FACE THE NIGHT, IN DEEP STARLIGHT ✿ Oneshot - stepping down | Blazestar

[Daisyflight]

"SUREFIRE, YEAH, THE SETTING SUN WANTS COMPANY"​

TW: detailed discussion of death + violence

Sleep had settled like an itch, the cool of leafbare troubling the edges of her torn ear. Daisyflight was exhausted of late, unable to find the little quiet moments in the day as she had a moon past. Blazestar’s death and rebirth, Centipedepaw- considering it all lay a tortuous trap. Tired, she was just so tired…

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Grime-clad paws hauled the grit below behind her, each mar in the rock flung to her tail tip and forgotten. Running- she was running. Why was she running? A flare of waxen light caught a puddle, the silt wreathing a reflection that might have stolen her breath if she had any to steal. Oil stained fur clung to the haunches of a much smaller shecat, white blot with blood. The grey slash of her snout was familiar, gloved forepaws barely visible beneath the city’s sweat. That cat in the water was a wisp of her present self.

"Fuck off!" The yowl left her without her knowledge, steel embossed corridor mimicking the cry immediately. It reached the intended target, a tense hiss echoing back. Daisy Flight felt as if she sat in her own mind, unable to paw at the processes that be to act of her own accord.

A blow struck her side, bluntly shunting her shoulder into the wall. "Look, I didn’t know you had your eye on that rat, okay? I left it! Now leave me, bastard.” Fright crumbled her words, tremors running unkempt down the molly’s spine.

”S’what? Shouldn’t be on this side of the nest ‘nyways.“ The depths of the cat’s growl seemed to shake the alley. Matted stripes hemmed his shoulders, broad marks that bled into the filth adhered to his stomach. His maw opened to speak again, hooded in the half light, before her assailant appeared to think better of it. In a motion all too practised, one forepaw went to hook Daisy Flight’s throat onto the ground. Through a fog, she felt as she wheezed beneath his grip.

Claws met skin, and instantly she was in it. The haze was torn away, plunging her into the heat of the attack. Flesh gave way below her, the taste of blood blushing the air. It was her heart hammering, her teeth deep in crook of the tom’s neck, her mind grappling to decide if she should kill- Kill? Could she do that? Live with it, as he rots on the concrete? He writhed, panicked, between her jaws. He would have done it.

The point of one tooth slid further, brushing the edge of the bone. Blood pooled across her tongue now, whiskers drawn to her cheeks at the tang. Effort split her lungs aflame, decision made. One sickening crack led to his chin to the floor, the next to the life being cut from him. Dead.

Leaden limbs gripped the damp stone, wrenching her up. A gleam pierced the corner of her eye.

Silver seeped between the tom’s tabby sides, billowing into a dilute slick as it met the wet of the concrete. Horror struck her, hard. Liquid metal crystalised into mist, linking the dead thing's limbs before the molly. The instant its rib cage rose into the air, limp paws brushing the ground, she scuttled back into the grips of the rattling metal at her back. Slack stars span, taunting. Starclan… She knew it- they- they-!

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Air cut its way through her, fresh. Pine fresh. Laughter, unsettled, sighed from her chest. The milk-glaze night sky held its usual clouds, illuminated by the weak light of the moon. That dream- memory even… It had been her first killing. Not her last, not on the streets, but the one to force mortality’s meaning onto her. The ending had been new, however. Being troubled by the past was a rarity nowadays, particularly in the form of a night terror. One had to let their choices lie to move forward.

A familiar weight pressed upon her chest. Those bejewelled prophets, with their murky intents. The fright she had felt in the dream bubbled forth once more, stirring up a thought that had tormented her for days now. If she was to be leader, after Blaze, then she'd have to take on the star's boons. After watching him die, repeatedly, divine responsibility would befall her. She couldn’t do it. Chill clutched at her pelt as she stood, careful steps navigating her out of the warrior’s den.

Guilt folded her frame at the sight of Blaze’s cream form curled within his den. ’With pleasure’. That’s what she had spat at him the day he called her to his side. If she spoke those words today they’d be genuine. It had taken a little while, but being deputy had begun to suit her. Daisyflight could feel it, that drive to push the clan into action even on the coldest of sunrises. He had picked her, rightly. But she couldn’t follow his example- his lives… The supposed plan Starclan had for her would not go forward. Death shouldn’t be stripped of its importance. What purpose could they have in reanimating cats, especially if it led to tyrants like Sootstar? Keeping your friend alive, whispered her mind.

"Blaze." In a soft tone, she roused him. "I have to tell you... I cannot-" Dishevelled and tentative, she pressed on. "Cannot be deputy. The stars, I don’t trust them, I won’t follow the path they’d lay me if I was leader.”

"I’m sorry. I promised to support you… Despair coloured her voice, and Daisyflight couldn’t help but look away in shame. Throwing aside her place in the clan in fear.

/ TDLR: Daisy has a nightmare of her first kill (self defence) that preys on her paranoia of starclan and she realises she could never succeed blaze as leader / be granted nine lives @BLAZESTAR
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[BLAZESTAR]

╭── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╮​

He hears a name, his name, or part of it, quiet in the confines of his den. He's been sleeping, curled tight into a huge pale sphere, face covered by golden paws. Blinking sleep from blue eyes, he yawns. It's his deputy, faintly outlined in silvery-violet from the moonlight filtering into his den.

She looks otherworldly, sent by StarClan, and Blazestar stiffens instinctively. Is he dreaming?

But no. She moves out of the light, and Blazestar can see how tired she looks. Defeated. She speaks to him again, and it's not through the dreamsoft voice of prophecy.

It cuts him like a set of enemy claws. "I have to tell you... I cannot-- cannot be deputy."

Blazestar's warmth fades. The chill in the air has come in with Daisyflight, and he flinches at the brutality of the wind, the frost in her words.

Oh, what is he losing?

"Daisyflight, you..." He falters. His eyes are round with confusion, with hurt. "But I need you. SkyClan needs you." Is she asking him to step down? Is she asking him to replace her, when he never could?

"You've served me so well." He thinks of her children, then, of the way her responsibilities have pulled her in so many directions. He is experiencing this now, missing so much of his children's kithood because he must deal with things like an apprentice being murdered on his territory.

Some of the hurt, some of the anger, fades as he looks back up at Daisyflight. He sighs. Had he the chance to go back, he thinks, he would not have chosen this path for himself. Daisyflight must see that in everything he does.

"If you truly do not want this, then I am in no position to force it on you. You're more than my deputy, you know." He smiles at her, and although it's sad and worn, it's from the heart. "My friend."

He stands and shakes scraps of moss from his pelt. He's alert now, awake. The ache in his chest is enough to spur him out of bed. "But, then... what do you want, Daisy?" He will not guilt her anymore, but the pain at losing her is almost enough to cause him to burrow back into his nest and forget the waking world altogether.

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[Daisyflight]

"SUREFIRE, YEAH, THE SETTING SUN WANTS COMPANY"​

The scratch of sleep in his voice steadied her, rocked reality back into her chest. She had said it. Elderberry branches framed the leader, their earthen scent further rooting Daisyflight into the pine forest they stood within. The streets are gone, and the stars are tucked safely behind the clouds.

He speaks of needing her and immediately words crept from her throat. "I know," she lamented, modesty falling away in her distress. Her children needed her too, and whether it was best to care for them as a deputy or a mother she did not know. And that damned Starclan-

’You're more than my deputy, you know…My friend.’ A morose blink shuttered across her eyes, a sting plucking at her temples. He was her friend, and she was stepping away from him. Few could claim the title, truly, in her life. Crowning another with such a tangible tie was unnerving, however the ragdoll had proven a constant source of comfort, of a sort. "I always will be," Daisyflight vowed, fierce.

"I can’t touch that moonstone, take on nine lives. My kits- they shouldn’t watch me die over and over… If I am to be mourned, let it be only once." The admission croaked out carefully, the calico forgetting for a moment that they weren’t kits anymore. It felt cruel, he had children of his own after all but- she couldn't

"Death does not scare me Blaze, but the dead do. I want nothing from them.” They spilt like blood, silver, these confessions. Recent events had whipped them into being, out of the crevices of her mind that she pinned them to. "I’ll still help you where I can- perhaps, in some way… if you’ll let me?” She sat then, defeated. ​

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