lemme try to get back into kier after three weeks. GOD I’M RUSTY

It was sheer, dumb luck that Kier happened to have a guard with him on that outing; he was coming back from one of his hush-hush meetings at the edge of the territory, one of the meetings that was unknown to everyone beyond anxious whispers and rumours — rogues; allies; something about Snowblister, something about the League; nothing to do with either. He made it his business to have a back-up plan for every back-up plan, to have a finger in every pie; and he also made it his business to keep his dealings completely beyond the comprehension of NightClan. It fostered both tremendous fear and tremendous reliance on him — only Kier knew what was happening; only Kier knew the way out. Quite frankly, even if he had no one to meet with, he still would have gone off to the edge of the territory for an hour or two — catch up on some sleep, visit a slum for some gossip he could sift the useful and the idle from — just to maintain that uncertainty. Uncertainty of where one stood created just as much love as it did fear. It was the purest drug there was.

And so, it was unthinkably lucky — or unlucky — that Kier had been returning, a little more slowly than need be, from the border, lost in his head, frowning down at the earth with a guard trailing along in trained silence at his shoulder; the only thing more frightening than a theatrical Kier was a quiet one. As he reached a path between the trees, he slowed to a stop, the guard doing the same behind him, and raised his head, nose twitching slightly. His ears, until then forgotten to the point of deafness — if tyranny had given him one weakness, it was a lazy, almost bored belief in his untouchability; he trusted completely in his guards to keep him safe, to keep him from walking off cliffs or being killed by some miscreant when he was so deep in his own head, and so he walked with a loping sort of gait when out in the territory that contrasted so strongly with his over-attention in camp — swivelled forward to listen. His mismatched pupils wandered over the dripping fern bank in front of him unseeingly. And then, suddenly, he let out an angry, spitting sort of sound and bounded through the ferns. The guard pounded after him, paws throwing up wet dirt. As soon as they both saw Kier’s daughter being lifted off the ground by the hawk, the guard, without needing to be told to, leapt for the bird; with it adequately distracted, Kier slipped in more discreetly to grab what hold he could get on his kit with his jaws. For a moment he dangled in mid-air just the same as her; then, with an angry squawk from the bird, King dropped. Kier let go of her as soon as the hawk did — she was almost the same size as he was; if he tried to hold her by the scruff, he’d twinge something in his neck, and then where would they be — and hit the ground just the same as his daughter did; he hoped it hurt. Not paying any attention to whatever battle the guard was fighting, he manhandled her roughly into the undergrowth.

“You stupid little girl,” he snapped as soon as they were sheltered in the thorns and ferns, his breathing uneven. Beyond them, he could hear the muffled sounds of the hawk making its empty-clawed escape. “I could have lost a fine guard because of your bull-headed negligence — and for what? Mm? To save you?” Noticing how bleary she looked, he suddenly snapped out a paw and caught her chin, hauling her closer and forcing her head from side to side so he could look at her eyes. “What are you on? Who gave it to you?” He was sounding more hysterically furious with every passing second — King was the one he’d vested the most responsibility in, and yet so far, she had been the most unequivocally disappointing: Brat was a nuisance, but he was fond of her; King, he had an incomparably strained relationship with, an utter inability to find common ground with her despite the amount of time they spent together, and it didn’t help that she spent most of it high. “Do you have any idea how this looks for me? I hear them snickering about you behind your back, and I haven’t the slightest ounce of blame for them — you’re supposed to be terrifying, but you’re an embarrassment. You want to be a prince? Princes,” pushing past all his aversions, and with obvious repugnance, he grabbed her and held her back against him, wiping roughly at her mouth with his paw like that would do anything to hasten the dispelling of whatever she was on, “don’t need saving from hawks.”

Still in that frenzy of action, he half-hauled her out of the undergrowth and back onto the sawdust trail that wound between the tall pines. Padding along, he shoved her forward, keeping her within eyesight; his voice as he continued to rave was furiously angry because he was furiously shaken. His shoulder fur was still prickling, his tail-tip still flicking madly, like he hadn’t settled down yet — he kept seeing the hawk, and whether that was because his daughter was almost taken or his heir, he would never say. “You know I need you — with my own kits gone and that little hussy’s litter more bastards, you carry my name. If Eris and I never manage to conceive another litter, you’re it, King.” There was such a discrepancy between the way he spoke of Eris and the way he spoke to king — Eris’ name was gentle; there was no force there, no expectation; if they never had another litter, they never had another litter. And then all the crass disregard came back — King wasn’t a kit; King wasn’t his daughter; King was the blackboard he wrote ideas onto, and the thought that a kit shouldn’t be told of her father’s efforts to conceive was utterly ignored by him when it came to her. “Whether or not either of us want it, you’re royalty. And do you know the danger it puts us in — all of us — if I stop being feared and begin being ridiculed? Tyranny, you stupid girl, is only as strong as the terror that surrounds it — and every time you pull a stunt like this, you shame my entire reputation.”

Shoving her again, he forced her into another patch of undergrowth, this one with the overpowering smell of yarrow. Storming past her with his bony shoulders rolling furiously, he ripped up a clawful and, with no thought to gentleness or permission, slammed his paw against King’s mouth, trying to force in the yarrow. “Eat, King,” he ordered, the herbs still trapped between her nose and mouth and his forceful paw. She could faint from oxygen deprivation as many times as she liked; she was going to swallow this yarrow, and she was going to vomit. Brat, he would have taunted with that cruelty that was so fondly joking that he would have denied it; Maiden, he would have coaxed so gently, with such praise and such promise of reward; Disappointment, he would have waved off to the medicine den. Only with King was he so… uncertain. And it was precisely because he felt that uncommon awkwardness, that disconnect, that he was so commanding — he had no clue how else to approach her, and so he used force. And yet the very fact that he was doing this — that he was willing to hold back her metaphorical hair while she vomited up whatever she was on — showed a self-conscious love. Or, perhaps he just didn’t want anyone else to see his daughter’s disgrace. “Get this mess out of your system and then beg me not to lock you in a cell until your skull is bristling with whatever cravings you’ve managed to give yourself. Stupid girl,” he muttered again, glancing away with his paw still against her mouth, his voice so quiet.