I don't know who taught you about tom anatomy but whoever they are... I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. "Aww!!" Esh reached up with both paws and grabbed Bermondsey's face, pulling him down to her level and pressing the bridges of their noses together so their eyes were staring into each other, upside down. "You think you have rights! And that I care! You're so cute, Bermy." She gave him a kiss on his nose and pushed him away.

That was Esh's typical response to being faced with facts she couldn't dispute and the certainty that she was wrong - to move on swiftly and annoy her way out of it so the other cat forgot what she was talking about in the first place. She was either incredibly clever or a complete bimbo, and sometimes both at the same time, switching in and out with staggering speed - you never knew which Eshek you were going to get. But she was honest, completely and fully, and if you got her word on something, got her loyalty that she waved about like a flippant little flag, she'd never go back on it; she had no interest in conquering kingdoms, in being a queen or a kingmaker, but if someone she was friends with happened to want to hack their way to the top with a tyrannical regime, she'd skip along at their side and slaughter her way through their adversaries, even if said adversaries were on the right side of history and the right side of morality; and, equally, if they wanted to have a nothing little life, she'd happily flop down beside them and make fun of butterflies. She was incredibly simple and easy to understand - everything she said, she meant. She might contradict it a second later, if it was a stupid little folly, but she still meant it when she said it. It was the ultimate sort of trustworthiness.

"Oh, pleeeEEEAASE," she groaned at Ber's comment about DayClan, hiding her face behind her paws and letting out another thunderous groan through her claws. She dragged her paws off her face and they thumped against the dusty floor; she lay there, despondent as she stared up at the milky rays of sunlight streaming through the high-up windows on the roof. "Glowstar wants to keep her precious little dumplings safe, like a wolf guarding bunnies. When I showed up with Luc, pretending to not be, y'know, me, she made me a maverick, which is like one step above a total social reject prisoner. Like, I'm a servant - literally. They haven't given me to anyone yet so I'm making the most of my last days of freedom before I have to wipe the nose of some snotty imperial mummy's boy apprentice, but when they do I'm going to be ruined. It's sort of genius, if you think about it - what's the best way to publicly humiliate someone who used to be powerful, who used to be a tyrant or a proxy? What's worse than execution? Turning a torturer into a pet, bowing and scraping for some little lord. Of course it's all going to end badly; you aren't rehabilitating the villains, you're just filling them with so much rage and resentment that one day they're gonna snap, and then where will her little bunnies be? I could almost kiss Glowstar - and I could, y'know, she's like my wife-in-law or something. She's an evil genius all dolled up in frills."

The warehouse was filled with a deafening silence when Eshek finally shut up. If this were a cartoon, the sun and moon would have gone through three comedically sped-up cycles outside the warehouse windows. She lay there for a long moment, silenced by the weight of the silence and drumming her paws against her chest, before finally heaving herself to her paws. "Anyway. I'm still sexy so whatever, right? And to answer your question - once you're throwing up, you'll realise how fun the journey that got you there was. Even the hangover will be fun. We'll turn you into a functioning cat one day, Ber." She patted him patronisingly on the shoulder. Then she looked around at the warehouse one last time, turning in a full circle and nodding to herself. "Yeah, this'll do. You just sit tight over the next day or two and I'll sort it all out. You can trust ol' Eshek." She gave him a toothy grin that screamed 'don't trust me.'

"Now c'mon, we're wasting daylight with you not shutting up and nattering away like a wounded little baby bird." She trotted ahead, heading for the other end of the warehouse. She still had a lot of city to be shown. "Tally-ho, Bermondsey my dear!" Her voice rang and echoed through the empty warehouse, startling birds from their nests; they flapped away outside, squawking and shrieking. 

“Y’know, you keep bringing the conversation back to being dominated and it’s makin’ me feel like you need to some soul searching. No judgement - my friends are into some freaky stuff, who cares if you wanna be spit on by some hot chick or cute guy? We’ve all been there. We all have mummy issues. That’s the good thing about being completely dispensable and unimportant like you are, not a Warden or a Nemesis or even a proxy - you can just disappear to do stuff like soul searching and no one gives a hoot. Like a spy, except there’s no glamour because no one cares. I care, though, Bermondsey. I care.” She turned and brought him in for a gentle hug, patting his back and nodding against his shoulder, eyes closed. It was a good thing Ber was so down-to-earth and happy to live a life of obscurity in second or third or fourth place; if he’d had any sort of ambition, he couldn’t have been hanging out with her right now. And she liked the guy; sooner or later she’d win him over to her, too. She was like a tick, or mould, or an incurable growth. You were stuck with her, and eventually you’d just give in and enjoy it. Maybe that wasn’t the best metaphor, because mould and incurable growths are difficult to enjoy, but we’ve already dug this hole and now we’re going to lie in it.

Why don’t you just leave? “Eh,” Esh replied eloquently. She knew why she couldn’t, or why she told herself she couldn’t, but what it really boiled down to in the end was this: she was lonely. She was afraid. She was broken. And Lucistic, Innocentia, all the remnants of her old life - they were in DayClan. Even Glowstar and Foxstar, the reminders of Funk, of his companionship; they were there. So she had to be there, too. “I never really had any ambition to start with. I just kinda got the job by default.” (This is true. I didn’t even try out or nothin’.) Don’t tell me you’re in love with Glowstar or something? She considered that for a moment before finally giving a massive shrug. “Maybe!” With that she trotted off whistling.

When Bermondsey started to lead the way up to the roof, Eshek saw the route he was planning to take and ducked back into the warehouse. She slipped over to the back wall with metal pipes clinging to the bricks beside the huge window and craned her neck to stare up at them for a second before hooking her little kitten claws into the metal - they screeched horribly - and hauling herself up. She made quick work of it, shimmying up the wall; when she reached the very top of the massive window, she kicked in the rest of the already-broken glass with one forepaw, clinging to the pipes with the other, and wriggled out through it. From there, with glass strewn all through her short, thick fur, she slipped over to the level of the metal staircase above Bermondsey, materialising out of the shadows. It was a trick she’d learned from Lucistic - who better to learn demonic party tricks from than the son of a demon? “You hurry up!” she crowed at him, leaning down the stairs victoriously and giving him a big grin. Then she realised where they were going and ran up excitedly. “Oh, a roof!” she exclaimed when she was standing atop it beside the grey tom, looking out over the city. “I love roofs! This is the best first date ever. I met a total babe on a roof once. And now I’ve met two.” She looked over at Ber with a big, sharp grin, aiming for fawningly innocent and ending up somewhere closer to unhinged. “Laugh at my joke,” she said around the grin.

BUGS BUNNY BER

Did killing your dad count as daddy issues? She definitely had mommy issues, and she was definitely a psychopath. Was she a people pleaser? She put on a good show, yeah, but she would probably have performed to the same extravagant degree if it were to an empty auditorium - she was like a performer that was always on stage, and people could just come in and out of the theatre to get snacks or just poke their head in to see what was going on. Eshek scratched at her ear with her hind paw as she thought about it. Man, now she wanted snacks. And to visit an abandoned theatre.

At Bermondsey's toothy little 'no', her grin grew and she let out a cackling laugh, throwing her head back and rolling back and forth on her spine, clutching her stomach with her forepaws. It was the first funny thing Bermondsey had done - the closest thing to a joke, and not only a joke, but an inside joke - and it made her happy; he was definitely starting to like her. How could he not? She was a delight. Pulling herself to her paws, she wiped tears from her eyes, letting out a sigh as she momentarily looked out over the city, and then started to walk along the edge of the roof, balancing precariously. "I'm fun, I'm sexy, we're go-in' to the disco. I'm fun, I'm sexy, we're go-in' to the disco," she sang over and over, doing a stupid little strut in time with the words. What disco? Who knew. Eshek looked down at her paws as she walked, moving each foreleg out to the side so to it hung out into thin air or over the rooftop beside her every time she took a step. She was now just an inch or two taller than Ber, on a little row of bricks that marked the edge of the roof, so if he were to walk along beside her they'd still basically be at eye level. "Y'know, everyone around here looks real skinny, especially you, so if you ever want a decent meal you can come to DayClan. They have this crazy dish where they toast apples from the orchard and stuff them inside a charred squirrel - it's weird, but man it's addictive. Or just regular fresh-kill, whatever. If you get sick of eating trash, I mean. But you are what you eat, so." She glanced away from her paws to shoot Ber a friendly grin. "I'm fun, I'm sexy, we're go-in' to the disco..."

At the end of this particular rooftop, just before she had to jump to the next one over a narrow alley, Esh hopped off the bricks and padded back to sit beside Bermondsey, looking out over the cityscape once more. She was silent for a long while, just sitting there next to him. When she finally spoke again, her voice was a touch more serious, though still abrupt enough to be vaguely comedic - because what was she if not a tragic clown? "Can you keep a secret? Good, here goes: I died, Ber. That's where I was. That's how I lost my position. That's why I'm in DayClan now. Funk..." She stopped herself, still looking out at the buildings and the reddening sky in front of her. She was going to say Funk and I had only been Nemesis and proxy for a few moons, but she still struggled to say his name without feeling like she was going to throw up from the confusing grief of it. She lowered her chin slightly, swallowing, though her face didn't show much of her internal struggle "I had only been proxy for two or three months. I was going to have kits any day. Then I was exploring on the roof of the mansion, and the glass broke, and I fell. And I was dead for two years. Except for me, it was only a single second. When I woke up, the mansion was abandoned, and all my friends were gone, and I was nothing. Only two cats in DayClan know - I can't tell Glowstar or Foxstar for... well, for reasons. And I just... needed someone in the League to know, too." Eshek looked up at Ber, looking strangely young, strangely vulnerable, like she was offering him something and was afraid of how he'd react. Her eyes were uncertain, worried.

esh: you can come around for a free meal
ber, shrugging: i mean i GUESS i could conquer the forest

Eshek’s whole demeanour had changed, like an actress slipping off all the bravado and letting her true self drift to the surface. Her eyes were serious and sane, clear with sadness and calm; her face was sombre and devoid of any laughter, even the set of her shoulders relaxing into a hunch, like she’d let out a great breath. “Thank you, Bermondsey,” she replied as she looked up at him, and her very voice was different, no longer a shrill, wild shriek, but heavy, quiet, real. Like this, it was easy to see Eshek as nothing more than the grieving mother who had lost her unborn kits. There was an exhaustion about her. “And if you ever need my help with anything here,” she continued, words full of meaning; a coup, she meant - murder, a cold rise to power, an ally, a right hand woman, a friend, a clawed ear to listen, someone to sleep beside when the nights grew cold and empty, “you know where to find me.” It was a debt owed, for keeping her secret. She took things like that incredibly seriously, her own unknowable sense of honour, of duty. There were few cats as reliable as Eshek.

She let out a breath, turning her head back to the setting sun casting a dangerous red glow over the city. This wasn’t home. It never would be. Home was gone. It was strange, the way she yearned for nothing but a family, an easy life, a mate to take care of her, and couldn’t seem to see it in any place but an old mansion full of murderers and monsters. She didn’t understand the kindness of good cats, was the truth of it; she only trusted the kindness of villains. Now her only home was Lucistic, and wherever he went, there home would be. “Well,” she said quietly, and closed her eyes. “If there’s nothing else.” She had been about to slip back into her usual self, the self that she could be happy in, and could feel it bubbling up inside her like floodwater, filling her from her toes and flooding towards her head, when her eyes blinked open again. She didn’t want to go back to Eshek, not just yet. It was like an oxygen tank - she could only survive for so long as the self she was beneath all that madness, unhooked from her own machine - but she could make it a few more minutes. Before all the grief she didn’t want to feel came crashing down and her mind snapped for real. It didn’t make the insane Eshek any less real, any less honest; it was just like a protective shield, used to keep her paws light.

The pale she-cat looked back up at Bermondsey. “Tell me a secret of your own,” she said softly, gazing up at him with tired earnestness. “Something real. Who are you? Where were you? What has hurt the most in all your sorry life? What are you most afraid of?” She didn’t want all the answers; she just wanted something shared between them, something to feel the cold night descending around them.

Eshek looked down at her paws as he spoke, nodding along in silence. Near the end, she raised her head and looked up at him, eyes melancholy and expression a quiet, haunted sort of earnest. When he was finished, she tilted her head slowly and offered him a thin smile - thank you. “There’s a lot of curses here,” she murmured quietly, eyes slipping back down to her paws. She let out a breath through her mouth.

Then, quick as death, Esh was back. “Have you ever considered,” she crowed merrily, bouncing up and giving Bermondsey a rough smack between the ears with one paw, “- in that pretty, egocentric head of yours - that you might just have a screwed up family?” She leaned in closer, their muzzles a breath apart and her eyes going cross-eyed to meet his. “Like, oh, you guys all murder each other? Join the club!” She stepped away from him, circling close around him as she spoke and looking everywhere but him, like some absent-minded, sure-footed dance. “I butchered a litter of kittens when I was nine moons old because my dad liked them better than me.” Her voice was steadily losing its humour and edging closer to genuine anger; her tail lashed as she continued to pace in a jerky circle around him. “Funk’s kid Bloodystar brought down religion and almost annihilated the Clans. My whole family is dead and the only good things, the only pure things, died when the rope snapped around my neck. For no reason. I guess I technically killed them, too. My mom, my dad, my baby siblings, my children - all me. My fault. Are you really such a selfish,” she let out a derisive cackle, stopping in front of Ber, “such a selfish, main-character-syndrome jerk-off that you think your suffering isn’t just pure,” she stabbed her muzzle closer, “dumb,” closer; their noses were all but pressed together, her eyes burning, “luck?”

She didn’t know why she was so angry. Guilt warred uncomfortably with the anger. It was nothing to do with Bermondsey. It was everything to do with Bermondsey. He hadn’t done anything wrong. His curse was his private pain - she believed it, believed him, and she hated the thought that he didn’t think that. Her emotions were all over the place. She hadn’t had a breakdown yet, hadn’t processed anything. This was the first time she’d actually snapped close to it. It was like a power outlet sending out a shower of sparks after trying to cover it with sticky tape and ignore it. Eshek softened in front of Ber, the senseless anger giving way to upturned brows and horrible guilt. What could she say? Sorry? She didn’t do sorry. Instead, Esh turned away from him in one sharp movement and, with a flustered, prickling lash of her tail, disappeared over the edge of the roof. She sank down into a hunched, guilty crouch on the fire escape below, the fur along her shoulders still sticking up anxiously.

For a long moment she was silent, just staring out at the red-washed city with an expression that was half stubborn glare and half chin-puckered misery. “I didn’t mean it!” she finally yelled up at the roof, in that tone of voice that said I know I’m the one in the wrong but I’m too petulant to outright say it so now this still sounds passive-aggressive and like I’m dragging my feet about it but honestly I feel like I could love you dearly one day and I don’t want to screw up a good thing before it’s had a chance to start. “I’m the jerk-off! I like you and I wanna be your friend - can we just… can we just say this was our obligatory first friend argument?” Now she sounded more plaintive, her shoulders shrugging up and her brows moving up and down as she stared out at the decrepit city despite the fact he couldn’t see her face. Her voice drifted up from the fire escape, reed-thin and a little pitiful. “You can call me ugly if it’ll make you feel better, because we’ll both know it’s not true.” It was a frail, questioning attempt at humour.

“I believe you~” was the last thing that came floating up from the fire escape, little more than a penitent, sing-songy little kitten wail. She added even more feebly and quietly: “Families suck. I suck…!~”

Speaking of, the thing about the kittens wasn’t entirely true. She’d done it, partly, because she’d wanted to spare them from a life with him as a father. It had been an act of selflessness for her half-siblings. Or, that’s how a kind-hearted psychopath would see it.

(frick i love ber so much. my clever baby boy. my genius son. ‘lose the one thing that was precious to him. his mind.’ that hurt like a butt on a stick) 


Bermondsey’s words hit their target; Eshek flinched, stung. Down on the fire escape where no one could see her, she looked up in the vague direction of the grey tom, her view blocked by the brick wall. Eshek wasn’t a proud cat; she wasn’t vain, or self-serving, or arrogant. Her world revolved around the few cats she loved and her heart had already gotten attached to Bermondsey. It never aimed wrong - it was the finest judge of character possible, far finer than her mind, even if said characters might be a breath away from evil. They were always good for her. Now, the prospect of losing the tom unsettled her, like she was sitting on nettles or a bed of squirming bugs. Expression dangerously close to pitiful, Eshek scrabbled over the edge of the wall and dropped back onto the roof, catching up to Ber with a brisk steps.

“I don’t want someone else,” she replied earnestly, walking alongside Bermondsey step for step and looking up into his face with a miserable frown. “And I don’t want your sympathy. Look, I don’t…” She tentatively touched her paw to Ber’s shoulder, asking him to stop. “I don’t really do heart-to-hearts. I expect you don’t either. And maybe you’re really good at keeping it all bottled up and I usually am too, so much so I forget I’m even doing it - you can’t survive in this world if you aren’t willing to hide something - but sometimes it… y’know…” She looked at him sheepishly; it was the closest Eshek had ever gotten to being submissive, waiting for Ber’s reaction. “And you’ll probably say something like ‘then bottle it up better’, or maybe you’ll say ‘stop grovelling, Eshek, it’s pathetic’, and it is. And I should. But I’m…” Eshek did have a scrap of pride, and right then she swallowed it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for asking for something vulnerable and then being a prick about it. Just please don’t go cold on me. You can be a bastard, if you want, but please just don’t be…” Icy. Eshek trailed off, still gazing at him. She could handle anger. She couldn’t handle the silent treatment. That was the stunted child in her. Normally she wouldn’t have persisted with an apology - either hurt was ignored and glossed over, or hurt didn’t land at all. But the tom’s ‘it doesn’t matter’ had been so stony, so withdrawn, that even if he dismissed it outwardly, she knew penance was something that needed to happen if she didn’t want to lose him entirely. Even if he didn’t - wouldn’t - call it wounded, she could feel the unspoken friction sucking out the air between them.

She looked up at him in silence. “I’m sorry, Bermondsey,” she said again quietly, eyes searching out his own.

"Promise," Eshek agreed sincerely, giving Bermondsey a few little nods. She meant it; until the day came that Ber dragged the topic out again by himself, she would ignore it and help steer anyone else she could away from it too - and if that day never came, if Ber never mentioned it again in her lifetime, then she'd have been silent all that time. If there was one thing she did well, it was keep her word. "And we can also pretend we didn't both feel just the tiniest bit of attraction for each other when we were fighting," she added with a lecherous little leer, just to try and dispel the last of the tension.

The sun had mostly set by now, only the faintest glow of red on the horizon left to break up the dark grey sky, the few stars glimmering sickly through the light pollution, the yellow squares of light sparking to life or dying in all those hundreds of high-rises and office buildings and apartment buildings. "C'mon, let's get some dinner. I'm hungry and you're cranky." With a last look at Ber that lasted only half a second - it looked suspiciously like she was double checking he was okay - Eshek trotted across the roof and, hardly stopping to check there was actually something to jump down on to, started leaping from box to box to get back down to the ground. Swivelling an ear back to make sure the grey tom was following, not like she cared or anything, Esh trotted down the street, the lamps buzzing in the still night air and casting pools of yellow light over the concrete. Did she know where she was going? Unclear. Steadily, the buildings began to give way to empty construction sites and vacant blocks.

And then, finally, there it was -

A gas station.

If there was one questionably good thing about Esh, which could be disastrous or life-saving depending on the situation, it was that she'd either been born without the gene for fear or lost it somewhere along the way. Existential dread, sure - but practical, mortal fear? Nah. This was proven by the fact that, upon seeing the gas station, she trotted across the empty parking lot rimmed by bedraggled trees and littered with shopping trolleys, her white pelt slipping in and out of buzzing yellow light and shadow - and walked straight up to the front door. Metal cans of gas were piled up in silver, metal mesh holders on either side, along with bags of firewood and sawdust. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights was now deafening; moths and other insects thwacked themselves against them.

The electronic bell dinged and the automatic doors slid open. Elevator music was playing inside the glowing white store. Ignoring the guy reading a paper at the checkout, Eshek trotted in and crossed the smooth, gleaming floor, heading for the chips aisle. "Plain or salt and vinegar?" she asked Bermondsey over her shoulder.

'do they have those in america' you ask the australian

At Ber's mention of giving her kits, Eshek gagged and made a childishly overly-exaggerated disgusted face. "Gross. Those kids would be total freaks, just like their dad." She gave Bermondsey a dazzling smile.

Inside the gas station, Esh looked over her shoulder at the grey tom, slinking along so uneasily behind her, looking like he was trying not to flinch at the buzzing lights and the rustling of the guy's newspaper and the electronic hiss of the glass doors as they closed behind them. Can't we steal something more appetizing? "Oh, sure, the starving one is still too good for the food I like. This is gonna be so typical of our marriage." But she turned on her heel all the same, trotting through an aisle selling peanut butter and chocolate bars and heading for the fridge section at the back of the store. She stood in front of one of the cold glass doors for a minute or two, eyes slowly wandering over the shelves as a Katy Perry song came on over the crackly speakers. "Ooh, sushi," she said at last, grabbing the underside of one of the doors in her paws and heaving with all her might. Managing to crack it open a little, cold mist hissing out into the aisle, she passed the door to Ber - "hold this, and don't lock me inside" - and reared up on her hindpaws, scrabbling for a moment at one of the shelves before managing to haul herself up. She slunk through the frozen wasteland of microwave meals for a second before finding the relatively fresh sushi in a little black plastic tray held together with a rubber band.

Pulling three of the little trays closer to her, she pushed all her weight back against the door she was currently inside - and, when it flew open, tumbled out with the sushi still safely in the packaging, landing in an auditory chaos of cat and thin plastic. She'd therefore rendered Bermondsey's need to hold the door that was now a few fridges down from her totally pointless. "Quick!" Grabbing the edge of two of the trays in her teeth, she started dragging it backwards towards the gaping door of the stock room and staff exit at the back of the gas station.

(THAT'S SO SAD, poor crim and the Forbidden Sushi)

"YOU smell like vomit and taste like battery acid," Eshek shouted at him through the door as she picked her way across the frozen foods, her voice muffled by the glass and her spine arched downward as she slid under the layer of frost clinging to the shelf above. Despite her best efforts it got sprinkled all over her fur, leaving her frosty and cold and wet. ...And not turn you into a catsicle. "AND STOP MAKING PUNS, YOU'RE NOT FUNNY AND I WON'T SHARE ANY OF MY SUSHI WITH YOU." Her shouting sounded like it was coming from the other side of a comically thick wall of cotton.

Fast forward to Esh being on the floor. As Bermondsey whacked the tray across the floor, sending it spinning, Eshek did a few manic little bounces in place, excited out of her mind by the danger and the hilariousness of the situation, and let out a squeal that turned quickly to a cackling laugh. The laugh continued in varying intensities, sometimes more like an excitedly panicked squealing as she dragged the trays backwards, sometimes back to an exhausted-by-the-joy-of-it-all kind of laugh-hum with her mouth closed around the plastic as Ber kicked the tray along, and then finally, getting her second wind, back to insane, stomach-aching laughter because it was just so funny, how the tray just went sliding along and Bermondsey kept kicking it. She had to let go of the plastic and just stand there, watching and laughing and occasionally stopping to mumble about how her stomach hurt and give it a little rub before seeing the tray again and bursting back into laughter.

Then, suddenly, the guy in flannel had somehow loomed up behind her and was reaching down to pick her up. Eshek started screaming and, dashing madly back and forth in the aisle - which was only a few steps wide so she was really turning back on herself almost before she'd even started running - wildly flailed around on the shelves, pulling down random snacks, before dropping down onto her chest, reaching wide with her forepaws, hugging the sushi and the snacks to her like she was a snow plough, and sliding madly away from the guy with her back legs peddling at the shiny floor and her chest sliding on the tiles. "AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH," she screamed, pushing herself through the back door into the staff room without any mind paid to Bermondsey. "AAAAAHHHHHH," she continued to scream as she slid her way out of the dingy, gloomy little room and out onto the still-warm ground of the car park. She tumbled down the little step and lay sprawled there in the buzzing yellow pool of light cast by a street lamp with the snacks all around her, staring up dazedly at the night sky.