Author's Note: This is a big messy chapter but it had to be done.
Apologies for an end note almost as big as the chapter itself. As a little extra treat there's the band logo of Rat Nation I made some months ago but was waiting for a chapter talking about the band to share it.
Warnings: Even more reminiscing, codependency, conversations between an adult and a teenager about sex and relationships which may be uncomfortable and/or wholesome at times considering they're father and daughter.
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"Oh, sick!" Jinx said as she stared at the cover of a LoudMess magazine from May 2000, a dark studio pic of Rat Nation and the line 'From the Slums to the World - First Interview with the Next Big Death Metal Band' next to it. She flipped the pages to get to the full article, where some more pictures illustrated the seven dedicated pages. They each got individual pics, but Mom's had particular emphasis and it made Jinx scoff; of course the metal guys needed the eye candy, especially in the 2000's.
One of the questions next to it was: 'What's it like having a female guitarrist?' to which the replies were:
Benzo: 'I dunno, how do you feel, Ava?'
Ava of Death: 'Pretty good, thanks.'
Plague: 'If the first thing you think when you hear her play is that she's a gal, you should play the song again'.
LM: 'Yeah, what I mean is, it's unusual to have a woman in a band without being the lead singer."
Ava of Death: 'You wouldn't want to hear me sing (laughs) I hope more people start getting used to seeing women playing metal. I for one am not going anywhere.'
Shark: 'And for those who don't understand it, good fucking riddance.'
Hound: 'To answer your question, having Ava as a guitarrist is great.'
LM: 'Great! So, Death, the song "Wounds" was actually written by you, and you two definitely prowess the riffs there...'
"Mom had to deal with a lot of shit for being a girl?" Jinx asked Silco over her shoulder.
They were sitting on the floor, Jinx crosslegged around a box filled with little trinkets and memorabilia she wouldn't think Silco would collect but really should've known better, prone to trips down memory lane as he was. Silco was sitting a little further behind her, an ashtray, a cigarette case and a glass of whiskey next to him and to Jinx's soda, cookies and chocolate, a hairbrush in his hand and full dedication to the task of detangling Jinx's tresses. He still had quite a way ahead, but he relished that; it was his own therapy, his moment of decompression. His phone was off and he hadn't yet bought a new one for Jinx. Their whole afternoon had been a nice little pause bubble, away from the world and worries, just the two of them having a good time listening to Silco's old vinyls and eating chocolate. He needed her to have that, a little girl with a box of presents and nice stories, for a little while longer. If it were him, he would never have bothered with any of this; distracting the mind after trauma. But it was her. He didn't want to take it away yet.
"The metal scene wasn't particularly keen on having women around, especially in heavier circles, so she did have to deal with some nuisances. You did have big names that were undisputably great and helped break the stigma, however, they were mostly vocalists. Your mother was particularly special because she was a guitarrist, and most bands were all male with a female front."
"Yeah, they say that here."
"That interviewer was a nice guy. It was our first interview for a magazine and he treated us like professionals, not like a bunch of slum metalheads who just made noise for fun, like most people did at first. After that we had times where we had to deal with the bottom of stupidity. Your mother got back at them with a silvertongue those idiots couldn't follow and exposed them for the mysogynistic pigs they were."
"Go, Mom!"
"We used that for our gain too, of course. If people wanted to see a woman play guitar, great for us. Your mother would say, come for the pretty girl, stay for the killer music. She sold the most signed prints, more than your father. There was some demand for Vander too, because he always took shirtless photos to show off the tattoos and both men and women were into that. We played with that once and did a pin up shoot, all five of us, where we did every sexy pose your mother was asked to do." Silco scoffed. "It was fun."
"What? ? Holy shit, tell me you have that here."
"Most likely."
Jinx scavaged the box looking for that magnum opus of human existence, shoveling through concert tickets, autographed pics of a bunch of different bands, most of which she recognized, an assortment of pins and patches, two more magazines with the band on the cover, and found a bunch of small tapes, a charger and a video camera in the bottom.
"I'm not gonna find some sex tapes in here, am I?" Jinx asked as she picked the camera and showed it to him.
"You shouldn't, no. Some questionable content, but not full sex." That one was in another box. Jinx was bound to get her hands on it one way or another.
She peeked the labels of the tapes, growing more and more intrigued as she read; '1999 rehearsals' , '2001 hotel Sunnyside, Eat Them tour' , '2001 popcorn, Benzo wedding' , 'Violet's birthday, End of year 2002 2003' , '2000 Zaun party, Plague and Death lovies' (aka Dad and Mom lovies), '2004 US tour' , '2003 Summer Fest, Europe tour', 'Powder's birthday 2006, brunch'. An empty one said '1999 Promenade'. She turned on the camera, seeing it had enough juice to run and studying the fossil for just a moment before she played the tape that was inside. It immediately started mid a high pitched screech.
'-of bitches! Argh, fuckers!' that was Mom, standing up soaking wet from the middle of an above-knee-deep public fountain she clearly had been thrown into. The guys cackled loudly, Benzo and Dad the victorious perpetrators enjoying their feat. 'I'm gonna kill you, man!'
'Guitarrists' bath time,' someone said off camera, and the image lurched sharply as a yelp was heard. Suddenly a couple of Dr Marten's hopping off the ground were all Jinx could see on the small screen.
'No, no, man, watch the camera! Son of a bitch, put me down!' Jinx recognized Silco's voice after a beat and for some seconds all there was on the recording was silly gruffs and a series of wild shakes of street lamps, hairlines and the floor as the custody of the camera was fought over and conquered by a happy Dad, who turned it in time to catch Vander's large arms effortlessly carrying a young Silco with a 'Don't, motherfucker-!' and off he went flying into the fountain next to Mom with a splash. The screeching cheers were even louder now that Dad was so close to the camera.
"Is it that time in the fountain?" Silco asked, his hands stopping if but a moment before he caught himself, forcefully working through the unwanted constriction around his heart. He hated that memories had bled and contaminated into each other.
"Seems like it."
"We were very drunk." Young Benzo stumbling on the edge of the fountain and falling onto the water to hysterical laughter was a nice hint of that. "I had the idea of getting a camera so we'd have material to put on a DVD one day. It paid off."
"Neat! Neither Vander nor Benzo ever showed me stuff like this," Jinx said as the foolery continued for a while (it was weird hearing Silco curse so freely, he didn't really do that anymore unless he was super angry or super worried) before the group bolted because someone threatened to call the cops. "I did see some stuff on youtube though. Like when you filled the hotel beds with whipped cream and played bowling with beer bottles on one of the tours."
"When we started out playing in Vander's place, we never thought we'd hit it big," Silco told her, focusing his hands back to the task and his mind into other memories. "We wanted to, of course, I had my grand plans, but it was hard and we didn't think we'd get through it. We played everywhere that would have us for free, went to festivals to try to spread the word, recorded hundreds of cassette tapes with our demo and our first album and handed it around. Might not seem like a lot, but we were all broke to begin with."
"Man, you really are old," Jinx teased. "Cassette tape demo! Holy shit."
"We've had this conversation already, young lady," Silco replied with an upturn of his lips.
"It paid off at least, or at least after the second album, like you said."
"Yes, we didn't get a lot of money before that, but then it got a bit overwhelming and we had to be careful not to get exploited. Vander got arrested for a handful of months for beating up one of our agents who was robbing us."
"How many times did you all get arrested?"
"We mostly just spend overnights in police stations and pilled up a record of misdemeanours. Vander was the only to actually do time. But that one wasn't deserved. We were used to not having money, but we certainly didn't like being taken advantage of. We'd got by for years always scrapping up for some kind of expense. We had to pay for a garage when Vander's neighbours got tired of our noise and called the cops on us, thrice. Then we rented a studio, which was a big step up both in sound and in price. Eventually I got two guitars and Benzo and your mother wanted an upgrade too. We always got bad microphones because we liked the gritty sound but we had to improve for the live shows, and later we all had to buy a new drum set when Vander broke the one he had in one of his fits. Money was always short."
"Hard to imagine him like that," Jinx said, looking up at the poster on the wall. He did look beligerent, but then again, so did he nowadays by sheer body structure and aggressive tattoos, and he was the opposite of a troublemaker.
"Vander was a very different man back then," Silco said with that often omnious tone of his. It slipped out effortlessly, an imprint grown deeper and more subconscious as the years went by: "Sometimes I miss him."
Jinx blinked, turning over her shoulder. "Didn't that man try to kill you?"
"Yes, he did. And I wouldn't be where I am without him."
Jinx opened her mouth but closed it without saying anything. She looked at the screen and then up at the poster again. They already had professional lighting and a decent camera in that shoot, so Jinx took a guess it would've been for their third album. That, and judging by the hairstyles her parents wore and the varying stages of tattoo development she could see; that poster must've been like twenty years old, perhaps taken a bit after the tape she was watching and definitely in the same year of the interview. Dad already had the tattoo with Vi's birthday on his arm and Vander had the Rat Nation logo tattoo'd on his chestpiece and his sleeves in early stages. Mom had the tips of her hair dyed electric blue to contrast with the navy of the rest, reminding Jinx of a burning stove flame, very 2000's. She had abandoned the style and let it grow long by the time Powder was born, but Dad and her used to change haircuts and colors like they changed shirts (she had long dark hair on the fountain night, but already had the blue flame hair in the interview). In the poster photoshoot Dad had a black mohawk, but in the tape he had spiky red flame hair and in Jinx's most vivid memory he had a buzzcut, so it was like they were three different people. Benzo was so skinny compared to his current chubby self that he almost looked more like a closely-resembled family member than he did himself, but he had the same familiar smug expression. Silco had the same twiggy physique made even more apparent by the patched vest he wore and had his long hair loose for the photoshoot, and the lack of scar made his already clearly younger self look like a baby-faced teenager.
Vander looked like a badass metalhead, hair about the same length as now but no beard, his expression stern and proudly showing off his massive built and tats, just the type of person who you knew you shouldn't mess with. He probably wouldn't pick a bone with you if you left him alone, but if you didn't, you'd be twisted in half by a walking tank. Or maybe that was Jinx projecting the current Vander, the only one she knew, the one with a softer expression and softer edges, the one who raised four kids and dealt with problems by talking or walking away. Not the type of person who would break drum sets and beat up people and drown someone in a river.
Some people sure change.
She turned back down at the camera again. It was a different scene now, a recording in this very house, not so neatly organized as it currently was and packed to the brim with all of them together with, to her surprise, a toddler Vi. She was trotting about, a lovely little thing chattering in baby tongue to her toys in the very spot Jinx was sitting with Silco now, while the adults around her smoked and worked on one of Dad's lyrics, all so young and different from their current selves. The ones still alive, at least. Well, she suppose the dead counted as being pretty different, too.
"Your parents died when you were little too, right?" she recalled.
Silco hummed. "Another thing we have in common."
"Yeah, but you had to fend for yourself in an orphanage. I didn't."
"After ten years, I got used to it."
"No one ever tried to adopt you?"
"No. I just aged out of the system."
"Weren't a well behaved little boy?" Jinx teased him, making Silco scoff.
"Not pretty enough to catch someone's eye, perhaps. Didn't matter. I found people I called my own, didn't wait for them to show up."
That definitely sounded like Silco. "Must have been hard, though."
"You've had it harder than me, Jinx."
"How so? I had a bunch of families."
Yes, Silco thought. And all of them had left her. Everyone had failed this child. If he needed one ultimate reason to stop any offensive attempt to remove him from her life, it was that. He wouldn't be another family to abandon her.
When Silco didn't answer, Jinx turned back to the camera, stopped the tape and switched it up with the most recent one of the bunch. She fast forwarded for a bit, and when she saw herself, she stopped and rewinded. She pressed play in a moment someone was recording Vander holding her baby self in his arms, the contrast so striking it was both hilarious and endearing. Mom showed up on camera to coo at her and give a kiss on her cheek. Two ladies were sitting together with Benzo, Silco and a seven year old Vi on sofas Jinx recognized from home, and Silco was playing with foam swords with Vi, distracting her for a bit while all the attentions were on her baby sister. Dad was the one recording.
'Happy birthday, my love!' he said, placing a sloppy kiss on her head and bringing the camera zooming in on Powder's face in the process. She squeaked deliciously, a huge smile on her tiny face.
Look at that. Jinx was an adorable baby. No fuck-ups yet. No jinxing. Just an adorable little chubby baby with a puffy mane of hair.
Who'd've thought.
Then again, that was the last tape in the collection. Rat Nation's last album came out before she was born. Only a single was released some years later, and then they were over. That wasn't a coincidence. She did jinx stuff. By something as simple as existing. It was her.
Some people don't change.
But still, look at that, her past and present families all together in harmony like there was nothing wrong in the world. It was... surreal. That reality existed somewhere in time, and she had proof of it in her hands. Mom and Dad alive and loving their daughters, throwing birthday parties and listening to children's songs in between death metal tracks, Silco and Vander sitting together, eating snacks and drinking, a familiarity and comfort to their postures revealing their trust. Vi would come by asking Silco to play with her, and he would sit on the floor to oblige her while he talked with Vander and Benzo. She watched her own one year old birthday party for a while, jumping between cuts until those ladies from before appeared on camera again.
"Who were they?" she asked, showing the screen to Silco. He took a drag of his cigarette as he looked, having just finished an entire section of Jinx's hair.
"That's Benzo's second wife, Mazie. And that was my girlfriend at the time, Lucia."
"You don't have girlfriends anymore. Or boyfriends," Jinx commented absentmindedly, looking at the strange lady as Mom zoomed in on her. She was pretty, tall, black hair, tanned skin and with nice make-up. Jinx didn't really know Silco's taste in women or men. She knew he hooked up with both before, but it was weird to see one in person (kinda) when she didn't really know any other to compare to in all the years she lived with Silco.
"I don't need them," Silco replied. He stuck the cigarette between his lips and persevered against the first stubborn tangle of a new tress. "I like my family the way it is."
"Okay." Jinx smiled, satisfied. "Vander doesn't date anyone either. Unless he's dating the police lady friend. I don't know what's their deal."
Silco felt a twitch on his face. He knew what their deal was. It wouldn't really surprise him to hear they had become intimate throughout the past decade. They suited each other.
Jinx nudged her head to the side inquisitively, taking Silco's mind elsewhere again. "What's it like dating a girl?"
"It was nice. Women tended to be very good company when they were passionate about something. It made for great conversations."
"Oh. What was Lucia passionate about?" Jinx asked, her voice with a slightly higher pitch than before.
"Music. She was a pianist."
"Ah. And how'd you meet her?"
"Mutual acquaintances. We dated for about five months. We still saw each other and talked in festivals sometimes. She's married now, built on her career and does piano recitals worldwide."
"Wow." She looked at the woman, frowning slightly. She didn't like her very much. "And what about boys? Which did you prefer?"
"It's different. Men had a different way of approaching subjects, more straightforward. It was interesting when you peeled back layers and got to their core. I didn't prefer one over the other. It just depended on the person."
"Any nonbinary?"
"Not a term people used at the time, but I had a date with someone who didn't particularly lean towards any genre. It was quite interesting. They were a painter, and the art would've been great for an album cover."
"Cool!" Jinx said, moving her eyes up for a moment. "I think a lot of girls look pretty. There's this girl in my class that's super cute, Lux. She's really different from me though, I don't know if we'd work as a couple."
"Really? That's nice." Silco separated the hair sections better. Lux. He'd have a look into who that was. "Do you like her?"
"I just think she's cute. I love Ekko." The words came out effortlessly, leaving a tightness on her throat only as an afterthought.
The fragile little bubble of play pretend, of not thinking, trembled dangerously under the scratching of the intrusive thoughts and she could feel its impending bursting. All these distractions, these nice thoughts instead of the shitstorm of-
What was going to happen to them now? She hadn't officially broken up with him, but like... what were they supposed to do now? She bet she had a bazillion messages from him by now, saying he was sorry, saying she had got it all wrong, stupid naive little fucking Powder-
He lied. Why did he have to lie? Why did he have to lie, why did they have to lie-!
"You should try dating a girl if you're curious," Silco told her, making Jinx snap back, her eyes out of focus. The scratches missed the bubble by a landslide, letting her turn with an eyebrow raised.
"I thought you didn't want me to date."
"I said you have plenty of time to date. Eventually. Other people. If you only ever date one person, you won't know what you like. If you don't want to date, however, that would be ideal. You'll save yourself a lot of problems."
Tell me about it, she thought. She knew what she wanted, who she wanted. She just didn't want Ekko to lie. She wanted him to say he was sorry. But that wouldn't be enough, would it. She wanted him to make her forget he had done something so stupid and hurtful. But he couldn't, could he.
Her gaze fell and found the abandoned screen. The recorded image of her birthday cake, a simple round cake covered in light blue frosting and one big white candle rimmed in pink, helped her eyes focus better. There must have been some cuts in the videotape while Jinx was distracted, because there were more people at the party now, friends she didn't fully recognize, but a couple of them were familiar.
"Oh, Babette!" she pointed as she saw the tiny old woman on the screen. She looked almost the same! Hadn't changed her make-up style in all those years. "I haven't seen her in ages. Wonder how she's doin'."
"She's doing fine."
"You seen her? Next time can I come with?"
"It was a chance encounter. We don't talk much anymore."
"Y'all go way back! How'd you guys meet her?"
"We used to go to her brothel often. Became acquaintances."
"All of you?" She grinned mischivelously, lowering the camera and turning to him like she was about to hear the best tea in town. Silco tried to adjust her back to her previous position but she had enough hair to twist around with no problem. "You guys did orgies?"
"Not exactly. We did get creative, though."
"Sex, drugs and rock n' roll, baby! Ow," Jinx cheered, cringing immediately after from the straining on her back. She forgot she had some remnants of the previous night. It still made Silco scoff out a laugh though.
"Well, we weren't exactly straight edgers, no."
"So what'd you do in your sexcapades? Recreational drugs? Voyerism? Hot threesomes? Were any of you into BDSM?" A gasp. "Were my parents kinky?"
Silco had to laugh, picking his glass and taking a drink. Oh, they did have some nice stories from their days. Jinx would surely find them fascinating; she was at the age to, whether Silco sometimes forgot it or not, and she didn't seem to find it an awkward or embarrassing topic. They were fun, part of this time capsule of good memories and peace Silco wanted to give Jinx before he was forced to bring her back to reality, to accept its pain.
Like everything else, sex had become... something different, after he drowned. There was no enjoyment where before was excitement or comfort. He needed to assert control over the other person in a way that exhausted him before, during and after the act. It didn't relieve nor revigorated him nearly as much as it was to be expected given the lack of vulnerability he now needed to achieve the slightest form of pleasure. He didn't like to be touched anymore, and sometimes it was hard to understand how he ever did. These stories were cautionary tales, the consequences of failure, of trusting, but for some reason that irked his common sense he felt wary to tell them to Jinx. He should protect her by teaching her to embrace pain, but it was hard. He just didn't want her to suffer, to know these stories were the result of all the fun nice ones from the past, despite what he himself knew to be the best learning method.
"I'm curious about how sex feels," she confessed after his silence, allowing him a way to evade the questions for some more time. "It's supposed to feel good, but like, how good? It can't really be better than chocolate." She grabbed at the bar next to her and gave it a poignant bite.
Silco kept smiling. "Not everything is exactly like something else, Jinx."
"Masturbation feels pretty good, so I suppose it should be a step up from that?" She clicked her tongue. "I doubt it. Twice more chances to fuck it up. With my luck, I'm sure I'll just mess something up and it'll be super awkward."
"You can mess things up. It's part of learning. The other person will mess up too, and you can both laugh about it. It doesn't have to be awkward. It's supposed to be fun, and yes, it's supposed to feel good, better than masturbation when you find the right partner. Different from chocolate, I'd say." Jinx grinned, chewing loudly, though she rolled her eyes as Silco went on: "But no drugs or alcohol if you ever do a play. Or ever, if I'm not closeby. And start in a decent clean place, no backalley get-together. Even Babette's brothel is a good place to start if you want."
"So you guys were kinky!"
"A fair amount."
"Tell me! What did you guys do?"
"What's important is that you can fully enjoy exploring your sexuality without the nuisances of-"
"Come on, that's boring, I want to know the other stuff!"
"I don't think you should deprive yourself of pleasure, just of relationships."
"Most parents would say I should focus on building 'strong meaningful relationships'."
"No, you shouldn't, and I trust you know this by now. You should focus on yourself. It's only if anyone makes you uncomfortable that things are bad. I hope you'll tell me if that ever happens."
"Okaaaay, Dad," she dragged, squinting at him as he picked his glass again. Thought he walked out of answering her the juicy bits, huh. No matter, she had more where that came from. "Did you and Vander ever fuck?"
Silco choked on his drink. Jinx waited patiently for him to recover.
"That a yes or a no?"
"No, we didn't."
"Never hooked up?"
"No."
"Sus~"
"We got that quite a lot, to be honest, and I never understood why. Vander doesn't even like men. We slept together many times, but it was nothing sexual. He was my brother. People are very prone to misinterpret things."
"Oh. I see. It just might've explained some stuff, you know." Jinx didn't give him time to think much on that before she asked: "Is it weird that we sleep together?"
The scratches returned, punishing the innocent bubble from the inside out. You jinx, you can't have anything, you ruin everything.
"I..." she tried. Silco slowed the brush on her hair. "I mean..."
"Does it make you feel uncomfortable?"
"No. Of course not, I'm the one that crawls into your bed all the time."
"Then I don't understand what's wrong about it."
"No, but like... wouldn't people find it weird, if they knew? If they already think... I only slept with Vander or Vi when I was little, not since I came to live with you. I tried with Vander, but he said I was grown up now."
"Most people don't have the connection we do."
"I mean... yeah. You're right. People..."
"People are idiots, Jinx." Well, couldn't argue with that argument. "We don't owe them explanations. They'll make their own stories regardless."
Of course people would distort things and create their own little fantasies. They didn't understand the good Silco and Jinx did for each other; they corrupted his love for his daughter as it was, let alone if they knew more of their personal lives. Which didn't mean those people were free of the consequences for spreading rumours.
"You're gonna kill Finn, aren't you?" Jinx asked, both of them following the same train of thought.
Silco lit a new cigarette. "Of course."
Jinx nodded. "Good."
Slowly, less abruptly, the scratching thoughts returned. She didn't want them, but it was slightly easier to deal with them, less threatening, if she had Silco's support.
"If the police follows on that, will there be a lot of trouble for you?" Of course there will be, you stupid idiot-
"They will pick every angle they can," Silco said calmly. "Especially something that's so easily believed by everyone."
Jinx lowered her head in shame, feeling the impulse to pull at her hair barely halted by the camera on her hands, but still leaving behind an aching pinch on her chest.
"I'm sorry that I didn't deny it when Finn brought it up."
"Don't worry about it. You were trying to help."
Jinx felt her eyes well up automatically. She lowered her gaze; they were talking in the tape, and Jinx didn't register the words as much as she did the voices. She opened her mouth before she properly thought things through: "Vander didn't... he wouldn't have believed any of that. He knows you."
"He doesn't know me," Silco snapped, stopping the brush. "The weak man he knew died in those waters."
"Okay."
Jinx lowered her eyes. She had thought about it, when Silco first told her; how did Vander try to kill him. Second question, the morbid curiosity one. It's not everyday you know someone who had a deliberate attempt made on their lives by close family. The answer was pretty morbid, yeah; drowning must be a pretty horrible way to go. Not that Silco had spoke about it much in that way. Just focused on the rebirth and the peace and all that stuff. Sounded like a matter of survival to her, to be honest. It couldn't possibly be easy to live with something like that, so some reinterpretation must help somewhat. If all she had was the memory of her sister hitting her and her words and felt pretty fucked up about it, let alone what Silco had gone through.
In contrast, the tape kept playing scenes from her birthday. Vi was playing with baby Powder as the adults stood nearby, talking and drinking. Vander and Silco were laughing over something someone had said. They looked happy.
Which really begged that first question, didn't it?
"Why did Vander try to kill you?"
Jinx raised her eyes again. Silco smoke the last of his cigarette, taking his time to breathe out the smoke before he stumped it on the ashtray and nudged her to turn around so he could properly conclude his hairbrushing.
"Vander should be a better person to answer that," he said somberly.
"You don't know?" Jinx asked. The thought was oddly horrifying.
"Oh, I do. He blamed me for your parents' death and for saying he shouldn't keep you both."
Jinx blinked. "I... Oh. But why?"
"I wanted to bring the band back together. If I hadn't, you're parents wouldn't have been out that night." Silco kept brushing her hair for some moments before he covertly exhaled and picked the glass. "And I questioned his ability to adopt you. He didn't like that."
"He tried to kill you just because of that?" Jinx asked, confused. That was way too little reason to try to drown someone.
"I didn't say it made sense. Vander has never been a particularly rational person."
"My parents died in a car accident. What fault would you have for that?"
"Like I said. They were out because of me."
"That's stupid. He really blamed you for it? And just for speaking against him? Killing someone doesn't really help his case."
"I accept the guilt I have, Jinx. It was harder to deal with when I was younger, as I'm sure you can relate."
Jinx opened her mouth and closed it again. It was different though. She actively almost got her family killed. Silco hadn't rigged her parents' car and made them freefall off the bridge, and questioning someone doesn't automatically make you worth getting wiped out. Vander really did it just for those reasons? Silco didn't lie, but... maybe he didn't want to tell her everything, maybe he didn't know everything - it's not like him and Vander ever got to sit down and have a chat about things. Must be hard to have a nice conversation about why you wanted to kill someone with the person you tried to kill. Whether there was more to it or not, if Silco spent the last years believing those were the reasons, that still...
"That fucking sucks," Jinx summed it accurately. "And no one knows about it."
"Enough people know."
"Then that's even worse!"
"It's in the past now. It doesn't matter," Silco said and fucking hell, he might not lie but he told the biggest bullshits sometimes, which was just as bad and forced Jinx to groan.
"Of course it matters! You threatened to tell the truth so you could keep me, didn't you?"
"What use would there be to threaten him with something I already know is inconsequential? I have taught you enough times that the police is corrupt and that you should be even more so to get anywhere. Besides, I don't hate Vander anymore."
"Then you hate Vi! Which is the same! Worst! She never did anything to you!"
"She did to you," Silco said matter-of-factly. "One too many times."
Silco should've told her then. He saw the moment and in a lapse of judgement (so many lapses of judgement where his child was concerned) let it pass without saying anything.
"All this is in the past. We move forward and deal with its consequences."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"We're not going to stay here for long," as soon as the words were out, Jinx was shaking her head.
"No."
"We don't live here, Jinx."
"Why not?! What's wrong about staying here? At least they can't catch you!"
"I am not going to run away nor deprive ourselves of our life because some cops are trying to overstep their place."
"But... it's easier for them to find you back home." If Ekko opened his mouth they'd find them immediately, and she couldn't know for sure he wouldn't. "And I sure as hell am not gonna go back to school tomorrow!"
"You're not going to skip it for much longer," Silco let her know, to Jinx's appal.
"But-! They'll put cops after me!"
Silco clenched his jaw at the thought of those pig cops doing just that. "I'll take care of it."
"What're you gonna do?"
"The people I bought in the police clearly aren't doing their job right. I should've started higher, and some of them currently owe me a fair bit. I'll make them consider their options."
"But what if they-!" Jinx tried again, and Silco's turn to shaking his head made Jinx's heartbeat shoot through the roof.
"I have good lawyers, and even better henchmen. These first few days will demand action, but everything will be back to normal soon."
"Well can't we stay here for those action days?" Jinx pleaded.
Silco stood up, making Jinx groan out in frustration when he said he was going to prepare dinner.
"Can't we move somewhere?! Not here, but some place else?!" she asked loudly as if the kitchen was a world away from the bedroom.
"I'll think about it," Silco replied at a normal volume, admitting that was a possibility.
While Jinx fidgeted with the camera, pausing the tape and starting to braid her hair thinking she probably wouldn't be able to evade everyone's involvement with the police for long, Silco turned on his phone as he waited for the ready meal to cook in the microwave. A shower of random notifications started to fall but Silco ignored them, focusing on Sevika's message 'The party is booked' and checking Instagram and Twitter to make sure his henchmen hadn't been stupid to post any plans of it on their socials. He knew them, knew they would get whatever job he demanded of them done well because they enjoyed the fat payment (money as his third in line persuasion tactic) and were wary of the issuing consequences of failure (fear second, violence first), but knowing them included knowing most were young and their degree of stupidity was exponential to their age. Silco liked to keep tabs with fake profiles, and as a side effect he ended up seeing whatever new luducrous trends and horrible music were going around. He checked some stories, one of them by a particularly stupid henchman (he would assess after the fact) where they shared a video with loud lettering 'bitches fighting fuck yeah!'. He would have swiped left if the strobbing lights on the recording hadn't reflected against familiar blue hair and he stopped, clicking on the original full reel.
The music blasted off the phone as the person recorded, shakily and only confusing at first, Jinx standing inches away from Sevika. It wasn't immediately clear she was being held by the woman, but the punch that was thrown was clear, clearer still how Sevika returned it, either by sheer instictive reaction or vicious intent, with a headbutt that sent Jinx stumbling back. A bright pink hair caught the lights and Vi flew into frame, engaging into a typical street brawl both her and Sevika stellared at, mindless entertainment material for the internet and for idiots who should be more wary of how they talked about his second-in-command and his daughter.
Well. He would need to have a conversation with Sevika, wouldn't he?
He would regret not talking with Jinx about that, especially about her sister. But when they had their dinners sitting on the floor and Jinx begged for more things that made her forget, Silco ended up yielding yet again despite himself. He wouldn't be able to do it so easily in the near future.
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Thieram was ready for the alarm to go off even before Ran threw the bat and blasted the glass. Vander should've put double glazing glass on the door and windows of his bar, though honestly, Thieram had seen Lock break through those without a sweat; it's easy when you know where to hit it and have the strength of a bull. They stormed inside without missing a beat and Dustin howled loudly in tune with the screeching alarm as he started to kick tables and chairs to the floor, pulling out his knife and giving it his customary lick before sticking it in the snooker table, carving lines and curves on the green cloth for the sake of it. He wasn't much of an artist, but he wasn't gonna let that stop him. Ran went straight to the line of colorful glass bottles behind the counter and started smashing them dispassionately, raining shards and alcohol over every close surface. They were better artists of chaos than Dustin, more straightforward, though on second thought that was probably too methodical for chaos to be proper chaos. The register followed, stripped of every coin it had after it was mercilessly beaten open. Lock centered his attention on the jukebox and the three well placed punches that left it a wreck. Thieram looked around the threshold, picked one of the chairs Dustin had tossed around with a sigh and threw it against the windows. It was a shame. He liked The Last Drop; good place, nice vibe, really. He wouldn't've minded working here on the weekends given the chance.
Ran ended the chance by pulling out a pack of matches throwing it to the alcohol.
Four minutes, in and out. It's impressive how much you can destroy in such little amount of time. They sprinted back to the van, pulling out the masks they had wore and drove away back to the Slums to a round of celebratory shots and probably some poker.
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to be continued
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Author's Note: Finally, enough 'what's gonna happen?' to some 'it's hapenning'.
So, lots of notes to share.
Ava's nickname on the magazine's interview "Ava of Death" comes from the song by Eleine that gave her the name to begin with. Shark and Hound are self explanatory, and Damyan as Plague was appropriate both band thematic and pair thematic. And Benzo is just Benzo.
I asked two of my metal colleagues for some help on bands and stuff. Silco Vander and the others started Rat Nation in 1996, Silco and Vi's parents were 16, Benzo 20 and Vander 22, but they met each other before. Vander was a high school dropout best friend of Benzo's, who in turn had failed several school years and ended up in Damyan's, Ava's and Silco's class. Their first album would've been from 1997, second from 1998 (when Vi was born) and the poster and third album would be from 2000. The fourth one would've come out in 2004, then Powder was born in 2005, and things started to slow down for the band. They released a single in 2007 and were trying to get back together in a studio when their parents died in 2011, and that put an end to things. That, and a little drowning incident.
LoudMess is a play on the name of the metal magazine from Portugal, Loud!. I wanted it to be Loudness but figured LoudMess was a nice pun.
I didn't listen to such heavy music when I was young and I didn't do a lot of research, but one name I know has been around the heavier scene is Angela Gossow, former vocalist of Arch Enemy, and that's the singer I had in mind when Silco mentions this. I was introduced to her at 14 by a fascinating owner of an independent metal shop in a small city (which was a feat on itself) as "the woman who has a voice many men wish they had". For a great band recommendation with women on rhythm guitars and bass, check Aephanemer.
The pin up session idea was inspired by Belzebubs's pin up calendars xD
Straight edge is a subculture of the punk movement where people don't consume drugs or alcohol, and but are also part of the most hardcore aspects of the culture regardless. A colleague of mine was the one to first introduce the term to me (he was a straight edger, tattoo'd and all) and I wanted to give a nod to that. Little metal encyclopedia he was/is. (you'd be surprised how many metalheads there are in aeronautics, holy shit, unless you're there, then you know. But I've also found them in my other jobs so I suppose we're just everywhere \m/ xD)
The silly band stuff were suggestions from my friend who I pester to exhaustion for feedback and suggestions. I also find this silly video has the right vibe for how the boys would act in the band instagram dot com /p/CkdTPNIgXEc/
The "scratching thoughts" was a wording I took from letterstorosie fic "talk revolution to me". Quite an interesting fic.
It seems that some of Silco's goons names are actually official, like Ran and Lock (I had also seen him called Mek and I actually have that name on chapter 2 and later called him Lock, so let's turn it into 2 different people), but Dustin (the licky licky guy) I'm not sure it is? I've seen the name in fanfics and I'm not sure if it was a fandom name or not, but I'm using it too, hopefully that's alright.
Lastly, the Rat Nation logo, which I feared looked too Black Metal-y but was sanctioned by my black metal colleague as being quite Death Metal-y :D (he did propose some changes I couldn't make work, unfortunately) hannibalcatharsis-zero dot tumblr dot com /post/701653616269950976
I feel the story got into a standstill that I did want to write, but am not sure if it's too enjoyable to read. Hopefully you'll feel different (let me know if you don't) and that I'll feel different about the next chapters.
Thanks for reading.