High on the bank, a tiny feline figure slipped behind rocks and snowbanks. Her green eyes were flinty, they glinted in the light, tracking the tom padding along the river’s edge. He wasn't a very alert one, was he? Her jaws were lightly parted, drinking in his scent, memorizing it, trying to pick apart the pieces of it she knew. She knew it, damnit.

Rocks clattered when the tom stumbled, then tumbled, clumsy over the loose stones. “Ouch,” he muttered, lifting his paw to rasp his tongue across it. Pfft. Pathetic.

“Better watch my step,” he said to no one at all.

She crouched low behind a snowdrift. Who is he, who is he, who is he? He looked like her. Fire and snow. Sleek. Patched. Striped. She parted her jaws wider. That’s him. Who’s him? Him. Him. Who? There was a life before all this. He was there. It’s him. It’s him it’s him!

Her claws flexed in the snow, heart pounding. She could not forget the dead and gone, the deserters, the ones before. She knew who this was, didn’t she?

And then Scratch was there, standing in front of him. Her ear flicked, and her smile was sharp. ”Better watch for company too.”

Who is he?

Her pelt rippled in a twitch. She stepped toward him. ”I don’t know—Where are you from?” We know him. That’s not right. It is. It’s him. She didn’t know him. Think, think, who is he?

Bloody memories. Flashes of claws. A stench. Cawing crows, yowls. Scratch’s heart raced, and she tensed as his paws pulled under him. A flash of delight—was she going to spread her claws today? Fight or flight. Fight.

Then—

"Y...Yoko?"

She flinched, as if she’d been struck. Who is that? No one. You know. There was a sharp ring in her ears, and she stared with narrowing vision at the tom before her. Her heart thudded hard against the cage of her chest. The name was there, at the front of her mind, as if it had been there the whole time.

”Koda?” Her voice was very small. The last time she’d said that name, it had been hoarsely cried from a raw throat, desperate and afraid. A tremble rippled through her.

He left! Deserter. He was right there. A bird cawed, and her lip feathered into an almost-snarl, eyes still round in shock. Koda. He left. She blinked. He was a kit again, like her. Blink. He was grown up. Big. Different. Still Koda.

”You… came back?”

"I thought you were dead,” he replied. “I...I thought everyone was dead."

Everyone is dead. She only blinked at him, her head lowering. Dead, gone, abandoned.

"Mom said to run and I thought you and Kurama were behind me."

Run! Mother’s voice. How long since she’d heard that voice echo through the fragments of her memory? Taken down. She’d been taken down, right before claws swung down at her own face—

"This whole time, I've been searching for anyone who survived. I can't believe you're alive Yoko."

Her pupils went wide and she hissed. ”You didn’t look! I waited! I waited for all of you!” No one came. Only Dreath. Then she barked a laugh, her smile looking more like a snarl. ”Yoko is dead. It’s Scratch now. Scratch.”

A crow cawed and her head snapped around. ”Shut up!”

“I was captured by twolegs the morning after the attack,” he said.

Her head snapped back around and her tail lashed. Two-legs. No-furs. Up-walkers. She’d only seen one in person a time or two. Monstrous things, tall-ugly-loud-stupid—Koda left her for those—

“It took time to heal, to escape. Please, sister. I swear, I looked.”

Sister. She was his sister. Small. Scarred. Rearranged now. Not Yoko. Not Yoko, we are not Yoko. And still she was, somewhere. Blink. Koda was a kit again. Her eyes darted all over him, and when the crow cawed again, she only lashed her tail.

”You… were captured.” Her voice was hard.

Deserted. Left. Abandoned. Captured. Wounded. Lost. A large, loud part of her raged against the violation of all she had known the majority of her life.

A small, quiet part of her yearned for her brother, for the gentle family that existed in another life.

”Is…” She struggled with the words. Her head lowered as she stepped forward. ”Is Karuma alive too? Did he look?”

“I don’t know,” Koda said, and her ears swiveled back. “I haven’t see any of us since that day.”

An unbidden growl rumbled in her chest. Gone. Left you.

“But he might be!” Was her dear brother frightened of her? Trying to placate? Was he a liar? “He could be looking now. Or he could… it was a bad night. I don’t know many of us made it.” He paused, and her eyes narrowed. “Have you… seen anyone else since that night? From our family?”

She straightened, laughed, the sound too light for the sharp shine in her eyes. ”Karuma lives,” she said. ”There were burial mounds when I crawled out from under a rotting body. They smelled of his claws. He buried them and left me. Left dear baby sister to bleed and slumber with torn flesh for a den. Left Yoko to die.” Her bitter smile turned dark, voice shaking with tension. ”No… Silly question. Silly me. He doesn’t look. Doesn't care. Not like my new family!”

Dead! Deserved it. He deserved it. Betrayal. Anyone can betray anyone.

Scratch tilted her head as a crow’s wings fluttered up high, feathers ruffling. ”Mother is dead. Did you know that? I watched that. Cut down like a stalk of grass in the way.”

Scratch hadn’t forgotten the way the grief that flickered across his face felt. She remembered crying for them, until the festering love and hurt boiled down into acidic anger and hate.

"I'm sorry,” her brother said softly. Brother. How strange that was. “I'm sorry you lived through that, that you had to see that."

Her face was hard, and she shivered, as if the cold were just now getting to her. She hadn’t felt small in a long time. She felt so small now—angry—afraid—lost—sad—angry, angry angry.

His eyes opened. Eyes like hers. Something seemed to dawn on him. "New family?” Draeth. “You have a new family?" Right.

“I did,” she said, tone starting light before it descended into barely controlled fury. “They’re all dead now, like all of you. They deserved it. My new father fixed me after he helped me see—all the time, telling me you abandoned me when he—he was going to fucking give me away—did he know the truth? About you?”

Left. He left he left he left he left they left—

The crow cawed.

”No! They took him,” she snarled at it. ”He didn’t leave.”

Her eyes snapped back at Koda, and her head tilted. How strange to happen upon him, when she’d turned her old life into a dream, one shattered by Karuma’s fucking idiocy, his abandonment.

”I hated you,” Scratch said. ”I hated you all so much that I seared it into my soul. I held onto it even as everything else faded away.”

She had tried to suspend her family in the amber of her hatred. But her hate wasn’t enough to keep their faces. One day came that she couldn’t recall their mother’s name. She lost the shade of her eyes, the cadence of her voice. She forgot the way a smile traced a path over Koda’s face. She forgot Karuma’s laugh. What had her father smelled like? One day, she couldn’t remember what love was at all. Draeth replaced them. Quill. Suki.

”That family,” she spit, voice tightening, intensity bristling through her, ”carved me up and put me back together, made me forget everything but how much I fucking hated you before they betrayed me too. I tried so hard to remember my name, brother—I tried, I tried! Yoko. I was Yoko. I was Yoko.”

Her breathing was hard, and she stepped closer to Koda, her eyes wide, bright, and desperate to understand. To be understood.

”But the time rolled by.” The words were remote. ”And when I have lost everything that made me who I was, what does a name mean, anyway? Scratch is just fine.” She stopped barely a pace in front of Koda, head tipped up toward him. ”But here you are. A piece of who I was.”

“I’m so sorry Yoko—” —she sneered— “Scratch, whenever your name is. It doesn’t matter, a name is a name.”

Is it?

“But you’re my sister. I still love you.”

Love? What the fuck is love, even?

“I know I wasn’t there for you, I wish I could have been.”

If wishes were prey, she’d be full for seasons.

“I’m here now. We both are. I’ve been trying to live as our family did, carry the memory and traditions.” Green eyes narrowed. “We could do it together? If you want?”

Scratch blinked a few times. ”Together?” Her voice was small again. Childish. She felt like a child. She always did, didn’t she? An angry, scorned, abandoned child. Broken and clawed and alone. Alone. Alone. Alone. Her head tilted—more like twitched—to the side. Her face warped with emotion, eyes filling. ”All anyone has ever done is hurt me, brother. Will you do that too? Will you hurt me?”

Safer alone. She was safer alone. But so, so lonely.