Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Your name is Eridan, and you live in a ship, all alone.

It's not so bad, really; if you're alone, that means there's no one to bother you, no one to force their own agenda, or make you...

(You shy away from finishing that thought, and turn onto a different track.)

It's not so bad, living alone. You're the only one in control of your own life, this way. Mostly.

You absently pick up a model ship from its home on a bookcase and turn it around in your hands. You remember this one; Seahorsedad had given it to you for your third wriggler molt, when you'd been so upset that you were the last one of your group of friends to molt. It had been fun, putting it together, even if they'd teased you about being obsessed with everything nautical for weeks after you'd showed it off. Karkat had even-

Lightning flickers, distracting you from your thoughts, and you walk over to a window. Rain pours down outside; thunder rolls, answer to the lightning, and you shiver.

"Errr-ridannn~" a sing-song voice floats down from the deck above, and you turn, confused. (Who was here? You were alone.)

"Er-ridan!" That voice was familiar, tweaking at foggy memories buried deeply.

"...Fef?"

(But wasn't she-?)

You aren't given a chance to finish that thought, as she abruptly materializes in front of you and wraps you in a hug so tight you can practically hear your bones creak, as is her wont. It feels so familiar now, like you saw her every day, like this was your life. But there was something important you had to tell her, had to warn her about-

"Fef, I-"

"Shh, guppy, shh."

She pets your hair and you submit to the affection, forgetting what you were going to say as a lump forms in your throat. Her hair floats around her like a halo; the water almost seems to glow. (But when did you get underwater?)

Something about this seems... wrong. She's never come to your hive before, only you to hers. But you aren't given a chance to wonder about that, either.

"I'm so sorry, Er-ridan!" she says, in that weird accent of hers.

"Sorry about what?" you ask, gulping water down your lungs like it's supposed to go there, and she gestures behind you.

You turn and find your husktop, blinking with messages, behind you (it wasn't there before, but that seems unimportant). Without any thought in the matter, you sit - the chair appears as you do - and open the message.

Your heart jumps into your throat, then drops to somewhere around the area of your feet. It's from Karkat - his angry grey text is unmistakable.

A raw wound somewhere around your heart starts to bleed. (You press your hand to it, but there's nothing there, no blood, just pain.)

CG: I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE YOU.
CG: I CAN'T BELIEVE I EVER TRUSTED YOU.
CG: YOU'RE THE WORST FUCKING HIGHBLOOD EVER.
CG: NO, THE WORST *TROLL* EVER, PERIOD, FULL STOP.
CG: YOU ABSOLUTE PIECE OF GARBAGE DOUCHEBAG.
CG: YOU'RE SO UNBELIEVABLY FUCKING SHITTY YOU CAN'T EVEN KEEP FRIENDS.
CG: USELESS EXCUSE FOR A TROLL.
CG: IT MAKES ME FUCKING NAUSEOUS TO THINK I USED TO CONSIDER YOU A FRIEND.
CG: YOU'RE NOT EVEN PITIABLE YOU'RE SO HORRIBLE.
CG: HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE, COWARDLY PIECE OF SHIT.
CG: DESPICABLE. USELESS. 

Feferi's hands close on your shoulders as you read, and you half-turn to look at her. She's speaking the same words on the screen, like she's reading them, but her eyes are focused - bright, piercing, hot - on you.

"Useless, weak, good for nothing-"

Her voice becomes many, echoing around the empty room, and you're suddenly aware that blood - fuschia, brilliant and royal - is dripping from her mouth. Her eyes go glassy but the words don't stop.

"Waste of space, waste of air, hopeless idiot-"

Every word feels like a fist, a lash, a crunch. You try to pull away, to curl up on yourself, to run, but Feferi won't let you go. All you can do is sit there as every voice in the world screams at you, until even your own mind repeats the words like a mantra.

Disgusting. Ugly. Stupid. 

Dishonorable. Ignorant. Coward. 

Worthless.
Worthless.
Worthless.

----

Eridan bolted awake, panting as though he'd just run a marathon and staring, sightlessly, into the dim light of the recreation room. The TV had long since shut itself off while he'd been sleeping - stupid, stupid, he thought, falling asleep on the couch like an idiot - and the faint pale light of the almost-setting second moon was the only source of light in the room.

It took long minutes before he was able to stabilize his breathing and start to think normally again. Everything had felt so real-

Oh, god, Fef.

He hadn't thought about her in... sweeps, at least. Not since before the Academy, anyway.

He'd gone looking for her, back then, when she'd failed to come online for nights and nights. He'd gone to her home, deep beneath the waves where even he had some trouble breathing, where the waters were dark and it was best to swim quickly and not catch the attention of the dwellers of the deep. He'd gone to her home, and found it empty.

Refusing to believe the reality of his eyes - she was always near home, always, it was too dangerous to wander far from her lusus - he'd started out to look for her, to search the ocean for her if need be, but he'd been stopped.

"She didn't want you to grieve," a voice had said, and thought, and vibrated, and echoed, taking over his entire world for a brief moment as the largest creature he had ever seen emerged from the depths beside her home.

And then her lusus - bigger than the biggest building ever built, bigger than the massive trees that towered over the southern continent, bigger than mountains - had done... something... to his mind, something that made the reality of Feferi seem at one remove; as though he'd dreamed her entirely. As though she had never been anything more than a story. And he'd...

He'd forgotten her.

He'd gone home, gone to school, graduated and come home again, without ever a single thought of her.

His gut twisted, and Eridan lowered his face into his hands. Karkat was right. Everyone was right. He was worthless, couldn't even remember the one real-life friend he'd ever had, just forgot her like she was nothing more to him than a nice daydream when it was convenient.

Eridan felt like he was going to vomit, or scream, or dissolve into hopeless tears.

He did none of those things, however, instead staring dry-eyed at the darkness of his hands over his eyes, remembering Feferi's burning gaze from the dream and the harsh grey text, vibrating with fury and disgust. Those probably hadn't been the exact words Karkat had used, not in reality - Eridan couldn't, didn't want to remember specifics like that - but it was similar enough to make no difference to his gut. It might have been a dream, but enough of it was real to lend the rest credence in the daze of waking.

----

Day had fully dawned before he could bring himself to move; when he did, he did so only because a shard of burning light pierced though a hole in the shades to land on his arm - not long enough to burn, but long enough to be uncomfortable and cause Eridan to shift unthinkingly. And then, once he'd moved, his body began to complain: everything ached from tension and the awkward position he'd been in on the couch, his bladder was too full, his stomach was too empty, his head pounded with the need for real sleep, his eyes burned with tears he couldn't shed.

Sitting and moping would get him nowhere. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, he chided himself angrily, forcing the anguish down, and shoved himself to his feet to deal with his body's concerns. It doesn't matter. You are what you are and there's no redeeming you, so you might as well get used to it.

It wasn't as though any of this was new. He'd stumbled through life this far, there was no point giving up now. Maybe he didn't have so much as a single hope, but living was better than dying, somehow. While he was awake, the nightmares wouldn't come; he had a feeling that, if he died, he'd never be able to escape them. That seemed as good a reason to keep on living as any.

His mind elsewhere, he took care of necessary business, then shuffled downstairs to the kitchen to find something to eat. He wasn't watching where he put his feet, though, and ended up stubbing his toe, hard, on the leg of the kitchen table. The brief flash of pain chased away the last vestiges of the dream, and as Eridan hopped around on one foot, swearing fit to make a blueblood blush, his stomach finally settled.

Nothing to do but keep going. There's nothing but now.

The mantra had helped him any number of times over the past few sweeps, reminding him to keep his head in the present when his mind wanted nothing more than to wallow in the past.

The pain eased enough to put weight back on that foot, and Eridan, now thoroughly awake, limped towards one of the cabinets. There wasn't exactly much to choose from, so it was the work of a moment to snag a basic ration bar from a box and tear the wrapper open with his teeth. Chewing these things was hard work - the upper covering had a consistency like taffy when it wasn't cold and got caught everywhere - but Eridan welcomed the exercise as it helped to ground him in the here-and-now.

(At least they didn't taste too bad, since the newest recipe update; back when he'd first graduated, the bars had been all but torture to force down, leading Eridan to subsist on mostly fish. Unfortunately, while fish alone might be a perfectly good diet for plenty of animals, trolls needed more variety - and particular vitamins and minerals - than fish could provide; and as Eridan really didn't fancy getting sick from malnutrition, he'd forced himself to eat the ration bars - a uniquely miserable experience. It had been an absolute godsend when they'd changed the recipe. The only downside to the new version was that taffy-like coating, and all things considered, that was nothing to complain about.

Eridan still had a box or two of the old ones hanging around somewhere in case of emergency - he hated to waste anything, even awful-tasting ration bars - but he'd probably eat food from the floor before he ever touched them. An unwashed floor, even. It couldn't possibly taste worse.)

Taffy coating half his teeth and jaw starting to ache from the effort of chewing, Eridan headed back upstairs to his room.

Falling asleep outside of his recuperacoon had been a stupid mistake; he knew he got nightmares, without the sopor to soothe. Not that he didn't get nightmares even in sopor, some days; but at least he got fewer of them, and they tended to fade faster. They also generally felt less horribly realistic, as though his mind had more trouble remembering accurately with the sopor working through his system.

Eridan shook off that train of thought. No need to tempt fate to give him another one; chances were it would be worse, and he hated waking up screaming. Maybe there was no one to hear, but the need to be quiet was too ingrained in him at this point for him not to feel awful about the noise anyway.

"Nothin' but now," he muttered to himself, forcing a somewhat uncooperative tongue to form the W properly even though he was alone, and swallowed down the last of the bar before shedding the oversized shirt he'd been lounging in and climbing up the steps to slip into the green slime within.

There's nothing but now.

And let it stay that way. 

Please.

Chapter Text

Several nights later found Eridan at the fueling station north of the capital. He'd been on a job, delivering paperwork; it was just shy of makework, really, but apparently the papers had been important enough to need to deliver a physical copy, and Eridan had pounced on the job before any of the others in his rank group could take it. He needed every extra credit he could bring in; his stipend was eaten away too quickly by sopor, food, and other necessities, and he needed to build his savings back up.

He wasn't in a bad place, all things considered. He'd almost gone into debt, buying his little flitter, a planet-bound plane just big enough for five (not that he ever had anyone but himself) that gave him the ability to take on far more jobs than he'd been able to before. It was an old model, pre-owned - nothing like what a violet should buy - but it was solid. Mostly. And more importantly, it opened up a whole world of work, jobs he'd never have been able to do otherwise; jobs that took him a long, long way from his little ship on the shore.

He'd had to scrimp by for perigees after that, buying only the cheapest of ration bars, eating mostly fish he caught himself, and rationing his sopor, until the investment started to pay off with the increased pay. But finally, by now, he had built his savings back up almost to where they'd been before. Still, the habits of taking jobs wherever he could and spending as little as possible had become ingrained.

Eridan scowled at the price listed on the fueling station, but opened the fuel port on his flitter anyway. Prices had gone up, again. Filling up was going to be a hit to his account; he'd delayed this long in hopes the price would go down, not up, but he couldn't wait any longer or he'd run out halfway home. He should have filled up earlier. Sighing, Eridan lifted the hose from the station and set it in place before hitting the 'start' button with the base of his hand.

There was nothing much to do while the fuel pumped through, so he took a few steps away to scan around the area. This fueling station was a fairly small one, being so near the capital; the trolls working here likely lived in the outskirts of the capital and commuted in, so there weren't any residential buildings. In fact, the only two buildings here were the convenience store that owned the fuel pumps and a larger building on the other side of the landing field, advertising itself as "Quick-E Auctions" in bright, flashing letters.

Eridan wrinkled his nose. He could smell the place from here: it stank of unwashed bodies and fear. It, and the landing field, were busy; apparently an auction was happening, or about to happen.

As though the thought had summoned it, a jet - much bigger than his little flitter, although still planet-bound - landed a short distance from the auctionhouse, which seemed to excite the people lining up to get in. A moment later, a line of trolls emerged from within, led by two bluebloods outfitted like guards. Most of the following trolls, however, wore collars and little else.

These, then, were the slaves going on auction, the reason for the hubbub across the way.

Eridan looked away from the procession with an internal wince he was careful not to allow to show on his face. As stupid as it was for a highblood to be squeamish about slaves, he couldn't stop himself. Maybe it was because he identified too much with them?

His back burned with a phantom pain and he shifted his shoulders to try to ease it. That was probably it. It was too easy to see himself in them, for all the differences in color.

But he couldn't let himself keep thinking that way, risking some of his thoughts showing on his face - at least, not where anyone could see him. Not if he didn't want to be culled for "improper behavior for a highblood" or worse. He couldn't risk standing out.

You are a highblood, he reminded himself, staring at the side of his flitter and trying to work up the courage to pretend nothing was bothering him. If he didn't look, it would be noticed. Trolls didn't ignore things like this, not even highbloods who might have seen such things hundred of times, and everyone else was watching.

This is what highbloods do. Highbloods own slaves, they don't sympathize with them. No matter how hard it was not to. You might as well get used to it.

With that thought in mind, he steeled himself and looked back over, attempting to appear as dispassionate about the whole thing as the rest of the trolls in the area.

There were perhaps twenty in the group, trudging in single file to the auctionhouse across the field. One of the teals guarding them took a stubby whip (Eridan winced internally) to the shoulder of a brownblood who had stumbled until he rose back to his feet to continue on. A rust, bearing evidence of the same, wept silently. A different rust hunched his shoulders, hair hiding his face, as a guard jeered at him.

A yellow, walking between two guards, had his forearms and hands encased in metal cuffs, as well as shackles on his ankles, and walked like he was dizzy: he must have fought his imprisonment, for the slavemongers to bind him so throughly, and maybe even drug him. The red ring on the collar around his neck marked him as a psionic.

Something about that yellow made Eridan feel... strange. He couldn't name the feeling that swelled inside him, couldn't think what it was for...

Were those... two horns on each side of his head?

Surely not. Eridan, losing control of his neutral expression, frowned and clenched his hands in fists. Lots of trolls had horns that forked. Lots. Surely some had ones that forked fairly close to their heads, where hair might hide the connecting piece. 

And lots of trolls were psionics. That surely wasn't unusual. The first rust had a red ring, too.

There was no reason whatsoever for his heart to be beating so fast. None at all.

No reason for him to pull the hose out of his flitter before it was full. No reason for him to hook it back up on the station, to press his wristband to the device to pay, to close the fueling port and lock the flitter and start walking purposefully across the field as the procession of slaves entered a side door to the auction house.

No reason to join the increasing number of people streaming in through the main doors of the building, nor to push his way through to one of the side platforms reserved for highblood use, using his wristband to verify his blood so the gate would permit him through to where he could see better than he could on the main floor.

No reason to watch, biting the inside of his cheek in anxiety he carefully masked on the outside, as the slaves were led, one at a time, onto the stage; to feel his stomach flip as each one - not the yellow, not the yellow - was bid for and sold and sent off the other side through an archway to be turned over to their new owners.

Thirteen slaves had stepped up, been sold, and passed on before the yellow was shoved onto the stage. He stumbled and nearly fell, casting a glare over his shoulder before standing tall and sweeping it over the audience.

Eridan felt his heart stop.

He'd never, ever, ever, heard of a troll with eyes like those - red on one side, blue on the other, the irises barely visible.

He'd never heard of one... but he'd known one.

"What'th wrong, fishlipth? Never theen a mutant before?"

Eridan had flushed and crossed his arms, trying not to stare. "No, actually, an' fuck you too. I thought I w-was comin' o'er here to meet a friend, not get insulted."

The yellowblood who'd met him at the door had lost some of his aggressiveness; the sparking red and blue psionics around his horns dissipated. "...Thorry. I... get a lot of people that... well."

Eridan had only shrugged. "W-well, I'm not them. So can I come in or do I gotta stand out here lookin' like some w-weirdo seadw-weller petitionin' a low-wblood?"

"You are a weirdo theadweller," the yellow had snapped, but stepped aside to let him into his home.

Eridan blinked rapidly to clear the memory from his eyes, and almost had his heart stop again when he heard the auctioneer.

"Going once, for five thousand three hundred, going twice-"

No, no, no-

"Eight thousand."

His words fell into the silence spreading across the room - the auctioneer had stopped speaking when he'd stepped forward into the light.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered at himself. He sounded arrogant, condescending, a little bored - in short, like a real highblood, nothing like how he usually sounded at all. The front of his mind, however, was busy running numbers and watching the crowd for anyone who seemed like they might try to bid again.

"Eight thousand, from the violet in the stands, thank you very much sir!" The auctioneer bowed in his direction. "Is anyone going to outbid eight thousand?"

Eridan clasped his hands behind his back so no one could see how tightly they were clenched. He'd taken a risk, going so high above the previous bid, in hopes that anyone else would be scared off. He couldn't afford to get into a bidding war; he didn't have the credits or the control over himself to effectively bluff any more than he was doing now. But although a wave of murmuring swept through the assembled trolls to his left, no one spoke up.

"Going twice... and sold, for eight thousand credits, thank you, sir! Please step through to the other room when you are ready to collect your purchase. Next we have-"

Eridan stopped listening. Even if he'd been interested in anyone else, he didn't have the funds to do anything further. For that matter, he wasn't a hundred percent sure he had the funds for this... Heart in his mouth, he swung open the gate on the far side of the platform and stepped into the side room the auctioneer had indicated, where a squinty-eyed cerulean sat at a desk in front of a computer, a chair and a wrist-reader facing her.

"The yellow, correct, sir? For eight thousand." she queried, as he approached. Her expression turned quickly to a frown as she saw him more clearly, visibly assessing his appearance and finding it wanting for the amount he'd bid. Eridan tried not to wince. He knew he didn't look great: even his best outfit looked worn, shabby, compared to most of the trolls here. He hadn't bothered to buy new clothing in a long while; after all, the most that most trolls saw of him was a glance as he handed over whatever goods or papers he'd been tasked with delivering. Besides, no one expected a simple messenger to be well dressed, not even a violetblood.

Eridan fought the urge to frown back at the auctionhouse employee and instead focused on keeping his face looking bored, as though he'd done this a thousand times. He ignored the chair and waited by the reader for her instructions.

The cerulean's expression clearly said she doubted he had the money, violet or no. "If you would use the reader, here..."

Eridan pressed his wristband against the reader, praying to whatever gods or spirits or luck might possibly listen that he hadn't miscalculated... and a moment later, the device binged, the cerulean's face cleared, and Eridan released the breath he'd been holding.

"Very good, sir, thank you very much for your custom. If you would, sir, you may pick up your purchase from register three; my assistant can answer any questions you have."

Eridan nodded, struggling to prevent himself from sagging in relief, and turned to walk over to the indicated area. The 'registers' appeared to be holding areas; only the troll he'd purchased waited in number 3, though the three other 'registers' all had three to five trolls in them each. Apparently, being bought by a violet made him special.

Or perhaps it was his belligerent behavior - Eridan noticed he remained shackled and cuffed, and his collar was hooked by a chain leash to a metal bar attached to the wall, where every other slave sat free but for their collars.

The yellow noticed him approaching and glared; Eridan grit his teeth and forced himself to look only at the olive-blooded assistant, who was giving him a clearly much-repeated spiel about how the collars worked and how they could be used.

"-so you can set the distance from the receiver he is allowed to go, whether the receiver is mounted or worn. The toggle here controls the psionic inhibitor - I would recommend leaving it on, he did a fair amount of damage before a guard got him with a tranq." She actually giggled at that, which infuriated Eridan out of all proportion to reality.

Hearing a growl, he thought at first it had come from him and stiffened, before realizing when the olive gave an absentminded rap on the enclosure's railing that the yellowblood, bearing his teeth at her, had been the source of the noise.

"We can give him another before you go if you want, though the drugs are probably still mostly in effect," she offered, as if in apology for the yellow's behavior. "Anyway, here is your receiver." She slipped it onto his wrist, next to the wristband, before he could protest. "And if you'll come over here, we'll get your blood registered to his collar. Sorry for the trouble, but blood-locks are standard setup, I'm sure you're aware-" Still chattering, the olive led him into the holding area and grabbed the yellow's hair with one hand, forcing his head back to expose the collar and indicating with the other where Eridan was supposed to press.

Trying not to wince, Eridan pushed his thumb against the marked area; he did wince, faintly, as the needle inside the collar pricked the pad of his finger to draw a drop of blood, but hid it quickly before the assistant could see. "Is that all?" he asked, stepping back again.

She smiled brightly, letting go of the yellowblood's hair, and crouched to unlock and retrieve the cuffs and shackles before walking back over to her station. "Unless you've got any other questions, sir!" 

Eridan shook his head, and she hit a button by the bar on the wall; it retracted, and she neatly caught the end of the leash that had been held on it, then dropped it into Eridan's hand. "Then thank you very much for your business, sir! Exit is immediately to your right. If you need any assistance getting him to your vehicle just ask, we can either tranq him again or one of the brutes can carry him."

Eridan, forcing himself to hold onto the leash, turned to look at his newly-acquired slave (fighting down nausea at that thought) and cleared his throat. "No. Not unless he... makes trouble." He tried to sound arrogant and like he knew what he was doing, but privately thought he just sounded peeved. At least he wasn't stuttering. "Come on."

The psionic troll looked like he was considering being difficult, but ultimately seemed to decide against it, rising to his feet - Eridan had to grit his teeth as he realized the other troll was a solid head-and-a-half taller than him - and stepping forward at a brisk pace. Eridan had to hurry to get in front of him so it at least looked like he was in control of the situation; annoyed, he did his best to look like his rush had been intentional.

Fortunately, it seemed the other troll couldn't keep up his pace for long, either; as they exited the building, the yellow slowed, and Eridan relaxed a little.

By the time they reached Eridan's flitter across the field, the psionic was stumbling, clearly feeling the effects of the drugs in his system. Eridan, entirely too aware of how many eyes were likely on them, had to fight to stop himself from helping him. Instead, trying to make it look like he wasn't paying any attention at all to the other's difficulties, he had simply slowed his pace to one that the other could keep up to, even when unsteady, and made sure he wasn't pulling on the leash so he didn't knock him off balance further.

It took three tries to get the lock on the flitter to respond, and Eridan burned with shame. What a sight: a shabby violet fighting with an old flitter, with a collared yellowblood who probably looked more in charge of the situation than Eridan did, if his quiet snort at the delay was anything to go by.

But finally, the door slid open, and Eridan climbed in. The yellow followed him without complaint, and sat where Eridan pointed (not trusting his voice to give commands).

He couldn't look at him, not this close; so, trusting the yellowblood to buckle himself in, he focused his gaze on the door as it shut, then on the cockpit as he slid into his own seat and buckled in. Second, third, and fourth thoughts spun through his head, and he started up the flitter entirely on autopilot.

What had he just done? He'd bought a friend - or at least, someone who'd used to be one, back before Eridan had proved that he didn't deserve any kind of friend. What was he going to do now? He couldn't - couldn't - keep him a slave, but questions would be raised if he tried to free him, especially so soon; questions that neither he, nor, he suspected, the yellow behind him, could afford.

A glance in the mirror as he accelerated towards the tower guarding the edge of the runway made him revise his opinion. The other was in no shape to go anywhere. He looked like he'd been half-starved; the drugs were making his head wobble (or perhaps that was the crappy suspension as the flitter rolled over uneven ground) and he looked dazed now that he wasn't trying to glare a hole in all and sundry. He would clearly need some recovery time; Eridan could give him that, surely, and then decide what to do from there afterwards.

Making a mental note to start researching how he could help that process, Eridan steeled himself for the inevitably frustrating check in with the landing strip control agent and rolled up to the window. These little checks never went well; it was like the agents knew him, knew how worthless he really was, and loved rubbing his nose in it. It made it so hard to keep his temper, and harder still to behave with equanimity - but it was too dangerous to respond to their taunting.

A real violet wouldn't even bother with them.

Pity you aren't that, huh? Eridan sighed silently and forced his face into an expression of bland neutrality, trying not to think about the yellowblood behind him for fear it would crack his thin-shelled composure. Soon he'd be home, away from the prying eyes and sniggering condescension. Soon.

Chapter Text

Sollux glared at the back of the violetblooded troll holding the other end of the leash attached to his collar, and fought to keep his brain working through the drugs in his system inhibiting both his control of his psionics and his mental faculties.

How had he gotten here?

It seemed like only nights ago Sollux been chilling with Karkat and Nepeta in Nepeta's home, cracking open something fizzy to drink and teasing Karkat about something inconsequential; only nights ago that Karkat, last of their group, had molted, his second adult molt; only nights ago Nepeta had returned, grinning, with a diploma in her hands, and they prepared to move somewhere with fewer eyes, where it would be easier to protect both Karkat and himself from being caught.

Only nights ago that everything had come crashing down, and Sollux had found himself beaten, drugged, collared, and forced into a 'rehabilitation program' for newly made slaves like himself.

He'd fought, of course; fought through drugs, through punishments, through whipcracks and punches and burning, until the administrators decided he was just too much trouble and sold him off to an independent dealer. He'd fought then, too; but the guards picking him up had tranquilizers, and cuffs, and no need or desire to keep him anything more than vaguely functional, and Sollux's body had betrayed him.

And then he'd found himself here: marched between two guards, a tranquilizer gun prodding into his back to "encourage" him to behave; shoved onto a too-bright stage in front of countless eyes, listening to unknown trolls catcall and bid for him like he was nothing more than property; sold to the highest bidder, whose ratty black shoes he was now following back across the rolling, pockmarked landing field.

Sollux clenched his teeth and his fists as he stumbled, the dizziness making him misjudge the height of a bump in the field. He wished they were walking on a proper path, but his new owner seemed intent on taking the shortest possible way to get to where they were going, which apparently was straight across the landing field. At least no new craft were coming in to land that they might have to dodge.

He was just grateful that his new 'owner' (fuck that, he doesn't own me, no one fucking owns me, fucking piece of shit) was going slowly enough that he could keep up, even dizzy as he was. Small favors.

He was less grateful that they had an audience. He could feel eyes on his back, thought he could even hear the whispers. They must be quite the sight, this shabby violet and his brand-spanking-new slave who could barely keep his own feet under him. At least he wasn't getting yelled at. Yet.

Come on, idiot. Keep it together. Don't fall, don't give him a reason to get mad. You can sort everything else out later.

It seemed like the whole night had passed by the time they reached their destination, but a glance up (once the seadweller had stopped moving and Sollux could risk lifting his gaze from his feet without losing his balance) told him the night was barely half through.

Having determined this, he turned his gaze towards the flitter the other had led him to, and snorted in disgust. It was old, and looked halfway to collapsing; there was rust around the landing gear and doors, dirt built up in all the little crevices, and it took the violetblood three tries with the keyfob for the damn thing to unlock.

What was this nonsense? Why was a violet, apparently rich enough to spend a small fortune on him, flying around in this junk heap?

The violet's shoulders had tensed when he'd snorted, but otherwise he showed no sign of responding, for which Sollux was grateful. Another troll might have smacked or shocked him for that bit of rudeness. Maybe this wouldn't be as bad as he'd feared.

Or maybe it would be worse. There was something about the other troll that made Sollux feel nervous. It wasn't anything in the way he was acting (like a petulant kid trying to pretend to be grown up) or looked (like he'd worn the oldest clothes he owned to come here - though given the state of his shuttle, maybe they were his best; Sollux swallowed another snort at the thought), nor in what he'd said (the absolute bare minimum he could get away with, apparently); he couldn't quite put his thumb on what was causing it.

Maybe it was just the drugs. Sollux gave a mental shrug and decided to worry about it later, when he could think without his thoughts sliding all around each other like new-hatched grubs in an ice rink.

Finally, finally, the seadweller got the flitter to unlock and the door slid open; Sollux, all too aware of the audience the two of them had, followed him in obediently, then sat in the indicated passenger seat, buckling himself in after only a moment of groping for the belt, which seemed to slip away from his trembling fingers.

The other troll still hadn't spoken or looked at him again, seeming preoccupied with something else. Sollux decided to let it be and not press the matter; there would be time enough to gain the other's ire later, and no reason to make life any more unpleasant now than it already was.

So after he buckled himself in, Sollux watched silently as the seatroll slid into the pilot's seat and did the same, then started up the engine and taxied to the control tower. (The landing gear definitely needed maintenance; Sollux winced at the squeal of complaining metal and the bumpy ride.) There they waited behind another shuttle waiting to take off for a moment; when it sped forward and lifted into the air, his new master took its place and rolled down the window to talk to the troll in the booth.

The control agent asked his identification and destination; the violet replied in a crisp accent. "Just heading home. Eridan Ampora."

Sollux froze.

No way.

There was no way he'd heard that right. 

Eridan? 

From his seat, he could see the side of the other's head as he leaned towards the open window. The agent was saying something; Sollux was too distracted to listen. Now that he was looking, really looking, he could see the traces of his childhood friend in the troll before him - the jagged lightning shape of his horns, the slender frame, the swept back hair. That hair was probably what had thrown him off; in Sollux's memories, Eridan had always had a shock of hair the color of his blood across his forehead, or slicked back like a crest. Sollux had used to tease him about that, saying he just wanted to show off his highblood status; Eridan had always insisted it was natural...

Sollux wrenched his thoughts away from the past and thrust them firmly into the present.

Clearly he'd lied about that, as readily as he'd lied about so many other things, and Sollux dared not let nostalgia pull his guard down. This Eridan was not the one from those happy memories; he was, at best, the piece of shit he'd proved himself to be later, and at worst, a distinct danger, a grown highblood with all the accompanying highblood threats.

He ducked his head down, pretending to be asleep, as the agent craned his head inside. He was still talking, more quietly, with Eridan; Sollux couldn't quite make out what they were saying over the idling engine, but the agent had a rather patronizing cant to his tone, and Eridan sounded rather irritated.

Finally, Eridan, clearly very done with the situation, bit out an audible "Am I clear to go?" and the agent sat back out of view with a cocky smile. Without waiting for a response beyond that, Eridan revved up the engine and the skimmer leapt down the runway, throwing Sollux back into his seat hard enough to knock a horn against the wall.

As the flitter first lifted, then settled into quieter flight, Sollux could hear grumbling from up front - something about a 'nosy ass motherfucker', in which description Sollux had no trouble recognizing the control agent.

He decided to keep his head down, to pretend he'd passed out; he really didn't want Eridan to realize he'd overheard that conversation. He was positive Eridan had recognized him - how could he not, with all of his obvious mutations? - and didn't want him to realize Sollux knew who he was in turn. After all, he'd hardly introduced himself, nor made an attempt to talk with Sollux, so he probably wanted to remain essentially anonymous, for one reason or another.

Sollux felt his stomach twisting as he considered why he might have been bought by Eridan in particular. Maybe he wanted some kind of revenge, or just to torment him - Eridan knew more than a few of Sollux's secrets, after all...

Worry made his thoughts chase themselves in ever-tightening spirals of anxiety, right up until his drugged system, already overloaded, decided it had had quite enough of that; and Sollux dropped off into the reality of his pretense of unconsciousness.

----

When he awoke, it was all at once, heart hammering and psionics crackling around his horns. He lunged up, gasping as he broke the surface of-

Sopor?

His psionics!

He reached up with a slightly sticky hand to feel at his neck. The collar was - gone!

Caught up in the excitement of finding himself free, he started to lift himself out of the recuperacoon he'd been resting in with his psionics. He got a few inches up... and promptly found himself splashing back down a second later as they fritzed out, which rather dampened his excitement. The collar might be gone, but the drugs were apparently still affecting his system.

Still! He had some control of his powers again, at least, and the collar was definitely gone; he'd burn through those drugs pretty quick once he started moving again, surely.

For the first time in almost a sweep, Sollux dared to let himself contemplate escape.

There was only one real obstacle in his path now.

Eridan Ampora.

Sollux smiled grimly. The seadweller had been supremely stupid in taking the collar off. Perhaps he'd been relying on fear - or nostalgia - to keep Sollux in place?

It didn't matter. Whatever he was expecting of Sollux wouldn't save him.

He would not be an obstacle much longer.

----

Sollux had to revise his plans somewhat once he finally managed to haul himself, physically this time, out of the recuperacoon. Finding Eridan, while a priority, wasn't going to happen while he was buck naked.

His old clothes were gone - good riddance - but a pair of sweatpants and a plain black shirt sat on top of a dresser, apparently meant for him. Sollux didn't waste time looking for a shower; the sooner he found and neutralized Eridan, the sooner he could be free. He could live with a bit of slime stuck on him until then. Both pants and shirt were too short, but he hardly cared. He wasn't naked; that was enough for now.

Padding outside the room - his balance was coming back to him now, though he'd stumbled a few times while dealing with the clothes situation - he started his search.

Outside the room stretched a hallway to the left, and a set of stairs to the right, going down to what looked like a door outside. Eridan wasn't in the hallway, nor was he in either in the next two rooms down the hall Sollux poked his head into (a bathroom and what looked like a living room, complete with a TV that took up most of a wall, respectively). Frowning, he approached the last door in the hallway. He hoped Eridan was in here. It would be much harder to get the drop on him outside, and he didn't dare try to escape without dealing with Eridan first. There were too many ways he could be quickly caught if Eridan figured it out.

But he had to find the damn seadweller first!

Fortunately, he hit paydirt with the last room. The door looked into a well lit room; bookcases lined the walls, and a desk sat in front of a window with a computer on top of it. The object of his quest sat, in turn, in front of the computer, all of his attention apparently on the screen and the piece of paper he was scribbling something onto.

Sollux grinned, tasting freedom.

A split second later, Eridan slammed into the far wall, knocking his head against it with a sickening crack, and slid down it to land in an unconscious heap at the bottom.

Sollux's grin widened, even as his head pounded with the effort of blasting Eridan with his psionics through the lingering drugs, and paced forward to the chair. Eridan wouldn't wake up any time soon, not after a crack like that, and Sollux had every intention of giving himself whatever advantages he could before he left. There were many, many things he could do to help himself with access to a highblood's computer.

He didn't even look at the screen until he was seated and went to close out of whatever stupid website Eridan had been paying such attention to (Sollux noted, with startled approval, that he was running through a proxy server). Just before he clicked it closed, though, words caught his eye.

Foods rich in these vitamins have been shown to speed up recovery in most cases of psionic overuse or extended blocking. Sopor slime immersion is also invaluable; studies have shown that psionic control improves dramatically with regular sopor immersion compared to use of sopor patches...

Sollux frowned, skimming down the page. Why was Eridan reading this...?

Closing the page out, he found another.

Though there aren't any known quick-acting antidotes, psionic-inhibiting drugs will wear off on their own. Sopor slime and sleep are the best remedies easily available; common remedies can help counteract lingering symptoms such as nausea and headache...

He looked down at the notes Eridan had been taking. One appeared to be a shopping list, drawing heavily from that first site's list of foods; the other had other notes on it: 'Will need lots of sleep'; 'Regular meals - NOT ration bars'; 'SOPOR SLIME', underlined several times. 

A sick feeling started to pool in Sollux's stomach, and he began to look through Eridan's history, scanning the sites as they popped up. With each one - all targeted at psionic health and well-being, aside from a few on, of all things, disassembling collars - his heart sank further and his confusion rose.

There was no getting around it, no other way to explain it. Eridan had been doing research into how to help him.

And Sollux had knocked him into a wall.

As if the thought had awakened him, Sollux heard a faint groan, and turned to see Eridan stirring. Apparently, either more time had passed than he'd realized while he was going through the seadweller's search history; that, or Eridan had a particularly hard head. Either was possible, really.

The seadweller pushed himself up from the floor with his arms and lifted his head, blinking rapidly and wincing. One hand raised briefly as though to check the back of his head where it had hit the wall, but he let it drop again before it even reached his shoulder; instead, he used it to steady himself as he raised his gaze, blinking owlishly to focus clearly uncooperative optic organs, to the yellowblood sitting paralyzed in his computer chair. 

Sollux stopped breathing.

"Oh... Sol. You're... aw-wake."

Sollux absently noticed the familiar stumbling over the Ws; he hadn't even noticed it gone in Eridan's crisp speech before.

Strangely, though he was understandably out of it, Eridan sounded more relieved than upset. "That's... That's good. Um."

The seadweller looked down, then pushed himself to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall to support himself. The abrupt upward movement seemed to make him dizzy, and he had to stop for a moment, breathing quickening into harsh pants. Finally, though, he got control of himself and looked back over at Sollux, who hadn't so much as twitched, staring like a deer caught in the headlights.

"I'll. I'll, uh. I'll... go make you... somethin' t'eat, then, yeah? You're... prob'ly hungry. Um. Yeah."

Sliding to the side, he ran into a bookshelf and hissed in pain, then felt his way around, hanging onto a shelf for balance, until he found a previously unnoticed door to the room on the other side.

"Um. You can, uh, I mean... feel... feel free to... do w-whate'er you w-want on the computer, just, um. Just use the, the proxy, okay?" And then he was gone, slipping out the door and shutting it behind himself.

Sollux could only stare at the door for some time, left with nothing but questions and a faint queasy feeling in his stomach he was fairly sure he couldn't attribute to the drugs.

Chapter Text

Apparently, Eridan's idea of a meal - when he finally returned to what Sollux had started to think of as the "office" room - was some sort of soggy, green, seaweedy mess, a half-burnt fillet of fish, and two cheap ration bars. Sollux, fighting nausea, took the ration bars and ignored the rest of it before turning back to the husktop, leaving Eridan holding the plate.

The seadweller shoved some books out of the way and set it on the desk; Sollux, the confusion and discomfort in his gut having twisted themselves up into anger, spitefully shoved it off to clatter on the floor, and waited for Eridan to say something - to get angry, or punish him, or otherwise show what he really thought of Sollux.

But Eridan said nothing at all; he just knelt down to clean up the mess.

Sollux, his gaze on the screen but his attention on the troll at his feet, felt a new stab of guilt. He'd expected... something out of the seadweller. The kid he'd known would have gotten upset and yelled; even Karkat would have just about bitten his head off for wasting food (assuming that slop could even really be considered food). A normal seadweller, especially one who "owned" him, would certainly have punished him for such insolence.

But Eridan just got to his feet, once he'd cleaned everything up, and silently left, carrying the plate with the ruined food put back on it.

Sollux did his best to tamp down on the guilty confusion and focus back on what he was doing - namely, catching up on the news that he'd missed while he'd been out of reach of a computer. Not common news (he'd had plenty of opportunities to listen to gossip and was quite up to date on that), but the underground stuff, the things he'd been learning to tap into in the sweeps spent with Karkat and Nepeta, the news from the lowbloods who worked under the highbloods' noses.

He'd found little of interest by the time Eridan came back, this time with two more ration bars and a large glass of water, which he set on the desk. Sollux immediately downed half the latter, then ripped open one of the ration bars and started chewing. It was just like the ones he'd been eating for most of the past sweep, tacky and oversweet; with a surge of pained nostalgia, he remembered the home-cooked meals Karkat had made.

But Karkat was gone - he shied away from the thought - and he was here, eating a cheap ration bar in the house of a former friend now turned "master" whose behavior Sollux couldn't even begin to understand.

Speaking of-

Sollux turned to look, but Eridan had vanished again. Stifling the urge to call for him, to bug him until he gave some kind of reasonable answer for his strange behavior (or lack thereof), Sollux only grunted and turned back. If Eridan wanted to play silent servant with the troll he now owned, far be it from Sollux to complain.

----

He didn't hear a word from Eridan for three solid nights. To be fair, though, he also barely saw Eridan during that time; he spent most of it in 'coon, sleeping. The drugs finally worked their way out of his body, and his energy and appetite returned. Whenever he woke, there were more ration bars, a pitcher of water, and a glass on the table by the recuperacoon, refreshed apparently every time Sollux slept, which he availed himself of as necessary before going back to sleep. He only caught sight of the other once, as he was leaving presumably after having refreshed them.

Finally, on the fourth night of living in Eridan's home, Sollux got out of 'coon and decided he'd had enough of sleeping for a while.

The usual bars and water sat on the table; Sollux drank about half the pitcher without bothering to use the glass, then looked around the room, for the first time properly examining it.

The place was mostly empty, aside from the recuperacoon, the table and two matching chairs, and a couple dressers against the wall. Sollux decided, reasonably, it must be Eridan's guest room. Certainly there were no signs of habitation; all the surfaces were spotless, no clutter to be seen; even the drawers were empty, he discovered after some exploration.

Well, there was clearly nothing much to find here, and he was starting to itch from drying sopor. He hadn't had a shower in nights, and it had been even longer since he'd had a proper one - slaves weren't allowed nice showers, they crowded under a common, ice-cold pump and tried to scrub themselves clean before they froze to death or the water stopped.

Remembering the bathroom he'd wandered into on the first night, he left the room - uncaring about his naked state, this time; it didn't matter, since he wasn't planning on going outside, and he'd long ago lost any kind of body shyness he'd had - and found it quickly.

Now that he was paying attention, Sollux was almost rendered speechless.

Here were the signs of highblood status he'd yet to see from Eridan anywhere else. The bathroom was huge. Along one side stood a walk-in shower and the nicest toilet Sollux had ever seen; the back wall housed a separate bathtub, almost big enough to swim in; and the last side, not to be outdone, had a double sink made of the same marble as the tub and the base of the shower.

This room showed a few more signs of occupancy, at least in the past; several hygiene products sat on the sink, on the edge of the tub, and in built-in shelves in the shower, and towels - black, embroidered with gold waves - hung on their appropriate racks or were stacked neatly on more shelves.

Sollux eyed the tub for a long while, but decided a shower was a better idea, to wash the crusted dirt and sopor off. It took a few moments to figure out the various dials and switches, but finally Sollux managed to get a nice, hot stream of water flowing, and stepped in.

Getting clean was just short of heavenly. He took his time about it, using some of the products sitting in the shower (the ones that didn't make him sneeze on sniffing them - had Eridan never heard of plain soap?), and luxuriating in hot water that just didn't run out. He'd been in for almost an hour, slowly turning into a nice yellow prune, before he finally felt clean enough to turn off the water; and that whole time, the water had stayed the same, hot temperature.

The perks of being a highblood, he guessed - decent water heaters. And good water pressure, too. Nepeta's shower had always been a little dribbly.

Feeling like a king, he stepped out and got a towel. The mirror was too fogged to see in, but frankly, he didn't really want to see what he looked like; he'd avoided looking when he came in, and he was going to continue avoiding it as long as he could. He knew he wasn't going to like what he saw, after all.

He dried off most of the way and wrapped the towel around his hips to go back to the bedroom in search of clothes. Eridan had apparently beaten him there; one of the previously-empty drawers was slightly open, and inside Sollux found multiple shirts (mostly too short, but a few were baggy even on him; he picked out one of those to wear) and two pairs of elastic-waisted pants that ended up looking like capris on his gangly legs. He'd have to bother Eridan - if he ever saw him - to get him some decent clothes that fit, but for the moment these were fine.

Sollux shook out his hair - getting water just about everywhere in the room - and combed it back with his fingers, wondering if he dared try to cut it. Nepeta had always taken care of that, after he no longer had Bicyclopsdads to do it, and Sollux was rather worried he'd make a mess of it and end up looking like, well, a wriggler who'd just cut his own hair for the first time. Which, aside from the wriggler part, was exactly what he would be if he tried.

He decided it wasn't worth it, at least at the moment (besides, he didn't know where to find a pair of scissors anyway), and simply shoved it behind his ears, where it would hopefully stay. He wasn't used to dealing with clean hair this long; it was oddly fluffy, and kept wanting to wander as it dried. Sollux wondered briefly how Eridan dealt with his - it was at least as long as Sollux's was now - before remembering the godawful amount of hair care products the seadweller had brought with him the one time he'd visited Sollux's home for a sleepover.

Thinking about the past made him maudlin; he shook himself free of the past with a bit of effort and headed for the door. He didn't need to think about that, not now, and probably not ever.

----

Eridan was, as pretty much expected, nowhere to be found, but Sollux entertained himself exploring while he waited for the seadweller to reappear. A few doors were locked, but most stood open, or at least unlocked.

The place was huge, far bigger than Sollux had suspected. It was, in fact, an entire ship. The area he was familiar with was just one small part.

The stairs he'd spied on the first day did, indeed, lead outside: but not to a road, or even the ground, but instead to the deck of a ship almost as big as Sollux's entire wrigglerhood apartment building. Exploration yielded a hatch on the far end, as well as two ladders, one on each side of the ship. A peek into the hatch showed nothing interesting, just a room full of old barrels and dust. The left side of the ship looked out onto ocean; the front right edge of it ran into the shore, and more water covered the back right.

Looking over the edge, he spotted a incongruous door built into the side of the hull where it met the shore; he turned to go back inside, making a note to find where that door led later.

Back inside, he found not just the staircase up, but a smaller staircase to one side that he hadn't noticed before leading down. Curious, he followed this to the next level down, below the deck, and found himself in a massive, but mostly empty, room that had probably at some point been a dining hall (or whatever they called it on a ship; Eridan would surely know, if Sollux ever cared to ask). That room led into the smaller, but still entirely too big, kitchen. This, too, looked mostly empty; a peek through the cabinets showed him only some boxes of ration bars and cobwebs.

Sollux shrugged at the apparent waste of space and figured Eridan probably did his cooking (if he did any at all; Sollux shuddered, thinking of the half raw, half burned fish he'd been offered on the first night) somewhere else. Surely the troll didn't subsist on ration bars like a slave.

Well, he was hungry, and he'd been eating nothing but ration bars for most of a sweep; without doing more than a quick check to make sure they weren't too horribly expired (they weren't; only a perigee past their best by date), he snagged one and started chewing on it on his way back upstairs. That was enough exploring for the day; he was starting to tire out, physically, and he wanted to get back onto the computer and see what news the last few days had brought.

----

He'd been entirely absorbed in an article about the newest computer models on the market when Eridan finally showed his face. Looking up when he heard footsteps, Sollux noted it was much later - almost day, in fact - and wondered briefly where the other had been.

He was distracted by what Eridan held in his hands: a plate of food, real food, food that looked much more appetizing than Eridan's prior efforts. Regardless, when Eridan set it on the desk, Sollux tucked in with a great deal more enthusiasm than he'd shown to food in a very long time.

He even ate the fish, though the weird, almost spongy texture made his teeth ache and his fingers itch and the burned edges left a bitter taste in his mouth. The vegetables - normal, landdweller veggies, like Karkat always insisted he eat - were a bit too mushy, but otherwise tasted fine, and their crisp taste (if not texture) neatly washed away the last of the burned fish in his palate.

When he finished - chasing down the last little pieces of vegetable; Karkat would have laughed to see him actually eat them of his own volition - he looked up to catch Eridan watching him from a short distance away, a little smile on his face that quickly faded when their eyes met briefly, before the seadweller looked away.

"...Thanks," Sollux offered, awkwardly, telling his tongue firmly to behave and not get all tangled in his teeth like it liked to do when he wasn't paying attention.

"...welcome." Eridan's voice was quiet; that waver from before was gone, or at least, well-controlled. He still wouldn't meet Sollux's eyes, but the yellowblood noticed his fins perking up a little.

He stared at those, fascinated, for a moment; Eridan, noticing his attention, shuffled awkwardly and the fins lowered again.

"Um. Did you... did you need anythin' else?"

"Uh... some water would be nice, I guess?" Was it his imagination, or did Eridan look relieved? He certainly didn't look put-upon, the way Sollux would have felt, acting like a servant the way he was.

"Sure. I'll be right back."

True to his word, Eridan returned shortly with the pitcher from his room - clearly just refilled, for the water was cold and dripped down one side - and a cup, which he set at the desk.

"If you, um, need anythin' else, just... let me know, okay?"

Sollux blinked up at him; Eridan looked away. Caught up by a sudden urge he didn't care to examine, Sollux gestured to a nearby chair. "Some company might be nice?"

The seadweller looked startled; but then his cheeks colored a little and his fins rose, flaring slightly. Sollux thought, absently, that he could watch those all night. "Uh... sure, I guess. You should probably get to 'coon soon, though, it's gettin' pretty late."

Sollux shrugged. "Yeah, yeah. You don't have to stay if you don't want to." Then he turned back to his article and was promptly reabsorbed.

Eridan didn't say anything further - but he did sit down, after retrieving a mobile game device from a nearby table, and stayed until Sollux himself decided, several hours after dawn, that it was time to sleep.

Chapter Text

The next few nights followed much in the vein of that one; Eridan was rarely anywhere to be found during the evening, but ration bars - now of a slightly higher quality - were always waiting beside the coon for when Sollux woke up, and he would generally reappear, bearing a meal of some kind, a few hours before dawn. Fish featured prominently; Sollux gritted his teeth and forced it down when he could, and simply didn't eat it when he couldn't.

The rest of the time, Sollux spent on the computer. Sometimes it was reading; sometimes games; sometimes he even took it on himself to do some coding, improving Eridan's proxies and building up firewalls and other anti-spyware defenses (one could never have too much security, Sollux figured, especially as a lowblood on a highblood's computer).

Eridan didn't hang around unless Sollux invited him to; Sollux tried not to be offended. Certainly nothing in the violet's behavior indicated that he felt it was beneath him to hang out, although privately Sollux couldn't think of any other reason why the other would avoid him so much, or look so uncomfortable every time Sollux caught his eyes. But he didn't complain, and so most of the time Eridan kept quiet and left him to his own thoughts.

As little as he saw his "master"-turned-host, Sollux was slowly starting to feel at ease here in his giant ship of a home.

That was when the nightmares started.

----

FearDeathTerror-!

Sollux found himself abruptly awake, panting and clinging to the side of the 'coon like a lifeline. His throat hurt like he'd been screaming; perhaps he had been, and that was what had awakened him, though at least he'd apparently surfaced first so no sopor had gotten into his mouth. (That would have been disgusting, on top of unsanitary, on top of distressing.)

Taking in big gulps of air, he tried to calm himself down. He couldn't remember anything of the dream itself - it had fled with the advent of his wakefulness, leaving only a lingering feeling of fear and dread - but those lingering emotions were more than enough to handle. He took a few more heavy breaths, forcing himself to breathe slowly-

Then abruptly lost that focus as the door swung open.

The unexpected movement triggered the terror right back into his head. Fear ruled him; he slammed the entering troll against the wall with his psionics before he realized what he was doing.

Eridan yelped as his horns cracked against the wall behind him.

"Ah! ...fuck. Sol, it's just me, okay?"

He didn't fight the psionics still pinning him to the wall, perhaps sensing that doing so would only set off the panic-beast in Sollux's mind. Instead, he hung limply, watching Sollux closely through carefully half-lidded eyes. "It's just me. I'm not gonna hurt you."

Sollux forced himself to breathe through his nose, and, with a grunt, worked on peeling away the panic-controlled psionics from the seadweller.

After several long minutes of struggling, Sollux finally managed to pull all of it back inside himself; Eridan dropped a foot to the ground, stumbling but catching himself against the wall.

"...thorry. I didn't... I didn't mean to..." Sollux began, but his panic had twisted up on itself and found a new outlet.

This was a highblood, his master, he'd just hit him with his psionics and now he would surely be punished-!

His breathing went ragged again and he pressed himself against the back of the 'coon as Eridan moved forward. The violetblood frowned - Sollux stopped breathing entirely - and reached out a hand to lay on his shoulder, which made Sollux flinch violently; but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to even pull away.

And the hand did nothing more than rest gently on his skin.

"Hey, easy. It's okay, Sol. You're safe. No one's gonna hurt you."

Strangely, the touch on his arm did seem to help. At least, it was easier for him to focus on that; the physical contact almost seemed to draw him by force back to reality.

After a few moments spent fighting down panic and fear, Sollux realized the other was talking softly; an apparently meaningless, meandering conversation with himself about nothing important at all. He didn't seem to expect Sollux to reply, though, so the yellow didn't. The tone was soothing, and the words unimportant; after a while, Sollux started to relax.

Eridan only stopped talking when Sollux was fighting to keep his eyes open, having relaxed enough that the sopor was starting to work again on his tired body.

Sollux made an inquiring noise as Eridan lifted his hand, and the violet gave him a small smile, teeth carefully covered. "Go back to sleep, okay? I'll be here if you need it."

He was too tired to argue. Sollux closed his eyes the rest of the way and slipped back under the surface.

----

After that, the nights fell into a comfortable rhythm. Sollux would awaken generally around midnight; ration bars and water would be waiting for him on the table, and any clothes he'd left lying around would have vanished, while clothes from the previous night, now clean, found their way back into the drawers. Sometimes a new piece or two joined them; these were simple, solid greyscale clothes, but they actually fit. (Sollux wondered how Eridan had managed to measure him for clothes without him being aware of it; unless he was just really good at eyeing sizing?)

Sollux would head over to the bathroom to shower the sopor off; sometimes he indulged himself with a longer shower or a bath, but mostly he just did a quick rinse, just enough to get slime off his body. Then he'd dress and decide what he wanted to do for the night.

Eridan was almost never around, so he'd had to entertain himself; mostly this consisted of chilling on the computer, but at one point Sollux got the itch to be out and about. When that happened, he decided to go explore the ship more fully.

He found how to get to the door he'd spotted from the deck earlier - it required going down to the dining hall and turning right, away from the kitchen; there was a door at the other end that led into a hallway, which in turn led to the door. The other doors on the sides of the hallway proved to be not locked, but instead just stuck with disuse. He fought to get one of them open: it was empty, dusty, and filled with cobwebs. He didn't bother with the other doors.

Outside, he spotted Eridan's flitter - the same old one he'd been brought here in - by the road that wandered along the coast; the section of road in front of the ship showed signs of having been used as a runway, which made sense. Very few land-bound vehicles were still in use these days, after all; no reason not to make use of the road if it was already there.

Heading back inside, he poked around the kitchen and found a door at the back which led to another set of stairs. Downstairs was the dark, unused base of the ship; water lapped against the last stair, which Sollux (deciding he didn't feel like getting his feet wet) stayed on. There were no lights at all down here, so he couldn't see farther into the room than the light from the kitchen penetrated, but he was pretty sure the entire base of the ship was one open space.

A hatch stood open just past the stairs - clearly a direct exit into the water. Sollux supposed that made sense; Eridan was, after all, a seadweller, and it was sensible to have an entrance directly into his home from the water, rather than having to go to the shore and enter through the door on land, or dragging himself up a ladder.

There was nothing else of interest down here; Sollux turned his attention back upstairs.

There were a few doors leading off the dining hall on either side; these all proved to be locked (or maybe stuck like the ones by the outer door; Sollux didn't bother to check further). Up the stairs again, and on the top level was the area he was used to, with the bedroom, bathroom, living room, and office. Closets were scattered here and there, but held nothing interesting - mostly just cleaning supplies and towels. One, just off the bedroom, was a sopor storage closet; though the sopor was stored in large tanks, he could see the piping that must lead to the outside of the ship, where the sopor drone would presumably make its deliveries.

He discovered no sign of where Eridan had his bedroom; he was vaguely disappointed by that, but it made sense that he'd keep it locked so Sollux couldn't poke his nose into the seadweller's private space.

----

Eridan always showed back up by a few hours to dawn; Sollux decided he was spending most of his time out in the ocean. Probably fishing; certainly fish continued to feature prominently in the meals he prepared. He always made something for Sollux to eat once he got back, usually consisting of fish, assorted veggies, and maybe a starch.

Sollux noticed he was getting better at cooking (the veggies weren't so soggy and the fish rarely burned any more), but still found himself hating the constant inclusion of fish. He hated fish, hated the texture, hated the taste, hated everything about them. Couldn't Eridan get his hands on some sort of decent, land-based meat? He was a highblood, after all, surely he must have access to anything he wanted!

Sollux decided that Eridan simply thought that everyone else would like fish as much as he himself presumably did, which was an irritating thought.

(Sollux stopped eating it entirely, always leaving it untouched on the plate, figuring Eridan would get the hint eventually. But he never seemed to; every night, fish continued to show up on the plate one way or another.)

And that was not the only irritation.

Eridan still almost never talked, nor spent time around Sollux except on the one or two occasions Sollux himself asked. He could only assume that the seadweller didn't want to, and was humoring him on those few times he did. (Maybe he thinks a lowblood isn't worth hanging around.)

Sollux's annoyance grew; he found himself snapping at Eridan for the tiniest little things, and a few times even pushed him against a wall or out of a room with his psionics, expecting some kind of reaction. But the seadweller would just... take it, silently, his fins pressed back against his head but his expression neutral. Then, when Sollux was done, the violet would simply apologize, remove the offending item if there was one, and vanish.

Which only annoyed Sollux more, of course. He couldn't figure any of this out. Eridan owned him, but it felt, at times, like Eridan was the slave. And Sollux didn't know why.

More than anything, he wanted Eridan to stop acting like a... like a ghost, only there when absolutely necessary and otherwise nowhere to be found. So he kept pushing: snapping, knocking Eridan around, insulting him, anything he could think of to make the other react; but nothing worked. There were moments he might pause and clench a fist or his teeth, and Sollux found himself hoping that this time would have been enough... but always, Eridan stopped himself, took a breath, and just let the abuse happen.

It was maddening.

----

One night, it was just too much.

He'd had a nightmare the previous day - not a screaming one, thankfully, so Eridan hadn't come in. (He was pretty good about that; any time Sollux had a really bad one, Eridan always came in - seemingly not minding that Sollux almost always ended up throwing him into a wall at first - to help ground him until he could fall back asleep.) Still, it had interrupted his sleep and he'd found it unusually hard to relax again afterward, leaving him irritable and on edge.

His work on the computer was also proving frustrating; Sollux was in the process of coding a new firewall, but something in the code kept bugging out, and for the life of him he couldn't find the damn problem.

So when Eridan came in, interrupting his concentration and bearing a plate that, as usual, prominently featured fish, Sollux lost it.

"Fucking hell, haven't you gotten the picture by now? I fucking hate fish! Stop trying to push your tastes on every-fucking-one else! Just because you like it doesn't mean anyone else does, you self-absorbed piece of shit!"

Red and blue crackled; the plate flew up to smack, food first, into the seadweller's face, before clattering to the ground.

Sollux found his anger draining away with the psionics; panting, he caught his breath as silence fell, waiting for the inevitable fallout.

Eridan stood as still as a statue for several long moments, eyes closed and fists clenched, as his fins fluttered back and forth, seemingly unable to decide on a position... but finally, they stopped fluttering and lowered; Eridan's hands loosened, and the seadweller simply breathed out a long sigh.

He neither looked at Sollux nor spoke; instead, he just crouched down to start cleaning up the mess, ignoring the food stuck to his face except to pick the worst of it off into the pile he was making on the plate, not having anything else to put it on.

Sollux watched, his heartbeat thundering in his ears; surely, any moment now, the other would turn on him...

But, as usual, nothing happened.

Eridan finished cleaning up the mess as best he could with just his hands and stood back up - and simply left, his footsteps fading as he descended the stairs outside.

Sollux clenched both hands into fists.

What was Eridan playing at, here? Anyone would have gotten mad at that! He'd humiliated Eridan, thrown food in his face, and all the other did was... leave?

What kind of game was this to Eridan, that he was willing to act like a... like a slave, like someone who had no choice but to take whatever was given to (or thrown at) him, like he wasn't a highblood who should be in charge of everything?

Where was the asshole he'd used to trade insults with, or the piece of shit who'd hurt one of their friends, or even the nervous but determined highblood that had bought him? And who was this silent "Eridan" that took shouting and abuse like... like he thought he deserved it?

Sollux couldn't reconcile any of it. Nothing made sense.

He let out a growl of frustration, dragged his hands down his face, and turned back to the computer. This was impossible. This shouldn't be happening. This wasn't how anything was supposed to go. And now he felt twice as guilty for snapping, and that only made him want to snap more. Next time he might not stop at a plate of food to the face.

He had to figure out what was going on. And that meant finding Eridan, probably apologizing, and certainly forcing a conversation - none of which were things Sollux was particularly good at.

Great. Just... great.

Chapter Text

Unfortunately, putting that plan into motion was proving straight up impossible. Every time Sollux went looking, he couldn't find Eridan... anywhere.

And he'd thought he'd been living with a ghost before!

He'd tried staying up or waking up early, in an attempt to catch Eridan when he replaced the food by his 'coon, with no luck. When he tried to stay up, at some point, he'd fall asleep, and when he woke up the usual swap would have been made; when he tried to wake early, the swap had already been accomplished.

He'd tried scouring the ship from top to bottom; no matter where he looked, either Eridan was not there, or hiding somewhere locked, or one step ahead of him. (The one time he'd tried looking and came back to the office to find a hot meal there had been infuriating - he'd swear he'd checked the kitchen several times!)

He'd even tried staking out the bathroom for an entire night, figuring the other would have to use it at some point, with no luck whatsoever.

Meals somehow continued to appear at a moment when Sollux wasn't paying attention (none of them including fish, anymore). He'd get caught up in something on the computer and find a plate at his elbow when he dragged his attention away; one would be waiting for him at the desk when he returned from stalking around the ship trying to catch sight of Eridan; he'd wake up from an exhausted nap on the couch in the living room to discover a meal waiting on one of the tables beside it.

And never so much as a glimpse of Eridan.

That was where matters stood a week later, when everything changed.

----

Sollux had come downstairs, trying to trace a noise he'd thought he'd heard, and found himself in the kitchen. 

A trail of wet footprints - Eridan! - led from the stairs at the back, through the kitchen, into the dining hall, and then through a door Sollux had never seen open before. Trying the handle, he found it unlocked, for once. He hesitated a moment, feeling like he was somehow invading Eridan's privacy - but he had to talk to him. And the trail of dripping footprints definitely led inside.

He pushed the door the rest of the way open and padded into the hall beyond. It was much dimmer in here than in the rest of the ship, even accounting for the lack of windows. Sollux looked up at the lights; they were dusty, and a couple even flickered. Eridan clearly never expected anyone to come this way.

(Not for the first time, Sollux found himself wondering how much of the fastidious cleaning Eridan did upstairs was something Eridan did normally, and how much was for his benefit. With this hall to compare the rest of the ship with, he thought the scale seemed to tilt further towards Eridan keeping it clean for him, which was a somewhat uncomfortable thought.)

He realized he'd gone too far a moment later, as he looked down to see the lack of wet spots on the floor; turning around, he saw them turn off into a doorway. The door occupying that doorway was partially ajar, and Sollux could see a wet footprint on the other side. This, then, was where Eridan had gone. Wondering what on Alternia might have caused the sea troll to come here sopping wet, Sollux pushed the door open and stepped in-

And was brought up short by a bookcase in his face. He had to throw his hands out for balance to avoid falling back on his ass. He hadn't even looked; there was only barely enough room between the wall where the door was and the bookcase for the door to open in.

Grumbling under his breath about the stupid design decisions on this ship, he looked around. The bookshelf extended to the wall on his right, and all the way to the ceiling. To his left, though, it ended a few feet from the opposite wall; the wet spots from Eridan's passage also followed this course, showing no signs Eridan had been discomfitted by the odd furniture placement. 

Sollux took the couple steps to the wall to get around the bookcase before looking up and into the room. When he did, he noted absently that there weren't any other significantly oddly-placed shelves, but the location of this one was somewhat explained by the presence of a fairly large, old couch taking up most of the room, strewn with mismatched pillows and patched blankets. Meaning to ask his host about this - and a number of other things - Sollux looked over to where the object of his search stood on the far side of the room in front of a dresser, struggling to get a dripping wet shirt off.

At the exact moment Sollux focused on him, Eridan got the shirt up over his shoulders-

Sollux, about to speak, froze.

Were those-?

"ED, what-"

Eridan started violently; simultaneously, he tried to pull his shirt back down and spin to face Sollux.

Neither of those two options were what Sollux wanted, however; he had seen something on Eridan's back, and he wanted a better look - because there was no way, no fucking way that he'd seen what he thought he had. So he flung out his psionics with half a thought to catch Eridan and hold him in place in a fashion that allowed him to see what he wanted - arms up, shirt plastered against them, and facing away.

Not thinking of anything else, he then stepped forward to get a better look, and gasped.

Eridan's back was covered in scars: some short, but most long, stretching from his shoulders to his waist. They were almost all vertical, if slanted to one side or another, each matching the next like it came from the same source.

Sollux knew what made these kinds of marks. He had a few himself, though nowhere near as many as swam before his eyes now in the dim lighting.

Eridan's back was covered in whip marks.

"What the fuck, ED-" he started to say, before a soft whine from Eridan caught his attention.

"S-Sol, let me go, please..."

The violet's voice was barely audible and cracked halfway through the sentence. Sollux, suddenly actually looking at the troll in front of him, realized that Eridan was tensed and shaking, his breathing fast enough to make Sollux feel almost lightheaded just seeing it.

In short, he was in bad shape, and it was quickly worsening.

"Shit- shit, ED, I'm thorry, I didn't mean to-" Sollux stumbled over his words and his lisp in his haste to apologize. He dismissed the psionics hurriedly; Eridan dropped his arms and fell to his knees. His shirt slid the rest of the way off to lay in a damp pile as he curled into himself, hyperventilating, and earfins plastered against his head, even the upper edges so low they were almost touching his neck gills.

Sollux's breath caught and he followed the other troll down, kneeling just behind and to one side of him. "ED, Eridan, I'm th- sssorry, I wathn't thinking... Are you okay?"

Eridan didn't respond, but Sollux hadn't really been expecting him to. He'd been through enough panic attacks post-nightmare to recognize the signs in the troll in front of him now.

"Jutht...breathe, okay? Um. In, and out. In, and- yeah, like that."

Eridan seemed to be doing his best to follow Sollux's garbled instructions. Sollux took a few deep breaths as much to calm himself down as to demonstrate for Eridan. He was, really, no good at handling panic, whether inside himself or out. Eridan was so much better at talking him through an attack, Sollux thought guiltily, wishing he could help more; but he kept talking, hoping it would help.

"Keep breathing. That'th- that's it. You're doing good, okay, in, and out..."

He wasn't sure how much time had passed while he talked Eridan through the worst of it, but by the time the sea troll was breathing normally and his fins released their death-grip on the sides of his head, his back had mostly dried off. His hair was still dripping, though.

Sollux found himself shivering just contemplating the wet troll - it was cold in here, surely even cold for Eridan? - and with a glance and a thought, brought the warmest-looking blanket on the couch over to drape across Eridan's shoulders.

The violetblood sagged a little with the new weight, but Sollux thought it seemed to be more out of relief than because of the new physical burden, and didn't remove it.

Silence reigned for some time as the sea troll slowly stopped shivering and began to breathe normally, before Sollux, uncomfortable with the silence, spoke up. "Hey, um. Are you... back?"

A moment passed; but then Eridan nodded. His fins waved a little, as though seconding the response.

Sollux let out a breath in relief and shifted to sit on the floor next to Eridan, instead of kneeling slightly behind him as he'd been. "I'm... I am sorry. I didn't mean to freak you out." Sollux took a breath and focused on shaping his tongue around the words properly. "I just wasn't expecting..." He trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand.

Eridan only shrugged, and Sollux winced.

"Do you, um... do you... want to talk about it?"

He realized, as the other's fins dropped again, that no, of course Eridan wouldn't want to talk about it, or he wouldn't have been hiding it in the first place!

He was about to apologize, again, when he was stopped by Eridan's reply. He had to lean in to hear it properly; Eridan's voice was so quiet.

"Wh...what do you... w-want to know...?"

Sollux swallowed, conflicted. On one hand, he'd come looking for Eridan to apologize, and really shouldn't be getting himself into more hot water by pressing... but on the other, he was just about burning with curiosity about where those scars came from - and he suspected the answer to the latter might explain Eridan's submissive behavior up to this point. Finally, he decided: info now, apologies after.

"Um. Uh. What... when did...?"

Eridan seemed to have no trouble making sense of that. His voice was oddly flat when he replied, a little louder than before.

"School."

Sollux blinked. "The...the teachers, or-?"

Eridan shook his head. "No. Some 'a the... other students. There w-was... there w-was a group, they... most people called them the 'Uppers'. They... didn't like me."

That was clearly the understatement of the century, if Eridan's back was anything to judge by. "Why?"

Eridan swallowed hard and stared at the floor in front of him. "I don't... I don't know. I mean, I guess, at first they w-were probably mad 'cause I ranked higher 'n them, but... they didn't stop, not e'en w-when I didn't, so..."

He paused to take a couple of breaths; Sollux remained silent.

"I don't... really know. They probably..." He caught his breath again, then his face twisted into a kind of humorless wry smile. "They probably just realized I w-was easy prey. W-worthless, doesn't fight back...wh-why not pick on him, right?" He laughed, a breathy thing, but there was nothing but pain in it.

"...'Worthless'? What, just because they didn't like you?"

Eridan lifted his head for the first time and gave Sollux a strange look. "No...? Because I am."

Sollux frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I don't... I don't understand wh-what you're askin', Sol." Now the violet was facing him fully, his own brows furrowed.

"What do you mean by 'worthless'?"

"...Not havin' w-worth? Do you need me to get you a dictionary?" Eridan asked, confusion and discomfort combining to make his voice louder than before.

Sollux found himself oddly pleased by the sharp answer. Here was the real troll he'd been looking for. But now wasn't the time to think about it.

"No, dickwad, I know the definition. But who told you that you were? If it wasn't them just because they didn't like you, then-"

Eridan interrupted him. "E'eryone did. Does. Wh-what does it matter, anyw-way?" He slumped and looked down again. "E'en you."

"I don't think you're worthless!" Sollux protested.

Eridan looked up. "Then wh-why..." But he stopped, then shook his head and looked away. "Ne'er mind. It doesn't matter."

Sollux, sensing that his own behavior might be the reason behind Eridan's doubt, wanted to push the issue; but now didn't feel like the best time, and there were other questions he wanted answers to, besides. He could apologize, fully, later.

"Did you... didn't you tell someone? Why wouldn't they put a stop to it, when they saw? There's too many, there's no way you got them all at once, you would have bled out..." There was something so wrong about all of this, that a seadweller might be beaten like a slave, even by others of his own rank. It couldn't be real, it was too far out of the realm of believable, that a highblood could bear marks like this...

But the irrefutable proof was written in violet-white scars marching across Eridan's back.

"Tell wh-who? No one cared." Eridan shrugged, still avoiding Sollux's gaze.

"Whoever took care of them?"

Eridan's eyes flicked towards him, then away again, and his voice was bitter when he replied. "I took care 'a myself. Startin' to feel like a broken record, here, Sol."

Sollux ignored the dig, except to feel a little pleased. "But surely the medic-"

That triggered something.

Eridan rounded on Sollux: hands on his knees, fins flaring wide, and pupils constricting.

"It w-was the medic's whip!"

The yellowblood reeled back like he'd been struck, eyes wide at the venom and agony clearly audible in Eridan's voice. His mouth opened, as if to reply; but he couldn't think of a single thing to say to that. Everything felt... inadequate, in the face of all that pain.

There was a beat of silence between the two, before Eridan continued, more quietly this time. "E'eryone knew-w, to some degree or another. No one cared. Or else they enjoyed it. ...Wh-why is it so hard for you to understand? You got some stripes yourself, don't tell me the people that did that cared?"

"But- but you're a highblood!"

Eridan made a noise that was half a snort and half... something else. "By blood, maybe. Not in any other... w-way that matters." Then he sighed and looked down at his hands, his whole body slumping. "Ne'er mind. It's not important. It's long past doin' anythin' about now-w."

Sollux wanted, badly, to argue, to pull all these strange thoughts of worthlessness out of Eridan's head and stomp all over them until they were nothing but bad memories; but instead, he bit his tongue, and acquiesced to Eridan's obvious desire to be done talking about it.

The seadweller drooped, clearly running on nothing but the barest dregs of adrenaline; Sollux sighed.

"You should... probably get to 'coon, ED. You look exhausted."

Eridan flinched a little and pulled the blanket closer about his shoulders. "...sure," he replied, after a long moment; but he neither looked up nor moved.

"ED?" Sollux frowned, slightly concerned, but the seadweller only looked more distinctly away.

Sollux was tempted to just leave him, but... this obviously wasn't Eridan's sleeping room, since there wasn't a recuperacoon, and he frankly didn't trust the other to actually go anywhere on his own. "If you won't get to 'coon yourself, I'll carry you. Come on."

"Don't you fuckin' dare, pissblood."

Sollux almost smiled at the insult, even though there was no force behind it, but forced himself to keep a stern expression. Instead, he stood up and promptly surrounded the seadweller in flickering red and blue: psionics lifted him into the air.

Eridan sputtered and fought, losing the blanket - but there was nothing to fight against. "Let go 'a me!"

"No. Where's your 'coon?"

The seadweller gave up fighting and crossed his arms, looking away, but didn't respond.

"ED?" Still nothing.

...Something felt wrong. Again.

"Eridan..." Sollux was starting to develop a sick feeling in this stomach. "Eridan, I'm not gonna put you down until you tell me where your 'coon is."

Eridan grit his teeth, but after a moment more, finally replied. "...Upstairs," he bit out, refusing to meet Sollux's eyes.

The yellowblood frowned. "But I've been everywhere upstairs, I don't remember seeing-" That sick feeling surged, and Sollux stared, a terrible thought writing itself across his mind. "Don't tell me you don't- you don't have another-"

But Eridan's refusal to meet his eyes was answer enough.

"But you didn't- I never thaw you- you've been thleeping dry thith whole time???" Distress tangled his tongue in his teeth, and he had to focus to calm down enough to talk properly again.

"I sleep fine w-without it," Eridan replied sulkily, still not looking up.

"Bullshit." Sollux glared, irritation spiking, and turned to stalk out of the room, hearing Eridan struggle as his psionics carried him along behind.

"Hey! You said-"

"I don't care what I said, I'm putting you in 'coon now, and you can just deal with sharing sopor with a lowblood." His voice was just shy of venomous. Here he'd been thinking that Eridan was seeming pretty decent, especially after hearing about all of that, but no, the seadweller just had to go and ruin things with his blatant casteism.

Imagine, sleeping dry just because you couldn't stand sleeping in the same sopor as a lowblood?

"That... that isn't wh-why I..." Eridan's quiet reply knocked his mental train off its tracks right as Sollux was working himself into a fine temper.

Sollux looked over his shoulder, glowering, and took the stairs to the upper floor two at a time. "Why else, then?"

"Because you needed it more. I didn't... w-want to..." He swallowed and hugged himself, hunching. "I didn't w-want to impose on you."

All of Sollux's anger drained away between one step and the next.

He stopped at the top of the stairs, turning to face the curled up seadweller floating in his psionics. "You- You didn't want to impose? But it's your 'coon!"

Eridan shrugged, eyes on his knees. "You needed it more," he repeated.

Letting out a frustrated sigh, Sollux stepped over to the door to his - no, Eridan's - bedroom.

"Well, you need it more now. If I put you down, will you get in on your own, or do I have to strip you and dunk you in myself?"

The seadweller flushed bright violet and grabbed onto the waistband of his pants with one hand, as though that would prevent Sollux from carrying out his threat if he chose to do so. "No, I'll... I'll do it myself."

"Good." Sollux manipulated his psionics to set Eridan, uncurled, on his feet. The violet stumbled a bit before catching himself against the side of the coon. "Good day."

"...'day, Sol. Thanks." Sollux almost didn't hear the quiet reply, as he was already most of the way out of the room; he shut the door behind him and stepped away, before realizing.

He still hadn't apologized. Shit.

Well, he'd just have to do it later. In the meantime, Sollux decided it was his turn to help out, and went in search of food. He might not be anything even resembling a good cook, but he figured Eridan would be hungry when he awoke, and surely he could manage something.

But first he'd have to see what he had to work with.

Chapter Text

When Eridan emerged from the recuperacoon, Sollux was waiting at the table near it, fiddling with an old game device to try to make it play a newer format of game.

He looked up as movement drew his attention; Eridan draped himself over the side of the 'coon.

"Have you been here this whole time?" Eridan asked; he was probably trying to sound irritated or offended, but Sollux personally thought he just sounded half asleep and a little grumpy.

"Not the whole time," Sollux protested. "I went and made food, see?" And indeed, a plate of something (maybe) approaching edible vegetables and something else that looked suspiciously like a ration bar cut into tiny pieces mixed in with rice shared table space with the game system.

Eridan viewed the plate with a wary eye. "Uh huh. Well, I appreciate it-" (his whole body screamed that he didn't, actually, appreciate it at all) "-but would you kindly scat so I can get out?"

Sollux barked a laugh. "Don't tell me you're body shy!"

The seadweller flushed, fins pinning back. "Fuck you, Sol, so what if I am? It's my fuckin' home. Now scat."

Sollux, pleased that the other had felt comfortable enough to gripe at him, laughingly put his hands up in capitulation, then scatted.

----

A short while later, Sollux found Eridan, showered and clothed, back at the table and looking dubiously at the plate of "food".

"What even is this?" he asked, grimacing, as the other came in and sat down.

"Dinner!" the yellowblood replied cheerfully.

"I'm pretty sure that's about as far from 'dinner' as it's possible to get and still be potentially edible," Eridan grumbled, but picked up a fork anyway. 

"Oh, shut up. That first meal you made for me was way worse!"

"I had a fuckin' concussion, Sol!"

Sollux huffed. "Okay, fine, I'm a shit cook, I get it. You don't have to eat it."

Eridan looked like he was about to say something but thought the better of it. Still, reluctance was clear in his body language as he picked up a piece of unidentifiable green vegetable and put it in his mouth. Then he chewed, swallowed, and reached for another one.

"See, it's not that bad!" Sollux crowed.

Eridan shot him a glare. "It's horrendous. I feel like I'm going to vomit."

"Then why the hell are you still eating it?"

Eridan didn't answer, and silence fell between the two of them as he (slowly and painfully) finished eating the food in front of him; Sollux decided the other was just being picky and let him eat, shifting his attention back to the game system.

Finally, the violet shoved the now-empty plate away, drawing Sollux's attention. The yellowblood snorted. "See, not that bad."

"I still might throw up," Eridan groused. "An' why did you feel it necessary to make me food, anyway?"

Sollux, about to tease him further about the meal, hesitated; then decided an honest answer was in order.

"I... felt bad. I mean, I sent you into a panic attack, I figured the least I could do was make you dinner."

Eridan looked startled, then turned his face away, coloring. "It... it wasn't that big a deal, really."

"Like hell it wasn't." Sollux sighed. "Look, just... I'm sorry, okay? And not just for that. I know I've been... just, an absolute jerk to you. No, shut up, let me talk," he ordered as Eridan, frowning, opened his mouth, presumably to argue; the seadweller shut it again at the admonishment, but continued to frown. "Seriously. I know I've been an asshole, okay? It's not a debatable fact. I've been..." 

Sollux paused for a moment, searching for words. "I've been trying to piss you off. I just... you've been nothing but nice, and I... didn't know what to make of it. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know? And when it didn't, and didn't, and you just kept... I don't know, being so submissive, not reacting at all, I..." Sollux cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I guess I thought I'd try to speed up the process."

He rubbed the back of his neck, entirely too aware of the violet's gaze pinned on him, and looked at the tabletop. "I'm... I'm sorry. Really. I never really... meant to be mean, I just..." He sighed. "I couldn't understand it. So I kept poking, and trying to get some kind of reaction out of you, so I'd at least know where I stood, and you just kept not reacting, and..."

Sollux didn't realize he'd started to spark until a cool hand laid itself on his forearm and his attention was brought sharply back to his body.

"It's okay, Sol. I get it."

When he dared to look up, the frown was gone and Eridan was wearing a small, shy smile, one that pulled an answering one onto his own face.

"...yeah. So, um. That's why, I guess. But after yesterday, now I know, well... there isn't another shoe to drop, is there? You never did this to get anything out of me."

"No," Eridan admitted. "I just... I couldn't bear it. Seein' you there. I'd've never been able to live with myself if I didn't do somethin', an' there just wasn't time to figure anythin' else out. I was gonna explain it to you once we were away, but... you fell asleep, an' you pretty clearly needed it, an' so I figured I'd do it when you woke up, an' then..."

"And then I threw you into a wall and gave you a concussion," Sollux replied wryly. "That... that probably... that woke up some memories, didn't it? Bad ones."

Eridan winced and looked down, fins lowering. Sollux waited him out.

His voice was quiet when he replied; Sollux had to strain to make out the words. "...yeah. I, um... I didn't know what to do. So I guess, I just... did whatever seemed like it would bring the least... pain."

Sollux sighed again. He'd been afraid of that, after hearing Eridan's story; afraid to hear that his actions had reminded Eridan of the horrors he'd faced at school.

He leaned forward and rested his head on his forearms (and, coincidentally, Eridan's hand, which hadn't yet moved). He felt the other start, but Eridan didn't pull away.

"I'm sorry. Again. But I really... I really don't mean to hurt you, okay?" He twisted his head to be able to look up without lifting it. "So... maybe we can... I don't know, start over? Pretend I haven't been an absolute asshole this whole time?"

That pried a fins-fluttering smile out of Eridan, though he worried a little at his bottom lip. "I don't know, Sol, you really have been an asshole..."

Sollux groaned and hid his face in his arms. "Fuck. Eridan, I'm-"

"Okay, okay, no, Sol, I was just kiddin'-"

"You were- oh my fucking god, ED." But when Sollux sat up, he simply couldn't keep the smile from his face. "Okay, I probably deserved that. Happy now?"

"...Yeah." The response was more honest than Sollux was expecting, and Eridan met his eyes. His face was just the slightest bit violet around the cheeks, and his fins were spread upwards more than Sollux had ever noticed them being before. (He hadn't realized they were that big - they looked smaller, when he kept them down - but the upper spines almost touched the seadweller's horns.)

Pretty things, those fins, so different than a landdweller's ears; so... expressive. On a whim, he reached over to touch one.

Eridan started violently and leaned away, covering the touched fin with a hand; the one on the other side had snapped down. "Wh-what the hell, Sol?"

"Sorry, they're just... They're pretty, and I was wondering what they felt like."

Eridan's face flushed even brighter; the uncovered fin fluttered uncertainly. "W-well, they ain't there for bein' felt up, so quit it." (Sollux - barely - managed not to snicker as the seadweller's distress brought out that distinct waver in his voice.) "I mean it!"

"Sorry, sorry." Sollux grinned and put his hands up in surrender. "I won't do it again, promise."

Eridan eyed him a moment longer, but finally removed the hand covering the fin. "I swear to god, you landdwellers are all the same," he began, primly.

"Oh, don't start that shit, oh my god, ED. What are you, ten?"

"I'm twenty-one, as you should know, I'm a perigee an' a half older than you-"

Sollux interrupted, staring. "What...?"

"What do you mean, 'what'? That wasn't exactly a confusin' statement."

"You know my wriggling date?"

Now Eridan flushed brightly, fins pinning back but not down and wiggling a little. "I, um, w-well, I... I just kinda remembered, that's all. It's not a big deal or anythin'."

"Jesus christ, Eridan..."

"Look, just, let it go, okay?" Eridan stood abruptly, shoving the chair back hard enough it screeched against the smooth floor. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'd better start makin' somethin' actually edible or you'll be up half the day complainin' about havin' to eat your own horrible cookin'." He grabbed the plate and stalked towards the door.

Sollux took the jibe in good spirits. "Sure, sure, run away. I can't believe you remembered my wriggling day."

But he didn't get up to follow. He still didn't want to push too hard, after all... and anyway, this conversation had given him a lot to think about.

----

The nights settled into a more... comfortable rhythm, after that. There were still moments when Sollux went a bit too far - but now, he knew that he had done so when Eridan shut down or fled, and he was generally able to get over himself enough to apologize. More and more, Eridan was starting to give back as good as he got; Sollux always felt a surge of unexplainable happiness when the seadweller felt comfortable enough to insult him back, and the first time that Eridan shoved him in response for a teasing comment, Sollux completely ruined the mood by grinning like an idiot the whole rest of the night.

Eridan still apparently needed a straight out invitation to feel comfortable spending downtime with Sollux, but that was all right. Things were still improving. It was much more comfortable living with a real troll instead of a ghost.

Meals were getting a bit better, too, at least as far as Sollux was concerned - partially because Eridan was getting better at cooking, but mostly because real, actual meat had started showing up on the plates. Not a lot of it, and it was only occasionally - but still! Actual meat, none of that teeth-grittingly slimy fish crap!

Sollux was occasionally even taking part in preparing meals, although Eridan still refused to let him actually cook. Or at least, he kept Eridan company while he cooked, and occasionally chopped things up.

Tonight was one of the 'just keep company' nights, though, and Sollux had finally worked up the courage to risk blindsiding Eridan with a question he'd been meaning to ask for nights. It was almost three weeks after his discovery; Sollux finally felt confident enough that Eridan would actually engage instead of running from the conversation to bring it up.

"So... how come you haven't gotten a second 'coon?"

"Do you know how expensive 'coons are?" was the sharp reply; Eridan didn't look away from the vegetables he was busy chopping.

Sollux, sitting at the kitchen table, rested his chin on his hands. "I didn't think they were that much. I got a second one as a wriggler. Nepeta got two extra."

"They discount 'em for wrigglers, didn't you know that? On account 'a sopor's so important for growin' an' all, an' they can't use patches." Eridan shrugged. "But since adults can use patches, they make 'coons more expensive." He paused a moment, head tilted. "Though they don't make sopor any more expensive, weirdly. Huh."

"I'm not going to try and figure out what's going through the brains of the people who set the prices," Sollux responded acerbically, prompting a chuckle out of Eridan.

"Wasn't expectin' you to. I was just thinkin' out loud."

"Okay, well. I get they're expensive, but surely you could afford one? I mean, you're a highblood..."

Something in that comment made Eridan's shoulders tense, and Sollux winced.

"I don't know how much you think I make, Sol, but I assure you it is not enough to make gettin' another 'coon financially responsible right now."

A moment of silence passed; then Eridan sighed. "Is tradin' off gettin' so bothersome? I can... I can try to adjust, get in earlier or somethin'..."

Sollux rubbed his eyes. Eridan was referring to their current 'normal' of using the recupercoon in turns - Eridan would get in a few hours past midnight to awake an hour or so after dawn; Sollux would then take it from then to whenever he woke up. It left the two of them with only a little bit of time to spend together, especially as Eridan was still vanishing for a couple hours right at dusk. (Sollux had asked, but gotten no real answer as to where he was going or what he was doing; as pushing the issue consistently led to Eridan shutting down, Sollux had decided to let it go.)

"No, that's okay, I just..." It was his turn to sigh. "I don't know. It still feels like I hardly see you, you know?"

"...I don't have to use it..."

"Don't you fucking dare, ED, if you try sleeping dry again I'll dump you in with your clothes on."

Eridan flipped him the middle finger over his shoulder.

"Seriously, though. What if we just...shared?"

"We are sharin'."

"No, I mean..." Sollux cleared his throat. "It's big enough. We could... we could just use it at the same time?"

Eridan stopped cutting and Sollux shut his eyes. Fuck me and my big mouth, I fucked things up again, didn't I?

"You'd... be okay with that?"

When Sollux opened his eyes again, the seadweller had set the knife down and turned. His face was flushed faintly violet, and his fins wavered uncertainly.

"Yeah? I wouldn't have suggested it if I wasn't okay with it. You're the one that's body shy." Then, remembering, Sollux added, "And doesn't like to be touched."

Eridan flushed a bit brighter. "I... never said that..."

"You chase me out of the room when you get out of 'coon, ED. I can take a hint."

"Not that, I mean... the other thing."

Sollux blinked. "That you don't like to be touched?"

Flushing ever more brilliantly and now not meeting Sollux's eyes, Eridan nodded.

"You freaked out when I touched your fin," Sollux pointed out.

Said fins flared and Eridan scuffed a foot. "That's my fins, that's different. They're... they're sensitive, that's all."

"So what you're telling me is... what? You want me to touch you?" This was getting a little too close to redrom territory for Sollux's gut's comfort.

"You don't have to. I'm just... I'm just sayin' it's not somethin' I dislike, is all."

Sollux could recognize his own favorite downplaying excuse when he heard it coming from the seadweller's lips, and winced a little. If it was that important to Eridan... well, he supposed it probably wouldn't be that hard to find (distinctly non-romantic) ways to touch him more frequently. And he could kind of understand it; from the occasional morning chat when they swapped 'coon, he'd gotten a pretty good idea of Eridan's former life, and it definitely hadn't involved much physical contact outside of things meant to hurt. Anyone would be touch-starved after that.

And really, it spoke volumes of Eridan's increasing comfort level with him that he'd dared to say anything about it at all. The Eridan of even just a week ago would never have brought it up.

Sollux felt himself smiling a little at that thought. "Fine, okay. Body shyness is still a thing, though."

Eridan shrugged and turned back to the counter. "If I get in first - an' knowin' your schedule, I would - it's not... it probably wouldn't really come up, I don't think. Not like you can see through sopor. An' I'd probably be up an' out before you ever woke up."

Sollux nodded slowly, then realized Eridan wasn't looking anymore and couldn't see. "Okay. I can see that. So... you're okay with this?"

Eridan cast him a weak grin over his shoulder. "Well, if it'll keep you from complainin' you ain't seein' enough of my ugly mug, how can I not be?"

Sollux didn't dignify that with a reply.

----

As it turned out, sleeping with another troll was apparently very good for not having nightmares. More than a few times, Sollux woke up out of a developing bad dream to Eridan shaking his shoulder and whispering that he'd been starting to thrash or whine; once or twice, Sollux even performed that service for Eridan, although the sea troll tended to have fewer of them (or else, was better at not waking Sollux up with them). It was surprisingly easy to get into a rhythm that worked for both of them, and while at the start sharing had been kind of awkward (how do I position myself so I'm not touching him everywhere and what if I wake him up getting in and what do I do if I start cuddling him in my sleep), it quickly wore off.

Eridan still vanished around dusk, long before Sollux woke up, but was now consistently back by midnight. He seemed to have lightened up a fair bit with the change of pace; he almost never froze up anymore (although Sollux was also getting better about not hitting on subjects that would make him freeze; so that might have been a mutual thing) and he seemed perfectly comfortable bantering with the yellowblood at any given opportunity.

Sollux, meanwhile, was starting to fall back into old patterns from when he lived with Nepeta and Karkat: taking over washing the dishes ("Maybe I can't cook, but you don't have to do everything, ED!"), bugging the violet into playing multiplayer games with him to relax (and even occasionally letting him win - Sollux told himself it was just to keep Eridan willing to play and refused to entertain the thought that it was the other's infectious glee when he won that was, by itself, the reason), doing some basic tidying and cleaning around the place ("Seriously, Eridan, stop trying to do everything by yourself!"), and generally just trying to be useful rather than a nuisance.

They spent more time together; time that was feeling increasingly natural. It was easy, bantering with Eridan, helping him cut vegetables or washing plates while he dried; comfortable, to sit beside him with a controller in his hands and a game on that giant TV screen of his; pleasant, to fall asleep to another's steady breathing and to wake up knowing that Eridan would have set up the shower just the way Sollux liked it after he finished with it. Slowly, Eridan was even becoming less shy about his body; he stopped even asking Sollux to look away.

Sollux was growing as used to the other's company as he'd ever been with Nepeta and Karkat, really. Maybe more; the two of them never seemed to grate on each other, though that might be as much because both of them were actively trying not to as because of their personalities.

He'd never bothered, before, to go out of his way to make things smooth; it had never occurred to him that having a relationship of any sort, even just friends, was supposed to be a two-way street, not just someone tolerating him while he did whatever and acted however he wanted. But now, he found himself actually accommodating another: swallowing down an insult that might have gone too far, picking up the slack when Eridan (despite his protests) couldn't actually manage to do everything, and taking time out of his night to spend with the seadweller even when he didn't really feel like it, simply because it was important to Eridan. He even went out of his way to give Eridan what physical affection he could manage - a touch on the shoulder or the arm, leaning into him when they watched a movie, petting his hair after a nightmare; a nudge here, a squeeze of the hand there - and felt a kind of pride, almost, in the way Eridan seemed to flourish under the attention.

Was this what they meant by 'growing up'?

Chapter Text

Summer, then fall, came and went. Sollux surprised Eridan with a custom-made game for his wriggling day and endured the snotty tears of joy the other bestowed upon him; Eridan made a (surprisingly good) cake for Sollux's, as well as getting him a couple of shirts with his sign on them: something he hadn't had, living off the radar, since he'd outgrown his wriggler ones. (The screen-printing looked homemade; that only made Sollux like them more.)

The rains started up as the weather cooled, and Sollux, complaining bitterly about the humidity that made his skin crawl, discovered to his chagrin that this area of Alternia didn't ever get what he thought of as a proper 'winter', with snow and ice and cold; instead, it just got a bit chilly and rained.

Constantly.

Well, not constantly, but near enough to it; the sky was almost always cloudy even if it wasn't pouring, and there were certainly more nights of rain than there were without it.

Sollux, resigning himself to a distinctly unpleasant couple of perigees, turned his focus to the computer, trying to lose himself in code to forget about his physical discomfort. Eridan would bother him to eat and sleep, but Sollux otherwise didn't see much of him, and so didn't notice the little changes in the other: the increased sneezing, the faster onset of exhaustion, the increased temperature.

At least, he didn't notice, until one morning when he found Eridan not in the 'coon when Sollux went to go to sleep, but instead slumped in the bathroom just outside the shower, shivering and half-conscious.

----

"Jesus christ, ED, what the hell happened?"

Eridan roused a little to Sollux shaking his shoulder, and blinked owlishly. "...Sol? Wh-what are... you doin'?"

"What am I doing? What are you doing?? How long have you been here? Fuck, you're shivering... Come on, get up, damn it, what were you doing?"

Eridan coughed into his elbow. "I w-was cold... figured hot w-water might help..." With Sollux's assistance, he managed to get to his feet, but he leaned heavily on the other and he stumbled a bit trying to walk.

"You aren't even wet anymore... you must have been sitting there for hours." Sollux winced at a particularly wet-sounding sneeze and turned their steps in the direction of the bedroom. "Fuck. Why didn't you ask me for help?"

"It's just a cold, I'm-" He sneezed, again. "I'm fine, really."

Sollux sighed. "No, you're really not. You passed out, naked, on the bathroom floor. You're not fine. Come on, you're getting into 'coon, and I'm making soup."

Eridan made a face. "So you're goin' to torture me 'cause I'm sick, is that it?"

"It's fucking soup, I can't possibly fuck it up that badly." Approaching the recuperacoon, Sollux briefly debated helping Eridan in physically, but decided it wasn't worth the extra hassle and simply picked the seadweller up with his psionics (ignoring the congested whine that prompted) and plopped him in.

"Sleep," he ordered the yellow eyes peeking above the sopor; Eridan blew a couple bubbles, probably in some kind of attempt at protest, but sank down under the slime anyway.

----

Sollux didn't sleep; he'd been staying up late and sleeping in a lot recently (probably another reason why he'd missed the early signs of Eridan's illness), and staying up all day was not, at this point, much trouble to him. He used the time to look up recipes - as usual, there wasn't a great deal of food to work with; Eridan had a habit of only getting things when they were about to run out, and not getting a great deal of variety - and tried his hand at making soup.

It was dusk by the time he had finally managed something he considered halfway decent. Spooning it out in a bowl, he carried it up the stairs to the bedroom - and found Eridan gone.

Sollux frowned, left the bowl on the table, and went looking.

He wasn't in the bathroom, though it showed signs of recent use; nor in the living room, nor the office. Sollux thought he would have heard if Eridan had gone to the kitchen while he was gone, but checked anyway; no luck there, either.

His next thought was the deck - for once, it wasn't raining, and maybe Eridan had wanted some air?

There was no Eridan in sight there, either... but on a whim, Sollux moved over to the railing that overlooked the door to the outside, and spotted the seadweller just exiting through said door.

Biting off a curse, Sollux concentrated, and was rewarded by a very upset Eridan, surrounded by psionics, being raised all the way up to the deck and deposited there - though Sollux kept the psionics in play to keep the other balanced (and prevent him running off).

"And just where do you think you're going?" Sollux demanded, glaring the seadweller down; then, as he got a better look, "...and why are you dressed like a blueblood?"

Eridan, in a dark blue hoodie that shadowed his face and jeans that were far baggier than Sollux had ever seen the other tolerate, glowered right back, arms crossed over his chest. "That's none 'a your concern. Let me go."

"So you can run off again? For fuck's sake, Eridan, you're sick, you need to rest."

"I've got places to be-"

"Yeah, in 'coon. Or on the couch, at least, if you won't sleep."

"Thin's to do-"

"Like what, exactly? Fall over on your face three steps from your hive?"

The violetblood sputtered. "I'm not goin' to fall!"

Sollux raised an eyebrow and let his psionics dissipate. Predictably, the seadweller, not expecting to suddenly find himself in control of all of his weight again, stumbled and went down.

"Fuck you, that's not wh-what I meant-!"

"Seriously, ED, you're not in any kind of shape to be running around." Sollux offered him a hand up; Eridan hesitated, but after a moment took it, and Sollux pulled him to his feet. "What is so important for you to get to, anyway?"

"None 'a your business," Eridan replied, looking away and leaning on the rail for balance; but the sharpness of his voice was very much at odds with his flushed face and downturned, fluttering fins visible in the shadows cast by the hood.

Sollux frowned and reached out to grab Eridan's chin, forcing Eridan to look up at him. "Spill."

Eridan squirmed, clearly wanting very much to pull away from the grip, but Sollux had no intention of letting him. Silence reigned for a few long moments; Sollux only waited, keeping Eridan's gaze locked with his. Eridan always talked eventually, when faced with dead silence and a look.

The pattern held true. Eridan swallowed nervously, fins lowering even further. "I-I...I promised to...help someone..." He tore his gaze away from Sollux's, though the other didn't release his grip on his face.

"Help someone? Who? Where?" Eridan opened his mouth again and Sollux interrupted, "And if you dare say it's not my business one more time I'm dumping you back in 'coon and dropping a table on it to keep you in."

Eridan shut his mouth again, tried glaring for a while, then finally gave in.

"...shopkeep, in town. I... I help him an' some others out, when they get deliveries." He shuffled uncomfortably, keeping his eyes turned away from Sollux; his face was dark with a blush at this point.

Sollux let go of his grip on Eridan's face when the other sneezed, and wiped the hand on his pants. "Gross, ED. Seriously, you're sick, what help do you think you're gonna be?"

Eridan's shoulders slumped, and he stared down at the ground; his fins drooped, similarly dejected. "I... I don't know. But we need vegetables, an' you ate the last 'a the chicken yesterday, an' if I don't go we don't have enough to get anythin' much..."

"...Don't have enough?" Sollux frowned. "What do you mean?"

Eridan seemed to realize what he'd said; his fins flared in alarm and he took an unsteady step back. "I-I mean, um..." Floundering for words, he looked anywhere but at Sollux. "I just... it's easier to get thin's like that in tow-wn, an' you know-w, they don't really do credits, an'-"

Sollux interrupted him with a finger to the seadweller's lips, keeping it there until Eridan subsided.

"Eridan. Are you taking on work in town because you don't make enough otherwise?"

The seadweller hesitated a long moment, fins fluttering, but Sollux's stern look seemed to intimidate him enough that he stopped trying to wiggle out of explaining. He nodded, miserably, and the fins drooped.

"It's cheaper to get food in town than to order online, isn't it?" Sollux thought he was beginning to put things together, adding up not just Eridan's behavior and words now, but also previously unexplainable behavior - such as Eridan's tendency to vanish around dusk, his unwillingness to talk about it, and how jittery he got when Sollux brought up any topic about money - into a rather discomfitting picture.

Eridan nodded again.

"And you don't make enough to afford it online?"

The seadweller scuffed a foot. "I get enough for sopor, an' necessities, an' the ration bars..."

"And that's it?"

Eridan's shoulders hunching was all the response he needed to that.

"So you're going into town to do... I'm guessing labor jobs, by the blueblood disguise. So that you can afford food for us."

"Couldn't pass as anythin' low-wer," Eridan mumbled. "An' I'm strong enough for it, you know-w seadw-wellers are strong..."

Sollux sighed. "Have you been doing this the whole time?"

"...since you came." Eridan swallowed. "It... it didn't matter, for just me, but you need more than ration bars, an' you hate fish, so..."

The yellowblood throttled the urge to follow up on that - had Eridan been living on just ration bars and fish before this?? - and took Eridan's upper arm in a gentle, but firm, grip. He steered both of them back inside just as the sky decided it had had enough of being nice and a drizzle started up.

"Come on. I made you soup, and I'm pretty sure it's even decent." Then, with a flash of insight, he added, just as Eridan was about to protest, "And there's too much for just me to eat before it goes bad, anyway. So you're going to have to help, if you don't want to waste food."

Eridan subsided, and Sollux fought the urge to grin. He could work with this, now that he knew what was going on.

----

They - both - had soup.

And Eridan didn't even protest when Sollux ordered him back into 'coon afterwards.

----

The next night, Eridan insisted on going into town, saying he was feeling “much better, thank you very much”. Sollux had eyed him dubiously - but the extra time in 'coon had seemed to make a difference, and Eridan wasn't even wobbling any more.

Sollux wasn't about to let him go by himself and overstrain himself, though; and said as much.

“But we need-”

“I said by yourself, idiot, do you ever even listen to me?” Sollux - gently - knocked on one of the seadweller's horns. “Besides, I've never seen the town. I didn't even know there was one, actually.”

Eridan scuffed a foot. “It's really nothin' excitin'...”

“Let me be the judge of that. Besides, if they've got labor work for you to do, I can probably do it instead, and then we'll have more money to work with, right?”

Eridan looked like he wanted to argue, but couldn't find anything to argue with. Sollux let a few moments pass in silence; then Eridan finally sighed, and he knew he'd won.

“Fine. But I'm not gonna carry you if you get tired 'a the walk. It's a long way.”

Sollux only snorted.

----

He had much cause to regret that decision by the time they came into sight of the town. Eridan hadn't been kidding; they'd been walking for almost an hour, and Sollux had not spent much time doing anything physical over the past perigees. His feet were killing him, even after spending significant chunks of time hovering with his psionics. At least his longer legs made keeping up with (the much shorter) Eridan easier.

Aside from his aching feet, though, the walk had been surprisingly pleasant. It wasn't raining, for once; in fact, the moons poked through the scant cloud cover as they rose, and Sollux could even see stars when he looked up. Eridan had been unusually chatty, drawing him into a conversation about the video game Sollux had dug up from the back of a shelf and bullied Eridan into playing with him.

Sollux humored him with the conversation, but mostly let the other ramble on; his own mind was more on Eridan' appearance.

Like the night before, he was wearing a blue hoodie and baggy jeans; the hood was drawn over his head to hide his fins and buttoned around his horns. While Eridan hadn't let him watch the process of putting on makeup - “A troll's gotta have some secrets, Sol!” - the results were impressive; if he hadn't known better, he would never have suspected Eridan was anything but blueblooded. Some trick of color gave him a faint blueish hue to the shadows of his face, and the matching violet freckles that dotted the other's face were completely gone.

Between the makeup and the difference of dress, Sollux hardly even recognized the troll next to him. He even walked differently (though that might have been partially because of the difference in clothing; the baggy jeans were heavy compared to Eridan's usual attire, and dragged a little on the ground).

As the first buildings came into sight around the trees, Sollux switched his attention from Eridan to the town with interest. It was quite a small place, really; the buildings were clustered about the road, only a few set back away from it. There weren't any signs of 'city life' here - no blinking signs, no litter, not even more than a couple parked vehicles (and not a single flight vehicle in sight) - but it was far from bare of life altogether. Trolls strolled between buildings; one with a wide straw hat walked the paths of a large garden next to one of the buildings farther from the road; Sollux could hear good-natured shouting from another group who seemed to be playing some sort of game with a ball, though he couldn't tell what, exactly, they were playing.

The whole scene had him relaxing. He didn't see a single troll higher than teal, and not one wore a collar or any other sign of enforced servitude, which told him this was likely to be one of those places that lowbloods had made just for themselves, a place that rarely, if ever, saw highbloods. Small wonder Eridan had said they didn't really deal with credits; Sollux doubted that a little place like this even had the technology to accept credits. No, these kinds of little communities generally either ran on barter or the ancient physical currency that in modern times had been mostly exchanged for virtual credits.

Eridan headed unerringly to a smallish building a couple doors in. “Come on, Dey'll have the news about who might need help, an' we can see what kind 'a sales she's got runnin'.”

“'Dey'?”

But Eridan was already pulling the door open. Sollux sighed and followed him in.

Inside, he had to pause to let his eyes adjust; it was much darker than the double moons made the street outside. When he could see again, he looked around. The shop was a small place; baskets sat on shelves to every side, holding all sorts of vegetables, fruits, and more. A line of freezers along the back wall looked to contain meat and dairy products, and a few shelves by the register on the counter had prepackaged foods like the ration bars, snacks, and candy.

Sollux eyed the latter two wistfully, but tore his gaze away before Eridan could notice.

Meanwhile, the “blueblood” was approaching an older olive, with horns shaped much like Eridan's except larger and starting closer to her forehead; she looked up from her box to greet him warmly. “Eri! Missed you yesternight, Arnold was half out of his skin with worrying. Oh- you brought your friend!”

For some reason, Eridan was blushing - Sollux found himself incredibly impressed with whatever trick of makeup he'd used, because even the blush looked blue - but he gestured for Sollux to come forward.

“Sol, this is Deydre, she runs the market here an' pretty much the town besides. Dey, this is Sol.”

Sollux wondered at the use of the nickname for a moment, before deciding it was probably just a safety measure. After all, troll names did tend to be unique, and thus easily searchable if you had the knowledge and access to relevant databases; but with only part of a name, that was rendered just shy of impossible for most.

“Pleasure to meet you, Deydre,” he replied, trying not to sound as awkward as he felt. He'd never been great in social situations, and meeting new people - at least in person - was something he really did not much like to have to do.

Deydre showed no signs of being put off or weirded out by his stiltedness, so he counted that a win.

“And you as well, Sol! Though I've certainly heard enough about you that it feels like I already know you,” she replied with an easy grin.

Being closer now, Sollux could see her a little better - enough to catch the dark olive surrounding her pupils. She's a full adult! I thought they were all in the Fleet!

Maybe the rules were different for lowbloods? Sollux had to admit he'd never actually looked into that kind of information; for him and his friends, final adult molt was still almost thirty sweeps off (assuming they even made it that long) so it had never seemed important enough to worry about.

He was too distracted by his thoughts to be embarrassed by Deydre's implications; and anyway, Eridan was embarrassed enough for both of them.

“Dey!” he squawked, drawing the drawstrings of his hoodie tighter to hide his face: apparently a normal gesture for him in this guise. (Sollux suspected the real purpose was to further hide his fins; even Eridan had to know they had a tendency to flutter when he was embarrassed, though he seemed pretty unaware of their movements most of the time.)

The oliveblood only laughed - a somehow comforting sound; Sollux found himself liking her pretty much immediately just for that - and plucked the list Eridan had been holding from his hands. “So, what is it you're wanting today, hm? Let's see. I've got...” She tapped her lips with a finger in thought. “Meats are all half off tonight, I had an extra shipment and I've got almost no room left in the back freezers.”

Sollux perked up, and noticed Deydre's eyes flick to him as though she'd known. Maybe she had; Sollux's desire for non-fish meat was a pretty reasonable thing for Eridan to have talked to her about.

“And... legumes 15%, got a bigger yield than I was anticipating and folks here aren't buying them fast enough.” That bit made Sollux droop a little. Legumes were definitely not his favorite thing in the world.

Deydre looked at him, her eyes dancing though she didn't permit herself more than a small smile to show. “They're good for you, Sol.”

Eridan cleared his throat. “Um. Legumes?”

Sollux snorted. How had the seadweller even survived this long? “Peas and beans, E- Eri.” The nickname sounded strange in his mouth, but 'ED' gave more of the name away in combination with 'Eri'.

“And lentils!” Deydre added enthusiastically.

“Absolutely not, you try and give me lentils and I'm throwing you-” He had to pause and revise. 'Over the railing' might give too much away. “Throwing you out a window.”

Eridan had the gall to snicker; Sollux glared back, and the seadweller-turned-blueblood put his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay, no lentils, I got it.”

The yellow huffed, and Eridan turned to Deydre. “You said Arn missed me - does he still need-”

“Help? Yes, he said he was only able to get about half his shipment down. Apparently a couple of the brutes from seaside-way came over to help out, but considering the sheer amount of curse words he used describing them, I suspect they were ultimately more hindrance than help.”

----

'Arnold' was, apparently, a fellow yellowblood who owned the hardware and electrics shop on the other side of the little town.

“Eri! Are you all right? You weren't in yesternight, I was worried-” The shopkeep, whose mismatched horns set close over his forehead gave him a likely perpetual look of confusion, got a look over Eridan's shoulder and spotted Sollux. “Is this your friend? How nice of you to come! I'm Arnold, proprietor of the shop here.”

Sollux elbowed Eridan (carefully, making sure it was below the edge of the gills that crossed the seadweller's ribs). “Do you talk about me to everyone?” he hissed.

“Hey, ease off, Sol, I really don't - Arn's Dey's kismesis, they talk!”

“Sol, hm?” Arnold, apparently having an interest in not allowing a spat on his property, interjected. “A pleasure. Eri-”

“Yeah. Sorry I wasn't in; got sick an' Sol decided I needed to stay home.”

Arnold nodded. “You certainly weren't looking great earlier this week - I'm glad he has more sense than you, keeping you home. Are you okay to help out, though? I can get by without, I don't want to stress your body any more than you already do.”

Eridan opened his mouth; Sollux elbowed him again and spoke up before he could. “He isn't, he needs to rest. But I can help.”

Arnold blinked, apparently just now taking in Sollux's scrawny form. “Um. Sure, I guess? There's certainly small stuff to be worked...”

Sollux sighed. “I don't need small stuff.” With nothing more than a glance, he surrounded a stack of nearby boxes with red and blue crackles; they raised off the floor a solid three feet to demonstrate the psionic's point before settling back down.

When he looked back, Arnold was staring at him wide-eyed. “That much power- how are you not-” But then he seemed to catch himself. “Never mind, that's not my business. Well. I'd be grateful for your help- especially with getting the stacked boxes off the pallets. If you're willing to, that'll be much easier with your psionics than it would be with ladders and a forklift.”

“I can help too-”

Sollux turned to glare at Eridan. “You can sit.”

The seadweller crossed his arms. “Not heavy stuff, okay, but I can still help with that 'light stuff' you rejected. Come on, Sol, just sittin' here'll be borin' as hell.”

Sollux, who knew all too well the perils of boredom, sighed and relented, and a smiling Eridan headed off to start pushing handcarts with boxes to their destinations and unloading the contents within. Sollux noted with a bit of surprise that the seadweller seemed to know where everything went without being told - but then again, he had said he'd been doing this kind of work since Sollux first arrived, hadn't he?

He shrugged mentally and turned his attention to Arnold. “All right. Where do you want me to get started?”

----

Several hours had passed by the time Arnold declared himself satisfied and disappeared briefly into what Sollux assumed was an office door.

Eridan, damn his face, wasn't even breathing hard, despite having helped out with heavier stuff over Sollux's protests at the end; apparently he was well-used to this kind of physical labor, but Sollux didn't have to like how Eridan just kept showing him up. Sollux, in comparison, was both panting and sweating like a horse. He hadn't used physical or psionic muscles in such amounts in a very long time (if ever!) and he was exhausted.

When Arnold returned, he had a fat packet in his hands which he passed over to Eridan. “There, and a bonus for an excellent night's work. My thanks for your efforts.”

Eridan took a peek inside. “Wh- Arnold, this is way too much-”

Sollux snatched the packet from his hands with his psionics. “You don't argue with the taskmaster, Eri, so shut up and take it.”

A faint grin on his face, Arnold watched the exchange. “Sol has the right of it, you know. Never argue with the person who pays you unless you're getting shorted. Seriously, Eri, the two of you did more tonight than five bellyaching browns did last night. I've never gotten everything away so quickly - and with so little trouble. You deserve every cent of that.”

Either chagrined or embarrassed (or maybe both), Eridan ducked his head and mumbled a quiet thanks as Sollux steered him out of the building.

“Come on. Night's flying and we still have to get food, remember?”

“I know, I know,” Eridan replied, shoving his hands in his pockets. “But he did overpay us.”

“Not your decision to make, and don't look a goddamned gift horse in the mouth. We need the money, remember? You're not doing this out of the goodness of your heart. Or at least you shouldn't be.” He gave Eridan a suspicious glare, and the seadweller subsided.

“...Fine, okay, you win, Sol. Let's get our food and get home.”

Chapter Text

“Do you want a tree?”

Sollux just about jumped out of his chair at the sudden question. He hadn't even heard Eridan come in! But when he turned, there stood the seadweller, arms crossed and looking at an empty corner of the room.

“A tree? What? Why would...?” Sollux could not, for the life of him, imagine what had prompted that question. What would they do with a tree? Why would he want one? Why would Eridan ask?

“Twelfth Perigee's, Sol.”

“What?" He'd completely forgotten in the strange, rainy, barely even chilly 'winter' here that it was, in fact, still winter, and that the major winter holiday was approaching. "It's that late already?"

Eridan's mouth twitched; Sollux suspected he was hiding a grin. “Yeah, it's that late. Twelfth Perigee's Eve is next week. So do you want a tree? I can probably find one, but it's been a while... I haven't really celebrated since before school, an' Seahorsedad usually took care 'a gettin' one.”

Sollux had to stop and think for a moment; his mind was still catching up to the fact that Twelfth Perigee's was a week away. (He hadn't even gotten or done anything for Eridan yet, since he'd not realized how close it was getting!)

“If it's not difficult, I mean, it'd be nice, but I guess it's not really necessary. I don't know, that was more Karkat's thing than mine.” That was true; Karkat had always been the one pushing to make everything 'festive', in charge of decorations, the tree, the food, even (frankly most of) the gifts. Sollux suspected that he'd found the whole thing particularly 'romantic'; the little mutantblood had always had a soft spot for anything romantic.

Thoughts of Karkat made his gut twist uncomfortably, though. This time last sweep, he'd been celebrating with him. And now... now Karkat was gone, forever.

He turned his attention back to Eridan and away from his own thoughts with relief when the other started speaking again.

“I'll look into it. I'm sure I've got decorations around somewhere, too, but I don't have the faintest idea where, so that'll take some lookin'.”

“Do you want a hand?” He wasn't sure what help he might be, but it might be better than sitting here and possibly getting sucked down the black hole of memory and misery.

Eridan worried at his lower lip for a moment, then shook his head. “It's all storerooms, and there's probably a bunch 'a stuff in front of them. You'd probably be bored stiff. At least one of us might as well be havin' fun.”

Drat. Well, he doubted he was going to be having fun, but better to be here with a distraction than to be bored wherever Eridan wanted to go looking and not have a distraction from his thoughts. “If it's not going to be fun, then don't bother looking for them? We don't need decorations.” It was only a week until the holiday, after all; they'd just be up and then down again.

Eridan shook his head with a grin. “It's mostly just gonna be dusty and a lot 'a movin' things, that's all. It's fine.”

Sollux sighed internally. Apparently Eridan was, if not as invested in the holiday as Karkat had been, still more invested than he was.

“Well, don't exhaust yourself, all right?”

Eridan snorted. “Me, exhaust myself on a few boxes? Who's the one that gets winded from a short jaunt to town?”

“It's not a short jaunt!” Sollux huffed, flipping the seadweller off; but Eridan, grinning, retreated from the field of battle before the yellowblood could come up with something more cutting as a reply.

Grumbling, Sollux turned back to the computer. One week, huh?

What could he do for a gift for Eridan in just a week? Buying something was pretty much out of the question; all their physical money went into food, and Eridan was the one in control of the credits, not that there was anything to spare there either. So that left making something or doing something.

He'd never been good at making anything that wasn't on a computer or other technological device, but he didn't have time to code something substantial like he'd done for Eridan's wriggling day; that game had taken him almost a perigee. And he didn't want to give the other something subpar. Eridan had done so much for him; throwing something together that was barely up to par would feel practically like slapping him in the face: “Hey look, have this crappy game, I didn't care enough to make anything good.”

But what else was there? He could do something, he supposed, but he had no idea what; he wasn't a good cook like Eridan (frankly, he wasn't even a bad cook; he was worse than bad) so food was out of the question. Doing chores didn't feel like a gift, nor helping with Eridan's work in town... what else was there?

Sollux sighed. This was pointless; he wasn't going to come up with anything for sitting here freaking out about it. So he put the question of a gift for Eridan on the back burner of his mind and turned back to the computer.

He'd been working on getting into a more secure part of the 'low web' - the hidden network lowbloods used where highbloods couldn't spy on them - and the complications of hacking around systems designed specifically to keep people outside of their recognized system out was more than enough to hold his attention for a while.

----

An hour later, he had it. The last wall went down and he slipped in, scanning rapidly for anything useful before the system rebooted and kicked him out again.

He didn't really have a distinct purpose for looking here - there wasn't likely to be anything that was particularly interesting - but maybe, just maybe, he might find something. Perhaps something about one of his other friends who'd vanished: Aradia, maybe, or Nepeta, who'd probably been sold as a slave like Sollux; or even Vriska and Tavros, out somewhere on the ocean on Vriska's ship.

Or maybe he'd find something on a rebellion. That would be interesting, and something that he might even be able to help. Karkat had always been talking about that kind of thing; Sollux supposed that was what came of being the descendant of the most famous (to lowbloods) and most covered-up (by highbloods) rebel leader in known Alternian history.

If he found a rebellion, he might join it, just in Karkat's memory. Maybe Eridan would even help - there was a lot a sympathetic highblood could do to help, even from the outside, even if the rebels themselves didn't really trust him.

Page after page flicked by; he skimmed through quickly, trusting his eyes to catch anything interesting even if his brain wasn't keeping up.

And then-

There!

He stopped quickly and looked for what had caught his attention. It wasn't much - talking about a mine, some kind of 'Sanctuary' - but... there! That was what had caught his eye: Karkat's symbol.

The symbol of the Sufferer.

A symbol used almost exclusively for a rebellion, or at least a cult the highbloods dearly wanted to stamp out. Only Karkat had ever used it casually, and even he'd been careful about it around others after someone (maybe Aradia? Sollux didn't remember) had pointed out to him what it represented.

Excited, Sollux started to read. It was about a mine, some place that someone had made into what they called 'Sanctuary'; a place presumably for those fleeing highbloods, probably escaped slaves and the like. He scrolled, skimming most of it - it wasn't all that interesting, ultimately - right up until he hit a few images: a desert cliff, another view of the desert, and a troll-

What?!

But before he could even really process the image, the firewall slammed back up, and he was kicked out.

----

Sollux spent almost an hour desperately and fruitlessly trying to get back in; but apparently someone had noticed him slipping by and was actively working to keep him out rather than relying on the passive defences of the walls he'd already hacked through. He had to spend too much of his time covering his own trail - he didn't dare let them get a tag on him that they could trace back to Eridan - to be able to get back in past the increased security.

The eighth time he was blocked just before getting through, Sollux let out a sound that was half groan, half whimper, and dropped his head into his arms.

This was impossible. But if he'd seen what he thought he had...

He heard Eridan come in, but couldn't muster up the energy to lift his head or look. An intense depression had settled over his shoulders; his mind was still scrambling around code and screaming at him that he wasn't good enough, that this was important and he was giving up.

He heard Eridan's footsteps hurry towards him; there was a sound of ceramic set on the wooden desk, and then something touched Sollux's shoulder.

“Sol? Are you okay?”

The yellowblood turned his head to look up at Eridan without lifting it, but didn't - couldn't - say anything. Words were inadequate, and his throat was too tight with repressed sobs to speak anyway.

Eridan knelt beside him; Sollux followed him down with his eyes.

“Hey - what's wrong?”

What was he supposed to say? 'I thought I saw something but now I can't get back in?' That just sounded stupid. And then Eridan would ask what he thought he'd seen, and Sollux really, really didn't want to say that out loud - not where it might make it real, not when there was the chance that it wasn't and he'd just be crushed all over again. So he just shut his eyes and turned his face back into his arms.

“Sol, come on, talk to me...”

A touch on his back - Eridan was rubbing it, like he did after Sollux had had a nightmare or a panic attack. It was soothing despite everything, and Sollux found at least his body relaxing, if not his mind.

“What's goin' on, Sol?” Eridan asked, again; Sollux looked at him, and between the honest concern in the seadweller's eyes and the soothing touch on his back, lost control over his tongue.

“I can't- I thought- I thaw him, I thought, but he'th dead, but I thaw him, and I can't get in, it'th blocking me now and I can't get around it and-”

Eridan hushed him before Sollux started to work himself into a panic. “Shh, it's okay. You're okay.” And then the most dangerous question of all... “Who did you see?”

Sollux hiccupped again and shut his eyes on a sob, suddenly aware that his sleeves were soaked: he'd been crying this whole time without even realizing it.

Who had he seen, Eridan had asked; and Sollux could only whimper the answer.

“...Karkat.”

----

Over the next hour, Eridan, with sweet, concerned words and a gentle touch, proceeded to pull the rest of Sollux's story out of him; the things he'd never felt able to talk about, the life he'd thought he'd never tell anyone about.

In hushed tones, between hiccups and sobs, Sollux spoke about his life prior to becoming a slave: about finding out about the hidden slave trade of the psionic specialty schools from Aradia's disappearance; about having his adult molt and joining Karkat to go into hiding at Nepeta's home; about the three of them living together for the sweeps it took for Nepeta to finish her schooling, and their plans to move somewhere less populated together, where Karkat and Sollux could more easily hide...

About coming home one night to find a pair of bluebloods waiting for him, olive splattering their clothes, and being taken down before he could even really put up a fight...

About knowing Karkat would be walking into the same trap when he returned, and wouldn't have even the miniscule hope that being a slave would provide, because he was even more of a mutant than Sollux was.

They'd both ended up on the floor in a nest of pillows Eridan had assembled from various chairs and couches in range; Sollux was curled up on his side, Eridan sitting beside him. He'd kept up the backrubs, too, as Sollux stumbled his way through his shaky explanation.

Then, when he'd thought that would be the end of it, Eridan keep pushing - now asking what exactly had happened, where he'd been to see Karkat; Sollux didn't think he could explain in a way to make the less-than-tech-savvy seadweller actually understand, but, haltingly, he did his best.

He was almost certain Eridan wasn't able to really follow, but fortunately, the violet didn't press any further; instead, he just shifted and got up to his knees, where he could reach the thing he'd put on the desk when he'd first come in - an abandoned plate of food.

“Um, I... I'd made you food. It's probably cold now, but... you should eat somethin'.”

Sollux swallowed and shrugged, not turning. How could Eridan talk about food at a time like this?

“Not hungry.”

The seadweller sighed. “I know, but... please just try to eat? You haven't eaten all night, an' not eatin's not goin' to help anythin'.”

How was he supposed to eat when his whole insides felt like they were twisted into pretzels and set on fire?

But Eridan wasn't done. “You need your strength, if you're goin' to find Karkat.”

The yellowblood, startled, flipped over to face Eridan. “You think I can?” he asked breathlessly.

He'd been expecting Eridan to be dismissive, to say what was trailing along in Sollux's brain - you're not good enough, you didn't actually see anything, it's useless to try. He hadn't been expecting him to suggest that, not only did he believe Sollux, but that he believed in him.

The way that no one had since Karkat.

Eridan shrugged. “You said you saw him, right? If anyone can, you will. So, eat somethin', okay? You won't get any further today, it's already real late, an' you know you ain't at your best when you're hungry an' tired. Eat, an' we'll sleep, an' you can put fresh eyes on it tomorrow.”

Sollux swallowed, then nodded. Eridan did have a fair point. While Sollux was supremely good at ignoring the needs of his fleshy prison when he got sucked into something, he was never at his best when he did so.

And he would need to be at his best, at the absolute top of his game, to do this.

So he finally accepted the plate from Eridan - and heard a grumble that didn't come from his own stomach.

He frowned over at Eridan, panic-thoughts shoved away with the sudden advent of worry for the other, a much more well-worn path in his mind than the one that his current predicament had made.

“Have you eaten?"

Eridan looked away. “I ate while I was cookin',” he replied; but he wouldn't meet Sollux's eyes.

Knowing Eridan, he was probably not lying, persay... but he'd likely had only a few mouthfuls. If he'd actually eaten, he would've been able to meet Sollux's eyes.

“I'm calling bullshit, ED. If you aren't gonna eat, I won't either.” He shoved the plate towards Eridan, making it very clear that he meant his threat.

Eridan let out an exasperated sigh. “Ugh, fine, you horrible taskmaster,” he said; the words were sharp, but the tone was affectionate, if frustrated. Then he stood up - confusing Sollux greatly - and took the plate.

“What are you-?”

“If I'm goin' to get food for myself, I might as well reheat this while I'm down there,” Eridan replied with a one-shouldered shrug.

About to protest it wasn't necessary, Sollux opened his mouth, but the seadweller nudged him with a foot. “Don't even. It's not any more trouble to heat up two plates than one. Why don't you grab the water from the bedroom while I do that? I'd put pretty good odds on you bein' dehydrated, again.”

Sollux, who was definitely not the best at remembering to drink on a regular basis, winced, but nodded.

Eridan padded out of the room, and Sollux worked his way out of the tangle of pillows he'd gotten himself into in order to go fulfill Eridan's request.

On his way out of the room, he glanced up to see little garlands newly hanging in the doorways; presumably Eridan's work, while Sollux had been otherwise occupied. Some gold baubles hung off of them, and in the center of each doorway winked a little silver star.

Sollux stared at one of those stars for a moment, and felt an inexplicable surge of hope spreading through him.

He'd seen Karkat.

There was no way or reason for there to be an old picture of Karkat on there; that meant it was new.

Which meant...

Karkat is alive!

Chapter Text

A few nights passed with Sollux spending every minute he could feverishly typing away at the computer. Eridan did his best to make sure that the yellowblood was eating, drinking, and sleeping, but Sollux was so focused that he actually tossed Eridan into a wall for the first time in perigees when he bothered him.

After that, Eridan decided it was a better idea to just... provide the necessary items and let Sollux do his thing. Even if it meant the other was hardly eating and, at least one day, didn't sleep at all.

It wasn't good for Sollux, Eridan knew, and felt guilt stir inside him when he thought about it; but he just... couldn't handle the other turning violent again. It hurt too much, mentally, physically, and emotionally. He hadn't actually had a panic attack after the incident, but it had been a close call; if he hadn't headed straight to dunk himself in the ocean, he probably would have.

(An interesting thing, that - somehow, the freezing cold water of the ocean helped him to calm down almost immediately as soon as he stuck his head under, no matter what the issue was. Eridan put it down to water being his element, and the cold shocking his system out of whatever emotional loop it had been stuck in.)

When he wasn't working in town or doing the necessary chores at home, he spent a good deal of time out swimming; within just a few nights, the big freezer tucked away under the stairs was full of fish, and Eridan was debating starting to fill the one upstairs, too.

He decided against it, though. It was too small to hold much, anyway, and even frozen, that many fish in a small space tended to smell a bit. He didn't mind, but Sollux might. And anyway, the amount he already had would feed him for a perigee.

So, in the absence of catching fish as a goal, Eridan started to explore in a way he hadn't since he was a wriggler. This adult body of his was ever so much better at swimming than the wriggler one had been; he was able to swim faster, stronger, and longer than he remembered being able to.

The fourth night found him sinking into the dark depths of the ravine that ran east-to-west paralleling the coast a few miles out: the ravine that hid the great white Emissary.

At least, he swam down until some kind of dark, tentacled beast rammed into him, knocking whatever air remained in his lungs out in a stream of bubbles, and sense back into his brain.

What am I doing??

Somehow, his body had started the trip to visit Feferi without his mind being involved.

There's no reason to go down there. There's nothing there to find, so get your ass back up to the moonlight!

Disturbed at a level he couldn't quite explain, Eridan did just that, swimming up and south, back to the ship and away from the beckoning depths.

----

The fifth night, he didn't go out again.

Instead, he decided it was time to try interacting with Sollux again. Surely by now the other would have calmed down a bit?

When he went into the computer room with a new jug of water and a plate of food, for the first time in nights Sollux actually looked up at his entrance.

Eridan set his burdens down on the desk. “Any luck?” he asked, when Sollux didn't immediately say anything, in greeting or otherwise.

The yellowblood made a noise of frustration and, sitting back in the chair, shoved the keyboard away from himself. “No. It's like... it's somehow targeting me, specifically! Every time I think I've gotten around it, bam, something new pops up and knocks me back out again.”

Sollux lowered his head into his hands, fingers tugging at his hair, and Eridan worried at his lower lip with his teeth as a thought came to mind.

“Maybe it's not you...” he began, but Sollux interrupted him.

“I know you don't know much about this kind of thing, ED, but no, it is me-”

Eridan put a hand up and Sollux subsided. “If you'd let me finish, Sol...”

Sitting back again and crossing his arms, Sollux waited.

Eridan took a second to put his thoughts in order. “I think... I don't think it's targetin' you. I think it's targetin' me.”

Sollux abruptly lost his look of impatient disbelief in favor of a startled understanding. “It's- god, because it's your computer, it's registered to you! Of course they'd be trying to keep a highblood out.” He thunked his head into the desk. “Ugh, now I feel so stupid. Why didn't I see that?”

“Maybe because all 'a your energy was goin' into fightin' through it?” Eridan smiled a little - almost, but not quite, making it look encouraging instead of sad - and reached over to muss Sollux's hair; the yellow made a noise of protest. “You're pretty singlemindedly pursuin' this. You can't think of everythin', you know.”

Sollux sighed and knotted his hands back in his hair. “Still. Augh. This is awful, you know - if they can still tell the registration through all the misdirects and proxies and everything I've put up, I don't think there's any way I can get through...”

“There... might be,” Eridan replied, slowly. “Hang on. I'll be right back.”

Sollux looked like he was about to question him further, but Eridan slipped out of the room before he could, heading down the stairs at a trot.

It was still a few nights early, but...

When he returned, he was carrying a flat box wrapped in white paper.

“I was intendin' to wait, but... well, I guess it's only a couple nights early.” He held out the box to Sollux, who took it with a confused blink. “Happy Twelfth Perigee's, Sol.”

“What does this have to do with-”

“Just open it, okay?” Eridan interrupted.

The yellowblood sighed again and, with a distinct air of humoring an idiot, slit through the tape holding the paper on with a claw.

Eridan watched avidly, hands clasped behind his back so tightly they were practically white. Arnold had assured him it would meet Sollux's expectations, but still...

He was rewarded by a surprised gasp when Sollux pulled the box free.

“A laptop? Eridan, that's... You'd better not have-”

“I didn't,” Eridan replied before the other could finish, knowing he would inevitably be protesting the presumed expense. “Traded labor with Arn for most 'a it, an' then found some stuff to make up the rest when I was lookin' for decorations.”

Sollux ran a hand over the cover almost possessively before opening it. “Eridan... this is wonderful. Thank you. But if it's still tied to your sign...”

Eridan smiled crookedly. “It's not. Arn registered it.” He could almost see the yellowblood's brain churning as he processed that little tidbit. Arnold had suggested that part, when Eridan had brought up several reasons why he'd wanted to get Sollux his own computer; the best way to get around potential spying on a highblood was, after all, not to have a highblood associated with the thing to begin with.

“Then...” Sollux appeared to be lost for words, but not for actions. He flipped the laptop open, tossing the box aside, and watched eagerly as the boot process started.

Eridan touched his shoulder to get his attention, and when Sollux looked up, he smiled. “I'm glad you like it. I'll leave you to it, then.”

“Yeah... thank you, Eridan, seriously. This is amazing.” Sollux reached up a hand to squeeze Eridan's before the seadweller let go.

Then his attention was back on the screen; Eridan, still smiling to himself, quietly left the room.

----

Aside from bothering him to eat, drink, and sleep regularly, Eridan left Sollux alone for the next few nights as the other flung himself into whatever he was doing with his new computer. He didn't ask; chances were Sollux wouldn't be able to explain in a way he could understand, anyway, and, well... he didn't really want to try to claim Sollux's attention for himself again, not when this was so important to him.

At least, not until around midnight on the longest night of the sweep.

----

“Sol... Sol. Hey.”

He shook the yellowblood's shoulder gently; Sollux looked up.

“What?”

“Get to a stopping point for tonight, okay?”

“But it's only-”

“Please, Sol. I'm guessin' you didn't realize, but... it's Twelfth Perigee's. I know this's important, but... surely it can wait one night?” Eridan rubbed the back of his neck and tried to keep his expression light.

Sollux just stared at him for a moment longer - Eridan shuffled uncomfortably - before responding.

“Shit. ED, I... I completely forgot. I didn't... I didn't get you anything...”

That was what he was worried about?

Eridan grinned in relief. “That's all right, Sol, I don't need anythin'. But I would like your company tonight, if that's all right.”

Sollux slowly smiled back. “Well, if you insist... I suppose I could be persuaded...”

“I'd take it as your gift.” Eridan raised a brow. “Since you're so upset about havin' forgotten to get me somethin'.”

“Ouch, hard bargain! Okay, okay. Let me finish what I'm working on though, okay?”

Eridan ruffled his hair, smiled as Sollux batted at his hand in irritation, and nodded. “Come to the kitchen when you're done.”

----

The rest of the night was spent eating the small feast Eridan had been working on for most of the night (and some of the previous nights as well) and then hanging out on the couch and watching Twelth Perigee's movies. (Eridan's idea; Sollux had initially complained about the cheesiness of those sorts of movies, but subsided when Eridan informed him he could pick which ones they watched. And if some of them were only tangentially related to the holiday, well... Eridan figured the time spent with Sollux to be worth the deviation in theme.)

By dawn, Eridan had ended up with his head on Sollux's shoulder and the other's arm around his; in this comfortable state, he half-dozed through the last movie, and had to be shaken awake when it ended.

“ED. Eridan.”

“Huhwha-” Eridan blinked owlishly in dazed confusion.

Sollux chuckled. “Come on, sleepyhead. You look like you're most of the way passed out already. Let's get to 'coon, okay?”

Eridan reached up to rub an eye and sat up, already missing the warmth of Sollux against his side and too tired to feel awkward about the sudden rush of inner warmth when he thought about the other. “Okay, okay. Don't make fun 'a me, I've been up since before dusk makin' food for you.”

“And who asked you to do that?” the yellowblood teased.

“Fuck you too.” But there was nothing but affection in the words, and when Sollux offered him a hand up, he took it.

It was only just past dawn. Muzzily, Eridan thought Sollux would escort him to 'coon and then go back to working on the computer; but when they got to the bedroom, Sollux stripped as well, and for the first time in a long time, they went to sleep together rather than Sollux slipping in hours after Eridan had fallen asleep.

All in all, Eridan thought just before he gave into sleep, this had probably been one of the best Twelfth Perigee's he'd ever had, even if there hadn't been any exchanging of gifts, or much in the way of decoration, or even a tree.

----

Twelfth Perigee's had been a lovely holiday; but the very next day, Sollux was back at it again on the computer.

Eridan sighed and resigned himself to being unimportant again. Of course Sollux would want to dedicate every spare moment and bit of energy he had to finding Karkat; they'd been friends for so long, after all. It was entirely unreasonable for him to be feeling jealous.

Besides, he thought morosely as he worked on the dishes from the night before, Karkat was assuredly a better friend than he could ever be.

How had he ever let himself forget that?

Just because Sollux had been treating him better - had even been, perhaps, a friend to him - didn't make Eridan worth being friends with. Or worth anything at all. So it only made sense, that Sollux would want to find someone else, someone better.

But it still hurt.

Eridan threw himself into whatever chores he could find to do to keep his mind off of it. He began spending most of the evening in town, helping out wherever he could; the extra money went into the little hidden niches he'd long ago carved into the woodwork of the ship, to be used in case of emergency - or, as he thought more likely, to be given to Sollux when he, inevitably, left to join Karkat wherever he was.

He'd need it, surely; as surely as Eridan wouldn't.

Deydre kept worrying at him. He deflected as best he could - “He's all wrapped up in somethin' on his new computer, I need somethin' to do before I go mad 'a boredom!” - but he was pretty sure she could tell something was bothering him beside that. She was like that, was Deydre; entirely too good at reading people, at knowing when and why people were bothered. That was probably why she was essentially in charge of the little nameless town - everyone knew she could be counted on to sort things out with impartiality and compassion.

But he didn't want her to pry - especially not now. He was too worried she might get more out of him than he meant to - or dared to - give.

Eridan didn't know that it would be a problem to tell her about Karkat, about what Sollux was really doing... but he also didn't know it wouldn't be, and he'd really rather err on the side of caution. It would break Sollux's heart, to lose this; and that, in turn, would break Eridan.

In the quiet moments, thinking about all of this, he'd had to finally admit to himself that Sollux meant more to him than anything else in the world; more than anything else ever had.

But at the same time, he knew that the feeling wasn't reciprocated. It couldn't be; Eridan simply wasn't worth it. The best, the very best he could hope for was to be useful, to help Sollux however he could.

So he resolutely stomped down the parts of him that hurt the most and set about being just that.

Inevitably, when Sollux discovered where Karkat was, he would want to go to him. He would need transportation, likely; maybe food, if it would be a long journey; certainly some kind of money. Clothes, too, possibly something more suited to rough living. Sollux had mentioned something about desert - so warmer clothing, for the cold desert nights. Boots, perhaps; the yellowblood's shoes were starting to get pretty worn.

The extra time he had to himself allowed him to take on some more official jobs; so he did so, and used the credits to get Sollux a proper pair of boots, more clothes including a nice coat, and several boxes of a mid-range quality ration bar that would hopefully be enough to get him wherever he needed to go.

And sopor patches; who knew if they would have recuperacoons or sopor wherever he was going? Those were expensive, but if Sollux needed them, there wasn't any substitute.

He didn't tell Sollux about the things he was stocking up on; as a matter of fact, he barely spoke to the other at all, Sollux was so engrossed in his work. He might wring a couple words out of him in the process of convincing him to eat, and occasionally Sollux had a nightmare that Eridan could soothe him out of, but that was really it.

Eridan tried to tell himself that it was no different than how it would be once Sollux was gone, but it was hard to convince himself of that when Sollux was still right there.

He'd almost managed to resign himself when the breakthrough came two weeks later.

----

He heard Sollux before he saw him: a joy-filled shout from the other room. Eridan set the plate he was drying onto the stack in the cupboard and made his way up the stairs, both anxious and eager.

It was impossible not to feel happy for Sollux, as he came into the room where the yellowblood sat hugging himself in joy; but equally impossible not to feel the abyss opening up beneath his feet, loneliness just a few breaths away. Everything, it felt like, had been leading up to this moment; and with equal parts hope (for Sollux) and dread (for himself), he paced across the floor to join the other at the desk.

Sollux looked up at him with the broadest grin he'd ever seen him wear; moisture sparkled at the corners of the yellowblood's eyes.

Eridan put everything he had into the best goddamn performance he'd ever put on. He wouldn't, simply wouldn't, ruin this for Sollux with his own problems; so he focused on flaring his fins up and forcing a proper smile onto his face.

“That sounds like good news,” he commented with an eyebrow raise, and was rewarded with the other's grin somehow becoming wider.

“I've got it! Well, I mean, I got in again. There's not like, coordinates or anything, but I've got what information they have. It's a mine of some kind in the desert; Karkat and some others've been making it into what they're calling 'Sanctuary' and taking in trolls in danger, like strong psionics, runaways, that kind of thing. The actual place is kept kind of secret just in case someone breaks into the network, obviously.”

“Like you did?”

“Well, yeah, but I don't have bad intentions. But anyway, I've got a general location, and some names, and I think we can do this.”

Eridan snagged a chair from a different desk and pulled it over to sit in.

“So what's your plan?”

That question drained away some of the excitement in the other, and Eridan cursed himself internally; but it was an important question.

“I... well, I don't... I don't know. There has to be a way to get there, right?”

“But how would you convince them that you're not some kind 'a spy?"

Sollux shook his head. “Karkat knows me. He'd know.”

“Assumin' he's there whenever an' however you get there, sure, but what if he's not? How do you keep them from cullin' you just in case?” As much as he wanted to keep Sollux feeling happy, he didn't dare let him go through with this without as foolproof of a plan as possible. It would be worse than anything, if something happened to him because of this, because Eridan hadn't been careful enough.

Sollux chewed on his lower lip. “I... I don't know. I just... I...”

Now his face crumpled, and acting purely on instinct, Eridan reached out to guide the other into his shoulder just in time for Sollux to break out into sobs. There he held him, rubbing soothing circles into his back, for as long as it took for the weeping to stop.

When Sollux finally calmed down, sniffling and pulling away, Eridan caught his hand.

“I'm sorry, Sol. I ruined your excitement. You don't have to think about this stuff just yet, it's not like you're goin' runnin' off tonight without thinkin' through it, you're more sensible than that. I just... I got worried, is all. I'm sorry.”

Sollux sniffed again and shook his head, scrubbing at his face with the heel of his palm. “No, you're... you're right. I can't let myself get caught up so much, there's still too much that could go wrong. I'm sorry I cried all over you.”

“It's nothin', don't worry about it, Sol. But here - why don't you get yourself cleaned up, an' I'll make your favorites to eat, an' we can both think on it, okay?"

Sollux gave him a watery grin that made his heart throb painfully. “Okay,” he replied; and gave Eridan's hand in his a squeeze before letting go.

Eridan watched him leave before getting up, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. Only once he was sure Sollux was safely away did he get up and plod back down the stairs to the kitchen.

And only once he was safely there, with the door shut behind him just in case, did he succumb to the tears that had been building up since the first moment he'd heard Sollux's joy.

Chapter Text

It was the next night before discussion on the how of joining Karkat resumed; Eridan, his mask securely back in place, had insisted on Sollux eating well and then going to sleep early under the guise of “makin' sure you can think properly about all 'a this.”

Now the two of them sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, sharing a rare breakfast of cereal Eridan had specifically picked up in a late trip to town the night before, after he'd put Sollux in 'coon.

(He'd had just enough time to make it there and back, and had been grateful for the heavy hoodie he always wore; the first rays of the rising sun had been beating on his back the last little bit of the trip, but the hoodie kept his skin from burning even if it didn't help with the heat.)

He hadn't mentioned the extra trip to Sollux, who might have protested; instead he insisted that he'd been saving the cereal for a special occasion, and “If this doesn't count, then what would?”

Sollux seemed to take his explanation at face value and chowed down with every evidence of enjoyment. But then, such a sugary meal was a very rare treat these nights.

Now, with empty bowls and full stomachs, the two plotted in low voices; there was no one to hear, but it still felt wrong to speak loudly of these sorts of things.

“So the biggest problem is figurin' out how to convince them 'a your good intentions if Karkat ain't around to vouch for you, right?”

Sollux nodded, chewing on a claw until Eridan swatted it from his mouth. “So what would convince them?”

“Well... I mean, I've only got history to draw from here, an' frankly it's probably pretty skewed from what really happened, an' it's also info from the side of the spies tryin' to not be thought of as such, but...” Eridan scratched his head. “There's some interestin' cases 'a spies intentionally bein' so blunderin'ly stupid that no one suspected they could be anythin' but what they looked like?”

Sollux thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don't think I could pull that off - and how would I explain being out randomly in the middle of the desert? Besides which, I don't even know how to find the place, short of stumbling across it in sheer luck. There's hundreds of mines out there.”

“Okay, so that's a different problem to address first. How do you get there, or else, how do you get them to come get you?”

Sollux blinked at him. “Get them to-?”

Eridan shrugged. “Yeah, I mean... if they're specifically tryin' to find you, they ain't exactly goin' to be mistrustin' you. Is there a way you might be able to get a message to Kar, um, Karkat?”

Calling Karkat by the nickname he'd used to use for him felt wrong, somehow. After all, they weren't exactly close any more. (Actually, Karkat probably never, ever wanted anything to do with him ever again, so 'not close' might be a bit of an understatement.)

If Sollux noticed the slip, though, he didn't mention it. “Um... I could see if he's still using Trollian, I guess?” Then he shook his head. “I really doubt it, though. That's got a really high chance of being traced. And whoever's in charge of security there is really good; I don't think they'd let him take that kind of risk, especially without a real reason to. I certainly wouldn't.”

“Well, you might as well give it a shot, right?” Eridan shrugged. “That's somethin' to get started with. An' we can put that thought on the back burner for a bit, maybe somethin' else will come up.”

Sollux nodded. “I can look into if there's more I can break into in the low web, too. Maybe I can figure out how to get in contact with those couple of names I found.”

“All right. That sounds like a good plan to work with for now.” Eridan patted Sollux's hand before the other got up. “Let me know if there's anythin' I can do to help, okay? An' don't worry about helpin' out around here, I'll manage just fine. You focus on this.”

Sollux just nodded distractedly, presumably already planning his angle of attack, and wandered back upstairs.

----

When Eridan came in to bring Sollux something to eat a few hours later, he was a bit surprised to see a familiar program still open on the laptop.

“I'd've thought you'd try that first,” he commented, setting the plate down.

Sollux just hummed in an inattentive response.

Well, no need to distract him. Saying nothing further, Eridan just turned to go; but before he'd taken more than a few steps towards the door, Sollux spoke up.

“Hey, ED.”

“Yeah?” Eridan turned; Sollux's attention was still on the screen.

“D'you remember Alviah? fluffyPredator?”

Eridan blinked and tried to dredge his memories. “Um...”

“Tealblood. She used to be around the group chat a lot.” Sollux's voice felt almost strangely nonchalant; Eridan frowned, not understanding what he was getting at or why it was important.

“Wasn't that... the chick that kept hateflirtin' with me?”

“Did she?” Now Sollux's voice was even more bland.

Alarm bells were going off in Eridan's head; but he could not, for the life of him, figure out why.

“Yeah? Wouldn't leave me alone about it. I had to block her 'cause 'a it. Worse than Vris ever was, an' that's sayin' somethin'.”

Now he was remembering a bit better, and disgust echoed from the past made his voice bitter. “Fucker tried to figure out where I lived an' threatened to kill Seahorsedad if I wouldn't pay court to her. Blockin' seemed the safest option.”

Sollux had turned around while he was speaking, staring at the seadweller; Eridan tilted his head.

“Why? What's she got to do with anythin'?”

“Oh, um.” Sollux looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. “Nothing, really. Just... old memories, digging through here, that's all. Got distracted.”

That seemed like a reasonable explanation, and Eridan nodded. “Ah. Well, yeah, anyway, she was a bitch. Hopefully it was just to me an' she didn't bother any 'a you.”

Sollux's expression turned unreadable. “...No,” he replied, and didn't elaborate; instead, he turned back to the screen. “That was all I was wondering, anyway: if you remembered her.”

“Okay?”

Nothing more was forthcoming from Sollux; Eridan sighed and let it go. “Don't forget to keep drinkin' water, Sol,” he reminded the yellowblood - who only waved a hand over his shoulder in a distracted response - and returned back to the kitchen.

----

Sollux was hard at work hacking through dinnertime and into the morning; Eridan only sighed, replaced the water by his elbow, and went to 'coon early.

They reconvened over breakfast the next evening, once Sollux awoke; cereal again, with just enough left in the box for the next night as well.

“So? Any luck last mornin'?”

Sollux finished drinking the milk from the bowl and licked it off his top lip. “Not really. Though, ugh, I'm seriously upset I didn't check Trollian a long time ago. KK messaged me, right after... everything. Said he was okay, and was going into hiding, and not to worry.” He grimaced. “I feel so dumb. Could've saved myself a lot of grief.”

Eridan patted his hand sympathetically; Sollux caught it with his and gave a squeeze, and the seadweller had to freeze his expression briefly in place as his heart flipped over before he could tamp the feeling down.

“But there's no sign he's been on since, and it didn't sound like he'd expected to be. Which, you know, we pretty much expected.”

Eridan nodded. “And nothin' on the web?”

Sollux shook his head. “Nothing. I couldn't even find those names again, much less a way to contact them. And there's even stronger blocks around that site; I don't even want to try to break in again. Saw too many tracers hiding in the code.”

“Okay. So.” Eridan freed his hand from Sollux's, hiding the pang that action caused him, and steepled his fingers instead. “Seems like gettin' Karkat to search for you, specifically, is out. So... can you make yourself somethin' they'd search for in general? Do they search for anythin'? How do these escaped slaves or whatever find them?”

“I don't know. If there was anything about that, it'd be on the site.” Sollux sighed. “I guess if they're even kind of advertising it, which they must be if it's on the low web at all, they must be somehow recruiting, but I don't know anything more than that.”

“Okay, well, let's run with that train of thought for a bit. If it were you, an' you were recruitin', how would you go about findin' people to do so?”

Sollux frowned in thought. “Huh. I've... never really thought about anything like that.” He tapped a finger on his lips in an unconscious thinking gesture. “They can't really be expecting people to come find them, or they'd be risking someone they didn't want finding them doing so...”

He sat for a few more minutes in silence; Eridan didn't interrupt it.

After all, he wouldn't be any help for this kind of question, not really. Eridan didn't know how lowbloods might think about these sorts of things; his experience and knowledge base was with official, legal military leaders, not with rebels who would have to actually hide what they were doing. Secrecy in tactics was never something he'd understood very well.

Sollux finally broke the silence. “I think I'd probably want to have a really good network of communication, so I could spy on official comings and goings...”

He paused a moment, tapping a finger against his lower lip again. “Didn't you mention something about work groups once?”

Eridan blinked, taken off guard by this sudden apparent change in topic. “You mean, like the rank group, for jobs an' shit?”

“Yeah, that. Is there any kind of message board or something?”

He still wasn't following Sollux's train of thought, but answered anyway. “Yeah. That's where the available jobs get posted.”

“Can I see it?”

----

Eridan watched with curiosity as Sollux scrolled through the message board once Eridan had logged into it for him. He wasn't looking at the job listing section, as Eridan had been expecting; instead, he scrolled through the chat boards, occasionally clicking on one or another thread before going back out.

“What are you lookin' for?” the violetblood finally asked, curiosity eating away at him too much to allow him to remain silent.

“Chatter.”

Eridan snorted. “Very descriptive.”

Sollux chuckled. “Actually, that's more of a defined term than you think. 'Chatter' means information passing - things like people warning each other of, oh, bad bosses, travel issues, police locations, that sort of thing. Stuff to watch out for.”

“Okay... how does that help us, though?”

The yellowblood made a noise of satisfaction and opened another thread, then gestured for Eridan to come read it.

He peered at the text. “'Watch out around these coordinates, a couple of cargo planes have vanished traveling over them?'”

Sollux pointed to the first reply, and Eridan dutifully began to read it out. “'It's probably those-' oh!”

“'Those rebels again,'” Sollux finished for him, as Eridan gaped in astonishment. “This, here? These coordinates...” He scrolled back up and clicked on a link in the initial post to open a map displaying said information. “They're all in the desert, see? These are the last known locations of those missing ships.”

He drew a circle around them with a finger, his voice rising in excitement. “This area, it's a little off the major trade route - see it marked there?” And indeed, running from north to south on the edge of the map fragment was a white line.

Eridan, reckoning in his head, recognized it as the route between two major cities a distance east of the capital, and said as much; Sollux nodded.

“So. Planes in this area, off the trade route, have gone missing.”

“That's real interestin', Sol, but I still don't see how this really helps us... Not every ship goin' over that area's been taken down, after all, or there'd be a major notice an' investigation, not just some chat thread about it.” He shrugged. “Frankly, there's probably been an investigation with each ship, already. So if the rebels are in that area, they'd've been found by now.”

“You're right,” Sollux answered. “But you're not thinking far enough. I'm going to have to look further into this before I really want to say anything, though. Just...”

He turned to Eridan with an almost feral grin. “This here... this is my ticket in. I just need to figure out exactly how.”

----

Eridan kept turning the puzzle over in his mind as he scrubbed the hallway floor. Sollux, claiming Eridan's continued presence was a distraction, had shooed the other out; so Eridan had decided on some cleaning work to keep his hands occupied while he thought, trying to follow Sollux's reasoning.

The yellow had agreed that the rebels were unlikely to be in that immediate area... but presumably they had to be somewhere nearby, at least near enough that they could get there. Assuming, of course, that it was in fact them and not some kind of weird, say, electrical interference or something that had brought the planes down.

But if it had been just a freak act of nature, there'd've been some sign of the downed ships, wouldn't there? And the post had specifically said they'd vanished, which indicated that no signs had been found.

There was a very small chance that they had been found, and someone in the government or police force was covering it up - but why would they do that?

So. The next most reasonable answer was that the rebels, or whoever, was taking advantage of or even causing the ships to go down, and then removing them to... somewhere. Perhaps their base; perhaps just somewhere they wouldn't be found. But why? And why some planes, but not others?

Were they just striking out randomly? Why would they do that?

Eridan sucked on his lower lip. Maybe they needed the planes themselves? That would make sense - if the rebels were going a distance away from their base to strike, they'd need a way to get there and back. And it wasn't all that difficult to hotwire most flitters or small cargo planes; even Eridan knew how to do it, at least in theory, and he was far from a technical expert.

Or they might need something the plane was carrying, and took or hid the ship to hide what they were doing. But how would they know which ships were carrying what they needed?

Eridan sighed. All of this was pure conjecture, without more information to work with.

Presumably, Sollux was actively searching out that 'more information', having seen these connections from the start; Eridan fought down the urge to go check in on him. Sollux had already complained about him 'hovering' and being a distraction. He'd just have to rein in his curiosity until the yellowblood was ready to show what he'd found.

----

A few hours past midnight, Eridan still hadn't heard from Sollux; so he decided it was long past time for another meal, and set about making it.

When it was ready, he brought two plates into the computer room, figuring that Sollux, if he was still investigating, wouldn't want to interrupt his work for long enough to join Eridan in the kitchen.

He also hoped he might be able to pry more information out of Sollux in exchange for the food; his curiosity had been running rampant this whole time, coming up with ever more ridiculous scenarios for those planes to have vanished, and he was impatient, to say the least, to learn whatever new information Sollux had unearthed.

The psionic in question looked up as Eridan entered, apparently not having been deeply involved in something.

“Oh thank god, food. I thought my stomach was going to start eating itself,” he said with a laugh; heartened, Eridan joined him, handing him a plate and sitting down in the second chair that had taken up permanent residence by the desk.

“Well, we can't have our best sleuth wastin' away of hunger, can we?”

Sollux stuck his tongue out, causing Eridan to giggle; then they both dug in.

They ate in silence, but quickly; Eridan suspected Sollux was just as impatient to catch up with him as he was with Sollux.

The seadweller finished first. After washing down the last bite with a good swallow of water, he set the cup down and turned his attention to Sollux.

“So. What has our best sleuth figured out? I've been dyin' 'a curiosity this whole time over here.”

Sollux swallowed his bite. “Let me finish eating first, ED,” he replied with a chuckle. “But I bet you've been thinking, too - why don't you tell me what you've thought about? You might have thought of things I didn't.”

So Eridan spent the next few minutes going over his logic as Sollux ate, gesticulating with fork and knife as he described mental images of rebels taking down planes and making off with the goods inside.

Sollux finished while he was still talking, but encouraged him to keep going until Eridan himself had to admit that he was starting in on plain fantasy instead of reasonable suggestions. Only then did the yellowblood finally begin to talk.

“Okay, so, you've actually worked the gist of it out for yourself,” he said with a grin; Eridan almost glowed with pride at the approval in his tone. “What I've been looking into is pretty much exactly the things you've been guessing at - when the ships disappeared, what they had in common, what kind of investigations were done on their disappearances, that sort of thing. There were more of them than that one thread reported, and covering a wider area, by the way.

“There wasn't a whole lot tying them together, really, in terms of anything at all - different times, different places, different cargo, different colors of pilots; some of them were investigated more thoroughly than others - the higher blooded pilots, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Eridan agreed, with a grimace of distaste that prompted a surprised blink from the yellowblood, before he shook himself and continued.

“Anyway. There weren't any signs of a coverup from higher up; and I went delving pretty far up the line to check on that. But they did all have one thing in common.”

Sollux paused, clearly for dramatic effect, and Eridan leaned forward, excited despite himself. Whatever the answer to that was, was likely to be the reason they'd been taken down.

“What? What did they have in common?”

“Every one of them, in addition to whatever their normal cargo was or whatever their assigned job had been, had captured or was carrying one or more unregistered slaves - runaways, or trolls like me, strong psionics who'd gone into hiding to avoid that fate.”

The pieces snapped together in Eridan's mind.

He stared at Sollux, turning the completed image around in his mind, and felt a surge of mixed excitement and fear.

“...Sol. I know how we're goin' to get you to them.”

Chapter Text

It wasn't that easy, of course. Trying to explain his plan to Sollux didn't go well, mostly because Eridan kept flitting from piece to piece in trying to do so and never quite fully explaining any part. Finally, Sollux had to tell him to stop talking and take a drink of water to calm himself down.

Eridan sipped until the boiling thoughts inside him settled into a less anxiety-producing fizz; Sollux, watching him, finally prompted him when he'd deemed Eridan calm enough to continue.

“Okay. So what I made of that babble was that you want to have me flown over the area that the disappearances have occurred in, so that the rebels can take down said plane?”

Eridan nodded and set down the glass.

Sollux hummed a little. “Not a bad plan in theory, but how?”

“We could... you could pretend to run away?”

“Okay. How do we make sure whoever picks me up goes over that area?”

“Um... we could drop you off there?”

“It's all desert there, ED. What if no one actually picked me up? I'd be wandering in a place with no shelter from the sun.”

The seadweller swallowed. “Uh. We can put it about on, like, those sites you were talkin' about, that you're goin' to be in a particular area?”

“Doesn't guarantee someone will come, so same problem.”

Eridan groaned and dropped his head into his propped arms. “It made sense in my head!”

Sollux patted his shoulder. “It does make sense, ED, really. There's just a lot of variables we'll need to control for, that's all. I really have no interest in getting into a worse situation if things go wrong.”

Eridan nodded miserably. “I know. I don't want you to, either. But then how can we do this?”

“Okay, well, let's think about it in order. Reverse order, specifically. End result with this plan would be for a plane with me in it to be taken down, right?”

“Right,” Eridan agreed, sitting back up.

Sollux ticked off on his fingers as he spoke. “So we need to figure out who is flying that plane, why I'm on it, how the rebels will know I'm on it, why it's flying there, specifically...”

“Well, uh, why you're on it, like I said, it would make the most sense to be because you were tryin' to escape or somethin', right? And how the rebels would know, well...” He sat up, a thought sparking something in his mind. “How did they know for the ones they took down? How did you know what those planes were carryin'?”

“The pilots radioed or contacted control towers informing of their pickups, when they found runaways; the ones carrying them from the start had them registered as cargo...”

“So can we figure out how to make sure that happens?”

“Without knowing that the pilot will contact someone, it'd be really difficult to do so in a way that's believable,” Sollux replied, shaking his head. “And if I were a rebel, if there was even a hint that something might have been managed, I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole, no matter how tempting the target was. Too high a risk of it being a plant, or a trap.”

Eridan rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, well, assume we somehow know the pilot will report it, for right now, and we can come back to that, yeah? Then... we have to assume that they'll catch wind of it, otherwise none of it will work.”

“And we have to make sure that if they don't act on it, for whatever reason, that I'm not going to then end up in a bad situation.”

“Right. So. If you run away from me, I mean, I'm registered as your 'owner'-” Eridan made quotation mark gestures with his fingers “-so they would presumably return you to me, right?”

“Presumably.... but I'd really rather not run that risk if I don't have to. And there's nothing saying they couldn't hurt me, in the excuse of capturing me, even if they did.” Sollux grimaced. “I've had more than enough of that to last a lifetime, honestly. I'd like to avoid that risk if at all possible.”

Eridan chewed on his lower lip. “Okay. Well. I could always put out a reward for you back unharmed?”

Sollux raised an eyebrow. “With what money?”

Eridan winced. “...shit. Um. Let's... let's come back to that. What else do we need to look at?”

“Why the plane would be flying over that area in particular. Without dropping me off in the desert and hoping.”

Eridan scratched at a knot in the wood of the desk. “Um... maybe dropping you off on the opposite side from here? So the quickest way to get you back is to cross it?”

“And what if they're warned about that area and avoid it? Or they prefer taking the trade routes, since they're policed?”

Eridan sighed. “So... what we keep coming back to, is we need to somehow be able to control what the pilot does.”

Which, of course, is all but impossible...

Eridan stared at the knot he'd been scratching at, trying to think as he let his eyes trace the swirls in the wood of the desk.

The whorls all seemed to converge on his claw, resting in the middle.

On... him.

Me.

His eyes widened, and he turned that thought around in his mind, trying to fit the pieces in. Each and every one slotted into place as neatly as though they'd been made to do so.

With each answered mental question, the picture became clearer.

“Sol. It could be me.”

“What? What could be you?”

Eridan looked up, meeting Sollux's eyes. “I can be the pilot. Then we'll know, for sure, that you'll be in the right area, that the right people are contacted, that if nothing happens you'll still be safe. That you won't be hurt in the process. We can come up with any story we want for why you're there, because no one's going to question me.”

Sollux dug his claws into the desk with an audible squeal of splitting wood. “Absolutely not!”

“Why not? It makes the most sense! It answers all the problems we have!”

“We don't know what happened to the pilots, Eridan! What if they killed them?”

Eridan's first thought was to say it didn't matter - because to him, it really didn't. But if Sollux was protesting this already, he probably wouldn't be able to convince him of that point.

“Well... you'll be there,” he replied, thinking quickly. “You can tell them. Why wouldn't they believe you?”

It was flimsy at best; Eridan could think of hundreds of scenarios where that could go horribly wrong. But it didn't matter, because it didn't have to be bulletproof. The only thing it had to do was convince Sollux.

Unfortunately, Sollux didn't look convinced.

Before the yellowblood could refute the point, though, Eridan, with a burst of inspiration, added, “Even more so because it's you. Sol, if it's me doin' this, we can make sure that your name gets into the information. An' Karkat will know. He'll know you can be trusted, that if you vouch for me that I can be too - at least to leave without revealin' anythin' about them.” He spread his hands. “It's not like I'll know anythin' except their existence, after all. They won't take us down near their base, an' neither their existence nor their probable approximate location are gonna be news to anyone even if I did want to tell anyone.”

Sollux was frowning; he chewed on a claw for a moment, once Eridan stopped speaking, before responding. “You... have a point,” he admitted, grudgingly. “I don't like it, but... you're right. It answers every problem and concern, as far as the plan goes, and I... I'm sure I can convince Karkat, if no one else, that you won't be any danger to let go again after.”

Eridan could easily poke holes into that last bit of logic, but he kept his mouth shut on them. He was trying to convince Sollux that it was a good plan, not that there were more risks.

After all, whatever happened to Eridan wasn't important. It didn't matter if Sollux failed to convince Karkat, or whoever else was there. It didn't matter if Eridan was killed, or was left to die out in the desert sun, or whatever else the rebels might choose to do to him if Sollux was unable to convince them.

The only one who mattered was Sollux.

This was a chance, possibly his only chance, to do something good, to overcome the worthlessness of his existence by helping someone who did matter. And if it took Eridan's life to help him, well... Eridan considered that a fair trade.

That didn't make it any less terrifying, however. He had to focus on keeping his fins from flattening against his head with the slow cramping of fear he could feel in his guts as he contemplated the very real possibility of death inherent in this plan. It was hard - every instinct told him to duck, to hide, to make himself as small as he could in hopes that the danger would overlook him - but the last thing Sollux needed was to see just how scared he was.

Eridan, somehow, mustered up a grin. “So,” he replied, with a cheer he hoped didn't sound as forced as it really was, “let's figure out what story we're tellin', about why we're goin' that way.”

----

In the end, that was the easiest part of all.

“There's really no need for me to be 'running away' or anything, if I'm with you,” Sollux mused. “After all, you do own me. It's perfectly reasonable for you to take me with you - if, say, you were doing a multi-night job and didn't want to leave me unsupervised.”

Eridan blinked, then nodded. “That would make sense. We don't have to rely on the temptation of a runaway, after all - you being you should be enough. As long as I make sure to mention your name, they'll know.”

Sollux nodded. “And Karkat won't let the opportunity pass by. Plus, there's really no way it could be viewed as a trap - there's no reason for anyone but him and me to know that I know him. If he has the opportunity, he'll take it, and I can't see why anyone would feel like it might be dangerous to do so. All we really have to do is wait for the right job to come up. We need one that's expected to be at least an overday trip, so you have a reason to bring me with you when you've never done it before, just in case someone checks.”

“It might be seen as weird if I cross that area without a reason, though,” Eridan noted. “Especially since there's been warnin's. I wouldn't be surprised if even the control towers warned me if I was expected to go that way.”

Sollux nodded. “So... we'd need either something that's across the desert from here, or where either end of the trip are across it.”

“Yeah.” Eridan pulled at his lower lip in thought. “...I'm pretty sure I can pull off 'highblood convinced of his own invulnerability' enough to explain goin' across a dangerous area, as long as doing so would be an otherwise reasonable route, like it's the fastest way.”

“I can write up a program to check each posted job for those variables, if you can leave it logged in on here and it doesn't kick you out for inactivity.” Sollux turned to look back at the larger computer screen over his laptop, which still displayed the rank group message board.

“I mean, I don't know for sure, but I don't remember ever being kicked out,” Eridan replied with a carefully casual shrug. “An' worst case, we just check regularly to make sure it hasn't, right? There's really not many jobs that'll come in during the day, so we won't really need to check it then, an' other than that it's not really a problem to just leave it up on the desktop.”

Sollux nodded. “And I'm sure I can work out a way to have the program send a notification to, say, your wristband - that can take notifications, right?” Eridan nodded, and Sollux continued. “So if you wear that, you'll know as soon as one is posted, and you can accept it. And even if the rebels don't take the bait the first time, we can repeat the process as much as we need to.”

“Okay.” Eridan managed an actual, relieved grin, despite the knot of fear in his gut. It was still good to have an actual plan, one they could start putting into motion right away. “So, you get started on that program, and I'll get the rest of everythin' prepared so we'll be able to take off at the drop of a hat when opportunity knocks.”

----

Preparing was, mostly, just moving the things he'd already been working on obtaining into the flitter itself. For ease of access, he'd (carefully) backed the plane up near to the ground entrance to the ship; a good plan, as shortly after he'd finished, the skies opened up into a waterfall.

Eridan, watching the rain from the door, debated waiting until it stopped - or at least lightened up - but decided it was too risky. They didn't know when the right job would come up, after all, especially for such narrow criteria, and if he wasn't ready when it did, they might end up waiting a long time for another chance. And who knew when the rain would stop?

So, instead, he turned and yanked open the rusted-shut door across the hall from the door outside - it complained loudly, but was no match for seadweller strength - to reveal a disused closet. Inside was a stack of black, waterproof bags, covered in dust. Eridan used to use them for fishing or gathering things out in the sea, back when he was too small to effectively carry much by himself; he could either wear them on his back or, as he had usually done, hook them to Seahorsedad's saddle. He hadn't touched them in sweeps.

The bags were old, but still at least mostly solid; and it wasn't as though they'd need to be perfectly waterproof now. All they needed to do was protect the contents on the short trip from ship to flitter.

In one went the new clothes he'd been buying for Sollux, as well as some of the yellow's older stuff he was unlikely to need for a while; he left the boots out, though, figuring Sollux would want to wear them when they left.

Next up were the sopor patches and the boxes of ration bars - these went into the bag that seemed the most solid, and then, just in case, Eridan bundled the whole thing into another bag. Better that they were difficult to access than taking the risk they might get ruined by something; they were by far the most important things to be packed, and the easiest (barring, perhaps, Sollux's tech) to ruin accidentally.

Eridan filled another pack with some of his own clothes, including an extra pair of glasses just in case something happened to his. It wouldn't hurt to have along a few changes of clothes for himself; if nothing else, he might want to change before heading home.

Assuming he even would be heading home.

He swallowed that thought and refocused himself as he ducked through the rain back into his home. Now wasn't the time to give into that sort of thinking; he had things to do.

What else should he pack? There would be a number of things they'd have to put in last minute, like Sollux's laptop; but surely he could find other things that might be good to have along, things Sollux might find useful later.

Eridan pursed his lips in thought, then took a few of the empty bags and trotted further into the ship, heading for the little corridor that held the room he'd used for sleeping when Sollux first came. There wasn't much in there now, aside from the old couch and the pillows and blankets he'd deemed too threadbare or patchworked to allow in the rooms above; but across the hall was the old storeroom he'd turned into a makeshift closet storage, back in his wrigglerhood.

He hadn't been in here in almost a sweep - not since first returning from school. At that point, he'd been trying to make up a new wardrobe, at least enough to clothe him until he could earn enough to buy new clothes; his school clothes were, as a whole, barely still serviceable as clothing at all, and he hated having to wear them - they brought back too many decidedly unpleasant memories.

Eridan had been glad, at the time, that he'd taken up sewing as a hobby after he'd tired of knitting in his fifth wriggler molt; though all of the clothes stored in here were much too small for his adult body, the sheer amount of them stored here - for Seahorsedad had never liked to throw anything out - made patching together at least some kind of a wearable wardrobe doable for someone who was relatively deft with scissors and a sewing machine.

Now he poked through for a different reason. Towards the back were some things that were not clothes: in a bin shoved under some shelves were multiple heavy blankets and quilts, things Seahorsedad had gotten but which Eridan had never had reason to use. It never got anywhere near cold enough here for him to bother with them.

But they might well be of use to Sollux, out in the cold desert; so he shoved them into bags and hauled them out to the flitter. He'd probably add some of the lighter blankets from the recreation room, too, later.

That left him with four empty bags, which he brought up to the computer room where Sollux was hard at work. One of them he gave to Sollux, briefly interrupting him, to fill with what he wanted in advance later; two they would use for last-minute items - these he left by the door nearest the stairs.

The last, the smallest of the lot, Eridan took back downstairs on a whim.

At the end of the little back corridor was a small bathroom, just big enough for a tight shower, sink, and toilet. The sink and the shelf over the toilet were cluttered with various things: makeup, styling products, hair dye, Eridan's favorite soap. (The latter's bottle was almost empty; Eridan looked at it sadly and sighed. It was too expensive to replace.)

He ignored most of the clutter that wasn't on the sink; instead, he cleared the sink counter's contents into the bag. All but the biggest multi-packs of makeup fit in nicely, though he also left out the mostly-empty container of foundation - there was a new one in the bottom of the bag - and his special box of the yellow, green, and teal makeup he used to tint his face blue. He would probably go into town again before they left, and he didn't want to have to go digging for that.

The rest he closed into the bag, then brought it out to the flitter, storing it out of the way in one of the hard-to-reach back storage cabinets.

He wasn't sure what use he would make of all of that - it would either just sit there until he came home afterwards, or possibly just live in there forever if he didn't make it home - but it wouldn't hurt to bring along, even just on a whim.

Eridan stepped back, once the bag was closed into the cabinet, to survey the rest of the flitter. The bags already in there took up a lot of the space; he'd strapped the bigger ones into the extra seats and shoved the smaller ones underneath. The other couple cabinets the flitter had were too small to fit anything useful in, unfortunately, so Sollux would have to deal with being surrounded by bags.

Most of it would go with Sollux, of course, so the ride back (if there is one, the back of his mind reminded him yet again) would be much less cramped.

Eridan, deciding he really couldn't think of anything else to pack now, sighed and trudged back through the pouring rain into the ship, closing and locking the flitter behind him just in case.

Now he just had to wait...

And, somehow, keep Sollux from thinking enough about the plan to realize just how much danger Eridan would really be in and call it off.

----

By the end of the night, Sollux had the program up and running. There was no real way to test that it would sort out the parameters correctly, but Sollux seemed confident enough; and they were, at least, able to test that the notification would work properly by removing the required parameters and simply waiting for a new job listing to come in.

Eridan found wearing the wristband constantly over the next few nights to be a major irritation. Normally, he only wore it to go out on official business (he couldn't wear it to town, as the band had the usual blood-color highlights; besides, anyone might scan it if they got close enough and find out Eridan's identity) and took it off the moment he got home. But now, after wearing it constantly save for sleeping, it was starting to rub the inside of his wrist raw.

Deciding he needed a distraction - and a break from the irritation - Eridan left the band with Sollux (with the instructions to just accept the job if the right one popped up; Eridan planned to be back within a couple of hours) and made himself up into a blueblood to head into town.

Deydre was pleased to see him, particularly as he hadn't visited in almost a week; feeling guilty, Eridan explained as much as he could of the situation without giving anything important away. It wasn't much of an explanation - “Sol found one 'a his old friends online, an' we're tryin' to work out a way to go visit without causin' suspicion” - but after a brief moment of studying his face, Deydre simply nodded and accepted it without further fuss.

“Can I take that to mean you probably won't be around again for a while?” she asked instead, and Eridan nodded.

“I don't know exactly when we'll be able to go, it depends on a lot 'a things. So it's probably not a good idea for me to be away from home for long - an' you know I don't exactly live close.”

Deydre nodded and patted his shoulder. “Well, I hope everything works out for you. Planning to make your goodbyes?”

Eridan managed a half-smile for her; the wording she'd used made his stomach flip over. He'd been able to forget, for a while, what this trip was likely to end in - but her question reminded him, forcefully, that there was a pretty high chance he was never going to come back here.

“...Yeah.”

“Well, come back here before you head back, all right? I've a few things to put together for you - and no, you do not get a choice in the matter.” She stared him down until, cowed by the steely determination in her olive eyes, he agreed.

Eridan spent the next hour going almost from door to door in the town, visiting the people he'd come to know and respect over the past perigees. He did his best to keep the visits and resulting farewells lighthearted, despite the knot of fear and grief growing in his gut by the minute. Each one was harder than the last; his smile began to feel frozen in place, and it took longer and longer each time to get the words out without stumbling all over them.

Every troll, as he parted from them, gave him a handshake, or a hug, or a pat on the shoulder; he cherished each one, despite how close to tears they kept pushing him. These people... these were the friends that he'd always wished he could have.

If only he could stay...

If only he didn't have to lie to them.

But, however nice they were, they'd never be able to accept a seadweller in the same way they did a blue; so really, this parting was for the best.

By the time he returned to Deydre's shop, Eridan was at the brink of tears; he had to keep biting the inside of his cheek to distract himself and stop them.

He wished he could just leave now, but... it wouldn't be fair to Deydre. And after everything she'd done for him, he couldn't let her down that way. So instead, he steeled himself as best he could and stepped into the little shop.

Deydre was just coming out of a door in the back - and Eridan stopped in his tracks.

Was that-?

But the oliveblood had shut the door behind her, blocking Eridan's view of what he thought he had seen; and she gave him no time at all to ponder nor opportunity to ask about it.

“Good timing, Eri, I just finished getting everything together.” She held out a black backpack; Eridan took it on autopilot.

“What-”

“Just a little farewell gift, that's all. We'll all miss you, you know.”

It was like she somehow knew: knew that he wasn't expecting to ever return. Eridan clenched his teeth, but a tear slipped past anyway. He reached up quickly to blot it before it did damage to his makeup.

“Y-yeah. I... I'll miss you guys, too.”

Then she held open her arms for a hug, and Eridan fell into them, trembling with the effort it took to keep from crying.

“Be strong, little one,” she whispered into his ear; the words had the sound of a benediction. “Go with love, and love will carry you.”

----

When he left, the backpack slung over one shoulder, he didn't look back - not because he didn't want to, but because he couldn't hold the tears back anymore.

And he was so very grateful that almost no one used this road, for he wept the whole walk home.

Chapter Text

Eridan, fortunately, didn't run into Sollux in the short walk through the ship it took to get back to his little bathroom. He didn't want to have to explain the tears; as far as Sollux knew, Eridan was expecting to return after getting him to the rebels, and would therefore, presumably, be perfectly able to return to the town as he wanted.

Eridan really didn't want to have to try to think of a way to explain why he was so upset that wouldn't make Sollux concerned. Frankly, he didn't think he could.

So it was just as well that he didn't see the yellowblood at all until after he'd had a chance to wash the makeup - and tear tracks - off of his face.

Once he was sure he looked presentable again, and he'd stored Deydre's gift - a bag of various food; he blessed her foresight, as he'd completely forgotten to buy anything while he'd been in town - in the kitchen, Eridan wandered up the stairs to find Sollux, as expected, in the computer room.

“Anythin' come up while I was away?” he asked, draping himself over the chair Sollux occupied to peek at the other's screen with a very careful casualness. There wasn't anything of interest on it (or at least, not of interest to Eridan), just line after line of code.

“One thing that was kind of close... here, have a look. I don't know if it'll work for sure, it's not expected to be multi-night, so I wasn't sure if you'd want to try it.”

Eridan made a noncommittal noise and shifted to look from Sollux's laptop to the main computer screen as Sollux pulled up the relevant job listing.

The yellowblood was right - it was a quick job, just a simple file delivery. The direct path from pickup to dropoff point only crossed the very edge of the area Sollux had marked as 'possible rebel activity'; potentially also a problem.

“Huh. Well, if it's not multi-night, how could we explain you comin' with, when I never took you before?”

“I... might have an answer for that.”

“Oh?” Eridan snagged the second chair at the desk over and sat in it backwards to face Sollux. “What'd you have in mind?”

“The past couple nights, I've been on the low web a lot, on the desktop. To the point that I think - only think, mind, but it's a pretty good guess - that the registration might have been noted. I'm almost positive I caught at least one tracer.”

“Isn't that a bad thing?” Eridan frowned a little.

“If I were trying to hide, or to protect you from being associated with me, yes. But we're not.”

“I don't follow.”

“Think of it this way. If people - someone - on there is able to track me, they'll track me - your computer - to you. Which puts their eyes on you. So if I'm able to associate me - my name, specifically - with my presence on the web...”

“Then... whoever's tracking you would know I have you?” Eridan guessed.

Sollux nodded. “And based on what I'm seeing, these rebels have fingers in an awful lot of pies. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find they're the ones running the low web in its entirety; I certainly haven't been able to trace the hosting anywhere I recognized.”

“Okay, so... what does that have to do with me havin' a reason to bring you along on a short jaunt?”

Sollux grinned a little. “Well, obviously, you found out.”

Eridan rubbed his temples. “Goddammit, Sol, you're seriously gonna need to spell this out for me. All this hintin's doin' nothin' but givin' me a headache. I ain't as brilliant as you, okay?”

“Fine, fine. Basically, what I'm suggesting is that you post on your message boards to complain that you found that your slave - there's where you put my name in, by the way - hacked your computer and was getting into places he really shouldn't be - maybe under the guise of asking for advice on what to do, or whether what I was getting into was a problem, or whatever. And then, when you take whatever job you next take, you have a very good reason to bring me along - you don't trust me unsupervised anymore, of course.”

“...'of course', he says, like it's fuckin' obvious,” Eridan grumbled under his breath.

Sollux, plenty close enough to hear anyway, snorted. “I don't think I can spell it out any more obviously for you, ED.”

“I get it, okay? Just, it ain't intuitive to me the way it seems to be for you.” Eridan sighed and rested his chin on his hand. “This kind 'a thing, this sneakin' around, ain't exactly my forte.”

“Clearly.” Sollux raised an eyebrow.

“You don't have to rub it in, asshole.”

“But if I didn't, how would you know it's me?” the yellow asked, entirely too innocently.

Eridan lightly hit his shoulder. “Because you're a fuckin' mutant, that's how. So help me out, here, how exactly do I phrase this kind 'a thing? 'Cause honestly, I've never posted a damn thing on here. Hell, I don't even look at it much.”

“Okay, well, you're obviously going to be extremely angry...”

----

They didn't end up taking that job; instead, he and Sollux spent most of the night on the message boards, monitoring the thread Eridan had written up with the other's input.

The responses were, frankly, terrifying, and Eridan found himself wincing and nauseated more than once, reading the 'suggestions' of punishments for his 'misbehaving slave'.

Oddly enough, Sollux didn't seem terribly affected. When Eridan asked, he only shrugged.

“I've heard it all before,” he replied, and offered nothing more.

Eridan decided against pressing and went back to trying to work out a reasonable response to the entirely unreasonable suggestions of mutilation, maiming, and other such torture.

He was incredibly relieved when, shortly before dawn, Sollux suggested that the thread had probably gotten enough attention that, if anyone was watching, it would be very clear just what was going on (or at least, what they wanted people to think was going on). By that point, Eridan was pretty sure he couldn't have read even one more response without actively losing the contents of his stomach.

“You either have no imagination at all or an iron constitution, Sol,” Eridan grumbled as he closed out of the thread, not even bothering to hide his sigh of relief.

“You get used to it after a while,” Sollux replied, stretching and grabbing one of the ration bars that had been sitting on the desk.

“I don't know how you can possibly be hungry after that, but I hope you ain't expectin' somethin' from me. I'm goin' to go scrub myself raw until I can't feel that filth anymore, it's makin' my skin crawl. An' then I'm gonna go try an' drown myself in sopor for at least a week.”

Sollux chuckled and tossed an empty cup at him. “At least drink some water - like you're always telling me.”

Eridan caught it and huffed. “Fine, fine, since you insist. Don't wake me up unless the ship's on fire, all right? Any other possible jobs can wait.”

Sollux hummed in agreement and bent over his laptop, too busy chewing to reply.

----

He didn't actually sleep for a week, of course; nerves had him up and about at his usual hour of just before dusk.

Unfortunately for his nerves, however, things took their sweet time about progressing. It took another four nights, during which Eridan fretted himself nearly to pieces, before their plans bore fruit.

But when the next possibility came in, it was entirely too perfect to pass up - a package delivery, crossing almost straight over the 'danger zone' they'd marked. It wasn't multi-night, being only just on the other side of the desert and well within range to be home for the day; but they weren't relying on that factor any more, so it didn't matter.

Eridan, who was fortunately in the computer room when his wristband lit up like a Twelfth Perigee's tree, practically knocked the chair over in his haste to bring up the job posting; he scanned it quickly to make sure it was adequate, and then, before anyone else could possibly snag it, hit 'accept'.

“Sol!” Eridan shouted over his shoulder. “We've got one!”

Now that it was safely theirs, he allowed himself to shift the chair back in place and sit down properly to read the posting more thoroughly.

Sollux, hair still dripping from his shower and a towel around his waist, jogged into the room just as Eridan finished. “What is it? Is it what we need? How soon?”

“Package pickup an' delivery. From that place south 'a the capital to the north desert checkpoint,” Eridan responded.

“Fuck yes, that's perfect!”

“Client wants it by the end 'a the night, so we've got a bit 'a time to prepare, we don't have to rush out right now. You got your stuff together?”

Sollux made to snatch up his laptop, before seeming to realize he was still dripping and thinking the better of it. “Not quite, and I need to finish drying off. Won't take long, though.”

“Okay. You do that, I'll get the other bag together an' meet you by the door. Make sure your shit's protected, it's rainin' again.”

“Of course it's raining, when is it not?” Sollux grumbled as he headed back to the bathroom.

Eridan turned back to the computer and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen; he quickly jotted down the relevant details of the job, then - for the first time since he'd returned from the Academy - shut the computer fully down.

After all, he wouldn't be needing it again - soon, at least, if not ever.

Eridan forced himself to take a few slow breaths to quell the rising panic tightening his chest. Pack first, get going second, worry later.

The two empty bags were still sitting by the door; he left one for Sollux and took the other down to the kitchen.

There wasn't much there; they were down to just a few veggies from the bag Deydre had given him and the ever-useful ration bars, as Eridan had really not wanted to go back into town again. There had been enough in the bag for a few meals - he'd stretched it as much as he could - but with two trolls to feed, a single backpack of food didn't last that long. (Though both he and Sollux had very much appreciated the couple bags of actual candy she'd hidden in there; that had made for a very fun night.)

Sollux, perhaps sensing Eridan's unwillingness to go back, had neither pressed nor complained about the dwindling store of decent food, for which Eridan had been grateful.

Now, it only meant there was less to pack.

Eridan grabbed the set of water bottles sitting on the counter to start filling them. He'd found them in a back cabinet a few nights ago, and, deciding they would probably be useful in a desert, had thoroughly washed them and left them out for just this purpose. Once they were filled, he set them into his bag; then added the carrots and green beans that were the last of their fresh food.

There was still room in the bag, so he dumped all but the oldest boxes of ration bars in as well; then brought the bag up to the recreation room and filled it, and Deydre's backpack which he found sitting in there, the rest of the way with a couple of the blankets from the couch (making sure to also grab the one that Sollux usually preferred to use).

Sollux came out of the bedroom with his bag just as Eridan exited the recreation room. “Ready?” the yellowblood asked.

Eridan gestured for him to head down. “One last thin' an' then yeah. Be there in a sec.”

Sollux shrugged and went to the stairs; Eridan ducked into the computer room.

There was one more very important thing, one that he hadn't wanted to bring up to Sollux in advance; he felt the other wouldn't want to have to be dreading it the whole time.

But they didn't dare leave without it.

Eridan opened the drawer of the desk to pull out its contents: one receiver band, and one metal collar. He shoved the (deactivated) receiver on his wrist, then followed Sollux down the stairs.

As he reached the bottom, Sollux stared at the collar in Eridan's hand. “What the fuck, ED?”

Eridan held his ground against the other's betrayed expression. “I've got everythin' turned off, so it's nothin' but a hunk 'a metal right now. Look, I don't like it much better than you do, Sol, but if someone gets it into their head to look inside and you ain't wearin' it, we're both gonna be in deep shit. There is literally no way to explain you not wearin' one.”

Sollux frowned. “And how are we going to convince the rebels that you're harmless if I'm wearing your collar?”

Eridan smiled a little. “'Cause it won't be my collar. You'll lock it.”

Sollux frowned. “I'm not following.”

“The blood-lock?”

“The fuck's a 'blood-lock'?”

Eridan blinked a few times, startled. “You don't... know?”

“What is it I'm supposed to know?” The yellowblood's tone was getting sharper by the second.

“Huh... I guess it makes sense that they wouldn't explain it to you, come to think. Seein' as a slave'd probably want to figure out a way around it.”

“ED, if you don't start making sense in the next three seconds...”

“Okay, okay, jeez, let me get my thoughts in order here!”

Sollux crossed his arms and waited.

Eridan paused a moment longer to collect his thoughts. “Okay, so. These collars, most 'a them, they're locked by what's called a blood-lock - it's a lock with a blood reader built in. When the collar is first locked, the person registerin' it presses a finger here-” he pointed to the depression, “-an' a little needle comes out 'a that hole and pricks it, an' takes the drop 'a blood. It reads it an' stores it in the system; after that, the collar can only be opened by the person who locked it, 'cause it takes another sample to unlock.”

He shrugged. “'A course, there's specialized equipment to get around it, but you can get culled just for possessin' that without a license, so it's not exactly somethin' people've got lyin' around.”

“Then when you say I'll lock it, you mean...”

Eridan held out the collar. “It'll register your blood. Then you can take it off at any point - say, to prove without a doubt to the rebels that I'm okay.”

“There's not some way someone would be able to tell it wasn't locked by you?” Sollux still eyed the collar with distaste, but took it from the seadweller - touching as little of it as possible and holding it like he expected it to bite him.

Eridan shook his head. “It's an entirely closed system. An' from what research I was able to do on them, they don't even register colors, they just compare the genetic makeup of the samples.” He grinned, faintly. “Apparently the original version 'a the lock just had color readers - an' some folks found out that those could be fooled with blood that was sufficiently close in hue. So they decided to make that not a factor at all.”

“Mm.” Sollux didn't sound convinced.

“Seriously, Sol. I really don't like to ask you to wear it, but if someone looks-”

“I get it. I don't like it, but I'll wear it, okay?” Sollux sighed. “But not until I absolutely have to.”

“Fair enough.” Eridan shrugged and, ducking through the rain, took the steps into the flitter two at a time.

He shoved his bag into a free space between two seats and turned to see Sollux entering after him, hunched over his bag to further protect it; the yellowblood made his way to the only passenger seat without bags on it, set his bag down on the floor by it, and settled himself into the seat. “Last chance for second thoughts, ED.”

Eridan managed a grin back for him, ignoring the knot in the pit of his stomach. “Isn't that supposed to be my line?”

“Fuck no. I'm so ready. Anything to get out of this stupid rain!”

“All right. Just gonna lock up an' we can get goin'.” The seadweller ducked back out of the flitter and moved over to the door to the ship.

The smile dropped from his face as soon as Sollux could no longer see it, however. This might well be the last time he ever saw his home, and he just couldn't manage a smile in the face of that thought.

Blinking back tears, he laid a hand against the old wood of the hull and took a deep breath; then let it out in a shuddering sigh and reached over with the key to lock the door. The bolt shot home with a quiet thunk, and he closed his eyes.

But there was no time for long goodbyes; Sollux was waiting. Eridan, trusting to the rain to hide any evidence of tears, turned back to climb into the aircraft again.

He shut the flitter's door behind him and quickly moved up to the cockpit, settling into the pilot's chair and starting up the engines with a feeling of finality. Behind him, he heard the quiet click of the collar locking into place around Sollux's neck and the other's hiss of pain, presumably at the needle prick; then his attention was on the road in front of him and getting the flitter into the air.

----

The pickup, just south of the capital, proceeded without incident; no one attempted to look into the flitter when Eridan exited to grab the package, so there was no need to explain away the visible baggage, which made Eridan breathe a quiet sigh of relief. He still hadn't come up with a good way to explain it.

He did make sure to mention that he had with him his “slave, Sollux” just in case the work with the message boards hadn't been enough, under the guise of giving his identity to the (supremely uninterested and half-asleep) flight control officer at the runway; but he doubted the other even noticed. Still, better to cover his - their - bases.

The officer didn't even mention anything about their planned path, which eased another of Eridan's worries; while he was pretty sure he could have pulled the planned ruse of 'highblood too convinced of his own immortality to be bothered with such trifles as safety' off convincingly enough, not having to do so was much preferable.

Takeoff, again, went smoothly, and then they were off.

He had to swing back west for a while to get around the capital - a no-fly zone for most craft aside from the most important, which Eridan's was decidedly not - but then he course-corrected back north-northeast once he was clear of it and gently took the flitter up to the lower edge of cruising altitude.

The flight passed in silence, both of them too caught up in their own thoughts and worries to make idle chatter. Eridan, at least, was hard pressed to hold his composure, and was quite grateful Sollux didn't want to chat; he wasn't entirely sure he could hold it together if he started talking.

A good portion of the flight was over the Southern Sea; as they crossed over from land to water, he looked west in a vain hope to catch one last glance of his ship; but of course, it was much too far away to see.

Eridan put the flitter on autopilot while they crossed the sea; the winds were even and there would be no traffic here - not so far off a general trade route, and certainly not so low in altitude. Most trolls preferred to fly at the upper ranges of cruising altitudes, for the steadier winds. He preferred to fly low, where he could watch the scenery, even if it did mean the air currents were a bit trickier over uneven land.

They were across the sea within an hour, and the land below them turned quickly from beach, to yellow-brown rolling plains, to rocky shrublands, and then, at last, to true desert.

The Northern Desert (Alternian names tended towards the literal) was a very rocky, almost mesa-like desert, filled with canyons and steep slopes and strange rock formations that towered far above the surrounding landscape. It was heavily populated by mineral deposits, hence the large number of mines; any troll above, say, teal, who had access to even just a couple slaves (or like-minded individuals willing to do some heavy labor) could easily find a vein or two of ore and start up their own, and registration thereof was distinctly unrestrictive.

Trying to find Karkat's 'Sanctuary' among all of the literal hundreds of mines that dotted the desert would have been harder than finding a needle in a haystack; Eridan was glad the plan didn't involve anything of the sort.

He watched the map on his dashboard carefully for the landmarks that would tell him when they crossed into the 'danger zone'; only when they had did he finally speak up. “We're in range, Sol.”

Eridan, watching in the mirror, saw the yellowblood nod. “Right,” was all Sollux replied, before looking back out the side window closest to his seat; but Eridan could see his hands clench on the armrests.

He wished he could do the same; but once they'd gotten back over land, he'd had to take the autopilot off. This low, traveling over uneven ground, winds were too chancy to risk not being in full control. Instead, he tightened his grip on the yoke and tried not to jerk it around by accident.

Perhaps it would have been a bit smoother to fly a bit further up, but he and Sollux had both agreed that flying low was the better option; both to make themselves a more tempting target, and to (hopefully) lessen the amount of damage that being taken down would cause.

So Eridan flew as low as he dared, right at the lowest edge of 'cruising range', and paid very careful attention to both what he could see out the windshield and on his instruments inside.

It was almost enough to take his mind off the growing terror in his chest - almost, but not quite. Any second now, they could be taken down; how, they didn't know, since none of the ships reported missing had ever shown back up, but it would invariably involve some sort of attack - maybe an EM pulse, maybe plain old shooting, or something else they couldn't even think of.

But ultimately, nothing at all happened, except that the wind picked up a bit as they crossed back out of the 'danger zone' to the north, making Eridan lift the flitter into a slightly higher flight path to avoid being buffeted about.

“...That was the upper edge, wasn't it?”

Eridan flicked his gaze up to the mirror; Sollux met it in the reflection.

“...Yeah. It was,” the seadweller replied, licking dry lips. “Maybe they didn't... hear?”

“Or they might be waiting for the return trip,” Sollux suggested, looking just as nervous as Eridan felt. “That might make sense - we're making a delivery, after all, and it would be noticed sooner if we didn't make it there.”

“Maybe,” Eridan replied dubiously. “But what if we'd decided to take the trade route home or somethin'? Wouldn't that be a risk, to wait?”

“I don't know. But we aren't, so... if they are taking that risk, it'll pay off, right?” The yellowblood managed a weak grin, but his hands remained clutched tight around the edges of the armrests.

Eridan's hands were just as tightly clenched on the arms of the yoke as he kept the flitter level. “Yeah, I guess.”

The cabin lapsed back into silence after that.

----

The delivery spot, much as the pickup had been, was at a designated field specifically designed for such errands. They landed neatly in a numbered spot, a distance away from either of the flight towers as well as the central building - a walk was a decent tradeoff for privacy - and Eridan unbuckled himself with hands gone partially numb from how hard he'd been gripping the yoke.

Sollux handed him the package they'd been tasked with delivering as Eridan pulled open the door; he took it with a quiet word of thanks, hopped out, and shut and locked the door behind him - just in case.

The dropoff point was a building in the center of the field, marked by black-and-white striped flags at the corners; three desks, protected from the outside by thick glass, contained stiff, uniformed attendants. The one Eridan approached with his package sounded almost robotic, clearly following a very specific script, and Eridan wondered if there'd been a lapse in security or some sort of issue recently, for all of them to be so very formal and tense.

He didn't mention anything, of course. It wasn't his business. Instead, he simply answered the required questions with equal formality, offering no unrequested information - except to, like before, state Sollux's name along with his own when requested for that information.

This attendant looked to be writing down all of Eridan's answers; certainly he was taking long enough about it to be filling everything out fully, and even though he wasn't in any kind of rush, Eridan found himself a little annoyed at the delay. The annoyance was only heightened as the attendant continued to question him, even asking a few things a second time as though to verify that the answers were the same.

The only thing that kept Eridan from actually snapping at him was that the blueblood who'd approached the desk to his right was getting exactly the same treatment; so it at least wasn't just him. (It only mollified him a little, though.)

When he was finally given leave to go, Eridan turned and stalked off with no more than the bare minimum of a thanks, irritation swelling and overtaking nerves already rubbed raw by the stress of the journey here.

By the time he reached the flitter again, he was almost fuming; Sollux took one glance at his face and reached out to close the door himself as Eridan threw himself back into the pilot seat.

“Jesus, ED, what'd they do?”

“Ugh, just... bureaucracy at its finest.” Eridan rested his elbows on the yoke and rubbed his temples. “They must have had security issues or somethin' recently; everybody's gettin' checked an' double checked, an' the attendants are bein' just... so stiff an' sour about all 'a it. Like fuck, man, I ain't the one fuckin' thin's over here, leave off.”

All his rant pulled out of Sollux was a smile, and Eridan turned to scowl at him. “Don't you be laughin' at my pain here, asshole, you didn't have to deal with them!”

“Sorry, sorry,” the yellow replied, raising his hands in playful surrender. “It just sounds so ridiculous, though, you have to admit!”

Eridan could see his point, but refused to admit it; instead he just turned back forwards, flipped Sollux off over his shoulder, and started up the engines again.

Much to Eridan's annoyance, the encounter was repeated at the flight tower set next to the runway. He - barely - managed to keep a civil tongue in his head as he answered the same questions yet another time, but it was a close call.

The only good thing about the intense questioning was that he had every reason to drop Sollux's name, not just once but, between the dropoff attendant and the flight tower attendant, three times. And the tower attendant even went so far as to look up Eridan's registration of said slave to verify that he did, in fact, own the yellowblood sitting behind him.

But that was far from enough to keep Eridan from practically bristling with indignation and irritation; and the attendant's distinctly condescending tone - seriously, was that just a thing for flight control attendants, being condescending? - only made it worse.

Sollux didn't help, either; as soon as they were in the air, the yellowblood burst out laughing. “Oh my fucking god, did you hear him?”

“Of fuckin' course I heard the insufferable prick, fuckface, I was talkin' with him! I swear to god, if you don't get yourself under control I'm goin' to crash this damn thin' myself!”

Sollux just flapped a hand at him in the mirror, trying to stifle himself with the other; but every time he seemed to get back under control, he'd look back up, catch Eridan's eyes in the mirror, and dissolve into laughter again.

Eridan, grudgingly, had to admit that, in retrospect, it was pretty funny; he still tried to keep his glower up, but Sollux's mirth was contagious, and pretty soon he found himself having to wipe tears of laughter away from his eyes so he could see to fly.

“Fuckin'- seriously, Sol, I gotta fly here-”

“It's not my fault you're laughing!”

“Yes it is, oh my god, stop lookin' at me like that!”

“You're the one looking in the mirror!”

Eridan made a noise of exasperation and bit a finger to get control back over himself before he dissolved into helpless giggles again as Sollux was doing.

“Fuckin' hell, Sol, get a drink 'a water or somethin' before you set me off again, damnit!”

The yellowblood had to undo his buckle and half-slip out of his seat to get at the bag that held the bottled water; Eridan watched him in the mirror as he did so, swallowed about half of it, and seemed to finally manage to get himself under control.

Eridan opened his mouth to say something else - but at that exact moment, there was a jolt throughout the flitter that sent the other stumbling a step forward before he caught himself.

“Shit!” Eridan jerked his attention back to the flight controls as the yoke shuddered in his hands and the lights in the aircraft flickered, terror slamming all trace of mirth from his mind. He'd let himself get distracted - he hadn't even noticed when they'd crossed that invisible line in the desert-

“ED, what-”

Eridan gritted his teeth and clenched his hands around the yoke, trying to keep it level. They were losing altitude, far too rapidly...

“We're hit, Sol, one 'a the engines. If you ain't buckled, do it- shit! Do it now!”

Another jolt shook the flitter, and the yoke abruptly loosened in Eridan's hands. He tried pushing it; there was no resistance, and - far more concerningly - no response at all from the flitter.

“Shit! Steerin's out too, fuck, oh god-”

The ground was approaching-

The flitter scraped a wing against the edge of a rock formation, knocking Eridan to one side as the aircraft tilted-

“Sol!”

Eridan threw his arms up to protect his head-

There was a crash and the ear-splitting shriek of metal stressed beyond its ability to cope-

He was thrown forward; his arms collided with the yoke-

Just as suddenly, he was jolted back in his seat, cracking his head against the seat back hard enough that, even with the padded material, he saw stars-

The flitter gave another shuddering lurch; then, finally, settled.

The power flickered one last time and went out, leaving the cabin in darkness.

Chapter Text

Eridan could only breathe for a long moment, quick gasps that filled his ribs with pain and did nothing at all for the black hovering around the edges of his vision.

But he couldn't just sit here - there was something, someone important...

He filled his lungs again despite the pain and forced himself to move. One hand, bruised and aching where it had smashed into the yoke, fumbled after the buckle of the seat belt.

“S... Sol-!”

It took multiple tries, but finally the belt came free. Eridan shoved himself out of the chair, grabbing onto anything handy to haul himself out and around it, panic pushing away the pain and clearing his mind a little.

“Sollux! Are you-”

He missed a grip and stumbled to a knee, but pushed himself back up. Sollux wasn't in his seat-

Eridan scanned the small body of the flitter desperately. Bags had been thrown everywhere with the impact, but he didn't see...

There!

“Sollux!!!”

He lurched forward towards the lanky body collapsed behind a seat. But just as he reached it, the bang of metal hitting metal made him look up-

Just in time to get a faceful of electric green psionics that tossed him back across the cabin.

Fortunately, he landed against a softer bag; bruises and aches complained bitterly, but he was able to drag himself back upright.

“Stay away from him!” an unfamiliar voice commanded; the owner of the voice was approaching Sollux, electric green crackling around her horns.

“I'll take care of him,” someone else sneered as they stepped over a bag, heading towards Eridan.

He thought he saw Sollux shift-

“Sol!”

-and then an arm slammed him back against the wall. Yellow eyes stared him down from just a foot away; he got a glimpse of a smile full of teeth before the troll in front of him grabbed his shoulders and smacked him back against the wall again.

His vision went black for a moment and a ringing filled his ears; past it he could make out fragments of conversation.

“-don't kill him, Karkat said-”

“-didn't say anything about-”

“-might have information-”

He swallowed hard and forced his eyes to blink several times, clearing back the blackness, at least a little.

Two more trolls had entered to attend to Sollux, blocking his view; he tried to crane around to see, but the movement snapped the attention of the troll holding him back to him.

“S-sol-!” Eridan managed weakly, before a hand pinned him by the throat to the wall.

“Shut up, wader. You're lucky he wants you alive,” the troll hissed, baring very sharp teeth in a predatory grin. “Or you'd be down with a snapped neck already.” He squeezed, as if to demonstrate, and Eridan fought, uselessly, for breath.

The ringing in his ears got louder; his gills flared as his body decided the reason he couldn't breathe must be because he must be underwater. But there was no water for him to breathe, and the sensitive lining on the gills burned from the dry desert air sweeping in from the open door.

Black encroached on his vision again; he scrabbled at the strange troll's arm with hands gone nerveless and clumsy from the lack of air, but the other only grinned wider and squeezed harder.

Eridan caught one last glimpse of bright green surrounding Sollux and lifting him into the air; then everything went dark.

----

When he awoke, it was to pain - pain in his ribs, his arms, his throat, everywhere.

It wasn't helped by the fact that he was being carried like a sack of potatoes over someone's shoulder, either. He couldn't quite manage to get a full breath; every step forced air out of his lungs, and the person carrying him was walking quickly.

Eridan concentrated and managed to force his eyes open. There wasn't much to see - just someone's black shirt-covered back, the occasional glimpse of the back of a leg or a foot, and sandy rock.

Part of his vision was blurry; he blinked hard a few times to clear it, before realizing it was because half of one lens of his glasses was gone. The other lens was cracked as well, but the pieces were still in the frame.

He supposed he should be grateful he still had them at all.

Memory was slow to return, likely because all his attention was on fighting for breath; but bits and pieces came back as the troll carrying him continued on. The delivery; the infuriating officials; laughing with Sol-

Sollux!

Eridan tried to twist, to look up and see if he could spot the yellowblood - but all he could manage was to turn his head to the side. The attempt at movement made him abruptly aware that he was tied, thoroughly: his arms behind his back, rope wrapped around them from wrist to forearm; his legs at ankle and knee, bent up and ankles secured to the rope at his wrists.

It was a position that did not allow for much movement at all.

Eridan debated struggling anyway; but more memories were returning and demanded his attention: the crash, and the terror of finding Sollux unconscious... the trolls breaking in, some going to Sollux but one coming to him...

That one slamming him into a wall, and then choking him until he passed out.

That would explain the pain in his throat, at least.

Eridan fought the looming panic back down. His mind wanted, desperately, to give in, to flee in the face of the pain - but he had to know if Sollux was all right-

The light from the moons was abruptly cut off, and the rock beneath the other troll's feet turned from rough and uneven to smooth. Eridan guessed they'd gone inside somewhere, though he didn't see any sign of a door.

The troll carrying him turned to the right, allowing Eridan a brief glance of the others they had been following; he caught a glimpse of the same electric green that had knocked him away from Sollux in the flitter holding someone - double horns. Sollux!

That group moved towards a short set of stairs; other trolls swarmed up it, calling out to the ones who'd just entered. Eridan couldn't make out much of what they were saying, but they sounded worried.

Then the troll carrying him turned forward again, blocking his view once more, and spoke; he recognized the voice as belonging to the same troll who'd knocked him out. “What do you want to do with him?”

“Just... take care of him,” another voice replied. “I need to see to Sollux, he's hurt.”

Well, that at least eased his worry for Sollux. If they were worried he was hurt, then they'd take care of him; and if they knew his name, that meant it was the rebels who'd taken them down.

That meant his mission had been successful.

It was a huge weight off his mind, to know that; but with that worry eased, new ones came in.

Why had he been brought here, too? Why was he even still alive? Sollux was unconscious - he couldn't possibly have spoken up in Eridan's defense. So that meant they wanted him for... what?

Information? He didn't have any. He was far too low on the totem pole of importance to know anything that might be useful to the rebels.

Maybe they just figured they'd need his blood to unlock Sollux's collar? But they'd had plenty of chances to take that while he'd been unconscious; all they'd need to have done was press his finger against it.

Though... his blood wouldn't have unlocked it, since it was locked by Sollux himself. So maybe they were keeping him alive so he could tell them whose blood it was registered to?

That didn't make much sense either, however. These were rebels; they'd taken down and rescued slaves before. Surely they had some means of removing collars without needing to unlock them normally.

Then... why?

Eridan didn't have any more time to think, however; the troll carrying him had started to move again, and pain jarred through the seadweller's body, interrupting any attempt at thought.

The troll didn't follow the others down, as Eridan had expected; instead, he moved again to the right. Eridan caught a glimpse of some sort of platform - right before the troll carrying him heaved him off his shoulder and tossed him onto it, knocking his head against the wood painfully.

Eridan blinked stars out of his eyes and felt the platform move beneath him. He'd landed facing a wall; it seemed to shift in front of him, then abruptly flew up. It took him a moment to realize that it wasn't the wall that had moved; the platform he was on had begun to rapidly descend, swinging from side to side and bumping into the walls on every side with each movement.

The descent was very uneven; Eridan found himself nauseated long before it finally landed with a thump that jarred every bone and injury in his body.

His position on the platform allowed him to, if he craned his head up, see where the wall on one of the sides had been replaced with an open archway. There wasn't much to see; beyond the archway was pitch blackness. The only light at all came from above him, up at the top of the long tunnel of rock he'd been lowered through.

Eridan had just enough time to catch his breath and begin to shift in his bonds before that abruptly changed. Light blossomed through the archway, causing Eridan to squeeze his eyes shut in pain; he heard the sound of footsteps echoing off rock first descending from above, then coming closer.

Eridan kept his eyes shut, deciding feigning continued unconsciousness was the best course of action. Though he was startled when the troll he'd heard come down hefted him up, he wasn't surprised; after all, they had to have brought him down here for a reason, and that reason was unlikely to be for him to stay on whatever elevator-like device he'd been lowered on.

Fortunately for his ribs and stomach, the journey was a short one. When he was dropped again, it was onto his front; he was able to turn his head in time to prevent his chin from smacking into the stone of the floor, but his head still hit it, and he lost track of everything for a while as pain exploded through his mind.

The pain receded slowly; Eridan waited it out, focusing on his breathing as soon as he was able to think at all. But this concentration was abruptly interrupted by the shock of cold splashing over him. He couldn't prevent the automatic reaction - sputtering and struggling, eyes snapping open and blinking against the water.

The movement revealed that his legs were free, now; Eridan used the opportunity to shove himself backwards with them, away from the troll he could see silhouetted against the light coming through the doorway. His arms had remained tied, however; if anything, they were tied tighter, if the ache in his shoulders was anything to go by.

His attention darted back to the troll standing over him. It was, judging by what Eridan could see of his horns, the same troll as before; he was holding a clay jar of some kind, which had presumably contained the icy water that now covered Eridan.

“Good evening, sweetheart,” the troll said with a leer visible even in the shadows of his face.

Eridan swallowed hard and tried to shove himself backwards again, but he was thwarted by running into a wall behind him. The other troll laughed: a cruel sound, one that drew answering echoes from Eridan's memories.

For just a moment, the troll above him grew taller; his horns twisted and turned down, and fins spread from either side of his face-

Eridan blinked rapidly and the illusion vanished, but the panic that the image had prompted remained, tightening his throat until he could barely breathe, much less speak.

“What, nothing to say for yourself?” The troll bent down; Eridan shrank back as much as he could, but he couldn't prevent the other grabbing onto his shirt and twisting, pulling him to his feet and smacking him back against the wall.

Eridan's shoulders and arms protested being squeezed behind him, but his mind had other things to worry about, between his fear from the situation and the answering panic dredged up from his worst memories of school.

“That's all right, don't worry. You'll talk soon enough.”

Eridan shut his eyes tightly, trembling, and prepared himself as best he could for the coming inevitable pain.

----

When he was finally left alone in the dark, Eridan could do nothing for a long while but pant weakly, trying to ignore the sharp pain it sent through his throat and ribs.

Slowly, he became aware of the pain from the rest of his body: his shoulders burned from the strain of laying on his arms; one leg was twisted beneath him, a dull stabbing pain spreading through the muscles around his knee; his jaw ached, his throat felt like it was on fire, and he could only barely manage to open his eyes against the swelling.

His glasses had been thrown across the room at some point; Eridan vaguely remembered hearing them shatter, but his memories were clouded at best and featured mostly pain.

He was pretty sure nothing was broken, when he finished taking inventory of everything that hurt; but it was hard to be positive, when every pain clamored for the limited attention his mind had to spare. Still, a little movement brought no new agony, just rapidly increasing aches, so he did his best to at least shift off his arms.

There was no getting comfortable, tied like this; but he tried, curling on his side so that his arms were partially supported by the ground and trying to breathe slowly through his nose.

He felt oddly disappointed in himself, being broken down by what was ultimately very little damage. He hadn't even been cut anywhere; just bruised and beaten. Time was, this little bit of beating would have barely bothered him. He'd gotten weak, over the past sweep and change, too used to being whole and healthy and unhurt. Alecto would crow, to see him now.

(Eridan shuddered at the too-vivid mental image that thought provoked and forced his mind back to analyzing his physical state.)

Whoever had tied him had apparently been fairly experienced; his fingers weren't numb, even if his shoulders felt like they were being pulled from their sockets. Still, he tried to remember to flex them occasionally, so the blood wouldn't pool. When they freed him (if they freed him, he tried not to think) he would like to have his fingers still functioning properly.

Being tied behind him had saved them from much in the way of injury, at least.

Some part of his mind vaguely wondered about what the purpose of all of this had been. The other troll had originally mentioned making Eridan talk - but he'd never prompted anything else after that, never asked a single question or even suggested Eridan speak up.

Could it have only been to see him in pain...?

He could, kind of, understand that. After all, surely many, if not most, of the rebels had suffered at the hands of highbloods; and here he was, weak and vulnerable, a sorry excuse for a violet and easy pickings.

Just like before.

Too low even for the lowbloods, huh, Ampora? See, even they know you're shit.

He flinched at his own imagination's words and curled up a little tighter. Here, in this dark, slightly musty room, he could almost believe it really was Alecto standing there and talking to him.

You might as well get used to it, you know. Gettin' hit's the only thing you're good for. Cry out and maybe you'll even be funny.

Eridan, as he had so often then, swallowed the whimper that nearly escaped him and focused again on his breathing, tears taking up their familiar tracks across his face and dropping noiselessly onto the slightly dusty stone floor. He wouldn't cry out. He wouldn't give them a reason to laugh. He could take the pain; it was the laughter that made him want to die.

As he remained still, the pain in his body eased to a dull ache, and he was able to think a little more clearly. He wasn't sure how much time had passed; but surely it had been at least the rest of the night, maybe longer.

Staring into the pitch blackness of the room, he reminded himself why he was here; tried to imagine what Sollux - surely awake by now - might be doing. Was he eating (something far better than what Eridan had ever been able to manage), or maybe sleeping (in his own recuperacoon, that he didn't have to share with anyone, much less a worthless excuse for a seadweller), or talking (with people worth talking to, who were funny and witty and smart and nothing like Eridan at all)?

Did he even remember Eridan existed? Maybe, he thought bleakly, maybe they told him he'd run away. Or that Eridan didn't want to see him. Maybe Sollux would want to be free of him badly enough to even believe it.

He shut his eyes tightly to try to stop the tears and held his breath to prevent the sobs that threatened to shake him. He didn't think Sollux would forget about him; not intentionally, anyway, but...

What was one miserable seadweller compared to what he was surely getting, somewhere above Eridan's head?

Who would bother themselves about him?

That thought came perilously close to allowing a sob to escape. Eridan bit his lip, hard enough to draw blood, and almost savored the acrid tang that flooded his mouth, letting it distract him from his despair. He had to keep it together. He no longer really remembered why it was so important, that he not let himself dissolve and fall apart, only that it was. Or had been. Or would be.

Only that everything depended on not making a noise.

Desperate to distract himself, he let his thoughts veer into the misty lands of daydream, something he'd not allowed himself to do in a very long time outside the immediate context of a book or a particularly engaging game. It was an old daydream, one he'd built, brick by yearning brick, in the perigees after everyone he'd known abandoned him; a phantom bastion against the aching loneliness of finding himself cast aside and forgotten.

He was a prince. A beloved prince, with a people who loved him, a princess who loved him too, servants and friends and everything a prince could ever want...

Chapter Text

Eridan hadn't thought he'd be able to sleep, but it seemed only a breath ago he'd been totally alone in the dark. Now light, painfully bright, woke him as it spilled around the silhouetted shoulders and heads of at least three trolls in the doorway. Eridan squeezed his eyes shut and tried to hide his face in the floor to avoid the burning brightness, which seemed, after the total darkness of before, as painful as going out in the Alternian day.

"What the fuck?" someone was saying. "I told you to take care of him, not beat him up and dump him down a hole, you complete fucking imbeciles!"

Something about the voice, or maybe the words, seemed familiar to Eridan, but he couldn't trace why; his head hurt too damn much.

As if thinking of his headache reminded the rest of his body that it, too, was in pain, Eridan was flooded with sensory input. His shoulders screamed that they were being pulled straight out; his leg that it was twisted halfway around; his neck that it was being strangled again; his fingers that someone was stabbing them with needles. Even his skin cried out, each bruise feeling fresh and breathtaking in the worst possible way.

The pain tripled in intensity as his position was abruptly changed. Something grabbed around his middle (his ribs yelped that they were broken) and hefted him into the air, dropping him, stomach first (it wept that it was stabbed), onto a shoulder. Eridan couldn't even begin to get his eyes peeled open to see what what going on, and all the pain overwhelming his system prevented him from even listening anymore.

He thought he would faint.

As the troll carrying him began to move, jolting Eridan repeatedly in the stomach (knives, stabbing, over and over and over) and jostling all the other hurting parts of him, he thought he would scream.

All that came out, however, was a low moan.

----

It seemed sweeps passed by while the troll carrying Eridan continued to walk; but since the light was still hurting his eyes when they finally came to a stop, he suspected it had been a pretty short walk overall. He only had a few moments to relax at the temporary cessation of added pain, however, before he was dropped onto something that gave just a bit, and all the pain woke back up, clamoring for attention from his weary mind.

Then the bonds around his arms fell away, someone tried to lift them over his head, and Eridan saw - not just stars, but an entire supernova, exploding behind his eyes. He didn't even realize he was screaming until the excruciating pain from his shoulders eased enough that he could feel the mounting anguish in his already-aching throat.

The person stopped trying to lift his arms up, and Eridan sobbed weakly, unable to do anything more than lie there, now on his side, for what seemed like a very long time indeed.

His arms complained again, quietly, for a brief moment while someone wrapped something cold around his wrists; his feet and one knee did the same when it was done to his ankles. After that, he was left seemingly alone.

----

After a while, his pain receptors started to go numb - or else, his mind managed to shove the constant pain into background noise; he found himself able to think again, if sluggishly, and was even able to crack his eyes open without his head trying to implode itself in agony from the light.

He was in a white-and-grey room; the bed - for it was a bed - beneath him had a pale grey cover, and the floor was of a similar color, though darker and smooth. The part of the wall that he could see was white, and the table between it and him was a shiny silver metal, with a matte white top.

He became aware of the quiet murmur of voices, just at the edge of his awareness; they seemed to be around the region of his feet. With exaggerated care to avoid setting off his headache again, Eridan slowly shifted his head down until he could see the owners of the voices through slitted eyes. None of them - or at least, the vague blobs that were all he could see without his glasses - looked even vaguely familiar, and he lost interest, letting his eyes close again.

Only for a moment, though, because after that moment, he heard a rather loud, very angry, and very familiar voice break into the otherwise quiet room.

"What the actual fuck, KK, I can't believe-" The voice cut off as the echoes indicated its source had approached the doorway.

Eridan braced himself to open his eyes again, and was rewarded with a familiar blurry outline.

"Eridan???" Sollux's voice cracked on the second half of his name, and Eridan felt like crying.

"Fucking- Who did this? How dare you hurt him?" The blurry blob shifted, perhaps to look at one of the other blobs by his feet. "Karkat, I swear to fuck, you have ten fucking seconds to tell me who did this before I start killing people."

"I don't know! I was told he was being taken care of, and I had you to worry about, and then the flitter to deal with, and about a hundred more fires came up-"

So that was what Karkat sounded like, Eridan thought muzzily. It matched him nicely, the strident tones easily reading as the all-caps of his quirk from when they were wrigglers.

He dragged his attention back to the shouting match at his feet, which had moved on without him.

"-fucking better be or someone is going to die - and it isn't going to be him!" Sollux's voice was unusually crisp on his Ss, an indication that far from being distraught, he was so furious that even his tongue behaved.

The Sollux-shaped blob, apparently done with the conversation, approached his head, becoming a bit more distinct the closer he was; when he spoke again, his voice was much quieter. "Eridan? Are you okay?"

Eridan squinted up at him and smiled vacantly. "I'm okay," he tried to say; what ended up coming out was more of a croak than anything distinguishable as words.

Sollux crouched down, bringing his face almost into focus, and put a finger on Eridan's lips to silence him. "Never mind. Shh. Don't try to talk, okay?"

He brushed the side of the sea troll's aching throat, just below the gills; the heat Eridan could imagine following in the wake of his fingers sank into his muscles, and he relaxed a little, letting his eyes slip shut again.

"I can't believe any of you would do this! He wasn't, and isn't, a threat. He saved me!" Sollux's voice was quiet now, but no less intense. "And you just beat him to a pulp. Or allowed it to happen!" he added, when someone made a noise of disagreement from Eridan's feet. It didn't stop the disagreement, but now Sollux was stroking Eridan's hair in just the way that he knew made him relax, and the seadweller couldn't summon the mental energy to focus back on the conversation; so he let himself drift.

Eventually, the hand in his hair stilled, and Eridan groggily opened his eyes again to find Sollux's face in front of his.

"You back with me?"

Eridan blinked a couple times to clear his eyes and carefully, slowly, nodded, keeping his unfocused gaze on the blue-and-red of Sollux's eyes.

"Okay. They're being assholes and don't want to let you free-" Eridan whimpered slightly in the back of his throat, and Sollux rested a hand on his arm to soothe him, "-but KK's agreed that if you'll wear a collar so you can't go running off they won't keep tying you up. Is that okay?"

Eridan couldn't read Sollux's expression very well, but he could hear the concern in his voice, and knew that Sollux wasn't just asking for form's sake. He wanted to make sure that Eridan really was okay with this option - or at least, more okay than he was with the alternative. Feeling somewhat heartened, Eridan nodded. Anything would be better than how he'd been bound; better than sitting alone in a dark room with nothing but the memories to keep him company.

Even a slave's collar.

Sollux gently squeezed his upper arm, kindly avoiding the still-aching shoulder area, and Eridan managed a weak smile for him. His mind was starting to clear, now; absently, he decided someone must have given him some kind of pain relief, because the rest of his body was only muttering in discontent rather than screaming. Even Sollux helping him to sit up - at least as far as the bindings on his wrists, attached to the side of the bed, allowed - didn't make it too bad; and the yellowblood's hand, gently resting between his shoulder blades, radiated enough calming warmth to aching muscles there that Eridan was even able to relax a little, for a while.

He leaned against Sollux and watched the blurry shapes at his feet through his eyelashes. There were only two, now - no, wait, there was the third one, coming around the doorway and holding something that glinted briefly in the light. The third shape handed its burden over to one of the other two, who then approached Eridan's head.

As he came closer, Eridan picked out a few noticeable features even out-of-focus: the new troll was shorter than Sollux, and his hair seemed to be let to go wild, almost hiding two small nubs of horns within it; the symbol of the Sufferer was blazoned in red on his shirt. This, then, was Karkat.

The same Karkat he'd been such friends with, as a wriggler.

The same Karkat who had decided Eridan was the worst scum to walk Alternia and blocked him, along with all their other friends.

The same Karkat to whom Eridan had typed hundreds upon hundreds of blocked messages in the depths of despair at the Academy, and whose angry grey text still frequented his dreams.

Eridan swallowed hard and dropped his gaze as Karkat stared directly at his face, probably trying to meet his eyes. Eridan didn't want to meet his eyes. He didn't know what he might see in Karkat's.

Disgust, and revulsion, surely. After all, that was what Eridan deserved.

He heard Karkat sigh, and then saw, from the edge of his vision, the glint of light on the shiny part of the collar the other was carrying as it was lifted towards his neck. He shut his eyes before it reached him.

The cold metal clasped his neck in a chilly embrace; the weight of it settled on his collarbones.

He could feel his gills flutter in protest: it was cold, colder somehow than the icy chill of the water they were used to, and blocked the lower ones from opening fully. And though the metal warmed relatively quickly to his skin temperature, the weight of it somehow kept that chill.

Eridan swallowed, experimentally, and felt his throat press against the confining metal; then Sollux was tugging on him to get his attention.

"Eridan? Okay?"

He nodded, automatically, blankly watching as one of the other blobs - a troll with horns that were very straight and very pointy - freed his hands from the shackles they'd been trapped in, then repeated the process for his feet. He felt the familiar crackle of red-and-blue psionics against his side as Sollux helped him ease up into a seated position with his feet on the floor; then they surrounded him again and helped to lift him to his feet, as Sollux, half bent over, got his shoulder under Eridan's to provide more stability. His own shoulder complained, but not badly enough to try to say anything.

"Come on. The room's at least on the same floor, so we won't have to manage stairs. It's just a short walk, okay? Just focus on me, and step-" Eridan, watching his feet, obeyed, and Sollux chuckled in his ear. "Good, okay, you got it. Come on."

The walk was, as Sollux promised, short, and mostly a blur of his own bare feet - he wondered idly where his shoes had ended up - limping across smooth stone: varying shades of tan and brown and grey mixing in folds that reached out of his focus.

Before his leg started to hurt too much, Sollux guided him to a door that swung open in a shower of red and blue sparks and got him to sit down on a couch just inside, shutting the door in the same fashion as he'd opened it. Eridan sat gratefully, rubbing absently at his knee as the psionic turned back into a blob moving across the room to another door to the left of the entrance.

He disappeared briefly through the far door; Eridan heard the sound of water running. When Sollux returned, he helped Eridan back to his feet at first; then, when Eridan's bad leg gave a bit and he stumbled with a hiss of pain, the psionic simply picked him up with his powers - Eridan barely noticed the little shocks of the psionics against his exposed skin - and carried him to the other room. This, as it turned out, was a bathroom: all of smooth tan stone but for the glass doors of the shower/tub hybrid, the metal handles, and the glass mirror hanging over the sink.

Eridan was glad to be unable to see more than a blur reflected in the mirror as Sollux sat him down on the lid of the toilet to start, gently, removing clothes that were - with the advent of a chance to clean up - suddenly far too dirty and damp with sweat for Eridan to stand them on his body any longer. He squirmed and shimmied as best he could to help Sollux get them off, almost missing the hiss Sollux made when his shirt came off to reveal the bruising underneath, and again when his swollen knee was exposed.

All he wanted was to be clean again, clean and comfortable and not tied up in ways that made his very bones ache and his mind play haunting, horrifying memories on rerun.

"You'll have to stand for a bit longer, okay? I want to shower the worst of it off before you soak." Sollux's voice was quiet as he helped Eridan to step into the tub; Eridan just nodded and let himself be moved by hand and sparking psionics like a doll as the other directed too-warm water on various aching parts of his body and gently scrubbed or wiped off whatever Sollux deemed unclean in that area.

Between Sollux's careful, gentle touch, the rising humidity in the room, and the water temperature being just a little warmer than he really found comfortable, Eridan found himself forced to relax; Sollux had to catch him twice when his legs threatened to buckle. By the time the yellowblood was satisfied Eridan was clean and let him sink to the floor of the tub, Eridan was more than glad to do so.

As the water level slowly rose around him, Sollux cooled the temperature of it until the sea troll nodded that it was cool enough for comfort. "It never fails to astound me how you find freezing water comfortable," Sollux muttered as he patted Eridan's head, leaning against the wall of the tub.

Eridan only smiled and let himself slowly drift off while the tub filled, finally falling into a somewhat restful slumber when the water rose over his head.

Chapter Text

When Sollux returned to wake him, he brought with him new clothes and - much to Eridan's relief - the backup pair of glasses he'd packed.

“Thanks,” the seadweller croaked, wincing at the pain that provoked. Turns out being strangled wasn't great for the throat - who knew?

Sollux winced in turn, probably at the wreck of Eridan's voice. “Don't try to talk, ED, okay?” He reached in to pull the plug out of the bathtub's drain, then helped Eridan to sit up. “I was able to coax some soup out of the kitchen workers; hopefully that will help some, and then you need to rest.”

Eridan nodded and leaned against the side of the tub as the water drained the rest of the way out. Sollux wasn't going to get any arguments from him; he felt like a ball of pain.

At least the soak had helped him rehydrate, which in turn let his body start to heal some of the damage. This dry desert air was distinctly not good for a water-dependent sea troll.

Sollux set his burden down on the sink. “Do you think you can stand on your own?”

Eridan thought for a moment, then gave it a try, using his arms on the side of the tub to push himself up. His knee complained - loudly - but didn't give out on him; though he did have to lean on Sollux's proffered arm for balance as he stepped out.

The yellowblood helped him dry off - taking extra care around his neck both to avoid pressing on it and to make sure the metal collar that now encircled it was completely dry - then into clothes. Eridan was relieved to see that Sollux had picked a pair of his shorts, rather than the longer pants that were all Eridan had packed for himself - he wasn't entirely sure he could stand long enough to get both legs into pants - and settled his glasses on his nose.

Once he was dressed, Sollux helped him to the couch, then dragged - with a rather painful screech of heavy stone on stone - the table from across the room over with his psionics. On it was a still-steaming bowl.

“How are your hands? Can you manage by yourself?”

Eridan flexed his hands, then his arms, experimentally, then nodded. His wrists and elbows ached a bit, and his shoulders still complained when he tried to lift his arms up, but neither was debilitating.

Sollux helped him to sit forward where he could reach the table and shoved a couple pillows in behind him to help him stay there, then handed Eridan the spoon. “Eat as much as you can, okay? I'm guessing those asswipes didn't feed you at all.” Eridan shook his head, and Sollux grunted. “Well, it's been a night and some since last you ate, then. Go slow, it's still hot,” he cautioned as Eridan made to put the spoon into his mouth.

Eridan paused and took a moment to blow on the spoon until it stopped steaming, then swallowed the spoonful. It hurt going down - but then, even breathing still hurt some, so that was only to be expected. It also made his throat press against the collar, which made him shiver reflexively.

The soup was smooth, but fairly thick; as he ate, it almost seemed to soothe his throat and he was able to eat a little better. Sollux had briefly vanished, to reappear with a stone pitcher - was almost everything here stone? - and a couple of - glass, thank goodness - cups, which he set down on the table within Eridan's reach.

Then he joined the seadweller on the couch and proceeded to fill him in on the situation as Eridan continued to eat.

“So, I don't know how much you remember - or were conscious for - but they took us down with a couple of shots: engine and a lucky one to the steering column. I'm guessing I hit my head on something when we crashed; next thing I knew, I was in the medbay - that's where you were when I found you, by the way - with a bunch of people surrounding me.

“Soon as I woke up, KK chased most of them off, though. I guess everyone was worried. They'd taken the collar off while I was out, so I didn't get to prove anything to them, sorry.”

Eridan shook his head to convey it wasn't something he needed to be sorry for, and Sollux continued.

“Once the medic there cleared me as being okay, KK brought me here; this is our rooms, by the way. I'm pretty sure I could have bullied KK into giving you your own after everything, but I figured you probably wouldn't want one to yourself anyway?”

The last was said with the intonation, if not the words, of a question; Eridan answered it with another shake of his head. At least he knew Sollux, and knew he'd be safe with him; who knew if he'd be safe alone?

Besides, he was used to Sollux's almost constant company by now. Being by himself would be, at best, lonely.

“Hope you don't mind continuing to share a 'coon - it'll be a little tight with both of us, but there's not a good way to get another in since all the new ones are wider than the doorframe, and I'm guessing it would make a lot of people even more upset with you if I insisted on it. There isn't exactly a surplus of them around here.”

Eridan shrugged. Sleeping with Sollux wouldn't be any trouble, and, well... if people were already angry at him, he'd just as soon not give them more reasons. He hadn't been expecting to still be alive, and certainly not here; but since he was anyway, he might as well try not to make waves.

“Anyway, KK just about dumped me into 'coon when we got here, so I didn't have a chance to ask about you. Then when I woke up and went looking for him, well... I found you.” Sollux grimaced. “They're so fucking lucky I didn't tear everyone there a new one. I can't believe they all would do that to you, even with you being a highblood.”

Eridan shook his head and held up one finger; Sollux blinked at him. “...Wait?” he asked, clearly trying to make sense of the gesture.

He shook his head again.

“One?”

He nodded.

“One person?” Sollux guessed; getting another nod, the yellowblood sighed. “So it was just one person that did all that to you?”

Eridan shrugged.

“I don't suppose you know who- no, you wouldn't, obviously, you don't know anyone here and I sincerely doubt they told you their name.” Eridan shook his head, and Sollux continued. “Well, if you see them, avoid them and let me know, okay? If they did this to you once, I don't trust them around you at all. I don't want you hurt again.”

Eridan nodded.

“Anyway, after I just about ripped everyone there to shreds for what they'd done - or allowed to happen - to you, I insisted, obviously, that they couldn't keep you tied up. KK was being particularly stubborn - he kind of suggested that it wouldn't be safe for you if you weren't, which is total bullshit - but I bullied him into at least agreeing to this.” Sollux touched the collar with the brush of a finger. “It's only got the distance module activated, and even that's set at the farthest it can go, so you should be able to go anywhere around here without it setting off. KK locked it, obviously, and has the receiver; he wouldn't let me have it. Probably figured I'd turn it off.”

The grin the yellowblood wore as he said that told Eridan in no uncertain terms that he would absolutely have done that, and Eridan smiled a little in return.

“They want to be sure you won't run off and tattle on where they are, I guess. Don't know where they think you'd run to. I tried to tell them you wouldn't be that stupid, to just run off into the desert, but-” He shrugged. “That didn't go much of anywhere. So, this.”

Eridan nodded. The collar was an uncomfortable weight around his neck, and a constant reminder of his situation, but he supposed he would get used to it. Sollux had, after all; and probably any number of people here had too.

And it did make sense, that they would want a way to prevent him from leaving. It didn't make him feel any better about having to wear it, but... he could at least understand the reasoning.

“Well, anyway. After I got you settled in to soak, KK gave me a tour around. It's a pretty big place; they've got a lot of the cliff carved out. It was a mine - technically, still is, to bring in some credits to get what they need - but it was intended to be what it is now from the start, apparently. Marrok - that's the troll who officially owns it, blueblood - is a Sufferist. KK says he's the one that found him and kept him from walking into the same trap I did.”

Sollux shrugged. “Anyway, he and his matesprit and some others started up this place on a copper vein, and found some gem deposits, which let them really get started on making this place what it is - getting 'coons instead of relying on patches, computers, plumbing and heating, tools, that kind of thing. Most of it they make themselves, though. All the stone stuff is hand carved, even the rooms. I'm told it helps that a lot of it is sandstone and fairly soft, at least as far as stone goes.”

Eridan lifted the bowl and tipped it to drink the last of the soup that he couldn't get onto the spoon, and Sollux made a noise of approval.

“Good, okay. Anyway, apparently the place has been running for about five sweeps; they're still working on expansions. You might hear some of the mining, though they've made a couple of barriers between the active mining area and the rest of the place to help keep noise down. I think KK said they're working on making some stairs at the end of the hall out there so they can make another set of rooms above. Sounded like they're expecting more people to be coming in on a regular basis.”

Eridan nodded; it made sense. And better to have the rooms ready and not need them than to get people and have to scramble to make space for them.

“So that's most of what I've found out so far. KK wants me to help out with the tech side of things - I was right, by the way, they are the main hosts of the low web.” He grinned. “So I'll be able to check that out more thoroughly, and work on defenses to keep people like past me out. You can heal up for now, and then we'll figure out what you want to do. I... honestly wouldn't blame you if you just wanted to hide in here.”

Eridan shrugged. It certainly sounded like an appealing notion right now - at least no one would bother him in here, not with it being Sollux's rooms. But he was worried he might get bored-

“So I'll leave the laptop with you. Fuck knows I used your computer for long enough, it's only fair I let you use mine. It won't access the internet unless I plug it into the network in the tech room, but it's got games on it and if you get bored of them I can bring it up and download more.”

Eridan nodded, relieved. So he would have something to do, at least.

“All of our stuff from the flitter is here, by the way - I put most of it in the bedroom-” He pointed to a door on the wall next to the one that held the door to the bathroom, “-except they obviously kept the sopor patches and the food. Managed to hide a box of ration bars from them, though, so we've got backup just in case.” His set face told Eridan that he didn't 100% trust them to actually provide food to the seadweller. “I'll bring you meals, and sorry in advance if they're late if I get caught up in something, but I don't trust anyone else to. The door locks, by the way, so you won't have unwelcome visitors at least.”

Sollux got up and dug in a bag by the couch Eridan hadn't spotted, bringing out his laptop. “So here - I've turned off the password so it'll just boot you in directly. Just ask me before you mess with any of the settings, okay?”

Eridan nodded. That was reasonable enough.

“You can refill the pitcher in the bathroom, water's safe to drink out of the tap. Medic says to keep stretching your leg and arms to help the muscles relax and heal, and to drink lots of water, though you probably would do that anyway.”

Eridan nodded again; the air was more than dry enough that he knew he'd get dehydrated pretty quickly, even with his gills shut. He would remember to drink.

“Think you'll be able to get in 'coon yourself when you get tired? KK wanted me to go up and meet the other techies and get settled in up there.”

Eridan hesitated for a moment; he didn't really want to be left alone again, but Sollux sounded like he was pretty antsy to go do what Karkat wanted. And, well... his own selfish wish to not be alone was hardly enough to fairly argue that Sollux should stay, especially as Eridan could certainly handle himself just fine with what he needed to do. He was pretty sure he could even manage to drag himself into the recupercoon. So after that moment of thought, he only nodded.

Sollux's relieved look sent pangs of unhappiness down his spine, but Eridan tamped them down and tried to ignore them.

“Okay. I'll try to check in in a couple hours, all right? Go to sleep as soon as you get tired again, the sopor'll help.”

Eridan nodded one more time, and Sollux got up, petting Eridan's hair briefly in a motion that made the seadweller's eyes slip shut briefly; then he was gone, the door softly shutting behind him. Eridan heard the sound of a bolt shoot home and relaxed a little. He'd be safe in here, at least.

After a moment, he squirmed to remove the pillows behind him and laid down on the couch, using one to support his head. It took some adjusting to get comfortable - the collar kept pressing uncomfortably against his gills when he laid on his side, but when he tried laying on his back, it laid against the bruises that were thickest around the front of his throat.

He finally managed to settle on his stomach; the back of his neck was the least damaged part of it, so the collar weighing down on it wasn't so bad. It was still uncomfortable, of course - he was pretty sure it would never not be - but it was tolerable enough.

Getting up and going to the recuperacoon felt like far too much effort right now, though he was quickly tiring; so he allowed himself to just relax as much as he could like that, intending to gather the strength to get up... and all unintentionally slipped into sleep.

----

He awoke out of a nightmare of Alecto strangling him to find that he'd somehow twisted onto his back; his hands were tangled in the collar, as though he'd been trying to pull it off. Probably he had been.

Eridan pushed himself up to a sitting position, breathing raggedly and trying to ignore the sick feeling that twisted his gut. He really needed to stop sleeping outside of sopor. It had been bad enough sleeping dry back when Sollux had first come, when he'd been whole and healthy; now, with an aching body that called back physical memories of school and a collar around his throat that only exacerbated the feeling, it was probably just short of dangerous.

In an attempt to settle his mind, Eridan reached out to pour himself a glass of water with shaking hands. The pitcher was heavy, and he ended up spilling; but it was just water and wouldn't hurt a stone table, so he didn't feel the need to get up to get something to clean it up.

He took his time sipping it, letting the coolness soothe the burning of his throat and the anxious buzzing lingering in his mind. Only when he felt relatively calm again did he start to think about getting up; going to 'coon was probably the best option right now.

With a grunt that only made his throat hurt a little, he levered himself to his feet; but rather than heading straight into the bedroom, he followed a masochistic whim and stepped back into the bathroom.

Now that he had his glasses again, the image in the mirror was no longer blurry.

Eridan winced; he looked just about as bad as he felt. His face was heavily bruised and swollen around his eyes; his neck a massive ring of bruises beneath the heavy metal collar.

The sight of the collar was, by itself, enough to send a shiver down his spine.

He'd never, ever, in a thousand sweeps or a million situations, thought there would be a collar around his throat. He was a highblood, after all, for all that no one of his color treated him as such - a violet, a seadweller, simply could not be a slave. For an infraction that would cause any lower-blooded troll to be enslaved, one of his hue would simply be culled.

He'd expected to be dead. This, though...

He caught the edges of an ironic smile hovering around his lips in the mirror. Perhaps he'd never imagined it, but it certainly was fitting, for him. He already bore a slave's scars; why shouldn't he be collared as one, too? He was certainly as worthless as any highblood would consider a slave to be, anyway.

The smile faded with that thought, and he hugged himself to stave away the surge of depression it had caused. That motion, however, brought his attention back to his body, as he caught sight of the darkened purple-black of bruises on his wrists.

Better to pay attention to that than to the yawning void of despair in his head; Eridan, with no small mental effort, yanked his attention back to his examination of his body.

What he could see of his arms past the sleeves of his shirt were bruised around the wrists and the backs of his forearms; an experimental pushing up of a sleeve revealed similar bruising around his elbows.

Looking down, he could see below the shorts that one knee was as colorful and swollen as his face and neck. There was some light bruising around his ankles and on the other knee as well, but nowhere near as bad as elsewhere.

Said first knee was starting to complain; Eridan shifted his weight off of it and lifted the hem of his shirt up.

Stomach and ribs had large bruises scattered around them; one side - the side that ached the most - had heavier marks than the rest. (He seemed to recall being kicked in that side more than once, though he shied away from the memories.)

All in all, it was far from the worst he'd endured - but there were an awful lot of marks.

At least he didn't have to try to hide them. That had always been the worst part of school: having to find ways to prevent people from seeing the injuries to keep from being deemed too weak to be a highblood and culled for it. Violets weren't supposed to allow themselves to be hurt, certainly not as much as he'd been on a regular basis, and any sign of weakness in front of the instructors - or worse, the headmaster - might well have been taken as a cullable offense.

Not that they didn't know what was going on, of course; but if it was out of sight, there was no need for disciplinary action.

The swelling on his face would have been the hardest to hide; makeup was difficult enough to apply over bruising, but trying to make swelling look less severe was tricky and involved a lot more effort than he felt capable of at the moment.

Forunately, though, he didn't have to hide anything now; the only one who'd see him would be Sollux, and he already knew.

(Besides, he doubted that anyone had found his makeup kit, so it was probably still in the flitter - which was who knew where.)

Feeling queasy from the inspection and the thoughts and memories it had drawn up from the dark recesses of his mind, Eridan turned away from the mirror and proceeded to limp into the bedroom.

Some sleep - actual sleep, with sopor to soothe - would surely help. It was good for healing bruises, if nothing else; and he hadn't seen any evidence of bleeding anywhere except, perhaps, inside his mouth where his teeth had torn into his lip.

Eridan shucked his clothes with rather more difficulty than Sollux had had putting them on, and levered himself over the edge of the coon with much wincing and panted breaths.

He was asleep again almost before even sinking below the surface.

Chapter Text

Eridan spent the next few weeks mostly in 'coon or on the couch, playing whatever of Sollux's games most caught his attention. The swelling on his face and in his knee and shoulders slowly went down; the bruises were even slower to heal, but by the time Eridan felt up to moving around more, they had at least faded a bit, the black disappearing in favor of lighter purple.

Sollux still tutted over them and insisted Eridan take it easy; the seadweller was not about to argue. He still felt exhausted, even with regular sleep.

It probably didn't help that he had nightmares every time he tried to sleep, either, whether it was in 'coon or out. When Sollux was there, he was able to soothe them away; but the psionic's schedule was irregular at best, and he often didn't come back to the rooms until well into the morning.

(Not that the night/day cycle had much meaning down here, with no windows and huge amounts of rock between them and the sky. Eridan himself could only really keep track of it by the clock on the laptop and the twice-daily faint sound of a bell at midnight and about an hour to dawn - though his body insisted on keeping the same hours as he had for perigees, waking just before dusk and going to sleep an hour or so past dawn.)

Without Sollux there to wake him and soothe him out of the nightmares, well...

He definitely wasn't sleeping very well.

At least the thick stone walls kept anyone else from hearing his screaming. Small favors.

To be fair, Sollux was doing his best to make sure Eridan was taken care of; he was pretty good about bringing him meals approximately on time - often compaining about the kitchen staff, who apparently side-eyed him and were reluctant at best to prepare a meal for a seadweller - and spending what time he could spare with him, but it just... wasn't enough.

Eridan knew he had no right to complain, however, and tried to remind himself that he'd been expecting to be dead at this point; he should be grateful that he was even alive, even if he had to wear a collar and was pretty much locked in these rooms (by a desire for safety, if nothing else).

But it was hard not to resent the clear disdain the others had towards him that he could read between the lines of Sollux's complaints. He'd done nothing to them - nothing to anyone!

He dreaded leaving the rooms, even as he felt himself starting to go stir-crazy as the nights, then weeks, passed. Trolls were not meant to stay in confined places; especially not seadwellers, who were used to having the vastness of the ocean to explore. The more time went on, the more anxious Eridan grew at not being able to see the sky or to walk more than sixteen steps in any one direction (eighteen, if he minced his steps; thirteen if he took larger ones - he had ample opportunity to count, in his constant pacing).

The games could only distract him for so long; and though Sollux got him new ones fairly often, after a while all of them began to feel the same.

He took frequent soaks in the bathtub, but it wasn't the same as being in the ocean, and something in the water made his gills swell painfully when he took them too frequently or stayed in the water for too long, interfering with his ability to breathe with them and making them ache. Sollux had asked the medics about it, but none of them had had any idea what could be causing it (and only one even really cared, anyway). After all, it was seadweller anatomy, nothing they'd been exposed to before; and Eridan was reluctant to undergo any kind of testing that might allow them to figure anything out, not when it was something he could prevent relatively easily by simply not staying in the water for too long or soaking too often.

(Sollux himself tried to do some research online about it - in the rare times when he had free time - but admitted he could come up with nothing that made sense; and he didn't dare try to hack into highblood networks that might have more information, not with the security of Sanctuary at risk.)

The collar was a constant burden, and even more of a constant irritation, rubbing the sensitive edges of his lower gills raw; if he wasn't careful with how he moved, it only got worse. Sollux had gotten him a lotion to try to soothe them, but it stung in his gills and made him feel like he was breathing in fumes, even when he wasn't trying to breathe through them; so he didn't end up using it at all and just dealt with the pain instead.

He tried not to complain about the food, but he missed fish dreadfully, and the salty tang of seaweed. Landdweller food featured a lot more (fairly bland) vegetables than he was used to eating, and left him feeling somehow hungry even when he was full. Meat helped, but there was rarely much of it.

He missed his home, and his 'coon - big enough to share comfortably, not like the one here that pressed him and Sollux together almost too close.

He missed the freedom of the ocean, the walk to the town, the exercise he was used to getting on a regular basis.

He missed Deydre, and Arnold, and all the other trolls from the town.

He missed his flitter, and the freedom it had provided him to go where he wished (even if he didn't wish to go anywhere anyway).

He even missed taking on jobs, dealing with flight control officers and snobby clients and officious guards.

In the lonely hours when Sollux was gone, he found himself curling up on the couch, trying desperately not to fall asleep or fall apart.

In short, Eridan was miserable.

But he wouldn't let Sollux see that. The yellowblood already felt horrible about Eridan's situation; he was doing all he could to improve it. It wasn't his fault that Eridan couldn't be content with how things were.

So he tried his best to put on a happy face, to pretend nothing was different from how they'd been at home, even as he felt himself slowly descending into a despair he had a harder and harder time fighting. (He tried to fall back on his old mantra - nothing but now, nothing but now, nothing but now - but it didn't help; not when now was as much of a problem as his memories.)

After three weeks and two days and five hours and forty-three minutes and sixteen seventeen eighteen seconds, Eridan just couldn't take it anymore.

“Sol, I... can I...”

“Can you what?” Sollux replied sleepily, sitting on the couch and towelling his hair dry after his post-'coon shower that evening.

“Just... maybe I could...” Words were hard. Eridan swallowed hard, twisted his hands together behind his back until his fingers were white, and tried again. “If it's okay, I mean, maybe... I, I could...”

Sollux put down the towel and looked up at him. “Yeah?”

“...maybecomewithyou?” Eridan finally managed, all at once and not able to look at Sollux as he did.

Sollux appeared to need to take a moment to process that. “You... want to come with me? What, to the tech lab?”

Eridan flinched at the surprise he could hear in Sollux's voice, but nodded anyway.

“You'd be bored, though. I mean, it's not like there's anything much to look at, if you're not a coder. Just a couple geeks in front of computers.”

Eridan scuffed a foot and stared at it, not feeling up to looking the other in the face. “I don't care, I just... if I don't get out 'a here I might start punchin' w-walls, Sol. I just... I can't... it's...” He trailed off, unable to finish the thought.

Sollux stood; Eridan watched his feet move closer, but still jumped a little when he felt the other's arms curl around him.

“Hey, it's okay, ED.”

Eridan sniffed, and realized he was crying as the part of Sollux's shirt that had touched his face became damp. “...'m sorry,” he mumbled into said shirt.

“Shh, no, it's okay, really. Of course you can come with me. I just didn't think you'd want to.”

Eridan felt a hand rubbing gently against his back and sniffed again, trying his best to stop leaking tears everywhere even if Sollux didn't seem to mind.

“I guess I kind of forgot, you aren't like me; you aren't used to being in one place all the time. I didn't realize it was this hard on you. I'm sorry for that, for not noticing.” Sollux's voice was soft, and his hand moved up to massage gently at one of Eridan's shoulders. “I'd be happy to have you with me, really.”

Sniffing yet again, Eridan let himself lean into the taller troll until he felt himself stop trembling. “...really?” he asked, tentatively, half expecting Sollux to rescind his words.

“Really. The only reason I didn't ask was because I thought you wouldn't want to.” The yellowblood paused, then sighed. “It's... not going to be easy on you, though, you know. I've been trying to get people to ease up, but... you're still a highblood, a seadweller, you can't hide it. And there's people here who'll resent you just for what you are.”

Eridan shrugged and shuffled a little. “I'm... I guess I'm used to it. Bein'... disliked, I mean. An'... an' anythin's gotta be better than goin' nuts in here.” He leaned back and managed a watery smile up at Sollux, trying to lighten the situation before he ended up crying again.

Sollux's smile back was half-hearted at best, but he reached up to pet Eridan's hair briefly. “If you're sure. I will protect you though, you know that, right? I can't stop them looking or talking, but no one's going to hurt you, not on my watch.”

(Some part of Eridan bloomed under those words, a warmth that spread through his body and had nothing at all to do with the residual body heat of the warmer troll beside him.)

He nodded in response, and Sollux continued. “Okay. Well, if you're going to come with me, you should probably get a bit more dressed than that...”

Belatedly, Eridan realized that all he was wearing from after his own shower was one of Sollux's old shirts; it was long enough to cover the necessary bits, but definitely was not a replacement for pants. He blushed brightly and stepped back out of the hug to go into the bedroom and find something more appropriate to wear out.

It didn't take long; he immediately discarded most of his clothes for the colors. He was going to stand out enough without flaunting his blood. Fortunately, though, he had packed a couple of plain black tops - one shirt, one sweater; he chose the latter - and some neutral colored pants, from which he picked out a fairly loose-fitting grey one.

With his injuries almost completely healed, it was the work of just a few moments to squirm into them - though the sweater was a little tighter than what he was used to wearing these nights, and it felt odd to have anything on his legs beside sweatpants - and he ducked back out into the main room.

“...do I still have shoes somewhere?” he asked, biting his lower lip; he hadn't seen any evidence of the ones he'd been wearing when they were taken down, and he hadn't packed extras.

“Um...” Sollux frowned a little, clearly trying to think. “I'm... honestly not sure, to tell the truth. I don't think anyone ever told me where they got to. They aren't in here, though.”

Eridan sighed and resigned himself to bare feet. One more way to stand out. Then a bubble of slightly hysterical laughter rose in his throat as a thought occurred to him.

Sollux looked at him strangely when it spilled out of him.

“Just... it makes sense,” Eridan tried to explain; Sollux only looked more confused, and the seadweller tried to clarify. “That I don't have shoes, you know. Cause-” He pointed to his neck, where the collar sat above the neckline of his sweater. “-cause slaves don't get shoes.”

Sollux frowned. “You aren't a slave, Eridan.”

“I'm w-wearing a collar an' all 'a them look dow-wn on me, I might as w-well be!” The laughter was becoming more hysterical by the moment, and he could feel tears start to prick again at the corners of his eyes.

“You aren't. Don't let it get to you, ED.” Sollux stepped closer to put both hands on Eridan's cheeks, and the seadweller took a few shaky breaths, doing his best to stop the hysterics and calm himself down. “You're not a slave, you're not lower or worse than them. They're assholes that can't be bothered to see what's in front of their eyes. That's their problem, not yours. Okay?”

Eridan hiccuped once and, reluctantly, nodded. He didn't really believe it, but he suspected Sollux wouldn't let Eridan go with him if he continued to disagree, and Eridan was just about willing to do anything to get out of these rooms.

Sollux ruffled his hair; Eridan made a quiet noise of protest, then headed for the bathroom to fix it (and scrub the tear tracks from his cheeks at the same time).

He still hated looking in the mirror, unable to ignore the metal band around his throat; but he pushed the discomfort away and tried to focus just on making sure his hair was fixed - at least as much as it could be, without any kind of products and being quite a bit longer than he was used to dealing with without such - and his face was clean. When he was finally satisfied on both fronts, he stepped back out to the main room.

Sollux was waiting by the door. As Eridan reached him, he opened it; and he didn't even complain when Eridan shuffled as close to him as he could without stepping on Sollux's feet.

The yellowblood led him down a corridor into a more open space; though the flooring of the corridor stayed the same, there was a large room off to the right which was only blocked off from the corridor by a low wall. Two sets of shallow stairs led down into it on either edge of the room, and it was filled with large stone tables and wooden chairs. A few trolls sat at those tables; Eridan cringed a little, but they didn't look over.

To the left they passed a set of double doors standing open; Eridan, on Sollux's right side, only caught a quick glimpse inside, but the sink and refrigerator he spotted told him what that room was.

A second corridor opened to the left after the kitchen; as they passed it, Sollux murmured to him that that was the route to the actual mine part of Sanctuary, where the ore vein was.

Just after that, they passed a large set of stairs on the right; Eridan could smell desert coming from that direction, and figured that was the way out. Sollux continued on, however, and Eridan did nothing but take a second wistful glance up the stairs before following. He wished he could go out, at least to see the moons; but he didn't know how far his collar's range would stretch, and someone might think he was trying to run away. Besides, he didn't want to go anywhere here without Sollux.

They passed the stairs, another set of double doors to the left - Sollux told him that was the medbay - and a small door to the right; then finally came to another set of stairs, smaller than the first - or rather, two sets, one leading down, the other up - of which Sollux turned into the one that went up. Eridan followed, close on his heels.

The stairs led into yet another corridor; Sollux turned into the first door on the right, and Eridan got his first glimpse of the tech lab.

There was more tech in the room than Eridan thought he'd ever seen in his life, much less in one place. It was filled with computers and other technical equipment; both lined the walls, and metal mesh cabinets filled with boxes with blinking lights and cables took up a large section of the middle of the room.

As they went around one side of the cabinets, Eridan spotted another troll; this one glanced up and waved absently at Sollux, before looking back at her computer screen-

Then she seemed to process what she'd actually seen and spun around again to stare at Eridan.

Eridan quailed a little and tried to hide behind Sollux, but the yellowblood put a hand on his lower back to coax him to step back out as he greeted the other.

“Hey, TM. This is Eridan. Eridan, Temana. She's head of the lab.”

Temana eyed Eridan for a long moment; he shuffled uncomfortably and kept his gaze on his feet.

“You brought him out here?”

“Is he not allowed to be?” Eridan didn't look up to see Sollux's expression, but he could hear the challenge in his voice; Sollux wasn't really asking, but rather forcing the answer he wanted.

“Well, I... suppose he is... I haven't heard anything contrary, I guess, but...”

“Then what's the problem?”

“He's a wader, Sollux! People are gonna be uncomfortable, and uncomfortable folks don't work well.” She didn't outright include herself in that, Eridan noticed - but he could hear her discomfort in her tone.

Sollux put a hand on Eridan's shoulder as the seadweller flinched at the derogatory nickname. “If they're uncomfortable, that's their own fault.” Sollux apparently either didn't notice or didn't care about her reaction. “He's not doing anything to anyone; I'm not going to ask anyone to interact with him if they don't want to. He's just going to be with me.”

Temana sighed. “...Fine, but you're responsible for him.”

Sollux made a not-entirely-polite noise with his teeth and tongue, then steered Eridan over to another desk, snagging a free chair on the way which he settled just to one side of his. “Sit here, ED. If anyone tries to talk to you, feel free to ignore them if you want; you're not here to be a circus exhibit or a verbal punching bag, and I'll make them fuck off if they try. Just poke me if I don't notice right away.”

He seemed to be waiting for a response; Eridan nodded and sat down, clasping his hands in his lap and staring down at them as he tried not to regret his decision. He had already been feeling uncomfortable and on edge, and the other troll's reaction to him only made it worse.

Sollux seemed to notice, and rubbed Eridan's upper back a little. “It'll be okay, you'll see. Not everyone here is so... prejudiced. I mean, TM's not too bad overall, but Cardea'll be nicer, and if Lemmie gives you issues I'll toss him into a wall; he already pisses me off. And really, no one else tends to come in here.”

Eridan nodded again, but didn't look up; he heard Sollux sigh, give him a final pat on the shoulder, and then turn to the computer in front of him.

Chapter Text

Neither of the other two techs tried to talk to him when they came in, though Cardea did her best to catch his eye to give him a little smile - Eridan couldn't manage a smile back, but did feel a little heartened by it - and he could feel Lemmie's glare on his back the whole time the other took to walk to his own station. Sollux was, apparently, too wrapped up in his work to notice them come in and introduce Eridan properly, but the seadweller hardly minded. The less that people noticed him, the more comfortable he felt.

The lab was silent but for the tapping of keyboards, the occasional clicks of computer mice, and the constant background hum of the tech in the room; Eridan tried to keep himself still and silent, not wanting to draw attention to himself.

For a while, he watched Sollux's screen; though he could make no real sense of the letters and numbers that crossed it, he could at least read them and guess. When that got tiring, he switched his gaze to Sollux himself, watching the way the other stuck his tongue out slightly through his lips as he concentrated; tugged at his hair when he was irritated; tapped his finger on his lips when he was thinking. Sollux seemed mostly unaware of Eridan's gaze, though once or twice Eridan caught the other's eyes flicking over to him; when that happened, he endeavored to turn his own eyes back to his lap before his gaze was spotted, but he was pretty sure Sollux had noticed.

The yellowblood didn't say anything about it, though, so Eridan continued to watch him. It was better than the alternative of getting lost in his own thoughts.

He managed to keep himself distracted like that for the better part of the evening before he couldn't help but start to shift. No one looked over at him when he did; feeling a little braver with no one's attention on him, he turned to sit sideways in his chair so he could look over the room itself a little better, and the occupants therein.

Each of the trolls had their own wall, at least at the moment, though more computers, not currently in use, were spaced along the walls. Temana - the one Sollux had actually introduced him to - sat to their right; Lemmie - the one who disliked him already - had the wall opposite them, with the door back out to the hallway on that wall as well; and Cardea - the seemingly nicest one - was on their left.

He couldn't see Lemmie very well, which he supposed he should be grateful for - after all, it meant the other (brownblood, by the color of his shirt; Eridan saw the sweep of one horn, curling from back to front below his ears) also couldn't see him that well. The glare he'd felt before had been more than uncomfortable enough to make Eridan want to spend as little time in his sightline as possible.

Temana seemed to be a yellowblood, like Sollux; he could see the edge of a yellow symbol - presumably hers - on the front of her black shirt. Her hair was close-cropped to her head, and her horns curled backwards, then down.

On the other side, Cardea also had a yellow symbol, hers on a white shirt; he could see the symbol better than he could Temana's, as Cardea had turned her chair a bit to the right. Her hair was pulled back in three braids that ran along her head, then were tied back at the base of her skull with the rest of her hair allowed to hang freely; her horns curled in and up in a gentle corkscrew. As Eridan watched, she frowned at her screen and bit at the skin alongside one of her claws, then resumed typing.

Eridan found himself chewing at the end of a claw as though in some sort of misplaced solidarity; very intentionally, he pulled it out of his mouth and clasped his hands in his lap so he didn't do that again. He'd thought that bad habit had been one he'd trained himself out of, but apparently not.

He wished he had the laptop, or a book, or something. Sollux had been right to say he'd be bored. But he didn't want to interrupt the other's concentration or work to ask him to come with him to get the laptop from their rooms, and he absolutely did not feel comfortable going by himself.

Frankly, he realized, leaving here was going to be a nightmare. It had been pretty early when they'd come - but surely there would be other trolls out by now. How was Sollux going to get them food? Would Eridan have to come with - or, possibly worse, be left here alone? He didn't want to be anywhere outside their rooms without Sollux... but he also didn't think he could handle as many people staring at him as they would probably face if he went out with Sollux now. Lemmie's glare and Temana's obvious discomfort had been bad enough; the thought of those multiplied by who knew how many other trolls was enough to make him want to find a dark corner to hide in for the rest of his life.

Just as he was thinking that, the sound of a bell ringing - much louder here than in his and Sollux's rooms - echoed into the room. Eridan turned himself and his gaze back to the desk in front of him just in time, as Temana sat back with a pleased noise. A moment later, Sollux did the same, though Lemmie and Cardea kept typing.

Solux looked over at Eridan, who fidgeted with his fingers in his lap. “That's the lunch bell,” he explained in a soft voice, meant only for Eridan's ears. “Do you want to...”

Eridan's flinch seemed to be answer enough, as Sollux didn't finish the sentence. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the psionic purse his lips, then turn to his left.

“Hey, CD.”

Cardea raised a finger briefly before returning to typing at lightning speed; Sollux simply waited, while Eridan rubbed at the skin around his gills under the collar self-consciously.

A few minutes later, she seemed to be done and turned to face them. “What's up?”

“Trade you compiling in the morning if you'll get lunch for us, and dinner later,” Sollux suggested, gesturing to himself and Eridan.

Cardea grinned. “Hell yes. Anything to not be stuck here half the morning!” With that, she - there was no other word Eridan could think of to describe it other than vaulted - out of her chair and set off down the stairs at a trot.

Eridan relaxed a little, and Sollux smiled down at him. “That's tonight taken care of, at least. You doing okay?”

Eridan worried at his lower lip; shrugged; then, finally, nodded. He didn't exactly feel comfortable speaking up, especially with the brownblood in the room.

As though the thought had alerted him, Lemmie stopped typing; Eridan heard the sound of a chair being pushed back from the other side of the room and hunched his shoulders up a little.

“Be great to get away from the rotten fish smell in here,” the brownblood sneered. “Don't you think, 'Mana?”

“You're only smelling yourself, Lemmie,” Sollux called with a snort; at the edge of his sightline, Eridan saw Temana snicker.

“Oh, fuck you too.”

“No thanks, not interested in rotting meat.”

Lemmie growled and stalked out of the room without a further reply; Eridan bit his lip. He doubted the other was going to be anything but infuriated that he'd been insulted like that in front of someone he considered to be inferior, and Eridan could predict that that fury would be taken out on him if ever Lemmie had the chance. He'd seen the outcome of that kind of situation more than enough times to know. But what was he supposed to do? He couldn't help what Sollux chose to say, and though he could, technically, have simply not been here, how was he supposed to know what would happen?

But that didn't matter to someone like Lemmie when they had their pride hurt.

Eridan touched the collar self-consciously. Perhaps he shouldn't have asked to come at all; going stir-crazy was probably preferable to this kind of hatred directed at him. It made him feel like he'd never left the Academy at all - that everything between that and here had been just a pleasant dream - and only reinforced the sense of worthlessness and despair he'd been feeling creeping up on him for weeks.

Caught up in his own thoughts, he almost jumped out of his chair when Sollux put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, are you okay? You're looking pretty upset.” Sollux pressed gently, massaging the seadweller's tense shoulder with one hand. “Nobody did anything while I was distracted, did they?”

Eridan shook his head; in so doing, he noticed that Temana had also left while he'd been lost in thought, and that he and Sollux were the only two in the room. “I'm... I'm fine,” he tried, weakly; but he couldn't lift his gaze from his hands.

He really should have known better than to hope the yellowblood would take that at face value; Sollux seemed to have an uncanny ability to read Eridan's emotions, and he used it now.

“Don't lie to me, ED. Something's up.”

Eridan bit his lip again. “Nothin'... nothin' happened, or anythin',” he offered, hoping Sollux would leave it at that.

Of course, he didn't. “Then what's up?”

Eridan shifted uncomfortably, swallowed hard - feeling his throat press against the collar - and tried to put his feelings into words. “I... I just... I feel like I shouldn't be here.”

“Shouldn't be here, like, in general, or specifically here?”

“Either?” Though fixing the former was all but impossible at this point, and Eridan knew it.

“Do you want to go back to the rooms?” Sollux asked, concern evident in his voice; but Eridan shook his head.

“Not... not in front 'a everyone...” he responded, hoping the other would understand what he meant - that there were inevitably going to be many more trolls out there, and he just couldn't handle that much attention on him, especially negative attention.

Whether he understood the implications or not, Sollux didn't press further. “Okay. Well, Cardea will bring food up - she'll probably be here with it soon - and she agreed to get dinner later, too. So we won't starve or anything for not going out.”

Reminded of the conversation earlier, Eridan dared a question of his own. “What's, um, compilin'?”

Sollux tapped a finger on his lips in thought. “Um... as basically as I can explain it, it's when we send whatever stuff we've been working on to get into the system. For us, compiling time is basically just sitting here to make sure no errors come up, and if they do, to fix them if we can. Since we can't really do much else while the compiler's running, we do it when we're all done here, and trade off mornings being bored out of our skulls until it's done.” Sollux squeezed Eridan's shoulder lightly. “So, taking CD's shift means she can go do things - or go to 'coon early - this morning, and we can stay here until mostly everyone's asleep.”

Eridan breathed a sigh of relief. Somehow Sollux had anticipated his concerns and managed to find a solution that didn't inconvenience anyone - except, perhaps, Sollux himself.

He felt a surge of guilt at that thought. “I'm sorry, to make you do that-” he began, but Sollux shushed him.

“You didn't make me do anything, ED. And honestly I don't mind compiling shifts very much, except that it keeps me from getting back to the rooms until late and I hate to wake you up when I come in.” He tilted Eridan's head up with a finger under his chin to look him in the eye. “Since you'll be here too, there's no need to worry about that, or to worry you're getting lonely.”

Eridan flushed and tore his gaze away from Sollux's eyes. He'd been trying so hard to keep Sollux from realizing just how lonely he was, but apparently the yellowblood had been, like he always seemed to be, able to see right through him.

“Hey, no, it's okay, ED. Of course you're lonely, you've been stuck in there mostly by yourself for half a perigee. There's nothing to be ashamed of.” Sollux squeezed his shoulder again. “And while we're here later, we can talk, and maybe figure out ways you can get out more, right? So it'll be two birds with one stone.”

Feeling a bit heartened, Eridan nodded, and was rewarded with a smile.

“Good. And- ah, there's the troll of the hour!” Sollux turned to greet Cardea, who was just entering the room with a tray in her hands. “Did they give you any trouble?”

Cardea grinned back. “Nope, just told them I was getting food for 'us' and let them make their own assumptions.”

Eridan made an inquiring noise, and Sollux turned to look at him. “The kitchen staff likes to give me trouble when I get food for two, since they know the other's for you,” he explained, mouth twisting in irritation. “I've complained about it often enough here, I'm sure Cardea's heard all of it.”

“Sure have,” the other troll responded, bringing over the tray to put it in a free space on one of the desks between their stations and taking her own plate off it to bring to her desk. “But they're used to it being you doing it, not anyone else; they probably just figured I was getting food for us techs. I really doubt they know us up here well enough to tell that there's not three techs to still be up here, with Lemmie and Temana downstairs. So, no trouble at all.”

Sollux pushed one of the plates over to Eridan; unlike most of the meals he'd been getting, this one was still steaming, and seemed to have a larger portion of meat on it than he'd seen served before. Was the dearth of meat he and Sollux usually got part of that 'trouble' Sollux was having?

Eridan felt his stomach twist at the idea that the trolls in the kitchen thought so poorly of him that they'd actively give him and Sollux worse portions; clearly, he was a burden on Sollux for that, since the yellowblood never had anything different from Eridan when he brought food to him.

But with Cardea there, he didn't want to say anything; so he did his best to conceal the surge of guilt that thought provoked and turned his attention to his meal. He could apologize to Sollux for that later, when they were alone.

He finished eating just before Temana reentered the room; he avoided her gaze as she passed them by keeping his steadily on his plate, though Cardea gave her a quick greeting through a bite of food. No one greeted Lemmie when he returned, though, and the brownblood kept his mouth shut this time - perhaps not willing to risk another taunt from Sollux.

When Sollux and Cardea finished eating, Sollux gathered all of their dishes onto the tray with red and blue sparks, and Cardea snorted. “Show off,” she grumbled; Sollux only grinned and turned back to his computer.

Silence fell in the room after that, as all the techs started up their work again. After a while, Eridan - bored enough that he almost forgot about being nervous - started to fidget, first with his sleeves, then the collar, and finally with his hair. The lattermost kept him occupied for quite a while, as he braided and unbraided small pieces in front of his face, trying increasingly complicated patterns as he went.

He was aware of Sollux glancing at him now and then, but tried not to think about it, keeping his focus on his hands.

Eventually, the bell downstairs rang again; Sollux didn't even look up as the other three headed out the door, but kept coding until Cardea returned a short while later with the tray, old bowls gone and fresh plates steaming in their place. There were only two this time - Cardea winked at them and mentioned something about joining her matesprit to eat before vanishing again.

“Well, that gives us here to ourselves, then,” Sollux commented quietly; Eridan looked up at him, and the yellow explained further. “Unless we've got something big going, dinner's generally when we stop working. Once we finish eating, I'll set the compiler running; with any luck, it'll be done in the next couple hours.”

Eridan nodded and turned his attention to his food. It was, again, a much better assortment than he was used to getting here; he scuffed a bare foot against the floor and spoke up. “I'm... I'm sorry, that you're gettin' worse food 'cause 'a me...”

Sollux looked up and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Because of you? How so?”

Eridan wasn't deterred. “Because you're gettin' food for me. This's... much better than we usually get, ain't it? So that means they're refusin' to give you anythin' better because 'a me.”

Sollux sighed. “It's not your fault, Eridan. You aren't in control of what they do, and I certainly don't blame you for it.” He reached over and squeezed Eridan's free hand with his. “If it bothers you, we could do this sort of thing more often. I suspect Cardea would be amenable, if I keep taking her compiling shifts in exchange - I know she's been wanting more time with her matesprit, and he's usually pretty busy the whole night so morning's the only time they really get together. Then we can do this, and get better meals out of it. Does that sound good?”

Eridan swallowed his bite, thought about it for a moment, then hesitantly added, “Maybe, um. Could we maybe bring the, the laptop next time, though?”

Sollux gave a soft chuckle. “I did warn you you'd be bored - but yeah. You won't be able to have the volume on, but otherwise that should be okay. None of us will be bothered by more computer noises, after all, as long as it's just clicking and typing.”

Eridan nodded his assent. There were plenty of games he could play that didn't require him to have sound on, so that wouldn't be a problem. And maybe his boredom with the games would be alleviated simply by being in a different place.

“Okay. Let's plan on that, then - you can come up with me when I'll have the compiling shift, and stay in the rooms when I don't, so you don't have to deal with seeing everyone until you're ready. If Cardea agrees, that'll be two nights out of four. And we can bring the laptop so you have something to do.”

Feeling much better about the situation now that they'd figured all of that out, Eridan nodded, and they finished their food in silence.

The rest of the shift passed quickly as they began to chat - or rather, Eridan asked questions and Sollux told him things about Sanctuary that he'd not had a chance to before.

From Sollux's words, Eridan began to see the shape of the place and the people in it - how everyone worked together to get things done, the types of work people did, the way the nights went, the command structure (Karkat being in command of the people and Marrok of the work and supplies; Eridan was a little surprised to learn how well the two of them worked together, compared to most trolls in command positions he was familiar with), and more.

And by the time the program was done, Eridan had relaxed enough that when he followed Sollux back downstairs, he walked with him instead of in the other's shadow, and didn't even flinch when they passed a few trolls still sitting in the dining hall on the way back to their rooms.

He didn't have a single nightmare that day.

Chapter Text

After that, the nights fell into a relatively comfortable rhythm. Every other night, he would join Sollux in the tech lab, keeping himself occupied with the laptop while the others worked, and Cardea brought the two of them meals; the other nights he stayed in the rooms, but Sollux always returned shortly after the meal bells to bring him something to eat. He had to return to work after they ate lunch, but he almost always stayed after dinner; they would chat for a while, then head to 'coon together.

(He never did find his shoes, but his feet were becoming callused enough that he didn't worry; and after a while he stopped even feeling self-conscious about it, as it turned out he wasn't the only troll to go around barefoot after all. It seemed plenty of others felt uncomfortable in footwear and chose to do without when they could.)

As the nights passed, Eridan became more and more comfortable in the lab. Cardea was unfailingly nice and frequently coaxed him into chatting with her too; and even Temana started to open up a bit, no longer viewing him with the same distinct wariness she had at the start - though she still wasn't exactly 'friendly' with him.

Lemmie never warmed up to him, but from the way the others acted around him, 'rude and unpleasant' seemed to be his default setting. It was, of course, worse for Eridan than the others - Lemmie definitely had some kind of grudge against highbloods - but it wasn't intolerable, when it was just words; and Sollux or Cardea frequently jumped in to cut the brownblood down a peg or two when he started to get particularly nasty.

(He only tried getting physical once; after Sollux, making good on his promise to Eridan, literally tossed him across the room, he seemed to decide it wasn't worth it.)

After a while, Eridan began to feel a bit braver, and even started to join Sollux on nights when Temana or Lemmie had compiling duties. Sollux and Cardea always walked him back, Eridan tucked neatly between them, and distracted him the whole way until he no longer felt quite so nervous even when other trolls were around. And eventually he even got to the point that he was comfortable walking to and from the lab by himself, if he tired before Sollux or Cardea were done or slept in late and wanted to join them later in the night, regardless of whether other trolls were around or not.

Nobody outside the lab really talked to him, of course; but that was all right, he told himself, and tried to believe it.

(In reality, though, it hurt; almost no one wanted to even acknowledge he existed, and pretty much all of the ones that did only did so to sneer at him or make cutting comments; 'wader' was a term thrown around with an uncomfortable amount of consistency. Eridan came to hate it like he'd never hated a word before in his life.)

But it was still better than being tied up and beaten, so he tried to be happy about it. And at least he had a few friends.

He occasionally caught a glimpse of Karkat, but he made sure to duck out of sight before the mutantblood could see him. He wasn't ready for that inevitable confrontation; frankly, he didn't think he'd ever be. He really did not want to hear, from Karkat himself, in person, just how much of a worthless piece of shit he was. The memories of the Trollian conversation from so long ago were bad enough.

In spite of that, Eridan was beginning to feel confident - at least that no one was going to try to hurt him, if not that they would accept him - so he started to try to make himself useful instead of just not being in the way.

He accompanied Cardea down when she got their food so he could carry it back up himself - allowing her to eat with her matesprit - and brought the dishes down again alone while the others got back to work; he watched the glasses each of the yellowblooded techies had at their stations, and refilled them as necessary from the large pitcher of water that lived on a table in the corner of the room (though he wouldn't provide the same service to Lemmie); he sat patiently through rubber-duck troubleshooting sessions directed at him; he even fetched items from outside the lab as the others needed them, whether it was something Sollux had forgotten in their rooms or a bandage for a papercut.

The only main area he had never tried to go by himself (or when anyone was inside; he'd only ever been in there after compiling shifts with Sollux, when pretty much everyone was already asleep) was the kitchen. There had never been a need for it, after all, with Cardea always being the one to get their meals and the dish-bins being in the dining hall; and since they knew that at least one person in there was distinctly against seadwellers, it wasn't a place he really wanted to try going to just out of curiosity.

And there simply had never been a reason to... until one evening, when they ran out of water in the jug that lived in the room.

It was the responsibility of whoever was on compiling duty to refill the jug; but Lemmie - whose turn it had been - had decided not to bother with that, since the jug was only a little less than halfway full. He had not, apparently, reckoned on the amount of water the five of them ended up going through, however, and the jug ran dry only a few hours after they'd all started work.

Temana, being the one to realize first when she got up to refill her own glass (Eridan was patiently being a duck for Cardea at the time, who was having trouble finding a bug in her code), started in on Lemmie. Eridan listened with half an ear until Cardea figured out her problem; then, freed of rubber duck duty, he went over to the table, determined to be useful.

Lemmie was complaining that he was right in the middle of something; Temana was demanding that he stop and go refill the jug since it was his fault it ran out. Eridan cleared his throat quietly, earning glares from both of them but getting their attention in the process.

He refused to let himself shrink back the way his body - sensitive to anger and irritation - wanted to, and instead spoke up, if quietly. “Um. I can go refill it? I'm not doin' anythin' now.”

Temana, caught a bit by surprise, blinked; Lemmie kept the glare up for a moment longer before huffing and turning back to his computer with a satisfied expression, apparently taking for granted that Eridan would take over his responsibilities.

“It's his fault it's not filled, Eridan, it's not your responsibility,” Temana began; but Eridan shook his head.

“I don't mind. Like I said, I'm not doin' anythin'. It's no trouble.” Then, before she could protest further, he slipped past her to grab the jug and headed out of the room and down the stairs.

There wasn't a closer place to refill it than the kitchen; but it was still an hour or more until lunch, so it should be at least quiet in there, if not altogether empty (at least, he thought so; he didn't exactly keep track of the comings and goings of the kitchen staff, so he didn't know for sure) so he felt confident enough carrying it to the doors and peeking inside.

Four trolls occupied the room; two were leaning against counters, apparently hanging around only to chat, while the other two were working - one stirring a large pot on a stove, the other kneading dough on a table.

One of the unoccupied ones - a rustblood, with horns that bent back then loosely twisted up - was the first to look up and notice him. She frowned with narrowed eyes for a second-

Then her face smoothed out into so natural of a smile that Eridan found himself doubting he'd even actually seen the previous expression.

“Eridan, isn't it?”

Feeling suddenly very shy - he wasn't used to even being noticed with anything but disgust, much less directly addressed - Eridan nodded.

She pushed herself off the counter and moved towards him; Eridan forced himself to stay where he was instead of backing up. “What can we do you for?”

He swallowed, then held up the jug. “Um... the, the techs ran out...”

“Water?”

Eridan nodded again.

“Sure, no problem.” She deftly took the jug from his hands and headed over to the sink.

Relieved that this was proving to be a simple task, Eridan relaxed a little as he waited for the jug to fill.

“Sverre?” The other troll who'd been lounging also pushed himself up, frowning a little. “Aren't you-”

“Oh, chill, Harlon. It's no trouble,” the first troll - Sverre - responded, interrupting him, and he subsided.

Once the jug filled, she turned back to Eridan and brought it over to him; Eridan took it from her with another shy smile.

“Thank y-”

But her smile abruptly turned cruel; before he could finish, a red glow surrounded the jug and lifted it out of his hands - and flipped it over his head, dumping the cold water down on him.

Eridan gasped and flinched back, blinking rivulets of water out of his eyes; the jug settled on a counter next to him as her laughter filled the room.

“Too dry for you here, wader? Why don't you go soak yourself?” She snickered as Eridan hunched in on himself, face burning with shame. “Oh wait, I already did it for you. So how about you thank me for helping you out?”

“Sverre...” That came from the oliveblooded troll who'd been stirring the pot; he hadn't looked over before, but did now, a frown on his face.

A kitchen towel, propelled by red, hit Eridan's head out of nowhere and blocked his view; Sverre snickered again. “Clean that up, fucker, and get out of my kitchen. You're dripping your grossness all over my floor.”

Eridan caught the towel with nerveless hands; his body, trained by sweeps of similar situations, automatically moved to obey, but his mind had been dragged into another place entirely.

A sneer curled the cerulean's lip upward. “What a disgrace. Did you think you were going to earn some sympathy here?”

Eridan's face burned almost as painfully as his back, and he fixed his eyes on the floor just in time to see a drop of blood from one of the open gashes sneak past his shirt and jacket to fall and splash on the tile.

It didn't escape the older troll's notice.

“Disgusting. Poor little grub, did you get a boo-boo?”

Laughter came from the back of the room; out of the corner of his eye he saw several other seadwellers in student uniforms. Among them he recognized two: members of the Uppers who'd been there to see his punishment: the whip cracking across his back - once, twice, thrice - each one forcing a scream from his lips and leaving behind a new line of fire down his back.

Eridan swallowed hard to try to control the nausea; the floor swam before his eyes.

A box suddenly entered his line of sight, shoving him backwards. His hands grasped it of their own accord.

“Take that and get out of my medbay, you pathetic worm. You're dripping your muck-blood on my floor.”

The cerulean medic gave the box another shove, hard enough to send Eridan stumbling backwards. As soon as he cleared the doorframe, the door was slammed shut in his face - much to the merriment of the trolls inside, whose laughter Eridan could hear reverberating through his head...

Somehow, Eridan managed to drag himself back to the present in time to watch his hands, moving of their own accord, wring out the bottom of his shirt with the towel so he stopped dripping; he then became aware that he was kneeling, having apparently wiped up the water that had splashed on the floor already while his mind was gone.

Ringing filled his ears, drowning out anything the others might be saying. He didn't try to take back control of his body again; not until it had stood up again on its own, placed the towel - folded neatly, if still soaked - on the counter nearby, and began to back out of the room.

He had just enough presence of mind to grab the empty jug before his feet took off with him and he fled, laughter echoing through his mind.

Chapter Text

The next thing Eridan knew, he was fumbling with the key in front of the door to his and Sollux's rooms. Forcing himself to breathe, he pulled his focus together long enough to get the key in the lock, turn it, and stumble inside; it caught when he tried to pull it out, however, forcing him to fight with it for another few seconds before he got it free and was able to shut the door behind him.

As soon as it closed, he slid down to the floor, tears blurring his eyes and sobs wrenching their way out of his throat. His mind played both old and new memories over and over in front of his mental gaze until he could hardly breathe.

He had no idea how long he'd knelt there; when he finally came back to himself, his legs were tingling with pins-and-needles from kneeling for so long, his throat burned, and he had to force himself to breathe through it before the panic overwhelmed him again.

Breathing (slow-quick-slow), he tried to pull himself together. He couldn't just sit here; he'd been doing something. He couldn't let himself fall apart when something was expected of him.

Drawing on reserves he hadn't known he had, Eridan grabbed the jug - abandoned on the floor nearby - then pushed himself to his feet and wobbled towards the bathroom. Filling it up in the kitchen wasn't an option anymore; but he was already here, and though it would take much longer to fill in this sink, it was at least private.

The jug didn't fit under the faucet; Eridan had to stop himself from dissolving in tears again and think.

This jug wouldn't fit - but the one on the table outside did. He could fill that, and use it to fill this one.

Solving that problem cleared his head a little further; he splashed - warmer - water on his face to ground himself and remove the evidence of tears, then pushed his body to walk back out to the outer room, retrieve the jug there, and begin the slow process of filling the larger one.

In doing so, he felt himself slowly returning back from the brink; his breathing slowed of its own accord, and he no longer felt like he was about to fall into an abyss. Thoughts returned; the ringing in his ears died down until he could hear the quiet of the room and the running water from the sink.

He'd been a fool, thinking that things had been getting better, that maybe he wasn't a useless worthless piece of dirt.

Thinking that he could ever be anything more.

Oddly, the thought was almost reassuring; it felt comfortable, to sink back into the familiar depression and hopelessness.

He didn't think too hard about it. The jug in the sink was overflowing; he turned his attention to that. Fill the bigger one, place the smaller back in the sink-

Moving made him aware of his shirt, soaked and clinging to him in uncomfortable ways; his hair dripped water down his face and onto his arms and back.

He couldn't go back to the others like this.

He left the jug to continue filling and stripped; grabbed a towel to start drying his hair. By the time the jug started to overflow again, he had it dry enough that it at least wasn't dripping any more. Pour into the larger jug again; one more fill of the smaller should be enough to top off the larger. He set the small one back under the flow of water and briskly rubbed the towel over his face and skin, hard enough to sting a little. The pain only helped to ground him further.

He was a bit more careful around the collar and his gills. They were still raw and hurt from even a gentle touch of the towel, but he didn't want to leave them wet; they liked to flare when they felt water, and that only made the rubbing of the collar on them worse.

Satisfied that he was dry - or at least as dry as he was going to get without taking far more time than he dared - he hung the sodden clothes over the tub's rim and moved into the bedroom.

Pants were easy - he had another pair almost identical to the ones he'd been wearing, and put that one on. However, he didn't have another black shirt; so he pulled the sweater on instead and hoped no one would notice the change. He didn't plan on staying up there long, anyway - just long enough to bring the jug in and let Sollux know he was going back to the rooms. He couldn't bear the thought of being noticed again, not now; and he knew that if he tried to stay, questions would be asked that he didn't want to answer.

He didn't want to talk about - or even think about - what had happened, at all, much less in front of people he respected.

When he stepped back into the bathroom, the water was spilling over the rim of the smaller jug again; he shut off the tap and lifted it to pour into the large one one last time. That was enough to fill it, and then some; he lifted the smaller jug to his lips and drank the rest of what was in there himself, before putting it back away on the table and picking up the large one to carry up.

It was heavy with the water, but he'd earned his muscles over perigees of work with much heavier things, and one or two perigees of not working hadn't set him back that far. In fact, not only did he handle the weight easily, but it also helped to steady his hands, hiding the shakiness he felt coursing through his body.

Some careful maneuvering was required to get through the door to the rooms and lock it again with the jug in his hands, but he managed it with only a bit of trouble, and turned his steps to return to the tech lab.

He had to pass the kitchen in order to get there; Eridan hesitated a moment, then turned to take the steps down into the dining hall instead, walking in front of the dish-bins and up the stairs on the other side, which path neatly avoided walking immediately in front of the kitchen doors. The few trolls in the dining hall might have looked at him a little strangely, but he wasn't in his head enough to even notice, still pushing himself through on adrenaline alone.

Safely past the danger, he hurried his steps to the stairs up to the tech lab.

Everyone seemed busy working when he entered; relieved, Eridan moved over to the table and set his burden down without anyone even glancing at him.

He'd like to just leave, but... if he didn't at least let Sollux know, the yellowblood would worry. So he'd have to let him know, but carefully - hopefully, he could manage it with the other not even looking at him.

That thought in mind and fidgeting with the collar, he approached Sollux's chair from behind before leaning in and tapping the other's shoulder.

Sollux gave a grunt; Eridan breathed a silent sigh of relief that the other seemed plenty distracted enough.

“I'm goin' back to the room, Sol,” he murmured; receiving another grunt in response, he turned to go.

Before he got more than two steps away, however, a familiar crackle of red and blue halted his movements.

Shit.

“...ED, why are you wet?”

Shitfuckshit-

“Uh... just, accident...?” he offered lamely, hunching his shoulders and refusing to turn around.

Unfortunately, he didn't have a great deal of control in the matter; not when the other cared to exercise his psionics. He felt himself being turned and hunched a little further, gaze on his feet.

“...Eridan. What happened.”

The tone of Sollux's voice brooked no arguments or further attempts at lying; Eridan flinched and shut his eyes, feeling his face heat up again in remembered shame, but he couldn't bring himself to speak.

He flinched again as another voice spoke up - Temana. “He went to get water half an hour ago...”

“Half an hour??”

Eridan wished he could shrivel up and disppear on the spot; but he couldn't, and had to settle for curling in on himself and keeping his eyes shut. He should have just left after bringing up the water...

He heard a chair scraping against the floor, then a rustle of clothing; peeking one eye open, he spotted mismatched shoes stepping in front of him, then a hand - gentle, too gentle, so gentle it almost made him start to cry again - lifted his chin.

“Eridan, look at me.”

His eyes opened of their own accord before he could tell them to stop; red and blue caught his gaze and held it. He fought back tears.

“Did the kitchen staff do something to you?”

He realized he was trembling as the other laid his hands on his shoulders; but he still couldn't bring himself to speak and reveal the shame of his mistake, of daring to feel anything other than worthless and having his true state shoved back in his face with the cold water spilling over him.

Sollux frowned. “They did.” It wasn't a question; Eridan squeezed his eyes back shut.

“Sollux-” That was Temana again, hesitant.

“No. Don't try. This will not stand. I promised him he wouldn't be hurt, Temana.” Sollux's voice was steely. "It was one thing when it was just petty shit like the food, but this goes too far."

Eridan opened his eyes in time to see the floor move under his feet as Sollux turned him around, then stepped past him and started to walk out; psionics sparked uncomfortably against the hardened soles, but he didn't even try to struggle as he was carried down the stairs. In front of him he could see Sollux, his shoulders tense and psionics crackling alarmingly around his horns and hands; he didn't need to see the other's face to know that his eyes, too, would be glowing with repressed power.

He was just grateful it wasn't turned on him.

But it would be turned on someone soon; Eridan felt a surge of guilt, and as they turned down the corridor towards the kitchen, he swallowed and tried to speak. Nothing came out, so he swallowed again, then forced the words out.

“S-sol...”

There was no response from the troll in front of him. He tried again.

“Sol, it's... it's fine, i-it's okay...”

“It's not okay, Eridan. It is so far from okay that it's not even on the same fucking planet.”

Eridan flinched at the barely-contained fury in Sollux's voice and tried to make himself smaller.

In front of them, the kitchen doors slammed open in a blast of red and blue, causing all the trolls within to jump and spin around to stare. Sollux set Eridan down beside him - keeping the psionics hovering around his body until he was sure the other wouldn't fall - and put his hand back on Eridan's shoulder. (Eridan tried very hard not to wince; it was still crackling with power and made the muscles in his shoulder jump while his skin felt like burning.)

Sollux's voice was deceptively quiet and composed when he spoke.

“Good evening.” No one responded; all but one bore looks of terror. (The last one, an oliveblood with horns that forked near his head, the lower parts curling down behind his ears and the uppers going straight up - Eridan recognized him as the one who'd been stirring a pot - actually smiled a little, strangely enough.) “I don't believe we've properly met.” Sollux's voice sounded pleasant, even; but his hand on Eridan's shoulder tightened painfully. “Allow me. My name is Sollux Captor. At the risk of appearing to boast, I am the strongest psionic here.”

No one looked like they were even remotely thinking of contesting that fact.

“And this is Eridan, who is under my protection.” Now his voice dropped to a terrifying growl that made even Eridan want to flee; and he wasn't even the one it was directed at.

But just as quickly, the psionic's voice resumed that pleasant tone. “I do believe there's been a misunderstanding. It seems someone here is under the impression that it is okay to torment a fellow resident, even for things entirely out of that resident's control, such as who they are.”

Eridan didn't know how Sollux could tell, but the one he surrounded in clearly intentionally painful sparking psionics was indeed the one who'd been responsible for Eridan's state, the one he'd heard called Sverre.

She looked like she was about to faint as she was brought directly in front of Sollux.

“Am I understanding the situation correctly? Or were you aware that your behavior was unacceptable, and chose to do it anyway?”

She'd turned a concerningly pale grey; her lips tried to work, but no words came out. Sollux continued on as though she'd replied anyway. “I see. It saddens me that a fellow troll could be so intentionally cruel to anyone else, much less someone who can't even fight back. I will have to speak to Karkat on this matter; he is, of course, the appropriate authority for this sort of thing.”

If anything, the other troll turned even paler.

Sollux set her down with an audible zap of psionics; she flinched and only barely managed to catch herself on a table when he let go.

“I strongly suggest that you, and any of your ilk you know of, learn very quickly that this behavior will not be tolerated.” His voice gained in volume even as it lowered back into the growl; Eridan, glancing behind him, realized they'd amassed a fairly large audience.

“The next person who attempts anything on someone under my protection will not be facing Karkat. They will be facing me, and I will not hold back. Is that understood?”

Sverre was nodding so rapidly her head looked like it might fall right off; two of the trolls behind her were nodding as well, though not quite so frantically. The last troll continued to smile, and gave Sollux a composed nod - not so much of agreement as of respect.

“Then I do not believe I have any further business here. That is, so long as it is understood that no troll here should be treated differently - or more poorly - than any other, regardless of color or status, and continuing to do so is unacceptable.”

There was more frantic nodding. Eridan saw Sollux permit himself a small smile; then he turned away and led Eridan down the hall in the direction of their rooms.

Eridan stumbled a little and clenched his jaw; if anything, the psionic's grip on his shoulder had tightened. He could feel the bruises already forming.

“S-sol...”

“Hush.”

Eridan swallowed hard, blinking back tears; his voice was barely even a whisper when he spoke. “Sol, you're... you're hurtin' me...”

Sollux let go so fast that Eridan stumbled into the wall next to him.

“Shit- shit, ED, I'm thorry- fuck, sorry, I didn't, I didn't realize-”

Eridan managed to get his feet back under him; rubbing gently at his shoulder with one hand, he took one of Sollux's with the other and pulled him forward. “Um. You're... makin' another scene, kinda... Can w-we... just go back?”

The psionic glanced behind him, saw that Eridan was correct, and let himself be pulled. “Y...yeah. I, I'm, ...fuck.”

Fortunately, the hallway that contained the access to their rooms was only a few steps away, and their rooms themselves only a bit further. Eridan, finding himself now in control, steered the barely-contained-babbling psionic to the door, and managed - with much less fumbling this time - to unlock it and get them both inside.

Once the door was safely relocked, Sollux slumped against a wall; Eridan managed to make it over to the couch before his legs gave out as the adrenaline left his system.

“Are you... okay? I didn't... I didn't do too much damage?” the psionic asked, voice wavering with stress and worry.

Eridan rubbed at his shoulder but shook his head. “Just, um. Bruisin', I think, is all.” There might be a little bit of burned skin from the sparking psionics, too, but he didn't want to bring that up. Sollux already seemed distressed enough, and it wasn't that bad.

The other breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed a little. “I'm still sorry. Fuck. I was just so... so fucking mad...”

Eridan rubbed the back of his neck, under the collar. “It's, um. It's okay, really. Um...” He paused a moment before continuing. “I... just, um, thank you... But it really w-wasn't... necessary, really, I w-wasn't actually... hurt or anythin'...”

Sollux sighed again - not in relief this time - and pushed himself off the wall to join Eridan on the couch. “Doesn't matter. They could have. ...What, exactly, happened, anyway?”

Eridan fixed his gaze on his hands and tried to find both words and the courage to say them; the psionic beside him waited in silence.

“Um... I, I w-went to, um, refill the jug, the kitchen's the nearest... the nearest place w-with a big enough sink. An', they w-were nice at first... then, um, she...” He swallowed hard and hunched in on himself. “Just... dumped it, on me, an' laughed, an'...”

He couldn't describe the flashback it had sent him into; not without risking sinking back into it. He could still feel the laughter in the corners of his mind, and the long-healed scars on his back ached with a phantom pain.

“I... so I, um. Just came, came here an' filled it, an' brought it back up. An'... uh. You know-w the rest.”

Sollux laid a hand on his knee; Eridan tried not to flinch. “...I'm glad to hear at least you weren't hurt,” he said quietly. “But that was still fucking shitty of them to do, you know that, right? You didn't deserve it.”

It was like Sollux was looking right into his mind, peeling away layers of defenses to peer into the pit of depression the incident had opened beneath him. Eridan clasped his hands together tightly enough that his fingers went pale and didn't respond.

“I mean it, Eridan. You didn't. You don't. You aren't worthless, okay? Don't go down that road again. People being shitheads isn't a commentary on your worth, or status, or anything. It's just about them being assholes.”

Eridan shrugged a little, keeping his eyes down; Sollux sighed again and reached over to pull him into a side hug with an arm around his shoulders. Eridan resisted initially; but when resistance proved futile, he let himself lean into the yellowblood's side.

“I'm sorry it happened to you, but it won't happen again, okay? I'm going to go to Karkat first thing tomorrow evening.”

It wasn't even midnight yet; but the way he said that made Eridan think he was suggesting staying here until then. Eridan swallowed and fidgeted with his collar. “Don't... don't you have to get back to... to w-work?” he asked, tentatively; he really didn't want to be alone right now, but... Sollux had better, more important things to do than to babysit him...

“Fuck that noise. They'll live without me for one night.” Sollux squeezed Eridan's shoulders lightly with the arm still around them. “I'm not leaving you alone like this- no, don't even try to argue with me, you'll just lose.”

Eridan, who had opened his mouth to do just that, shut it again at the admonishment. Arguments with Sollux over things like this never went well, not for Eridan anyway; the other had a mulish streak a mile wide and was not afraid to use his psionics if necessary to prove - or enforce - his point.

So instead of arguing, he just slumped into Sollux's side in a silent admission of defeat.

Sollux hummed in satisfaction and went to lean his head on top of Eridan's - only to pull away with a disgruntled noise. “Fuck, ED, you're still wet. Hang on.”

Eridan didn't even get a chance to protest before a towel - the fluffiest they had, Sollux's personal favorite - floated over in red-and-blue sparks and dropped into the psionic's hands. (Eridan felt an irrational feeling of relief that the other hadn't just dropped it on him instead; it was much easier to take the other's ministrations to his hair when it didn't call back memories of earlier.)

Armed with the towel, Sollux set about rectifying the situation; his hands were as gentle drying Eridan's hair as they'd been on that first night when Eridan had first come to these rooms. Silence fell for a long moment-

“...Holy shit. It is natural!”

Eridan jumped a little at the unexpected exclamation; Sollux was peering at the hair at the front of his head. “What-?” he asked, confused.

“The streak. I always thought you were just a pretentious asshole showing off, but - fuck, it's seriously natural?”

Eridan flushed brightly and reached up to the hair in question; but of course he couldn't see where it had grown out, revealing the natural color the black dye usually kept covered. “It... shit, I didn't think it'd grow out so soon...” Distress made his shoulders hunch again. “Um, did... did anyone ever find my, my makeup bag? From the flitter? I've, um, I've got dye in there...”

Sollux removed Eridan's hand from covering his hair and proceeded to comb through it. “Why dye it?”

“...Are you askin' why did I dye it, or why I want to now?”

The yellowblood shrugged. “Both?”

Eridan shifted uncomfortably, face a brilliant violet. “I mean, I don't really... want to have anything standin' out more than I have to... an' if you thought I was lyin' about it bein' natural, what do you think everyone else is goin' to think?”

“It's pretty obvious it's growing out that way,” Sollux suggested; but Eridan shook his head.

“I'd really rather not take that risk, if it's all the same to you,” he responded, eyes lowering to his hands in his lap.

He felt, more than saw, Sollux shrug again. “Well, your decision. So then, why did you start dyeing it?”

Eridan fidgeted with his hands. “Same... same reason, really. Didn't want to... stand out. Got enough attention without that.”

Sollux made a soft oh of understanding. “School?”

The violetblood nodded, not looking up.

“Okay. I can see that.” Sollux was silent for a moment, before continuing, “Well, if someone found your bag, they didn't bring it here; but I can't think why they wouldn't, if they had, so it's probably still in the flitter. Did you hide it or something?”

Eridan shrugged a little. “Not intentionally, but it's in one 'a the back cabinets. Probably no one looked there.”

“I'll bug someone to get it tomorrow,” Sollux promised. “If it's that important to you to cover it up.” Eridan only nodded, and the other continued his work on the seadweller's hair until he was satisfied that it was adequately dried.

Eridan did have to admit he felt a little better once there was no longer lingering wetness reminding him of what had happened. “...Thanks, Sol,” he offered quietly as psionics floated the towel back into the bathroom.

Sollux rubbed his back briefly with a small smile, and Eridan submitted to the affection without so much as a token protest. “No problem. It's the least I can do, after hurting your arm like that.”

Eridan shrugged; the movement only caused a bit of pain. “Barely even feel it. It's fine.”

Sollux leaned forward to gently bonk their foreheads together. “I feel bad, okay? So. I'm still sorry. I'll try not to do it again.”

Eridan offered him the ghost of a smile in return, and didn't even try to argue as Sollux continued to fuss over him the rest of the night. Cardea, wonderful friend that she was, brought them both lunch and dinner; and they both went to 'coon early, together.

Chapter Text

"So, Sollux. Want to tell me why you felt the need to make every-fucking-one suddenly terrified of you?"

Sollux leaned back in the chair he occupied in what Karkat had come to think of as his office, a little room off the corridor which also housed the tech lab and, further down, the logistics and communications room; it was just big enough for a desk, his chair, and a couple more on the other side of the desk for anyone who needed to talk to him. Its proximity to the control room (as they'd all taken to calling it, 'logistics and communications room' proving more trouble than it was worth to say) made it particularly useful for his purposes. He was, after all, the one pretty much everyone came to with issues; and as a solid third of the issues he needed to solve came from the people who worked in the control room (and another quarter from the tech lab down the hall), being nearby was handy.

He gave the yellowblood across the desk from him his third-best glare; infuriatingly, Sollux didn't seem cowed at all.

"They were bullying ED. I wasn't going to let that stand." He crossed his arms and stared back. "Since you don't seem to have any interest in stepping in to protect him, I figure it's up to me."

Karkat sighed and dragged his hands down his face. "Last I knew, things were fine."

"You said that about when we first came and he was beaten to a pulp, too."

The mutantblood flinched. Sollux would bring that up. "I can't be fucking everywhere, Sollux."

“Maybe not, but you do seem particularly disinterested in Eridan's welfare, specifically.” Sollux propped his feet up on the desk, leaning his chair back on two legs.

Karkat resisted the urge to throttle him and looked up at the ceiling, searching for patience that did not come easily to him. “It's not specifically, nookwhiff,” he replied, trying not to think that it kind of actually was, lest Sollux read it on his face. “You don't have any idea what it's fucking like, trying to wrangle this many trolls who've all got issues and feelings and think it's fun to get on each other's nerves or make things that should be simple tasks into absolute fucking garbage fires. I don't have the time or the energy to deal with everything!”

“Mm-hm. I'm sure it's so hard, giving the slightest bit of a damn about the one troll here that's the most likely to get into trouble through no fault of his own. Takes so much time to check up on him once in a while, to make sure he's not getting fucked over by everyone here for just existing.”

Karkat ran his hands through his hair in agitation, further messing up any vague order it might have been in this evening. “What do you want me to do, hold his fucking hand? I've got more important things to worry about, you know!”

Sollux took his feet down and let the chair return to standing on all four legs with a thump. “Nice to know you value your friends so little, Karkat.”

“For fuck's sake, he's not my friend, and I really don't know why you think he's yours, either! What the hell do you even see in that piece of shit seadweller anyway?”

Psionics crackled around the yellowblood's horns; Karkat crossed his arms and refused to back down.

“Everything you apparently don't.” Sollux stood up abruptly. “Everything you can't be bothered to drag your head out of your own nook long enough to see.”

Karkat made an exasperated noise. “Fuck you too! I don't need to look to see what he is! Have you forgotten what he did?”

The psionics died out; Karkat briefly felt victorious-

“What he did? What, pray tell, did he do?”

“Fucking- you can't be serious! He tricked and beat up our friend when she wouldn't quadrant him!”

Sollux raised a brow. “Did he, though?”

“What the hell are you talking about?? Of course he did, she said-”

The yellowblood interrupted him. “Oh yes, 'she'. Remind me, who was this 'she'?”

“Fucking- Alviah!”

Now Sollux grinned humorlessly, and Karkat felt like he'd somehow lost the argument just by saying that.

“Right. Alviah. Who was she... oh, yeah, I remember now. Wasn't she Tavros's matesprit for a while? The one who cut off his fucking legs so he wouldn't leave her?” The psionics started to crackle again.

Karkat still wasn't about to back down, despite the uncomfortable weight he felt in the pit of his stomach. “What's your point, asshole?”

“You're seriously telling me you're taking her word as being worth anything? That what she said is, in any possible way, actually true?”

“Why would she lie about something like that?”

“Why would she lie about why Tavros stopped contacting us? Why would she lie about what she did to him? For fuck's sake, Karkat, take your head out of your ass and think for a second here!”

“Oh my fucking god, has living with him completely rotted your brain? He admitted to it!”

Sollux cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, really? When?”

“When I talked to him!” But the statement lacked conviction; in the face of Sollux's certainty, Karkat was starting to doubt his own memories.

“I'll believe you when you prove it. I strongly suggest you go take another look at that conversation, though, because I can fucking guarantee you he did no such thing - because he never did anything to her at all, except refuse her pitch advances. Believe me, I checked.”

He didn't wait to hear a reply before stalking out, even if Karkat had been able to get himself together enough to make one.

What was he saying? The whole reason they'd all ostracized Eridan had been for that! Of course he'd done it! And what did Sollux even mean by saying he'd 'checked'??

Grinding his teeth, Karkat shoved his chair back - taking a perverse pleasure in the screech of wood on stone it created - and all but stomped over to the door to slam it shut.

He didn't want to see anyone else right now, he was so angry.

But what if Sollux is right?

He told the little part of him that whispered that to fuck right off. Obviously he was wrong!

But what if he's not? What if you're wrong?

Karkat dropped back into his seat with a growl and pulled the laptop sitting on the desk over to himself. So Sollux wanted proof? He would give him proof!

It was the work of a moment to turn it on and log in; but after that things stopped being easy. He'd forgotten that this computer had never had Trollian even installed, much less contained his old chatlogs; he would need to download the client first to be able to get at them.

As the program slowly downloaded, Karkat felt his anger start to drain away, replaced by a sick feeling in his stomach. What if he was remembering wrong, and Sollux was right, that Eridan had never actually done what the tealblood had claimed he did? What would that mean, for Karkat and what he'd done?

The program finished downloading and started to install; Karkat watched the little bar fill and drummed his claws on the desk. He wouldn't think about that. He was right, he knew he was right, and Sollux had just somehow been blinded by his own wish to see Eridan as something better than what he was, that's all.

The installation finished with a ding; Karkat leaned forward and opened the chat client.

Messages immediately popped up: Terezi, Tavros, even one from Equius. He closed all of them without even looking at them and set himself to invisible just in case anyone who knew him still used the program. (He'd had it drilled into him by the techies not to send out anything that someone could possibly trace back to them. Downloading and passive viewing wouldn't be a problem, but if he sent a message out without the techs making sure it was safe, it might catch someone's attention - or worse, give someone a trail to follow back.)

He scrolled down on his friends list until he came to the bottom, the list of blocked users. It had only two entries: fluffyPredator - even though she was absolutely dead, at Vriska's hands, it had still felt like a blow he could strike at her to block her old username-

And caligulasAquarium. Eridan.

Ignoring the roiling in his gut, he double-clicked on the second entry.

A message window immediately popped up; he scrolled up to the beginning of the last conversation they'd ever had.

CA: okay wwell see you later kar
CG: SURE. WHATEVER.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling caligulasAquarium [CA] at 16:15 1-15-50

carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling caligulasAquarium [CA] at 19:52 1-16-50

CG: OH MY FUCKING GOD.
CG: I CAN'T FUCKING *BELIEVE* YOU!
CA: hi to you too i guess
CA: believve me about wwhat
CG: YOU KNOW WHAT.
CA: uh
CA: i really dont no
CG: FUCK YOU, YES YOU DO.
CG: YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
CA: seriously kar wwhat are you talkin about
CA: wwhat did i do
CG: SHUT THE FUCK UP. DON'T EVEN *TRY* TO LIE TO ME.
CA: im not lyin about anythin
CA: kar wwhats goin on wwhy are you mad
CG: NO, FUCK YOU.
CG: WHY AM I *MAD*??
CG: YOU *KNOW* WHY!
CA: i really dont kar wwhats goin on
CG: YOU'RE SUCH A FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT EXCUSE FOR A TROLL!
CG: THE BAR FOR BASIC FUCKING DECENCY WAS SO LOW IT WAS *IN THE FUCKING GROUND*!
CG: BUT YOU DIDN'T LET THAT STOP YOU, OH NO!
CG: YOU WENT AND GOT YOURSELF A SHOVEL SO YOU COULD GO PLAY LIMBO WITH THE **FUCKING DIGBEASTS**!
CA: wwhat do you mean
CA: wwhat did i do
CG: SHUT THE *FUCK* UP, YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF TRASH.
CG: I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING FROM YOU.
CG: AS A MATTER OF FACT I DON'T EVER WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING FROM YOU EVER AGAIN!
CG: IT MAKES ME FUCKING NAUSEOUS I EVER EVEN THOUGHT YOU WERE A FRIEND!
CA: wwait please
CA: i dont knoww wwhat i did but im sorry
CG: SHUT UP.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] blocked caligulasAquarium [CA] at 20:04 1-16-50

Karkat stared at the words on the screen before him, feeling sick to his stomach. He had been positive he remembered Eridan admitting it, but...

He hadn't. He'd apologized, yes... but it definitely seemed, in retrospect, that he didn't know why.

He could have just been faking it, sure, but...

Karkat hovered over the name in his userlist for a moment, then - for some desire for closure he didn't entirely understand - right-clicked and unblocked him.

Immediately, a prompt window popped up on the screen.

- 7,362 blocked messages -
----- VIEW / DELETE -----

Seven thousand messages??

What the hell??

Karkat could only stare at the prompt for a long moment, trying to comprehend what he was seeing. Eridan had sent him over seven thousand messages after Karkat had blocked him? How? Why? When??

He couldn't help himself; a sheer need to know had him clicking on “view”.

It took the chat client quite some time to load that many messages; Karkat, almost vibrating with impatience, watched the loading circle spin for a solid five minutes before it vanished and revealed the updated log.

He leaned forward and began to read.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] blocked caligulasAquarium [CA] at 20:04 1-16-50

CA: kar please wwhat did i do
CA: i dont understand
CA: no one else is talkin to me wwhats goin on
CA: wwhys evveryone blockin me
CA: WWHAT DID I DO
CA: fuck im
CA: im sorry okay wwhatevver i did im sorry
CA: please come back
CA: please
CA: evverythin wwas fine yesternight i dont understand
CA: wwhat happened
CA: please just tell me wwhy
CA: im sorry im sorry
CA: im srory

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 23:14 1-16-50

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 18:36 1-17-50

CA: no ones tellin me wwhats goin on kar please talk to me
CA: i dont understand
CA: please just
CA: tell me wwhat i did
CA: fuck
CA: wwhat happened wwhat did i do
CA: wwe wwere talkin fine before i dont understand wwhat changed
CA: did you just
CA: get tired a me
CA: is it somethin i am
CA: is it just that i exist
CA: i cant think a anythin else it could be
CA: i wwish youd just talk to me i dont understand
CA: fuckin hell kar WWHAT HAPPENED
CA: wwhy is evveryone blockin me
CA: please just talk to me

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 18:55 1-17-50

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 16:58 1-19-50

CA: it IS me isnt it
CA: its cause im me thats the wwhole reason
CA: you all just got tired a me
CA: i guess i cant really blame you
CA: im just
CA: im fucked up arent i
CA: alwways botherin people wwhat dont wwant to be bothered
CA: hittin on people wwhat aint interested
CA: evven fef aint talkin to me
CA: you dont evven knoww her though
CA: so its gotta be me right
CA: if you an evveryone an evven fef aint talkin to me
CA: im the only connectin vvariable
CA: am i
CA: am i that bad
CA: i wwish youd talk to me

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 18:15 1-19-50

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 21:18 1-23-50

CA: im sorry
CA: im a fucked up piece a shit i
CA: i understand
CA: i dont got the right to complain
CA: or to feel lonely
CA: or anythin
CA: fuckin useless excuses for trolls dont get that
CA: im sorry
CA: im sorry i evver bothered you
CA: im sorry i bothered anyone
CA: you all just put up wwith me i guess
CA: i dont knoww wwhy or wwhy noww it wwas too much
CA: im sorry im me
CA: im so fuckin sorry kar

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 21:51 1-23-50

Karkat had to pause for a long moment to blink the burning sensation out of his eyes. What was all this? What was Eridan talking about?

It sounded like he thought he was the problem - not something he did, but that just... being him was the problem. It didn't make sense! Why would he think that?

Unless...

Unless he really hadn't done anything.

Unless they'd all just blocked him without ever explaining why, and he didn't have any idea what he could have done wrong.

With a sinking heart, Karkat scrolled down, feeling a strange need to keep reading, to try to understand.

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 12:47 2-16-50

CA: its been a wwhile hasnt it
CA: not that youre evver goin to see this or anythin
CA: i guess i just
CA: i dont got anyone else to talk to
CA: molted yesternight so
CA: seahorsedad left this midnight
CA: its just me noww

(In the back of his mind, Karkat felt a little jealous - Eridan had, given the date stamps, had his first adult molt perigees before the rest of them! But that fact wasn't important or relevant, so he dismissed the thought and kept reading.)

CA: got my academy letter though
CA: its early an all an the schoolswweeps not evven started but i guess they dont wwant people hangin around doin nothin
CA: says im gonna sit in on classes an shit
CA: maybe get a head start on my swweep group
CA: remember wwhen i used to talk to you about it
CA: academy i mean
CA: no wwho am i kiddin you wwouldnt remember
CA: an you aint evven gonna see this anywway
CA: fuck
CA: im such a useless piece a crap trollin someone wwho aint evver gonna talk to me again just cause im lonely
CA: im
CA: im gonna try to be somethin at school
CA: if you wwanted to knoww
CA: maybe im not wworth anythin otherwwise but at least i can be good there
CA: i knoww im smart enough to do wwell i mean
CA: aced evverythin in schoolfeedin
CA: top honors an shit
CA: maybe if im smart enough if i do wwell enough maybe ill be wworth somethin
CA: maybe i can make up for bein me
CA: anywway i just wwanted to say goodbye i guess
CA: im probably not goin to havve time to wwaste on talkin to no one

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 14:25 2-16-50

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 21:24 4-4-50

CA: i knoww i said i wwasnt goin to come on here
CA: but i
CA: i need someone to talk to
CA: evven if its just a blank wwall
CA: i
CA: i tried so hard kar
CA: i wwas doin so good i got top place
CA: an they
CA: they just
CA: fuck i cant evven type it
CA: fuck

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 21:38 4-1-50

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 16:24 4-6-50

CA: he wwants me to COME TO THEM
CA: fuckin grabbed my shoulder on my wway to class an told me to meet them in the attic after dinner bell
CA: like wwhat the hell
CA: NO
CA: if youre gonna fuckin beat me im sure as fuck not goin to followw along wwillingly like a goddamn idiot wwhat do you evven take me for
CA: some kind a fuckin masochist
CA: no an no an fuckin NO
CA: suck my bulge alecto im not your SLAVVE

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 16:31 4-6-50

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 19:51 4-7-50

CA: fuck
CA: evverythin hurts
CA: they said i deservve it cause i didnt obey them
CA: that im wworthless
CA: im
CA: startin to think theyre right
CA: that you wwere right
CA: i hate this
CA: i hate that i havve to fuckin just
CA: do wwhat they wwant
CA: to not get hurt
CA: i hate that i cant not obey i hate that im scared to
CA: i hate myself
CA: i cant handle it kar i cant i cant
CA: i dont knoww wwhat to do
CA: if i do good in class theyre goin to hurt me again
CA: if i dont do wwhat they wwant they wwill too
CA: they said so
CA: i guess i deservve it but i dont wwant to hurt any more
CA: i just
CA: i cant evven try anymore
CA: its only goin to end in pain
CA: the teacheradicators dont evven care wwhat they do
CA: not to a wworthless piece a shit like me anywway
CA: i should just givve up
CA: im nevver goin to be anythin
CA: i dont deservve to be
CA: im sorry kar im sorry i evver tried im sorry i evver bothered you
CA: i didnt deservve anythin good you did for me
CA: im glad at least you saww it an got out before i hurt you more
CA: before i inevvitably fucked evverythin up for you
CA: i hope i didnt anywway
CA: i hope youre doin okay
CA: that you got free a me before i did somethin horrible
CA: im
CA: im sorry im botherin you
CA: evven if youll nevver read this im sorry anywway

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 22:26 4-7-50

Karkat swallowed hard. They... someone had hurt him? For doing well in his classes? For not going willingly to be beaten up? And they told him he was worthless for it?

And why did he seem to believe them?

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 21:25 5-1-50

CA: im
CA: i dont knoww wwhat to do
CA: i cant go to anyone
CA: it hurts so much kar
CA: i thought if i just didnt try if i just didn't do anythin in class that theyd leavve me alone
CA: but i cant evven do that right i guess
CA: im still doin too good evven if im not tryin
CA: im doin too good if i aint at the absolute bottom a the class
CA: they
CA: i cant
CA: it hurts
CA: i dont understand wwhat i did to deservve this
CA: but i guess i just
CA: i just do dont i
CA: i deservve it for bein me
CA: thats wwhy theyre doin this
CA: thats wwhy no one cares theyre doin it
CA: im barely evven a fuckin troll at all so i deservve it
CA: i evven tried to go to the docterrorist kar an he just
CA: shovved me out a the infirmary wwith a bunch a bandages an not a damn thin else
CA: not evven any fuckin painkillers or antiseptic or anythin
CA: i cant evven ORDER painkillers
CA: i thought docterrorists wwere supposed to help
CA: i guess i dont deservve help
CA: i should just
CA: i dont knoww
CA: i wwish i could just stop existin
CA: it hurts so much

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 21:56 5-1-50

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 20:32 5-3-50

CA: did you knoww if you sleep in sopor wwith open wwounds theyll get infected
CA: just found that out the hard wway
CA: fuckin hell my back hurts so much

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 20:40 5-3-50

What... what had happened to him?

Karkat swallowed around the lump in his throat and scrolled down through dozens more messages, skimming for something that explained... anything.

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 19:52 10-40-50

CA: it wwas fivve this time
CA: yesternight i mean
CA: didnt evven beat me or anythin just the lashes
CA: suppose i should feel grateful it wwasnt more but
CA: they didnt evven say wwhy
CA: i think theyvve stopped evven tryin to come up wwith a reason for any a it
CA: i mean
CA: besides the obvvious
CA: obvviously
CA: you knoww they used to try an pick out somethin id done or not done or somethin but they didnt evven say anythin this time
CA: wwell
CA: they laughed
CA: i guess its good im at least useful for that
CA: lets all just get a good laugh in at amporas expense
CA: aint he funny hangin there bleedin
CA: aint it funny howw he screams
CA: i
CA: fuck
CA: im sorry
CA: i shouldnt be complainin
CA: its not anythin more than i deservve anywway
CA: i just wwish it didnt hurt so fuckin much
CA: the laughter is the wworst really
CA: they just
CA: theyre mockin me
CA: they alwways do wwhen i cant keep quiet i hate it
CA: id like to see one a them take fivve fuckin lashes an not scream
CA: id like to see one a them take any at all
CA: im stupid for evven thinkin that though
CA: no one else deservves it like i do
CA: fuck i wwish
CA: i wwish i didnt evven exist
CA: but i dont get wwishes
CA: thosere for real trolls wwho matter
CA: not for shit like me

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 21:46 10-40-50

Lashes??

Five lashes ? Like, whip lashes?

What else could he possibly be talking about, though?

But why were they whipping him? He was a highblood, not some slave! It didn't make sense! Even if they didn't like him, they shouldn't have done anything like that!

He scrolled down further before reading again.

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 18:24 11-20-50

CA: alecto wwas mad at somethin tonight
CA: dont knoww wwhat
CA: dont think it wwas me
CA: or at least not any more me than alwways
CA: but he did it himself instead a tellin one a the others to
CA: at least he only broke skin in a couple a places this time
CA: didnt evven use the wwhip
CA: awwkwward to get at to clean but
CA: could be a lot wworse so i guess i cant really complain
CA: wwish i kneww wwhat made him so mad though
CA: not that i could do anythin about it but you knoww
CA: i hate bein in the dark about evverythin
CA: oh heh i fell asleep in class yesternight did i tell you
CA: proper fuckin delinquent here
CA: too stupid to use a coon so he falls asleep in class
CA: the teacheradicator wwas pissed but after alecto his cane hardly feels like anythin

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 18:52 11-20-50

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 19:24 11-36-50

CA: im runnin out a foundation
CA: thought id brought enough for swweeps wwhen i came but apparently not
CA: though i guess i wwasnt expectin to be usin it daily all ovver practically evverythin
CA: found some fingerless glovves online though wwhen i wwas lookin for it
CA: i dont like to spend credits if i dont gotta but my handsvve been gettin pretty rough
CA: an since im loww on foundation i cant really be usin it on my hands if i can get somethin else
CA: ill look like a fuckin vvagabond but wwhatevver
CA: at least itll covver the bandages an bruises
CA: ill get them

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 19:31 11-36-50

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 21:33 11-42-50

CA: good newws
CA: wwas able to find some foundation online finally
CA: took some serious searchin cause apparently theyre not allowwed to call it makeup
CA: blemish removver is wwhat the listin says
CA: fuckin wwhatevver its fuckin makeup
CA: happy twwelfth perigees to me i guess
CA: i can hide all a the bruisin an shit again

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 22:01 11-42-50

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 21:24 12-9-51

CA: i got more a that antibiotic stuff
CA: gonna havve to be careful wwith it cause its so fuckin expensivve but fuck my back hurts so much i can barely evven get my shirt on an i cant miss any more classes
CA: you knoww i nevver really realized howw much i took evverythin for granted before this
CA: i could alwways just buy wwhat i needed
CA: nevver really had to wworry about credits
CA: i mean seahorsedad alwways made sure i wwasnt wwastin them or anythin but i alwways had enough for wwhat i needed an then some for wwhat i wwanted too
CA: but they dont take too kindly here to someone wwho aint doin wwell so if you aint doin good you dont get much
CA: better to havve no credits than to get beaten to a pulp or flayed all the time though so
CA: dont really got much of a choice
CA: i movved up ONE FUCKIN PLACE last wweek an he wwas so mad he almost broke my arm
CA: i think the only reason he didnt is that then the docterroristd havve to tend it an he really dont wwant to
CA: the docterrorists about the only troll wwhats got any say in wwhat alecto does i think
CA: pity he hates my guts an not in a good wway
CA: an i dont evven knoww wwhy
CA: so anywway im back dowwn to wworst in school an he seems relativvely mollified
CA: can you believve
CA: wwhen i started i thought i wwas gonna do so good
CA: thought id be top a the class
CA: cum laude graduate here
CA: looked like id be too i mean that first perigee i WWAS top a the class
CA: thats probably wwhat made them single me out originally noww that i think about it
CA: newwbie to school showwin them all up wwith better grades
CA: wwell theres no risk of that anymore
CA: dont get me wwrong im still learnin the material
CA: as much as i can anywway
CA: i havve to
CA: its actually really difficult to fail horribly wwithout knowwin it wwhich is so fuckin counterintuitivve but
CA: apparently random guesswwork givves too high a score
CA: so fuckin stupid that i havve to actually wwork to fail
CA: if i didnt havve to try itd be so much easier
CA: im so tired kar
CA: just
CA: i wwish i didnt exist
CA: but its funny you know
CA: i keep wwishin that but wwhen it comes to facin cullin i cant do it
CA: its like i keep fightin evven though i shouldnt bother
CA: all it wwould take wwould be to showw someone wwhat they do
CA: any a the teacheradicators or evven the headmasterminator
CA: just drop the jacket an shirt an let them see all a it
CA: wwouldnt evven be a question theyd do it on sight
CA: boom there goes ampora too wweak to be a highblood lettin himself get so fucked ovver
CA: especially bein dualscars descendant
CA: disgrace to the fuckin name
CA: but for some reason i cant just givve in an do it
CA: i keep tryin an i dont knoww wwhy
CA: shits gettin so much harder to hide
CA: an its not like anyone doesnt knoww wwhats goin on
CA: but if its out a sight its out a pan or somethin like that
CA: if i look fine i wwont be culled
CA: fuck evverythin
CA: fuck me
CA: im so tired

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 23:51 12-9-51

Karkat had to take another few minutes to process. He could hear the despair in the words, could almost feel the fear and the pain behind each violet message. This... this fatalistic troll who thought he somehow deserved to be hurt, to even be culled, was... Eridan?

He couldn't reconcile it with his memories... but-

His memories were wrong, weren't they?

He did no such thing, Sollux had said.

But Karkat had been so convinced...

He took a few deep breaths to try to settle his stomach and stop his fingers from trembling, then scrolled all the way down to the bottom. It was a long way; apparently Eridan had just kept trolling him - no, trolling no one, sending his messages out into the void in a desperate attempt to feel like someone, anyone, cared - for sweeps.

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 17:20 5-38-53

CA: placement scores are in
CA: surprise a motherfuckin surprises im in last
CA: but at least that means ill be done soon
CA: bottom ten at the end a three swweeps get kicked out you knoww
CA: wwell theyll call it graduatin but its really kickin you out
CA: acidfire wwas tellin us
CA: the group wwhats gettin kicked out noww that is
CA: that wwe should be ashamed a ourselvves an wwell be gettin less of a stipend than evven a decent tealblood wwould get
CA: an that wwere too stupid to get any kind a decent jobs so wwere gonna havve to wwork harder than the rest a evveryone wwith better grades
CA: i dont care
CA: ill scrub fuckin loadgapers if it means gettin out from under alectos frond
CA: anywway the wwhole time im just sittin in the back tryin not to snicker like
CA: do they havve any idea howw hard im already wworkin
CA: that aint gonna be anythin new
CA: an its not like havvin no credits is gonna be neww either
CA: so wwhat wwe wwont havve much of a stipend
CA: none of us do noww either
CA: so really all they wwere doin wwas rubbin our faces in howw stupid wwe are
CA: none of us cared i dont think
CA: i certainly dont anywway
CA: i get my face rubbed in wworse thins on a regular basis
CA: anywway im gonna go
CA: if i hurry i can hit the dinin hall right as they open wwhen no ones there yet an get somethin decent to eat for once

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 17:46 5-38-53

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 19:16 6-2-53

CA: wwell this is it
CA: tomorroww im gone
CA: hard to believve it really
CA: i almost cant imagine bein free a all this after the three fuckin swweeps thats all that trash like me gets
CA: three swweeps wwas plenty long enough let me tell you
CA: trolls wwhat do betterll stay for longer a course the bestll stay for six
CA: theyll get good positions
CA: maybe be some kind a official or evven get to go out to the fleet
CA: i hear the top student a the ones there six swweepsll get their owwn ship out there
CA: heh alecto wwas so mad it wwas almost wworth the stripes to see it
CA: cadyrn beat him out right at the end
CA: good for him i guess
CA: not so good for me obvviously but then wwhen has anythin been good for me
CA: wwell aside from gettin out a here i guess
CA: anywway theres really no point in this anymore
CA: talkin at no ones a stupid thin to do noww im gonna be out
CA: therell be jobs to take thins to do
CA: gotta figure out howw to make credits
CA: after failin so spectacularly here my stipends gonna be next to nothin a course
CA: an i dont evven knoww if i still got a hivve or if someone elses taken my ship
CA: dont knoww wwhat ill do if they did
CA: is it legal to kick out a grub if they take ovver your hivve
CA: though wwhy any lusus but seahorsedad wwould pick my place is beyond me
CA: wwhole thins practically a pile a wwood wwaitin to collapse im sure theres much better places
CA: only thin it evver really had goin for it wwas that it wwas my ancestors ship
CA: it doesnt really matter though
CA: im out a here an alecto or anyone wwont be able to reach me anymore an thats more than enough to livve for evven if i end up hivveless an half starvved
CA: ugh fuck carryin my backpacks gonna hurt like hell tomorroww though
CA: thats probably wwhat he wwanted more than to take out that shit wwith cadyrn on me noww that i think about it
CA: im gettin awway from him so he had to send me off wwith one
CA: wwell
CA: fivve or six
CA: last reminders of just howw amazin he is at hurtin people
CA: heh
CA: anywway im gonna
CA: gonna just shut this dowwn an get packed i guess
CA: thanks for
CA: not bein there i suppose
CA: better than you bein there anywway i dont havve to feel horrid about botherin anyone since you aint there an aint evver gonna be there anywway
CA: i hope youre livvin somewwhere good an youvve got all the good stuff you deservve out there
CA: an that you aint thinkin a me
CA: you deservve better than to wwaste time on thoughts a me anywway
CA: goodbye kar

caligulasAquarium [CA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 22:36 6-2-53

That was it. That was the end of the messages. The last one was sent more than three sweeps after Karkat had blocked him. It was sent less than two sweeps ago.

No wonder Sollux was so worried about him. With the kind of mindset Karkat could feel coming through those words, and the way the people here felt about highbloods...

It was a wonder Eridan kept trying at all.

Karkat laid his head down on the desk and let the rising guilt consume him. He'd never reached out to Eridan, never even bothered to explain anything. He'd left Eridan feeling like he was the only problem, that his very existence was a burden, that he somehow deserved everything that ever happened to him.

He'd been hurt, at that school of his - hurt terribly. If he looked, would he see scars? Did Eridan still feel them? Did he remember each one? Did he dream of them, of what happened, the way Karkat still dreamed about losing Nepeta and Sollux?

Did he feel just as bad here as he must have felt then?

Karkat covered his face with his hands. He'd been... so fucking terrible to Eridan - treating him like he was the worst of the worst, not caring that the trolls here took his reactions as a guide. He had known, of course, what was going on here; at least to some degree. He'd known that Eridan was getting the cold shoulder at best, that people were taking out their hatred of highbloods on him. But he'd never felt the need to step in, because he'd always felt, on some level, that Eridan did deserve it; and since no one was actively, or physically, abusing him at least, it wasn't really a problem, nothing he needed to step in about.

He'd never wanted Eridan to be actually hurt, sure - he'd been mad when he'd found out what had happened, when the seatroll was first brought here - but it hadn't really been because he thought Eridan didn't deserve it. It had been because he didn't want anyone here to be as bad as the highbloods were.

But... the other highbloods. The ones who'd hurt Eridan as much as they would any lowblood.

No wonder Eridan would never meet his eyes, that he fled whenever he spotted Karkat, that he never complained about how he was treated or about the collar or about anything. He thought that he just deserved it, simply for being him.

But... Sollux was right. He'd clearly never done anything. Alviah had lied; and really, that only made sense, given all the other things she'd done and lied about afterwards. If Eridan had rejected her... well, they'd all seen what had happened to poor Tavros, when he'd realized the mistake he'd made and tried to break it off with her. It was entirely believable that she'd have taken Eridan's rejection so poorly that she would fabricate an entire story painting him as a villain in revenge.

And Karkat had fallen for it, and never thought to check further, not even when Alviah had later proven how much of a piece of shit she was.

He'd never even thought to give Eridan a chance.

Karkat dug his claws into his palms until he felt the skin part beneath them. He'd been so fucking stupid. He'd been terrible to a friend because someone else lied to him; he'd fucked over Eridan's entire life because he didn't bother to listen.

Eridan deserved better than he'd ever gotten.

He hoped it wasn't too late to change things now.

Chapter Text

Unfortunately, it seemed that as soon as Karkat had made the decision to try to right things with Eridan, everyone else needed him for a million stupid things that apparently only he could figure out. By the end of the night, he was so frustrated from hearing complaints and dealing with problems and answering questions that he was about to bite the head off of the next person to accost him.

That was not to be, however; the only person to do so on his way back to his own rooms was Sollux.

“What the fuck do you want now?” Karkat asked grumpily, sighing.

Sollux raised an eyebrow. “Long night?”

“You have no idea.”

The yellowblood shrugged. “Then don't let me bother you,” he responded, stepping back with his arms crossed.

Karkat made a frustrated noise and shook his head. “No, ugh- look, can we just... talk in my rooms? I need to stick my head into some cold water and not be somewhere everyone and their lusus can bug me.”

If Sollux was surprised by the offer, he didn't show it; he just nodded and followed after Karkat.

---

With a cold shower and some food - which Sollux had apparently obtained while Karkat was taking care of the former and insisted he eat - under his belt, Karkat felt a little less like biting everyone in sight.

He shoved the empty plate away - he hadn't actually realized just how hungry he'd been until he'd seen the food - and shifted to look at Sollux sitting on the couch.

“Okay. So what did you want?” he asked, trying very hard not to let it sound irritated.

Either he succeeded or Sollux gave him the benefit of the doubt; the yellowblood didn't react negatively, only sat forward and answered the question with a question of his own.

“Did you look?”

It took Karkat a moment to figure out what he was talking about; when he did, he flushed and looked down at his hands.

“...Yeah. Um. How did- How did you know? That that was, that he didn't...”

Sollux didn't seem to be having any issue following Karkat's response, although privately Karkat was pretty sure he was barely making any kind of sense whatsoever. Maybe the yellowblood just knew Karkat well enough to read between his actual words.

“I looked.” Sollux rubbed the back of his neck, looking a little embarrassed. “I probably shouldn't have, not without asking, but... Well, after I asked and he didn't seem to have any idea about it, I had his computer, and he never actually uninstalled Trollian or anything, so it was pretty easy to just go look at their chat. She had been pretty horribly - in both senses of the word - blackflirting with him: threatening all sorts of things if he didn't agree. All he did was tell her to fuck off and then blocked her. So. It was pretty easy to tell that, well...”

“That she lied to all of us.” Karkat sighed. “I feel like such an asshole. I should have... at least talked to him. ...Did you look at- well, any other conversations...?”

Sollux shook his head; Karkat dropped his into his hands.

“Do you know, he kept trolling me? For fucking sweeps. All through school.”

Sollux sat up a little straighter. “What, seriously?”

“Seriously. It's... it was fucking horrifying, what he went through - do you know any of it?”

The yellowblood hesitated, then nodded. “I've... learned a little. There's the nightmares, sometimes he talks during or after them. And I've seen his scars, and he explained a bit. Didn't want to talk about it much, understandably, so I didn't want to press.”

Karkat winced. “His scars? How... how bad...”

Sollux looked away. “Bad. Really bad. His back's just, covered in them. And his upper arms some, and he's even got a few on his legs. That's why he's always wearing long sleeves, you know, and long pants. He hasn't said anything about it, but given how shy about it he still is with me after a whole damn sweep of living with him, I can't say I'm surprised he doesn't want to show them to anyone else.”

“Fuck.” Karkat swallowed, not wanting to ask but needing to. “Did he... does he... is it bad, for him? I mean, being here? With everyone else?”

Sollux met Karkat's eyes; the latter dropped his gaze after only a moment. “It's not the worst it could be; no one's tried to beat him up or anything since that first night. But he's... he's sensitive, to what people are doing and saying and feeling about him. He's had to be, to keep from getting hurt - or hurt more - or to know when to run.” He sighed. “I'd been making some progress with him, before we came here, getting him to open up and feel more confident, but...”

Karkat dropped his head into his arms; his voice was muffled when he spoke. “And then we all fucked it up, right?”

“He's been having a lot more nightmares,” Sollux said, instead of directly agreeing. “And shuts down a lot more than he has in perigees. That's what he does, you know; if he can't run, he freezes, just shuts everything down and doesn't even try to fight back. I'm pretty sure that's what happened yesternight, though I haven't pushed him to talk much about it. Or asked around; I was going to leave that particular interrogation to you.”

Karkat raised his head again. “I'll... I'll look into it. I don't suppose you know-”

“Sverre was the main instigator. I think you'll get the best information out of the oliveblood, um... I think his name was Burley? He was the only one that didn't look to have been involved, at least in the bullying.”

“Burley Olevia. Okay. I'll try and hunt him down first. He's pretty responsible, you're probably right that he wasn't involved.” Karkat sighed. “And then... fuck. I need to talk to Eridan.”

Sollux's face was unreadable. “Yeah, you do.”

“Any idea how I'm supposed to accomplish that when he fucking runs like a rabbit any time he even thinks he sees me?”

“Does he really?” Sollux raised his eyebrows. “Huh. I guess that makes sense. You never really come into the tech lab so I haven't seen it happen myself. You could try to catch him there, I guess - he's usually with me there during the night - but...” Sollux cleared his throat. “He definitely won't want to talk in front of them. Even if Lemmie wasn't such an asshole, he's shy around other people, especially talking about himself. And I don't think it would be a good idea to have even me sitting in on that conversation. The two of you need to work it out, and if he's trying to hide behind me the whole time he's not going to be listening to you.”

“He doesn't come down for meals?”

Sollux didn't even dignify that with a reply, only a raised eyebrow. Karkat winced.

“Right. No, he wouldn't, of course. Um... what about, does he leave separately from you? To go to the lab, or come back, I mean?”

“Sometimes. If I'm up particularly early or late, and he wants to sleep.”

Karkat tugged on a piece of hair, thinking. “Do you think you could manage doing that so he will?”

“Possibly... but after yesternight, I'm pretty sure he's going to be sticking to me or Cardea like a shadow.”

Karkat sighed. “I guess that makes sense. And I suppose you telling him I want to talk isn't going to work, either.”

Sollux shook his head. “It'll just spook him. He's absolutely convinced you think he's the worst troll to ever walk Alternia, you know. I don't know what you said to him, but he still has fucking nightmares about it.”

Karkat flinched. “...Fuck. I... I never thought...”

“Damn right you never thought.”

Karkat made a noise of exasperation. “I get it, okay? I've been a colossal dickhead and the worst person ever. I'm trying to work out how to fix it, here, and you're not helping.”

“Forgive me if I'm a little pissed on his behalf. You haven't been dealing with his nightmares for perigees. He has them almost as often about you as about school, you know. At least the ones he talks during, or tells me about after.”

“...seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Motherfucking... how am I supposed to fix this, Sollux? What am I supposed to do?” He looked up, quailed at the other's expression, and looked down again. “I don't... I don't know what to even say, not to him, not when... he's so scared of me, I don't want to fuck this up again!”

“You're going to have to figure that one out on your own, KK.” The use of the nickname at least meant that Sollux wasn't angry at him any more; Karkat let his shoulders slump in combined relief and regret. “I'd better get back before he starts worrying.”

“...right,” Karkat responded, but the yellowblood was already out the door, shutting it behind him.

Fuck. What was he supposed to say? How did you fix something like this?

Well, the very first thing would have to be to find Eridan in the first place - to find him alone, specifically. Sollux was right; if there were others around besides Sollux, Eridan probably wouldn't talk at all, and if Sollux was there, well... he'd said Eridan would just hide behind him, and Sollux would know better than anyone. That wouldn't be helpful at all, to any of them.

He was going to have to hunt Eridan as carefully as any cat waiting for a mouse in a mousehole to get him alone.

Karkat sighed and resigned himself to what would probably be a pretty long hunt.

----

It was indeed a pretty long hunt. As a matter of fact, it was an impossibly, frustratingly long hunt. Karkat felt about ready to bite something before a week was out.

His original plan of staking out Sollux and Eridan's door wasn't necessarily a bad one - but he hadn't reckoned on everyone else.

Namely, on everyone else needing him.

He'd kind of forgotten just how integral he'd become to this whole operation. It hadn't felt like so much when he was mostly just sitting around in his office - forcing people to come to him if they had an issue - but when he was skulking around the living quarter hallways, more people came to interrupt him, or for longer; or at least, it felt like it.

By the second week, Karkat was seriously considering just giving it up entirely. He hadn't yet caught so much as a glimpse of Eridan by himself; like Sollux had warned him, the seadweller was sticking like glue to him or to that other yellow techie who seemed to have become a trusted friend. (It took Karkat a couple times of seeing her to remember her name - Cardea Pallie - as he didn't see her often; problems from the tech side were almost exclusively brought up to him by Temana.)

He supposed it made sense; after having done the required investigation into the Kitchen Incident (Burley had, in fact, been extremely helpful - and also rather profuse in his apologies; he seemed to feel that he should have noticed and/or been able to step in before anything happened, and wouldn't take Karkat's assurances that there was no way he could have known what would happen), he could definitely understand why Eridan was scared to go anywhere alone. Too many trolls here held the same opinions on highbloods as Sverre did; and even if they weren't really acting on them, if Eridan was as sensitive as Sollux suggested, he would be able to read that from their behavior, and would probably avoid being alone around them just in case.

(Karkat did get what was probably an unreasonable amount of pleasure out of ripping Sverre a new one when he finally talked with her - especially after finding out what had happened to Eridan, not just at her hands but in his past as well. It wasn't a talk she was going to forget any time soon.)

Karkat had also, late in the morning after everyone was asleep, read more of the messages Eridan had sent him. The more he read, the more guilty he felt about everything - about his own actions back then, about his lack of reaction or caring more recently, about allowing any of this to happen - and the more he found himself aching with sympathy for the hurt, lonely, barely-adult troll who bared his heart in messages he thought no one would ever read. His skimming the first time he'd looked at the messages had been just that - skimming - and had really missed the depth of the abuse the seadweller had gone through.

Frankly, he could barely imagine anyone going through that and still somehow coming out of it at all, much less mostly functional. It truly spoke volumes of Eridan's strength that he'd kept going, that he didn't give in and let himself be culled just to escape; and that even now, despite facing the hatred almost everyone here felt towards highbloods - the nasty words and jokes at his expense that must call back some pretty horrible memories for him - he somehow kept going, kept trying, rather than hiding from everything and everyone.

Karkat had thought he'd had it bad, being a mutant, having to hide everything he was from everyone, fearing culling every single night of his life; fearing to reach out to anyone, fearing discovery and the death that would inevitably follow. But Eridan... not only had he faced that same fear (admittedly, not for as long, but still), but he'd faced it because of the horrifying abuse he'd gone through - and then had had to hide that abuse or face being culled for something he was powerless to prevent?

It made Karkat want to punch walls. How dared people do this to anyone?

He hadn't thought he could get any more devoted to his cause, to taking down the hemospectrum and freeing the trolls who suffered, but apparently he could. Or at least, he started to really think about what taking it down would really entail - that it wouldn't be just lowbloods being freed or helped, but that it would put everyone on equal footing. That it might even keep something like this from happening again.

He'd never really sympathized with his ancestor before; they shared a similar intent, sure, but (from what he'd read of his teachings that survived the centuries) the Sufferer had always seemed so... so passionate, like he was somehow personally hurt - beyond just fearing for his life - by the system he was trying to overthrow; like it was in his bones, like he followed a dream and not just a cause. Karkat had always thought that was kind of, well... stupid, to be so affected and moved by the plight of others; to get so impassioned by it that he went around preaching about it. He'd never really understood it.

He was beginning to, now, in stray thoughts and glimmers; beginning to despise a system that could hurt someone he knew, a friend (or at least someone who had been one, who would have still been one if not for Karkat's own stupidity), so terribly; a system where the perpetrators were not only not punished but - as Eridan's messages suggested - had the abuse they'd heaped on someone unable to fight back entirely ignored while their efforts in class were praised.

That they would be given the highest and most important of positions, and left the target of their abuse the worst off of anyone.

It was infuriating.

Which only added to his increasing frustration: with everyone else, with being constantly bothered and interrupted, with not being able to catch Eridan to have that talk, with the people who kept being assholes to the seadweller no matter how much Karkat tried to call them out on it now.

So he really wasn't in the best frame of mind when he finally did corner Eridan alone.

Unfortunately, he only realized this after he'd already cornered him.

Karkat had caught him coming out of his rooms alone after Sollux had already left; the seadweller shrank back against the wall behind him at seeing Karkat, his escape route cut off but unable to get back to the door to hide within the rooms again.

“Eridan-” Karkat began, then paused.

Eridan looked terrified: eyes wide, pupils constricted, fins trying to merge into his skull. He had his arms up in a defensive position that had nothing at all of potential attack in it, as though he was, well... expecting abuse that he didn't even dare fight back against.

The thought made the simmering rage boil up in Karkat.

“For fuck's sake, quit cowering! I'm not going to attack you!”

Unsurprisingly, that accomplished nothing but making Eridan flinch and press back into the wall more.

Karkat sighed and tried his best to tamp down on the frustration and anger and make his posture look less like he was in 'attack mode'. It wouldn't help anyone, least of all Eridan, if Karkat let himself take his irritation out on him.

“Fucking- look, I'm not here to attack you, or yell at you, or anything.” He hoped his efforts to look less intimidating were working; he couldn't tell from Eridan's expression or body language. Eridan certainly hadn't relaxed at all, that much was crystal clear; and he didn't even try to speak, much less actually say anything.

“Goddammit.” Karkat ran his fingers through his hair, then stepped back, giving the other a little more room while still preventing him from easily running. “Okay. Look. I'm not mad at you, I swear. At all. I... I know you think I hate you, but I don't. Really.”

Confusion flickered across the other's expression, and Karkat held out his hands, palms up in a submissive position to show he had no weapons or intent of attack.

“I don't. And, frankly, I never even should have. Ever.” He shifted uncomfortably, shoulders slumping a bit as the energy from his anger ran out of him.

Eridan just continued to watch him with wide eyes.

“I just... I just want to talk. With you. Alone.” He just about cursed himself as that phrasing made the other tense up again. “No, I mean, actually just talk. Not yell, I'm not angry - well, not at you. I'm not here to insult or taunt you or anything. Just... just talk.”

Eridan was clearly still confused and wary - but he'd lost a little bit of that tension that had had him practically vibrating in fear.

“Is that okay? Can we? It's... it's important. And I really mean it, I don't want to hurt you. At all.”

He watched emotions war with each other in Eridan's body language; his fins, while remaining lowered, fluttered just a little, and he kept swallowing like it would help him think better. Maybe it did; Karkat didn't know.

He waited it out, trying very hard to not let the irritation rise back up in himself and focusing on keeping his hands how they were. It wasn't a position he found himself in naturally or easily, being quick to anger and frequently refusing to accept any kind of defeat; it was an instinctively submissive position, one that allowed ready access to veins in the wrist that could, if cut or slashed properly, cause very quick bleeding out.

As a matter of fact, Karkat wasn't sure if he'd ever taken this sort of position before.

Whether Eridan himself understood the significance or not, his subconscious did; slowly, his posture relaxed somewhat and the terrified 'prey' look on his face eased. Karkat continued to wait until Eridan stopped pressing himself back against the wall and started to look at him more in wary confusion than outright fear before speaking again.

“I really do just want to talk. I... Sollux kind of... beat my head into realizing just how much of an asshole I've been, and that you... you didn't deserve it. Okay?”

There was no response except confusion flitting across his face again; Karkat took that as a good sign.

“I... I didn't realize, until Sollux told me. What had actually happened. I just thought... I believed her, and didn't even ask you, and I was an absolute dick for doing that.”

The confusion became stronger, and Karkat realized that Eridan might have no idea what he was even talking about. It had, after all, been over two weeks since he'd had that conversation with Sollux; if the other had told Eridan about it, it certainly wouldn't still be in Eridan's immediate memory.

“From, before. You know. When we... when we last, um, talked. And I yelled at you. I didn't...” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, only belatedly realizing that broke his nonthreatening posture. Fortunately, Eridan didn't seem to notice or react negatively to it; Karkat took the opportunity to relax a little himself and let his hands fall to his sides. “I should have listened to you, not her.”

“...wh-what do you... mean... 'her'?”

Eridan's voice was so quiet Karkat had to strain to hear it without leaning forward and potentially scaring him; barely above a whisper. He frowned a little, but quickly smoothed it out of his expression when he saw the seadweller quail.

Why was he confused? Surely Eridan remembered that conversation, would know what he was talking about? Sollux must have spoken about it, reassured Eridan that he wasn't at fault...

Unless the yellowblood had been a complete idiot and didn't even think to do so.

“Didn't... Sollux didn't tell you about that? About what actually happened back then? Seriously?”

Eridan, still clearly confused, shook his head, and Karkat made a noise of frustration - but carefully directed it to one side so as not to reawaken Eridan's fear.

“Ugh, it would be like him, to go around defending someone and fucking up a troll's whole perception of everything, and not even bother to tell the one he's defending why he needed to be defended!”

Eridan only blinked in incomprehension. “Um...”

“No, never mind that. It's not important, just Sollux being an idiot.” Karkat sighed. “Great, well, guess it's up to me to explain, since that asshole couldn't be bothered.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked back at Eridan. “So. If I'm going to give you the whole story, I'd like to be somewhere comfortable doing it. How about one of those little alcoves in the dining hall?” He had a feeling Eridan would probably prefer somewhere more neutral for this talk than his and Sollux's rooms, or worse, Karkat's; he still looked like a wild animal caught in the headlights and about to flee.

But Karkat had no intention of letting him do so and having to chase him down again; he'd had more than his fill of said chasing just to get this chance. So before Eridan could do anything more than potentially vaguely contemplate escape, Karkat reached out to grasp his forearm in an implacable - if relatively gentle - grip. Eridan shrank back and tensed again, but didn't try to pull away.

“Come on,” he said, trying to sound encouraging rather than irritated and not sure if it was working; but Eridan at least still didn't resist when Karkat started pulling him towards the dining hall.

Chapter Text

Once he'd procured his target - one non-resisting, but still nervous and wary, seadweller - Karkat guided him through the mostly empty dining hall to one of the alcoves about halfway down the wall. It was one of the ones with just a couple soft chairs and a single side table against the back wall, instead of having an eating table between the seats. Getting Eridan sat down in one of the chairs, Karkat watched him warily as he seated himself across from the violetblood; but Eridan still made no move to flee.

“Okay. So. Uh... I don't even know where to start.” Karkat tugged at a stray piece of his hair that had fallen down next to his face; Eridan only watched him with a blank expression, his fins lowered as far as they could go. “Well. Um. Do you remember Alviah Acchan?”

Eridan blinked, visibly confused. “The... the teal that kept, um, blackflirtin' with me...? Sol... Sollux asked that too - what, um, what's she got to do with...?”

“Fuck, he seriously didn't tell you, did he. Ugh.” Karkat sighed and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “Well. To make a long story as short as I can make it... Sollux said you rebuffed her, right?”

Eridan nodded, worrying at his lower lip. “She, um, threatened my lusus if, if I wouldn't... go pitch with her. An' other thin's. I, uh, didn't want to... so, um, I blocked her.”

Karkat winced. “Well. She... I guess she didn't take that well. Because, well, that wasn't the story she told the rest of us.”

“What do you mean...?” Confusion was visibly beginning to win over wariness.

“I'm guessing it was meant to be revenge. She got the rest of us - me, Sollux, Kanaya, Terezi, everyone - in a group chat, and told us that, well...”

He paused, sighing; but it was important to continue. “That, when she'd gone to visit as a friend, you'd... beaten her up, and then forced yourself on her.”

Eridan's eyes went wide and he rocked back, fins spreading wide. “Wh-what? But I never even met her!”

Well. If that didn't speak for his innocence, nothing would. There was no way he could have faked that level of shock, especially while in such a vulnerable, nervous state.

Karkat shifted and rubbed at one knee with the heel of his palm. “Well. Um. She was... pretty specific. And I guess she knew... just enough about you, about your home and stuff, to make it sound really realistic. We - all of us - just... believed her. And, well...” Karkat swallowed hard. “She was insistent that we didn't go after you, physically - in retrospect, probably so we couldn't verify it with you - so I, um.”

It was proving incredibly hard to admit his own guilt in this; Karkat had to lower his gaze to his hands, unable to face the seadweller across from him. “I... insisted that we all block you. Cut off contact. Because, well, if no one could punish you for it physically, then ostracizing you was the best... the most we could do.”

When he managed to find the courage to look up again, Eridan's expression was almost impossible to read - not because he was hiding emotion, but because there were too many emotions all flitting about across his face. His fins almost seemed to be dancing - moving a little up and down, forward and back; they couldn't seem to pick a position any more than Eridan was able to settle on an emotion.

“T-that's... that's wh-why...?”

Karkat could only nod.

Eridan, rather abruptly, slumped down and hid his face in his hands; the shock appeared to have chased off the last of his fear of Karkat. “I-I... I thought... I didn't... I thought it w-was, it w-was just me...”

Karkat cleared his throat nervously. “...I know. But, well... it wasn't. We thought it was you doing something, but it really... it was her, lying, to get some sort of revenge.” He sighed. “We - I - should have realized, at least later... she, um. She did some... pretty terrible things to Tavros, when he became her matesprit. I should have remembered, thought to check in with you, when I realized, but...”

He tugged at the lock of hair again, hard enough to hurt. “She had us all pretty thoroughly convinced. So even though I knew what a horrible fucker she was, I never... never really questioned whether she'd been telling the truth about you.”

“....wh-why...?”

There was so much pain and heartbreak behind the question that Karkat felt all his internal organs twist in guilty discomfort. “I... I don't know. I wish I did. I wish... well.” He cleared his throat. “Now you know. Sollux kind of... forced the issue, or I wouldn't have, um, ever thought about it. He figured out what really happened. I can't fucking believe he didn't tell you himself.”

Then Karkat sighed. “I guess he didn't really tell me, either, though. Not... really explaining anything, anyway, not until after. I thought... I told him I remembered you admitting to it. I thought I did. But he told me to look back on my logs, and, well... you didn't, obviously.”

Realizing there was something else he probably ought to bring up, he cleared his throat again. “And then when I looked, um, I guess I wondered what else you'd said, after I blocked you, and, well...” He rubbed the back of his neck, debated hiding how much he'd read of Eridan's messages, and decided fully admitting it would be the best course. “Then there were, um, like seven thousand messages, and I couldn't not be curious...”

Eridan threw up his head to stare at Karkat; his fins first flared, then flattened against his head as he paled, then flushed, then paled again. “You- you read my-”

“I mean, not all of them, that would have taken half a sweep seeing how much you decided to throw out into the void, but... yeah. Enough.” Karkat shifted uncomfortably, realizing that that maybe hadn't been the nicest thing in the world to do - something along the lines of reading someone else's diary - but how was he supposed to have known that Eridan had been trolling him all this time in the expectation that he'd never read it? He couldn't have, of course. So it wasn't Karkat's fault. Even if he'd kept reading even after realizing. “Enough that I know, well... you didn't deserve it. Any of it. Not any of what happened, okay?”

Eridan seemed to shrink into himself. “I'm- I'm sorry,” he whispered, staring back down at his own hands. “I... I didn't... I never thought you'd... I hadn't wanted to, to bother you, I...”

Seriously? He was stuck on that?

“You haven't been listening to a fucking word I said, have you?” Karkat made an exasperated noise and ran his hands down his face, then sighed when he saw Eridan only flinch more and start to apologize again. He really didn't want to go through the whole rigmarole of calming the seadweller down again; so he interrupted, albeit more quietly this time. “Fucking- No. Shut up. Stop. I'm... fuck, I'm shit at this, okay? I'm trying to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry, for everything.”

That at least got Eridan's attention and his gaze up from his knees.

“I didn't know- No, I didn't even fucking think to check. I didn't bother to listen to you at all, and I let some-fucking-one else's opinion dictate what I thought of you. That wasn't even remotely fair to you, and I'm the worst kind of asshole for doing it, and I'm sorry.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed again. “I fucked up your life. No, don't,” he interrupted, when Eridan looked like he was about to protest. “I did. If I hadn't listened to her, if I hadn't insisted everyone else block you too because of it, if I'd even bothered to talk to you instead of yelling at you, or to talk to you for more than two fucking minutes, half of this shit would never have happened. You wouldn't have this shitty self-confidence issue, you wouldn't have been alone half your life, you might have been able to fight back against the fuckers who decided to abuse you there. You might have made something important of yourself, instead of getting stuck with... this.”

Eridan's fins trembled; he'd returned to looking at his hands in his lap halfway through Karkat's speech. “I... but, it's not like... like I didn't deserve it anyway...”

“For fuck's sake, you're seriously not actually listening to me at all! You didn't deserve it! You didn't deserve any of it!” Out of the corner of his eye, he realized he was attracting a bit of an audience; he turned to give them his second-best glare - which scattered most of them - and lowered his voice so the rest weren't able to hear as easily.

When he looked back, Eridan had pressed himself back against the back cushion, eyes on his hands in his lap and fins back flat against his skull again.

Shit.

Karkat bonked the back of his head against the wall behind him. “Fucking- look, I'm just bad at this, okay? I'm trying to make you feel better, not fucking terrify you. I mean it, seriously. You didn't deserve that. I was just, an absolutely monumental asshole, and I hurt you because of it. I shouldn't ever have listened to her over you; I should at least have thought to double check when she... when she showed what kind of murderous abusive shitbag she was. I should have at least explained to you what she'd said.”

Eridan's fingers were white with how hard he was gripping them; he didn't look up.

Karkat sighed again and tried to sound less angry. “I'm sorry. Really. I fucked you over, I was an asshole, and I'm sorry. I want to... I want to help, as much as I can, okay? I've been a shithead and I haven't listened but I'm trying... I want to change that, now. I'm sorry, and I want to fix it if I can. I want to help, Eridan.”

He leaned forward and reached out to put a hand over Eridan's, gently cupping them. Eridan looked up with wide eyes.

“Tell me what I can do to help. Please.”

The seadweller swallowed, eyes darting between Karkat's face and his hand. “I-I... but I don't...”

“If you're about to say you don't deserve it again, then shut up. I don't care. How can I help?”

Eridan pulled his lower lip between his teeth and his gaze finally settled back on their hands - his clenched together, Karkat's resting on top - in his lap. “I... I don't know,” he finally admitted, quietly, as his shoulders hunched a bit. “I'm... really, I'm doin' okay, it's... it's not that bad or anythin'...”

“Maybe not, but there must be something I can do.” Karkat sighed. “I am going to make sure the dicks who've been bothering you stop that. I can do that much - I've already started; at least, well, I'm trying. I, um, can't make them like you, but I can stop them from taking it out on you. Is there anything else I can do?”

Eridan freed one of his hands to fidget with his collar, but didn't say anything.

Karkat winced; that wasn't even remotely subtle. “Fuck... I'm sorry. I... I can't.” Eridan dropped his hand again, fins lowering, and he hastened to continue. “It's not because I don't want to, okay? But the collar, it's... that's the only thing keeping people from being, well... terrified of you. I'll turn it off, I can do that-” He let go of Eridan's hand to mess with the receiver on his own wrist. “There. It's completely disengaged. But... if you don't have something to show you're, well, I guess 'under control' is the best way to put it, a lot of people here are going to be really scared. Especially the ones just coming in, who don't know anything about you yet.”

“I... I understand,” Eridan whispered, though his shoulders hunched further.

“I wish I could. I'll... I'll try to get folks on board with it, okay? I can't... I really can't make that decision by myself. I know that's fucking unfair because it was just my decision in the first place, but people are used to it now; seeing it on you makes them feel like you're not a danger to be around.”

“I... know. I understand. It's okay.” Hands now free, Eridan grasped his elbows in a sort of self-soothing gesture.

“Is there... is there anything else I can do, though? Do you want anything? I could, um...” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked down, for the first time noticing Eridan's bare feet on the stone floor. “At least get you shoes, maybe?”

That prompted a faint smile out of the seadweller, and Karkat breathed a silent sigh of relief that he hadn't irrevocably terrified or hurt him. “I guess that'd be... nice. Not that I... ain't used to it, by now, but... yeah.”

“Okay. I'll do that. Anything else? Clothes?”

Eridan shrugged.

“Clothes. I'll check with Sollux, if you'd rather.”

That got a nod.

“Okay. Um...” Karkat wracked his brain for other ideas.

Eridan swallowed; when he spoke, his voice was tentative. “Maybe, um... if there's maybe... just, somethin' I could... do? That I could help with?” He swallowed again, then pressed on. “I, um, I'd like to be... useful, I guess, an' I mean, I try, but I'm just... not that useful, to Sollux an' all 'a them...”

Karkat blinked. That hadn't been something he'd expected Eridan to ask for at all. “You mean... you want to work?”

The violetblood nodded.

“Uh. I mean, I can... maybe find something, but... look, no offense meant, but what can you even do?”

Eridan rubbed the side of his neck under the collar, but the ghost of a smile hovered around his lips. “I'm used to, um, general labor stuff. Liftin', carryin', that sort 'a thing. I can, um, work with pretty heavy things. I'm used to it.”

Karkat was taken by surprise, again. “You're used to manual labor? As a highblood?”

The smile firmed a little. “I mean, a troll what doesn't make much's gotta take work where it's offered, right? An' there's...” The smile faded. “There wasn't ever that much for, um, for someone like me, of, well, better stuff. Easier jobs, or better payin' ones, or anythin'. I did some courier work but, um, that didn't really... make enough alone, for Sol and me.”

“Huh.” Karkat supposed that made sense; after all, hadn't those messages said something about how Eridan was going to get a terrible stipend? It made sense that he'd also be offered a poorer pool of jobs to take.

“I mean, if you're willing to do that sort of thing, the miners can always use help. Not the skilled ones, not at the vein, but...” He paused, thinking. “There's a group working out by one of the neighboring cliffs; we're trying to mine it out to make more hidden room for flight vehicles. That's a lot of just hunks of rock being moved around, and there's really not enough psionics who aren't needed elsewhere to help move the heavier things. You'd be pretty strong, being higher blooded, right?”

Eridan nodded; his fins flared out just a little. “Can do about... two hundred? Maybe more? I don't usually weigh things, so I'm not entirely sure, but it's somethin' like that.”

Karkat stared. “Jesus fuck, seriously?”

The seadweller tried not to smile and failed. “Yeah.”

“Well, you'd definitely be a lot of help out there, then; no one else could possibly lift that kind of weight themselves, and Aletta's the only psionic who can even remotely do that much - I mean, aside from Sollux, obviously, but he's got better things to do than move rocks around. She's always pretty much occupied with keeping the safety wall up so nothing falls on anyone, anyway.” He nodded, mostly to himself, at that thought. “If you're willing, that would be really helpful, to have you out there.”

“I'd... I'd like that.” Eridan's fins fluttered. “I... don't like to be, um... not useful.”

Karkat shrugged. “I can understand that. Well. I can take you to meet them first thing tomorrow evening, if that's all right with you? They'll, uh... it'll be easier for them, then, to, well...”

“Get used to the idea 'a workin' with a wader?” Eridan's tone was quiet, but still bitter.

Karkat winced. “I'm going to fucking ban that word. Don't you dare. But...” He sighed. “You're not wrong, I guess. I'd rather not spring it on them, especially this late when they'll all be tired from work.” He paused a moment to think. “Aletta's probably going to be the worst of them, but I'll try to get her to see reason. She's the team lead as well as being the psionic, so... if she doesn't give you shit, the others shouldn't. And tell me if they are, even if it's just words, got it? No being the fucking Sufferer from you.”

Eridan managed to hide his smile a little better this time, but Karkat still saw it crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Okay.”

Karkat reached over again to lay his hand on one of Eridan's. “I'm... I'm glad, that, uh. We were able to, well, do this. Talk. And that Sollux smacked me for being such an ass. I can't, um, I can't really promise I won't be one again, but, just tell me if I am, okay? Or tell Sollux and he'll tell me, he's got no compunctions in that regard.”

The seadweller nodded.

“Good. Well. Um.”

“...I should... probably get up to the lab. They'll be, um, expectin' me. An' I can... let them all know the, the new plan.”

Relieved at the rescue of his awkward attempt of ending the conversation, Karkat nodded. “Yeah, you do that. I'll... I'll go take care of things on my end.”

Eridan nodded in turn; but just before Karkat was about to stand up, he turned over his hand under Karkat's to briefly grasp it properly. “...Thank you,” he whispered; Karkat saw violet tingeing his cheeks, and his fins were extended up further than Karkat had ever seen them go.

“You're... you're welcome. But I should be thanking you. You had, you have, every right to be... just, furious with me, I guess. For everything I've done. So, thank you, for... well, being a better person than me.” He gave the seadweller a crooked smile, stood, and walked away before the other could respond to that.

A glance backwards showed Eridan's face an even brighter violet than before and his fins fluttering; Karkat smiled to himself and headed up to his office to start things in motion.

Chapter Text

The next evening, Karkat was waiting by the door to their rooms when the seadweller emerged in company with Sollux.

“Oh, good, KK, I don't have to go tracking you down,” Sollux commented, and squeezed Eridan's shoulder; the violetblood, flushing a little, looked up at him. “Was a little worried you'd forget.”

Karkat rolled his eyes. “I don't forget this kind of thing. Eridan, are you ready?”

Eridan felt Sollux squeeze his shoulder again, and managed a shy smile for the psionic before turning his gaze to Karkat. “I, um... I think so,” he replied quietly.

“You'll be fine, ED. And if you're not, I'll come and toss them all on their faces for being assholes.”

That prompted a steadier smile. Eridan nodded, and Sollux patted his shoulder one last time before turning and heading off to the tech lab.

Which left Eridan alone with Karkat. The thought was enough to prompt a shiver down his spine of automatic nervousness, but he quickly repressed it with the memory of their talk the night before and turned his gaze to the other troll.

He hadn't really ever noticed it before, but, while the mutantblood was a good bit broader, Karkat was actually just a little bit shorter than Eridan; a strange thing, given that Eridan was, to a greater or lesser degree, shorter than every other troll in this whole place. (It definitely didn't help his feelings of inadequacy to have everyone else literally looking down on him.)

He had to admit it was nice to not have to look up at someone, for once. He couldn't even remember the last time that had happened.

Karkat gestured for Eridan to come with him and started off; Eridan quickened his steps to keep up. Karkat walked fast for someone as short as he was.

“I talked to everyone already; Aletta promised to keep everyone in line if they weren't behaving.” Karkat shrugged. “They're a little disbelieving of your ability to actually help, but I figure that will fix itself pretty quick, given what you told me yesternight.”

Eridan nodded and tried to keep himself from fidgeting with the collar so he didn't draw Karkat's attention to it again. It had become almost a habit, one that helped ease the itching of new skin growing (and then being rubbed raw again) around his gills; but he didn't want Karkat to feel bad about not being able to remove it.

“I'll have proper shoes for you tomorrow; I see Sollux lent you his for now?”

The seadweller nodded again. He was wearing the boots he'd bought for Sollux before they'd left - a time that felt like so long ago, now. They were big on him, but a few layers of socks helped. And he was unlikely to overheat, even doing heavy labor; the desert night, as he felt as they began to climb the steps out of Sanctuary, was bitingly cold. He was glad of the long sleeves of his sweater and thick pants he wore. (Sollux had offered him his jacket as well, but it was big enough that Eridan had had to keep pushing the sleeves up to do anything with his hands, so he'd decided it was more trouble than it was worth to wear it.)

The sweater was a decent compromise. He wasn't really looking forward to getting it as dusty and dirty as it inevitably would become, seeing as it was one of only three shirts that he felt comfortable wearing here (one of which was technically Sollux's); but Karkat had promised new clothes as well, so hopefully he'd have more options later.

They were at the top of the stairs before Eridan noticed. The hall at the top was wide; to the left was a smaller hall that led into a room that Eridan couldn't quite see, and to the right the wide hall continued for a while before turning left and letting out, with no doorway or doorframe at all, into the desert outside.

Eridan took his first real look outside Sanctuary with wide eyes. The entrance was set into a tall cliff that curved forward on either side, leaving the mine itself almost sunk into the ground of a canyon of sorts. The area immediately outside the entrance was clear and flat; to the right sat a squat little building of wood, which looked mostly disused. (Eridan supposed it was probably where the miners had lived before they'd gotten Sanctuary built.) At the far end of the open space was a set of stairs, short but deep and very wide, with ramps on either side. Karkat headed to these stairs and up; they were so deep that both of them, with shorter legs than most, needed to take two steps on every other stair.

At the top of these stairs was an even bigger flat area, a plateau of sorts; there were smaller cliffs to either side, but the far edge seemed to drop off with nothing beyond it except a view of more desert.

“This is the landing field,” Karkat explained as he turned to the right. “We have one official flitter; it parks here when we're not using it, but Acorus and Waylen have it out right now on a mission.”

“Mission?” Eridan queried, curious.

“Um, yeah. Like, what happened to you and Sollux. You aren't the only ones, you know, though as far as I'm concerned you were the most important.” Karkat flashed him a grin.

Eridan only shrugged. He was pretty sure that, whatever the other said now, it was Sollux who'd been the most important. Eridan himself had been, at best, an afterthought.

But that was all right. He didn't mind being an afterthought as long as Sollux was taken care of.

Thinking about it brought another question to his mind. “So where do you keep the unofficial ones?”

Karkat pointed to the cliff to their left, where two pillars, set wide enough apart to permit a small flitter to fit between them, held up a shallow shelf of a roof. The area inside was shadowed, but Eridan thought he could make out the curve of metal of a vehicle inside. “There's only two functional ones right now, in there; we have a covered ravine the rest of them are in until someone's able to fix them up. There's three down there, and scraps.” The mutantblood shrugged. “First couple of times we tried taking planes down, the planes themselves were pretty much unsalvageable, so we took them apart for the useful parts and hid the rest.”

Eridan winced a little. “...Mine?” he asked, tentatively.

“In the ravine until someone can fix the steering. The engine and wing were easy to fix and replace, but steering's gonna need someone with more technical skill with flitters than we have right now. We've been putting feelers out for someone with experience, but nothing's come up so far.”

Eridan felt a surge of relief, hearing that. He'd been afraid for a moment it had been torn apart. Maybe it wasn't a great vehicle - it was old and had more than a few issues - but it was still his.

“Anyway, the dock we have over there is only big enough for the two, and maybe a skimmer if we ever get our hands on one, but there's flaws in the rock past where we've carved out that Tareka says would make the place collapse if we tried to dig further. So we're working on a new one, here.”

While they'd been talking, they'd approached the cliff to the right of the top of the steps. Now that they were closer, Eridan spotted several trolls near the cliff face itself; more visible was the electric green outline of a large rectangle, about half as tall as the cliff, held up against the face.

He had to fight down a surge of fear. That was the same green that he'd seen when his flitter had been brought down...

But it had never done anything to him directly; that had been a troll other than the psionic - one he still hadn't seen again, and who he hoped he never would.

“That's Aletta, holding the safety wall up. We're digging down, of course, the cliff's not tall enough to allow anything much to fit if we kept at the same level as here, so the wall's mostly just keeping anything that gets dislodged up top from falling down while they're working.”

Eridan nodded to show his understanding; before he could ask anything further, however, they came into range of the crew working here.

The psionic - Aletta - let out a shrill whistle on spotting Karkat and Eridan, and the trolls working at the face turned and headed over. Aletta herself slowly drew the wall away from the face; when nothing more than a few stones fell down, she set it down to lean against the cliff and came over to them herself.

Karkat waited for her to join them before speaking.

“Okay, so. I'm sure you've all seen him around before, but this is Eridan. He's agreed to help out here. I talked to you all about it, but I want to reiterate - don't be fucking assholes, all right? He hasn't done anything to you, don't do something to him.”

Eridan clasped his hands behind his back to hide how white they were from nervousness, and endeavored to keep the same from showing on his face.

Aletta shrugged, looking only at Karkat. “We won't if he doesn't. Work's more important.”

The other miners nodded their agreement.

One, a yellowblood with horns that curled loosely around his ears and the sides of his head shaved, stepped forward towards Eridan - who had to force himself to not step backward in turn - but he only gave Eridan a grin. “I'm Levern,” he introduced himself. “Been here since the start, with Aletta.”

He gave a look to the rustblood next to him, who stepped forward as well; this new one had short hair and horns that gently corkscrewed forward. “Kaisen,” he offered, but didn't say anything more.

In turn, the others introduced themselves - Darryn, an olive with horns that curved up and branched out with little prongs like feathers; Einion, another olive, who had horns that curved backwards over his head, a single branch coming off one; and, finally (and with a very clear air of disdain), Aletta herself, a rust whose horns swept back then turned up sharply at the ends.

Eridan shifted nervously once the introductions where done, not sure what would be expected of him; but Karkat had that well in hand.

“Eridan doesn't have any experience in mining, but he'll help with moving the larger pieces out of your way so you don't have to break them up later or have Aletta deal with them.”

That prompted raised eyebrows; Eridan rubbed the back of his neck but nodded.

“If you say so,” Aletta said dubiously, eyeing the violetblood. Eridan tried not to wince. He knew was the other was seeing - a slender, short troll, hardly bigger than a wriggler, who probably looked like he'd be blown over by a stiff breeze - but with the long sleeves, she wouldn't be able to see how his body was ultimately mostly muscle; nor could she know how dense a seadweller's body was, to survive depths in the water that could crush another troll: density that allowed for far more muscle in a much smaller space.

“I do say so. Eridan?” Karkat gestured towards a boulder that had been rolled over to one side but not yet brought to the pile futher along the cliff.

Eridan eyed it for a moment, but it didn't look like it was likely to be too much; and he'd been told sandstone like this was lighter than other types of rock. Stepping forward, he bent to find handholds... and lifted it with no trouble at all. It was, in fact, lighter than he'd expected; he could probably manage something half again as big as this if he needed to.

“Where's it supposed to go?” he asked, bending his head to one side to look at the others past the stone.

All of them bore expressions ranging from surprised to dumbfounded; Darryn was the only one able to answer at all, and even he could only point to the pile further along.

Eridan only nodded and moved over to the pile, head still tilted to the side so he could watch his feet around the boulder and not trip on anything that might be in his path. On reaching the pile, he gently set it down, held it in place a moment to be sure it was steady, then trotted back to the group.

“I told you,” Karkat was saying, smugly; Eridan felt his face heat up a little and lowered his gaze to the ground.

“Well. I guess he'll be right an' welcome.” That was Levern; Eridan saw him shake his head from the corner of his eye. “Never would 'a thought such a little shrimp-” Eridan found himself smiling a little at the pun, and was startled to see a slow smile returned to him from the yellowblood “-could manage anythin' like that."

“I imagine you'll find he can do a lot more than you think. So, Eridan, you think you'll be okay out here? Like I said, tell me if you're getting shit from anyone.” Karkat glared around the semicircle of trolls, who all gave him either a grin (in Levern's case) or a shake of the head (from everyone else).

Eridan nodded, then scuffed a foot. “Um... so what needs to be moved, still?”

“Right to it, aren't ya?” Levern chuckled and placed a hand - gently - between Eridan's shoulderblades to direct him over to the cliff face, as the others went back to their work. “Well, our workin' pile's over here...”

----

Settling in with the work group was easier than Eridan had expected. He got the occasional frown or scowl from Aletta, and she pretty clearly didn't want to interact with him any more than she absolutely had to, but nothing worse than that.

And the others were polite enough - and Levern was quickly becoming an actual friend, much as Cardea had.

The work was pretty simple; when larger chunks of rock broke free from the working face, he would get them and bring them over to the slowly-growing pile the others were creating with the castoffs from their mining. Between larger pieces, he would gather the smaller bits and stones into a wheelbarrow and bring them over to the pile as well: a job that had apparently been done by the others in turn before.

Levern had offered to teach him to use a pick and mine, but Eridan had politely refused after seeing the look Aletta had had on her face upon overhearing that suggestion. He wasn't sure what had prompted it, but he didn't want to get on her bad side - not any more than he apparently was just for being him, anyway.

And really, he was more than used to doing just this sort of work, carrying and gathering; it wasn't any more tedious than working for some of the shopkeeps in town had been.

Levern regularly engaged him in chat and jokes, slowly dragging Eridan out of his shell until he felt almost comfortable enough to joke back. The seadweller even began to eat with the group (minus Aletta) in the dining hall, at least for their lunch break - though he almost always went to join Sollux either in their rooms or the lab for dinner.

Slowly, finally, Eridan was coming to see Sanctuary almost as a home.

----

As the nights passed, the excavation progressed; Aletta's wall became ever more important as the stone over their work became thinner and the pit deeper, and it became vital that they all were well away from the area when the wall was removed to avoid being struck by stones dislodged by the work below. But the arch above their excavation continued to hold, even without the wall in place; and Levern, well experienced in mining (as he'd been one of the original group who'd created Sanctuary), was careful to direct them in their work so that it wasn't weakened so much that it fell.

The seasons were difficult at best to keep track of, out here in the desert, where there was hardly any noticeable temperature change, and so close to the equator that the days and nights barely changed in length; but a calendar was kept up to date in the dining hall. It had been around halfway through Twelfth Perigee when he and Sollux had first come; Fourth when he had started working with the miners; and now spring was quickly turning into summer, with the shortest night of the sweep occuring with the change from Fifth Perigee to Sixth.

The collar had become only an annoyance by now; his lower gills had formed calluses and scar tissue to protect the sensitive flesh beneath (at least somewhat, though his gills still complained if he wasn't careful with his movements) and though the damage prevented him from breathing well underwater, he rarely had occasion these nights to do so anyway. He still took soaks in the bathtub, but only now and then when his skin started to feel like it was as dry and cracked as the desert ground; no more than once or twice a week, really, and most times he didn't even fully submerge.

Eridan still found himself fidgeting with the collar occasionally; it had truly become a habit by now. But it was one that wasn't worth the effort to break; with all the new people coming in - their numbers had swelled by another eight since his and Sollux's arrival, most of them in the past perigee - it didn't hurt to draw attention to it, to let those people know that he wasn't something to be feared. (Or even to remind the people who weren't new, but who still distrusted him - like Aletta or her matesprit Marrok, or most of the kitchen staff.)

He never stopped hating it, of course; but Karkat's efforts to get others on board with its removal had gone nowhere, and eventually Eridan had asked the mutantblood to stop trying. Bringing it up constantly ultimately only served to make people more uncomfortable with him as they were reminded why he was wearing it. It was especially problematic for the people who were beginning to see him as at least a trusted acquaintance - if not actually a friend - but who couldn't quite be comfortable without that visible sign that he was 'under control' or otherwise not going to be a danger to them: ones who'd been hurt by seadwellers like him in the past.

He couldn't blame them, really; in their place, he'd probably want him to keep wearing it too. It still hurt, a little, that they couldn't bring themselves to trust him... but not enough that he resented it.

Or at least, not enough that he was willing to express that resentment to anyone but Sollux - and even that only in the wake of nightmares, ones where it was Alecto who'd put the collar on him, or the Karkat of the past who still hated him, or the troll who'd hurt him back when he'd first came.

(He'd discovered, shortly after he started working with the miners, that that particular troll was a tealblood named Acorus; the reason he'd never run into him when he'd been staying inside was that Acorus's main job was flying the flitters wherever they needed to go, so he was generally kept busy - and away from Sanctuary. When he wasn't doing that, he worked in the garden, accessed by a tunnel from the kitchen; another area Eridan avoided being around. Eridan endeavored to continue to stay out of the tealblood's way as much as possible.)

Really, he was becoming fairly content with his lot. He'd taken to eating all his meals in the dining hall with his work group (as usual minus Aletta, who'd never really warmed up to him even if she was unfailingly polite; she preferred to eat with her mate, Sanctuary's other leader Marrok, who didn't seem to like Eridan very much either). Sollux and Cardea generally joined them, and he discovered that Kaisen was the matesprit Cardea had so often traded her compiling shifts to Sollux to eat with.

And eventually, others started to join their little group as well, despite - or, very occasionally, because of - Eridan's presence.

And so Sixth Perigee continued on its way.

----

They were all being especially careful these nights, as Levern had discovered a crack in the rock above them that he said might make the area unstable. They'd be able to reinforce it with wood once the lower area was mined out to where the floor would end up being, but until then they'd just have to work around it and trust to Aletta's careful placement of the wall to keep things from shifting too much while they worked.

She herself, to properly place the wall, had to get closer to the mining site in order to see well; though she tried to stay out of the way, it did make things a little awkward, especially for Eridan when he had to maneuver around her with larger boulders.

Taking down the wall at the end of each shift was becoming an increasingly nerve-wracking event, as they all waited with bated breath to see if this time was the time everything fell and ruined all their work over the past perigees...

But every time, though the stone groaned and pebbles and rocks showered down from above, the ceiling continued to hold, night after night.

Two weeks into Sixth found Eridan, as usual, at the mining site. A bit before their lunch break, a particularly heavy rock broke free; it took Eridan some time to move it out of the area that was quickly becoming a cave, being more unwieldy than most of the others he'd worked with. When he finally got it to the pile, it was with a sigh of relief; he took a moment to shake out his arms from the strain before turning to walk back.

But before he'd taken more than a few steps back towards the excavation, he heard a shout and a grumbling of rock falling from below, and the rest of the group came bursting out in quick succession. Someone (it was impossible to tell who, in the mad dash) briefly knocked into Aletta standing in the entrance - just a little bit, but it was enough to make her concentration waver for a second...

The wall, leaning against the cliff face and pressed up against the side to protect the working area from the side and above, shifted slightly with that lapse in concentration, releasing a few stones past it.

Aletta brought her attention back to it quickly, but not in time to prevent that small release; and doing so meant she wasn't paying attention to anything but the wall itself. So she didn't see what Eridan saw - the rock, rolling over the top of the wall she was moving back into place - or how it started to fall down, directly towards her...

He shouted to warn her and she looked up, but she simply couldn't respond in time.

It hit her head, directly on her temple, before Aletta could protect herself - and Eridan felt time slow to a crawl.

She collapsed; the electric green surrounding the wall and holding it in place winked out.

The wall itself, freed of her psionics and pushed by the weight of the loose rock behind it, leaned forward and began to fall...

Directly onto Aletta.

Eridan's feet took off with him before he even had time to process what he was seeing, much less to think about what to do.

He skidded across loose rock on the ground, stumbling but not stopping, until he slammed into the wall with his forearms - catching it before it had fallen more than a few feet. His feet scrabbled for purchase against the rough stone beneath him; for a panicked second, the wall continued to move as Eridan's feet slid backwards-

But finally, first one, then the other, caught and held.

The rock behind the wall groaned against the new obstruction; more stones, freed by the movement, showered down around him...

But, somehow - Eridan held.

The full, crushing weight of the wall - and all the shifting rock now piled behind it trying to force it down - leaned inexorably down onto him...

But he held.

More rocks fell and scattered around him, shattering against the stone beneath; the crack in the ceiling gave way and the even greater weight of all the stone above pressed into the wall...

But he held.

Against the weight, against the stone, against the inevitability of being crushed himself, Eridan held.

His world narrowed to the wall above him and himself. There was nothing else important, nothing more important than holding on, than preventing the collapse as long as he could. He couldn't stop it forever - he knew, even through the fear and desperation and need to concentrate that clouded the rest of his mind, that that was impossible - but he could, he would, he had to, hold it for long enough that someone could pull Aletta away, and that everyone else could get away to a safe distance, before he crumbled.

He held. He had to. He couldn't let her die.

Aletta might not like him - but she was vital to the rebels. She was the only psionic even close to matching Sollux's strength. She was Marrok's matesprit, the main reason he'd ever made Sanctuary, and the reason he kept going. She led the mining crews, knew enough about everything to direct them, and figured out how to hide their work from potential spies flying above.

No one could possibly replace her.

Against that, Eridan was irrelevant. He always had been. Sure, he could haul around rocks almost as big as he was, and he'd made himself as useful as possible wherever else he could... but when it came down to it, the only people here who would even really miss him were Sollux and maybe Karkat, or Cardea, or Levern. Certainly his loss wouldn't be a detriment to the cause.

He knew that doing this was going to end in his death. There was no way around that. But if he could save Aletta, buy enough time that they could get her to safety before Eridan fell, well...

It was an easy decision to make.

Even as this processed through his subconscious, his conscious mind had better things to worry about. The stone behind the wall kept shifting, and he had to shift his weight with it to keep it in place.

Distantly, he heard the sound of shouting. He couldn't make out what was being said; they were too far away and he didn't have the concentration to spare to try to listen. No one sounded like they were approaching; sensible of them, with rocks continuing to break free and fall to either side. The wall was the only thing keeping him and Aletta safe at all.

Hopefully someone would think to get a psionic strong enough to move Aletta away.

Hopefully they would do that soon.

Or maybe they already had; he didn't dare take his focus away from the wall to check.

His arms, his legs, his back, everything ached and burned with the strain of holding on - he thought he even felt something tear in his leg - but he couldn't let go. Not until he knew she was safe.

Or until he simply couldn't hold it back any longer.

He squeezed his eyes shut, the better to concentrate, and forced himself to keep his mind only on what he was doing so he didn't think about what would inevitably happen when he couldn't.

Rock shifted, further this time; the wall itself moved with the pressure from the stone to lean in more from the right, and Eridan had to scrabble for purchase again with his feet against this new direction the weight started to come from.

He couldn't quite manage in time.

His left leg twisted - something else tore - and his knee gave out.

Eridan hit the ground, hard, on that knee; he cried out from the pain, but he could hardly hear it over the blood pounding in his ears.

The wall, briefly freed of its obstruction, continued its fall-

Until it was stopped, again, by his arms - still up, still holding, even after everything.

The newest change of weight and angle was even harder to bear up under. More rock had shifted into place behind the wall, pushing it down; his position was harder to maintain, with one knee - bearing far too much weight - on fire with pain. The foot on that side was trying to hold ground, the toe of his shoe digging into the rough sandstone of the ground; but it was slowly, inexorably, pushed backwards by the weight Eridan was trying to hold back. His other foot hardly had anything to push against, with the knee bent in front of him, so the weight fell almost entirely on his injured knee. He couldn't even shift to change his position; the wall was far too heavy and unmoveable.

He tried to keep holding, no matter the pain shooting up from his knee; tried to keep the weight up and away...

But it wasn't enough.

He could feel himself failing.

Hoping past hope that someone had gotten Aletta out, he braced himself for the inevitable.

Chapter Text

If we keep pressing west with the missions, it might draw attention more that way... can't keep staying in the same area or they'll be able to triangulate the position. Might mean overday raids, though - should ask Aletta if there's a way to disguise the flitter overday, she might know. Nets, with scrub, maybe...? Or painted canvas-

"Karkat!!"

Karkat jolted up, his attention immediately pulled from his own thoughts and directed to the panicking troll who'd just barged into his office.

“Karkat, emergency! Cliff collapsed- Eridan-”

He didn't need to hear any more; before the troll could even gasp out the rest of her message, he had straight up vaulted over his desk - heedless of the papers the move sent flying everywhere - and hit the ground running.

Trolls were boiling out of rooms, alerted by the shouting. Karkat didn't let himself slow down, but he did snap out instructions over his shoulder as he took the steps down three at a time.

“Psionics, every one of you, get outside to the cliff! Someone get Sollux, I don't care if you have to fucking drag him-”

A bolt of red and blue shot past him; he felt the crackle and smelled the burn the psionics left behind in the air. Sollux was already on his way.

Karkat skidded at the bottom of the stairs and shoved a foot into the wall there to get himself turned without losing too much of his momentum. “Get out of the way! Psionics to the cliff!” he bellowed, with what little breath he had that wasn't going into pumping his legs as fast as they would go.

The rest of the run was a blur; he vaguely remembered dashing up the wide steps to the landing field, stumbling over one or two; around him trolls with longer legs or more used to physical exercise passed him on the way up.

It was impossible to miss the disaster that had occurred. Half the cliff face had collapsed, right over where the mining crew had been working.

“Eridan!!”

In front of him, the red and blue bolt of Sollux had come to a stop - not out of his own volition, but by the combined psionics of at least three other trolls, holding him back from throwing himself into the danger zone where stones from the cliff continued to shower down, even as he screamed Eridan's name. They were babbling something; Karkat, panting with exertion, reached them in time to hear some of it.

“-distract him, he'll lose it-”

“-can't hold it up alone-”

“-got Aletta out-”

Karkat himself skidded to a stop at the edge of the danger zone - broken stones and rocks littered the ground, and more fell as he watched.

It only took him a few breaths to assess the situation; he'd always been good in a crisis, and it served him well now.

Most of the mining team was off to one side - Levern, Kaisen, Einion, Darryn - and he could just see the edge of a bent horn as they knelt around another. They were safe - but the troll who'd alerted him had said Eridan-

He knew why the instant he looked past the group to where the cliff had collapsed.

The protective wall had fallen, the cliff crumbling onto and around it; but beneath it, somehow holding it up, was a too-familiar figure, jagged lightning horns identifying him even through the dust and falling stone.

Sollux shrieked his name again and finally pulled free of the psionics trying to hold him back-

But Karkat grabbed onto his arm as he tried to run past and promptly punched him - only holding back a little - in the stomach.

That stopped him as nothing else could. Sollux dropped to his knees, bent over; one arm still reached out in front of him towards the figure under the cliff even as he fought for breath.

“Sollux, listen to me!” Karkat screamed into the psionic's ear, gripping onto his shoulder. “That's half the cliff down - you can't hold that up alone! You'll just end up killing both of you!”

“But... Er...idan-!” Sollux gasped out.

“Listen to me! We're not fucking abandoning him, all right?! But we need to work together or he'll die!”

Sollux finally caught his breath and pushed himself to his feet; he stared, desperately, at Karkat, trusting in his friend to somehow come up with a plan to save Eridan.

Karkat felt his mental gears click into place; a solution - at least, a possible one - presented itself, and he grabbed onto it with both metaphorical hands.

“I need all psionics here!” he bellowed; trolls scrambled to obey. “Sollux, I need you to make a shield - catch the wall, I know you can't hold it up alone but make a shield the rest can push against!”

Sollux, taken by surprise, gaped for a moment.

“NOW!”

Red and blue flickered into place, sparks dancing together to form a vague outline of the wall they surrounded.

“Temana, stand aside and get him out as soon as he's free! Everyone else, push the wall! Now!!”

Light - flickers, sparks, glowing tendrils, all the different forms that psionics took, all threaded across the space and slammed into the red and blue.

Sollux's psionics flickered, failing.

Karkat's heart pounded in his ears.

“God damn it, Sollux, fucking hold it!”

There was a cry of pain from the cliff, audible even from where they stood; Eridan dropped to one knee, and the wall dropped another few feet before he caught it again.

“Eridan!”

The red and blue sparks solidified with Sollux's scream; lights of all colors pressed against it. For a heart-stopping second it looked like it wouldn't be enough-

Then the wall lifted - only a couple inches, but that was all that they needed.

Eridan toppled over on his side and went limp; pale blue tendrils swarmed around him, dragging him out and away as fast as Temana could manage it. She wasn't strong enough to lift him, but she could manage to pull him. And she was the strongest they could spare away from the wall.

The lights, finally, got him out of the range of the danger, and Karkat, stumbling a little, had to catch himself as relief briefly made his bones turn to jelly.

“He's out! Let it go!” he called to the others, forcing himself to breathe slowly and stay standing.

The psionic powers at the wall flickered, blinked, or popped out of existence; several trolls fell to their knees or into others as the cliff resumed its collapse, crumbling and crashing and sending more shards of rock and dust billowing out towards them all.

Sollux swayed into Karkat, who managed to catch him and ease him down into a sitting position. Almost immediately, the yellowblood tried to struggle back to his feet, but Karkat pressed on his shoulders to keep him down - noting as he did so that yellow dripped down from one nostril. “The medics are with him, you need to stay put so you don't fall on your fucking face, damn it, Sollux!” he yelled over the noise of the collapse; he could see the signs of psionic overuse in the trembling body and bleeding nose before him.

Sollux was, of course, having none of it - but Karkat was stronger than him, in a better position to apply that strength, and Sollux himself was weakened by his efforts with the wall. The mutantblood had no trouble keeping him down.

All around them, trolls stumbled and helped each other get further away. Blood stained more than a few - from psionic overuse, shards of rock, skinned knees, or any number of other causes.

Across from them, the cliff continued to crumble; dust choked the air and the noise was nearly deafening as the rest of the cliff face that had been held back until now collapsed, causing even more of an avalanche effect. As more and more of it fell and shattered apart, not only the mining site, but a significantly larger portion of the plateau as well, were covered in loose rock. Karkat winced to see it - so much for perigees of work. There was no way they'd ever be able to use that cliff for anything now; even once it had settled, the rest would be far too unstable to risk trying with.

But there were far more important things to think about now than the future of the cliff. He closed his ears as best he could to the developing rockslide and turned his attention back to Sollux.

Chapter Text

Finally, the noise quieted as rock settled, and Karkat found he could hear - and breathe - again. He took another look around, checking in on the situation; spotted Marrok lifting his unconscious mate with the greatest of care and carrying her to the steps down to Sanctuary; saw Jaycie - one of the medics - following; saw the rest of the mining group making their unsteady way over to Temana and Eridan.

The two medics left on the plateau were, as he'd told Sollux, kneeling next to Eridan, laid out a short distance away. Even from here, Karkat could see violet blood staining his face and the rock beneath him; for a panicked moment, he thought they hadn't gotten to him in time-

Then one of the medics stood up.

“He's okay!” she called to the gathered trolls, and Karkat slumped in relief - but straightened again in surprise when a cheer burst forth from the gathered group around Eridan and the medics.

Startled, he looked up to see not just the other trolls from the mining group, but others as well, more than a dozen trolls altogether - over a third of Sanctuary's entire population - cheering and hugging each other. At least two were outright crying; he thought one might be Cardea, but he couldn't see the other well enough to identify them.

Karkat had to swallow hard to keep his composure at seeing just how many people were so concerned about Eridan's welfare that they stayed until - and cheered when - they knew he was okay. He hadn't realized just how much Eridan had become... not only accepted, but wanted, by the others here.

It was a revelation that had Karkat blinking back tears even as he found himself smiling.

The olive medic who'd announced that the seadweller was okay knelt back down, and Sollux scrambled back to his feet. Karkat didn't try to keep him down this time; instead, he offered - and had that offer accepted - a shoulder to lean on as they both made their shaky, exhausted way over to the fallen troll. The other trolls gathered there parted to let them pass.

Sollux broke free as they approached and stumbled to his knees at the unconscious Eridan's side.

“How bad-?” Karkat managed, smile vanishing when he finally actually saw the violet troll. Eridan looked horrible. His face and head were all but covered in blood; more stained his shirt and the ground beneath him; and his knee - visible now that the medics had cut off the pants leg just above it - was visibly twisted and swollen with violet and black, and the front was scraped raw and bloody.

Karkat fought the urge to collapse beside Eridan as Sollux was doing. He couldn't let himself. He had to keep himself under control, no matter how worried he was; with Marrok tending to his matesprit, he was the only leader here, and if he let himself collapse there might be panic. For the sake of everyone, he had to hold himself together.

Ariona - the head medic, a yellow with tall, pointy horns - was the one to reply. “We can't tell for sure with his knee, though it looks twisted; maybe sprained, maybe strained. Even aside from the abrasions, it's swelling something fierce. But we can't tell what or why or how badly it's injured for sure out here, or if there's any other internal injuries.”

“The blood-” That was Sollux, gently but desperately stroking Eridan's forehead and cheek, heedless of the violet staining his hands.

“That, at least, is just superficial damage. The bleeding from the nostrils is from strain - you have that yourself, sir Sollux,” Ariona teased; but it didn't make the psionic relax any.

“And the rest? His head?”

“Like I said, superficial damage. Mostly minor cuts and abrasions, likely from pieces of stone when he was being pulled out. Nothing that won't heal in a week or so. It looks a lot worse than it is, head wounds bleed like crazy.”

Karkat stepped in. “We need to get him inside, to the medbay.”

“On it,” Sollux replied - but the red and blue sparks that briefly skittered across Eridan's body promptly vanished. “Shit- shit, I'm, I'm tapped out-”

Karkat laid a hand on the panicking psionic's head to calm him, ignoring the sparking shocks between his horns. “Shoosh, easy, Sollux. You're not the only one capable of lifting him - and most of the others don't need psionics to do it.”

“Please. Allow me.”

Ariona stepped to the side, surprise written across her face; Marrok moved forward to fill her vacated position.

Sollux bared his teeth and shifted to place himself between the straight-horned blueblood and Eridan; his glare was accompanied by a subvocal growl that made Karkat's shoulders tense as he removed his hand from the other's head.

But he couldn't find it in himself to blame Sollux for the reaction. Marrok, much like his mate Aletta, had been openly distrusting of the seadweller - even more so than she was. Karkat had heard wader from him more than once; he had stopped when Karkat had called him out on it, but he'd still had nothing good to say about Eridan, and a fair amount of bad.

It was only reasonable for Sollux to want him to stay away from Eridan, especially in his current helpless state.

“Fuck you, you piece of shit, fuck off! You're just going to hurt him!” Sollux snarled; psionics tried to crackle around his horns, but faded before they could do anything more than briefly spark.

Karkat kept his mouth shut - and was glad of it a moment later, as Marrok knelt down beside the psionic, head tilted slightly back to show his peaceful intent.

“He saved my mate's life,” the blueblood said quietly. “If not for him, she would have been crushed. I spoke with the others - he ran in to save her. He had been out of range, out of danger when she... when the wall fell. No one would have blamed him if he'd stayed away. No one could have ever expected anything else.”

Marrok let out a shuddering breath; Karkat, looking more closely, saw evidence of tear tracks down his face. “But he did it anyway. He risked his life to save hers. He had to have known that even if he could save her life, that it would take his - that there... that no one would be able to save him. Not outside of a miracle.” The blueblood had to stop for a moment, pressing the heel of his palm to one eye; Karkat saw tears sparkling in the corners of the other. “But he tried anyway. And he did. I... I owe him everything, Sollux. Please. Let me bear him inside. It is... it is the very least I can do.”

Sollux hesitated for a moment longer... but, finally, pushed himself to his feet and stepped aside.

Marrok shifted to get closer, then lifted Eridan with just as much - if not more - care as he had his matesprit, cradling Eridan's head against his shoulder. As he approached, then moved down the stairs, his steps were slow and sure, clearly doing his best to avoid jostling the seadweller in his arms.

Karkat, Sollux, and the rest trailed after him, almost in a daze.

The last of Sollux's adrenaline-fueled energy appeared to be quickly running out of him; Karkat guided the other to lean on him and helped him down the steps and into Sanctuary, prompting a weary, anxious smile out of the psionic.

“Thanks, KK,” he murmured once they were inside and down the stairs within; then he took a breath, stood up under his own weight, and followed Marrok into the medbay.

Ariona followed Sollux in; Zollie, the other medic, stopped in the doorway. “The rest of you, go find something useful to do. You aren't going to be any help here,” she snapped at the trolls coming down the stairs and those hanging around the area; cowed, they dispersed.

Karkat sighed and, out of sight of everyone but Zollie, leaned against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, allowing himself to be weak for just a moment before he took up the burden of leadership again.

So many things could have gone wrong. If they hadn't gotten there in time, if Eridan had faltered, if he'd been unable to take the weight, if the psionics hadn't been able to work together, if Sollux hadn't been able to hold the shield, if people hadn't gotten clear of the collapse-

They could have lost someone. Eridan and Aletta almost certainly; even others might have died. It could have been a disaster of the worst sort, a true tragedy.

But... it hadn't been.

Karkat took a deep breath and stood back up... and found a real, if weak, smile lifting his face even as tears threatened to break free from his eyes.

It hadn't been.

Somehow, in a miracle that defied all odds, Eridan had succeeded-

They had been able to save him-

And no one had died.

----

When he checked in at the medbay later, Marrok was gone; Aletta rested in one of the main room beds, holding an ice pack to her temple.

“He's in the first room on the right,” she said quietly, seeing Karkat; her voice trembled a little. Karkat couldn't blame her - though she'd been unconscious for most of it, the state Marrok had been in would certainly have unsettled her when she'd awakened, and she'd surely heard the tale by now.

He nodded silently to her and passed by, heading into the small hallway that housed the individual rooms.

The first room on the right, as Aletta had indicated, had the door propped open; Karkat slipped inside.

Eridan was still out cold, though the blood had been cleaned up and his knee wrapped in white bandages. Sollux sat beside him, slumped over but holding onto the violetblood's hand.

Karkat cleared his throat a little and the yellowblood snapped up, instinctually moving to put himself between Eridan and the door; but he visibly relaxed on seeing who it was. “Wh- Oh. KK.”

“Trouble?” Karkat asked, a little confused at the automatic response.

Sollux shook his head. “Just... startled me, that's all. I keep thinking... well, that someone's going to come take advantage. After the last time he was in here...”

“Oh.” Karkat winced a little. No wonder Sollux was so jumpy. The last time he'd been with Eridan in the medbay had been right when they'd first arrived - when Eridan had been badly injured, restrained, and then...

Then Karkat had forced him into the collar Eridan still wore.

He felt a surge of guilty nausea in his throat, and swallowed it down, hard.

“How... how is he?” he managed, tentatively.

“Nothing major, like Ariona said, thank fuck. All the bleeding was pretty small stuff. Only two spots needed stitches, even. And a moderate sprain in his knee - didn't fully tear anything, they said, but a lot of swelling, and he's not going to be up to walking on it much any time soon. I hope you're not expecting him to go back to work, cause Ariona'll have your head if he's on his feet for more than ten minutes at a time the next couple weeks - and if she doesn't, I will."

Karkat shook his head. “There's no work to go back to. The cliff's completely collapsed - rock's still settling. I've put up a perimeter around it so no one goes too close. We'll have to find a new location for that new flitter hangar, there's nothing salvageable there. And he needs to heal.” He sighed. “I... there's... Sollux, I think it's a good time to call a vote.”

Sollux blinked. “On what, where to put the new hangar? I don't think people are going to have that much of an opinion-”

“Not that. On... Eridan.”

The yellowblood bristled, and Karkat hastened to explain. “Not like, on him being here. On, you know, the collar. After this... well, I think with this all freshly in everyone's minds this is going to be the best chance we'll have to get a favorable vote for removing it.”

He'd never actually put taking the collar off to a vote before - he'd been feeling people out, trying to convince them, for a while after he and Eridan had first talked, but with the responses he'd been getting being so negative, he hadn't wanted to risk a vote. Failing in a vote would have been worse than simply not having the vote at all; it would have given precedence to refusing its removal, which would have made any later attempt of overturning that vote much, much harder.

Sollux relaxed a little at the explanation. “...yeah. Probably. I... I hate to make him face anything so soon, though...”

“The longer we wait, the more likely people are going to forget what happened. I want it off him, Sollux, it's not fair to him, and I don't care if it's manipulating people to do this now if it will work.”

The yellowblood offered him a lopsided smile. “Can't say I disagree, KK. We'll have to get Ariona's okay on it, though - he'd better be present, after all.” Then he chuckled a little, though it sounded a bit gravelly. “Harder for them to ignore what he did when it's right in front of their faces.”

Karkat nodded. “I'm sure we can manage a chair. If he's up to it, I'd like to do it right away tomorrow. I can put it about tonight, that way we can arrange for everyone to be present before people need to go off to work.”

“And it will keep them from wanting to stay to make arguments all night, hm?” Sollux asked, raising an eyebrow. “You are manipulating the shit out of this.”

“Guilty as charged. You complaining?”

“Hell no. I'll talk with him as soon as he wakes up again, and Ariona when I see her, we'll figure out how we can get him there. Worst case scenario, I should have most of my psionics back by then and I can carry him, though he might just complain the whole way that he's being electrocuted.” Sollux had a soft grin on his face as he spoke.

“Well, it does kind of feel like that,” Karkat pointed out. “Especially on bare skin. Speaking of - do you want me to get something from your rooms for him?” Eridan was still wearing the cut-up pants, after all, and he'd surely feel even more self-conscious in them.

Sollux thought for a moment, then fished in his pocket for the key, which he tossed to Karkat. “Bottom drawer next to the 'coon, one of the grey ones. It'll be baggy enough on him that it shouldn't pull on the bandages or anything.”

Karkat caught the key and nodded. “I'll be right back, then - or, better, I'll send Ariona with them, if I run into her. She's probably in the dining hall about now anyway.”

“Okay. Might need her help to get him changed anyway. I'm still sparking.”

“You need to rest, too, you know.” Karkat raised an eyebrow.

“I will once I know what they want to do with ED. I'm hoping she'll clear him to rest in our rooms - I don't like him being here, and I know it makes him jumpy. He was practically vibrating the whole time they were working on his knee until they gave him a sedative.”

Well, that explained why Eridan was still asleep - or rather, asleep again, apparently.

Karkat nodded again. “Okay. I'll start putting out about the vote.”

“Get MK on it, too.” Karkat blinked at the nickname; he hadn't heard Sollux refer to the blueblood as that more than once or twice. Apparently he was feeling more generous towards him now. “He was in here as soon as Aletta was settled to make sure ED was okay. I think he'll actually help, now.”

The mutantblood nodded. "I'll try and track him down. He's the one who knows where the voting stones are, anyway, I don't remember where they got put this last time. They're not on the stage, at least.”

Then he reached over to give Sollux, who still looked nervous, a pat on the shoulder. “It'll be okay. We'll pull this off, he'll be out of the damn thing, and things will be better. You'll see."

Chapter Text

The next evening found the trolls of Sanctuary gathering for an 'important' but unspecifed vote (Karkat, in the interest of preventing people from coming up with arguments in advance, had not given more information) in what had come to be called the theater: a room carved out about a perigee ago across from the dining hall, for the purpose of meetings and other gatherings that the dining hall had proved less than ideal for.

The entrance was very wide - almost as wide as the theater itself - and split into two sections with a short wall between them. The smaller left part followed the wall beside it, then turned farther left and let out on the back of a 'stage' of sorts, which took up about a third of the room; the wider right one led down a few steps into an 'audience' area set a few feet below the stage. It was an ideal setup for meetings, votes, and entertainment of various styles, and had been used more than once for all of these purposes by now.

Karkat leaned against the wall just 'offstage' where he couldn't be easily seen from below, going over his speech in his mind, while trolls filed into the audience section and found comfortable spots - sitting, leaning, or standing as they preferred. Marrok, at the right-side entrance, had the two baskets of voting stones with him and was keeping track of who came in so they could be sure everyone was present.

Not every vote required everyone there if they weren't interested - but Karkat did not want to give this vote even the slightest hint of illegitimacy. Everyone would be here if he had to drag them here himself; everyone would hear the testimony, be given the chance to bring up arguments, and be able to vote, so that no one could possibly complain against the result on the grounds of not having been able to do so.

Marrok stood up once all but the last few trolls - Eridan, Sollux, and Zollie - were in the theater and accounted for, and stepped over towards Karkat. “Everyone's here,” he said quietly, and Karkat looked up.

Zollie - the olive-blooded medic with horns that branched like a stag's - was just coming down the hall with Sollux; between them they half-carried a very pale and limping Eridan. Karkat winced a little at the sight; Eridan did not look good, at all. Frankly, he barely looked like he should be upright at all. But that was, honestly, all to the good for this particular vote. Sympathy would be very helpful here.

Marrok briefly returned to the other side of the entrance to pick up the chair the baskets had been sitting on; setting the baskets themselves on the top steps, he brought the chair over by Karkat.

Sollux helped Eridan to sit as Marrok took the steps down to join the audience; once Eridan was settled, Zollie followed the blueblood's example, grabbing her voting stones on the way.

“You okay to do this, Eridan?” Karkat asked quietly, crouching beside the chair. “I mean, it's important, but...”

Eridan nodded before Karkat got any further. “Yeah... Sol said. I'll be okay,” he offered with a tentative smile. “Just... prefer not to have to stand much, right? Zollie said she'll... start cuttin' heads off if it gets too much.”

“Whose heads, of course, is the question,” Sollux muttered; the three of them shared a quick smile at the attempt at a joke before Karkat straightened.

“Right. I'm gonna introduce the vote, you two can stay here until we're ready for the actual testimony.”

Both Sollux and Eridan nodded; Karkat turned to head out onto the stage, catching a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of Sollux putting his hands on Eridan's shoulders and leaning down to murmur into his ear before the turn of the entrance to the stage took them out of sight.

Standing up here was becoming a pretty familiar event for him, now; being the leader in charge of all the trolls here, he was almost always the one to call meetings or votes to order. He didn't like it - it always felt uncomfortable, to have so many eyes on him after a lifetime of trying to avoid just that - but he was getting used to it.

He stepped to the center of the stage where the acoustics were best, cleared his throat, and waited until the soft talking from the gathered trolls below quieted.

“Right. So. You all should know the drill by now, but just in case I'm gonna give a rundown,” he began, trying not to shift or give into any of his nervous habits. Tonight, of all nights, he couldn't appear anything less than absolutely confident.

“You should have grabbed your stones at the stairs - yes, go get them now if you forgot, one of each. Presiding troll - yours truly - will present the issue at vote; arguments may be made after it is presented. When no more arguments are brought up, we'll cast the vote - there'll be a pair of bags going around, drop your vote into them and pass them on. White for yes, black for no. No messing with other people's votes or double voting, obviously. If you cast the wrong vote - which, I mean, just don't, it's not that damn hard to put the right stone in - but in case you do manage to fuck up that simple of a task then come let me know when the bags go up. Questions? No? Okay, let's get on with it then.”

That spiel taken care of, Karkat gestured to Sollux just off the stage; the psionic nodded. The chair Eridan had been sitting in floated in red and blue onto the side of the stage; Sollux helped a tired, limping Eridan onto the stage to sit back down on it. A quiet wave of murmuring swept through the audience when they saw him (and, presumably, the state he was in, given the undercurrent of concern Karkat heard from below).

It was probably just as well Eridan was as exhausted as he was, Karkat decided; it meant he was too tired to be horribly self-conscious about being in the spotlight, so to speak. He'd noticed Eridan seemed to hate having much attention directed at him even more than Karkat did - probably with good reason, in all honesty. But now the sea troll hardly even seemed to notice the others below at all.

Karkat dragged his head back to the important task at hand and turned his gaze to the audience.

“So. I know all of you will have heard what happened yesternight, even if you weren't present for it. But to sum it up - there was an accident at the mining site off the landing field. Levern says a crack in the ceiling started to give way so he got everyone out of the cavern; in the process of this evacuation Aletta was jostled, taking her concentration away from the safety wall- no, I'm not fucking taking questions, ask your neighbor to explain. She briefly lost concentration on it and a rock got past it and hit her, knocking her unconscious and releasing the wall. Everyone following so far?”

It was really a rhetorical question; he didn't actually wait for a response. “Eridan saw her drop and the wall start to fall. He was out of the dangerous area already, but when he saw her fall, he took action.”

Now Karkat slowed his speech in order to get across the importance of his words.

“Eridan - who was, I cannot emphasize this enough, already out of danger - ran back into it to catch the wall before it fell on, and killed, Aletta. That wall had half the cliff behind it; I don't fucking know how he managed it, but he stopped it falling and held it back, protecting Aletta.

“He didn't know - and this is from him, mind - he didn't know if he could do it at all. That was a fucking enormous amount of weight. But, rather than staying in safety, he threw himself back into danger, to try to hold back an impossible amount of stone behind that wall, just to try to save her. Without knowing if he even could.”

Marrok, beside the stairs to the stage at the far end of the theater, cleared his throat; Karkat shrugged. “I'm also informed that he probably didn't think, even if he could save Aletta, that he himself could be saved in turn - Eridan?”

The seadweller blinked, startled at being addressed. “Huh?”

“Did you think you could have been saved, been gotten out, when you went in? That you could have survived?”

Eridan looked down and swallowed hard; his voice was quiet, but Karkat was pretty sure he was still audible to at least most of the others below. “Um... I, um... I don't... I just, didn't really think about it at all, I guess. It... it didn't matter, not really.”

Karkat narrowed his eyes, but decided calling Eridan out on his bullshit self-deprecation could wait until they weren't in front of the entire assembled population of Sanctuary.

“Close enough. Well, anyway, regardless of thought processes on the matter, and to make a really short summary of a fucking terrifying night, he did save her - he caught the wall and held it long enough that Aletta could be pulled out of danger. And then as most of you know, all the rest of the psionics working together - and that should give the rest of you a damn good idea of how fucking heavy that wall and the rock behind it were - all the psionics, working together, were just barely able to lift it enough that he could be pulled free before the cliff collapsed entirely.

“Eridan's actions yesternight literally saved Aletta's life - and possibly others', too. And, to bring this damn meeting to its point, he's still wearing a fucking slave's collar.”

Startled talk started up from the audience; but watching Eridan from the corner of his eye, Karkat noticed that he didn't seem to be surprised by the seemingly abrupt change in topic - though he did shift in his seat, looking rather uncomfortable.

Probably Sollux had told him what to expect, from what Karkat had talked about with him.

He gave a mental shrug and turned his full attention back to the trolls in front of him, waiting for the talking to die back down.

“So. He's been wearing that damn thing since he first came here. I was the fucking idiot that put it on him - I will readily admit that I was horribly biased and should have never done it, but I can't change that now. More importantly, he has been wearing it, has continued to wear it, so that the rest of you feel safer around him. What I want to bring up here is whether you all still need him to prove himself to you, even after all this. Because I think he's done enough - more than enough - to show you that he's not only not a danger to anyone, but a fucking asset. He risked his goddamn life to save someone who didn't even like him. I don't know how much more anyone can expect out of a person - and frankly, I don't think anyone could reasonably expect even that much!

“I put the damn thing on him, but it's not my call alone any more. So I'm bringing it to a vote. Shouldn't we honor his deeds, instead of treating him like dirt, like none of you would ever want to be treated - like many of you have been treated in the past?”

Karkat was being incredibly manipulative with the way he was phrasing things, and he knew it - and he didn't care at all. Actually, he did the opposite of not caring at all - he was very intentionally manipulating the situation as much as he could, being as persuasive as possible and doing his best to make anyone who was thinking of arguing feel too guilty to actually follow through.

So what if it was a little unfair? It was far more unfair for Eridan to have been forced to wear that fucking collar for half a sweep. They could stew in their guilt and shut up about it, as far as Karkat was concerned.

“So? Any arguments before I call the vote?”

To be fair, he did wait a solid ten seconds - he counted - to allow anyone to speak up that wanted to; but though there was some mumbling and muttering from the gathered trolls below, no one stepped forward.

“Fine. Then I'm calling the vote. White stone to honor Eridan and remove the collar, black to-” He caught himself just in time to prevent finishing that as 'be an asshole' and adjusted his language. There was such a thing as pushing too hard; he wanted to convince people, not make them angry by insulting them. “To refuse. Marrok?”

The blueblood stepped forward with the two bags he carried; he passed one of them to one of the trolls in the front, the other to one in the back.

Karkat watched as the bags made their way through the assembled trolls, forcing himself to breathe instead of holding his breath the whole time it took for them to complete the circuit. It seemed to take a perigee, everyone was moving so slowly...

He glanced over at Eridan and Sollux. The former had his eyes closed, his head leaning into Sollux's hip and the psionic's hand resting on his shoulder; Sollux himself met Karkat's eyes, his expression difficult to read.

Karkat turned his gaze away in time to watch Marrok gather the second of the bags and step up to the edge of the platform to hand both of them up to Karkat, who bent down and took them.

“Last call for voting, anyone missed the bags?”

Karkat waited for a moment; when no response was forthcoming, he stepped back and upended the bags to reveal the vote.

The first bag of stones clattered onto the end of the raised 'stage'; the second was quieter, stones ticking on top of each other, a gentle fall of white on white.

Karkat dug in his pocket for his stones and let his own pale one fall onto the gleaming pile at his feet, unable to prevent a triumphant grin at the clear and visible result. “The vote is overwhelmingly for,” he announced, for the benefit of those who couldn't see the heap of white at his feet.

It was overwhelming. A few black stones marred the white, showing a couple trolls disagreed - but they didn't matter. What mattered was the rest of everyone; the sheer number who'd - whether through his masterful manipulation or on their own - decided to vote to remove that goddamned collar.

Really, he'd only been holding out hope for a simple majority; this result, this avalanche of support, was beyond his wildest expectations. Sure, he'd biased his presentation as much as he really could, but that wouldn't have held up against people who were really set against Eridan; it would only serve to push those already wavering to the side he wanted them to fall on. Realistically, he couldn't possibly have manipulated the vote this much.

So the fact that so many of the people here - people who had, almost to a troll, either faced or narrowly escaped horrors at the hands of highbloods - had come to trust Eridan, to believe in him, even if in just this instance, made him... well, he couldn't help but to feel proud.

In more ways than one.

He was, of course, proud of Eridan, proud that he'd managed to earn their trust...

But he was also so, so proud of the rest of Sanctuary; proud that they had learned to let go of, or overcome, their own fears, their own traumas, to accept and welcome a seadweller among them.

That they trusted - could trust - Eridan, a highblood, enough to remove that last barrier that separated him from them.

Feeling pretty damn good about the result, he'd been about to start on the speech he'd prepared for just this event - but then Karkat saw movement from the corner of his eye and paused. Sollux was helping Eridan up from his chair on the side of the stage.

Obligingly, Karkat stepped back to allow the seadweller the floor. He hadn't been expecting Eridan to have anything to say - or, rather, to want to say anything at all - but he was hardly going to deny the other the chance to speak, not after this result.

Eridan looked distinctly pale and a little shaky as Sollux helped him to limp forward; he could barely put any weight at all on his bad knee. But it was his expression - set, determined - that made Karkat hesitate.

What is he-?

But Eridan had started to speak, facing Karkat as much as the gathered trolls below.

“I... I'm grateful, really, to... to see all of this. To... get your support, like this.” Karkat saw him swallow hard. “But... respectfully-” He looked first at Karkat, then to Sollux beside him, “-my stone remains uncast.”

Karkat frowned. What was Eridan getting at? Sure, he hadn't voted, but surely it didn't matter, with this kind of result-

Sollux helped Eridan to step forward and approach the pile of stones, then steadied him; once the seadweller was standing on his own (albeit pretty much just on one leg), Sollux handed him the two voting stones he'd apparently kept aside.

Eridan took them...

Then, without hesitation, he dropped the black one onto the snowy-white pile.

Karkat wasn't the only one to gasp.

“Eridan, what- You do remember the vote is for removing the collar?”

The seadweller looked over his shoulder to give him a small, shadowed smile. “I do.”

The trolls below started to murmur; Karkat frowned. “Then why- You can't tell me you like wearing it!”

Eridan held up his hand for quiet; grumbling, Karkat subsided so the other could speak his piece.

The seadweller waited until everyone was quiet before speaking again. “Of course I don't. But... there are other considerations besides my comfort.” He took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh; Sollux squeezed his shoulder gently and stepped away, giving Eridan the full floor.

Eridan still looked pale and trembled a little, but he stood on his own, clearly determined to say his piece despite being in rough shape. “I am... honored to see your trust; that the sight of me, of what I am, doesn't frighten you any more. But, there is more to consider before this decision can be fairly made.”

He swallowed, then firmed his shoulders. When he spoke again, his words were carefully, properly enunciated - hiding his usual seadweller accent - with a voice meant to carry; Karkat found himself a little envious of how powerful and musical the seadweller managed to make his words sound, how they managed to carry without Eridan even really raising his voice.

“The reason I wore - that I'm wearing - this collar, is to make those around me more comfortable with my presence. And while I am truly, truly glad that you all feel safe around me now, that you believe it unnecessary... I also want to think of the future.”

Eridan took another deep breath and spread his fins out wide; as he began to speak again, his normally short stature seemed almost to tower from the force of his determination, while his voice rang out with a confidence Karkat had never seen from him before.

In that moment, Karkat realized just what Eridan might have become, in a different life.

“This place is a sanctuary: a sanctuary for all. And it is my hope, as I suspect it is yours, that it should continue to be so - not just for the ones here currently, but for others in the future. That this place can offer safety and freedom to many more who need it. But... many of the ones who may come, who will need that sanctuary the most, are likely to be as afraid of me as you were when I first came - without the chance to know me or to know if I can be trusted. I won't be the troll you see; to them, I will be someone to be feared.

“I can't change what I am - but if my wearing a collar helps them to feel safe here, to have that sanctuary, then damned if I'll discard it for my own comfort!”

The room echoed in stunned silence when Eridan stopped speaking.

Karkat stared at the seadweller, unaware his jaw was hanging open, until Sollux elbowed him in the side.

He snapped it shut as the yellowblood stepped forward to support Eridan again, who leaned against him in exhausted relief.

“Well. Uh. Goddamn, Eridan, did you really need to outclass me on my own platform?” Karkat managed, stepping forward again as Sollux drew Eridan to one side. The joke, weak as it was, still had the desired effect; Eridan, though violet tinged his cheeks, huffed out a laugh, and Karkat spotted a few smiles in the audience below. “You're an absolute fucking beast of a public speaker, you know. I should have you make all my speeches.”

Eridan's face flushed an even brighter violet and he ducked to hide it against Sollux's chest - until the yellowblood bent over to get one of Eridan's arms over his shoulder and hiding was no longer an option. Fortunately for the seadweller's composure, this was immediately followed by Sollux helping him across the stage and past the small wall that divided the ramp to the platform from the steps to the audience area below; Karkat heard, more than saw, their steps turn in the direction of the living quarters once they reached the hall.

Some of the gathered trolls below followed their example, heading off to other duties or activities; Karkat himself stepped forward to the edge of the platform, voice quieter than when he'd been projecting to speak to an audience.

“He's a better troll than I am, that's for sure. Nothing could get me to wear one of those by choice. Not even ice cream.” That was met by soft laughter - it was a running joke at Sanctuary that Karkat would do anything for ice cream, a luxury they were unable to get out here.

He crouched down and sat at the edge of the carved stone stage, legs hanging off of it. “Well. He's not wrong, and it is his decision, but fuck if I'm going to make - no, even let - him wear a fucking slave's collar any longer. He deserves something better. Will anyone help me make him a collar that honors his courage and choice, rather than insults and degrades him?”

Several trolls pressed forward to join him in discussion; the rest took this as the end of the meeting and left.

In the back of his mind, he reminded himself to bother Sollux later; it had definitely seemed like he'd known what Eridan was going to do, and Karkat would very much like to know why the yellowblood hadn't warned him about it. But that was for later; now was for turning the varied ideas of the trolls gathered around him into a workable plan.

Chapter Text

The little group Karkat had formed worked rather feverishly over the next few nights. Comprised of several trolls who were both adept with crafting and sympathetic to Eridan, they were uniquely suited to this challenge.

Karkat was, honestly, the least useful of all of them - he had almost no experience with any kind of crafting - but he did his best. If nothing else, he could hold things in place, fetch tools as they were needed, and make sure everyone was eating, drinking, and resting as necessary.

Marrok was the team 'lead', as such. He was the most experienced smith in all of Sanctuary, having been working with metal all his life; and though most of his experience was with weapons rather than anything like the task they had in front of them, he was quick to adapt. After all, a collar wasn't really much more difficult than finicky bits of a sword.

Einion, as Karkat discovered, also had some experience with smithing; he'd never asked to do anything like that at Sanctuary, preferring to work with the mining group or build larger pieces of stone or wood (like the stone tables of the dining hall), but apparently he too had taken up smithing as a hobby as a wriggler. His main experience was with robotics, which made him a little better at making the smaller, interlocking, moving pieces than Marrok, like the hinges and locking mechanism.

Another surprise Karkat had was learning that Zollie - the oliveblooded medic - had quite a bit of crafting experience. She couldn't work with the raw metal to create anything, but she had extremely deft hands - likely very useful in her medical work - and was very good at putting together all those finicky bits and getting it all functioning.

The last member of their little group was a tealblood with short, forked horns: Ilmari. She was a fairly new arrival - having only come about a perigee ago - so Karkat didn't know her as well, but she'd been helping out the techies and occasionally helping pilot the flitters (as she was almost as good at that as Acorus was, and better than Waylen). Apparently she had enjoyed jewelry-making as a wriggler and young adult; and she applied that knowledge to making the collar beautiful as well as functional.

It took them a while to come up with the plans for the collar, suggesting and discarding design after design, but by the end of the week after the vote, they had a blueprint to work with.

Karkat had originally thought to make the whole thing out of gold, but Marrok informed him that that wasn't a great idea for two reasons: one, gold didn't hold its shape very well and was easily damaged; and two, they simply didn't have enough of it to work with and it was expensive to obtain - if they even could obtain it. So instead, they went with the next best option.

Marrok took some of the steel they had and beat it into the shape of the collar; then Einion and Ilmari worked together to plate it with the gold that they had. Once that was done, Einion and Marrok set to making the smaller components while Ilmari took the collar itself to start decorating it with skilled hands. Karkat, watching her work, was rather amazed to see what she could do with carving tools.

They'd debated decorating it with jewels - something they did have a fair amount of, from the gem deposits the skilled miners were still discovering in the mine - but decided against it; Ilmari said it would be too easy for them to fall out unless the prongs to hold them were set into the collar before it was plated, and at that point no one wanted to make another just to do that (even if they'd had the materials to do so). So instead they settled for the designs Ilmari could carve into it. Frankly, she was masterful even with just that.

Once Ilmari pronounced herself satisfied with the decorated collar, Zollie took over to put together all the mechanisms, and it was complete.

All that was left to do was to give it to Eridan.

----

That ended up being a bit more of a predicament than Karkat had expected, however.

While they hadn't exactly been keeping their work a secret, the rest of Sanctuary had apparently decided to do so - at least from Eridan. Karkat was mostly met with shrugs when he asked about it, but a few trolls did talk: everyone who was (even just a little) fond of the seadweller wanted to surprise him with it - for which idea Karkat apparently had Sollux and Cardea to thank - and those who weren't simply didn't know or care about the work Karkat's team was doing.

The downside to this was that pretty much everyone who knew about the new collar wanted to see the gifting of it, which made doing so a much more complicated ordeal than it would otherwise have been.

And he could hardly deny them; they were as excited to see Eridan's reaction as Karkat himself was, and they had been managing surprisingly well to keep knowledge of it from the seadweller. (Of course, it had helped that Eridan didn't leave his and Sollux's rooms very often while his knee was healing; that time was, Karkat expected, when Sollux had started putting it about to make the new collar a surprise.)

As such, by the time Eridan was back on his feet again and returning to his normal routine - minus the work, as a new location for the flitter hangar had still not been decided on, with both Marrok and Karkat otherwise occupied - everyone was either on board with the plan or entirely uncaring (or unknowing) about it.

So Karkat ended up having to plan an Event in order to make sure everyone who wanted to watch could do so.

----

Four weeks to the day after the vote had occurred, everything was finally ready. A meeting had been called at the end of the night - officially, on some less than interesting subject, but everyone (except Eridan) knew the real purpose.

So it was probably pretty confusing to the seadweller that Sollux insisted he come along to this (apparently boring) meeting; and even more so when he saw the number of people who'd gathered.

Sollux had intentionally timed his and Eridan's arrival to be a little 'late', so everyone was already gathered by the time they arrived; Karkat was able to watch the violetblood's reactions as he saw the crowd - and as Sollux interfered with his initial reaction of heading down into the audience pit to steer him onto the ramp to the stage instead.

“Sol, what...?” Eridan asked, confusion written over every inch of his face and body; but the yellowblood only grinned and gave him a push to send him, stumbling a little, the rest of the way out onto the stage proper.

Karkat caught his arm before Eridan could try to flee and drew him to the center of the stage with one hand, keeping the other behind his back.

“Kar, what's goin' on, why-”

“This isn't a meeting on placement of new rooms, Eridan,” Karkat told him with a grin as wide as Sollux's.

“But that's-”

“Yes, I know. That's because we - everyone here - wanted this to be a surprise.” He shrugged. “Apparently it was deemed to be more fun this way, I don't know. I wasn't in charge of that.”

That prompted some chuckles from the crowd below; Eridan looked over at them and paled a little, seeming to only now realize just how many people were gathered below - and were watching him.

But Karkat stepped in before he could begin to panic.

“I was in charge of something else, though. We, everyone here, felt, and feel, that your decision at the vote was something that deserved honor, rather than degradation - and this slave's collar-” He reached forward to tap it, “-is nothing but degrading. So we decided to fix that.”

In one smooth motion, before Eridan could process the words or step away, Karkat pressed his thumb against the collar's lock - not even wincing at the sharp prick - and pulled it off to toss carelessly across the stage.

Then, before Eridan had a chance to do anything more than gasp, he brought up his other hand - the one he'd kept behind his back - to gently clasp the gold metal of the new one around the seadweller's throat.

Eridan's hands raised of their own accord to feel the new collar, eyes wide.

Karkat smiled at his expression; and smiled even wider as more emotions fitted across Eridan's face as the seadweller started to notice the differences. He had to say, he'd been pretty pleased with the result of his little group's work.

Unlike the slave collar, it was fairly slender; not so much so that it looked like anything but what it really was, but slender enough that it didn't even touch the base of his gills.

(Karkat winced a little internally as he saw, now revealed, the damage the old collar had done to those sensitive parts of the seadweller's anatomy. The lower gills - the ones that had been underneath the old collar - looked scarred over, swollen, and almost sealed shut. He hadn't realized just how bad the old one had been for Eridan to wear; it made him feel even worse about having made the other wear it. He'd had no idea it was doing so much damage - Eridan had never said anything...

But that was no longer important. He couldn't undo the past. All Karkat could do was ensure Eridan would never have to go through that again; and hopefully the damage would be repaired - with his next molt, at least, if not sooner.)

He shoved aside those thoughts and brought his attention back to the new collar.

It seemed almost to sparkle a little in the light (a trick of texture on the metal, Ilmari's work), and fit Eridan's throat perfectly. Up as close as he was, it was also possible to see the engraving along the edges - the waves of Eridan's symbol, repeated all around the collar. The inside curved slightly outwards and was as smooth as Marrok and Einion could make it, to rest comfortably against the skin without any sharp edges to irritate; even if it did end up rubbing against Eridan's damaged gills, it wouldn't cause any more problems there.

“Kar...” Eridan was blinking rather a lot; Karkat suspected he was trying to keep himself from crying. “Kar, what...”

“You deserved far better than that fucking despicable hunk of metal,” Karkat explained with a small smile. “So, like I said, we solved that problem.”

Then he paused. “It's... is it better?” A little bit of uncertainty crept into his tone; Eridan continued to look just, well, shocked, and it was impossible to tell if it was a good shocked or a bad shocked.

But Eridan dispelled that concern almost immediately.

“I- Fuck, Kar, it's so much better, I don't- I don't even know-w wh-what to say-”

It was impossible not to smile again as Eridan's emotions brought out that little waver that lingered in his speech, and Karkat didn't even try. “Good. I'm glad. We made this to honor you, you know, so it would have been pretty bad if it wasn't.”

“Fuckin'...” Eridan sniffed, then abruptly stepped forward to wrap slender arms around Karkat in an almost crushingly tight embrace, hiding his face against the mutantblood's shoulder.

Karkat, startled, froze for a second; but when the seadweller didn't seem inclined to do anything else unexpected, he relaxed and raised an arm to gently pat his back.

After a moment, Eridan pulled back with another sniff; but then he seemed to remember he was still on the stage and flushed brightly. “I, uh- um-”

“Okay, all of you, you got the whole show and everything, now scat,” Sollux called with mock prudishness, stepping out onto the stage and in front of Karkat and Eridan while making little shooing motions at the gathered trolls below.

The move caused much laughter, but did end up with the desired outcome; within a short period of time, the three of them on the stage became the only ones left in the room, and quiet fell.

Karkat rubbed the back of his neck, reddening a little as he realized just how stressful - and potentially upsetting - this all might have actually been for the shy seadweller. “Eridan, is it really all right? I'm sorry for making a spectacle of it, but everyone wanted to see the whole giving thing and I didn't want to leave anyone out but I couldn't think of another way to do it-”

Sollux placed his hand on the back of Karkat's neck, which soothed the rising anxiety; the mutantblood paused to take a couple breaths.

Eridan used the silence to wipe his eyes, then smiled over at him. “It, it is, really. I can't believe you'd, you all'd do all this, just, for me, 'a all trolls...”

“Oh, shut it with the self-degradation, you deserved it.” Sollux's words were sharp, but the smile he favored the shorter troll with was anything but.

“But-”

The yellowblood, removing his hand from Karkat's back, stopped the newest protest with a gentle finger over Eridan's lips; Karkat watched in fascination as the seadweller sighed and silenced himself in response, despite Sollux not really interfering with Eridan's actual ability to speak.

“You do deserve it, ED. And you didn't deserve that other piece of shit.”

Karkat cleared his throat, getting both of their attention. “Not to interrupt, but... I should probably, um, point out the other important feature of this one."

He took Eridan's hands and guided them up to where there was a small raised button on the lower edge; pressing it gave a soft click - and the collar unlatched.

Eridan's face was priceless; Sollux's eyebrows went sky-high. Karkat took a mental snapshot of the scene and grinned.

“Well, there's not really any point in having it locked on, after all - you're only wearing it for show, essentially,” he explained. “So you might as well be able to take it off when you want to. It's not like you're going to go around with it off, not when you're the one who argued to keep wearing it in the first place.”

“I... guess you're right,” Eridan replied after a moment; then he snapped the collar back together. “It's appreciated, Kar, thank you. But, um... honestly, I probably won't take it off anyway.”

Karkat raised an eyebrow and Eridan smiled a little sheepishly. “I've kind 'a gotten used to havin' it, you know. Gonna be enough to get used to one that's comfortable without feelin' all weird not havin' one at all.”

Then the seadweller frowned a little in concern. “That is, if... It is sopor-safe, right?”

Karkat chuckled. “It's gold plated steel. Yes, it's sopor-safe. By the way, make sure you check it out in a mirror at some point, if you won't take it off to see it; Ilmari put a lot of work into the decoration. It looks good on you.”

Eridan flushed a little and leaned back against Sollux, fidgeting with it. “I, um...”

The yellowblood interrupted his thoughts by ruffling his hair, which earned a squawk of displeasure from the seadweller, and Karkat couldn't do anything but laugh.

Fortunately, Sollux also joined in; and after a solid attempt at pouting (which was rather foiled by the smile hovering around his mouth), Eridan did too.

The seadweller was the first to recover from the laughter, though the smile had solidified on his face; but he waited until the other two quieted before speaking.

“Really... just, thank you,” he said quietly, to both of them. “This is... I never expected anythin' like this. And that everyone was... everyone wanted to...”

“Honor you?” Sollux suggested.

“I... yeah, I guess. That... I never expected to, well, make a difference, at all. To, to make people... happy.” He ran a finger along the edge of the collar, blinking rapidly. “It, this, means... so much to me, you don't even know...”

Karkat put a hand on the seadweller's shoulder. “I'm glad. It was an honor to make it. You really deserve it, Eridan. I can't imagine how you could... well. It's off you, now. I'm... I'm sorry, though. For your... gills.” He rubbed the back of his neck, wincing a little. “I didn't realize...”

Eridan reached up with a hand to cover one set of the gills in question, and averted his gaze. “Um... I didn't, I guess... want you to, is all. I mean, you already felt bad about not bein' able to take it off, I didn't want you to feel more guilty. It's, um, it's not really that bad, anyway. They don't hurt anymore, an', well, its not like I'm havin' to swim much, out here. In the desert, you know.” Eridan gave a little, self-conscious chuckle.

Karkat managed a weak smile for the other's attempt at humor. “Well, maybe not, but still. And with all of that, you still were willing to wear that damn thing? I don't... I just, you really are a better troll than me, you know.”

Eridan flushed a little and looked down. “I'm... I'm really not,” he started; but Karkat shook his head and interrupted.

“You really are. Eridan, I don't think I'm exaggerating at all when I say that no one else here - and possibly not anywhere - would willingly put up with something so humilating, that was actively injuring them as well, just for the comfort for some hypothetical new arrivals who might be scared of them. I still can't entirely believe you literally refused to take the damn thing off.”

Eridan shuffled uncomfortably, chewing on his lower lip and keeping his gaze down at his feet.

“He's right, ED.” Sollux reached out to gently tip Eridan's head up until he was looking at them - or at least, in a vague direction that kind of encompassed both of them, given the distinct size difference between Sollux and Karkat. “You are amazing.”

Eridan blushed so hard Karkat could practically hear the blood rushing through his face. “I-I... But...”

“No buts, dumbass. Take the goddamn compliment for once in your life.” Sollux seemed to be trying to glower, but he was smiling entirely too much to pull it off.

“B-” Eridan was silenced again by the finger on his lips.

“No buts.”

Eridan's fins drooped a little; but after a moment, he nodded, and Sollux took the finger away. “I... I don't know why you... think that, but, um...”

“ED...”

Eridan flushed. “Look, that one was unintentional, Sol!”

“Uh-huh.” The yellowblood didn't look convinced.

“It was. As I was goin' to say, just...” Eridan took a breath, and the sharpness of irritation faded. “Thank you. Again. I... I don't think I can say that enough, Kar, I mean... this is just, it's wonderful. Thank you.”

There were tears in the violetblood's eyes; Karkat had to blink back some threatening in his own before replying. “You're welcome, Eridan. Like I said, it was an honor to be able to do this for you. You've more than proved your worth here, and I, for one, am beyond grateful for your decisions and your presence here.”

Eridan offered him a watery smile in response. “I'm... I'm glad, that, um. That, well, that you think I'm...”

“Worthy?” Sollux suggested; something in the way he said it made Karkat think the word itself was somehow important, though he didn't know why.

That thought was further affirmed by Eridan's response: a bright violet flush and staring at his feet. “I-I... I guess, yeah...”

“I told you," Sollux said quietly; Karkat suspected that statement, made by Sollux as he leaned down to put his head by Eridan's, hadn't been meant for his ears, and elected to pretend he hadn't heard it.

“Well, anyway. That's really all there was to that. And now I'd better get to the actual business I've been neglecting this whole time, before people start biting my head off. And I'm sure your team would like to get back to work, Eridan, so first order of business is going to be figuring out where we can put that new flitter hangar.”

Karkat reached over to pat Eridan's shoulder, getting another watery smile from the seadweller, then stepped past the two of them to head up to his office. Like he'd said, it was past time he attended to his real duties.

But he savored tonight's proceedings all the same, even as he bent his mind back to his own work.

Chapter Text

It was only a couple nights after that when the decision on the new flitter base was made, and Eridan and his team got back to work.

The new location was much farther from Sanctuary than the other had been, simply because there was no good location closer that the experienced miners thought would be safe. No one, after all, wanted a repeat of what had happened at the last one. It wasn't ideal, to have it so far away - but it was what they had.

The distance led Eridan and his team to take their lunch with them and eat on the site; they didn't come back until almost sunrise, and ate a late dinner then before pretty much falling into 'coon.

Sollux found himself missing the extra time he'd had with Eridan rather fiercely. It was much lonelier at meals without him; and since Eridan was frequently out and about right at dusk, Sollux didn't even see him that much.

Cardea was, of course, sympathetic; the new schedule of the miners had her matesprit away as well. (Though, in addition to commiserating, she also rather frequently teased him for being so upset about someone who wasn't even quadranted to him; Sollux found the teasing rather uncomfortable and tried not to think too much about it.)

The other techs - for their number had risen to seven (well, five and two who worked more part-time there: Ilmari, the tealblood, who also piloted, and Kessie - a maroonblood with slightly wavy, upright horns - who frequently joined Noreta, Sanctuary's main hunter/gatherer, in hunts) - were rather less sympathetic, though they certainly weren't mean about it.

(Lemmie was, of course, still unpleasant about everything, but no one really expected anything else from him.)

But with these new additions, Sollux had found himself, over the past perigee or so, feeling more and more estranged from the group. Certainly it felt like the newcomers fit in far better than he ever had.

Temana and Ilmari had even hit it off so well that by the time Eridan had received his new collar, the two had started to wear each other's rings to announce to the world they had become moirails. They switched over to eat meals together with Orelia, Temana's matesprit; Temana's little group ended up also gaining the other new techs, and even Cardea seemed to fit in there, though she continued to eat with Sollux most nights.

With Eridan and the rest of the miners gone, their mealtime group was down to only Sollux, Cardea, Burley (the oliveblood from the kitchen), and Laniel (the head gardener, Burley's matesprit); a far cry from the earlier nights when they'd been the biggest group in the dining hall. And - missing the enthusiasm of the miners - rather than being filled with talk and laughter, the group ended up mostly silent.

Even in the tech lab Sollux missed the camaraderie of the earlier nights, before the new techs had started to arrive; every night seemed to increase the distance between him and the rest.

He had tried to fit in, really he had. But Birtie - a brownblood with forward-set, scooping horns - was far cleverer with her words than Sollux had ever been, making jokes and doling out good-natured (or, in the case of Lemmie, less than good-natured) insults with an ease Sollux honestly envied; Kessie, when she was there, tended to attract everyone's attention even without trying - she had a natural charisma and sweet temper that made everyone enjoy her company; and of course Ilmari spent most of the time she had in the tech lab hanging out with Temana.

They didn't actively exclude him; but Sollux, who really didn't share any of their interests, ended up feeling pretty constantly left on the wayside when the others got to talking. It had been easy enough to ignore while Eridan was recovering - once back on his feet, the seadweller had spent most nights back in the lab with Sollux in lieu of any other work - but once he was back to work, well...

Sollux, for the first time in more than a sweep, found himself honestly lonely.

Every night after Eridan had gotten back to work felt like an eternity; something to be endured rather than enjoyed. He dreaded dragging himself out of 'coon to go to work, dreaded facing the cheery mood the tech lab had taken on, dreaded trying to work while the others talked, dreaded everything about the night until Eridan came back.

It was harder and harder to concentrate on his coding, with such thoughts on his mind; he began to make mistakes - stupid mistakes, wriggler mistakes - and hated himself for it. Which only led him to withdraw even more.

By the end of the first week of the mining work resuming, Sollux had started to get up with Eridan to see him off, then to go straight to the tech lab - earlier than anyone else - to get some time with no one else there in which to work. He'd stopped going down for lunch entirely, and only picked at dinner when he went to eat at all; he couldn't stop thinking, dwelling on stupid shit, on his own self-pity and self-hatred, long enough to eat anything.

He figured, what with everyone else being so interested in each other, that no one would even notice, much less care. It wasn't like he was bothering anyone; if anything, he was doing the opposite.

But despite what he thought, his isolation was not unnoticed.

----

Sollux had been absorbed in his coding, for once able to concentrate with the others down at lunch, when out of nowhere a steaming bowl appeared right next to his keyboard.

“Sollux, you really need to eat something.”

Sollux jerked, focus abruptly pulled from coding to the troll now standing beside him who had put the bowl there. He blinked several times, startled at the interruption. “...KK?”

“Yes, that's my name, don't wear it out,” Karkat replied, a little irritably. “Now eat, all right? You're doing that damn thing where you get all wrapped up in shit and neglect yourself, and I'm not gonna stand for it, fuckface.” He crossed his arms and waited, clearly intending to stay there until Sollux did as he was told.

“...Not hungry.” Sollux tried to turn back to his coding, endeavoring to focus again; but Karkat was having none of it.

“I don't give the slightest, tiniest bit of a shit, Sollux. Eat or I'll fucking unplug the computer.”

Sollux groaned and turned in his chair. “Fucking hell, KK, I'm trying to get some work done here-”

“Don't care. Eat.”

The yellowblood sighed, but he recognized one of Karkat's stubborn moods when it hit him in the face. The other wouldn't leave him alone until he complied.

“Fine,” he grumbled as he shoved the keyboard away from himself and picked up the spoon. “You can go away now.”

“If I leave now you'll just go back to work.” Karkat's tone was implacable. “So I'm going to stand here until you eat every fucking bit and you're just going to have to deal with it.”

Sollux sighed again and picked up the spoon. “Why are you like this?”

Karkat snagged a chair over from one of the unused work stations and sat in it. “Because you're being a fucking idiot and neglecting yourself, and Eridan's not here as much anymore to call you on your bullshit, so that leaves it up to me.”

Sollux winced at the mention of the absent seadweller.

Karkat's voice was much softer when he continued. “I'm not blind, Sollux. Nor are the others. You've been closing yourself off, not eating, hardly talking to anyone - we're all worried about you.”

Swallowing a bite to hide his discomfort, Sollux kept his eyes on his food and said nothing.

“I'm worried about you, Sollux, okay? You're... well, you're my best friend, you know that, right? That's never changed.” Now Karkat sighed. “I know I've been all caught up in shit and I was an absolute asshole for a while there and I've barely even seen you, but... fuck, I didn't mean for it to be like this. I'd like to, well, change that - or at least make sure you're doing okay, all right?”

“...Okay.” Sollux finally looked up, briefly meeting the mutantblood's concerned gaze with his own, conflicted one, before looking away again. “But... I'm fine, really.”

“Bullshit.”

“Asshole,” Sollux grumbled in return.

“Not for calling you out on your crap.”

“For being an absolute dick, yes, you are.”

“Shut your gaping bulgehole before you start spitting out even more excrement than you already have.”

“Fuck you too.” Sollux had to suppress a weird urge to grin. The exchange felt almost too familiar; like nothing had ever happened, like the two of them were exchanging banter long ago in Nepeta's home, or even earlier, as wrigglers. Like they'd always been together.

But... they hadn't. Not anymore.

He lost that brief feeling of amusement entirely.

With his mind mostly on his work - and on Eridan - he'd not really noticed, consciously, how little he'd seen Karkat this whole time... but thinking back, he realized the other had been far less present than any other time in his life (not, of course, including the time he'd thought the mutantblood was dead). The thought hurt.

“Eat,” Karkat reminded him; Sollux forced himself to take and swallow another bite around the lump in his throat his thoughts had called up.

“So what even brought all this on?” he asked, trying to use his lingering irritation to mask the hurt and loneliness.

“You being an idiot, obviously.” Karkat's tone was sharp; but then he slumped a little and rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, I've been a shit friend, okay? I get it. I didn't mean to be, I just... got caught up. There's always so much to do here, you know - I mean, you've seen the shit I get pulled into sorting out. But...” He sighed, looking away. “That doesn't excuse the fact that I've been, well, neglecting you. Our friendship.”

Sollux took another bite and waited - a tactic that always worked well on Eridan.

It seemed to work just as well on Karkat. “Just, fuck. I'm... I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry for up and fucking dumping you here and barely making the time to say hello, I'm sorry for being an absolute shit to you and Eridan at the beginning, I'm sorry I haven't been trying to talk to you or checking in on you or anything-”

Sollux shut him up with a hand to his face; Karkat squawked in indignation.

“Chill, KK. You've been busy, I get it. It's okay.”

It wasn't, not really; but there was no point in dwelling on it - not if Karkat meant what he said about wanting to fix things.

Sollux took another bite, then sighed. “It... it is good to see you, though. I guess I'd been, just, kind of thinking...”

Now it was Karkat's turn to wait him out; and as the silence stretched between them and urge to break it swelled, Sollux found - much to his discomfort - that the tactic worked just as well on him, too. Damnit.

“That you didn't want to. Be around me, I mean. It's just, well...” He shifted uncomfortably, eyes on the bowl of soup in front of him to avoid looking at Karkat. “I guess... Everyone seems to be fitting in fine around me, like I'm not even there. And I... I guess I sort of thought... maybe you had, too.” He took a breath and let it out slowly to keep his voice calm. It mostly worked, but it couldn't stop the almost fragile tone. “That you, you'd, well... moved on, and just... forgotten about me.”

Karkat reached over to put his hand on Sollux's and squeezed it. “I didn't. I haven't, and I'm not going to. I never meant to ignore you or anything, Sollux, I mean it. And I am worried about you. I'm sorry my being stupid has contributed to this. But can we, I mean... fix it?”

Sollux hesitated a moment, then put his other hand, spoon and all, over Karkat's. “...Yeah. I'd like that.”

“Friends?” Karkat looked equal parts worried and hopeful.

Sollux managed a lopsided smile in response. “...Yeah. Friends.”

----

After that, Karkat ended up coming into the tech lab every lunch, bringing up food for both himself and Sollux. They ate together then, and Karkat did his best to rearrange his schedule to join Sollux and his little group for dinner, as well. When he couldn't, he made sure to at least drop by the tech lab to let Sollux know.

As nights turned into weeks, Sollux found himself settling into the new schedule. He still felt rather disengaged with the rest of the techs - he didn't share most of their interests, and didn't really feel like talking about things he didn't care about - but they did make the effort to include him if he showed any kind of inclination to join them; so it didn't hurt quite as much that he didn't fit into the group. And Karkat's regular attention helped to stave off that aching loneliness from Eridan's absence, at least a little.

The mutantblood had developed a habit of coming into the lab whenever he had free time, usually bringing some kind of hot drink for Sollux (“You don't drink enough, damn it!”) and spending a bit of time with him before his duties called him back. These little visits did help to bolster Sollux's mood, at least a little, though it remained difficult to focus well; he still kept making stupid mistakes - and hated himself for it - but it didn't happen quite as frequently.

And then, when they were both done with work after dinner, Sollux and Karkat got to talking, for hours on end. Sollux learned a great deal about Sanctuary and Karkat's thoughts about and plans for it; in turn, he told Karkat about his work, about living with Eridan, about all the things they hadn't been together for. And as the conversations lengthened, Karkat began to invite Sollux to his rooms, rather than staying in the dining hall.

By the end of the second week, he'd even given Sollux a key - just in case.

----

Three weeks in, Karkat didn't show up to their regular lunch. A little concerned, Sollux went looking; but no one he asked knew where he was, and Marrok said he'd never shown up in his office that evening at all.

Reckoning in his head, though, Sollux realized something.

It had been just over three sweeps since their second molt... which meant Karkat - and, frankly, Sollux himself - were due for their third.

Karkat wasn't the type to skip out on his time with Sollux, much less his duties; so if he hadn't shown up...

It was almost certainly because he was molting.

With that thought in mind, Sollux excused himself from work for a while and made a visit to the kitchens. Karkat would probably be starving after he finished, going off experience - especially if it was as intense a molt as the duration of it seemed to indicate. The trolls inside weren't exactly pleased to see him after they'd already finished with lunch, especially not with a request for more food - but when he explained that Karkat was probably molting, Burley offered to make something up.

Bearing the tray of food, Sollux headed to Karkat's room; getting the door unlocked and open proved a little difficult with the tray, but he managed.

His timing was excellent; just as he was setting the tray down on the table, he heard groans and the splashing of sopor that indicated Karkat had woken up and was getting out of 'coon. Sollux didn't try to go into the other's bedroom; they'd been used to seeing each other naked at Nepeta's, but not here, and he didn't want to overstep. Instead, he just called out to the other troll from the living room. “I've got food if you're hungry, KK.”

That was met with a noise of surprise, and Karkat poked his head out around the door. “Sollux? What- Why are you-?”

“You didn't show up for work,” Sollux pointed out.

“Shit, is it- it's that late?” The mutantblood looked a little chagrined. “I'd hoped to be done by dusk when I felt it coming on...”

“It's past midnight,” Sollux replied with a raised eyebrow; Karkat winced.

“Shit. Uh.”

“Get yourself cleaned up and come eat, all right?” Sollux very intentionally sat in a chair facing away from Karkat and the door to the bathroom to give the other at least a semblance of privacy to take care of necessary business.

“...Right.”

----

About twenty minutes - and a hot enough shower that Sollux could feel the steam - later, Karkat, now clothed in a black bathrobe, rejoined him.

Sollux looked up as he came into view-

And then, to his shock, up even more.

“Shit, KK, what the hell?”

The mutantblood groaned and dropped into a chair facing Sollux. “Don't ask me, asshole, I didn't ask for this shit! ...Fuck, I don't even think I have anything that will fit anymore, I didn't think I'd shoot up like eight goddamn inches in one fucking molt!”

Sollux, getting quickly over his shock, fought to hide a grin. “Well, it at least makes up for the last one, doesn't it?”

Karkat dropped his head into his hands. “Fuck. I take back everything I said last time about being mad about not growing. This is awful. No fucking wonder I put on so much weight this past perigee, it fucking needed it for this goddamn monstrosity of a molt!”

Sollux interrupted him by shoving the tray under Karkat's nose, and watched in amusement as instinct overwhelmed both irritation and the urge to complain. Karkat fell on the food with a voraciousness rarely seen in any sane troll; but if anything would reasonably make a troll less than sane, a huge molt like this certainly would.

It was barely ten minutes before Karkat finished the tray of food, which had had enough on it to feed three (and about twice the amount of meat that would normally be given; Burley, in his fourth adult molt, knew very well that a troll needed the additional protein after a molt).

“That does explain why it took so long, though,” Sollux commented as Karkat ate. “You must have been molting pretty much since you got in 'coon yesterday, to have grown so much.”

Karkat made a noncommital noise and swallowed the last bite. “I wish it hadn't. Done any of that, I mean.” Then he sighed. “Well, I guess it's not all bad. Won't be craning my neck all the time to see everyone.”

He thought a moment, then looked carefully at Sollux. “You should have had yours before me, shouldn't you? You did last time.”

“Dunno. Haven't really felt it coming on-”

He stopped, blinking as a realization dawned on him. “I- wait, fuck, the depression! I've been having joint aches for weeks too... Didn't think much of it, but, that would make sense...”

“But you've been sleeping in sopor - why wouldn't you have just had it, instead of showing symptoms for weeks? Why would it be delayed?”

Sollux shook his head, frowning. “I don't know...” he began - then he sat up straight, eyes wide. “Wait, shit, you know what? You know how they always tell you to not have, like, robotic limbs or anything in the 'coon when you're approaching molt? I bet you can't molt with someone else in the 'coon!”

Karkat raised his brows. “And you sleep with Eridan every day. Well, that would certainly explain it.”

Sollux groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “What am I supposed to do, then? I can't ask him to try to sleep elsewhere - and even if I just stay in after he gets up, if I'm not done molting by morning, he'll try to sleep dry, and I refuse to let him do that again.”

Karkat made an inquiring noise.

“Didn't I tell you? How Eridan slept dry the whole first perigee or so I lived with him, so I could have the 'coon to myself? And apparently he spent a lot of time sleeping dry at school, too. But he gets awful nightmares when he does, and if I'm going to be molting I won't be able to wake him out of them.”

“Right, I remember now. Huh...” Karkat drummed his claws on the table for a moment, thinking. “What if you came and took mine?”

“What?”

“I mean, if your body's been trying to molt for weeks, it should pretty much happen as soon as conditions are right, right? So what if you came here once you got up tomorrow? It won't matter as much for me to sleep dry one day if necessary - though I swear to god if you take that long because you're growing as much as I just did I might have to smother you.”

Sollux barked out a laugh. “Pretty sure yours was just catching up on the growing you'd missed with the last one.”

“Point still stands. But anyway, since I sincerely doubt your molt will take as long as mine did, if you come here right away in the evening you should be done before morning anyway. And either way you don't have to worry about Eridan.”

Sollux propped his chin on his hand. “I suppose,” he replied; then snorted. “Well, at least this way I can kind of plan for it. There's something to be said for that, rather than just waking up after it without entirely expecting it.”

“Oh, definitely. I might try finding someone to sleep with around my next one just to do that. Especially if they end up taking this long all the time. Fuck, there was important shit I was supposed to do this evening-”

“Chill, KK,” Sollux interrupted before the other could get worked up. “MK said he took care of it. You can catch up with him in a bit. I'll get you some of my clothes in the meantime - you should fit okay in the looser ones at least.”

“Not my fault you're a fucking twig,” Karkat grumbled.

“Didn't say it was,” Sollux replied with a grin. “Anyway, it should be a pretty good fit, just might have to take up some of the hems a couple inches.” He shrugged; then made a face. “Damn it, I'm probably going to need more clothes, too. Shit. Suppose it's too much to hope that I won't grow this time, huh?”

“Considering how you've always been determined to be significantly taller than me our whole lives, I'd said that's pretty unlikely, yeah.”

"It's fucking genetics, KK, I can't help it!"

Karkat grinned and punched him lightly in the arm. “Sure you can't. I bet you've got some kind of deal with yours, to get so fucking tall all the time.”

“There's plenty taller than me! MK's like six and a half!”

“Marrok's on his fourth molt, of course he is, dumbass,” Karkat pointed out. “It still wouldn't surprise me if you continued to shoot up like a goddamn weed, though.”

Sollux sighed. “Well, guess we'll probably find out tomorrow, huh?” He levered himself up with a grunt. “I'll get you those clothes while you get this cleaned up; then you can go catch up on what you've missed, and I can go make plans for a fucking delayed molt."

Chapter Text

Sollux was pretty quick to show up the next evening. Karkat had only just finished getting dressed - in some of the yellowblood's clothing still; there hadn't been time to get anything else - when the knock came on his door.

Fortunately, he'd tidied up before he'd gotten into the shower; everything in his rooms was, if not precisely cleaned up, at least not too horribly cluttered.

He answered the door fairly promptly once he'd finished buttoning the shirt, revealing Sollux - in sweatpants and a loose shirt, and carrying a grey bundle in his arms - waiting outside.

"All right, shit's pretty much cleaned up in there - got something to wear in case?" he asked the yellowblood, standing aside to let him in.

Sollux held up the bundle in his arms as an answer; Karkat took that as meaning whatever the bundle was, it was probably something adjustable enough to wear if he did end up molting out of his current clothing size.

Karkat nodded. "Okay, good. I doubt you'll be done by then, but I'll check back around lunch and leave some cold food for you in case I'm not back when you're done. And then I'll check at dinner, too, and bring food back; if you aren't done yet by then we'll just play it by ear, I guess."

"If I'm not done by dinner you can pull me out of the 'coon anyway," Sollux grumbled, prompting a laugh from the mutantblood.

"I'll take that under advisement," Karkat replied, grinning. "Now go on, get. The sooner you get in, the sooner you're done and we can all go back to normal instead of you being a grumpy, mopey dick all the time." He shooed the yellow towards the door to his bedroom.

Sollux barely even waited until he'd gotten through the door to the bedroom to start stripping; coloring a little, Karkat turned and slipped out of the rooms, closing and locking the door behind him, before he ended up getting an unintentional show. Not that it would bother him that much - this was Sollux, after all, they'd seen each other naked any number of times - but he was worried it would bother Sollux, now.

After all, it had been a long while since they'd lived together with Nepeta - he swallowed and pushed the (mostly) irrational surge of guilt that her name evoked away - and he simply wasn't sure if the same rules applied. Sollux himself certainly had grown up, emotionally, a great deal in the sweep they'd been apart; perhaps that meant he'd grown out of that level of comfort with Karkat, too.

The thought made him feel a little sad, that they - who once spent almost all their time together - might have fallen apart so far; but he didn't want to push it if Sollux wasn't comfortable.

Karkat forced his mind from thinking about his friend into work thoughts. There was a great deal to get done - especially since he'd been unable to do much yesternight, after his long molt - and he didn't want to spend any more time on it than was absolutely necessary, so he could get back to check in on Sollux.

The walk up to his office was the most entertainment he'd gotten in a perigee. While a few people had seen him yesternight and were prepared for it, the rest had had no idea; seeing trolls consistently doing double-takes and staring was incredibly amusing - almost enough to make up for the bruises he was accumulating from running into things because he wasn't used to this new body yet.

Once he reached the upper hallway, he poked his head into the tech lab on the way to his office, just to check in; though they were unlikely to need anything, and Sollux obviously wasn't there, it had become habit.

Temana had seen him yesternight, so she didn't do much besides give him a quick wave; but the others hadn't, and he got another bit of entertainment from them all staring.

He'd spent enough time with them by now to feel pretty comfortable with them; so he dared to risk a tease. “What, never seen a tall mutantblood before?” he asked innocently, leaning against the door frame.

“Nope,” Birtie replied cheerfully, recovering quickly. “And still haven't. Just cause you ain't puny no more don't mean you're tall!”

Well, that deflated his ego balloon pretty quickly. Karkat huffed and crossed his arms. “Well, we can't all be hulking giants like you,” he replied to the seven foot tall troll, trying for a scowl - but he was still in too good of a mood to really manage it well.

“Then you'd better get used to bein' short, huh?”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck you too.” Karkat shoved himself up from the doorframe. “Well, you can tease Sollux about his later - unless he ends up outgrowing you.” Birtie snorted, and Karkat grinned. “I wouldn't put it past him, you know. Pretty sure his body operates purely off spite.”

The brownblood laughed, and Temana shifted around. “All right, back to work, both of you,” she said, making shooing motions at Karkat. “There's more than enough to get done!”

Karkat obeyed with a chuckle and headed to his office.

---

Lunchtime had found Sollux, unsurprisingly, still in molt. Karkat hadn't been expecting anything different; so he left the tray of food he'd brought on the table and headed back out to finish his own meal. It was very unlikely the yellowblood would be up before at least a couple hours past midnight; after all, he'd only gotten in a bit after dusk, and molts - Karkat's monster one of sixteen hours not included - usually took between eight and ten. The food Karkat had left in there should be enough to at least take the edge off post-molt hunger if Sollux was done before dinner, and he'd be back with dinner once it was served.

As usual, it wasn't hard to lose himself back in work - though it did throw him off briefly when he went to get himself a drink to realize he didn't need to get two. He'd gotten into the habit of bringing Sollux some whenever he took a break to get any - a little gesture that the yellowblood definitely seemed to appreciate, if the smile on his face when he saw Karkat bringing him one was anything to go by.

Karkat could pretty much live on those smiles alone. He looked forward to Sollux's mood improving once he molted - at least, hopefully. He hated to see Sollux so, well... upset.

Karkat sipped at his drink on his way up the stairs, mind suddenly caught on that thought.

When had that happened? He'd never used to care - at least, not all that much. Sometimes it had even been entertaining to rile the psionic up, back when they'd been living together, just to see him blow up computers (at least until they'd been adults and they'd all had to live off Nepeta's stipend) or throw things around with his powers.

But now the thought of doing something like that just made him feel sick. He didn't want to upset Sollux - he didn't even want to see him upset. The whole time they'd been reconnecting, Karkat had had the odd urge to do, well, anything he could to help the other feel better.

The feeling wasn't foreign to him - he'd always had an urge to help others, after all - but the extent to which that desire ran for Sollux was pretty surprising.

Karkat reached his office door before he even realized it, and his mental train of thought was abruptly derailed when he saw Montel, the heavy-set brownblood with backwards-curved horns that was Sanctuary's head crafter/builder, waiting inside for him.

Oh well. Back to work it is.

He pushed thoughts of Sollux and feelings aside and got to it.

----

Dinner bell came before he even realized it was approaching; Montel had been followed by several others bringing up complaints, one of which had necessitated Karkat bringing out the little files he kept on Sanctuary's residents to keep tabs on things in order to rearrange some duties to keep two fighting trolls apart until they found an auspitice to handle things - a job that kept him busy straight though the night.

He set the files down with a sigh of relief as the bell rang and sketched out his plans on a sheet of scrap paper. It wasn't an ideal solution - he couldn't figure out a way to arrange things so that they wouldn't come into conflict at all - but it should help keep the issue down to a manageable level for the rest of everyone else.

He would, of course, have to go talk to each of them - to encourage them to find an auspitice, if nothing else - but that could be a problem for future Karkat. Right now, current Karkat had other plans.

A brief stop in the kitchens and a few words to Burley got him what he wanted - a tray of hot food, enough to feed three, with a heavy emphasis on meat - and he headed to his rooms.

Sollux was likely done, or about to be done, by now; Karkat would bring this to his rooms now and eat there himself, so that he didn't keep the yellowblood waiting. The food he'd left would have been enough to take the edge off post-molt hunger, but not to satisfy it, even if Sollux had hardly grown at all.

When he got there, he discovered upon entering that Sollux was done with his molt - he could hear water running in the bathroom, and the coon was deserted - but the food was untouched; Karkat took that to mean the other had at least not been as ravenous as Karkat had been, and that he'd probably only just finished.

He set the tray down and sat in one of the chairs to wait for the yellowblood to come out of the bathroom.

When he did and Karkat looked over, he felt a surge of envy.

“Lucky you, you asshole, still fitting in your clothes,” he grumbled; Sollux was wearing his clothes from that evening again - the hems were too short, but it still fit. Fucker.

Karkat shoved the tray over towards the other troll as he joined him at the table, though Sollux remained standing for the moment.

“Hey, can't control the molt. It is pretty nice, though, gotta say.” Sollux gave him a lopsided grin.

Karkat rolled his eyes, but let the irritation go; concern took over instead. “No problems otherwise, though? No issues from delaying it?”

Sollux shrugged. “Not so far as I can tell. Besides, people have delayed molts all the time, it's not like it's weird. Especially for only having been, what, like two weeks? Three? Can't have been delayed longer than that, I don't think - don't remember feeling so shitty more than three-odd weeks ago. And I was about two or three weeks earlier than you last time, right?”

“Something like that, sure.” Karkat replied cagily. It had been three weeks and four nights, precisely, but he didn't really feel like letting Sollux know he remembered such a stupid little detail like that after three whole sweeps and fuck knew how many life changes.

Fortunately, Sollux changed the topic pretty quickly. “So. I'm shit at estimation - how much have I grown? You don't look all that much smaller than this evening, so it can't have been too much.”

Karkat looked up and eyed him carefully. “Uh... maybe two, three inches? You'll have to measure it, I think, I'm not as familiar with you as I am with me, obviously. And I don't remember how your clothes fit before.”

“That's kind of what I was figuring,” Sollux agreed, then snagged a chair out to sit down. “Now, what heavenly delights have you brought me?”

Karkat raised his eyebrows, but the words made him chuckle. It did seem the depression was at least eased, if not gone altogether. That was one major worry off his chest. “Good to see you in a decent mood, for once. It's just normal dinner, honestly, though with some extra meat on the side. Some of it's for me, by the way, so don't eat all of it.”

Sollux raised a brow in return, looking at the tray. “I'm hungry, but I'm not ravenous like you were,” he pointed out. “This's gotta be enough for three or four, there should be plenty, even with post-molt appetite.”

Karkat rolled his eyes. Of course. Because Sollux hadn't had his whole body turn him upside-down, mentally speaking. The yellowblood might be bumping into things with his horns for a night or two, but he'd have an easy time adjusting. Karkat, meanwhile, was going to end up with even more - and more impressive - bruises long before he got used to his new body.

He sighed and dismissed the thought, turning his mind to matters at hand and his attention to the food in front of them.

----

Nights after that started to blur together for a while. The two of them ended up spending most of their free time together. Karkat even started to stay up with Sollux in his rooms until Eridan got back, a circumstance that had the violetblood clearly very confused the first few times (especially the first, which was the first time he'd gotten a look at the newly-molted mutantblood - his expression had been priceless, and his indignation at now being the shortest troll in all of Sanctuary by several inches even more so); but he seemed to get over it pretty quickly.

Eridan generally had a smile and a few words for Karkat when he got back; but the seadweller was pretty much always all but asleep by that point, so he usually just exchanged quick greetings with the other two and went to topple into 'coon.

As nights continued to pass, Sollux remained fairly upbeat; Karkat was relieved to see that most of the depression had been from a need to molt rather than some sort of actual problem. He still got sad when Eridan was brought up during the night - Karkat couldn't blame him, really; he kind of missed seeing the seadweller around, and he wasn't used to significant amounts of Eridan's company on a nightly basis - but otherwise seemed cheerful enough.

It didn't seem like he was fitting into the tech lab any better, though, from what Karkat noticed. Sollux didn't seem upset about it anymore - but he rarely talked with the others, at least in Karkat's view; and they didn't really try to draw him in, either.

Karkat asked Temana about it at one point when she came to give him an update; she'd shrugged. “He's pleasant enough still, but... well, I think he doesn't like that he's not needed so much anymore, with all of the new blood; and we're not really doing anything new, just maintaining the current systems and updating defenses. He's... honestly, I think he's bored,” she'd offered with a one-sided smile. “I know the rest of us are, a little, that's why we talk so much, but he's not a chatty kind of troll, you know? At least, not the same way the rest of us are. Lemmie notwithstanding.”

Karkat had mulled over those words for a few nights before deciding on a plan.

----

When Sollux appeared at the top of the stairs to head into the lab one night, Karkat intercepted him.

“KK? What's up?”

“Come on. I'm stealing you for tonight.”

Sollux blinked. “Um, but, work?”

Karkat grinned. “You're going to work with me tonight, Sollux. Temana cleared it; she said there's not much going on there anyway and they can handle it.”

The yellowblood blinked again, but didn't seem upset or inclined to argue further, easing Karkat's mind that he at least wasn't going to be resentful about the abrupt change in plans. “Okay?”

“Come on,” Karkat urged, grabbing Sollux's arm and starting to drag him down the hall to his office. “I need your brain on something.”

----

It had proved an excellent move. Sollux, used to finding patterns and manipulating data, was a huge help with some of Karkat's more difficult quandries - and his ability to write up little programs to help sort things out was even better. With his help, Karkat got most of the information he'd kept by hand onto the computer, and programs written that allowed him to access and manipulate it in ways that made things like scheduling far easier.

Sollux had even done the same for Marrok; the blueblood was effusive in his thanks, as keeping track of inventories became infinitely easier with the code doing most of the work.

Sollux himself seemed pretty happy about the change in routine; he paid lie to Temana's statement of 'not being chatty' pretty much whenever the two of them were not otherwise engaged, and Karkat found the yellowblood had some really good ideas for the further development of Sanctuary, among many other things.

His presence became a staple in the mutantblood's office; one of the two chairs Karkat had had for guests ended up permanently on his side of the desk for Sollux, and Karkat started to involve him in discussion and the decisions he had to make, as well. It was much easier to handle everything with a second person to help take up the slack, especially when they were as good at it as Sollux turned out to be, and as easy to get along with.

They had disagreements, sure, and sometimes they even turned into shouting matches - entertaining any troll in earshot - but that was only because that was how the two of them operated. They always had.

But it wasn't until Cardea made a remark in passing about 'get a private room for your sweet nothings, you two' that Karkat really realized what it looked like to everyone else.

And... what it felt like, to him.

He'd never actually had a quadrant filled, before. He'd done some fooling around with some of the others - mostly black flings, but there'd been a couple weeks of something approaching redrom with Rillie, one of the original mining specialists, before he'd gone official with Waylen - but it wasn't like he had experience. Not outside of his beloved romcoms, anyway; and as it turned out, real life wasn't really anything like those.

Karkat ended up hemming and hawing about it for a solid week after realizing his feelings. He really, really, didn't want to ruin the relationship the two of them had now. Sollux had become almost an anchor, someone he could really rely on to help without causing more issues, to take up what Karkat couldn't handle and do it with style. If confessing his feelings ended up making Sollux so uncomfortable that he elected to stop doing that, it would be awful.

But it was becoming harder and harder to stay silent. And it didn't seem like Sollux would be less than amenable to the idea - as Karkat ended up analyzing every action he took in a pale light, more ran with that flow than against it - but...

He wasn't sure. And he was afraid to risk it.

In the end, though, it was taken out of his hands entirely.

----

“Hey, KK.”

Karkat looked up from the paperwork he was filling out to see Sollux leaning against the far side of the desk. He blinked in surprise - he hadn't even noticed the other leaving, much less coming back in - but set down the paperwork to give Sollux his attention anyway. “What's up?”

“Come take a break from that. It's almost lunch anyway, and I want to show you something. I had the kitchen staff pack us up lunch so we can eat there.”

A picnic lunch?

...Why was this starting to feel like something out of one of his romcoms...?

No, that was stupid. He was just overanalyzing things again, trying to see them in a light that fit what he wanted. Sollux would surely have a perfectly normal, non-romantic reason for this.

Besides, this was Sollux. Sollux didn't do romance.

“Uh...?”

Oh, very clever. Such wit and charm you have, truly. 'Uh'.

Karkat told his mental critic to shut up. Fortunately, Sollux took the moment in stride, not seeming at all bothered by the mutantblood's sudden lack of words.

“Come on. Before someone decides to pounce on you and keep you up here all lunch again.”

Karkat winced a little. That exact situation had happened just yesternight - and while it had been an urgent situation, it hadn't helped his concentration or his temper to forego a meal.

That decided him more than anything else, really. “Okay, okay, fine. Let me finish this quick.”

----

When they reached their destination with the basket of food Sollux had collected from the kitchen on their way, Karkat was even more startled.

“What-?”

Sollux turned his steps to a newly-carved set of stairs along the side of the cliff on the right side of the landing field, a bit past the cascade of rock from the mining accident. “Someone decided that this would make a good place to have a little memorial, of sorts,” he replied in answer to Karkat's mostly unvoiced question. “...Does it count as a memorial if it's to an event instead of, like, a dead person?”

“How the hell would I know?” Karkat spat back, with no venom at all, and Sollux looked over his shoulder to grin at him.

“Rhetorical question. Anyway. So Rillie and Tareka took a look at it. Seems like all the unstable parts already went down in the accident or shortly afterwards; so the remaining cliff is solid enough to be on, if not to carve into.” As he spoke, the two of them climbed the steps to the top to find several benches, a low table, and a fire pit up there.

“Okay. That doesn't explain why we're here.”

“Can't I want some time alone with my best friend?”

Karkat tried to pretend his sudden interest in the bench opposite where Sollux was sitting down wasn't to hide his quickly-heating cheeks.

Damn it, no, stop that, this isn't a romcom, this isn't anything, it's just friends...

“KK? You okay?”

“Uh. Um. I- yeah, sure, fine, nothing going on here, nothing to see, definitely-” Karkat tried to sound entirely unconcerned.

“Then why won't you look at me?”

If he hadn't known better, he would have said Sollux's tone sounded almost... fragile. The way it had when he'd confessed his worry that Karkat had forgotten about him, over a perigee ago.

Despite himself, he turned.

He expected teasing; but Sollux didn't have a cutting remark about his clearly still flushed cheeks, or about the deer-in-headlights expression, or about anything at all. Instead, he just gave a gentle smile when Karkat turned and indicated a spot on the bench next to him.

“Come on. I brought food for a reason, you know.”

“Uh... oh. Right.” Karkat cleared his throat, told his face to stop making a fool of him, and joined the yellowblood.

----

They ate mostly in silence (externally; internally Karkat was involved in an intense screaming match between his inner romantic and his outer cynic). It wasn't until they'd finished that Sollux spoke up again.

“Hey, so, um.” The yellowblood cleared his throat, looking at his hands. “KK...”

Karkat looked up, silencing the war in his head to listen. “Uh... what's up?”

“...I, um,” Sollux repeated, ever so cleverly; and it was the yellowblood's turn to blush. “Uh. Just...” He rubbed the back of his neck, chewed briefly on his lower lip, then sighed. “Oh, fuck it. Look, I'm not good with this kind of thing, I'm sorry if it isn't everything you ever wanted, but, I was... I mean... just, here.”

He shoved something at Karkat, who took it automatically before even looking down.

In his hands was a little black box. A very familiar kind of little black box.

What-

“You're supposed to open it,” Sollux pointed out rather gruffly, and Karkat, without even really thinking, obeyed, his heart thundering in his ears.

Inside the little box was some velvety padding - and on that padding laid a little silver ring.

He could only stare at it for a long moment, eyes wide and face heating right back up - but then Sollux shifted and looked away, and Karkat's attention snapped to him again.

“I... fuck, I'm thorry,” the yellowblood whispered, lisp curling into his speech as he turned away, hunching in on himself. “I... I thought... jutht. Never mind, you, you don't have to, I'll jutht, we can, we can jutht thtay-”

Karkat finally found words in the face of the other's retreat. “Oh no you fucking don't, you dolt, you don't get out of this that easily!”

Sollux flinched; Karkat felt his heart flip over and he hastened to explain. “Fuck, no, wait, I don't mean it like- look, I've been... I just didn't expect... Oh, fuck, just...”

He set the box down to grab onto the yellowblood with one hand - before Sollux could shrink away even farther - and dug into his pocket with the other to bring out... another box. One that looked suspiciously like the one Sollux had just given him; one he'd been carrying in his pocket for a week straight, ever since he'd realized his own feelings.

The look on Sollux's face matched what Karkat suspected his own had looked like.

Karkat cleared his throat. “That's, I mean. Fucking hell, I'm supposed to be the fucking romance expert but I just, I don't even know what to say, Sollux. It's not just you - fuck, how is it that you're managing to be the romantic one here and I'm all stumbling over myself like a night-old foal?”

“I don't know, you seem to be doing pretty fine to me,” Sollux offered, a little weakly but with a smile - and better control over his lisp - as he took the box Karkat shoved at him.

Once his own hands were freed, Karkat turned his gaze to the first box and lifted the ring inside out. It was a little thing, a thin silver band set with a yellow, diamond shaped jewel - matching, as Karkat knew very well, the ring Sollux was just removing from his box, except with a red diamond rather than a yellow.

Karkat, blinking tears out of his eyes, slipped the ring onto his left pinky finger and closed the adjustable band to fit nicely.

Then a surge of panic hit him - his left, what if Sollux hadn't- What if he just thought- If he hadn't been meaning it so seriously, if he'd expected a right-hand ring...

But that panic was assuaged immediately as he looked up to see Sollux doing the same... also on his left, on the hand that indicated permanence, seriousness, rather than the 'courting' right.

Sollux looked up to meet his eyes once he'd settled his own ring, with an absolutely huge, straight up goofy smile on his face. “I can't believe you had that with you,” he snickered, poking Karkat in the thigh.

“Oh, fuck you, and I can't believe you're the one that got all romantic here - I mean, a fucking picnic, are you kidding me? You were the one that told me romance was stupid and a relic of the past!”

Sollux flushed brightly and rubbed the back of his neck, averting his eyes. “I mean... well, I wanted you to... I wanted to make you happy, you know? And you like all this romance stuff even if I don't understand it.”

Karkat felt his lips spreading into what was probably a matching grin to Sollux's earlier. “Well, you did. Make me happy, I mean. Though you would have without even all this shit, you know - I thought, um, I didn't realize... I figured it was just me, that I was reading into things too much, wanting romance where there wasn't really any... I didn't think you'd even...”

“I did. I've been thinking about it for weeks, KK.” Sollux admitted, visibly embarrassed. “I just didn't... I was worried you wouldn't, that you didn't feel the same... fuck, it took ED just about smacking me to even think to say anything."

“What- seriously?”

“Yeah. According to him, 'It's fuckin' obvious to everyone except you two idiots!'” (His imitation of the seadweller was shaky at best, but Karkat let it slide.) “And, well, he said you probably wouldn't want to make the first move so I had better.” Sollux swallowed. “It wasn't... it wasn't too horrible, right? I mean, I tried, I'm just not good at this romance shit-”

“It was amazing, Sollux, I really can't believe you did all this just to indulge my stupid fucking romance-addled brain,” Karkat interrupted. “Now for fuck's sake, get over here before I start fucking crying, you asshole.”

Sollux scooted over, and Karkat pulled him into a hug from which there was no escape. Fortunately, it didn't seem like Sollux wanted to escape, anyway - not if the tightness of the yellowblood's arms around Karkat in turn was any indication.

And as they sat there in each other's arms, food and work and everything else entirely forgotten, Karkat felt a piece snap into place in his heart.

For just a moment, he could forget everything else... because, for the first time in a very long time - with Sollux in his arms and cool silver on his finger - everything was right in Karkat's world.

Chapter Text

Summer passed into fall as the mining crew worked on the new flitter hangar. Work went a little quicker out here; the cliff they were working on - and then in - was much more stable than the previous one. In fact, once they had carved out a decent sized cavern and were well away from the entrance, they didn't even need the safety wall anymore.

Once that happened, Aletta took over moving the rubble, and Levern taught Eridan to use a pick. The work was hard and long; Eridan desperately missed the ease of the previous nights, but getting the hangar done was incredibly important. They'd lost a great deal of time and effort in the previous location; Aletta wanted to have this one done by spring next sweep, and the plans for it were pretty intense.

This new hangar was planned to be as big as it needed to be to fit all of the flight vehicles - except the official one - that Sanctuary had accumulated, and then some. The ravine they had most of them in currently was starting to crumble; soon the contents wouldn't be well hidden from above anymore, and the loose mechanical parts there were beginning to get worn down by sun and wind and sand. The plan was to move those into the current smaller hangar, where they'd be convenient to the landing field and easier to work with, and to move the vehicles that were currently in there, as well as the ones in the ravine, into the hangar they were working on now.

With all the work, Eridan really only got to see Sollux a bit at dusk and dawn. He missed him, of course - how could he not? - but he knew Karkat was watching out for their yellowblooded friend, so at least he knew Sollux would be doing okay even without Eridan there to make sure he was taking care of himself.

Frankly, Karkat could probably do that better than Eridan could, now; since they'd (finally!) officialized their pale relationship - at least as much as trolls off the grid could, not being able to legally register it - it was pretty much Karkat's responsibility to keep Sollux functioning, much more so than Eridan's.

(He still felt a surge of jealousy whenever he thought about that, but shoved it away. He wasn't pale for Sollux, he knew that perfectly well, so there was no actual reason to be jealous. Really.)

By Eleventh Perigee, things were really taking shape. There was definitely something inherently satisfying about seeing the results of one's own hard work, and Eridan felt it every time he looked at the hangar-to-be. The others seemed to, as well; certainly there were always grins shared around whenever they stopped work and were able to get a good look, and satisfied talk around the kitchen table in the morning after they got back.

Normally, Sanctuary was quiet when they returned just before dawn, with most of the residents long away in 'coon (or at least, occupied in their own rooms). The miners would grab something to eat, then follow suit, to get whatever sleep they could before dusk the next night. It became a nice routine, a way to settle down; seeing the place in the peacefulness of morning was calming.

A bit past halfway through the perigee, however, they returned to find Sanctuary - far from being peaceful - instead a boiling hive of activity.

----

It took no small amount of effort to find someone to explain what was going on; people only knew that some sort of news had come in that had everyone freaking out, and not much more than that - though there were plenty of wild theories flying around.

After several failed attempts to determine what had actually happened, Eridan suggested they all just go head up to the control room and Karkat's office; if anyone would know what was really going on, it would be someone up there.

He was right; there was a group clustered around one of the communication stations in the control room, talking urgently but with lowered voices. Most of the miners stayed in the doorway; Eridan was the only one to approach, and that mostly because both Karkat and Sollux were both part of that little group.

Karkat was in the middle of saying something; Eridan slipped in next to Sollux and tugged at his sleeve to get his attention.

"Wha- oh. ED." Sollux drew him in a little further; his voice was a whisper to avoid disturbing the others. “Should have figured you'd find your way up here.”

Eridan kept his voice just as quiet as Sollux's. “What's goin' on? Can't find anyone who actually knows anythin' downstairs. Some kind 'a news?”

Sollux's jaw twitched like he was clenching it. “...Yeah. I'll, uh. I'll explain in a minute, okay?”

Karkat had finished talking and looked over at the two of them. “Sollux, are you able to get on looking into that? I know it's late but-”

Sollux interrupted before he could finish. “Yeah, I can. This is more important than sleep; the sooner we know shit, the better, and we don't know how much time we have.”

“Is there anything anyone could do to help you out over there?”

Sollux shook his head. “Not really. It would take longer to coordinate something than for me to just do it. And we don't have the processing power to effectively run more than one search at a time. But any more current information you can get me will be helpful.”

Karkat nodded. “We'll try and contact around in here, see if anyone else has better information or if we can overhear anything else. All right. Cardea, Marrok, you two stay with me; the rest of you - and you miners too, I see you over there - get something to eat and then rest. Whatever you can do to calm people downstairs would be good, too. I...” He hesitated. “I think it would be better not to let this around, just yet. Try to get people to sleep first, and we can tackle it with more information tomorrow rather than everyone freaking out now.”

That was met with varying degrees of acceptance, but no one argued. Shortly after that, everyone dispersed; only Karkat, Marrok, Cardea, Sollux, and Eridan remained.

Once the hallway was cleared, Sollux took Eridan's arm and pulled him out as well. “If you get us some food while I get started up, I can explain what's going on,” the yellowblood suggested; nothing loathe, Eridan nodded and trotted off as soon as Sollux let go of his arm.

The group who'd gone down from upstairs had started to get people to disperse. Eridan heard various statements being passed around to explain, but most had the general message of 'It's under control right now, sleep and there'll probably be a meeting in the evening'.

Eridan himself joined the miners in the kitchen; unlike normal - where they would find and reheat food from one of the refrigerators for themselves - both Burley and Sverre were still up, doling out bowls of steaming stew from a pot on the stove and passing out bread to whoever wanted it. Eridan grabbed up a larger tray and went to Burley. (He'd mostly reconciled with Sverre by now, and she at least tried to be decent, but he still felt uncomfortable dealing with her and preferred not to if he had the option.)

“Hey Bur, I'm gettin' food for me an' Sol - is anyone gettin' stuff for Kar an' the others up there?” he asked quietly.

Burley shrugged. “No one else's come with a tray, so probably not. You going to?”

Eridan nodded. “Goin' back up there anyway, might as well. Five 'a us total, then.”

Burley didn't waste any more words - he wasn't the type to speak more than he had to - but loaded up Eridan's tray with five bowls and snagged an entire loaf of bread to put on there as well.

Eridan, with a quiet word of thanks, slipped out of the kitchen and back to the stairs, careful to keep the tray balanced so he didn't spill from any of the very full bowls on it. He managed for all but one, that last occurring as he bumped open the door to the control room with his hip.

Cardea was the first to spot him. “Eridan?”

“Brought you guys food,” the seadweller explained, setting down the heavy tray on a table near the entrance that didn't have any kind of electronics on it. “Figured probably no one else would 'a thought 'a it. An' that if Sol hasn't eaten yet you haven't either.”

Marrok favored him with a small, wry grin. “You're not wrong. I'm guessing the last two are for you and Sollux?”

Eridan rubbed the back of his neck with a hand and nodded. “Sol said he'd explain. An' I can make sure he doesn't get into trouble at least, make sure he's drinkin' an' whatnot if it ends up bein' an overday thing.” He would find a way to make himself useful - he didn't want to be excluded from all of this, not now.

“Good thinking, Eridan, thanks.” That was Karkat, bent over another desk and typing on the keyboard on it; he didn't actually look up. “We'll be all right in here for now. Sollux has the worst of it; it probably will be overday for him, if not for us, if we're going to have enough information to explain in the evening.”

“Figured. But let me know if there's anythin' I can do to help you guys, too, all right? You might need a fetcher or somethin', an' if I'm gonna be up here anyway I might as well.”

That got an absent nod from the mutantblood, and all three of them bent back to their work. Eridan, deciding that he probably wasn't needed here now but that at least no one was going to object to his involvement, tucked about a third of the loaf of bread under one arm and picked up two of the bowls to bring into the tech lab, leaving them to it.

When he entered the lab, Sollux was typing furiously; Eridan set down his burdens at a nearby, unused table and pulled over a chair. His stomach was growling fiercely, and if Sollux was occupied anyway Eridan might as well take the chance to eat something.

He was about halfway through his bowl of stew when Sollux finally clicked a couple of times and sat back.

“Got time for food?” the seadweller asked, looking up.

“Fuck, yes, finally. This's gonna take some time to run through, at least.” Sollux shoved his chair back, stood, and joined Eridan at the side table. “Let me get something in my stomach, and then I think I promised you an explanation.”

Eridan just nodded and set back to his meal.

They ate in silence; Sollux was apparently even more hungry than Eridan had been, since they both finished eating around the same time despite Eridan's head start.

When they'd finished, Sollux floated the water pitcher and a pair of glasses over to them; Eridan took it with a word of thanks and filled them up, passing one back to him.

The psionic took a long drink of the water, then set it down and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Right. So. What we know. You know we're tapping official communications, right?”

“Like, government stuff?” Eridan guessed.

The yellowblood nodded. “Among other things, yes. Mostly anything official we can get a signal for, though this did come from a government channel.”

Sollux fidgeted with his spoon, visibly nervous - which made Eridan nervous in turn.

What would have upset everyone so much? What could possibly have caused all of this?

But Sollux didn't leave him in suspense for long.

“Well... to keep it brief - the Empress is coming.”

Eridan sat back in shock.

The Empress??

“Coming here?”

“I mean, not to Sanctuary or anything, but to Alternia, yes.” Sollux sighed and ran his hand through his hair - a habit, Eridan suspected, that he'd picked up from Karkat. “They're calling it a state visit; from what we were able to get from the message, she's planning on being here a couple of nights. I'd guess it's to check in with the government and make sure things here are going how she wants them to, but... fuck, I'm really just guessing here. It's the Empress, who knows what she's thinking?”

Eridan took a swallow of water to give himself a chance to think. “So... what does this mean? For us, I mean?” he asked after a moment. “Do you think she's likely to find Sanctuary, or...?”

Sollux shook his head. “Unlikely. And even more unlikely that she'd care. We're just a little group as far as they know, after all; nothing to really worry about, especially not at her level. A couple planes down here and there, some escaped slaves - that's about the extent of what we've done. At least, to any kind of official knowledge. We're careful to keep track of that stuff, and to keep things about Karkat and the Sufferists from getting out. But...”

“But what?”

The yellowblood hesitated, then sighed. “We're... well, this is possibly the best chance we could have.”

Eridan tilted his head to the side, confused; Sollux took that as a question and continued.

“To, well... actually do the whole rebellion thing, for real,” he explained slowly. “It's likely to be sweeps before she visits again. Five, ten, fifteen - we don't know. And a rebellion just here on Alternia would get quashed pretty quick if she hears about it and brings the Fleet back, you know? So... we're kind of trying to figure out if there's a way to topple it from the top down - now, while they're still unaware of us.”

“You mean...”

“To.... to kill, or dethrone, the Empress, yeah.” Sollux's lips twisted in a wry smile. “Assuming she even can be killed.”

He sighed and took another swallow of water. “Well. So, what we're all kind of trying to do now, anyway, is getting more information wherever we can as soon as possible; we don't know how long we have before she arrives.

“I'm running some searches to get whatever historical information that exists online and pull together whatever we can determine from her previous visits - there's been three since the Fleet formed, this'll be the fourth. And Karkat and those guys are trying to tap into whatever else they can to get whatever information there is about this visit - whatever people know so far.”

Sollux sighed again, then went silent; Eridan let the quiet hang for a while, thinking.

If the Empress was really coming to Alternia...

Sollux was right, that this might be their best - possibly their only - shot of having any kind of actual success here, rather than just being an ineffective little base, doing small rescues and tiny sabotages. Trying to overthrow the Alternian government here would inevitably end in failure if the Empress and the Fleet weren't accounted for as well; like Sollux said, the rebellion would just be quashed by them later.

Like the two rebellions before it had been - the ones people knew about, anyway. The Empress was entirely too effective at suppressing that kind of knowledge for anyone to know for sure if others had occurred.

The Summoner's rebellion was pretty common knowledge around Sanctuary, if nowhere else; that had been the reason for the formation of the Fleet in the first place. Knowledge of it was as strongly suppressed as the government could manage, but it had been recent enough - just about fifty sweeps ago - that the knowledge hadn't entirely been erased, even on Alternia where only wrigglers had been left when the Fleet formed.

And of course, there was the Sufferer's rebellion as well; little was really known about that aside from the few texts that Sufferists managed to preserve over the sweeps, but they knew it had happened.

No rebellion had ever been successful, as evidenced by the Condesce's continued existence. It almost seemed useless to try, when they were up against the Empress herself, the ruler of the Empire for hundreds of sweeps - so long that no one even knew how old she even was.

It was rumored that she was immortal, invincible; most believed that she was the only Empress they'd ever had, that she would be the only Empress they ever had. That any kind of threat or attack was doomed to fail against her.

Eridan was, frankly, a little surprised to hear that others here thought there was even a chance of success, given how most people thought she was literally immortal and invulnerable.

But-

The computer dinged, distracting Eridan from his thoughts and causing Sollux to almost leap out of his chair to slide into the one in front of it.

Eridan waited a few minutes as the yellowblood scanned through the text on the screen before speaking. “Anythin' useful?”

Sollux grunted, still skimming. “Mostly shit we already knew. Previous visits lasted three or four nights; she held, I guess you'd call it court, for each of them. Made some edicts, culled some trolls, fucked with more, gave away positions in the Fleet and administrative ones here to trolls she liked. Nothing really exciting, nothing useful-”

“Sollux, we've got some info-”

Eridan and Sollux both startled at the unexpected interruption and looked over to the entrance; Cardea leaned against the doorframe.

“What is it?” Sollux asked, turning away from the computer to give her his full attention.

“I don't know if it's the same from previous visits, but news is in that it's not her flagship coming. No one's sure what ship it'll actually be, but it's something small. The flagship wouldn't fit anywhere near the capital apparently, at least not anymore. I don't know if it's because of construction here or if the flagship was expanded out in the Fleet, but there it is. So that's going to limit the number of trolls coming on it pretty significantly.”

“That's good to hear. Anything else?” Sollux asked, tapping his fingers on the desk.

“They're - the government and the high ranking trolls, that is - gathering some of the more far-flung of their number into the capital, so everyone can be presented and attend on her. Seems they're expecting some chances for advancement, like good positions in the Fleet. And estimates are that she'll be here right around Twelfth Perigee's, though there isn't a for sure date yet. Depends on how fast her ship is; the courier vessel is a lot faster than it, whatever it is, but no one knows anything more than that.”

“Less good.” Sollux sighed. “Okay. Thanks, Cardea.” Then he turned back to his computer and resumed scrolling.

Cardea spared Eridan a lopsided smile and darted back to the control room, leaving the tech lab in silence; a silence Eridan used to drift back into deep, unsettling thought.

----

They were, in fact, up most of the day; Sollux caught a couple cat naps while the search programs were running, but Eridan forced himself to stay awake. The last thing anyone needed was to be disturbed by his screams; and with the way his thoughts were trending, a nightmare was all but inevitable if he did fall asleep without sopor.

An hour before dusk, Cardea - looking almost as tired as Eridan - brought up some food for them. Sollux was still asleep, with the program running, but Eridan looked up.

“Everything going all right in here?” she asked, quietly to avoid waking Sollux, as she brought her burden over to the table.

Eridan shrugged. “There's not been much Sollux thought was useful,” he replied, his own voice soft and rough with weariness, and shoved a sheaf of notes over towards her when she joined him in sitting at the table. “I've been takin' notes on what might be, but... there's just not a lot 'a information about, well, anythin'. Apparently no one likes to take notes, or at least, to put them anywhere accessible to anyone else.”

Cardea flipped through the papers, tongue sticking out the side of her mouth as she concentrated; though from the way her eyes kept jerking back up, Eridan suspected she was having trouble with that.

Finally she set the papers down with a sigh. “I can't focus enough to even really read this,” she admitted. “I've been up this whole time too. Managed to send Marrok and Karkat off to 'coon, since they're gonna need to deal with everyone else in the evening, but someone's gotta be watching the channels in case something new comes through, and I'm the only one besides them that really knows these new machines.”

“You ought'a train someone on them, then,” Eridan pointed out.

“There hasn't been time. And we weren't expecting anything like this to come up, so it wasn't really a priority. Marrok and I were able to manage it turn and turn about with Karkat helping out occasionally up until now; we didn't need someone on it constantly, after all.”

Eridan shrugged and poked at a piece of meat on his plate. “Have you gotten anythin' else?”

Cardea sighed and shook her head. “Just the same shit, rehashed and reprised. Unfortunately, it seems like no one really knows much, not even at the higher levels.”

“So, between that an' the little we've dredged up, we're flyin' half blind, huh.” Eridan finally speared the meat and popped it in his mouth, using the time spent chewing to get his thoughts in something vaguely approaching sense - a tall order, when his mind wanted nothing to do with thinking until it had sleep. “Do you know what they're plannin' to tell everyone else? I can't think it'd be a good idea to really, well, let everyone in on everythin'...”

Cardea shrugged. “My understanding of it is that they're going to keep it at the news that she's coming and emphasize that we're going to have to lay really low for a while to give them all something to concentrate on.” Her lips twisted in a wry, tired smile. “They don't want it to be common knowledge what we're thinking, hoping to do... I'm assuming Sollux told you.”

Eridan nodded, and she continued. “Well, that sort of thing would be best kept on the down low - at least until we have a real plan. If we can come up with a real plan, that is. If any of this is even potentially possible.” She sighed. “I don't... honestly I'm not sure I believe it is. She's lived forever, crushed rebellions far bigger and better organized than us. I, well... I think she probably is immortal. Or at least her healing power, whatever it is, makes her that. I've never heard of her even being injured, you know? So how could she possibly be killed?”

Eridan bit his lower lip. He wanted, desperately, to respond, to say what he knew...

But with how tired he was, doing it now - when he wasn't sure he actually would have control over his tongue - probably wasn't the best idea. There were some things he did not want to reveal, especially not accidentally.

Besides, he wasn't even sure he was remembering everything accurately; and inaccurate information would be worse than no information. He would need time before he could even think about speaking out.

So he kept his mouth shut and just gave her a shrug in return.

Fortunately, she seemed to take that as answer enough, and the two of them lapsed into silence as they ate and waited for the sun to set.

----

An hour after breakfast bell, Sollux sighed and gave up; they hadn't found anything new in the past three searches, and both he and Eridan were getting so tired that, even if they could find anything else, they probably wouldn't be able to process it. So when Karkat poked his head in to tell them to go to 'coon, neither of them argued.

Eridan pressed the sheaf of notes into the mutantblood's hands as he and Sollux dragged themselves past him; as they descended the stairs, Eridan caught one last glimpse of him shuffling through them before he was out of view.

Trolls below were gathering in the theater, talking in low voices; presumably they were prepping for whatever meeting Karkat had planned.

It wasn't worth it to Eridan or Sollux to stay up for it, however - they already knew more than Karkat was going to tell the others - so instead, with no small amount of relief, they just went back to their rooms to topple into 'coon.

Chapter Text

When they got up later, Eridan discovered that work on the flitter hangar was being indefinitely postponed.

As a matter of fact, all work outside Sanctuary was being postponed (except a small group that was working on disguising the contents of the flitter canyon in case the ravine finished collapsing while everyone was staying in). Everyone was being encouraged to stay fully inside as much as possible, especially those who were off the grid - which was, frankly, a majority of the trolls at Sanctuary.

Waylen would still be making his merchant trips - he was one of the few trolls actually registered legally to be at the mine - but by himself now, and being very careful not to buy anything that would seem at all out of place for a small mine... just in case someone was watching.

Eridan thought a lot of this was ultimately pointless caution; but, well... it wouldn't hurt, and it would give the others something to focus on so that they didn't pry further than that.

But Eridan was caught up much deeper in everything than most of the rest were.

Karkat and Marrok had formed a sort of 'council': a small group of trolls who were important to (and could be trusted to keep their mouths shut about) the real plan; a group that consisted of Sollux, Eridan, Aletta, Cardea, Brinda (the maroonblooded Weaponsmaster, Marrok's kismesis), and Temana.

Cardea and Marrok had gotten Temana, once she was informed of the situation, up to date on the new technology in the control room (apparently she had been familiar with the older tech, which had been replaced shortly after Eridan and Sollux had arrived, but never bothered to learn to use the new equipment). The three of them now were taking it in shifts to keep ears out on the tapped channels, so that someone was always there.

Unsurprisingly, there was more chatter on those channels as the nights passed; so though Sollux had hit a wall with getting information on the previous visits, new information was still coming in. The 'council' met every night to share it and discuss ideas: in the early nights, they'd been working on mostly speculation, but by now, over a week in, more solid intel was being obtained.

The Empress was projected to arrive on the first of Twelfth Perigee. The ship she was taking to Alternia from the Fleet was a newer vessel, one that had only joined the Fleet a few sweeps ago with that sweep's recruits; it was a small one, but it would fit easily in the landing field by the castle in the capital. Its captain was a violet by the name of Odalis Ormarr.

(Eridan hadn't been able to prevent a shudder when he heard the name. Ormarr had graduated the sweep after Eridan started school - top place, to have gotten his own ship - but he had been one of the more... violent members of the Uppers.

Eridan tried to ignore the way his back burned whenever he thought about it and focused on what was important rather than old, unpleasant memories: nothing but now, nothing but now, nothing but fucking now.)

The Empress was planning to stay a total of five nights, departing on the fifth of Twelfth, and taking with her a number of trolls from Alternia - ones that she chose to give positions to out in the Fleet. For that reason, the crew she had with her to get to Alternia was minimal; though the ship itself normally took a crew of thirty to fifty, the intel they had suggested that she was travelling with about twenty.

News of that disparity had even more highbloods flocking to the capital; the more room there was on her ship, the more trolls she might take with her back. Anyone who was - or hoped to be - anyone was planning to show up for her visit.

Which only made things more difficult for the council; but they were focused on a different issue first. The council, as they discovered within a few meetings, was split rather markedly down lines of what was possible.

On the side arguing for the possibility of assassination were Karkat, Sollux, and Marrok; the other side, convinced of the Empress's immortality and/or invulnerability, was led by Aletta and consisted of Temana and Brinda. It was a heated, constant debate, exhausting everyone on the council and, honestly, preventing very much from getting done at all.

Only Eridan and Cardea kept quiet, refusing to take one side or the other, albeit for what were likely vastly different reasons.

Eridan suspected, from his earlier conversation with Cardea, that she was unwilling to pick a side because she wasn't sure which she believed...

Eridan, on the other hand, knew exactly what he believed. Or rather... what he knew.

For Eridan had more information than any of the others could even guess.

He wavered for nights about speaking up. What he knew... it was the most closely-kept secret he'd ever had. He'd been sworn to secrecy on it barely out of grubhood, and he'd never once broken that confidence, for it would have been a death sentence to ever speak of his childhood friend. Gl'bgolyb had impressed that on him with the greatest of weight.

(Over the past sweep, Eridan had decided that that was also the reason the Emissary had caused his memories to weaken after Feferi's death - Gl'bgolyb had always seemed to hold a certain fondness for him, and with Feferi gone there was no reason for Eridan to continue to risk his life by having that knowledge. But now, in this new situation, it was unfortunate that he was having trouble remembering everything. Most of it came up through too-vivid nightmares; the more he remembered, the worse they got. He was pretty sure Sollux was at his wit's end dealing with them - which was not helped by Eridan's absolute refusal to say anything about them - but there was nothing to be done; Eridan needed to remember as much as he could, if he was going to help.)

So it was, at a nearly instinctive level, terrifying to contemplate giving out that information, to tell them about Feferi and what he knew from her. But...

If he could tell anyone about it, these trolls - the ones plotting to kill the Empress that would order his death for the crime of knowing Feferi - would be the ones to tell. And his knowledge would be critical to their success.

So, finally, six nights before the Condesce's projected arrival, Eridan decided he'd remembered enough to be certain of his knowledge, made his decision, and resolved to speak up as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

----

The meeting started much as it always did; with no new information to disseminate, the members fell immediately into the usual argument. It was slightly unbalanced from Aletta's side, with both Temana and Brinda busy elsewhere, but Aletta seemed determined to make up for their absence with sheer force of will.

"It can't work!" she insisted as she had often over the past ten nights of discussion, half-standing and leaning forward against the table.

Karkat was just barely preventing himself from shouting; the strain came through in the strangled tone. "We have to try! If we don't take this chance, who knows what might change before the next?"

Eridan bit his lip and listened, working up his courage.

"How long can we keep ourselves secret - keep Karkat secret?" Sollux added. "It could be a dozen or more sweeps before she returns again! We can't pass the chance up!"

“And what if she can't be killed?”

From here, the burden of proof always fell on the 'pro' members of the council. He'd seen it enough times to have all the arguments memorized: all the arguments that had never convinced Aletta, and barely swayed Temana and Brinda.

There was no more time for internal debate. If ever there was a time to speak up, it was now, when Aletta was at her most off-balance, having asked the question that opened up the opportunity to argue against her.

But Eridan didn't have an argument to try to persuade her with, something she could tear apart and use to fortify her own position...

He had facts.

“She can.” Eridan's words were quiet, but confident, as he spoke into the brief gap between the maroonblood's question and anyone's response.

The table fell into silence at the unexpected interruption - the deviation in the otherwise routine argument.

“...Eridan?” Karkat asked finally, visibly confused, and turned to look at the previously silent seadweller - who almost never spoke up at all during these meetings, much less with such certainty. “What...?”

Eridan looked back at him, his face set. “She can be killed. It's not impossible. Her healing will fix a lot of things - but not everything. And it needs time to work.”

Now everyone at the table was staring at him; Aletta dropped back into her seat. Eridan took a deep breath and tried to fight back the automatic urge to shrink back.

“What- Why are you talking like you know?” Marrok demanded, frowning.

“Because I do.”

“How?” That was Aletta, sounding almost as strangled as Karkat had earlier.

Eridan took another deep breath, folding his hands in his lap to remind himself to stay calm.

“I...” He paused a moment longer, trying to find the words to make them believe him without him sounding like a lunatic. “...Look. This is probably goin' to sound crazy, but I swear to you it's true.”

“What is?” Karkat demanded, when Eridan paused too long.

Eridan didn't answer immediately. “...Sol, Kar, do either 'a you remember me tellin' you about someone named Fef?”

Both of his wrigglerhood friends frowned at him; Sollux shook his head, but Karkat hesitated for a moment.

“I... think I remember something about that? When you were, uh... right before you went to school?”

Eridan flushed a little, realizing what the other was carefully not saying, and gave him a little smile of gratitude for not bringing that up. “Well. She was my friend, growin' up. The only one I really knew in person.”

“Why didn't you introduce her to us, then?” Sollux asked, curiosity overwhelming confusion.

“Because it was too dangerous to.”

“It was- what? Why?” Karkat frowned, taken off guard. “Was she a mutant too? I mean, you already knew about Sollux, and even I talked to you fuckers, what could she possibly have going on that would make it so dangerous to have friends?”

“And what does this have to do with anything?” Aletta interrupted.

Eridan refused to let himself be cowed by her tone or distracted by her question. “She wasn't a mutant. At least, not any more than any of her caste is.”

He breathed in, held it, breathed out slowly. This was it. There was no going back, after this.

“She was tyrian.”

----

He sat quietly through the uproar his comment had provoked. Everyone was talking over each other - asking questions, demanding answers, insisting that he was wrong or misremembering or lied to.

It was easier to hold his composure with thoughts of Feferi on his mind. With their budding moirallegiance, she had been the one troll who really knew how to calm him down - not just physically, but mentally, emotionally - and even after all this time, even with her dead and gone, her memory eased his anxiety.

Eventually, the trolls around the table seemed to get the hint that he wasn't going to say anything while they were all yelling at him and each other, and settled down into an expectant silence.

Only then did Eridan speak again. “I told you it was goin' to sound crazy,” he pointed out, with a tiny bit of humor that only Sollux - from the twitch of his lips - seemed to appreciate. “But I'm not lyin', I'm not misrememberin'. She was tyrian. She was an Heiress. And most importantly... she wasn't the only one to ever have existed.”

“How do you know?” Aletta pressed.

Eridan raised an eyebrow. “I knew she was tyrian because I met her. I knew she was an Heiress because she told me. And I knew there'd been others before her because 'a her lusus. Gl'bgolyb.”

“Her... what?!” Karkat had found his voice again.

He permitted himself a small smile. “Yeah. The Emissary herself. The Empress's lusus. She's not fiction, she's not myth, she's very real.”

“But that means-”

Eridan inclined his head and waited, but the mutantblood seemed to have lost steam and wasn't able to finish his thought; so after a moment, the seadweller continued. “Gl'bgolyb is the only known lusus to be able to have two trolls at a time. An' that's important, because she's been raisin' Heirs an' Heiresses for thousands, upon thousands, 'a sweeps.”

He paused again - but this one was for effect. It was a rather heady thrill, having all these trolls hanging on his every word; it was entirely too easy to get caught up in it and play to his audience like the performer he'd always wanted to be at heart.

...But then he remembered why talking about this was important; reality crashed down on his moment of pleasure and crushed it. Now was absolutely not the time for dramatics.

He sighed and let the desire go. “To make it quick; there are always Heirs and Heiresses. Gl'bgolyb always raises them. She told us, in times past, when the Heir or Heiress reached adulthood, they would challenge the reigning monarch, and whoever won would take - or retain - that title. But when the current Empress came into power, she didn't want to risk losing it. So, for generation upon generation, she's been...”

Eridan sighed again, closing his eyes briefly. “She's been killing them. Not letting them make it to adulthood to challenge her at all. That's what happened to Fef. We... we pretty much knew it was goin' to, honestly, but Fef... Well, she was always so positive about everythin', so convinced that she would survive, that she would be the one to finally take the Empress down, that keeping herself hidden and not interacting with others would keep her safe until she was old enough, but...”

Eridan started a little when he felt a hand on his shoulder; he looked over to see Sollux watching him with sympathy in his expression.

The seadweller swallowed and continued. “Well. Anyway, that's why it was dangerous, for everyone. The Empress did not want anyone learning that there ever could be someone, who even might be able to take her down. It was bad enough that I knew, but if you all had, if she'd tried to reach out to anyone else?” He shuddered. “I don't know... I don't want to know what might have happened. With just me, an' even that contact only bein' in person or on a closed, private network...”

(Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sollux startle as the yellowblood belatedly realized just what he'd helped Eridan with, that one time way back then when Eridan had come over with a pair of waterproof laptops and what, at the time, had probably seemed a very strange request.)

“Well, we could maybe manage; but the more people who knew her - who knew what she was - the more dangerous it would become, for everyone. So we didn't dare.”

“...Look,” Karkat said into the silence that followed that statement, “It's, well, it's good to know that there are others, that the Empress isn't actually the only one ever, and I get that this is hard for you to talk about - which is why I'm guessing you hadn't said anything about this earlier - but... what exactly does this have to do with whether she can be killed or not?”

“What about her healing power? Why wouldn't that still save her?” Aletta demanded. “How do you know how it works?”

“'Cause Fef had that ability too.” The matter-of-fact statement provoked several gasps; but Eridan didn't wait for questions this time. “An' she said others've had it as well, before her. Not every tyrian, but... enough. She said it's a variation on psionics, actually, though I never really, uh, understood the technicalities.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding looking at anyone in particular as his bravery started to run out. “But anyway, that's, um. That's... how I know the Empress can be killed; because Fef was. She's, uh, she's probably essentially immortal, as far as lifespan goes - or near enough to it as makes no difference - but she's not invulnerable. That's all propaganda.”

Another silence fell; no one seemed inclined to break it for a long while. Eridan turned his gaze to his hands now clenched in his lap and waited.

Sollux was, eventually, the first to speak up. “So... the important thing from all of this is that, she is able to be killed. That it's not impossible, and it has been done in the past, even to trolls with that healing power... healing psionics, fuck, that's a hell of a thing to think about. But, all this, it means...”

Eridan nodded and looked back up. “Yeah. We have a chance.”

----

After that, Aletta had no more arguments to make; in light of Eridan's knowledge, her position had deteriorated until all she could do if she spoke was admit that she'd been wrong.

She wouldn't, of course - it went entirely against her nature to admit anything like that - so instead she stayed silent; and the discussion, without her protests to interrupt it, moved on to actual planning for the first time in over a week.

Eridan kept himself quiet as well; he didn't really have much to add to this part of the discussion. As he'd told Sollux once, his knowledge base did not run to the kind of secrecy that rebels needed in plotting. The others would be far more effective at working something out without him trying to get involved.

But unfortunately, even knowing that the Empress could absolutely be killed, and with the combined minds of several experienced plotters on the task, a feasible plan seemed...

“Ugh, it's fucking impossible, is what it is!” Karkat fisted his hands in his hair. “With all that increased security and patrols, there's no fucking way around it!”

“There's gotta be a way to sneak in,” Cardea replied, brows creased in frustration. “Ilmari's got psychic psionics, she can make people look the other way-”

“Unless she can make a fucking crowd look the other way, it's not gonna be any good,” Karkat growled. “There's going to be too many trolls there - everywhere! All her crew, and the normal inhabitants of the castle, and all the highbloods and their entourages coming in for this? There's no way!”

“Can we pretend to be part of one of those entourages?” Sollux asked, frowning. “I mean, there have to be lowbloods in them, right? Then Ilmari only needs to convince the highblood we'd be pretending to serve that we're supposed to be there.”

Cardea winced. “Um. She's... she can't do the convincing thing,” she admitted, looking rather reluctant to give that kind of information on her newly-formalized kismesis out. “It's more of a 'you can't see us' kind of thing, what she can do.”

Karkat groaned. “So we're back to square one.”

“Okay, well... there's servants, right?” Sollux suggested then. “Can we get in through them?”

“Not unless you've been taking lessons in court manners,” Marrok pointed out quietly. “Not and be in any kind of position that isn't thoroughly supervised, with no possible chance to break away and get somewhere useful. And that's even supposing they don't keep careful track of their slaves, which I very much doubt.”

Karkat opened his mouth, about to say something else... when he was interrupted by the dinner bell. Instead, he sighed and sat back. “Look, let's just... let's just take a break for right now, get something to eat and some sleep, and we can reconvene tomorrow. Maybe someone'll come up with something by then. We've still got like, a week, right?”

Cardea nodded. “She's expected to arrive on the first. That's six nights from now, and she's expected to stay for five before returning to the Fleet.”

“Okay. Everyone, eat, sleep, meet back in the control room after breakfast tomorrow,” Karkat instructed as he stood up. “And, I know this is really fucking rich coming from me of all trolls, but actually do the eating and sleeping things. We need everyone on the top of their game to work this out.”

That prompted a half-hearted chuckle around the table, but no one disagreed as they all dispersed to follow his orders.

Chapter Text

The next night, after their (ultimately futile) post-breakfast meeting, Karkat and Sollux had sequestered themselves in Karkat's office for a discussion.

They'd been deeply involved in it, not paying any attention to the rest of the world, when the rest of the world - or at least, a particular seadweller - came knocking.

"Kar?"

Both of them started violently at the unexpected interruption; Sollux quickly closed his hand around what he held and shoved it in his pocket before Eridan could see.

"What is it, Eridan?" Karkat asked while the yellowblood recovered.

"I... We need to talk. It's, um. About the Plan."

Sollux frowned. Eridan's downturned fins were trembling, his fists clenched, his body stiff: he was anxious about something, but clearly determined to be here and speak anyway.

What could be scaring him so much? What about the Plan? He hadn't been like this at the meeting after breakfast... could something have changed since then? Certainly Sollux and Karkat had been rather out of the way since then - with their discussion taking up all of lunch and up until now, an hour past - so it was theoretically possible... but he couldn't imagine what could have changed so quickly, not without at least Karkat's involvement.

"...Okay?" Karkat responded, blinking; given tacit permission, Eridan stepped the rest of the way into the room, followed by Marrok.

Karkat gave the blueblood an inquiring look, but Marrok just shook his head and took a step away to indicate Eridan had the floor.

The seadweller cleared his throat and clasped his hands behind his back; Sollux, sitting to one side, could just barely see the fingers start to turn white with how tightly they were pressed together.

"I've... been thinkin'. An' was talkin' with Mar, an' Brin. An' I think..."

Eridan took a breath, swallowed, then proceeded to plow into what was clearly a rehearsed speech.

“We've been goin' about this all wrong, Kar. Tryin' to figure out how to get a group in, how to sneak past everyone, all 'a that: it's not gonna work. Lowbloods just aren't gonna be able to! Ilmari's good with her mental psionics an' all, but she can't do it to enough 'a them at once to give us a decent shot. There's just no way it can work!”

“Okay, and?” Karkat raised an eyebrow; Eridan wasn't saying anything new, at least not yet. All of them already knew that everything they'd proposed so far was pretty much impossible. “What's your point, Eridan?”

“That there's another way. We don't have to sneak in, or try to snipe or ambush her en route, or anythin' like that. We don't have to hide.”

Karkat crossed his arms, frowning. “What exactly are you suggesting here?”

“She's holdin' audiences,” Eridan began, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Sollux could see his nervousness in the way his fins tembled and in the clenched fists behind his back, but he was doing an impressive job of covering it up through pure determination. “There's gonna be all kinds 'a highbloods there, hopin' for her favor. Lots 'a less than great graduates wantin' good places in the Fleet, or hopin' for a better position here if she doesn't like whoever's currently fillin' it. Lots 'a people tryin' to prove they're worthwhile.”

Eridan settled his weight back on both feet, fins briefly going still, and spread his hands out. “What better way to get in than to have a low-status violet hopin' for a promotion?”

Sollux froze, blood draining from his face, as the implications of the seadweller's statement crashed down on him.

“To- what the fuck do you mean, to get in?” Karkat frowned, clearly not having realized yet just what Eridan was suggesting.

“Exactly that, Kar. To get in, get to her, without havin' to sneak around or anythin'. To get into that audience.”

Now Karkat was beginning to understand, if the way he stiffened was any indication. “And do what?” he demanded, his voice strangled.

“Get close enough an' shoot her, obviously,” Eridan replied, almost offhandedly.

How can he be so fucking casual about that??

“All we would need would be a reason to take a weapon in.”

Karkat pounced on the apparent flaw in the seadweller's plan. “And how are you going to manage that? They're never going to allow an active weapon in!”

But it was futile; even Sollux could tell that Eridan had everything already worked out, and was just leading Karkat down the road of logic he wanted the mutantblood to take.

The seadweller only raised his brows. “How about a nonactive one? One that visibly isn't functional, but is still important? Such as, say - the weapon of a defeated rebel leader, gifted to the Empress as a tribute to gain her favor?”

Karkat scowled and clenched his fists, but followed along. “And what good is a nonfunctional weapon going to be?”

Eridan smiled tightly. “It can hide a functional one,” he replied, and stepped back to include the previously silent Marrok in the conversation. “Mar? You want to tell Kar what you told me?”

The blueblood hesitated a long moment, eyes on the desk to avoid looking at any of them; but finally he sighed and gave in. “...It's... possible,” he said, grudgingly. “To do it, I mean. Take an old-style rifle, something that fires shot or bullets... it's possible to make it look nonfunctional - to be nonfunctional, in the original mechanisms - but hide a functional laser weapon within. I... I could do it.”

WIth that, the blueblood stepped back, visibly relieved that his part in this was done; Eridan, his plan now fully revealed, clasped his hands behind him again and waited for Karkat's response.

It wasn't long in coming. “No, Eridan! Abso-fucking-lutely not!”

Sollux felt pathetically - in both senses of the word - grateful to Karkat for refusing to even consider this stupid fucking suicidal plan of Eridan's. Now, hopefully, they could move on-

“But-”

...Eridan wasn't letting it go.

Sollux held his breath and clenched his teeth to keep from interrupting. This was Karkat's show, not his. Sollux might help him out here and there with his work, but Karkat was the leader. And he would have to be the one to make a decision like this.

“Fucking no, Eridan!”

Just let it drop, Eridan, please, please, just let it go, don't insist on this, I can't lose you-!

“Then what do you propose we do?” Eridan snapped, eyes flashing and fins flaring in furious, determined defense of his idea. “Because I haven't heard anyone else offer anythin' with the slightest chance 'a workin', an' we don't have time to sit around dreamin' in hopes somethin' better will come up! This will work!”

“We'll... we'll figure something else out!” Karkat squeezed his eyes shut for a second. “We've got plenty of people, surely-”

“An' are you goin' to risk them instead?” Eridan demanded. “How many do you expect to be willin' to risk everythin' like that? How many will it take, to pull this off without me? How many people are you willing to lose?”

Karkat opened his mouth - shut it again - did so once, twice more; before slumping and dropping his gaze.

Sollux's heart fell.

Eridan's voice went quiet, almost gentle in its persuasiveness. “All you need is one person, Kar.” He took a deep breath. “Someone of high enough caste to get in, without being questioned. Someone who would have an acceptable reason to seek audience, and to be granted it with a weapon. You know they'll cull anyone lower with one on sight, even if it's visibly defunct.”

Karkat continued to sit in silence; beside him, Sollux had to clench his fist - the empty one - hard enough that his claws drew blood to keep from interrupting, from stopping this, from shutting Eridan down and refusing to allow him to follow through-

“I'm the only chance you've got, to do this without a huge amount of bloodshed.” Eridan's fins lowered a little and his hands were white behind his back, but he pressed on, voice rising again. “Even with that bloodshed it's barely a chance at all - an' you'd be risking so many! We don't have an army to throw at them, to try to break through; we don't have the strength to take this troll-to-troll, even if huge losses were acceptable for us the way they will be for them.

“But it only takes one person, in the right place, at the right time, to do what an entire army can't!”

Karkat still wasn't saying anything; but Sollux could see the way his claws were digging into his legs and the way his teeth were clenched so hard that the yellowblood half expected to hear them snap. He found a certain measure of comfort in the fact that Karkat didn't like this either...

But the mutantblood was, had to be, a leader first. A leader of all of them. And a leader of all of them couldn't dismiss something like this out of hand just because he didn't want a friend to be hurt.

“Kar, look. You know I'm right,” Eridan said, more quietly. “You know it's the only way. Maybe if she was here longer, if there was more time, if we had more people, there might be a different way - but there's not. If we're goin' to do this at all, it has to be me.”

“We can't lose you, Eridan,” Karkat managed finally, voice strained by how hard he was trying to be impartial and not show his emotions. “I won't allow it.” He paused; but before Eridan could do more than open his mouth again to protest, he continued, “You have to be able to get out after, all right?”

Sollux latched onto that hope even as his heart fell even further. Karkat was giving in...

But, if this plan wasn't doomed to end in the seadweller's death... he had to admit, it was the best thing any of them had come up with this whole time. Eridan wasn't wrong; it would work.

He just had to get out afterward.

Eridan's fins drooped a little at the demand. “I... I don't know how, Kar. But you can't lose this chance, just because 'a me, okay?”

“No, it's not okay, goddamnit!” Karkat half rose, hands grabbing onto his desk hard enough to splinter the wood beneath his claws. “I fucking mean it, either you get out alive or you don't go in at all!”

The seadweller quailed a little under the force of Karkat's anger and frustration, and his fins lowered even further, but he didn't back down. “Then find me a way out. Because I have to do this. If I can't...” He paused to wet his lips. “If we lose this chance because 'a me, I don't... I can't... I can't live with that, Kar!”

Sollux felt the box in his pocket give under the tightness of his grip around it - despite having been actively trying not to clench that fist - and endeavored to loosen it before he crushed it entirely. But it was so hard, in the face of all this: in the face of Eridan offering - no, demanding - to sacrifice himself for all of them.

And all this coming now, right on the cusp of what he'd been preparing...

It wasn't fucking fair!

Karkat seemed to deflate a little, and dropped back into his chair. “I'll... fuck. I... I'll try, okay?” But then he crossed his arms and fixed Eridan with a glare. “But that means you're going to have to get beyond good at shooting - and fucking running, too, for that matter. You'll only get one shot, and you'll have to get out afterward. We've got less than a week; you're going to need to be training every fucking second you've got to pull this off, got it?”

Eridan's fins rose a little even as his shoulders slumped in relief. “Yeah. I got it.”

“Get to Brinda, then. Might as fucking well start now.”

Then, as the seadweller turned and disappeared around the door - followed closely by Marrok - Karkat turned to Sollux. “You need to figure out his way out, Sollux. Get the specs, maps, blueprints, whatever you need, figure out how we can do this. You have full authority to commandeer whatever you need to do it - people, tech, processing, whatever, I don't care, just find a way.”

Sollux took a shaky breath, clenching his fist; then nodded.

He would. He would figure it out, whatever it took.

He had to. Eridan had to make it out.

The alternative was unthinkable.

----

Sollux spent most of the next week feverishly working in the tech lab - to the point that he was even taking meals in there, brought to him by Karkat or Cardea, and only going to 'coon when he was so tired he couldn't see straight.

All other business had been put on hold for this; the tech lab became the 'council chamber' so that Sollux didn't have to leave for the council to have their meetings, and its normal inhabitants were reassigned.

Mostly, anyway; Cardea and Temana were, of course, on the council, and Ilmari had been brought into it, so they were all there anyway, giving Sollux whatever help they could.

Over meals, between Sollux's feverish bursts of activities, the council hashed out the Plan in detail.

Eridan wasn't usually there to contribute, nor was Brinda; their nights were entirely taken up with training Eridan with a fervor equalling or surpassing that of Sollux's work in the lab. The seadweller was working harder than he'd ever worked in his life, fiercely determined to prove himself able to do this.

He and Sollux barely saw each other now; Eridan was invariably asleep by the time Sollux came in to pass out, and just as invariably up and out of 'coon long before Sollux awoke.

Sollux would have felt awful about it, except that there was one and one thing only that he could possibly allow himself to focus on: not losing Eridan forever.

At this point, there was no stopping this train wreck. Each night had more and more details hashed out, plans made, people told. There was no time to spend with Eridan, not if Sollux was going to ensure that he would have that time, ever again.

The nights passed too quickly. Sollux studied blueprint after blueprint; collected profile after profile on trolls expected to be there; went digging through every bit of communications he could find with reckless abandon to get the information he needed.

Most of what the other techs were doing was covering his back, security-wise. It took all of them to keep up with him; and it was a good thing all their efforts were being directed at this one thing, because the work pushed their hardware to its limits - to the point that one of the non-tech's duties was to keep ice packs on the machines most prone to overheating and fans running throughout the room.

Things weren't falling into place the way Sollux wanted them to. He was getting the information, sure - but it wasn't working, wasn't fitting into any kind of helpful picture. And as the nights passed, he got more and more desperate, worked longer and later, which made more and more work for the others trying to keep everything functioning around him...

Until finally Karkat had to literally pull the plug on his computer to get him to rest.

Sollux spun, horns and eyes and hands crackling and spitting hard enough to send up little trails of smoke. “What the fuck, Karkat?!”

Karkat stepped back and dropped the plug before it electrocuted him simply through proximity to the psionic. “Don't fucking give me that, Sollux, you're spiralling, you need to stop and rest!”

“There's no time-”

“There'll be less time if you crash now and end up unable to help later! Now for fuck's sake, calm down before I have someone pour some goddamned ice water on you to make you!”

Sollux snarled-

But Karkat didn't back down, meeting his blazing-inferno gaze with steely determination. “You need to rest, Sollux, it's five hours past fucking dawn and even if you can keep this shit up indefinitely, no one else can!”

Sollux flicked his gaze over to where the other techs were working... and saw Karkat was right. Cardea had her head down on the desk; Temana, standing, was visibly swaying; Ilmari's keystrokes lacked their usual grace and had turned into rough plunking on keys instead.

“Yeah. Like I said. Rest. Even Eridan knows he needs to rest, and he's even more bullheaded than you are about most of this!”

...It was right about then, as Sollux's psionic crackling eased and the desperate fixation on his work wavered, that the exhaustion he'd been staving off hit him like a truck.

Karkat caught him before he'd toppled forward more than a few inches, murmuring something Sollux couldn't make out into his ear and gently steadying him. Then, as soon as Sollux had control of himself again, the mutantblood helped him to his feet and began the slow process of getting the taller troll down the stairs, into his rooms - with a brief delay for Sollux to fumble with his keys until Karkat just snatched them from him and did it himself - and into 'coon, next to a deeply slumbering violetblood.

----

Karkat was back when Sollux awoke and dragged himself out of 'coon, head feeling like a thousand jackhammers were trying to tear it apart.

“Evening, dumbass,” the mutantblood greeted him, affectionately. “Get in the shower then come eat. I've got painkillers.”

Sollux took a couple stumbling steps towards the table; Karkat frowned and pointed at the bathroom door. “Shower first, Sollux.”

Sollux grumbled something unintelligible, but obediently turned his steps to the bathroom instead.

When he emerged again, dripping wet but slightly more awake, Karkat gestured him to a chair, pushing a plate of food over in front of it.

“You're the last one up,” he told the psionic as Sollux dropped into the chair and started shoveling food into his face, pausing only briefly to down an entire handful of painkillers with most of a glass of water. “I was talking with Brinda before this - she says Eridan's as good as he's going to get.” He grinned a little, but it was a tight grin, the humor a little forced. “She also said that even if he was a bit rusty to start, he was a better shot even before training than she is; apparently he wasn't kidding about using that rifle he always used to show off to us all. So.”

Sollux grunted.

Karkat refilled the glass of water from the jug on the table. “Anyway. Now that I've got you here, in case you haven't been paying attention to the meetings behind your ass the past couple nights-” His tone said that he knew perfectly well that Sollux had not been paying any attention to them at all, “-Marrok finished the weapon two nights ago; Eridan's been practicing with it since. He says he wants at least another full night of practice with it before he's confident, so he's doing that now; we've determined the best time for all of this is going to be right before she leaves, in two nights. Hopefully security will be the most lax around then, with no threats that whole time and the visit being almost over.

“And I'm pretty sure Cardea managed to get this through to you, at least, but the audiences are being held in the castle itself, rather than in her ship - which makes sense, obviously, since it's a small ship - so that hopefully makes getting in - and getting him out - a little easier.”

Sollux nodded; he'd been poring over blueprints most of the evening yesternight. Karkat was right, it would have been much harder to manage an escape from a technologically up-to-date ship with remote control over its doors than from an old stone castle with nothing of the like.

“Local chatter says there's guards at the entrance to the throne room and spread throughout the castle itself - one of our direct infomants has been doing her best to track their positions so we have an idea where they'll be - but the landing field at least isn't heavily guarded. Not away from the Condesce's ship or while she's not in transit, anyway.

“Our rough plan is to have Eridan fly in maybe an hour before the Empress is expected to leave, talk up the guard with his story of 'rebel prisoners' and presenting his 'tribute', get into the audience, and do it. Marrok's pretty sure that cutting it that close will have people less inclined to actually verify things, especially with a violetblood who probably outranks any of them to begin with.”

Sollux nodded again to show his understanding, chewing the last of the bread.

“So. When we get up there I need you to fill the rest of us in with what you've found out - I know you're getting frustrated not being able to come up with something on your own, but plans are better made with more heads than one. Maybe we'll see something you haven't.”

Sollux drained another entire glass full of water and set the cup down sharply enough that Karkat winced. “Then let's get to it,” he replied, pushing himself to his feet and striding towards the door, leaving Karkat to catch up.

----

“-so from here it's pretty much a straight shot to the landing field,” Ilmari explained, drawing her finger along a hallway on the blueprint printed out on the table. “As long as he can get to here-” She stabbed a doorway marked on the paper, “-I can cover him after that from the landing field guard, and as soon as he gets close enough, I figure you can grab him and get him on while Waylen gets the flitter going. It should be fast enough that they won't be able to get pursuit up until we're well away.”

Sollux nodded, frowning in concentration as he studied the blueprint. “If the flitter can take off with the door open, I can get him inside while we're taking off, yeah. It'll probably be pretty painful, with the wind, but it'll work.”

“I can handle pain,” Eridan said quietly, letting himself down onto a free chair as everyone looked up to see him. “Don't worry about that.”

Sollux tried for a smile for him; the seadweller returned him one that was much more steady and calm than the yellowblood knew his own to be.

Eridan turned his gaze to the blueprints. “From what I caught 'a that, I'm runnin' for the door, basically?”

Cardea nodded and leaned forward to walk him through the steps he'd missed; Eridan watched intently as she traced along hallways and explained what they'd planned out.

He nodded when she finished. “Okay. That seems doable,” he replied, with a quiet steadiness that eased the background buzzing of panic in Sollux's head.

Seeing the seadweller so calm helped him to calm down, as well. Eridan was the one who knew his own abilities the best; if he said he could do it, then he could.

...Maybe this wouldn't be a disaster after all.

"Okay. Let's go over the whole thing again, from the top,” Karkat instructed, “and I want all of you thinking about all the stupidest shit that could possibly go wrong with any of this as we do, okay? Freak accidents, 'magic spells', wild lusii attacks, fucking anything, we need this to be motherfucking bulletproof."

Chapter Text

That morning was the first time Sollux and Eridan went to 'coon together since the seadweller had first come up with his plan.

Eridan was glad to; mostly because it meant Sollux would be getting a good day's sleep for once - a necessity before tomorrow night's final preparations, which were going to be intricate and need the psionic's very careful attention - but also because, well...

He'd missed him.

It had been all very well and good to put all his focus into training himself to be the absolute best he could be, and he knew he only had a limited time to do it in - and that Sollux had been doing equally important work - but...

That didn't really matter to his gut, to the part of him that had been lonely for so long and desperately wanted not to be lonely again. And no amount of reasoning made it feel any less horrible.

Sollux was still verbally going over some plans with himself, muttering under his breath and making half-aborted hand gestures, as they prepared for 'coon; Eridan didn't interrupt. The last thing he wanted to do was distract him.

Which was... a very hard decision to hold himself to, Eridan was discovering.

For in amongst all the desperate training and hectic plotting, he had realized something; or rather, had finally allowed himself to see something that he'd never really dared to even think about before.

....He didn't want Sollux as a friend.

He hadn't, for a very long time indeed.

Eridan wanted him red.

He was desperately, vibrantly, painfully, fervently, terribly, brilliantly flushed for him.

It was a hard thing to discover, especially now, with all of this looming; and it only became harder as he realized there was nothing he could do about it.

He couldn't risk it. He couldn't risk the Plan.

There was too high a chance of confessing having an adverse effect, regardless of how the confession might turn out - either on Sollux, making him not do his best work or try to call things off to protect Eridan; or on Eridan, making him unable to focus or unwilling to take the risks he knew he had to.

...It hurt, though. To be so close, to realize after all this time exactly what the desperate longing in his chest had been this whole time, and to be able to do nothing about it...

It hurt, like claws of grief sinking into his heart.

But he couldn't risk the Plan.

So he stayed quiet; helped Sollux into 'coon, deflected the other's worry about him, convinced the yellowblood to sleep rather than talk the way he wanted to so Sollux would be at his very best tomorrow.

But Eridan couldn't stop himself from - once Sollux was fully asleep - gently petting his hair, working his fingers through the strands and the sopor, and wishing things could have been different.

----

He was up the next evening before Sollux, and used the time to obtain a meal for both of them.

When he returned with it, Sollux was just getting out of the bathroom; he gave Eridan a nod - as usual, not verbal this early - and ducked into the bedroom again, coming out a moment later with clothes.

Eridan's heart twisted to see what the psionic had picked. The shirt Sollux was just now dragging over his arms was one of the three Eridan had made, over a sweep ago - one of the ones with Sollux's symbol that he'd carefully, meticulously crafted, following an online tutorial.

...Thinking back, he should really have realized, even then, why all his world revolved around Sollux and his happiness.

But he hadn't, and now it was too late.

Eridan hid his sadness with forced cheeriness, pulling things off the tray for both of them to eat and filling up glasses with water. "Got food, Sol, come eat something before you go start work," he called; the yellowblood came over as soon as he was dressed and dropped into one of the chairs.

Eridan took another, and the two of them ate (mostly) in silence; Sollux's under-breath muttering (Eridan made out a few words here and there, enough to know that the other was still talking himself through the work he'd need to do tonight) was the only sound beside the clink of silverware and glasses.

The yellowblood seemed to be in a bit of a hurry; he finished his food quickly, and though he hesitated when he was done, lingering to be polite while Eridan continued to eat, he was clearly anxious to be gone.

Eridan waved him off with a nonchalance he wished he actually felt. “Go on, I'll clean this all up. All I'm doin' tonight is more target practice, won't be hurt for gettin' there a little late.”

Sollux was clearly relieved to be gone, and darted out after only a nod. Eridan tried his best not to feel hurt; he knew all of this rush was in order to make everything in the Plan work tomorrow, knew that it was all for his benefit, this extra work to make sure that he was able to get out as well as in, knew that it was necessary, but...

But, but, but. There was no room for buts in all of this.

He ruthlessly shoved his discomfort and longing and sadness away into the darkest corners of his mind where all the things he wanted to forget lived, and focused instead on what he needed to do.

Starting with cleaning up here.

----

The night passed quickly; and much to Eridan's disappointment, Sollux was still working late into the morning.

“You need to sleep,” Karkat told the seadweller when he intercepted Eridan by the tech lab's door. “More than any of us, okay? You have to be at the top of your game, you know that.”

And he did. That was the worst part. He knew it, knew that his physical abilities would suffer if he didn't get enough rest...

Eridan caught a but simmering up and shoved it back down. “...Don't know how well I'll be able to,” he admitted instead, trying hard not to show how upset he was.

He must have succeeded, because Karkat only nodded. “I figured; stop by the med bay on your way back. Ariona'll have something for you to take, to make sure you sleep.”

Eridan kept his sigh purely mental. He hated taking any kind of medicine if he didn't absolutely have to, especially stuff like this that messed with his head, but-

No buts.

He would take it in order to rest, and not allow himself to dwell on might-have-beens or maybe-ifs or should-have-dones.

And so he did, and didn't; and he was lost to the world long before Sollux finally came in.

----

Eridan woke alone, to the smell of something warm and tasty.

He heaved himself out of 'coon and stumbled, eyes half closed, towards the door; a shower and then that food he could smell sounded like the best idea in the world.

Though the food still steamed even after he'd had his shower, no one waited for him by it. Eridan felt oddly grateful. It would be easier to build up the composure and confidence he needed tonight by himself; easier to get those walls up before he saw Sollux, so that they could be built out of the solid ground of his conviction instead of the unsteady morass of his emotions.

That in mind, when he finished his food, he returned to the bathroom instead of immediately getting dressed. He had some time; by the clock in the living room, he knew he wouldn't be needed for the final rundown for another hour or so.

What he was looking for had been relegated to the back of a shelf from disuse, but a bit of careful reorganization allowed him to pull it down without too much trouble.

He put the bag on the sink and took his time digging through it for exactly what he needed; then, setting the tools of his practice on the counter and carefully folding his glasses beside them, he leaned in to the mirror to see better as he worked.

It was easy to fall back into the habits and muscle memory of his school days with his mind still a little sleepy and his eyelids slow to respond; he'd done this every evening for sweeps, and not that long ago, either. His hands practically moved on their own, opening cases and dabbing brushes.

(Though when the pain of those memories, called up by the smell of the makeup and the familiar routine, threatened to make his hands shake, he had to take a couple breaths to push them back away and refocus himself on the present.)

With no bruises to hide, counter-coloring wasn't necessary; so he picked a light foundation instead, one that wasn't as obvious even at close range as the heavy stuff he'd usually used back then. It felt light on his face, if a bit foreign - he hadn't worn any makeup at all since coming here, and it had been just over a sweep since then.

After that came contouring, to make the makeup look natural and emphasize the youthfulness of his face; then carefully redrawing his biolume spots to keep it from looking landdweller-blank and fake; then a little eyeliner - yellow-white on the insides of his lashes to make his eyes look bigger and wider, black on the outside to emphasize the length - and some lip stain to complete the look.

He set everything with heavy-duty setting spray, gave it a minute to work, then resettled his glasses on his nose - but he resisted the urge to look until after he'd finished the rest of his preparations.

The next step hung off a shelf next to the couch, kept carefully pristine and wrinkle-free.

He'd never, in his entire life, been so careful getting clothed. Not that he really needed to be - the uniform was by no means fragile - but it kept his mind occupied to be careful, to make sure he didn't add a single wrinkle more than absolutely necessary, and anything that kept his mind from fluttering around in half-panicking spirals was a plus right now.

He'd gotten used to the comfortable clothing everyone here at Sanctuary wore; the stiff, unyielding fabric of the uniform felt almost hard against his skin, calling back memories of harsh, stark black uniforms. (He pushed them back again.)

First socks (particularly weird to wear those again, honestly; he'd stopped wearing them even at school after a sweep or so), then pants (pristine white and pressed with perfect creases), then shirt (black, but wouldn't be very visible); all very nice looking, but ultimately simple.

It was the jacket that was the showstopper to his outfit.

Zollie (one of the first trolls outside the original council to be brought in on the Plan due to her crafting skills: her sewing ability rivalled Eridan's own, and she didn't need to spend every spare minute training) had been working on it almost feverishly since the moment she'd been told everything. Made of a pure white, high quality fabric - to match the pants - it was precisely tailored to Eridan's frame and decorated with tasteful highlights in gold and silver. There were no military markings, but overall it looked almost as fancy as any general's dress uniform.

A high collar hid his scarred gills from sight; he buttoned that part up very carefully. The stiff material felt somehow even less comfortable than the old collar had, much less his current one (now sitting in honor on the same shelf the uniform had been hanging on); and though it was probably more of an emotional feeling than an actual physical one, it still made him swallow uncomfortably a few times to try to settle it before turning his attention back to getting dressed.

His shoes were less than ideal, but there was only so much they could do on that front; no one here was a cobbler, and they couldn't exactly buy a nice pair of highblood-quality shoes without calling down unwanted attention on themselves. Besides, the shoes were important not to his looks, but to his abilities. It was far more important for them to fit well and to have excellent treads for running than to look nice. Eridan had been running in them for most of the week, so he knew they were good on that front.

A good amount of boot polish in a shiny black, put on just yesternight, made them look passable, at least; and frankly, Eridan very much doubted anyone would be looking closely at his feet.

A few rings - the only ones he'd brought, dug up from the bottom of his makeup bag - completed the outfit, and he stepped back into the bathroom to get a proper look.

He barely recognized himself in the neatly put-together, wide-eyed young highblood staring back at him in the mirror. The only thing marring the look was-

Oh. Hair.

He dug back in the makeup bag again, coming out with the few products he'd brought for such things. It was the work of just a few moments more to get it styled properly, in a fashion popular among younger highbloods (at least, during his school years; he hoped that, if fashion had changed, his older style at least wouldn't draw undue attention, but there was no way to check now) that would keep it securely out of his eyes and face.

He was grateful he'd just dyed the streak out again a week ago; it would have taken too much time to do it now, and it would definitely have attracted the wrong kind of attention were it visible.

That done, he stepped back again to look everything over with a critical eye.

The extra work with the makeup really sold the whole outfit. It made him look fresh-faced, younger; gave him an air of honesty and eagerness even at just a glance that would help his acting immensely.

He practiced a moment with his expression to find the best one to encourage that look. Inner eyebrows a little raised, cheekbones lifted and back, mouth slightly parted, fins relaxed and out - he looked like an eager puppy. Raise the inner eyebrows a little further, lower the fins a bit and flutter - an anxious, eager puppy. One who wanted nothing more than to please his Empress and was desperate to be given the chance to do so.

Sweeps of practice, aided by the lingering smell of the makeup in his nose, let him keep his expression in place despite the turmoil of emotion beneath it. He only let it go when he was positive he could replicate it at a moment's notice - and proceeded to do so several times, just to check - before finally turning away from the mirror.

It was time.

----

At any other time, the looks he got as he walked up the stairs to where the trolls needed for the Plan were gathered by the entrance to Sanctuary would have been funny; but this wasn't any other time, and he simply couldn't find it in himself to feel less than somber.

“The- holy shit, Eridan, what the hell-?”

Eridan managed a small, tight little smile for the mutantblood who'd just turned to stare at him. “Look okay?” he asked; he knew the answer, of course - there was no one more critical of his appearance than he himself, nor anyone more familiar with how young highbloods should look - but he did value Karkat's opinion.

“I barely fucking recognize you, Eridan, holy shit,” was the less than composed response. “You look- There's no way that's all just the outfit-”

Eridan's smile steadied a little. “No,” he admitted, clasping his hands behind his back and forcing himself not to fidget. “I dug out my makeup kit from school, from the flitter when we came.”

“Your- Oh.” That was Sollux, stepping back into the hallway from the desert outside. “You... you look good, ED.”

The smile faded. Sollux's words were stiff, his expression even more so.

He supposed it was probably too much to ask for anything else. Everyone was stressed, tense, worried; of course Sollux would be, too.

“...Thanks,” Eridan replied, looking away.

“Okay, well, that miraculous transformation aside - and holy hell does it feel weird looking at you like an actual highblood, Eridan - let's go over this one more time before you fuckers need to get going.” Karkat took a step towards the rest of the group; obligingly, the rest of them stepped back and spread out so that everyone could see each other.

Eridan found himself next to Sollux; he swallowed hard, mentally trampling his bubbling emotions down...

And then just about lost control entirely when the yellowblood's fingers found his. They squeezed, once, then let go; Sollux's eyes never left Karkat's face.

In any other situation, the move would have been comforting.

In this one, it meant Eridan lost the first few minutes of Karkat's speech in his desperate mental scramble to regain control and calm. He ended up intensely grateful for the sweeps of practice his time at school had given him with hiding his emotions behind a blank exterior; otherwise he might have dissolved entirely, and that would have ended in nothing but ruin.

Fortunately, he was as exhaustively familiar with every detail of the Plan as everyone else there, so he didn't actually miss anything that he didn't already know in his mental scuffle. When Eridan finally managed to wrestle his emotions back into their boxes, Karkat was just finishing.

“-drop the gun and run like your fucking ass is on fire to the side entrance. Ilmari and Sollux, you're up then - Ilmari, distract any eyes out there, Sollux grab Eridan as soon as he's in range and get him onto the flitter.

“Waylen, as soon as you see Eridan, get the flitter revving so you can take off when Sollux grabs him; Ilmari, you'll keep those eyes off all of you as long as you can hold it. Follow the route we worked out home, straight east to start and only start doubling back north and west a couple miles out over the ocean. If you see any signs of pursuit, keep flying, obviously, don't lead them back here. There's enough fuel in the flitter to go for a solid night flying, and the window tint should allow you to fly into the day if necessary.”

Karkat stopped for a couple breaths, then resumed. “Right. Last call for questions, concerns, bathroom?”

Eridan caught a snicker from Ilmari's direction at that last, but no one responded otherwise.

"Then go. Be...” Karkat swallowed, then recovered himself, his words gruff. “Be safe, all of you, and for fuck's sake stick to the plan. If any of you die I'll kill you again myself, got it?”

That prompted a few more chuckles. Eridan wished he could relax enough to join them.

And then there was no more time.

The trolls leaving started to climb into the flitter - Waylen, Ilmari, Zollie (with a medkit, so she could stabilize anyone who might potentially be injured as soon as possible), Sollux...

Then it was his turn.

Karkat caught his elbow as the seadweller moved to pass him. “Eridan.”

Eridan looked up at him and tried to force a smile. “Yeah?”

“...don't get yourself killed, okay?” Karkat's voice was rough and strained; Eridan could see tears sparkle at the corners of his eyes. “I'll never forgive you if you do.”

Eridan gave up trying to force his face into an expression it wasn't prepared to take, and instead called up the puppy-expression from his muscle memory and pasted it over his features.

“Yes, sir!” he replied breathily; and if his voice shook a little, the startled laugh the move provoked out of Karkat covered it.

“Holy fuck, okay, okay! Get going, you massive dick, I can't believe you!”

Karkat's response gave Eridan the strength to muster a facsimile of a grin for the mutantblood once he dropped character; then he ducked past, hopped up the steps, and settled himself into the pilot's seat before the grin could crack where anyone could see it.

----

Eridan was grateful for the need to fly this leg himself - there was no good way to switch pilots while in the air in this small of a craft - as it gave him something to focus on, especially since it had been so long since the last time he'd used a flitter at all. Takeoff and the first few minutes of flight were a bit rough as he familiarized himself with the controls and with this unfamiliar flitter's peculiarities, but he quickly got them leveled out into a steady flight path.

No one spoke; Eridan was grateful. It was all he could do to fly and hold himself together without anyone saying anything; if he'd had to try to interact outside of the persona he was already starting to drag himself into, he was sure his fragile control would crack entirely.

But he didn't have to. He heard some quiet murmuring behind him - a glance in the mirror showed Ilmari and Zollie with their heads together - but nothing that needed his attention, much less his interaction.

The flight seemed to simultaneously take forever and no time at all. Eridan could have sworn they'd spent hours, nights, weeks crossing the ocean; but it felt like only minutes before they were approaching the neat rows of buildings of the capital, then the ancient, sprawling castle itself.

The radio crackled into life as they were hailed; Eridan closed himself into his persona and responded in the clipped, aristocratic accent any good young highblood learned to speak with in public.

From here, they were in character.

He watched the mirror with a fragment of his attention as the others behind him pulled out the fake collars and cuffs they'd prepared and got themselves into character as well; all of the trolls travelling with him were supposed to be 'rebel scum' he'd 'captured', brought with him to provide veracity to his claims.

They all hoped that would end up being just a backup plan - that no one would actually question Eridan that closely or demand proof before letting him in - but it was better to be prepared for it and have it not be necessary than vice versa.

As he brought the flitter in to land in the spot he'd been directed to, Eridan suspected that he wasn't the only one holding his breath.

----

The landing field's guard was waiting when Eridan settled the flitter and shut it off.

Eridan took a moment to fix his expression into place and set his posture properly, dragging himself into the headspace of the character he would need. More than anything else, he needed to be confident. He was a highblood - even if he was young and low-status and about to do something any highblood would probably find nervewracking, he would still be confident about it.

Eridan glanced at the others just once before descending the few steps to the door; Ilmari gave him a thumbs-up and the rest nodded, faces grave. Eridan nodded back, shoved away the spike of anxiety, squared his shoulders, and pushed open the door.

He left it partially open as he stepped out, his attention on the guard - a broad-shouldered cerulean with horns that twisted in opposite directions - as he approached.

Eridan didn't wait for him to speak first; he slipped from puppy to anxious-puppy and twisted his hands together in front of him. “Is she- she's still here, right?” he asked, forcing his voice into a slightly higher pitch than normal to sound younger, less threatening. “I came as soon as I could, the prisoners-”

Apparently he'd succeeded in seeming unthreatening, for the cerulean interrupted him. “She's about to wrap up the last audience, kid, you're really cutting it close.”

“I can- fuck, really? I, I have to... but, the, the prisoners-”

“If they're not cooperating, it'll take you too much time to wrangle them, and there's no one spare to help,” the guard told him, standoffishness melting into something approaching sympathy.

“But I can't, I have to show, she won't believe without seeing-” At least sounding anxious wasn't difficult, with how tense he was already; and the guard clearly was taking all of it at face value.

“Kid, if you want to get in there before she goes, you really don't have time.” Then - and Eridan could hardly believe his luck, that the guard would suggest it and Eridan didn't even have to lead him into it - the cerulean added, “Do you have something else you can take? As proof, I mean? You can always come get the prisoners after...”

Eridan brightened his expression, making sure his fins perked properly. “Oh-! Yes, the leader, I took his gun after I culled him, would that work, do you think? Let me grab that!”

He didn't wait for the guard to reply, spinning on his heel and darting back into the ship. Zollie, out of sight of the door, kicked the side of the empty seat in front of her a couple times and Waylen grunted in an impressive facsimile of pain to distract the guard; Sollux handed the rifle to Eridan, who quickly double-checked to make sure it was in its nonfunctional setting before descending the steps again.

This time he fully shut the door behind him; it beeped quietly as it automatically locked.

“Will this work?” Eridan asked breathily, lifting the rifle to show the cerulean. “I had to disassemble it so none of them got any ideas about using it but-”

The cerulean's eyebrows had risen, but he inspected the weapon quickly. “Well, that's probably just as well, frankly. We couldn't let you in to see her with a live weapon, after all. But that's just a hunk of wood and metal at this point. Old style, huh? Must have been a pretty poor excuse for a rebellion.”

Eridan automatically stiffened, then momentarily panicked - but the guard read the response as something else entirely. “No, no, easy there, I'm not knocking your work, just commenting. Taking down even a crappy rebellion is still pretty impressive for a kid like you. You shouldn't have any trouble swinging one of those shipside spots.”

Eridan made his fins perk back up. “You think?”

“I do - but you'd better get going. I'll call ahead to let them know you're coming with that tribute weapon so no one bothers you on the way. Take the door there, with the white pillars, then just keep going straight - you'll see the throne room easily enough, that's where you'll want to be. Good luck, kid.”

Eridan gave him a sketchy half-salute - carefully calculated to be just respectful enough to flatter the cerulean without making himself look subservient - and headed for the indicated door at a trot.

He took a careful look around at everything as he got inside, without slowing. This would be his escape route; it was vital he made sure he was familiar with it. Taking note of the placement of statues and vases as well as the slipperiness of the floor, he continued at his brisk trot, letting the exercise warm up and ready his muscles for the coming exertion.

He did not let himself think about what he was doing. There was too high of a chance his mask might slip. Instead, he carefully thought about what the character he was playing planned. Getting to the throne room, going up to the Empress (prompting fear and excitement and anxiety and thrill, all at once), presenting his tribute to her-

He skidded to a stop at the towering black-pillared entryway at the end of the hall. A set of gigantic double doors, carved out of a wood so dark it almost looked black itself, were set into the wall beyond the pillars; a huge blueblooded guard in a uniform so crisp and perfect it made Eridan's look like peasant attire in contrast stood in front of them.

Eridan tried not to quail at the deep frown the guard gave him; but fortunately, anxiety at that expression was appropriate for both him and his character, so if he slipped a little it wouldn't matter. “Um, the, the field guard said-” he stammered, craning his neck up to look at the other troll. “That, um, I was gonna, I mean, um, tribute...”

“Compose yourself, violet.” The words weren't quite a growl, but coming from someone almost twice his height, more than twice his weight, and armed, it was still more than enough to make Eridan shiver and snap to attention almost on reflex. This blueblood reminded him uncomfortably strongly of the Logician, one of the most formidable instructors at the Academy.

“Y-yes, sir! I, um.” He gulped, holding the rifle up with a hand around the barrel and the shoulder rest dangling, a pose calculated not just to make the weapon look less dangerous, but also to make him look inept - and therefore harmless. “I-I, I wished to present, this, to her Imperial Majesty, it's the, the personal weapon of a rebel leader I culled, I have prisoners from the rebellion as well but there wasn't time-”

A hand reached out to grab the barrel of the gun; Eridan let go and held his breath, but the guard only brought it up to his gaze to verify that it was, in fact, completely non-functional: the entire hammer assembly was removed, paler wood and shinier metal exposed where it had been as though the rifle had seen long use with it in place.

(Of course, the whole thing was actually new - the appearance of age came from some careful staining, burning, and in the case of the metal parts, a bit of judicious acid use - but Marrok had been very skilled with his work.)

The guard grunted and lowered the weapon again; Eridan took it back in both hands. “Fine. Go.”

Then he stepped back, pushed the right-hand door open, and waved him in.

Eridan slipped past him, heart in his mouth, and paused in the atrium on the other side as he got his first view of the ancient throne room.

It wasn't as huge as he'd expected it to be. In his mind, he'd built up an image of something far more grand; but this room was hardly any bigger than the dining hall at Sanctuary. The ceiling soared far higher than the stone of Sanctuary's did, of course; but it wasn't really any bigger.

It was, however, just about packed with trolls - all of them, unsurprisingly, taller than Eridan, most by a foot and a half or more.

Eridan swallowed hard and looked back over his shoulder in time to see the door shut behind him.

...shit.

That wasn't part of the Plan.

Eridan clenched his teeth and forced himself to breathe. It didn't matter.

He looked back forward again, focusing on his breathing - in, out, slow, slow - and tried to settle himself. In here, with no eyes on him more than briefly, he didn't need to keep character as a shy, nervous young highblood.

What he needed now was calm.

He shifted to set his feet properly, as Brinda had taught him, and counted his breaths until the fizzing anxiety ebbed and his mind cleared again.

The Plan formed almost visually in front of his eyes. He needed to find her-

The raised dais across the room from him was empty of the throne he expected to find there; all it held was a single purpleblood leaning against the back wall, horns tall and hooked and paint in jagged streaks across her face. Her arms were crossed; a spiked club dangled from one hand.

Eridan turned his head, following the flow of the crowd, to find the throne he was looking for on a visibly new, taller dais on the right side of the room. He could just barely see the Empress around the heads and horns of the highbloods surrounding him.

He would have to get further in to get any kind of a shot.

Also not part of the Plan.

He tightened his fingers around the rifle and took one more deep breath before stepping forward. It didn't matter. He was here. He would do this.

As he took the few steps to enter the room proper, he let the movement conceal his actions as his fingers found the concealed switch on the underside of the barrel; with the ease of much practice, Eridan flicked it over to connect the circuit, priming the hidden weapon within.

Then he refocused himself and let out the remainder of his anxiety on a long exhale.

A true sense of calm settled over him now.

It was time.

It didn't matter that the Plan was up in smoke - the second part of it, anyway. He would follow the important part. That was why he was here.

This was what mattered.

Eridan took another breath, settled the rifle properly in his hands, and took his first step into the aisle in the crowd that led to the new dais.

All around him was movement, chatter, the shining of jewels, the gleam of gold; a tapestry of wealth and nobility in living motion.

Eridan moved past it all like he was in the eye of a storm. His conviction seemed to clear the air around him of the glitter and the babble, until every breath he took was full of stillness and purpose.

Another breath, and he centered himself on that purpose. Another step forward, and he let everything else go.

Nothing mattered but what he would do.

Failure - backing out - was not, and never had been, an option. He would do whatever it took to make sure he succeeded.

...Even though it would require his life as payment, with no escape route left for him.

Another breath - let that thought go. It served no purpose. Another step forward.

He was fully among the crowd, now. On either side of him, highbloods - a few of the darkest blues, some purples, but mostly violets - milled in careful little eddies, playing the tense games of politics such creatures found important. If he knew any of them, Eridan didn't know; he wasn't looking at them.

Another breath. Another step.

None of them paid any attention to him, either. Why should they? The guard at the door had checked him in, so he couldn't be a danger, despite the weapon in his hands; and he was only a callow youth, no one of any importance. He was below their notice.

None of them could even imagine that what he was about to do was possible, much less about to happen.

Breath. Step.

He was far enough in to see her properly now, at the end of the aisle, talking to some older seadwellers by her throne. Her weapon, a gold-and-gem-encrusted double-trident, leaned against the throne that she sprawled across; a blueblood stood behind it, back as ramrod straight as his sideways horns, an energy-laser rifle in his hands to guard his opulent Empress.

The Empress herself sparkled with gold and fuschia, every inch of her gleaming and adorned in jewelry; rings and bracelets glinted in the light as she gestured in response to something a tall violetblood with squared-off horns said to her. Studs and chains glimmered in her fins (Eridan was too focused to wince, but in the back of his mind he had to wonder just how much that had hurt, to pierce there), and even her horns - tall and curved - were bedecked with precious gems and gold; glittering chains dipped between them from jewelled cuffs clasped around the bone.

She didn't even glance Eridan's way.

Breath. Step.

His finger tightened on the trigger and his heartbeat thundered in his ears, loud enough to drown out the chatter around him; his world narrowed, cutting out the bustle and brightness to either side, until all he saw was her.

Just a few more steps, and he would be close enough to be sure of his aim.

Breath. Step.

In the stillness of his purpose, in the calm of his mind, he could feel the shape of a thought. Eridan let it come forward, immersed in that calm.

...Regret.

He acknowledged it without letting it distract him. It was true. He did feel regret.

He regretted that would be leaving everyone - Cardea, Levern, Karkat...

Sollux.

Breath. Step.

Everyone had been planning with the idea that he would somehow get out of this, Sollux most of all. Eridan had gone along with it; he'd worked out the Plan with them, practiced and learned the steps and prepared to follow through - he didn't want to die, after all.

But when it came down to it, past the illusory trappings of everyone's hope...

He'd known better. He'd always known better, ever since he first gathered together the pieces of his Plan.

Breath. Step.

There was no getting out of this alive. Not for him.

And yet, it felt... right.

This was what had always been destined to happen. His greatest worth would be his sacrifice.

Breath. Step.

He couldn't give anything else to this new world they would be making, couldn't help the rebellion in any other real way...

But he would do this. He would do what no one else could, give everything he had in this one chance they had to change everything.

His sacrifice would be worth something.

He would be worth something.

And in the end, isn't that all anyone could ever ask for?

Breath. Step.

He was close enough now; knew that, from here, he wouldn't miss.

His mind stilled. Calm settled over him like a cloak.

He stopped.

Breath.

Raised the rifle; set it to his shoulder.

Breath.

Aimed.

The Condesce looked up - looked at him. In her narrowed, contemptuous eyes, he saw Feferi's anguished ones.

Breath.

I'm sorry, Sol.

Pulled the trigger.

Chapter Text

As the flitter door shut and locked, the 'prisoners' within relaxed - at least a little. There was nothing more they could do now until Eridan did his part and got back out.

But Sollux didn't intend to sit there in anxious silence. As Eridan headed toward the castle, the yellowblood reached down and dragged out the case containing the laptop he would be using under his seat.

It wasn't his laptop; as a matter of fact, it was technically Marrok's (not that the blueblood had ever used it, nor had ever intended to). The reason Sollux had it now was twofold: first, it was far more technologically advanced in the actual hardware than the relatively cheap one Eridan had obtained for Sollux; and second, it was registered to the highest blood caste they had available to register tech to - which would hopefully help keep the highbloods from spotting him hacking in as easily.

Sollux had been at work with it almost constantly over the past two nights, installing and updating his own programs and security measures until it was as good as it was going to get without perigees to prepare it, for the purpose of one task alone.

Giving them eyes.

Technically, it wasn't necessary. They didn't need to see as Eridan did his part, just needed to keep watch for him returning. But Sollux refused to sit there and wait when he could be doing something.

Sollux found his lip curling in disgust as he set to work trying to hack in. The castle's security was terrible. It looked like it had been scrabbled together by a couple wrigglers and a grub playing at fake coding games.

...Well, maybe not quite that bad, but it was still far below the level of technical literacy that Sollux expected.

Not all of it, of course - Sollux wasn't even trying to hack into anything like the communication network or anything that was designed to be accessed from outside the castle at all - so it wasn't, from a technology standpoint, like the highbloods were running around outside with their asses flapping in the wind; it was more like they were all pantsless in their little internal network, the one that didn't extend much past the outer walls of the castle.

Apparently none of them felt the need to guard from within.

Well, Sollux might find himself almost scandalously disgusted by its inadequacy, but the crappy internal security only made his work easier, and made the chances of anyone detecting him laughably low, so he was hardly about to complain.

It was the work of minutes to get himself connected and locked in, and half of that time was spent just trying to work out what exactly controlled what in the messy muddle of code he found himself faced with.

"Any luck?" Ilmari whispered, leaning over to get a look at the screen.

"The whole damn thing looks like it was written by a half-illiterate wriggler," Sollux complained back in a hiss. "It's so bad I want to bite something, oh my god. How do they do anything with this mess?"

Ilmari wasn't distracted by the complaints. “Are you in? Are there cameras, or anything, to work with?”

“Yes, I'm in, how the fuck do you think I know how much of a mess this is? And I'm working on it, nothing's sensibly labelled or anything so finding the right parts is- got it!”

The scrolling lines of code on the screen were replaced with video feeds. Sollux flicked through them, staying only long enough at any given one to identify its approximate location before moving to the next, until he found what he was looking for.

The camera feed he stopped at was labelled “TOH 002”. Front and center in the feed were floor-to-ceiling pillars with a set of doors between them. A large troll with sharply curling horns stood to one side of the doors; the feed was grayscale, but from the sheer muscle mass the troll exhibited, Sollux suspected he was a blueblood.

Below him was a much smaller troll; the lightning-bolts of his horns were what had made Sollux pause on this feed to begin with. Eridan had gotten this far, at least.

And was getting further - as they watched, he stepped past the guard through the open door and out of sight of the camera.

Sollux went back to flicking through feeds, heart in his mouth. He had to find it, fast, it would be happening any second now-

It wasn't Eridan's horns that made him stop on the next feed, but the sheer number of trolls crowded onto the screen - this had to be the throne room. There were no signs of excitement or panic in the crowd, though, so Sollux relaxed minutely; he hadn't missed anything, at least.

This camera seemed different than the first; for one thing, this feed was in color, and of a much higher quality. The label on the bottom of the screen read “REC COURT 01” - Sollux guessed that it was a media camera rather than a normal security one. That would also account for its excellent positioning, for it showed the throne room from about as good of an angle as it was possible to get with that many trolls in one space, allowing the viewer to see the press and bustle of the highbloods gathered while still having most of the frame dominated by-

Her Imperial Condescension herself.

Sollux felt his shoulders hunching as he observed her. The Condesce was terrifying to see in all her glory. Every inch of her dripped wealth; every move of her body screamed dangerous. This troll - no, this more-than-troll, this supertroll, the embodiment of the Alternian Empire in its totality - this was the troll they had thought to murder?

All at once Sollux understood Aletta's point of view. How could someone as... as everything as this, ever possibly be killed by lesser trolls like them?

If it had been up to him, Sollux might have called it all off at that very moment.

But it wasn't; and the one in whose hands the Plan did rest was just now entering the view of the camera.

Sollux could only see Eridan's back from the angle he was at; it was impossible to read anything of the violet's emotions in the wide angle of the media camera, but Eridan was stepping forward at a steady, sedate pace, showing no sign of hesitation.

Stepping forward, away from the entrance, away from his escape route-

Sollux frantically flipped back a few feeds to TOH 002 - and found the answer to the question his mind hadn't even been able to form yet.

The door was shut.

Eridan had no escape route.

Sollux flipped back to the media camera, fear surging in his heart. “Fuck, no, Eridan, get out of there-!”

Ilmari hushed his panicked words. “The flitter's not soundproofed, Sollux, stay quiet,” she hissed.

Sollux couldn't even look up at her; his eyes were trained on the little dot of white and black and orange slowly advancing up the aisle. Surely he was just being sensible; of course he couldn't just leave, he'd only draw the wrong kind of attention to himself. He'd simply have to go through with the pretend-plan - present the tribute like the character he was playing had intended, go through whatever else was necessary, and get out as soon as he could...

He wasn't. He wasn't approaching her, he had stopped-

Sollux watched in petrified terror, frozen in place as time slowed to a crawl.

Eridan raised the gun; set the back of it against his shoulder, aimed; and then - before Sollux could even blink - white light blossomed from the muzzle, flaring brightly before shooting forward towards the throne.

In the seemingly-eternal space of a breath that followed, the light enveloped the Empress, then vanished, leaving her limp with a smoking, fuschia-tinged hole in her chest visible even through the feed.

But Sollux didn't even have a chance to begin to feel victorious, because in the very next heartbeat a second flash of white appeared, from behind the throne...

Going the other way.

When it blossomed again, the flare was partially hidden behind the form of the troll with the lightning horns; and as it faded, leaving afterimages dancing in his eyes, Sollux saw him-

Fall.

Sollux's mouth opened on a scream he didn't even hear himself make.

“ERIDAN!!”

----

He wouldn't ever really remember what actually happened next.

With the scream, he'd tried to leave, to fly out, to get to Eridan and protect him and rescue him and-

He didn't know. But something had stopped him, or someone, or-

He wasn't sure. All he knew was he wasn't there, and he couldn't get there, and Eridan-

“Eridan!”

When he screamed again, it tore through his throat with the agony of repeated abuse of his vocal cords. Had he been screaming this whole time?

Had the others been talking to him? He couldn't hear anything but a loud ringing in his ears...

The lights seemed too bright, red and blue flickered and crackled everywhere, everything was blurry and dizzy and Eridan, Eridan, Eridan-

“-have to go, Sollux!” he heard over his own screaming.

He didn't care-

Then there was a sharp prick in his leg - his gaze, torn from the screen, caught Zollie's - and then, finally, everything started to slow. The spinning stopped; the sparks faded; the screaming died out; and Sollux was left with a strange lassitude creeping up over his body that made even blinking feel like moving through molasses.

“I'm sorry, Sollux,” the medic was saying, even as she pulled the syringe away from his thigh; tears streaked her cheeks.

As the panic faded, black flickered at the edges of his vision - then rapidly encroached. Sollux caught one last glance of Waylen and Ilmari at the front of the flitter; felt the engine come to life below him...

And then he was lost in the darkness, as lost as the other half of his heart.

----

When Sollux awoke, it was to a white-and-grey room and a troll slumped over his right hand. It took a moment to think through the fuzzy mush his mind seemed to be - the aftereffects of whatever had knocked him out, he suspected, muzzily - but eventually he was able to identify where he was: the medbay at Sanctuary.

Presumably he was also here because of whatever had knocked him out; but he couldn't really remember anything, and trying made his head hurt too much, like trying to break down a wall with his bare fists.

He shifted a little, trying to get comfortable, and the troll slumped over him shot upright, both hands clutching Sollux's.

“Sollux! Fuck, I'm glad you're okay,” Karkat greeted him, hoarsely. “Zollie said it was just a tranq but...”

Something about him looked odd. “KK...?” Sollux asked, reaching over with the hand not already caught in a tight grip to touch the wet tracks on the other's face in confusion. “Why are you crying...?”

Karkat didn't flinch at the touch, but he did flinch at the question. “You don't... remember...? Fuck. Sollux, we...”

He seemed to be struggling for words. Sollux, feeling strangely numb, waited him out with a neutral expression.

“...It's, just... fuck, we all tried, but... You guys couldn't wait, you would have been... so he, you had to leave him...” Fresh tears were starting down his cheeks again. Sollux gently wiped some away; Karkat freed one of his hands to scrub at the other cheek.

“...Who?” Sollux asked, balanced over a precipice he could only vaguely sense beneath his feet.

“...Eridan.”

----

-flash of white appeared from behind the throne-

-hidden by the form of the troll with the lightning horns-

-saw him fall-

“Sollux! Sollux, please, stop! You can't, you're not there!”

He became distantly aware of shouting outside of his head; it sounded like it was directed at him, but he couldn't devote anything to listening to it. His whole mind was focused on Eridan Eridan Eridan and there was nothing left for any other concerns, especially not those of anything outside of himself-

A sharp searing pain blazed itself across his cheek. Sollux gasped, thrown entirely unwillingly back into his body.

Around him he heard crashing; turning to look even as he raised a hand to his stinging cheek, he saw on the floor all sorts of things that he vaguely remembered seeing in the room before, albeit not on the floor then.

...Had he done that?

“Sollux, look at me!” Karkat shouted, shaking his shoulders, and Sollux endeavored to drag his gaze back over. The mutantblood was weeping openly now; seeing the tears streaking down his cheeks made Sollux abruptly aware of his own.

“You're not there, I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry but you had to leave him or we would have lost all of you too-!"

-the light vanished, leaving her limp-

Everything crashed down.

They had... Eridan had done it, he'd succeeded, but then-

-white blossoming around a too-familiar figure with lighting-bolt horns-

He hadn't gotten out.

They'd left him.

Eridan, his Eridan, his heart, his treasure, the one he'd wanted to spend the rest of his life loving-

Was gone.

The Plan had succeeded - at the cost of Eridan's life.

----

By the time Karkat helped him out of the medbay, neither of them had any tears left to shed.

Sollux leaned on his moirail for balance, nose stuffed up so badly it ached and eyes so dry now that they burned, as they made their unsteady way down the corridor and into the dining hall, where Karkat sat him down and told him to stay before disappearing into the kitchen.

Sollux breathed unsteadily through his mouth and dully looked around. He wasn't the only one in the large space - there were a few small groups clustered at tables and pairs in the little alcoves along the edges - but the others were just as quiet as he was.

In one of the alcoves he spotted a pair of familiar figures - Temana on one of the soft cushioned chairs, holding in her lap a curled up Ilmari and gently rocking her back and forth as the tealblood's shoulders shook in silent sobs.

In another, Waylen and Levern leaned into each other, tear tracks down both of their faces; Levern was saying something, but it was far too quiet for Sollux to hear.

A light touch on his shoulder startled Sollux, but not enough that he reacted with anything more than a blink. “...Sollux,” said a deep, raspy voice; the psionic looked up to see Marrok above him. The blueblood's expression was closed off, but his voice spoke of the grief he was concealing. “I'm... I'm so sorry. I know... I know you were close.”

Sollux looked away. 'Close' didn't begin to describe it...

But... Marrok didn't know that. No one knew, except Karkat.

...Not even Eridan had known.

If he'd had any more tears left in his body, he would have burst into them again at that thought; as it was, all he could do was drop his head into his arms with a long, shaky breath that was almost a moan.

Eridan hadn't even known. Sollux hadn't told him.

After Eridan had brought up his plan, Sollux had gotten so caught up in trying to make sure that... exactly this... didn't come to pass that he hadn't spent any time with Eridan at all. He'd set his plans aside, naively assuming that he'd have all the time in the world afterward to spend with the seadweller, to confess his love then, without anything lingering over them about to fall.

But now... now Eridan was gone, and he had never even known...

Sollux felt a hesitant patting on his shoulder, then heard Marrok move away, presumably to return to his matesprit, his matesprit who was alive and well and right there for him whenever he wanted her-

Karkat interrupted his thoughts by setting down a heavy tray with a thunk onto the table. He hadn't even heard him approach again. “Sollux, come on,” the mutantblood said quietly, his voice gritty from crying. “You need to drink something, and eat something, it's almost dawn.”

Sollux didn't move. How could he eat, when Eridan-

"That wasn't a suggestion, Sollux,” Karkat said with a sigh. “Look, I know... I know this is fucking awful, and I'm sorry, but you have to take care of yourself, okay? I... I can't lose you too, please...”

That got Sollux's head up from his arms; Karkat met his gaze with rapidly blinking eyes. “Please, Sollux,” he continued in a whisper. “Not you, too.”

Sollux couldn't bear to see that kind of pain reflected back at him, not when he was the cause. He looked away; Karkat set a glass of water from the tray in front of him, and he picked it up with shaking hands to sip out of.

“There'll be... there'll be a service, around midnight tomorrow,” Karkat said quietly as he took his own glass; he swallowed down about half of it. “I don't know if you want to go, but... there'll be people, speaking, I mean. About him. A... memorial, I guess.”

Sollux shrugged.

“You don't have to decide now. Um. Here, Burley made... made up your favorite stew, yeah?” A bowl was shoved under his nose; Sollux couldn't smell a damn thing, but it did look like something he'd usually find very appealing. He took the spoon Karkat handed him with a numb grip and stared down at the stew, trying to work up some amount of willpower to actually eat.

“...he wouldn't want you to starve,” Karkat said quietly as he finally sat down beside the yellowblood. “You know that. He would be the first to insist you eat, if he were here.”

Sollux sniffed a little; discovered he could, and sniffed a little more, clearing at least a small pathway through his nose. The stew did smell pretty good, even if his stomach felt like it was twisted in knots. He hesitantly lowered the spoon into it, and even more hesitantly lifted it back to his lips. Karkat was right; Eridan would want him to eat, and drink, and take care of himself.

So he did, for Eridan's sake.

Karkat talked him through eating the whole bowl and drinking another full glass of water before he let up; by now, the dining hall was empty but for Temana and Ilmari in their alcove, Temana seeming to be performing the same service for Ilmari that Karkat had been for Sollux.

Karkat dealt with their dishes, then returned to help Sollux to his feet. “Come on,” he said roughly, “time for 'coon.”

Sollux followed numbly; but when he would have turned down the hall that led to his and Eridan's rooms, Karkat steered him to the stairs that led down to the mutantblood's rooms instead. “I'm not letting you sleep alone,” was all the explanation Karkat gave; but Sollux latched onto it with relief. The thought of facing an empty 'coon made him want to break down all over again, even though there was nothing left to break.

When Sollux finally drifted off, it was with a too-warm body wrapped around his, his head tucked into Karkat's shoulder, and the gentle murmur of reassurance and love from above slowly distorted by the sopor rising over his head as he sank down.

His dreams were full of ocean currents and sea gulls and a gentle breeze that felt somehow violet but never stayed long enough for him to see.

----

Sollux didn't go to the service.

He couldn't bear to face it; couldn't bear to see the sympathy on the faces, couldn't bear to hear the words, the memories, the stories they would tell to remember his precious seadweller.

Karkat did go; Sollux suspected the mutantblood had expected Sollux to stay in 'coon, but he couldn't. It was too empty, too warm, for him to handle. So instead, shortly after Karkat had left, Sollux pulled himself out and padded over to the shower; setting it to the coldest that he could tolerate, he stood for long minutes under the flow and tried to find that comfortable chill he was missing.

But the water was too empty and too fleeting to hold what Sollux wanted, and after only a short while he got out again.

He found his discarded clothes folded neatly on the side table in the living room; not even bothering to do more than roughly towel his hair dry, he put them on and walked out in a daze. He wasn't sure where he was going; he just let his feet take him where they wanted to.

As he reached the top of the stairs out of Sanctuary, a desert breeze blew in to caress his face. It smelled of sand and dust and something else, something familiar; he found himself chasing after it without any further thought in the matter, running across sand and stone and up yet more steps.

It wasn't until he found himself at the top of the stairs of the little memorial built over the collapsed mining site that he figured out what he had been chasing.

Gusts of wind blew up around him, damp and moist in a way that was utterly foreign in such a dry place; within minutes, they were so strong that Sollux was driven to his knees next to one of the benches, leaning against it to brace himself. Thunder rolled - not an uncommon occurrence even here, especially at this time of year - shaking the ground; lightning flashed in the boiling clouds sweeping in above; and just heartbeats later, the skies themselves answered Sollux's grief with their own.

It didn't rain often, in the desert...

But the world itself felt Sollux's pain.

Sollux bent his head under the torrential downpour, letting the beating of the cold water drive all the thoughts from his head. Everything was too much; it was a relief to let it go, if only for a little while, and let the world express all the pain he couldn't bear to carry.

His hands, shoved into his pockets to stay warm, found in them something he'd entirely forgotten about; heedless of the storm except to keep a careful grip so that the pounding rain didn't rip what he held from his hands, he pulled it out.

A little black box - crumpled, and now, in the wet, falling apart.

He pulled it apart and discarded it, keeping only its contents, which he held in both hands and cradled to his chest.

Only then did he give himself back over to the grief; his screams drowning in the peals of thunder and the pouring rain washing the tears from his upturned face, as nature itself shared his grief.

Eridan, Eridan, I'm so sorry... I never meant to leave you, I never meant to lose you, I'm so, so fucking sorry, Eridan...

----

But... life went on.

After his little disappearing-into-the-storm act, Karkat refused to let Sollux go anywhere unsupervised; Sollux submitted to it with the same numbness he'd felt on being steered to Karkat's rooms the first morning back.

Sanctuary echoed with the grief that slumbered in Sollux's heart. Though people went about their tasks, a pall hung over them; there might be small joys, but once they passed they were truly gone. Everyone was too terribly aware of the cost their victory had come at; even celebrating that victory felt hollow.

No one tried to draw Sollux out, even as he returned to work in the tech lab, desperate for something to distract his mind from the grief. Ilmari and Cardea shared the same empty look he felt on his own face; Temana held her moirail close and tried to fill the space with her words. Birtie sometimes engaged as well; when she did, they would chatter back and forth about nothing important at all.

Sollux let it drift past him without ever trying to hear any of it.

Not even Lemmie broke through; the brownblood was as silent as Sollux, and just as fixated on his work, as though something haunted him.

Something certainly haunted Sollux; he didn't need to think about it to know what it was. Everything echoed with the hollow emptiness of missing; everywhere he looked he saw Eridan's ghost. Here, the chair he sat in when he spent time in the lab with Sollux - there, the jug he'd so often refilled for them all; here, the pen he'd taught Cardea to spin on her fingers - there, the cane he'd used while his knee was healing, leaning against the back table where he'd forgotten it; here and there, there and here, little pieces of Eridan permeated the space until Sollux had to shove himself almost physically into his work to drown out the memories.

Only four nights had passed since he'd been lost, and Sollux didn't know how much longer he could go on before the void inside of him swallowed him whole.

----

He'd gotten so used to ignoring anything outside of his work that it took Birtie shaking his shoulder hard enough to actually physically tear his gaze from the screen to bring him back to the present.

“The fuck, BT?” he snapped, brushing her hand from his shoulder irritably. “I'm fucking busy!”

“You need to see this, Sollux,” she replied; something in her tone cut off the lingering protests in his mind. “Now.”

She didn't wait for him to reply; just grabbed his arm and dragged him out of his chair and over to her computer on the neighboring wall. All the rest of the room's inhabitants were gathered around it; but Sollux didn't get a chance to look at them before he was shoved into Birtie's seat and found himself looking instead at a video.

It was a news feed of some sort; the imperial designs at top and bottom indicated it was a government broadcast. Words scrolled along the bottom of the screen; Sollux ignored them for the moment in favor of studying the scene, trying to figure out what Birtie wanted him to see this for.

In front of the camera stretched an open courtyard - Sollux recognized it as part of the castle - with a small crowd of mixed mid- and highbloods, mostly standing to either side. Along the back edge, centered in the camera, stood several purplebloods in full Church regalia; between the purplebloods stood two violetbloods - one with tall horns that curved to either side, the other with ones that jutted forward and almost seemed to droop at the ends - in formal military outfits; and between them, sitting on a high pedestal, was a stiff-necked tealblood with curling horns, fuschia-draped robes, and an ornamental whip clutched in one hand.

Sollux recognized the High Justicer when he saw him. But why was he here? What was the purpose of this broadcast?

Sollux found himself wishing he'd paid a bit more attention to what was going on outside of Sanctuary - or even outside his own head - the past couple nights; maybe then he'd understand.

Movement caught his eye; his gaze skimmed down over '-brought to trial for the crime of-' in the scrolling text at the bottom to see a pair of bluebloods enter the camera's view, striding towards the High Justicer and dragging between them-

Sollux's heart stopped entirely.

He knew those jagged horns like he knew his own.

“Eridan-?”

But wasn't he- He'd seen him fall-

Yet here he was, alive - if not exactly well; even in the miniature form he could see on the screen Sollux could see the blood and bruises covering his body - and just now being forced to his knees in front of the tealblood with a vicious kick to the backs of his knees. His jacket was gone, the formerly white pants were ripped and dark with dried blood, his black shirt hung off him in tatters, and his arms were bound tightly together behind his back; but his posture was tall, defiant, even as one of the blueblooded guards yanked his head back with a grip on one lightning-bolt horn.

Sollux dragged his attention away from Eridan with an effort, to look down at the text below. The High Justicer was speaking, but the words were tinny and hard to understand, the video a poor quality mirror broadcast on a backwater website. Sanctuary didn't exactly get cable out here, and chances were Birtie hadn't wanted to take the time to find someone broadcasting it in better detail.

(A glance out of the corner of his eye showed her sitting in front of the unused terminal to the right of hers and flicking through webpages - probably she was doing that now.)

The text was repeating itself now; Sollux caught the little flag markers that indicated the beginning of a text and forced himself to pay attention to the words.

-A violetblood has been caught in the act of and brought to trial for the crime of murdering Her Imperial Condescension. The High Justicer will give his sentence.-

Not very descriptive - but just then, the Justicer snapped out his hand, cracking his whip to pronounce judgement; and a moment later, the text along the bottom of the screen flashed and updated.

-New! The High Justicer has sentenced Empress-killer: “Have his name be struck from the records. No troll would do this, therefore he is no troll.” Punishment to follow...-

Sollux shoved himself back up from the chair and dove for the door, psionics crackling around him as he used them for steadiness and speed. “Karkat!” he bellowed without even pausing, bursting into the other's office.

Karkat looked up from his laptop with a scowl. “What the fuck, Sollux, can't it wait?” he asked irritably; but Sollux just grabbed him with his psionics and dragged him out of his chair, over his desk, and back into the tech lab, heedless of the screeching it provoked.

When he got back into the lab, Birtie had found a better broadcast and had gotten it up on the biggest screen they had. Sollux set Karkat down - using just a bit of psionics to keep him in place until Karkat realized what was going on and stopped trying to go for his moirail's jugular - and stared up at the screen, heart in his mouth.

They hadn't missed much; the camera angle had changed to zoom in on a flat-topped stone. At first look, Sollux thought it was black; then he realized that the darkness wasn't part of the stone itself, but the colors it was stained with.

Nausea danced around his spine. He forced himself to watch as the guards shoved their prisoner down onto it on his back - to his left he heard Karkat whisper “Eridan?!” - and hold him there. Eridan struggled as best he could, but with his arms bound behind him, there was no way for him to effectively fight.

A blueblood stepped into view from the right side of the screen, carrying a heavy axe. Around him Sollux heard gasps; behind him someone sobbed quietly.

Sollux felt like his blood had turned to ice; he watched in silence, barely breathing. He'd thought he'd already grieved, had begun to come to terms with Eridan's loss, but now... he'd had such a brief moment of hope, of knowing Eridan wasn't dead, and now he was going to have to watch him die, all over again?

The axe-wielder stepped up to the stone; one of the guards held Eridan's head in place by the horns as he raised his weapon...

The axe fell. Sollux shut his eyes before it connected, throat closing off, unable to bear actually watching the fatal blow.

Eridan screamed.

Sollux flinched, tears gathering in his eyes-

But...

Eridan kept on screaming, long past the point when Sollux had been expecting the silence of death to fall.

Heart somewhere in his throat, blocking his breathing, Sollux opened his eyes; tried not to hope. He refocused on the screen just in time to see the axe fall again, accompanied by another scream; but this time, he didn't shut his eyes - so he saw, past the violet blood, that the aim of the axe had never been a neck or a head.

The axe-wielder turned and held up his gory prizes. Sollux fought an overwhelming urge to throw up when he realized what they were.

Raised up high like a trophy, still bleeding, were displayed-

Eridan's horns.

Beside him, Karkat did vomit.

Chapter Text

Later rewatching of the first part of the broadcast, with audio, gave them the context they'd been missing.

The trial itself had been quite short; like most government trials, it was meant as a show, a demonstration of the power of the Alternian government - a means to show anyone who might be thinking, with the Condesce gone, that they might be weakened. It was, in essence, a warning - 'do anything like this and this is what you will face'.

The Justicer had declared Eridan to be 'not a troll anymore' for his crimes; and to symbolize his removal from trollkind as a whole, had ordered the removal of his horns - the very symbol of being a troll.

It was horrendously effective in its purpose. Everything they heard while combing through the fallout for information spoke of terror - from highbloods and lowbloods alike - that such a thing could be used as a punishment. It had no precedent; a judge might rule for the removal of, say, a hand for stealing, in certain niche cases, but ultimately in almost all cases of major crime, the punishment was death or slavery.

Eridan had not been sentenced to death - at least, not immediately. The Justicer had said something along the lines of 'imprisonment for the rest of his life' - another oddity; though the castle had dungeons, they were only ever used for temporary holding of criminals prior to culling events - with the suggestion that while his life wouldn't be much longer, a quick death was too good for him.

Sollux wasn't sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, it meant Eridan was alive; but on the other hand, who knew what tortures he was being put through?

Would it have been more merciful to just execute him? The Justicer - and whoever had given the Justicer his directions; that particular stick-in-the-mud would never have come up with something that new by himself - seemed to think so.

Was it wrong of Sollux, that he almost wished they had?

But it wasn't up to him. What was up to him, was what they were going to do about it: because as long as Eridan was alive, there was still hope of rescue - and nothing would stop Sollux from mounting that rescue.

----

"It has to go to a vote, Sollux."

The psionic, interrupted in the middle of going over his frantic plans for rescue, spun to level a red-and-blue crackling glare at his moirail. "What?!"

“It has to go to a vote,” Karkat repeated, crossing his arms and meeting Sollux's glare with a set, emotionless expression. “There's more at stake here than Eridan.”

“Fuck you! How can you even suggest just leaving him?!” Sollux was aware, in some part of his subconscious, that objects were starting to levitate around him; but he couldn't bring himself to care through his fury. How dare he? How dare he even think that they might not rescue Eridan??

“Sollux. Listen to me. It's not just about Eridan.”

“How can you-”

“Shut up!” the mutantblood snapped; startled, Sollux subsided. “Look, everything about this is fucking horrible and I fucking hate that I have to even contemplate this, too, but there is more at stake here than just Eridan's life. Think about it for a second here! Why did they broadcast that? Most of Alternia probably didn't even know the Empress was dead before that went out, and I'll bet my ass a lot of the ones who did know thought it was a hoax. Why would they confirm it, on an official broadcast, if they didn't have a very good reason to?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“They're trying to draw us out, Sollux. They're using him as fucking bait, to get us to come so they can find the rest of us. They know he wasn't working alone!”

The floating objects around him came to a stop, then lowered again, as Sollux processed that bit of information. He wanted to argue, but...

It made too much sense.

Karkat, likely sensing Sollux's resolution wavering, pressed on. “If we mount a rescue, it could lead them back to us. We're not perfect. Something could slip, someone could get caught, a mistake could be made, and if that happened everyone here could die too. I'm not saying we shouldn't try! But everyone needs to have a say in this; we can't just do it.”

“We didn't put the fucking mission to murder the Condesce to a vote!” Sollux protested, clinging onto his last defense; but Karkat had an answer for that, too.

“Stupid as it fucking sounds, that mission was less dangerous, Sollux. They didn't know we even existed, they weren't prepared for anything like that to happen. If Eridan hadn't succeeded, it would have been relegated to just another stupid rebellion, or a highblood going crazy, and most likely nothing would have come of it at all. Even if they did try to find the rest of us, they would have had about as much luck as they're surely having trying to find us now - without us dropping a lead into their hands in the form of a rescue.”

“He's right, Sollux.”

Sollux started and looked over at the new entrant to the conversation; he hadn't even heard Marrok's approach.

The blueblood came over to them. “And besides which,” he continued, “this kind of mission is going to require a lot more cooperation to pull off than that one did. A successful vote will get you that cooperation without people feeling like they have no say in the matter.”

“But what if it's unsuccessful?” Sollux demanded, anxiety curling tighter around his spine.

“Then we'll figure something else out,” Karkat said with a sigh. “But I don't think it will be. You haven't been listening to everyone the past couple of nights, Sollux, but... what happened to Eridan, it's been on everyone's minds. There hasn't even been a celebration of the victory, because no one's really gotten over his loss yet. I just, I can't imagine that most of Sanctuary doesn't feel exactly the same way that you do. But a vote is necessary to make sure. Everyone deserves to have a choice in this matter, when their own safety is at risk.”

----

And so, despite Sollux's protests, a vote was called.

It was held as quickly as they could manage and still make sure everyone was present: just before dawn on the night after the broadcast had first aired. The entire population of Sanctuary gathered in the theater after their work was done for the night.

Karkat hadn't hidden the topic from anyone this time; it was vital everyone understood all the risks involved with this potential rescue, that they understood exactly what was at stake, and how and why they might be at risk, too, not just the rescue group. He and Marrok had gone troll to troll over the past night, presenting the choice and collecting any arguments they had, for or against the idea, to bring up at the vote.

Karkat had also been frustratingly insistent on using neutral language as much as possible for this, presenting everything as fairly as he possibly could. This was, he told Sollux, not the kind of vote where they could get away with being manipulative. It was too important; it affected all of them far more than the one about Eridan wearing a collar could possibly have.

So neutral language it was, and Sollux just had to grit his teeth and deal with it.

Ordered to stay off the stage for the duration of the arguments if he couldn't keep himself neutral, he paced restlessly just offstage as Karkat introduced the vote and presented the arguments they'd gathered. It seemed to take forever, and Sollux could have sworn that, for all of Karkat's insistence on neutrality, there were far more arguments against the rescue than for it. If that made people decide against it...

Sollux didn't know what he'd do. Something stupid, probably. Reason was something he had to hold onto with tooth and nail right now, and if this failed he'd probably lose it entirely.

Worry about that later.

Karkat had - finally! - finished with his presentation while the yellowblood was distracted by his thoughts. “Any last minute arguments? Everyone feel like your concerns were heard?” Karkat asked, and waited a moment; but no one spoke up. “Okay. Then I'm calling the vote. Same as usual, everyone,” he stated, as Marrok stepped forward to hand out the voting bags. “White for rescue, black for no."

Now that his presence wouldn't be a distraction, Karkat nodded to Sollux, who stepped onto the stage to join him as the bags were passed around the audience, hands tightly clasped behind his back. Neither of them spoke as they watched the vote being cast; the silence stretched on interminably, the only noise the soft click of stones as they were dropped into the bags.

When they were full and offered up at the front of the stage from the audience, Sollux was the one to step forward and take them; he was so tense that he felt like he should have creaked when he bent over, and stiff muscles complained at the unwanted exercise, but he ignored them and moved back over to his moirail in the center of the stage.

“Last chance for voting,” Karkat called, taking one of the two bags from Sollux. He waited for just a moment to check; then, when no one spoke up or stepped forward with a missed vote, he nodded to Sollux.

The two of them upended their bags simultaneously. Stones clicked together, collided with each other, and went rolling... and Sollux's heart soared.

Stone after stone tumbled onto the stage in an avalanche of white.

Pure white.

Not even one dissenting vote had been cast.

Sollux poked through the pile with a foot just to be completely sure, feeling tears prick at the corners of his eyes; but all that was there to see was white.

"...It's unanimous,” Karkat whispered, wonderingly; then, louder, for the rest of the trolls in the crowd, “It's unanimous, for rescue!”

And then, as the trolls below cheered, he turned to Sollux.

“Bring him home, Sollux,” he said, fervently, eyes shining with tears and the most painfully hopeful expression the yellowblood had ever seen him wear on his face.

Sollux couldn't find words to squeeze past the lump in his throat; so instead, feeling it somehow appropriate, he just gave Karkat a salute in return.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw more than a few people below copying the salute; and despite everything, he finally - for the first time in nights - managed to smile.

We will bring him home.

Eridan, Eridan - hold on, we're coming!

----

“He's being held in the dungeons - which makes sense, obviously,” Sollux explained, as they gathered on the third day after the trial with the information they all had been able to gather. He spread the newly-printed blueprint of that level of the castle out on the table in the tech lab and traced a finger along the hallways, squinting at the small lettering, until he found the one he was looking for. “Here.”

Marrok marked the indicated room with a pin with a little violet flag.

“From what I heard, it didn't sound like they intended to let him die any time in the immediate future.” Sollux didn't elaborate on that point, and fortunately, no one asked him to. It made him feel sick to think about what he'd overheard, the two trolls gloating over the injuries they planned.

If he got his hands on either of those two...

Set it aside. Focus.

“Cardea? What do you have on security?” Karkat asked, when Sollux sat back to indicate he was done.

"It's tight.” Cardea cleared her throat. “Everyone going in is getting questioned to hell and back - there's a lot of complaints about it in the chatter we've been picking up. There's been a couple cullings, too. It's mostly focused on people coming in, though - chatter says if you stay with your vehicle they don't bother you except to do a quick check on what you're there for.”

"What about anyone going out?" Waylen asked.

"There's still checks, but it's a lot less meticulous, from what we've overheard.”

“I can understand what might be going in, but what kinds of things are going out?” Aletta asked.

“There's always deliveries both ways,” Marrok told her.

“And people,” Cardea added. “Highbloods that were there for the Condesce's visit are still trickling out.”

Waylen and Karkat both started to speak at the same time; they looked at each other, then Karkat sat back and gestured for Waylen to go first.

“How close is scrutiny on the highbloods leaving?” the tealblood asked.

"I'm not sure," Cardea answered, slowly. “There hasn't exactly been a lot of chatter from them. But I'm guessing probably not very; highbloods would be the type to put up a stink about being imposed upon, even for security, so the lack of chatter probably indicates they aren't.”

“You want to get him out in a highblood's train,” Sollux guessed, when Cardea was done.

“It seems like an option,” Waylen replied with a shrug. “Assuming we can figure out how to get him into that group in the first place, and then out of it again later...”

“And how to hide him from said highblood,” Ilmari added with a grimace. “I can't affect anyone from much of a distance, or out of sight...”

“So, somehow hide him from the guards, and the people he'd be going out with? And what about injuries? He's not going to be able to walk far, if at all,” Sollux pointed out.

“Highbloods have baggage,” Zollie said quietly. “Lots of it. It might be possible to hide him in it.”

“We still have to somehow make sure that the highblood doesn't notice either him there, or whoever is going to be managing to get him in there...” Karkat pointed out, chewing on a claw.

“What if we don't have to worry about the highblood at all?” Aletta spoke up.

“How?” Cardea asked, eyebrows raised, and Aletta continued.

“Well, who said we had to get him out in the train of an actual highblood? If they're not questioning the highbloods closely, there's no way that any given guard can possibly know all of the ones there, by sight. Sometimes the easiest way to do something is in plain sight.” She shared a slow grin with Marrok.

(Sollux wondered, idly, just what the two of them had pulled off 'in plain sight' to cause that look, but suspected he would probably never know.)

“So, what, you're suggesting someone pretend to be a highblood?” Karkat asked.

“No one's gonna look too closely at someone who seems like they're going to cull anyone who gets in their way,” Aletta answered. “It's all in the acting. If you look passably like a highblood - a little makeup and some nice clothing goes a long way - and you act like one - a really, really touchy one - anyone lower is going to be too scared to look further.”

“Okay, well, that's all very well and good, but how are we supposed to get in, then?” Temana pointed out. “They're questioning everyone coming in, after all - and they're surely watching air and foot traffic outside the castle as well. And if we're going to be a highblood's train and hide Eridan in baggage, we're going to need to have that baggage. How do we get that in without being suspicious, and then get it back out again without someone noticing it's the same stuff or people?”

The table fell silent for a long moment as everyone thought on that problem.

“Can we get someone in without being seen?” Zollie asked, finally.

Marrok cleared his throat. “There is... a door, Brinda and I spotted, that seems to be out of use, that leads to some storerooms near a stair to the dungeons,” he suggested, slowly. “But we would almost certainly be noticed if we tried to walk up to it from a distance, and would definitely be if we tried to land the flitter there to use it.”

"We don't have to land the flitter,” Sollux interjected, a plan forming in his mind's eye. “Aletta, I was getting the impression you were thinking to play the highblood, right?” Getting a nod, he continued, “Then, between Aletta and me, we have more than enough power to get whatever we need down from a flying flitter; it would just have to come in to land slowly enough that we could jump ship on the way. Then whoever's piloting doesn't have to worry about hiding anything, they can just say they were called for a pickup, and we can go get Eridan, then pretend to be that highblood and train to get him out!”

----

The rest of the night was spent frantically gathering materials, crafting lightweight, collapsible frames for 'baggage', and putting together (with some feverish sewing on the part of Zollie and the reluctant donation on Sollux's part of the old, violet-colored clothes Eridan had brought and never worn here) a highblood-passable outfit for Aletta to wear. Her nest of curly hair, worn loose instead of tied back as usual and teased out by her very patient moirail Tareka, was by itself adequate to hide her lack of fins; and for the final touches, Sollux provided Eridan's makeup kit, which Tareka used to mimic seadweller bioluminescent spots on Aletta's face.

The 'costumes' for the other two going in - Sollux and Ilmari - were much easier; all they needed were relatively plain clothes that could pass for servant outfits, and, in Sollux's case, one of the old psionic collars.

It was, in fact, his old collar - a fact he noticed with a shudder. But he couldn't get away with one of the fake ones they'd made up for the regicide mission; there was a chance someone would spot his psionics, so he needed to have a collar that marked him as 'under control'. No highblood would allow an uncollared psionic to serve them, especially in a place like the capital.

So he would wear his old collar, and tried to tell himself that if Eridan could put up with it for half a sweep, he could put up with it for half a night. Even if it did make his skin crawl and his mind jittery with reminders of his time in 'rehabilitation'.

----

The next night, the night of the rescue, was calm and clear, not only in the desert but also in the capital. The flight over was silent, everyone on the rescue crew immersed in their own thoughts - until Waylen alerted them all that they were quickly approaching the castle, and it was time to move.

The flitter burst into activity.

Aletta took charge, working quickly to pull open the side door against the wind of their passage. She had to shout to be heard over its howling. “Temana, Zollie, get into your hiding places as soon as we're out and you get the door shut - Sollux, Ilmari, you guys ready?”

Sollux nodded and Ilmari gave a thumbs up.

“Then no time to waste - three, two, go !”

She was out first, bringing with her the majority of the 'baggage' - folded frames and cloth to drape over them. Sollux swept up the rest of it and Ilmari in his psionics and dove after her.

The hillside was dark and quiet as they landed; there was no sign anyone was even anywhere to see them, much less that they had been seen. One worry off the list.

Aletta had already approached the castle wall when Sollux landed and was messing with the door - barely visible in the brush that grew around it. As Sollux and Ilmari approached, she made a quiet noise of satisfaction and pushed it open.

“Do I want to know how you know how to pick locks psionically?” Sollux asked in an undertone as he reached the door.

Aletta flashed him a smile and didn't answer; instead she just whispered, “All right, let's go - Ilmari, you're in the lead so you can 'can't-see-me' anyone we run into.”

The door led directly into a pitch-black room; from the amount of dust their footsteps stirred up, it hadn't been used in a very long time indeed. Sollux, as the last one in, carefully shut the door behind them and relocked it; they wouldn't be using it again, after all, and better to cover their bases just in case someone had seen them descend.

Ilmari had found the door to the hallway in the meantime. “Should we just leave everything here?” she asked in a whisper. “The less I have to make people not-see, the easier it is, and I can't prevent anyone from running into things...”

Aletta nodded. “Even better, I'll wait here with all of it. You and Sollux go get Eridan and bring him back here; that way you have less to deal with, and we can have this door locked - with me inside - so no one accidentally stumbles on our stuff.”

“Sounds good to me,” Sollux said quietly, catching up with them and setting his bundle on the ground by the door. “But let's go, quick. Temana should have gotten the cameras dealt with by now, but the longer Waylen has to wait the more likely someone will get curious.”

Ilmari nodded and carefully pushed open the door, eyes glowing very faintly in the dim lighting; but there was no one there to see them. Her eyes dimmed again as she gave the all clear and Sollux joined her; behind them, the door shut quietly and the lock clicked into place.

From here, silence was necessary, as they pushed forward into progressively less dusty and more well-used hallways and slipped down the stairs to the dungeon level. It wasn't a long walk, but it was a tense one; Sollux kept jumping at shadows and whispers of noise, thinking each one was someone coming, someone who would catch them...

But when they finally did come across someone, shortly after descending to the level of the dungeon, they had far more warning than shadows and whispers.

Compared to the near-utter silence they'd been moving in, the sound of careless footsteps and the chatter of voices rang through the space like bells. They pressed themselves against the wall; Sollux held his breath, but Ilmari had it well under control. When the two trolls - seadwellers both; Sollux recognized the one with the drooping horns from the trial, though the other was unfamiliar - came around the corner, they didn't even look in the lowbloods' direction.

“You should break the other one tomorrow,” the unfamiliar violet was saying, teeth flashing in a razor-sharp smile in the dim lighting of the corridor. “Then you'll have done one a night, right?”

Drooping-horns made a dismissive waving motion with one hand. “No, we'll let him keep that one for a while yet. No need to rush.”

He recognized the voices - it was the two trolls he'd overheard, when he'd confirmed Eridan was still alive. They had to be talking about Eridan.

Sollux only managed to keep himself from sparking - or making a murder attempt - with a huge effort.

The first violet made a disappointed noise, but shrugged. “If you say so, Alecto.”

“I do say so. You aren't doubting me, are you, Ormarr? It hasn't been that long since you've been away, surely you haven't let Fleet life rot your brains so quickly.” His tone was positively poisonous, and Sollux had to suppress a shudder.

Ormarr hissed faintly, his fins canting down. “...No,” he replied finally, almost sullenly - which made Sollux very, very curious. Who was this 'Alecto', that an actual Fleet Captain deferred to him so strongly?

But his curiosity was not to be satisfied, for just a moment later the two turned into another hallway and went out of earshot.

Ilmari tugged on his sleeve, jerking Sollux back to himself; when he looked over, she turned and started back off, heading in the direction the two violets had come from. Sollux followed, his mind on the conversation they'd just overheard.

Those two violets seemed to be the ones in 'charge' of Eridan - in charge of torturing him, at least. Sollux shivered, remembering that toothy smile. It had sounded like they were just coming from doing... something, to him. Breaking things? Arms? Legs?

What tortures had they put Eridan through?

By the time Ilmari put up her hand to let Sollux know to stop, his thoughts had spiraled down into dark, nauseating places; he was relieved to be distracted from them as she put a hand on his shoulder and gestured at the door across the hallway from them.

He nodded and approached while she waited against the far wall, keeping watch.

The door was locked with an external chain attached to the wall - the chain itself was strong, but the pegs setting it into the wall were thin. Sollux, surrounding them in red-and-blue, snapped them with hardly any effort at all, leaving the chain to dangle freely.

He swallowed hard to prepare himself, then pushed open the door.

Chapter Text

Eridan laid very still and tried to breathe as shallowly as he could. Everything hurt; everything had been hurting for... well, he wasn't actually sure how long, anymore. What were nights and days in the pitch black of his cell? Even when the door opened - inevitably heralding more pain - there was no natural light to indicate the time of night; just the low, flickering, almost torch-like ancient lighting of the hall outside.

Eridan hated that door, hated that light, hated that hallway; hated that every time he saw them, it meant more. All he wanted was to be left alone, in the dark, to die; but every time he started to think that maybe this time would be the time no one came back... they did anyway.

The slave wasn't too horrible, he supposed; though he skittered about fast enough that Eridan had trouble processing where he was at any given time, leading to a sense of lingering panic whenever he was in the room, he hadn't actually hurt him - at least, not intentionally. All he did was clean up whatever mess had been left (including Eridan, when necessary) and leave him his water allotment.

...The slave probably wouldn't be able to leave it, this next time. Not if they wanted him to actually drink it, anyway. He wasn't sure he'd be able to.

That came perilously close to thinking about what had happened. Eridan resolutely turned his mind away.

The slave wasn't too horrible. He came in, ran around cleaning things, left the water, and left. It wasn't a pleasant experience; but it wasn't the worst, either.

The single visit from what he presumed was the doctor, back at the beginning when they'd-

No no nono-

Back at the beginning, had been far worse. He didn't remember much of it - just pain, mostly, and the feeling of being treated as dispassionately as a fucking bug - but...

It was better than the other times that door opened.

Eridan swallowed, carefully, and focused on his breath for a long moment, trying to find a way to breathe that didn't make his ribs scream. It didn't work; but at least, laying still, they weren't being aggravated further.

He'd tried to move onto his side to rest them a little better, but everything had hurt far too much to follow through on that plan. His one 'good' arm couldn't manage that much all by itself, besides. It may not have been-

Too much too close no-

Well. It couldn't. So he was stuck on his back, much like that aforementioned bug, staring sightlessly up in the blackness and trying not to think.

He wished he could sleep, but sleep seemed elusive at best. Every time he thought he'd finally started to relax enough, either he moved wrong and some new pain woke up again, or that godfuckingdamn door opened again and brought some new discomfort or horror.

He was expecting the slave again, next. The others had just left - well, he wasn't sure about the 'just' part, since time wasn't something he could keep track of very well right now - but they had been the last ones here, and usually the slave came twice between each of their visits.

He shut his eyes briefly - not that it made any difference in the dark, but it did ease the burning in them a little - and tried to find some kind of pleasant thought to chase after, to distract himself from the pain and the fear and the yawning, beckoning void of madness or giving up.

Really, he should just give in: give up, stop trying altogether. He was close enough to the edge that even just not drinking for a night or two would probably take care of it, even without any more visits from... them.

But... he couldn't bring himself to, and he didn't know why - not any more than he knew why he'd kept trying all through school.

Maybe it was because he hadn't in school; maybe it was some echo of his past self jumping through the unsteady gap of time to take over his present actions. Certainly nothing else he'd ever been through felt so real as those old school nights, now.

Perhaps the smell of this room was more damp than musty; perhaps it lacked the light shining up through the floorboards, or the bulb hanging on its little wire; perhaps it was quiet enough he could hear his own heartbeat thundering in his ears instead of the creaking of boards, the wind at the single window by the stairs, the squeaking of mice and pitterpatter of creatures running through the walls and over the roof; but, in the end, it wasn't so different. Not in any way that mattered.

For of course, he was the same.

Not visually, maybe - Alecto had grown, of course, since Eridan had seen him last, at least one molt if not two - but his essence - who he was, what he did, what he wanted - well... all that was the same.

Except that there was no doctor to hold him back from doing whatever he wanted, now; no school to slap him on the wrist if he went too far. Nothing to stop him at all, except his own desire to make Eridan suffer for as long as possible.

After all, there was no one left to care what happened to Eridan.

(His mind offered up images, feelings - teal, olive, red, yellow - but he shoved them away. He wouldn't bring them into this place, wouldn't subject even the thought of them to what lingered here. Wouldn't risk it. If they came because he thought of them, if Alecto found them...)

No.

He shoved those thoughts away again, as hard as he could. There was plenty of room now in those darkest corners of his mind for them, after all; all the terrible things that had lived there were back out in his present mind.

He'd almost become numb to all of it; or at least, the black memories didn't seem to evoke the same sort of terror anymore that they used to in the good times he tried not to think about now. Maybe he was just too tired.

Maybe it was because they paled in comparison to what was happening now, what had happened to him here...

No!

Desperate to find something to think about that didn't lead to what had been done to him, Eridan threw himself back into safer memories - ones that didn't have anything to do with present he didn't dare think about.

His ship? That was probably safe enough.

Seahorsedad? Yes, that was safe. He missed him; he could even wish he was here, because there was no way he ever could be. Alecto couldn't hurt his lusus, not now and not ever, because he would never be able to find him.

(If he was even still alive; many lusii didn't live much longer than it took to raise a wriggler, after all.)

So it was safe, to think of Seahorsedad, and to wish for his comfort - what little of it his lusus had ever had to offer.

And his ship: he would never see it again, but he'd come to terms with that a long time ago, long before now. It was safe enough to think about that; Alecto couldn't hurt his memories of it, after all.

Focusing on that, he built his memory of it up in his mind, piece by piece.

The great hull, cracked and patched, curving through the water and up into the air; the deck, smoothed by long sweeps of weather into an almost uniform darkness now, the newer fixed parts disappearing into the whole; the center mast, straight and tall despite who knew how many sweeps of it standing alone; the front and back ones, snapped off a long time before Eridan had ever been hatched. The little porthole windows of the lower levels; the newer, large frames of the upper ones; the moonlight spilling into his recreation room, or the study, or-

Yellow-

No, no, no. He wouldn't think of yellow - not here, not now.

Water. Water was safe.

The sea, extending out for as far as he could see to the north. The schools of fish that dared to live near his hive, risking his predation in exchange for the protection from others - for of course, first Seahorsedad, then Eridan himself, had scared away or hunted out anything large enough to be dangerous from the waters around his home. The little hatch into the underdeck of the ship, the freezer for his catches-

Yellow-

No!

The sea, the waves, the wind, anything, anything that didn't remind him of-

The door swung open, spilling light into the room.

Eridan squeezed his eyes shut against the pain of it; it might be dim lighting, at best, but compared to the pitch black of his cell, it burned like the sun itself.

He waited, with bated breath, for the figure in the doorway to move. Why weren't they moving? The slave never waited that long; he skittered in, did his work, and skittered back out again in as short a time as he could possibly manage.

It couldn't be... surely it wasn't Alecto, back again...? He'd only just left, surely, he never came that soon after leaving...

The doctor? But there was nothing to treat - nothing that would kill him, anyway, not quickly, not without effort...

Then the figure spoke-

And Eridan froze.

“...Eridan?”

He knew that voice.

He knew that voice like he knew his own.

But he can't be here-!

Eridan laid very, very still and kept his eyes shut.

Perhaps this was it - perhaps this was the moment he finally went insane. His thoughts had come too close, and they'd broken through, and now he was hallucinating that the one person he desperately, desperately wanted was here, and not not-here as he equally desperately wanted him to be.

Because Sollux couldn't be here.

He couldn't.

The figure approached, quickly - Eridan heard them drop beside him - and then-

Touch.

It was feather-light, the barest of brushes against his skin; but it left a line of fire in its wake along the side of his bruised and aching face.

It's not real, it's not, he's not-

“Eridan, please...”

The fire traced again, this time along a fin; Eridan couldn't prevent it from fluttering weakly in response.

It's not real-!

“Eridan, wake up, please, please-”

His eyes slipped open; he shut them again quickly, expecting the burn of the lights - but the figure beside him was blocking him from the brightness, leaning in over him.

He heard an intake of breath. “Eridan?” the figure said, again; and the line of fire was back, trailing along his cheek.

That was three times. Three times, touched.

His dreams never made it to three.

His eyes fluttered open again before he could stop them.

He couldn't make out anything of the figure's face, with the light silhouetting them; couldn't even really look at the silhouette itself, with the way it made his eyes ache to see the light on the edges. But...

“...S...sol...?”

It was weak - barely audible even to himself; it caught on his cracked teeth and went skittering away into the dark - but the figure heard it.

Sollux heard it.

“Eridan, fuck- Are you- no, fuck, jutht...” he said, stumbling over his words as he leaned in again.

Eridan forced himself to look, despite the light. The shape, the flare of his hair; the catch of his tongue on his teeth mangling the sibilant...

“...'s it... really...?” he whispered, not quite able to process it; his good hand raising on its own to reach towards the figure beside him.

Hands - warm hands - enfolded it.

“Yeah. It's me, Eridan.”

Tears pricked his eyes, and he blinked rapidly, trying to clear them; the light reflected strangely through them, making his already bad vision far worse.

“I'm here,” Sollux murmured, leaning in close. “We're... we're going to get you out of here, okay? I need to...” He stopped; Eridan heard him swallow. “I need to move you, okay? It's... it's probably going to hurt, but we need to go, quickly, before anyone comes-”

Get him out, Sollux said...

Was it real? This precipice, this chance, that he stood at...

Should he step back? Back into the darkness, into the pain, into what he knew was real?

Or should be take the risk... and believe, that there was someone there to catch him?

...If this's a hallucination, or a dream, let me never, ever wake up...

Eridan took a breath, shut his eyes, and jumped.

“...okay,” he whispered hoarsely back, squeezing his hand on Sollux's just a little bit; then, when Sollux hesitated, he did it again, more steadily. “It's... okay,” he rasped, and tried not to wince at the ruin of his voice. “Do... it.”

The yellowblood swallowed, then nodded; blue-and-red swirled around him, flickering with not-quite-sparks against his skin.

There was no way he could be imagining that. Nothing in his imagination could replicate that feeling. His breath hitched in his throat as he ruthlessly repressed a sob.

“I'm sorry,” Sollux whispered, probably thinking the sound had been from pain.

Eridan cracked open his eyes and shook his head, just a little, to deny it. “...Do... it,” he repeated, a little more strongly.

“...Right. Um. Try to... try to be as quiet as you can, okay...?”

Then one of Sollux's hands released his - though the other remained, hot and soft against his chilled one - and the sparks surrounded him and lifted him.

Eridan shut his eyes again against the increased light and pain from the change in position. Sollux was being as careful as he could - he could tell, for the move provoked only pain and not agony; it had hurt more when he'd tried to roll himself over - and though he felt his breathing hitch again, he swallowed it down, grit his teeth, and breathed shallowly through his nose.

Quiet.

He could do that.

If there was anything he could do, it was be quiet in the face of pain.

...But he refused to let go of Sollux's hand in his.

The warmblood didn't let go, either; he left their hands clasped loosely together, curled his other under Eridan's back - just enough to feel, not enough to aggravate the injuries there - and moved towards the light.

----

The next little while passed without Eridan's awareness; he only came back to himself at the sound of a voice.

“Oh, god-”

Eridan focused and opened his eyes a slit; but whoever had said it had turned away, and he let them slide shut again. Sollux was still holding him - his hand was warm and reassuring in the seadweller's grip - so it couldn't be a problem.

He could worry about it later.

Sollux squeezed his hand, catching his attention, and whispered a warning. “We're going to put something over you, okay? You're doing so good, ED, just keep quiet and we'll get you out. We're almost there.”

Eridan, not bothering to open his eyes, just gave him a little nod in response; and then something came down over him - he felt cold brush his shoulder, the good one - and settled. A moment later, something else settled over that, blocking out the light almost entirely and leaving Eridan back in the darkness.

But this time, there was warm along his back and warm clasping his hand, the reassuring sound of breath next to him and the wonderfully uncomfortable tingle of psionics on his skin; and with all of that, the darkness wasn't frightening at all.

He let himself drift off again until the noises of things moving around him stilled; then a voice he didn't quite recognize spoke.

“Okay, ready?” There was a pause, then, “Ilmari, hide us as long as you can, okay? The fewer people who see us, the easier it'll be to keep up the disguise.”

Ilmari. He knew that name. Teal floated around the edges of his mind; he acknowledged it instead of shoving it away, and the idea of it twined with yellow, further bolstering the feeling of reassurance.

“Got it,” Ilmari's voice replied; and then they were moving again.

This part was rougher. Sollux, having to carry both Eridan and whatever it was that was hiding Eridan from view, was having a harder time keeping him perfectly still, and Eridan had to bite the inside of his cheek - broken teeth catching and tearing the skin there until his mouth tasted of blood - to keep himself silent as his injuries were jostled and woke up into pain.

“Come on, you useless worms,” said the voice he hadn't been able to identify; but it sounded different, now. Haughtier, condescending, impatient.

Eridan tightened his grip on Sollux's hand, anxious - and was met with a gentle, reassuring brush of a thumb along his fingers.

Whatever was going on was part of the plan, then.

Now he could hear the murmur of voices around them; Sollux's control slipped a little further, and Eridan only barely swallowed a whimper as his bad arm bumped into the frame covering him.

He turned his whole focus onto the task of staying quiet, tuning out the voices around him even as they got louder, as that first voice spoke again, as the light changed and his bad arm bumped into the frame again and pain rolled around his mind and his mouth tasted of iron and he had to stay silent-

A familiar rumble echoed up from below, and he realized the voices had stopped - and then his body tensed against a sudden acceleration and stars danced in his eyes from the pain surging as everything was jostled...

And then a voice called, “We're clear!” and he heard the sounds of people bursting into action.

The frame was lifted off of him; he squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden increase in brightness, and felt Sollux's thumb rubbing his hand - gently, comfortingly.

“Eridan? Are you able to talk?” another familiar voice he couldn't quite place asked as he felt the owner approach.

He made an attempt to respond, but all that came out was a little stuttering groan; Sollux's thumb soothed away the attempt.

“His voice is rough,” Sollux said, answering her question so Eridan didn't have to. “It's probably better if he doesn't.”

Then the thumb stilled, and Sollux asked a question of his own to whoever the original speaker had been. “Can you... can you see if we can, if it's safe to, I mean, set him down, at all? I don't know how much longer I can hold this much control without something slipping.”

The troll on his other side didn't respond verbally, but her hands - warm, not as warm as Sollux but still wonderfully warm against the chill of his body - gently touched him, running along his torso and back.

Despite his best efforts, he couldn't prevent little gasps and whimpers as pain woke up in the wake of her hands; but eventually, she stopped.

“Spine and hips look okay, structurally. Be careful with his limbs and chest, but you can let him rest on you - Ilmari, hand me a couple pillows? Thanks.”

Then the pain woke up again, twofold, as the psionics lowered him, and he lost the rest of the world for a while.

When it ebbed enough that he could think again, Sollux was speaking.

“-okay?”

Eridan cracked his eyes open, tentatively; but the light didn't hurt so much, now, with the flitter's internal lights dimmed for flight and the tinted windows blocking out most of the moonlight beyond.

“Hurting?” the yellowblood asked.

Eridan hesitated a moment, taking inventory of his pains - then realized that Sollux probably meant in general, and that if he had enough pain to take inventory of it, the answer was obviously yes.

He nodded carefully.

“Anything we can do to help? Something in particular hurting, or is it just kind of all over?” Someone crouched beside him; Eridan flicked his gaze over and recognized the troll there, even blurry: Zollie, the medic.

(Olive twined with yellow and teal.)

“I can give you a sedative if it's really bad,” she added, he tone concerned.

Eridan swallowed, but shook his head a little. “Don't... w-wanna sleep,” he rasped; speaking made his throat sting, but it was getting a little easier.

He really didn't want to sleep. He was afraid that - if he did - when he woke he would be waking back up into that cell - alone, with his last hope gone.

Explaining that was far out of the realm of possibility right now, though; so he didn't try. “'S fine. I'll... manage.”

“If you're sure.” Zollie sounded a little hesitant, but didn't push the issue. “But tell me if it gets to be too much, okay?”

She was worried. Eridan did his best to give her a grin, trying for humor to deflect that worry. “'Less you're... plannin' on breakin'... somethin' else... 't w-won't be.”

“Shh,” Sollux hushed him, and Eridan subsided. “You know that's not going to happen. Now rest your voice, okay? Actually, just rest, period; at least, as much as you can, all right?”

That sounded like a good idea, really. His throat burned from even that short little speech, and though the pain in the rest of his body had eased somewhat now that he wasn't being moved anymore, it was still more than enough that he really didn't want to exacerbate it.

He swallowed a couple times, letting the saliva ease the burning as best it could, and nodded; then, following a desire he didn't even try to examine, turned to rest his face against Sollux's chest.

It was warm; he could hear the yellowblood's heartbeat.

Yellow, warm and bright, spun through his mind, chasing away dark echoes.

He'd been afraid...

He'd been afraid that he'd never hear that again.

The thought made him shiver; but Sollux only held him a little more closely, chasing away the shivers with his lovely warmblood heat. “It's okay, ED,” he said softly.

Eridan took a shaky breath in and let it out in a long sigh, forcing his muscles to relax. Sollux was here. Sollux, and Ilmari, and Zollie, and he was with them and not in that dark, terrifying cell-

“We've got you. I've got you. You're safe now.”

-he was safe.

----

He drifted, again; never quite falling into sleep, but letting the quiet conversation around him pass without trying to listen to it.

The tone of it changed when a male voice came from the pilot's seat. He couldn't quite make out what he was saying, but the one-sided conversation continued for a short while before stopping.

A moment later, Sollux's hand came to rest on his cheek. “Eridan?” the yellowblood asked quietly.

Eridan carefully opened his eyes.

“We're almost home,” Sollux told him - and Eridan had to blink quickly to stop tears from welling up.

Home...

But the yellowblood wasn't done. “There's going to be... well, everyone wants to, I mean...”

He seemed to be searching for words; Eridan brought his attention fully back to the other's face and waited.

“...I guess, greet you? That doesn't sound right, but, well... Anyway, you don't have to do anything, I just wanted to... warn you, I guess. Everyone'll be there, they all want to know you're safe, that you're... well, alive, really.”

He sighed, looking away. “And I mean, I know that's... they were worried too, but...”

Eridan, unsure what to say to that, said nothing.

The yellowblood sighed again. “Just... look, I... I don't... fuck, I just...”

Everyone else in the flitter was silent; Eridan could hear the soft whine of the wind catching in the crevices of the door when Sollux hesitated.

“...I was... I was so scared, Eridan,” he finally whispered, lowering his head almost enough to touch Eridan's forehead with his; their eyes met, and Eridan became abruptly aware of how little space there was between the two of them.

“I thought... I thought I'd lost you - we all did, I mean, but... fuck, I... I never... I thought I'd never be able to-” He took a shuddering breath, visibly trying to calm himself, but Eridan saw tears glimmer in the corners of his eyes. “I thought... you had died, and I never even told you...”

He fell silent. Eridan waited for a long moment, but Sollux didn't seem to be able to find the will to continue; so Eridan took a breath - shallow, to keep his ribs quiet - and got himself together enough to ask, “...tell me... what?”

There was another silence; for a moment, Eridan worried that he'd somehow fucked up, interrupting him, but then-

“...that... I love you.”

It was so, so very quiet; Eridan almost wasn't sure he'd heard it correctly.

“...wh-what?” he whispered in turn, eyes wide and tongue fumbling over his waver.

“I... I love you, Eridan,” Sollux repeated, shutting his eyes; when he opened them again a moment later, they shone brightly with tears. “I wanted to... to tell you, to ask you, before... everything... but I... I didn't want to... I was scared to. I was afraid it would... it would fuck everything up, and there was no time, and you had so much you needed to do and I had to keep you safe and then I couldn't and-”

He was spiralling into hysteria; and though Eridan's mind hadn't yet caught up with Sollux's words, he responded to the emotions with the ease of long practice, lifting his good arm to gently place his hand against Sollux's cheek.

The yellowblood silenced himself, took a breath, and leaned a little into the hand. Eridan felt wetness trail along his fingers.

When Sollux spoke again, it was steadier. “I thought I'd lost you, and I'd... never even gotten to tell you. And I'm sorry, I know this isn't a good time and I don't even know if you feel the same way and it's probably shitty of me to do this now, when you're... when we've only just gotten you free, and you're probably not even processing all of this, but...”

He stopped again; swallowed; then pressed on. “I couldn't... I couldn't bear to think you'd died and never even known. So I'm... I'm sorry, if this is horrible timing or you don't want anything to do with me again or anything, but, fuck, Eridan, I'm so fucking flushed for you-”

Eridan's mind finally caught up.

Sollux was...?

He'd said-

He was-?!

Even in the privacy of his own mind, words were impossible.

But he couldn't leave Sollux unanswered - so Eridan turned instead to actions.

His hand slipped from Sollux's cheek to fist in his shirt - and then, not even comprehending his own daring, he pulled Sollux down that last inch of space between them.

----

It wasn't a good kiss.

It was a horrible angle - Eridan's ribs ached as he tried to hold himself up enough to press into it - and at least one of his broken teeth cut into Sollux's lip and released a trickle of gold.

But it didn't matter - because when he finally let himself ease back down, the look on Sollux's face warmed him down to his core - a core that had been so very cold, for so very long, that he'd never even realized it could be warmed.

The warmth spreading through him drove back all the pain and all the fear of the past few nights; anxiety and memories and every last touch of cold, cold hands on his body fled in the face of it, until he knew nothing but the warmth and the lovely, stunned-turning-to-giddy-joy expression on his beloved's face.

“Flushed for you,” he whispered back-

And the cabin burst into cheers.

Chapter Text

The control room was surprisingly silent for the number of trolls gathered in it.

Though originally only Karkat and Cardea had been there (Karkat finding himself, after lunch, unable to sit and wait in his office any longer despite knowing that there was no way there would be any kind of word back so soon), as the hours crept by others had joined them.

First those with a right to be in the room (Marrok and Birtie, trained on the communications equipment even if they weren't using it; and Ariona, who, as head medic, would reasonably want information on Eridan's status as soon as possible); then others particularly worried about others on the mission (Waylen's moirail Levern; Aletta's moirail Tareka; Zollie's matesprit Einion); then still more - Brinda, Laniel, Burley - until the room was crowded with people and Karkat started chasing off newcomers with a snarl and a glare and sent them to wait for news somewhere else.

The time for the earliest possible contact from the mission - the length of time it took to get to the capital and then immediately back into range - passed, and Karkat stopped his pacing to sit in the chair by the radio station; Cardea, at the main communications array, gave him a nod before focusing back on her screen, her headphones on as she flipped through the channels they monitored for anything useful.

Another hour went by as slowly as though time was crawling through molasses; the people waiting in the control room paced, stood, or sat as their anxieties dictated, but no one spoke more than briefly, and that only in whispers, as though to ensure they didn't miss anything. Karkat fought the urge to take over Cardea's place just so that he had something to occupy himself with and directed his attention to the radar near his seat, squinting to try to make out anything on it despite knowing there wouldn't be.

Then, finally, after seemingly sweeps had passed in the silence and tension of the control room, the speaker in front of Karkat crackled to life.

"Hail, Sanctuary, this is the Ark reporting, come in."

Everyone converged on his station when they heard it, eager to hear what news the Ark - the appropriately-named flitter that had been sent on the rescue mission - had to report.

Karkat shot a glare around that had them backing off at least a few feet, before leaning in to activate his microphone. "Come in, Ark, we read you," he answered, and was irrationally proud of himself for managing to keep his voice from shaking. Waylen hadn't sounded upset or anything, but... it was hard to really tell, with the low quality of the radio - especially at this range, when they couldn't even see the Ark on their radar yet. Waylen must have tried to radio as soon as he thought he possibly could.

The wait while the radio signal went out and a reply came back was interminable; the room was so silent you could hear a pin drop, and Karkat was pretty sure no one was even breathing. Seconds passed like sweeps, the anxiety building up like a wave-

Then the wave crested, and broke.

“Ark reporting; our mission was successful!"

There was a beat longer of silence as people gasped and the words were processed - and then Karkat could hardly hear himself think over the cheering.

“Shut the fuck up, you assholes, or take it somewhere else, I have to respond!” he shouted over the noise; but he wasn't even able to pretend to be angry, not with his own urge to cheer - or break down into tears, he wasn't really sure which - bubbling up in his throat.

But a leader had to maintain appearances, so he allowed himself to do neither. (And if a few tears escaped, well, no one commented on it, so it didn't count.)

“Out! Out!” He made shooing motions at the loudest of the cheerers; laughing and cying in pure joy, they obeyed his directions, running off to spread the word to the rest of Sanctuary who waited just as anxiously as they all had for news.

Karkat turned back to the microphone. “Copy that, Ark,” he replied into it, well aware that the cheering from the hallway would be making it into the broadcast and really not caring. Waylen wouldn't mind. “Estimated TOA?”

The wait seemed much shorter this time; Karkat knew it was simply because the anxiety had been released, but he almost half-imagined it being because the flitter was barrelling towards them far faster than it was physically able to.

“We're half an hour out, approximately,” came the response. “Making all due haste. No pursuit.”

“Then come as fast as you can, Ark. What...” Karkat had to pause and swallow around a lump forming in his throat, “what, um, is the situation with... with Eridan?"

“He's in bad shape, Sanctuary, but conscious, and Zollie says he's stable, at least for the moment. But he'll need proper medical attention ASAP; he's got a lot of broken and cracked bones and significant external injuries, though nothing is actively bleeding or worsening.”

“We'll have it ready,” Karkat promised, breathing a sigh of relief. If Zollie proclaimed him stable, he trusted her judgement. “Everyone's going to want to see him - I'll try to organize it, so no one interferes with getting him to treatment as fast as possible, but... warn him? I know attention isn't his favorite thing in the world so it's probably a good idea if he has a chance to prepare.”

“Understood, Sanctuary.” There was a pause - presumably Waylen was relaying his words - and then he came back on. “All right, warning passed on.”

“Anything else to report, Ark?”

“Negative, Sanctuary. Clear to land in landing field when we arrive?”

Karkat hesitated, briefly debating asking Waylen to try to land in the clear area immediately outside Sanctuary so as to get Eridan to the medbay faster, but decided against it. Waylen was a good pilot, but the Ark was a larger flitter, and while it would probably fit, it would be tricky to get down there. Besides, it would be a lot easier for the corridors of Sanctuary to get clogged up with people wanting to see Eridan than the larger space of the landing field, and better for everyone's ears if any loud cheering occurred outside.

(He could still hear the occasional burst of it echoing up the stairs and into the control room as new groups were informed of the good news; and if it was kind of bothering him, it would surely bother Eridan.)

“Affirmative, Ark,” he finally answered. “Use the normal landing area, so we have room for people to gather before the stairs - and if anyone blocks your landing area just land on top of them.”

Though Waylen didn't transmit any laughter, it was pretty clear in his voice even over the crackly radio. “Copy that, Sanctuary. ETA twenty-five minutes, landing direction is usual landing field location with permission to squash obstacles. Do you want a contact when we're closer?”

“Not necessary, Ark, only worry about it if you're somehow delayed.” Though frankly, Karkat wasn't sure who he could convince to stay in the control room for such a contact anyway; and they wouldn't be able to get any information out to the gathered crowd in the landing field without going out themselves, either.

They really ought to get some sort of internal radio system, he decided, or maybe some kind of mobile devices like phones, linked to Sanctuary's network. He'd have to set the techs on figuring something like that out, once everything settled down a bit; it seemed like a very useful thing to have, especially as Sanctuary got larger - and after all of this, he had a feeling they would be getting larger, and probably pretty quickly.

“Acknowledged. We'll see you soon, Sanctuary.”

“Copy that, Ark.”

Karkat released the microphone and sat back in his chair, staring at the ceiling and allowing himself a few moments to process everything.

The mission had been successful - Eridan was safe, and coming home.

There would be a lot of consequences from all of this, he knew; for Eridan, for him, for Sanctuary as a whole... frankly, for the world as a whole. Because he wasn't about to keep the rescue a secret - at least, not once Eridan started to heal. It was strategically important for people to know that the troll who killed the Condesce was not dead, that he was aligned with Sanctuary (and the Sufferists) and hadn't been some sort of fluke working on his own, and that they didn't intend to go quietly back into hiding and never do anything again.

The time when they could pretend not to exist was over. And while they might not be ready for a full rebellion just yet...

It was on the horizon.

He had a lot of work ahead of him.

But first...

He had a ceremony to prepare.

----

It took most of the next twenty minutes to organize said ceremony... or at least, some vague, cobbled together attempt at a ceremony.

As he'd suspected, everyone wanted to be present; he'd only barely managed to bribe Birtie into staying in the control room in case of emergency contact with the promise of a personal report on Eridan's status immediately afterward and her favorite food for dinner. (Sverre would be an ass about having to make something on such short notice - the dinner bell would normally be rung in about half an hour, if not for all this excitement - but he was sure she'd manage somehow.)

Only Ariona and Jaycie stayed behind of their own volition; they had to prepare the medbay for Eridan's arrival. A lot of it had been prepped since the rescue mission had gone out this evening, true, but now that they had confirmation of his injuries, there were other things to organize - or so he was told. Karkat didn't inquire too closely into it; it was their profession, not his, and he had other things to worry about.

Namely, keeping everyone from absolutely losing their collective shit about all of this.

Trying to get almost the entire population of Sanctuary organized even in the vaguest possible sense was like herding cats; he had to repeat himself entirely too many times in telling people that no, they couldn't go and hug Eridan, or give him a pat on the back, or anything.

Finally, he lost his temper and shouted, loud enough to be heard across the landing field. “For fuck's sake, you all are going to stand the fuck back and not get closer than six fucking feet to him or anyone coming from the flitter!” he ordered, staring them all down with his very best glare, the one he'd never used for anything here.

It was enough to cow even the most excited, which gratified him.

“You may stand on either side and watch. He needs fucking medical attention and if anyone interferes with him getting that as soon as fucking possible I will have your goddamned hides for a rug, do I make myself clear?!”

No one responded, which Karkat took for agreement. “Stay away from the landing area until after the flitter has docked, Waylen has blanket permission to squash anyone in the way and I would not recommend testing his willingness to do so. Do not try to 'help' by opening the door or anything, stay out of the way.”

A bit more glaring (and some additional direction from Marrok and Levern, who walked out the lines of where people could stand) finally got everyone mostly organized by the time the flitter came into view.

Waylen's landing - setting down precisely in the center of the marked landing circle - was perhaps a touch more showy than usual, but Karkat couldn't fault him for playing to a crowd after the impossible rescue their group had just pulled off.

No one had organized any kind of actual ceremony proceedings - no one had had time to - but by some unspoken collective decision, the gathered trolls all fell silent as the door opened.

Aletta and Zollie were the first out, Aletta's green psionics sparking around her horns - presumably to move anyone in the way forcibly out of it - but as she saw everyone was quiet and organized, she allowed the sparking to die out and simply stepped to one side to allow the next to exit, Zollie mirroring her on the other side.

Karkat, standing just in front of the stairs, could tell who that next person was before even being able to see him, simply from the glowing blue-and-red of his psionics surrounding the form in his arms.

Sollux exited the flitter sideways, to prevent the edges of the door from touching his burden; in his arms Eridan lay still, head supported by the yellowblood's psionics against Sollux's shoulder. Karkat did his best to prevent a wince as he took in the seadweller's condition.

Though someone had wrapped him up in a light blanket, hiding what Karkat suspected were the worst of his injuries, he was still as pale as a ghost, visibly trembling, and his right leg visible under the blanket was bent at an angle that looked very wrong. In addition, his missing horns made him almost unrecognizable. Karkat had to swallow down nausea as he saw, in person, that lack; and though the beds weren't visible - presumably due to hair and scabbing covering them - it was still jarring at best to see flat darkness where orange and yellow should be.

They hadn't left him much at all. By his best judgement of what he could see, Eridan must have less than an inch of the horn base remaining, maybe even as little as half an inch. Far less than any troll had had, ever. No horn had ever broken that near the base, where the horn was strongest; and Karkat had never even heard of any troll (or even older wriggler) with horns smaller than his own, at three inches; much less an inch or less.

Stomping down on the rage that boiled up in him at the thought of the absolute fucking scumbags who would do such a thing, Karkat forced his attention to the approach of Sollux and Eridan - and noticed the gathered trolls had taken the ceremonial feel one step further.

Every troll present was saluting the pair with their hands over their hearts... but then, as the whisper came passing through the group of 'he can't see, without glasses', an even more surprising collective decision was made.

One by one, in a rippling effect following the whisper as Sollux carefully stepped forward, each and every troll gathered there dropped to one knee.

The effect was enough to make the hairs on the back of Karkat's neck stand on end with the pure emotion in the gesture; and as the psionic troll noticed, Karkat saw Sollux whisper into Eridan's ear. He couldn't tell what was said, but it did end up with the violetblood - who had previously had his eyes shut and his face tucked against Sollux's chest - looking up and out.

It was hard to read his expression behind the bruising and swelling that covered most of his face, but his fins were unobstructed; drawing on memories of Sollux explaining the emotions the various movements evinced, Karkat could read confusion in the downturned flicking, followed by a slow change into embarrassment, then added pleasure, as the upper tines rose and fluttered.

Sollux came to a stop close to Karkat; the mutantblood suspected he'd gotten so close so that Eridan could see him, and didn't step back. He forced himself not to look at the seadweller's injuries, and instead focused on his eyes - wide, emotional, almost disbelieving, as they caught Karkat's.

He'd had a speech of sorts planned - nothing long, nothing that would delay everything too much - but found the words deserting him as he looked into those wide, yellow eyes.

The eyes of his childhood friend; the eyes of the one he'd hurt for so long...

The eyes of the troll who'd gone through hell at his school and still come back out; the eyes of the violetblood who'd dealt with all the hatred Sanctuary's residents had to offer and the shame of being forced to wear a collar and still come through; the eyes of the seadweller who'd won his place among them...

The eyes of the highblood who'd been willing to risk everything to use the position his blood gave him to do the one thing no one else could, to dare to defy a system that hurt the people he called friends, and to bring it down even at the cost of his own life...

The eyes of a hero.

A hero who, though broken and damaged, was still somehow living.

At the memorial they had held for him, thinking him gone, they had recognized him with a title to honor him: to honor his deeds, his courage, his very heart.

And now, it would be Karkat's honor to truly bestow it upon Eridan.

Karkat blinked away tears and raised his hand to his heart in a salute he meant with his whole being.

"Welcome home... Champion."

----