her fight and fury's fiery, oh but she loves like sleep to the freezing
The Ark barks out a cold laugh at the thought of it, the sound edged enough to cut through the damp warmth of the cabin. Her smile spreads slowly, cruelly, as she imagines all those gentle-handed suggestions made by people who think concern grants them the right to reach for what isn’t theirs, or who mistake envy for duty. Let them try. Let them offer her a better captain, a better course, a better life. There would be a particular pleasure in proving not only the well-meaning wrong as well as the openly ambitious, in letting both sorts discover that she has never needed saving and has no patience for being handled like something stranded.
The water still wanders over Jack’s skin in salty, impossible paths, thinning gradually into the heavy air around them, but his admission draws her attention back fully, though not with surprise. This truth has sat between them for years in every course he’s set, every storm he’s met head-on, every time he’s trusted her with the weight of him and asked her to carry it. She presses back into the spill of her red hair so that she can see him properly, tempest-blue eyes fixed on his. "I know."
The words are simple, but they carry the full acknowledgment of what he has placed with her: not his life, perhaps, but something close enough to matter more. His soul, in the ways that count, just as he holds hers. It is not a chain, not an obligation she has to drag behind her through every sea they cross, but a privilege. One she carries with the same fierce, unsentimental care she gives her crew and cargo, only deeper. More jealously. There is no flare of romance in it, no soft performance for anyone else’s benefit. Just the quiet, dangerous certainty of being chosen and choosing back for reasons that go beyond flippant and fleeting declarations of romance.
A single huff of laughter leaves her as she shakes her head, agreeing. "My lips are sealed." Then her mouth parts again, slyness returning as quickly as the tide shifts beneath a hull, and her eyes narrow on him with a glint that promises trouble rather than tenderness. "Though I suppose we could always give the rumour mill something else to churn about if you're tired of hearing about this?"
The water still wanders over Jack’s skin in salty, impossible paths, thinning gradually into the heavy air around them, but his admission draws her attention back fully, though not with surprise. This truth has sat between them for years in every course he’s set, every storm he’s met head-on, every time he’s trusted her with the weight of him and asked her to carry it. She presses back into the spill of her red hair so that she can see him properly, tempest-blue eyes fixed on his. "I know."
The words are simple, but they carry the full acknowledgment of what he has placed with her: not his life, perhaps, but something close enough to matter more. His soul, in the ways that count, just as he holds hers. It is not a chain, not an obligation she has to drag behind her through every sea they cross, but a privilege. One she carries with the same fierce, unsentimental care she gives her crew and cargo, only deeper. More jealously. There is no flare of romance in it, no soft performance for anyone else’s benefit. Just the quiet, dangerous certainty of being chosen and choosing back for reasons that go beyond flippant and fleeting declarations of romance.
A single huff of laughter leaves her as she shakes her head, agreeing. "My lips are sealed." Then her mouth parts again, slyness returning as quickly as the tide shifts beneath a hull, and her eyes narrow on him with a glint that promises trouble rather than tenderness. "Though I suppose we could always give the rumour mill something else to churn about if you're tired of hearing about this?"
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.
