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Thrushpelt pads through the dappled forest undergrowth, drinking in the scent of greenleaf.
Familiar sights greet him at every turn. The clearing of clovers, the tangle of thorn bushes, the fallen pine… he leaps over the log, breath short as he lands into the leaves below. Here, he strays from the worn path of patrols - and even though this particularly thick layer of bush is, also, familiar to him, his heartbeat quickens as he pushes through the branches.
For, hidden on the other side, Sunningrocks waits, warm and inviting. Beyond it, the river flows smoothly between Thunderclan and Riverclan territory, providing a peaceful, quiet ambiance. Thrushpelt’s ears swivel instinctively, checking for company - but no patrols have been sent out here yet, and the only thing he hears are the twitterings of birds.
The aging tom shakes leaves off of his pelt and leaves the cover of the treeline. Instantly, sunlight presses down on him. Thrushpelt squints as he pads down to the rocks, relying on memory alone for guidance.
He lays down with a quiet thump on the warmed stone. The sun insists on trying to steal his energy, tempting him to rest, but Thrushpelt fights back the need for a nap, coughing. He didn’t come here to sleep.
Heart fluttering, he lays down his head and waits.
It seems like an eternity later that reeds on the other side of the river rustle. Thrushpelt remains frozen, eyes fixated on the movement; and a moment later, a head pokes out from the greenery.
An apprentice, dark-pelted and eager, scampers out. He doesn’t notice Thrushpelt on the other side, so excited he is to get into the river. Behind him, the bushes rustle once more, and Thrushpelt’s breath stills.
Stonefur steps out from the reeds, calling to the apprentice by the shore. The young one turns, meowing something back that Thrushpelt can’t hear, but from Stonefur’s faintly amused, exasperated expression, he guesses that the apprentice hadn’t taken well to the rebuke. Shaking his head, the older RiverClan tom joins his apprentice by the shore, both blissfully unaware of Thrushpelt’s eyes on them. Stonefur dips a paw into the water, talking to the younger as he swirls it around; the apprentice leaning forward with keen eyes.
The corners of Thrushpelt’s muzzle tip upward in a smile as Stonefur shakes his head again when the apprentice clumsily copies his mentor. Stonefur fixes his posture, lecturing all the while, and looking at the pair across the river, Thrushpelt’s heart squeezes.
He could almost imagine Stonefur in the sandy hollow, teaching his apprentice how to get into a hunting crouch.
The tom swallows harshly, swallowing another bout of coughing. This, right here, the sight of blue-gray fur, was the real reason why Thrushpelt kept leaving camp to go on winding walks. More often than not, he ended up here, on Sunningrocks, watching the clan across the river. Chasing ghosts.
Stonefur laughs at something the apprentice says and Thrushpelt’s heart squeezes again.
That laugh. Older, huskier, louder, yet so, so, achingly familiar. It was the same that Stonekit used to giggle out, playing tag with his littermates and the older kits in the nursery. It was the same eyes, the same voice, the same smile, the same expression…
He’d denied it, back when he'd first seen them.
When a Mistypaw and a Stonepaw had showed up to the Gathering, announced as new RiverClan apprentices, Thrushpelt had stared at the two nervous cats, stunned. No. No, no, no, no, no, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. Mistypaw. Stonepaw.
He’d glanced wildly around to his clanmates, shock and hope clawing in his pelt, but nobody seemed to notice. Nobody seemed to care.
After all, the kits had been gone for moons. The clan had moved on, and every cat saw his constant, bedraggled patrolling as echoes of grief. Clanmates had offered to sit with him, giving him words of advice for moving on, or flashing him looks of sympathy. Featherwhisker had draped his tail over Thrushpelt’s haunches once, promising him that StarClan would look after them now. Sunstar had suggested - not unkindly - he start doing dawn patrols instead of waking up early just to go to the fringes of ThunderClan territory to search.
He still looked for them in every kit-shaped shadow in the forest, but slowly, he returned to his regular duties. There were new litters in the nursery. Bluefur had gotten promoted to deputy. The kits were never talked about between them, a silence that burnt a hole in his heart, but if Bluefur didn’t wish to speak of them, then he respected her choice. They were gone, and there was nothing left to say between him and her.
So when he’d searched over the crowd of cats, praying, hoping, begging for an explanation, for something, for the maybe chance that what he was seeing wasn’t a hallucination, Bluefur looked just as shocked as he felt. Her eyes had met his, in a brief contact that left questions running amok in Thrushpelt’s mind.
But then she’d lowered her gaze, and turned back to face the leaders on the Great Rock.
In the moons following, Thrushpelt didn’t know how to speak of his suspicion. How could he? His kits were dead, and the thought - the thought - that they were alive and healthy, living as RiverClan apprentices, a clan across the river, seemed ridiculous. How could they have escaped a fox? How did they survive the leafbare? How did they end up in RiverClan, of all places??
Bluefur remained as silent as ever.
And, slowly, Thrushpelt shelved the thought.
It was nothing but mere coincidence, he told himself. Rumor went that they were Graypool and Oakheart’s kits, completely riverborn, raised by the clan their entire life. It didn’t matter that they possessed the same names or the same pelts as Thrushpelt’s lost children. StarClan was playing a cruel, cruel trick on him, nothing more.
Thrushpelt, once again, had lost them. Forever, now.
This time, he grappled with the truth in silence.
It wasn’t until nearly seven moons later that the first of many revelations started to crash down everything in his mind.
It’d been another gathering. ThunderClan was in good spirits, buoyed by the reappearance of greenleaf and the recent birth of a new litter; Thrushpelt remembers teasing Rosetail over a new crush as if they were apprentices again, lifted by the mood of his clanmates. They’d congregated at the clearing, as always, and waited for the leaders to announce their news.
ShadowClan had gone first. Then WindClan, then RiverClan, and Crookedstar had stepped forward with his tail high and pride glimmering in his gaze as he announced two new warriors in RiverClan’s ranks: Mistyfoot and Stonefur.
Every hair on Thrushpelt’s fur had stood up higher in that moment. In the passage of time, he had forgotten about the two apprentices that had plagued his mind after that first gathering. But now, looking at the two, confident, young warriors accepting the congratulations from their clanmates, Thrushpelt was hit with a wave of déjà vu.
Standing there, proud in the moonlight, they looked exactly like Bluefur did.
His eyes had tracked almost instinctively over to the she-cat, sitting by the Great Rock, and was stunned to find something he’d never expect for a ThunderClan deputy to express for RiverClan warriors.
Pride. Joy. And, buried deep under the brilliant blue eyes, eyes that Thrushpelt had spent a lifetime studying, was love.
Rabbit-length by rabbit-length, the image of what he thought was true stripped itself bare in his mind.
So Thrushpelt had known, for a while.
He still wonders about that night. Why she’d took her kits to RiverClan. What had happened to Mosskit, little Mosskit, the weakest and smallest of the three. How Bluefur had found the strength to stagger back to ThunderClan camp, alone, because there was no other way those kits could've ended up there, unharmed, on their own, how she must have ripped a hole in the nursery before screaming bloody murder. How she had lied to him and to the clan, going with him on pointless search parties because she already knew where they were; safe and sound and warm in the RiverClan nurseries.
Thrushpelt had expected he’d be angry at her when he lay in his nest that night, after the gathering had concluded and his mind spun with a million different thoughts. But reaching down into his heart, dissecting each emotion -
He didn’t find any fury.
He couldn’t hold resentment for the one and only cat he’d ever loved. The only thing rotting in his stomach was regret, swamping and festering. Regret that he couldn’t be better, that if he had said or done anything else then maybe, maybe, his kits would still be in his paws. Regret that he could’ve talked to her more, discovered her plans, supported her, noticed something - then maybe everything would be different.
But she’d known that. Bluefur had always known that Thrushpelt would’ve carved a new Highstones in the mountains if she had ever asked. He would’ve done everything and more for her and the kits if it meant keeping them safe, in ThunderClan.
Maybe that was why she didn’t tell him. Out of fear of revealing their true father and out of fear that he would’ve stopped her - because, Thrushpelt realized, he would, he truly would. He would have never allowed her to bring those three tiny kits to the RiverClan border in the middle of a blizzard.
And for that reason, she lied to him.
He simply couldn’t hate her for it.
He’d seen how broken Bluefur had been when she’d returned that horrible night, frozen and exhausted after countless patrols sent out to find the kits or the ‘fox’ that’d taken them. Even if it was all a ruse, her grief was real, and Thrushpelt knew that if he’d ever let it slip that he’d discovered the truth, that same collapsed, defeated expression would return. Everything she’d sacrificed would’ve been destroyed.
So he kept the secret a secret.
And now he lays there, old, battered, several fox-lengths and an entire world away from the cat he used to call a son. Thrushpelt never stopped paying attention to them during gatherings. He couldn’t help it - those nights and these long walks - they were all he allotted himself, over the moons, to know them.
He knew that Mistyfoot had a crush on one of her other clanmates, Black-something. He knew that Stonefur had been the hero to save a drowning kit. He knew that the pair had been the ones to lure a badger off of RiverClan territory.
Every single glimmer of information, Thrushpelt held dear, tucking it somewhere deep in his chest. And in their absence, he wonders more about them. What was their favorite food? Did they like climbing trees? Did they remember anything of their birth? Did they ever have the notion that they, perhaps, weren’t fully riverborn, that there were just the slight differences between them and their clanmates that used to mark them as Thrushpelt’s?
Thrushpelt suspects he’d never know the answers. Instead, all he can settle for are these fleeting glimpses, each one a reassurance that his children are alive, they are happy, they are healthy, and each one a reminder of what he could’ve had.
He wonders if Bluestar had ever done the same, traveling out here. Did she take her own paths through the forest, always, irrevocably, ending up by the river? Did she also watch the water flow, wondering about the kin she’d given away?
Thrushpelt has never smelt her scent on these rocks. At gatherings she does not acknowledge them. She has played her part to perfection for seasons. It is he who is selfish, watching Stonefur teach his apprentice. The only thing Thrushpelt can ask for is forgiveness from StarClan. Let him be selfish, just this, please.
StarClan grants him the afternoon. But when the sun sinks below the horizon and Stonefur and his apprentice disappear once more into the reeds, Thrushpelt must leave.
At home Spottedleaf fusses over him, lecturing him for his carelessness with greencough. Rosetail brushes her head against his flank, teasing him for his rasped voice, and Bluestar brings him a freshly caught mouse.
Thrushpelt accepts it all with a tired smile. He doesn’t indulge them in where he went, what he did, or why he vanished. He keeps two secrets to his heart: one, Bluestar’s; two, his own.
He would hold both til the day he died.