IN THE NAME OF LOVE — private

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    shadowclan, she decided, was a pretty alright place. the cats seemed nice enough, there was food and shelter, and plenty of friends to be made. but she knew there were ways she'd never belong.


    she couldn't wake up as easily as the others. her body rose when it was no longer tired, not because of the sun - she couldn't see it. she could tell if it was night or day. she couldn't tell an apprentice from an elder, particularly when she didn't know them. she knew she'd never be able to have an apprentice, she was lucky she'd even been granted a nest in the warriors den. she feared she'd be moved elsewhere sooner or later, though, and the thought terrified her.


    so when snores became a chorus in the den, rousing the petite feline, she stood and took her leave, slipping out of the den and, after bumping into a few walls, the camp. she was still unfamiliar with the territory, but the feline was desperate to try to teach herself, to remain a warrior.


    when she didn't catch the scent of any prey, likely not due to a lack but due to the overpowering scent of the everygreens and the many felines who had walked through the forest over the hundreds of moons past, a frustrated moan escaped her lips. she could count the number of cats who'd walked on this very spot before her, she could tell exactly when the last did, but she couldn't pick out a damn mouse - she felt useless.


    "come on thebe, stop being so damn useless." she cursed herself, voice a whisper laced with anger and frustration. "you can do it. be the blind warrior. come on."

    [fancypost bgcolor=none; bordercolor=transparent; borderwidth=0px; width: 400px;font-size:8pt;line-height: 150%;][justify]in comparison to the sightless felidae, twoface was also born with something that deviated from the desired norm. in contrast, he had everything she did not.


    each day he would wake to the lightening of the dark isolation his eyelids provided. the sun would shine to him, the world lighting as if saying hello in a gradual wave of the solar entity upwards. he would then see the camp, the cats, everything that made up his life. in a way, he was luckier than thebe. he was blessed with a sense she'd never had the pleasure to experience.


    yet at the same time, he knew that she was also luckier than him in a sense. the day he'd been born the medicine cat had told him mother he likely wouldn't survive more than a few days. well, it'd been months since then and although he was alive, two was well aware of the fact his lifespan could been significantly shortened thanks to his deformation. that thought was what kept him so in-line and considerate. he needed to do the best he could for shadowclan while he was still around. for all anyone knew, the ragdoll could die the very next day.


    it was that mindset that prompted him to follow shadowclan's newest member wherever she'd decided to go so late at night. he himself had been struggling to calm his nerves after the promotion. the whole change had him grasping for some way to calm the gears of his overactive brain, taking to pacing in the hopes of tiring his body out enough. that's when thebes had stumbled from the warriors' den and out into the marsh.


    her words during this had his ears pricking on his head. "useless?" the echo of the term was hushed, though loud enough for her to hear his question. the masc would then approach with steps made louder than usual so as to not alarm the disabled she. "you made your way here all on your own. you're capable of many more things, too. the words 'useless' doesn't truly apply to anyone, if you think about it."
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    voice startled her, despite his loud approach. frankly, his approach startled her, every loud step sounding more like the impending pawsteps of her murderer. she'd had fear instilled into her at a young age, taught to her as a survival tactic. if she feared the unknown, she couldn't let it close enough to hurt her.


    her fur stood on end, eyes shifting into saucers as she tried to pick his scent out, to process it, to recognize him. twoface, the deputy. upon registering his name, she felt at ease, if only slightly. he was a deputy, and deputies were supposed to be the good guys. next in line for leader. she told herself to trust him, to calm down, and after a moment, her fur relented, but her heart still beat like a hummingbirds wings.


    "i'm capable of less than any other warrior. i can't hunt, i can't fight - i can smell and hear, and that's it." the usually optimistic feline said, a sigh escaping her lips and she sat down, defeated. "the only useful warrior duty i can perform is, like, guarding the camp. and that's not even a real warrior duty."

    [fancypost bgcolor=none; bordercolor=transparent; borderwidth=0px; width: 400px;font-size:8pt;line-height: 150%;][justify]hackles raise, eyes wide - the girl hadn't been expecting a tag along at all, had she? in a selfish way, twoface registered that he almost felt glad the blind girl couldn't see the amuse twitch of his maws. it was a terrible thing to think of, really. no one should find entertainment in another's disability.


    "sorry," would come his abashed mumble that followed her jumping. while she would likely take it as a simple apology for alarming her, it was also for his momentary distasteful idea. a moment was provided for her to acknowledge that, though she soon went on to shares her woes.


    there was a part of him that connected with her fears. two himself had a blind spot due to his displaced optics and that'd taken adaptation on his part to learn skills that came to others so naturally. no, he wasn't completely devoid of one of five senses, but he was confident enough in his experience to apply that here. "camps need guarding. that's important a job as any other."


    "but i understand what you're saying. tasks are hard when you can't learn them from someone that shares your burdens. that shouldn't stop you, though. there's no right way to do anything." a pause of his words allowed the tom to sweep his eyes over her form in thought. "being a warrior is all about learning. you learn, you try, you apply, then you start again. maybe you won't be the best in some areas, but you can succeed in others."
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    a frustrated sigh escaped her lips. it wasn't intended, and certainly not to be so loud, but it came nonetheless and she didn't regret it.


    "every duty is necessary, but repetition is exhausting. twoface, i don't know you well - or at all, really - but i do know that you can see. i've collected that you can hear, and you can speak just fine. i hear your paws, and i know there's four of them moving. it makes you fully functioning, normal. unless you've got some sort of hidden disfigurement, i'm sure you're perfectly handsome. i mean this with the utmost respect, but you, my friend, have got it easy."


    and that was another downside to such a blindness. thebe couldn't see ugly things, to the feline, ugly simply meant poor manners. because there was no way to see to judge, and it was all really based off of what a feline acted and smelt like, and the tom smelt perfectly fine, and acted perfectly fine, so she fancied that must translate to a fine visage.


    she was new. she hadn't heard the stories, hadn't paid much mind to the whispers, or much of anything said about the tom. a combination of not being awake with her peers and never really being around them prevented her from knowing the extent of the truth of his name.


    [*dun dun*]

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    how her words could hit so close without her even realizing it was . . . dreadful.


    she'd only been telling him what she perceived to be the truth. and it was to her, wasn't it? there was no need for him to feel the stab in his chest, nor to droop like a kitten scolded by its dam. he shouldn't have felt a flare of temper rise - one that hadn't been present in his life for moons now.


    thebe had no way of knowing what she said was far from wrong. easy wasn't his life. his entire kithood had been nothing but a battle of survival against a world so cruel. he couldn't function right; drinking was a chore, eating was a skill hard to learn, and sometimes his own mother would cry over a son she wouldn't lose.


    apprenticeship brought on the worst of it all. bullying had been a daily from him. after all, cats tended to lash out at the unknown. seeing as he was a feline with a pair of muzzles and three eyes, one of which didn't even work, he was far from something they understood. before he'd grown a skin as thick as stone, the tome had struggled with just getting up in the morning. he didn't fear claws nor teeth nor death - he feared words.


    and just like that it'd all come back to him. a moment was passed, silent, as he was choked up with words. something bitter wanted to rise from him, but twoface wouldn't let it. he stomped it back to the very darkest parts of his mind and ignored it like he had for months.


    "thebe."


    the name came out hoarse. he closed his jaws, swallowed, and began again. "i'm not- i do have a disfigurement. before you say anything, i'm not mad. you couldn't have known. but i'm not normal. i'm not handsome either. in fact, i'm considered quite hideous in the eyes of others.


    "i was born with a deformed face. i have two muzzles and an extra eye - hence my name. i really do have two faces." the deputy felt so small explaining it to her. he hated how his voice sounded like it did, hated how she couldn't just understand so he didn't have to try to make her. but it was better that it came from him, rather than someone else. at leas that's what he was trying to convince himself.
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    he said he wasn't angry, but she could smell it sizzling off of him like bacon in a frying pan, the scent drifting passed her with the wind. he was angry, she concluded, but didn't blame her. his explanation brought logic for anger, some degree of frustration or perhaps humiliation; he'd spend his life being shamed for something that seemed obvious to so many, that explaining it must have been painful.


    "well," she began, carefully choosing her words as she considered the matter. "...then we ought to be very good friends. because to me, you have no disfigurement. a good personality goes a long way for a girl who's blind as a bat. everyone else, you can have two faces with - but to me, you've just got a nice voice and a nice personality. no disfigurements, no being different. i can be the freak here." she offered with a smile, partially in an attempt to cheer him up, and partially to show him she meant it. he sounded no different than any other cat, and provided he didn't act it, he was no different.


    she opened her mouth once more, but remained silent, deciding that he might take offense to her asking to touch his face. es. it was the only possible way for her to grasp a concept of his words, but she fancied that, even if he was plain looking, he might be uncomfortable with a total stranger rubbing her paws over his face.


    [lmao, thebe just wants friends]

    [fancypost bgcolor=none; bordercolor=transparent; borderwidth=0px; width: 400px;font-size:8pt;line-height: 150%;][justify]// they will be Best Friends,,


    thebe's response had him pausing. the words sunk in, deep and wandering. twoface stood there for a moment, no reply coming forth. he'd receded into his mind without warning, leaving the girl to linger in a silence that wasn't as nearly heavy as their conversation had grown just moments before.


    she was right. as much as he felt the need to argue against it, two couldn't. there wasn't a single word the fem had spoken that was anything less than truth. to her, he wasn't imperfect or disfigured or a freak of nature. to her, he wasn't a hideous creature. to her, he was normal. there was something about that fact that twoface found solace in. tension melted from his form, muscles going lax at the discovery.


    she didn't think less of him for his mutation. she might have been one of the only ones in the clan who felt that way.


    a chuckle. that was the first thing to come from him after she'd spoken. it wasn't condescending, nor was it in ill humor. no, it was genuine as the blue in the sky. "to someone like me, blindness doesn't make you a freak. it makes you different. when i look at you, i don't see anything but an equal. your disability far from defines you, thebe."
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    the silence made the hairs on the back of the felines neck stand up, the confusion visible on her features. she hesitated, jaw opening to inquire if he was still there when he finally spoke. and, unlike his response, her own was immediate and rather sharp.


    "no." she said immediately, lips pressed tightly into a frown as she regarded him, looking a mixture of offended and wounded. "no, twoface, don't try the whole different thing. i'm blind, not some sort of special snow flake. don't... don't say it doesn't define me, because it does. because i want it to.


    "do you know how many people laughed at me when i was coming here, saying i'd be the blind warrior of shadowclan? they thought i was a joke. but i didn't make it here in spite of my blindness, i made it here because of it. it defines me, but i want it to. i'm not going to shy away from my blindness because it's a part of my identity, because i would be unrecognizably different without it. i'm not normal - i'm so, so different because of it, in good and bad ways. it makes me a freak, and i'm embracing it.


    "own the words and they can't be insults." she declared, shrugging her shoulders. she'd been told plenty of things, plenty of times in the past fourteen moons. and she'd learned to filter anything said to or about her. she'd developed a thick skin - or at least some semblance of it. granted, anyone who paid attention to her self-depricating jokes could see how self conscious she was, but it was easier to put up a strong front. easier to break in the silence, alone.

    [fancypost bgcolor=none; bordercolor=transparent; borderwidth=0px; width: 400px;font-size:8pt;line-height: 150%;][justify]thebe's cutting tone had him lurch back physically in expectation of something more. yet, nothing came. but the look upon her face was far worse to him than a hit would have been or any number of insults. she was hurt, and he had done that. he was no better than someone who teased her for it.


    when her wall of words came, twoface stood silently. he made no movements, no sounds, didn't even so much as change the shallowness of his breath that was making his heart rate pick up. the tom was afraid to interrupt, still struck by the change in her.


    as he listened, the deputy found himself subconsciously drawing similarities between their stories. being laughed at, being doubted, developing some mechanism to shield everything from hurting as much. but she'd done that a lot better than he, hadn't she? while thebe embraced it all, he still suffered from it. the fem took it and accepted it with no so much as a bat of her nonworking eyes.


    two sunk into himself then. he was vulnerable around her, though only because he could be. she wouldn't see the falling of his face, the look of utter resentment that sat in his darkening optics. why couldn't he be like her? why couldn't he brush it all off? instead, he just acted aloof towards aggressors and pushed down whatever hurt was roused from their words. later, when he was alone, twoface would dwell on it all. he would bring up every single thing said and drown himself in it.


    but, no- thebe didn't have it as bad as he did. plenty of cats were blind, and plenty had overcome their lack of sight to prove themselves useful as any. and him? he was a rarity among the one-of-the-kinds. he was the freak of the freaks. there were cats missing legs, missing senses, missing parts of them that hindered what they did but never completely stopped them. and there he stood with a cranium crammed and split with a trio of eyes and another muzzle that was next to useless hanging on him like an ugly decoration he couldn't take down.


    a part of him envied her. she didn't have to see a grotesque mutation that threatened to shorten her life. she didn't have to deal with an askew line of sight that messed with her actions. she didn't have to worry about eating wrong and choking because her inner body was a complex maze. she wasn't the freak, no matter how much she insisted. she wasn't the abomination of nature.


    another part of him, the more humble one, whispered from someplace far off. he had no reason to be jealous of a blind cat. thebe came with her own woes, and she had problems of her own that were undoubtedly more challenging than anything he could bring up. she couldn't see. and here he stood loathing his appearance. it was selfish. it was useless.


    "you're a blind warrior." the four words were nothing more than him bending to accept her wishes of how to be viewed. she was blind. he wouldn't pity her for that. "you can't see, and that'll make things harder for you. still, i know you'll learn to do most things almost, if not just, as well as any other cat. you have a stronger nose, stronger ears, and i'm willing to bet your paws pick up more vibrations than mine do.


    "and if that makes you . . . abnormal-" he wouldn't call her a freak. that word didn't belong to her like it did to him. she was disabled, not something that called for stares or disgust. "then that's fine. you're blindness is who you are, as my looks are who i am. you'll do things different, experience things different, and i'm sure you'll go places doing it, too. you made it here, now it's just a matter of deciding where you'll be next."
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    she listened with inquisitive ears, trained for reading between the lines. sometimes, too much. she wondered if he was angry, thought she was trying to one-up him. perhaps he was amused at the passion, the fire she spoke with. maybe he was trying to understand it, her.


    when he spoke, though, she felt a sinking feeline in her stomach. at his words, at his apparent resolve. it seemed to final. it seemed like a conclusion. she didn't want it to end; she didn't want him to say goodbye. she had no friends because she always got deep, personal, and it was impossibly difficult to turn personal into a casual conversation in passing, into 'friend'.


    "i don't want to go anywhere else." she drcided, shrugging her thin shoulders and letting her eyes close. they felt cold. "i'm not silly, there's no such thing as blind deputies and leaders. i could be a queen, but... well, queen would be accepting that domesticated life, moons without hunting and training, and i can't afford to let my senses get dulled. and being an elder, for the blind, means early retirement or no retirement. you don't make it to a hundred moons when you're blind.


    "i'm left with staying, and i'm alright with that." she decided once more, shoulders shrugging yet again as she motioned to the tom. "you've made it bud, you've become something. you've conquered your handsomeness and become the next leader of shadowclan." she purred, though her tone was clearly only half joking.


    [ruuushed]