Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Moirallegiance is the least understood of the conciliatory quadrants, but barely less dangerous than the kismesisstic.

Most trolls do not ever experience a genuine sustained moirail, as one can live life successful in the black, red and ash without having to set aside someone to be truly pale with. A troll may experience a variety of whitish feelings for other trolls in their lifetime and be both content and not dismembered by the Imperial Drones. Humans would call this concept ‘having a variety of friends,’ but as everyone knows human concepts are “stupid” and “don’t even make any sense.”

In the language of Alternia the word for friend is the same as the word for enemy. The etymology of moirail is entirely different. The closest root is something like “complement.”

If one were to ask an experienced auspistice which quadrant was the most difficult to deal with, it may surprise young trolls to learn that the answer is often “the pale.” Matespritship is pity with tenderness; the mating fondness of need, the pity of being loved as kismesissitude is the mating fondness of abhorrence. Moirallegiance is pity with understanding, the complete knowledge yet acceptance of another. It is this knowing acceptance, of possessing the only other troll who understands you for what you are, that creates the particular atmosphere of restraint especially dangerous trolls require. It is pity without contempt.

Perfect understanding often leads to perfect despair. It is the true moirail an auspistice may learn to fear: an imbalance of moirail to matesprit to kismesis may see the moirail turning against the other two quadrants, at which point one might as well slay everyone involved to keep it all tidy. Legislacerators hold the pale quadrant in the utmost respect, which is to say they often execute the moirails of their guilty defendants on rote. It would be disrespectful to imply they had no hand in the crime. The law requires a thorough, if bloodied, claw.

For the truly dangerous troll, the pale quadrant is as important for survival as the mating pair, though no Imperial Drones will come after you without it filled: instead the rest of the world will come after you, as inevitably and surely, and you will not live through it.

Young trolls find it difficult to distinguish between moirallegiance and matespritship, and play at moirails like young humans play at house (except about a million times less mindless and moronic-looking). It does not help that, traditionally, a declaration of moirallegiance is followed by the first and only act of physical intimacy between the pair; one cannot have true understanding of your moirail if you have not understood all of your moirail, whether you find this appealling or not. In some ancient cases it was recorded that the moirail would undergo the same one-off with their counterpart’s matesprit and kismesis, though this seems unnecessary, gruelling and “asking for shit” in modern Alternian eyes.

With this understanding, then, it is unlikely one finds one’s moirail at nine sweeps, let alone six. This hardly precludes the young from making, or often, breaking moirails, discovering the quadrant subject is flushed or caliginous or simply your next victim instead, generally getting into violent trouble the way any growing troll will. This does not prevent their pale aspirations, as a true moirail is as forever and as immutable as anything can be in the universe.

There is a particularly troll joke regarding a true moirail centering around the phrase “never alone again,” the hilarity being that in Alternian the subtle understanding of the word ‘alone’ applies only to a living moirail with a dead counterpart.

Humans do not get this joke, but as stated throughout this document, humans are assholes.

He had never known what it was like to be without Feferi. They had been together since they were very young, barely more than grubs blinking at the open sky and the moons sailing overhead. Back then they had just been two small strangers, without suspicion or pressure or any of that bullshit: just him and Fef, the way it had always meant to be.

In the dim annals of memory they’d first met when she was trying to kill him, which if you asked him was pretty fuckin auspicious between trolls of their caliber. Well, she’d been trying to kill his lusus in order to assuage Her terrible hunger, not him, but if you got around to it that basically meant she was trying to kill him, so yeah, auspicious. They fought and bit for as long as they could, thrashing about in the shallows making the foam purple with their baby blood, dropped to sleep exhausted in the sand and that was that.

Who could say when the pity began? She’d been young and seaweedy and naked, and he’d been baffled and downright perturbed that his lusus did not fight her. Together they snapped apart fish and drank the liquid behind their eyes, frilled their struggling bodies between their teeth. Eridan had been young and skinny and his lusus swam him ragged, unsympathetic and merciless as the rock they’d built their fuckin hive on, made him work hard as shit. Nobody understood that he’d always had to try so much harder than anyone else.

Nobody but Fef, who saw it firsthand. Somehow they’d taken to spending most of their time side by side, long before they really understood purple blood or Princesses or anything but the great salty sea. Her hair was short, tangled curls, so he took the pains to sit with her and comb them. He was tired all the time and sickly, too, though he hated to fuckin admit it, so she would sit and guard him from godawful hungry sea horrors while he slept. Eridan thought he started to understand her, really truly understand her and who she was and how she was different, when she held him because he was hurt and cried when he was sad. What was that, if it wasn’t pity? What were they, if not the most fated of moirallegiances?

One day I will be Empress, she said, swinging her legs. I can’t wait. I can’t wait, I really can’t wait! This is the fight I was born for, Eridan. I reject this world, but I’m going to build one. I’ll shrimply build a great big new one.

She had been a revolutionary, with fish puns. You’re fuckin crazy, Fef --

-- glub glub glub! So are you! We’re both hard work!

Reel hard work. --

It hadn’t been a holiday, they’d argued all the time in the petty exhausting way that wasn’t the wild satisfaction of blackrom. Landdwellers had done stupid mindless land-dweller shit without even the excuse of stress he had having to build a big new world while bitchfighting over what the big new world was going to even be. Pale romance consisted of one wild troll and the one who acted like a hit of sopor, preventing them from burning themselves dry before they’d even begun; back then they hadn’t known who was wilder, him or her, him and his grand traditions of genocide which were fuckin historical thank you very much and her with her -- revolution.

But he’d said: my battle is going to be your battle, Feferi, white as the light from the stars, white as the whales who swam in the underwaves. Eridan remembered all of it. Eridan was always going to remember all of it. She’d smiled at him in that slow, wonderful, arch way of hers, a fuckin queen at five sweeps: that’s all I could ever want, she’d said. For that he would have brought the world to its unworthy goddamn knees, just for that, just for her.

Pretty as hell, too, with her hair brushed and wavy like a strong tide, her eyes big and a little too wide underneath the goggles he’d put on her head. Before him her eyes were stung red and broken from the ocean; how pale could you fuckin get before they went down in history books as most moirailish moirails? Soft and scrubbed smooth from the salt, that was Fef, round stubborn chin and bright flushed gills, and the place where her sloped shoulders joined her neck made him think there was nothin else worth wasting your eyes on, not at all.

All that shamelessly pale flirting: I know you, she’d said one day, given him the shakes. I know who you really are -- just the little things for both of them, you would’ve liked the moons on the sea tonight, you like that sorta colour. And I know how you’re gonna feel about this --

Back before when he’d been worthy of her. Was a stupid fuckin wriggler who’d imagined himself pale as milk with the Princess and the only iron in the fire for Vris, when the whole world was his oyster and he was sure as shit gonna shuck it. It was sick to think the greatest night of Eridan’s life, the one that still qualified for best and greatest night of his life, was the one when part of him realised everything was gonna go to hell.

“You believe in your stupid doomsday machines like you believe in magic,” she’d said, and he’d crossed his arms behind his head and laid back in the sand and not cared just to show her, to show her how it didn’t sting -- “which is to say, you don’t, you just mess around with them because you’ve got stupid ideas about landdwellers and you’re afraid of the way I do things!”

“I am glubbing not.”

“You are glubbing too -- Er-i-dan,” she said, “sometimes I think I know you better than you know yourself.”

It had twisted inside him and he’d squeezed his eyes shut behind his glasses, knowing her face and the shine of her sharp teeth without having to think about it. “Whelk, Princess,” he’d said, and he’d meant it to hurt, really, he’d just wanted to slap her stupid face sometimes and see her flush tyrian, only his need wasn’t as black as it was pained -- “sometimes you sound awful pale for a boy.”

He always remembered her oh, all her air bladders exhaling in the surprise that was always replaced with her effervescence. She bit every realisation in the throat, savaged it until it was dead. She would’ve made one hell of an empress. “Do I,” she said, and “Do I!” and “The palest, Eridan.”

“Any minute now you’ll porpoise a moirallegiance.”

“Any minute,” she agreed, and he deliberately forced himself to take note of how she took up his hands between her own: made himself think, I’ll remember this forever, all these exact moments as cod is my witness, when she tilted her head at him and smiled again that crooked smile. “Any second. Maybe even now, Eridan!”

He sat up, struggling the sand off his jersey when she continued, “I am only a humble princess with a big lusus mouth to feed, and a world to teach how to cull, so really, what could I offer a prospective moirail like Eridan Ampora, but if you could ever want to bhaleen on my shoulder, then I think -- I really do think -- “

“Fuck yes, Fef,” he said, and he kissed her.

Later on he always thought she was a little bit surprised by that kiss, their hands crunched between each other and his rings biting into her fingers, but maybe she marked it up to him being a cruel deliberate traditionalist or whatever the hell she marked it up to, he didn’t know. All he knew back then was kissing her. Feferi kissed him like a real moirail, learning his lips and his cheeks and the tip of his nose all pale as you got, but even back then he just wanted her mouth and the sweet salt of her tongue. Fumbling with her goggles so he could lick the palpebral flaps above her eyes, every bit of her eyelid. His hand at her neck. Her hands at his arms, collarbones, pressing against where his heart beat in his chest in a fuckin quicktime march of vascular drumbeats. I’m here, she’d said, and kissed him again until they were both giddy. I’m really here, it’s all right.

The first time for a moirail was always meant to be discovery, some kinda admission, and Eridan kept on telling himself that every time he bit her it was a breakthrough. Wasn’t like she didn’t fuckin get into it. Fef rolled on top and skinned off all his clothes, looked down at his skinny-ass body like he was actually worth lookin at and pressed her cheek against his ribs. “You’re fine,” she said, and he hadn’t even known what she was assuring him of, just that he loved her for it. “You’re fine.”

By then of course he’d been hard as hell and she couldn’t get naked quick enough, and she was laughing as she wriggled off her shoes and lifted her arms so that he could work her top off: clutched her there in the itchy sand and stroked her breasts, afraid to look at them or her, completely undone when she sifted her hand through his hair and stroked the base of one horn with her thumb. Eridan nearly got off just like that, just her fingers doing that and the slight curve of her belly against the swell of his bulge. When she moved her hand down and curiously wrapped her hand around him, squeezing and unsure, he had to fuckin think of Gamzee Makara bein unsexy not to fill a pail then and there.

That first time he was too stupid to do anything but touch her, get his selfish fill of touching her and saying you are so beautiful, Fef, just fuckin look at you, kissing the insides of her elbows. Babbled a whole bunch of shit not knowing what he was saying. We’re gonna be so good together, the best, the best moirallegiance --

-- we always were the best, she told him. Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m here. I’ll take care of you.

-- I’ll take such good glubbin care of you, Peixes --

Feferi cried out and bit him all over when he was inside her, palmed his horns and hips and laughed unsteadily as he ground her into the surf. She rolled the syllables of his name around like they were some kind of holy prayer, Er-i-dan, and I know you, I really do, I do all properly pale and perfect. The feel of somebody else’s body against his broke his heart and his brain, her body, so immaculately tight and wet as goddamn rain and laughing with each thrust like he was her undiscovered fuckin territory. He came with the tide licking the soles of their feet and Fef lickin their wounds, both of them crusted with sand and huddled close, splotchy and violet with blood. They stayed like that for such a long time. Somehow he thought he’d come away knowing exactly what to do as a moirail, satisfied with the part of her he took away and the part of him she had, but at that moment all he could think about was the crushing disappointment that they only got one shot ever at each other’s bodies.

“You are beautiful,” she told him, and kissed his heaving chest. “It’s going to be you -- and -- me! Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

“You were my queen before you were anyone else’s,” he said, wobbly, pathetic. “You were always my queen, okay.”

“Eridan, I’d -- I’d rather be your moirail than anyone else’s stupid glubbing empress.”

At that point he was so flushed for her it was goddamn disgusting, but Eridan Ampora was nothing if not a good liar.

A slap to the face of moirallegiance, a righteous harpoon going right through its blubber, so cruel a burn that people would have gasped. She’d never even blinked.

They had never been moirails. Not even for a moment. Nobody knew Eridan Ampora and accepted him at the same fuckin time because that would mean givin him a fuckin break, would mean he got it easy, when every single universe seemed obsessed with making it so hard. He’d just thought one day she’d look at him, really look at him, and when she opened her eyes and looked at him she’d see -- red.

Instead she'd put a hole in his heart. So he put a hole in hers. Conciliatory quadrant his fuckin ass.