i'd wipe the dirt off your name with the shirt off my back
Flora doesn’t flinch, not visibly, but gods if her muscles don’t burn with the effort of keeping still. Her gaze stays on him, hard and unblinking, mouth drawn into a line so tight it trembles at the edges. Because how else could he have meant it? But then he clarifies—and oh, oh—something in her goes still. Like a garden in the dead of winter, the colour vanishes from her cheeks, the heat pulled from her chest.
Her curls sway faintly in the wind as she turns to face him fully, arms folded more for support than sass now. "You don't get to speak for me anymore," she says quietly, her voice low but sharp, trembling on the edge of disbelief. Her jaw tightens, her throat working as she swallows it all down; everything she wants to say, everything she’s already said too many times before. "You’ll never not be something to me," she manages, though the words nearly crack on her tongue. "But it’s great to know what I’ve become to you." The echo of it lands in the pit of her stomach like an anchor, heavy and cold and lined with rust, before the burn catches behind her ribs, a flashfire of humiliation and grief that threatens to consume her, and gods she shouldn't be fucking surprised but the pain of it is evidence of how naive Flora will always be when it comes to Jack.
Her laugh is soft and sharp, the kind that cuts on the way out. "At least this time you get to play the asshole dad," she says, the words delivered with all the casual elegance of a dagger slid between ribs, because hahahhaa how dare you talk about when we were together like that.
"I can fly the rest of the way myself," she mumbles, turning to go and tell Murph to slow the Ark enough for her to pull away.
Her curls sway faintly in the wind as she turns to face him fully, arms folded more for support than sass now. "You don't get to speak for me anymore," she says quietly, her voice low but sharp, trembling on the edge of disbelief. Her jaw tightens, her throat working as she swallows it all down; everything she wants to say, everything she’s already said too many times before. "You’ll never not be something to me," she manages, though the words nearly crack on her tongue. "But it’s great to know what I’ve become to you." The echo of it lands in the pit of her stomach like an anchor, heavy and cold and lined with rust, before the burn catches behind her ribs, a flashfire of humiliation and grief that threatens to consume her, and gods she shouldn't be fucking surprised but the pain of it is evidence of how naive Flora will always be when it comes to Jack.
Her laugh is soft and sharp, the kind that cuts on the way out. "At least this time you get to play the asshole dad," she says, the words delivered with all the casual elegance of a dagger slid between ribs, because hahahhaa how dare you talk about when we were together like that.
"I can fly the rest of the way myself," she mumbles, turning to go and tell Murph to slow the Ark enough for her to pull away.
