Work Text:
“I’m cold. I’m really cold.”
“Right,” Sevika murmurs, crouching closer to the narrow space between the washer and the cabinet, still running with a constant hum, where the certain blue-haired girl had tucked herself in for hours while they all had a heart attack looking for her.
Sevika had told Mel beforehand Jinx is having one of her—ah, one of those days. They have them. It’s just that for Jinx, who has been traumatized without end throughout her formative years—Jinx, who’s all closed off and snarky and skittish and took exactly five months to warm up to her since the day Sevika came to introduce her to her nephews as someone who might just stay for good—Jinx, who’s always been so afraid to show her insides to someone that isn’t exactly the two people she loved the most in the world—her bad days are. Well.
It's just Mel has never truly seen it before in Jinx, until now. She just didn't expect her to be so—so small. Such a little girl.
“Scoot a little closer out here, will ya?” Sevika broke Mel’s train of thoughts. She watches helplessly from behind her as her girlfriend tries her best to fit her flesh arm into the narrow space to reach for the girl. “C’mon. Just let me see if you finally have that fever.”
“I don’t wanna have the fever,” Jinx frowns, clearly getting upset further.
“No, I know,” Sevika tries to reason—it’s surprising, seeing her interact like this with Jinx; Mel has never had them in the same room together without throwing a snarky quip back and forth at each other every few minutes. “But you’ve been little for a while, haven’t you. Figured something might be wrong with ya.”
Mel could see the way Jinx’s lower lip quiver, and her teeth immediately biting down on her lip to stop herself from crying. “I’m really sorry,” she whispers, in a very small voice that makes Mel want to drag her away from her hiding place by the feet and swaddle her with at least 3 layers of blankets and hold her and hold her and hold her.
“You don’t have to be,” Sevika assures with a low voice. “You just gotta come out for me.”
“I’m really cold.”
“I know,” she nods, still with the same tone, very patiently. “It’s warm in there, huh. But we can get you a blanket, and it’ll be way better than ovening yourself down there.”
Jinx’s voice squeaks. “We?”
Sevika tilts her head. “Mel’s with me, kiddo. Remember her?”
Jinx shook her head. “No. No... don’t want her here.”
Mel feels her throat tighten, but a part of her reasons with the heartbreak almost immediately. Jinx isn’t Jinx. She’s small and confused and afraid. And sick, too, on top of that. It isn’t personal. And then, watching her with another step between them, And she barely knows me.
“She could leave, if you’d like,” Sevika says, “but she loves you, too, and she wants to help.”
“Really?”
“Course.”
“But—” a shaky breath, “but I don’t know her. I can’t remember.”
“That’s alright. You remember me,” Sevika holds out her hand once again—her flesh hand, Jinx always gets a bit upset about her mechanic one. “I’m here to help, yeah, Pow?”
Jinx—no, no, Powder —nods. “But—” she shook her head once again, just as she was about to take Sevika’s hand, “but my bunny.”
“Your bunny’s still in the washer. You threw up on her last night in bed, remember?”
Jinx sniffles again. “I’m really sorry.”
“You know you don’t have to be,” Sevika says, wiggling her fingers once again. “C’mon.”
She shook her head with a frown. “I wanna wait until she’s clean.”
“Powder—”
“I don’t wanna leave her!”
“Hey,” Mel feels the need to speak up, all of a sudden, despite knowing it was probably best not to intervene with the difficult attempt, “tell you what. If you let Sevika bring you to bed, I’ll do a special trick to get bunny dry up faster.”
Jinx—Powder—blinks, very slowly, while looking up at her, as if still trying to process who she was, or why she’s there. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Mel says, crouching by Sevika’s side to get closer to her. “Yeah, of course. If you come out, I can show you right here.”
Powder frowns, still a bit distrusting, but she slowly, finally, makes a mind to scoot out of the narrow space and take Sevika’s hand to come out with them.
“There we go,” Sevika sighs out, once Powder is fully outside. She moved her arms to wrap around her lanky arms and legs, but Powder shook her head—braids flying around and all—and said, “No. Want Mel.”
“Really,” Sevika says, rather disbelieved, but mostly amused. Mel feels her chest expand with surprise, with joy, and has her arms open and ready to receive the girl in her arms. “Mel?”
“Of course,” she says, bracing herself as Powder sluggishly crawls out of Sevika’s arms and into her lap. “Well,” Mel murmurs, settling her arm around her entire torso and the other wrapped on her shoulders as she brushes her palm over her forehead. “Aren’t you warm, honey.”
Powder burrows her face into the crook of her neck as easily as Jinx would make the offhand jokes Mel would always find herself laughing to. “Mmm. Can you do the trick, please.”
Mel huffs out a soft laugh. “Sure, but then you’d have to move and be with Sevika and I’d need to find a hair dryer.”
Powder sniffles. “Mm. No.”
“Or,” Mel says, resting her back against the wall of the laundry room and cradles Jinx with her entire body, raising an eyebrow when Sevika comes back with a blanket and a wet washcloth as well as a teasing smile on her mouth. “We can sit here, and watch bunny spin around while she gets warm and clean in the dryer.”
“Mmm,” Powder hums, sleepily, “Okay.”
“Alright, sweetheart,” Mel runs her palm over her scalp, trailing down to twirl her knee-length braid and making sure her feet are tucked into the blanket nicely. “You just close your eyes.”
Powder cracks an eye open and wraps her fingers around her shirt just a bit tighter. “Stay?” she asks, very quietly. It sounds more like a plea than a question.
Mel wants to tell her that whatever ghosts that haunt her will never find their way here. That whatever mallet that’s shattered and broke her little mind will never return to hurt her ever again. That they’re here, now, to hold her and pick up the pieces, glue it back together again. And it won’t be perfect, not like it used to be back when she was a beautiful baby girl, but—here, now, cradling her in her lap—it might almost fix what’s broken..
Instead she says, “of course. We’re staying. As long as you’d like.”