"Let's run away," he says, voice full of of a youthful, infallible optimism. "We can find somewhere we won't have to hide." Strongclaw makes it sound easy, but the urgency in his eyes belies the grim undercurrent of danger. Sablefrost can only stare at him; it seems so grandiose. His desperation is something she can't fault, can't follow. Nettlecloud has betrayed her, her son's eyes tell a story of their own, and yet fleeing does not seem to be a option. One can not simply run from PureClan and expect to live. Although...the mere thought of running, of escaping, is enough to stir a certain anticipation in her belly.

"No," she says, and can't disguise the disdain in her voice. It is mere instinct to scoff at him, to turn from anything he might propose, but this contains a different level of idiocy, and she could not shoot him down gently if she tried. Strongclaw stares at her sadly, looking a little wounded. She just shakes her head. "I have kits to look after, Strongclaw. Oakkit and Emberkit. What would they do without me?"

"I think you'll find that's not your choice, Sablefrost." Gone is the optimism, but the taint of his desperation remains, staining his voice cold and hard. "What do you think will happen if you stay? Morningstar will kill you, publically. How are your kits supposed to cope with that?" Sablefrost can see it plainly; she will stand, a spectacle, in camp, and everyone she's ever known will watch her die. Who will kill her, she wonders? Smokefang? Morningstar? Her father, perhaps? And the prime seats, she knows, belong solely to her children.

"What am I supposed to do?" she whispers; escaping is fruitless, but to stay would be even worse.

"I just told you," Strongclaw hisses, and she gets the innate feeling he's a little bit pissed she won't blindly follow his half-formed plan. He inclines his head, whiskers brushing her cheek. His gentleness belies a sentiment he does not voice. "Run away with me." The prospect beckons, raising ugly curled fingers as every selfish bone in her body shrieks. Sablefrost has no choice but to follow, and yet something delicate inside her breaks all the way, warps with every step.

Strongclaw is ignorant; he has no clue, no idea of the guilt inside. He is already leaving with everything he cares about. They reach the gorge, still swamped in the shadow of the forest, and follow it south. She's never gone this way, never been inclined to wonder what could possibly be found underneath her own adequate territory. Strongclaw seems to know where they are going, as if he's traced this route before, dreaming of an escape to come. By definition, PureClan's territory has no borders, though there are many places no warriors bother to go.

Her pair is cheerful, now; upbeat, practically bouncing on his paws, and Sablefrost finds it easy to loathe him in her misery, feeling for all the world that they are both apprentices. She is irate, and it settles over her skin like a second pelt, an intimate and familiar guest. She glares at his feet, and wonders if she should push him into the gorge and run back to her fate, whatever it may be. She has never run before, and certainly not from her own flesh and blood.

"Do you think they miss me already?" she asks bitterly, as the sallow crescent of a moon rises into the sickly sky. Strongclaw has set a strict pace, and the end of the gorge is almost in sight. At her words, he halts slowly, shoulders caved.

"You aren't the only queen in PureClan," he sighs. "They'll be looked after." He meets her eyes, frowning as he wills her into understanding; they will be fine, and everything they have just fled will remain as stagnant and unchanged as it ever was. It's what he thinks, this entitled tom with his inborn pedigree, and he cannot fathom how wrong he is. It occurs to her suddenly, sickeningly.

"They'll kill them!" she gasps. "They're a byproduct of everything PureClan's ever strived against-"

"Morningstar won't kill them!" Strongclaw snaps. "They'll be good warriors and she knows it."

His words fall on her deaf ears, lost in the sudden pounding of her blood through her skull. I left them to die. They're already dead. Without seeing, she turns, and every selfish instinct she harbours is shredded against the weight of her panic. Before she can move, teeth clamp onto the scruff of her neck and drag her backwards. She shrieks, an unintelligible sound, the sum of her frenzied rage in a stark brutal sound. Perhaps she manages to convey her hatred- not of the archaic, beastly laws of PureClan or the golden monster at the head of them all, but the creature at her back, resolutely ripping her from the fabric of her world, blue eyes clenched shut against her pain and his own.

The dawn rises red and cold upon their forsaken silhouettes. He had pinned her against a tree as she struggled, whispering his apologies. "I can't lose you," he said, a palpable ache in his eyes. He let her go, and Sablefrost had accepted this; her cold future, her inescapable shame, her incomparable loneliness.

"You don't have me," she whispered, as she tried to sleep. Nothing he did indicated he had heard her, but his breath seemed to hitch, and she took that as her small, vicious victory. To think that I had...that I could've… There were no secrets between them, just yesterday, only an abyssal affection and the potential for something more.

Sablefrost rises and stretches, joints popping. Strongclaw and awake, already watching her, apology no doubt poised on his tongue.

"Save it," she growls. Already, her kits are locked in an isolated corner of her heart, the place she reserved for her lost children in the city, abandoned to a fate she cares not to think about it. What's two more kits, to cherish and then forget, when the process is so familiar to her? Her motivations again are purely selfish, and she must think of her own survival. It's the only thing that matters. Now. She had a mask, once, a cold and frozen disposition, and she summons it back from the grave. Strongclaw merely gapes at her; she must look like a ghost, every dead part of her returned to its old glory. He looks lost, but that's not her concern, not when he was the one to drag her out here in the first place.

"Are we going?" she snaps, when he doesn't move. "You were so eager for us to leave yesterday."

"Don't do this to me," he pleads, on the ground, recognizing the return of the glacial thing he fought so desperately to thaw. "It doesn't have to be like this."

"Morningstar must be chasing us by now," she says, turning to leave, the gorge a yawning shadow on her left.

Strongclaw releases a sign of inconsolable defeat and climbs to his paws. This time round, he is the one the follows.

Meals are sporadic, dreams are restless, and the days are spent walking, always walking, with silence as their only constant. Strongclaw retreats, just as she has, and they forget what they have left as they move forward in jarring disharmony. The forest has ended, and so has the gorge, and they march endlessly through a swamp, and a field, over hills and around towns; perhaps it is a line, perhaps it is a circle, or perhaps she has already died and this is nothing at all. Out of all realities, that might be her favourite. Though Sablefrost makes an effort to remain clean and immaculate, Strongclaw deteriorates; he collects burrs in his pelt like festive decorations, and doesn't bother to scrape off the mud caked to his paws.

I'm doing this to him, she realizes, but pushes the thought away as soon as it comes to mind. He can choose to groom himself if he wants.

Still, it is lonely. Regret haunts her everyday; regret for her recklessness, for her harshness where it was not required, but her pride won't let her back down now, to apologize. It's too late, she thinks- in many ways it is, and she is about to know it. Together, they settle under the shade of a small tree as night rolls over the land, wordless. They haven't eaten since yesterday, but that is apparently a problem for tomorrow. As always, sleep is evasive, promising a chase she does not want to make. Thoughts of her children loom, but she stoutly ignores them and begins to make a therapeutic list of prey animals in her head instead. It's hardly engrossing, and the boredom sets her adrift. She doesn't hear Strongclaw rise or approach, but the distinctive touch of his nose against her forehead sends sparks through her nerves- it will never leave, this feeling- and it does not dismay her, as it might have done a day ago, a week ago.

"I love you," he whispers, but she doesn't feel him leave.

He's still gone in the morning when she wakes- his words jolt through her again, and she sits up straight to see their dismal campsite is cold and abandoned. Sablefrost scans the horizon, but of course he is not there- the art of fleeing is one he has crafted perfectly and for once he has wielded it against her. She feels hollow and stricken; she was not made to be alone, to thrive without others at her side. Her own anger is dull and muted. Sablefrost doesn't have to ask why; its her fault, after all, her petty coldness that forced his distance.

She goes back, she undoes it; she curls up with him every night; she grooms him when he refuses to do it himself; she laughs with him as they walk, and she returns his hushed sentiments until the happiness threatens to drown her. But that can't happen. She's already ravaged any chance of it, slaughtered any hope of that future. She curls into herself and wonders if he will come back, unable to abandon her entirely. But clearly he is, because he never returns to that forlorn spot, the copse where he finally gave up.

Sablefrost goes on when it becomes apparent it is her only choice. Her steps have never been so stilted, so forced. Dimly, her rage burns- how dare he leave her alone, when it was he who coaxed her from her home so long ago? Even stronger is her sorrow when she realizes she has lost everything she has cared for- she has driven it from her or walked from it carelessly. He path is no longer a straight line, nor is it nothing at all; only when she sess the gorge does Sablefrost realize she has completed a loop, and she does not intend to stop now. Onwards she marches, grim and focused; she will find her kits or she will avenge them.

The woods are familiar as she strides through them, although they seem barren and silent. Maybe even here, miles away, PureClan's oppression can still be felt. She can picture Strongclaw's face and his bitter disappointment as she strolls back into the hornet's nest. If only he knew, this could be enough to drag him back to her. But he's ignorant, and that is the way it will remain. And then she stumbles upon camp, and the unexpected silence drives any thought of him from her mind. It is deserted, and in the gaping quiet, her gasp is abruptly loud. Any trace of life is long gone, the scents cold and dead, dens derelict. She rushes through the camp along her old familiar haunts, and it is all the same; vacant, stagnant, bereft. The meadow yawns ahead; cool apprehension ruffles her fur, but she ignores it. There is a rising stench, but she can't place it, until she rounds the corner and falls upon the carnage of a broken war. Bodies are locked in lethal embraces and in death there is no division. Firepaw, here, and Meadowmist over there, slit head to tail with a bloody grin on her muzzle. Iceface has been flung on his back, and his throat is nowhere to be found. In the rubble of a fool's' revolution are faces she doesn't recognize. It is sickening, but she forces herself to study every face, to search relentlessly for her kits. They didn't die here, she discovers, and her relief is staggering.

Sablefrost escapes the field of slaughter, unlike so many. She is truly lost now; aimless, alone. The river calls to her, and so she goes, following its soft siren call until she leaves the place of bloody reckoning far behind. She is still walking when she sees something far ahead; a spot of black, a pelt as sleek and dark as hers. She hurries forwards, her mouth open to call out, but she has not spoken for months and she's not sure if she knows how anymore. Instead, the figure turns and sees her, recoiling for a moment in shock and surprise. They are close now, and she can see her daughter is no longer a kit but a seasoned young she-cat, strong and scarred but alive.

"Sablefrost?"

Her mouth is still open, but how can she explain she is not a hallucination? She hardly believes it herself.

Another figure rushes through the grass, bulky and strong. He exchanges a glance with his sister. "We knew you'd come back," he says. "You owe me five mice, Ember, I told you she'd find us before we reached the city."

"Shut up, Oak."

"How?" Sablefrost whispers, staring at the pair who should be dead.

Ember inclines her head and glances back towards the forest with a small measure of sadness and regret. "He found and and forced us to escape. The very next day the rebels and the warriors destroyed themselves. We got out, but I don't know who else did."

Sablefrost turns around, and there he is; clean at last, not quite so bitter or angry, looking at her with hope. She can't resist him; it turns out she never could.

"I shouldn't have made you leave them," he murmurs, for her ears only. "I was wrong. That's why I went back, and I couldn't tell you."

"You abandoned me."

His blue eyes are wide, plaintive, and he frowns as he wills her to understand. No longer obstinate, trying not to be stubborn, she does. Those long cold days are still a distance between them, but it is a distance they can cross, because the odds have been demolished, and they own some semblance of freedom.

"Let's run away," she says, and they share a moment of nostalgia for everything they did wrong. The I love you's come later.

merry christmas and all that