Feferi opened her eyes. She was surrounded by water, as clean as can be. The water seemed to stretch as far as the eye could ever hope to see.
She twirled around in the water for a small bit of time, massively enjoying the space, and then stopped. This was her dream bubble. Feferi had died. She knew it instantly.
It was probably so easy for her to tell that she was deceased, and merely just locked into a sort of eternal dream due to the fact that she had worked to set up the dream bubbles for her friends to use. She just didn't expect that she would be using one so soon. After all, she was supposed to live; she was supposed to become Empress after the game had ended.
But now, she wouldn't be Empress, not like this, with her dead. That was even taking into account that the other remaining trolls survived the game, which she knew there was a huge chance that they would not.
The thought that her friends could all be joining her in the bubbles frightened her. It didn't, up until now, since the thought that she even could die on Derse and reality never crossed her mind as being an option.
More thoughts flooded her mind, like a bottle collapsing under the weight of pressurized sea. She knew she couldn't take all the thoughts on at once, when she wasn't even fully accepting yet of the fact that she was not living, not with her friends anymore, so she focused on the only two she could bear to have cross her mind: Eridan and Sollux.
Eridan had ended her life, she knew that. He did it without a bubble of remorse in his eyes. He was angry, and all he really wanted was her attention, she knew that as well. But he drove to such dangerous extremes to gain it, that she had to break off their moirailegence. There was only so much strain she could take inside that relationship. And how could she satisfy his wants if all he would ever want from her was more? She couldn't. He wanted everything, and since he couldn't have everything, he would eventually seek oblivion. Feferi's only hope was that he would eventually calm down and realize the truth of the matter. Had she known that her actions would cause him to snap, she knew she would have behaved differently, but still would not know what exactly to do. She was young. She didn't know everything. She didn't know how to save her friend. And that's exactly what he always was to her: her closest friend. As such, she was naturally angry in her own way that he was the one that put her in the dream bubble, but she wasn't going to froth over in her anger. He was her friend, and he always would be, even in death.
But what of Sollux? Eridan was dueling with him before he attacked her. That was what caused her to retaliate in the first place. Eridan dared touch the one that had become so precious to her. And she swore silently to herself that she would protect Sollux from Eridan if it ever came to such a prompt matter of choosing. However, Feferi didn't know if indeed Sollux had been spared his life. She hoped for it. It wasn't his time to die yet. He still had so much to gain, even if he had to do it alone, without her. Sollux had been the first to let her express her feelings; the first that didn't just regard her as the Future Empress. She was just like anyone else to him. She was normal, and free. She developed enough care and emotion towards him that she wanted the best for him, no matter the cost. She wanted to let him be able to smile, at the end of it all.
Aradia crossed his mind frequently, as Feferi knew that Sollux struggled with the fact that he couldn't save her. She saw the pain in his face whenever he saw the Aradiabot. The memory would remain ingrained in him, but all Feferi wanted was to take the hurt away. Now that she was gone, she couldn't work towards that goal. The realization that she couldn't protect and nurture him started to rip, leaving her chest hurting in mental recoil. She was useless to all her precious ones now. Just a useless, dead royal.
As the thoughts settled in her mind, she lost hope that any good could come of the situation. What at first seemed like a system to keep the dead dreaming and ignorant of their loss of life seemed like a trap to her. While the others would think that they would live forever, or would just accept things as they were, Feferi knew she wasn't going to live forever; she was just going to dream forever. And dreaming wasn't nearly as worthwhile as living.
Feferi curled up into a ball, continuing to float into the deep abyss of the ocean. She wasn't ready yet to face any of the circumstances or possibilities that faced her. It was all too scary, too overwhelming. It was too soon.
Had she looked up, she would have noticed that the water turned magenta, to match her blood color. Her dream was to transition into a nightmare; the longest nightmare of her life.