SUNFIRE
There weren't many cats who could look him in the face anymore. It was like a thorn in his heart, a burning coal in his gut every time he caught one of his clanmates quickly swiveling their heads away.
The phantom claws had long stopped raking over the wound, but it only took one look from another cat to remind him. That, or a rainy day, catching his own mismatched features reflected in the puddles.
Socks never seemed to notice. Maybe he was too embarrassed to bring it up—most cats were. But he always looked him deep in the eye, just like always, a purr in his throat and a familiar lopsided grin hanging on his lips.
They were curled up together in the attic of the lodge, with a mostly finished rat between them, light slanting through gaps and patches in the roof. There was the light, constant drip-drip-drip of rain, streaking down the rafters and splotching the dusty wooden planks.
Stars, how he'd missed this. With all the bustle in camp, the spike in panic and elders and queens patching the walls, he'd barely been around in the past moon. This place, sometimes it felt like the only place he could sleep.
Even with Thrushear close, one more outsider who might be an island of solace in the maelstrom of camp, even with the dozen clanmates who made their nests next to him, the warrior's den seemed so lonely.
He gave a long, quivering stretch of his arms as Socks gave him a sleepy, intimate lick over the ear, pulling him closer.
"Good stars, I'm past exhausted," Sunfire sighed.
"It's come to that?" Socks purred close to his ear. "I didn't think a wildcat with warrior training could get tired so easily."
"Well, think again, as poor of a warrior as that might make me," Sunfire said, craning his head back. "Would I be a poor warrior if I said I craved another rat?"
"Hmm…" Socks mewed thoughtfully for a long moment, eyes still closed. "Yes."
"Well, frog-dirt on the code, I want another rat. But you're right." If that made him a poor warrior, so be it. Who could hate a full belly, a dry shelter? "What a disgrace it is for me to remember your name, or know your face tomorrow, or be so familiar with your nest."
"And how ill it follows, after you've labored so hard for your Clan, that you should hang around the lodge and chatter about nothing," Socks mewed, brushing his tail on the fringe of his scar. "Tell me, how many noble LeafClan warriors would do so, with their leader being so sick as yours is?"
Sarcasm was their language. It was meaningless banter, but Sunfire still felt himself clench his jaw, stirring to slide up from under Socks' weight to sit up. "Can I tell you something, Socks?"
"Yes, please," Socks mewed lazily, giving his own long stretch as he sat up beside him. "And let it be an excellent good thing."
"It's good enough for a rogue."
"Go on then, Mister Sunshine. My entire body is braced for this excellent something you're going to tell me."
Sunfire let his gaze wander up to the rafters. Bats sometimes roosted along the ceiling, but there was nothing stirring there now, just the tiniest glimpse of sky through the Twoleg nest roof. "It's not right that I should be sad, that I'm deputy, and my leader is sick… But to someone like you, even if you are a rogue, I could tell you… That I could be sad." He swallowed back any hint of emotion except snarky indifference, even as he toed toward the lead weight hanging on his heart. "Very sad."
"Very hardly," Socks mewed.
"By this paw, you think me as much of a fox-heart as you and Goosebelly," Sunfire mewed with a weak, playful bat across the cheek with his sheathed paw. But he couldn't keep up the facade, or match the lightness in Socks' voice. "But I'm serious. My heart bleeds that my father is so sick… and keeping as vile company as you keeps me from showing it."
The stress of it, the crushing sorrow, it was bottling up inside him and threatening to pop.
"The reason?" Socks questioned with an inquisitive tilt of his head, his voice still light.
His tail flopped back and forth on the attic floor, heart bumping around between his ribs. "What would you think of me if I wept?"
Socks hung onto his answer a moment, but looked him straight in the eye, as always. "I would think you a most warriorly hypocrite."
"It would be every cat's thought," Sunfire agreed, "and you're blessed to think as ev-ery cat thinks. Every cat would think of me as a hypocrite, indeed. And what moves your most worshipful mind to think so?"
"Why, because you've been such a deviant and poor warrior all your life," Socks laughed, "and so grafted onto Old Gooseguts."
Sunfire twitched his whiskers, tail flicking. "And to you."
"By this light, I am well spoken of," Socks countered. "I can hear it with my own ears. The worst they can say about me is that I was born in Twolegplace, and I'm a proper menace with my claws, but I can't help that, can I? I confess it."
Sunfire opened his mouth to speak, but the sound of paws scrabbling through a window down below made them both turn their heads. Even without scenting the air, it wasn't hard to guess who it might be.
"Here comes Sneezy," Socks sighed. They both leaped down from the attic, to the top of an old wardrobe, down to the floor of the lodge and around the corner.
Indeed, Sneezy was already helping himself to another rat off the pile thinking nobody was looking, with Goosebelly's new apprentice sitting idly nearby. He had it dangling between his teeth by the tail, but dropped it as soon as Sunfire and Socks emerged into the main hall.
He'd recommended the apprentice for Goosebelly as a joke, when Rowanstar pressed him about assigning mentors for Beethorn's kits. There were only so many warriors in the Clan, and perhaps some responsibility might prove a productive distraction for his former mentor.
But the quiet, obedient little kit he'd assigned to Goosebelly was mimicking his mentor more and more by the day. Not something he could begrudge him for. It was still a fond memory in his mind, his first time sticking his head inside the old Twoleg nest he'd only heard nursery-tales about, to find a whole other world entirely.
Acornpaw was already a new regular face, and it was almost like seeing a younger splinter of himself. Sunfire just gave him a nod of greeting, confident he wouldn't give him away. After all, they were both here.
"Sunfire!" Sneezy sniffed in greeting, pawing the rat away and sending it sliding innocuously out of view. "SkyClan light your path."
A little confused, but he had the spirit. "And yours, noble Dripnose."
Socks rounded them both with a teasing prod of his paw against Sneezy's flank. "Come, you virtuous rogue, you bashful fool—are you blushing? Why do you blush now? What a queenly warrior you've become!"
"He called on me from an alley, just a bit ago," Acornpaw chimed in. "I could scarcely tell his face from the shadows, except for his nose."
True, Sneezy's nose was a thing of legend among Twolegplace. An inflamed, knobbly snout, ceaselessly dripping snot like a waterfall. It could beam out of the darkness as bright red as any flame.
"Has our apprentice not learned much from his mentor?" Sunfire mewed to Socks.
"Away, you little stunted rabbit, away!" Sneezy growled at the young apprentice, swiping a paw.
Acornpaw ducked back reflexively, still grinning like a fox. "Away, you goose-tail!" His voice came out like a mouse-squeak.
"Goose-tail?" Sunfire said, cocking his head. Could he be behind on the apprentice den's new insults already? Good stars, that made him feel old. "What's a goose-tail?"
"I call him goose-tail, because his face drips like Goosebelly's behind."
That earned a hearty chortle out of him, sliding one of the rats from the pile between his paws. "That one's worth some fresh-kill, I warrant."
"Keep this good blossom from cankers," Socks purred. "Have a second one on me." Acornpaw accepted with a low, gracious dip of his head, but still an impish look in his eye.
"And if you don't get him killed by some cat meaner than me, then SkyClan's been robbed," Sneezy grumbled.
Sunfire settled down, licking a paw and running it over his ears. "And how does our mentor fare, Dripnose?" Sneezy had insisted on being called Goosebelly's apprentice, even when he explained that a cat his age wouldn't have a mentor. That made them peers, in a sense.
"Very well," Sneezy purred between another sniff. "Miss Mittenhearts tried to kill him earlier, but that's all water under the bridge now. He was hoping to see you at the lodge tonight."
"As it should be," Socks answered for him, as Sunfire's tail thumped agitatedly against the floorboards. Bleeding stars, he shouldn't even be there now. LeafClan camp was astir like a crazed hornet's nest, queens and warriors and apprentices alike preparing for war. And he was expected to somehow pull that together. "It baffles me that Miss Mittens would waste the energy. Old Gooseguts hasn't been in the best of health lately, has he?"
Sneezy tilted his head skeptically. "He seems healthy enough on the outside to me."
"Yes, well, it's the inside parts of him that need the cutter, but who am I to say?"
Look at them, how they played fools with the time while his warrior ancestors sat in the clouds and mocked them. "You said Goosebelly will be at the lodge tonight, Sneezy?" Sunfire asked distractedly. An old boar feeding in the familiar watering hole.
"He will," Sneezy said with a nod.
"And all the usual company," Acornpaw said, bouncing on his paws. "With Miss Mittens and Dolly."
The intrusive thought crept up into the rear of his mind, and when he glanced toward Socks, he was giving him the same fish-eating grin. "Shall we surprise them while they share tongues tonight?"
"I'm your shadow," Socks mewed, kneading his claws in the old wood planks in eagerness. "I'll follow you."
"Acornpaw, and you, Sneezy," Sunfire warned with eyes flicking to the both of them. "Don't say a word to Goosebelly about me being in Twolegplace today." Without even glancing down, he batted a rat from the pile between Sneezy's paws. "There's for your silence."
"I have no tongue," Sneezy purred, picking the rat gingerly up between his teeth.
"And for mine, I will govern it," Acornpaw said with a whip of his tail.
Sunfire gave them both a satisfied glance and dismissed them with a flick of his tail. "Fare you well, then. Off you go."
As Acornpaw and Sneezy padded off, he turned back to Socks, brushing his tail along his flank. To see Goosebelly in his true stripes, then. "How should we execute this, Socks?"
"Tansy and mud worked well enough last time," Socks mewed. "We could hide in the attic. Or, sit and watch from the rafters."
From a deputy to a rogue—a low transformation, but he'd make sure the purpose weighed with the folly.
"You always had a beautiful mind for trickery," Sunfire mewed, just eager to push LeafClan and war and death from his mind, even for just a day. "Follow me, then."
