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“I’m not sure I see the need,” Firestar muses, his voice steady. “Onestar may have grown less friendly, but he was still willing to send us aid when the badgers attacked. I cannot believe he would seriously try to threaten our territory so soon.”
“But surely more patrols can’t hurt?” He resists the urge to protest more strongly, aware that he will never convince his Clan leader if he oversteps his bounds.
“They most certainly can, if we overwork our warriors to the point of—”
His mew is abrupted by an overjoyed cry from the clearing below. “Squirrelflight! You’re back!”
“With kits? I didn’t even know you were expecting!” The first had sounded like it came from Poppykit, while the second is unmistakably the significantly deeper voice of her kin, Thornclaw.
Alarmed, he shoots off a quick look of utter shock mixed with the beginnings of excitement in Firestar’s direction. Together, they get to their paws and hurry out of the leader’s den.
Below, the welcoming committee has been joined by a cream-colored pelt emerging from the nursery. “Thank StarClan Leafpool was with you! Are you all well? They look fine!”
By now he’s leaping down the rocks with all the speed of LeopardClan, his expression rapidly fluctuating between besotted anticipation and sheer horror as he considers the full implications of the word he heard earlier, the one that would make him—
“Brambleclaw, look! You’re a father!” And Whitewing brings his greatest hopes into terrifying life.
He reaches her side, unable to find a way to express the seven emotions he’s feeling in a single voice. “... Squirrelflight?”
She purrs and burrows her muzzle into his pelt. “They came so suddenly, and we couldn’t come back to the camp until they were old enough to walk…”
They say nothing for a moment, and around them the Clan says nothing as they hold their breaths and wait for the moment to end.
“Brambleclaw, do… do you like them?”
His fears vanish and utmost love blossoms. “I couldn’t be happier.”
The day passes in a blur. He’s vaguely aware of every Clanmate he has personally congratulating him three times apiece. He knows greater fear than ever before when she tells him that her milk has stopped coming, and begins to live again when Leafpool explains that she can give Ferncloud—due for her third soon—borage to allow her to produce milk.
He curls up with her that night just as always in the warriors’ den, uneasy that their kits are nestled with Ferncloud but reminding himself that they will know all the love they can from him when morning comes. And the morning after that as well, and each one that follows. From now on, there is nothing more important than his kits, black and golden and gray tabby.
He didn’t have kits before today. But he has them now, and that’s all that matters.
He’s their father whenever he’s not the deputy. Every moment not spent arranging patrols or informing Firestar of what the patrols have reported or settling feuds or arranging patrols or going on patrols is spent in the nursery, playing moss-ball or giving badger rides or keeping them away from Firestar’s den. It feels as though he’s there more than she is.
He’s there more than she is.
And they’re never ill. Or, they might have been, at some point, but Leafpool is determined to cure them of every illness before they can catch it. At this point he doubts deathberries would give them more than a mild cough. He also doubts Leafpool remembers these are her sister’s kits, not her own.
Not that he’s not grateful for Leafpool’s concern, of course. Or her advice. But it would be nice to play with them with her for once, not with Leafpool, or Ferncloud, or Daisy, or some other she-cat that isn’t their mother.
Eyes blazing like suns, they straighten up as if all of StarClan is watching—and for all he knows, they are. Their excitement is infectious: the apprentices are, as always, realizing that this means more paws to clean out the elders’ bedding. The queens are looking on with adoration, all of them having played some role in bringing this moment to fruition. The other two kits are gazing with eyes bigger than the lake as they realize someday it will be their turn.
And he feels as though he’s the first father ever to watch his kits grow up. Perhaps it’s to compensate for the first moon of their life, when they knew only their mother and her sister. Whatever the reason, he knows he’ll never be able to tell them just how proud he is. He contents himself with a few words of encouragement, and then settles in next to Birchfall to watch as Firestar begins the ageless ceremony.
“I gather you all for one of my favorite duties,” it starts, and he finds himself purring at his leader’s easy familiarity. For as overjoyed as he is for his own kits, he realizes that Firestar, too, takes personal satisfaction in this moment—in them, the ginger tom sees all that she has become, and all that she has passed on. They’re the kin of his kin, no matter how well he tries to play the impartial overseer.
Golden to pale, spotted gray.
Black to—he didn’t know about this beforehand—Leafpool. It’s not a surprise, though, when he gives it a bit of thought. She’s thoughtful and dutiful and intelligent. But her ambition is plain for all to see—or, at least, he thought so. Perhaps she only wanted to be leader someday in the same sense that Lionkit wanted to be as strong as a real LionClan warrior.
He holds his breath.
The Clan matches him.
“Of course you do. And your mentor will be Brightheart.”
Gray tabby to ginger-and-white. Or, more accurately, none to one. And, honestly, would anyone have expected anything different? Could you see Brackenfur doing it? Of course not. But the Clan continues to hold its breath.
Because he’s not moving.
His digging his claws into the ground and his tail is flicking from side to side and the other apprentices’ gently encouraging words are falling on ears as deaf as his eyes are blind.
Should he do something?
What a foolish question. Of course he should. Who else will?
Leafpool leans down and whispers something no one else hears. And, for once, Jaykit listens. He crosses the clearing to Brightheart, his fur spiked and his eyes narrowed as if he needs to prove the depths of his irritation.
The Clan breathes again. This isn’t perfect, but what other choice does anyone—Firestar, or Jaypaw, or Brightheart—have, really?
As the chant breaks out, he heads over to climb the rocky ledge leading to Firestar’s den, passing Leafpool on the way. He pauses for a moment, nodding to her in thanks. As their father, it should have fallen to him to remedy the situation, but he’s grateful to her nonetheless.
She holds his gaze ever so briefly before Hollypaw arrives and drowns her in fervor.
ShadowClan are attacking. “Now!” screeches Lionpaw, jumping at him with paws outstretched. Jaypaw dives between his legs and heaves upward. They’re bigger than they think they are, so he falls, of course. Lionpaw shows him no mercy.
She’s not nearly as amused. “Enough!”
Jaypaw, of course, isn’t the slightest bit intimidated—incensed, if anything. “We’d almost won!” It’s been over a moon since they were exchanged, but clearly the fire for battle hasn’t left him. Sometimes he wonders if Jaypaw actually wanted this at all.
“Good ambush,” he purrs, forcing himself not to fall down that fox den again. “But you know you’re not meant to be playing here.” Since when has anyone truly understood what Jaypaw wants? The gray tabby’s made it abundant that he doesn’t need others’ understanding, or approval, or pity, or help.
He gives in and dreams a bit more as she continues to chastise them. Shouldn’t he try to understand Jaypaw a little better? Not that they aren’t father and son, but it feels as though they’ve never really connected as closely as he has with the other two. It doesn’t help that he can hunt with the other two. Somehow he suspects that searching for herbs wouldn’t be quite as intimate.
She sounds as though she’s reaching the end of a point. “... and all Birchfall’s and Graystripe’s hard work would be wasted.”
So he adds on. “We need to expand the warriors’ den before you and the other apprentices become warriors.” He’d ask her for advice, but—though she hasn’t said anything—he can tell she’s chasing the same rabbit. Jaypaw’s an enigma to them both. “It’s already too crowded.”
“Okay, we get the point!” They’re not the only ones in the camp, though. And they’re certainly not the ones spending the most time with Jaypaw. But to ask for help would be… embarrassing. It would be close to admitting that he didn’t know his own son as well as he should, that neither of them had fully grasped that particular part of being parents.
Still, that wasn’t quite the same as admitting that Leafpool had somehow come to unravel it better than them, was it? Of course not. It was natural she would have noticed things they hadn’t, with how much time she’d spent with him. Even before she became his mentor, she’d been in and out of the nursery constantly for five moons. It was as though she were playing pretend to be their mother.
Even before that, she’d been with Squirrelflight for the first moon, the missing moon that had created a hole in his heart. Instead of a father, they’d had two mothers. Leafpool had been their mother for a moon, and had forgotten to stop after that. She’d started pretending and never stopped.
Wasn’t he supposed to be thinking about how to get to know Jaypaw better?
Dragging himself back, he stops her from scolding them any further. “Leave them be,” he meows cheerily. “I’m sure they’ll smarten themselves up before we leave.”
“Nice pigeon.”
Nice pigeon? Really? It’s sizeable, but the rabbit would be an impressive catch for even Sandstorm, though he supposes that particular comparison wouldn’t make much headway with the moor-dwellers.
Nice pigeon. What a sorry excuse for a father. He’d say something to balance out the difference, but he knows it would sound insincere, and would only highlight Crowfeather’s snub. Forget being a father, how did Crowfeather ever end up with a mate? And not just Nightcloud—he had Leafpool padding after him back when the Clans first arrived at the lake! For StarClan’s sake, he nearly got a medicine cat to have kits!
Leafpool nearly—
A howl hurtles down the mountain towards their group. It’s not a dog’s.
“Wolves.”
“We’ll get this prey home safely. The wolves are too clumsy to follow our mountain paths.”
Be that as it may. “But there’s a lot of open territory before you reach them.” And they’ll have to cross it multiple times to carry all this prey. “You should go.”
The clearing bristles with anticipation. He can’t say why, but he knows. This Gathering will be different, and not just because Onestar has let all the other leaders speak before him.
“Wait! There’s something I have to say that all the Clans should hear!”
Her presence, always tangible in the ThunderClan camp, now flows through the entire island clearing. She speaks with purpose and resolve, with the knowledge that she is right to be heard and the certainty of experience, though where she got it he has no idea. Her fortitude matches that of the leader of his youth—the cat who led them against BloodClan.
Hollystar has arisen.
“You think you know me, and my brothers, Lionblaze and Jayfeather of ThunderClan. You think you know us, but everything you have been told about us is a lie! We are not the kits of Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight.”
It’s a lie. It’s a joke. It’s a dream.
An odd silence overtakes him. He should be terrified, shouldn’t he? But as the sky spins and he feels the eyes of all four Clans on him and his mate—his mate, his mate, his mate!—he realizes that what he’s feeling isn’t fear, or anger, or despairing sorrow. It’s pity.
Because he knows what’s coming next. There’s only one answer here. He should have seen it long ago, in the endless trips to the nursery, in the patient encouragement, in the entire world that she weaved around them.
Maybe he blinded himself on purpose.
He was never a father. He was never a father.
So even while he feels himself screaming at the entire lake that there must have been some great mistake, that StarClan must have truly abandoned them all for everything—all the moons of love—to have been shredded by Hollyleaf’s barbed tongue… he keeps his pain inside and waits to see what will come next. This isn’t his story to tell. He was never anything but the Clan deputy. He won’t interfere this late in the tale.
In his inaction, the world shifts again.
“Leafpool is our mother, and Crowfeather—yes, Crowfeather of WindClan—is our father.” Shouts of disbelief and outrage—had they really not seen it sooner? How had he not seen it sooner?
“These cats were so ashamed of us that they gave us away and lied to every single one of you to hide the fact that they had broken the warrior code. It’s all her fault.” Hers? Not hers. Not any of theirs.
The emptiness begins to give way. The pity takes on a more rounded form, encompassing not only her and Leafpool, but Hollyleaf as well. It’s crescended into her eyes, now, the pain that drove her to this. And in her great triumph, he knows, Hollyleaf won’t see what comes next.
He must protect her. She’s his kit.
“How can the Clans survive when there are cowards and liars at the—”
“Hollyleaf. That’s enough.” He looks for the source of the voice, and realizes it’s his own. She seems to stumble, as if she forgot he knew how to speak—but then, he did too.
The clearing belongs to him now. Even Crowfeather, he senses, is willing to let this calm last. Every cat here is in silent agony, and he’s the only one who can save them.
He moves, and as he does, the peace moves with him. He pads forward, one step at a time, until he is standing in front of her.
For another age, neither of them speaks. She finds her voice first, barely a whisper under the strain of her lie, birthed only by the smallest hope that she dares to express. “... Brambleclaw?”
“It’s okay, Squirrelflight. I knew. I always knew.”