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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!
"If I got out anymore I'd have to give up my citizenship to Torchline," Jack drawls, raising his eyebrows at Flora as if to ask if that's something she really wants. "Hardly been at port this season between Halo, the Greatwood an' King's End." And now Stormbreak, he nearly says, only that particular city doesn't seem nearly as inviting as it had done mere moments before, not now that less fond memories are surfacing.
Her hand lingers over his chest, and before she can let her fingers drift away again Jack's own raises to catch and over it, pressing it there against the warmth of his skin. "I wonder sometimes how shit would've gone down if you'd told me what you were plannin'." If he'd have involved himself or if that would have still spelled the end for them; where they'd be now, whether so many of the things that had come to pass would have unravelled the way they did.
Scrunching his nose and shaking the thought away, he glances back at Flora and scoffs out a gentle laugh. "Well," he says, plucking up the thread of her humour and carrying it forward, "I'll have to come and see the place in that case, won't I? Unless you've put it somewhere I can't see the ocean on purpose." He smirks.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora huffs under her breath, the sound soft but certain. "Yeah, right," she murmurs, head tilting enough for a curl to slip loose against his shoulder. "You’d never be able to leave Torchline no matter how long you were gone for."
The press of his hand over hers stills her fidgeting, and it draws a breath from her that doesn’t even come close to filling her lungs. Against her better judgment, the urge to kiss him edges close again, and she has to swallow it down, exhaling instead. Rolling her eyes before she lets them close, she says, "Probably you’d have told me it was a terrible idea and not to do it, and I’d have done it anyway." Her fingers twitch faintly against his skin. In her mind, though, the thought lingers sharper; whether if she’d known what he’d say back then and how it would make him feel, if she would have chosen Torchline, or chosen him.
His humour is easier to grab onto, and she does, her body loosening as a snort of laughter leaves her. "Maybe the rooms shuffle around," she muses, the corner of her mouth tipping up as she tilts her head back to smirk up at him. "And so yours only has an ocean view when you’re being nice to me."
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
"Mm, you're right," Jack admits freely; perhaps one of the only things he'd agree so readily about, in truth. "I wouldn't." Torchline runs in his blood and no other place has ever come close; he knows her like he knows his own ship, right down to the flavours of the city depending on the season and the day of the week. There are few other places that Jack can claim to feel so comfortable.
This had been another one of them, though, once upon a time, and as Flora's thoughts whirl towards closing the distance between them further, his eyes flick towards the cupid's bow of her lips for a moment. "Oh, prob'ly. Or I'd have told you it was a terrible idea an' come up with some crooked way 'round it. Not that I could ever guarantee you'd take good advice when it hands itself to you." He smirks.
Groaning, the rooms shuffling around in her house all too reminiscent of the aforementioned Greatwood, Jack throws his free hand over his eyes. "An' here I thought comin' to visit you in your pretty beach mansion was bein' nice to you."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
It feels absurd, the way she thinks about edging closer to Jack as if she’s some teenager steeling herself to reach for a boy’s hand. But given how tangled and tumultuous things have been between them for so long, it almost feels justified—like she’s earned the right to hesitate. The last time she’d kissed him with that kind of intent, it had been with a reckless thought of to hell with it all flaring hot in her chest. Now it’s quieter, more dangerous for the softness it carries, and gods she doesn't think it's worth the risk.
Flora hums as though weighing Jack's words, nose wrinkling before she admits, "You probably would have come up with a better idea." The easy concession doesn’t last long; at his criticism, she nudges her hip against his. "You're one to talk."
Her laughter lifts lighter when he groans, his hand flung over his eyes like some martyr. It shakes the heaviness from her thoughts, at least for the moment. "Why d’you even bother eating, when you’re already so full of yourself?" she chuckles, the brightness of it rolling out into the space between them like sun breaking back through the clouds.
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
"No no," Jack objects with a quiet shake of his head, "let's not get it muddled, love. I don't take advice period, whether it's good or bad. I'll dish out both though, dependin' on the day." As Flora well knows; it could be some snippet of wisdom or it could be a nudge towards selfishness or violence. Regardless, the captain will offer it as if it's gospel either way. His hand slips from his eyes again with a grin at her unexpected quip, Jack raising his eyebrows at her.
"You practice that one on your way over, did you?" he drawls. "If you must know, it's mostly outta boredom. Gives me somethin' to do with my hands, too." He'd have made a joke about it keeping them out of his pants, only they both know he's the polar opposite of most when it comes to stoking his own carnal fire.
As his gaze catches hers again, though, the thoughts that keep surging and edging away in her mind like the tide start to wash across the threads of his magic. And for all the things that Jack considers not worth the risk, this can't be one of them, especially with the near desperate ease with which they're laying together now. Like nothing had happened, like there's something to be found or to be built from the ashes of lessons he'd not been ready to learn before.
And so before the wave can drag back again and take the urge with it, Jack leans in to close the distance between them, his lips finding hers in a kiss that's completely at odds with the fire and passion that seized them before.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora can’t help it; laughter bursts free, bright and helpless. "Been waiting years to use that one," she teases, mouth curling in delight. The words she almost says next—that if he needs something to do with his hands she has ideas—scatter like startled birds, because suddenly the space between them is gone.
Her breath catches, and instinct takes her hand from the warmth of his chest to his cheek, fingertips brushing the rough stubble there before sliding higher into the softness of his hair. The kiss lands with the gentleness of something unlooked-for, warm lips pressing to hers with no rush, no fire meant to consume. His breath mingles with hers, the faint bite of rum still clinging at the edges, and she leans into it, her body caring little for the way her mind worries. It feels absurd—how something so simple can spark through her like lightning in still water. To anyone else it would be impossible to explain, how she could go from waiting in his cabin for the familiar chaos of their bodies colliding to having her world tilt off its axis at a kiss as soft as this.
When she pulls back, it’s only far enough to see the ocean-deep blue of his eyes, her own searching his as though they might hold the answer she’s too afraid to voice. He’ll feel it anyway—the flood of her thoughts tangled tight against the tether of his magic, the chorus of we can’t, we can’t, we can’t, beating against her ribs like wings. Butterflies riot in her chest, battering against the edges of her smile until she swears they might escape through it, fluttering into the space between them where the taste of him still lingers. "Jack.."
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
"I don't care." Jack's voice is quietly certain even before his name slips from her lips, the words whispered against the corner of her mouth. His arms have swarmed around her in the time it has taken for her to draw back, and in one smooth movement he draws her over the top of him, leaning in for another kiss.
He doesn't care about can't and shouldn't and whatever ending finds them driving off a cliff together. He doesn't care about what's right or how he's not good for her or how the world and everyone in it is going to snap at his throat for the audacity of it. He doesn't care. Only her absence has let him realise how much she's broken him in the seasons they were together, how for all the ways he hasn't changed, he can't change, he's evidently capable of it.
Why else has he spent this time hunting for something that comes so infuriatingly easy in her presence?
Hating it as much as he's learning to accept it, Jack draws back just enough to gaze up at Flora, the fury of the Arclight brewing in his eyes. "I can't just keep fucking you without having you," he whispers. "And you know it. So pick."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora doesn’t even register the moment she moves, only that she’s suddenly there, draped across him as if her body remembered the map before her mind could protest. He fits beneath her in the way storms fit the sea, inevitable, and when his lips find hers again, she meets them without thought, fingers curling tighter into his hair as though pinning him to the earth might keep her from slipping entirely into him, or away from him. Her heartbeat surges in her ears, her cheeks blazing, and still she leans into the kiss as though it’s both lifeline and undoing.
When he pulls back, the sudden absence of him leaves a coldness crawling through all the places where his hands aren’t, a reminder she hadn’t meant to give herself. Breath stumbles out of her in a shaky sigh as she stares down at him, heart hammering so loud she’s surprised he can’t hear it too. She’d thought this—just fucking her—was exactly what he wanted, the clean transaction of heat without weight, chaos without consequence or strings. And maybe it had been easier for her to believe it, because the alternative would mean acknowledging just how dangerous this was for her, for them both.
Her voice comes softer than she intends, raw in its honesty, her gaze locked on the fury and stormlight in his. "It’s not that simple," she whispers, the words trembling out like a confession. Surely even Jack, for all his fuck-it bravado and sharp-edged grins, had to know it was never going to be that simple. That it couldn't be?
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
"It is for me," Jack says, the words riding out on a breath he'd forgotten to take in the time they'd been kissing. It's easy to be selfish for Jack Barclay, easy to sail into an oncoming storm with little more than a cocky smile and the memory of past successes to guide him, and although years and experience have tempered the loose cannon he'd been as a younger man, there still exists a fuse within him that sparks with the right motivation.
And Flora, evidently, is motivation aplenty.
So it is that simple, to say yes to something bad for him and bad for Flora, because it feels good and right in the moment. It's the most simple thing in the world, to say fuck it, I'm doing it anyway, if only for this one thing in maelstrom of other responsibilities.
"If not for you, though..." He exhales a long sigh, his grip on her loosening enough to let her go, and he nods towards the shirt she'd been wearing where her compass is still nestled. "Then I get it."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
It’s nearly everything she’s ever wanted from him, the kind of words that could have undone her once upon a time. But they come dressed wrong, dressed in Jack’s way; soft only until the blade shows. It hits her like a riptide turned cold, water rushing out at her knees until she’s left scrambling for ground that isn’t there.
When his grip slackens she feels it everywhere, her skin prickling to gooseflesh, a shiver running deep enough to shake her bones. She’s never felt so naked as she does in this instant, with their easy intimacy and affection suddenly feeling like it was being wielded against her. This too feels familiar if only because she knows how quickly the tide can turn around Jack—how he could turn warmth into steel, a kiss into a cliff edge—but still, when she pushes back from him, her eyes are wide, bright with hurt she can’t smother fast enough.
"Jack," she breathes, her voice catching on the edges of his name, imploring, pleading. She shakes her head, curls tumbling forward, before the heat in her chest twists sharp into something else. The hollow, clawing ache of being left behind by him again steels her spine, pulls her chin high with grit she barely feels steady on.
"It isn’t that simple," she whispers, then harder, fiercer, as her gaze cuts down at him. "Especially not when you can just decide it is and shove the rest on me. Either I make the choice right now, or I fuck off your ship—that’s it?" Her voice shakes with fury and hurt, with the impossible unfairness of it, and still she holds his gaze like she refuses to be the one to look away first.
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
Jack's frown isn't the sharp steel of rebuttal or the warning before an oncoming storm - as Flora's emotions flare and rise like a rogue wave, he gazes up at her with little more than quiet confusion. "What's hard about it?" he asks with a soft shake of his head. "We've been tip-toein' around each other since the House of Midnight, fightin', talkin', orbitin' each other like neither of us can let the fuck go. And then the masquerade, your ship, mine--" He huffs out a laugh that's all quiet disbelief.
"I'm tired of pretendin', Flora," he says. "An' I can't keep doin' this with you, hearin' someone else's name in your thoughts while your hands are on me, bein' your distraction for when shit gets hard. I was part of what we had too - you aren't the only one who got hurt." Forcing himself not to freeze over - emotionally or physically for that matter - at the mere reminder of it, Jack quietly clears his throat.
"I know what I want, an' it's you, whatever that looks like. If you need to think about it, do whatever you need to do."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
She swallows hard at the unexpected gentleness in his voice, her own head moving in a faint mirror of his. "Of course I couldn’t let go," she murmurs, because how could she, when everything in her life had been stitched through with him in one way or another? But the words barely leave her before the rest hits—other names in her head—and she has to move, has to make space for what is inevitably coming, because she can’t breathe without every shift of her hips pressing skin against skin into him.
Sliding to the side, she drags herself against the wall, fingers fumbling for the sheets shoved to the foot of the bed. She pulls them up roughly, over her own bare skin and tossed halfway across him as well. Knees drawn tight to her chest, arms wrapped around them, she feels suddenly small, stripped raw, one wrong word away from tears.
Her voice comes out low, almost mumbled against the curtain of curls falling around her face. "I know you know I slept with Kai." She stops there, biting the inside of her cheek until it stings. It’s not how she ever thought she'd say it—honestly never thought it would come up—but at the mention of other names in her mind, there's only one Jack could be talking about.
Her eyes flick sideways to him, bright and glassy. "But nothing’s changed since the House of Midnight." The words scrape out of her, because she feels that heartbreak all over again, the tenderness of it, the devastation of looking inside his mind and seeing how it worked, how there could never be space for her. His thoughts had been a spider’s web she could never untangle, sticky and intricate and full of threads that weren’t hers, that he both couldn't and wouldn't ever clip.
A tear slips down her cheek as she squeezes her knees tighter. "You called us impossible, Jack," she whispers, her voice trembling like it might break apart. "And now you fuck me a few times and suddenly everything has changed?" But had it? Because here they were, failing at yet another hard conversation with Jack gesturing toward the door and Flora in tears.
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
She slips away from him and the distance is as cold as any other night alone in this cabin, Jack shifting up enough to slump back against the headboard. The blankets land in his lap, lending a small piece of dignity to what's becoming a very undignified conversation, and he rakes a hand back through his sun-bleached hair, wincing at the pain in her thoughts. "I found out at Caly's birthday, from the man himself," he agrees - and it had stung then, in some walled-off way he didn't quite let himself feel, but it prickles a little more now.
His sigh is almost a laugh, Jack shrugging to her with as much honesty as a villain can muster. "'Course it hasn't. We were done - what would it have all been for? My fuckin' health?" But of course she doesn't just mean the surface of things, his prickly nature, the way he's learned to behave as one of Torchline's crooked kingpins. It's the root of it all, the intrinsic way they both are that just don't gel together.
"If we're so impossible, how does this keep happenin'?" he asks, gesturing between them - him, her, in bed again. "You can't keep your mind on the straight an' narrow when we're together, so how the fuck am I s'posed to? You were thinkin' about kissin' me long before I did it just now. An' now it was wrong, 'cause it was me?"
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Her eyes squeeze shut at the mention of Caly’s party, embarrassment blooming hot as if she’d been caught naked in a crowded street. She exhales in a shaky rush, a sigh that doesn’t know whether it’s meant to calm or to empty her of everything knotted inside. His words press into her skin like grit, and though she wants to hold still—wants to just breathe through it—her body betrays her, flinching at the touch of his tone.
When she looks at him again, there’s fire in the frustration that burns up through her chest. "Because the sex was never the problem!" she says with exasperation, her curls swinging as she shakes her head. "The banter, the stupid fights about your clothes, bothering your crew—that was always easy. This part was always easy." Her fingers dig into the sheets, fists knotted white against her knees.
But when he drags her thoughts into the open, her cheeks flush with a heat she can’t disguise. She huffs, a sound caught between fury and hurt, her voice cracking louder than she wants. "Even if I had kissed you first, Jack, I wouldn’t have demanded that you decide what it meant right then and there. I wouldn’t have thrown it down like a gauntlet and told you to choose."
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
