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One of the things that nobody told you about falling through a black hole was that it was somehow soothing and uncomfortable at the same time. In much the same way that some people found peace in getting squeezed really hard, by a machine or by other people, Eridan found the experience of getting sucked into a singularity the mass of two universes to be a wholly... Interesting one. He had more time to think and ruminate on things than he ever thought possible, and yet, no time at all. The sky around him, past the event horizon, wasn't black at all, but rather, a void of color, the presence of nothing at all.
It was so hard to describe absolute nothing in a way that made sense to anyone who hasn't experienced it, but it was both easy and hard to look at. The hardest part, really, was wrapping his mind around what exactly it was he was looking at every time he looked away from the gargantuan black sphere and towards the... White? No, it wasn't quite white. If he had to put a color to it, it was probably grey? But, really, it was just nothing at all. Absence of color in a different way than black or white. He looked at both views for a while before he actually fell into the singularity.
After all, a black hole's event horizon grows larger at a faster rate than a black hole's mass or radius. As a wannabe-admiral, stellar mechanics were something that he had studied a little more than a lot of people would assume he had. Shwarz-Schild radii and Ainsta-Hawkin radiation and all of that jazz. No, he wasn't the best in his schoolfeed, but-
Oh, and then he was on the ground.
Adjusting to life after the afterlife is, on its head, a sentence that makes absolutely no sense, and yet here this Eridan was, adjusting to life after the afterlife. Earth C was a fine place to be, barring the slowly boiling war, but really, Eridan had enough of that in his life. When you're dead for so long, taken out of the game early by a crazed Jadeblood killing you, you start to get a little humbler about your life experiences. Finding out not only that he wasn't the "canonical" Eridan, but that the "Alpha Timeline" version of him had outright killed Feferi was enough to send him into a tizzy of needful forgiveness for a week or so, sort of groveling at every Feferi that passed him by, and a couple of other people that he heard he had hurt. Really, it seemed that a common pattern to Eridans was that they had a tendency to go a little violent when pressed into a corner, which Eridan totally got, but he never considered that he would get violent enough to kill someone he cared about.
It took a little bit of doing, and thank his lucky stars every single day that ghosts didn't have to eat or drink - wait, was he still a ghost? He was corporeal enough, unlike the ghosts of Alternia, but he was definitely a ghost in a dreambubble at one point, and his eyes hadn't turned to normal, he could clearly remember dying, and so on, but here he was, alive and well - but, eventually, he found a hive that would let him stay. One open enough to this particular Eridan, after a pretty long conversation over a cup of tea in a nearby cafe, with the mustardblood ornery and antithetical to the concept, but the fuchsia willing to give him a chance. Evidently, her will won out, because after that, Eridan had a place to stay.
A recuperacoon to call his own again, one real and made of real hivestruct, filled with real sopor, instead of the hazy imitations in the dreambubbles. A refrigerator full of real, honest-to-god food, and a working range, all the little creature comforts that you took for granted a: in the afterlife, b: in the gravity well of a black hole, c: alone on the streets of a city pretty much entirely made of ghosts. He didn't even need to sleep, but boy, did he like to get his sleep on when he had the opportunity, which was often, considering there was little else to do.
A couple of little flaring arguments led to a couple of interesting developments in a couple of weeks since the beginning of his stay at the Peixes-Captor Household, as it were so known. The first of the interesting developments was him getting into quadrants with Sollux - a little pitch, specifically. It took a couple of days to stabilize into something less tumultuous, but when it stabilized, things were good. Sollux kept him sharp, Eridan kept Sollux sharp, and things were merry and jovial, if a bit biting and incisive. The second of three interesting developments was his flushed feelings finally (finally! And, uh, kind of confusingly? He never expected it to work, to be perfectly honest) being reciprocated by Feferi. If you asked him how the exact order of events leading up to this ended up working out in their favor, he couldn't tell you. That wasn't really his place as a player, or as a person. That was more the enviable Rose Lalonde's position rather than anything else, or maybe Terezi's, the two Seers he knew that were actually useful at jack shit.
Plus, it wasn't like he interacted with either of them. Doomed Roses and Terezis were surprisingly hard to come by, for some reason.
Then, there was the third interesting development in the string of interesting developments, coming hot off the heels of the first two. Because then, Sollux vacillated into the red... and Feferi... Didn't vacillate black? So now here Eridan was, with two matesprits like a chump. He spent a lot of time in the shower thinking about figuring out how to deal with it, before both of them came up with the magic solution that had passed Eridan by: Why not just be matesprits with both of them? After a little bit of sputtering back-and-forth, they came to the conclusion that they could all mutually agree to. Which was exactly what Feferi and Sollux had suggested.
So now, Eridan was the lucky guy with two matesprits, somehow. And sometimes Sollux went back into black, but most of the time they were all red as could be, and Eridan didn't mind that in the slightest.
And that, finally, was the approximate rundown leading up to the present day, maybe a year or so since he landed on Earth C, all caught up. Present day meaning, specifically, about midnight, the time when most trolls were up and active and awake. The city streets never stopped bustling, but with a nocturnal and a diurnal race splitting the planet about 35/35, you could tell their sleeping patterns just by who was mostly on the streets and sidewalks at any given time of day. Right now, that was the trolls, and right now, that included Eridan, and, more importantly to Eridan's mental state, the one person he really hoped he would never get the distinct displeasure of seeing ever in his life.
A Kanaya Maryam. Not his, probably, judging by the way she was looking at him and trying to strike up a conversation as if she wasn't the person that had killed him in what felt like a hazy, indistinguishable past life. Something something "Oh, hello, Eridan! How is the evening treating you?"
Eridan's skin was already starting to get slick with sweat, and he really, really did not want to be here right now. Ideally, anywhere but here would be nice, without running into another Kanaya. Even a Gamzee would be better than another Kanaya, as much history as there was there to be had. He mumbled a "Yeah, I'm fine," and tried to turn away, but was stopped by a sudden rough hand on his shoulder. Well, it wasn't rough - it was quite the opposite - but it was familiar enough that the sensation of being grabbed by someone who had the same face and hands as your killer was enough to take him from "on edge" to "careening over it", causing him to jump and cry out in shock.
"Are you okay, Eridan? You look like you've caught sight of a particularly malevolent specter... Is something the matter?" Kanaya asked, and all her most auspicious of well-meaning gestures was out the door along with Eridan. He felt cornered on this city street despite all avenues and directions being open to him, even up, if he so chose to do so. The crowd wasn't thick enough to impede him, and yet, he was frozen stiff as a popsicle, his neck filled with a familiar ache of phantom pains. A memory of teeth like buzzsaws entreating his skin to their undue attention.
He did the only thing that made sense to him at the moment, breaking away brusquely from Kanaya's light grip, heavier than a ton of bricks, and ran. He ran and ran and ran until the streets looked unfamiliar and the sun was beginning to come up on the horizon, and his ghost sides ached from the heavy expenditures, even though he didn't need to breathe to bring oxygen to his muscles in the way that alive people did. The running itself, and what it meant, that was what was causing these aches and pains to sprout across his body like the undue roots of an unwelcome tree, digging through the soft, earthy loam until they broke into his physical form.
The walk back was calmer, for a given definition of calm. He had made his way out from the city's edge and into the suburbs, where the hives and homes were further apart, with space for lawnrings and decoration, and collapsed into the dirt beneath him in a manner that would be undignified if he cared about dignity at the moment. Rolling back over, he stared at the night sky, dark-coated clouds passing by overhead silently, a judging choral order of watchers staring down at his dead panic and commending him for his efforts. The grass beneath him was a soft green carpet that reminded him of absolutely nothing that he had experienced before or since Earth C. The Land of Wrath and Angels was all stained glass and choir halls, dramatic, spiky architecture. Nowhere worth lying down. In Alternia, he lived in a shipwreck, spent most of his time above water, and fields of seaweed were nothing compared to this sensation. On the meteor, there was just tile and stone, and in the dreambubbles, everything was indistinct enough that nobody seemed to have a clear memory of grass.
But right now, he was just lying down, on the real, physical grass, a cold and slightly damp bed made of the entire Earth below him, looking upwards at clouds in the sky, directly at the moon. He stared at it in all of its glow and glimmer and pure stark white. He was calm now, still and careful, tired after what felt like days of running away from his past. Really, it was only an hour or two, but it was still an hour or two that he had been constantly moving forward and away from his hive. Maybe it would be nice to grab a fistful of grass and fall asleep?
Eridan woke up on the couch, which was strange, considering that he definitely didn't fall asleep there. His immediate reaction was to consider all of the options as to what happened. Option a: Had he woken up, gone back to his hive, fallen back asleep, and not remembered any of it? Option b: This was not his hive, someone found him sleeping on the ground and took him in, despite how familiar the interior of the hive was to him. He was pretty sure neither of those options was reasonable and crossed them out mentally. Option c: He had dreamed the whole encounter with Kanaya, and had actually fallen asleep on his couch. That one was probably the most reasonable of the three, but it, too, was out the window, when Sollux bumped his head into Eridan's from above, reaching out from behind the couch to do so.
"Hey." He hissed, and Eridan looked away from him. "Any particular reathon we found you, like, an hour away on the grathth?"
"Just wasn't havin' a good evenin'. Had to walk away for a little bit. You got a problem with that, Sol?" Eridan replied, trying to pull himself away from Sollux, but his matesprit's hands were clamped tight around Eridan's head. It was only once Eridan started shaking his head as quickly as he could that Sollux let go.
"Not really, where you thleep ith none of our buthinethth." Sollux flippantly replied, floating himself over the couch and depositing himself neatly on the other side. Ah, that was probably the answer - Sollux probably levitated Eridan up so he didn't wake up. Outside of his recuperacoon, Eridan was a pretty light sleeper, but when a telekinetic was floating you, you never felt anything. Not unless they were trying to squeeze you or fling you, but a light psychokinetic touch felt like nothing at all. You were just... Suddenly not on the ground. Perfect for recovering a passed-out boyfriend from whatever lawnring he had deposited himself on.
Eridan looked out the window. The sun was starting to come up, but he felt refreshed, distinctly un-tired, if a bit sore. A several-hour long nap would probably do that to you, though. It took a couple of seconds for the words to come out of his mouth. "I saw Kan again. Or a Kan, at least."
"Oh, jeeth." Sollux mumbled, hooking an arm around Eridan's shoulders. When another shape made itself evident in their periphery, walking her way over to them, Eridan looked down at his socks, wiggling his toes around a little bit beneath their thick fabric.
"Wakey wakey, sleepyhead!" Feferi chimed in, sliding herself onto the couch right next to Eridan. Eridan wasn't really feeling it too much, so he curled up into a ball while his pusher pounded away, throwing blood around his insides like it was going out of style, through all his veins and arteries. Feferi was dressed in pajamas, since she was the only one of them to dress sensibly at any given moment, but even the comfort of cloth wasn't enough to wash away the sinking, icy feeling inside of his stomach. It crept up into him, and he burrowed his head further into his knees.
What if Kanaya came... bursting in through the door, chainsaw in hand, ready to go again? No, the thought was silly, but the imagery was invading his mind like a fungus on someone's crops, eating away at the base and making everything unstable. The harvest of pure thoughts was unusable, tainted by the mental image that would not go away, that familiar sensation of sweat dampening his skin beginning to pervade his surface. Something was falling into the pit of his stomach, while Feferi and Sollux talked over him and around him. He heard Sollux say the name Kanaya, and he felt the pit deepening, shutting his eyes to make the sensation go away.
He had died once before, and thought he would never encounter that feeling again, even when he was orbiting a black hole the mass of two universes. That was serenity, but in comparison, this recollection of bad dreams was a nightmare. It felt just like the dread of dying once again inflicting his body. He didn't realize that he had begun shaking until the talking stopped and his matesprits had begun to look upon him with pity and sympathy. When Feferi asked "Are you okay, Eridan?", he burst into tears, trying to escape the situation by getting up from the couch.
This time, however, when someone grabbed him, he didn't panic more, although the primal part of his brain from pre-evolved trollhood certainly did. It wasn't like this was the first panic attack he had at the Peixes-Captor household, but it was definitely coming on the strongest. By now, it had become almost a matter of routine. A shoosh from his right, and a pap from his left, with Feferi tugging on his goofy cape until his head was in her lap, Sollux bringing up the other side so that Eridan's legs could rest in his lap. Or, in this case, with how curled up he was, his feet. Sollux pulled him out like an accordion, scooting closer to Feferi until the two of them had formed a solid platform of lap for Eridan to be curled up on and rest his shaking body.
Feferi ran her fingers through Eridan's hair, brushing it in only the way someone with hair down to their tailbone would know how to do, ruining the stripe of color that was set in there, but, well, there was a time and a place to care about things like that and it wasn't here and now. Sollux's telekinesis surrounded Eridan in a soothing wave, pressing down at various little spots on his body, like at the base of his neck, a little tingly static that helped wick away the cold chill in his chest and replaced it with tingles. The thoughts of Kanaya and her instrument of cutting continually tried to intrude, but in this comfortable cocoon, everything bounced off.
Slowly, Eridan's breathing came back to normal, as did his heart rate. He turned himself around of his own volition, not being moved by his two matesprits, and he let one arm dangle limply on Feferi's lap, the other one curled up to his chest. Feferi bent down to kiss the side of Eridan's head, right near his temple, while Sollux continued to roll little spheres of invisible telekinetic force down and across Eridan's back. Soft murmurs and rough lisps about things being okay. A final shoosh, and Eridan shudders into calmness like the engine of a car slowly skidding to a halt in a parking spot.
"The sun's coming up, Eridan. Why don't we try to get you in your recuperacoon?"