You know, people seem to have this idea that they're invincible. They think, "Those people are having something awful done to them, but a stand-up middle class citizen like me will never experience that." And most of the time, it's true. Even when you watch someone take their last breaths and look at their bloated, yellowed corpse, you think "But it's still a while before that happens to me."

I wish I had watched her chest expand and taken something away from it other than that vague, naive sadness that means absolutely nothing. But what else do you expect from an eleven year old i guess. I didn't even know my grandmother, all I knew is that she was an abusive and neglectful mother. All i know is that i felt absolutely nothing when i looked at her except a sense of misplacement because i had never seen my mother cry before.

I don't like the number 43.

"When you know that your time has come around, you know you'll be prepared for it. Say your last goodbyes to everyone, drink, and say a prayer for it."

-Dance of Death, Iron Maiden

Chapter 43:: This Hell We Dare Call Paradise

Ashen leaves crunched under his paws at every step. Snow fell softly from black clouds, and the wind was sharp, and it howled like a siren through dead tree branches.

Red Ash was named so for a reason. His mother gave birth to him in the basement of a burning building, and his fur was stained by soot and flame. He didn't remember it through his own mind how she had died, but his father's memories were very visceral. Red Ash knew that because he had made a habit of looking into his father's memories once he had learned that he had the ability to.

He supposed he should have loathed to use that ability, considering the way it was given to him. Sometimes he was very thankful that he had met a smokey demon in the night, wreathed by smoke in the abandoned lot of a building. Sometimes he cursed the existence of such creatures. Whether he was happy with it or not, he had become the character he was because of that demon, so the question of whether or not he was thankful for the demon depended on whether or not he was happy with the character he had become.

And he was terrified of the answer to that question.

If he admitted that he hated himself, then he would have to live in that misery for the rest of eternity. If he loved himself, then he would have to love every terrible thing he'd ever done. Everyone he'd killed, everyone he'd made cry, he would think of them and have to laugh.

Ashen leaves crunched under his paws at every step.

Red Ash often entertained himself by thinking of all the worst things in the world. What else was there to do but to study pain, when eternal life had been given to him through sin? He thought about his father constantly, looping in his mind the memories he'd stolen. He enjoyed that secondhand feeling of anguish and regret when he watched his own mother, own uncle, own grandmother die. He was fascinated by that alone, completely disregarding the feelings of love and happiness that his father had felt.

He was fascinated by the thought of death. He fantasized about death. But somehow, his fantasy and his reality collided. Where before he was curiously, mildly studying pain, he started to love it and to cause it.

Ashen leaves crunched under his paws at every step.

He was a pessimist, a hedonist, and an empiricist. Love meant nothing to him but the pain his father had felt as he watched his mate bleed out behind a glass window. He took what he wanted without permission, and he sighed in temporary content every time he experienced something new.

He did wind up dying eventually. It was quite bloody and somewhat embarrassing, so he didn't like to think of it often. But rather than hinder his progress, death liberated him. He had become truly immortal. However, "immortal" does not mean, as he had thought, "free of consequence." He was imprisoned many times for "intentional harm against the common good." He found it amusing that imprisonment was the only thing that they could do to him, and even that didn't last very long. He had a charisma brought about to him by self-reliance and an extensive understanding of psychology through experimentation, as well as an understanding of reality that ironically was stronger than anyone else's because of the fantastical way he chose to live. It was really nothing more than a product of paradigm that was the reason he was superior to everyone else.

He fell in love, once.

It was a feeling he'd never experienced in his life. He'd already gotten bored of his family's angst at this point and had forgotten his father's feelings completely. He was surprised that the feeling was much different firsthand than secondhand. He'd been surprised to feel anything but physical attraction for anyone, and he'd been surprised that he'd cried when his love died.

Red Ash never found his love again. He forgot his face, his voice, his warmth, and the colour of his eyes. But he never forgot the feeling.

Ashen leaves crunched under his paws at every step.

He began to doubt himself. He sought out thrills, as he always did, but the ecstasy they brought him were shadowed by the question of purpose and worth. Nothing held any recognizable meaning anymore. He was bored, miserable, and frustratingly self-reflective.

So he sought out the first voice he remembered hearing, the first face he remembered seeing, the first thought he remembered having.

Once again, he sought out a demon.

Snow fell softly from black clouds.

The demon laughed at him.

When pessimism becomes confusion, when hedonism becomes uncertainty, and when empiricism becomes boredom, what does one have left? When a confused, uncertain, bored individual prone to self-reflection is faced with the fact that salvation is unsympathetic, unrelenting, and eternal, what does he do?

He falls back into old habits, looking for familiarity even as familiarity disgusts him.

Ashen leaves shattered under his claws at every step.

(POV: Lukas)

The sun had disappeared behind the horizon, and all was dark.

Lukas had never felt wistful in his life and he had never wanted to. He knew enough about his own life that he knew there was no reason to. He hadn't had a particularly informative life. There was never any lesson learned, any virtuous morality to be passed on. He was not wise and so he felt that wistfulness was wasted on him. And because he was by no means a faithful clan cat, he never once looked to the sky with starlight in his eyes, dreaming of things beyond death.

This night, though, being wistful just seemed to be appropriate, and he found his thoughts to be very poetic.

He stepped out of the den, too restless to let his mood be wasted, and his pawsteps stirred the snow on the ground. It was snowing, but it was a very calm snowfall, and Lukas felt no urgency to return to his nest because of it. He wouldn't pretend that it was a pleasant sensation. The wind might have been gentle, but the air was sharp and had no pity on him. He tried to breathe lightly so that the cold wouldn't stab his lungs so harshly, and he tucked his tail close to his body so that it could share the warmth.

Even so, he didn't hate it. The camp looked so serene and peaceful that he could barely dare to think of the battle that had caused such chaos before. It was a different kind of stillness that he was sensing now than he and Aetherstripe had experienced after that battle. It was still one of grief, but it was so soft.

The snow is so beautiful at night. Lukas stepped forward again. His paws were wet and cold.

Snow fell like tears, frozen tears. Once the harsh light of the sun had subsided, this sorrowful mourning was all that he was able to feel.

All was dark.

Tears fell like snow, like frozen rain. They fell so lightly. His fur was cold and wet.

That day, he had looked into Sorrelspot's eyes. Haunted eyes, mournful eyes completely free from ferocity. His eyes were not the eyes of a killer, but they held the guilt of one. Lukas was the one who should have been guilty. He hadn't even had the strength to look at those bodies, at the damage that he and cats like him at caused. His paw had sunk into the blood, and he had recoiled. Recoiled from the consequences of his actions, recoiled from the bile in his throat, recoiled from the grief in Sorrelspot's eyes.

His breath choked him, and he took another step forward to nowhere.

Lukas didn't deserve to be wistful. He had done nothing virtuous in his life and had no right to speak of virtuous things, or claim he knew the way that someone must live to be virtuous. He had no right to call something ugly or beautiful because he had never seen beauty and chances were he was uglier himself than any vice of another.

His tail sagged into the ground. He didn't bother to raise it once he felt it hit the snow. It crossed his mind to, of course, but his body only stepped forward again.

The worst part wasn't that he was a coward. He had been a coward his entire life and had several defences and reasons why living by a rule of self-preservation was not a reprehensible thing to do. The worst part was that he had no right to be a poet now, to describe the things around him and judge them. He had no right to mourn the loss of clanmates he barely cared about. After the battle, he'd watched cats fall from their paws and still find the strength to help their brother or sister. He could not understand why. And yet, he still had the audacity to act as one of them. To look Sorrelspot in the eye, to lean on Aetherstripe, to risk his life fighting with his fellow clanmates, and then lick his own wounds while a mother licked her dead son's was the pinnacle of dishonesty.

There wasn't even any reason to cry. He'd known that he was the scum of the earth since the day he was born. He knew it because his mother had whispered it into his ear, and repeated it every day until he left her in a nest full of rats.

He'd left her to die. He never falter in this decision even when he knew that his unborn brothers and sisters would die, too, because he was honest. He had no familial sentiment for his mother, no empathy for his callous father, and no pity for someone who had never tasted air enough to know it was poisoned.

He was a murderer before he was six moons old, and he didn't give a damn about it.

But now, he was crying.

He tried to step forward, but he collapsed. He didn't care that he collapsed. He knew that the darkness of the night would be serene, whether his wistful eyes would witness it or not.

(POV: Rockpaw)

Rockpaw was tired, but he didn't want to sleep. Well, sleep itself would have been great, but he hated dreaming.

When he was certain that the rest of the apprentices were asleep, he lightly padded out of the den and onto the snow. The night air was bitter, scolding him for being out past curfew, but he persisted. It wasn't snowing, but the sky was heavy with clouds and Rockpaw guessed it would in the morning.

Winterflame was also there. Rockpaw hadn't noticed him at first, which was strange considering he had made no effort to hide himself. He was sitting neatly in the center of the camp, head lifted proudly to the sky. It made Rockpaw suddenly feel shameful for sneaking, but he still kept his head ducked as he approached.

"Winterflame." His tongue was still hesitant to curl around that name, although it suited the warrior perfectly. Like the wind of winter, he was callous and unforgiving. He was aloof and preferred analytical thought to emotion and harsh reflex; even so, he was passionate like fire. His eyes were warm, and so was his fur. The name suited him perfectly and there was nothing else about it. But Rockpaw still loathed to call him any name but the name he had first introduced himself as.

"Oh, Rockpaw. Good evening." It was far past evening, but Rockpaw said nothing of it.

"What are you doing?" he asked because he had nothing else to say.

"I don't really know," Winterflame answered. "I just felt the need to wake up and look at the sky tonight." Saying this, his head tilted back upwards and Rockpaw's did the same.

"There aren't any stars," Rockpaw pointed out needlessly. Winterflame hummed in agreement.

"No, but it's still beautiful." When he spoke, his breath fogged in front of him and wreathed his face. "And it doesn't matter much whether there are stars or not. Our ancestors watch over us either way."

Just like every other time someone mentioned dead cats, Rockpaw's mind visualized Hawkstripe. This time was different than the other times, though. Instead of just thinking of his face or an idle memory associated with him, Winterflame's tranquil voice reminded him of the brutality and gracelessness of his death. He flinched, and Winterflame gave the curious head tilt Rockpaw swore he learned from Poisontongue.

"Do you really believe that?" He asked it in a whisper, his head down.

"Of course I do." He huffed indignantly, as if the afterlife were always a certainty. "What else do they have to do lying around in Heaven for all eternity, anyway?"

Rockpaw looked up curiously. "Heaven?"

Winterflame nodded, and then his resoluteness turned to reluctance. "Don't... you believe in Heaven, Rockpaw?"

Believe in Heaven?

He was silent, because he didn't know the answer to such a question. But Winterflame must have mistook his hesitance for a sudden nervousness in front of a higher authority (he really had taken on the role of a warrior with such grace that he often was unapproachable), because he added, "You can speak freely here with me, Rockpaw."

Rockpaw inhaled, realizing that he was now required to say something. "I don't."

Winterflame tilted his head again. He probably didn't mean it to be condescending, but it always was, and it was always irritating.

"I've never once been confident that the cats I've watched die found peace after death, and I've never once assumed that I will either." His whiskers twitched. He heard Hawkstripe's words again for the hundredth time and watched Dominique cut him open again for the thousandth time. "If Heaven exists, then we don't belong in it. We're not worthy of it." His gaze snapped defiantly up to meet Winterflame's, his eyes narrow and fierce. However, Winterflame's were light.

"That's what we're alive for, Rockpaw," he said. "Every day we have to strive to be more virtuous, so that when the day comes, we can share tongues with angels and guide our descendants to our side. All of us, therefore, are worthy."

Rockpaw stared at him in what he knew was open-mouthed shock. How could he be so hopeful? So certain of virtue? How could he look into Rockpaw's eyes and imply that he was worthy of Heaven?

"H-how can you say that?" The wind squeezed his throat, making him stutter.

Winterflame was unperturbed by his incredulity and faced the stars again. "When I look up at the midnight sky in the dead of Winter and still find a light, how could I say anything different?"

Rockpaw looked to the sky, but he did not see a single star.

"You should go sleep. You have early patrol tomorrow, right?"

Rockpaw shrugged.

"Then you should go. If you want to sit with me for longer, I don't mind it, but you're shivering."

Rockpaw nodded and stood. "Goodnight, then."

"Goodnight."

When Rockpaw reentered the den, he immediately regretted it. The air was stale, and it seemed colder than it had been outside.