i'd wipe the dirt off your name with the shirt off my back
Flora doesn’t remember the last time she was on the Ark. Not properly, anyway—not with any detail. It’s gone, because no part of her ever expected there’d be a last time. Not with this ship, not with him, either. So this time, she promises herself that when she steps off again, she’ll say goodbye to the Ark. She'll take a moment to remember so as never to forget.
For now, though, she keeps her balance with the ease of someone who once called this place home, watching Jack in that too-deliberate way of trying not to watch, gaze fixed somewhere near but never on him—except when it is, traitorous and fluttering, because godsdamn if he isn’t still handsome even now, covered in dirt and ichor, half-wrecked and still somehow glowing under it all. It's unfair. He’s unfair.
Flora’s stomach coils as he begins to speak, letting images form of darkness clotted thick with strands of silk, something vast moving in the shadows, Noah and Sah half-swallowed by void. She should be listening, just listening, but the words paint too vividly, the horrors too easy to imagine. So by the time Jack’s voice hits a note of quiet fury—by the time the captain's glare cuts clean through Hadama’s decision to stay—Flora’s no longer watching the particular blue of his eyes or the sharp line of his jaw. She’s picturing earthen ceilings buckling above the Tidebreaker, the way the earth would taste if it filled your mouth while some void horror forced you to suffocate.
"Fuck," she mutters, raking her fingers through her curls. She is as unsurprised by Hadama's decision to stay as she is Jack's choice to go, faulting neither but feeling frustrated just the same.
Flora turns her face to the wind, eyes narrowed against the burn behind them. "What do you think their chances are?" she asks, not trying to mask the concern. "Should I...should I get my dads? Or tell Remi to start listening for their voices in his head?"
For now, though, she keeps her balance with the ease of someone who once called this place home, watching Jack in that too-deliberate way of trying not to watch, gaze fixed somewhere near but never on him—except when it is, traitorous and fluttering, because godsdamn if he isn’t still handsome even now, covered in dirt and ichor, half-wrecked and still somehow glowing under it all. It's unfair. He’s unfair.
Flora’s stomach coils as he begins to speak, letting images form of darkness clotted thick with strands of silk, something vast moving in the shadows, Noah and Sah half-swallowed by void. She should be listening, just listening, but the words paint too vividly, the horrors too easy to imagine. So by the time Jack’s voice hits a note of quiet fury—by the time the captain's glare cuts clean through Hadama’s decision to stay—Flora’s no longer watching the particular blue of his eyes or the sharp line of his jaw. She’s picturing earthen ceilings buckling above the Tidebreaker, the way the earth would taste if it filled your mouth while some void horror forced you to suffocate.
"Fuck," she mutters, raking her fingers through her curls. She is as unsurprised by Hadama's decision to stay as she is Jack's choice to go, faulting neither but feeling frustrated just the same.
Flora turns her face to the wind, eyes narrowed against the burn behind them. "What do you think their chances are?" she asks, not trying to mask the concern. "Should I...should I get my dads? Or tell Remi to start listening for their voices in his head?"
