What Could've Been (Closed)

Daily, Shyfawn woke up, most mornings with her joints aching. The cold leaf-bare and stressful environment seemed to make her aches worse. Along with her joints, the elderly queen found herself having to squint if she wished to see something farther away. Her vision was deteriorating and she knew this but Softbreeze was stressed enough. The poor scrap was practically her stardaughter, as Shyfawn was good friends with Graybriar before her demise. She didn't want Softbreeze wasting precious herbs on an elder like her, so she didn't mention the issue to her or Smallbean.

Downtuft was on patrol with Brookpaw and Dayspring, along with Deerhawk, and so Shyfawn looked around, a rabbit sitting at her paws. Squinting her blue eyes, she looked around the clearing, catching a glance of a tortoiseshell face. Ah! Sagepaw! The tortoiseshell tom was a lonesome little scrap, perhaps he could do with a nice meal and chat. "Youngster, come on over and share this rabbit with me, hmm?" She chirped, purring as she scooted over to make room for the young apprentice (or so she thought) to join her.

When the buzzing tension at last overwhelmed him, Pyrik retreated to the moor. A moon ago, he would’ve thought he’d lost his mind. Even now, he could only guess why he’d chosen to run here, of all places. Learning the truth of his origins hadn’t made WindClan easier to bear—any of the cats trying to burn holes in him with their glares could have been a parent, a sibling—but at least he knew what to expect.

Or so he’d thought, until the first cat to call for Thalia’s execution invited him to eat with her. Pyrik hesitated. Maybe Shyfawn had meant someone else. (No, her eyes were unmistakably on him.) Maybe she’d somehow forgotten who he was. (He knew he should have worn his fox pelt—) Maybe Downtuft was lurking nearby, ready to spring the second a threat approached. (Possible; likely, even.) But questioning it could lead to conflict, and…he was tired. Tired enough to walk headfirst into a trap without fighting it, hoping against hope it could be anything else. He sucked in a breath. “That…that sounds great. Um—thanks, Shyfawn.”

The invitation remained. Uncertainty in every step, Pyrik padded across camp to settle down beside the elder, acutely aware of the dried mud trapped in his pelt. His gaze drifted to the rabbit. What was he supposed to say? None of the words pushing at the base of his tongue were meant for WindClan ears. Any ears, really. “…I’m, uh. Not that good at hunting these yet. They’re faster than I thought they’d be.”

Ah.

Maybe she should see Softbreeze for some celandine, after all.

Too late, she realized this in fact was not Sagepaw. Nor was he WindClan at all. She'd just invited an Asylum cat to share tongues. How fun, she thought dryly. Shyfawn suddenly wished with a desperation that Downtuft were here; what if the Asylum cat got angry and attacked her? She couldn't defend herself, let alone her Clanmates when they'd inevitably try to help her only to cause a full blown war.

Maybe she could just leave; tell him it was an accident. But as she looked into Pyrik's eyes, now that he was up close her vision was a lot clearer, she felt a prickle of unease. The hues didn't quite match, but in that moment, Shyfawn saw Violetpaw in him. He was uncertain and lonely and-- stars above he looked hardly more than a kit. "Harebrains, every last one of them. Sending kits into war. No wonder you don't know anything! Most apprentices fight only a fox or a border skirmish at most." Shyfawn clucked, moreso to herself, clicking her tongue slightly as she examined him. "With your scrawny frame you'd make a decent moor runner I suppose, although you could use a bit more muscle.." The nursery queen mused.

She slid the rabbit to him; truth be told she wasn't very hungry. She just wanted someone to talk to. How different this tom's life would've been had he grown up in the Clans. "You've something on your mind. Would you like to talk about it, Pyrik, right?" She offered.

Shyfawn had maternal instincts that liked to activate whenever they pleased. The uncertainty in Pyrik's eyes had sparked something in her, and she hadn't been able to resist the sympathy. Young cats always were her weakness.

The old she-cat tensed, and Pyrik’s heart dropped right through his paws into the moor itself. A mistake. This was a mistake. Shyfawn had realized the same thing—unless it had been a trap from the start—and now she was sounding the alarm, calling WindClan down. He jerked upright, knowing full well he had nowhere to go. This whole forest was caught between the Clans and the liars who’d raised him.

Shyfawn looked at him. Stone-silent, he looked back. As he watched, her expression shifted to something so odd on a WindClan face that his mind couldn’t make sense of it; it wound itself around the rising panic and squeezed it down to nothing. Pyrik sank to the ground. Shyfawn was speaking now, words his ears processed halfway. No wonder the Clans can’t feed themselves, they don’t even train their kits. He recalled the fox’s fangs tearing into his sides. Maybe it wasn’t foolishness that kept WindClan’s young in the nursery.

A slightly sandy rabbit appeared at his forepaws. Pyrik glanced up with a question in his eyes (wasn’t this supposed to be Shyfawn’s?), but pulled it closer anyway, not wanting to be rude. Any peace between them was as tenuous as spider silk. He had to tread carefully. That, and, though the thought of eating right now made his stomach curl in on itself, rabbit wasn’t half bad. “Right.” The gravity of Shyfawn’s offer hit him, then. He blinked, startled. “A-are you sure? I mean, I’m—you’re—” A cat from a Clan who'd lost kits to Asylum. Pyrik’s mouth snapped shut, realization dawning. For once, WindClan’s hatred could work in his favor; no warrior would dare tell Eris or the captains that their secret was out.

...But Shyfawn would never believe him. No one would. They’d doubted Thalia while the wounds on her face were still bleeding, and self-defense was far less outlandish than this. Pyrik wilted. Softly, he addressed the rabbit: “I…I can’t. I’m…not sure I know how.” At least he could be honest about that. Moving his attention from the rabbit to the faraway gorse walls, he hunched his mud-spattered shoulders and was quiet…until a spark lit in his brain, and a question burst out of him like a fox from the bushes. “Have you ever, um, met anyone who looked like me?”

Stupid. So stupid even he could see it. Even if Shyfawn had met his family, they weren’t his anymore. They’d stopped being his the moment Goldengale’s corpse hit the sand. But the words were out in the open, and though it would more likely hurt than help, if it did anything at all, he wanted, needed an answer. With a hard swallow, Pyrik raised his head toward Shyfawn, blue eyes worn, yet wide.

Raising an eyebrow, she'd chuckled softly, "You don't what? Know how to eat a rabbit?" Shyfawn quipped, amusement in her soft eyes. Yes, she was sure now. His uncertainty was like Violetpaw's. "Cats that look like you? Hmm, y'know, I can't quite place a paw on it, but you do remind me of Violetpaw. She's lean like you, the way your ears curve, fur length. Your pelt colors don't match at all, but you've got some similarities. We found little Violetpaw on the moors when she was an infant, not even properly weaned yet. She took to Softbreeze instantly, viewed her almost like a mom." She broke off with a laugh, recalling the horror of Downtuft when he received his first apprentice.

"Hah! You should've seen the sheer terror on Downtuft's face when Violetpaw was named his apprentice! She grew on him, I think. He was scared of disappointing her, but he as a better mentor than he gave himself credit for." The elder molly mused, blinking fondly, "I consider him and his sister as my kits, really. Goldengale's loss didn't just affect them, I thought of her as a daughter myself. But I'm old, death is apart of life, and I know my time in WindClan will end soon anyways, I've lived a good life in my home Clan and when I go to StarClan I'll see all my loved ones," blinking,the Queen seemed to realize she was rambling.

"Oh! Sorry, I got off topic. We were talking about Violetpaw, hmm? Poor scrap, she got run over by a monster. No herbs would've helped her, though Softbreeze tried desperately." A sigh escaped her maw, and sadness clouded her eyes for a heartbeat. Shaking her head to clear away those thoughts, she continued, "Now! No need to muse on that! You remind me of some other cat, but I can't quite remember his name..."

She trailed off, eyes clouded in thought as she tried to recall his name. "He was a tortoiseshell, and I distinctly remember his mother. Dacedream, poor child didn't deserve what happened to her, Dappleshine and Raventail were devastated. She was ThunderClan, you know. Her son... Oh! Jaydream! That was his name. I heard from some ThunderClanner that he met an unfortunate end by Rainstrike. But your paws and face look like his. Why do you ask? I'm sure there's a reason you want to find cats that look like you, in the Clans no less?" Shyfawn mused, folding her paws neatly as she hummed the inquiry, curiosity begging for answers.