private SURVIVORS GUILT // hawk + wolf

[spicepurr]

@HAWKSPINE @wolfpaw!

Spicepurr waits just out of camp for him. Her stomach rumbles with an unfinished meal, but she doesn't wait for him to inquire about it. Instead, she juts her head in a direction, and begins walking.

The she-cat isn't unkind - if he asks questions, she answers. If a conversation pulls between them, she entertains it. In fact, after a short stint in silence, she's desperate to. To the warrior, these may be her last moments as the glimmer in Hawkspine's eye. All before they find Wolfpaw once more, all before they manage to break her free, to bring her home. Would she be heralded as a hero, then? Would she want to be, care to be? She came out to the twolegplace, far beyond where she's used to, for selfish reasons. Pitiful reasons, really. Should she be honored in any way?

"This - this garden here, Hawkspine," she chirps when she recognizes the slats, the bush pressing against them from the inside. She models the path way up, her claws clicking into wounds in the wood. Spicepurr balances on the top edge, waiting for her companion to follow her, before dropping into the plush green grass once more. Her gaze immediately fixes to the webbed enclosure she had seen Wolfpaw before.

A pause. A blink, where she wonders if she could claim this to be the wrong home instead. A sigh, hidden by a sucked in breath, as she lays down her ill-worn weapons and relinquishes the control she's desperate to have.

"Wolfpaw?" she calls out, launching atop the glass table once more. It wobbles, but she holds fast. "Wolfpaw! Come out! I've got... I've got someone who wants to see you!"​

 

[HAWKSPINE]

Hawkspine, for once, has barely been able to fill the silence that extends between him and Spicepurr. His mind whirls. Not because of the knowing look Sweetnose had given him (though thinking about that makes his throat warm), and not because of the fact that this trek has taken them further into Twolegplace than Hawkspine has ever been in his life (thinking about that is terrifying), but the concept of seeing Wolfpaw makes his eyes sting and his chest hurt with emotion he has tried so hard not to think about in moons on end. His littermate. He was going to see his littermate again. He was going to be the first one in his family to see Woof all grown up, found by Spicepurr of all cats where Coyotecrest's search had turned up empty.

Guilt gnaws at him. He should have told someone. Howlfire was going to be so upset with him. Blazingheart was going to be even more so. She'd have wanted to come, even though she and Spicepurr didn't really get along too well. Was he going to have to lie to his kin about this? Would he be able to get Wolfpaw out and save all of them the inconvenience? StarClan, he hoped so.

His path up isn't graceful, the smooth wooden fences of Twolegplace very different from the pine-bark of the trees back home, and briefly he finds himself distracted by awe at the climbing skills of his friend. If not for that bad luck in her first assessment, Spicepurr would have been the most impressive graduate of their moon, he just knows it.

Hawkspine wobbles atop the fence, heart lurching as Spicepurr drops onto a flat surface that rattles beneath her. It looks like ice, but doesn't shatter into watery shards under her weight. The torbie doesn't follow but he does lean forward as she calls into the strange twoleg contraption. Wolfpaw, she calls, and Hawkspine's eyes well with tears. He doesn't know if he can do this. He opens his maw to say as such to Spicepurr, ears twitching back, but a noise from within the twoleg-mesh den stops him short.

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