Chapter 12

Fang lay in darkness.

When he tried to move, sudden agony coursed through his pelt. He felt as though he was on fire, flames licking every part of his body. Vainly, the tom fought against the darkness as it threatened to hurl him into unconsciousness once more.

Focus... a voice rang in his head.

"Is that you?" Fang mumbled, but his voice came out slurred.

Yes, the voice murmured calmly, taking the edge off of Fang's panic. It's me, Fang. It's going to be alright.

The pain sharpened, and Fang wanted to screech. He tried to focus on the voice as it kept murmuring reassurance in his head. He wanted it to stop. But he didn't want to... anxiety made the flames die back for a split second.

"Am I dying?" Fang mumbled.

He was dimly aware that he was laying on his side, though his eyelids drooped. Fang couldn't find the strength to open them, or to even move. As his words rang out into the stillness of his mind, the voice fell silent.

Of course not, it said at last. That cat had some sort of darkness, but you, Fang, you are a child of darkness. You were born into shadows, after all.

Fang didn't know who this voice is, yet it seemed to know everything about him. As the voice fell silent, Fang had the distinct impression that it had left him alone for the moment. He shifted, wincing at the pain.

I have to keep fighting, he told himself firmly as a tremor passed through his flank. For the Midnights. For my family.

Fang finally managed to crack open his eyes.

He was laying on his side, paws sprawled out in front of him. Fang stared down at his paws, trying to ease his breathing. There was blood on his right forepaw, dried and dark. With a jolt that sent a spark of pain shooting into his skull, Fang remembered the grey tabby who had held Claw down.

She was lying a little ways away from him.

Fang gazed at the enemy warrior, whose fur was stiff. A gentle breeze ruffled her pelt, but she didn't move. The tom struggled to get to his paws, expecting the pain to override him. But, as he pushed upwards, swaying slightly, the worst of the pain began to subside.

He was left with a dull ache in his head, likely from where he had collided against a tree after...whatever Aspenpaw had unleashed...had flung him backwards.

While the world slowly shifted into its normal proportions, Fang took in his surroundings.

Debris had been flung away, and the patch of grass where Aspenpaw had once stood was singed and charred black. Glancing up at the sky, Fang received a nasty shock; the sun was nowhere to be seen, as though it had been destroyed.

Fang fluffed up his pelt as he saw the frosty white flakes begin to fall from the sky. Leafbare had nearly arrived, yes, but without the sun's warmth, it felt colder than ever. It was as though a shroud of darkness had been put over top of the clan's territories, obscuring the light.

The next thing Fang noticed was how eerily silent it was. He had expected to see Claw, Aspenpaw and that other tom somewhere too, but they were nowhere to be seen. It was just Fang, and the grey tabby she-cat.

Head low, he stalked towards her. An odd scent was wafting off of her, but Fang refused to think about it, refused to acknowledge what it meant, until he saw for certain. His paws felt numb as he walked over the accumulating white dust towards the fallen warrior.

"Hello?"

Silence.

Fang tilted his head to one side, glancing towards where the gathering of cats had previously been. They had all disappeared too.

"Excuse me," Fang began uncomfortably, glancing back at the motionless body before him. "I-I'm sorry about attacking you, but, have you any idea what is going on?"

He pressed a paw against the cat's shoulder. It was cold to the touch. Fang padded around the cat until he came in front of her face. The moment he stared into it, he lept back.

Her eyes were glassy and distant, jaw slightly ajar. Fang glanced at the dried blood surrounding her, and the cut on her throat. He saw the bump on her head where she had collided with a tree. Fang didn't know which had ended her life, but one thing was certain.

The she-cat was dead, and it was all his fault.

Fang lifted his muzzle up into the sky, and howled into the darkness.

The noise lifted from out of his chest right up into the sky. Fang yowled his pain, his grief over the life that had been lost, and his terror at being alone for the first time in his life. He howled from his heart, all the pain that he had been holding in.

If the stars heard, they didn't answer. But one cat did.

"Fang. I thought you were dead."

Fang broke off his howl.

Robin was slinking out of the undergrowth, expression unreadable. He noticed a long scar trailing along her flank from where a wound had only recently stopped spurting blood. He flattened his ears and took a pace away from her.

"Where are they?"

Robin stared at him, pity in her expression. For a moment, she seemed as though she was about to hug him, but then, a twig snapped in the distance, and Robin looked away. Her expression hardened.

"After the light fled, the warriors turned tail and ran. What was left of our ranks did the same, though you will find that some of our cats still lie here."

Fang nodded, trying to shake away the tears and keep his limbs from trembling. Robin wasn't meeting his gaze, yet she seemed so much more certain than he was, unafraid of the violent world that encompassed her.

"So the clan cats fled," he repeated cautiously. "Back to their homes? But after the attack," he was keenly aware that the scent of blood still lay thickly across the clearing, "they'll be coming for us, won't they? They won't stop until every Midnight is as dead as her," he flicked his tail at the limp cat which lay on the ground between them.

"Eclipse has finally made the choice to run," Robin said. "Run to...Her. I suppose we've finally admitted defeat. Time to hand ourselves over to her clutches."

Fang caught the emotion in his Commander's mew as she spoke of the Her.

"Who?"

Robin glanced at him. As their eyes met, wide lilac and desolate amber, she winced and looked away.

"Someone who certainly isn't about to run from a fight. Someone who is fully ready to obliterate the clans at their most vulnerable. Someone who has secretly been building a deadly army of cats who fight in the shadows, ever since the night you were born."

That's an interesting way of phrasing it, Fang thought, but he had little time to think about bigger plots of world domination. The fact that the sky was literally black even though it was day would have to wait. My unit. My family. They need to be safe.

"Where's Nightshade?"

"Safe. He's not leaving with the rest of us."

"Haze?"

Robin winced visibly. "She's...going to be alright," the scarred tortoiseshell responded at last.

"Alright?" Fang probed. He knew his Commander well; she rarely showed any hint of emotion. So for her to be this worried...

"Let's just say that she'll live. Eclipse is already on the move, so either she leaves with me and you tonight, or she and Nightshade will have to go it on their own. Stars know they'll need all the luck they can get."

"So we're splitting up the unit?" Fang's voice was dangerously quiet. "And what about Claw? You haven't even mentioned her."

The temperature could have dropped a hundred degrees for how rigid Robin went. The snowflakes swirled between the two of them, making Fang's fur prick as they landed on his spine.

"Fang, face the facts," Robin said. "If she's not here, and if she's not with Eclipse, then she's dea-"

"SHUT UP!" Fang snarled.

Robin still didn't meet his gaze. Fang felt hurt and anger mingling in his belly as he glared at the cat who had been the closest thing he had ever had to a mother.

Robin turned away. "Life isn't fair," she said. "What you want doesn't matter, kit. It never did. Never will." She glanced over her shoulder. "Meet me at base by dusk. We've got to catch up with Eclipse."

Then, Robin turned, and limped into the shadows.

Fang watched her go, body tense. The moment he was sure she had disappeared, he curled in a ball, whimpering softly, his tail tucked between his legs. The snow fell faster, obscuring his pelt, while Fang fought against the urge to howl once more.

He didn't know where Claw was. Haze was injured. Robin was hurting. His groupmates were fleeing.

There was a voice in his head telling him what to do, but Fang had no idea whether to trust it or not.

He didn't even know whether to trust his own claws not to lunge for another cat's throat like he had the grey tabby.

Fang had never felt so alone.

Except...he wasn't alone.

"Did you just have the worst day of your life too?"

A soft voice murmured just above Fang's ear. A desolate, broken voice. He shifted, and felt the warmth of another cat's pelt just a few tail lengths away. It melted the snow off his muzzle.

"I guess," Fang mumbled. He hesitated, "I mean, yeah, I guess I did. Pretty rotten day on the whole, really."

He felt like laughing and crying at the same time. Was that weird? Was he losing it?

The voice beside him sighed. "Me too. I mean, seriously, I thought I'd seen rotten with this vole I'd left in the corner of the den this one time. But nope. Today tops even that."

Fang almost laughed. The noise came out like a sort of guffaw, and at the same time, liquid ran down his face from his eyes.

"How could you not taste the stench?"

The cat purred hoarsely in such a way, that Fang wondered if they were growling instead. "I've never been one to keep track of everything. Some would call me scatterbrained. You?"

"I wish," Fang sighed. "I'm the sensitive one. The one who thinks too hard. Who questions too much."

Fang wasn't sure why, perhaps he had finally lost it, or he was exhausted to have a filter, or perhaps because he really needed to get it off his chest, but he began telling this cat everything about the night and his broken unit.

And they listened.

"I'm really worried about her," Fang whispered at last. "I think that if anything ever happened tonight, it would be because of me." He paused. "But what about you? You said your night was rotten too..."

"Firstly," the cat said, "it isn't your fault. Either we all have some blame, or we don't, I guess."

They paused, and their voice suddenly sounded very small.

"Are you sure you want to hear my story? I think you might come to hate me after it."

Fang wasn't sure how to respond. "I don't think I will," he said at last. "I don't think any cat is worth my anger unless they truly are a monster."

The cat paused.

"It all started with a small ginger kit... She was born in a single litter, born to do great things, or so all the cats around her told her. She had everything a cat could ever dream of, security, praise, a high rank, except she lacked one thing. Family."

Fang listened as the vulnerable cat went on.

"But then she realised something," the cat said after a few more lines. "Her father wasn't a hero, nor truly was her mother. They had both run away from the clans, tails between their legs, without so much as looking back. And her father... he was a monster too."

"The truth is, I think I was the one that caused this shadowed dawn," the cat said. "The darkness came from my paws. You say that you only truly loathe a monster, but what if I am that? All my life, I wanted to be a hero. I used to be Aspenpaw of DawnClan, but now... now I don't know who I am."

For a long time, Fang remained silent, his mind processing all that he had heard.

The story of a cat who had never truly gotten a family. Just last night, he would have attacked this cat on sight, but he was as much Fang or the Midnights as she was Aspenpaw of DawnClan now. In that moment, they were just two young cats, completely vulnerable before each other.

Fang got to his paws, and blinked open his eyes.

And there she was.

A ginger tabby pelt which seemed to glow even in the shadows, curled up in a ball. Fang padded over to her, hesitated, then sat down, and placed one paw on her back.

"I'd like to be your friend," he said.

"We only just met," she sounded surprised.

"Maybe, but we've got to start somewhere. I don't want to be alone, and I don't think you do either, right?"

"Yeah," the she-cat sighed.

She shifted, and lifted her head out of where she had burrowed it in her pelt. Then, she turned to him, and blinked open her eyes.

They were green and bright.

"Thank you," she whispered.