"Hey!"

He stops, hand on the handle, waiting for Vi to catch up to him.

"Can we talk?" He opens his mouth to answer, but she cuts him off: "Or do I need to set up a meeting first?"

What is it with the sisters not letting him get a single damn word in before they barrel down straight into outrage? Silco sighs and unlocks his office door, willing himself to find patience for that sister too.

"No, you don't have to set up a meeting, and I do have a free hour or so. What is this about?"

"A free hour- okay, never mind. This is about…" She hesitates. "This is about my sister."

"I see."

He walks into his office, hanging the keys on their hook before dropping the paper he was carrying on the desk. He takes the time to organize them back into a somewhat neat pile, his back to Vi. He knows she has walked into the room in turn, as he can see the outlines of her figure reflected into the rose window. She's standing a good five or six feet behind, her arms crossed over her chest.

He turns to face her, leaning against his desk, hands sprawled over the map of the Twin Cities pinned to the wood. By the Kindreds, Vander and she might as well be related; her whole attitude reminds Silco so much of his old friend…

"Well," he says before he could dwell on that for too long, "for starters, you know that Jinx talks to me, right? She told me you're convinced I've been manipulating her."

She uncrosses her arms, but she isn't lowering her defenses, oh no, her hands are balled into fists. She takes a step forward.

"And?"

"And," Silco repeats, deliberately not paying attention to her as he retrieves the cigar box from the side of his desk, "I would appreciate it if you stopped doing that."

"Is that a threat?"

"No. Merely a request… for now."

Her stormy eyes dart left and right, eyebrows furrowing. She has the same crease in between them as her sister, he can't help but notice. She's visibly struggling to grapple with his response, clenching and unclenching her fingers – ah… she will have to learn subtlety if she ever wants to be anything more than a puncher, that girl.

He keeps watching her as he lights his cigar, taking a drag of it before speaking again:

"Jinx doesn't need any more voices whispering in her ear."

Vi distinctly flinches at that. She looks away. Guilt? Jinx told him she always had hallucinations, even before her newly-made family went up in flames of her own making. Her sister must have been aware. But did she ever acknowledge it? He has an inkling the answer to that is no.

Guilt morphs back into anger, because of course, that's easier, it warms – burns – instead of chills, and Vi works just like Vander does.

"You're not helping Powder," she says.

"And you've been back for what, a week? That's not even her name."

"She's not a jinx!"

She screamed. Silco slowly breathes out the cigar smoke, masking the girl for a short moment.

"She's whoever she wants to be. And she wants to be called Jinx."

"Whatever." She shakes her head; her nostrils flare. "What do you even want from her?"

"Nothing."

"Bullshit. There has to be something. She's working for you, she…"

He pushes himself off his desk, walking around Vi. She cranes her neck to never take her eyes off him.

"Tell me, Violet. What do you want from her?"

"She's my sister!"

"That is no answer."

She turns to face him fully, clearly not pleased with this little game. He only returns her stare.

"She's my sister," she repeats. "I don't want anything from her. I want her to be happy." A pause. She seems to be thinking, then her features harden. "You're not going to make me believe you care about her."

"She has lived with me for four years. And she's a brilliant inventor, sure – but none of my employees sleep in the Drop."

She sneers.

"Why, then?"

She reminds me of myself, he thinks first. That's part of it. She's skinny and weak and no one took her seriously before, because it doesn't matter how bright you are down there; if you can't be useful in a fight or strong enough to be an asset in physical labor, chances are you will never get to prove it. They differ in many ways, of course, Jinx and him. They don't care about the same thing, to begin with, and it saddens him, but what can be done? She's her own individual and truth is, Silco wouldn't wish it otherwise. She's perfect as she is.

As for the other reasons… He doesn't quite know, to be honest, why it happened. Maybe because she isn't afraid of him, never was. Maybe because he had no one, not really, even though he never expected to come to care this much for this child – Vander's child. That day at the cannery, seconds before the whole building came crashing down, when Silco looked at her tiny frame, wracked with sobs, blue eyes reddened with burning tears… He didn't think much before he grabbed her, pulled her close. Protected her. Perhaps, in the end, it's not that he needed someone, but that she did, and he could be that someone – like he had hoped someone would be, in his youth. Like Vander had been, in a way. Before.

He never expected that Jinx would take so much space in his life and heart, that, to her, he would be unable to say no. That, for her, he would give up anything.

He doesn't say any of that out loud. He doesn't say anything, in fact; he only shrugs and brings the cigar to his lips again, the earthy taste burning down his throat and lungs. He's half-expecting Vi to keep pressing, but no, she shakes her head, takes a step back, and lets herself drop onto the couch. She still looks so young, Silco can help but notice then. Not even eighteen – but there is no time to be a child in Zaun, not when you have to survive before you could even get a chance to live.

"Who was Vander to you?"

The sudden question takes him off-guard.

"What?"

Vi repeats herself. He wonders if she has asked Vander the same question about him.

"I… He was the person I trusted most. We did everything together. Here," he adds, gesturing to the room – and, by extension, to the whole building, "in the Last Drop. We bought it after a bountiful heist on the other side of the river, though there was only his name on the property act, out of convenience, allegedly. I didn't think it mattered at the time."

"It did matter in the end," Vi says, in the tone of someone who's only talking to themselves. "That's how Vander could keep the Drop after your… falling out."

"Falling out."

That sure is a way of putting it, he thinks, taking one last long drag of the cigar before walking back to the desk and putting it out in the ashtray. When he looks up again, Vi has leaned forward, forearms resting on her thighs, head raised. Like her sister, she meets his gaze dead-on, both eyes, teal and ember-black alike.

"That's what Vander called it when I asked," she continues, answering his previous unsaid question. "Added he betrayed you. What happened? For real?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I want to understand. I don't want for Powd… Jin- my sister," she settles on with a grimace, "to be caught in the middle of whatever shit went down between the two of you. I… I don't want to lose her too."

Her voice breaks a little. She bites her lip, her fingers drumming over her kneecap, then abruptly she stands back up. Her face is an open book, confusion and grief, fear and anger, flashing in turn across her youthful features, darkening the shadows around her eyes.

Anger feels better. Always. At first, at least.

"You already got Mylo and Claggor killed, after all, right? All because you wanted to get back at Vander, and in the end, you did get him thrown into Stillwater, and me with him." She takes a step forward, voice raising, and suddenly Silco's acutely aware of the desk behind him, blocking his way. "What, you remembered us after four years, and now you expect we would just forget all about that fucking day? No question as to why you are working with enforcers either? And I- I've been through the Sump Levels, I've seen how it is, I've seen the junkies, and-"

"Are you done?"

"Am I…?"

Her lips move, but no sound comes out. Her shoulders are trembling, her eyes blown so wide the gray irises are lost to blood-shot white. For a second, Silco thinks she's going to hit him.

"No, I'm not fucking done!"

She kicks a chair instead, sending it clattering to the ground, and Silco flinches at the sound. She missed that, thankfully, the heels of her palms pressed over her eyes, before she runs a hand through her hair in an effort to calm herself down. It seems to work, at least a tiny bit.

"Sit down, Violet. And I will answer your questions."

She looks like she wants to argue for a brief second, but then she surrenders and flops back onto the couch. Her posture stays tense, nails no doubt digging into her palms. Vander used to have those little crescent shapes frequently etched into his calloused skin, despite his best efforts to keep his nails filled as short as possible. Silco used to like it, running his fingers over the marks, thinking it meant controlled strength and righteous fury. Right.

He leans against his desk, both hands on the edge of it, mindlessly stroking the polished wood with one of his thumbs. Thinking about his next words.

"What do you want to hear about first? My history with Vander, or what I'm planning to do for Zaun, above the use of Shimmer as a recreational drug?"

He sees her eyes narrow.

"There is a plan?"

"Of course," he scoffs – and yes, he realizes, it's a plan now, no longer a dream as it has been for the longest time. "This was the plan too, years ago; the means only changed a bit, but not the endpoint. I want freedom from Topside. The whole Undercity, united as an independent nation."

"They… they will never let us. The Pilties," she clarifies with a disgusted twist of her mouth.

"We will force them then. Make them afraid. They don't want a war against our chem-tech. After all, they have much more to lose than us."

Her frown deepens. He can almost hear the gears grinding in her head.

"That's… Vander says that if we strike back, it will only bring pain onto us, and more deaths. That we have something to lose. Each other."

"And what do you think, Violet?"

To her credit, she actually pauses to think it over. When she talks again, it's with her head bowed, picking at the scabs over her knuckles. He wonders briefly where she got those. She hasn't been fighting anyone, has she? If she did, it hasn't made it back to his ears yet – and that would be surprising. Maybe Vi found a bag to practice with. Maybe she only hit a wall.

"I…" she slowly starts. "I think that they are going to hurt us, whether we fight them or not. They don't care. I… Vander and I, maybe we were truly guilty, but they never even put us on trial. That's not fair.

"No. It isn't."

"When did you meet Vander?"

By the Kindreds, this kid is going to give him whiplash with her questions. He thought that was only a Jinx's specialty, maybe courtesy of the voices in her head, but now it seems like it runs in the family instead.

"When we were kids. He helped move coal brought up from the mines to the factories and, well, I worked down there."

"You were a miner?"

"Hmm-mh. All throughout my childhood."

"Did Vander already think we needed to keep peace with Topside then? When you were young?"

Silco can't help but scoff at that, a sound bordering on laughter at the ridiculousness of that idea. Vander was more often than not the one pushing for violence back then, if only for the thrill of the fight. They shared that fire.

"Ah, no. For a long time, he didn't. I would say that changed after the Day of Ashes. After he saw people dying because, arguably, he had told them to be there, on the bridge that day."

"My parents died there."

"I know."

"And? You don't consider it the same way Vander does, do you? Do you think their deaths were justified? That they serve any purpose?"

"No. To all of that. But I think he's wrong about the cause of it all. They didn't die because he wanted to organize and lead a protest. They died because enforcers fucking shot them, plain as that."

"That's the same fucking thing," she hisses.

"Not quite. Think about it. It wasn't supposed to be a fight, that day, on the bridge. It only became one because enforcers wanted to slaughter Zaunites and be done with it, and, oh, some decided they were not going down like cattle."

"They wouldn't have died," she argues stubbornly, "if they weren't on the bridge."

"Yeah, and they would have died of illness, starvation, chem-poisoning, or maybe violence too. Your pick. The Day of Ashes, it only highlighted the way things are, down there, except way quicker than with their stomach eating itself, or with chemicals slowly eating away at their flesh. At least, maybe, their deaths served that purpose. Look, the people accepted to keep Vander as their leader, even as they were mourning the deaths of their loved ones. They knew it wasn't all his fault."

She chews on her lower lip, looking sideways, but she doesn't argue with that. He suspects she has accepted that already, since she clearly considers the man almost as her father, despite losing her real one on the bridge. Just like Jinx did.

Maybe – probably, given what she has said so far – she even thinks he has been right.

"And afterward," he continues, "Vander clung to his so-called peace because he felt guilty. Didn't want more deaths, he said. Perhaps, also, he knew that another failed attempt at retaliation would lose him the support of the Lanes."

She raises her head as that, an odd emotion flashing through her face. Eyes wide for a second, before her face takes back that look of refrained anger, intertwined with hesitation.

"You know," Silco presses on, "that too played a part in our… 'falling out', as he so gracefully put it. I wanted to keep fighting; he wasn't ready to gamble what little power we managed to gain over the newly founded Lanes. And he wasn't good at talking things out back then."

"So…"

She pauses for a second, pursuing her lips together, eyebrows knitted. Silco can imagine that it's hard, trying to make this new picture fit with what she thought she knew – and for a good reason, it doesn't fit. The Hound nickname doesn't come from nothing, and that something has very little to do with the caring father and peaceful bartender figure Vander tries very hard to project now, at least to his kids.

And himself… Well, Silco has no issue now with playing the part of the monster, and his scarred face definitely fits that, but that's something he has been taught. Power comes to those who would do anything to achieve it. Even, and especially, try and murder your lover to rule all alone.

So yeah, he can empathize with Vi's struggle and confusion. He had to face the same dichotomy, in a way, when he was dying from the fever and infection, his eye lancing white-hot pain throughout his entire skull.

"So," Vi starts again, "that's why he pushed you away? To keep you from doing… whatever you were planning to do to fight back?"

"He tried to kill me, drown me, but yes, that's the gist of it."

That's shock, now, over her youthful features. He feels her gaze on his face, the left part, and only then does he realize his hand had risen to brush against the scars. He lets it fall down, gripping the edge of his desk again, his thumb sliding across the familiar texture of the wood.

The silence stretches for long seconds before Vi speaks up again:

"But if… I… even if I don't mind risking my life to fight against Topside, I… Jinx. I can't let her get hurt." Her eyes narrow. "Can you?"

"There is no way to truly protect anyone with the Topsider's boot pressing down onto our necks."

Silco answered too fast – rehearsed words. An automatic, easy reply, because he doesn't want to dwell on what he would do if it came to Jinx being in serious danger. That she disappears without a word, every once in a while, sometimes taking one of her handmade guns with her, sometimes not – and he couldn't tell which is worse – it already makes him worry sick. And she goes on missions for him, sure, but never alone, mostly with Sevika in fact, whether his right-hand woman likes it or not, but that's only because he figured that if he doesn't give her that outlet, the girl is going to blow up. Metaphorically and figuratively.

"I see," Vi finally says, reclining on the couch, uncrossing her arms – and he's about to ask her what exactly does she see, except there aren't as many shadows in her cloudy eyes as before, so maybe he doesn't need to ask.

There is a knock rasping on the door then, and when Silco turns to it he finds Vander there. How he didn't hear the man approaching, loud footsteps echoing in the hallway, remains a mystery to him. He's normally always aware of his surroundings, that he's talking to someone doesn't change that – but he has been distracted, lately. The lack of sleep must be catching up.

"I, um, sorry for intruding. Powder's looking for you, Vi. She's downstairs."

"It's Jinx."

Silco looks at Vi, surprised. They had spoken in unison. She holds his gaze a second more, then shakes her head and hops back on her feet.

"Thanks, am going."

Vander sidesteps to let her exit the office, but he doesn't follow her and leave, no, he leans against the door frame instead, lingering just at the entrance.

"Trying to convert another one of my kids, are you?"

He's mostly joking, but Silco heard just as well the intention underneath, colder. Almost like a threat.

"She came to me," he clarifies. "She wanted some… clarifications."

"Oh, I'm sure you were eager to give her those."

"I did not lie to her, Vander. Go, if you don't believe it, go ask her. I didn't tell the whole truth either, but trust me, it wouldn't paint you in a better light, on the contrary."

Vander sighs heavily.

"I know, Sil- co. Sorry."

It's only for the slip-up, the old nickname, the apology. Tossed too lightly to stand for anything else.

"She wants to fight, your girl. Violet. She's angry."

"Yeah, I'm well aware. I tried to talk her out of it, you know?" He sighs again, looking over his shoulder at the stairs she disappeared down to. "I was… afraid she would only end up hurt, or worse."

"Like that didn't happen already. In Stillwater…"

"Careful, Silco. One could argue she only ended there because she was at that damned cannery when the enforcers swooped in."

"She was going to turn herself in. Maybe you would have succeeded in taking her place, or maybe they still would have sent you both behind the bars."

Vander visibly deflates, runs a hand over his face.

"Yeah," he mutters half-heartedly. "Wouldn't put it past those bastards."

"You had a deal with them."

"I had a deal with Grayson," he argues. "And it wasn't… it wasn't out of cowardice, like I know you're thinking it was."

"Really?" Silco's tone has gone colder, dragging the syllables out on his tongue. "Then what?"

"Giving up the fight… It takes courage too. It would have been easier to disregard those two girls on the bridge, to keep the blinders up. I had to recognize that leading that attack was a bad idea. That it was time to step back and lick our wounds." Silco's mouth twists into a sneer, but he stays quiet. "It's easier to fight than to lead. Easier to punch and not think."

"For someone with your build, maybe."

"Yeah. Maybe. But come on, Silco, tell me. If it came to Pow- Jinx, and yes, I heard Vi asking you that same question. Wouldn't you be ready for… anything? If it meant keeping her safe."

"I would let this city burn for her."

"Yes, but would you stop fighting?"

Silco opens his mouth, then closes it. Thinking it over.

"I… I don't want her to live in the same world as us." He hesitates, then adds: "I wasn't always rational when it came to her. She's brilliant, but… she can get carried away."

Understatement. He can almost hear it in Sevika's voice, calling him out on that. He knows he hasn't got a clear mind when it comes to Jinx, he loves her too much for that – not that he would ever admit it out loud to his right-hand woman.

"Sevika hates it," he adds, and a very slight smile pulls at the edge of his lips then. "She says Jinx could bring all of us down, one of these days. So, is that it? Is that the lesson to take here, that love makes us weak?"

Vander shakes his head, looking appalled.

"No! It… By Janna, Silco, no. Fuck, it… it keeps us alive. You could have died, the way we met, if I didn't intervene. I would have ended up dead or at least in Stillwater, if you didn't come back, that day with the enforcers. When you got that small scar on your lip, the old one. And so many other times too. And, and- the girls, too, they wouldn't have survived without us. Children get to grow up only because someone cares enough. Otherwise, it would just be a pile of corpses down here."

Silco raises a brow – really, he can only actually move one, but he knows it conveys his intention anyway.

"Hmm, you've thought about it before, or what? That was quite the tirade."

"… Yeah. Yeah, I've thought about it. After I... After you. The river," he adds with a grimace, as if his meaning wasn't clear enough already.

"I see. Now, Vander, I have a meeting coming up. So could you… I don't know what you do these days, but go do that, um? And I will see you tomorrow, ten o'clock. You haven't forgotten, have you?"

He doesn't miss the anger flashing through Vander's gray eyes, his pride wounded, but that anger is familiar, not yet flaming up – and infinitely better than whatever was in his eyes until now. A bit like regret, the bitter dusty taste of what has passed – like something else, too, something Silco doesn't want to think about.