Author's Note: I do not and never will own Redwall.
Written for the One Prompt, Many Fandoms Competition. AU.
She didn't understand why she couldn't leave home.
But Brome- she would protest, and her father only shook his head. Her mother couldn't even look her in the eyes.
But Martin- she would try next, and the response then was angry.
You're never seeing that mouse again, Urran told her, almost shaking her frail shoulders before Aryah counseled him to stop. Her tears watered the rose bush planted in front of her grave.
She wasn't dead, though, and perhaps that had been the problem all along, she was supposed to be. She didn't know why she wasn't. All she remembered was the most horrible pain in her head...
And then she'd woken up, laid out in her childhood bedroom, with her paws folded across her chest, and her mother weeping by her bedside.
Her funeral had been lovely, from what she'd seen out the window. She had naturally been forbidden to attend. Forbidden to see anyone, forbidden to even say goodbye to Martin. He has to think you're dead, they all have to think that you're dead.
It was over a season before her parents even let her leave the house, and then it was through carefully constructed disguises about a visitor arrived in the night. She couldn't speak, for fear of someone recognizing her voice. She certainly couldn't sing. She didn't know if she could anymore, but she would have liked to be permitted to try.
At night, she sat in the windowsill, staring up at the stars and wondering if Martin was doing the same.
It took less than a year for Rose to start planning her escape.