sitcom that’s just the double-killed cats living in what’s beyond starclan and the dark forest: a shitty apartment building.
bristlefrost, ashfur, and spottedleaf are stuck in a lease together. ashfur never washes dishes. eerie father and son duo tigerstar and hawkfrost live in the unit above and they’re SO loud — are they wrestling 24/7 up there or what? the answer is yes: they spend all their time training and leaving tigerheartstar annoying voicemails
also darkstripe drops in unannounced once an episode. everyone swears they didn’t give him a key how does he keep getting in here
edit: calling it the double death duplex au for now! there are bunch of posts under the tag!
another edit: here’s a masterpost for the double death duplex au! it’s grown into a fullfledged au in the last two weeks, and I’m so excited that folks have taken to it so much. thank you!
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.
thinking about ddd!hawkfrost hiding tadpole from tigerstar and his gang for as long as he can before ultimately bringing it to bristlefrost and her roommates because he knows they'll keep him safe for him even though they have no reason to trust him
I can’t decide if it’s funnier if ashfur and hawkfrost dated/broke up while they were alive or if they somehow end up dating in the after-afterlife 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!
plot point idea for duplex!ashfur: once he thinks he’s cleaned his act up and is ready to be around people (other than darkstripe) and have a roommate again, hawkfrost moves in and it goes terribly (at least the first time) but like in a funny way
