Jack

Her boundless energy has her words springing too fast for him to keep up and he shakes his head rather helplessly. It’s only every other word that’s registering with him and when he holds hands up to subdue her long enough for him to respond, she latches onto the grey of his skin like a vice trap and he startles, flinching.

It’s overwhelming, this first brush of physical contact he’s had in what well may be eons at this point. Or so it feels. She’s cold or at least some convincing mimicry of what he remembers of the sensation. But it’s like a jolt of electricity along his arms and the hair rises there with the goosebumps that stretch and reach greedily for more sensation. He can’t stop the full body shutter it triggers, throat feeling suddenly too tight as he swallows hard. It has been such a very long time since he’s been touched.

Our people? She speaks as if he is privy to the subject of her speech. If his swimming brain is hearing her correctly, this indicates she was not fairy when she died.

He gapes at her, trembling and wide eyed and aghast. He’s still reeling in his chair, breath stuttered and broken as he grasps in vain for some measure of his control back. She’s left him spinning out of orbit with one clasp of his hands, but he’s even more shocked (and some fraction unnerved) to discover she’s affected him in turn. She’s looking like him in a way that has him leaning back, some long dormant fight or flight response getting upturned by her conversational dance.

You are extraordinary. You are a gift.

”I am not, my lady,” he corrects, almost inaudible with his lungs still paralyzed. He is careful not to tighten his hold on her wrists, for fear she might retaliate and cut off his means of retreat without a scuffle. He keeps his touch feather light and delicate, feeling naked underneath the penetrating and adoring gaze. It is eerily familiar. He squirms in his chair. ”I have done nothing to merit such praise. Only stumbled upon a gracious and powerful magician who humored my poor attempt at companionship for a short time. It is she who is extraordinary, not I.”

She.

The cloaked woman knew his medium was female. Without being told.

Our people. She. My daughter. You already found her. Her.

Jack goes still. He could be a wild animal the way he sits, doe-eyed and frozen in her snare.

Until she lowers her hood.

Then with a gasp, he recoils, throwing himself backward with enough force to send the toppled chair clattering to the floor. But her grip is unnaturally strong and when he reaches the end of his flexibility, his own pinned arms send him crashing back down to lean panting on the table. Panicked, he thrashes against the wood like a feral thing, the sockets of his arms already beginning to throb from the abuse.

”Release me,” he demands, no more than a growl in his chest as he stares at her through the swatches of dark hair that have fallen in his face. He jerks his hands back, testing her compliance. On the second time, she looses her hold and freed from her, Jack shrinks away, clutches at his wrists as if he’s been burned.

He pants, his stare now no more than an apprehensive leer.”I know enough,” he says with a touch of defiance. It is a lie, he knows nothing compared to the lifetime of knowledge a mother holds. And she is right here before him, all but begging him with her eyes to ask his questions freely, hungry for his interest. But there is a niggling in the back of his mind that too closely resembles worry for Electra’s well being that protests his gut reaction to dive too quickly and too deeply in with this stranger. Whatever relation she may be and however beautiful she appears. It is the same protective streak that had flared when Electra had asked him not to pursue her stalker, but now flipped to the opposite end of the spectrum.

He rubs idly at his wrists.”Tell me her name then, if the woman carved in your skin and the one carved in my heart are one and the same. Tell me her name and why you did not start with it. I do not pander to people who play games with my generosity.”