This took a lot longer than I had planned to get done; I kept getting distracted by making backstories for characters that won't be properly introduced for many chapters. But here it is!

Cross-posted to AO3 and Warriors Amino.

Still un-beta'd.

Chapter Two

Blinking awake, Tiny looked around as confusion fogged up his mind. He lay in a mossy nest at the edge of a small clearing surrounded by ferns tall enough to cover everything in shade. As he wounded where he was, he was suddenly aware of the burning pain in his sides. He let out a hiss of pain at the sensation and the memories of the cause flashed through his head.

"Now that you're finally awake, take those herbs," a low, gruff voice meowed, startling the young black cat.

Tiny looked up to where the voice sounded and let out a squeak at the sight of the other cat. On the other side of the small clearing, sitting in front of a boulder with a large slit in its center was a very large brown tabby tom covered in scars. The large male wasn't facing him, wasn't even looking at him, but instead was looking down at several plants at his paws, sorting them into smaller piles.

Looking away from the scary looking cat, Tiny looked down and spotted a small pile of plants and a seed at the edge of the nest he was in. He bent his head down and quickly lapped up the herbs, wrinkling his nose at the foul taste, but swallowing them anyway as he was afraid what the tabby might do to him if he spat them out.

The sounds of ferns rustling caught Tiny's attention and he turned to see the blue-gray she-cat that had helped save him from that fox step through a fern tunnel in the wall of ferns. She gave a nod to the tabby before stopping in front of the black tom, sitting down and staring down at him with clear blue eyes.

"I am pleased to see you are awake, young one," she meowed. "I am Bluestar, leader of ThunderClan; you are currently in our camp's medicine den."

Though Bluestar had the air of authority, Tiny couldn't help peering around her to look at the scary tabby, only to freeze when he noticed the tabby was no longer looking at his plants, but was now glaring at him with dark amber eyes. He tore his gaze away to stare down at the ground, quivering under the intensity of that glare.

"What is your name?" Bluestar meowed gently, trying to coax the answer out of the clearly nervous tom.

Tiny looked up at her, but his gaze nervously flitted back to the tabby before landing on the she-cat again. He opened his mouth to tell her, but he couldn't get anything to come out.

The gray she-cat blinked in understanding, turning to look over her shoulder at the large tom behind her. "Tigerclaw, I would like a moment of privacy with him," she told him and while her voice was friendly, it was clearly an order.

Tigerclaw let out a low growl of annoyance, but stood up to leave anyway. As he walked out of the den, grumbling why he had to leave his own den, Tiny gasped as he saw one of the tabby's back legs was completely missing, all that was left was a hunk of heavily scarred tissue.

"Tigerclaw is ThunderClan's medicine cat and as such he has taken a vow to heal, not to harm," she explained to him. "His scars are quite shocking to anyone who has never met him before, but the accident that give those to him was an isolated incident."

Tiny turned back to Bluestar, his light blue eyes wide. "But he's missing a leg!" he exclaims in his shock. "How is he alive?"

She dipped her head a little, blue eyes dark as she meowed, "It was a horrifying wound and our medicine cat at the time worked endlessly for several moons to keep him alive." She turned her gaze to the fern tunnel, as if looking through it to see the large tabby on the other side, as she continued, "But he survived and is serving ThunderClan well as its current medicine cat."

He blinked as he let what he just learned settle in his mind with everything else that has happened to him since he entered the forest. He turned back to the ThunderClan leader and as a thought dawned on him, felt his pelt flush with embarrassment. "Ah, I'm sorry for not introducing myself," he apologized as he pulled himself into a sitting position, his sides feeling a dull ache as whatever plants he had swallowed earlier dulled his pain. "My name is Tiny."

Bluestar turned to settle her gaze back on him and mewed, "I have some questions to ask you. Do you think you are well enough to answer them or would you like to rest some more first?"

"I can answer them now," Tiny meowed, fidgeting a bit under her powerful gaze.

"What were you doing in the forest?"

Pale blue eyes darted down and he looked at how small his paws were compared to her's. "I had a question to ask you forest cats."

"What was that question?" She asked, her voice holding a touch of surprise, like this was an unusual answer, which it probably was.

He hesitated for a bit, but finally asked in a small voice, "What do you do with unwanted kits?"

"Unwanted kits? There isn't any kits or cats unwanted in ThunderClan," Bluestar said, confusion clear in her voice. "Why do you ask?"

Tiny looked back up toward the she-cat and stared into her eyes, finding that he believed what she said. "My siblings told me that twolegs drown unwanted kits in the river," he explained. "I can hardly be called a kit anymore at two seasons, both of my siblings found twolegs of their own and none seems to want me."

"Twolegs can be very cruel, but I don't think even they would do something like that," she meowed back, trying to comfort him.

He stayed silent as his eyes flicked back down, not quite believing her because what if she was wrong and that was what he was going back to when he returned. When he left, would he be going back to a death sentence?

"You were very brave to attack that fox in an attempt to protect Ravenpaw without any training, Tiny," Bluestar told him. "ThunderClan is always in need of brave warriors which is why I will extend an invitation to you to join ThunderClan."

Tiny stared at her stunned. Join the forest cats-ThunderClan? But what about his mother? Could he really leave her behind? But if he returned to the twolegs, would they just throw him into a river? "Th-thank you for the offer," he did manage to stutter out.

"Rest, Tiny," she told him as she stood. "You may stay in ThunderClan's camp until you are healed; you can inform me then of your decision." She turned and walked out through the fern tunnel, the ferns rustling from the movement.

Tiny watched her go, his mind still on the offer. The fern tunnel rustled again and Tigerclaw emerged from it. The large tom glanced around his den, eyes landing on his patient and narrowed. "What are you still doing here?" his low, gruff voice growled out.

"B-Bl-Bluestar said I could stay until I healed," the black tom squeaked out. The ThunderClan leader may have said that the tabby took an oath to never harm another cat, but that did not make Tigerclaw any less scary in Tiny's eyes.

"But what are you still doing in my den? Your wounds aren't so bad that you need to be confined to a nest. As long as you don't jump around too much, you should be fine. Now go, your presence is annoying me," the medicine cat growled.

Tiny nodded violently, quickly getting to his paws and dashing out of the den through the fern tunnel, not wanting to anger the tom any further. As he stepped out of the tunnel and into ThunderClan's camp, he let out a gasp at what he saw.

And the one of the craziest changes has been revealed! Tigerclaw is a crippled medicine cat. This chapter was suppose to be longer with a whole tour of camp and meeting a bunch of characters, but I decided to cut it short so I could get an update out faster. Hopefully it won't take quite as long to get the next one out.