LEADER OF SKYCLAN
.
CW: descriptions of obsessive compulsions, trichotillomania
Rosebelly haunted every inch of the camp. Even after his body had been set to rest in the soft earth, even after he had been covered with lavender and buried with all the care and compassion that was due a warrior who had died fighting for his clan, he still lingered. Hawkstar swore she could still taste his blood at the edges of her fuzzy consciousness as she drifted from awake to restlessly asleep. She could catch glimpses of his cinnamon tabby pelt flitting at the very edges of her imperfect vision, taunting her poor depth perception, clinging to her blind side like a trickster rather than the warrior she had trained. He stayed clicking, purring, popping in her ear, a consistent buzz that made her nauseous to focus on - though he was so, so impossible to ignore. If he would just stop, if he could only leave her be for just a moment, she could maybe shove his memory away as a bloody secret rather than a screaming harbinger of her burgeoning incompetence.
She slips away from White-eye's open embrace, and it is a small comfort when her mate does not stir save for a whisker twitch. If she were lucky, White-eye would never even notice that she had gone - she had a habit of being a deep, unbothered sleeper.
The night does not offer much secrecy when the moon is still so bright. Eggshell white turns silver as Hawkstar slinks out from her den, electric blue sparking off the half-moon. She tries her best to ignore it. The moon was not Hawkstar's friend here; the offering of a bright, clear night was not comforting or exciting or exhilarating. Even the misty visage of the moon far beyond the canopy, even covered by leaves and filtered through the foliaged branches, Hawkstar could feel her heart begin to slam against her ribs at the delicate rays that did manage to make their way down to glitter her coat.
This was not the moon of SkyClan's ancestors. This was not the heavenly glow of the StarClan that Hawkstar knew: it was the celestial glare of some stranger masquerading as their elders and family and friends. Or, or maybe … maybe it was just that their StarClan had abandoned them. They had - they - they
Spittle pooled at the corners of the pointed king's lips, collecting in the folds of her parted maw. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't move, she could- she could she could -
Hawkstar whipped her head to her shoulder, pulling, ripping at the hairs that had begun to stand on end - itching, hot, uncomfortable. The hairs slipped between her teeth, brushing against her fangs, clumping together under the collected saliva on her tongue, and then sticking at the roof of her mouth as she pulled -
The cats that had given her their lives, the cats that she had fought with and trained and lead and gone gone gone all gone all lost to this -
Another clump pulled and sticking on her tongue. She rasped her tongue against her teeth to wipe it free before ripping at another patch, each hair annoyingly clinging to the barbs on her tongue.
The patch of skin didn't feel any cooler without the hair there, and now the skin only prickled uncomfortably warm , but now just also naked and exposed to the sticky night air. But the thoughts had slowed from a torrent to a trickle, and Hawkstar shook her head to rid the last of the little hairs from her mouth.
Slowly, she picks herself up and creeps away again, back to her den, back to her mate - without Rosebelly's spectre looming for the first time in days. White-eye stirs at her re-entrance to their nest and a purr rises rustily in her throat.
"You been pickin' again."
White-eye mumbles, and settles her face on the shoulder Hawkstar had just picked raw. The warmth of White-eye's cheek is small comfort to the itch, the ache, the need to pull, but still Hawkstar leans into her. She curls tighter into her mate's embrace."Can't prove it if you didn't see it.".
White-eye doesn't offer a rebuttal. Hawkstar waits a beat, then two, before she hears White-eye begin to snore again, her small exhalations tickling the nape of her neck, her tail curled protectively around her haunches. Hawkstar shifts and twitches and settles again and again and again, but she doesn't get up again, and after what feels like hours, blackness creeps along the edge of her vision: darker and darker until finally, she is blessed with the respite of an uneasy sleep.