Overcast Eyes Like English Skies

 📅 March 2013

〚ᴄᴡ ғᴏʀ ғʟᴇᴇᴛɪɴɢ ᴀʟʟᴜsɪᴏɴ ᴛᴏ ɪɴᴊᴜʀʏ & ᴍᴇɴᴛᴀʟ ɪʟʟɴᴇss〛

It was rare for Sethfire to truly feel like he had ‘free time,’ but that seemed to be the theme for the day, for a change. Kato would be home, but Seth had no classwork to do or lectures to attend; Athena had headed off to school, and Anarchy had managed to find work for the day, clearing scrap out of a lot slated for development, so Seth had dropped him off there. He mused about life and change on the return home. 

Anarchy had changed remarkably in the time since he’d joined them; it was so jarring a transformation that Seth found himself regretting having not taken any pictures during their first few days together. The new life and the methadone had allowed Anarchy to eat, and his trips to the gym and frequent manual labour meant he’d packed on a substantial amount of muscle. He’d already been tall when he moved in, but over the past year he’d somehow seemed to have gained another two or more inches of height. Kato seemed irritated over it and had bought at least three new pairs of platform boots to make up the difference, but still…even without a growth spurt, Kato had changed, too… 

Seth frowned. Kato had been troubled from the very start; their first true meeting he’d had no issue in cursing Seth out or in flashing him his scar-riddled arm. And then of course there had been the situation at the school… 
There was still a chill that Seth could recollect, in that moment where Kato’d had the bag; had the gun; where he was turning and rising and ready and it could all have ended there.
It hadn’t, thank God, and Seth had been able to get him somewhere safe, thank God, and he seemed willing to start to branch out into new interests, thank God. The band and this album production they were closing in on, especially, had really seemed to put some distance between himself and his past.
 But sometimes he still asked if he could, with supervision, show his guns to the others; teach them how they worked, how to take them apart and put them together and the top rules of gun safety, because he could make it educational, and they’re not loaded, and please, Seth, it’s useful information, I’m so far past doing anything crazy anyway... 

Seth allowed it on occasion. Kato was good at how he spun it; convincing when he talked about it helping him to reframe the weapons in his own head; that he knew he had to be responsible and all such things if he was going to be presenting himself as knowledgeable. He’d get a gun safe whenever it was that he moved out, he said, assuming his guns would still be in the picture, or something like one. He knew they weren’t legally owned weapons, it’d be a time to figure out what to do with them, if anything, and they’d have to be safely stored during that, wouldn’t they? And he didn’t want to have to padlock his closet like Seth was doing.
...It was difficult. Kato could be difficult. He wasn’t a “bad” kid, but Seth did feel like he had to be very careful about him. He could be deeply kind, deeply caring—and deeply honest, like he had been the first time they properly connected. He was funny, certainly intelligent, and he’d seemed to become far healthier since moving in. He was no longer actively cutting—or at least nowhere Seth could see. But that was the thing: Where Seth could see. And Seth knew that Kato could take the same intelligence that he used to read Seth’s own psychology and counselling books front-to-back in order to carry on the book-club-esque conversations that Seth so enjoyed...and use those smarts, instead, to be deceptive. 

He tucked his tongue to his cheek as he stepped into the lift back at the apartment, deep in thought, wondering how best to be playing the guardianship role he’d assumed for Kato. He would be turning eighteen in summer, and Seth was anticipating legal adulthood being something that could cause further friction between them if he came across too overbearing. 

Just in time to rescue him from his musing, a short, dark-haired girl joined him in the lift, pushing a dolly of moving boxes stacked higher than she could possibly see past and with only some of them strapped down. Even as he watched her board the elevator, the topmost one teetered precariously, then nearly fell off onto her head—only halted by Sethfire’s instinctive catch. The girl startled at his motion as though she’d not seen him. Maybe she hadn’t, past all the boxes and the hair that shrouded her right eye from view.

“...Do you need some help with these?” Seth asked, hefting the box in his hands. It was bizarrely heavy to have been up so high. The girl seemed young; small, certainly, like she ought to have someone else with her. She stared up at him.

Seth was used to being stared at. He figured it would be worse by far anywhere other than New York City, where anomalies were generally treated as commonplace, but even here he was tall and long-limbed and starting to appear punked-up from his sister’s influence. The scarring on his arms was nothing that eyes easily passed over, either. But this was a different sort of staring; her expression was neither repulsed nor pitying; despite how far overhead he stood, she didn’t even appear intimidated. Instead, she looked up at him with something like wonder. 

“You can help?” she said, or maybe asked; her intonation seemed just slightly ‘off.’ At first he couldn’t tell if she was making fun of his accent, either, though her expression was still rapt and not snide.
“Sure, I can help if you would like me to,” he said. “Er. My name is Sethfire. Seth. Are you just moving in today?”

It was almost as though she hadn’t heard him: Instead of responding, she swiftly checked both ways out the elevator door like a child preparing to cross a street, then darted back inside and hit the ‘close door’ button before the one for her destination, an unmistakably fearful expression on her face.
Sethfire felt a mounting sense of concern for her. Was she in danger? Where had that hypervigilance come from?

“My name is Jazz,” she answered at last; speaking quickly, her voice only just above a whisper. “...You can call me Jazz.” 
Seth allowed a small smile, but he couldn’t quite tell if it was intended as a joke or if, perhaps, she was attempting to hint that it was not her real name. He was beginning to believe her slight British accent to be real, however, and the kinship tugged faintly on something within him—as did the nervous dart of her gaze; her hung head and wringing hands.
“...Are you alright, Jazz?” he ventured, hoping she knew the inflection meant ‘safe,’ meant, ‘you can tell me if you are not.’ 

She startled as though out of a daydream and looked up at him again, her unshrouded eye wide; the pale grey of an overcast sky.
“Oh! You really do know more than most people,” she said, her bizarre tone managing to be what could only be described as a flat chirp. “I could tell.”
“What?” Seth asked, blindsided.
Jazz nodded instead of providing an explanation, then interrupted her nod and abruptly shook her head, instead. Seth slowly echoed the head-shake, raising a questioning eyebrow. 
“...No?” he asked.
“Not now,” she said. At that moment the elevator dinged, causing her to flinch markedly. She ducked behind her boxes and nervously eyed the doors as they glided open. Sethfire had no idea what to make of her.

“...You’re moving to the top floor, then? I’m just one below you,” he said soothingly, deciding that was the best approach to take. He tapped the precarious boxes on the dolly. 
“Do you mind if I carry these for you, Jazz? So that you can see where you’re headed to?” 
She gave him a swift nod after only the briefest moment of hesitation, and thankfully the other two unsecured boxes were not nearly as heavy as the first. He trailed her down the hall to her unit, blinking at the congruency to his own route a floor down. He checked the numbers as she unlocked the door. Sure enough...
“Oh. We truly will be neighbors,” he said; “I rent the flat directly below this one.”
“I guess it was destined,” she said with a tiny smile. Like with the comment about her name, he was unable, again, to tell if it was said in humor.

She had another couple loads of boxes to retrieve from downstairs, some of which she needed help even to load onto the dolly. Sethfire could tell he was pushing the limits of his hands with the work he was putting them through—his fingers were tingling and there was a painful burning sensation clawing up the inside of his wrists—but he couldn’t bear to leave Jazz alone to struggle behind her veil of hair, tugging a dolly and startling at any sudden movement. 

“Is no one assisting you in this, Jazz?” he asked softly, their final ride up the lift; “Family, friends…? Someone to help you with furniture?” 
She gave a swift, anxious shake of her head. “I’m doing it on my own.”
“...Well, then I am glad I can help you do it on your own.” There was a sad sort of curiosity that crept over him, though he felt distinctly wary of being too invasive. But why was she doing it on her own? She didn’t look like she could be any older than Athena, and in fact could have passed for much younger. He doubted very much there was a polite way to ask her age. What was her story, though? How old was she? Where were her friends; her family? What did her comment in the lift about him mean?

He tested the waters as they paused up in her flat, while he ran his wrists under the tap in a subtle attempt to soothe the shooting pains plaguing him, and she searched her menagerie of unlabelled boxes for whichever one contained the kettle.
“So...Where in the UK are you from, Jazz?” Seth ventured, feeling a question about her audible accent wouldn’t land as being quite so nosy as one about her age; “Did you move recently?”
“To here, today,” she said, with a brief, quirked smile;  “But...to the US, when I was little. From Dover.” 
“Ah, Kent. It was London for me, but I moved when I was young, as well. My sister and I.”
“Oh. I don’t have a sister,” Jazz said. Sethfire had no idea how to respond to her, and finally settled on a rather awkward;
“No...not everyone does, do they?” 

Jazz was quirky, for sure, though Seth made every effort to not fall too far into his ongoing education in mental health counselling while talking to her—it seemed a rude concept to meet someone and treat them as a potential client or a place to practice diagnostics. She ought to be Jazz, to him, Jazz-from-Kent, not the potential case study upstairs. 
Really, she was just interesting to talk to, regardless of all else; kind of funny, definitely enigmatic. She was difficult to parse, he enjoyed it. He mentioned his sister would be turning eighteen that year and found out Jazz would be, too; she was less than a month older than Athena was. She wasn’t in college, nor was she applying; she didn’t think she could handle it. She liked the concept of attending university, but there were so many people there. 
“Oh, you’re not moving for school, then?” Sethfire prompted. She blinked up at him.
“...No.”

He accepted the refusal to answer his unspoken so why?—it wasn’t like he was owed that anyway—and they were still chatting at a shallower sort of level, about such things as how much a cab was compared to the subway or if that saying about March weather was true, when the sudden sound of a slamming door came from somewhere down the hall and caused Jazz to jump backwards as though someone were shooting at her feet.
“I, er, I do live with three other people, probably around your age,” Seth said, rather apologetically; he couldn’t imagine Kato’s non-infrequent yelling—or, indeed, door slamming—would mix well with her obvious hypervigilance. “Forgive me if things downstairs occasionally get noisy. You can text or call if it ever becomes an issue; let me give you my number.”

He caught sight of the time as they exchanged numbers and winced internally; Kato would likely have a drawled “Did you get f***ing lost?” loaded and ready for the moment he opened the door.
“I should get back to my flat, Jazz, but really—if you need anything at all, I would be happy to help. To the best of my ability.” He offered a shallow wave of his hands along with a tilted smile; she’d noticed how he held his warm mug to his painful arms; he’d answered her inquiry over his history exactly as obliquely as she’d offered her reason for moving, which she’d thankfully allowed and hadn’t attempted to pry. His hands tended to hurt, his fingers tended to curl. She’d moved house.
“Okay, yeah, thank you, Seth,” she said as she walked him to the door; “Good-by.”

She stopped closing the door at his exit just before he turned away, and through the small gap, suddenly said, nearly fearful in tone; “Don't tell anyone about me yet, though.” 
He stared back at her, one wide grey eye studying him anxiously through the cracked door. “...Alright,” he said.
“Okay. Good.” The door snapped shut.

Sethfire took a moment before managing to shake himself off. 
...Bizarre.

---

“Christ, Seth, you took your goddamn time. Did you get fucking lost?” Kato greeted as soon as Sethfire unlocked the door.
“...It happens to even very skilled navigators,” Seth replied delicately. “...I encountered a detour of sorts.”
“Right, yeah, if that’s how you wanna put it,” Kato scoffed, waving a dismissive hand before re-burying his nose in The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire. “Pro tip for next time: If the street name numbers are dropping, you’re heading west.”
“Thank you, Julian. I shall attempt to commit that to memory.”