The sound of faint music floated through Sollux's head as he woke up. He slowly opened his eyes, remembering in a daze where he was. Eridan was gone. He looked around, careful not to move his head too much. Judging from the light coming in through the window, he decided that it was probably morning. The smell of something cooking wafted to him from elsewhere in the house. His throat felt amazingly better already. Carefully, he tested the limits of his voice. "Hello?" he whispered. That was fine. "Hello?" he said a little louder. Then, "Hello? Eridan? Feferi?" His voice cracked halfway through, but the pain was significantly less than it had been the night before.

Feferi poked her head in the door. "Good morning, Sollux! Did you sleep well? Oh, Eridan remembered to feed you last night, right? I have pancakes, if you want some. Just a moment." Before Sollux could answer any of her questions, she ducked back out of the room.

There was a soft patter of footsteps. Eridan appeared in the doorway. "Mornin'. Sleep well?" he inquired. His hair was slightly tousled, and Sollux couldn't help but smile as Eridan yawned.

"Yeah. And I feel much better, too."

"You prob'ly want your glasses now, huh?" Eridan started across the room towards the table.

"No, wait. I wonder if I could jutht..." Sollux slowly tensed his arm muscles one by one. They still hurt terribly, but he managed to maneuver his arm out of the blankets, clumsily grab the glasses, and situate them on his nose. "Ow," he muttered as he carefully placed his arm back underneath the blankets.

"Wow." Eridan seemed speechless. "You heal fast."

"Well, I didn't have any broken boneth. I gueth my body'th jutht really good at patchwork."

"Well that's lucky."

Feferi returned just then with a plate of pancakes in one hand and butter and maple syrup balanced precariously in the other hand. "I brought you five to start out with, but there's lots of extras if you want more. And don't feel like you need to eat them all. And I wasn't sure what you'd want on them. We have other stuff downstairs...jam...peanut butter...nutella...is there anything else you want with them? Oh, I have drinks too."

Sollux glanced down, embarrassed. "Well, there ith one thing I alwayth have with...pretty much everything."

"Well, speak now or forever hold your peace." She giggled.

"Ith kinda weird..."

"Come on. I won't laugh."

"Well...do you have any honey?"

"Of course! I'll be right back. Oh, do you want more water?" Sollux nodded. "Hey! You moved without cringing in pain! That's good!" She disappeared down the hall.

Eridan looked questioningly at Sollux, a hint of mirth in his eyes. "Honey?"

"Yeth, ED. Honey."

"ED?" The confusion on Eridan's face was comical.

"ED. I'm shortening your name to two letterth. It thaveth time." Eridan laughed, remembering their conversation from the night before. Sollux couldn't help but join in. Feferi came back with the honey and water.

"Did I miss something funny?"

They stifled their giggles as best as they could. "It's nothin'" Eridan managed.

She shook her head in exasperation. "Whatever. I have to go to work. Try not to burn the house down while I'm gone, ok?"

"I'll do my betht," Sollux answered sarcastically, "though how I would manage that from the confineth of the bed I can't imagine."

Feferi laughed. "See you two."

"Bye," Eridan called as she left. The music faded, punctuated by the slam of the door when it drifted just out of earshot. He turned to Sollux. "Do you want me to feed you now, or...?"

Sollux shook his head adamantly, silently pleased that the movement was so easy. "I want to try by mythelf. Jutht put the plate on my lap for me?"

"Sure. I'll put the honey on for you, too."

"Thankth." Slowly, Sollux disentangled his arms from the blankets. He clenched and unclenched his hands a few times, working his stiff muscles, then grabbed the fork and knife. With more effort than it should have taken, he cut a small slice out of one of the pancakes and brought it to his mouth. Every movement caused agony to course through his body, but he was just ecstatic that he could manage to get through the pain. He chewed and swallowed, face beaming. Eridan was watching him, dumbfounded.

"What?"

"I just can't believe how quickly you're healing."

"I've alwayth healed quickly."

"Well, I didn't know that." Sollux kept eating. "So I guess Kan and Rose really were right. I wasn't so sure, but a broken arm or somethin' wouldn't heal this quickly."

"Yeah..." Sollux's eyes became slightly unfocused as an unexpected gauze of depression invisibly slipped over him and he was swept back into the riptide of his memories.

Eridan bit his lower lip in mild discomfort and didn't continue. Sollux ate in silence for a few minutes.

At last the question that had been on Eridan's mind became too much to hide. "What was her name?"

Sollux was taken aback. "What?"

"Your girlfriend."

"Oh." Sollux put the knife and fork down, the light metallic clink lost in the roaring in his ears. "Aradia."

"That's a beautiful name."

"I know." He could feel his sadness flowing back, crashing over his carefully constructed dam and threatening to drown him once more. His eyes filled with tears.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up."

"No, it'th good. I should probably talk about it. That'th how people get over thith kind of thing, right?" Sollux's voice was choked, a few tears flowing down his face. The tears landed on his plate, and Eridan gently took it and set it on the side table.

"What happened? Did she break up with you?"

"She'th dead." Those two words were more than Sollux could handle. He no longer even tried to hold in his tears, body shaking painfully as he wept. Eridan, unsure of what else to do, placed a hand on Sollux's shoulder.

"I'm sorry." Sollux didn't respond. "I know what it's like, sorta. My parents died when I was pretty young. It's hard." Sollux nodded mutely. Eridan waited for his tears to diminish a bit.

"How long had you two been together?"

"A little over five yearth." Sollux raised both arms, hugging them close to his body. "She wath my betht friend."

"I'm so sorry."

"I wath earning the money to buy a ring. Tho I could propothe." Sollux bit his lip, trying anything to keep from losing it. "I gueth it wathn't meant to be."

"Do you want to talk about somethin' else?"

"No. I think it'th helping to talk about it."

"Ok. Um, how did she...die?"

"The wath walking home, and got hit. By a car. The driver didn't even thtick around to take the blame." Anger filled his voice. "He left her bleeding to death in the middle of the road for two hourth before thomeone found her. By the time they got to the hothpital, she wath already dead."

"I...I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to thay anything."

"When did this happen?"

"A week ago. I couldn't take it. I tried to get through it, but I jutht couldn't let her go." He laughed bitterly. "My apartment thtill thmellth like her. I have pictureth of her, of uth, everywhere. I couldn't bear to move anything that belonged to her. I thought that thomehow, if I pretended hard enough that she wath thtill alive, maybe she'd come walking in. Like nothing had happened. But of courthe, she didn't."

"Didn't anyone help you through it?"

"No. All of my friendth didn't know what to do. They all thort of dethided the best plan wath to let me have thome time alone."

"Any family members?"

Sollux shook his head. "I have no family. My brother ith... thort of broken, I thuppothe. My dad wath a thychiatritht, and wath alwayth focuthing all of hith attention on my brother. Trying to fixth him. He wanted me to become a doctor like him. But I've never been much of a people perthon. When I went to college for programming, he told me to never come back." Sollux took a deep breath. "Aradia wath my family."

Eridan shook his head, sympathy emanating from every fiber of his body. "That's horrible."

Sollux nodded mutely. "It didn't matter though. Even if anyone had wanted to help me, I couldn't bring mythelf to even leave the apartment. When I finally did I found mythelf walking to thith plathe we alwayth uthed to go. By the thea." His voice was cut off by tears. Eridan sat silently, sharing his sorrow. "I thtood there, on the cliff, and then it jutht occurred to me. To jump. I didn't have anything left that mattered to me. Tho I did. I jutht wanted to be with her. Alwayth."

Eridan patted his shoulder, softly so he didn't hurt him. "Is there anythin' I can do?" Instead of answering, Sollux grabbed his arm and pulled him into a hug. He could feel Sollux tense up with the pain the movement had caused, but he didn't back away. Tears soaked through the shoulder of Eridan's shirt. "I'm so sorry. It'll be ok, I promise," Eridan whispered.

After what seemed like an eternity, Sollux's sobs became less pronounced, then faded altogether. His grip on Eridan loosened. Slowly, Eridan stood up. Sollux was asleep again. Eridan grabbed the plate of pancakes and took them downstairs, quickly scraping the pancakes into the trash and rinsing the plate off before setting it in the washing machine. Then he went back up to Sollux's room and, as silently as he possibly could, he lifted the cushion of the chair and retrieved his sketchbook and pencil. By some miracle, the tip hadn't broken. Then he sat, opened to the sketch he had started last night, and lost himself in the careful art of capturing and confining the complexity of life onto the page.