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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!
"Touche," Jack concedes with a crooked smile, because she's right; whatever he's open to now, he'll expect to be held to account for it, but endless oh and alsos would probably grate on even a person with an abundance of patience, let alone someone like the captain.
He blinks himself into focus - mostly at the mental equivalent of snapping fingers, it's true - as she brings up something immediately, Jack reaching automatically for the glass she's holding as if to rescue it from becoming warm in her hands. (By drinking it). "I... yeah. That's fair, I guess," he says slowly, sipping at the liquor. "You're... I can't be like this with anyone else. It's still new, to an extent, bein' able to respond to anythin' without givin' the game away."
Sighing as if considering it, he tilts his head back against the wall. "I think it'll always be easier if I hear you say it, if it's somethin' important," he says eventually. "'Cause that's how I gotta be with everyone else. Might even prompt me to talk back, who knows." It's a dry joke, but it's a joke nonetheless.
As for his tendency to disappear when he's angry, he chews at the inside of his cheek, inclining his head with a gentle nod and raising his eyes to catch her gaze. "And where's home?" he asks. "Here? Your place? Or just... wherever you are at the time?"
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
As Jack steals the glass, Flora tugs at the sheets the way he had before, fingers worrying the fabric. "Your telepathy's...as helpful as it is impossible sometimes," she admits with a soft sigh, her eyes fixed on the blanket, not doubting for one second that he likely felt the same about it. "And I know it’s unfair, but...sometimes it feels like because you know what I'm thinking—when you don’t listen, it’s like ignoring something I’ve said out loud." She bites the inside of her cheek, guilt pressing against honesty, but she keeps going. There's no specific moment she has in mind, just the overwhelming feeling of the tables always being tilted in Jack's favour. "Like, when you know my feelings are hurt, or you feel me not wanting you to go and you go anyway—" She falters, breath catching. "With anyone else, none of those things would count, but with you...it's like it cuts so much deeper."
It hits her then, how much sharper every fight feels, how much heavier every joy, like she’s been rewired to live at extremes in his orbit. She shakes her head, helpless. "I know it isn’t fair," she murmurs, voice thinner now. "But even if I try to say everything out loud, it won’t change the fact that you already have the rest of it."
His question about where home is lingers heavily in a way that'll have her aqua eyes snapping to him. She nods slowly, but her throat tightens. "That's...a good point. Maybe I just mean there’s a difference between cooling off and disappearing," she says, fingers knotting in the sheets. She hates that this is one of those times she can’t just let him read her and spare her the ache of speaking. But she forces the words out, however raw and terrible it feels to give voice to her insecurities. "After before…I'd take a thousand fights with you than how it felt when you just left."
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
The brief raise of Jack's eyebrows - wry and tired, more than anything - is wholehearted agreement with Flora's statement; helpful and impossible is how he'd grown up with it, after all. "...I know," he says eventually. "That's the other reason leavin' was so easy. It's hard to exist when your thoughts are so tumultuous, an' it was simple to walk away from it, same as I would for anyone else." But that hadn't been fair, and he'd admitted as much in the House of Midnight.
"I can't say I won't do those things again," he says. "Knowin' what you think doesn't mean I'll just... be and do all the things that make you happy no matter what. Doesn't mean we won't still have arguments. But I can bring it up, so it's not like I've ignored it." A chance at a middle ground between the two extremes they'd lived in prior.
Refilling the glass, he nods his agreement about the difference between cooling off and fucking off entirely, but as it cuts to the quick of their worst fight, Jack's gaze drops as well, jaw feathering. "I was so angry with you," he mutters, voice barely beyond a whisper. "Not for what happened, though that was part of it at first. It was more 'cause you did it without me. Like I wasn't good enough to be included in it." Inhaling a long breath and huffing it out again, he offers the glass out to her.
"That can't happen again," he says quietly. "You wanna do somethin' weird an' heroic an' stupid, by all means. But let me in on it. What's the point of all I can do, if I ain't able to help the person that matters to me most when it counts?"
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora nods slowly. She knows Jack's telepathy didn't just mean he had to yield to her every thought, but it feels freeing to finally say it out loud, that picking through her thoughts might be inevitable, but it also stung. "I just… wanted you to know how it feels on the other side. To have someone pick and choose what matters, when it all matters to me." Her mouth twists, almost a smile, almost not; for as difficult as she could be, she couldn't imagine having to also deal with her thoughts at the same time. After a pause, she swallows and adds, quieter, "Is there anything I can do? When things get tense, between us?" Because inevitably it would. "To make it easier for you?"
She goes still as Jack refills the glass, silence heavy between them until she realises he isn’t dredging up the past just to punish her; he’s bleeding from it still. Her teeth find the inside of her cheek as she nods almost too quickly, and then she inches closer to where he's sitting, shoulder brushing his in a gesture that feels fragile for all its simplicity. "It won’t happen again," she whispers, meaning she’ll let him in on her reckless schemes, that she won't let him feel like he isn't good enough to be included.
"If there’s another war…" The thought slips out before she can cage it, unrelated as it is to everything they've been discussing; her voice wavers as she shakes her head, curls spilling forward to hide her face. "I don’t think I could stay queen." She risks a glance at him then, the scars in her mind likely just as jarring for Jack as the ones on her body. "I don’t think I could take it again."
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
Now it's Jack's turn to nod, the captain tapping a gentle, rhythmic finger against the side of the liquor bottle. "I get it. Better'n I did before, anyway," he says. And at least he can try to be less clumsy with his rummaging through her mind. As she turns it back on him, though, it's with almost pleasant surprise that he tilts his head towards Flora. "Yeah, do more of that," he says quietly. "You don't ask me much, in general. An' I'm hard-wired to be a closed book, but if you're the one askin', I'll usually answer."
It's how it had been the day he'd told her about his past, growing up with his father, the things he'd stolen in terms of the memories of his mother. It won't always be easy and he won't always like it, but in forcing him to talk, at least the crux of their argument might come to light sooner.
She inches closer, then, and Jack's fingers itch with something suddenly vibrant and awkward, as if he wants to either have her in his lap or he wants them apart, but he makes himself sit with the feeling as if it might help him to understand it. "Thanks," he says quietly, only for the old wounds in her mind to flash, sudden and stark, at the forefront.
"Love, if you wanted to give it up tomorrow I'd not stop you. There was a time when you bein' queen definitely sweetened the deal for me, but it ain't been that way for longer'n not." He nudges her gently. "Become a full-time guildmistress. I could give us plenty of work."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora nods, because his understanding—even if it’s only partial—is as much as she can reasonably ask for, short of somehow learning to keep her thoughts shuttered away from him entirely. The look of surprise that crosses Jack’s face draws a quick, instinctive smile from her; rare as it is, she catches it like sunlight spilling through a crack. "I can absolutely do that," she murmurs, soft and almost shy, as if the act of asking him questions is suddenly a thing precious enough to handle carefully.
When his nudge comes, not with hollow comforts but with some other life invented in a heartbeat, she laughs warmly, the sound thick with affection. Gods, it’s far too easy to picture—guildmistress and pirate smuggler, the pair of them tumbling headlong into whatever chaos they pleased. Maybe she’d inherited her parents’ penchant for doing the things she thought she was meant to, and while that mostly landed her on the side of good, it was only happenstance in the end. Left to Jack, she’d dive headfirst into debauchery with him and never look back.
The thought clings as she pulls in a breath and shifts away, rising from the bed with the sheet clutched around her. From his trunk she steals a pair of sweatpants without hesitation, tugging them on before shrugging into the chambray shirt she’d arrived in. No doubt he'd feel the tide of her thoughts shifting, uneasy, pressing at the edges before she reins them in. Clearing her throat, she leans back against his desk, the distance deliberate, a gift to them both for what she’s about to say.
"About Kaisel..." Her voice trails off, colour blooming hot in her cheeks as she bites at the inside of one. Her mind betrays her, flickering with images too sharp to ignore, each one surfacing like sparks in the dark. Against the tide of it she manages, softer, "Do you want to talk about it now, or later?" In light of all they'd agreed to and how his name had bloomed in her thoughts even with Jack's hands on her body, no doubt this was going to be something she'd have to actually give voice to, however uncomfortable and confusing it was likely to be.
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
"Don't start thinkin' about debauchery, now. I can only behave myself for so long," Jack says with a smirk, his tone light, so hopefully she won't mind his enjoyment of her imagined other life. It's one he also indulges in as she gets to her feet from the bed, letting his magic linger in the sun-dappled patches of the chaos they might cause, the successes they might share. Before Jack knows it, in fact, Flora is leaning against his desk and dressed, and the shade of the new topic robs him of the warmth of her creativity.
Exhaling a heavy sigh, he wrinkles his nose and sits properly at the edge of the bed, his elbows on his kees. "Depends on what you got to say about it," he says. "For now, I'm listenin'. If we gotta table it for a bit, though, I'll let you know. How about that?" It's not like he can fall back on old habits besides and disappear, given that they're in the air on his ship.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Her grin flashes at his comment, because they both know better than to linger too long in some made-up fantasy; with her habit of dragging half-baked dreams into reality in all the wrong ways, it’s a dangerous game to play, all the moreso right now with the pair of them equally vulnerable and grasping at straws like they were liferafts.
The grin fades as she studies the floor, dragging her thoughts into some fragile order so they don’t start spilling faster than her mouth can catch them. One arm curls tight around her middle, not quite defensive but close enough, her hand pressing into the soft fabric of her shirt as if it could hold her steady. She swallows hard before she begins, her eyeline somewhere near Jack's feet. "Things with he and I didn’t turn into...more, after that night," she says carefully, words stitched tight together. "Because I wasn’t over you." There was his side of things with Caly, which was an extra wrinkle in all of this, but Flora wasn't sure that was relevant to how she was feeling now. Her inhale trembles a little, and when she tries again her voice dips softer. "But after the House of Midnight—when things were really over between us—"
Her teeth catch the inside of her cheek hard enough to scatter whatever fragile focus she had, heat rushing into her face until she can’t even risk glancing his way. "After that, I did want him." The admission barely gets passed her lips, shaped more by breath than sound as it was. "I think...maybe I even started down the road of falling in love with him, before..."
She trails off, the air leaving her in a sigh that drags her shoulders with it. Her hand gestures vaguely, almost helplessly, as though he can fill in the mess of details better than she could string them together; Caly’s birthday, all the drama, all the sharp edges caused by the distance between them. "If not for what’s happening right now, between us," she says at last, her voice thin and unsteady, "I’d have seen where things went with him."
Her fingers press harder into her side, as if she can't hold the truth in place now that it’s finally out. "I’m only telling you this," she adds softly, "because those feelings aren’t just...gone, despite everything you and I are trying to figure out."
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
Jack can see the way Flora starts to hold onto herself in all the ways he'd learned to recognise over the seasons of their being together - he'd seen it before in the House of Midnight, and on the deck of the small boat where her mother had sequestered her away. As such, he grounds himself at the foot of it, his posture as open as her own is closed off, his expression schooled into the sort of neutral she'll have seen on him dozens of times.
As she speaks, though, of course he isn't immune to the way her words land. The urge to scoff is something he has to bite back, his fingers brushing across the knuckles of his other hand as he listens until Flora has said all she needs to. "An' you're okay with still bein' around him?" he asks quietly.
"I don't mean whether you think you can trust yourself. Either you can or you can't - ain't like it'll be somethin' hidden if it happens." It's not a matter of trust for a telepath so much as it's whether Flora is warning him or simply informing him. "But you don't believe he's not gonna be waitin' in the wings for me to fuck up? To rescue you from this bad decision? 'Cause I'd place a bet he will be."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
In the moment, Flora's too tangled in her own knots of guilt and awkwardness to fully register the gift Jack's giving her by sitting so still, so open, without a single scoff or sharp edge in his expression. Later, she’ll think on it and appreciate it more than she can say, but right now the noise inside her is too loud to even be aware.
A humourless laugh slips under her breath, small and brittle, her head shaking as if she could scatter the worst of it loose. "I wouldn’t cheat on you," she says firmly, her voice low but unwavering, "and not just because the risk of being caught is basically one hundred percent." Her eyes lift to his, and there’s no hiding the conflicted ache there.
Kaisel flashes in her mind whether she wants him to or not—the way he’d already gone and completed a quest for her, just to try to smooth things over, the way he’d spoken like he’d leap as high as she needed if it would make things right. She exhales softly, her words slower now, steadier. "I wouldn’t take that bet in a million years," Flora says, her voice a thready mixture of affection and sadness, because Jack was right. Kaisel probably would be waiting, like a bright-eyed puppy locked out of a room, convinced someone’s going to open the door eventually, and gods if the juxtaposition of that image overlayed over the struggles she and Jack had just gone over doesn't make her heart clench.
She exhales quickly, as if the words might run away if she doesn’t catch them, trying to give them shape because Jack had asked her to, but also trying to cushion the sharp edges she knows they must carry for him as well to speak not just about someone else she had feelings for, but someone that Jack so vehemetly disliked. "I don’t want to compare you," she says, her voice quieter now, searching for a balance between honesty and gentleness. "There is no comparison between a few weeks and the years we’ve spent together. That’s not even a question." But it was something, something that bordered on the verge of love had it not been for Kaisel's own stupidity and Jack's sudden remergence in her life.
Her gaze slips down again, fingers worrying at the hem of her shirt, but she forces herself to keep going. "But it doesn’t change the fact that I do feel something for him. And I’m not entirely sure what to do with that now, in the middle of everything you and I are trying to sort through."
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
"Downside of telepathy," Jack mutters with a shrug that's as quietly sad as it is honest. "You wouldn't even have to get that far." He'd know that she was thinking of it, almosting about it, without it ever needing to get physical. And having never gone swimming in these waters before, he's not entirely sure how to feel about it.
Sitting back at last and leaning back on one hand, he wipes the other against the fabric of his pants, as if frost had been threatening to rime on his fingertips as they speak. "...I 'preciate you tellin' me, love," he says slowly, "but I hope you can understand that I'm prob'ly the worst person to comment on this. Anythin' I say is gonna be in my own best interest, an' I ain't gonna pretend to play devil's advocate for a kid that's been nothin' but a thorn in my side."
And that's without considering Caly, or how Vesper feels about him for that matter. "If you wanna talk to him before decidin' anythin' between us, be my guest." But that's all he can offer, and he'd be a liar if he said he wasn't hoping for a conversation that crashes and burns.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora glances at him and winces, the thought striking her belatedly of what it must be like for him if her mind wandered—even if only to memories she couldn’t quite keep buried. With Koa, the choice had been cleaner, simpler back then; when Jack had finally wanted her, she’d carved out the summer fling with Koa without hesitation, eager to throw herself into a future with the man she’d been pining after since she was seventeen. It hadn’t occurred to her, until now, what kind of weight that kind of wandering might carry for Jack, how even memories might feel like betrayal in the right light.
Her head dips in a soft nod, the line of her shoulders easing as she lets his words settle. Everything he said is reasonable, more than that—it’s fair. She hates the thought of how it must land with him, but she can’t bring herself to regret saying it all aloud. Too much had already been left unsaid between them, silence doing what lies never could: rotting them from the inside until there was nothing left but ruin.
"I know," she whispers, breath catching faintly as she folds her arms around herself again. "Thank you, Jack." The thanks isn't for permission, not for leeway, but for the simple fact that he’d been willing to sit with her in this, to even let her speak it aloud when she knows how much easier it would have been to look away.
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
True to the conversation they've been having, Jack opts not to pry open her train of thought by responding with words, trusting that anything she'd want to say would be out in the open between them. Instead he merely gives a quiet nod, letting himself thread her ideas through his fingers to test them for truth in his own mind. And with anyone else, certainly, there'd be no issue, but with Flora? The distance between them is long eroded, and betrayal certainly tastes like the right phrase.
She thanks him, though, and he can't help but scoff humourlessly, rolling to his feet. "Don't feel too grateful," he says with a wry smile, "I'm already kickin' myself for leavin' him alive that time." Setting the liquor bottle back on his desk, he gestures around the room as if to ask whether she's got anything left on her immediate list. And if not, "...You think you might wanna have that conversation with him sooner rather'n later? Not that I'm impatient, but... no. I am. I'm impatient."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora might have dropped herself into his lap had he not stood, but since he does, she lets her gaze track after him, curls bouncing with the small shake of her head and an affectionate roll of her eyes as the bottle is tucked away.
The mention of talking to Kaisel sooner rather than later, is enough to set heat climbing into her cheeks, a flush she feels all the way down to her collarbone. Just the thought of actually having that conversation has her stomach fluttering uncomfortably, like a storm cloud waiting to break. She drags in a breath that trembles as it leaves her lungs, because there’s nothing left to hide behind now, no excuses or convenient distractions.
And then she moves; too fast, too much like a wave trying to crash over its own hesitation. She loops her arms around Jack in one sudden sweep and presses herself in, cheek to chest, clutching at the warmth of his bare skin as though it might ground her before she can scatter. His heartbeat thuds steady beneath her ear, and she shuts her eyes, pressing tighter until she feels the heat of him seep into her own flushed skin. Rather than thinking what she wants, Flora says it, her lips brushing his chest as she speaks, breath catching as though she’s afraid he might not give it back. "Say you still love me." The words are fragile things, torn out of her not by logic but by ache, the same way a match flares when struck too hard. "Tell me that this is worth it to you."
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
