falling [solo]

Thalia's paws led her to the edge of the river once more, to the very same place where her world had fallen apart. Where all she knew was revealed to be a lie, though she hadn't realized in the moment; she hadn't let it settle in her mind until she'd told the others and everything came crashing down at once. Now it was all in pieces, and she couldn't put it back together.

That was all she had, pieces of a life she never got to live and pieces of the one she did. Asylum was all she remembered, but it wasn't all she was.

(Or was it, if she didn't remember the rest? What was Laurelkit to her? A memory lost, a life not lived. What did it matter? If she had been Laurelkit once, then she was Thalia now, and she would never be Laurelkit again.)

Roe was gone, and the rumors were worrying. The cats she was raised with, the family she still loved so much despite herself, were filled with anger and despair and confusion. So was she. Who to trust, what to do, whether she could live with herself - none of those questions had clear answers anymore.

(What is there to do, when your heroes were never on your side? When the line between your allies and your enemies is so blurred you don't know if you can trust anyone but yourself? If you're not even sure you can?)

The pale calico stared at her reflection in the water. What was she, if she stripped away Asylum piece by piece? Without the fox, without the scars, without the crushing weight of everything she was ever told? She tried to imagine it. Was there anything left that belonged to Thalia?

A killer, a monster, a bloodthirsty savage; the little voice that told her everything she ever did was wrong told her now. In that moment, it took Lilacstar's voice - another friend turned enemy, through some tragedy or another.

(It was an accident. She hadn't wanted to hurt anyone, and she'd honored their wishes by keeping her distance from their borders when she could avoid them.)

There had to be something. Something she was missing, a piece to the puzzle that would make it make sense.

She had told Roe that her loyalty was with Asylum over the Clans; and now that the world had caved in on itself she wondered about it. If her loyalty wasn't with the Asylum at all, and it wasn't with the Clans, where was it?

She thought of Roe, who she'd looked up to all her life, who was somewhere now that she couldn't see. Pyrik, the brother who wasn't hers by blood but who had stood by her through her worst days. Katana, the partner who still drew her in despite the distance between them now. The other stolen kits, wherever their own loyalties were. The ShadowClan leader that had died to save her life.

(It was there, with all of them; with every cat she trusted, despite the voice in the back of her head telling her not to. Loyalty to her friends, to her family, to strangers who had shown kindness; not to any place or cause at all.)

She was left, then, with an unfamiliar voice in her head asking a question she had no answer for:

What are you going to do now?