There's an ache in you put there by the ache in me
But if it's all the same to you
It's the same to me
I won't ask you to wait
If you don't ask me to stay
We could call it even
Even though I'm leaving
And I'll be yours for the weekend
'Tis the damn season
________________________________________________________________________________
Me and Vi both sleep restlessly the night before the masquerade ball and have to get up for good at the crack of dawn to lean out our window. We go to work for a little while; there's no Council meeting, so Caitlyn comes to the lab with me to blabber at Jayce while him and me and Viktor screw with our scale model. We're all back at the manor early to "get ready," something Caitlyn made us carve out several hours for. Vi brings Ekko so he can eat Mariette's snacks with us. Us three play cards and nap in the sitting room for the majority of the "getting ready" period while Caitlyn gives herself some kind of spa treatment— Ekko falls asleep first with his face in one of Vi's shoulders, so I take the other one, and he looks miffed and scrambles to his feet when we wake up.
"What time is it?" I ask.
He pulls out the Z-Drive. "Ten past seven."
"Let's get this over with," Vi says, stretching. We tramp up the stairs and run into Caitlyn's mom and dad, who are dressed to the nines in the most awful Piltovian garb ever designed. Her mom has pearls strung on her wrist and neck that could feed a family of four for a month if I sold them. I make sure my smile looks artificial.
"I'm gonna take a shower," Vi says, pulling her costume pieces from our wardrobe. "Go grab your stuff if you want it."
I cross to the guest bathroom and collect my makeup and the Topside nail polish I snaffled from Caitlyn's mom. My insides are bouncing, so I skip back down the hall, smacking Vi with my braid when we pass each other. She catches it and smacks me back. I put my things on our bed and dig my costume out of my hideyhole, but I run downstairs instead of putting it on.
Ekko's still in the sitting room, reading a book on an armchair. He looks at me warily when I come in.
"Hiya!" I say, sitting on the coffee table in front of him.
"What's the matter?" he asks.
"You," I say.
"What?"
"You're not dressing up."
He closes the book over an attached gold ribbon. "You knew I wasn't gonna."
"Yeah, but I didn't know how dull you'd look until now," I say. "We have to do something."
"Uh, no, we don't."
"Yes, we do." I examine him closely. "How about I do your makeup?"
He gestures to his war paint. "I already did my makeup."
"Not that makeup, silly," I say, hopping to my feet. "Wait here."
I dash back upstairs and bring down my whole box. Ekko sizes it up and sighs as I flip it open on the coffee table.
"Whatever you're about to do, I'm not interested," he says. "Just go get dressed."
"I can't yet," I say, rifling through the box feverishly. "At this rate, I'll show you up so hard that the guests will pass out."
"I'm not trying to impress the guests."
"Well, you should be." I spin on the table to face him. He braces to stand up. "Freeze!" I say.
"Jinx—"
"You'll like it! I promise." I lean forward, examining his face; he leans back as far as his chair lets him, but I account for that easily. His eyes flit around me like he's searching for an exit. "Just give me five minutes," I say. "You can take it off if you hate it."
"I'm not in the mood for jokes."
"When are you ever, grumpy-pants?" I mimic his pout. "Besides, it's not a joke. Here." I go back to my box and pull out a case of emerald paint. "Look! Your theme color."
A molecule of amusement crosses his features, but he stamps it out fast. I lean in again, the case balanced on my knees and a tiny brush poised. He's still pressed back as far as possible.
"Stay still," I say, putting a steadying hand at the side of his jaw. He doesn't listen— actually, he does the opposite and jerks like my touch is a burning iron.
"Do you have to do that?" he asks irritably.
I feel myself flush, stung. "I do if you want this to look good. It won't take long."
He gives another sigh, now in resignation, and I cautiously cup his face again. He accepts it. I trace my design in the air just in front of him, then move my hand upward and set the brush against the outer corner of his left eye. His lashes flutter and I see both of his hands do a defensive jump.
"It's okay," I say. "It won't hurt. Actually—"
I take the paint case and hop up so I'm perched over him, one foot on either of the chair's armrests. "There," I say, placing my brush again.
"What are you doing?" he asks, now more alarmed than irritable.
"What, do you think I'm about to kill you in the Kirammans' sitting room?" I'm now more irritable than stung. "Relax. I'm getting a better vantage point so I don't poke your eye out."
"Gee, that's reassuring."
"Shut up and let me work."
He shuts up. I sweep a vibrant line upward and out in the first curve of a firelight's wing, squint, and do the same on the right to keep it as symmetrical as possible. This close, I can see green and brown flecks in the storm color of his irises. I try not to notice. I do anyway. He's focused on me, not searching for exits anymore— maybe he's thinking about my eyes too.
As if. If he's thinking about them, he's thinking about the noxious purple drowning out the blue he knew, and how cold my fingers are, and how he hates to be so close to me. I can feel his tension. I remember when he taught me to hoverboard, how his breathing changed when he caught me and I held on tighter.
I did what I had to do to survive. You did what you had to do to ease your conscience, no matter how much wreckage it created.
"Jinx," he says.
"What?"
"Are you done?"
I realize I've gone still, my brush motionless in the air, my eyes fixed on his. I lift them quick. "No. Sorry."
He moved a bit at some point when I was zoned out, and now a lock of his hair interrupts my canvas on the left. It's the one with the bullet shell strung on it. I flick it away and try not to notice how fuzzy it is, but I fail, and it falls right back down and I have to flick it a second time.
"Here." He lifts a hand to hold it out of the way, and his thumb brushes mine, and I'm the one who jerks back from the iron this time. "Uh— you okay?" he asks.
"Fit as a fiddle," I say through an aggressive smile. "Stop moving your face."
I finish picking out the shapes of the wings and fill them in, bringing in a strip of color partway over his eyelids. I'm not quite satisfied after that, so I go back to my box for a few more doodads. He tenses up again when I climb back onto his chair.
"One more minute," I say.
"Fine." He's back to staring at me, probably to make sure I'm not gonna pull a blade from my makeup case and slice his jugular.
Trying not to care, I add a thin strip of glitter along the outlines of the wings and lean back to appraise my masterpiece: pretty, but still not striking enough. I stick a gold gemstone on both sides where the upper and lower segments of the wings meet, just to make sure nobody passes by him without noticing.
"Ta-daa!" I say, jumping to the floor.
I give him a mirror from my box and climb onto the back of his chair so I can see what he sees. What actually ends up drawing my attention are his lips, parting in surprise and staying that way, and the shallow scar on his cheek, and his hand on the mirror's handle, precise and delicate in a fingerless glove with haphazard bits of metal at the knuckles.
Crud.
"Soooo?" My grinning face approaches his in the reflection. "What do you think?"
He holds the mirror closer to his eyes, blocking me out. "Where'd you get makeup, anyway?"
"None of your concern. Do you like it or not?"
He sets the mirror down and turns around to look at me, gold gems flashing, emerald paint luminous against his skin. This is maybe the first time I've had a canvas more beautiful than my art.
"Yeah," he says, locking down my gaze. "I like it a lot. Thanks."
"Don't mention it." I get to my feet and chuck everything blindly into my box. "And don't screw it up."
"I'll try my best."
I sprint back upstairs. The shower's stopped running and the bathroom door is cracked, so I peer through. Vi's trimming her hair at the counter and whirls around when I barge in, but relaxes when she sees that I'm me.
"Why haven't you gotten ready at all?" she asks.
I slap my box down in its place. "I was getting Ekko ready."
"I thought he wasn't—"
"He wasn't, but luckily, I was there to steer him right."
"You'd better get a move on, then," she asks. "Do you want me to redo your braid?"
"No."
She shrugs, lifting her ornate Topside scissors again. "I'll be back in our room pretty soon, if you need anything."
"Don't freak out if I'm not there. I have stuff to do."
"As long as you're dressed in time."
I close the door and sneak down the hall in the wrong direction, unraveling my braid as I go, because I'm a dumb weak traitor, but that doesn't stop me. Caitlyn's door isn't cracked for spying, so I just slide in.
She's in a disgustingly frilly bathrobe right now, though I see her dress hanging in front of her in her wardrobe and her mask on her desk. It's shiny, with curlicues carved in and layered half-circle thingies building off the edges, like a golden fungus. But I bet she wouldn't like it if I said that.
I wait until she starts turning around with her dress to tow to mumble, "Will you braid my hair?"
She gives a melodramatic gasp, her free hand going to her heart. "Jinx! You scared me half to death!"
"Okay."
"What did you say?"
I roll my eyes and uncrumple my words a bit: "Will you braid my hair?"
"Me?" she asks, gawking. She lays the gown out on her bed, removing the hanger. "Is Vi busy?"
"No," I say.
We stare at each other for a few seconds, until I feel sweat on my palms and a blush rising in my cheeks. "Don't if you don't want to," I snap. "Whatever. You probably can't even make a braid, can you?"
I spin on my heel and storm off. Stupid Piltie. Stupid Jinx. Why would I even want—
"Wait," Caitlyn says just before I reach the door. "Of course I want to. I was shocked, is all. I'll braid your hair."
I look back. Her hand is held out toward me, one foot forward, an obnoxious, earnest expression on her face. My lip curls.
"Sit down." She nods at an open spot on the floor and runs to her bathroom, returning in a moment with a small armful of junk. I haven't sat down yet, or even moved from where I was when she stopped me, so she sits first and puts the junk down, nodding again. Still edgy, I tiptoe over and lower myself to the ground.
"Is it all right if I comb it first?" she asks, running her fingers through a knotted lock.
"I don't want any of that crap in there." I cut my eyes at the bottles and tins at her side with suspicion. They're probably poisons that'll turn my hair gray.
"How about just this one?" she asks. She's holding up a pale blue spray bottle. "All it does in loosen tangles."
This was a terrible idea. I want to leave. I can feel her behind me, radiating Piltovian cold into my breathing space. "Fine," I hiss.
She didn't ask me for anything. She doesn't know what I traded.
Why'd you do it, then?
Because she would have died otherwise. You wouldn't give up an object to save somebody's life?
The tug of a comb. A spray of sweet-smelling mist. She works like she's done this a million times, and I accept it. I let a former enforcer mess with my most valuable feature like it's nothing. Stupid, stupid, stupid Jinx.
"You have such lovely hair," she says. "How did it get so long?"
"I never cut it." How else?
"Never?"
"I mean, I did. Vi did. She used to chase me around with scissors sometimes and say she was gonna cut me bald."
Caitlyn laughs, smoothing a couple strands behind my ear. "That sounds like Vi."
"She always braided it. I never let her teach me, because I wanted her to have to do it. But she stopped when she left. Obviously."
I didn't want to cut off hair you had never braided.
How did so much happen so fast?
"Is that when you stopped cutting it too?" asks Caitlyn.
"Uh-huh."
"Didn't it get in the way when you... fought? I can imagine someone grabbing hold of a braid to pin you or trip you up."
"Nothing got in the way when I fought," I say flatly. "People knew better than to touch my hair. The entire Undercity lived in fear of me."
It all comes out in past tense. I don't notice until I've finished the last word. It gives me a feeling of gravel and velvet.
Caitlyn isn't perturbed. She never is. "I find braiding so relaxing," she says. "My mother taught me."
"Thought it'd be your nanny or something."
She laughs again. "I used to do my dolls' hair. As I said the other day, I always wanted a younger sibling— I would have loved to do theirs...." She gets to her feet. "As for you, how would you feel about doing something different?"
"What?"
"A different hairstyle. Something special for the ball."
I grab a few locks protectively. "Like what?"
"Like...." She goes to her desk drawer and takes out several pins. "Well, I'm not sure. Would you let me experiment?"
"Not if you're gonna make it ugly."
"I won't make it ugly. If you don't like it, I'll put in a regular braid. We have time."
I don't know why I agree. There's no way she has passable taste here. She'll probably make me look like a snobby old lady. And yet.
She descends on me like a bird of prey. Instead of gathering all my hair, she leaves it mostly undone and scatters several small braids throughout it, pulling back the ones at the front with the loose strands around my face and pinning them behind my head. She gets her nasty paws on my forelock for a second, but I make her leave it be. When she's done, she walks around me three times, her face screwed up in thought, and scrounges up several transparent bands from that drawer. Then she pulls carefully measured handfuls of hair, one braid in each, in front of my shoulders and puts the bands in at intervals to make little bubbles.
Her level of effort starts to disconcert me at that point and it seems like she's just gonna keep on going, so I ward her off and stand up. Before she can get a word in, I race down the hall to the guest bathroom and look in the mirror and try to convince myself I hate the whole mess, but that dumb Piltie has somehow made me look good.
"Powder? Are you— whoa."
I spin around. Vi sizes me up confusedly.
"Hideous, right?" I say, crossing my arms. "I was just gonna take it out."
"What? Don't take it out. It looks great. But since when do you know how to braid?"
"I don't," I say, going into my makeup box. My face burns.
"Then who did this for you?"
"Nobody."
There's no point in saying it. Other than her, Caitlyn's the only one in this house who'd even consider touching me long enough to make this happen. But I stand by it, so Vi doesn't push.
"Well, I like it," she says. "I think you should keep it."
"If you say so." I pull a few metal rings from the box and put them over the clear ties that make the hair bubbles, figuring it'll seem a little more Jinx-y that way, and commit to the bit. Vi hovers.
"Can I help you do your makeup or something?" she asks.
"I don't need help with makeup."
"Oh. Okay." She half-smiles, picking at the tape on one hand like it's bugging her. "Yeah, no joke. I went down to see what you did to Ekko— it was incredible."
I ignore her and put down the stolen glass bottle of polish with a clank. "You can do my nails, though."
I doubt she has any idea how to paint nails, but she goes from part-smiling to beaming as she takes the bottle and my outstretched left hand.
"Shut the door," I say.
She kicks it closed and sits on the counter. "How come?"
"Caitlyn can't see your costume before the party. It's supposed to be a big moment. You can't see hers either."
"Where do you get this stuff?" she says, and my giggling makes her smear my first nail. "Shit."
"It's fine. But you should wipe the excess off on the edge of the bottle first. You don't need as much as you think. And try to do one long stroke instead of a bunch of little ones."
I get to work on my lips— I got a dark ruby color for tonight, and gloss that I nabbed from Caitlyn. I've never worn gloss before. Vi takes a washcloth to try to fix my nail, and we both look at the dense black stripe that shows up on the pale pink.
"Who has pink washcloths?" I say.
"Fucking dumb," she says. This time we make sure to keep all pigments away from me while we laugh.
"Hey," she says a little later, when she's moved on to my right hand and I'm doing my eyes. "Are you good with Caitlyn now?"
"Who cares about Caitlyn?" I say. "She exists. Whatever."
"You let her do your hair," Vi says.
"That's what you think."
"If you don't want to talk about it, we don't have to. But it's easier for me if I know where your head's at."
When I was a kid, she used to be able to read my mind. She didn't have to ask.
"Caitlyn's fine," I say. "For a Topsider. Her house sucks eggs."
"You didn't tell me much about when you two went shopping," Vi says, soaking the entire tip of my ring finger in black. "She said it was good. What'd you think?"
"It was fine." I weigh my options and add, "I have some insider information about her, if you want it. Good news and bad news."
Vi has the pink washcloth again, but her automatic functional roughness with it turns slow and thoughtful. "Bad news first."
"I think she has to have an heir."
I feel Vi's grip on my hand change, but her voice is casual: "Why? Because she's a from a clan?"
"She was talking about how her parents had her because they had to have an heir, not because they really wanted a baby."
"That's a shit approach," Vi says, belatedly scraping the paintbrush on the rim of the bottle. "I doubt she'd go for it."
"She's a Kiramman. But I can tell her it's shitty and trick her out of it so you don't have to, if you want."
"No, don't. If she needs an heir, she needs an heir. We'll figure it out."
"Last I checked, neither of you can knock each other up."
She grimaces. "Powder."
"I'm just saying what we're all thinking."
"I didn't mean me and her would have an heir together."
"Are you allowed to have an heir with someone who's not your lover over here? It sounds like something they'd cry about."
Vi redoes my nail with a disinterested sweep that ends up being the best out of all of them. "I meant, she'll find someone to marry who she can have a kid with. I don't have to be part of it."
"But don't you want to?" I ask. I don't know why it comes out with so much concern.
"Sure," she says, "but there's no reason to think that's what would happen. We're not actually lovers. We haven't picked a term."
"Still? What are you, then?" I stare into the mirror, blowing on my nails. The polish claims to be a "quick-dry gel formula." They don't have that in the Undercity.
"I don't know," Vi says. "But we haven't committed to each other. She can do what she wants."
I'll still trick her, but I'll keep it to myself. "Well, I got the good news from Viktor," I say. "He says it's a huge deal Topside to be someone's plus-one to a ball— Caitlyn asking you means she thinks she's really close with you. So maybe you need to get with the program."
For the good news, it makes Vi look pretty alarmed for a second there.
"What's wrong?" I clap my hands over my mouth. "Are you gonna break up with her again? Why? Did she do something?"
"No! I'm not breaking up with her. I can't break up with her if we're not lovers, first of all, and second—"
"You're lovers."
"— I don't want to. Everything's fine." She gets to her feet. "C'mon. Let me see."
It takes a second to realize she means she wants to see me. I turn to face her, and she sizes me up again, but slower, and smiles like she's sad. Her hand drifts to my cheek.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"Nothing. I— you grew up really pretty."
"Why're you sad that I'm pretty?"
She laughs weakly. "I'm sad about the growing-up part, not the pretty part. I have no idea what you looked like at any point in the last seven years. Do you ever think about that?"
Whenever I had to fix my clothes because I got taller. When I discovered I had cheekbones. When I first got hit on by a gross guy at the bar. When I realized I could hit on other people for my own benefit. Every time I added a new bullet shell to my hair.
"Yeah," I say.
"I don't suppose you took any pictures?" she says.
"Zilch. But I've seen a couple portraits. People passed them around so they knew who to look out for."
She pushes my forelock back, careful enough that I don't make her stop, and tilts her head. "You look like Mom," she says.
"Oh."
Dear friend across the river...
Purple hair. A warm, lowish voice. A round necklace. Soft hands. But her face— I search and search, like I have a million times before.
"I don't remember what she looked like."
Vi's eyes widen.
"Yikes," Mylo says.
"Sorry," I mutter.
"No— Powder, don't be sorry about things like that." She drops her hands and turns me back to the mirror. I look between our reflections. She has her shirt tucked in like a Piltie businessman; she found something Jayce Talis reportedly calls "slacks" and hung chains from the belt loops, and she actually washed all the embedded dirt off her boots. Caitlyn has her in a chokehold.
And me— I just saw me. Only I didn't look like this.
"There," she says. "Now you remember."
We stand there for another few moments, until tears threaten to wreck my makeup. I shake it off. "I have to get dressed."
"Find me when you're done."
I run back to our room and pull on my tiny show-stopper of an outfit. It's ingenious. No one who looks at it will think I could hide anything in it. The empty holster on my thigh blends right in with the cuff of my stocking.
Chewing paint off my cuticle, I wander back to the bathroom and find Vi worrying at her bandages again, pulling an end out from one of her shirt cuffs and trying to push it back in.
"Did you forget to cut the back of your hair?" I say.
"No." She touches the longer pieces a bit shyly. "I want to grow it out."
"Really?"
"Not too much. But yeah."
"Why?"
"I don't really know."
"I've got an idea."
We cross the hall again, bringing the polish-covered pink washcloth with us, and shut the door in case Caitlyn comes roaming. I crawl down to my hideyhole and exchange the washcloth for a ribbon.
Vi looks under the bed when I come out, but is expectedly confuzzled. "What were you doing?"
"Visiting my hideyhole. You can't see it from here," I say, answering her question before she asks. "It's in the mattress."
"How is it in the mattress?"
"I dug a hole."
"In the mattress?" She tips her head back, groaning. "How big is it?"
I approximate a circle with my hands. "It stretches out beyond the opening, though."
"Powder."
"Nobody's gonna find it."
She sits on the bed heavily. "Never a dull day with you, huh?"
"Nope!" I say, hopping up behind her. "Do you want to see my idea?"
"Go crazy."
I gather her uncut hair. As I predicted, it's just long enough that I can use my silver Caitlyn ribbon to tie it into a little tail at the nape of her neck.
"Look," I say, pulling her hand up to feel the neat bow. "Now you're an esteemed gentleman."
"An esteemed gentleman?" I hear her smile. "I like that. You're on a roll today."
"And every other day." I get to my feet and twirl, checking how visible my holster and outer thigh are when my skirt lifts. Not that I need to— I calculated every measurement in meticulously when I made the costume, including all plausible indoor physics events. The whipping scars on the front of my legs are making an appearance, and so is the round burn scar on my side, because anyone who looks will either turn away fast or focus solely on them and not any other part of me.
Vi leans back on her elbows and gazes at something in her head, which makes things easier. "Remember when I used to say I'd sneak you into a Topside gala sometime?" she says.
"And we'd eat all the hors d'oeuvres."
"Didn't you want to plant a bomb in a punch bowl? Or something like that?"
"I wanted to plant a starter bomb in the punch bowl, and when everyone got covered in punch, I'd explode the big bomb in the cake."
She touches her ponytail again, grinning. "Who would've thought we'd ever go to one of these legally?"
"Not me." I slow my spinning to a stop. My hair settles unfamiliarly, but in a good way. "Do I have to stay with you the whole time?" I asked.
"You don't have to. Why? Got other plans?"
"No," I say. "You do."
"I do?"
"Wooing Caitlyn in a unique and sensual setting."
She snorts. "I thought we were already lovers. Why would I need to woo her?"
"Well, I thought you weren't lovers," I say. "So you do need to woo her."
"And while I'm wooing her, what'll you be doing? Drawing monkeys on the guests' dresses?"
"And on the tapestries."
"Right," she says. "Tell you what: I'll stay off your back as long as you keep your comm on and promise not to torture Ekko. And you two need to have dinner at our table so I'm not alone with the Kirammans and whatever other snobs they bring with them."
"Deal."
I was half-hoping she'd fight more. I would've liked to stay close and have this be the gala we imagined going to together. But I have work to do.
"I'm gonna wait downstairs," I say. "You're staying in here until you can officially present yourself."
"How's that gonna look?"
"I don't know. It's your problem. You need to make it hot and memorable. I have a glitter bomb that could help. I could even stick some flower petals in it for you."
She cringes at my use of the word "hot," but laughs at the last part. "I think I'll just keep it simple," she says. "But thanks."
I wave a dismissive hand and sit next to her for a hug. "Your loss."
________________________________________________________________________________
Intro lyrics from "'tis the damn season" by Taylor Swift.
oh my god i love them all
So lemme level with you guys - I give you updates faster than I produce them, and it's starting to catch up with me, especially cuz I've recently started a new writing project, so I'm going to start posting every two weeks. It might get slower than that at some point too. Nonetheless, you can still expect it to be finished!! There's lots of fun left to be had <3 love u guys