Not Your Fault, But Mine [closed]

Coming over the slope, Galloway felt all the breath escape his lungs. So, it was true. He had hoped it was all a miserable coincidence. He had hoped that he would feel no flickering flame of recognition as his eyes adjusted to the new landscape. These prayers went unanswered. The scent alone came back to him in an explosion, and he knew that he had not been lied to, nor had he heard them all wrong, nor was he projecting his own fears. Not in the slightest.

Speaking with the local menagerie over the past moon, mostly twoleg toys and scrappy barn cats, the tom had learned much about the forest that lay beyond the misty mountain range. Laying by riversides and in haybales, Galloway shared stories from his journey with whoever would listen. In exchange for a meal and a companion for a lonesome evening, any cat would spin him a thread of their own. If that cat was a spritely she-cat, he might even stay for a second lonesome evening (or, in the case of one molly, a quarter-moon). That was how he lived: chasing threads, pausing only for rest, and coming up with nothing. No cat that he encountered in all his ventures had even heard of the Asylum. None of them knew the significance of the pelt he wore.

Oh, what a pelt indeed. Galloway had grown to the size of his father and then some, and with his new stature came the need for a pelt. He lost track of how many pieces of prey he butchered practicing the ancient art. It took him almost all season to perfect his skill and learn the tricky anatomy of the animals he encountered. Of course, it was only fitting that the pelt he wore now would be his only true trophy.

---

The baying of a hunting dog was unmistakable, but this one was shrill… juvenile. A hound with great big flopping ears and nasty, frothing teeth was chasing him and one of his many companions away from the shed where they were stowing away for the night. Galloway felt the heat of its breath on his mottled tail, twisting as he tried to outmaneuver it. At some point between his vision blurring and his heart leaping out of his chest, it occured to him that a dog this young was bound to be stupid. The tom cut to the left, sending his paws out in front of him as far as they would reach, anticipating a break in the chase as the dog caught its footing to. Galloway choked on his own ragged breath, scrambling through a wire fence which separated the woods, which were twoleg hunting grounds, from the mother of all Thunderpaths. Four monsters wide, the Thunderpath was nothing like any he had seen. He knew that as soon as his paws touched the black rock that it may be his certain end. Him or me, the scout finally decided, and he commanded his haunches to send him, shut-eyed, across the path. Galloway's gut flipped at the sound of a monster's shriek just behind him, but his feet did not falter.

Slamming his flank into the guardrail at the edge of the Thunderpath, Galloway waited, embracing the dark haze of his closed eyelids before him. The tom dared not open them for several terrible moments, convinced that if he did, he would see a set of yellow canines around his throat.

When he opened them, he saw nothing but a hardly twitching body and a smear of crimson behind it. Me, then.

---

That was all a few moons behind him now. His beautiful tawny-white-and-brown pelt was brushed daily, ears kept to a velvety softness. He was especially fond of the structure he had given the head, which was reinforced with dried vines and sticks. He brushed the head onto his shoulders with a swipe of his paw and swallowed the thorny feeling that was accumulating around his throat.

Grazing the territories with a watchful eye, Galloway identified the swamp where his life shifted course. From the day he left, he assumed his destiny was to rejoin the Asylum as their scout. He would often daydream about the day where their mighty leader would announce, “Galloway, he who has traveled the endless wilderness to find his way, will be the scout captain of our newest colony.” Now, it felt like a kittish fantasy. It was loathsome. If his wily paws and keen nose would bring him all the way back to the beginning, then maybe he was never meant to find it in the first place. He must have walked around the world and back. Galloway collected his breath back into his lungs and pulled his dog-head back onto his crown. At a moment’s notice, he had decided the course of the rest of his life. At the very least, he could question the locals with more efficiency than he might have at a younger age. Then, he could set back out on course to one of the many lands he had inhabited before. There were surely half a dozen she-cats who would be pleasantly surprised to see him again. Hopefully, he had no little scraps of fur running around to be responsible for…

The tomcat shuffled down the beaten path made by medicine cats before him, and when all other wonderings had finally abandoned him, the questions he dreaded had a clear path to the front of his consciousness. How long had it been? Could Hyacinth still be here?

Walking through the tall grass of the moor made him uneasy and filled his stomach with sloshing bile. Every noise and aroma was deeply unpleasant. He couldn’t bear to walk any farther. At least, if nothing else, he’d find good shelter what was left of the Asylum’s bustling camp.

Gentle pawsteps nearby caused Hyacinth’s ears to perk up, honing in on the dreadfully unfamiliar gait that shoved through the fresh, tall grasses. It wasn’t often that she was tasked with guarding the camp, as it wasn’t on her list of duties as a prowler. However, if it meant her children got an extra blink or two to rest their weary bones, she’d do it in a heartbeat. Amberdawn’s pelt was more frequently used as a nest-liner, but the she-cat supposed when guarding for intruders (or even predators, despite the fact that they’d been fewer and more far between in recent moons) her neatly groomed pelt was more effective than her usual badger pelt.

All her focus was on the pawsteps that grew nearer and nearer, and eventually got so close that she dropped into a low crouch and scanned the surrounding area. She moved quietly so that she was strategically hidden just behind a thickened shrub, enough that she could easily peek beside or underneath to see whoever was approaching. Soon enough, a tri-colored pelt that looked almost like some sort of hunting dog was within eye-sight, and Hyacinth narrowed her chartreuse colored eyes as much as she could to see what it was. Whatever it was, it was… Off. It had an odd gait and seemed to have a weird shape to it. She didn’t have long to ponder this, though, as it was coming toward camp at a brisk walk. If she waited any longer, it would be far too close for her comfort. A quick leap and shove off of her hind legs landed her almost directly on top of the creature, and she bowled it over onto it’s side and sunk her claws in for a death-tight grip. Her eyes widened as the pelt loosed beneath her claws, though, and she fought to find purchase anywhere without slipping. Eventually she felt her claws sink into a warm pelt, and felt the slow seeping of blood around where they sunk in. Staring down at the creature below, it didn’t take long for her to notice that the hood of this dog pelt had come loose to reveal the face of an all-too-familiar cat below. Panting, she mewed, ”Is… Is that you? I thought you were dead!” She still hung on tightly, as much as she could, for the off-chance that she was speaking to a complete stranger. The resemblance had to be too good to be true.

He hardly noticed her, the strange cat that assaulted him. By the time he caught the glint of her iris she had set herself upon him, convinced that he was some predator coming to lay waste to whatever group had seemingly taken refuge in the camp of the great Arcane Asylum. She was stronger than him by far, built tough and big as he was; it seemed like she was bursting from her pelt at the seams. He couldn't leap away fast enough.

Galloway hit the ground with a crunch as the air left his lungs and an involuntary, gurgling cry left with it. His hind legs kicked off the dirt in practiced reflex, but twisting took more effort than it was worth with the bruise developing along the length of his ribcage. The scout clenched his eyelids and every muscle along his neck, so that by some miracle he might be spared her deadly fangs. His beautiful, thick-scruffed pelt was what saved him. As soon as she felt his pelt slip away she was diving back in, hardly phased by his gruesome covering. The tortoiseshell felt hot fire trickle up his spine; he had forgotten what it was like to lose a battle. Many of the loners he encountered had never had formal training. Their backyard scrapping over meals was nothing compared to a sanctum strike. He overpowered almost every cat he encountered. With terror, he recalled his kithood, bested by all his siblings at one point or another. This time, he was really going to pay for it.

"Okay! Okay! Stop! I'm not a dog!" he spat, face pinned to the ground. There was nothing he couldn't try to talk his way out of. "You gave me plenty warning!"

Is… Is that you?

Galloway half-chuckled, half-gasped. "Who's 'you?' You know many toms with dead dogs on their backs? ...You've still got your claws in me, sunshine."

He craned his neck, biting the inside of his cheek to distract from the aching in his flank. Her pelt was slipping off, too, revealing a calico beneath with eyes that nearly matched the yellow-green of his own. For a beat there was no sound between them but their labored breathing, and Galloway dared not interrupt it, as if she might disappear in a cloud of smoke if he moved even a muscle. Hyacinthia.

"I guess I am," he breathed. "By the Asylum itself, you never left... Your shoulder, show me your shoulder. Show me your rank."

At the tom’s response to her question, Hyacinth feigned shock and rolled her eyes, muttering a quick, ”You’d be surprised.” She slowly unsheathed her claws at the mention that they were still, in fact, buried beneath the loner’s pelt. Once a beat had passed and it seemed like he wasn’t going to lash out against her once more, she stepped off as gently as she could to the cold ground underpaw. Unblinking eyes stared back at the tom in disbelief, whiskers nearly trembling. No, she was better than that. Swallowing her shock and utter disbelief, she shrugged her pelt off her shoulders, a heavy thud sounding between them as it hit the dirt. A cool breeze ruffled her fur, enough that a slender scar on her shoulder glinted in the rays of sun that caught her long tufts of fur.

”So many moons… I thought you’d died long ago. I thought… I thought it was just me. You just… disappeared, without a word. Where have you been, Galloway?” Hyacinth could feel a lump forming in her throat as she stared at him, four paws rooted into the earth; unmoving.

Galloway rolled onto his side, finally released from Hyacinth's thorny grip. It took some time for his chest to stop hammering, begging him to get up and run, and he passed those ample few seconds by shedding his pelt completely and taking stock of his sister's appearance, more weathered and mature than when he had left her. She was marked by something different now. Her characteristic bratty petulance was like a shadow on her features and no longer the mainstay. He thought that he might look different too, without the furrowed brow of a hothead know-it-all. That part of him was tucked safely away, under layers of other sediment he had accumulated. They were both so unlike the other that it made Galloway feel sick, but no sicker than the assault of questions she asked him.

He tried to hide how the line of questioning made him flinch. There was no worldly explanation for the things he had done, except that he was young and an idiot. "I lost Kirabo. I found our sister, but she was changed. They took her and made her into something else. I just couldn't be here anymore. I felt like we were gonna wander in circles forever. I didn't think I'd be gone all that long before I came back to get you. I didn't think you'd even notice, that's how quick I thought I could be. But in all these moons, I never even got as much as a whiff of the Asylum. Not one cat I talked to could give me anything that didn't lead me right back here."

No longer content to sit and sulk, Galloway got up and shook out his fur. There was something left unspoken, that he glossed over. He cleared his throat, "She was going by Rosethorn, in the clan Tavora was born in. She challenged me, gave me that whole 'Warrior Code' speech, and I defeated her. She had... about the emotional fortitude of a pelt-ward. I brutalized her." This was the thing Galloway never spoke of, though he'd shared a lifetime's worth of secrets with moonhigh companions. It felt different, to say the words out loud to someone who might truly understand. He chewed on the insides of his cheeks, lost in some kind of thought and the intense discomfort of their pause of silence.