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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!
Were it not for the act of gods buck and sway of the ocean beneath them to carry things along, Flora would have discovered that Jack is absolutely not beyond begging under the right circumstances. Blessedly, the pitch of his hips into her is enough to have that dam breaking - but gods, he thinks he breaks right along with it, such is the desperate force of the pleasure that rips through him.
He hears his name as a distant thing - probably in the same cadence that those standing on the deck of The Ark hear it, honestly - the captain's mind flooding and crackling with Flora's bliss until it's bursting with it. He nearly flinches with the feeling, carried brutally over the threshold of his own climax and left to drown in their combined pleasure; breathing and thinking become secondary, and it's through the thunder of his own pulse that he finally drags in a shuddering breath, letting it back out on a fractured moan against the crook of her neck.
For Flora, knowing what she does about him, it might not be so strange that Jack is trembling with the comedown of it all, panting softly against her skin and letting his full weight sink down onto her, even as he clutches her closer. There was a time where he'd have recoiled to create distance between them - between anyone - but there's little else the captain desires in this moment than the easy silence of her mind and the warmth of her body.
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
For a long, long while, Flora is entirely unable to tell where she ends and Jack begins. His shivers are hers, the trembling of his breath against her neck a vibration that hums softly along her skin and deep into her bones. The weight of him pressing her into the mattress doesn’t feel suffocating or heavy; it feels grounding, anchoring. There’s no smugness, no triumphant teasing in her thoughts the way Jack had once assumed there would be—just an overwhelming, aching fullness that swells the vast oceans of her mind back to their former glory.
While Hotaru’s magic had left deep, jagged furrows that ripped apart the bright and blooming flower beds Flora had built for herself over the years, now, tangled against Jack, it's as if together the pair had simply taken advantage of the deep grooves Hotaru's magic had left in its wake, using the freshly tilled soil to plant something fresh and strong that would flourish even during Deepfrost.
Air rushes from her lips in a quiet, shaky sigh, and for a second Flora can't recall if she’d been holding her breath or simply hadn't managed to catch it yet. The thought barely forms before it drifts away, carried off by the warm haze that has her limbs boneless, her heart spilling over with something she doesn’t have the strength to name. Slowly she pulls her hand out from between them, placing her palm softly over Jack's back so as not to rouse him abruptly from the stillwater haze she was sure he felt.
For the first time since waking on the houseboat, since feeling her mother’s magic curl around her mind, Flora feels whole again. Not perfect, not untouched, but whole. Despite the compass she knows is in her discarded pants, and despite the offer Jack had made earlier, this, she thinks, this right here is home.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
Flora knits herself back together and Jack is left adrift in her wake, feeling each vibration of her thoughts like a note plucked on the strings of a harp. Separate at first, until the song can layer and build into swelling harmonies in a seamless rise and fall of music he can curl himself against. Music where she can keep him, for a while.
It's an embarrassingly long time before he feels as if he's properly caught his breath, but like Flora, the thought comes and goes like a leaf on the wind, and he inhales a slow, deep breath and lets it out again against the warm, soft press of her skin. Her hand against his back almost has him arching into the touch, the heat from her fingers at odds with the cool air still drifting into the cabin from the open door up to the deck.
Not wanting to speak so much as he wants to press kisses to every inch of her body, to stoke the fire in her mind and her core until they can do this again, over and over, for the rest of the afternoon, it's likely a good thing that Jack is still a slave to the needs of his own body, and it's with unsurprising exhaustion that he considers their next course of action.
"If you wait until we're back on The Ark," he says, his voice rough and hoarse with exertion, "I'll let you shoot a cannon at this boat."
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
"mm?" Cracking open an eye (as if that will help her better understand), and seeing nothing but a tangle of dark hair obstructing her field of view, Flora smiles crookedly and lets her lashes slip shut. "As opposed to not waiting until we're back on The Ark?" She wonders, mischief making music out of her voice despite how exhausted she suddenly was. Even if the pair hadn't been up before the dawn, they'd likely still have been tired, but gods if the urge to simply drift off regardless of where they currently were wasn't strong enough to be more than just a little tempting.
"I could always try and break through the floor and start to sink us.." Flora suggests. Her fingers begin to slowly trace abstract waves across Jack's back while the thumb of the hand intertwined with his, softly strokes over an old scar silvering his knuckle. "..I bet I could make you cum again before we capsize." Snickering quietly into his hair before nosing through it in order to press a kiss against his forehead, a completely unrelated idea flashes through Flora's mind bright enough to have her blinking her eyes open again.
"The way my compass works...you should have something like that for the Ark." While it made sense for Flora to flit around the entire continent, where if not his ship, would the captain ever need to suddenly return back to? "Sorry, I don't know what made me just think of that." She apologizes, before trying to douse the brightness of her thoughts.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
Hissing out something like a laugh into the crook of her neck, Jack doesn't roll his eyes, but Flora will likely get the impression of it anyway by the tone of his voice. "Dunno how you're gonna manage to sink this place with a cannon if we ain't on The Ark, but who am I to tell you what you can and can't do?" Especially right now, when she's reduced him from ruthless captain and literal force of nature to little more than a man too tired and content to lift his head.
"Mm, you could certainly try," he agrees, though it would involve her getting all the way out of bed and picking up that gnarled, pointy improvised weapon, and Jack has his doubts. As for making him cum again before the boat sank, that's enough to have a dirty smile curling up the corners of his lips, his body relaxing quite without his permission wherever her hands touch. "I'd hold you to that, but you'll need to give me at least fifteen minutes before you start." He's good, but he can't work miracles, Flora.
Turning his head just enough to feel her lips brush against his forehead - Jack can't remember anyone having kissed him like this, and his thoughts are still too scattered to the wind for him to make sense of it - the captain sees the sparks of her idea, watching them flicker through her subconscious as a sleepy observer. Evidently, even his telepathy is too wrung out to do more than passively watch for the time being.
"Not a bad idea," he says, brushing off her apology as his numb hands start to gain their feeling back, Jack grazing the soft curve of her hips with his fingertips. "I could always use another tattoo." At least that way the compass couldn't be stolen away, not unless someone wanted to flay off his skin.
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
The challenge of it has Flora's brows raising mischievously even though her eyes remain closed. In her mind, she's gently rolling Jack over and placing a pillow beneath his head, before descending slowly down the length of his body in order to properly strip him of his boots and pants. "Where would the fun in that be?" Flora wonders, of giving the captain a 15-minute grace period; where would the fun be for either of them? Continuing to mentally tease by imagining in great detail the placement of her lips across various muscle groups, physically, Flora let the pressure of her fingertips grow a touch stronger now that it was clear Jack had emerged from his murky post-orgasm depths.
"An outline of The Ark over your heart, maybe?" Flora suggests; really, there was no better place for her. (And, selfishly, it would block that particular patch of his skin from ever being claimed by Safrin).
Still more than content to be pinned beneath Jack's weight, the queen nuzzles her cheek against his temple and then up into his hair. "At the risk of overinflating your ego, I do feel way better now." She hums, knowing that there wasn't a chance in hell it wouldn't go to his head, but also sort of thinking some of it was well deserved.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
"Fun for who?" Jack wants to know, and although the tableau that takes place in Flora's mind is just that, it doesn't stop the catlike smile that creeps across his lips. Fun for both of them as it happens, the captain enjoying both her apparent knowledge of his body and its muscle groups as well as the pressure of her fingers, and he shifts just enough to rest his head properly against her shoulder; the good one, thankfully.
"Might make it a little hard to touch to get home," he points out, of The Ark in all her glory tattooed on his chest. "I was thinkin' of keepin' the compass idea." He holds up his arm, turning to show the inside of his wrist. "Maybe just here." With The Ark as the North point, of course. "If you're so keen to have that part of me spoken for, though-" the place over his heart, he means, "I could be persuaded."
Grinning to hear not only that she feels better but also that it's with his ego in mind, Jack gives as close to an easy shrug as he can manage. "I'm glad. I was worried," he says, opting for that over anything else he might have said. It might not have looked like it and he certainly might have struggled to act like it at times, but it's no less true.
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
"Anything that's fun for me would be fun for you." Flora quips in return as if Jack needed reminding how his telepathy worked. "And I'd make it very fun for me." While he might not have gotten to the point of begging this time around, the queen had the afternoon the pair had spent at Molly's preserved behind layers and layers of amber for her to look at and relive anytime she wanted. She could hear the rough desperation that had been in Jack's voice when he'd begged her to finish, all before making him cum first anyway.
"Well if that's what you're worried about you could just ink your fingertips." She took his meaning though; if ever his hands were bound, no doubt he could manage to touch his wrist far easier than his chest. "Maybe you could even add onto it as you go...The Ark, Torchline, me..." If he wasn't a telepath she'd suggest having one to ferret out lies as well. Raising a brow at the easy offer of her being able to lay claim to the skin over his heart, it was both as surprising as it wasn't. For one, Jack wasn't the overly sentimental type such that he'd probably just view it as skin, but then again knowing what he did about Flora who absolutely was the sentimental type, even if he simply put another spray of flowers there, it would read to anyone who knew the couple like a permanent mine perhaps more clearly than a wedding band would.
Shifting her hips and mentally giving Jack a nudge to encourage him onto his side (all of his shrugging and shifting had made him an uncomfortable blanket), Flora keeps one of her long legs draped over his hip in an effort to keep him close as her fingers tease along his side. "I know." Sure the captain had a strange way of showing his concern, but having known him for as long and as intimately as she did, Flora had been able to see it in everything he both did and didn't do. "I don't know if it would have worked as well this morning, but..." She did genuinely feel lighter. Brighter.
"But now that I have both daddy and mommy issues, I might need more of this kind of medicine on the regular." She adds, nose crinkling as she leaned in to steal a kiss.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
Grumbling his acknowledgement that she's got him there, Jack smirks and complies in rolling onto his side now that he doesn't feel quite so untethered to the world around them. Settling there, with her leg draped across his hips and his arm curling to tuck beneath her head, it's even more difficult in this position to resist the pull of rest and sleep, but he knows if he closes his eyes now The Ark will be left hovering over this little houseboat for hours to come.
"Oh, ha," he says with a roll of his eyes; inking his fingertips indeed. Her second idea is a good one though, Jack raising his eyebrows and offering a dip of his head in acknowledgement. "Let's start with The Ark and go from there," he suggests - since that had been her first suggestion. As for the nature of whatever ink he spills onto his skin, the captain raises an eyebrow and glances down at his bare chest. "More flowers? The first took long enough to choose," he drawls; because they were chosen, painstakingly so, despite his apparently blase approach to tattoos.
"Perhaps one of your daggers," he suggests with a scoff. "Though if that's the case, you may as well just cut a scar into me with one." And he'd let her, too, Jack leaning in to meet her kiss halfway, his tongue apparently well-rested compared to the other parts of his body. "Welcome to the club," he rumbles. Of daddy and mommy issues, he means. He can also confirm that the medicine she's decided to take is, indeed, a good choice.
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
"What? It'd be very you to disappear with the snap of your fingers." Flora points out. Then again if he were to accidentally press his fingers together while doing something else and vanish to The Ark, Flora might be tempted to cut said fingers off and have him tie them around his neck, instead.
Following his gaze, Flora's eyes greedily sweep over the unmarked skin. "Oh?" She wasn't to know how long he'd agonized over what flowers best represented her, not when he'd just shown up one day and casually stripped his shirt off to reveal the fresh spray of ink like it was nothing. "Maybe more flowers, but...I mean, I'm sure we can do better than just the obvious reference to my name." Or, maybe not. Maybe she'd just have someone ink Flora right across the muscle. Maybe the O could even be a heart.
Raising a brow at the thought of cutting into him, the queen recoils slightly if only to try and better gauge if he was kidding or not. "Don't you think you have enough scars because of me?" To emphasize, her fingertips slid down the length of his side before falling between them and tracing the horizontal lines which had carved him open. More than happy to meet the rise of his tongue with her own, Flora lets her hand press against the captain's lower abdomen as if she might wipe away the scars beneath her palm.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
"Yeah, but-- exactly." Flora makes his point before he gets a chance to do it himself, and Jack doesn't particularly want to go around wearing his fingers, thanks. Of course, then she's staring down at his bare chest as if it's a canvas, the captain reaching out to snag her chin in his fingers, redirecting her gaze to the spray of her name against his arm. "Hibiscus for happiness, jasmine for good luck, bougainvillea for passion, lilies for beauty," he reels off, and he'll fight her if she wants to disagree on it. Flora - happy-go-lucky, passionate and beautiful.
Releasing her if only to better concentrate on kissing her, the marks against his abdomen are still fresh and pinkish, though the coming seasons with turn them silvery, and he can only shrug and draw her closer as if to hide the scars with her body. "Those weren't because of you," he says firmly. "Besides, it'd be a nice change to have one put somewhere on me on purpose." Leaning in to kiss her again, this time when Jack draws back it's to stretch, the captain finally put together enough to consider moving.
"A'right. You want to sink this thing, or beat it up some more?"
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
Feeling something heat inside of her as Jack reaches for her chin and adjusts her gaze, though 15 minutes certainly hadn't elapsed, Flora was suddenly quite keen to press her luck and see whether or not she could beat the captain's proposed timer. It was only due to the surprisingly sweet explanation of the various blooms that Flora remained where she was, utterly melting, twitterpated, and tonguetied. When she found that she was able to speak again, she clucked her tongue disparagingly before playfully swatting Jack's shoulder. "Why did you never tell me that before?" Wanting to throttle him with affection, Flora can only huff adoringly. "Gods, the arguments I'd have let you win if I'd only known." Known that he hadn't just strolled into the parlour they'd seen in Stormbreak and gone flowers, here, because let's be honest, that's what we all thought he did.
More than happy to pin herself against him regardless of the reason, Flora shrugs lightly. "I dunno, I think Pierce absolutely meant to do that on purpose." It still doesn't feel right to laugh about what had happened, but in light of her fresh trauma, it didn't feel quite so bad, either. "Maybe I'll get something to cover up mine." It was as close to outright asking Jack if he thought her scars were ugly, but after been told that beauty represented at least a quarter of the bouquet on his arm, Flora couldn't ignore the way her vanity gnawed at the back of her mind.
Humming against Jack's lips, as he pulls away and she is left to consider their next move, the queen sighs softly. "Nah, let's sink it." Even if she'd known that Hotaru had rented it under Remi's name it wouldn't have made a lick of difference.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
"You - ow - never asked!" Jack quips back, in what is probably the most mannish response he's ever given her, which is saying something given how he can usually curate himself and his words to whatever situation suits. "Let me win?" he adds belatedly, mildly affronted to learn that Flora would let him do anything, but amused nevertheless as he draws her flush against him and resists the urge to roll over again, this time to draw her atop him. They've a ship to sink, and all that.
"I've no doubt he did. But that's the point - Pierce did it, not you." Shrugging and finally sitting himself up, Jack has to spend a moment hitching his pants back up and fastening them before he shifts towards the edge of the bed. Glancing back at Flora as she mentions finding something to cover the evidence of her own death, his expression is one of genuine confusion, and he leans back to brush his lips across her scarred shoulder.
"Scars are sexy," he reminds her, rolling to his feet and stretching his arms above his head, his back releasing a crackle that has him swearing softly.
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
"Nice try." The Doubletake scoffs, rolling her eyes and absolutely not letting Jack off the hook when it came to what she had or hadn't explicitly asked. "Mmhmm. Let." Widening her eyes argumentatively, Flora curls the fingers of one hand into Jack's hair, leaning suggestively against him as if also thinking about swapping out the positions they'd originally found themselves in. "Just think instead of letting me win, I could have returned the favour." Flora had come to know (and know very well), the blue glaze that often sheened over Jack's eyes when they were on the verge of arguing; it was the look of strategic telepathy wherein the captain was clearly debating whether or not arguing with Flora was worth it. Usually it wasn't such that he'd blink himself out of it and just shrug at it her.
Watching Jack with a lazy smirk, as he turned his attention toward her shoulder Flora felt herself stiffen, and had she more time to think about it, she might have covered her scars with the palm of one hand to prevent him from looking at them. "People say that about men, never women." She counters on the heels of a sigh. "Or when they do, they usually mean something small and cute, not.." Standing, Flora glances at her shoulder before her gaze drops down the length of her naked body. Having only been stabbed once in the stomach, it was her shoulder which bore the brunt of Pierce's assault, but the queen hated them both in equal measure. "..y'know. This."
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
