sensitive topics SELF-FUFILLED PROPHECY ( JUSTICE ༊ )

[APPLEJAW]

She could handle Chilledstar's death. What would it make her if she couldn't? Someone stuck in her apprentice moons, still hanging off the tail of her former mentor. Someone that could not handle change; and that someone would crumble quickly within a place such as ShadowClan. Someone fool enough to think her leader unkillable, despite every sign pointing toward that absolute untruth. Applejaw refused to be any of those things, for ShadowClan needed no more weakness within its ranks. If she could not cope with a death — she would have rolled over to die moons ago.

She could have wallowed in it all. She could've let her tail drag — she could have let go of what made her... her, but her father's succession had made it easy to keep distracted. Look to the future, she did. Applekit had always eagerly awaited the rise of Smogstar. In a way, her dreams had come true, even if Applekit had never come to terms with who must die in order for it to be realized. Even if Applejaw, still, may never hope to.

Smogstar had arose over a hopeful horizon. It was remarkable, she had thought, in a place where the sky was gloomy more often than it was not. She'd heralded him upon Clanrock with a gaze reflecting the new name he bore; twinkling, holding hesitant hope for the future. Applejaw would be as she has always been: a powerful set of claws, a tool for those with the right to command her. For Chilledstar, she would have done anything. There had been a time where she would've done the same for Granitepelt as well. She is blessed to live long enough to see her father's reign. For once, for certain, she could say she is placing herself in paws of someone capable. If she could not trust her father, who else could there ever be?

Then came the sickness. Then came the disappearance.

The flame of ShadowClan's long-deserved success was snuffed before it could even burn properly. No death. No untimely first life lost, but complete evaporation; nine whole lives carted away to somewhere they could only pray to find. Smogstar was gone, and for the first time in her life, Applejaw is aimless. Her end-all-be-all disappeared into the darkness of night. They tread the same territory over and over, narrowing gazes at the grooves in the trees, at every rustle of a reed. Its a territory they've known for seasons. A territory that they've turned over corpse-after-corpse within. Insanity is what it is, checking the same places again and again. It'd be insanity too, to think Smogstar would up and drag himself from camp in the middle of the night to never return. Forget his sickness. Forget it all. It couldn't be true. She couldn't let it be true.

Stubbornness is an admirable quality in the right paws. It is that stubbornness that brings her to the Thunderpath.

WindClan was not above spies. They were not above lies and deceit. For most of the length of ShadowClan's lifetime, WindClan has always been right beside them, making their lives all the worse. It just made sense, didn't it? ShadowClan's problems always came running back to them. To not kill Granitepelt had been a mistake. To not kill Siltcloud had been a mistake. To never tear across WindClan's border and demand of them to right their wrongs — perhaps, had been Chilledstar's biggest mistake. If Mirepurr, Halfsun — anyone believed the passing of a mantle would free WindClan from every ounce of ugliness, they were a damned fool.

It was not just WindClan that laid past this border, either. Granitepelt, he's dead, Starlingheart's stutter is in her ears. Whispers had passed between them all. Granitepelt, dead. Granitepelt was dead. She knows he is; knows this is not something Starlingheart could have possibly mistaken... And yet its the thought of his name that spurs her across the Thunderpath. She can hardly hear the monsters over her own blood rushing in her ears.

The moors are a whirlwind of empty shrubland. Winds bluster freely past a thick tortoiseshell coat, uninterrupted by any trees or towering reeds. She would find what she was looking for, no matter what. She would find an answer.

Perhaps by StarClan's blesisng, it doesn't take long for her to find it. Applejaw's gaze falls upon them with cold determination. They would find no tremble in her body, in her face, in her voice; because what goaded her was justice, and surely not fear. Her words whip forth with tightly-held solidity. " It was you, wasn't it? " They did this. If not them, then who they worked for; what they stood for. She had considered them a friend once, and so she would always remember them and their betrayal.

Applejaw leaps for her scapegoat without a second thought.​

 

[GHOSTMASK]

Some corrupted urge keeps pulling her back to these borders. The place she lives now is not her home, not a home at all—and maybe that's why she keeps finding herself compelled to marsh and moor. One day she's pressing insistently at the seams of ShadowClan, unspooling the tiny threads that make up the lives there. The next, she's drifting around the corners of WindClan, never so close they'd notice her, always smelling thickly of wild garlic and dust. Never does she stay in DuskClan longer than she absolutely must; she spends hours and hours hunting, she tells her so-called Clanmates. Hunting of a sort, sure. Under the cover of thick gloaming and cloudy skies, she watches the tiny warriors from afar, imagining she could snuff out their unfairly earned lives with the press of a paw. A wrathful god, like she deserves.

It's been a long time since she ventured to strike down upon the puny ones, longer still since she was successful. Two attempts, both of them cut short too soon before she could finish the job. Always the ShadowClanners ruining it, whether it was a well-timed patrol saving Lilacfur's life or her stars-damned aunt dragging her off of Poppyglow before she could give them what they deserved. What she knew they deserved. She oscillates wildly between the ego of a god and that of a crawling rat in the gutter. It is only when she has a thrumming life between her claws, singing for its end and begging for its continuation, that she feels right.

Applejaw presents herself like a gift. Her bicolor gaze flames with cold accusation when it falls upon her own beetle-dark eyes. Ghostmask does not pay much attention to the words she says, the hard determination of her solid body. Her spiraling black eyes fall upon the pale fluff of her throat, and she thinks of how delicious the irony would be. She had spent much of her youth bowing to Applekit, then to Applepaw; her steadfast deputy, always at her elbow and there when Comfreypaw was being a spoilsport. She had pandered to her, but in the end, it hadn't been enough—Applejaw hadn't been enough to keep her there. Maybe if the torbie had just been a better friend, Ghostmask wouldn't have been forced to do what she did.

Her face is curiously impassive even when Applejaw leaps for her. She meets the tortoiseshell with claws popping from their sheaths and glossy fangs bared to the root, tumbling into a tangle of limbs. The infuriating stalactite drip-drip of her thoughts fades into that blessedly familiar background noise as she grapples with Applejaw, her abyssal eyes always trained on that white throat. Ghostmask's claws splay wide, and even though Applejaw has at least a head on her, the upper paw is too easy to gain—what's going to happen to Applejaw is inevitable, she thinks, but it's also the warrior's fault. For not being good enough.

Ghostmask aims to slam the larger warrior into the ground and cage her in with her sinewy forelimbs despite the difference in size. Her head hangs low from her slender shoulders and she stares down at Applejaw. She thinks in the dew-bright rosiness of her youth, it might have pleased her to be so close to the other. It still makes her happy, but more so in anticipation of what she sees as unavoidable. One claw-laden forepaw aims to frame the other cat's face, almost tenderly, even as Ghostmask contemplates what she might do with such a lovely visage. The setting sun lights the planes of Applejaw's face quite nicely, after all.

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[APPLEJAW]

Maybe the worst part of it all is that there's no reaction. Applejaw surges suddenly, falls upon Ghostmask with the brunt of her weight — and she cannot earn so much as a look of surprise. No eyes widening, no gasp hidden just past the bite of Ghostmask's fangs. She's come this far and her old friend could not even dignify her with a response. She'd thought it would satisfy her. Instead, Applejaw only finds — she only feels...

She's gotten clumsy, she realizes. When had that happened? Sometime in between waiting for her life to begin and now. She had been so sure, she'd thought, resolute in her mission as she'd lunged for the she-cat; but her strikes are suddenly insecure. Her teeth snap together, and she can only find whiskers and wisps of fur. Ghostmask matches her blow for blow. Panic was dangerous, Applejaw has always known ( was taught by Ghostmask's father ), but with every whiff of claws, her expression furrows. With every miscalculated slip, she strains. Why, why, why couldn't she get herself together?

Her chest is heaving as the rogue slams her into the ground. It knocks the wind out of her, and simultaneously the cracking visage of calm is shattered. It isn't fair, childishly, she thinks. It wasn't fair that she could look upon her like this, as if she'd always known she would win. Applejaw bears the face of a loser, with fur frayed at the ends, with dual-toned eyes blistering. Since her mother's death, she's resigned herself to sharp eyes and stone-hewn jaw. Nothing like this, with blown-wide pupils; with a pale maw twisted in this feeling she forbade herself to ever know again.

Its fear. That's what she feels. If the drum of her heart was determination, she would never lower her weapon. If it was adrenaline, she would not feel as weak as she does. Something had gone wrong along the way. Ghostmask looms before her, and there is nothing that makes Applejaw submit but her own pathetic soul. She heaves, she shakes, and she realizes why she could not fight the way she wanted to: she didn't know what it was for, anymore.

She's a kit again, staring down the gaping mouth of a beast. There is nothing more she wants in this moment than for Chilledstar to save her again. She wants Smogstar to take her by the scruff, up and away to safety. Though its by his daughter's claws that she would die by, she longs for the watchful gaze of Granitepelt to tell her what to do.

She's never really grown up, has she?

Applejaw regrets never mourning her mother while she could. She regrets never mourning any of them, even he who had done more bad than she could ever had known. Perhaps if she had, she wouldn't be regretting this stupid thing that she's done.

She can't understand why Ghostmask does this — upholds her face as if she is something to be prized. Did she remember them, too, sticking by each others side in their youth? Perhaps if they had both mourned the loss of each other, none of this would be happening.

For the first time since she was a kit, she cries.​

 

[GHOSTMASK]

Applejaw is crying. Tears trickle from her steel-cut eyes and down to the hard set of her gnarled jaw, and Ghostmask feels them sprinkle damp spots on her paw. Dimples are pressing into Applejaw's soft fur where her claws dig into the other's face, just short of the pressure needed to open wounds. A single bead of blood pops up beneath one claw, and she feels her head spin with exhilaration. For one who's spent so much of her life purposeless and adrift, the sensation of purpose, of power, is a heady high. Energy zigzags down her sinewy forelimbs, sets her thin body alight until she feels as if she's bathed in flame.

She cradles the warrior's face like a prize, a thing of admiration—and in a way, she is. Dying under Ghostmask's claws will be the greatest purpose she ever serves, after all. Maybe she had always been meant for this, ever since they met as loyal deputy and leader in the nursery. For a moment, Ghostmask contemplates tracing the hard lines of Applejaw's face with her own gnarled claws; in the end, though, reason wins out. The killing is more important than the method, for one thing; for another, it had been through these kind of flights of whimsy that Lilacfur and Poppyglow had so luckily escaped.

No, she thinks, pinning Applejaw's white throat beneath her gaze, better to do it quick. Messy, but quick. For some reason, her victim does not struggle, does not protest with tooth and claw—she lies there and cries, and a satisfying assurance flames in Ghostmask's heart. A further affirmation that she deserved this, and that Ghostmask deserved to do it to her. Anticipation is as thick in her veins as her father's traitorous blood, and then she—

—she lunges, tearing at Applejaw's throat with her bottom teeth first, the upwards killing blow of a wild boar. Copper spills richly onto her tongue, and she does not luxuriate in it or its taste. It is not about the red slicking her jaws, or the foamy pink bubbles spilling over Applejaw's lips as she tightens her bite. The how is irrelevant to Ghostmask; it is the act itself, putting herself above Applejaw by any means necessary, even if it means putting her under the ground.

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[APPLEJAW]

It's all the moments in between that are cruel. The caress of claws that she refused to see. The tear of skin, slow, at first. It's just time enough for the blood to calm its rush, for fear to not take up space in her mind so completely. It is not into acceptance that it wanes, but resignation: the relinquishing of it all when a thing becomes inevitable. As it all voids, regret rushes in to fill what cracks are left behind. She had done it all — played this game for the whole of her life only to end up here. A kit dreams of apprenticeship, an apprentice dreams of warriorhood... What did a warrior dream for, then? She thinks — she had thought, to serve a leader they believed in. Was that too lovely of a dream for a ShadowClan cat?

Blood smatters her fur, and she thinks that it might be, indeed. The buzz of pain from a claw-kissed face now erupts into screeching cacophony as Ghostmask rips her open. Applejaw's scream is silent, welling up in her throat and catching on the thick lump of her remorse. She cannot breathe. Instead, blood wells in her mouth, coats her old friend's tongue. Her collapse is instant, the moment muscle is torn. Ghostmask grips her as if she never intends to let her go; and that would be the ultimate cruelty, she thinks. No possible hope of being lifted to safety, even as her eyes dull and the world lurches sideways and black-and-white. Something unseeable glimmers past the barrier of life and death. Was she so desperate, was she scared enough to dredge the visage of a savior to the corners of her eye the very last moment that she could?

She thinks she sees them. Thinks she sees Chilledstar, sees Halfshade. Past the fogged shadows, she strains for an answer — strains for Smogstar. Was it here that she'd find her answer after all? It's a feeling, nothing but a feeling that tells her something is swimming just past her vision. She can't move. Cannot even manage the loll of her head, hardly the jitter of her eyes; and mercifully, indeed, the world falls silent.

And of course... Granitepelt would never come to find her. The thought does not make her as happy as it should. ...She doubted it was real, anyways. She doubted any StarClan warrior would see her worthy of fetching, after all of this.

Her true last breath had been moments ago. In consolation, that is the very last thing she realizes.​