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Jack gets anxious if they stay in one place for too long.
It’s not a problem. Enid has always liked travelling, and it’s not like business gets much worse than it already is if they move on frequently. The boy is worth it, anyway. He’s a good kid. Strange, but good, so empathic it hurts him more often than not. She’s never wanted children, but he makes it make sense.
When they stay too long in one place, live out of the same rooms for too many days in a row, he disappears into himself. He’s gotten almost talkative, out on the road, but staying still too long makes him quiet again.
He needs to be moving, needs to sleep under open skies to relax. Crowds hurt him, but quiet rooms scare him, and all Enid can do is take him away from it all so he can breathe.
She tastes rage at those moments, ice cold and foul at the back of her teeth, but all she can do with that is huff angrily and unravel it. She can’t do anything to the woman who stole her boy’s peace, and even if she could, that wouldn’t get it back.
This rage is the only thing she ever tries to hide from him, and it is how she learns there’s no point in trying.
Hiding her emotions has never been hard, for Enid. She’s rather had the opposite problem, being mistaken for surly when she’s joyful, or indifferent when she’s seething with rage. She uses it as a strength when necessary, as a weapon against those who may hurt her, but it’s made it hard to relate to people.
Jack, though, Jack sees right through her. He relaxes when she’s calm and goes quiet when she’s angry, even though it isn’t at him, and no matter how hard she hides it. He cuts through the shit, and sees straight to the heart of her.
It doesn’t take her long to realize it’s not normal.
Being perceptive is one thing, this is quite another. Jack knows things he couldn’t possibly know, sees things she knows aren’t visible. She’s not the only person who can’t hide from him, and she wonders, watching him, if he hasn’t had the opposite problem from her. Not being able to show yourself and not being able to hide are two very different things, but equally bad, she supposes, when it comes to making friends.
She doesn’t push, curious as she is. She knows better than that. But she does ask, just the once.
“Y’can tell, can’t you? When I’m angry,” she asks him one morning, while they’re on the move, sitting at the front of the cart with the excuse of watching the road for not looking at each other. Hard conversations are better that way.
Jack doesn’t answer with words, but he freezes, a little flinch that makes her heart bleed.
“Y’know I’m not angry at you, love, not ever. Ye ‘aven’t done a thing wrong since I met ye,” she’s fast to assure him.
“I know that,” he says, like the concept of it startles him.
“Well, good.” She lets the conversation breathe for a moment, glancing over to see him looking smaller than usual, but not particularly scared. “Ye don’t have t’tell me, ‘s long as it don’t hurt ye. I won’t be angry if y’do or not.”
She’ll leave it at that if he wants, not sure whether or not he’ll even answer. The important thing is that he knows. Some day he might tell her, and maybe he won’t. Until then, she will lend him all the peace she has to give.