Little Talks (Closed)

Nothing worked. Nectarleap tried to forget. That didn't work. Every time he almost got there, he would feel incredibly guilty. He had caused someone he loved to die, or let their death go unpunished, and forgetting them was just plain evil. So he tried coming to terms with it all. Accepting what had happened. But still, every time he thought about everything, he either blamed himself or felt extreme rage. Praying worked best, but he had come to rely too heavily on it. That small escape allowed him to slide further and further into the pit of despair. Allowing himself to beat himself up, to make empty promises. What he called praying was more of promises to StarClan. And most of them he would have never considered before Heathershade's death. Though he had recovered from that, that was when his life had started going downhill. Before his mate's death, his life had been nothing except happiness. His friends were by his side, he could do anything he put his mind to, his worst fear being heights. After seeing the broken and bloody form of his mate, however, nothing seemed the same. After that, he knew that the world was a dangerous place. Never could he completely rely on anything. Stormcloud had helped him through that. Willowpaw and Shadefall had helped him. Now they were gone. While he knew it was unfair to Sweetpaw and Foxpaw to fade away like this, he couldn't help it. In his state, every time he looked at his daughters reminded him of what he had lost, not what he had gained. Unfortunately, he had almost stopped talking to them. The pain was too much. No longer did the memory of his sister calm him. No, it teared him apart to know she was gone. Foxes were not a symbol of power anymore, now they just reminded him of the time his son had nearly died. And actually died less than a moon later. The sad form of once a happy warrior strode out of camp, not knowing where he was going. Possibly to hunt of patrol the borders, but more likely to visit graves. His kit's in particular. Fawnpaw's first. He felt like he had lost her time and time again. First his sister, then his daughter who shared her name, then the cat she died saving. Sitting down, he hoped nobody discovered him sobbing over an accident that had happened moons and moons ago. Might as well get up and visit a more recent death first so they wouldn't think horrible of him. Just those facts made his blood boil. How was the rest of the clan so easily able to move on? Did they not remember that friends and family members had died for them? Did nobody care. Shaking uncontrollably, he began on his way to Stoneheart's burial site. Maybe even Emberpaw's once he was in that area.

"StarClan, why couldn't I have had one day to undo all the wrong I did? Lives could have been saved if I had acted differently. Please, just give me one day. If I had one more day to wish. To be better than I ever could have been."

"Nectarleap." Twistedtail was standing a little ways away from where the calico tom was. She knew all too well what Nectarleap was feeling- after all, his deceased mate Heathershade was her own daughter. She had been depressed after her adoptive mother Heatherstripe died unexpectedly while kitting. After her first mate Shadewillow of Shadowclan had abandoned her to take care of her illegal kits alone, she felt hopeless. The feeling only accumulated after her true love and best friend Sprucethorn had been murdered by Bear shortly after he promised to be the stand-in father. Then her daughter Echopaw died of greencough, and her mother Mossfoot disappeared into the night, and she grieved night and day. And once Heathershade died and the siamese warrior's short-lived third love Ash of Burning Forest died all too soon she had been incapable of doing anything but huddling at the corner of the camp and crying. Of course, she had long moved past that disastrous phase of her lifetime, but it was evident Nectarleap had not.

"It's all okay. There is no need to grieve no more," the scarred she-cat rumbled in a serious, but soft, voice. She trotted forward until she was shoulder-to-shoulder with the younger warrior. They once were rivals back when Nectarleap married her daughter, but there was no reason to keep that hatred around now. "I know it is hard to move on. I know all too well, my friend. But you need to move on.

"How can you say that?" Nectarleap sobbed, trying in vain to keep his voice level. For a few moments after speaking, his breath came only in short hiccups, letting him know that to his dismay, he had began to cry. Twistedtail shouldn't have to see him like this. It wasn't as if he had every really liked her after how she had treated his now long dead mate. But right now he didn't really care how Heathershade had been treated. He just knew that she was gone. Though that probably wasn't the best way to look at things, it was how he felt. Her soft voice both comforted him and angered him, sending a bubbling mix of emotions washing through his body, causing his head to feel hot and light, like he was in a surreal fever dream. "How can you say that? You hated her! You've gone through grief, but this is another level you don't understand. Just as my life was improving, I lost it all again! How can I stop grieving and move on? It would be unfair to them! It was MY fault, and the least I can do is honor their memories. If they don't already hate me." Before he could stop himself, words began pouring out of his mouth in a series of sobs, and he stopped caring about who he was talking to. He just needed someone who had experience. Anyone. "It's just that every morning when I wake up, I wish I was who I can't even say I've been, because it is so much more than I ever was! And every night, I go to sleep knowing that I lost everything I had to lose, because I gave away everything I every could have asked for!"

OOC: woah almost forgot about this. Sorry for the big speech block, she's gonna be rambling about how she lost everything too

IC: "I have lost everything as well. I know I never showed it, but I did love her." the aging siamese sat down lightly on her haunches and stared off into the stars. "You say I wouldn't be able to understand but I do. I lost everything in my early years, and just when I thought everything was going to be better I lost it again. I didn't think I could get worse than my current situation, only to fall foxlengths down into despair."

"Once, when I was very little, I wasn't a Windclan cat. I was a Thunderclan cat, born between a cat named Mossfoot and another, Blacktwig. They weren't mates at all, but they loved me nonetheless. When I was just a mere moon old I was curious and ran away from the camp in the night. I got lost and scared, and wandered around for some time. I didn't know where I was and I didn't know how to hunt and as such I starved. Luckily, a Windclan cat named Heatherstripe had found me and took me in as her own. I made friends with two others, Rippedpaw and Sprucekit, and I thought everything was going to be fine in life."

"However, it was not. Heatherstripe died very suddenly when I was very young, from birthing complications. Riverclan invaded the camp shortly later and after we lost Rippedpaw lost faith in Ashstar. He went and talked to her in the leader's den. Then he was running out of the camp, and then he was gone. Later I would find that he joined Skyclan, but for a time I thought he was dead. I became depressed. When I became a warrior it just got worse. Mossfoot had came looking for me when I was in late apprenticehood and joined Windclan to be with me, but she suddenly disappeared in the middle of the night. I accidentally had kits with a cat I didn't love, but Sprucethorn helped me and became an adoptive father to the kits. Those kits were Echopaw and Heathershade. Not even a moon after he offered to help care for them I found him, dead. Echopaw died of greencough shortly after she became an apprentice. I was crazed with grief. I thought that if I showed love to anyone anymore, Starclan would just take them away from me. I didn't want to risk that again. And even after Heathershade died I was still cursed. I had became friends with Wolfpaw and acted as a second mentor to him. I knew he had a strange urge to kill things, and I tried to help him get rid of that. I tried to save him. And you know how that ended."

Twistedtail took a breath, before realizing she had rambled. "But anyways, you constantly grieving is not honoring their memories. It's clinging onto a painful past and refusing to look forward to a bright future. Your friends and family and mine are all up in Starclan. They are in paradise. No war, no pain, no fear, and no suffering. There are no factions that divide them and no disagreements in Starclan. They are happy and looking over you, and they would want you to be happy as well. They would be sad knowing that you are denying yourself happiness by clinging onto this. So do yourself and them alike a favor, and allow yourself some peace."


OOC: that was a really big textblock what have i done

"You're from ThunderClan?" That was certainly something Nectarleap hadn't known about Twistedtail. His biological kits had been part ThunderClan. Strange. As the scarred she-cat continued talking, he couldn't help but feel as if she was telling him her sob story to make his seem less bad. It wasn't working. But he did feel some guilty relief that this wasn't just his bad luck, it was the risk of being a clan cat. That was probably what she was actually trying to accomplish by telling him. Yet he felt like she thought worse of him because she had gone through so much and made it out fine, and he hadn't. Well, that wasn't quite true in his opinion. There was a lot he had been through that she didn't know about, and so many emotions he had bottled up that she didn't know he felt. While she had gone through grief before, could she really fully understand him? Not without information. And he needed to let those repressed emotions out before they were so heavy that they killed him. Moons of frustration and misery poured out in a series of sobs, before turning the the older warrior, emotions blazing in his amber eyes.
"Sure you have been through grief before, but does that really allow you to understand what I've been through? Do you even remember when you were happy, and nostalgically yearn for those days every second of your life? I do! When I was young, I was an amazingly happy apprentice. When my sister Fawnpaw died, I didn't even know what it meant! I was innocent and happy. All at once, my world grew real. My sister and best friend, Sweetpaw, died, and my mother was taken by twolegs. My two friends were constantly fighting, with me stuck in the middle. Then I was able to move on. I became a warrior, fell in love, had kits. I WAS HAPPY AGAIN! But then there was the mist, and there was disease, and there were predators. Sootpaw, Stoneheart, Heathershade, Blizzardkit, and Emberpaw all died within a moon of each other! I only recovered through Stormpaw and Fawnpaw. Then what do you know, here comes a badger and kills my daughter! But I still had hope, and new family. I thought I could recover. I almost did. Then death came and took so many more cats away from me. Stormcloud, Willowpaw, Rosepaw, Shadefall, Ashstar. Only four cats I love are left, and Silentstrike is so injured I don't even know how long he has left. My whole life I'd faced death after death, and always I repressed my feelings, only recovering through filling the gap and ignoring my emotions. Being happy just so I wouldn't be sad. But now I just can't!"
His voice had lowered to a saddened mumble, before rising back up to an angry snarl. Nothing in his mind made sense. Twistedtail was a cat he thought he hated, and now he was spilling out secret after secret out at her. But only to make her understand his pain. She needed to know that he wasn't just wallowing in his pit of grief for the sake of it. His amber eyes suddenly flashed with anger directed at the she-cat, and his claws dug into the ground, a fruitless attempt to prevent himself from shaking. "How..." Taking a deep breath, he looked at his paws then back up at her face. "... Do you expect me to move on when that has always included me denying my right to feel? Especially now. This is not honoring them. But letting myself repress their memories is dishonoring them. If StarClan is such a paradise, why doesn't everyone just kill themselves? If you're right, why shouldn't I? I am not denying myself happiness anymore, because I ALEADY HAVE. The moment I accidentally let Stormcloud die because I was scared was when I lost right to happiness. The moment I knew I wouldn't be able to freely move on. Then it happened again. When I failed to make your kithood friend serve justice for Willowpaw's death, I deserved to fall deeper into the pit of despair. When I looked at Ashstar's dead body, void of emotion, I knew I had broken myself and I deserved it. They may not like me like this, but I would hate myself if I wasn't. They probably hate me for my actions already anyway."