Shimmer eyes slivered open.
Jinx lay quietly in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening to the rustle of Lux's sleeping breath.
The voices in her head were only a dull murmur, now, present, but distant.
No Mylo, no Claggor, no Vander. The boys were far away, floating in their chains in the deep. Vander...well.
He'd been a rarer visitor to her tortured mind, his spectre only staring at her, silent and sad, disappointed and deeply wounded by her hatred for her sister.
But wasn't really ever there, was he?
And that was proof that it was all bullshit, all the scratch-eyed hollow ghosts in her skull. Because Singed had him hanging in a lab, all along. And now he was free.
And so was she.
Jinx closed her eyes, and saw his big teeth crunching through Lux's skull, spilling her bright blood, and fear spiked in her spine suddenly, the fear that she would open them again and Lux would be gone, just another figment of her fragile reality, conjured to bring her comfort and then callously torn away...
Jinx lay there, breath held, the thought gripping her from head to toe. Paralyzed, a bug full of spider venom waiting for its organs to liquify.
Lux isn 't real. She 'll be gone when I breathe out...
But she did, because sooner or later, even she had to...
And Lux wasn't.
Jinx didn't even have to open her eyes. Lux's weight was nestled against her, radiating heat. The sheets smelled of sex and soap and Lux's summer-breeze scent. She could hear and feel Lux breathing, deep and even, her sleep dreamless and pleasant.
She opened her eyes, and there she was – Lux, her face half-hidden in mussed straw-gold hair, her expression soft and relaxed, a tiny angelic smile on her lips in her sleep.
She 's real.
She 's here, with me.
We had sex. That too.
Jinx supposed that meant she was a woman now, or something. She didn't feel any different, not really.
Oh, there was a fizzy, buzzy swelling inside her that wanted to bubble up as a laugh or a sob, but she wouldn't let it, so it just kinda sat there. She recognized it as that little creature that had hatched when her Sunbeam had held her so tenderly in Pinkie's basement – it was sticking around, feeling warmer and less painful and more bright...
...and between her legs, well, maybe she was a little sore down there. Lux had really gone to town on her at the end there, not quite as intense as some of her toys, but Jinx had asked, after all, and it had felt so much better than when she was alone...
Jinx got it, now. It was still silly and vaguely gross and kinda weird but wow. Wow. Now, she got it.
Besides, she was a Jinx, she was allowed to like weird and gross things, wasn't she?
Not that it gave her any urge to try it with anyone else. No, it was Lux, because it had to be Lux. It was always going to be Lux, before they'd ever met.
And if it hadn't been Lux, it wouldn't have been anyone.
"What now, Flashlight?" she whispered to no-one, quiet, with no hope of stirring Lux from her slumber, "What do we do now?"
Miscolored nails carded through the gold, brushed it back from her beautiful face.
What do I do?
The moon said it was time...
Jinx's arms felt heavy.
But then, the Sun ...
She fluttered her eyelids, just for a minute, and then took a deep, shuddering breath.
"...not done with you...yet..."
Silence.
A weighty bitterness of smoke hung on the air, and all the other scents were gone.
She sat on his desk, hunkered up, hugging her knees. Her braids coiled on the table beside her.
She heard the soft scratching of his pen.
"Sentimental," Silco said, clicking his tongue against his teeth.
"Yeah well..." Jinx shrugged, tipping her cheek to her knee, "Y'taught me that, didn't you?"
His eye, bright and blue as the sea, snapped up to hers, its blood-and-shadow twin remaining impassive.
"The trajectory you chose still lies ahead of you, daughter."
"Wasn't me," she muttered, "Wasn't me who chose. Moon said it was time."
"And who are you to deny the moon?"
Jinx mumbled into her arms. Her shoulders knotted up with tension.
"I'm Jinx. When do I ever do what people tell me to..." she said quietly, finally looking at him.
Silco smiled, that thin, rare smile he gave only her.
"You did much for me, if I recall."
"...cuz I'm your daughter," she said.
"Yes, you are."
"And you'd never have given me to them..."
"...and I'll never forsake you," he finished for her.
Jinx's breath came in wet, ragged gasps. Shimmer tears sliced her cheeks.
"Then what do I do? Tell me what to do."
His chair creaked. Silco rounded the table, and knelt facing her, looking her in the eyes.
"It's not fair," she sobbed, "You're there. Waitin' for me. It's not fair..."
"You don't need me anymore," he said quietly, reaching up to touch her chin, "The truth is that you never did."
"That's not true," she hissed through clenched teeth, "I need you. I need you back. I screwed it all up again..."
"Have you?"
Jinx's breath hitched and caught in her throat.
"Don't lie to me, Jinx."
"I...I..."
"Tell me. Is the time close? Will you take my hand and go into the dark?"
She swallowed, gulping down her tears, and the calm fell over her.
"I can't come yet," she whispered, "I'm not ready..."
"And why is that?"
"I'm not alone anymore," Jinx smiled, a quavering smile, "I found my Light."
"Then, my daughter, my Jinx," Silco drew her close, to the cold razor scent of his cigars and his cologne and his death, "The next choice is yours."
Jinx tucked herself against him and breathed the scent of cigar-smoke and warm skin and sunlit hair and her own tears as she shivered awake...
To the lair. To the sound of the baboons chattering somewhere off in the depths of her workshop. To the tender rasp of Lux's breathing against her arm.
The soothing dark and the keening, scratching void both retreated to their corners of her mind.
There was only silence, and stillness, and Lux, sleeping deeply, a warm treasure in her arms.
Jinx wiped the tears that scoured her cheeks and let her breathing even out, until – unconsciously – it had fallen into rhythm with that of the girl sleeping against her.
Jinx drew a shuddering, deep breath, and sat forever with her, staring and thinking, whilst her brain sketched sunbows and raindrops across the canvas of her thoughts – whilst in the darkness, scratching malice and angry voices chanted Vi-vi-Vi-Vi-vi-Vi like a war-drum.
So much wasn't finished. So much still had to be done.
Could she even, now?
Jinx stared unblinking at the lair walls, the symbols and plans and schematics and diagrams and formulae hidden in all of her graffiti, a visual language hard-coded into her art that literally only one persona alive - Jinx herself - understood, because she had invented it to communicate with her own brain, and nobody else would ever need to understand it, so why would she ever need for it to make sense to anyone else but her?
Lux murmured in her sleep, and the sound pulled her out of that complex spiderweb of plans and possibilities and into the moment.
The warmth of her. The torrent of fresh memories. All of the things they'd just said and done to each other, precious snapshots frozen into Jinx's brain like afterimages on the backs of her eyelids.
Shit.
Why did it hurt so much? Why was she so frightened?
Was this what it had felt like, back then? When the faces faded into the flames...b̴l̵u̷e̵ ̸l̵i̴g̸h̸t̸n̶i̴n̴g̶,̷ ̶r̴e̶d̷ ̶f̶l̵a̸m̴e̷s̴...̷all their futures truncated in one clash of the c̶y̴m̴b̴a̴l̶s̷. Had she forgotten what it felt like? When the scribbles screeched and the void reached and she squeezed Pow-Pow's trigger and the chair c̵̯̈́r̷̜̎e̵̝̿aḱ̵̩ed̵͖̀- Wasn't it just like this? Don't cry, you're perfect... This feeling? Having something to lose, again?
Why did it feel just like lifting Fishbones to her shoulder that first time? Knowing she tottered on a precicipe, she couldn't undo what she was about to do, there would never be any going back?
Only...this was scarier, in a way.
Because this time, without knowing it, she'd already stepped off the cliff.
And now she had, what was she going to do about ViV̸i̶ ̶v̷i̴ ̶V̸I̵ ̷V̴I̵ ̷i̷V̶ ̷i̷v̵ ̶V̸I̴ ̷v̵i̵ ̷V̸I̶ ̸V̵I̸...
What was she to do with that black cold hate that had kept her going? Animating her thin cold limbs like a revenant biding its time to crawl back out of the grave and strike? What about the moon's words - her words - traitor, Piltie-lover, not-sister, Enforcer -
The moon clawed at her back in the cawing of crows. The sun warmed her face and led her forward.
She looked down at Lux's sleeping face, the shift of her eyes under dreaming eyelids. Ah, now she dreamed. A tiny gleam of drool sat at the corner of her mouth. Jinx's lips twitched as she wiped it away with a thumb, more tender than any touch she could have ever imagined giving to anyone.
All the words of hate and vengeance, the mantra that had kept her bitter heart beating, those weren't the only words anymore.
Jinx buried her lips in Lux's hair, breathing her, as she fell in and out of the blank of her mind.
They were words, tiny terrifying words, words she knew, but didn't, couldn't, understand.
No one, not even Jinx herself, heard her lips whisper them aloud, save the iron darkness of Zaun.
"I love you."
Her words were swallowed into the dark.