Work Text:
Spottedpaw feels light-headed, and somehow heavy-headed at the same time. She sits upright uncomfortably, fidgeting with her paws near it—him: the body. She chokes on the silence, and the peering gazes of ThunderClan over her. She rakes her claws over these cold lifeless stones of Sunningrocks, and it reminds her of the river, and the way those rapids erode sharp slate into pebbles.
She realizes she hasn’t been exhaling again, and lets all the air out of her lungs. Her forced posture slumps to an imperfection, and she heaves like she’s about to die. She’s sure at least one of them saw her break form. She forces her neck to obey her, craning in the vague direction of where they all would be standing.
For a moment, she thought that at least one of them saw right through her act, but around the circle of her clanmates, there’s pity and a deep resounding sadness. Between those two faces, there is yet more, but she can’t bear to look at those he held him in higher light, for all of them held a gaze of fervent anger so violent, that, even if not directed at her in any regard, crushed her with all the weight of StarClan and the Dark Forest combined.
Her distant stare focuses on the big dark tabby sat by Darkpaw, whose face portrays nothing but a calm, blank expression. Darkpaw himself doesn’t meet her gaze, but instead looks down into the gravel, sleep deprived from the night patrol.
Dim red rivulets weave arteries between little pebbles. The river is sickly silent as it grinds the flowing blood into nothing but pink mist in the deeper waters.
-
Bluefur gave life to three beautiful kits. Their names are Stonekit, Mistykit, and Mosskit. Stonekit. Mistykit. Mosskit. Mosskit.
The first two looked much like Bluefur, just a little darker in coat, and sometimes, if you looked at them right, you could almost say they were just very grayed out dark tabbies. This came from Thushpelt, their father, certainly, even if his pelt never got that dark. Fur colouration works in mysterious ways.
Mosskit, however, was an outlier. Out of the three of them, Spottedpaw could only really recognize Mosskit for sure. Unlike her littermates, she had this stark white pelt spotted by gray flecks like little stones. Her little ears ended in gray tips.
Mosskit always looks up to her with those big round eyes. Her eyes were blue, so blue in fact, they seemed to be the same blue as the cloudless sky, or the blue of light shadows cast by trees in fluffy leaf-bare snow.
Bluefur purrs often of how apart from her pretty gray spots, she mirrors her late sister in every other aspect.
Snowfur. Thistleclaw’s first mate.
Her mind spins.
Late at night, when she’s often still awake, she just worries about nothing. Time passes without her noticing, and sometimes, when her legs give in and she finally decides to rest, the sun has begun to rise. She checks who Mosskit is with whenever she can see her from the entrance of the medicine den.
He’s there. But only sometimes, of course. It makes perfect sense why they talk to each other, because all clan-mates should talk to one another sometimes so it’s nothing. Regardless, she keeps watching.
She talks to him more than normal. But what is normal? He’s the future deputy, of course he gets attention. Whenever his bountiful one-cat hunting patrol comes back, or when his heroic solo border patrols suddenly comes home, everyone younger than her flock to him like ducklings. Mosskit is among their ranks every single time.
One sun-high, Thistleclaw returned with a plump thrush. Spottedpaw lurked behind the opening of the medicine den, and watched from there where the shade kept her head cool, and hidden from sight. He turns his head low to those who ran to him, and then he smiles. It’s a loving smile that she can barely see, but she remembers it so well from when he used to look that way to her. Stonekit asks him, eyes worried wide, and he responds in kind, nuzzling the top of his head. It uneases her, but she can’t place why.
Always, Spottedpaw contemplates how much he’s changed. He must be a better cat now that it’s been moons since what happened before, and she’s just worried about nothing. And then she looks down at her forepaws, thinking about how wrong she is. What kind of medicine cat judges another? And what is she doing now, but this awful paranoid investigation instead of sorting medicine, instead of getting more stock, just so worried, so bothered all about nothing that pertains to her.
She looks back up, and her eye meets his. She locks in place like a chital on the thunderpath, her breathing slowed to a pulp. That loving, comforting smile contorts, curls into something. His opaque eyes bore into her. She can’t read his expression, it haunts her, but somehow she can feel it: betrayal, cold indifference maybe. She desperately fights the urge to cry, to run away, or to run to him all at once.
The little voice in her head begs her to run back to him, and tell him that he’s right—he always is. I was never meant to be a medicine cat. The little voice says. Teach me how to rip my enemies to shreds. Teach me to kill, to love, to hate…
It’s something to do with her face, or the way her posture slumps that Thistleclaw smirks. There is no love in the way he does it, only appreciation of his work. Spottedpaw wishes she felt as numb as her paws were. Medicine cats’ minds never should wander these awful places.
Finally, she breaks sight, and turns, shrivelling inward. She covers her eyes with her paws, jaws trembling, body shaking, tail screwed up.
She realizes she’s forgotten to exhale. She lets all the air out of her lungs in a huff. Her chest decompresses, and she feels it everywhere else. She shakes herself off, vying to forget everything just now, praying to StarClan that she would—if it were a valid reason, and she hopes it is.
Suddenly, her eyes widen, pupils slitted as she realizes she’s broken sight of Mosskit too. She shifts her gaze back to the middle of camp where the group had already dissipated.
Feathers line the dirt where Thistleclaw stood.
It means nothing. It never means anything. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Feathers line the dirt where Mosskit stood.
-
She falls and her forepaws catch her before she eats shit. There, knelt beside the cool air of the quiet river, she trembles so hard she could be knocked over by a sudden gust of wind.
They know. They must all know now. Oh StarClan, they must.
But if StarClan won’t save her, nobody will, and now she is a traitor to the clans—and StarClan—and the Dark Forest would never take her—not like she’d ever want to step paw back in that horrible creepy place again.
Outside the code, that’s where she’ll be. Chased out her home to somewhere in the unknown.
Torn apart by rogues, picked into pieces by loners, mocked by joyful kittypets in their big twoleg dens, plump with… whatever they eat in those places, happy with their simple little fence gazing life, free from all the burden of these horrible, horrible politics, while she starves with how little hunting she’s ever learnt from her old days as a warrior apprentice.
“It’s difficult, I don’t blame you any. Death is a fact of life.” Featherwhisker says in, next to her, prying at Thistleclaw’s wounds obscured in his thick wolf gray pelt. And if only he knew what Spottedpaw was even thinking right now.
“Know me, Spottedpaw, the first time I saw a body in battle, his neck was spouting blood much like the river current here, and it was this wound so vast, the jugular…” he stops in the middle of his story, and spots how she’s shriveled in place, and is no longer there on the same plane of thought as him.
He clears his throat awkwardly, retreating to his search for the killing blow amidst the flurry of gray fur.
Maybe she’ll find someplace to stay. Like a muddy alcove where food is spare but manageable. Maybe she could find some other wood out there, or maybe she should turn tail and run to where twolegs stack their dens so tall? Or… or give up and be a kittypet? Or… or…
-
Spottedpaw stalked the two out of camp. She hid in the undergrowth several tail lengths away, and stuck to those bushes where the leaves had already started to wilt: rotting amber like her pelt. Never did she doubt Thistleclaw’s tracking as future deputy, but she hopes and begs to Silverpelt above that maybe just this once, his senses may fail him.
She crouched inside a leafy orange shrub and attentively took in everything she could eavesdrop.
“[…]Bluefur […] you?” his muffled voice called out to the little kit. His voice is gritty like gravel, but churns in a sickeningly smooth way meant to soothe, but all it does is send shivers down Spottedpaw’s pelt.
“[…]?” Mosskit replies, her head facing the other way so Spottedpaw couldn’t hear any of it. The kitten’s paws have some mud on them now, so she tries to shake it off like a dog. Then, she hops happily around the senior warrior, stopping where her face is visible to Spottedleaf’s hiding place. “[But] mama say’you’re scaaary.” the kit says, her eyes dazzle
“If you knew Bluefur better, you’d know she’s a stick in the mud. Don’t listen to her; I’m plenty of fun.” He purrs.
“Fun? Show me! [Show me!] Show me!” She starts running loops around him again, and Thistleclaw starts to cackle.
“How about next sundown?” He says, unmoving. Spottedpaw’s fur stands on its ends.
The kit’s head tilts to the side confusedly.
“Tomorrow, at sundown, go to your nest, and sleep [early], make sure you’re alone.”
“Why?” Mosspaw asks innocently, head still tilted.
“Don’t worry.”
“M’kay.”
And then they walk back to camp, leaving Spottedpaw all alone. She glanced down at her forepaws, and realized she’d been shaking cold. She has no thoughts, or are all of them stuck together in a way where she can’t hear them anymore? She waddles uncomfortably back home for chamomile, narrowly missing a fallen log she almost walked right into.
-
“I didn’t know they let apprentices kill.” Featherwhisker murmurs.
Spottedpaw looks up to him near instantly “What?” She chokes out, sheaving her claws.
“RiverClan. Some of these wounds—bite marks.” He reaches into the fluff of his neck where several bite marks rest bloody under his pelt. “They’re not quite deep enough to be a fully grown warrior’s. There’s other ones too, but there’d have to have been at least two or maybe three cats, one apprentice certainly.”
“Honestly, it’d have to’ve been an apprentice about your age, give or take.”
“Uh-huh…” she murmurs.
“Spottedpaw, this is really important—someday you’ll be down here inspecting bodies too, and I won’t be able to help you from the elder’s den. I know you were close to him, so I’m very sorry I have to be blunt like this, but for all intents and purposes, Thistleclaw’s a patient right now in need of treatment like any other clanmate. The treatment right now being to figure out how he died so his spirit can rest peacefully in StarClan.”
Is that all everyone thought of us? She sinks into her own pelt. Close.
“Ah mousedung,” he chuckles lightly in face of the circumstances “look at me, I have my full medicine cat name, yet even I can’t even find a killing blow—or bite for that matter.”
-
Leaves rustle overhead. The chatter of camp is gone, but a whistling birdsong from somewhere further away still keeps her company. It’s dark this moonrise. Somehow, it feels so much darker, and dimmer than any other moonrise she’s seen, but it might just be that she’d always been in the medicine den for every other time. Uneven steps, paws sore from overuse, she carries a bundle of herbs, making sure she doesn’t pierce the black berries inside. A few poppy and foxglove seeds fall out, but it doesn’t matter much. She paws them into the dirt where they’ll never be seen again.
She stalks into the warriors’ den, where the sleeping bodies of her clanmates lay, peacefully clueless to her intentions.
Thistleclaw’s den is the closest to the entrance. He doesn’t snore, but his chest still rises and falls, indicating his life.
She walks around his nest, and catches his expression. His face is contorted into something like pain. Spottedpaw is taken aback, and reconsiders herself. She steps away, and closes her eyes. She wants to disappear into the ground, she wants to forget that this even happened.
And then she remembers Mosskit, and those big blue eyes. So full of joy, of the happiness of someone who had only ever known Thistleclaw as a model warrior, and the innocence of a kit who should never know anything more than that.
She opens her eyes again, and decides she must do it.
She wrenches his jaw open. His stark yellow eyes open instantly. The poppy seeds, the poppy seeds should keep him asleep! Startled like vermin, she shoves the whole bundle into his mouth while he’s still waking. He recognizes her, and then writhes hard, almost knocking her down while he chokes on the medicine. Those horrible bloodshot eyes that once seemed tender to her looked upon her with all the judgement of a heartless betrayal. She clamps her claws down onto his muzzle with all the might she can muster, keeping him wordless, and soundless to the sleeping masses around them. He lashes his claws at her, narrowly missing a gash in her neck. Even as experienced as he is, his movements become sloppy when the pawful of poppyseeds start to take effect. He bats into the air around her, and then nowhere at all when the foxglove paralyzes him frozen. His eyes go foggy, his pupils relax, and expand outward into the iris creating black circles that reflect back her terrified form. She lets go, and he falls into the moss of his own nest. It’s near soundless, just a gentle thud, like a kitten into a leaf pile.
The nightshade must’ve done its work. If only he fell one whisker’s length away, the whole warriors’ den would’ve awoken at once.
She waits a few seconds to make sure he won’t come alive again. She turns his head over, and black foam starts pouring out of his mouth.
Fuck…
She panics, pawing the stuff back into his mouth as best as she can. The water hemlock–it causes your mouth to foam, of course. How did she forget? Why… why… why…
Without a second thought, her teeth bare into his fur, biting into flesh. His blood pools into her mouth, and it tastes something closer to crowfood than actual blood. She then starts hauling the heavy corpse out of the warriors’ den. Her pads are so raw already from foraging the whole plot fresh, and his immovable corpse just makes her wear out so much more. She carries on regardless, pulling at him with all the strength she can muster out of her body.
His tail catches on the thorns of the bramble wall, leaving scratch wounds in their wake. He bleeds a trail to camp as she drags him. It feels like it’s been moons. Her jaws quiver, and she feels limp herself. Her eyes are wet with regret, but she forces herself to distance herself from her morals, trying to wrack her mind for anywhere she can bury him. Eventually, when her legs are about to give out, she reaches a small treeless clearing, where the ground is tender from the rain days before. She nudges his body, the dirt on her pawpads discolouring his gray pelt, and she starts to dig, looking away from him. Her claw sheathes fill with murky cold mud that makes her overworked paws numb.
To top it all off, she realizes she’d stopped breathing. She inhales rabidly, choking out dead grass while attempting to exhale. She can’t tell where her paws end and the ground begins but she just keeps going. Rosemary… she thinks. I should’ve brought rosemary… Hide the scent so nobody will find him… mousedung, foxheart I am! I’m a murderer! A cold blooded killer… What kind of medicine cat is that… What kind of traitor to the clans, to the stars…
In the middle of thought, she’d stopped. She heaves louder, chest rising and falling under her as the whole forest crashes onto her as she realizes what she’s done. It’s so quiet now. Once, there were owl calls, night birds, the rustling of leaves. There’s nothing. Maybe it’s the thumping in her ears, maybe it’s because her mind doesn’t have the capacity to know how to hear right now, but she’s never felt so alone in her life. Not when she was in the medicine den up at this time of night thinking about this, not when she realized Spottedstar would never exist, not when she felt Thistleclaw’s hatred for the first time, not when she was alone with him in that terrible horrible place that night, not when nobody came for her then, nor knew to come for her, not to save her.
She gives up. She cries. Tears streamed down her face at first. And then she broke down. She sobs into her muddy paws. Dirt gets in her eyes but she doesn’t care. She wishes she were in her nest right now. She wishes she could sleep. Could she ever now? Now that he’s in StarClan? Would he send visions to haunt her? Make her relive all the pain she’s ever felt again, relive his death? So many things, and she’s so tired, so worn. Everything’s gone belly-up, and now she can’t do anything.
And then she hears something… someone.
A voice calls to another in the night. Two figures appear from the void, one big and broad, the other smaller, and noticeably skinnier. The night patrol. She can’t do anything but stare, and it’s only when they’ve fully approached, and seen her fully with Thistleclaw laid next to her does she realize it’s Tigerclaw and Darkpaw. Thistleclaw’s apprentice, and his apprentice in turn.
Darkpaw looks confused at first, probably. The shadows of the night obscure his expression, but then he looks somewhere between scared, suspicious, and enraged. Spottedpaw understands, and her ears stick to her skull. She looks up to his mentor. Tigerclaw stands a few paws’ length ahead of his trainee as if protecting him from the sinner in front of him. He says nothing. He looks at the body. And then back at her. He’s expressionless. Somehow, that scares her more.
“Darkpaw,” his voice noticeably quiet. She flinches.
“What do we do with her, Tigerclaw?” The young apprentice asks.
“Bring him to Sunningrocks. We’ll make it look like a scuffle.”
“...him? Don’t you mean her?”
Tigerclaw looks unappeased, “Him. Thistleclaw. The corpse, mousebrain. If we hold him up instead of dragging him, it’ll look like we didn’t drag his carcass down there.”
Spottedpaw blinks twice. Darkpaw mirrors her.
“What!?” The apprentices both say in unison.
Tigerclaw bites down hard enough into Thistleclaw’s scruff she swears she heard a vertebrae snap.
“W-what are you doing?” She shouts out to him, struggling out of the hole she’s dug.
“Quiet, Spottedpaw,” the dark tabby orders. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m saving your pelt.”
Darkpaw hesitates before biting into Thistleclaw’s leg. His eyes widen, and then he chokes out, letting go, obviously tasting the very same wretched thing Spottedpaw did earlier, but when Tigerclaw flashes him a stern glance, he forces himself back in place and attempts to lift him back up again.
“Saving? Saving???” She asks, dumbfounded. “I’m a murderer! I’m a mess! Traitor to ThunderClan, and you’re saving me???”
“Not for long you aren’t.” He says, shoving his jaw into Thistleclaw’s shoulder. “C’hme. Hrelp ush phinish hwhat hyou stharted” he mutters, mouth full of fur, nodding towards the other leg that Darkpaw isn’t absolutely failing at propping up.
Without another word, she comes up by Darkpaw’s side, and lifts the leg. Tigerclaw leads them forwards, down an unnavigable path in between roots under the cover of the canopy above.
Soon, or maybe seasons later, they reach Sunningrocks.
When the sky is visible again, it’s overcast. Silverpelt, and the moon is hidden behind storm clouds. She can’t tell if it’s a sign of impending doom or just the weather. She hopes it’s just the latter.
In the gravel near the settled river, she lets go while her last bout of energy drains from her. Darkpaw falls over when she does, hissing as the body falls on his forepaws. Spottedpaw stumbles over, intent on checking his paws but the smaller apprentice fumbles away from her like she has an infectious disease. She retreats expectantly.
Tigerclaw unsheathes his big sharp claws. He brings them to Thistleclaw’s ribs, and starts slashing haphazardly.
Spottedpaw’s eyes are wide, unable to focus on anything but the blood that pours down as his matted fur turns more and more crimson.
“Darkpaw!” He shouts, and Darkpaw scrambles over to start hacking at him too.
“Don’t you hate the guy, Spottedpaw?” Tigerclaw remarks, noticing her lack of engagement. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
“I can’t bear to hurt him.” She replies.
“And yet, you bear taking his life?”
“I–I wanted him to die peacefully!” She pleaded, “I only wanted him gone, not suffering… I can’t-”
“Can’t what? Stand his presence? Why, then we’ll be thinking the same thing. Peaceful death my dirt. He used to tear me limb from limb like a rabid dog back when I was his ‘paw. It’s an utter shame he isn’t alive to feel every clawswipe now.”
“And he didn’t send you to Featherwhisker?”
“You think he cares to send me to the medicine den?” He looks back to her in annoyance. “Nobody can see wounds through thick fur. We washed the blood off in the river after we trained, none was ever the wiser.” He nodded briefly to the body of water near where they sat, then continued desecrating the body. Darkpaw had his head down through the whole of it, continually clawing the same spot over and over again.
“Claw elsewhere maybe?” She recommends, “If there’s too many in one place, it’ll look too deliberate to be a scuffle.”
Darkpaw scrunched his muzzle, “you’re not my mentor, traitor.” He murmurs through his teeth.
“She’s no traitor.” Tigerclaw hisses back at his own trainee. “ThunderClan is better without his presence.”
Darkpaw looks to his mentor, “But Tigeclaw!-”
“Do what she says, your mentor commands it.”
Darkpaw sighs, then starts clawing half-heartedly elsewhere.
“And do it with passion!” Teases Tigerclaw, “With the theatrics of a riverclannie who’s finally getting their grubby fish-smelling claws on a ThunderClan warrior!”
He sighs harder, but does not object as he rakes his claws harder into flesh. “Rahh.” He says unenthusiastically. “I’m a grubby clawed, fish-smelling riverclannie. I’m here to kill Thistleclaw at Sunningrocks.”
“I doubt RiverClan even knows his name!” He bursts out in laughter, getting Darkpaw to crack up too. Somehow, even Spottedpaw finds it in her heart to chuckle a little, forgetting for just a moment about murder. And then it comes back again, as soon as she thinks of it.
“Shouldn’t we have alibis?”
“Me and Darkpaw started our patrol, but then Thistleclaw decided to tag along.” He says instantly. “We split up. Us two go to the ShadowClan border, and he goes alone to the RiverClan border. We find his body covered in wounds at Sunningrocks tomorrow. He got caught in a skirmish, and was killed by RiverClan in battle.”
“What about me?” She asks.
“I don’t know, what do medicine cats do at night? Collect herbs?”
“Well, it’s not that simple. There’s got to be a reason… Maybe I’m out there collecting oak leaves for the stock, and I ran into you and Darkpaw.”
“Near the Thunderpath?
“Would they believe that though? Oaks grow better deeper in the forest…”
“They don’t bat an eye at anything; the Thunderpath’s a good enough landmark to tell them we were near the ShadowClan border anyway.”
“Okay…”
Darkpaw’s stopped slashing while Tigerclaw was speaking, he’s breathing hard, fatigued already.
”Darkpaw, go back to camp.”
”Huh??” The apprentice looks up, mildly offended. “But I’m doing everything right!”
“Okay, but you’re starting to look like you dragged a body out to sunningrocks and spilt his guts all over it.” The mentor quips back.
The ‘paw sighs hard, and starts walking back, tail down, head down. “Fiiineeee.”
Spottedpaw remembers the trail of blood by camp, and a terrible thought comes to her.
”—You need to clean it!” She directs her words to the apprentice.
”Huuh?” Darkpaw asks
”I dragged him halfway here—they’ll think-”
”What? The fox prey trail? That was you??”
“Fox trail?!?”
”Ohhh that’s why it was such a big one.” Tigerclaw chuckles, “We saw it circling camp. Didn’t have a scent, thought it meant it fell in some mud or something. Explained why there’s mud all over the grass. I thought it was just a really fat fox. Turns out it was just a really Thistleclaw shaped cat.”
“Please still clean it up, I don’t want anyone finding it.”
”In my humble opinion, dear Spottedpaw, I think it raises more suspicion if the ground with blood on it right next to camp was pawed over with dirt.”
“Uhh, who am I listening to exactly?” Darkpaw asks sheepishly.
”Me and Spottedpaw.”
”As in whose commands I should follow, they’re conflicting.”
”Listen to your mentor Darkpaw… my idea was bad, sorry.”
”It wasn’t bad, you’re just over-covering your steps. Trust me. Nobody ever sees anything.”
And in the deepest parts of her mind, she knows it is true.
”Can we wash our paws at least?” She asks.
”No thank you.”
”Can I, Tigerclaw?” Darkpaw asks, still in the same spot.
”Go back to camp and sleep, for Silverpelt’s sake or I’ll drag you back there myself!”
-
The clan is watching. Featherwhisker sighs, unable to find anything substantial.
Spottedpaw awaits in unbearable suspense.
“Alright, so, since he died from a physical fight, there’s no need to check for causes like, say, poisoning.” He says. Spottedpaw unstiffens finally.
“But since it’s your first time, I want to show you how. If he were poisoned, there would be plenty of signs—like foam in case of water hemlock, or maybe dye from berries: like for instance, red from deathberries, or other such stuff in that vein. Here, I’ll-”
When he pries open his jaws, the inside of his mouth is painted black. Foam obscures his throat from view, bubbles dyed black from nightshade.
When Featherwhisker looks back at her, Spottedpaw looks like she’s about to crumble into pieces. Her eyes are wide with guilt, and unimaginable terror only visible to him, as the only one able to see her face.
“And look.” He starts to speak, his voice cracking just little enough for a keen enough ear to sense.
Spottedleaf closes her eyes. It’s over. It’s all over.
“Perfectly healthy. There’s absolutely nothing wrong.” He purrs.