private Water thicker than blood ☁ Sedgepounce

[VIPERPAW]

*+:｡.｡ Having a dead dad felt strangely better than having a living one. It was like...there were no more chances for Snakehiss to disappoint Viperpaw. When Viperpaw looks over the horizon, he can stop himself from hoping his dad will crest the hill. Better yet, when asked where his dad is, and Viperpaw inevitably answers "Gone", he won't feel as ashamed anymore. My dad is dead is so much better than My dad's exiled.

Still, he catches himself staring over the horizon again tonight. The stars weave a dusted purple river overhead, paving the way deeper into the cosmos, far beyond the line in which his visibility stops. It's better having a dead dad than an exiled one...but he isn't sure its an easier weight to carry. After all, watching the stars dance above his dead, winking brilliantly in communal laughter...he wonders if Snakehiss is among them.
If, even in death, he remains barred from the good side.

Viperpaw sighs, rubbing the back of his head.
"Was it worth it?" he asks the shadows lapping at his paws. Dead or alive, he doubted his dad would've answered him.

*+:｡.｡ Updated 10/11/24

• "SPEECH"
  
  
  GENERAL:
  ☁ Viperpaw
  ☁ DFAB— He/Him
  ☁ 10 moons
  ☁ Son of Snakehiss and Berrysnap
  ☁ Brother to Rowanpaw, Snakepaw and Privetpaw
  ☁ Windclan — Tunneler's apprentice
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  COMBAT:
  ☁Physically easy | mentally medium
  ☁Attack in bold white
  ☁ None currently

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

The night is dark. The grass is frosty, the sky is bruised indigo, and it's been days since Snakehiss was found dead at the border. He seems to haunt Sedgepounce now more than ever—this viscous, dark sludge lumbering in the back of his head, nearly tangible enough to be glimpsed at when he glances over his shoulder. It's not fair. Of course he had to die here in a spectacle, haunting everyone with his haggard, decaying body. He couldn't just stay away.

In the small quiet of camp, Sedgepounce isn't the only cat awake. Through the dark he spots a smudge—drawing closer, he hears a voice. "Viperpaw?" he whispers. A growing sense of dread creeps spider-like across his flank. He hovers near the apprentice's side, concerned. "Y'okay?"
​

 

[VIPERPAW]

*+:｡.｡ Viperpaw flinches at the call of his name. For a brief, half-asleep moment, he believes it's truly Snakehiss. At last, his dad readies an answer - acknowledges the boy he abandoned so many moons ago. Nonetheless, fear grips his soul; as if he's been caught doing something wrong. In many ways, he is. After all, it's wrong to talk to your exiled father, dead or not. Perhaps even more so in death - transgressing not only one's loyalty to Windclan but Starclan as well.
The thought leaves him all at once deflated. Deep down, he realizes, he doesn't believe his father has been welcomed among their ancestors.

Passing through the first few stages of grief in the millisecond it takes for Viperpaw to turn around and see Sedgepounce, he's left more than a little tired. The young man would blink hard at Sedgepounce's inquiry. He has an immediate answer on the tip of his tongue, and he readies it with an attempt at a smile...only to promptly give up when he finds no strength to back up an "I'm fine" line.
"Mmm" he responds with a noncommittal shrug, turning his attention back to that drowning twilight sky.

"I was just thinking..." he hesitates, glancing back at Sedgepounced with a kicked look, hesitant to incur a wrath he isn't entirely sure he didn't deserve. "About my...about Snakehiss" he admits, shame tingeing the sigh that leaves him. He waits for Sedgepounce to remind him of his father's misdeeds, to chide him for wasting time thinking about a man whose name ought to be lost to history.

But...did it? He worried his lip, shame increasing into a crescendo of anxiety that had his tail flicking back and forth in a sporadic fashion. It was one thing to think about his dad - bad enough; It was a whole other to wonder...Chartreuse eyes snap towards the leader's then before sheepishly away, back to his paws. He remembered, cheeks burning at the refresher, the manic screams of his would-be hero shouting at their leader. How he was a bad omen. How he didn't deserve his new rank.

And...look what happened.

What was he like? Before, y'know..." Viperpaw suddenly blurts out. When he asks, let it be known that he isn't fishing for good memories from Sedgepounce- quite the opposite. His father had been hopeless for as long as Viperpaw could remember, he'd just stupidly kept wishing he'd been mistaken. Perhaps it's that part of Viperpaw that still longs for Snakehiss to finally come and visit him that leads the demons in his ears to vying for the man's corrupt rhetoric. Yes, that's it! Turning fully towards Sedgepounce the boy- almost desperately- asks, "He was always kinda crazy, wasn't he?"

*+:｡.｡ Updated 10/11/24

• "SPEECH"
  
  
  GENERAL:
  ☁ Viperpaw
  ☁ DFAB— He/Him
  ☁ 10 moons
  ☁ Son of Snakehiss and Berrysnap
  ☁ Brother to Rowanpaw, Snakepaw and Privetpaw
  ☁ Windclan — Tunneler's apprentice
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  COMBAT:
  ☁Physically easy | mentally medium
  ☁Attack in bold white
  ☁ None currently

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

Though his face is mostly murky in the evening dark, Sedgepounce can just make out the smile that drags heavily onto Viperpaw's maw, and then falls like sandbags clipped from their ties. He confesses thinking about his father. It makes sense that he's miserable. "Okay," Sedgepounce responds. If thinking about Snakehiss is a crime, then Sedge's just as guilty—the cruel image of his fly-eaten carcass gnaws at him still.

There should be more finality in it. Snakehiss is dead, the whole chapter of his life is closed. And yet, he lingers—survived by the cats he left behind, the children he abandoned. Leaving his kits was probably the best thing that Snakehiss could have done for them, and it's probably the worst thing he ever did, and now he's gone and it's all Sedgepounce can do to wonder: What if? There's nothing more final than death, but Sedgepounce thinks he would've had more closure if Snakehiss never came back at all.

A pair of round, moon-yellow eyes turn toward him, reflecting the dimly lit sky in neon-ish pools. It's the first time he's ever talked to Viperpaw without any screaming or theatrics. There's been no hollering about slaying evil, or defending WindClan...it's a slow realization, and it lodges a cold, painful stone somewhere between his lungs. Stars, he curses. How much of Viperpaw is just an act?

He settles down beside Viperpaw, resigned to yet another terse conversation with Snakehiss' left-behind brood. His prior talk with Rowanpaw still weighs heavy on the mind. He wants to do better for Viperpaw, but...Sedgepounce doesn't have it in him to lie.

"Not always," Sedgepounce sighs. His eyes latch to the stars as he wades through the harsh, muddy waters of remembering. "He was always a bully. From when we were apprentices—kits, even. He wanted other cats to feel like they were beneath him, so...y'know."

He hazards a foolish glance toward Viperpaw, gauging some reaction through the dark. A deep frown latches to his maw. "Then we got older, and all that shit with Sootstar started happening, and he just started...spiraling. And he never stopped." It's one of his biggest failures, not seeing the escalation. Snakehiss was as annoying as a botfly—buzzing and irritating and harmless, otherwise. It wasn't until Sedgepounce was drowning in the river that he thought he should've seen the signs.
​