Yes, I changed the story title. This is still Chrysanthemum, in case anyone is confused. But that title, while appropriate, was too long and hard to say and was starting to annoy me. So I went to the next best thing.

Sorry for the long wait. Blame a combination of AP exams eating my life and an addiction to anime fanfiction. T.T But here we are, finally, with chapter five.

featheredwing: nobody ever thinks of that pairing, not authors nor cats in the books. That's why Smokepaw is so sad...

feathercloud13: aww, don't hate Tawnypaw! She's just, uhh... stupid. And mean to poor Smokepaw...

Shellheart: you're right about human swear words - thanks, I didn't even notice I was doing that. Normally I try to stick to Warriors language, so I'll try to get back to it. And thank you for feeling everything you were supposed to feel from last chapter, and super duper thanks for telling me about it. You have no idea what encouraging-but-still-constructive-criticism reviews like yours mean to me. :)

A/N: I didn't read over this chapter before posting, because a) I'm lazy and b) I have state exams next week. Okay, bad excuses. I did spell check though, so it should be okay...but just try to ignore any bad grammar and spelling. ;)

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Five, of Stupidity and Melancholy

Tawnypaw

Tawnypaw leans into Rowanpaw's warm flank and gazes up at the stars. A cool leaf-fall breeze floats over the pair, and the sounds of the night forest wrap them up in a blanket of wind and sound. A silky, deep blue geranium tickles her nose; she breathes in its calming scent with a heavy breath, and then exhales softly. For a few stolen moments, she has no worries in the world.

And then a sharp rustling noise brushes the edges of her hearing. Her ears twitch, but she thinks nothing of it until she hears it again a moment later, but louder. And nearer. Logic would have dismissed it as a squirrel or night bird stumbling through the undergrowth, but something about the crinkle of leaves that she barely hears makes Tawnypaw's heart drop and prompts her to sit up and look around in curiosity.

Confused, Rowanpaw sits up beside her. "What's wrong?" he questions.

For a moment, Tawnypaw doesn't answer. Her sharp eyes scan the forest for the source of the rustling, but the brush is now still, and even her clear, night adjusted vision picks up nothing. It's as though it was never -

There. A dark, shadowy figure slips behind a tree a split second after her eyes catch it.

"Tawnypaw?" Rowanpaw asks quietly, "Are you alright?"

Tawnypaw shivers. She refuses to believe that what she saw was a cat - or, particularly, a specific cat. No, of course it wasn't. What would a cat be doing here at this time of night anyhow? It was all in her head.

She shakes her head, for Rowanpaw's benefit, not for her own, because she is certain. "No, I'm fine. Just tired." She yawns, genuinely, to emphasize the point.

"Maybe we should go back," Rowanpaw suggests. "They'd probably get worried if we spent the night out here anyhow."

"Yeah..." Tawnypaw agrees with him, but she isn't really sure why. She looks down at the geranium she had been sniffing, and thinks of how wonderful it smelled, and how happy and peaceful she had been just a few moments ago, and doesn't want to leave. Yet something tells her she should go back.

"We should do this again some time, though," Rowanpaw adds. "But for now, we probably oughta get back."

He lets her lean into his soft chestnut fur the whole way back to camp. Tawnypaw finds herself lulled into another spell of peace, and when she and Rowanpaw stumble into the apprentice den just before moonhigh, she falls asleep before she hits the ground, all thoughts of paranoia forgotten.

xx

Talonpaw

Talonpaw is almost asleep when Smokepaw returns. His brother's eyes are dark and red-rimmed, as though he'd been crying - but Smokepaw knows better than to show his tears. In ShadowClan, being weak enough to show tears could earn a beating from Blackstar, and that is with luck. But despite his expert attempts to hide it, Talonpaw can see in Smokepaw's eyes that something is wrong.

"Smokepaw...?"

Smokepaw collapses into a heap of moss and buries his head in his paws. "Not now, Talonpaw," he murmurs into the ground.

Talonpaw ignores the whine and places himself beside him. Smokepaw had seemed fine when he'd last seen him at sunset - okay, maybe not fine, maybe a bit troubled, okay, maybe incredibly troubled and just as screwed up in the head - but at least then he wasn't falling to pieces before his eyes.

"What...happened?" Talonpaw ventures tentatively.

"Nothing," Smokepaw whispers, his voice muffled by his paws.

Talonpaw resists the urge to roll his eyes, because he feels like his brother is acting like an angsty kit, and rests his tail gently on his back. "C'mon, Smokepaw, it's alright," he soothes. "Come on, look up at me and tell me what happened."

Smokepaw shakes his head in his paws, rubbing his nose into the dirt in the process.

Talonpaw gives a snort that falls somewhere between exasperation and depression. "Smokepaw, please talk to me."

"I don't want to," Smokepaw mumbles into the ground.

"You're acting like a kit," Talonpaw informs him.

"I don't care."

"Oakfur would be upset."

"Oakfur can suck it."

Talonpaw frowns. "When did you decide you hated your mentor? I thought he was on the better side of the spectrum."

"I just hate everyone."

"Smokepaw, this is useless. You can't just decide to hate everyone."

"I just did."

"You're impossible."

"Everything's impossible."

"Stop that!" Talonpaw finally snaps. "Why do you always have to be so cynical?"

For a moment, Smokepaw doesn't respond. Just when the silence stretches a bit farther than Talonpaw would like, and he's afraid Smokepaw isn't going to respond, his brother mews in a small, defeated voice, "Just leave me alone, Talonpaw."

Another silence envelops the two brothers. Talonpaw lies down beside his littermate and rests his head in his paws, at a loss.

With no other course of action, Talonpaw ventures down a risky, rocky path. He summons all the willpower from ever fiber in his body to the tip of his tongue, and asks quietly, "Does it...have to do with Tawnypaw?"

Smokepaw doesn't respond.

Talonpaw sighs. "Smokepaw -"

"She was with Rowanpaw," Smokepaw interrupts.

Talonpaw stumbles over his oncoming lecture. "Wait - what?"

Smokepaw's face snaps up, and his intense yellow eyes meet his brother's. Talonpaw fights the urge to flinch away at the deep fire flaring from his littermate's eyes and burning into his retinas.

"You heard me." Smokepaw gazes off into space, and suddenly, the growl dies from his tone. "She was with Rowanpaw. In the flower patch."

Talonpaw is stunned. "How -"

"She betrayed me," Smokepaw replies simply, as if it should be obvious. "She obviously likes him better, and doesn't give a rat tail about me. Well, you know what? I don't give a rat tail about her, either."

Talonpaw doesn't reply, and Smokepaw doesn't speak again. Sometime later, Smokepaw drifts off into a fitful sleep, and sometime after that, just before moonhigh, Tawnypaw and Rowanpaw return to the apprentice den. Talonpaw notes how Tawnypaw contentedly falls asleep without even a glance his brother's way.

xxx

Smokepaw

Just because Smokepaw had fallen asleep without confronting Rowanpaw did not mean he had forgotten the older apprentice's transgression. Oh, no, great StarClan no. He had just been in no mood to deal with it the night before, and in more of a mood to complain to Talonpaw. But when he wakes up late the next morning, he allows his inner rage to pull him to his paws and drag him out of the apprentice den to where Rowanpaw and Tawnypaw are sharing tongues in the shade of the Highpine.

"Rowanpaw!" Smokepaw's call carries all the emotion that coursed painfully through his veins, all directed at that one despicable cat. None of this anger is directed at Tawnypaw - no, so much of his anger is at Tawnypaw that it isn't even comprehensible - but that is a different kind of anger, more of a disappointment, a foreign feeling that the apprentice who wishes he was strong and cold inside and is secretly, unknowingly, terribly afraid of the unknown does not wish to face, or even to acknowledge.

So instead, he turns his fury on Rowanpaw. The emerald-eyed tom looks up at him coolly. "Yes, Smokepaw!"

Tawnypaw suppresses a shiver. There is only one explanation for Smokepaw's rage, which flares out of his ears in sparks and smoke, but she clings to the belief that she was mistaken, and the shadowy figure she saw in the trees was a trick of the midnight light.

But Smokepaw takes no note of her, the same way she had taken no note of him. All his attention is focused on Rowanpaw. He lowers himself into a fighter's crouch.

"Fight me."

For a moment, Rowanpaw's expression is unreadable, and then the handsome tom's features break into a mocking grin. "You, Smokepaw? Fight me?"

"Yes," Smokepaw growls. "Right here, right now."

"Smokepaw -" Tawnypaw begins, but Rowanpaw cuts her off.

"Are you serious?" Rowanpaw cocks his head questioningly, a smug smirk plastered on his features. "Keep in mind, little kit, that I'm going to become a warrior any day, and you've been an apprentice for, what, a moon?"

"Two moons," Smokepaw hisses through barred teeth.

"Stop giving him the chance to back out, Rowanpaw," meows Cedarpaw, padding up behind Rowanpaw and Tawnypaw. "Just give him what he has coming."

Smokepaw has no idea how long the red-furred tom has been listening, but he shoves the minor disturbance away. If Cedarpaw, another cat on his enemies list, is present to see him tear Rowanpaw to shreds, then all the better.

Rowanpaw's eyes never leave Smokepaw as he responds to his brother, "It's the kind thing to do, Cedarpaw. I'm just trying to spare him." The dark green eyes glint in anticipation. "I'll give you one more chance, kit. Back off now, or I'll rip you to pieces."

"Rowanpaw, Smokepaw, stop!" Tawnypaw pleads, but the two toms ignore her.

"I'm a ShadowClan warrior, and I never back down," Smokepaw declares proudly.

"Fine, have it your way." Without further ado, Rowanpaw leaps at Smokepaw, and bowls the younger apprentice over into the dust.

"Smokepaw!" Tawnypaw screams, panicked, as her friend hits the ground. She whirls around to Cedarpaw, who is watching the scene play out in amusement. "Cedarpaw, do something! Stop them!"

Cedarpaw shakes his head. "I'm sorry," he replies, not sounding sorry in the least, "But this is way too much fun." He ignores the look of horror Tawnypaw displays at his response, and continues, "Besides, Smokepaw so had it coming."

Tawnypaw opens her mouth to defend her friend as he tussles in the dirt with her crush, but no sound escapes her lips.

xxx

Tawnypaw

"Hey, don't you talk like that about Smokepaw."

To Tawnypaw's surprise, the reprimand comes not from her own lips, the lips of Smokepaw's best friend, but from his brother Talonpaw.

Cedarpaw turns on the younger apprentice. "What's that, Talonpaw? You also want to fight?"

The shy little tom, however, does not have the inner fire his brother possesses - unlike his fiery-tempered, fiery-willed littermate, Talonpaw's element has always been earth. So, though he had gathered all his courage to confront Cedarpaw, at the older apprentice's threat, he steps down.

"N-no," he stammers, and looks away timidly.

"No, you're right, Talonpaw." Having gathered herself, Tawnypaw chooses now to take her stand. After all, is this not what she has always wanted for herself? To be a calm, strong decision-maker, problem solver, and friend? To stand up for what is right? To be what ThunderClan never was? Yes, she knows, this is her dream, and she pursues it with all her heart, she thinks.

So she continues in Talonpaw and Smokepaw's defense, "Leave Talonpaw be, Cedarpaw, and leave the fight alone too. It's none of your business."

Unfazed by her bold stand, Cedarpaw simply smirks. "It may be none of my business, but it certainly is yours," he informs her. "Have you not considered what they're really fighting over?"

Of course she has, but she has shoved it guiltily away into the back of her mind, and continues to do so. "They just don't like each other, and they probably got in a fight over prey or something," she meows.

Cedarpaw laughs wildly. "You keep telling yourself that."

And Tawnypaw would.

A sudden yowl from Talonpaw jerks Tawnypaw out of her embarrassing thoughts. She turns around just in time to see Rowanpaw roll out of Smokepaw's headlock, spring upwards towards the camp boundaries, and disappear up into the trees.

"Coward!" Smokepaw shouts after him.

Rowanpaw pokes his head out of the dying leaf-fall leaves, standing proudly on the top branch. "Coward, huh? Let's see you be so brave up here."

"You're the coward," Smokepaw hisses, but nonetheless, takes to the trees in pursuit.

"C'mon!" Talonpaw meows, and darts off into the woods after them. Tawnypaw jolts herself into awareness and follows, with Cedarpaw hot on her heels.

The apprentices of ShadowClan slowly move further and further out into the pine forest, with two dramatically duking it out in the treetops, and the remaining three following closely on the ground. There are times when Tawnypaw completely loses the pair of fighting toms in the foliage, and others when they fly out of nowhere and crash land onto the next tree, where she could clearly see every little detail. The way their fur is dappled by the bright sunlight, the way their neck fur prickles, the way Rowanpaw's eyes glint with amusement and confidence, somehow looking down upon Smokepaw without being above him, and in turn Smokepaw's eyes burning with deadly fire.

The two jump and swerve furiously, dancing through the treetops, seemingly oblivious to the perilous drop that inevitably awaits one of the two below.

And then, suddenly, everything comes to a standstill. Smokepaw kicks Rowanpaw in the side, causing the chestnut-furred tom to stumble backwards, almost to the edge of the branch. He somehow maintains his footing, but he stands with his back to a wall - or, rather, with his back to the open space that will probably critically injure him should he fall into it.

Smokepaw stalks towards him, perfectly ready and willing to push his rival from the branch. Rowanpaw takes a shaky step backwards and the branch wobbles under his unstable paws, but the confident glow does not leave his eyes.

"Don't do it, Smokepaw!" Tawnypaw shouts from below, her voice laced with panic. She doesn't want either of them to fall, either of them to be seriously injured, and the image in her head of Smokepaw pushing Rowanpaw from the tree and the apprentice she's grown so very fond of crashing to the ground with a snap torments her eyes.

She looks around desperately, but Talonpaw is frozen with nervousness, and Cedarpaw trying to hold his expression of confidence.

"Rowanpaw will still pull this off," he meows with forced firmness. "You'll see."

A patch of indigo geraniums growing nearby catches Tawnypaw's eye. She remembers how nice they had smelled the night before, and how they had filled her with a sense of peace. Why can one else could smell the geraniums?

(Why does Rowanpaw despise amaryllis? Why do hollyhocks grow more abundant than mums?)

Tawnypaw's head spins, and she resists the urge to bury her head in her paws. "Please, Smokepaw!" she yowls.

xxx

Smokepaw

What do Tawnypaw's words matter? This is all for her, after all, but she is too mousebrained to know or care.

He pushes Rowanpaw backwards as far as he will go, to his limit.

"Surrender," he demands.

"No," Rowanpaw snarls.

"Then I'll be forced to push you."

A pause. And then Rowanpaw smirks in a way that begins to scare Smokepaw - but no, he can't have anything up his sleeve, because this is the end, this is the end, this is the end.

And then suddenly, Rowanpaw leaps. How he managed to leap straight at his opponent with his unstable position, Smokepaw would never know. But with his enemy lunging straight at him, vicious claws unsheathed, Smokepaw has no choice but to instinctively duck. Rowanpaw lands on his back and uses his body as a spring board, gracefully propelling himself back up onto the tree trunk.

"Nice one, Rowanpaw!" Cedarpaw cheers from below. "Told you so," he brags to a defeated-looking Talonpaw.

Smokepaw seethes with fury. He had been so close... how had he let Rowanpaw slip away?

xxx

Tawnypaw

Tawnypaw lets out a breath of relief as Rowanpaw escapes without harm. She had been genuinely scared for a moment. Though, to her discontent, rather than giving up once they realized the harm they could have done, the two toms pick up their battle right where it left off.

But then suddenly, that perilous, heart-stopping moment occurs again, although this time the positions are reversed.

Tawnypaw feels her heart catch in her throat as Rowanpaw lands a blow straight to his rival's chest that sends the smoky-furred apprentice tumbling backwards. Smokepaw lets out a panicked yowl as he topples from the narrowing branch.

Talonpaw gasps. Cedarpaw smirks. Tawnypaw screams.

And then, miraculously, Smokepaw manages to twist around and grab hold of the branch, and clings to it desperately by the tips of his foreclaws.

Rowanpaw takes his time striding up to his helpless enemy, balancing flawlessly on the balance beam that is the pine branch, and then effortlessly dislatches the left paw from the branch.

Smokepaw lets out a yell, not of fear but of unimaginable anger as he falls into the air and dangles from the tree by just one claw, now at the complete and utter mercy of his greatest enemy.

"Rowanpaw, stop!" Tawnypaw screams in panic. "You've won, alright? Now let Smokepaw up!"

xxx

Smokepaw

Rowanpaw pauses. Smokepaw looks down at her, but she looks at the ground, for some reason refusing to meet his eyes.

"Well, Smokepaw? Should I listen to her?" Rowanpaw's breath is hot in his face. "Just surrender, loud enough for everyone to hear, and I'll let you up."

She's scared for me, too? The thought is surprising to Smokepaw. But then the cynicist in him kicks in, and he knows that despite all of this being for her and for her care, said means nothing to him at the present. Her care cannot save him, no matter how hard she tries, because Rowanpaw is a rotten piece of crowfood and he himself is hopelessly stubborn.

"Of course I won't surrender, mousebrain," Smokepaw snarls. I'm a brave ShadowClan warrior...right?

Rowanpaw barks in laughter. "Are you sure? Do you really want to explain to your mentor what a failure you are when he comes to visit you in the medicine den? You'll probably hit your head again, you know. You won't even be able to see straight. And then Oakfur, Russetfur, Blackstar and the rest will think you're even stupider than you were before."

"I...won't give up," Smokepaw hisses through gritted teeth.

Rowanpaw grins. "Suit yourself. Though I was hoping you'd choose to be stubborn." And then, without hesitation, he flicks Smokepaw's right paw from the branch.

All three apprentices below scream as the Smokepaw falls, falls, falls from the tree and crashes, crashes to the ground.

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A/N: next chapter will probably be the last. Aww, how sad...except not really, because then I can get to work on some other plot bunnies. The new crossover section gives me tons of insane ideas.....