𓍊𓋼 He hasn’t left his mother’s side since the kits were born, awaiting Flycatcher’s return to camp. Flamewhisker has yet to name the four bundles of multicolored fur, and she likely won’t until her mate returns, but Falconheart is okay with that. Maybe his father will return to camp with amazing ideas for their names—he’d been the one to give Falconheart his name, and the young warrior can only imagine what he’ll suggest for these kits. Maybe Hawkkit, to match Falconheart, for the little ginger tabby. Or Mothkit, after Flycatcher’s sister, for one of the she-kits. Maybe the little ember-flecked she-kit would be named Flamekit, after her mother. Bicolored eyes watch as his mother sleeps, kits tucked up against her belly, and he nearly doesn’t catch the sound that draws his attention away.
Movement from outside filters into his ears, and the cream tabby perks up. But it’s only Howlingstar—she calls out for Flamewhisker, and the tone of her words tells him immediately what he needs to know. It’s the same tone she’d used to confirm to Skyclaw that the tortoiseshell’s brother was dead.
Flycatcher won’t be coming home. He won’t be coming to push his way into the nursery, to lay eyes on his second litter of kits for the first time. He won’t have any names to give them like he’d given Falconheart his. He won’t be here to offer Falconheart more reassurance that he’s a good big brother, and won’t be here to pick him up after every failure he’s bound to experience. He won’t be there to tell Flamewhisker how beautiful their kits are, and support her as they grow larger and larger to eventually become apprentices.
"Flycatcher… was killed," the tabby-striped leader says, and the world around him fades to black. Noises collide and mesh together into an unintelligible cacophony of static. The dirt that he’s standing upon may as well crumble into a pit of quicksand beneath him, for how fast the young warrior collapses weakly onto his haunches beside his mother. His ears are flattened, as far backward as they will turn; if he can block out everything around him, then maybe it will be easier to deal with. If he can just pretend, for a moment, that this is all some stupid joke made in poor—terrible—taste, then he doesn’t have to… have to…
He can’t. He can’t be dead. He can’t be gone.
Flycatcher can’t be gone, because if he’s gone, then how is he going to meet his next litter of kits? How will he help Flamewhisker raise them, and watch them grow up in the same nursery that Falconheart and Stormfeather had stumbled around in for the first months of their lives? How is he going to watch as his second litter remains sheltered, safer for longer, within the confines of the nursery until they’re fully prepared to become apprentices? How will he see another litter of his kits become warriors, and carry on his legacy as Falconheart has been unable to? How will… how will anything be okay without him?
No noise escapes him, not even when he lifts his head at last, his own devastation interrupted by his mother’s denial. He looks up-
And suddenly he’s a kit again, little cream paws stamping against the ground and begging his father to play a game with him. It was only him and Stormfeather as kits, along with a much smaller Skyclaw and Duskbird, but he’d still looked up to his father more than anything in his earliest months. His heart squeezes in his chest, the constricting feeling not letting up for a moment. It’s only getting worse as he stands here, silent as the grave, trying to make sense of what’s been laid bare before him. He can’t accept it, can he? It can’t be true. This isn’t a random warrior, one whose life is not intertwined with his own. This isn’t Batwing or Duskbird, who he has lived without before. This isn’t his mother or sister, who volunteered for a journey into the mountains and were gone for two months, but still came back. This is his dad, the one constant in his life. This is the one cat who he has never been apart from.
Flamewhisker refuses to believe that it’s true, and the cream tabby’s heart sinks to his paws. His mother demands for everyone to get out, and her pain is clear to see as he looks at her. "Mom," is the single quiet word he manages to force out past the lump in his throat. A soft protest, attempting to get her to see reason. But he has to… he has to see if it’s true. He knows, he understands that it must be true. But he needs to see his father’s face, to know for sure. Pale paws scrabble at the ground as he rises, his movements weighted by emotion as he haphazardly makes his way out of the nursery. "Where is he…" his voice fades to a whisper as his eyes fall upon his father.
It’s true, then. His father lies still, lifeless, on the ground. The sight is hard to take in—it burns itself into the backs of his eyelids nearly instantly, and everything is suddenly too real. Suddenly, the prickling of eyes upon his pelt is overwhelming. The weight of multiple gazes on him is too much to bear. Without any other idea of what to do, Falconheart once again does what he has done best since the first days of his apprenticeship. He runs. He hides. He does not face the situation head-on.
He finds not his own nest in the warriors’ den, but the one that smells most strongly of his father—and there he curls into a ball, a perfect approximation of a miserable, pathetic warrior. How does he live without Flycatcher? How does his mom live without her mate? How does ThunderClan live without its lead warrior, its former deputy, friend to so many?
…How is anything going to be okay again?
