flora
At Melita’s question, Flora’s shoulders lift again, slower this time, and she shakes her head as the steam curls against her cheeks and the heat of Safrin’s Mirror laps softly at her collarbones. "I mean, maybe it felt like a choice," she says, and even that feels generous enough to leave a sour little film over her tongue. "But really, if someone like...literally put you together and was your captain for years and years, and then suddenly you had a body, I mean..." She runs her tongue along her teeth, aqua eyes narrowing slightly as the shape of it settles in a way she hates. "He always loved that ship more than anything, so really, how else could she be anything other than exactly the same towards him?" The realization hits wrong, an ugly little pang beneath her ribs, because this is not just Jack fucking his ship, is it? It's Jack being handed something almost worse for Flora’s ego to look at directly: a version of love built to fit him from the keel up, something loyal because it had never been anything but his, something that might be his soulmate in the most horrifyingly literal way possible.
With a huff, Flora looks back to Melita and lets her mouth pull into a wry smile, forcing the thought away before it can bloom into anything more humiliating. "I am too," she says, drawing in a breath that feels too thin for all the heat wrapped around her, as if she can choke out the lingering shadow of where she might have ended up if she had chosen differently that day, if she had gone back, if she had mistaken being coveted for being happy. The smile stays, because she makes it stay, but there is something brittle at the edges of it now, something that belongs to the woman she had almost been and is very, very glad she is not.
With a huff, Flora looks back to Melita and lets her mouth pull into a wry smile, forcing the thought away before it can bloom into anything more humiliating. "I am too," she says, drawing in a breath that feels too thin for all the heat wrapped around her, as if she can choke out the lingering shadow of where she might have ended up if she had chosen differently that day, if she had gone back, if she had mistaken being coveted for being happy. The smile stays, because she makes it stay, but there is something brittle at the edges of it now, something that belongs to the woman she had almost been and is very, very glad she is not.
The rumors are terrible and cruel
But honey, most of them are true
But honey, most of them are true
