never loves Feathertail romantically. FeatherCrow was never a ship I particularly liked

has a real backstory (family dead)

is more of a loner than simply Hostile™ or Just An Asshole™ because I think he would have been way better if he was just nothing more than someone who does things by himself

becomes depressed for reasons other than just Feathertail dying (but some of them are caused by Feathertail dying)

decidedly does not suck as much

is (becomes) close friends with Squirrelpaw

joins ThunderClan ("exiled" by Mudclaw (except he doesn't have the power to do that (but Crowpaw doesn't know that)))

is kind of in the background for most of the journey to Midnight because he's 1) off, alone, doing his own thing and 2) I'd rather focus on him after the journey

As sweet as the enemies to lovers trope is, I am decidedly not doing SquirrelCrow because I am...

(pause for dramatic effect)

...pairing him with Spiderpaw.

okay now hear me out

Whether this is a romance or a bromance is a coin flip honestly, but I think they could work together because (in this AU) they have the following qualities in common:

lost close family members

kind of a jerk because of it

likes to be alone

skinny (not a backstory trait i just think it's funny)

except Spiderpaw only begins to show these traits after losing Shrewpaw, his last remaining brother and closest friend. Crowpaw notices these signs and realises that this is suspiciously similar to his own backstory and he tries to do something about it, the same way Squirrelpaw did for him.

As a note, when it came to having Crowpaw come to ThunderClan, I initially thought about putting him with Whitepaw, but then I decided "nah" and then I thought about the next option who wasn't Squirrelpaw or Leafpaw and then I came up with this and I thought "wait this could be really funny actually"

I have no good reason for doing this except it's cute.