Chapter Text
Jinx could feel the music as much as she could hear it, a thumping beat that seemed to put electric current into her limbs, leaving her thrashing and weaving like it was all she’d ever known, ever wanted to do.
After all, why would anyone want to do anything so nasty as have even a semblance of a thought in dark and mad times such as these.
It felt good to lose herself in it, to just move and move and move. It felt good to trick herself into thinking that something else was doing Jinx’s moving for her, easier to just not think about it at all and move.
She was dancing in a dingy bar, flashing lights following the music to briefly illuminate a mass of grinding, writhing, jostling people in staccatos of red, blue, and pink.
Pink, like Vi’s hair. Pink, like the spray cans Isha had liked best.
It was a little sad how easily Pink could run to Red, especially in her memories. Even paint could get to looking like blood if you stare long enough.
Left’em! You left’em! Look at you, hiding away, like usual!
Jinx felt whispers crawl up her spine, scratch at her brain. She heard Mylo’s voice starting to stab the memories back into her brain, and she almost fell off of her feet. It was only with frantic stumbling and maybe some mumbling that the poor girl managed to keep those damned feet beneath her.
She barely made it to the bar without letting the scream she felt seething in her guts rip past her lips, and just the effort had her chest feeling like it was on fire, breaths coming in ragged pants. It felt like so many other times when something tore open anew within her, but Jinx tried to pretend like it was the first time sometimes, to feel the pain all anew. That made it better, but only sometimes.
The barkeep’s ugly, punch-flattened nose left the rest of his blunt features shifting into someone else’s, someone with a broad face and a greying beard Those eyes looked at her with pity even as she snatched the dirty Zaun mash brew poured into an equally dirty glass as soon as it’d been set down, and Jinx heard the whisper of a father’s disappointment.
Which one, she’d killed two, Two, TWO
Jinx grunted against the burn as it poured down her throat, letting out a sigh when she felt it hit her stomach. The buzzing fire, the hazy bliss, it was everything Jinx had ever needed and more. She was about to order another when she saw someone lean onto the bar beside her, a tattooed woman with a scar running up along one side of her jaw and hair a Red just a few shades too dark to be Pink . She said pretty words at Jinx, smiled at her while hungry eyes drifted down Jinx’s cat-lithe body. Another animal on the prowl, come to see what’s on display.
Jinx smiled back, because she knew what that’d lead to. She reached out to run curious fingers over a muscled bicep, remembering the feeling of scars on tanned flesh when she’d used to do this for Vi , when she’d had another name. She felt those hot muscles flex back at her, and it was almost like old laughter tinkling in her ears, those memories floating by her in the air.
The girl, Jinx didn’t even bother to ask her name, ordered another round of drinks, and Jinx couldn’t take hers slowly this time either. She may not have cared about the lady’s name, but she knew how it looked, how she looked. At least the booze numbed the shame, too.
While she felt the feeling of not feeling, Jinx could see the crowd behind her just out of the corner of her eye, so many limbs rising and falling like the waves she’d once sunk under and under again. Watching’em was almost enough to make her feel sick all over again, people who just couldn’t give a care while the night was still young.
Was that Envy or Disbelief turning her stomach?
A rough hand went to her shoulder, pulling Jinx close and pressing her into a wide torso, and Jinx giggled as she felt the beat of their heart. She’d always liked being held, had even needed it after her parents had died. It’d been one of the best ways for her big sister to break Pow-Pow out of a tantrum or a sobbing fit, and Jinx had dreamed of being wrapped up in strong arms again and again.
It felt like it’d been a lifetime since she’d last been held, but that was only because the last try ‘round hadn’t worked well enough either.
Maybe it’d just take another loop ‘round the Bend.
Another night she probably wouldn’t want to remember.
“Guh-gettin’... Awwwfully friendly, toots! You do this for all the drunks?”
The hand on her shoulder, the one keeping her pinned, drifted lower, fingertips running over the ridges of her ribs, down the taut expanse of her belly before finally circling over the swell of her hip bone.Those same rough fingertips dragged against her skin almost like scratching, dragging over skimpy clothes and raw skin.
Jinx felt heavy, blurry, and she was happy for it. This was why she came here, after all, night after night.
Hey now, everybody’s gotta get their chills and thrills somehow, right?
—
Something passed down Vi’s spine, and she wasn’t sure whether it was a shudder, a shiver, or even a chill.
She’d told herself, down in the mines with her sister and another sister still, that she was done with the Are-... The Pit. She was done with trying to make herself forget, trying to drink it all away.
She had been tired of waking up with scars on her knuckles she didn’t remember putting there, and even tired of the way Loris had stopped meeting her eyes.
Now that she was back again, it almost felt like Vi had never really left. No matter how many drinks she’d ever had, Vi had always felt the roar of the crowd while she was in those rusty old walls, and she could almost feel it while searching through the bars just down the street that she’d used to crawl around through night after night.
Why would she ever come back here, why would she even take the risk of falling back down, especially after nearly having her life bleed out through her guts? Cait hadn’t been able to meet her eyes when she woke up in Kiramman Manor and asked where her sister was. She hadn’t been able to look at the bandages around Vi’s stomach, either.
Because no one could really tell her where Jinx had gone in the aftermath of Viktor’s Commune, not even Sevika. Apparently, Jinx had run away with tears streaming down her eyes as she screamed out for Isha, her body just a shimmer-flash ripping through the crumpled bodies of the followers that’d had their souls leak out in a horrible sigh.
All Sevika had been able to say while not meeting Vi’s eyes was that Jinx had come by sobbing so badly she could barely speak, pushing herself to at least tell the Ogre what’d happened to a little sister the old ganger had never really expected Jinx to have. As she told Vi, her features dropped, pain putting an edge on a voice that cigarillos and booze had already been eating away at for years.
When Vi had practically begged, backing Sevika up against the bar while her goons started to rise, the former Pit Fighter got an answer she really hadn’t wanted to hear.
Latest rumor was that a girl with long braids dyed with something like axle grease and old miner’s clothes put over something else was dancing her way through these dark nights. One scared thug-girl even said she’d seen some strange color flash in this mysterious ghost’s eyes when someone tried to force a little heavy petting after one too many drinks, but everyone else just said that was a common bar brawl.
With no other options, Vi had gone chasing down what may have just been a shadow on the wall, or maybe it was her sister losing it all. And it meant she’d have to go back to those grimy bars, the places where all Vi could see was hazy joys and rough caresses amidst the endless repetition of getting beat and getting blacked out back in her memories.
She had to know, one way or the other.
Here she was, and Vi wasn’t really sure if she really did want to know after all.
Just being in this den of the mad was giving her that tingling sensation going up and down her spine, the urge to pull up to the bar and make a few friends, while away a night she didn’t want anyhow.
But Vi was here for someone, so she made sure to look close at all of the people with dull, hazy eyes dancing till they dropped out on the floor. The lights made the features she could catch drawn, like people were burning their souls down to ash in their frenzy for the good time everyone came for.
Vi needed Jinx to not be here, she needed to know that she just hadn’t found her hurting sister curled up in some other dark hole, one that didn’t stink like bad memories and other things that people puked up on the floor.
Then Vi caught it, a flicker of two somethings long dancing in the air like a whip being cracked. Then she caught another flash, and her eyes honed in.
She saw a thin girl with skin that looked a little too pale even under these strange lights, eyes drawing in shadows a little too deeply to bags just beneath as she seemed to stare off at nothing up in the ceiling.
Then Vi noticed that those two long braids were drifting into and bouncing against a woman a head taller than her with a nasty, gnarled scar going up near from jaw to hairline. This stranger was smirking at the girl that might’ve been Vi’s sister, even stepping close to take up grinding for a moment or two.
She saw them dance like nothing but animals, bodies sliding against and intertwining with one another's, and Vi felt her stomach turn as the pair turned in their steps. She was able to catch the glint of the stick-thin girl’s eyes backlit with a shade that definitely wasn’t the club strobes, and Vi started to feel that shiver turn into a pit yawning open in her stomach.
Even as she tried to push through the sea of people between her and Maybe-Jinx, she saw the mountain of a woman start to pull her dance partner to her hip as they turned to push side by side towards a side door, it almost felt like she was losing to the tide as they moved away.
If Vi remembered correctly, it’d lead to a twisted alley that’d lead to a twisted street. From there, you could wander to all kinds of abandoned and broken-down buildings, the kind of place that Vi had once taken up an apartment in.
If she didn’t follow them now, Vi would never be able to find them in the maze of the warrens waiting outside.
She gnawed on her lip as she saw the hand drawing circles on the pale girl’s hips drift lower, starting to cup cheeks turned taut and tight by a life in the Undercity, even digging in for a real grip. The hand's owner leaned down to whisper something into her prize's ear, but the answer came as the twin-braids sagged from a lolling head. How... How much had this girl in an oversized miner's jacket, just like the one's they'd found in a room with a letter that'd broken Vi's heart, had to drink?
The sight made Vi’s skin crawl, and she knew she couldn’t let Jinx go home with someone like this. You shouldn't drag home the stumbling drunk. Then again, wasn't that what Vi had done again and again, too?
What Vi didn’t know was why she almost felt jealous rather than just worried. What she didn’t know was why she’d stopped wondering whether that really was her sister, Vi just needed to catch up with Jinx and make her sister feel at least a little better.
She couldn’t lose the last piece of a family they’d almost been able to put back together again, no matter how jagged her edges had gotten. Vi would always try again, for Powder and Jinx both, sisters old and new again.
And so Vi finally got clear of the sheer mass of humanity still bumbling around to a tune that didn’t sound so good anymore just as the side door swung back close, and she knew she was about to go sprinting off into the night, no matter how far it’d take her.
Vi would save Jinx, because she had to.