sensitive topics SIX FEET AIN'T SO FAR DOWN

[deathpaw]

[ gore denoted with ♤ ; tldr, deathpaw attacked whitepaw and out of self defense, whitepaw killed deathpaw ]

Her paws - they're soot and mud. They've never been clean. From birth, they are detailed by sin, by horrors scraping their dirty claws down the stripes of her patterns. There were hours where she thought she could clean them well enough and be a daughter that her mother would be proud of.

But today… Today, she cannot clean herself. Today, she assumes herself the villain she was born to be. Today… today the stars will see her no longer.

She hears weeping in the wind as she takes down the rabbit, blood dripping from her teeth. She's mindless, a pion to someone else's brigade, as she marches forward. The border lingers ahead of her, nowhereness beyond that. Her father will see her soon, take her away with the promise of strength and integrity… He is wrong. She knows that he is wrong.

But can the fragility of life truly be kept safe in soft paws? Her worth means morsels less here than it would in DuskClan. Her siblings… they would not understand. They wouldn't -

"Hey."

A rasping voice, a familiar tune. Her head turns with an achingly cold speed. The world is empty. The world is nothing. He looks at her and his golden gaze is knowing. But he does not know her. No one has ever known her.

"Don't do it."

He tries, and it's the step towards her that triggers her fight. The rabbit falls and in an instant, she's racing towards him. Him, with his mud and muck body, painted by the pain and sorrows of his abandonment. He with his crown of pure white, of innocence - of his clean mind, unbridled by the suffering around him. He need not care of them - of his false siblings and true ones. The medicine cats pity him, feed him whatever his sickly body wants. His pale, pale fur - it's all a lie.

A lie. A lie!

She shoves her body into his, his weaker bones clanging together as she stomps atop of him. His shock is evident, but she sees it fear. Blue eyes are vacant as she stares down at him. He, the epitome of drowning purity.

She, the harbinger of death.

♤ She lunges for his ear, notches her teeth to the base, and pulls. It's more difficult than she had anticipated. Cartilage does not give as easily as she thought it would. Again she sharpens her teeth with the flesh of his ear and again she pulls, ripping more and more from him and spitting aside the bits that get caught in her mouth. All the while, claws score into her chest. Her pale but still dusty chest, her chance at clarity still dulled and now bloodied, splashing back at him.

♤ She misaligns her next aim, diving her teeth into his eye next. A rip, a tug, a spurt - she spits out that golden, sunshine eye. She does not gag and her frown, now painted with reds of all shades, deepens as he still wriggles beneath her. Her paw lifts, her claws extended, and she scores his features, again, again, again, again, until fur and skin peel like ribbons with her claws.

She does not notice she's crying. The salty tang of her tears mix with the overwhelming metallic scent in the air. Her jaw tenses so hard it hurts, and in her folly, in her false eagerness to appease her sense of a namesake - her prey fights back.

♤ Dark fur wrinkles with the sudden motion; his back arches and his teeth find the cleaves of her throat. With a kick of life, he bites down hard on what he can grasp. With the last quickness he can muster, his fading will to live, he rips back. Morsels of her throat tangle with pieces of him on the moorland grass, and she stares helplessly down at him.

It's not instantaneous - death is a slow crawling wraith that aches in its trudging steps, that fills the body with a chill rivaling leafbare snow. Perhaps that was her mistake, then. That she did not take her time. That she was too quick, to hurried in her actions. That she tried to take so much from him when all she should've done… was steal his life.

I'm sorry, she does not say it to him. It is not his to earn. Her limbs fold and she lands just atop of his body, her apology sent to the lands far away. The rabbit is still warm.
​

 

[whitepaw]

[ cw pretty much all the way through for graphic descriptions of violence and gore ]

Whitepaw's day begins with a desperate kind of determination. His steps are methodical, steady, his fur carefully groomed against the chill of the morning wind. The weight of the sickness that clings to him like a shadow is pushed aside, buried under layers of pride and the need to prove. He's worth more than this—more than the pitying glances, the whispers, the endless accommodations. His paws brush against the familiar dirt of WindClan's moor, and he feels grounded, unshakable.

Until he sees her.

She's ahead of him, her shape stark against the horizon. Her movements are erratic, a sharp edge to her posture as she drags a rabbit with her. Blood streaks her muzzle, crimson against the mixed shades that make up her being. Whitepaw feels his stomach twist, but he doesn't stop moving. "Hey," he says, his voice rasping against the tension in his throat. She turns slowly, and something in her gaze makes the air feel thinner. It's empty, hollow—and yet brimming with something he can't name. "Don't do it," he urges. There's no plan in his mind, no grand intention, just the raw instinct to stop whatever is about to unfold, to save her from the dread that thickens the air.

Despite the good intentions, when she moves, she doesn't hesitate. The rabbit falls, forgotten, and she lunges for him. Whitepaw barely has time to react before her weight slams into him, his legs folding beneath the force. Pain shoots through his ribs as they collide with the ground. The fury in her is wild, unrelenting, and his mind scrambles to make sense of it. Why her? Why him? He doesn't get the chance to question it for long because her teeth are on his ear, pulling, ripping. The pain is searing, sharp enough to send stars bursting behind his eyes. He tries to shove her off, claws blindly reaching for purchase against her chest, her face, anything— but it's no use. The world tilts as she tears at him with a kind of desperation that borders on madness. His ear is gone, the cartilage giving way after relentless attempts. Blood spills warm and wet down his face, staining the pristine white of his fur. He's gasping, struggling, but she doesn't stop.

Her teeth find his eye next. Whitepaw screams, the sound raw and broken, but it feels like it belongs to someone else. The pain is unbearable, an explosion of agony as his vision shatters, the light from one side of the world snuffed out in an instant. Claws dig into the mutilated flesh, scoring ribbons of grotesque viscera from his face. Despite his screaming, his thrashing, nothing he does seems to matter. Her claws rake across his face again and again. The world is a blur of red and black, his mind reeling from the sharp tang of his own blood and the suffocating weight of helplessness. This is it, he thinks. This is how I die.

The thought becomes a source of ignition. Something primal flares to life within him, a last spark of will that forces his body into motion. His back arches, muscles screaming in protest as his teeth sink into warm meat. He bites down hard, harder than he thought he could, and pulls with everything he has left. The taste of her blood fills his mouth, bitter and metallic—the flood of copper chokes him, filling his throat alongside his own blood. Her body jerks, her claws falter, and she collapses atop him, her breaths shallow, her eyes wide with something like regret. Blood pours from her throat, mixing with the dirt beneath them. Whitepaw gags as he spits the flesh from his mouth, caught beneath her weight, his vision swimming as pain drowns him. They lie there, tangled in a grotesque tableau of violence and ruin, the rabbit's lifeless body forgotten behind them. For a fleeting moment, Whitepaw wonders if they'll both die here, their blood soaking into the earth like rain. His heart pounds, weak but defiant. He doesn't want to die. Yet as the chill of the moor presses against his exposed flesh, he can't help but feel that some part of him already has.

Her body is still, her blood soaking into his fur and the moorland grass. The rabbit lies forgotten beside them, warmth seeping out as the frosted earth takes its due. Whitepaw stares at the still-warm corpse atop him, his vision swimming with red, and he feels something break inside him. The wind howls across the moor, carrying with it the scent of blood and loss. He doesn't cry.​