Warrior Cat Clans 2 (WCC2 aka Classic) is a roleplay site inspired by the Warrior series by Erin Hunter. Whether you are a fan of the books or new to the Warrior cats world, WCC2 offers a diverse environment with over a decade’s worth of lore for you - and your characters - to explore. Join us today and become a part of our ongoing story!
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goldcrest <3 what's this, our 73rd thread? it can't be
Royalkit's eyes were on her paws as she pattered towards Kier's den, watching them against the stone floor; she felt happy, in that melancholy way she always felt happy, and her steps were obliviously peppy, like a girl dancing in a shadows-and-cobwebs ballroom while the world ended beyond the windows. "DAAAAD," she called, looking up for the first time as she trotted up the slope towards his nest. None of her other siblings would have dared approach him so directly, but she had the easiest relationship with him purely because she had either been born without the need to be loved by him, or had given up on it with a smile as soon as she'd been old enough to open her eyes. So, she was happy simply because she had no reason not to be. She was aware of the violence, aware of the bloodshed, aware of the fear, but she had her tarot cards and her dusty leather pouch and her cons, and so she had no reason to be unhappy. It all just rolled off her. It had to.
It had to.
She lived in a nightmare, but it was her nightmare. Her tenuous connection to the crown was a bloody one, but it was still her family's crown.
Poking her head over the top of the stone mound, she saw not her father, but his mate. Her stepmother, though they'd never had much interaction; the only time they'd been near-introduced had been when she'd accidentally wandered into Eris' path and been frustratedly shooed away by Kier; she'd heard him say 'I'm sorry' over and over behind her, and it had been the only time she'd ever heard him sound anxious. 'She wasn't meant to be out,' he'd said, so quiet and fawning, like her stepmother was made of glass and he was trying to glue the pieces back together before they slipped out of place, 'I didn't mean for you to have to see her.' Now, Brat smiled, tipping her imaginary newsboy cap. "Pardon, Mamselle," she excused herself, and turned away. She began to descend the slope once more, whistling unhurriedly as she went. Kier must have been out with her sister. Maybe she'd go find some unwitting victim. Snowblister's classes were due to start, but she was good at avoiding them, by hiding or faking a cough so she had to go to Twilightdance's den or just running into places the deputy couldn't reach and flicking her tarot cards in her face through the gap.
There was hardly a time Eris was seen outside her den. The clan passed concerned whispers, some worried, some relieved, and those brave enough to attempt to poke their heads into the den that she had yet to come out of would find nothing but a lump in the nest she shared with her mate. After her outing with Kier, just after the incident, she had suddenly turned recluse. Hot and cold, clingy one moment and shockingly cold the next, craving love and affection yet withering at the thought. She loved Kier. She was angry that he had yet to return her kits to her. He was doing his best. He wasn't doing enough. Her mind had ran circles around itself until the rope snapped and it was free, something out of her control. Sometimes she would pace around, talking aloud to herself, sometimes she didn't move all day, and on rare days, she would force herself outside, around camp or outside, where she would do the same thing she did the first time she stepped foot back outside after her run-in with Kate. It never lasted long. She always felt watched, vulnerable, and eventually she would retreat for days once more. Eating was either too difficult or too time consuming. Nothing felt right. Maybe, with the promises her kits would be returned, something old had sparked inside her once more; a look, a word, a laugh, so explainable her, but it always dissipated, swallowed by the fog. She wasn't even aware of it. It was life, it was her life, she lived it, it was going right if it felt wrong, it was familiar.
The den had been closed off to visitors, Eris demanding that anyone who set foot be executed where they stood for attempted assassination. She wasn't taking chances, and she wasn't lying when she said she would burn down anything in her way. Kier had to have his meetings elsewhere. The only ones allowed in or out were herself, her mate, the medicine-cats (though they were on thin ice), and that grey assistant of Kier's who had lent himself a nest, much to Eris' disdain.
DAAAAD. She stiffened from where her pacing was interrupted, staring down at a kit. Her face flickered with something incomprehensible, and then she laughed. "Kier, how did you get so small?" For a moment, he was all she saw in Brat, and then she blinked, mouth clapping shut. "What the hell are you doing in here?" She spoke quietly, "I ought to have you ripped to shreds for this." She blinked again, and her image was clearer — this was Kier's, this was his kit. Not hers. Not theirs. Brought to Nightclan after a deal. She remembered him telling her, she remembered she wasn't opposed, curious, even. She wasn't sure if she wanted to be lenient or not.
"He's not here." She spoke finally, voice a breath that had escaped, an exasperated sigh, and she turned with a whir of the still air. "Go. Go. Somewhere else."
Brat was halfway gone when she stopped and, after a moment, turned back. She'd never known Eris before she'd been like this — she'd always just been her father's half-mad, reclusive mate. Some of the other kits spread ghost stories about her; Leveretkit, old enough now to be apprenticed, insisted in a hushed voice to his younger companions that she was a witch. Brat, though she liked horror stories as much as the next motherless kit raised in violence, didn't see a witch when she looked at her stepmother. She just saw sadness.
Hopping back over the lip of the stone, she padded back over to the she-cat and sat down, setting down her leather pouch. "Wanna play cards?" she asked, twisted to the side to unlatch the bag and find her self-made tarot deck. "Must get real lonely up here. Dear papa's always busy, you know." The sentence was said in a vague English accent, the sort of one that pronounced papa as 'papaa.' Smiling widely, she held out half the cards, expectant eyes not leaving Eris'. "We can wait for him together, 'less he's fallen in a volcano. That'd be cool. I wanna go in a volcano. Have you ever been in a volcano?"
She didn't realise she was likely playing with stinging fire.
There was something so aggravating, yet so refreshing, about the kit's willful disregard, her ignorance, her childish innocence. She wanted to kick her out, and yet Eris turned and stared, blinked down at the thing. Kier was leader, king, of course he had business. He was looking for their kits, he was preparing for war with the League, she assumed. She realized she hadn't bothered to ask or even listen to anything of his life as of recent, so caught up in herself, in her own suffering, that his had hardly registered. The realization would be gone moments later, but still she sat, disgust still blatant on her face.
"Why would I have been to a volcano?" She blinked at the cards, eyebrow lifting in confusion, scarred lip curling. The newer, mostly healed one on her cheek matched it, a terrible, constant reminder. She remembered catching herself in the water, once, getting a drink. She wasn't unused to scars, to violence, and yet staring at what Kate had left behind, the tear in her ear, the scratch just under her eye, it stuck out so much more, it felt so much worse. She refused to drink from the streams with her eyes open anymore.
Eris — after minutes of staring at the kit before her as if she wasn't there at all — laid down on her stomach, paws folded in front of her. She rolled her eyes, but focused them on Brat once more. "Go on, whatever your name is." She'd never asked Kier. It had all happened too quickly, the kidnapping of her own kits and the birth of that dirty rogue's, and while they were experiencing their first moments of life, Eris had been curled up in the medicine-cat's den, sleeping or so disconnected it felt like a living dream. There was a spot of jealousy for them. Why were they so lucky.
Brat beamed at her, immediately setting about shuffling the deck; the stones clattered against each other. "Brat!" she replied as she worked. "Well, Royalkit, but my dad calls me Brat and so everyone else does too. I think that's actually meant to be my name. My nursemaid," she glanced up briefly before looking back down at the cards, just to make sure Eris was listening, "the one who fed me after our mom died, she says our dad was really upset and angry when he named us, because we didn't have names for a few days after we were born until suddenly one night he came in and gave them to us. She said it was like he hated us. So I'm Brat, my brother is Disappointment, my sister is Maiden, and my other sister is King. She's really my brother because, I don't know, Disappointment wasn't good enough or something. She doesn't really talk about it. Anyway, so she's always out... Maiden says 'why should he ever hate us?' but I don't know why our nursemaid would lie."
She looked up, less bothered by the topic and more distantly curious, and set down the cards to play. "Do you think he hates us?"
She burst out laughing. "Brat! Oh, he's funny," she continued for longer than neccesarry, and though the situation didn't call for it, she spoke the words with an adoration, with humoured love. The whole thing made her chuckle, and perhaps she didn't even find it funny, maybe she just desperately needed something to laugh at, to lift her spirits, and it was the first thing she could grasp that held any aspect of comedy, no matter how small it was. Finally, she settled down.
"I don't know why she would lie either, Brat. I'd quit your complaining, though." Eris squinted at the cards, reaching a paw out to disrupt their neatness, purely out of curiosity. "What have you done to prove otherwise?" She lifted her head again, yellow eyes fixing, unblinking, on Brat.
Brat laughed along with Eris, because to her it was a weird game; when the laughter went on for longer than she had air in her lungs, she raised her brows, pulling a 'she's crazy' face at the ground like it was a private audience, and went back to righting the cards where Eris had disturbed them. But her opinion of Eris as crazy wasn't malicious, and wasn't tinged with any sort of judgement of dislike; she went back to smiling as soon as she thought it, humming to herself as her father's mate continued to laugh and she just reordered the cards. Violence and insanity were like milk to her; it was all she'd ever known, and she lay down among it with the same gentle acceptance that any other kit would lay down among cotton and wool.
She looked up at Eris without raising her head as the older she-cat finally spoke, but her only reply was to flick her eyes back down and push the pile of stone cards towards her. "Go fish." Then, like the words had just caught up to her, she suddenly frowned. "I don't complain. I'm the perfect rebel." It was her whole identity. She frowned deeper. What have you done to prove otherwise? Brat looked up, full of daring. "What have you done? No offence, petite madame, but I've never seen you do nothing but lie all cooped up in here and sleep. Sometimes you yell at people. Mostly you sleep. I assume you're sleepin'. Why would he even like you still?" She sniffed and looked down, drawing a card back and turning it over to see the picture. "I don't get marriage."
She gave the cards a curious look, eyes flicking between them and Brat's own. The words washed over her like a poisonous tide, stinging, brutally honest, and everything she didn't want to hear. She followed the kit's motions, turning over a randomly chosen card of her own and pushing it forward with more force than necessary. Her face was set in a deep scowl.
"The medicine cat," Eris spoke of her with disdain, "told me I should be resting. Would you prefer I reopen my injuries? Would you prefer me dead?" She snorted, humourless. Why would he even like you still? The words played over in her mind, matching her own that had been thought before — she was worried that Brat was right, that Kier didn't like her anymore, that he was too busy to care, that she was being too much.
She focused her eyes again, glaring at Brat, "Kier is doing everything he can to get our kits back. Just because you're his daughter doesn't mean you can't face consequence for such words. I'd watch your tongue." She fiddled with the card she'd pushed forward, tail flicking in annoyance.
"Back?" Brat echoed, pushing herself up into a sitting position. "I thought they died. That's what everyone else says - they say they died 'cuz of something my aunt did; that's my aunt down in the prisons, you know. No one talks about it direct-like, they're like," she dropped her voice to a panicked whisper, holding her paws under her chin like a nervous mouse, eyes darting about, "did ya hear what happened? Quietquietquiet!" She went back to normal, taking a few odd moments of silence to stroke the side of her head and gaze unseeingly at the ground between her and Eris, like she was thinking. Then it was like she booted up again. "Real bloody though, I think. And that's why no one sees you anymore - that's what they say." She leaned forward, eyes wide with grim curiosity. "Is that true? Or are they liars?"
Her annoyance grew into an open rage, jaw clenching as she bit the inside of her cheek. She was seconds away from brushing these useless cards away from them and shoving Brat out the door, but she had enough sense to stop herself, leaning back with her head held high, offense on her features.
"Yes, whoever's been saying that is a liar, and you are to report them to Kier as soon as you could." Her voice became more unsure, trying to keep up the walls of unreality that she had built around her recent life, "they're in the League." A hint of nervousness, but she was utterly convinced and there was no talking sense into her. She looked upon Brat with a certain bitterness, like she had opened up the curtains and allowed the truth to infiltrate her dark, comforting room — but it wasn't the truth, she reminded herself, it was all lies. It didn't matter that Kier had said so himself, that the clan talked about it, that the medicine cat could confirm. It was all lies. There was nothing stopping her from getting them back, she was set on it.
She almost softened, but her sharp edges remained. "Don't mind to them, don't listen to any of the words they say. Vultures, they are."
"The League?" Brat echoed loudly, overwhelmed by the twisting turns this story was taking. She didn't disbelieve it — there was just so much. Now she'd completely forgotten her card game. "So..." She used her paws as she spoke, like she was laying out the pieces on the stone ground to get this straight. How'd they get in here to take them? Did they grapple down from the ceiling? "My brothers and sisters are in the League. Why—why the League? What's in the League?" As far as she knew, her father and his mate had been born in NightClan — she'd never given much thought to why they had different names to everyone else, just assuming that it was something like how she shortened her name to Brat. Kier and Eris were just the—the beginning of their names, she couldn't remember the word. Ever melodramatic, she felt like her whole world was being turned upside down, like she was screaming in front of a backdrop of fire, but it was a wonderful feeling.
Vultures, they are. Brat nodded knowingly. "Easy to scam, though," she agreed, like she considered herself so much more grown-up than a few-moon-old kit. "Well!" she exclaimed suddenly, looking up; it was another opening she'd picked up from her father. "I'll help my dad get them back, don't you worry." She reached out and patted Eris' paw. "And till then, I can be your kid!" To her, it was a selfless business proposal, one out of the goodness of her heart, for free, no interest rate; she didn't need a mother. She was happy being a scruffy street urchin.
She gave an unamused look, almost irked that she had to waste her time explaining this all to a kit, but she had resigned herself to it. Though, admittedly, she was almost thankful it — Brat had been the only one who hadn't tried to argue her on it. Her kits were stolen. Brat believed her. "A group of cats like Nightclan. A bunch of brutes, that's what they are. Don't ever trust a League cat." The proposition didn't extend to Kier or Eris, because as far as she was concerned, they weren't and had never been League cats. They spent too much time away, alone, isolated, hadn't been born there at all, hadn't truly been apart of it. It had been a home, not her home.
Her smile was more of a wince before it all suddenly fell. And till then, I can be your kid! A million different emotions crossed her face before they settled stubbornly on the same annoyance she had bestowed upon Brat the entire time, though there was something incomprehensible mixed in. "No, no." It came out sharp, like a hiss. "I don't need any replacements. I'm getting them back. You are your father's kit, barely. Not mine. I have my own, thank you." It was obvious she wasn't being polite or gracious. Eris took a breath, unsure as to why the words caused such a strong reaction, and sat back, staring down at the cards in front of her. Everything had been too confusing lately.
