Chapter Text
Vi woke up when someone nudged her with their foot. She stirred, so deep asleep that it took another nudge to make her open her eyes. There was no dream to shake off, no certainty she was in Stillwater, and no aching headache from a hangover. She’d forgotten what waking from a good sleep in a safe place felt like.
Jinx stood overhead, looking down her nose at Vi. Her hands were on her hips, and she wore a vaguely disapproving look. “Move it, sleepy-head.”
Vi groaned and closed her eyes again. She gasped when a heavy weight dropped onto her chest. Isha stared down at Vi with a pretty good approximation of Jinx’s expression. Isha twisted—her tailbone was sharp against Vi’s sternum—and crossed her legs, leaning over Vi to poke her in the nose.
“What’s wrong?” were Vi’s reflexive words.
“Why are you like this?” Jinx asked in teasing irritation.
Isha mimed. By now Vi understood the general ‘okay’ and ‘Vander’. Jinx unnecessarily translated, “We’re going to see Vander. Figured you’d want to come.”
Vi yawned and stretched, earning a giggle from Isha when she wobbled on Vi’s chest. Vi reached out to pick up Isha and set her next to her so she could sit up to stretch her back.
“Hurry up, bozo,” Jinx said with zero heat. She dropped Vi’s boots beside her before she slipped off of their hut’s platform to the ladder.
Another yawn stretched Vi’s jaw, but she managed to shove her feet into her boots. She watched Isha nimbly climb down the ladder before she followed, dropping to the ground with a surprising burst of energy.
“Gotta piss,” she announced, scratching her scalp. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Overshare much?” Jinx muttered with a wrinkle of her nose.
After a trip to the lavatories, a quick scrub of her teeth, and two pieces of fruit collected from creepily helpful people, Vi made her way to the greenhouse that had been Vander’s home since their first day. Viktor wasn’t there, but that was probably why Jinx wanted to visit now.
He was asleep, but that was no surprise. Vi hoped his rest was as good as hers had been last night. She took a seat behind his massive shoulders and reached out to comb her fingers through the coarse fur there. He was alive and warm under her touch, and his breath raised his shoulders evenly.
It was funny. Under the chems, sweat, and blood, she could catch a hint of Vander’s steadying scent. When he’d wrapped her up in the darkness of the mine, she’d realized she’d forgotten it. Now Vi closed her eyes and leaned against him to breathe him in and commit him to her memory.
She stirred when Jinx sank down beside her. Over Vander’s massive form, they watched Isha dart to the edge of the greenhouse with fruit clutched in her hand. She was trying and failing to entice a bird to eat it.
“Do you remember?”
Vi tilted her head to look at her sister. Jinx studied Isha with a soft half-smile before she looked down.
“When we used to make up stories about the monsters that would fight each other? I always got scared, but you used to say that as long as you were around—”
“I’d never let a monster get to you.”
Jinx’s smile was as fragile as Vi felt. Jinx tilted her chin at Isha, smiling when Isha looked back at her with a grin. “I do that with her. Only, I’ve never had to tell her I’ll keep her safe. She’s always just believed it, even when I didn’t.”
“That’s kind of how it is, isn’t it? I always believed Vander could protect us, no matter what kind of shit we got into.”
“Everything I’ve done with her… It’s been from you. Took me a long time to realize, and then when I did… It was like I could see who you were again.”
Vi had seen it. The small gestures, the careful touches, the reassurances. She smiled through her tears and asked, “Still have all your insides, Pow-Pow?”
Jinx scoffed out a quiet laugh, then her eyes dropped to her feet. Her expression sank. “With Silco… You were still there, just buried under him.” She pitched her voice in apparent imitation. “‘She abandoned you, Jinx. She never loved you. You can’t trust her.’ He used to be so loud, even after he died, and now…”
Vi searched for something to say. She withdrew her hand from Vander and cautiously set it on her sister’s hand. Faster than a blink, Jinx seized it hard enough to hurt.
Vi admitted, “I’d do anything to do it all over again. But—”
“I wouldn’t.”
Vi’s breath caught in surprise. Jinx offered her an unapologetic shrug. “So we had one shitty day. Doesn’t mean all the ones before it weren’t awesome. Right?”
Vi closed her eyes against her tears. She smiled and nodded. “They were pretty awesome. But I’d still do anything to erase that one shitty day.”
“Well, we can’t.”
“Right. We can’t. All we can do is keep going to protect him—” Vi jerked her chin at Vander. Then she looked at Isha, who was sprawled on her back with the fruit raised in the air, a bird cautiously perched on it. “—and her.”
“Together,” Jinx said quietly. She looked up at Vi and smiled, and Vi found herself smiling back. Vi squeezed Jinx’s hand and nodded.
“Together.”