you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody
“Shut up,” Flora laughs through a smile that’s gentler than her voice pretends it is, the kind of smile that slips in through cracks left behind by sorrow. She doesn’t tell him how much those words mean. She doesn’t need to—not with the way her thoughts brighten in spite of her efforts, colour blooming like crushed petals rehydrating in the warmth of his presence.
The surprise flickers through her no matter how carefully she tries to stifle it, a shift in the air between them that Jack will no doubt feel as clearly as if she’d said it aloud. She dips her chin as though to anchor herself against the tide of it, unwilling to let the words as long as you want me here echo too loudly through her, even if a younger version of herself, not so long ago, would have thrown open every door in her chest and answered forever without hesitation.
Instead she turns from him, not in rejection but in retreat, a soft withdrawal into the safety of her illusion. The bed is warm with ocean light and silk sheets, and though her spine tenses in protest as she first sits down, she lets herself lean gently to one side, collapsing with the grace of someone who’s too tired to pretend otherwise. Her limbs fold loosely beneath her, her dress whispering along her skin as she finds the most forgiving angle to lie without pulling on the wounds that have already begun to itch with healing.
Propped slightly on one elbow, her golden curls spilled against the pillow and eyes turned up toward him, she watches Jack with something open and unguarded in her expression, something painfully sincere. “Thanks for coming,” she says softly, the words light and real and completely inadequate, but true nonetheless. And though her voice is quiet, her mind fills the space he leaves her with a deeper language—something golden, something warm, pulsing with slow affection that spirals out like sunbeams on seawater. For him alone, those thoughts reach—soft and vulnerable and glowing, shaped not of promises or conditions, but of presence. Of I’m glad you’re here. Of I missed you. Of please don’t go.
She doesn’t speak them. She just lets them ripple outward like music under the surface of her thoughts, knowing he’ll feel them all the same.
”They captured Dahlia, I think,” Flora offers conversationally, having not heard Vox’s broadcast thanks to the various tinctures she’d been given to drink to keep her unconscious while the worst of her wounds were tended to.
The surprise flickers through her no matter how carefully she tries to stifle it, a shift in the air between them that Jack will no doubt feel as clearly as if she’d said it aloud. She dips her chin as though to anchor herself against the tide of it, unwilling to let the words as long as you want me here echo too loudly through her, even if a younger version of herself, not so long ago, would have thrown open every door in her chest and answered forever without hesitation.
Instead she turns from him, not in rejection but in retreat, a soft withdrawal into the safety of her illusion. The bed is warm with ocean light and silk sheets, and though her spine tenses in protest as she first sits down, she lets herself lean gently to one side, collapsing with the grace of someone who’s too tired to pretend otherwise. Her limbs fold loosely beneath her, her dress whispering along her skin as she finds the most forgiving angle to lie without pulling on the wounds that have already begun to itch with healing.
Propped slightly on one elbow, her golden curls spilled against the pillow and eyes turned up toward him, she watches Jack with something open and unguarded in her expression, something painfully sincere. “Thanks for coming,” she says softly, the words light and real and completely inadequate, but true nonetheless. And though her voice is quiet, her mind fills the space he leaves her with a deeper language—something golden, something warm, pulsing with slow affection that spirals out like sunbeams on seawater. For him alone, those thoughts reach—soft and vulnerable and glowing, shaped not of promises or conditions, but of presence. Of I’m glad you’re here. Of I missed you. Of please don’t go.
She doesn’t speak them. She just lets them ripple outward like music under the surface of her thoughts, knowing he’ll feel them all the same.
”They captured Dahlia, I think,” Flora offers conversationally, having not heard Vox’s broadcast thanks to the various tinctures she’d been given to drink to keep her unconscious while the worst of her wounds were tended to.
