Retribution [Closed]

Each step had been painful but not because of the fire that burned across the left side of his face. Droplets of blood marked his trail throughout the forest. However, a majority of the several clawmarks across his eye had begun to crust with a mixture of dirt from his claws. The bulky tom's sides heaved and it felt like his chest would constrict until he could no longer breath. His throat tightened as he tried to swallow what felt like sand. Sweeping numbness continued to spread throughout his limbs. What felt like relief had only been temporary. He didn't regret his earlier actions. Although the swollen and likely infected wounds over his eye had glued it shut and made the journey that much more difficult.

When he finally reached the camp entrance, Beartooth paused. The realization that he would have to face Pricklepaw now caused him to hesitate slightly. But the pause was only momentary. His massive paws scored the earth as he headed straight for the medicine cat's den. Once at the entrance, the tom's figure blocked out what little light streamed through the entrance. His voice was raw and managed only to crackle out one word, "Pricklepaw." While he had barely been touched by his opponent, and his only deep wounds were self-inflicted, every ounce of his strength felt like it had been sapped away. Perhaps, if he had considered the medicine cat's frustration, his ears would have burned hot with embarrassment. Instead, he just stared ahead with exhausted eyes as he awaited a response from his adoptive brother.

Pricklepaw was in the back of his den, organizing the herbs that he'd just collected earlier that morning. Coltsfoot next to tansy, horsetail far away from his single piece of honeycomb, yarrow and three red deathberries in a corner where no kits could reach them... He heard the pawsteps before he smelled the blood. The signature heavy footfalls of his least favorite cat alive were easy to recognize, even if his monstrously large claws weren't unsheathed. Now that he was a medicine cat apprentice, the atrocities that the tom committed were even more disgusting to him. Knowing how cats felt when they were in pain, and how the cats who loved them and tried to treat them suffered… anyone who could inflict such suffering was someone that he never wanted to see again. But here was Beartooth at his doorstep.

What had that… that being done this time? What innocent cat had he maimed? Whose life would he be congratulated for destroying? Whose flesh had those claws ripped into unsympathetically as blood and agony rushed out? When the medicine cat apprentice turned around unwillingly, he saw that the answer to all his questions was Beartooth himself. The monstrous warrior had large, gaping wounds on his face, claw-marks too big to have been made by any regular cat. Knowing what must have happened, the tan-furred tom found himself without any sympathy for the tom’s suffering whatsoever, knowing what he’d done before. What a waste of herbs and time. “So did you find another cat who suffers from the same disfiguring malady you do,” he inquired, lip curling, “or did you mistake your reflection for an enemy by accident?”

His sides heaved and his muscles ached. The massive tabby stumbled a few pawsteps closer to the medicine cat before his legs were rendered useless. In an ungraceful and rather embarrassing display, the warrior fell to the ground at his adoptive brother's feet. Had he been of any normal state, Beartooth might have felt something more than the creeping numbness that swept through his chest. Maybe his ears would have flattened or heated up with some sort of reactive feeling. Instead, he stared up into Pricklepaw's expression. He drank in the hatred and the pure disgust that was on display without any sort of attempt to hinder or hide it. It caused the crashing torrent of emotions to rip through his chest much more. Beepaw had left behind invisible claws that dug in further as he watched his adoptive brother's face.

"You think that I'm a monster." His voice was raw, raspy and crackled like it never had before. In such a state, the usually imposing mass that was the Thunderclan warrior was a wreck. The green depth of his eyes, always the most expressive thing about him, prickled with hints of tears once more. There was almost a plea that edged into his words, one that begged Pricklepaw to deny it. He pressed further, letting the silent question ring in the air as he condemned himself, "I am. I know I am. Beepaw saw it. And you do too." Dirt had lodged itself into his wounds when he had fallen to the floor. And he barely registered how it stung. But his eye winced involuntarily as he stared up at the tom he had considered his brother. Pricklepaw wouldn't spare him. He never had. And that thought only tightened his chest further as he looked up pitifully.

Pity made his chest sting as he saw the extent of the tom's wounds, self-inflicted though they were. Why was he even considering wasting his herbs on this mess? Blood was dripping all over the floor that he'd just recently cleaned with moss, filling him with disgust for more than one reason. If any other cat stood before him, even Lichenmask, he'd probably be running for cobwebs. But he couldn't bring himself to do it for Beartooth. When the tom spoke again, Pricklepaw's eye twitched at the raw pain and pitiful pleading in his voice... and the bluntly spoken accusation. He hated the tom, and everyone hated him for it. All of their rose-tinted gazes saw some kind of gentleness in his monstrosity, saw only the fact that he hadn't truly murdered Beepaw instead of the fact that he'd cared nothing for his "brother," and had left him to drown in the river. When the hulking, bleeding mass spoke Beepaw's name, the medicine cat apprentice's fur bristled. "You have no right," he hissed bitterly, sage-green eyes glaring pinpricks of light. "No right to say his name after what you did. You may not have deliberately killed him, but I know how you left his body water-soaked in the river without a hint of remorse. Though your beastly claws and fangs are ugly, they aren't why I hate you. It's because of what you are, Beartooth."

The creamy tan-furred tom began to circle his Clanmate, looking at the extent of his self-inflicted clawmarks while also realizing how much he hated every inch of his pelt, his very being. "It's how you maim and disfigure other cats with those claws, and how everyone loves you for it. How you insert yourself into my family because you have none of your own. How you take such pleasure in the pain of other cats, making them and their loved ones suffer because it's the only way you can be successful in this Clan...." Pricklepaw spat out each word from the depths of his heart, which bubbled and foamed in bitterness that had taken root many moons ago. "Why do you think you had to be adopted? Why do you think Beepaw despised you so? Why do you think..." he drew close... "that I loathe your very existence?" There was no remorse in his eyes, nothing but cold disdain and hatred. "It's the inside that counts, Beartooth. And your inside is a bleeding, disgusting, monstrous mess. Just like the rest of you." The tom flicked his tail and turned away, no longer being able to stand looking at the hunk of clawed-up flesh that stood in his den, pity and anger welling up in equal amounts within him.

Each word struck the air, forcing themselves into the soft fur that lined the warrior's ears. They seemed to cut into him like claws of ice, sending chills throughout his pelt and far deeper into the depths of his very being. Such unadulterated, genuine hatred overwhelmed him. Even at this moment his love for the tom that he saw as his kin was not hindered and that made ever accusatory syllable cut further into his psyche. Beartooth's chin struck the ground ungracefully as his head fell, jarring his jaw and the stinging wounds at the top of his head. The medicine cat's burning gaze spoke of genuine honesty, a personal truth, and disinterest in healing the wounds that marred his coat. It was his own fault, after all, the claw marks across his eye, the death of Beepaw, the hatred that radiated from this tom who he had seen as a younger brother and had watched grow into the clan's medicine cat. He remembered a certain sense of pride in Pricklepaw, any accusation of murder forgotten.

Even lying here, stinging, festering wounds further exacerbated by the dirt and sand that dug into them, Beartooth couldn't help the flickers of love that underlined the agony of his forest green gaze. As much as he should have seen the cat that spat on his very existence and saw him as no more than a piece of rotten crowfood, all he could see was the spikey-furred kit that wrestled with Beepaw at Blizzardshine's stomach. When he looked at Pricklepaw, there was no disdain for him, only a sensation of self-directed disgust and guilt that threatened to rip his seemingly unfeeling chest in two. Normally a neutral mask, the expression on his maw faltered and as he clenched his teeth in some futile attempt to bear it all, the fangs the poked from underneath his top lip dug into the flesh of his maw, prickling the skin like that hadn't done in so many moons. It was quite the sight, a bulky mass like the massive Thunderclan warrior laying in the mess of his own blood and dirt.

He didn't sniffle like a kit as much as he might have wanted to, but the pitiful expression on his face hinted at as much. His eyes shone with pure brokenness. As Pricklepaw turned away, it snapped the final piece within himself. There was nothing more within him, nothing deeper than the anguish, internal hatred, and culpability that overwhelmed him in waves. Beartooth loved that little kit as much as the rest of them. And that little kit couldn't have hated him anymore if it tried. A low breath left his maw in something akin to a broken sob. But despite the tears that pricked at the sides of his eyes, nothing ever fell, "I'm sorry, Pricklepaw." He croaked, feeling the sand cut through his throat once more, "I'm so sorry." The warrior rose to his paws, tottering unstably. It was only with the assistance of the grip of his awesome claws that he managed to stand. With one lingering look at the medicine cat, the one whose paws could never treat him in good conscious, Beartooth turned away himself and started for his nest. There was nothing for him there.