── He has never been more of a stranger to himself. He hadn't gone with the marsh cats —as they once were— with intent to participate in the violence, but he'd also recognized how extremely unlikely any attempted compromise would be. A hopeless situation and he'd followed them anyway. He could have left and waited until their battle concluded, removed himself entirely from a conflict everyone would have lost regardless of whether he'd added his teeth to the fray. Roseal doesn't know that he can believe his own reasoning for having stayed, not when he'd been so quickly given over to long, red shadows and some sort of battle fugue that took— no, he can't say that. He can't shirk responsibility.
He had seen Rubble, an aging tom nearing the later cusp of his life, and confronting him were little more than children. Nothing can justify setting their most vulnerable of people against each other, but Roseal can't claim any high perch from which to stare down upon them all when he'd murdered two marsh cats. And worse still, that before he'd realized the truth, his blood had carried some gleeful melody that the rest of his muscles had played harmony to.
The sudden call of his name sends the same muscles spasming in a flinch, jerking his still-dirtied paws from the river's course. He recognizes the figure leaping the width of the water, and clearly Cicada remembers him still, even if he cannot say the same for the creature sharing his pink eyes. He swallows and aims for the disaffected wanderer he used to be, shrugging his shoulders and smiling crookedly.
"Is that what I was doing? I just liked how the water felt on my toes," he says, feigning ignorance. Hidden away from the rain under a sparse canopy of undergrowths seems a place far behind them both, and one Cicada will likely never return to. ShadowClan, as it's called these days, won't take kindly to anyone who isn't there now. At least Cicada won't have to take quite as much time sorting the debris from his curls in a place such as this, one not as damnably damp as the marsh. Too much sun for Roseal, though, but he hadn't...he can't leave ShadowClan, anyway. Far too many unspoken debts. "If I had a way of repaying you for all the mud you must've swallowed, I'd...well, it'd be repaid already." His smile evens out, slightly more sincere.
He can't quite stomach the softening concern in the darker feline's features. It's another whetstone for the jagged expanse of metal twisting in Roseal's belly, one he can feel pressing against his lungs as Cicada implicitly asks what he doesn't have the energy to answer. "I thought you were excited I'd learned how," he murmurs, trying for a playful tone but undoubtedly failing. "RiverClan, eh? Descriptive." He clears his throat, aware he's circling the subject and that it must be painfully obvious to the other tom's careful gaze. "I just needed a little space, is all. From the mud, and mosquitoes, and the absurdly loud frogs." Roseal glances down at his wet and only partly cleaned legs before eyeing Cicada, somehow wry and sheepish all at once. "One more time for the road? I can return the favor."
──── surr'oseal'isme (roseal). he/him pronouns. roamer; goes where he pleases.
──── approximately thirty-eight months old; not entirely certain of his own age.
──── single & uninterested in any romantic attachments; possibly open for flings.
──── very tall, scarred albino with sharply-peaked ears and a bobbed, scruffy tail.
── He doesn't entirely remember getting here. He'd finished Rubble's grave and stared at it for such a length of time that breaking his stance was met with stiff, sore muscles. Roseal had glanced down at the dirt and mud and pine needles coating his legs, the pale fur brackish in hue, and the urge to flee came over him so strongly he'd torn through the foliage thoughtlessly. He doesn't remember choosing a destination. He blinks and he's staring at a river unlike the modest stream supplying ShadowClan with its fresh water— but the thought of returning to wash himself there raises the hairs on his neck and sends a hot poker into his belly.
