Can't Let Go (closed)

He stood outside the elder's den, his paws working on its branches, and its leaves. His mind blank, his paws working almost by themselves in the grey light of the clouded day. No rain fell, just a clouded foreboding. Brooding.

The elder's den was cold, and drafty. He'd spent the last night curled into a tight ball, no warm pelt next to his own to ease the chill of the new-leaf night. Nor to ease the dark shadows that moved across his mind. Strange dreams seeping through the walls.... It hadn't been lived in for moons, and they were thin, patchy. No familiar scent next to his own, just that of Stormpaw, also sent to live in it as punishment.

Punishment....

His paws slowed, and he simply looked at them for a moment. The white was stained with a faint tinge of green from the bush's leaves, and dirt. No red, but he could remember it. A shiver ran through his frame as he remembered the feel of skin under his claws, and warm blood. The memory of a still body followed a moment later, and he closed his eyes. They should have done something.... They could have.

It was best Bat wasn't in the den with him, not after... that. Especially with the nightmares of flashing yellow at the end of a dark, narrow alleyway that woke him with a jerk to stare up at pinpricks of light showing through the roof above, his heart pounding in his chest, the sharp scent of fear surrounding him. And the blood....

He growled, forcefully pushing the thoughts away and diving back into the task in front of him in a futile effort to keep them away. In the back of his mind, though, they still lingered, little dark shadows with glowing eyes, watching, waiting. Ready to snare him again and take what little sanity he had left through the misery he had become.

"It's going to rain soon, I think," Batbite said in lieu of a greeting. Her words were casual, unconcerned; she didn't even acknowledge the task Minkstream was working on. She thought about it, but all that came to mind was harsh words he didn't need to hear. She'd said her piece on the subject, and she would stand by him needing to deal with his punishment on his own - but she wasn't being punished, and she wanted company, so here she was. "Hopefully it's just light rain, if we can't have sunlight."

He twitched slightly as a familiar voice came from behind him. Through his single-minded concentration on the task in front of him, he hadn't even heard pawsteps coming up behind him. Twisting his head, he gave her a quick glance, his paws stopping for a moment. For just a moment, his eyes searched her face, but there was nothing but casual unconcern there.

If only the same could be said for him. He felt like a mess, both physically and mentally, twigs sticking out of his fur, and clumps where it had matted from some un-nameable substance he'd picked up repairing the den. Metaphorically, the same could be said for his mind. Some part of him wanted to blurt out an apology, and the rest felt a little numb and cloudy, with a touch of restless desperation thrown in there.

He settled for nodding, one ear flicking uncomfortably as he settled back to all four paws. "Anything would be good." His voice sounded flat even to his own ears - a lackluster attempt at conversation. It didn't help that he didn't care much about the weather right now. Just keeping his mind away.

He glanced up at the sky, and its billowing, cold clouds. Like what they sometimes had out by the river, in the marshy ground infested with reeds. There, a light breeze might be hissing its cold, uncaring song through them, a rattling death-ridden sound. Rippling little puddles of grey-reflecting water. "At least here it's sheltered." That was a little better. It had at least a bit of emotion, even if said emotion was - unfortunately - melancholy laced with a hint of bitterness.

Batbite sighed, tired already of dancing around the subject. "Why did you do that, anyway?" she asked. "You had to know it wasn't going to end well."

That wasn't to say that she accepted Rainstrike's actions, or even tolerated them on a personal level. On the contrary, she held fast to her opinion that her denmate no longer deserved the title of warrior, but she held her tongue. There was nothing to be done for now except take action on her own, and while Rainstrike had certainly made the problems worse she hadn't been the one to cause them. That honor belonged to the Righteous Few.

Her voice was softer when she spoke again. "I love you, but I need you to understand. I know you're not happy about this - I'm not, either, but what are we going to do?"

He glanced away from Batbite's gaze when she asked the question, something akin to shame stirring under his pelt. "I..." Why had he? His mind hadn't exactly been coherent at the time, and the memory of leaping forward to attack Rainstrike felt more like a darkness-tinged dream - or maybe nightmare - than something his own paws had done.

The image of Dace's limp body flashed behind his eyes again, along with Rainstrike's words, and his heart constricted with an odd mixture of grief and anger. Maybe he did know. Yes, he knew why he'd leapt forward. And the anger that had raged then still stirred somewhere in the depths of his heart.

He pushed it away, looking back up at Bat with a half-hearted shake of his head. A moment later she spoke again, her voice softer.

"I love you, but I need you to understand. I know you're not happy about this - I'm not, either..."

Searching her eyes for a moment, his own reflecting a claw-scratch of pain and guilt, he found himself wishing that, anger or not, pride or not, he hadn't let his claws do the talking.

"...but what are we going to do?"

He stood for a moment, attempting to shake off the fatigued numbness that had been his constant companion for the day as he tried to think. Got to stop feeling sorry for yourself. They need you. Batbite needs you. Something stirred as her question echoed in his head, and a spark gradually came back to his eyes. What were they going to do? What could they do? Oakstar hadn't done anything yet, nor had anyone in command - all they had done was talk, and all they would do was talk. Plans were all well and good, but talking about planning without planning itself wouldn't help anything.

A flicker of defiant determination flashed in Minkstream's eyes for a moment, pushing past the exhaustion. "We can't do nothing like we're doing now. They'll slaughter us if we sit around trying to keep our heads down. Any 'code-breaker'-" especially me, He added silently, trying to keep the shiver of ice working down his spine from showing, - "is a target for them - they showed that with everyone who's died at their paws."

He let out a slightly bitter snort. "But we can't fight them, either. Not without the rest of the Clan." A sigh slipped free of his maw, and he cast a helpless look up at Batbite. "I don't know what to do, Bat. We're stuck here; if we go out they'll hunt us down, like...." A memory of the scent of blood drifted past his nose. "...like they did with Dace."

His eyes traced the pattern of grass poking through the ground at his paws. "If only we could hunt them down," He murmured, longing to flex his claws into the dirt, and wishing harder that it was the pelt of the fox-spawn who had killed his Clanmate.

"We can't do nothing," she agreed. Watching, waiting... It had led to senseless violence, senseless death. It couldn't be allowed to continue. "They don't care about us, do they? But we can't fight them. We're not strong enough," Batbite murmured. "We can't quite escape it, can we?"

There's a moment of silence, as she lashes her tail. Minkstream - Strom - he knows her distaste for the laws that govern their lives, and her ever-wavering faith in StarClan themselves is no secret, so she speaks quietly when she does. "Is the rest of StarClan letting this happen? They just couldn't let us live our lives the way we want, could they? Copper and Lynx had the right idea, probably, to run away and never look back... Maybe if I'd waited, I'd be wherever they are now," she mused. "But I wouldn't be with you, would I?"

Still, her brothers were long gone, as much as she remembered them each and every day. There would be no finding them now, even if she left right this second and searched for the rest of her life. There was a whole world to search, after all, and they've had several moons worth of a head start - whether they're alive at all, she didn't even know, but she'd like to think that they were. They were better warriors than she ever was, after all.

The unspoken question lingers in the air, along with the air of oncoming rain. Why did we come back?

"There's no sense in trying to change the past," she said eventually. "That's what it comes back to. But when the past is trying to change us... What do we do? We can't do nothing, but every course of action means risking ourselves... And I can't lose you, too."

He didn't know. There were a lot of things he didn't know, a lot of things that frustrated him because he couldn't know. Was this the whole of StarClan? Were his family and friends - all of whom had died - in on this? Dace... Dace had died. If she had gone to StarClan....

He mentally shook his head. All of this... none of it made sense, and if it did, he had a feeling he still wouldn't understand the whole thing. Especially not right now.

Listening as Bat continued, her words a murmur, he couldn't help but feel that if she wasn't with him, she'd be safer. All the cats around him, who he loved and loved him, had died. Cats around him... all of them gone. All he had was Bat, now. Even if they hadn't come back, there still would have been danger. Because of him. As he looked at her, conflicting feelings rising in his chest, he couldn't help but wonder.

"None of us should go out alone," He murmured eventually, before bringing his eyes up to hers, the weight of countless moons of pain showing for a moment in his eyes. "I can't lose you either."

Her own statement, though... Rainstrike's snarled words echoed through his mind. Out of spite, she'd suggested he go and find them himself, and see how he fared in a battle against them. "But maybe... maybe it would be better if someone went out and faced them," He said with a frustrated sigh. "Whatever good left in StarClan knows we need someone to do something."

Maybe that someone should be me. He didn't dare say it aloud, but the thought still rose like a streak of mist from the ground, curling into his mind. The Clan didn't necessarily need him, after all, and he was already marked....

The hiss came from the dark corner where the gray tabby had settled herself. She hadn't bothered to patch the elder's den. Why should she? What was it to her if she got wet? It very well didn't matter. Nothing did. Except revenge. She'd get her revenge, that much was assured. Her beloved tortoiseshell friend did not die in vain. She simply would not allow it. Images flashed through her mind, in such distinct, exact images she could've sworn it was happening all over again.


A growl rose in her throat at the the thought of her niece. Rainstrike was of no kin to her. She was an enemy. Bitter resentment rose up, sorrow lost in a raging sea of anger. Stormpaw had no true kin here. Dacedream had been of truer kin than any cat here. Oakstar had betrayed her. He hadn't exiled-- or better yet, killed-- Rainstrike. He'd made her assist Mossbloom. Mossbloom! Assisting the medicine cat was a task any noble warrior would willingly do. Rainstrike was no noble warrior. She was almost-- not quite, though very close-- as bad as StarClan themselves. Dacedream did not walk with StarClan, no, she walked with true warriors. MoonClan perhaps, as the moon was a symbol of peace. Yes, she decided, StarClan is no longer. MoonClan is where the honorable walk. Finchstar, the noble leader of WindClan-- and oh-so brave, unlike her cowardly father-- walked alongside Dacedream, proclaiming in the name of love, just as Dacedream would have. Love made up every fiber of Dace's body, and Stormpaw would die before she let Dacedream's legacy die.

Legacy.
Would Dacedream even have a legacy? She had kin, yes, but... Vixenpaw-- however much Stormpaw had agreed with her-- was not easy to befriend, and Cherryblossom seemed more interested in she-cat than toms-- much like her mother with Duskrain, she mused--, and Jaydream.. Well, she didn't know the tom very well, but if he was anything like his mother, he was simply wonderful. Who would carry on her legacy? The answer vibrated through her, a single echo with a single answer. I will. She vowed. I will never allow her memory to falter. As long as I have breath in my body, I will tell every kit of her, speak of her at gatherings to come. She will always be remembered.


Memories came flooding back in rivers, choking her until she could scarcely breath. Her heart hurt so badly, she thought it might kill her. She breathed in deeply, shaking as she rose, padding over to Minkstream, Batbite as well, though she may as well not even been there. "They deserve to pay-- in blood." She mewed, blue eyes meeting Minkstream's as if asking him to accept her offer.