Raven's Shadow [Ravenclaw]

Beechface picked her way along the creek, jaws slightly parted as she scanned her surroundings. More and more apparent were signs of growth as the last of the snow melted, and she even spotted a small clump of marigold that was too young to be harvested in a spot untouched by shade. The trees were gaining green leaves again, even. Skyclan's forest was finally starting to recover from both the fire and leafbare, it seemed.

It should have made her cheerful. She should be happy that some semblance of normal life was returning to the forest. The Asylum was gone, her father was back in the clan (not healthy, by any means, but he was alive), and yet...

For every problem that disappeared it was as if three more rose in their place. Dawnhawk wasn't dead after all. Bloodstrike's condition was... Not good. The recent string of injuries with Foxfire and Copperfox. Bloodstrike and Wolfstar weren't talking, and neither were Bloodstrike and Smokefeather. And Smokefeather...

Beechface shook her head. She had no idea what to do about any of it. Maybe Bloodstrike had been right when he'd said he might not be fixable, but did he have to kick Smokefeather when she was down, too? Her mother avoided the medicine den now as well as avoided the nursery. She avoided her own grandkits, even.

Not that Beechface's relationships with her family were any better, really. She was hardly capable of holding the clan together, much less those she should've been closest with.

Stars, her own kits were being raised on a lie. Ravenclaw was living a lie. She'd been so busy she hadn't talked to her poor sister in weeks. Even Wrenspring, she'd hardly interacted with. And the kits... Birdpaw at least was intimidated by Beechface and wouldn't look her in the eye. Not that she could blame her. She had no right to think of the kits she'd given up raising as her own. Sagelight's disappointment had been expected, but it had stung. It stung almost as much as the knowledge of what she'd somehow pulled Ravenclaw into. She was an innocent in all of it, and hadn't deserved any of this.

She pretended it didn't hurt when she saw Ravenclaw and Birdpaw entering the camp with jaws full of prey, or the way Birdpaw looked at her mentor with such trust. Beechface doubted the apprentice would ever look at her that way. She tried to ignore the jealousy, the bitterness, and yet the feeling nagged at her anyways.

She'd given up that right, though, hadn't she?

As if summoned by her thoughts, the breeze carried Ravenclaw's scent. Guilt pricked at her as she caught sight of the dark she-cat up ahead.

Maybe she could slip away without being noticed.

Things were supposed to go back to normal. Things were supposed to be okay. The Asylum had been defeated and banished from their lands, if they were lucky. Ravenclaw herself had been part of the party that had taken them down, and she had helped bring her father back home. These were all great triumphs that she had happily recounted to the kits and apprentices of SkyClan as many times as they could handle. When she was out in the territory alone, however, things weren't quite so good-natured.

The scars the intruders had left on their camp were still worn by the clan. It was especially noticeable in her own family. Her father was a bit unhinged, to put it lightly, and all of her siblings seemed to be at odds with each other for one reason or another. Not that she was any better. Though she wasn't outwardly feuding with Beechface, it was hard to look at her and not think of Wrenspring by her side. The time they had spent apart hadn't made the wounds heal any faster, unfortunately. She could keep pretending that her and Wrenspring were happy together, but they weren't even together. The two of them didn't even know how badly Ravenclaw was hurting. Not that she had told them, but...

Speaking of... Ravenclaw felt her fur standing up on edge as she caught sight of Beechface a short distance away. She must've been gathering herbs, so maybe Ravenclaw hadn't been seen... No, she couldn't hide from her sister forever, no matter how much she might want to. She was a strong SkyClan warrior, right? She couldn't be afraid of any confrontation. Trying to look not aggrieved, she padded over to Beechface. "Out looking for herbs?"

Of course, she'd been spotted. Foxdung. Beechface tried a smile, but even she realized how brittle it was. Ravenclaw probably hated her, anyways.

"Ravenclaw... Hey." She shifted her paws awkwardly. "Trying. At least there are herbs growing now, but there's a lot that are too fragile to be harvested just yet." She huffed. Not that any of the herbs seemed to actually help their father any. What was the point if nothing she did helped? He'd put on weight, but that was it. Time might help the night terrors, but those were quite possibly the very least of Bloodstrike's problems. And using poppy seeds was like trying to stop the river with a twig. The physical pain alone he seemed to be in was hard enough to manage or... Not manage, as the case was. There had to be something Beechface was doing wrong, there had to be something she was missing. As the days dragged on, the worse he seemed to be, and Beechface couldn't figure out what she was doing wrong.

"How've you been? How's... training?" She asked, eyes hesitantly lifting to Ravenclaw's face. Only to feel her heart twist at her sister's expression. Unlike with Bloodstrike, she could guess at exactly what was wrong and she'd bet a fresh quail that she was right. This at least, wasn't Asylum's fault. This was hers.

"Ravenclaw, I-" She began to speak and her voice faltered. What was she thinking? There was nothing she could possibly say to make things right between them, surely. "I'm sorry for the position my own stupidity put you in. You don't deserve any of this and neither do the kits."

"Training?" The last thing she was thinking of in that moment was training, but at least it was a potential distraction that she was all too happy to take. "Oh, it's going well. Birdpaw's going to be a fine warrior. She picks things up so easily. Reminds me of me, actually." She laughed, but her praise was genuine. Birdpaw was a great apprentice, and she couldn't be more proud of her pretend-daughter. Of course, going down that route of thinking reminded her of exactly what was wrong, and two of the three cats involved in this lie. She suddenly felt awkward, and couldn't look at Beechface as she apologized again.

"It's fine," she responded simply, though it clearly wasn't. "As long as none of us tell anyone what's going on, they can find out the truth in StarClan." Each day made it easier for her to not tell anyone about the dreaded secret she was harboring. The one cat she couldn't live with, in the end, was herself. It was living the lie that was killing her, watching Wrenspring walk around, loving another cat: her own sister. Well, one of her fifty sisters, anyway.

"She has a great mentor, Ravenclaw. I'm proud of both of you." Beechface mewed, and she meant it. Beechface had distanced herself, but she'd watched the pair when they came and went from camp, and sometimes caught a glimpse of them out in the forest while she was searching for herbs. She just wished that she didn't have to be so distant. She wished she wasn't so caught up in medicine cat duties, or maybe that she had never been chosen for the position at all. Maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe she could've been the one mentoring an apprentice.

Beechface hated the jealousy she felt towards her sister. It wasn't her fault.

"Is it really?" Beechface couldn't quite hide the aching bitterness in her voice at her sister's transparent lie. Neither of them were particularly good at that (not that she'd ever known Ravenclaw to utter a lie before, she'd always been honest), except for lying about the kits' very existence, apparently. Or maybe the clan was willfully turning a blind eye to it all.

"The kits are better off, I know that. I hardly get a chance to sleep without something else going wrong and requiring my attention. You take better care of them than I ever could, and- " Stars, it hurt, but it was true.

"Still it's not fair for you. I just... wish things hadn't turned out this way." She sighed.

"Yes, it's fine," Ravenclaw again responded tersely, her voice tenser than she meant. Quickly realizing that, she shut her mouth and turned away from Beechface, struggling to get any more words out. "I chose to help both of you. I didn't have to, but I wanted to." She could still remember her rash decision, often regretting it with every fiber of her being. Then she'd have some alone time with Wrenspring, or she'd be with 'her' kits, and she wouldn't feel so regretful. It wasn't all bad. It just could definitely be better. "They're all growing up to be warriors now. It feels like this only happened yesterday." Her voice dropped to a whisper, glancing over at her sister. "It makes me want kits of my own." Of course, the tom she wanted to have kits with was with someone else. She wasn't sure if she could ever love another tom in the clan like she did him.

"I know. You didn't have to and I... Can't thank you enough for that." Beechface said. Her sister wasn't fine, but neither was she, really. And yet, this had become their normal, as painful as it was.

"I keep turning around expecting to see kits in the nursery still. Realizing they're almost warriors..." Beechface shook her head, though a small smile played at her lips. "How quickly do you think dad would claw my ears off for saying it makes me feel old?"

"Considering what's happened since we brought him back? He'd claw your ears off for a lot less than that." Ravenclaw laughed, though it wasn't exactly a mirthful topic. Everyone in SkyClan knew that Bloodstrike wasn't okay. Something had happened when the Asylum had kidnapped him that made him snap in some way. As much as she loved her father, it made it tough to be around him sometimes. "So... how is Wrenspring? Is everything going alright?" She made it sound casual, but she was already mentally berating herself for even bringing him up.

"I wish I knew exactly what they've done to him. Poppy seeds are the only thing that seem to keep the pain manageable and even then it's... Not manageable. He can't live on them forever. He's determined to get out of the medicine den as soon as he can and I don't blame him for that. He's going to need that stars-cursed stubbornness to get through this." Beechface sighed. It was frustrating, both to watch and to be the one dealing with him.

"I've been so busy lately I haven't even gotten a chance to really talk with him. Redfall, dad, Foxfire... Copperfox wound up back in my den after what, a few days? Blossomstep is improving but she won't be leaving my den for a few days either." She couldn't keep the frustration from her voice, though it was clear it wasn't directed at Ravenclaw. "Every time I turn around, it's always something. Stars know Wrenspring handles the stress better than I do."

"Lichenpaw's back and I've hardly said more than a few words to him." He had been Copperfox and Ravenclaw's littermate, her younger (and favorite, when not in Copperfox' hearing) brother. And she'd hardly been able to say a word to the loud apprentice with her duties keeping her tied up. Beechface needed to do better than this, she felt like she was slipping further from her family as the days went on.

Beechface caught sight of a bright flower, and she drifted closer to it. Poppy, of course. She stared at it for a moment with a frown, deeply unhappy with the knowledge that the seeds would be used far too quickly were she to pick them. They were needed though, so she began to carefully harvest what she could of the seeds, wrapping them in a leaf for safekeeping.

"We're some kind of family, that's for sure," Ravenclaw remarked, chuckling to herself. If Beechface knew of how she felt for Wrenspring... Well, it wouldn't be the most damaging thing they had gone through, would it? She sighed softly, knowing that she couldn't reveal it, even if it would feel good to get it off her chest. Even if her feelings towards her sister were complicated to say the least, she knew how important the medicine cat was to the clan, and how much stress she was under. Being selfish would only get Ravenclaw so far, and if it was a detriment to her clan, she just couldn't do it. Not to SkyClan, nor her kits. She swallowed the lump in her throat every time she remembered that little fact.

"We'll recover, though. SkyClan does a lot of that." She had heard from the elders about the many trials that SkyClan had gone through just to be where they were today. None of the other clans knew what it was like. They were survivors like that, and it made them tougher. Maybe more dysfunctional too, but what cat wasn't after what had happened?

Ravenclaw's words earned a snort from the medicine cat. "We're something, alright. There's never a dull moment." She tried to joke but even to her ears it fell flat. Always something, indeed. Beechface wished that she was a normal warrior who didn't have to deal with the stress of caring for the clan. She wished even more that the clan could just catch a break, for things to not go wrong for even a short while.

"You're right, we'll find a way through this, somehow." Beechface hoped, at least. "It's just... Frustrating. I feel like I'm not doing enough, you know?" A paw swiped through the dirt as Beechface was caught up in her own thoughts, her own insecurities.

"You're doing plenty," Ravenclaw reassured her, or perhaps accused her. She wasn't exactly sure herself. "Do you need help bringing any of the poppy seeds back to camp?" It was easy to see what Beechface had been gathering, and equally as easy to know why. It didn't seem to be helping very much, but whatever worked, if only just a little. "We're probably due back anyway."

"Thank you, sis, but I've got these." Beechface responded, lightly brushing her tail over Ravenclaw's flank, a combined gesture of thanks, apology, and comfort, though Beechface wasn't sure her sister wanted any of the three from her.

Beechface carefully picked up the bundle of poppy seeds and turned towards camp. Having a mouthful of herbs would prevent her from sticking her paw in it again, hopefully.

Ravenclaw wanted to say something, but she wasn't sure what. Did she want to apologize for ignoring her sister for awhile? Did she want to unleash her pent-up anger from her longing for Wrenspring? In the end, whatever she truly wanted to do remained unknown and unfulfilled. She just quietly sighed and followed Beechface back to camp, feeling no closer to closure than at any other point before.