THE DEATH OF YOU AND ME \ dawnglare

[BLAZESTAR]

He doesn’t want to be in the medicine cat’s den.

Once, the cloying spiced perfume of the herbs Dawnglare has strewn about the den had been a comfort. A mystery, StarClan’s chosen still the funny kitten pawing a window in his mind. He’d felt at ease coming to the medicine cat with a question, with a dream, with a prayer. He’d delivered his first litter of kits, had stayed at his daughter’s side until she’d joined StarClan.

Blazestar cannot bear to look at the sienna tom’s nest, as there’s another curled inside of it. A WindClanner, a cat Dawnglare had been cavorting with for moons—even after Blazestar had agreed to a code that had lost him everything.

And Dawnglare saw nothing wrong with it. Puts the blame on Blazestar for being upset, for nearly turning Mallowlark away from their borders. Every day, he wishes the strange white cat had never approached. Every day, he wishes he could take back what he’d said—wished he could take back what Dawnglare had done.

The flame point shifts in his nest, lowering his chin on pale rust-colored paws. It’s eerily quiet. Fireflypaw is asleep, and the other patients—those less fortunate than he in some ways, and more in others—slumbering away from herbs used to soothe them. Dawnglare’s presence is omnipotent, like StarClan’s themselves—but it is also oppressive, suffocating.

Between them is too much history. Too many trampled feelings, ghosts of memory woven between them that neither can outrun.

Blazestar wishes he could. He turns his head, catching a blue eye that nearly mirrors his own in color. “You’re awake.” Murmured. Barely said at all. He hadn’t meant to acknowledge Dawnglare, but since the two of them had locked eyes when he’d returned home, he has felt strange about the other tom.

@DAWNGLARE
​

[ PENNED BY MARQUETTE ]​

 

[DAWNGLARE]

Nothing has changed; mantra hums low within the crevice of his mind. Dawnglare tells himself that it is all the same, no matter the sun coat that not berries betwixt his walls. He is lethargic. He is too - awake. His heart hammers in his chest, and yet he is more sluggish than anything, gait slow and sorry.

The den is fuller than it has been since Leaf - bare. He should hardly mind. The coalescence of breath was not a thing that concerned him, and a warm distraction always sleeps nearby. When he breathes in pine and heather, he forgets. The world becomes cradles of softness once again; suddenly, not even the slivers between sleep were so unpleasant. An overly - full tail seeks to fill the gap a broken bob could not, he can think of moon - silver pools, more than anything else.

It is not so easy tonight. Not all the bodies nearby were so unobtrusive, and he cannot help but regard the outlier with silent eyes ajar. There'd been the idle click of claws against stone. Always, until at last, he'd crept away at the break of dawn. It's not as if it mattered to them. It's not as if they heard him anyways. He'd love to tell him again and again, he's sure. There was no real purpose to his steps, but perhaps, to spare his mate of the wretchedness. What wretchedness? He may ask another time. But for now; unbidden, undeserved. He busies himself with gathering what needs to be gathered, unhindered by judging blue eyes, so like their father's

Now he returns on quiet footsteps, and the bitter scent of marigold comes with him. He is ghostly, as he moves. Paws hover aimlessly over the dotting of herb strewn across his floor. Their floor, that was. Togetherness was not always mirrorlike, considering. Wondering, wonderment; blue eyes are fogged as they turn to that flame body. Twin pools blink back at him, and Dawnglare is caught between nothing.

Immediately, he recognizes such a thing as stupid, and he wills himself to appear the same. Jaw set, face flat. Golden petals are like citrus against his tongue. He looks like he would like to frown, but he does not. " Indeed. " It does not sound as stilted as it feels.

A gaze given is difficult to take away, and he'd hate to meet one like his when did not have to. Staring too - long, his eyes too - wide, he chews his lip, but resolves to do nothing in the end. Nearly, he leers to check on Blazestar again, but such a thing– and superflously at that– would be more closeness afforded than it has been in some time. Uncertainty drives him away, in the end. His paws tilt away stiffly, and he searches for a pile to drop his bounty into.

Blazestar would not remain here for too much longer.

It had been fine, the first time. It had been. And it still could be. " You died, " he says plainly, and he looks to the herbs so intently, it would be like the statement was for them. For once, it was not. For once, he talks to something he could touch. He doesn't know what he expects from saying such a thing. Maybe he doesn't expect anything. Not truly.​

 

[BLAZESTAR]

The air is strange and muffled between them, as though phantoms crawl in the spaces their words leave. Dawnglare’s acknowledgment of Blazestar’s statement is said just as staidly. “Indeed.” His blue eyes dance around the den before they pin the flame point in place, too-wide and unnerving. It’s the longest they’ve gazed at one another since Mallowlark had joined the Clan. Blazestar’s fur prickles with discomfort, but he does not look away.

“You died.” Dawnglare’s eyes break away from his, dancing to the herbs scattered at his side. Blazestar clears his throat, but it’s a quiet sound, made just to have some noise spill from him. The quiet is eerie. Much is being said in the lapses, and he does not like what he hears. “I did.”

His gaze falls from Dawnglare’s reddish fur to a nearby leaf, a scrap of some medicinal property not properly put away. Blazestar extends a ginger paw and dabs at the plant matter. Aimless. “Do you know how many lives I have left?” Their connection has been severed, but their connection to StarClan, even separately, has not. Does StarClan share such things with him?
​

[ PENNED BY MARQUETTE ]​

 

[DAWNGLARE]

It infuriates him more than it was supposed to: such easiness in the face of death. It was not something Dawnglare was a stranger to, so why did it bother him so? Once the stars laid paws on the sun that was him, those lives were not his, and he may do with them what them what he pleases, even if that meant losing them one by one with those he loves still young and breathing. He clamps teeth over the thought, for it was not a concern of his. And were he to make it one, he would most certainly not be allowed as such. So is the man Blazestar apparently was. Perhaps the lapse in judgement brings him more discomfort than anything else did. Why should he not let him bleed out by the throat?

He continues worrying his own lips, instead. It was not easy to find something else to do besides meet his gaze at this hour. Golden blooms are only distraction. He pretends that his plan for them is much greater than it truly is, but that may only last so long. He follows the sun - blazed paw that reaches for herb litter. Through the corner of his eye, that is. A feathered tail draws closer to himself. " I do, " he tells him honestly; wonders if he should go any further. He hums low, pondering, though perhaps it sounds more like scraping for a number, and not like it was burned into his mind. " Five. "

Even those below him, stupid as they were, could manage seasons alive with a single, measly life. Blazestar, with his nine, should be divinity among them. Yet he only seems to use them as more reasons to remain a fool. " I had thought you would take more care. " You should take more care.​

 

[BLAZESTAR]

Blazestar is not surprised by Dawnglare’s answer. Five. Yes. He’s gone to the stars four times and somehow found the willpower to descend again to the forest. He watches Dawnglare stare intensely at some bright yellow herb, sprigs and blooms, but there’s no guessing what the other is thinking. Even at their closest, that has never been possible for Blazestar. Perhaps it’d been lonely, that way—perhaps Mallowlark, equally odd, shares that with him.

He does not consider the thought further, stubbornly shoving it away. He flicks an ear and shifts his gaze, voice near-sullen as he responds to Dawnglare’s chastisement. “I do not have nine lives so I can be careful.” His flank twitches, remembering the crunch of bone under monster’s weighted paw, a fox’s fangs, a dog’s, slicing claws during the thick of battle, sinking into snow. It’s exhausting to consider five more deaths. It’s even more exhausting to consider what lies between those deaths and his last.

“StarClan gave me nine lives so I can defend those with only one. Those in my protection.” He rests his chin on the edge of the nest, staring into nothing. “Why else would I need so many? You tell me.” His tone turns near-accusatory, as though Dawnglare has hidden some great secret from him.
​

[ PENNED BY MARQUETTE ]​

 

[DAWNGLARE]

An earflickers at that, acknowledging, but saying nothing by word of mouth.He does not. have them to be careless, either. More lives did not mean more to throw away, but more to hold dearly. Consistency is in the world, but not in the ones in it. Fragile bones and thin skin that tears easily. Blazestar should not have to be a face that blurs in the crowd, someone that rises only to replace a fallen corpse. The sun should not be delegated to such mortal terrors and tribulations. It is meant to long outlive them all; seasons of warmth.

But perhaps it is the future he yearns for himself, fool that he is. Dawnglare has known him as one since their inception, but he has never minded quite so much. Why did he, now?

The thought makes him uncomfortable, and he tries to keep the fur from rising along his spine. StarClan gave me nine lives so I can defend those with only one. And how many of them were truly worth something? What made a trade fair, soul for soul? He is snuffing out what is his too, too quickly. Why else would I need so many? Dawnglare glances him from the corner of his eye, the corners narrowing. He dares to address him as if he cared what he said. " Because they would be lost without you, Blazestar, even if that is much a mystery to me. " His jaw is clenched tight. Dawnglare resists the urge to gnash his teeth. " You are wanted alive rather than dead, and you may continue to be so, " If that is what you want. ​

 

[BLAZESTAR]

Dawnglare’s anger does not show on his features, but rather in the tightness of his lower jaw, the way his teeth click together as he snaps responses. “Because they’d be lost without you, Blazestar, even if is much a mystery to me.” The Ragdoll blinks, realizing for the first time that Dawnglare has abandoned the name he’d always used for him before. He is no longer Blaise to the sienna tom; he’s Blazestar, detested figure implemented at SkyClan’s helm by StarClan. The thought is rather like a kick to the stomach, though he cannot verbalize why.

“They will not be lost without me.” He turns away from Dawnglare, unable to bear looking at him any longer. His anger has vanished, smoke shredded in a storm and scattered. He feels only the ache in his heart that he always does when he remembers the friendship that’s withered between them. Smashed. Shattered. “There will always be another after me. They will learn to rely on Orangeblossom, and they will continue to rely on you and on my son.” His voice loses fervor, empty and tired. “That’s the truth.”

✧ INFO.

•  
• 
  — blaise . blazestar
  — he/him ; leader of skyclan
  — pansexual ; divorced ; single
  — longhaired flame point Ragdoll with blue eyes
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — penned by Marquette
  — chibi by Mercibun

​

 

[DAWNGLARE]

It is the wrong answer; the slump of his shoulders, the way his voice deadens into nearly nothing. He'd think that a leader (a friend) would rise to their feet, and declare that they will live. Realize that the stars themselves would rather see you triumph above all, and let those below live comfortably, knowing that some things would never change. He does none of that.

And so he would continue to throw his lives away like spoiled herbs, to think the trade was fair, when the fact is that it was not. As Blazestar looks away, Dawnglare gazes more surely upon him than he has in some time. It's unbearable, does he know? It's unbearable, how he is. Dawnglare wants to rip the frown from his face and rip the stars from his eyes. He should cut him open and let all five of what is left leak from him in swift misery. Why should he wait around for something that was doomed to happen? Why should he care for someone who couldn't live for himself?

Truly, he weeps for those who would have to see what comes after. Perhaps it was his mistake to think this was anything at all, to begin with. Perhaps it has always been nothing, and it would continue to be so. Perhaps it had been a blessing to be outcasted from something doomed to fail.

Dawnglare would not cry for him. He would not.

The flash of anger is brief, before he too looks away. He would not respond to this false hope, but blithely acquiesces, " Fine. "A heavy breath in his lungs. " What you do with your lives is not my concern, " he says, voice pulled taught with insincere neutrality; and he would look back to his herbs, some of the poor things torn to shreds.​