Blaze boarded the second train shortly after leaving the first. Though she wasn't sure exactly where she was going, she knew she had to keep going, at least for another day. She switched trains in Paris and got onto an overnight train to England. She figured the streets there would be crowded enough for her to blend in pretty well. That, and she didn't need to learn a new language. There was only one empty boxcar, and she gladly filled it. She didn't have any belongings except for what was in her pockets—the money and the wiring materials that Cole gave her. She stared at the wire tool and spun it in her hands, wondering if she was doing the right thing by being on her own. She hated being on her own because she never felt safe. Well, she hadn't felt completely safe in the backstreets except for the fact that she lived in the highest tree. Did she feel safe with Cole? It was strange for her to admit, but she had never felt safer.
"Hey, mind if I join?" she heard a voice ask sweetly from the door. She flinched and dropped the wiring supplies, startled by the voice that wasn't her conscience. Blaze was just happy the voice wasn't Deanna's or a scientist's. The girl in front of her had light reddish brown hair and green eyes that sparkled even in the absence of sunlight. Freckles dotted her face and arms below the sleeve line of her tshirt. Despite all of this, she was bronzed by the time she spent in the sun.
"Sure," Blaze said slowly, unsure as to whether it was safe for her to talk to the girl or not. How did she know that she wasn't an undercover worker for the organization? She didn't, but then again, this girl looked to be about her age, maybe a bit younger. Unless they started hiring young, the girl was safe.
"What's your name?" the girl asked as she set her bag on the opposite seat and sat down across from Blaze. Below her black tshirt, the girl wore elastic-waisted red pants that seemed to flow around her knees, and had images of elephants and giraffes on it.
"Blaze, and you are?" she asked. The girl reached down and picked up the wiring materials, handing them back to her before answering. Blaze had almost forgotten their location on the ground from the shock of hearing the girl's voice in the doorway moments before.
"I'm Charlie, short for Charlette, but I don't ever go by Charlette," the girl informed Blaze. Charlie's openness and excitement was a bit unnerving to Blaze, but part of her outgoingness reminded her of Flynn. She even looked a little bit like him, but Blaze attributed that to the fact that she missed him already. Him and Cole alike. Before Blaze could open her mouth again, Charlie asked, "So, where are you coming from?"
"Italy," Blaze replied briefly. It wasn't because she was irritated that she was responding tersely, she was taken aback by Charlie's presence and part of her mind was still a whirlwind because of leaving the ship so suddenly. She realized that the girl might think it rude if she didn't keep up conversation.
"And you?" she asked. The girl's outfit was different from what Blaze had seen as the accepted norm in this part of Europe, with their darker colours and high-end fashion sense. This girl's style was different, and that could be because she didn't care what others thought, or it could be the norm wherever she was coming from.
"I was working as a mechanic in East Africa," She explained without hesitation. There was an excited tension to her voice, as if she couldn't hold back the happiness from within her, and that it was going to burst through her chest if she didn't speak. The girl's smile seemed to spread from ear to ear, as Flynn's had. Blaze shook her head to get the images of him and Cole joking around out of her head. The Cole she knew didn't kid around, but Flynn always seemed to bring out a childish lightness to him that revealed to her a whole new side of the Azori she knew. She sighed, missing her boys. It had only been a day and night of traveling, but that's the most she'd ever spent away from Cole since the moment she met him. Blaze's mind snapped back to reality and she realized that the girl was peering at her to make sure she was okay. She could see that the girl was hoping to continue their conversation. Maybe Blaze wasn't the most open person, but holding out a conversation like this was hard. She knew if she befriended the girl that she'd end up pulling her into trouble too. Why did Charlie have to seem so nice?
"A mechanic? How old are you?" Blaze frowned, looking the girl over from head to toe. She was as tall as Blaze, but a year or two younger. How could a fifteen year old girl be a trained mechanic so young? Perhaps it was possible, but rare.
"I'm fifteen, but I'll be sixteen in a few months," Charlie assured her, letting go the fact that Blaze had spaced out on her. She was skinny for a mechanic, but Blaze could see the outline of her lean muscles from there. The girl blushed, guessing what Blaze must think of her.
"I'm stronger than I look," she added confidently. Blaze half-expected that she'd said that to convince herself more than for Blaze's sake. Blaze didn't have much doubt because she believed that no matter what a person looked like, they could decide their own path. This girl obviously had.
"Did you work on a lot of cars?" she asked Charlie, who nodded.
"I worked by the coast for a time, so mainly I was working on ships, though. For most people, it takes a long time, but I can make minor repairs from the outside without taking it out of the water," she boasted, putting her hands behind her head with a sly grin as if she had something special that only she knew about. She sighed casually, no…she sighed as if she were pretending to be casual, but something was off. The girl grinned to her to see if Blaze would notice what she was trying to hint at. Blaze stared at her, wondering what she was supposed to notice.
It irked her how up front the girl was being about herself. How was Blaze supposed to guess what was so special about her? Why did it matter if she already knew she was proficient at repairing a ship? Obviously, it meant the girl wanted her to know it, but why? Blaze scanned the girl with her eyes, but could find nothing out of the ordinary, until she noticed something dark under the girl's ears, hidden by the hair covering her neck.
Blaze scooted forward toward the girl and pushed her hair back, suddenly more curious than cautious about what the girl may be hiding. Charlie didn't seem to mind, and she kept that smug smile on her face while Blaze looked more closely at her neck. There were slits on either side, and she could open them and close them at will. That's when Blaze realized that Charlie could breathe through them. She scooted back quickly, not sure what to say. Did Charlie always begin conversations like this? How did she know that she could trust Blaze not to turn her into the police or call some lab? Well Blaze wouldn't do that, but she'd had others do it to her before, so she took precautions with whom she shared her wings.
"Why would you show me?" Blaze sat across from her with her jaw unhinged after she spoke. She still could not believe her eyes. She had never seen another mutant before in her life that was outside of a laboratory. She was almost terrified that someone passing by their boxcar room would see the gills and bring them in for questioning. There'd be no hiding her wings if that happened. Was the girl trying to get them killed?
"Something tells me we're not so different," Charlie replied slyly with an eyebrow raised. Before Blaze could reply with "I don't know what you're talking about" or a simple "no," the girl held up a feather that had been on the ground of the boxcar. It took Blaze only a split second to realize it was hers. Her heart stopped in that moment, but when it jumped back into rhythm, so her body jumped into action.
Blaze lowered the curtains to the room quickly to prevent anyone from peering in. She mentally prepared herself for a fight, but she hoped that the girl was a mutant by chance and not one of the laboratory experiments trained to retrieve her and other renegades. Everything that Cole taught her was still fresh in her mind, but she had never used the training in real life. She wondered if the girl would really introduce herself like that if she was meaning to bring her to a lab. Charlie noticed that Blaze had not taken her eyes off of her since she held up the feather, so she dropped it.
"I mean you no harm," Charlie chose her words carefully.
"Who are you really?" Blaze accused, suspecting that the story she had told before was false. If people found out who Charlie was, would they let her be a mechanic of ships, or would they contact the police? In Blaze's experience, it was always the latter of the two. Charlie raised her hands slowly to show that there was nothing in them.
"Scout's honour, my name is Charlie, I'm the baby of three children, maybe more, my parents may have misplaced a few, but they're all boys and I'm the only girl. I'm almost sixteen, my parents left us a substantial amount of money in their will and I've been independent for a long time now but I have a caretaker since according to some areas of the world I'm not a legal adult yet. His name is Roy, and he's pretty cool. I'm not following you. My favourite colour is deep ocean blue, I enjoy long walks on the beach but I'd rather swim than walk, I've been called Ariel from the Little Mermaid but I haven't seen that movie so I don't know what it means. Do you?" Charlie said all in one breath. Her slow movement but quick voice confused Blaze, and she couldn't wrap her head around half of the answers that were given. The girl stared back at her, wondering what her response would be. Blaze tried to process everything the girl had just said, but it was a lot to handle. Charlie had smiled when she said the last bit, from her favourite colour onwards. She seemed innocent enough. Blaze let go of the wiring knife that was in her coat pocket, and sat down across from Charlie once more as Charlie lowered her hands. What had she planned to do, poke her with a wiring tool? Granted, the tool was sharp. Still, it seemed like a childish gesture, and she was thankful that she hadn't removed the knife from her pocket.
"What about you?" Charlie asked, peering at her again with her head cocked to the side, trying to figure out why Blaze was now avoiding her gaze. Blaze was only embarrassed for a moment before deciding that she'd trust the girl in front of her, at least for now. Being alone wasn't the best option when people were after her.
"What do you mean?" Blaze asked. Did Charlie expect her to open her life up to her?
"You said you were in Italy. What was it like? Did you meet any cute Italian boys?" Charlie asked. She swung her feet from the seat like a child and clung to the sides of her chair, waiting expectantly for her.
"Er," Blaze wasn't sure how to respond. She'd never talked about boys with anyone before. And who was Cole to her, exactly? Protector, friend, traveling companion, and someone who she cared about. She shook her head, and responded,
"I wasn't there for long." At least the statement was honest, even if her mind was warring with itself. She had to get the subject onto something else. Maybe this was her chance to share herself to someone openly without being scared of being turned in. She had always been good about talking about who she was in the Backstreets to the other outcasts, but she didn't go into details about where she came from. Nobody there did.
"My name's Blaze. I don't know if I have family out there or if I was just a test tube baby. I was raised in a lab and forced into physically and mentally challenging tests until I'd collapse. I've escaped a few times, but they always find me. I left my friends in Italy to protect them. I always end up being on my own because it's safer that way for the people I love," Blaze admitted. She had never been so blunt about her past in her life, and she felt cold once she said it, as though her past was reaching toward her with icy fingers. Charlie stared at her for a moment, but it wasn't a horrified stare that she sometimes got when opening up to someone. Not that she dared to open up to many people.
"Well, consider yourself no longer alone. Nevermore," Charlie offered her a hand, and Blaze extended her own to meet it. Knowing that there was another mutant around made her feel less like an outcast or freak, she realized. Was she just clinging to Cole because he was something as different as she was? No, there was something more to it than that. Maybe he'd keep his promise and find her in a few weeks. In the meantime, she'd get to know Charlie a bit more. It appeared that the number of friends she had tripled in the past few months. Then again, she doubted her enemies had vanished or depleted in number either. She sighed and leaned back as she listened to one of Charlie's stories about running from an angry gorilla in Uganda. Charlie's stories were unique and bizarre, but Blaze found them comforting nonetheless.
Back in Italy, Flynn was making way to get the Gypsy's Treasure repaired. He couldn't do that in Cole's hometown, and had to sail it up the coast a bit. He had told Cole that he'd be back soon, though. He worried about that boy. The weight he carried seemed heavy compared to Flynn's own, but then again, Flynn never let anything get to him. He knew he was adopted, but he was never hurt that his original parents gave him up. Instead he considered himself blessed to have a stellar father and a ship that could take him anywhere he dreamed of going. Where that was, exactly, he wasn't sure. Right now, he needed to be at Cole's side to pull him out of the rut he called the life of an Azori.
When he visited Cole before heading out, he was sitting dutifully at his brother's side listlessly. Usually his eyes seemed cold, but now, Flynn could have sworn he saw a flicker of life and fire in the boy's eyes. He could tell that the interaction with Blaze was still on his mind. Flynn sighed and sat across from him with Ty's unconscious body between them. It wasn't an easy thing, to get off the curse. Flynn had seen it done from afar, and found it absolutely terrifying, even to watch.
"You need to lighten up," he advised Cole. He pulled a juggling ball out of his pocket and tossed it to Cole. Flynn never went anywhere without a set of juggling balls somewhere on his person, or at least some trinket he could play or perform with if he were bored or tight on money. It wasn't always easy finding a crew for the Gypsy's Treasure, especially one that held his eccentric ways. So, during the offseason and when his crew retired or switched employment, he scavenged for money by street performing. It wasn't much, but it was enough to live by. Cole caught the ball with one hand and rolled it around his palm, not looking up from his brother's body. He had to monitor the boy's vitals, and he wasn't about to play games with Flynn to 'lighten up'.
"Listen, it's not like you two'll never see each other again. Anyway, there are many fish in the sea. You've had girls before, so don't pretend that—" Flynn tried to reason with him guy to guy. He knew Blaze was different from any other person around, especially to Cole, but thinking about her wasn't going to bring her back to him.
"Leave. You have to deal with your ship," Cole cut him off. Cole's voice had the dark, loveless Azori tone to it that always sent a shiver down Flynn's spine. He knew that Cole had always done his best to avoid his past and his family, but sometimes his family name seemed to fit him well.
"If you hold too tightly, you'll crush the bird's wings," Flynn reasoned with him, not giving up. It was a loose metaphor for the situation, but Cole got his point. He worried about her, but his fear was getting the best of him now.
"Anyway, the scientists won't—"
"Do you think for one second I believe she can't handle the scientists?" Cole asked, his voice so deadly that Flynn thought he was talking to the devil himself.
"No, she's stronger than they are in every way," Cole went on. Flynn was surprised that Cole showed such confidence in her when not long before, he was speaking about how she needed protection. Then why was he worried? What was the only thing that could concern Cole, aside from losing Blaze to the scientists? Losing Blaze. Suddenly it hit him—Flynn felt silly for not catching onto it before.
"They were watching, weren't they? Your family?" Flynn asked in a choked voice. Even speaking about the Azoris was hard for him to do. Cole nodded, but he still didn't look up at him. Cole's head hung from his shoulders, as if it was his fault his family members were watching them. Watching Blaze.
"Since day one. They figured out I was back, and I could sense them on us when we were walking back to the ship," he replied, and Flynn was relieved that his voice had become somewhat less toxic and more eerily calm. Flynn never thought he'd be thankful for an Azori's calmness as Cole was portraying at the moment. He wondered what was going on in that head of his.
"What did they do to the others? I know you don't keep friends for very long. What happens to those you care for," Flynn asked. He'd never been allowed to spend more than a few days on land with Cole at a time, but every time he met him, Cole always ushered him away.
"They find us. They restrain me and make me watch as they tear them to shreds. I didn't want that to happen to her too," Cole replied, finally looking him in the eye. The tension in his voice indicated to Flynn that it was painful for him to even think about. His eyes were tearless and not even a little bit glassy, but he had never seen Cole cry, so he wasn't thrown off by it. The others that Flynn was asking about were other girls, other friends, and other traveling companions Cole had made in his childhood. Though they were few, each one of them was seared into Cole's mind. And each one of their blood was on Cole's hands. Flynn was as speechless as the day he found out that Cole was an Azori and what that meant. He couldn't imagine what it was like to be powerless to save the people he loved. A few minutes went by of utter silence. Flynn wasn't often at a loss for words or ability to cheer people up, but even hearing of Cole's life pulled his heart toward the ground. How could he make things right if they were twisted and knotted like a rope that would take years, or a very sharp blade, to undo?
"I'm…sorry, Cole," Flynn whispered. Cole looked back down at his brother, wondering if he had done the right thing by sending her off. He realized that despite the fact he often held her when she was in danger or scared, it was him who relied more on her than her on him. She could make friends easily, even with and especially because of her wings, if she found the right crowd. He knew that she'd take the lab out of the game somehow. He could count his living friends on one hand, and they were disappearing or falling away from him every second. Whenever he was around them, they were in trouble. His family made it a point to remind him that he was going to head the Azoris one day, that he'd 'see the way' and come back to them, and more than anything, that Azoris did not love. They didn't have a heart, and they lived for bringing death to others.
"No biggie, right? It could be worse. I could be in love with a gypsy who's always dancing five steps ahead of me," Cole shrugged and looked up again with a pitiful smile and a wink. It was a light stab at Flynn, but it wasn't meant to do any harm. Flynn realized that he was attempting to mimic Flynn's own lightheartedness, even in the darkest of times. Maybe the boy had a sense of humour and wasn't helpless after all. Flynn smiled, and it was a small, sad smile, but it was at the same time, full of hope that things would get better for his friend. He was happy when there was happiness and hope around him.
"Mr Cole Azori, there may be hope for you yet," Flynn replied. He stood up and walked around the bed. Cole stood up and put his hand on Flynn's shoulder.
"Don't get yourself in any trouble, pirate," Cole said, as if giving a child a sturdy warning. Flynn pulled him into a tight hug and then pulled away so he could put Cole's knife and gun on the bedside table in case he needed them on the journey. He had left them on the ship when Blaze had left.
"I'll be back in a week or so," Flynn grinned, and then gave him a small slap in the face.
"Stay alive while I'm gone, please? I don't want to have to carry an unwelcome message to your girlfriend." And with that, he was gone.