Assassin's Creed Drabbles

↳butterflies

in which edward kenway can only hope Jenny loves you the way he does

EDWARD KENWAY PENS the letter three times. Each one is a little different from the last, but they all start the same way. Four days past, I was given the greatest blessing and the greatest shame of my life in equal measure. I met my daughter. Jennifer.

Anne tells him he'll be a good father—when his blood finally cools enough to keep to one place. But thinking about the little girl sleeping in the next room over and alone at his desk with only a piece of parchment and a quill, his doubts and guilt gnaw at him. What if Anne is wrong? What if I cannot do this? What if failing Jenny is my last betrayal of Caroline? He recalls Jenny's hesitant smile when she disembarked the brig—the way she'd looked at him as though she weren't certain he truly belonged in her life. Edward cannot blame her.

Devil curse him, he'd seen your face in his waking thoughts since the moment Jenny first took the lilies he'd picked and his hand. The thought shamed him for half a heartbeat—Caroline deserved his grief; Jenny deserved his whole attention—but you refused to leave. You hadn't left his thoughts since the day the two of you sailed from Nassau in different directions. But if he could not believe Anne, perhaps he would believe you.

He inks the quill, tapping it once against the slip of parchment before writing again—Pride's an ugly thing. I've carried enough of it to know. He's never been one to ask for help, but Edward writes to you because he wants to do this right, and he knows he cannot do it alone. I've crossed oceans with less uncertainty than I feel when walking into my daughter's room.

The letter starts the same each time, and ends the same, too. I would very much like for you to meet her, should you wish that. He reads the words once, then twice, and does not toss it into the fire like the others. Instead, he signs his name. Yours, Edward James Kenway. Ink dry, he folds the parchment with careful hands and seals it with wax and a doubloon stamp, addressing it to you, in Beaufort.

IN THE TIME since first writing you, he's had more than enough time to doubt, to second-guess himself, and nigh convince himself the letter was lost at sea—or worse, that you had no wish to answer it, that he'd asked too much. But a merchant sloop slips into harbor with fresh wares and a rumpled letter from the Carolina colony. Anne knows the curl of the letters spelling Edward's name before she ever turns the letter over. The green wax only confirms what she'd already known.

Edward sits in the chaise lounge of the library, watching Bernard play a game of chess with Jenny—a game he's never had the patience or temperament to learn. The butler hums thoughtfully after Jenny moves one of her rooks. "An ambitious move, Miss Jennifer." A ledger rests open in his lap, but it's been several minutes since he's turned a page or made a mark, eyes always drifting back to his daughter, lips curling each time she takes one of Bernard's pieces.

A knock sounds against the frame of the library door. Anne leans in, a weatherworn letter hanging loose between two fingers. "Thought I'd find ye here," she greets—there was a time not so long ago when she'd never have wagered on finding Edward Kenway in the same place twice, unless it were a pub or the bottom of a bottle. Yet here he is, watching a game of chess instead of the tides.

Edward glances up, distracted only a moment. "What is it?"

Anne doesn't answer at first, only looks down at the letter, thumb brushing over the familiar sweep of ink. "For ye" she says, holding the folded parchment out. The corner of her mouth lifts. "From Carolina."

His keen blue eyes drop to the letter, but he doesn't move. Not at first. He glimpses the game again—Jenny has taken another of Bernard's pawns—then rises and crosses the library from his place by the hearth. Edward takes the letter from Anne, murmuring his thanks, and steps out into the dining room.