private I WAS JOAN, I WAS LAZARUS ♥︎ THISTLEBACK

[DOEBLAZE]

CW : Mentions of death, blood, and gore.

♥︎

The pine forest is cast in half - light, wintry blue stained midsummer's spilt - wine purple as it winds between the trees, casting long soot - black shadows across rippling grass, its sweet pastoral scent rising to mingle with the sharper perfume of the pines. Fireflies pinwheel, playful, between the sturdy trunks, spots of gold against the dusk, much like the greater gilded glow she casts her eye up towards. It would be a pleasant evening if it were not for the temperature—the night is unseasonably cool, not close to leaf - bare's bite but—too close for comfort—too much like snow that steamed when Blazestar's blood hit it, when Harrierstripe's entrails met its cold embrace—pure white and made to be ruined, made for her bloodred pawsteps, a lonely trail back to camp, stark against the cleanness of her Clanmates' tracks, stained—

She is not fond of cold weather.

Her swallow pulls thickly in her throat, gazing out into the stagnant darkness. The chipped jade stone of her eye slides towards @ThistleBack, settling on the hard pull of his muzzle, the wild spikes of his fur, gunmetal eyes—scarred and stained as she. She does not seek out gossip but it finds her—it is hard not for such a thing to find them all, the lingering whispers of what the other warrior, so courteous when they'd spoken before, had done. She imagines it, for a moment—the gnarled white muzzle twisted in rage, dripping bloody foam—the biting crush of the murderer's bones under powerful teeth—the thick blood puddling around the death - blow—the horror in the audience's eyes.

Suddenly it's all too close—her muzzle and her teeth and her death - blow, and Orangestar's suspicion in hazel - scented darkness—and muscle pulls taut, maw setting in a grim line as she turns her gaze forwards once more, feeling the ghost of copper linger on her tongue. Silence hangs long between the two of them, an odd duo set at the camp's mouth, the evening's designated night - guards, a watch she's normally happy to keep—but it's so cold suddenly—

" Thistleback, " she says, breaking the pine - fragrant silence before she knows she is. Her eye turns back to him, but it's steel - cut now, too - cold, frostbitten to keep red - white fire at bay, the foggy crimson that had ended with Harrierstripe spilling his life out of his stomach. " You killed Kuiper, didn't you? "

It's damn near a statement, and it breaks from behind her teeth with the abruptness of a fleeing rabbit. Her ears feather back, almost ashamed, but she does not take it back.​

 

[ThistleBack]

The dusk weaves above their ears, a beautiful sky darkening and drowning the sun away. Thistleback’s tongue rasps over the bone of his wrist, the jagged strips of thorn cuts scabbed over scrabble under his grooming efforts. The cold air calms the angry ache in his muscled shoulders, he never did rest did he? but, there never really was rest for the wicked. He draws in the cold air, lets it stroke the walls of his lungs. He welcomed the raven’s wings, they bring darkness. He was no stranger to it.

name called, his skull snaps up like a dog whistled to " good evening, love " he greets her kindly, voice hoarse and deep as it rumbles from his maw. . The small scarred widow, lilac tabby veil over various scars she wore the coat of a warrior in truth. The rasp in her voice has an element of soothing, easy to listen to. Even if but the abruptness of her, question? statement, rather- her ears are fallen back as she says this. Thistleback wasn’t one to flinch physically, but internally, a nail had stabbed into his side, prodding that which has laid dormant and undealt with for too long. It didn’t collect spiderwebs, it collected ash from a chimney of unbridled reprieve, he chews the bones of it. Let’s it settle like sediment, to mention is to silt the water and make it murky. His muzzle twitches,

slack jaws rotate with a chin flexing into place, a silence falls over him. A tense break in the cogs of his thoughts, where they turn over for consideration before passing his lips. He licks over his teeth an introspective habit, before his throat vibrates to clear. " Aye " he nods, the memory conjures behind his roaming stare. His shoulders stiffen, he curls a forepaw and his toes crackle but he flexes them out of idle half-thought. Kuiper’s lacerated, tangled, obliterated body laid before the eyes of Skyclan, his family.

His stare shifts to a spot in camp center now, an invisible stain of red. " a less than reputable moment of my life " he wagers aloud, he recalls biting down on flesh over and over like a rabid hound. His nails ripping skin, spewing the blood of his own kind. " I admit I… was no better than a rogue myself that day…. " he admits, paused words reach as colorless eyes stitch over Doeblaze’s fringe framed face. A flicker of calm fragility, a vulnerability displayed through the thick windows of his damnable soul. It somehow felt, like he was speaking to Blazestar that moment. A glimpse of it, brushing his heart like the wind over the leaves. " but as I once said, to your beloved mate. Stars rest his soul.. I was a rogue once, and that sort of thing doesn’t just…. " wash away like mud from fur? " I just wish I hadn’t….or rather… " he stops, his paws shift across the ground roughly as he wraps an arm around himself, there, his claws prick at the skin of his own arm. A grounding technique he developed in his youth.

Six moons time, no-one dare mention the day to him. Some avoided him like a poisonous shadow, some eyed him with whispers. History was something upheld by the tongue of clanners, fossilized and dutifully re-spoken. Just not within his eavesdrop. Perhaps they were torn between the family man who served his clan and leader upon council faithfully and valiantly, and the monster who was capable of destroying someone with extreme prejudice and without being ordered to do so in the first place. Ungoverned, savage, and seemingly unpredictable.

He had lost the opportunity to speak to Blazestar, to confide in the warmth of forgiveness and love he knew the fallen leader held like a torch to the lost souls of his clan. A guiding star in the sea of broken things, he had made them whole. He’s crushed by the silence he chose now, never more the chance to speak to such a beloved friend. Who was he to speak to? his children were grown but he would die never having surfaced the skeletons and laid such burdens upon them. Dad needed to be nothing less than dependable, strong, and formidable. The answer, not the question. the solution- not the problem. In truth he was dormant, stifled, angry, and deeply sad. Deersong and he had drifted apart since the execution of Kuiper, grown distant and cold over that time driving a wedge like a spike of ice, exhausting his emotions to the point of toxic petrification. Unwilling to speak freely, letting it bottle and overflow. Not without regret, but certainly without rectification.

" Blazestar didn’t give the order…but I did it…. I killed that child-killer…. not many things one could say they both regret ….and wouldn’t change… " his tone is afflicted with a clear unease now. Torn like his tormented mind was, a deeply unsettling world he had painted of his afterlife. Doomed for the darkforest’s shadows, where he could not watch over his children and grand children. That which made him sharper, angrier, and work harder to avoid such thoughts. His frown deepens, he is thankful for the shroud of darkness but he dismisses it by glancing to the one-eyed molly.

⛤ OOC INFORMATION REFERENCE ⛤

• —
  
  
• 
  
  
  
  forty-eight mns. EVENT TRACKER | IMPORTANT INFO
  — Former Lead warrior of Skyclan 12.22.22 - 06.2023
  — Father of Coyotecrest, Eveningsun and Scorpionpaw
  — mentoring Teeveepaw formerly Snowpath & Quillstrike
  — very muscular piebald black and white tom with spiky fur and cold silver-grey eyes.
  — voice & accent
  — biography･ﾟ✧​
  OPEN for Dice battles | stine#3004
  
• 
  
  

​

 

[DOEBLAZE]

His greeting is a return far more courteous than she deserves, and she dips her head beneath the weight of his friendliness. It feels painful, it feels heavy—as everyone's does. The community that had once felt like an embrace drawn close, the community she still strives to preserve, feels so unearned it's painful these days. The loneliness she once loathed, that she hid from at all costs, she would almost welcome now—anything to lift the weight of undeserving every time someone turns a friendly mew or a curving smile towards her, offers to take her extra dawn patrol or bring her the choice pick from the pile today. Anything is better, her self - imposed exile is better, than the immense weight of kindness. It's why she normally favors the night watch.

He does not deny it, and his voice is gravel - on - gravel when he replies in syllables as brief as her own. Muscle pulses tightly in her jaws when she turns her gaze away, forcing lonesome jade to stare out into the bleak darkness, reflecting the moon's cold light back. She does not look away for long, though, indulging a former habit only briefly—verdant eye turns back to Thistleback with a gaze as piercing as if she had opened her claws, fixing him as squarely as a sword through the chest. Try as she might, though, she has always worn her heart on her face, and surprise and sympathy ripple across it at equal intervals, velvet waves crashing in time with the evening wind that toys with the fluffy curls of her fringe.

She listens to his lonely tale in silence, and lets it stretch long before she breaks it with her own.

" I know what you mean, " she answers simply, and if he looks at her sidelong, surprised, she does not begrudge him it. She is not proud of what she had done on that bitterly cold leaf - bare day, and if she can bury it with her own paws, she will—not a secret, but she'll keep it anyways. " Harrierstripe, " she says, as if in explanation, tasting the moor - sourness of his blood on her tongue. Remembering his crazed words, the grudge he had carried heavy in his heart all the way from the wastes. " I—after Blazestar— " she stops and starts, as if her mate's name is a ball of bramble caught in the back of her throat. As if its holiness might burst from her, rejecting a stained host. " I killed him. "

Silence unspools long, then, until she finally admits, " It didn't make me feel any better. "

OOC : —

♥︎

​