I am aware it's been a while. If you want to know, Lightningpaw and co. are on holiday and I've been writing some stuff of my own. But here's another oneshot to prove my existence.
I own none of these characters. I do not own warriors. I do, sadly enough, own two GCSE revision books.
Thoughts
Idealised world
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She knew it was soon. For both her and her sister. It wasn't just her medicine cat skills telling her that, but instinct.
She hated keeping things a secret like this. Fortunately, not a lot had happened in the past few moons, and she had been able to keep a low profile, but she knew that once it happened, the game was up and she had no way of explaining what she had done.
She closed her eyes and lay down in her nest. It was dark in here, and lonely since her mentor had died. She felt so alone. Unwittingly, her mate had rejected her, and there wasn't a cat in the world she could confess to now. Except…
"Leafpool! Have you seen- oh." Brambleclaw rushed into the den, almost yowling before he saw the quiet shape before him. "Have you seen Squirrelflight?" He asked in a quieter voice.
A jolt ran through Leafpool. Squirrelflight was missing? And she was going to have her kits any day soon! "No," Leafpool replied as calmly as she could, "no, I haven't. Don't worry," she added, "I'm sure she'll come back if she needs to."
"Thanks, Leafpool." Brambleclaw's eyes glowed with a combination of gratitude and worry as he turned and left.
Leafpool got up. She needed to find Squirrelflight. Something wasn't right. Deliberately, she kept her thick leaf-bare fur ungroomed and fluffed out, and walked towards the camp entrance, looking around almost nervously. Most cats were either asleep or out on patrol at the moment. Ashfur stood guard at the entrance, and he nodded courteously as Leafpool walked past. Her pelt tingled with nervousness as she felt his gaze sweep over her, but he stayed still and silent.
Moonlight dappled the ground as it fell through the leaves of the trees, and Leafpool tried to pick up the faint connection that she and her sister shared, or used to, at any rate. I can't believe we've grown so far apart… Leafpool whispered in her head as she wandered around the forest.
Suddenly, she saw something in her mind's eye. Ginger fur, falling. Pain lancing through her. Something… a feeling of… dread? Leafpool knew immediately that it was her sister. She followed the feeling as it grew strounger and stronger until she found Squirrelflight lying down on a pile of leaves.
"Squirrelflight!" Leafpool cried out and she rushed to her sister's side. "Squirrelflight! Are you alright?"
"I'm fine." Squirrelfilght turned to face her sister. "I just tripped, and I didn't feel like getting up for a while."
Leafpool breather a sigh of relief, before giving Squirrelflight a piece of her mind. "What were you thinking? You know your kits are due soon, and you just wander off into the forest!"
"What are you thinking?" Squirrelflight snapped back. "Yours are too, you know!"
Leafpool recoiled in shock, and stood staring at her sister. "You- you know?" She whispered.
Silence.
"Yes." Squirrelflight whispered, gently this time. "I know." She saw the look of anguish on her sister's face. "Don't worry. I haven't told anyone. I would never betray you, Leafpool."
"Being a medicine cat is everything to me…" Leafpool murmured, half to herself. "I don't know what I'll do. I can't leave my kits, they'll die. And I can't give them to Ferncloud, there would be too many questions…"
"If it make you feel better, I don't know either." Squirrelflight looked half-amused, half sad. "I don't think I could care for kits. I'd just get too restless. I'm a warrior, not a queen."
Leafpool nodded in understanding, and the pair purred quietly, both out of amusement, and to comfort each other. Leafpool stopped when she noticed Squirrelflight's purrs had turned to groans, her face twisted in pain. As her sister's cries grew louder, waves of pain engulfed Leafpool too. With dread, she realised what was happening.
Great StarClan, why must this happen to me?
Crowfeather's eyes as he showed little more that blind indifference to the she-cat he had once been preparted to share his life with. The beauty of their time on the moors. Moonlight on fur, tabby and black, the two pelts merging as they stood side by side, looking out at what they once thought of as their future home.
They could have started their own Clan, perhaps. FreeClan, or JoyClan. Leading side by side under StarClan's gaze, but free from rules dictating who you can and can't love. Free from the accusing glares of those who refused to accept that Crowfeather and Leafpool loved each other. No. Crowstar and Leafstar. Those would be their names.
Their kits would all be wonderful. The toms would look like Crowfeather, and the she-cats would look like Leafpool. And their Clan would take in cats who had been driven from their homes or unfairly treated, and give them somewhere to enjoy life, and a future to play a part in.
The Clan would live for generations, and be in harmony with the four original Clans. It would be a beautiful place.
But reality jars things back to the way things really should be.
Leafpool lay, staring vacantly at the three kits that lay, squirming and mewling on the ground between the two sisters. Squirrelflight's expression was one of warmth and love, the opposite of the fear that made itself at home in Leafpool.
"Hello." Whispered Squirrelflight to the kits. Leafpool dimly realised that she had never heard her sister speak like that. So gentle and caring. It was as if the two had switched bodies.
After what seemed like an age, Squirrelflight's green eyes met Leafpool's almost empty amber ones. "This one's mine," she murmured softly, stroking the golden-ginger tabby with her tail, "and these two are yours." She gestured towards the other two kits. Leafpool looked down at them. One black, one grey. They were tiny. The grey one had fur somewhere between Leafpool's and Crowfeather's; grey, but a pale grey with tabby stripes. The black kit was stockier that the grey one, who looked small and lean like a WindClan cat, but it had a pelt almost identical to Crowfeather's.
"What are you going to call them?" Sqirrelflight asked, startling Leafpool back to reality.
Names? Leafpool had never thought of names. "I… I don't…" She stammered.
"Come on, Leafpool," Squirrelflight urged, sounding more like her old self, "they're your kits."
Leafpool frowned. She had never really thought of what she would do when her kits came. Her mind always made it seem so far off. She nosed her kits gently, breathing in their scents, so much like hers. One she-cat and one tom. She cast her mind back. Names. Names. The first living thing she had seen when she had returned to ThunderClan territory to warn of the badger attack was a jay. She looked down at the little tom. His fur was a mottled grey, bordering on blue-grey on the darker stripes, and he looked as light as a feather. "Jaykit." She whispered.
Squirrelflight looked pleased at this. "That's a really nice name." She remarked.
Leafpool looked down at the black she-kit. The tiny budle of fur looked so much like a miniature Crowfeather, it hurt. She thought back to another dark-pelted she-kit, who Leafpool had thought of as a promising warrior, whose life was cut short, and Leafpool had always felt guilty at the death, when she felt she could have done more, or something, at least. "Hollykit." She said, and the black kit let out a mewling squeak that made Leafpool feel as though her heart was tearing apart. Shame. Sorrow. Loneliness.
"I think I'm going to call my kit Lionkit. He looks like he's going to be a tough warrior when he grows up." Leafpool looked at the newly-named Lionkit. With golden fur and Brambleclaw's build apparent in the little kit already, it seemed a perfect name for him.
"What am I going to do?" Asked Leafpool, looking at her sister, who was absorbed in watching the three lives still only just begun. "I can't take them back…" Leafpool continued, "they would get suspicious. And I could- I could never leave them out here." She lapsed into silence.
"I could take care of them." Squirrelflight suggested.
It took a while to sink in. Leafpool was far away again. "How could you? What possessed you to betray us like this-"
"I could take care of them." Squirrelflight repeated.
"R-really?"
"Yes. Of course." Squirrelflight's expression tore Leafpool up inside. Such compassion. "I know how much being a medicine cat means to you." She chirruped to her sister, the kind of sound a queen makes to a kit when it has just had a nightmare. It made Leafpool calmer almost immediately. "I can't see you upset like this. If you went back, and told everyone that you were the mother of Hollykit and Jaykit, you wouldn't be able to survive. If I went back, and told them that I was the mother of all three, I would just spend time in the nursery, then become a warrior again."
"You would do that for me?" Leafpool asked incredulously. "You would take in my kits?"
"Of course I would." Squirrelflight mewed, as the first flakes of snow drifted down from the sky.
Squirrelflight was found by Leafpool with her three kits, but she couldn't move them yet, as they were too young. When they were taken back to camp, Squirrelflight didn't have enough milk to feed them all, and so they were taken care of by Ferncloud. Leafpool watched them grow up. Lionkit was every inch Squirrelflight's and Brambleclaw's kit, with their bravery and looks. Hollykit was stockier than Jaykit, and her bright green eyes meant that she could be passed off as Squirrelflight's daughter.
Jaykit, however, resembled a WindClan cat in build, and when his eyes opened, not only were they blind, but also blue, just like Crowfeather's. Leafpool worried about him, but Jaykit seemed to develop a hard, prickly exterior to his Clanmates, which reminded Leafpool of stories of Yellowfang, and of course, Crowfeather himself.
Leafpool was overjoyed that Hollykit had inherited her passion for medicine, and even more pleased that Jaykit had inherited the medicine cat talent. But still, she worried about her son, and whether his prickliness and anger would lead him down dark paths.
As she watched her secret son sleeping on his mossy nest in the medicine den, she cast her mind back to the night she had first set eyes upon them, and deep inside her, she knew that there was an emotion she had overlooked back then that was perhaps even stronger than the ones she had recognised.
Love.
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I am aware that this is terribly cliché and badly written, but hey, that's life. Oh, and it's not incestual love, those of you with filthy minds. Grr.
