Well, we've finally gotten here. Good luck, Willowleaf, darling 3

Chapter 36: The Cat who Destroyed the World

Willowleaf knew the second the border came cracking apart that she was going to destroy the world. No, it was something she had always known deep inside. All this death, every terrible thing associated with her…it had all been for a reason. The reason was because Willowleaf had been tasked with the type of task no one else had been given. She was the one to kill. She was not just a destroyer. She was the murderer of the five.

Her paws touched grass, a soothing feeling of grass and dirt below that. Willowleaf could feel that the grass was soaked in dew, and when she looked down, she noticed that each stalk of grass was so pale it matched her paws precisely.

"Willowleaf?" She looked over her shoulder, and Mouseclaw was trodding towards her. He seemed laughably bright against such pale grass and clouds of thick, stuck pale grey all around them. Like he didn't belong here. Willowleaf had never been gladder to see him, but that was something she didn't need to express in words.

"What is this place?" said Mouseclaw.

"I have no idea." Willowleaf had a feeling, though, that she would find a path easily enough.

"Where did the others go?" Mouseclaw was spinning in circles looking for answers. Willowleaf wasn't worried about her siblings. If anything, they should have been worried about her.

"Don't be worried," said Willowleaf softly. Mouseclaw turned towards her and then cautiously took a few steps towards her. "I think the time has come."

"Willowleaf." Mouseclaw touched his nose to her ear. "Please stop talking in that voice." He couldn't stand when she talked like she was about to give into a fate that she had never actually controlled. Why was he surprised at her pessimism at this point? She was Willowleaf, the cat that destroyed everything. There was no other way.

A wind blew past them, whipping past Willowleaf's fur, making her ears twitch back and forth as she tried to catch the direction or any sort of scent. The only scent that came to her nose was one of pure age.

Around them, the grass began to ripple and change, and Mouseclaw pressed close to Willowleaf's side as the grass grew tall in aisles around them. The sky darkened overhead, and suddenly Willowleaf could only see it all transforming and shaping into something brand new.

She knew where they were. A dream in this landscape had never seemed so clear to her.

"What's going on?" Mouseclaw kept asking questions, and Willowleaf tried to answer at least this one.

"Every dream we've ever dreamed about anything relating to our powers," said Willowleaf. "All those dreams came from here."

"What is it, though?" said Mouseclaw. He flexed his claws, and Willowleaf looked down, unsurprised to see that while tall dark grass grew around them, the path beneath her paws was still an icy white. She felt sad to see it like this. All her life, she had been told that the truly good cats were like a light in the darkness, a sliver of brilliant white against a darkness. It felt wrong to put someone like Willowleaf on a path that represented all the hope of them all.

Willowleaf couldn't express any of this out loud, so she looked up to Mouseclaw.

"Well, it's given us something to follow, at least," she said. Mouseclaw nodded. They plunged forward along the white path, climbing the hill on top of which Willowleaf could see the four other paths: gold and silver, red and black. Her siblings would be walking those paths tonight. She just had a feeling that their paths would all lead in different directions, and hers would be leading to a place of utter destruction.

"Willowleaf, you have this look in your eye." Mouseclaw had to chase her a little bit, surprised when her pace was fast. "Please, you need to be careful and think."

"I'm thinking," said Willowleaf. "Mouseclaw, I was told this day would come. I've been prepared for this all my life."

It was so strange how calm she felt.

"No, you haven't." Mouseclaw's voice was low. He darted past her, stirring the long grasses on either side of them. In the strange reflection of stars, his eyes were floods. "Willowleaf, listen to me. I know you think you're meant to destroy the world – you aren't. You get to choose what you do."

"Choice?" Willowleaf laughed, her fur shaking at the idea. "Where did you get the idea that I chose any of this?"

"I'm not saying you did," said Mouseclaw. "Why would you? I'm saying you get to chose what to do with the powers you've been given."

"Mouseclaw, destiny doesn't work like that." Willowleaf felt so sure of this fact. It was the only one she felt sure of anymore.

"Willowleaf…" She shook her head and pushed forward, nuzzling his shoulder to pass him. Not knowing what to say, Mouseclaw followed.

They walked up a hill and then descended again, and then repeated the process again, and again, and again. Each time, Willowleaf caught sight of the paths of her siblings diverging more and more. They would never be so close.

There was a strange wind here, on it riding the scent of ancient days past. Willowleaf felt like in this place, she was truly coming home to the destiny that had been set out for her. She glanced back at Mouseclaw, who still looked so betrayed.

"I'm sorry," said Willowleaf. "I'm sorry it's like this."

"You've given up," said Mouseclaw.

They walked on. Willowleaf thought that if she really wanted to, she could panic. She could cry and scream and press into Mouseclaw and let him protect her and defend her like he always had and always would – if they survived this trek. But what good would it do? She was as calm as she had ever been, calmer even then the moment in which she had killed Tigerheart.

The path rose again, and when Willowleaf squinted, she could see the great hollow with its trees, now bare. The round moon in this strange parallel place shone down in a blazing circle, illuminating the flat center of the hollow. The trees didn't even cast shadows upon it. Willowleaf hesitated before taking a step forward.

As soon as she stepped into the hollow, the moonlight above their heads flickered. Willowleaf and Mouseclaw looked up in startled unity to see that no moon existed anymore. Only strange incorporeal stars glittered still above their heads. The moon had simply ceased to exist. It seemed the destruction of everything had begun even without Willowleaf realizing it. She figured this made sense – she would just slowly blink out the lights just by being here. Eventually, it would all be destroyed.

Her eyes adjusted to the lower light as she looked back to the hollow. Her paws trembled against the earth as she took a deep breath. She could almost taste the remnants of water here. Water. It was a strange thought, that she somehow had water-based power. It was even stranger that she could control it the same way she had always controlled ice.

"What's this place, then?" Mouseclaw sounded weary.

"Some sort of hollow," said Willowleaf, though that was quite obvious. She took her first steady step out of the grass and onto the smooth stone, where the grass ran thin and altogether stopped growing, it seemed. "There used to be water here."

"Willowleaf…" She could feel a lecture coming on. "What does your destiny actually tell you to do? Isn't it about freezing the roots of something? Not destroying?"

"It's all about interpretation, isn't it?" Willowleaf shot him a look. "I guess that's an optimistic look at things, your view."

"No, it's not." Mouseclaw lashed his tail. "Look. If you really think you're a product of destiny, doesn't that mean you don't choose anything in your life?"

"What?" Willowleaf thought about it for a second. If her destiny had been bringing her here all along, what was to say that it wasn't controlling her this whole time.

"It can't be." Mouseclaw shook his head furiously. "If it were true, how could you even be a cat? How could you even exist and think and feel?"

Willowleaf didn't know how to answer. She opened her mouth slowly, trying to think about all the hard decisions she had made. Leaving ThunderClan – no, refusing to return to ThunderClan. Then giving in and returning. Freezing those shadow cats, back in their time in the Dark Forest to stop the earthquakes. Letting Mouseclaw stay with her all this time. But even then…even then there had been a right choice and a wrong choice. Even then, Willowleaf had just done what she was meant to do.

"Willowleaf, I can't fully explain it, but I love you," said Mouseclaw. His words forced her to look at him. "I love you. I don't love your destiny. I love the cat that I know, the cat I see in front of me. I love her laughter and her spirit and her courage. How can you tell me that's just destiny talking?" He shook his head. "If you say all of this is destiny, then you and I didn't choose each other. But that's not true. We chose each other. We're still choosing each other. Every day we choose each other."

Willowleaf blinked twice, and then the sky burst into light above their heads. Bright, stunning, clear blue light emanated from below, casting new shades through the hollow and lighting up the trees in a wave of blueish light that faded towards the moon's normal silver color. Mouseclaw and Willowleaf looked up in unison to see the bright light of the moon, as round and beautiful as a moon had ever been.

"That's a sign," said Mouseclaw, twisting his tail to gesture to the new moon. "Isn't it?"

Willowleaf stared at it and tried to figure out what a bright moon could possibly mean. It had vanished, and not it had returned.

"I don't know," she said. She glanced at him. "And I can't answer your question. About why we choose each other. I can't answer it."

"Try." Mouseclaw scored the hard earth with his claws; as hot white scratches appeared, Willowleaf winced. "You're never trying."

Willowleaf got very quiet, staring at her paws.

"I don't know," she said. "It never seemed like we were really in danger of losing one another, even…even when we were." That didn't make sense. "I know you make me feel safe and protected. When we're back in the waking world, it feels like I don't even have this destiny when I'm with you. But now that you ask me, I don't feel like I'm choosing you." A sudden spark of panic hit her in the heart. "Is it hard, the choice?"

"Sometimes," said Mouseclaw, flicking his head to the side. "But not all the time. And I've always made the same choice."

He squinted at her, unsure what to say that would help her see his point. Willowleaf had lost sight of the point, but it didn't matter. She felt her highly protected ice walls - maybe walls that hadn't thawed since she had killed Tigerheart – begin to dissipate. Stupid water powers getting in the way of her ice powers.

Seeing her on the brink of one of her panics, Mouseclaw took a step forward.

"I'm sorry to bring all this up," he said. "I don't want it to be about our relationship in this moment. You've got enough to think about. I just want you to remember that you're Willowleaf, not just a cat with powers."

"But who is Willowleaf, if not a cat with powers?" said Willowleaf.

As if in response, red-hot light shot across the sky, and the scent of smoke replaced everything. Mouseclaw jumped, and Willowleaf found her eyes jerked upwards as the fire started across the sky. She thought she would always see the sky as this dark, far-distant mass dotted with stars, but now red-hot flames evidently licked through the sky and burnt it to nothing like it were just canopy. Her mouth fell open, and her heart fell to the very bottom of her stomach.

Of course it was going to happen like this. She didn't know what the moon meant, but this made too much sense. She had been brought to this hollow just for the reminder that her job was here: that destruction was evident and inevitable. The longer she put it off, the more horrible it would be to carry out her duty.

She took a few more steps into the hollow, and firelight and blue moonlight mixed as she walked. With every steps, she felt her paws falling into old, long-dried sources of water. It took Willowleaf a moment of staring down at the exact center of the hollow at her paws against the pit floor to realize: this had once been a place for a gazing pool. This was the original pool where all the StarClan and before-StarClan warriors had gathered to look upon their descendants. She could almost feel down to ThunderClan from here.

The thought of ThunderClan made tears well up in Willowleaf's eyes as she came to the realization of what this place must mean.

"Willowleaf, oh no, what is it?" Mouseclaw was hesitant to come any closer into the clearing. He seemed to be still struck by the stars on fire, glancing up every seconds to see the way fire was clawing and slicing through the tarp of a sky without mercy or evidence of end. Willowleaf felt the world around them shift, like even it was no longer safe.

"This place is the thinnest place between the dreaming realm and the waking realm," said Willowleaf. She smiled, though nothing was enjoyable. "It's the only feasible place from the dreaming world I could ever destroy the waking world."

"Willowleaf!" Mouseclaw dived forward, but Willowleaf felt herself fall back into her long-old pattern of casting people away. And snow began to fall, although she didn't know from where. Maybe it was more accurate to say snow rose from the area around her paws, pounding into the air, surrounding the entire clearing. She heard Mouseclaw howling, but then the sound of rain drops and snowflakes hitting one another drowned out his yelling her name. A blizzard appeared in a cone around Willowleaf, and for once she felt in control of it. She looked up at the stars that were wreathed in furious orange light, and she felt her tears slide down her cheeks.

Fountain had said that if she did not do this, she would fail in her destiny. He had said that this was about choice and cycles, but half of Fountain's words were riddles. Willowleaf was absolutely sure to the very bottom of her bones that her entire life, she had been pointed in a single direction. She could feel the ice begin to pang underneath her paws as the snowstorm cascaded up around her; it was starting to leak into the real world. She thought she understood. Her destiny was not about killing for the sake of killing or anything like that. It was just because it was time for them as cats to leave behind the world of the living. The dreaming world – the world of StarClan – had plenty of open space. Goodness and evil, borders that were arbitrary, everything. It was just time to make the move to a new plane. Willowleaf could do that for them. It was, after all, the right thing to do.

Sure, they would never have the same squabbles. But death and dreaming provided a plane that was so much more powerful and dynamic than the waking world. The living world was full of pain.

"Willowleaf!" She squinted and thought she could see Mouseclaw getting battered around by the snowstorm, and she wished to herself that he would just get out of the way of it all. Once she had given her life up – her extra life – for him. Why had she done that? He would be far better off coming to this realm forever, too. It was just Willowleaf that would have to keep living, when the rest of the world was an icy terrain.

Willowleaf felt her ice pierce, and as she did, the fire light faded, to be replaced for a few ominous seconds by a swirling monochrome mess of white and grey. It looked like the canopy of the night sky had been torn back to expose an ugly white-grey stoneface. Then, in those seconds, she saw emerging from the grey and white a new sun hurl itself into the sky.

Willowleaf's breath was taken away, because she recognized the strokes across the world. Wind tore through the sky, repainting it dark indigo and placing stars there, one by one. Her heart felt suddenly very warm as she recognized what was happening. It slowly started to piece together, one part at a time. The stars on fire – Birdfeather. This new paved sky – Skysong. Mountainstone and Littlefalcon were involved somewhere, too, or maybe they would be shortly.

Willowleaf stared up as the stars reordered herself and found herself strangely full of hope. Her siblings were fighting somewhere. They had destinies to complete, and they were completing them, fighting as hard as they possibly could. Maybe Birdfeather had lit the stars on fire, and it had looked horrible above their heads. But now, seeing this new sky be pieced together in its place, Willowleaf couldn't help but feel entirely at peace. It was beautiful. Birdfeather had destroyed something for Skysong to put something beautiful in its place. Maybe that was what she was missing: the cycle.

A cycle. Those were Fountain's words. A cycle of creation and destruction, completed with the moon winking in and out, the sky burning and then soothed back into its place. Willowleaf for her entire life had been the destruction. Maybe it would be up to Mountainstone – or even Littlefalcon, if he had some sort of other non-water power she didn't know about – to put back what she had destroyed.

But no…she had seen what had happened when Tigerheart had died. Her ice powers had destroyed his life…and though her water powers had thawed his body out, she would not be able to bring him back to the waking world. She was like both creation and destruction all wound up together – ice and water, although she had to choose one and not the other at all times.

But then wasn't she back to where she had begun? She was destruction. Willowleaf had always known that. But if she were truly capable of both creation and destruction…

Her littermates were up there fighting for her, and they had chosen to do that. Her Clan-mates down below in the world of the waking were fighting for their Clan and for two silly little kits and for their pride and family because they chose to do that. And Mouseclaw chose her. Each and every day. And she chose him. It was a strange and beautiful pattern, life.

Willowleaf didn't want to destroy it. She wanted to be creation. And in the crystal-clear moment of that decision, the blizzard stopped.

Willowleaf could feel it melting, feel every snowflake come dripping down around them. She blinked at her paws as where all the snow dropped, a pool of water was rising. It reflected the shrill, clear color of the moon. For a second, Willowleaf could see her own face in the waters.

Then the water rippled, and Willowleaf felt in the water that this hollow was alive again. She looked down as the water no longer showed her face, but the forest floor she knew so well. All of it was coated in a thin layer of snow. Willowleaf laughed out of pure nervousness. She saw a few heads she recognized: Cinderheart shaking slowly as she got to her paws, Dustfur kicking a pile of sudden snow off a tree root. Other warriors from other Clans looking around as the snow surrounded them. Willowleaf opened her mouth to try to say something and make contact, but then she saw Whitestar emerge from the trees, her tiny light body turning and twisting as she surged towards them. But Mistystar poked her nose out of a tree, and then Oakstar, too…

Then in a burst of light that made Willowleaf recoil, she saw reflected in the pool a scene of StarClan warriors emerging from the snowbanks that had been cast high against the trunks of the trees. She recognized those StarClan warriors, too: Firestar, Blackstar, Onestar. And Mothwing, for RiverClan.

"What has happened?" murmured Mistystar, still flinging ice off her ears. "Is this a sign?"

"StarClan has had its own leaf-bare," said Onestar in a steady voice. "And now we emerge from it towards new-leaf."

"This snow will melt." Blackstar's voice was full of pride. "From it, you will find peace."

"Peace." Mothwing wrinkled her whiskers in amusement then turned her eyes up, and Willowleaf took a step back. It was like the New StarClan medicine cat could see that Willowleaf was watching in this pool. "StarClan was born into battle. We have always been a tree with roots of war."

"And now we are a tree with roots of peace," said Firestar.

"Willowleaf…" She heard a splash, and Mouseclaw was standing at the end of the pool, shivering, his pelt very wet. "Do you hear them?"

"Freeze the roots of everything." Willowleaf shivered at the own idea. "I brought…"

"You brought peace." Mouseclaw was smiling. "No…you chose peace."

Willowleaf could feel her tears falling, and they dripped into the pool, making it ripple and conform, and the vision and communications faded. She turned towards Mouseclaw and laughed as a wave of relief like big enough to capture all the water her powers offered her crashed through her. She shook head to paw, her pelt on edge. This was her destiny – peace. She could have chosen war, but she had chosen peace. Her ice power and her water power alike had brought peace. Willowleaf giggled with joy and splashed out of the pool, tackling Mouseclaw, sobbing.

"It's over," she whispered into his fur as he stood steady, wrapping his body around hers. "It's done."

"You chose this," said Mouseclaw. "You did brilliantly."

Willowleaf smiled at him, and for a second, they held each other's eyes. Then Mouseclaw's body shimmered, and Willowleaf realized that he was standing in the edge of the pool. She smiled, pressing her nose into his.

"Wake up," whispered Willowleaf. "I'll be with you soon."

Mouseclaw nodded to her, his eyes the last thing to fade from view, and then his image shimmered before fading. Willowleaf turned around, half knowing what she would see.

She could see eight cat-shaped figures atop the nearest tall hill. Her littermates. And their mentors. Laughing to herself, but sure they could hear her, Willowleaf took off, tripping over her paws, sprinting as hard as she possibly could. The grass here was no longer long and carved in colored paths, but one uniform sheet of grass that was the color of actual grass at night.

"Willowleaf, you did it." Skysong was crying, too, and Willowleaf fell into her sister's shoulder. "You did it."

"I saw your sky," said Willowleaf. "That was what told me I could." She stepped back. "And Birdfeather, your fire."

Birdfeather's green eyes flashed with a deep-rooted pain, and Willowleaf felt for a second that even going forward, she and Birdfeather would always feel the same way about this. They were destroyers, and poor Birdfeather was not given the same chance to create as well. Willowleaf pushed into Birdfeather's smoky scent as well.

Mountainstone was standing staring at his paws, but he looked up and smiled wearily when Willowleaf approached.

"You had something to do with the moon, didn't you?" she asked.

"Bluemoon," whispered Mountainstone. Willowleaf wasn't sure what that meant other than the cat, but she did suppose the moon looked very blue. She let Mountainstone embrace her, rubbing into his pelt and remembering how all this felt. They felt like home.

Lionstar was watching her proudly, Jayfeather and Doveheart and Ivypool around him.

"The balance has been restored, New StarClan has hunting grounds, Old StarClan has found their peace, and the war has ended," said Lionstar. "You all did brilliantly."

The four littermates exchanged glances and then smiled at their father. And then Willowleaf noticed Littlefalcon sitting a little bit apart from them, watching her.

"What's wrong?" said Willowleaf. She turned and took a cautious step towards her brother. "What…what happens next? We won, right?"

"Decisively," said Skysong, holding her head high. "We should wake up now."

"Littlefalcon?" said Birdfeather. "You don't seem yourself."

Willowleaf tilted her head to the side. There was a long, sad look in Littlefalcon's eyes.

"What do you know?" asked Willowleaf, each word careful and slow. Littlefalcon laughed almost to himself.

"Well, you see, that's just the thing," he said. "You found out by now that you have the water powers I stole from you. That you all have power I stole from you."

"Littlefalcon, it's okay," said Skysong, her voice a slightly-forced purr.

"No." Littlefalcon shook his head. "You see, I knew."

"What?" murmured Birdfeather. But Willowleaf thought she understood. Littlefalcon nodded slowly. "Knew what?"

"I knew it all." Littlefalcon flicked his tail from side to side. "All of it. Everything. From the beginning." He smiled. "I think it's about time I told you: that my powers were never elemental, but omniscient."

Hopefully that speaks for itself.

~Elsi