Eshek was getting better about being able to go near Funk's old workspace, where she'd first met him. The grimy glass and all the dozens of panes, the wilted, black-tipped ivy clinging to every crevice, the smell of cold and dust and growing things, one or two of his old beakers still tucked away on the shelves - for a long time she'd avoided it, because her brain knew he wouldn't be there but her heart would still gets its childish, broken hopes up and then be wounded anew. But since her night with Ber, when they'd so casually scaled it to get to the roof of the mansion, it had become less a mystical terror and more a place of old memory, all good and all happy. So she could go there now, in little lengths of time, and feel comforted by it, by the familiarity and the whisper of his presence there, instead of haunted. She could go there and think how beautiful it was and how young and stupid they'd been.

Back in the day, Esh would have been sneaking in to steal some illicit substance that made everyone call her a tweaker and gave her a reputation for coming home after three days not having slept for any of it, but now, with age or with her pregnancy, with the company she kept or the simple fact that she finally had some semblance of a family - the fact that she was happier than she'd ever been - she'd mellowed. So now, she was just harmlessly and fleetingly sticking her head into the den, back half-turned to the she-cat and thoughts occupied by the simple lists that an expecting mother made in her worry, and reaching her paw up to claw down some goldenrod to help with the back and joint pain she was getting more frequently now that she was getting further along.

She was just turning to slip quietly back the way she’d come, the most harmless and sane she’d ever been, just a soon-to-be-mother thinking about play groups and feeding schedules (Ber wasn't weaselling his way out of doing his part to bounce the goddamn babies) and briefly reformed from psychopathy, when she turned just enough to catch sight of the other cat lying hazy and soft-focus in the shadows at the back of the den. Eshek jumped slightly, instinctively moving to hide the goldenrod before she remembered she wasn't technically doing anything wrong and that she was no longer a troubled teen smoking out the window - weird feeling, that. “Oh! I’m not stealing. I got special dispensation to take what I want. I just made that up. I didn't. Wow, you look terrible.” Esh's voice wasn’t the sort of amused scorn she’d use if it were a tom lying half-butchered at the back of the den; there was genuine shock in her voice, in her wide eyes, in the careful way she padded over like she didn’t want to disturb her. “What happened? Did you get into a fight with a semi-trailer? That happens.” She nodded like it was perfectly normal.

Eshek circled around her once, sniffing at her wounds, the shadows of the ivy washing over her pale pelt and turning her face to shadow, before sitting down in front of her. She didn't recognise her, but then she hardly bothered to learn the names of most of the League. As much as she claimed to worship her home, that home was really only two things: the abstract concept of the League, and the handful of cats she actually spent time with. The rest could get set fire to and she'd just step over them. In that way, sacrifice the few to save the many took on a warped meaning in Eshek's callous, subconscious ideology - ensure the League's survival, the idea of it, but tip all the nameless hunters and trainees and younglings into the vat of acid so long as the few she could actually put a name to the face of kept kicking. She was kind, so childishly pure-hearted, just a stunted little kit - until she wasn't. Not a very good Life Proxy, then - but was life fair? The impossible jumble of Eshek's morality was what made her so frightening.

Eshek let out an appreciative bark of laughter at the joke about picking a fight with the devil - even if it wasn't really a joke. "Hey, me too! Except I did win, technically, I think - it was just so unfair because she stopped playing by the rules and then I got my ass kicked. But stuff happens, y'know? 'Least I walked away with all my lives. Life. So who's the real winner. Moi."

She was completely relaxed and at home, her guard down as she happily tapped her tail-tip against her forepaws and did a cheery sort of swaying dance with her upper body as she looked around the greenhouse above Safiya's head from where she sat in front of her. No one was more trusting than a violent psychopath with multiple counts of homicide and uncountable acts of torture - or maybe that was just Eshek. She was like a dog: if she liked someone's vibes, even after just two seconds of knowing them, she bonded incredibly quickly and was then their best friend - even if it was only her who felt that way. It was like she smelled something in the air and if it was good, she instantly dropped her shoulders and trusted them with her life. Stupid? Stupid. Eshek? Eshek.

She'd almost forgotten the other she-cat was there at all when she spoke again. Eshek looked down like she was startled, having been so deep inside that cavernous head of hers. Her eyes narrowed slightly at the 'd-', but she said nothing. She could have been about to say doctor, if she wasn't from the League - which she clearly wasn't, if she didn't know who she was. "I'm Eshek," she told her. "Some sort of Proxy. I dunno which one - they keep changing it. I think they're trying to rebrand because the Warden - Warden," she said it a second time in a voice full of doubt about the legitimacy of Bermondsey's claim to that position, "has it in his head that the League used to be this great, sweeping empire so now we all have to sit around while he tries plan number 73 of how to make us imperialists again. I'd say he's hardly sleeping because of it, he's so highly-strung, but he doesn't sleep anyway, so." She fell silent, doing a funny little smile like she was thinking and had forgotten she was in the middle of a sentence. Then, suddenly she remembered. "Oh! No. Nothing against Charlotte but I wouldn't trust her to treat me anymore than I would a fox. You have just as much chance of getting foxglove as you do feverfew. I like her, though. Anyway, no, I was just getting some goldenrod for ze babies." She looked down at her own stomach with the happy pride of a mother and tapped it gently with one paw. Then, still smiling that uncharacteristically soft smile, she looked up again and asked, "what's your name?"

Eshek frowned down at her. "Bermondsey," she replied, like it was an obvious fact that didn't matter.

And then the she-cat was begging her, practically grabbing at her coat tails. Eshek's frown only deepened - but it wasn't out of disdain, it was out of genuine, confused concern. "Of course," she promised the she-cat, and that too was stated like it was an obvious fact, though gentler and more tender this time, her voice quiet and soothing. Eshek's honesty, her trustworthiness, were indisputable, so open and child-like that few, even the most jaded of the League, would think twice about. She didn’t lie because she never even considered doing it, or the need to. If she intended violence, why hide it? If she was crazy, why lie about it? If she was kind, she was kind; if she was brutal, she was brutal. But she was never false. It made her one of the most simple souls in the chaos of the forest, a child stunted in the trauma of kithood and left both gentler and bloodier for it. Her morality was utterly twisted, a hellish free-for-all - but there was honesty in that, too. Starve one child to feed another - she'd feel no guilt about it, just a toddler lopping off barbie heads and then turning around to be so gentle to the family dog, but she never pretended to be anything else. Her frown softened, eyes unguarded and almost maternally heartfelt as she looked down at her. "I won't tell a soul. I promise."

I’ll kill you if you call me by my full name. Eshek couldn’t help it; a grin spread across her face, adoring and impressed. It stayed in place as Safi threatened her further. Her eyes were bright, like she was hoping and waiting for the she-cat to hit every note - and when she did, she couldn’t have been happier for her. “Yes, boss,” she replied with a purr, her gaze settling into half-lidded. She loved it, that this sweet-looking little she-cat had turned around and whipped out violent extortion. It was everything she could ever have dreamed of - all Eshek lived for was being surprised.

However - probably not the best time to say she was carrying Bermondsey’s kits, then.

At Safi’s next questions, Eshek listened like an obedient, tamed wolf, sitting hunch-shouldered and neat-pawed in front of her. She frowned in thought for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t here when he first came back but I haven’t seen him around any kits other than the trainees, and none of them look like that. Honestly, he’s never seemed like the kit type.” Her eyes wandered back down to the she-cat’s wounds; there was still the faintest trace of infection there. “Would you…” Her voice had grown quieter, tender and soft like she was trying not to spook a nervous deer. “I’m not a healer but my mate was. Would you like me to give you a little more help? They look like they sting.” She was quiet for a moment; then, “anyway, I know what it’s like to not be able to tell anyone who you are. I know how lonely it is. Where I live, when I’m not here, in DayClan, there’s only three cats who know my real name. It’s… as much as I love them, it’s hard.” She looked up at Safi from where her eyes had wandered down to her paws and her head had followed. Her voice was soft, faintly sad. “So I’m not going to hurt you. And I’ll keep your secret. I promise.” To dispel the moment, Eshek suddenly broke into a sharp grin. “If only ‘cause I don’t want Charlotte creeping around my room and bumping into things tryna poison me.” Honestly, Ber’s niece kind of creeped her out, not that she’d ever say it. Even she had some vague knowledge of boundaries, if only because the more you fumbled around in the dark the more you learned the general location of the electric fences, even if you didn’t understand why they were there. 

Eshek laughed - surprised, loud and shrill, delighted by the confusion, but not cruel. Seeing that Safiya wasn’t going to refuse her help, she turned and walked over to Charlotte’s stores, starting to half pull out various herbs and sniff them before pushing them back in. “No. No, my mate was the last Nemesis. You wouldn’t know him. After your time here, I think.” It was odd, to think the League she’d known all her life and the League Bermondsey had known - and this she-cat too, seemingly - were two such different things. No overlap; she was born, she completed all her training, lived, died, and that was all after Bermondsey had already led his own life here and left it behind. And now those two worlds had combined - were continuing to merge every day. It made her dizzy sometimes to think about.

“Well, not poppy seeds,” she replied without looking over her shoulder. “No offence, but I think you’re already half-dead enough that a whiff of one and you’d fall into a coma and die. Happens to the best of us. Chervil,” she said at last, like she’d decided upon it at the same time she announced it, drawing it out with her claws, and turned back with a bundle in her mouth. She’d also slipped in some thyme leaves but unless Safiya saw it and accused her of trying to poison her, she wasn’t going to mention it; the she-cat could use some relief from her anxiety. She sat hunched beside Safiya and chewed up the chervil just enough to tilt her head over her stomach and drip the juice into the wound. Eshek’s eyes flicked to the side as the she-cat started to speak again, her brows naturally quirking up from the awkward angle as the juice continued to drip off the frayed remnants of the leaves. She was done just as Safiya finished her question; leaning back, Eshek spat out the leaves and used one paw to wipe her tongue. “Yeah, I was born here.” She looked up from her work to flash Safi a big, beautiful, dazzling smile, like she was posing for a 1950s kitchenware ad. “One big happy family!” She went back to tearing up strips of thyme leaves with her claws. “Same tragic backstory as the rest of us. Killed my mommy in childbirth, only one of the litter not stillborn, daddy blamed me for his wife being dead, so I grew up and made him dead, too. You know how it goes.”

Still looking down at the leaves, her paws continued to work for a long moment, growing slower and slower, until finally they stilled and, without looking up, she asked, “I’m sorry to ask this but… why can’t Ber—mondsey know you’re here?” Her voice had started out low and calm, but as soon as she had to fill in the rest of his name as an afterthought, her voice went up and grew slightly panicky, like she was guilty and hiding it poorly. Having to hide the fact she knew him intimately from her, and that she was harbouring her from him - she wasn’t built for this.

She squirmed, panicking, under Safiya's scrutiny and tried desperately to pretend like she didn't. She just busied herself frantically with scraping together all the bits of leaves that had spread out over the floor, avoiding her gaze, and patted her paw against the she-cat's side, brushing the last of the juice into the wound and sticking any fragments of greenery to her pads. But then her comment made her look up.

"Kill you?" Eshek echoed in disbelief. As dangerous as she knew Bermondsey was, in a low, quivering way like a vial of poison instead of the loud, outward violence of an axe, and as much as she knew that she understood only puzzle pieces of his life before her, she'd gotten so used to the idea of him just being the weird kid she could bully that she couldn't imagine him having an active vendetta hateful enough to murder someone over. She'd like to see him kill someone; but that wasn't the point of this. "Why would he kill you?"

And I don't want word getting around if I'm going to be a sitting duck to a murder attempt. "Well, I'll stay with you," she replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, like it was something that she took for granted. She had just been about to settle down beside Safiya when she asked her question. For a long, agonising moment she was torn, like she was being drawn and quartered by four horses strapped to each limb. Her eyes, usually darting around, now stared at one spot a little way away in the middle of the dusty, ivy-strewn floor. Finally, she drew in a breath and looked up to meet the she-cat's eyes. "These are his kits. We're not- he's not my mate, we- it's complicated." She sucked on the inside of her cheek doubtfully, tilting her head slightly to the side and scrunching up her face like she was reassessing. "Not really. We slept together. Doesn't matter. Point is, I won't tell him. He's my friend, I love him, but it's... girl-code, y'know?" The last two words were spoken more quietly, uncertainly, almost like she was asking a question, for confirmation. She sounded exposed; vulnerable; like she was hoping for something she'd dreamed of, playing alone with her dolls, since she was a kit. She'd never really had a female friend before, as much as she'd tried and tried and tried. There was Innocentia, but she was... well, she adored her, but she was Innocentia. As a youngling and a trainee, Eshek had been the gawky girl with the legs longer than everyone else and the weird hyperfixation on torture that, try as she might to bond over it and show things off, no one else was as excited over as she was. Much as she'd deny it, she'd been bullied and lonely. Friendless. It was only after she grew into her looks and learned how to act like she was hot and careless and popular - only after she learned how to bully others - that cats suddenly wanted to hang out with her. She was happier, but most of them didn't really want to be her friend - they just wanted to know where all the best parties were. And now, even though she'd somehow attracted a mismatched menagerie of male friends whose approval she didn't care as much about, she still didn't have... a girl one.

As soon as Safiya let out her giggle a half-grin hooked up at Eshek's face; and when she started to laugh, Eshek laughed along too, genuinely, despite not really knowing what they were laughing about or what was happening. "Oh, he still is," she replied with a grin that was strangely fond. She tilted her head. "Not... overtly, but his first response to me telling him I was pregnant was asking me what I was going to do about it, so he was thinking about it." She let out a sharp laugh through her nose, grinning smugly ahead. "He just knows he could never take me, even fat as a dumpling." In a softer, more sacred voice, as she bent her head to lick gently at Safiya's shallower wounds and clean any grit from them, she added, "but then we had a scare with the kits. And now, I think something's changed. He really does want them."

He told me he'd kill them when I dropped my kits off with him. Eshek's eyes widened, horrified - which was strange, since Eshek had never had any qualms about killing kits before. But when it was a tangible mother’s kits, when she was there, it was different. It was horrible. Truthfully, her sympathy was more with Safiya than it was with her children - being a mother hadn't made her more sympathetic to the plight of kits, it had made her more sympathetic to other mothers. Kits could still rot in a ditch, and frankly the idea of Ber doing something like that was kind of psychopathically hot - but the idea that Safiya had entrusted her children with her brother only to have him say something so cruel to her; it made Eshek sick in a way she hadn't felt since the first weeks of her pregnancy. She didn't believe Ber would do such a thing, and yet she did. Or, rather, she believed he thought he would be able to. Oddly, though, when Safiya mentioned dropping her kits off with Ber, Eshek's response wasn't jealousy; she just accepted it, nodding along, because the air surrounding the she-cat's relationship with Ber instinctively didn't feel romantic, it felt clouded by something like family - so when Safiya suddenly amended herself, Eshek looked vaguely startled. She'd just accepted it. "Oh!" she exclaimed automatically, just because Safi was speaking quickly too. She nodded like, yes, right, no, of course.

As the she-cat kept speaking, Eshek's mind wandered to the young grey tom Bermondsey had seemed so startled by during the confrontation with Aspenstar. She considered mentioning it to Safiya, asking if that physical description sounded like one of her kits, but she stayed quiet; she didn't want to give an anxious mother false hope. She'd be sure before she told her, and for that she'd need to ask Bermondsey. Privately, she had her doubts that Ber could ever actually go through with the task of killing a kit, even if and precisely because it had his blood flowing through its veins; he might march about like a good little soldier boy and make himself out to be so ice-cold, but she knew he had a soft spot for the world that he so desperately tried to hide. That might have made him all the more vicious to try and cover it up, but with these kits, she felt a strange certainty that he hadn't been able to live up to his own promise. If he had, she'd hit him just for having been so crass and tactless to his sister.

And then Safiya was warning her about Ber's other family. "I've already met Chelsea," she replied, like the she-cat was overreacting. "She didn't seem bothered by it - really, she seemed happy. Excited, even."

Eshek didn't reply to Safiya's comment about Ber and her caring about each other, just kept gently grooming the she-cat's wounds with long, quiet strokes of her tongue. But at her panic about Chelsea, she raised her head, watching Safiya with an unreadable expression as she listened. "If a snake comes near your kits," she replied at last, in a calm, steady voice, "you kill the snake. But I won't so long as she stays in sight." It was a demoralising blow, to learn Chelsea might not be the sister she'd hoped she was, and it made her child-like heart ache with innocent, youthful sadness and surprise, but she wouldn't grieve over the betrayal and her own lack of insight now; she meant it - if Chelsea tried anything, they'd see who was quicker. Sisters be damned.

"He's told me enough. Insanity, matricide, the curse... But if you wanted to tell me more, I wouldn't stop you. It's only fair, I think, to know precisely what I'm bringing myself and my kits into. What I'm owed, even. Bermondsey can be self-centred when it comes to who the curse will actually affect, even if it's just his brainwashed sibling and not any actual cosmic force." Her voice, as she brushed her paw over Safiya's flank more out of habit now than any actual medical care, had taken on a serious, almost cold quality so foreign to Eshek's usual demeanour. Drawing her paw away, she softened slightly and eased the thyme leaves across the ground towards Safiya's head. "You should eat these," she told her gently. "Being afraid all the time will kill you just as much as keep you alive. I'll stay with you." She didn't feel the need to say it wasn't poison; she assumed, by Eshek's tattered ears and scar-crossed pelt and wild eyes, that the other she-cat had already deduced that quiet killing wasn't her style.

"Oh?" Eshek replied in a murmur. She'd picked up on the fact Safiya seemed to like being taken care of and was more than happy to put herself into that role; she kept up her gentle, quiet grooming, more just for the comfort of the rhythmic movements and the warmth than to do any actual cleaning. Even though she knew Safi was older than her - and older than Ber, too, when there was already quite an age difference between them - she felt younger. Smaller. "Who was Nyx?"

When the she-cat yawned, Eshek stopped grooming and raised her head, watching her with a faint smile that met Safiya's own when she turned to her. And when Safiya thanked her, her smile simply grew, eyes warm. I guess I'm the brainwashed sibling he's talking about huh? "I don't know, little one," she replied in that same, low murmur, carefully turning around to lie down the same way as Safiya and begin grooming gently between her ears. Their sides were pressed closer together, warm and soft. "Don't keep any promises you can't keep," she added with a purr, her voice faintly amused. Even as she continued, it was said in the same low, comforting way, like it was important but not enough to wake up about; like she was just talking as Safi drifted off. "I cleared all my family off the map but I have a terrible feeling that my brother is going to reappear one day soon. And with the way I raised him, I worry about him and my kits. I love him, and I miss him, and I'm sorry, but I worry." If it came down to choosing Lorah or choosing her children, she didn't know who she would save.

Still thinking about Lorah, Eshek slowly lowered her head to rest her chin between Safiya's ears. "Is it scary?" she asked after a long moment, her voice vulnerable and quiet. "To be a mother?"