Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It happened when you were half blind.

You can barely remember how long ago that was now, you've spent so long being blind and alive and alone and you hate it, but it's better than joining the others on their crazy mission to get themselves killed again. You've lost enough to the fucking game, you shouldn't have to deal with it's hoofbeast shit anymore.

You had to put up with Eridan's whiny hoofbeast shit up until he killed Feferi, and you don't really know why that part is important to remember, but it is. That little shit murdered FF, and you can't forgive him.

Every time you pass through a time bubble, a doomed timeline of yours or of the ancestors who aren't ancestors, you chance running into a version of him. So far you've met three different Eridans, as long as you've been walking on your own. You kind of expected more.

It isn't until you nearly run, face first, into another version of you that you realize your attention was drifting away from the path ahead of you.

"Ow, fuck!" he screeches at you, a thin hand clasped to a bruised and broken looking nose. You don't think you caused that, the dead can't exactly break. When you silently offer a hand down to him, he takes it, and between the two of you, he gets back to standing.

That's when you start to notice other things.

One of the four horns that tops his head is snapped. The edge looks clean, but you know it must have hurt like a bitch. Horns are delicate, alright? Shit like that should not be handled with any sort of roughness beyond a kismesis grabbing them during approved play. He looks bruised all over, patches of sore looking yellow spots all over his arms and face and neck.

"What the fuck happened to you?" you manage to ask him after a minute of staring at the bruises. Something looks off about his outfit, something seems out of place, but you can't seem to figure it out.

He gives you a shit eating grin and shrugs. "We fathed Jack Noir, all thprited up and everthing, and he fucking killed uth. It only got worth when Lord Englith thowed up and added hith thit to the fight. Fucker doethn't fight fair." His teeth aren't broken, his eyes aren't blind, and you're hit with the realization that he seems a lot more relaxed than you can ever recall being since you were just a little wiggler.

Despite the bruising and the broken parts, he also seems happier than you can ever recall being.

Full stop.

"Sol!" someone calls from behind him, from the way he came, from the way you're headed and you hate how you tense up when you realize that it's Eridan's voice you're hearing.

The other you looks entirely too happy to be hearing the seadweller's voice.

"ED!" he calls back, then puts two of his fingers to his mouth and lets loose a whistle so shrill it hurts your ears. An answering whistle comes back over the hill, and a few seconds pass before an Eridan is standing at the top of it. There's something on a chain on his neck, and you both watch as he lets himself slide down the hill gracefully, landing on his knees next to the other Sollux.

Which was, you realize, part of a ploy to get a hug in there somewhere.

The Eridan wrapped both of his arms around the other you's knees, pulling him close and holding tight. "Couldn't find you," he whispers, face pressed to other-Sollux's thigh, a happy grin on his face. "Found you here."

"Been looking for you," the other-Sollux admits, a fond smile taking the place of his own grin. "You found me firtht."

Despite the pain you know he's got to be in, he drops to the ground next to the Eridan, buries a hand in that ridiculous hair. Eridan's horns are damaged too, his left one chipped to all hell and his right one cracked in half but still attached. It looks like it was split down the middle by something, and you're not sure you want to know what did that.

After a few seconds of nuzzling and smiles and happy little purrs, the two of them seem to remember that you're standing there.

"...Doomed timeline?" you eventually manage to say, voice cracking on the last few syllables.

Eridan nods first, his hands still tangled in the hem of other-Sollux's shirt. "You're still alivve." he studies you carefully. "Wwhat about your vversion of me?"

You almost don't want to tell him, don't want to make his smile go away. It's obvious that, however fucking weird it is, the both of them are happy with the distinctly red feelings between them. You're also not sure you want to see what your face looks like when you're upset. You know you have ugly crying face, you don't want to see that shit.

"My version of you is dead, probably wandering around here somewhere." you mutter the words, half hoping that they don't hear them.

You've finally managed to figure out what's different about other-Sollux's outfit. He's got an Aquarius symbol in a rich pink-purple color on his neck, a thin silver chain keeping it anchored. The two of them have exchanged their symbols, which is only something that trolls who are extremely flushed for each other do.

Suddenly, the desire to be anywhere but here strikes you.

"What happened?" other-you asks and shit, this is a whole new kind of fuckery that the universe is throwing at you.

"Kanaya killed him. He killed Feferi. He made me go blind." you explain in as few words as possible, feeling a little sick. Eridan's hand slips from other-Sollux's shirt and tangles with his hand instead. "What the fuck happened to make you flushed for him?"

The grin is back. This time, it's less shit eating, but it's still got a little bit of that.

"Well, we didn't have that thit happen, obviouthly." he lisps the words at you, and you pin him with the fiercest glare you can muster right now. "We got onto the athteroid, and he wathn't ath attached to her ath he had been. The'th my Moirail, he'th my Matethprit."

You twitch. You know you do, you can feel it.

Or maybe, given that shit does not seem to be going your way today, it was a shudder.

Eridan's hair is longer than you recall it being, and the two of them look older now that you're focusing on that to try and ignore everything else you're seeing. The purple that he dyed into the chunk on top is fading out, more important things taking the place of its upkeep.

The sting of longing you feel can go fuck right the fuck off, you think as you look at the two of them. Eridan tried to kill you, he can fuck off too, you definitely don't want him in any quadrant. The fact that there's a version of you with him in the red quadrant changes nothing, and it never will.

If you had to guess, other-Sollux is about nine sweeps old, as compared to your own eight, and that doesn't seem fair. It doesn't seem fair at all, seeing as you're probably never going to make it to that age. The voices are dying down the longer you're in the dream bubbles, but you know they won't stay away from long. Just thinking about them gives you a headache, and you rub at your temple, eyes closing for a moment as you try to sort through your own thoughts.

"Jutht be glad neither of you went God Tier." other-Sollux says quietly, bringing you back to them. "There'th another dream bubble where they're all three floating around, athholeth in fuzzy clotheth."

"...All three?" you raise an eyebrow, trying to ignore the obvious change in subject.

"Two of you, one of Eridan." other-Sollux shrugs. "Having two dream thelveth ith a little weird, weird thit goeth down when you God Tier."

You nod, then wave goodbye to them, not even saying anything as you walk off. You know it's an asshole thing to do, but you can't bring yourself to care. They're matesprits, you don't have to care. They've got enough caring from each other.

You have to wonder what it would be like.

Chapter Text

Not for the first time, you really wanted to meet whoever had made the game and beat the shit out of them.

Not so much because of what had happened because you found it, but because of what had happened after. The game had, apparently, brought back the dead like so much saved data, dropped you all into human lives and left you the hell alone. Except that, in making you all human, you had been left blind and alone.

Feferi is Felicity now, and she lives a couple of blocks away from you.

Karkat is someone else now too, and you found him online, but you haven't met up with him in person just yet.

(He lives with John, one of the humans from the other session that was the world you guys created, and he still sometimes tries to insist that he hates the guy. You know better, you know him better.)

Everyone is back. Everyone has a place, even Gamzee and Tavros have found happiness in being soft and pink skinned, even with more pigment in their skin than you. Everyone else gets to live, gets to survive the bullshit that the game threw at you.

Except for Eridan.

Somehow, that doesn't seem fair.

The game had plunked you down in a life where you're blind, an oddly already there knowledge of braile and the associated computer programs in your head. A cane fits into the spot on your bedside table.

You have someone who comes over to your apartment twice a week to make sure that you're doing alright.

If you think intently about your time in the dream bubbles, you can still remember it, but the more that time passes...You're slowly forgetting, like a scab over a deep wound. Healing, but still there.

(You don't want to forget. It would be an injustice to the people you knew.)

Terezi is Teresa now, an up and coming lawyer who is utterly terrifying when it comes to winning cases. She's still blind too, which just allows people to underestimate her in court, and then whisper about how afraid they are of her when she beats them into the ground with her flawless arguments.

You don't know what the world outside looks like, but your guide occasionally describes it to you.

You don't think you'll ever get used to sunlight.

The warmth on your skin when you leave the house is something that always frightens you for a little bit, the reminder that the Alternian suns would have destroyed you is something that your brain still has.

Today, however, is something important.

Your name is Samuel Choi, you used to be Sollux Captor, and somehow you just know that today is going to be important.

With a sigh, you pick up your glasses, shove them onto your nose and run a hand through your hair. Your caretaker has told you that they're a little odd, but they somehow suited you. When you asked her what that meant, she told you that it wasn't everyday she met someone who chose to have anaglyph sunglasses when they were blind. She told you that the red and blue lenses suited you, suited the hetero-chromatic eyes you still had.

Strangely, that had been what made it alright to be human for you.

Coming back to the present, you pull your jacket on, then feel around the table in front of you for your cane. When your hand settles on it, you curl it against your chest, wait until your front door is locked behind you before you extend your cane with a gentle flourish.

It clicks together and you start walking.

You don't really have a destination in mind, but you think you might be heading to the coffee shop that's just down the street. Your laptop is in the bag that's slung across your chest, and you're probably just going to end up arguing with Karkat for a few hours before trekking back home and ignoring the rest of the world.

Your cane taps the sidewalk as you move, the repetitive sound reassuring as you move through a world you can't see, have never seen.

It's when something catches the end of your cane that you nearly fall flat on your face. the handle jamming into your collar bone. It forces your breath out, and you drop to your knees to avoid the possibility of shoving the damn thing up your nose.

"Oh, shit, I'm so sorry!" someone rushes an apology out, a careful hand dropping onto your shoulder. "Are you alright?"

The chill of cold skin against you, even through the layers you're wearing, is enough to make you focus. "Yeah, jutht fucking peachy." you mutter, a hand immediately patting your laptop bag to make sure it stayed put.

"Wwait." the person (You're pretty sure it's a guy.) says, and you jolt at the speech impediment. "Wwait just a moment, okay?" you can hear the rustle of cloth that means movement, and the hand stays put on your shoulder as he calls out, "Carl, wwould you just fuckin' wwait a minute?" another rustle probably means he just turned back to you and you don't know anyone else who would have had that stupid accent or that fucking speech pattern.

He gets to it first, a hand going to your chin to lift your face further into the light. "Sol?"

"ED?" you ask in turn because you refuse to be the one who breaks first. You know that you're a stubborn asshole, you have always known this and it has always been true.

"Sol." he says again, wonder in his voice as fingers trace over your cheeks and across your lips. After a few seconds, he helps you stand up again, the handle of your cane back in your grasp as he straightens out your clothes. You let him, trying all the while to ignore the pressure in your chest that means you're trying not to cry. "Howw- Wwhen did you get here?"

You snort, a burst of sarcastic laughter as the sounds of the city around you seem to fade. "The game- You remember that bullthit, right?"

"Yeah." he answer quietly, his hand still on your jacket, mindlessly tugging the edge of it.

"It fucking dropped me here, damage to my eyeth and all." you gesture carefully at the area around you, the movement slow. You don't know how close he's standing to you, you don't know if someone else is walking by. Apparently, he was walking with someone named Carl, and you don't know where the fuck that guy is standing either. "What about you?"

"I just...Sort of wwoke up here one day. There's an entire life in my head that I havven't fuckin' lived, Sol." he sounds like he's on the verge of tears, his hands still infuriatingly close but not close enough.

Somehow, in the time between meeting a doomed timeline version of yourself who loved him and now, you fell in love.

Maybe it was inevitable.

You put out a hand, searching for the edge of his face. "I-" you cut yourself off as he leans into you, his cheek in your hand. His skin is still cold, but it's warmer than he had been as a troll. His hair is still gelled back, and you're willing to bet that there's a streak of purple in it.

There's a trace amount of stubble on his cheek as well, just enough to make a rough scraping texture when you run your fingers over it. You laugh quietly, and you can feel your lips stretching into a smile. There's also tears running down your face, but it's okay because there's a matching wetness on his face.

Someone clears their throat next to you, and you just about smack them with your cane.

Eridan hisses, somehow still sounds like a troll when he does, and then there's the sound of flesh against flesh that means he just hit whoever it was for you, his leg blocking the movement of your cane. "First fuckin' rule about blind people, asshole!" he snarls, his other hand sliding up to the base of your neck. "Don't sneak up on them!"

"Vwell fuck you too!" they snarl back.

"...Ith that your dancethtor?" you raise an eyebrow, a soft giggle escaping you before you can stop it.

"Yeah, the fucker apparently got to come back to life and come with me." Eridan's other hand lands on your shoulder, trails up to your cheek, wipes away the tears that are there. "...Do you evven knoww wwhat you look like noww?" he asks you.

You shake your head. "No. The game dropped me here without any thight at all, not even in the memorieth of being younger."

He takes your hands in his own, and you faintly realize that there's callous on his palms. "Is there somewwhere wwe can go and talk?" he asks you, his voice softer than you have ever heard it. "I wwant to knoww wwhat happened to you."

"Part of it'th your fucking fault." you remind him, allowing yourself to be drawn closer. He's still wearing a fucking scarf, you can feel it when he presses closer and hugs you.

"I knoww." he whispers into the small space between the two of you. "I'm sorry."

You reach for the collar of his jacket, hook your fingers around it tightly, then pull him even closer until your lips meet his. It doesn't feel like forgiveness, not just yet, but it does feel like a new beginning.

You think you can live with that.

Chapter Text

The very first thing you had been aware of was the fact that your entire fucking body ached.

When you opened your eyes, a pair of very familiar glasses glinted back in the early morning light, and when you grabbed for them, the hand that came into your limited view was a pale pink color. Pushing your glasses onto your nose, you sat up, pushing aside the cushions and the fabric square that covered you.

You were wearing a pair of blue and purple striped soft pants that reminded you of what little you had ever seen of the god-tier clothing.

Panicking a little, you had stood up and then promptly flopped back down and dropped completely into a panic attack as you took in the details of the room around you. A looking glass on the wall showed you your new face.

You had almost the same face.

The coloring was wrong, and your hair was now a bright rust color, but the features were the same and the purple streak was still there.

Your eyes, instead of the yellow-orange and black that was slowing fading into a violet that matched your blood, were now a blue-green color that reminded you more of Terezi than anything else. Your shoulders, bare of any fabric, had freckles that looked like the scales you once had.

Taking a deep breath, shaking as you realized you no longer had gills, you frowned at your reflection. The human in the glass looked back at you, eyes lost and confused, lips turned down in a frown that twisted your entire face.

You ghosted the tips of your fingers over the glass, mouthing syllables softly.

You still had your accent.

A knock on the door made you startle, hands clenching up. Stark white imprints were left behind when you pulled your fingers from your neck, swallowing nervously. "H-" you cleared your throat, then tried again. "Hey?"

"Fuckin' fuck, can I come in?" silence followed the question, then broke again. "It's Cronus, by the vway."

"Yeah." you decided after a few seconds. "I think the door's unlocked?" the lilt on the end of the phrase that made it a question confused you for a second. You were so unused to sounding unsure.

The handle of the door turned and the door opened, admitting the man who identified himself as your dancestor. He looked even more like you now than he had in the dream bubbles. The eyes, the hair, the freckles across his nose...It was like the two of your were almost copies of each other. "Hey." he said softly, arms crossed over his chest. Unlike you, he was wearing a dark green tank top, black pajama pants nearly obscuring his feet.

"Hey." you swallowed against the lump in your throat. A flash of memories, like a movie played at triple speed, made you close your eyes for a second. Almost before you could identify the information given, you knew what it all was. "Are you gettin' wweird memories too?"

Cronus nodded, running his hands back through his hair. Without any gel in it, it flopped back down in the wake of his fingers. "The ablution block of this place has things in it that I'd call mine." he started slowly, then shuffled over to the concupescient couch (the bed, your mind whispered.) and sat down on the edge of it. "So..."

"Wwe're human." you blinked, the words scaring you so much more now that you said them outloud.

He drew his knees to his chest, wrapped his arms around them. "Yeah."

You sighed, then drew yourself up to your full height. "Wwhat else havve you got? The memories, I mean."

"I got a job," he hesitated, then looked up at you again. "I vwork at a body shop, fixin' cars. I got a group a' friends that I only see a fewv times a vweek. I think they might be Aranea and Meenah?" he rubbed at his forehead, fingers digging into the small spot between his eyebrows. "Ain't got many friends, got evwen less time ta see them. You?"

The words sounded strange to you, and you're willing to bet that they feel weird to him. "I'm a college student." You crossed the room to sit next to him, press your arm against his. "I havve a part time job at a bookstore that's less than a mile from here. I like photography, especially nature photos. I havve evven less friends than you, and you constantly nag me about it." You looked up, met his eyes, then shrugged helplessly. "You're my brother."

He sat there for a minute, studying your face, then held out a hand. "Carl."

You held yours out in turn. "Erasmus, but I go by the last name of our family wwith the end chopped off." you shudder briefly, your other hand going to your gut, the memory of Kanaya slicing through you like paper under the force of her chainsaw. "Erik."

Cronus put his arm around you, tucked your head against his cheek, then kissed the top of it. "Vwe'll be okay." he whispered.

The two of you, in the mirror, looked almost identical. From the memories in your head, you know that he's seven years older than you, and that your parents are off travelling the world. You come from a rich family that decided affection meant nothing and money took the place of actually raising their kids.

Now, however, you pull the dark purple scarf you found in your closet further up your face, blocking out the worst of the chill.

Despite being human, your body temperature is still colder than would be comfortable, and Cronus walks next to you, as close as he can be without running into you. The two of you are shivering messes in the sudden breeze that kicks up every few minutes.

Both of you sigh in relief when the sun comes out and seems to banish the wind.

"Fuck," Cronus whines, hands tucked deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched up around his face. "Vwhy the fuck is it so fuckin' cold?" his nose scrunches up as well, lips pursing in a deep frown. He goes quiet again, and you briefly glance at the person coming towards you on the sidewalk. You think about doubling back, heading for the coffee shop that the two of you passed a few minutes ago.

The silence between you and him feels comfortable, in a way that you haven't felt since your lusus died.

The gentle tap-tap-tap of the approaching person slips out of your mind as you rub your hands together. The walk had been your idea, a chance to get a first hand look at the new world you found yourselves in. Instead of relying on the generated memories, you two had charted a path that would take you through the inner portion of the city, through a couple of parks.
It would give you a chance to see how people interacted with each other and the surroundings without seeming like creeps.

Your entire train of thought is derailed when your foot catches on the cane of the person who had been coming towards you. The soft rubber bumper on the end of it jams against the underside of your toes, causing the upper end of it to smack into his chest.

When he drops to the ground to avoid the cane going into his face, you follow the movement with your body, hands out to steady them. You know what the cane means, you remember Terezi in all of her terrifying glory, you should have been watching better. You can feel the apology bubbling out of you already, and when the sun catches on the blue and red glasses you swear you can feel your heart stop cold.

He says something in return, but all you can focus on is the fact that he's got the right glasses and his hair is spiked in that ridiculous way and he has the lisp you remember.

Cronus, the asshole, keeps walking.

When you call out to him, make him stop in his tracks, the guy jolts, then goes stiff under your hand. You know you still have your accent, you know you still sound enough like you that anyone who knew what they were listening for would be able to identify you.

You help him stand, help him get back to how neat he was when you ran into him, and then you can't stop touching him. Cronus is coming closer now, jaw dropped and eyes wide as he takes in Sollux Captor. Sollux leans into you, the two of you talk for a bit, and then the three of you walk somewhere, Sollux leading the way.

Before he had lead the way, you had gotten to kiss him.

Holy god, you got to kiss him.

He started it.

Holy god.

As a troll, it was one of the few things that you had wanted so desperately that it became something that made you angry. As a human, he has chapped lips and there's a patch of dry skin on his neck that makes you worry, but he is still him.

You don't remember much of the journey back to his apartment, but you know it smells so much like him that you don't even need the heightened sense of smell that you find yourself missing.

"Tho." he says, gesturing wide enough to encompass the entire room. "Thith ith my plathe."

You reach for him, fingers catching in the hem of his shirt as you say. "Sol, wwould you fuckin' come here for a second?"

He lets you pull him in closer, lets you nudge him onto the couch as you take in his face. He looks like he's the same age as you, and you find it almost deeply unfair that he still looks so much like himself. In response to you letting your hand drop, his searches out your knee, his slightly sharp nails digging into the flesh beneath your pants.

"Be honetht," he starts solemnly. "You're wearing your hipther-douthe thcarf, aren't you?"

You laugh, almost hysterical, as you pull him close again. "No." you answer truthfully. "This one's just purple. Didn't havve my blue striped one wwhen I wwent to look for it."

Cronus, off to the side, snorts in amusement. Sollux looks up at him, eyes focused somewhere on the wall three feet to his left. "Fuck off, dancethtor." he quips, grinning when Cronus hisses at him. "You may be the one that thurvived that methh, but that doethn't mean you're the throngetht geneticth in the gene pool."

"I havve to ask you," you start, grazing your knuckles over his cheek slowly. Unlike when Cronus approached without warning, every quiet touch from you seems to invoke a pleased little noise from him. "Do you knoww wwhy wwe're here?"

"Fuck if I know." he almost growls as he says it, the noise more troll than human. "I think that the game decided to convert the oneth who died into thaved data? I know that FF'th back, I've met up with her a few timeth thince waking up here." when you go still, hand still against his face, he turns to you. His eyes, one blue and one brown, are pale and unseeing, but you still get the sensation that he's studying you.

When he speaks again, it's quieter, more reserved. "You aren't planning on finding her and getting revenge, right?"

The tone of voice he uses suggests that it would be a bad idea for you to even think about it, and the hand that clenches tightly around his folded up cane suggests that he would not hesitate to beat you with it if he thought that was the case.

You shake your head, the thought dismissed before you can even entertain it. "No," you watch him relax, knuckles going back to the normal color as he smiles softly. The expression makes you want to hold him, his body pressed against yours, and capture the image for eternity. Sollux Captor is smiling for you, is looking pleased to have found you, is looking happy because of something you said. "I wwas stupid, I should havve let go."

You know that now, and now you aren't even able to dredge up the slightest bit of grudge against him. She ran from you because you were too much for her, and she ran to him because there's just something about him that calms high-blooded trolls down.

Or rather, there was.

With a sheepish look, like he's afraid to interrupt, Cronus edges closer, dropping himself down into the chair that caps the end of the couch. "Vwhat about the other trolls?" he asks quietly, fingers clenched together so tightly that it looks like he might be losing circulation.

"I've found a lot of them." Sollux leans into the back of the couch, draws you with him. The way he holds onto you, it feels like he's scared to let go. "Feferi ith a couple of blockth away, liveth with a couple of friendth. Karkat ith theveral thitieth away, liveth with one of the humanth who played the game too." he shrugs, scratches at his head. "I can't theem to find Nepeta, Equiuth, Vrithka...Motht of the higher bloodth. Terezi ith a lawyer, I've found her. Gamzee and Tavroth are living together in a thmall houthe...Gamzee'th a baker, Tavroth ith a vet."

"Vwhat-" Cronus sighs, rubs at the set of tattooed lines on his forehead. "Vwhat about the older trolls? Ones like me?"

Sollux frowns. "Haven't really looked." he tilts his head and you swear that you could kiss him again. "Didn't even occur to me. Thorry." he reaches out slowly. "Hand me my laptop bag? Need to thow you two thomething."

With a nervous swallow, Cronus does. "Vwhat'cha showin' us Chief?"

As he pulls out his laptop, Sollux gives your big brother a sharp toothed grin that looks so much like the ones you remembered, you almost lean in and tap a knuckle against his chin in a soft mimic of the fights you used to have with him. That grin started many of them sometimes, had always let loose the wound up energy you remember having.

"People." he answers vaguely, typing just as fast as he could when he could see.

The keyboard is braile, the letters almost invisible to you if you don't look closely. When he logs into a social website, you have to blink away your surprise. One of your eyebrows still rises, and he turns into your side, nudges his chin against your shoulder. Before you can ask, he hits a button and the computer starts talking, describing where each spot on the page is.

It's only a few seconds before he almost flawlessly navigates to Feferi's page. Her hair is still the wild bush of fluff you remember, and you smile at that. "That's Fef?" you ask, almost unnecessarily. He nods before you can finish the sentence.

"The'th a marine biologitht." he explains.

You grin. "Of course she is. Gotta save the fuckin' whales, gotta keep the world alive." you shake your head, then peer at the screen. "Melanie?"

Cronus jerks over to look at the screen. "Oh, hey." he starts, making a face at the screen. "That's Meenah, and I'm kind a' sure that she's got Aranea's lil' sis on here too." he gestures, barely avoiding putting his finger tip against the small pictures on the screen.

As if in response to his movement, a chat box pops up.

Before the computer can get into the full description of what just happened, Sollux taps the volume button again and it falls silent.

When he meets your eyes, Cronus grins at you. "So, I think I'm gonna leavwe the tvwo a' ya alone, let ya catch up. If you find anything else out about the rest a' the trolls from my group, ya knowv howv ta contact me."

He sends you a wink as he leaves and locks the door behind him.

If Sollux had been able to see it, you probably would have retaliated in some immature way. Possibly by shoving the cigarette he keeps tucked behind his ear so far up his nose that he would have snorted out tobacco for weeks.

"Tho..." Sollux clears his throat, rubs at the back of his head nervously, then turns in your general direction. "He'th your..."

"Brother." you fill in quickly, and you don't think you're imagining the relieved slump of his shoulders. "He's lookin' for this guy I think he might be hung up on? Not fuckin' sure, kind of don't wwant to think about it."

"Do you have a name?"

You smile at him. "You little sneak!" you accuse playfully. "You're still a hacker, aren't you?"

He laughs and you think that you could get used to the sound. "Courthe I am, what'd you exthpect?" he sets his laptop on the coffee table, lets his fingers slide up the skin of your arm, over your shoulder, then come to a rest on your cheek again.

You let him.

The play of his fingertips over your face makes you sigh, eyes slipping closed. It feels right, like you're finally where you're supposed to be. "Do you knoww wwho wwas trying to talk to you?" you ask him.

"KK, but he knowth that I thometimeth path the fuck out with my laptop open and online, tho me not anthwering won't thurprithe him." Sollux shakes his head, his fingers sliding up into your hair. "Courthe it'th fucking gelled. Why am I even thurprithed?"

"I wwanted to knoww wwhat happened to you." you remind him quietly, catching his hands in your own. When he falls silent, eyes closing, you press gentle kisses to his knuckles.

"After you killed FF," he begins, head tilting off to the side, his still sharp features casting deep shadows. "Gamzee did thome thingth that weren't good, Vrithka killed Tavroth...I think that might be part of why GZ went off the deep end." he swallows the sigh that tries to escape him, a soft, almost silent, miserable noise that makes you ache to hold him. "AA and I helped with thome thingth, but then we kind of left and tharted to wander through the dream bubbleth. I think I've met your dancethtor before."

"Wwould make sense." you agree.

"I don't really know what happened to KK and the retht after I left." Sollux warns you, drawing his knees to his chest. He has always looked smaller than he is when he does things like that, mostly because all of his size is in the length of him. Thins arms and legs that show a lifetime of forgetting to eat when it came down to the choice between computers and food. A sharply edged face with the only soft angles being the glasses that perched on his nose.

"It's okay." you tell him, lean forward until you can take his hands again, rest them back on your face. "It's hard to talk about, isn't it?"

"ED, you tried to kill me." he shudders, one deep breath away from crying. "We were raithed ath trollth, we were taught to exthpect death...Exthept then it wath you, and I told mythelf that I hated you for yearth after you did that." he looks up at you, mismatched eyes perpetually unfocused and looking away from your face.

You go to say something, to apologize again, and he slides a hand over your mouth. "Let me talk." he whispers, biting the inside of his bottom lip. "I need to thay thith."

With a nod, you kiss his palm just once. His breath hitches, and you have to wonder how many nightmares you made him have. How many times you were the darkness that closed in on his already damaged mind and how many times you were just one more thing that tried to break him.

"When I left KK...I wathn't in the mood to play the damn game anymore." he shakes as he talks, minute trembles that leave him feeling more fragile than he would ever admit to being. "I wandered the dream bubbleth, talked to other verthionth of mythelf." he strokes his thumb over your cheek, like he's trying to memorize the details. "I found a doomed timeline where we were fluthed for each other. Other-me wath a lithping dick, hadn't had KK drop him down the thtairth while running from GZ.

"He wath wearing your thymbol." he whispers the words like he thinks nothing will happen if he says them quietly enough. "Hith verthion of you wath wearing mine."

"Wwhat-" your throat is suddenly drier than a desert, and you swallow a few times until it stops feeling like the skin is going to crack open. "Wwhat about your eyes?" you stop your hand from meeting the skin of his cheek, but it's a near thing.

"When you attacked me," he begins, both hands on your face now. "I uthed my thionicth to the point of burning out my eyeth."

"I'm sorry." you shudder, then let yourself slide out of his hands and onto the floor. Your knees hit the wood hard enough to bruise, but you ignore it as you bury your face in his knees. "I'm so sorry, Sol, I'm so fuckin' sorry." you can feel that you're shaking, and you know that if he could see you, he'd probably laugh at how messed up your face looks when you cry.

And you are crying.

For the second time in one day, you are crying, the tears soaking into the fabric of his jeans.

You don't know how long you sit there, crying into his knees, but you know that time passes and then he's on the floor too, drawing you closer until your face is buried in his shoulder and his hands are buried in your hair. You're sitting in his lap now, and without even thinking about it, you clutch him closer, as close as you can get without one of you being inside the other.

Hazy disjointed memories of being a sprite with him, of having him in your head, insist that you could be even closer.

You ignore those, focus on his warmth and the scent of him that surrounds you now.

"...ED?" he ventures softly, one hand dropping down to rest on your hip. Before he can even say anything else, you cock your body at enough of an angle that he has a palm full of you. He groans appreciatively, kneading the soft curve of your thigh. "I wath gonna athk if you wanted to thay here tonight."

You nod, lean into the hand that's still in your hair. With a sharp inhale, he presses his nose into your neck, his other hand reaching behind you to grab an entire handful of your ass. The hand in your hair tugs, the action a few shades firmer than gentle, and you let your head fall back. His lips slide against the veins of your neck, searching for a collar bone, and then his still almost-troll-sharp teeth fasten around part of your throat and you moan softly.

The press of his body is perfect against yours.

"Have to tell you," he pants out when he pulls back enough to talk. You can't see what he just did to your neck, but fuck it felt good.

"Yeah?" you're panting as well, the syllables escaping in between you dropping kisses onto whatever exposed skin you can find on him. His thin fingers slide along the waistband of your pants, and you can feel his nails leaving soft scratches in the skin.

"Might have fallen in love with you." he hisses out when you reach up and scratch gently at his scalp. You make a mental note to ask about the voices that used to plague him.

Much much later, you think once you catch up to the words he just said.

You look down at him, lips parting with an embarrassing little smack of noise. "Wwhat?"

"Don't know when. Jutht...Fell athleep one day and woke up, and then there it wath." he shrugs, trys to play it off as no big deal, hands still clutching at you.

You pull both of your hands away, every single hidden dream flaring to life in your mind as you remember how many times you thought about him saying those words. After a few moments, you put your hands on his cheeks and draw him back in for your second kiss.

"I- Fuck, Sol..." you can feel the tears rushing back, ready for another run. "Sol, I lovve you too."

Chapter Text

It's only when you wake up that you realize something is off about your bed.

There's a heat at your back that makes you wary for a second, the brush of wirey curls against your shoulder so alien that you can't help but back away. It takes a moment, your hand stretching out so slowly to make contact, but when you remember the night before, everything falls into place.

He breathes in slowly, evenly, heartbeat calm and relaxed.

You can feel it, both the breathing and the heartbeat, with your hand over his heart. When you trace your fingers down his body, you find a thick line of rough skin that neatly bisects him. An inch or so down from it is his bellybutton, the hips that have always been a combination of slim and thickly built.

He is so much smaller than he seems. For all of his bluster and his ranting and his grand ideas and ornate clothes, he is so startlingly small.

Something sticks in your throat, a stinging that you think might be the start of tears. You tamp down on it, sitting up slowly and reaching for your bedside table. Fuck, you left your cane out in the living room, you were so wrapped up in the arrival of Eridan and Cronus in your life that you left the stupid fucking thi-

Your fingers fumble over the end of it, placed further away from the edge than you normally put it.

"Mhmm..." he mumbles, and you feel the bed jostle as he moves. When his hand flops to a rest near your knee, you smile. "Sol?" he shifts again, fabric rustling as he does. "You okay?" his hand comes up to rest on your shoulder, a touch of warning as he leans into your space and retrieves something from the table. The soft click of plastic against plastic means his glasses, and you wait until you think he has them on to grab hold of his chin and kiss him again.

"'M fine," you whisper as you pull back. Your cane is still in your lap, and your left hand is still wrapped around it and maybe you should be putting some thought into putting on some clothes, but you can't really make yourself care. "I jutht...Did you fold up my cane?"

"Oh, yeah." he tenses up under your hand. "Did I do it wrong?"

"No." you shake your head minutely, and you feel him instantly relax. "It wath folded right. It'th jutht that it wath folded at all."
You can feel the silence wrap around the two of you.

When he speaks again, you hear the wariness in his voice, the hesitance of admittance. "I wwas in the dream bubbles for years, Sol. I don't evven knoww howw long it wwas anymore. I don't evven knoww howw I ended up here. One minute, it was dream bubbles and death, and the next it wwas wwaking up in an aching body that is so human it almost still hurts." he sighs, and guides your fingers to his lips when you reach there anyways.

You ghost your fingertips over the soft flesh, marvelling in the warmth.

"It's somethin' like one livving swweep equals twwenty swweeps as a ghost." he continues, lips drawing downwards in a frown. "Or maybe it's the other wway around? Time gets confusin' wwhen you're dead." his voice quakes, his entire body trembling under your touch. He shrugs, manages to quell the shaking. "All I really knoww is that I...If I got a second chance, for anythin', I wwouldn't be so..." he swallows, the noise loud in the quiet of the room. "I promised wwhoevver might be listenin' that I wwould be better."

"Better at what?" slips from your mouth before you can stop it.

You can't see it, but you know he's looking at you. "Dealin' wwith people." he takes a deep breath, both of his hands coming up to cup your chin and his thumbs are running over your cheeks. You can't help it, you lean into the touch and almost purr. "I knoww noww that wwhat I did to Fef...I don't deserve bein' forgivven for that. Or for wwhat I did to you. Or anyone, actually."

"Tho you don't want to talk to her?" you ask, mouth quirking into a smirk. The small gasp that comes out of him startles you for a second, and then you hear his breathing go ragged for a second and you understand. To be given a second chance when you so phenomenally fucked up...

"I do, evventually." he nudges his forehead against yours, presses a kiss to the spot above your top lip, lets you pull him into a kiss again.

The stillness of the morning settles in around the two of you again, his hands on your back and his glasses gone and off, somewhere to the side. It's the lazy press of lips against lips, skin against skin, and all you can really think is that this is the best you have ever felt. The voices that you heard when you were a troll have mostly left you, but they occasionally still make themselves heard. Like a deleted file, there's still traces of them in the system, but his presence seems to be a guard against them.

His fingers sweep across your ribs, gentle enough to tickle, and you laugh.

There's a pause, an obvious assessment of what just happened, and then he does it again on purpose.

"ED!" you scold, catching his hands in yours and leaning back until you're nearly off the edge of the bed. Immediately, his hands are around you again, scooting you back onto the bed and away from potentially falling off. With an almost ridiculous giggle, he kisses the tip of your nose and sits up with you still in his arms.

"Wwe should probably actually talk to people today." he suggests quietly.

With a nod, you swing your legs off the bed and stretch, your spine popping satisfactorily as you switch to standing. Your hand lands on the wall, like every morning since you moved in, and his footsteps tell you that he's stumbling around the room. "KK probably wantth to know what the fuck happened to me."

"You said he wwas used to you not answering!" he squeaks back.

You grin, steps towards the bathroom and snag your toothbrush off the counter. "He ith." you listen as he steps a little heavily in one spot. "But he probably wantth to know why I didn't anthwer him when it wath thomething like four in the afternoon."

"...Did I-" he cuts himself off.

He doesn't continue the thought, doesn't expand anything he might even possibly be thinking. It takes you a minute, but you understand. "ED, if I wanted you out of here, you'd be fucking gone already. I may be blind and thtill a lithpy bathtard, but that doethn't mean I can't defend mythelf." you hear him shifting his weight, and you sigh, still holding your toothbrush and gesturing to where you hear movement with it. "If I managed to fall in love with you when all I remembered wath you being an athhole, what maketh you think I'm going to make you leave? Or that I regret anything?"

"But-"

"No!" you cross your arms over your chest, use the bit of height that you managed to keep and look blindly down your nose at him. "ED, if you aren't piththing me off by being in my room right now..." you wait for a second, then smile at him. "All I'm thaying ith that I want you here, and I want you to have contact with people that you uthed to know."

He clears his throat and for the first time since you became human, you really wish you could see. "Am I evven wworth it? I wwoke up here, wwithout a family other than my dancestor."

You set your toothbrush down and walk towards, a hand out. He catches it in his own, presses soft kisses to the tips of your fingers. "I am nowhere near the right perthon to tell you that yo have worth." you begin, searching for the words as you breathe in his scent. "ED..." your other hand slides into his hair, and you sigh for what feels like the millionth time this morning. "All i can do ith tell you that I perthonally forgive you, and that I think FF might ath well."

For a moment, he stays pressed against you, and you stay silent and let that sink in. "However, we've moved all of ten feet today, tho we thould probably do thomething today."

He snorts, a familiar sound from when he had grey skin and horns. "Probably."

Chapter Text

You watch as he does something you can't discern with his laptop, his thin fingers tapping over the keys so rapidly that you can't keep up.

"You okay?" he turns towards you, a hand still on the computer. "Your breathing ith getting heavy. We can rethchedule if you need to. KK'll underthtand." he waits for you to answer, his other hand coming to rest on your knee. The last few days of your life have been spent getting to know what his is like, including a full list with pictures that you had to look through carefully of the people you used to know. "Pluth, it'th not like hith human knowth too much about you."

With a small smile, you lace your fingers through his. "I'm fine," you assure him, glancing at the laptop and the waiting video call. The camera on his laptop is a steady blue light as it waits for you to connect to the people on the other end. "I haven't seen Kar since I died. It'll be good to see him again, even if the species is entirely different."

He pulls your hand into his lap, cradles it between his own.

When he presses a kiss to the knuckles, it feels like an echo of something that happened a long time ago. The half formed memory sits on the edge of your mind, and you try to focus on it for a few seconds. It slips away, so much like water through a sieve that you lose it completely.

"Let's start."

He lets go with one hand, taps a button, and then sits back. The other end of the video call is picked up quickly, an angry looking young man on the other end. His hair is messy, a deep red color that is so dark it almost looks black. There's a splash of freckles across his nose, bags under his eyes that are so dark they look drawn on.

Next to him is a guy that looks about the same age. The other guy is wearing a bright blue hoodie, and it matches his eyes. His skin is almost the same color as Sollux's, and the corners of his eyes are tilted down.

"Hi Sollux!" he greets, voice far too chipper for how early it is in the day. He looks at you, head tilted to the side like a confused puppy, and then he waves enthusiastically at you. "Hello!"

"John, shut your fucking trap for a minute," the dark red haired man grumbles, jamming his elbow into John's side. John lifts his arm, tucks Karkat under it, and then grins at the camera before fluffing the former troll's hair into an even wilder mess than it already was. "Oh for fucks sake!"

"So as you may have guessed, new guy on Sollux's end, I'm John!" he's still smiling, bright and happy, and it's a startling contrast to Karkat that you almost can't parse it out.

You wave back, and then shrug. "I used to be Eridan, but noww I'm Erik."

"Yeah, the game did that to a lot of people." he giggles as Karkat burrows deeper into his side. "Sorry about this being this early. We have class in an hour, and today is one of those days that we have every minute except for right now filled."

"Fucker chose to have business as his major and some other bullshit as his minor," Karkat explains, wiping a hand over his eyes.

"It's not bullshit, Karkat!" John scolds, his free hand on his hip. "It's useful."

"What, your dumb ass is going to use baking and culinary arts? You hate baking!" Karkat growls something so quietly that the mic in his computer translates it into static. "I know for a fucking fact that you aren't a fan!"

"I'm not a fan of having cake shoved into my face so often that I have a permanent layer of sugar on my skin." John corrects him, pulling a mug from off to the side and handing it over. "Drink your coffee, you're grumpy without it." he considers for a moment, then grins mischieviously. "Well, you're always grumpy, so it only makes it a little better."

Karkat cradles the mug in his hands, rests the tip of his nose on the rim of the cup.

There aren't any insults coming forth, so he must have accepted his fate of being called grumpy and moved on from it. You look between the mug and his pleased expression. You have never seen Karkat Vantas so relaxed.

It makes sense. He's not Karkat anymore. He's still called that, his face is still the same except for coloring, but he isn't the mutant blooded troll that you knew anymore.

Sollux lifts your hand to his lips in front of them and Karkat watches, knuckles going white on his mug. When his kisses your skin again, there's a great rolling of eyes before Karkat is flipping off the camera and sighing.

"So," he says, still actually partially smiling. "Does this mean I have to tell the truth about this being my boyfriend?"

"Only if you lithten to me tell you about mine." Sollux is grinning now, and you can feel your cheeks flushing. "I think that thith meanth that everyone who took part in the game ith now in the new world that wath created by the thurvivorth."

"Oh." John looks down at Karkat. "We should get everyone together and celebrate."

"ED knowth where a few of the danthetorth are."

Karkat sits up so fast the he almost spills his coffee and you have to admit that you're worried about the fate of it and his dark grey shirt. "Those assholes came back too?"

"Met Cronuth. He'th not ath bad ath I thought he would be."

"Does that mean he knows where Kankri is? Does Cronus know where Kankri is?" Karkat looks desperate, looks worried and upset and a whole bunch of other things that you can't exactly identify. You must have looked confused or something because Karkat meets your eyes and shrugs. "My pre-loaded backstory bullshit when I got here. I have an older brother, and he and my fucking dad disappeared a couple of years ago."

"I don't knoww," you admit. "I'll have to ask him in a bit, when he gets off work. I know he knows where Meenah and Aranea are."

Sollux shifts when there's a knock on the door. "I'll be back in a minute." he excuses himself, leaving you with the laptop and two people you only barely recognize. You turn to watch him walk away, then turn back to the camera.

John and Karkat are squabbling about something, the blue eyed man holding Karkat's mug above his head and giggling everytime Karkat shouts an insult at him. "Hey?" you ask, frowning when they don't take notice. "Could the twwo a' ya stop fightin' for a second?"

Oh god, your accent gets worse when you don't control it. You sound like Cronus.

With a triumphant noise, Karkat regains his coffee, turning to you as he sips it. "Fu- Eridan." You watch as his face goes pale, his jaw going slack. "Eridan, turn around!" Next to him, John looks like someone slapped him, jaw dropped and eyes bugging out of his head.

You turn, just in time to catch the end of a baseball bat as it slams into your head.

Chapter Text

You wake up with a shackle around your ankle.

Your head hurts like a herd of elephants are stomping around in it, your back aches like you've been sleeping on a wooden board, your fingers feel numb, and there's something cold pressed against your cheek. On top of all of that, someone decided to chain you to something.

If you meet them face to face, you're going to attack and keep attacking until they stop moving.

You may be blind, but you are not helpless.

You never were.

With a soft grunt, you shift and something hits your head. It feels like a foot, and every horror story you have ever read makes you freeze in position because fuck what if it's not attached to a body? You nudge it with your head again, listening intently for any sort of sound that might indicate a living being.

"...Sol?"

Oh thank fuck.

"ED!" you try to sit up, moving your hands to steady yourself, when his hands land on your shoulders and stop you. His skin is warmer than yours, and that feels wrong because you're supposed to be warmer. Even as humans, you're warmer.
His hands are trembling against your skin.

"Sol, don't movve." he sounds close to tears and your hands are still numb. When you shake your head, his hand shifts to the back of your neck. "I wwoke up in time to see him walking away. Sol, your hands are-" he cuts himself off and his voice sounds teary. "Sol, I think he broke your fuckin' fingers."

"Wh-" you can feel the panic settling in, and you let him rearrange you until your back is pressed to his chest. "I-"

"You wwent to answwer the door and left me talkin' to Kar and John." his hands are running through your hair, his knees braced against your sides to help keep you upright. "You didn't come back and then someone hit me wwith somethin'. Based on wwhat he wwas holdin' wwhen I wwoke up here, I'd say it wwas a baseball bat."

His nails dig into your scalp as they run through your hair and your brewing headache seems a little less likely to happen.

Despite the amount of bad in this situation, you let your eyes close and let yourself relax against his chest. His breathing is even, his hands are in your hair, and so far your hands are still numb. "What did he give me? I can't feel the broken boneth."

Eridan goes still. "You can't feel them?"

"No."

He breathes out a heavy sigh, then wraps his arms around your waist. One of you is shaking, and you're out of it enough to not know which of you it is. There's no reply from him for a little bit, and you continue. "I anthwered the door becauthe I have a caretaker who cometh over thometimeth. Thought it might have been her, it'th Monday and that'th uthually when thhe cometh to check on me."

"Wwhat's her name?" he asks. His voice is blurry sounding, and you have to wonder if it was his head that was hit.

"Amanda. Thhe'th been my caretaker thince I wath twenty." you shrug. "I think thhe wath theventeen when thhe thtarted? Thhe jutht cometh over and maketh thure that I have food and all my utilitieth are working. Before you came back into my life, thhe and KK and John were the only people I talked to."

His nose presses into the patch of skin behind your ear and you sigh in what could be called contentment if you weren't locked up by some crazy fuck who knocked you both out in your apartment and apparently dragged you to some place that Eridan can't see a way out of.

"Wwe'll get out of here." he whispers, voice almost dangerous. "Sol, I swwear to wwhoevver might be listenin', wwe wwill get out of here. I wwill make sure that you get back home again."

There's a howling noise coming from somewhere now, and if you listen closely it sounds like it's in the building with you.

"What'th that?"

He shifts behind you, a hand on one of your shoulder blades as he listens to it. Whatever it is, it's angry. Whoever or whatever is making the noise, they are angrier than you have ever heard a person be. Following along with the howling is a crashing noise, like glass breaking.

"I don't knoww." he finally answers.

His words are almost swallowed as the door of the room you're in slams open.

"Holy shit." Eridan whispers. "Holy fuckin' shit."

"ED?"

"Holy fuck."

"ED, it'd be great if you talked to me right now, I don't want to hand over my reigning champion 'Aththhole' badge to you for not telling the blind guy what the fuck ith going on."

"Hello Eridan." someone speaks, and you freeze at the new voice because it sounds like somethng you've heard a million times and at the same instant it sounds completely unfamiliar. Next to your head is a sound like a computer fan, and then your hands aren't numb anymore. "You and your matesprit will be out of here in a few minutes, we just have to wait for Kurloz to catch up and find me."

"Wwait, wwhy do you knoww me?"

A laugh and the voice sounds again. "I know your brother. I helped him with something when there was still a running session of the game to consider." a hand lands on your head and you jolt, almost ramming the back of your skull into Eridan's nose. "And you are still both technically my little dark moons, even if I never actually had contact with you and yours." the feeling in the air changes, like she looked away. "I get two little mixed moons!" she exclaims.

"We should go before he gets here. I think he plans on torching the building when he's finished." someone else speaks, and you turn to Eridan and bury your face in his neck.

"How many people are here right now?" you ask quietly.

His hand rests on your back, stroking over your spine slowly. "There's you, me, and then twwo wwomen wwho seem like they are going to do damage to someone if wwhat they wwant doesn't happen."

"Oh!" the first new voice again. "I am so sorry, I didn't even think to tell you that there were people! I mean, it's obvious that there were, but I should have thought to tell you. I'm not used to any of my dreamers being blind." And then she's whispering something to someone, and you can sense the people in the room. "We've both opened up your awareness now, it should be less easy for someone to sneak up on you now."

"...Did you jutht Terezi me?"

It's a stupid question, you know that before it leaves your mouth, but it needed to be asked because you have a sudden suspicion about who these two might be.

"We may have. Now, we have to go. Wait here until Kurloz and Kankri arrive, then run for the exit. Caliborn is a problem, no matter which world he's in." her hand is on your arm for a second, and the touch seems to restore the heat you lost. "Be careful."

And then they're gone.

Whatever they did made you aware of everything. Without being able to see, you know where everything is. There's a chair in several pieces in a pile six feet away. You can tell that there's weak points in the shackles holding you and Eridan.

"Sol?"

"I thort of hope that thith ith not permanent. I can tathte my tongue, I can hear the pile of debrith, and I can almotht thmell the weak linkth in the metal of the chainth."

Chapter Text

You wake up in a dark room.

As cliche as it sounds, as horror story as it is, you wake up in a dark room and you're chained to a fucking wall. The room seems to spin as you try to sit up, and you wince as you see the blood puddled under where your head was. Your entire head hurts and when you finally remember what happened, you jerk completely upright.

Because Sollux is blind.

If someone he didn't know came to the door and didn't identify themself and stayed completely silent, he wouldn't know where they were.

He's lying on the floor next to you, hands curled together in front of his face. There's a set of shackles around his ankles and there's cuffs around his wrists. Other than a bruised lip, he seems unharmed. You let out a sigh of relief and the motion of trying to turn makes the pain in your head flare up again.

"So, you're awake."

For the first time, you look around the room and actually manage to see something. In the corner, there's a light, held by someone who is wrapped entirely in something like the cloak you once wore. What little you can see of them is covered in cloth, and when they step forward, there's a clunking noise. With each step forward of their left leg, the light catches something that looks like gold.

A pounding noise echoes in your head, drowning out everything else.

(Dying on the ground with Sollux at your side.)

Your breath catches in your throat, tears burning at the back of your eyes. There's a sharp pain in your head, and it seems to originate from the spots where your horns once were.

(A Doomed Timeline. Something that was never meant to be.)

"I wanted to ask you," they snarl, flashes of sharp teeth catching the light and fuck they look sharp enough to tear your throat out. Humans, when you were creating them, were soft and thin skinned and easy to break.

You might regret making something that turned out to be so much like a prey species now.

(Doomed and the kindest reality that you had ever known. Untouched by your rage, without the needless death of those you had attacked.)

"WHY YOU, OF ALL PEOPLE," they lean down, press the end of a baseball bat that they pulled out of their cloak against your chest and slam you into the wall. They grind it into your skin, then pull back and start again. "GOT TO LIVE A HAPPY LITTLE LIFE WHEN I HAD TO SUFFER AND LIVE WITH HER!"

You slouch down as far as you can, away from their face.

They set the light down, stripping themself of their hood, forcing you to look at their face with the baseball bat propping up your chin. The pain in your head reaches a new point of awful and then you're staring into a pair of bright red eyes set in skin that's so pale it makes milk look dark. Topping it all is a mop of white, and the word 'Albino' pops into your mind.

"You made me a FREAK while you got to live a normal life!" he shrieks at you.

You kick out at him, manage to get him to back off a little. "I didn't do jack fuckin' shit to you!" you find yourself yelling. There's an image of a younger, human, worried looking Cronus in your mind. You remember him telling you that, if someone kidnapped you, you needed to make as much noise as you could if you thought it would help.

The albino man hisses, lashing out with the baseball bat.

Instead of the hit landing on you, it lands with a sickening crack on Sollux's unprotected hands. The hands that he needs. The ones that he uses to see and read and work on his computer and oh fuck, you just got them broken.

The abuse continues until there's nothing but a sort of...Squishing sound, every time the bat lands. You only realize you're crying when the bat lands against the wall above your head, deep heaving breaths and rivers of tears that would have embarrassed you in any other situation.

"Shut-" it slams against the wall again. "UP!"

With a deep snarling noise, the man backs away, leaving the light far enough away that you can't actually reach it. "FUCK YOU!" he screams as he storms out of the room, the door closing with a slam. Left behind, on the floor and only a few inches away from you, is a set of small keys on a ring. They almost glimmer in the light, and you snatch them up, fumble them into the locks on your own handcuffs so that you can work on Sollux's at a better angle.

As you struggle, you throw out a desperate plea to whoever might be listening.

'Please,' you think, crying silently now as you pull the thick metal off of his almost abnormally thin wrists. 'Please let this not be somethin' that hurts him forever. Don't let this hurt him. Don't let this destroy him.'

You, hands shaking, finally manage to get them off and toss them to the side. Sollux is somehow still unconscious, eyes still closed and fuck he looks helpless.

'Please.'

There was already bruising on his skin. Should skin bruise that easily?

'I will let every last memory and moment of my life be erased if you just let him heal!'

Oh god, you can feel your head hurting so much more.

You remember something from the brief time that you were awake on Derse, some whispered legends that you had always just scoffed and ignored. Something about a Mother, an alien word that had meant 'Caregiver' of some kind. An ages old religion that reminded you too much of what Gamzee would talk about.

For a moment, you feel hands running through your hair. There's a touch against your forehead, and then the pain dies away. The panic packs itself up and then disappears as well, leaving you slumped against the wall while Sollux twitches against your outstretched foot. Eventually, he tries to sit up, and then you stop him because his hands are shattered and you doubt that moving them or using them will be anything good for him.

There is a haze of time as you try to keep yourself and him down, both of you talking to fill the silence.

And then, there's a woman with blue hair and she's looking at you and you put two and two together. The numbness of the pain in Sollux's hands, the sudden appearance in a closed off room with no entrances besides the door that the psychopath left through...

It spoke of something that you didn't want to think about.

"Holy shit." you whisper. "Holy fuckin' shit."

"ED?"

"Holy fuck."

"ED, it'd be great if you talked to me right now, I don't want to hand over my reigning champion 'Aththhole' badge to you for not telling the blind guy what the fuck ith going on."

"Hello Eridan." her voice is almost musical as she kneels down and looks at the two of you. Her eyes are an impossible blue, darker than her hair, and there's a smile on her lips as she reaches forward and touches your head.

"Wwait, wwhy do you knoww me?" You can't help but asking.

She tells you that she knows your brother, but she says it in a way that also mentions the game and that's when you know. You don't know why you know, but you know who she is and you know why she's here and that she's the reason Sollux is not screaming in pain.

You're only briefly aware of what happens next, the conversation that follows, the brief flash of light and something that seems to be joy made physical.

And then Sollux is blinking slowly. He still can't see, but there's a sense that he didn't have before of the space around him. She and the other woman fade out of sight, and the second they're gone completely is the moment that the door slams open again and admits a wild haired man with dark skin. Behind him is a short man that looks almost identical to Karkat as a human, and you help Sollux to his feet.

Somewhere, in the time of you talking to the woman who frightened you but also made everything better, the shackles disappeared.

"Well." the shorter man looks between the two of you, an eyebrow raised. "Kurloz, do those look like-"

Kurloz nods. The two of them step forward and Sollux cringes. "We're not going to hurt you," Karkat's twin says, hands held up in an attempt to pacify. He's wearing a bright red long sleeved shirt, a small black cancer symbol sewn into the collar. You pull Sollux into your arms when you smell smoke, and you gesture out the door.

"Howw about wwe try to trust each other wwhen wwe're not going to die of smoke and fire?"

"Agreed." Karkat-clone nods once, then turns and follows Kurloz out the door as he starts running.

The run, brief and almost frightening because there's a raging fire going on around you thanks to an angry mute man with a name that sounds like a troll. For some reason, he reminds you a hell of a lot of Gamzee when he went sober.

And fuck, that scares you.

"So, now that we're not in danger, I have to tell you that apparently Karkat told Gamzee that I had gone missing. When Kurloz's human life activated, he came to find me." Karkat-clone explains, a hand on Kurloz's shoulder. "My name, as a troll, was Kankri. I believe that Caliborn mistook me for my, in this life, little brother." he gestures off to the side.

'Caliborn' is tied to a sign post, a gag stuffed in his mouth and his baseball bat nowhere in sight. Across the parking lot is the two women, the blue haired one smiling as she shrugs. The red haired one gives you a thumbs up, motions at Caliborn and grins almost evilly.

You can't help it.

Before you turn away, you extend your middle finger to him and sneer.

Chapter Text

It has been four months.

Four months since a dark room, four months since broken hands, four months since a crazy man who used to be a Cherub named Caliborn. You found out from Sollux that Caliborn would have grown up to be a monster of a being named Lord English. You found out that Lord English was the cause of death and null timelines.

With some hesitance, Sollux told you about the timeline where you started out kinder and ended up his matesprit before you died in a fight against Lord English.

His head is in your lap right now, your fingers buried in his mussed up hair as you watch Karkat and Kankri trying to ruthlessly destroy each other in a video game that they set up on the television that you added to the new apartment that Sollux moved to. You blink, then chuckle, shaking your head slowly. Apparently, you're still getting used to it, the whole 'Living with the one you love' thing.

"What'th tho funny?" Sollux tips his head up to face you, a small smile on his face.

You laugh again, then lean down to kiss his nose, nudging your forehead against his. "I just keep havvin' to correct myself wwhen I think about this place. I think I'll get it one day, but right noww it's harder to remember that we both livve here."

Sollux snorts, an amused sound that catches the attention of the man leaning against the wall. He's wearing a yellow hoodie, and there's a mop of hair covering his eyes, but other than the brighter wardrobe and the hair, he looks almost identical to Sollux.

Which, when you think about it, makes sense.

After all, Sollux's identical twin would look almost identical to his brother. It also makes a weird sort of sense that it's Cronus's arm around the guy's waist, but you don't really want to think about it. The room is filled with the people you and Sollux have managed to find, the players of the game from the two sessions you were aware of, and the people that Kurloz and Cronus tracked down. The Dancestors seem to have landed in sibing relation to their Ancendents, and when you look around the room, they've mostly clustered together.

Kurloz, however, is plastered against Kankri's back and occasionally pressing buttons on his controller to help his matesprit win. Actually, it's only a matter of time before Karkat, with Gamzee's head on his knee and John's chin on his shoulder, expl-

"FUCK!" He spits the word out like something vile, tossing the controller down. "It's not fair to have two people playing at the same time, you motherfuckers!"

Kankri's eyebrow arches in a smooth curve, a gleeful little smirk on his face. "You dare call me a motherfucker? I'll have you know, Karkat, that that choice of phrase could be considered triggering. I, for example, have never once fucked our mother, and I am appalled that you would insinuate that I have. Or that I've ever thought about it! For shame, Karkat, for shame."

With his shoulders shaking from almost silent laughter, Kurloz buries his face in Kankri's sweater, which seems to possibly also be Kurloz's sweater? You don't think that Kankri is much of a skeleton themed person.

Gamzee lets out a soft honking sort of noise, an echo of the sounds he used to make as a troll, and then flies into a flurry of Spanish that's aimed at his big brother. While Kurloz answers, Kankri slips out of his arms and heads to the kitchen, ruffling his brother's hair as he passes and pausing to talk to Meenah at the door.

Damara is sitting in Meenah's lap, running a hand through the waves of curls that tumble around her shoulders and pulling it out of the way when the other woman leans in to kiss her neck. Her attention is split between her girlfriend and Sollux's caretaker.

Amanda, when you met her and saw her for the first time, turned out to be Aradia.

The unexpected revelation that some of the people who had played the game had been given younger lives as humans had been...

Astonishing, actually.

It opened up the possibility that the ones still missing were only missing because you and Sollux had been looking for them in your own age group. It meant that maybe Nepeta and Equius (And now that you knew, Horuss and Meulin) were younger and as such were cut off from socializing with people who were in their early twenties.

Sighing audibly, Amanda puts her entire hand on Damara's face, pushing her sister back a little bit before hopping off of her stool and going into the kitchen.

When you turn back to the group in front of you, you jump a little because Kurloz is staring at you intently. Before you can ask what he wants, he tilts his head at you and then looks over your shoulder at your brother. Cronus, when you look too, has his chin pressed into Mituna's shoulder. When it looks like Kurloz is considering his words carefully, almost like he's thinking about not saying anything at all, you smile at him. When you met him for the first time, you had assumed that he was mute, especially once Kankri explained that he had been as a result of their session.

"I don't evven knoww howw wwe both got so lucky." you tell him, your fingers already finding their way back into Sollux's hair.

He nods slowly, a warning in his eyes even as he smiles back. "You are good." he almost whispers the words in slightly broken english. "Is why." he sits up straighter, unfolds his legs and lets Kankri sink back down in between them. When the shorter man leans back against Kurloz's chest, he lets his eyes slide closed and his smile goes softer. "I am lucky." he mutters into the skin of Kankri's neck.

Karkat makes a noisy show about looking away from his brother, but when he turns his head to face Gamzee, you see him smiling as well.

"Wait, where the fuck is Tavros then?" he asks him.

Gamzee's grin is a little crooked, but he laughs. "Aw, man, Tavbro ain't here yet 'cause he got a school thing." he tugs nervously at his gauges, wincing slightly when Kurloz leans over and detaches his hand from them. "Ain't my fault they kin'na itch, bro!" he defends himself with a smile. "'S better than me all up and scratchin' at my new ink!"

Rolling his eyes, Kurloz nods and gestures for him to lift his sleeve.

"What'd you get this time, you fucker?" Karkat asks, the word an absent-minded addition to his vocabulary. "It better not be a fucking pin up girl."

"I wouldn't!" Gamzee almost-snarls, the edge of the highblood he had been catching in his words. "Would never do somethin' like that to my Tavbro! He..." he trails off, frowning. "I wanted to get somethin' that would always remind me of him, and I did. I ain't gettin' some other person's face tattooed on me."

You watch as this all unfolds, this oddly pleasent interaction taking place at your feet. "Wwhat did you get?"

He looks up at you and you swear that there's some purple in his eyes even now. "I got his sign." he tilts his arm towards you, lets the light shine on the specialized inks that so closely resemble the blood color that Tavros once claimed as his own. When Karkat opens his mouth, he cuts him off. "And of course I got it at my bro's shop. Where else would I go?"

"As long as you don't choose some back alley place that'll give you fucking tetanus and HIV and all that other stuff..." Karkat grumbles, letting John pull him back until their pose is mimicking the other couple.

Gamzee leans forward and kisses the top of Karkat's head, smiling brightly when he pulls back. "Ain't ever even thought about it bro." he stands up, still unfairly tall, and heads for the door because now someone is knocking. He and Tavros are just that way, weirdly in synch with each other even when one of them isn't in the room.

You look around again, smiling as you see everyone you and Sollux have managed to gather.

Somehow, without the pressures of troll society pressing down on each one of you, the entire group has managed to band together to form something that you never knew you wanted. Even with age differences and different interests and lack of meaningful friendships when you started out, something happened that you had never expected.

Somehow, despite you doing everything wrong, everything has managed to turn out alright.

Your name was ERIDAN AMPORA, and you were an asshole that destroyed everything you touched because you thought it was your right, given to you by a game you and eleven others played.

Your name is now ERAMUS M. ERIKSON, but you go by the name ERIK, and somehow you managed to find a family and a place you belong.