ashmoth….
itd be a goofy idea but i could see like. after hawkfrost dies, ashfur is completely heart broken, he has nobody left to turn and rely on. he begins to accept squirrelflight will never love him, causing him to spiral into a deep depression where he chases after anything that even slightly reminds him of hawkfrost. one night, at the gathering, he ends up talking with mothwing, and the two bond over their former connection with hawkfrost, their grief tying them together in some sort of messed up codependent friendship. ashfur starts projecting his idea of hawkfrost onto mothwing, and slowly begins to obsess over her, while mothwing falls in love with him for her own reasons - a mixture of desperateness to reconnect with any semblance of her dead brother, as well as an urge to form a 'normal' relationship with a tom since mothwings started to realize she'll never properly get with leafpool. the two become very reliant and attached to one another in a toxic way, both projecting the traits of a long lost cat onto the other person in a failing effort to find comfort in their grief.
i'm... really conflicted on this.
one one hand, your concept sounds interesting as hell! i love doomed toxic ships! on the other.. i only see mothwing as a lesbian, who KNOWS she's a lesbian. So it feels wrong shipping this... although technically, in the books Mothwing is straight/unlabelled.
i guess the way i could make this work is it's comphet from mothwing. i feel like you implied mothwing was comphet anyways?
