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She lunged at him like a bullet, then – he remembers. How his hand slid of the handle of his dagger, no longer useful when the kid had not meant to be malicious. She just threw herself at him because she had not known any better.
Made him fall to the ground, to his and the others’ equal surprise. He remembers that too. How stunned he was, to have her wrap herself around him like he had not just intended to stick the dagger to her throat. But there was no use of that, then. Her sister had already run away. And she had left her, she had left her, she had left her – like the little girl was chanting in sniffles against his waistcoat.
As she cried, he put her arms around her. It was so odd, back then – to be holding something that was neither dead nor dying. He had not done that for so long he had forgotten what it felt like. She taught him that, again. Curling up in his embrace, unafraid of him. Something living, and so vulnerable.
He remembers.
She is drawing now. Her little creations. Neither monkeys nor humans, not even robots. She isn’t sure what they are, not any more than he is. Whenever he asks, she tells him she has “just thought them up like that.” They come and go, like most of her designs. While he hopes some of them will finally become applicable, he does not wish to hurry her. He wants her to burn bright but at the pace that suits her. May it be another few years before she is of any help. May it even be a decade. He will wait.
Her hair is hanging in braids, getting longer and longer each month.
“It’s impractical in battle,” Sevika once pointed out.
“Not if I do THAT!” she laughed, throwing one of her braids around Sevika’s gun. It got caught around it instead of letting her slide the weapon out and steal it, but her point was made.
She refuses to have it cut.
“Jinx has her hair long,” she argues. She started calling herself that last year. At first – changing it every other day. He had learnt to ask whether it was Jinx or Powder on any given day.
“Which one it is today?” became their own good morning. He asks her when she comes to wake him up and she grins at him as she chooses it. Jinx, more and more these days.
“Jinx it is, then. Good morning, Jinx,” he says, as she nuzzles into his cheek. Sometimes they stay like that until the actual morning comes. She tells him she cannot sleep. He understands it so well he does not even complain whenever it results in being woken up an hour or two after a middle-of-the-night meeting.
Today is a Jinx type of day, and one they have both slept unusually well on. He wishes to go back a few hours, to the morning, when the two of them were eating and Sevika had not yet reached him with any morning news. What a pity he cannot.
He runs a hand over Jinx’s hair, patting down a lock that has escaped the hairdo.
She turns her head to him, a crayon in her hand. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. I came to see how you’re doing.” It isn’t entirely true. He is having trouble pacifying those few who miss Vander. That is why he has come here at this hour – because her presence calms him, and most of all he needs calm.
But she seems to sense that, through his lie. Or maybe she will simply use any opportunity she has to squeeze his lungs out with a hug. “Sure,” she says now, getting up. The crayon clatters onto the desk.
Without another word, she wraps her arms around him. He returns the embrace, stroking the top of her head; holds her, like something living, and trusting. His Jinx.