Jinx has an edge to her today.
More so than usual, even; the kid always has a slightly manic edge to her, grinning and hopping about like she's had one too many Mentats, even when she hasn't been popping them like candy. But there is no tell-tale red stain to her lips, so it's not the Mentats.
No, she's laughing a little too loud, smiling a bit too wide. Cracking dirty jokes that would make poor Gob blush if he had any skin at all. Fixing the radio again—for free, even—much to Moriarty's delight. Humming and singing off-key to some nonsensical song that was likely made up on the spot.
But there is a strange sharpness to her eyes, a brilliant shine that highlights how brittle the kid really is.
Nova's senses are normally pretty good about this—have to be, really. Her trade depends on her looks, and she's gotten very good at reading people. Figuring out which clients are too high to be safe to deal with. The line between a happy drunk and a mean drunk. Which of them might break her face, or which are just interested in the non-bruising sort of rough trade.
Jinx is off today, but not dangerously so. At least not to anyone else.
"Hey, sweetheart. Fun scavving today?" Nova drawls, leaning against the bar.
The Vault kid grins widely, words tumbling out of her in a rapid-fire patter, like bullets from an assault rifle.
"Oh yeah! Fun! Lots of fun! Dogmeat sniffed up some Raiders, so I got my trusty hunting rifle and pegged a few! Pew pew! Right in the head!" she giggles, extending her index and curling her other fingers to mime a pistol. "They were attacking a trading party on the road, so I was just helping out. Doing my bit, you know? The Wastes would really be a lot more hospitable if people just helped eachother out, right?"
The past few weeks have changed her already. Nova remembers her when she first came in the bar, all wide-eyed innocence and cheery patter. Her hair was dark auburn, tied back in a messy knot and her dusky skin—naturally dark, like fresh earth, not this chalky, sunburnt mess from running about the Wastes— almost glowing with health, coming from a rad-free environment. Now her hair is dyed a brilliant blood-red, half-shaved into a much more unladylike ridge. That thin Vault suit has been exchanged for leather armor, and she looks more like a mercenary than a sheltered little egghead.
"That they would be, hon. But a bunch of Raiders don't bother you now, do they?"
"No, no they wouldn't," Jinx sighs, flapping her hands like angry birds. "It was the trading party, you get it? One Raider chopped down one of the folk with this crazy shishkebab—gotta make me one of those—'afore I had a chance to even get in. After the Raiders are dead, I start talking with the survivors. The caravan's pissed. Like the Stahls claim Moriarty does in the beer!" she cackles, raising her voice just enough to rile Moriarty.
The old sleaze smiles, chuckling with that over the top Irish brogue that Nova has come to hate.
"Now, now, darlin', yours would be the last bottle I'd piss in. If you ever bought any, at least. You're my little whiskey girl," Moriarty oozes, charm oozing out of every oily pore. The girl's got caps from selling all the crap she finds, and loves spending it. Or rather, needs to spend it. Bullets don't come cheap, and neither do stimpaks—even with Gob's little under-the-table action for the Vault kid.
"Yeah, yeah. Your drinks are better, but Jenny's cooking—mm! I love me my iguana bits! Though sometimes I wonder why I never see an iguana…" Jinx muses, voice trailing off. Her eyes are starting to glaze, foreshadowing of one of her episodic mood swings.
More than once, Nova has wondered if Jinx has ever been, well, diagnosed with anything, or if her Mentats are some sort of self-medication. Maybe the girl's just a little bit crazy. In fact, scratch that. Nova knows the girl's a little bit crazy. No one else would keep going out into the Wastes, doing goody-two-shoes things that make Three Dog sing her praises. But maybe the Mentats just push it over the edge.
"But the caravan. I mean, first I thought they were just hauling the usual. Ammo. Weapons. Food. The things you need. I'm all set up to say 'sorry for your buddy there, here, let me lighten your load and swap you some caps for the junk he can't carry anymore.' Then I realize, talking with 'em, that he was the cargo. The loot. That guy that died. They're talkin' 'bout how such a shame 'tis they lost 'im an' th'price he'd fetch in Paradise Falls…"
She drops syllables, even the occasional word, in her mad outpouring of verbage. Diarrhea of the mouth, she called it once with a self-deprecating laugh. A decidedly unappealing phrase, but true. The only thing that makes her stop is the fact that she ran out of breath, hyperventilating slightly as she wheezes for air.
And this was the so-called hero Three Dog keeps yapping about? Nova brushes the cynical thought aside. Kid is crazy—or eccentric, which is just a fancier way of saying the same thing—but her heart's in the right place. Sort of like Moira Brown, but even smarter and with more ammo.
Gob can be sweet, but is sometimes dumb as a box of rocks. Nova can't kick him before the ghoul says exactly the wrong thing.
"Slavers? You didn't let them get away, did you?" he asks breathlessly, adulation in his milky eyes. Moriarty shoots the ghoul a sharp look, but turns away with a grumble when he realizes this is no thinly-veiled stab at his indentured servitude.
Jinx snaps her brilliant blue eyes on him with the intensity of a Yao Guai spotting lunch.
"No, of course I didn't! Never mind that they were chatting with me, all friendly-like! Never mind they were so polite and well-mannered! I didn't even peg 'em as Slavers until they started talking business! They even thanked me for helping them out with that Raider attack, and offered me some purified water in gratitude! They were still evil, baby-stealing, people-farming slavers, after all!" she giggles, peals of laughter rising into a wicked cackle as she kicks her feet out, curling at the waist to clutch her sides as if about to bust her guts.
Before Gob has a chance to blurt a misaimed apology, Jinx kicks her feet out, bouncing to a standing position as if riled up for a fistfight. She starts pacing, Dogmeat watching her with his head quizzically cocked to one side.
"So they're evil, right? But they also, weird enough for such evil people, left me alone. To attack 'em would be me instigating a fight for a change. Starting, not just finishing. So I am standing there, staring off as they walk away, and thinking: what would I do? What should I do? Let 'em go because we have no personal animosity? Or take 'em down because being a polite sociopathic, slave-catching scumbag means they're still scum? Knowing that if they live, they and their buddies are going after my buddies in Big Town again?"
Rhetorical questions, asked without any expectation of an answer. Jinx's eyes are positively glowing, blazing brighter than the midday sun.
Then, abruptly, she deflates, collapsing bonelessly back into her seat and nearly tipping herself off her barstool. She reaches out carelessly for the nearest shot glass, pouring a slug of whiskey down her throat. While that had been Nova's, the prostitute doesn't deny the girl the drink. Jinx was buying, after all. And whiskey wasn't even Nova's poison of choice.
"So yes. I shot 'em. Quietly pulled out a combat shotgun, signaled Dogmeat, and went to town once their backs were turned," Jinx says dully, words flat and emotionless in stark contrast to her previously frenzied manner. While she appears to be staring into the empty shot glass, her eyes are unfocused, pupils dilated as if to consume the iris.
"I did not call out. Or warn them. Or challenge them. Just mowed them down. It was murder. If they weren't slavers."
A long pause between those last two sentences. It was murder.
Unprovoked.
Jinx shuts down for the rest of the night. She still laughs that brittle broken-glass laugh, she still smiles that jaw-breaking grin, and she still moves her hands about like angry birds, alighting on the newly-fixed radio, tousling Nova's hair, and once even patting Moriarty's sour-puss face with drunken familiarity. But she does not speak. She does not accept Gob or Billy Creel's justifications for her action, she does not rise to Jericho's baited comments, and she ignores Doc Church's snide remarks on the dangers of addiction.
She does not speak her guilt.
And when she at last falls asleep, snoring gently against the bar, she dreams of three men who meant her no harm and had expressed only gratitude for her service.
And she shoots them again.