Awake, Alive, and All That I Am *Shine & Shine*

[ShinoDino first of her name!]

I'm at war with the world and they
Try to pull me into the dark
I struggle to find my faith
As I'm slippin' from your arms

He'd probably never stop coming here. Never stop taking in the scent of a rival Clan. Here, his memories soothed his heart. Here, he remembered simpler times. Before StoneClan. Before battles and dozens of dead warriors. Before his mother died in defense of the Clan she'd only loved because of her son. Before being banished from his medicine cat position for the sin of loving another. Before his mate disappeared. Before his kits hated him. Before he watched Darkfoot, his best friend, join StarClan despite his best efforts to stop the greencough massacre.

For so long he'd railed at StarClan for letting him endure the fire at the Gathering that ruined his lungs. He hadn't started the Gathering fight. It wasn't his fault that StarClan was forced to send the fire from the sky to end the carnage. He'd only wanted to be a warrior. He'd only fought because his leader did and his mother did.

Now he couldn't imagine his life any other way, despite the incredible hardship he'd endured. He knew full well StarClan would not have chosen him to be a medicine cat had he not suffered the permanent effects of smoke inhalation. Their own punishment had steered his life off course. Now they had gone silent. Again. Needlethorn had been cold and distant the night she'd given him his full name and nearly every time he'd visited them since.

Now he had an apprentice with a broken back, a leader traumatized and backed into a corner, and a Clan quaking in fear.

He could handle all of that, maybe . . . if only he'd been able to help his daughter Skyheart.

Owlflight winced. He'd never get her blue eyes, so accusing, out of his mind. She and Blazestorm had tried for a season for kits. When Blazestorm disappeared, Skyheart had come to him in desperation during Swiftdance's last disappearing act. He'd been so hopeful too, wanting this happiness for her. When he had to tell her that, no, she was not pregnant, the look on her face shattered his heart.

She blamed him for her troubles. And he couldn't fully disagree.

His love for all of his kits, the four that rested with StarClan and the one here with him, threatened to overwhelm him, and the mottled tom took a deep rattling breath to steady himself. He'd come out here looking for herbs, not more heartache.

Oh Hinafeather, I can't help our daughter. She has no one to lean on and won't allow me near her. I wish she could find it in her heart to forgive me.

I'm at war with the world cause I 

Ain't never gonna sell my soul 

I've already made up my mind 

No matter what I can't be bought or sold

[ShinoDino first of her name!]

It's getting harder to stay awake
And my strength is fading fast
You breathe into me at last

When had she last been able to lift her paws off of the ground? A moon ago? Longer?

It didn't really matter. She'd given up trying to find a reason to live. Her heart ached every day. It ached for the tom she'd always believed to be her father, Darkfoot, who had died so cruelly in the greencough season. It ached for her missing mate Blazestorm, whom now she knew would never be coming back. It ached for her adoptive sister Softstrike, gone before she could really get to know her. It ached for the cat she'd called her mother, Moondream, sacrificed on the alter of StoneClan. And, despite her best efforts, her heart ached for the cats who had given her life. Hinafeather and Owlflight.

Her very soul ached for the kits she wanted so badly but would never have.

Skyheart scuffed her paws against the ground as she walked, bulldozing through the undergrowth that got in her way. She'd long stopped caring about keeping her pelt nice. She had no one to look nice for. Her once-fluffy and long pelt now stayed matted with burrs and stained with dirt. Once, her blue-tinged, nearly-white pelt had glowed like the brightest sun, outstripped only by her eyes as blue as green-leaf skies. No more. She wandered the territory like a ghost cat, frightening kits and snarling at everyone.

Why should she bother being nice? No one had ever shown her true kindness except the cats that were lost to her.

Loneliness welled up in her and she wanted to wail like a lost kit. She wanted, needed, a reason to keep going.

She could never, ever forgive Owlflight for cursing her with this life. Hinafeather had played a part too, obviously . . . but somehow she blamed Owlflight more. Maybe because he'd always been there in her life, visiting every day. Back then, she'd just assumed he was a caring medicine cat visiting his friend's kits.

I've lost my identity so many times. Who am I?

her soul cried. She tripped on a fallen branch, her lumbering paws numb with grief and long-suffering pain. The lightning strike of pain shot up her right paw and foreleg and she hissed angrily. The only things she could properly feel anymore were painful things. She shook her paw and rolled her shoulder a few times.

But when she took another step, pain laced up her paw and shoulder again and her very brain seemed to shudder away from the agony. StarClan above. She spent most of her waking hours avoiding injury so she wouldn't have to see Owlflight. She'd strictly forbidden herself to have any contact with her father after he'd broken her heart telling her she was not having kits. Blazestorm had already disappeared by then and she'd known the chances were slim . . . but he'd made it all final. He'd made it real.

Limping through a clump of bushes, Skyheart's distracted brain didn't process the scent until it was too late.

"Oh! Uhhh . . . hi."

Please don't notice that I'm standing and walking weird . . .

When my faith is getting weak 

And I feel like giving in 

You breathe into me again 

[ShinoDino first of her name!]

I'm awake I'm alive
Now I know what I believe inside
Now it's my time

The rustling in the bushes caught his ears, but before he could process the sound, there she was. The scent. The voice. The cat that could get his attention and break his heart faster than anyone else.

"Oh! Uhhh . . . hi."

Only an idiot or the blindest and deafest medicine cat in history could overlook Skyheart’s rolling gait and pained grimace. She looked even worse now than the last time he’d seen her up close. Her pelt, once so soft and flowing, was dirty, limp, and matted with burrs. Her eyes, those brilliant copies of her mother’s, were dull and glazed with grief . . . with anger. With all of the emotions that she had every right to feel.
With all of the pain that he wished he could protect her from.

“Skyheart.”

He morphed into medicine cat mode before he started acting like the father she didn’t want.

“What happened to your shoulder?”

“Nothing.”

She snapped off the end of the word like the cracking of a sapling. But her eyes flickered. That alone told him more than she could ever know.

“Okay then. Walk.”

Owlflight twitched his mottled tail. He forced his gaze to remain impassive - if a bit obstinate. If she could walk four strides without a problem, he’d eat his own tail.
She made it three strides, before bringing her entire right leg up. Skyheart hissed through her teeth, shooting daggers through her gaze.

“Fine. I tripped and it started hurting. Happy now, oh great medicine cat?”

He took the blow as he always did. His heart had hardened slightly over the moons. If her barbs were the price to pay for her presence, then he would gladly take them.
He padded closer to her, ignoring how she recoiled the closer he got. He padded around in front of her to get to her injured side.

“Lie down.”

“What? No way.”

“I can’t fix it if you don’t. Or I can push you over?”

“You can try,”

Skyheart snarled, hobbling forward a tail-length.

“Okay.”

Owlflight raised a paw and pretended to aim for her shoulder. As expected, Skyheart squeaked, tried to jump aside, and fell resignedly to her knees. But it brought him no joy to see her in pain. He could handle any part of his job, but when it came to his precious daughter. . .

“Fine. You win. It really hurts. Why does it hurt so bad?”

Somehow, Owlflight doubted that she just referred to her physical pain.
She flopped onto her uninjured side, the sunlight catching the dark bags under her eyes. Owlflight longed to curl up next to her, tell her stories like he had when she’d been a kit. He longed to take away all of her grief and pain.
But he could not. So much of it would always be because of him.

I'll do what I want 'cause this is my life
Right here, right now
I'll stand my ground and never back down

[ShinoDino first of her name!]

Waking up waking up
Waking up waking up

“Fine. You win. It really hurts. Why does it hurt so bad?”

Skyheart stretched out on her uninjured left side, letting the single tear of pain leak out of her left eye where Owlflight couldn’t see. Being this close to the tom that repulsed her made her skin crawl, but her three test steps had proven to her that she’d never make it back to camp without help.

Maybe never going back to camp wouldn’t be so bad.

Another tear slipped out as she remembered the events of barely an hour ago. Moonshadow cleaning her nest out of the warrior’s den. Again. Alone. Again.
Clearly, her little tabby boyfriend couldn’t be bothered to help his mate out - oh right. He wasn’t a ThunderClan cat.

I should have run off for the mountains with Blazestorm when we had the chance.

Owlflight’s paws pressed gently into her shoulder and she hissed with mingled pain and relief. Despite her feelings towards her biological father, Owlflight was absolutely the best medicine cat ThunderClan could ask for. He had two badly injured apprentices in his den and yet here he was, giving her wrenched shoulder the same level of care and attention.

She went to Tornrose as often as she could for anything medical, but no cat would know better than Owlflight the answer to the question that haunted her.

“Why . . . why do some cats have kits easily? And some . . . don’t.”

Owlflight paused for a moment, seemingly inspecting her shoulder. He pushed his weight into her shoulder and she heard a small click, followed by a burst of pain. Then the relief set in.
Then:

“Conception is such a delicate thing. Timing. Stress. Fertility. Age. Vitamin levels.”

His goose-gray eyes stared into hers and she couldn’t look away.

“And there’s always that bit that even medicine cats never figured out.

I think that’s the bit that StarClan holds onto until they’re ready to relinquish kits into our care. Skyheart,”

Without meaning to, she hung on every word.

“Cats like Moonshadow haven’t endured what you have.

She’s faced her own troubles, but during StoneClan you - and your siblings-”

Skyheart flinched.

“- you all endured far more, emotionally speaking. And have since then. Unlike Moonshadow, Blazestorm had his own set of troubles.

Now, I’m not saying there was anything ‘wrong’ anywhere,”

Owlflight added hastily, seeing her about to angrily interrupt,

“But we cannot deny the impact that StoneClan, combined with the emotional damage done by Flamestone’s treatment, might have had. We will never know exactly why the two of you were not blessed with the family you rightly deserved.”

She let her eyes fall away from his. For a minute, Owlflight worked and massaged in silence. Her mind kept straying to Moondream and Darkfoot. The cats she’d considered her parents up until Hinafeather and Owlflight’s gut-wrenching revelation. The revelation that had, ultimately, saved her life. Moondream’s death in StoneClan, and the triple blow of Darkfoot, Softstrike, and Daymoon dying of greencough, coupled with Mousepaw’s and Twistednight’s deaths, had all factored into the times when she and Blazestorm had tried for kits.
Could that have been all there was to it?

Oh Blazestorm. She’d accepted that he would never be coming back - nothing could have kept him from her. But now what?

“Owlflight . . . is it too late for me? After everything . . . could I still have a family someday?”

He stopped and her eyes honed in on one of the bare patches on his shoulders where the fur had never grown back.

“Skyheart, I see no reason why you couldn’t. Your heart, not your womb, would be the biggest factor in that future. But Skyheart, just because Moonshadow is preg-”

She sat up so fast Owlflight backed away in alarm. The plan fell into place so easily. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t figured it out before. The solution to all of her problems. Skyheart got to her paws, pleased to find that her shoulder was not only fixed but pain-free.

“Thanks Owlflight. I’ll be going hunting now.”

With a whisk of her tail and trotted off into the undergrowth, her smirk growing when Owlflight did not call after her.

He doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does. My heart will have no factor in this. It’s time for me to take what I want.

But first, she had to make her plan worthwhile to one other cat . . .

Waking up waking up
Waking up waking up