[fancypost borderwidth=0px; width: 420px; text-align: justify; font-family: verdana; font-size: 11px;]This isn't a oneshot! TL;DR and things are at the bottom of this I'm sorry, and it's meant to be replied to, it's just.. long. Because development.
[hr]He should have never been there in the first place.
But he was, and there was something funny about it, he knew. It was a twisted sort of funny, the kind that hurt the pit of the stomach in the worst way, and yet the laughter didn't stop, it wouldn't stop, and even when it was practical torture, there was still some odd, abysmal optimism lingering in the depths, just beneath the original, horrific jolt first experienced when the situation arose. Someday, perhaps in the late future, he'd laugh about this. He'd laugh about it because he'd finally see the humour in it, wherever it was, because it was there, somewhere, it was just..
Hiding. Things liked to hide, he found. Submerged in the shadows, it was often hard to spot them without a keen eye. He liked to pride himself on having a keen eye, able to notice even the smallest of details, but he was having some trouble finding it. The humour. Everything else was in plain view, and even a blind man would've had difficulty overlooking it. But the humour, it was- clever. Perhaps it was right under his nose. Perhaps it was beneath what he saw, in the dirt, uncovered only once he'd muddied and bloodied his paws angrily digging in a futile attempt to find something to make the black night brighter. He wasn't scared of the dark. He was nocturnal, naturally. But this? This wasn't just dark. It was dismal, it was hopeless, and he couldn't find a way out. The tunnel exit was closing above his head. He couldn't see. He felt as if he was being buried alive.
He slapped himself.
Claws raked across his own cheek, but he felt next to nothing. The pain was not enough to ground him, drag him from his mind. He'd always thought that lamps lit up his thoughts - dim lamps, but lamps nonetheless. He'd not realised they'd gone out. He'd been so distracted by WindClan, he'd forgotten to change them. Forgotten to buy some more. Forgotten to replace the broken bulbs and give himself a little more life - he was drained, and he was relating his mentality to a blackout. An electrical failure, a short-circuit, and he was going to blow. He was going to snap, and the wires were going to fray, and anyone who came too close would be caught in it; lightning would arc from him to them, and they would fry alive. He didn't think there were any nearby electricians. He was alone.
They'd called him smart, once. He'd been the smartest of his friends, and he'd put his brain to good use. He didn't know why he'd stopped, really. He didn't neglect his abilities, he just didn't press them. Point was, they'd called him smart at some point. They'd also called him brave, and handsome, and amazing at everything. If he'd wanted to do it, they'd said, he'd done it, and he'd done it well. Better than anybody else. So when he'd dedicated himself to the preservation of basic rights, why had he failed? He'd failed the people closest to him, the people who'd called him smart, and brave, and handsome, and amazing at everything, capable of succeeding in anything he wanted. He'd failed them, and they were dead. He'd not even been there to put up a fight. He'd been young and egotistical and out doing what young kids did, and he'd come back, and he'd been alive and smiling, and they'd.. not been. Simple as that.
He'd not even given them a funeral. That had just added insult to injury, he thought, but what was a kid meant to do? Probably not run, but he had. He'd run because running was what he was good at, climbing up high where most people didn't dwell and racing until his paws cracked and bloodied themselves, and then he'd ended up in WindClan. He'd forgotten - or repressed - what had happened. He'd let himself do what he'd never been able to do before, and he'd tried to impress, tried to prove he was not the worst son in the world, the worst person in the world, tried to prove that he was worthy of even the barest sliver of approval.
In doing that, had he ignored what mattered the most? He wasn't driven by hate. He wasn't a hateful creature. But this.. the caracal swallowed thickly, but it didn't do anything to push down the lump in his throat. Instead, it swelled it until he fought to breathe, a muscle jumping over his ribs and across his flank as he struggled to calm the pounding of blood in his ears. His pulse was loud and insistent, a screaming howl in the back of his head. He thought it was going to kill him. Just.. burst through his skull and fracture his cranium and leave him dead on the ground. It wasn't a terrible concept, just a selfish one. His parents would've never been proud of somebody who thought like that. They would've frowned, bitterly disappointed, shaking their heads sadly at him. Maybe his mother would've hugged him, but she wouldn't have liked it. Despondency would've outweighed the concern. He could feel their stares now.
And that woke him up, breaking the surface of the water and shaking his sodden head with a gasp. Not disappointed, devoid, the glassiness glazing their eyes as they stared fixedly at him, expressions unchanging and stale, bodies in a state of decay that caused rot to consume most of their flesh. Why are their eyes untouched? Probably because they weren't real. They weren't just glassy, they were glass, judging him. Silently. Waiting for him to break. Give in. Or.. give up. It didn't matter. Was there a difference? Agin, it probably didn't matter. But they wanted to see him succumb. He didn't want to give them the satisfaction.
But people didn't have a choice in breaking down. If they did, mental meltdowns would be nonexistent. They stared at him, and he stared back, and something fizzled out. He reckoned it was that intelligence. A small voice in his head cried out - Think, Red, don't do it. You'll regret it in the morning, when you wake up. You're durable, but you're not invincible. You know this. You know- he snuffed it out. He licked his fingers and gripped the wick and watched the flame disappear, and he moved on autopilot. He was going to do something. Something stupid, but something nonetheless. Acting was better than not acting, right? Anything was better than letting this go unnoticed, uncared for, unannounced.
So he went for the easiest option. Lone wolf. Marched right up to the border and saw a loner, and punched 'em in the face. Bang. Snap. They expected a name and business and got a fight. Had the desired effect, anyway, and they were bigger than he was, but he didn't care any more. It wasn't like this wolf had killed his parents. Wasn't like this wolf knew his name, knew his pain. They were just going about their daily business, and he'd shattered that calm. Didn't matter, anyway. It was what he wanted. He wanted it because it let him sort himself out, and he never solved his issues with violence, because hitting wasn't the answer, but what did it matter any more? Some freak had taken his parents' corpses and dumped them on WindClan territory. They knew where he was and he didn't even know who they were. Some detective he was. He was an idiot.
And he wasn't durable. His brain was right. He could dodge hits all he wanted, and he did, but then what happened when he stopped? What happened when he hit the wolf so hard teeth rattled against the ground, and the resulting recoil woke him up? He slowed. The wolf was beneath him and gasping and bloody, and he realised what he'd done. And he panicked. A quiet, childish sound of discomfort left his lips and he suddenly didn't know what to do with the paws that had been pressed against the wolf's throat. He pulled back. He tried to apologise, tried to say sorry-
And got head-butted in the nose.
I guess I deserve that.
But he couldn't kill, he couldn't do that. His parents' murderers killed people - he wasn't going to stoop to their level. So he was laconic, comatose, unresponsive, stunned by the blow that had him bleeding from the nose. The wolf was only acting out of defence, though. He didn't blame it. The already-present scars were reopened, ones on his leg and the one on his chest, but it was more than that. Scars everywhere. Shallow ones that were hidden were deepened, new ones formed in areas of otherwise blank skin. He was sure a rib was broken. Maybe two. Bruises were common, anyway. Bruises that'd linger long after the bleeding had stopped, bruises many wouldn't see after a while but he'd still feel when they were pressed on in the wrong way, the way that caused a kaleidoscope of butterflies to erupt in the chasm of his likely-empty stomach. He still didn't know if he liked that feeling or not.
Seemed like the wolf was dragging it out, though. He guessed everyone was a sadist at heart, somewhere, deep down. He didn't think he was, though. Not like this. Maybe the poor guy wanted him to know that he wasn't allowed to just punch people in the face, which was fair. He wasn't sure why he did it, really, now. Perhaps he ought to've listened to that voice in his head, the one that told him he was an idiot for considering this. Perhaps he ought to've chosen a smaller opponent. Something that didn't hit as hard. Something that wasn't about to kill him. Something that had enough mercy to let him go when he tried to repent. Something empathetic.
Again, he could feel his parents' glassy eyes. Cold, dark, disappointed. They hadn't raised a son for him to die because he let a potent cocktail of feverish, uncontrollable emotions cloud his supposedly superior judgement.
That wasn't an option, then. He wasn't there to dissatisfy, was he?
So he broke again. Snapped somewhere at the lower spine and swung upwards, and his talons sunk into the eye of the creature - the wolf's narrowed gaze shut with a low yelp, and in the haze, he kicked at it with his hind legs, throwing it off. Funny how targeting the eyes made people stop fighting. It was gone, scrambling away, apparently deciding that ending the caracal's life wasn't enough to risk blindness over, and it felt like a cheap copout, some sort of stupid escape attempt that didn't fit right with the situation. But it was what it was, and he sat up - or he tried to. It was harder than it looked, especially when battered. He didn't recommend full-body smack downs. There were better forms of anger management.
He wanted to go back to the bodies, but he couldn't move. Did it count as a victory if he felt like he was going to vomit? He didn't think it did, but the lamps were flickering dimly again. They were trying to live. And that was good. He didn't like the idea of dying so much now he'd again come so close. Perhaps wakefulness was, at least, better than the nightmares. He reckoned purgatory was the nicest place he'd reach at this point, so even if he did die, he'd not see his parents again. Death, of all things, was a foolish attempt at reconnecting with the people he'd cared about the most.
And even then, he didn't think he'd ever want to see his parents again. His views of them had become so skewed, and he couldn't recall his mother's voice, his father's laugh. He couldn't recall their personalities. They'd been proud, but they'd not been pushy. Right? Right. Had they been diligent? Had his.. had his father's smile curled left or right? Had his mother's eyes rolled clockwise or anticlockwise when something had irritated her enough to become amusing? He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember anything so specific, only the vaguest of memories. Was his knowledge meant to dissipate so quickly? You've not been thinking about them enough. You'd remember if you thought about them enough. Your brain's neural connections strengthen every time you relive a memory, and if you can't remember, it's because you've neglected thinking about them. Like you don't care. But he did.. it was just hard. Thinking about what he'd lost hurt him in a multitude of ways he hated to regularly recall.
He blinked multiple times in rapid succession, trying to clear his thoughts, but he.. he couldn't. His head felt as if it was filled with hot water, as if it had cracked at the back. He.. the pain was alienated. It wasn't agony, but it felt off, wrong, foreign. It didn't feel like it was his own pain. He didn't feel like he knew who he was, but he curled his tongue around his name and pushed it to the forefront of his mind. It was fuzzy and fractured at the sides, broken off into splintered fractals at each edge and in between, and it didn't look right. Nothing did. His world was fading rapidly, colours peeling away and leaving him submerged in some sort of monochrome hell. He didn't know it, but the pigment was fading from his fur. Russet fell back to reveal a dark silver-grey, like that of a bullet, though most of it was unnoticeable, drenched in blood and offset by already-forming bruises.
He was sick. Blacks and whites and greys swirled ahead of him, and he felt like he was drowning. He wanted to throw up but he'd not eaten in a short while - he'd been sickened by the idea of eating prey after an unfortunate revelation, and his stomach was emptier than the chasm of rational thought that had once made up the biggest portion of his mind. He focused on a dark speck on the ground until the hues returned, though not to him, never to him, and hypersensitive eyes picked up sharp crimson, contrasting brightly against dark green grass, and he winced, flinched, and his body lurched forwards when he stupidly tried to rise, leaving him collapsed in a messy heap on the ground.
His parents.. he'd thought they were going to make it. The three of them, together, happy. They were meant to live normally - and he wouldn't be here, not now. He'd be with them, probably. He was still a kid, wasn't he? He.. he didn't know how old he was. He couldn't remember how many birthdays he'd had - if he'd even had any. Years weren't important, not where he came from. Months were, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds - but years? He.. he remembered a month celebration, when he'd reached a good five months, and he'd been smiling. Happy.
He wasn't smiling now. His eyes wanted to shut but they couldn't seem to, open wide and staring right ahead at nothingness. For a brief moment, he was aware of the stickiness of blood that clung to him, but that awareness faded quickly, and he shut down, conscious but not at the same time. His head hurt, his feet hurt, and the multiple cuts throbbed, trying to bring him down to earth, but he felt as if he was flying. It wasn't a good feeling, either, not the familiar one that he'd come to love, the sensation that dragged him away from the darkness of his mind whenever he thought of the parents he'd never get to see again. No - this was something far more warped than that, his stability unseated by seeing those parents, eyes plucked neatly from their sockets and replaced by horrific glass replicas, flesh consumed by writhing maggots that crawled over their forms.
And they were still there, in WindClan. Somebody else would come across them eventually, maybe even before somebody came across him, and he..
He didn't realise he was crying. It wasn't the sort of crying that everybody knew of, that everybody felt - there were no heaving sobs, no wails, and his body was still, stoic, seized up. Wide eyes had widened further, though, and the tears had drawn crude tracks through the blood that soaked his grey fur, carving random patterns into his cheeks. Again, he glanced down at the blood he'd trailed on the ground, then forced himself to stare behind himself - crimson smears and tracks marked a loose trail back to the border, where the fight itself had begun - though the majority of the blood was his own. He was a bone-breaker, a bruiser, not the sort to slash and gnash until flesh resembled ribbons. The wolf, clearly, had a different fighting style. Even after Red had knocked out several of its teeth with a particularly vengeful blow, it had been all jaws, biting and ripping and ragging him back and forth like a terrier would a rat.
He felt like a rat. He felt like a failure. He thought back to the most recent meeting - his first meeting - and how whilst a few had been knocked from their posts, many had been bumped up, and he, aside Tyler and Slowmotion, had been commended for recent activity. Commended because he was doing well at.. something. God, he didn't know, but this wasn't him doing well. He hadn't been able to protect his parents. After that, he hadn't been able to protect their corpses. What good was he if he couldn't even keep an eye on dead bodies? What good was he if he couldn't even save the lives of those he'd held dearest?
An unfair bolt of frustration, apparently still lingering even after the fight, thrust itself into his gut and twisted, evoking a low, teeth-grindingly painful scream from his clamped jaws, and he slammed a paw into the ground, eyes somehow widening further, unblinking and reddened, raw agony dilating his pupils. Incapable now, it seemed, of comprehensible speech, the caracal again tried to selfishly rise to his feet, only to collapse and slam his chin into the ground, limbs trapped beneath his slim form and expression now something despondent.
Blood welled behind his lips, so he worked his tongue and swallowed it.
He was dying. He reckoned he was going to bleed out before five minutes were up, maybe ten if he was lucky and some of the wounds started to scab, but he was dying. And if he did die, it wasn't going to be as a golden hero. Nobody'd look at his body and feel a bittersweet sense of pride - nobody would respect his choices. His entire life had been lived to try and impress - and he was going to die disappointing.
There was an irony in that. And suddenly, inexplicably, Redbird saw the humour.
It wasn't enough to make him laugh.
[hr]
TL;DR - Red was on a patrol & saw the bodies of his dead parents - or so he thinks. In a panic, he snapped and fled to the border with the intention of fleeing from his problems again, but instead came across a wolf waiting to join - so he punched the them in the face. A fight ensued, Redbird overpowered the wolf and was about to kill it when he 'woke up' from his trance, leading him to suddenly lose the upper hand and get pummelled. Badly. He managed to eventually scare the wolf off by scratching it in the eye, and it ran away, leaving him in a bloodied puddle somewhere in the territory. He then sort of went from being red-coloured to being silver-grey. He's still conscious, mind.
INJURIES: Wounds of varying sizes and severities have been opened up all over his body, the wound on his chest and the wounds on his front leg have been reopened, he has three broken ribs, a fractured left foreleg and mild head trauma.
WORD COUNT: 3166 words.
[size=10px]GENERAL INFORMATION.
• Redbird, male, physically 9 months.
• WindClan member, previous loner.
• Bisexual biromantic, single, no crush.
BODY INFORMATION.
• A lean dark-silver caracal, grey-blue eyes. (Reference.)
- Injuries: scars everywhere, wound on chest, heavy scarring on right front leg, 3 broken ribs, fractured left leg, mild head trauma.
PERSONALITY INFORMATION.
• Ambitious, distant, observant, innovative.
• Curious, self-doubting, manipulative, renegade.
• Calculating, somewhat irascible, cautious, friendly.
• Cerebral, emotionally frustrated, respectful, trustworthy.
• Wants to impress, dutifully passionate, sarcastically humorous.
BATTLE INFORMATION.
• Physically difficult, mentally medium-hard.
• Can start fights, will finish fights, refuses to kill.
• Attack in bold #BAD2FA or risk being overlooked.
• Tough to catch, hits hard, can't take too many blows.
• No kill, anything else is permitted so long as it's realistic.
