Work Text:
Jay Ferin sits at the table drawing birds. Her sister sits across from her reading a book. It is an atlas. Ava Ferin wants to become a navigator. Jay Ferin wants to learn how to fly. Ava compliments her sister's scribbled sketches. Jay asks about the stories she’s reading. Ava doesn’t have the heart to tell her it isn’t a work of fiction, so she makes up tales of the lands of the maps she’s memorizing. She has always been a good story teller.
Ava Ferin slams her book shut when she hears footsteps approaching. She tells her sister to pack up her drawing. Jay refuses. Ava does not stick around to argue. Jay’s father enters the study with the force of fire shattering windows. Jay realizes her mistake. She crumples the edges of her page with the force of her small shaking hands and tries to slip out the door. Her father catches her shoulder. He asks if she’s avoiding him. She chokes on her answer, a phantom of ash coating her tongue. She does not resist as the pages are taken from her hand. She watches passively as he burns them in his palm. She looks him in the eye as he yells at her – Jay knows better than to give into the comfort of staring at the floor – but she sees nothing but burning birds haunting her mind.
Jay cries in Ava’s arms. She tells her of the unfinished drawings that are now all charcoal black. The mourning of those pages is the easiest feeling for her to process. Ava gets her new parchment and sets her up at the desk in her room. She does not pull out her book. She sits and talks and gives her sister advice on not smudging ink. Ava does not have time to steep in her guilt. That would only harm them both. The best thing she can do is take action. Teach her sister the best tips for protecting herself. Ava tells Jay she must be a detective. Pick up the clues of when someone is coming. Investigate when to leave a room. She turns perception into a game. Makes the vigilance a young girl must have less terrifying. She has always been a good story teller.
–
Jay sits at a bar staring into a full cup. She has been given permission to leave, but that is only half the story. She can leave, but she could always leave, couldn't she? The chains that keep her here are complicated. Jay is alone. Jay is more alone than she’s ever been. Jay’s mother asks if she's ok and she smiles in a way that doesn’t reach her eyes. It is clear in the way her shoulders sag that she knows Jay is lying when she says she's fine. Jay doesn’t mind. They’ve been doing this dance for months. May Ferin is a safe person to fail at lying to. The deception will not get her in trouble. It will only make her feel guilty for worrying her mother. Jay takes a sip of her drink hoping it will fill the void opening up inside her. All it does is burn.
Jay doesn’t mind working at the tavern. She likes it more than the work she’s expected to do. It’s nice to be a friendly face. To do work that is simple. To be enough.
Her mother passes an overly chatty customer off to her and she hops the counter to pour him a drink. He grins with a crooked smile. Jay can smell the sea on his shirt and see the mischief in his posture. He confesses to being a pirate eagerly in a way that makes it clear he does not recognize the Ferin name. He’s an idiot, an asshole and a coward. He’s a first step. He’s a diving board. He’s her ticket out of here. He practically begs her to join his crew. She has never been one to pass up on a good opportunity.
—
Jay sits with good posture and does not move except to turn the page of her book. Chip enters the room she’s in and she does not look up, but she tracks his moment out of the corner of his eye. He’s opening drawers looking for something. After five torturous minutes of him not asking for help she offers some. He stares at her confused. He hadn’t realized she was in the room.
He tells her she blends into her surroundings. She tells him he’s an idiot and points out her red hair. She starts laughing first and he’s quick to follow.
—
Jay doesn’t know what she’s doing here. That’s not a question she feels like picking apart with a gun to the back of her head. Is she in the navy? Is she a pirate? Is she a real Ferin?
She lies because her life depends on it — it always does — and she doesn’t bother to pick apart which lies she tells herself.
She recognizes Lizzie’s voice in her dramatic reunion with Chip. There’s no way she could forget. She stands there as they argue about whether she’s to be trusted. Lizzie is right. She’s a liar and a spy. Chip is right. She won’t hurt them.
She defends her hatred of the navy. None of it is a lie. She exposes a sliver of her fears to Chip and Gillion. Her motives are twisted. She’s omitted too many details. But the more she tries to convince people she’s a pirate, the more she wishes that’s all she was. She has nightmares every night and they are always red. She’s a spy. She’s playing make believe. She’s a traitor and she doesn't know who she’s going to turn her back on.
—
Jay Ferin is a coward. She can’t even be smart about it. She’s grown soft. She’s staring at the ground and she’s frozen. People are yelling and she’s frozen. They ask her how to fight her father. All she ever learned was how to survive him. That’s not enough.
There’s only one thing she ever learned to protect others from him. Drawing fire.
Jay begs her father to leave them alone. To take her and leave them alone. She’ll give up her freedom to save them. She’ll give up on answers. He shows mercy. He accepts. They’ll be ok. She is not strong enough to say goodbye. She just walks towards the darkness. It’s her turn to be the big sister.
Gillion and Chip fight. They fight her choice. They go against her father. Jay is on fire and she’s terrified. Jay doesn’t know what her father will do and she’s terrified. Her friends should be terrified. They shouldn’t be doing this. Her father asks if she’s going to let them treat him this way and she knows all hope is lost. The word discipline will haunt her for the rest of her life. She feels numb as she draws her bow. A fire has burned her inside out and there is nothing left behind. She’s not sure how much of this is magic and how much is her giving up.
Her friend is bleeding out on the floor and she is a monster. Chip is looking at her like she’s disgusting. She is glad that he’s seen through the illusion. Maybe it will save him. She confesses all her sins and tells him it meant nothing.
He doesn’t believe her.
He sees through that illusion too. It’s terrifying. She doesn’t know how dangerous it is to fail at lying to him.
They ask her what she wants. What she truly wants. Somehow she tells the truth.
—
Jay is good at walking into rooms silently. It has become a habit. Sometimes it scares people and they all have a good laugh after. Jay adds to a conversation Chip and Gillion are having and Chip’s shoulders jump up to his ears. Gillion doesn’t notice and responds joyfully. Chip’s shoulders drop back down, but the tension stays in his spine. Jay could recognise that stance anywhere. The way one stands when they are not in danger, but know someone could become a threat at any moment. She is looking at a mirror. No. This isn’t a mirror. She has never been on the other side of this. She finishes the conversation without breathing a hint of what is wrong. Then when she's alone she claws at her throat trying to free herself of the ashes. She is not something hollowed out and left behind this time. She is the fire. She is going to burn alive. She has become everything she hated. How hadn’t she realized the tools she’d carved to survive would hurt others?
—
Jay knows how to change her behaviour. She understands intention intimately. She knows how to blend into the background, but can bear the weight of observation. She knows what scares her and she will do anything to be different. She walks heavy enough to be heard but not to scare. She stalls in doorways instead of slipping through them. She sighs or coughs or makes any other quiet announcement. She apologizes for her actions by being obvious, by warning that she’s there. Chip doesn’t flinch as much. He stands between her and Gillion. So she keeps her distance. She silently thanks him for letting her stay. Gratitude is a physical feeling. Every morning she is shocked her presence is worth the price. She will keep this stance if it is all she can give them. It’s been a while since she’s had to walk on eggshells. The steps of this dance are different, but she hasn’t lost the muscle memory.
—
Jay Ferin wakes up screaming. She pulls her knees into her chest and sobs. No one died in this nightmare. No one was even hurt. It was just her and her sister talking, like Ava never died. Ava was horrified with the person she had become. She told her she was just like her father. No threat to her life could scare her more than that.
Her heaving wakes up Chip and Gillion. That makes her feel even more disgusted with herself. They wrap their arms around her and she is weak enough to lean into their touch. She does not deserve this comfort. She is a monster because of what she’s done to them. They should be terrified of her. They are. But right now the only concern in their bodies is that for their friend. It doesn’t take much coaxing for her to spill out what happened in her dream. She doesn’t have any fight in her. Gillion says he’s sorry she heard such horrible things and it just makes her feel weak. How dare she bait them into denying what is so clearly true.
Then Chip pulls away to meet her eye. He says with unwavering conviction that she will never be her father. That she will always be too compassionate for that. Jay knows everything there is to know about liars. She knows she is one. And she knows there is no doubt he’s telling the truth. She holds them both tight and she cries. They whisper into her hair that they love her and that she is safe. She believes them. She can let herself believe them.