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Silco was not a kind man.
He hadn’t been for some time. No, that man died years ago, drowned in the waters of Zaun, dissolved by the filth and chemical burn of the pollution and emerged a changed man. It was a mistake to be kind in their forsaken city, a fact that he had nearly forgotten in his time with the Hound. How kind of Vander, then, to remind him how cruel the world really was.
He rubbed the surface of the coin in his hand, the face weathered by time and the elements, and clutched it tightly in his fist. Silco wasn’t a kind man. He was a survivor. He suffered, he died, but he won, and he learned.
He would not allow it to happen again.
He looked up at the room, empty aside from him, then further, up into the rafters painted with Jinx’s crude scribbles, and sighed, letting the coin fall from his hand, the metal clattering faintly on the floorboards and rolling off somewhere in the corner of the room.
Somewhere out there, Jinx’s sister prowled, waiting and searching and wandering. Somewhere out there, a traitor walked free, ready to hurt as she once did and search for something that she would not find. Revenge, retribution, the gem, even. The nerve on that girl.
He tsked, and lit a cigar, leaning back in his chair and taking a drag, the smoke coming out in a formless puff, like the undercity’s smog, dirty and unkempt as most things were. He watched as the embers flaked and crackled, the fire burning his irises a twin orange. That day, the same day he watched the world burn, the day that everything burned, he remembered that smell, that sight. The scent of burning flesh as his eyes filled with yellow and red and his vision burned equally bright, doused only by the water and the cold and the fear.
He would not allow it to happen again.
And yet.
His ghosts were not all dead, it seemed. Vander still lived within her, that girl, the redhead who spoke with her fists and hurt worse with her words. The girl who left Powder behind, and left him Jinx. Jinx, the sister who ruined everything, who hurt everyone that got too close.
Who never meant to do any of it.
He took another drag of his cigar, tapping the ash into his ashtray, his gaze lingering for a moment on the decorated thing before turning to the door. He would not allow the past to haunt either of them any longer. Vi – that girl, the sister who was one no longer – could not be allowed to continue. He could not allow Jinx to see her again. He would spare her the pain.
He would do what was necessary to save them both.
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At the end of the day, Silco was not a kind man. He bit and snarled and hissed at every kind word, at every offering hand, because he knew what they would bring in the end; pain and suffering and weakness, and he could not allow that. But as he sat there in the chair that Jinx had brought for him, his life bleeding out of him, he thought that, maybe, perhaps the pain was worth it this time. And perhaps he was, somehow, in some way, a kind man. He was something, at least, for having taken in Jinx and having brought her into their lives. He did not make Jinx, but he helped, he made her strong, he made her better. And oh, was she better.
He watched as she cried, his thoughts blurry and mixed, but he still couldn’t help the smile that made its way past it all. His daughter. The child who would cling to him when she was young, despite everything, the child who brought color into his dreary world, the child who had become such a wonderful, wonderful light in his life. The only one he ever trusted, depended on, leaned on, as she did for him.
“I never would have given you to them.” He muttered, his voice raspy, his thoughts slipping for a moment as his mind stumbled, then picked itself up again, his eyes finding hers. “Not for anything.”
Even though she despised him for lying, for everything he did… it was alright. He had his regrets, yes, and those dragged sluggishly through his mind in his last moments, thoughts of Jinx and Felicia and Vander, of all things, of how he had failed them all. Even now, he couldn’t protect Jinx from her sister, couldn’t stop the cycle.
But it was alright. It was. He was not afraid of death, not anymore, only the pain it would bring Jinx, and he could see it now, the hurt running down in droves across her cheeks, the first time he had seen her truly pained ever since the day that her world fell apart.
He was glad, at least, that he could have been there to try to hold the pieces together, as ruined as they both might have been.
They were strong now.
He was better now.
His vision began to swim, and fade, melting into a daze of blue and purple and the sound of her apologies, of her tears for yet another person who got too close. He wished he could say more, to ease her mind, to help as he once did. But he knew he didn’t have the time.
“Don’t cry.”
The world slowly went dark, and the last thing he heard was her sob as he drifted away, the currents taking him into the waters below.
“You’re perfect.”