Doe was adapting to life in the dark better than the SummerClan-born cats - it was just like going back to an old habit, easier, in fact, than being awake during the day in the first place. Not counting his time dead, he’d spent far more time in NightClan than he had in SummerClan. While others yawned and nodded off under the shadows of the moon, he just got on with it with quiet efficiency, helping to repair the patches of garden damaged during the battle in resigned silence. He was resentful, he was unhappy about the new arrangements to say the least, but he knew better than to voice it out loud, and either way, it wouldn’t last. That was where Doe sat now, just outside the leader’s den where Sunpetal had started to grow a garden before the takeover, his shoulders hunched as he half-heartedly pawed at uprooted flowers and nudged plants back into place in the soil so dark in the moonlight, but his calico pelt still impeccably groomed. Being conquered was never an excuse to not take pride in one’s looks. He was aware of Stormstar leaving the beech den but he didn’t acknowledge him, not even with a movement of his eyes; he just lowered his head slightly, his tail-tip twitching irritably and a quiet growl fluttering in his throat at the flippant greeting to SummerClan, and continued to work in the shadows, likely unnoticed by most in the camp.

Most, except the puppet ruler. When the NightClan intruder called for him specifically, Doe tensed slightly, his only movement a slow glare at the grey-blue tom over his shoulder. But still, he didn’t resist. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said to Stormstar by way of greeting, falling in beside him and neatly brushing soil from his forepaws. “Are we on a nickname basis? I’ll stay Doefreckle to you, Stormstar, if it’s not too much of a bother.” He smiled, poisonously sweet. His voice was so icily polite. You look pretty soft. Doe gave his head a bewildered little shake, his brows pushing into an incensed frown. He was, but who just said things like that? First Moonblight had just commented outright about his paw; now he was being called soft - after having lived in the bubble of SummerClan for so long, he was caught off guard afresh by how upfront and direct NightClan cats could be, just uprooting insecurities like it was nothing.

“As much as I appreciate the possible compliment,” he continued as he pushed out of the camp exit after Stormstar, “I’m not an apprentice. Therefore, I don’t generally collect moss. There’s also the small matter of SummerClan cats preferring sheep’s wool and heather, but of course you know that. And who am I to tell my glorious new leader he can’t have moss? You’ve already imposed night in place of day, why not moss instead of heather?” Doe’s snarky little tirade had descended into borderline hysteria, his prissy-as-is voice getting even higher. His poor mood was likely to do with the fact he was still refusing medical treatment. He was limping more than usual, each ginger, tentative step making his right foreleg jerk upright. His paw was the worst it had been since it was first broken - he had so far refused to see Pinesimmer about it and dared not get Vulturemalice in trouble by going to him, so he just stubbornly put up with it and pretended it wasn’t the worst pain he’d ever been in, pretended he wasn’t dizzy with it, pretended he wasn’t losing sleep because of it, which wasn’t helping with his mood either. To anyone else, he might have apologised. But as it was, he just looked up at Stormstar with narrow, defiant eyes, like a child who’d have to be carried to bed because he was over-tired and wouldn’t stop hitting people.

For the first time in a long while, Doe was stunned into silence. Of all the things he’d been called outside his family, a ’disappointment’ was not one of them. He’d been expecting to be brushed off and disregarded, or to have his displeasure received with disdainful amusement - he hadn’t expected not only genuine consequences, but goading to say more. It felt like a trap. In truth, Doefreckle’s behaviour had become so bad lately because it had gone unchecked - Ratstar in particular had never scolded him for the sullen tantrums until he got his way, or his sly comments, or his childish little outbursts. But this, to be stood up to and looked down on - more than anything, it just made Doe feel embarrassed and a little guilty, for stupid reasons he couldn’t fully understand. He didn’t want to disappoint Stormstar - he never wanted to disappoint anyone. Really, it was that word that stuck so much in Doe’s craw.

He had opened his mouth to retort something, teeth glinting in the moonlight. Now, after hesitating for a moment and looking like the fight physically melted off him, he snapped his jaws shut, looking both cowed and uncomfortable, and vaguely irritated at being made to feel like that by a faux-leader instated by a tyrant. But he had enough sense that he wasn’t going to take Stormstar’s bait and rail against the occupation. “Well, it’s just a lot to adjust to,” he replied at last, his glowering, guilty gaze scraping away from Stormstar’s to look down at the ground. His instinct was to brush an awkward forepaw across the soft, night-time grass; but because that would mean either using his broken paw or putting weight on it to use the other, he just stood there, looking little and sharp-shouldered and annoyed.

A little less bitingly, he added, “and for the record, they’re hunting in the wrong places. Everyone and their senile grandmother knows the birch woods have nothing but sad little sparrows, too pathetic to feed a kit.” A moment of silence, then, remembering Stormstar’s gloating jibe about the NightClan cats filling the fresh-kill pile: “anyway, like I’d be thankful for the scrawny old rabbits your slow warriors are actually able to catch. They spend more time sneezing at flowers than killing anything.” He grinned up at him, thin and crooked. It was the closest thing to a truce he’d give him.

Doe laughed unexpectedly at Stormstar's criticism of his own warriors; it was a little unplanned rush of laughter, almost a bark, and the second it was out of his mouth Doe's brows twitched in the faintest frown, bewildered and slightly frustrated by himself. The quickness with which the grey-blue tom's mood had changed bewildered him, too. He was starting to feel a little light-headed, though it might only have been the rich night-time pollen at the end of summer. "Mm," Doefreckle hummed. "I remember. I was a NightClan warrior long before I was ever a SummerClan one. No offence, but they can all choke. Well. Bit of offence." His gaze darted up out of the corner of his eye, gauging Stormstar's reaction.

But the gentle look on the leader's face caught him off guard again. He took a small, automatic step back. As Stormstar continued, his expression by-passed a frown and settled straight on slight wariness, his eyes darting slowly between the leader's own. When he took a step toward him, Doe didn't move back - but his body language made it clear that he wasn't welcoming any further closeness, his head drawn back and his eyes distrustful as he looked up at him. When Stormstar started speaking to him so unguardedly, opening up a world for him where he would be aiding in the oppression of his Clan even if the other tom called it peaceful co-existence, Doe had no idea what to think or do. The unquestioning trust Stormstar was laying upon him, what it would mean for SummerClan - he felt both like his mind was frozen blank and like a thousand images were racing through it: NightClan acclimating so well to the meadows, with his help, that they made a home for themselves and never left; the complete annihilation of everything that made his home his home by the Clan he had been born into and abandoned; a time where a Clan on their territory ever having existed before NightClan became a distant memory, a nursery fable. He would be a traitor; he would be helpful. He would be betraying his home; he would be keeping them alive.

While his thoughts were still mired in those blurred, uncertain futures, Doe's wide eyes still locked with Stormstar, the leader closed the distance and rested his muzzle against him. Caught by surprise and jarred from his thoughts, Doefreckle flinched back; but by the time his eyes flicked up to look, startled, at Stormstar, he had already turned away, leaving Doe wired and adrift. Was the leader flirting with him? Was he just being... friendly? Very quickly? He had no idea what was happening. Stormstar's mood seemed to shift like the tide, even more than Doe's own did.

"Uh," Doe replied weakly, then cleared his throat. He took step forward that brought him to Stormstar's side, looking out at the dark fields briefly before turning his head up to the grey-blue tom. "If there's any moss in SummerClan - can we still call it that? Or am I NightClan again?" he interrupted himself dryly, quirking his brows slightly at the leader, "- then it would be in the Deep Lands. That way." He jerked his chin to his right, deeper into the territory where the trees grew close and the shadows were dense and damp. Even as he did so, his eyes never left Stormstar, still watching him uncertainly like he was a fox, or a puzzle, or some combination of the two. A danger, a hindrance, or a help. An ally. He hadn't worked it out yet.

Doe didn't take his eyes off Stormstar as he strode with a brand of cheery confidence he'd never seen in his life towards the gloom of the tight-growing trees. Because he was more than a little infatuated with his own image, Doefreckle was generally used to him being the wonder to other cats - he was cheerful, he was charming, he was casual enough to be called boyish and innocent. He did things others only dreamed of doing, said things more forward than others would have the gall to say. He was the overly physical one. He'd never met someone who was... more. More than he was. And because he knew most of what he was was fake, he was desperately trying to figure out whether Stormstar's was, too. Was he incredibly good at pretending, better than even Doe? Or was he just like this? The fact he couldn't tell, no matter how hard he wracked his brain, was both incredibly unnerving and addictive, like a blank puzzle with all the pictures missing that he couldn't sleep until he'd figured out.

He followed behind Stormstar with that same bewildered gaze, his eyes rarely leaving him for more than a second at a time. Eventually, he fell in beside him. As the leader continued, Doefreckle was even more thrown off, and this time a little incensed. We're still SummerClan here - we? He was just inserting himself into SummerClan's life so casually, like he'd always been there, and it was simultaneously so childishly naïve - endearing, almost - and infuriatingly privileged that Doe was left with no idea of what he should be feeling. That didn't change as Stormstar went on. He didn't want to impress Aspenstar, but maybe it would be in SummerClan's best interests if they were outwardly welcoming of her and her warriors... For my sake? Why was he talking to him like they'd been friends since childhood? Like he was his confidante? Was he actually this casually trusting or was he manipulating him or? Keep you as her own - was he-was he already Stormstar's, then? Doefreckle felt like he was about to short circuit; he could feel his ears growing red from frustration, and maybe from a bit of a blush because it really did sound like Stormstar was flirting with him and he wasn't used to not being sure. What was direct honesty? What was just a throwaway comment? He had no idea! At least with his most complex relationship, when he'd pushed against Chim's boundaries, he'd known where the boundaries were. With Stormstar he felt like he'd had his memory wiped and was starting at life completely from scratch. He just stumbled along at his side, too dizzy to return his grin.

"And what's the ultimate goal?" he ventured at last, when he felt confident that he could find his voice without choking on his own spit. "NightClan has two territories and two leaders? What happens when you, or your successor, finds SummerClan more a home than NightClan? Or when you prove to be a better leader than Aspenstar and NightClan becomes the colony that isn't making its quotas? Will there be a war?" Doefreckle was starting to get slightly worked up by all the hypotheticals, his soft, expressive brows quirking and falling madly as he spoke and his eyes darting around the damp, dark ground beneath his paws as he limped along. "Will-Will-what-" He didn't even know what he was trying to ask. He was becoming slightly breathless by trying to make sense of what was in his head. 

This time, when Stormstar touched him and snapped him out of his whirling thoughts, offering him a tether with which to ground himself to the dark blue-black woods around them, he froze, but he didn’t flinch away. He raised his eyes, gazing back at Stormstar with an expression that swam with confusion, distrust, the begging to be allowed to trust and not be proven wrong, not be proven a fool for it. He was so utterly confused by the leader’s personality, but he was quickly being overcome by weariness - he was too tired to think about it, to wonder which parts of him were genuine and which parts weren’t, to wonder at the grins that were more confident and dazzling than any he’d ever seen. So, he let out a breath and accepted it all, every piece of it. Maybe he’d go on quietly tucking it all away into a box he could sort through later, but for now he’d just let his lungs unclench and feel the cold night air around them.

The leader was warm against his side; a breeze whispered through the close-glowing trees and ruffled the fur of his exposed flank, making him shiver and sending a flurry of goosebumps trailing up his spine. There already was one, he wanted to whisper back at his assurance that there wouldn’t be a war, but he didn’t. He felt like he could whisper anything into that little space between them, where Stormstar’s breath would mingle with his own and wash warm over both their pelts, and it would never leave the darkness of the forest. For a long, long moment, in the quiet of the dark trees, all he could feel was the silent closeness of them - their two bodies felt like a little glow of warmth amid the cold, and for heartbeat the way Stormstar’s fur shone in a patch of moonlight before the clouds swallowed it back up made it look like there truly was light emanating off him and brushing over the tree bark. It was intimate, close; he could feel every breath Stormstar took a split second before he heard the gentle exhalation and felt the whisper of warmth against his ear. Shivering, Doefreckle stepped away.

“It’s this way,” he murmured quietly, meeting Stormstar’s gaze for only a fleeting moment before looking away again, his eyes finding the soft, dark grass misted with the first of the night’s dew. He limped ahead, not waiting for Stormstar to take the lead this time. “So, did you jump at the chance to lead a Clan, get a -star behind your name? I can’t tell if your optimism is because you’re a bit of an idiot or if it’s because you’ve done this before.” His voice, despite his words, had no heat to it; it was just quiet, tired, genuinely wanting to understand. “Do you not have a mate or three and seventeen screaming children back home? I find that hard to believe.” There was a bit of teasing in that, despite the tiredness. A bit of something else, too. He didn’t look back at Stormstar.

It isn’t the first time a leader has begged at my feet to look after their clan. Doefreckle let out a burst of laughter without entirely meaning to. “God, you’re arrogant,” he laughed, too thrown off by the casualness of the comment to salvage his pretence of emotional distance. He turned his head to grin at Stormstar, another little laugh slipping out through his teeth. Whether or not this unshakeable confidence was real or not, it was the first time Doe had really encountered it - and when he did encounter it, it was usually tied to cruelty and bruises. Every tom he’d gotten close to in the past, and in the present, had an underlying sadness, a tragedy - and though he could tell clearly that Stormstar had a lot hiding under all this manicured charm, it was also an incredible relief to be faced with self-assurance, with intense eyes that said more than the leader ever would, with someone that he didn’t have to heal and soothe and fix. Maybe it was the solidness of it all, of him, that Doe was beginning to feel the faintest flicker of attraction to. As Stormstar continued, the mood growing paler, Doe dropped his gaze, his heart growing a little more sober as reality sank back in after the beguiling distraction of the tom’s irreverence, but the underlying questions of the night - the taut, buzzing uncertainty of how it would end - still bubbling away below the surface.

“Mm,” Doe hummed quietly, eyes on his paws, unwilling to say he related to that melancholy sentiment more than Stormstar could know but feeling it never the less. Doe’s relationship with settling down had always been difficult to understand, even for him - he wanted it more than anything; he fled from it; he yearned to be loved, to be called someone’s mate; nothing made him feel sicker. He’d only truly wanted it with two toms and one had turned him down, whatever soft ending that might once have been at the end of their story a victim of wrong timing, always wrong timing, and the other had… Well, the other had been so hurt by his callous coquettishness that even now, with Doe’s heart offered willingly, he couldn’t take it. Now, with Hywel, he was so terrified that he’d convinced himself, in some perverted defence mechanism, that he didn’t want him. The burden of lying to himself, of half believing it, left him so tired, so lonely, so cold, and NightClan’s takeover, now cutting him off forcefully from Hywel and providing him with a perfect excuse that he wasn’t sure he wanted, only left him feeling more lost and more alone in the dark.

When Stormstar feigned ignorance and forced the lead, the initiative, into Doe’s paws, he rolled his eyes. “Oh, don’t be obnoxious,” Doe replied with the faintest sliver of an unimpressed, hooded-eyed smile, crooked and thin. His voice had grown lower. His gaze, glinting in the shadows, held a challenging refusal - he wasn't going to give in first. “You know why.”

Doe rolled his eyes; god, he was insufferable. He’d never met anyone so cocky. This tom seemed like he’d be up before everyone else, leading the apprentices on a brisk jog through the crisp dusk air. But still, as Doe turned and limped after him dutifully, there was a little smile on his face, wry and bemused. All in good time? He’d never been turned down like that before — or, rather, never been… reallocated to a better time slot? But any frustration or indignation - had he seen Doe? Not to be a little narcissist, but - was wrapped up in that same stupefaction, and he was starting to strangely enjoy it, like watching a stage play with a script that kept twisting and turning — and just when he thought he’d predicted it, outsmarted it, caught up to it, it turned again. Doe wasn’t a cat that anyone could call patient, but being forced to be by Stormstar’s eccentric sort of self-assurance was becoming something he was almost fond of, in an ’you just have to sit back and turn when he does’ sort of way - for a control freak like him, it was just as much a relief as it was a struggle to pry him from directing everything and being forced to just see what happened. Plus, being forced to wait was appealing in itself, though he’d never have known it before.

“I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to have a dictator just out and say that’s what they are,” Doefreckle replied with his soft brand of dryness. “Aspenstar keeps up her saviour story but I much prefer mildly threatening allusions to forces to keep us in line. Much more honest.” He looked up at Stormstar from the corner of his eye. “What about gossip, then? Is that classed under obedience? Because I promise, your majesty, after another night here they’ll know your favourite place to be scratched and the name of your mother’s mother. I hope you have a thick skin. It’s hard to tell. You could be… soft.” He tilted his head. He still wasn’t over just being called that outright in front of the whole camp. He neither agreed to nor refused Stormstar’s request. That meant either he had silently acquiesced but didn’t want to give the leader the pleasure of knowing, or ‘I’ll need a bit more convincing’, just to be difficult. 

When they reached a little hillock among the trees, Doe suddenly turned without warning and headed up it. “Come on,” he told the leader, like he was holding him up. The damp, grassy knoll led to a dense circlet of old oaks, their leaves and the lichen dangling from their trunks blotting out the starry light of the night sky. Thick roots rose from the earth; dew-soaked moss grew on the trunks; and the heady smell of damp bark and late summer flowers hung heavy in the air. Doe sat down on one of the roots, now taller than Stormstar, and wrapped his tail neatly around his paws. His eyes glinted in the velvet cloak of darkness as he watched him, but otherwise the only parts of him visible were the patches of white on his coat. “Good place for an ambush, isn’t it?” Doe commented from the blackness, but there was a catty, impish amusement to his words that proved them to be nothing but a dark joke.