Chapter 2 (F):

Firestar awoke in a strange place. Blinking his eyes open, he found himself lying in a very small space. It was a lot like the cages he'd freed Brightheart from, he remembered blurrily, but instead of being completely mesh, only one of the walls had the thin bars. The rest of the walls were all a solid, grayish color. In the corner of his cage, he found a food and water dish. The water was filled to the top, but the food dish only had a few mouthfuls of dry pellets in it. Under him, he looked down to see an old blue cloth that held dark stains in it and smelled of other cats.

Slowly, he stood. His head was pounding with a headache, and he blinked in an attempt to make it go away. He stepped forward and peered out of the one wall he could see through. Between the bars, he saw that he was in a Twoleg's den. He found that his cage was high off the ground, but there were no other cages that he could see except for his own. He could only see smooth walls and the shiny floor, and several large Twoleg objects, but that was it.

He instinctively opened his jaws to taste the air. The Twoleg scent was overwhelming and mixed with his headache, it made him want to gag. Underneath it though, Firestar could smell that there were fear scent and multiple different cat scents. They were all faint except for one, which was so strong, Firestar wouldn't be surprised if the cat was standing atop his cage right now.

"Hhh…" Firestar tried to speak, but a feeling of dizziness met him. "Hello…?" He tried again, his voice raspy. He sank to a sitting position and peered through the cage, resting his head tiredly on the wall as he did so.

"Oh!" A surprised voice mewed, and there was a soft thump as though the cat was leaping down from a high place. Firestar heard several swift movements, and a face appeared through the bars. She crouched down in front of the cage, her eyes wide and friendly. "You're awake!" She chirped happily.

Firestar blinked at the she-cat. For the first heartbeat, he had sworn it was Leafpaw. The cat in front of him was a small brown tabby she-cat, with a white chest and paws and the same amber eyes. She looked startlingly similar to Leafpaw, except for the fact that she looked to be about the age of a young warrior, instead of a still-learning apprentice.

"Sorry if I startled you." The she-cat apologized, quickly shuffling backwards when Firestar did not respond. "I'm just surprised you're awake so early. Most cats are still sleeping pretty heavily after the dose you were given!"

"Dose?" Firestar echoed the unfamiliar word, then coughed to clear his throat. He looked briefly over his shoulder at the food and water and his stomach rumbled with his terrible hunger, but as the stench of the dry pellets reached him, he just wanted to gag again. There's no way he'd be eating kittypet food anytime soon, he told himself.

"Oh, yes." She nodded, and her gaze scanned his pelt curiously. "It's pain medication, you know? The Workfolk sometimes give it to wild cats or those who need lots of help instead of just a checkup."

She paused, and her ear twitched as she considered him. "It's odd though. Usually, the Workfolk takes the wild cats into the holding room after an examination. You must have an owner then. But you don't look like a normal house cat." Her eyes settled on a scar on his shoulder and moved onto his unusually thin frame. Firestar grew very aware of his showing ribs under her gaze. Suddenly the dry pellets didn't sound all that bad.

"That's because I'm not." Firestar turned and shuffled over to the Twoleg dish. He sniffed the dry pellets with disgust but allowed himself to try a small mouthful. At first, he cringed as he crunched the hard food. The food was dry with a vague flavor that he could not identify, but he before he could complain too much, he found himself wolfing down the food. The hunger got the best of him, and he quickly found himself scarfing down all of the food in the dish and swallowing thickly.

The she-cat behind him made a startled noise. "Hey!" She pawed at the cage's bars in an attempt to get his attention, "Don't eat so quickly! Cats who eat too much on medication could get sick."

Firestar hardly paid any attention to her. He stared down at the empty bowl now. There hadn't been much in the bowl to begin with. The food he had been given hadn't even covered the bottom of the dish. But despite the queasy feeling that rose up to meet him already, he was still wishing for more.

"You should drink some water."

Firestar's ear twitched at her worried meow. He bent down and sniffed at the small dish of stale water. Unhappily, he allowed himself to follow her instructions and lap up a few mouthfuls before turning back to the kittypet outside his cage.

"What is your name?" He asked.

"My name is Lilian." Her eyes showed her surprise. "I live here, at the vet."

"You live here?" Firestar asked with a strange voice, trying and failing to disguise the fear that had struck him. The vet. The vet was where kittypets went to see the cutter. His tail twitched nervously as he thought about what the Twolegs could have done to him while he was unconscious on their 'medication.'

"Yep," Lilian confirmed with a short nod, politely ignoring his fear. "When sick cats come in and need a friend while they wait for their Housefolk to come and bring them home, the Workfolk will sometimes put them in here so I can keep them company." She eyed him again, "But you're not a house cat, are you?"

"No." Firestar said shortly, "I'm not."

"Then maybe you've been assigned Housefolk." Her voice brightened. "Sometimes when cats have been assigned Housefolk, or have been chosen, they are taken from the holding room and get put in here."

"The holding room?" Firestar asked, not understanding what she was meowing about. But he hardly heard her next words. His mind had moved onto his Clanmates. His groggy and clouded mind prevented him from making any comprehensible thoughts, but the faces of his starving Clanmates still swam in his mind. His headache began to pound again as he remembered Squirrelpaw and Brambleclaw pounding after the racing monster that had stolen him from ThunderClan.

Guilt rose in him, fueling the queasy feeling in his stomach, as he realized that he was here, dry and fed and given medication, while his Clanmates were cold, sick, and starving. The food in his stomach threatened to come up, and he focused on holding it back as he leaned heavily against the side of his cage for support.

"Yes," She nodded, her eyes trained on him nervously. She did not ask how he was feeling however, and instead continued to explain the situation. "The holding room is a long room filled with cages up to the ceiling. It holds cats who don't have homes, or who those who need to stay here long term. I've only been allowed in there a few times though. Not all the other cats like me in there." She huffed, as though half-annoyed, half-amused by this.

There was a silence between the two as Firestar's queasiness subsided and he settled down on the thin blanket on the bottom of his cage. He curled up facing away from the she-cat and tucked his tail tightly up around him. Maybe if he went to sleep StarClan would meet him…

"What's your name?" Lilian's voice broke the quiet, and Firestar's ear twitched with his own newly found annoyance.

"I am Firestar," He told her simply.

"Firestar?" She repeated, as though testing the name on her tongue. "That's an odd name. I've never heard of it before."

Firestar hummed his agreement. He supposed it would sound weird to a kittypet. He had thought that Graypaw had a weird name during their first encounter in the forest. To his further annoyance however, the she-cat was not finished with their conversation.

"Where are you from?" She asked. "You're not fed very well. Is it hard where you live?"

"I suppose you could say that." Firestar didn't turn to look at her. "It'll only be harder now that I'm gone."

He heard Lilian shift behind him, as though not knowing what to say now. Finally, she whispered, "I'll leave you be, Firestar. It is very late, and if you do have assigned Housefolk, they should be here as late as tomorrow to pick you up."

Great. Firestar growled silently to himself. I'm back to being a kittypet.

Despite the medication pulling him towards sleep, Firestar found it hard to settle down.

His mind still swam with the faces of his Clanmates, and his stomach churned with frustration and worry. How would Sandstorm react when she heard of his disappearance? He wondered. How would the Clan react to losing their leader so suddenly? Would StarClan tell Cinderpelt that he was still alive?

A new thought struck his mind, and he gritted his teeth. Graystripe would be appointed leader in his place. Firestar knew that he had chosen Graystripe to be his deputy with the Clan's best interest in mind and that Graystripe had led the Clan for several moons while Firestar was away rebuilding SkyClan, but he wondered if his friend was truly ready to become the leader, especially in such hard times.

He doubted that his friend would fully accept the position if there was still a chance of him being alive, but he wondered how Graystripe would handle the pressure of the situation they were in now. Sometimes Firestar had felt that he couldn't handle it himself. The pressure of keeping his Clan alive through starvation and freezing temperatures, while watching their territory being destroyed and waiting for the other Clans to agree to leave... it was a lot to handle, even with the help of a medicine cat and a deputy.

Firestar's mind raced with confusing thoughts and questions, but as he laid there in the quiet and dark surroundings, he quickly found himself being pulled back into unconsciousness from the medication once more. He welcomed it.


"Firestar! Firestar, wake up!"

Groggy, Firestar rolled over with a groan. His head hurt and he didn't want to go out on patrol this morning. "No, go ask Graystripe," he mumbled into the thin bedding beneath him, waving off whatever warrior wanted his attention.

"Graystripe?" The high voice sounded startled, and Firestar's ear twitched with confusion. "No, Firestar wake up. I think you were having a bad dream."

"What?" Firestar sat up at these words, more awake now. He blinked hard a few times, his eyes hurting in the bright light of the room. He could remember nothing of his dream except for a sense of dread and darkness.

"Are you okay?" Lilian was sitting anxiously outside of his cage, peering in at him.

"I'm fine." Firestar sighed and sat up. He gave his shoulder a few swift licks, then turned around to look at his food dish. It was still empty from the night before, but he was able to step forward and take a drink of the stale water still. He winced at the faint metallic taste.

Lilian looked sympathetic now, "Don't worry. When cats are put into this room, it means that their Housefolk will be here soon for them. And it's past noon now, so they shouldn't be long."

"Noon?" Firestar asked, unfamiliar with the word.

"Sunhigh?" Lilian offered weakly.

There was a silence between them, and Firestar took the time to ask, "Don't you have Twolegs?"

"I told you before," Lilian meowed. "I live here. Ever since I was a kit, I've always lived here."

Firestar listened quietly as she told him about how her mother died to protect her and her brother from a couple of rouges beside a big Thunderpath. She was taken here by some Twolegs, and was raised here by the Workfolk. Eventually, her brother was adopted by his own Twolegs, but she was kept here to help welcome the other cats who came in for treatment or adoption.

Once she had finished, Firestar offered his own story as well. He left out much of the fighting and death of course, but he told her about his place in the wild, and a little bit about how his Clan works. As he spoke, Lilian settled down in front of his cage with her paws tucked under her. She listened keenly as he spoke of his Clanmates and the events leading up to now.

"So," she said after he had finished his story, "Your Clanmates are still out there? In the wild without you?"

Firestar nodded, "Yes, and I have to get back to them. But I have to get out of here first."

"You know," Lilian tilted her head in thought. "I think I have heard of the Clans before."

"What?" he asked, startled. "Really?"

She nodded slowly, thinking, "Yes, several moons ago." she recalled, "It was by a rather unfriendly tom, if I remember right. He was this skinny gray tom, with a collar of teeth."

Firestar sighed at her words, "BloodClan." he said, though his hope did not vanish. This was a great start on his return to ThunderClan, he knew. If BloodClan was nearby, then so was the forest. If he could just get out of here and find one of their recruits, then hopefully they could point him in the right direction and he'd be able to find ThunderClan before they had to leave their territory.

It was Lilian's turn to look startled now. "BloodClan?" she repeated, "Well, I suppose that name would fit a brute like him. You should have been the Workfolks' faces when they took that collar off of him. You should have seen his face!"

"Not too happy to have lost his collar, I suspect?"

She gave her chest fur a few swift licks, "No," she told him, "He wasn't. I would have been more than grateful to have that thing removed from around me, but he was pretty angry."

"That's BloodClan for you," Firestar grunted, then a silence fell between them.

Lilian looked at him curiously, her fur prickling as she seemed to be holding back a question. Finally, she asked, "What is it like to live in the wild?"

Firestar wasn't too surprised by her question, "It's the best decision that I have ever made. Living in the wild is challenging and demanding. But when you're hunting and patrolling beside your Clanmates, it makes up for all of those hardships. There's nothing quite like living in a Clan."

"And you're their leader, you said?"

"Yes, I am the leader of ThunderClan."

"They must really need you back then, with everything that is happening to your home." Lilian sympathized. "What will happen now that you're not there?"

Firestar leaned back as he began to explain to her how his deputy would step up in his place. He hadn't gotten far into his explanation however, when a click was heard and the door to the room opened.

He cut off sharply as he saw a Twoleg enter the room over Lilian's shoulder. She turned around to look at the Twoleg, "Oh," she said, blinking. She had been listening quite keenly to his story, but now she was standing with a purr to greet the creature. "Firestar, this is the Workfolk who had cared for you last night."

The creature walked over to Firestar's cage and peered through the bars at him. He smiled kindly and became distracted as Lilian happily chirped for his attention. He let a small snort of amusement and ran his giant paw over her back as she purred and reached up to rub her cheek along his arm.

The Twoleg was holding a new dish in his opposite paw, and Firestar could smell that it was filled with more dry pellets for him to eat. Stopping from petting Lilian, the creature reached forward and unlocked the cage's latch.

Firestar was on his paws in a flash, and he backed as far as he could into the cage as the large fleshy paw was forced into his cage. Firestar hissed in warning at the Twoleg, but it didn't seem daunted by his threat. Just rumbling softly, the Twoleg dumped a small mass of pellets into his dish and retreated its paw again.

Firestar watched through narrowed eyes as the creature shut the cage once more and locked it. He took a short moment to rumble lovingly to Lilian, scratching her behind the ears and patting her near the base of her tail before turning to leave once more.

As the Twoleg disappeared and the door clicked behind him, Lilan turned to him and rolled her eyes. "All you non-kittypets are all the same." she snorted. "He was just bringing you food."

Firestar let out a growl at her words, but she just looked at him in amusement. Settling down before his cage, she asked, "What are your Clanmates like? I know you said that you have a mate and kits."

Their conversation went on for a long time, and Firestar found that his head was clearing all the while. With the medication wearing off and his strength returning after eating his second round of kittypet food, he felt the best that he had in moons. He talked on and on with Lilian, finding that she was curious and genuinely interested in what he had to say. She was startling to ask about what StarClan was when their conversation was interrupted for the second time.

"Oh," Lilian looked up in surprise as the door to the room opened again. "It looks like your Housefolk is here!" She moved out of sight now, and Firestar looked out of the front of his cage to see two Twolegs entering the room.

The first of the Twolegs was the "Workfolk" here. He held a thin white angular object with many black markings on it. He gestured towards Firestar vaguely as he spoke to another Twoleg that looked more familiar. At first, Firestar couldn't remember where he knew the Twoleg from, but then he realized with a jolt that it was the same creature that had climbed into the monster that Firestar was trapped in and made it run.

The Twoleg was tall and hairless. He nodded in understanding to the worker beside him, though his interested eyes never left Firestar once. Under his stare, Firestar felt his fur begin to raise instinctively along his spine. The Twoelg spoke briefly, then turned to take the white sheet from the other male Twoleg.

"It looks like you're going home." Lilian murmured from where she was crouched beside the cage.

"Home?" Firestar echoed, his claws flexing anxiously. He watched the Twolegs speak, their voices loud in what used to be a quiet atmosphere. Wherever that thing takes me is not home.

The worker Twoleg stepped forward now. Firestar bit back a low growl as a new cage was placed before him, and the worker opened the front of his cage. A large, fleshy paw reached in and grabbed Firestar by the scruff firmly. Firestar yowled at this and twisted in an effort to get away. The Twoleg pulled him swiftly from the cage though, and he soon found himself being shut away in the new one.

The door was shut promptly, and Firestar hissed at the Twoleg's face peering back at him through the bars. The working Twoleg shook his head, clicked its tongue in a displeased fashion, then stepped back to allow the bald Twoleg to pick up the cage.

Firestar crouched low, bracing himself as the cage was lifted into the air. The bald Twoleg turned and began to walk towards the exit, the cage swaying clumsily as he carried it with one paw.

"It was nice to meet you, Firestar!" Lilian called after him.

Thank you all for reading. Don't forget to leave your thoughts in the reviews!