I closed my eyes and saw my father's sins
They covered me like a second skin
I peeled them off, and sure, I bled a bit
But now I'm free to sink my own damn ship
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Vi comes back to our room looking angry and starts spouting a stupid plan Ekko made before I even ask. It's not actually that stupid, but she's scared he's gonna die, so she wants to punch someone about it. I'm the only enemy she has access to right now, but she doesn't choose me. She paces instead.
"I don't get how this is gonna stop Sevika, though," I say. "She won't accept a government run by anybody but herself."
"Yeah, I know. He hopes stopping the enforcers will at least give us a few days to grab people who will fight on our side before she attacks— either that, or he'll somehow demand terms that are so perfect, she'll stop on her own. It's fucking ridiculous. We'll lose him for nothing."
"He'll stop the enforcers," I say.
"Unless they just go on in and take him out once he tries to engage them."
Ekko's too clever to let that happen just like that. I tell her so, but she scoffs.
"When he's done scouting, he'll come back here and I'll tie him down," she says. "He's not doing it."
I giggle. "Are you just mad he stood up to you?"
"I don't give a shit if he stands up to me! The problem is that I want him around, and he wants to get himself killed."
I wonder for a split second if she's ever complained to someone else that she wants me around.
"Why would she have?" asks Mylo. "Ekko's the last piece of her family that you didn't blow up. You're just a jinx." ("Jinx jinx jinx jinx jinx.")
Vi sits on the end of my bed and looks at me. I look back even though it makes my stomach hurt.
"I'm so glad you're here," she says, "and not out there in the middle of all of this."
Everyone betrays us, Jinx. Vander. Her. They will never understand. It's only us. You're my daughter— I'll never forsake you.
Because if I was in charge of the rebellion, it would win in a landslide, and she thinks that's what I'd be doing if I wasn't locked up. Which is true. If she hadn't taken me here, I would have woken up and found Sevika and become the boss. I would have shot down every Topsider I could reach and watched them writhe on the ground in their blood. I would have seen Silco's plan through and won us a nation, and I would have been the best daughter in the new world.
You're strong now. Just like you were always meant to be. Jinx is perfect.
"Are you happy with us?" Vi asks.
"What?"
"Are you happy staying with me and Ekko and Caitlyn and the Firelights? I know I made the choice for you. And I— keep making the choice for you. But I hoped you would like it here. Do you?"
I can't look at her eyes anymore, because it's not fair that she has blue eyes and I don't.
Her hand moves onto my knee. "Jinx?"
Because you're a jinx! Do you hear me? Mylo was right.
It's okay. We'll show them. We will show them all.
"Yes." It comes out in a whisper because of the lump in my throat. I remember fire. She's a torch, her hand burning where it touches me. "I like it here."
Have you forgotten how she left you?
She smiles. It's a crisis-averted type of smile: anxious, giddy, wavering. I don't see it, but I hear it when she says, "Good."
I thought— maybe you could love me like you used to. Even though I'm... different.
What makes you different makes you strong. Always remember that, okay?
I bite my tongue. "Vi."
"Yeah?"
"What happens after the war?"
"What do you mean?"
"What happens after the war? What happens if we win and they stop looking for me and you don't have to hide me anymore?"
She takes her hand away. "I told you," she says softly. "You'll stay, and you'll start over."
I'm sorry, Powder. I never meant to leave you.
You need to let Powder die.
"The Firelights don't like me," I say.
"You'll grow on them," she says. "But if you don't, or if you want to go somewhere else, we'll go somewhere else. It doesn't matter to me as long as we're together."
Things changed when you left. I changed.
I know, Pow-Pow. You did what you had to do to survive. It's okay. What matters is we're together.
"She didn't know yet," Mylo says. "She didn't really know what you are."
I push myself toward the top of my bed.
"Are you all right?" Vi asks.
"Just tired."
"Oh. Okay."
She gets up and goes to get my tranquilizer, but stops with her hand under her pillow and turns to look at me. I look back. She drops the pillow and searches her pocket instead, then comes back to me, holding the key to my handcuffs.
I watch her face instead of the key, and she watches my face, and the cuff unlocks from one of my wrists. That always happens. But then she reaches across the cot and my other wrist drops too.
I wait, not believing it. Her eyes shift away. A second later, she passes me the syringe and turns around— I told her on the second night that I didn't want her to watch me inject it because it was embarrassing, and I was genuine then, but now it's a tool. Like yesterday, I roll over silently and empty the medicine into the cup on the floor between my cot and the wall.
Vi takes the syringe back and waits beside me until I make my eyes flutter and close. "Are you okay?" she asks again.
I nod. Through my slitted eyelids, I watch her leave my field of vision and turn the lanterns off and I hear her shuffle around and get in her own bed.
"Good night, Powder," she says, even though she thinks I'm already out.
I move my left wrist under my sheets experimentally. I expected this moment much later, if ever. My freedom makes me nervous.
"Freedom?" says Mylo with a laugh.
I can't give her up. I can't. She's my sister.
I'm sorry.
Vi sleeps lightly, so I give it a while, counting to two thousand after I hear her breathing slow, which doesn't happen for forever in the first place. I roll over again and wait, then grab my cup and wait, then put my feet on the floor and wait again, then stand.
"You're making a mistake," Silco says. ("You're making a mistake, you're making a mistake, a mistake, a mistake, a mistake.") "Go back."
You want control, but you don't want to have to think or feel. Those approaches are diametrically opposed.
Even though she keeps my medicine itself under her pillow, unreachable, she keeps the syringe on the floor under her bed. When I have it, I pull in every drop I collected in my cup.
I changed. I'm different. You can't just peel away seven years and expect to find the same thing you left.
In some ways, I think she's still the same kid I left by the docks. She buried her as she was, like a pearl, and tried to cover her with what she became.
I see cracks.
She does too. And every time she does, she buries herself deeper.
I planned to have a bigger dose by the time I did this. One night's dose for me probably wouldn't even get her fully unconscious, and she'll probably be able to resist two nights' after an hour if she has the will, but this is the only day it can happen, so I'm just gonna have to hope for the best.
Before I can scare myself out of it, I kneel and press the needle into her shoulder. Her eyes open wide and she tries to pull away, but I hold her still with my free arm, and the tranquilizer is already taking enough of her strength that she can't overpower me. She doesn't even come close.
When the syringe is empty a second later, I jump back, and she attempts to focus on me, her expression scared and confused and sad most of all. "Powder?"
"I'm sorry," I whisper.
"Where... how did you get it? How are you awake?"
"I'm sorry. I had to."
"Why? Why would you... Powder...."
She drops back on her pillow, and I only notice that she had taken hold of my wrist when she lets it go. I haven't seen her sleep like this in seven years— this morning, she had her eyebrows furrowed and her fists clenched, and I thought maybe she didn't know how to relax anymore. But she does. Her hand hangs limp over the side of her bed; a lock of hair falls over her face, rippling with her breath. I say her name, even though I shouldn't, and she doesn't so much as twitch. I think it was me who furrowed her eyebrows and clenched her fists. I think she'll sleep better when I'm gone.
Powder— I'm here for you, only you. You can fire that thing if you want, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to abandon you again.
I take Vi's jacket from where it hangs on her bed frame. I try to think of a message to leave off with, but I don't have one, and what I scribble down would make me scream if I received it. Hopefully she still knows me enough to know what I mean.
At the door, I look back, and I look forward, and I wipe my eyes and leave.
Are we still sisters?
Nothing is ever going to change that.
I spend all my time trying not to see myself. I spend all my time trying to believe that the past can be buried, like a pearl, but I understand better than anyone— nothing ever stays dead.
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Intro lyrics from "Let The River In" by Radical Face.
omg what is jinxie planning!! gosh i adore her. i'm sorry i keep torturing her but i'm afraid i'm not stopping any time soon
hope u enjoyed :)