Have you ever felt frozen by your own personality? Like you've been trapped in your own past, wrapped tight like spider silk and left to rot by your past and future selves?
Eridan was always cold.
Always staying under the water and away from everything he could since the game restarted, not bothering to treat the cuts and bites the lusii of the new world's ocean gave him. He had broken the gun in his sylladex over his knee when he had realised the game had restarted. He wanted nothing to do with what he had done. He wanted to shed it, but it clung stickily to him and made him feel uneasy in his own skin.
Why should he interact with them? Why give himself over to what everyone wanted to do to him? He'd had some pretty nasty things happen in the dreambubbles. He'd found a giant nest of writhing monstrosities. He didn't think he would be able to find them again, but they had kept him close for over a year whilst he was there, telling him what would happen when the others found him, that he was only lovable by them. He'd been ripped from their grasp when the game ended, but they sung so prettily and the echoes still bounced from the inside of his skull. If he let himself drift, he could hear them more clearly, and he didn't miss them so achingly, and it was while drifting and listening that he bumped into the flat rock connected to a part of the mainland on which someone was sitting.
"Shit, dude!" Hands pulled at him, and he let them drag him. That was what happened with those he missed, the bone white and shadow grey things who had held him and loved him like no one else had or would, as they said themselves.
"Are you alive? Are you even fucking alive..." Pale hands waved in front of his eyes and he blinked slowly, unmoving as he was dragged onto
"...Okay, you're alive. Okay. What the fuck is up with you, man?" Someone was bending over him, so pale. Like one of them. One of them who he had missed so much.
"...sing..." He caught one of the hands with his own. "...sing for me...I missed your kind..."
"Dude. Do I like like an MP3 to you? The fuck do you mean?" Whoever it was slid a hand under his back, and sat him up.
Eridan shivered and felt his eyes sting. They weren't going to sing? He opened his mouth and began to sing one of the melodies he could remember, swooping up and down like a hymn.
The reaction was instant. The person leapt backwards, swearing and shaking, and Eridan fell sideways, still trying to sing the tune. No, this person wasn't one of them, was he? He couldn't tell. Maybe he had forgotten the song? Maybe Eridan was singing it wrong?
They suddenly held him tight, picking him up and pressing a hand against his mouth. He blinked and they pressed his head into their shoulder, whispering at him to be quiet, and he stilled, relaxing into them.
Of all the things that Karkat had expected, Dirk Strider at his door was not very high on the list. After all, Dirk was Dave's older brother, but they didn't usually meet up.
Dirk holding an almost half dead, shivering and drenched Eridan in his arms like he was cradling a newly pupated wiggler wasn't exactly at the top of the list. He stared at Eridan and then back at Dirk before Dirk pushed past him.
"I know the shit everyone did, Karkat. I know what they did but seriously, what the fuck. What the fuck is wrong with you that you didn't think to check on him." Dirk cradled Eridan as he gently put him down on the sofa.
"I don't even know what the fuck you're babbling about, Strider, and if you don't explain quickly, so help me-"
Dirk looked up and took off his glasses. "Shut the fuck up. Get me a first aid kit, and seriously listen when I tell you to." Eridan was clinging to him, not saying anything with a strange expression on his face as Dirk ran a hand gently through his hair.
"S'alright. You're okay. You'll be fine here..." Dirk had an odd way when he spoke to Eridan, a way that went up and down in tone. Eridan relaxed, and Dirk sat next to him on the sofa, always keeping a hand on his hair or face or shoulder, keeping contact.
Were they pale? No, Dirk had a moirail in Roxy. Karkat fetched the huge box he had in the nutrition block and frowned as he set it down.
"What the fuck is going on, and why does Eridan look like he's been through a meat grinder?" He peered at him and handed some antiseptic wipes, and Dirk began gently wiping at some oozing scratches and what looked suspiciously like bites from something large.
"Eridan, huh... Thought he looked familiar. So, okay. Before I tell you anything about that, I need you to listen to Eridan. Alright?" Dirk stared at him through narrowed eyes, and Karkat rolled his eyes.
"Fine, my auditory clots are open for business. In the event of pranking or bullshittery, they will shut down permanently and the largest-"
"Eridan...can you sing for me?" Dirk took Eridan's hand and Eridan cleared his throat, and began to make a little sound in the back of his throat, and a familiar tune poured out.
Oh, fuck. Karkat clasped his hands over his ears and backed away. Horrorterrors. Horrorterrors and their soft, creepy singing and oh, fuck where had Eridan learnt to sing it? Was that Eridan or a horrorterror? He felt his mind spin, and found his wrist caught by Dirk, and his scythe in his hand. He stared at it, wild eyed before turning to Dirk, while Eridan kept singing softly, dragging his breath to mimic the weird noise the horrorterrors were known to make midway through song.
"He's not Eridan. That isn't Eridan. I don't know how the fuck it got here, but that is a fucking horrorterror."
Dirk shook his head. "No. That's Eridan. That is Eridan, and you either deal with it, or I do by myself." He covered Eridan's mouth and Eridan fell silent.
"H-How...What...what even..." Karkat could feel himself shaking and Dirk let his wrist go, picking his shades up from the arm of the sofa and turning them over in his hands.
"First thing he asked me to do when I grabbed him was sing for him. To sing for him. That he'd missed me and others like me." He looked up again. "Don't pretend that you don't know what that means."
Karkat sat down where he was, staring up at Eridan.
"I..." He felt like someone had punched his heart from his chest. "You mean..."
"I mean he thought I was a horrorterror, from the looks of things. He's been with them, who knows for how long. They've been singing to him." Dirk looked at Eridan, moving his hand away from his mouth. "And they fucked up his brain, because he sure as hell doesn't sound like the person I heard about."