sensitive topics SIMPLY CALL ME A FOOL || DEATH

[heavybranch]

‎‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ It isn't often that Heavybranch feels his age. His bones ache at the joints and he's no stranger to his teeth falling from his mouth like discarded needles from a spruce, but those aren't his age. He's caught sight of the lines that seasons have etched into his face, the way his one full body sags like his skin is reaching for the soft ground, and those have always just been his body's age. Though sometimes tetchy, Heavybranch has maintained his young mind throughout his many seasons.

Now, after each and every hard fought open-mouthed breath Heavybranch feels old.

‎‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ He hadn't thought of this disease as bad, or he had thought himself untouchable after being alive for so long without caution. Heavybranch inhales and it is a rough, phlegmy sound, then exhales as if he can't hold onto the breath any longer. He's never thought he would feel like this — he's never been this ill before.

‎‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ❝Never took a mate,❞ Heavybranch says to nobody and everybody. What he doesn’t say: This is my story, this is why I matter, this is why you need to try harder to save me, ❝Never had any kits of my own. I wasn’t ever interested in either, but that hadn’t meant—❞

Inhale, exhale, and it is an ugly sound.

‎‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ❝That hadn’t meant I couldn’t be a friend. I still gave to the marsh group, and I gave to ShadowClan. Thought I did a good enough job of it. Thought I’d earned my comfort,❞ He’s laid on his side in a half curl, head lolled out of his nest and pillowed on nothing but the soft soil of the medicine den’s floor. His eyes are distant and dull, looking back on a different time, ❝Thought I…❞

‎‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ Heavybranch trails off, too weak to continue. He draws in an inhale like it is a battle, his flank wavering with the effort of it, and then at once his whole body tenses. He relaxes in increments, until at last he lets out a final exhale, and is gone.​

P. 14​

 

[hitch]

He's not visiting the medicine den for Heavy Branch specifically, but when he pokes inside, all he sees is a dying man and his stale, straining breaths are so very loud in Rosemire's ears. They twist back in visible distress, pale eyes widening, and he fumbles his way to the elder's side like he'd tripped over to Rubble's so many moons ago. "You are a friend to ShadowClan," he insists, though it doesn't seem that Heavy Branch hears him, and he reaches out to touch a paw but flinches back because his own's suddenly all red and wet and warm. It shakes when he tucks it back under himself, like he might hide the memory from himself.

"You deserve it. Just— Starlingheart will be over in a moment, old man, there's still time, you—" His voice plummets in volume as his urgency heightens, and he reaches again for Heavy Branch, this time to wedge his paw under his head, pillowing it from the ground. It's just white this time, but it's not a mercy worth appreciating. He's going. The life's slipping out of him as suddenly as he'd collided with Rosemire on the ice, as suddenly as the laughter startled out of him. He was faster than he'd expected.

He's watching him slide forward now, too fast to stop, and Rosemire's frozen solid and a thick, wintry veil obscures his vision. Heavy Branch disappears into it. The muscles above Rosemire's paw go still. "I'm sorry," he whispers, and he doesn't know who he's talking to anymore but none of them are here.
​

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[smogstar]

Riding on the wind's currents are the laboured gasps of a soul doomed. These croaks, they are unlike the wet and wretched expulsions he has gotten so used to hearing. It is a grim sound, a death rattle camouflaged as a wheeze, and a poorly camouflaged one at that.

Smogmaw stares at the shadowed mouth of Starlingheart's cave, from which the death throes' echoes spilt outside. Limbs refrain from mimicking Rosemire's example, instead staying firmly fixed on the cooled mud underfoot. He pities the cat damned to a comfortless death in that claustrophobic hole—yet, seeing how it hadn't been a certain someone's saccharine tone wracked by the convulsions of death, the deputy decides his presence is hardly needed. Stepping paw amongst the infected would serve to prophesise his own fate. Alas, compassion was a luxury ill-afforded by the tom even on the best of days, and most certainly not during the dense fog of this plague.

Now marks the pinnacle of ShadowClan's misfortunes, he wagers in this stupor, in which Yellowcough ultimately shifts from a destructive prediction to a tragedy in-unfolding. Familiar faces he has lived alongside for seasons unending will soon go to feed the worms. Battle-hardened warriors. Queens who've fostered this very community. Meek apprentices, now prevented from receiving their full names. And elders, whose storytelling voices will go forever silent.

The ear lent towards the cave returns to focus, as a passing clanmate seizes his attention. "I need you to fetch our medicine cat, no matter how busy she may be," the deputy instructs, bearing more sympathy towards Starlingheart and her workload than whoever was currently living their last moments. "Someone is gravely sick, hacking and spitting everywhere in the den." And alongside him, a warrior willingly adding himself to Starlingheart's patient list. Rosemire's questionable judgement shall not be condemned, though; rushing headlong into a nest of plague-ridden cats will provide enough consequences as is.​

 

[Starlingheart]

Starlingheart had been out getting moss so that her patients would not need to get up to get water from the small pool in her den. A lot of them could not make the trip, and her stores were getting less and less every day. Sometimes it was hard to tear herself away from them and sometimes it was easy. Sometimes the fresh air and the clarity of being alone was necessary for her own benefit. She could not be an effective healer if she herself was drowning, after all.

She is surprised, however, when she comes back to camp, back to her den, and finds cats already there. "Rosemire, Smogmaw, what-what're you-" her voice cuts off when she sees what they are looking at. Heavybranch. His eyes lack color and stare up at the ceiling of her den, as if he had watched his soul leave his body and head for the stars. Deep inside her subconcious, it is an outcome that had been expected. As much as she had wanted to deny it, she knew when she had given Flintkit double the dose that she was taking it from someone else who needed it too. Still, her eyes blurr with tears and she finds her heart twist with shame and guilt.

"You-you both need to leave" she finally says, her voice quiet "I-I dont need you two to get sick too" it would be a nightmare if they lost more cats to this horrible disease. "G-go, go and someone-someone please tell the rest of the clan that Heavybranch is gone" She knows that she will have to prepare for his vigil, but right now she feels sick.
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[lilacfur]

A tired heavy gaze rest on the shadowed maw of Starlingheart's den. Wheezy breaths and sputtering coughs echo distantly from inside and it is impossible to ignore. The collective suffering her Clanmates endured in there was shocking, something she never imagined seeing before. Not like this.

A certain voice rasped from inside, hardly discernible between the choking gasps within. She recognized it as their elder, Heavybranch. The old tom she would have been happier to change nests for than any other senior cat in their ranks. The kind face that lit up the darkest corners of a den. Yet his voice was cut down into a dull blade as he desperately bargained his life.

Rosemire's offered comfort to the tom is what brought the teetering spill over her eyes as she quietly listened. She had no words to share with the elder, none that she had not already given him in her prayers for his health. She didn't want to add herself to the patients in her sisters den to see the man die. She was conflicted in the moment, feeling guilty for acting on her self perseverance instead of sacrificing her comfort for that if another. Though it quickly broke down hearing Starlingheart admonish the two toms.

"Starlingheart, is there anything I can get you, for him?" Her voice is unsteady as she struggled to keep herself sturdy in the face of what happened. The loss that withered down before them. ​

[ sad hello's and mad high low's ]​