Fan Fiction

I finally fixed this, eww the other one had so much mistakes, please point them out if you find any in this one, such as canon cats or blogclanners, thanks!

Distant Kin

Allegiances

*Windclan:*

Leader:

Ashstar- gray tom with white tabby markings.

Deputy: Cloudtrike

Warriors:

Baybreeze- gray tabby she-cat tinted with ginger markings- apprentice: Quitepaw

Skytail- Brown tabby tom

Spottedsky- Brown and white speckle she-cat

Volefeather- Brown and white tom apprentice: Cloverpaw

Redheart- dark russet tom

Yellowtail- solid golden she-cat

Streamfur- gentle dapple she-cat apprentice: Cherrypaw

Smokestorm- fluffy gray tom apprentice- Frozenpaw

Apprentices:

Cloverpaw: solid brown she-cat

Cherrypaw- brown and white she-cat

Quitepaw – Gray she-cat with dark gray muzzle, paws, and tail

Frozenpaw- shiny white she-cat

Elders

Fernfang: dark brown tom

Sharppelt: fluffy gray tom

Shorttail: Russian blue she-cat born with a short tail

Medicine cat:

Smallstep: Small brown and white tabby tom

*Riverclan:*

Leader: Reedstar: brown tabby tom

Deputy: Silverclaw- silvery tabby she-cat

Warriors:

Berrystorm: Ginger she-cat

Leapordstripe: orange and brown spotted she-cat apprentice: Icepaw

Smokestorm- dark gray tom

Tigertail- dark tabby tom

Appleclaw- red-brown tabby she-cat apprentice:

Lionstorm- brown and gold tabby tom

Pineleaf- brown and gray tabby she-cat

Soottooth- dark gray and white sleek furred tom

Apprentices:

Icepaw: white she cat with light gray highlights

Medicine cat:

Runningmist- Bright white and gray she-cat

Elders:

Tallwhisker: brown and white “penguin suit”

*Shadowclan*

Leader: Darkstar- jet black tom with vibrant green eyes

Deputy- Shrewslash- brown tom with green eyes

Medicine cat:

Brighteyes- brown and white tabby with one blue eye and one green eye Apprentice- Echostripe- bone gray tabby she-cat with dark stripe down back

Warriors;

Clawstripe- brown tom

Crowjaw- sleek black tom with yellow eyes

Rainheart- gray she-cat with white patch on heart

Elders

Timberwhisker- bright orange and brown tabby with bright yellow eyes

*Thunderclan*

Leader

Breezestar- Gray and white tabby

Deputy;

Pebbleclaw- Breezestar’s brother, (the same)

Medicine cat

Crystalpool- gray and white she-cat

Warriors

Squirrelfur- orange tom

Oakstorm- cream tom

Hedgeflower- gray and brown she-cat apprentice- Mousepaw

Elders

None at the moment

Apprentices:

Mousepaw: gray tom

The Hidden Army
Chapter 5: By Fernfall
Hollowflight
Edited by Winterpaw

–———
My story started with the cold.

Chills, mostly. I ran a fever more often than not and my ribs were more prominent than my eyes. Cold played along the surface of my skin, frost on icicle fur. It covered me like a roof, subtle and silent. I thought it deflected the taunts and jeers that I could always hear whispered in the shadows.

My denmates ignored me. If I’d been a body, they’d have left me for dead. I was contained in the ice, I was separate and alone.

I was five moons old when I was too big and the ice cracked like an eggshell. I was no longer invincible by virtue of my invisibility. They hit me. I felt it.

I had always been the runt, the weakling. I had less body than I needed. I did not know how to look someone in the eye.

“Prove you aren’t as pathetic as we think you are,” Troutkit whispered, her paws pushing into my fur so hard it was hurting, and I couldn’t move away and I couldn’t cry; all bite and bruise. “Come sneak out of camp with us.”

My sister Mossykit: my random, shallow sister, sat behind her, face horrible with indifference. Rushkit was farthest away from the wall I was pushed up against, face longer than the horizon. Body still.

“No,” I mumbled, warm and woozy from the pain. “We have to wait until we’re apprentices. You can go, but I’m staying.”

Dead silence, cut. It was all vaguely a fairy tale, a kit story. The beaten underdog facing his tormentors. His sister and his only friends. Only the young know the cruelty of children. Lies and overcoming war.

That’s how it happened. The punch. The wound. A single, vibrating moment. I felt it first in my teeth (a rattle like thunder) and then in my cheek, where her paw left a feeling that I could only describe as red.

I slumped down and Troutkit left, dragging Mossykit with her, and though I couldn’t see it, she was rolling her eyes as if all she’d been doing was asking me to play and I turned her down. The warriors would have seen it that way. But they don’t see anything anyways.

It could have been a dream, but I swore long after the fact that Rushkit stayed behind. Found poppy seeds and fed them to me. He treated my wounds like treasures, treated me like a foreign species. Family. He smelled of our shared home: dirt, reeds, and lakes. The willows were my worst favorite part; they were too pretty to be innocent.

The kindness was an impossibility.

I thought the shock of pain would leave me numb and slowly broken. I believed the dirt in my mouth and the ache in my skull would make me avoid pain at all possible costs. How wrong I was. My first encounter with violence was never meant to put me off.

It was the beginning of an addiction.

——-

I spent my moons as an apprentice trying to become less. Less there. Less alive. I walked like suicide; every breath I took was an apology and a tribute. Troutpaw remained in control, and ambition burned her inside and out. Mossypaw at her side, more reluctant, now, and yet more afraid to move away. Decided yet unsure.

Rushpaw I could never quite figure out. Too rebellious to leave me for the crows, but to afraid to help me openly. Risky but caring.

We were friends. That is something easy for me to confess. Dissect us and you would have found hordes of kittypet food, shared wounds, an uncanny knowledge of herbs; water.

“I hate them,” Rushpaw whispered after a training session with me, wet and panting. “Troutpaw and Mossypaw. They’re cowards. When I imagine their faces, that’s when I hit hardest.”

I strived to have the same feeling as him, to want to hurt more when feeling anger.

I never thought Rushpaw knew quite what to do with himself. Resentment and fatigue bubbled over in equal measures at frequent intervals. He would be resigned first, and then suddenly he would be furious, and then he would be as bad as them. I wanted to hide from him as much as I did the others when he dragged me from my nest and coerced me into troublemaking. I wanted him to help and hurt me.

With a scowl on his face he’d say to me; “Nobody cares about us, we can do what we want. You’re letting them win by doing nothing.”

I would ignore him as best I could, and then he would grin in the cruel way he learned from our sisters. “I’ve told you what I’m going to do, and if you stay here and do nothing, you’re still complicit. You’ll get in all the trouble with none of the fun.”

And then we would be off, and I would tell myself it was okay, because one day it would be over altogether.

When and Rushpaw and Troutpaw became Warriors, I sat at the back of the crowd and imagined that Troutpaw did not exist, was not standing there in the sunlight, gleaming like she had StarClan’s trust woven into her pelt. I howled Rushpaw’s new name like an incantation. Like a prayer. Rushtail. Rushtail. Rushtail. I left spaces for Troutpaw’s name, blank and unforgiving. I would not say it. She would not need me to share in her success, and I did not wish to do it. The world was hers already.

I sat vigil with him on the other side of the camp from his sister, so he wouldn’t be alone. Friend or not, I thought I owed him that. I told myself I was not just there to get away from Mossypaw, alone in our den.

Rushtail and I sat in silence until the deepest midnight gave way to a dizzying dawn. I never knew if he looked at me, because I did not look at him, I looked at the spaces between the stars and wondered what became of bullied kits that nobody wanted. I looked at the moon and wondered what dank hole my body would be thrown in when I died.

—–

“Hey! Hollowpaw! I need something from you!”

The fish I was hunting darted out of my reach. The resulting surge of frustration made me uncooperative. I stood where I was in the shallows and let her come to me. It was a small act of rebellion, but I felt a thrill in it nonetheless. Troutstream had grown from the blunt nursery bully into something beautiful and dangerous, a creature of short, glossy fur and perfect sharp teeth. She flashed me a smile that brought toms to their knees, and some she-cats too, I wouldn’t doubt.

“Your sister and I are going somewhere tonight. I need you to take our patrol shifts, okay? And to hunt for us too.” She demanded, voice like rain and fire.

The easy answer would have been ‘yes, of course I will,’ but instead I asked, “Where are you going?” Because curiosity kills cats.

“None of your business. Just take our shifts.”

“No.”

I rebelled.

She was on me in an instant, pressing my face into the damp soil, choking out air. Troutstream dug her claws into the soft skin of my sides. I felt them prickle like heated thorns. “Your sister is so much better than you. She listens to everything I say. You’re worthless and stupid. Now, you will take our shifts, correct?”

“Yes,” I murmured. “I’ll do it.” Tears sprung into my eyes and I couldn’t fight them.

She giggled in a sky-high tone and let me go. “Yes! Good, good. Thanks, Hollowpaw!”

My heart throbbed in my chest and my breath came in sighs. All I could hear was the wind. The moon wasn’t there to take my darkest thoughts away.

—-

Rushtail tossed me a fish and told me to eat five. I glared at him and flopped onto my nest, exhausted from the endless hunt and looping patrols. Troutstream’s ‘requests’ came with no respite, and I had no trouble falling asleep. I sank into rest and dreams.

The place I dreamed was only lit with the glow of the grey sky, tiny white flowers spangling the ground like specks of ice, but somehow more wrong. Demented.

“They’re called moondrops.” I jumped at the voice, fluffed all my fur on end as if it could protect me with its thickness.

The voice’s owner slipped into my field of vision. A brown tabby with a ghostly white stomach, he was all I ever wanted to be: sharp claws and hard muscle. Fatally handsome, undeniably masculine. He moved like the shadows. His fur was shredded and long, and his eyes trapped me under ice.

“The flowers,” he said. “Moondrops. I wouldn’t touch them, if I were you. Even a trace of their nectar is deadly. Youll be gone in an instant.”

I nodded, under his spell. “Who are you?”

He ignored me. “Your sister and her friend are off frolicking with a ShadowClan tom, doing things that SarClan disapproves of.” He said StarClan like a swear.

“When you wake up, you’ll be aching all over from the patrols and hunts you did for them. Why didn’t you stand up for yourself?”

My eyes shifted from his broad shoulders to my ragged paws. Heat prickled in the tips of my ears. “I can’t. I can never stand up to Troutstream. I’m terrible at fighting, I’ll never pass my assessment. I’m dumb and bad.” I had to hold myself back from spilling out my emotional insecurities to the phantomous tom.

“You have no faith in yourself, Hollowpaw.”

I don’t ask how he knew my name. I always choose the wrong things to say. “I know.”

The tom moved closer. “I can teach you,” he says, quiet and slow. “I can teach you to be strong. Troutstream is only the beginning. By the time I’m done with you, you will face armies without flinching.”

The dream pulsed and spun. I was there, and then I was gone, and then I was back again. The movement of a heartrate. I repeated, “Who are you?”

“Call me Hawkfrost. I’m from RiverClan as well. I know all of your struggles.”

“Are you from StarClan?”

“Better.”

“Tomorrow, then. Train me tomorrow night.” I found the words I wanted.

Hawkfrost chuckled. His eyes gleamed with something hidden. “Armies, Hollowpaw,” he whispered, glazed. “Armies.”

—–

“You need to rely more on your hind legs. They provide more power with less effort.”

I ran through the drill with Ivypool again. She was just as skilled as she was distant. Never looking at me, but through me. At something beyond the frame. I never knew what.

Blossomfall padded by.

Hawkfrost stared at Ivypool’s body.

“Why are you here, Hollowpaw?” Ivypool snapped.

My answer was practiced, immediate. “For strength.”

She laughed and I could taste bitterness in it. “Strength, huh? Fine. I want the exercise down by tonight. Do it again.”

—–

I had not been in the Forest long when I met Harespring.

I tripped over him, because he was sitting in the shadow of a black and poisoned tree, and instead of hurting me further he helped me up.

I took a few steps back, and a few moments to place the patched face.

He was WindClan, and revered. I had seen him on patrols before, streaking across the moor like the breeze was in his paws, and I had seen him at gatherings, sitting at the front of his Clan with a cluster of admirers, slender and proud and assured.

And now he was in the Dark Forest, half hidden in the gloom, pelt flecked with black mud, moor-grass green eyes glowing. I wondered what he could possibly have to learn here.

I looked at his white paws. He was wraith-like and slim in the gloom.

“Hollowpaw, right?” he said.

Startled that he knew my name, I nodded.

“You’re terribly young.”

“I’ll be a warrior in a few moons,” I mumbled. “Or maybe sooner, I learn faster here.”

In the corner of my vision Harespring turned his head away. “Yes,” he murmured, but it seemed like he was saying it to himself and not to me.

“-I’ve seen you before-” I blurted, to break the silence, and then wished I hadn’t done it. “-At gatherings and stuff, I mean… you’re- um-”

He looked at me, amused and just a little sad. “Oh, have you?” Like he was toying with me.

“…Yeah. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to learn from you.”

Harespring stood up, and for a second I thought he was about to leave, but instead he said; “You can find out what it’s like to learn beside me. We’re all the same in Tigerstar’s eyes.”

He sounded a little bitter.

“Just be careful, Hollowpaw. These cats won’t hesitate to kill you. Nothing here is your friend.”

——

I trained with Ivypool in the black river, later, and repaid the favor for what she had been teaching me. It did not even seem strange that I was teaching a ThunderClan cat to swim. I could hardly see our divisions anymore, we were just tattered pelts and we moved in tandem. At first the Dark Forest had been a means to an end. Now it was the end, and life was the means. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed.

I was terrified, to begin with, when it had seemed like a world filled with Troutstreams. Clones and copied bodies. Then I learned to love it, to stalk for it in my dreams and push the day faster.

I learned to love the fight and the chase and the technical work behind each fighting move, I learned to love the viciousness that ran in the veins of the cats who lived in the shadows, I learned to love the power that it truly was gifting me. I was reinvented and renewed.

Recycled.

I took, and I did not count the cost. Payback was only for being scarred a little too much.

The flaws on my skin were irrelevant. I was stronger than I had ever been, mentally and physically. I was not afraid anymore. I could rebel again.

—-

When Troutstream came for me again, I was ready. She carried herself like she was made of sugar and cherries. I was bigger than her now, I realised, all sinew and muscle, a contrast to her sparrow frame.

Sunrise nose. Slit for a mouth. Almond eyes. “Hey,” she says, “Do something for me, would you? Mossypaw and I are–”

“No.”

She lashed out, but I was quicker. I caught her paw, used it to twist her over and slam her to the ground. Reverse the roles. She smelled of mint leaves and strawberries, always fruit with her. If we didn’t loathe each other so much, I might have fallen for her. “You aren’t going anywhere,” I said, for the first time.

I stepped over her so I could pin her with four paws. We were nose to nose and I caught one of her paws with my own, dug my claws into her pads. Blood welled up where I had pricked her. She didn’t look at all threatened. “Red suits me,” she said. “But you look bad in any way.”

I wanted her to feel afraid, to feel how I had felt for seasons. I wanted her to be hurt. (I was just like the words Rushtail said, then.) But how did I feel, I wondered, that I could make her feel too? Humiliation I hated, but pain? I was obsessed with pain, and she seemed to almost revel in it as well. It was strange to see her pinned down, to see her bleeding like the cats I trained with every night. If this was justicel it was not like how the stories told it. It was as corrupt as the Forest.

“What happened to you?” she asked. “When did you become so strong?” Her expression faded to concern, almost.

“Overnight,” I replied, because it wasn’t entirely a lie.

I made her take on my patrols for the next three moons, so I could train, and also just partly because I could. She deserved it, I told her, and as I stepped away, I looked her in the eyes for the first time. I clawed her again later.

——

After that, we moved in different circles. I had no time for anything outside of the Dark Forest, anymore. Mossypaw seemed to be nearby more often than she had ever been, and she looked worn down and worn out, but I did not have time for her either. My parent were ants.

Maybe if I was not so consumed by the world I lived in when I was sleeping, then I might have been glad to receive my sister as a friend for the first time in my life, but as it was she existed as a distraction. A “friend” might be a stretch, anyways.

Rushtail had had little time for me since he had become a warrior moons ago, and for that I was now almost glad, I decided now. I did not need friends, attachments to consider and maintain.

Training was the only important thing. And power.

The only two of my Clanmates that did not blur into the background with the others were diligent Beetlewhisker and his mother Icewing, whom I saw most nights, if we were training in the same part of the Forest.

Icewing was all gleaming teeth and blackthorn claws, but the most caring and two-faced cat. She fought like a hurricane. Beetlewhisker was thoughtful and quick-witted, quietly innocuous, you did not suspect him until he had you pinned on your back and his teeth in your flesh. He took the longest of us all to learn but had the most effect. Icewing and him carried their own drama throughout the night.

Blossomfall and Ivypool got it on by darkly trees and Hawkfrost fought them. Furzepelt watched Sunstrike, Sunstrike watched Breezepelt, and everyone ended up depressed. Ratscar and Redwillow and Antpelt and Mousewhisker and everyone.

They were as drunk on the Forest’s acid as I was.

—–

My warrior ceremony came and went. Despite my brief concerns that my lack of focus in Clan life would hold me back, I passed with flying colours. Compared to the Dark Forest, the tests were kit’s play. Doodles of knowledge.

The night before Mossypaw and I were due to receive our names, we duelled each other at close range.

She could hardly land a paw on me, and I caught her each time, flipping her, pinning her, filling her black-and-white pelt with dust and then beating it back out of her.

“How…?” She cried, and I hit harder and grinned.

When it was over, I walked away before I would have to hear her say what she wanted to. I was too slow, though.

“Hollowpaw, I wish we could be friends.”

I did not want to hear it.

———

I trained to be faster.

—–——

Two nights later: I was in the Dark Forest as Hollowflight, and suddenly everything fit in place.

Spiraling heights and close battles. Finding a Clan within the Clans. Ivypool, staring at tortoiseshell she-cats and mapping their bodies from across the river. Or just one, the special one we all know of.

I was where I was meant to be: deep within the forest, surrounded by the dead and the dying. Thistleclaw used to be the cat’s guy, the one who would talk and socialize with each of us souls. Hawkfrost took over, but always had the most attention on Ivypool.

I was desperate still to learn, I drank down every word that spun my way and copied every flick of the warriors’ claws. Young and yet growing.

I had never been so confident. I had never made jokes before. I looked into cats’ eye and fought them with my retinas.

Sometimes Harespring was next to me, like a shadow or a ghost. He always was. So brave and strong in the limelight, but a creeper hidden away.

“I don’t think they are what they seem,” he said once, when nobody else could hear. “I’ve heard they want to destroy the Clans. Our home. Who would stand for that?

“I’ll stand by them. Besides, what have the Clans ever done for us?”

He did not reply, but when I met his gaze it was filled with the same sorrow. Why did he hate this place so much, I wondered, and still come here every night?

I was blinded by my selfishness. Becuase I was tormented throughout my greasy child years, I forced down other cats’ throats that the Clans were bad, too.

I grew stronger still. My pelt was a map of my life, scars testament to my trials.

Harespring gave me another. Long and thin, down my cheek, when we were fighting. He was WindClan, thinner and lighter than I. My weight was an advantage, but he was quicker. He darted back and forth like a minnow, and left little scratches all over my muzzle.

I pinned him down.

“What happened,” he asked, “to Hollowpaw?” And he clawed my face.

“This is what I want, Harespring,” I replied. I flipped him over and I was pinning him down.

My blood dripped onto his nose. His eyes were wild and he was so immersed in the struggle. He didn’t notice the scarlet drops slither into his mouth.

—–

There was no dawn, on that last day. There was no cue to battle, there was no final moment of preparation. War calls and cat falls, but no dress rehearsal.

I realised for the first time that I still did not know what I was doing.

I did not know who to fight for. I would claw, still angry and powerhungry, but against who?

“If you die out there, Hollowflight, I’ll find you and kill you again.” Harespring pressed his nose to mine and laughed. He would fight for WindClan, I knew.

“Nobody knows my mind like you do,” I said. I did not think I knew myself.

And then he was gone.

I’ll stand by them, I said. These are my people and I can be strong. My life is here, now, and Troutstream can fall beneath me.

When Hawkfrost attacked Rushtail, I changed my mind.

I threw him off Rushtail, the one who’d been my only friend. Newborn power crackled through me. I made a scratch at his stomach, his ear, went for his eye, let ignorance and rage overcome me.

Big mistake, bad mistake.

Hawkfrost gained the advantage, dangerously close to my right cheek, where I had first been hit, years ago. He unsheathed his claws.

“I promised you, you would face my hidden armies,” he snarled. “I never break my promises. The Forest was your home, and bad you betrayed it.” He killed me before his profound speech.

He left me for dead, in the way I had always thought my denmates would. They did not see me either, as I lay under a bush that I had dragged myself to for concealment. I watched the other Forest trainees’ lives unfurl ahead of them—those who survived.

What did I regret?

I let Rushtail leave me behind. We had shared our childhoods, but I had let him throw it all away. I died for him.

I had never made up with Mossyfoot, and Troutstream stayed as queen. They snuck away at nights again.

By the end, I had no family.

I never saw Harespring again. I imagined him standing beside my bloodied body, head bowed. He was too noble for tears. In my imagination, he said that he didn’t want to remember my humour or my skills, he wanted me back. I imagined pressing my nose to his. Then I saw the blood dripping into his mouth.

My story ended like it had begun; everything was black and cold, and I was alone.