Chapter 3- "Betrayal"
Two lizards and one frog; that's all she got. Maplepaw had been running the territory all day and the sun was just setting into the horizon. She was walking back to camp now, in a hurry. She held her catches high for her mentor and was waiting for some sort of approval.
But as she approached camp she heard wailing and her spirit dropped like a stone in cold water.
Sudden flashes of enemy clans invading camp came to her and she let go of her prey. She spirited forward, she tried to scent something amiss. She didn't know any other clans except Thunderclan and her own, but she didn't detect anything that was different.
As she emerged through the entrance, still frantic, the snarls of anger and grief filled cries were louder and she saw the clan gathered below the piles of boulders. Brokenstar was sitting on top and his eyes were determinedly looking down upon his warriors Wetfoot and Clawface, who stood tall while a hunched over Yellowfang sat between them.
Before Maplepaw could make sense of the scene Brokenstar saw her. His eyes did that thing, telling her something; something she didn't understand. He looked pointedly to the spot in front of Yellowfang and.. Maplepaw went cold.
Flatpaw and Cloverpaw were there. Lying motionless, covered in scratches, and bite marks along there pelt. The familiar rise and fall of their chest was absent, their eyes were closed tight, and Maplepaw know they were dead before she even felt the cold flesh beneath their pelts.
She let out a grief stricken cry, it mingled with the clans, but it alerted the clan of her return.
Her mother, Darkflower, called to her. Maplepaw ignored it though and went straight to her siblings.
She pushed through the gathered cats and stood under Brokenstar. Shock ran through her veins, sadness started work its way into her heart. She was looking down at her them and she saw no form of life left in their frail furry bodies. They were hunting with Starclan already.
"I didn't do it." A hoarse and low voice hissed.
Maplepaw looked up in shock, she was met with orange eyes. It was Yellowfang that said the words and Maplepaw knew it was. Yet she couldn't quite understand the pleading looks the old medicine cat gave her. Or those words 'I didn't do it'.
Of course she didn't do it.. she was their medicine cat. She healed, she didn't kill.
"I didn't do it, believe me. Believe me, Maplepaw." She repeated.
Maplepaw couldn't find her voice, the run here made her breathless and then the shock hadn't completely dissolved. Before anything more could be said at all Brokenstar jumped down to Maplepaw's side and struck the old she-cat into silence.
Yellowfang staggered back, and the crowd roared in a unified anger..
"Shadowclan!" Brokenstar bellowed above their cries. "You have been betrayed. We have been betrayed! Flatpaw and Cloverpaw lay before you tonight because of this betrayal, they were murdered not by our enemies, but our own connection to Starclan! Yellowfang has murdered these innocent apprentices, the future to our clan."
Maplepaw stood at his side, not a mouse-tail away, with her dead kin at her feet and the raw pain of grief fresh in her heart. She couldn't understand Yellowfang's words, or his. They were all just too unbelievable.
The confusion over ran everything else inside of her.
"These young apprentices were out at my training." His eyes narrowed as he spoke, boring them into Yellowfang's crude glare. "I leave for one moment, and our sweet Cloverpaw falls into a prickling bush. Naturally!" He suddenly exclaims louder, looking away to the surrounding cats. "I send her and the young tom to our medicine cat. When they didn't return.. I came. I saw them and then you did too; seated in front of her just as they do us now!"
His words played out perfectly. Maplepaw saw it; she knew her sister was a klutz, she knew her brother would take Cloverpaw along to get fixed up... and though the cat just denied this, even though Maplepaw was able to immediately believe her, she took her mentors, her leaders accusation instead. Because it fit, mostly.
She was enchanted by his way of words. It fixed the confusion in her.
The crowd was enchanted by their leaders words. As they have always been. They screeched out of raw anger and for a brutal revenge. Save.. there was those few who sat behind the loyal crowd, watching Brokenstar with narrowed eyes.
Maplepaw looked down at her sister's face and remembered those blue eyes. She recalled how hurt they were when she spoke those vicious words earlier. She tried to remember her sister before today, but she couldn't. All she could remember were those last few hateful glares and how she had almost forgave her.
They could have made up with her just this night. They could have shared tongues and eaten dinner in peace tonight. Maybe she would praise Cloverpaw's fighting skills and Maplepaw would receive some back for hunting...
But now she couldn't. She couldn't ever. Yellowfang, their murderer, took that away. Maplepaw stood there for a few moments, her guilt and grief was eating away at her until it slowly ebbed away. Only to be replaced by a sudden savage anger.
Without thinking she flung herself forward.
Yellowfang was unprepared, having expected being attacked from behind more then anything and Maplepaw easily sunk her claws into the slumped shoulders. The elderly cat was knocked backwards, the two went spinning back at least three feet, the whole clan scrambling out of the way with loud encouragements.
Once the world stopped spinning around them, Maplepaw came out on top. Her back legs kicked out onto the exposed underbelly, and she sunk her teeth into Yellowfang's neck. She acted on instinct, she didn't know how to fight. She hadn't seen many fights, but this felt natural – fighting – it was like, she just knew, like it was bred into her blood.
The same blood that was pounding in the back of her eardrums.
The crowd roared to her, except one. Ashfur, a retired warrior, now elder.
He stopped sulking in the back, and pushed himself forward, standing just before the fighting pair. "Stop!" He yowls. "This is not right. Killing her would make us just as she is!" His distressed eyes lifted to their leaders. "Brokenstar, banish her, expel her, but this... this is not the way! If she sets foot in our territory again then that is the time to kill her, but not now. Not this way."
Brokenstar stared at Ashfur and his eyes were expressionless. Then they slowly turned to Maplepaw on top of Yellowfang, twisting her claws cruelly through the others thick fur. It was enough to catch Brokenstar's interest.
He could see Yellowfang was over her shock now. He could see her preparing to retaliate and fling his apprentice off. Without much thought he strode forward the few feet and clamped his teeth into Maplepaw's scruff, tearing her away from the fight; just as he done at the thunderpath.
He dropped her to his side and looked at her, evaluating her.
Maplepaw stared forward still. Her emerald eyes were alight with a fierceness that he could not place. She couldn't look away from her prey, there was a hazy outrage in her face. She was blinded by her sibling's death and the resulting fury.
All Maplepaw knew was that she is no longer ranking her claws into the backstabbing killer's pelt.
She looked to the one who tore her away furiously, and met Brokenstar's eyes. Through the red haze that had clouded her vision she saw approval in his amber depths... she stopped dead in her anger for a few second, the confusion coming back full force.
She had thought to see sternness and law-bidding stares, but not – definitely not – approval.
He gave her approval... for murderess behavior.
They stared at each other for a fraction of a minute, before Brokenstar abruptly turned away.
"Ashfur is right!" He announced. "This is not the way it should be done." He turned away from them now and jumped back atop the boulders, looking down at them. "I say this before Shadowclan, before Starclan... Yellowfang is no longer Shadowclan's medicine cat. She is no longer apart of this clan at all…" He looked down to her. "You are exiled. You are not allowed to step one foot back in this territory or I will personally pry your fur from your body. Now go!"
Maplepaw let out a screech then, following after the fleeing rogue. It was expressing more then anger, but there was a howling sadness in it and soon the whole clan joined in with her.
Yellowfang went stumbleing out of the center at first. Her fur was raised with fear and her eyes were hard yet unsettled and bothered by their screeching. She made a slow process on leaving until Clawface snarled at her and chased her, spiriting out of their camp.
A/N: So I'm trying this story again! Hope it's better this way. Thanks for reading, sorry for typos. PLEASE review. I promise more romance later on! -Taryn(: