Chapter Text
Mistakes. He has made many of them. Some that haunt him, lingering at the corners of his minds like cobwebs he can’t wipe away, some that flourished into wild successes. Gambles, that’s all mistakes are. Errors that can twist one’s fortune to great failure or grand victory. One just needs to know how to play them right.
Holding all his mistakes close to his chest like a hand of Two-Tevlin. Surveying the masks surrounding him, cracking their porcelain faces one by one. He didn’t have to play by the rules, no, he just needed to know the game—and Silco had mastered it.
And yet sometimes he still lost. Cards fluttering toward the table with mocking faces—snarling up at him, fanged and ready to pounce. Heart thrashing against his chest, fighting to be set free. To flee from the errors—to forget they ever happened. A longing to be weak.
Of course, Silco can’t allow that. Not anymore. Instead he has to watch, fight and persevere.
Jinx never told him things. She waited. Perched there with the same expression of glaring intensity—crouched stone-still or fidgeting around in her seat. Head cocked to one side, shoulders stiff. Glancing at Silco out of the corner of her eye, trying to snag his own gaze towards her. It used to take him longer to notice.
It was the same now as it had been years ago: the tattered girl with a sharp tongue and an even sharper mind falling deadly silent. Silco would sometimes forget she was there—he still does. Sprawled up in the moldering rafters, even though he has warned her of their instability. Stubborn as always. Disappearing into the labyrinth of her mind. Silco wishes he could look into her thoughts, see the intricacy of their workings. Perhaps then he would finally learn everything about his daughter.
Yes, he would consider her a daughter now. It took quite some time. A dragging effort until it finally came easy, snapping into place. An understanding, Silco supposes, of their respective situations. Frenzied empathy, no longer alone but with the light of a kindred spirit.
The situation was awkward at first; trying to guess what the broken girl in front of him was feeling and thinking. Grasping at straws that would constantly illude his grasp. Mistake after mistake. How was he supposed to know what a girl her age liked? Thought? What she wanted from him and whatnot. Trying to pick apart every thought, wrestling with every feeling. He could do that effortlessly with others; tell when they felt hopeless or scared or cocky. But Powder was different, more genuine. A disconcerting combination of innocent and life-hardened. Pestering him with those slate-gray eyes, burning into his skull with a cold gaze. An unreadable pool of monochrome and neutral expression flickering over him constantly. A sort of solemnity that no child should be capable of.
He would have given anything to rid him of her all those years ago. To this day he isn’t sure why he didn’t ball up his fist in the back of her shirt collar and throw her from his office. Toss all those distracting stares and whining and whimpering and sobbing out the doors and slam them behind her. He was a busy man with things to get done—a man who needed peace whenever he could get it. A man with a vision, rallying strength to power the dream.
And yet he could never throw her out. No matter how much his thoughts told him he wanted to, no matter how much others advised him to. Everytime he tried something twisted inside him, a fist gripping his heart and tangling up all the veins. Some monster was shaping inside of him—a mother bear in front of a cub—chasing away anyone who threatened the child’s presence.
Instead, Silco constantly tried brushing off how odd she made him feel.
It was all too familiar.
No, Silco did not know what to do with the lost child at first. Their tentative bond as strange and unwieldy as a baby bird trying to fly for the first time. Wobbling and crashing into bushes of thorns and nets of confusion.
She had nothing for him. But she was Vander’s child—Silco’s brother’s child. She was a little girl with admiring, wide eyes and ambition. She was a difficulty. She was familiar. She was a Phoenix rising from the literal ashes of pain and suffering—of guilt-drenched mistakes.
She was like him.
A mistake ending in victory.
***
“It would be good for you to leave the room today, Jinx.”
“Don’t call me that.”
His hand pauses above his eye, leading the needle away from his face and into focus. He focuses intently on the tool, casually turning it over before placing it down on his desk cautiously—as if not to startle an animal. She has never talked this much. Only the faint whir of a fan can be heard, the girl falling back into her lapse of silence. Silco stares at her, careful to fix his expression of curiosity—muffling it with layers of meticulously practiced masks of emotion. Turning her silence over in his mind, Silco palms the brass instrument from his desk. Nestling the needle over his eye, notching the circle around the socket—ignoring how chips in the metal snag against the blackened skin. It’s all just another sensation. A droplet in a bucket of water.
A breath hitches sharply in his chest, squeezing his chest, forcing his finger to twitch over the trigger.
The wince reaches his ears before the pain registers, followed by a swift flood of relief—and a rush of golden adrenaline.
Silco blinks the remaining film of shimmer from his vision, tossing the brass device on his desk. It clatters loud and carelessly this time. But the girl doesn’t flinch. The lingering feeling twitches in his eye, vibrating in the socket for a second more before calming. He forces himself to relax, shaking out the discomfort with a few more hard blinks. Fingers lace together tightly before turning to face the little girl tugging on her uneven pigtails, eyes numbly focused on the air in front of her. “Why not?” Silco already knows the answer, but he would like to hear it from her all the same.
“Because I don’t like it.” The words are curt, plain—perhaps a bit derisive, but Silco lets it slide. The explanation should be enough for Silco. But the sentiment feels oddly, uncomfortably dry; deprived of anything more than words pieced together with needle and thread. Silco isn’t sure why he cares.
Vander’s girl pulls her knees closer, resting her forehead on tattered pants patched at the knees with odds-and-end materials.
Mental note: get the girl new clothes.
He can hear the wobble in her voice, the tears beginning to swell up thick in her words. “I don’t like it.” She repeats simply, head buried now, eyes snapped into the present. No longer focused on the ghosts ahead of her.
The fan continues to spin, chopping up the stuffed air, replacing silence with a consoling white noise. Keeping the room just cool enough for Silco’s taste. Silco tips his head to one side, peering down at the girl, legs now hiked up against her chest. “Now’s not the time for crying.” The words come out a touch gentler than he intends—but he allows it. Silco pauses, allowing his mind to catch up with his mouth. “Do you know what a jinx is?” Silco studies the barrel of his cigar, watching smoke curl from the ruffled tip.
She buries her face behind her legs: “someone that brings bad luck.” She’s making an effort to pull the emotion back from her words—strength fought for in each letter. He admires the effort.
Nodding slightly, he takes a long draw from the cigar, feeling the air thicken then thin once more. “That’s part of it—but you’re missing a major piece.” The girl looks up in confusion, brows furrowed angrily. Silco crushes down the cigar, leaning the stub against the walls of an ornate ashtray. “A jinx is also a powerful spell. One that can bring down destruction on its enemies—on the people that have wronged them.
“Power. Taking what your enemies branded you as and making it your own. Becoming strong .” Strength is safety: Silco has known that all his life. Fighting tooth and nail in the Fissures—against Piltover. Nothing else matters. Nothing else rises to the top—everything else drowns amid the grime of trials. Silco finds himself gripping the edge of his desk.
The girl stays silent for a long time, hands smudging at the tears tracked down the grime of her cheeks.
Second mental note: get her some clean water to wash her face.
Silco keeps his eyes trained on the girl, face impassive. Eyes staring at the floor, loosening the grip on her knees, she shuffles her weight around on the couch, pensive and utterly silent. Silco is content to wait for an answer, relighting the cigar, sniffing the saccharine-sweet rotting scent of burning Chupa leaf before drawing a breath.
“So…I have to go by Jinx now?” Her voice still trembles, but has lost the rattling shake that plagued it before. Good. She’s already stronger.
He taps the cigar against the ashtray, watching embers sparkle and flutter down into the box. “You may call yourself whatever you like.” Silco doesn’t bother filling his words with candied sweetness and forced pity. Falling into natural timbre—understanding.
Their eyes meet. Blue and black against gray. “But don’t run away from Jinx.”
The girl looks away, and nods.
***
Creation. That’s what all mistakes are. That is what everything is—a creation.
Silco is quite proud of the creations Jinx has made—the creation she herself has become. However, he is most proud of what she has taught him to create.