Afterimage
“Do you have dreams, Jinx?” Vi asked her once. Her hair was mussed, and she was missing her usual jacket. There were dark shadows under her eyes. She was trying to be brave, to be Vi, but Jinx knew better.
Not better enough to move from her spot in the rafters, but what was that saying? It’s the thought that counts. Ha.
“Maybe,” Jinx admitted. Voices hissed in her ear, liar, liar. “Do you?”
Vi huffed a hollow laugh. “Maybe.”
“Do you…do you dream about me?” Jinx asked, quiet, small. It was the part of her that might still be called Powder that spoke. The part that wanted reassurance.
Well, actually, that wasn’t only confined to Powder.
Shut up, brain.
“Sometimes,” Vi said. “But not the way you think.”
Jinx pulled her knees into her chest and watched her sister slump forward, arms braced on her thighs. She wanted to drop to the floor, maybe slot herself into her sister’s side. She was better at the touching than the talking. But sometimes one or both of them flinched away. Sometimes it was easier to hide, to listen from the shadows. Then she left, and only a little part of her felt guilty about it.
/ / / / / /
Jinx stands before the table, set for tea, surrounded by mismatched chairs and three people she loves, hates, fears, wants to kill. The voices snarl and spit in her ears, liar, leave them, leave him, kill her, run.
Mylo and Vi snap Jinx, Jinx, Jinx, and she wants to cry. She shoots Mylo and it does fuck-all to help, stupid stupid stupid, never fucking listens to her, and Silco is talking and she just wants everyone to shut up and let her think.
She shoots him, too, screaming. Just like before his chair spins slowly, but now it turns and turns and turns, creaking, squealing, and Jinx sees a flash of pink hair. She screams, everything screams, and the whole world flashes and sparks and splinters into pieces.
Jinx wakes with all the volatile energy coursing under her skin, all the unspent cries gathering in her lungs, choking her slowly. So she releases it all, tearing into the too-nice room the Pilties put her up in. It reeks of privilege and nice perfume in here. It could do with a little disaster; a little Jinxing. That’s what she tells herself as she uses one of her many hidden knives to shred her pillows and fling feathers across the room. Then she breaks everything breakable, strips the bed down to the bare mattress, and shreds all of that too. She takes the gun she is definitely not supposed to have anymore and writes Pow on the wall in bullet holes. The cool marble cracks, and the gold bullets glint from inside the stone. She hesitates, staring at it. Her chest heaves, all the things inside of her finally spent.
Some presence behind her makes her turn around, and there again is that twisted tea party, Silco’s muzzled mouth, Mylo-not-Mylo with a hole between his hollow eyes. Vi, Vi, Vi, slumped lifelessly with a too-wide bloody smile carved into her face.
Jinx stumbles back, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. When she removes them, all she sees is a flash of pink hair before Vi is on her, tackling her to the floor. Not the rough, debris-strewn concrete from before, but the cool marble of her bedroom. She twists, snarling, but for once Vi is more animal than her. And Jinx, well, she was never the one of them who used her fists. Her sister’s hands smash cheek and shoulder and teeth until Jinx finds her gun and whips her with it. Vi slumps sideways, and there is so much noise. so many things flashing. She scrambles back onto the rug. It digs into her shoulders, burns across her palms. When she lifts her hands, they drip inexplicably with blood.
She blinks, and Vi is gone, the tea party is gone, everything is gone. Her room is still destroyed, but what does that mean? What does anything mean?
You killed her, a voice whispers in her ear, and Jinx flings her hands over her ears. Powder, Powder, always hiding.
“Shut up!” she screams. The sketchy outline of a figure flickers in front of her, and she fires at it with another wild cry.
At last, the voices fall silent, and her vision stops flashing. Jinx slumps, the gun falling to the floor, and curls into a ball. Now the tears come, like they always do. Sometimes Jinx is close to smashing her head into the wall just to make everything shut up, but she forgets what comes after. The ringing silence, and the loneliness. She doesn’t know which is worse.
“Jinx?”
No, the voices are definitely worse. Why can’t they just leave her alone?
“Oh, Jinx. What’ve you done?”
What have you done what have you done what have you done you fucking jinx can’t help but break everything you touch what have you done-
“Stop it,” Jinx whispers, rocking forward and back, digging her fingernails into her arms. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
Her voice rises in a helpless sob as she claws at her own skin. “Stop, please, let me out let me out- “
“Jinx!” A hand grabs her wrist.
She is trapped, trapped, fight fight get away. She lashes out, feeling her bare foot connect with something that grunts in pain, and the fingers around her wrist release her. Scrambling to her feet, she backs herself into the nearest corner, shuddering all over. Only then does she realize that Vi is kneeling on her floor, holding one hand to her bloody nose.
“Hey, even now you got good aim,” Vi murmurs, swiping at her face and examining the blood.
Jinx closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Wake up,” she tells herself. “Wake up, wake up, it’s not real, she’s not here.”
When Vi speaks again, her voice is closer and completely different. “Hey, no, Jinx, I’m here. I’m real. You’re not dreaming.”
“You’re just saying that!” Jinx shouts, twisting away and pressing her fists into her eyes so she doesn’t have to look. “Go away, go away, I don’t want to hurt you again. I can’t.”
“Hey, hey, hey, you didn’t hurt me, Jinx. I’m fine. I’ve done worse to myself walking into glass doors, yeah? Open your eyes for me, okay, look, it’s not even bleeding anymore.”
Carefully Jinx peeks at her. Vi is scrubbing the last of the dried blood from her upper lip, but she’s right; the bleeding’s stopped.
“Doesn’t hurt?” Jinx asks. Her voice is very small.
Vi grins, bright and bloodless. “Not a bit.”
“Not a dream?”
“Promise.”
She considers. “Prove it.”
That gives Vi pause. She casts around the room for something and finally says, “You okay if I’m gone for a second? I need to get something from me and Cait’s room.”
Jinx nods. Vi jogs out of the room, hurrying , which is sort of nice. She doesn’t move a muscle until her sister returns, holding her old jacket. Jinx doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean; it’s practically a fixture of Vi’s skin at this point. It’s in most of the dreams, too. She makes a vague, questioning noise in her throat. Vi holds the jacket out to her and she presses closer to the wall, like it could swallow her.
“Sorry, sorry, just…look. Remember last week, when I went roofrunning and ripped a nice hole right here?”
Vaguely Jinx does, but she’d forgotten until now.
“Patched it up myself. Cait thought I was crazy for using blue thread, cause it’s so obvious, but I wanted to remember.” Vi runs her fingers over the long line of electric blue stitches, the same color as Jinx’s hair. Carefully, her fingers trembling, she reaches out and touches it, too.
This isn’t a detail her dreams would make up.
With a soft, choked cry of relief she flings herself into Vi’s arms. Vi is tense for half a second, then relaxes, pulling her close. Jinx sobs, digging her fingers into Vi’s back, then immediately loosening her grip for fear of hurting her. With one arm her sister clutches her tightly enough to bruise a rib, and with her other hand she traces the bloody scratches on Jinx’s arms and neck.
“You wanna let me clean these up?” she murmurs.
Jinx shrugs, shrinking back a little. “They’re fine. Nothing I haven’t done before.”
She feels Vi’s wince. “Well, it’d make me feel better. So please?”
Jinx shrugs again. “Okay.”
“Caitlyn’s awake, too, but I told her not to come in until you were-“
“Less crazy?” It’s supposed to be a joke, but it doesn’t sound like one.
“Less scared,” Vi corrects. “She’s waiting outside, but I can tell her to bug off if you want.”
The big thing Jinx has been working on is pushing down—no, she’s supposed to say working through, according to the fancy brain doctor Pilties that help people stop being sad their parents died, or whatever—her desire to murder Caitlyn Kiramman. And the fact that she hates her. She doesn’t hate her so much anymore, now that she mostly knows Vi has more than enough heart to hold them both. But it’s not always easy. Still, Cait is nice, and she once let Jinx live when any sane person would have killed her.
And it would be helpful to have someone around to keep her from…from snapping, and doing something she’ll regret.
“Jinx? I really won’t be mad if you want her to go away, I-“
“No, no, it’s…fine. Does she have a gun?”
“It’s Cait. Probably.”
“Good.” Jinx already knows she’ll be in trouble eventually for her secret gun—not so secret anymore, with Pow on the wall covered by a second spray of wild bullets. So she should probably not make that worse, but her hands itch for something to defend herself with. “Can I bring a knife?”
Vi smiles and pulls out of their hug. “Sure, kiddo. Whatever makes you feel better.”
Jinx fetches the closest one from the floor and a belt from the table to strap it to her waist.
“Bathroom? Or stay here?” Vi asks.
Jinx eyes her destroyed room. Caitlyn probably shouldn’t see what she’s done to the place, even if it smells like smoke and chaos now and feels closer to home. “Bathroom.”
They go. Caitlyn, outside the door, shoots Vi a questioning glance. Her sister nods once, so she offers Jinx a smile. Jinx isn’t ready to smile back, so she just ducks her head into Vi’s shoulder. Her sister wraps an arm around her and squeezes, quickly. In the bathroom, Jinx sits on the edge of the sink while Vi dabs alcohol on her scratches, wiping away blood. It stings, and it’s cold, but Jinx grits her teeth and bears it. It’s her own fault, anyway.
Something brushes her arm that isn’t Vi and in half a second Jinx has her knife out and a snarl curling her lips. Caitlyn has her gun out at the same moment.
“Guys,” Vi hisses.
Jinx glances at her and grins, sliding the knife away. “Sorry, V. Just testing you.”
Caitlyn’s mouth quirks and she holsters her gun.
“May I?” she asks, holding up a couple of bandages and gesturing at the deeper scratches that are still welling blood.
Jinx nods and examines her pink and blue fingernails so she doesn’t have to pay attention to Caitlyn Kiramman touching her skin. She should cut them, probably, so she doesn’t do damage again. But that’s a problem for Tomorrow Jinx to deal with.
When Caitlyn is done, she steps back. Vi offers her hand, and even though Jinx doesn’t need it, she grabs it anyway and hops off the counter.
“Are you…” Vi hesitates. “Do you hear anything?”
As if summoned, Jinx hears a snatch of indistinct whispers and shakes her head. “Little bit. Not a lot.”
“Are you gonna be okay to go back to sleep?” Vi asks as they step back into the hallway.
Fear is a living thing in Jinx’s throat. She eyes Caitlyn. She wonders if there is a universe where she can say no to that question.
“I can’t deprive your girlfriend,” is what she decides on.
Caitlyn, shockingly, snorts. “She’s a huge blanket hog. Plus, she kicks. Take her, for all I care.”
It’s a gift, and Jinx hates to be ungrateful. “Okay,” she says quietly.
Only once they step back into her room does she remember it isn’t exactly habitable. She pauses just inside the door. Vi, though, doesn’t hesitate. She gathers up the remains of the sheets and blankets and stuffs a few handfuls of feathers back into the pillows so they aren’t quite so deflated. All of it is piled on the bed, and Vi tosses herself after, scraping together a sort of disastrous nest. She pats the blankets invitingly.
Jinx clambers in, and the two of them curl up together as if they’re kids again, crammed into the same narrow bed in a crappy little house in Zaun.
“Gimme this,” Vi murmurs, sliding Jinx’s belt off and tossing it on the bedside table. “Go to sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
Jinx obediently tucks her long braids around her and settles down. “You should sleep too,” she mumbles.
“I will. Once you’re out. And I’ll wake up if you have a nightmare. I’m a light sleeper.”
She is. She also really does tend to kick, so Jinx isn’t one hundred percent certain either of them is getting to sleep at all. But she doesn’t really mind. She nestles into her sister’s chest and closes her eyes. The voices dog at her heels as she slips into sleep, but her dreams are blessedly normal. The nightmares aren’t gone forever—they’ll probably be back in three days, tops—but the respite is good enough. Her sister has her, and maybe, someday, Caitlyn too. They’ll make it through this shit together.