dazing in the dark

JACK

Jack goes without much coaxing, drawn fully into her space with only a quiet moan to show for it, his limbs suddenly heavy and uncooperative in the wake of their combined storm. He shifts just enough to allow for breath beyond suffocation (though that comes as an afterthought, admittedly), rivulets of water trickling down the channel of his spine before taking on a life of their own, curving in pathways that defy gravity as the Captain's own magic teases control of them.

"D'you know," he mumbles after a long few moments, the sound of his voice muffled but nevertheless wryly amused, "there are people who reckon you don't have free will?" Rumours are sinister things, and if they've reached Torchline's ears, they've started in King's End, and therefore have already breached the web of Jack's magic. "They think you've got no choice but to be here. That you're nothin' more than what I made you, an' that I made you for me."

He half murmurs the words against her throat, and the sly enjoyment in his tone already gives away what he thinks of that. "As if I could cup my hands around the ocean an' tame it." He scoffs. Jack is good, but not even he is so arrogant.

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

her fight and fury's fiery, oh but she loves like sleep to the freezing

The Ark feels the tug of Jack's magic where it catches at the water still beading from her skin, and a sly smile presses against his shoulder at the sensation of it. She draws one deep, contented breath and lets it go slowly, shifting beneath him until the weight of him settles more comfortably across her, as natural as an anchor finding the sea-floor after a hard crossing.

His voice has her eyes opening, lashes brushing softly against the skin of his chest as she listens. Amusement reaches her expression almost as quickly as it has his, though hers carries a sharper edge when she tilts her face enough to look up at him. "That’s what they reckon, do they?" A quiet, scornful snort leaves her. The whole idea has the flavour of idle dockside talk, of people who have nothing worth tending in their own lives and so make a pastime of reducing other people’s choices to something small enough to understand. Worse, it betrays that they’ve never seen anything resembling true partnership. What exists between her and Jack isn’t a flimsy tether of sweetness and breathless looks, isn’t built from soft words that vanish as quickly as they’re spoken, isn't so fragile or short-lived as butterflies. It is older than that, stronger than that: made of storms survived, routes chosen, damage repaired, and every time one of them has trusted the other to keep going when the world gave them reason not to.

Her head tips back a fraction, inviting the low vibration of his words more fully against her throat. "It’s a pity none of them have the balls to say it to my face," she says, wolfish amusement peeling back her lips as brief, bright visions of corrective violence flash through her thoughts. Not enough to disturb the calm settling in her body, but enough for Jack to feel the teeth beneath it.

Then she shrugs. "You’d think it’d be clear enough that if I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be." Her blue eyes hold his, dark and unwavering. "I don’t need a crew to sail anymore. I don’t need anyone to set my course or keep me moving." It made it easier, of course, but it was no longer necessary. The water at his spine curves lazily beneath the pressure of his magic, looping in impossible paths as her mouth softens into something quieter, though no less certain. The fact that the Ark remained under Jack's command should have been evidence enough of the fact that it was entirely her choice to remain that way.

sweet and right and merciful, all but washed in the tide of her breathing

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

JACK

"Mmhm," Jack hums against the hollow of her throat, entirely entertained and self-satisfied, and even more so at the sharp prickle of not-quite-fury that sparks across The Ark's mind in response. "I bet they'll have the balls once we're settled in Torchline. Lots of well-meaning if you need helps or I could captain you betters." Because it doesn't escape Jack's notice that the rumours are likely born from equal parts jealousy of what they have and envy of what might be theirs if they can make her out to be some damsel in need of rescue.

It isn't anything she's ever needed to say explicitly before - Jack has known since the second he first flipped her coin that she belonged to herself, and that any clutch of control on his part save in case of emergencies would be more damaging than any rough seas or high winds. That, ultimately, had been the core of his nerves about it; the sort of rejection that would have her not only have her turning her back on him, but having ship turn on Captain in one fell swoop.

"It'd kill me if you did leave to sail alone, y'know," he says, the words not the soft and desperate adoration of a man in puppy-love, but the dark truth of a bond so deep as to be carved in his bones. Not literally - Jack hasn't murdered to become immortal just to dramatically commit suicide - but inside something would certainly wither and take decades in its remaking. "Don't let the rumour mill catch that either, though, or they'll think I'm blackmailin' you on top of everythin' else."

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

her fight and fury's fiery, oh but she loves like sleep to the freezing

The Ark barks out a cold laugh at the thought of it, the sound edged enough to cut through the damp warmth of the cabin. Her smile spreads slowly, cruelly, as she imagines all those gentle-handed suggestions made by people who think concern grants them the right to reach for what isn’t theirs, or who mistake envy for duty. Let them try. Let them offer her a better captain, a better course, a better life. There would be a particular pleasure in proving not only the well-meaning wrong as well as the openly ambitious, in letting both sorts discover that she has never needed saving and has no patience for being handled like something stranded.

The water still wanders over Jack’s skin in salty, impossible paths, thinning gradually into the heavy air around them, but his admission draws her attention back fully, though not with surprise. This truth has sat between them for years in every course he’s set, every storm he’s met head-on, every time he’s trusted her with the weight of him and asked her to carry it. She presses back into the spill of her red hair so that she can see him properly, tempest-blue eyes fixed on his. "I know."

The words are simple, but they carry the full acknowledgment of what he has placed with her: not his life, perhaps, but something close enough to matter more. His soul, in the ways that count, just as he holds hers. It is not a chain, not an obligation she has to drag behind her through every sea they cross, but a privilege. One she carries with the same fierce, unsentimental care she gives her crew and cargo, only deeper. More jealously. There is no flare of romance in it, no soft performance for anyone else’s benefit. Just the quiet, dangerous certainty of being chosen and choosing back for reasons that go beyond flippant and fleeting declarations of romance. 

A single huff of laughter leaves her as she shakes her head, agreeing. "My lips are sealed." Then her mouth parts again, slyness returning as quickly as the tide shifts beneath a hull, and her eyes narrow on him with a glint that promises trouble rather than tenderness. "Though I suppose we could always give the rumour mill something else to churn about if you're tired of hearing about this?"

sweet and right and merciful, all but washed in the tide of her breathing

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

JACK

It isn't something that ever needed to be spoken aloud between them, but with people speaking all sorts of other mistruths to themselves and setting them to the waves to sail across the Arclight, Jack lends this his voice just this once. And the fact that her mind settles in response to it rather than churning with panic or glee or strange and giddy pride is all the more reason for him to covet her for it. The Captain settles like a ripple in the vast expanse of her ocean, charting his course and trusting it to be true, and never once has The Ark faltered with it.

He shifts enough to regard her properly, scoffing a laugh as well and reaching out to gently grasp her jaw, giving it a shake. "They are, until the rumours get borin' an' you want somethin' else for people to talk about," he drawls, though by that point she's already spinning a yarn along those same lines. Jack raises his eyebrows and releases her, reading the trouble in her expression and meeting it with the quiet patience of a man who knows not to question it.

"Go on," he urges.

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

her fight and fury's fiery, oh but she loves like sleep to the freezing

As Jack shifts above her, The Ark’s gaze follows him with the same mingling of affection and appetite that has always made her attention feel like something one might gladly drown beneath. His hand closes around her jaw, and her smile blooms easily into the space between his fingers, blue eyes brightening with mischief as though his permission has merely given a name to the trouble already waiting at the surface. "Do you know anyone in Torchline," she asks, letting the question linger a moment before widening it with a slight tilt of her head, "or anywhere, really, who can simply know what abilities another person has?"

Her brow rises; the answer is likely no, or at least no one they’ve ever had reason to fear in that particular way. Someone like that would have made keeping Jack’s telepathy quiet a great deal more difficult over the years, and neither of them is in the habit of overlooking dangers that obvious. "If the rumour mill wants something to chew on," she says with a lazy shrug beneath him, "I’m sure we can find ways for it to hear about abilities I may or may not have." There is truth beneath the lie, of course. Healing has been gathering in her for some time now, something warm and insistent beneath the surface of her skin, but she sees no particular reason to give the world an honest account of where her strength begins and ends. Let them make their own maps, and let them be wrong.

Her smile sharpens. "Suppose word got around that I could clear poison from any drink before it was swallowed. It might at least spare you the effort of having to listen for it every time someone decides they’d rather solve a problem with a bottle than a blade." Jack’s telepathy catches such things often enough, but it means casting his net wide and waiting for the thought to surface. A lie like this might make poison less tempting in the first place. One less route toward murder. One less danger that has to reach him before either of them can stop it. "Or we could always let the grapevine guess at whether or not wedding bells are in our future." By which of course she means the crashing of those set to ring for a certain queen and her jester.

sweet and right and merciful, all but washed in the tide of her breathing

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

JACK

The amusement lingers in Jack even as his mind cools to the quiet ticking of memory and intellect, immediately put to work by her question. He shakes his head slowly after a moment or so, because she's absolutely correct - anyone with that sort of power would have bled into his awareness enough for him to avoid it, he thinks. "Reckon there might've been once, when the Ascended were around." And gods that's an old thought now, Jack wrinkling his nose before the expression smooths out. "Now, though? Race, maybe, but not specifics."

Which is fine for him - the time has long since passed when he used to masquerade as little more than an Accepted with uncanny sailing prowess. He waits for the crux of her point, though, and when it comes it's as diabolical and cunning as anything he might have suggested himself. (Little surprise, there). "You know I'd check anyway, love," he purrs of the poison; paranoia is a difficult habit to break. "Though if you're right about that hidden magic locked away, I doubt it'd matter in the long run." Healing magic is the perfect antidote to poison, he would hope.

And there are certainly other abilities they might take advantage of. "Suppose they think you can control other ships, or at the very least speak with 'em." The wedding bells have a laugh rumbling out of him, granted, but he inclines his head as if to say it's a good point. "Y'know," he says, "I reckon it'd cause more of a ruckus if it got out that we were tyin' our own knot than if we were crashin' someone else's." But as the old saying goes: por que no los dos.

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

her fight and fury's fiery, oh but she loves like sleep to the freezing

The Ark considers his answer, then gives a small nod. For all the ways she’s learned to be cunning, a year in this body hasn’t yet put her on equal footing with the particular machinery of Jack’s mind, and there’s no shame in knowing where another person has already mapped the water more thoroughly than you have. "I suppose poison’s relatively easy to contend with anyway," she says with a faint sigh. "No sense in forcing anyone who wants you dead to get more creative with their efforts."

The thought of other ships, though, brightens something in her expression. Her brow rises, and the curve of her mouth begins to spread with slow, dangerous amusement. "All it would take is a bit of current against a rudder," she says, "to make it feel as though a ship were actively refusing its orders." Wind catching wrong in the rigging, water dragging a hull just off course, a helm turning heavy beneath a captain’s hands at precisely the wrong moment. She could say things aloud to another vessel, let the sea and air answer in small, inconvenient ways, and it would be enough. Enough for people to decide they’d seen exactly what they’d hoped to see, if they were already primed to see it.

As for wedding bells, The Ark laughs with him, the sound warm despite the sharpness of the thought. Jack has tied enough knots in his life to make sailors nervous, and done it well, but that particular one is not something she’s ever expected him to reach for. Her shoulders rise in an easy shrug beneath him, blue eyes narrowing with a pleased, calculating glint. "For as much drama as it would cause her if we did show up, I'm not sure there’d be anything quite as biting as you failing to show because you were marrying someone else." It hangs there between them, deliciously spiteful in theory, but The Ark doesn’t press for it to become anything more than that. Flora has earned every thorn the Captain might leave in her path, as far as she’s concerned, but she also knows how far Jack has come from allowing that particular wound to govern the course he chooses to actively encourage him to relapse now. Unlike Flora, the Ark wouldn't give anything to marry Jack.

"There are all sorts of jewellery stores in Torchline that I've yet to see," she hums wickedly; and if her eye for shiny things led those jewellers to the wrong conclusion, what of it?

sweet and right and merciful, all but washed in the tide of her breathing

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

JACK

"Mm, especially when someone's handin' it to you. People tend to think a lot about it," Jack says with a scoff, finally shifting enough to roll onto his back and stretch, though he doesn't go far enough to suggest he's creating purposeful distance. It's comfortable, the way they move around one another, and he knows by now that wherever The Ark wants to be in relation to him, she'll simply be. "Though I dunno," he adds, muttering the words around a slow smirk, "I can applaud creativity sometimes. Breaks up the days a bit."

The picture she paints of careful manoeuvring of other ships is enough to soften his smile into something quietly pleased; it might not seem like much on the outside, but gods know what ripples a drop in the ocean like that might make. "Could arrange a few meetin's aboard other ships to sell the point," he adds; between them it's certainly something they could accomplish, and rumours would do the rest.

He glances sidelong at her as he feels her mind parse through the possibilities of a more personal bit of gossip like a deck of cards, and he scoffs out a laugh at the mere prospect of actually crashing the Hot Take's wedding. "Y'know, I can't imagine anythin' more tedious," he admits. "Especially considerin' how much of a sittin' duck Torchline's gonna be with its ruler - and it's Very Special Demigods - all off throwin' confetti."

And if there's the additional whisper of another wedding at the same time? So be it. Tipping her a wink, Jack gestures to The Ark's hands and the plenty of space for more rings. "You did say you wanted to get a few more decorations, too."

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!