Nightshade

I wrote fanfiction for school

this has stupid things in it that were required and it was also cut short because of the page limit and it was also rushed and not greaaatt writing but WHATEVER

--Willowlight

We grew up on a diet of deception and lies, surviving off our wits and cleverness. The strong flourished and the weak fell behind us. Just as it was meant to be. If we could not determine the difference between truth and lies, we had no right to know the truth, the captains said. Those who contributed to our society would rise above the rest. Useful deeds would raise us. Betrayals would cause us to fall.

I contemplated this as I sat in my patch of peace in this raging battle.

Our world was constructed of illusions of grandeur and power. We would be the greatest group that ever was, said the captains. We would rise above the greedy Twilight Hunters who proudly held onto their territory and kept the beautiful gardens they created for themselves. Rosalina herself told the story of how she nearly died because she stepped one pawstep too far across their borders, again and again, drilling it into our heads again and again that they were bad. I stepped toward the top of the ranks, where cats dipped their head to me and stepped aside to let me pick the first prey. I was never at the very top, but I was loyal to them.

So why was I regretting this before I even started?

A storm of screeches and claws thundered around me. It was a hurricane of blood and battle; a raging inferno of anger. I could almost feel the torrents of emotion that radiated from the hundreds of cats there. It tore apart the peaceful glow the springtime had held, breaking the spell of the once-beautiful camp. Blood marred the astonishing colors of the flowers that splashed around the forests. A whirlwind of claws and teeth ripped apart the beauty these cats fought to keep for themselves.

I didn’t spot any cat suitable yet. All of them had the same anger in their eyes, the same desire to hold on to this territory. The same thing I was born to fight against. The same thing my group had worked for moons to fight against. Infiltrating the faraway Dawn Runners. Convincing them to settle in the territory near the Twilight Hunters, where those vicious cats would see them as a threat. Tracking scents over the borders. Fueling the tensions between their groups. This war was our goal, and our plans’ results were blossoming around us.

I waited and waited and waited until the perfect cat showed up. A small tom, a bit younger than I was, with eyes full of fear and paws that carried him away from the inferno of battle. Slashes and old scars crisscrossed his grey-and-white spotted pelt. He looked around desperately for escape before collapsing on the sidelines, away from the hundreds of fighting cats. I smiled.

I helped him up, letting him lean on my shoulder. I carried him farther and farther away from the battle that he hated so much, bringing him through the beautiful territory both organizations desired so much, though only one of the two was righteous. The Twilight Hunters were greedy savages who killed my mother, I thought. They don’t deserve the territory. I carried him away and away from those awful cats, from the raging of battle and the screeches and yowls that came with it.

“Come along. I can heal you,” I whispered, though I knew I would do much, much, worse.

The blizzard of petals was more of a light flurry outside the flowery forests the cat at my side came from. Rivers of colorful flora turned to the odd trickle of daisies and dandelions. It was more real here. The sickly-sweet scent of flowers didn’t overpower everything else; the fresh scents of the forest were detectable now. I liked it better this way. I built my den in a land that belonged to no cat, a land where foxes and badgers fled after being driven off by the cats that claimed the territories nearby. I would have to be careful.

I lay down the grey-spotted cat in a nest of moss and began sorting out my herbs to cure his injuries. I could tell the young cat would be sleepy for a while; he was overworked from the battle and tired from training. Chamomile could help with that, and marigold for his wounds. Cobwebs to stop the bleeding and thyme for shock. Once I healed him, my job would be easy.

I had always been the best cat for this kind of job, said the captains. My pelt was sleek and well-kept. My voice was soft and kind, instantly trusted by every cat who heard it. I had the skill to heal even the most severe of wounds. I knew how to charm a cat, manipulate emotions and put them in my debt. I could make any cat fall in love with me effortlessly. Any information came to me easily. I could tell someone a badger was a mouse and they’d believe it, they said. I had been trained to improve my charms, to capture information from any cat easily. I was a natural, according to the captains.

Whisper had given me this mission herself. She said if I succeeded, I could be the youngest cat to ever rise to captain. I would be our savior. I loved that idea. I had a plan and I would follow it, and this cat would give us the information we needed and a member who knew and hated the Twilight Hunters. I could manipulate him like no cat else could. I could help our group bring down the others. We could win.

He woke a few days later, still smelling of flowers and nectar. His blue eyes opened blinked a few times in confusion. I gazed down at his fur, coated with leaves and berries and petals that would cure the wounds that coated him, though I was sure I couldn’t prevent scars, both on his coat and in his mind.

“Eat these,” I murmured, dropping three poppy seeds under his muzzle. “They will help you sleep. I am Belladonna, and I too am tired of this war.”

That was far from the truth. But if you couldn’t determine the difference between truth and lies, you didn’t deserve to know the truth, said the captains.

“I was once part of the group you were at war with,” I continued, not pausing once, “but I've been building this den since we moved here. I never liked the war, so I was planning on leaving when I got the chance. Now seems to be the time.”

Lies, lies, lies. Corrupted falsehoods designed to deceive. It is impossible to live in a world of lies without becoming a liar yourself, said the captains. Learn early.

I refused to let myself feel guilty. I was doing this for the greater good, I told myself. He is part of the group that killed my mother. He is no more innocent than any of them are. He is one of the cats that we are fighting against. He is the enemy, I told myself.

“What is your name?” I murmured quietly.

“Torrent,” he replied, and he drifted off to sleep not long after that.

He stayed healing in my den for three long days of waiting and planning and herbs. Three days of waking him from nightmares that plagued him and composing a complex spiderweb of lies and deception. I came from the other group, I said. I was just like him, I said. I was harmless and would only heal him, I said.

I was a good cat, I said.

He stayed for two moons in total. He spent every moment, waking and asleep, with me. He trusted me and loved me and poured floods of emotion and worries out, letting them all spill to me. And I brought every drop to the captains, who met with me on barely-moonlit nights. I kept my voice low during these meetings and the words caught in my throat whenever I spilled a secret he had trusted me to keep to myself.

His friends came one day. Two young she-cats loyal to the Twilight Hunters who threatened all the progress I had made turning this cat to my side. Corrupting him, murmured a voice in my head, but I ignored it.

My claws itched to tear them apart, to shred them for siding with those greedy cats. I forced myself to wait. You must always wait for the moment to strike, then strike quickly and powerfully, said the captains. I listened, simply bringing Torrent away from the two of them. Protecting him, I told myself. Protecting your plan, my conscience whispered back.

I fought daily against a wave of emotion and regret, fighting against the voice in my head. You must press on, I told myself. He is with the enemy. He deserves it. It’s not bad if it’s for a just cause. The voice in my head fought back, telling me, again and again, everything I was doing was wrong. I ignored it day after day as it relentlessly thwarted my duty, repeating the words of the captains in my mind. It’s for the greater good. It’s justice. If you cannot determine the difference between truth and lies, you do not deserve to know the truth.

He is in the group that killed my mother.

The last one worked best.

I lied to him for two moons. Two moons of unconditional love and trust from him. Two moons of acting and lying and weaving together untruths. Two moons of convincing myself it was right and that I could not betray my group. My family. That Torrent deserved it. That I was on the just side.

I had never intended to stop.

He was the one who caught me first. He followed me one night as I padded toward the meeting place with the captains, where I planned to betray his trust once again. He discovered me and I pretended to be captured, though I knew the charade was unconvincing.

That meeting was a hard one. They urged me to get rid of him, told me that there was no reason to waste time on converting him to our group. I spoke in a low voice the whole time, but I wasn’t sure why.

“I’m not going to get rid of him yet!” I had whispered indignantly. He was a comforting presence, sometimes. I didn’t want to lose that.

I lied to him that morning, and he hadn't fallen for my unconvincing untruths. If you could not determine the truth between the truth and lies, you didn't deserve to know the truth, I told myself. He didn’t deserve to know anyway. I was loyal to my group; my family. I had to come up with a plan, quickly.

I realized I couldn’t lie more. I realized I had already betrayed him. I had already failed my group. I was already broken.

“I was never in the other group you were captured by.” Every word shattered a piece of me. “I was sent by my group to get a member of the Twilight Hunters to get us information.” They’re all greedy, selfish cats. “We’ve been working on this war between you and the Dawn Runners for so long, but we hadn’t been able to figure out how far along we were because of your group’s extra security. You were the best candidate, and I was going to recruit you into the group once you hated your old group and loved me enough. I wasn’t planning on… feeling…”

He ran as I spilled out my secrets as he had to me. I flooded him with betrayal and emotions, giving him every bit of my plan. Every detail I revealed, every word I spoke crumbled me. My plan. My resolve.

Broken, broken, broken. My plan was broken. His trust in me was broken. I was broken.

I was a failure to my group and my leader, Whisper; a traitor to Torrent. I had been standing on a thin branch between Torrent and Whisper, and that branch had broken and both fell away under me. I had waited too long to choose. I got neither.

Now, I needed to climb back up that thorny, twisting tree and choose which one I wanted.

A young tom, part of the enemy Twilight Hunters, who had fallen for my act (not me, I told myself. He doesn’t love me.) or the cats that raised me, that taught me all I knew.

The choice was easy, the captains would say. We raised you and trained you and made you who we are. We taught you everything you know, and you still failed us. If it wasn’t for us, he would’ve hated you as soon as you spoke a word to him. He hates you now, and the only thing left to do is accept it. Come back, and climb your way back up.

He betrayed me, I told myself. You comforted him when he spilled his secrets to you and woke him from his nightmares. He just ran without another thought when I told mine.

“I can’t betray another more cats I swore to be loyal to,” I muttered aloud.

I picked up the most precious of my herbs and walked away from the den, away from the petals the breeze carried from the Twilight Hunters. My head was lowered and my tail dragged on the ground behind me. I knew Whisper would be furious. Her captains would ridicule me and demote me to the bottom of the ranks instead of my former place in the company of the elite group of skilled members that I once enjoyed. I would be considered a traitor to our nameless coterie, a failure to our soon-to-be powerful society.

And I was. I had failed when I could not afford to. I deserved to be punished and hated. It was my fault that my plan had fallen apart. I should have been more careful. Now I had to run back with my head down and work twice as hard to earn my old place in the rankings. I padded away from the den that I had built with my own paws. Away from where I had stayed with Torrent. Away from everything that my world had consisted of for the last two moons.

I tried my best not to regret it.

If you couldn’t determine the difference between truth and lies, you didn’t deserve to know the truth, the captains said. And I believed it.