Mossthorn watched Brambleclaw's stupid sauntering around angrily, wishing that the lake was closer so that this journey with him could be done and over with already. "You should see the lake at sunset, it's real special then. Should be happenin' in…" He briefly glanced upwards, estimating the time of day by the position of the sun in the sky. "About an hour." Mossthorn shook his head frustratedly, trying and hopefully succeeding in completely hiding his disdain towards him… probably not… "I've been to the lake at sunset before. It's… nice." The blue of the water mixing with orange and pink and green was nothing in comparison to the depths of Squirrelflight's emerald eyes… the Moonpool came closer but not by much… Brambleclaw looked back at him, guffawing, before springing through the bushes lining the shore and emerging on the other side. "Nice?! Just nice? The deal my other brother's been tryin' ta make with me is 'nice…' SON OF A BADGER!" Reeling from that foxer calling him his brother and being half right when he had said it, Mossthorn didn't realize what had happened for a long moment.

He hesitantly made his way through the bushes to see a sight that he had never thought he would be even partially horrified by: Brambleclaw in serious danger of dying, in the clutches of the fox trap Squirrel had told him about. The squirrel he had presumably been attempting to catch sat above him in one of the trees surrounding the fox trap and now him for a moment, looking down at him, before running off to safety. Despite the mortal peril he was in, Brambleclaw attempted to bite down on the squirrel's tail as it ran past him, cursing as it narrowly escaped his jaws but perking up with an unsettlingly high level of trust in Mossthorn as he approached him, looking down at him as the squirrel had. "Give me a paw, would you?" An agonizingly long moment passed in which neither of them did anything before Brambleclaw continued, his voice more strained this time as the fox trap clamped down on his neck but still somehow booming. "You see, Mossthorn, I could asphyx-"

He coughed wretchedly, clawing at the fox trap in sheer desperation for what felt like an eternity, before dropping his legs in exhaustion and looking up at Mossthorn with a mix of apprehension and opportunism. "I'll make you deputy. Just let me go." Mossthorn tried and failed to back away from him, frozen to the ground. "...What?" Brambleclaw strained to look the way they had come, blinking hard as he presumably realized that his vision no longer allowed him to see the bushes through which potential rescuers might come very well, before looking back at him with unfocused eyes. He seemed almost… amused now, he was so out of it from a lack of air… "Afta me n' Hawkfrost kill Firestar with one a these things. You can be deputy. I'll even throw in Squirrelflight." He laughed, the sounds becoming more and more strained until they eventually stopped. Some of his lucidity was back now… did this mean that StarClan had a foxed up sense of humor or that they were trying to torment him? Maybe they were trying to torment both of them… "What'd I ever do to you?"

Mossthorn forced himself to step slightly closer to him. "...Nothing, it's what you did to her." Brambleclaw fought against the fox trap and fate to keep his eyes open and at least partially focused on him. "...Her who?" Mossthorn could only stare back at him, wondering if he would get it even in the clarity of his final moments in the living world. Briefly, almost bored understanding flashed across his eyes. "...Oh, her…" With that, his head lolled back, and Mossthorn breathed in sharply with shock as he realized he was dead. Eventually, he worked up the courage necessary to start the long and hard process of dragging him back to Squirrel, belatedly freeing him from the fox trap and realizing the second his teeth closed around his scruff that he had been wrong about it not mattering how big he was. Gathering every ounce of strength in his body and love for Squirrelflight, Mossthorn managed to start making progress with him, thanking StarClan for the relatively flatter terrain of ThunderClan's new territory. Despite his exhaustion, he searched for and found a fresh pile of fox dung, dragging him through it so that his scent would be masked and unable to be detected anywhere near Squirrel's clearing. He couldn't let it implicate either of them… plus it was just nice to be able to do that to Brambleclaw despite the horror of the situation… dragging fox dung through fox dung…

Ironically, he finally reached his destination at sunset, a sunset that the foxer he had kept tripping over on the way could… probably see from StarClan now due to the unfortunate lack of an equivalent worse place for bad cats to go… although with StarClan doing absolutely nothing about his cruel treatment of Squirrelflight they might not have even sent him to such a place if they did have it at their disposal… He got his acquired body to Squirrel, turning away from him in disgust as he immediately started digging in to it. At long last, those revolting eating noises subsided, and he cast his tired and dazed gaze across the ground in front of Squirrel briefly, ensuring that no traces of the late foxer were visible or smellable and cursing the fact that he knew his scent well enough to do this even if it was coming in pawdy right now, before running his front paw along his ear and dragging himself in the direction of the nest he had made himself behind the warriors' den and outside of the sight and mind of its entrance, struggling to keep his eyes open. Far before he had reached it, he emerged into a smaller clearing where Squirrelflight was sitting down, facing away from him. Immediately, she spun around to face him, her eyes wide with fear.