Phantom Pain

by khruangbin

Tawnyfur is a disillusioned young ShadowClan warrior in a forest on the brink of war. The night of the Gathering, she slips off a fallen tree and is killed. And then she starts the night of the Gathering over again, and dies. And then again, and again, and again.

1. The Night Before a Gathering

PHANTOM PAIN.

ONE.

Ugh.

The night before a Gathering.

Everyone always loses their minds about it, but I'm here staring at my reflection in a rain puddle and wondering if I can make myself throw up so I don't have to go.

I'm standing staring at my face in the puddle with the image of the trees over my head silhouetted by the setting sun. I just went out for a drink of water, and then a drink of water turned into an hour, looking at myself, looking back at me. I stab it with my paw to disturb the reflection and it morphs into chaotic ripples.

I'm maybe two fox-lengths out of camp, but I can hear through the thickets how excited everyone is to go to this forest-wide gathering of monumental importance. They're all going to be making these huge important decisions about the futures of our Clans and our livelihoods once it's over. Yay.

When I turn around I get my back paw stuck in a thicket torn lose from the camp's exterior barrier so I have to sit and wrestle it loose. I've got something wrong with that back leg there, have for a while now. It's sort of a paint deep in the joint where it meets the rest my body.

I'll tell you, I'm a young cat. I've only been a warrior for about six months now. Old enough to have my own apprentice, finally, but not old enough to feel like I'm much more than an apprentice myself. I'm not some elder nursing my sore joints who can't clean her own bedding. Yet I've got this pain anyway, somehow, for at least a moon now. It's not killing me. I figured I can eventually use it to get out of doing something I don't want to do someday.

Thicket-free, I head for the camp entrance and two warriors nearly trample me leaving camp. "Hey, Tawnyfur!" One of them says to me. Briarmouth. He swishes his tail. "We were just going to go grab something before we lave, you want to join?"

"Pass," I say. I always pass on hunting with this guy. Got a mouth like a rabid badger. "Pick me up a vole, though!" And I duck past them into the camp.

Ugh. Too many cats. Cats everywhere. Just emerging through the briar tunnel is like getting hit by a wave of sound. All the meowing and blabbering. Heatherstar is regally passing to the leader's den with her head held high and three of her senior warriors flanking her. I swish my tail at her with a smile, but she doesn't see me. Figures. I steel my way through the center of camp, my eye on the medicine cat's den, halfheartedly greeting my other Clanmates on the way. My brand new apprentice, Snowpaw, waves both her tail and her claws at me from the other side of camp, playfighting with the other apprentices outside of their den, and I sheepishly return the greeting, but I hope she doesn't come bounding over to me. Rats, she's going to want to spend the entire Gathering at my side tonight. I'm going to have to muster the energy from someplace. StarClan knows how.

"Tawny! Tawnyyyy!"

Before I reach the medicine cat's den I'm intercepted by Shallowtail skidding I front of me, trembling about, wiggling with excitement, slapping me with her tail. "Tawn!" She says. "You look like someone threw crowfood on you! Not like – you look bad – just like you look bad, because you look sad or something." She pulls a frown. "Why so sad?"

"Oh, I'm not sad," I meow in a long and drawling voice, "I think it's just the absolute dire importance everyone treats these Gatherings with that kind of bring me down, you know? Like oh, good, let's all get excited to race to a distant island with a bunch of cats who hate each other – and look! It resolved nothing. Hurrah."

"There could be a war," Shallowtail observed seriously, innocently. "I think it's important to try to resolve things, even if it doesn't work."

"Yeah, sure." I say. I continue for the medicine cat's den.

"Oh, come on!" She dashes after me. "Let's stay up after we get back and do something fun tonight!"

"Fun? Like what?"

"I don't know, let's climb the tallest tree in the forest or something! We haven't done that since we were apprentices."

Shallowtail and I, we go all the way back to the nursery together. Everything makes Shallowtail excited. Even the prospect of forest-wide warfare doesn't dampen her sprits.

"Sure, why not." I say. "Listen, I've got to pop in and see Blackwing really quick, but after that I'll catch up to you, okay? Let's eat something, I think Briarmouth's bringing me a vole. We can share." I offer a toothy smile.

"Why do you have to see Blackwing?" She folds her ears with concern. "The leg?"

"Yep, the leg." I stretch it out to show her. "I wouldn't say it's getting worse, but it's not getting better either. Here's hoping I can score some of those poppy seeds again…" Another toothy smile offered. "Wish me luck?"

"For the poppy seeds, or your leg feeling better?" Shallowtail pouts. "Oh! Oh! Oh! I forgot to tell you, Heatherstar talked about you, she wanted to see you I think." She lazily licks part of her leg. "She didn't sound mad or anything."

"Oh – good." I say. "Okay, I will think about that after I've gotten my much-needed dose of poppy seeds. Thank you Shallowtail. Love you."

"Love you, Tawny!" She meows, and then somersaults over herself running off. "Good luck!"

I nose my way into Blackwing's den with a low, "hellooo?" because it's so dark in there. While my eyes are still adjusting, I'm greeted by a soft, herb-smelling paw lightly against the side of my cheek.

"Tawnyfur." a voice whispers. It's Thistlepaw, Blackwing's apprentice. My eyes adjust and I see the round, wide-eyed face of this calico little apprentice.

"Okay, hi there, Thistlepaw," I say, removing her paw with my own. "Is Blackwing around?"

"She's in the back, treating Greenwhisker. He still has that sdder bite festering."

"Ouch," I say. I kind of forget how to offer condolences for a moment. It's Greenwhisker's own fault he developed an appetite for lizard and now goes hunting for them where adders live. "Listen, if Blackwing's busy…it's just my leg, it's hurting again, if you could just give me some poppy seeds I could eat and dip…"

"Blackwing!" Thistlepaw yowls, breaking her former pal of silence. "Blackwing, Tawnyfur needs poppy seeds!"

I follow her deeper into the den. Smells like medicine in here and it's just assaultive. Everything these medicine cats do is smelly. Even they kind of smell. If it wasn't for those treasured poppy seeds, I'd never set foot in here. In the back, Blackwing is bent over Greenwhisker's orange form, he's sprawled lazily in the back, his cobweb-wrapped paw stuck straight in the air. Blackwing comes to greet me with a nose touch. A nose touch, that's what Thistlepaw needs to learn. No need to lay her yarrow-covered paw on my face.

"Tawnyfur," Blackwing says softly. "Come lie down, I have a nest for you."

"No – no, it's really just the poppy seeds I need…"

"Well, let me check out that leg first. Lie down." Both medicine cats guide me to the nest, and I begrudgingly lie down on bedding that smells amazingly clean. Maybe they had to replace it because whoever lay before me made accidental dirt in there or something. Ugh. Blackwing uses her paw on my flank to push me onto my side, and then noses about my sore leg.

"Does it hurt like that?" She eases it out straight. "No" I say. "How about that?" Pulling it into the air. "No…" "How about that?" She pulls it backward. I yelp in pain, almost kick her off of me. I can't help it. StarClan almighty, that hurt.

"Could be muscular." Blackwing mumbles. "I'm sorry, Tawnyfur. I wish I had a better answer for you with this one. My best recommendation is you stay here and rest for at least a week."

"But I can't do that," I say. "I can't lie around the medicine cat's den for a week while my phantom pain heals. What will Heatherstar think of that? And it's not even like I've got some glorious battle wound, or any real wound at all, actually, it's just this…pain."

"A phantom pain." Blackwing agrees, nodding with empathy, looking lowly into my eyes. "Try not to stress it if you can. Here's some poppy seeds for you…" she has them tucked into a ball of dew-soaked moss, I lick the whole thing off eagerly. "If it still hurts, come back tomorrow for more."

"Okay." I say.

"Are you going to the gathering tonight?" She asks me.

"Yeah." I say. "I mean I have to. And Snowpaw's dying to go…so I don't have a choice."

Blackwing sits down patiently. Observing me. "Why don't you want to go so bad? What is that about?"

"I can't be the only ShadowClan cat that isn't hot on attending Gatherings."

"You're the only one I know." Blackwing says. "It worries me a little."

"You don't need to worry about me," I say. "I think I'm just going through something right now. I think it's the war. Or the potential of war. You know, growing up my whole life in a forest that's seen almost entirely peace, and now it's like…"

"Are you afraid to fight?"

"I'm not afraid…I'm just…" I'm moving to begin sitting up in the nest, begin leaving. Don't want to get too deep with Blackwing here. "I think my leg just hurts, really."

"There are other ways to be in pain, too." Blackwing says. She's still sitting. I'm standing.

"Yeah, well." I say. "Thanks as ever for the poppy seeds. You keep a she-cat living, Blackwing. Next time." And I shimmy out of there pretty fast.

The camp outside is even more crowded than it was before. Shallowtail is chattering eagerly with Sunwing, this pale-orange tom with the whitest paws and the whitest belly and the greenest eyes. I'm pretty sure they're becoming mates. Well, Shallowtail thinks they're becoming mates. Brackenclaw is with them too. He waves his tail exactly. Brackenclaw thinks we're becoming mates. I think. I guess in a way we are. I don't know how most cats our age would define it. I like the warmth of sleeping beside him in the den, but then all the other stuff…joining me on patrols, always asking to go hunting, trying to schedule our training-sessions at the same time…I mean I know I'm supposed to love it, Shallowtail loves it when Sunwing does that with her, but truth be told I think I'd rather do it all alone.

Shallowtail waves her tail at me eagerly and stands up like she's about to dash through the camp to join me, but I nod at Heatherstar's den, and roll my eyes for good measure. She gives me one of her telltale grimaces: "good luck!" Shallowtail loves saying "good luck" to you. Now that's a she-cat who really believes in luck. Her mother told her that when she and her litter were born, she was the only one of four born in a perfect ray of sunlight filtering through the nursery's walls. Bathed in sunlight, she was. Shallowtail calls this her "luck". "It's watched over me my whole life!" She'll say. Every prey she's ever caught – luck. Befriending Sunwing, Sunwing asking her to hunt by the border – luck. That time she fell out of a pine tree trying to catch a magpie but landed on the one hidden patch of wildflowers instead of the craggy rocks surrounding it – all luck.

It's got to be nice, believing in luck, I think. If you imagine your life is up to luck and really out of your hands, I mean there's nothing to fear, then. Not really. It's out of your hands.

I cross to Heatherstar's gloomy den and wait outside. I know she can see me out there waiting, but then I get impatient and slap my tail against the stone until her nose pokes out of the dark. "Tawnyfur," she says. "I'm glad you're here."

"Hi mom." I say.

I duck into her den after her. It smells like squirrel in here. For good reason – she's still in the process of eating one. "Want to share?" She offers me.

"Nah." Feels weird eating with my Clan leader, even if she's my mother and all. Plus, I feel sick. Those poppy seeds kill my appetite.

"Well." She says. She turns in one spot in her den. "You look glum."

"What? That's crazy," I laugh. "I feel great. Gathering tonight!"

"Gathering tonight." Heatherstar looks so somber. "Tawny, dear, if this Gathering doesn't go well diplomatically, this could be the end of the peaceful agreement we've maintained for over two generations now."

"So just let – WindClan and RiverClan figure it out." I say. I pick at something between my toes. "How are you, mom? How's life whisking around with those four burly toms of yours all the time?"

"You could be one of my advisors too, someday, if you wanted." Heatherstar says wryly. She picks a bit of squirrel off the bone and watches me.

"Mm, that will definitely happen." I say.

"I'm worried about this glum attitude of yours." She says.

"Oh StarClan!" I laugh. "You are the second cat today who has called me glum! Glum. How am I glum?" I smile as big as I can.

"Because you're unmotivated, you're withdrawn, you eat way more than you hunt, you don't like patrolling, or even heading to the borders, you sleep way too long, your apprentice has complained to my deputy about how poor her training is going, and most of all Tawnyfur, because of the way you talk."

"Which is?"

"Negative. It's negative."

"I'm not negative!" I implore. I forgot why I came in here. "I'm just – going through something, or something. Okay? Mom? Why did you want me to come talk to you?"

"I have a proposition for you." She spits out a bone. She's kind of a gross eater.

"Sure."

Heatherstar lowers her voices now, and lies down on her side so her sandy flank is glowing faintly. "Depending on how tonight's Gathering goes, Tawnyfur, ShadowClan will probably be allying with RiverClan against WindClan's injustices."

"You're saying…war?"

"Yes, we will be going to war." She sighs. "This isn't a decision that I've made quickly or lightly. But I'm coming to believe it's the right thing to do to help those cats. I know it will be violent, I know that we will lose lives."

"Oh, good."

"But, since you are my daughter, and I know you aren't wanting to go into battle, I'm prepared to offer you something."

"What?"

"If you so choose, I won't command you to join the frontlines in battle. You can stay behind and hold down the camp and focus on hunting."

"Really? Why?"

"Because I don't want to drive us farther apart."

I sigh for a long time and dip my head. "Mom, listen."

"No, Tawnyfur." She says. "I would hope that you would choose to fight and choose the good of this Clan, but I also don't want to build resentment between us by forcing you to do that."

"Great, so I suck as a warrior." I say. "Okay. I'll think about that. Good. Bye, mom."

I leave her den in an awful mood and smelling all over from that stinky squirrel she was poking at. Having your mom be your Clan leader is pretty tough. As a queen, and as deputy, it was a different dynamic with us, but then she became leader. It used to be easier, is all I'm saying. And I miss it.

Maybe it would be different having her as Clan leader if things in the forest weren't so tense right now. Six moons ago, or so, WindClan's age-old leader finally passed, and his deputy, Mousestar, took his place. Ever since then, it's gone straight downhill. Mousestar immediately tightened borders, to the point that WindClan wouldn't even let RiverClan medicine cats pass through their territory on way to the Moonpool. That really set something off between those two Clans. It wasn't war or anything, but it was border skirmishes for sure. And then a WindClan cat was killed. Pushed into the river, by a RiverClan warrior. Since then, WindClan had poached two of their warriors. Pacing, guarding that border day and night. It had turned bloody. It was an unavoidably growing problem now.

I find Shallowtail by the fresh-kill pile with Sunwing waiting to leave. Other cats have begun lining up to leave, bathed in the moonlight overhead, patient watching the moon rise so they can leave, and quiet now. The mentors are hushing their apprentices and the most unruly kits have been shepherded back into the nursery. Shallowtail and Sunwing are cuddly – sharing a mouse together, cleaning food off of each other's mouths, acting as adorable as their kits will probably be. I sit down with them, and it takes a moment for Shallowtail to pull herself from Sunwing to greet me.

"What did Heatherstar want?" She asks.

"Just…motherly stuff." I say.

I feel the tap of a tail on my shoulder behind me, and look around. Oh. It's Brackenclaw. He lowers his eyes, his whiskers twitch invitingly. "Hey Tawnyfur."

"Hey…Brackenclaw." I say. I sit up a little. "How was your day?"

"Good. Uneventful patrol." He sits down with me and hooks a vole. "You want to share?"

"Uneventful is good." I say, with as much energy as I can muster. Shallowtail is watching the both of us with a silly expression. "And no, thanks, I'm full."

"You're never full." Shallowtail says.

"Shh!" I shush her. "Um, anyway. Brackenclaw. You're going tonight, right?"

"I'm coming." He says. "What do you think's going to happen with Mousestar there?"

"It's going to be horrible." I roll my eyes. "All that hatred and vitriol – not just him, but Fallenstar, too, and then the rest of RiverClan. Peaceful gathering of all four Clans? StarClan's dreaming!"

"You shouldn't take StarClan's name like that." Sunwing says blankly. Great. "What if you died tonight, and that was the last thing you said about them?"

"Oh, whatever." I stand up. "They aren't listening to me."

"Jeez! Shhh!" Shallowtail whips her tail against the dirt. "You're attracting bad luck."

"Are you leaving?" Brackenclaw asks, watching me stand and back away from their group.

"I'm just going to find Snowpaw for the Gathering." I mumble. I amble across the camp, and I can feel all three of them looking for me. I shouldn't have said that thing about StarClan. That's one of my problems; I say something I shouldn't just because I want to see if I can. It's like Sunwing said, it's going to kill me someday.

Snowpaw must have been watching me approach from inside the apprentice den, because she bursts out and bounces up to me, giggling at her apprentice friends left behind who weren't invited tonight. "Are we leaving now? Are we leaving now?" She's jumping all around. "Am I doing okay? Do I look okay?"

"You look great, but you have to settle down." I say. "You can't go bounding off to the island like that, you'll fall off the tree and break your neck."

"Oh StarClan, I hope not." She settles down immediately. By the fresh kill pile, my friends are lining up together, and Shallowtail swishes her long silver tail at me. She wants me to join them again. I arrive at their sides just as Heatherstar emerges from her den, and with a silent cue, nods toward the camp entrance.

Shallowtail, Snowpaw, Sunwing, Brackenclaw and I take up the end. I'm usually at the end. My heart is sinking as we leave the camp and charge across our territory. Dried leaves snapping under our paws. Twigs breaking. Owls calling from the trees around us with mild interest, the flickering interruption of bats, the full moon zigzagging through the branches overhead, intermittently flashing us in its deathly silver light, illuminating us, my motley Clan, my friends, my apprentices, and then me, all the way the rear.

"Shallowtail told me that you guys are going to climb trees after we get back." Brackenclaw falls behind to keep in pace with me. His voice is low so nobody hears, but his orange eyes bore into mine with that sultry, too-interested quality that, to be honest with you, really puts me off. I know he's trying, but if he only realized his eyes looked like that…

"Mind if I get in on that?" He asks.

I look at his dark brown tabby coat distantly, regard him from far away in my own mind. "Yeah sure. It'll be fun."

"Good. Sounds exciting. I'd like to watch you climb some trees. I want to see if you're as strong as you look."

I roll my eyes a little bit. This tom. How am I supposed to like him and make him a mate when he says things like that? "Surprise, buddy." I hear myself say. "I'm actually really weak. Watch me, I'm not even going to make it across the fallen tree to the island."

"I very much doubt that." He narrows his eyes, smirks, and runs ahead, tracing the length of my pelt with his tail tip the whole time.

When we reach the marshes outlining the island, completely bathed in moonlight now that we're out on the island, I can smell that WindClan has already passed through here. They must already be waiting on the island. Probably got here early to scope everything out. Ugh. Why does this type of stuff have to happen? Like I'm so sick of it, and I haven't even experienced it yet. War. We're going to go to war. I can see Heatherstar's lithe, supple body at the front, tensed and confident, issuing orders, consulting with her deputy, surveying the forest around her. War. We're going to war. I'm going to fight. I'm going to bleed. Someone's going to bleed because of me. They're going to die. My friends are going to die.

I could die.

War.

My leg hurts. Crowfood phantom pain.

ThunderClan arrives as my Clan is beginning to cross the tree to the island, and they wait in elegant order behind us, allowing us to cross first. ThunderClan. We're friends. Sort of. Things could be a lot worse, I guess. Some of their warriors are greeting our warriors from the across the narrow marsh that separates us. While I'm watching this, waiting to cross last of all, I notice a certain warrior on the edge there. A smoky-black tom with a single white paw.

Oh. I get a rush. Looking at this guy. The moonlight is making silver ripples along his smoky coat, his lithe muscles. He's thinner than some of the other warriors, his fur is sleeker, there's a slinky narrowness to him, but StarClan. I can't stop looking.

He notices me too. He watches me. That's all he does, he watches me.

I'm thinking very hard about how I could find him and approach him once we're on the island and find out his name, just his name, that's all I want, but then the darkness of this reality I'm chasing descends over me in one blow. The name? Of a ThunderClan warrior? What kind of mousebrain am I? I mean, this is just the type of thing I do. And Brackenclaw is sitting right next to me, his brown fur flush against mine, offering warmth, and I'm still letting my evil eye stray over this ThunderClan cat over there. The last thing the forest needs is some scandalous, life-ruining affair between a dismal ShadowClan cat and whoever that warrior is.

I must be a really bad cat.

Brackenclaw leaves my side to climb aboard the fallen tree. Instead of watching him cross safely, I watch the ThunderClan tom instead. He's quiet. He's pensive. He's silver in the moonlight.

I look away. I jump neatly onto the tree and land on all fours. My sore lag snags on something, slips, grabs a spindly branch which snaps and breaks and destroys my footing, and then my entire body twists, turns, and spins off the tree trunk.

Beneath me is shallow, murky water, and a dead branch of the tree protruding dramatically from the water. I twist onto my back, twisting, in disbelief and trying to right myself, and I land on the branch. It smacks into the back of my head. It breaks my neck.

I somehow know I'm dying, quickly, facedown, in the shallow puddle of filthy water smelling my blood mix with the water I'm soaking in.

Ugh.

The night before a Gathering.

Everyone always loses their minds about it, but I'm here staring at my reflection in a rain puddle and wondering if I can make myself throw up so I don't have to go.

I'm standing staring at my face in the puddle with the image of the trees over my head silhouetted by the setting sun. I just went out for a drink of water, and then a drink of water turned into an hour, looking at myself, looking back at me.

I'm going to stab it with my paw to disturb the reflection.

But then I don't.