Work Text:
Jinx really does enjoy her work. She likes to fight, but more importantly, she likes to make Silco happy.
What isn’t fun about fighting, are the injuries. A cut she can bandage and forget about is easy. Bullets are fine to dig out as long as they’ve not hit anything vital, and she’s good enough at dodging that it’s rare for her to get caught by one anyway. Broken bones are annoying, but as long as they aren’t in her legs or feet they’re easy to ignore and continue work with.
Bruises, though easily the least serious of all the ones listed above, are probably her least favorite type of injury. She can’t stand them, the way they ache enough to bother but not enough to justify a painkiller, which would knock her off her game. They’re ugly too, flowering purple and yellow and red overtop her skin.
She dodges swiftly and without issue, throwing her own fists in wild but precise arcs. Jix is a good fighter. Probably not as good as her sister, but her skills are not to be underestimated. She prefers her guns, though. Quicker, more precise, if messier.
The smugglers are bigger than her, and she is rather twig-ish, so they often don’t take her seriously. Just because one likes using weapons, that does not mean they are dependent upon them.
She’s just walking home from that fight now, and though they have yet to form, she can feel the bruising over her arms and stomach. They’re going to be bright and obvious, for sure. It already hurts, too, a low throbbing that she clenches her teeth against as she moves across the rooftops towards home.
There’s nothing she can even do for them, and that’s the worst part. Ice helps, but the relief is short lived and hard to keep up with.
She gets home later than she’d hoped, since she’d had to dodge around some Enforcers on the way.
Silco is in a meeting when she does finally get there, so she stiffly and silently moves into her spot in the rafters. It’s hidden well, so that you have to look up at a very specific angle to see her, but she can see perfectly downwards. She knows he knows she’s up there, since he always does, but the man in front of him does not.
He doesn’t seem like a threat, so she lets them talk, only half listening.
She doesn’t really know what she’s here for, since it’s not like there’s anything to be done about her minimal injuries. Vi and the others have been especially loud today, so sitting with him might be nice, and she still has a report to deliver.
The meeting doesn’t go on very much longer, but Vi gets louder the entire time. She always sits just beyond Jinx’s vision, in her peripherals, so Jinx can never truly look at her. It’s unfair, especially since Vi is the only one she wants to see, and the others are right in her face all the time.
“It was a pleasure to speak with you,” Silco says, standing and reaching over the desk to shake the man’s hand. The man repeats Silco’s words back to him and leaves. Once the door has shut, Silco sits back down. “Well, Jinx?”
“It went well,” she says, swinging off her perch to land on his desk. “They won’t be stealing anymore.” She holds up a hand, then folds her ring and pointer fingers to demonstrate how she managed to stop them. They’d been skimming Shimmer, taking minimal amounts from barrels to sell independently. It’s a common practice, one she deals with a lot.
“Mm,” Silco hums, nodding his approval. “Well done.” She smiles, preening. She likes to make him proud. “And you?”
“Nothing much,” she huffs, sliding to the edge of his desk and swinging her legs over the edge. “Bit’a bruises and stuff.” She pauses and glances towards Vi, who, as usual, slides just out of reach again. “They’re being loud.” She doesn’t need to specify, he knows.
“What do they say?” he asks, taking one of her hands and ghosting his fingers over the red marks which will soon be purple.
“Shimmer,” she replies. “They always say Shimmer.” Vi and the others hate the work she does for Silco. Jinx doesn’t understand why they care so much, considering they are all either dead or long gone. They left her, they don’t get to be mad. “They don’t like it.”
“I see,” he presses lightly at the bruising, gauging how bad it is. She already knows it’s fine. “Well, I appreciate all you’ve managed to accomplish, anyway. They are just fictions, besides, so their opinions are irrelevant.” He says this every time. She knows he tries very hard to understand her hardships, her struggles with imaginary voices, but he doesn’t. He can’t possibly understand.
“Yeah,” she agrees, anyway, because he’s trying and she appreciates it. Her hands brush over the skin of her arms. “Anyway, I’ma get back to work now.” She slides off the desk and bounces around it to give him a hug. Then she twirls herself out of the room with a cheery wave.
Jinx loves her workshop. It’s precarious to stand on, sometimes, and if she gets a little too rowdy when testing her inventions the entire structure will shake. It has a little workbench for her smaller creations, and there’s a neat little first aid station. That’s where she goes now, sitting down on the little stool to patch up whatever she can. She bandages the small cuts along her arms, and one across her cheek.
All in all, a good, low effort mission. But Vi is still in the corner, and Jinx can practically feel her disapproving glare, even if she can hardly see it in the sides of her vision.
“Doesn’t matter what you say,” Jinx spits, in a rather childish voice. She sticks a bright pink bandage around her finger. “I’m doing good work, and that’s what matters. Not what a stupid dumb ghost has to say.” Vi is silent, but no less frightening in the corner.
She hisses as she pokes the bruises along her arm. They discolor the area around her tattoos, and when they’re a little bit more healed, the effect may be cool. Nonetheless, she doesn’t like them.
Vi never had bruises. Well, sometimes she did, but not usually. She was too fast, too good at fighting to catch. She slipped away before anyone could land a hit hard enough to leave a mark.
Vi would be disappointed, Jinx knows she would be, which hurts all the more because she’s the entire reason Jinx fights. For the freedom Vi would’ve wanted.
The bruises sting even more when she thinks about Vi like that.