"Sorry you got stuck on the dawn patrol again." Mossthorn dipped his head, hoping to express sympathy to Squirrelflight and stop himself from getting completely overwhelmed by her dazzling, incandescent green eyes as he often did by looking away from them briefly. But not too briefly… He couldn't resist looking back up at her as she laughed slightly, igniting a fire within him that mirrored but didn't rival those of her eyes, of her passionate, strong, alluring nature… "It's not your fault, Mossthorn, it's…" She trailed off, clamping her jaws shut and looking around alarmedly as if she was worried that her words had summoned the stupid foxer who's fault it actually was… her mate, the deputy who could easily assign her to better patrols or at least stop going out of his way to give her bad ones whenever she stepped one paw out of line and onto his bad side by his ridiculous standards: Brambleclaw. Eventually, she looked back towards him with now mostly suppressed tension, and Mossthorn went through his familiar ritual of desperately and uselessly attempting to think of a way to make the situation better or at the very least comfort her effectively, sliding his barely touched shrew, her second favorite type of prey, onto the remaining scraps of the squirrel, her favorite type of prey, she had eaten after a long moment.

"Do you want this? I'm not hungry right now." He was never hungry anymore, not really, but he would still always be happy to do this for her even if he was. Squirrelflight's eyes lit up as if he had given her the whole of ThunderClan's former territory in the forest, and she leaned in closer to him, sliding an elegant paw so close to his and stopping right before they touched. "Thank you, Mossthorn." Mossthorn managed to stammer out an "Of course" as she lowered her head to bite into the shrew, looking up from her in apprehension and alarm as the carefully left unspoken foxer himself, Brambleclaw, emerged from the… leader's den instead of the warriors' den for some reason and sauntered towards them from behind her. He always did this, sneaking up on her when she couldn't smell him with her nose buried in prey or her sister's herbs… thinking it was funny for some stupid reason when his mate was freaked out by his mere presence…

Mossthorn got out an utterance of her name, not yet having figured out how to effectively warn her without it setting off Brambleclaw long after he had left and only Squirrelflight was near him to witness his awful treatment of her, and realized with alarm that he had completely drowned him out by also saying her name much more harshly than he had. He felt her claws against his paw briefly as she instinctively unsheathed them in fear before jumping upwards to face Brambleclaw, who was laughing as if he had actually done something funny there and not incredibly cruel. Or maybe the cruelty was what was funny to him… "You're just gonna keep fallin' for that every time, aren't ya? Mousebrain." Squirrelflight shrunk away from Brambleclaw and towards Mossthorn slightly, her normally tall and confident stature completely gone. "...Yes, Brambleclaw…" He thrust towards her unexpectedly, towering over her and somehow switching from cockiness to aggression in the blink of an eye. "What did you just call me?!" She flinched away from him further, practically lowering herself to the ground as every fiber of Mossthorn's being screamed at him to get in between her and her aggressor while simultaneously keeping him stuck to the ground. "I'm sorry, Brambleflower." He slid his claws out, resembling his father, the cat he had gotten the second half of his name from, even more now despite his loathing of him. "That's better."

After a pause, he spun around to face Mossthorn, switching back to self-assured, unsettlingly friendly cockiness with a suddenness that was almost predictable with him. "Ya gotta train 'em, heh, stud?" Whether this perceived camaraderie between them had been falsely inferred from their shared descendance from Goldenflower, their mother and the only she-cat Brambleclaw seemed to respect and genuinely love, or, much more horrifyingly, similarities between them that Brambleclaw might think were there, Mossthorn didn't know, but not a day went by where he didn't pray to StarClan to let it be the former. He stood up, trying and failing to think of a response that wouldn't feed into Brambleclaw's apparent confidence in the righteousness of his actions or his cruel treatment of Squirrelflight with his mouth stupidly open, and eventually dejectedly closed it as Brambleclaw continued while starting to herd her towards the camp entrance as if she was a kit. "Listen, we're gonna be goin' down to the lake on our own this time if ya know what I mean, but just lemme know when you wanna hang out there just the two of us. I'll get outta my deputy duties, ya hear?"

As Brambleclaw turned back towards Squirrelflight, forcibly moving her head with a front paw with unsheathed claws so that her panicked gaze was now directed at him instead of Mossthorn before exiting the camp while practically dragging her along with him, he almost wished that he didn't know what he meant; he didn't even know the full extent of what Squirrelflight's treatment at his paws was and it was still too much to bare. Although, he knew deep down that he would never actually take an opportunity to erase his knowledge of any of her suffering; he wanted to be there for her and understand her as much as possible. It was just awful that pain was such a big part of that, or a part of it at all… it was so awful that Mossthorn now understood how Cloudtail didn't believe in StarClan; it must be much less painful to believe that they simply didn't have starry ancestors watching over them than to think that they did, but they just didn't care enough to avert cruelties like this, especially those inflicted upon a cat as amazing and strong and kind and beautiful as Squirrelflight…

Mossthorn realized that he had padded many fox-lengths away from camp, instinctively keeping far enough behind Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw that they wouldn't notice him heading in the same direction as him until he had been able to set off on a different path. Apparently he had navigated ThunderClan's new territory alone so much, not going on patrols and avoiding them before he could come across them because even that foxer Brambleclaw, despite seemingly thinking that they were best friends for some stupid reason, had had to silently acknowledge eventually that no one besides him and his mate wanted to be around the weird cat with a fourth of his legs and most of what had made him pleasant to be around taken by dogs, that he could now do so without thinking about it. Funny, his extensive knowledge of a territory that most of the warriors were still getting used to and complaining about due to it not being the old forest could come in pawdy if any of them were willing to look him in the eye long enough to realize that it might be useful and ask him about it… or maybe it had occurred to them and they just weren't willing to subject themselves to his presence for long enough to obtain some of it… his presence as the metaphorical thorn in their collective moss nest, although they certainly acted like it was literal…

The name Mossthorn had seemed cruel to him when it was been assigned to him… with what little mental processing ability he had been able to devote to contemplating it so soon after barely surviving a dog attack thanks to Brambleclaw's father and his step-father… but it had quickly proven to be surprisingly apt for something borne of their leader at the time's rapidly increasing paranoia. Brightheart had been renamed by Firestar, earning a new name after she had overcome the dog attack and whatever attachment if any she had had to Mossthorn with Cloudtail's help, and he had not, not that he could blame him… it would be mousebrained to pretend that he had ever completely escaped from that fateful day… for one thing, he was still terrified of…

Dog!

Mossthorn instinctively scrambled backwards, tripping over either his own paws or the root of a tree or both in his determination to get away from the horrific, terrifying beast that stood only a few fox-lengths away from him. After a long moment of lying on the ground at an awkward angle, frozen in fear and miraculously not becoming dog food, Mossthorn hesitantly stood up and turned around to face it, feeling unexpected… pity? empathy? …understanding? coursing through him and clashing with his horror as he took in this all too familiar and yet distinct sight. The dog, despite towering over him, was lowering its head to the ground, weakly and submissively, but not lowering it as far as it could go due to the rusted chain that connected its collar and the tree straining and stopping it. Its easily countable ribs practically jabbed through its matted, dull coat, causing him to not realize until a second later that this dog, just like him, was also missing a leg… although in its case it was a back leg. Mossthorn managed to tear himself away from it after a long moment, turning back to face it after it whined at this. "Don't worry, I'm just getting you some prey and water. I'll be with you in a moment."

As he was mentally chastising himself for expecting a dog of all things to understand speech, it dipped its head in acknowledgement, calming down significantly as if it had understood his words. Mossthorn's second attempt to leave the side of this strange and interesting dog, even temporarily, was much harder and took much longer, but eventually, he had exited the clearing he had found it in and started looking for prey. Wait, no, its need for water would be more urgent… probably… dogs were similar enough to cats that that was still true, right? He quickly figured out what the closest moss-bearing tree was and headed towards it, gathering enough for a cat before mentally adjusting for the dog's larger size, collecting more, and dipping it into the nearby stream. Mossthorn walked back towards the dog, trying and failing to not worry about how his inevitable 'Please let me keep this incredibly dangerous animal that has killed many of our clanmates in the past and nearly you' conversation with a leader who already didn't like him would go. It jumped up excitedly as he came into its sight with the moss, eagerly licking it after he had managed to overcome enough of his fear to force himself near enough to it to drop it at its front paws and sending extremely rare pride shooting through him.

Mossthorn found himself smiling slightly as he turned around and headed back out of the clearing, shooting an "There's more where that came from" behind him as he went. He parted his jaws, tasting the air for prey. The sight of a squirrel at the base of a tree in front of him broke through his awareness after a few seconds, and he hesitated, reasoning that there would be plenty of them left in the forest for Squirrelflight now that it was greenleaf, before carefully stalking towards it and pouncing on it, quickly biting its neck before taking it with him to the clearing where the dog was. Its enthusiasm for the squirrel turned out to be even greater than that for the moss, and Mossthorn gave a practically unheard of for him second smile that day, only realizing that he had fully approached the dog this time to give him the squirrel after the fact. The dog tore through the squirrel hungrily, eating it in approximately one second before licking Mossthorn's front paw as if in the same motion. Mossthorn laughed slightly, lying down as the dog did and hesitantly stroking the fur of its front legs slightly with his front paw, his claws sheathed.

"I was gonna name you after Squirrelflight anyway; looks like the name Squirrel's even more fitting for you now." Squirrel perked up at the mention of her name, tilting its head as if it was curious about her, before looking behind Mossthorn with even more interest and some added fear. Mossthorn turned around, following its gaze, and met its terror as he saw a patrol led by the worst cat possible for this situation; Brightheart. She stared at the dog in fear, frozen to the ground, and melted into Cloudtail, her mate, slightly as he pressed against her side reassuringly. "We'll go tell Firestar about this, and he'll figure out a way to take care of it, okay? They'll never hurt you again, I promise." Despite the direness of the situation, Mossthorn couldn't help but imagine himself in Cloudtail's place and Squirrelflight in Brightheart's, even as they turned around to address Brackenfur, Whitepaw, Ashfur, and Birchpaw.

"Ashfur, Birchpaw, stay and help… Mossthorn guard the dog until we get back. Brackenfur, Whitepaw, collect the prey we've caught and bring it back to camp." The tension in Mossthorn's body and mind only increased as Ashfur and Birchpaw approached him, getting far closer to him than he was used to for cats besides Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw… although he wasn't really used to it in Brambleclaw's case… but not as close as they had been to the other members of their patrol. As Ashfur directed Birchpaw to not get too close to the dog and to get on the opposite side of it as him, suffocating Mossthorn between them, Mossthorn shot the now fearful dog as reassuring a glance as he could manage, silently promising it that he would defend it as if he had several lives to spare just as the cat who would be deciding its fate did.