Chapter Text
Jinx isn’t really sure how long it’s been.
She’d gotten really bored after a while (not that she really knows what that means, not that the trays that come under the slot in the door are in regular enough intervals that she coulda kept track even if she had all her marbles) and started calling out for people—she knew they were there, they hadta’ be there, because the food was real…not that she ate much of it, but it smelled real enough—but they never answered her, and the boredom became all consuming.
They hadn’t ever unshackled her wrists, and after she'd slipped out of one of ‘em the first time (or at least, the first time they caught on) so she could stretch her arm, they’d sent like half a dozen people in to fix that with newer, better ones that buzzed with the same energy as Fishbones. They came complete with these weird glove-like things on the end, too, so now she couldn’t even unball her hands any.
That all made trying ta’ eat a huge pain in the ass, and honestly, she wasn’t real hungry anymore, anyways, so after they did the old switcheroo, she stopped bothering entirely. What did it matter, she reasoned, if she actually kicked the bucket here? As long as they played their cards right and pretended Jinx was still stuck here, Silco wouldn’t even know—and by the time he eventually figured something was wrong, he prolly wouldn’t even care anymore, anyways. Jinx had fulfilled her purpose: he doesn’t have a use for her anymore…and typically, when people outlive their usefulness around dad…
She tells the guards—or whoever’s listening (is it anyone, or had they just left her here to rot? Are the footsteps she heard really even there, or is it Mylo, here to gloat?)—all of that and more, just babbling on and on because she can’t help it because it’s all just so boring and it’s giving her time to think and she doesn’t want to think.
The trays stop mattering, eventually. The smell might have bothered a Piltie, but Jinx grew up around worse, and since the cell was filthy anyways, well. It reminded her of home, kinda, on the days (has it been days, or is this all just one terribly long night? There’s no sunight here to tell…) it didn’t drive her fucking crazy. When her vision gets so bad from the not eating thing that she can’t stand it any longer, she drags herself to a corner farthest from the shitty door, pleased at least that the chain had enough give to let her pick her own final resting place.
She’d ‘a been content to go out like that, too, only that’s when the Pilties seemed to remember she existed.
She’s sorta out of it (ok, really out of it) when they come by again, and by the loud way the fella in charge is talkin’, he ain’t real happy with the other people, either, but Jinx doesn’t care; she only wants him to stop so she can go back to existing in the comparably quieter place in her mind, and it ain’t like she can tell what he’s even goin’ on about, anyways. It all just sounds like slush.
He doesn’t stop…and then, they don’t leave her alone.
It’s only when she spots the needle that she realizes she shoulda paid more attention after all.
Apparently, they’re not expecting her to fight back. It’s fair, probably, but also kinda stupid, because just going along with it all last time's what fucked her up so bad in the first place.
Or was it two times ago?
“Dad shoulda lemme go,” she slurs, twisting outta their grip before they can jab her with anything. It won’t kill her: if they wanted that, it'd be showier, she’s sure, and she’d heard something like orders and Council and transport, ‘an she figures, ya’ know, she loads ‘em enough, they let her off with a bullet to the brain as opposed to whatever the rich pricks in office wanted with her.
“The hell are you talking about, lady?!”
“Shit, how can she even fucking move?!”
“Is she dangerous? Should we wait a little longer—”
“If you idiots had stalled anymore than you already had, we’d have to move her in a casket instead of a gurney: what the hell were you even—”
Urf. He’s so loud. She just wants it all to end.
“—ny idea how much shit we’d be in if she keeled over here?!”
“Stop…,” they aren’t listening to her; the skinner guy’s makin’ even the lady holding the syringe antsy.
“How the hell am I going to explain that to the Councilors?!”
Jinx has no idea what they’re on about, but it’s too much it’s too much it’s too much—
“Sir, we didn’t—”
“Bullshit! Count the trays in here, Powell!”
“But—”
Jinx whimpers, the urge to clamp hands that she can’t fucking move so overwhelming it makes her shake. She twists out of the lady’s hold and falls back against her corner, pleading for something to make them stop so her ears stop ringing like this—all that time in the silence made the added noise too loud, and now she can’t tell what’s real—
“COUNT THEM!!!”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
She slams her head back into the wall until the noise dims down some. They don’t like it, there’s cursing and movement and people, but since it’s not all-consuming anymore, she passes out with a smile on her face that makes them all go rigid instead of…whatever it was that was in that vial.
And who knows? Maybe she’d done it hard enough that this’ll really be it after all.
Cassandra’s heels click against the hardwood floor in the study as she listens to her daughter and the Talis boy plead their case once more, mildly annoyed that Caitlyn had saw fit to broach the topic for the what must be the fifth time in the last twenty four hours.
“I’m sorry, but my hands are tied,” she tries, only keeping her mounting irritation from her voice for this…Violet’s sake. Why she was still staying at their estate was something of an enigma to Cassandra, but she’s long since stopped inquiring as to her daughter’s romantic proclivities. Honestly, in any other situation, she might have been happy Caitlyn had chosen to start dating again: ever since she’d got it into her head to enlist, she’d staunchly refused to show any interest in such matters, citing a “lack of time” since her sole focus (besides simply driving her mother to an early grave with her reckless disregard for her own life) was to make a name for herself in her chosen career.
If only she hadn’t gone with the only known blood relation of Piltover’s most wanted criminal. Every action Caitlyn took reflected on their House and, by extension, the Council as a governance…and what sort of reflection has that been, recently? Her daughter had illegally released a prisoner in Stillwater Hold, blindly ran to the undercity to track down a dangerous, quite possibly deranged criminal alone, and then went behind all of their backs to make a deal with the man orchestrating this recent bout of mass hysteria without consulting Cassandra about it until after it was presented in front of the Council.
It was taxing, to say the least…more so now because of what she and her longtime friend were asking of Cassandra.
“I know what it would entail, mother, but please: she needs help, and Stillwater Hold cannot provide the sort of psychiatric care necessary for her rec—”
Cassandra sniffs, unimpressed by the argument. “I’m well aware of her troubles, Caitlyn, but the safety of Piltover’s citizenry must come before the needs of a single disturbed criminal. There are no facilities in the city that are equipped to hold such a danger to society besides the one in which she currently resides in.”
The woman with the off-pink hair (not a dye, if the reports on Jinx’s own roots are to be believed) turns away at that, the exhaustion clear in the lines of her face enough to soften Cassandra’s tone as she continues. Like it or not, that is still her sister, and there was no need to antagonize the woman of Caitlyn’s fancy anymore than this situation undoubtedly already had.
“I’m sure they’re handling her with more care than they’d afford to most: her safety is necessary to ensure the undercity maintains their word.”
Violet scoffs, running a hand down her face as she starts pacing once more. Cassandra nearly corrects her out of habit: she’s about Caitlyn’s age, and showing any sort of behavior that could be perceived as a weakness to someone you’re actively debating is ill-advised…but she stays her tongue. The words would fall on deaf ears, and the poor girl had been through enough, if their story is to be taken at face value.
“With respect, Councilor Kiramman,” the Talis boy cuts in, his words easily carrying through the study without needing to raise his voice, “that just isn’t true: I’ve heard first-hand accounts that the conditions where they’re keeping her are well below even the death-row standard. She gave herself up willingly—is this how we’re planning on showcasing that sort of cooperation to Zaun?”
Cassandra quirks an eyebrow at him, looking up from her paperwork with a frown. “’First-hand’? However would you have managed that?”
“I…may have bribed a guard?” The nervous twinge to his voice nearly causes her gaze to flatten, but he rushes on as if worried he’d lose the nerve to continue if he left enough time for her to respond. “But my point still stands: Zaun is its own nation, now, and tensions are already concerningly high between us right now because of how this all played out; what happens when they discover how she’s being treated by the City of Progress itself?”
She doesn’t bat an eye. “Are you sure this has nothing to do with that other reason you mentioned when you first broached the subject to me?”
To the boy’s credit, he doesn’t miss a beat. “Are you sure you’re not dodging the question?”
Her lips thin, but she sets the papers aside. “She’s dangerous, Jayce—that girl managed to waltz right past not only the Academy’s security, but our House’s personal detail as well. She blew up a building, killed at least a dozen people, and kidnapped and nearly murdered my daughter—and that pales in comparison to the catastrophe she nearly caused with the Hextech that the undercity still retains ownership of today. A person like that cannot be allowed to circulate amongst the general populace.”
What she does not mention is her true concern: that this “Silco’s” reach may extend to the inpatient facilities available in the city proper. All it would take was a single bad apple to spoil this fragile peace—whether they freed the girl or killed her would be irrelevant at that point: once she was gone, all hell would surely break loose. They can’t afford that, coming so close to war. The city still had scars from the event well over a decade old that had nearly caused one, and that rift had never truly healed. If the undercity’s population was no longer her concern, then they couldn’t do this for Piltover’s even more so than before. It’d take possibility and morph it into certainty.
“She also saved Cait when she was nearly discovered by Silco’s people,” he reminds her assertively, “and she didn’t resist any when she was removed from her sister and Cait’s custody at the station, either. I saw how she moved—she could have easily gotten away or slaughtered the officers on duty there. But she didn’t, because she wants this peace deal to stick. I won’t pretend I understand her reasons, but I do believe she won’t try to run or stir up trouble just to cause more chaos.”
Foolish boy, she thinks grimly, the girl isn’t the only problem.
“I promised her she would be safe here, mother,” Caitlyn tries, fixing her in place with the same look as a recently kicked puppy. “Please?”
Cassandra weighs her options. By now, after nearly ten days since the agreement to conditionally emancipate Zaun was signed into law, she knows the two of them aren’t just going to drop the matter. She isn’t going to transfer the girl as they wish to, however; it would simply cause too many issues, come with too many risks and too little supervision to be practical (and she doesn’t just mean for Jinx)…but she can’t very well just brush them off: she doesn’t want her daughter to do anything too rash out of desperation, and with Violet’s presence and Jayce’s own near-hysteria, that’d assuredly be a given unless she at least appeared to address their concerns.
Even if they had ulterior motives.
“I will visit Stillwater Hold tomorrow afternoon to see the conditions myself—alone,” she adds pointedly when Caitlyn tries to cut in. “If I deem them to be unsatisfactory, then I will see to it that it is corrected,” she had authority to do more than that, but she felt no need to elaborate on anything since this was all a preposterous waste of her time to begin with, “but if I find them acceptable, then you will both drop this subject and move on. Am I clear?”
Two reluctant nods are all she needs to dismiss them, though given the way Violet had already slipped out of the room…
She suppresses a sigh, her gaze shifting out the window towards where her impromptu unannounced visit would lead her come tomorrow.
Don’t do anything stupid, girl.
It’s not it.
When she wakes up again, it’s to a head that’s too slow and heavy, to arms that are triple secured to these metal posts along a bed she doesn’t want to be in, to thoughts that seep through her mind and out her ears slower than molasses (which, she’d read once, was pretty fucking slow besides just having a shit name)…and to an otherwise empty room.
It doesn’t stay empty for very long, but that’s because the boys have never known when to just leave her the fuck alone and she can’t stop the irritated words that drip from her lips like unwanted messengers because with no use of her arms (she hadn’t bothered trying with her legs; they don’t even really feel attached to her right now) and nothing else to focus on, it’s the only thing that her attention’s really drawn to.
It's creepier than usual, though—like their words are spoken through static or huge metal pipes, like she’s looking at silhouettes a room away…it’s all just so fuzzy which only makes everything worse.
She hates it. She hates this, and though she doesn’t really register she’s making a racket, her caterwauling must be annoying enough that it pisses whoever’d jammed her here off, because a bit later people come in the room with more shit in a syringe and she’s out before she even registers what’d happened.
The next time she gets up, she feels terrible—she’s freezing, the lights in the room are too bright, the voices around her too loud, it’s too much—but the thing that catches her attention the most is the way someone’s hand is sliding a needle attached to this bag looking thing into her arm, and it…she just.
Snaps.
She’s not even really sure exactly what she does or how she does it—but one second, she’s laying in their cold ass bed like the one the Doctor had strapped her down in, and the next she's holding the bloody end of it up and standing behind the upturned gurney-thing trying not to vomit out her own organs onto their floor so they don’t start screaming again, and Mylo’s laughing at her, but it comes out all wrong and the room’s spinning, the red of her arm twists in time with the frantic beat of her own heart and the people in the room flinch away even as she presses herself into the wall—
—one way out, Powd—
“—st drop the IV, kid, you’re hurting yours—”
Scared, scared, they’re all scared—
Her hands come to bracket her head to get them to shut it already but the other people in the room don’t like it for some reason (why are they so nervous?), but something in the hall distracts them before they can bother her anymore (why can’t they just leave heralone?). She takes the opportunity to itch the wet spot above her ear and something falls from her hand as it opens with the motion, but she’s sweating too much to care.
“—hat on Runeterra is going on in there—”
“—a’am, we can’t let you in—”
“It’s not saf—“
Jinx whimpers, the sound coming out funny to her ears as her fingers dig further into the itch, but she forces her chin up on her knees anyways (when had she sat down…?) so she can get a good look at the new faces appearing just on the edge of perception through the doorway.
More words are spoken, but she doesn’t hear them as she sees someone step into the room Jinx had half-destroyed in an effort to escape the Doctor (was it him? He’d had bags…they had bags…what was…?) and the liquid, but the look on their face is all wrong and she has to look away, suddenly too sick to pretend she could stomach the way the world’s still tilting anymore as she tucks her face into her knees.
Maybe if you weren’t such a baby—
“Stop…”
She’s not sure who says it, or if it’s even out loud or real, but when something gets closer to her and the sound reaches her ear like the bells in a clock tower, she decides she can’t do this, can’t wait for them to just end this like she’s been waiting for anymore and her head snaps up hard against the wall as she shakes, hoping they’ll be too afraid to get any closer…
“Make it stop,” she whispers to the someone now hovering there against the wishes of herself and the blurry globs of blue in the background, “I can’t take it anymore, I’m scared, just make it stop!”
The voices from everyone but the someone grow louder, twitchier, more frantic as the person in the grey gets closer, but Jinx can’t, she can’t, and she forces her eyes shut as her nails dig deeper into the itch she hopes will just stop forever, flinching hard when something brushes against her forehead.
Cold. Why was everything so cold?
Their voice is louder, now, and since it’s not warm like not-Vi had been on that rooftop, she knows for sure they’re not real and the thought makes her laugh, but it comes out just as wrong as everything else and the thing pulling away from her forehead pauses before retracting completely.
What they say doesn’t matter, but what they do bothers her, at least at first. Their hand settles back on Jinx’s head, this time on her hair, and Jinx curls tighter into a ball as if it could make them disappear. It doesn’t work (nothing she ever does works—)
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
She flinches back at the words, the tone softer and different than the Grey Person had sounded like before. She wants to argue (they couldn’t know that—or maybe they could, since they’re not real…), but all that comes out is her own quiet whisper of “cold” because everything is still freezing, because her arms are tingling and tight with the stiff pain that’d come from not moving for as long as she did.
But how long had that even been?
Something’s draped over her shoulders, and it nearly makes her jolt before she realizes how warm it is. It takes longer than Jinx cares to admit to realize that when next the Grey Person speaks, it’s to answer her question.
That’s ok, though: she knows they can hear her thoughts. They’re like her brothers…
“Evidently too long. Much too long.”
Heh. Evidently. Ev-eh-dent-lee. Sounds funny.
The hand on her head pats it a couple of times before brushing a bit of her hair back behind an ear. It felt weirder than normal, and Jinx unconsciously reaches to feel for it by her side only to come up grasping at air.
Weird.
In between parts of a conversation she doesn’t have the presence of mind to follow even if she wanted to, the Grey Person chats with her a bit, making her wonder, idly, what nice thing she had killed to get haunted by such a chatty ghost.
Maybe they weren’t all that chatty and she was just thinkin’ they were—wouldn’t be the first time she’d made that mistake. Either way, their presence here, even if not really there, is enough to kinda pull her away from the room and the blue and the red, and she sorta just floats in that pleasant dullness, uncaring of the way the boys try and engage her or of the heated words that are exchanged too far above her head for her to hear.
At some point, dull grey fades to black, and Jinx silently thanks the Grey Angel of Death for making it finally stop.