komorebi ; connected one-shots
pairings ; mentioned past leafpool / crowfeather, mentioned one-sided nightcloud / crowfeather
word count ; 1,850.
notes ; alternatively titled, 'a warriors fic in 2018? more likely than you think!'. see end for more details.
komorebi ; meaning
'sunlight filtering through leaves'
"Keep still!"
Crowfeather's voice is a harsh growl around a mouthful of gray fur, commanding the young kit in his jaws to stop kicking and fighting the water. The lake was cold, and full of sloshing waves. It certainly didn't help that the thing was spluttering and desperately gasping for air, trying to fill it's lungs with the oxygen they had been deprived on. While he was glad the thing didn't seem dead, they weren't out of the waters yet— both metaphorically and literally.
As his dark paws hit the earth beneath him, a sign they were close to the stony shore where his four Clanmates were waiting, he has to scold the youth for squirming once more, as the small tabby was trying to walk himself to the shore.
"Stop wriggling!"
After his sharp hiss the young cat seems to understand what he's supposed to do (finally!) and the older tom manages to pull him up and onto the pebble lined shore, where the kit soon begins coughing and hacking. Instinctively he pushes his paws against a small chest, working hard to help remove any remaining water from the gray kit's lungs.
Heatherpaw, his apprentice, looks at him with worried blue eyes. "Will he be okay?"
"Who's there? Are you warriors?" The stranger rasped, his voice weak and eyes vacant from shock.
"What do you mean?" She asks, pacing around the small kit with brief curiosity; soon it's replaced by shock. "He can't see!"
Soon her mentor is overcome with his own form of disbelief, amber eyes blinking with utter confusion. He focuses hard on the small kit, trying to figure out why someone would let him go anywhere on his own.
His voice escapes, his usual deep and angry hiss. "What in the name of Starclan is he doing out here by himself?"
He turns his gaze to Whitetail, a senior warrior and his only son's mentor, who only gave a shake of her head and a look that conveyed her own uncertainty. Beneath it, there was her usual motherly concern; the face of a queen who had lost all her kits, who didn't want to see someone else lose theirs. She bends her small head down and began to graze her tongue over the kit's gray fur, and with brief deliberation Crowfeather bends his head down to join her in soothing the shocked young tom.
"Will he be okay, Whitetail?" The brown tabby pelt of his apprentice moves closer, crouching her shivering body down beside the youth.
Lifting her head up, the white she-cat speaks soft. "He'll be fine, Heatherpaw. Can you hear me?"
Slowly, the kit nods his head, clumsily dragging himself into a sitting position. His blind gaze traced over each of them, as though he was perfectly capable of seeing the four of them. He pauses for a brief moment, before shaking his entire body out, water once soaking through his fur now streaming through the air searching for somewhere to land; every single one of them jumps away to avoid getting wet, though for Crowfeather it's a matter of not getting even more soaked.
Now that he wasn't drenched from head to tail, they all could pick up on the distinct smell of Thunderclan, full of oak trees and undergrowth, and a slight tinge of herbs. It's a scent he tries not to take a deep breath of, it's familiarity to someone of a distant past almost too much. Yet he contains himself, and instead focuses on the snarling face of his son, Breezepelt.
"Typical that a Thunderclan cat should thank us by trying to drown us!"
With a swift cuff over the ears, the father responds. "Stop making a fuss, Breezepaw! It's only a few drops of water."
Uncertainty washes over him, though it's well contained as he approaches the small tom, leaning so close in that he could feel breathes mingle. He demands answers, harsher and more prickly than the sharpest of thorns.
"What were you doing so far from your camp? Is there anyone with you?"
"Be gentle, Crowfeather. He's had a bad shock." Whitetail pleads with him to be easier, yet he still needs to make a show of being loyal to Windclan, even though it's been many moons since he last interacted with a Thunderclan cat in a slightly kind manner. Rasping her tongue over the little one's ear, she gives a small look of reassurance, though the kit can't see it. "You're safe now, little one."
The kit's body, once stiff with anxiety, slowly eases into relaxation beside the white she-cat. He leans against her, sapping warmth from her soft fur, looking for shelter from the harsh winds of the moors.
Once she sees him calm, she gives their introductions, each cat getting a flick of her tail with their name. "I'm Whitetail. This is Crowfeather, and these are our apprentices, Heatherpaw and Breezepaw. We won't hurt you."
"I think he might have guessed that by how we just saved his life!" Breezepaw mutters, earning a sharp glare from both his father and the gentle warrior.
"I wish you'd teach your son some manners, Crowfeather!" She huffs, though seeing that the dark tom was focused entirely on the gray tabby, she quickly turned her attention back to him as well. "What were you doing out here alone? Did you know you were heading for Windclan territory? Are you in trouble?"
The kit looks away, almost guilty. "I will be."
"I should hope so!" The oldest tom snaps, an almost fatherly tone he had rarely used with his own son coming out. "What was your Clan thinking, letting you wander off like that?"
Heatherpaw, with skills unlike any other, manages to completely ignore the situation at hand, leaning in close to the tom until her whiskers brushed against his tabby pelt, her bright coloured eyes blinking up with nothing but curiosity.
"Can you see anything at all?"
The black tom, barely bigger than the kit, snorts. "If he can, he must be stupid, walking off the edge of a cliff!"
"I didn't walk off the edge!" The smallest hisses back.
He only earns a doubtful sniff. "It looked like it from where we were standing."
Having enough with this childish banter, Crowfeather quickly scolds his son once more— hissing that he'd be quiet, and he's almost filled with relief when the apprentice shuts his yap. Son or not, he shouldn't be making comments like that, though perhaps he's just being a bit hypocritical. After all, there was more similarities between him and Breezepaw than they both cared to admit.
With a harsh sigh, he turns to his Clanmates. "I suppose I'd better take him back to Thunderclan,"
He gives a quick look back at the young cat, who stared blankly into space while his tail twitched in anticipation.
"Are you well enough to travel?"
With a large nod of his head, the gray kit heaved himself to his shaky paws, determination filling his face to not be seen as weak in front of members of another Clan. He takes a deep breath, and bows his head politely, matching the words he quickly mewed. "Thank you for rescuing me, but I can find my own way home."
"There's no way I'm letting you wander off by yourself again," The dark gray warrior insists, and landing his tail on the shoulders of the smaller cat, he gives a quick order back to the other three cats as he leads the pair down the beach. "Whitetail, take Heatherpaw and Breezepaw back to camp."
The trip is full of silence.
Crowfeather discovers that the kit isn't so much a kit after all, despite his tiny body and fluffy fur. Apparently he's an apprentice named Jaypaw, and one look at the interactions between him and his old friend Squirrelflight is all he needs to know to see who's kit this is. She presses her ginger muzzle to his still-damp fur, giving him quick but ferocious licks between the ears as she asks questions to the Windclan warrior.
The air was tense, full of a sensitivity and awkwardness he hasn't felt in a long time. He had quickly stopped being friends with the cats from other Clans as soon as the journey had ended, though a certain incident involving the ginger she-cat's sister might've helped amplify the tricky mood.
As he makes a comment on kits wandering off on their own, her only response makes his stomach churn, her words like ice.
"Crowfeather, I believe Windclan once had cats who went wandering farther than they should."
He struggles not to bite back, plenty of responses rushing through his mind like a flooding river, but in the end he can't say a word. Because she's right, he's gone farther than he should've plenty of times— he left because of the prophecy that bought them to the lake, and he left because he fell in love with the one cat he shouldn't have.
Giving a quick word of advice, he soon follows the small patrol down into the camp, past the thorny barriers with Stormfur by his side. The older cat was glad to see him, walking by his side with a few small words that the dark gray tom didn't hear.
Almost instinctively he followed Jaypaw, down the slopes and straight towards a place he shouldn't be, and he's overwhelmed once more by the sweetness of herbs and the scent of a she-cat that he shouldn't see. The moment that she stops focusing on the young apprentice, her voice cooing her relief, she stiffens at the very sight of the moorland native, and tension crackles harder than lighting.
She takes a sharp breath, though it's caught in her throat. "Hello, Crowfeather."
"Leafpool." He's unable to hold back the affection of times long gone that crawls into his words, and her eyes flicker briefly. "I was out with Breezepaw and his mentor when we found him."
Her voice tenses even more, brittler than frost. "Your son's an apprentice already?"
"He is."
He focuses his attention instead on a bounding newcomer, a pure black she-cat with shimmering green eyes, who rubs her muzzle against Jaypaw's cheek with nothing but affection. Though they didn't share much in common, there was something to the lithe shape of their bodies that made it obvious they were littermates. They bore little resemblance to Squirrelflight and her mate Brambleclaw, and briefly he wonders if they looked more like a distant relative.
With not a single word to say, he watches as the cat he loved searches for herbs and aides the young tom, doing the job she believed was destined for her. She had left his side to continue this, and was completely happy with her place in her Clan. It was almost stinging to confirm it with his own eyes, and once he's seen the rescued apprentice relaxed and drifting off to sleep, he takes a few paces back to the entrance of the den.
His head bows low, and his voice is curt, yet polite. "I'll be on my way."
notes ; so i had a big thing written up down here about why i wrote this, but my computer has a habit of refreshing itself if it's left along for too long, so i'm afraid it was all deleted. anyway, i'll try my hardest to repeat what i had written down here. i recently picked up and devoted a week and a half to rereading the first four arcs in the warriors series, books i hold dear to my heart for really bringing my love for writing to life, and i have to say that i was struck by inspiration.
i'll be the first to admit why i picked them up, i had recently joined a warriors rp forum in order to get back on my writing groove and perhaps meet some kind people, and i needed to reacquaint myself with the series. i have to say, i don't regret it one bit.
in particular, i ended up feeling a rush of inspiration to write crowfeather, who no matter how old i seem to get, will always remain one of my first crushes. he shaped my type in men, as i always seem to find myself drawn to dark haired boys who are rough around the edges. i also will always love leafpool and crowfeather's relationship, even though they never worked out. it cemented my affection for the 'brooding boy, gentle girl' trope, and i can only hope that one day they'll be able to love again.
their unresolved sexual tension also makes me snicker, and the part of this chapter where they meet is absolutely full of it.
this fic will be loosely connected one-shots based around the times crowfeather interacts with thunderclan over the period of the 'power of three' arc.
this chapter, and this fic, will be full of dialogue straight from the books, as im just doing a sort of 'from his eyes' vers of those interactions!
i hope you enjoy.