trapped within an abstract from a moment of my life

you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody

The quiet between them holds for a time, but Flora doesn’t let her thoughts falter or dim. She keeps them golden, deliberately sun-warmed and bright, the way she might keep a candle lit through a storm—fragile but determined, refusing to flicker out just because silence has settled in. She doesn’t push, doesn’t prod at Jack’s hesitance, because she knows better than to expect his fEeLiNgS to come freely when pressed. That wasn’t why she’d shared her gratitude in the first place. She hadn’t meant it as a key to unlock him. Just…as truth.

Even so, a small smile plays at the corner of her mouth when his voice finally returns to her, low and reluctant, shaped like something close to a confession. She doesn’t look at him right away, but there’s a softening in her expression, an unspoken thank you threaded through her breathing as she watches the shifting dapple of imagined light against the bedsheets.

When he settles near her, she turns her body slightly—not enough to tug the claw marks that line her back, but just enough that he remains in her periphery, like a lighthouse she’s quietly orienting herself toward. Her lashes lower as she murmurs, [ay]“I’m sure Ronin or Remi would have told you I was alright…” Her tone is casual, airy almost, but the thought trailing behind it flickers with quiet intent, a ribbon curling lazily toward him in her mind, looking for confirmation, craving the admission she’s hoping he’ll give her.

That he had to see for himself.

And then he speaks Dahlia’s name, and the warmth in her mind retracts like a tide drawn back from the shore. Flora stills, her lips pressing together as the sea-glass shimmer of her thoughts darkens to something sharper, cooler—edges forming where there had only been softness before. Her brows lift, not in surprise at the news itself, but at the ease with which it’s spoken. “Is that so,” she murmurs, and though the words are quiet, there’s a current beneath them that suggests this particular stillness will not last.

“I’m surprised that wasn’t your first stop,” she adds, the words almost languid but unmistakably edged, her eyes meeting his now, unwavering and far too clear. “It’s going to be mine.”

JACK

”I’m sure they would’ve, but I wasn’t interested in seein’ them. I wanted to see you,” Jack says before he can stop himself, leaning casually back on one hand on the bed, his gaze following some imaginary hel as it freewheels through the clouds over them. ”I kept replayin’ what happened in the Greatwood with Pierce, an’ I was in the air before I realised I’d made the order.” He makes it sound much more casual than it is, Jack itching at the stubble on his chin with his free hand. ”Didn’t realise it’d be worse’n Pierce, though…”

He glances over his shoulder towards her, just as the golden sheen of her thoughts cools to something steel-lined and glacial. Jack can’t help it; a smile curls at his lips, one that suggests he knows this particular feeling all too well. ”I’ve been in her head,” he reminds Flora. ”Ain’t nothin’ any of us can do to her that’s worse than what’s already happened. Don’t get me wrong, though - I’ll happily tag along with you to see you kick her to death.”

Some things had been more important, though. Jack doesn’t think he needs to say it, that this is one of them.

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody

The words slip from him almost carelessly, but Flora feels them settle deep, blooming warmth beneath her skin like sunlight pressing through the salt-slicked air. She doesn’t look away as Jack leans back, casual in posture but not in presence—never in presence. Her thoughts, gilded and brimming once more, respond instinctively, spilling gold over the imagined water, scattering light like seashells on wet sand. For all that she keeps her expression tempered, there’s no hiding the way her pulse skips or the delicate flutter of something unspoken in the way she watches him.

I wanted to see you. It loops in her head like a song. It shouldn’t mean as much as it does, but gods it does.

She draws her knees up slightly, careful of the ache in her ribs, and nods as he mentions Pierce. Her gaze softens, lips parting to speak before faltering again. “Being stabbed was…clean by comparison” she murmurs, the corners of her mouth twitching with grim humour, though the words taste bitter even as they leave her. “What she did—” A shiver rides down her spine and she closes her eyes, letting the sentence fall away, unfinished.

When Jack turns toward her with that familiar roguish curl of his mouth, the kind of grin that has always made her feel like she was capable of anything, Flora lets out a low hum of agreement. “If she’s that weak now, I’ll have to go slow with my daggers,” she muses, letting the idea unfurl in her mind like silk ribbon drawn between fingers. “Can’t have it end too quickly.” There’s no fire in her tone, only ice—measured, glinting, dangerous. “She made it last for me,” Flora adds after a moment, voice dipping low, steady and cutting. “It only seems fair.”

But then she looks up again, her gaze sliding back to Jack, her voice softer now, curiosity coiled inside it like a tether. “Do you know what Ronin plans to actually do with her?”

JACK

Jack is the rock that Flora's thoughts crash against, and though he's known it for some time, only now is he able to properly realise the trenches of erosion she's made in his sky-high walls. The glittering light of her pleasure oozes through the cracks she's made, warming him in turn, and it's with a careful and measured breath that the captain keeps his gaze on the illusion spraying across the walls and ceiling above them. "What she did was personal," he agrees. "Personal in a way that goes beyond anythin' the Family ever wanted to achieve."

And so really, it does only seem right that Flora make her retribution just as personal in turn. Better men might have argued the platitude that a life well lived is the best revenge or some other bullshit, but Jack? Jack reaches out almost affectionately to tease a lock of golden hair back behind the Doubletake's ear. "Let me know when you plan to do it. I'll let you know all the things she's most afraid of."

As for what the White Knight plans to do with Dahlia, the captain rolls his eyes with reluctant approval at it all. "A clever move, if I'm fuckin' honest," he mutters. "He's gonna use her as leverage with the rest of those purple fucks, an' try to squeeze as much information from her as he can. When she's no longer useful, though? I imagine he'll be just as eager to spill blood."

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody

Flora’s thoughts, once golden and soft, slip downward into deeper tides as Jack speaks. The edges of her guilt bloom into something bruised, seeping through the seams of her confidence like seawater through rotted wood. She’d always believed—truly believed—that her compass, her rings, and sheer force of will were enough to keep her safe. She had cloaked herself in the illusion of control like it was armour, and even when surrounded by Caido’s strongest demigods, it hadn’t been enough. Her illusion of safety had been torn apart like silk.

Still, when Jack reaches out to brush her hair back—gentle, almost tender in the quiet dim—Flora leans into it before she can stop herself. The touch lands like a balm and a brand all at once, the kind of small, perfect thing she wants to trap in a jar and keep on her nightstand forever. "Maybe..." she begins, voice quieter than before, "maybe we come up with a plan. Together." It’s a fragile kind of offering—an acknowledgment of her own vulnerability, and a silent vow not to let pride pave the way next time. She glances sidelong at him, lips tugging into something that almost resembles a rueful smile. "I think I’m finally ready to stop pretending I’ve got everything figured out. Just...don't tell anyone."

Her fingers curl slightly in the blankets as she shifts, legs stretching just enough to ease the ache in her back. Jack’s assessment of Ronin’s strategy draws a frown, not of disagreement but of consideration. "You really think she’ll talk?" Flora murmurs, brows furrowing as her gaze drifts toward the illusion above, where imaginary clouds blow across a sun-dappled sky. "That she’d let herself be used like that? I don’t know...I feel like she’d die before giving up anything about them. Not just because she’s loyal, but because she’s petty enough to spite us on the way out." Her nose scrunches faintly as she exhales. "It’d be very on brand."

JACK

"Maybe we do," Jack agrees without hesitation, and the words might as well have dripped through an old hourglass like golden grains of sand. Because if they'd come up with a plan together in the first place, perhaps... Perhaps, perhaps. "Mm? Ah, finally - a secret of yours I can keep. Might be that we're even one of these days," he adds, though he offers a small nod nevertheless. "It never leaves this room."

For the captain's part, he mulls his words over for a few moments before, with a long sigh, he finally lets them loose. "I've been hangin' out with the kid more lately - Vesper," he says. "Been playin' around with the magic we share. It's teachin' me a lot about trust that I doubt I'd have learned otherwise. Teachin' me that I ain't exactly been fair to you, when it comes to what you know an' what I was willin' to give."

Letting his fingers drop from the lock of her hair, he leans back on his hands again and scrunches his nose to consider Dahlia in the grand scheme of things, not to mention in her new and weakened state. "I dunno," he says honestly. "She's never been isolated like this from the rest of 'em. Who knows what she'll respond to; threats, bribes, blackmail. It's a lot of unknowns."

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody

Flora huffs out a breath that’s somewhere between a scoff and a laugh, dry but coloured with unmistakable warmth as she rolls her eyes at him. "Careful," she mutters, "if we start evening the score, I might start expecting apologies next." But even as the words leave her lips, her gaze lingers on him, softening at the edges with something far less flippant. Because she hears the sincerity in what he says—what he offers—and even if she doesn’t fully understand it yet, she knows the weight of it when it comes from someone like Jack.

As he shifts into talk of Vesper, the mention of trust coils through her chest like seaweed stirred in a current. At first, she simply listens, her mind gilding with cautious optimism, unsure where this is leading. But then the conversation brushes close to them, to what she did and what he didn’t, and Flora’s thoughts curl defensively around the ache she hasn’t quite figured out how to name. Her blue eyes cut back to him, searching. "Oh?" There’s no heat in her tone, only uncertainty, the kind that curls quietly beneath her ribs and tries not to hope too hard.

And maybe it’s easier to pivot than to wait for the answer. Turning her gaze back to the ceiling, to the sunlit illusion still painting the world in gold, she lets her lips twitch into something just shy of wicked. "If I didn’t think she’d see through it—" Flora of course didn't know that it had been Dahlia's Vox-glasses at work that had let her find the queen, "—I’d say you could borrow my invisibility ring and go listen for yourself." She glances at Jack, her expression sobering. "Still...you really think there’s a version of her that talks? I just...I can’t picture her afraid enough of anything to crack." Then again, Flora had never been suddenly made weak and had all contact cut with those she cared about.

JACK

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves now, love," Jack quips, hissing in an exaggerated breath that suggests Flora is starting to ask for the world on a platter if she's expecting apologies from the king of unapologetic asshattery himself. The smile remains on his lips nevertheless, though, quietly amused and realising, perhaps for the first time since he'd arrived, how easy their conversation has been.

So of course he has to go and ruin it - one of them does, after all, and it's been Flora's go for a long while; now it's Jack's turn. "Yeah," he mutters, rubbing at the back of his neck where the sun has bronzed it, even through the tousles of his dark hair. "It felt like I'd already given you too much by tellin' you what I could do. Like anythin' else was you askin' for more'n anyone deserved to get from me. An' I'm startin' to realise I was wrong."

He raises his eyebrows at her, blue eyes flashing with a mix of self-deprecation and amusement. "I ain't sorry," he clarifies quickly, before she starts getting ideas (see above), "but I might've been wrong."

Letting his hand drop and shifting to sit a little more comfortably at the edge of the bed, Jack watches a ripple of light on the wall from some illusion of water beneath it. "At this stage, I dunno if we even need to hide ourselves. She ain't gettin' out," he admits, of Dahlia. "An' I dunno if she'll talk, but I definitely reckon there'll be a version of her that might bargain. I s'pose we'll just have to wait and see."

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody

As always, the casual lilt of love curls through her like warm wind through a curtain—light and ridiculous in how much it affects her, but she covers it well with a playful roll of her eyes, lips quirking in fond exasperation. "Alright, alright. Baby steps," she murmurs, the words brushed with humour and the unspoken agreement that maybe that’s all either of them is capable of right now anyway.

But as Jack shifts and starts to speak in earnest, something within her stills. The garden of her thoughts quiets to a hush, the imaginary sunlight softening against glassy leaves and warm soil, and Flora just listens. The neatness of his logic, the tangle of his resistance, the surprising clarity with which he admits it now. And when he clarifies—not sorry—she huffs out a laugh that carries more affection than frustration. "No, of course not," she echoes, teasing but soft.

She watches him for a moment longer, unsure what she wants from this—what she’s allowed to want. Her fingers toy lightly with a fold of the sheet, her body still curled inwards, cocooned but open. There are a dozen things she could say: ask him to lie down beside her, coax more feelings into the open, or defuse it all with something glib. But instead she lets the moment breathe and for once she doesn't immediately demand Jack put a label on what they were to one another.

When he turns their attention back to Dahlia, she nods slowly, lashes dipping before lifting again. "I didn’t mean sneaking in to try and crack her yourself," she clarifies. "Just...lurking around while someone else did the questioning so you could get the full picture of how she reacts." Then, after a moment of consideration: "If it’s Sunny doing the interrogating though, you wouldn’t have to hide at all."

JACK

Of all the things Jack has learned to expect from Flora in their time together, space and silence is not one of them. And the captain makes himself feel it as the things he's written into reality with his tongue are left to linger in the air between them. His hands drop back to his lap, his mind teases his own truths into strings of logic that make all the more sense without any immediate jumps to defence or justification or denial.

"D'you want to see?" he asks slowly. "Not that I s'pose it matters now." Or does it? The question hangs like a guilty suspect trying not to be noticed in the corner of the room. "But if you wanted to know how things work for me, how they have to work for me - I can show you in a place like this."

It doesn't even have to be now, not with Flora in the state she's in, but Jack would be lying if the same urgency that had brought him running isn't tapping on his shoulder still, cautioning an opportunity that might never again present itself.

"Yeah, I've heard our old governor has a penchant for interrogation," he says with a sudden huff of laughter. "Might be worth it even just to see him get to work on that bitch."

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody

Her nod is immediate, instinctive; less a decision and more a spark catching fire, her curiosity blooming with the sudden flush of gold that floods her thoughts. The illusion that clings to the ceiling hums softly in response, as if stirred by the very idea of it, and for a moment she’s back there in memory: green and gold unspooling across the walls when he'd first brought her here, silks and garnet ribbons bleeding into the air when he’d touched her, the room glowing with the echo of her orgasm, alive and blooming with the proof of how she’d wanted him.

She swallows, her throat tight for reasons that have nothing to do with pain, and when she speaks her voice is low but steady, wrapped in wonder and caution and something like trust. "Yes," she murmurs, gaze flicking up to meet his with something unguarded behind it. "I’d like to see it." There’s no teasing in her tone now, no glittering mischief to shield herself behind—only the quiet ache of wanting to know him in ways she hadn’t been allowed to before.

JACK

Jack ought to have expected the immediacy of her response based on everything he knows about Flora; every bridge burned and tentatively rebuilt between them, every time she'd tried to pry some part of him out into the open to look at. And yet it still comes as a quiet surprise, the captain sitting himself up properly and clearing his throat as the bloom of her curiosity dances across his magic and he has to stop himself from mentally swatting it away on instinct.

"Okay," he says slowly instead. "I ain't sure what it's gonna look like, though. Might not be as pretty as what you saw last time." Even as he speaks, the room begins to darken around them into a veil of black space - only the bed remains for Flora's comfort, though Jack has already risen to his feet.

"Alright, let's see..."

It's a slow fizzing through the air as Jack parts the veil around himself, delicate, crackling lines spiderwebbing across the room, branching and branching again upon themselves like synapses firing a constant barrage. There are tiny flickers of colour along the webbing that, he realises, are the thoughts he'd shown Flora previously, only rather than a detailed snapshot left to bloom around them, this is like zooming out a few hundred times.

There are no parameters in this room, but the captain lets his consciousness expand to the furthest ranges of his telepathy, until he stands crowned in the fragile strands of his magic; a sleeping beast ever viligant for change or danger or something interesting and useful. "Say something. Or even just think it." It's an invitation rather than anything else, because while Jack already knows he's the focus of a lot of little conversations (mainly involving Derek and his broken nose), he assumes Flora will find it more interesting to have things bloom to life a little closer to home.

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody

The breath Flora sips in is quiet but sharp, drawn through her teeth as the darkness rushes in—not the soft shadowed kind that wraps like velvet, but something vast and unknowable. A black sea without horizon, her bed the only island in a midnight expanse that stretches endlessly in every direction. She feels suddenly tiny, suddenly unmoored, clutching at the edge of the sheets as though they might tether her to something real.

Where her own mind is a tangle of flowers and crashing surf, gold-threaded thought and aching colour, his is...different. A spider’s web laced in static and glass, vast and layered, every delicate filament sparking with the bite of thoughts too fast to follow. It’s disorienting, dazzling, and more than a little overwhelming—like trying to navigate stars from the wrong end of a telescope. Flora swallows hard and clutches the sheets tighter, eyes wide as the synaptic strands pulse with hints of colour she can’t quite place.

Still, when he asks—think something—she does. She thinks of home, whatever that means now. Of Torchline's docks at dusk, the laughter and music spilling out of the Hanged Man, the pale stretch of sand behind the bar where she and Enzo once danced under moonlight. She thinks of the kiss of salt air and how the water always glows a little brighter than anywhere else.

JACK

Like a raindrop into a lake that creates ripples far larger than that which had caused them, Flora's thoughts are a trigger for Jack's own mind. Of course he has thoughts of his own - and many of them - but they are so interlaced with all that he's built, it's simply easier to use Flora as a springboard to get started. And so Torchline - home, for both of them - blooms to life, turning one of those crackling filaments a shade of deepest ochre and setting it to sparking, until the islands they both know bloom out around them, like a watercolour.

For Jack it's the same smell of the docks, the cry of the hels, the taste of sweet liquor. But it's danger, too; blood and darkness and an iron grip; it's the world he'd cupped in the palm of his hand for so long before the barrier had fallen and had taken his small patch of territory with it.

And then it fades, the thought setting the rest of the telepathic spiderweb to flinching, picking up on any similar minds within range; picking up on their thoughts about Torchline, until it's an enormous, comprehensive picture that's a far cry from Flora's beginning. The region flushes back into view with intricate details added from the fishmonger fucking in a room two doors down, from a waitress in the corridor who had only visited once and had hated the oppressive heat, from one of the Ark's crew standing outside and daydreaming of home.

"It's a lot," Jack mutters, as if to say he understands if she wants him to drop it.

no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!