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Jinx limped home to find Isha sitting on the kitchen table, coloring something. Damn it. She really didn’t want the kid to see her like this, all banged up and suffering from blood loss.
"Hey, sweetheart,” she said, as Isha looked at her blood-smeared figure with some concern. “I’m a-ok, just had a little adventure.”
“Daddy?” She signed.
“Sleeping?” Jinx signed back.
Isha nodded.
“Then don’t wake him,” she said.
She sat down on the rickety chair hard, feeling dizzy and nauseous.
“Alright kiddo, time to teach you some basic first aid. You know how to sew?”
Isha shook her head.
“Welp. Staples it is then. This will be fun for the both of us! The first aid kit is right there on the counter.”
She pulled off her jacket as Isha grabbed the first aid kit. She looked at Jinx’s gnarly bullet wound curiously.
“Pretty awesome, isn’t it? If you want, you can keep the bullet once you get it outta me. But first you got to clean it. Use those little alcohol wipes in there.”
“Does it hurt?” Isha signed.
“Duh,” Jinx said.
Isha picked up the wipes and began the cleaning. She was a lot more gentle than Jinx usually was with herself, but she also took a lot longer. Still, Jinx wasn’t about to show any sign of pain and traumatize the poor kid even more. Finally, Isha finished.
“Good job,” Jinx said. “Now grab the tweezers and dig around in there for the bullet. And don’t worry if I scream a bit; that just means you’re doing a good job.”
Isha frowned, hesitating.
“Hey,” Jinx said, putting a bloodied hand to her chin. “I know you can do it. You’re a really smartie pants, got it?”
Isha nodded and went to work. Jinx managed not to scream somehow. On second thought, letting an eight-year-old dig around all her muscles and veins wasn’t the brightest idea. But Isha was always clever, and after a while she managed to pull it out.
“Good job,” Jinx said, through gritted teeth.
“Crying,” Isha signed. “I hurt you.”
Damn it. Jinx hadn’t even realized she had tears running down her cheeks.
“Well, that’s what happens when you get hurt,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt at first, because you’ve got all this adrenaline and all you can think of is staying alive. But when it’s over, you have time to hurt. And then the pain just hits you all at once. It sucks, but you’ve got to heal.”
“Talking about the wound?” Isha asked.
Jinx noticed her fingers were all bloodied. She gave a small sigh of defeat.
“You really are a smartie pants. Well, hey, at least I didn’t scream. That probably would have fucked you up a bit. Anyway, here comes the fun part. You see that stapler?”
Isha looked from the wound to the stapler, frowning.
“Don’t give me that look. You love stapling. You’ve made so many fun projects. And how different is skin from paper anyway? They’re both flat and, uh, probably have a lot other similarities I would be able to think of if my brain wasn’t suffering from a lack of oxygen right now.”
Isha sighed and picked up the stapler. Carefully, she began to close the wound. That thankfully hurt a lot less than either the cleaning or getting the bullet out.
Then she took the bandages from the first aid kit and started wrapping up Jinx’s injury. As she looked at the little girl, she realized she had no idea what her life was like before she found her and Ekko. She was pretty sure she was a miner, judging from how she looked and the clothes she was wearing when they found her. And because of how much she loved sunlight. Jinx knew a lot of the orphan kids in the mines spent their entire (usually very short) lives down in the bowels of the earth. Maybe her parents were dead, or maybe they had just left her. Or they could have sold her off. That happened all too often down here.
She definitely hadn’t had a happy life, one way or another. And her life here wasn’t exactly perfect. Jinx knew she was a shitty excuse for a mom. But no one else was going to do the job.
Isha finished bandaging her. Then she picked up the bullet.
"Yeah, kid, you can keep it.”
She tapped her neck.
“A necklace? Kinda morbid, but sure. I’ll make you one.”
Jinx got up, a bit unsteadily. Blood loss was a bitch.
“Here, I should reward you for being so helpful. And my blood sugar is probably seriously low right now. How about we eat the rest of the cake?”
Isha smiled and nodded.
Jinx got out the cake with one hand. She poured some energy drinks into the closest thing they had to fancy glasses.
“To not dying of blood loss!” She said as they clinked their glasses together. “Now let’s demolish this cake.”