Title: Inundate
Prompt: Eridan Feferi
Toska, Russian: Acording to Vladmir Nabokoov, "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody or something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom."
Summary: She has never understood drowning until she met Eridan.
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He's at it again. There's a sound in her earpiece, a warning, and she knows Eridan's about to suck her back into his whirlpool of issues.
She can handle the whines and cries. The pleas for help, the torrent of feelings with nowhere to go. A moirail is supposed to take these things, to suck them in and keep them away.
That much Feferi can handle. Or at least try to—pulling his thoughts out of him is like trying to swim up river.
Hard, but doable.
(but not right, not at all. Moirails are supposed to confide, supposed to talk. She's not supposed to drag it out at.)
It's the rest she can't handle. Even without seeing him she can picture his face. The exact expression he has just before he completes the call. She's seen it on him enough times.
Feferi knows the smirk and curled upper lip. The face of a shark before it attacks. His words have a jagged edge now, sea glass cutting her hands, and she doesn't understand why he keeps biting her. Pushing her.
Giving her but he never takes. Never receives. Her own feelings are clammed up inside and she doesn't know when she can talk to him about it.
Or who else to, because he never listens. Something bubbles up in her, something angry and scared and just so lonely.
"Feferi," he calls out, and she can hear his voice so clearly. The exact tone of it. It always starts with a plea. A soft sound with a desperate edge.
"Feferi," he repeats. And now it is a demand, an order. His jaws sink into her, waiting to dig in. The softness is gone, but the desperation remains.
He wants something from her. She has an inkling of what, of just where he is trying to pull her. It's an undercurrent she can't take.
A path she refuses to follow.
They are moirails. Two trolls who support each other, who swim the channel together. It can be slightly one-sided, but never entirely so.
She is tired of threading water on her own.
"Feferi!" he calls, a last time, and she gets up. A sadness swells inside her as she forms her next words.
She can't do it anymore. She just can't. Something has to give, something has to break. And she refuses to let it be her.
She has never understood drowning until she met Eridan.