@wardencommanderrodimiss is at work, post fic!
Part 1
Larry doesn’t think about Warrior Cats for a long time. Well he does, he occasionally checks up on his favorite characters on the wiki and remembers them with nostalgia, and occasionally misses XxWolfDragonxX but he’s got other things to worry about. Other things, like girls and Phoenix and art and finding a job.
It’s Miles, again, who drives him to fanfiction. “Prosecutor Edgeworth choses death.” What the actual fuck man? Larry’s had three beers too many and is laying on his couch, ready to bawl his eyes out all over again, because he thought they’d gotten him back. They’d laid his father to rest. It was everything kid Larry had wanted, hell he’d written an entire fanfic to deal with what he didn’t think he’d ever be able to have.
The memory of the fanfiction drives him to stumble to the computer and open his old fanfiction account. It takes like five minutes, he can barely remember the password and he’s too drunk to type it right.
He has some messages, what the fuck. Apparently people send you spam mail to join their forums now? There’s an ancient message that makes him blink back tears.
“You okay?” It’s a simple question but it’s from XxWolfDragonxX about a month after his last update. God he feels guilty about that, he just vanished on him.
He wonders whatever happened to the guy, and then cracks open his old fic.
He’s drunk enough to not feel much shame for it, but it’s bad. The plot is all over the place, and he cringes each time he writes in and then writes out a girlfriend. And man, oh man, now he can really see how Firebirdpaw could be gay for Sharppaw. He saw it in person too.
Before he knows it he’s writing again, sloppily, drunkenly, but he’s pouring out his grief for Miles, for what they had gotten back but never gotten to truly recover.
Larry wakes up to pain in his head and cheek. The head is from his hangover. The cheek is because he passed out on his keyboard.
He groans, and stumbles off to go take care of his hungover ass, and eventually several hours, Advil and glasses of water later he returns to his computer.
Okay whoever said “write drunk, edit sober” was a lying asshole because while Drunk Larry thought he was a poetic genius, Sober Larry thinks Drunk Larry was a dumbass. A cat walking over the keyboard could write better.
In some places it looks like that’s what happened. He runs a hand through his hair and sets about typing it all up again.
He stops to eat, to drink, to call Phoenix, to make sure he’s still alive. Phoenix is apparently pinballing around the denial and anger steps, Larry tries to help as best he can.
As for himself, he grieves the same way he did fifteen years ago. He doesn’t want to think about that, how long it’s been or that he’s getting old, instead, he plots and rewrites and overhauls the entire thing.
He, Sharppaw, and Firebirdpaw are apprentices of SpiritClan, founded by Spiritstar. He feels that’s a fitting name for Mia. Her younger sister is Cherrypaw, and together the four of them are going to be something great.
And then Sharppaw’s father is killed, and he vanishes. This is where Larry begins to tweak things, making Von Karma the leader of a group of rogues, determined to bring the Clan down, and raising Sharppaw as his son to do so, also using his knowledge of the Clan to ensure its destruction.
Spiritstar and her apprentice Firebirdpaw (he refuses to change the name he’s attached to it now) begin to investigate, refusing to give up, both deeply disturbed by what had happened in their Clan.
He slows down as he makes progress, before forcing himself to finish. He keeps Wolf, the rogue, he can’t write out XxWolfDragonxX not even after all this time. He has some information on the rogue group that puts Firebirdpaw and Orangepaw on the right path.
They find the rogue group, and Sharppaw, now Demon. It takes work, but with time they make him remember who he truly is, and he sides with the two of them and SpiritClan to take down the evil leader.
The last they see of him is him giving chase to one of the leader’s generals, the cat Larry made Gant.
-
“Firebirdpaw!” Orangepaw leapt forward, staring at the tom, who’s orange spiky fur seemed even more ruffled than before, “Where’s Demon?”
The tom stared at him with a hollow look in his yellow eyes, “gone. He didn’t wait for me when chasing the rogues and…”
They both gazed into the woods and where they could hear the last of the fighting, and Orangepaw’s chest tightened, “he’ll come back. We’ll- he’ll come home and we’ll all be made warriors.”
Firebirdpaw let out a small noise, and then nodded, and sat down, as though to wait for Sharppaw again. Orangepaw sat next to him, and waited. They waited until Spiritstar came to get them and drag them home.
-
He goes through the like 50,000 words that he wrote in two weeks adding notes like “I know it’s been nine years since I posted anything, here’s an entire massive rewrite. I cleaned up a lot and tightened up the plot” –stole events from his life—“and fixed a lot of the names and things but some of the weirder ones I’m keeping, too attached” and “Wolf is a nod to an old friend, and of course cats can be gay.”
He posts it as one massive fic, like 25 chapters at once and then goes, lays down, and sobs.
He leaves it be for a while, he’s not ready to face reviews for it just yet, instead, he showers, pulls himself together, calls Phoenix, drags him out into public, ignoring the way how even two weeks later storm clouds seem to billow around Phoenix.
He only remembers to check when he gets home, dropping into his chair, and took a deep breath.
There’s a surprising number of reviews, apparently dropping a huge fic was the way to go? Several people have reviewed multiple chapters. One or two remark on Firebirdpaw or Spiritstar’s names but most are just enjoying the fic. There’s a lot of screaming towards the end.
His heart squeezes in his chest at a review in all caps “OKAY BUT DEMON’S FINE RIGHT? THERE WAS NO BODY HE’S FINE” and Larry wishes to any and every god, harder than he’s ever wished for anything including a date to the prom, that it worked that way. He blinks and reaches up to rub away a tear or two.
People’s comments on the “unnecessary feelings” line makes him laugh.
“Look,” he mumbled to himself, still amused, “it’s not my fault he actually said shit like that okay?”
He starts responding to the nicer people, thanking them for reviews, not able to address yet the questions about Demon’s death. As he’s responding he notices that his review count is rising.
He opens it and the first thing he sees causes his mood to pull a sharp 180.
The review is in all caps, on the first chapter and is a single sentence. “DUDE WHAT THE HELL?”
It’s the username though, that makes him laugh out loud, because XxWolfDragonxX is back, and apparently reading the entire fic. He grins, and clicks on a button to respond.
“I’M SO SORRY, HOW HAVE YOU BEEN?” he types, ready to pick up an old friendship, because right now he could use it.
15 notes
·
View notes