#cheez rambles

If it were to be written, it would chiefly be from Scourge's perspective, as a lot of the connections' formations ride quite heavily on his perspectives, and mainly start with him. It wouldn’t happen without Scourge’s actions and drive to deepen the connection personally. I also would be tailoring a LOT of the groundworks for how Scourge was inevitably written in the main series and the novellas because, frankly, I find “canon” Scourge lacklustre and poorly written. Another wasted character whose concept and introduction could've potentially made him interesting, but. No. No. Generic bad guy no. 18937 except THIS time he's 🔥Atheist🔥!!!

So, for Scourge specifically, I like to think his time as leader of the city cats is a complicated matter internally. He is cool as ice and confident in everything he does externally, but that is only because internally he is on his toes ALL the time and so exhausted because of it. Because really? His leadership in the first place snowballed down from his treatment as a kitten and feelings of insignificance, and was worsened so SO deeply when his hopes of being finally liberated by forest cats were so violently crushed. It obviously traumatised him and has haunted every decision he made into his adulthood. He carries this burden every. single. day. His "independence" and "leadership" are quite literally plagued by his resentments and traumas, forcing him deep inside his own mind for everything, and hence, he reads as extremely cold and calculating because of it. He seems to have an answer for everything effortlessly... BECAUSE he's always thinking. Always ruminating. Always so fucking angry.

So of course, naturally, the clan cats live in his mind rent-free. Chiefly Tigerstar. And not just because of what he did to Scourge specifically, but because he represents pretty much everything he hates about these clan cats. They have rules, but they are so flimsy and easily broken for personal wants that they just seem pointless. They are a mass cult, divided into four mini cults, fighting over resources, when they really have no distinction between them aside from their clan titles. War for the sake of war. Skirmishes and flexing of moral superiority, “MY way is right and YOUR way is wrong!” for land and food... land and food that is a very real problem for Scourge's cats. They're boxed into the city. Food is scarce. Cats are dying, choking on pollution and slowly starving, no matter where they go. They don’t have the luxury to think beyond survival of the fittest, and no matter what Scourge does or says, there is only so much that can realistically be done. Cats are going to starve. It is inevitable.

To him, the clan cats represent privilege and rotten, festering "tradition for the sake of tradition." They're parasites. A joke. Scourge's argument embodied in one: If a cat like Tigerstar can legitimately reap the benefits of the highest role of privilege in that society, then it holds no value.

He hates them. He holds so SO much resentment for their politics, hypocrisy, "blood purity", EVERYTHING.

It is such a clear, easy "black and white" "good vs evil" argument in his head. Well, it WOULD be, but… just as much as Tigerstar lives in his head rent-free, Bluefur also does.

No matter how angry he gets at the clans, he cannot help but rethink when he remembers Bluefur. She represents a diamond in the rough. A single, tiny speck of hope in this otherwise barren wasteland of rot. From his brief encounter with her, she was the perfect embodiment of how he hoped the forest cats to be when he was a kit. She legitimately values the codes they were taught, was diplomatic and kind, and stood up for him despite how easy it would have been for her not to. No witnesses beyond those two monstrous cats, and she did it anyway.

Full disclaimer: Scourge harbours no attraction to Bluefur. He barely knows her and couldn't possibly make an accurate assumption on her. In a sense, he sees her as a victim of the clans. She is a legitimately good cat with noble values, but she has been conditioned to box her thinking in to what the clans limit. A shame. If only she could’ve been enlightened to think beyond. But she has been idolised in his mind just as strongly as Tigerstar and the clans were demonised. He is frustrated that she complicates his clear-cut hatred towards the clans... but she does indeed represent that sliver of hope he subconsciously wishes to cling to. That glimmer of humanity inside him that he fights so desperately to crush. It's there. It always will be, and it is shrouded in pain and resentment.

So, Stonefur's role in all this?

For me personally, I think Stonefur looks almost identical to Bluestar. Like how cats would look at Brambleclaw and just immediately have associations of Tigerstar? That level of similarity. Perhaps just different enough for there to be possible doubt before the truth was revealed, but ultimately that's her kid bro.

Scourge is quick to make the association. He meets Stonefur roughly around the time that Stonefur himself would have proudly declared to Riverclan that Bluestar was his mother. So, naturally, Scourge is interested in him. He is subtle, of course, but a lot of the time as Tigerclan was slowly and insidiously coming to formation (to no surprise of Scourge btw: simply the naturally monstrous progression of these hideous clans) he is focused strongly on Stonefur. He couldn't say why really... perhaps that childish want inside him to see good truly prevail where it seems completely absent. He so deeply wants to believe, wants to have hope. That part of him that idolised Bluestar so badly wants to be rewarded for hanging onto hope for so long.

And Stonefur hardly disappoints... for better and for worst.

Stonefur himself? The picture of what these clan cats boast. He is noble, he is devoted, he is a true follower of what the stars and clan code asks: wasted on them, Scourge would think.

And the catch? Stonefur is punished for nothing more than his blood. He is stripped of his deputy status, starved, mocked, and imprisoned by cats that he once trusted completely. Cats that legitimately did like him.

Scourge's heart burns with rage: these forest cats are so terribly weak-willed. So susceptible to their inbuilt cult conditioning that Tigerstar only need push lightly. Leopardstar is a spineless coward and abided when she had the power to stop it. The result? The ordered execution of two teenagers, their only crime being that they too had half-clan blood. Scourge would think back to Bluefur shielding him from Tigerpaw and Thistleclaw when he looked at Stonefur shielding the two from Tigerclaw and Blackfoot now.

War for the sake of war. It's all for nothing.

Now, in this AU I'd have to slot Scourge to be present during the events leading up to Stonefur's execution. He would be unreadable as ever, but internally completely fixated on Stonefur's courage. On his utter defiance to break, because he too knows that these “justifications” are bullshit. Scourge sees the potential to actually reach his mind, because Stonefur’s nature is not obstructed even by the cult conditioning.

Sooo long explanation aside, Scourge would offer to Tigerstar to take Stonefur back to the city as a prisoner: "He is better as an example. I will show him what it is like to live in defiance of Starclan… of Tigerclan's will." Scourge is biting his tongue.

So this is kind of where their dynamic would begin. Stonefur is oblivious to all these inner workings of Scourge's mind — on what HE has come to represent to Scourge.