Sister Cities

Part 9: Vi

(CW: Police brutality)

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I know how it feels to be

At war with a world that never loved me

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Vi, I think I'm in—

It's the second thing on my mind when I wake up, after looking over to make sure Powder's okay. She took her tranquilizer again, so she's sleeping hard, her braid meandering down the mattress at her side. I only had the one ribbon, but she didn't seem to mind. She only started wearing double braids with Silco.

Vi, I think I'm in—

I swing my feet around and press them to the floor, because my mind keeps trying to finish the sentence and it's doing a shitty job. All it gives me is: Vi, I think I'm in love with you.

Caitlyn doesn't want me. She thinks she does, I know that, because she grew up reading novels from that massive library in her mansion and she thinks I can be her star-crossed lover. But she hasn't invited me to a cocktail party and realized I can't tell different forks apart. She hasn't taken me to confer with elites and seen that I don't even know their names, let alone what they do or how they do it. She hasn't slept in a bedroom whose floor is lined in mold instead of imported carpeting. I'm surprised she can even breathe down here. She doesn't want me— never in a million years would she be "in love" with me.

And if I think I want her, it's only because I'm a touch-starved ex-prisoner who lost all my street smarts in solitary. I used her to find Powder and get a chance to speak to the Council. She used me to get the gemstone and learn about our exciting array of criminals. Now I'm using her to protect Powder, and pitying us just hasn't become too inconvenient for her yet.

We don't fraternize with Topsiders down here. They will screw you over every time.

Our door creaks, making me shut up at long last, and Ekko comes in with three plates like yesterday. He gives me two of them and sits at my side.

"I think you and Jinx should move to one of the treehouses," he says when we're done eating. "Everyone I've talked to would feel safer with thicker walls around her."

"But she hasn't tried anything."

"You can make a compromise for people who are housing a girl who killed five of their own days ago." He uses the tone I've heard a couple times when he's giving orders. And he's right, so I nod.

"She's gonna be sad to leave her drawings, though," I say.

Ekko pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand and searches his pocket with the other. He comes up with three oil crayons, two blue and one pink. "We use them for fine detailing on the mural," he says, slapping them down on the cot between us.

I pick up the pink one. It looks like what she uses for her creepy graffiti around the city.

"Can I take her out?" I ask.

"Out? Like, farther than the bath? No. You're joking."

"With her hands cuffed, and cuffed to mine. And several people standing by with weapons."

"You're talking about Jinx."

"I think it would be good to acclimate her," I say. "To make her feel more like part of us, part of this, so she doesn't go looking for— something else."