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Jinx was enraged. Her chest had tightened itself into a throbbing ball, her teeth clenched so hard they scraped sharply against each other with the slightest movement of her jaw. In her heart, a pinprick of hurt was overshadowed by rage.
How dare he?!
Jinx was upset, too. Her eyes stung as patronizing tears threatened to trickle over her eyelids.
How dare he?!
She clenched her eyelids shut and kept walking, head facing the pavement and nails digging into the palm of her hands as she recalled with fresh bitterness the conversation of that morning. A way behind her, Sevika's brusque voice barked her name, but she might as well have been calling to a ghost.
Jinx remembered that morning vividly, how she had carried out Silco's injection as usual. How he - the traitor - had beckoned her back over with kind eyes and a warm smile, patted his knee to welcome her into his lap.
"I want to put something to you," he'd began as she settled. "You see, Jinx, it's all very well me taking you everywhere, and you know full well I take nothing but pleasure in your company. But..." he sipped some coffee from the mug she had gifted him, "There are some things I do - have to do - that I wouldn't want a child seeing."
"I can take it,” she'd replied, not knowing where he was going with this.
"So you say," he muttered regretfully, pinching the bridge of his noise and sighing in search of words. "Which is why it's only an idea. I was thinking: it might be good for both of us, perhaps, if we introduced a sort of... trial separation."
Trial separation.
The words had stung like venom, and they didn't hurt any less now. Whatever tears she had kept in now rolled freely down her cheeks in little streamlets.
She hadn't paid attention to another word he said, just gaping at him in horror. She didn't even let him finish. While he was mid-sentence, she got up and just walked away, the blockade of her mind drowning out his protests. When he came after her, she ran, and she hadn't stopped running until her lungs begged for mercy, and then walked steadily, sedulously away without a thought to where she was going.
She knew now, though, walking the usual route to the arcade, stepping over shattered glass. If anyone had followed her, she wouldn't have known; she had been to caught up in her own mind, exterior sounds drowned out by whispers of old friends, of brothers... of sisters.
She pulled herself up onto the counter of her favourite game, back pressed against the wall, eyes closed. Pulling her knees up and folding her arms, she hunched over and buried her face into her knees. Utterings from old memories drifted in and around her head - Vi, Mylo, Claggor, all of them.
"What's the matter, Mylo? Scared Powder's gonna beat you again?"
A snicker. The other voices hushed. She sighed and looked up, still curled up tight like a ball of yarn
"I told you,” taunted her ex-brother, lounging languidly opposite her with a perpetual smirk on his his face. "I told you he'd get sick of you. God, you're so clingy."
"He's not sick of me," she retorted. "He loves me!"
A spiteful laugh. "Pow-Pow!" he leaned forward, staring her full in the face. "What's it matter? It doesn't matter how much he says he loves you, a problem's a problem, and problems need getting rid of! Besides," he leaned back again, arms folding behind his head, "you heard him! You're a child." He twisted the last word vengefully, viciously, taking the needle that had pricked her heart before and stabbing her a second time.
"So?!" she spat back, but the emotional hurt dampened her conviction.
"So?!" he waved his arms exasperatingly. "Are you kidding me?! You're weak, Powder!" He interjected before she could argue. "You are! You are, and he knows it! That's why he doesn't want you around anymore! You'd just screw everything up! I mean, what, you think he would bring you when you can't do anything useful? Please, you'd get eaten alive. Ah, Geez, now you're crying."
"I'm not weak!" she wailed, slamming her fists on the table.
Mylo scoffed. "Well, he thinks so! Bet he thinks you're damn useless, too!"
"I'm not!" Her tone was edging on hysterical now. Fists balled ferociously, she jumped over the counter and scrutinized the tumult of wires that made up the workings of the arcade game. She smiled, a dreadful smile that flashed teeth and eyes that flickered cold like the peak of winter. From the corner of her eye, Mylo's smirk dropped.
"What's the matter, Mylo? Scared Powder's gonna beat you again?" Claggor's ghost whispered in the corner
"I'll show him," she snarled, tasting tears in her open mouth. "And you, and Vi, and Claggor, and everyone! You'll see!" she was yelling now, gaze deranged, flailing her arms at a few newly formed apparitions. "You'll all see!!"
Through a series of grunts and jaunty movements, she pushed plugs together, attempted to push tears back into her face, failed, screamed and then began wildly untangling the wires and forming circuits. All the while the omniscient eyes of Mylo and Claggor leered over her. Eventually, the game came to power, and she leaped over the desk, snatched the false gun, and whirled around to face the challenge.
For a moment, she just stood readily, eyebrows furrowed in deep concentration, letting all the voices invade the facets of her brain
"...because you're a jinx!..."
"...Powder's gonna beat you.."
"...She's a problem..."
Trial Separation.
Trial Separation.
Separation.
Separation!
Separation!
Something in her snapped. The game had begun.
She fired, fast and fiercely, one shot after the other hitting exactly where it need to go. Mylo's own shots followed not too far behind. Despite her teared streaked vision, her mind was cold and clear enough that she hit every target with meticulous accuracy. In the background, she had the vague impression that Claggor was cheering for her. From above, the scoreboard clicked away, the numbers climbing higher and higher, overtaking first Mylo's name and then her own. But it finished too soon; she needed more; she needed that boy's name wiped clear from the board and replaced entirely with her own. She kicked the machine, and it all started again.
This process continued for about an hour, an impassioned and desperately fervent display of gunfire that pushed her further and further to delirium, until the targets distorted into the face of her horrible, traitorous sister. Her shrieks became more cinsistent, her tears more uncontrollable, until she was a howling, convulsing, bewailing mess of blood red rage and fear, an indestructible force of tragic violence.
Finally, the last shot rang, the force of it hurling her backward. She caught herself on her knees, lurched over gasping and panting, as her face glistened with the dripping of her sweat. Her hands gripped harshly at her knees, as she peered up at the pinging board she saw the last last of Mylo's name vanish under the weight of her own.
Cheeks flushed and fluctuating with breath, she gave out an uncanny choking sound, and her body flung itself toward the counter. She forced her head into its wooden surface, and her throat tore itself open with a ghastly, prolonged, despairing screech, biting into the wood with so much force it splintered between her teeth. Her hands fisted and clenched at her hair, tearing out blue locks in raw, unfiltered frustration. She was barely on her feet, her toes being the only part of her body to touch the floor, the rest of her tenuously supported by her elbows on the counter. Her legs were spread out helplessly, buckled at the knees and yet those same knees stayed miraculously elevated from the floor. Her quavering, hapless frame vibrated with the pain-staking force of her sobs.
Shakily, she pushed herself up by the palms of her hands, watching her tears hit the table through thin lids. Her sobs came out in breathless gasps, and for the second time that day her lungs pleaded for air, her throat as dry and crisp as dessert grass. Her body jerked with the strength and irregularity of her cries, her tongue tainted by the flavour of wet hair and salty tears-her sight glazed over, and though she tried for strength, her arms gave in, and this time her knees really did hit the floor, her face and cries shrouded and muffled by the fold of her arms.
"Jinx?"
That voice. She recognised that voice.
"Jinx!"
Who-who's was that voice? It had a rough tenor, one that was supposed to be intimidating, yet contained a tender quality only when directed at her.
"Jinx..." It came to her now, soft and a little raspy in her ear.
Silco.
"Oh, darling, oh, precious..." Secure arms encased her tiny, quivering body, and she was pressed against the firm warmth of her father's chest, blanketed in a shell of safety - her only shell of safety.
"I'm... I..."
A low shush and a genteel hand through her hair paused her shaking sentence. "Don't talk. Just breath. Feel the rise and fall of my chest. Hear my heart. Listen to my voice."
"B-but the-the scoreboard."
The desperation in her voice caught Silco's attention, making him aware of what she needed. "Show me."
She said nothing and just pointed half-heartedly upward. He followed her finger, and then gawked at the scoreboard, eyes wide in astonishment as he realised the entire board was lined with her name, and her name only.
"You see?" she whispered dolefully. "I-I'm not weak."
"I see. I always saw," he cooed, redirecting all his attention back to his daughter. "I always knew you weren't weak." He paused. "Would you like to know the truth, hm? Why I suggested that idea?"
She nodded.
"I didn't want you to see me as I am. You see, Jinx, I'm..." he chuckled darkly, "I'm something of a monster-and I know-" he pressed on when she was about to protest, "-I know I've told you about my dream, about the Nation of Zaun, and I know you're aware of the... unfortunate things that must be done to get there, but I just..." he pulled her closer to him, and his voice took on a melancholy quality she'd never heard before. "I am just afraid that, if you were to see me fully, all my flaws laid in front of you, that you might hate me, leave me as Vander did."
Jinx pushed back abruptly and gawked at him in bewilderment. Silco had never admitted being afraid to anyone - much less elaborating on his fears - and yet here he was, not only revealing them to her in an act of vulnerability, but revealing that they were nearly the exact same as hers.
"Leave you?!" she exclaimed incredulously. "You're scared I'm going to leave you?! I'm the one who's afraid of you leaving me!"
"Leave you?!" he repeated back to her, placing a hand on his chest dramatically. "Jinx, you wound me! I made a promise to you."
"I know," she mumbled. "But Mylo said-"
"Take it back from him," he said suddenly, pressing his forehead against hers and cupping her face with his hands. "And I will take my doubts back, too. They think we're going to leave each other - our ghosts, our voices, our doubts. But we can outsize them, we..." He paused again, pulling back from her and smiling knowingly, running his hand through her hair. "Tell me, Jinx, what will we do?"
She grinned; she knew this mantra: "We'll show them," she said resolutely, and then their voices came together as they embraced.
"We will show them all."