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Silco pulled the comforter further over his shoulders, suddenly unable to resist nestling his cheek a little against the soft pillow beneath his heavy head. Although this was not the first night in this bed, for a moment, it seemed to feel like it was. It had felt like that every single night so far. And for a brief moment every evening, just before falling asleep, he could not avoid dwelling on the fact of how long he had not slept in a proper bed. Or how long he had not had such a nice thing as a warm blanket around his shoulders or a soft pillow under his head.
And every evening he was overcome anew by this strange feeling, knowing fully well to whom he owed this place, this bed.
That he was sleeping under Vander's roof again, in one of his beds, with a blanket and a pillow that the man had quickly traded for two bottles of his best rum before making Silco stay for the night, not wanting to let him go back like this, to wherever he had come from.
And so it had become Silco’s nightly little routine, his personal eternal to-and-fro, almost like an inner mantra before falling asleep.
Stay or leave? Vander or the Lanes? A house full of children or crushing loneliness?
And each time, he started yet another morning under Vander's roof, stayed for yet another day, found his way back to the soft bed in the evening and decided to spend yet another night. Hidden away under the soft, warm blanket, he kept pushing all his worries away, again and again, until exhaustion finally overwhelmed him and he found some peace – at least for a moment, before nightmares tore him from his sleep again.
He had never slept very deeply, had learned early on as a boy in the Lanes to keep a sense of his surroundings even in his sleep, any noise or movement enough to wake him, his fingers already closed around the nearest weapon in defense. The nightmares had come later, though, and had only begun to plague him when he had long since stopped being on his own or living in the Lanes.
Back then, Vander had often been there when it had happened. He had held Silco in his warm arms then and mumbled into his shoulder until he had found his breath again and his body had stopped shaking. Sometimes it had been Felicia who had just gently stroked his hair, humming a soft song to calm him down. Sometimes Connol had found him, too, screaming and struggling with his blanket, and he had talked to him in a low voice then until Silco had come to himself and had realized that it had just been another nightmare.
It had gotten better over the years, with those people by his side.
Until he had lost it all.
He still remembered his first nightmare after the protest, Felicia and Connol's pale dead faces before his eyes, them suddenly opening theirs with a look of disappointment, with anger on their faces. All the other faces of the people they had lost that day. The dream had burned itself into his mind and was hard to forget.
After all, Silco had seen it, had seen all those faces countless times again since then, and still saw them most nights to this day.
Vander's face, too. His had been added after their Argument on the banks of the Pilt, along with the suffocating feeling of his rough hands around Silco's neck, the water in his burning lungs, the sharp, blinding pain in his eye.
Silco suppressed a sudden shudder. He tried to push the images away, as he had done over and over again, especially since he had started staying here, back under Vander's roof.
He did not want to think about why he had returned to him in the first place, what all this would even mean for them, or how things would go from here. Whether he would forgive Vander for what he had done and what he had not, whether he ever could.
And so Silco did as he had done every night for the past week. He just pushed it all away even further and closed his eye, trying to block out the blurry outlines that the damaged one was still sending to his brain.
He could not say whether he had already slept or, if so, for how long. But he suddenly woke again, a little startled, when he saw the dark outline of a shadow in the doorway that had opened just a smidge.
"Are you awake?" whispered the small figure appearing at the door, and Silco could not help but close his tired eye again and shake his head, exhaling some air in irritation .
What a stupid question.
Groaning softly, he sat up in bed and ran his hands over his face.
"Mm. Powder?" he mumbled back sleepily, hearing her quiet exhale in response to this.
She was right. What a stupid question.
Sighing, he just shook his head again and waved his hand through the air to dismiss what he had just said. Instead, he leaned over to the small bedside cabinet next to the head of the bed, where he flicked on the naked light bulb in the wired holder, instinctively flinching a little at the sudden brightness of the light that fell on his injured eye and that seemed to send a familiar jolting pain through his head.
Vander had tried but had not been able to find a suitable shade for the lamp that would have dimmed the light a little. Silco had not really cared, he had not even been expecting to be staying longer than one night. After all, he still did not know whether he should stay any longer or not.
So, with another soft groan and a hand over his left eye to protect it a bit from the sudden light, he sat up again. Blinking against the pain for a moment, he looked back at Powder, finding her still standing in the doorway, her face half-hidden behind a pale hand clinging to the wood of the doorframe, from where she was eyeing him suspiciously.
He noticed the dark shadow under her eye, which he could see peeking out from behind her hand and the doorframe, and suddenly noticed the paleness of her skin as well, which seemed to have an even grayer sheen than usual.
"Powder?" he merely repeated her name, hearing the quiet concern in his own voice as he sat up a little further. He lowered his hand from his own face to the mattress beside him and swung his legs out of bed, feeling the cool wood beneath his feet as they touched the floor. "What's wrong?"
She hesitated and lowered her eyes for a moment.
"Promise you won't tell Vander," she murmured softly before looking up at him again, her gaze and the deep crease between her brows suddenly a bit too serious to quite fit her young features.
Silco just nodded, a little surprised by that request. Why should he, of all people, tell anyone anything?
It wasn't like he was her father. And neither was Vander, really.
"I won't," he replied sincerely before leaning forward a little, tilting his head. "I promise," he emphasized.
Powder hesitated for another moment, but then finally, she tentatively moved from her place in the doorframe and stepped into the small room, sparsely lit by the single light bulb. Avoiding Silco's gaze, she quietly closed the door behind her with one hand and pressed a blue stuffed bear to her side with the other, which reminded Silco for a brief moment of the pink rabbit that Vander had given to Violet so many years ago when she had been less than a year old and which Felicia had needed to mend countless times, as a few of the seams had kept coming undone from all the cuddling.
But as he looked at the bear, Silco's gaze fell on the blue fabric and he suddenly noticed how it seemed to be slowly turning red under Powder's pale hand.
"Powder, what –"
At the sudden force that had come with the worry in his voice, she backed away from him a little, instinctively seeming to hide her hand with the bear at her side, looking up and blinking at Silco from slightly widened eyes, her small body almost rigid for a brief moment.
Gently, he raised his hands a little.
"I – sorry. Come, let me see that, will you?" Silco tried for a softer tone and held out his hands to her in a silent offer.
She hesitated again for a moment before slowly starting to move, stepping towards him. Lowering her gaze, she came to a halt mere inches from his knees and took the stuffed bear in her other arm before, without saying a word, holding out her hand to him, her bleeding palm facing upwards between them.
Silco blinked.
Gently, he clasped her small hand in both of his and tilted it a bit towards the light of the bulb on the bedside cabinet, shaking his head softly at the ugly sight.
The wound must undoubtedly be painful. A nasty-looking cut, no, much rather a tear, ran across Powder's palm, starting at the heel of her hand and ending in a small, crooked curve between her index and middle fingers. With all the blood, Silco could not tell how deep the wound was, but the smudged, already partly dried marks and the redness around the jagged edges, which seemed to indicate the beginnings of a mild infection, told him that the injury was not entirely fresh anymore, and he guessed that Powder had been trying to take care of it herself for who knew how long now – clearly to no avail.
Silco sighed softly. He lifted his gaze from her palm to look at her, trying to catch Powder's for a moment, who, after hesitating another moment, finally lifted her head to meet his eyes, the small crease still between her brows – now almost as if in defiance of what he would say.
"Accident?" He merely asked her, careful not to challenge her unnecessarily. He knew what she could be like if someone accidentally overstepped her boundaries, if she felt pushed into a corner, if she felt small or insecure. When he saw Powder merely nod in response to this, he suppressed another sigh before quietly returning her nod. "What happened?"
At this, she lowered her eyes again and shrugged her shoulders evasively.
At this, the sigh that Silco's had restrained escaped him.
"Alright. How much does it hurt, can you at least tell me that?" he asked instead, and again, Powder seemed to hesitate for a moment before she finally shook her head and shrugged her shoulders for a second time.
"I don't know," she mumbled. "It wasn't so bad at first."
"And now?" he asked. Again, Powder hesitated.
"It hurts," she admitted quietly. "Badly."
"Yeah, it looks like it does," he replied with another cautious little nod. "Come on, let's get to the bathroom and wash it so I can have a better look at it, yeah?"
But at this, Powder blinked up at him, startled, her eyes suddenly wide again.
"He'll hear," she whispered, shaking her head. "He will – Please, Silco, he told me. He'll be angry with me, I know he will."
"Who will be ang– You mean Vander?" he asked in surprise.
At this, she bit her lip before giving a small nod.
"It'll be fine, Powder. I am sure he'll be just as worried about –"
"I tinkered again, that's how it happened," she suddenly interrupted his admittedly weak approach, her brows drawn together so tightly now that it caused her whole forehead to crinkle beneath her crooked blue bangs. "He told me not to do it anymore, but I thought I could fix his stupid clock for his birthday. I thought – he lets Mylo and Claggor do their damn tinkering all the time. It's not fair! I just wanted to show him that I can do it, too. That I can do even better than any of their shitty crap! And it wasn't even that hard, but – I just slipped. It was stupid."
Silco had learned enough about her in the short time he had been here to know that Powder only started swearing like that when she was truly upset with something. He did not really care himself, but he knew that Vander did not particularly like it when the kids swore much.
And so Silco let them do it all the more, sometimes even edging them on for his own amusement.
He did not quite understand Vander's rejection. Instead, it seemed to trigger a strange feeling in him, as Pilties usually did that, forbidding their children to swear. This way they could tell themselves once again that they were something better, not at all like the stray kids from the streets of the dirty Undercity. Just another reason in a long line of reasons to look down on them, to distinguish themselves from the oh-so uncivilized, swearing mob from this side of the city.
And so it almost felt a little as if Vander had forgotten where he himself had come from whenever he gave any of the children a pointed look for swearing. As if Silco and he himself had not said much worse things, swearing like a sailor at their ages.
Silco sighed yet again and started to open his mouth, but Powder suddenly looked up at him, silencing him before he even had the chance to say anything, the expression in her blue eyes far too serious for the features of a child so young. But Silco realized at this thought that he should know better. That no child in the Lanes remained truly young, that so many of them had already experienced so much more than anything most Pilties uptown could ever imagine.
That he himself had contributed significantly to making it that way. That Powder only grew up the way she did because of him. That, because of him, all three children under Vander's roof had lost their parents at such a young age.
At this thought, Silco had to resist the sudden instinct to lower his gaze.
"Don't tell him," Powder urged him, however, suddenly bringing him back to the topic at hand. "Don't tell Vander."
"But this looks serious, Powder," he objected, already a little half-heartedly, and lifted her hand a little in both of his. "This is – You have to tell someone."
"I told you, didn't I?" She merely replied, her brows once again drawn tightly together on her forehead.
At this, they looked at each other for a moment, both unwilling to give in – until Silco finally gave another soft sigh and lowered his eyes first, the ultimate sign that Powder had won this silent argument. For now.
And so he gave a weary little nod and just sighed again.
"Alright," he mumbled. "So here's the plan. You stay here if that is what you want. I'll quickly head to the bathroom to get some water for rinsing this, okay?" At this, he looked back up at Powder, who, instead of saying anything, just continued looking at him for another moment. Finally, she gave a slow little nod, and Silco returned the gesture gently. "I'll clean the wound and have a look at it. If it's something I can deal with, I will. Promise." He gave her a look. "But if it's something more serious, we'll have to go to Vander."
Powder opened her mouth as if to contradict him, but Silco simply shook his head, not letting her.
"Not a discussion," he decided sternly before she could even begin to talk back. "You're not going to lose your hand over some hurt feelings, understood?"
He saw her nod reluctantly in response to this, a mean glint in her eyes, which he skillfully ignored. He’d had more than enough practice with her mother over the years and had already endured far nastier looks from Felicia.
And so he merely returned her nod yet again before gently letting go of her hand and rising from the bed.
"Go make yourself comfortable," he said as he turned back to her at the door, one hand already on the handle, with a small nod over his shoulder in the direction of the bed. "I’ll be back in a second."
Without waiting for her reaction, he slipped out through the door, which he closed quietly behind him, and into the dark corridor, which he then started to sneak down. He could hear Vander's rumbling snores behind the closed door diagonally from the one he had just come through and suddenly had to fight a small smile.
He'll hear, my ass, Silco thought, shaking his head to himself, as he slipped past the door before disappearing into the bathroom a little further down the corridor.
After a moment, he found a small bucket in one of the cupboards there, which he suddenly vividly remembered having thrown up in many years ago. He knew it was true when he recognized the triangular scratches and the small dent at the bottom of the bucket that he had stared at in his misery back then, while Connol had reluctantly held his hair behind him and Felicia and Vander had laughed at his lack of ability to hold his liquor.
It had been quite some time, but to be on the safe side, he still wiped the bucket out with a cleaning agent that he found in another cupboard before rinsing it once again and finally filling it with some water.
Silco collected a few clean cloths and even found a rolled-up bandage on a shelf, which he also took with him before he quietly crept back along the corridor with all his finds in his arms, past Vander's snoring behind his door and back into the room where he had left Powder to wait for him.
He found her lying there curled up in the bed, the blanket pulled up over the tip of her nose so that only her eyes peeked out above it, blinking tiredly at Silco as he stepped back into the room.
He felt a small smile tug at his lips at the sight. One would almost think he had kept her waiting for hours instead of a few minutes.
With a little shake of his head, he got down on his knees in front of the bed and put the bucket of water on the floor between his legs, after placing the cloths and the bandage on the bed at Powder's feet.
"Alright," he said and held out his hand to her. "Let me see."
Powder followed his request and sat up a little. Silently she held out her wounded hand to him again, the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders as she did. Her bear was pressed firmly against her chest with the other hand, the crease back between her brows in quiet concern.
"This might hurt a bit, but I'll be careful," Silco promised quietly as he took her hand in his and dipped one of the cloth pieces into the water.
But when he gently ran it over the wound in her palm, she visibly flinched at the touch. He could see how her brows drew together a little tighter, her eyes fixed on the ground where he knelt. He could see how she silently gritted her teeth and pulled the blanket a little tighter around her shoulders, how she stubbornly seemed to be trying not to let him see too much of her pain.
"You cold?" he asked, not knowing what else to say in order to try and distract her from the pain, gently nodding his chin at the blanket around her shoulders as he continued to wipe the blood from her hand.
When he looked up at her briefly at the question, he saw her shake her head almost a little sheepishly, her gaze still averted.
"It smells like you," she finally admitted after another moment's hesitation, speaking so quietly that Silco almost did not catch it.
But when he raised his head a little at this to look up at her in surprise, she merely shrugged her shoulders and kept avoiding his gaze, her teeth buried in her lower lip. Not knowing what to say to that, Silco decided that he did not need to go into it any further for now and simply dropped the topic.
Instead, he silently turned his attention back to the wound in her hand, immediately feeling something of an old routine beginning to kick in, all the many wounds he had tended to in his life before his eyes. But he tried to make an effort and quietly explain to Powder what he was doing and why as he worked on her hand, remembering to gently ask her every now and then whether she was alright or whether she needed a little break.
But he did not even need to look up at her to know what her answer would be to that. He could already guess the slightly defiant shake of her head before she even gave it to him every time he asked that question.
Carefully, he washed more and more of the blood from her skin, realizing with a quiet relief that, without all the blood, everything suddenly seemed only half as bad as it had looked at first. The wound was undoubtedly painful, but at least it was not as deep as he had feared. It just seemed a little irritated and in an unfortunate spot, getting further irritated with every movement of her hand. Unfortunately, the cut was not too clean, though, the edges a little rough and jagged, likely increasing the chances of leaving at least a small scar.
Not Powder's first, though, and, if Silco knew one thing for sure, not her last, either.
"Now, this will sting," he warned her gently as he pulled a half-full glass bottle from under the bed that he had secretly stolen from Vander's liquor stocks a few days ago just for such occasions, assuming the man would probably not even notice it missing, as half-heartedly as he was keeping his records. Somehow, Silco seemed to have known that it was only a matter of time before he would have to deal with another injury.
Except that he had firmly believed that it would be one of his own.
Powder hissed softly as he dabbed a little of the alcohol onto her palm, but she continued to try and hide her pain, not moving or withdrawing her hand.
"Attagirl," Silco smiled at her and wiped the last of the alcohol from her skin before reaching for the bandage on the bed next to her and starting to unroll it a little.
Powder watched him silently as he worked for a moment, her head tilted slightly as he began to gently wrap the bandage around her hand.
"You're good at this," she suddenly remarked quietly, causing Silco to look up at her for a brief moment. "Caring for injuries," she added, and Silco raised his shoulders, nodding.
"I had a lot of practice, I suppose," he replied.
"Why?"
Silco sighed softly.
Children and their endless curiosity.
"I... grew up in the Lanes," he mumbled. "It's not a place one would consider a nice home to be growing up in." He hesitated for a bit, could feel how Powder seemed to be waiting for more than that. Sighing again, he gently shook his head. "Also, you know how your parents and Vander and I were... how we fought for a different future for the Undercity? For independence?" he asked slowly and saw Powder nod in response. He nodded as well. "Yeah. The Enforcers were a lot more violent back then. And we got a little reckless from time to time," he said with a small shrug.
Well, a little reckless was probably a bit of an understatement, but he did not know how much Powder knew about that time. What Vander had told her or the boyd. And he certainly wasn't in the mood for the discussion that would undoubtedly follow if Vander found out that Silco had told her about all of his old rebel plans for Zaun, possibly even egging her on with his stories the way he had done it with him and Felicia and Connel in the past.
Silco sighed.
"People got hurt," he continued quietly, his eyes fixed on Powder's knee on the edge of the bed as he spoke. "So we all had to patch each other up every now and then."
"Mom and Dad, too?" Powder breathed so softly again that Silco almost did not hear her.
He looked up at her then, saw the unconcealed curiosity in her eyes, saw the hunger for more stories about the people who had been her parents. People she had barely known herself, while Silco and Vander had spent so much time with them in comparison.
"Sometimes, yeah," he replied quietly, suddenly feeling some strange sensation in his throat. "But your mom was pretty good at dodging trouble. Always found a way out of a hassle before it got ugly," he added, giving Powder a small smile at the memories. "Your dad, too. They were much better at it than Vander and me, anyway," he murmured. "We got caught a lot, he and I. Had to patch each other up much more often than either your ma or pa. Well, for a long time I had to do all the patching up for the both of us. Believe it or not, Vander could get quite squeamish about my wounds sometimes."
He almost felt a soft smile creep on his lips at the thought of how stirred up Vander had reacted to even the smallest of scratches on Silco's body back at the beginning of their relationship in the mines. Almost as if he had been made of glass, too fragile for the job, worth protecting. But Silco had quickly made sure to make him and the other two realize how much he could take, had even begun to take some pride in it. Over time, more and more often he had deliberately started provoking confrontations with enforcers, only realizing years later how he had been secretly seeking Vander's attention by this. How, even more importantly, he had still been trying to prove to him how much he could take. That he was not at all fragile, that he was truly worth it.
But as time had gone on, more and more often it had been Vander, Hound of the Underground, once so stubborn and hot-headed, who had chosen to flee rather than attack. Who had to drag Silco through the streets by his arm as they fled, who had sometimes even thrown him over a shoulder without further ado, carrying him off, Silco kicking and screaming and cursing in his grip, before he could get into even more trouble.
Silco felt his smile slip at that thought, suddenly feeling an old pain, an old sense of betrayal rising in his chest again.
He shook his head, pushing these thoughts aside for now.
"Your pa was the best out of all of us when it came to patching people up," Silco murmured instead, his eyes fixed on Powder's small hand in his. "He was really gentle. And funny. Made you laugh so hard that you would forget for a moment that you were in any pain."
Back then, Silco had often thought about how many of his own wounds he’d had to take care of in his childhood since there had simply been no one else in the Lanes to do it for him. It had been different, had been so completely unfamiliar when there had been Connol and Felicia and Vander. Suddenly there had been people around who had helped him and who had cared for him. And not just out of pity because he had needed help, but because they had liked him, had genuinely cared about him.
And so it had hit him all the harder when he had suddenly had to take care of himself again after his Argument with Vander. When he had suddenly had to take care of injuries that had far exceeded anything he had ever had to deal with before. Injuries that had been inflicted on him by the same man who had once barely been able to look when Silco had stitched himself up, caring for a nasty cut after a fight with drawn knives or dressing some laceration after an encounter with an enforcer’s baton.
But did not say any of that, had decided not to tell Powder. He did not know how much she knew about all this. Whether she even knew anything at all about his and Vander’s fight and the reason why she had hardly recognized Silco's face under all those scars when he had finally turned up at the door of The Last Drop.
He had decided that it was not his place to tell her about it. Vander should be the one to make that decision, just as he had decided to mark Silco with those scars that day.
"There you go," he murmured as he finally secured the last piece of the bandage between a few of the earlier layers, gently releasing her hand then. "How do you feel?" he asked, looking up at her. Powder, in turn, looked at her bandaged hand for a moment before she finally shrugged her shoulders a little under the weight of the blanket, undecided.
"Tired," she replied quietly, and Silco gave a little nod in response.
"Mm," he grunted in agreement. "Been quite a night, hasn't it?"
He wiped his hands a little with the last piece of cloth and got up from the floor before putting the bucket with the now slightly reddish water by the wall opposite the bed, and, after a moment's thought, he carelessly threw the bloody cloths into it as well.
He would just deal with all of that in the morning since Vander would notice the bandage on Powder's hand and undoubtedly ask questions anyway. No need telling her any of that now, though.
When he turned back around, he saw her already curled up on the bed again, his blanket pulled over her small frame.
Silco looked at her, hesitating for a moment.
"Don't you have your own bed?" he mumbled when she made no effort at all to move from her spot. At that question, Powder merely blinked up at him from under the covers, silently shrugging her shoulders a little.
Silco raised his eyebrow and tilted his head.
"You're not planning on leaving, are you?" he asked with a small sigh and saw Powder shake her head a little in response.
At that, he sighed again and decided that he did not have the energy - or the heart - for this debate now.
Which seemed interesting enough, as he was not exactly a man known for understanding when it was time to surrender.
"Scoot," he simply said as he stepped closer and sat next to Powder on the edge of the bed. She silently followed his instruction and made room for him, a small, almost satisfied smile appearing on her lips, which suddenly seemed to unsettle Silco a bit, though he could not say why exactly. "Just this once," he made clear as her gave her a serious look for a moment. "And only because you're hurt and I feel pity for you."
He saw the small, now almost amused smile on her lips grow just a little wider as she nodded in response.
At this, Silco let out another sigh.
"And no snoring," he ordered as he finally lay down in bed next to her.
"I'm not Vander," Powder chuckled softly at this and contentedly handed him a bit of the comforter, while Silco suddenly had to fight a small smile of his own.
Silently, he just shook his head at her and turned onto his side before finally switching off the naked light bulb on the bedside cabinet.
"Thanks, Silco," Powder whispered into the darkness. At this, Silco sighed yet again.
"Sure. Now go to sleep, Powder," he murmured back and closed his eye.
He tried to ignore the unfamiliar presence behind him, but found that it seemed to be much easier than he had expected. Before he even knew it, he had already drifted off and was only startled out of his sleep again when he suddenly heard a stifled gasp behind him and shortly afterwards felt the mattress beneath him move uneasily.
Sleepily and a bit disoriented, he sat up a little before hearing the soft, poorly suppressed sobs next to him, which seemed to send an icy shiver down his spine for a moment. He knew only too well what it felt like to wake up from a terrible nightmare and to desperately try to hide it.
And so, wordlessly, he felt in the semi-darkness for the shivering bundle beside him, gently running his hand over Powder's head in a reassuring gesture, the way her mother had done it to him countless times. For a fraction of a moment, he could feel her freeze under his touch, but before he could withdraw his hand and apologize for the touch, she had already scooted closer and wrapped her arms around his middle before she began to sob into his shirt.
Hesitantly and a little helplessly, he just patted her head for a moment, not quite knowing what to do or how to comfort her now.
Powder pulled him closer, hiding her face in the soft fabric of the ugly shirt he had gotten from Vander to sleep in when they had talked him into at least staying the night a few days ago before leaving again.
She had gone to such lengths to hide her nightmares from the others, had not wanted any of them to see how bad they had gotten. She had not wanted Mylo or Claggor to make fun of her for it, or Vander to think that she was even weaker than he already seemed to think she was, with the way he had been treating her since The Accident.
But she had always had nightmares. Only usually Vi had been there to hold her until it had gotten better and the images had blurred and the voices in her head had gone quiet again.
But her dreams had become worse without her.
Instead, Powder kept dreaming about her now, about her last moment.
When she dreamt, she saw the sudden explosion in that room up in Piltover, over and over again. She saw Vi being thrown through the air, everything as if in slow motion. Saw her body hit the floor hard, suddenly still and with all tension gone. Saw the horrified look on Claggor's face, which had brought her back into the moment as she had suddenly begun to understand what had just happened and what she was seeing. When she dreamt, she saw herself stumbling towards Vi's limp body on the ground again, turning her onto her back, shaking her, yelling at her to get up. She saw her still face, the soot on her cheeks, the trickle of blood on her lips.
She saw the glowing blue stones in her own hand that had somehow triggered the sudden explosion and that had been taken from her by one of the enforcers. The stones that she had found and pocketed just minutes earlier, only realizing much later that, if she had not taken them, none of this would have ever happened.
Powder whimpered at the thought, unable to hold back or hide her sobs.
Silco responded by finally putting his arms around her and holding her in silence, just as Vi used to do. Gently, he ran a hand over her back and slowly rocked her back and forth a little as she sobbed into his shirt.
But he said nothing, made no attempt to stop her tears. Instead, he simply let her cry.
And Powder pulled him even closer and cried into his shirt, where she could smell him between her shaking sobs, just as she had smelled him earlier in the fabric of the blanket.
She found that she liked his smell, almost found something strangely reassuring in it.
But above all, it was the way that he was saying nothing that seemed to offer her comfort more than any words of hid could have. And she began to understand that he probably knew all too well what she was feeling, that he probably had his own nightmares, too, that he was struggling with. Powder could sometimes see it in his eyes when he seemed to be thinking that no one was looking. And she guessed that something that had left such gruesome scars on his face would surely leave scars on his heart as well, just as Vi's death had torn some into hers.
And so he seemed to know not to say any stupid things like It's okay or You are okay, like Vander sometimes would when he did catch her crying.
It was stupid because it was not true, none of the things he would say in such moments were.
Because how could everything be okay when Vi was gone?
How could Powder possibly ever be okay again without her?
But Silco did not say any such thing. Instead, he just held her in silence as she slowly began to calm down again, her tears long since dried up and her body utterly exhausted. He held her as she buried her cheek against his chest and wearily closed her heavy eyes, his scent in her nose and his ugly shirt soft against her cheek. He held her as she finally fell silent in his arms and, before she even knew it, had drifted back to sleep.