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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The Deep Lands a blur of shrouded greens in the distance, the meadows a pop of color, the sights and scents and sounds of SummerClan a buzz that Sunstar could not register. Sat beneath a sprawling oak's branches, there was only an imaginary line between the land she owned, her birthright and most prized possession she was hellbent on protecting, and the figure shaping up out of far-off shadows. An abrupt, sweeping lash of her tail signaled the queen's rise, and as Doefreckle made his approach, she was there to match him step-for-step, shoulders taut and head high and eyes hooded by the cast of the sun from behind her.
"Doefreckle." If he expected heat, it was absent from her voice: frozen over. "When I had you exiled from SummerClan, that was a lifetime arrangement. By the count of my nine lives and the breath in your lungs, it seems neither of us have died, and as such your banishment has not yet expired. Put one hair over this border," that line seemed to grow and morph into a wall of ice between them, as impenetrable as Sunstar's gaze, but she secretly worried that if he were to reach a paw out to it, it would shatter. She would be vulnerable to him. He wouldn't; she would make sure of it. "- and I'll kill you myself."
The second Doe recognised Sunstar’s figure approaching from far off across the meadow, he let out a deep, quiet sigh, as frustrated as it was anxious, grief-stricken, frazzled, his eyes rolling back in his head briefly like he was cursing the inability to slink away unseen — now they had to close this awkward distance and have a fruitless confrontation. His heart fluttered in his chest from nerves; his stomach clenched with the feeling of being found out, of being confronted about his pitiful habit. He’d known it would only be a matter of time before she caught wind of his visits to SummerClan, visits that had become more and more frequent, more and more a predictable and vaguely pathetic appointment. A fixture — the flowers bloomed and Doefreckle came at the same time every week to gaze forlornly past the territory markers. Sometimes he would meet (accost, really, quite frantically) Shaded and ask him gently, worriedly, about Sunstar without mentioning her by name and about any news from the Clan, news he nodded along to unblinkingly and lapped up desperately no matter how small or insignificant it was, prompting him for more until he ran out of even the most menial things to tell him; sometimes Bluebelldream would stumble across him and he’d have to explain, without actually explaining, cheerily and unconvincingly avoiding the question with his eyes darting wildly about, why he couldn’t cross the border and join her; sometimes he’d just crouch down and watch a patrol wistfully through the tall flowers. And now, to meet Sunstar and have their animosity remain unchanged… To meet each other as enemies. It pained him.
But he wouldn’t show that. “Oh, you can count!” he greeted, stopping in front of her on the other side of the border. “Fancy that — you’ve been practicing, Sunpetal. Good for you.” At her threat, he let out a scornful burst of laughter, soft brown eyes widening. “Kill me, will you? With those manicured claws?” He let out a breath of mirthless laughter and looked away, silent for a moment. When he looked back, his eyes were wary, distrustful, tired — just let him have this one thing. “It’s not against the rules of my exile to look,” he told her, bitterly quiet. He wasn’t going to beg, but this was as close as he’d come. Don’t take this from me as well, was what he meant. She’d said she would, on that terrible morning — she’d said she’d take everything from him. But with all the time that passed and everything that had once been between them, he hoped the compassion she kept buried so deep in her heart would have softened her stance towards him. Who told you? he wanted to ask, but he knew that would be pointless — it could be anyone. Shaded would keep his secret, but it was already a pretty poor one — the whole of SummerClan probably knew about the pitiful former leader who came to gaze at what had once been his home. It was probably a running joke on the rumour mill. His stomach roiled with self-conscious insecurity at the thought and it took everything in him not to squirm, not to shrink inwards and let the softness of his being swallow up all his performative fire.
"You haven't a morsel of decency in your body, have you?" The Sunpetal Doefreckle would remember, the friend he pined for, had hardened into something cold and divine. She could still retain some of that hard-won softness when she let down her guard, but the trauma and recent losses inflamed at the sight of him, at his barbed tone and spitting resentment. His antagonism stripped away that flicker of compassion he wouldn't have seen- a too-brief flash in her eyes when she'd first seen him appear- and solidified her role here: as Sunstar the bitter queen, all traces of Sunpetal the friend erased. "You betray my clan and disobey my order, yet you've the audacity to mock me? Really Doefreckle," she didn't bite back the harsh laugh that bubbled up, "I shouldn't be surprised. You haven't changed at all. It's a wonder you still have it in you to show your face here; after all, StarClan rejected you as a leader and SummerClan rejected you as a traitor."
Every word was a deliberate strike. Sunstar knew it'd be easy to sink her claws into the softness of him- Doefreckle was only a fighter by necessity, all silken purrs and pretty eyes and wounded innocence- but physical wounds would grate shut and death would release him. Living with the wounds she inflicted on his soul... Well, she hoped that would be unbearable. Taking things from him- inconsequential things like a will to live, happiness, his home- was becoming a secret pleasure of hers.
She sat across from him on the other side of that imaginary line. Her guard was, at the moment, lowered. She relaxed, almost lounged, in that spot, with a halo of wild daisies and summer-sweet smells, as if to mock him with what she had, what he didn't. She even unsheathed those manicured claws and turned them this way and that, inspecting the sharp points at the ends in the glinting light, before seeming to remember he was even there, feigning shock. "Oh, you're still here? Not tired of looking yet, are you?"
You haven’t a morsel of decency in your body, have you? Doe let out a burst of laughter, but his ears flicking slightly back betrayed the hurt. “That’s rich, coming from you,” he snapped back; it came out less care-free and holier-than-thou than he had been hoping for and far more wounded.
At her well-aimed insults, each of them plunging a knife deeper and deeper into his heart and twisting it till it twinged with such a terrible ache, Doe finally lost it. “OH, GEEeeEEeEEeTT OOOOOOVER IT, SUNPETAL!” he exclaimed, tossing his head back and flinging it from side to side, barely resisting the urge to grab either side of her face from across the border and shake her like it would make her see reason, like he couldn’t believe she was still going on about this. And then, suddenly, with a sharp step towards her that brought him dangerously close to the border, he sobered, all the self-obsessed amusement darkening into mirthless eyes and blame. “YOU rejected me as a traitor, not SummerClan — don’t use them to justify your overreaction. And StarClan might have rejected me, but without ME, you and that mother of yours wouldn’t have your GARDEN,” his voice turned mocking, sneering, head tilting like Sunstar’s preoccupation with flowers was something so sweet, so childish; he continued to advance on her slowly, “or your TITLES, or your pretty little flower crowns you use to hide just how ROTTEN you are on the inside. Everything you have is thanks to ME. What have you contributed to our Clan except exiling someone for a MISTAKE and turning your reign into a TYRANNY? You’re SO afraid of being second guessed that you brutalise anyone who tries, and GOOOOOOD FORBID they should ever ask you for forgiveness.” He turned away, paw scraping across the earth where he’d just inched over the border, his voice turning to a bitter mutter, “better luck asking a car not to hit you.” Which, incidentally, he also had experience with.
At her dramatics, Doefreckle eyed her sideways with something close to disgust and sat down heavily, hunched with misery and defensiveness, on the other side of the border, lip curling slightly. It was like watching someone drink their fill when he was dying of thirst. “You know, you really are cruel,” he commented in quiet disgust when she was done with her little show, still watching her out of the corner of her eye, “do you know that?” Like he wasn’t exactly the same. Like they weren’t two sides of the same puzzle piece. Not even that. Like they weren’t two monarchs on the same side of a coin, back to back. “Are you done? Or do you need some time to think up your next witty comeback? It’s hard,” his voice turned pitying; he looked at her fully and tilted his head, frowning at her, “being all looks and no brains. And even then…” He quirked his brows and looked away; the looks are nothing to write home about, it said.
Then, suddenly snapping his head towards her, he gave her a long look through narrowed eyes, like he was assessing something, or like he was telling her what he was about to do — and slid his good forepaw across the border. The soil built up around his toes, pushing towards the leader. It was petty and beneath the both of them, but then, so was this whole falling out. His glare never left hers, daring her to react. What are you gonna do? it goaded her, the immaturity turned hatefully serious in their private war.
As Doefreckle delved into his little tantrum, striking her over and over again until the dents began to form in her armor (nothing more than an internal chant: do not sink. do not sink. do not sink to his level.), Sunstar eventually rose back to her paws. It was all she could do not to fling, strolling- though her motions were too hurried, too stilted, to be casual- along the border for a distance before turning, crossing in front of him, and pacing another distance in the opposite direction. She circled back in time to watch his paw cross over, and she plunged forward to pin in beneath one of her own, though her claws remained sheathed; the gravity of this encounter would fix them both to this area, the planets Sunstar and Doefreckle on an unavoidable collision course.
"Get over it? She pressed down on his foot. "Oh, it's just that easy, isn't it? I forgot how easy it must be for you, since you're clearly very familiar with breaking hearts and leaving the pieces for someone else to pick up." How many nights had she sat in the medicine cat's den, listening to her brother lament over his first love? How many tears had Vulturemalice shed in silence? How many of their clan members pined for this tom, this same one who'd ruined not only her sibling but her too? Sunstar had been there to fix what he'd broken in others, but there was no one to mend the parts he'd destroyed in her. "I should just get over it," she scoffed, incredulous and scathing, "right. I'll just get over it, move on, who cares anyway? Who cares that, while your clanmates suffered, you cuddled up to their oppressor? Who cares that while we were all planning to reclaim our home, you got the VIP package? Who FREAKING CARES that you knowingly slept with Pinesimmer after he killed my father, while the den you slept in was still wet with his blood, and pretended to be oh so sorry for me when I came to you, pretending you'd done nothing wrong- as you still continue to do?" Her toes curled against the paw they pinned, Sunstar glaring into her own reflection in the darks of his eyes, as her composure started to crack. The residual pain bloomed up through the cracks like an invasive weed, still just as poignant as the day they'd last seen each other.
"I'll get over it," Sunstar said slowly, hatefully, each word a crawling growl, "when you keel over and die."
When Sunstar leapt at his paw and pinned it, Doe hissed at how insufferably childish she was, grateful he hadn't put his broken paw across the border instead. He tried to pull away but she held on, surprisingly solid despite her puny size; eventually, he gave in and just sat there, one foreleg extended, awkwardly hunched and glaring at her out of the corner of his eye with a low, unceasing growl rumbling in his throat. The growl didn't stop as she continued, dragging up reminders that ached guiltily in his heart; if there was one thing that was a twisted addiction for him, one thing that made his own abuse lessen for just a few moments, one thing that gave him the short-lived comfort of superiority, of hurting to soothe his own hurt, of being something that was wanted but always denied — if there was one thing that hurt him the way he needed to be hurt, it was breaking hearts. Because then he was worthy of hatred. It gave him the high of being wanted and the pain of the ensuing guilt, the ensuing worthlessness. Toms forced themselves on him — come ooon; you can’t be such a pretty temptress with those kiss-me eyes and not deliver! — and so the power of being able to dangle himself in front of someone and take it away was so agonisingly empowering. Because it was his choice. It was his. Not theirs. For just those times, he was his own.
But it didn't feel like that anymore. He had cared for Vulturemalice, and hurting him... It had to have been intentional, didn't it? He knew what he was doing. He knew. But it hadn't been out of cruelty. And it hadn't made him feel good. It had felt painful. For the first time, he'd wanted to be kind, and he'd tried to be — none of it had been pre-meditated, not that time. It had been the closest to soft selflessness that Doe had ever come. And he'd still hurt him. Even his kindness was a wound; his very touch was poison. He reached out to offer gentleness and left blistering in its stead. The horror of it had left him a staring, gaping wreck. He was a sickness. He'd lain awake in the dark, and he'd felt some unknown weight in his chest. And the guilt of Shadedsun. Of Hywel. None of it felt good anymore. Playing with Shaded's heart had once been his favourite past-time; now, every second word he said to the tom he loved more than his own life was sorry. I'm so sorry for the way I treated you. But he couldn't explain that to Sunstar. He couldn't explain that he cared. She wouldn't believe him. As she moved onto NightClan, he ducked his head and looked away, glaring petulantly at a clump of tough grass with the fur on his shoulders prickling slightly. It was punishment for myself, he wanted to wail back. But he couldn't say that either — the words died on his tongue, from stubbornness or from the learned helplessness of knowing it would fall on deaf ears, would make no difference. He had done it. To keep the guilt from swallowing up his heart, he channeled it into anger at Sunstar.
"Like your dad?" He snapped back, his temper finally cracking completely. "Wanna know how it felt to be taken over your father's blood? It felt great." His voice was spitting, crude rage. "I'll keel over and die," Doe spat back, delirious with hate, suddenly leaning forward until his face was almost pressed against hers, "when SummerClan is in good enough hands that I might not be needed to step back in and save them from your pathetic leadership."
A thunderclap boomed across SummerClan's skies, so violent it shook the very ground. Doefreckle only had time to look up to the heavens — the sky had darkened to a gloomy, ominous storm, unbeknownst to the oblivious, fighting enemies — before his vision was drained of all its colour like oil paints running down a canvas and he collapsed to the earth.
When he awoke, his head was pounding. Squeezing his eyes shut in a few slow, pained blinks, he winced, giving his head a quick little shake like he was trying to clear water from his ears, and pushed himself up into a weak sitting position. Blinking, he looked around — and his blood stilled in his veins. Sunstar lay beside him but he hardly noticed her. All around him was glowing white — the faded outlines of trees, of SummerClan meadows, of undergrowth, but all luminescent like pearls. The air smelled faintly sweet. Everything was ominously silent — no birds, no breeze — and eerily chilled. Empty. But he didn't notice how off it all felt, how it seemed to simmer with barely contained anger. He was blind to it; there was only one thought daring to flicker to life in his mind. Sitting up straighter, he looked frantically over his shoulder — it was the same there, too.
He was in StarClan.
For the first time in his life, he was in StarClan.
He didn't stop to think he should be afraid — didn't stop to think he might be dead, or that this might be a terrible thing. All he could think was that... He was here. After being denied his lives, after being denied the very kindness of being acknowledged, of existing to StarClan at all; after spending two years thinking he was fundamentally broken, that he had done something wrong to be unworthy; after two years of hating them — he was here. And all he could feel was relief, relief so strong it bubbled into his chest like water and escaped his mouth in a desperate, disbelieving sob of laughter. Joy. He teared up with it.
He wasn't broken.
He forgot about Sunstar. He didn't stop to think about how angry she would be, about their fight only seconds before, about the terrible things he'd said, about the fact his back was turned to her sleeping form and that when she woke up he'd be completely defenceless — didn't stop to think they were still locked in a personal war, or that their being in StarClan now was very much not a good thing. That was Doe: always oblivious to the monsters creeping up behind him if the view ahead was pretty and warm. He just stared around at the glowing landscape with his ears pressed back and his brows pushed together and his eyes brimming with soft, smiling tears. He was here.
