call me chaos, call me divine

JACK

That first ribbon of water that caresses his calf is more than enough to get Jack's attention, and as The Ark's mind glides against his own once more, his smile is quiet, private, warm. He ought to have known - even if she hasn't realised it yet - that command over the waves would be in her wheelhouse, and as that watery embrace curls higher, the Captain allows himself to be ferried down and under.

Silence doesn't envelop him in the way it might most others - he can still hear some of the crew in range - but as she coaxes him deeper into the Spillwave, soon she's the only thing he can feel. And when Jack spots her, hair floating wild about her head, wearing only the sea and the pale sheen of a manta crystal, it's like looking at the ocean herself; a seaborn goddess in her element.

A stream of bubbles threads regularly up and around him, air magic removing the risk of drowning, but he'd have gladly held his breath until he passed out to keep this image of her burning in his mind. A pulse of water magic helps to propel him closer, Jack swimming a slow circuit around The Ark, as if to admire her from every angle, in the endless blue.

fight so dirty but you love so sweet
talk so pretty but your heart got teeth

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

The Ark

As Jack descends, the sunlight above fractures and thins, turning him into nothing more than a shifting shadow against the blue. The sharp lines of him blur, swallowed by depth, until he is no longer a man cutting through water but a darker current moving toward her. For anyone else—seen from a deck, glimpsed through fog—that silhouette would have meant danger, blood and cannon and ruthless intent, but here beneath the Spillwave, the Ark feels no such thing.

Her mind is no longer just the glittering skin of the sea but the long, slow breath beneath it; the cool trenches, the secret gullies where light goes to soften and play. The water wraps her like silk torn from the sky, slipping along her ribs and thighs, threading through her hair until it blooms around her in a maroon halo. She does not kick, nor does not cup her hands as she has seen the crew do from above. Limbs, it turns out, are suggestions at best when it comes to moving in the water. 

For a moment, she simply hangs there, buoyed by magic she does not consciously command, the sea pressing against her in quiet consultation, adjusting her balance as if remembering the shape of her hull. When Jack circles, she does not twist herself with muscle and stroke; instead, the water turns her gently, as if she is still something vast and worth moving around. It gathers at her hips and shoulders, a private tide that rotates her in place so she can follow him with her eyes alone. And those eyes are bright; brighter than the surface, brighter than the sun filtering down in pale ribbons.

Her hand stretches through the cool blue toward Jack, fingers unfurling the way her sails do at the first touch of wind. If he takes it, he will feel not a grasp but an invitation, her skin warm even here, her smile flashing sudden and wild; no demure maiden of the shallows but something older, something that knows the rhythm of undertow and storm. Pressure swells around them, not violent but insistent, and she moves—not swimming, certainly not flailing—but gliding as if some invisible keel has formed along her spine. The currents gather at her back and stream past her hips, drawing him with her in a smooth arc beneath the surface. It feels less like swimming and more like sailing, even here, her body angled through the blue as if the sea itself has agreed to bear her.

Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze,
but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees

Code stolen from Queen Sky

JACK

For some, perhaps, this might be like descending into something other, something that belongs wholly to the sea and the ships and all the creatures in between them. For Jack, though, it's just like coming home. There had been an ocean before there had been much else for him - before there had been an Ark, before there had been telepathy, before things like blood and smoke and bitterness had even existed as words in his vocabulary.

Before all of that there had been surf and sand and the strange, undulating warmth of the tide, and it's to all of those things that he surrenders himself now. His fingers close easily around her own, something wry and playful in his expression as she eddies them along, as sleek and graceful beneath the water as she is riding atop it. You've got more than siren song is what he'd say if he could. She's brimming with the sort of magic he knows all too well indeed, and so it's perhaps little surprise that Jack remains a passenger in this game for only a short, indulgent while.

A minute later and his own magic surges at his heels, spearing them more quickly through the water as if to see how fast they might go.

fight so dirty but you love so sweet
talk so pretty but your heart got teeth

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

The Ark

The first surge of Jack's magic is not terribly surprising, not when the Ark has borne witness to the birth of more than one of Jack's abilities. The water tightens around them as his power spears through the Spillwave, and she feels the sudden acceleration like a tide breaking loose from restraint.

Her hair streams behind her in a dark, flowing banner as the water rushes faster, light fracturing in long ribbons across her skin. The sensation is intoxicating—speed without mass, motion without timber groaning beneath it—and something shifts in her that has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with choice. For so long she has been the vessel, the weight and the width and the force that carried him. He would lean into her wheel, brace against her rise and fall, command her forward through storm and shadow. She would bear him. She would answer him. She would carve a path wide enough for both of them.

Now, though, her hands reach for him, finding his shoulders first, and for a heartbeat she hesitates; not from uncertainty, but from the sheer unfamiliarity of it. She has always been the thing that others anchor to. She has always been the boards beneath boots, the steadying force beneath hands. But in this new body, already the Ark realizes there is more the world might offer her, and so with a silent laugh, she slips an arm around his neck, her body aligning with his as naturally as hull to wave. Her bare skin presses along his back, the glide of her breasts and stomach against him less deliberate than inevitable, and she lets the water carry them both while he drives them forward. The currents curl along her spine and over her thighs, but she does not guide them now. She does not correct the angle or shift the pressure, but instead just allows herself to be borne.

It is not surrender in the way the sky demands or the way a storm forces compliance. It is something far rarer for her, for them both in all likelihood, to allow for any of this, because for the first time since she learned the shape of him, she is not the ship and he is not the captain, but instead they are just something weightless and powerful and together.

Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze,
but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees

Code stolen from Queen Sky

JACK

Down here with just the two of them, her mind all but envelops his own, nothing but sensation and raw experience and emerging realisations in the warm depths. And Jack lets it flow over him with the same ease of the water they cut through, a smile kicking up the corner of his mouth as she adjusts and clasps herself against him. There's no need for him to grasp for her, no need to check to make sure she's steady or safe or alright - it's just this and the endless blue and the shimmer of sunlight on the surface somewhere above them.

How long they swim like this is an eternal unknown for the Captain. All he knows is that it feels right to be like this, to let the world and his burdens escape like the bubbles streaming in their wake. And when he finally does aim for the surface it's only because the water is growing more shallow; by the time his head breaks the waves his feet are anchored in sand and his hands are grasping for her thighs as if to keep her aloft in a piggy back.

Some short distance behind them, the ship bobs serenely in the Stillwave, and the crew can be seen - just - some splashing in the water, a few having made their way to the longer beach, more still on deck. But they've emerged into some small cove, little more than thirty or forty feet across, all soft, hot sand and craggy boulders. "Say when," Jack says, a little out of breath, and he smirks down at her bare toes that have yet to touch the sand.

fight so dirty but you love so sweet
talk so pretty but your heart got teeth

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

The Ark

The sea falls away from The Ark like a lover stepping back, and gravity descends in its place, dense and unrelenting. Her body feels suddenly heavier than any hull she has ever known, and instinctively she tightens around Jack, her thighs bracketing his hips more firmly, her arm looping tighter at his neck. His hands at her thighs are a welcome anchor and she leans into him without shame, without hesitation, because for the first time she understands how much the water had been holding her, and Jack will feel the almost childish way her mind wants to go back into the water.

The sun, though...It pours across her shoulders and down her back, catches in the droplets clinging to her skin, and she shivers—not from cold but from the sudden, radiant heat of it—the way it kisses every inch of her at once. It is different from the filtered glow beneath the surface, different too from how it felt when she was dry.

When Jack tempts her with the sand, lowering her toes toward it like an offering, she studies it with the same sharp curiosity she once gave to unfamiliar harbours. "When," she whispers back, mischief brightening her tone, and lets herself slip from his hold, though one arm remains wound around him, unwilling yet to relinquish that point of balance or safety in this brave new world he'd brought her to. The crew are too far away to see them, but were they near enough, the pair might look like some hedonistic Adam and Eve risen from the sea, naked and shameless, standing on their own little slice of the world. 

As the Ark's feet meet the sand, she recoils at once as it clings to her. Fine grains stick to her wet skin, pressing into her soles and between her toes, and she jerks one leg up with an expression of genuine shock. The texture is nothing like deck boards, nothing like water; it is dry and shifting and insistently present. She presses herself into him again, more startled than distressed, lifting her foot and flexing her toes as if that might dislodge the invasion, but of course the sand merely grits against her skin unpleasantly. 

Her lashes, still clumped with saltwater, frame eyes made even brighter by the flush of colour across her cheeks, and her hair—already beginning to dry in the heat—falls in tangled waves around her. She studies the shoreline, then looks up at Jack with open disbelief. "And you all actually like this?" she asks, incredulous and amused in equal measure, her lifted foot still dusted in pale gold as if the beach might also claim some small part of her.

Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze,
but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees

Code stolen from Queen Sky

JACK

It's a familiar feeling that rolls off her, that urge to return to the sea, to be weightless and free and buoyed by the tide and the waves. Only years of habit have Jack's legs bracing instinctively against the sudden pull of gravity, especially with his very important cargo on his back with her arm coiled around his neck. He pauses in the soft, dry sand to catch his breath and await her instruction, the Captain turned back towards the gently lapping waves, and when she speaks - when - he lowers her dutifully to the beach.

The way she recoils near instantly from it has an honest laugh breaking from his lips, Jack having to steel himself against her shock that scatters across his magic like sunlight reflecting off the water. "A lot of people don't like it," he says, his own feet caked in sand that he's more than used to ignoring. "Once you dry off a little it'll fall away. But if you can't stand it, c'mon."

With a guiding hand still around her, he leads them to where the waves break and wash across the sand. The beach is more firm here, their feet leaving perfect prints in their wake, and as the seawater sluices over their toes, she'll find her feet, of course, washed clean. "Better?"

fight so dirty but you love so sweet
talk so pretty but your heart got teeth

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

The Ark

The Ark wrinkles her nose, allowing Jack to guide her without protest, her fingers resting lightly at his side as they move back toward the tide. Even in irritation there is trust in the way she leans into his direction, in the way she does not question that he will make it right. The first wash of water over her feet draws a visible change from her. Relief moves through her like a tide reversing itself, the tension in her calves and arches dissolving as the sea reclaims what the shore had tried to keep. She exhales softly, a sound almost reverent, watching as the foam curls around her ankles and retreats again, leaving her skin clean and gleaming.
 
She lifts her face toward the sun then, marvelling at how the light feels different here, unfiltered by canvas and rigging, unbroken by distance. It touches her directly, warming the hollow at her throat where the crystal rests, pooling in the curve of her collarbones. It slips in liquid glints along her ribs and gathers in the delicate hollows of her hips where droplets of seawater cling to her like scattered jewels, caught in the gentle swell of her breasts, tracing slow paths down the smooth plane of her stomach. Her skin, still pale from its long life beneath varnish and salt spray, seems almost luminous in the morning light; untouched and new and startlingly alive. There is something untouched about her, a kind of unclaimed brightness despite her scars, and yet it is threaded with the unmistakable pull of the sea: a siren’s promise woven into every line of her body.

Glancing up at Jack, her gaze dragging slowly over the water clinging to his collarbones, the freckles darkened by water, the salt drying against his jaw, and she grins, deeply pleased by the way the sea has marked him. A small huff of laughter escapes her then, oceanic eyes rolling with amused exasperation. "I can maybe understand why you leave me," she says slowly, tilting her head as another wave breaks around their ankles.

Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze,
but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees

Code stolen from Queen Sky

JACK

The waves break around them, bringing with them the ocean's soft lullaby interrupted only by the occasional call of seabirds, and whether it's because of The Ark or because of himself, Jack feels the tension start to flee his muscles. Standing like this in the warm sunshine with his feet in the sand brings with it the most curious sense of nostalgia - not since leaving Torchline has he found somewhere that felt as if it could be those islands, and as he realises it, memory turns sharply into something like homesickness.

His jaw feathers a bit then, his arm drawing The Ark more closely against his side without realising it, and his free hand longs to slip into the pockets of pants he isn't wearing or to search for cigarettes he isn't carrying. "Mm, you ain't seen nothin' yet love," he says, slanting a smirk her way. "Wait 'til we get to the towns an' cities." They won't rival Torchline's eclectic boardwalk or its endless cobbled streets or colourful buildings, no, but there is more to land than this.

Don't get him wrong, of course. This is a damn good start.

fight so dirty but you love so sweet
talk so pretty but your heart got teeth

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

The Ark

The Ark does not miss the way something tightens Jack him, even if he does not name it. When he draws her closer she does not simply settle at his side; she turns into him fully, angling herself so that her body faces his and her arm can wind around his lower back with quiet possession, as if she is testing how he fits against her when the sea is not between them. The other hand roams without hesitation, fingers mapping the familiar geography of him in a new scale; pads brushing over the faint ridges at his abdomen, tracing the pale seams where blades or magic once found purchase. Towns and cities, that is where most of these came from, she realizes, and something in her mind sparks bright and defensive at the thought of crowded streets daring to lay claim to him again.

She does not scowl or bristle; instead there is a subtle tightening at her mouth, a sea-dark defiance that sits easily alongside her curiosity. If land is what shaped those scars, then land will have to reckon with her now should it ever try again.

When The Ark looks up at him it is with that crooked, knowing grin as she imagines as best she can what it might be like; market squares, narrow alleys, taverns thick with smoke and voices, eyes turning toward her, because they will turn, bodies and voices and disorder. She tips her chin slightly, water still drying in glints along her collarbones. "What am I supposed to say when asked my name? Or who I am?"

Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze,
but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees

Code stolen from Queen Sky

JACK

It is not a common thing, for someone to offer comfort to Jack Barclay, however subtle, however wrapped in protective possession, and it's rarer still for him to accept it. But standing here in the sand at the edge of the world with someone who has seen it all with him and stands here anyway, he forces down the old familiar urge to step away, to nurse his injuries - whether physical or otherwise - in secret, so no one might see where the cracks run or how deep they might be. No, instead he leans into The Ark in turn, nosing into her drying hair and inhaling the smell of salt and sea and spice that clings to her.

And nothing needs to be said in those long moments; the time simply passes in the rush of waves across their feet and the heat of the sun on their bodies, until the breath loosens in Jack's lungs and he feels himself steady again. Then she's turning to look up at him, the Captain tilting his head as he considers her questions. "Well," he says, "the truth of it is that you're The Ark and you're a ship captained by a very notorious and very dangerous man." Smirking, unable to help himself, he nevertheless continues.

"What do you want to call yourself?" he asks. "You know what I call you, an' you know what the crew call you, but who are you to you?"

fight so dirty but you love so sweet
talk so pretty but your heart got teeth

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

The Ark

The Ark stands with him the way she always has—unflinching, bold, entirely his—only now the loyalty that once existed in timber and iron is carried in warm skin and curious hands. She does not know yet what to do with fingers except let them wander, and so she allows them to explore him without self-consciousness, her palm skimming over the planes of his chest, her fingertips pausing along the ridges of old scars as if committing their textures to memory. For decades she has felt the ramifications left by injury, the way wounds presented themselves in Jack's tone, or lean, or silences; now she learns the difference between raised and smooth, between healed and merely endured.

When he calls himself notorious and dangerous, she gives him a sharp, playful swat to the shoulder. "Very dangerous," she echoes, her mouth curving. Then, because she is still testing the world the way a prow tests current, she lowers herself experimentally onto her knees. This time the sand does not cling the way it had when she was dripping wet. Satisfied, she eases back fully, sprawling in the warmth of it with a slow exhale as the heat presses along her spine and the backs of her thighs. The sun settles across her like a second skin, and she lets her fingers drift idly down the flat of her stomach simply because the sensation still feels astonishing, this constant feedback loop of touch and temperature and texture.

"I am the Ark," she says at last, turning her head to look at him properly. The name is not ornamental, not just what is scrawled in cursive across her hull. "That is the only name I have ever had, and it is the only one I want." It was one of the first things Jack had given her, after all, and she'd not be rid of it without a fight. "If we call me something else, it feels like..." Her nose wrinkles faintly, searching for the right word and discarding what little she can come up with, having no real vocabulary to describe what it means to hide. "We don't need to hide me, do we?" Her blue eyes find his, her curiosity genuine; there is much in Jack's mind she is still too new to the world to understand, and keeping her a secret might yet be one.

Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze,
but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees

Code stolen from Queen Sky

JACK

He lets her explore to her heart's content - it isn't as though Jack is shy (laughable), and it's something new for him, too, to feel her mind join the dots between what had once been understood only by whispers of sensation to the new and full spectrum of human experience. He's about to catch her hand over his chest, not knowing quite why, when it comes up to swat him instead, and the Captain scoffs out a laugh and releases her so she can sink and sprawl down into the sand.

Jack is slow to follow, but he does follow in the end, leaning back on one hand to gaze down at her as the waves continue to tug at their feet and their calves. "Then that's the name you'll keep," he says agreeably, before glancing down at her with blue eyes set aglow by the morning sunshine. "The last thing I want to do is to hide you," he tells her, though the smile that curls across his lips contains both warmth and darkness.

"The more people know who an' what you are, though, the more dangerous things'll get. There'll be people who want you for themselves. People who want to get rid of you. People who'll want to hurt you just to get at me. So if you want to keep yourself hidden, I won't stop you." But if she doesn't, his smile says, then those people will have one helluva time trying to get to her.

fight so dirty but you love so sweet
talk so pretty but your heart got teeth

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

The Ark

Much as The Ark knows there is more world waiting—towns and cities and crowds and danger and spectacle—lying here with Jack in the warm cradle of sand and tide feels impossibly complete. The water laps lazily over their feet, retreating and returning in a rhythm older than either of them, and her body hums with the pleasant after-sensation of having been carried and carrying in turn. It is a different sort of fullness than cargo in her hold or wind in her sails; this one lingers in her muscles and beneath her skin, a quiet echo of movement and closeness that makes her want to stretch simply to feel it again.

When he says he doesn’t want to hide her, something in her answers immediately. It isn't just the way her fingers still idly trace the line of her own stomach, delighting in the feeling of it, but his words and the look on his face that has a ripple of pleasure moving up her spine like a slow current. He has shown her off for years—docked in foreign ports, cutting sharp silhouettes against hostile horizons, gleaming and defiant beneath cannon smoke—and she has never once been tucked away like something shameful. The thought that he would do the same now, with her standing here in skin instead of sail, draws a low, satisfied warmth through her. 

At his warning, she snorts softly and turns her face up toward him, hair blazing copper-red in the sun. "They've already tried," she reminds him. "They've tried to board me, to sink me, to burn me, to steal the things you hid away inside me. They have aimed cannons at my ribs and knives at my crew." Her eyes sharpen, bright and almost amused. "And a few who have tried to steal me away." And gods, the bloodbath that had followed.

The Ark props herself up on one elbow so she can see Jack more clearly against the glare of the sky, chin lifting with unmistakable defiance. The expression that curves across her wine-dark mouth is not gentle; it is feral and pleased and utterly certain. "Let them try," she says, and the words are not reckless, they are an invitation. Her smile widens, wicked and delighted at the thought of it. "Besides, it will be better now that we can laugh about it together, after they fail."

Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze,
but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees

Code stolen from Queen Sky