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“If he found this . . . everything might have been different.”
Vi hesitated, her hand hovering as she reached out toward Jinx, who sat curled-up at Vander’s worn wooden desk. Their father’s letter to Silco was clutched tightly in her slender, trembling fingers, and her head was slightly bowed where she was facing away from Vi, free hand braced against the edge of the desk as if her palm were holding her up.
Vi nearly regretted showing her the damned letter at all, but she knew she would’ve felt worse if she had kept it from her; Jinx had been the one to come and get her for this search for Vander, however much of a wild goose chase it would probably end up being. That . . . said a lot, about parts of Jinx that Vi hadn’t known remained within her.
(“He’s your father, too”, Jinx had said, and as much as Vi had tried to see her as anything but since her realization that Powder was gone, Jinx was still her sister — and, subsequently, Vander was still their father. Even if he had not been the only surrogate parent that Jinx had had; no, she had had both sides of their apparent coin, if this letter was any indication of the bond the two men had shared.
It seemed that even they, once, had called each other brother before picking up their weapons and turning on one another — and where had Vi heard that before?)
As if she could hear Vi’s thoughts — though, truly, she seemed to be too out of it in the throes of the letter to hear anything, just then — Jinx’s index finger began to trace the looping S of Silco’s name at the very top of the letter. A little shiver passed through her thin, pale shoulders as she tipped her head forward, blue hair falling over her face and hiding her already blank expression.
Something sick twisted in Vi’s stomach at the sight of her. The lurching feeling of it pushed her forward, and before she even knew what she was doing, she stepped forward to place a hand on her sister’s shoulder — and she didn’t regret it like she thought she might have, because this was Jinx but this was also Powder, no matter what, and Vi had left her abandoned long enough.
“Maybe,” Vi said quietly; a belated response to Jinx’s lament. “Or maybe not. There’s no use wasting time thinking about it; you can’t change the past, and it is what it is. ‘Sides,” she added on as an afterthought, “maybe he did read it. Maybe he just didn’t care.”
Jinx seemed to consider her words, tilting her head just slightly to one side, staring off into nothing at all, or perhaps something only she could see. Her muscles — unbelievably strong, Vi thought with disbelief as her eyes flickered down to where her hand was resting on Jinx’s shoulder — were tensed and strained, flexing slightly underneath Vi’s fingers.
“You’re right,” she said at last, voice thin and rasping, all of the tension seeming to drain from her at once as she leaned back slightly, humming affirmatively. “He wouldn’t’ve, would he? Always was stubborn like that.”
You would know, wouldn’t you?, Vi couldn’t help thinking. You were his daughter. His Jinx — even if you were mine first.
“He wasn’t all bad, though, y’know.” Jinx tipped her head back to meet Vi’s gaze, her eyes half-lidded and shining a faint purple hue. She was still holding the letter almost delicately, blue-and-pink colored nails tracing the words scrawled out in Vander’s handwriting. “He saved me, didn’t he?”
“Did he?” The words came out before Vi could stop herself, and her grip tightened slightly on Jinx’s shoulder.
Or did he kill you, Powder?
(But she already knew the answer to that question.
She had seen her answer, firsthand, in the ways she had watched Jinx — had watched her sister, outside of times when she was having a clear mental break. She had seen it in the way Jinx treated the kid, Isha, above anything else; holding her hand, comforting her, encouraging her. Being a better bigger sister than Vi herself ever had.
Powder was still there, in every word Jinx said to the kid. Even if she had changed. Even if she wasn’t Powder anymore.
Vi — she hadn’t changed. She had grown, in Stillwater — but she had not changed. She was still that same brash, defensive, survivor of a kid who had struck her little sister and called her a jinx — even if she was starting to see ways to change.
Vi had not changed. Jinx had — and so had everyone else.
Who, then, was the one to be judged?)
Through Vi’s internal turmoil, Jinx held her gaze — not firmly, but almost casually, as if she were callous about her sister’s blunt words.
“Yeah,” she responded, equally as bluntly, with a roll of her eyes as if Vi had said something stupid — and, to Jinx, perhaps she had. “He did. He took me in; taught me how to not fuck up everything I do. Gave me a place where I fit in, Vi. Made me strong. Let me be . . . me, let me be Jinx, because even if he molded me along the way, Jinx is mine.” Her eyes flashed, and her grip on the letter tightened. “He was . . . he wasn’t good, but he wasn’t all bad, and he was . . . where I belonged.”
“I should’ve been that,” Vi rasped out. “Where you belonged. It should’ve been me, P —,”
“You weren’t there.” Jinx cut across her simply, blankly, and it felt more painful than when she had slapped her.
“I wanted to be, you don’t —,”
“But you weren’t. He was. And like it or not, sis, he’ll always be my father — just as much as Vander is.” Jinx swung herself upwards abruptly, shoving the letter into one of her baggy, stitched-together pockets and shaking off Vi’s hand to turn and face her fully. “Not a good one, fuck no, but still someone who gave a damn, okay?”
Her eyes flickered again, that same unsettling purple. She looked away; a thought seemed to cross her mind, then, and she laughed.
When Jinx spoke again, it was as if Silco himself had stolen her tongue, and was using it for himself.
“Is there anything so undoing,” she rasped, “as a father?”
“Yes,” Vi responded quietly, and she raised her hand once more to lightly graze over Powder’s shoulder. “A sister.”
Jinx’s gaze met hers, the purple hue flickering from her eyes until they were that familiar violet blue of Powder’s soft gaze, and then she broke away from Vi’s touch once more. She turned her back and slouched over to Isha, who had spilled ink off the side of the desk, and was tracing wobbly drawings on the stone floor.
“C’mon, kid,” Jinx murmured, holding out a hand, seemingly not caring about the ink stains that the kid’s fingers would leave. Isha took it without hesitation, humming happily and giggling as Jinx shoved her helmet down playfully over her forehead.
Vi nearly felt as if she would be sick once more as she slid on her gauntlets and hung back behind the two of them, her own words — Jinx’s words, really, or, if she was being honest with herself, Silco’s — ringing through her mind.
Because truly, she thought with some painful mix of anger and grief and numb acceptance, was there anything so undoing as a sister?
(But through the pain of meeting her sister’s shimmer-glazed eyes, of watching her revel in the pain she caused, in seeing just how much she had changed for the worse and for the better through the equal pain of watching her with Isha, or seeing her lament over Silco’s letter, or acknowledging at all that she had come to get Vi, come and brought her to these tunnels to look for the illusion of their father because, after everything, they were still family —
Well.)
It was just another question, in regards to her sister, that she already knew the answer to. Whether she liked it or not.
But she was not given time to ponder it — because a ground-shattering roar filled the caverns without warning, and Jinx’s face lit up like Powder’s as she whirled around with an ineffable sort of joy painted across her face, calling out for the father that they both shared, her cry making something within Vi really and truly come undone.