Brambleclaw wasn't sure when it stopped hurting. He would watch her walk by, fiery red tail drooping toward the dusty ground and feel nothing. Nothing. Not anger, or hurt, or longing. Just emptiness. He should've been frustrated. With himself, with her, with everything.
He wasn't.
Everything was numb. He had felt so much before. Even when things were impossibly awful, and nothing went right, it was okay. It was always okay, because he had her. Things just made sense. He had thought that he had everything figured out. The world was complicated and harsh and cold, but she was so familiar and amazing and warm. She was home. He had known her.
He had known nothing.
Her eyes met his, green on amber, and he waited for that wild rush of emotion that he had once been so addicted to. He had to feel something. Anything… Nothing. Not even a flicker. He wondered if his eyes looked as dead as hers did.
As he turned away, so many words that he wanted, needed, to say hung heavy in the air like the fog that clouded his mind. He kept his mouth shut. It wasn't like he had the courage to say it anyway. He should've been disgusted with himself.
He wasn't.
When he assigned patrols, he made sure they would never meet. It used to be because he couldn't deal with the anger rushing around his mind, the crushing hurt bearing down on his heart like hundreds of rocks, the burning, heart-pounding, why-do-I-still-feel-this-way love that never left. Ever. Now it was habit. Why bother changing things? Don't fix what isn't broken, right?
(That was a lie. He was just too broken to be fixed.)
He insulted her. Broke her down. Corrected her. Tried to hurt her, cut her, burn her with his words. Because when she was hurt she lashed out, and if she lashed out, then maybe, just maybe, he could feel something again. He always felt the most when he was fighting with her. He always felt the most when he was with her, period.
So why did he feel nothing now?
Why didn't she just fight back? This was all her fault (it was always her fault). If she would just yell at him, scream in his face, maybe it would pull him back from the edge. He kept on thinking that if she just acted like she did before, things could go back to the way they were. But maybe she was tired of everything. Maybe she was giving up. Maybe she didn't want to fight anymore.
Maybe she couldn't fight anymore.
He hadn't seen her smile since that night. He wondered if it was his fault, but hoped (in vain) that it wasn't. She had always been beautiful when she smiled, emerald eyes glowing with this crazy, infectious energy. Now she just looked dead. Like him.
Then she left for the Tribe. He could hear the hope in her voice as she searched his words for some sign that he still cared. But he couldn't care, not when she was standing there, desperate and broken, someone so completely wrong. She wasn't herself. Not the way he'd known her. How had he reduced her to that?
Moons passed – the numb feeling didn't go away. It was like when he had fallen into the water at the sun-drown place. The feeling kept on washing over him and every time he was finally free it dragged him down again. A never-ending cycle that he couldn't ever escape. He was drowning in it, falling
down
and
down
and
down.
He couldn't breathe sometimes, and he knew that if she were there, she would've understood. She wouldn't have gone on some long psychological explanation of why he felt like that, just made a sarcastic comment to bring him back out of his mind. To bring him back to her.
It was funny how often he confused 'her' with 'home'.
When she returned, she was different. Her eyes brighter, her tail straighter, her step lighter. He could've sworn he saw a smile or two grace her features. And he couldn't help but wish that it had been directed at him.
He began to push her again, insulting her whenever he got the chance. Deep, cutting insults that most of their Clanmates wouldn't understand the meaning of. But she did. And for the first time since that night, she fought back. She shot a bitter retort back at him and he was so wrapped up in the pounding of his heart and the butterflies in his stomach that he almost forgot to respond. Almost.
The apprentices that had never been exposed to a Brambleclaw/Squirrelflight screaming match must have nearly died of shock.
He had forgotten how good it felt to fall in love with her. When he was near her, everything seemed so much more colorful. So much more real. She had this sarcastic sense of humor that drove him crazy and a temper that could go from a spark to a forest fire in a matter of seconds. He found that with every fight they had, he was becoming free of himself, little by little. Free of the thorny barrier that had held his emotions back for so long. He wondered if she felt the same.
(But he didn't need to wonder. He knew her well enough to know she did.)
It didn't matter anymore what had happened in the past, because seeing her like that – eyes blazing, the sunlight turning her fur into fire – reminded him that he hadn't fallen in love with her because she was perfect. He had fallen in love with her because she was impulsive and sarcastic and hot-headed and stubborn and fiery. When he was with her, he wasn't Brambleclaw-the-Clan-deputy or Brambleclaw-Tigerstar's-son. He was just Brambleclaw. Sure, sometimes it hurt.
But sometimes, a little pain is okay.