Work Text:
She is the Empress in miniature.
Surrounded by these impudent, snivelling whelps, it's she who grabs your attention and holds it, thrashing, in her net. It is plain to see that whatever is going down on this damned lost rock is the mess of frightened children, and one you have no desire to be pulled out of your dreaming death to take part in. The little one in orange is the spit of Spinneret, bespectacled and sly now, but also lost and blustery in a way that you find difficult to look at. No gamblignant. Just a girl. Your lady the Marquise would have been humiliated to have you look at her. Her shame was rare and sweet as wine, but this is not the time --
One in a mockery of Subjuggulation facepaint. One small legislacerator, albeit your paths rarely crossed with the Arbiterrors and their judiciary: that was Mindfang's fate, one she endured long lost of you. One scowling little revolutionary, horns thoroughly nubby as if they recall the saw to his ancestor's before the execution. Impossible but apt. And then there is the gangly, nesh creature who is your own, who's lived a life of obvious ease and is none the better for it. His recognition of you roils with a sort of terror.
All of it fades into irrelevancy when you see her. She is the twin of the Empress if the Empress was the height of your ribcage, and it is her you are down on one knee before. Revolutionary's shouting, but you don't care. There is no scent in her of the musk and ambergris your queen wore, but she still retains a lingering smell of salt, one you can't deny.
I servve only the blood of the Mother, you tell her. I servve only her most high Imperious Condescension.
She is not your empress. Her face shows every flicker of emotion.
"Feferi, say yes!" Background hollering. "We need the fucking help right now!"
When you proffer your mouth she hesitates, but does not pull away her hand. You kiss every small and perfect knuckle.
"You don't need to kneel to me," she says. "I'm just the heir, not the Empress! And I'll never be the Empress now."
She is thinner and more wild than she was in your time, and the pearls in her hair have been replaced with a simple gold band. The eyes behind those hard plexplastic goggles track across the room too much, too furtively, though as everything else she does even her fear is effervescent. Her lusus was a Horror of the queerest sea-deeps, and though she laughs often and freely she walks as though on knives. It's tragic that this imperial girl-child is condemned to an oceanless laboratory. Your Empress grew thin and pale and fragile without salt water, cruel and vengeful in its absence, and your heart ached as her foolish courtiers thronged among her.
You would have been struck down for being this close to the Empress. Four steps behind was a great privilege. When you reach out to touch this heir's dark curls she does not even notice.
"Favour to call me Dualscar, my liege," you say.
"Call me Feferi," she replies, lightning-quick.
So it begins.
She seeks you out often. When you find a quiet space to read a book of your exploits (Mindfang would have laughed; you wwould havve indulged quicker, you handsome arrogant harpy) the Princess will appear in a whisper of bright skirts and light feet. All of these grublets are fascinated with you, especially the highbloods. Little Serket avoids you like the plague, about as assidiously as you avoid the white-painted Makara; sopored he might be, but you do not want to cross paths with even a half-grown mirthful messiah. You get on best with the burly, civil-tongued blueblood, the one who in private quietly asks you to hit him across the face as hard as you can. You condescend to do so. He is thrilled.
Ampora -- well, Ampora's another matter. And you are too busy with deigning to read to the little heir when she asks, alone with her books and her wriggler's fascination of you. Sometimes she dozes against your leg, wavy hair and curved horns a spill across your thigh. They are all very tired. When she does this you carefully take off her goggles, and you marvel at the beauty of her face. Feferi never stirs.
When you were young you never trusted your lusus, let alone a grown troll. You shall take her in hand.
Now when you talk together she is charming and feckless and often thoroughly irritating. Sometimes she listens to you. Sometimes she does not. Feferi Peixes is more quixotic than her ancestral self, and if more unabashed still bites like a new feral shark. But your words hold the frill of her young ear in a way you never held the one you really wanted.
"I'll remind you your dynasty's Empress is dead. Therefore: you are Alternia's queen, Miss Peixes -- "
"Alternia's gone," she says, and she turns to fiddle with some piece of wriggler frippery, a soft stuffed cuttlefish, which she walks with her fingers across a railing. There are many dead cuttlefish in her rooms. She has shown you them. "I never ruled over anything. I'm loach to think I could rule over anything now! I wanted to change everything, I really did. I would have banned culling, and disbanded the Threshecutioners, and stopped the ships -- was I kind, Dualscar?" Her thoughts are a school of evermoving fish. "Was I a merciful queen?"
You don't say a word. "No," she decides, and her arched dark mouth pulls down around the edges. "No, the ocean doesn't teach you to be merciful, does it."
"You are," you say, "completely correct."
Feferi Peixes smiles. Every line of her heart-shaped face and her small, stubborn chin are as familiar to you as breathing, both in old memory and new. Those goggles are a shame. They spoil the neap-tide loveliness of her. "I spent all that time with Her terrible hunger," she says. "I got sick and tired of it. Sick! And! Tired! So I thought when I grew up I would cut it back. And not just me, I would have given power back to the Trolligarchy. And and and, re-established the Senate -- "
"Madness," you say flatly. "Shrimply put, the Senate are corrupt when they're figureheads, and would have been all the more corrupt given a single whelk of power. The result would have been roeful, child." ("You're so good at fish puns," she says admiringly.) "Where did you learn these idealistic politics? Oh, let me guess. At the knee of your shouty little leader?"
"They were always mine, not Karkrab's! I came up with them myself, thank you very much."
"He has no unseamly desires for your quadrants? All his type want is to grouper for power, princess. Every troll flounders in front of a crown. Look at you: you're not even leader. Where is your tyrian blood? Do you think yourself incompetent? Can you not lead?"
"We're all glubbing equal -- "
"Etiquette, princess."
" -- like I said, equal, and Karkrab reelly doesn't think of me that way." Haughty. Rattled. Upset. She is pretending you are not a grown man, and considering the attitude of a grown troll to one barely pupated you take a moment to admire her bravery. “He never would.”
"What of your aberrant yellowblood?"
"I -- "
"What of my own young self? Tried to give you a whale yet?"
"Nobody's trying to anglerfish towards my quadrants, all right? And it's hardly your business if they did! Ugh! You know, I can see where Eridan gets all his troutishness from, you've got no right to stick your fins into my business. Or to be patronizing about my politics. Or to sneer! And I'll say glub if I want to. Glub glub glub glub glub - "
"You're an unbelievable brat," you say. "Here I am acting as a damned friend to you, and you act like a dirt-blooded grub barely two sweeps."
"Wait -- "
She's proud. When you leave it takes her the length of two corridors to come barrelling out of her room like a shell in barrage to run after you, and catches you by the shirtfront. She is ever unaware of the imperial rules. And she touches you so often. "I'm sorry so don't be angry," she says in a rush. "You just shrimply drive me up the wall when you're bossy. It's not as though any of this matters any more. Does it?"
You allow ten seconds before you give in, and she is so relieved she lets you put a finger under her chin and raise it to look at you. "I only have your best interests at heart, guppy," you say.
"I know, I know -- "
"I'm here to protect you from your anemones."
"I can take care of myself."
If you raised your thumb you would be able to touch her lower lip, and trace it with the ridge of your nail. Under her clear grey skin there is that rich fuschia flush of her blood, and for a moment you think she trembles as though terrified you'll kiss her. "Think of me as a lusus, little princess," you say, and for a moment you even consider doing so.
There's some movement at the corner of your eye. You ignore it. Finally, she breaks the spell and says a little impishly, "Some glubbing lusus," and dances out of your grip.
"Watch your dirty mouth," you call out, but she laughs and escapes off down the hallway, as quick as a sprat. When the sound of her footfall diminishes you turn around to the burning yellow glare of your descendant, curling his lips in a truly poor imitation of your sneer. Both his hands are fisted at his sides, knuckles ashen with it. The genetic material you pailed out must have been well and truly diluted by the time it got to him.
"I don't fuckin trust you even a little," he says.
You lounge up against the wall indolently instead and pick at your fingernails, just to see if he gets madder. "She's told me about it, you know," you say. "Trying to get to the red quadrant through the pale is the saddest tactic in the book. No queen is impressed with any move that bassinine." Looking at him now, that rage is tinted with despair. "If it makes you feel any better, grub, I don't think much of that dirty-blooded scholar she's pink over either. Not that she's had any time for him lately, has she?"
"I don't fuckin trust you with her," he repeats doggedly.
"And whyever not?"
"Because you're me," says Eridan.
Your laughter mocks him all the way to his slammed door. How he wishes.
You really cannot help yourself. You pin that long black spill of hair high up on her head, how Her Imperious Condescension would wear it; she submits to your ministrations without a word, as your calloused hands brush her neck. You can see her tyrian gills flare, unsettled. At six sweeps she is as wet sand, far different to the young trolls you see arriving onboard the naval boats to begin their training. She’s mouldable, no matter how stubborn. No matter how flighty. The little princess won’t remove the goggles entirely, but you’ve at least relegated them to her forehead and not her eyes.
Feferi knows what she does to you, no matter how coy she acts. You’re absolutely certain. Six sweeps maybe, but six sweeps and reading to you now, sitting in a chair with your books as you sprawl on the floor and sharpen the barbs of your harpoon. She’s given you more than your cold and lonely star of an Empress ever gave you, your lost and only love, and it is easy to look at Feferi coming through a doorway and see Her in that wholehearted smile. You’re glad Spinneret isn’t here. You imagine her mockery anyway: six sweeps? Six sweeps? Oh, how low do the pathetic stoop!
“I don’t know what’s wrong with Eridan.”
You take her foot and rest it on your shoulder: her bare toes wriggle, and she flinches with laughter when you trace a slow line up from heel to instep. “You’ll continue whether I request you do or not, guppy, so continue.”
“He told me I should be breaching out more to Sollux, would you believe?”
The little shit’s more cunning than you gave him credit for, though cunning in a limping, adolescent, truly underwhelming way. He will have to learn that crossing you will lead to unfortunate ends. You turn your head so that your cheek is against the fine firm bones of Feferi’s ankle, and for a moment your mouth brushes against her smooth slick skin, soft as a young dolphin’s. There is a dimple in her cheek when she smiles. “Grubling quadrant politics,” you say, “how I did not miss you, not one bubble of you. Come here.”
After a moment she puts down the book and slithers down beside you, not quite in your lap, not quite not in your lap, her legs hooked over yours and head bent against the chair. “So spit it out, princess,” you say. “Do you desire little Captor as your matesprit? Your red quadrantbearer? Going to shore up and ask him?”
“I don’t know. I like him, I like him so much! But lately it’s been -- complicated,” she finishes, a trifle lamely. “I don’t know. Too busy to glub about feelings. Roemance sucks sometimes, Dualscar. Roemance sucks most of the time. I’m no good at waiting, I’m no good at thinking; I do what I feel when I feel it. I know: reel mature, Peixes! It’s always just -- moment, moment, moment -- and I never think about where I’ll end up, just about what’s exciting. I’m practical about a lot of stuff, why am I so flotsam and jetsam about this?”
Wrigglers. You wonder how kids these days even get up to the filial pail.
“Life’s a beach,” she decides, and you tug on the ruffle of her earlobe to remind her of her manners. Infuriatingly, even now she just laughs. “You were lucky, you and the Marquise were kismeses from the moment you met -- “
“And I was red for a woman who never uttered my name,” you say. “Going to admire that, Princess? I loved someone who never did a thing but see right through me. I loved her in silence, loved her so much that if she’d slit my throat all I would’ve wanted was to not spill my unworthy blood on her carpets.”
For long moments you’re both quiet, and you’re lost in memory and the old, painful claws of the love that nobody understood, that still wraps itself around your heartvalves, the one that is and was your dying dream. Feferi dares an intimacy: she leans forward and presses her cheek to yours, and then she recklessly kisses it. Her lips burn like the red-hot brand of a carnival priest.
“She would have changed her mind if she’d just glubbing known you,” she says, and chastely misaims to peck the side of your mouth. Flustered at this incursion, she rolls away from your gaze to stand and brush herself off like she’s dusty, and at your smile she only blushes more. By the time Feferi flees she is fuschia with embarrassment.
You decide: it’s time.
There are no recuperacoons in this astral hellhole. The children sleep -- when they’re allowed to sleep, as Vantas is a miniature tyrant in the making -- on piles of things, ridiculous things, gathered up like nutbeast nests. You would set that damn horn pile ablaze if you weren’t so wary of the young highblood. Feferi sleeps in the strewn detritus of her room, on cuttlefish toys and bits of bright clothing, skinny limbs thrown out every which way as she dreams her horrorterror dreams. The goggles are skewed once more over her eyes.
You kneel before her. With each breath her chest gently rises and falls; her small and tender breasts float high on her ribs, and inside your head Spinneret mocks you once more for them. How the mighty wallow now, Orphaner! Should we ban you from schoolhives? Feferi is heavy and groggy from sleep when you reach down and kiss her mouth, slow and mindful in all the ways you can be slow and mindful, but when her eyes open she is rigid as driftwood. You’re annoyed but kiss her through it anyway, her chin, her cheeks, her jawline, and sure enough she makes a sound like a newborn calf and softens under your lips.
“You were born to be my matesprit,” you tell her. “A little late, but you were born to be my matesprit.”
It’s obvious her kisses have been confined to nothing or a few swapped pecks with the mustardblood. You push those stupid plexplastic eyeshields away and kiss her in earnest, because you’ve been patiently waiting for this for fucking weeks, and when she opens her mouth to taste you tongue teeth and all you don’t wonder at the stabs of lust in your groin. She is so inutterably lovely, so exquisite and breakable. Feferi’s hips cant against yours when you push yours down, make her feel your bulge so she knows you mean more business than previous grublet touches could have taught her. All the while she’s pressing herself against you, rubbing and eager, so you give her what she wants and roll on top of her entirely.
You dwarf her. When she haloes her legs around you her ankles don’t meet. She grips with her knees, still arching up to meet you as you nibble her throat and kiss the place where her sensitive gill ruffle begins, and it’s so perfect and so according to plan -- she is yours. She is absolutely yours. You possess her in the way that your Empress possessed you. The hiss that slips out her throat when you slide your hand up to engulf her breast is music, and so is that selfsame hiss when you ease up to wrestle yourself out of your shirt.
Her fingers trace the pucker of scar tissue at your face. You feel only tenderness for her, true and genuinely painful tenderness. That’s why it’s so infuriating when, as you start to peel off her clothing, she once more does her driftwood impression. “I don’t know how I feel,” she says.
“You said you never know how you feel, guppy. We’ve been wanting this for a while. Kick those shoes off.”
“I don’t think -- “
“It’s not like I’m going to make you fill the pail in the first minute,” you say. “I know how to be slow. Lift your hips.”
Those brief clingy black trousers take a bit of wrestling to deal with, moreso than her skirts. When she’s naked she gets embarrassed again, covering herself with her hands until you kiss her wrists and place them aside. Her age has its definite drawbacks. For one, when you trail your hand down her belly and dip it between her thighs, she reactively squeezes her legs shut; her breath hitches and you know you have her, caught between worry and pleasure, but if only she would give in.
“Dualscar,” she says, “I think we should stop.”
“I don’t.”
A little feebly, “I’m clamming up.”
You say, “Any other adult troll would have killed the wriggler by now,” before you can stop it coming out your mouth, and that does not exactly ease her. The hesitation’s no good. You cease the childhood things and show her what a troll grown to maturity wants: you bite down into her shoulder and spill that sacred red-purple blood all over her slim collarbones, making her squirm and thrash against you, which stiffens your resolve in more ways than one even as the squirming and thrashing gets a little too frantic --
You think the first time is a little overwhelming for her. She puts up a good fight, worthy of a troll twice her age, passionately scoring her nails down your arms and shoulders and slicing you to ribbons. You hardly feel it. Feferi is a highblood: that sort of aggression comes naturally to her. When you slide yourself inside her she screams, but that’s natural too; you are bigger than she is. It hurts. That is something she’ll have to get used to. You tell her she’s so sweet, so tight, all you ever could have wanted, and perhaps it’s that that causes the storm of tears against your chest. By the time it’s all over she’s quiet again.
You kiss her right on her tiptilted nose, kiss her exhausted grimace. She doesn’t respond. Mindfang in your head says little now.
When you wake up she is gone. You had not expected to sleep. When you dream, now, you dream of nothing. Her clothes are gone, but the hollow made by her body remains; and so does the smell of you both, sweat and blood and sex. When this truly inane game session started by Vantas is over you will take her back to the ocean, raise her more properly there to all that an Empress of Alternia should be.
In the end, you’re not that surprised when your coddamned descendant shows up on Feferi’s doorstep, though your annoyance is a slow and dangerous simmer now. If he had shown up with the harpoon gun that is rightfully yours, at least it would have been an excuse to wring his skinny neck. As it is, he’s just standing there very still with a stupid-looking wand brandished in one hand.
“I know who you are,” he says.
Eridan’s voice is like cold, dry rock, like the empty airless space all around you on this fucking asteroid. You know he’s staring at you, as you hadn’t bothered with a shirt; the dry crusted stains of purple mixed with richer purple, blood intermingled, the raised welts that were left by her scrabbling at your chest. “Isn’t that adorable,” you say, and you gently touch one of her wounds.
“I know who you are because I know who I am,” he says.
You notice that around his neck he’s wearing those stupid goggles of hers, still flecked with her blood. Strange. The troll boy in front of you raises his wand as though it’s meant to mean something to you, like a hilarious parody of a threat, and you wonder yet again how your genes trickled down from Orphaner Dualscar to become Eridan Ampora. Poor idiot grub probably wonders the same thing.
“So what’s that thing meant to do?” you ask idly.
In a burst of white light, he shows you.