flora
The wind cuts through the top of the lighthouse without warning, ice skittering across stone as Flora twists instinctively away, arm lifting to shield herself as she brandishes the torch between them. The flame gutters violently, sputtering under the sudden pressure, and her breath catches sharp and uneven in her chest as panic spikes again, sharper for the way it feels like his fault and hers all at once.
Then the air stills, just enough. Flora exhales a shaky breath, the torch steadied back into something that will not immediately betray her, and she looks at Jack properly for the first time. He looks exactly the same; infuriatingly, painfully unchanged, all sharp angles and familiar lines, like time has decided to be cruelly selective about what it erodes. The unreality of it hits harder than the cold, Jack standing there in front of her at the top of the world as if he has every right to exist in this space she'd have thought was the last place she'd ever see him again.
"I’m in the w—" she starts, then cuts herself off, glancing back over her shoulder at the brazier as confusion threads through the fear. Had he followed her here? Had he really come all this way just to have it out with her one last time? Maybe even to kill her up here, thinking perhaps it was too far for her father's to fly to bring her back?
Flora reaches for the torches she left behind, movements clumsy as she gathers them and pulls them aside, eyes never quite leaving him, still half-expecting him to vanish or lunge if she blinks. For a breathless second she even wonders if he means to take one, steal the fire right out of her hands. "What are you doing here?" she finally asks, voice light but unsteady, heart still hammering as she stands far too close to a man she never expected to see again, let alone here, with no ocean between them at all.
Then the air stills, just enough. Flora exhales a shaky breath, the torch steadied back into something that will not immediately betray her, and she looks at Jack properly for the first time. He looks exactly the same; infuriatingly, painfully unchanged, all sharp angles and familiar lines, like time has decided to be cruelly selective about what it erodes. The unreality of it hits harder than the cold, Jack standing there in front of her at the top of the world as if he has every right to exist in this space she'd have thought was the last place she'd ever see him again.
"I’m in the w—" she starts, then cuts herself off, glancing back over her shoulder at the brazier as confusion threads through the fear. Had he followed her here? Had he really come all this way just to have it out with her one last time? Maybe even to kill her up here, thinking perhaps it was too far for her father's to fly to bring her back?
Flora reaches for the torches she left behind, movements clumsy as she gathers them and pulls them aside, eyes never quite leaving him, still half-expecting him to vanish or lunge if she blinks. For a breathless second she even wonders if he means to take one, steal the fire right out of her hands. "What are you doing here?" she finally asks, voice light but unsteady, heart still hammering as she stands far too close to a man she never expected to see again, let alone here, with no ocean between them at all.
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars
it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
