life demands a final chapter (c)

The journey home had been long and strenuous, but at the same time Perchstar felt as if it had passed in the blink of an eye... as if the many things that had changed between the panic of the wolf attack and the relief of arriving at home had been sprung upon her by surprise. Obviously, during the many long days of snowblown travel, she had been made aware of Rowansong's condition. She'd assisted Littlepaw in looking after them with what little help she could offer, useless as it was. She'd known. She'd known. So why was it that now, inside the more familiar confines of the medicine den, what she was confronted with felt like new information? What was this sensation that pressed in tight against her from all sides, as constricting as stone walls and suffocating as the bottom of the river, when she saw the strange angle of Rowansong's legs in his overstuffed nest? Why did the scent of herbs make nausea rise up in her throat?

Still, she stepped forward quietly and laid a fat fish at the side of his nest, so he could easily reach it with his mouth if need be. Then she sat down a few mouse-lengths away, curling her tail tightly around white paws in an unconscious gesture he hopefully would not interpret as discomfort. It was--but not with him. It was yet again the bitter self-loathing that she would never quite be able to swallow down, aggregated over her moons of responsibility in the lives of others who suffered and died over and over again, aggravated once more by the pain of someone she cared about. The tom she'd watched grow up from a kit. Whose warrior ceremony she'd missed. Who had leapt in front of a fox and been mangled for it when she was just steps away from stopping him. If she'd been faster... if she'd been stronger... As always, as anything she could have prevented, it was her fault. But Perchstar kept the boiling mess tucked away inside and spoke with the quiet neutrality he would be used to. "How have you been?" she asked, hating the question. But she had to ask. It would only be real if it came from his own mouth. "I know you are in pain, and I am sorry. I just... wish to know if I can help, I suppose. Though I am sure you've heard no shortage of those words recently." Perhaps she ought to have opened with chatting about the weather, or reminiscing. Stars-curse it all. She was no good at conversation. What was she supposed to do when her failures led to such agony? What shorthand in speech existed for "please forgive me, it's all my fault," that wouldn't then turn the attention to her instead of those who actually suffered? Some tired part of her, long-since stifled by her awkward and un-nurtured kithood, whispered that she did not like this responsibility. That she did not like what it led to. But any hope of escape had vanished long ago with her love for the Clan. She would look after it, and protect it, and tear out a little more of her heart each time when she failed. It was her fate.

Perchstar did not know what she had been expecting. Welcome? Appreciation? Still, the way that Rowansong's ears pinned back and his form shied away when she arrived caused something inside her to twist desperately. She shouldn't have come. Of course her presence would only make things worse. His response to her asinine question was harsh, but deserved. Moons of training kept her face from breaking as her internal resolve crumbled, but she could not quite stop her eyes from gluing themselves to the floor. She couldn't bear the look in his eyes, the hatred. She had been absent for the most important moments of his life, and then failed not only to save Egretswoop, but to keep him from throwing himself after her. Too slow. Always too slow, and too weak, and too foolish to save anyone.

“Does a cat have to die to justify when you’re doing a poor job? Well how about all of the other cats who have died under your watch, then, are they a sign of you being a poor leader? Like Cloverheart, or all these queens that keep up and dying when you’re around, or even your apprentice, what was it, Beetlepaw?”

Many more could be added to the list. She added them, mentally, daily. The numbers kept growing. When she finally died for the last time, nothing would be left of her but a dirge of the names she'd failed. Perhaps they would line up in the stars to berate her for her incompetence.

For now, she would have to berate herself.

Perchstar could not meet his eyes. She could not stand herself--not that she was here, not that she could not help, not that she could not go back in time and fix every single misstep. "There's no need to apologize," she said quietly. "I should not have intruded. I did not mean to imply pity, or any such thing. If there is nothing I can do to assist, I would not want to impose. I imagine that my presence brings you no positive emotion." Why was she rambling? She ought to just leave. Frustrated with herself, she flicked her shredded ear several times, but to no avail shaking off the unwanted sensation of writhing, clawing guilt eating her up from inside. She managed to tear her eyes up from the ground briefly, but caught sight of the fish she'd brought as a gift, which only worsened the bile threatening to rise up from her throat. What had she been thinking? Useless. "I know it means little," she whispered, helpless to stop herself. "but I am glad that you live. I know such words do not help. I just... If I had lost you too, after everything..." Upset, she lashed her tail. This was only going to make it worse. "I could not save Egretswoop. I could not save you, either. And now I can do nothing but offer empty platitudes. I'll leave." Heat rose up within her pelt, as it always did when she let her mask slip even slightly. And unlike Poppyshine, Rowansong was in no state to be patient with her everlasting failures. She should leave, and quickly. Now he would know her for the fraud she really was. Torment clouded her ice-melt eyes as she forced herself to her feet, in the direction where she knew the exit would be. After all these moons... why haven't I improved?

It hurt. Everything hurt again, with the agony she'd never been able to completely soothe and that always rose back up when she needed it least. Perchstar couldn't even see the exit, but the only coherent thought amidst the sudden spiral of self-hatred was to retreat, to run like a coward back to her den. To go curl up against the solid wall of reeds like a kit and sob until the emptiness subsided, however briefly. It was a horrible reflex and she hated it and she hated herself but it was the only way to get herself back to normal in the slightest. But--

"Aunt- Aunt Perch, wait."

Her paws froze. Not of her own volition, she paused, as if a sudden block of ice had formed around her and completely subsumed her ability to move. Aunt. The term she'd heard once or twice from Poppyshine in a moment of teasing, from Sprucebark in a rare sentence of affection, but not from Rowansong. Never from Rowansong, whose ceremony she'd missed, whose space she'd never quite belonged in, whose life she'd now ruined. To hear the term--so halting and unfamiliar--tumbling from his mouth felt like a physical blow, leaving her stunned. It shouldn't have. She didn't deserve to be addressed in such a way. Without the honorific even, with a familiarity implied that she'd never done the work to merit. Unjustified. But it was an invisible wall in front of her trembling legs, and the damage was done when she heard the way Rowansong spoke next, his voice wavering with a sound that even she could recognize as hysterically repressed sobs.

Once she regained control of her treacherous limbs, Perchstar whirled to see her best friend's son--her nephew--reduced to a weeping, begging wreck. What little of his body he could control remained outstretched towards her in a gesture of desperation that stabbed sharply red-hot into her chest. She'd done something wrong again, she must have, for the apologies to flow endlessly from his mouth as if his very chance at life were abandoning him. As it had. As she had. Something had attached itself to her heart and was pulling at it cruelly, threatening to rip it from the very cavity in which it had always so uneasily rested. Was there anywhere in this world she could go that she would not just cause pain to everyone that she loved? Love... that was the word. The one that tore her open every night and clumsily patched some semblance of her together to walk ghostlike through the world of her responsibilities. The reason that she could not stop torturing herself over the lives lost, the friends lost, the eyes that would never look at her again.

She did not recognize the strange, half-strangled sound that emerged stillborn from her throat, nor did she remember the journey from her former position to her current one, but within what seemed like moments Perchstar was lying on the floor directly next to Rowansong. Her head rested on top of his, pushing it down with a gentle force into her paws which lay beneath it, and as much of her weight as she could bear pressed directly into his fur with a silent need to be there. What little self-control remained made sure that she stayed away from his injured areas and did not hurt him further. That was the last thing he needed. She'd hurt him enough. Her every move was the wrong one, her every motion made everything worse, but if she would rather claw open the earth and bury herself in it than hurt his already-too-damaged form. Her paws were wet already, dampened by tears he shouldn't have had to shed. A similar burning sensation began to rise in the back of her throat. But she was there, and she was there.

"I will not go. I am here. I'm sorry." Her voice, muffled in his fur, was a far cry from the neutral tone she'd attempted at the beginning of the conversation. It held a husky roughness, a rawness from suppressed loathing that she'd always had to swallow down. "I'm sorry... I'm sorry." She couldn't see him anymore, not with her eyes screwed shut and buried in his copper fur like this, but at least it meant he couldn't see her either. He couldn't see the shaking of her shoulders or the grief-betraying way her ears pinned back on her head. "It was wrong of me to pin my losses on you. I should not have said anything. I try not to say anything because I know it will hurt, but I did and I hurt you still. I am sorry, Rowan." Perhaps she should have let the embrace speak for itself and should not have spoken at all, but there was little reason to hold any more back at this point. She could not possibly be worse than she already had. If there was even a small chance she could soothe the raw terror she'd briefly seen on his features... "None of this is your fault. My grief was not caused by you--I mean, I worry for you and for your wellbeing, but my... my indisposition is not solely your doing." A shaky exhale ruffled his fur. There was little way to regain control of her mask now. It had slipped away from the interaction completely, for better or for worse. Likely the latter, judging by the heartbreaking way that the previously strong and confident tom whose side she pressed into was hiccupping and sniffling. She hated the way her voice sounded when she spoke--not an ounce of calm poise, nothing but her own ugly, hoarse, whispering voice. "I just... I know how it feels. To hate yourself. So please, please do not. You are loved. You are so loved." Loved with the fire of all the stars. Loved with an agony that threatens to bite my heart open with sharp fangs even now.

Of course, nothing she said could help. Of course, she was only making things worse. Perchstar knew that, and yet she could not leave. Not only because her legs were refusing to obey her commands, but because leaving Rowansong alone in this state would be an unkindness even if he hated her presence. He didn't, judging by the awful pleading in his tone, but he should have. He should have. And the words he spoke, the ones he forced out past the sobs that he should not have had to cry, before jolting out of the embrace as if physically struck, pierced straight to her heart. It was as if the words he spoke into her ruff of fur were being forced directly into her chest and attacking what little light still lived there.

"Don't tell me how loved I am. It does not change anything... It does not mean I should be."

"I love you, Aunt Perch."

Before she knew it, her own eyes began to burn, echoing the dampness from Rowansong's tears that now stained her fur. She blinked fiercely, willing the physical representation of her emotions away. She was here to give comfort, not to receive it. What little of her self-control still remained would not allow it. But hearing those words, her first instinct was to protest. To fight back, even as he was now fighting against her. How pathetic, that they were both trying so hard to strike each other with their love first. It seemed he had won though, with his insistence, even through the agony wracking his frame. He was in such pain, so much more pain than her, and yet here she was once again making it about herself. Always about herself. How had this happened? Why did this happen every time she bared her soul? Why were those she loved always so intent upon tearing into the slightest opening she made, forcing themselves inside to direct sharp fangs at her self-loathing and causing irreversible collateral damage in the process?

There was little she could say. She could not answer his queries, as  heavy as they were. "I know," was all she could manage, her voice still rough as a mother's tongue. "I know. It... it does not make it better. It does not change anything, because--because there is nothing to change. Nothing to fix. A moment... and nothing more. But you are allowed the moment. We are allowed. Even for a moment... to feel." It felt odd, but she was saying it to herself as much as to Rowansong. Normal cats did not hole up their feelings until they collapsed, like this. She ought to have been more like Poppyshine and experienced her grief with grace, so that she could then have enough space in her heart to carry others' as well without destroying herself. To open herself up was difficult, and vulnerable, and it always ached so horribly and it always made her feel worse afterward. But... what if after the pain, however long it took, was when it could get better?

Perchstar spoke again, almost thinking aloud, managing to bite off words past the bitter coating of her throat. "It hurts, but... it is like the cleaning of a deep, open wound. It stings, at first. But afterward... there is the chance of healing. Not guaranteed, but a chance." She exhaled, shakily, almost laughing at herself but there was no mirth contained in the action. "And sometimes you feel that your heart is so scarred and so, so ugly, that there is no point in cleaning yet another wound. What is the point. Why not just let it ache. But... it doesn't work." And it didn't; she knew that. In her better moments she knew that her coping mechanism was not an effective one. Only now in offering such to Rowansong did she truly understand it for herself. "That wound grows to canker and... and reopen the others. It worsens everything. You have to care for it... eventually." She knew that such understanding would fade immediately in the next instance of such a wound upon herself. But with her nephew in such torture, she could not help but try and impress the knowledge that she had staunchly refused upon himself. "So if... if you need anyone there, for however long... even if it hurts. Even if you do not like yourself, even if you do not wish to ask for it. Please know that I will not think less of you. How can I, if I am worse? I will not judge. I am incapable of judging you."

How many of her Clanmates assumed that her unfeeling façade was the truth? How many of them believed that she was cold, and maybe angry or judgmental, and therefore allowed her to be nothing but a distant authority figure? It was an image she had cultivated, on purpose. But maybe... maybe it had been a mistake. It was far too late to change now, but perhaps all of this torment was completely of her own making. Perchstar drew herself in closer to Rowansong as if to push away the thought. How hypocritical, to blame herself while she attempted to help another. Her head itched incessantly. The ruff of her fur was completely dampened, now. But if this had helped at all, rather than making it worse... if this could be the catalyst for another, such as Poppyshine, to truly help and heal... it was worth it. "So... if I can help--and by help I do not mean to fix you, but to simply be... like this, to offer myself in any way... then I will. For no other reason than that you have asked me to. Since I love you, also. Rowan. Know this." Because she did. She loved him, and she always had, and even though she had not spent much time with him because they had both always been so busy and she had assumed his hatred of her, she still did. She loved so deeply and so much that it destroyed her, and those she had lost plummeted what little of her emotional health she'd retained into an endless oblivion. And yet she could not stop loving, no matter how hard she tried, so she had to live like this. Had to press others to her chest and not even let free the tears brimming close behind her eyes. "It is too hard to ask an old cat like me to change her ways," she murmured. "But perhaps... perhaps, if we try... we could change together."