Feferi is stirring.
"Oh my fuck," Eridan slurs, mouth full of his own blood and missing teeth, "oh my fuckin god, she's alive."
And he's by her side in less than a heartbeat, before Sollux can even dig his claws into that stupid fishfucker's arm, wrabbing his webbed fingers around Fef's shoulders and shaking and saying over and over, "Fef, Fef! Wake up, c'mon, Fef, you can do it, c'mon."
"The fuck are you doing, ED," he hisses instead, grabbing Eridan by the collar of his stupid goddamn cape, it's torn all to hell why is he even still wearing it. "You're gonna get yourself killed — "
"She's comin back, you yellow freak, look at her, we can't just leave her — "
Feferi is drooling pink out the side of her mouth, all her veins jumping. The long tendons down her arm are twitching under her skin, clenching and unclenching her fingers unevenly.
"No, man," Sollux says, and even as his throat closes up over her words he says, "she's gone, okay, she's fucking gone, she's not her anymore."
"What? No, fuck you, you don't want her back, fuck off, I don't need your fuckin help, mustardblood." Eridan huddles closer over Feferi's writhing corpse, jerks to tear Sollux's hand off his cape — it just rips the fabric more, another set of jagged slashes in the purple.
"I want her back, what the fuck, of course I do, she just isn't going to — "
Feferi's mouth opens wide, opens real wide. Too wide. There are some of her teeth at the back of her mouth and she swallows them dumbly. Her eyes go open and they're blank, colored still, not the dead white but blank. Eridan freezes over her. He asks her, "Fef?"
She makes a sound, a low guttural hiss, turns her whole head to stare at the various parts of Eridan.
"Oh fuck," he says, "oh fuck" and when Sollux grabs him, this time, he doesn't fight.
They run till their legs give out, leaving their weapons behind like complete idiots, huddle against an abandoned building and finally they both realize that Eridan is sobbing and whimpering like a kicked woofbeast, curling into himself like he'll disappear and leave only his stupid damn cape behind. All muttering this messed-up mash of Feferi's name and all sorts of gods and other words, and fuck fuck fuck, until Sollux scooches up close and wraps his arms around him.
"Jesus, ED, calm down," he says, "it'll be fine."
He lets Eridan cry himself to sleep against him, whispering stupid uncomforting things against his hair the whole time. "It'll be fine," he says, until he almost believes it, too.
It won't.