Jay has a good eye.
She always has, since she was little. A sharp eye, piercing blue, following piercing arrows during her practice.
She's always been sharp, intelligent, observant, seeing, tracking. She noticed things others didn't with ease, she looked where most eyes didn't, she found what others lost.
She sees cracks in foundations in buildings, cracks in facades in people, cracks in the scorched earth left in the wake of destruction in the name of growth.
Jay has a good eye.
She's always been able to find the roots of things- of people, even. Oh, Jay is good at looking at people.
She remembers meeting Chip for the first time, in her mother's bar.
His face was boyish, his hair a mess, his cheeks smudged. His clothes were old and worn, his boots ill-fitted and scuffed, his hands calloused and scarred. His eyes were brown and bright.
More than that, though, his eyes were haunted.
Behind his mask he wore, whether he knew it as a mask or not, was a violent fear that lived in them, something dead and rotting that was eating away at him.
The feeling was so profound, so visceral, she could practically see flies spewing from his mouth every time he talked, though that may have just been his lying- It was hard to tell with Chip.
Anybody could tell from looking at Chip he was insecure, but she could tell just how much deeper that festering wound went.
But he was still moving, still fighting, still working through that ache, through whatever pain filled him up and suffocated him, and she admired him for that.
She still does.
So she went with him, on a scummy excuse of a boat that barely fit the two of them comfortably, and then, sailing on blue waters with a blue sky above them, her blue eyes found a blue face, and a scarred, calloused hand, nearly without thinking, reached out towards the person in the water.
They nearly capsized the boat trying to haul him onto it, but he was loud and excitable and proclaimed his name as a mantra he had clearly said many times before, and that she could attest to having heard many times since.
The boat was more than a little crowded after that.
It felt a little bit more like home, too.
But she had a mission, and she would analyze and do what she had to.
Her first impression of Gillian was loud.
Everything he did, he did with gusto, with pride, with confidence, and with more than a little confusion for those first few months.
She had very little idea what the Undersea was like before she met Gillian, and with how little he would talk about it beyond general statements or vague anecdotes, she didn't learn much more about it for a long while after.
Her second impression of Gillian was guilt- sacrificial, even, willing to take any hit, to fight any battle, to do whatever it took to protect even at the cost of himself- especially at the cost of himself, it almost seemed sometimes.
Gillion was loud and proud, but only on the outside.
She saw how stormy his ocean blue eyes would get, hardened with a steel that was forged within him.
She saw his firm grip on his blade, his bloodstained lips in battle from when he was too injured to have even kept moving much less still fight, his unwavering hands.
She saw that he almost never, never ever, took off his armor, even when sleeping, for several months when they first met.
He was always ready for a fight, even if he didn't want one.
Like a weapon without a sheath, a weapon forcibly sharpened.
It came to little surprise to her when he told her and Chip that his destiny was told to him that he was a weapon, and that he had been brought up as such.
Little surprise, yes, but much horror.
A weapon without a sheath.
A champion without victory.
A boy without a home.
...It explained a lot.
The 'training' he underwent sounded, frankly, inhumane.
She didn't know how old he had been when he started his training, but she knew it was young.
Far, far too young.
She didn't have the best childhood, she knew that, but compared to Gillion, or Chip? Her childhood seemed like a walk in the park.
She had plenty of food, a loving mother, some sort of support; she got to go to school, got to go back home, got to have some semblance of a normal childhood, even with her family being the way they were.
She had people who cared for her, at least in some capacity.
Who did Gillion and Chip have?
Gillion had his sister, at least for a time, and Pretzel. He had the Elders as well, and he flinches every time Chip or Jay bring them up, so they've learned to avoid the topic.
Chip didn't have anyone for years until the Black Rose Pirates, and didn't have anyone again for years after he lost them, and whatever he had going on with Price and his crew was bad enough Chip had apparently burnt Price's house down.
Jay had her mother as a constant support in her life, and her own sister, until.
Well.
She didn't really have a sister anymore, she supposed.
And her father left with her, absorbed in work, and before that he had never been the most present to begin with, obsessed with her training.
...In hindsight, maybe she didn't really have the best childhood either. But she at least had something. She had something.
Jay has always been observant.
She's always seen what others missed, the things they don't see about themselves that she analyzes and catalogues and remembers.
It's helped her survive, and it's helped her thrive.
She sees a target, and she'll hit it.
She sees her own reflection, staring back at her with those blue eyes that always pierce through any mask or facade.
She sees herself.
She sees determination in her own eyes.
She sees sadness, sees grief.
She sees a seeping sense of anger that resonates through her core with a fire brighter than the sun that she recognizes from her father.
She sees her sister's eyes staring back at her with an emotion that, for once, she can't read, can't analyze, can't catalogue.
She looks away before she can convince herself it's disappointment.
It's always easier to look at others, she's noticed.
It's quite a lot harder to find those flaws in the self.
Reflecting only works so long as you're willing to see whatever stares back.
Maybe someday, she'll be able to meet her own gaze without getting pierced.
