towerofanimus | [Open Log]

Entry tags:

[Open Log]

Characters: AU Eridan, OU Vriska, and Open!!
Setting: Somewhere in the tower, feel free to choose. He's travelling down the stairs for lunch.
Format: Either is fine.
Summary: Eridan is out and about. Meet him! Also Vriska is going to try to feed him to spidermom.
Warnings: Nothing yet. Eridan's foul mouth is certain to be found here.

[Hoarding food can only take you so far. Eridan's still not really talking much to his roommate, mostly because he's a bit resentful that Taiki took a flying leap off the tower with Eridan on his back. Stupid weird paranoid crying kid who claimed to fly but didn't even have wings and stupid Eridan for believing him and stupid tower for existing. He misses Feferi so much his wind tube hurts.

So anyway, he can't ask Taiki to bring him food anymore, so that means he has to go down to the cafeteria. But. He's not scared. Eridan Ampora doesn't get scared. He just doesn't want to have to deal with all this weird glubbing shit.

He is climbing down the stairs, head held high and a very 'come at me bro' look on his face. If anyone wants to give him shit for existing or something, he is so ready]

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"Ah. I wath one of the 'freaks," Ψiioniic said, a little dryly, and also more than a little bitterly. "And I couldn't thee very well, they fucked with my vision twofold, so I thuppose I missed seeing you when you arrived."

He started down the stairs again, because he had also been on his way to get something to eat. He was starting to feel a little less paranoid about coming out of his respite block, since nobody had attacked him yet. Having his status as the Helmsman rubbed in his face as a 'reward' hadn't helped much.

Eridan cautiously began walking again, too, following the gold-- no, he was just yellow, he needed to remind himself of that - down the stairs.

"I didn't see too many people," he said haughtily. "This place wwas so fucked up, and full a wweirdos. I just mostly stayed in my respite block. So you probably didn't see me at all."

"Probably not. If it wath late enough in the month, I was dead, so it would have been pretty hard to see you anyway." Ψiioniic was babbling and he was aware of it, but he couldn't seem to make himself STOP. He'd never just made casual conversation with a high-blood before, but they were going to the same place and it would be too awkwardly obviously if he just... stopped going and waited until the sea dweller got far enough ahead of him.

By the same token, Ψiioniic didn't want to seem to be backing down from the high-blood, or give him the impression that he could order Ψiioniic around.

Eridan was having a similar dilemma. He'd hardly ever had a casual conversation with anyone in his life, other than Feferi. Certainly not with Sollux. So it was weird to just be talking to a goldblood, but he was similarly unable to show weakness by trying to extricate himself from the conversation in some awkward way.

So he soldiered desperately onward.

"I mostly just died, too," he said. "My roommate wwas fuckin' shithivve and paranoid and talkin' about killin' the freaks, and so wwe decided to try to escape. Only he wwent and said that he could fly, and that wwas obvviously not true, because wwhen he jumped off a the towwer wwith me on his back, wwe just fell."

"Ah... flying abilities don't work outside the tower," Ψiioniic said, wincing at the thought. He might have tried something similar himself, if he hadn't been warned by Aradia. "And even on thome floors inside it. My powerth are completely useless out there, tho his probably were, too." He sighed. "They're working very hard to keep us here, but we're not all jutht sitting around and taking it."

Should he mention that there was a plan in the works to try to find out who, exactly, was holding them all? Probably best not to, not unless Signless decided to go completely public with it.

"The paranoia wath a side effect of the experiments," he said instead. "SS - Signless, my moirail - was thuffering from it, too. He and my other roommate tried to kill me. And then Sollux did kill me."

Eridan was about to say something about the first bit, asking what people were doing if they weren't just sitting around and taking it. But then Psiioniic mentioned something that made Eridan completely forget about what he'd said before, and not even hear whatever he said after.

"Your moirail is the Signless?" he asked, the blood draining from his face and his fins tightening flat against the sides of his head. "He's not here, is he?"

"Who, SS? Yeah, he'th here," Ψiioniic said, confused by the sudden terror on Eridan's face. At least, he thought it was terror - he'd never seen the expression on a sea dweller before. Eridan said 'The Signless' the way Ψiioniic might have said 'Her Imperial Condescension'. "Obviouthly, or he'd have had a hard time trying to kill me. I mean, there's timeline shenanigans going on, he wath already dead at the time when I was taken from, but it's not like that'th anywhere NEAR the weirdest timeline fuckery going on in this plathe."

Eridan had no idea how to feel about this. He hunched his shoulders nervously, the scarf sneaking into his mouth as he began to chew on it. The Signless had died a martyr, and had never seen his philosophy come to fruition in his lifetime, but only a few centuries later, the Summoner was inspired and changed everything.

And this guy was that one's moirail. He was really, really important. One of those mentioned in the scriptures. In fact, now that he thought about it, Eridan was sure he recalled the name 'Psiioniic' come up before, lots of times. If he weren't such a determined atheist, he would have noticed sooner.

Eridan was having a really hard time recalling that Psiioniic thought of him as a highblood and was apparently scared of him.

"Right. Timeline shenanigans," he said indistinctly through the wool.

The sea dweller's reaction was completely baffling to Ψiioniic. He obviously recognized the name of the Signless, but why was that inspiring scarf-chewing terror?

The image of Dualscar chewing on his scarf like that tried to sneak into his think pan, and he barely managed to choke down his answering, slightly hysterical snicker.

"Um. It'th not like he dislikes high-bloods or anything," he said, feeling his way through the verbal minefield and not certain what might set it off. "That would make him a bit of a hypocrite. He hates the hemospectrum, not the people ON it. He'th even working with the Condesce right now to try to find a way out of here."

Eridan realized what he was doing and pulled the scarf out of his mouth. It was a bad habit he picked up as a wriggler and it sometimes hit him at really bad times. Not in a long time, though. Usually he was too busy running and fighting when he was scared.

Psiioniic wasn't doing anything aggressive, though. He had to calm down.

"A course he must hate hi-- uh, trolls like us," he snapped, though without much force. His fins were still vibrating with nervousness against the sides of his head. "They killed him horribly, didn't they. And anywway, it's because a him that the sea dwwellers are fuckin' brinesuckers and held dowwn noww. Evven if that wwasn't his original intention, that's the logical outcome a wwhat he did."

"He doethn't remember being killed... he's from before that happened," Ψiioniic insisted. He had to admit he wasn't sure about how the Vast Expletive would have changed his moirail's outlook on high-bloods, and he was just as grateful not to have to find out.

"All he wants... all any of uth ever wanted... was to not be treated like shit or made into slaveth," he continued doggedly. "NOBODY should have to thuffer that. It doesn't matter what your blood colour is, high or low. What do you mean, 'brinesuckers' though?"

It sure sounded good. Eridan scowled at the floor, fiddling with the end of his scarf, which was a little frayed. Didn't Psiioniic get it? Couldn't he tell by looking at Eridan's worn clothing?

"I mean that he wwon," he said. "And us sea dwwellers wwere laid loww. The wwhole hemospectrum got fuckin' flipped."

Now that he was looking, Ψiioniic could see the state of disrepair the sea dweller's clothes were in. He'd initially written it off to the effects of the tower - his own clothes weren't exactly looking fresh and fabulous anymore. But Eridan hadn't been here long enough for that to be a factor, he'd said.

The idea of the sea dwellers being at the bottom of the hemospectrum was so impossible to grasp that Ψiioniic could barely wrap his mind around it. But he was sure of one thing. "If the hemothpectrum was flipped, then we didn't 'win', we LOTHT," he insisted quietly, eyes down. "People are still thuffering. There are still low-bloods. Changing the COLOUR doesn't change the inherent wrongness of our violent thystem."

Eridan was feeling a bit self-conscious about how obvious he had been with his insecurities and fears. He sneered, drawing himself up and pushing his nervousness aside. Though his fins were still tight, he tried to cover that with bravado.

"Yeah, but at least it isn't you sufferin' noww is it. Don't pretend you aren't at least a little satisfied wwith this turn of affairs." He snorted and started down the steps. He wasn't absconding, he was just, figuring this conversation was probably over - and hoped that Psiioniic wouldn't flatten him against a wall for his impudence.

&3936;iioniic stared after him, trying to find words to express what should have been obvious. Eridan spoke as if this reversal of the hemospectrum in his timeline somehow put Ψiioiic in a better position, as if it had anything to do with him at all.

"I'm a thlave," he finally said, flatly, before Eridan had gotten more than a few steps down. "I've been a thlave half my life. I've been assaulted, tortured, brainwashed and completely fucked over, bound into a ship ath its Helmsman and turned into an object. BOTH of my previouth owners are here in the tower, and I've already died twithe in the last month becauthe of them. If anybody ith still experiencing any of that, regardless of what colour their blood happenth to be, I don't see what I have to be thatisfied with."

Though inwardly Eridan was flinching, he struggled to keep it out of his bearing. He was sick of feeling off-balance and confused, and this was one of the people who was directly responsible for him having a completely shitty life, even if it wasn't his intention.

"Isn't that all the moray reason for you to loathe me?" he snapped, whirling around and letting his cape flare out dramatically, though the fish pun that slipped out reflected his true emotional state. "I'm one a them. One a the kind a people wwho made you suffer and enslavved you. Wwhy wwouldn't you be satisfied that I'll nevver havve the chance to hurt someone the wway you'vve been hurt? And probably, wwhether you admit it or not, you feel I deservve this! Evveryone else does, so wwhy wwouldn't you?"

"Why wouldn't I? Becauthe I'm a comrade of the Signless," Ψiioniic said, drawing himself up despite his instinctive need to cringe and flinch away from the angry high-blood, despite the way he had to bite his tongues to keep from blurting out apologies and begging forgiveness. "Violence ith WRONG. Suffering is WRONG. Trolls can be better than the hemospectrum allowth us to be... no matter which way it runth. And I will believe that no matter how much they torture me for it - and they have. Oh god, they have."

His voice shook, and he had to stop for a moment to swallow, but then he continued doggedly. "And I won't thay that I wouldn't be just ath happy to see the Condesce or Dualscar get thome of their own medicine. Because I'd be lying - they hurt me, they hurt me SO BADLY, and I want them to pay for it. But you're not them. You've never done anything to me - or to anybody elthe, probably. You've suffered ath much as any low-blood. There'th nothing for you to pay for."

Eridan almost took a step back, but at the last instant he remembered that he was on a staircase and that would probably result in his death. He stared up at the goldblood, scarcely able to believe his auricular sponge clots.

He'd never heard someone talk like this. Not to him, and it closed his wind tube so much he had to swallow a few times before he could speak. When he spoke, he could hear the desperate hope in his own voice, and cringed at it, but the words were already out.

"You reely feel that wway?"

If he'd fallen Ψiioniic would have caught him, but it was probably just as well that they didn't put it to the theory. Talking like this to someone who was - as far as Ψiioniic's instincts were concerned - a high-blood was taking every bit of nerve he possessed, and it left him rather shaken.

"I do. I have to," he said. "It wath hearing all this from the Signless that gave me the thtrength and hope to free mythelf the first time. The belief that we CAN be better, that we SHOULD be better. And 'better' doethn't involve torturing different people. I want the suffering to end... not to become one of the people cauthing it. You have no idea how much it hurts me to know that our beliefth ended up creating a different sythtem of torture, and it will hurt SS even more."

Eridan frowned a little, turning that over in his mind. He'd never been religious - in fact, he'd deliberately rejected the Sufferer's faith, like all good sea dwellers. But there was some attraction to this.

More attraction to putting things back the way they had been, but that was difficult to imagine. He knew there were groups trying to do that, but he'd always kept his head down. He didn't want to die for a bunch of brinesuckers who'd never done anything for him, after all.

He honestly had no idea what to say to all that.

"...Oh."

The awkward response made Ψiioniic realize how much he'd started preaching, and he blushed a dull shade of yellow. "Uh. Thorry," he said, just as awkwardly. "It's sort of thomething I'm passionate about. Don't get me thtarted if you don't want to listen to a half hour lecture... and definitely don't get SS thtarted, he's even more into it than I am. But I really do mean it. I don't care if you're a thea dweller... if you're a low-blood, you've been hurt just ath much as I have. Even if my conditioning thays I should throw mythelf at your feet and beg forgiveness," he added, sighing.

If Eridan were being honest, he hadn't been hurt quite as much as Psiioniic - but a lot, still! His mind insisted - and he wasn't really sure what to do with the feelings that this whole conversation had inspired.

Bad enough winding up Sollux Captor's kismesis. Did he have to start feeling pity for his ancestor, too? That was patently ridiculous.

"Wwell, there's nothin' to forgivve," he said awkwardly. He wasn't sure what to say. How lame would it be to admit that no one's ever been nice to him like this, and given him a chance to just be himself, instead of instantly labelling him a sea dweller and making assumptions?

"So, um." Once again Ψiioniic was completely at a loss for how to continue the conversation, or even if he really wanted to continue it at all. Talking to a sea dweller, low-blood or not, was difficult for him. But he didn't want to just spout off at the poor guy and then abscond on him. "I wath going to get some food...?" he finally said, half statement and half invitation.

"Yeah, me too," Eridan said, then winced faintly. It seemed obvious that Psiioniic was as uncomfortable with him as he was, and both of them were pretty much searching for a way out of the conversation. He hesitated, then added haughtily, "But if you don't wwant to join me, I wwon't be offended."

It was a lot easier to deal with that haughty attitude when Ψiioniic could see that it was covering a low-blood's natural insecurity and nervousness. Despite himself, it made Ψiioniic smile faintly. "Well, I wouldn't want to intrude," he said, tilting his head. "But if the high-bloodth give you any trouble... either version of them... I'm usually pretty eathy to find, and I like company."

Even if there weren't any of the high-bloods from this Eridan's timeline here, Ψiioniic could easily imagine what people like the Condesce and Dualscar would think of a sea dweller who acted like a low-blood. Eridan might be in for MORE torment from them than he would be from the high-bloods he was used to.

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