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He finds her in his office, tucked into the backrest of his chair, legs folded to her chest, chin resting atop her knees.
He is surprised, in a way, when he doesn't spend a single moment wracking his brain over how she keeps managing, without fail, to permeate through closed doors.
As he'd dismissed himself from the frankly miserable solstice celebration plaguing the Last Drop, he had noticed her sudden absence and he'd wondered where she'd scampered off to. Jinx had made a brief appearance earlier in the evening despite his best attempts at dissuading her from the idea but had quickly changed her mind as soon as she had realised nothing and no- one present was of any real interest to her. And a couple childish pranks could only keep her entertained for so long. But she had begged him, nagged him ceaselessly until he'd been powerless to do anything but begrudgingly let her come, if only so that she would never want to come again. He's certain now he's succeeded, that she'll never demand to attend a second time, now that she's seen what boring celebrations with equally boring adults looked like.
He sometimes wonders whether she feels lonely. She always vehemently assures him she finds him to be plenty good company, however, and he knows well enough that cultivated loneliness directs her focus towards what's most important.
Feeble green light pools on the floor before and behind his desk, the matted glass of the circular window allowing Silco little insight into the state of the outside - the streets bustling with song and screams alike - but just enough of it into the tremors coursing through the child occupying his chair. Her hair is down, accentuating just how much freedom of growth it had been given in the recent months, and her shoes lie at the chair’s feet, one the right side up and the other almost upside down.
On Silco’s desk, a collection of fluorescent markers is dispersed haphazardly, alongside a meagre pile of cardboard sheets and a singular paintbrush with a split tip. There is an impressive puddle of what seems to be glue close to the desk’s edge.
“Jinx?” Silco questions, sternly yet searchingly, gentling himself into the bubble of quiet panic she seems wreathed in. “What is it, girl?
Baby blue bores into his face instantly and he understands her request without words. Slowly he lowers himself until they are almost at eye level, balancing on the balls of his feet.
She doesn't seem to have been crying, there are no wet trails carved into her round cheeks, but her distress is evident enough nevertheless.
“I wanted—” a sniffle sneaks up on her burgeoning answer and she shudders. Silco knows better than to crowd her, then, no matter how loud his every instinct is screaming at him to alleviate her sorrow.
“I wanted… I—I wanted to make your office pretty for the holidays before you came back because it's always so dull and sad a—and I've never seen you decorate it anyway but then the glue,” she points a finger at the offending tube, “spilled and I was too late to remove it so now it's hard and not sticky at all and I can't get it off— I tried to, I really really tried but then they said the idea was stupid anyway and maybe it is because I don't want you to get mad and it’s actually stupid and I'd just jinx it anyway—”
Her eyes are pearly and blue with tears yet to come as she suddenly scans his face, his whole face, for any tells. It's fleeting, however, like she's dreading to find out how he chooses to react to her confession.
Silco considers himself a rational man, and so he does not try to lie to himself and pretend to find a reason why he might want his office, his oasis , accosted by merry holiday decorations. He doesn't need the gaudy cheer the more optimistic seem to think they bring into one's life, not even for an evening. But ever since Jinx had left her mark there, for the first time, ever since she'd doodled across the back of his desk and he'd let the colours stay, his office had become her oasis, too.
Although he doesn't need the cheer, the comfort, she deserves at least some of it.
He devotes a few seconds to simply contemplating her - small, definitely too slim for her age, with knitted brows and a quivering bottom lip. And in that moment, he surprises himself most of all as he realises that what he would want for the least in the world would be for that gentle blue uncertainty to glaze over and drip into a puddle of tears.
“I understand. And I appreciate your intention.” He says slowly. Jinx brightens up momentarily.
“Y—you do?”
“I do, dear girl. Although, next time, I would prefer it if you asked me before you tried to decorate here. I do like to always know exactly the environment I am stepping into at a given moment. That being said,” he sighs as he notices the doubt slowly seeping back into her eyes, “I do love your creativity so, and I would hate to miss the opportunity to gain your professional insight on how to… brighten up my closest surroundings.”
“Does that mean I can decorate, then?” Jinx buzzes with newfound, unadulterated enthusiasm.
“With moderation. Just ask me and I'll be sure to tell you whether or not I wish to follow through with the idea you suggest.”
She grins widely in a way that makes the apples of her cheeks puff: “Sure!”
It's thanks to the stars reflected in her eyes that Silco realises he will likely admit of much more decorating than he should to get his point across, anyway. Moderation is going to be a challenge after all.
After Silco sternly establishes that he is not upset at her for spilling glue on his desk, Jinx brightens up like an explosion and immediately proceeds to inspect the fruits of her failure with keen interest. She giggles to herself at whatever thought crosses her mind, then, before turning her attention back to him.
“It kinda looks like you!”
Silco startles, although she doesn't seem to notice. He narrows his good eye at the puddle and, were he a man of weaker resolve, open puzzlement would be etched across his face.
“I hadn't realised I had grown a gigantic horn on my cranium.” He settles on remarking dryly. He hopes absentmindedly that the area he is referring to is indeed, in Jinx’s mind, his head.
She only giggles again, as if amused at his expense: “No, silly, you're wearing a hat !”
Silco huffs out a laugh despite himself.
“Of course I am.”
The skin of his unscarred right planes prickles and he knows a pleading gaze is boring intently into his face.
“Yes, Jinx, you may colour it, if you wish. Go fetch your paints.”
When she eventually makes her way back, skipping excitedly, he's managed to peel the puddle of glue off his desk and has settled it on a piece of paper. Jinx doesn't waste a single second, enveloping her creation in coats of paint before she's even properly seated next to it.
The puddle of glue she has claimed even remotely resembles a human being is far too bulky to possibly represent him, Silco assesses, and he cannot make head or tail of where the miniature’s head ends and throat starts but under the careful ministrations of Jinx’s creative spirit, it begins to take form. The colours are decidedly off and from certain angles the alleged hat hardly reassembles one but, eyeing his miniature contemplatively, Silco can only approve of the effort. Once she seems satisfied enough Jinx levels her gaze with his meticulously, hands still gripping her paintbrush, and only when he praises her on a job well done does she move on to adding final touches to her creation.
As she goes on to meddle with cardboard he moves to sit on the couch, back leaned against the plush backrest, one leg folded in half and positioned on the thigh of the other. Occasionally he tunes into Jinx’s pensive mutters as she reaches for a paintbrush or a pair of scissors. His mind is buzzing with unused energy, his fingers strum on his calf almost restlessly. He looks back at Jinx, briefly, if only to make sure she doesn't so much as see him in this state. He refuses to smoke in front of her but his fingers are itching to grab his cigar, cut the tip and light it. Instead, he focusses the sudden bout of restlessness on her, checking now from the corner of his eye whether or not she is operating all of her tools safely. Once she beckons him over he does not hesitate for a second to approach - and he is rewarded with a blinding grin and a clumsy cardboard cutout.
Somewhere in the midst of her creative frenzy she has procured a box, seemingly out of thin air. It stands idly by her side and when he leans in to inspect her newest creations, she picks it up and makes a small show of sliding the lid off it.
The contents of it are visibly handmade, a sturdy thing and, with the bouts of bright yellow, pink, blue and green lining its surface boldly, the identity of its creator becomes evident.
Silco regards it, his good eye tracing its edges and corners and the slope of what seems to be its back. It's a frog on a string, a bulky one. A toad? A toad. A toad on a string with a miniature missile on its back. A missile toad?
Ah.
Grinning at the calculating look haunting his eyes, Jinx pats the animal on its head. It stumbles into a brief fury of bobbing and happy creaks.
" Sevika told me people who stand under it had to kiss each other,” she says with a sneer, tongue stuck out like she'd tasted something bitter, before adding in a more enthusiastic tone, “or punch each other! Whichever comes first!”
Her excitement is almost contagious and Silco has to fight off a half-smile before answering, picking his words one by one, carefully.
“Traditionally, this isn't exactly what—”
But Jinx huffs, cutting him clean off: “I know . I know it's actually meant to be this smelly plant from Topside but I couldn't find any at the Last Drop - I thought Mr. Chuck might be using it in drinks or something - and if I asked you for permission to go out to look for some you would've suspected something.”
A scheming glint twinkles in her eyes.
“Soooo, I had to make my own thingy - and it's way, way funnier anyway.” She gives the contraption another pat before squinting at him assessingly. “You get why it's funnier, right? ‘Cause it kinda sounds like—”
“Yes, I do.” He dismisses her explanation with a raised hand. “Very creative of you, child. And how resourceful, too.”
Jinx nods with a shy grin, clearly satisfied, before putting her creation down. It's the only semblance of a warning Silco gets before she's flinging herself forward, clutching him like she did on the day he found her. And he, just like he had then, slowly returns the gesture.
A couple of beats pass before he feels her look up.
“Will you be kissing anyone under the missile-toad?” She asks, a glint of mirth in her eyes. Her tone is much slyer than Silco’s ever heard it.
He regards her neutrally.
“No.”
The dissatisfied pout her face morphs into almost manages to wrench a laugh out of him.
They hang the contraption just above the door, in the end, despite Silco’s resounding scepticism. Buzzing with energy, Jinx explains that while he will always know it's there, and therefore should have no problem avoiding it, nobody else entering his office will.
“It will be funny ,” she clarifies excitedly, “‘cause those brutes will have to kiss each other or themselves - ha! - and they will be so so mad but they'll have no other choice! They all huff and growl like they're about to go boom when they're mad, ya know?”
Privately, Silco knows nobody will be bothering him for long but outwardly, he offers her an acquiescing nod.
Soon enough, his office is dripping in the kind of brightness not even the circular window behind his desk has ever provided him with. Cardboard snowflakes hang from the lower points of the ceiling and a colourful glue figurine sits at the far edge of his desk. There are a few candles lit, clouding the air with the faint smell of apple, gingerbread and a good night's sleep. And, of course, the toad , just above the door. Silco spares it a brief, assessing gaze. The missile may be a model, an artifice that should not cause any trouble but he's fairly certain he has noticed Jinx taping an explosive to its back when she thought he wasn't looking, and he makes a mental note to double check it at a later time.
Jinx herself is almost at eye level with him, now. Hands on her hips and lips pursed pensively, she stands at the edge of his desk in a way she knows he won't scold her for.
(He only has done so once, the first time he'd found her there. And he should've continued that trend, really, but the utter delight that had crossed her features then had been unlike anything he'd seen before and soon enough, she had him wrapped tightly around her little finger. He'd never pointed the stunt out to her again. His greatest concern had always been making sure she didn't stray too close to the edge and hurt herself, after all.)
Her gaze is zeroed in on the toad for a couple of seconds before she looks back to him, pensive.
“Is it true that animals learn to talk at midnight, just this one night? Are we going to hear the crows talk? ‘Cause they always caw so loud and I don't think they even have anything nice to say anyway. But,” she drops into a crouch, her eyes tracking him as he moves to sit in his chair, “I also kinda want to hear them. It’d be so cool .”
Silco is hardly surprised by her question. The cult of personality he has built for himself around a sense of ubiquity and the subsequent dread of being watched , assessed, was never limited exclusively to the streets of Zaun. And although he knows she's mostly forsaken believing in the urban legend his name has become, she still remains sturdily rooted in the conviction that he is somehow omniscient.
“I don't believe they do, no. I've never been privy to hearing Zaun’s fauna speaking, at any point. The crows caw, child, and the dogs bark and growl, but they definitely have never spoken."
Jinx regards him, disappointment subtly clouding her eyes, but she recovers fast enough to retaliate with still-fresh conviction: “Yeah, yeah, but all you do is work, anyway, so of course you wouldn't hear them. Ever. I bet I could sneak up on them and hear something .”
He nods his acquiescence with a sigh.
“I don't doubt it. Perhaps even, one day, you will prove me wrong.”
The silent challenge immediately catches her attention and, in a bout of fierceness, she bolts onto his lap.
“I will!” She enunciates with conviction. Her small hands latch onto the fabric of his shirtsleeve. “Can we go now? Please, please please, please !”
“Next year. We may go together, and we will see whether or not I am wrong.” He hopes the sternness of his tone indicates the finality of his decision effectively enough.
“Awh, but why? I wan—”
A yawn tears through Jinx’s words, surprisingly wide for such a small person, and Silco is suddenly reminded of the few litters of kittens he’d occasionally stop to feed and tend to as a youth. Each of these pathetic, defenseless creatures had seemed to only have been wishing for three things - food, shelter and a protective warmth - and since he couldn't ever give all three to any of them, at the time, he at least would to her, to Jinx , now.
“Don't you think it's high time you went to sleep, Jinx?” He questions and she makes quick work of shaking her head vehemently.
“No. I want to stay up! I want to—” she stretches her legs before letting them dangle idly in the air. “I want to see the first star, at least. I want to say hi to it.”
“Is that so? Why?”
“Because none of the other stars are there waiting for it. And it probably gets lonely after it appears, it's so boring up in the sky.”
Silco assesses her patiently, hand reposing on the armrest of his chair. His index and middle finger strum against the smooth surface in anticipation.
“Just because the other stars abandon it doesn't mean I have to do the same.” Jinx explains assertively, and Silco knows well enough that it isn't exactly a star she sees cowering behind the words peppering her admission. And if the moon shone nearly as brazenly in Zaun as it does in Piltover, the blue hues of her eyes would long have turned pearly white with a distant sort of grief.
Startling himself with the note of softness that seeps into his voice, he reassures her: “I understand, Jinx.”
And suddenly, her previous melancholy long forgotten, her eyes are sparkling up at him with newfound vigour.
“Can I wait for it, then?”
“I suppose I'll allow it.” He concedes, gesturing vaguely at the window behind his desk.
“Will you wait with me?” She inquires, eyeing him curiously.
“Of course. I would very much like to greet this first star, too.”
She nods adamantly and repositions herself on his lap. Her hands begin picking at and twirling her hair between her index finger and her thumb, legs kicking the air happily. Ultimately, however, she lasts until the chorus of the same tatty song playing down at the Last Drop permeates mutedly through the walls of Silco’s office for the fourth or so time before her eyelids start drooping and her head lands quietly in the crevice between his upper arm and his chest. His heart sags in relief as the buzzing energy slides off her in waves before evaporating completely. Although, he allows himself the admission, he can only admire and commend her for the iron persistence that has led her to last this long.
Slowly, he lets one of his hands settle on her head, caressing it soothingly.
“Are you sure you wouldn't rather go to sleep, Jinx?” He prods in the most patient tone he can muster.
“I don't wanna!” She holds her own with a huff, although her voice sounds woozy. “Staying up for the first star is very important…”
“So is sleep. You are barely thirteen—”
“I’m thirteen and a quarter !” She butts in but he persists, unbothered.
“—so it is imperative that you maintain reasonable sleeping habits.”
She cocks an eyebrow, lips twisted upwards, as if to wordlessly point out the hypocrisy of his remark. Silco’s own bedroom mostly exists to give both her and any potential guests a semblance of normalcy in their idea of how he operates on the daily, after all, and it would benefit his dignity not to try and count up the number of times she has found him slouched in his chair, asleep, pen in hand and a stack of half-assessed papers arranged meticulously atop his desk. In that moment, her eyes trained on him, she is an unblemished mirror of the man he left behind in the waters of the Pilt, years back. Her round cheeks, rich in baby fat, the uncertain slope of her nose, her furrowed brows - to Silco, they all reflect the same naive, youthful energy that used to flow through his own veins. And that sceptical expression isn't unlike those he used to openly assess his entourage with, seeking out comrades and subordinates alike, cutting into their starry-eyed ambitions to carve into them the slightest blemish of hope. Like a weak man would, although he could never compare her to that weakness, not ever. Her features are schooled into an expression that is familiar, yes, but he finds that she dons it with greater dexterity than he himself ever has. Then, in a split second, she yawns, and the illusion is all but broken.
Her gaze drops briefly to her lap, resurfacing only when his fingers begin carding through her hair. There are petals of shyness burgeoning in her eyes when she levels them with his once again.
“Will you… will you say hi to the first star for me? Will you tell it that I really really wanted to say hello to it myself but I was too—” another thorough yawn cuts her off abruptly. “Sleepy…?”
“I will.” His fingers continue carding through layers of blue.
“Promise?” She holds her pinkie out to him and he hooks his own onto it, offering her a half-smile he hopes is reassuring enough.
“Promise.”
“And it won't be… it won't be mad at me?” Her eyes bear all the qualities of a puppy’s, asking for a treat or a pet.
Silco shakes his head curtly: “It won't, child. I'll make sure of it.”
“...Okay. Thank you.”
She shifts to make herself more comfortable, huddling her bundled hands close to her chest.
“See, I told you…” She mutters almost stubbornly, wading into the rhythm dictated by her slowing breaths. And Silco knows the words aren't meant for him, not really, but he finds an odd type of satisfaction in them anyway.
Later, he'll carry her to her room, settle her in her bed and tuck her into her new, pink-and-blue patterned blanket. A neatly packaged present may even appear at her bedside, mysteriously. But now, cradling her in his arms, green light reflecting on her cheek, he lets himself rest.
High in the sky etched with clouds of smoke, the first star manifests accompanied by another.