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The first time it happens, he nearly stabs her. It is only the sensation of small arms wrapping around his chest and a tearstained face smashing itself into his chest that stops him from wringing the intruder’s neck with a strength he doesn’t make a habit of showing.
“Powder?” He whispers into the air, soft sobs punctuating what would otherwise be perfect silence.
For a few minutes, only hiccups and loud, snorting sniffles meet his ears.
Eventually, she speaks.
“S- Suh- Silco,” she whimpers out, large blue eyes practically glowing in the dim moonlight as she looks up at him. “I-” She bawls, pressing her face back down into his chest as her hands curl up into tiny fists against his shoulderblades.
He is…at a loss. Doesn’t know what to do, for a few moments, can only lay there, frozen and shirtless and wet-chested as the little girl he’d taken in mere days ago sobs into his chest with all of her might. Hesitantly, he raises one hand and places it upon her upper back, gently patting her before beginning to stroke down her spine in what he prays are soothing motions.
“Shh…quiet, child,” he murmurs, a bewildered blankness spread clear across his face. Still half-asleep - but rapidly awakening more and more - and unused to people being so vulnerable around him, he knows nothing but to continue petting her like this in the vain hopes that it does something.
For a time, they lay together like this, with Powder curled up tight against Silco’s body as she wails, then cries, then sniffles. Then, with one, last, trembling inhale, she looks back up from the other’s chest and looks at him with a gaze that penetrates his very soul.
She looks so innocent, in all of her pain. With her wobbling bottom lip and the wetness of her lower lashes, she is the perfect picture of a child that has suffered emotional torments far beyond her years.
“S-Silco,” she says, voice wavering. “I saw them, heard them,” she whimpers out, her chest heaving like she’s either about to throw up or start sobbing afresh. “I-I didn’t- it was an accident, I just- I just wanted to help with the mission, i-it wasn’t supposed to-” Powder hiccups again, squeezing her eyes shut as she shakes her head frantically, like she’s trying to remove something from deep inside of it. Short nails scratch at Silco’s back as her hands clench and unclench. When her eyes reopen, there is terror, fresh and sharp and visceral, shining within them. “Do you hear them too?” She whispers the question out, like she doesn’t want him to say yes, like she wants him to say yes, like she doesn’t want him to answer and like she’ll die if he doesn’t.
He thought that his heart had been deadened by years of being treated like a blemish upon society, but something inside it creaks as he purses his lips, hesitates for a moment before he shakes his head lightly. “No, Powder.” He pats her back again, the motion stiff and awkward. “What are they saying to you?” That thing in his heart creaks again as he watches her expression fall, watches it plummet.
“They- M-Mylo-” She chokes the name out like it’d been stuck in her throat from the moment she’d stumbled into his room, eyes blurred with tears. “-h-he and Claggor, they both- it was my fault, I- I jinxed the mission!” Powder cries out, her voice cracking as vitriol stains her tone, harsh and self-loathing. “Vi was right to leave me, she was right, Silco, I-I’m nothing but a- a jinx, that’s all I’ve ever been and that’s all I’m ever going to b-”
“Silence, child,” Silco says, brows furrowed as a frown curves his lips downwards. “You may be many things, but a jinx is not one of them.” He caresses her back again, notes that the action seems to finally be starting to relax the near-hysterical girl.
“How do you know? How do you know that I’m not going to-” She drags a forearm over the entirety of her face to wipe it, succeeding only in smearing tears and snot over both her arm and her face. “-to get you killed too?” Her voice is so small, now, quiet and terrified and open.
“I don’t.” The hand comes up to start running its fingers through her messy hair, gently combing through it. “But when I do die, it won’t be because you ‘jinxed’ anything, Powder. It will be because I am a wanted man. My days became numbered the moment I started seeking power.”
Powder frowns at that, her lip wobbling again as new tears come to her eyes. “Well, I’m not gonna let you,” she huffs out, smushing her cheek up against his damp chest. “You’re nice.”
He doesn’t get a chance to respond as, not more than ten seconds later, a loud, grating snore echoes throughout his room and he is left laying in bed with a dead-asleep child cuddled up against his side.
That night, Silco finds that he still has a heart left, and that he is in immediate danger of having it stolen by this peculiar little girl that he’d decided to save at the very last second.
The second time it happens, Silco jerks awake, blinks bleary eyes and begins to prepare himself for a murder attempt, but, this time, he hesitates to jump into action, waits for something.
Mere moments later, he is met with the feeling of a small, warm body pressing itself up against his own, followed by the sensation of wetness against his chest as Powder’s body quakes against him.
He waits for her to cry herself out, getting the feeling that this is going to become a routine for them. She’s interrupting his sleep, he should be irritated; he’s a busy man, he needs his sleep, so why isn’t he upset with her? Why does he want, more than anything, for her demons to leave her be?
When the sniffles abate, he murmurs out, “are-” and shit he forgot their names already, “-they giving you trouble again, Powder?” The same as last time, one hand comes up to begin brushing along her spine with fluid, gentle movements.
She nods, smearing tears and mucous into his skin. Doesn’t speak for a few minutes as her breathing slowly, slowly begins to even out. Eventually, she raises her head, locking eyes with him as she sighs out, “they’re telling me worse things, n-now.” Her gaze darts to an empty spot about four and a half feet up on the wall and her eyes narrow, fly open wide, fill with tears before she hurriedly presses her face back into Silco’s chest. When her voice comes out next, it’s muffled by his body. “Keep telling me to…to hurt myself. To do evil things.” Powder looks back up at him, brows furrowed with anxious terror. “I don’t think they like you, Silco,” she says with a wavering voice. “They don’t like that you make me feel less bad.”
Silco presses his lips tightly together, struck with unsureness for the third time since he’s met Powder. He settles for moving to rub her shoulder, his thumb moving in light circles against the fragile skin there.
“I think,” she says, sniffling, “that they think you’re bad, because you make me feel good about me, a-and I’m not supposed to feel good about me. They keep calling me a big girl word that they used to use when they thought I wasn’t listening. They keep calling me a ‘stupid fuckup jinx’, and I don’t think that stupid fuckup jinxes are supposed to feel good about themselves.”
And the sound of such a little girl’s voice saying the word ‘fuck’ almost makes Silco want to bark out a laugh, but something holds it back. Something about Powder brings out the softness within him that he thought had left him, makes him want to take her feelings into account and, so, instead, he moves to wipe her tears away and says with a firm tone, “Powder. You aren’t a ‘stupid fuckup jinx’.” He hesitates for a few moments, painfully aware of how rusty he’s gotten with…well, with being not cruel. “You’re perfect. Tell those silly little voices in your head that you are, every time they give you grief.”
And she lights up at his words, nods frantically as a shy little smile curls across her lips. “Okay, I…I will, Silco.” She hugs him tightly, presses a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you.”
He flinches back slightly at the kiss, shock flashing across his features for a few moments. Insecurity paints itself upon Powder’s face, and she looks down and away from him, frowning deeply.
“I- I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have- I was going to ask if I could sleep here, tonight, but, I-”
“Stay, child.” It slips out without him really even meaning to say it, and he already knows that she’s going to keep him up all night, because Powder sleeps like she’s being tortured with the way that she kicks and snores and thrashes, but as he looks at her face and the way that she gazes at him with relieved adoration, he already knows that it’s going to be worth the fatigue in the morning.
The fifth time it happens, Powder calls him ‘daddy’.
When he wakes up to the sight of moonlight and the sound of bare feet slapping against the hardwood floors of his bedroom, he knows that this is another bad night for Powder. He pulls his sheets back for her, pats the side of his bed as he brings one hand up to cover his yawning mouth.
She practically launches herself into his bed. She has grown more used to the apparitions of her dead friends tormenting her, is used enough to them that she no longer arrives in hysterics, but tears are still leaking from her eyes as she wipes her face with Silco’s chest and she mutters something into the now-wet skin there.
“Powder, I can’t hear you from down there.” Silco’s hand comes up to run itself through cerulean strands, scratching gently at the base of her neck now and again.
A shuddering, content sigh leaves her before she pulls her head back, eyes wide and nervous. “I…I can see them more clearly, now, Silco,” she says, a hint of fear creeping into her tone. “What if this never gets better?” She has grown enough, now, to know to use Silco’s sheets instead of her arm to wipe her face. “Wh-What if they just keep getting worse and worse, forever?”
It should bother him, that there are now tears and snot all over his hard-earned silken sheets, and, yet, instead he takes a corner of them and dabs away the spots that she missed.
“Perhaps they will, child,” he says softly, resuming his stroking of her hair. “Maybe they will get better, maybe they will remain as they are now, or maybe they will get worse, but only time will really tell.” He leans down to press a gentle kiss to the crown of her head. “No matter what path they may take, though, you will find a way to make it through.” He places one crooked finger up underneath her chin, tilts her head up so that their gazes meet. “We will find a way to make it through.”
Powder smiles, the expression tremulous and grateful, as she nods. “Y-Yeah…yeah, you’re right.” Her head whips to the side, something dark and mean entering her eyes as she glares at a corner of the room. “You’re wrong, Mylo,” she snarls out, teeth bared as her hackles start to raise.
“Hush, child,” Silco says placatingly, carefully turning her head back towards himself before he continues petting her hair. “Get some sleep. You came here later than you usually do.”
She takes a shaky, deep breath, holding it for a moment before letting it out in one great big puff of air. “I didn’t want to bother you,” she mumbles, laying on her side facing him before she slips one arm up underneath him and drapes the other over his chest. “So I kept waiting for them to go away, but they just kept…kept getting louder. More real.” Powder’s mouth stretches open wide as she yawns, blinks sleepily.
“Powder, you could never bother me.” Silco shifts slightly in an attempt to spare Powder’s arm from the inevitable end wherein it goes numb from being trapped underneath him, but she just readjusts herself and snuggles up closer against him and he decides that it’s a hopeless task. “Did you not learn that the first time you came to my bedroom?” A small smile comes to his voice. “I don’t allow just anyone into my bedroom in the dead of the night.”
Powder snickers, getting halfway through a nod before another yawn breaks it off. “Mhm…I guess you’re right. G’night, daddy,” she slurs out, a bone-rattlingly loud snore following soon after.
“D-” He chokes on his own spit, tries to cough with minimal jarring to Powder’s body - though, really, he needn’t have bothered; the girl could sleep through a hurricane - as he attempts to process what Powder had just called him. After a few minutes spent frantically running in mental circles trying to figure out how best to let her down gently that he doesn’t view her that way, he spends several more minutes thinking about the fact that he…sort of really does, actually.
Once he’s caught his breath, he lets out a low sigh. He supposes he’s a father, now.
The seventeenth time it happens, it isn’t Powder who climbs into bed with him, but Jinx.
Their little late-night get-togethers had gotten more and more spaced-apart as Powder had learned to live with the mockeries of her dead friends taunting and tormenting her every waking second of her life. They had, eventually, reached a peak, but, after a while, they had both come to the realization that that peak had been reached and, save for a few nights where Powder had still struggled heavily with coping with them, Silco hasn’t seen Powder in his bedroom at night since.
But there’s something about tonight that’s messing with his ability to sleep, some feeling of expectation, and he’s not particularly certain of what it is up until the nearly-imperceptible rapping of knuckles against wood meets his ears and his dual-toned gaze turns to meet Pow- Jinx.
“Hey, Silco,” she says, a heavy frown marring her features.
Without a word, he pulls back his blankets, pats the unoccupied side of his bed. Distantly, snidely, a voice in his mind mutters at him that fathers don’t lay in bed with their daughters past a certain age, but he pays it no mind.
‘There’s nothing strange about this, about us,’ Silco tells himself, tells that voice. ‘Jinx needs me. I won’t let her down.’
She sidles over with an awkward, shuffling gait, eyes darting around every now and again. Occasionally, a plethora of expressions will flash over her face within a split second, every new barrage of them intense and enhanced and different. Silco hasn’t seen her like this in years.
“Come here, precious,” he says, sitting up and leaning against the headboard.
Jinx crawls into his bed, sitting next to him and laying her head on his shoulder as she lets out a shaky sigh, the kind of sigh that sounds like she’s about to start screaming or sobbing or both. “They’re mad, Silco,” she whispers.
“Tell me why,” Silco responds, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and squeezing her tightly against himself.
“They-” She swallows, loudly. “They’re not happy that I took the name ‘Jinx’. Said I stole it. Said that-” Suddenly, her gaze sharpens into a glare and she screams at the wall, “fuck you too, Claggor!” before she slumps bonelessly and continues, “-that because you helped me, you’re gonna get jinxed too. That I killed you. Signed your death warrant.” Jinx sniffles, her lower lip quivering as she turns to look up at him, those big, blue eyes damning him. “I- I can’t lose you, Silco.”
And he is abruptly made keenly aware of the fact that there is a certain thing there, because it passes between them through the gaze connecting them, and he’s not sure of how long it’s been there, doesn’t know if it had just now bloomed or if it had been slowly building up over the years of nights spent holding each other, but it flushes his cheeks pink and freezes him in place, draws his eyes to her lips for a split second too long and he doesn’t know who is leaning towards who, only that they are drawing closer and closer together, and-
-and he jerks back, breathless as he says, softly, “Jinx, you won’t lose me. Not now, not ever,” refusing to address what had just nearly shattered their world.
Jinx nods, humming out a wordless sound of assent as she stares down at the foot of the bed.
“...do you need to sleep with-” He stumbles over his words, sees an innuendo where he shouldn’t, before continuing with, “-sleep here tonight?”
If she notices, she says nothing about it, just nods again and turns to press her face into the crook of his neck. “Yeah-huh. ‘M sorry. I know I almost killed you the last time I was-” She flinches slightly, frowning for a moment as her ears twitch. “-the last time they were bothering me.”
Silco lets out a light chuckle, hopes, prays that it diffuses the strange tension that has built up between the two of them. “Some things never change, Jinx. You’ve always been a tumultuous sleeper.” He presses a kiss to the top of her head. “I wouldn’t change anything about you for the world.” He is met with a snore and the sensation of drool running from Jinx’s open mouth onto his collarbone.
When they first kiss, he has lost count of how many times she’s snuck into his room.
He is well-trained, by now, to recognize her by the sound of her footsteps upon his bedroom floor. He’s awake before she knocks on the door, hides his smile at the way that she still feels the need to ask to enter. She’s never needed to ask.
“Silco?” Her voice is hushed, strained, almost.
“I’m awake, Jinx,” he says, voice low and gruff with the last remnants of sleep. Silco pushes himself upright, sits up against the headboard of his bed as he pulls the blanket to the side and pats his bed. “What’s wrong?”
Jinx doesn’t move from her position by the door, keeps one hand on the doorframe as she stares down at the floor with an apprehensive little frown curled across those pretty little lips. “I…” Her voice peters out like she loses her nerve halfway through the word.
Now it’s Silco’s turn to frown. “Jinx?”
Silence rings throughout the room for a few moments before Jinx shakes her head - hisses out a string of words that Silco can’t make out from across the room - and starts to turn around. “No, I- I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have- I should let you sleep. I’m sorry.”
“Jinx.” It isn’t often that he has to whip out the ‘dad Silco’ voice - as Powder had once dubbed it - but the effect it has upon Jinx is instantaneous: She freezes in place, hunches over slightly, turns back around to face him with the look of a cowed dog. The shadows of doubt are still haunting her features, but she doesn’t seem to be drawn up as tight, doesn’t look like she’s in immediate danger of bolting anymore.
“I-It’s nothing, I just…” She lets out an exasperated sigh, running her hands over her face. “Claggor, for just- would you- let me TALK goddammit!”
“Precious, come here,” Silco says, brows furrowing with worry.
Hesitantly, she pads over, plopping herself down on the edge of the mattress and seemingly unable to face him.
He scoots over closer and takes out one of the bolts in her hair, begins combing out the braid there with careful strokes of his fingers as he waits for her to speak.
“...Silco, do you remember when, uh…” Jinx scowls, slouching further. “Man, now I know how you felt the first time I came in here. Emotions are hard,” she huffs out.
Despite himself, he lets loose a low laugh. “Yes, they are, Jinx.” He leans in to kiss the back of her head. “But I loved relearning them with you.”
Rather than relaxing her, though, the action causes her to tense right back up, her spine straightening out and the muscles in her neck bulging slightly.
“Jinx?”
Silence.
“Jinx. I cannot help you if you won’t tell me what’s wr- mmph!”
And suddenly there is a teenager with a half-undone braid wrapped around him and her lips are pressed against his with virginal enthusiasm, kissing him like her life depends on it, and he is frozen stock-still for just a moment too long because Jinx rips herself away from him like she's been burned, hurriedly wipes his mouth before she starts backing away, tears filling her eyes.
“I-I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, fuck, I should’ve listened to them, I-I-I-”
But she doesn’t get a chance to run because Silco has stood up and he grabs her by the wrist, spins her around and presses her down into the bed on her back as he stares her down with a ferocious intensity that she has never seen in him before.
“Are you sure you want this, Jinx?”
She blinks once, twice. A tear rolls down the side of her face.
“More sure than I’ve ever been of anything in my entire life,” she breathes out, her voice hoarse and her cheeks tinged pink. “I’m sick, they told me I am, but, you,” Jinx says, straining to try and kiss him again but she can’t quite close the gap between the two of them, “you’re the only one in my life that I’ve ever wanted like this. I would kill for you, die for you, Silco. I love you.” When her eyes dart to the doorknob, they only narrow for a split second before they turn right back to meet Silco’s and adoration floods her gaze once again. “So either kick me out or let me kiss you.”
And he wishes that he could feel conflicted about it, he really does, but he’d known from that one, damning night that this was an inevitability. That, even if he hadn’t felt the same, he will always give his daughter what she wants, what she needs, but he cannot even begin to fathom the concept of not loving his daughter the way that she loves him. Can’t even begin to imagine a life where he isn’t just as obsessed with her as she is with him.
“I love you too, Jinx. More than you could ever, possibly know.” And with that, he releases her wrist, allows her to surge upwards to smash their lips together in an inexperienced kiss that almost definitely will leave them both bruised. Teeth knock together at first before Silco’s hand cups Jinx’s jaw, caresses her gently until the fire in her is tamed somewhat and she stops trying to get as close to him as possible and starts working her lips against his in her best imitation of his own lips’ movements. At the first prod of his tongue against her mouth, her eyes fly open from their half-lidded state as her lips fall open in shock, and he slowly, carefully slips it inside, pokes at her own tongue and wraps his around hers until she gets the idea and they play the slick muscles together for several long, perfect minutes before breaking apart with a wet gasp.
“Can I sleep here tonight, daddy?” Jinx’s smile is sly as she looks up at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and clasping her hands behind it.
“Always, Jinx,” he says with a fond smile.