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The impact of flesh hitting a wall echoes in his ears. Eridan only snarls as Sollux slides down the mass of gray concrete in an unconscious heap. No, he isn’t dead. But he’s as good as. Eridan could easily finish that pissblood off right here and now, and that’ll be one less obstacle in his way.
It isn’t his fault that Sollux couldn’t see that siding with Jack is the only way out of their current predicament.
He steps closer, ready to finish Sollux off for good. He raises his wand (not a magic wand, everybody knows that magic is fake as shit) and prepares himself to release a white science blast doomed to obliterate any living being that stands in its way-
Something hard strikes him in the back of his head.
Eridan suddenly collapses to the ground, feeling a bump form under his jet black hair. His glasses are knocked off his face, a crack forming across one lens. He tries to stumble back to his feet, but his already blurry vision is made worse by a possible concussion and his legs give out underneath him.
He twists around and looks up, just in time to see a vaguely Feferi-shaped form approaching him. Her golden trident sits in her hand. Eridan can’t read the expression on her face from here. Is she upset? Enraged? Remorseful? Sadistic?
All Eridan can fully think about is how he feels. Betrayed. Abandoned. Alone. Why? Why is nobody able to see his side of the story? Why is it he’s always doomed to destroy the relationships he touches, never getting the chance to feel a fleeting sense of fulfilled romance?
This isn't fair. Isn't right.
“I’m so sorry, Eridan,” Feferi sobs as she raises her trident over her head. “I really don’t want to do this. But you’ve left me with no choice.”
The prongs are swiftly plunged into Eridan’s heart.
For a moment, it feels like the world’s on fire.
Eridan bites back the urge to cry out, because he refuses to give Feferi the satisfaction of hearing him vocalize his pain. The prongs messily rip through his flesh and he feels a rib snap.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck! It hurts so bad!
Feferi’s form finishes and begins to walk away, leaving Eridan by himself to bleed out. He grits his teeth and bites down on the inside of his cheek, only to stop when he feels the taste of violet blood rush through his mouth. The ever fuzzy world continues to distort and black spots swim before his eyes. He squeezes them shut, unsure of how much more he can take.
At long last, as the sensations in his body spread even further, Eridan can’t take it anymore and unclenches his jaw to scream.
“Woah, motherfuck! Take a chill pill and relax, brother!”
“Gamzee!?” Eridan’s eyes pop open as he stares at the troll before him. It’s…Gamzee, alright. Not his Gamzee, though; he can tell. This one has milky white irises and his chest stays perfectly flat, no sign of breathing. He’s dressed in his signature Capricorn T-shirt and polka dotted pants, but the clothes are full of rips. His hair is somewhere even more untamed than it usually is and his face paint could use a touch up.
Eridan tries to sit up. Gamzee kneels down and helps him with it. “What’s got a guy like you in a motherfuckin’ situation?”
“Where am I? What the hell is this?” Eridan frantically glances around. It appears to be Gamzee’s planet.
“You’re on LOTAM, dude.” Gamzee gestures broadly to all the tents surrounding them. “Welcome to my humble abode.”
“Humble scmumble, I don’t care,” Eridan hisses. “I’ve gotta get outta here an’ back to the meteor.”
“There ain’t no meteor, brother.”
“Bullshit! There has to be!”
Gamzee slowly shakes his head, that damned smile of his still crooked on his face. “This is a dream bubble. You’re dead, my guy.”
“I’m dead?” Eridan asks in a small voice. Did Feferi really…kill him?
“Oh come on now, being dead ain’t so motherfuckin’ bad!” Gamzee laughs. “Tell you what. Let’s go get some Faygo from my hive and slam ‘em back. Then you can tell me what’s got your little fancy cape in a twist. Purple brother to purple brother.”
“I’m not your brother…” Eridan starts to say, but then trails off as his fate looms over his head. His ex-moirail killed him. He bled to death on the floor of the meteor all by himself, with nobody willing to revive or comfort him. They all left him to die. And it stings. He’s used to feelings of solitude, but never at this scale, where the word plays itself on his loop in his thinkpan like a broken record.
Lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely…
So he follows Gamzee through LOTAM because what else is there for him to do? Where else could he really go?
They reach the hive and Gamzee sets out two bottles of sugary Faygo on the nearest table. “Here we go! One for you, and one for me. Drink up, purple brother!”
Will Gamzee stop calling him that?
Eridan tries a taste of the soda. It’s…whatever. It’s soda. Not the worst thing in the world, but there are better beverages he could be consuming instead. Although given his company, it’s more than likely that Faygo is the fanciest thing Gamzee has lying around. Eridan isn’t really sure he wants to dig into a sopor pie.
“Um…thanks, Gamz,” Eridan finally says after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence. Gamzee has just been staring at him the whole time with those milky white empty eyes of his, but it’s also entirely possible he could’ve just been zoning out as well.
“Not a problem at all. I noticed you never answered my first question anyway.”
“Um, my bad. And that was?”
“How did a guy like you end up here?”
Right. Everything comes flashing back to him and Eridan presses a hand against his forehead. “Fef, she…yeah. She an’ Sol wanted to stop me because I thought joinin’ Jack would be our best option. So we fought. Managed to knock Sol out before he got his hands on me. Wasn’t watchin’ my back, I suppose. Next thing I know, I’m here.”
“Yeesh.” Gamzee makes a face. “That’s motherfckin’ rough, buddy.”
“Yeah. You could say that again.” Eridan flops back against his chair and sighs loudly. “Why is it always me who has the worst luck?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, look at me!” Eridan points to himself. “I’m dead! Murdered by my own flush crush! An’ it’s like nobody even cared! They completely left me alone to drown in my own misery!”
Gamzee hums and rests his chin on his interlocked fingers, perhaps an attempt at appearing deep in thought. “Man, you’re just one big ol’ Negative Nancy, ain’t ya?”
“Well, what’s there to even be positive about!?”
“Fishy purple brother. Eridan. My guy.” Gamzee reaches out and pats him on the back. It reminds Eridan of the way Feferi occasionally used to soothe him back when they could be called a moirallegiance. Ugh. Look at him now, an absolute sap waxing nostalgic over a meaningless gesture.
“Death is still full of plenty of miracles and you just gotta see that,” Gamzee continues (miracles, as fake as magic). “There's the dream bubbles, which I’d say are pretty motherfuckin’ miraculous themselves. Beats a whole lotta nothing, that’s for sure. They got a lot of cool shit to see and explore. I ain’t even got the chance to see it all, and I’ve been here for fuck know how long. You get to take things slow, move at your own pace, just sit back with a pie in your lap and watch everything go by.”
That doesn’t sound…entirely repulsive.
“So that’s all I have to look forward to,” Eridan bemoans. “Just an eternity of sopor pies and mind-numbin’ boredom.”
“Aw now, it ain’t all that boring!” Gamzee drains the last of his soda and lets out a loud burp. “We’ll find stuff to do, you and me.”
“Wait, you…actually wanna hang out with me?”
“Well, yeah?” Gamzee looks almost confused. “You’re the first troll I’ve seen in a long time. So just try to keep it between us, but I get a little lonely out here once in a while.”
Eridan bites back the urge to snort, but Gamzee sounds and appears so earnest that it makes him hesitate. He didn’t think the troll was capable of any emotion out than being stoned the fuck out of his mind. And doesn’t Eridan know all too well the feeling of loneliness. Of having nobody on his side.
“What do you wanna do?” he finally asks.
Time passes. It could be hours. Days. Maybe sweeps. Eridan doesn’t know, doesn’t care. Time loses all meaning when its passing doesn’t affect him anymore. Eridan proceeds not to dwell on that much longer, more inclined to stare up at the gray skies of LOWAA with Gamzee at his side.
Turns out that when Gamzee mentioned kicking back with a pie in his lap, he was being as serious as someone like Gamzee possibly can. Not like Eridan’s in a position to judge either, since he’s helped himself to more than his fair share of the gooey green substances in the pie tins. He absentmindedly wipes the remains of the sopor from the corners of his lips, feeling a buzz come on already.
“How the hell do you do it, Gamz?”
“Do what, my guy?”
“Act so carefree an’ stuff.” Eridan throws his arms out and almost smacks Gamzee in the face doing so. “I don’t think I could ever meet a troll more chilled out about everything than you. So what’s your secret?”
“The secret is to hang loose and not give a flying fuck about what other people think or do.” Gamzee’s words slur ever so slightly and Eridan can’t help but find it oddly adorable. “Life’s too motherfuckin’ short to worry about things outside your control, y’know. I learned that the hard way. Like Feferi, for example. She ain’t digging your vibe? Just gotta let her go and move on!”
Eridan sighs. “I wish it was that simple. But it’s Fef. She was my everythin’. I mean, I’m still tryin’ to process the fact that she’d kill me so easily, like sweeps of being pale for each other meant absolutely nothin’ to her.”
Gamzee makes a very undignified noise. “She wasn’t good enough for you anyways, bro.”
Eridan sits up and throws an empty pie tin to the side. “What, an’ you’re sayin’ you are?”
Gamzee merely winks in response. Eridan huffs. “Ugh. Gamz, every single iteration of you is completely unbelievable.”
“Don’t try to deny it, purple brother.”
“I may be lonely and pathetic, but I ain’t desperate enough to get with you just because.” Eridan rolls his eyes.”Because you’re the only other troll out in this dream bubble an’ because you’re actually nice to me an’ because…”
He trails off, watching as Gamzee slowly traces a doodle in a half-eaten pie with his finger. He slowly pulls out a gob of sopor and holds it up to Eridan’s nose. Eridan doesn’t hesitate to suck it off Gamzee’s finger, the obscenity and lewdness of the gesture not completely lost on him.
Maybe he’s not totally lonely after all.
Gamzee only laughs again, never one to stop smiling. “You never fail to amaze me.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, mock me all you want.”
“I’m serious, brother. You could do way better than Feferi. And we might as well make the most of the time we have together.”
Eridan looks up at the multicoloured crack in the sky. His smile slowly forms, mirroring the lopsided one on Gamzee’s face. “Yeah, I suppose that’s true.”
He goes back to lying down, curled up at Gamzee’s side.