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Silco knows the moment when Vander hangs his gauntlets in that bar he keeps as a fortress that his brother is a changed man: not the rebel, not the fighter, not the man willing to kill his closest friend.
Silco knows, war changes people. They were supposed to be siblings, and now Silco is a dead man and Vander is a peacemaker. War weakens, he knows from how he now leaves himself open on his left side, all because of a faulty, tainted eye. War weakens, he knows from how Vander has learnt to care and love, and bow his head and talk in a low, slow voice.
Silco knows, time changes people too. He has waited for so long that his hate has dwindled to almost nothing, just the flares of pain in his body, his scar that does not fully hides. When he stares the man that has wronged him all that time ago, and all throughout the years separating them too, he almost feels nothing at all, just the elation of finally having caught up with the weeping wound in the timeline of his life. Vander, each second ticking away with each breath he takes, with each desperate sweep checking on his children, is running out of time. After all, Silco was simply bidding his time, lying in wait.
Silco knows, that the love for a sibling can survive hate, can live longer than respect or worry, but cannot withstand betrayal. The oldest tale, the truest as well: you may share a womb, a bond – but once someone turns on you, turns their back on you, it’s game over. Brothers and sisters make the most miserable of enemies, they know you so well after all. They can dig so deep and pick at hurts you didn’t even know you had. They can take one look and understand the undoing weakness by the way your body stands, by the blood flow in your body. That’s why, he swears, he’ll never be the same as his brother.
So Silco knows, that he is strongest when alone. That does not mean that when a little powder added spark to herself and turned herself into a jinx, he knew how to do anything but stare in awe, want to get closer, if only to see better. Others stared in awe too: at him though.
His eye hurts, the dark straining it further. They never do when looking at her. How to explain to the underground, to his surviving city, that he’d sell them all, gut them all, wreck all their futures, all their loves, for the pleasure and safety of his daughter?
Of course, they don’t understand. Just as he didn’t understand his brother, when he has stared at a pink-haired girl and made her his world, his successor. There’s nothing as undoing as a daughter. But tucked away, in the corners of his own office, knowing all his secrets, building him dreams and power, is his most precious treasure. She has held a weapon at his face a month in, and he has taken any blood drawn with the pride of a father seeing his daughter grow into herself.
Silco knows, that to accept peace once meant to be weak, just as he knows that to accept it now means to be strong. He was strong once, and he is so weak now.
Silco knows, from first-hand experience, that brotherhood, sisterhood will not survive other bonds. He will not give Jinx, for nothing at all – because she herself has chosen him, has made herself in his image; his perfect daughter, just as she is. He has heard it all, the critiques and the suspicions, and all fades away when her arms go around his neck, when she says his name. He has allowed the destruction of her entire world, and she has got on her knees in front of him and loved him, the only way she knew how. And it has been glorious, the best part of his life. When she looks at him, he’s not just a damned man, but someone who can also give, not only take. Someone who can and must protect, not only pain.
And Silco knows, Jinx is just like him. Even when she doesn’t want to accept it, even when she thinks she got him all figured out, even when she tires of her old man’s words – like daughters do. It doesn’t stop the doubt, it doesn’t stop the begging: she has never told him so, he has simply trusted fully and blindingly.
At that table, staring down the ghost of Jinx’s past, Silco is so unsure that he knows nothing at all. His fingers still work, at undoing her restraints – and he’s the fool who taught her the knots in the first place, and she’s a perfect student.
Silco knows, he’d jump in front of any bullet for her. He doesn’t have to, the bullet meets him where he is. This is only the second time in her life that she got on her knees for him, and just as once she asked for his love, without words, he now gives her his forgiveness, for which she didn’t know how to ask.
Yet, you can’t kill the snake without cutting its head.
Long live his legacy. The future cannot change in a human’s lifetime, but if he leaves it all in her hands, Silco knows it will all be as it should. After all, it would have been war regardless.
Silco knows he’s just the first casualty.
Silco knows Jinx will survive the war.
Like father, like daughter.