flora
Flora stands there clutching herself like she might split apart if she loosens her grip, the towel crushed against her chest, shoulders curling inward as if she can make herself smaller by force of will alone. His relief hits her in waves she cannot quite reconcile, the laughter landing wrong, echoing too loud in the small space, and for a moment she feels utterly unmoored, like she has stepped sideways into a version of the world where nothing is weighted the way it is supposed to be.
Her fingers fidget at the gold of her invisibility ring without her meaning to, thumb rubbing at it until the metal warms beneath her skin. She has wanted to disappear before, plenty of times, but never from Kaisel, never like this, and the impulse startles her even as it lingers, a sick little itch at the back of her mind. Her arms tighten further around herself, tank top wrinkling beneath her grip, breath shallow and uneven as she stares at him like he is speaking a language she no longer understands.
For a suspended second, doubt creeps in, insidious and sharp. Maybe she is overreacting. Maybe all of it had been inflated, magnified by love and fear and secrecy until it felt catastrophic when it was really just... this. A thing to be laughed at. Maybe she had been trained to treat Jack's secret like a holy thing, something fragile and sacred that would destroy him if mishandled, and now she is standing here with it broken open and being told, in effect, that it is fantastic, or even mundane. But then she remembers Koa’s face when she told him. The way he had gone still, the way understanding had settled without her having to justify the weight of it. The way he had seen her in it and understood what it had meant.
The comparison lands like a bruise she did not know was there, strange and unwelcome, and the hurt sharpens into something dangerously close to betrayal, even if she knows that is not quite fair. Still, fairness does not stop it from aching.
Flora blinks, hard, eyes bright and unfocused, and finally she finds her voice, thin but steady enough to carry. "What...what did you think I was going to say?" she asks quietly, the question hovering between them like a last attempt to orient herself, to make sense of his reaction before everything tilts too far to recover. She does not answer the rest of it; right now she needs this one thing, needs to understand where his fear had gone and why her truth feels so small in its wake, because without that, she is not sure she can make him see her at all.
Her fingers fidget at the gold of her invisibility ring without her meaning to, thumb rubbing at it until the metal warms beneath her skin. She has wanted to disappear before, plenty of times, but never from Kaisel, never like this, and the impulse startles her even as it lingers, a sick little itch at the back of her mind. Her arms tighten further around herself, tank top wrinkling beneath her grip, breath shallow and uneven as she stares at him like he is speaking a language she no longer understands.
For a suspended second, doubt creeps in, insidious and sharp. Maybe she is overreacting. Maybe all of it had been inflated, magnified by love and fear and secrecy until it felt catastrophic when it was really just... this. A thing to be laughed at. Maybe she had been trained to treat Jack's secret like a holy thing, something fragile and sacred that would destroy him if mishandled, and now she is standing here with it broken open and being told, in effect, that it is fantastic, or even mundane. But then she remembers Koa’s face when she told him. The way he had gone still, the way understanding had settled without her having to justify the weight of it. The way he had seen her in it and understood what it had meant.
The comparison lands like a bruise she did not know was there, strange and unwelcome, and the hurt sharpens into something dangerously close to betrayal, even if she knows that is not quite fair. Still, fairness does not stop it from aching.
Flora blinks, hard, eyes bright and unfocused, and finally she finds her voice, thin but steady enough to carry. "What...what did you think I was going to say?" she asks quietly, the question hovering between them like a last attempt to orient herself, to make sense of his reaction before everything tilts too far to recover. She does not answer the rest of it; right now she needs this one thing, needs to understand where his fear had gone and why her truth feels so small in its wake, because without that, she is not sure she can make him see her at all.
Every single thing I touch becomes sick with sadness
'Cause it's all over now, all out to sea
'Cause it's all over now, all out to sea
