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The afterlife was a bit of a shock to him. In the dreambubbles there were literally dozens of different versions of themselves running about from various failed timelines.
He supposed he was just lucky to stumble upon him. Him, being the Sollux he had fought back on the meteor.
He didn’t know it was him at first, of course. The last he had seen of Sollux, before getting a chainsaw through the torso, was the Gemini knocked out cold against a wall.
He also didn’t see him at first. The dreambubble he walked into was calm and looked like a desolate part of Alternia. It was dim, the sun had just set, everything was peaceful. Fields of grass spread out in all directions, save for a lone sheltering tree in the center.
Having nothing better to do Eridan started walking towards that.
As he neared he could see someone was sitting beneath the tree and as he got closer still he could see that person was Sollux.
Unexpected, but okay.
The only real difference between this Sollux and all the other Solluxs was that this one wasn’t wearing his stupid red and blue shades. Instead he was wearing what looked suspiciously like Ferfei’s glasses.
Another strange thing about this Sollux was he wasn’t saying anything to insult him, or to tell him to go away. All the other Solluxs were really good at insulting him on sight, he’d insult them right back, they practically had a war of black overtures going on. Instead he was quiet as could be, looking off into the distance.
Eridan wondered if he was electing to ignore him instead. It took him a few minutes of standing there waiting for the psionic to give up ignoring him and tell him to get lost before he realized Sollux wasn’t looking at anything in particular.
“You’re blind,” he said, surprised despite himself.
Sollux turned his head slightly, more in his direction. That head cocked to the side. “And you’re wearing a dress,” he returned.
“This version of me isn’t,” Eridan huffed. He had seen the version of himself flouncing around in a skirt, all the versions of Sollux liked to bring it up all the time.
Sollux shrugged. He went back gazing off into the distance with his unseeing eyes.
“What happened to your eyesight?” Eridan asked.
Sollux tilted his head in his direction again. “A douchebag with a magic wand,” he said calmly. “Oh, wait, sorry, science stick.”
Eridan got it pretty damn quick. He snorted. “Serves you right,” he said. “You attacked me first, I was just defendin’ myself.”
The indifference on Sollux’s face turned to mild distaste. “Oh,” he said as he figured out what Eridan just had. “It’s you,” the distaste faded and he went back to looking impassive. “Hello,” he added.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Eridan asked. “And why don’t you have any front teeth?” he added. “I don’t remember knocking those out.”
Sollux shrugged again. “Kk dropped me down some stairs because he’s an idiot,” he replied. “I was unconscious though, didn’t feel it or anything,” he drew a deep breath and let it out, leaning back against the tree, folding his hands behind his head. “Do you want something?” he asked
Eridan was floored. No insults, not blaming, or telling him to get out of his nice quiet dreambubble. He didn’t even seem to care. He’d think he’d at least be pissed off over his lack of eyesight and teeth. At least it got rid of the lisp, all the other Solluxs still lisped like mad. “Why are you so calm?” he demanded to know.
Sollux shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be?” he replied. “Does it disturb you?” he looked a bit curious.
Eridan stood there for a moment, gap mouthed, then shut it abruptly. “No,” he replied. He then walked over and sat down beside him. For a long while he just sat there with the Sollux he had blinded, not saying a damn thing, enjoying the cool breeze and the rustle of wind through the grass.
It was actually kind of nice.
.
He kept coming back. Sure witty banter with the other Solluxs was fun and kind of arousing, but it got damn tiring after a while. There were more than enough versions of him running around for them to insult anyway, he wasn’t that necessary. Mini-skirt Eridan loved it, all the extra attention. Him, not so much.
He had finally had enough when he ran into a Sollux and an Eridan locked in an embrace that was pretty much the troll dictionary definition of caliginous. He thought that he’d find it amazing to see that it was possible, him trapped in an amorous embrace with Sollux, both fighting for the upper hand with bites and kicks…
Instead it just made him feel a little bit sick.
He fled.
.
“Hello again,” his Sollux (he wondered when he had started thinking of this Sollux as his) greeted, as he did every time Eridan came to visit him in his nice quiet sanctuary.
“Hello yourself,” Eridan grumbled.
Sollux did that contemplative head tilt thing he did when he was about to ask a question. Sure enough… “What happened?”
“I don’t wanna to talk about it,” Eridan snapped.
Actually he did want to talk about it, but telling Sollux about how he had just seen himself with… Sollux, and how he found it really fucking disturbing was a bit too much mind fuckery for one day.
“Okay, okay,” Sollux went back to studying the skyline with his unseeing eyes. After a few minutes of blessed silence the blind ghost tilted his head to the side again. “Your insults are gone,” he said casually.
“What?” Eridan replied, looking up at him.
“Your insults,” the Sollux smiled slightly as he gazed off into the distance with his blind eyes. “Going on and on about how you’re royalty and I’m a low blooded whatever the fuck, blah blah blah, you were like a broken fucking record ED. What happened? The other ones still go on about it.”
Eridan blinked. He hadn’t realized he had stopped, but if he thought about, he had a while back. How much time had passed anyway? Sweeps? Either way, if he admitted it, it was partly this Sollux’s fault. There was no point in insulting someone who didn’t insult him back and it kind of felt dumb calling a blind person scum. Like picking on the disabled. Even he had some standards. “Don’t see the point anymore I guess,” he muttered. “When it comes down to it, we’re all dead, aren’t we? Even if some of us don’t act like it.”
He looked up when he got no reply to that only to find that Sollux was still smiling. As Eridan watched he reached out, and searching fingers found the side of his face. Eridan’s breath caught and he sat very very still. Sollux gently ran his hand over his cheek, nose, edge of his glasses, before he pulled away again. “You still feel like ED,” he teased.
“Of course I am,” Eridan swallowed. “… I don’t suppose I could convince you to do that again?” he asked. As soon as he said it his face flushed. God, that came out strong, even for him. Didn’t he just run away from this? There was no need for red advances or black flirting or pailing in the afterlife. None of it was necessary and yet...
“Ehehehehe,” Sollux laughed. “Yup definitely ED,” he said.
Eridan flushed with embarrassment and scrambled to his feet. “Fine then, you don’t have to, could have just said so,” he grumbled.
A hand caught his pant leg. It tugged. “Sit down,” Sollux ordered.
Eridan sat.
“There, that’s not so bad is it?” The expression on Sollux’s face went from reproving to a bit curious as he reached out again. This time thin fingers played along the side of his face, through his hair, and finally traced the line of his lips.
Eridan pretty much forgot how to breathe. Not that it mattered if he could breathe or not ‘cause he was a damn ghost…
The other troll leaned towards him. Eridan froze completely as Sollux pressed his lips to his own.
Oh. Eridan thought. Ohhh.
.
It seemed to take little time at all for him to wind up on his back, with Sollux blindly sliding his hands down his torso to the hem of his pants, as casual as could be. “Sol,” he said, a desperate note to his voice. “Sollux.”
Sollux paused. Unseeing eyes met his own. “What?” he asked. “You want this, right?”
Eridan nodded, then shook his head. “Not… not like…” he couldn’t finish because it was beyond embarrassing, this entire situation was mortifying, what the fuck was he doing? He could feel himself blush deeply.
Sollux gave him a kind smile. He reached out again, hand fumbling for the side of his face and stroking it gently. “Shh,” he said.
“Are you shooshing me?” Eridan huffed.
That got a slight smirk. “Maybe?”
Eridan bore his teeth at the other troll, not that it mattered, because Sollux couldn’t see a damn thing. “I just don’t want you black is all,” he felt his cheek burn at the confession.
“I know,” Sollux gave him a toothless grin.
Eridan felt like his stomach had just dropped out from under him. “You do?” he said, his voice an embarrassing squeak.
Sollux leaned forwards again, hand seeking his face with sure fingers. He leaned forwards, pressing a kiss to his jaw, working his way up to his mouth. He pulled back just enough to speak. “Does it look like I want you black?” he asked.
Eridan stared. “Er… no?” he said.
Sollux gave him another grin and followed that up with another kiss. Eridan found himself beyond confused and aroused to boot. Sollux went back to fumbling for the hem of his pants and arousal won out.
Okay maybe there was no need for pailing in the afterlife, but it was sure nice. And, true to his word, this Sollux definitely did not seem to want him black at all.
.
Pailing his Sollux on red made being around all other versions of him and all other Solluxs absolutely unbearable. Point in case when he walked by a jeering one in a Prospit outfit one day. “Hey fishface, how’s dating your gross ancestor working out for you?” he called out to him.
Eridan turned. “Fuck off and leave me the hell alone Captor,” he snapped. “You got the wrong Ampora.”
Sollux stared after him as he stormed off, a puzzled expression on his face.
.
He made his way back to the bubble where his Sollux sat. He seemed to be there a lot, only occasionally going off to talk to others. Eridan didn’t know if that was because he was blind, or because he got all his visiting done when he first died and was just chilling for the rest of his afterlife. Either way, it was nice that he was so easy to find all the time. And, well, he was fond of the dreambubble too.
He settled down and instantly curled against him, shuffling down so that he could put his head in Sol’s lap. Sollux reached down and patted his head absently, the same small smile on his face that he usually wore.
“I hate you,” he muttered.
Sollux’s hand paused for a moment, before continuing. “I’m going to assume you mean other mes,” he replied.
Eridan nodded. “Yeah,” he replied.
His Sollux let out a small chuckle. “Good,” he said.
Eridan actually sat up at that. “Good? Why is that good?” he demanded to know.
Sollux chuckled. “Cause I get to keep you to myself,” he replied. He was smirking again.
Eridan blinked at that. “Oh,” he said. He flushed yet again as Sollux proceeded to show him exactly why he should consider this a good thing.
.
When he woke up one day to find he definitely wasn’t in the afterlife anymore, but rather back in his old hive Eridan nearly had a panic attack. He logged onto his husktop, demanding to know answers.
No one else seemed to know what was going on. Except for Karkat, who told him he thought they had won the game somehow, but instead of transporting the survivors into a new universe, they were back to pre-game settings. He was beyond stressed out about it as well, ranting and raving about how that wasn’t supposed to happen and how he didn’t go through all that bullshit to have to survive life on Alternia again. Eridan blocked him and went to go look for Sollux.
He had a sinking feeling Sollux was gone. By Sollux he meant his Sollux, the blind one he had become friends and then matesprits with, the one he spent nearly every undead moment with for what felt like sweeps upon sweeps. Of all the versions of Sollux running around in the afterlife, what chances were there that his Sollux was the one to be brought back?
An even bigger shock was the fact that Sollux wasn’t anywhere to be found.
No one else knew where he was either and Karkat stopped ranting long enough to get as frantic as he was with worry.
They checked out his hive only to find his lusus was dead and the footprints in the mud around his hive definitely belonged to an adult troll. Terezi sniffed up the place and declared that adult trolls had taken him, probably Imperial soldiers.
Eridan felt like he was dying. Even Ferfei, back under the protection of her horrendous lusus, couldn’t console him.
“I’m shore he’s still alive somewhere,” she said as she sat with him on the rocks in front of his hive. “We all came back. He was really glubbing talented. He’d be a big asset to the empire.”
Eridan just glared glumly out over the seascape. “Could you maybe take over the throne soon so we can find out? Because I really want to find him, Fef. I owe him that much at least.”
She gave him a surprised look, which softened with understanding. “Oh,” she said. “You’re Sollux’s Eridan, aren’t you?”
Eridan glared at her. “I ain’t no one’s nobody,” he said.
She already had a huge grin on her face. “You were the one who hung around the blind Sollux all that time! You two were inseparable.”
“That’s not true!” Eridan flushed a dark purple.
“Oh Eridan! Everyone knew about you two! I’d admit, I was even kind of jealous,” she winked.
If anything that made Eridan’s embarrassment worse. “Stop it, Fef!” he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anyway. It was probably one of the other ones that got brought back and the rest of ‘em were assholes.”
She got a pensive look on her face. “You might be in luck,” she said. “He was the last Sollux to die in our timeline,” she made a hand motion at herself. “Just like I’m the Feferi you….” She trailed off. “Well, it’s not important anymore.”
Eridan flinched. He absolutely did not want to talk about that either. And he knew there was a half dead Sollux running around with Aradia. He was probably the one that got the honors of being resurrected.
She smiled gently and placed her hand on his leg. “You’ll find him,” she said. “I know you will. And if you have to become friends with him again, that’s not so bad is it?”
Yes, it was bad. It was terrible.
.
He still looked everywhere, even though he wasn’t sure if it was his Sollux who had been brought back. He felt he owed his memory that at very least. If there was any hope at all that he’d see him again…
Unfortunately all evidence pointed towards the Gemini no longer being on the planet. He did his homework too. Apparently Geminis were randomly gathered up to do things like pilot ships and move things, using their psionic abilities to serve the empire. If the empire ran out of adult Geminis they came and got younger ones.
At least he knew then that Sol had probably been picked at random. He thought that with Sollux’s skills with computers he’d be much more valuable elsewhere than just being a tool that pointed ships in the right direction. Maybe he hadn’t had time to explain himself before he was taken.
Eridan also couldn’t get anywhere near the databases that would tell him where the other troll was. He wouldn’t be able to until he was off world, and that wouldn’t happen until he was nine sweeps old.
.
The rest of his pre-adult life passed in misery.
The only person on the face of the planet that was more miserable than him was Karkat. They developed a caliginous relationship because of that, unexpectedly, because Eridan was sulky and that made Karkat want to kick his ass. After that fight he found first hand that Karkat was a mutant, not that he cared anymore and told him that outright to his face. “Why the fuck do I care if you’re some damn lowblood mutant freak, for serious Kar,” he said as he blotted the other troll’s split lip. “I won’t care if your blood was every single fucking color of the rainbow. I don’t care about anything.”
Of course that had led to another fight, but afterwards when they were both laying about trying desperately to recover their breath Karkat had given him a contemplative look and remarked that at least his relationship with ghost Sollux had done been good for him.
Good for him? Right. It had made him miserable, that’s what it had done.
.
Three sweeps later and the entire lot of them reached final maturation. The ships came down from space to gather them up, off to be tested and assessed for new positions within the empire. The only one to stay behind was Ferfei, who went into hiding. She still needed to take over the throne, though Eridan had no idea how that was going to happen. Perhaps the Imperious Condescension would challenge her to a duel, who the fuck knew?
He feared for Karkat when they were all loaded up on ships and separated, afraid he’d be culled for his blood color, but he found out a couple weeks later that his old friend had been placed on one of the Imperial warships as a strategist. Apparently he had somehow managed to talk his way out of a culling sentence, and got off by proving he could be an asset to the empire.
That relieved the hell out of Eridan. The strategist thing relieved him as well. He knew Karkat had once upon a time aimed to become a threshecutioner, which was an appallingly bad career move for a troll that was so sensitive he cried whenever someone he knew died. Hell, he’d make a far better threshecutioner than Karkat, he had no problem with culling other trolls, though his enthusiasm for it had definitely tapered to pretty much non-existence after the game.
He himself had been conscripted into the Imperial Navy as part of the spacefleet.
He rose through the ranks, fast. His blood color gave him a one way ticket to the top. His moodiness didn’t hurt either.
He didn’t particularly care. His only care was to find out what happened to Sollux. And, well, assist Feferi with taking the throne if she ended up needing their help.
He did find him, finally, less than a half a sweep after conscription. He was able to hack (with Karkat’s help) into a confidential database that told him exactly where Sol was. He was a pilot, of course he was, on a mid-sized warship half the galaxy away.
Karkat was working his own way up the non-combative ranks, getting by with shear willpower and more talking his way out of shit, wearing contacts to show that he was a rust blood. Eridan far outranked him just based on his blood color alone, even if Karkat wasn’t a mutant. When they met for their first post maturation pailing (Karkat was the absolute worst at black relationships – being with him was like having hate-sex with a moirail and their feeling jams would take up hours,) they decided that they’d both do their best to get onto Sol’s ship. That meant putting in requests for transfer, making friends with other crew members in order to pull favors, things like that.
Eridan ended up getting transferred onboard first.
Almost exactly four sweeps after being brought back to the land of the living, Eridan found himself wandering into the deep dark bowls of a intergalactic warship, looking for an old friend who probably didn’t remember him as anything but an old rival he hated, or worse, someone who had tried to kill him more than once.
.
He hadn’t expected the tentacles.
It took him a week to get down to the helmsman’s room, which is to say get past the solid thick door that separated where the helmsman was kept from the rest of the ship. He had to get Karkat’s help again to figure out the code to break in, because it turned out not even somewhat high ranking officers on the ship knew it.
Once he got past the door Eridan could see why.
He shivered as he looked around the room with distress. The room was practically pulsing around him, almost like it was alive. The entire place was dark and dank with a faint rotten smell to it. He took another two steps into the room when several fuchsia colored tentacle-like cables snaked out from behind several computer consoles, wrapping around his arms and torso.
“What?!” Eridan gasped. One of them wrapped around his neck, choking him slightly as he twisted and turned.
“What are you doing here?” a voice demanded to know and Eridan’s heart froze in his chest. He knew that voice. It was him, it was Sollux… a little bit deeper but definitely him… except his voice seemed to be coming from all around him, from out of the walls.
“Sol it’s me!” he exclaimed. “Eri-“
The tentacle around his throat tightened slightly. “No one but the captain is allowed to enter. You are an intruder,” the other troll’s disembodied voice said impassively. “You will be held until your superiors come to retrieve you.”
Eridan’s heart fell. He didn’t recognize him? He suddenly realized there was something worse than Sollux only having bad memories of him - having no memories at all.
“Sol!” he cried out. “Sollux please,” he begged. “Let me go, it’s me, Eridan. Remember? We grew up together! We spent time together in the dreambubbles. Shit!” he started to struggle in earnest, which just led to the tentacles tightening on him more.
No, that wasn’t going to work - he didn’t want to be strangled to death or lose all circulation in his limbs. Eridan shut his eyes and forced himself to relax, going limp. When the tentacles didn’t continue to tighten he breathed a small sigh of relief and pressed on. “I know you probably won’t believe me, but I used to visit you, beside the tree, remember our tree? We spent a lot of time together. I- I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much. Please remember…” his voice caught in his throat.
The tentacles released him quiet abruptly, dropping him back onto the floor. “Oh,” the room around him said in Sollux’s voice. There was a surprised note to the disembodied voice. “It’s you,” he added.
Eridan looked around, trying to find the place where the voice was coming from. “Sol?” he asked the room tentatively. “I take it you remember me then.”
“Yes.” The room was silent for a moment. “You should leave,” it continued. “Now.”
Eridan’s mouth fell open, and then he frowned as he scrambled to his feet. “No way,” he replied. “I didn’t spend all this time lookin’ for you just to have you kick me out now that I’ve finally found you.”
“I’m not the Sollux you remember,” the disembodied voice replied. It sounded faintly angry. “The Sollux you’re looking for died sweeps ago. There’s nothing left for you.”
Eridan felt his blood run cold momentarily. Nothing left for… “I don’t care,” Eridan replied, stubbornly. “You’re Sol, that’s all that matters.”
There was a snort of humourless laughter. “Funny.” Sollux’s voice said. “Not too sure you’d be into pailing a corpse.”
Eridan felt his face drain of color now. “C – come on Sol, it can’t be that bad-”
The room laughed, deep and sarcastic. “Right. ED, get the fuck out of here.”
“No,” Eridan set his jaw.
“LEAVE,” Sollux snapped, and there was a definite threat to his voice now. A tentacle lashed out, hitting him in the center of the chest with a solid thunk.
Eridan stumbled backwards a couple steps, then regained his footing. “Still not going,” he returned stubbornly. “You’re going to have to do better than that,” Eridan knew he was banking on the fact that Sollux wouldn’t hurt him, and right then he wasn’t too sure he wouldn’t. He clenched his hands into fists and lowered his stance, preparing to be attacked.
Sure enough his comment got a growl, an actual fucking growl out of the computer. Tentacles darted out again, wrapping around his body before he could react. Eridan quickly found himself lifted into the air again. At least there wasn’t one around his neck this time. “Do you think it matters to me what you look like?” Eridan demanded to know as he forced himself not to struggle. “I was with a blind toothless version of you for sweeps, I don’t really give a fuck how hideous you look now. I mean obviously you’re gonna look different, it’s been four sweeps. But you were my best fucking friend,” his voice cracked. “I missed your stupid voice and you obviously still got that.”
There was silence from the room again. Eridan tried to force himself to relax and just breathe. No, he still wasn’t being hurt. That was a good sign. Maybe he was getting through to him.
When a small thin tentacle came up to brush against the side of his face Eridan flinched despite himself. The tentacle paused, then continued when Eridan didn’t move again, travelling up along the side of his face, touching his brow, nose, lips. It fell away again, hanging limply to the side.
There was silence and then the large tentacles that held him pulled him gently. He suddenly found himself moving through the air.
“Sol,” Eridan began as he tried to twist and turn to see where he was going. “What…”
“Calm down,” the room said. “I’m going to show you.”
Eridan went still.
He was disappearing into the blackness in the far reaches of the room. He blinked as they stopped and he realized he was in front of someone.
That someone was embedded into the deep fuchsia tentacle cables up to his waist, and his arms were held up above his head. Those were in tentacles too, nearly to his shoulders. Thin cables snaked around his head to a pair of glasses over his eyes, which flashed a dull red and blue.
The rest of him, what he could see, was definitely Sollux.
He did resemble a corpse a little. He was painfully thin, a black Gemini -shirt hanging off of his frame limply, spotted here and there with long dried yellow blood. His grey skin, which should have darkened with age, was much lighter than it should have been. His cheekbones were sharp and angular. But the worst part was how the tentacles actually looked like they were burrowed deep into his skin.
Eridan recoiled, as much as he could while being bound. “Oh my Cod,” he breathed, his eyes wide. He struggled against the tentacles that held him and they let him go. He regained his footing and reached out, trying to feel along the thick cords that disappeared into Sollux’s abdomen. “Tell me how to get you out!”
“ED, stop. You can’t,” the voice sounded slightly annoyed and Eridan stared. He could see Sollux’s mouth move as the disembodied voice in the room spoke. So he wasn’t completely plugged in, he could still move, even if it might be just his mouth and nothing more. Eridan scrambled up, his hand touching his lips. He felt cool to the touch, which was distressing as well. He drew his hand down, fumbling at his neck for a pulse. That he could find as well, beating against his fingertips.
He was definitely still alive. “You’re not a corpse,” he said, relief in his voice.
Sollux’s skin moved against his hand as the room laughed briefly, bitterly. “No,” he said. “The wires that connect to me do enough to keep my body alive. Barely,” he paused significantly. “ED…”
Eridan shook his head. He reached out, putting his arms around the other troll’s waist and resting his head against his chest. “I missed you, Sol,” he said, his words muffled in his shirt. He smelt rank, but Eridan didn’t care. He clung to the body of his bound friend, forcing his breathing to be level, and to not lose his shit in a singularly embarrassing fashion.
Eridan heard the computer sigh. “Yeah,” Sollux said quietly after a long moment. “I missed you too,” Tentacles reached out and up, drawing around him. They curled around his shoulders gently, holding him back as well as they could.
.