~On the Meteor~

~Signless' POV~

I don't remember the last time I was as nervous as I am making my way up these stairs. About halfway to the top, I start to hear gunshots. Karkat did say that he would most likely be shooting, I just didn't think he'd be the type to use guns. By the time I reach the top, he's stopped shooting. He's loading a set of pistols with his back to me.

"Hey, Kankri," I greet. "Can we talk?"

Instead of responding, he levels his guns with a target and starts shooting. When he stops, I put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention, assuming he has earplugs in. He immediately spins around, a small knife appearing in his hand. He presses the knife against my throat hard enough to draw a few drops of blood. "Stop touching me," he growls before the knife disappears and he turns his attention back to his guns. "I don't want you in my mind and you can't control your powers yet."

"Then teach me." He glares at me and just starts reloading again. "You don't like me very much, do you?"

"No, I don't."

"Why?"

He turns to face me, anger in his eyes, and shouts, "Because you had the ONLY thing I ever wanted! You had a Guardian that didn't beat and molest you every day of your life! I DID! Dolorosa loved you as if you were her own flesh and blood, and I wanted that! I didn't get that until a week before we entered our session! A month after my mate walked in on Samael raping me! The ONLY good things that came from my youth were Cronus and Meenah. They were the ONLY ones Samael allowed to visit me and Cronus visited me every night." He turns back to loading his gun before saying in a quieter tone, "He's the only reason I didn't kill myself a long time ago."

"I'm sorry, I had no idea."

"That's because I never wanted you to know. I didn't want anyone to know," he stops loading the gun long enough to remove the sleeves covering his forearms, revealing more scars than I care to count. "The only other person alive who knows about these is Cronus, and that's because he convinced me to stop."

Without thinking, I reach out and take his hand to examine the scars.

'Careful there, Chief,' Cronus says as he adjusts Kankri's grip on the handle of the gun. 'Hold it like that or the slide's going to clip your hand.'

'Like this?' Kankri asks, his grip loose.

'A little tighter.' He smiles when Kankri holds the gun properly. 'There you go. Now aim like this.' He demonstrates how to aim before checking Kankri's stance. 'Don't freak out on me. I'm going to adjust your stance. Is that okay?' When Kankri nods, Cronus easily moves his arms to be a little higher and his feet a little farther apart. 'Now take a deep breath, keep your eyes on the target, and pull the trigger.'

One loud bang later and there's a hole in the corner of the target. 'I missed,' Kankri says, sounding a little disappointed.

'You did better than I did my first try. I broke a window on the neighbor's hive,' Cronus laughs. When Kankri pouts at him, he pulls him close and kisses him softly. 'We can work on your aim. Okay?'

The vision ends with Kankri smiling as he turns back to the target. He yanks his hand away and finishes loading his pistol. "You looked happy," I say, trying to get him in a better mood.

Instead, he hands me the gun and says, "Shoot." When I don't move to take the weapon, he puts the gun in my hand and moves out of the way. "Shoot or leave."

I mimic the position Cronus had shown Kankri in the vision and pulled the trigger. The recoil hurts a little, but I unload the entire clip. Each shot gets closer to the middle of the target. Once that pistol's empty, he hands me the other one. Every shot from the second pistol hits dead center. While I unload that gun, he moves to stand by the door. The sound of something metallic behind me catches my attention. I turn just in time to see Kankri throw that little knife at me. Somehow, I manage to catch it just before it hits me. I spin around and throw it at the target, once again hitting dead center.

He finally cracks a small smile as he makes his way over to the target to retrieve his knife. "With that one memory, you've learned enough to do this," he states as he brings our targets closer. His has a single hole where he kept hitting the same place. Mine has a line of small holes leading directly to a large hole. "I can teach you how to shoot with lethal accuracy, but I can't teach you how to control your Seer powers. Terezi would be best for that as the Seer of Mind. I still accidentally catch glimpses sometimes. As for the powers you inherited from our blood caste, Psiioniic would be a better teacher than me. Caste powers are far more difficult to master than player powers and he's been using his for his entire life."

"I can't ask him to do that. He never had a choice on whether or not to use his psionics."

"Of course you can. The worst he can do is say no. Before his accident, Mituna helped me learn to control my powers."

"But Mituna was never a slave. Psii was for eight sweeps."

"And how long has he been free?"

"A few months. He was hatched into slavery and would have died one if Equius and his friends not gotten us off Alternia."

He hums in contemplation for a moment. "I thought you had freed him sooner. Still, there's no way he would say no to you." I look at him, thoroughly confused. "You really do have a lot to learn. When he's with you, he's completely calm. Right now, I can feel his anxiety from here. He'll jump at any opportunity just to be close to you. And that's never going to change."

"I should go check on him."

"Yes, you should." As I start towards the door, Kankri tosses a red button up shirt to me. "I meant to give you this earlier. I doubt Psiioniic is very happy that you two match," he says, gesturing to the whiplashes on my back. I had forgotten about most of Psii's scars. His oldest ones are whiplashes. There are maybe a few dozen, most likely meant to beat obedience into him when he was young. And Kankri's right, he's not happy about my injuries. I should also check on Sollux at some point.

I'm almost to the bottom of the stairs before I even realize it. I was so lost in my thoughts that I almost ran into the door. Quickly putting on the shirt, I push open the door and attempt to navigate my way to Sollux's room.

~On LOCAH~

~Dirk's POV~

By the time I found one of the benches along this path, Arquius had fallen asleep in my arms. Not wanting to wake him, I just laid him down on the bench. That was a few hours ago. I don't blame him for being so tired, it's been a stressful day and he doesn't usually sleep very well, if at all. When I look up from my exhausted sprite, I see Erisol floating down the trail.

I wave at him quickly before giving him a sign to be quiet and pointing to Arquius. He seems to be relieved to see that his brother is okay. "I think this is the longest he's slept in a while," I whisper.

Erisol nods as he sits on the ground next to me. He silently watches Arquius sleep for what seems like forever before finally saying, "I don't like him being your sprite."

"Neither do I," I respond, slightly confusing the green sprite. "He deserves better, but he's stuck with me. That's not fair to him."

"No, it's not." He goes quiet again. The silence doesn't last nearly as long before he turns to me, a look of hatred in his eyes. "I saw the bruise on his cheek. Why did you hit him?"

I can't seem to look Erisol in the eye. "He was having a nightmare and everything else I tried didn't work. I panicked when he wasn't waking up." I pause, finally managing to look up into his hate filled eyes instead of down at my lap. "You didn't hear him. He sounded so scared. I couldn't let him stay like that. I'm a monster of a human being, but I'm not so horrible that I'd let someone I care about suffer." My gaze wander's back to the peaceful face of my sleeping sprite. "At least, I like to think I'm not."

Erisol huffs before handing me a spirograph pendant. "I'm only supposed to give Jake one of these, but your session's fucked already and he never calls on me." When I take the pendant, he runs his fingers through Arquius' hair. "The next time he has a nightmare, call me. I was made from a piece of Sollux that already learned how to take care of him. He might have appeared to calm down but hitting him only made it worse." Before I can ask him to clarify, he whispers something to Arquius too quietly for me to hear.

Arquius looks confused when his eyes flutter open. "Where are we?" he asks, rubbing away sleep as he sits up.

"Somewhere on LOCAH," Erisol answers as he rises from the ground. "Jake sent me to find you two. Gamzee's refusing to talk to anyone. Roxy was hoping he'd talk to you. And I wanted to talk to Dirk."

Arquius' hand moves to lightly touch his cheek before he says, "He wasn't trying to hurt me."

"I know."

"He really is trying to be better."

"Equius, I'm not convinced he can be better." Instead of arguing, Arquius just pouts at his brother. "Come on, everyone's waiting for us back at the house."

~On the Meteor~

~Signless' POV~

It's harder to navigate the halls of the meteor than I thought it would be. Every hall looks the same to me and very few of the rooms are labeled. I would have walked right past Sollux's room had it not been for the door being open already. I'm not quite sure what I expected his room to look like, but only about half of this room looks like it belongs to Sollux. The technology and bee-related décor seems to be spot on for the young gemini. The pirate theme the rest of the room seems to have makes no sense, though.

At least it made no sense until I saw the sleeping sea-dweller with their head rested on Sollux's lap. That must be Eridan, Sollux's matesprit. Equius hasn't told me much about them other than that their ancestor was an Orphaner. Although, I could have sworn Equius told me that Eridan was male.

"Don't let the skirt fool you," Terezi says from the next door down. "He started wearing more feminine outfits when we left our Alternia. That's about when he and Sollux started being more open about their shared quadrants."

"Was that ever an issue?"

"Back on Alternia, they had to hide their relationship because everyone expected Eridan and Feferi to wax flush for each other. Nobody cared that she was already a horrible moirail to him or the fact that he and Sollux vacillate between pitch and flush so frequently that sometimes they don't even know which quadrant they're in."

"We stopped labeling our relationship a long time ago, TZ," Sollux laughs. "What's the point in labeling something that can change so fast?"

"And I wasn't a horribubble moirail!" Feferi snaps.

Sollux laughs again. "You dumped him for being 'high maintenance' right before we entered our session."

"He was, though."

Sollux turns his blind gaze back towards her, brows furrowed in anger. "No, Fef, he wasn't. He was so severely depressed that I've long since stopped counting how many times I've walked in on him trying to commit suicide. He went to you for the emotional support a half-way decent moirail should provide and you called him dramatic in about a thousand different ways."

By now, he's so angry that sparks are bouncing between his horns. Knowing that him using his powers in the state he's in right now could be lethal, I move across the room to sit on the bed next to him. I place a gentle hand on his shoulder in an attempt to calm him.

Sollux walks through a large hole in the side of a ship, a couple of bags of food floating on his psionics behind him. 'Hey, ED,' he calls. 'I stopped by the market on my way here.' He makes his way through the ship to a small kitchen and starts putting away the food he had brought. 'I had noticed you were running low on some stuff yesterday and figured you wouldn't bother restocking until your cabinets were empty, as usual.'

Once he's done putting the stuff away, he looks around. The look in his two-toned eyes is one of confusion and worry. 'ED?' he calls again as he ventures deeper into the vessel. When he finally makes it to a respite block, he sighs. 'ED, it's almost midnight. Why are you still asleep?'

The room's so dark I can barely see anything, but Sollux's eyes glow bright enough to illuminate a grey lump on top of a pile of purple and yellow blankets. Sollux smiles a little before he takes a step into the dark room. That step lands in something wet; a small puddle of something thicker than water. His hand searches the closest wall until it finds the light switch. It takes a moment for Sollux to register what he's seeing once his eyes adjust to the new level of brightness.

Then he screams at the sight before him. There isn't an inch of that room that isn't splattered with violet blood. Random pieces of fins are strewn all across the floor. The grey lump is now clearly Eridan stripped of his fins. He's loosely holding a bloody knife in his hand. The yellow and purple blankets are now clearly just yellow blankets stained purple by the dying boy's blood.

Sollux rushes to assess the damage. There isn't a single fin left on the young sea-dweller. Blood is slowly flowing from each of the fresh amputations. 'Eridan?' Sollux calls as he kneels beside his injured mate. His panic only slightly subsides when Eridan's eyes open weakly. 'There you are,' he says quietly as his psionics manifest as patches over the wounds, further slowing the bleeding. 'You're going to be okay. I've got you; you're going to be okay.'

He gathers Eridan in his arms as the vision fades. "So that's why Kankri was mad at you," Sollux mumbles, running his fingers through Eridan's hair. "Welcome to the game. Something to keep in mind, most of us don't want you, specifically, in our heads. Don't take that the wrong way, though. For me and KK, it's because we don't want to disappoint you."

"Most of us idolize you more than our own ancestors," Terezi says.

Feferi nervously plays with her bracelets, adding, "Especially us highbloods. Our ancestors were absolutely horribubble! But you were nice and fair to everyone. That's why Aradia took Equius to you instead of Darkleer. She knew you would take care of him." She glances over to a very confused Eridan and her nervousness almost immediately shifts to her usual bubbly demeanor. "Good evening, sleepy guppy."

"W-where are my glasses?" he mumbles, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.