the future freaks me out

Aurelia

these nightmares all bend
silver linings are all i need

The Hanged Man, because of course he's there.

There's a sweep of memories at the sight of Jack Barclay, of their last conversation, how well that had gone. There's also a flood of relief and a strange calmness that centers her in the moment, pulling her mind back from all the directions it's been going in.

Physically, it's not hard to see that she's just been travelling as she approaches. At least she's wearing a fresh change of clothes and it's possible that she's bathed but, with the heat and humidity she looks like hell anyway. Her skin is blemished with bruises, scrapes, and uneven tan lines. There's a stress rash on one of her arms that she itches as she comes to a stop in front of Jack. (Or near, next to, depending on what he's doing)

"Can we talk?"

so please just hold onto me
these demons, they're old to me

JACK

Jack's just ordered a drink, and as Aurelia's thoughts flood the perimeters of his telepathy, he orders a second. She's unmistakable in the way she crashes into his magic, both familiar and welcome but also fucking why, and by the time she's sidled up beside him at the bar, he's sliding a tumbler of whiskey across to her. "Probably a good call, your majesty," he drawls, grabbing up his own glass and moving away, motioning for her to join him.

The captain chooses a table that's probably meant to seat a lot more people, but who the fuck cares honestly. Sinking down into his chair, he takes a sip of his drink and settles back to gaze over the newly minted queen of Torchline, from the marks of stress to the dishevelled appearance. "You go first - most've what I have to say is just cussin'."

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

Aurelia

these nightmares all bend
silver linings are all i need

Jack's words are heard, at a surface level, but they don't strike much of a chord. Not, perhaps, in the way he'd like. No, what Aurelia reads further into are his actions - the glass of whiskey slid across toward her, the way he gets up to pick a table, the gesture to join him. She takes it all in silently once she's asked to talk, gaze visibly uncertain.

With a gentle but marked release of tension, she scoops up the tumbler in her calloused, dark hand and sinks into the seat beside him. And as she does, she looks down at the grains of the table. For a split second, there's an impulsive desire to hug Jack that she fights off. No, sitting beside him will have to just.. do.

"Then I'm taking a drink first, too," she mumbles, tilting the glass up to her lips and letting the drink fall down the back of her throat until she can't stand it anymore and she has to set it down.

She wants to be rough and callous, to be harsh and cut to the chase. She'd prepared a little speech, even. It runs through her mind as she mulls over saying it: yeah, I know you're not happy. None of us are - but this is what we've been left with. And it ain't ever gonna be enough.

But she bites that back, pursing her lips, tasting the harshness of the alcohol on them. Finally she turns toward him, a sad grin building up along the chapped edges of her lips as her gaze zips over his rugged features. "What do you want me to say, Jack?" Her voice cracks and her eyes water. Let's blame the alcohol on that. She looks sharply away, blinking, and straightens up in her seat.

"Shit's all over the place. I've been trying to set things straight but I can't do it all myself - or at once. I'm sorry I wasn't here to welcome the Ark back to shore. Been uh... fetching unicorns, among other things," said casually, as if that's a regular chore around here. Swallowing, she lifts her brows and asks, "So... I'm guessing your talk with Maeve didn't go very well? Or is it something else you wanted to cuss me out for?" Truly, she's all ears.

so please just hold onto me
these demons, they're old to me

JACK

"Suit yourself," Jack rumbles, taking another drink as Aurelia goes ahead and does the same. And whilst he doesn't visibly bristle at the idea of being hugged by his ex-crew member, he's definitely prepared to shy away if she tries it. (Shy away being shoving her off her chair, naturally). Instead, he merely smiles into his glass to hear her little speech; despite himself, the captain relaxes as well. Finally, a whisper of normality might be returning to the islands, whatever other bullshit is going on.

"Mm, so I've heard. Healin' fountain or some shit, right? I got promised a fleet of skyships too - not that I need 'em. Meetin' with Maeve weren't bad at all, though I do want you to say why you decided to be qUeEnS." He snorts. "Any Torcher worth their salt knows the only queen that rules these islands is the sea. Whatever floats your royal boat though, I guess."

He sets down his glass and levels her with a suddenly serious look, one that speaks of captain to captain, if there was any such thing between them. "What'd you need?" he asks. "To make it so things ain't goin' to shit, I mean."

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

Aurelia

these nightmares all bend
silver linings are all i need

(She knows better than to try and hug grumpy old Jack. She'd never make that mistake even once, but... did she seriously weigh the risk in her mind for a moment? Yes, yes she gosh dang did.)

Jack zips through all his points like he doesn't rightly care about any of them in the end, and Aurelia's gaze is flickering back and forth as she tries to decipher how true or not that is. As for being called queens? She scoffs a little herself and shrugs one shoulder. "Titles don't mean jack," she remarks, eyeing him with a bit of a spark in her eyes, "no offense." In her opinion, it wouldn't matter if she wanted everyone to refer to her as... fuck it, Buttercup. What matters is what she does with the position she's been given.

When he eyes her more seriously, she finds herself sobering a bit and she sits a little straighter, less hunched, less defeated-looking. "I need you to be... my right hand," she suggests tentatively, "aside from Maeve. I need someone that truly knows the city. Including the underbelly. And honestly? I just want you to have a say in what goes on, because I know you're not gonna let this place go to shit and I know you'll say somethin' if you think it is."

Letting that sentiment hang for just a few moments, she mulls over more of what she wants to say by rubbing her lips together, and then continues, "Torchline needs defenses, the kind that... could be used for war. I thought our very own brand of skyships would be good. Maybe Safrin could help with that, if she knew it was for the protection of her city. Even if it's just one or two flying ships, I could step foot on them. You know, without blowing up..." Which is pretty fuckin' important.

"Beyond that, I.. actually want you to help us with social affairs. I think you'd be good at it," she eyes him with an arch of her brow, though she does mean that very sincerely. There's some hesitance and she lurches in her seat before she admits, "Juniper - from the Greatwood, she leads with Remi and Nephele - came here asking for us to make ties with them now in preparation for the war. But the Greatwood isn't experiencing any pressing issues currently. So I told her that there's no reason for us to make any agreements preemptively," her nostrils flare and uncertainty is palpable at this point. "I don't know if I'm doing this right or if I'm just delaying the inevitable. Or maybe that's the point." She quiets, even though she wants to ask questions and make points, to let Jack speak his own thoughts on the matters. "What do you think?"

so please just hold onto me
these demons, they're old to me

JACK

Jack, of course, gives no indication about what he might or might not care about and to what extent, the captain taking another long drink as Aurelia mulls over it all. He shrugs a shoulder in a silent none taken in response to her remark about titles, though he might argue that if they don't mean jack then there was no need to change them. He doesn't, though, instead running a finger around the rim of his glass until Aurelia speaks once more.

And he's impressed, honestly, to hear the request given so candidly, though what he thinks about it is, once again, a mystery. "I've seen three Governors fall in the space of the last two years, and now there's a queen sittin' in front of me," he says. "So speakin' as a citizen of the islands first an' foremost, you'll forgive me for givin' it a hot minute before fallin' for your elevator (they don't exist here Jack) pitch."

Reaching into his pocket, he draws out his cigarettes and matches and offers one out to Aurelia. "With the track record of leadership, I was here before you an' I'll prolly be here after you," he says frankly. "If it weren't for Maeve offerin' to make the Ark fly, I wouldn't have really given a shit, honestly. Dunno how you swung that with Safrin."

All of that is dancing around the issue, though, and he strikes a match and holds it to his cigarette. "I'll be your right hand," he mutters, "because I am good at it." Good at manipulating, good at knowing what Torchline thinks and what it wants and how it likes to conduct itself. Which brings him to his opinion about her alliances with the Greatwood.

"You always wait for 'em to come to you," he says, taking a drag of his cigarette. "Which they've done. But what'd we get out of this alliance? What does the Greatwood got for us?"

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

Aurelia

these nightmares all bend
silver linings are all i need

"I'm no governor, and I'm no queen either. Fuckin' hell, you should see the place I was born in. But... well, maybe a fresh slate is what this place needs." She leans towards him, a bit closer than she means to given that she's drank something strong, and nabs one of the cigarettes he offers. Both of their smokes are lit without so much as a flick of a match, thanks to the fact that her fingers are basically built-in lighters. Nifty, eh?

"As for making the ark fly..." she sucks the first drag off her cancer stick and squints, "that was my idea. I knew you'd need something in return. It's still only an idea," she eyes him carefully then, "haven't swung anything with Safrin yet, and I don't think I'll be swinging anything at her in the future. Say- wait a second," she keeps squinting, but a bit harder now as she readjusts to more fully face him, "why don't we just get you a skyship from Stormbreak? You can fly one for the time being, and maybe I can get some kind of... enchantment, to make me immune to their..." she waggles her fingers in emphasis of the skyships' own enchantments. Yknow. The ones that hurt if you're abandoned or ascended.

Jack accepts her offer, much to her surprise and way faster than she thought he would. Her eyes stretch wide for a moment and her lips fasten around the butt of her cigarette until she's snatching it out of her mouth and grinning at him. "You're a damn saint, Jack. You know that?" She chuckles then, because of the irony of course, and takes a long drag off her cigarette before they take a deeper dive into the 'current affairs' part of things.

"I'm not really... sure. Not much, if I had to guess," she remarks bluntly, because she can be blunt here, "they were weak to Ascended attacks before, weren't they? I think that's why they might be trying to secure an alliance with us now, after the war's been 'prophesied'. Maybe they're scared of the Grounds making a move. But I don't even know what this war's gonna look like, Jack. None of us do."

so please just hold onto me
these demons, they're old to me

JACK

Or maybe it just so happens that Aurelia was born in precisely the sort of place that makes her so like a lot of the Torchers. So Jack doesn't offer anything to that, though he does raise an eyebrow as she leans in close, making his striking of the match utterly redundant. Is he impressed? Maybe.

Too bad she ruins it all by raining on his flying Ark parade, and Jack grows very still as he digests this new information, the honesty in her thoughts. "That ain't what I was told," he mumbles around his cigarette, taking a deep drag of it. "So I'm joinin' your merry little council on the promise of somethin' you ain't even checked is possible?"

He laughs, because he can't decide who is the bigger idiot - them for offering, or him for accepting. It doesn't change his decision on the next point, though, Jack snorting and shaking his head. "Ark or bust," he mumbles. "Ain't interested in any other ship. Who said they're enchanted like that anyways?"

Whatever has happened, though, it seems he's still Aurelia's right hand man - and a saint, apparently, something that has him scoffing and blowing smoke into the air. "Fuck off," he tells her bluntly. And that's a very to the point version of his answer to the Greatwood, too.

"Why the fuck you worried about somethin' you don't know? War's comin', so what? Stick to what's happenin' now. Torchline needs shit doin' now." He shrugs. "War can fuckin' wait."

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