Chapter Text
Jinx feels weird.
It’s not, like, bad or nothin’, just strange—and not in a way that’s super easy to describe, either, ‘cuz trying to focus on anything is hard for some reason.
She can’t exactly remember why, but something about the weird-ness of it all bothers her in the same way a bug bite might: scratchy in the think-y sense, like if she were to go pokin’ at it, it’d only bug her more.
Actually. Now that she’s got that idea floating around her skull, maybe she’d meant that literally: why does her head itch?
She doesn’t really process what she does in response what with her eyes shut ‘n all, yet, only that something touches her arm and then her head still itches and her hand’s back by her side. Honestly, the fact that she can even tell that much is prolly a blessing ‘cuz the more she tries to open her eyes, the more they seem to wanna stay jammed shut, and the harder she tries to pin down any specific thought, the faster they seem to fly outta reach.
It takes until she’s half asleep again before she figures out the problem, and even then, the rest of her head keeps on shuttin’ down without her permission like it’s somehow got a mind (heh, get it?) of its own:
It’s warm in here.
The first thing that greets her when Cassandra walks through the door is the visage of her daughter pacing the entryway to their estate, the look on her face betraying the plethora of thoughts flitting about her skull like songbirds between the foliage in the spring. When she spots her, Caitlyn walks up to her and starts launching into what is undoubtedly another tiresome speech about her word and the undercity and the agreement the Council had approved…but Cassandra's arms cut her off more effectively than any words ever would.
“Mother…?” Caitlyn asks, the tension the surprise embrace had caused leeching from her stance as Cassandra squeezes her slightly tighter. Her reaction is warranted: Cassandra had disappeared for the bulk of the day—for far longer than she’d expected to, with all of the arrangements she'd had to prepare in the spur of the moment—and given that her daughter’s…well, whatever Violet was to her was in plain sight, she probably hadn’t expected any sort of physical contact in her greeting (she’s simply never been one for such displays when those besides her immediate family were present).
It isn’t, as her child might have put it a few years ago, “in her style”…but frankly, after what she’d just had to witness, after the way that girl had looked…after what she’d said during transit…
Cassandra finds that she doesn’t give a damn.
She holds her longer than she typically might, longer than Caitlyn would have allowed her to in her teenage years, and when she finally pulls away and brushes a bit of her daughter’s hair out of her eyes, Caitlyn has been effectively struck silent, staring in a quiet awe-infused embarrassment. It takes until she catches Violet’s eyes for Caitlyn to fumble around for the words she’d likely carefully rehearsed in her head in preparation for this conversation (for it wouldn’t do to head into a negotiation without a plan), but Cassandra answers her question before any words escape her lips:
“I had her transferred. She’ll be arriving shortly.”
At this, her daughter’s face scrunches up in confusion, a frown marring her expression as her mouth opens once more—but to both of their surprises, Violet interrupts, her exhausted tone more pleading than it is anything else.
“I—to where?” She starts, the deep-set purple bags under her eyes the only part of her that truly lives up to her name, “I have to know where she’s going—please.”
They look so much alike.
She can feel her own face soften, if only just a bit. “Here.”
Caitlyn startles, and her…friend's mouth gapes like a fish. This time, however, her daughter beats her to the punch:
”What?!"
She thought that the afterlife would be different than this.
It’s not a complaint, really, just. She’d assumed that when people die or whatever, they got to see everything clearer or something—or maybe just get to relive all their mistakes so they can, you know, refract on them or something. Or is it reflect?
Err. Well, you get the point, probably.
But things aren’t clear here: thoughts and stuff come even muddier than they had back when she was alive, and considering all the crazy she had goin’ on back then, that was saying something. There’s no angel here, either, or Janna, or even the blue nightmare blobs or her brothers or…or Vander.
Just a whole lotta waiting and these weird tingles, that itch that’s never really gone away.
It’s annoying.
Still, whenever she thinks about stopping it or moving around or whatever, something always manages to distract her before she can actually go through with it…and the longer she thought about that, the weirder things became. Like, weren’t you supposed to be dismembered or disembodied or however that one you’re a ghost now word supposed to apply once you kicked the bucket?
Speakin’ of weird, wasn’t there something she’s supposed to…
Urf. Her head’s so itchy—
Clack!
Jinx’s eyes finally flit open at the unexpected noise, and though it takes a minute for the black spots to fade from her vision, when they do, well, she’s left with a whole heckuva lot more questions than answers.
Her hand comes up to itch her head again, but when that noise breaks the silence in this too-dark room she’s found herself in and something tugs at her wrist, she looks down to find that someone had cuffed her wrist to the wooden headboard with a long, jangly chain…which starts stirring up some kinda alarm in her, ‘cuz why the hell would the afterlife bother with something like that?
It makes her take a real good look around: first, her other hand’s free, and so are her legs (probably a dumb decision in Jinx’s opinion if Death actually wanted to keep her here, but then what does she know ‘bout that kinda thing?), and she sure as shit ain’t in that jumpsuit from before…her wrists got these thick bandages around ‘em (even the shackled one…which, now that she’s really lookin’ at it, is padded for some reason), and when her free hand comes to feel at her head, she finds that it’s wrapped up, too…
And the bed. It’s nice, it’s warm, and the covers are thick, and there’s, like, pillows and sheets and shit…nothin’ like she’d ever had back home.
Which is starting to add up to something she just don’t really like, because if you can bleed and itch ‘n all that, were you actually even dead?
And if she’s not dead, and she’s not in prison or the undercity…
Just where the fuck am I?!
The panic that sets in after that is enough to shake off some of the funk that’s been screwing with her head ever since she woke up, and Jinx forces herself to her feet…and promptly falls on her ass as her vision swims, that stupid fucking clink! following the loud thud her body makes as it hits the floor.
It’s much colder, outta the bed, and it makes her shiver more than it maybe shoulda, her ears ringing against the strain that forcing herself back to her feet’s turning into (is she in a fucking dress? why the fuck—)
The doorknob turns and her nerves catch fire, but she’s temporarily blinded by the light that spills in when the damned thing opens ad she shields her eyes with her free hand, taking on a defensive position even though she can barely keep upright and her head’s fucking spinning—
“Powder! You’re—”
But then, that name, that voice suddenly kicks her shit into an overdrive she didn’t know she even had right now.
She’s not really sure what happens after that, just that she kinda blanks out for a bit and when the world finally comes back into focus, she’s looking down at her—at Vi and her fucking Piltie girlfriend, the both of them standing with these twin wide-eyed stares at the door to the fanciest jail Jinx’s ever seen—
Wait. Down?
When she gets enough of her bearings to look around and actually, like, notice shit, she finds that she’s somehow managed to get into the rafters that she didn’t even know the room had, the other end of the chain-thing (does it still count as a handcuff if the other end ain’t on a hand?) dangling loosely below her with part ‘a the wood from the headboard she’d apparently ripped out resting on the floor below her. It makes her face screw up before she can really think much about it—how the hell had she—?
Somethin’ pink catches her eye and she looks down at this dress thing she’s got on just to watch the light spread across it shift a little, and that’s when she remembers the Doctor and that procedure…
They’re saying something below her, now, but Jinx ain’t much in a mood to listen, her mind reeling from all this…this shit that she doesn’t know how to process and the second one of them steps closer, she hastily pulls the rest of the chain and shackle up and curls one of her hands tighter around the wooden beam she’s holding so tightly to she thinks it might burst and—
“Jinx!” This no-nonsense voice calls from below her, pulling her outta her head long enough to fix them with what she’s hoping looks like a glare (but probably doesn’t, considering everything that’s goin’ on). There, moving to stand in front of a surprised looking Piltie and the ghost that used to be her sister, stands the most pretentious, entitled lookin’ middle-aged lady Jinx’s ever seen in her life. She also looks pretty unamused with this whole Jinx is chillin’ in the rafters thing she’s got going on here, too, which is just fucking fantastic, really, because now it probably seemed like she’d planned all this stupid fucking bullshit when all she actually wants to know is what the hell is even going on?!
“Jinx,” the old broad repeats, her voice quieter and laced with something Jinx can’t really understand seein’ as she’s not all with it at the moment. She forces her gaze back to her, scanning her face to try ‘n sort it out for herself, but it’s gone blank, now, and she doesn’t know what to do with that because—”come down from there.”
It makes her bristle, despite the whole lotta nothing she can read in her tone. Or maybe because of it: she ain’t a huge fan of, like, not knowing what’s going on—
When have you ever known what’s going on?
And oh great: now he’s here to join this fucking circus, isn’t that just fantastic?!
“Who the hell are you?” Jinx asks heatedly, hoping her anger will be enough to mask her own confusion…or fear. The lady’s expression doesn’t shift, but before she can answer, Vi’s twitching in the background gets her attention and Jinx bristles when she watches her start to boost herself up on this big ass wooden dresser to (she can only assume) come up and fetch her.
“Would you two mind giving us a moment?” The lady says, her voice oozing with an authority that makes her want to roll her eyes as much as narrow them (mostly ‘cuz the words ain’t directed at her).
Vi shifts to face her, and the younger Piltie hovers awkwardly, looking between Jinx and the broad with a nervousness that would honestly be pretty satisfying if she wasn’t like eight seconds from a fucking breakdown…but see, then, since she’s watchin’ ‘em so closely, she hears what the enforcer bitch actually says—
“That’s…really not a wise idea, mother.”
—and that, well, it makes all these dumb thoughts in her head resurface as she thinks it over: like, that’s her mom? Wasn’t…didn’t that mean she’s part of that Kira—whatever family, too?
Shit, does Jinx still owe them?
No no no, the nervous one quickly supplies while she tries to stop herself from spiraling, you paid them back already, remember? When you helped the dumb one get outta Zaun.
Yeah…yeah, sure, but—
Oh WAIT! She grits her teeth at his volume—the asshole is way too close to her ear, the one on the itchy side that tingles in pain with his words. You fucked that up, though, didn’t you? Almost got your sister blown to smithereens just ‘cuz you couldn’t keep track of what one little Piltie was doing!
Wait, no, that’s not fair! How was she supposed to know that fucking idiot was feeling extra stupid that night? She’d done her part—
You mean before, or after you kidnapped and almost killed her? Just asking for a friend.
“That’s not—I told you that wasn’t my fault!” She hisses at him, further irritated by the casual way he laughs it off.
But, if she jinxed the debt at repayment, does that mean they can still collect?
Shit…shit, what does it—
“Just who is it that you’re speaking to?” Jinx’s head snaps back at the younger Piltie, who’s watching her with that same, maddening look of pity that she’d so loved to fix her with in the undercity. She sets her jaw, shaking her head so she doesn’t do something stupid like attack the asshole who’d put her in this mess in the first place…although…
Where the fuck even is this place, anyways?
“Caitlyn,” the older Kira-whatever states sternly, the look in her eyes reminding Jinx of the way Sevika’d used to look at her when she dropped her guard one too many times in her hand-to-hand training. “Take your friend and leave us—there are guards in the hallway.”
“But—”
The Piltie cuts herself off at the reproachful look she gets from her mom, and Jinx watches as she leads Vi out (but not without the both of them stealing one last look at her before the door shuts behind them).
It leaves her alone, staring down at the Piltie with eyes that are probably more hostile than they should be considering she doesn’t really know what she’s up against, here.
Or where here even is.
Golly, that’s really gonna bother her!
“Will you climb down from there now?” Her tone is neutral, kinda like Silco’s would get during negotiations between the chem barons. He didn’t used ta’ let her go to those (and honestly, she didn’t really like going, either: they’re super fucking boring) when she was younger, and she’d thought she was missing out until he finally caved…and then it was just a buncha’ awful people (herself included…she’s deluded on a whole boatload of shit, but that ain’t one of ‘em) squabbling with each other about profit margins and personnel changes and Shimmer. Isha’d always get pissy when she was left out, but that was one thing neither her nor dad wanted to wrap her up in—like, that’s gotta be some kinda’ torture method, right? Death by boredom…but dad always said it was ‘cuz it was dangerous (which is probably fair). He’d kept having Jinx come with, years later, and it’s only when she figured out that her special brand ‘a crazy scared the hell outta ‘em that she pieced together why…
Now she’s hoping she can channel like a fraction of that spook factor here so the Piltie’d keep her distance and maybe tell her what’s going on…’cept she don’t look real spooked.
Just calm.
Still…she had shooed the dumb one away, and Jinx probably still owed them for that whole thing from when Isha was small (or, well, smaller)…
And honestly, she’s fucking exhausted and falling from this height without the adrenaline boost that panic had helped her keep going would really freakin’ hurt…
The lady’s face doesn’t shift even as Jinx lands on the admittedly soft carpet a few feet away, and she’s honestly kinda impressed the jumping hadn’t made her fall over (her vision takes a little longer to fully come back, though).
Jinx tenses when the lady takes a step forwards, and to her surprise, it makes the woman stop. She eyes the lady warily, that other half of the cuff in her hand twitching as she waits, but the graying lady only sighs and launches into an explanation.
“I think you’ve reopened the wounds on your wrist,” she answers carefully, not batting an eye when Jinx turns to look at the still-cuffed arm in surprise (yeesh, no wonder she’d been cold), “I was merely going to assess the damage: my husband is a doctor, and if it’s bad enough, I can have him—is everything alright?”
She stops when Jinx takes a step back at the words, her breath catching in her throat at the mention of the Doctor (admittedly, there’s a little part of her that knows there’s something not quite right with the way her brain’d processed that statement, but it’s drowned out by her exhaustion and her comforting ol’ pal, paranoia), and the lady, for the first time since she’d started yapping, seems at a loss for words.
Her mouth opens and closes once as she looks Jinx over—for what, Jinx is both reluctant and afraid to find out—before she…walks away?
The action catches her off-guard, and Jinx watches her as the lady sits on the edge of the bed. It…weirdly kinda makes her feel a little better? It’s like being in the rafters again, knowing someone is below you and within eyesight’s always made her chill out a bit. It’s probably why dad’d never care if she chilled up there while he worked—sometimes, especially in the early days, it was the only way she’d gotten any sleep.
When Jinx’s shoulders droop a little bit as some of the stiffness there starts easing up, the lady continues, her voice still pretty empty, but also somehow softer in a way that wasn’t just ‘cuz she’d gotten quieter.
“I understand that the prison staff didn’t treat you very well, and also that you likely have questions, so if you’re comfortable with it,” she gestures briefly to the bed next to her in silent invitation to come sit, “then I propose we forego the physician for the time being and have a discussion about how your circumstances have changed in recent days.”
…oh. Well. That doesn’t sound so bad…
Jinx bites the inside of her lip, thinking it over before she skirts towards the bed, but she leaves a good couple feet between them—the lady might be older, but so is Sevika, and she could prolly still get the jump on her if Jinx got close enough. The woman doesn’t comment on it, and soon enough, they’re both chillin’ there in an extremely awkward silence whilst Jinx irrationally fixated on the way her feet don’t quite touch the floor (stupid tall Piltie bed). When Jinx doesn’t speak for like a solid half a minute, the woman clears her throat and begins, her voice as light and steady as if they were just chatting about the weather and not, y’know, the whole terrorist thing she kinda had goin’ on for a bit there.
“As you've already seemed to gather, I am Caitlyn’s mother, and I currently serve on Piltover’s Council,” she doesn’t comment on the way Jinx fights to keep the scowl off of her face. “After my daughter insisted that I audit the facility in which you were detained and I found the conditions there to be unsatisfactory, I had you temporarily transferred here instead.”
Jinx’s face screws up at that (the city only had the one prison…where else would she ‘a even gone?), but the lady must know what she’s gonna ask before she even says anything because she continues a second later. “While the…staffing issues are being sorted at Stillwater, you’ll be staying at my estate—"
“Wait wait wait—you brought me to your house?!” When the woman doesn’t answer beyond an almost stern looking stare (for being interrupted, maybe?), Jinx can’t help herself from going on. “Guess I know where your kid gets her stupid from, then.”
The lady doesn’t immediately snap at her like Jinx thinks she will, instead fixing her in place with the sort of glare that’d put Sevika’s to shame. “I don’t tolerate that sort of diminutive language in this household, Jinx.” Jinx doesn’t flinch under her gaze (she’s been shot with way worse, sometimes even literally) and the lady’s face takes on a different expression as she looks her over…and then Jinx is rearing back from her outstretched hand—
Which, crazily enough, makes the Piltie stop.
“…I’m just checking for a fever, child—you’re rather pale.” The lady’s staring at her with a raised eyebrow, now, like her reaction to some rich, kidnap-py rando tryna’ touch her outta the blue was somehow the strange part of this interaction. Heck, she’s lucky Jinx doesn’t have her knives on her, ‘cuz usually when people get up in her business like that, it ain’t to see if she’s sick.
When she tells her that, though, the lady’s face screws up into the same pity as was on her kid’s earlier, and it pisses Jinx off…for a good half a second before her eyes catch on something that’s just chilling on the bed up by the pillows:
This fancy, grey shawl thing…
And it’s about at that point that some of the pieces click together for her.
“You’re the angel,” she mumbles in disbelief, a detached sorta horror beginning to chill her through the stupid gown. She knows that that probably sounds crazy to the lady, but she can’t bring herself to care, because if the angel was this dumb Piltie’s mom and that grey thing was actually here—
“Is there something wrong, Jinx?”
—then they’re really not gonna kill her, are they? Fuck, but…but back there, she thought she’d been so close…
She’s already furiously scrubbing at the tears leaking down her cheeks even before the lady finishes her question, and the only thing she does when the woman’s hand brushes against her forehead is squeeze her eyes shut, pulling her knees to her chest so she’s got something to hold onto. It’s clear by the way the woman freezes that she doesn’t know what to do—and that made two of them, because Jinx doesn’t know how to fix shit—but that doesn’t stop her from standing a moment later and leaving the room.
When she’s alone, she lets herself cry harder and her nails dig into her legs (they’re shorter than before, and cleaner, just like her hair…someone’s playing house, here, and Jinx is their doll) to try and drown out the words the boys keep screaming into her face.
Failure. Traitor. Pet. Weak. Baby. Coward.
Alone.
She can’t tell if it’s making it better or worse. Her nose is so full of stupid, leaky snot that she’s gotta breathe from her mouth, and it takes a lot of effort to keep herself from freaking out because the breaths come too quick, too shallow, and it makes her want to scream at the Pilties, at the world, at herself and she—
“—solutely burning up, and quite obviously delirious,” the words pick up through the door as the old angel broad’s clipped heels click against their fancy wooden flooring.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” a tired voice responds as the lock on the door flips open and the doorknob starts to turn, “without knowing what they gave her, there weren’t a lot of options for antipyretics we could give an unconscious juvenile even through an IV—”
Jinx freezes, her blood running cold at the thought of the Doctor sticking her with anything else. She’d stopped him, though, hadn’t she? Before he’d injected her with that last syringe?
So why was this happening? Is this even happening?
“It’s not real,” she forces herself to say, the words coming out in a rush as the door begins to open. They’re still talking, but she can’t hear any of the words over the sound of her own heart thudding against her ribcage, pounding in her ears. “I stopped him, He stopped, it’s not real!”
She holds herself tighter as the laughter grates in her ears, as the images of the Piltie superimpose over the Doctor and her sister and the explosion that’d nearly done her in, of the Boy Savior and his panic and if the ghost who didn’t even have the decency to stay dead…or at least to let Jinx take her place.
It’s what you deserve, you know.
She does. She does, they didn’t need to keep reminding her, she already—
She curls somehow tighter, perched there on the edge of the bed or the precipice of hell (who knows which), when something touches her shoulders, and she starts apologizing without really even knowing what it was for just to make them go away…
But it makes her feel…warm, after a while, and that forces her to pause. It’s nice, being warm.
When she lifts her head up a bit, there’s two middle-aged people standing a few feet away from her, watching her carefully, but like.
In a different kind of carefully?
The lady from before looks like she’s trying and failing at lookin’ emotionless like dad does (does Jinx get to call him that anymore? Would that make him angry?), but the only thing Jinx can really read there is concern, and that can’t be right (or maybe it could, if she’d get in trouble if Jinx didn’t fit well into the little box they’d thought up for her). The guy, though, he’s just staring at her with, like, the most gentle sorta look that someone’s shot her since Vander’d died, and that…
“Hello, Jinx,” the fella starts calmly, “my name is Tobias. I'm here to change the bandages on those cuts you got there and give you some stuff that will make them feel better. Is that ok?”
He…asks? As in, he wants her answer? When he doesn’t move to touch her or dig in the bag he’d brought with him or anything for a minute, Jinx wipes her face with her arm and swallows, the blanket around her shoulders shifting as she moves.
“What…what kind of stuff?”
She’s going to get someone prosecuted for this, for the way this girl is flinching back or shying away from every near touch or offer of treatment. What the hell had they done to her to make the child this resistant to everything?
Given the bruises that littered her too-small frame or the way she reacted to even the mention of needles, it wasn’t anything pleasant…but still. Her husband may have presented the treatment as an offer, but in reality, should the child refuse, they’d get the security detail waiting in the hall to subdue her, if they had to. Cassandra’s hoping it wouldn’t come to that: Tobias is a pediatrician, and he had a way of making unpleasant procedures more palatable to the children he worked with by presentation alone. Jinx may not be a child (though Cassandra’s not entirely convinced this is true, and even supposing it was, she’s not that far off, either), but she lacked the impulse control and processing capabilities of an independent adult at the moment—whether that be because of untreated mental illness, the odd Shimmer residue found in her blood, or her current malnutrition and fever, Cassandra isn’t sure.
It’s honestly impressive, the way he’s able to get her to agree to let him work with her, and he’s patient in a way that’s endearing because in all their years of marriage, that had never once flagged. He explains what every pill he sets out for her is used for, and though the girl is obviously wary about some of it, she agrees to try them, for now, and flushes a bit when Tobias thanks her for being brave. Unfortunately, none of them are psychiatric medications; Cassandra is no doctor, but the girl’s panicked behaviors and words spoken to people that aren’t in the room with them seem like they would warrant treatment, but since she had no formal diagnoses, Tobias isn’t a psychiatrist, and the girl still has a raging fever and (likely) traces of the cocktail of drugs they’d shot her up with in the prison's isolated infirmary, those simply weren’t an option for now. Besides, in her current state, as Tobias had explained to her the night prior, they may do more harm than good.
For now, she had to rest, get through her sickness, and then perhaps Cassandra would schedule a home visit with a mental health practitioner. Then, and only then, would she allow the girl any visitors outside of herself and her husband (why Caitlyn or their guest felt the need to insert themselves into this delicate situation now is something that she’d address the moment the door to the guest room locked behind her). She doesn’t intend for her stay here to feel like an imprisonment, but there would be rules she still needed to follow until they can get her back to either a significantly reformed Stillwater or a vetted and refurbished inpatient facility in town.
She couldn’t very well stay here forever: Cassandra is a member of the Council, and this girl would require quite a bit of supervision (and not just for herself, but for anyone even remotely close to her)…she simply doesn’t have the time for it, and to be perfectly candid, Cassandra doesn’t want her here. She may pity the child, yes, but she’d put Caitlyn in quite a lot of danger several times over, now. It was just too much risk. Still, she’ll do her due diligence: the girl won’t suffer from poor care, wherever she ended up, and in the meantime, she’d be treated as something of a mandated houseguest…one that required a bit more assurance than most that she was going to be staying (not that she’s actually worried the child would go anywhere, considering that she’d given herself up voluntarily, but then that might have been due to her own delirium) than most others they might have entertained in the past.
When her husband eventually pulls away with a pat on the girl’s shoulder that she flinches away from, Cassandra eyes the discarded chain-link cuffs on the plush area rug before suppressing a sigh. Unless she were to install some sort of cement or metal anchor for one end of the restraints to be secured to, the measure was next to pointless: she was simply too strong not to, apparently, rip out chunks of the wooden headboard otherwise, and it’s not as if there were many other places to secure them. She could have the girl sleep in the Hextech prototype ones commissioned specifically for her by the Council and the prison (they’d provided them to her estate upon the child’s release), but it wouldn’t stop her from leaving, just from moving her hands (or fingers, what with the strange cloth mitten-like devices built in around the insides…and they wouldn’t be particularly comfortable to sleep in, either).
She has Tobias take the metal with him on his way out, impressed that he hadn’t so much as brought up the girl’s treatment of their daughter whilst they spoke. He’d been extremely reluctant to allow her in their home at first, but once he’d gotten a look at the poor state she was in, he’d abruptly changed his tune. It also helped that Caitlyn herself had admonished him for it at first, though why she was so insistent upon aiding the child is still something of an enigma to Cassandra despite the repeated explanations…
She suspects it has something to do with her “not-girlfriend” that was staying in the nearest guest room to her daughter’s own.
As the door shuts behind Tobias, Jinx shivers, unconsciously drawing the overcoat Cassandra had left with her since they’d left the prison tighter around her until she realizes just what it is. To her surprise, it only makes the girl’s gaze grow distant, and it takes until the third or fourth call of her name for Jinx to respond to her as she speaks.
“I’ll have the kitchen staff whip up something for you: do you have any allergies?”
Jinx shrugs, and Cassandra’s unsure if she even registered what was being asked, the way she stares straight ahead.
“…I’ll have to ask your sister, th—”
The teen bristles at that, a set of startled, but dangerous eyes fixing the Councilor in place that serve to silence her as effectively as a slap ever could have.
“When the fuck did you talk to my sister?”
She sounds worried…how strange.
Cassandra stares down at her, perplexed, as she struggles to keep the emotion from reaching her face. “Child, you saw her conversing with both myself and my daughter not even a half an hour ago.”
Just like that, most of the tension leaks out from her hunched form, and Jinx looks away in…annoyance? “Oh. That’s what you meant…,” there’s so much distaste in her tone that it has Cassandra raising an eyebrow before she can stop herself, but luckily, the girl still hasn’t turned to face her to notice. There’s a pause, then. “She’s not my sister—and I’m not a kid.”
It comes out defensively, maybe petulantly, and that only serves to further her point, but something about her statement…
“Then just who were you referring to, Jinx?”
There’s another pause, some realization or another flitting behind too dull eyes beforehand expression clears, leaving behind only the exhaustion that her and likely everyone else in this house have become all too familiar with in the past several weeks. Unsure of what else to do (perhaps she should have had Tobias take over? But then, this was her foolish endeavor to begin with…), she resolves to go sort the matter out with the kitchen staff as the girl needed to eat, but just as she stops in front of the door, the child speaks up once more:
“’m not allergic to shit, lady.”
She pauses for just a moment before she leaves, and with a last look at the girl still wrapped in her overcoat, she answers a question the girl had yet to ask.
“My name is Cassandra.”