imagine if jayfeather never became a med cat. hollyleaf became a warrior too, sure, but jayfeather has his whole "i can't believe he gave the blind kitten to the half blind cat you still have one working eye" in front of brightheart and she's like "it's because i had to learn a whole new style of fighting when i lost my eye and i can fucking do it again"
so she works with jaypaw to figure out his strengths in battle and weaknesses. his problem with visual tells? she interrogates everyone about other clans' fighting styles and recreates them on her own time, and then she works with jaypaw until he can recognize the sound of someone planting their hind paws to rear up, the sound of a front paw rushing through the air, the sound of riverclan warriors emerging from the river when most warriors wouldn't be able to hear it because they wouldn't be listening for it. she runs drills with him again and again, not telling him what clan's fighting style she's emulating before starting and letting him figure out. he gets lightning-quick reflexes, and the ability to tune out most battle sounds to focus on the cat in front of him. he learns how to get his subconscious to focus on the sounds of battle and filter in the sound of approaching pawsteps. he learns how to go for the main parts of the body, the head and legs with a sideswipe and the full body itself by crashing down. he learns that if he scoops up sand, dirt, leaf-litter, and throws it at their face, it'll fuck them up completely. he learns how to track a moving target while he himself is moving.
she brings him out to pieces of the territory without telling him where they are, and has him guess. she has him learn to pinpoint a scent and sound more precisely than any sighted cat, to brush a paw over the ground so lightly that it doesn't crunch dead leaves or snap twigs. she has leafpool cobweb a leaf over her good eye and tries to hunt, to figure out the problem areas, and she figures out workarounds. she brings him to different spots of the territory and quizzes him on the location, on how to get places from there. she has him move silently all the way back to camp.
his siblings graduate. everyone tells them to give up. jaypaw looks them in the eyes and says fuck you, he's learning to be a warrior and it's working.
he and brightheart run drills where they borrow other clans' cats and have them attack jaypaw. he defends himself startlingly well, in their eyes.
at one point he, in typical prickly jaypaw fashion, asks longtail why tf he's still an elder. longtail finds the idea of becoming a warrior again insurmountable. jaypaw flounces off thinking he's better than longtail because of course he does, but it makes longtail happy to see a cat who is like him doing what he couldn't.
brightheart grabs the leader himself and is like "watch jaypaw's assessment. he's doing ridiculously amazing he should be a warrior" and he has to agree, jaypaw has somehow mastered being a warrior despite his disability.
jaypaw gets to be a warrior and spit in the faces of everyone who told him he couldn't, brightheart becomes the de facto mentor of disabled kittens, and the rest of the clan learns an Important Lesson about disability
(edit we have a poll abt his warrior name now)
