Chapter Text
“Not for the last fifteen years,” Jyn said and drew her sword, the flash of the guard and the pattern on the blade hinting at the truth of the stories. The sky had the warmth of new gold; the sea the glitter of jewels. Cassian, not letting the slenderness of her wrist and the steadiness of her blade bother him, answered that he did not believe her while the deck pitched and rolled beneath his feet.
He heard them say “Erso," but Jyn was the name he used by fires in taverns, by guttering candles in small rooms, by windows overlooking muddy streets. Once, he had said her name to soften the hard-edge of her words, the anger in her eyes. And the last time, to call her back to him.
Under the tropical sun, she traced his throat with the tip of her blade, the metal burning a hot kiss on his throat. He swallowed. She pressed. A bead of blood trickled down.
“Jyn,” he tried again, “Your father is-”
“You still don’t believe me, but it doesn’t matter.” she said, fiercely. “There is just me left.” She made a sound, an aborted laugh, stifled by her own scowl.
He had once smiled only because she did. Cassian flinched at the memory and felt a sting at his neck. A second bead of blood joined the first.
Jyn’s eyes followed its path down his throat. Her blade remained steady. “But you-”
There was something wistful in the tone that almost made him hope, but Cassian was spared his own reaction to it because Kay reappeared beside her quietly, as if out of the woodwork, thin as a lathe and expressionless, a single bright eye fixed on Cassian, the other one now sunken and bisected with scars.
“And now?” he asked, bloody saber still in his grip, but angled downwards toward the gorey deck, “I am going to imprison him in” --a slight hesitation --”the hold.”
“Call it a jail, Mr. Tousseau,” Jyn answered distractedly, “for understanding.”
“Different words for a room with a lock,” Kay said, dismissive, with the tone something of his old self. And his large hands were gentle on Cassian when they clapped on his shoulders, almost dragging him away. Jyn’s eyes never left Cassian, but she let the sword drop and did not stop them.
“You saved me once,” Kay said, marching Cassian down the quarter deck, though the men lining up around them, their clothes still crusted with blood. Kay’s shoulders and sword pushed them through, “though I have not yet decided on a name for this.”
There are no places to burn corpses for battles, but drowning could be easy. Cassian would call it revenge if that was what Kay preferred. But then they went beneath the deck, away from the limbs and bodies thrown overboard or sewn into bags.
“Are you hurt?” Kay asked. Cassian shook his head and felt dizzy. The jail was small and foul, a corner set aside amidst the barrels and between the goats, but Kay handed him water without asking. It tasted vaguely vinegary.
Cassian had had worse accommodations. And at the least now, now he knew he was among friends of a sort. “For how long?” he asked, then gentler, “And you?”
“As well as can be expected.” Kay sounded surprised at the question. “I am fulfilling my fate as an androide, as I’ve long predicted, neither one thing or another.” Pirate, criminal, cyclops- Cassian had made Kay all those things, but Kay walked free. “Cassian, I told you once I would go to the ends of the earth with you. Then you told me that I had to go with Jyn. I did both.”
“And I did not,” Cassian said, amusement forcing through despite the post-battle wariness that was descending, “so our roles are switched or is this my punishment?”
“But I am not,” Kay said quietly, fiddling with a lock, “intended for this life, I’m sure.” He shook his head. “No, it will not be indefinite imprisonment. Jyn would not. It’s for the crew. I’ve not seen the death toll but the latest prize should satisfy even the most greedy. Accounting for the mutinous, the odds for your survival increase with the offering per share.”
He sank into mathematical reverie, or perhaps better to distract himself from his own utterance that Jyn “would not.”. It was, after all, an assumption. It was even illogical, which the Kay Cassian knew must detest, but time may have changed him again. Kay’s old prison had servants and silks, but sunlight was a thing to wonder at through windows, an impossible thing like living without fear, like walking through the door a free man, until Cassian entered through the servants’ entrance and freed Kay II, E. of S- from slow poisons and he began to wear a name instead of a title. By the time they met Jyn, Kay had been already half a continent away from his guardians and their locks.
Kay swung shut and locked the door to Cassian’s cell. “There are at least eighty-nine ways to escape this cell,” he reminded Cassian, bright eye friendly through the salt-bitten bars, “but you’ll still be aboard a ship in the middle of the sea.”
A ship, but not the ship Cassian expected and needed. And whatever treasure the hold may now possess, according to Kay, Cassian would not have access to them as a prisoner.
Jyn had spoken of the sea and of the battles she had fought, but she had been a slip of a thing: small, dirty, bringing turnkeys their meals and stealing their wallets, and eventually, keys. It had been easy to dismiss her words as lies, metaphors, perhaps even revenge fantasy, as girls fallen into misfortune often had. But perhaps it was all Cassian’s fantasy instead. He had taken her with him from Parma then Paris; he had hoped to introduce her to the principles of freedom inherent of the Ancien Régime, but then he lost her- Divine retribution, he sometimes thought, for everything he’d done and would do.
Hours passed. The stench became bearable as all the lights faded. Then exhaustion came all at once. He fell into an uneasy sleep and stirred awake with the ship. People rushed in and out, accessing the stores and the galleys, but he was left alone until it became quiet again and all he could hear was the ocean and the creaks and groans of the wood. The weight of the manacles was hurting his wrists. A man he once met said that he would carry his prison with him. He had not imagined it literally. And so, hungry, thirsty, in the dark, at first he did not realise there was a shadowy figure glowing by the thin light of a lamp.
Cassian brought his hands and the weights around them together as the door grated open slowly on rusted hinges.
“Captain said you’re to dine,” the pirate said, a gun aimed at him. “Don't think anything untoward. Size will not help you.” Cassian was not bigger than the pirate himself, then with a sudden spike of hope realised he must’ve meant Jyn. He was roughly jerked to standing, the led across the deck where the men on watch spared him little attention.
Jyn was already sitting, blunderbuss across her lap when they were let inside; a line creased on her brow, the corners of her mouth hard when she dismissed Cassian’s companion. At least her face was clean of blood, her expression less warlike than their last encounter.
The great cabin itself was sparsely furnished, though the table had familiar tableware: gold rimmed Sèvres plates and delicate colored Venetian crystals. The food, too, might’ve been part of the loot. The aroma of beef filled the room. Golden honey soaked pears sat on a silver platter beside a tureen of creamy soup, thick with pieces of meat and vegetable. Cassian’s mouth began to water.
“Kay insisted that I eat with you,” Jyn said. “He supposed that it might show the men that my courtesy to you is a sign that we expect a ransom.” She picked up a spoon. Cassian took it as permission to start eating. “Also,” she added, sounding amused, “he reminded me that you’ve not eaten all day and then went personally to annoy the cook.”
“I didn’t know Kay cooked,” Cassian said, reminding himself to slow down.
“One of the many skills he learned hiding in the kitchen, apparently,” Jyn said, “Though resurrection or reanimation, he assured me, is still beyond him.”
Cassian could not tell whether there was resentment behind those words and was uncomfortable he could not. He put down his fork. “Will he not join us?”
“He’s ensuring that we’re not disturbed.”
“Who’ll interrupt us?”
“Everyone wondering whether you would kill me while we eat.” Jyn raised her eyebrow, “You cut down your own crew and your cabin was locked. They think you mad.”
“I was in prison.”
“So you were a prisoner. Again?” Jyn asked, clearly skeptical. “And they gave you a sword?”
“I had just freed myself.” Cassian took a sip of the wine and felt a vicarious thrill recognizing his former gaoler's prized madeira. “As for madness, two days on a diet of seawater has a most interesting effect on my attitude toward my fellow shipmates.”
“As usual, you refuse to answer my questions.”
Cassian lifted his gaze and met her eyes. “I’m waiting for the one you really want to ask.”
“Did you consider that perhaps I don’t want to hear the answer?”
Cassian paused, wondering at the implication, trying to read the intensity of Jyn’s question. It shouldn’t be difficult, but perhaps it should. The truth offered no consolation and a lie to her seemed contemptible, and Cassian’s self-loathing had never been exactly a secret. Draven had said “forget her, she was no one” which had seemed his usual cruelty. Of course, he had not known who she was. What would he think, if he knew that the daughter of Galen Erso had been right in front of his eyes, under his nose, and he had sent her away.
“But you’re onboard my ship, Cassian. It is still Cassian isn’t it?” Cassian nodded. “Why did you shout my name?”
“It saved my life,” he answered, honest enough. The moment he shouted to be taken to “Erso” however inadvertently and realised his mistake Kay had stepped into the fray and hauled him in front of her.
“Except you didn’t know my name.”
Cassian took a bite of the pear, the syrup stickily sweet, lingering on his tongue, his mouth. She was watching him as if he had more secrets to tell her when she already knew what he was. The insanity of it! He bit his lip, hesitant, then continued, “I was tracking down a ship called the ‘Urso’, carrying gold bullion from America and private treasuries of the governors. Named after the bear.” he clarified. They had spoken in Italian the first time they met.
“And so you thought you, too, would brave stings and broken bones to find your prize?” Jyn asked, frowning. “Except you ended up on the wrong ship. What would you have done with a ship full of bullion?”
“The gold will be conveyed to the cause. Three million is a king’s ransom; an entire army. Though there are those who consider bringing your father something the same.”
“The cause, again?” Jyn scoffed. “You’re not even French. And how did you propose to do that?”
The memory of Tivik hanging on the futtock shrouds and the HAC men beneath them taking aim came to Cassian’s mind. Tivik, but feeble as he was, whatever he learned about Kafrene had scared him. There had been no other choice.
“You are English,” he reminded her. “Which side do you choose?”
“I am the captain of this ship,” replied Jyn, standing up. Manners held, Cassian did the same, as if it was any other dinner at court. She threw him an amused glance but walked to her desk and its mess of papers, maps, and navigational tools. “All I care is that my crew and I are fed, clothed, and well paid, but now you tell me that you’ve no gold but came to look for it here.”
“But when I learned that you are the daughter of Doctor Galen Erso, who has been working for the sultan of the Ottomans-”
“I don’t even know if my father is alive. And the sultan hates the Holy Roman Empire, like you,” Jyn interrupted. “So tell me why do I need to pick a side other than my own? Tomorrow, you’d be put to work until your ransome’s paid.”
“Work?” Cassian asked, nonplussed.
“Would you prefer to be thrown overboard?” Jyn asked archly. “Kay can watch over you if you’d like to keep your madman’s reputation until we can send word to your bank at the next port.”
“Yes, but how did you get here, Jyn?” he asked, stepping closer. He lowered his voice as if others would overhear. “I looked for you.” The tone, more than the words themselves, startled himself and her. For a moment, they were both silent.
“Did you?” she asked finally, imperious, as if the confession meant nothing.
Cassian looked at her; there was gold and silk here, too, in the green her eyes, the red flutter in her cheeks. He continued, voice less steady than he liked, “I went to the meeting point, but you and Kay were already gone. Then I went to England in the hope of seeing you again before they told me that you were dead.” Even now, the madness that consumed him on his search seemed a fever dream. But he remembered reading Draven’s letter, the words that so numbed his thoughts so that he could scarcely remember the the journey back to the continent. Knowing that the letter had been forged later hadn’t changed the realization that he would miss her.
Jyn, in front of him, remained silent, lips pressed together. He could not read her expression, but that mixture of stubbornness and determination on the girlish face was as achingly lovely as he had dared to remember.
“You were wrong, I am not on the wrong ship, Jyn.” Slowly, he reached as if to cup her face. The movement, slow, with the hint of a question, in the moment where no encouragement was given, ended somewhere around her shoulder where the warmth of his palm seeped through her thin shirt, his naked thumb against her collar. “I finally found you.”
She was much smaller than him. He was closing upon her carefully so that she could choose to sit against the desk or step away. She was in trousers. He stepped into her space and realised he could feel the warmth of her thigh against his. The awareness sent a flush to his face. She didn’t move.
“I never tried to find you,” she told him, looking up. “You weren’t there. It was better to assume you dead.” She brought her hand to press against his chest, to draw him closer or push him away.
Cassian did not live a life with the luxury of certainties, but even for him, it was reckless to depend his life on the goodwill from a week’s acquaintance. “I left against my will,” Cassian said, holding her hand against him. The knuckles were bruised and split, her fingers hard with calluses. She was more magnificently alive than he had imagined. “I always mean to stay,” he said. And when he leaned down to kiss her and let her sigh into his mouth, he pressed her closer and thought surely he meant every word.
-=-=
The pale morning found Jyn sitting in her bed, putting on her boots quietly. For a moment she stood in the middle of the cabin, waiting to see if Cassian would stop pretending he was still asleep, but he didn’t, so she closed the door softly, a little relieved.
He was still a spy and now looking for her father. And all because of her name. For Cassian, it was a secret, a treasure, the means to all his ends. No, Cassian, Jyn had wanted to tell him, it was merely the name for whom her mother died defending, the name of a man who did not raise her, and who might as well be dead except Cassian claimed he was not. That name provoked a mutiny and put Jyn ashore at sixteen under the thin protection of the Pontas, until they, too, were betrayed by men looking for her father.
Men very much like Cassian, in fact. Except he hadn't known it when they were running from the prison guards or the nights he slept on the floor of the room while she took the bed. He hadn’t known her name when he took her to Kingston, or when he failed to turn up at their rendezvous. And she had waited and waited-
Even with wind strong enough to fill the sails and the smell of the sea all around her, she could still recall that dangerously handsome face, hear his warm whispers in the dark, and feel the sear of his kisses against her mouth, her throat- He said he looked for her...
“Have you made a decision?”
“What?” Jyn asked, sharper than she intended, but it was only Kay, wearing an annoyed expression.
“Does he go back to your jail?” And the distaste in that last world was palpable.
“He goes to work like anyone else on ship,” Jyn said, “until the ransom is paid.”
“Very good,” Kay said. “Fresh air and exercise would be much healthier for him.”
Jyn sighed. Even for an earl, never mind one who grew up under semi-imprisonment, when it came to Cassian, Kay’s behavior was protective beyond eccentricity. “He’s not a pet,” she reminded Kay.
“No, of course not,” Kay replied breezily, “but he could do with some sun. He was looking phlegmatic.”
Jyn wondered whether Cassian’s diet of seawater was less an exaggeration that she supposed.
“Did he tell you why he was imprisoned by Kafrene?”
“If only you had not allowed the slaughter of Capt. Kafrene and his crew, you would know by now,” Kay said, sarcastic. “If only you could talk to Cassian after dinner. Imagine that. That meal was for sustenance, nothing else.”
Jyn colored. Kafrene and his ship had been necessary. Cassian had been, in his way, necessary, as well. No promises, she had reminded herself, his hair soft between her fingers. She clenched her hands on the railing, dug her nails into the wood to bring herself back to the present instead of with the man she had stupidly left alone to roam her cabin. She wanted to get out before he could ask her anything; rather, before she started to hope for anything. “Perhaps it would be better if he goes back to the hold,” she mused aloud. Before Kay left, she added, “By the way, you were right. About Port Royal. He wasn’t in town when the earthquake hit.”
“I am always right,” Kay replied, with the comfort of a person grown used to certainty. “It’s time for him wake up and eat something. He always forgets.” Kay said, dismissing himself to go and fuss about Cassian. Perhaps Cassian would tell Kay the truth where he actually had been or had been ordered to be; that been the promise between them. As for Jyn, everyone had been careful to make her no promises and if she had thought they did, Jyn always knew her inheritance included an impractical amount of romantic imagination.
By the time Cassian came on deck, Jyn was already going over Kafrene’s papers. Staven and Codo made disgusted noises at how badly the log was kept, unbelievable that this was the man who was going to be commodore.
“And the prisoner?” Staven asked, flipping through a page. “Figured out his rate yet?”
“Hmm?”
“We still need to determine the ransome.” Codo, his brother and second-mate, explained, “if you intend to keep him in your cabin. How much should we deduct?”
“Surely add to the ransome,” Staven muttered.
“Well, if he’s there a second night, I’ll assume he could charge a rate,” Codo returned mildly. He turned to Jyn, “I’m assuming you won’t be kicking him out.” He followed up with, “Remarks have been passed. There are those who wonder if you were the sharing kind.”
“I can’t leave the ship while in port and we keep to the code. No sharing.” Jyn didn’t miss the look between them. Old faces like Edric and Staven aside, this crew was not the same as the one she grew up with. The way they took Kafrene and his crew was merely the latest example. Saw’s grudges tend to hold, though perhaps even her stepfather would have balked at the way the deck ran red and the waste in burning a good ship. At least Cassian lived, so Jyn felt she couldn’t complain.
“Kafrene has named two passengers with initials only. ” Codo said. “Who did we pick up?”
“Bishop Draven’s protege,” Kay swanned in. “Willix.” He explained a redacted version of the events that brought them together. That was, him and Cassian, not Jyn and Cassian. That particular story could not be told based on an identity.
“Minor nobility,” Codo said, warily. “Shall we say the standard rate, on account of his...particular friendships. Or, none at all.”
“Take it out of my share,” Kay said.
Jyn didn’t miss the look that passed between the brothers, but they went on through the book and papers trying to find the admiralty’s orders until the watch changed.
She caught glimpses of Cassian through the day, mostly swabbing the deck. Kay had made good on his intention about fresh air and exercise. He had set out his writing desk on the deck and everyone, knowing that the strokes of his pen could feed or starve them stayed out of the way even when their only prisoner was actually sitting on the deck while splicing ropes.
Perhaps her wince was seen from a dozen yards away. Cassian looked up, met her eyes, and smiled so beautifully that Jyn smiled back, and had a horrible feeling that she looked like a fool though was actually in the right.
By nightfall, they found some more promissory notes, a few packets of letters, but the orders, usually in waterproof envelope, were missing. Probably thrown overboard with the bodies, though all their coats have been examined.
“I took everything important,” Kay said, marking his final calculations of the total value of the shares on paper in neat script. This was a second clean copy. The revelry, so to speak, usually didn’t begin until everything’s tallied and the men knew how much richer they would be once they make port.
“You took your friend,” Staven pointed out.
“Please repeat that,” said Kay coolly. “I think there’s a fly in my ear.”
“I said,” Staven raised his voice so that both Jyn and Codo looked up. “That at some point in time during the boarding action, you took the time to extract your friend and marched him across the deck of two ships in pitched battle.”
“If you’re accusing me of neglecting my duties, say so directly.”
“You were against the attack.”
“I was against the boarding action,” Kay said, his accent growing haughtier by the syllable. “We outgunned them. There are a dozen men dead or wounded because you insisted on hand to hand combat instead of waiting for a surrender, which was a certainty, given what we know. I was overruled. I went over anyways.”
“And extracted your friend. He’s the only one who lived. Did you know he was there?”
Jyn had been ready to interfere but the question made her pause. Reece Tallent and his mutineers were gone by the time she and Kay tracked down her old ship. Jyn and Kay had arranged a letter of the marque that sprang the crew and the ship and the cargo from impounding. It surprised but suited the old hands to see Saw’s daughter. They had voted her captain partly to stop the in-fighting. Staven and Codo had been her supporters. They never questioned her, just as they never questioned her choice of quartermaster.
“I wished I did,” Kay replied. Just as Staven triumphant smile began, he added, “I also wished that he was not the only one who lived because of me. You let your friends die, first mate Staven. ”
Codo swore, colorfully, about it being a vote, but Staven’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, apparently seeing to finally to get the fight he wanted.
The knocked stopped everything: the helmsman was requesting change of course. There was something in the water.
The something turned out to be wreck, unsettling glitters in the dark. The night was clear, so Jyn ordered Staven and a few men to row out amidst the flotsam. He came back with jetsam and what apparently was a corpse.
“He fainted,” Staven defended, a purposeful glare in Kay’s direction, and sent the body to the infirmary. Then he went below deck, apparently enervated by the recovery effort.
Kay kept his voice low. He was due to be on deck. “You don’t want fractions in the crew, especially now Kafrene’s orders have disappeared. You’ve spent a lot for what, in the end, is not much at all, in term of actual profits. All these deaths for pointless posturing seemed to be more politics than piracy.”
Kay had never expressed any particular liking for her occupation or the company she kept, but he had stuck by her instead of going back to Cassian (if he knew where he was) or back to Draven. Kay had been steadfast with this crew and fought at their side.
“But you do know, don’t you?” she asked. “You sat with Cassian all day. He knew what Kafrene’s orders are.” Then it struck her: Staven’s anger. It was anxiety more than certainty. The many things that went wrong. “Where’s Tivik, Kay?” He wasn’t among the list of the dead. They had assumed he made off of the ship at one of the ports, but the logs were bad. They didn't expect a message from him until later. And, in a crew of two hundred, Cassian had played an aristocrat and Tivik wouldn’t have qualified for the captain’s table, but Cassian was the one who said he was imprisoned. The idea that she had been made a fool tugged at her.
“You know Tivik had a mission.” She kept her voice light, quiet. Routine information gathering, learn where the navies were going-
“So did Cassian.”
-=-=