Eshek trudged along near the back of the expedition, head thrust forward like a loping lioness and steps heavy. Mud sucked at her paws. The last time she'd been in a marshland had been the grey, misty dusk she'd gasped back to life, her kits dead and her life gone. Needless to say, going back to one was psychologically tough; she walked like she was physically shrinking back, like every cell in her didn't want to take another step, and her expression, to hide all this fear and pain, was suitably dour. To add to her crawling trepidation, her stomach was now noticeably round; to go back to a marshland with the lives she held more precious than anything, that she clung to all the tighter for her first litter having been taken from her, made her chest constrict. It took everything in her to not just lie down and refuse to move. It didn't matter that their father wasn't her mate; these kits were everything to her, so much so that she was almost afraid to sleep at night for the terror that they'd be severed from her in the dark.

It had been strange, too, to go back to the Mansion. She hadn't really even processed it yet. For her, it was two moons ago that she'd been pestering Funk awake in his quarters. For everyone else, it had been two years. She'd hardly moved out of it; it hadn't felt so much like stepping back into a ghostly past overgrown with ivy as it had been just walking back into your home after a brief trip away, every step unthinkingly familiar where to the others it had to be relearned. Except everything was broken and dusty, and the old scents of your life were gone, and the glass from the ceiling you'd died falling from was still scattered in the entry hall. She'd cry about it soon, probably, once the trauma of it properly sunk into her bones.

Really, she should have been back in DayClan. But the newly reinstated Proxy was nothing if not destructively stubborn and she was determined that this time round, she'd do things better. She'd be a Proxy - a League cat - worthy of the name. She'd grown, however imperceptibly. Her dark eyes scraped up from the dark, damp ground to bore into Regulus' back. They were on better footing than they'd been on at their first meeting - she almost respected him, if she didn't quite like him - but she still found herself watching quietly from the shadows, waiting for any tiny little mistake.

"How much further?" she snapped, raising her voice to be heard from the back of the patrol. "My paws are cramping and I'm hungry." They weren't, and she wasn't, but she was never going to make Regulus' leadership easy for him. "Did no one pack snacks?" She looked around at the group then clicked her tongue and, shaking her head and looking away, muttered under her breath, "Incompetent..."

"'Could've stayed back in the mansion' - ooooh!" Eshek squealed, stepping close and rubbing her cheek adoringly against Bermondsey's. "I almost forgot we were roomies! I love you, roomie! Are you excited to be a daddy, roomie? Do you hear wedding bells, roomie?" She jumped on Ber, hugging him around the neck and squishing their cheeks together, still squealing - and then suddenly shoved him away, her face falling into an ugly sneer. "Shut up, Ber."

Funnily enough, the way Bermondsey was reacting to the news of being a father was almost identical to how Funk had reacted. Of course, Funk had been a little more... tactless about it - 'you could always just throw yourself down the stairs', she remembered him saying. Just once, she would have liked someone to be happy about the news. Would have liked gentle words and purrs and love, instead of Funk's 'you're getting fat, been taking extra helpings?' and Bermondsey's horror. She sympathised with Ber's fears about his family curse, she did - but he seemed to forget that it impacted her as well. These were her kits just as much as his - if they ended up dangerous or insane, it wasn't just him who would be hurt by it. It was grating and faintly heartbreaking to always be the one carrying precious lives she loved with all her heart and being treated with nothing but withdrawn disdain for it. Even Luc, endlessly loving and excitable as he was, likely wouldn't want anything to do with them until they were adults. Only Pinesimmer had been vaguely supportive about it, not making her feel... tainted. The first time round, she'd put up with it, not knowing she could have expected any better; now, she was sick of it.

Just because she didn't want any more stupid tension from him, Eshek brushed her cheek reassuringly against Bermondsey's and then drifted over to walk beside Rhiannon. "You look excited," she purred softly, sounding tired. Her eyes wandered over the other she-cat as she loped along.

Uta's mind had been wandering haphazardly on the patrol's little field trip. Spooky stuff? Dare even say scary stuff? That was enough to keep him interested and entertain different ideas of endless possibilities. He did not want to be let down afterall, life was so boring to young-faced seasoned assassin/proxy he's still listed as the former he would die happy right now if they found something fantastical and frightening all in one.
Some commotion made him aware of his surrounding again, enough to glance back at Eshek and Bermondsey who were indeed hilarious in-house entertainment for this evening. Something about it reminder him of another time of yesteryear, another couple he was once friends with.

"Stop flirting you two, you already won 'most adorable couple'." he teased waving a tail at them, the nostalgia giving him an actual smile though it was easy to miss when he turned and face-forward again. He supposed he too could bother someone with a conversation for the rest of the trip, but the question was who?