Author's Note: It is now time for Chapter Eleven. I won't bore you with how long it took me to even come up with ideas for this chapter, but I really do hope it's worth it.
Chapter Eleven
"Lionpaw!"
The golden tabby apprentice blinked sleepily and lifted his head at the sound of his mentor's voice drifting in through the tendrils of bramble that surrounded the apprentice's den. He was just about to settle back down and go to sleep when he heard Ashfur's voice once again. His mentor sounded way more annoyed, and this time he shot to his paws, shaking scraps of moss out of his pelt as he rushed out of the den. He didn't even pause to smooth out his pelt with a couple of licks, keeping his mentor waiting was not something he wanted to be accused of doing.
"Oh, so there you are, finally," meowed Ashfur with a roll of his eyes as he saw his apprentice exit the den. "I was beginning to think you had died in there. Anyway, we're doing battle training today. We should have the training hollow all to ourselves, so hurry up and grab something to eat. I want an early start."
Lionpaw twitched an ear in his mentor's direction to show he'd heard, then he turned and headed to the fresh-kill pile, being sure to wait until his back was turned before rolling his own eyes in exasperation at Ashfur's impatience. Despite the fact that he and his mentor weren't especially close, Lionpaw couldn't help but look forward to this early morning battle practice. Fighting was something he felt he did exceptionally well, and he wanted a chance to show off. With that in mind, he took the smallest piece of fresh-kill he could find on the pile, an especially scrawny shrew, as it turned out, and finished it in a couple of bites.
Licking any of the excess juices off his lips, he curled his tail up and headed over to Ashfur, his amber eyes lit up with eager anticipation. The pale gray warrior had been waiting by the entrance to camp, and when he saw Lionpaw headed towards him he stood and headed up the tunnel, not even waiting for his apprentice and leaving the golden tabby to race after him in order to catch up.
When Lionpaw arrived panting at the training hollow, Ashfur was already sitting there waiting for him, thin tail curled unconcernedly over his paws and a look of boredom on his face. Lionpaw cleared his throat to get the tom's attention, and Ashfur looked over at him, saying "Ah, took you long enough. We're going to begin with some warm-up exercises, so let's begin, shall we?"
Without further ado, the pale gray warrior slid neatly into a crouch and, with a slight wriggle of anticipation, launched himself at his apprentice. Lionpaw saw him coming and ducked, sliding underneath him as he did so, however, the older cat was much quicker on his feet than the golden tabby tom had given him credit for, and whirled around expertly to deal a blow to the back of the apprentice's head. Lionpaw wasn't expecting this, and fell heavily to the ground. He knew it was over now. As soon as Ashfur pinned him down, there'd be no getting up. As the pressure of the gray tom's paw on the back of his neck pushed him further into the sandy ground of the hollow, he gritted his teeth, as much to stop himself from tasting dirt as to stop himself from snapping back at Ashfur's smug words.
"Well well, I suppose even the sons of deputies can be so easily beaten," sneered the senior warrior, allowing his claws to slide out just enough to brush Lionpaw's pelt before fully sheathing them again. "Tell me, Lionpaw, how does it feel to be thrown into the dirt, like just another annoyance to be gotten rid of? Your mother would be so proud, wouldn't she?" He spat the word "mother" as if it left a vile taste in his mouth, and Lionpaw couldn't stop a feeling of unease from coming over him. He didn't like the way this conversation was going, and he didn't like the fact that he was essentially trapped in here alone with Ashfur.
Desperately, the ginger tom struggled to get free, and, as if his struggles had reminded Ashfur of where they were, his mentor immediately took his paw off the younger cat's neck, shaking himself as he did so. Gasping for breath, as his nose now had a fair bit of dirt shoveled in it, Lionpaw clambered unsteadily to his paws and immediately began pawing at his face, trying to free the sand from his nostrils. When he was done, he turned angrily on his mentor, who was gazing rather shame-faced at his paws. "What was that for?" he demanded, amber eyes blazing as they met Ashfur's pale gray pelt, "And what was that you were saying about my mother?"
During the questioning, Ashfur had remained gazing solidly at the ground, but as soon as Lionpaw stopped talking, he looked up to meet his apprentice's eyes with his own, and what Lionpaw saw there immediately made anything else he may have said die on his tongue. The warrior's eyes were a swirl of emotions; sadness, anger, hate and helplessness all claiming a spot in the tom's bitter blue gaze. Lionpaw immediately wished that the past few seconds had never happened. That he had never had to see that look in his mentor's eyes. He wished that he could just look away and pretend none of this had ever happened, but before he could, Ashfur spoke, and his words put a halt to anything Lionpaw may have said.
His voice was barely above a whisper, and Lionpaw had to lean forward and strain his ears to hear it, but eventually he managed to get, "Do you want to know the truth about your mother?"
Part of him wished desperately not to embark upon this conversation, but another, greater part of him was eager to find out what it was about his mother that caused Ashfur such mixed emotions. Not daring to speak, he nodded, silently, for the tom to continue. Ashfur obliged, and chose a blunt opener for his tale that immediately had all of Lionpaw's attention.
"Your mother is the cause of all my unhappiness. It wasn't always like this. I used to believe she was a decent cat, especially when she went on the journey to the sun-drown-place and helped save the Clans. Brave, resourceful, I regarded her as all of those things, though after the journey when she made it clear she wanted to be with Brambleclaw I respected her choice. They really seemed made for each other, and I wasn't about to force my way between their happiness. Of course, all that changed when we arrived at the lake." The wistfulness in Ashfur's tone surprised Lionpaw, and the golden apprentice had no trouble at all matching his own picture of his mother with the one painted of her by Ashfur. By all accounts, surely, Squirrelflight was a remarkable warrior, and that's what made it so hard for Lionpaw to make the connection between his mother and Ashfur's unhappiness.
"You see, apparently, despite everyone feeling assured that your parents were definitely going to end up together, they apparently had different plans in mind, and got into a fight soon afterwards. Squirrelflight claimed that Brambleclaw was not a cat she knew anymore, and that she could no longer trust him. And guess whose shoulder she ended up crying on after all that!" The sudden bitterness that entered the narrative at this point was matched by a flash of anger in Ashfur's blue eyes. "Me! That's who! Everything would have been fine, if only she'd left me out of it. But did she? No! She had to go and use me. Use me! Just to try and make Brambleclaw jealous. She didn't even care about what she made everybody else feel. What she made me feel. She had me wrapped around her paw, pretended she cared about me, made me care about her, made me love her.
"And then what did she do? When Brambleclaw came crawling back to her, did she tell him she was over him? That she had found someone else? No! She didn't even have the decency to notify me before she dumped me for him. She didn't even care that I still had feelings for her. That I still loved her, even after she had broken my heart. And then, when she announced that she was pregnant with Brambleclaw's kits. That's when I truly began to hate her. I wanted to cause her pain, as much pain as she'd caused me. She wanted to pretend that the entire thing had never happened, that I was no-one to her, never would be and never was. She's been doing that ever since then. Pretending, while those around her only get hurt more."
Lionpaw stared aghast at his mentor, who had gone back to staring at the ground, lost in his memories. The memory of those haunted blue eyes, staring at something further away than Lionpaw could imagine, still remained strongly imprinted on his mind. Nervously, he backed up towards the exit, saying as he did so, "Well, I just, uh, be going. I'll see you later!" With that he turned tail and scurried off into the forest to hunt, leaving Ashfur alone with his memories of days long past.
-sc-
Meanwhile, Jaypaw had been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to hunt for quite a while. His nose told him he was near the WindClan border. It also told him that the scurrying sounds fading into the distance belonged to a mouse, and that that mouse of the tenth piece of prey he had failed to catch today. Swearing, he strained his senses, determined to catch something before going back to camp. Ever since he had quit being Leafpool's apprentice, he hadn't really had anything to do besides hunt, and it was becoming painfully clear to him that, even with Hawkfrost's training, that was not something that came easily to him. And it wasn't as if he could really do anything else. After him having been the medicine cat apprentice, his Clanmates were rather unsure how to treat him, and never invited him to go on patrol or train with any of the other apprentices. He hadn't expected the transition to be this hard, and had to admit to himself that he had thought that the only hard part would be getting everyone else to accept his decision. Everything else he thought would just come naturally.
Sighing, he immediately perked up again as the scent of a nearby ThunderClan patrol drifted past. Must be Dustpelt's, he thought remembering that Brambleclaw had assigned the senior warrior a patrol along the WindClan border. Taking another sniff, he caught the scents of the rest of the patrol, made up of Sandstorm, Thornclaw, Honeypaw, Hazelpaw and Poppypaw. He was just going to wait for them to pass by when he was hit by sudden inspiration. Just because he seemed particularly useless at everything else, didn't mean he couldn't patrol well. In fact, he thought, I'm probably better suited for patrol than all these cats, because my senses are sharper than all of theirs.
Satisfied on this point, he held his tail high and sauntered out of the bushes to meet the patrol. He could hear that they were startled to come across him, and a few moments later Dustpelt asked, "What brings you here Jaypaw?"
Jaypaw let out an exasperated sigh and replied, "What do you think? I'm here to join your patrol. And before you ask, no, Firestar didn't send me, I just figured patrolling was something a little more suited for my talents than hunting." He felt like rolling his eyes, as he traced the thought patterns going through their heads at this last statement, and just on cue Poppypaw finally burst out:
"But you're blind! How could you be any help on a patrol?" Jaypaw sensed Thornclaw going to rebuke his apprentice, but interrupted before the golden tabby tom could even begin.
"Don't try to rebuke her, when you were all thinking it! I know I'm blind, but so what? I can still sense stuff, you know." And I can probably do it a whole lot better than you, was a part of his sentence he didn't consider it wise to add on. When the rest of the cats just stood there, looking rather ashamed of themselves, Jaypaw flicked his tail impatiently and asked, "Well? Are we going to get on with this patrol or aren't we?"
Jaypaw sensed Dustpelt's shrug, and the patrol moved on, Jaypaw attaching himself neatly at the end. At least this will be more useful than anything else I've done recently, thought the gray tabby tom, listening with half an ear to Honeypaw and Poppypaw's excited conversation.
-sc-
Lionpaw came back into camp, his head held high and his jaws stuffed with prey. He had had to make three trips to bring back what he had caught since that morning, and it was now just a little before sun-down. This latest batch included three mice and a squirrel, and Lionpaw decided that instead of putting them on the fresh-kill pile, he'd go see to it that the elders and queens were fed, and then he'd settle down with something for himself.
When he got to the elder's den, he was relieved to see that Mousefur was asleep. The elder was grumpy enough without having him to take it out on. Dipping his head to Longtail, he left him with two of the mice and padded on to the nursery, where even from a distance he could hear Ferncloud and Daisy trying to quiet Foxkit and Icekit. Smiling, he padded over and stuck his head in through the entrance, offering the two queens the remaining mouse and squirrel. Daisy blinked appreciatively at him and took the mouse for herself, while the two kits fell upon the squirrel. Leaving, he headed for the fresh-kill pile and selected for himself a nice plump vole.
Looking around for a place to sit, he noticed Jaypaw sitting alone by the apprentice's den, gulping down a thrush. Padding over, he dropped his vole nearby and meowed, "Hey, mind if I join you?" Jaypaw shook his head and moved over to make room for his brother. The two ate in silence for a while, then Lionpaw looked up and said to Jaypaw, "You know, I think Ashfur has bees in his brain."
"What makes you say that?" asked Jaypaw, looking up. He had feathers stuck to his muzzle, a few of them drifting dizzily to the ground as he gave his head a rapid shake to dislodge them.
"Well, earlier today, he was going on about our mother, and said that she was once in love with him, but when she became mates with Brambleclaw, she broke his heart." Lionpaw looked anxiously at Jaypaw, hoping his brother would reassure him that Ashfur's story wasn't anything worth worrying about. It had disturbed the golden tom, but he couldn't bring himself to completely disbelieve it, especially not after what he had seen in the pale gray tom's blue eyes.
However, all Jaypaw said was "Ah," as if Ashfur's story explained some missing part of a puzzle.
This puzzled Lionpaw, and he was about to ask Jaypaw exactly what he meant by it when he was interrupted by Brackenfur. The golden-brown tabby tom looked worried, and didn't even bother to greet them properly before asking, "Have you two seen Hollypaw? I haven't seen her all day."
The two looked at each other, the worry plain on both of their faces. It was Jaypaw who finally said, "We haven't seen her either, but we'll help you look for her." So saying, he and Lionpaw padded over to some of the other apprentices and began questioning them, while Brackenfur did the same with a couple of nearby warriors. Looking up at the shining stars of Silverpelt that were just beginning to emerge, Lionpaw hoped that nothing bad had happened to his sister. Something bad just couldn't happen to her. They had a prophecy to fulfill, after all.
Author's Note: Okay, so Jaypaw tries to branch out, Lionpaw gets a history lesson, and Hollypaw goes missing. A bit cramped all for one chapter, but it wouldn't work any other way.
Also, I have to say, I seriously wasn't expecting the scene between Ashfur and Lionpaw to turn out so... bitter. I mean, seriously, it wasn't supposed to get that serious, or emotional, at least not so quickly, but things just sort of... happened. That's the way the words chose to come out, and I have to say, I'm not all that unhappy with it, though in the original version, before my cat deleted it all, Ashfur was in great danger of turning his apprentice thoroughly against him. Ah well, at least now he's a little less out and out creepy. In the original version, it sounded as if Ashfur was planning to do something horrible to Lionpaw, and I'm sincerely glad I got the chance to fix that. At least now I have openings for more plotlines and such. More messes to clean up. Just what I need. Stay tuned for Chapter Twelve! It's probably going to be very long and I'm not going to enjoy working on it at all, but I'll try to keep it interesting.