A/N: Hi. Remember when I said 2023 would be the year of working on Spottedfur's Pride? And when I said this chapter would come in, quote, "a few days"? I hope you don't, actually. This is kind of embarrassing for me XD I wanted to, and then the biggest hyperfixation of my life hit me, like, a month later, and that's where all my creative energy's gone.
But! 2023's not over yet, and though I've accepted this fic will just be one that... updates as it goes, whenever it strikes me (because I have the whole thing planned out! Just a matter of actually finding the time and place to write it), I DO want to close off 2023 with some more Spottedfur's Pride. Knock on wood, I'll be able to finish the first arc, which should be... two chapters from now? Maybe?
Still, like I've said before: thank you for reading, whether you're someone who's been following this slow-going story since its inception all the way back in 2017, its Ao3 birth in 2020, or if you just found it today. Welcome! I hope you enjoy what's to come, because I'm enjoying making it. This fic does mean a lot to me!
Even the moon looked unfamiliar from IvyClan's medicine den. Spottedpaw could just barely catch it through the leaves, its light dull at best as the night cast the camp in a hazy, dreamlike dark.
It being nothing but a dream would've made the situation easier, he thought. He'd wake up in his own den in a few hours, relay his strange nightmare to an attentive Sorrelpaw, and he'd never have to think about this odd, backwards world ever again.
I'm sorry, Spots, he wanted to hear through the chirping of night bugs outside, this is my fault, I shouldn't have dragged you out here…
…but all that came out of Heronpaw's mouth was a grumble and a heavy sigh.
"Stupid IvyClan." Trying to read Heronpaw's expression, all Spottedpaw could catch was that familiar smug whine of a kit put in their place. Hazel eyes darted about the den as he tried to wriggle into a comfortable spot against the prickly nests. "Falconstar'll come." He stated, glaring down into the blades of grass. "She's not gonna let any of her cats go missing. Not after Maplepelt and Tawnyfur."
Head hanging low, Spottedpaw didn't respond. He felt like a mouse pinned down by a hunting patrol — wanting nothing more than to scurry back to its home, wishing to struggle but knowing it would only tear at the claw-marks in its flesh. Even in the quiet stillness of IvyClan's camp after the sun had gone down… his heart pounded, with Sheepclaw's snarl and Firwhisker's stern orders still seared into his mind.
And there Heronpaw was — spoiled, self-obsessed as ever. I can do whatever I want, the casual way his tail wrapped around his paws said, Falconstar'll bust me out and I'll never have to worry about a thing. Oblivious to the innocent apprentice he'd pulled into this plot out of some self-righteous need to prove how cool he was…
"...this is your fault, y'know." Spottedpaw muttered, with conviction he didn't think he had — and as his fellow apprentice blinked in confusion, Spottedpaw scrambled to his paws, and the words kept coming. "You got us into this mess! I didn't ask to be dragged along to IvyClan's territory at sun-high on a day I could've spent with the cats I actually like!"
Confusion flashed across Heronpaw's eyes — to Spottedpaw, it had to have been one of the only times any cat had stood up against him. "I… I wanted to be nice!" The embarrassed way his ears flicked almost made Spottedpaw want to back off and apologize — if it had been any other cat. "It was a place I liked, I thought you needed the training, so there!" Dramatically, Heronpaw rolled onto his side, tail tickling Spottedpaw's flank in a manner that made him jerk back. "You think I knew IvyClan would show up?!"
"What did you expect to happen?!" Spottedpaw snapped, resisting the urge to swipe his claws at his fellow apprentice's face. "Just because you're Falconstar's kit doesn't mean you can act like an idiot in front of the cats who want our pelts! You might be happy being thrown into a den like a prisoner 'cause it means you can yap at our enemies like a big strong warrior," each word dripped with venom, more of them tumbling and tumbling out, moons upon moons of confusion reaching their heads in an instant, "but guess what?! I don't!"
Mouth uselessly flapping about, like a fish out of water, the playful annoyance in Heronpaw's expression shifted into a genuine irritation — a glare that wouldn't look wrong on his parents' faces. "So what, you want me to roll over and take it like you? Let 'em treat us like a bunch of Twolegs' kittypets?" His teeth bared. "'Cause that may be how Cloverfoot raises his kits, but it's not how Falconstar raises hers."
Thrashing his tail about, kicking up dust in the clearing, knocking herbs down and sending Spottedpaw's heart racing, Heronpaw lowered his head to meet his denmate's eyes. "The cat who dragged us here against our wills is the one who threw Maplepelt into a stone and busted her head open. And you know the cat who fought 'til his last breath to avenge her?"
Her very own mate — of course, no cat had forgotten Tawnyfur, least of all his orphaned daughter, to say nothing of the cat he'd had his throat bled out in front of… Spottedpaw shut his eyes, able to picture Sorrelpaw's father watching them with a cold, dead stare only tail-lengths away. Thick, black clumps of blood, leaking out the bite marks in his neck, fur still in his claws, yet here Spottedpaw was, cowering…
"We remember him." Heronpaw said, as Spottedpaw directed his attention to his paws — taking deep breaths, nerves Heronpaw showed no care for soothing. "We praise him. The elders talk about him almost every day, how he fought with Ivyfur and Pinestripe against IvyClan since they were apprentices…" His eyes softened in remembrance, and here the only pawful-of-moons age difference between the two apprentices felt like entire seasons — before settling in the cold glare Spottedpaw knew well from his denmate. "We don't remember the cats who turn their bellies up for IvyClan brutes to rip their guts out."
A paw jabbed into Spottedpaw's chest — the little tortoiseshell bared his teeth, Heronpaw's words making his claws flex into the dirt. He was right, in a way, Spottedpaw supposed, but… why? Why did it have to be this way…? No matter what path he walked, his destiny was to die for his Clan one way or another — cowardice, courage, both worth a rat's tail to him… did he have to die a hero, or even a pitiful martyr, to be remembered? To be liked?
Maplepelt's skull cracked against a stone… when Spottedpaw closed his eyes, he saw his Clanmates meeting that same fate. His parents, Cloverfoot, Brightclaw… even his fellow apprentices. He remembered tales about IvyClan's brutish old leader, Robinstar, and the whispered rumors amongst the elders about how she once left an ElmClan kit to drown in a river. The young weren't spared — not ElmClan, and not IvyClan.
Spottedpaw remembered the small silver molly who accompanied Firwhisker and Sheepclaw. She'd glared into the ElmClan apprentices like they were full grown warriors — at Spottedpaw's last Gathering, he remembered sharing jokes about the gray around Copperstar's muzzle with a pale tom from DuneClan. He didn't know the other apprentice, he'd never caught his name, and the odds were low that they'd ever see each other again… but they were friends, for that Gathering alone. He'd told him about how he'd caught a snake once, and Spottedpaw had gawked, he'd never seen a snake before in his life…
…he couldn't picture doing the same with an IvyClan apprentice. They were cats just like him and his friends, yes, but… cats that were raised to want him dead, through generations-long conflicts. The silver IvyClan molly had regarded Spottedpaw and Heronpaw like enemy warriors — would she have let them go if it had been a pair of ShellClan cats, or DuneClan cats…?
Taken out of his thoughts with a gasp, Spottedpaw jolted at the sight of a third cat squeezing his way into the clearing.
Dense footfalls.
A thin, wiry tail.
Green eyes, sharp, settled onto the duo easily.
Firwhisker's voice was one Spottedpaw knew, already, he would hear in his nightmares — moons from now.
"Pipe down." The deputy snarled.
In the low light, his claws glinted — though Heronpaw wasn't deterred in the least, ears twitching in annoyance. "We can't have a conversation now? What, do you expect us to sit on our tails all night after you dragged us out here for the high crime of being a couple of kits playing on your territory?"
Spottedpaw cringed. To Heronpaw's credit, he soaked up his parents' talking points like moss — Falconstar's miniature, in every sense of the word, down to the way the ruff of fur around her shoulderblades fuzzed up, before any other part of her pelt.
"I said," Firwhisker raised his voice, and then a terse paw, lashing forward to swipe a pair of twin scars down Heronpaw's face, "pipe down."
Fur, flesh alike, tore, and the apprentice yelped. Easily, blood beaded down, scarlet framing his right eye — tainting the cottony fluff.
Spottedpaw couldn't even find vindication in his bully's pain. One eye faltered, blinking out blood, while the other gaped in horror.
Here, now, mouthy as he'd been, he was a kitten under Firwhisker's claws. Surely, no cat had ever struck him like that before — this was no training spar, not even a border skirmish or inter-Clan battle, but a one-sided act of nothing but spite.
Something welled in Spottedpaw's chest — something he didn't think he had the heart for.
"Wh… what?!" He snapped, and Heronpaw's reddened gaze lolled into his direction, while Firwhisker glared. "You can't just hurt an apprentice like that!"
"You're Mousepaw's size. She's having her ceremony next moon." Firwhisker responded — Mousepaw, Mousepaw, Spottedpaw wracked his brain, trying to catch the faces he'd seen throughout the unfamiliar camp, but none stuck out in his mind, busy as he'd been trying to disappear into the snow. Firwhisker scoffed. "You can handle being smacked around some."
Thin, slit-like pupils flitted to Heronpaw, who desperately tried to swipe a paw against his new wound — only succeeding in smearing more blood into his fur.
"Might teach some real manners to nepotism brats like you."
None of what Spottedpaw was hearing scanned.
For, sure, he knew IvyClan could be hateful — their cold, ambitious deputy, most of all — but…
…hearing it, laid out like this, plain as day.
It felt almost like a propaganda story, one Brightclaw would feed the apprentices on their way to a training session.
…but…
…no, the hatred in Firwhisker's gaze was real. A cat who hated a pair of apprentices more than the dirt under his claws, those same claws painted with the blood of one of them…
…this was painfully, terrifyingly, real.
…but…
…he had to ask — and he was sure, somewhere, Stormstar had to ask, too…
…how did this happen to a Clan?
Spottedpaw's claws, ones he didn't even think were out, bore into the dirt. Its frost bit at his toes. Across the den, Heronpaw's ragged breaths painted the air, having not said a word past a pawful of wordless gasps since he'd been struck.
"Why are you acting like this?" Spottedpaw bit, unable to wholly keep a quiver out of his meow, unable to lift his head enough to meet Firwhisker's pupils for longer than a few seconds. "Aren't you supposed to be an honorable deputy?" He asked, scanning all he knew: about leaders, about deputies, about warriors, about the idyllic-seeming society he'd been fed his whole life, natural as the taste of mouse — a talk Comfreywing and Daisyheart had once given him and his friends, half of them still in the nursery, about Clan law, passed down from ancestor to ancestor, and the spark of superiority it ignited in Spottedpaw's chest, to think he was born into more of a community than any rogue, loner, or kittypet could've been. Ripped away by IvyClan's claws — by cats like Firwhisker. "What about the warrior code? What about your ceremony?"
He knew he sounded like a kitten, brash and sentimental, blind to some higher purpose that must have come with age, one he simply couldn't have grasped yet… and the tilt of Firwhisker's head confirmed it.
"You think you're the only cats in the forest who care about those things?" He asked, and here his cold glare meshed into a sarcastic sneer. "You think valiant, oh-so-great ElmClan are the only ones with decent heads on your shoulders?" A scoff, and then another flick of a large, batlike ear. "Your cats aren't innocent, either. We take these precautions because you netted them — your leaders and warriors would throw you to the foxes if it meant saving their own pelts."
His gaze lingered on Heronpaw, leaving an even you unspoken. The van-patterned tom flinched.
Spottedpaw kept his head low, deep in thought.
Their leaders and warriors…
…most of them, his and his friends' own parents — their mentors…
…Dawnpaw's parents, Splitface and Antthroat, looking bright as the sun to see their daughter playing with that friendless stubby-legged tortie tom… and Dappleflower and Mottleheart, happy for them, urging Spottedkit to never wander too far, no matter what Tawnyfur and Maplepelt's rowdy little girl told him was on the edge of the territory…
…the kind two elders, in the den at the edge of camp… no one ever confirmed anything, but Sorrelpaw always leaned into Spottedpaw's ear and whispered that they were probably a couple, to which Marigoldstripe would chuckle and ask her to get to work changing their bedding, for two lovey-dovey mates needed a good place to sleep…
…Silvercloud, Nettlenose and Comfreywing's mother, widowed by the war, but made a kinder cat for it all the same. She'd always stopped to give Spottedpaw pieces of her prey when he was little, to which Dappleflower laughed at her old friend and told her she'd make her poor kit plump as a partridge — to which Silvercloud asked what a partridge was, and then Dappleflower started talking about a kittypet she'd met on the DuneClan border one as an apprentice…
…and Falconstar and Brightclaw — stern, yes, but by StarClan, every apprentice in the camp wanted to impress them. Even Thymepaw and Nettlepaw, shy as they were, puffed out their chests when hearing their mentors were going to put them in a training session with Brightclaw… and there was no feeling quite like seeing a glint of pride in the gruff tom's eyes…
…was all of that an illusion?
The war came to ElmClan. It was tragic — horrible, taking claws and blood to the place Spottedpaw and his denmates called home. It raised bratty cats like Heronpaw, it stole cats like Sorrelpaw from their families, it settled a weight on the youngest members of the Clans' shoulders like nothing else: knowing, any day, IvyClan could come again, and they would have to bury their best friends, parents, mentors, one day, just like countless ElmClan apprentices before them had.
…but… it was a cruel fact of life, natural as the sun rose in the morning. A factor none of them had any paw in — easiest to point their tails in IvyClan's direction and call them the brutes, because, for all Spottedpaw cared, blood on their paws, they were.
Right?
…
…right?
"When have we done…" he began, dreading the answer, but knowing a good ElmClan cat would fight for their Clan's honor until the very end, "…anything to you?"
There, that smug look in Firwhisker's eyes again, full of judgment — Spottedpaw didn't want to become an adult like him, not ever, and faltered, casting his gaze down to his paws.
The silence stretched on, the only sound in the medicine clearing being the rustle of Heronpaw settling into his nest, sniffing.
No sounds came from camp. Moonhigh, now. Even the chirp of night bugs had disappeared.
Now, they were silent — listening.
Firwhisker exhaled.
…and… then, in the low light, he just looked like a cat. A tired, overworked deputy who now wasn't getting any sleep because of these mouthy apprentices.
Still, Spottedpaw couldn't bring himself to feel sorry — not when his muzzle stung, secondhand, at the sight of the blood streaking down Heronpaw's face.
"Stormstar's a new leader." Firwhisker began. "Robinstar was our last." Carefully, his eyes narrowed. "I'm sure you know the stories your Clan's fed you about her."
The phrasing made Spottedpaw bristle, but he nodded, slowly.
He remembered, yes, tales from the warriors, how Robinstar of IvyClan was a ruthless warmonger who tormented the other Clans for all nine of her lives. A massive black and ginger molly, with claws long and sharp as a slit moon. Scars crisscrossed her body — visible as day on her pelt, the final death throes of her victims, whose struggles amounted to little more than scrapes on her paws.
He remembered the stories about Splitface, Dawnpaw's father, a lilac tom who'd once been a handsome apprentice, with two bright eyes, two fluffy ears, until Robinstar ripped the fur from his face, the pupils from his sockets, to teach ElmClan what happened to cats who crossed her Clan's borders.
He remembered, most clearly, Ivyfur: Comfreywing and Nettlepaw's late father, one of her victims, killed unrighteously in battle. His spine, broken, by a cat twice his size — by a cat who, by the look in her eye, would have done it again, and again, if given the chance.
It took all of ElmClan's might to take her down, so the story went: a patrol of cats, the same ones who'd cooed over Spottedpaw's birth, creeping into the leader's den and digging their claws into her throat as she slept.
She had four lives left, and the blood pouring from her wound was thick enough to walk through.
It sent a chill up Spottedpaw's spine just thinking about it.
"Your cats started it." Firwhisker spoke. "Disrespectful until the end."
Ears turning back, teeth baring…
"…that Ivyfur tom…"
Spottedpaw froze, hearing a name like an uncle to him spat out of the IvyClan deputy's mouth — Heronpaw said nothing.
"What rotten queen he slithered out of gave him a name only StarClan had a right to." He sneered, and the sudden hatred slipping back into his words made Spottedpaw cringe. "Our Clan's names are sacred — from our founders. It's blasphemy, of the highest order, to use them for your kits. To claim one cat can hold any of the power an entire Clan can."
His eyes locked onto Heronpaw.
"Your cats should have known that."
Heronpaw blinked, once, twice, and then bristled. "Fox-dung!" He hissed.
Mouse-brain — what are you doing?!
"Ivy stems are black! Ivyfur had black fur!" Claws out, he swiped in Firwhisker's direction. "You lost your right to sacred! You're hardly any better than those stupid plants — Robinstar's rotting in the Dark Forest for the fox-dung your Clan pulled!" High-pitched, kitlike next to Firwhisker, but with convictions burning all the same, he spat out — "Keeps pulling, actually! You haven't learned crap since Robinstar, attacking apprentices and holding them hostage over training, I'unno, a tail-length from your border?"
Still, Firwhisker's glare was enough to silence even his convictions.
"I'm not finished."
The white-and-blue tom's scratches still bled, and it seemed he and Spottedpaw both knew the IvyClan deputy wouldn't have been afraid of adding more.
"Ivyfur," he began, "thought he was a little lamb of StarClan, because of the hate in his name. You have him to thank for half of this war — he made the storm clouds come at Gatherings, when even we knew to keep the peace between us, for DuneClan and ShellClan's sakes. IvyClan cats weren't cats to him — we were prey animals to pin to his den and make trophies."
"…that…"
…Spottedpaw trailed off.
He was going to finish, that doesn't sound like Ivyfur, but he had no right to make that call, did he?
All he knew were the stories — the black tom's Clanmates calling him a war hero, Silvercloud giving birth to Nettlekit alone, just moons after her mate had been slain. The morning — StarClan, the mourning, even when Spottedpaw had been too young to properly remember it.
Ivyfur had been a friend to them all, every adult in ElmClan — an emblem of hope, of perseverance, and when he died…
…
…still, Firwhisker was a grown warrior, and Spottedpaw reckoned he knew the stories better than a kit who'd barely been old enough to open his eyes for half of them, than a kit who questioned the foundations his Clan stood on more by the day.
"We've been battling for generations — over prey, over the crags you were playing on, over our cats… but your Clan chose war the moment Ivyfur was born, the moment your hack medicine cats deemed him worthy of that name." Firwhisker growled. "He attacked and attacked, he fanned the flames more than any cat in the forest, 'til Robinstar had to break his spine and end it. And you had the StarClan-damned nerves to call yourselves the victims."
In the dim moonlight, Firwhisker's fangs flashed. "Even your apprentices would skin our kits and throw them in the river for a mouse's tail. You attack us, and we retaliate, because you haven't backed off yet." He shook his head. "And I see it in more cats: Ivyfur, Brightclaw, Falconstar, Tinyclaw,"
His whiskers twitched.
"Heronpaw…"
The animosity this cat held for a single apprentice made Spottedpaw's fur stand on end…
…but Firwhisker knew Falconstar, and knew, given the chance, she'd raise her sons to be Ivyfurs yet again.
Spottedpaw couldn't trust the tom's words. IvyClan weren't the victims — not when they mutilated Splitface, not when they killed Maplepelt and Tawnyfur, and surely not now. Not when he was still an apprentice, and couldn't sleep in dens alone at night, needing to cling by Dawnpaw's side — for, when he closed his eyes, there the sound of Maplepelt's head caving in against a stone was. For, when he chewed his prey, there the sight of Tawnyfur's blood welling against Sheepclaw's fangs was.
And there Firwhisker was, lecturing two apprentices who'd already been deprived of their kithoods…
…but Firwhisker wasn't the only one to blame.
Spottedpaw eyed his denmate — Heronpaw was just an annoying bully, as far as he knew… but he'd proven, tonight, time and time again, to have Falconstar's blood in his veins.
Could Spottedpaw really picture his fellow apprentice being raised to lead massacres like Ivyfur was?
…no…
…no, that was a trick question.
Of course he could.
Of course he could.
"You kits may not have asked for war, but your mommies and daddies are the ones who started it." Firwhisker spoke. "So maybe you'll have some respect next time you play on our territory."
…
…and with that, Firwhisker turned, and was no more. Spottedpaw watched, with wide eyes, until the tom's wiry tailtip disappeared into the night.
Heronpaw had nothing to say to that, giving a dismissive huff as he sniffed around the medicine den for herbs — cobwebs, if possible.
Still, his face bled.
…but, truthfully, Spottedpaw didn't feel like helping him.
Eventually, the older apprentice found what he was looking for, smeared the appropriate herbs across his face, complained at the smell, and curled up into his nest.
Now, it was only Spottedpaw and his thoughts — Spottedpaw, and Firwhisker's words, replaying in his head, over and over… then, derailed, by his mentor's, his family's, his Clanmates'...
Were any of them right?
Where did the Clan end, and the cat begin?
Stormstar was a liar and a coward — a fat-faced mouse-heart afraid of her own shadow, who'd let more blood, ElmClan and IvyClan alike, stain her paws before ever putting one down to punish Firwhisker.
…but it was naive, too, to think of Firwhisker as more monster than cat.
Your leaders and warriors would throw you to the foxes if it meant saving their own pelts.
When was the last time Spottedpaw had heard Maplepelt and Tawnyfur's names, without a call to action attached?
They were beloved warriors, weren't they? Parents of a rowdy young kit, forever displaced by their deaths — only StarClan knew how Sorrelpaw must have felt, hearing her parents' blood smeared all over IvyClan's name, remembered not for their favorite prey, or the stories they told, or their whirlwind romance, but for their grisly ends.
Sorrelpaw didn't need parents, so long as she had a mentor like Brightclaw, right?
The deaths replayed in Spottedpaw's mind every time he closed his eyes — how long, then, until it happened to his friends, or his parents, or even him? Would they be happy to be made faceless martyrs, just like Tawnyfur, Maplepelt, Ivyfur, Splitface, their suffering paraded around for all of the forest to see?
Was Spottedpaw prepared to die for ElmClan's cause — what in StarClan's name even was the cause?
How could Falconstar have ever considered this dignified — respectable?
How many of Spottedpaw's idyllic memories, of tight-knit Clan community, already fragile, ever-close to breaking, cobwebs on a still-bleeding gash, had something horrible crawling underneath?
How often had Mottleheart and Dappleflower wondered how they would bury their kit one day?
How many cats would never see a sliver of peace in their lives, for cats like Falconstar and Firwhisker?
For cats like Ivyfur — cats like Heronpaw?
Cats like Heronpaw… cats like Heronpaw…
…what was Ivyfur like, as an apprentice? A tom with his chest puffed out from the day he was born, living and dying knowing it would all be for his Clan's hate — revered as much as he was, ultimately, discarded, to be made nothing more than a vague legend.
Spottedpaw thought — and he saw Heronpaw.
And he saw more cats dying, and he saw the wounds on Heronpaw's face scarring over, the trauma of tonight nothing but a trophy — another story…
…if it wasn't cut off at the source, it would continue: for moons, seasons, generations, until IvyClan and ElmClan cannibalized eachother into nothing: never looking the other in their eyes, for talking with their claws was all they knew, like blinded dogs who could do nothing but bite.
How easily he could picture it: Heronstar, the splitting image of his parents, commanding a patrol to die in the nebulous name of ElmClan.
Spottedpaw couldn't breathe, veins lacing with terror, claws sinking into the dirt.
None of this mattered.
It never would — unless it was cut off at the source.
Through blurring, collapsing vision, Spottedpaw raised his claws, staggering closer to the sleeping Heronpaw.
What was a bully one moon would be a serial killer in twelve.
Another hero, just like Ivyfur — one his Clanmates were delusional enough to remember fondly, because if they saw the truth, they would break.
But Spottedpaw had never been the sentimental type.
So it came, easier than he'd ever imagined, to press his claws into the softness of Heronpaw's throat.
The blood kept him from screaming — his eyes only bulged, and for all his training, all he talked, all he bragged…
…he was a big piece of fresh-kill.
Moons of stories, generations of martyrdom — how easy was it, ultimately, to put a paw down and stop it all?
The hammering of Spottedpaw's heart in his chest, the bristle of his fur, standing on ends like ferns…
…it was adrenaline, right? Something like it?
He was doing something for himself, not for his Clan — for once in his, sure to be short, pitiful, life, right?
Because it didn't matter, did it?
What good did Spottedpaw's friends, family, Clanmates, do for him, if it was all built on lies — and they were all prepped, easily, for a slaughter they had no paw in deciding?
That was what he told himself, what he repeated, looking at Heronpaw and seeing a huge mouse with its throat torn — that's just how you kill your prey. You thank StarClan for its life, and lament it no more.
It was a pest, too — if you didn't kill it, it would've ruined the wildlife…
…so it was…
…it was…
…it… was…
…for the best.
Spottedpaw remembered being a squeamish kit. The way prey burst in his mouth always made him sick, and he remembered wishing he could have Dappleflower's milk forever — there, he didn't have to look at the dead, mangled mice, watching their organs burst…
…but what would that have made him, as he grew older — a tom never weaned off his mother's milk, so soft his teeth and gums became one?
If he wanted to live, he'd have to get over himself — crush bones in his teeth, tear off bloody hides. Taste the fat on his tongue, thanking StarClan for its life.
First the prey, and then his natural enemies, IvyClan — so the adult warriors would have told him.
But there was a better direction to turn his claws…
…so he repeated, muttering to himself as he shambled through the unfamiliar medicine clearing, pawing around until he found a steady stream of water.
The blood and grit washed away easily — easier than it should have. Easily as licking a mouse's blood from your jaws.
Turning back, there Heronpaw was, motionless. Hazel eyes, bulged, staring up into nothing, jaws parted in a forever silent scream.
The blood was thick, wet, pooling into his nest, into the herbs, into the grass.
I should sleep before it starts to smell.
Spottedpaw didn't recognize his own voice, in his head — numbly staring, wide-eyed, at his fellow apprentice's body… as if it would twitch, as if it would shamble to its paws, and cry out, Spottedpaw did it! Spottedpaw's a murderer! Lock him up!
…but it never did, and so Spottedpaw slept, as the blood pooled, closer and closer to touching his meager nest.
He hid his face in his paws, as he did, knowing just another glance at the hazel eyes boring into his could've kept him up for moons.