[lone]

Being an apprentice was the strangest thing. It was funny - Mercurypaw had waited a long time to be respected, to get to tell his remaining Dad about being an apprentice, and now that the day had come… both Dads were dead. Gone forever. Mercurypaw was angry, definitely - but not sad. Sadness was weakness, and within the first week or so of hearing about Thrushflight’s death, he had hidden it away and revealed only anger. I’ll make you proud, Dad. I’ll make whoever killed you pay one day. That was going to be hard, considering he didn’t know who it was or even what Clan they were from - every Clan but SkyClan had been involved, which only made Mercurypaw angrier.

It had been between ThunderClan and WindClan, and certainly if it had been a fair fight that way, Thrushflight wouldn’t have died. No puny ThunderClan cat could have killed his Dad, but… Mercurypaw still couldn’t bring himself to rule them out. It could have been anyone. And whoever it was, one day, he would find them and he would make sure they knew exactly who he was killing them for. He would kill them very slowly, making them beg for mercy before he finally ended their wretched, pathetic little lives. Right now, there was a furious expression on Mercurypaw’s features as he watched the other cats in the clearing, going about their business like it didn’t even matter. Mercurypaw had been taking care of what he needed to - but in his free time, you would never catch him aimlessly wandering around. He rested, waited, watched… always wondering if perhaps it had been an “inside job” and a WindClan warrior had killed Thrushflight.

It was almost consuming him. This was why caring about anyone, anytime, was weakness. Mercurypaw’s family was the one thing he couldn’t help but care about. He was fiercely loyal towards them, more so than his Clan, almost. And it was a weakness. An awful one.

@RedHead