Swiftpaw's Chance: Chapter 2
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“-scar. Dogscar. Swiftpaw!”
He opens his eyes. Everything hurts.
Longtail is crouched in front of him, blue eyes wide. “Are you…” his eyes flick away, just for a second, “back?”
“Back?” Swiftpaw echoes. Was he gone?
“You, uh...” Longtail lets the sentence trail off, clearly lost for words.
“Attacked Bluestar,” Cinderpelt says from somewhere behind him. “Tore open just about every single one of your wounds. Scared every cat half to death.”
She starts applying a poultice to his back. The pressure and the herbs sting, and Swiftpaw hisses.
“I...I’m sorry?” he tries. It hurts worse to talk than before.
Longtail touches his nose to Swiftpaw’s ear. “Don’t be sorry. To me, anyway. I had half a mind to give her a good clawing, myself.”
“Me, too,” Cloudtail pipes up.
“You still shouldn’t have tried to kill her,” Cinderpelt says. “What were you thinking?”
Swiftpaw shakes his head a little. He doesn’t remember much of it. Just...being angry. “I didn’t want to kill her. I don’t think.” He can’t imagine wanting to kill Bluestar, in any real, solid way.
“You bit her chest and clawed up her flanks pretty badly,” Cinderpelt informs him. “And you did say you were going to kill her.”
“Multiple times, actually,” adds Longtail quietly.
“I don’t...I don’t remember that,” Swiftpaw says. “I hate her. But I don’t...I don’t want to kill her.” He’s never killed anyone before. And even if he hates Bluestar—the anger simmers in him even thinking about it, her fault her fault —he wouldn’t kill her. He wouldn’t.
Warriors don’t kill. Not like that.
“Swiftpaw?” Longtail asks softly. “Are you okay?”
He nearly laughs. Nothing about this is okay . He’s starting to doubt it will ever be okay again.
“She named us,” he says quietly. It’s not an answer, except that it is. “Lostface. Dogscar. You have to call me that now. Right?”
Longtail’s eyes go hard. “Not if I can help it. You’ll always be Swiftpaw to me, no matter what Bluestar says.”
Swift—Dogscar shakes his head. “This is my name now. I might as well get used to it.”
“If that’s what you want.”
Dogscar closes his eyes. “It is.”
-0-0-0-
Dogscar jerks awake, panting in his nest while his heartbeat slows, sick with the leftover sensation of falling. He has the horrible feeling that he’s just woken from a nightmare, but he can’t remember anything. Just darkness, and voices…
Pack, pack, kill, kill.
Cloudtail’s hushed whispers on the other side of the den chase the howling voices away, and Dogscar shifts in his nest to peer back at him.
“Brightpaw! Brightpaw, wake up, c’mon, please…”
Underneath that, Dogscar can hear her whimpering. He strains, and catches some words.
“Pack, pack,” Brightpaw—Lostface?—says and she twists in her nest. “Kill, kill.”
“It’s not real,” Cloudtail is saying, “Brightpaw, wake up, it’s just a dream-“
“Don’t say that,” Dogscar snaps, before he can think about it.
Cloudtail glares at him. “What, don’t try to help her when she’s having a nightmare?”
Dogscar growls. “Don’t lie to her. And stop calling her that. Bluestar renamed us. We’re Dogscar and Lostface now.”
“Just because you decided to punish yourself doesn’t mean you get to inflict it on her, too!” Cloudtail snaps, his voice rising sharply. “I’ll call Brightpaw whatever she wants me to call her.”
“Why should you?” Dogscar asks, bitter. He wants, more than anything, to be able to stand for this fight. As it is, he’s a pathetic ruin of a warrior too weak to even move, and Cloudtail is perfectly healthy. “What gives you the right to care about her? You couldn’t stop us that night. You didn’t fight by her side.”
Cloudtail’s eyes are icy when he responds. “I didn’t drag her into a death trap just to prove something, either. Don’t pin this on me when you know, if it wasn’t for you, she wouldn’t be here. She adores you, you know. Haveyou ever heard the way she talks about you? You took all the trust she had for you and used it to make her follow along with your stupid plan. Maybe Bluestar should have made you warriors. Maybe I should have been a better guard. But you are the one who refused to stop. That’s why she’s here, nothing else. This is your fault .”
Dogscar is faintly aware that he is trembling. Cloudtail glares at him for another moment and then turns back to Lostface. Brightpaw. Dogscar doesn’t know anymore. His gut is roiling with Cloudtail’s accusations, your fault your fault your fault ringing in his ears, and he digs his claws into the dirt to stop them from flying into the warrior’s white pelt.
“Swift—Dogscar?” Longtail asks blearily, lifting his head. He’s refusing to leave Dogscar’s side anymore, after he missed him waking up. Dogscar wonders how much of it has to do with the way he attacked Bluestar. He wonders if Longtail blames him for everything, too.
“Is everything okay? You’re...you’re shaking,” Longtail whispers, throwing a glance over his shoulder at Cinderpelt’s sleeping form.
“Fine,” Dogscar growls.
“Are you sure? You say things in your sleep, sometimes, and I’m...I’m worried about you, Dogscar-“
Longtail stumbles slightly over the new name and Dogscar twists in his nest, putting as much space between himself and his mentor as possible.
“I said I’m fine , Longtail,” he snaps, and whatever small, rational part of him that still exists is screaming stop, stop , “What difference does it make to you, anyway?”
“Swif— Dogscar, I’m your mentor-“
“ Stop calling me that !” Dogscar screeches. “You don’t care , you just feel guilty, because maybe if you’d been a better mentor you’d have tried to talk to Bluestar instead of following her blind like every other cat in this Clan!”
Longtail stares at him. He opens his mouth, closes it. His eyes go hard, glittering with something Dogscar can’t place. “If that’s what you believe, then fine. As for your name, you can punish yourself as much as you want and I can’t stop you, but I won’t stick around and let you take this out on me, too.”
He stands to leave, and Dogscar throws one last barb. “You know I’m right. You know none of this would’ve happened if it wasn’t for you.”
Longtail goes still, only the end of his tail swishing slightly. “This isn’t my fault, Dogscar,” he says finally. “And it isn’t yours, either. You didn’t deserve what happened, but the blame shouldn’t be pinned on any cat here.”
Dogscar shoots a last wordless hiss at Longtail’s retreating form, for lack of a better retort. He turns around and glares at Cloudtail, who is very carefully watching Brightpaw sleep. Dogscar glares at him until Cloudtail glances up again, then hisses and turns his back. He tries to ignore the cold spot behind him as he closes his eyes and feigns sleep.
-0-0-0-
When Dogscar wakes up—or rather, pretends to, since he never did go back to sleep—it’s to a calm quiet in the den. A careful look around finds Brightpaw and Cloudtail asleep, and Cinderpelt closer to the front of the den, sorting herbs. His gaze goes to her forepaws where she hooks wilted leaves in her claws and inspects them, then he drifts back to her hind legs. One of them is mangled and crooked, resting only lightly on the ground.
As if she feels his eyes on her, Cinderpelt looks up. “S—Dogscar. You’re awake. Did you sleep alright? I was going to change your dressings in a minute, once I finish here.”
“I’m fine,” Dogscar says.
Cinderpelt hums, noncommittal, and finishes sorting out her last few leaves. As she pulls marigold leaves and cobwebs from her stores, she says, “I noticed Longtail wasn’t here this morning. Would you know anything about that?”
It’s a casual, gently leading question, a mother to a misbehaved kit. Dogscar suppresses a growl, but he can’t stop his ears pinning back against his head.
“Longtail left last night. He won’t be back. You oughta be happy about that, one less warrior getting in your way.”
Cinderpelt starts to peel away his old dressings, starting with the smallest wounds. “I won’t pretend I’m happy about Longtail leaving. He cares about you a lot, you know. Is there any special reason he left?”
Again , she asks it like she already knows the answer. Dogscar grits his teeth. “No.”
Cinderpelt just hums and warns, “I’m coming to your back now. This one’s messy, it might hurt.”
She starts gently peeling away the old mess of poultices and cobwebs, and Dogscar feeling the sharp, hot sting of a peeling scab just before blood runs down his back.
“ Ow ,” he hisses, just as Cinderpelt mutters a curse under her breath and apologizes, “Sorry, I’ve never treated a wound this bad before, especially not without Yellowfang.”
“For StarClan’s sake, ” he growls. “You couldn’t make it as a warrior and it turns out you’re a terrible medicine cat, too.”
Cinderpelt is very still behind him for a long moment before she says, “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that, because you’re hurting. But I’ll ask you not to say that to me again.”
“Why won’t you just fight back ? All this time holed up with herbs and sick cats has made you a pushover. I’ll ask you not to say that again . No wonder you couldn’t be a warrior.”
“Dogscar, that is enough ,” Cinderpelt says, and the sudden hard edge to her voice makes him fall silent. “Don’t pretend you know anything about my life or what I can and cannot do. If you want to be cruel, that’s fine. It’s my mandate to heal cats, not just the ones I like.”
“So you just have to take it, huh?” Dogscar asks.
Cinderpelt gently pulls away the last of his old dressings and starts to press the new ones in. It’s a long moment before she responds.
“I have to do my best to heal you, Dogscar. In any way I can. The way things have been going, you’re going to need at least one cat still behind you.”
For the second time in less than a day, Dogscar has nothing he can say. He settles for a low hiss and lashes what remains of his tail. Cinderpelt finishes her work and comes to stand in front of him. She places her scarred leg right in front of him, nods to the herbs slathered over his own hind leg, where the dogs dragged him from the tree.
“And, Dogscar?” she says. “Don’t say anything about my leg when you can’t use yours, either.”
Fireheart chooses that moment to poke his head into the entrance of the medicine den. “Cinderpelt?”
She shoots Dogscar an unreadable look and turns around. “Hey, Fireheart. Is Bluestar okay?”
He nods. “I did what you told me, and the bleeding stopped pretty soon. She’s…agitated, this morning, but fine.”
“I’ll see to her, now that these two are taken care of,” Cinderpelt says, already gathering some more herbs and cobwebs up in a large leaf. “If you don’t mind watching that one?”
There’s a lightness to her voice when she says it, a world away from Bluestar’s cold, clouded eyes, but Dogscar hears the words just the same. That one. He bares his teeth in his worst growl, the same he gave to every one of the dogs he fought. Fireheart steps smoothly in front of Cinderpelt.
“Dogscar,” he says, his voice a warning.
Dogscar turns his head away, resting it on his paws. Cinderpelt and Fireheart exchange words too softly for him to hear, and then he can just make out her uneven gait padding away.
“How are you feeling?” Fireheart asks, and it’s stiff, laced with half a dozen undertones Dogscar can’t process.
“ Fine ,” Dogscar says. He wants nothing more than for cats to stop asking him that question. “How’s Bluestar?” Not that he cares, really, but there’s a sort of morbid curiosity about what he did to his own leader.
Fireheart clears his throat. “She’s alright. The bite on her chest wasn’t too deep, and the scratches didn’t hit anything important.”
“I’m in big trouble though, aren’t I? Warrior status revoked, sent to the elders den, exiled, killed? What’s the punishment?”
Dogscar is still facing away, so he can’t tell, but it feels like Fireheart is looking at him, aghast. “You aren’t going to be killed , Dogscar,” he says, and he sounds a bit horrified at the prospect.
Dogscar turns around again. “Why not? I tried to kill Bluestar. Life for a life, right? Isn’t that how it should work?”
“ No, ” Fireheart says vehemently. “Warriors don’t kill.”
“I almost did,” Dogscar says. “I bet you’d like it if I was exiled, huh? One less problem for the rest of the Clan to shoulder. Especially after everything I did.”
Fireheart shakes his head. “I would never exile you. I can’t say what Bluestar is thinking, but I wouldn’t, Dogscar. I know you’re struggling.”
Dogscar snarls at him. “Oh, I’m struggling , huh? I’m struggling? Who’s fault is that, huh, Fireheart?”
“No one’s.” The deputy won’t meet his eyes.
“No one’s? Not even Bluestar’s deputy, who was supposed to have a say in what happens in the Clan, who sent me away from that battle and ruined my chances of being a warrior? Who stood there while Bluestar passed all of us over? While she renamed us?”
“Dogscar, you need to stop,” Fireheart says firmly. “I’m sorry for everything that happened. I tried to help you, I really did, but the Clan leader’s word is law. There’s only so much I can do.”
“Then you’re a coward,” Dogscar spits, “or a fool. And this is your fault.”
Fireheart dipped his head stiffly. “Cinderpelt will be back soon. I have more important things to attend to.”
Dogscar watches him go, and then slowly becomes aware of a prickling at his back. He turns around. Brightpaw is staring at him.