Archive of Our Own

Request: Hi! Since you are doing Arcane, I was wondering if you could write Parent Silco x Child Jinx fanfic? Maybe the first time Jinx gives him a gift and Silco sees himself as a father figure?

Response: [[Author Allie here. Hi! Thank you so much for your request. Firstly let me make this clear: you are never annoying for requesting stuff!! We love getting requests, and since I love Arcane a lot, I definitely don't mind getting a ton of Arcane requests now lol. Silco is my favorite character.

This is my first time writing his character, so I hope it feels right to you! I'll get better at it the more I write him, so feel free to request more stuff (:

PS: I know that you mean Silco x Jinx as father/daughter, so this isn't directed at you, but I want to make this clear to anyone reading this: we will NOT write Silco x Jinx as a romantic or sexual relationship. They are purely familial on this blog.

That's it. Enjoy!]]

There were times in the beginning where he'd regretted picking her up.

Not enough to want to throw her out, no, of course not - he sympathized with her plight, had gone through the same thing himself (well, a similar thing, he supposes - the added trauma of being the reason most of your family is dead was one he was not familiar with). But he’d never had to deal with a child before, he’d especially never been the sole guardian of a child before.

Her moods were erratic, she'd say one thing then do another, and she had grown very fond of pranking the members of his ever growing inner circle of workers. They were largely harmless pranks other than a few scrapes or bruises that might ensue when her contraptions didn't work the way she had intended for them to work, but... as previously stated, largely harmless. But it was just enough to cause unrest, annoyance and aggravation in his followers. When they came to him complaining about her actions, he'd tell them that she was only a child and that anyone who couldn't handle the humor of a little girl was certainly not fitting to be on his roster of paid muscle. They shut up quick after that, but he had to admit that he still thought about it from time to time, about how she was turning out to be quite the nuisance.

There were nights where she would cry and scream into her pillow as waves of raw, angry memories flooded her mind, trashing her room in a temper tantrum and kicking and clawing like a wild animal at anyone who tried to get too close to her. He wasn't sure what to do then - he'd never had a child of his own. He could put on a smile and a cheerful demeanor to play at a tea party when she was in a good mood, but he had no idea how to calm a traumatized girl in the midst of her most recent meltdown.

So, yes, there were plenty of times in the beginning where he'd second guessed his own decision to take her in. And though they were never big enough feelings to warrant an actual attempt to get rid of her, they still sat there, settling in the back of his skull and whispering about how he'd gone soft and weak for a child, about how she was more trouble than she was worth.

But the day she snuck into his office while he was away, giggling to herself childishly while she decorated the room with crayons and colorful paper confetti, he'd gotten a taste of just why he kept her around even through all of the torment she put him and his men through.

He walked into his office with a sigh, looking down at the paper in his hands. Expanding his network was proving to be a difficult task, and he knew better than most that not everyone could be controlled with force. Finding a delicate balance between inspiring loyalty in his men and needing to use fear as a control method was... challenging, to say the least. But he was skating by, for now, and he sure as hell didn't intend on giving up just because the task at hand was a difficult one.

He was so focused on his paper that he didn't notice the changes to his office for a few seconds after entering. Only when he heard a small, childish giggle belonging to one headache of a girl did he finally look up. First, he looked to the source of the sound, and he saw her right there plain as day - Jinx, ten years of age, sitting in his office chair with a bright grin on her face streaked with an odd mixture of both dirt and vibrant paints that never seemed to wash off. He had learned, over the few months he's had her in his care so far, the difference between a genuine smile of childish happiness and the excited grin that told of a plan hiding behind her eyes. Today, it was the latter.

But before he could narrow his eyes - his one eye, as the left was paralyzed almost entirely and never narrowed or blinked with the right - and ask her what she was planning today, he finally took note of the rest of his office. Streaks of vibrant pinks and blues and greens all over the walls, mostly in crayon but it seemed there were splashes of paint thrown in at random as well.

There were strips of torn up colored paper all over the floor, her attempt at confetti no doubt, and a few streamers that had been precariously stuck to the walls with pins and needles. He looked around the room, slack jawed in surprised, and didn't know at first how to respond.

"Jinx," he began slowly, looking back down at the girl sitting in his chair. Her smile dimmed for just a moment at the word, a hundred terrible memories flashing in her blue-grey eyes at the origins of her new name, but she blinked away the bad feelings and looked up at him with another bright grin. "What is all of this for?"

"It's a celebration!" She explains simply, swinging her legs back and forth. The swivel chair shook with her movements.

"Ah," he managed a small smile, remembering - this is a child, young and naive and eager to please. He couldn't put on his stern face like he did with his men. "What are we celebrating today, then?"

She giggled and leaned back in his seat, and he could see now that she was holding something in her hands. It was just below his line of sight, hidden partially by the lip of his desk, so he couldn't tell what it was from where he stood. He hoped it wasn't another one of her paint bombs - while he enjoyed her gadgetry and wanted to encourage her creativity, he had lost count already of how many times he'd had to order his office cleaned from all the paint and colored smoke she would trail behind her. Everywhere she went, her brightly colored pranks followed.

"Your birthday, of course!" He paused at that. His birthday? Was it his birthday?

Oh - yes. He vaguely remembered telling her when his birthday was, months ago. It had been her own birthday then, and instead of waking with a smile and asking for gifts and treats like most children her age would on such a day, she had spent most of her morning in bed, weeping. It had taken him hours to coax her out of the blanket cocoon she'd wrapped around herself, only to learn that she had thought about how she had nobody left to celebrate her birthday with this year, which had lead into the inevitable fate of another meltdown as memories of her dead family flooded her mind.

He'd done everything she wanted that day - had breakfast in bed with her, took her out to play some made-up game she invented, had ice cream for dinner at her request, and then spent the night sipping on hot chocolate and teaching her how to play cards. And at the end of it all, when she was tucked into bed and her eyes slid shut as her lids grew heavier by the second, she'd asked him when his own birthday was. We'll celebrate together, just like we did today, she'd told him. He'd smiled and told her that he didn't need a gift and that he wasn't really in the habit of celebrating his birthday, but she'd been adamant and he'd given in.

He had no idea she would have actually remembered.

She saw the look of surprise on his face and scooted off the chair, leaving whatever she had been holding on the seat as she skipped around the table to grab hold of one of his hands with both of hers.

"Did you forget your own birthday?" She giggled, finding the idea quite silly.

"Well, I..." He turned his head sideways, like a curious puppy. He smiled. "I suppose I did. Thank you for reminding me, Jinx."

She beamed up at him, eager to please. She dragged him back to his desk, hopping up and down excitedly. She grabbed her hidden item off of the chair before he could see it, hiding it behind her back as she edged around him while he sat down.

“And what are you holding there, I wonder?”

“It’s a secret. Close your eyes.”

He chuckled softly, obliging even as he said in a teasing tone, “Well, I can only close one.”

“You know what I mean!”

He put his hands on top of both eyes, covering them. The vision in his right eye, though not completely gone, was dim and blurry enough that he could barely see anything out of it. Jinx had asked about it once, and he had explained that it was like trying to see the world through a dirt-caked, grease-smudged lens. Dark and grainy and blurry.

Silco listened as she clambered up on top of his desk, one of her newest favorite places to sit. He turned in his swivel chair to face her even with his eyes covered, and she quietly rested her feet on his lap. She was a very physically affectionate girl and almost always liked to be comforted by touch in some way - holding his hand as they walked, sitting close enough for their knees to touch when they sat together, leaning against him at random…

It was something he found himself struggling to get used to. It’d been a long time since anyone had been so affectionate to him.

“Okay,” Jinx said in an eager, childish voice. “Open!”

Silco removed his hands with a flair and a smile, earning a small laugh from the girl sitting on his desk and partially in his lap. She was holding something out to him, cupped in her two hands.

A… cup?

“For me?” He asked, hand hovering over it. He can’t honestly say he remembered the last time anyone had given him a birthday gift - it seemed such a frivolous, childish thing to him, to celebrate your birthday with streamers and gifts when a simple ‘happy birthday’ was more than enough. Jinx nodded her head at him, and he picked up the mug delicately.

It was a mostly brown mug with two small round handles, one on either side, and it had been drawn over in neon crayon. At first glance it seemed like random scribbles, something the girl in front of him was fond of drawing all over the walls of her bedroom - but looking closer showed that there was method to the madness in all the bright colors.

Of course, he chuckled. The monkey toy, the one he found most annoying with its constant clanging of the cymbals, had become an almost obsessive favorite of hers in the last few months. And here, she’d designed the mug to resemble it with a light grey face, round black eyes, and pink frown.

“So…?” Jinx asked nervously. He looked up at her and noticed that she seemed shy all of a sudden, as if he’d taken too long to answer and she was already assuming all the worst things about her gift. He smiled softly at her, an act that felt more genuine every time he did it.

“It’s beautiful, Jinx. Thank you.”

She perked up at his reassuring words, leaning forward on the desk to point at the bright colors excitedly. “I made it myself! I hope the colors don’t come off when you drink from it…”

“Well, there’s a good way to test that, my dear,” he trailed off as he looked at her with a raised brow.

Her eyes grew wide as she realized what he was saying, and twinkled with excitement as she grinned and nodded. She jumped off of his table and landed on the ground with a thud. A tea party! She loved having those. "Yes, yes! I'll go get my own cup!" She shouted as she ran out of the door in a hurry, not even slowing at the shouts of those in the hallway telling her to watch where she was going.

Silco smiled softly as he watched her go, turning the mug in his hands slowly and running his fingertips over the rim and handle. Every doubt of picking the girl up off the streets, of taking her into his arms and promising her strength and comfort, fled his mind as he looked at the brightly colored monkey face she had scribbled onto the mug. What a fool he had been, he thought.

He wouldn't give her up for anything.