#applebelly

Aliases / Nicknames: N/A

Gender: she-cat

Family: Fawnfur (mother), Grasseye (father), Applebelly (brother), Springtail (brother)

Other relations: Thornfern (mentor), Lighthawk (apprentice)

Clan: Windclan

Characteristics: neglects patients she knows won’t make it

Number of Victims: 13

Number of Murders: 10

Murder Method: gives patients placebos in place of actual herbs

Known Victims: Leapingdusk, Thornfern, Applebelly, others unknown

Cause of Death: complications due to age

Cautionary Tale: N/A

Story:

“I don’t want you wasting your herbs on me,” Sagekit remembered her mother telling the medicine cat, Thornfern, when she had been deathly ill. She didn’t know why the memory stuck with her so strongly and more clearly than anything else, it just did. 

She was still a kit when her mother passed. Old enough to remember her, young enough to forget about her grief after the next moon, a time she also spent travelling to the medicine den more and more. Thornfern was irritated at first, thinking she was a foolish kit bent on gobbling his herbs. But she would only sit quietly and stare at them, as if studying them. 

Initially when he had patients, he would shoo her, gently, out of the den. Then he realized her curiosity wasn’t a phase, and let her watch what he did, so long as she didn’t disturb anything or anyone. 

Sure enough, just as he suspected, Sagepaw became his apprentice as soon as she reached six moons. Thornfern was delighted to finally have one. He wasn’t going to retire anytime soon, but it was well past time he got a student to pass on all he knew.

Sagepaw was a brilliant apprentice. She was unfazed by Thornfern’s tendency to grumble, was kind to the patients but knew not to promise them uncertain comfort, and would always get the right herb before he even finished asking for it. After all, she did spend a long time observing him as a kit. 

As interested in herbs as the kit had been, there were two other, stronger reasons that she had visited the den so often. One was to remember her mother, the other was to avoid her brother. 

She wasn’t sure what Applekit’s problem with her had been, they got along well as young kits, but now he always took the time to tease her. He was double her size, if she fought him, he would surely win. If she ignored him--which she tried to do, as her father advised--he would keep jabbing and jabbing at her until he struck too deep a nerve. 

They ignored each other more now, but still Applepaw, and later young Applebelly, would occasionally make sure to ruin his sister’s day.

Maybe he should have been kinder, but when so many other gentle hearted warriors died, does it really make a difference? He was Sageleaf’s fourth victim-- not a word she herself would use. 

He had been injured in battle and received an ugly infection. With Thornfern in the elder’s den, his sister was his only hope of recovery. And she would help him, surely? She was a medicine cat, it was her duty. And they were littermates. But he only ever felt himself getting worse. Then one day, his last one, he saw them. The berries being munched into his poultice. Blueberries. Even he knew that they were useless.

Sageleaf wouldn’t be afraid of admitting her satisfaction at her dear brother’s demise. It didn’t matter. She knew how to asses a cat’s health, and if she assed them too sick or injured to make it with or without the help of herbs, why waste the medicine? Why not speed the process along? Well, maybe Applebelly’s injury wasn’t as bad as some survivors had been, but too late to save him now.

She wasn’t foolish enough to openly give them fake medicine, especially when someone else was around to observe. But with the medicine in a mushed-up poultice, it was easy to hide. And when one coughing queen hacked her guts, she only needed to point the deaf elder out of the den to prevent him from seeing her struggles.

Ill Thornfern could only cough a protest as he, too, realized what he was being fed. Perhaps speeding the process could be seen as mercy, or monstrous. Sageleaf wasn’t one to care.

She didn’t care for her apprentice, Lightpaw, either. She trained him, that was all she needed to do. She refrained from letting his sick mother die, though. She didn’t want a crying apprentice on her paws.

Moons passed. Relatively healthy patients would heal, the others were buried. Lightpaw earned his full name “Lighthawk,” after protecting some run-away kits from a hawk one night while the pair were on their way to the Moonpool. He had sheltered them with his long frame while his mentor fought the creature off.

More moons passed. Sageleaf ached. She now dreaded the trips to the Moonpool. She hated getting up for every patient. It wasn’t an idea she was fond of, but she finally had to admit that she was old. She retired, with the leader’s good wishes, and died peacefully after many moons of rest.

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Additional information:

--Applebelly disliked his sister because he was jealous of how their father spent the most time with her.

He continued to bother her because he was jealous of her uniqueness as a medicine cat, furthering her father’s praise.

Deep down, Applebelly did still care for her, and was deeply shocked and hurt by his death. 

--Sageleaf caught greencough as an elder. Starclan warned Lighthawk against healing her, suggesting to instead give her fake herbs and let her join the afterlife. Lighthawk refused.

--Her mother’s death didn’t really cause Sageleaf’s motive, it just pushed the idea She likely would have done the same whether or not she survived.

--Lighthawk has an apprentice of his own: Brittlepaw.

--The brief mention of her pointing a deaf elder away so that they don’t notice the hacking queen is seen in the comic pages below.

--The comic pages are old af