her fight and fury's fiery, oh but she loves like sleep to the freezing
The Ark nods slowly, letting his answer settle through her as the smoke from their cigarettes threads lazily upward into the warmth of the cabin. "I was only trying to figure out whether establishing ourselves as more than a glorified cargo ship might be worth our time," she says with a small shrug.
His warning has one brow lifting, and something low and primal stirs beneath the surface of her thoughts, dark water warming under the pressure of something with teeth. The Ark’s mouth curves, slow and just challenging enough to promise she understands the kind of heat he means. "Is that a fact?" she asks, the words soft as smoke and no less dangerous for it.
The curtness in his voice doesn’t cut against her, if anything, her smile turns faintly apologetic beneath its wry edge, and she sets the cigarette carefully in the ashtray before looping her arms around his neck. There is no one else in the world who could stand this close to her and have it feel like the natural shape of things, and while Jack has always known how to handle her as a vessel, how to give her direction when she needs it and room when she doesn’t, this is newer. This body is newer. The ability to voice the tension rather than simply carry it beneath everyone else’s feet is newer still. "You might not be," she says as her head tips slightly, the red of her hair slipping further forward as her expression turns more openly wry. "But I haven’t even been this for a year."
One hand unloops from his neck, fingers combing gently through his hair to draw it away from his face. Her gaze trails over the unmarked lines of him, the familiar shape of his features held steady by magic even as years and weather and everything else keeps moving around them, before settling again in the too-blue of his eyes. "All these years, you’ve made me patient when you wanted me to be," she continues. "The difference now is that I can tell you when I don’t want to be." For all her opinions, all the ways she has always needed to be listened to and handled with care as a galleon, she is still fresh in this particular way of living, not having yet made a full circle around the sun. She has not yet learned how to sit through the slower seasons with the same practiced endurance Jack has gathered over the years, how to let a quiet stretch remain quiet without beginning to feel the stillness turn stale around her. Her mind has been restless because she is restless, not because she doubts him, and there is a difference sharp enough that she needs him to understand it.
"But I can be," she says at last, quieter now, blue eyes holding his. "If that’s the course we’re on."
His warning has one brow lifting, and something low and primal stirs beneath the surface of her thoughts, dark water warming under the pressure of something with teeth. The Ark’s mouth curves, slow and just challenging enough to promise she understands the kind of heat he means. "Is that a fact?" she asks, the words soft as smoke and no less dangerous for it.
The curtness in his voice doesn’t cut against her, if anything, her smile turns faintly apologetic beneath its wry edge, and she sets the cigarette carefully in the ashtray before looping her arms around his neck. There is no one else in the world who could stand this close to her and have it feel like the natural shape of things, and while Jack has always known how to handle her as a vessel, how to give her direction when she needs it and room when she doesn’t, this is newer. This body is newer. The ability to voice the tension rather than simply carry it beneath everyone else’s feet is newer still. "You might not be," she says as her head tips slightly, the red of her hair slipping further forward as her expression turns more openly wry. "But I haven’t even been this for a year."
One hand unloops from his neck, fingers combing gently through his hair to draw it away from his face. Her gaze trails over the unmarked lines of him, the familiar shape of his features held steady by magic even as years and weather and everything else keeps moving around them, before settling again in the too-blue of his eyes. "All these years, you’ve made me patient when you wanted me to be," she continues. "The difference now is that I can tell you when I don’t want to be." For all her opinions, all the ways she has always needed to be listened to and handled with care as a galleon, she is still fresh in this particular way of living, not having yet made a full circle around the sun. She has not yet learned how to sit through the slower seasons with the same practiced endurance Jack has gathered over the years, how to let a quiet stretch remain quiet without beginning to feel the stillness turn stale around her. Her mind has been restless because she is restless, not because she doubts him, and there is a difference sharp enough that she needs him to understand it.
"But I can be," she says at last, quieter now, blue eyes holding his. "If that’s the course we’re on."
sweet and right and merciful, all but washed in the tide of her breathing
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.
