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Eridan is covered in lusus blood and shaking when Feferi first leads him, gently but insistently, to a pile.
It only takes fifteen minutes for everything to break down.
He tries to effect a getaway on admittedly uneasy feet. The pile of plushies and throw pillows fights, tries to swallow his hand as he pushes down to swim up. “Fef, I- I gotta get back out there. Your mum needs food. I gotta-”
“Shhh.” She puts her hand in his, her other resting on his arm to stop she shakes her head, and she tugs, gently. “It’s okay.”
She looks at him and gives him a look that is so understanding that he doesn’t know what to do with it. Except believe her.
His tears are making small purple miasmas around him, and he lets himself fall like a controlled demolition, limbs folding up to fall more or less in place, slow motion with the water, and she wraps her arms around him. He closes his eyes.
“We have time,” she murmurs, her forehead against his.
But
That’s the one thing they don’t have.
His eyes flicker open, and he leans back. She could hold him there, easily, he’s not trying to break her grip, but her arms part anyway, and the reassurance falls by the wayside.
“Eridan?”
He blinks his tears away. “Uh,” he says, stupidly.
“You’re not okay,” she says.
No, he thinks, choking back a laugh that would be wildly inappropriate in the circumstances. “I- just three more. Three more and she’ll be happy, right?”
Then you’ll be happy, he doesn’t say.
“Eridan-”
“After, Fef.” He gives a watery chuckle, but it ends up pitched with nervousness. “Please, god, I wanna. But after.”
She purses her lips. If she says no, tells him to wait, tells him damn the entire fucking planet, he’d- he’d do it. At this moment. If she’s telling him that it’s worth it, it’s worth billions of lowbloods keeling over and lower-rainbow splattering the land new colours, he-
Well. She’s the Heiress.
And he also knows she’d regret it, besides. If she’s- if this is what he thinks it is (moiraillegiance, it’s gotta be, what else could it be?), then he has to think about her as well, and she’d regret letting them die.
A few lusii for half a planet of people. It’s an easy trade to make.
But he waits, just a moment, hesitating with his feet off the ground but not swimming out the window yet. Waits.
She sighs, looks away, and nods.
He paddles away.
--
The second time they pile, Eridan initiates. It’s been a week, and who knows if she even still wants that, but he- he needs it, hates that about himself but he does.
“The kid- screamed,” he says, looking at his claws. The lusus wouldn’t even have been worth the bother, except it was slim pickings today, and he was straining his mind’s ear as if somehow he, blood that was far-rainbow, would be able to hear the murmur before it started offing people. “Told me I couldn’t, told me I shouldn’t.”
The kid had said more.
‘Kid.’ They’d been Eridan’s age at least. But he couldn’t imagine screaming that much for seahorsedad since the early days. And they’d screamed. Fucking hell did they. Called him every name in the book. ‘You’re a monster,’ which had stung, ‘take from the lowbloods,’ which had made his stomach churn, ‘I’ll kill you,’ which had scared him til he levelled Ahab’s at the kid and they’d gone quiet. He felt awful, but they’d shut up and it was easier to deal with the roiling knot that the gun in their face was causing than the fucking accusations. Easier to take the kid’s fucking dad when they were whimpering and saying, ‘just don’t hurt me,’ in any case. The look in their eye had gone from frothing rage to acquiescence. And couldn’t they understand, this wasn’t pretty but it had to be done?
He tells Fef all of this. And he looks up, as the flood of words becomes a trickle, as her soothing motions bring him back down to reality, and for a moment, there’s something in her eye.
He doesn’t know what to call it. Disgust, maybe. Fear? What does she have to fear from a story like that, he’s just shown her he’s loyal for fuck’s sake.
She shakes it off after a millisecond and then she’s saying the right things, all the right things, trying to help, telling him that he can’t let it get to him.
It does.
Not the kid. He forgets the kid quickly. Others take their place, and eventually they blend together. But her face, for that instant, sticks with him.
He lands on a word for it. Shamed.
--
He starts taking from lowbloods. The ones on the shore, anyway. Purple, he thinks, usually. They don’t scream so much. They don’t fight so much.
For a while, he thinks that they’re just more reasonable, that they know why this has to be done, why he’s taking their lusii, their fucking parents.
It’s only when one starts crying and he almost tries to comfort them- he wants to comfort the kid he is orphaning- when it clicks. The kid whimpers and sniffles and he’s about the reach out a hand and say something that will sound lame like ‘I’m sorry,’ when they pre-empt him. “Why are you doing this?” She asks him.
His hand, already stretching out, jerks back in surprise. “I-”
“Why did you kill my mom?”
She
They don’t know.
The pieces slam together like shackles. They aren’t accepting it. This- for perigees now he’s been killing their parents and thinking they were nobler than the so-called nobility, that they knew what was at stake, that they accepted their sacrifice. Because they didn’t fight and they didn’t scream while he was there (though after, yes, after they certainly scream, loud enough he can generally hear it even when he’s far over the shoreline).
This isn’t a sacrifice.
This is-
He almost throws up, stumbles out of the kid’s house and almost forgets to take the corpse with him. Can you imagine, if he killed the kid’s mom and then didn’t take the corpse? Killed the lusus for no reason? What a twisted joke that would be.
They aren’t accepting it. They are simply more afraid of him. They simply allow their parents to be killed. Not to keep the lowbloods alive in the short-term and everybody alive in the long-term. Because he’s a violetblood.
Because they fear him.
He stumbles back to Fef’s hive, dragging three people’s only source of survival behind him, and she catches his arm before he can even haul them down to her lusus.
She takes the net with her face fixed in determination and hauls them down herself.
Relief floods through him when the net leaves his hands, and when she comes back up, she and he curl up in the pile and talk and talk and talk. He mentions it, how they just give up, and she looks as appalled as he feels. Felt.
But
After all, if it’s easier, then it’s easier. And he’s worrying. Nobody’s come for him yet, but maybe it’s better not to shit where you eat, so to speak.
And the shorebloods (purple? Blue? He can’t even remember the colours when it gets below violet), well, there’s loads more of them, isn’t there. And the ocean’s more dangerous. They’ve got their insane clown religion.
They’ll-
He chokes on the thought they’ll be fine.
More of them will survive than will seadwellers.
And it’s for them, anyway, in a way. Fef’s immune, and it’s not like he’s going to be worrying about it until she’s just short of a shout. At that point, there’d be plenty of fresh meat, troll-less lusii for the taking by the bucketload. So, it’s not even for him.
He holds these thoughts in his head for his sanity’s sake.
He doesn’t even notice as, for her own sanity, Fef reaches the opposite conclusion.
After all, why is it that the lowbloods should just stand by and take it? Yes, Eridan is doing an important job- he’s doing a thankless, difficult, perilous job, and he’s so good, but if people have to pay, then why does that have to fall on the lowbloods?
She feels like mentioning it. Saying he shouldn’t show any preference. Or take the largest lusii so fewer trolls have to lose their lusii.
She doesn’t, though. In case it feels like a criticism. He’s doing her a massive favour. She knows there was such a thing as an Orphaner back in the old days, but really, this is more than a favour. This is… This is something she wouldn’t expect anybody to do it. But Eridan doesn’t mind.
She knows that’s not true. He just wants to do it so that she doesn’t have to.
But if she tells him to hunt fewer landdwellers… She can imagine his expression. He would think it was a bad idea. Politically, even. She should be building coalitions among the next generation of Seadwellers, so that when she takes over (if, if she manages to win), she has loyal lieutenants to draw upon.
She doesn’t want to have that fight. It would be too much. She decides to trust him.
--
The first time Eridan ropes Feferi into a pile to soothe her, she’s crying, tears trailing about her face, as she babbles something about prophecy and her lusus. He has a feeling it’s not about the prophecy. Not just about the prophecy.
“I’m supposed to unite two species,” she says, wiping her face furiously. “How the glub am I meant to do that!?”
Glub? Is that meant to be a swear? “Language,” he says, trying to make her laugh.
She does, and it’s better than nothing but it’s weak as shit and he’s already soothing her. She can do it. He knows she can.
“How?” She asks, looking at him.
He.
Hesitates. Just for fractionally too long. “I don’t know,” he says, quietly. “But she trusts you. She says you can.” He wraps an arm around her, pulls her in and puts his chin on hers, keeping her close as he can. “I believe it,” he whispers. And then he smiles, faintly. “We’re both with you. How could you possibly fail?”
She bursts into tears again.
She doesn’t tell him that Gl’bgolyb told her other things.
That she would die. That Feferi and Eridan would die, too.
It’s terrifying. Even one of the three of them meeting an end would be- almost a violation of the natural order, as far as she’s concerned, as far as her stupid blood is concerned. But all three?
What could it possibly be except the Vast Glub? Or something worse.
She curls into a ball against him, and he rocks her, soothing noises like the sound of the ocean waves lapping against the walls of his hive. Rhythmic, sweet noises. He’s doing his best to ground her.
In her mind she is floating inches away from Gl’bgolyb’s face, staring into the featureless white skin, and her mother is giving her expectations, duties. Like the hunting, but Eridan cannot help her with this. Cannot- she admits- take the duty onto himself and do far, far more for her than she deserves.
And so, she sniffles, dries her eyes, and smiles. She accepts his offers of help with empty words, and steels herself against the fact that, in all likelihood, she will have to do this alone. And she will, given the prophetic pronouncements, in all likelihood die. She levers them both upright, and pretends to be fine, like she sees him do whenever he comes back rattled by the words of some victim, unable to accept the idea of a greater good when it hurts them. Because Eridan can accept it, she thinks. She doesn’t know how, but he accepts being a killer in a way she never could. So, she thinks, she can accept being a sacrificial lamb, and a princess, and a failure, and a good moirail who doesn’t let her moirail worry about things that neither of them can change.
She smiles and leads him out of the pile, because all their piles are about solving the problem most efficiently so as to make the pile unnecessary- because of Eridan’s constant fearful edge that time is running out in some indecipherable sense. She feels some sort of way about that, but she isn’t about to argue with tradition at this point.
They eat lunch together, while at the back of her mind, her bond to Gl’bgolyb feeds her the sense of her mother shearing the day’s Orphaner offerings to strips and then feeding them delicately into her mouth. She whispers soothingly to Feferi, telling her how good she’s doing, how dead she will be, how they can spend eternity together, and how good the food tastes. She even mentions Eridan- ‘that boy is good for you,’ a thought blooms across the bond, followed smoothly by: ‘he will kill you.’
Her eyes snap over to look at Eridan, munching on some food- leftovers from some banquet-level prepared meal the other day, ruined by refrigeration but it’s all they’re up for eating at the moment. By the time he glances up at her, flushing and then smiling and then finally flicking a pea at her face, she knows she doesn’t even believe it. Her mother is wrong, or right but in the wrong way.
Eridan would never kill her. Perhaps she is mixing up Feferi and the Condesce, somehow. Perhaps when Eridan dies (her heart aches, even if it’s tens of thousands of sweeps away), she will die of a broken heart as well. Perhaps he has to kill her to save others, or she’s so wounded that she asks him to put her out of her misery. Perhaps her death unites the Seadwellers and Landdwellers. Something.
She still doubts whether he would have the strength to do it, but the idea of him killing her, like other trolls kill each other, is so laughable that she shoves the entire thought out of her mind.
When they’re lingering at the doorway, Seadweller’s Goodbye in full glory as they work slowly up to the leaving, laughing and chatting even halfway through the door, and he opens his mouth to say something, something she later (she kicks herself, repeatedly) convinces herself was almost ‘you can stay over if you like,’ she opens her big mouth first and says, “pale for you.”
It's the first time she’s said that, and it shows. His expression slides from terrified to almost heartbreakingly pleased. “Pale for you, too,” he says back, grinning.
And like that, they’ve created the perfect moment to leave. Lingering longer, well that would ruin things, wouldn’t it?
She skips down the steps of his hive’s path to the water (pale for you pale for you pale for you pale for you) and grins, looking back in the full confidence he’s still standing there, leaning by the door and watching. He is. She waves boisterously back at him, and he waves in a much more restrained way, but above water her eyes are good enough that can see his weight leaning against the doorpost like he wants to dash after her. Hold her hand, tell her she’s diamonds and fairy dust, brush her hair, and do all those stupid little pale things together. She does too.
But they’ve created the perfect moment to leave. And she doesn’t want to ruin that. So she turns, dives into the water, and peeks her head above the surface just long enough to blow him an exaggerated kiss. Through the tossing waves, she thinks he mimes to catch it, or to blow one back, and she glubs with laughter because he’s ridiculous, she’s ridiculous, and this is a perfect moment and she is sure the future will be all moments like these, strung like pearls across a necklace. Shiny, beautiful, treasured.
--
The first time Eridan realises he has a flushcrush on Fef, he dismisses it immediately. He’s still pale for her as Peixes is pink. The ruddy run in his feelings is- it feels nice, but it’s just that. He doesn’t need it. All he needs is her, happy, safe. He will look after her like he always has, and she’s going to do the same.
Some stupid flushcrush won’t get in the way of it.
And it fades in a week, leaving him with an untroubled vein of pale and sparkling diamond.
He’s talking to Kar about romance in a general sense, like he’s been doing a lot of recently (guy is fascinating, and his vocabulary would make a sailor blush), and mentions it, just offhandedly. Something like ‘Even the best moiraillegiances can have flushed tints. Me and Fef, last week, I had a bit of a flushcrush on her, but it faded quick. It doesn’t mean anything.’
Kar raises an eyebrow at him. “Right,” he says, sarcastically. “I did wonder why you seemed so uninterested in matespritship.”
“I’m not- I ain’t exactly uninterested, Kar, I just-” got bigger things going on, he doesn’t say.
He’s memorised the rough locations of all his friend’s hives, and he’s relieved to see they’re all far too far inland for him to bother. ‘Cept Gam. But it’s easy enough to avoid one hive, and besides it’s hours and hours away from his usual hunting grounds. He shouldn’t even need to head out that far for at least a sweep, if not longer. And he’ll be six sweeps old, by then, so it’s not like he won’t be able to take on everybody he can’t now. He’ll have food for the horrorterror.
“Like fucking what? Can you tell me a single flushcrush you’ve had in the past sweep?”
He does his best not to hesitate because Kar will know it’s bullshit, just like Fef does, because these two fucks actually understand him. So, he just says the first name that comes into his head, quick as he can. “Kan.”
Kar’s eyebrows go like Helmships making for galactic escape velocity. “Kanaya,” he says, flatly.
“Yeah?” Eridan responds, weirdly defensive. “She’s a classy lady, Kar.”
“That’s a weird way to put that,” Kar says. “But she’s also… not into guys?”
He rolls his eyes. “It was a while ago, and it’s not like people only get crushes on people who like them back. That’d be some weird fuckin’ romcom world where things only ever were complicated because of quadrant triangles and shit.”
“Just making sure you know that.” Kar flicks a finger up, and for once it isn’t his middle finger. “That’s one.”
“Two, counting Fef.”
“Two.” He makes a V-shape with his two fingers. “Anybody else.”
“Ter.”
Kar’s face cracks into a stupid grin. “You asshole and you idiot.” Oh yeah. Kar’s weird ‘will they won’t they kill me’ with Terezi. He’d forgotten about that.
“Why me idiot?” Eridan asks him, a little hurt.
“You can’t just have a kismesis with Vriska, you’ve got to go after her flushcrush, too? Really twist the swordcane?”
Eridan’s eyes shoot up. “Flush? I thought it was pale?”
“Yeah, you think a lot of things are pale.”
Eridan rolls his eyes and flips Kar off.
The conversation moves on.
--
The next time Eridan feels like that, he decides to just wait for it to go away.
So he waits.
“Nah, Fef, need to get some stuff done tonight. We’ll do it tomorrow, though?”
“What’s so important you can’t set aside the time to visit your moirail!?”
“FLARP stuff with Vris! C’mon, I’m only gonna be distracted the whole time if I pull myself away right now, and that’s not gonna be any fun for anybody.”
“Hmm. I guess you’re right.”
“And the papers only get wet if I bring them underwater anyways. But after I kick her ass, my schedule is wide open for you, alright?”
“Well… alright! I hope you and her have fun.”
He waits some more.
“Eridan! We haven’t talked in a while, properly talked!”
“Guess not. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be sorry! We’re talking now, aren’t we?”
“Heh. We are. How is everything? How’d the chat with- what’s his name. Sol? How’d that go?”
“Reely well, actually! He’s so funny! I think you and he would get along swimmingly. He’s friends with Karkat as well!”
“Huh. Any friend of Kar’s has to have enough of a tolerance for bullshit that they don’t mind me going off on one about FLARP.”
“Eridan! It’s not THAT bad.”
“Fef.”
“What!”
“You’re biased.”
She slings him into a headlock, laughing. “Okay, fine, I’m biased and your FLARP stuff is REALLY BORING. Are you happy?”
“As. A. Clam.”
She pushes him and then grabs his arm as he floats away with the shove and pulls him back into a rib-bending hug.
He hugs her back.
He can mostly ignore it, but-
Fef’s hair is a mess, and she’s all cried out and Eridan thinks he missed about nine percent of it while he was thinking some not-so-pale things about his diamond, and now she’s smiling contentedly and they’re wrapped up in a hug, he can’t help but think about how it would feel to kiss her? It’s warring with his desire to brush her hair, and his instincts are a mess between trusting she’s got everything under control (because how could she not, she’s perfect), and taking her hand and wading through it with her (because she’s scared, because he can help, because he wants to, because he’s pale for her), and it’s stunlocking him, making it hard to- to move. To commit.
It’s starting to get on his nerves a little bit. Starting to eat away at the diamond feels.
Him and Sol have talked exactly twice, and he felt irrationally jealous because Sol was clearly angling for the ol’ moirail soft permission to make a move and Eridan just played dumb because he didn’t really wanna think Feferi and flushed in the same sentence long enough to tell Sol he should go for it. And he doesn’t wanna spend enough time talking about it to work out if Sol would be good for her, so he’s being polite and distant in a way which he’s sure is coming off as highblooded prickitude.
This would solve the problem, or make it a million billion times worse, but he can’t just bring himself to do it. He should, needs to, before Sol gets frustrated and tries anyway because if he sets himself against Sol and they get flushed (he wants to throw up, and it’s easier to foist it off on Sol being a yellowblood than accept that this, too, is his fucked-up complex about his own moirail) then it will be worse for everybody. Whatever.
He just needs to focus somewhere else.
The whale goes down, hitting the ocean surface with a crash that sprays water up high enough to shower over him like salted rain.
He glances at the troll treading water that’s rapidly mixing with blood, expression murderous, fearful, and he tuts.
Vris’ lusus needs fed too.
He puts a beam through the troll’s stomach, urges seahorsedad down, and scoops up the corpse.
On someone else,
Ter gives him a look, and for a half-second, he’s convinced there’s something like a solution here, and he can ride back to Fef and tell her he has a matesprit, nothing set in stone, but let her be proud of him, happy for him, have something real, something… something to take his mind off this ridiculous infatuation.
He didn’t mention it beforehand, because he’s trying his fucking best not to get in a pile with her. Not while he wants to hold her hand and kiss her, and it’s all technically allowed for a moiraillegiance, and Fef would probably be overjoyed because he’s a withdrawn little shit isn’t he, and this would be tantamount to saying ‘palest fucking diamonds ever.’ It would keep her happy, and he’s bending under the weight of that, but it wouldn’t be right. He couldn’t. Because he wouldn’t be doing it for the right reasons, for the reasons she’d assume. False pretences, almost.
And then her mouth curls into an inquisitive expression. “You… are asking me if I want to go out with you?”
His heart sinks, because that doesn’t sound like a ‘yes.’
“I do.”
“Why?”
He blinks. Why…?
He can’t say what jumps to his mind first, which is ‘maybe it’ll distract me from my pathetic flushcrush on my moirail,’ because a) that’s more like really shitty paleflirting than flushflirting, and b) why above Gl’bgolyb’s writhing tentacles would he say that?
He can’t say the next thing, which is that Kar has good things to say about her (about 70% of the time, anyway, and the rest she’s the bane of his fucking existence, apparently), because that would be admitting that this was spur-of-the-moment, and put her focus on Kar beside.
“Uh,” he says, which is probably worse than saying those other two things. He tries to say something honest, though. He’s trying his best to find somebody, sure, but he’s not going to enter a relationship under false pretences for the same reason he isn’t piling with Fef as much anymore, because the pale feels great but the red is always waiting there and he’s watched enough movies (with Kar and Kan, who else?) about that sort of vacillation ending with the pathetic side character fucking things up and ending up with nothing they want that he doesn’t trust himself to keep it strictly pale. And if he can’t be pale in a pile, he isn’t going to give Fef the half measure.
He's got to find someone before they can go back to normal.
The silence stretches on a beat, before Terezi opens her mouth to say something.
“You’re pretty smart,” he says, getting in ahead of her. “Fuck, I- that was a stupid qualifier, imagine I said really really fucking smart?”
Her mouth closes, and she studies him. Her eyes search his face for some sign of deceit. “That’s certainly more accurate,” she says, eventually.
He grins. “You’re smart as shit and you’ve got the combat skills to keep up with, frankly, two badasses like me and Vris and come out ahead as often as not.” He shrugs. They’ve only played a few games together, but he can almost feel what a flushcrush of Ter would be like. He’s not opposed.
“FLARP?” She grins sharply, incisively. “That’s what you’re basing your opinion of me on?”
He shrugs. “Not saying we’ve got to dive in headfirst. We can take it slow. Get to know each other. But yeah. You’re pretty cool.” He closes his eyes and waves a hand. “Really really fucking,” he corrects. “Keep getting them mixed up, sorry.”
She snickers as she considers this. “Hm.”
She’s- he’s pretty sure she’s genuinely actually considering it. Holy shit.
He imagines them together. She’s…
She’s fucking cool, actually. Nothing he’s said is actually untrue. Sure, he’s got another goal, and the more seriously he imagines it, the worse he feels about that, but he doesn’t dislike the thought of them.
“We could carve our way through any fucking battlefield together,” he says, putting on his best Dualscar voice. “Whaddaya say, Redglare?” He holds out a hand to her.
She hesitates, and her hand moves a little bit (back already straightening as he mentions Redglare, almost like she’s channelling her ancestor’s over a century of experience and power and presence, and her grin sharpens), when it stops, and falls back.
She cocks her head. “…This isn’t about me, is it?” She asks.
Fuck.
His heart sinks to the bottom of the proverbial ocean and proverbial deep sea fauna start nibbling at it immediately.
“I-”
“This is about her,” Ter says.
“No. No, I genuinely do wanna- fuck, I dunno, I wanna try. I think you’re really fucking cool.”
She shakes her head. “Laying it on a bit thick, Mister Ampora,” she says. He’d feel better if she sounded angry. “I know you and Vriska have your kismesissitude-”
Relief floods through him, oh, that, her, thank fuck, and he almost misses the next bit.
“-But I’m not going to let that come between me and her. I don’t want to be some weird power play to unbalance her.” She grins. “Besides. Wouldn’t that make the game less fun?”
“I-” he says. “I didn’t ask just because I wanted to piss Vris off.”
“No,” she says, nodding. “Probably not. You wouldn’t try to date me just to piss her off, I know. But would you have thought to date me if you didn’t want to piss her off? Would it have crossed your mind?”
He hesitates. She shrugs as if to say see what I mean?
“I’m not saying we’d be bad together. But- if it’s only going to happen because of your other quadrants… That doesn’t sound very much like serendipity, does it?”
He sighs. “No. You’re right.”
She shrugs and gives him a smile. “Who knows. Maybe we’ll grow closer over time and you’ll fall flushed for my winning personality.”
He snorts. “You’re really fucking cool-”
“Really really fucking cool,” she interjects.
“-but if I can be honest?” She motions for him to continue. “I like your personality, but I sure as fuck wouldn’t call it winning.”
She swats him playfully. God, he’s fucked. He’s just accepted that he can’t do this, and it’s the moment where he’s most convinced that he wants to.
But she’s right. “So. You’re holding out for serendipity, then?” He raises an eyebrow. “Anybody I know?”
She coughs and scuffs her boot against the ground. “Maybe.”
“Right,” he says, finding himself grinning despite himself. “Well, I won’t pry. Friends, still?”
She grins. “Friends. Until you cross me on the field of battle.”
“I’d expect nothing less.” He turns to go. “Take kar of yourself,” he calls back to her, when he’s almost at the door.
Something bounces off his head a second later.
But he’s not exactly finding a bunch of things that can distract him-
He tries hanging out with, or even just messaging, Gam and Kar and even Tav.
Vris gives him the dirtiest fuckin’ look he thinks he’s ever seen when he casually asks if Tav is flushed with anybody, and when he gets ahold of that damned diary she’s bent on copying a few weeks later, he gets it.
Talking to Gam is frustrating, and he thinks the dude might genuinely be pan-damaged, so he’s out immediately.
Kar he just can’t think of like that. He knows he takes the whole hemonymous thing ridiculously seriously, to the point where he’s pretty sure Kar would only ever accept any sort of quadrant attention until he met whatever insane preconditions where he felt he could trust them with the, he’s sure, enormous secret of exactly what colour his blood is. Besides, he’s seen too many of Kar’s bad days to have the prerequisite blind adoration. He’d have to get over a lot of stuff for Eridan to be seriously interested. Eridan would probably have to help him. And if he thinks about it, he’s not exactly opposed to that, but-
Wait. Fuck. Scrap that. Forget what he just said. What kind of pathetic loser would he be if he was pale for his best friend, as well as flushed for his moirail? The worst kind, that’s what.
Essentially: nah. Not Kar. For a multitude of reasons.
He doesn’t even try Eq. The guy gets sweaty when Eridan messages him. More pressingly: the guy would probably fold like a cheap suit if Eridan asked him if he wanted to go out, and even he’s not quite that desperate as to push things like that.
Which means he’s getting pretty desperate. So, he stops for a while, tries to put it out of his mind for a little bit and not panic so much.
So what if he has less-than-pale thoughts about his moirail? He’s not going to act on them. She needs him same as always and sure, the diamond sparkles a little less than before, but he puts that down to a combination of the honeymoon period being long since past and the strain of this stupid flushcrush. If he can just sort it out, things will be back to how they were before. They’ll be fine. He can be there for her.
-And it seems like everything comes back to the same problem. The one he can’t even tell his moirail about.
He messages Kan, they talk, and he tries to be sympathetic about her blatant flushcrush on Vris, even though it’s so close to home it’s knocking on his door in blatant defiance of the ‘no solicitors’ sign. He likes to think they’re close friends, and he wants to make an effort to help.
And then she closes off like this:
GA: Eridan I Just Want To Check
GA: You Know I Dont Feel
GA: Um
CA: wwhat
GA: Pale For You
CA: wwhat
GA: Im Just Saying This Conversation Has Been Veering Slightly
GA: In A Conciliatory Direction I Guess
CA: wwell yeah but
CA: fuck sorry kan i didnt mean it like that
CA: i wwas just tryin to help
CA: im her kismesis so its evven like my business to make sure shes not sabotaging herself
CA: be too easy if she wwas havving moirail problems
CA: hell
CA: i think you twwo are great together an youd be great as moirails or matesprits both
CA: sorry if that came across as
CA: sorry
GA: Its Fine
GA: I Think Im Probably Just Being Paranoid
CA: hey its
CA: if you wwant me to back off i can back off
CA: this is gonna sound selfish but vvris has gotten A LOT better at the wwhole fated rivval thing since you an her got together
CA: like sure thats nice for me but also
CA: it means things are going wwell right
CA: youre good for her an i repeat MOIRAIL OR MATESPRITS BOTH
GA: Its Really Unnervving How You Keep Saying That
CA: Unnervving huh
GA: Whoops
CA: haha
GA: Haha Ok My Bad
GA: Im Not Trying To Be Ungrateful For Your
GA: Um
CA: advvice
GA: I Was Going To Say Help
CA: so wwas i but then i remembered thats got CONNOTATIONS or wwhatever
GA: Ah Yes I Forgot About The Connotations
CA: theyre wwily bastards connotations are
GA: Anyway
GA: I Just Didnt Want To Leave You With The Impression I Was
GA: It Feels Really Harsh To Say Interested In You But Thats Kinda What I Mean
CA: hey no wworries im not exactly your type regardless
GA: Um
GA: No
CA: like i said no wworries
GA: Ok Good
GA: I Just Wasnt Sure If This Was An Attempt At
GA: Flirting
CA: wwhyd you think that
GA: You Have Kind Of A Reputation
CA: wwait wwhat
GA: For Approaching People With Propositions
CA: i
CA: i guess i havve like a feww times but its not like im asking people to jump into quadrants immediately im just
GA: Asking
CA: wwell
CA: yeah
CA: i havve a reputation
GA: Not A Huge One
GA: Well Not For That Anyway
CA: yeah
GA: But
GA: A Little Bit
GA: People Think Youre Very Flirty
GA: But Not Particularly Serious
CA: wwell
CA: thats a bit shit
GA: Can You See Where It Comes From Though
CA: yeah i guess
CA: you knoww im not going after you though
GA: I Suppose So
GA: Myself And Karkat Seem Safe From Your Advances
CA: wwoah back up wwho said anything about kar
CA: hes a stand up guy wwhy couldnt i be advvancing on him
CA: hypothetically
CA: fuck im not kelping myself am i
GA: Um
GA: I Suppose I Just Assumed That You Also
GA: You Know What Never Mind
CA: i
CA: kan if people are talking about me like this i gotta knoww
CA: you dont gotta copypaste evverything anybodys evver said but like
CA: if you knoww then please
GA: Well
GA: The Rumour Is You Seem To Be Focussed Mainly On
GA: Girls Rather Than Boys
CA: wwell youre hardly gonna judge that are you
GA: Well No But I Was Politely Ignoring That Actually
CA: ah shit wwhoops
GA: Its Alright I Brought It Up
GA: Im Sorry If I Upset You
CA: nah youre fine
CA: and id rather knoww wwhat people are saying rather than be oblivious
CA: its not like im setting out to flirt wwith evverything that movves
GA: Or One Half Of Evverything That Movves
GA: I Just Said That To Myself In Your Silly Accent And Had A Private Moment Of Enjoyment
CA: yeah wwell i cant help that my vvoice is so vvery amusing can i
CA: anywways as i wwas sayin
GA: Haha
CA: OR THAT yeah evven though thats SLANDEROUSLY UNTRUE an wwe just dont knoww that many avvailable guys who are my type
GA: Sure
CA: but its good to knoww
CA: or
CA: is it wweird this is kinda upsetting to hear
GA: Probably Not
GA: Sorry Again
CA: nah no worries
He stares at the screen and tries to believe that’s true. Some worries.
But he isn’t about to make a fuss about that after hearing he’s got a reputation elsewise, anyway. He was just trying to help. He doesn’t want to undermine that.
CA: anywway
CA: kar sent you that romcom yet
GA: He Has Been Messaging Me For Days Asking Me To Watch It
CA: wwatch it its good
GA: I Suppose I Can Hardly Disbelieve The Recommendation Of Both Yourself And Karkat
CA: really
CA: but wwe havve shit taste
GA: Yes
GA: But It Also Aligns With My Own What Would You Call It
GA: Shit Taste
CA: haha fair
He makes polite conversation for a while before making an excuse and logging off to do something else.
He stares at his desk for a while, before letting his head fall and meet it.
--
The first time Eridan gets depressed, not that he’d ever call it that, Feferi catches it and is there in a flash. She hates piling on land, says her hair gets pinched uncomfortably and responds with mock outrage when he says she could always tie it up. But she drags him to an overland block in his hive because it’s closest and lays down with him in the pile of wands and holds him.
It's rare, this. Piling when one of them isn’t crying.
“What’s wrong, guppy?” She asks, and it’s far too sweet, and he sighs.
“I just.” He shakes his head. “Nothin’.”
“It’s not nothing, Eridan. Something’s bothering you. You don’t have to tell me, but…”
But he should. He sighs.
“Just feel like. Empty, sometimes.”
The killing is getting to him, not that he’d ever fucking admit it. Admitting the killing was getting to him would be tantamount to admitting weakness, letting Fef down, and blaming her- all in one neat fucking package.
“Empty how?”
“Difficult to explain,” he says, evasively. It is, but that’s an excuse. “Just not as easy to do things as it used to be.”
That lingers.
“Not causing any problems though,” he adds, because he’ll still take care of the feeding schedule, of course he will, he couldn’t not.
She hugs him. “If it’s bothering you, it’s a problem,” she declares.
A faint smile rises on his face. “Thanks, Fef.”
They both settle into the pile and don’t speak for a few minutes.
“What makes it feel better?” She asks, and now she really is playing with fire, because he knows the answer to that.
Like fuck is he going to tell her, though.
You do. You and me, pale or flushed, whatever. I just want you.
Alternatively:
Away. I just want to go somewhere far away and never have to feed your lusus again. Isn’t there somewhere we can go her Glub can’t reach? Just the two of us? Just… quiet?
He doesn’t say either.
“I- it feels better, sometimes,” he admits, hesitantly, “when I-”
Hurt people. Get hurt. Takes the edge off.
“Yeah?”
He sighs, starts again.
“Sometimes, I just want to kill-”
She makes a noise. Involuntary. Terror.
He switches track seamlessly. Honesty stowed away for later, where it can’t hurt her. This really is a farce of a moiraillegiance, he thinks, desperately.
“-Everybody,” he finishes.
She takes this in for a second. “And me?”
He shakes his head. “Never you.”
“But… other people.”
He pauses. What is he saying? Does he?
He’s not sure. But it’s better to make her think he wants to kill, needs it, than the alternative. That he might need help. That he can’t help her feed her mum. “Yeah,” he says. Keep it simple.
“Oh,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” he says, because he’s aware. She’s siding against the caste system and she’s changing the definition of culling and she’s so kind, but he’s just admitted to wanting- what? genocide? Omnicide?
It’s fine. Better than the truth, in some ways. Keeps him seeming dangerous. Nobody would come after the Heiress simply because her moirail had killed their lusus, but even still, she’s safer if people think he’s insane. She’s safer if she knows he’ll kill anybody who tries to hurt her, who even fucking touches her.
And that feels good. Knowing he can protect her.
She shakes her head. “Don’t be sorry,” she says, keeping her tone brighter than she probably feels. “I’m here.”
She holds him, and he leans in.
She’s…
She doesn’t care. That he’s just told her he wants everybody but her dead. That he’s in charge of keeping her lusus alive so the rest of the planet stays intact and yet she trusts him, who has just confessed omnicidal tendencies, not to hurt her mother. He never would, but the fact she believes that?
God, he doesn’t deserve a fraction of her.
“It would,” she begins, and then coughs, laughs self-consciously.
“Mm?”
“It would make me sad if you killed everybody. We know some really good people.”
“Yeah. Kar. And Kan.” He misses the look of suspicion when he says Karkat’s name, which clears by the time he follows it up.
“Sollux. Terezi. Vriska.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Think I’m biased on that last one being good.” He hugs her. “But yeah. Killing her would be no fun.”
Feferi laughs, tension drawn through it like a wire. “I never understood that.”
He grins. “We’ll get you a worthy rival, Fef. We’ll find you somebody who makes your heart pump with-” he flounders, and then catches the words. “With irritation. Annoyance. They’ll annoy the shit out of you in the best way.”
“Can’t see the appeal,” she admits.
He waves it away. “We will. You’ll hate their guts and love pulling one over on them. It’ll be great.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” He kisses the top of her head. “We’ll find you serendipity, Fef.”
She doesn’t know if she wants that, doesn’t really want anything except to help him . But if it keeps Eridan happy…
“Thanks,” she says, with her arms wrapped around him.
--
Feferi can feel her moirail drifting away from her, and she has no idea what to do.
Every individual excuse seems perfectly reasonable. Together, it looks like ‘not today, I’ve got a headache’ ad infinitum. Which is fine. Sometimes you don’t feel like it. Sometimes that lasts for a while. But it feels like it’s spurred on by something. She knows it’s not that everything’s quiet and nothing is wrong, and that means she’s worried. They’re barely piling once every week, sometimes less! And he’s talking about less and less when they’re in a pile.
When they do pile, he’s pushing her, trying to get at the juicy stuff going on with her, and he’s digging for things that she’s pretty sure aren’t even there, to the degree it’s worrying her a little! But when she brings it up to him one evening, he just snorts, says ‘just trying to do my job. Sorry, Fef, maybe I’m rusty or something. I’ll knock it off.’
It irks her, a little bit, even if that’s silly. It’s not like nobody uses the term ‘job’ for quadrants. It doesn’t mean anything. He’s begged forced her to watch Karcrab’s romcoms enough that she’s seen many a character refer to things kismeses or matesprits do for each other as ‘their job.’
…But she does wonder. Is he actually happy? Is this a job, like Orphaning is? He seems to enjoy that one, so maybe…?
But he does knock it off, for a while, and drops it again when she points out he’s doing it again. So, it’s fin! Fine!
…She would like it if they piled more often. But she has him wrangled into a pile right now, and she’s drilling down, trying to approach his hangups sneakily, work out precisely how to get him to open up. Her old techniques are still mostly golden, but any time she tries to pout and tease him into opening up, he clams up instead. Those used to be her most reliable ones!
And she’s trying not to feel hard done by, except…
Except she’s starting to think maybe he’s finding piling easier when she’s sitting above him. Or holding him.
Out of his line of sight, bassically.
She shoves the thought away forcefully, enough that her mother notices, and whispers soothingly to her. She tells her daughter that she is beautiful, that Eridan is good for her. That he will kill her.
She automatically waves away the last part of that, because he would never.
But it serves to make her concerns feel almost silly. She curls at her middle, bending until her horns swing down and her face is looking upside-down at him from the top of his vision, slightly off-centre to avoid being impaled on his horns.
“Hey,” he says, grinning a little.
“Hey,” she replies, grinning back hugely. “What’s up with you?”
He shrugs. “Sittin’ in a pile with a beautiful girl. Same old.”
The comment, so quick off the back of her frankly ridiculous insecurities, makes her almost blush, and makes her delirious with happiness. She giggles. He laughs back.
She leans down further to give him a tiny kiss on the nose. His eyes blow out wide as saucers, and she laughs at his shocked expression. “Pale for you,” she says, teasingly.
She feels him tense, just a little bit, just briefly. And then he relaxes and smiles back at her. Tries to lean up, she’s pretty sure he wants to kiss her on the nose in retaliation, but his horns meet her shoulder, and he gets stuck there. He pouts. “You get what I’m going for,” he says, disgruntled.
“I do,” she murmurs, pleased as punch. She leans down, and he gives her an identically teeth-rottingly pale kiss on the nose.
“Pale for you,” he whispers, smiling with stars in his eyes.
And then, everything is better, and nothing is wrong. Because he is here, and whatever is worrying him, it’s buzzing far in the background where it can’t hurt them.
She wants to kiss him on the mouth, and it’s such a sudden and ridiculous thought that she almost laughs. She’s getting sappy.
She squeezes him close. “Wanna hang out tomorrow?”
He laughs (wheezes- she hugs tight!). “Fef, we’re hanging out right now.”
“Yeah, but this is-” she puts on a vaguely authoritative tone “-business!” He grins and rolls his eyes because he thinks her voices are ridiculous. “We’re doing all sorts of really important moirail stuff right now. But we should watch a movie!”
“How dare you imply that’s not vital moirail shit,” he grumbles.
“Okay, fine! But we should do something! Maybe I could sit in on a FLARP campaign session?”
He shifts a little. “Those get a little violent,” he says doubtfully. “And when it’s me and Vris they tend to get a little. Uh. Inappropriate.”
“Oh, I’M SURE,” she says back, rolling her eyes.
“Alright, fine, if you want.” He smiles. “Wanna play a character?”
She grins. “Nope!”
“Figured I’d give it a shot.”
She feels like she’s gotten him back, back from the brink of… something.
And then the day for the FLARP session rolls around.
Vriska manages to cut Eridan across the chest, and it oozes a small amount of violet through the ridiculous costume he’s wearing. He responds by firing a blast that scorches her across her entire hand.
They whirl around each other, fighting on the deck of the ship while around them, trolls they’ve roped into their game (including using Vriska’s, ah, talents) provide a background of pitched combat.
Vriska cuts a rope, and Feferi totally misses how, but it sends a wooden beam swinging around to catch Eridan over the head, and he staggers, barely avoiding falling to his knees.
Feferi is there in two seconds. “Eridan!”
He glances around in a daze, and then meets her eyes, smiles a little, and then wobbles. She catches him by the arm and helps him stand upright. “Hey, Fef.”
“Are you okay? You got hit really hard!”
Vriska laughs. “Lighten up, Peixes. He’s taken bigger blows than that. His whole fleet blows!”
Feferi turns around angrily. She doesn’t totally get the appeal of kismesissitude, to be fully honest, but she really doesn’t get how this is something Eridan would want. “Go away!” She yells. “Just- fuck off!”
Vriska rolls her eyes, until Feferi uncaptchalogues her trident.
“Oh.” Vriska says, her voice going weirdly flat. “Right. Yeah.”
She backs up a little.
“Fef, what are you doing,” Eridan mutters, trying to blink his vision straight.
“You’re hurt!” She fusses over him for a few seconds.
“mfine,” he says indistinctly. “Why’d- why the battle stop?”
She looks around and realises he’s right. The rest of the ‘pirates’ are standing around awkwardly. Not quite looking their way but keeping them in sight.
“I, um.”
His eyelids flutter, but when he focusses in on her trident, his face falls in a frown. “Aw, Fef, that. That’s probably why.”
She doesn’t get it. “Everybody here is armed!”
“Not everybody here is you.”
Suddenly the looks make sense.
She’s the scary Heiress who could kill them all. Hell, who could ask them to line up before she killed them all, even. She could ask them to kill themselves, and-
Can’t think about that. Not right now.
“Are you alright?” She asks.
“I’m- fine.” He’s awkward.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think you killed the scene.”
She blinks. “…What?”
He sighs in exasperation. “Vris was- planning something. She’d've wait until I stood up and looked, and then.” And then he shrugs. “Well, she’d probably drop a shitton of rope on me.”
“I would,” Vriska calls out. “That was pretty much what I was planning to do.”
“Oh,” Feferi says.
She… thinks this is one of those things she doesn’t really understand.
There was a time where there was nothing about Eridan or his life that she really could say that about. Where they shared everything, and she’d know the ins and outs of Vriska’s MO as well as Eridan did. There was probably a time where she’d have known not to leap in and help against his kismesis’ scheme, or stayed back and cheered him on, or whatever, but she would have gotten it right.
He gives her an uneven grin, and she can’t tell if it’s forced, or if he’s just hurt from Vriska’s attack. “Sokay,” he says.
“Well not to me! You ruined the scene, your highness,” Vriska complains. Feferi tries not to let the hurt show on her face too much.
Eridan rolls his eyes. “Oh, can it. Taking five.”
Vriska sighs but waves them away dismissively.
Feferi helps him walk over to the side and sit down heavily.
She sits beside him, leaning against the side of the ship. He puts his head on her shoulder.
“You alright?” She asks.
“Course,” he says.
He says that a lot, nowadays.
“Are you sure, because it looked like that-”
“Fef,” he interrupts, sitting upright, a bit of tension in his voice. “Drop it. Okay?”
She looks at him, and opens her mouth, because that’s not how it works, he shouldn’t push her away like that, and actually-
And she shuts it again. Twists it into a smile that she’s sure probably makes her look half-mad with worry and drops it.
--
The last time they pile, Eridan does not mention his most recent hunt, where the troll screamed and begged him to stop until he shot them to shut them up and then called Vriska, and Feferi does not mention the increasing number prophecies Gl’bgolyb is whispering to her, nor their increasing gruesomeness. They know about the game, by now, and Feferi is ready to be free of her mother’s prophecies and inevitabilities and mind-bending riddles and contradictions and warnings.
Eridan seems excited, too. He’s…
He won’t tell her what he has planned, even though she knows he has something planned, and she doesn’t want to push. She really barely even wants to know, and that wracks her with guilt, because she should care. She remembers caring about every little thing Eridan did, and caring about supporting him, and liking it when he supported her.
Nowadays, his support feels more like overreach, maybe even nagging, and her support feels haphazard, unwanted, or chronically misplaced. He doesn’t want her looking after him. She’s watched him slide, slowly, from a sweet, concerned friend, to somebody dangerous. Somebody who builds and commissions doomsday devices that never seem to work, and he curses and throws them about and rages about incompetence and best laid plans and the fucking landdwwellers. And all she can think is, thank glub, because the alternative is murder, genocide even, on a scale only matched by the Vast Glub- and the troll pacing and muttering and breaking things is the one whose job it is to keep Gl’bgolyb fed and quiet. How long before he decides to lighten up on the feeding schedule?
…She likes to think he would never. That he wouldn’t want to, but he also would never. Would never do that to his friends. To her. Kill them all, leave her alone.
--
Feferi Peixes is exhausted. And if she had to guess, so is Eridan.
Eridan does not ever seem to want to talk to her about all the stuff she knows he’s interested in- FLARP, even when she can stomach talking about it, he just gives her curt summaries like the blurb of a prewritten module more than the details-rich. Romance, be it novels or real, he slowly started going to his good friend (maybe there’s some jealousy there) Karkat. They have been running on empty for quite some time, and it’s time for a change.
They are playing the Game soon. And she wants a break.
She wants that change.
And to be quite honest, this moiraillegiance died a while back. She feels guilty in ending it, feels worse for carrying it along just so she could keep an eye on him, make sure Eridan didn’t do anything reckless, didn’t… didn’t stop feeding her mom.
But this is the right thing to do. He has seemed more and more excited as the game gets nearer, and she’s glad. And now that she’s entering, maybe it’s all okay. She might not care about him like that anymore, but she still cares. The diamonds are gone, but he is still one of her oldest friends. She hopes he can recover, become the kid she used to know, before he got buried under… Under murder and anger and something he never shared with her. Now that he can no longer hurt anybody, maybe he will be her Eridan again.
But as it stands… She cannot do this. And the last reasons to continue doing it regardless have just disappeared along with their planet, with their entire species.
She wonders if she did this. He killed for her. For her mom. Maybe it’s her fault he’s like this. Him and Vriska, they killed to feed lusii. And she knows from Terezi, knows what happened. How Vriska got crueller. Eridan mentioned it too, one of the few things he would mention was “how much of a massive bitch Vris is becoming.”
Did she make her moirail cruel? Maybe she should have taken the feeding duties.
But how, something whispers to her. Not her mom. You couldn’t cut it. Couldn’t kill. Wouldn’t have been strong or smart or mobile enough to kill enough every week.
And what would the killing have made you?
She shakes the thoughts away, the guilt. She won’t allow herself to feel guilty, right now.
There’s a Game to play, now, and they can do something new together. Maybe with some time apart, doing separate things, even keeping to themselves, she and he can both recover, and become friends again, genuine friends, because she can’t be anything more for him.
She hopes they can. Really, really hopes so.
So, when she enters the Medium and she picks up her tablet, she sees Eridan’s icon, and-
We have already read this conversation.