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!
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Doefreckle shouldn't have been here. He'd been good about reining in his curiosity since coming back; he stuck to SummerClan's territory - mostly - and was more-or-less content to give in to the slow, quiet, easy life of camp and the meadows. Though the old Doe would have been horribly bored by the monotony of peace, of the same faces every day, the same scents, the same greetings when he woke up each morning and the same flowers in the same places, the new one was letting himself find out for the first time what it was to have a home you didn't feel the need to run from. He was happy, or getting there. That old constricted feeling in his chest when he stayed in one place for too long, with the whole world out there calling to him and his own inadequacies having a chance to show themselves to the cats around him the longer he let them see him, was softer; he felt like he could breathe, like his lungs were lighter and his heart was freer. For the first time, he could nap during the day and not feel like he was drowning. Shadedsun, Crow, Vulturemalice, Sunpetal, Mudthistle, even Ratstar; he'd never been constantly surrounded by cats who cared about him, who considered him their friend, who worried about his welfare and asked about his day. It made his heart feel warm and safe and vulnerable and frightened all at the same time, until some nights he felt close to a panic attack; how long until he let them down? Until they saw through his sweetness, through to all the things his father and all those nameless toms had seen and been disgusted by?
But there was still that tantalising itch, gentler now that he was older, more fun and less desperate, but hungry all the same. He'd heard, from cats around camp and from Hywel, that the League had moved. And as much as he both hated them and regarded them with utter disdain, it offered him an excuse impossible to argue with - someone had to go and see. It was a disappointment, he thought, though his thoughts were skittish with nerves at being so near the League; the city had been wild and thrilling, in a way that suited Doe's new, tame taste for thrills, self-imposed because he didn't trust himself with the more violent sorts - this was dark woods and ghosts. Same as the League had always been. He'd liked the city... And it had had that cathedral.
So, now, after skirting around the outskirts of the forests with a disapprovingly bratty sort of look on his face, Doe was back near the city. He was in a better mood now - actually, extremely happy; being critical of things cats he didn't like did always worked wonders, even if he always liked to pretend he was so very supportive and gentle (failure was much more exciting to watch than success to a vain, insecure sadist like him, especially if he wasn’t doing too good himself - if he couldn’t succeed, no one should), and, in addition, he'd been proven SummerClan truly was the best place to be. He had a place; he was loved, and he loved in return, with a bewildered, wet-eyed gratefulness; he was needed. He had a look on his face that was all contempt and haughtiness, quirked brows and a set little jaw - which, with how boyish he was, just made him look like a pretty, spoiled, prissy little prince. He was dreading the long walk back to SummerClan, but maybe he could find Hywel and spend the night with him. The silver tom would never turn him down; he liked the immodest feeling that knowledge gave him.
Around him, the dilapidated buildings towered up to the sky, all broken windows and shadows and bricks washed red and orange by the evening sun. Smoke drifted up from a manhole cover in the middle of the road that sizzled and shimmered with summer heat. Doe was sitting in the middle of said empty road, surprisingly fearless despite having been killed by a car two years earlier; but it was warm against his aching paw and the sun fell in perfect waves there that made his fur feel like it was burning, and to a tom with a breathless little penchant for pain, burning was a good thing. He was facing the inner city, eyes closed against the sunshine; it made the dark behind his eyes look orange. It was only when he stood, opening his eyes with a contented little breath, and turned—
That he was confronted with someone right behind him. “Christ!” he hissed, angry and flustered, flitting backward as his ears flattened themselves against his head.
"Well, well, well. You don't look like you belong here."
Unfettered, the stranger ignored Doe's start, scrutinizing him with a pair of eyes that were like a mirror image of his own, if the mirror were trapped in moonless midnight; dark, mirthless, unholy eyes stared back at him, glittering in the sharp sunshine. He loomed slightly above the slender tom, neither too tall nor too bulky, but his head hung low, as if to make them level - or to mask the carnivore's grin hidden in the sloping shadows of his face. He knew his directive, his responsibility, his creed to drive this quivering cat out of the league's domain - that or kill him, whichever was preferable to his mood, since Doefreckle did not strike him as a particularly feral or menacing cat nor one that could take him in a fight if it came came to it - but, like a cat looking down upon a mouse, he found he didn't want to do that. Not yet anyway. Cezra always did like to veer tantalizingly close to defiance.
He moved to the side, circling Doe, each step on the seething asphalt biting against the skin of his pads but he didn't flinch; after witnessing his and his coven's sins, he knew the gods had hellfire and brimstone awaiting him one day. Best to get used to it. He didn't stop until he'd made a full circle around his prey and, when he did, he sat, tilting his head to the side. Something was...familiar about him, in that same manner as when there's a song you think you've heard because it's melody is familiar, although he knew they had never crossed paths before. He smelled a mix of rosemary and orange, but buried under it, he thought he smelled something else. Something, or someone, he knew.
Of course, that couldn't be the case. Cezra didn't know anyone with a penchant for adventure beyond the league. He didn't know any blue eyed boys like that. It was practically unheard of here.
"What are you in for, lover boy? The thrill? The kill? Don't worry; I won't spill your confessions," he taunted, pointed fangs exposing themselves from behind his lip in a beguiling grin. Aching hunger stirred in his belly, eyes moving to where Doe's blood pulsed in his throat. Gods, what he wouldn't give for a taste.
Doe sat back straight as the tom circled him, a disgusted sneer twitching up the calico's top lip. He sat up straighter every time Cezra leaned in closer to avoid being touched, following him from narrowed eyes. God, he hated League cats. Hywel had almost made him forget, but this tom was everything vile and uncouth about the place that made him despise it. That old familiar hatred, the one that had festered ever since the League had killed his kits for one of Mother E'tani's pointless little games, seethed and bubbled quietly in his stomach. He'd wanted the whole group wiped out since he'd first smelled their stench on the twisted little bodies. No - earlier. Ever since Funk, who'd re-broken his paw and left it worse than ever, who'd drugged him to keep him at his side and whispered words like unloveable and worthless that he'd spent years trying to shake off, had slunk into a Gathering as the League's newest Shaman.
"Neither," he snapped back, sharp and prissy. It was almost absurd, how out of place Doe was beside Cezra - he would have been little nipped in waistcoat and cane and pretty curls next to black eyes and snapping teeth. "And whatever this archaic little back-and-forth is meant to be, it's already getting quite dull. So tell whichever Nemesis it is you have nowadays - or whatever stupid moniker you give your leader - that you were very scary and chased away the interloper and let's nip it in the bud. Mm?" Doefreckle stood and, with a lingering glower at the tom, moved to shove past him.
Oh, these interlopers were just so silly! Cezra bit back a laugh as Doe attempted to shove him away, drunk off the thrill of prey that wasn't afraid to bite back a little bit. Though, they both knew that only one cat here fit the role of hunter, the assassin taking in the tom's prim posture and pretty pelt and the peculiar way he nursed a paw against his chest the second he wasn't alone. "It doesn't seem like you've come all this way just to up and leave on my account," he mused, ignoring the seething way the tom spoke, "Why, it looks like you came here for a reason. I'd hate to see you go home empty pawed, lover."
He leaned in close, reaching a paw out as if to rest it against Doefreckle chest, but no sooner had he felt the graze of fur tickling his pad had that same paw slammed down, catching Doe's broken one beneath it. The sickening crunch of bones that never healed properly caused a shiver to run up his spine, hooded eyes flashing appreciatively.
Doe had been eyeing Cezra warily, his gaze flicking uneasily between the tom's eyes. And then, Cezra crushed his broken paw beneath his own, forcing him to lurch down slightly. Doe let out a cry - there was no potential for snark or pretend when the pain that flashed up from his leg and through his body was so burning, so complete. It made him dizzy and for a second he did sway, blinking frantically to dispel the static haze of black and white. The cry turned to a high sob, and the sob turned to a shaky hum as he tried to get himself back under control. He wasn't going to let this tom win, not like he once would have. Not like he once did with Funk.
The heat of the road radiated against his face as he looked up at Cezra from where he was half stooped against the concrete, his flank pressed against it. "What is WITH you League cats and your obsession with my paw?" he choked out accusingly, his voice trembling and borderline tearful, weak despite how hard he tried to make it flippantly defiant, pretend he didn't care, stand up against Cezra - and the question was genuine; there was no humour in it, despite how much he tried to make there be, just a half hateful, half almost heartbreaking begging to know why this kept happening to him. Why they had to be so cruel.
He wanted to rip his paw out of Cezra's grip, scrape it against the concrete and be free of him, tried to work himself up to do it - it would just be a momentary flash of pain, he could handle it. But the terror of that brief moment stilled him to inaction. The fresh, hot agony on top of what was already baseline pain every day of his life was enough to make treacherous tears well in his eyes. He couldn't do it. So he just stayed there, half-crouched, head bowed, waiting to be let up.
It took everything in him to hold back the whine fluttering in his throat; it was pathetic, and he dreaded what Cezra could make of it on top of the averted eyes and the yielding stillness. So, he stayed silent, waiting until he could be allowed to retreat back to the safety of SummerClan with his tail between his legs. Humiliating - but at least he would be alive.
There was something about the way prey screamed when hurt that made him feel all funny on the inside, and the way Doe looked up - pleading, resentful, desperate - was enough to make a grown man swoon. He resisted the croon in his throat, instead savoring the moment before it was gone too soon, and then he was agitated, frustrated to hear his methods compared to others in the league. His face was close, too close; his breath hot on the other tom's cheek; his gaze dark and domineering; his claws itching to push forward, break skin, release the delicious blood within. It would be so easy to do and Doe would be powerless to stop him. "Perhaps, if this paw of yours is such a nuisance when you deign to trespass on another group's territory," he hissed, nearly frothing at the mouth, "it would be best to eliminate it? I could certainly be of service to you with that, love."
He'd killed and drank his victims' blood before, sure, but amputation was never a type of torture he'd ever considered before. Something about it made the gold behind his eyes sparkle, glittering blankly as he let the suggestion sink in on Doe's face.
For a long moment - a moment too long, really - Doe just stared up at Cezra, his eyes wide and his breath frozen in his lungs. Then, finally, he wrenched himself from the other tom’s grip and fumbled out from beneath him in one messy movement, staggering backwards low to the ground. “Get off me,” he snapped, but his voice was just a bit too breathless, a bit too guilty, a bit too flustered to hold true terror.
It had been so long - so, so long - since he’d been in pain. Since he’d been afraid. Since he’d felt that brutal, snarling brand of love that left bruises and fractures and tasted like his own blood in someone else’s mouth. He’d made that vow to himself when he came back and so far he’d stuck to it - and it had been good; for the first time in so long, he was happy. But here, now, with that addictive promise held in front of him, he felt that terrible, destructive crooning that happiness was boring and was confronted with how weak he really was. It was like all the good things in his life - friends, a home, a tom he was telling himself he wasn’t falling in love with - were suddenly peeled away like tattered wallpaper and revealed to be fake, and this, this familiar intoxication, was the only thing that had ever been real. The pink, guilty flush in his ears was treacherous.
“No, love,” Doe shot back, nursing his paw protectively against his chest; it was worse than before now - he tried to move his dew claw but couldn’t feel it enough to find the right muscle. His voice was feebler than he had been hoping for, quivering slightly around the edges and sounding more like a weak, hateful flirtation than genuine defiance.
"Oh?" He crooned. "You don't sound so sure?" Cezra creeping around Doe was akin to a lion stalking an injured antelope, his stance dangerously poised to leap at any moment and chase down one that stood no chance at escape and whittle down the distance between them until he was rewarded for his efforts. He always was a better hunter than fighter, thrilled by the chase and the stealth, the look of terror on unsuspecting prey, the knowing that he could dissolve himself into shadow and lurk and reign. He could imagine a thousand different ways Doe could try to flee, shake him off, thunderously defy fate, but there was only one end to it and all it would take was one little leap.
Doe tried to suppress a shiver as he watched Cezra circle around him - and failed. His heart was thudding in his chest; he was sure it must have been visible to the tom. He backed around in the frail beginning of a circle, trying to keep Cezra in sight, before giving up and just staying still. He knew what was coming, and he knew better than to try to run - there was no hope in that. He just accepted the inevitability of the pain and tried not to hate himself too much for the thrill that shuddered through his stomach at the thought of it. Close enough to touch. But really, the thrill was still slightly disappointed. He wasn’t a masochist, didn’t like pain - it was the degrading intimacy of it, the flirtation that darkened, the way someone looked at him when they didn’t love him, when they were just using him, that he’d always had a weakness for. This by itself, this fear, this impending pain - he’d survive it, because he was better at surviving than the best killer was at killing, because he always did, but it would be such a disappointing missed opportunity if he just let it continue on its present course without trying to reroute it to something that better suited him. Maybe it was just a twisted defence mechanism that kicked in now to protect Doe; maybe it was something from his coquettish, shameless apprenticeship waking back up.
When Cezra leapt, the only resistance he met was a quiet, startled cry from being jerked out of his thoughts. Doe wasn’t going to give him the joy of a struggle, of a fight, of pleading - he knew that would frustrate him more. There was nothing worse for a hunter than prey that didn’t give them the reaction they’d been hoping for, that didn’t squeal. Doe just crouched there, his body consciously relaxing until it practically melted beneath the tom, his muzzle close to the hot pavement and his hindlegs drawn under him. He didn’t bow his head, just looked at Cezra out of the corner of his eye. “You know,” he told him, and his voice was sweet with disappointment in him. He tried to roll over beneath him, only managing to move a little further onto his back. His forepaws were now crushed against Cezra’s chest. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so let down by a handsome tom’s narrow-mindedness. You keep calling me lover and now you’re just going to renege on that promise? For a bit of blood that I’m only too happy to give? It’s… tragic.” He sighed like a little old-Hollywood actress and shook his head sadly, sharp eyes still on Cezra like a challenge. “I’m always being hurt by fickle toms.”
