Chapter Text
It was half past eleven, and Silco still sat sequestered at his desk; surrounded by assorted papers and schematics.
It wasn’t so bad—he had several fingers of whiskey in an engraved lowball glass and a cigar whose smoke trailed lazily towards the ceiling from its (highly decorated) ash tray. The door was closed firmly against unwanted visitors, which meant the room was lit only with filtered, greenish light from the circular window behind his chair.
The room was quiet, save for the typical ruckus that drifted up from the street outside the Last Drop. The reason for that quiet was Jinx’s absence. Were she present, perched up in her rafter nook, Silco would have been having a much more sociable (otherwise known as noisy) evening.
Jinx, Sevika, and a handful of their associated personnel had been gone all evening—executing a maneuver against the ever-encroaching Piltover enforcers that had taken him two weeks to plan.
Ever since Silco had rejected, in no uncertain terms, Topside’s offer of sovereignty in exchange for Jinx, relations between Piltover and the Undercity had further devolved. Patrols were escalating, both in number and in violence. But tonight, the enforcers were about to be repaid in kind.
From the hallway, the sound of heavy boots thudded towards his door—the kind of weary footsteps one would take after a strenuous evening. Two raps on his door preceded its opening. Sevika leaned her head inside, and Silco beckoned for her to enter.
Upon seeing the crease of her brow and the sullen set of her mouth, he silently poured another glass of whiskey from the crystal decanter resting atop his desk and pushed it towards her. Sevika dropped into the chair opposite him, letting out a groaning sigh. She accepted the whiskey with a nod of thanks.
“Shall I assume it wasn’t a success?” Asked Silco dryly, steeling himself for the report with a mouthful of whiskey.
“It went as good as it could have, given that there were nearly two dozen of ‘em and they had fucking gas masks on.” Sevika took a deep swig of whiskey and wiped her mouth with the back of one hand. “They were using the grey.”
Silco grimaced; that boded ill.
“We’ll reassess accordingly. We can force them deeper, into crevasses that cannot be reached by the ducts. After all, their feeble eyes are so accustomed to light that they’re blinded by the slightest gloom.” He ran a weary hand over his greying hair. The streaks seemed to have gained in numbers over the last month alone. “I’ll speak with Jinx about appropriate gadgetry; we can curtail their advantage in that way as well.”
Sevika nodded, but she didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic. Silco did not begrudge her the apathy, given that her eyes were still reddened from the enforcer’s weaponized pollutants.
The pair finished their drinks in grim yet companionable silence. When her glass was drained, Sevika rose, setting it down on his intricately inlaid desk with a muted clink. Halfway to the door, she turned back.
“Oh, by the way, you might want to check on your kid.”
At the immediate concern written across Silco’s face, Sevika added:
“She didn’t get hurt. Ripped their ranks up something fierce, as a matter of fact. But once we got back, she was lying at the bottom of the stairs. Too lazy to walk, I guess.” Sevika shrugged. Jinx’s behavior was never exactly her top priority.
Silco sighed, rising at once. That sounded like a situation that required his attention. At the top of the stairs awaited a hot bath and Silco’s affection. If Jinx hadn’t even attempted to reach them, she must have been feeling exceedingly unwell.
Fortunately, by the time he entered the hallway, Jinx had managed to rouse herself enough to stagger up the steps. Their paths met on the landing. Upon seeing Silco, a smile broke across Jinx’s exhausted features. She practically collapsed against him, wrapping her arms around Silco’s midsection in a tight hug.
Relief unfurled in his chest as he returned her hug, plucking a bit of stray ash from one of her braids—the strands made grimy and slightly fuzzy by combat.
“Hi,” Jinx mumbled into his coat.
She sounded utterly worn out—and Silco had a sneaking suspicion that the petulant tinge to her voice was the product of overtired littlespace.
Silco distanced himself from Jinx with a hand on either shoulder. She made a noise of protest, but lacked the energy to resist in earnest. He gave her a brief once-over; making note of her slumped posture, creased brow, and wide, weary eyes. Her clothes were darkened with ash and grime, but the blood smeared across her left temple did not appear to be hers. Jinx was tired and floppy, but otherwise unharmed.
The tension that suffused Silco whenever she was away on missions, whenever she was out of his sight, melted; trickling away as Jinx hugged him again, tired of being studied and hungry for affection.
“I wanna take a bath.” Jinx said, her words made mushy by the fact her face was pressed into Silco’s shirt.
He agreed that a bath was most certainly necessary. She was in a filthy enough state that he would have refused her entry to bed, had she tried to go there directly.
“Can you manage on your own tonight?” Silco asked, knowing that she often required his help washing her hair when feeling little.
Jinx shook her head, no.
“Help.” She peeped, like a muffled baby bird.
Over the years, Silco had grown increasingly conflicted as to his role in Jinx’s bathtime ritual. On the one hand, she was now seventeen; an age that decorum decreed was far too old to be bathing in front of one’s paternal figure. On the other hand, explaining such a notion to her—especially on an occasion when she actively possessed the faculties and emotional capacities of a young child—was next to impossible. Jinx would never see his withdrawal as anything but rejection. And rejection, particularly when regressed, was utterly crushing.
After a single ill-received attempt at explaining propriety to Jinx, Silco had dropped the subject and not broached it since. If she needed his assistance, he would provide it—that was that.
By the time Silco finished washing Jinx's hair on this particular evening, the bath water was nearly opaque with grime
Throughout the process, she’d leaned against the side of the tub, as though unable to support the weight of her own head. This made it exceedingly difficult to work shampoo into her dirty blue hair; but each time Silco set her upright, she made an uncomfortable noise and collapsed within moments. After four repetitions, he hadn’t had the heart to try again. It felt simply cruel.
Save for those whines of protest, Jinx was unusually quiet throughout.
Bathtime typically brought out her most playful tendencies. She loved splashing in a tub full of bubbles, periodically holding up clumps for Silco’s inspection and spinning wild tales about the shapes she saw within the soap. More often than not, Silco himself was expected to join in this process of interpretation—though he lacked Jinx’s imaginative streak.
But this lively whimsy had been dwindling since her surgery, and tonight it was wholly absent.
While the conditioner percolated, working its wonders on her floor-length hair, Silco plucked a cluster of bubbles from the water and held it aloft. Its many facets sparkled in the light thrown by a chemtech sconce on the bathroom wall.
“Hmm, what do you make of this one?” He asked, forcing puzzlement into his voice in lieu of concern.
“Jinx?” Silco prompted, when she didn’t acknowledge him. She remained huddled against the side of the tub, her glazed eyes fixed on something beyond the tile wall.
With great effort, Jinx turned to look at the proffered bubbles. Her gaze was unfocused as she stared blankly at them. The bath water had plastered little whirls of blue hair to her forehead and neck. She looked so precious, and so miserable, that Silco felt almost ill.
“What do you think this looks like, darling?” Silco coaxed, rotating his hand so that the bubbles twinkled and shone.
“I dunno,” Jinx mumbled, a furrow forming between her tired eyes. Her narrow shoulders slumped further. “...sorry.”
“That’s alright,” he replied at once, returning the bubbles to the water. “You don’t have to apologize.”
Silco wiped his hand dry, giving up on the hope of instigating that particular game. The air of discomfort radiating from Jinx made his heart sink. The readily apparent fact of her distress, coupled with his inability to do a damn thing about it, was unbearable.
“Shall we adjourn, then?” Silco asked, fetching a fluffy towel from beside the sink. “You’ll feel better after a night of rest.”
Except that was proving to be untrue. Jinx awoke each morning, sore and groggy, with dark circles etched below her vivid pink eyes.
Those eyes; first so alien, now so beloved. Though Silco had been discomfited by them on the night of her surgery—when they’d flashed with rabid anger in each sliver of light—they had since softened into familiarity. He was even growing to find that the saccharine pink suited her, despite being perpetually bloodshot at the edges. She was his Jinx, regardless.
But, throughout the past weeks, his Jinx had been losing her trademark sparkle.
While Silco was immeasurably grateful that the shimmer transfusion had saved her life, he was growing increasingly concerned as to its side effects. When he confronted Singed about them, the scientist had pulled a dirty notebook from his pocket and eagerly jotted down her symptoms—insomnia, headaches, dizziness, nosebleeds, muscle aches, a doggedly painful cough —but was unable to provide answers. After all, no one had ever survived this particular procedure before.
Per usual, Silco placed the towel within reach and averted his gaze to afford Jinx privacy. The fluffy bundle waited atop the carved side table, but she did not reach to take it. After a stretch of silence, devoid of the tell-tale splashes of her rising from the water, Silco turned back to the tub.
Jinx was exactly as he’d left her: peering up from the bubbly water like an owlet in a nest.
“The water is going to grow cold soon, Jinx. Come along, I can hear the bed summoning you.”
Usually his personification of objects earned at least a smile, if not an outright giggle, but now she just stared petulantly up at him—her lip trembling slightly.
“I can’t.” Jinx whined, like he’d asked her to scale the tallest building in Piltover, not simply stand up from the bathtub.
“And why is that?” Silco replied. “Your towel is right here, darling.”
“Oww,” was Jinx’s only reply. She raised one slim arm from the water, the hand hanging limp, and then let it flop back with a splash.
Silco sighed, running a slightly damp hand over his slicked hair.
“I understand.” He wracked his brain for the most efficacious way to get Jinx from the tub. “If I help you stand, can you dry yourself off and put on pajamas?”
Jinx nodded feebly, shrugging. Silco could tell she did not want to; that she simply wanted to re-materialize, in comfortable clothing, beneath the covers. But, at least, she seemed willing to try.
Lifting Jinx from the tub, with a hand beneath each arm, soaked his attire almost entirely. She had slumped against him to a greater degree than was expected, reluctant to let go even when she stood on her own two feet. Exhaustion was palpable in each labored movement.
Silco stood just outside the door while Jinx dressed, so as to hear the crash if she suddenly collapsed. Fortunately, all was silent, and a bundled figure re-emerged within minutes—wearing soft, fuzzy pajama pants and an oversized sweater, onto whose hood she had sewn floppy animal ears cut from two different fabrics. One of the ears was affixed with clumsy pink stitches, the other with blue. Their shapes were slightly irregular. Despite the warm bath, Jinx’s cheeks remained pale—a consequence of her recent augmentation.
As she shuffled through the doorway, she yawned hugely; both eyes scrunching closed. Jinx blinked several times, like she had just awoken from a thousand-year slumber, and peered up at Silco. He had seldom seen her so visibly little, and the sight bent his thin lips into a smile.
“Someone seems sleepy,” he observed, eliciting an exaggerated nod.
“Yeah. I wanna go to sleep right here,” Jinx pouted, pointing at the floor. It was a point of intersection between bathroom tile and bedroom hardwood—far from a comfortable place to sleep.
“I think you might regret that choice in the morning, when you awaken with grout imprints.” Silco was pleased she was speaking at all, let alone in entire sentences. “Might I suggest your bed instead?”
Jinx made a displeased expression.
“Nuh uh,” she said, as though Silco had offered her a platter of garbage. “Your bed.”
This request was hardly unusual. When Jinx had first arrived in his care, she was veritably unable to sleep alone. The terrors that dragged her, screaming, from her dreams required almost nightly comfort on Silco’s part. Even if she began in her own bed, by the wee hours of the morning she would run, often in tears, down the hallway to join him—steps hastened across the carpet as if her nightmares pursued her, even in wakefulness. These days, it was a coin-toss whether Jinx would ask to sleep in her own room or Silco’s; though her recent illness had been stacking the odds in favor of Silco’s bedroom.
When he did not immediately respond, hesitation flickered across Jinx’s sleepy features.
“Please?” She added, in a small voice—clearly (mis)interpreting his silence for reluctance.
“Of course, my dear,” Silco reassured instantly, dragging his focus from the contemplation of her wellbeing and into the present moment.
Relief broke across Jinx’s face, granting it a brightness that was almost tragic, compared to her misery in the bath.
With her last scraps of energy, Jinx scampered across the room and leapt onto Silco’s bed. She landed on her stomach, limbs akimbo, bouncing from the mattress’s rebound. As Silco joined, in a far more restrained manner, Jinx rolled onto her side to scoot beneath the covers he held aloft for the both of them.
Immediately, she cuddled up to his side, laying her head on his chest with another exaggerated yawn.
“Wait! What about the story!” She piped up, despite her visible sleepiness, as Silco reached to extinguish the chemtech table lamp atop his nightstand.
Sleep was tugging at Silco’s periphery, eager to wash away what had been a long, and somewhat stressful, day. But he would not dream of denying Jinx’s request; not tonight, not when she was feeling only tenuously well already.
“As you wish. But only one chapter, we both need sleep.”
Jinx kicked her feet enthusiastically beneath the blankets as Silco fetched the book from the nightstand’s upper drawer. This show of exuberance seemed to sap her remaining vigor, for she lay very still and very quiet throughout Silco’s recitation. Jinx was usually a most engaging audience—prone to giggles and gasps and full-body wriggles if the story was to her liking. Silco knew this particular book to be one of her favorites, so its sedate reception was certainly due to the heavy pall of fatigue weighing upon her.
Silco read in a low, soothing voice—animated enough for Jinx to enjoy while still being conducive to sleep. She always preferred he do voices; a level of performance he did not always concede to. But tonight, when the stern old farmer stumped up the cobblestone steps, muttering to himself, Silco donned a gruff, raspy growl.
“Who’s there, creeping around my garden?” Silco read, ruffling Jinx’s hair—as though she were being accused of the trespass herself.
Relieved delight ignited within him as Jinx gave a weak giggle, leaning into his affection. She shrugged, feigning innocence; just as the interloping rabbit did in the story.
By the time Silco finished chapter six, Jinx was asleep; her head on his chest, eyes closed, features softened by slumber. She did not so much as stir when the story paused on a cliff-hanger, the rabbit’s fate hanging in the balance.
Silco, closing the book and setting it aside, studied her expression; so peaceful in repose. The softness of her cheeks, and the slight pout of her lips, made his chest hurt. In some ways, so little had changed since he first met her as a lonely, desperate little girl. Over the years he had grown familiar with the ferocity of her grief, her terror, and her need for his comfort. The vicissitudes of her mood never shook him. It was just Jinx, and he loved her. Silco had weathered far more dire storms than hers.
But the bitter addition of her shimmer-induced illness was like a needle stabbing deep into his lungs. Silco felt inept in the face of her pain; ill-equipped to do anything but hold her, murmuring that he was sorry, that it was going to be alright, that he would never leave her. It was not enough. Impotence was unacceptable to Silco—it instilled in him a savage, desperate feeling of suffocation. He prided himself on his tenacity, his ability to always do what was needed, but this particular quandary had no clear solution.
There was nothing he could do but tighten his arms around Jinx, cradling her as if the tenderness of his embrace could drain the poison from her veins.
With an exhale, more tremulous than he would have desired, Silco brushed a little whirl of blue hair back from her forehead. He stole away another moment to study each beloved feature, as if committing them to memory. Then, carefully, so as not to disturb Jinx, Silco leaned over and pulled the lamp’s chain—plunging the room into darkness.
* * *
He woke to the sensation of a warm body pressed against his back; a body that was shifting about, unable to lay comfortably in one position for more than a few seconds. Silco rolled over, still half dreaming, and lay a steadying hand on Jinx’s arm. The temperature of her clammy skin jolted him the rest of the way out of sleep.
Jinx was positively burning up.
Despite the fire raging in her veins, she was shivering. Tremors shot through Jinx’s whole body, powderful enough that Silco could feel the twitches beneath his hand.
Silco extricated himself from the tangled blanket enough to reach the bedside lamp and pull it on. The liquid inside ignited, bathing Jinx with light as she lay shivering amidst the messy quilt. Her brow was furrowed, and the delicate muscles of her face were twitching—as if in a state of slumbering consternation. Regardless of the fever, the skin of her cheeks remained as pale as that of a ghost.
Now that he was awake, Silco realized that Jinx was making a horrible strangled sound in her sleep, like an injured animal: an expression of pure, unadulterated discomfort. It was soft, no louder than a whine, but it pained the listener with its misery. Silco rubbed her arm gently with his thumb, hoping the gesture would permeate her discomfited dreams.
It was not unusual, these days, for him to awaken Jinx in such a state. More than half the time, the silent comfort of his presence was enough to guide her deeper into dreams. Tonight was not such an occasion.
Silco watched, still a bit bleary-eyed, as Jinx’s breath hitched. Air seemed to catch in her inflamed lungs, like thorns snagging at cloth, turning at once into a cough.
Jinx’s eyes opened, their pink irises reflecting an uncanny luster in the lamplight. Another cough seized her, causing pain to replace the look of sleepy confusion on her face.
With jerky, labored movements, she pulled herself closer to Silco—collapsing, with her head on his chest, as another vicious wave of coughing tore through her.
Moving on instinct, Silco’s hand came to rest on her back as Jinx fought to catch her breath. He could feel each racking spasm beneath his hand, but would not allow himself to wince outwardly on her behalf. Pity never aided.
Silco sat up, pulling Jinx with him, so that she lay in his lap while his back rested against the tufted headboard. With great difficulty, Jinx looked up at him, trembling hands fisted in his shirt. Her wide, pink eyes shone with overwhelm, imploring him to help her. She tried to speak, but her words were superseded with a cough that made her eyes squeeze tight with pain.
“I’m sorry, darling. I know that hurts.” Silco said softly, as her head dropped to rest on his chest once more—too heavy to hold aloft.
The whining sounds Jinx made, between gasps for breath, telegraphed utter distress. The distress of someone whose body was not theirs to control.
Silco poured every possible ounce of consolation into the soft, repetitive circles he rubbed on her back—knowing the gesture could never truly hope to dispel Jinx’s pain.
She clenched her teeth, struggling to flatten her breathing into regularity. Though her coughing had mostly subsided, each intake of breath was ragged and labored—as though her lungs themselves were raw. They probably were, Silco thought, considering shimmer’s corrosive capacities. Her soft features were creased, brow furrowed.
Jinx curled up tighter in his arms, as though she wished to be entirely encircled by warmth. Gasps faded to shaky breaths, though her fever-stricken shivers did not abate in the slightest. She was like a small inferno in his lap, forcing Silco to kick his legs from beneath the sweltering covers.
Jinx made a small noise as he gently stroked her temple. The skin beneath his fingertips was hot and dew-dropped with perspiration. It congregated where pale met blue, dampening the soft, downy hairs that grew there.
In a quest for comfort, or perhaps distraction from her uncomfortable existence, Jinx slipped her thumb between her lips—letting her eyes flutter closed as she did. This was not a common occurrence for Jinx, even when regressed, and it telegraphed just how badly she needed solace. It jerked Silco back to other such evenings—when nightmares had proved just as unbearable.
“Don’t worry, darling,” Silco murmured, his words hard-edged with conviction. He spoke more to himself than to the nearly unconscious girl in his arms. “I will help you, I promise. If I have to throttle the answers from Singed’s miserable throat, so be it.”
The vow was futile, just a litany of words meant to sooth his own sense of ineptitude, but Silco had never meant anything more.
Beneath her gently closed lids, Jinx’s eyes twitched—sleep reclaiming its dominion over her mind. Thumb still between her lips, she curled unconsciously closer to Silco. He stroked her hair, with the utmost gentility, far past when she ceased being aware of his doing so.
When darkness finally dragged Silco under its thrall, the words of his promise throbbed in his ears like a pulse, like a mantra.
He would help her.
No matter what it cost.