She takes a slow drag of the cigar. Rolls the smoke around in her mouth, tasting it. This brand is mostly bitter and rotten, like every cigar in the Undercity, but it carries the barest hint of something spicy and nutty. It's enough to put it above the rest. After a few seconds, she opens her mouth and lets it pour out, not even bothering to properly push it out with an exhale.
She'll need to get up, eventually. Find her arm downstairs and take it to Singed, see if it's salvageable beyond dismantling it for materials. Then she'll have to go and find Silco. See what that letter was about and what he's been doing all evening. If she had to guess, he's probably looking for Jinx.
Because of course he is. She's Jinx, and that means she comes first.
Her eyes drift over the hole in the ceiling, right above Silco's desk. Where they think she doesn't know Jinx lurks, sleeping or playing or eavesdropping on whatever business crosses Silco's desk. She almost snorts at the thought. She'd be a terrible right hand if she couldn't catch the creaks and shifting down of dust from that spot every time the damn girl moved.
Hell, even if she weren't Silco's right hand, it wouldn't have been hard to notice. Jinx is always moving. Swinging or swaying or bouncing. Never, ever still. Rarely quiet, either. Humming or singing or muttering to herself like the stereotypical wackjob she is.
Her eyes drop down to Silco's desk. The glass she split in half is gone, just like that worm's body. The blood was cleaned up hours ago. Everything is ready and pristine for when its owner comes back.
With a sigh, she realizes she'll probably spend the night looking for Jinx as well. Silco has better things to do than that, not least of all sleep, but damned if he ever sleeps when that damn girl has a fit and disappears. And she'll inevitably go looking for her so he has one less headache to deal with. So he can focus on the important things.
She has to get up eventually.
But for now, she takes another drag of the cigar.
Then she hears that spot above Silco's desk creak and sees a cloud of dust sift down, and she accidentally inhales the smoke in surprise.
The coughing nearly brings her to tears, agitating what's assuredly at least one cracked rip and several bruised others. What remains of her prosthetic arm pulses angrily with dull pain as well, and she desperately tries to stifle her coughing fit.
Once she has, she glares at the spot on the ceiling.
Of course. Instead of letting herself be found by Silco, staying put somewhere he'd inevitably find her, she comes to the last place he'd look. Just to waste the most amount of his time.
Typical Jinx.
She continues to glare at the spot in silence, cigar limp and forgotten in her fingers. For a moment, she considers ignoring her like she always does. She definitely doesn't feel like dealing with her. But she also doesn't like the idea of Silco stalking the Undercity like a madman needlessly, so she sighs and closes her eyes in anticipation of a headache.
"You should go find Silco," she calls out, more than loud enough for the girl to hear. "He's probably looking for you."
She expects, maybe, to hear nothing in response. One of Jinx's favorite methods of annoying her is pointedly ignoring her. A derisive snort at the idea of her father looking for her would also be pretty expected. Well within the realm of teenager behavior.
But instead there's a loud sob, and her eyes snap open.
Jinx cried a lot when she was a little kid. She still remembers hearing her sob through the walls of whatever rundown safehouse they had chosen for the night, running and hiding from Vander's sycophant avengers. Then she hit puberty and it seemed like the only emotions she had were either manic happiness, petty brooding, or wild anger.
So hearing her audibly crying is… unexpected. And uncomfortable. Because now she knows that sheknows she's here. She can't just pretend like she doesn't hear her.
Well, she could. She could probably walk out the door, too. But as much as she hates the girl, she still remembers that much younger one. The one who had looked at her with stars in her eyes whenever she showed off her strength, or who had pored over her prosthetic arm with Singe, making minute adjustments and improvements.
So she sighs and forces herself to stand, stifling a wince and a hiss as pain pulses through her chest and shoulder.
She makes her slow, stumbling way over to the desk. She considers the chair in front of it for a second before thinking better of it. Instead, she sits herself gingerly on the edge of the desk.
Another few moments pass in silence, during which she listens to Jinx continue to cry as she tries to catch her breath. Once she has, she swallows the bile threatening her mouth and grinds out through her teeth, "…what's… wrong?" The words are almost painful to utter.
There's no coherent answer. Just more soft crying.
She sighs again.
"I'm not going to leave," she says heavily, shutting her eyes again as she feels that headache beginning to pulse through her skull. "You're just gonna hurt someone in this state, so-"
There's a thud that shakes the desk behind her, and before she can turn around, something big and heavy hits her in the back of the head. In her state it's more than enough to throw her to the ground. She can't even catch herself, reflexively trying with her missing prosthetic arm and obviously failing. She hits the floorboards face first, and she feels warmth bloom to life in her nose.
" SHUT UP! " Jinx howls behind her.
It takes her a few seconds to even flip herself around so she can snarl at her. Her chest is screaming at her, burning sharp lances of pain stabbing out at every inch of her.
When she does flip herself around so she can give the damn girl a piece of her mind, though, the words die in her throat.
Jinx is already snarling back at her, eyes bloodshot and burning a bright pink . The tears covering her face aren't clear, but instead the bright purple of shimmer. In her hands is some sort of weapon shaped like a shark, the eyes and inside glowing the same bright blue that her sister's gauntlets had. Her eyes leap to the left eye of it, studying the torn metal around it, and she connects the dots. The project Silco had had her working on. A Hextech weapon of their own.
It's enough to shock the anger out of her, but then Jinx goes further. The anger disappears from her face, replaced by… genuine remorse. The Hextech weapon falls to the desk with a clatter as her hands fly to her mouth in horror.
"I'm sorry," she says quietly, and she can't tell if it's to her or herself. Then she blinks, and the purple tears start pouring out with even more strength. "I-I'm sorry," she says, definitely to her now. She shuts her eyes and shakes her head, lowering it as her hands move to her ears. "I-I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
She stares at her, feeling wildly out of her depth. The apologies continue to pour past her lips, though eventually they become muddled with spit and snot and helpless sobs.
The damn girl has been nothing but a thorn in her side since she hit her teen years. But it's almost impossible to feel any real measure of hate or anger at her when she's acting this… pathetic.
She drags herself to her feet, and then stumbles back over to lean against the desk again.
"It's fine," she mumbles, even as she winces and refuses the urge to rub the back of her head. "Your sister did the worst of it."
That just makes her sob harder, and she sighs.
"What happened?" she asks quietly.
It takes several seconds for her to gather enough of herself to reply.
"I-I… k-killed… h-him," she says, and it's like watching that little girl from years ago again. Whenever she had done something wrong, she had always shut her eyes and flinched away when telling her. Like she expected her to hit her or something.
She does the same thing here, eyes squeezed shut, arms tightly wrapped around herself. She couldn't have hit her even if she wanted to. Her mind is too busy trying to pick through the possible identities of "him".
"Who?" she asks eventually, at a loss.
Jinx just shakes her head, though, still tensing, waiting for a strike that'll never come.
She continues to stare at her, running through the list of men they share in their life. Cross reference with the list of people that would leave Jinx in this kind of state after killing him, and-
Her stomach drops into her shoes at the same moment her heart leaps into her throat. In a very, very quiet voice, disbelieving, she asks, "Silco?"
Jinx lets out a sob that sounds closer to a pained shriek.
For a moment, a single moment, her vision goes red. Because this is what she had said would never happen. No matter how crazy Jinx went, no matter how far she flew off the handle, she had always thought that the one person that would always be safe from her was Silco. And now…
Now…
Everything is fucked. If she's right, if she's killed Silco… everything's gone. Everything he worked for, everything they worked for, is gone. Without him, the Undercity'll turn on itself like a pack of wild rats. The Chem-Barons will tear everything they built apart, taking whatever scraps for themselves that they could. Zaun will never be… anything… because she…!
SHE-!
She's still huddling in on herself, waiting for a strike.
She realizes her teeth are grit and she's huffing like a mad bull. The wood of Silco's desk is creaking dangerously under her grip.
She wants to hit her. She wants to shove her to the ground and choke her to death, feel her body go cold under her. She wants to watch the light fade from her eyes.
But she can also feel how her quivering is shaking the desk, and the anger fades despite her best efforts to hold onto it. In its place flows in something else. Something cold and weightless and empty. One that echoes with the thought, over and over again, Silco is dead.
"H-How?" she asks, and to her faint horror, her voice cracks. She clears her throat and adds in a much more even voice, "How?"
Jinx shakes her head again but begins to speak again regardless. Even as she remains huddled in on herself.
"I-I thought he was gonna- he- I-I heard him, t-talking about h-how P-Piltover w-wanted me, a-and I thought h-he was gonna- s-so I-I t-took him, a-and Vi, a-and her little topsider toy," anger fills her voice for one moment at the mention of that enforcer girl. "I-I wanted- I thought, i-if I-I could make h-her c-choose, i-if I could make V-Vi choose me, o-over her, I-I could go back to b-being Powder, b-but she d-didn't, a-and that e-enforcer got loose, a-and then Vi started t-talking about them, a-and S-Silco was trying to s-stop her, a-and h-he had a gun, a-and-and… and…"
She sobs, and she can see a dribble of blood where she bites her lip.
"I-It was s-so loud. E-Everyone was y-yelling at me, a-and I… I-I panicked… a-and I… I-I'm sorry," she says again, eyes squeezed so tightly shut the lids have turned white. "I-I'm sorry… I-I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I-I'm sorry… "
She watches her, feeling… feeling…
She should feel angry. She should be beating her to death with apocalyptic wrath . She killed Silco. The man who had taken her in when she was worth nothing. Who had raised her like a daughter. Who had given her everything she had needed to succeed. Who had protected her and shielded her from the consequences of all of her fuck-ups . The one man who could have made something out of the Undercity. Who had the guts and the brains and the will to unite it under the flag of Zaun, to fight back against Piltover, to let them be something other than the topsiders' dumping grounds .
She should be angry .
Instead her eyes flicker to Silco's chair and burn as she realizes she'll never see him sitting in it again.
Her breath comes in and out of her shaky and trembling. She isn't… damn it, she isn't going to cry. He had been her boss. A useful boss, someone she followed because he actually got shit done . That was all. He…
He…
With a shaky breath, she turns her eyes back to Jinx. Considers her, paper-thin little girl that she is.
And then she reaches out, gingerly, and puts her arm around her shoulders. Jinx almost flinches away entirely, eyes flying open as she stares at her like a startled animal.
She stares back, forcing the tears down. She's stronger than this. Better than this. She's helped take care of this brat ever since Silco took her in. And if caretaker for a little psychopath is a useful role to fall back on so she doesn't have to think about him being dead , then so be it.
She tightens her grip around her shoulder, pulling her closer. Not enough that she couldn't break through if she wanted to, but enough to make it clear what she was offering.
Jinx takes it with the same desperate, touch-starved hunger she had taken Silco's offer with all those years ago. Her grip is only more crushing after years of growing and training, maybe even more than explained by that , and it's positively agonizing with her battered ribs.
But she swallows down the pain like she's swallowed down the indignity at Silco so blatantly favoring her. She wraps her arm around her as she buries her face in the crook of her neck, sobbing.
"H-He f-forgave me," she mutters against her skin, and she can't help but chuckle at that.
"Not surprised," she says, voice a low rumble. "He always did."
Jinx sobs harder. "H-He s-shouldn't have," she cries. "He shouldn't have."
She chuckles again. "No, he probably shouldn't have." Then she sighs. "But… he did. You were his daughter."
There's a few moments of silence in which Jinx just cries, and she just rubs her back. Rests her cheek against her head, resolutely keeping her eyes away from the chair to her right. She instead studies the weapon. It's crude, just like everything Jinx makes, but that's not very fair. Everything in the Undercity is crude. Built from whatever Piltover had deigned to toss down to them.
She wonders, for a moment, what Jinx's life would have been like if she'd been born topside. She was smart enough to reverse engineer Hextech with just whatever she could find down here, after all. What could she have accomplished with all the privileges being born above ground would have granted her?
Probably a lot. Probably more than any of those topsiders have, anyways.
"H-He s-said they w-woulda given us e-everything," says Jinx suddenly. Her cries have softened slightly. "F-Freedom. Z-Zaun . I-If h-he gave them me, t-they would have…" A sob. "H-He should've. A-All he'd lose w-was a p-problem . A-A jinx. "
She can't help but frown in distaste, even as it's her own words being thrown back at her. There's no venom to Jinx's voice, though. No petty bite. This isn't a jab at her. This is what she believes.
So she sighs and pulls her a bit closer.
"You're a problem, Jinx." She says it softly. Dulling the words to something less harmful. "There's no denying that. But you're our problem. Even if I knew it was you those enforcers wanted all those years ago, I would have never asked Vander to give you to them. That isn't how the Undercity does things." She thinks about the Chem Barons and sneers. "It isn't how the Undercity should do things."
She breathes again, her exhale shaky once more, but with anger this time. Not at Jinx, but at Piltover . Piltover and every puffed up, selfish, greedy, worthless, rich fop that lived there. All the ones that thought if they dangled enough money and enough shiny things in the air, they could do whatever they wanted to anyone . The ones who thought the world was theirs to buy and sell and toy with.
"If those topsiders want you… then they can come down here and go through us themselves, " she growls. "We're Zaun. We don't make deals with those bastards.
"We burn them to the fucking ground. "
