flora
Flora shakes her head again, slower this time, like she’s trying to make sense of something that just won’t quite settle. "So when someone else offers you a job or an opportunity, it’s on merit," she says, her voice still soft but edged now with quiet disbelief, "but when I do it, it’s automatically just a handout?" She blinks at Soh, her brows drawing together, confusion flickering into something more raw before she lets out a quiet, disbelieving breath that almost passes for a laugh but doesn’t quite make it. "Who else other than me knows more about what you’re capable of doing?" she asks, and this time there’s something behind it that lands heavier, something personal, something hurt.
Her gaze slips away for a second, unfocused, her jaw tightening as she swallows against something that rises too quickly, too sharply. "I do know what it’s like," she says, quieter now, the words coming slower, more deliberate, "to not want to be in someone else’s shadow, to feel like you have to prove you can stand on your own." Flora, after all, had spent years doing just that; trying to be something beyond just the daughter of demigods, something earned instead of inherited, something hers.
She looks back at Soh, and this time there’s no disguising it, no smoothing it over as her shoulders lift in a small, helpless shrug. "I guess I just..." she starts, her voice catching slightly before she pushes through it, softer but breaking at the edges, "I never thought that’s what I was to you." A shadow to try and escape. Her fingers tighten faintly where they’re still holding Soh’s, because the thought lands harder than anything else they’ve said—harder than the argument, harder than the disagreement—that somehow, in all of this, Soh sees her not as support, not as someone who knows her and is a soft place to land, but as something to step out from under.
Her gaze slips away for a second, unfocused, her jaw tightening as she swallows against something that rises too quickly, too sharply. "I do know what it’s like," she says, quieter now, the words coming slower, more deliberate, "to not want to be in someone else’s shadow, to feel like you have to prove you can stand on your own." Flora, after all, had spent years doing just that; trying to be something beyond just the daughter of demigods, something earned instead of inherited, something hers.
She looks back at Soh, and this time there’s no disguising it, no smoothing it over as her shoulders lift in a small, helpless shrug. "I guess I just..." she starts, her voice catching slightly before she pushes through it, softer but breaking at the edges, "I never thought that’s what I was to you." A shadow to try and escape. Her fingers tighten faintly where they’re still holding Soh’s, because the thought lands harder than anything else they’ve said—harder than the argument, harder than the disagreement—that somehow, in all of this, Soh sees her not as support, not as someone who knows her and is a soft place to land, but as something to step out from under.
Bad, bad boy, shiny toy with a price
You know that I bought it
You know that I bought it
