(im messing with the timeline because i had this drafted before gold and i actually did the miscarriage thread and i said in that that the rogue gave birth the same dusk eris lost their kits and so obvs kier would be very different in this interaction if i were following that, but i like this version too much to forsake it. so… much as i love the life-death symbolism of that, maybe i’ll retcon it and say this happened like a night before the miscarriage and he just cast them aside to be forgotten cuz he was too excited about his and eris’ kits to consider them his children. yeah let’s go with that. i’m just talking to myself, okay SCENE, kier talking now)

woof childe @starkravingmad no stress if you haven’t posted bios yet!! <33



A Few Weeks Earlier

As Kier padded to the edge of NightClan territory, flanked by two guards, his steps were as light as his heart. Everything felt like a perfect chess game played exactly right — the Clan was terrified of him, a puppet medicine cat was beginning to so naïvely spread his gospel, and now the first of his kits were breathing in real air. He’d seen them for the first time that night, had turned them this way and that with an untender paw like they were nothing but merchandise as they mewled and squealed, and they’d been nothing special — disappointing, really — but they were still his. Smiling as he made his way through the strips of black shadows between the moon-lit pines, he mused on the night she’d told him she was expecting.

“Ah,” he’d greeted her, smiling and pleased as he’d padded into the temporary guest quarters she’d been given during her stay in NightClan. “Excellent. You’re pregnant. This is a nice way to end the night.” Then he’d leaned in, grinning at her teasingly, like it was a conspiratorial little joke between them. “And they’re mine?” he’d asked around the grin. “You haven’t been playing about on the side?” His eyes had been so harmlessly kind, so amused, but his teeth had been a threat. He no longer needed the kits — Eris was pregnant, just a few days before the rogue — but it was nice to know all the same; he’d pass them off to some nursery queen, keep them in the lower ranks and the shadows so as not to usurp his true heirs, but the knowledge that they were his blood would be enough to keep them around. With this rogue, he felt nothing but a grim, smiling satisfaction; it was a job well done by him. It didn’t matter who she was or what brats she birthed; they were just his lineage, his legacy. Eris — his constant companion, his equal, the one who owned him in the truest sense of the word; she mattered. This was just politics.

Now, as they approached the border, he saw the silhouette of her half-crouched in an open field, still so skittish, still so poorly bred, tensed like birds hiding in every tussock of grass was going to steal her hard-earned spoils from her. Kier smiled as he padded up, not looking about for any danger as he left the cover of the towering black pines for the open field; even here, beyond his territory, he acted like he held complete dominion. He dipped his head to her as he stopped, enough space between them that it was clear this had never been anything but a transaction.

“Pleasure doing business,” Kier said smilingly as his guards saddled the recently pregnant she-cat with all the trinkets and gold and jewels she could ever want. She looked between them in wide-eyed, disbelieving awe, letting out a breathless scoff of a laugh — just a gold-digging surrogate, Kier thought as he watched with that same, unmoving smile, homeless and poverty-stricken. “You know the rules,” he went on in a joking, playful voice, drifting closer to pick her chin up with one paw and smile into her eyes. “These kits will never know you, and you’re not to come looking for them.” She nodded enthusiastically, blinded by jewels and not at all interested in her spawn. Satisfied, Kier let her go, paw slipping from her chin.

“Have a safe trip,” he called after her, waving his tail in friendly farewell as she set out across the night-time field, the grass turned black, blue and silver by the patchy moonlight drifting from behind the clouds. When she was a fair distance away, he said to his guards, still smiling, “kill her. Take back the jewels. No use letting such fine wares go to waste on a womb.” With that, he turned away and padded back into the trees. He didn’t even remember her name.

---

A few weeks later, Kier was not the same cat he’d been that night. Now, sitting silently as the kits he didn’t want played about his paws, he didn’t seem to notice them. He didn’t feel real. He just stared unseeingly at a low spot on the opposite stone wall, a look of hollow, trembling grief on his face. The horror in his eyes was both numb, glazed, empty — and screamingly alive. They had seen demons, though the demons had been only unfair loss. They howled with it. Eris’ mind had snapped, and now he was alone. With kits he loved, but that he hated the sight of. With kits he wanted to be happy with, wanted to give the childhood he’d been denied, wanted to draw to him and love, but who he felt sick with resentment, with guilt, to look at. With kits who should have bled out in their half-siblings’ place. On previous visits, he’d played with them, had crouched low and batted them about and let them climb all over him. Had smiled at them and laughed with them. Had been gentle, stepping over them with all the wary curiosity of a first-time parent who didn’t know what it took to hurt a kit.

But the grief came in waves, and this night was a terrible one. He hardly heard them, just went on staring. He was far too young to be a father; was barely out of his traineeship. He was a child trying to comprehend pain at its most acute. And he was failing. He was alone, with only Laertes for comfort and companionship, and he was failing.