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Silco had ruled his new territory with an iron fist, a half-melted eye, and the patience of a particularly malevolent saint. He had brokered alliances, intimidated local leaders, throttled a corrupt sheriff with one hand while writing a bribe ledger with the other. He had, in short, survived the worst the undercity could throw at him. But now—now he was facing something much, much worse.
His eyebrow pencil was gone.
Not misplaced. Not buried under a stack of ledgers. Not behind the half-empty bottle of industrial-strength eye serum Singed insisted he needed because “the scar tissue might congeal again.”
Gone.
Silco stared into the mirror, aghast, one dark, angled brow still present and correct above his unscarred eye. The other side, however, was a pale, hairless desert of upper eyelid. The bald expanse mocked him. Mocked him, the way Vander once had mocked the idea of a revolution with a mug of beer. Silco did not like being mocked. Nor did he like being lopsided. His symmetry was part of his brand.
He spun on his heel, fury simmering at a low boil, and marched down the hallway of the old refinery that now served as both criminal headquarters and foster home to one excessively energetic preteen with access to explosives.
“Powder” he called, knocking once—politely—and then pushing the door open without waiting for a reply. He wasn’t her parent—he was a leader of this operation. He didn’t ask permission. He commandeered.
The scene before him, however, did make him pause. The girl was sitting cross-legged on the floor in a tornado of (his) pens, crayon bits, and what looked suspiciously like the calculations he left on his bedside table last evening. Her blue hair was in the messiest braids he’s ever seen. He made a mental note to ask Ran to redo them, Since sevika wasn’t keen on helping out with the girl.
Powder did not seem to notice him. She was too busy scribbling furiously on a piece of cardboard. And in her hand—his eyebrow pencil. The very same. The last good one. Imported, delicate, subtly smudgeable—and being used for a drawing.
“Child.”
She flinched a little. Her fingers tightened around the pencil. Her body curled around whatever was in her lap like a dog guarding a bone.
“…Have you been touching my things?” he asked, tone low and even.
A pause. No eye contact. She didn’t look up: “No.”
He blinked. “Powder, don’t lie to me.”
Another pause. She hunched further over her artwork like it was a map to her soul. Silco took a step inside. The floor clicked under his boot—a pressure plate. He sighed. She was still booby-trapping her own room. He needed to speak to her about it once he wasn’t—apparently—being robbed blind.
He stepped around a tangle of wires and into the light and finally saw it. Her drawing. Rough, scribbled, half-finished. Charcoal smudges all over the corners. Bits of crayon melted into the lines. But it was him. Sharp jaw. Asymmetrical coat. That tired, permanent glare. The scar was too big. The hair was wrong. One of the eyes was completely out of shape. And still—
He stared. Not at the mistakes, but at what it meant. She had drawn him. Of all things. Of all people. Of everything she could’ve put to page—monsters, monkeys, bombs, her sister—she drew him.
A stunned silence fell between them. The girl didn’t move. She wasn’t smiling, she wasn’t fidgeting, rather looked frozen, like she’d been caught doing something she wasn’t sure was bad or not. He saw her glance sideways, quick and sharp. She was bracing for the mockery, the punishment, the shame. That’s what she knew—what she expected. Silco realized—his gut tightening with the thought—that she thought she’d done something wrong by drawing him. That he’d be angry, that his image, captured in smudged lines by unsteady hands, wasn’t something he’d appreciate.
For the first time in years, Silco felt something warm pull at his ribs. She wasn’t scared of him. Not as much as in the past weeks. Not enough to not draw him. Not enough to not look at him. She was still tense, still wary—but she had taken something of his, something close, and made something with it.
Maybe that meant she was starting to trust him.
It hit Silco all at once. The realization sat heavy and strange in his chest, like a door creaking open he hadn’t realized was locked.
“…That’s me,” he said.
Powder looked away immediately, like she regretted everything. “You can’t have it,” she muttered.
“I wasn’t asking.”
“…Then why’re you here?”
He looked at her. Hair a mess, paint on her shirt, something hidden in her sock. His pencil in her hand like a stolen relic. And a portrait. Of him. He sat down beside her, slow and careful. Not too close.
“The scar’s on the wrong side,” he said.
The girl flinched again, almost imperceptibly.
Silco pointed at it. “It curves up. Not down.”
“…I ran out of space,” she mumbled. “And you put some numbers all over these pages. I couldn’t use them.”
He huffed out something dangerously close to a laugh. “I’ll bring you better paper, child.”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t tell him to leave, either. They sat in silence for a beat longer. Then, softly, Silco said, “You can keep the pencil.”
Powder finally looked up. He held her gaze. Firm, but not unkind. “Just ask next time.”
A pause. Then a shrug. “Okay.”
Silco almost smiled. He raised to his feet, but before he left, he stopped at the door. His voice was quiet, almost kind. “Would you like me to get you some markers as well?”
He heard it before he saw it—that tiny, half-choked inhale. Not a word, not quite a yes, but that twitch in her fingers, the sudden way she sat up straighter, the barely contained excitement that she tried—so, so hard—not to show. She didn’t say anything. Just nodded, fast and jerky.
Silco nodded back, then stepped out. He was still missing an eyebrow. Still missing the tool to fix it. But somehow—just slightly—he felt more whole than when he’d gone in.