JACK
Drowning is a more accurate metaphor, Jack agrees, and it doesn't get any easier as the tide of Flora's thoughts pulls back for a moment before inevitably crashing forward with as much force as the captain has expected and then some. "No - you're not. And that's never been a bad thing." Flora not being like him is just one of the many reasons they do work together, in a professional capacity and otherwise. If he's Torchline's calculating mind then Flora is her beating heart, and if that's all this was, it would never stop being easy.
With her emotions detonating through his magic like - yes - cannonfire, it's only years of maintaining a very good poker face that allows Jack to keep a neutral expression, but even then, the slight creasing at the corners of his eyes can't be denied. That she'd seen him through those rose-coloured glasses is no surprise, and it wouldn't have been with or without telepathy. No, it's that she's discarded them and stuck around anyway that feels strange, leaving the captain with the sudden urge to roll his shoulders or to drum his fingers against the side of his leg to create movement where there's only stillness and silence.
"Well I'm glad one of us knows," he responds automatically as she continues, unable to help it. "Because I don't. I don't know what it's like, how it feels, what it's meant to be. I can see love it in other people - can watch it play out, go right, go wrong more often than not, but that's it. I'm just someone lookin' over other people's shoulders at it." And I think I'm tired of it.
But Flora's saying what they both know, and Jack nods his agreement and shakes out his hands at last as if to disperse the tension that had begun to gather there in flecks of ice and frost. "You're still here, though," he points out.
With her emotions detonating through his magic like - yes - cannonfire, it's only years of maintaining a very good poker face that allows Jack to keep a neutral expression, but even then, the slight creasing at the corners of his eyes can't be denied. That she'd seen him through those rose-coloured glasses is no surprise, and it wouldn't have been with or without telepathy. No, it's that she's discarded them and stuck around anyway that feels strange, leaving the captain with the sudden urge to roll his shoulders or to drum his fingers against the side of his leg to create movement where there's only stillness and silence.
"Well I'm glad one of us knows," he responds automatically as she continues, unable to help it. "Because I don't. I don't know what it's like, how it feels, what it's meant to be. I can see love it in other people - can watch it play out, go right, go wrong more often than not, but that's it. I'm just someone lookin' over other people's shoulders at it." And I think I'm tired of it.
But Flora's saying what they both know, and Jack nods his agreement and shakes out his hands at last as if to disperse the tension that had begun to gather there in flecks of ice and frost. "You're still here, though," he points out.
believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes
when it ends and how it goes
- Secret Telepath
- Functionally Immortal (Forever 35)
- Two small star tattoos beneath his left eye
- Click for The Ark!
