came in like a cannonball

MELITA

Melita didn’t have the grace nor the wardrobe of Flora; but she had always taken to the water, streamlined beneath the surface until she emerged again, close to a manta ray floatie. Her own bikini had been found in the market stalls in a great outcry of excitement – after all, it was patterned in rubber ducks – and bursting through the warm surface tension came with a beaming smile, sunlit and radiant in her own savage way. Launching upon the vessel, it bounded and bounced against the wall as she leaned back and let the air immediately start its wake over her; she’d be diving back in soon enough. Shielding her eyes, she opened one towards the Doubletake as she began to describe something hitting very close to home; understanding the protective nuances of something new and fledgling and wholly uncertain, but unaware just how much it had grown underneath the shielding proclivities, so that eventually it couldn’t be hidden any longer.

“That’s fair,” she assessed at first, her nose wrinkling at the thought of Jack all over again. For Melita, it was a bizarre fence to stand upon – eternally on Flora’s side when it came to the younger woman’s unfortunate entanglements with the Captain, and then, well, she often helped her former employer with his bullshit just the same. Loyalties were sometimes a slippery slope, but she’d never proclaimed to be an honest, morally superior being. In the end though, Flora had deserved more than Jack – and perhaps she’d found it. “For what it’s worth, I’m just glad you found someone that isn’t a pile of shit,” she winked, because despite her own stupefying moments with Kaisel, he was at least good to the Torchline Queen.

Rolling over onto her stomach, she dropped one hand into the water, letting her fingers play and dip below the veneer while she listened. She didn’t envy the sentiments of all the brutal intertwinings and woven relationship dynamics; imagining Flora striving and clawing to find that happiness and all the mystifying paths along the way. Even if it had seemed simple, it clearly hadn’t been; Melita had to consider herself fortunate that she and Iskra just had their own idiotic selves to navigate around. “And that you’re happy,” she grinned, wrinkling her nose and then winking. She likely didn’t know half of what the Doubletake had been through; but it was high time she’d had something to relish and sink into.

When the subject turned to her, she laughed, striving to pretend she hadn’t been here recently and making underwear fireworks. “Actually, Sunjata, Jack, and I went banshee hunting. He missed a lot,” and while she could imagine one day Flora might enjoy the thought of the Captain being choked out by a monstrous heathen, she was careful not to mention it. “He didn’t say what it was for though,” and Melita, being prone to violence for any reason, hadn’t thought to ask. “I’m working on some cannon things. Ronin inspired me.”

You're all gonna watch me
Disappear into the sun