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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She hated them. She hated who they were, what they represented, and the despair their presence wrought. Sunpetal hated the NightClan cats with every fiber of her dandelion-loving, spoiled-pampered-princess being, and though she was well aware her constant adamance to be difficult for every one of them jeopardized the mutiny beginning to boil in the heart of SummerClan, she couldn't stop herself from it.
"Careful, the treeline on this side of camp is less dense; you might catch your reflection in a puddle and die." They caught her on a particularly nasty night. She wrenched herself away from the grasp of her escort and, as he attempted to put her back in her place, she glimpsed the three distinctive marks across his chest and hurled a snarl right at them. "One more paw on me and I'll make sure the next ones go through your heart." Sunpetal held the silver stare until Aspenstar's pet broke it, slinking off back to wherever it was he lurked, and she felt herself immediately deflate, sinking to the ground where she stood as the fight drained out of her. She could keep up the appearance of resilience but the exhaustion was clear now; she was tired.
Doe had been watching Sunpetal's interaction with Phantomfox uneasily, sitting tensely a little way away and feeling his chest clench with nerves when the tom manhandled her. As soon as he left, Doe watched him for one long, stressed moment to make sure he was really leaving before hurrying over to her. "You shouldn't antagonise them," he told her in a quiet, anxious voice, sitting at her side before dropping into a crouch, his face close to hers and his worried frown finding her eyes in her own shadow. He could feel the warmth of her, her defeated breathing and body heat, on his muzzle.
Unable to stay still, he sat up again and paced a quick, fretful circle close around her, looking around at the camp like he was making sure it was safe to talk, before dropping back into the same crouch he'd been in before. He slumped his chin onto the toes of his forepaw, looking at her with damp brown eyes like he, the kicked dog, thought she were the kicked dog. "Especially not him. You saw what he did to Rosethorn." Tilting his head so his cheek rested on his paws instead, he added, "although you suddenly being Miss Obedient might raise more suspicions than anything." He tried a smile, eyes not leaving hers, but it just looked worried. "You're not Sunstar yet." His voice was just a soft, fond mumble, a throwback to an earlier conversation rather than any actual deeper meaning, and he smiled, his tired eyes pushing up a little at the bottom.
"I didn't cast the first stone," mumbled Sunpetal, heaving herself up so she was in a sitting position now. She could afford a momentary weakness, letting her weariness show, but one cat being witness to it was enough. She sensed his body heat move closer in the darkness, offering her a place to lean into, but she merely smiled and waved him off despite the sheer effort it took her to do so. "Him doing that to Rosethorn is exactly why he gets my extra special treatment," she added, "They'll find things to harass us for, so why not make it worth it?"
Sunpetal was a radically different cat than she'd been at the beginning of all this. Her denial and fear had been suffocating for everyone around her, her wails heart-shatteringly loud, and that had given way to the hopelessness that rendered her eerily silent, the fight sapped right out of her, but lately she was bolder, brighter, bristling with revived determination. "Speaking of Rosethorn, she's taken a liking to poppies recently." It seemed like a sudden shift of the conversation, oddly juxtaposed to the subject matter they'd previously mentioned, but the cats of SummerClan would pick up on the change. Anyone with a lick of botanical knowledge would know that some varieties of poppies in their famous meadows only opened in the mornings. Sunpetal's gaze found Doefreckle's, reflecting his smile in them.
They'll find things to harass us for, so why not make it worth it? Doe watched her worriedly; that was a philosophy guaranteed to bring far more harm to the captive than the jailer. But he didn't say anything. Instead, he shifted from a bony-shouldered sit to crouching close beside her, soft and warm in the chill of the early night; he couldn't quite loaf because of his broken paw, but he could tuck the others beneath him and soften his body enough to stop forcing Sunpetal to see his anxiety.
But when Sunpetal changed the subject and turned her head slowly to smile at him with that knowing, defiant, almost... triumphant look in her eyes, Doe's anxiety turned to a confused sort of blind hope. He frowned back at her, eyes glowing with an intelligent interest that had been lost lately beneath a dull, quiet glaze. "Oh?" he replied, his voice low. "Have you, too?" Was that where she had been slipping off to? Was that responsible for the constant, impatient tremor that seemed to quiver from Sunpetal's body? "Poppies can be poisonous, you know," he added in that same quiet, careful voice.
If Sunpetal was going to set herself upon this potentially deadly path with this desperate, hateful fearlessness - this recklessness - then someone had to think of the consequences of it going wrong. That had never been his role before - he'd always been the one others had to run after and talk down - but, though he told himself it was purely out of concern for his friend that he loved, he knew so guiltily that it was also a treacherous concern for the NightClan cats, a back-stabbing hesitance to have this occupation end. This wasn't how it was supposed to go - he was supposed to use Stormstar to help SummerClan get its freedom back, to help them overthrow their oppressors. But as much as SummerClan was his everything, his chosen home, his saviour, NightClan was his birth Clan. And being forced into this close proximity with them when he'd spent so long hating and running from them had been strangely healing. He wasn't ready to let go of that when it had just begun - he was afraid to. It was so selfish of him when others were suffering, he knew that - especially Sunpetal. And that was why she could never know. But at that moment, crouched there with her soft pelt against his, he couldn't tell himself which side he'd go to; which side he'd confess each other's secrets to if he were pressed.
Sunpetal inclined her head forward so that when she next looked at Doe, the angle allowed the moonlight to burn a slow, seething silver in the depths of her gaze, unusually tenebrous. "That's why you just cut them off at the stem. The petals will fall on their own," she purred. "The meadows will flourish again soon."
She leaned away, easing back into a more relaxed stance where her tail could curl primly around her paws, her eyes could slit into contentment, and she could feel the trembling nerves against Doe's flank. "How has it been for you? All of this? Has Birdie looked at your paw yet?" Her gaze cast worriedly towards it, remembering the agony he'd endured on that painful limb to stay by her side that night, a quiet mew of gratitude drifting into the sliver of space between them. She had never expressed it since then- but it lingered between them now.
"Oh," Doefreckle laughed, slightly choked. "Good, good." He gave Sunpetal a quick smile, soft and strained, and looked down at his paws. It seemed their roles had utterly reversed; no longer was she the spoiled princess throwing around her family name - now she was the ruthless general fighting for it. And he was a frightened child. She'd grown and evolved and he'd regressed, fallen even further from grace. The young she-cat he'd scoffed at, he was now awed by - intimidated by, like she was keeping a thousand pieces of knowledge behind her eyes that he could never dream of comprehending.
How has it been for you? All of this? Has Birdie looked at your paw yet? Doe fought back a wince. The terror of Sunpetal finding out what he'd done with the tom who'd cut a life out of her father in front of her eyes consumed him and drove him nearly mad; with his paw better, now it was guilty, paranoid fear, imagining all the ways the secret could come out, that needled through his fur and kept him awake at night. Part of him was convinced she already knew, that she knew right now, that she was torturing him with those sharp eyes that looked so warm but that could be hiding such coldness. The other half was eaten alive by the certainty she didn't know, that she still trusted him, that she was leaning against him now as a friend not knowing what he'd done and that she'd be so torn apart by it when it inevitably came out. But it wouldn't. He was driving himself mad with the promise to himself that it wouldn't. He wouldn't let it. Maybe if she succeeded in this, Pinesimmer would be driven out and all he'd have to live with would be the guilt of living the rest of his life as her friend with his lie burrowed beneath his skin. Yet another part just wanted to confess here and now; he had to bite it back, the desperation to just face the penance he deserved. He was too much of a coward for that. God, she was so young and so brave and here he was, afraid to face his friend.
How had it gotten to this point? It was almost sick, the irony of it - he'd butchered his paw to protect her, and protecting her had left him with the pain that drove him to Pinesimmer's den, and that protection had helped set her upon the path that had led her to become the she-cat lying beside him now but reduced him to... this. They were like a scale, one tipped down while the other rose. He wished more than anything that there would come a time, when the ash of this had settled and NightClan was gone and his secret was safe, when the scale would settle, when they could just be friends.
"Yes," he replied at last, and he hoped his voice didn't sound as shaky as it felt. It wasn't a lie; Vulturemalice had treated his paw - it just hadn't worked. The thought of Vulturemalice just made the panicked guilt grow in his chest; he cared for him, and she loved him, and if it wasn't only her that he hurt, if it was Vulturemalice as well... He wanted to cry. "He did. It's better now, I think." He flexed it demonstrably; it responded. There was only the familiar dull ache, a little sharper than before. Doe looked up at her with a smile. "I've been fine. It's strange, having my old Clan living among us, but that's the case for a lot of cats. I'm not special in that - the wound's just... older. It's been a rest on my eyes, to be in the dark, but I'll be happy to go back to the sun." A lie? He choked it back down. His smile softened. "How have you been, my love? How's your father?"
wow what's this? a reply?? it's a christmas miracle
Did she know? Did Sunpetal know that, as she wept over Ratstar in the death-filled gloom, in the next den over Doefreckle- her friend and savior- laid himself next to a murderer by his own choice and enjoyed it? If she did, her eyes didn't betray her; they were like centuries-old ice, hard and impassive and only bright on the surface. Their depths were far more unforgiving in the shadows of the moonlight.
"Good," she breathed, watching his paw flex. Doefreckle's pain twinged on his face despite his efforts to hide it, and the ensuing smile on Sunpetal's face was reaching toward sympathy, reaching out to lower it back to the ground with her own dainty, gentle paw. "You should let it rest. Tomorrow night, maybe, I'll have someone escort me to the Northern Sea. It starts to freeze around this time; I can bring back some ice for you to use." His maw parted, likely to dissuade her, but she interrupted him in a manner similar to how her father would; her tail lifted and cut through his plea, splitting it in half and silencing him.
It's strange, having my old clan living among us. "Is it a good strange? Does it make you homesick?" There was nothing Sunpetal knew of this unique predicament Doefreckle found himself in. Life was joyously routine for her; it always had been. She knew where she belonged as intimately she knew what her brother would eat for breakfast, knew every single cat in SummerClan and the dirtiest of their secrets, and knew down to her core that- even if she left- she would always long to come home even from the other end of the world. When Sunpetal looked at Doefreckle again, after stargazing absently in the lapse of their conversation, her gaze was now probing, trying to find... She was trying to find something within his own eyes, a crack that might leak out his secrets from the utter darkness that was swallowing them. The abyss of them just stared back at her.
Sunpetal smiled wryly at his questions. How was she? Really, truly? "I'm dealing," she allowed after a pause, "and so is Papi. He... He goes between being conscious and comatose, but Birdie says the worst of his wounds have healed. He said the worst of it had healed before he'd checked on it. I just hope he gets better quick so he can fix all of this. I want everything to go back to the way it was." For a painful second, the facade cracked and Sunpetal's youth freed itself of the suffocating snare this occupation had it in, crawling over her features like lightning across a storm-black sky.
