Remember me (Bolt/Raven) [Finished]

The shecat felt an infectious smile spread across her lips and an old warmth curl in her chest. It was so old, so deeply engraved but hidden by years of dust and pain, she had almost forgotten its very existence, but she remembered it now and it burned like a cheerful fire. Not the bad kind that scorched flesh and turned all it touched to ashes, but the good kind. The kind that kept a cat warm even in the most endless winter, and Raven definitely felt like such a cat. Her life had been cold for too long, far too long.

"Family? What family?" she scoffed. She lowered herself into a crouch, tail lashing and pale eyes glistening with play. "I just came here to make myself an only child. Hold still for me, will ya?"

She was ready to pounce and get up a good scuffle going when a look of confusion fell over her brother's face. She rose out of her crouch, shock plain on her face as his words fell heavy on her ears.

"... I lost my memory a while ago..." I don't remember you.

The words were as plain and obvious as if he had said them aloud and they hung in the air between the two cats as Raven's inner fire died and what was left of her heart crumpled in on itself. It only took a moment, only the span of a few heartbeats, for that fragile flame to be snuffed out by the howling winters that had surrounded her for so many moons, threatening to bury her under their cold snows. As the tom watched, the shecat seemed to cave in on herself. Her shoulders and tail dropped. Her playfully risen fur lay flat and lifeless. Her eyes dulled and she simply seemed... less. Less vibrant. Less real. Less alive. 

The beautiful silver shecat who had seemed so brilliantly vigorous just a heatbeat before now looked like the cat she really was. The cat that had lived through too much and been given too little. The cat that was, at her very core, broken. Maybe beyond repair.

"Oh," she mewed softly.

Something was wrong with her voice. It sounded so quiet, so dead. Her dull eyes dropped to her paws without really seeing them. She sat, as if standing was more effort than she could muster. She curled her tail around her paws tightly. As if that would make things better. As if that would keep her together.

As if that would keep her from falling apart.

"I..." her tone was so soft, so quiet and weak. The faintest breeze could almost snatch it away. "I was your sister. Once. I was gone for a long time. I wasn't sure if you would even want me to come back. I wouldn't have bothered you except... Except lately I've lost so much and I don't know what to do anymore." Her voice broke at the end of the sentence. She had to clear her throat to start again. "I just..." Raven's vision was blurry and her cheeks felt wet. She just what? Why was she even here if he didn't even remember her?

"I just wanted to know if I could be that cat again. The cat that had a family. Once."

The shecat did not look at the tom. She couldn't. She rose to her paws to step closer to the tom. To feel someone beside her. To stop the horrible emptiness inside that threatened to swallow her whole. She brushed her shoulder against the tom's. Warm. He was warm. Or did she just feel cold? Cold as the snow that had pelted her for moons without any sign of stopping. Destroying the landscape of her heart as surely as frost killed off most things in Leafbare. Raven let herself rest her head against the tom's side.

"Bolt, you... you aren't my brother anymore, are you?" the mew was quiet, hardly more than a whisper but it still burned the air and sucked away all of the oxygen until neither cat could breathe. Or maybe that was just the pain. The sharp kick in the gut for both of them as the truth was laid out plainly. Bolt, Raven's brother, was lost, and this new cat wearing his skin was not what the broken shecat needed most right now. He was not enough to save her. "My brother..." Raven's body tensed, a sob about to burst through her chest. "-was never this gullible."

The shecat moved quick as a viper and tackled the unwary tom. Bolt had always been the better fighter -but that was only if the siblings played fair, and Raven always fought dirty. The shecat kicked his front paws out, shoved all her weight into his shoulders, and toppled him on his side to the ground. There was no escape at this close range and the poor warrior had been blindsided. Not giving the tom time to react, she promptly sat on him, and farted, beaming down with a jeering grin.

"You really thought I would just curl up and cry like a wuss? Ha! Puh-leaze. You are still such a Dolt. Did you think you were the only stubborn one in our family or something?"

The tom could easily dislodge Raven. She was still half his size and likely a third of his weight. Raven seemed completely unfazed though as she laughed.

"You seriously don't remember anything, do you? Man. Sucks to be you, but rocks to be me. You don't know any of my tricks anymore." 

The shecat settled down quite comfortably on her brother's side, kneading his fur and purring in satisfaction at getting to be on top. Oh yeah. It was good to be small sometimes. At the tom's question, Raven blinked and her stomach rumbled exceptionally loudly.

"A three-day old mouse and some berries... roughly 2.825 days ago," she informed him, making a face. "It... did not exactly taste good. And there might have been a few ants on it. Or a lot of ants on it. It was definitely very spicy. All for your smelling pleasure, brother dearest."

Raven was not a good hunter in the best of situations. What with her travelling, she had been too busy to waste the several hours it would take for her to catch even the simplest of meals. When on her own, she mostly lived off roots and berries, something she had never minded but nutritionally she knew she needed meat in her diet. She had stumbled upon the mouse by chance. It had simply died of old age it seemed and had been half-eaten by insects but before that... Raven started to count the days since she had eaten prey but it was too depressing so she stopped. Essentially, she had needed to eat something other than roots to keep up her strength and the carrion had been the only thing available. Then she had gotten onto clan land the next day and had not dared to hunt. She had collected too much data regarding the fierce protectiveness of clan cats over their prey. Spending all day walking, then being led to the Clan's Camp where she did not want to take prey without permission meant that as of today...

Er, yeah. It had been a little while, but the shecat scoffed it off.

"Pfft, food. Who needs food? You eat some and then you just need more in a few hours all over again. Might as well not eat it at all."

Then, seemingly without warning, Raven paused in her kneading to reach out and smack Bolt's face. Not enough to hurt, or even enough to start up a good tussle, but more like she was demanding his attention.

"Hey," she snapped, "No thinking."

"You say you forgot everything so that means I know more than you and that means I'm in charge." She proclaimed with a proud purr. Her pale eyes narrowed and a grin spread over her face. "And before you go protesting my rules, you should be reminded that the 'no thinking' one is your rule."

This much was actually true. Raven remembered, even if her brother did not. She had hardly begun taking on her lady-like persona. Learning what being another cat on the outside meant, and learning what real isolation felt when buried the truth of who you were. The cats around her had been happy with her new, 'more acceptable' attitude and yet Raven had felt as if a wall had been erected between her and the world. She had wanted to be closer to others, but she was not sure anymore if lying was the right way to go about it.

Cue her big fat Dolt of a brother. Bolt had not stood for her nonsense for one second. He had tackled her, pinned her, and tickled her until she was half-suffocated from laughter and cramps and tossing out every bad, non-lady-like word she knew, swearing vengeance. Bolt did not want a Lady or walls between them. He wanted Raven, his sister. He made her swear to cut out all that weird thinking. She informed him she couldn't think anymore because he had nearly killed her and would he please let her breathe for half a second now! -but she did. No thinking. No walls. Not between them.

And she got washed away down a river a pawful of days later.

The shecat was not thinking of this memory now. She continued kneading her brother's fur (Bolt had always liked the massage and Raven liked the height, it seemed this had not changed with age) and found herself surprised by the scars, some faint some fresh, she felt under the tom's coat.

"I guess I can't ask you about your life then," she grumbled. "It was probably boring anyway. What do you remember though? Cats? Places? That one fight you got into last week when you ate too much catnip?" She was joking but she honestly would not be too surprised if that last one was the only thing he remembered. Her brother had always been battle-oriented. And hunting-oriented, at least, compared to her. He got the sharp claws and she got the sharp tongue.

It was alright. Bolt had never begrudged her for hogging the obviously better part of the gene pool and she loved him anyway despite his tragic disabilities.

The shecat felt her brother's sadness and wished she had more data. She wished she had come back sooner, wished she could help him fill in the blanks. Or gaping holes as it were. She had no better clue as to what kind of cat he had been than he did himself.

"I know a few bits and pieces," she told him. "From the old clans. I know you had a mate named Fernheat or something like that and you two had a whole brood of kits. Apparently there was something important going on with you starting your own clan full of them. Cats seemed to be quite intimidated by you and thought you were a troublemaker." The shecat snorted. "Like that changed anything. The only difference between you as a kit, you then, and you now from what I can tell is that you're bigger and less fluffy."

The silver shecat's head drifted to the side as a thought seemed to curl around her and catch her attention. "So, your mate now... Is she nice? Does she love you?"

The silver shecat's ears popped up and her expression brightened at this.

"Oh! Seriously?" Now that she knew Bolt was still with his mate, her jeering grin was back. "You mean a shecat actually has the patience to be mated to you for that long? Holy holly!. Bolt, you better stick that shecat to you like pollen to a bee's butt because no other shecat would be that crazy!" She wrinkled her nose as something seemed to occur to her. "Well, except me -but I'm not crazy." She stressed the last part with obvious sarcasm.

Nope.

Definitely not.

Raven laughed.

"You really have to introduce me to her. Or I can just find her on my own. I've got a whole bunch of gre~at stories I could share. Like that time you stomped through poison ivy. Or the time you gnawed on my yew branch and barfed all over Mom's nest."

The shecat's eyes positively gleamed and she hopped off of her brother, safely out of clawing distance. She tossed her head at his mention of her future status and swished her tail dismissively. "Psh. Please. I would never be someone's 'aunt'. Now, 'Awesomely-Cool Super Aunt' is a title that might fit better." The shecat beamed. "I promise to teach your kits all they care to know about briars in nests, mice with berries hidden inside, and how to tickle-tackle you, all before their fourth moons. Aren't I just the best?"

Then the question she had been dreading came up.

And, honestly? It was not as bad as she had feared. No, she had not built a clan or turned herself into a leader but she had...

Raven shrugged. "This and that." she said casually. "I spent some time in a lighthouse, spent some time in the mountains, and now maybe I'll spend some time here. Wandering is nice-" It really wasn't actually. It was lonely. "-but it might be nice to have a home for a while... Maybe." Now when the shecat smiled at her brother it was not brimming with the arrogance and confidence that seemed to bleed out from every hair on her pelt. It was more reserved and, if a cat could believe it, genuinely hesitant. The Clan had welcomed her, sure, but Bolt was her brother. It might seem petty, or lame, but... well... She just wanted to double check that he wanted her back. To make sure. Of course she knew that he did. Clearly it was obvious. And who would not want her, right? Psh. It was totally a done deal anyway.

But the shecat still felt a small ounce of tension creep under her skin as her words hung, waiting, in the air. Waiting for what Bolt would tell her this time.

The shecat's tension melted as a harsh laugh burst its way through her. Oh gorse. That image. She couldn't breathe. She could. not. breathe. Tears of laughter swelled in the corners of her eyes and she had to force them back down as she attempted to suck down gulps of air. When she finally could stop again, the air quieted and she found herself giving her brother a soft, warm smile. Yeah. She had missed this. She had missed having someone at her back, even as they tripped you up with their latest gag in the front.

"I missed you, Dolt," she told him. "Family sucks, but no family sucks even more. "

...

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"I'm glad I have you as a brother."

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Raven's stomach grumbled loudly. Ending the moment. She laughed again then got a suspicious, crafty look in her eyes. "So, you were out here hunting, ri~ight?"