((To clarify, this idea came to me on a whim, and is loosely based on some awesome works I've read before. Basically, in the brief period of peace, Sollux reminisces about Eridan, his death, his feelings, things like that on a walk with Kanaya. Pairings involved are EriSol and implied RoseMary. This is just a drabble, so I don't know how seriously this will be taken, but reviews are always welcome and appreciated~!

I do not own the characters; they belong to the Huss of Lips.))

Two sets of footsteps echoed as they traversed the deepest part of the core. One figure was graceful, padding lightly and slowly in time with the other's unsure, stumbling step. The former's soft hand was wrapped around the latter's arm, guiding him with a self-generated light she knew he couldn't see. They were headed in the general direction of nowhere in particular, taking full advantage of the brief gap between one crushing event and the next, just walking. He hadn't yet gotten used to the fact that he had to feel the ground in front of him with a foot to make sure he didn't fall, sending the both of them who-knows-where. She hadn't gotten used to the broken, tired expression frozen on his face. Her world was bathed in light, his in darkness. What once was silence to the female was now filled with the sound of her own thoughts and questions, like why didn't she make the cut somewhere cleaner and less prominently smelly? Was the first, more scattered adversary dead too? Why had the one whom she was guiding looked so shocked and distraught at the sight—or rather feel of her handiwork? Conversely, for the first time in his life, the male's head was silent. There were no more screams and pleads of those about to die, only the sound of his breathing, shaky from the trauma of past events. For once he missed the voices, as he had access to what happened on each doomed timeline created by one time mishap or another. Sometimes they didn't even know they were about to die, and sometimes they had known all along and were telling some doomed version of him things they never would have said unless it was their last moment, which, of course, it was.

"Hey."

"Gog, what ith it, fithbreath?"

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"Everythin'."

"ED, what'th going on?"

"You an' me, well, I never knew what we were. I still don't know what it is, really. Red or black or whatever. But it's somethin', right? It doesn't have to fit in a quadrant for it to be important, 'cause life ain't about fittin' in neat little boxes. It's about livin'."

"ED, what did you do? You're being nithe, and it'th kind of worrying."

"Can you hear me?"

"What—"

"In your head. Can you hear me?"

"I don't underthtand."

"He's found us: Noir has. He's here right n—"

Wait, why did he remember that? Oh, that was right. What was said in that timeline was the closest to the truth. He found his eyes burning and only rubbed at the cheeks for any stray tears, careful not to make the sockets bleed. She noticed him do this, but let him be. What had to be done was done. They walked that way for a few more minutes, engulfed in solemn but not uncomfortable silence, until the lack of noise burnt the male almost as much as the salty tears from his wounded ducts.

"Why did you kill him?"

She shrugged.

"Answer me, Kanaya." Every word hurt, and the taste of blood filled his mouth as his tongue pressed against his gums in the making of a sound foreign to his own speech. "Anssswer. Ansssssswerrrr. Huh."

Under other, more casual circumstances, Kanaya would have laughed; instead, she simply accepted his order. "To put it simply, it was one part revenge, one part justice, and another part blind rage, if you will excuse the pun."

"What pun? Oh. Well, why revenge?"

"If you must know, he—oh, just give me your hand." He did as he was told, extending his arm towards whatever direction they were going. Her hand was small and dainty in comparison to his: all the fingers seemed to flow in one concise direction, and they weren't short not long, fat nor thin, but his hand seemed to resemble a tree—long, skinny, dry branches of fingers with knobby knuckles splaying out from a large but also thin palm. Without a second thought she pulled it to the makeshift bandage over her abdomen, allowing the hand to study the spot where it didn't meet flesh. He traced a perfect circle around the hollowness, his fingers growing sticky with fresh blood. He was used to the feeling now, though. It was all over him: all over his shoes and the hems of his pants, his knees, his face, the back of his head, elbows, hands… from the time when he was kneeling over half a body, wondering whether he should be laughing or sobbing, then realizing he was doing both. His fingers bent the fabric, nearly plunging into the hole where organs should have been. "He wanted all hope gone," was the only thing she said.

"How are you still alive?" She slumped against his hand, taking it in her own once again but not letting go this time. She radiated heat, an attribute he never associated with Kanaya. For a split second her grip on him tightened, then loosened again as she realized what she was doing.

"I don't know." The words are simple, too simple for an intellectual like her to even say. "I don't know how I'm alive, and it scares me to death." She let go of his hand then, leaving him blind again. "Maybe I should have died. It might be dark there."

"Where?"

"Wherever."

"I thought you like the light."

"I do. But darkness is beautiful too, and I want to finally meet it."

Oh. That darkness. The one who was so much like her, but so different. The one who always had its nose in a book and rambled just as much as she did. The darkness who was light as much as she was both light and darkness, that bloomed and blossomed and tore apart its fences with its thorns. His smile cracked the dried blood on his lips, pulled at the empty gums, hurt as much outside as inside.

"In that case," he searched for the right words to say, trying to make it clear to her exactly who he was mentioning, "I should hope for the best, right?" Although he couldn't see it, she smiled, understanding what she had all along. She put a hand on his shoulder, in remedy to her guilt as well as his mourning.

"Sollux." He looked up, and she could see the blood and tears again, undistinguishable from one another, rolling down his cheeks. The floor that was stained with violet and magenta and yellow and olive and indigo was joined by jade. The standing there moment, the not talking and the not giving away that you're crying except for their breathing moment, the thinking of impossible feelings and feeling impossible thoughts moment, the realizing how everything has come undone moment. They all came together and the two of them realized they had never been so raw.

"Yes?" A foreign voice to him, so tiny and vulnerable, so unlike him, answered her,

"Do you know what red and blue make?"

They walked, on and on and on, to inevitable disaster, to death and the beginnings of both hatred and love. For her, it was to darkness, darkness eventually, darkness for years. For him, it was to a home, and to several different homes, each a treasure trove of secrets and memories, and sometimes even hope. But they didn't know that, not yet. At this time the just ambled, taking time to appreciate that there was a moment where no one was dying, and friends were with them. They liked to think so, at least. Their ears filled with sound again, a bubbly giggle, a confident cackle, a nervous stammer. The calm statement, wavy, that there didn't have to be those borders, that they could just feel, that red and blue made purple. The memory of that one moment in the dark underbelly of the meteor where he pressed against a cool body, wrapped in fabric too expensive for him, without knowing why, without knowing whether to loathe or to cherish, where he learned he could do both. Their hands squeezed together, feeling the same thing with completely different memories, and then they were alone again, at the foot of a flight of stairs leading to who-knows-where, yes, there, and beyond.

"Where are we going?" She asked, or he asked, they didn't know who. They smiled.

"I have no idea."

"Forward, then?"

"Forward."