AN: Hello again, Warriors readers. For anyone who reads my continuing crack saga "Love: You're Doin' it Wrong!", I apologize profusely for the lack of updates. I've just had a very long, very unmotivated summer. And the TawnyxCrow chapter really hasn't gotten anywhere; I've had to rewrite it not once, not twice, but three times so far. And it still stinks like yesterday's fresh-kill. Gahh.

Anyway, this was done...basically on a whim. I'm a closet Feather/Crow shipper, and I've always liked how the Erin's downplayed their relationship - it leaves more to the imagination. With the Leaf/Crow affair, they did the complete opposite (eating up most of the book's space in Twilight), therefore ruining the book for me. So generally, I think Feather/Crow was better written, and therefore the more believeable pairing. Yell all you like - it's still my opinion.

All characters and scenarios are borrowed from Erin Hunter. This piece was written by Steel Plated Bambi, and is only available on this site and DeviantART. If you see this somewhere else, it has been STOLEN.

With Me

By Steel Plated Bambi

I still see her sometimes.

Every so often, I'll look at the reflection of the moon on the lake, or wake in the morning to the glitter of new snow on the ground, and I'll feel that I've caught a glimpse of her.

Feathertail.

She was, in a word, beautiful. Like no other creature on Earth. And it went farther than just the sheen of her silver coat, or the sparkle in her blue eyes. Feathertail was never one to doubt, never held a grudge. She was able to take the good things along with the bad and appreciate them, something I'd never been able to do. And she tried to help me see things the way she did – how she managed to live and let live, in a life that could be mercilessly unfair to even the most honest of cats. In the moons we spent as companions, she taught me a lot of things about life, about myself... and about her. And I think that's when I started, for the first time, to really care about someone else.

I never told her how beautiful I thought she was. Would she have believed me if I told her she was perfect? She probably would've laughed it off, called me a flatterer – but unlike some of the things I've said in my lifetime, I'd have meant every word of it. She was perfect, in every sense of the phrase; I'd never find another cat like her if I searched for a thousand moons. And it was this fact that made losing her all the more painful.

She was the first to show me true friendship. No one had ever taken an interest in what I wanted – and why should they have? I would never do the same for them. But for some reason, she cared enough to try and get to know me – and she did, maybe even better than I knew myself. And maybe that's why I needed her so badly: she was a kindred spirit, the other half to my whole. She understood me like no one else could, and accepted me for who I was. When we were together, I felt as though I were finally complete. Like I'd been searching for something since kithood, and had finally found it, in her. I didn't know what that meant at the time, only that it felt...right to be near her. All I knew is that I couldn't imagine going back to the way I was before, in WindClan. Without her.

And then she fell.

I still hear that shriek in half-formed dreams -- the kind that you wake up from with your heart racing and your fur standing on end. The whole terrible thing was like a dream: a gaping maw lined with row upon row of savage teeth, and huge malignant eyes, closing in quickly; myself trapped, backed into a corner with nowhere to go, cold stone against my back; a thunderous cracking, like the sky breaking in two, and a desperate, gut-wrenching cry. The shock of it has rendered the memory into fragments, snatches of sound and colour that twist and coil around each other in my nightmares. But the images of what came after are stamped with brutal clarity onto my mind's eye.

I can still see it, as though it had happened yesterday. Feathertail, laying there not a tail length away, her beautiful tabby fur caked with pooling blood and settling dust. Her outward beauty ruined forever. But the real Feathertail – my Feathertail – still flickering inside, like a flame about to go out in the wind. I spoke with her, my heart crying tears of blood, and realized in those last moments what it was that I felt. It was love. And she had loved me too, enough to give up her own life so that I might keep mine. Knowing this at last, when there was no time left to do or say anything about it, nearly killed me in itself.

And so the world lost one of its most perfect creatures, so that a crabby, insignificant WindClan apprentice could grow up to be a warrior. There are times I wish things could've been different, that StarClan hadn't taken her so soon and that we'd been given time to explore what might have been. But then I remember what it was that Feathertail tried so earnestly to teach me: live and let live. For a long time I refused to accept what had passed; I looked to the stars every night, even in dreams, to see if I could find the part of me that had died along side her. And every night I was disappointed.

Many moons have passed since then, and life has thrown many things at me in turn: a new home, second and third lovers, even fatherhood. It hasn't gotten any easier to cope, but I try. Because somewhere along the line I realized that I didn't have to go looking for Feathertail -- she was always with me. And she still is.

There are still signs of her everywhere. When I see the twinkling of Silverpelt above my head, or hear the rain pattering on the surface of the lake, or feel the breeze tug at my whiskers as it travels on its way across the moor, I know she's with me. She's all around, ever watching, ever sharing. And that simple thought is what keeps me going, through thick and thin, through the good and the bad. It's what made me turn my eyes away from empty skies when a new face came into my life, and what kept my heart from breaking all over again when someone I loved walked away for good. No matter what life will throw at me, no matter how much it hurts, I know I can always pick up the pieces.

Because I am whole when she is near.

And she is always with me.