private when does a war end? ☾ orangeblossom

[DOEBLAZE]

When Orangeblossom finds her, even after the medicine cats' ministrations ( once they'd finished weeping over Blazestar ), Bobbie makes a sorry sight. Curled into her new nest in the medicine den, her ruined face is cleaned of blood and masked by a thick layer of cobweb and strong - smelling herbs, gauzy webs wrapped around her shredded ears. The world is suddenly absent by at least a quarter, nothing but darkness where her leftmost field of vision had once been, and the shifts of the cat on her left side are slightly muffled, as if coated in a thick layer of snow.

"Orangeblossom," she greets in a voice husky from battle - cries and sobs. Her remaining eye is red - rimmed and hollowed, sunken into her shredded face. She talks around the cobweb dusting a cut cleaved through her lip and chin. She observes these things, because she has little else to observe; no emotion colors her world ( yet? yet? ), only a jarring formality. "I suppose you would like to hear what happened."

Even in the haze of blood and pain and swirling black, she had heard the deputy's announcement, the perceived shadowy quality of her phrasing. A green eye narrows. Did Orangeblossom believe that she would kill her mate, the love of her life? That she could not be trusted? Would they be posting a guard outside her nest? Bobbie exhales sharply, hitching slightly from the bruising incurred during her struggle with Harrierstripe. Her head pulses painfully and her eye watches Orangeblossom's face carefully, searching for doubt. For distrust.

// @orangeblossom !!

"speech"

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[Orangestar]

𝐵𝑈𝑇 𝑇𝑂 𝐴 𝑊𝑂𝑀𝐴𝑁, 𝐵𝑌 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐸𝑁𝐷 ✧ 𝐘𝐎𝐔'𝐋𝐋 𝐊𝐍𝐄𝐄𝐋 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐀

• 
  
  — orangeblossom | tags
  — she/her ; deputy of skyclan. mentoring springpaw.
  — scarred white-and-ginger she-cat with brown eyes.
  — "speech" ; thoughts
  — chibi by waluigipinball
  — penned by mercibun. @ me in any official tabbytales discord for plots.
  
  

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The sight is achingly familiar. A season-cycle ago Orangeblossom had been in a similar situation to Bobbie now, curled up in the foul-scented den of herbs and blood. Their circumstances, however, could not be more different. Orangeblossom had been scarred in service to her Clan; and while Bobbie was here to heal too, she is forced to bear the added burden of having just lost - or killed - her mate.

"Tell me everything." She meows, shuffling her paws so that she could sit down. If Bobbie moves she would gesture for the older she-cat to remain lying down; at least her body could rest after this ordeal, even if her mind could not.

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[DOEBLAZE]

Her searching eye finds it, paranoia setting her pupil jittering. Orangeblossom's face is conflicted, and Bobbie's eye does not find the comfort of sureness in it, the assurance that the deputy—and by extension, the rest of the Clan—still has faith in her. Whatever minimal trust her Clan had in her has surely evaporated by now. A green eye flattens and she makes a half-hearted attempt to sit, to drag herself to Orangeblossom's eye level. To make the ginger-and-white warrior look her in the eye and tell her that she doesn't believe her.

Bobbie sinks back down, collapsing into a tangle of limbs. She inhales sharply, drawing in bracing air that tastes of copper tang.

"We were out by the border. Spending time together. Talking about the kits." Her voice is colourless and wilting, narrowed eye never leaving the deputy's face. "He came out of nowhere. Smelled like heather and blood. He was mad, raving. He said—" she pauses, tasting blood as her tongue probes her ragged and bitten cheek. "He said Sootstar and Weaselclaw send their regards," the tabby mews flatly.

"He knocked me aside. By the time I got to my paws and my senses, Bl—he was already gone." She pauses, a rasp creeping into her empty tone. "It couldn't have been more than a moment. Just a moment."

"I said, I said I would kill him, and—and then everything gets hazy." She remembers dizzying smears of red. Fire tearing across her face. The softness of Harrierstripe's underbelly beneath her fangs. "We fought for a while. He took my eye. Then I killed him." Her narration of the incident is empty in tone, as though she were recounting someone else's experience entirely. "I begged him not to leave me," she mews tonelessly, and it's clear which he she's referencing. "Then he died."

Bobbie fixes Orangeblossom with an accusatory stare. "The fur between my claws is brown and black. Not gold. You can check if you so please."

"speech"

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