bottom line, we made it out the first time still in love and half alive
The Ark knows about Jack's telepathy, even if she can't quite name it. Even so, when he says she can’t catch fire, something stubborn rises in her. There must be a limit to what he can sense, she thinks, because the heat inside her is real. It is gathering, and it is spreading. And the worst part—the most confusing part—is that some deep, undeniable piece of her wants it to keep building. Wants to burn, which, as The Ark, as the thing that has housed and protected Jack and his crew, the thing Jack has built a legacy around, feels like blasphemy and it has her cheeks heating all the more.
Still, when he steps back, the loss of him is immediate and physical. The absence of his chest against hers, the withdrawal of his hand from her waist, lands like a blow. She inhales sharply, and every instinct urges her forward again, to erase the space he’s made.
Fire has never been Jack's element, not until recently anyway, and she has never been a vessel built to carry it. She was made to move by wind and canvas and clever hands that knew how to read currents; she moved because air filled her sails, because men understood tides and tension and balance. She was never a galleon with an engine roaring in her belly, and for the most part, fire had only ever harmed her: lantern oil spilling and burning hot against her boards, sails once devoured in an orange roar that left her mast blackened and broken. So when it blooms now inside her, low and insistent and spreading through her middle, some primal part of her that is still wood and beam cannot reconcile it with safety, no matter what Jack says.
She presses her palm flat against her stomach beneath the satin blouse, fingers splayed over smooth skin. Surprised that she can’t feel the heat from the outside—there is no scorch despite the way it burns slow and steady inside—her brow knits, confused and almost naive, and she reaches for Jack's hand. Guiding his palm beneath her blouse, pressing it flat against the same place, just below her belly button, she lifts her eyes, searching his face. "Make it cold." She's felt his hands frost against her railings before, felt ice bloom where he willed it, and if it is fire making her mind and body loud, surely ice can quiet it.
Still, when he steps back, the loss of him is immediate and physical. The absence of his chest against hers, the withdrawal of his hand from her waist, lands like a blow. She inhales sharply, and every instinct urges her forward again, to erase the space he’s made.
Fire has never been Jack's element, not until recently anyway, and she has never been a vessel built to carry it. She was made to move by wind and canvas and clever hands that knew how to read currents; she moved because air filled her sails, because men understood tides and tension and balance. She was never a galleon with an engine roaring in her belly, and for the most part, fire had only ever harmed her: lantern oil spilling and burning hot against her boards, sails once devoured in an orange roar that left her mast blackened and broken. So when it blooms now inside her, low and insistent and spreading through her middle, some primal part of her that is still wood and beam cannot reconcile it with safety, no matter what Jack says.
She presses her palm flat against her stomach beneath the satin blouse, fingers splayed over smooth skin. Surprised that she can’t feel the heat from the outside—there is no scorch despite the way it burns slow and steady inside—her brow knits, confused and almost naive, and she reaches for Jack's hand. Guiding his palm beneath her blouse, pressing it flat against the same place, just below her belly button, she lifts her eyes, searching his face. "Make it cold." She's felt his hands frost against her railings before, felt ice bloom where he willed it, and if it is fire making her mind and body loud, surely ice can quiet it.
we didn't die, but no guarantees this time, but fuck it lets do it again
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
