the waiting place

Since her return to ThunderClan, Batbite had found that she felt rather like a stranger in her own home. She had been raised here, even some of her earliest memories were of this camp and some of these cats; but she was surrounded by strangers, kits who had been born and grown in her travels, and the ones she'd looked forward to seeing the most were no longer among them. Lynxtail and Copperheart were gone, somewhere past the same horizon she'd been chasing since she left, and while she held out hope for their return she didn't have the heart to chase after them. There wasn't the faintest trail to follow, after all, and she'd already come all the way back here with Strom in tow.

No, she supposed it was time to do the thing she'd always hated most. Time to settle, to realize that this was the only home she had left. The time had come to settle and stay, to place down roots in this forest she knew so well - most of ThunderClan had always seemed to her like trees, with deep-seated roots and no desire to leave. In contrast, she thought of herself as the vines of ivy climbing up and around them, always trying to climb higher. Maybe she couldn't put down roots like they did, but she could wrap herself around the cats she loved; tying herself to them in hopes that it would make it easier.

Oh, how she hated settling. It felt like giving up, admitting that something was impossible; and that was too much like admitting defeat for her liking. In a sense, she supposed she was giving something up - she couldn't keep leaving whenever her paws itched to explore anymore, now that she'd offered Oakstar her loyalty. Her return had been considered a celebratory occasion, and she'd let herself be swept up in all of it at first. But now, with StarClan's anger and this camp full of cats she hardly knew, she wondered if it would have been right to stay at the barn, or to have left in search of her brothers once she'd learned they'd also left.

She tried not to show any of those worries outwardly, of course. To the cats around her, she was the same as she'd ever been - proud and playful, teasing and rarely serious; and she was just as prone to dramatics as she'd ever been. Today she was seeking bugs - they were harder to find in leaf-bare, true; but the joy of slipping them into some unsuspecting cat's nest was well worth the effort.

This place was different. Strom couldn't help noticing every time he woke up to the smell of moss and cold, moldy leaves. No cold tinkle of the river nearby, no lonely moan of the wind rushing through stiff reeds as it tried to pierce their woven dens. Somehow, after coming back from the barn to a place populated by an entire Clan of cats, he woke up subconsciously expecting to be back in RiverClan. Not that he hadn't found himself wandering through it in his dreams, lately; a strange, dark look twisting it with giant trees covered in oozing moss - almost like the worst of the old and the new was permeating it. If that was what the Dark Forest looked like, he wouldn't be at all surprised... maybe it was, maybe those shadows of cats he thought he knew flitting at the edges of misted shadows were a sign that StarClan had abandoned him. Or at least, that those now leading it had.

Shaking his head, he wandered through camp, mews of other cats talking and the squeaks of kits playing twitching at his ears. Even though his dreams had always had a dark edge to them - he couldn't remember those he'd had before the twoleg incident - waking to Batbite sleeping peacefully beside him banished any thoughts of loneliness or guilt he might otherwise have had. StarClan couldn't take that from him, no matter how hard they tried.

And speaking of Batbite.... Her scent caught at his nose, and he tilted his ears in that direction to hear a faint shuffling noise. A moment later, he caught the sight of her dark pelt as he approached, green eyes concentrating on the task in front of her.

Smiling, he joined her, inspecting what she was searching with his head cocked, curiosity twitching his whiskers. "What are we looking for?"

"Bugs, if you'd like to help," Batbite whispered with a conspiratorial tone. Strom's presence eased her thoughts, the way it always seemed to, and her worries faded to the back of her mind. "Copperheart used to, and it's always best with someone else in on the plan. I think Coalpaw needs to loosen up a bit, and this is one way to achieve that goal. Maybe not the best one, considering how hard they are to find this time of year," she mused. "Or I could always put them in Oakstar's nest. Mm... Maybe worms would work better? But I haven't seen any of those, either. They're easier to find when it rains... You lived near the water for most of your life, didn't you? Are they more common there?"

Strom grinned, his whiskers twitching with new interest. He couldn't help remembering the occasional time he'd pulled that prank on other apprentices back in RiverClan with his brother and sister when they were still... around.

A mrrow rumbled in his throat at the thought of a worm in Oakstar's nest. I'd give a fish to see that. "Worms are always great; you could find them almost anywhere in RiverClan territory, usually near rotting logs or places where leaves piled up."

Experimentally, he dug at the cold earth near his paws, pawing away a couple of rotting leaves to get at the damp earth. No wriggling pinkish forms met his paw, though, as he scraped through the somewhat hard, cold dirt. "You don't have any really muddy places with soft dirt around here, do you?"

Batbite's face fell as she realized the flaw in her plan. "No, I don't suppose we do... Not this far from the water, at least. Back to hunting beetles, I suppose. Thanks for trying, though," she added, affectionately bumping her head into his shoulder. "Why do you think they vanish in leaf-bare? We don't disappear." The thought brought to mind a distant memory. "I wonder if the cave beetles at the mountain tribe disappear too? I suppose I'll never know the answer to that."

Strom gave her a sympathetic smile, shrugging lightly. "Beetles aren't so bad. Though... if you really wanted something different, we could always catch a little fish or two. I'm sure Oakstar would love it."

He considered her question for a moment, head cocked slightly to the side. "Too cold? Maybe they sleep in the ground all leaf-bare." Regarding her curiously at the mention of cave beetles, he temporarily turned his attention away from searching for little bugs. "They have cave beetles up there?"

"The issue with fish," Batbite remarked, a little bit drily, "is that most of us can smell them from several fox-lengths away. I'm fairly certain he still has a nose, unless that's somehow changed since sunrise. And yes, they do. I was trying to prank Ferretnose at one point - you know, it was something to do, before I started getting to know the other cats it was beyond boring - when a Tribe cat came up to me and very loudly asked why i was playing with cave beetles. That prank didn't work out for me, seeing as Ferretnose was right behind us," she recalled, but the sparkle in her eyes betrayed the fondness of the memory. "Though I do wonder how Chirp is doing now. It was a long time ago." She paused, then continued to speak as she resumed her beetle-hunting search. "That's right - you wound up at the other place, didn't you? What was that like?"

He smiled innocently. "That's part of the fun."

The smile faded slightly as she mentioned the other place. The lake. A part of him was glad she'd turned her attention back to beetles; she wouldn't see the pain of his memories there reflected in his eyes. If only I had memories as good to share.... Shaking his head slightly, he turned his attention to the leaves nearby, only partly paying attention as he recalled those moons spent there. "Yes. I did. It was.... Well, I won't lie, it wasn't great. I met up with Lynxtail and some others, and we journeyed to the other end to meet up with other groups who'd made it." A slightly rasping laugh came free of his maw as the memory of stinking mud and all manner of debris piled on the shore - not to mention the occasional body - came back to memory. "The place got better after a while - less dirty water and mud - but most of the time we spent trying to get back on our paws."

Not to mention that at the time, he'd been in abject denial of his sister and brother's fate. His mindset back then hadn't been the best. Letting the memory go with a silent sigh, he shrugged. "Most cats weren't really in the mood for jokes-" Including me, He added silently - "but that could have been because of the lack of beetles."

"I think most of them weren't, either. Most of the Tribe cats I saw were weirdly serious - and a lot of the warriors weren't exactly happy. But I didn't have anyone else to fall back on, so I had to do something to pass the time," Batbite admitted. "So I took to badgering everyone else as much as I could, and playing tricks like I always did. And trying to show them up," she added, the melancholy lifted slightly with her proud smirk. "I'd say I succeeded. But it wasn't nearly as satisfying when most of the cats I knew and loved were so far away and I didn't know if I'd ever get to see them again."

Strom turned over a leaf with his paw, though the gesture was mostly pointless as he looked at Bat, the smile returning once more, though a little less cheery, and a little more sad. "What you did would've helped keep them less serious. In that, I think you definitely succeeded in showing them up." For a moment he was silent, turning back to the leaf and inspecting its blank, completely bug-less surface as he mulled over her last statement. "No, it never is," He mewed softly.

His thoughts turned to what had happened after, when they met the cats who had been with the Tribe. The dogs, Starlord, and the blur after that. A sudden frown touched his maw, and he turned around to look at Bat, a new thought coming to the fore. If he was there, then he must have come with them....
Bugs forgotten, he asked the question almost before he thought about it. "Bat, did you ever meet Starlord while you were there?"

Once, the question might have been asked with a sense of urgency as he sought any trace of the dead rogue he could, but now it was spoken with a simple curiosity, spurred on by the thought he'd never considered before. It wasn't like he wanted to dig up old ghosts, not with what he knew now, but there was still a curiosity that wondered if his mate already knew of the old tom's past.

"I tried my best. It helped me forget how dire the situation was, at the time... Then, when we finally came back, I learned how to swim. It wouldn't help if it happened again, I'm sure, but... It was nice to pretend I had some sort of control. That if the water came for me again I'd be ready for it," Batbite murmured. She hadn't been swept away by the water in the first place, that was true, but there was no telling if she'd be so lucky a second time. If she'd known that her entire family, at the time, would have been swept elsewhere... She would have let it take her, there wasn't any question about that, even now.

"Starlord... I don't think I ever spoke with someone by that name," she replied, thinking over the cats she could remember carefully. "For all I spent my time doing whatever I could find, I didn't talk to most of the other cats. But maybe I'd seen them around somewhere? What did they look like?"

Strom found himself reluctantly remembering a blood-stained form lying at his paws as Batbite asked the question, and he paused for a moment, hesitant to bring back the old memories. Echoes of grief still lay around there - ghosts of sadness for a cat he'd once respected - but more for the family he'd remembered, and their deaths. But it was no use going back now.

"He was white with ginger patches, and... bright blue eyes," He said, his eyes going distant as he remembered the details, every one of them burned into his memory. "He was about my size." He let a half-smile creep up the side of his maw, a hint of melancholy bitterness tinging it. "In fact, if you took his pelt and his eyes and stuck them on me, you'd get a pretty close match."

Why was he so reluctant to outright say it? For a moment, he thought about tacking on the detail that the cat had been his father, but the words died in his throat long before they ever made it out of his maw. Some things... some things he just couldn't say. Luckily, his mate was more observant than anyone else he'd ever met. If anyone could unravel the secrets he dragged around on his shoulders, she could. And, in the deepest part of him, he wanted her to. She, of all cats, would understand, wouldn't she? Maybe that was part of the reason he didn't want to say it.

How can I love her if I can't even tell her the name of my own father? He felt like rolling his eyes at himself. You tell her you love her, and then you promptly keep everything from her. Great job.

Now that he offered a description, Batbite could recall a cat that matched. "I think I did see him there, actually. Never got close, though." She'd never spoken to him, but she did remember seeing him amidst the cats that had gathered in the mountains. And now, surveying her mate, she supposed she could see a resemblance - his description wasn't wrong at all. "Sounds like you knew him pretty well," she mused, nudging his shoulder with her nose. Though her mind raced with theories as to their connection, though she tried to remain in the present. "Is it right to assume there's some history there?"

"Ah." He nodded. What else had he expected? It was no wonder he'd never learned the truth about the tom until he met his brothers; the old loner had somehow managed to be everywhere, and yet never leave behind any tangible evidence that he had been. Apparently, despite his facade, Strom still cared about him, somewhere in the depths of his heart. Despite what Starlord had done.

He searched her eyes as she bumped his shoulder, her question gently peeling away his reluctance. For a moment, he hesitated. "I didn't. Not really. He wasn't there for me when I was growing up." With a snort at himself and his vagueness, he finally took the plunge. He'd wet his toes enough to get used to the water; may as well dive in. "He was meant to be my father. Never did a very good job of it, though." He sighed, sitting down and giving her a wan smile and a shrug, finally giving up his now-half-hearted search for bugs. "He left us when we were born and never came back. I didn’t even see his face until he died in front of me."

Batbite nodded, understanding - at least vaguely - the concept of absent parents. "My mother left my siblings and I on the outskirts of ThunderClan's territory," she murmured. "It's hard to remember most of it now, we were so young... We were lucky enough that Leopardstar found us." She'd grown up with a family, after all, her brothers and her father and Oakstar had helped to make her who she was now, and then her friends had made their marks on her heart. "I'm sorry you couldn't count on him. And I know it's not the same... But you can always count on me."