Notes: Okay, so here's the deal. This story has been delayed for a while because at first there was a scene I didn't want to write. It was the continuation of Kanaya's arrival at Karkat's home, and as I wrote I kept realizing that everything I was doing there could EASILY be ruined by the pending end of Homestuck. At last the stalling led me to the start of the Gigapause, and I realized that here was my chance. Much of the future Karkat/Gamzee, and Gamzee/Kanaya interactions are heavily dependent upon where and how Homestuck ends. I need to know where these characters are left in relation to each other to give this story my all on their front. And so I came to a decision: I was going to hiatus. I wanted to see the end of Homestuck to make this story be everything it can be. I will, of course, ignore any details that completely ruin what I'm doing here (such as Hussie actually giving us an epilogue that says what happens to everyone), and I'll throw out details on the way that need to be gone to create the AU I want. But I want to make this story as good as possible, and so I'm taking a break after this chapter. Thus we end up with a shorter chapter that is almost exclusively focused on Eridan. Forgive me, but that is what this has to be.

I tried to get in contact with the requester to run this decision by them, but I have not been able to reach her. With that in mind I have finally opted to do what I was suggesting to the requester.

I always wanted to do side stories with this series. I wanted to explore how characters got where they were, how they handled the awakening of their memories, and a few other things. I always worried I'd never be able to do so because of how busy I was. Now, though, those stories are coming. If you're reading this on Ao3 you might notice that this story has now become part of a series: Alearustuck. If you're reading this elsewhere, well, I'll try my best to make sure that Alearustuck stories are clearly noted to be so in their summaries so you can find them. I'll be diving into side stories to fill the time until the gigapause is over and I'm comfortable finishing the story. Sorry. That is just what I need to do. Even when the Gigapause ends I may continue the pause here for a while to keep doing the other stories. I hope you can forgive me this, but as a writer this is what I feel needs to happen to give this story the chance to be the best it can be.

I hope that the first Alearustuck one-shot will be coming soon, so keep your eyes out. I hope to see you there

A Handful of Diamonds – Chapter 4

He comes awake with the sunrise, bathed in the motherfucking miracles of the dawn. The first words his pan plays with are the traditional morning meditations upon the three-fold goddess of space, a thanks for the creation of life, light, and a place for them to live. Not that he can do much more than laugh when he thinks of the fucking words. Morning always meant thanking the goddess in the aspect of the Stringer of Stars, for giving the world warmth and light. As if that was ever something she did. Messed the fuck up with his wicked brother, corrupting the world and dooming them all. Not that he hadn't had more than two hands in that as well, but that wasn't even up and important in the grand scheme.

Still, it's nice to feel the sun on his face, to feel the light and the heat and look up and not be blind. It's one of the wicked miracles of this life, maybe one of the few he'd ever get to experience, especially with the recent turn of events.

He'd seen it last night, all up and got his wicked peepers on an old problem come home to roost. Eridan motherfucking Ampora had dragged himself back into town, looking sorry and beaten down like he deserved to be. In a moment of watching he'd remembered the last time he had seen Ampora alive, or at least what his pan told him was the last time. The three of them had stood together in that high place, the Spider, the Fish, and the Clown. All up and motherfucking getting their showdown on until, just before the strike, they had been interrupted. Eridan's own motherfucking avenging angel, in that life and this one, considering how steamed the regal sister had looked when he'd watched her storm across the street this morning. There was a small voice in his pan that said that wasn't the last time they had seen each other. There were memories, fuzzy and faint and almost unreal when he looked at them, that said that he'd met Eridan before hitting the streets. But no, those memories were hard to catch, hard to hold on to when he tried. They slipped through his fingers like water or sand, holding no promise and all sorts of wicked lies.

"Yo, what up my wicked brother?"

Gamzee slowly turned his attention from the stoop in front of the communalhivestem and put on his widest lazy grin as he turned his head to look at the lanky human who had strode up to him. The man was familiar, passingly so, and yet the sight of him launched a motherfucking yearning in Gamzee that he knew had to be filled.

"You up and got the stuff?" Gamzee whispered at the arriving motherfucker, still smiling and watching just how uncomfortable it made the human. There was just something about them that made them uncomfortable around a mouth full of fangs. Weaklings.

"Yeah, I got the stuff. You got the payment?"

Gamzee fished around in his pockets and at last came up with a handful of crumpled bills and loose change. The human frowned at the sight, but at last held out a hand to receive the payment. Both of them knew that Gamzee's payment was more of a courtesy than anything else. It wasn't like he couldn't break the human in half without even trying. But Gamzee brought him customers, Gamzee didn't throttle him, and Gamzee kept the streets clear of other dealers. For that he paid far less for premium product, which the dealer happily handed over before making off like a flapbeast out of hell.

And Gamzee? Well, he sat himself down in the shadows of his alley and pried open the little baggy that had been thrust into his possession. For a moment he stared at the meager collection of pills. They weren't as tasty as sopor pies, but they were good, damn good. They brought the colors back to his eyes, made the world look as illusory as it felt. It made his blood tingle and his pulse flow. They got him through the day, and from what he'd seen last night, he was going to need it. Things were changing, and he wasn't sure he liked just where it was going to lead.

"Cronus? M! O! G! What are you doing here?!"

There was little for Eridan to do but sigh and hide as much of his face as possible behind the thick coils of his scarf. It had taken almost five minutes of concentrated pleading to get Porrim to surrender the thing to him uncleaned and unmended. In the end it had taken a hard won promise to hand the scarf over to Rose upon his return for mending and Cronus offering to let Eridan stay with him to win Porrim over. The scarf was the only part of his own wardrobe that he'd been allowed to retain for his trip out into public. It looked ridiculous next to the borrowed jeans and t-shirt of Cronus', but it was familiar and comforting, a shield against the strange world of familiar faces. It was all he had to protect him from the cheerful catgirl all but bounding toward him and his older doppelganger.

"Yo, Meu, what's up?" Cronus greeted, but only after removing the toothpick from his mouth.

"I was just asking you that!" Meulin Leijon laughed, her voice louder than was strictly necessary in the hustle and bustle of the mall. "Is that little Ampurra with you? MOG! When did he come back? Oh, look at the poor thing in your terrible clothes! He needs something better..."

Eridan watched as Cronus raised both of his hands in a shooshing gesture, waiting for her to notice before speaking. It was strange to see considering how happy Cronus was to talk over him and Porrim at what had passed as breakfast.

"We're here to get him new clothes. He ain't got any of his own 'cept the old stuff, you know?"

"He doesn't have anything?" Meulin asked, pulling an excessively sad face at that. "Why not?"

Cronus sighed and turned his attention to Eridan. "Your business. You explain."

"Why should I?" Eridan demanded, his voice muffled behind his scarf.

"Shit, don't be so rude!" Cronus snapped even as he whacked Eridan upside the head. "Sorry, Meu. Apparently he's forgetful. Give me a moment, okay?"

Meulin nodded, smiling just like the cat on her sweater as Cronus bodily dragged Eridan away from her. Once there was a bit of distance between her and them, Cronus turned them both to make sure they weren't facing Meulin, then shot Eridan a dirty look.

"Geez, you're so insensitive!" Cronus growled, shaking his head. "Get your head on straight. Don't fucking hide behind that scarf like an asshole. Meu's deaf, you douchewad. Reads lips like a champ, but it doesn't work if you got your fool ass mouth covered. Your accent will be hard enough on her as it is. Talk normally, but always make sure that she's looking at you when you speak. Normally we wave a little to get her attention if we want to say something. Never talk to her while chewing something. It alters the mouth shape. And don't whisper or shout, that fucks things up too. Be nice to her. Memories ain't much, but she takes hers of Sgrub pretty hard compared to most of us cuz of what Kurloz did to her."

"What did he...?"

"Ain't your fucking business. Most of us agreed to try and put all that behind us. We ain't the same people we were back then, so we try to remember that and be friends."

If only the same could be so easily done for the Alternian trolls. Then again, Eridan had committed far worse crimes than most of the Beforans. After all, he had killed two of his friends and severely injured a third. And for what? Because he had lost faith. Because he had refused to see the hope and potential within the human session. Even now Karkat hated him for it, and Eridan expected even worse from Fef, Kan, and Sol. Even thinking about it made him wonder just why it was he had bothered returning to Ristart.

"Okay, now that you know the rules, let's get back to Meu. We were lucky to run into her. She's got to be on her break now, but we'll follow her back when she gets back on shift. Meu works at Fashionable Impressions, and she can get us a discount for you. The ten percent staff discount means we can buy ten percent more stuff for you."

"That isn't quite how it works," Eridan mumbled, but he lowered his scarf to completely uncover his mouth.

"Whatever," Cronus sighed, throwing his arm companionably around Eridan's shoulders. "With Meu and me helping you'll look sharp in no time. Then we're meeting up with Kankri for lunch and we're going to sit down and have a nice talk."

"A talk?" Eridan asked, unable to keep the fear out of his voice.

"Yep. Inquiring minds want to know just why you're back and why you chose now."

Eridan swallowed hard. He had been worried that it would be something like that.

"So..." Cronus breezed as he dragged a chair away from the food court table with a foot, then flopped down into it in his best fake boneless way, letting the mass of bags fall from his arms in a comic way that made Meulin giggle behind her hands. "Eridan, babe, time for you to start talking."

The way his young clone rolled his eyes made him want to reach across the table, grab him by the bundled mass of his new scarf, and shake some respect into that glubbing pan. Instead Cronus just smiled widely as Eridan slipped with less showtrollship into one of the chairs, carefully arranging the bags on the floor beside the table. It was almost amusing to see Eridan fuss with them, shifting them this way and that until they were perfectly in line from largest to smallest. No, scratch that, it was funny, mostly because he knew Eridan wasn't the neatest troll. It hadn't taken much time watching the way he interacted with Porrim to figure out that he wasn't one of those poor trolls who were compelled to make everything perfect or suffer from anxiety. This was purely a display of nerves, the same way that Eridan hiding behind his scarf and refolding all of the clothes he'd tried on with military precision had been. Eridan wasn't comfortable around him, not that Cronus could really blame the kid. They all had shortcomings and failures in the past lives they had lived, and those memories were always hard to come to terms with. Hell, Cronus had shut himself inside his hive for a full month when his memories had come back, ashamed of just who he had been and how he had treated trolls he now called his friends. In fact, the first thing he'd done when he'd met Mituna had been to apologize, which had of course confused the other troll since he hadn't awaken to his own memories yet.

Eridan, though, had pretty good reasons to stress, to have fled before this. Some sins were hard to forgive. Things like what Eridan had done had drove others away from Ristart. Aranea, Vriska, Kurloz, they had all gone off to escape the way they thought others were looking at them—or maybe because of how people were looking at them. Meenah... Well, she had gone because she had always been unable to let herself be bound to one place for any amount of time. But that was beside the point. The point here and now was the younger troll across from him whose fins were drooping in that slight way that any seatroll knew meant Eridan was thinking himself into the worst kind of funk.

"Let him take his own pace," Meulin chided him, a look of disapproval sketched over her face. "Being seen with someone as lacking in fashion sense as you has to be traumatizing!"

"Aw, Meu, do you have to be so cruel?" Cronus asked, dramatically pressing the back of his hand against his forehead as if he were a vapors prone hysterical dame from one of those old movies Kankri always insisted they watch but spent the whole time through ranting over. "A guy has got to have something uniquely him!"

"Then why force what is you on him?" Meulin demanded, even as she turned to fuss Eridan's scarf into laying more attractively around his neck. Eridan went rigid at the touch, and it almost occurred to Cronus to reach out and stop Meulin's actions. Hadn't Eridan been through enough having the hyper troll fuss over him in the shop for literally two hours?

"He just reminds me of, well, me," Cronus offered, smirking at Eridan. The other troll didn't even look up from the table he had been staring at since he finished fussing with the bags.

"Which is quite inappropriate considering the fact that he is his own person and should be allowed to develop as he sees fit. The similarities that may be inherent in the two of you due to shared genetic makeup is hardly something that justifies any attempt you might make to push your own styles, opinions, or goals upon him. Thus I would..."

"Hey, Kankri," Cronus sighed, not even turning his head to look at the newcomer to the conversation. Kankri huffed in that way he always did when someone interrupted his flow of thought and sat himself next to Cronus. From the corner of his eyes he could see Kankri not-quite glaring at him in the way he did when people got him out of his best rants, and then it was Cronus's turn not to giggle. He was too used to handling Kankri these days, and it was always its own kind of fun to deflate his uptight friend. "About time you joined the party. What do we want to eat today?"

"Sushi!" Meulin cheered, finally leaving off her fussing over Eridan's new clothes. At last Eridan seemed to relax around the fins, but Cronus could tell by the tension in his shoulders—a tension he was used to himself—that he was by no means pleased to be stuck with the three of them.

"For the last time, Meu, they don't serve sushi here," Cronus sighed, leaning forward to shift most of his weight onto the point where his arms were crossed on the table.

"You didn't ask me what we were going to eat. Just what we wanted," Meulin laughed at him, before letting her eyes cast around the food court. It was a mystery just why she did that every time he asked, she knew the restaurants and offerings here better than he did, and yet she always acted like there was a new experience to be had. Oh well, to each their own.

"Salad," Kankri offered, the same choice as every other day that they met for lunch. One of these days Cronus was going to trick him into eating meat other than roe cubes and Kankri was going to be so enchanted that he'd give up this whole human concept of veganism. After all, humans evolved to be omnivores. Trolls, on the other hand, had always been carnivores. Acting otherwise was just ridiculous.

"How about you, Eridan?" Cronus asked, smiling at his personal mini-me. "I know a place here that does a killer cheese steak. Huge ones too, great for filling the stomach."

"Porrim said I should take it easy," Eridan mumbled, again ducking his face into the apparent safety of his scarf. "That my stomach isn't ready to..."

"There's a small place that does some good soups," Kankri suggested, already rising from his seat. "I'll treat you to something brothy. Porrim shouldn't have too much of an issue with that. Meulin, why don't you come with me to help carry stuff. We both know what Cronus wants anyway."

There was a moment where confusion clearly crossed Meulin's face. Then her eyes sought Cronus out and met across the table, and he gave her just the tiniest little nod. She understood, and immediately jumped to her feet to trail after Kankri. Cronus almost smiled thankfully at them. They were smart, his friends, and realized that Eridan needed time. Time and maybe a sensitive ear to open up to before he really started talking. Which meant leaving someone behind that could, and had in a way, easily be in Eridan's own shoes. Far nicer shoes now than they had been this morning, even Cronus had to admit that. Porrim had doled out a decent bit of her savings to see Eridan well equipped for starting his life over, to the point where Cronus was almost jealous.

"How do you make up for not one, but two lives of fucking up everything?" Eridan asked after a moment, his voice barely a whisper through the scarf.

Well... This was sure going to be a conversation. Cronus leaned back in his seat once more, frowning pretty hard as he thought about it. At least Eridan was opening up to him, but he wasn't expecting that question so fast.

"Do you always go straight for the hard questions?" Cronus questioned right back after a moment of thought. With a sigh he shook his head and met Eridan's eyes, holding them and refusing to let him look away. All he could do was hope that it would really work, and shock of all shocks Eridan just sat there, staring at him. "Listen, there have been a lot of people trying to figure out the answer to that question for centuries. The short version is that no one really knows."

"And the long?" Eridan asked, his voice a pained whisper.

"You never stop trying. You throw yourself on their mercy and dedicate yourself to making it better. And if they tell you to leave, to just go away and never be in their line of sight again... Well, you just do that," he answered after taking a long moment to think. "If a hurt is too great to forgive, then the only thing you can offer them is whatever reparations they ask for, even if they hurt you."

"And... If you have feelings for them?"

Cronus froze, and he knew from his reflection in Eridan's glasses that he looked like an antlerbeast in the headlights.

"Then you give everything you have to figuring which is worse: them blaming you for what you've done wrong, or living your life with them never having known what they meant to you."

"That's what I was worried you'd say," Eridan mumbled before all but collapsing onto the table, burying his face into his arms. It took everything Cronus had not to catch the younger troll up in his arms and shoosh his tears away. Instead he watched on, acting as nonchalant as he could while making loud comments that sounded like a conversation but was mostly just him trying to keep the strangers of the food court from knowing the pain Eridan was feeling. Well, there was that, and a new resolution to do everything he could to help Eridan to mend bridges burned in a previous life.