Redwillow's corpse fades like a kit's imitation of death.
The truth of death is not so clean and easily swept away. Blackstar knows that well. He remembers the gleam of bone, he remembers the sodden, blood-stained paws that greeted him when he stared down, he remembers Mistystar's eyes. He remembers her burying him, he remembers catching her, he remembers the silence of night as she stared at him.
He had wondered, then, if she would leap forth and deliver on the challenge in her gaze. If she would end it there. She didn't. She turned back to her brother's body and dropped him into the grave and scraped earth over it, his neck blackened like a charred log in the darkness. His black paws are stained the same colour, in the memory.
No one buries Redwillow, because they don't need to. His broken body vanishes, as does the scarlet that weighs down Blackstar's paws. Lionblaze gives him an impressed look and revulsion swells in Blackstar. He turns away from the young warrior.
He stares at the space where Redwillow once was.
He thinks of the glitter in Redwillow's eyes, the confidence and the hate. He recognizes it. He sees the pawprints of Tigerstar and Brokenstar on Redwillow's pelt, because they were once deep in his own fur. But it was not them who killed Stonefur. It was me. He scrapes his paw across the earth anyway, creating a dip where Redwillow faded.
Redwillow would have killed their Clanmates, if he could have. He would have obeyed every order from Brokenstar. He would have stolen kits, he would have killed the half-Clan filth, he would have—Blackstar stops. Blackstar stopped him.
There is no corpse, which Blackstar thinks is fitting. He didn't kill him, really. He saved him. No one saved Blackstar. No one stopped him.
At least Redwillow was right about one thing. Blackstar's time is almost over; his paws are heavy, his pelt ragged, his breaths strained, and soon enough it will be him that his Clanmates lay in the earth. Too late, too late, too late, and Stonefur lies still in the Old Forest.
He hopes death comes before another Gathering; before he sees Mistystar's shadowed gaze as she stares him down. He cannot bear the shame another day. He looks at where Redwillow isn't and feels envy, so covetous that Redwillow is consigned to an oblivion without memories. A corpse cannot hate itself. Blackstar lets out a breath and waits for death another moon.