A.N: Well I found enough time to finish this, it was half finished, sitting in a USB with dust on it from last year... and I had five minutes to spare. So here! It's about the size of the last chapter, small, but plenty action.

Bursting into the cave, only to slide across the smooth rock, my mind was echoing Hawk's Shadow's words. A slow, creeping dread was encasing me as I stared around, almost blind to the familiar golden shape in the center of the cave, much more real than the shadow cats that haunted my vision. But I took a calming breath as I stared at Lionpaw. We were here, together now. He wouldn't hurt me, and I felt safe with him. I bounded over with a different dread eating away at me, one that had been planted back in camp by the poisonous words of Breezepaw.

My eyes scanned his face for the telltale slashing marks that Breezepaw had told about, it was obvious that Lionpaw hadn't cleaned himself very much yet. The broad-shouldered apprentice seemed to have taken very little damage in fact, but I ignored it, shadowed by the one flaw that caught my eye.

"Your poor ear!" I rushed forward, eyeing the red-brown stain of dried blood on the delicate flesh of his dusty ears. The nick was pretty deep, starting at the side, angled toward the center of the ear and downward before sharply cutting off. It would never heal, and Lionpaw would probably wear it like a trophy if I knew him in anyway.

"It's fine," His half-hearted remark seemed automatic, supposedly assuring. But it only made me worry more without his usual flamboyancy. The effort behind the words was hollow, I could almost hear them dropping like stones through the moment of silence between us.

'He's probably tired. From the battle and all.' But that didn't explain the almost tangible emotion of regret that hung around him, clinging like dew during the evening.

"What?" My head tipped to the side, I could feel the blood inside kicking up a notch, and my heart beat faster for some reason. How was it possible that my body knew what was coming, but I didn't?

Lionpaw shuffled his paws, eyes indecisive and filled with some emotion I couldn't name… regret? Fear? 'He shouldn't feel afraid around me; I'm his friend!' But his amber eyes were following mine, the discomfort was obvious in the twin golden flames.

"We can't meet anymore." He blurted out suddenly, eyes widening with the fear I had seen, glimmering in the background. He watched me closely, looking for a reaction, but I couldn't move.

For a moment I was thrown off balance, Lionpaw's words not truly sinking into my brain. The ground seemed to drop away from under my paws, the one thing that I had always known was there, now gone. The sound of the river behind me gurgled into white noise; my ears didn't seem to be working anymore; all I could heart was the steady thump of my heart beating, the blood rushing through my body.

"What do you mean?" My voice quavered, unsteady. I felt small, almost like I was shrinking under his amber gaze. Now I could identify the emotions I saw there. Even as I stared into them, his twin golden globes, I could see that this was no joke, he was serious and it was hurting him.

'Good, because it should hurt him! This is cruel!'

"We just can't" His voice sounded rehearsed, he glanced away with his ears flattening, his tail snaked along the stone behind him.

'That's no answer!'

"But we're having fun. Why do we have to stop? We're not hurting anyone." That wasn't true. He was ripping my heart out with every word he spoke. I desperately wanted to wake up, pretend this was all a dream.

'He's got someone else. Someone in his own Clan.' A poisonous whisper cackled in my mind

"I think that you're great, Heatherpaw," He was talking again, even though it felt like I couldn't hear him. The words took forever to digest in my head. I had to focus on his, not the treacherous voice in my head. And as if pulling myself out of the water, I shook my head as if expelling whatever dark thoughts were clogging my mind. "But you need to find someone in your own Clan. I need to be the best warrior I can be, and I can't do that if I'm here every night."

So I was a distraction? Some little thing, expendable in the bigger picture? And he did have another she-cat, didn't he? I stumbled back a step, not wanting to be near him. Blinking quickly, I tried to clam down on the stream of thoughts rushing through my head, so quickly it felt like they were giving me a headache. "It doesn't have to be every night," the voice that came out of me wasn't mine, I was reeling somewhere off, falling off some mental precipice.

"I was looking for you in the battle today. What if you had been in that battle?" He challenged, desperate to make me see his reason, though it wouldn't do any help now. But I was backing up defensively, ears flattening even farther toward my skull. "You could've fought Breezepaw or Harepaw or-" I wanted to continue, but a glint in Lionpaw's eye made me freeze, the words dying on my lips, clogging my throat with unshed tears and unspoken words.

"Battles aren't that simple and you know it! I can't pick and choose. I have to defend my Clan. I can't be worrying about you all the time."

'Then can't you worry about me some of the time? Right now would be good!' The thought flared in my mind like a star, cold and clear. The ferocity of it made my breath catch, and I couldn't seem to remember how to make them expand again. Coughing out a little gasp of pain, I sucked in a lungful of air, closing my eyes against the pain that flared like sudden light. 'He doesn't care,' some part of me whispered as I eyed the hard gleam in his amber depths. A splintering feeling made my vision blur with moisture, and the pieces of something broken fell inside me, yet that terrifyingly clear and cold version of myself had taken control, finding my voice, pulling it out of myself in a lick of blue flames, ice-locked. "That's it then?"

"Yes," Somehow he continued to look so determined, so heartbreakingly beautiful, the tom I had once knew… and I wasn't effected by his pain.

How could he dismiss everything we had been? He could be so defiant? He never admitted that he had liked my beyond a friend, was I wrong to assume that? Was I wrong about everything? My world came crashing down all around the fox-dung hearted, cold-eyed figure of Lionpaw, who had stolen my heart, only to return it as a pile of dust. As this new awareness broke through me, I embraced the darker side of myself, the one that was cold, stone-hard and whole still. It was a shield, something to put between myself and anything he could do to me now.

"Fine!" My voice was final, disheartening, so much like Crowfeather that I could hardly believe myself. I had always chided him for being terrible to Breezepaw; but was this how he felt with Nightcloud? I was channeling him to the tips of my whiskers now. "I understand now," the sentence was charged as I felt more than saw the pelt of Hawk's Shadow besides me, his pelt brushing mine as he apologized with his blue eyes. He had never betrayed me, why should he apologize? It was all Lionpaw's fault. Everthing.

I turned my back on him, tail whipping side to side, so close to my body that it whipped the hairs on my haunches to stand, if they weren't already that is. And with that, I could almost see myself, as if outside my body, padding away from the golden tom who held the unfaithful glint in his eyes, an arrogant step in his stride as he played with my heart, then dropped it.

'You were wrong, Hawk's Shadow.' The thought spun with my paws, disappearing as soon as it came, like dust that rose around my legs in the heat of Greenleaf. '"take all your heart, loyalty and courage to face," you said. Now I have no heart. I realize where my loyalties lie. Where my courage is. And I'm walking back to it. By StarClan, I have been wronged, and I will not lie back, and I will face it.' The mutinous thoughts swirled in my icy heart and burning rage, a truly empowering combination as I vanished into the tunnel's welcoming darkness, feeling the coldness on my back as Lionpaw's gaze left my retreating pelt, and I glanced sideways to Hawk's Shadow. Even though I had not spoken aloud, the tomcat narrowed his eyes in response to my emotion, two electric azul eyes hovering in the darkness that shrouded so many secrets. And he whispered into my mind the most tempting revenges and promises of glory; and as my eyes hardened, locking my heart away in a forbidden place and sharpening my claws as they scraped along the hard floor of the tunnel, I could've mistaken it, but there was a flash of excitement, almost joy in my wraith friend. But I could care less. All I wanted now was my claws to sink into the traitor's pelt, ripping until crimson blood washed my delicate paws. I would not be used again.

A.N: Plz Reveiw, I felt redudant in this chappy XD