She wakes with cool water lapping at her side. It tugs rhythmically at her fur, a gentle back and forth motion that soothes the throbbing pain hovering around her left shoulder. Maybe it never quite healed from being twisted, she thinks. But then she remembers the fire lashing against her side, bright as the sun as it seared her skin, and she knows the ache in her shoulder is not from her old injury.

Stonetail lets the water pass over her without opening her eyes. She listens without moving an inch, as if keeping still will wash away the aches and pains and tragedies. Against the bank, she hears the water splash lightly, and a soft grinding noise speaks of the streambed's pebbles shifting aside, making way for the body that trudges through the water.

"Do we move her yet?" asks Clay. Stonetail has never heard him so somber, and wonders if she is dead, if her body is being washed for burial in a stream. But her shoulder prickles, then throbs violently, so she must be alive.

"I think we can," Streamheart replies, her body humming with the words, vibrating against Stonetail's ear. Stonetail makes no sound as Clay slides beneath her rear legs, shouldering her weight with ease and lifting her free of the water. Streamheart leaves her crouch to follow Clay up the bank, and rivulets of water come pouring off Stonetail's side. Free of the cold stream, her injuries begin to sting outright.

Finally, she speaks. "Careful. Please."

Streamheart gasps, though softly enough that Stonetail only knows thanks to her ear pressed against the silver tabby's side. "We're trying," she promises, slowly lowering herself. Stonetail feels her tail brush against damp grass. "Robinfoot told us to hold you in the water for a little while because of your burn. How do you feel?"

She feels weak. Hazy. Smoked out and trampled upon. "Fine," she lies anyway, trying to stand the moment Clay and Streamheart move themselves out from beneath her. Still adjusting and aching, though, she doesn't get far, and lies down in the grass. Even Streamheart's probing paws, slick with some kind of paste, suddenly feel distant. In fact, nothing feels close except the slow, labored thump of her heart, again and again.

"You can't scratch at this," Streamheart says, her voice muffled. "Robinfoot says the poultice will only help if you leave it alone. We're going to cover it in cobwebs to be safe. All right?"

A raindrop splashes against Stonetail's nose, jolting her into focus. "Right," she manages. Slowly she opens her eyes, twisting to find Streamheart rubbing a yellowy paste into her side. The stinging has already begun to subside, and she sighs in relief. Already it feels better, though she wishes she could stand. Shouldn't they be going?

"I couldn't kill him," she says suddenly. His face looms before her mind's eye, and her heart lurches. "He's still out there. We have to go. He wants me dead." But every effort to rise is thwarted by her friends carefully pushing her back into the grass. Streamheart accidentally leaves a streak of sour yellow paste against Stonetail's neck.

"Wait until I'm done," she says, "and then we'll catch up with the others." Steadily she continues applying the paste, and when she finishes, she rinses her paws in the stream before swaddling Stonetail's shoulder in cobwebs. It's not the neat work of a medicine cat, all bulky and thick, but when Stonetail finds she can rise with help and put a little weight on each leg, she realizes she'll take it.

In silence, Clay and Streamheart help Stonetail along, pressed so close that her paws barely ghost the ground. They are doing nearly all the work, and Stonetail is grateful that she did not have a chance to peer into the stream. Whatever the extent of her injuries are, they cannot be pleasant if she is not allowed to walk on her own. As they go, Clay is uncharacteristically silent, his gaze focused well ahead. Occasionally, he breaks away to hold undergrowth aside for easier passage, and Stonetail wishes she were ignorant of the anxious pity in his eyes. The same concern radiates from Streamheart, who continually brushes her feathery tail over Stonetail's back in much the same way a queen would soothe a distressed kit. Stonetail feels small at the touch, powerless, but no matter how many times she pushes Streamheart's tail aside with her own, it comes back. Soon it dawns on her that the presence of Streamheart's tail is not for her benefit, and she stops fighting it.

After what feels like a lifetime of slinking through the fine, light rain, Clay speaks. "Not far," he says, returning from a brief foray ahead to clear the way. "The Clans are over the next hill. Featherstar led them there."

"Almost everyone is safe, too," Streamheart adds with a weak purr. Even after so much fire, so much death, she's trying to hold fast to hope. Stonetail can't help but purr, even if it sounds like the scrape of claws on stone, even if it feels that way in her bones. It isn't funny, and she isn't happy, but the purr fills her chest until it becomes too hard and bitter and real to bear anymore.

"Almost," she echoes wryly. "But not everyone." Even as she senses it's unfair, she looks to Clay, and he stiffens at her words. It's like her tongue is suddenly made of fire. "Where's your brother, Clay? Where's Greystar? How about most of BreezeClan? Or the queens who won't see their kits grow up? Torch killed them. They're dead, and almost isn't good enough!"

The fight leaves her body all at once. Stumbling, wounds stinging, she can do nothing to stop herself from pitching toward the ground. Yet she does not meet the dirt. Fluid as ever, Streamheart surges into the way and breaks her fall. They halt their progress.

"You might be right about BreezeClan and the queens," says the silver warrior, "but you don't need to snap at us for it. And you don't know about Coal. He was fighting Torch when we carried you out so we could get away. There's still a chance he won."

"A chance," Stonetail scoffs. She had a chance, and nearly died all the same.

"Yes. So please breathe, and wait with us until we know more. Please?"

Clay sits down beside them, forcing his ears into a semblance of perkiness even though his tail drags limply in the earth. "Coal won't give up easily, either," he declares. "He isn't dead, and he won't be. I promise."

He's saying it more for himself. Fight extinguished, energy spent, Stonetail can't blame him. The tabby tom has spent his life at his brother's side, and has probably failed to imagine a world in which he walks alone. For Clay, a world without Coal is as impossible as day without night.

"I…I need to sit," Stonetail mumbles, leaning into Streamheart as her friend curls around her. Clay joins at her other side, giving her ears a kindly lick as he settles onto his belly. Despite her momentary flash of cruelty, they stay with her.

"We'll sit," Clay says. A faint twinkle lights his eyes, proof enough of his faith, of his hope.

There is so little else to hang onto. Stonetail latches onto the feeble hope that is not even her own, resting her chin on Clay's back. She coughs. A tremor races through her heart, knocking it off-kilter without warning and robbing her of breath. She will not be rising to her feet any time soon, and fighting to breathe past the taste of smoke in her mouth, she waits.

»»««

Stonetail does not remember drifting off. Exhaustion must have robbed her of consciousness shortly after the light rain stopped. Now, though, as she wakes, she realizes her dull aches have gone sharp, as has her mind. She moans and pulls her legs beneath her body as if to rise, but Clay stops her.

"Coal came back. Streamheart went with him to speak to Featherstar," he whispers, purring. The sound of his joy does not feel like joy, though, and Stonetail lies still as the tabby goes on. "They're going to be back soon. He wants to talk to us."

"We should go meet them," she insists after a long beat of silence. But when she tries to rise, she finds she can't escape the unsteadiness in her legs long enough to stand. Clay licks her forehead sadly and drapes his tail over her back. For once, he's more than willing to wait, and that alone keeps Stonetail from attempting to rise once more. Whatever Clay imagines his brother wants to speak about, it cannot be good.

The waiting does not take long, though. Coal and Streamheart's tired forms press through the undergrowth. The latter makes her way directly to Stonetail's side, touching her nose softly to the grey tabby's flank. The former, however, hangs back, hovering there until everyone acknowledges his presence.

The first words out of his mouth are "I'm sorry."

Greystar is gone. Coal takes a seat to recant his story in his carefully clipped way. When he reached the camp after helping Featherstar escape, he says, he watched from the dirtplace as Greystar and Torch fought for all they were worth. But Torch was stronger, healthier, and it wasn't a fair fight. Greystar was slammed into the ground and did not get up, not even as Torch turned his attention to Stonetail again. And so Coal fought until Clay and Streamheart arrived, and he fought until they left, and he fought until he thought he would be next.

Then he ran.

"I'm sorry," he says again, looking at his paws. "I wanted to take Greystar with me, but…I thought one cat alive was better than two dead."

Dead. It rings in Stonetail's ears, rattles in her skull. There has been so much death. First WillowClan; Mistpaw was left to cope with the three deaths that orphaned her. Then BreezeClan, poisoned by prey fool enough to drink tainted water. Then Thrushpaw. Thrushpaw could have been protected, could have been saved! Stonetail's throat constricts. Listing the remaining deaths, while tempting, is too much. The urge to retch is already strong enough.

Still Greystar hovers in mind. After all those moons of fighting tooth and claw over every little thing under the sun, Stonetail cannot believe she is dead. Not when she seemed so changed, so harried, so concerned at the end. Not when she meant to pass her only child onto a killer to keep her hold over the Clan at the beginning. Which is the real Greystar anyhow? It's impossible to tell and hurts to try.

Even worse is that Torch is now her only living kin, lost to the smoke and wind. Stonetail fights to breathe evenly, but when she notices Coal has lifted his gaze from his paws, she almost stops entirely. His posture is nervous, expectant, determined all at once. He is almost like the tom that fought tooth and claw to escape captivity when he first arrived. It seems so strange.

"There's something I need to do," he announces. His voice is steady, steadier than those gathered have heard in a long while.

"I have to leave."

Now no one breathes. The distant birdsong seems to fade, and perhaps the cool wind trundles to a halt. Stonetail's jaw drops open, and Streamheart's ears snap upright. It is Clay, though, who voices the protest they all feel.

"We can't go," he cries, leaping to his feet, fur fluffed out. "After all this? Coal, we have a home. We have a family again!" His voice breaks. "We can't go. Not now. We just can't."

Stonetail has seen Clay vulnerable before. She's seem him fret over the apprentices, worry that he's irritated the elders, wished that the Clan wouldn't hate him so much. He's been the one to show every hope and fear plainly since the start.

So when Coal leans his forehead against his brother's and says, "So stay," Stonetail freezes.

"You don't have to go this time," Coal chokes out. "It just has to be me."

"But it's always been us!" Clay squeezes his eyes shut and shakes Coal off. "Why do you have to go anyway?"

"I just do. Will you please trust me?" Coal tries to lick his brother's ear, but misses as the tabby bats his muzzle away, claws barely sheathed.

"Tell us why?" Stonetail asks suddenly, before Clay can reach the point of hysterics and actually hurt his brother. There is a long silence, broken here and again by Clay's ragged breathing. Coal meets Stonetail's eyes after a moment, though both can feel his desire to look away.

"I've been running a long time," he says slowly. "A really long time. Wherever the Clans go, that will still be running, so I'm going to go the other way.

"I'm going to find Torch, and this time, I will kill him. I almost had him tonight, and I can do it again. When I've done that, I'll find my way back, but I just…I have to stop running."

He looks at his brother. "This is your chance to be a warrior," he purrs. "You can keep a home and a family here. You can have the life you wanted."

"I didn't want that for just me," Clay replies, ears pinned back to his skull. He lashes his tail, but soon settles and falls back on his haunches. "But," he goes on, choosing every word carefully, "I'll protect the Clans until you come back. Come home. So you have a home to come back to."

"ShadeClan will take you in any time," Streamheart promises quietly. "As a warrior. We'll make sure of it."

Coal dips his head. "I hope so. I have been." Then he stands, once again looking at his paws as if the power to speak has deserted him. Stonetail supposes that he is no good with goodbyes, a thought confirmed when he wordlessly presses his forehead to Streamheart's, to Clay's, to her own. But Stonetail is no good at farewells, either. Her tongue curls back into her throat as the black tom turns his back. "Goodbye" dies on her lips as he crosses the grass. "Be safe" meets a similar fate as he sets one paw into the undergrowth.

"Coal, wait!" makes it out loud and clear. Coal stops.

"What?"

It's a good question. Stonetail hasn't a clue what she wants to say. There has been no time to think, to rehearse. But as her shoulder begins to itch, she asks, "When you find him, will you do me a favor?"

"Anything but spare him," he replies.

She shrugs her cobweb-coated shoulder even though it burns to do so. "Carve him up. For me."

"Consider it done."

And then they watch as Coal vanishes into the ruined forest of pines. The faithful shadow disappears at last. No one moves at first, as if they all mourn a death that may or may not come to pass, but eventually, Clay and Streamheart are ready to move on. Tenderly, they fall into position to support Stonetail, but she finds herself limping ahead of them, following the heady scent of fear coming over the ridge. The remains of the Clans must wait there still. She knows it's far-fetched, but for a heartbeat, she wonders if they wait for her.

She is coming, whether they wait for her or not, and as she hikes up the hill, her shoulder aches.

It will be her best reminder.