Work Text:
Tonight was the night Caitlyn decides to address the elephant in the room when she’d walked in on Vi chirping lightly over Jinx’s drawings on the coffee table as she combs her hair down with a detangler.
It wasn’t an easy decision. She’d seen this peculiar, sudden change of behavior about twice or thrice before, so peculiarly not Jinx that it made a mark on her memory. The first had been when she’d found Jinx’s bedroom door on the far end of the house open slightly ajar—something that rarely ever happens—and the girl smiling softly on the floor, having some sort of tea party with her dolls. Now, Caitlyn isn’t the one to ask the questions over such harmless things, but it did leave an uneasy mark on her. She wasn’t sure why.
But the second time it happens again, Jinx had been sick out of her mind and terrified and yelling about her late father, and she’d been so terrified when Violet called her Jinx like it physically harmed her that the alarms in Caitlyn’s head started to make a whole lot more sense. There’d been a few occasions after that when it might have occurred again, but Caitlyn wasn’t close enough to Jinx by nature to truly know—only small moments of her smiling too softly, or speaking in such an unburdened, childlike manner.
That is, until tonight.
Caitlyn smiles an acknowledging smile at Vi when her wife greets her from the living room, hanging up her coat on the hanger by the doorway as she makes her way in. “Have you two had dinner?” she asks.
“Not yet, we were waiting for you, but I’ve set it up on the table,” Vi says. “Let me pop them into the microwave for a sec.”
“I can do that,” Caitlyn tells her, offering a small smile at Jinx by the table when she looks up sheepishly from her drawing, covering it slightly with her arm as if she was—shy. “But you could come and help?”
“Sure,” Vi says, smoothing out Jinx’s hair from her hands as she stands. “Keep at it, squirt. I’m going to finish your braid after we have dinner, is that OK?”
“Okay,” Jinx chirps back happily, and something inside Caitlyn’s chest squirms.
“Vi,” she started as soon as they were out of earshot in the kitchen, but her teeth bit on her tongue before she could say more. She’d wanted to ask—have been wanting to for a very long while, now, but she could never be sure if it was something to be brought up or left to just… be. The times these strange occurrences with Jinx happened, Vi had been so happy, happier than she’d ever seen her before, just interacting and spending time with her little sister. Something they have never truly done before. It makes her wonder if it was something they’d agreed upon, or Jinx had consciously agreed in an effort to make her happy? Caitlyn wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“I know,” Vi murmurs, to her surprise, as she punched the minutes into the microwave. It sends a comforting humming noise throughout the whole kitchen. She offers her a small, offbeat smile. “You’ve been wanting to ask.”
“I—I don’t know,” Caitlyn admits. “I was just… well. Confused, I suppose.”
“I get that,” Vi shrugs. “I’d be too, if I were you. And I’ll explain, just—” she shut her eyes. “Could we pretend that everything’s fine for a moment? Just for dinner, until I settle her into bed?”
Caitlyn shook her head. “Yeah. Sure, love.”
“Thank you,” Vi sighs softly. The microwave sends out a series of frantic beeping then, as if on cue, and Caitlyn watches Jinx’s frames jump slightly, startled, and Vi’s calm voice: “S’okay, just the microwave, remember? Come over here, Powder, let’s have dinner.”
“You called her Powder,” Caitlyn starts, then, long after the girl in question had been settled to bed and they’re all curled-up on the sofa late at night, the TV flickering on and on before them. “And she didn’t even flinch.”
“Because she is,” Vi says, simply. “She’s Powder.”
Caitlyn shook her head. “I’m afraid I’m not quite following.”
“She has this… thing,” Vi starts, “I—I wasn’t sure if they were present when she was still with Silco. But I’d started noticing after she was with me, the little things… like playing with dolls again. Or asking for Vander. Or—” Vi laughs, breathily, “climbing into my lap and asking me to do her hair.”
Caitlyn shifts in her seat. “So it’s… regression?”
“At first. But then her psychiatrist mentioned to me about her headaches, and constant periods of memory loss—it’s more than that.”
“More than that… how?”
Vi sighs softly and leans against the head of the couch. “When we were kids, a lot of real shitty things happened. You know that part.” Carefully, Caitlyn’s hand sneaks to worm its way between Vi’s, squeezing it gently for reassurance. “And Powder was—young, really really young, and it kept on happening... Her mind couldn’t handle it. So, it broke.”
“Oh,” Caitlyn hums.
“And because it broke, they became these fragments... parts of her that sort of—I don’t know, juggle around the bad memories so that she doesn’t have to bear them, because she can’t. So there’s Jinx… a fragment that became her, someone stronger, someone who’s older and angry and fierce. But there’s more than that… One of the fragments is Powder. The baby sister I left.”
It went quiet for a while. The TV flickers on, and on. In the far corner of the house, she knows Jinx’s bedroom door is being held open slightly ajar for tonight.
“Does she remember much?” Caitlyn asks.
“No,” Vi sighs. “I’d figured she’d be about… nine, ten, by the way she acts.”
“Any notes on how I should… proceed, if Powder comes around when you’re not here?”
Vi huffs out a soft laugh. “She’d be clingy, that’s for sure.”
“But she doesn’t know me?”
“No,” Vi smiles. “Next time, would you like to play with her?”
The loud clatter is what makes Caitlyn decide to move towards her bedroom door, very carefully. “Jinx?” she calls out. “What was that?”
“Didn’t break anything!” Came a strangled reply. “Your pretty house is fine, Piltie.”
“You know that’s not what I’m worried about,” Caitlyn sighs, gently nudging the door open. The sight of Jinx clutching the side of her head as she kneels by her desk isn’t something she’d been expecting. “Shit,” Caitlyn hisses. “Hey, you—what happened? Did you hit your head?”
“M’ fine,” Jinx insists, shoving away her extended arm before it could even touch her. “Just—leave. I need you to leave.”
“We both know you’re not fine,” Caitlyn says. “Let me see your head.”
“I didn’t fucking hit it,” Jinx snarls. “I just have a bitch-ass migraine right now, okay?”
“Let me help, then,” her voice softens. “Come and sit down properly.”
Jinx is still jittery and defensive, but she’d let her guide her down to sit on the floor, even as she curls up into herself as she does—head between her knees and her arms clutched over her head, and something inside Caitlyn’s chest squirms and aches.
“I’m going to turn off the lamp so it doesn’t strain your eyes,” she narrates. “And I’ll get you something for the pain.”
“I’ll be fine,” came her muffled reply, but there’s no real heat to it now. Just a terrified plea. “You can—you can leave. Just leave...”
But they both know nobody is doing that.
When Caitlyn returns with a glass of water and an aspirin, Jinx is still lying curled-up on the floor, like a newborn thing, her arms shielding her head. Her eyes dart wildly when Caitlyn reaches down to crouch by her side.
“It’s just me,” she murmurs, “just Caitlyn. Remember?”
Jinx’s stares at her and she shakes her head. “Vi?”
“Not home yet,” Caitlyn answers. “Does your head still hurt?”
Jinx nods fervently.
“Let me help you,” Caitlyn sets the glass on the floor. “Could you show me where it hurts?”
“Everywhere,” Jinx whines, “it just hurts…”
“I know, love, I know,” she hushes. “Come up here. I’ve got you medicine for the pain.”
“I don’t wanna… no medicine.”
“I promise it doesn’t taste bad,” Caitlyn coaxes. “It’ll help make you feel better. Promise.” She doesn’t exactly recall how her words had gotten so simple and soft, but it does. And Jinx is looking at her with a skeptical, calculating expression, so Jinx-like and un-Jinx like at the same time that Caitlyn suddenly, wholly understands everything. “Do you trust me?”
Jinx moves to uncurl herself, very slowly, as if expecting something to happen, but Caitlyn is slipping her hands under her arms and very gently hoists her up her lap before she even realizes what she was doing. “Here, see?” she held up the small, white pill between her fingers, “you put this on your tongue and wash it down with some water, and it’ll help.”
“It doesn’t taste bad?” Jinx asks, tentatively reaching out to touch it.
“It might taste a bit bitter,” Caitlyn admits, “but only for a very short while. That’s why you’ve got to wash it down with water really quickly.”
She frowns, and carefully murmurs, “okay…”
“Right,” Caitlyn says. “Let’s open your mouth, then… place this right here on your tongue. Take a big mouthful—that’s it, and swallow… is it still there? Let’s take another sip, then. Did it go down? There you go. Good job.” Absently, her hand reaches up to run itself through Jinx’s hair. Powder’s. Jinx’s. Does it really matter, in the end?
Caitlyn kept at it, petting the fringe on the left side that never seems to stay down, over and over. And Jinx—Powder—leans into the touch, slowly, carefully. Settling her face on the side of her nape.
“Vi’s right,” Caitlyn laughs breathily as her arms move to wrap around her little body. “You are clingy, huh?”
Powder just hums in reply, her eyes fluttering closed, and something in Caitlyn feels like she finally might begin to understand the love Vi holds for her baby sister.