bring your daylight, bring your dark || icy

[ashpaw!]

Ashpaw isn't hurt. She didn't do anything special or get into any particular danger, and she's been hurt badly enough before that these few cuts and bruises seem like nothing. She'd tangled with a WindClan apprentice a little younger than herself, held her own till the retreat, and she's... too shocked to be proud of herself. She thinks they're all shocked. Their own home ransacked and bloodied, a peaceful night destroyed.

She's shivering, when it's finally over—WindClanners retreating, RiverClanners regrouping, the camp utterly trashed, dens broken and herb scattered. Adrenaline crash, maybe. Screeches and howls echo in the back of her head. Everything reeks of blood and horses — she wonders how long it'll take to fade.

She hears screaming — she hears Cicadastar screaming, then Clayfur, and she watches survivors gather. Someone's dead, she thinks numbly. She doesn't move toward the fallen warrior, stuck to her spot, unwilling to look. If she doesn't — if she doesn't—

Clayfur's sobbing is so loud. And then Stoatsplash is running for Beesong, and Gillpaw is crying out someone help him and Ashpaw hears the name, Clearsight, and she doesn't know what to feel. Devastated, mostly, because Clearsight was a good warrior and so many people loved him and it isn't fair but also — for just a moment, the smallest fraction of relief. Because — because it isn't Willowroot, or any of Willowroot's little babies, or any of Ashpaw's friends. Is that awful, does that make her awful?

She finds herself searching for Iciclepaw first — why does she do that? Why is Iciclepaw so important? — and stumbling toward the other girl when she sees her. "Icy," she calls with a watery voice, and she thinks of blood and broken bones and Clayfur crying and crying and imagines Iciclepaw, beautiful Iciclepaw, who is so nice and cares about Ashpaw for no good reason — imagines Iciclepaw —

"Icy," she repeats, reaching the calico at last, horror seeping through her at the state of her fellow apprentice — why would WindClan do this to them? "I'm — you — are you — ?"

Are you going to collapse and die in front of everybody? Are you going to drown in your own blood like he just did? Am I going to be the one screaming? No, she thinks, no. Not Iciclepaw. Iciclepaw, who she's known since they were kits. Iciclepaw, who defends her and makes space for her, who used to never be gentle but now ... now. Iciclepaw, one of Ashpaw's closest friends.

"A-Are you okay? What did they — " do to you, she wants to finish, but Icy won't like that phrasing, she thinks. Because she's strong and she fought just like everybody else. But she is so — so wounded. Stars. She looks so hurt.

"You need Beesong," Ashpaw says, almost whimpers, stepping closer to her friend on unsteady paws, not from injury but from fear. "Please let me help you."
​

—— " i found gold in the wreckage "

✦ ooc ✦ character information ✦ recent events

• there is so much fractured emotional introspection here whoops but HERE U GO @iciclepaw
  
  
• - 9 month old orange tabby with green eyes
  - apprenticed to lead warrior willowroot
  - crushing hard on iciclepaw
  - happy-go-lucky, mischievous, hardworking
  - very friendly, but defensive of riverclan!
  - got real fucked up as a kid so if she seems like she was fucked up as a kid, that's why
  - "speech"
• - KICKED FOX ASS
  - she is on a JOURNEY
  

​

 

[iciclefang]

WindClan has fled, and RiverClan is stranded in the ruins. A warrior dead, his last words choked in blood. Her uncle keens his grief, head bowed and body bent over the cat he'd loved. Everywhere Iciclepaw looks, her Clanmates are battered, their eyes dull with loss. They have lost, lost more than the battle -- they've lost what little security they'd had left in these StarClan-forsaken wetlands, lost a warrior who had died defending their home.

Iciclepaw is numb. Her wounds seep blood, and it hurts to walk, but she is alive when Clearsight is not. She is walking when Cindershade cannot. Awake when Smokethroat's single eye remains shut with blood. And I don't deserve to be.

She's never felt this way before. Her confidence in her prowess had always preceded her. She's never suffered a defeat this brutal, and perhaps no one in RiverClan had, but --

She hears Ashpaw's voice, and she turns to find her friend, eyes hazy with pain and shock. A flame in the mist, brilliance in a darkness she has found herself cloaked in. Ashpaw's green eyes are wide with worry, with the horror of what has become them all, and the tortoiseshell cannot offer her comfort.

"Others need Beesong more," she murmurs. As she speaks, she remembers the shame of being pinned, the WindClan warrior's fangs fastened into her scruff and inches from snapping her neck. Defeat. It stings worse than any of the wounds torn into her body.

She takes a moment to lean into Ashpaw. She seems like she's okay, and it's a relief. Could she have gone on if Ashpaw had been in Clearsight's place? StarClan forgive her, she feels tremendous gratitude that she is not in Clayfur's position right now. She lets her face press into Ashpaw's ginger fur, trying to ground herself. Steady.

Iciclepaw will not allow herself to break. She cannot afford to. RiverClan will go on, and so will she. "I couldn't win," she mutters to her companion. "He-- he had me by my neck so quickly. If he hadn't let me go, I would've died. So fast." She knows she should use this pain, this loss, to become stronger, but for now...

For now, she laments. "Are you okay?" Iciclepaw's narrow eyes sweep Ashpaw's pelt and body for serious gashes, deep wounds. She had only just recently recovered from her battle with the fox. "I didn't even... see you, during the fight," she says. And if she had? I wouldn't have been able to save her anyway.​

[ PENNED BY MARQUETTE ]​

​

 

[ashpaw!]

She's breathing so fast, too fast. The ginger tabby shifts weight from paw to paw, watching Iciclepaw's composure crumble beneath the unexpected terror, the violence — Ashpaw remembers that feeling. She had been smaller, and she wonders how much of it's the same — the way that hole opens up in you, gaping wide, that awful creeping knowledge of mortality. Loss.

"Others need Beesong more." Ashpaw wants to argue but she can't — so many of their warriors lost this battle, scraped by barely alive — caught unprepared, exhausted. Smokethroat, Cindershade, Redpath. Ashpaw wonders if this victory will satisfy the queen of the moors, if it's enough blood yet. When it'll be enough.

"He-- he had me by my neck so quickly. If he hadn't let me go, I would've died. So fast."

Ashpaw's own heart starts to pound as Iciclepaw keeps talking — and she thinks of the sunrise a long time ago, patrol dragging home a calico body. (There are days that Ashpaw thinks she may as well have killed Pumpkinpaw herself. The girl's life sits on her shoulders and it will forever and ever: the promise that Spiderfall kept.) They'd had friendship, too, and tummy butterflies, nights presses close together in Beesong's death, and so quickly it was ... gone. All gone. She thinks even further back, the tom's claws on her own body, holding her underwater to hide his scent — how she'd gasped and cried for air — "if he hadn't let me go, I would have" —

Somehow it always comes back to this. It replays and replays. "I would have died," Iciclepaw said. "I would have died."

Not my Iciclepaw, she thinks, and knows it means nothing.

She wishes she could close her heart. She can't. She's not built for that, even after so much pain — she's not the type to harden. She might wish sometimes that his brutality had make her strong, had made her cold, had made her invincible — that anything could make her like that — but she will always just be this, open-hearted. Soft and hurt and loving. There's nothing she can do to pull away, nothing that'd make losing Iciclepaw any easier, so she doesn't have much choice but to lean in. Let WindClan keep taking. Let the world be as cruel as it wants. She'll just have to — hold on tighter. She will steal as much love and safety as she can, cling to every moment that she can pry from this war, keep whatever she can take for herself. You're mine, she thinks with a — a fury that surprises her. I'm gonna hold on tight.

Let her softness be a rebellion.

She swallows, shaky gaze trailing over Iciclepaw's flank. "I'm here," she says. "I — I know that's scary. I know. You're gonna be okay, okay? I'm right here." Right here. Staying. It's all she can do.

Ashpaw wonders, dazed, if her father was in this raid. If her brothers were. She didn't see them, but — it'd make sense, if they were there. Was it Lynx who took a RiverClanner's life? Was it Gravel who did this to Iciclepaw? She doesn't know and she doesn't want to.

Iciclepaw turns worry back on her, and Ashpaw had expected that — "I am," she says. "I promise. I was fighting another apprentice — I just — held them off till the retreat. I'm okay."

She's still shivering. She's still — shocked. Attacked in their own home — their dens destroyed, their medicine pillaged, a loyal warrior slaughtered.

She reaches out to touch her nose to Iciclepaw's head. The other girl's a bit taller, so she has to tilt her chin up a bit — "You should rest," she says. "I can... I can sit with you. I'll find you a — " a nest that wasn't destroyed " — a spot. Till Beesong can look at you. I won't... I won't go anywhere, okay? I'm right here."

She's never really tried to be gentle like this with Icy. Never thought it'd be welcome. But then Iciclepaw has never sounded scared like that either.
​

—— " i found gold in the wreckage "

✦ ooc ✦ character information ✦ recent events

• ooc text goes here
  
  
• - 9 month old orange tabby with green eyes
  - apprenticed to lead warrior willowroot
  - crushing hard on iciclepaw
  - happy-go-lucky, mischievous, hardworking
  - very friendly, but defensive of riverclan!
  - got real fucked up as a kid so if she seems like she was fucked up as a kid, that's why
  - "speech"
• - KICKED FOX ASS
  - she is on a JOURNEY
  

​

 

[iciclefang]

The feel of ginger fur brushing into her own slows her heartbeat, even if only momentarily. She looks Ashpaw in her brilliant green eyes, held there by some unspoken magnetism. When she focuses, there are still shadows behind the brilliance, still lurking phantoms. Unnamed but sharp-fanged predators, not foxes but worse. Iciclepaw's usual instinct is to draw close to her, to offer what little comfort the stoic tortoiseshell is able to -- but for the first time, she's only wondering if Ashpaw sees the same thing in her own eyes now.

"I'm... okay," she repeats. Ashpaw speaks with strength. Her voice does not waver, does not falter. She is Iciclepaw's protector. How and when had that happened? The blue-eyed tortoiseshell lets Ashpaw's nose brush her forehead. "You should rest," and Iciclepaw has never wanted anything more.

"I just want you with me," she whispers. She won't feel her wounds anymore if Ashpaw is there to lean on. She can forget them, forget the pierced flesh on her neck and the claws marks on her flank.

It's the shame she still has to battle, but she will let Ashpaw be the salve for that, too. "We can rest... here. You must be tired, too." Her voice is hollow with exhaustion. "We got off luckier than... than some others did."

Iciclepaw's heart is seized briefly -- panic -- and she swallows it down, asks Ashpaw softly, "Mudpelt? My siblings, did you -- did you see them anywhere?"​

[ PENNED BY MARQUETTE ]​

​

 

[ashpaw!]

Here. Okay. Here is fine. Ashpaw still guides her friend a couple tail-lengths away, further from the center of camp, shaky pawsteps dodging puddles of blood. She settles down, practically tugging Iciclepaw down with her. Gentle but insistent. "I'm not going anywhere," she finds herself repeating, a low murmur of comfort. "I'm right here."

Without thinking she starts to groom, licking the other girl's wounds, cleaning blood from calico fur the best she can.

Red hackles raise at Iciclepaw's sudden panic — but lower just as quickly as she jumps to reassure. "I saw Mudpelt and Lilybloom," she says. "In the fight, and after. They looked like they got off ... mostly fine, I think." It's honest, if not wholly certain. She knows they were at least still standing. Her voice cracks a bit as she adds, "I — I think you're hurt the worst of all of them."

Keep grooming. Something to focus on. She nuzzles a little into Iciclepaw's flank, breathes in the scent, tries to ignore the way it's marred by blood and horseplace stink. It's a small thing but it makes her so angry — why would WindClan do this? Destroy so much of their camp, kill and maim and steal and leave their rancid stench on her Iciclepaw? She wants to just – she wants to just burst into tears and hold Icy forever, keep her away from them — she wants to clean it all off and make everything okay again.

She bites back tears and settles for this: the closeness, tongue rasping over another's flank. She's put off by how dismal the other girl has become, how tired and quiet. Normally her quiet is sharp — it is cunning, attentive. This isn't any of those things. It's —

It's —

It's like she's thinking things at herself that she doesn't want to say out loud. Like this was failure, Ashpaw realizes — is that... is that what she thinks?

"You were — good, you know," she says, stumbling over her words a little, anxious to fix. "Fighting a warrior — and he looked so — so strong. He'd have torn me to pieces in seconds, I think." She swallows. "I know... I know you still ..."

StarClan, she's gonna mess this up.

"You're the strongest apprentice in the whole clan," she says. "And you defended it. The clan, I mean. You defended it as good as anybody. Just because you lost — " She laughs, but it isn't a happy sound. "I mean, ev-everybody lost, I think. Smokethroat. And Cindershade. And Redpath, and — " She cuts off before Clearsight's name.

"It wasn't a fair fight. It was... it was wrong, what they did. An ambush, attacking us out of nowhere for nothing. It was wrong."
​

—— " i found gold in the wreckage "

✦ ooc ✦ character information ✦ recent events

• ashpaw rlly said juniperfrost who ? fuck that guy
  
  
• - 9 month old orange tabby with green eyes
  - apprenticed to lead warrior willowroot
  - crushing hard on iciclepaw
  - happy-go-lucky, mischievous, hardworking
  - very friendly, but defensive of riverclan!
  - got real fucked up as a kid so if she seems like she was fucked up as a kid, that's why
  - "speech"
• - KICKED FOX ASS
  - she is on a JOURNEY
  

​