Chapter Text
==> Eridan: wwake up
You are beginning your day, night, whatever it is right now, the same as you always do. Glaring up at the ceiling of wherever you happen to be in, eyes watering with agony.
You always make yourself wait a little bit before locating where your legs are, because if you don’t brace yourself, you’ll get sick and you don’t want to choke on your vomit or ruin your scarf. You can’t exactly get up and lean over. That’s one of the many horrible side effects of being half the man you used to be.
You’re alone, just as you have been every single hour of this hell. You kill two and a half people and apparently karma decides you should be alone for the rest of eternity. Good fucking riddance. You were a lonely, whiny bitch when you were alive, and apparently you still are now that you’re dead. The angels were right.
You ponder how hard it would be to crawl out of this cave and just abandon your lower half. You evidently don’t need it in the afterlife, and it’s not exactly doing you any good. Shooting out a punch into the air, you use your arm’s momentum to carry you onto your stomach.
Bad idea! Bad idea! You knock the wind out of yourself as you put too much pressure on your abdomen gills. You start trembling at the overwhelming pain and your unease at this whole situation. Using one elbow after the other, you pull yourself forward despite your excruciating pain. A violet trail is left in your wake.
This was a huge mistake, you realize as your fins flatten with fear. Angels are near the entrance that you managed to locate. You wish you could backtrack as quickly as you can make an ass of yourself. It’s too late, they’ve seen you and they are approaching.
Their touch is like acid, it burns without being hot, and they all reach in to grab at you as they surround your sorry excuse for a body. Why are you so pathetic? Why can’t you take care of yourself? This is why no one wants to talk to you. You are just so pathetic. No one could ever take you seriously. Especially as a lover. Look how pitiful you are. It hurts just to look at your sorry excuse of a life. Wait, you’re dead. At least you aren’t a waste of a life anymore.
They know all that has ever happened to you; they are intimate with your memories and love to use them as playthings. They look harmless, if a little awkward, just pale yellow forms with long arms and long fingers that have an extra joint. They don’t look all that harmful, but the words they speak, the way they twist your memories and faint rebuttal, it almost hurts worse than the poisonous touch.
You killed her, but you thought you loved her. Your love was fake, just as fake as all the friends you think you have. Thought you had. You’re dead now, because of their fake friendship. They all have wanted you dead for sweeps because of how pathetic you are.
“It’s not true,” you whimper, but honestly, who are you kidding? Of course they’re right. You try to go blank, ignore them and their words and just go dead to the world of the dead.
Their claws rake through your spilled out guts, and poke and prod at your exposed gills. They don’t seem malicious, just sorry that they have to torment someone as worthless as you. Bored, and they keep spewing their hateful words as if it’s the only thing that brings a small amount of joy.
You cover your ears the best you can and squeeze your eyes shut in an attempt to shut them out. Even if just a little. A hideous shriek tears through your best efforts though, and you snap your head to look at the scene of an angel being gutted in front of your very eyes. And then another.
Steel blue claws rip a third one apart at the throat and abdomen, and the last angel falls to claws raking her chest into ribbons. One panting troll stands the victor, sprayed in the iridescent yellow-green of their blood. Testing the blood by smell first, she deftly licks her long claws clean.
Squatting beside you, she comments plaintively,” Aww, Ampurra, you haven’t figured it out yet.”
You’re working too hard to hide your tears to really listen to what she has to say. Great, she killed the angels for you, but now she’ll make fun of you for sure. You keep your arms folded in front of you so you can cradle your head on them. “Ampurra…” She calls as she pushes at your arm for you to respond.
Setting aside your glasses so you can better rub at your eyes, you grit out,” What?” Even you can hear the sound of crying bubbling behind your bitter question.
“What were those things?”
“... Angels,” you admit,” An’ they were kickin’ the livin’- well dead, crap out a’ me.” You’re still trembling, and it makes you feel anxious like she’ll start pointing it out soon.
“Why didn’t you efur tell us how pawful they were?” She makes sure to enunciate so you can hear all her puns, and you idly wonder how much she thinks about the puns she uses. It always took you more time than you liked to admit to come up with your fish puns, and you used them almost exclusively for making Feferi happy.
“I tr-tried… Just nobody much listened to me in the end…” Way to go. Make yourself sound even more pitiful than you already seem. “What are you doin’ here anyways?” You bite out, hoping to sound more annoyed than pained. You’re not so sure you succeeded. Thinking you might have been able to wipe away the majority of the lavender streaks from your puffy eyes, you add a glare in her direction for a good measure. She’s a bit blurry without your glasses, but her soft edges are well defined by her colorful wardrobe.
Pouting with that ridiculously cute face of hers, she answers,” Wow, way to say thanks fur rescuing you. If you must know, I was a little lonely and was hoping I’d find a furriend.” Her gaze softens as she asks,” Are you okay? I mean beside the…” She gestures at your missing half, wincing as she fails to come up with a polite way to phrase it.
“Oh, just purrfect,” you spit out mockingly, pouting yourself now. It’s not fair. You got sawed in half, but she’s just dandy in the afterlife. Sure, she’s a little dead, but at least she can walk.
She giggles, and for a split second you think she’s laughing at you until you remember you made a cat pun.
“Though, if you wouldn’t mind shovin’ my large intestines back in, I’d appreciate it.” She obliges you, being surprisingly at ease with seeing a vivisected body. Her ability to look at the morbid and not be phased at all surpasses even yours, and even mildly impresses you.
“Watch the claws cat troll,” You warn, even though she’s doing a fine job. It just seems odd for another troll to be this helpful while you’re down. She pouts momentarily, but closes her eyes and relaxes her expression.
“Do you want help turning around?” She asks. You wonder why she’s being so nice. Suspicion needles through your mind that she has ulterior motives.
“No, I don’t need a glubin’ land dweller’s help to turn myself over,” you deny snidely. In hindsight, you could’ve probably found a politer way of phrasing that while still saving face.
“Well, fine,” She sighs while rolling her eyes, standing up. She turns on her heel and prowls out the cave entrance, lithe and dangerous, and obviously a little pissed off at how you’ve been treating her.
“W-wait, where are you goin’?”
“Home,” She spats,” Away from rude sea dwellers like you.”
You realize this cave that’ve you’ve been appearing in often is probably right next to her cave. You had managed to stay away from the angels for the most part, despite their seeming drawn to you. You usually avoided talking to yourself, or at least tried. She probably had no reason to check out this cave she knew like the back of her paw until she heard signs of life- er, death.
She mentioned being lonely. You know for a fact that there should be other dead trolls besides you two, unless they all came back to life too. You can’t fathom why you’d appear in her neck of the woods if the others didn’t, but you guess it doesn’t really matter now. You fuck everything up.
Pushing yourself over as you were indeed capable of doing, your insides slosh uncomfortably. Again, the breath is knocked out of you as your gills take the brunt of the fall. You don’t bother putting your glasses back on as the world becomes more blurry and violet tinged. Seriously, you’re such an idiot. You spend the rest of the time wallowing in self pity until you go unconscious.