Eridan shadowed Eddie's steps, altogether grateful for the lack of comment on his pound of flesh. The voices loomed at their backs, but if Eddie was calm, then so would be Eridan. He knew what the other man had suffered, at the hands of his employers.

He knew how quietly desperate a man could be to never go back to pale latex hands and stainless steel. He knew that fear.

"I could." No particular inflection, on those two short words. An acknowledgment. "I could give you all sorts of reasons why I wouldn't, but you don't want that. You can't trust that, can you? Platitudes. You know damn well how I could benefit from sellin' you out."

He reached out, fingertips finding that leftmost building. They'd left him his blood, at least, explained away by a vague medical condition on the rare occasions it was asked about; royal purple still thrummed in his veins, though the true sign of his lineage had long since been castrated. It helped, sometimes. To see his blood.

"I'm sick of the game, Eddie. Spendin' my Saturdays torturin' the shoulders I used to cry on." Two fingers lit up in tandem, low burning lights, and he traced the sharp angles of his glyph in the chipping paint. "I can't do this anymore. Guess you could say I grew a conscience."

Wryly spoken, almost a joke. Purple eyes found the spot between Edward's shoulder blades and bore into him, there.

"Kind of like you."