you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody
Flora only stares at him as he starts pulling the logic apart, the blue of her eyes still too wet and bright in the strange light, her expression hollowed out by something that refuses to be reasoned with just because he’s found the cracks in it. Her lips press together, and she exhales through her nose, the sound soft but unmistakably unconvinced as she shakes her head, curls trembling in their humidity-frizzed halo around her face.
Maybe from where Kaisel is standing, the line between her and Harper’s death looks tangled enough to cut apart. Maybe it looks like one of the Wildwood’s paths, doubling back on itself until blame becomes a trick of the trees, a thing that only seems to lead to her because she’s standing too close to the dark. But Flora can still see the dominoes. She can see the one with Harper’s name on it, and the one with Jack’s hand against its back, and the one before that with her own hurt stamped bright and ugly across the face of it. There’s a difference between being one of a thousand reasons something happens and being the reason someone else decides blood is an answer.
"You know that isn’t the same at all," she says softly, without heat, because she doesn’t have enough of herself gathered up for a fight and because some things feel too awful to keep explaining once they’ve already been dragged into the open.
Maybe if someone’s death had ever been pinned squarely on him, if his name had ever been written in their blood by someone who claimed they’d done it because of him, he’d understand the shape of it better. Maybe then the difference wouldn’t feel so small from the outside. Flora doesn’t say that, though; she only lets her gaze drop briefly to the abandoned jellyfish umbrella gleaming wetly on the ground before looking past him, toward the festival and the crowd clustered around Harper’s return.
"Can we go?" Her voice is still quiet, but there’s a thin thread of need pulled through it now. She glances back toward the lanternlight, toward the shape of everyone watching the dead become briefly un-dead, and forces herself to add, "unless there’s anyone else you want to see?"
Maybe from where Kaisel is standing, the line between her and Harper’s death looks tangled enough to cut apart. Maybe it looks like one of the Wildwood’s paths, doubling back on itself until blame becomes a trick of the trees, a thing that only seems to lead to her because she’s standing too close to the dark. But Flora can still see the dominoes. She can see the one with Harper’s name on it, and the one with Jack’s hand against its back, and the one before that with her own hurt stamped bright and ugly across the face of it. There’s a difference between being one of a thousand reasons something happens and being the reason someone else decides blood is an answer.
"You know that isn’t the same at all," she says softly, without heat, because she doesn’t have enough of herself gathered up for a fight and because some things feel too awful to keep explaining once they’ve already been dragged into the open.
Maybe if someone’s death had ever been pinned squarely on him, if his name had ever been written in their blood by someone who claimed they’d done it because of him, he’d understand the shape of it better. Maybe then the difference wouldn’t feel so small from the outside. Flora doesn’t say that, though; she only lets her gaze drop briefly to the abandoned jellyfish umbrella gleaming wetly on the ground before looking past him, toward the festival and the crowd clustered around Harper’s return.
"Can we go?" Her voice is still quiet, but there’s a thin thread of need pulled through it now. She glances back toward the lanternlight, toward the shape of everyone watching the dead become briefly un-dead, and forces herself to add, "unless there’s anyone else you want to see?"
