i've given up on counting blessings (solo)

{tw: this solo contains themes of suicidal ideation.}

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Leopardsun wasn't sleeping.

The sun had risen some time ago, its light warming the marsh, but all she felt was the familiar chill of the empty space around her.

The guilt tugged at her thoughts, her veins filled with an icy chill rather than the pleasant warmth of the weather around her. She had sworn to take responsibility. That was what it was, wasn't it? Oh, she had blamed herself for the death of her parents (twice over; one pair of names she'd never known, and then the faces and the voices she had loved), for the loss of her sister (but she wasn't responsible for the floodwater that had devastated their home).

But it was Leopardsun that ordered the attack on WindClan, Leopardsun that led them, Leopardsun that allowed her kits to join the patrol.

Now she had two kits dead and buried and two still living ones that she had failed just as much- one who had been despondent ever since they returned home.

Now she had a dead best friend- and wasn't that her fault, too?

If she hadn't been so focused on the battle with WindClan, on the preparation and the execution, she would have been keeping a closer eye on ShadowClan’s own territory. It would have been safer, wouldn't it?

He would have lived-

Wouldn't he?

Honeylight was a light in her life, in everyone’s lives, and now he was dead and gone. The empty space beside her where he should have been made the space outside the warriors’ den she’d claimed for herself feel like too much.

So she’d slipped out of camp after ensuring the last patrols of the night were sent out, into the marsh and toward a place where she knew she could be alone.

(It was the last thing she wanted, but the only thing she deserved.)

And she let herself cry, shaking with quiet sobs, until she had no sorrow left to give.

Lay down your sorrows, turn away and leave them there.

Her heart, her life, her feelings-

This was a sacrifice.

It was all a sacrifice.

Sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice.

She’d always thought that about leadership. That to give up your name, your essence of self, to honor the stars was a sacrifice.

Leopardsun hadn’t ever seriously considered what that meant for her.

She had a responsibility to ShadowClan, had dedicated herself completely to the cats around her, but she hadn’t ever thought to wonder if anyone was responsible for her.

Leopardsun had fallen to the wayside, then.

Did she even know who Leopardsun was, when she stripped away the layers and layers of responsibility and work to be done? Of lingering grief and bitter regrets?

What would she have been, if Nightstar had chosen someone else? Someone better?

Did it matter?

She had never liked to dwell on the what-ifs and the could-have-beens, not when she could help it, but when there was nothing else left…

She had no idea who she was, or what she wanted.

Not that any of that mattered anymore.

Focus on the living, she kept having to remind herself.

And in every way that mattered, in every way other than that her heart was still beating and she was still standing firmly on the ground…

In every way that mattered, Leopardsun was dead.

She would lay her hopes, her wishes, and her dreams here, next to her grief and her sorrow.

Here and now, in this moment, she didn’t want to be alive.

But what she wanted didn’t matter anymore, hadn’t mattered since the day she was called on to serve her Clan, and it had taken her too long to see that.

(And if she left a piece of her heart in the marsh that day, as she turned back toward ShadowClan’s camp, well.

No one had to know.)