What if Breezepelt was exiled after the Great Battle, but was accepted back into the Clan because he rescued and brought back missing kids Cherrykit and Molekit
Aka the unborn kits he would have killed had Jayfeather and Honeyfern’s spirit not stopped him.
Maybe they snuck away in the night hoping for an adventure. Maybe a flood washes them away. Or maybe a lingering dark spirit lures them away because it’s bitter it lost the battle.
Whatever the case, Breezepelt finds them.
He tells himself it’s not his problem, that all Clan cats can rot, kit or no, yet he can’t bring himself to abandon them. He knows he has to take them back, even if he’s attacked for stepping foot on Clan territory again.
He’s still snappy. He’s still bitter. He’s still full of resentment.
So when Molekit complains about being tired and asks for a break, he could just smack him—
He doesn’t. He’s not like him. He’s not like Crowfeather. At least he doesn’t want to be.
He doesn’t become World’s #1 Caretaker, but he watches his words and keeps his tongue in check. He will tell them to stop complaining if they say the same thing over and over, but he won’t refuse rest breaks (especially not with their little legs), won’t refuse stopping to hunt, and a little ways into their travels, he even indulges a little in their need to stop just to look at something that caught their eye.
And the kits respond to it. They like this cat and so they tell him about themselves and about their parents, and that’s when Breezepelt realizes who they are.
I really like the idea of them being lured away by a Dark Forest spirit because imagine Breezepelt being fueled to kill a pregnant queen by a Dark Forest cat and then he protects the very kits he would have killed against one (maybe Darkstripe? One always a pawn, the other breaking free).
That’s as far as I thought about it because someone said something about Breeze’s redemption pretty much coming out of nowhere and him suddenly being fine now because he’s a dad.
So consider: he is better now because of kits…just not his own and in a different way, and his redemption is actually focused on
Don’t know if the timeline fits with the kit’s ages but. Idc
