A/N: Am I ever gonna outgrow this series about talking cats? ...nah
Anyway, this is canon-compliant, but like…..definitely embellished because I think we can all agree that FirexSpotted wasn't exactly the Erins' most well executed plot line lol. I've always had a huge soft spot for that ship though, because foolish, tragic love-but-not-really-love stories are basically my favorite thing. The title is a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet:
"Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity."
Enjoy!
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"I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is." - Vladimir Nabokov
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Firepaw felt as if his life hadn't truly begun until ThunderClan.
The vividness of the it, the dusky scents of all the life and death in the forest, the ground under his paws which could be soft or thorny but never as hard as the floors of that Twoleg house, the eyes of StarClan above him instead of the artificial Twoleg lights. As unforgiving and bloody as it could be, the forest was real, and alive, and for the first time in his life he knew what it was to feel.
Then he saw Spottedleaf, and he realized he still didn't know just what feeling was.
She was the forest embodied for him, in a way. Her tortoiseshell coat was full of the richest, darkest colors; a flurry of black and orange and cream like the dance of shadow and light on fallen leaves. Her large eyes looked like they had the sunset caught in them. Before, the forest had been something mystical and unattainable that had filled him with a longing that felt like embers under his pelt. The forest, as it turned out, was attainable - but now that elusivity and want had transferred over to her.
He was so young, and she was so pretty, and maybe that was all it really took for him. He found himself disturbed at the sight of her, mystified by the twitch of her tail or the sheen of her fur. He'd never felt the things he felt around her and half-wondered if in the Clans there ran a special breed of cat who prompted dizziness and fever with their simple presence. But he never noticed anyone else react to her that way, although he couldn't believe he was the only one who could see how special, how different she was from everyone else. Graypaw knew she was pretty, but "pretty" didn't sum up the dazzling force of her presence, did it?
He dared to think that no cat had ever felt something as deep as he felt for her, that the way her sweet scent had gotten caught under his skin was unique. Even when he began to realize that, yes, every cat fell a little bit in love sometimes, he knew that she was still utterly exceptional. He felt that the stars had touched her at birth and never really left; that she was some sort of divinity in physical form and that she had fallen into the forest by chance. She was supposed to be somewhere beyond, he thought, and he was glad that she had somehow wound up in ThunderClan for him to cast timid glances at all the time. He didn't speak to her much, it was true. But whenever he asked her for herbs, his young heart felt as if their souls said deep, untranslatable things to each other that they just couldn't understand yet.
"I like her," he whispered to Graypaw once. "I just really like her alot."
Graypaw meowed in laughter and shoved him with his paw. "She's a medicine cat, mousebrain! Besides, you've barely even talked to her."
He rolled over and sighed, feeling tortured in a very romantic way. "Maybe I don't need to," he said.
"It's just because she's your first, probably," Graypaw licked his paw and ran it over his ear. "The first time you feel something always seems the most powerful, right?"
Firepaw couldn't imagine feeling anything more powerful than this. He felt strangely close to her, or maybe he just wanted to be, because at the same time he didn't know anything about her but what her existence did to him. It had to be love - or something close to it, at least.
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It was wrong. She knew it was wrong and she told herself everyday it was wrong but it didn't help.
She had given herself to StarClan and never regretted it, finding so much more meaning in the veins of leaves and the darkness of Mothermouth than she ever had in the panting hunt or the idea of kits at her belly.
But still - still - thoughts of Firepaw never left her; crowding around her mind like foxes scratching at the nursery walls. Just as dangerous, but decidedly more...enticing.
She didn't understand it. Toms had never held much interest for her; she'd always had an inkling that she was meant for something different. But then again, so was he. He was bound to the stars just as she was; she could sense it. StarClan had told her that fire alone would save the Clan, and just like that a kittypet with burning ginger fur turned up on ThunderClan territory. Am I just projecting my expectations onto him? she wondered sometimes, asking herself if she was reading too much into his fiery coat. But her soul had been fine-tuned to the messages of StarClan since she was a kit, and she was just about certain of it - Firepaw would be the savior. She could feel it whenever he was near; the unyielding bonds of destiny that would never let him go. She was jealous, in a way. The purpose of her life was to communicate with StarClan, and yet the stars seemed to have touched him more than they ever had her. And he didn't even know. Not yet.
She knew the way Firepaw looked at her. Everytime she met his gaze he was looking at her with a sort of awe, like he had never seen anything so rare and fascinating in his life. It was the look she had seen on other medicine cat apprentices the first time they saw the Moonstone in all its glimmering beauty. It frightened her. He was too important to play with the warrior code; StarClan never would have willed him to want her.
And they couldn't have willed her to want him, either.
As much as she hated to admit it, she liked it when he looked at her that way. There was a part of her that was glad to know he shared her feelings, though she wasn't exactly sure what those feelings were. Her heart was in her mouth whenever he came into her clearing and it was just the two of them, alone. She was hyper-aware of his eyes, bright green as beech leaves, that somehow held an oldness in them like they were the eyes of who he would become instead of who he was now. She knew it wasn't normal; that for most cats feelings like this didn't just happen overnight. She wondered if it was her link to StarClan that made him have this hold over her; whether the senses that connected her to the world of their ancestors were constantly stirring now that a living omen had showed up in her camp.
She hated it. She was supposed to be better than this. Everyone thought she was perfect - so sweet, so innocent, so wise. And she tried so hard to be that for them, especially in the difficult moons ThunderClan had faced for so long. She bit back every complaint, put forth the most serene smile, never showed anyone even when she was exhausted and overwhelmed by being the only medicine cat. She never made mistakes only because she never let herself. She had dedicated herself to her duty so much, concerning herself only with others and playing at flawlessness for so long that everyone believed it. She had considered herself so in control of her emotions that nothing could ever unbalance her, but now there was Firepaw. Now there was Firepaw. And he wanted her and couldn't hide it the way she did; he didn't fully realize the barriers that had to exist between them. He wasn't like the rest of ThunderClan - he didn't know the warrior code the way she and her Clanmates did, the same way a kit suddenly knows to suckle.
He was so brave and unabashed and intelligent, and so kind even to bitter Yellowfang. His specialness was evident in everything he did. StarClan, it killed her. He was so young, but she was, too - older than him, of course, but still young. And she couldn't help but wonder - maybe, if I had continued my warrior training - would he and I -
No - she couldn't let herself think of it. There was no point in imagining some sort of fantasy world where they were together; there was only the here and now, where she was a medicine cat and he would be a warrior. But she couldn't just push away the effect he had on her, the longing that had taken hold of her like a parasite in her organs. She felt sick with wanting him, hot and aching, and this was the only illness she did not know how to cure because it was more like madness instead. It seemed entirely out of their control, the way they were vitally drawn to a cat they hardly knew like the river was drawn over the gorge. How could StarClan's prophetess and StarClan's chosen one not have possessed each other?
She knew that somehow this would come to some sort of end. She had a dream where they were the only cats in the forest, and his name was Fireheart and he said "I love you. I'll die if you don't love me, too," and she said "I love you, I love you," and they curled around each other whispering "this is it, this is fate," but then the sky caught fire and scorched them alive. In another dream, they stood at two sides of the river, but the river flowed with Silverpelt instead of water, and they stood and stared at each other forever and ever while gentle flames ate away at them both, but she disappeared in a quiet shower of ashes while he went on burning.
She didn't know which one was the omen.
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He stared at Spottedleaf. At dead Spottedleaf. At Spottedleaf who would never again move past him with her seraphic grace, who would never again appear in her herb-perfumed haven, who would never again press her dappled pelt to his like she had that one time as she grieved Lionheart, when her brief touch had been like a balm spread over an oozing wound.
For a moment, he forgot all about the kits ShadowClan had stolen. He saw nothing but Spottedleaf, her flank still and her fur damp with the rain. She was still beautiful. She was still so beautiful. He stumbled closer to her and saw the red stain of her life on the ground, and he felt a sense of dull surprise. Somehow he hadn't expected her to bleed like an ordinary cat, surely someone like her should bleed nectar or honey. He felt a rising pain like a swelling bee sting, and every time he thought he couldn't be any more hurt he was - he pressed his nose into her fur and trembled, realizing just how much he had lost, just how much had never happened between them. Somehow, he felt like this was the only way it could've ended. Beautiful, pure, lovely things always went tragically, didn't they? They always took hearts with them.
He wanted to lie beside her forever, but then he remembered Frostfur, and the love she had for her kits. He remembered the torment she felt from losing them to ShadowClan, and he remembered the task Bluestar had given him.
"Goodbye, my sweet Spottedleaf," he whispered.
And he left her.
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The river was drawn over the gorge.
She came to him.
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He knew it was...unhealthy. How he sometimes wanted to be asleep more than he wanted to be awake. How he sometimes cherished the brief words her starry spirit breathed to him more than he cherished the memories he made in real life.
The gap between them was even greater, now. But he should've known. The tie between them was too strong for even death to separate them completely. It may be stretched thin as a cobweb now, but he still felt her, could still smell the sweetness of her scent in his nose and hear the petal-soft murmurings of her voice. As he went through his days he saw her eyes in the delicate glow of fireflies and her movement in the swaying of tree branches.
He wondered if he was mad. It wasn't sane to hold onto this dead cat like she was still alive. But he didn't feel like he had a choice - there was a part of himself that had left the earth with her, and he was never going to get it back. His dreams with her were usually foreboding, as she whispered some vague warning into his ear. He wished that he could talk to her more, but somehow the two of them had never needed to talk. Or maybe they were forbidden to, by the same unstoppable and mysterious force which sometimes seemed to have rooted his love for her inside him.
She never left his dreams. Even as he found how deeply he cared for Sandstorm, there was a part of him that was always drawn back to the medicine cat. Sandstorm was prickly and imperfect and real, and her pale orange coat held a sort of unpolished, striking beauty. Spottedleaf was far away, impossible and unearthly and seeming more strange and beautiful with every dream, as if she withdrew farther and farther away from her living self and belonged more and more to StarClan.
He loved Sandstorm. He did. He knew Spottedleaf was lost to him forever, and maybe always had been. But perhaps that was the reason she always haunted him; the same quality that had made him yearn for the elusive as he first ventured into the forest was the same quality that would forever seek her out. He was never sure if he couldn't let her go or if she couldn't let him go - but he had loved her, beyond all thought, all reason, and beyond her grave.
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A/N: If you made it this far please review, especially if you follow/favorite!