Greetings one and all.

This is my first HS fanfiction I've posted, so I'd appreciate it if you left reviews with your thoughts for improvement.

This IS slightly AU- the trolls and two of the kids are on the meteor, fleeing the Scratched session from Bec Noir. However, everyone is alive (with the possible exception of Aradia?) and not, you know, murdered or left behind.

I should probably apologize for the short length of chapter 1, but whatever, this is my not caring face.

The artist responsible for this sexy cover image is =Aquillic-Tiger on deviantART. Definitely worth checking out :O

Thanks, enjoy!

CENOTAPH

Chapter 1

Three years was a long time.
Long even for a normal life. But longer still aboard the cold shell that was their world now.
Their world, their savior, their tomb, their home.
The meteor was unevenly divided up to provide the kids and trolls with not only a living space, but almost everything they needed to eke out life in the abandoned labs. A central wing held banks of computers, the kitchens, and public alchemiters. Individual quarters branched off from the central areas, twisting away into the myriad labyrinths of rusting pipes, tortured metal, and cold blackness. Almost everyone had elected to keep their quarters as small and as close to the others' as possible, half out of convenience and half out of a mind of safety. The upper levels were mostly safe, but the underlabs and far reaches of the top layer were infested with Imps, and as you went down farther, much worse things.
Sollux had repaired and developed the lab's security systems enough that there was usually advance warning of intruders in the upper levels, but Karkat had quickly decided there was a need for greater security, and assigned regular patrol duties. They rotated twice-daily, a task complicated by the nocturnal nature of the trolls.
Without John and Jade, and with the addition of Argent and the Mayor, the group more or less struggled to get by. The occasional message found its way through Paradox Space to reach them, but Sollux doubted that their own replies were received as frequently.
Dave was unusually solemn without his best bro around, and only rarely acquiesced to a "jousting of slam poetry" with Tavros. Whatever loneliness he felt was hidden far beyond his sunglasses, and concealed just as well through his regular outings with Terezi.
Rose was coping somewhat better, yet felt the absence of the Egbert siblings acutely, although only Kanaya was entitled to be aware of it. Instead, Rose tried to distract herself through her unofficial position as the group's resident psychiatrist, a job that was "not completely devoid of thanks, but also one of harrowing difficulty and of the utmost importance," as she put it.
So it was not of great surprise when, as she made her way through one of the dimly-lit corridors to the lab's public space, Rose nearly collided with a rather distressed-looking troll, dressed in regal finery and many jangly bits of jewelry, but wearing a most unpracticed frown.
"Hi Rose," Feferi said unhappily.
"Hello, Feferi. What's wrong?" Rose asked, with not a little exasperation.
The highblood troll clasped her delicate-looking hands behind her, but Rose was not fooled. She knew that, although immature, Feferi possessed the strength of an apex predator, and could probably tear Rose in half, dainty nails or no.
"It's about Eridan, isn't it?" Rose guessed, when Feferi failed to respond.
The highblood troll shifted uncomfortably, looking at her feet.
"Maayyyybeeee..."
Rose sighed, and tried to find a comfortable piece of wall to lean against. It was a venture doomed to fantastic failure, and she ended up awkwardly braced against a portion of freezing steel with several bolts digging into her spine. Still, it was the best she could do whilst seeming casual.
"Whale, I saw you talking to him the other day, and I was wondering... does he seem like he's doing okay to you?"
In reality, Eridan had shoved past Rose on his way from the dingy public cafeteria, and she'd stopped reluctantly, but compelled by curiosity to know why he was in such a hurry.
"Outta my wway, uh... human. I'm kinda busy at the moment," Eridan had blurted, his words barely intelligible under his heavy seadweller's accent.
"Whatever could be so important as to obviate your manners?" Rose asked pointedly, not moving aside.
"Wwhat? Oh, you're Kan's matesprit, so you gotta be a wwordy one. Sorry I'm wway too busy to be dealin with you humans right now," he said impatiently, brushing past her and into the hallway.

"Our interaction has been... negligible, I fear," Rose said, frowning.
"Oh..." Feferi glubbed unhappily. "I've been a little worried about him, ever since..." She trailed off, but had already said enough for Rose to infer the rest. She'd heard from Kanaya about Eridan and Feferi's breakup a while ago, and hadn't thought much of it at the time.
"If anything were wrong, Karkat will have taken care of it," Rose assured her. "All I know is that apparently he's quite occupied with some important matter or another."
"Oh... Whale, I guess that makes sense..." Feferi said, thinking.
Hmm.. Most fortuitous.
"I suppose I could make an inquiry to ascertain the nature of his more recent irregularities," Rose said, exploring.
"That would be amazing, Rose, thank you!" Feferi said brightly, taking Rose's hand in both of hers.
"Don't mention it," Rose replied graciously. "I'll let you know what I find, shall I?"

"Ampora?" Karkat asked, surprised. "Why do you want to know?"
Rose had approached their esteemed leader as he sat in the public lab, typing furiously at his husktop. She'd tried to time it during the patrol rotation so there wouldn't be anyone eavesdropping, or more likely, bursting into the room via transportalizer as seemed to happen nearly every once a day.
"He made it quite clear he was "wway too busy to be dealin with you humans." Rose looked around for a chair to pull up, but Karkat had the only one and the more she looked at his workstation, which was covered in crumpled maps and strange Alternian scribbles, the more she decided against sitting anyway.
"Uh, yeah. Well, that's his own fucking business, isn't it? It's best you don't concern yourself with him," Karkat said with finality, turning back to his Trollian client. Rose tried to look over his shoulder, but there were so many chat windows open at once that she couldn't even see who all he was talking to. The timeline feed was a jumbled mess of colored lines, and Rose found herself suddenly thankful that she wasn't the one in charge of managing the time players' comings and goings.
"It was my assumption that you would take note of-" Rose began, frowning.
"You need me to make it an order? Fine. Stay the fuck away from Eridan Ampora." He glared at her for a moment, before turning back for the second time to his husktop.
"Now get back to whatever it is you were doing before you decided to engage in being a complete and total waste of my fucking time, which, by the way, I have absolutely no need for, because if you haven't noticed, I lead a team comprised a hair short of entirety by the most lunatic collection of fuckasses and shitsponges ever assembled, and my time is in no small demand for being wasted-"
Rose rolled her eyes and left, leaving Karkat to continue shouting by himself in the disarrayed lab.

Thanks! Please don't forget to review and tell me what you thought, good or bad!