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Character of the Season
Frail in body but dangerously quick of mind, Nikandr is the sort of character who proves that curiosity can be just as perilous as any weapon. A necromancer, inventor, and problem-solver with more ambition than self-preservation, Niki approaches the world like a puzzle box begging to be opened, even when what’s inside has teeth. Blunt, dry-witted, fiercely independent, and carrying a history best left partially buried, he has a knack for making even failure feel fascinating. Whether he’s raising the dead, moving across Caido to King's End, or experiencing a hangover for the first time, Nikandr brings a wonderfully strange spark to Caido, and we can’t wait to see what trouble his brilliant mind wanders into next.
Congratulations, Niki!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
OG Skinning provided by Kaons, with functionality and many custom plugins made by Neowulf!
Flora thinks she can hear Jack leaving, if only because there are no more soft huffs of annoyance or the sound of ice falling from his fingertips onto the sand. She doesn't risk checking, though. She'd seen him walk away from her often enough to be able to picture his silhouette disappearing over the dunes without so much as a second thought, and so, trying to channel a bit of that ice for herself, sits down on the beach with her toes buried in the wet sand trying not to care.
The sound of him returning has the queen flinching, her head snapping up from where she'd let it lower, her back straightening. Her mind tries to guard itself against whatever bullshit is about to come her way—no doubt the captain has thought of some witty retort he'd rather not go unsaid—only what he does have to say catches her off guard, and the thick thicket of trees in her mind shiver and part. "What do you mean do I want it?" Twisting, Flora eyes him over her shoulder, not having the luxury of being a mind reader to know what the fuck his question was meant to get at.
Did she want to be in love with a man who made her feel like a nuisance for having feelings for him? Did she want to be in love with someone who was more often frustrated with her than not? Who'd made it seem like his lack of love for her was her fault, for having not picked up the slack and just held on a little longer despite his obvious discomfort when all along she'd been trying to do just that?
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
"No, not any of that," Jack snips out, as if he can wave away the barrage of questions she thinks at him, the captain left almost glaring down at her in the moonlight, his tanned skin made pale by the bleak light overhead. "Or... despite that, I should say."
Hating that she's slumped to sit down because it either means he needs to join her or talk awkwardly down at her - something he might relish doing to other people, but Flora no longer makes the cut, as it happens - Jack eventually settles into a crouch in front of her, forearms resting on his knees.
"If I say to you right now that you're right, that I've been pushin' you away this entire time and that I've been choosing not to give whatever this is between us the sort of attention it deserves... if I say Flora, I'm sorry, or Flora, I'll do better... is that even somethin' you want?" He tilts his head. "Or is it better if I just get up and walk away?"
believer, believe it or not you'll know when it ends and how it goes
Glowering up at him, Flora rakes her fingers through her curls, pulling them back away from her face, resisting the urge to say something petulant like, well apparently that's all this ever was, so... Instead, she just clenches her teeth together as he sinks down, near enough at her eye level that at least she's not going to pull something in her neck by continuing this conversation. No doubt some part of her will be hurt in the process, but not that, at least.
"Jack...gods, you know this hurts, right? Not everyone has the luxury of being able to switch their emotions off like you do." Having turned slightly more toward him, the moonlight carving out her silhouette in silver, Flora does her best to try and soften, to let him peer through the forest she'd grown of towering birches in her mind to protect what little light she felt like she had left. When he'd found her at the fountain, something inside of her had fractured to be sure, but the cracks were superficial; a wound that bled more than it had any right to owing more to gravity than injury.
But these fractures hadn't come from just one blow, but instead had been the result of months—seasons—worth of pressure. Spiderwebs of weakness had snapped out, stretching and expanding, growing little by little, until the last blow had finally been dealt.
—Just feel what you feel. I want to know.
—Whatever you're thinking, I don't want to hear it.
And then it had all splintered; the cracks had roared across her pysche, shattering her heart in the process and now here Jack was with his fucking hypothetical questions as if the breaks he'd opened up were his to measure and puzzle over.
"Please just stop." Biting at the inside of her cheek as tears stream down it, Flora tries to keep the words as steady as she can. "I don't want to play this game with you. I don't want to think about what if this, and for the record if you'd that. We've already both said that it doesn't matter, so just.."
..go.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
"Of course I know it hurts," Jack says instantly - that's a given, considering one of their biggest problems has been the fact that he can read her fucking mind. His fingers feel cold again as he beholds her on the sand before the pale white of the Aumakua, and this time there's no ice coating them. "I'm tryin' to make sure what I do next is gonna stop that happening again, one way or another." The words almost burn on his tongue, the ones he hasn't said yet, the ones he's fighting to form because if he wants it enough he's capable of gods-damned anything, or so says Flora Kaito-Taliesin.
But she tells him to stop, and Jack gazes away from her, frowning and rising back to his feet. "I'm not playin' a game with you, Flora," he mutters. "I just wanted to know if you could really see it - a future with all the good and bad parts that come along with bein' with someone like me. Because if you can't, then that's fine, and I'll go. But if that's what you want?" He holds out a hand, as if to help her up. "Then it's what I want as well. I'll figure myself out. I don't... fuck, Flora. Don't make me walk away from this stupid lighthouse without you, okay?"
believer, believe it or not you'll know when it ends and how it goes
09-10-2024, 09:45 AM (This post was last modified: 09-10-2024, 09:45 AM by Flora.)
flora
"I wouldn't worry about it. You've got an eternity to figure out how to get breaking hearts down to a science." The words are out before Flora has even realized she's said anything, and while her thoughts vaguely gesture toward an apology, she's bitten her lower lip between her teeth.
"You are, though." The queen counters, swallowing as she hazards a glance up at Jack, before letting her gaze fall somewhere down the beach. "I..." Pausing before the words tumble out, even though they've been dancing around it this entire conversation, Flora hasn't forgotten the way that the word love had felt like a weapon tossed out between them, just waiting to see who'd pick it up and strike the first blow. Wrapping an arm around herself, she continues, pointedly not looking at Jack as she does. "I fell in love with you knowing that you'd never feel it back, knowing that any realistic future I could see with you would be bleak and probably unsatisfying for both of us, and I loved you anyway." Because that's how it worked, Jack. It wasn't contingent on well if you want this, or what would you say if I..
Eyeing the fuzzy lights of Haulani, Flora sighs. "I've never let myself think of a future because I knew it wasn't what you wanted." She murmurs, only vaguely aware of the way his fingers are stretching for her. "And now you suddenly want me to, after you've just said that actually you've been pushing me away from the start?" Wanting to swat his fingers away for the ultimatum they posed but knowing what his touch would do to her, Flora just lifts her eyes from his outstretched hand up to his face. "I think it's you who needs to think about what he wants. What a life with someone like me would be like, and how you actually feel when you aren't hiding behind hypotheticals."
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
09-10-2024, 09:53 AM (This post was last modified: 09-10-2024, 09:54 AM by Jack.)
JACK
That's pretty much that, then, and Jack's fingers close around the empty air and fall back to his side, the captain wanting suddenly to throw something hard and far off the edge of Aumakua's island and far away, deep into the ocean. "Right," he mutters. "I suppose I'd better get on that, then." Figuring out what he actually wants, that is, if his dithering around on the beach only to return to Flora's side every time hasn't been him doing exactly that.
"I'll see you around, Flora." Or he won't. The mess has just gotten messier, and given that the Doubletake is going nowhere and he's suddenly just as inclined to put distance between them, he does step away from her on the sand to walk away across the beach and into the swaying grasses. At least there's one fair thing to come from all of this - now they're both hurt.
~FIN
believer, believe it or not you'll know when it ends and how it goes
