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This is stupid. It’s not even stupid in a funny way. It’s just stupid in that he thinks this is going do something. Prove something. Change anything. It won't, it never does and it never will. You are both playing a children’s game with adult concepts and neither of you know how to stop.
You aren't wrigglers anymore.
The arena smells like fresh earth, you've got two perigees before the next big tournament and the sand has been raked deep. It hasn't had the chance to become hard packed under your feet yet, you like it best like this, the feel of it between your toes and the cool night air on your shoulders.
He sits in his box─ or more, he lounges. It’s absolutely retarded the way he pops fat grapes in his mouth and watches you, mutilating the fruit with those tiny piranha teeth. He eats them unripe and impossibly sour, its a disgusting waste.
The entire arena is empty besides yourself, him, and your prey. They stopped being enemies a long time ago, and they stopping being worth your hate long before that.
You walk around each other in this stupid ritualized pre-game, like a pair of school kids waiting to see who gets enough balls to take the first flail-armed swing. Except you're both practically adults and this blueblood literally lacks testicles.
He looks at you with nervous eyes; of course he does, they only express illusions of grandeur in the first few minutes. Then the realization hits of just who you are and just what they are. His entertainment.
You can't imagine what the poor son of a bitch did. Maybe something important, maybe not. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter, all Eridan Ampora needs is an excuse. He puts his ridiculous heels up on the ornate handrail of his little violet-draped tuna can and pulls the bowl of grapes into his lap. Look at that smug motherfucker, fat nasty trash. God you wish he was fat.
You pity the highblood sucker in the dirt with you. He hefts his mace a bit and you see the attack coming probably before he does. They always break first from this pointless dance. Too nervous and too scared, they stop thinking. You can't blame them, they think they face their deaths everyday. All these insect motherfuckers do, they see a culling ditch and think 'oh I might be next.' You pity them, because they don't really know hopelessness until they're here in their final hour.
His mace hits the dirt; his arms follow it's powerful downward momentum and his feet kick up dirt as he struggles to rip it from the soft ground.
He swivels those bright blue eyes up, he knows you were just there a moment a go.
Your single spectator chuckles and it makes bile rise in your belly like nothing else. Not even the smell of the culling chute can get you nasty sick as fast as he can.
You want to break his other horn off.
You want to kiss him so hard he forgets what air is and maybe, if you're lucky, suffocates.
The poor condemned bastard charges you again, and that mace is too big for him. It speaks a lot for his ego, to carry a weapon so obviously unsuited to his physique. He awkwardly rips it from the ground and you watch him do so. The momentum of it tips him predictably backwards and almost sends him sprawling onto his ass. It's easy to just reach out and help him along, just a little push. He windmills almost too perfectly and goes down hard, gasping like a fish when all the air gets knocked right out of him.
You're just toying with your food.
Ampora is just toying with you.
He laughs at what you've become. You sneer up at him and he just pushes another succulent concord past those vile black lips.
Your doomed felon hauls himself shakily to his feet, tosses his mace in the dirt. It's a glimmer of intelligence, but too late and too little. You want so terribly for him to have a fighting chance, but this wouldn't be an execution if the odds were in his favor.
You kill him. You wish it was more glorious than that, more dramatic. You want to say he fought hard, but he was young, stupid, and arrogant. He comes at you with those bright gold talons and you just reach up and grab an attractively curled horn.
It was just a game of how clean can you make the decapitation after that.
Troll blood isn't real. It’s like snow cone syrup. It's rich and blue, and it rolls down your blade in fat beads. Your kingdom for a paper cup of ice to prove your point.
He’s angry. You like him better no other way. He drops the copper bowl of fruit on the floor and hauls his feet off the railing so he can instead lean over it and snarl at you.
You use the end of your sash to wipe the greasy blue offense off your weapon and look up at him in his little sardine tin, his flippers looking all tied in a fuss. Poor baby.
He hates it when you don't play by his rules. When you remind him that you aren't the troll he desperately wants you to be. He'll never have you. Dave Strider is damned wild mustang and Ampora doesn't even know what a cowboy is.
He’s half out of the balcony, almost half way over it before you cock an eyebrow at him. This is a game neither of you can start to play.
He gives you this strangled look and hauls himself back into his gilded cage.
It makes your heart hurt.
The ultramarine blood finally crawls far enough to soak in around your feet. It drags your attention down and you study its warm texture as is slides blue-black mud between your toes and reeks of iron. No matter how you struggle to humanize the sight, you can't.
You want to.
You want to feel guilty now. You're old enough to want that guilt for what you've done but it just doesn't come.
He brings you sacrifices like this. Sometimes they're spies, sometimes they're cowards. Occasionally both. Almost never neither.
He's like a desperate cultist, hungry for just an ounce of your time. Willing to have you spill as much of his people's blood to get it. You can't help your nature though and you always spill it to fast. Cut that precious time too short, render your moments together fleeting and unfulfilled. You are an unfulfilling god to worship, that used to delight you. Now you just wish he would find a new religion.
When you look back up he’s gathered up his copper bowl and stands staring at you.
It’s such a strange sadness in his eyes, as alien as he is. A longing you can understand but not quiet grasp.
He’s as beautiful like this as when he’s a fury of flared fins and shark teeth.
You hate him in ways that are not even close to human in concept. You love him in the most human sense of the word.
He turns and leaves because you cannot.
