private THE MIGHT OF THE HUNTER [sunstar]

[SCORCHSTAR]

༄༄ Night is beginning to fall across the moorland, gradually blanketing the territory in darkness. The stars shine overhead, twinkling prettily as though they have done nothing wrong. She wants to spit, wants to claw and bite and scream, but instead the deputy's jaw remains firmly shut as she rises from her empty, cold nest and makes her way across the camp to her destination.

Her presence at the den's entrance is marked by a whipping of her tail, a scrape of claws across dirt. "Why did you… why did you say it?" She staggers on her feet, eyes wild and hackles bristled. Enraged, for the moment. He is at fault. He is to blame. He did this. He spoke up during the clan meeting, told them that WindClan would suffer. He set this in motion. "The clan is not… hungry yet. Why did you…" Words come out in a growl, her vision blurs. There are two Sunstars before her—and then, all at once, she meets his eyes, and he is one again.

All at once, the wind is taken out of her sails. The calico wilts before her leader, head drooping—her shoulder slams roughly against the den's wall, relying on it to support the weight that her paws can't carry any longer. For a moment, she simply stares at the tom, eyes glazed, mouth open. Why did you make her do it, she wants to ask, wants to snarl, but she… she knows it isn't fair. To herself, to Sunstar, to Bluepool.

The truth of it is… her mate did this to herself. She was not forced into it—was not made to do anything. She led a patrol into RiverClan's territory of her own volition, and she lied to Scorchstreak's face about it. But… can she be angry at all? The calico had done the same thing, back when she had traveled to the bridge by herself to face down Smokestar and his leering warriors. The sole difference is that she survived. Her mate… did not. But she cannot be angry at Bluepool, not when her mate lies dead—not when she loves her still more than anything else.

Who is to blame, then? Who can she turn to, whose throat can she set bloodied claws against? The scars upon her chest burn, set alight by a twisted, searing emotion she has never felt so strongly before. When she speaks again, her words are muttered, nearly slurred. "She didn't have to die. She didn't… she didn't have to. And it's all so pointless. She's gone, and it means nothing. Does it mean anything… to you?" Does anyone mean anything to Sunstar, besides his own kin? Has he become warped by leadership so quickly, to abandon them all when they need him most? Had StarClan taken more than expected, when they had healed his stump of a limb? Thoughts swirl around her head without pause, endless in their screaming.

She stares at her leader, her friend—expecting an answer. Something solid to grasp onto, some platitude that will make the world spin the right way again. Star-blessed, star-chosen, and for what? Why can't you fix this?

☽♰☾ IT WAS WAR, IT WASN’T FAIR

• ooc: @SUNSTAR
• 
  SCORCHSTREAK ❯❯ she/they, deputy (tunneler) of windclan
  ༄ small, slim flame-streaked calico with fiery golden eyes. cold and closed-off, ferociously protective of her clanmates. rarely seen aboveground.
  ༄ mate to bluepool ; sibling to rattleheart & rabbitclaw
  ༄ mentor to pinkpaw
  ༄ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted
  ༄ penned by foxlore

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[SUNNVAR]

Despite the figure curled within Sunstar's nest, he is a ghost throughout his den. Each of his shuddering breaths takes him throughout the entirety of the lonely space. He does not sleep. Open eyes have adjusted to the dark, and stare unblinkingly at the wall. His mind turns over the nights that days that seem to go slower and slower with each one that passes. How long has it been since Bearflight left him? Since his faith in Wolfsong shattered? Since Weaselclaw stood before him, rail-thin and radiating malice, to tell him things he could not bear to hear? It had been a lifetime already since Bluepool had died. His grief was hollow within his bones. Dead-eyed. As cold as the stone he now stares at. She had been a part of his life long before he thought of himself this way. The upbeat companion to Mintshade, bright even in Sootstar's shadow. Had they been friends? He believes so.

Had she given up on him, in the end?
That, he does not find himself able to answer.

His eyes drift shut in time with Scorchstreak's ragged breathing. Where his own exhales were a weak and quiet echo, hers tumble about the den like a mountain-slide, words spitting. He lets it go. Cannot bring himself to meet her rage as much as his old pride may have begged him to. With only the faintest memory of harshness, Sunstar lifts his head and bites, "Would you have preferred our bellies were beyond empty first?" By the time that his gaze meets hers, the both of them seem fit to collapse. She is standing, and has further to fall. Sunstar struggles to stand. She is so weak, and so is he. The grief that had smothered him like dead weight becomes a cloak that he wears. Shadows drag along his golden pelt as he staggers a half-step towards her slumped form. "Would you have preferred she went there with no strength, with nothing but desperation to feed our clan? Must our clan first suffer before we can care for ourselves? Why must WindClan always repent?!"

The word booms until it fades. The only sign he had ever said a word is his half-open mouth in the silence. Her words have flayed the skin upon his vulnerable belly. Everything about him hangs out. A scarecrow with its filling pooled beneath it. A weak specter, and all that had once made it frightening. Glacial eyes are wild. Not with rage — Scorchstreak might even recognize the feeling that lingers there.

"All that we have given is pointless," he roars. "Since a time long before Sootstar's demise these moors have suffered, and what have we to show for it but a graveyard of those we cared for and a debt to each clan that has allowed us to live?" He spits their acceptance of his existence with violence into the floor of the past leader's prison. "We stand alone against the rest of this forest, and Bluepool knew that. She did this for her clan. Not for me." It could not have been for him. He knows what he had said. Knows the tangle of accusations that will come for his clan as the full moon rises. But he knows, too, that Bluepool had done this for Scorchstreak and her littermate, and the kits that began to fill their nursery. "She was my friend," he rasps. "Before she was ever my warrior. She was my friend."

𝐈 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐌𝐄𝐀𝐍 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐈𝐌 𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐎𝐔𝐒 ╱ ( 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐀 𝗕𝐀𝐃 𝐃𝐎𝐆 ) 〚 06.03 〛 🟒ᨒ

• ooc: —
• ↟ 𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑. ╱ AMAB HE - HIM - HIS. LEADER OF WINDCLAN. ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆̶̬́̀
  ———— a rogue brought to windclan in a search for greatness, one of sootstar's most loyal warriors turned into her downfall. with a mate and kits to worry about, and now nine lives from starclan with a missing limb, windclan's leader has a lot to prove.
  
  
  
  a large chocolate and white rosette tom with seaglass eyes. the first thing many see when looking at sunstar now is not his proud posture or un-windclan build, but the scarred stump that remains of his front left leg. a wound that would have killed most other cats took one of his lives; not even starclan could repair it.

• "speech"

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[SCORCHSTAR]

༄༄ This is not the first time she has seen Sunstar defeated, but it is the first that he has seemed so small. So truly emptied of fight. But still he rises to face her scorn upon three legs, even though he stumbles. She welcomes it. The tom roars his argued truth, wields it like claws to cut through her defenses. Proactivity is the repellent of suffering, he points out. Would she have preferred they become hungry before turning to the other clans' territories? Before provoking yet another fight that they cannot win? Yes, the widowed queen within her wants to say, because she would give anything to have her love by her side for even a few moments longer. She would give anything to stop the fighting, stop the bloodshed, stop the looming shroud of death that has followed them even after Sootstar's wretched reign came to its screaming end.

But the deputy—the deputy cannot say that. The iron-pawed wielder of logic and fact, she cannot say that she would sacrifice WindClan lives for such… such selfishness. "Our warriors have two choices, then? We have only two? Starvation… or murder, throwing ourselves against the other clans until they finally decide to eliminate WindClan for good?" Her voice is low in the face of Sunstar's shouting—his continued tirade. He does enjoy his tirades, but how she grows tired of them. Why must WindClan always repent, indeed. Through all of it, Sootstar had been the one to strike first. Has Sunstar not done the same thing? Silence blankets them, and a dark ear twitches. Surely the clan has overheard by now. Scorchstreak could not care less if she tried. She shoves herself off the den's wall, her expression hardening, while Sunstar rampages on.

It all blurs together as he speaks, the truths and the falsehoods alike, but the deputy's own wild look does not fade until the tom's voice drops. At last he speaks plainly, without the same frenzy that coats the rest of his words. She was his friend, he says. Before she was his underling. At least he cares, then. It is more than Sootstar would have felt for her very own littermate.

"And what… does she have to show for it now?" The words are ash on her tongue. She did this for her clan is his claim, and Scorchstreak doesn't know what to do with that. She understands what he means, the words he does not say, whether he intends it or not. And she knows it to be truth. She knows without a doubt what lengths Bluepool would go to for her. The silvery tabby would have killed for her, and would have died for her without question. But she did not need her mate to die for her; she has never needed that. She would want it less if she had known what it would come to. "We can't even bury her." She had loved the moors, and yet her body rests far from them. Far from WindClan. Far from Scorchstreak.

☽♰☾ IT WAS WAR, IT WASN’T FAIR

• ooc: —
• 
  SCORCHSTREAK ❯❯ she/they, deputy (tunneler) of windclan
  ༄ small, slim flame-streaked calico with fiery golden eyes. cold and closed-off, ferociously protective of her clanmates. rarely seen aboveground.
  ༄ mate to bluepool ; sibling to rattleheart & rabbitclaw
  ༄ mentor to pinkpaw
  ༄ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted
  ༄ penned by foxlore

​

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[SUNNVAR]

"Murder?" he snaps. "This was not murder, Scorchstreak. Do you think your clanmates so low that they would go with the intent of death? She went for prey. To fill our clan's hungry bellies. And she did so of her own free will." Had he heard her thoughts, it would have struck a blow far deeper than her words do. To compare him to Sootstar, that he had chosen to tread the same path — perhaps he had, for in moments of quietness within his den he follows the echoes of her insanity. The restless rage of one who had lost what mattered. Unlike her, at least, he tried to make an effort. Reel himself in, feel this place, his clanmates. He could have shouted at her for her hypocrisy, for before following him, she too had followed Sootstar. Nearly to her very end, she had followed.

All of them had. That is the cruelest joke of them all. The best among WindClan still had blood upon their paws, and regardless of what they did, the other clans would see that first. So too did Scorchstreak, it would seem. The trust that tethered them like an iron chain creaks beneath the strain. "Not once have I asked for this clan to kill another. Should they be so eager to eliminate us for the theft of prey, then they shall face StarClan first." He knows that the stars would not save this clan. Even as the flames threatened their camp, StarClan had left them to their fate. The rain was no gift from them, whatever the other warriors may have thought. They had given him nothing but these lives, to shed again and again for the sake of this clan which looked to him not as the friend he had once been, but as Sootstar's successor. And even the sun could be dimmed by such an ash-filled legacy.

"She has all that any of us have. A place in StarClan, alongside Bearflight, Tigerfrost, Vulturemask– it is all that any of us will have to show for this life. Memories and grief are the only things those remaining will carry until their own time comes." Tumultuous anger laces his words, and a current of anguish like blood staining their path.

𝐈 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐌𝐄𝐀𝐍 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐈𝐌 𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐎𝐔𝐒 ╱ ( 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐀 𝗕𝐀𝐃 𝐃𝐎𝐆 ) 〚 06.03 〛 🟒ᨒ

• ooc: —
• ↟ 𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑. ╱ AMAB HE - HIM - HIS. LEADER OF WINDCLAN. ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆̶̬́̀
  ———— a rogue brought to windclan in a search for greatness, one of sootstar's most loyal warriors turned into her downfall. with a mate and kits to worry about, and now nine lives from starclan with a missing limb, windclan's leader has a lot to prove.
  
  
  
  a large chocolate and white rosette tom with seaglass eyes. the first thing many see when looking at sunstar now is not his proud posture or un-windclan build, but the scarred stump that remains of his front left leg. a wound that would have killed most other cats took one of his lives; not even starclan could repair it.

• "speech"

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[SCORCHSTAR]

༄༄ Sunstar meets her question with rage, with disbelief. Scorchstreak's tail whips a steady beat, casting jagged trails through the air. "What else would you call my mate being thrown into the gorge? That RiverClanner murdered her! Of course she didn't want to die there!" Why would he… why would he ask such a thing? She is not the one who thinks lowly of her clanmates—she is not the one who warned them of hunger, when they have not managed to scrape by before. He, who stands with a mate here on the earth and firmly graced by the favor of StarClan, speaks to her as though she does not understand. He is her friend, has been her friend for as long as she can remember, but in this moment she wonders if that will be the case if they continue down this path.

Her voice grows slow when she speaks next, weighted with exhaustion. "The stars won't save us. They can't." But he does not truly believe what he says, does he? Does he truly think that StarClan would intervene to save them from any clan? If the stars were to do anything, it would be only after it was too late—just like the rain that had come after the fire.

"This is pointless. I'm going to go—unless you have need of me, Sunstar." Let me know when I am due to join my mate, she does not say. Still, she spits his name like poison, like he is a hemlock leaf that she must scrape from the roof of her mouth lest it kill her. But after it comes a tired sigh, a spark of something reasonable breaching the surface. A glimmer of a deputy again, and not a grief-twisted widow. "I imagine neither of us will sleep, but perhaps we can revisit this after we've rested a bit." Perhaps, come morning, they'll both have clearer heads. Less grief filling the empty spaces where Bluepool once held each of them together.

☽♰☾ IT WAS WAR, IT WASN’T FAIR

• ooc: —
• 
  SCORCHSTREAK ❯❯ she/they, deputy (tunneler) of windclan
  ༄ small, slim flame-streaked calico with fiery golden eyes. cold and closed-off, ferociously protective of her clanmates. rarely seen aboveground.
  ༄ mate to bluepool ; sibling to rattleheart & rabbitclaw
  ༄ mentor to pinkpaw
  ༄ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted
  ༄ penned by foxlore

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