He didn’t know why he’d gone to the League’s old territory, where he knew Hywel was most wont to hang out. He didn’t know what he was hoping for, what he was searching for, what he wanted to give - an apology, closure, a goodbye, an ’it truly wasn’t you.’ Nothing. He didn’t know. All he knew was that that morning, he’d had to go see Hywel - even if it was to do only that, see him. Know he was alright. He was safe. He’d accepted, after long, black nights and numb, rosy days that he was in love with him. He wasn’t denying that anymore, at least not to himself. But that didn’t take away the grief of it, the fear, the exhaustion. He was so tired. He hadn’t been sleeping. His pelt was still perfectly smooth but it was forced; he was just going through the motions, staying pretty because he always stayed pretty - he just drifted through the days with his eyes on the ground, mumbling replies to Sunpetal or Shaded or forcing a small, tired smile for Bluebell. Everything felt so hectic and so stagnant at the same time - his mind was grey and lifeless and empty, yearning for something he was going to keep on denying it, like he was starving a little bird; his heart was restless and pleading and bright, thrashing against all the constraints, but he’d resigned himself, and so it would have to resign itself as well. To a life half-happy, to a ribcage half-empty, to mute smiles and dull eyes and constant fatigue. To lying awake at night with the warmth of Shadedsun’s thick fur beside him, hardly able to register the sweetness of the honeysuckle or the heather.

And so, when he’d suddenly felt that today he had to go to the city, he didn’t argue with himself. He was going through the process of grieving, of letting go; he’d do it just for that, to let himself let go of the last and only tom he’d ever love like he loved Hywel. There would be others - there were always others - but they wouldn’t be this. They would never be this. As he limped through the streets that had become familiar, he was almost calm, almost at peace. It was a bleak, sad sort of peace, but it was peace all the same. He knew why he was here, or at least he understood that his heart needed it, even if he wasn’t quite aware of the reason. He knew this would be the next step, and after that it would get easier. Not less agonising, not less like his lungs were filled with glass every time he inhaled, but easier. Like picking at your skin got easier the more used to it you became, even if it still bled.

And then he rounded the corner.

At first, the look on his face was as honest as Doefreckle had ever been - wide eyes, caught off balance, caught vulnerable and left like that; pure grief, slightly open-mouthed and entirely too young. The tom was everything Doe wasn’t, everything Hywel had promised he’d choose him over. He was keening for him in a way he never did for Doe. Was practically whimpering. Hywel, who he loved - who’d cast him aside so easily and sunk down to drown in other lovers. Doe hadn’t done that - he’d been too deep in mourning to even feel any sort of attraction. And here Hywel was, like he’d never existed at all.

He’d been stupid enough to love him — and for what? For this? For this?

And that’s when, stronger than all the soft sorrow, Doefreckle’s temper flared, anger filling his chest with heat and jealousy rearing its ugly head. He didn’t recognise the feeling at first - he so rarely got jealous, and when he did it was just a faint little thing, like the fluttering of butterfly wings. But this was sick jealousy, hot jealousy, nasty, hateful, broken jealousy. This was the jealousy that put blood in your ears and a tingle in your limbs. This was jealousy as sharp as it was dizzy, eagle-eyed and foggy-headed.

“Isn’t this a pretty sight,” he spat, then spun around with a lash of his tail and stalked in the opposite direction. He hated the tom. He hated him for being what Hywel wanted. He didn’t hate himself, not then - he was on his own side, and Hywel wasn’t. Hywel was over there. Hywel had moved on. He hated him. He hated him like fire. Fire was all he could feel, all he could see, all he could hear. Fire was all around him. He hoped Hywel burned in it.

Doe couldn’t stop growling, high and incessant in his throat so his whiskers shook with it, with his anger. The second he heard Hywel call out after him, he stalked faster, his head thrust forward and his shoulders sharp as knives. But with the burden of his paw - how he hated it at that moment, hated it with everything in him - Hywel caught up to him easily. Trapped and cut off from progressing down the street, Doe whirled to the side and began to pace back and forth, back and forth like a wild, caged animal. His ears were back, his tail-tip twitching ominously - which was almost worse than him just lashing it. Whatever rage was on Doe’s face right then, there was far more, far darker, under the surface.

“WHAT, Hywel?” he shot back, still pacing in tight little loops in front of the tom. He didn’t look at him. Wouldn’t look at him. It was a terrible thing, to be terrified of love but to have been built by the universe so utterly dependent on it. On someone else. To be afraid to get close and all the while yearn for it, all the while feel incomplete without someone there beside him telling his heart all the things it ought to feel and fulfilling his half-ness. He was just one half, always just one half, one fragment of a heart locket. He was made for love, and he was petrified of it. He hated being alone, hated every second he spent by himself, and he ran from the alternative, from anything that might bring him happiness. He was created to be someone’s mate, and he’d been mortified by his own destiny. But at that moment, that didn’t fill him with the usual self-disgust, with the nasty assurance that he didn’t deserve joy - instead self-pity, protective of himself for once in his life, became fiery and hateful and fierce. For the first time ever, Doefreckle was defending himself.

And then, it fell apart. Finally, like the fire had burned up him and left dismal ash in its place, he slowed and turned to Hywel - defeated, tired, grieving, worn-down. His ears drooped. “What?” he repeated in a voice that was so utterly ruined. Like this was the pathetic end of a game he was so tired of playing, so broken by. Served Doefreckle right, to finally be the one made a fool of. To finally be the one who had to stay awake at night with the image of the tom he loved with someone else playing through his mind. Now he knew what it felt like. He wanted to beg forgiveness from everyone he’d ever hurt with this. When he continued, his voice was quiet with thick, numb exhaustion. He drifted his eyes down; he couldn’t see the lack of love in Hywel’s blue eyes. “Why does it matter where I’m going? You don’t care. Away from here. Back to SummerClan. I don’t know. You should go back to your plaything. He’s probably waiting. And everything I’m not.” Still not looking at Hywel, he moved to brush past him. He was already planning the route home, in a tired, dissociative, grey and misty sort of way - back past the townhouses, on the trail beside the woods, across the meadows…

Shaded would be there, or Vulturemalice - it would be wrong to use them but where had kindness got him... He had no appetite for it, felt sick and weary at the thought, like he’d rather die than be with anyone but Hywel, but he didn’t care, so... Maybe he’d go find someone else, some rogue or handsome kittypet who would be so enthralled by a warrior, even a broken one. He didn’t want to, would rather have curled up and slept and forgotten for just one grey hour, but if Hywel was doing it...

Doe’s defeat immediately turned to a petulant glare when Hywel wouldn’t let him pass. He shot daggers up at the taller tom. He didn’t understand anything. And how many others have you woo’d and left, hm? Doe’s jaw dropped slightly, his defiant expression giving way to genuine, startled shock. That was a low blow. He gathered himself and it quickly gave way to indignation. “None,” he shot back, stubborn and immediate - it was an obvious lie, but Doefreckle was in that self-righteous mood where he’d deny it to the point he honestly believed it. “I guess you’re special.” He raised his chin. It was both an insult and a betrayal of how he truly felt about Hywel - he was special. “And even if I had, to a thousand other toms, it wouldn’t have been any more than you’ve done it to.” His voice had that obnoxious, sanctimonious quality it got when he knew he was so far in the wrong that he began to believe he was in the right, his gaze averted and his head raised and his tone high and haughty and judgemental.

I was afraid, he wanted to say. I love you; I was scared; I still am; I want to be with you; please see through what I’m saying. Inside, he was pleading and miserable. But he was too stubborn to say it aloud, too stubborn to back down from the fight even if he didn’t want to be in it. “I do have a right to be jealous, I think,” he continued in that easy-going voice, still not looking at Hywel, and wandered over to a different spot on the road to faux-absently play with a loose bit of tarmac with one paw. Like he was so unbothered by all this. It was like a boy from Eton pretending he was just one with the laypeople; normally Doe would never touch something like that, and he’d likely go and wash his paws frantically as soon as he was out of Hywel’s sight. “Especially because after me that’s the best you could do? How long did it take you, anyway? Was I even back beyond the SummerClan border by the time you were saying all those pretty things to someone else, do you think? And don’t—don’t call me Doefreckle. Like you don’t know me at all. Like I’m nothing. It’s—it’s—no, not even my leader calls me that.” As soon as he started talking about his name, his voice began to wobble with all the emotion he was trying to keep under wraps - the grief, the confusion, the hurt, the anger, the insecurity - and he spent the rest of the sentences trying to contain it and pretend Hywel wasn’t hearing what he must have been hearing. On like I’m nothing, his voice broke slightly; in the next sentence, the imperious, dismissive irritation was back, though weaker and more fragile and far more forced-sounding than before. He didn’t look at Hywel through any of it, aside from a quick glance at the pointed mention of the SummerClan border; he hoped Hywel didn’t catch how hurt his eyes were. Truthfully, he never wanted Hywel to stop calling him Doefreckle, never wanted to stop hearing his full name said in his voice - because no one else called him that. Because it was only Hywel. Because it was his thing, that strange formality despite the utter informality of him. But Doe wasn’t rational, he wasn’t thinking; he was floundering blindly between wanting him more than anything in the world and his utter inability to face the terror of it.

These weren’t the jibes Doe would have levelled at someone else, though. With Shadedsun on the mountaintop, his insults had been vicious - about Shaded’s own pathetic feelings for him, about his anxiety, about how insufferable and unloveable he was, about how Shaded had thrown himself at him and Doe still hadn’t wanted him. But now, this wasn’t maddened, confused grief over the death of their children that he regretted for the rest of his life - this was low, aching hurt. He wasn’t trying to tear Hywel apart — he was trying to say I love you without saying it, trying to beg and plead without begging and pleading, trying to say please see how much it hurts to be away from you with nothing but coldness. “I came back to give you a reason and some closure,” he continued in a stronger voice, still looking down at the chunk of tarmac with his brows raised, and what he meant to say was don’t listen to a word I’m saying; I know in my heart I came back to be with you. “But I see now you don’t need that. You’ve moved on fine. I was just another afternoon’s sport before dinner. No hard feelings, then. Hope I was good, at least - another mark for your bedpost.” His head tilted slightly as he spoke, rolling the black chunk back and forth under his mottled pads, brows rising higher disinterestedly to try and force down the stupid, treacherous betrayal. 

When Hywel began, Doe's face was set in that defiant, stubborn anger. But the more he spoke, the more Doe's anger crumbled into guilt, into sorrow, into profound, aching grief, until all he could do was sit there and watch and listen, blinking at Hywel with his heart breaking in his chest. Because he hadn't known it had affected Hywel this much. He... Even up to a minute ago, there had been that theatrical part of Doefreckle that found this all a bit fun - everything he felt was genuine, all his jealousy and rage and indignation and hurt, but he'd also, deep down, just really enjoyed the knowledge that he'd done this, he'd caused this, he'd once again gotten close enough to someone to make them feel things because of him; pull their puppet strings and watch them dance. Maybe that was a defence mechanism too, to keep him at arm's length.

And now, it all fell apart. All the fun fell utterly apart and all he was left with was the bleak world, the reality, that he was in love with Hywel and he was afraid and he had caused this. Because it was true. Everything Hywel was saying was true. It had been true when Shadedsun had said it, and it was true now that Hywel was saying it: he just hurt and hurt and hurt and acted shocked and betrayed when they one day had enough. He was always too self-obsessed with his own life, too fully absorbed in the driver's seat, feeling everything too much except all the things he should have been feeling and was too afraid to - and now, when it finally all crumbled away, it was too late. He'd known the silver tom had fallen for him first, but he still hadn't... Hadn't really understood how deep those feelings went. That it was love. Real love. That he loved him. Hywel loved him. When at first he'd said it in the past tense, Doe's heart had fallen with grief, with the knowledge that he was too late - but when he said I love you, when he reiterated it over and over and over, the relief he felt with studded with just as much grief and none of the selfish glee he might usually have felt. This wasn't childish love, boys playing at romance for a game, like he'd thought it was, like he'd felt it was even up until a minute or two ago - this, he realised, was real. He loved Hywel, too, more than he thought he did. So much more.

He was the love of his life, he could feel it; the way he made his heart quiet, the way he lined his chest with softness, how safe and whole and loved he felt with him. He would never find another like him; this was the end of the road for Doe, even if he'd fall in love again, each time getting a little more brittle and a little more lifeless. He didn't want anyone else. He wanted Hywel. He wanted to call himself his mate and wake up to him every morning and get into petty little squabbles about the proper way to do stupid, meaningless things and fall deeper in love every day that passed. He wanted more than anything to go to him now, to close the distance and press himself to him and tell him he loved him, too. But he didn't. And he wouldn't. Much as his soft heart was begging him to just give in to being loved and go to him, his fear won out. Hywel didn't deserve this. He deserved someone who wouldn't hurt him like Doefreckle had.

Doe suddenly realised that he was crying. He raised his paw, startled, to his cheek, drawing it away to look at the wetness upon it; he quickly wiped his cheek and turned his head stubbornly away, sniffing once and continuing to look away until he was sure the tears were gone. When he looked back at Hywel, his gaze was convincingly cold. "Well, that's not going to happen," he replied quietly. Hurt him to save him; hurt him to make him stop loving the wrong tom. Doe was never going to be able to give him what he wanted. They both knew that. He was never going to stop being afraid of happiness, even though he would never stop searching for it. "So I suppose this is the end of it. I..." One final lie, to solidify it. "I never loved you, Hywel."

He turned away, gaze averted when he said the lie, the greatest lie he had ever told. He couldn't meet his eyes when he said it, couldn't look at him. To see the pain, or the cold reflected back - or, worse than any of it, the love slip away. "I hope you find happiness. But it won't be with me."