Archive of Our Own ^beta

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With two muscular arms half engulfed in the gauntlets, Vi rips Pow-pow from her fingers and literally tears it into pieces, launching Jinx a few feet backwards. She just barely manages to catch herself on her hands and knees before eating the pavement, and Vi wastes no time at all in jumping in front of her, those big fat fingers of hers reaching out for Jinx’s arms.

When they’d come here, Jinx’d thought they didn’t want to kill her or anything, but that first shot from the Piltie’s fancy new rifle had instantly proven her wrong, her real name coming out of Vi’s mouth icing on the shit cake that today was turning out to be. Wherever the kid was watching from up above them, Jinx only hopes that she knows when to leave. She might not have spelled it out for the brat, but this was never going to end well.

Not for Jinx, and not for Vi.

Vi moves to swing at her again, but something fucky happens with her gauntlets, this crackly blue electricity-like stuff zappin’ all around them, and as she screams in pain, Jinx hears Sevika grunt out a similarly hurt sound from behind them. With an annoyed flick of the eyes, Jinx runs towards the pair still fighting behind her, whipping out Zapper so she can shoot at the Piltie to give Lefty the chance to get up already…but the slippery topsider manages to dodge most of her bullets, and Jinx just keeps shooting.

At one point, she shoots at the hex compartment on the side and the weapon crackles with the same energy as Vi’s just had—but she doesn’t get to see what happens because Vi’d somehow pulled herself together enough to punch her in the side, and when Jinx can’t completely pull outta the way of the empowered fist, her body’s launched towards where she’d been steadily corralling the Piltie towards that trap she’d laid before all this began. Jinx curses her luck as her body flies right by the Piltie’s, but before the lady can even think about shooting her, that compartment Jinx had shot crackles to life again, a stray bolt shooting out from the side of it until it hits Jinx’s own pistol in her hand.

That makes the pistol start actin’ up, and Jinx has to grit her teeth as she finally understands those looks of pain all the others had just been sporting when that energy buzzes to life under her own skin, setting her nerve endings ablaze with a horrible bolt that zips up her arm and through her spine, leaving her temporarily frozen in place as the trap she’d laid springs around her…

As she’s thinking about how royally fucked she’s about to become (yes, I’d like my Jinx served well done, please), the hex gem in her pistol starts overheating in earnest, and the sounds of something charging up whips to life from each of Sevika’s arm, Jinx’s pistol, and the Piltie’s rifle. As three separate, chaotic energies fill the area of the room the three of them all stand or lay in close proximity to, the chompers Jinx had put out suddenly burst to life.

As the world shatters around them, Jinx’s last thought is that she’s glad Vi isn’t caught in the blast.

Chapter Text

Her ears ring and she squeezes her eyes shut tight, but the sound just won’t go away. Vaguely, she recognizes someone’s calling out to her, but it’s just…wrong somehow in a way that’s hard to put into words considering the part of her brain that usually, you know, processes stuff has apparently decided to go on vacation. Instead, there’s nothing—just the fuzz between her temples, some slick substance that coats the back of her head, and, of course, a generalizable feeling of some dull pain that’s kinda just ambiently chilling throughout her entire body. Any time she even thinks about moving in the next however the heck long she’s stuck wherever her limp, doll-like body had ended up, a sharp, stabbing spike of pure awfulness shoots up the offending limb and straight to her head, making all these vague sensations she’s got going on about a gazillion times worse…

But it’s only when something real and solid curls under her arms and pulls her off of wherever she is that her stupid head shuts off for real, and after that, she just sorta drifts off.

It takes…well, probably a long time for things to turn back on, and it ain’t all quick, either. It starts with her tactile sense: she feels all warm, kinda like her head had before ‘cept it’s everywhere, an’ since she’s feeling slightly less like she’d been hit by one of those fancy Piltie motor carriages, she figures out pretty quickly that that’d probably been blood or something from the impact her skull’d made with…eh, whatever she’d ended up bonkin’ it on…and she’s gotta say, considering that that’s kinda what she was goin’ for here, things finally seem like they’re turning up Jinx.

‘Cept, then it keeps going.

She don’t got a real great sense ‘a time or nothin’ here, but she’s at least pretty sure that things’re supposed to, like, stop after a while when you blow yourself up for realsies…an’ the fact that she keep gettin’ more ‘n more feeling back into her extremities is more concerning than it is anything else.

‘Course, that shit had fucking nothing on what she first ended up hearing.

“—o, it was my fault—I shouldn’t have brought her along.”

It’s Vi.

Oh boy. OK, so that’s…that’s not great. Vi wasn’t supposed to take her in, and she sure as heck hadn’t been trying to before…so why now?

While she’s busy thinking of like eighty different ways to say what the fuck, she hears someone sigh—just, it’s not, like, a lady soundin’ sigh or nothin’. It’s too deep for that, too…well, not prim ‘n proper to be Vi’s idiotic ”oh, let’s go waltz right into that super obvious trap made by the known terrorist!” girlfriend.

Thinking about it like that almost makes her laugh, but her throat’s too dry for anything to come out except a cough, and even that’s all pathetic ‘n small sounding…but she nearly flinches when a hand comes and touches her face. At first, she thinks someone’s about to beat her ass, but a second or two later she realizes they’re only trying to smooth out her hair, and it…

God, it ain’t helping that whole mess of discomfort thing she’s got going on, either.

That other voice says something, but it’s blocked out by the pounding of her own dumb heart, and by the time she’s chilled out enough to hear anything else, it’s Vi who’s yappin’ yet again, the hand that’s probably her’s not pausing for even a second as it gently cards through the strands on the top of her head.

Maybe it’d be nice if they hadn’t, say, been fighting to the death just a little while before…or if it hadn’t made Jinx realize someone’d cut most ‘a her hair off. Hell, even the fringe was gone now…and it’s starting to feel real unsettling the longer she thinks about it. They were definitely gonna kill her or at least lock her up for the next forever, so why bother with any of this?

There’s something she’s missing here…

“She hit her head after that explosion I told you about. I mean, I carried her back as fast as I could, but one of those assholes that jumped us got the shit while we kicked the hell outta his buddies…only so much I could do with one hand…is she gonna be ok?”

They got jumped? Damn, this Piltie was dumber than Jinx’d given her credit for—although anyone stupid enough to attack someone wielding hextech anything was somehow even dumber than they had to be…not that Jinx even knows what the rest of it really means.

Janna, why couldn’t she just kill me?

Deciding just to finally bite the bullet already (the one Vi’d apparently been too much of a little bitch to actually shoot), Jinx decides it’s time to actually open her eyes. Steeling herself, she cracks open one only to feel a wave of pain crash into her—she doesn’t get much out of the whole thing besides a migraine: just a splash of pink and the silhouettes of some other probably enforcer creeps all hovering over her like the no-life losers they are…that, and the same wrapped hands she’s used to.

Maybe they’d be comforting, a long time ago.

That ain’t how she feels about it now, though.

If anyone has something to say about it, she doesn’t stay conscious enough to pick any of it out.

The next time she wakes up, she really wakes up.

Everything around her feels more solid, more present than it had before: the sounds of breathing, the feel of the blankets (thin and oddly familiar smelling considering she’s probably in like Stillwater or something), the arms curled around her—

Hold the fuck up. The what?!

God, but the way she practically vaults out of their grip might have been awesome had she not felt so weak (stupid concussion): she doesn’t even manage to break this asshole’s steely grip around her, and in her panic, she realizes it’s also too dark to see anything. All she’d really managed to do was jostle her cellmate (they wouldn’t be for very long, if Jinx could help it) awake, their confused, sleep-addled ”hmm?” nearly enough to set her off—

But then, something happens.

A light suddenly brightens up the room they’re all cozied up in, and it highlights this lady’s features: the pink hair, the blue eyes they’d once shared, the muscular build…

The fact that they are fucking fifteen.

The strength comes easier after that, and Jinx practically flies from the little bunk bed they share, getting tangled up in the blanket she’d managed to cart along with her as she topples to the old wood floor below, ignoring the annoyed hum from across the room as she rips the blanket from her face and pushes herself up to her feet.

It's a mistake, of course: she’s off-balance and moving much too quickly for someone who’d been so recently exploded, and she nearly collapses then and there until those same strong arms bracket her frame as they had before, and when she manages to stop seeing spots in her vision everywhere she looks, she turns to look up at her sis— Vi, who smiles down at her in relief.

Smiles down at her…

Oh.

That…no, no, no no no no no no no no no.

“Janna, Pow, you scared the hell outta me.”

It’s all said with this—this soft smile and a hand that moves from under her arms to around her back to try and press her into a hug. But Jinx isn’t having it.

“Wh—hey! Be careful, you’re gonna hurt yourself!”

As she pushes away from the brick wall of a teenager in front of her, an overly-dramatic sigh from behind her gets her attention mostly because it shouldn’t exist:

“Leave it to the baby to wake us all up in the middle of the night.”

It’s…nasally. High pitched, gets under her skin without too much effort on his part.

It’s familiar.

Backing away, careful of how she moves because she’s even shorter than before, Jinx gets in a position to take in the room, defend herself in her sleep clothes if she had to…and honestly?

No one should be allowed to blame her for what she says next.

“What the fuck?!”

“Powder!”

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Shit.

Shit shit shit shit shit, she’d gone back in time?

How the heck is that even possible?

She’d read all the stupid Hammer Boy Wonder’s notes—boring as though they were—and there hadn’t been a single goddamn thing about time travel in them. But what else coulda brought her here? And why now?

Vi steps towards her again, her arms outstretched like she’s approaching a wounded animal, this…panic on her face that Jinx hasn’t seen since that little tea party she’d set up all plastered there now that her screw up kid sister is twice the screw up and half the kid. Jinx presses herself into the wall by reflex, the images of pissed enforcer Vi from the future superimposing on the one of the concerned teenage face not doing anything at-fucking-all to lessen the tension in either the room or her messed up head.

“Woah, is she ok?”

There it is again, a second voice from whatever hell Jinx’d sent them off to all those years ago, full of sleep and concern and this generalizable anxiety he’d been known for back in the day.

Her arms come up to—to what, actually? To stop them? How? She’s fucking eleven!

You know how much ass whooping Jinx did when she was eleven?

“Oh man, how hard did she hit her head up there?” Claggor asks, a nervous quality to his voice as he shifts to sit up and face her from his couch.

Fucking none!

Mylo scoffs, the light sound of him burying his face into his pillow enough to bring her back to the present…or rather, the past.

“You guys aren’t real,” she hates the way her voice quivers, hates the way her words make even him sit up to stare her way, the way it causes Vi’s face (old-Vi? Ex-Vi? Kid-Vi?) to twist with some unidentifiably negative emotion. She jolts when Vi gets in her space again, close but careful not to touch as she looks her over with a worry that she just shouldn’t have the capacity for anymore.

It's really, really fucking with Jinx’s head.

“This isn’t real—this can’t be real,” she doesn’t even mean to say it, the words tumbling past lips that she can’t keep clasped shut anymore than she can deepen her own tone of voice, it’s timbre much higher than she’s used to as she sinks to the floor in panic.

They shift uncomfortably around her, and distantly, she’s aware that the silhouettes she’d seen in her brief waking moment earlier in the day hadn’t been the enforcers after all.

“OK, Powder: this isn’t funny anymore,” Mylo cuts in, his tank top sliding a bit down one shoulder as he stretches, “just go back to bed already—we’ve all had a shit day since someo—“

Popping sounds from somewhere above her make her duck her head in between her knees, and she’s only kinda aware of what happens after when Vi cuts into his cruel little spiel. “Finish what you were saying—go on, see what happens.”

It’s a clear threat, one that makes Jinx want to laugh just as much as cry, but she does neither of these things, her attention being elsewhere.

Just breathe, you idiot!

“Uh, guys?”

Clag’s voice is lost somewhere in her own hyperventilation, and that ringing returns to her ears a second later, effectively blocking out the rest of them. Sometime later, when her throat aches from trying to force air into her own lungs past its own constriction, she feels but does not hear the whimper that escapes her when something touches her shoulder, and Jinx only holds her arms over her head, intent on drowning it all out for good.

Who knows, maybe if she tried hard enough, this shitty little mirage would fade and she’d wake up in a more traditional type of hell than the one she’d been thrown into.

Her hopes are dashed when someone loops their arm under her knees, the other bracketing her back, and she very nearly loses consciousness again as everything narrows even further than it already had: her airway, her vision, her already nonexistent hearing—hell, even her sense of touch pulls down to just this shitty pins and needles sensation that permeates throughout her whole, too-small frame.

Ok, just…just calm down…

But when had telling herself that sorta shit, like, ever worked?

Heck, when had she even listened to it from anybody else?

“Shh,” some fuzzy-sounding, but close-by voice says from above her. If she focuses—which, all things considered is a bit hard to accomplish at the moment—she can feel the way a different kind of warmth engulfs her now, can feel the steady exhalations of whoever (and she’s not stupid enough to not know who it is at this point) has their chin resting on her head. She can hear the steady thrum of their heartbeat after a moment, too, because all this moving around has jostled her enough that one of her arms no longer covers her ear.

She doesn’t really wanna calm down because all of this is just as insane as she is right now, but even though all she wants to do is bolt or fall back asleep and never wake up or scream, whatever this is actually helps, and soon enough that burning sensation in her chest reduces to a dull ache.

Bizarrely, that’s what makes her actually start to cry…she doesn’t remember much of their mother—like at all, really—but this, the position Vi’s got her in with one arm wrapped around her and the other hand gently carding through her hair…this she can remember.

She wishes she didn’t.

“It’s ok, Pow,” her voice comes out a whisper, and Jinx feels every minute movement her jaw makes as she forms the words over her head, can hear now every breath she takes (when had one of Jinx’s arms fallen to her knees?) with the way her ear’s pressed up against her chest.

She’s wrong, of course, but trying to explain that sounds as equally unappealing as opening her eyes or heading back to the boys who could not really be the boys because…because…

When Jinx’s hand starts coming back up to pull at her own, too-short hair, Vi easily bats it away, pressing a kiss to the top of her head as she continues to hush her like she’s a fucking child and not…damn it, whatever the fuck she counts as right now!

Her head aches, her limb and chest ache…well, everything aches, and that burst of erratic energy she’d gotten when she’d woken up to this mess had crashed and burned as soon as Vi decided to play hero, and now…

Now she’s too exhausted to do anything other than bask in the horror of her current situation, but also too tired to examine it any further than the surface level. Any more complicated ideas or interpretations come out too half-baked or blurry to make any sense of, and she ends up faltering in the uncomfortably ominous silence of her mind.

When Vi notices she’s stopped trying to move as much, the arm wrapped around her briefly extends to reach out for something, and Jinx flinches hard when something covers her up to the shoulders—at least until Vi’s hand slips down to her cheek to wipe some of her tears from her face.

Then she practically leaps from her arms…or, well, she tries to.

Vi’s always been too strong for her to face alone.

“Easy, easy,” she says, apparently ignoring the fact that Jinx had probably almost broken her nose with the way she’d nearly headbutted her (Vi’s reflexes were better than her’s, too). “You’re alright.”

No, this was not alright—this is crazy and Jinx can’t understand why Vi doesn’t see that, can’t even remember how this had even happened in the first place because her mind’s still reeling from the shock of it all—

It…it can’t be real, right?

“Just go back to sleep, ok? Whatever’s bothering you, we can handle it tomorrow.”

Jinx shakes her head even as Vi settles them further back into…wherever they are. She’s sitting, she knows that much, but the boys are nowhere around and it’s dark (though admittedly, she hasn’t fully opened her eyes to take a good look around).

Please let me go.

She doesn’t say it, though—can’t, actually, with the way things start slipping away. She can no more hold onto those last tendrils of consciousness than she could run away from whatever is even happening right now, and Vi pats her head as she adjusts the blanket she’d thrown around the both of them, her next words coming through a yawn as she continues.

“That’s it. Don’t worry; I’m not going anywhere, Powder.”

If she says anything else, Jinx doesn’t stay awake long enough to hear it.

Chapter Text

Jinx wakes up before Vi does.

It’s not that surprising; Vi'd always liked staying up later and sleeping in longer than she had, back when they were actually kids instead of playing at this fucked-up version of house like they are now. After…after the first explosion—after Vi’d left the first time and Jinx’d thought she was dead—Jinx became basically nocturnal, but it’s not like her dumb kid brain probably even knew that, nor could she simply just forget that she was injured.

She supposed she doesn’t know if Vi’d ever changed her sleeping habits. It isn’t like she’d had the opportunity to bring it up while they were, you know, trying to kill each other down at that weird undercity shrine.

Still, this at least gave her an opportunity to see where she’s even at right now, and…it’s a little weird, to be honest. Vander had never explicitly told ‘em not to sleep on the main level of the tavern, but then he probably didn’t think he’d ever have to, either. That's where Vi had brought them, draping herself across one of the booth benches on the same side of the bar near the stairwell leading up to the main office with Jinx in tow…and it’s where they both are now, huddled under that same thin old blanket that Jinx had unwittingly tangled herself up in as she’d jumped out of a bed that’s no longer hers the night before.

There’s enough light, scant though it may be, that shines through the stained glass windows surrounding and built into the main door that lights up the bar that she at least knows it’s early in the morning. If she listens closely (and like it or not, she’s always been good at that), she can even hear people out of the memories of her past go about their business beyond the thick wooden barrier standing locked in her way, just muffled voices and strained grunting and irritated grumbles drifting in to a place older than Powder and Vi alike…but not older than Jinx.

Not anymore.

The trick now would be figuring out how to extricate herself from Vi without waking her up; she wouldn’t call her a light sleeper or anything like that, but even a heavy sleeper’d probably get up when a whole ass human being gets off of them, and Jinx’d seen firsthand how Vi used to roll outta bed whenever she’d stir back when they were younger.

The thought makes her grimace, a wave of panic swelling throughout her small frame that she tries to press back to the hell it’d come from—only, she also tried moving away from Vi at the same time, and all she succeeded in doing was throwing herself to the tavern floor, half a blanket following suit.

It's only then, as Vi startles awake and Jinx hastily pushes herself to her feet, that she realizes her plan to escape had been doomed from the start.

“You girls finally awake, then?”

Oh god.

“Woah, Pow, you alright?” Vi’s tone gets progressively more worried as she pulls herself out of the booth, but beyond noticing her close proximity, Jinx scarcely registers the words at all, because…because—

“Hmm,” that same deep voice rumbles from behind the bar counter where his ghost probably now stood, another spectre haunting her from a past that everyone around her doesn’t even know exists. “The boys said she’d been acting off last night—hell, even Mylo’s worried.”

There’s footsteps behind her, ones that speak to the weight of the lumbering man they carry forwards, but Jinx doesn’t dare look, her hands twitching at her sides as she struggles to breathe. In front of her, Vi’s stopped approaching, a look of borderline horror covering her face like cheap paint—because despite all of this crazy shit going on around her, Jinx knows what Vi is capable of doing, and while she’d been down to die in the future (present?), she’s not ok with that teenage-fucking face being the thing that does her in now, not when Jinx looked like this.

This scene, that face, her own small stature? All of that still haunted her nightmares as an adult. She doesn’t need it now, doesn’t want that reminder to scar her twice, doesn’t want to carry it over into whatever fucked-up afterlife surely awaited a societal scourge like her when she got done living through the hell she’d woken up to here.

Rationally, you gotta understand that she’s trying not to flip out, that she knows it won’t help the little zombie situation she’s got going on here, but no amount of telling herself that seems to be enough to get her body to catch up to her brain. There’s pathetic, loser tears dripping down her cheeks before she knows it, and when Vi takes another step forwards in her own alarm, the last little bit of Jinx’s sanity screws off with the rest of her common sense.

She might have the reflexes of Jinx, but she’s got the body of a toothpick eleven year old.

That’s probably why, when she jumps up from the table she’d vaulted onto like some merc, she misses the rafters above by a solid two or three feet.

The responding crash to the floor is only almost as unwelcome as the hands that follow after her.

She’s curled into a ball faster than she thought a non-Shimmered up version of her could move, and she’d thank Janna for it had she not been currently convinced the wispy wind woman was out to get her for that extra speed because she manages to avoid seeing his face for the time being. When one of those huge, calloused hands tries to find its way to her forehead (to check for a fever, maybe, if the rational part of her brain was still working right), she curls somehow tighter, her own white-knuckled grip only earning her a sigh from the hulking man now knelt by her side.

“Powder! Are you—”

“Leave it, Vi,” comes his accented command. Had she been any less, you know, in the middle of an existential crisis, she mighta thought it strange that neither her nor her sister had ever picked that up over the years spent in his care.

Now most of her thoughts are centered around the way his huge hands remind her of those hextech gauntlets that’d been doing their damndest to smash her into a pulp.

That reminds her of some of those drawings she’d painted for Vi and her stupid girlfriend, and that reminds her of her current situation, and that nearly makes her blackout because holy fucking shit, that was real?!

This is actually happening. She’s not, like, hallucinating or unlocking a new level of crazy (probably?) or discovering magic or nothin’.

This is real.

She does not want this to be real.

And when those fat arms of his curl around her tiny frame like living tree trunks around a fucking ant, she becomes painfully aware of how little that matters.

Jinx and her siblings never used to go into Vander’s room unless they absolutely had to, back in the day. It was pretty much reserved for things like absolute emergencies wherein someone was in immediate danger of dying.

Apparently, being questionably concussed and trying to launch oneself into the ceiling qualified as such a thing.

She doesn’t uncurl or open her squeezed-shut eyes or move an inch even after Vander sets her down—the only reason she even knows where they are is the smell. It’s…musky, but not in a bad way: like soap or shaving cream meets a cocktail of alcohol and just the slightest bit of blood.

It reminds her of the past, of his body, splayed out facing the night sky. It reminds her of the bridge, of the suffocating scent of smoke and charred flesh and fire, of axle grease for reasons she doesn’t dare pick apart.

It reminds her of Vi, calling her by her true name for the first time in what should have been hours ago, now.

But it’s not.

“You’ve got quite a thick skull, given it hasn’t cracked open on account of all the things you’ve been smacking it on lately, but even that has its limits,” he jokes, his tone soft and…she wants to say appraising, but she’s not sure if that covered it all. There’s a real concern there—unlike some of her family, Jinx had never once questioned that Vander cared for her deeply—but it’s covered under all these layers she’s having trouble sifting through to parse out all the nuance to his character, stuff like tonal shifts and volume of speaking, the body language she refuses to look at…basically everything Silco had taught her to analyze over the years on reading people.

You had to get decent at it, to do what he did, and she’d picked it up, some—the interesting parts, at least. Enough to know that there’s a lottta somethings here…she’s never really put much thought into it before (intentionally so), but Vander’s kinda always been the most complicatedly simple man Jinx’s ever met. Silco’d said something similar, once, but she’d tuned him out: she didn’t want to hear about him after everything, wanted him to stay a ghost in her past, an occasional bug in her ear, a face forever buried in the graveyard she’d made of her mind.

And yet, here he is, trying to ever so gently tilt her cheek up to get a look at her face. When all Jinx does in response is let out a wet little whimper, he sighs and lets up. Silco and him were always different in that way: Silco would push where Vander would relent, would shatter what the other would save.

At the moment, she’d much prefer the breaking one just so she didn’t have to keep living in her own nightmare.

He lets out a long breath, probably shaking his head with the too-long stubble that she used to laugh at when she’d kiss his cheek and it’d tickle her face before she got old enough that it became embarrassing (especially with a certain brother of her’s and his relentless teasing).

“You weren’t awake when I told the others,” he says softly, his weight causing a dip in the bed that pulls her slightly closer to him as he sits himself. “But the topsiders are after the lot of you for that little stunt of your's,” he lets out something between a sigh and a growl, more frustrated than it is angry as he goes on, “and I’m sure they’ll come searching the trenches…I wish I could take you to a healer before things cool down some, but it’s too risky the way things are now. Think some would be as liable to break your bones as they are to set them.”

She finds his voice soothing if not the blunt statements themselves, and the part of her that isn’t still reeling over everything wonders exactly where he’s going with this before he finally gets to the punchline.

“So for now, I’m afraid I’ll just have to do…mind letting me get a look at your head?”

She buries her face tighter into her legs, ignoring the almost-sigh he lets out in response.

“Never were one to make things easy, were you?”

He sounds almost fond and it makes a weird, dizzying kind of feeling surge in her stomach. She nearly loses her nonexistent lunch, forcing herself not to dry heave into her own lap as he continues.

“That’s alright. Tell you what,” she flinches hard when a strong arm suddenly pats her shoulder, and she can feel the way he both tenses and nearly pulls back before he stops himself as he continues, “you could use some more rest and should stay out of sight anyways, so I’ll let you stay in here while I man the bar,” he doesn’t say that he’ll look at her injuries while she’s asleep, but she hears it anyways, “and I’ll come check on you every once in a while to make sure you’re doing OK. Sound like a plan?”

She doesn’t answer him, and it must make him nervous…Vander’s never been the fool some took him to be, particularly when it came to reading people. Like being a drug lord, his line of work necessitated that sorta deal as well…he knows just as well as Jinx does that something besides just her injuries is horribly, horribly wrong, but he can’t place exactly what it is. He knows that she’s not gonna let him poke at her, that he might hurt her more than help right now with as wound up as she is, that he can’t afford her causing a stir with as tense as shit is between topside and the Lanes…so he’s trying to find a way to handle it all.

Silco'd told her once that Vander didn’t know his own limits. Jinx kinda gets it now, him trying to handle this impossible situation all by himself because he doesn’t want to drag anybody else into this shitshow his idiot kids had made for him.

His hand tightens just the slightest bit around her shoulder as he pulls her in a little closer, and she’s leaning against his warm, muscular side a moment later. She tenses at the touch, but relaxes into it very, very slightly a second later.

That kinda goes right out the window and lands in a dumpster as he continues, though.

“You want me to get Vi—”

He doesn’t even finish the question before she’s holding onto herself so tightly that if her sleep shorts weren’t in the way it woulda broke skin, and he briefly tenses next to her as she starts sobbing like a fool who’d forgotten how to breathe before he lets out a long, slow breath.

When he next speaks, he just sounds so tired.

“Whatever happened to you yesterday, Powder, I’m sorry.”

Yeah, Jinx thinks almost hysterically, her ears pounding from all the blood rushing to her head as her fingers go numb from the pressure, me too.

Chapter Text

Ok.

Ok. So. Plan I-Don’t-Fucking-Know-What-I’m-Doing-Or-How-I-Got-Here-And-All-I-Can-Get-My-Peanut-Sized-Brain-To-Think-About-Is-Panic isn’t really working out.

Now that she’s sitting alone in the dark of Vander’s room, she’s capable of seeing this…and of thinking a little more clearly in general. She’d probably have a complete and utter breakdown should anyone walk in, mind you, but still.

Her clear thoughts have told her one thing in the past half an hour she’s sat here in Ball Mode on the bed, and that’s that she needs to get the fuck out of here.

The good news? Vander’s room is on the main floor, and the drop from the window above his bed (which itself is too small to fit an adult) is only like six feet or so, max. The bad news?

She has absolutely no idea what she's gonna do after that.

Her initial response (after all the internal panic) was something along the lines of how the fuck do I fix any of this? but see, that led to another good point. Is fixing it—going back to the future or whatever—even a good idea? The future is fucked! She hates it!

But.

She’s not really a fan of the present, either…the idea of seeing Vi again, of hearing her voice or being pulled into a hug that she doesn’t want is actually enough to make her sick…but what other choices did she even have? She’s eleven! Sure, she could probably take care of herself, once she got used to the height difference and found some scrap and worked out a whole bunch…but the topsiders are still after them, and it’s not like she’s real inconspicuous what with the blue hair and the whatnot. If the Pilties put a bounty on ‘em like they did in the future, she’s ultra, royally fucked.

Her other option is equally shit, because there’s no way in hell she can act like the same kid she’s supposed to be here, and she’s gettin’ real tired of the way no one even’s really gotta try ‘n set her off. She can’t help it: this was all just…too much. She’d been all prepared to go out swingin’ back there, and then her fists halved in size like she did.

Only a screw up like you could jinx your own death.

She pulls her legs tighter to her chest, a baleful look in her eyes directed at nothing because the only person around she could even realistically be mad at was herself, and she still doesn’t even know why any of this happened.

And then, of course, there was the concussion that isn’t as questionable as she'd thought it was: like, she cannot stand looking directly at any sources of light, her head keeps pounding, moving too fast makes her dizzy, she hadn’t been able to walk in a straight line while she paced the room earlier, and any loud noise sends a bolt of agony right to her already messed up cranium.

And it’s daylight right now!

She’s kinda fucking starving, too, but she’s pretty sure if she tried to eat anything, she’d throw chunks all over Vander’s bed. Another problem? Despite everything, the scent of the room and the familiarity with the décor in here without any people around to speak or prod at her is doing wonders to keep her from losing her shit, and if she leaves, well. She can’t exactly take the room with her.

…right?

Huh. Actually, now that she’s thinking about it, there might be something here that could solve a couple of those problems…and then she can finally get the heck outta here.

She can just…figure out the rest, later.

It takes an embarrassingly long time for her to maneuver herself out the window, and she doesn’t even do it well enough that she’s able to pull the window shut behind her or, you know, not land on her ass.

In hindsight, Operation Pillowcase Blindfold probably shoulda started after she’d left the room. The stupid sun just hurt her eyes too much—and besides, she probably woulda landed on her butt, anyways. Even now, everything hurts so bad she’s just kinda navigating her way by leaning against the dirty alley wall, unable and unwilling to fully support her own weight as she makes her way further into the undercity. She probably doesn’t have a lot of time to work with, here: Vander’d been poking his head in every hour or so (she assumes…ain’t like she had a clock to look at or nothin’) to check in on her…it’s prolly only been what? A few hours, tops? She’s pretty sure he’s just waiting for her to finally conk out so he can maybe treat whatever injuries she had (judging by their reactions, she’d hit her head pretty good on that table, and she’d already had bandages under her sleep shirt from whatever explosion they were talking about).

She’s not stupid: the wounds were probably from, like, the botched hextech heist up topside, but they could also be from the blast that sent her here, too. There’s really no way of knowing, and it probably didn’t matter, anyways. Either way, the next time Vander came in to make sure she didn’t keel over in her sleep, there’d be people looking for her, and that would not go well for her at the moment.

When the light from the sun eventually gets too much for her shitty, injured eyes to handle even through her makeshift hat (relax, she can still see through it…kinda), she tucks herself into an alley and shuts them, waits for the ringing in her ears to die down a bit, for her limbs to stop shaking so damn bad.

And then she forces herself back on her legs made of jelly and creeps forwards again.

And again.

And again.

By the sixth or seventh time or so, she’s…she really, really,shouldn’t continue, can’t hear or see much of anything even without her pilfered pillowcase, can’t support her weight for too long without tumbling to the ground, can’t do much except sag into some random, crumbling cement wall that she’s too disoriented to even really feel. There’s just this…pressure besides her—that, and the pain.

Maybe that’s why, when something snags the front of her shirt, she doesn’t really react at first, too focused on the spots in her vision and the ache in her head from the sun she now faces to do much other than hang from that outstretched fist like meat on a butcher’s hook.

When she finally gets a good look at them, her heart drops a bit—because even though she’s kinda out of it, she can still recognize the face of the enemy.

“Piltie?”

Chapter Text

”You!” The Hook seethes, radiating an anger that confuses her more than it humors her.

It gets a little funnier when her vision clears up some when she forces her head to the side, effectively using that fat topsider head to block out most the direct light from the sun. That’s when Jinx finally gets a look at the half-baked Cupcake herself, that rifle strapped to her back acting like the sprinkles on top.

Distantly, the part of her that’s still awake enough to even care recognizes that 1) this teenager shouldn’t know who she is or how to even find her and 2) that gun of hers ain’t even a little hextech.

It means…something. Yeah, she’s sure it does, only everything’s a bit too, uh…what’s the word…

Huh.

She’ll think of it eventually. It takes until the hook (which is just the Piltie’s balled up fist around her shirt) shakes her a few times for her to catch Jinx’s attention…she’s still trying to remember the word she needs to use to describe this one situation she doesn’t know how to explain.

…damn, it’s no wonder people thought she was crazy.

“How did you—what did you do?!” The Piltie spits furiously, eyeing her in disdain as she speaks.

“You sound funny,” Jinx drawls, her speech slurred as she blinks sleepily at the fuzzy dessert practically frothing at the mouth before her.

Or would it be frosting?

The thought makes her laugh and apparently that’s not the reaction the lady-turned-teenager had expected, because she’s staring at Jinx like she’s got a few screws loose.

Jokes on her, though, 'cuz Jinx straight up lost those ages ago…although technically, since she herself has actually gone back several ages (well, she’s a younger age now than she’d been yesterday, anyways), maybe she could find them?

Oh man, this isn’t good: her head’s all soupy and stuff. She’s surprised her brain ain’t leakin’ out the ears or something.

Oh! She remembers the word!

“Wrong," good, that was starting to annoy her.

“What in the goddesses’ names are you talking about?”

Ehh, that’s a pretty good question, actually. What were they talkin’ about?

“Mmm…I don’t really know,” she answers honestly, her words lacking the bite they’d normally have when speaking to a Piltie.

Wait, when’d she get here?

“Is that supposed to be some kind of joke? I’ve been standing here for several minutes now.”

Oh. She musta said that part out loud—

“Will you stop that?!”

…how? What?

“I don’t…what’s goin' on?”

The topsider looks her over real careful-like then, her big dumb eyes lookin’ for something Jinx couldn’t have put a name to even if she’d tried...which of course means she don't know if the Piltie found it, either.

Then she looks kinda like she’s surprised and also kinda like she maybe feels bad about something (which is weird, but that's mostly 'cuz Jinx doesn’t really get what's happpening) and a second later she sets Jinx down…which woulda been fine, maybe, had Jinx’s legs been in the mood to support her own weight.

Fickle little things, legs are.

“Do you actually not—oh dear!” The Piltie gasps when Jinx falls over, but she catches herself with a hand before she eats the pavement, so. That’s a plus.

“What exactly happened to you, Powder?” Honestly, Jinx barely registers the words over the ringing in her ears, but they come into focus again when a hand wraps around her forearm. Jinx flinches at the touch and tries to yank her arm away, but she’s still got the concussion-fueled strength of, like, a baby, so it doesn’t really work out too well for her.

“Don’t call me that,” she forces out through her own chapped lips, causing the topsider to freeze before forcefully pulling her back to her feet (it don't hurt or nothin', though, which is more than she could say about, like, the entire rest of her body). She keeps her hand on her this time, eyeing her like she’s one of Jinx’s monkey bombs instead of, you know, Jinx.

“…why do you say that?” The words are spoken with too much something in them to be just curiosity alone, though she’s honestly forgetting what a good word for that something is.

Darn, this kinda sucks. How come she can’t remember anything?

Some voice in her head whispers something like concession or something and Jinx mentally waves it away—

“It’s concussion and you most certainly have one,” that too-high pitched voice says absently, some indecision or another eating up most of her attention, and Jinx gets the sense she ain't even talkin' to her no more as she continues. “It will make it rather difficult to return to Piltover, but you’re light enough…I think I’ll be able to manage.”

Uhhhh. What?

Either she’s accidentally talkin’ out loud again or her face screws up enough to speak for her, because the Piltie lets out a frustrated breath and answers her questionably-spoken question a second later.

“…I don’t know how you did this or even exactly what you did, but I suspect this bizarre situation we’ve found ourselves in is your doing in some capacity, and you’re wanted back topside for other reasons, anyways.” Yeah…Vander hadn’t been happy about that, not that Jinx really gave a flying fu—“In any event, you require medical attention and I require answers…I suspect Jayce and his partner will know better what questions to ask, but if I set this right now…”

…hold on a sec, Jinx is still stuck on that tiny little detail where she goes topside.

More specifically, the part where she has absolutely zero fucking intention of doing that—

“It wasn’t exactly a question, Jinx,” err, she sounds kinda angry— “besides, you should consider yourself lucky: you’re still a child, here, at least physically, and the sentence they’ll give you will undoubtedly be lenient because of that.”

…sentence? The Piltie just spoke a whole buncha those—which one was the important one?

The topsider huffs a laugh before pulling her closer, and though Jinx doesn’t really have the energy for it, this is like the third time today someone’s got all touchy with her—

“Gods, please don’t describe this in that sort of manner—”

—and she’s just not enjoying that, like, at all, so when the panic comes back yet again (she’s gonna have to start charging fucking rent), she almost welcomes it. I mean, it doesn’t help her actually do anything useful like pull away or nothin’—

“I must say, I find you much more tolerable when you’re too disoriented to be outwardly aggressive—”

But it does make her start hyperventilating again, so. Silver lining?

I hate my fucking life.

“…please calm yourself, Jinx,” Oh gee, why didn’t I think of that?! “We’re going to get you medical attention first, and I’ve no intention of harming you.”

…why would that be comforting from the person who’s fucking kidnapping her?!

Good news, though: she’s probably gonna black out soon if this keeps up, and she can’t get enough air to accidentally say her every thought out loud anymore, so.

Don’t ever say she never gets her way.

“…you look like such a child that I’m having a very difficult time not consoling you. Just…take a deep breath.”

Well, look who’s saying their thoughts out loud now? How the tables have turned.

…yeah, she can’t fucking see anything anymore. Yikes. Not a great sign. It’s…weird: there’s this disconnect between the extremely panicked, uncomfortable part of her that can feel as the Piltie awkwardly hoists her up to rest her head against one of her shoulders, and then there’s this fuck it part that just honestly doesn’t care about that at all.

Jinx much prefers this part, and a little while later, she can’t even remember why she’d been freaked out at all, finding herself just content to coast along as she sags into the weird pole she’s propped herself up against as she moves down the street.

Without her feet touching the ground.

Why is the pole warm and scented like flowers?

…wait.

“That was an incredibly strange way to describe a human being.”

Uh oh. Piltie. Hextech. Topside. Moving.

Oh God. Panic back. Panic back!

She pulls away from the shoulder she’d apparently just been chilling against and instantly regrets it not because the Piltie stops to hold her still but because her back is to the sun, and the sun is apparently her arch-fucking-nemesis—

“It really isn’t: you simply have a concussion.”

—because its Rays of Doom burn into her skull like Death Lasers from Hell and force her to shut her eyes, allowing the Piltie an easier time holding her still as they continue along, a sharp, searing pain from the laser still bouncing around in her head from where it’d crawled into her eye socket—

“Would you please quiet down? If I get intercepted before I can bring you into custody, we’ll both find ourselves in trouble.”

Umm, like future-tense?! Did she have any idea what’s going on right now?!

“…point taken, I suppose, but I really meant to say that it can and will get worse for us both if you don’t cooperate—”

Oh, God, Shut the fuck up already!

“You’ve quite the mouth on you for an eight year old.”

…Eight?!!!

“Could you stop with the struggling? You’re not slowing me down any, but it may worsen your condition.”

Well shit, say less—

“I beg your pardo—mph!”

…ouch.

Oh man. Oh boy. Jinx doesn’t know what the fuck just happened, but it really fucking hurt: one second, she’s putting up an honestly laughable resistance against the cupcake and the sun itself, and next, she’s been tossed to the ground, her ears ringing and head fucking splitting too much to do anything but lay there and writhe. It’s like she woke up for the first time again and she couldn’t convince her head to do anything useful even though she’s awake, and well…

Uh. Where was she going with this?

Urf. Her arms tingle too much to know for sure, but she thinks maybe something’s touching them, and then she knows something is touching her forehead because it makes her flinch hard enough that she hits her head (again) against the hard surface below her and actually blacks out…

Not sure how long it lasts…tired…

…

Eventually, some rhythmic motion lulls her back into herself, and when she cracks open her eyes, she spots…the Piltie, but like.

Um.

…hard to explain. Sleeping, maybe? Wait, there’s a hand around the back of her shirt, pulling her along…oh…

Those are the backs of someone’s legs. Why is she looking down at the back of someone’s—

She jolts when part of it loosely clicks into place, and the motion grabs the attention of her second kidnapper, that tattoo of hers noticeably absent from her face as she turns to look at Jinx in a relieved concern.

“Powder! Just—just don’t move too much, ok? And stay awake, if you can. God, I’ve been looking everywhere for you—”

She cuts off at the look on Jinx’s face, not that she coulda really told you what it is…must be something bad, though, for Vi to be all scared lookin’ like she is.

“Put me down…,” the words, barely understandable as they are, make Vi pause…that, or the tears do (why do they burn so badly on her face?).

“Pow, you can barely stay awake right now—just…i-it’s alright,” weird. Her voice’s all…shaky.

Jinx woulda shook her head if she could, but that’d take too much energy, so instead, she tries to pull away. It doesn’t work: Vi doesn’t even have to try to stop her before she can’t find the strength to free herself, and Jinx is left panting against her shoulder, a high pitched whimper escaping her throat when Vi’s hand drops the Piltie she’s dragging behind her to curl around Jinx’s back.

Trapped.

She’s vaguely aware that she’s shaking, that Vi’s panicking, that she’s sayin’ all sortsa things Jinx’s dumb ears don’t bother to hear…’cept until this one part…

“—f I put you down now, you might not get back up—”

“Mmhmm,” Jinx hums, drawing Vi’s eyes to her as she stares in disbelief. Still, it surprises her when the teen’s own eyes start to water and she holds her even closer than before.

“Oh Pow, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’ve got you, I’m sorry…”

That’s what Jinx listens to, these words repeated like some terrified little mantra as the last of her reserves finally gives out, crumpling in defeat as she passes out once more.

Trapped.

Chapter Text

The rest of the walk back to the Last Drop, Jinx can’t remember…or at least, she can’t in like a normal way, anyways. There are…bits of sound that flit around in her head that pair nicely with the nightmares that continue even past what she can only assume is their arrival: some dragging sound, heavy boot thumps on wood, some of Vi’s words to her over the years that she has a truly difficult time with separating from anything she’s currently saying. Is the humming from now, or from the night after Vander’d brought them both back to the tavern and Jinx had waken up in a cold sweat?

It's confusing, the way hands poke and prod at her forehead, the way the chill from the night air is replaced by one generated from her own body, the way she can feel herself be carried and flung into a wall, the way she’s both lying down and writhing in pain from the crystal embedded in a pistol she no longer carried yet still felt, the way her lungs can’t seem to get enough air because she’s drowning in the waters Silco baptized her in or choking on the Grey her enforcer sister released into their old arcade or too stuck in her own panic to remember how to breathe.

Somehow, everything is bizarrely, simultaneously true…and it’s pretty fucking awful.

What happens directly after that, she couldn’t tell you—only that when she tries to pick her head up from (presumably) Vi’s shoulder, someone gently pushes it back down, that the only way she can even tell where they’re at is because of the smell (sweat caked into already grime-filled couch cushions with a touch of gunpowder), that when she tries to open her eyes it makes everything worse again…at least, for a while.

She catches bits and pieces of conversation, but it’s kinda hard to hear the exact words through the pounding of her own skull, so it’s mostly just tones that she gets the most.

“—on’t give a fuck, she’s dyin—“

“—elling you, Vi, it’s not a good—”

“—an, he’s gonna be so pissed—"

Vi sounding stressed, Mylo sounding panicked and angry, Claggor on the verge of a mental breakdown. Stomps and shuffling and reluctance turned begrudging acceptance as the world jostles in Vi’s wake, as she’s wrapped up in some blanket or something, as something smooths her hair, as the cold night air seeps through her clothes to her pasty, feverish skin, as the darkness creeps back into her sense and there’s nothing.

Jinx thinks maybe she’ll die like this, flitting in and out of consciousness within the prison of her sister’s arms.
It’s…surprisingly not as terrible a thought as it maybe should be.

She startles awake when something’s forced down her throat, but her panic causes her to lose vision before she can take any of it in for very long, just the tips of pointed ears, the dark of an old alleyway, and a splash of damning pink. Everything stops after that, but she knows too much of how this shit worked now to get too excited by it, and when she eventually figures out how to think again, all she really does is lie there, taking it all in. Her ears ring too much to pick up on anything useful, and it doesn’t exactly take an Academy scholar to figure out whose arms are curled around her or nothin’, but the revelation does jack all to make her feel any better about it.

Weirdly enough, it’s only then that things get fuzzy again, and then everything that happens falls back into a haze of sensations that blur together as much as her memories do.

How much of it’s actually real, well, that’s not for her to say.

There’s a low humming accompanied by something running down her hair, there’s a too-sweet-to-be-natural taste in her mouth that vaguely reminds her of tea because of the earthy aftertaste, there’s this warmth all around her that somehow reaches everywhere but her bones, this ever-present chill soaking through her much like the sweat she’s sure she’s been caked in. Lots of words are spoken, but she hears approximately zero of them beyond her ears registering that they’re even there.

She’s surrounded by so many people and voices and yet…she’s so very, very alone.

“Shhh,” something rasps from nearby, some silhouette of a figure that’s still too good to be true attempting to lull her into some false sense of peace despite the laws of space and time not really digging that at all. “Don’t cry, Pow, you're gonna be ok.”

Irritatingly enough, it works, and soon all the pointless buzzing surrounding her like she’s queen of the hive dies back down into her dreams.

It's dark when she wakes up, still curled in her sister’s arms (Janna, how the fuck did they sleep like this so often back in the day?), but this time there’s a thick layer of blankets separating her from direct contact, and—swaddled not unlike some fucking newborn with the biggest headache of her goddamn life—this is how Jinx first spots her, sitting on the floor sporting an ugly bruise on half of her face as she scowls at them despite the uncertainty lingering in her features.

Her throat like sandpaper meeting gravel, Jinx at least manages to get a couple words out before it all devolves into a big ass coughing fit that has Vi pushing the blankets away from her face in a panic.

“Fucking Piltie.”

Chapter Text

Jinx hopes she’s sending all the hate festering in her little, cocooned frame through the glare she shoots down at the rich cockroach staring up at her from the floor…but after a couple of seconds looking anywhere gets her all dizzy and she has to turn away.

This is also how she remembers Vi was still holding onto her like a lifeline, and Jinx really tries not to think about it too hard as she presses her face into her shoulder, desperate enough to try anything to avoid blowing chunks of the nothing now bubbling in her stomach from the way the damn room keeps spinning. Vi doesn’t help forgetting this any when she curls one hand around the back of her head and presses her further from the topsider’s view with a muttered go back to sleep, Pow as if she had any right to be so damned comforting after everything.

If the Piltie knew about…eh, whatever it is that’d happened, then Vi had to, too…right? She sure hadn’t been acting like it, though…at least from what she can remember.

Urf…all this thinking’s making her sick.

“C’mon, Vi, maybe if Powder’s really up she can finally explain why the Piltie you dragged here tried hauling her up topside to keep her as a pet,” Mylo cuts in, tossing some ball or something around the room if the sounds of an object thudding against the walls were anything to go off of, making her head ache even more than it already did.

As if sensing her discomfort, Vi pushes more of the blankets around her head to help muffle the noise. It works—of course it works, of course Vi’s stupid kindness actually makes her stupid kid self relax.

She had some fucking nerve, trying to cozy up to her now.

…she’s aware of the irony, there, considering that of the two of them, only Jinx could really be called cozy—but still! It’s not like she really wants to be!

“I told you: we’re letting Vander handle her,” Vi practically growls out, and a second later she’s shifted slightly from under Jinx and that banging stops.

Musta caught the ball.

Irritatingly enough, it helps the drums pounding in her head die down even more, and Jinx lets out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding as her senses even out some. She feels…bad, but it’s not like a we’re gonna die if we don’t do something real shortly here kinda bad, it’s a recovering from a hangover alone in the bottom of a mineshaft kinda bad.

It has the potential to (and probably will) go poorly for her in the very near future, but there’s technically no immediate danger…which, of course, gives her time to think.

“Violet—,” that posh voice sounds from the floor, causing Vi to tense as she cuts the other teen off.

“I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but if you wanna keep all of your teeth, don’t call me that,” she growls, probably looking ridiculous with the big pile of fluff covered kid chilling in her lap.

Maybe Jinx’d find it funny in like any other situation…or if she weren’t the kid.

“Fine then, Vi,” the Piltie spits with a somehow audible eye roll, not pausing long enough to get interrupted by one of the other people in the room, “I believe I’ve already told you this, but that girl isn’t who you think she is, she’s—”

“Newsflash, asshole: I don’t give a shit about whatever bullshit story you’re trying to sell me, so how about you shut the fuck up about it before I make you.”

The Piltie sighs even as Mylo snorts from somewhere across the room (not like Jinx can see much from where she’s at, here), but she doesn’t give up.

“Vi, I know you’re a good person, and you must sense that something is off about all of this,” it’s not a question, and the words serve to chill Jinx’s already foul mood to the point she wants nothing more than to get up and bolt—fuck the concussion, she’s dealt with worse—but Vi must be able to feel how she tenses and her arms tighten just the slightest bit more.

If she keeps this up, I actually might hurl all over her.

She deserves that, though.

She deserved so much more since the arcade, since the bridge…and Jinx did, too.

If she could have moved her arms from where sweat and blankets alike glue them to her sides, Jinx woulda curled in on herself then like shielding her view of the world that now made even less sense than it had before would actually change anything.

If only she were a little crazier. Maybe then, she’d actually buy into it.

Vi doesn’t answer her, but Jinx can’t tell if that’s because she’s intentionally ignoring the other teen or if it’s because she’s actually giving her words some thought.

Doesn’t care, either, because sooner or later, Vi’d remember and then Jinx is fucked either way…and honestly?

Piltie aside, what’s so bad about that?

She must pass out or something while she thinks it all over, because when she wakes up next, it’s to the smell of something that gets her stomach to growl just at the scent of it. It’s distinct, the way Vander’s stew used to flavor the air…and judging by the voices that slowly taper back into her surroundings, she’s not the only one who thinks so.

Jinx is just glad she’s finally free from Vi’s grasp, laying on her side facing the wall in the lower bunk they used to share. It’d make getting the hell outta here that much easier, though she’s not so delusional as to try it now. She probably couldn’t even walk straight at the moment.

Trying to play it safe at least until the static screwing with her hearing dies down a bit, Jinx grits her teeth and doesn’t move, and slowly, she can make the words out better than she could before.

“…bit of a mess of things, Vi,” Vander rasps quietly, that slight I’m disappointed in you but we have to fix this first edge to his voice making Jinx want to reflexively curl in on herself. “Now young lady,” his words aren’t unkind, but there’s that special something in them that makes Jinx listen a little more closely to him as he continues, “you wanna tell me why you were trying to kidnap my daughter?”

Jinx almost whimpers at that—he never really came out and said it before, not since that one night ages ago when Jinx (or, well, Powder, then) had asked him—but he thought of them all as his.

She wants to shut it all out after that. She doesn’t deserve his love—not anymore, not after what she’d done to him.

He sighs and no one speaks, and Jinx can’t tell what that means until the Piltie speaks up…

Uck. Weird. Cupcake talking to Vander.

The time here really is fucked. At least the strangeness of it makes it easier to listen to.

“Mr. Vander—,” she doesn’t stop even as both Vi and Mylo snort, “I’ve tried explaining already, but she is a key suspect in an ongoing investigation,” some people shift in the room—she can tell by the way the floorboards creak—but Jinx can’t see who they’re from. “If she’s taken into custody now, we can avoid the coming bloodshed between Piltover and the undercity. I swear she’ll be unharmed.”

There’s a tinge of desperation to her tone…Vander must not have liked that answer.

“You seem pretty certain that turning her in will spare us all some trouble…but what I’m guessing you didn’t know is that your appearance here’s already caused us plenty, Ms. Kiramman.” At the Piltie’s surprised gasp, Vander continues, a bit of annoyance creeping into his tone. “Did you even think about what would have happened if you’d gotten caught by someone other than Vi?” When the Piltie doesn’t answer, Vander grunts, probably shaking his head in that way that he did. “There are worse things lurking down here than the concussed child you’ve been terrorizing, girl—and had any harm come to either of you during that ill-advised trip?” He lets out something like a disgruntled groan that speaks to the headache this had probably already driven him to. “You’re worried about tensions, let’s just say that this could have gone far worse for you.”

Nobody speaks for a while, and Jinx has to suppress a shiver from the fever she certainly still has—it’s giving her chills and she’d rather they not know she’s awake. When Vander breaks the silence once again, his tone is more casual than Jinx’s would probably be in his situation.

“Now, here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to fetch an old friend of mine, and they’re going to make sure you get back up topside in one piece,” when she tries to cut in, he cuts her off, patient but stern. “And you’re going to keep any mention of these kids out of your story, understand? You came down here on a whim, a thug roughed you up, and I made sure you got back home alright. Are we cle—”

“I will do no such thing!” The Piltie answers defiantly, her voice causing some more shifting in the room before she continues. “Taking that girl into custody will save countless lives and has the potential to stop a war within our city! Why can’t any of you see that I’m trying to help you?!”

You could probably hear a pin drop in Vander’s office with how quiet shit gets after that, and Jinx knows the only reason the Piltie doesn’t get decked by Vi again is because someone stops her approaching footfalls before they make their way over to that posh accent. When he starts talking again, she gets her answer as to who.

“Vi, enough,” his words make her back off, but judging by the way she stalks off and the bed dips behind her a second later, Jinx has a pretty good idea of what she’d done in protest. “Listen, girl: we don’t give up our own people. I need you to understand that before we move forwards with this,” something creaks (the springs in one of those old couches, maybe?) before he goes on. “I’ve got to contact that friend I mentioned. While I’m gone, the five of you will not move from this room unless it’s on fire, alright?”

He must get some nods from the teenagers before he starts up the stairs, leaving them all with a last I shouldn’t be long before the basement door shuts behind him.

“Oh great: just what we needed,” Mylo bitches, his tone dripping with enough sarcasm that he’d never be parched even in a desert, “another person to babysit.”

“Come on, Mylo, can’t you just leave it alone?” Claggor’s nervous voice cuts in, his timid footfalls pacing back and forth across one strip of the room.

A hand brushes the bangs out of her face and she flinches, and the hand stills for all of a moment before it retracts. Vi sighs as she shifts from sitting up to leaning against the headboard or ladder or whatever the hell you called it in a bunk bed, and instead of just, like, leaving her be, her hands pop up under Jinx’s armpits even through the blankets and she pulls her in to rest back on her lap.

Janna, she knew they did this a lot when they were younger, but all of this—this fucking touching now after everything was just—bleh!

Leave me alone, she wants to grumble at her…but if she starts makin’ ‘em twitchy again, they’d probably never let her outta their sight, so she doesn’t voice it. Instead, she lets the stupid teenager prop her up against her shoulder and pretends that she doesn’t despise the way one of her arms curls loosely around her waist.

Restrained like she is, it makes Jinx’s fever-addled mind wonder: would Vi have actually arrested her back then? Lock her up in Stillwater, maybe give her her old cell just for kicks?

It hadn’t seemed like it. She’d really been gunning for her, then—and Jinx wouldn’t have even hated it.

The chill that zips up her spine next has little to do with her fever, and she flinches back when Vi’s hand finds her cheek.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to freak you out,” Vi apologizes, her voice softer than it’d been with the Piltie. “How long have you been awake?”

Jinx thinks back to that look on Vi’s face when she’d ripped apart her minigun back at the altar, the way she’d apologized then, too at the start of the fight, of the gas mask she’d wore in their old hangout spot, of the way that bandaged hand felt curled around her chin when she’d left her at the cannery…and for once, she’s got a real answer to one of her questions.

“Longer than I wanted to be.”

Chapter Text

Vi doesn’t seem to like her answer if the way her arms tighten around Jinx’s frame is anything to go by—but to her shock, once the added touch makes her stiffen, Vi strokes her hair one last time before moving to stand.

For a brief and uniquely terrifying moment, Jinx is convinced that she’s going to pick her up (now that she’s lucid enough to be aware of all the shit happening around her, that is not a comforting idea)…but all Vi does is prop her upright against the headboardy/ladder thing before she walks away. Jinx watches her warily even whilst the boys call out to her (”Vi, we’re really not supposed to go up there…” and “No way are you leaving me alone with them!”), but the other teen just rolls her eyes before shooting the Piltie a glare, grabbing the ladle in the stew with just a little too much force as she pours a little bit into one of the two empty bowls still sitting next to it on the coffee table.

“Uh, why do you get to have seconds?” Mylo questions, that snarky tone to his voice more restrained than normal ‘cuz of that tension practically oozing out of Vi’s form. Vi doesn’t answer him with anything other than a flat stare before she stops in front of the bunk bed again, and Jinx gets the urge to bolt when she sits near her with her legs hanging off the sides.

She tries to at least keep the thought from reaching her face, but stopping the flinch when Vi holds the bowl out to her is next to impossible with the way she stares into her eyes with real concern.

Fuck my life.

“Hey Pow,” her words are much softer than they’d been with the others, and there’s this real special quality to it that kinda reminds Jinx of the way Isha’d hummed to lure a stray cat in so she could pet it. When all Jinx does is press away from her hand, Vi sighs. In her peripherals, she can see the way Claggor nervously watches the exchange, shifting his weight between his feet as Vi continues. “I know you probably still feel like shit, but the healer told me whatever she gave you would work better if you ate something…”

Jinx tilts her head at that—when had they seen a healer?

It explained that sickeningly sweet taste in her mouth, though at this point she’d been half-convinced she’d dreamed that up.

Hell, part of her wasn’t convinced she hadn’t dreamed this up—that whatever this was would just kinda abruptly end or somethin’ and then she’d just.

Go back to where everything’s shit and Vi hates her guts and Vander and the boys are gone…but also where things made sense.

Instead of thinking about that anymore and make herself freak out for the 4000th time like she has been, Jinx looks away from the too-familiar eyes and wordlessly accepts the stew, steadfastly ignoring the unsubtle relief there as she stares into the bowl.

Truthfully, it’s making her mouth water—she hasn’t had something as good to eat as this would definitely be in fucking ages—but also.

Tummy.

Like, it’s not terrible or anything…but you ever get the feeling that even when you’re not actively nauseous, if you ate something then you’d, like. Throw up everywhere?

It smells delicious. The ceramic’s warm between her hands. But stomach.

But dinner.

She narrows her eyes at a carrot floating in the broth. Stupid harmless food offering!

Why does everything always gotta seem like a trap nowadays?

“You know staring at that isn’t gonna make it go away any faster,” Mylo comments snidely, watching her just like fucking everyone else is because the circus was apparently in town tonight and she’s the fucking main act.

Jinx doesn’t miss a beat. “And running your mouth ain’t gonna make anybody like you any better, either, but it hasn’t ever stopped you before, huh?”

The boy spins on his heels to fully face her, his mouth falling open a bit in shock. Vi blinks from next to her, stiffening a second at the (apparently) unexpected words before barking out a laugh that makes Jinx wish she’d just kept her damn mouth shut.

Too loud. Everything’s just too fucking loud.

Vi seems to notice her discomfort and she stills, that concern from before coming back full-force enough to make her stomach start flipping like it was doing some kind of parkour demonstration, and Jinx reaches behind her to set the bowl out of sight for now, stew be damned, so she can bury her head into her knees.

Stupid basement and its stupid bright lights and other people and…

And Vi.

“I…,” the teen sitting next to her flounders and for a while, no one says anything, but Vi’s never really been one for silence (just, sometimes she spoke with other ways than words). “Do you need help or somethi—”

“C’mon, Vi, she don’t need any help,” Mylo’s tone is unbothered, and his voice intersects with her own thoughts (namely, God, no) “She ain’t five… even if she acts like it sometime—”

“Is she not still concussed?” The Piltie asks simply from across the room. Her stupid posh accent drips with an authority she just doesn’t have here (as in within the undercity and also at this point in time) as she continues. “It should be no great shock that she’s unable to keep anything much down at the moment, then, and it would be foolish to continue to coerce her into it for the time being.”

The words make Jinx want to eat the damn thing out of spite, now, but unfortunately the spite starts tasting like bile in the back of her throat and she refrains.

“And what the fuck would some rich little kidnapping Piltie bitch know about that?”

Oh. Vi sounds mad.

Huh.

Maybe something good would come outta all this after all…or at the very least, something entertaining.

Jinx doesn’t look up from her lap (the place where the bowl had rested over her legs is still nice and toasty, and for whatever reason her head really likes the feeling), but she likes to imagine the lady-turned-teenager bristled at the words.

“More than you lot, apparently, who have yet to extinguish the lanterns around here and hydrate the injured child so as not to exacerbate her condition,” Ooh, she sounds all indignant, now—this was gettin’ good.

Vi clicks her tongue, and Jinx can’t say she hates the way those fat knuckles of her’s crack dangerously as—presumably—her hands ball into such tight fists that they pop under her wraps. “Yeah, ‘cuz you obviously have her best interest at heart, here.”

The Piltie hums in assent, though it comes off as more hostile than anything else. “That’s about the only intelligent thing that’s come out of your mouth thus far.”

Oh shit! Vi’s gonna kick her ass and it’s gonna be awesome!

Urf. Awesome’s tastin’ a lot like spite, now.

…maybe she really is just sick.

The sound of a heavy footfall and a couple panicked steps towards it are enough to force her to peek back out into the room, where Clag and Mylo each have a hand on one of Vi’s arms and yet are still struggling to stop her from getting any closer to the extremely unamused looking Piltie sitting on one of their couches.

“Vi, don’t: Vander’ll be pissed,” Clag warns, his grip firm on her forearm.

She snorts, not even glancing his way as she answers him. “Like he’s not already?”

Surprisingly, Mylo’s the most reasonable of them all (and Jinx is half-convinced that’s just because he’d somehow known it’d piss her off) “She’s obviously taunting you, dude—don’t just let her win.”

That’s actually enough to get her to pause, and when they see she’s not pushing up against them anymore, the boys release her with a collective sigh. Vi tsks as she stalks away from the other teens to the back wall, and Jinx gets a good look at how tired and dirty she actually is before remembering that she’d dragged both her and the Piltie back here alone.

Come to think of it…

When Jinx shifts her gaze to the stupid topsider, she’s pleased to see that her clothes were in much worse condition than Vi’s own and wonders where her rifle had gone before deciding not to care. After all, she didn’t seem to want to shoot Jinx with it, and even if she had, that’s just a free ticket outta this hellhole in Jinx’s eyes, so…

Win-win?

Still, her pleasure is short-lived what with the whole unpleasantness of having her life ripped up and stitched back together in the wrong places like it had been, and by the time the dirty Piltie turns to look at her, any signs of happiness were long since wiped from her face.

Her expression is kinda funny, though it takes until the lady talks for her to figure out it ain’t just ‘cuz of that bruise on her face. “Would you like some water?” She sounds almost reluctant to have even asked, but there’s a resigned sorta undertone there that Jinx doesn’t really get.

She ignores the way she can hear Vi turn back towards the topsider, probably pissed she’d even spoken to Jinx at all. “Not from you,” she spits heatedly even through the mush the head injury thing she’s got goin’ on makes of her thoughts. Her words apparently stop Vi in her tracks, and the Piltie clicks her tongue like she’s the one that got to be irritated here.

“That wasn’t meant to be a sort of jab, Jinx—”

“What the fuck did I say about calling her that?!”

The topsider shakes her head in irritation, but Mylo cuts her off before any words can escape her lips.

“Why, it ain’t like she’s wrong: we bring her on one job and it goes—oof!” Jinx shifts to face them, but she’s just as surprised as Vi seems to be at the way Clag draws his hand away from the back of his head with something between a scowl and a frown.

“Would you knock it off already?”

Mylo rubs at his head with a scoff, but he doesn’t start up again, and Jinx watches them for a minute before she notices the lights dim, and then everyone turns to look at the way Vi dials down the brightest lantern in the room. There’s something, briefly, in the way the Piltie’d looked at Mylo that Jinx doesn’t quite know how to place when her gaze had flickered to him for a moment, but it’s gone so fast she’s half-convinced she’d imagined it or something as the lady turns back to Vi.

No one says anything for a while—not when Vi leans against the wall closest to the stairs, not when the Piltie looks away from the other teen when Vi notices her staring, and not when Claggor paces the length of the room again and Mylo uses the opportunity to lie across the couch.

Not really wanting to talk to the Piltie anymore than she had to, she tucks her head back into her lap and curls her arms there, ignoring the way it makes the cold chill from before creep back into her little poorly-heated nest.

She might have dozed off after that if not for the way someone lightly taps her shoulder a while, and she has just enough wits rattling around in that too-small head of her’s to stop the flinch trying to rattle her entire, tiny body. The person standing there with a ratty old canteen isn’t quite the one she’d expected it would be.

“Um, hey,” Claggor almost whispers, slowly retracting his hand from her like he’s afraid of spooking her. “I have this, uh, in case you want some…,” when Jinx makes no move to take it, he wraps it around the bed post so it stays hanging over the side, his quiet voice getting no louder than it had been just seconds before as he explains. “She probably wasn’t wrong about the water thing—I know it helped me when I fell out of a window this one time and…erm. Just. It’s there, I guess.”

He trails off towards the end, sounding a bit defeated. Jinx isn’t sure how to take it, so she doesn’t say anything.

Of the two boys, she’d always liked Claggor the best back when she was a kid. He’d sit with her sometimes and let her ramble on about her designs, and sometimes they used to nap together on the couch and Vi got sick or whatever (technically, Vi and her didn't actually dhare the bottom bunk, but Vi almost never slept up on the top one...which is sorta a problem now that Jinx isn't actually eleven anymore). Once, it'd just been because she wanted to make a fort and neither of the other two were in the mood to humor her.

They’d stayed up half the night back then, and he’d shown her how to make shadow puppets of a ton of different animals and they’d laughed about it ‘til Vi’d thrown a pillow at them to settle down.

To date, it’s her favorite memory of him…not that she tried thinking about it very often, anymore. It’s not like him bein’ not as much of an asshole as Mylo had saved him when she’d…

Well. Let’s just say that Vi still had his goggles, back where she came from.

Either way, the stupid train of thought of her’s is apparently distracting enough that she’s not paying attention to what she’s doing, because a second after he starts walking away, he pauses as a couple words drips from her mouth like molasses.

“Thank you.”

All she gets in response is a shrug, but she doesn’t miss the way everyone’d turned to watch her at that. It ends up making her so uncomfortable that she drops her head back into her lap, feeling something between relief and irritation that her headache’s less pronounced now that the lights have dimmed.

Either she’s more tired than she thought she was or she just loses track of the time, because at some point later, she picks her head up from her lap, noticing the way everyone save the Piltie had moved and that her legs have kinda gone asleep from staying in this awkward position for so long. Either way, no one’s really watching her or nothin’, so she takes advantage of the fact that the Piltie’s gone back to pissing Vi off to pull the canteen into her lap.

As she drinks from it at an almost agonizingly slow pace, she tries to tune more into their conversation.

“…hasn’t come back yet—”

Vi huffs. “I already told you it’s fine—he’s Vander,” she cuts the topsider off with a scowl, scuffing her boot over the hardwood below her feet as she speaks.

The Piltie looks less convinced, though the uncertainty is traded out for something like displeasure when she catches Jinx’s eyes on her. Now that Jinx’s feeling less like complete shit, she brings one of her hands to offer a little, mocking wave, and when the cupcake turns to her with a look of offense, Vi steps in front of the topsider threateningly. She hadn’t even looked back to see what Jinx’d done to draw that look from the Piltie, just jumped straight to pissed at the other lady.

Jinx’d maybe find it funny if she hadn’t known that Vi was only acting like that because she wants to protect Powder.

A wave of bitterness washes over her and she turns away from their exchange…not that anyone can see her reaction given the way all heads in the room are trained on Vi.

“You really need to cut that shit out,” Vi threatens, a no-bullshit tone of voice she’d definitely picked up from Vander enough to get the topsider to keep her stupid trap shut…for all of two seconds.

“Does none of her behavior come across as odd to you?”

She hears Vi shift before answering , her tone both flat and somehow still vaguely threatening. “Aren’t you the one that was going on and on about the different ways head injuries can fuck people up?”

The Piltie makes a noise of frustration. “That isn’t what I—”

“And you know what? Now that he’s not here to stop me,” Vi’s tone draws Jinx’s eyes again, and she watches as she leans over the spot on the couch where the Piltie’s still seated…and at the angle she’s at now Jinx can see the topsider’s face again. “Why don’t you—"

Oh dear Janna.

She’s surprised when everyone (sans Vi) turns to face her, then, and it takes her a minute to realize she’d said that out loud in probably the same tone she’d thought it up in her head with…extremely disgusted.

To be fair, the way the Piltie had blushed when Vi stood over her was just…gross. There’s a whole fucking boatload of things that Jinx doesn’t wanna think about maybe ever, and right now, whatever thing that was going on between those two back home was at the very top of that list.

“What is it you’re on about?” The Piltie half demands, that piercing blue gaze trained on her much like her rifle had been in what really only felt like a couple hours ago. Her tone has Vi’s head tilting at her a bit, but Jinx only levels the topsider with the flattest stare she can muster before continuing.

“Do you ever turn off the desperate lesbian vibes, or…?”

At that, Clag’s mouth drops open and Mylo snorts (which he pretends is just a cough). The Piltie looks both indignant and a little embarrassed, but the question causes Vi to turn back to face her, though she looks more perplexed than anything else.

“Powder, how does she know you?”

Oh. That’s what she’d taken from that.

Jinx eyes Vi with a wary half-glare before turning away, suddenly finding the conversation more work than it was worth. Claggor takes the silence as permission to cut-in, and to Jinx’s silent relief, it isn’t to badger her.

“C’mon, Vi: it’s late,” he reasons softly, “let’s just go to bed. I doubt he’s coming back tonight.”

The thought makes Jinx stiffen—she’s starving and uncomfortable and the idea of having to share the bed with Vi again threatens to make her sick (just when she thought she could force herself to keep the food down…)—but she can feel Vi’s eyes on her as she answers, her footsteps barely audible through Jinx’s own crashing train of thought.

“…Fine. Here,” Jinx hears Vi stalk back towards the Piltie, and her own curiosity has her turning back to them in time to see the topsider staring at the offered blanket with something like confusion. When she doesn’t take it, Vi gets annoyed and tosses it in her lap before raising her arm to point at the top bunk behind her. “You’re sleeping up there, Piltie.”

Jinx watches Mylo shift, and Vi turns her head to glance at him and his raised eyebrow from across the room even as the topsider tries to correct her (I told you, my name is Caitlyn). “Uh, if she takes your bed, where are you gonna—”

The Piltie flushes at that and Jinx nearly rolls her eyes again.

“You want me to sleep in your bed?!”

Vi shakes her head, opening her mouth to explain before they all turn to face Jinx again, the snort she couldn’t hold back enough to draw all their eyes.

“What could you possibly find so amusing about any of this?” The Piltie practically hisses, earning her a warning glare from Vi.

Jinx shoots her a half-grin that’s anything but friendly, privately please the Piltie had taken the bait for a trap she hadn’t even meant to set.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot that your entire personality’s centered around wanting to fuck my sister.”

The topsider’s face darkens to the deepest shade of red Jinx’s ever seen on her, and in less than a second she’s hiding it in her hands whilst Mylo starts laughing his ass off in the background. Claggor’s staring at her, bewildered…and Vi?

Vi’s pinching the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes in a unique mix of amusement, surprise, and mild-horror.

Jinx can’t say she hates it, all things considered.

“Where the hell did you even learn to say shit like that?”

Claggor looks between the two of them with a raised eyebrow—his mind must have went to the same place as Jinx’s had…mostly ‘cuz Vi had definitely said way the fuck worse things in front of her when she was younger—but before either of them can continue, Mylo finally slows down enough to speak.

“Janna, Vi, you shoulda seen you faces!" he wheezes, earning an annoyed glance from the other teen. He points to Jinx then, and she offers him a questioning look of her own before he continues, “she’s gotta get head injuries more often!”

At that, Vi walks over and smacks him on the shoulder—not hard, but it’s enough to make him devolve into another fit of laughter—and to everyone’s surprise, she actually starts answering the question that Jinx had honestly forgotten he’d asked.

“I’m not going straight to bed, moron—Vander’d skin us alive if she slipped away before he got back,” she states simply, causing Mylo to slowly calm back down as she goes on, “so it’s fine. Plus, we have her sleep up in that creaky ass top bunk, even if I do nod off, we’ll all wake up if she tries anything stupid,” at that point, she turns back to the still very red but no longer hiding her face Piltie with a look colder than ice, “which she won’t do unless she wants to get her ass beat.”

It's not a question, but it (unfortunately) gets the topsider’s face to start turning back to its original color as she offers Vi a confrontational sorta look (or maybe it would be, had Jinx not just roasted her into oblivion). After a moment, Vi turns back to look between the boys, and after a beat they shrug and start settling into their couches for the night. Vi doesn’t immediately move to shut off the other lanterns in the room, and after a very impatient stare leveled at the topsider, the Piltie stands and makes her way towards the ladder to the bunk bed—one that Jinx inches away from as she approaches.

Beyond offering a single, irritated glance, the Piltie doesn’t acknowledge her, and after a moment, Jinx hears the bed creak above her as she gets settled in…but her focus is mostly on the teen standing in front of her, that bowl from before held out to her yet again.

“Please eat something, Pow,” she half-pleads. Jinx’s shoulders hike up a bit at that—she doesn’t like the name, she doesn’t like that this is real, or that the Piltie’s here in this place, and while she’s at it, she doesn’t like being in this place…it felt like she’s desecrating some kinda tomb—but before she can even think of a way to verbalize any of that without sounding unhinged, Vi plucks the canteen from before from her lap and replaces it with the bowl…that’s somehow still warm.

Her eyebrows furrow at the thought—had she not slept for all that long?—but Vi speaks before she can think too much about it.

“We warmed it back up for you…just maybe don’t share that with Vander,” she adds quietly, looking uncharacteristically cowed.

Not knowing what to say (and also not wanting to say anything), Jinx waits until Vi walks away before she starts eating it, glad her nerves or head wound or whatever the fuck’s been making her feel so shitty has finally eased enough that she can eat without spewing it back into her own lap…and it’s just as good as she remembers it being…

Which actually starts making her eyes water again, but she forces the feeling back down when the topsider shifts above her, the noise reminding her of this whole mess she kept waking up in.

“You’re gonna be in a shit mood tomorrow ‘cuz of this whole no sleep thing, you know,” Mylo mumbles, lazily looking towards Vi even from where he was sprawled across the couch.

Vi shrugs indifferently, settling on the old wooden stool before answering him. “Don’t know why you think it’ll just be me losing sleep here—your watch is next.”

The younger boy groans and Vi shoots him a smug-looking smirk and Jinx…finishes her stew (honestly probably too fast, but she’d been fucking starving) before placing the bowl back on the table behind the bed. The clinking sound the ceramic makes draws Vi’s gaze, and she levels her with a softer, grateful smile that has Jinx turning to face the wall faster than she’d moved all night.

I can’t deal with this shit right now, she grumbles in her own mind, happy at least to take the irritation over the previous panic…though if Vi really did come back over to share the bottom bunk like they had before later in the night…

She curls a little further into herself, then, holding the blanket tighter around her as if the fabric alone would be enough to shut out the world around her. Above her head, the Piltie shifts yet again until one of the boys calls for her to stop moving so much, and Jinx presses her head further into the mattress, trying and failing to deafen herself so she can sleep through more of this hell.

This is gonna be a long fucking night.

Chapter Text

She wakes up to the sound of voices the next morning (well, it’s probably morning, anyways) and is immediately reminded of the previous night’s events when the words the teenagers in the room say starts sounding more like a conversation and less like the last vestiges of her own, faceless nightmares.

“…not back yet.”

Claggor. He sounds nervous, but then when does he not?

“And your plan is simply to wait here for him?”

Ugh. Her.

“Yeah,” there’s a challenge to Vi’s answer—one that the Piltie, who’d apparently somehow gotten out of the top bunk without waking Jinx up, doesn’t seem to like. “That’s what Vander said to do.”

That’s fucking rich, of course, because Vi used to do the polar opposite of lotsa stuff he’d said to do before, and here she is pretending his word is the only law that matters.

Maybe it’s just because there’s a better person around to spite at the moment.

Or maybe she’s just scared.

Jinx shakes her head at that, trying and failing to will the thought away before it turned into something else.

Unfortunately for her, it alerts everyone else in the room that she’s awake, and she doesn’t even notice their noticing until a hand is lightly curled around her shoulder—which is also how she’s reminded that Vi hadn’t been next to her when she woke up.
Before she can think about what that means, though, the voice attached to the hand speaks up and she forces herself to listen.

“You’re up,” Vi says through a sigh, sounding relieved, “Good—was starting to get worried there for a while. How are you feeling?”

That’s a good question, actually: how is she feeling?

Objectively terrible, but that’s less to do with the whole blown to pieces thing she had going on than it is to do with the accidentally got pulled out of time and space so I could have the most uncomfortable sleepover imaginable in my childhood bedroom with a room full of people I once tried to kill (err, mostly) type thing…so…

Jinx shrugs without making eye contact. The panic had kinda died away for now, but whatever’s left is more…what’s a good way to say it?

If there was ever a bad kind of calm, this would be it.

Vi nods, which Jinx can only see because she’s taking a look around the room. Her visions a little blurry, but Jinx thinks that’s more due to the exhaustion and probably oversleeping than the concussion—especially because the lights are still pretty dim and everything’s still mostly quiet. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes, then thinks about what to do as her stupid little eye crumbs or whatever flake to her lap where she’s now pulled herself upright. She’d thought of some of the more serious questions before now (the what and the why and the how of it all), but she had just as many answers to those now as she did…eh, however many days ago it’d been…

What’s a sort of mindless task that she could do down here where she could do something with her hands and free her head up for thinking?

Itching the back of her head, she decides on something when her eyes catch on the scrap box in the corner—but before she can get all the way standing, Vi grabs her arm a little lower and gently pulls her back down.

Great.

“I’m not sure you should be upright just yet, Pow,” her voice is quiet, but she can see the stubbornness in her gaze: it’d be easier trying to arm wrestle Jericho than trying to argue with her right now. “Besides, the medicine we gave you earlier’s probably still making you dizzy.”

Jinx’s brows furrow at that, and when Vi notices she offers her an apologetic smile.

“You were out cold still, but we couldn’t wake you up. That was the last of it, though, so you should at least feel a little better?”

Huh. Part of her is pissed, but it feels dull somehow, or maybe just distant—like it’d be too much work explaining why that bugged her…or why it was really stupid to give an unconscious person any liquids. The other part of her is more irritated that she’d been drugged at all, but beyond a twitch of her lips, she doesn’t comment on it.

What’s the point? It wouldn’t magically undo anything, and the medication they’d given her or whatever musta worked at least a little bit since her head ain’t pounding so bad and her stomach doesn’t feel all gross. Instead, Jinx leans back so her head rests against the headboard, and Vi lets go of her arm.

Baby steps, she thinks bitterly, I’ll get outta here eventually.

Can’t do that if she feels like shit, though.

Vi might try asking her something again, but she cuts herself off when she follows Jinx’s gaze to the corner, and no other words need to be said. A few moments later, Vi’s deposited the box on the bed in front of her and Jinx slumps over it, eager to tear through its contents, but sluggish all the same. Vi drags that stool up to the bed that she’d been sitting on last night, and some part of Jinx might have been grateful for the distance if this situation sucked just a little less to begin with.

Like, yes, Vi was being very considerate right now. No, that doesn’t mean Jinx owed her shit.

“What are you gonna make this time?” She prods lightly, obviously encouraging conversation because she’s worried about Powder and the weird ways she’d been acting lately. Jinx hums absently, her hands mechanically feeling around for the parts she needed to really finish the old Mouser resting half-completed in the box.

“Fixing this,” she states simply, her words coming out quiet but not slurred. When the Piltie tenses from her seat on the couch, it almost makes Jinx smile.

But even that felt like too much work.

What the heck was in that drug?

“What’s wrong with it?”

Jinx sighs, mildly annoyed that Vi either wasn’t taking or was intentionally ignoring the fact that she wanted to be left alone. From behind her, she hears Mylo mumble what isn’t wrong with it? and she has to ignore the way the Piltie turns to watch him with that same confusing look on her face as yesterday so she can focus on what Vi hisses out to him:

“Stop being a jackass: you’re getting on my last fucking nerve.”

“He’s not wrong, though,” Jinx speaks through a yawn, oddly uncaring of the boy’s jabs. When they all turn to her in confusion and pity, she continues just as softly as before, a crescent wrench in hand as she takes apart this piping that’d been shoved into the box from some junk run they’d done eons ago. “It’s shit: the design was alright, but there’s not nearly enough gunpowder in them for an effective explosive.”

Mylo snorts, ignoring the look of warning Vi shoots him over her shoulder. “What, you supposed to be some kinda expert on that, now?”

That actually gets a laugh outta her, a short, unhappy bark that shakes her shoulders just a bit because—because—

“More than you could ever know.”

Chapter Text

Nobody says anything for a bit after that. Vi’s looking at her with some mix of confusion and concern, the Piltie’s looking at her with this pensive expression that’d probably eat away at her nerves on a normal day (not that she’s feeling super normal or anything right about now), Claggor’s scratching the back of his neck and looking at Mylo, and Mylo…

Well, he looks like the same overconfident, arrogant, and stupid little shitbag he’d always been in her memories with just a little more emphasis on the “stupid” part.

And Jinx can’t really bring herself to care.

She’d probably have spent the rest of the day like that, fixing the decade old turned brand new gadgets scattered about the box and hanging like string lights around the bottom bunk of the bed had the Piltie not decided to cut in, her tone as uncomfortable as Jinx should be, all things considered.

“Why are you all standing idly by whilst such a small child fiddles around with something so dangerous as an explosive?”

Jinx nearly snorts: so that’s her play, hmm? Appeal to the logical side of the teenagers so stupid they’d organized a heist on probably the most dangerous workshop in the whole city?

She’s not surprised when Vi rolls her eyes, nor is she surprised her brilliant brother cuts the older teen off before she even get a word in.

“What does it matter what she works on, Piltie? It ain’t like any of it’s gonna do anything anyhow.”

Vi stands up from the stool, then, and all it takes is a threatening step forwards for him to raise his arms in mock surrender (though the way his eyes widen suggest he's more spooked by the action than he lets on).

“Hey,” he continues, his voice just as even (if slightly more irritated) than it was before, “I’m just telling it how it is: her shit never wor—”

“You haven’t the slightest idea what you’ve done here, have you?”

Time in the room seems to stop for a moment (heh, get it?) as the Piltie cuts him off, and both Mylo and Vi turn away from each other to regard her as Jinx continues her work. With a single satisfying little click! later, she sets the completed Whisker next to her crossed legs on the bed, trying her damndest to ignore the Piltie’s not-so-subtle (but kinda weird) jab at her as she reaches back into the box for the next broken thing.

“Who the hell are you talking to?” Vi threatens lowly, her voice sporting that no-nonsense quality she usually only took with street thugs or when she got really pissed. The Piltie, to Jinx’s surprise, merely shakes her head with a sorta bitter lookin’ expression as she huffs an irritated sigh.

What crawled up her ass and died?

Whatever. Jinx reaches for the socket wrench next, humming quietly with strain when she can’t immediately loosen the bolt stuck tight to the hunk of Academy trash they’d scavenged from a trash heap some time ago. Just as Vi moves to take it from her (probably to do it herself so poor wittle baby Pow-Pow wouldn’t struggle so much), Jinx finally tugs the damn thing loose, and though her vision blurs a bit around the edges (probably shouldn’t have held her breath for that, huh?), it doesn’t stop her from salvaging the washer she’d needed from between the bolt and the metal.

When Vi settles back onto the stool, the room settles into a semi-comfortable silence and eventually, the boys start chatting about some comic they’d found in an alley on the way back from the botched heist, and when Jinx reaches back into the box again, her fingers brush against the pouch she usually wore around her waist and she fishes it out of the container…

Only to hear some small, suspiciously rock like objects clack together dangerously within the leather.

Oh boy.

Pretending she’s just looking for a tool, she peaks inside to see all of the unrefined stones just where she’d remembered putting them all those years ago, and Jinx sets the pouch by the few fixed bombs she’d rigged up on the bed, her palms sweating with the knowledge of what they had done in the past, of what they were meant to do.

Do they still have to do that?

Jinx doesn’t know how this time stuff works; do they hafta do things in a specific way or something? She’s kinda hopin’ not: like, besides it all really, really sucking the first time, she’s pretty sure the Piltie wasn’t gonna be down for any of that, and Jinx doesn’t really know what happens if she just kills her or something. What if they could only go back together? What if it screwed things up too much to off the kid of a Councilor like that—like, wasn’t she friends with that old hammer guy who created hextech in the first place?
Does she even care about any ‘a that, though?

Jinx shakes her head before getting back to work. The Piltie leans further into the couch cushion where she’s seated, eventually only breaking the silence when she asks Vi for a hairbrush and a washrag.

She ends up with a broken comb and one of Mylo’s old, sweat-stained shirts—one that, by the way he protests, he hadn’t been prepared to give up on just yet.

When all Vi’d said was ”guess you shouldn’t have been such a cunt, then,” Jinx couldn’t help but agree.

She can’t say she pays too much attention to the time—they eat, at some point, and Jinx gets seconds herself, this time (a fact which Vi is very overtly pleased about if the smile she’d shot her meant anything), and Jinx fixes like a dozen of her old hand bombs and starts working on a gun before realizing she doesn’t have the right kinda hardware for something that intricate, the other teens chat amongst themselves (sans the Piltie, anyways…she’s too busy looking around the room and staring at Jinx like a fucking creep whenever Vi had her back turned for too long)…and eventually, Jinx very carefully packs up her shit into the box without accidentally killing them all so she can lie down for a nap.

When she next wakes up, it’s to the sound of chatter, again, and since she can pretty instantly tell that whatever they’d given her had worn off, she’s in a shit mood, too, so she’d rather just tune them all out…

But when one of those voices is Vander, that icy dread from the start of all this overrides every other feeling.

“—an into a bit of a problem back there, sorry,” he sounds more annoyed than apologetic. Maybe a little distracted, too. “Everything’s set up now, though: we’re meeting her tonight to send you home.”

Jinx doesn’t have to be watching to know who he’s speaking to, but apparently she ain’t the only one who’s a little twitchy about the way he’s talking, ‘cuz next thing she knows, Vi’s cutting whatever the Piltie’s trying to say off herself.

“’Problem’? What kind of problem?” There’s a challenge to her tone that Jinx knows is just because she’s worried and is trying to hide it, but it makes Vander grumble all the same.

“It’s nothing you lot should be co—”

“Bullshit!” Vi cuts back in, a real anger to her voice that only barely overshadows the panic Jinx knows is there. “You were gone for almost a full day! The bar’s never been closed for that long!”

He sighs. “Vi—”

Something happens, then. A thudding sound that Jinx can’t really place since she’s facing the wall, yet, but it must have it’s intended effect when Vander cuts off at the noise—and Vi wastes no time before she continues.

“Vander, please,” Jinx tenses; it’s almost the same tone of voice she’d used to beg Jinx not to off her stupid girlfriend back then, but she’s talking to Vander. “Just tell us what’s going on.”

The silence that follows is so loud it makes Jinx want to curl in on herself, and for a long moment, she thinks Vander really won’t answer…but just as she starts tuning them all back out for her own sanity, the only adult in the room (besides her and the Piltie, kinda) opens his mouth and leaks something worse than the Gray into the air, poisoning the blood in her veins and forcing her too-small body to stiffen:

“It’s Benzo’s lad. He’s been missing for days now—and not a single damn person seems to know where he’s gone off to.”

The gasps that follow have jack-all on Jinx’s own, surging headache.

Son of a bitch.

Chapter Text

“Little Man’s missing?!” Vi exclaims into the silence that’s somehow more grating on her nerves than the whole fuck, the panic’s back situation she’s got going on. She hears Vander sigh and when she turns over, he’s halfway through running a hand through hair that probably would’ve fallen out in the future had Jinx not burnt it off for him at the cannery. The bed creaks under her as she moves, and when Vander looks at her, there’s a definite relief in his gaze that makes her want to shrink away, to hide under the blanket and never come out because—

“You look like you’re feeling better,” his voice is deep, warm in a way he shouldn’t be with her, and her heart skips a beat in panic when he starts making his way to her side. From across the room, Mylo rolls his eyes at her flinch, shaking his head as Vander pauses midway to the bed in obvious confusion.

“C’mon, Pow, you were fine earlier,” he grumbles, his eyes oddly serious for his lax tone of voice, “don’t start with the twitchy shit again: it’s just Vander.”

Yeah, meat-head, she thinks weakly, her hand bunching up in the fabric of her shirt under the blanket, that’s the problem.

She swallows, her eyes not leaving the tall man before her that still sports a conflicted look on his face as he stares down at her with a growing frown.

She swears that she used to be cooler at one point.

The man sighs, rubbing at his face before closing his eyes and turning to Vi.

All the while, she ignores the Piltie’s gaze from across the room, trying not to show how uncomfortable it’s making her.

“I contacted that acquaintance I spoke about earlier, but due to a certain event up topside,” he eyes Vi very pointedly and Vi doesn’t even shift under his gaze, “the enforcers are now prowling around in larger groups than normal. I don’t want to risk them starting any trouble in the bar,” I don’t want them to find you, he really means, “so you lot are going to make yourself scarce until the meeting tonight. I’ll come find you before then—so don’t come back to the tavern unless something is on fire, understand?”

Vi scowls. “If the fuckers are coming down here anyways, wouldn’t now be the perfect time to ambush them? Those arrogant fucks wouldn’t even know wh—”

“Are you mad?” The Piltie half shouts, earning her a stern look from Vander and all the hostility in Vi’s teenage body as she continues, “that could start a war!”

“Yeah, princess: that’s the point,” Vi answers with a flat gaze.

”Princess?” God, just kill her now.

No one notices her eye roll, which is probably for the best since she’s supposed to be an idiot eleven year old and not herself.

“No one is starting anything,” Vander cuts in, an authoritative edge to his voice that shuts the both of them up as they turn to face him once more. “Is that understood, Violet?”

Ooh, the full name.

He only does that when he’s being really comforting or he’s in the process of chewing someone out, and it ain’t real hard to guess which one it is given the way his arms are crossed in front of his chest.

“But Van—”

“No, Vi—you start any shit, you’ll drag her into it, too,” he gestures towards the bed and Jinx resists the urge to narrow her eyes—she’s probably the only one of them that could take on a group of blue bellies, as long as she had her explosives. “Is that what you want?”

Vi’s eyes flicker to her and her shoulders sag as she averts her gaze, though she’s obviously unhappy about it.

“Wait, we have to bring her, too?” Mylo chimes in, and normally, Jinx’d be pissed that he just up and assumed she’d be some kinda liability like he always does until she sees this uneasy look in his eyes.

It puts her on edge, but Vander seems to understand what he means. “Too dangerous to keep her here—they’ve been tearing apart the undercity looking for the four of you. Just don’t run into any trouble and you’ll be fine.”

He looks like he’s reassuring him, which Jinx finds a little insane considering he’s not the one being insulted here, but his next words pull her out of her thoughts before she can think too much on it. “Take the Kiramman girl with you, too.”

Claggor shifts nervously on his feet at that, his eyes flickering between Jinx and the ex-Commander like he’s thinking about something unpleasant. “Is that a good idea, Vander? I mean, she tried to kidnap Powder before—”

“I was not kidnapping her!” The Piltie looks indignant, but her expression flags some at the way both Vander and Vi turn to her with matching, unamused (and in Vi’s case, hostile) glares.

“’S that so?” Vander says lowly, his tone bordering on dangerous as the Piltie freezes in her seat. “Then what would you call it, girl?”

“I…it was a citizen’s arrest,” she defends weakly, her expression almost nervous as she looks at the man before her.

Vander grunts at that, the look in his eyes unyielding. “Then I suppose if we decided to keep you around here without your parents knowing where you are or if you’re even alive, that’d just be a citizen’s arrest, too?”

The way he says it without raising his voice or shifting his gaze…Jinx almost thinks he’s serious. The topsider swallows, looing uncharacteristically meek.

“N-not if I hadn’t committed a crime,” her words are softer now, more vulnerable in a way.

Jinx kinda likes watching her squirm—served her right for being an asshole, in her opinion.

Vander huffs, shaking his head. “You’re in over your head here, Ms. Kiramman,” he says her name like it’s an insult, the Hound of the Underground speaking instead of Vander. “I suggest you quit before that meeting gets canceled after all.”

The boys both stare at him with wide, shocked eyes. Vi looks smug, staring down at the Piltie with crossed arms that mimic their caretaker. The Piltie looks away with a short, but sullen nod.

Jinx keeps herself from grinning. Barely.

“Now, pack up your things and head out. Bring a change of clothes—I don’t know how long things will take to cool down after this. I’ll wrap up some leftovers from the bar.”

Jinx thinks that’s that until he hesitates at the foot of the stairs, and the rest of them watch as he turns around and (to Jinx’s mild panic) kneels by the bedside, not giving her any time to react as he pulls her into a hug.

She stiffens in his firm hold and he runs a hand over her hair before pulling back enough to hold onto her shoulders. She watches him warily, trying her best to keep from pulling away because even though she’s not convinced he isn’t some spectre haunting her from the grave, she doesn’t want to offend him.

Can’t quite stop the shaking, though.

“Everything’s going to be alright, understand?” he doesn’t give her time to answer before continuing—not that she even could right now, anyways, “just stay close to Vi and try to rest, if you can. Soon enough, this will all blow over and I’ll take you to any scrapyard you want: seems like you’re running out of parts, there.” He nods to the box now full of finished, actually functional bombs and tools.

She’s not expecting it when he leans back down and plants a kiss on the top of her head, and Jinx sits somewhere between her fucked-up head an reality (or at least, this reality) as he pulls away and starts back up the stairs, her shoulders still tingling from the hands of a ghost. She doesn’t see how the others react because the second he's out of sight she buries her head into her knees and tries to slow her breathing, wiping a tear she hadn’t noticed falling down her cheek on legs still uncovered because she’s yet to change from her sleep clothes.

After a while, she pushes herself off the bed and mechanically changes out of her clothes (they weren’t prudes like all the Pilties were if the embarrassed look on her face at all of them undressing said anything about how shit was up topside) and slings her bag over her shoulder, clipping her utility belt on and steadfastly ignoring Vi’s increasingly concerned glances that she shoots her way.

“You doing ok, Pow?” She asks quietly as Jinx tries not to look at the pouch full of the death rocks now tethered to her small frame. Jinx doesn’t glance up at her, pretending she’s too busy getting ready to offer any sort of eye contact.

“Just peachy,” she mumbles, sure that Vi could hear her even over the sounds of zippers and belt buckles and opening drawers in the background.

“If you get tired, let me know, alright?”

Absolutely the fuck not.

Jinx might actually rather die than have Vi cart her around like she has been—it throws her off balance, for one thing because she’s so damn short but isn’t quite used to it yet, but it also very unhelpfully reminds her of the way she’d smacked her around with those gauntlets near that altar, and Jinx ain’t down for a repeat experience of that.

“Sure,” Jinx says instead. She’s hoping she sounds even half as convincing as she’s trying to be. Judging by the way Vi lingers, she’s probably not as successful as she’d hoped.

Jinx doesn’t bother packing any clothes—she doesn’t fucking care enough for that, and she’d already seen Vi do it for her, anyways—and soon enough, the five of them are heading up the stairs and out the back door. As soon as the door opens, Jinx nearly groans at the feeling of rain pelting her skin—it’s really coming down, now, and she’s in no mood for it—but it doesn’t take long after the door shuts behind Clag for something else to grab her attention instead.

The way the Vi slams the Piltie against the wall seems to surprise all of them, and Claggor nervously calls out Vi’s name to try and explain, probably, that she shouldn’t be doing that—but Vi blows them all off in favor of pulling the teenager she holds by the collar off the ground a bit as she growls out a low threat:

“Listen real carefully, asshole, because I’m only gonna say this once: stay the fuck away from Powder unless you wanna get back topside without any of your teeth. Got it?”

When the Piltie doesn’t answer, Vi shakes her roughly until she gets a nod, and then the other teen barely catches herself before eating shit on the pavement as Vi thrusts her forwards...but judging by how red the topsider had become, Jinx guesses the threat isn't as effective as Vi'd probably wanted it to be.

A second later, Jinx tenses when Vi grips her shoulder and hauls her to the front of the group with a determined look that softens just the slightest bit at whatever expression Jinx can’t quite keep from her face as the five of them start off, three sets of footsteps falling in uneven intervals behind them as Vi orders them onwards.

“Let’s go.”

She’s not really surprised at where they start off to: there’s not a ton of places a group as large as them could really go hide out, and there’s only one with anything to actually do. Still, she gets the sense after a while that they’re being followed, and her eyes flicker up to the rooftops and down the many alleys and hidden alcoves they pass as they go along. Unfortunately, their footsteps and the heavy slap of rain cascading all around them is enough to cover up pretty much anything else they might have heard as they go along, and she has to force herself not to look too nervous because every time she does, Vi pats her upper back “comfortingly” instead of just holding onto her shoulder likes she’s been doing the rest of the way so far.

Jinx is pretty sure that’s because she’s afraid she’ll try and bolt, and that’s unfortunately enough to get her not to even try it: Vi could and would easily sling her over a shoulder or prop her up on a hip like a toddler if she tried running off, and besides that just being humiliating as an adult trapped in the body of the scraggly pre-teen that she once was, Jinx can only barely tolerate the single hand on her shoulder as it is: any more touch from Vi would probably make her spiral, and she can’t afford that right now if she’s gonna somehow get outta this mess.

So instead, she walks, and waits, and tries her best to listen…but the feeling of eyes on them from somewhere just isn’t going away.

How long had it been? She’d noticed pretty much as soon as they left the bar, but honestly she can’t tell if that’s just cuz of the Piltie who is also staring at her whenever Vi doesn’t glance back her way.

It makes it hard to think, and even when she can fir longer than a few seconds at a time, it makes her sick. There are few people she’d rather spend a bunch of time with than the two assholes that hunted her like a dog dressed in the same uniforms worn to kill her parents (or, well, the first set of them)—and add on the ghosts that still somehow haunted her mind even though they weren’t really dead yet here?

Shit, if she wanted that then she woulda just set up another tea party!

“It’s ok, Pow, we’re almost there,” Vi says, her voice barely audible over the rain and the boys’ ambient chatter in the background. She must have mistaken her tense-ness as some cold chill or worry or something.

If you only knew…

“Where exactly are you taking us?” The Piltie accuses, her tone uncertain as she calls out to her from behind them. Jinx’s gaze flattens—leave it to the topsider not to let her forget her presence.

Vi doesn’t bother answering until the Piltie repeats her question more forcefully—but when Vi opens her mouth, they all freeze at the sound of heavy footfalls down a nearby alley.

“Shit,” Vi curses as a wave of blue comes into view. Jinx doesn’t have any time to protest or retaliate before Vi swings her up by the arm, and she has to scramble for purchase until Vi’s arm loops under her knees as she runs, leaving Jinx mortified and more than a little annoyed that Vi had chosen the toddler carry for this next use the child as luggage adventure that she’d found herself unwillingly embarking on. She buries her face in her hands as the four teens around her book it, and she’s surprised to see that Claggor’s the one who's making sure the Piltie had come along, an unrelenting hand wrapped around her forearm as he runs.

When they reach the next intersection and the enforcers behind them seem to notice that a suspicious band of children is actively running away from them (real smart move there, fist for brains), they start off towards them with calls of “halt” and “stop” and “surrender yourselves”—and because they’re adults in riot gear against a bunch of kids in generation’s old hand me downs, they start gaining on them fast.

Jinx practically curses as she mumbles with her belt, ignoring the way Vi tries to press her back down.

“Um, Vi?” Claggor’s nervous voice breaks through their heaving, and he continues to pull the uncooperative Piltie along with them, slowing their pace because she’s trying to get them caught.

Asshole.

“Shut up and run!” Vi barks, glancing back with another curse at how much closer their pursuers have become.

“Hey!” Jinx calls out behind her, effectively grabbing the attention of the four teens as she tosses one of the Whiskers back at them. The Piltie’s eyes widen in terror as she digs her heels in, but Mylo manages to catch the thing after he fumbles with it for a second, rolling his eyes when he sees what it is. Claggor yanks the Piltie forwards with a grunt, ignoring her pleas to stop and get away from the metal canister. “Pull the pin and toss it backwards: keep it low to the ground, preferably by a wall if you c—”

“It’s not going to help! When will you get it into your dumb fucking head that you’re useless in shit like this?!”

Jinx bristles, then pulls away from Vi who shifts her grip like she’s afraid Jinx will run off—but all she needed was to shift the shit on her belt a bit. Once she gets a hold on another Whisker, she rips it from her belt and pulls the pin with her teeth, ignoring the Piltie’s panicked ”no!” and Vi’s increasingly louder calls for her to calm down before she tosses it as far as she can over the boys’ heads.

Then she stills, letting Vi pull her back into an even tighter hold as the teen increases her pace, and after a moment, Mylo turns to her with a knowing scowl.

“See? This is why we don’t bring you with on anything important—now you’ve slowed us down enough with your bullshit that they're gonna catch up. But hey, want me to pull the pin on this one, watch it not fucking work a second ti—“

BOOM!

The four of them skid to a sudden stop in the mud as the Whisker explodes, and Mylo watches with wide eyes as the brick walls between them and the enforcers crumble from the force of the explosion. Unfortunately, the blue bellies probably weren’t close enough to get hit by any of the debris—the Whiskers weren’t all that powerful since they were meant for close-range type shit—but it effectively stops them from getting any closer since a big, burning stone pile separates them from the teens.

No one says anything for a moment, all of the rest of them too stunned for speech as Jinx stares at the wreckage impassively.

“Well go on,” Jinx says quietly, her words enough to draw their eyes in the relative silence. She waits until Mylo fully faces her in disbelief before she continues. “Pull the pin.”

”Jinx!” The Piltie spits, rage dripping from her string bean of a form as she practically shakes in place. “He’s a child!”

Jinx feels her gaze flatten as she watches the Piltie, unamused by her reaction. Mylo glances back at the wreckage, then at the bomb still held in a loose grip in his hand.

“Holy shit, Powder,” Vi hasn’t looked away from the now dying flames, her breathing finally slowing as she stares.

Claggor shifts from behind them, clearing his throat. “Um, guys? We should really—”

Vi shakes herself out of her stupor and takes off once more, now using both hands to hold Jinx in place like she’s some fragile little thing instead of the person responsible for the ruins now fading away in the distance. Jinx takes the opportunity to stare at Mylo over her shoulder until he catches her gaze, and she looks pointedly between him and the bomb in his hand before mouthing ”pussy”.

He gapes and Jinx shoots him a smug smile that has the Piltie watching her with a mix of horror and something like frustration, and, satisfied with how things are going even though Vi still won’t let her go, Jinx rests her cheek on the shoulder in front of her, content to stare at the walls surrounding them as they carry on through the undercity.

Chapter Text

Jinx maybe nods off on the way there—or at the very least, she isn’t paying enough attention not to be surprised when they suddenly stop. Vi definitely notices her stirring, but she doesn’t release her (which gets on her nerves) even as they enter the old arcade, its rustic interior looking less…y’know, fucked up than she last remembers it being. Of course, that thought puts her on edge because the last time she was here also happened to be the first time she’d seen Vi in the uniform that betrayed their people…that betrayed her, even if maybe she kinda had it coming.

But Vi didn’t need to join them to kill her—Jinx woulda welcomed it, after that shitty dinner. That had just been an added slap to the face.

A slap in the face that led to the three of them coming right back here together again because it’d pissed Jinx off enough to set up that little show of hers in the undercity. She was supposed to die there, had thought that would be both the best and worst outcome all wrapped up into one, awful package.

But instead, she’s finding as Vi adjusts her hold so she’s resting more snugly against her grip, she’d somehow found a way to fuck it all up even worse.

She mulls over Mylo’s words from a lifetime ago, annoyed to feel them resonate in whatever little scrap is left of her soul:

”She jinxes every job!”

They stop in the entryway to the room, Vi’s arm leaving her back for a second and giving Jinx hope she’ll finally set her down already that’s dashed when her other arm tightens as Jinx squirms in her hold.

“Vi, you can probably put her down now—we shouldn’t be running anymore, I mean…,” Clag trails off as he shifts his weight between his feet, but although Vi answers him a moment later, she isn’t looking his way.

“In a minute—I wanna talk to her for a bit, first,” Jinx stiffens in her hold as her eyes widen just a bit, but the only person who can even see it is the Piltie, who’s still staring at her with trace irritation while also sporting a newly raised eyebrow at her reaction. Jinx turns away so she doesn’t hafta stare at her stupid face any longer, but in doing so she finally gets a look at what Vi is doing as she takes the Whisker from Mylo and shoves it into her jacket pocket. "We’ll be up top—watch the Piltie.”

Vi doesn’t wait for a reply as she skirts towards their rooftop exit, this old shitty window that never really shut all the way near the back of the building. Jinx isn’t surprised she can get up the stack of old crates to hop up to it with only one hand—she’d seen her do it once with her arms full—and soon enough, she’s closing the window behind them as much as it’s creaky old hinges will allow and they’re sat down on the lower part of the rooftop. She shifts Jinx to rest in her lap, but doesn’t let her pull away when she tries to put some distance between them, a wrapped hand curling around her upper arm effectively pinning her in place. Jinx stops trying after that: what’s the point? She’s stuck between a Vi and a hard place, here. Might as well conserve what little energy she has and wait for the right moment to leave.

When Vi notices that she isn’t actively trying to flee anymore, she releases her arm, and for a long moment, neither of them say anything. In the distance, she can hear the faint sound of heavy machinery—an ever-present constant where they are in the undercity, the noise as natural as breathing or someone groaning from a stab wound. It should help her relax, but then nothing about any of this is relaxing. She wonders, faintly, just how long it would have taken her Vi to have punched her lights out for good had she gotten dumped here, too.

Instead, she has to suffer whatever this is…and it’s honestly pretty easy to say which one she woulda preferred.

“So,” Vi’s voice is quiet, soft in a way it prolly shouldn’t be considering Jinx had blown apart a couple bricks walls and threatened Mylo in front of her, “you wanna tell me what’s going on with you lately?”

Obviously not, dumbass.

She doesn’t say that, though—her fingers that occasionally brush the hair from Jinx’s face are too close to her throat for her to be that brash, and she just ain’t sure if or when her Vi would come back, too. Instead, they chill there in a silence that would probably be awkward if Jinx cared a little more about any of this.

Mostly, it’s just annoying.

When she doesn’t answer after a few seconds, Vi’s hand slips from her hair to her cheek and Jinx pulls away, the phantom feeling of mechanical gauntlets slamming into her face enough to make her stiffen and try to flee on instinct. Vi has to loop her arm around her waist to stop her from launching herself away (maybe off the roof, maybe just anywhere else), and Jinx is met with the unfortunate realization that she maybe cares more than she’d like to.

This fucking blows.

“Janna, Pow, what’s gotten into you?” Vi half sighs as her hand starts pushing against Jinx’s temple—not hard, just firm—and it makes her thrash for a moment before she can hear Vi’s heart beat as her ear is pressed to her chest. It makes her freeze, then relax ever so slightly (it’s not on purpose or anything, but it’s one of very few things of her mother’s she has left, this one, fleeting memory) and Vi keeps her hand there as she speaks, Jinx’s legs hanging off the side of her lap.

“I’m worried about you,” She says quietly, her voice sounding louder and more distorted than it really is thanks to the position of Jinx’s head. “I’m not gonna get mad or anything, but I need to know how that topsider and you met. Where do you know her from, Pow? Why does she want to kidnap you?”

She’s met with silence and the ambient, far off sounds of the city. What is she supposed to say here? The truth? Some sarcastic lie that’ll cause Vi to keep her here even longer? There is no right answer, no single explanation she could possibly offer that would make any of this come out as not fucking insane.

Jinx would know, considering she is herself.

Vi’s hand starts stroking her hair, pausing only for a second when she flinches back from her hand. Eventually, with her head against her chest and the steady thrum of the heart beating within it and the warmth from Vi’s hold seeping some of the chill in her bones from the horror she felt at all of this, Jinx finds herself calming down, if unwillingly.

Of course, that only lasts long enough for Vi to say her next piece.

“You know I’d never hurt you, Powder,” her voice is low and sincere…it almost makes her feel bad at the scoff she lets out in response.

Almost.

That reaction seems to confuse the teen more than anything else, and she slips the hand in her hair down to tilt her chin up so she can get a good look at her face.

Jinx isn’t sure what she reads there, only that it makes something like hurt flash across it and that it makes Jinx feel bad even though that’s fucking unfair because Vi’s the one who’d chased her down, not the other way around.

Everything coming out of her mouth is a lie, and the worst part is that she didn’t even know it yet.

God, why can’t you just leave me alone?!

“Oh Powder…,” she trails off, her voice cracking in a way that makes that pang of irrational guilt return in full force. Why? Why was she making her think about all of this?

Jinx is tired of thinking—she’s tired of doing anything!

That’s what the stupid altar was all about!

She presses Jinx back against her shoulder again, this time in an awkward sitting down kinda hug that gives her goosebumps because she won’t leave her the fuck alone and she can’t escape the bullshit rattling around in her skull pressed up with her head tucked into the crook of her neck like it is.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’ll fix it, ok? Just-just hang in there for now: I’ll figure it out.”

God, this sucks.

After a long, awful moment, Vi eventually lets her go, and Jinx ignores her attempts to help her back into the arcade as she makes her way down herself.

It's oddly quiet once she reaches the main floor again—none of the games are active, no one’s really talking. They all turn to look at her when she walks past them, and she resists the urge to snap as she makes her way to the larger, more impressive crate of scrap metal and other not-quite junk pieces her and Clag and…and that other guy used to build and alter their games with.

…she’d forgotten about him. Was that gonna be yet another fucking problem for her to deal with?

Stupid, shitty hextech sending her back to the stupid, shitty past with all these stupid, shitty people!

Jinx sets her jaw as she tears through the box with more force than probably necessary, all too aware of the multiple sets of eyes staring at her all the while.

“What are you—”

”Don’t.” Vi commands the Piltie, cutting her off with a dangerous edge to her voice.

The topsider sighs in frustration, but ultimately keeps her stupid mouth shut, which Jinx counts as a win.

When footsteps approach her from behind, Jinx pointedly ignores them, expecting Vi to try and scoop her up like she’s some kinda doll that’s not twisting in the right way or something—but to her (unpleasant) surprise, it’s Mylo’s shitty shoes she spots in her peripherals instead.

Great.

“Hey, uh…you wanna play the shooting game?” He sounds uncharacteristically sheepish about it, and it makes her characteristically not give a fuck.

She doesn’t bother answering, too annoyed to do anything but grab the next part she needed as she shifts through the metal. Someone (or multiple someones…Jinx isn’t paying that close of attention to it all) shifts from behind her, and Jinx only digs that much louder.

“C’mon,” the light quality to his voice is forced, “I’ll even let you win.”

“Like you always let her win?” Vi cuts in, her worry from before hidden under her smug tone (probably because of the Piltie). They all knew it was bullshit: honestly, Jinx is pretty sure the dipshit needed glasses or something back then (or maybe he was just dropped on the head one too many dozen times as a baby—his first parents had been raging alcoholics), because he couldn’t aim for shit.

Fuck, even Vi was better at it than him, and Vi fucking sucked at using guns.

Her problem had less to do with aim, though—she’d watched her toss a throwing knife at a dartboard hanging across the tavern and hit the center just to scare the shit outta some creep who just couldn’t take the hint that the fella he was flirting with wasn’t interested.

Jinx ignores him all the same, though—there’s nothing she could do except maybe overcharge it to make the targets move fast enough to be a challenge for her, even shrunk down like she is now. She knows it’s true because it had been since she was nine, and they all knew it (well, except for the Piltie, anyways).

She finally fishes out the last part she needs and walks off to the corner of the room, removing a wrench from her belt to start disassembling the chunk of what probably used to be a motor sitting on the ground in front of her.

Unsurprisingly (but still irritatingly), her newfound, idiot shadow trails behind her after a moment.

“Mylo…,” Clag calls from further in the room, a resigned quality to his voice as he watches the other boy stop a few feet from where she’s working.

“Uh, hey…,” he sounds less certain now as he speaks, and Jinx sees him lift his arm up to the back of his neck out of the corner of her eye as she removes the first piece she needed for her newest project. “So the bomb worked: that’s cool, right?”

She rolls her eyes, her irritation getting the better of her. She can feel the Piltie’s eyes on her from where she sits on a crate near the steps to the boxing game (one Jinx had never beaten Vi at, not even as an adult), and it only serves to make her grip tighten around her tools, wishing it was the lady’s throat instead.

I shoulda killed her when I had the chance.

Mylo snorts, probably finding herself reaction funny—little did he know that she really wished he’d pulled that pin.

But you can’t win 'em all, right?

Not that I’ve been winning anything, lately.

She removes the metal cylinder from the casing she’d just opened and holds it up to her face, examining it for any dents or imperfections she might need to fix or file away before she got to the next part.

“So, uh…I’m sorry, for being so…I dunno, hard on you earlier, I guess,” he sounds like it’s physically painful for him to say it, and Jinx only clicks her tongue, not bothering to look up at him as she sets her part down next to the rest of the pieces. It seems to irritate him, if the way he shifts his boots has anything to say about it. “You could at least say something, here: I’m trying to be nice.”

“Whatever,” she mumbles, sounding annoyed even to her own ears. He shifts to better face her, but she doesn’t pay him any mind, her fingers running over a burr on the next hunk of metal she plucks from her stack.

“What was that?” He sounds irritated, now, and Jinx is in absolutely no mood to deal with it.

“You’re apologizing ‘cuz Whisker actually worked, right?” She doesn’t pause for very long, not caring much for his answer, “but what kinda message does that send?” When he doesn’t reply, she continues, her voice straining as she turns her wrench on a particularly stuck on bolt. “You know, I didn’t really think much on it before, but you kinda suck as a person, getting your kicks in by shitting all over the smallest kid in the group—and what now? You think I only have value or something because I’m useful to you?”

He stammers. “I—well, no, I didn’t say that—“

“Do you have any idea what that feels like? For someone who’s supposed to care about you to constantly tell you how useless and worthless and terrible you are at everything you try to do every time you do anything, all the time, always? Eventually, I just can’t get you to stop: It’s like—like you’re this little, annoying voice in my head that I can never get to shut up!”

She takes a breath, realizing how angry she’s become and how silent the rest of them are before shaking her head, and finally, she turns up at him with the most hateful stare she can muster before she continues. “So if you really want to apologize, then fuck off, asswipe.”

He stands there, his eyes wide with something like regret and shock, but Jinx doesn’t really care what he does—he’s just a punk ass ghost who’s forgotten he’s dead, and she doesn’t have the energy to waste on things that were even less real than the shit she normally saw…so fuck him.

He ends up walking away in silence some time later, and the room doesn’t erupt in conversation like it usually does here. No one speaks. Sometimes, they’ll look at her—especially Vi and the Piltie—but as long as they all leave her the fuck alone, Jinx doesn’t really mind being a wallflower for them all to see.

Eventually, Vi asks Clag to play the boxing game with her, and she ends up bumping him down the leaderboard even further than before when she gets in fourth…right under her first three high scores. The sound grates on her nerves, but she doesn’t say anything to stop them, doesn’t want to be the center of attention in this shit-show for any longer—so she works in relative quiet.

That only lasts long enough for a guy to be tossed through the stained glass windows, just like before.

Fuck.

She’s on her feet in seconds, the half of her project that’s done tucked into her belt as she starts off towards the exit again, and she’s almost impressed with how fast she’s vaulting up the crates as she reaches the window. Mylo’s already in the process of sliding down to the ground—there’s not another roof or good foothold they can get to easily from here, and Claggor’s right behind her looking nervous as always as Vi helps him up to the roof.

“Oh man, Caitlyn ran off, Vander’s gonna kill us—”

“He’ll kill us even more if we’re caught—now move!” Vi orders, her tone non-negotiable as she hurries him along. Jinx is already down before Mylo even reaches the bottom, and she gets a few looks from the others as they land around her, but Vi quickly leads them off when they hear the enforcers start rounding the corner behind them. They start gaining on them and Vi has to pause to scale a building so she can free a ladder to let them up a fire escape, but as Mylo and Claggor make their way up, it starts looking like she’s gonna have to go for a Mouser this time just by the sheer number of them. She removes it from her belt and hides the case from their eyes as she stands and waits for them to get in just the right place—

But before she can pull the pin as they close in, an arm curls around her waist and she’s yanked backwards. She’s halfway through rolling her eyes—couldn’t Vi see she could handle this on her own?!—but when the person’s other hand deftly clasps around her wrists and presses her into the brick wall of the building they stand nearby she knows she’s fucked.

“Calm yourself, Jinx,” the Piltie says quietly, her now free hand unlatching her utility belt so it falls uselessly to the ground below her as she continues. “They won’t hurt you—I’ll make sure of it, so long as you don’t try anything rash.”

She barks a laugh at that—because bull-fucking shit the Piltie who kept digging them deeper into this mess would do anything to get her out of it. Still, even as she tries to kick herself back from the wall or twist out of the topsider’s grip, she’s just too small to get any leverage, and she hears the boys panic above her as Vi starts sliding back down the ladder even as the enforcers start closing in—

But then something strange happens.

Vi isn’t down yet, but something rips the Piltie backwards (and her, too, since her wrists are still held in a vice grip by said Piltie’s hand), and as Jinx falls over the Piltie and then immediately pushes herself away, she can only sit there, dumbfounded, as the person who’d tossed the Piltie to the ground pulls the pin on the Mouser and throws it so hard that it rolls under the feet of one of the enforcers halfway to them down the street.

It's quick, after that: these babies packed a bigger punch, and it shows in the way that pieces of a few of them fly in the air, smashing against buildings and shattering onto the cobblestones as the wooden buildings collapse from flying debris that the detonation had made of part of the road and the people once standing on it. It’s like a light show where the only two colors are blue and red, or maybe some kinda fucked up art piece with blood as the paint.

When the boots of the person who’d pulled the pin stop in front of her, Jinx finally turns away from the spectacle, craving her neck from where she’s still seated on the stone road to get a good look at their—her—face even as her lackeys start filtering in from a nearby alley.

“What the fuck did you do, kid?”