sensitive topics I WANTED TO DRESS A BLADE UP IN RED — starlingheart

[GRANITEPELT]

TW !!!!!!! DELIBERATE VIOLENCE AND MAIMING !!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !!!!!!

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He can scent her, here by the Thunderpath. She’s like an exotic flower, and he’s like a hummingbird—no, a honeybee, longing to drown in nectar, stinger poised and punishing. Granitepelt can scent her through the acrid fumes, can hear the delicacy of her pawsteps over the thundering roar of monsters. He creeps through the moor, his gray pelt blending into the leafbare-stripped bracken, his fur snagging on the gorse that pricks his sides. Long, slender dark green eyes narrow into slits as they find her through the ferns edging the border.

She moves the same. She moves exactly how he remembers, in patterns he’s long memorized, with careful anxious steps, small twitches of her ear. She’s nervous. Does she know he’s so near—can she scent him, still, he thinks, crouching so low his belly hitches against the earth. Can she get him out of her head, or is he still dancing through it, leaving claw marks through everything she loves and splintering her fragility? He tastes the air, drinks her in. It’s intoxicating. It makes him want to be reckless.

“You’re still so perfect,” he says, rising to his paws. Undergrowth cracks under his weight. He’s different now, hardened by a life on the moor, his face and shoulder, his flank and stomach, all bearing the scars her Clanmates had left on him. His eyes are the same, limp with love and obsession—but there’s something different, too, the surface cracked like ice. She’s broken something inside of him that he cannot repair.

He doesn’t want to repair it, he finds. He wants to rinse his body in its coolness, bathe in the mess she’s made of him. He wants to hurt her for hurting him. He wants her to feel how she’s made him feel. His claws are unsheathed before he reaches her, but he’s smiling still, and it’s achingly youthful, the smile he’d given her when he’d offered to pry the thorn out of her paw pad when they were nurserymates.

“Don’t worry,” he murmurs. It’s supposed to be soothing. It’s cold. It’s like rain slick on asphalt. “I won’t leave you the way you left me. I will stay with you until it’s over. I owe that to you, don’t I? I owe you that.” He impedes her space, and being so near her is like setting his fur aflame—the tips of his pelt blazes, electrified. He lifts his claws to her face almost tenderly, sinking them into her left eye and tearing. “I’ll hold you while you die. I’ll hold you until—”

He smacks the bloodied tips of his claws down her chest, ignoring her screams, ignoring whatever she shrieks at him. They run red with her blood. They glisten and shine and he lifts them to his own muzzle and presses them into the white fur there so that he may taste her blood.

“I love you, Starlingheart.”

, ”​

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[Starlingheart]

Whenever she is alone near the Thunderpath, her mind always strays to the same place. Her mother. It does not matter that the border they share with WindClan is not where Briarstar met her demise - the scene is still the same. A darkened path, a monsters headlights in the distance, the roar it makes as it passes by without a care in the world about who or what it may leave trampled in its path. Leaf bare is a difficult season for more than just prey. It is difficult to find herbs too. She has to paw through the snow in order to find leaves that usually she would be able to spot with ease - leaves that are rendered useless by frost. She has told Magpiepaw to split off from her. If they searched in separate areas then that would make their search more fruitful, right? She is, of course, aware of the dangers that would come with such an action, but she was desperate. ShadowClan was desperate.

She is nervous, of course. How could she not be? She looks over her shoulder, stares into the shadows that edge the forest surrounding her, certain that she sees a flash of gray just in the corner of her eyes. ’Its just my mind playing tricks on me she manages to convince herself. Until a familiar voice pipes up from behind her, making her veins turn cold.

You’re still so perfect he says and immediately her muscles seize with fear. She doesn’t want to look behind her, to see that he is real and here and to wonder just what it is he is doing here but she forces herself to anyways. He is littered in wounds, claw marks that once she would have treated while muttering sweet nothings to him, but now it was all so different. There’s evidence of herbs still smeared against his fur and she has to wonder who had treated his wounds, if he had lied about their origins or if he had confessed and come clean to his new clan. She has no doubt WindClan would not care either way.

"You don’t-don’t have to do this" she says, her pleading voice faltering only slightly as she slowly backs away from him, her eyes wide with terror as claws slide out of their sheaths. She freezes like a petrified prey animal as quickly, he closes the space between them and before she can think, before she can react, claws are tearing into her flesh. Pain blossoms over her eyes and she can’t see oh stars it’s so dark, it hurts so bad she shrieks in pain and her first instinct is to raise a paw to cover the eye that his claws had scoured, but it is not over. Not yet.

More claws find their mark on her chest, blood spatters the ground and all she can do is stare stupidly down at it and wonder as he licked her blood from his own paws. “I’ll hold you while you die” his voice is the same, the voice of the cat she had once loved. Someone she now knows is gone. ’Run’ her conscious urges her and she does, she turns and she sprints away as fast as she can. If she can just make it close enough to camp she can call out, she could get help.

She doesn’t make it.

Her heart drops as she feels claws dig into her legs, as she feels him try desperately to stop her from running from him. She kicks with everything she has, hoping to connect to anything at all and for a moment, she is successful. She feels his grip slacken, is able to pull away and run a few more steps until once again she is stopped. This time, a weight lands squarely on her back, teeth dig into her scruff and the side of her face digs into the mud. Her good eye looks up at him, up to the sky where she begs silently to StarClan. please make this stop. her sides heave and she trembles underneath his grip. "Dont- please- please don’t do this" she begs again, tears in her eyes as she watches blood start to stain the snow around them Her blood. But he is not the same cat she once knew. He is a crazed beast, she can see it in his eyes. A predator who takes, a creature who cannot be reasoned with. But still, she tries "Please Granitepelt"

She is not ready to leave, she is not ready to die

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[GRANITEPELT]

Her fear fills his nostrils like he’s inhaled the scent from a delicate blossom he intends to trample underpaw. You don’t- don’t have to do this, she begs him, and he almost wishes he doesn’t have to do this. Granitepelt wishes more than anything he didn’t, for a fraction of a heartbeat. “I do,” he murmurs as his claws cup her face. “Because you hurt me.” And he hurts her, and she shrieks in pain—her paws fly to her face in a vain attempt to dislodge him. He can feel the soft tear of her flesh. It’s enough to keep him going, despite the flutter in his belly, in his heart.

When his nails leave their mark on his chest, her single good eye is wide with stupid surprise. Even now, in agony, she can hardly believe what he’s done to her. Granitepelt looks almost sadly as she stumbles away from him. The white tip of her tail disappears into the marsh grass, and he follows her with stony pawsteps, expression sad but dutiful.

His eyes gleam with pleasure when he finds her again. Her movements are erratic, disjointed. She can barely hold herself upright.

Granitepelt launches toward her. His claws find the meet of her hindlegs, and he shreds without regard for the perfection she used to be to him. She kicks out, and he fumbles his grip—she’s free for just a moment, and he’s reminded of the butterfly he’d encouraged Flintpaw to trap, to dismantle.

He leaps again, and this time his weight crashes into her. They both tumble toward the earth, his teeth latching into her scruff. Please don’t do this, she cries. Please, Granitepelt. The snow cracking beneath their weight is beginning to redden, to darken with her blood. He releases his teeth from the nape of her neck where he’s pulled and torn, and his smile is grisly. “You should have come with me. You forgot, didn’t you—you forgot that you were mine!”

His breath is ragged, strange, coming in unmeasured gasps and stutters. Her eye is sealed with blood that congeals in the cold. Her chest has a single line that drools scarlet into the snow. He lifts his claws and scores a bigger mark above the first. “You’ll never leave me again,” he gasps, and his voice is so strained and taut it sounds like it’ll break. “I—I won’t let you.” His paws, akimbo on either side of her now, are clumsy and scrabbling in the frost.

, ”​

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[Starlingheart]

Love. Starlingheart has known it before, had seen it before in ever-green eyes she is certain. Love was present on the day they had first spoken in aloud to one another, in the promise that they would become mates one day. How right had those moments felt? Had there always been something wrong, something off? How long had she missed the signs, how many times had she looked into those eyes and spoken those words not knowing that the blood of someone she cared for still stained his paws. Invisible to the naked eye and yet still there. The stars would certainly never allow him to forget. Love did not feel like this, she is certain. This blinding pain, this crushing weight, it was something else. Obsession, the actions of a cat who knew he was loosing something that he had once coveted and who could not let go. If she could not be his then she could not be anyone's at all.

Feebly, she scrambles at the snow, paws desperate for purchase on the ground slick with ice melt and her own blood. She was loosing too much of it too fast, she can feel it. Her motions are weak, her thoughts sluggish. She had never been strong, but now she couldn't fight back even if she wanted to. Tears mar the vision of her remaining eye, the forest around her becomes blurry and above her she can feel him breathing, hot against her neck, his words ringing in her ears. "I am-I am not yours. Not-n-not anymore" her voice is quiet, her words strained, each syllable an effort to sound out through a tongue that feels like lead in her mouth. She can feel the life draining out of her, can feel a river parting her inky black fur and cascade onto the ground where it pools. If she were a patient, she would be pressing moss to the wound, would be telling them to stay with her, to not fall asleep, but the lull of the darkness of sleep is too inviting. She can feel herself slipping away, her good eye rolls upwards to the sky and then, with a wheezing shuddering breath her vision turns dark, her eyelid flutters closed.

She surrenders herself to the mercy of the stars.


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