you know, you'll always know me

i could be the reason you can't sleep at night

The Glade is in full bloom, radiant with the scents and sounds of Flowerbirth. The trees sway gently above in a slow, contented rhythm, their canopies catching the sunlight and filtering it into golden-green beams that dapple the wildflower-covered ground. Bees buzz lazily between blossoms, and the crystalline trickle of the nearby stream plays its part in the symphony of spring. It's the kind of place that should feel peaceful—should offer solace—but Flora is anything but at ease.

She sits near the edge of the water, grass tickling at her toes where her sandals have been abandoned beside a mossy rock. Her legs are folded, dress pooled haphazardly around her like a dropped napkin, curls swept up but already beginning to escape, just as restless as the mind beneath them. In one hand, she twirls a single daisy plucked from the meadow, petals already showing signs of having been fidgeted with far too much.

Flora hadn’t known what she expected when she wrote to Sohalia, only that she had to write. That not knowing where they stood had left something raw and gnawing inside her chest, especially now that Jack—

Well. She presses her lips into a firm line, breathing in sharply through her nose.

She’d ruined so many things lately, and she could handle the fallout from almost all of it. Except Soh. That fracture, she knew, would break her in ways she wouldn’t be able to joke or charm her way out of. So she waits, perched like a creature made entirely of nerves and hope, head turning at every rustle of wind through branches, at the flutter of bird wings or the crunch of footfall through grass.

Sohalia arrived to find Flora already seated in the Glade, and though a part of her longed to rush to her friend’s side, she couldn’t help but hold herself back. She’d spent days raging at Flora, hurt and betrayed by her best friend, and yet now… now she found that she was less angry at being lied to and deceived, and more angry that Flora’s stunt could have cost her in ways that she couldn’t even imagine.

It could have taken Flora from her forever, and that was something that the Luminary couldn’t quite stomach.

So her voice, when she spoke, was quiet, measured, and surprisingly devoid of rage. ”Flora.” Still, she couldn’t quite summon a smile for her friend, watching her instead with a mixture of fear and uncertainty, as though not really inclined to believe that this was truly the real Flora. That this could be some trick by the Family, that perhaps Flora’s scheming had gone wrong, that maybe she was next on the Family’s agenda for her own recent meddling and that this was how they’d get her. ”Are you - you know, you?”

i could be the reason you can't sleep at night

Flora’s head snaps up at the sound of Sohalia’s voice, and for a moment everything in her seems to still—breath caught, daisy frozen mid-spin, expression pulled into something that teeters dangerously between hope and guilt. She turns quickly, grass whispering around her as she shifts onto her knees, half-risen like she might bolt toward Sohalia if only she could tell what sort of distance actually lies between them.

The measured tone of her name, though—Flora—is like a hand pressed against her chest. It stops her. And it hurts, a little, because Soh’s never said her name like that before. Her lips part, a breath escaping like a quiet oh, and then—eyes wide, glossy, desperate to be believed—she gives a tiny nod. "Yeah. It’s me."

She wants to reach out, but her hands stay stubbornly curled in her lap, the daisy trembling slightly between her fingers. "I swear, Soh. No tricks, no weird Family bullshit. Just me." Her voice cracks softly at the end, and she hurries on before emotion can clog it up completely.

"I—I didn’t think they'd tell you—" Her words collapse into a breath, her hands pressing against her thighs as if to physically ground herself. "You’re my best friend, Soh. I’d never, ever do anything to hurt you on purpose. You believe that, right?"

Soh could see the flash of hurt on Flora’s face, and a part of her longed to rush to her friend, to scoop her into an embrace and smooth away any pain that lingered. But the Doubletake had made the first cut, and Soh hung back, her arms crossing over her stomach as though to protect herself from whatever excuses her best friend had to offer. She swallowed hard as Flora spoke, taking a few steps closer to where Flora still sat, seemingly frozen in place.

”Yeah - yeah, no, I know -“ she said, except what had Flora expected when she’d handed the Luminary those letters? That Soh would walk away unscathed? Flora had made her a part of the plot from the moment she’d asked to meet, and there were no apologies or excuses that could change that.

But this was Flora - her best friend, the woman who had stood by her through thick and thin, and through all of her own monumental mistakes. And didn’t Soh owe her the same courtesy?

So the Luminary dropped to her knees in the grass beside Flora, wrapping her friend into a hug so tight that she was sure she could hear Flora’s bones creak. ”Just - gods, Flora, what were you thinking?” she asked thickly, her eyes bright with unshed tears. ”How could you - why would you - you could have died. Again. And what if this time you didn’t come back?”

i could be the reason you can't sleep at night

Flora doesn’t cry, but gods does she come close. The moment Sohalia’s arms wrap around her, Flora’s entire body seems to exhale. Her spine curves forward as if her whole frame can finally bend under the weight it's been carrying, her face burying into the crook of Soh's shoulder. It's not elegant or composed—it’s clinging and breathless and half-raw, because for all the walls Flora can build, there’s nothing strong enough to guard against the quiet devastation of feeling like you’re losing everyone who matters.

"I did think about it," she whispers hoarsely. The words hang there like bruises, heavy and sore, before she pulls back just enough to look her friend in the face, expression scrunched in a mix of guilt and stubbornness. "That’s why I sent a letter to Remi. I told him to make sure Ronin was cured before I did it. Because if something happened to me—if I didn’t come back—I wanted someone who could bring me back. I didn’t just do this and hope for the best."

Her fingers clench in the soft fabric of Soh’s sleeve, her voice thick but firm now. "Wouldn’t you do it too? If you had something that could keep Stormbreak safe—really safe—wouldn’t you use it? Even if it was risky? Even if people didn’t get it?"

Flora blinks fast and hard, nose pink and eyes too shiny. "I didn’t tell you what was in the letters because I couldn’t. I’m not attuned, I can’t talk in my head the way you can, and if Vox or Dahlia overheard..." She trails off, shaking her head. "I didn’t want to put you in more danger than I already had. I thought... if you didn’t know the plan, no one could force it out of you. It wasn’t about trust. It was about protecting you." About protecting Jack and Hadama too so that when she stood in front of Dahlia she could confidently say that she hadn't told anyone what she was planning so that Reaper's wrath, if it came, would be focused on her and her alone.

Soh listened as Flora pulled back, her eyes searching her friend’s face with a mixture of anger and disbelief. She hadn’t been angry before, but she was now - because at the end of the day, of course she understood. Soh would have done anything for Torchline, anyone for the people she loved. She would have leapt at the chance to protect those she cared about, and damn the consequences. She could even understand the secrecy - with Vox seemingly everywhere, Flora couldn’t risk her plans being in the open.

No, it was her best friend’s complete disregard for her own life that had Sohalia fuming, and it was with a certain ache in her heart and a fire in her gaze that she stared Flora down.

”Flora, don’t you get it? It’s not about why you did it. It’s not even about keeping it a secret. It’s just, it’s - you’re not expendable, Flora!” she nearly shouted, her tears overflowing as she took her friend by the shoulders, willing her to hear the desperation in her voice. ”What if something had gone wrong? What if Ronin didn’t get to you in time? You could’ve been gone, Flora. Gone forever, and I -“ Her throat closed on the words. She couldn’t have borne losing Flora for a second time.

”And then,” Soh continued, a hysterical laugh falling from her lips even as tears continued to drip down her cheeks, ”Having to see you - infected you, and knowing that there wasn’t a damn thing I could do except pray that your plan worked - and even now, having to question if this is even real?” She took a shuddering breath. Another. ”Flora, I can’t - you can’t just - fuck, Flora!“

Soh had well and truly lost her composure now, and she released Flora’s shoulders to wrap her arms around herself, raising one hand to wipe messily at the tears. ”I get it,” she hiccuped after a moment. ”I do, because I’d have done it, too. But don’t pretend you wouldn’t have been worried out of your mind if you’d done the same thing to me. I’m not mad because you did something reckless and brave and brilliant - I’m furious because you don’t seem to realize that you are way too important to the people around you to be throwing your life away like that.”

i could be the reason you can't sleep at night

Flora’s expression tightens, her jaw clenching beneath the weight of Sohalia’s anger. Her heart races at the tears, the shout, the fuck Flora that slices through the Glade like a thrown dagger, sharp and true and aimed to wound. "Yes, I am," she says, quietly at first. "In the grand scheme of things, Soh, I am expendable. You know how many people live in Torchline? How many people count on that city to be a place of freedom, a place they can run to when everywhere else starts falling apart? I’m just one person. One person who got to be queen because I ran my mouth at a meeting and didn’t die fast enough to get voted out."

The words sting even as she says them, her fingers curling into fists in her lap, digging into the fabric of her dress. Maybe it was because, for all the ways in which Flora resented the heroic nature of her demigod parents, she'd been steered more by their natures than she'd had liked to think.

"I didn’t just throw my life away," Flora insists, voice cracking just slightly. "I had a plan. I sent letters, I picked my moment, I waited until the timing lined up just right. I thought it through. I took every precaution I could." A breath, shaking, but her chin stays lifted. "But it was still worth the risk, because this—" she gestures vaguely around, thinking of Torchline despite being surrounded by the Glade. "—all of this is more important than me. It always will be."

She swallows thickly, curling her arms around herself now, mimicking Soh’s own posture like some mirrored ache. "I didn’t want to hurt you. Or Hadama. Or Jack." She'd kept Soh ignorant, had tried to communicate her intentions as best she could to the Tidebreaker, and had given Jack mageglass and a revivify feather. What more she could have done she truly didn't know, save for sitting on the sidelines and letting the Family continue to take and take and take.

Soh's jaw clicked shut, feathering with the effort to keep from shouting that Flora just didn't get it, because the most annoying part about all of this was that she did. It made it all the harder to stay angry and all the more easy to slip into devastation, because Flora didn't matter in the grand scheme of things - none of them did - but she did still matter. As Soh had very recently explained to Koa, all lives were worthy of being saved, and none of them were worthy of being tossed aside just for the greater good.

If they gave up on individuals in favor of the masses, eventually they'd run out of people to die for.

But Flora's hurt had Sohalia deflating, reaching out to peel one of Flora's hands away from her middle to grasp it desperately. "I was just so worried, Flora. It was terrifying. You have no idea what it would have done to me to lose you, and I know there are so many other people who feel that way." But the thing was, at the end of the day, Flora wasn't sorry. If she could go back in time, Soh knew that she would do it again, and again, and again, and damn the consequences.

And, honestly? Soh admired her for that. She wasn't sure that she would have that kind of fortitude.

She wasn't going to keep beating a dead horse; she knew that continuing to argue with Flora would fail to get either of them anywhere. And she loved her friend far too much to allow this to be the thing that broke them. So instead of berating her more, the Luminary shifted gears: "Tell me about Jack."

i could be the reason you can't sleep at night

Flora’s breath hitches softly at the question, and though she’s grateful for the shift—grateful that Soh isn’t leaving, isn’t staying angry forever—there’s a fresh ache behind her eyes that flares at the sound of Jack's name. She draws her knees up, curling her arms around them as she exhales through her nose, a tired sound, like the dregs of storm-wind bleeding out of a sail. "It was awful," she admits, her voice low. "I mean...I knew he’d be annoyed and probably mad. I even expected him to leave the harbour for a bit. But not like that. Not for real."

She swallows, glancing out toward the bright tangle of wildflowers, but all she sees are fragments of the docks in King’s End, Jack's silhouette fading into the fog. "He didn’t even read the letters I sent after the first one. Said he’d put our magical parchment away in a drawer, didn’t look at it again. He said…" Her voice cracks, and she forces herself to keep going, voice raw and exposed. "He said I’d turned Torchline into a prison. That he didn’t feel safe with me anymore. That he didn’t trust me."

One of her hands curls into the grass beside her, twisting it between her fingers. "I didn’t tell him because I was trying to protect him. But all he saw was that I made a choice that could’ve gotten him killed, or used by the Family, without even asking. But...he'd said before that he wanted to be a thorn in their side, to be unignorable and to not let them walk all over us so I really thought he'd understand about extreme measures being taken."

She shrugs, hollow. "Now he’s gone. I don’t know if he’s coming back...It's the longest we've ever gone without speaking, and.." Flora finally turns her gaze back to her friend, and her expression is wide open, fragile and shattered. "It hurts so bad I can’t even breathe sometimes, but..it was worth it, wasn't it? To protect Torchline?"

It was hard to listen to. Flora's voice cracked and caught, fraught with pain that Soh could do nothing to erase. And while the Luminary had to admit that Jack had a point - she herself would have trouble trusting that Flora wasn't going to get herself into trouble again - she couldn't find it in herself to hold a grudge. This was Flora - her very best friend, who had been with her through thick and thin, who had supported her through everything and then some.

What kind of friend would Soh be if she didn't return the favor?

And it wasn't really even the kind of thing she had to think about. She listened, and she scooted closer to Flora to wrap an arm around her shoulders, and she rubbed soothing circles on her back. And in the end, when Flora turned her fragile, shattered gaze on Soh, the Luminary didn't hesitate. "It was worth it," she said, even if she wasn't sure it was. "And if he doesn't understand your reasons, then he doesn't understand you. You were never going to sit back and watch if there was something you could do to protect Torchline." She sighed. "I'm so sorry, Flora."

i could be the reason you can't sleep at night

Flora’s breath trembles on the edge of Sohalia’s words, but she lets herself lean into the arm around her, lets the circles on her back ground her like the slow ticking of a clock. She doesn’t cry—she’s cried so much already, for so long—but there’s a brittle gloss in her eyes that softens at her best friend’s voice. She nods, barely, once, a little jerk of her chin that says I know even if she doesn’t fully believe it yet.

"I told him," she says, voice raw but steady. "Right before all of this, before I went to Stormbreak—I told him I wanted to marry him." Her lips twist into something that’s not quite a smile, not quite a grimace. "Not like… a proposal. I just meant that I’d decided. That it was him. That I didn’t want anyone else." She exhales, and it sounds like a confession. Her fingers twist in the hem of her dress, knuckles gone pale with the tension of it. "And now he’s gone, and I don’t know if it even mattered. I don’t know if any of it did. Because you’re right. Maybe he doesn’t understand me. Maybe he never did." Which, given his telepathic abilities, was a hell of a realization.

Her voice goes quiet at the end, cracked open by the weight of it all, and when she looks back to Sohalia, there’s no mask to soften the grief. "And to top it all off, since I assume everyone is going to want to protect Haulani using the vial of Dahlia's blood, I'll have to move out of my house and give up the Hanged Man for as long as the Family are around." Flora’s gaze drifts back to the water again, but this time it doesn’t linger. Her lashes flutter, catching the last of the light before she closes her eyes entirely. "Or Dahlia said she'd come after everyone I care about."

If Sohalia was surprised to hear marriage on her friend’s lips, she hid it well, her brow merely knitting together in thought as she listened. She’d known that the couple were serious - or, at least, that Flora was serious - but to hear her speak of matrimony was something that she’d been somehow unprepared for. What must it be like, she wondered, to be so incredibly sure of someone only to have the rug pulled out from under you?

Was that what she’d done to Jude and Koa? Not that they’d been anywhere close to marriage, of course, but if she’d inflicted even a modicum of this kind of damage on them… she really deserved to rot in the depths of hell.

Because almost worse than the realization that Jack was gone was the sudden understanding that maybe he hadn’t known Flora like she’d thought, and that was somehow a more depressing thing - that this person who the Doubletake had thought to be her other half could cut her out of his life so easily, so completely, without even taking a moment to look backwards…

And then there was another blow, one that left Soh staring at her best friend, speechless. ”But… you’ll be…” Not defenseless, perhaps, because gods knew that Flora was better at taking care of herself than Soh, but certainly not benefiting from the protection that her plot had offered to all the rest of them. Blinking back tears of despair, Soh’s grip tightened on Flora. ”I’ll come with you,” she said desperately. ”We can - we can go wherever you want, and - and -“ And what? Wait? Hide? Still, Soh set her jaw mulishly. ”Let me come with you. We’ll figure it out.”

i could be the reason you can't sleep at night

Flora tries to hold it back—she really does. But with Sohalia’s voice wrapping around her, with the unshakable certainty of her offer and the warmth of her arm still grounding her, it all begins to slip. The tension in her throat crumbles. The breath she’s been holding since Stormbreak breaks unevenly, and the tears come—silent at first, tracing the apples of her cheeks like twin echoes of the tide.

"I think he’s really gone," she says, the words breaking like glass between them. Her voice is thick now, raw in a way it rarely is, and she clutches at Sohalia like the only lifeline that hasn’t frayed.

But even as her chest heaves, Flora shakes her head, curls catching against Soh’s shoulder. "Just have you in Torchline.." she manages. "You don’t know how much it helps... just having you there. Passing by you in the market or on the beach." She sniffs, wiping at her cheeks with the heel of her hand, laughing wetly in a breath. "I asked my dads to find me a sailboat to live on. My brother lives on his skyship and they have the Northaven so..."

All the things Soh might have said died in her throat even as she thought them. Then he wasn't worth it, she might have said. Or, You'll find someone better. Or any number of empty platitudes that would ultimately do nothing to soothe Flora's broken heart. Instead, she held her friend as she started to cry, tears that somehow broke Soh's heart right alongside the Doubletake's.

And if she silently swore vengeance against the man who would do this to her best friend, then so be it.

"A sailboat?" Soh asked, arching a brow in an attempt at levity. "Goes perfect with your beachy waves," she offered, tugging at an errant curl on Flora's head. Then she sobered. "I can live on a sailboat just as easily as in an apartment in the city." It was hard, sleeping alone when one had grown used to sharing a life with someone else. Soh thought of Jude and sighed. "Just... say the word and I'm there."