"I've told you all I know," says Firestar on the second day of week five. Just like he always does. It's even true now, though it wasn't at first. He doesn't know much anymore.
Tigerstar smiles, a dark thing that's all teeth, and doesn't move from his place outside Firestar's cell. Not that Firestar really expected him to. "I don't think that's true," he says, and Firestar's gut turns at the predatory tone. "I think you have quite a bit more to tell me. You were the leader, after all."
Yes. He was. Firestar doesn't like to be reminded of the burden he's left behind. Poor Leafpool, not Leafstar until she comes of age, ruling a realm at barely thirteen with her eleven-year-old sister as advisor and heir to the throne. How are they managing? Firestar can't get any news, here in the heart of ShadowClan.
"It's been more than a month since I've been gone. They'll have changed the guards, changed the passwords." Squirrelflight might not have thought of it of it, but Leafpool certainly would. Firestar raised two smart girls, and Leafpool has four years of advising experience. "I can't tell you anything."
He's so tired. Tired of resisting. Tired of being always on his guard. Tired from too little food, too little water, too little sleep, too little sound, too little light. It's always dark in his cell, so far underground that no sunlight can sneak through and too far from the torches for even flickering firelight. Tigerstar, with his conversations and lit candle, is almost a relief.
A relief who is asking him to betray his daughters. "But you know the fortress layout, surely? They can't change that."
Firestar shrugs. "This one? No. I don't. The corridors are tangled, the staircases intersect, the rooms connect in odd ways. Even I would have to be looking at a map." It doesn't hurt that they'd only recently relocated to Sunstone. If he'd been there for more than six weeks, he probably would've known the fortress like the back of his hand.
"ThunderClan primarily uses simple, easily constructed buildings for protection. I was there, you may remember." Tigerstar is smirking. It's hideous and maddening and beautiful, all at once. And Firestar does remember; it would be difficult to forget.
He laughs, not mirthful at all. Unusual. Firestar doesn't easily give in to bitterness. "We did twenty years ago. No more. We learn from our mistakes." When a realm's advisor tries to hire assassins to murder the Queen (well, leader, but they'd all called Bluestar the Queen, she'd meant all that the title implied and more to them) you make the layouts complicated after that. No hireling could find their way through the maze that is Sunstone.
Lord. He'd only been seventeen when Bluestar named him heir and advisor — the positions were and are interchangeable — and he really hadn't been ready. And then his Sandstorm died in childbirth, and that traitor Darkstripe slit Bluestar's throat, and Firestar was twenty-six and alone when he took the throne and thirty-seven and alone when he passed it down to one even less ready than he was.
Tigerstar just stares at him, eyes narrowed to golden slits that glitter in the candlelight. "I hope you aren't expecting that I'll just give up."
Firestar shrugs again and says nothing. There is nothing to say.
He is expecting anything but. Tigerstar does not give up, ever.
"I'll be back tomorrow," Tigerstar says. Whether it's a threat or a promise Firestar isn't sure.
And Tigerstar leaves and takes the candle with him, and Firestar is left with nothing but a strange sense of loss.