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Powder’s—even now, even after everything, Vi can’t quite manage to call her Jinx, not even in her own head, not consistently, not if she doesn’t make the conscious effort to, and her first impulse will always, always be Powder—eyes blaze with something heated, something scalding, something angry. Something bloodthirsty, maybe, something violent, definitely.
Vi knows this look intimately. Knows it as she knows the rhythm to which her heart speeds up when she’s moving, when she’s punching stuff. Knows it as she knows—or used to know, rather—the color of Powder’s eyes, always haunting her.
She knows it because it reminds her of herself. Because in prison, during those many years, that was the only expression she ever saw if she passed by a reflective surface. Because if she’s honest, she’s probably pretty much always looked like that.
Maybe it is all Vi’s fault. Maybe it is Vi’s fault that Jinx is so violent, maybe she’s doomed them both from the start through being her angry, rotten, violent self when Powder looked up to her. Maybe they have always been the same.
It’s not a mirror, Vi thinks. Powder—Jinx, Jinx, Jinx—is a lot more scrawny than Vi, looks a lot more underfed. Looks tired with the gaunt, haunted face and the blazing pink eyes, looks ruined with the smudged makeup and the bruised lips. With the way her hip bones and her ribs poke through her skin.
Vi likes to think she herself is neither underfed, nor tired, nor ruined. But she also thinks it’s her fault that Jinx is all of those.
Jinx huffs, rolls her eyes, her whole head rolling with them, and it snaps Vi out of her guilt spiral, out of this all-encompassing self-hatred that consumes her every day, unless she fills it with as much other stuff as she can manage.
(Fights. Training. Caitlyn. Working out. Going on patrol. Obsessing over finding justice, because it’s easier than looking in the mirror, than looking at the real person who killed Powder.
But that’s not true, right? Right? It was not her fault, right?
It sounds hollow to her ears. It was always Vi and Powder, Powder and Vi, and now they’re both alone.)
“Ohhh my,” Jinx sing-songs, very clearly annoyed, even when she’s very… tied up at the moment. Against the chair she’s sitting on, while Vi is standing in front of her with her arms crossed, trying her best not to start pacing. “Are we done with your pity-party, Vi-oh-let? Can we move on to more fun things, now?”
It cuts her to the bone, somehow, how unbothered by all of this Jinx seems. And—and Vi knows, okay, she knows most of the things Jinx has done, especially after she’s witnessed firsthand what happened to the council, but it physically hurts, somehow, the fact that Jinx does not seem to care.
The fact it doesn’t seem to matter to her. Collateral damage, background characters, what does it matter.
It makes her so angry she’s burning with it, and there she is right at the beginning. There they are, looking at each other with exactly the same expression. Always sisters in the end, aren’t they?
(It would be easy to let go, Vi thinks. It would be easy to see the world like Jinx does, to push it all away. And—and Vi doesn’t want to pretend like she’s a good person, but this is—)
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” she hisses, despite herself. Despite the fact she knows it’s a bad idea, knows it will only give Jinx ammunition. Despite the fact she knows they’re just spinning in circles, that Jinx will never change, and that Vi will never change, either. “Does it even matter to you? Even just a little bit?”
Jinx purses her lips and tilts her head like she’s thinking, and she looks nothing like the angel Vi was picturing every day and every night when she was in prison, the angel she remembers. And she looks everything like the angel Vi was picturing every day and every night when she was in prison, the angel she remembers.
“Nope,” Jinx says, then, wiggling her shoulders like she’s testing out the rope, popping the p. “But I was always a disappointment, wasn’t I? Always a jinx.”
She’s grinning now. There’s a knife Jinx is holding out and Vi is running straight into it repeatedly, again and again and again, like some of these days, it’s going to be different. Like it’s ever going to end in anything but an aching stab wound.
They’re in Piltover, and Vi remembers being a kid, remembers holding Powder close, remembers dreaming of living in one of these fancy houses with her sister. Remembers wanting to burn this whole city to the ground.
“Why are you doing this?”
To me, hangs unsaid in the air. That’s how Vi wanted to finish that sentence; why are you doing this to me. It’s useless, stupid, desperate, pleading. She steels herself for more harsh words. Steels herself for the impulse deep inside of her to break Jinx’ nose.
(But she’s hit Powder once before and she never wants to lay hands on her again because she always, always breaks the things she touches. All of it inevitably falls apart.)
Instead, Jinx’ face hardens. Instead, she spits out, “We’ve been through all this, sister-dear. Done the pleading. Done the talking. Why don’t you turn me in to your enforcer buddies and we get this over with, yeah? I’ll try not to try blowing anyone up.”
It breaks Vi’s heart, that Jinx thinks she’ll turn her in, throw her in prison like what happened to her. But on the other hand… what else would she think?
(That Vi would kill her? She can’t even—she can’t even think about that in any more detail.)
What else was Vi even planning to do? There was some thought, she knows that, she remembers that, but she can’t recall the specifics. Can’t recall anything but the hunt.
She’s always been a predator. She just guesses she never thought sweet little Powder, her shining star Powder, her light-in-the-dark angel Powder, would turn out to be one, too.
Vi’s mouth is all dry, her throat all rough. This open, white-gold Piltovan room all around them doesn’t fit, not with both of them here, not with Jinx’ eyes blazing like that, not with her fingernails long and the nail-polish chipped, not with how rough and copper-brass Vi still feels inside.
Again, the impulse to run away with Powder washes over her. To take her sister and run, leaving everything else behind, like she’s always dreamed of, somewhere in the back of her mind.
She can’t. She won’t. And it’s not even Powder sitting in front of her anymore.
(And why does that not seem to change anything anyway?)
“I’m not going to turn you in,” Vi says, her voice like sandpaper in her throat. Jinx bites down on her bottom lip, furrows her brows in what looks like confused annoyance. “Powder, I was never going to turn you in.”
Jinx huffs. She doesn’t say it, but Vi can hear it anyway. Powder is dead.
She might as well be. Vi might as well have been the one to kill her.
(Faintly, feeling sick and thrilled with it because she’s always loved Powder and she’s always loved violence, she wonders how she’d do it. With a knife, maybe. With her bare fists. Pounding, choking, gutting.
Wonders how Jinx would kill her. With her gun, or would she make it more personal, more intimate? Is Vi worth that, still?)
“I really don’t understand you,” Jinx huffs, leaning her head back to look at the ceiling, until Vi can see her chin and her pale, thin throat. Until Vi feels an urge almost primal, an urge she doesn’t want to put into words, because she thinks it would kill her. “Why’d you nab me like that then, hmm?”
Vi doesn’t have an answer to that. There’s an itch in her thighs; like she wants to pace around Jinx. Like she wants to circle her, around and around and around, like that would get her closer to understanding her.
When did they stop knowing each other?
“I want to help you.”
Jinx scoffs, rolls her eyes again.
“Bite me.”
Fair, Vi guesses. Jinx has been very clear about how she doesn’t want any help. About how Powder is dead, about how Jinx is the only one who’s left.
“You loved silly stupid little Powder that much?” Jinx continues, and now, her voice sounds strangely scratchy. Now, she looks sad, draped back over the chair, bound to it tightly, so skinny she might snap.
It tugs at Vi’s chest. Aches, aches, aches, until she feels unsteady on her feet.
She’s stepped one, two steps closer before she really notices, before she can stop herself. Freezes right in front of Jinx’ chair, boots nudging against Jinx’, and from up here, she has to crane her head down to be able to see her sister at all. Her eyes look so big from this angle. Jinx refuses to look at her.
“Of course I did.”
She sounds desperate again. Maybe she is stupid. Maybe she deserves Jinx toying with her, because she keeps doing this, over and over and over again.
“Do,” Vi adds then, stupidly, because she keeps thinking she might be able to change something. Might be able to do anything at all, anything that’s not watching and circling and boiling. “I still do.”
Jinx doesn’t scoff, this time. No, she keeps staring off to the side, avoiding Vi’s eyes, her braids falling down to the floor like rope. Like something Vi could hang the both of them with.
Jinx’ lips part, then she presses them together again. A small furrow appears between her brows, then she squints her eyes, then she bites down on her bottom lip again, and it looks like it’s going to pop like overripe fruit.
Vi’s mouth has been full of blood so many times. She’d take Powder’s to spare her, she thinks.
“Come here,” Jinx whispers. Stupidly, Vi leans in. Stupidly, she watches how Jinx tilts her head, slowly, how Jinx leans up, up, up, until her lips press to Vi’s. It prickles down her spine in a thrill that feels all too much like danger, all too much like blood, all too much like violence.
She didn’t even know this is something she wanted. Did she? Did she want this? Has she always wanted this, even when Powder was so small, even when all she wanted to do was protect her? Does she want this, or is it something else entirely?
Whatever it is—it’s too hard to think right now, anyway, with her blood rushing through her head so loudly—Vi can’t really bring herself to care.
(Which sounds contradictory, because she’s so guilty still she feels sick about it; but somehow the guilt is about something else. Somehow, it’s because of the fear of having corrupted Powder. But is this not the same thing, too?)
Whatever it is, she kisses Jinx back. Feels Jinx’ chapped lips scratch over hers, pushes her tongue to the gap in Jinx’ front teeth, hisses when Jinx bites her tongue open only to press hers to the cut.
It’s always been violence. Maybe that’s always been what Vi needed. Maybe it’s always been what Jinx needed, too. Maybe Vi loved Powder, and maybe she can love Jinx, too.
She doesn’t know where to go from here; hasn’t since she captured Jinx. But, but, but, she just keeps kissing Jinx, like that’s going to put her back together.
(Like it’s going to put them back together. Like after this, they’re going to grab each other’s hands, intertwine their fingers, smile at each other and disappear into the sunset together. Like after this, they’re going to kill each other, going to tear each other apart.
She knows she’ll never let go either way.)