private at my beck and call // sedgepounce

[cottonsprig]

When was the last time they spoke to one another?

Moons and moons ago, she feels. Despite living together for most, if not all, of their lives... Cottonsprig cannot discern a proper conversation between her and the white-mottled tom that occurred recently. Maybe a passing greeting, or small talk to fill the air on boring patrols. But a heartfelt discussion? Not since Sootstar was alive - not since she and Snakehiss were a thing. StarClan, they were children. Youths trying to play God. Cottonsprig hardly thinks she's anymore of a capable adult now but as she peruses the moorlands, a small patrol at her side, she decides that she has no other choice but to be the adult.

Sedgepounce is assigned to make sure she cannot be so easily chased off again. A side effect of her totally convincing backstory. (She would not blame a soul if they side-eyed her for her rambling details.) Cottonsprig tries to ignore the awkward air between them as she pulls apart tall moorland grasses and sniffs at different flowerheads. She just needs a few more doses of lungwort to feel comfortable - but she doesn't think she ever will be, in truth.

Her head swivels and she looks towards the tom, who's gaze follows the horizon line. The badger sett is off that way, she thinks. That's where many of their cats still rest to this day... That's where Foxglare is, their one remaining connection to one another. She's not been able to approach him since her return, since his help in staging everything. Would he think her pathetic? For folding so soon after finally getting what she wanted? Freedom, the ability to raise her kittens without judgement? She's tossed it all away now, to save the very Clan who would've torn her to shreds if they knew.

"He will be okay," Cottonsprig speaks up, her words catching in her throat. Her tears are on a hairline trigger, a single one escaping as she moves to stand nearer to him. "Fox isn't anything if he isn't tough, y'know?" Her voice pitches slightly, perhaps with the lingering fear that she's telling an outright lie. She swallows the lump in her throat and she looks towards Sedgepounce. A slow beat plays between them before she turns her gaze to her paws.

"Is it too late to apologize, Sedge?"

𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 ˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠

• ooc // @SEDGEPOUNCE

• ❥ MEDICINAL KNOWLEDGE
  ♥♥♡ WOUNDS ; can confidently stop bleeding and mend lacerations. will often request that you keep your injury clean and wait it out first.
  ♥♥♡ INFECTION ; as a side effect of likely her own doing, very dutiful with technique and treatment shortly thereafter.
  ♥♡♡ ACHES & PAINS ; will defer to a dark tunnel and rest. if pain persists, maybe she will offer something.
  ♥♡♡ BROKEN BONES ; has never dealt with a broken bone. likely will ask that you never move. ever again.
  ♥♥♥ TRAVELING HERBS ; learned well from her previous mentor. will pile even too many remedies to tough the wilderness with.
  ♥♥♥ KITTING ; having kittens of her own and helped several others with their litters, she is very well versed with calming techniques and quelling pain.
  ♥♡♡ POISONS ; she knows what they are... but that isn't enough, isn't it?
  ♥♥♡ ILLNESS ; having worked through two yellowcough bouts, she is confident in her remedies. much else... she's operating on trial and error.
  ⸻ cottonsprig is a dutiful and excitable medicine cat. she enjoys company and loves conversation. she'd rather not have too many curious noses snooping around her den... but who is she to quell curiosity?

• 

  ⸻❥ cottonsprig is the primary medicine cat of windclan. a former princess to the moors, she harbors many guilts for her actions throughout her short life. she has no consistent partner, unwilling to commit and settle, and she is training celandinepaw in medicine.

​

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

He stares off at where the moor meets the sky. A dark bruise of cloistered rainclouds mock him from there—a distant promise, no matter the cool, calm evening which drifts upon them now.

He's had time to process. The earth doesn't feel like it's about to give way beneath his paws anymore, and the raw and weeping wound in his heart is now merely sore. Standing here with Cottonsprig doesn't make his lungs seize like they did when she'd trudged half-dead into camp. There's some semblance of normalcy, but his brain refuses to meld her into the background anymore. She sticks out like a sore thumb—an unwavering constant, always in the corner of his eye, as if afraid that she'll disappear again. He is supposed to keep her safe out here. Even so, the distant malady of the Badger Sett draws his attention.

He will be okay. Sedge's ear flicks. Cot's always had a particular manner of speaking. Her voice is light and warm, but she uses these stiff words and elocution shared by the upper crust of WindClan's oldest families. Bluefrost and Sootspot have it the worst; it's almost like Sootstar's irreverent tone is funneled straight through them. Cottonsprig's always been more expressive, though. He'd never thought he'd miss the sound of her speaking.

He will be okay, she assures. He wants to believe her. He does, in a way, because she's right. Foxglare seems so impervious, even when ill. Yellowcough's probably just a cold to him. He's probably so bored over there.

Yet the lingering doubt buzzes in the back of his skull something fierce. They've already lost Quietcrow. He's already lost Cottonsprig for a time. He can't...he can't.

He looks at her now. A tear cuts through the fuzz on her face, burying into the fur of her cheek. She stares out at the horizon like she's scared of losing something, too, and he can't help but to wonder what she's already lost.

At one point, their argument was one of the biggest things in his life. It occupied his thoughts, drove some insurmountable wedge between them. But now it seems so...small. Like this speck of dust waiting to be picked up by the wind. Cot's watery eyes do nothing to vindicate him; they pierce, instead, deep in his soul.

His face splits into a wobbly smile. "Not unless it's too late for the both of us," he hedges.

Sedge waits for Cottonsprig to meet his eyes again. He feels an itch behind his own, a tremble at his mouth. He sobers for a moment. "'M sorry for being mad at you, and ignoring you. I was...stars, things sucked back then, and I was..." Stupid, his mind supplies. "Overwhelmed."

"You were—we were both—under a lot of pressure," he says.
​

 

[cottonsprig]

"Not unless it's too late for the both of us..."

The threat of tears grows stronger as he warbles his own voice. When she looks back towards Sedgepounce, a smile forms on his face. It's uncertain, as if testing unknown waters when one doesn't know how to swim. But it's there, and she tenses her limbs only to keep her from collapsing against him. Perhaps it's just a part of their new normal, learning how to be adults alongside one another once more. Or maybe, should the mottled tom be any bit inquisitive or introspective - he'd notice the careful space she holds between them still. Moons ago, she would've held him too close, mused with him of the stars in the sky... what happened?

She knows, but he doesn't - and still in their moments of vulnerability, she hides her truth.

Regardless of the tension in her shoulders, there's pure relief between them. Their feud, pathetic as it was, crumbles to near nothingness as Sedgepounce continues. An apology, though one Cottonsprig doesn't think she deserves. "We were kids," she presses, her ears folding back. "We... were only following what we thought was right. You were only doing what you thought was right. I... was being mindless and chasing the tail of the most -" her breath builds in her chest and she expels it with a sharp, "rancid tom WindClan had to offer." It's almost said with a laugh. Almost.

She feels as if the blood still slicks her paws and maw. She looks through the tom as if Snakehiss is only a mouselength away, and the lost scars of her chest itch. Cottonsprig forces herself back to reality.

"I'm sorry, for choosing him over you. For... not seeing how much you cared. For not being there for you when you needed me..." Her ears remain folded to her head. She wonders what else she could apologize for (she's say sorry for the leaf-fall rain that's inevitable at this rate,) but opts for a sigh, her tail curling around her form. "I missed you, Sedge. You... were one of my best friends, y'know." Again she looks back towards him, "I hope you can forgive me."

𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 ˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠

• ooc //

• ❥ MEDICINAL KNOWLEDGE
  ♥♥♡ WOUNDS ; can confidently stop bleeding and mend lacerations. will often request that you keep your injury clean and wait it out first.
  ♥♥♡ INFECTION ; as a side effect of likely her own doing, very dutiful with technique and treatment shortly thereafter.
  ♥♡♡ ACHES & PAINS ; will defer to a dark tunnel and rest. if pain persists, maybe she will offer something.
  ♥♡♡ BROKEN BONES ; has never dealt with a broken bone. likely will ask that you never move. ever again.
  ♥♥♥ TRAVELING HERBS ; learned well from her previous mentor. will pile even too many remedies to tough the wilderness with.
  ♥♥♥ KITTING ; having kittens of her own and helped several others with their litters, she is very well versed with calming techniques and quelling pain.
  ♥♡♡ POISONS ; she knows what they are... but that isn't enough, isn't it?
  ♥♥♡ ILLNESS ; having worked through two yellowcough bouts, she is confident in her remedies. much else... she's operating on trial and error.
  ⸻ cottonsprig is a dutiful and excitable medicine cat. she enjoys company and loves conversation. she'd rather not have too many curious noses snooping around her den... but who is she to quell curiosity?

• 

  ⸻❥ cottonsprig is the primary medicine cat of windclan. a former princess to the moors, she harbors many guilts for her actions throughout her short life. she has no consistent partner, unwilling to commit and settle, and she is training celandinepaw in medicine.

​

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

It's difficult to watch, to hear, the subtle unravelling taking place before him. Cottonsprig's got this tightly-wound facsimile keeping together all the unspoken parts of her, but as it crumples he can't help but to cringe. "No, Cot. I—I..." Her apologies are both grating and cathartic without his own explanation, that poorly-kept secret burning a hole in his gut. "I mean—I was so...jealous of you. And it made me so..."

He coughs out a breath. Even now, Sedgepounce's voice is quiet, whispered through a grit of embarrassment. It's his turn to have difficulty in meeting Cottonsprig's eye. "I wanted to be Wolfsong's apprentice. And I...resented you, when you were picked," he admits. Frivolously, probably, since surely Cottonsprig already knows. The chasm between them had been forming for far longer than their fight, their estrangement. Fractured by his own misplaced anger.

He feels foolish to admit it all now. Medicine cat feels even more an unreachable concept than ever before—he's always had this sense that it'd come naturally to him, that he would excel. But he sees now the wear which it inflicts upon Wolfsong and Cottonsprig and realizes that...that probably wasn't true.

"But...that was wrong of me. I mean, you were chosen by StarClan! And regardless, it—I'm...I'm sorry. For how I treated you. I hope you can forgive me after so long!"

He hazards a glance upward. The wobbly, uncertain smile that eclipses his maw is short-lived in favor of a brief, twisting scowl. "You can't blame yourself for anything Snakehiss did, y'know? He was—that's...that's not your fault." It's like she said: they were just kids. How was she supposed to know how things would turn out?

Fractures of memories splay across his vision, of Snakehiss and Cottonsprig and his own harshness toward her. The pressure behind his eyes builds until tears are falling freely down his face. "I'm just...I'm so glad you're home."
​

 

[cottonsprig]

It's the trembling heartbeat in her chest. Its the way her claws press into dying grass beneath them, rhythmically and then not at all. It's the way that everything that's ever been wrong feels fixed again... until reality crashes in with careless words trying to be vulnerable and warm. "Jealous of you... I wanted to be Wolfsong's apprentice... You were chosen by StarClan!" Another tear races through the fur of her cheeks and as she looks on at the tom - who in their youth held her at a distance, all because of something out of their power... she can't help but feel even worse pain.

He believes it divine intervention. She knows it is soaked with blood and guided by a gnarled claw.

Maybe there had been inklings when they were younger, of his want to be beneath Wolfsong's tutelage. Maybe she reveled in the envy, enjoyed the way it made the mottled tom grow upset. Maybe she was so entranced by the sickly greens of Snakehiss' gaze that she could not see the hurt in Sedgepounce's amber hues. Cottonsprig looks at him, now, and she sees a tom who could've been a far better medicine cat than herself. Who could still speak with StarClan, today, if their paths weren't forcibly changed.

It was supposed to be you, she convinces herself easily. Not me, Sedgepounce, she wants to cry as he continues, assuaging the guilt between them. You.

He begins to cry. And though she has told herself several times to hold her distance, to keep her space, she cannot resist. She shuffles forward, pressing her shoulder to his in order to provide her own source of comfort. Guilt and shame burns beneath her pelt for what she knows and what he doesn't - for the crimes that she holds in soft, snow white paws and for the sins that were never hers to shoulder, but landed upon her regardless. Tell him, she screams. He deserves to know. They all do. But what would the Clan do, she wonders, if they learn in one fell swoop that she is nothing but a sham and a codebreaker?

Sedgepounce is one tom. She's trusted him before, she trusts him now, and even if he did turn around and let loose every secret she had to tell... her stomach churns as she draws her tongue over his cheek. Who would believe him?

"I... It's a lot, Sedge," she starts, and should he allow it, she holds his gaze. Cottonsprig may not share everything with him now, but much of his youth had been plagued by her success. It feels terribly wrong to not share that it was falsely awarded. "I'm sorry - I... Sootstar..." saying her name still somehow feels blasphemous. A sour acid on her tongue, a new static in the air. "She planted the cotton ball for Wolfsong to find. I... only found out recently. Before I -" left, the syllable hangs and she almost says it with her whole chest. She clenches her jaw, "A moon ago," she reconfigures her statement, not seamlessly at all. Her tail lashes, "If she hadn't done that... I wouldn't be a medicine cat. It could've been..." You - it hangs unsaid in the air. Instead, she says, "I'm so sorry."

𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 ˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠

• ooc //

• ❥ MEDICINAL KNOWLEDGE
  ♥♥♡ WOUNDS ; can confidently stop bleeding and mend lacerations. will often request that you keep your injury clean and wait it out first.
  ♥♥♡ INFECTION ; as a side effect of likely her own doing, very dutiful with technique and treatment shortly thereafter.
  ♥♡♡ ACHES & PAINS ; will defer to a dark tunnel and rest. if pain persists, maybe she will offer something.
  ♥♡♡ BROKEN BONES ; has never dealt with a broken bone. likely will ask that you never move. ever again.
  ♥♥♥ TRAVELING HERBS ; learned well from her previous mentor. will pile even too many remedies to tough the wilderness with.
  ♥♥♥ KITTING ; having kittens of her own and helped several others with their litters, she is very well versed with calming techniques and quelling pain.
  ♥♡♡ POISONS ; she knows what they are... but that isn't enough, isn't it?
  ♥♥♡ ILLNESS ; having worked through two yellowcough bouts, she is confident in her remedies. much else... she's operating on trial and error.
  ⸻ cottonsprig is a dutiful and excitable medicine cat. she enjoys company and loves conversation. she'd rather not have too many curious noses snooping around her den... but who is she to quell curiosity?

• 

  ⸻❥ cottonsprig is the primary medicine cat of windclan. a former princess to the moors, she harbors many guilts for her actions throughout her short life. she has no consistent partner, unwilling to commit and settle, and she is training celandinepaw in medicine.

​

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

The distance between them, crackling and seething and cold, closes now, but once it's gone it's like it was never there at all. Sedgepounce leans into her, the presence grounding, as he raises a paw to swipe away at the tears spilling unbitten from his eyes. It's hardly the first time that they've sat like this. Side by side, trading confessions—one or both of them crying. Sedge had plenty that he'd complained to Cottonsprig about in his younger days. His parents, his siblings, his mentor. Their expectations of him and how he was never able to meet them. Their suffocation and their distance. His loneliness.

It's not so different, now. They're older, more worn-down. The tears on his face feel embarrassingly juvenile, but they refuse to stop. He sniffles.

I...It's a lot, Sedge. "Sorry," he croaks, dragging a paw over his eyes. For the outburst, for the confession of old contempt, he isn't sure. Cottonsprig's drawn him in close; he presses his forehead to hers briefly, comforted, before she tilts her eyes to catch his own.

And it's...it's... "Wha—I, I..." A long, stunned silence overtakes him. "Holy shit, Cot."

His jaw clicks shut and again he lapses into silence, but no malice nor anger cross his features as he wordlessly processes. In fact, he looks a little silly. Sedge's eyes have gone huge and round, and though his tears have tapered off from the shock of it all, his face is still puffy from crying. It's a bit like how baby owls stare out at the world from their nests, perpetually surprised.

After a moment passes, so too does another. It's somewhere around the third that Cottonsprig's words have made several laps around his whirring brain, and the response that bursts from him is both unthinking and genuine. "You don't know that," Sedgepounce says. "That you wouldn't have been medicine cat, I mean. You're—"

He stops. Overwhelmed. "So...Sootstar rigged it, but...but that doesn't mean Wolfsong wouldn't have picked you anyway." He shrugs at her, jittery but open. Truthful.

Moons ago, maybe—moons ago, when the scars across his flank were new and weeping, when he was fresh with the wounds of loss, Sedgepounce would have scorned her for this. But those scars are dull and old, now. Mended in no small part by the herbs and care that Cottonsprig offered, back when they weren't even speaking.

He'd once feared that nothing would soothe that now-distant pain, but the time had passed anyway.

Sedgepounce's jaw sets. "We can't change the past," he murmurs solemnly. "We have to just...move forward with what we have. You're our medicine cat for a reason, Cottonsprig. We don't know what we'd do without you. I don't—" It's too much, too fast. She was his best friend, once—and that meant a lot to a little boy with hardly any friends at all. Perhaps, with time, they can be friends again.

For now, Sedgepounce's face erupts into a watery smile. The chuckle that escapes him is a little lightheaded. "I'm, ugh—sorry I'm blubbering all over you," he huffs, scrubbing a paw over his face again.
​

 

[cottonsprig]

What does she anticipate? Yelling, drawing away from her comfort in anguish and upset. Accusing her of always knowing, of flaunting her falsehoods before him just to make him feel less. Of purposefully hurting him, telling him now only with the aim to cause harm. She waits for claws in the form of angered words, tears sharpened to thorns as they shatter against the ground. For him to backpedal and run, to tell the Clan - and for her only solace to be in the fact that, maybe, no one would believe him.

But instead, the tom sniffles. He exclaims softly, sure, but he doesn't move from her half-embrace. She apologizes readily but he does not accept it. He reasons with her fears, dampens the form of her sorrows. "It's okay," is all he would've had to say. And yet in their vulnerability he provides her so much more. Security and kindness, his voice purely genuine. Cottonsprig cannot believe him, cannot fathom that if her mother never played God, Wolfsong would've sought her help. But Sedgepounce presses into her that reality and she has nothing but to accept it.

She sniffles, trying desperately to not further dampen his two-toned fur with her tears. She's missed him, missed this, and hurts more and more every second she cannot express numerous more details, more secrets. His laugh breaks her spiral and she cracks a smile, too.

"No, no, I'm sorry," she murmurs shakily. A paw reaches to his cheek, pressing away the dampness that doesn't dry. "I started it, at least. Let me have this," she says shortly after. Cottonsprig looks to his watery eyes, comforted once again by their warm hues, but before she can find herself floating away she stands once more.

"We should - we should really get going," she murmurs. She sucks in an enormous, annoying breath and lets it out in the same fashion, all in an attempt to bring his laughter out once more. "We're supposed to be back before sundown. Cats - cats will think I got lost again, or something."

𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 ˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠

• ooc //

• ❥ MEDICINAL KNOWLEDGE
  ♥♥♡ WOUNDS ; can confidently stop bleeding and mend lacerations. will often request that you keep your injury clean and wait it out first.
  ♥♥♡ INFECTION ; as a side effect of likely her own doing, very dutiful with technique and treatment shortly thereafter.
  ♥♡♡ ACHES & PAINS ; will defer to a dark tunnel and rest. if pain persists, maybe she will offer something.
  ♥♡♡ BROKEN BONES ; has never dealt with a broken bone. likely will ask that you never move. ever again.
  ♥♥♥ TRAVELING HERBS ; learned well from her previous mentor. will pile even too many remedies to tough the wilderness with.
  ♥♥♥ KITTING ; having kittens of her own and helped several others with their litters, she is very well versed with calming techniques and quelling pain.
  ♥♡♡ POISONS ; she knows what they are... but that isn't enough, isn't it?
  ♥♥♡ ILLNESS ; having worked through two yellowcough bouts, she is confident in her remedies. much else... she's operating on trial and error.
  ⸻ cottonsprig is a dutiful and excitable medicine cat. she enjoys company and loves conversation. she'd rather not have too many curious noses snooping around her den... but who is she to quell curiosity?

• 

  ⸻❥ cottonsprig is the primary medicine cat of windclan. a former princess to the moors, she harbors many guilts for her actions throughout her short life. she has no consistent partner, unwilling to commit and settle, and she is training celandinepaw in medicine.

​