MY CLARITY ♥ starlingheart

[Halfshade]

Cats had left for the journey to the mountains to find a cure and she only partially remembers some of it, dazed and lost to sleep most days. She can’t remember who went, she can’t remember where she is half the time but she does remember that the pain she feels is often in her head and chest and not her lower abdominal area. That is new. That is something else.
Part of her realized a few days ago but didn’t want to believe it, chalked it up to her delirium and inability to focus but in a rare moment of clarity she finds herself gasping out in surprise and alarm for the medicine cat as she walked by-tending to her herb stores in wake of her apprentice’s absence.
“Little bird…I think…I think something is wrong with my stomach.” She knew though, didn’t she, why the need to be vague and shy about it, but she wanted to be wrong. She needed to be wrong. Her excuses to return to the nursery in wake of the rising sickness in the clan had not saved her, it had damned her and it had even harmed more than just her own wellbeing if she was right.
Halfshade, malnourished and struggling to even keep a little food down, was pregnant and she had no idea how far along she was at this point. These kits could be born from her ailing and broken body any day now and most certainly would die without the lungwort needed to spare them the sickness and even with it they might be too small to take the medicine at all. She also was not going to be able to produce milk with how difficult it was to eat. They would need to go to another nursery queen if they were to survive at all.
“...I’m going to die aren’t I?” She was sick, she was miserable, but she wasn't stupid. Even in her haze of focus she knew that there was not long left in her and their cats may even not return at all. Had...someone important left? She can't recall it but she's already mourning for some reason..
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[Ooc]
@STARLINGHEART
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[Starlingheart]

She cannot believe how much she misses Magpiepaw. His absence had been noticed almost immediately. Sometimes, she still found herself turning to ask him a question, green eyes settling on the empty space where he should be. A sad sigh would escape her and she would turn back to whatever she was doing. While she works, she wonders if it would get easier with time. He's coming back, she reassures herself silently, but a part of her tries to prepare for the worst.

When a voice speaks up from the corner of her den she is on alert immediately. Her head whirls around to find the source and she is surprised when it is Halfshade. Her voice sounded weaker it is so unlike her that at first Starlingheart had thought a stranger had creeped into her den. Immediately, whatever she had been doing previously is forgotten as the medicine cat heads to the queens side.

Her eyes are sympathetic but they knit together in confusion Stomach problems? Did Halfshade really not know... "Halfshade.." There was no way she didn't know "I can-I can give you watermint if you-if you want buh-but I think-I think we both know what-what the real cause is" She really wished it wasn't so, it broke her heart to even think of it. This was the worst possible time, the worst possible way and if Starlingheart had known earlier she would not have made the horrible choice she had...

"No shh you'll be okay" her voice is hushed and pleading, like she is a kit again. She needed Halfshade to be okay. "Can i- Will you eat?" She would bring her anything she wanted if only she would keep something down.

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[Halfshade]

"...I know....I know, I...." It wasn't fair-none of this was. She'd die in a clan of cats who didn't even like her or eachother, the cruelest clan in the forest where love went to die and no one batted an eye at it. They'd not had a leader who cared since Briarstar. They'd not had stability since Briarstar. She wants to tell Starlingheart how good her mother was, but she can only think about how much she hates it here now. She should've been a kittypet-she was once pretty enough for it, any two-leg would've taken her in. But she stayed for Smogmaw and he...
"...I wish he didn't go...I want him here, why did he go? Why did he leave me?" Why had he not even said goodbye, she knows there was no closeness she could ask for but even just a few words at the mouth of the den would be enough. But instead she finds out from Starlingheart, her son is in a nest near her, sleeping with lungs trembling with every inhale and her other kits out apprenticed out there with no watchful deputy father to keep an eye on them and she can not help but feel abandoned. It's irrational, its born of her own fear and the delirium of the sickness and some part of her knows that but it is drowned out by the part that is terrified. Halfshade doesn't want to die, but she feels like she might.
The medicine cat
"I can't..." Her voice cracks, brittle like how she feels; as if she would crumble to pieces at any second. She knows she's hungry but the idea of food disgusts her and she can't even smell prey now without turning up her nose at it. The torbie's throat tightens and she feels herself choking up again, unable to breath but wanting to cry until her lungs burned, "They're going to die aren't they? I'm too sick I...I'm going to kill them. There's no point.."
These kits didn't deserve this world she was bringing them into, if only she had been more thoughtful, more aware, but she'd only selfishly wanted to guard herself in the nursery once more. She's only thankful none of Frostbite's kits got sick because of her.

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[Starlingheart]

It hurts her terribly, to see her dear friend like this. She tries to imagine if she were in Halfshade's paws. If she lay sick and on the verge of death in a nest in a strange den and her mate left without even coming to say goodbye, and then she found out she was expecting kits again on top of it all. She would not be -able to bear the heartbreak she thinks. "He is strong and ShadowClan needed him to go and get the cure, to bring it - bring it back for-for you- for you and Swanpaw" she explains gently. It is why her apprentice had left too, after all. But still, there is no excuse as to why he hadn't come to say goodbye and she knew it so she doesn't dare try to defend him. She wants to claw his ears when he returns for such insolence but for now all she can do is be there for Halfshade in the time she needed it most.

"It's not your fault" she says, her voice nearly a whisper. She adverts her gaze from the bi-colored molly "It-it would be on-on my shoulders if they died" the confession leaves her lips before she can stop it. "I-I understand if-if you decide to-to hate me for this but there was-there was three cures Halfshade" and what had she done with the third? Something terrible, something awful. Granitepelt had told her it was okay, had understood why she had made the choice she had, but would Halfshade understand? She was a mother too but that didn't excuse the terrible thing Starlingheart had done "I-I could've saved you. I could've saved your kits or-or I could've saved Heavybranch but-but I didn't know. I didn't know and-and I have always thought you so strong and Flintkit was so weak and Heavy-Heaybranch..." terrible. It was a terrible thing to say. He was old and weak and she is not certain he even would have made it with the cure. "I gave Flintkit double the dose because I was- I was afraid of losing him but now-now I'm afraid I'm going to lose you and-and you will lose your kits and it will be all my own doing" what a miserable situation she had gotten herself into and she had no one to blame but herself.

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[Halfshade]

The Medicine cat's words did little to console her but she settled down enough to not breath so heavily, to not light her lungs ablaze with her aggressive sobbing mewls and it was only at the sudden confession does she quiet, disbelief fighting to the surface past the fog of dizzying uncertainty.
It took a moment to realize, to understand what she was being told, but finally it clicked: Flintkit had been double dosed. A cure right there, gone.

"I see...." It is quiet, defeated, there was no point being angry or upset and she did not have the energy for it anyways. The confession is met with a wheezing rattle of laugh, a single soft huff of a noise and she did not bother to raise her head to maintain eye contact; she was too exhausted.
"...I can't...I can't be mad at you....what mother wouldn't do the same? It's the burden we carry...we love them...they mean more than anything...than any clanmate...no one understands a queen's battle..." She couldn't say she wouldn't have done similar in her place, Starlingheart carried a heaviness most cats could never comprehend and she'd made the choice she felt she could live with. Maybe it was the delirium, maybe she knew she was too far gone for it to matter, but Halfshade felt nothing. She knew she should be some kind of way, to be condemned to death to save another, her own son still ill and wasting away and Heavybranch...was gone? The torbie hadn't even realized his nest was empty now, too lost in the haze of sickness and dipping in and out of sleep; if Starlingheart had not pointed it out to her she might have never noticed at all.
"...my kits...deserve names, even if they die...they deserve names. Nice names, happy names." She inhales, exhales, her frame barely moves, "Warm...hope...soft, comforting things...strong names so maybe they..." She trails off, does not finish her lamenting, "..I miss him, even if he....I...Blue...Tangle..." Mismatched eyes flit lazily upward to Starlingheart's face, "Bird..."
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[Starlingheart]

In that pause where Halfshade says nothing Starlingheart only hears the beating of her own heart. Loud and buzzing in her ears, a symbol that she is alive despite the fact that she fears reparation for her choices any moment. Whether it was from StarClan or Halfshade's claws it does not matter. When it does not come, however, when the queen simply says 'I see..' she almost feels disappointment. She almost wants Halfshade to get angry. It would at least be proof that she was alive. Instead of anger though Starlingheart gets understanding and it is more than what she deserves. She feels her cheeks getting wet from tears quietly shed but she quickly brings a forelimb up to her eyes and wipes them away. Now was not the time. There would be a moment to grieve once all this is over, she is sure, but right now Halfshade needs her. All of the cats who are lying sick in her den need her.

"I vow on my life and the life of anyone I hold dear that if your kits live I will watch over them and protect them, and whether-whether they li-live or-or die I'll - I'll make sure they at least go to StarClan with a name" she says, her voice quiet but sure. Halfshade could have that from her, at least. She owed it to her at least. "Yuh-y'know kits who- kits who die at birth have lived the perfect lives. All they know is-is love. No suffering, no hunger no pain. Just love and warmth and then peace." Bird... The name reminds her of when she was just a child pretending to be a medicine cat, pretending to be an adult, how afraid she had been but how loved she had felt when Halfshade would call her Little Bird and she would curl around her and tell her everything would be okay. "No matter what happens I'll-I'll make sure your kits know love in their lives" everyone deserved to no matter the circumstances of their birth.

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