It was the smell of old blood that scared Lily.
Not the way she felt like something large and heavy had stepped on her, or how her head was heavy and her mouth dry. Not the crippling soreness in every muscle, even her neck and ears. Not the scratchy feeling all around her eyes, like she had gone a moon-cycle without ever pawing off the eye-crust that came with sleep.
All of that was concerning, in an abstract way, but where she was lying was warm and flat and comfortable enough that she would have been happy to ignore everything and doze until she felt better. Weakness and soreness would dissipate with time, and if she was sick - the only explanation for the other little details bothering her - that too would go away.
But the acrid scent of blood wafting from somewhere nearby had no easy explanation and wouldn't go away if she ignored it. It invaded her nostrils, making her feel sick to her stomach. There was no breeze where she was, but she got the sense that it was wafting from somewhere close by. She felt as if she was dreaming, the sort of dream where the moment she opened her eyes or moved, something terrible would happen.
It was foolish, in a sense, the sort of superstition fledglings learned was just that, a superstition. But she didn't remember where she was, or how she had gotten there, and she had no explanation for her lack of knowledge. Even when she thought back, all she remembered was the hazy, rage-tinted impression of a terrible nightmare, nothing real or substantial. With her last memory something that obviously had not actually happened, it didn't seem so far-fetched that she was still dreaming.
Eventually, her dry mouth and growing headache forced her to act; she needed water. She cracked open ridiculously-crusted eyelids, and beheld…
Nothing. A rugged stone slope, leading to a stone wall, leading in turn to a stone ceiling. Wherever she was, it was dark, with only a few red crystals inlaid in the ceiling providing any light. There was no sign of the origin of the smell, though her nose was insisting it was close.
She glanced down at her paws, and saw reddish-brown crust splattered across them. The sight brought to mind no clear memories, just more half-remembered nightmares flitting about in the back of her mind. She didn't know how or why she had gotten blood on her paws.
That, more than anything, was what motivated her to stand despite the total exhaustion making her limbs feel like limp fish. She didn't know, and not knowing was dangerous. Someone's blood was on her, and she didn't know who, or why, or what they might have done to her after she dirtied her paws. If she had even done something herself.
There wasn't much to see, even when she turned around. She was on a slope near the bottom of a vaguely spherical cave. There was a low pool, more of a puddle, sitting at the lowest elevation. A few red crystals shed dim light on everything. Said light did not illuminate any obvious ways into or out of the cave, and given the cave was barely a few dozen paces across at its widest point, that worried her.
It looked for all the world like she had just appeared in a place with no entrance or exit, completely cut off from the rest of existence. She didn't believe that, not for a moment, but she wasn't even close to being at her best at the moment, and couldn't think of any other explanation besides the obvious, that there were exits and she just couldn't see them.
One mouthful of stale pond water of dubious origins later, she was forcing her tortured limbs - like she had been standing for days, or running for nearly as long, though she remembered neither - to cooperate, limping around the perimeter of the cave. The walls weren't smooth at all, lines with cracks and edges, and looking closely, she could see a place where those cracks were all set back from the rest in a shape large enough to fit a light wing through, though the blockage was…
She leaned in close, almost fell forward as her legs buckled, and knocked her nose on the suspicious arrangement of rocks that looked layered, like someone had broken off a lot of thin slabs and stacked them up. It wasn't the same method of blocking passages that Ember and Beryl had used before, but she could believe it had been derived from that, adapted to use the rocks provided by the different surroundings.
That didn't reassure her at all; Beryl or Ember had locked her away, or someone else had learned from them and then done it. Put like that, she was beginning to suspect Holly had gotten the information from them by proxy and decided to off her competition…
Lily snarled at the suspicious portion of wall and backed up a few paces. That was just like Holly in theory, but in practice it seemed strangely brazen. People would wonder where she had gone, and she was flightless so there would be no easy excuse of 'we can't catch up to her' to dissuade search parties. Holly wouldn't have done it unless she had reason to believe the majority of the pack wouldn't mind their rightful alpha disappearing.
An enemy had done this, though. Of that she was sure. Holly, or Rose and his pack of light wings, or the other pack that had killed a fledgling. She remembered that… though those memories were cracked, missing some context and certain details. She didn't remember exactly what Rose had said to make her mad, but she remembered being angry at him. She remembered the walk to his pack's territory, but not the walk back. It was like someone had taken a line in the sand and swished their tail through it around that point in time, blurring and erasing more and more from then on.
That pointed to a culprit, in and of itself. Rose. Something in the air, or maybe she had eaten while in his territory and didn't remember it. Maybe she had never left.
She growled to herself, and coughed as her raw throat made itself known. That was one mystery solved, at least. She could get confirmation once she broke out.
She inhaled, clenched her chest, and fired at the blockage. It didn't budge, though the explosion had been strong enough to make her reflexively back away. Tiny puffs of smoke came from a few spots on the wall, and the explosion didn't seem to have been all that effective. Aside from the smoke, there was no visible change.
She used the rest of her fire on the wall in the same manner, hoping that repeated blows would succeed what a single one had failed, but to no avail. It held solid even as she spent her last blast for the time being, mocking her inability to damage it. Whatever it was made of, it was much thicker than she had assumed. It had to be, to act so much like solid stone.
Maybe it would fail against another barrage later; she didn't have any other ideas, short of throwing herself at it, and her throat felt even worse after firing over and over again… She drank from the puddle - and it really was a puddle now, she doubted it would last much longer - and lay down next to it.
Whoever had trapped her here, they obviously needed her for something. If she couldn't break out herself, she could wait until they came back for her. Assuming they didn't wait until she was nearly dead of starvation or dehydration, of course.
Waiting wasn't a good plan, but she couldn't think of anything better. Her head still felt stuffed full of grass, and everything still hurt… Her anger at Holly and Rose and anyone who would do this to her was the only thing that kept her from just going back to sleep, and even that not for long.
O-O-O-O-O
Crystals scraping on rock had a peculiar sound, one that, to Lily, rang of mockery. She glared up at the movement on the ceiling, watching angrily as one of the inlaid crystals slid to the side, out of sight. Light wings were moving it, she could see their white forms through the semi-translucent stone.
She felt trapped and tricked; the wall hadn't been a way out at all, or if it was, it wasn't the one her captors used. It was stupid and irrational to hold a grudge about it in the face of literally everything else about her situation, but she held one anyway. Especially as she had just wasted her fire on said wall. She couldn't fly up to their entrance, she couldn't climb to it, and now she couldn't even fire on it to express her anger. She was reduced to waiting and watching as five light wings dropped into her little cave, one by one.
She recognized them all. Every single one of them. Cara led the way, dropping down warily and keeping her eyes on Lily at all times. Said eyes were full of hate, set in a face where teeth were on full display. Aven came next, and kept her eyes on everything but Lily. After her, Clay dropped down, glancing at her once and then looking nowhere in particular.
Behind him came the two males she only barely recognized; she had a name for Sandstone, but the other had been present in her last clear memories, introduced as one of Rose's people, an important one.
Three people from her pack, two from Rose's pack. Three males, two females. No Holly, no Rose, nobody from the dark wings.
She didn't know what she wasn't remembering, but it seemed reasonable to assume her enemies had joined forces. Since neither was present, she could also assume this was happening more or less in secret; they had sent their trusted underlings and would be establishing alibis for themselves while whatever this was went on. Clay was the outlier, unless he had been corrupted by Holly right under her nose…
She realized that she was shaking, and that she had stood and backed up until her tail was against the wall. Neither was conducive to any useful image, so she tried to force herself to calm down… It didn't work. She was angry, so angry, and only her confusion stopped her from acting in some way. She was in a bad spot, but it was stupid to corner her, and the moment she saw a way out she was going to use it.
She would get out. She tore her eyes off of Cara and glared at the puddle instead, by degrees mastering herself.
When she felt balanced - not calm, certainly not that, but able to hide it well enough to speak without giving anything away - she looked up. The light wings opposite her had spread out a little, taking up half of the cave. None looked relaxed, none sat down or otherwise made themselves vulnerable. They didn't trust her.
"What is this?" she asked neutrally. She belatedly pulled her teeth back, only realizing she had them out after she had spoken.
"We have come to hear you speak," Clay said carefully. "If you can. To ask for an explanation."
"For what?" she asked. "And why am I here?"
"You know why," Cara growled.
"I do not," she denied. "In fact," she continued, resisting the urge to pace as it would bring her too close to them, "if you wanted me to speak, you would not be approaching me here, with this group. I feel threatened. I'm not going to cooperate until I know exactly what you're trying to get out of me, and why."
"Tell us what you think of Holly," Aven said quietly. Her jaw seemed to be injured in some way; she spoke slowly, and with great reluctance, wincing at every little movement. For some reason, Cara was glaring all the more harshly.
"What am I supposed to think, when her sisters are interrogating me in a place I cannot leave, and with light wings from a pack that has expressed a desire to see me deposed?" she asked rhetorically, hiding the white-hot anger she felt behind a dismissive shake of the head. Her claws slid out almost of their own accord, and after a moment she decided to leave them out, just in case.
"That is not an answer," said the light wing whose name she didn't know.
"Let me out of here, and maybe you'll get one," Lily shot back. "And you should tell your alpha that I will not be deposed by someone so stupid he could not even avoid angering me on our first meeting."
"What do you think is going on here?" Cara demanded.
"I think something has happened to me, and I think your sister is responsible," Lily growled, seeing no reason to lie when her enemy apparently had the upper paw regardless. Holly wouldn't be stupid enough to fall for an obvious lie, and whatever she said here would surely get back to her. "I think Rose is helping her try and take over, because he is a greedy waste of space that wants our territory. I think you are all here to try and get me to say something you can report back to them, so that they can more easily discredit me with something. It won't work, I'm going to get out of here and take my pack back no matter what you try. Your best move is to let me go and hope I feel merciful!"
She ended her little rant with a snarl that should have echoed, but didn't. Aven shied away from her angry gaze, Clay stared at her with something akin to sorrow, the two light wings from the other pack were hiding their reactions, and Cara…
Cara had a viciously satisfied look that made Lily think she'd made a mistake somewhere, though she didn't know what. Her next words confirmed that.
"I think that speaks for itself?" she asked the others, her eyes still on Lily.
Aven responded by jumping up, flapping twice, and latching her front paws over the opening in the ceiling. She pulled herself up, struggling a bit with lifting her entire weight but succeeding in the end. Sandstone followed without comment.
"For what it is worth," the unnamed light wing male said, looking at her, "My alpha and my pack have no paw in any of this, except as observers beholden to neither you nor Holly. Whatever happens next, it was not our decision."
"Thus speaks the coward covering his pack's behind because he's worried his alpha picked the losing side," Lily growled dismissively. "I'll remember this. You want my goodwill, do something I will appreciate when I take my place back." She specifically did not ask for help escaping this cave; any intimidation would be undercut by needing immediate assistance, no matter how bad a spot she might be in.
She hoped she was doing the right thing; there was too much unknown for her to be sure of everything, and while falling back on angry, unfounded confidence was reassuring, it wasn't something she could necessarily back up. She was bluffing in almost every way.
The male left, leaping up and pulling himself out with an agility the others had lacked, and Cara was alone. Lily considered jumping her, but the weakened, frankly pitiable state she was in made that a losing proposition.
"I do not know what I expected, but I am still underwhelmed," Cara remarked. "You did not even try to defend yourself."
"Yes, because anything I said would change your mind," Lily huffed. She wished she knew what was on Cara's mind.
"Right," Cara growled. "But a heartfelt, grovelling apology might have made me laugh, at least."
By now, Lily was mostly certain her loss of memory was entirely intentional on someone's part, because it made all of this so much harder. Cara was her enemy, that much was certain, but what sort of enemy and why it had come to this would have been very useful things to know. "Tell me what you think I need to apologize for, and I might consider it," she retorted.
Cara snarled and leaped forward. Lily tried to back up, pushing her tail up against the wall before realizing she wasn't getting anywhere, but by then it was too late to move. She met Cara's lunge head-on, her back spasmed, her muscles all gave out, and then Cara was kicking at her wings and sprawling on her back and dragging claws down her flanks and it hurt-
"Cara!" Aven's voice cut through Cara's snarling and Lily's yelping and did far more than Lily's pained struggling in getting Cara to back off. "Stop that!"
"She deserved it," Cara growled, taking a few more steps back even as she looked as if she'd rather be continuing the decided only-sided fight. Lily let her go, unable to do anything more than lay on her stomach, holding back a pained keen. She wouldn't give her the satisfaction of knowing how much the cuts and her back hurt.
"Still," Aven growled from up in the ceiling. "Come on."
Cara huffed something unintelligible and leaped up. She missed the opening entirely on her first try, which Lily would have laughed at under different circumstances, and had to jump again. Once she was up, the crystal was shoved back into place, lying on top of the opening. The fit wasn't perfect, now that she was looking Lily could see a few gaps around the edge…
Not that it mattered. She gingerly craned her neck to lick at her new wounds, properly looking at them for the first time in the process. Cara hadn't cut her deeply, but a half-dozen bleeding scratches on both of her flanks was agonizing even if it wasn't crippling. The pain in her back was worse, though it both had no apparent source and was slowly abating.
She wanted to stomp around and break something. She wanted to thump Cara, knock some sense into her, and then force her to explain why everything was going so wrong. She wanted to curl into a ball and whine until the pain went away. Only one of those was actually doable, and it was the worst of the three, the one that gave her no outlet for her anger, which made her even angrier.
She did it anyway, trying very hard not to feel sorry for herself. If she could just remember what had happened then she could do something more productive than brooding, but she couldn't. Every time she tried, she just brought up scattered fragments of her nightmares, and those were no help at all.
O-O-O-O-O
By the time the crystal began moving again, Lily was no longer bleeding, no longer so angry she felt like hurting someone, and hungry on top of everything else. Thirsty, too, since the puddle was now nothing more than a lot of mud at the bottom of a depression in the rock. She still had no idea where the water had come from, or how it was supposed to be replenished. That might have been a promising sign of her imprisonment being temporary by design, but she wasn't feeling that optimistic.
Then a black paw slipped around the crystal to better haul it aside, and she found that she could be optimistic. "Beryl!" she called out, relief flooding her like the tide filling a little hole dug by a fledgling. He wouldn't be on the side of anyone who stuck their alpha in a little hole and refused to tell her why and attacked her, let alone when that alpha was her and the one holding her prisoner Holly.
"Lily," he grunted as he dropped down into the cave. He looked fine - and she only realized she was checking him over for injuries after she had confirmed that he didn't have any - and sounded okay, if reserved, which made sense since he was probably going behind someone's back to come save her like this.
"You have no idea how glad I am to see you," she exhaled. She would have gone up to nuzzle him, but there was a chance they were being watched from above, and her body was still a big, aching mass of pain, so she stayed where she was and settled for purring at him.
"How are you?" he asked bluntly. His eyes roamed over her body, though there was none of the usual playfulness - or more rarely, suggestiveness - that she was used to. He stared at the cuts on her side for a bit, before looking her in the eye.
"Hurt all over, but not in any way that matters," she said. "Despite Cara's attempts to the contrary."
"Attempts? She hurt you more than once?" Beryl asked.
"Well, not last time I saw her, but I'm having trouble remembering what's been happening recently, so I can't be sure," Lily said flippantly. She was relieved, so relieved to have someone she could count on. "Help me out, I have no idea what is going on here."
"No idea." He repeated her words as if they were some inexplicable mystery.
"None," she confirmed, waving her tail at him. She was noticing that he was fairly tense, not relaxing at all, and took that to mean someone was observing, someone he didn't trust… She lowered her voice. "Seriously, things start to get fuzzy around meeting the other pack, and I cannot remember anything after that. I do not know what is going on." She had trouble with some things from before that, too, but 'forgetting to do something' was not even worth mentioning when compared to a complete loss of time.
"I would… like to believe that." He shook his head. "How are you feeling right now?"
"Why would I lie?" she asked, tilting her head and giving him a sad look meant to convey that she was asking, more specifically, why he thought she would lie to him. She flicked her ears upward, indicating their hypothetical observer, then shook her head. She wasn't lying for the same of whoever was listening in; in this case, the truth seemed like an effective tool to use against Holly, whatever her game was. So long as Beryl filled her in on what she was missing, she could use her previous ignorance for any number of things. Especially if he did it without letting on to the one listening in.
"Could you just tell me how you are feeling right now?" he repeated gently. "Any signs of sickness? Coughing, sneezing, anything like that."
"No?" She thought about it. "Sore throat, but the kind you get from roaring or talking way too much, not the sickness kind." Which meant she had been doing one of those things sometime recently, which was in itself a lead… Maybe that was Beryl's plan, leading questions to let her piece together what had happened herself. She could do that. "Next question?"
He looked… surprisingly uneasy at her enthusiasm, which she interpreted as a request for her to calm down so as to not give anything away. "Yes," he said, "are you still having trouble sleeping?"
"Did Honey tell you about that?" she asked with a low growl. She had thought Honey understood the need to keep afflictions private, so as to ensure light wings went to her with even the most embarrassing ailments… In fact, she was certain she had beaten that into both Honey and Copper.
"Yes," he confirmed, ensuring she gave her one-time pupil a firm talking-to at some point in the future. "Is that still affecting you?"
"I have not tried to go to sleep yet," she answered. "But yes, almost certainly. It was not going away." Once she got out of this tiny cave and back to the pack, she could ask him to put her to sleep… But then she would be doing so in front of the pack, which would have its own problems. Maybe she could sleep with him here, wherever here was… It would be ironic if Holly's machinations only managed to benefit Lily in the long run.
"I see," Beryl rumbled. "And have you felt… out of control… recently? Since you woke up."
"Define out of control," she said uneasily. That touched a little close to her nightmares for comfort; her acting like a raving lunatic, acting like Claw, hurting people, going too far… She didn't even like thinking about it.
"Irrationally angry, paranoid, sure that everything is a plot…" He was giving her a whole series of strange looks she couldn't make heads or tails of. "Unusually sadistic, or feeling that you are right by default… Anything that is not like how you have always acted before coming down here."
"I think I could not be the one to say, since I would not know if I was being affected," she reasoned, trying to figure out what he was telling her under the guise of inquiring about her health. It might be he was telling her about Holly, telling her what sort of madness Holly was spiraling into… One that was scarily similar, in all respects, to her dream. Maybe she had witnessed Holly doing those things, and then had a nightmare about it afterward. That explanation made her feel, if not good, then at least sure of herself. Much more so than him actually asking her would have.
Still, she had to answer honestly, if only because he actually seemed to care about what she was going to say. "Maybe angry?" Though Cara and the others had definitely provoked her, and being shut in a small space with no way out would make anyone angry… "And you cannot really call it paranoia when everyone really is out to get me." She gestured to their current surroundings to underscore her point. "Other than that, and the memory problems, and maybe wanting to hurt Cara after she hurt me, and my well-justified confidence in my own intelligence…"
She laughed weakly. "Put like that, I guess all of those?" Not that she was really any of those things… She didn't feel great, in truth she felt pretty terrible, but that would pass. A few days of rest, some sunlight, though she couldn't get either of those now…
"And that does not worry you?" he asked.
"Sure, but I've got bigger problems," she huffed. She tilted her head and waved her paw impatiently. "Look at these cuts for me and tell me if they are deep, would you?"
He approached cautiously, placing his paws carefully, and she was suddenly frustrated. Not with him, with her ignorance, because she was sure there was a reason for everything he did, and it burned, not knowing. When he leaned in to look at her cuts, she hissed discreetly but a little more harshly than she had intended. "Tell me what's going on," she requested - no, demanded, what with her frustration leaking into her voice.
"I don't think you'll take it well," he said bluntly, not even bothering to lower his voice. "And I know that if you did remember, but were… better now… pretending not to remember would be a great trick to garner sympathy. But if it is, I need to know about it."
"Why would you say that?" she demanded, jerking her head up frantically to remind him about their listener, of course she couldn't actually tell him the truth even if her ignorance was a lie, he should have remembered-
"There's nobody there," he said. "I came alone."
"Well then what was all that about asking me how I was and in the process giving me hints so I could figure it out without you telling me?" she asked, at the same time shying away from a tentative lick on her wounds. She cared more about answers than having another layer of saliva applied.
He backed up to look her in the eye again. "I was not doing that, I was really asking," he said slowly. "You gave true answers, right?"
"Yes, but I thought… Never mind." She felt like an idiot now, but that could be ignored. Best if she moved on and didn't acknowledge it. "I really don't know what happened. Things just get blurry when I try to remember what Rose was saying to me when we met, and then after that nothing, just nightmares and then waking up here."
"That's… not ideal." He shook his head. "But I guess it explains why you seem…"
"Confused?" she ventured, her heart sinking. There were so many things here that weren't fitting together with her theories, and the way he was talking, it didn't sound like Holly pulling off some clever trick was all that had happened.
"No, confused is how I feel about you right now," he huffed. "I think you were sick, either in body or in mind. But you did some very bad things while… like that. Things I'm not happy about. But I'm not happy with what's going on back with your pack, either."
"You're not happy with me?" she asked plaintively, feeling like she had just stepped on something that crumbled under her paws and sent her flailing, only without any of the physical disorientation.
"No," he said, his eyes narrowing. "Not at all. It might not be your fault, not entirely, and I feel a little more confident of that after talking to you just now, but… That can wait."
"There are more important things going on," she agreed, latching on to the familiar line of reasoning. "Give me the relevant details, nothing more."
"Okay." He exhaled, inhaled, exhaled again…
She watched him breathe, waiting for him to continue. Now that she was looking for it, she could see the subtle distance between them, the one that had been present since he entered the cave. It was hard to spot, because they had made a habit of pretending they were less involved than they actually were, so the only difference now was that his motivation for keeping apart and not showing affection had changed from necessity to unease and some sort of lingering resentment…
He hid it well, but she couldn't stop seeing it now that her eyes had been opened.
"You went crazy, tried to send Thaw on a suicide mission, intentionally avoided Pearl when she was looking for you, completely ignored Holly and her sisters when they tried to talk to you, sentenced Holly to stand in a waste pit when she tried to get you to come to her senses, and then when she actually did it because she was trying to make some stupid point that wasn't even close to worth it, you actually made her go through with it," Beryl blurted out in one long, rushed speech.
The words rattled around in her head, flitting about and refusing to settle into something coherent. She gaped at him.
"Then," he said angrily, getting worked up as he spoke, "you finally said she could get out, pushed her back in when she did, and then attacked her! She would have died, and she still might, and you tried to hold Aven hostage too, and that was when I finally got back and found out what was going on. I talked you down, I think, it wasn't really clear, and Honey put you to sleep which she should have done long before it got to that point. Everyone was freaking out, more so after it was over, and the whole pack made Holly the stand-in alpha while they tried to figure out what they were supposed to do…"
Lily didn't understand what he was saying. The memories of her nightmare were passing in front of her eyes, each one more ludicrous than the last. She felt faint.
"Then Holly started coughing, and Honey didn't know what to do to help her, either," Beryl continued, all but roaring at her, completely oblivious to her mounting horror. "She was throwing up and her wound was looking bad, so Cara and Aven took over for her and decided to ask the other pack if they had any healers, which they did, but those light wings didn't know much about how to treat her either-"
"Stop!" Lily shrieked, crumpling to the ground. "Stop, please!" She couldn't take any more, it had all happened, her nightmares were real and she had actually done all of that and he was so mad about it, and he had called her a danger to the pack. It was too much to process, all heaped on top of her while he ranted.
Beryl fell silent. She shuddered, trying to piece together the fragments of hazy memory into something coherent now that she knew they weren't nightmares, but her actual actions. There was a grim quality to most of them, and her actions mostly matched what he had said…
She had… overreacted. Holly had overstepped, but she had disgraced herself in front of the entire pack all on her own, especially when her actions evoked memories of Claw. She still felt somewhat justified, but she had gone about it wrong.
That was… salvageable. She had been sleep-deprived and confused, but she was better now. It was recoverable, if she did things right. She repeated that assurance in her head, over and over, until her heart stopped pounding. It could be fixed. She was fine now.
"What… what then?" she finally asked, her voice quiet and small.
"Nobody knew what to do about you," Beryl said solemnly, "so Cara decided to put you somewhere out of the way until something could be decided. The other pack mentioned this place, Ember helped block up the way out, and you were brought in. Then Aven, Cara, and a few others gathered to talk about what to do with you."
"It is not their choice, though?" Lily asked, hoping she was right. If her fate was up to Holly, Aven, and Cara, they would use it to make sure she never got a chance to come back and claim her rightful place.
"It is," Beryl said. "They came down here to find out what you had to say for yourself, and when they got back they went right back to debating it. I'm not in the group, so I'm not supposed to know what they're saying…"
"But you do anyway, because you wouldn't just sit back and let this happen," Lily said hopefully.
"I had Pearl listen in," he confirmed with a heavy sigh. "You have to understand, you scared them."
"Cara and Aven?" she asked.
"Everyone," Beryl replied. "You scared them and you reminded them of the worst parts of Claw. It was so obvious that even I knew what you looked like, and I never met him."
Lily remembered Beryl… quoting her, quoting her words to Claw so long ago. He certainly had remembered, far better than her. "I was stupid," she said vehemently. "There were other ways to deal with Holly that wouldn't make me look so bad."
Beryl gave her an uncertain look. "They're still scared. They don't want it to ever happen again. There's talk of merging the packs just to make sure-"
Lily snarled at that.
"-And there's talk of the pack not having another alpha at all, which is much more popular, though neither is so popular that anyone is taking the ideas seriously," Beryl continued. "But when it comes to you… People are scared."
"You already said that," she remarked.
"Because it's true," he huffed. "They don't want to see you again, they don't want you back as alpha… Cara and Aven and their little group are just deciding how best to make that happen, and what is just in regards to you."
"What are they planning?" she asked plaintively. This was going to be difficult; a lesser light wing would have admitted defeat after hearing all of that. Just taking back control was going to be an uphill battle, let alone keeping it and repairing her reputation and everything that came with it.
"They don't know yet," Beryl hedged. "A lot was riding on whether you were… lucid… and whether you regretted what happened, or even acted like you did."
"And?" she pressed, squinting at him. The way he was acting, he had to know what was coming.
"It looks like exile," he said bluntly. "At least. Cara was pushing for some sort of physical retribution for what you did to Holly, but she has backed off on that. Same with having you killed-"
"That was an option?" she barked, appalled. All else aside - and there was a lot to ignore there, but she managed it - killing the former alpha wasn't supposed to happen anymore, and Holly should know that. But Holly wasn't involved, if what Beryl was telling her was accurate.
"Someone asked Rose's people how they dealt with attempted murder," Beryl said gravely. "Apparently, they have very strict rules on these things. Aven shot it down soon enough, but it was not immediately rejected. That is how badly you have scared them."
"They had better be scared," Lily grumbled, offended beyond belief. "When I get back…" She trailed off, not entirely sure how to end that threat. She would do something about her people considering killing her a potential solution to their fear.
"It does not seem likely you will ever be allowed back," Beryl huffed.
"Of course it wouldn't be allowed," Lily scoffed angrily. "That would undermine them and give me a chance to make amends. No, I've messed up once, and they're going to try their hardest to make sure I never apologize, or otherwise make myself look less horrible. That doesn't mean I'm not going to go back anyway."
"Maybe," Beryl said noncommittally. "Do you remember what you said to Thaw?"
"I think so," she said, momentarily taken aback by the sudden change in topic. But it made sense, when she stopped to think about it; she was taking his assistance for granted, and he was still mad at her. Hiding it very well behind the veneer of needing to talk about more important matters, but mad nonetheless. It was good she could easily reassure him.
"What do you have to say about it?" he asked sternly.
"It was a stupid mistake that I wouldn't have made if I was in my right mind," she promptly replied. "Really. I should have asked Ember to go. I'm sorry."
He eyed her skeptically. "It does not sound like you actually are sorry," he remarked.
"Well, I am," she huffed. "It was a bad idea and a stupid one. He did not do something stupid because of me, did he?" She was pretty sure Thaw was fine, if only because Beryl's rage was more of the 'simmering' variety than the 'apoplectic' kind, but she wasn't certain.
"He went out into the caves without telling anyone," Beryl growled. "It took me, Ember, and Spark to track him down, and when we did he was seriously considering trying it. You almost sent a fledgling to what would have been his death. He doesn't even look like a normal two-headed dragon when he changes!" He clawed at the rocks, glaring angrily at her.
"I'm sorry!" she exclaimed, whining for emphasis. "I told you, it was a terrible idea that I regret! It is great that you got to him before he actually tried it." She didn't feel that guilty about it, despite how she was acting, but that lack of guilt itself worried her as much as Thaw's near-miss did. She was pretty sure she should have felt something more.
"While we were tracking him down, you were doing terrible things to Holly," Beryl growled, apparently taking her apology at face value but still not appeased. "We walked right back into that mess at the end. Are you sorry for that?"
"I am," she declared, "but that wasn't really me, it was something else. I am fine now. Can you forgive me?"
"You are saying you are sorry and that you are fine, but I don't really think either is entirely true," Beryl said stubbornly. "I know you, Lily, and something here still feels off."
"That's not my fault," Lily objected. She really wasn't sure what he was noticing that had his guard up.
"Well, it's bothering me," he said. "I'm going to go see what they've decided."
"And then you'll help me get around it?" she asked hopefully.
"We'll see," he grumbled, leaping up to the hole in the ceiling. She watched until he had completely moved the crystal back, then resorted to pacing around the sloped confines of her cave, frustrated and worried.
He was still mad at her, even though she had apologized. She had apologized, but she hadn't really felt it, even though she should have. She had been acting strange and wrong before, and in retrospect a lot of her decisions were overblown…
She went over what she remembered of her actions one more time. Cutting off Rose was a good idea, assuming he had actually expressed a desire to take over her pack like she remembered saying. Establishing some sort of deterrent to enforce the unpopular decision was a good idea, but forcing someone to stand in the waste pit was not. It had backfired, and she shouldn't have required hindsight to know that something so viscerally disgusting would come back to bite her.
Not that she felt bad about subjecting Holly to it; the sneaky usurper had gotten what was coming to her. Just thinking about all of the evidence she'd seen of Holly plotting got her blood boiling. Diora had been a good help, and Pearl was probably in on it…
Thaw had been a tactical mistake; she had burned herself by assuming Ember would reject the idea outright without even asking. Sending Thaw into danger was also bad… But she didn't feel that bad about him going out and thinking about it.
It was that lack of guilt that she kept coming back to. She liked Thaw; even if his Dam was against her, that didn't mean she had to not care about him. He was the strong and silent sort, with a deep voice that didn't totally match his body, and Beryl's little brother. She didn't want him to get hurt.
She really didn't want him hurt. It felt like she had been slapped in the heart, and the face for good measure. She would feel awful if he died doing something stupid that she had suggested, and she was sorry, and she did feel terrible about even trying it. Now that she thought about it.
Something was still wrong. There was no other explanation for why she had to remind herself to care about someone she really did care about.
She sprawled out on the stone, confused and worried for herself. If she wasn't better, she couldn't be sure anything she thought or felt was actually genuine. That was going to make things even harder.
But she refused to even consider giving up. Whatever the verdict, she would somehow convince Beryl to be on her side, somehow get back into the valley, and somehow make amends in a way that got her back into being alpha. She had to.
O-O-O-O-O
Lily was thirsty and tired and very hungry. She hadn't eaten, she hadn't been able to sleep, and there was no more puddle to drink from. Her head was pounding harshly by the time Beryl returned, and he didn't come bearing food or good news. She knew the former by how he didn't give her any fish, and the latter by his guarded expression and posture, just like before.
"What's the verdict from the pretenders?" she asked, her mouth dry and her voice raspy.
"Exiled, and that's it," Beryl said, bowing his head. "Just so you know, it's not what I would have wanted."
"What would you have wanted?" she asked, ignoring the implications of what he had just said. She wasn't really exiled, he would help her get back into the cavern and establish a pawhold so they couldn't exile her.
"You to spend some time away, as long as you needed to get better, then to be allowed back under the condition that you didn't do anything to try and take power," Beryl sighed. "But they didn't like that idea."
"Of course they didn't, it would mean they don't have someone to demonize and hold up as a reason for Holly to stay in power," she laughed bitterly. "So, what's the plan?"
"The plan…" He looked her right in the eye. "Make the best of it?"
"The real plan," she snorted.
"I don't know why you think there is a plan other than that," he objected. "They announced it to the pack. Everyone knows you're not supposed to be in the cavern, and if anyone sees you they'll call for help. The guards all know to drive you away if you show your face."
"Those are just complications, not reasons to give in," she hissed. "And why are you being so negative? I've gotten over worse obstacles in the past."
"Well, for one thing, you're assuming I want to help you take the pack back," he growled. "You still have not given me an apology I actually believe is more than just manipulation."
"The pack needs me," she argued, anger mounting. She knew she was supposed to question her every thought, but this seemed clear-cut enough that her anger was warranted. "You can't just keep me away because you're mad at me!"
"It's not me doing the keeping away, I'm just the one they sent to tell you!" he objected. "But I would keep you away anyway, if it were my decision. Whatever the actual cause, being alpha made you come this close to killing someone you wanted to protect, and torturing someone else, and who knows where you would have gone next. I think you weren't in your right mind, but the fact remains that being alpha did that to you. Why do you think I want you to go back to that?"
"I have to!" she barked. "You don't understand."
"I don't, you're right," he barked back. "But you can't do it anyway, so it doesn't matter!"
"I'll do it, just you wait and see," she snarled. "Where is the cavern from here?"
"It's to your left once you get out into the next cave," he growled. "But you can't get back, it's one of the blocked paths. They can only open it from the inside."
"How were you getting back?" she demanded.
"They would recognize my voice and let me through," he shot back at her. "How are you going to get past that?"
"I…" A thought occurred to her. "I won't," she said victoriously. "I know another way into the valley." The sea dragon had spoken of a cave filled with white flowers at the other end of that long, walkable ledge over the underground lake. If she could circle around and find that cave, she could find a path into the cavern that nobody could block.
She didn't tell Beryl any of that. He might just try to stop her. She wasn't used to thinking of him as an enemy, another obstacle, but she would if he forced her to. He was doing so now, telling her to give up, to just lay down and die, or whatever he thought she should be doing.
"Let me out, and get out of my way," she snarled. "If you aren't going to help, then I don't need you."
"You're not thinking straight, again," he said.
"Maybe not, but at least I'm doing something other than waiting for death like you want me to," she spat. "When did you start siding with Holly and the rest of the traitors? Because the Beryl I know would never tell me to give up."
"The Lily I know wouldn't be all but attacking me, no matter how mad she was," he retorted, nodding to her claws, which were out and ready to cut if he so much as made a single move toward her. "You're doing great if you're trying to convince me you're still not in your right mind."
"Get out," she snarled, feeling utterly betrayed and angry enough to attack him, no matter how futile that might be. "Get out, let me out, and when I make it back and am alpha again, get ready to apologize for betraying me. I trusted you."
Beryl leaped up and left, and Lily turned and smacked her tail against the wall, over and over again until the pain outweighed her need to roar or whine until she lost her voice entirely. She was so mad, and so sad, and she was going to find that cave with white flowers just to spite him. When she was alpha again, he would be sorry. They would all be sorry.
