Chapter Text
Pain. It was the first sensation that greeted Silco as consciousness slowly trickled back into his mind. A throbbing, deep ache pulsed through his chest. He remembered… death. A gunshot. A flash of vibrant blue hair. Jinx, his beautiful Jinx, cradling him in her arms, tears streaming down her cheeks, an anguished expression on her face.
He didn't want to see her cry.
He had promised her everything. Promised her that she would never be betrayed by him, never abandoned. Yet, here he was, leaving her behind in a moment of rage and madness. An accident.
He knew she didn't mean to do it. The instant regret and despair on her face told him as much. If anything, he was the one who picked up the gun. She reacted to the click as the safety was flipped off. And now because of him, his little girl thought it was her fault. She blamed herself when she shouldn't.
After all, she was perfect.
He told her so. Made sure she heard him say it. He didn't want to join the voices in her head who tormented her. She needed to know he didn't blame her. That she was his perfect daughter and he'd never forsake her. There were many other things he wanted to say to her. He never told her how much he loved her. He should have. He should have told her every day. Now he's dead and Jinx is alone.
But if this was death, why could he still feel?
The pain was intense, and yet it wasn’t from the gunshot. Slowly, Silco opened his eyes. He expected darkness, oblivion—perhaps the great beyond, or whatever came after life. Maybe he would even see Vander waiting for him on the other side. But instead, he was met with something else: a dim, humid room filled with the scent of stagnant water and rust. His heart lurched.
The warehouse. The smell. The familiar grime coating the walls. The taste of the Undercity’s polluted air thick on his tongue. This was not where he died.
"How…?" he whispered to himself, pushing himself to sit upright, though his body screamed in protest. His mind whirred, struggling to process what was happening. His fingers trembled as he ran them over his chest, expecting to find the wounds left by Jinx’s bullets, but there was nothing. No blood. No pain.
His eye throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat, and when he caught a glimpse of himself in the cracked mirror on the wall, he froze.
He was younger.
Silco barely recognized the face that stared back. The age lines on his face weren't as pronounced as he remembered, his skin smoother than before. His bad eye still glowed orange, but his vision was sharper than it should be. Like it was before the years of constantly injecting shimmer in his eye dulled his eyesight.
"Impossible." He stood up, surprisingly steady on his feet. Much better than he should have been considering he just died.
Panic surged through him. This wasn’t just some strange dream, nor some twisted afterlife. He was alive, and—judging by his appearance—younger.
“How… when…?” Silco’s voice rasped through the darkness, disbelief and confusion wrestling with the calculating, methodical part of his brain.
Suddenly, there were footsteps outside in the hall, and someone knocked on the door.