Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She’d never heard from any cat what happened to him. Not that she’d ever wondered.

He’d, at first, seemed a StarClan cat. She had observed him from high in a dead decaying tree, watching as the tom padded near the border. A snarl built up in her throat. “What do you want?”

“I finally found you,” he mewed. Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve been searching for a while.”

The she-cat’s tail twitched.

“Have you, now?” she spat. “Good. You’ve found me, then. Now go away.”

He shuffled his paws. His black fur stuck out like a night sky, white fur stark as snow. She’d seen many a cat like him, even here, as the seasons have gone by. But…

His pelt stuck out like a memory she couldn’t quite recall.

He wore a collar.

A kittypet.

“Do I know you?”

“I don’t expect you to remember me,” he began, “but—”

“Oh, why does it matter?” She rose to her paws, fluffy dappled tail twitching behind her in non-hidden anger. “Why are you here?”

He blinked.

“You asked me if you knew me—”

“Why are you here?” she cut him off with a hiss.

“Because!” The tom shuffled his paws again, green eyes staring anxious and wide. “I wanted to talk with you again, Mapleshade.”

…

. . .

Now that she thought of it.

His voice wasn’t entirely unfamiliar.

She squinted at him.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

The tom twitched his whiskers. “Myler,” he mewed.

Mapleshade’s fur bristled.

“What are you doing here?”

“I told you, I was looking for you.”

“You know full and well that’s not what I mean,” she growled. “Did StarClan let you in? I can’t imagine those prissy little fleaballs would. They wouldn’t accept kittypets into their midst.”

Myler shook his head, “No, I’m not from StarClan. StarClan doesn’t even know I’m here. They wouldn’t allow me when I asked.”

The large she-cat scoffed, “I’m not surprised. Where are you from, then? Unless I’ve gone utterly mad and you’re here as a nightmare.”

The small tom flicked his tail. “Rude,” he mumbled, before, a bit louder, “Not a lot of clan cats know about us, but we’re much like StarClan. We like to call ourselves Whole Moon.”

“…Whole Moon,” she echoed, dubiously, sniffing. “Really? What an odd, pretentious name.”

“Yes, and StarClan is somehow better,” Myler meowed without warning—catching her off guard to the point an amused snort near left her. She bit it back with a pointed scowl.

“While I may be inclined to agree,” a lot inclined, she thought, “I’ve never heard of you lot, either. And frankly I wish to not see you. So you can go back and tell these Hole fleaballs—”

“Whole,” he corrected.

“Yes, exactly.”

Myler twitched his whiskers again. “But you’re saying it like—”

“Oh, shush,” Mapleshade snapped. “Stars above, are you a nuisance!”

He said nothing. Somehow, that simply irked the Dark Forest cat even more, and she sank her claws into the bark of the dead tree, climbing her way down at a breakneck speed. “If you’ve nothing worthy of my time to say to me,” she marched right up to the border, claws still unsheathed, sticking into the slimy mud under her with each step, “then I insist you leave me be!”

Myler took a hesitant step back at her approach; bringing a satisfied grin to her muzzle. It only grew when he opened his own to speak, then shut it again.

“What?” she sneered. “Cat got your tongue?”

“You can’t make me leave!”

…

She stiffened.

“Excuse me?”

“What I mean is…” Myler straightened to his full height—and though the small tom only measly reached her chest, his eyes spoke for him. Blazing, a fiery forest green, they bore into her. “No.”

Mapleshade took a step back, this time.

Spitting furiously, she did not wait to hear why.

She did not consider herself a coward, nor had she ever.

But, in that moment,

she turned tail and fled.

Back into trees, she did not heed the shout of Myler behind her, leaving him far, far behind her.

Chapter Text

The very next day—or, what constituted as such in a place such as the Dark Forest—was much the same, much to Mapleshade’s growing grievance.

One of the other Dark Forest members, set to have patrolled the border between StarClan and the Forest, had approached her. Their tail was bushed out in obvious irritation, and when she saw they had strayed from their duty (they hadn't been patrolling for even two heart-ripples) Mapleshade took a pawstep towards them.

They took this as initiative to speak. “There’s—”

Bad idea, because the she-cat lashed out and cuffed their ear with razor-sharp claws. “You piece of mousefodder!” she snarled as they flinched back, spitting at her—but they tiptoed away a few steps, back arched though they backed down at the sight of her furious bared teeth. “Are you so incompetent that you can’t be bothered to finish the one job I give you without asking for help?!”

The cat grumbled to themself, rubbing their sore ear with a paw. “Well, if you just had an ounce of patience in your body to listen, maybe I could tell you why,” they hissed.

As though to prove their very point, Mapleshade sniffed impatiently. “What is it, then? Don’t waste my time any longer than you have to.”

“Yeah, yeah,” they snorted back, “anyhow, there’s that same tom from yesterday here to see you again.” They sniffed, “Honestly, I’m a bit surprised you let that mousefodder live.”

Her fur bristled. “If you are so worried, why don’t you take care of him yourself?”

“Waste of my time,” they scoffed. “But by all means,” they jerked their head in the direction of the border, “be my guest.”

With that they flicked their tail, stalking off into the darkness of the trees. She had the increasing urge to bound after them and finish her earlier job (that is, rightfully rake her claws through not just their ears but the rest of their pelt), but, again… She’d rather get on with her day without as many “casualties” as necessary.

She wondered if Myler had any intention on testing her patience today too.

Giving her chest a couple of annoyed licks, the she-cat breathed in, sighed, then began padding on the outskirts of the Forest’s border, in the direction from which the other cat had come. She half-expected to run into a StarClan cat instead, DarkClan forbid. In fact, DarkClan only knew if that piece of mousefodder had mistaken some StarClan-righteous flea-brain for Myler in the first place! Why, if after she’s taken care of this problem, she could only get her paws on the rest of that blasted—

“Hi again,” a voice mewed behind her.

She whipped around, wondering how in the world she’d missed him—when she saw nothing.

“Up here.”

Her eyes flicked up.

There he was. Again. Lounging on a StarClan tree, his fluffy tail dangling off the branch.

…Cheeky.

Was this some sort of way to get back at her? To mock her?

“What do you want?” she meowed gruffly, instead. She would not allow herself to be mocked, or intimidated. Not again.

“I still want to talk. We never properly did.”

He stood from the branch, and began making his way down. She unsheathed her claws.

“If you—”

“I have no intention of harming you, or crossing the border,” the small tom interrupted. “I genuinely just want an idle conversation with you. Is that too much to ask?”

“Are you testing me?” she demanded.

“Can I talk with you or not?” His tail flicked, in a blink. She would have missed it if every fiber of Mapleshade’s being weren’t studying him—and as it turned out, the movement, albeit brief, told her he was not taking no for an answer.

…

Mapleshade narrowed her eyes.

“…Very well, then,” she said slowly. “What is it you want to talk about?”

Myler’s eyes widened a bit, and a smirk flashed across her muzzle. Surprised to hear that, was he?

“Oh,” he managed. “Well. How are you?”

.

.

.

At the end of her own shock, Mapleshade twisted her lips into a snarl.

“Is this a joke to you?”

Myler blinked.

“What?”

“Are you here simply to torture me? Has that been your plan all along?”

“What?” he repeated again, sounding aghast, “No! I—”

“So, what— You want The Magnificent Mapleshade to make herself your fool so you can laugh at her?” she went on, sneering angrily. “Is that it?”

“No— I— I just wanted to—”

“To ridicule me!” She raked her claws through the dirt beneath her, glaring icily not at him, but at her own paw doing the deed. “To prove some sort of point, right? That I was in the wrong? That, ‘Oh, StarClan had never abandoned you, they had wanted you to return to them, you chose to run from them, you chose to turn away and lose everything, you chose this, you chose this’.”

…If Myler had heard her breath hitch. He said nothing about it.

“Mapleshade,” he began, softly. “That’s not why I…”

“What did they tell you? Hm?”

She ripped her claws out of the earth, one tearing off, as she stepped a paw closer.

“What indoctrinations did they feed into your brain, Myler?” she asked. “What did they tell you I did? Did they tell you I was evil? Wicked? That I,” her voice shook, “murdered my own kits?”

“You didn’t,” he spoke quickly, and, then, her blood ran cold, even further, somehow.

. . .

“So you do know. You do know what really happened, then?”

“I…”

“Tell me. What happened.”

. . .

In the silence, only then did she notice the small tom quivering in fear on the edge of StarClan’s border, green eyes wider than she could remember.

…Well. No.

She still remembered that terror when Patchkit’s face faded into his.

Grief's teeth clenched her heart, and she nearly screamed out, “Tell me what happened!”

“You killed innocent cats!” Myler barked out, at last.

…

And,

at last,

the she-cat stopped trembling.

“Ah,” she breathed. She did not step back from him. Frozen. “So they got that part right, anyway.”

Myler looked back at her in visible torment.

“They told me you were wicked,” he choked, “and evil and vile and— And, I hadn’t wanted to believe them but why would they lie to me?”

“StarClan will be StarClan,” Mapleshade muttered. He either didn’t hear or simply was too distraught to give it a response.

“I’ve never trusted Clan cats. I’m still not sure I do. But I trusted you.”

Without pause, she shot back, “That was your first mistake.”

Myler flinched.

The intended effect, and yet, it filled her with nothing but emptiness.

“…Maybe so,” he admitted quietly. To her, or himself, she wondered? “But you never harmed me.”

“That means nothing.”

“I know.”

He sighed. Sounding… Tired.

And, she just had to ask.

“Why do you keep coming to me, then?”

It seemed he’d been expecting that question. At one point or another.

He took another breath in, as though for strength.

“Because,” he mewed quietly, “I’d rather hear your side of the story than anycat else’s.”

…

. . .

A loose chuckle escaped the Dark Forest she-cat, before she could help it.

“That is—”

Silly? Bee-brained? Even mouse-brained, perhaps?

It didn’t really matter for she never got to say it.

“What are you doing here?”

A voice came out from behind Myler and he jumped several paces back, fur standing on end—and when Mapleshade saw who it was,

her fur didn’t exactly remain settled, either.

His holly-green eyes met hers with a sort of stoniness only she had come to know, and he regarded her with an almost sneer; lips not quite pulled back in a taunting snarl, but his scowl gave off a similar effect, all the same.

“Don’t you think you’ve terrorized this poor kittypet enough?” were his first words to her. Cool, quiet. But not like the quiet from Myler. It was different. Intimidating. Mocking. Cruel.

And Mapleshade made the effort, because of it, to make herself look twice as large in response.

And she stood up straighter, and sent the shame down into the lower parts of her blackened heart, and she had the nerve to sneer,

“If this is what you assume of me—to stoop that low, that is—then DarkClan wonders why I ever shared a nest with you.”

Appledusk twitched an ear. “Oh?” he meowed. “I bet StarClan wonders the same for me; considering you have stooped much, much lower.”

Do not let it get to you, her brain demanded. Do not let that fox-heart get to you. You are better than this.

Am I? her heart questioned.

“And whose fault was that?” She wanted to rake her claws across her own pelt. “You speak as though you are higher than all of StarClan,” she spat.

He flicked his other ear, simply, before turning fully away.

“At least I can say with confidence that I have always chosen them over myself.”

And there it was.

And, there her former mate went. Walking graciously away, stopping to say something to Myler, who had done nothing but stand there the entire time, ears flat against his head, the epitome of a ball of anxiety.

When her eyes settled on him for too long, Myler glanced to her, so she flattened her ears too and hissed at him.

Waste of her time, indeed.

They both left in tandem, as Mapleshade watched, licking the drying blood from her torn claw. She wondered how often they talked. She wondered if Appledusk had been the one to tell.

She wondered how much Myler hated her.

If StarClan did have any grace left in them, maybe, just maybe, they would make sure neither of them ever came back.