Warrior Cat Clans 2 (WCC2 aka Classic) is a roleplay site inspired by the Warrior series by Erin Hunter. Whether you are a fan of the books or new to the Warrior cats world, WCC2 offers a diverse environment with over a decade’s worth of lore for you - and your characters - to explore. Join us today and become a part of our ongoing story!
News & Updates
11.06.2022 The site has been transformed into an archive. Thank you for all the memories here!
Here on Classic we understand that sometimes life can get difficult and we struggle. We may need to receive advice, vent, know that we are not alone in our difficult times, or even just have someone listen to what's going on in our lives. In light of these times, we have created the support threads below that are open to all of our members at any time.
Doefreckle wasn't self-destructing. He was... adventuring.
Because he was free now! No more leadership, no more responsibilities to SummerClan - he could go back to doing what he'd loved as a young warrior: exploring, and wandering, and discovering new things. It wasn't because he was feeling lost and insecure and useless, wasn't because he no longer felt like he had a place or a reason; no! He was just doing what made him happy. The world was vast and endless, and now that he was no longer burdened by a -star suffix, he had the freedom to enjoy it. He wasn't reneging on his promise to himself, the promise that said this time will be different. This time, I'm not going to get myself hurt. This time, I'm going to focus on healing and finding happiness.
He was just embracing his new life as a bachelor. His best friend he'd only just realised he was in love with all along? Dead! His first love? Moved on! His kits? All grown up without him and scattered to the four winds! He'd never even met them! Ha! Yay! Life was truly beautiful.
Doe limp-trotted through the soft dusk, forcing a smile and trying to muster up more enthusiasm for his little adventure than he actually felt. The sky was still pinkish from the beautiful sunset; there was a cool, gentle breeze that rustled the few leaves overhead; the air smelled like chimney smoke and apples and, very distantly, fairy floss. It was good. He was good. Everything was good.
SwiftClan’s camp had quickly become too suffocating for Peachblush that evening. His fellow Clan members were both too cautious and yet too insensitive around him; they tip-toed around issues like his mate’s death or his son’s accident, but in a way that it was all too obvious what they were doing. He’d had enough of the curious stares, the hushed whispers that lingered around him like flies to a corpse. If he were still in DayClan, perhaps he could’ve confided in another one of his children—the first litter he’d had with Fuzzyheart, who were adults with their own families now. But he’d gone and left them when he couldn’t hack it after Fuzzyheart’s passing, and they’d lost two fathers as a result.
He saw very little way out of the estranged relationships he had with them now.
That was the thought that accompanied him as he trekked aimlessly through the wild, his destination a mystery even to himself. His eyes sought out whatever sights they could in the sparse forest ahead of him, until they caught the form of a distinctly feline shape moving through the territory. Peachblush squinted, trying to make out the details. “Is that...Doestar?”
Doe had been poking his head into a rabbit warren under an oak trunk when he heard the faint voice. He started upright, whacking his head against the roots and letting out a hiss. Turning, he glanced around the pink-tinted woods, rubbing the fur between his ears with his good paw and keeping himself in a precarious sitting position with his broken one. Finally his gaze settled on the ginger and white tom squinting at him.
"Oh!" he chirped, letting out a flustered little laugh and lowering his paw. "Uh... Peachblush, isn't it?" For a split second he thought about repaying the favour and calling him Peachstar, but he quickly brushed aside the nasty little impulse. "And it's Doefreckle now, actually. Just Doefreckle." He smiled, a soft little expression laced with just the tiniest hint of rawness. "Look at us now, huh?"
He had no clue how much the former... God, he'd lost track of the amount of titles the other tom had held. Leader, Heda, something in DayClan while Doe had been... away. He'd only seen and heard of him in passing - they'd just narrowly missed each other, the ginger tom abandoning SpringClan at the same time Doe was joining SummerClan. He'd always had this vague little notion in his head of how pretty he was, but he'd been aware of his formidable bengal mate and had never thought about it beyond the occasional passing daydream on the edge of sleep. Anyway, he had no clue how much Peachblush knew of him - didn't know if he was aware of his death, the two years he'd spent being dead, any of it. Half of him hoped he wouldn't ask about it; the other half was desperately aware that if anyone was going to understand at least a little of it, it was him.
Peachblush faltered for a second at the other cat’s correction. “Right. Of course,” he said, and dipped his head in an unspoken apology. He didn’t know why he was thrown off by it. Plenty of former leaders dropped the leader suffix from their names if they stepped down, Peachblush himself included. Some annoying contrarians like Cradlegrave even refused to take the suffix in the first place.
Now that the initial surprise of meeting a non-SwiftClanner out here had mostly worn off, Peachblush found himself...mostly confused, with a dash of intrigue. He hadn’t known Doefreckle well when the other tom had been around—they’d always just sort of missed each other, the timing never being quite right. Privately, the other tom reminded Peachblush of himself in some ways, although that was based entirely off his surface-level observations. He didn’t have much else to go on, anyway. But that wasn’t what piqued Peachblush’s interest the most—even if he hadn’t known Doefreckle well, he still knew that the tom was supposed to be dead.
“I must admit, Doe—freckle, I thought you had...” Peachblush searched around for the right words. “...Passed on, to put it as delicately as I could.”
"Oh." Doefreckle let out another soft little laugh, this one slightly sadder than the other. As much as he'd been privately hoping Peachblush would pry, he was now struck with the terror of having to be honest. He'd always had... a strange relationship with honesty. Most would say he wore his heart entirely on his sleeve, that he never knew when to shut up, never knew how to anything other than blab. But that wasn't entirely true. Sure, he'd ramble about things that didn't really matter - stories, the sunset, harmless events that had happened in his life. But the things that truly did matter? The Doefreckle he pretended to be was the honest one. The Doefreckle who was mean, who was vain, who was self-absorbed and petty and self-destructive in all the ways that weren't pretty or romantic - that one struggled with it.
Offering a small, shy smile, he limped a little closer and sat down, curling his tail around his paws. Out of pure habit, he tried his best to obscure his broken paw from view. "Well, I- I had," he started shakily, flashing another smile like he was apologising for his nerves. He cleared his throat and looked down, voice growing quiet. "I was passed on for two years, actually." His mouth hung open for a moment, chin moving up and down as he searched for the words to describe it. Finally, he decided against it at all. Looking back up, he concluded gently, "and then I woke up. And everything was different. They had a new leader, most of the cats I'd known were dead or gone, and I was... obsolete. So," he added, voice soft and tired and his gaze and smile equally so, "now I'm out here. Far from a home that doesn't need me anymore."
Peachblush’s mouth fell open, slightly agape as Doefreckle recounted his—frankly, harrowing tale. He nodded in faux understanding throughout it, but the truth was he had absolutely no idea what to make of that. He’d heard of cats rising from the dead before, but not like this. Not someone who’d reportedly passed on, then come back to life with seemingly no divine reason whatsoever. This one is going to take some absorbing, Peachblush thought, and tried to find the words to comfort him.
“I’m sorry about losing your Clanmates,” he said carefully, unable to hide the slight way his brow had furrowed in thought. Perhaps what Doefreckle was feeling was a bit like how Peachblush himself would feel if he returned to DayClan, or even SpringClan—children grown up, loved ones passed on, no one in the Clan he had personal ties with. Not that he had many of those in SwiftClan either apart from the litter he’d adopted, but that had been his choice, mostly. “It must be very hard to go through, waking up one day and finding out everything’s changed seemingly overnight. Including the laws of the known universe itself. Regarding...your un-death, I mean.”
Doefreckle watched Peachblush with faint amusement softening his features. He'd never met someone so gratingly polite before - never met someone whose politeness teetered so dangerously close to snobbiness. It was endearing enough to make his heart squeeze in that old, familiar way. He chided himself silently. He studied the smaller tom as he spoke, a small smile on his face. His attempts at comfort fell on deaf ears - there wasn't much comfort anyone could offer in a situation like this, and he'd given up searching for it before he'd even started - but the way he said it...
Regarding... your un-death, I mean. Doefreckle purred a quiet laugh. He enjoyed the way the ginger tom had to consciously correct what seemed to be a deceptively waspish personality. "Yes, Peachblush," he replied with a teasing little half-grin, "death is a little challenging. How terribly astute of you to notice." He suddenly remembered the bengal tom he'd glimpsed hanging around him and flicked his eyes up, half expecting to see him through the trees. "You had a mate, didn't you? The one with-" He stopped himself. The one with the missing eye. The parallels between Peachblush and himself just kept on growing. He twitched his tail-tip at the irony. "The one with the bengal markings. He won't be worried about you out here by yourself?"
Now it was Peachblush’s turn to be not know what to say. Fuzzyheart’s death still weighed heavily on his soul—they’d never found the body, and Peachblush had always tried to phrase it as his mate’s assumed passing. Whether he’d been trying to remind other people that his death wasn’t certain or merely convince himself he wasn’t sure, but as the moons passed, he’d come to accept his loss. There was a brief moment where he considered Doefreckle’s resurrecting and whether it could happen to Fuzzy some day, but he pushed the thought out his mind as firmly and definitively as he could. There was no point in clinging to hope he should’ve lost a long time ago.
None of that mental tangent really answered Doefreckle’s question though, so he bit the bullet and opened his mouth to speak. “Yes,” he said softly, staring out in the direction of DayClan. “He would be worried, I think. But unfortunately, he’s...no longer with us. For a little over half a year, now.” No, he was not still counting the days. He was getting better, dammit. He had to be.
Doefreckle had been beginning to worry, since coming back, that he'd lost the ability to feel. He'd always had the capacity for detachment and coldness, but by and large he'd felt too much. Too much anger, too much grief, yes - but the softer emotions, too. Too much joy at the little things; too much love for pretty strangers; too much kindness, enough to make his heart break at a baby bird fallen from its nest into the flowers or at the grave of an elder he never knew. Not only had he started to worry he couldn't feel anymore, but he'd started to worry, even before his death, that his heart had been hurt enough times that there was nothing left but the cruelty he'd learned from others. Could he still have that gentle heart in love with the world, he'd wondered, late at night alone in his den or out on the meadows, or was he just the shell all that violence had left? Was he doomed to just pretend for the rest of his life?
Now, as fresh grief rushed into his chest, he felt like he knew the answer. He wasn't broken; he was just hurt. And you could heal from hurt. There was hope in hurt.
"I'd say I'm sorry," he murmured, "but I know that's the last thing you'd want to hear." Drawing in a quiet, shuddering breath, he continued, "I lost my mate as well. Well, I say mate - he was... He wasn't..." He pawed at the earth, searching for the right words. "He loved me, but I was an idiot. It was only during those two years, a long time after he died without me, that I finally realised how stupid I'd been. And now, it's too late. He's gone, and he died thinking he meant nothing to me." He let out a quiet, humourless laugh, rolling over a stone with his paw. "Maybe he's in StarClan now. I hope so. If I thought he was trapped in the same place I was, in that half-life, I don't know what I'd do. I wouldn't get up in the morning. And that's hard enough already." He flashed Peachblush a small smile.
Doefreckle was silent for a moment, searching the other tom's blue gaze. "So, I won't say I'm sorry. Because if I get one more 'sorry' from SummerClan, I won't be responsible for what I might do." He let out a groan. "And then there's the awkward, overly-kind silence - don't get me started on that." He batted the stone away with his paw, watching as it clattered roughly against a tree trunk. He turned back to Peachblush, his smile playfully exasperated. "We've suffered grief, we know, we get it - shut up about it, or scream about it to the heavens above, or just stop. Y'know? Christ."
