Iβm not too sure if youβve read PO3 BUT. interpretation of HollyAsh πππ - π Fall π
(as a note, I have read as far as AVOS' end currently but I do not remember most of AVOS)
I don't know how they would get together. So I'm leaning towards unrequited from HOLLY's point of view. Somewhat inspired by your drabble before! Ashfur doesn't really take notice or else he thinks it's just an apprentice crush.
(Ashfur accepting apprentice crushes are often ridiculous and short-lived, but also looking down on them even more as no apprentice can ever experience Real Love like he does)
Hollyleaf admiring him for many reasons but not really getting close to him. She wants to be, but there's not really anything they can bond over - she thinks. She isn't sure. She's working up her courage.
Then the fire happens, and she sees Ashfur at the top of that log. He's come to save them. She's sure of it.
Between her grief for what she thought was the truth, the seeming loss of her parents, not knowing where she stands now... there's also him. Ashfur. Prepared to kill her and her littermates. In love with her mother. But Squirrelflight isn't her mother.
It's all over the place. She's all over the place.
She hunts him down, kills him, to save her littermates, to save what she can of her family, but she mourns him. She whispers for forgiveness. Her trust in the warrior code shatters.
But in a world where Ashfur loves Squirrelflight but (isn't an incel) accepts she doesn't love him, I think he might learn to love Hollyleaf. He'll compare her to her mother, certainly, that might even persuade him to agree to be mates with her. But it will never be the same, and he'll never quite love her enough.
