New chappie, people! This one's from Brambleclaw's POV. Thanx for all the reviews, guys!
Brambleclaw went to sleep the night of the rouge attacks in better spirits than he had been in a long time. Squirrelflight was speaking to him! The very thought made him want to leap around for joy.
She curled up in the nest beside him that she had abandoned a long while ago, in favor of one across the den next to Ashfur. Brambleclaw saw the gray warrior looking at him with badly masked jealousy, but he didn't care. He could deal with Ashfur, as long as he had Squirrelflight.
The ginger warrior wrapped herself up in a tight ball, her fur fluffed up against the winds. "'Night, Brambleclaw," she mewed.
"'Night." He watched through half-closed eyes until her breathing stilled to a soft rhythm, showing she was asleep. Only then he allowed himself to drop off too.
Brambleclaw found himself in an unfamiliar place. He was following a scent, a scent he did not recognize but felt attatched to. His nose was almost to the ground, his ears were pricked, and his fur quivered as he went. The smell was so familiar, and he felt infuriated that he could not place it.
Then he came to a dip in the ground, a shallow basin in the flat territory he had been walking through. Brambleclaw padded down, but once he cleared the rise his paws stopped. He thought his heart did, too.
Tigerstar sat in the middle of the valley, just as he had in one of Brambleclaw's previous dreams, in the ThunderClan camp. He looked at Brambleclaw, and then moved to the side, revealing Hawkfrost, who held the same proud stance as his father.
"Greetings, my son," meowed Tigerstar. "It is good to see you again."
Brambleclaw said nothing. He didn't really know what to say. He wasn't glad to see Tigerstar, but neither did he want to leave. The last dream he had had like this had left him yearning for it to have gone on, and that yearning opened again at the sight of his kin. Hesitantly, he came closer. "Why do you keep coming to me?" he asked of Tigerstar. "You're dead!"
"Bluestar is dead," his father answered, "And yet she came to you, many moons ago. What she said to you resulted in the survival of your Clan. How can you scorn me for coming as well?"
"You're...you're evil," whispered Brambleclaw. "You tried to kill us all." He turned to Hawkfrost, looking into his brother's blue eyes. "He did, Hawkfrost. You won't remember, but he did." Somehow this seemed important.
"What have I done wrong?" Tigerstar meowed, his amber eyes holding Brambleclaw where he was. "I tried to bring the forest together. I was was wrong, I admit, to recruit BloodClan. I paid dearly for it, too- for I paid with not one, but nine of my lives."
Brambleclaw's fur bristled as he remmebered that awful day. But he remembered other things, too, at the same time. "You're lying," he muttered. "You wanted to destroy the Clans. You were going to murder anyone that got in your way."
"I fought to defend my Clan," Tigerstar insisted. "Fought to get you to see that my way was right. Tallstar and Firestar were fools."
"They were noble leaders." Hawkfrost spoke for the first time, and he looked unsure about contradicting his father. "Firestar still is."
"Tallstar was old even then." Tigerstar's head swiveled to look at his other son. "And too obsessed with the old ways. And as for Firestar..." he paused for a moment. "He never trusted me, not since his days as an apprentice. He thought me evil, but he never once asked me for the truth behind all I had done."
"He's my leader," Brambleclaw protested. "My mentor."
"He leads you only because I was driven off for him to replace me as deputy," Tigerstar retorted "And he mentored you, why? To keep an eye on you. Because you are are my son."
His words chilled Brambleclaw to the bone, not because of what they suggested, but because they made sense. Brambleclaw stared at him, and he was hit by a series of flashbacks. Of a time before the journey to the sun-drown-place, before Squirrelflight. A time where he had been a kit, and then a young apprentice. The fire at the ThunderClan camp, that Firestar had saved him from. Firestar's days as deputy- but he had been Fireheart then. Bluestar's fraying leadership, and the attack by the dog pack. The day when Firestar had told him what Tigerstar had done.
He trusted me, thought Brambleclaw. He saved my life.
"He trusts you," Tigerstar mewed, as if he could read Brambleclaw's thoughts. "But does he really? Enough to be his deputy?"
Brambleclaw's spine stiffened. How does he know? he thought desperately. Everything I'm afraid of, everything I've thought. He knows it! "Firestar...Firestar didn't name a new deputy because of Graystripe," he meowed.
"Or was it because he was afraid of the best cat for the job?" Tigerstar whispered, his gaze intensifying. "Brambleclaw, you are a fine warrior, and more than that, you have saved your Clan. Any warrior worth a whisker would have put you as their deputy. But Firestar didn't."
Brambleclaw said nothing, and Hawkfrost was staring at his father, his gaze unreadable. Brambleclaw realized that Graystripe's returm must be news to him, but he didn't say anything about it. Tigerstar got to his paws and his words were directed at them both. "When I look at you, I see myself. I see fine warriors, warriors that know the warrior code as well as their own names. Warriors that would defend their Clans with their lives."
Hawkfrost swelled at his praise, and Brambleclaw felt strangely warm too. As if it was a respected warrior giving him praise, not the biggest traitor the forest had ever born. Tigerstar padded towards him, and he rested his muzzle briefly on Brambleclaw's head. Then he did the same to Hawkfrost. "Do not hide from who you truly are," he advised softly, quietly. "Embrace it."
He turned and walked away, and within a heartbeat he was gone. Brambleclaw turned to look at his half-brother, wondering what Hawkfrost would say. The RiverClan cat lifted his head to the dark sky, and he looked just as noble as he had the night of Mudclaw's death. "He's right, Brambleclaw," murmured the tabby tom. "We can't hide from who we are. And we are Tigerstar's sons."
But Brambleclaw stuck his claws into the ground. He looked up at the sky, and for the first time that night he saw Silverpelt, and the cats of StarClan. He may be my father, he thought, and I may be like him. But he is dead, and he can't tell me what to do. Not anymore.
"Do you believe him, Hawkfrost?" he asked. "Believe what he tells you?"
Hawkfrost kneaded at the turf, looking uncertain. "I don't know," he admitted. "I never saw BloodClan, or the joining of TigerClan. Was it awful?"
Brambleclaw remembered being crouched on the ground, listening to Firestar on the Highrock, telling the Clan of how Tigerstar had ordered Blackstar- Blackfoot then- to murder the RiverClan deputy Stonefur. He remembered sitting with Tawnypelt as apprentices, watching Feathertail and Stormfur, also apprentices, curl up, exhausted and beaten in the corner of the den. They had been imprisoned by Tigerstar for being half-Clan.
Even more vividly he remembered the stare of his father's eyes, when he had asked him to join him and Tawnypelt, telling him that she had made the right choice, that TigerClan was the place for him. His tongue quivered in his mouth as he remembered the response he had given, remembered the proud stare of Firestar's eyes and the angry one in Tigerstar's.
"Join you?" he had meowed. "After all you've done? I'd rather die!"
He replayed all his memories to Hawkfrost, who listened with pricked ears and wide eyes. The dream was fading, the ground shifting, as Brambleclaw spoke his last words to his half-brother. "He called me a fool for not joining him," he meowed. "But one of us didn't leave Fourtrees alive that day. And it wasn't me."
Next chapter will be up soon! (It's from Leafpool's POV, btw)