Red Sun Rising: Chapter Twenty-One
(AO3 counterpart here.)
Gradually, a voice came to Firestar, first distant, muffled in his ears. The voice was repeating a name, over and over. It took a moment for the name to reach his consciousness.
“Thornclaw!”
Firestar slowly turned around, and his empty stomach tried to heave. The bloody cat the patched toms had been thrashing was still laying on the ground, clumps of golden-brown fur ripped away. Standing over the cat were Frostfur, shaking his shoulder, and Tornface, her eye wet with grief.
“Stars…” Greystripe said softly.
Moving like he was in a dream, Firestar made his way over, passing around Frostfur to crouch by his future deputy’s head.
The only part of Thornclaw not covered in blood was his forehead. His entire neck was shredded, to say nothing of the gashes all over his chest and belly. His mouth was open, but he seemed unable to take a breath. His eyes, pale with pain, stared up at the still-red moon. It wasn’t until Firestar’s head blocked his view that he seemed to be able to focus.
Firestar said nothing. He just met Thornclaw’s stare, hardly able to get a thought through his own head.
“He’s dead,” was all he could get out. “You kept me safe.”
The pained glint softened, and Thornclaw, even as he fought for air, blinked slowly at Firestar before lowering his head back down and shutting his eyes.
“We have to do something!” Frostfur burst out. “He can’t breathe! He– he needs a human!”
Tornface said nothing. She just pressed her nose to her brother’s side.
Dustpelt, stepping out of the crowd, hovered over his apprentice, his legs shaking. He rested a paw on Thornclaw’s neck and rasped, “His windpipe is crushed. There’s nothing we can do.”
“What do you know?!” Frostfur bristled and whipped her head around to glare at him. “A human could save him!”
Dustpelt looked over at her, voice weak and back legs threatening to collapse. “There aren’t any humans around here to help. He won’t make it to one in time.”
Frostfur’s teeth were half-bared as she fought and failed to retort.
“What’s going on?!” Brackenfur wove around a cluster of cats, a partially-red Snowshade following him. The two of them caught sight of Thornclaw immediately, flinched in unison, and sprinted to join their family.
Thornclaw did not seem particularly concerned, eyes open to look up at his brothers. He made one more haggard attempt to breathe—a chuff?—and his body stilled, staring sightlessly beyond them. He did not move again.
Snowshade whimpered and leaned into Brackenfur, who seemed to gather himself much more quickly than Frostfur and Tornface. He breathed in deeply, briefly rested his cheek on his brother’s head, and asked miserably, “What happened to him?”
“He protected me,” Firestar said dully. “While I was…”
Brackenfur and, slightly delayed, Snowshade looked at him. Snowshade flinched again and signed, What happened?
Firestar didn’t answer him. He just touched his muzzle to Thornclaw’s forehead. When he drew back, he foggily noticed that a round spot of blood was where he had touched.
“Firestar.”
He looked behind him. The other leaders had come closer, all of them a little uneasy.
“I am sorry you’ve lost someone,” Blackstar murmured. “We all must count our dead.”
“Think that’s best.” Rookstar nodded, raising his voice. “We’ll need to be ready to report any more rogues coming to our borders after this. Keep in touch.” After a pause, he added, “And leave whatever Blood cats you find dead on this moor. We’ll handle the disposal.”
“You’ll have your friends eat them, you mean,” someone muttered.
A couple strays looked at each other in shock. Firestar thought he heard one whisper, “So they do have predator friends.”
“Good a way to get rid of them as any.” Rookstar slanted his head apathetically. “It’ll send a message, too.”
“If I might…” Brick, standing close by, cleared his throat. “I suggest you leave Scourge somewhere on the road, if you don’t want to take him all the way to town. That’ll scare any of his followers from bothering you again.”
“That we can do.” Rookstar turned to him. “Thank you and your crew for helping us.”
“We appreciate it,” Leopardstar said, like it took everything she had to pull gratitude out of her. “What do you want in return?”
Brick gave her an amused look. “We’ll be content with some peace and quiet. Maybe a quick hunt on your, uh, ‘neutral grounds’ before we go.”
The leaders looked at each other, then at Firestar. He belatedly realized they were silently asking for his opinion. He managed a single nod.
“Whatever you can catch is yours,” Rookstar said to Brick. “Go in peace.”
“You got it.” Brick turned, raised his head, and called as loud as he could without yowling, “Let’s go! Homeward bound!”
Slowly, with a few kindly parting words and well-wishes, the muddy strays followed after a departing Brick. A couple placed a paw on one of their own that didn’t survive the fight, but they made no effort to take the bodies with them. They just went down the hill, talking quietly to each other.
With that, the Clans started moving around. Firestar couldn’t tell how many dead cats there were. His eyes kept going back to the little white one. He was faintly reminded of the kits that had perished in the fight against ShadowClan.
He sat down heavily next to Thornclaw, his vision fuzzing and ears staticky. Occasionally a voice would pass by, but he had no idea what they were saying. Everything seemed so red under the light of the moon.
“Firestar? Hello?”
Dimly, he looked up and to the side. Mistfoot was talking to him, her ears back.
“Are you here?” she asked, her voice bereft of RiverClan’s usual humor.
His stomach lurched again.
“Oh,” he said slowly. “Yes.”
“Well…” Mistfoot looked uncomfortable. “I was asking if you’d like to go to the river to, ah… wash yourself off.” She gestured broadly with a paw. “You’re a bit of a mess.”
For the first time, Firestar looked down at himself. His front paws’ fur clumped red, and it stretched all the way up his legs to his chest. If he looked a little further, he could see his stomach was much the same.
“Oh,” he said again.
Mistfoot said something else. He didn’t hear. She repeated herself and he faintly caught, “…to go get Duckflower, if you don’t mind, I did ask Dustpelt, but—”
“Mistfoot.”
This voice was a lot clearer. Firestar looked up again and blinked; Leopardstar was standing in front of him, speaking to her deputy.
“If Dustpelt said ‘yes’, then take who you want and go with ThunderClan,” she said. “The rest of us are going back to Sunningrocks.” Her gold eyes went to Firestar. “With an extended invitation to ThunderClan’s leader.”
Delayed, Firestar mumbled, “Sure.”
And that was all he was capable of.
Some cats came up to him and said things. Some of them passed by his vision in colorful blurs. It didn’t look like anyone else from the Clans died. Maybe. He wasn’t really sure. All he was conscious of was manually directing his feet to carry him down the hill.
Pale blue eyes stared him down as he moved, a glare of ice on his back the entire walk.
When they reached the water, Leopardstar said something about staying in the shallow end. Firestar silently walked into the river.
The shock of the cold water hitting his paws was an odd sort of relief. The further he walked, the higher the cold went, until he was up to his chest. It woke him, kind of. He was able to look down and really study the water, even if his mind was numb.
The river kindly carried streaks of red downstream, drifting off in ribbons. He lowered his muzzle into the water with a breath Thornclaw had not been able to take, and the sensation brought his mind back down to reality, if only for a moment. He exhaled, focusing on the air in his nose departing as bubbles, and lifted his face away again. He lifted a wet foot and pawed at his muzzle and brow, like he was grooming after a meal.
It was only now that he was aware that Leopardstar was standing at the shore, looking uneasy. Voices downstream told him that RiverClan was celebrating their victory.
“Listen,” Leopardstar said, immensely awkward. “Rookstar was right. It had to be done. I– I get that it’s not pleasant to kill, but…”
Firestar met her eyes dimly. He didn’t speak.
It was a grim sort of comedy that she couldn’t maintain eye contact, even as she tried to sound stern and confident. “He was a murderer and he was trying to take our homes. You told everyone about how miserable he made life in the Aulmir, didn’t you? We did them a favor.”
Silence from Firestar.
“My point—” She tried to match his gaze. “My point is that you did a good thing. Even if you don’t think so right now, you did. And we all appreciate that.” She cleared her throat. “Killing someone is– it’s hard, I know—”
“You’ve done it?” Firestar asked, quiet and flat.
She faltered. “Er– no, but...”
Firestar hummed in acknowledgement and watched his paws under the surface again. Some of the blood was still clinging on where it had dried into clumps of hair. He should do something about that.
Leopardstar didn’t say anything else. She fidgeted, shifted her weight from one pair of feet to the other, then bobbed her head and hastened over to her Clanmates, leaving Firestar to slowly scrub his limbs until the last of the blood was gone. It took a long time.
When he came out of the water, Mosspelt trotted over from a hushed conversation, greeting him as he stood, dripping and silent, on the shore of the river.
“Well…” Mosspelt said after a pause. “The good news is that you’ve got no blood on you. You might want to shake yourself so you don’t carry the whole of the river home.”
Wearily, Firestar was certain he did not have it in him to shake. He was foggily amazed he could even walk right now.
Mosspelt waited, silent, before stepping closer to him and saying in a low voice, “I’m sorry it was you.”
Firestar blinked emotionlessly and looked at her.
“I heard how he, uh…” One side of her mouth twitched in a grimace. “Well, I heard about the state of him, after. That’d shake anyone, my friend.”
Firestar’s response took ages to come out of him. “I’m going to go home now.”
“Right.” Mosspelt took a step back. “You do that. Duckflower and the elders should be back with us, and then we’ll depart. Thank you for letting us stay here without a fuss, Firestar.”
He walked past her without a word.
The forest was quiet, like it wanted to be respectful. Firestar had to focus on the feeling of twigs grabbing at his wet coat and soil sticking to his soggy feet. Otherwise, he had an odd sensation of floating outside of himself, somewhere removed from the world his eyes were seeing without his body concurring.
Voices filtered into his ears somewhere to his right. When he looked, a cluster of cats were walking together and talking. He caught RiverClan’s scent mingled with ThunderClan’s.
He didn’t call to them. He kept going.
He blinked and he was in camp. The conversation around him was uneasy and muffled.
“Firestar?” Ravenwing came into view, his eyes wide and alarmed. “Were you in the woods alone? We thought– we thought you’d meet up with the patrol bringing RiverClan home, and you’d go with them.”
“Yeah,” Firestar said.
Ravenwing hesitated before stepping a little closer, his voice softer. “Are you okay?”
It took a moment for Firestar to focus his eyes enough to see the body in the center of camp, circled by cats.
“Do we have time to bury Thornclaw tonight?” he asked, the longest sentence he had managed so far. It exhausted him.
“I—” Ravenwing blinked in surprise. “Well, it’s late, but– yeah, I think so. But are—”
Firestar walked past him. He joined the grieving circle around Thornclaw, standing next to Dustpelt, who had his nose pressed against his apprentice’s shoulder with his eyes shut.
Thornclaw had never really achieved a peaceful expression, even when he was asleep. It looked alien on his noble face—eyes shut calmly, mouth closed, ears forward. He looked like he was having a nice dream after a long night of hard work.
Firestar didn’t say anything. He just laid a paw on Thornclaw’s torn side, not really observing him or the paw. Some part of him piped up that he should be devastated right now, that he should be mourning as strongly as Thornclaw’s mentor and family. The rest of him was floating far away, unavailable to take calls for grief.
Dustpelt’s eyes opened and caught sight of Firestar’s paw. “Oh—” He lifted his head and turned to Firestar. “You’re, uh… you’re soaked.”
Firestar hummed, monotone. “Has everyone had the chance to say goodbye?”
Dustpelt sat up completely, mouth tight in a grimace. “I’d say so. I’ve been here the whole time, and it seemed like the entire Clan except you came by.”
The cats clustered around Thornclaw glanced at each other, then looked to Firestar. His eyes drifted back down to Thornclaw as he tried to gather his mind back into his head.
Somewhere to his right, Squirrel’s scratchy little voice was whispering loudly, “How come everyone’s being all sad, Goldenflower? It’s just a dead cat.”
Goldenflower, Firestar dimly noted, had a tone of great patience and sorrow. “That cat is one of us. He was a friend and a brother and a son, and he should be grieved and buried because we all love him, even if he’s gone.”
“Ohhh,” said Squirrel, like she didn’t really get it.
Firestar sat for a long moment, half-listening to the conversations around him, before retracting his paw and turning away. He made his way to the meeting stump. He didn’t have it in him to jump onto it; he simply hauled himself up on front legs that desperately wanted to shake, then turned and more collapsed than sat down as he waited for everyone to gather around below him.
What to say… Hard to think of anything when nothing felt real.
But he did have to speak. Everyone was waiting for a eulogy.
“Thornclaw…” He paused, took in a slow and yet oddly shallow breath, and continued. “Thornclaw died doing what he had promised to do during the battle. He protected me. The cats… the two cats he went up against were almost bigger than him, and much more willing to kill.” Another falsely-calming inhale. “I don’t doubt he gave them scars to remember for years to come. And still, he wouldn’t pass on until I told him I was safe.”
Frostfur swallowed a lump in her throat, eyes wet, ears flat against her head. Faintly, Firestar felt a pull to offer comfort, hollow though it was.
“To tell you the truth… Thornclaw was going to be our next deputy.” Firestar waited for the murmurs to settle before continuing. “He had incredible potential to be a leader all of us would proudly follow. He wanted to walk in the footsteps of his father, and even if he didn’t get to, I know Lionface is praising him in StarClan now.”
At this small lull in his speech, a tidal wave of exhaustion hit Firestar. Combined with the disoriented state of his head, he swayed on his front feet, almost certain he was going to fall off the stump. His vision didn’t quite blur, but he couldn’t recognize what was in front of him.
“I’m sorry,” he said when the silence had gone on too long. “I don’t think I can say any more. We… we ought to bury him. Frostfur, do you know where he’d like to rest?”
Frostfur said something that blurred in his ears.
“That sounds fine,” he said, and nearly fell off the stump as he crouched to jump down. “I’ll take—”
“Firestar.”
He landed with a stumble, and Dustpelt was right in front of him. His voice was quiet; Firestar barely managed to make out him saying, “Why don’t you go rest? I can take Thornclaw out with his family.”
Firestar was blandly aware that he was supposed to protest and insist on helping. What came out of his mouth was a single, “Okay.”
He didn’t register anything else after that—not until he was collapsed in his nest, staring at the accursed wall in front of him. Normally, the thing would be barren and dull.
Now, the cracks in the stone seemed to form in the shape of a cat’s face. It was a natural evolution to envision pale blue eyes, frightened and in agony, staring him down without blinking. Frost coated his veins.
He tried to tolerate it. He really did.
He left his den in silence and entered camp.
Everyone was asleep. Aspencloud and Goldenflower were laying next to each other, eyes shut serenely. Halftail grunted and shifted in the elder’s den. It was… peaceful.
Firestar didn’t really direct himself anywhere. He just ended up in the warrior’s den. There was a nest right next to the entrance that was empty.
Thornclaw’s nest.
Would he mind?
Firestar didn’t have the energy to do any more than send a silent apology and sink into the nest without even circling or curling up.
Someone took in a sharp breath, let it out, and whispered, “Firestar?” When he looked, it was Dustpelt, who added, “What are you doing here?”
He could have lied. He could have dismissed his deputy’s question.
“I can’t be alone with my thoughts right now,” he said.
Dustpelt’s copper eyes darkened with understanding. He nodded and lowered his head again, mouth tight like he was afraid of saying anything to upset Firestar further.
Firestar screwed his eyes shut and buried his face in the moss.
He couldn’t be sure if he fell asleep at all.
