The door shuts like a sentence behind Jinx - a heavy, metallic sound that still manages to bring back way too many unwanted memories, and to make the already barren room seem even more hostile. The orphanage, at least, tried to keep up the pretense of reforming the screw-ups holed away inside, and even that was too little in Lux's eyes.
Jinx can't help but wonder what would her oldest friend say, seeing this. Probably something like How is anybody supposed to get better in a place like this? Yeah, that seems about right. Shows what she knows. Places like this aren't for helping. Well. Not the ones inside, anyway. They exist just to hide away what the normal folks don't want to see, to deal with, to remember about. Not that it'd ever stop the idiot from trying, anyway.
She's too good for them. For her.
The girl puts her hands in her pockets to stop them from shaking, steeling herself for what's ahead of her, and approaches the single chair in front of the glass wall to stiffly sit down. The chair is actually of better quality than what she managed to get for her place - discount stuff, all of it - and yet it has to be the single most uncomfortable seat she's ever had the displeasure of using. Not even the one by the Crownguards' dining table tops this, not even with their judgmental eyes glaring daggers at her for allowing their daughter to waste her time on a charity case like her.
She would like to say it's the chair's fault, or the dirty grey walls, or the buzzing, sharp light above her head, or the silence that's become such a rare occurrence with Shiro and Kuro in her life. But no. Those are all things she's gotten used to in her dump of a house, and even before that, it wouldn't have made her quite so uncomfortable.
No. The reason her muscles seize up is the company.
"Hey dad," she calls to the man sitting under the wall on the other side of the glass, a notebook and pen in his hands.
He doesn't acknowledge her presence, doesn't let himself be distracted from his drawing, or perhaps simply deigns to ignore her as a part of his game. Either way, Jinx knows he's heard her. He always paid such attention to everything around him that to think otherwise would be an insult. So she waits, restlessly tapping her foot on the floor.
Minutes pass, and Jinx tries not to count how many. Counting is a bad habit. Counting the tiles, counting the faded butterflies painted on the wall, counting the stars out there behind the window. Heh, the last one always did soothe her the most. Go figure. Still, she shouldn't. There's so many other things to focus on with the walls of the cell being completely covered in drawings – all of them beautiful. Most people would find them disquieting, many disgusting. Maybe it's the exposure speaking through her. That, and seeing first-hand the hundreds of carcasses she and her team make. Why must people insist death be ugly? Are there not enough ugly things in the world already?
"Good morning, dear." Her eyes snap to her father's calculating own, suppressing a flinch when she finds him just the other side of the glass. He always did move without a sound. Handy in his profession, the girl supposes. "To what do I owe the honour?"
"Figured it's about time I saw the hole they put you away in." Getting the words out is a fight against her tightening throat, but she manages. She's gotten good at fighting, lately.
"Truly? I had thought your curiosity sated years ago. I did my best describing the place in all those letters you asked me for."
"Touche."
"Forgive me, you're right. I'm still in shock from seeing my wayward daughter after resigning myself to never hearing from her again."
"I can always leave if it's too much for your fragile heart." Jinx sneers, ignoring the sharp pang in her heart. This was a bad idea, coming here – so, par for the course with all the others in her life.
"Jinx, dear, whether you stay or leave makes no difference to me." The man meets her angry gaze with a cold, dissecting stare. "A minute or an hour of break from the monotony of this place is nothing compared to the time I've already spent here."
She can only handle the scrutiny for a few more moments before her eyes drop to the ground, burning. Of course. What was she expecting? Well, it doesn't matter if he wants her here or not. She's here for a reason.
She wipes the mist away from her sight, waiting an extra moment to make sure her voice behaves.
"How have you been?" she eventually asks.
"...Bored."
"What, that's it?"
"It's the only thing I will never get used to," he responds with heat creeping into his voice. "It's so difficult to find inspiration in a place like this." He gestures at his windowless cell with the sort of theatrical flourish that still remembers from when he was reading her the bedtime stories, all those years ago. The little her loved it. "They could at least provide me with proper paints. Apparently they contain chemicals detrimental to my well-being."
"Contraband." She scoffs. Ridiculous in nine out of ten cases. No cap guns allowed, but oh, here is your knife for the dinner, and here are your state-funded scissors.
"Yes, I've heard you had experiences of your own with it." What? "What's this look for? I may have lost your custody, but I'm still entitled to some of the facts of your life. Imagine my surprise when I learned you earned a scholarship, in a good school to boot."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence."
"I'm not questioning your capability, only your motivation."
"Motivation? How about getting out of that craphole I was put in, how's that for motivation?"
"Sound, I suppose. Though living arrangements are only ever temporary. You could find a much better reason." Well, duh! She's not about to say the only reason she cared enough was to stop the pitying looks she got from Lux. He'd just take it as a sign of weakness, and refuse to let go.
"That why we always lived in hovels?"
"Don't insult your own intelligence by implying you don't know the why."
"Yeah, a real master of evasion right here," she points to his cell. Of course she understands why they were always on the move, always beneath the radar. Much good it did them both.
"Oh, I'll get out of here sooner or later. Somebody will always need a man with my particular talents. Did you ever wonder why I'm here as opposed to dangling from a rope?" Honestly? Yes, and often. The Void might hold monstrosities unimaginable, but men like him are a reminder that monsters come in all shapes and forms.
"I always chucked it up as a freak accident on the judge's part."
The man shoots her a disapproving look, and Jinx still can't help feeling like a small child again, having just been given a stern talking-to after doing something exceptionally dumb. She'd had many chances to commit the look to memory.
"Are you quite done joking around? If you had simply wanted to check up on me, you'd have done so a long time ago. You want something. Out with it."
Right. Pleasantries over, time to get this over with.
Her throat clams up when she opens her mouth to speak. Does she really want to know? If being a Guardian has taught her one thing, it's that sometimes, it's much easier to remain ignorant of the truth. Jinx would be perfectly happy not knowing about the horrors always waiting to devour the world whole, about how she might be just a day away from being ripped apart by literal monsters, about how the same can happen to Lux.
But for Stars' sake, this isn't some world-shattering secret. It's just asking her scumbag of a father a question about her family. It's about as mundane as such questions can be in their situation. Probably. She thinks. She hasn't got much experience to draw upon.
"I met mom." That, she can see, her father did not expect. He draws back with a blank look on his face. "She didn't recognise me. I... I went to her concert, and-" she cuts off, fearing her voice is about to crack. Dad waits with a patience of a hunter, and a still unreadable expression. "She just gave me an autograph- like any other fan."
"Did you introduce yourself?"
"No."
"Did you plan to?"
"...I don't know what I planned."
"Hmm." There's a pause in their conversation as his eyes regain their calculating edge. "Did you hope she'd recognise you? Take you in? Perhaps break out in tears and apologise for leaving you?" Jinx returns to staring at the floor. She didn't hope, exactly. She daydreamed, in spite of knowing better. Sue her for giving in to a fantasy after learning that magic is real. "Was she everything you hoped for?"
What question. There's not one kid in the orphanage who did not dream of being taken away by some rich, distant relative. It never happens, of course. So it came as quite a shock to learn she already knew her mother; from the posters, from ads, and Janna's music. It also came with a question.
"Why did you take me? Why didn't she?"
"Because, my dear, she didn't want you. She only carried your pregnancy to term on the condition I would take you off her hands," The man says so calmly, so matter of fact, that for a moment the girl thinks it might be his brand of attempt at humour.
It passes quickly. His eyes remain as cold as they always are, without even a spark of mirth to warm them.
"O-oh." She thinks back to the CD the woman signed. Janna should appreciate having it. "Does she- know you're in here?" Does she know her child had no home?
"Well I did make the national news." Is that satisfaction she can hear in his voice? Of course it is. "I would hope she didn't forget all about us that quickly."
It takes effort, but Jinx manages to keep herself from crumbling right there, in front of the man. She can't tell which would be worse. Her mother forgetting all about her, or, so much more likely, still not wanting her even knowing she'd have nowhere to go to. Not that surprising, come to think of it. Who'd want to take a criminally insane man's kid into their house, who's to say she wouldn't turn out a screw-up like her father? She can't even say she'd prove them wrong; hers are all the wrong reasons for being on first name basis with Caitlyn.
She looks at the man before her, the only family she's ever had, locked away for the remainder of his life, without anyone to visit. At the man who had read her bedtime stories and held her throughout the nights the monsters wouldn't go away, who had taught her to always give twice as much back to anybody who would give her shit. Him, not her normal, famous and admired mother, him. A murderer.
She searches for words as the silence between them stretches on, and finds herself coming up empty.
"I'll... I'll come back some time," she quietly says, sparing her father one last look to see the surprise painting on his face, before standing up and hurriedly leaving the barren cell, not stopping baring the security checks until she sees the light of the sky again.
No sooner is she out of the building than a pair of arms closes in an embrace around her shoulders, and two magical balls of fluff start circling around her like they usually do.
"Are you okay?" A pair of concerned, pink hued eyes meets her own.
"Course I am," Jinx says with a smile that feels only a little bit forced.
It's not all bad, she muses as Lux fusses over her all the way to her room of an apartment. Could she take the opportunity and leave this existence behind now, would she? A few years back she'd have said yes without a second thought. But now? Knowing that she'd never have met the girl at her side?
She wonders how her life would look like right now had the girl holding her hand not found her, had she not stuck around in spite of Jinx's best attempts at pushing her away. Would she find a meaningless job, lead a meaningless life, or perhaps rot away in a cell in some institution, like her father? She certainly wouldn't have cared enough to get in their school, to work towards getting her own place, a dump though it may be.
It's Lux who makes them tea once they get there, and it's she who makes meaningless conversation to fill the silence Jinx for once can't. She lingers even as she announces she should probably go home.
"Hey," Jinx hesitantly calls out as the girl opens the door to leave. "Can you stay tonight?"
The words stop Lux in her tracks, and for one, terrifying moment, Jinx fears she's read the girl wrong, as she all too often does – overstepping a boundary she wasn't meant to. There isn't a word that she knows to describe her relief when Lux turns back to her with a radiant smile adorning her face.
"Of course I can."
Yeah, she decides. In spite of everything, her life is definitely not all bad.