Chapter Text
Time belongs to those who own the hours.
Love to hearts exchanging eternal vows.
Life to death in selfishness a lifetime sours.
Faith sustains rules angelic universal powers.
Time belongs to fat vultures
who own exploit tyrant hours.
Love to merging hearts exchanging
soul felt sacred eternal vows.
Death to bloated eternal selfishness
many a wicked wasted lifetime sows.
But faith sustains God sent rules
life saving angelic universal powers.
-- Slave Rebellion by Terence George Craddock
When Captain Eridan Ampora - yes, Captain, newly promoted, his new epaulets still shiny and the ink still wet on his promotion papers, figuratively speaking - first walked into the schoolfeeding complex looking for a Helmsman for his new ship, he had been excited, nervous, and anticipatory.
That excitement had quickly paled when he saw the state the lowbloods were in, hooked up to machines and drugged to the gills, their eyes glassy and staring and really fuckin' creepy.
He had grown downright nauseous as the administrator explained what they were doing here, but he had struggled to keep his expression neutral and bored. It wouldn't do for a sea-dweller to seem sympathetic to the lowblood trash. Their sacrifice was what made the Empire possible, and Eridan wasn't the kind of troll who could be called disloyal to the Empire.
He needed a Helmsman, he told himself, and if it weren't him who took the unfortunate sap, then it would be someone else. It didn't really matter. They were just lowbloods, anyway, and this was just their lot in life.
But then he passed one particular cubicle, and there was a familiar face inside.
He stopped dead and stared, his stomach churning.
No, no, no no fuck no, not him too!
He knew he should have known it was this way. But to actually see Sollux here, submerged to his waist in sopor slime and hooked up to a forest of wires and tubes was almost more than he could bear. This was someone he knew, not a faceless lowblood.
Someone he had had feelings for, though he hadn't seen Sollux in sweeps.
Not since the game ended, and the world was reset, and his former friends had allowed him to run away with his tail between his legs. Back to his hive, back to a life even more lonely than he could have imagined was possible. But he had worked hard, obsessively, and covered himself with glory.
And Sollux was a mindless shell in a vat.
He stepped into the cubicle and reached out, then paused as the slave's eyes shifted to look at him. Red and blue orbs widened with terror and Sollux shivered in his bonds.
Eridan dropped his hand and turned to the tealblood standing behind him. "I'll take this one."
There was a soft, whimpering cry behind him, which he ignored.
"Ah, an excellent choice. This one is one of the more powerful I've ever trained. Her Imperial Condescension herself has expressed interested in him--"
He didn't want to hear that. He cut her off with a wave. "Are you sayin' I can't fucking take him? He's not avvailable?"
"No, no, highblood, not at all!" The tealblood groveled and scurried away to draw up the paperwork.
Eridan stood and waited, his back to Sollux, impatient.
When he'd signed the forms and affixed his symbol in the proper places, he strode for the door. "Havve him sent to my hivve," he ordered.
"Not...not the ship?" the woman asked, confused.
"Ship's not ready to be launched, yet," Eridan lied. "Anywway, I'vve got somethin' special for him. You gonna question me, filth?" He added with unnecessary harshness.
She was obviously taken aback. Teal wasn't exactly a low blood colour, though it was lower than his. Much lower. And she bowed deeply, if with an irritated twisted to her mouth. "Of course, highblood. It will be done."
He just nodded and left, his hands' trembling hidden under the folds of his cloak. He couldn't have stayed another minute in that horrible place, he was sure.
A black skimmer arrived at his hive the following day, and deposited the slave on his front doorstep. The green who made the delivery was nervous and skittish, with old scars on his wrists that told Eridan that he had gone through indentured servitude at least once, possibly for petty crime.
He didn't care. He had eyes only for the yellow.
He pressed his ring to the reader and then his thumb, letting the machine read both his symbol and his blood temperature for identification.
Sollux stood still and mute, his head lowered and his hands clenched together in front of him. There were chains on his wrists, and a collar around his neck with a bulbous leech grafted onto the metal. The leech's body was swollen tight like a drum, and the mouth latched onto the side of Sollux' neck, feeding him some kind of drug.
The green took back the machine and handed Eridan a package. "More of the drugss," he hissed. Some kind of speech impediment. His symbol twisted like a yellow-green snake. "Ssinsse you are keeping him for a while insstead of insstalling him on your sship right away, you'll need it."
"I thought he couldn't fight back," Eridan said, taking the package, even if his skin crawled at touching it.
"Ssometimess misstakess are made, highblood," the green said, bowing low. "Ssometimess their will iss sstrong. We don't want any trouble for you, that'ss all. It'ss jusst a precaution."
"Fine," Eridan said, his hopes sinking a little. "Are wwe finished here?"
"Yess. Have a good day, highblood. Glory to the Empire."
Eridan resisted the urge to grab Sollux and pull him inside. Instead he turned away and snapped a command, "Follow me," as he strode back into his hive.
This wasn't the hive he had built as a child. It was a new one he had commissioned on another world, one of the central military worlds, where his ship was in the process of being built, and where he had based himself for most of his career. It was far less rambling, and didn't look like a ship, but more like a castle. His recuperacoon was in one of the turret rooms, with a spectacular 360 degree view of the sea all around his island.
He knew the other sea dwellers were taken aback by the fact that he didn't live underwater, like most of his brethren, but he liked swimming no more than he had as a child. He preferred to live on land, but close to the ocean.
And that had turned out to be an advantage this time. He could bring Sollux here. And unless the slave used his powers to fly - something that would require a huge rebellion, given the programming he'd experienced - he couldn't leave. No one could come here without Eridan being prepared for it, either.
They were alone. Together.
Sollux trailed in his wake like a skinny, pale shadow. Robotic butler drones scattered from rooms like humanoid cockroaches when he entered them, then returned to continue cleaning and tidying after he had passed through.
He walked up a flight of stairs and into a sitting room, then slumped onto the divan with a sigh, finally looking at his slave.
Sollux stood like he didn't know what he was supposed to be doing, shifting slightly from foot to foot and looking down at the floor. The slight sign of life was good, reassuring, but the fat leech on the side of his neck looked like a tumour, and the handcuffs that glittered on his wrists were impossible to ignore.
"Come sit next to me," Eridan ordered, and Sollux shuffled forward obediently. He sat down on the divan, his head still trained on the floor.
Eridan felt like crying for the first time in sweeps. He swallowed to force the tears down and caught Sollux' unresisting wrist, examining the cuff. It wasn't hard to figure out how to unlock them - they didn't need a key, instead they had been imprinted already with his blood type. It probably had happened when he signed for the slave outside.
He pressed his thumb to the contact and the cuffs sprang open. He tossed them aside for the butler drones to take care of later.
Then he examined the collar - or more specifically, the leech. He grimaced with disgust as he curled his fingers around the fat body of the biotechnological creature and pulled it away from Sollux' neck. The slave whimpered as it came free, the sharp needle-like mouth drawing out of his neck along with a few beads of yellow blood.
The thing was attached to the collar itself. Eridan explored along the collar with his free hand until he found the contact and it opened with a click. Then he picked up both collar and leech and hurled them as far as he could across the room.
Then he got up and strode out of the room. "Don't movve until I get back," he snapped harshly, and didn't see how Sollux shrank into the cushions in fear at his tone.
He went to the ablution block down the hall and stared at himself in the mirror for a while, then closed his eyes and lowered his head.
He could deal with this. At least Sollux wasn't in that place anymore. Even if Sollux was scared and Eridan had no idea how to handle him, it wasn't like it could be that hard. Sollux had been fixed up to serve him, so Eridan just had to tell him what to do.
Easy as larval pie.
After he had made sure his emotions were in check, he washed his face, straightened up, and walked back out to the sitting room in a swirl of cape.
Sollux was still sitting exactly where he had been. He looked up tentatively as Eridan strode back in, and shrank back, quickly lowering his eyes again.
"Can you talk?" Eridan asked. Sollux hadn't made a sound up to now except for that first cry of fear back at the complex. Surely they hadn't done something like cut out his tongue. He had to be able to talk to give reports as a Helmsman, didn't he?
Thankfully, Eridan's uncertainty didn't last long. "Yeth, captain," Sollux said quietly. "I can talk."
He even still had the lisp. It made Eridan's chest hurt.
"Okay," Eridan replied, then hovered for a moment in indecision. "Wwell, you're not bein' used as a Helmsman, so put that out a your mind right the fuck now. You can stay here, wwith me, and servve me in other wways."
He waited, but there was no response from Sollux. After a moment, he huffed and crossed the room, sitting down next to him.
He hesitated, watching Sollux, who was sitting so stiffly and hunched over that he was visibly trembling. It seemed like the drugs must be wearing off already, because he seemed more alert and his emotions were obvious, but he didn't seem inclined to rebel. Not that Eridan had expected him to.
What could he do? The silence was drawing out and growing more awkward by the moment, and Eridan was starting to feel a little frantic.
Then it occurred to him. He could do...whatever he wanted.
Eridan reached out and put his arm around Sollux' shoulders. He was trembling, himself, a little.
Sollux shuddered visibly, and Eridan had to swallow an angry word or two. He didn't need to act like his touch was physically abhorrent, did he? That wasn't exactly good service.
"C-captain," Sollux whispered, startling him out of his increasingly angry thoughts.
"Yeah? You can talk, Sol. Say wwhatevver's on your mind," Eridan said quickly. The silence was really hard to deal with, but maybe Sollux just needed permission.
"Thank you, captain," Sollux said. "Captain, I'm not, trained for thith... I...I wath thuppothed to pilot a ship. Not...not..." He shuddered again, and Eridan suddenly realized something.
Sollux was crying.
He drew back his hand as if it had been burned and stood up abruptly, moving away. Sollux gave a soft cry at the sudden movement and threw up his hands as if he had expected Eridan to hit him. The slave hunched, trembling, on the divan, as Eridan walked to the window, struggling for control.
Finally he trusted himself to speak. "Look, Sol," he said in a slow, even tone. He turned back to look at the slave. "I knoww you'vve got no upright reason to believve me, but you belong to me noww, so you'll just havve to. I didn't fuckin' buy you to make you my sex slavve, and I didn't buy you to make you my Helmsman. You get that?"
"Yes, captain," Sollux said obediently, but he looked more confused than reassured.
"You wwant a ask me somethin'?" Eridan asked, folding his arms across his chest. "Go ahead."
Sollux was silent a few long seconds before speaking. "What are you going to do to me?"
Eridan stared at him for a long moment, then sighed. "I don't have the first fuckin' clue."
Sollux looked up, searching his expression. Eridan schooled his features as best he could until the slave dropped his gaze again.
"Are you going to kill me?"
"Fuck, no!" Eridan sighed and rubbed his forehead.
"Pleathe," Sollux whispered, and the pain in his voice brought Eridan's head up to look at him again. "Jutht kill me."
Eridan clenched his fists, nearly cutting holes in his shirt by accident. "Sol, wwhat the fuck?"
"Pleathe, I'll do whatever you want. Jutht don't make me thuffer," Sollux trembled and shook.
Eridan nearly absconded. He took two steps back, his breathing coming fast and harshly through both his mouth and his gills. But he forced himself not to run, to stand his ground and face this.
"Sol," he said sharply. "I'm not going to kill you. And I'm not gonna make you suffer. Get that through your fuckin' mutated think pan!"
"Why not?" Sollux asked. "Why are you lying to me like thith? Why don't you jutht do what you bought me to do and get it over with?!"
If Eridan hadn't been in so much agony, he might have been pleased that Sollux was practically yelling at him, even if he was doing it while cringing against the pillows, his face streaked with yellow tears. At least he was standing up to him, a little.
"Because I've alwways been fuckin' flushed for you, Sol!" Eridan snapped. "You're so fuckin' pitiable, howw the fuck am I supposed to wwant to hurt you more?!"
And then he really did abscond. He turned and fled the room, slamming the door and locking it.
He kept running until he reached the cliffs on the south side of the island, then dove into the ocean. He swam until his lungs burned from the unaccustomed effort of breathing water instead of air, and his arms ached, and his eyes stopped leaking.