you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody
The ache expands into her limbs as Jack continues, and Flora barely manages to blink back the tears that rise like tidewater before her voice slips out, raw and tangled in a laugh that has no mirth at all. "You said you weren’t good for me because you lived on a ship," she breathes, her hands already moving as she turns to face him fully, stepping through the space between them like it doesn’t matter that it might be the last time. "Because you'd come home bloody. Because you were too murdery and rough." Whatever his exact reasonings had been, he'd never come right out and said as it happens Flora I'm a maniacal control freak who lost track of his own web and is now as tangled in it as everyone else is.
She takes his hand in both of hers, cradling it like something sacred even as her fingers trace over the map of him. Across the scar-toughened knuckles, the callouses worn in by salt and consequence and the weight of all he carried, all he held back. She’s known the shape of this hand in hers since before she had the luxury of taking it for granted, and still it undoes her now.
The rain in her mind doesn’t soften—it spills, manifesting in the wetness that streaks slowly down her cheeks as he says he wanted to be enough.
And gods, what could be crueler than that? Not the fights. Not the silence. Not even the way he'd walked away. The knowledge that he wanted to be. That somewhere, in all the barbed wire and misfires, he had tried in ways she couldn’t see until it was too late. Her voice splinters on the edges of her grief, as she lifts tear stained lashes to look up at him. "What am I supposed to do now?" she asks, her hands still cupped around his like she might hold the answer there. "Just smile when I see you in the market? Ask how the waves are treatin’ you like I don’t still love you?" Her head tilts, her lashes heavy with tears unshed and tears already fallen. "Pretend I don't still remember the shape of you? That I don't know what your voice sounds like first thing in the morning, or what it sounds like when you laugh before you realize you've done it?" The crimson threads in her thoughts shimmer. Waver. But don’t let go. Not yet.
She takes his hand in both of hers, cradling it like something sacred even as her fingers trace over the map of him. Across the scar-toughened knuckles, the callouses worn in by salt and consequence and the weight of all he carried, all he held back. She’s known the shape of this hand in hers since before she had the luxury of taking it for granted, and still it undoes her now.
The rain in her mind doesn’t soften—it spills, manifesting in the wetness that streaks slowly down her cheeks as he says he wanted to be enough.
And gods, what could be crueler than that? Not the fights. Not the silence. Not even the way he'd walked away. The knowledge that he wanted to be. That somewhere, in all the barbed wire and misfires, he had tried in ways she couldn’t see until it was too late. Her voice splinters on the edges of her grief, as she lifts tear stained lashes to look up at him. "What am I supposed to do now?" she asks, her hands still cupped around his like she might hold the answer there. "Just smile when I see you in the market? Ask how the waves are treatin’ you like I don’t still love you?" Her head tilts, her lashes heavy with tears unshed and tears already fallen. "Pretend I don't still remember the shape of you? That I don't know what your voice sounds like first thing in the morning, or what it sounds like when you laugh before you realize you've done it?" The crimson threads in her thoughts shimmer. Waver. But don’t let go. Not yet.
