Chapter Text
On a warm weekend morning, when Jay Ferin was a child, she told her mother she wanted to be a dancer. The day prior the two of them had gone to the ballet together, Jay had seen something quiet but familiar in one of the dancer's eyes, fierce determination is what her mother called it, but Jay was young and didn’t quite understand what that meant, so she just called it fire.
When Jay told her mother she wanted to dance her mother laughed kindly, and told her daughter she would find somewhere for her to learn. To say Jay was overjoyed would be an understatement.
On a colder weekend morning one Ava Ferin visited her mother and sister, she watched as a young girl twirled around the room in a light blue tutu sewn by their mother and she smiled. Jay may have been uncoordinated and clumsy but she was stubborn, and so as a little girl she dragged her sister into the center of the room and they danced until they were tired. Jay told Ava something that day, she doesn't remember it now as it was off-handed, something easy to forget, but she said to her sister;
“Ava! We saw a show and the girls dancing looked like birds! I’m gonna dance on a stage one day! I’m gonna look like a bird!”
Jay Ferin’s first shot with a bow was nowhere near perfect, but it was good, it met the expectation of her name, and so when she shot a second time and it crept ever closer to perfect no one batted an eye. Jay didn’t dance anymore, if you asked her she would have told you she wanted to be in the navy her entire life, she would not mention stages or elegance or birds, but instead she would say she wanted to make her parents proud.
Jay knew what fierce determination was now, she saw it on occasion when her sister visited, she saw it in her mother when faced with a challenge, she never looked her father in the eye but she assumed it was there too. So Jay shot arrows into bullseyes with her best attempt at fierce determination, and told the world she was a Ferin through and through. Jay Ferin was not a dancer, she was a soldier.
A few days after Ava Ferin died Jay found a note in her home, scrawled in her sister’s handwriting, a forgotten note, barely a passing thought quickly slipped to their mother, ‘make sure she keeps dancing’
Jay visited the ballet again soon after, they were different dancers, a different show, years had passed, she had forgotten her love for dance. When she looked for the fierce determination in the dancers again, she only found fire. Jay got angry quickly but she called it determination, because at the end of the day she was a Ferin.
When Jay Ferin first saw Chip fight it crossed her mind he may have been a dancer, he may not be elegant or graceful, he certainly wasn’t a bird, but he was lean, fast, nimble, more dexterous than she’d ever been. She considered asking him if he’d ever danced, but the possibility of him knowing she had as a child seemed too embarrassing to be worth it. So she watched him fight, she watched him run, she watched him dance his way out of situations in his awkward bumbling manner that somehow always worked, and she sighed and tried to keep dancing off her mind.
It didn’t really come up again until the deck was covered in ice and all she heard was yelling and the crack of lightning, because while she was prepared to intervene Jay hesitated as she watched Gillion Tidestrider dance. Jay knew he was strong, and she knew he was clumsy, she’d watched him trip over his own feet plenty of times. And while yes he cut through water with grace, on land he wavered. So when Jay Ferin watched Gillion Tidestrider cut through air, watched him spin and strike with his usual might and strength backed purely by muscle in a way that reflected grace, she hesitated. When lightning arched around him and he struck Chip with the might of fabled gods she hesitated. It wasn’t until she blinked and a battered Chip lay on the ground, Gillion’s sword at his throat, electricity buzzing in the air, that she snapped out of her stupor and intervened. She never asked Gillion if he danced, she assumed dancing in the undersea might be different, and she didn’t quite want to explain the art to a literal fish out of water.
The first time Jay Ferin shot a gun she was young and shaky, her father was there, it was just training, she still thought about dancing instead. Now she knows her ability to train a gun and shoot a target spot on was a power she wielded well, she could not be blinded, she could not be shaken, she could point, shoot, and hit. When the magic worked, when her bullet burst into flame on impact, when she trained her eye just right and a mark, a target, a gold coin to shoot out of the air appeared, Jay Ferin beamed. When the late night tinkering paid off and she watched her extra plating keep Gillion safe, she sighed with relief and smiled. Jay Ferin was not a dancer, she was an inventor.
Her father was there again, she did not look him in the eye, but she assumed it was there as she always did, the fierce determination. And when fire licked at her hair, her shoulders, her arrow as it flew, she tried to think of the dancers, of their fire, it was different, she swears it was different. Jay Ferin cries and begs and burns until she’s charred and tired, and then she runs, she leads and they follow and she knows she’s still crying but she just runs. A few nights later on the ship she stares at a silent scrawled reminder, and she cries again, and she tries to remember the dancers, their faces, their costumes, their eyes, but all she remembers is fire.
In the morning, when she shows Chip a new spell, and it burns a hole in the wood floor and she tries and fails not to scream, he looks at her worried, and Gillion comes running, and they hug her, and she remembers the dancers, properly this time, and the fire is different, and she can breathe again but its not the smoke of her hair burning this time, it’s not the hole in the wood floor, she sees her fire and it’s warm and graceful like a dancer. It’s her’s, not her father’s.
Elizabeth Lafayette is a dancer, at least Jay believes so, she quickly realizes that Lizzie is a lot of things Jay wishes to be. Yes Lizzie has the grace and elegance, the quick footwork, the poise, the fierce determination. But more than anything she has the leadership, the anger, the drive, that Jay wishes she had. When Jay looks at Lizzie she wishes to see fire, she wishes to dance together while wasted instead of crying over a long lost note she keeps on the ship still, just as a reminder that maybe if it all drowns, she can dance. But no, they talk about Ava and then they laugh and then she cries and they don’t talk about it the next day, and when Lizzie swings through the air like it’s her home, like a bird, Jay tries to look away, and when Lizzie tells her not to die, Jay wants to cry all over again.
Jay does dance, one night on the ship, buzzing from alcohol and adrenaline she grabs Chip’s hands and spins him around the deck, they laugh together, Gillion laughs with them. Ollie and Chip start dancing and Jay watches in awe and again starts to wonder if Chip used to dance, but before she can think too hard about it Gillion and Alphonse come into view and she bursts into laughter once again.
Jay dances while in a haze of the charm of a fanciful evening, and the charm of a vampire, she twirls properly this time, with what she hopes is the elegance of a bird, if you asked Chip he’d say Jay had two left feet but what does he know. It gets interrupted quickly by murder and mystery, but it was nice, she wishes she’d taken up dancing again that night, properly considers it. But Jay Ferin is not a dancer, she’s a pirate.
Jay is on stage for the first time and it all goes wrong, she wasn’t supposed to dance per say, but when it comes to improv anything could happen. She watched him pull the card, she watched him dissapear, and in a flash dancing was the last thing on her mind. Jay Ferin went on stage and she lost everything and she swore not to go on stage again. When she was standing in a room full of scared people, full of noise, all she could see was fire, not the beautiful dance of flame, not the elegance or grace, but the smell of burnt hair, the feeling of charred skin, the burn that turns to numb searing in her heart as she blames her ignorance for loosing him, she can’t loose another.
Gillion saw the note once. Jay Ferin was sat tinkering, working on his armor, the note had fallen out of her bag, he picked it up. If you asked Gillion Tidestrider why Jay had a note of seemingly no significance about dancing, he would say it was some sort of inside joke between Jay and her mother, that’s what she told him at least.
Jay Ferin enters a mirror to find her fellow captain, and before she steps through she sees her reflection. Shoulders squared, the tips of her hair are still charred, her face is grief stricken but her eyes, her eyes are not fierce and determined, they’re not angry, they’re not even quite sad, they’re full of fire. She’ll dance again, maybe one day she’ll get to be a dancer, but for now she fights, she points, shoots, and hits.