Beautiful Insanity - Epilogue

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Few spoke of her again.

Her name became a taboo that everyone was terrified of. When the truth had been revealed, and all the horrible, dirty deeds that Brightheart, more commonly called Lostface, had committed came to light, she acquired a group of devoted fans, and a group of cats that wished that they had pushed her into the gorge. Many of her fans sympathized with her, and honestly believed that she had every right to be angry, which she did.

At first, the argument over her - while rather small and occurring amongst a small group of cats from ThunderClan, was very passionate and occasionally a little violent. However, most cats refrained themselves from these little debates and maintained a stony silence whenever her name was mentioned. Yet, most of these cats that stayed in the neutral silence, in all honesty, hated her. She killed two innocent ThunderClan apprentices, a kittypet, and indirectly led to the death of Cinderpelt, the beloved ThunderClan medicine cat.

They had all the reasons to hate her.

But soon, memories of Brightheart and her bloody acts faded. Elders died, kits were born, and those who were young enough to remember her moved on with their lives, consequently leaving Brightheart to be lost in the sands of time.

However, there was one cat who never forgot her.

One cat who remembered her until the day he died.

In the time that followed Brightheart's death, he had become somewhat of an introvert and a recluse, doing his duties and being very antisocial. He said little and said nothing at all whenever Brightheart came up in conversation. Many thought he would speak out in her favor; that he would be her number one defender.

But he wasn't.

Despite this, he never forgot her.

How could he?

As the years passed, he grew old like the rest of them. Many who had lived during Brightheart's time had died, leaving him and a few others, most of them having been kits or young apprentices to remember her. Even at an old age, he was a very eccentric cat, sticking to himself hardly ever speaking. Shortly after he moved into the elders' den, he began to have nightmares of a one-eyed cat coming after him. When one of the young warriors jokingly suggested it was Brightheart - the cat from the stories - he clawed their ears.

You didn't need to be a medicine cat to see that his health was declining, and one night, the event that he had been waiting for since the day Brightheart leapt from the gorge happened.

It was the middle of newleaf, and the cat was asleep in his nest, long, fluffy white tail curled around him. His whiskers twitched innocently as he dreamed. In his dream, he was standing in the Old Forest, near a place called Snakerocks. Even though the cat remembered this place, he couldn't picture it. The details around him were very hazy, almost fuzzy in appearance. Why here? he wondered. Of all places, why here?

A mist crept forward from between the rocks, rolling over the land like a gentle wave. It slowly engulfed the ground, swallowing up everything in its path. The cat watched it with a mystified expression, intrigued and fearful at the same time. A moment later, two silhouettes appeared, stepping into view languidly, almost as if they were floating. He couldn't see any specific details at first, and, for a moment, thought that they were actually a part of the vapor.

"Cloudtail," a soft, familiar voice mewed.

The tom looked toward the figure on the right. Curious, he screwed up his old eyes, narrowing them like the old cat he was, struggling to see who this cat was. After a while, details began to come into focus: a dappled, mottled gray tabby she-cat. The moment he saw her clearly, he recognized her.

"Brindleface! Is that really you?"

The she-cat smiled warmly at him. "I've missed you so much, Cloudtail. And my, how you've grown! You're no longer the little kitten that suckled at my belly. I am so proud of you."

Cloudtail looked at his foster mother with a solemn expression. "How can you be proud?" he inquired dismally. "I failed you."

Her eyes clouded over in confusion. "What do you mean, Cloudtail? You were a brave warrior, and you served your Clan to your upmost ability!"

He shook his head, refusing to look at her. "I lost her…"

Brindleface's face hardened slightly, but it was still sympathetic. "Cloudtail, you must not blame yourself. Brightheart made her own choices that you are not responsible for. You must understand that."

"I thought you said I would get to speak to him!" a voice hissed from the smog.

Cloudtail swung his head in that direction to see a familiar white-and-ginger shape come into view. "Brightheart…" he breathed. She was just as he remembered her: her fur soft, and smooth; her one remaining eye a dark, emerald green; and then, of course, there was the scar on the right side of her face that started at the base of her ear and stretched all the way to the tip of her chin. The scar was looked almost as if it were a mask; covering the right side of her face, but Cloudtail knew that it was very real. He remembered the night Fireheart brought her back to camp, her face bloody and mangled, her right eye hanging down from her face by a single fiber of tissue.

"I was waiting for the right moment to tell him you were here," Brindleface replied defensively. The gray queen narrowed her eyes slightly and fluffed out her fur with a huff.

"Sure you were," Brightheart muttered, rolling her one eye. At long last, she met Cloudtail's gaze, her expression unreadable. "It's been a long time, Cloudtail."

Hearing his name on her tongue made him shiver in with a bizarre pleasure. "It has…" he meowed, trying to remain calm. Seeing her after all this time, after dreaming about her, and missing her for so long practically overwhelmed him. His old, feeble heart pounded like a freight train just staring at her. "Brightheart, I'm so sorr—"

"Don't," she cut him off, raising her tail for silence. "You've lived your entire life in sorrow and regret. You did not push me off the gorge, Cloudtail. I jumped on my own accord."

"No! You were under the influence of whatever that monster inside you was! You weren't in your right mind, Brightheart! I should have been faster. I should have stopped you!" Cloudtail insisted. His blue eyes were wide, and strained. "I should've stopped you… I should've stopped you…"

Before their eyes, Cloudtail crumbled into a sniveling white mass, his sides heaving every time a sob ripped through him, tearing at his heart. Brightheart padded over to him and ran her tail along his spine in an effort to soothe him. "Don't cry, Cloudtail. Please don't cry. Brindleface is here to take you to StarClan. You'll be happy there. You'll have everything you need."

The white tomcat looked up at her with confused eyes. "Brindleface…" he breathed. "But what about you? Surely you're coming with us?"

She avoided his gaze, looking at a small ant that crawled across the ground slowly, but surely, making its way to where its destination was. "I have paid for my crimes Cloudtail," she finally answered, still not meeting his eyes. "And if I must suffer in darkness for the rest of my existence, then so be it."

"Brightheart!"

But she wasn't listening to him anymore. "I came here to tell you to not worry about me. You've spent your entire life worrying about me and something that happened what now seems like ages ago. I cannot tell you tell you that I'm happy, but I can tell you that I am content. I accept my punishment and am perfectly fine with and capable of being in the Dark Forest. So, please Cloudtail, don't worry. I'll be okay."

"Brightheart…" he half-whimpered. "I should have saved you…"

"Even if you did save me," she mewed, turning away from him entirely, "it wouldn't have made a difference. I still would have ended up here. I've killed to many Cloudtail… Too many in cold blood… I can't change what I did, and neither can you. Take comfort in the fact that the evil inside me is gone. I was never purely good, and I was never purely evil—none of us are. In those stories the queens tell us in the nursery, the good always wins… but those are just stories. In real life, the evil is real, and so is the danger, and so is the hatred. I hated you, you know. I hated everyone in ThunderClan for ignoring me, tossing me aside like I was a pile of old prey bones… That evil that lived inside me—the evil that lives inside all of us—comforted me, and I fell for it. I shouldn't have, but I did. It's my own fault. There's nothing either of us can do about it… What we [i]can[/i] do is hope. Have hope for the future. Hope that other cats won't be like me and give in to the evil inside them. Hope that they will be like Cinderpelt and find the strength to pull through their troubles."

While she spoke, the ant crawled toward her, its six legs working overtime. Toward the end of her speech, it finally reached her front paws. Its antennae twitched as it examined her slowly, almost as if it were trying to recognize her. The ant knew this cat from somewhere, but it didn't know where. When Brightheart finished her speech, she looked down and saw the insect. She smiled wryly at it before glancing over at Cloudtail. "I have to go now."

"Wait!" he gasped, taking a hesitant step toward her. "You can't go! You can't. You don't deserve to be there."

Brightheart shook her head before looking back to the ant. She raised her paw and stepped over it carefully before disappearing once more into the mist. She wasn't about to let it be crushed a second time.

"Wait!" Cloudtail cried, but Brindleface stepped in front of him. "You can't go after her, Cloudtail. She is going to a dark place where her kind belong."

Too stunned to make a sharp retort, Cloudtail just stared at the place she had disappeared, his heart bursting into a million serrated shards that pierced his chest. Sadly, he turned away, guided by Brindleface. With heavy paws, and a heavy heart, Cloudtail and Brindleface made their way to StarClan, but Cloudtail made a vow to never forget her. As long as his spirit lived—no matter how faded he became—he would never forget the tragic tale of Brightheart, and her beautiful insanity.