I’ve always imagined that in the battle with the dark forest, Mapleshade’s kits died.
It would be horribly ironic if one of her trainees killed them, like Ivypool or Hollowflight (probably on accident though, I imagine they’d be super on edge). Maybe someone was coming to attack Maple. And her kits, despite everything, wanted to help their mom.
So it led me down the thought process of what would happen if a kit or apprentice showed up in the duplex? And what kind of abilities would be given to them?
:(
I've been thinking about Mapleshade's kits in StarClan. maybe someone took them in. I imagine the rest of StarClan shielding them from their mother's actions. It must've been confusing for them as Ravenwing, Frecklewish, and Appledusk show up one by one in the stars. I imagine Appledusk doesn't know if he should tell them he's their father. At least in StarClan Frecklewish would get the chance to apologize to them.
but we're talking about the ddd!au! maybe they fell victim to the environment shifting around. the dark forest changed forms a lot due to Ashfur - maybe the same happens in StarClan. the idea of it being caused by one of Mapleshade's trainees is juicy. it being Ivypool hurts my heart, probably because she's already gone through so much and her pain kind of gets highlighted in my au since there's so much focus on Bristlefrost's state.
there are definitely kits in the au for them to meet! Tadpole is there with Hawkfrost.
maybe Mapleshade's kits are taken in by Spottedleaf and Frecklewish, who were sad that they couldn't have kits of their own or adopt until the kits turned up. Frecklewish definitely recognizes them and hides it from Spotted at first.
I'm not really sure about their abilities though, I'll have to think on that! they lived such short lives so it'd be hard to make them different from each other. maybe they have powers as a group?
it would be great to hear about bris for the ddd au!! or snowtuft if youd prefer
for bristlefrost, I think hers would be a superedition called Bristlefrost's Spirit. and it'd be a double meaning w/ how she's a (lost) spirit, but also how she learns to keep her morale up when the various other cats (toms) she's defined herself by (first stemleaf, then rootspring, and also in a non-romantic sense the impostor) are lost to her. she has to figure out she is when she has no clan or mate that needs her. what does she need herself? who is she?
I think snowtuft would have a novella called Snowtuft's Regret or Snowtuft's Memory. he's my favorite "secondary" character in this au so forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but I love the idea of him learning to use his memory-walking powers on himself and his life in the old forest as tigerstar's lackey returns to him full force. at the same time, his friendship with spottedleaf blossoms in the duplex. he's plagued by the thought that she and bristlefrost and all his friends in the duplex would shun him and damn him to just as lonely of a life he had in the dark forest if they found out. when it's too much to bear, he confesses his past to spottedleaf.
how about duplex au redwillow? (I got very attached to him in alitm)
I liked him in alitm too!
I think he’d be both sad and glad to see bristlefrost show up at the duplex - sad that she died in the dark forest, but happy to get to see her again! she apologizes for not stopping him from falling in the water, he tells her she has nothing to be sorry for and thanks her for giving him hope and a reason to run instead of giving up. a bittersweet moment for them both.
his “sitcom”/show role would be that upbeat and friendly guy who’s secretly haunted by his past.
the two of them are friends! if any former dark forest cats try to give her trouble, he backs her up and tells them off. he dances around telling her how he died the first time.
but one day/night/time is weird there, they’re hanging out, looking out into nothingness out the window and a light goes off in her head. she’s heard the name redwillow before, before she met him in the dark forest. she’s heard it called out over a silent crowd. she remembers blackstar listing the casualties of the great battle. but how did he end up in the dark forest if he’d died protecting the clans from it?
when he confesses that he actually fought on the side of the dark forest, she runs. she doesn’t want to believe that there’d been something about her close friend she didn’t know, and that it was something so awful.
she warms back up to him slowly. he tells her that he knew her mother. she tells him that it was blackstar who read out his name every gathering. he’s too shocked to speak -- on earth, his last act was telling blackstar it was his time to die. he doesn’t know how to process the fact that the one who killed him was also the one keeping his name alive.
redwillow, bristlefrost, and snowtuft hang out in the lobby together too. they hope that sparrowfeather and maggottail are okay, but they have plans for if the two of them also spirit-die to have the best slumber party ever.
OH about ur ddd au… what do hawkfrost and bristlefrost think of each other? i thought it might be interesting if hawkfrost finds out that she’s ivypool’s daughter and kind of starts looking out for her without even realizing it. like he’s subconsciously trying to make up for the way he treated ivypool by looking after her kit but also idk if hawkfrost would ever get to that point. BUT i am curious
I like the idea of him trying to make up for how he treated Ivypool by helping Bristlefrost! maybe he’d get there after awhile. he probably wouldn’t admit that he’s purposefully helping her for a long time, though. he’d be doing something helpful and then be like “I’m doing this because I wanted to not to help!” and then do something minorly petty to even it out lol
(also, to give context to a later bit: I see ddd!hawkfrost as having thorny plants growing from his fur since brambleclaw/star killed him both times.)
I can’t remember if this is canon but I’m imagining Ivypool didn’t tell any of her kits specifics about her time in the dark forest, at least not until Bristlefrost went there to fight Ashfur. she’d hoped she’d never have to. so Bristlefrost vaguely knows who he is but not that he led her mom to the dark forest (not at first)
Antpelt gets protective of her and thinks Hawkfrost is up to no good. so he and Snowtuft and Redwillow confront Hawkfrost but can’t figure out what he’s up to (because, for once in his life, afterlife, and after-afterlife, he isn’t up to anything.)
Hawkfrost thinks Bristlefrost is a goody-two-shoes when she first arrives at the duplex. but he respects her leadership and her sacrifice as he learns more how she ended up there, the only cat in the duplex to die twice at once.
and when he finds out she was Ivypool’s daughter, that respect morphs into an uncomfortably heavy weight in his stomach. a sense of responsibility that’s foreign to him.
for the first time, Hawkfrost feels guilty.
and as he realizes this, the gnarled, brambly plants in his fur grow little flower buds.
Bristlefrost thinks Hawkfrost is full of hot air. she sees him working out at the gym and doesn’t give him much of a second thought other than “wonder how he sleeps with all those thorns in his fur.” not until someone anonymously starts helping her and her roommates out with little things. something they managed to lose in the vents shows up at their doorstep. and the one time she catches their mysterious helper and sees that it’s Hawkfrost, he’s so defensive and she has no clue why. she asks why he’s going out of his way to help her and he can’t answer. he even doesn’t seem to know himself.
Antpelt tells her more about his own time in the dark forest telling her about Hawkfrost.
Bristlefrost reels from the revelation that her mom killed one of her closest friends. but at the same time, she knows that if Ivypool hadn’t double-killed Antpelt he probably wouldn’t be in the duplex with her now. she feels a lot of conflicting emotions.
she leans on her friends. spottedleaf makes her a hot cup of tea. antpelt reassures her that while it was awful, he’s glad he can be here with her and their friends now.
later on, Antpelt breaks it to her that it was Hawkfrost who brought her mother to the dark forest in the first place.
so she goes from “I can’t believe my mom was a killer” to “the guy in the unit upstairs made my mom into a killer” and that really throws her. she sees red and nearly kicks his door in right then.
ik you already have a line for darkstripe but if there's anything else id love to hear it
also what does ripplestar do
for darkstripe: he definitely shows up at different people’s apartments and acts like he was invited but he’s really just bored. tigerstar won’t let him hang around and acts like he doesn’t even know him much to darkstripe’s dismay. he has hawkfrost kick him out of their room
so he’s in that sitcom role of “guy who keeps showing up at our house” and he takes snacks and negs people but he’s actually only there because he’s bored and lonely out of his mind
also he lets it slip that he got his ass kicked by firestar in rootspring’s body and bristlefrost is proud of her bf and doesn’t let darkstripe forget it
it’s absolutely devastating to him that firestar was the one who killed him. since it was firestar but also not-firestar maybe there’s some wispy fake flames coming from the wound that killed him. this is repulsive to tigerstar which is why he shuns him.
the flames are darkstripe’s greatest shame (until he realizes that he was a terrible cat while he was alive and dead — then maybe listening to some of the less villainous cats convinces him that being evil wasn’t worth it)
for ripplestar: I’m realizing I don’t think I’ve read code of the clans! I have a couple of the field guides that came out when I was a kid but that’s it. but from his wiki page he sounds like he’d lurk around all quiet in the halls but then play music really loud in the middle of the night
is there any difference between double dying and fading out after enough time has passed in the df or starclan? like do cats who fade get the double duplex or only cats who actively double die?
good question! what I’m thinking is that the cats who double-die because their spirits are killed are stuck in the duplex. the cats who fade from memory and disappear from the afterlife that way end up at the duplex but they can roam
the faded cats are more “at peace” since they had time to fade instead of being abruptly removed from what I’m imagining as the natural end of life in that world
the double-killed cats are free to leave the duplex once they’re at peace as well
which introduces a kind of sad idea actually - like if say snowtuft comes to terms with his past and how he’s changed because he’s in a supportive place now, that’s what allows him to leave that place (and that found family) behind if he chooses to.
I’m not 100% set on how that would work since I don’t want it to be like “forgive and forget your past and everything you’ve done.” I’m walking a fine line here that isn’t quite redemption stories all around
also, I really like the good place (which probably shows haha) so there’s an idea I’m borrowing from that (which I’m pretty sure was inspired by the concept of nirvana in buddhism, not 100% sure). it comes up towards the very end of the series though so I’ll put it under the cut in case anyone decides to watch it who hasn’t already
so that idea of the door that ends your afterlife and let’s you rejoin the universe or whatever and you don’t know what happens or what that feels like is what I’m thinking of!
like the double-killed duplex cats can’t leave the duplex even though they can spectate on the living world (and starclan and the dark forest and all the little afterlives too eventually).
but once someone is at peace with their actions in their life and afterlife and what’s happened to them and what they’ve done, they don’t start to fade but they’re free to leave the duplex.
alright your duplex au just tapes up my broken heart like? snowtuft's random second death after the erins led us on destroyed me. i crave the closure and this gives me the closure. SO uh i had an idea, ddd!tadpole? i want hawkfrost to meet his not-quite-older-anymore brother and just. you know. break down sobbing
this was so nice to see out of the blue, thank you!!! 💛 it really warms my heart to hear that you’re feeling closure from this au. ddd!snowtuft in particular has grown to mean a lot to me. it’s encouraging to hear that this little cat au is doing something good for people reading it because it sure is doing me a lot of good to write it.
and now for your proposed ddd!tadpole! this is a really, really good idea. tadpole (like hopekit and wishkit) has room to kind of be whoever. I also want to put ddd!hawkfrost through the wringer emotionally and this is just *chef’s kiss*
confession: I don’t think I read sasha’s graphic novel, and if I did it was back in elementary school. but I did watch a lil recap on tadpole and there was something that I think is really fun for the au:
tadpole was never told who his father was, while hawkfrost wound up being molded into tiger star’s right hand man (cat?) and defined by his loyalty to their father.
(more on ddd!tadpole below the cut!)
once sasha isn’t around anymore, I imagine the only one keeping tadpole’s memory alive is mothwing. so eventually, mothwing dies and joins starclan (or doesn’t, not as punishment for not believing in them before but because she rightfully doesn’t trust them). that means that mothwing enters the afterlife and tadpole enters the after-afterlife at the same time. (big day for hawkfrost! also I love how mothwing who spends a lot of her life not believing in ghosts has two ghost/spirit brothers. I like reading her as not believing in ghosts because believing that one of her brothers is essentially undead and evil is emotionally harder than believing that her brothers are just gone.) I think I’m going to go with the idea that living cats remembering you keeps your spirit from beginning to fade, I know the books are inconsistent about it though.
~
so tadpole arrives in the duplex and he doesn’t know why. even though he’s been around for a long time, he’s a forever kitten. he’s lost, scared, and alone.
hawkfrost does rounds around the duplex, recruiting new arrivals for tigerstar. he pulls up ready to intimidate and possibly recruit the newcomer, but when he sees that it’s tadpole he stops in his tracks.
he feels an uneasy tightness in his chest. he hears himself call out to his brother, hears a name that hasn’t left his lips in seasons and seasons.
“Tadpole? Is that really you?”
“Yup, I’m Tadpole, nice to meet you! What’s your name?”
and for the first time in his (after)life, hawkfrost doesn’t know what to say.
he finds tadpole on a solo patrol around the duplex without tigerstar, and he’s relieved. his brother doesn’t recognize him and he’s relieved?
he’s confused. shouldn’t he want tadpole to finally know about their father? tigerstar is always the answer after all; following him is just what hawkfrost does. that’s how he knows how to be, and anything else isn’t imaginable to him. he’s never been led astray by tigerstar, except for... all the times he has been.
(have you ever known something before you even acknowledge to yourself that you know it? that’s what hawkfrost does. he knows deep down why he isn’t giving this kit over to tigerstar, but he won’t admit it even to himself.)
~
hawkfrost hides tadpole away for as long as he can. he wants to give him the kithood he deserves. he feels guilty for getting out of the flooding house before him — wait, is that guilt? hawkfrost hasn’t felt guilt since he was a young, living cat in the old forest.
when hawkfrost and tadpole talk, it’s weird like you said since now they’re both simultaneously the big brother. hawkfrost looks after him, but he’ll always be tadpole’s little brother at the same time.
he’s taking care of this little kit, but he’s also still playing sidekick to him. going along when he wants to play pretend, yes-and-ing his goofy ideas. he owes it to him.
~
it’s when tadpole is at his happiest and boldest that hawkfrost feels the sharpest stabs of guilt in his heart. he’s just a kit. tadpole was only just a kit like he is now, and he died because of him.
tadpole was only a kit when he drowned, and for that hawkfrost feels a scorching regret that he hasn’t felt about anything else since then. he thought he’d buried it, buried the way they never got the chance to bury his brother.
but then again, he was also only a kit back then. he wouldn’t blame tadpole if it’d been the other way around, would he?
hawkfrost asks tadpole that one day. he knows he’s asking too much of this kit, his big-little brother. but he needs to know.
tadpole is taken aback, his eyes wide. hawkfrost braces himself for his anger, but tadpole just buries his face in his brother’s fur as he gives him the biggest hug a little kit like him can give. he doesn’t say anything.
that’s all he needed to say.
~
this all happens just before hawkfrost starts helping bristlefrost and her friends without admitting it. tadpole’s arrival in the duplex changes him. here’s the big brother who’s missed out on the whole rest of hawkfrost’s life, and what does he have to show for it? what is he supposed to tell tadpole about how he lived his life? I think that’s the push that gets hawkfrost to introspect.
hawkfrost also gives them the upper hand when tigerstar ultimately comes to try to take bristlefrost’s radio — he betrays the og traitor. and tadpole helps!
~
this is disorganized bc I keep adding stuff and going down rabbit holes but this was really fun! tadpole has a place in the au - a really important place actually! he actually gives hawkfrost a good push for the change of allegiances that I’ve teased at for him. thank you so much for the ask!
