#swiftpaw warrior cats | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sparrowsoupp · 1 year ago

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so a ‘swiftpaw lives’ au is nothing new here BUT hear me out:

in this au, everything happens as it does in the first arc up to the night where swiftpaw and brightpaw sneak out of camp to fight the dogs. as they are leaving, cloudtail somehow sees/hears/notices and is obviously suspicious so trails them into the forest secretly.

as they get closer to the dogs’ den he realises their plan and confronts the pair, trying to get them to return to camp. swiftpaw is defiant and argues back, escalating into a fight as cloudtail tries to physically knock some sense into swiftpaw. brightpaw looks on in horror trying to break up this fight. this is obviously not a very quiet battle, considering the participants are two bullheaded teenage boys, and so the dogs are woken up anyway.

swiftpaw leaps into action as brightheart freezes in paralysing fear. as a dog lunges at her, cloudtail notices and leaps into the dog’s jaws, pushing brightpaw out of the way in the process. in a burst of fear and strength, brightpaw notices swiftpaw unconcious and unable to move with a missing leg and grabs him to run away, escaping from the dogs and leaving cloudtail to bleed out and die (hence the main catalyst for differences in this au: cloudtail dies in swiftpaw’s place). she doesn’t realise this at the time, hoping cloudtail will understand since he is still up and fighting, and not thinking about the consequences of leaving one cat alone to fight a pack of dogs.

bluestar renames them in the same way lostface was named in the original arc, brightpaw being renamed lostface and swiftpaw being named dogleg, and fireheart is ANGRY with the pair (and himself) for the needless loss of his nephew’s life. no renaming ceremony is held, and they are made to keep their names in rememberance of their foolishness. (sidenote: i think this would also spark a major shift in fireheart’s good nature and personality, leading to MAJOR knockon effects for the rest of the series, but i haven’t thought about it too much yet and also i need to reread the books) and because cloudtail isn’t around to advocate for lostface’s warrior retraining, she is relegated to be a medicine cat and never really emotionally recovers in the same way she could in the books because cloudtail isn’t around to offer her that emotional support. she also very much blames herself for letting him fight a battle that he never signed up to fight and dying in the process, the overwhelming levels of guilt weighing on her constantly to the point where cats are a little creeped out by how empty even her remaining eye looks.

on the other hand (paw?), dogleg is left seething with anger and bitterness towards his clan. (i imagine him after the attack as a somewhat ashfur-like character, except much more extreme) a lot of his toxicity and anger would be taken out on lostface, one of the only cats he talks to anymore, and instead of brightheart and cloudtail entering a very healthy and positive relationship instead lostface ends up in a secret (VERY toxic) relationship with dogleg. she remains attached to him i think because of the trauma they experienced together. i have to think more about that, though. (maybe even kits?)

in the end something something dogleg forces lostface to start poisoning food as the clan’s medicine cat to take revenge on other cats like bluestar or fireheart. i think this culminates in dogleg turning very traitorous somehow.

that’s what i have so far! feel free to sends asks/tag with suggestions or ideas of knockon effects of this change. thanks for reading this big ol paragraph of me rambling about cats lol, appreciate y’all 🦭👍