bottom line, we made it out the first time still in love and half alive
Now it's the Ark's turn to feather her jaw, tension pulling tight and then holding as his words settle between them. Jack’s anger runs hotter, sharper, closer to the bone, but what rises in her is something colder and heavier, the kind that comes from being forced to watch rather than act, from knowing exactly what she would do if given the chance and having nowhere to put it. It is one thing for him to carry what Flora has done to him; it is another entirely for her to feel the weight of it and have no clean way to answer it, no place to drive it back where it belongs.
She turns her head to him as he glances over, her gaze catching his fully. There is something almost searching in it, the blue of her eyes deep and shifting, not soft but not cutting either, holding him there long enough to read the line of his mouth, the set of his expression, the way something in him seems to resist even the agreement he gives. It doesn't look like satisfaction, it looks like concession.
"It’s been nearly a year," she says quietly, the words slipping out without judgment, without accusation, only the steady weight of time laid plainly between them. "You’ve been gone that whole time, and she’s gone and got herself married and still..." Her voice trails, the rest of it left hanging because it doesn’t need finishing, because the truth of it is already there in the space between them. She shakes her head once, small, controlled, as if dismissing something that refuses to be dismissed.
The anger doesn’t flare again; it settles instead, forced down, contained in the same way his is, in the same way neither of them seem able to rid themselves of it entirely. "I don’t think she’s ever going to leave you alone," she admits after a moment, her voice lower now, the edge of it dulled not by softness but by something closer to reluctant understanding. "And if what you need is indifference to come back..." Her gaze drops briefly, then lifts again, meeting his with something steadier, something that carries the weight of what she doesn’t want to accept but does anyway. "I don’t think you’re ever going to get it." Though Flora had written in her letter that she'd always love Jack, the Ark thought all it really ended up meaning was that she'd never fully let him go. Real love, after all, didn't fit like a noose.
She turns her head to him as he glances over, her gaze catching his fully. There is something almost searching in it, the blue of her eyes deep and shifting, not soft but not cutting either, holding him there long enough to read the line of his mouth, the set of his expression, the way something in him seems to resist even the agreement he gives. It doesn't look like satisfaction, it looks like concession.
"It’s been nearly a year," she says quietly, the words slipping out without judgment, without accusation, only the steady weight of time laid plainly between them. "You’ve been gone that whole time, and she’s gone and got herself married and still..." Her voice trails, the rest of it left hanging because it doesn’t need finishing, because the truth of it is already there in the space between them. She shakes her head once, small, controlled, as if dismissing something that refuses to be dismissed.
The anger doesn’t flare again; it settles instead, forced down, contained in the same way his is, in the same way neither of them seem able to rid themselves of it entirely. "I don’t think she’s ever going to leave you alone," she admits after a moment, her voice lower now, the edge of it dulled not by softness but by something closer to reluctant understanding. "And if what you need is indifference to come back..." Her gaze drops briefly, then lifts again, meeting his with something steadier, something that carries the weight of what she doesn’t want to accept but does anyway. "I don’t think you’re ever going to get it." Though Flora had written in her letter that she'd always love Jack, the Ark thought all it really ended up meaning was that she'd never fully let him go. Real love, after all, didn't fit like a noose.
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.
