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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"And I just, I think it's all kinda stupid and I wish you were here," she meowed quietly. "It... it sucks without you. I know Middie's still here, and I know that I've got, like, everything in the world other than the whole your nephew is a sadist thing, I'm pretty and popular and all that, but it's just... not the same." Sunrisepaw's voice trailed off as she gazed out into the open sea On days when the pangs of loneliness became too much for her, she came out to the very spot that she, Midnightpaw, Twilightkit and Orchiddrop had sheltered while the clan fought. It was one of the last real memories she had of her mother. Of course, there were other memories, too, memories nested between that night and the night they disappeared, but this was her strongest. She didn't know what happened to Orchiddrop or Rosethorn; the sisters one day vanished. This was precisely why she still came out here, all these moons later. She wanted to believe her mother was still out there somewhere, and when she came out here, there was a childish part of her that hoped that somehow, her voice would cross the oceans and make it to whereever Orchiddrop was. Maybe, Orchiddrop would hear it and come back, even if just to tell her that she was okay. Sunrisepaw sent each of her little talks to her mother - or were they more like prayers ? - to the universe in an envelope stamped with her own hope.
It made sense why tonight was one of the nights that she craved her mother's presence. After all, the ceremonies had been earlier that day. Her own ceremony had been difficult for her - behind her pomp and circumstance, there had been more than a moment where her gaze had swept the crowd, wishing with all of her heart that her mother had surprised her and came. Your parents would be proud, Foxstar had told she and her sister, and it had sent another dagger through her chest. She wanted them to be proud, and more than that, she wanted them to be able to tell her themselves. She had survived it, though, with a smile and a grin. Not a single cat was to know of her more sentimental nature; no, on the night of her ceremony, she had put on quite a show. She'd expected this ceremony to be easier for her. After all, by this point, she'd adjusted to being Uglyfacepaw's training partner. There was nothing Foxstar could do to make her life worse, or so she thought. She had been wrong. As if trying to personally target her, Foxstar had put Peonypaw with her. And even worse than that, Peonypaw's stupid dads looked so stupidly proud. It was an added insult to the injury, bleach poured into an open wound. Of course, she'd been upset.
As soon as the festivities ended and she could slip away without being noticed, Sunrisepaw had come right here, her face drawn into a mix of forlorn defeat and loneliness. She'd told it all to her mother, or really, the night sky and maybe a fish, if there was a fish in the water, in hopes that it would make her feel better. And now that she was done, she realized it didn't. Even after confessing her feelings to the universe, she still felt just as alone as she had all night. She slumped forward, letting her head rest against her paws. This sucked.
Peonypaw was padding with a quiet sort of withdrawnness through the more prickly bits of SummerClan’s territory, the stretch before the cliffs. Her steps were slow, her head down. She and Doefreckle hadn’t had a fight about it yet, but they’d come close after the ceremony, as happy as she had been — he’d been angry about the way Sunrisepaw had treated her (and a little about how that reflected on them; Shadedsun could be as endlessly generous and kind as he wanted, Doe was more than happy to be the domineering one), Peonypaw had gotten angry about the fact that he was angry, and he’d said all sorts of things like look at the way she treats you; if she wanted — if she DESERVED — your attention she’d give something back; there will be so many others for you to put your heart into, it doesn’t have to be her, not when you’re so young. He talked about how he and Shaded had cared for Sunrisepaw and her littermates on that cold night-time beach when she’d had a full future ahead of her, he talked about how she had taken the gift gentle Orchiddrop had given her and squandered it with her cruelty and her bullying (like he wasn’t just like her, and maybe that was precisely why he didn’t want his daughter with someone like that) — he’d talked and he’d talked and he’d talked, as usual the one to do the most of it. She didn’t know he was just afraid — terrified — of her ending up like him, of offering herself up to the wrong person and getting a broken heart if she was lucky, a broken body if she wasn’t — of losing her childhood to abuse disguised as affection like he’d lost his, far too young — that he was so desperate to keep her from making the same mistakes he’d taken years of suffering and loss and death to learn from that he was this close to locking her in a tower just to keep her safe. All she saw was him being overbearing and unreasonable — she was an apprentice now, and that meant she could look after herself. She’d crawl back into their nest in the nursery that night and cry and all would be forgiven as it always was between loving parents and a tempered child, but right then, she felt grown up and stubborn and indignant at being told what she could or could not feel for someone. Like they were being kept apart. He’d tried to be gentle, tried to edge closer to her with a soothing smile and desperate, anxious eyes, but she’d snapped at him and stormed off and ignored his soft, pleading Peony… from behind her.
All she could think, irrationally and without a scrap of substance, was that everything would be better if her mother were here. She’d understand. She’d been a girl once — they never had; how could they know? Shaded and Doe had sheltered her from the worst of her mother’s childhood realities, so she didn’t know how wrong she was to think Lilydawn’s youth had had any room in it for joy. It was the most hopeless thing in the world, to miss someone you’d never met — someone who you’d never spoken a word to, and yet who was the very foundation of your existence. She wished her mom had been there to see her. She hoped she might be proud. She often imagined how her mother might react to things, though she didn’t have much more to go on than stories — Shadedsun’s fuzzy description of her, Doe’s vague description of her as a ‘firecracker.’ He never seemed that eager to talk about her, always got this pained smile on his face. Maybe she wouldn’t have been proud. Maybe Lilydawn — she had a name at least, they were never guarded about that — would have had something mean and demeaning to say about her ceremony. Maybe she would have said she didn’t understand what the excitement was about and made her feel bad and immature for being happy. Maybe her idealised mother wasn’t a nice person. She didn’t know. She refused to think that; it would have broken her heart, broken the warm, desperate image she clung to like a picture in a frame. Either way, she still wished she had been there. Wished she had been there to groom her beforehand and let her curl up with her in her nest after. She loved her dads. She was grateful to them. She didn’t realise how much.
But she wanted her mother.
In her teenage anxiety, she had warmth, love, companionship, a home. Everything she could ever have asked for.
But she didn’t have her.
Peonypaw padded along the top of the cliffs, still as soft and prim as always despite her trailing tail; she didn’t trudge, didn’t stalk. Aside from her bowed head and sad eyes, she still looked like a princess. Shadedsun had taken her here once, her and her siblings, when they really weren’t old enough to have been out of camp. Taken them to see the sea. She looked out at it now, stopping on a flat rock still warm from the day’s sun and turning to face the ocean. The breeze buffeted her fur as she gazed out at the horizon; it was still smudged with smears of red and orange against the ashy grey, and she could feel rain in the air. Peonypaw let out a breath, trying to find the view beautiful. It was her first solo wander out of camp but all she could feel was the heaviness of her heart. Not loneliness exactly, because she couldn’t feel lonely with her sisters and her dads who had known her mother and a Clan full of warm-hearted cats who seemed to have set aside their gossip about her and her littermates to embrace her as one of them instead. Not hollow either, because all she ever received from everyone but Sunrisepaw was love. But just like… there was a little hole in her heart, and tonight it had swelled to consume her. It would go back down, the swelling would stop, but right now she felt its gentle, silent sadness like someone was hugging a shroud around her.
And then movement far below made her head bow faintly, eyes wandering down with a mournful sort of slowness to see a familiar pelt against the darkness of the sand. Her chest gave a heavy familiar flutter. Her dad was wrong about her, because Peonypaw wasn’t like him; she didn’t offer her heart up to Sunrisepaw to be broken because she liked her meanness. She was just as mean. Looking at her now… Just as sad. And she didn’t really want anything from her… It was just a crush. It didn’t have to be everything in the world. She just had a crush on the popular girl in school, the leader of the rival gang. There wasn’t any harm in that. Letting out another breath like she knew she was walking into more verbal onslaughts — she was used to them, to dishing back what she got — she turned and padded down towards her, making her way down the cliff path until the sand was shifting under her paws. Sunrisepaw was just finishing her confession to her mother when she padded up quietly behind her unnoticed, paws sinking into the sand unevenly so that sometimes she leaned off balance and almost stumbled.
For a moment she just stood there behind her, watching with her brows pushed together till they formed a little crease — she’d picked it up from Doe — and her eyes sad. Then, finally, in a soft voice that wasn’t as teasing as her words, she spoke. “You’re not that popular.” She didn’t say anything about Sunrisepaw being pretty; she couldn’t deny that. She padded slightly closer. “Really, I don’t think anyone even actually likes you that much. You’re just mean.” It probably sounded horrible, but it wasn’t a bad thing to Peonypaw — she liked Sunrisepaw like that, even if she didn’t say it. Stopping again, she sat down, her voice growing fainter as she looked down at her paws in the cold sand. It was like a truce had been drawn between the two warring factions of the school’s prom queen debate. “I miss my mom too, though. Sometimes.” It was a lie to make herself sound more cool. She missed her all the time. And she hadn’t even known her the way Sunrisepaw had known hers. She missed an idea. It was stupid.
And that was the difference between Sunrisepaw and Peonypaw, really, why Sunrisepaw couldn’t help but to bristle at the sight of her. Peonypaw had it all, at least to a child that had been abandoned completely. Who cared about not having a mother when you still had cats that cared about you, cats that would hold your paw as you toddled through life. Sunrisepaw didn’t have that. At best, she had Eveninglily, Oceanglow, Foxstar, and Middie. Eveninglily had never come back from the war, a bandaged veteran whose psyche had fractured at the first sight of blood. Oceanglow was gods only knew where, she hadn’t seen him face to face in months but his scent was still present in the clan. Foxstar hadn’t even been a warrior when she was born – what good was he? Stupid and fluffy and soft on the outside, a cruel villain on the inside. At least Sunrisepaw was the opposite; she was fully transparent around her peers (at least, when she was around peers her age, although her stunt at the ceremonies suggested that maybe she was growing more willing to show her rear end in front of everyone) that she was mean, and that meanness was little more than a cardboard shield. And then Midnightpaw, her twin who had frowned her way through the last few moons after her other, less cool friend stopped hanging around. All she wanted was a cat like Peonypaw’s dads in her life, someone to groom her and tell her how much they loved her, hell, even someone to tell her she was headed in the wrong direction sometimes (not that she’d often admit she was ever wrong). Of course, she missed Orchiddrop, but Orchiddrop could have been anyone, really. She was so desperate to fill the gaping chest wound left by her disappearance that she would have settled with anything; just please, stop the bleeding.
Peonypaw was everything that she hated. Even abandoned by her mother, an orphan, Peonypaw had more tender support than Sunrisepaw had. Why did Peonypaw get it and not her? Peonypaw’s very existence also reminded a small part of her that, no matter how much she could prattle on about how at least she was wanted and didn’t just get dumped like rubbish, in all reality, she, too, was now an orphan (no, that wasn’t true, Orchiddrop was still out there, she had to be still out there, something was preventing her from coming home, one day, Sunrisepaw would be united and she’d tell her that she was so sorry but that the battle had now been won and she was coming home). For a cat who had always prided herself as being the cream of the crop, a literal princess, daughter of the second in command, at the end of the day, she was no different than this random cat that just showed up one day. Except she was different – at least Peonypaw had dads.
When she heard Peonypaw’s voice, she couldn’t help letting out a hiss. Maybe it wasn’t Foxstar that had a vendetta against her; maybe it was the universe. It had realized it had accidentally made her too powerful and now it was moving mountains to ensure that her bad days only got worse. It was shockingly cruel; had she not just confessed to the stars that she had been upset by the addition of just this cat?
“I must have been a serial killer in a past life. Must have murdered an entire damn village with just my mind or something screwy. There’s simply no other explanation as to why I deserve to be stalked by someone whose barely old enough to take her primary exams,” she muttered, not quite talking to Peonypaw just quite yet. She then slowly turned, the sadness that had once been in her gaze now replaced with thinly-veiled impatience.
“Not that popular?” she meowed with a laugh. “I don’t seem to remember you being voted princess through a democratic election process ran entirely by your peers. Oh, right, I don’t remember because it didn’t happen.” She rose back to her paws, giving herself a quick shake. “And, plus, if I’m not popular, it’s even more pathetic that everywhere I look, somehow you’re right there. If I’m not popular, then you’re not stalking a loser, and I can’t imagine that would be good for daddy’s image.” If Sunrisepaw was abrasive on a good day, tonight, she was being borderline cruel. Peonypaw should have known better than to approach her. It wasn’t as if she didn’t make it perfectly clear meer hours ago that she didn’t want anything to do with the runt. (There was a small part of her, a nagging, stupid part of her, that recognized that in addition to jealousy, deep down, Sunrisepaw might feel a slight affection for Peonypaw. After all, there was an itty bitty part of her that was impressed by her sheer gall. Of course, though, that part of her was deeply repressed by the sheer annoyance that she felt every time she looked at the other apprentice).
“As for mean, only to cat’s whose brains have been replaced by string cheese. Trust me, the cats with any intelligence at all? They love me. You’ll see tomorrow in training; Ravenmask simply adores me.” It was part of why Cometsong hated her so much; she’d convinced her mentor from the very beginning that she was nothing but sweet and innocent. Monsterpaw hated it, accused her of brownnosing, and maybe that was true. But, if nothing else, Sunrisepaw knew which cats were enemies she could not make.
“Oh, great, you’re joining me. Right, right, make yourself at home,” she meowed when Peonypaw sat, her gaze never leaving the others. She narrowed her eyes. “I can’t go anywhere in this damned territory to get a moment alone, can I?”
And then, Peonypaw spoke again, and in slow motion, Sunrisepaw realized exactly what it meant that the other had heard her say that she was pretty popular. I miss my mom, too, though. Sometimes. The floor gave out from under her and horror crossed her expression. No, no. Peonypaw did not hear all of that, did she? (There was a part of her that was already bitter enough to hope that she had: during her monologue, she’d called Peonypaw a wide variety of insults, and might have cursed her out a time or two). No one was supposed to hear that. She was supposed to be alone. Why did it have to be here? Sunrisepaw felt no embarrassment over her misstep in believing she was wrong; instead, a soft panic rose through her chest. Such a reaction was common for the hyper-independent child who realized that someone had heard that, god forbid, they had needs. Without realizing it, she had shown her opponent the one area of her life where her coat of armor had a chink in its carefully crafted metal. Not even Midnightpaw knew how sensitive her weakness was. She’d seen death, blood and murder unfold before her eyes, and for the most part, it didn’t affect her. The only thing that affected her was her mother. And now Peonypaw knew.
The horror lingered in her eyes for a moment longer as her jaw hung slightly open, still shocked at her realization. It was as if Peonypaw had caused Sunrisepaw’s brain to completely short-circuit. She needed a factory reset – wait, were those tears in the corners of her eyes? Certainly they couldn’t be, right? A few more beats of silence passed, before she tightly shut her jaw and blinked rapidly a few times, regaining her composure and defeating her own stunned silence. “Oh, yeah?” she meowed, her voice raising slightly. “You miss your mom, do you? The one you never met because she didn’t want to meet you? You miss her? That’s rich. And, even richer you think telling me that is supposed to what, comfort me? Like our experience is the same or something? Well, it’s not.” Her voice continued to raise with each word until it reached a distressed octave. “So if that’s all you have to say to me, you might as well turn around and go back to whatever hole you crawled out of because that’s stupid.” Sunrisepaw was beginning to tremble, the word stupid cracking in her throat. Why was this happening to her?
Peonypaw was utterly oblivious to Sunrisepaw’s inner turmoil, her resentment of her, though she tried so desperately to understand her hatred and her anger, tried so desperately to peer into the other she-cat’s mind, with an agonised frown on her own face, and give her sympathy and know why. But she was so utterly closed to her, so composed of walls and shields, and Peonypaw’s different, changing approaches — she tried to strike up deeper conversations, she tried to be nice, to be mean, circling round and round like she was searching tirelessly for weaknesses in the defences — couldn’t pry them apart. She was left bewildered and hurt and uncomprehending.
When Sunrisepaw hissed, back still turned to her, she stopped. A little droplet of hurt panged in her heart — because she was just as mean, she was just as much a popular prom queen, but if Sunrisepaw was the more wounded of the too, constantly on the attack to keep others at bay, Peonypaw was the softer. And her constant anger at being near her did hurt. Maybe that should have been a sign — maybe that should have told her that Sunrisepaw didn’t like her, and didn’t want her around, and that she should stop showing up wherever she was and trailing behind her. But three things were true: she felt Sunrisepaw was lonely, she herself was infatuated despite herself, and she was young. All combined so she couldn’t. It would have been wrong, to leave Sunrisepaw alone before she’d gotten through to her — maybe she would have been more angry, to have her constant fan give up and turn away from her. Maybe she’d be hurt.
At Sunrisepaw’s serial killer tirade, Peonypaw’s ears slowly drooped back against her head, her brows pushing together in a wounded expression; she did have feelings… But she also had a temper, and she was defensive. “I’m not STALking you, you self obsessed DRAMA QUEEN,” she retorted, resuming her defiant stomping towards her across the sand; it grew firmer as she drew nearer to the water. “I was just walking and then I saw you having your stupid main character moment by the sea and I was like god she looks ridiculous and I was coming down here to tell you that when I heard you being a baby and talking to the air.” As if she didn’t babble to Lilydawn about everything that happened in her own life. “And I just thought you sounded so stupid that I had to try and make you feel less embarrassed.” It was a defensive, cobbled together excuse, one that made her angrier as she bought into it herself and stuck by it.
At her next tirade, Peonypaw just glared at the back of her head; at didn’t happen, she tipped her head back and rolled her eyes, because, really, let’s be honest, neither girl was particularly witty but both thought they were wittier than the other, and that line was not Sunrisepaw’s best. And I can’t imagine that would be good for daddy’s image. Peonypaw made a face and mocked her over-exaggeratedly, mouth movements big around the silent imitation as she leaned forward. When Sunrisepaw stood, Peonypaw stayed seated, glaring back at her defiantly. You’ll see tomorrow in training; Ravenmask simply adores me. “Oh yeah?” she replied in a low, quiet voice, sneering at her and giving her head a little wobble from where it was thrust forward slightly. “Then he’s gonna adore me more.”
What was a life-or-death argument between them really did seem ridiculously immature from the outside.
When Peonypaw sat down beside her, the very fact that Sunrisepaw complained but didn’t move away fed into Peonypaw’s confidence, into her beliefs; the other she-cat didn’t really want to be left alone. She was all talk. Peonypaw wasn’t incredibly smart, but she could deduce that.
And then Sunrisepaw was insulting her. Insulting her mother. Rather than anger, Peonypaw just felt such a sudden wave of hurt, of grief — because there was nothing that wounded a girl more than hearing her mother spoken ill of; she could take any amount of verbal sparring, but the image of her mother she held in her head was delicate and fragile and sensitive. She didn’t want her to be hurt by Sunrisepaw. It broke her heart with such a panicked flood. “She did want to meet me,” she retorted, but her voice was just as crackly as the other apprentice’s. Sunrisepaw’s brimming tears only made her throat close up more; seeing others crying always made her cry, it was her most embarrassing flaw, especially when she prided herself on her toughness. “She just… couldn’t. She had to go.” The excuse felt weak, because the fact was she didn’t know why. She was always defending her mother — to her siblings, to herself — but she didn’t understand. The fact that Doefreckle and Shadedsun didn’t either, that they always just got uncomfortable and guilty and evasive whenever she asked, hurt her more. Not even they knew why their daughter couldn’t have stayed for her. For Petuniapaw. Wouldn’t she have liked to know them? Her heart swelled with fresh grief she usually only felt in the middle of the night. During the day, she could be happy — like she was recording everything with her eyes to one day show her mom, as a recap of her life. During the night, that hope broke. And then, wiping her sniffling nose with the back of her paw, she snapped defensively at Sunrisepaw — and it was the meanest, most thoughtless thing she could have said, because for the first time she was trying to hurt her. “At least my mom left when I was just a kit — yours knew you and she still chose to go. How much must you have sucked to make her wanna leave her stupid, sucky daughter?” Her voice cracked weakly through the whole thing, punctuated by treacherous little hiccups of breath. She didn't even know when she'd started crying.
This was about as much of a disaster as it could ever have been.
