Chapter Five.
Ghost - MountainClan Territory.
Move.
He heard the voice in his head and nearly went into shock.
It hadn't even been two days since he heard Jaytalon's voice in his head, and there it was again. Just like the first time, it stunned him into silence. Into an un-moving, useless shell of a cat.
That's when he remembered that Ari was still with him.
Maybe it was talking about StarClan, or something, but they were still here with him. And right now, he was being told to move. To maybe not be standing so out in the open, just waiting to be stumbled upon. His head is still swimming when the two of them finally end up behind a rock that'll work for now, but not forever.
Ari says something, something he doesn't hear at all, still stuck in his own head.
It didn't take him by surprise the next time he hears it.
Stay where you are. You're safe.
He didn't feel safe, and judging by the fact that Ari was locked tight beside him, muscles coiled like she was ready to either run or fight, whichever opportunity presented itself first, she didn't either.
Regardless, he didn't move. Told Ari as much. Recognized the fact that she didn't know whether or not to believe him.
Jaytalon?
Please, don't be gone. Not again.
A beat, and then he heard it again.
Just- Just shut up for a second.
Well. That sounded like his brother if he ever heard him. It made him want to just crumple to the ground and cry, hearing that. He couldn't, but he wanted to. Not when they could still be in very real danger, for all he knew, and when he had Ari here. There would be time for that much, much later.
He watches the patrol leave over his shoulder, sees them disappearing into the trees. It's almost like he can picture Jaytalon watching them too, making sure they leave.
He can still see them, slowly getting further and further away.
Don't freak out. Please.
Ghost doesn't even get a second, the faintest moment to contemplate that sentence, before someone lands on him.
He's already getting real tired of getting landed on.
Whoever it was, decidedly not Ari, because he gets one last glance at her before he gets a face full of snow, didn't even seem to be trying to hurt him. He doesn't go sliding all that far, but he can't see through the ice crystals and snow in his eyes. All he recognizes is the fact that whoever's pinning him to the ground gets dragged off and thrown a good few feet away, judging by the harsh thump.
He staggers to his feet and Ari is by his side, fur bristling, claws out, looking torn between anger and confusion. Ghost takes a second to look over his shoulder. The patrol is out of sight, but they can't be far. None of them made a sound. Not him when he dropped, not his attacker when he landed.
When he turns back, his heart stops.
It's not him making a joke. He feels something stutter to a stop deep in chest, feels whatever air is in his lungs freeze. His blood goes so cold everything feels numb, and he doesn't know how to feel anything, at that point.
Suddenly, the don't freak out, please, is starting to make all sorts of sick, twisted sense.
Staring back at him, one of Wrensong's yellow eyes and one of Jaytalon's blue, is the Frozenkit he thought for certain would be dead.
Ghost can't move, can't force his body into action, into doing anything other than just standing there.
Frozenkit stares back at him, but he's not Frozenkit anymore, there's no possible way. They're the same size now; but his fur is still that pale gray and white, washed silver in the moonlight. He looks haggard, tired, older than he is. On edge, like they all are. By now Ari is staring between them, sudden realization dawning in her eyes.
He tries to speak, tries to have anything come out that would make sense, but all he gets is a strangled croak.
"Iceheart," is all the not-Frozenkit standing in front of him says. He doesn't know why he expected his voice to be the same, but this isn't the six moon old he last saw sleeping in the nursery in ValleyClan's camp. All he can do is nod, hoping that he at least looks a little more put together than he currently feels.
"Who are you?" Ari asks softly, trying to settle herself down. She's speaking for him now, because he still can't manage anything on his own.
Frozenkit doesn't get a chance to answer, though. He opens his mouth, and then stops. He takes two steps forward, and Ghost nearly panics because he doesn't know how to handle this after so long.
"You need to go," he says instead of answering Ari. "Now, you need to go now, someone's coming back to look for me."
Ghost watches him start moving, like he's leaving, and that terrifies him even more. At the last second he turns back to them, eyes wide. But he looks to Ari, in a motion that should surprise him but doesn't.
"You guys need to get down the mountain. Back to twoleg place, before we do. If you don't go fast you won't get there before we go and I don't know what will happen if they see you."
He's talking to Ari, and not him, and for some reason that should be a little bit offensive but all he can do is stare. Stare as this not-Frozenkit takes off in the direction the patrol went, leaving them behind, and what just happened?
What just happened?
"Ghost."
Jaytalon knew this whole time that he was alive.
"Ghost, we need to go."
Ari is nudging him frantically, staring after the patrol. After Frozenkit.
"You heard him, alright? We'll sort out ... whatever just happened later. When we're safe."
Jaytalon said they were safe. Was he lying? They're not dead, not injured, but Ghost feels like he was lying.
He lets Ari herd him back to the treeline, back onto one of the paths they followed up here. Eventually, they're running. He doesn't know when they started running. There doesn't seem to be enough air in his lungs for him to be running, but he is regardless.
He also doesn't know where his heart is, if it's still inside him or lying back on top of that mountain.
His brain doesn't allow him to process the amount of time it takes for them to get back to the lake.
Moonlight is still spilling across it, turning it into a glassy silver. The lights of twoleg place are close, but not close enough to taint the darkness. Ari herds him into a thick copse of bramble bushes, shoving him backwards. Thorns prick at his pelt, branches digging into his side, but he lets himself go. Lets himself vanish completely until all he can feel is the thundering of his heart in his chest. Turns out it's still there.
Ari doesn't say anything for a long moment, instead choosing to stare out from in-between the branches, her chest heaving. She swallows, taking a deep breath. Like she's trying to compose herself, and turns back to him.
"They must be moving pretty slow," she says, her voice rough. "There's no sign of them."
She watches, and he doesn't say anything. Several moments later and he still doesn't know what to say. Even if he wanted to begin an explanation out-loud he doesn't know where to start.
It doesn't help that Jaytalon has suspiciously vanished from his head again. It's easy to blame it on their escape, on their run down the mountains. Jaytalon's just giving him space, didn't want to bother him while he was very well running for his life, for all he knows.
That's not the truth, and Ghost knows it.
Ten moons. Ten moons and Jaytalon's known this whole time. Everyone in StarClan has. He's been alone, mentally and physically for that long, and not a single soul has bothered to tell him that he didn't have to be.
"Ghost?" Ari finally asks. "Who was that?"
He doesn't know if his eyes look hollow, but he sure feels that way.
"You don't have to tell me, it would just make it a lot easier to know. Know anything, really. You know I want to help, we all do."
"It was ... that was my nephew. The last time I saw him he was six moons old. I didn't think there was any way he could still be alive."
That's nowhere near good enough of an explanation. It's definitely worse than anything Ari deserves to hear. But he doesn't really have a proper explanation for her. Not yet, anyway, and possibly not anytime soon.
"I didn't know you had a sibling." Is all she says instead, and it occurs to him that he never mentioned that at all. Only Nyla tried to bring it up, after he foolishly mentioned him, but since that she had kept it to herself. Maybe she knew better than to push, or maybe she was just being respectful. Otherwise it's been left alone, and that's probably been for the best.
But it's like Ari said. They want to help. And if they're going to have a remote shot at helping, they need to know every single piece of the puzzle.
"A brother. Jaytalon. He was one of the only ones they killed right away. I found his body when I got back to camp."
All of a sudden, there's an alarming amount of pity in her eyes, and he looks away. Maybe because he's a coward, or maybe because he's spent so long stewing over it that getting these looks ten moons later only makes it worse. That's why he chooses to make it worse on his own, too.
"If it helps any, I was also hearing his voice in his head. That's why I was acting so weird."
The pity vanishes and morphs into something incredulous within seconds. It's almost funny.
"You know you sound crazy, right?" She questions, her head tilted to the side in disbelief. It's a good confirmation, at least. He feels crazy.
"It's just a lot to process," he says weakly, instead of continuing. Ari snorts.
"Yeah, you're telling me."
She turns back around, briefly glancing back through the brambles. There's still no sign of them. They must be slower than Frozenkit thought. Not Frozenkit, not really, but he doesn't know what else to call him.
"So, to recap the night. We snuck away, went up the mountain, you had your dead brother's voice in your head, and you found your nephew who is also your dead brother's son. And then we almost possibly got caught, imprisoned, and subsequently murdered. Want to add anything?"
"Think that's good."
He's calmer now. His heart still wants to explode out of his chest, now that he's pinpointed it again, but he won't let it. Even amidst the panic Ghost can admit that this might be the turning point towards giving him a purpose again. If Frozenkit is alive, then there's more hope than ever before that he's not the only one.
Part of his Clan is still alive, somewhere. He's not alone.
"I should probably head back up the mountain and let them kill me," Ari adds as she shoves her way out of the brambles. He pushes out behind her, eyes narrowed. It's not like he'd let her, of course not, but it's a curious thought regardless.
"Why?"
"Jasper's gonna kill me when we get back anyway. At least with them there's enough of them that maybe they'd do it quickly." She laughs a little, and he finds himself smiling in return. He's been doing far too much of that over the past few days.
Fair enough.
The building is empty when they get back.
Ari slides through the narrow gap in-between the doors. The sun is just starting to slide over the horizon, but it's still dark inside. He watches her call out, first for Jasper, and then Nyla, and then both. No one slips out of the shadows towards them. There's not even the faintest of noises coming from the gloomiest corners. The rafters where they had perched yesterday are now empty.
"Jasper!" Ari calls one last time, clearly frustrated. She stares up at the roof like it's holding some sort of answer to all of her current problems.
"Maybe they went out looking for us," Ghost suggests, but it has been quite a while. They were gone for half a day. The odds that Nyla and Jasper are both still out there looking isn't that likely.
Which begs the question of where they really are.
"C'mon, they can't be that far off," he says, even though he's exhausted now that the adrenaline has faded off. His paws ache, and he wants nothing more than to lay down and go to sleep with the knowledge that he's safe. He's not safe, though, not really, and neither are Nyla and Jasper if something is wrong.
It's clear that Ari is on edge. It's apparent that her and Jasper are almost attached to each other's sides. Or at least, they would be, if she didn't have a tendency to run off.
He has no idea where to go, so he lets her lead. This part of twoleg is more run-down. The nest they stay in looks like it hasn't been used by any twolegs, at least actively, for quite a while. The lake's edge is in the distance, though, and he can already see some of them milling around. Not enough to warrant any terror, but enough for him to not like it. Not that he ever will.
She leads him into places she clearly knows - some old haunts, some recent. She leaps onto fences and peers through the windows of old, broken nests like she's done it a thousand times.
There's no sign of them, not anywhere, though. It's eerily silent, and it's why he hears the monstrous crash from a few thunderpaths away. They can't see anything, not until Ari leaps from a fence up onto the edge of a roof, so quickly he blinks one second and all of a sudden she's gone.
"Huh, that's not good."
"What's not good?" He asks, stretching up until she moves and he can jump up beside her.
Oh. That's really not good.
He can see it now, some sort of towering twoleg monster, garishly yellow and hunched over a twoleg nest. The roof is half-collapsed, the curved part of the monster buried inside it. Ripping it apart.
And standing on the edge of thunderpath just in front of it, two barely-there pinpricks in the distance, are Nyla and Jasper.
Ari mutters something under her breath, something suspiciously foul, and takes off.
Again. He blinks and she's gone. He should be used to it, by now. It's something she seems to do an awful lot.
She takes off across the rooftop and leaps down, and he has no choice but to follow. By the time he edges himself to the end of the roof she's on the grass below, darting through the narrow space between two more nests. His paws ache worse than before, and he lands hard on a sill below, wincing, but keeps chasing after her.
There's another single, massive fence in-between them and the next thunderpath. The one Nyla and Jasper were on. That alone makes him scramble over it faster than he even thought he was capable of moving in this state.
Ari is standing at the opposite edge of the thunderpath when he finally catches up. A monster roars past, the wind buffeting against his fur, and he flinches.
"Jasper!" She shouts, but the roar of the giant twoleg machine drowns her out. It takes another part of the roof away in it's jaws, and Jasper moves closer, Nyla on his heels.
Ghost is about to consider himself the sane one of the group when Jasper leaps through a broken window into the building.
Yeah. He's definitely becoming the sane one.
Nyla takes one fleeting glance around, and follows, glass scattering onto the ground outside. The monster isn't moving, but it's still taking parts of the building away, wide chunks of brick raining down onto the grass.
"I'm going to kill him before he kills me," Ari hisses. She looks one way, then the other, and takes off across the thunderpath before he can process it. Ghost has no choice but to stand there for a moment, waiting for another monster to pass, as she darts across the grass and leaps through the window after them.
It takes a moment for his heart to stop racing long enough to cross the thunderpath himself. The monster creaks, and for one horrifying moment Ghost thinks it's coming to eat him. Maybe he's not the sane one quite yet. It just moves a few inches before stopping again, and he leaps onto the windowsill, peering in.
It's pitch black, and he jumps in anyway. His terrible decision making skills aren't through yet.
There are heavy planks of wood scattered across the floor, glass a minefield around his paws. He carefully shuffles forward, trying to search out anyone in the darkness. Ari's already gone, and he can hear someone shouting. For a moment, he recognizes Nyla's voice. But then another. And he definitely doesn't recognize that. It's younger, higher-pitched. Infinitely more terrified than he thought he was capable of feeling.
Something's wrong. He doesn't know what, but they're less safe than they were on that mountaintop.
The roof creaks again. A plank of wood crashes to the floor two feet to his left, and he leaps away.
He sees the bright yellow of the monster descending, and he knows what's going to happen before it does.
There's no one to yell to. No one to warn. He already knows it's coming, and he has nothing but seconds to move. The entire roof gives away under one final push, debris raining down all around him. Crashing into his legs, something slamming into his back. A larger piece nearly takes him to the ground, and he starts moving. Running, as fast as he can manage, just as the last of it comes down.
Everything goes terrifyingly dark.
He doesn't imagine it's going to be light again anytime soon.
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