trust the devil never to let go [solo]

Thalia loved this time of year. Most of the flowers had returned after a long and peaceful slumber, and while some wouldn't blossom for a while yet she had no shortage of choices for her favored pastime. Weaving flower crowns was something she had done since her earlier Asylum days, and it carried with it a fond sense of nostalgia. Memories of days gone by, bittersweet as they now were.

The simple motions were something familiar to her now, after so long using them to calm her anxieties and making them as gifts for her friends and Clanmates.

Fourtrees was, perhaps, a strange place to be doing this; but it was a place that, for Thalia, was steeped more in blood and violence and traumatic memories than anything else. It was a beautiful day, and she was out in broad daylight (most of ShadowClan was sound asleep in their camp at the moment, save for the day guards and perhaps a handful of others, but Thalia still liked to enjoy sunny days on occasion- she hadn't been born to the night, and sometimes she'd had enough of it); and besides, her worst memories had all taken place at night.

If she wanted to banish them, replace bitter with sweet and sharp with soft, then it made sense that she should do so in the light of day.

It wasn't so bad, when she could open her eyes and see the grass and the Great Rock and the trees; and not the cages and the bodies and the blood.

There had been so much blood.

But now there was grass, and there were flowers, and there was the peace that came with being alone but not lonely. She hadn't known that sort of peace before ShadowClan, had been so dependent on others that she couldn't stand on her own four paws without a familiar face to hide behind. Even now, she shied away from the other Clans more often than not (afraid that someone would see her as the broken, twisted thing she saw in her darkest dreams; afraid that they would see her as she was and decide that she hadn't done enough, that she couldn't do enough, to atone for her past).

Still, she had chosen her path. To embrace her history and her birthright, instead of shunning it. To be Thalia, the name they gave her. She couldn't have been Laurelkit- a stranger to herself, someone known and loved but that she could not remember; she never would have been the child they lost- and each time her steps carried her back to ThunderClan (because, by some twist of fate, it had happened more than once) no one recognized her now. She could have been someone new, though, and instead she had chosen to be who she already was.

While deep in your heart, you may wish to follow me- I beg of you... Do not.

Roe was the cat who had been an inspiration to her, time and again, and it was his words she was following when she chose that path.

Try to right our wrong, just a little.

"Have I done enough?"

The words were whispered on the wind, carried away on the breeze. The clearing was empty, except for herself and the grass and the flowers and all of the blood that had been spilled here seasons before.

"I wish I knew the answer."

She had chosen ShadowClan, because their leader had shown her kindness when she hadn't thought she was deserving of it; had saved her life when she was an enemy, not just a stranger. Flintstar- Flintshard, eventually, but he had always been Flintstar to her; he was her leader in a way that Murkystar and Froststar and Nightstar- as much as she respected each of them in their own way- hadn't been. Even after his retirement, even after his death, she still held him in such high regard- he had taught her how to fight again, when she refused to be defined by the way she was taught to strike to kill, when she refused to let another innocent cat die because she lacked self control.

Only then, when she could defend cats of the forest as fiercely as any of those who were born or raised to do so without fearing that she might lose control, could she truly call herself a warrior of ShadowClan.

I think I know what I want to do now.

And I think that if I want to try to fix what's been broken... I have to stay. I know I want to try.

And she could hear her younger self; could hear her own questions carried on the breeze in that smaller, less confident voice.

That younger Thalia, the one who is both wide-eyed and broken-hearted, who doesn't yet know who or what she is, asks, "Did you do it? Did you fix it? Did you make a difference?"

And she doesn't have an answer. She doesn't think there is one. Asylum is little more than a distant memory, a story told from elders to kits, to those who didn't live through it. So does it matter that she's still trying to be what they should have been, when so few are left who remember what they were?

Rookfire knows, because he lived it. Pineblossom knows, because she asked, and because she's the closest thing to family that Thalia has left in ShadowClan.

(Pineblossom doesn't know about the blood on her paws, the death that wasn't the Dark Forest, the reason she still tries to avoid WindClan at Gatherings. Neither of them know about Cleft, because she won't speak a word of what almost happened that night to anyone but Katana or Emberleap and both of them are gone.)

For a long time, Thalia hadn't known how to stand on her own. She had hidden behind Katana, behind Roe, behind Emberleap. But each of them had left, and she couldn't hate them for it.

Just like she couldn't hate the Asylum cats who had raised her along with the rest of the stolen kits, who had lied to them and made them what they were. They had still raised her, had loved her in their own twisted way. They had taught her right from wrong, and even if they hadn't been quite right, that didn't change the fact that they had made her who she was.

They had made her a killer, a broken-hearted thing, but they had also made her Thalia; and she couldn't imagine being anything else.

Did you make a difference?

"I don't know. Does it matter?"

She was talking to the wind, she knew, but she had to ground herself somehow. It was so easy to get lost in her own memories, to lose sight of herself.

She had learned to handle the predator pelts that had once been their signature, but there were no pelt wards in ShadowClan. There was just Thalia, and those who chose to learn from her.

Most of them didn't even know who she was, or where she had come from. To the majority of ShadowClan, she was just Thalia; a warrior with a strange name who had been around longer than most.

"...I'd like to believe I've done some good."

She didn't know if that was true or not. She didn't think there was any way to know for sure.

What was she meant to do? She certainly wasn't going to question the cats around her about whether she'd somehow made their lives better or worse.

She gathered herbs for the medicine den, she gathered flowers for her friends. She helped out where she could around camp.

In her own way, she provided for ShadowClan.

"Who are you? Did you ever answer that?"

There was that voice of her younger self again; with the question that had haunted her for so long after learning that her life had, in many ways, been a lie.

"It took a long time, but... I did. I know now."

Thalia was a lot of things.

Child of Asylum.

Warrior of ShadowClan.

Most importantly...

"Someone who likes learning, and teaching, and flowers."

Most importantly, she was just Thalia.

A finished flower crown lay at her paws, and she began the work of twisting together another. Maybe she would give this one to Burdockroot, along with the herbs she'd gathered. She wasn't sure the medicine cat would wear it, but that didn't matter as much as the thought behind it.

"I kept the name my family gave me, but I'm the one who chose what I wanted to be. When I decided I wanted to reclaim their legacy, I had the chance to define it for myself: knowledge, peace, kindness. Everything we should have stood for. As long as I keep to those ideals, I don't think it really matters if anyone knows why. No one else can decide who you are; you have to figure it out for yourself."

There weren't always easy answers, but she had come to understand that it was just part of life. Things were rarely simple, even the ones that seemed that way on the surface.

Fourtrees would always be a place that left a bitter taste on her tongue, she would always see it in her nightmares drenched in blood and the overwhelming scents of fear and death. But she could come here and weave flowers in the daylight, and she could see that life carried on past the things she couldn't forget.

The chill of winter would continue to give way to new life in spring-

And with each passing day she, too, would find new ways to grow.