[SE] maybe then you'll get a little heated too

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

The Ark is a hive of motion tonight, the entire ship humming as the crew prepares her to depart back to King's End. But Vesper doesn’t move through any of it; he misty-steps straight past the noise and the bustle, re-forming in the narrow dark of his cabin.

He doesn’t bother lighting a lantern, just reaches for a duffel he drags out from beneath the small cot before setting it on the bed, the mattress groaning under the weight, and begins to pack. He doesn't do this carefully or thoughtfully, just efficiently, with clothes folded with mechanical precision, a knife sheathed and shoved to the bottom, the few trinkets he keeps tucked away gathered with the practiced indifference of someone who can’t afford to think while he moves.

It won't take a telepath to see that he isn’t planning to return; not to the Ark, not to King’s End, not to any version of the life he had before this evening unravelled everything he’d been managing to hold together. Not until he figured his shit out.

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

It's not unusual for the crew to catch glimpses of Vesper as he flickers in and out of existence, chain-stepping with his magic to get to his destination unbothered. And as Jack feels the flare of recognition from some of the men, he initially takes it with a pinch of salt, assuming the boy has decided to sequester himself away in his cabin, potentially hungover, until the journey is well underway.

What is unusual is for the Captain to be able to glean anything from the young demigod's mind. Usually as guarded as his own, whilst his thoughts are by no means open for Jack to rifle through, there's enough give there to catch the frenetic beat of reckless decision making, of moving to keep moving, of the urge to disappear and run from whatever emotions lurk behind that buzzing need to escape.

Frowning, the Captain mutters a few orders to the crew and nods towards Murphy as if to tell him to take over, leaving the rest of their course plotting in capable hands and stepping casually across the deck and then down to Vesper's little tucked-away cabin at the prow of the ship. Reaching out, he raps against the door with his knuckles but doesn't open it, and rather than calling out, he parts his mental shield enough to let a wisp of intrigue slip through. A quiet, telepathic you good? for Vesper to pick up on.

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

The brush of Jack’s mind against his shields lands like a strike rather than a question, not because the Captain pushes hard but because Vesper is already paper-thin, cracked down the centre, every thought thrumming too close to the surface. The contact skitters along those fractures, sharp enough to make him flinch as though something physical had touched the back of his neck.

He ignores the knock entirely, even as the sound folds into the cramped dark of the room without comment, his breath tightening as he stares at the half-packed bag like it might offer him direction. It doesn’t. Nothing does. The echo of Colt’s thoughts still sits in him like a bruise blooming outward.

There’s a long, heavy pause—almost a held breath—before his shadows stir at the edges of the floorboards. They curl toward the door in a slow, measured creep, slipping through the seam with a quiet metallic whisper as they slide the latch free. The door eases open, enough for the lanternlight from the corridor to cut a thin line across the cot, catching on the constellation freckles scattered along his cheekbones.

"Just packin’ my shit," he says, the words rolling out low and steady, with none of the usual disinterest he weaponizes so easily. It sounds too final, too brittle beneath the smoothness, but he doesn’t try to fix it. "Ain’t comin' back with you."

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

Jack might not have much experience with the mind of the boy behind the door - not beyond what they've purposely shown each other, sometimes necessarily vague and other times disarmingly genuine - but he can sense the sort of familairity in it that he'd carried in himself not too long ago. Vesper might not be on fire with it, but Jack can almost see the hair-thin cracks; barely visible, but liable to shatter with very little pressure.

The door eases open and Jack steps inside, opting not to keep the conversation in the hallway. Clicking it shut behind him and blooming a lantern to life with a pulse of fire magic, he glances from the haphazardly packed duffel to Vesper's face, to the things he says and all the things he doesn't. "Okay," he says slowly, of him leaving.

"You wanna tell me why? Or where you're plannin' on goin'?" Telling or showing, if Vesper is so inclined, given the abilities they both carry.

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper doesn’t shift to make space for Jack, but nor does he bristle at the intrusion. He doesn’t even bother lifting his head fully; the Captain’s presence barely registers as more than a change in the room’s pressure, a slight tilt in the air around him that his magic notes out of habit rather than interest. He keeps folding a shirt with that same mechanical precision until Jack’s question lands, quiet but direct, and his hands still. Not dramatically, just enough that the fabric stops moving, enough that his shoulders lock in place. The second question has nowhere to land; he has no destination, only the bone-deep certainty that it won’t be King’s End. But the first..

He breathes out slowly through his nose, not quite a sigh, not quite annoyance, and glances back over his shoulder. The brow he lifts mirrors Jack’s own habits so cleanly it’s almost funny, if anything in him were in a place to find humour at all.

If anyone understands what it feels like to stand in a room with a mind that’s bleeding at the edges, it’s Jack. But understanding and wanting to talk about it are separate matters entirely, and Vesper is unmistakably his father’s son in this regard as well as all the others. He isn’t inclined to spill anything more than the minimum required to justify the bag sitting half-zipped on his cot.

His fingers rake through his pale hair, catching briefly on a knot and he shrugs with the kind of careless ease that won't fool Jack for a second. "Ran into Colt in the Glade," he says, voice smooth, low, too even for the tension still coiled in his shoulders. "Went bad." That’s all he offers, stripped down and sanded flat, as if the words themselves aren’t carrying enough weight to sink the ship.

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

Jack leans casually back against the door to the little cabin; it's not as though it will do a damn thing if Vesper wants to leave or get past him, so it feels like as good a place to be as any without intruding unnecessarily into the bubble of tension around the boy that threatens to crack at any moment. It absolutely doesn't surprise him that Vesper doesn't want to talk about it, though the way he glances over his shoulder at him, all guarded expressions and raised eyebrows - it's like looking at a pale-haired reflection for a second, the Captain fighting to keep the surprise from his face.

"Didn't go how you planned, then," he guesses, despite having no real idea whether Vesper had planned anything at all when it came to running into Colt again, only that his response to seeing her at the festival (hazy though the memory might be for Jack) had been similar enough to his own when seeing Flora for him to guess at certain parts.

"Lots of stops before King's End," he points out slowly. "Don't gotta jump ship straight away. Ain't like anyone here knows about it apart from me, an' she sure as shit won't be on board."

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper’s shoulders stiffen, the muscle there pulling tight as a bowstring. He doesn’t turn all the way, just far enough that Jack can catch the flash of expression he’s barely restraining, the one that’s far too raw for his liking and therefore gets buried under the nearest weapon he has left; sarcasm. "Yeah," he snaps, the drawl sharpening into something colder. "That’s what bad usually means." It lands quick and clipped at the edges, the words roll off his tongue with practiced ease, a defensive strike dressed up as casual irritation. He turns back toward the duffel, shoving another shirt into it like the fabric personally offended him. 

Jack’s suggestion hangs in the cramped air for a moment, the slow offer of options, of not running quite so hard or so far, drifting in like a hand held out to someone already halfway underwater but  Vesper doesn’t reach for it. Instead he glances back over his shoulder again, blue eyes narrowing, not hostile, just exhausted behind the bravado. "What?" he mutters, brow lifting. "Like mud an' jungle an' swamp?" He scoffs under his breath, fingers closing around the zipper of the bag but not pulling it shut just yet. "Far as I can tell, there’s fuck all between the Grounds and King’s End."

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

"Not true," Jack says, far too casually. "Things goin' bad could've been exactly what you planned, even if you ended up here like this. I thought you said you were tryin' to cut things off with her - which I assume is what happened." The steel in Vesper's posture, the clipped irritation, it all sings of a breakup, but then perhaps he's running because he's found himself bound and tied in an honest-to-gods relationship with Colt by accident?

Biting hard at the inside of his cheek to keep even a whisper of a smile from threatening, instead Jack lets out a long sigh and tilts his head at Vesper's point. "Sure, if you go the direct route," he says. "Otherwise, could be the Greatwood, Halo, the Climb... might flirt with the Ahi Coast as we fly by as well if I'm feelin' particularly vindictive..."

It isn't a decision he'd made until right this second, but suddenly it's something he finds very easy to offer. "You can jump ship whenever you want along the way - if you feel like it."

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper’s hands still again, the fabric caught half-folded between his fingers as Jack’s easy logic threads itself through the room. His jaw slides to one side, not quite a clench, not quite agreement, just the quiet grind of someone who recognises a point he doesn’t want to acknowledge. He doesn’t turn immediately, intaking taking moment, letting the breath fill him slow, steadying something frayed at the centre. When he does glance over his shoulder, the look he gives Jack is measured and tired rather than sharp. "If it’d gone how I planned," he says, voice smoothing into something low and even, "I’d have said it went well." He drags a palm across his face, letting his fingers scrape briefly through his hair, and exhales a thin breath that feels too heavy for the small room.

Jack brings up cutting things off, and Vesper lets his eyes fall half-lidded, shrugging one shoulder without committing to the gesture. "What I wanted," he mutters, the drawl flattening into something far softer, "was to disappear. To let her forget about me." To do right by Colt, in same bastardized sense. Vesper swallows, throat working visibly in the lantern’s glow. "This... was not that." He leaves it there, because he doesn’t have the language for anything more than the naked truth of it which sits like a knot under his ribs; too tight, too raw, too close to breaking.

When Jack casually offers the whole continent like it’s a collection of doorways Vesper can step through at will, the boy straightens, brow rising slow and unmistakably wary. The suspicion isn’t hostile; it’s the reflex of someone who’s had too much torn open in too little time, someone who’s lost all sense of the ground under him and is waiting for the next thing to give way. His eyes narrow, the line between them creasing faintly as nothing comes through Jack's telepathic shield to hint at the Captain's motive. "Don’t you have shit to do back in King’s End?" he asks, the tone not accusatory but genuinely puzzled, the wariness held close in the cool drawl.

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

Pursing his lips but opting not to logic at Vesper any further, Jack slowly straightens from the door and steps across the little space, pushing at the duffel bag just enough to be able to sit down on the bunk. (Not like there's anywhere else to sit). "Ain't one to call you stupid," he says slowly - on the contrary, Vesper has one of the sharpest minds Jack has ever encountered, and for good reason given his parents, "but I've met Colt, an' there was never any way she was gonna let you disappear."

It doesn't mean what happened wasn't for the best - but it does mean it probably stings a helluva lot more than Vesper planned.

Recognising the suspicion in the young demigod's posture, in the careful line between his brows, now Jack can't help but to smirk; quietly confident, a casual pillar of strength in the small space. "Course I do," he says. "It can wait. Scarcity increases demand, y'know."

Then he does draw his mental shield down enough to part the curtain of his thoughts and feelings. The complex web of his mind is smaller now than it had been at the height of his career in Torchline, still smouldering in some places, shiny and fresh in others, and the threads of it that link to Vesper right now all but thrum with something as close to real empathy as a man like Jack can get. An olive branch, a recognition that things might have been a lot different for him if the man he'd been a few seasons ago had this version of himself to rely on.

"Don't get used to it, yeah?" he mutters.

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper watches Jack cross the cabin with a guarded stillness, and when the Captain nudges the duffel aside and sits, his pale head tilts a fraction, a narrow line drawing between his brows at the opening remark about his alleged stupidity. That earns Jack nothing but a long, pointed look before Vesper’s head angles further, the expression somewhere between incredulous and dryly unimpressed, because that is absolutely the sort of phrase someone uses right before they call a man stupid. The glance lingers for a beat, blue eyes sharp with silent commentary before he exhales and lets the accusation ease into something quieter. Jack is right about Colt. As much as Vesper wanted to disappear, as much as he wanted her to lose her grip on him before things got worse, the odds of her simply letting him vanish had been slim at best. 

"Well," he mutters, a shrug rolling through his shoulders like a man trying to rearrange the weight on his back, "I made it so she fuckin’ hates me now, so..." The sentence unravels before it reaches its end, tapering into a tight silence. He hadn’t wanted things to end—not really—he’d only wanted to pull out the detonation wire before they blew each other apart. And instead he’d managed to shatter everything in a way he can’t unsee, can’t unfeel, can’t untangle.

Jack drawing down his shields shifts the air in the cramped room and Vesper straightens instinctively, bracing for fire, for knives, for the sharp edge of a mind forged in darker seasons. Instead he finds something else; a controlled, simmering steadiness, sections of danger clearly marked but pulled back, tempered into something deliberate. A peace with teeth, but peace all the same.

It takes him a moment to realise the breath he’s holding is one he hadn’t meant to save, and then, with the smallest flicker of reluctance, he lets his own shields soften. They don’t fall—he’s never been wired to let anyone fully in—but they wilt just enough for Jack to see the edges of what he’s carrying. The images he can’t scrape out of his head. Colt’s channel tearing him out of himself and leaving him hollow in her wake. The way she’d looked at him in the Glade, hurt written across her face in a way that had cut sharper than any blade. And beneath it all, the quiet thought she’d never meant him to hear, raw and ringing and lodged in the centre of his chest like shrapnel. I loved you.

He tries to organise it—tries to sort the images into neat order, tries to steady the emotional chaos into something less humiliating—but nothing cooperates. The mess is the mess, and he’s barely holding the seams together as it is. His lip curls faintly, the smallest, frustrated attempt to reshape the ache into something less vulnerable. When he speaks, the voice that comes out is thin and careful, as if he’s afraid the sentence might splinter on the way out. "It fuckin...hurts," he murmurs, the admission bewildered more than pained, like he still can’t quite believe anyone else has the ability to strike him in a place he didn’t consent to open.

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

"That's one way to draw a line in the sand with her, I guess," Jack mutters. He knows it all too well; distance has given him the space gather up the pieces of his heart that Flora had shattered, selecting the sharpest ones to wield against her like knives in the dark. Heartbreak has given way to a flimsy sort of bitterness, a hurt that wants to sink its teeth into the one who caused it, and it stands a chance at turning to hate if he gives it half a chance.

"Would you change it if you could?" he asks, perhaps unfairly. "Or is it for the best that it goes like this, even if she hates you?"

He drops the curtain of his mind back into place just as he senses Vesper's own thoughts start to give way to the messy edges of the chaos in his head, Jack wincing automatically as he tries and fails to make sense of it - likely the same as the boy before him, truthfully. "Mm, it does," he agrees, patting the space on the bunk next to him and shifting enough to make room. "I used to hang out in taverns an' read the heartache from barflies. Didn't seem all that bad until I got a taste of it myself."

Wrinkling his nose and raking a hand back through his hair, he glances up towards Vesper. "Worst part is that the shit you think'll make you feel better - drinkin', fightin', escape - it doesn't work. When I left Torchline an' got to King's End, I just felt like shit with a different view."

Granted, there had been a plethora of other reasons why he'd needed to detach from the islands' criminal underbelly in his state - but it was running away all the same.

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes

if you try and chase the sun you're never gonna catch it

Vesper’s shoulders lift in a loose, weary shrug, the kind that doesn’t pretend toward certainty. The lanternlight catches on the constellation freckles along his cheekbones as he stares down at the half-packed duffel, jaw shifting slowly as he turns Jack’s question over in his mind.  "It’d be easier if she’d just forgotten about me," he says, the words flowing out low and unvarnished. "But I guess there’d always be the chance of it sparkin’ up again between us when I came back south." He huffs a small breath through his nose, not a laugh, just a release of tension he can’t hold in his chest anymore. "Now?" He shakes his head, lips curling faintly in something that barely resembles a smile. "Ain’t any chance left. Not now." His gaze drops, the sentence tapering into a soft, defeated murmur. "Not that there ever was to begin with, I guess." His telepathy seemed to have all but ruled that out.

Jack’s invitation draws Vesper’s eyes over, and whatever pride he usually wears like armour doesn’t even make an appearance. He slumps down onto the bunk beside his father, taller than Jack by a few inches but looking younger than he has in seasons; shoulders rounded, posture loose, head down.

Vesper nods once and Jack explains, slow and unsurprised, accepting the truth in the Captain's words without needing to probe into the memories behind them. "Mostly," he says eventually, rubbing a thumb up along the line of his cheek as if trying to scrape something away, "I just don’t wanna run into her. Or hear about her in someone’s mind." He shakes his head, blond hair falling forward until he brushes it back again with restless fingers. The ache sits under his ribs like a knot he hasn’t figured out how to breathe around yet, and gods if it doesn't fucking feel like the easiest thing to do would be to just carve it right out.

And now it's turning out to be the worst of my bad habits

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

JACK

"Death by a thousand cuts versus a quick one," Jack reasons. "Might hurt now, but maybe you did the right thing in the long run." Colt might hate him but that means she might be able to love someone else in time, someone who wanted that love instead of to exist in her mind as a shadowy half-memory. Leaning his elbows on his knees as Vesper slumps down onto the bunk, the demigod's mental shields have got nothing on the youthful hurt that shines plain in his face once the bravado all drops away, Jack glancing sidelong at him to listen.

Huffing out a breath that might be a laugh if you cock your head and close one eye, the Captain nods in all too ready agreement. "I can drink to that, even if it don't make a difference to feelin' like hell," he says, jostling his shoulder against the boy's for a moment. "Y'know, Ludo can carve memories right outta you for a price. Your mother'd hate it, but if it ever got too much..." He shrugs. "I considered it for a bit, but I don't like the idea of havin' holes in my mind."

Other than that, though...

"Bet no one'll be thinkin' of her in the Greatwood. Or Halo... or The Climb," he says slowly, the ghost of a smile curling across his lips.

believer, believe it or not you'll know
when it ends and how it goes