Chapter Text
When her vision cleared and she finally felt herself start to seep back into her body, she wasn’t really sure how much time had passed by in the real world. It could have been hours or maybe days. The voices had never been this bad before, but maybe she just hadn’t deserved a haunting the way she did now. The place behind her eyes ached with their echoing words, and their grins peeked menacingly into the edges of her vision, even now. It was terrifying, filling her with the type of fear that would usually send her running into her big sister’s protective arms, always waiting to chase off the monsters.
But Vi wasn’t here. And the only real monster in sight was her.
Powder grimaced, turning to take in her surroundings for the first time, breath hitching as her body protested against the movement. Everything hurt. Every joint was sore, her head pounded, and her stomach ached with hunger. Still, she ignored it. The room was dark, no light except a flickering lamp sitting on a table a few feet from her.
It was cold, despite the thin blanket draped haphazardly around her shoulders, and the air smelled stale and foreign, a stark difference from the scent of home and food cooking upstairs that she woke up to every day. No muffled clamoring of customers overhead, or familiar bickering of her siblings nearby. Just quiet, and the dull whirling of an old, failing ventilation system.
She was alone. Alone.
She had never been alone before, not really. From the moment she was born, there was always Vi. Even through the loss of their parents, Vi was there, fingers gripping tightly around her hand, a silent promise of her presence as they bared the horrors in front of them. There was no squeezing now. Just the cold and a nagging stinging feeling that was getting sharper and more insistent the clearer her vision became. Her eyes slowly fell downward, seeking the source of the pain she felt, only to find her soot-covered fingers crusted with dried blood. It was almost grotesque, the way the skin of her thumbs and index fingers was torn and peeled back crudely, still sticky in the places the blood hadn’t yet dried.
With a grimace and a shuddering breath, she forced herself to stand, legs trembling with the effort, and she stumbled in her attempt to walk. She had to grab the edge of the couch she had just risen from, still feeling weak and disoriented, but she shook her head with a fierce jerk, not allowing the sensation to take over. With stiff steps that seemed to drain her with every movement, she started towards the door, but found herself freezing as her hand hovered over the door’s handle. In the corner of her eye sat a hanging mirror– it was dusty, the paint chipped and flaking off around the frame’s edges, but still it beckoned her. In an instant, the door was entirely forgotten as her shoulders slumped and she walked with stiff, heavy steps to find herself in front of the mirror.
But when she looks into the reflection, it’s not herself that she sees.
What she sees is a girl, covered in dirt and soot, with greasy strands of choppy hair escaping from her barely surviving braid. Puffy, dull eyes stare back at her, with purple marks below them telling stories of a deep-set exhaustion. One was far worse than the other, as blossoming next to it was a fading purple bruise along her cheek. Unwittingly, her fingertips followed her line of sight up to her bruise, wincing as they pressed curiously to the festering mark. Then, shakingly, they drift to below her nose, hesitating only a moment, before pressing faintly against the dry rivulet of blood crusted over her lip.
I told you to stay away.
Her stomach lurched, and she roughly brought the back of her hand to wipe it away, even as some maroon flakes remained, tauntingly, just causing her to get more aggressive in her movements.
Then, behind her, the door opened. She just about jumped out of her skin at the sound, heart thudding. Despite this fear, the man who entered looked calm and held up his free hand placatingly, the other hand holding a tray.
“Glad to see you’re back with us. I was hoping you would be– I brought you some food.” He quietly sat down on the couch, waiting patiently as she timidly followed, sitting across from him, staring at the tray he placed in front of her with an unreadable expression.
She hadn’t noticed how hungry she was before until only moments ago, but somehow, now, she felt her stomach protesting its neglect with a fiery demand. And yet still, she couldn’t bring herself to eat.
“I know you,” her voice was abrupt, searching. “Why do I know you?” She asked, eyebrows furrowed.
The question seemed to catch him by surprise, but only for a second before he tilted his head. He watches her for a moment, then his expression shifts into something like a smile.
“I was friends with your mother. I’m surprised you remember, you were very small.”
She didn't really know what answer she had been expecting- maybe some denial and another confirmation that she was seeing things- but she hadn't been expecting his words. Mama.
“You- you knew my mom?” her voice cut out embarrassingly on the last word, but she had no time to dwell on it. He knew her mom.
Suddenly, it all made sense, why the moment she saw him at the cannery, she was relieved and filled with familiarity.
He was friends with her mom. He must’ve been there to help, to get everyone out, just like her mom would have done.
But she had messed everything up,
jinxed it
and so there was no one left to save. No one at all, except for her. Someone who… someone who maybe shouldn’t have been saved at all.
She couldn’t have stopped her lips from trembling if she tried.
“It was my fault,” she whispered, voice barely picking up in her own ears. “The explosion. It-it was..” she grimaced, jerking her head to the side with a rough shake, “it was my fault.”
She didn’t see how, in that moment, the man’s eyes widened, remembering the sheer magnitude and destruction of the explosion.
And this little girl in front of him…. she…
His eyes flickered with something dangerous, mind aflame as the girl in front of him continued on.
“I didn’t mean to– I swear I didn’t, but- but Vi- she didn’t- she wouldn’t- have you seen her? Did she come back yet?” The girl had suddenly resurfaced from the place she had seemed to slip into, her eyes now wide as she looked up with him imploringly, twisted with desperate hope.
“Violet, your sister, she–,” he pursed his lips for a moment, considering his words very carefully, the gears shifting in his brain. “There have been no signs of her. It seems that she left after the incident that night. No one has seen her since.”
Powder winced, twitching slightly, “No, no, she’ll come back. She has to come back, right? She-she wouldn’t–” she couldn’t finish the words, feeling like she was choking.
“She just doesn’t understand, does she?” His tone was soothing, but the words were laced with something sharper. “It was just a mistake, wasn’t it? But I suppose she was too overtaken by her grief and anger–”
Powder flinched at that, casting her vision onto the floor.
“She had lost her father, and her brothers, and to find that it was her little sister who had done it?” He tsked softly, shaking his head sympathetically.
His eyes shifted slowly to Powder, who had tears falling as she sniffled.
Silently, he guided her chin up with gentle fingers, bringing her to meet his eyes. “But she was your sister. Leaving you behind, for a… for a mistake? It’s unforgivable.”
At that, Powder’s eyebrows knitted together, shaking her head in protest, anxious to defend her sister, but she couldn’t muster up any dissenting words before Silco had begun again.
“You were her little sister, her blood, and she walked away. You made a mistake, and for that, she abandoned you?”
The girl's eyes widened as she sniffed, wiping her hand harshly across her face. “She- no, no, she’ll–”
“I’m sorry child," Silco sighed sympathetically, "a betrayal like that is truly insurmountable. I know this must all be very difficult to process.”
She felt as though all the air was knocked out of her body, mouth open and lips forming words that never quite made it.
It was true, wasn’t it? Vi left. She was there, she had watched it happen, so how could she sit here now and deny it? Vi had seen what she had done (what she was), and looked at her with more hatred in her eyes than Powder had ever believed could be possible. The way she had struck her down to the ground, grabbing her with every ounce of ire the world had to offer. And most achingly, the way she left. The way she walked away. She just… walked away. Even with Powder screaming, begging for her sister to stay, to not leave her, gasping out sobs of her name, she… left.
Neither one of them moved for a long time as the silence of the room seemed to overtake them, so much so that he almost jolted when she finally spoke.
“W-what do I do now?” Her voice was nothing more than a whisper.
He hummed a noise of acknowledgement, considering it, but she continued after a moment.
“Vi’s- Vi’s gone, everyone is gone. And I…,” she froze. “How do I– how am I supposed to deal with this? How am I supposed to go on after what I’ve done?”
His eyes glimmered with recognition. He knew the question well, just as he knew the betrayal and the grief. And in front of him, not only sat the sickening parallel of a younger self, but an opportunity.
“You use it.” His voice was firm, unwavering in his answer, which came to him so clearly. She looked up at him, eyebrows furrowed, but listening to his every word.
“You hold on to this moment–the pain, the grief, the betrayal. The rage. And then you use it. You take it in hand and you never let it go. Remember it, remember how it feels, how it burns, and use it. Become stronger from it. And smarter," he told her, voice stern and confident. "Don’t make the same mistakes you made before. Don’t falter or wither from them, but let yourself rise from it. Let it make you into something more than you ever could have been before. Something they never thought you could be.”
Powder frowned, eyes darting as she ingested the words. They were so jarring, and something she never would have predicted. They were so starkly different from what Vander would have told her.
But Vander wasn’t here anymore. Nothing was.
Silco watched, captivated, silent and appraising as the girl before him stared at the empty space around her, eyes wide, twitching around as if she was seeing a whole world he could not.
And maybe, just maybe, she was what he had been searching for this whole time. The answer to the unsolvable question of how.
Yes.
She was perfect.
________________
She had followed him wordlessly as he led her to the place he told her he would be taking up operations, eyes trained at the rubble beneath her.
Her heart seemed to drop to her feet when she realized where she had found herself. When she found herself standing in front of her own home.
“I know this place is very familiar to you. Hopefully, that will make this easier of an adjustment.”
But he was wrong. Despite the fact that she had spent the past years of her life here, growing up and memorizing every inch of it, and she walked inside now, she felt hit with the aching strangeness of it all. Gone was the music that had always played, and the warm-toned lights that she had known, and most of all, behind the bar, was not her father, but rather some man she had never seen before, and the rustling sound of her siblings and Ekko was nowhere to be heard.
“How about you go and get washed up and resettled, hm?" Silco proposed. "I’ll be in the office if you need me.”
And with that, he was gone, and she was left there, reeling, alone. Alone.
Frozen, staring ahead of her at the door to the basement, where she and her siblings used to sleep. Even now, silent, the door seems to call to her, the ghosts of her past hissing in her ears.
So she runs.
She runs and runs, but she can’t escape. The voices travel with her, and in every corner, there seems to be a scribbled face watching.
The grief tearing out of her, wracked with voices and twisted faces worse than she has ever dealt with before, she runs and runs until she can't breathe anymore, and she finds herself scrambling up to a familiar rooftop, seeking the ability to breathe in a way that the Zaun air didn’t seem to allow.
The sight of it filled her head with twitching, glitches of memories. Vi leaning against her, grinning as she told her some outlandish story. Her and Ekko comparing their finds from the scrapyard, and dreaming out loud about the possible creations they could make from them. Mylo and Claggor chatting away, laughing and teasing.
The memory was so warm, and she was so, so cold.
And alone.
She had never been this alone before, and it ached, like a physical injury. Wrapping her arms around herself, her hands met the caked, dry blood scabbed onto her elbows and arms from her fall during the explosion.
Breathing felt like trying to flow up a balloon with a small hole in it, no breath seemed to do it, and she was choking on the useless, whistling gasps that tore through her.
Where was Vi?
She needed Vi, she needed her sister. Her sister would know how to fix this, fix her. She would kneel down beside her, and remind her how to breathe, and she wouldn’t be so alone.
But Vi isn’t here. Vi is gone, gone and she’s never coming back. She’s never– she’s never going to come back. She left. She left, left you. She left you because of what you did. She saw what you did and what you are, and she will never, ever come back now. She knows what you are. She knows what you are.
Powder sobbed, hands ripping at her hair, chest aching with panic and she still couldn’t breathe.
“Jinx” a voice snarled, as if right in her ear. Powder shrieked, hands pressing hard against her ears, fingernails digging into her scalp.
“Mylo was right”
“No,” she whimpered. “No, please!”
“You did this?”
“It was an accident,” she sobbed, dropping to her knees, wheezing for air.
“I told you to stay AWAY”
“Stop it, please, please please-”
“Because you’re a Jinx! Do you hear me? Mylo was right.”
“STOP IT!” She shrieked, voice cutting through the electric thrumming in her ears, and she was left alone with only the sound of the wind, her frantic breaths, and the city underneath her. It hurt almost as badly as the punch had.
She stayed there for a long time, just sitting on the rooftop, huddled in on herself, fingers sticky with fresh red blood that left its mark on the concrete beneath her.
The city kept on moving underneath her, the sun continued to go down, and people kept on with their lives.
Do they not know? Do they not know that the world ended?
Do they not know that nothing will ever be the same?
Numbly, movements jerky and stiff like she wasn’t controlling her own body, she felt herself moving. Walking in slow, mindless steps, she watched her feet carry her to the edge of the rooftop, stopping only as her toes were right on the ledge. She just stood there, swaying unsteadily as she looked at the unyielding world below her, and alongside the numbness in her chest, another sensation took root.
A sudden and sure answer to her question that had been rattling in her brain for hours.
How do I live with what I’ve done?
She can’t.
The words settled into her stomach, and for the first time, the noises quieted.
The ache settled, and the answer pulled at her, from far below.
How could she say no to such a gravity?
Powder knew only one thing now. There was no use denying it, and there was no good to come from tears or waiting. Powder has to die.
Powder killed her family. Powder was weak, and stupid. How could Powder live when Mylo, Claggor, and Vander were dead– where was the justice in that? There was no use for Powder left in this world anymore, she had made sure of that the moment she ignited that bomb.
She should’ve known, she never was a hero. She's a jinx. Mylo was right.
She stood there, no longer trembling, stepping forward just the smallest bit, feeling the rushing surge in her stomach as her toes went past the safety of the edge. She hovered over the city her sister had kept such dreams for, just like she had for her.
That was all gone now, up in ash and vanished like spoken promises.
She closed her eyes, and she could breathe again, feeling the wind whirl around her, and the desire to be anything other than she was swept over her. With one last breath, she steeled herself, swaying once again as she opened her eyes.
And when she did, the sky had changed.
The darkness almost hid the image of the broken city beneath her feet, the one she had been looking at her whole life, and all she could see was blinking lights.
Fireflies.
For a moment, she just stared at them, frozen and mesmerized, as they danced through the sky right in front of her. It was almost like stars, and for a moment, she didn’t feel so alone. For a moment, she felt almost new.
Her eyes fluttered from the glowing bugs in front of her, to the plunging depths below, and she took a step.
“Goodbye, Powder,” she murmured, voice low and calmer than she would’ve ever recognized within herself before.
Turning around and stepping away from the ledge of the roof, she felt as if her feet were made of lead, and yet somehow, she felt lighter than ever before. Maybe leaving yourself behind can do that.
__________________________________
She returned home to the Last Drop in the cover of the dark night like she had so many times before, but the Last Drop was no longer the same, no longer buzzing with light and life and warmth. But maybe that's okay, because she wasn’t the same anymore either.
Maybe the change could be good. Maybe it would make the memories of how things used to be hurt less.
Her footsteps echoed underneath her like some deathmatch, and she entered the office without so much as a knock.
Silco’s head snapped up at the unannounced intrusion, but his expression shifted as his eyes landed on her.
“Powder. I’m glad to see you back. I was worried you had gotten lost.”
But she just shook her head, expression unreadable and gaze dark, “Not Powder.”
At that, he frowned. “What’s that, child?”
She bit down on her lip, tasting the iron spark from it. “Powder’s gone. She was weak, and she was stupid. And I’m going to be something else entirely. Something I think I was always supposed to be.” Because you’re a jinx. She jinxes every job. Jinx. Jinx. J-
“Then who are you, dear?” Finally, she met his eyes.
“Jinx.”
Even now, even after claiming the name as her own, the word felt like a punch to the face every time she heard it.
Good.
Let her hurt. Let her feel that pain every time she was addressed. Let every word spoken to her remind her of what she did that night; of what she truly was. Let it burn her from the inside out, and make her something new, something stronger.
And she hoped that even after that, the name would continue to sting like a punch every time she heard it, because maybe, that feeling is the closest that she will ever be to her sister again.