[SE] maybe then you'll get a little heated too

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper’s jaw feathers, the muscle ticking in a way that speaks to reluctant agreement rather than peace. Jack’s right—death by a thousand cuts or one clean break, it all hurts the same in the moment—but only one gives a chance at healing. And while Vesper knows Jack had the harder burn of living in Flora’s kingdom with her name on every damn tongue, he’s still fairly sure he’d hear Colt’s echo in King’s End just the same. 

The mention of Ludo strips his composure back for a moment. He raises a brow, the corner of his mouth lifting in a wry, strained smirk. "I ain’t sure Safrin would let either of us light a candle for Ludo without showin’ up herself," he mutters, dry enough to crack. Then the smile fades to something quieter, more honest. "And I don’t know if I could go through with it, anyhow." It isn’t romantic, not some noble notion of it having been better to have love and lost than to never have loved at all. It’s the simple, sharp truth: erase the ache, and what stops him from making the same goddamn mistake again? What stops him from stepping right into the same fire because the memory of the burn’s been carved out of him?

Jack lists the other regions and Vesper nods along, only half listening as he sorts through the edges of his own thoughts. "Halo’s too fuckin’ cold," he murmurs. "And the Climb ain’t got half the luxuries I’m used to." There’s a flicker of something like humour there, faint but real. "The Greatwood, though..."

He trails off, considering, then his teeth press into the inside of his cheek, a habit inherited straight down the bloodline, and he turns his face toward Jack. Not fully, just enough for the question to land where it belongs instead of drifting out into the dark. "You think..." His voice dips low, softer than he ever lets it get around anyone else, his sisters included. "You think bein’ with someone is the sort of thing men like us just don’t get to have?" It’s the honest, careful question of a telepath who has spent his entire (short) life holding back the weight of other people’s minds, and who finally ran face-first into the truth of what it does to him when he lets someone too close.

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

Scoffing out a real laugh at that, unable to help himself, Jack slants a grin in Vesper's direction. "Y'know, I believe it," he agrees. "An' I've been real lucky so far not to get on your mother's bad side. Ain't somethin' I plan on tryin' out if I can help it." And as Vesper has already concluded, it's the memory of the pain that teaches you to avoid those same pitfalls in future.

"Halo ain't too bad for gettin' lost though, if you can handle the cold. Ain't no one willin' to brave it to go lookin' for you," he points out. "But you're right... the Greatwood might have enough there to keep you entertained for a bit. An' it's a real nice distance from King's End. Though, loathe as I am to admit it, you'll be missed if you go." On The Ark, he means. Telepathy has naturally made Vesper into the sort of sailor the crew can recognise in their captain, and that similarity goes very far indeed when it comes to their willingness to follow orders.

But then Vesper is turning towards him, more or less, his voice low and earnest in a way that people simply aren't around Jack. It takes him off-guard, especially given the question that accompanies it, all of it enough to strike right through the chinks in his armour, landing a blow at the tender flicker within him that believes the answer to that question is yes.

"...Men like us," he repeats quietly, the ghost of a smile on his face as he reaches out to gently clasp Vesper's shoulder. "Y'know, there was a time when the idea of someone else bein' able to do what I can do was like a knife against my throat." Not the case now, clearly, but that in itself is proof that change is possible.

"The problem, I guess, is that I'm the only one you've got for reference. An' I don't think I'm built to be with someone, no." Though there is that soft echo in the back of his mind, of what Safrin had said, but he brushes it away for now. "I dragged myself up alone an' did the best with what I had. Doesn't have to be that way for you, though, if that's the sort of thing you want."

Vesper's magic doesn't have to be the sort of gift and curse that might cost lives to know about.

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper doesn’t look at Jack while he talks; not out of disrespect, not out of distance, but because the space between them is already stretched thin enough that meeting Jack’s eyes feels like it might snap something neither of them is ready to hold. For others, this would be nothing. For the two of them—two telepaths who have spent their whole lives bending themselves so no one sees where they break—it’s the emotional equivalent of dropping to their knees in the street and sobbing into each other’s shirts.

He frowns down at his hands instead, at the silver rings glinting faintly in the lanternlight. The constellation freckles on his skin pulse in a slow, thoughtful rhythm as he tilts his head, trying to decode the old scar tissue in Jack’s voice, the quiet admission tucked into the words. "Bein’ dropped down into paradise with two sisters is a cakewalk compared to how you had it," he agrees, voice low, smooth, threaded with a reluctant gratitude he’s never said aloud. "Never mind bein’ a demigod on top of it."

He pauses, eyes narrowing at the plank floor like it might offer some kind of instruction, but it doesn't. He swallows, throat tight, and shakes his head slightly. "But when it comes to bein' with someone..." His breath hitches on the way out, chest rising in a slow, uneasy drag. "I just can’t see how it’s meant to go unless I tell the whole fuckin' world what I can do."

The truth spirals out of him in one long, unbroken flow, the same way thoughts spill across a mind he never asked to read. "Holdin’ it back all the time, it’s like livin’ in a lie that gets heavier the longer it goes on. Not just 'cause of keepin' straight what I should know from what I do know, but all the shit that ends up pilin' up." His fingers tap lightly against the bunk beside him, restless, a quiet echo of the static that always hums in the back of his mind. “"It’s the baggage people don’t say out loud. The secrets they don’t mean to give you. The emotions they don’t even know they’re thinkin’ at you. The fuckin' insults." Worse, most of the worst things people thought were dressed up all with pretty lies, which only made them all the uglier to hear.

He huffs a breath that might’ve been a laugh if it wasn’t so scraped thin, knowing Jack would understand.  The next exhale is softer, sadder, threaded with resignation rather than anger. "Unless I go around tellin’ everyone what I am—which I ain’t about t’ do—I don’t see how it ends any different than it did with Colt."

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

Scoffing at that and offering a nod of acknowledgement - cakewalk indeed - Jack gives Vesper's shoulder a rough squeeze before letting his hand drop back to his lap. "Be that as it may, this sort of magic is its own baggage," he says, and the boy goes onto explain just as much. Vesper says all the things Jack has carried for years with the succinct weariness that only comes with someone who knows it intimately; all the things he'd taken to heart in his youth, things had morphed into swaggering, reckless arrogance in the years that followed before burning out into the jaded indifference it is now - mostly.

"Makes you real tired, doesn't it?" he says softly. "Takes the shine off bein' alive, too, if you let it. But I dunno if you gotta tell the whole fuckin' world about yourself to find someone. I didn't have to, even if it blew up in my fuckin' face in the end." But that hadn't been his magic's fault, not entirely, not all by itself. The man it had carved him into had contributed, certainly, but just knowing about him hadn't been what had ended it. No, it was that Jack hadn't been enough, plain and simple.

"Not everyone's Colt," he says. "The way she thought 'bout you, the way shit would've gone if you told her about you - there are people out there that'll take it in their stride." It's more a matter of whether he's got it in him to want to look for them after this.

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper absorbs the squeeze to his shoulder without flinching, the touch landing with a weight he isn’t sure how to return. Affection between them has always been something edged and accidental; shared by proximity, in the quiet, in the things they do rather than say. He nods once, an awkward, grateful tilt of his head that feels like the best he can manage.

Jack talks, steady and unvarnished, offering the closest thing men like them might ever get to hope. But Vesper’s expression doesn’t shift toward belief; if anything, the lines around his eyes deepen with a familiar, bone-deep weariness. He rubs his thumb across his palm, the motion small and restless, like he’s trying to work loose a splinter that isn’t physically there. "Do you know that, though?" he asks quietly, glancing up at Jack from under pale lashes. "Been thinkin’ about it a lot since we talked last. Even if they take it in stride...how the hell does it not change things?"

His eyebrows lift, faint but clear. "How do they not start sayin’ shit like, well, you know that ain’t what I meant, or I can’t help what I think? or thinkin' that just because we can see it all spelled out in their minds that we're gonna agree or think the same." He shakes his head, the movement slow, heavy with cynicism he didn’t used to have. "Feels like every argument’d get twisted up before it even fuckin’ starts."

He sighs then, long and tired, his shoulders sinking under the weight of a truth he knows Jack understands. "From what I’ve seen...lies in a relationship can be a good thing. Sayin’ you ain’t mad when you are, or tellin’ someone somethin’ looks good when it don’t. Holdin’ shit back ‘cause it’ll hurt ‘em." Vesper shrugs faintly, the corner of his mouth twisting; not into a smile, but into a rueful understanding. He looks sideways at Jack then, the shared resignation unspoken between them. "We don’t get that." Not the soft sweet lies, not the white noise. Instead they got everyone's worst moods, their ugly thoughts, and shadows that stretched long and wounded in a way they could never show.

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

Jack can't help but let out a soft, almost helpless little laugh at that - for as much hope as he'd been trying to offer to Vesper (as if by giving it to him perhaps he won't feel quite so hopeless himself), the boy is very skilled in pointing out all of the flaws he'd tried to patch over. He ought not be surprised, honestly, but it doesn't make for a particularly uplifting conversation. "I don't know, kid," he says honestly.

"Those sorts of things did come up between me an' Flora a lot. It was always, you know what I'm thinkin' and what I want, so why can't you just give it to me, like I was some vending machine for affection." Like he wasn't entitled to his own baggage when it came to their relationship, because he had the advantage of prior knowledge. "It never seems to go the other way, though."

Sighing hard enough to drag his shoulders down, he can only give a quiet nod of agreement as Vesper continues. "No, we don't," he says. "Jus' make sure if you do ever get with someone, they don't also have a fuckin' truth ring on their finger. That just makes shit twice as ugly."

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

The phrase vending machine for affection lands with a dull, resonant thud somewhere deep beneath Vesper’s ribs; too accurate, too familiar, too easily mapped onto every imagined version of how things might have gone with Colt if he’d stayed, if he’d tried, if he’d let her see even half of what he felt and could do. The idea that knowing what someone wants turns into owing it to them is a fear he’s never named out loud, but hearing Jack put it plainly feels like someone cutting a lock off a door he hadn’t wanted opened.

As Jack mentions the truth ring, whatever composure Vesper had left collapses in a startled, visceral jolt. His head jerks toward Jack so fast it almost snaps. His eyes go wide—properly, comically wide—and for a rare second he looks young in a way that isn’t charming or aloof or devil-may-care, but horrified. "A truth ring?" he repeats, voice cracking just enough that he clears his throat immediately after, like he can smooth the edge back into place. "Fuck."

He drags a hand down his face, then tips his head back against the bulkhead with a little thunk, staring up at the ceiling like the wooden slats might offer him divine guidance. "You never catch a fucking break, huh?" It’s rhetorical, but the way he asks it—half incredulous, half commiserating, half absolutely convinced the answer is no—makes it sound like a genuine plea for the universe to reconsider its treatment of the Barclay bloodline, if not for their sakes, but for Nova and Caly at the very least.

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

Given that Jack had lived his entire relationship with Flora and that little accessory, perhaps he doesn't give it the appropriate weight, but as Vesper flinches and the Captain glances across to see true horror in his expression, he's inclined for the first time to reconsider. "Yeah," he says, huffing out a breath that tries and fails to be a laugh. "She can't lie to me, why should I get to lie to her, y'know? Seemed like a fair deal at the time, except y'know... she could always take it off if she didn't wanna hear a hard truth."

Scoffing and shifting enough to glance back at the demigod as he slouches enough to gaze up at the cabin ceiling, Jack shrugs a bit. "Not when it comes to this shit, apparently," he says. "I like to think it's karma for bein' shit-hot at everythin' else." A couple of seasons has given him the strength to wave that kind of bravado around again, but there's no telepathy or truth ring needed to see that it's false.

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper lets out a sharp exhale through his teeth, the sound halfway between a scoff and a laugh that never quite arrives. His head rolls back against the bulkhead again, eyes narrowing with a dry, incredulous bite. "Oh sure," he drawls, smooth and razor-edged, "totally fair to just have a warnin’ light go off that somethin’ ain’t true, without any context about why. Real balanced arrangement you had there."

He snorts when Jack tries to hide behind bravado, the sound low and dry as driftwood rubbed together. He doesn’t need telepathy or rings or anything else to know Jack doesn’t believe a damned word of his own swagger. Still, Vesper gives him the dignity of the lie by not poking at it. Instead, his gaze drifts sideways, sharpening with something considering, almost conspiratorial. "So," he says, tone deceptively casual, "would you have any interest in takin’ over a region?"

He raises one pale brow, the ring of starlight freckles catching faintly in the lantern glow. "Ain’t like there’s no water in the Greatwood," he adds, voice lilting in a lazy, speculative hum. s[ay]"And maybe...I dunno." He shrugs, though there’s intent behind it; weight, thought, the thread of an idea forming. "Maybe it’d be nice to make our own rules somewhere for once."

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

"When you say it like that it sounds shitty, yeah," Jack says with a smirk, having been able to put a fraction of distance between himself and the mess of his relationship with the Doubletake now; enough, evidently, to be able to joke about it a bit. Still, as he senses the change in Vesper; subtle, dangerous, but nonetheless evident in the oh-so-casual tone of his voice, the Captain lets all other threads of conversation die.

He can't stop the wrinkle of his nose, though, at the immediate thought of ruling anywhere in an official capacity. "No," he says plainly, because there's no advantage in drawing it out. "There were so many opportunities to be Torchline's governor, but I never took 'em. It's one thing to be some underworld kingpin - it's another to have to go beggin' for regional shit from the gods an' to attend tedious leadership meetin's."

But he can guess at what the boy is getting at, Jack arching an eyebrow towards him. "Between you an' your sisters though, you probably got what it takes."

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper studies Jack’s reaction with the same quiet, feline attentiveness he’d had in the Glade, only now the instinct isn’t to pounce, it’s to parse. To weigh.  Jack’s nose wrinkles and the word no comes out with the blunt finality of a snapped rope. It earns him a faint, wry curl of Vesper’s mouth, one eyebrow lifting like he expected nothing less.

But then Jack keeps talking, and Vesper’s gaze sharpens. Governor. Meetings. Begging gods. All the trappings of a life neither of them has ever wanted. Vesper’s head tilts, the angle small but meaningful, a tell he never quite learned to hide. "Ain’t a kingpin anymore, though," he murmurs, letting that settle before rolling his shoulders in a slow, thoughtful shrug. "And there ain’t anyone sayin’ we’d have to attend those meetin’s. Or beg for a godsdamn thing."

The notion of begging makes something cold flicker behind his eyes. He might be young, but he knows enough about where he stands in Safrin’s pantheon—and where Jack stands now—to recognize how few hoops they’d ever have to jump through. "Safrin’d give us what we asked for," he adds, voice quiet but certain. "Ain’t exactly a stretch." And honestly, what would there even be to ask for?

He shifts a little on the bunk, leaning back just enough that the lanternlight cuts a faint gleam across the constellation freckles drifting over his cheek like a slow pulse of starlight. "And as for politics...doubt anyone’d try pokin' at a place run by a demigod and a man who used to run half of Torchline from a tavern table." There’s no arrogance in it, just an awareness of power, sharpened by hurt and survival, and tempered by the fact that he couldn't imagine the likes of Danta or Sunjata batting an eye at an empty seat at any meeting.

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

Part of being the kingpin-that-he-ain't-anymore (and thanks ever so for the reminder, kid) has made Jack very aware of when he's trying to be sold on something, or won over to a certain point of view. It helps, of course, that usually he can see the truth writ plain in the person's mind, but the tone of voice, the gentle angle of convincing, that's the same across the board.

Not that he thinks Vesper has any other motive than what he says, though the Captain can't stop the indulgent smile to see the boy try to corral him into getting on board. "You wouldn't run the place with your sisters?" He raises his eyebrows. "Jus' so I know for sure, you're suggestin' that I dig up all my newly planted roots in King's End to take over the magical forest that doesn't like me, where I died a couple years back?"

It's not a no, but surely Vesper can see where the incredulity lives in Jack's bones.

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper’s mouth curves into a grin that could almost be called boyish if not for the tired sharpness behind it. He angles a look at Jack, letting that deadpan humour flow smooth as water over stone. "I ain’t lookin' for the trial-and-error approach to life if I can help it," he murmurs, smirk deepening. "You and me both know things get done cleaner when you’re in the mix. Girls’d run the place well enough, but with you? We’d be capable of a whole lot more." The compliment is real, even if he wraps it in dry wit to keep it from sounding sentimental.

Jack’s very reasonable objections earn him a raised brow and a slow, deliberate nod from Vesper, as if the Captain is being deeply dramatic, but also as if he makes a fair fuckin’ point. "Roots are all well and good," Vesper drawls, brushing his thumb over the rings at his fingers, "if you wanna spend immortality playin' the same role you’ve always had. King’s End looks good on you, sure, but you really plannin' to make that your forever?" A little jab, maybe, but an honest question too. Maybe Jack was content with the rolling green hills and haunted valleys. 

As for the Greatwood, "Well...then maybe we carve out that whole portion of the woods." His tone folds into a wry little hum, as if that’s a perfectly reasonable solution. "Bet Safrin would do it happily." But his swagger fades almost as soon as it lands, with Vesper exhaling soft and long, shoulders dipping a little. "It was just an idea anyhow," he mutters. "Maybe not even a good one, considerin' the girls are puttin' down roots in King’s End too."

Something tightens through his expression; quiet, small, but unmistakable. Not grief exactly, but that hollowed-out ache that comes from realizing you’re the one walking away from the centre of your own life while everyone else stays behind.

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

"Were it not for what happened, both you an' I would still be playin' the same role we always had in Torchline," Jack points out, his smile entirely shit-eating if only because he can't help but test the stress fractures in Vesper's plans with logic. "I ran the underbelly of those islands for two thirds of my life. I've been in King's End for what... two seasons?" If it isn't already clear, Jack isn't the type to flit around looking for purpose in different regions. Especially when, as Vesp has already pointed out, he's got all the time in the world to play with.

But what he hasn't had before is the sort of connection that now exists between them - shared magic, shared blood, and a goddess peeping behind the moon to watch over them both. Jack furrows his brow, then finally glances back at Vesper. "I'll think 'bout it," he decides. "You go to the Greatwood for a bit an' see if you even like the place. See what's out there, what's worth seein' - same as you were doin' for the Grounds. Then we'll talk more about leadership, yeah?"

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes