A/N: This was originally written for slipstream over on Archive of Our Own for the 2013 Ladystuck Fic Exchange! Their prompt was: Nepeta3Feferi. Their relationship before being merged together as a sprite, together in the dreambubbles, and how being merged into one being (and later separated) changes their interactions and understandings of each other. And/or jump waaaay into the future with Feferi as empress and Nepeta holding a high position of power within the court (bodyguard and chief tactician, maybe?) and the two of them smirking at each other knowingly and holding silent conversations with the minutest of gestures during boring as hell meetings and Nepeta causing the royal laundry constant headaches what with all the blood and rips her clothing suffers when she's out assassinating all who would threaten her beloved. I hope I did it justice!
Next week will be the six-year anniversary of Feferi's coronation, and you pace back and forth across the stage where she'll make her speech. You know that all the buildings along the street have been cleared, and there are armed Imperial guards inside each one. You had a group of mindreaders scan each guard, and you made sure the readers themselves were all olive to teal and solidly pro-reform. The best, of course, are higher blood than that, but you can't risk the possibility of a mindreader spy for the terrorist cells that support the old system getting so close to the Empress. Too much information at risk, you think, and sigh, remembering the effortless speed that the Condesce's mindreaders cleared out potential traitors on the Alternia of your youth.
Back there, on the real Alternia, not this two-mooned duplicate, everything was prey to everything else. This taught you to watch in all directions in all times! You know this is true here, but the tells of a lying politician are less clear than the crunch of a cholerbear settling into position in the branches above you was. But assassins make for much more valuable trophies, you remind yourself, and grin. In your mind's eye, you redraw the city as a jungle. The trees are skyscrapers, the sewers and alleyways are the cave systems and the underbrush. I know where a howlbeast or a slitherbeast would hide, now where would a murderer go?
You glance upwards, and hiss, long and soft like your lusus did when she smelled trouble. There are always the skies, on this new world with no Summoner and no mass killings of trolls with wings. And then there are the sewers beneath the streets – I'll need guards to search through there for bombs, you think, and try to recall Feferi's memories of the open ocean and the threats from all directions there. It's not exactly the same, but –
(You remember swimming down into the ocean, furious at Eridan and your face hot with tears and anger. You were all of three sweeps old, and how dare he try to act like you couldn't care for Mom all by yourself? You had fed her off of fish and as much flesh you could pry from injured whales without getting torn to bits by a shark yourself. You had lured the seahoofbeasts as close as you could with piles and piles of seaweed so she could catch her own food, and anyway Mom said that part of the hunger was the loneliness, that it wasn't as bad now that you were here. How dare he act like you weren't doing good enough – all he wanted to do was to kill some animals, he didn't even care about the lowbloods like you did! Everything was unfair and overwhelming and you worked so hard and you swam down, down, down, further away from Mom's voice than you had ever been.
Eventually, slowly, you let yourself float down and press against a rock, and let your sobs bubble out through your gills while you caught your breath. Down here so deep it was harder to breathe, and even harder while crying, but you were thinking more about how much you hated Eridan Ampora with all of your vascular system than the practical ways to deep-sea dive. And so you weren't paying attention, and the first tickling touch of something against your foot made you push off upwards in a panic. You weren't stupid; you knew about all the things down in the Alternian ocean and almost none of them were anything you'd want to sneak up on you – even the seahoofbeasts had venomous spines. So looking down and seeing a real full grown eel yawning up after you sent you right into a panic, and you decaptchalogued your favorite trident with a rush of displaced water. The eel blinked at the motion and swam upward, which you took as a sign to stab your trident down into its head as hard as you could, then push off and swim back to your Mom as fast as you could.
When you got home, she was worried and scolding, not sympathetic. She told you in her whispery bubbly voice like the vents far beneath you that you had gone into its home, and what if it had just been curious? All of which you thought was nonsense, because you were curious about a lot of things you didn't try to eat, and anyway all of Alternia was yours by birthright, straight down to the little crags that eels lived in.
When you went back to get your trident a few days later, the eel was already mostly eaten and not good at all for your Mom.)
You snap out of the memory and shudder. You and Feferi talked for whole hours back when you first stopped being Fefeta about how you could remember each other's lives better than your own. All you really think about the subject is that you're strangely glad that the dreambubbles pull people back into re-enacted the way they were when they were alive. As much as you love Feferi, you wouldn't be happy in her life, and you don't think she would be happy in yours. No cat would do well underwater and a fish like her couldn't live in the forest like you.
Your train of thought is interrupted by the slight tingle of your earpiece. Feferi's voice rings out in your ear, unheard to the guards around you. "Nepeta, is e-ver-ything clear out there? "
"Not yet," you reply. "Well, I know how to secure all the buildings from start to finish of the parade, but we've got to secure the subways and sewers too –"
"I'll assign troops to patrol down there closer to the date," she says immediately.
"Well, duh!" you say. "I know you're not dumb enough to just charge in without checking like a big clumsy woofbeast!"
"Then what am I?" she asks, a smile in her voice.
"A most clever and hard to catch catfish!" you say. "Who wins all the battles she gets into, and knocks everyone down a notch too!"
"Nepeta, you shouldn't let me get arrogant!" Feferi exclaims, but you can tell she's about to laugh.
"Well, saury," you say, emphasizing the pun to carry it over, and you grin when Feferi breaks into giggles. "I'm just trying to make you happy and not be all purranoid, not make you easy purrey for all the dumb terrible old officials who're just waiting for you to get tangled up in the net of your own plans."
"You should apologize, my Pouncellor, for defaming your Empress!" Feferi says. "We've got business to do, and when you're done over there, then you come back to report to me in person."
"I'm done now," you say, and gesture for the guard's captain to come over to you.
"Excellent!" Feferi says. "I'll be waiting for you," and you hear the hissing buzz of the secure beetlephone settling down again on the other end.
"Go down the streets and mark every sewer entrance, alleyway, or subway along with the minimum number of guards needed to hold an space of that size," you call out to the captain. "We'll be blocking them off physically, but snakes always find another way out of their burrows after you've caved them in." She nods, and doesn't question why you're already bounding away down the steps. Everyone knows you have regular appointments with the Empress, and everyone knows your downed assassin count has passed into the double digits.
Feferi's quarters are partially below the first floor, in true seadweller style. There's an area (added on by the new royal architects) that rests above water to meet with land dwellers, and then the deeper area filled by real filtered water from the ocean just beyond the palace. You can't go too far down there, but you can see the myriad colors of cuttlefish clouding the water beyond. Feferi is down with them, stroking them and cooing to them exactly as she did on the real Alternia, in your memories from her.
The tiles shift from white to fuschia as you step on them and the DNA they pick up from you comes back as a registered friendly. Patterns activate as you move around the room, and you can see the walls of the underwater room open like petals to show a viewscreen of the newest Imperial guest.
Feferi breaks the water as soon as she sees your coat. "Nepeta!" she cries, her voice burbling with the water still in her gills. It spills down her throat and over her wetsuit, and you can see where her thoracic gills flush their last breath as well. She pants for a moment as her body switches over its method of breathing, and then sits up grinning. "Uncover any plots to overthrow the government today?" she asks.
"No, but I'm hearing whiskers of a plan for next week," you tell her. She rolls her eyes.
"Not after you practically skinned that skinny old indigo last month!" she says. "I'd betta lot of money that it's just paranoia from last year's plot."
"They would have made the plans before that," you point out, and sit down cross-legged on a dry section of the floor so you aren't towering over her anymore. "And anyway, I didn't purractically skin him, I did skin him! Right here in this room."
"But it was all the extra security measures we've put in place in and out and around the city, like the new tiles, that I was talking about!" she protests, and collapses dramatically to put her head in your lap. "And did you really have to put his body in the water? The room is self-cleaning, so that wasn't an issue, but now all the cuttlefish keep bothering me and I think they want another troll."
"The old Empress would've just found them a troll off the streets," you say. "And he was already in the water, that's why they got to him."
"Well, I'm not the old Empress, so I'll just give them my next assassin if Terezi's people don't need them for too long! How's that for a plan?" Feferi tilts her head backwards so you can see her anglerfish grin. "And if they do, then my cuttlefish can suck it and stop moping about! The gunk in the harbor messed them up way more than any little lack of their favorite food did, and they're safe inside now, so there."
"Yeah, but they purrobably got a steady supply of troll down in the harbor by the docks," you point out, and poke her in the forehead. Feferi squawks and swats at your hand. "Exactly like a cat!" you crow.
"I was you for months," she cries, and punches you in the shoulder. With her head on your lap, it's an awkward angle, and so it doesn't do much for all her strength. "So of course I act like you sometimes! I don't think you got your swimming skills in that old forest of yours, I bet you still had freshwater seatoothbeasts up there."
"I never saw any, but one of my neighbors would always insist that one almost got his lusus. He even went to the Imperial office for our area to report it and get it killed, and they culled him for being too much of a wuss to do it himself." There is a pause in the room.
"That wasn't right," Feferi says. "If I heard about someone like that now, I'd take them off to the city or to a farm where they wouldn't have to worry about wild animals like that."
"Duh!" you say. "If I thought that was right, I wouldn't be here."
"That would be terrible," Feferi says, "I mean, twenty years ago I wouldn't have cared, but – "
"We hadn't even played the game then!" you protest. "I didn't care about half of us and especially not any aliens like the humans or the carapacians."
"I know that!" Feferi says, gesturing. "I just mean that being Fefeta made me understand you like nobody else."
"That could sound awfully pale," you say, frowning down at her.
"You know I don't mean it that way!" she exclaims, swatting at your arm again. "You and Equius have been together forever, and pale isn't for me. The Empress has too many advisors and committees to only have one person balance her out."
"But not too many to stop her from from being as flushed as thick red meat?" you say.
"Ew! My teeth would get stuck in that," Feferi says. "No, you're as flushed as fresh bloody hoofbeast, but I'm as flushed as a shimmery fish out on the reef."
"Or an octopus hiding?" you ask. "Or a crab?"
"Not a crab," she says, shaking her head emphatically. "That would mean I was cooked, and I've still got lots of plans to put my arms into.
"But the hoofbeast meat you said I was like was dead too!" you protest, smiling.
"I only said the hoofbeast was bleeding!" Feferi argues. "It could still be fighting."
"No you didn't!" you say, "You definitely said it was dead. But – what if I was as flushed for you as a purrbeast with a mouthful of delicious fresh prey?"
"It's settled," Feferi says, and you settle into a companionable silence. The water just a few feet away from you laps gently at the edge of the pool.
"You know what?" Feferi says suddenly after a couple of minutes of quiet.
"Not yet," you reply.
"You're so cute I could cuttlefish with you all night long!" she says, and grins with all ten thousand of her needle-thin teeth.
You swoop down for a kiss, but she laughs and turns her head, so you wind up with a mouthful of gill. Neither of you mind at all.