This is a challenge for ScorchClan. Prompt: Survival. Just a little what-if [insert cat in story who you are about to discover the identity of] survived. (hehe)
Just keep moving...
A little bit further...
Don't...
Stop. Her tired paws collapsed beneath her, leaving her underbelly pressed to the cold forest floor. She thought she heard a crack in her frail bones that seemed to grow weaker every step of the way.
I can't continue...not now, not like this. But at the same time, she knew that she couldn't give up either, not then and not like that. She couldn't die now, not after she had already made it this far, not after she knew how much she had to lose.
And yet, she couldn't help but think, StarClan, take me now.
But if she reached StarClan, she wouldn't be reunited once again with him.
No, she had to keep moving.
It was only the most primal of instincts that kept her going. That kept her trudging on, until the pads of her feet had been rubbed raw by the dirt and the stone and the woodland.
When she was particularly desperate, she clung on to the memories that she had, the ones farthest from reach of her disease-addled brain, the ones that came from a happier time, that was quite far back indeed.
She sheepishly stood before her mentor. "Sorry," she said, tail between her paws, "I was just so excited. My first battle, I–"
"You are aware that it shouldn't have been your first battle? That you should've been treating your clanmates rather than fighting beside them?"
"I just–"
"I understand," and a sigh.
"You do?" she looked up for the first time, and her mentor had a half-disappointed, half-amused glint in her eyes.
"You're not a medicine cat."
"But I can be, I know I've forgotten the herbs in the past, but I just need a little more time," she was determined not to be a failed apprentice.
"No," her mentor seemed determined. "There's nothing more I can teach you. I see the glint in your eyes, you're a warrior at heart." she paused. "Even more than that, you're a survivor. You just keep on fighting, long after the battle has been won."
The younger she-cat was thoroughly confused.
Her mentor continued on. "It will serve you well."
"Thank you..."
And just like that, one memory faded into the next, and she could no longer see her mother's face, but another, that of a white and ginger tom...
"Thank you," she told him, green eyes locked with green.
"For what?" he asked.
"You saved me. Without you, I'd probably be a corpse at a dead end in those tunnels. You took me in for moons and moons and nursed me back to health. And still you let me stay here, and I don't know why, but you've never once got sick of me, or told me to leave."
"Any cat would've done the same," he mewed simply.
"Not just any cat has that kind of courage."
Maybe it was her age, or maybe the exhaustion that was causing her to remember things that didn't happen. Maybe it was the fact that she had more than once thought through what she would say to him, to thank him.
It was not as if she had left him long ago without a thank you. It was not as if she had no sympathy for him at the time. It was that it was never enough, she could never express it enough.
And their final farewell had left him with the last word. I will never forget you...
These words she played over and over in her mind in the days that followed. So she would never forget them. So that she would carry them to StarClan and beyond–or, wherever she ended up at this point.
I will never forget you...
As if she was the one who helped him, gave him her everything. As if she was the one with the kind spirit who could tend to wounds both physical and mental. As if she was the one who deserved a final statement such as this.
I will never forget...
This was why she had to survive. This was why she had to make it. She forced herself to her paws, but barely made it another two tail-lengths before her legs wobbled and gave way once again.
"You've already survived once, I wouldn't try your luck again," said an all too familiar voice.
"Fallen Leaves?" She lifted her feeble head, and indeed, her special friend was standing before her, young and fit as he was when she last laid eyes on him. She became aware of her own appearance, old a worn down, spread eagle on the floor. She felt her voice grow more serious. "How are you here?"
"I am no more than a spirit," he said vaguely.
"So I'm hallucinating again?" The reality crashed down on her again. "They said I was being crazy, seeing things. I didn't want to believe them..." She murmured half to herself, half to the handsome tom standing before her.
"You're not hallucinating. The Tribe of Endless Hunting has permitted me a word with you."
Her heart both soared and sunk simultaneously. It was as she had feared- Fallen Leaves did not belong to StarClan.
"So I advise you once more, to not try your luck," he continued.
"It is not my intent to survive."
"Oh, but it is, isn't it? You were always a survivor."
"What have I survived? The tunnels? The boulders? I had you with me for those, you helped me."
"It took you to survive those boulders, even before it took me to nurse you back to health. Or do you not recall that you had shifted the wreckage yourself before I stumbled upon you? It took your own will."
"I would've gotten lost in the tunnels," she protested, her speech from before vaguely lingering at the back of her consciousness, but not quite reaching the surface.
"You would've done fine on your own. You-"
"No, I wouldn't!" she insisted once more.
"Fine, have it your way," he said, with surprising brutality in his voice. She had to admit, this was not the ideal meeting she had imagined with her lost lover. She was too timid to speak.
Luckily, he broke the silence, with a gentler voice. "At least let me know what you're doing out here. What your true intent is."
"I wanted to see you again," she was surprised at the confidence in her own voice. "I thought-if I died in the land where the Tribe resides, the Tribe of Endless Hunting might accept me to live with you."
"I'm afraid you're looking in the wrong place for that," he looked hard at her, but there was no regret in his mew.
The thing he did next was most peculiar. He sat down, curled next to the she-cat, pressed against her side so that he could feel the warmth of his pelt. And then, he told her something so precious that she would hold onto it like the words he had spoken in the tunnel, remember his warmth breath that tickled her ear, for the rest of her rather short life,
They spoke no more, and when the she-cat woke up, she knew it was no dream what she had experienced.
Her paws carried her steadily in a certain direction, but not towards the mountains beyond, but home. For she was a survivor and she would survive not with rock beneath her feet, but earth, a moment longer. She would live to see more sunups and moonhighs back where she belonged.