i. down by the water
You are ERIDAN AMPORA and your history with FEFERI PEIXES was destined for tragedy.
As a highblood with an illustrious background, you know the stories and tales of your ancestors more than most other trolls your age. You are an apt pupil, a quick learner, and you emulate your heroes with grand gestures and furs and jewels. You even find the descendant of your ancestor's kismesis, a young blueblood with a vicious lusus and a scheming mind. Your footsteps will shadow and improve upon the ones that came before you.
Amporas have always had penchants for the Peixes line. You succeed where the Orphaner failed. He died without the Condesce even knowing his name.
Feferi will die with your name on her tongue.
ii. caught staring at the symbol on her chest
You are content with being pale (the most palest pale to evver havve paled im tellin you fef) until you catch his eyes on her, lowblood scum that he is. A teal-blood, one sweep your elder, with a smile that she calls lovely. You are lovely. You can be lovely, too.
Gl'bgolyb gobbles him up with a satisfying crunch. Fef forgets about him fast, is too busy patching up your wounds and making sure you have your glasses on straight. She paps you before she leaves, a gentle gesture meant to calm you even when you're not breaking down.
It is then that you realize you are flushed for her.
iii. it's a cruel world and it's time
The Orphaner Dualscar died in obscurity, mourned by no one and missed by no one. The Condesce is never told and, if she had been, she would have killed the messenger for wasting her time.
Cronus Ampora died a troll disliked by most and would have been mourned by very few if the few who would have mourned him had not died at the same time as he. Meenah cares enough to defend him from Aranea's prodding, but remembers why the prodding was taking occurring in the first place when she speaks to him.
You see Fef in the hornpile with the mustard blood and you know that you never really had a chance.
iv. don't fool yourself
You used to dream about a future together, Fef being ruling Empress and you being the right hand of her rule. She had dreams of peace, but you had always been the realist of the pair and you knew it would take blood to secure her place upon the throne. She would guide the planet with wisdom and love, you would back her up with your Crosshairs and bloodshed in the shadows. No one would question you because you would be the most powerful male-bodied troll in Alternia – the queen's matesprite.
You saw parades and portraits and grand balls and grand battles and a beautiful love and a history that would last forever, but what you got was a chainsaw to the torso.
v. the queen has met her doom
You two were the story of a bright light and the twisting darkness around it. Stayed on the edges, crept along the corners, churned and writhed and hissed. You could have never touched her, not really, never truly been next to her because she was above you in every way, always had been, it had just taken you this long to figure that out.
You see her standing, a silhouette with a smile, and you are the pale figure behind the scenes. You watch as she disappears and you wake up on a beach, screaming with pain and pupils white as the sand around you.
vi. if i could find peace
You spend days and nights screaming. Death was never supposed to be this, spillin' gallons after gallons of your beautiful blood. The pain doesn't stop. Your hands try to find the source and all you feel is nothing below your stomach, but somehow you can still twitch your toes. It is the absence of it all, the true horror of what has happened to you. Kanaya and a chainsaw, all the way through, cut you down.
You vomit and you cry and you crawl until you think you should be numb, but you aren't numb because the incomprehensible pain of your injuries has not ceased.
vii. what the water gave me
She stitches you up, stitches up your worthless body.
"Fef?" you whimper and you cannot believe it, cannot believe that she's here, even after what you did.
She says nothing, simply sits down and gets to work. With each sharp stitch, you can feel the pain spilling out and abandoning your body. Feferi Peixes pulls you together until you are whole, and then she throws you into the water until you are clean.
"Why are you here?" you ask her as you sink to the bottom. She swims after you, flexing her long arms and legs and daring you to try to use yours. They work, you find, but you are too tired to use them. You've always been too tired – a seadweller who hates landwellers who doesn't actually enjoy being in the water himself.
"You've been screaming too long, Eridan," she tells you, the first words she says. She is beautiful in the water, natural and fitting for a seadweller princess. But you cannot bare to look at her. Her eyes are white as the moon glittering through the ocean and the current of the water moves her shirt just so the wound that killed her and the wound that you caused is visible.
It is too much.
She frowns and the look of sorrow sits too well upon her face. "I'm not gonna say I'm not mad about what you did or that I forgive you completely, Eridan. I just can't do that."
You hit the bottom of the pool and close your eyes. Amporas were never meant to be loved, you decide. Amporas were never meant to be anything.
"Eridan, don't you dare sit there and feel sorry for yourself! You do that too much and it gets you in trouble! You lose sight of what's important!" she yells and she grabs your hands. "Now you aren't going to sit at the bottom of this pool for the rest of eternity and whine about what happened when you were alive because you're dead now and you've been screaming long enough and it's time that you get over yourself and go swimming with me!"
The two of you break the top of the water together and you let the fresh, cold air fill your lungs. "Fef, I'm so sorry," spills out of your mouth and then "I love you, Fef." In one quick movement, you are against her chest and you are sobbing.
"I know, Eridan," she says. "You always have."
viii. you give, you give me it all
You are dancing in a beautiful ballroom, draped in furs and jewels and fineries. You are no hero and you are not the secret hand of the empress, but you are finding that your present is not such an awful reality.
She is beautiful, dressed in fineries from two universes, and wearing a crown befitting a queen. Queen of the ball, that is, not of any planet or any home known to either of you.
You meet in the middle. She is careful to grab you, doesn't want to strain the stitches because she knows that the fatal wound bleeds when you are too reckless in your movements. The two of you dance, careful and calculated.
Your dead heart still seizes when you see the wound that you created and sometimes you do not see her for many days and nights because she cannot handle the overly dramatic way that you go about simple emotions, but you are learning and she is teaching you.
One night, when you have been dead for many human centuries, she turns to you on the same sandy beach that brought you to the afterlife and says all matter of fact and sweet, "Eridan, I am flushed for you."
You are ERIDAN AMPORA and, for at least a night, FEFERI PEIXES sleeps in your arms.
wow i really like homestuck and erifef is my otp and i wrote this awhile back but i never got around to posting it! i hope that you liked it!
the numbers are song lyrics to an erifef fanmix i made in october that inspired the piece. the mix can be found at 8tracks at /foreverthyme/our-queen-has-met-her-doom if youre interested in listening to it.