Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mining in the Fissures was brutal, back-breaking work. It was incredibly dangerous and the pay was shit. You spent ten hours per shift in claustrophobic darkness, breathing in the toxic fumes while chipping away at the crystalline Fissure ore with substandard equipment. The pace of the labor was crushing and there a thousand ways to maim yourself or die while doing it. And then you had the majority, the vast majority, of the profits stolen from you by the Piltie bosses. But in the Undercity, life gave you few options. You labored or you joined a gang.

Or in Silco’s case, you did both.

And you treasured your off-shift hours like the sack of golden hexes he had hidden in the dining table’s false leg. And an off-shift period where Vander was gone with Connol and Benzo on a topside smuggling operation? Where he had the bunkhouse to himself? That was like he was standing on the Promenade; wearing clothes he’d never be able to afford, smoking and drinking the tobacco and liquor he always dreamed about and watching a flaming airship filled with Sun-Kissed nobles crash into the Pilt. Silco had intended to enjoy this solitude with some extra rest and then writing down ideas for his and Vander’s nascent crew. What they could do and what they could be.

That had been what he intended to but life and Felicia chose not to cooperate. He closed his journal and tried to process what the tiny typhoon who had just whirled into his home had yelled at him. She was prone to saying provocative and outrageous things whenever they came into her head but surely, he had misheard her.

“Come again?"

"That's what I'm trying to do!" She flashed him that big bratty grin of hers.

Silco rolled his eyes and sat up in his bunk. The twenty-year-old miner looked at the sixteen-year-old girl leaning her hip against the table. He had known her all her life. They had been raised at the same Lanes orphanage together. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do for her. Silco had been responding automatically to her requests since they were both grubbers. When a six-year-old tugged on his tattered shirt and lifted an empty bowl up with big pleading blue eyes. The ten-year-old boy, skinny and hungry himself, just wordlessly scrapped half of his own bowl of gruel into hers.

He had never been able to say no to her. But this was a roof-jump too far; he rubbed the bridge of his aquiline nose and sighed.

"Fel, I'm not taking your virginity."

The purple-haired technician’s apprentice puffed out her cheeks, crossed her arms over her chest and stomped her brown work boot on the packed earth floor of the bunkhouse. Somehow coming across as more imperious than any Piltie princess despite in actuality being a self-educated Lanes orphan. She huffed and looked away.

"Why not? I ain't pretty enough for ya rat-bozo?"

Silco snorted and sat up from his thin, scratchy mattress. He put his bare feet on the dirt floor. At least they could have this conversation in private. He and Vander had to bust the heads of a few attempted squatters but their claim on this unused storeroom in a played out mine tunnel held. This bunkhouse of theirs was small, simple and warm. It was Silco’s first ever……home. Felicia lived in a female worker dormitory and was always knocking down their door. Not that he minded. Except on the nights she would sleep over. No matter who’s bunk she crawled into, his or Vander’s, her chainsaw-like snoring could be heard no matter how much of his bond-brother’s boxing tape he stuffed in his ears.

The young man was thin but muscled, he worked, stole or fought every day. His pale olive skin was one of the normal Undercity human hues. His features were sharp; he had big ears, a large pointy nose and prominent cheekbones. His teeth were sharp, crooked and his smiles tended to be small. They turned into sneers whither he meant them to or not. Her many rat-based nicknames for him were not unearned. But Silco also had fine and lovely dark brown hair which he wore long. The back was tied in a messy manbun while he had a single bang that hung almost insolently over the left side of his face.

Silco also had a pair of lovely blue-green eyes.

He reached over to the old, many times patched sewed, leather jacket hanging on the bunk post by his pillow. The young man reached into a pocket and pulled out a battered pack of three-washer Heap brand cigarettes and a book of matches. He tapped a cylinder of tobacco out, stuck it in his mouth and struck a match against the splintered bedframe. Silco held the match up and made a small production of lighting the cheap cigarette. Felicia stood there and fumed while she waited for him to answer her. Such a quick temper on her, he enjoyed teasing her and only deigned to respond after blowing out the first drag.

"You know very well that you're beautiful. Now, where's this coming from?"

She blushed at his words and looked away, one of her hands going to tug on the small purple braid on her right shoulder. Silco smiled at the reaction. He wasn’t lying or being nice. In the last year, Felicia had grown-up on him. The skinny little street rat that had always been running behind him had blossomed into proper Undercity rose. Her purple hair was long, down to her shoulder blades when unbound. Some days he would stand behind her in the line for the lifts at the start of the shift, idly braiding it for her as she yawned and they both waited for their turn to descend into the hell where they worked.

Felicia was only about four inches shorter than him now. Her face was that of an adult, her chin came to point and she had a proud, pointy (smaller than his) nose. A bit of baby fat stubbornly clung to her cheeks, right under those big beautiful steel-blue eyes. Eyes that shone with intelligence and danced with mischief and that always lit up when she saw him. Her body drew his eyes, that flat little girl was gone. She was a worker like him, she was lean and muscular. But the teenager had a healthy bosom and a delicious set of hips on her. Silco blinked in surprise as a fact truly sank in for the first time.

Felicia was a woman now.

"You always leave the Drop with a pretty girl or a hot guy. You're a big slut. I figured you'd know what you're doing."

That surprised a bark of laughter out of him, she was charming as always. Silco leaned back on the bunk, seeing her in a new light. She was looking at him with a familiar determination. The same look in her eyes when she was reviving an ore-crusher or repairing piping systems. But there was also hesitancy and a bit of fear. Silco knew why. He knew why she waited until the two brawny reasons she would be worried about were out of the city. Reasons he cared about as well and didn’t want to hurt.

"Connol or Vander would be doing backflips if you offered either of them this. Why me Felicia?" She blushed, harder than before, at his question. But he needed to ask. They all loved her. But she had her eye on them, not him. She looked up at the timbers on the ceiling.

"That's why I'm asking you. They're….complicated. You ain't. You're my friend. I trust you and you won't read into it. I want to learn about this, I want to experience this. I don’t want go to Babette’s either, before you suggest it.”

“Oh? But you will engage the services of this big slut?” She rolled her eyes and cocked her head at him.

“Sorry, that was a bit mean. But….you are the most knowledgeable person I know. I’ve heard the stories from Benzo and Connol and I know you’ve…...been….with Vander.” Now it was his turn to cock his head at her tone.

“Does that bother you?” Felicia bit her lip and shook her head.

“The opposite. We’ve all been in each other’s pockets since we were kids. We fought, scrapped, begged and worked together, why not the other stuff? It’s why I’m asking you to give me hand….and more! Heh. But seriously, Vander trusts you with everything and so do I.”

Janna damn this girl, Silco thought as his pride flared. She always slipped right passed his defenses like smoke. Hmmm. He should still say no, it could all end in a very messy situation. He was about to err on the side of caution when Felicia sat next to him on his bunk and took his hand. Her hand was smaller than his but just as rough. Calloused, scarred fingers intertwined with his. Silco was surprised to feel his pulse quicken.

"Silco…...please?"

Had he ever said no to her? About anything?

He looked at her and also realized something else.

He wanted her.

Those big blue eyes, fucking unfair. Silco stuck his cigarette in his mouth and reached over to her, brushing the hair away from her face. The sixteen-year-old looked at him expectedly, awaiting his surrender. He gave it to her.

"Ok Felicia." She grinned and hooted happily. Then she looked at him, bit her bottom lip and cocked her head.

"What do we do first?" Silco raised an eyebrow at her nervous tone and smiled around his smoke.

“Do you know how boys and girls are different?” Felicia groaned and slapped his shoulder.

“Rat!” He leaned over and sneered back as their noses met.

“Brat!”

A charge, like a chem-battery whirling up, passed between them and Silco turned his head slightly, rubbing the tip of his nose against hers. He whispered to her.

“What have you already done?” She smiled and rubbed her nose back against his.

“Kissing, durr. Been felt up too, I liked it.”

“By which one?” She smirked and stuck her nose in the air as she answered.

“Both.” Silco was impressed but not surprised. Felicia was smart, crafty and pragmatic. Like any Undercity woman should be. He was proud of her, she was a survivor and didn’t let herself get swept up by the first fuckwit to buy her a Jericho’s burrito or a ticket to the flicker-shows. His next whisper was heavier than his first.

“Cheeky little girl. This isn’t just about what it feels like to fuck. You’re going to screw them both and you want to be able to tell who’s better. Oh….and you want them panting after you even harder than they currently already are. What a minx you are.” Her shrug was perfect insolence and her whisper was raspy with promise.

“Gotta check the tool kit and read the operating manual before you turn the chem-engine on. I love them both but I want to see who fits me best. You can help me do that. Plus, I knew you’d say yes when you lit that smoke. I know my rat.”

That arrogance and the affection mixed with selfishness along with that cold math that any Trencher would recognize. She knew life was a haggle and she had to get the best deal she could. Silco found himself incredibly turned on by her and a thought flashed in his head like a neon sign.

‘Either Vander or Connol will fit her better than me but I’ll fuck her first. No matter what, she’ll always be mine.’

“Stand up.” Her eyes widened at his growl and she obeyed. He liked that.

Felicia stood and Silco took a final drag of his cigarette before pinching it out and flicking the butt away. He stood and looked at her. She had taken to wearing simple dresses off-shift, saving up her cogs for them. She said she liked how they made her feel after half a day in work overalls and engineering boots. This preference had not gone unnoticed, with both Connol and Vander buying them for her. The tan one she was wearing today was from Vander, Silco had been with him when he bought it. Actually, he had been the one to pick it out, after the big fighter had stood in front the dress rack at the clothing stall for thirty Janna-damned minutes, unable to make a decision. Silco had chosen this color because he thought it would look good against her purple hair. He looked her up and down and knew he had been right.

She was wearing a brown leather harness-corset over it. She had a toolkit and blade attached to it. Silco didn’t see any reason to go slow, the girl was here for a reason. He lifted a hand to the corset’s shoulder strap and flicked the buckle open. His hands moved to the laces in the middle and he quickly untied it. Dropping the rig to the floor without a second look. He took fistfuls of the dress.

“Arms up.” Once again, she obeyed. Bratty little Felicia, who normally complained and yapped like she was being paid by the word, silently obeyed him. His cock throbbed in his pants as he pulled the dress off her and tossed it on her corset. He didn’t look anywhere but her eyes….yet.

“Sandals off.” She flicked them off her feet, her eyes never left his either. Felicia was nude now except for a leather bracer on her left wrist and the leather chokers she wore around her neck. Silco stepped back and then let himself look.

Janna. She was so fucking beautiful. It had been a handful of years since he last saw her naked. Back when they kids in the public baths. Those hips were just appetizing as he thought they’d be. Silco wondered what her skin felt like. The purple hair between her legs was a shade darker then on her hair and curly. His eyes wandered up her torso to her tits. Felicia had filled out with a pair of teardrop shaped breasts, topped with small brown nipples. Looked to be slightly more than a handful. She bit her lip and laughed nervously.

“Do I pass inspection?”

“Like I said, you’re beautiful.”

His soft tone made her blush again and Silco was pleased to see that blush reach her shoulders this time. The young man was wearing a ragged white shirt, which he pulled out of his brown pants and pulled over his head. Silco had slim chest with pronounced collarbones. He never had been a big eater, unlike the human garbage disposal eyeing his chest with an appraising glance. He didn’t go in for skin art or piercings. The only things decorating his chest was a slash-scar on his right side and a downy dusting of brown hair on his chest with a happy trail down his flat stomach. He started undoing his pants, Felicia crossed her arms under her breasts. Pushing them up at him as she teased him.

“I don’t know rat, not much meat on your bones. You may have noticed my tastes run a bit thicker.” Silco smirked as he hooked his thumbs on the waistband of his pants and dryly responded as he pulled them down his skinny shanks.

“Vander said something similar…at first.”

“Silco, we used to bath together, I know what your dick looks like…….oh.”

Felicia’s voice trailed off as he lowered his pants and stepped out of them.

“Huh. Ok, that’s not what I remember.”

Silco was not an overly tall or broad. He was skinny plus he tended to slouch but he did have one large and thick part to him. Blue eyes widened as his uncircumcised cock came into view. Silco chuckled, that reaction was similar to Vander’s as well. He kicked his pants to the side and they looked at each for a few moments before Felicia dragged her eyes up from his crotch and tapped a foot against the floor.

“Soooo, what first?”

“I’ll show you.”

He was fast, he always had quick hands. One closed around her wrist and pulled her over to him and he had the other on the back of her neck before she could make a sound. Silco tilted her head back and kissed her. Felicia stood frozen in shock for second as his lips met hers….then he felt her loosen up and start kissing back. Silco turned his head and opened his mouth and was surprised that she thrust her tongue forward first. One of Felicia’s arms wrapped around his shoulder while the other encircled his waist. She pressed herself against him as their tongues met. Silco felt her nipples hardened as her tits rubbed against his chest and his cock twitched, poking her thigh.

Had he wanted this too?

Felicia was practically his…...sister? They had been in the orphanage together, they worked together, drank and ate together. His friends were her friends. One of the men she was considering sleeping with was an occasional lover of his. Like she said, they lived in each other’s pockets. He was certainly reacting physically to her. That wasn’t the confusing part. It was her smell. Sweat, the burrito she had obviously eaten on the way down here and…...axle grease. That combination was so uniquely Felicia to him, he almost smiled against her mouth.

Silco liked that smell a lot and his heart thumped a little differently.

He turned them around and bent forward, sitting her down on the bunk. He broke their kiss with a small bite to her lower lip. Felicia lurched back, touched her lip with two fingers and giggled.

“Biting, probably should have expected it.” Silco arched an eyebrow as he sat down next to her.

“You liked it.” She looked at him and shrugged coyly.

“Maybe.”

“Let’s see if you like this.”

She sighed as a hand covered one of her breasts. Silco licked his lips and kissed her shoulder as he kneaded her softness. He rubbed his thumb over her nipple, she liked that but winced when he squeezed harder.

“Softer?” She nodded.

“I’m kinda scared about it hurting. They both got big hands and I…I want….I…want….”

“Felicia, never be afraid to ask for what you want. Neither of them are beasts and they worship you. Tell me like you’re going to tell them. Go on.”

“I want it be nice. I wanna be treated nice. Like those Piltie girls in the flicker-shows. You know? Like a lady and shit.”

“You’re better than any soft Topper girl in lace gloves who can’t even use a screwdriver. You deserve better and I’m going show you how nice it can be. Don’t ever settle for anything less.”

Silco’s hand slid down from her breast over her belly and down between her legs. Felicia leaned back and spread them open for him. His fingers ran through those soft violet curls before touching her plump, wet pussy lips. Felicia sucked in her breath as Silco kept his promise. He was gentle. He never said no to her. He drew circles on and rubbed her lips before he started dipping his fingertips in, gently rubbing that wet, increasingly wet, velvet flesh.

Felicia grunted, gasped and breathed heavily as he played with her cunt. She jerked her hips for the first when he sank his index and middle finger into her up to the second knuckle. Silco curled them and stroked her inner walls. She moaned and put one her hands on his thigh. He whispered into her ear without stopping.

“Do you want to touch me?” She nodded. Silco grabbed her hand and moved it up his thigh. His cock was laying on the upper part, hard and throbbing. He guided her hand to it and Felicia touched his shaft. She wrapped her fist around it. She muttered as she gave it an experimental squeeze.

“So that’s what one feels like.”

Silco hissed with pleasure, not at her touch so much, but that he was the first. Something murky and hungry surfaced in the waters of his mind.

“Move your hand up and down. Slower! Slower! Nice and even, nice and even.”

His voice was guttural and she listened to him. Her obedience was proving to an unexpected thrill. If she was anyone else, he’d be far more aggressive but no, she wanted nice, Silco would give her nice. He’d never hurt her. He…….cared about her too much. The young man and the teenage girl touched each other. His long fingers slipping in and out of her tight cunt while her small fist moved up down his thick, veiny shaft.

Silco wasn’t surprised that he didn’t encounter a hymen as he pushed his digits deeper in. Trencher girls and femmes already worked full-time by they reached adulthood. Labor jobs, strenuous work. He had read somewhere that Piltie girls took pride in their passivity and avoiding physical activity. They probably kept their hymens until they were old bitties. Lots of the boys, and lasses, thirsted after the unattainable topside gals. Silco never did, whenever he saw a Piltie, all he could see was their ugliness and greed. No, give him a miner boy or girl like Felicia any shift of the week. He winced slightly in pain as her thumb pushed down on the head of his cock too hard. Even if she hadn’t quite figured a man’s mechanics yet.

Felicia couldn’t keep a rhythm, her nails kept digging into all the wrong spots and sometimes she’d just stop when his fingers hit the right spot inside her. It was both the worst and best handjob he’d ever gotten. She moaned and stopped completely as he felt the first tremor inside her. Felicia dropped her head on his shoulder and groaned.

“Silco….that feels so good.” He knew if he kept this up, she would cum soon. That was his goal, he wanted see and feel Felicia cum very badly. Just not on his fingers.

“You want to feel something better?” Felicia answered by raising her head and rubbing her nose against the underside of his jaw.
“Lay back on the pillow for me, spread your legs.”

She shuffled back and away on the bunk, sighing a little as his fingers withdrew from her. Silco got between her legs as she laid back on the thin pillow. The bunk wasn’t that big, he would have to half-crouch off it but he would get the job done. He crept back as far as he could on his knees. Felicia's cunt was before him like countertop meal. Open, red and wet under that purple patch. He licked his lips, suddenly very hungry. Her eyes widened as he dipped his head.

“Silco? Are you? You’re going to…….ooooohhh”

Her question faded away as Silco kissed her cunt. He used his thumbs to spread her lips open and give her one long slow lick from top to bottom. She jumped like she had just brushed a live chem-wire and cried out.

“Janna! Fuck!”

That was the reaction he wanted. His tongue started to flutter up and down her exposed folds. Silco pressed his mouth against her cunt to get it in deeper. She yelped as he poked and wiggled his tongue in her. He pressed his thumbs down on her lips, rubbing up and down as he licked faster. She was already primed, this wouldn’t take long and Silco wanted her to remember this.

He moved his mouth up to the nub of flesh above her opening. Felicia screamed as Silco wrapped his lips around her clit and sucked, hard. He inhaled sharply several times before gently trapping it between his teeth. Then he started to lick it like one of those Promenade lollipops he used to buy her. Felicia’s hands shot to his head and grabbed fistfuls of his hair.

“SILCO! Keep…..Fucking Fiddlesticks! KEEP DOING WHAT YOU’RE DOING!!!”

Of course he obeyed. He licked, faster and faster. He felt her vibrate on his teeth. Silco urged her on with another gentle bite. Felicia’s hands ripped through his hair, tearing it loose as she came. Warm liquid squirted on his lips as her hips rose off the mattress, her knees bent and her muscles locked up. Silco moved his hands up to grab her waist as she shook and screeched.

“AAAAAA!”

Silco kept licking and sucking as she collapsed back against the bunk, shuddering. She was leaking like a busted water pipe and he eagerly chased every droplet of her spend with his tongue. Felicia tasted like sugar and fruit. Janna, he was hard, his cock was twitching and drooling in anticipation of the final act. After a few minutes of his cat-like cleaning, shaky hands pushed his head away and she whispered.

“Too much. Too much.”

The man ceased his ministrations and crawled up her sweaty body. Felicia wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him. Silco hugged her back, crushing her against his chest and rolling over to his side. She was shuddering, he rubbed her back and kissed her forehead. Felicia bent her head up and kissed him. His hair had come loose and she tugged on the ends as she licked his lips and broke the lip lock. Her eyes sparkled as he looked at her.

“That’s me on your lips. I just tasted himself.” He nodded.

“You taste good.” Felicia buried her face in his neck.

“Shut up. You’re weird.” He chuckled, the brat never far away. But Felicia surprised him then.

“You’re not a rat, ya know.”

“Hmmm?” She leaned back, releasing his neck. She laid her head on the pillow, looking up at him and blushing in what seemed like a way unrelated to physical passion.

“You’re….pretty. You’re the prettiest of my boys.”

It was Silco’s turn to blush, he snorted and tickled her back. Felicia giggled and her foot rubbed his calf.

“Is that what I am? One of your boys?” She looked at him seriously, with murky meaning in her eyes.

“My first boy.”

Well, wasn’t she a clever girl. He was claiming her firsts tonight but it seemed he himself was claimed long ago. Felicia looked down between them, at his cock laying on her stomach. She looked him and breathed out slowly.

“I’m ready.”

So was he. Silco rolled them again. Felicia onto her back and him on top of her. He pushed her lags apart, taking his cock in hand. She gasped as he rubbed the head across her wet lips. Silco saw a spark of fear in her eyes and he murmured to her.

“I’ll go slow. Just relax. Your body knows what to do.”

Felicia grabbed his biceps as he eased her lips open. She grunted as she felt the head enter and yipped like a whump as it popped in. Silco grunted and hissed as the and first inch slid into the tightest thing he’d felt since Vander’s asshole. But she wasn’t a drunken man-mountain that he had on their knees and elbows behind the Drop. So when she squeezed his bicep hard, he stopped. Silco watched her face scrunched up and she closed her eyes, getting used to the feeling. Patience was torture as the top of his dick was enveloped in pulsing, warm heaven.

But he wasn’t an ogre, so he waited until her features smoothed and her hand relaxed. At that unspoken signal, he slid in another two inches into that wonderful softness. She was loosening up now, their crotches damp with sweat and their combined fluids. He angled his hips and pushed in more. Felicia took a deep breath and her jaw tightened but she don’t halt his progress. Silco was almost all the way in before she slapped his chest, held her hand there and groaned.

“No more!”

Not the first time he had heard that. At least it was a slap and not a punch like Vander threw when Silco bottomed him out. Once again, he suffered as he held still. It was much worse this time. Her cunt was clenching and releasing and it felt like heaven. The beast inside him roared to fuck her. To tear this little thing to shreds but Silco held. He held until his eyes crossed and infinity passed and Felicia removed her hand from his chest. The teenage girl reached above her head and gripped the bunk’s railing.

“Show me Silco. Show me how good it can be.”

Janna above and Tahm Kench below; that utterance, made in a breathy whimper, almost made him blow his load right there. Silco gave out a strangled moan and pulled his hips back, the cooler air of the bunkhouse on his cock calming him. He leaned forward and his thighs pushed her legs wider and she groaned, gripping the wood harder.

Then he pushed back into her, stopping halfway, then out again. Silco’s shoulders and back clenched as he repeated, building a rhythm.

“Uuh-uf-uuh.” Her little huffs of breath were like music to him as she got wetter and wetter. Allowing more of his cock in and letting him build up speed. This encounter was for her, Silco wanted her to feel good, this wasn’t about him but still, he couldn’t control his mouth. He leaned over, grabbing her waist with one hand and putting the other on the mattress by her armpit. He put his face over hers and purred as he thrusted.

“is it good?”

“Y-Yes!” Her excited response made him thrust harder.

“Who’s making you feel this good?” She moaned but didn’t answer. He grinned, that was unacceptable. Silco flexed his hips and shoved his cock into her as hard as he could.

“Who?” Felicia shrieked and gripped the wood above her head so hard it creaked.

“YOU! SILCO! YOU ARE!”

Silco fell on her, crushing her against the mattress as he started to fuck her hard and fast. Felicia wrapped her legs around his flat ass as it pumped up and down. Her arms returned to his neck and she cried out as she started to quiver again. He was close too but he didn’t want it to end. She was too tight, too hot, she felt so good, almost……

……perfect.

“Sil…Silc…Silco….I’m gonna….again.” Thank fuck for that, his control was rapidly dissolving as well. He kissed her temple.

“So am I. Let go. With me, do it with me. There’s a good girl.”

She cried out in wordless ecstasy as he bite down on her shoulder. His strokes were short and rapid as Felicia came again. It was like lava, it was like sticking his dick in hot, raw Fissure ore. His cock swelled and he started to thrust in deeply when a spark of sanity returned to him. With a frustrated snarl, Silco pulled out of her grasping cunt. Just in time. The first line of cum splattered across her pubic hair, followed by spraying her stomach and tits with rope after rope of spend. His eyes almost popped out and his teeth were vibrating in their sockets.

He collapsed next to her like a he just took an Enforcer baton to the back of knees. Felicia had both hands on her forehead and was panting. After a minute or two, his muscle control returned. Silco sat up, reached over her and grabbed his shirt, smokes and matches off the ground next to the bunk. He used the shirt to wipe the cum off her and lit a cigarette after he tossed it back on the floor. He settled back down next to her, staring at the ceiling. It was a narrow bunk, barely room for them both side-by-side.

They used to lay like this at the orphanage when she slept with him after having a nightmare.

“Thanks for that, Rat.” Silco grunted and blew a smoke ring above them.

“Just doing what big sluts do.” She tapped her foot against his ankle. He looked over at her. Felicia swept sweat-soaked hair off her forehead as she stared at him.

“I mean it Silco…...thank you.” His featured softened.

“I always look out for you…...and since whenever have I said no to you?” Felicia laughed and grabbed the cigarette out of his hand. She took a drag and smiled as the smoke came out.

“Never and don’t you start thinking you can just cuz you tasted the merchandise!”

He rolled his eyes and shook his head as she put the cigarette back between his lips.

“Ssssoooo, who’s better? Me or Vander?” Silco laughed so hard at question, he almost coughed up a lung. He didn’t laugh outside of a low chuckle often, it felt good to feel his belly work. He wiped tears from his eyes as he answered.

“That’s not an easy comparison. Like burritos and fish bowls. I will say this, since I’m not currently suffocating under a heap of snoring, hairy flesh……you win on a technical knockout.” Felicia hooted and raised a fist in the air.

“Hell yeah I do!”

They smoked a couple more cigarettes in silence and then she yawned.

“Can I sleep here tonight?”

“Sure.”

“Wanna go to Jericho’s for breakfast before work?”

“Yeah. You’re paying.”

“What? I don’t have any money!”

“You have cogs hidden in your corset. I felt them when I undid the laces. Learn to hide them better.”

“Uuugh, fine. You’re the worst rat!”

Silco laughed again as she pouted and kicked his leg.

****

It only happened that once and they never really talked about it after.

Silco watched her spin Vander and Connol around the Drop for the next year or so from his bar stool in the corner. And finally, she danced away with the redhead. Silco figured that would happen. Connol was the kindest and most dependable of them and brattiness aside, Felicia was pragmatic woman. He couldn’t decide if it bothered him or not. It was a low-burning question mark in his mind. He learned to ignore it.

Vander had a tougher go of it. His feelings for spunky engineer ran deep. He went on a weeklong bender that saw him banned from the Drop for three months, landed four people in the medic’s stalls and had him spending two weeks in Stillwater on an assault charge. Silco put him back on his feet after he got out and he and the new couple soon mended fences. Then they started their family and Vander came back to the revolution and him.

Life went on.

They all grew up.

They all changed.

Then one day, they all marched across a bridge.

Then they all died.

They all died that day, even if took some of them years to fall over.

But Silco kept breathing and he buried all those memories along with his friends and family. He was a different man now, with a true purpose and he honestly hadn’t thought of the night he took Felicia’s virginity in years.

Until her daughter crawled into his bed and brought it all back to him.

Chapter Text

25 Years Later

It wasn’t her coming into the bedroom that made him open his eye. She had been doing that since the earliest days of them. It wasn’t the soft sounds of her footsteps, she had been well-trained in stealthcraft but she wasn’t sneaking or skulking. Nor was it the slight disturbance on the bed as she climbed up on it. It was the way she was doing it.

Usually, it was a straight line from the door or the room’s air-conditioning vent to the side of the bed. Where she would crawl under the heavy blanket he used, he got chilly nowadays despite the Zaun heat, and cuddle again him. She would wrap herself around his body from the left side. The Chem-Baron slept on his back like a corpse, or like a ‘mummy-daddy’ as she liked to call his sleeping position. The girl would meld herself against his side; throwing a leg over his, an arm over his midsection and resting her head on his chest. She ran as hot as he did cold, so his expensive gray Freljordian-wool blanket would be kicked down to their intertwined feet in short order.

Not really a problem he discovered, she was a little chem-furnace, she kept him warm. When she smaller, it was quite pleasant actually. She fit against his side like a hot water bottle or like a warm brick wrapped in soft cloth. A trick his grandmother taught him, the lord of the Undercity and future ruler of the Nation of Zaun was from a long line of skinny shiverers. It became less pleasant as she got older. The little yearling turned into a filly and he was not a large man. She was now a blanket that was too hot at times.

His sleeping companion also snored like a rock crusher, drooled like a leaky pipe, kept him awake by tracing the old ganger tattoo on his chest. Was that all? If only. She had night terrors and he meant night terrors . Screaming, punching, kicking, crying nightmares. He had light scars on his arms, neck and back from her nails because of the nocturnal horror shows that played in her head. He always held her firmly when they got bad, so she wouldn’t hurt herself. Sometimes she wet the bed. The girl would hide in shame for days despite him assuring her it wasn’t her fault. Yes…...she was as much a handful asleep as she was wake.

And he never voiced a single complaint.

She was part of his circadian rhythm. He rarely awoke when she came to his bed and it didn’t bother him when walked in and found her curled up like a cat next to his pillow. In fact, it was the nights she didn’t show which disturbed him. After five and half years of her coming and going; the silent and still nights without her were ones where he had trouble falling asleep.

But this was different.

You don’t survive over a quarter-century as a ganger, revolutionary, prisoner, Chem-Baron and industrialist by letting people sneak up on you. He slept lightly as a necessity. So when her steps altered and the pattern of the wooden floor panels softly squeaking changed, his eye opened. Sleep fell away instantly as he registered something different (Danger?) in his personal quarters. The girl didn’t come to the side of the bed, she approached from the front. Creeping over the high Demacian dark oak footboard and onto the king-sized mattress. He heard the soft tinkling sounds of her braids following her as the metal holders scrapped on the wood.

She was crawling up his body. He could hear soft, but excited, breathing now. He didn’t move until she reached his waist. When he felt her straddle him, his right arm moved to bedside table, she clocked the movement and squeaked as he pulled on the dangling chain of the chem-lamp. The bedroom was illuminated by the soft yellow light. Silco blinked his eye once to adjust to the difference and then forty-five-year-old old man in red silk pajamas looked up at the naked sixteen-year-old girl sitting on top of him.

“Hello Jinx.”

The girl grinned nervously and brought her hands up, palms out, wiggled them back and forth and then cocked her head at him.

“Eh….surprise?”

But it wasn’t really a surprise.

****

To say his relationship with Jinx was complicated was a vast understatement. It had been from the very start. When a weeping little girl with blossoming bruise on her cheek leapt into his arms and knocked him on his ass in the rain. That unexpected reaction also knocked the knife out of his hand.

Silco had planning to kill her after she told him where the other girl was.

Even after realizing who she was. Even after seeing those blue eyes. Her parents were gone, Vander was gone, those boys were gone and her sister would soon join them.

Sometimes killing was an act of mercy.

But Powder changed that plan, knocked him off his path with a bone-crushing embrace and three words.

“She left me.” He had stared at her and heard, despite the thunder and fire, the raw agony in that sentence. His eye flicked to the body of Vander, illuminated by the flames.

His brother. His best friend. His lover, his……everything.

“She is not my sister anymore.” Silco looked down at her again. He saw her. So small, helpless and alone. He saw another person as well. A younger man, with a ruined face, crawling out the river, weeping and alone.

Such a dirty little thing.

Silco then hugged her back and told it was ok. That they would show them, they would show them all. He told her what he had whispered to himself when he staggered away from the Pilt, all those years ago.

It wasn’t easy yet it was the easiest thing he’d ever done. It would be sometime before he fully grasped the enormity of this little girl. When it did it hit him for the first time? Ah, yes. Her hand. It had been a few weeks since the Cannery. He was on the move constantly; plotting, making deals, ending lives. Securing a base of power in the Lanes that would allow him to use Shimmer to claim a place among the Barons.

The man did all this with a little blue shadow at his heels.

Powder refused to leave his side. She seemed frightened he’d disappear. Silco quickly realized it was pointless to tell her otherwise or order her to stay at the Drop. Even then, punishing her or being just being strict with the small, owl-eyed creature never occurred to him. She wasn’t a bother. She just shadowed him. Powder was there, watching as he founded the empire that he needed to free their people. She didn’t flinch at the things he had to do. Even when he killed someone in front of her for the first time. Silco only realized that she was still there, literally right next to him when the man’s brains splattered all across the wall behind him.

One of Vander’s collections men. One of the loyal ones. Silco admired that loyalty and then killed him for it. Only to remember that there was an eleven-year-old girl with him and Ran at the time. But she didn’t scream or cry. She didn’t even look shocked. Powder just cocked her head like a raven at the brain matter and blood at the wall. Like she saw something in it. It happened right after that. When they were exiting the building while Ran collected the man’s debt books. The place was along a busy auto thruway and they stopped at the curb, waiting for a hole in the traffic so they could pass.

Did she take his hand or did he reach for hers?

Silco didn’t remember. But he did remember walking briskly across the street and only realizing her small hand was inside his about halfway through. He was not a man given to physical touching. Not since….not in a long time. She was squeezing hard and kept a grip on his hand once they were on the other side of the street. It was strange how not strange it felt. Like she had been there all along, holding his hand and he was just now seeing her. That was the first time she had ever frightened him and the last time he ever considered keeping her at a distance.

Odd how two opposite feelings can merge like that.

Equally strange was how easily she merged into his life and mission. Silco discovered a brilliant universe existed between her ears and behind her eyes. She could build wonders and horrors. She ached to create, to bring the visions in her head to life. Silco knew it was his duty to help her do this. Silco supported her unconditionally from the start. Providing her with materials, work space, funds for her projects. Any and all projects; from the useful to the mad. She brought him wheelbarrows full of weapons, engines, toys and gadgets. Not all worked, not even the majority of them did. But no amount nonfunctional devices or accidental explosions would stop Silco from giving Jinx what she needed the most. What she required more than food, water or air.

His complete and absolute acceptance and approval.

If Silco was not a man given to touching, he was definitely not a man given to praise and showing emotion. You didn’t get a pat on the ass for doing your job. If one of his crew went above and beyond, they were compensated for it. But they didn’t get a smile or clap on the back. Vander always did that sort of thing, easily, it was natural to the big man. It wasn’t for Silco, such emotional displays always made him deeply uncomfortable. Not with her though, such words and actions flowed like water. And she drank them in like water. Every word of praise, every small smile, every second that he paid attention to her and ideas. She bloomed under his eye.

As did he under hers. The water flowed in both directions. Silco found the dusty and unused chambers of his heart chugging back to life with every crooked-tooth smile, every bone-crunching hug, every moment of her yapping and babbling. How pathetic it was, she was his only friend. Silco could admit that now. Even before she was his student, his heir and his hope…...Jinx was his friend. There he was; a grown man, sitting in a meeting with his lieutenants, receiving good news, stone-faced the entire time. When did the corner of his thin lips twitch up? Only when he left the meeting, walked into the hallway and saw her sitting next to the door. Fiddling with one of her machines until she heard the scrap of his boots on the floor. Then she looked up, smiled and exclaimed ‘Silco!’ Like she had been waiting for days and not just an hour.

When was the last time someone was happy to see him walk through a door?

But those waters were not untroubled. Jinx was deeply unwell. It started at as crying jags and nightmares; understandable given what she had been through and Silco thought it would naturally fade as grief tended to do. He was wrong. There were moments of catatonic freezing and unholy fits. She soon revealed to him that her family wasn’t really ‘dead’ and they spoke to her from the shadows. Silco caught her harming herself more than once. She refused to cut her hair and had to be physically carried to the bath.

Worse of all was the belief she had that he would abandon her if she wasn’t ‘useful’. That she was and always would be a ‘jinx’. Her emotional states were difficult to maintain and hard to predict, the storms came quickly. She would be happy one moment, building something next to his desk and happily chirping at him and then it would change in an instant. She would fall silent, her eyes would grow fearful and dart to the corner of the room. Her breath would quicken and she would turn even paler. Then she would begin digging bloody rows in her arm or leg with whatever tool was in her hand at the moment. Or she would grab a knife, a shard of glass or use her nails. Unless Silco was there to stop her. She attacked anyone else who attempted to intervene.

Silco was a problem-solver. He would help her. That proved far more difficult than he anticipated. His lectures were met with stony silence or placating lies. The behavior continued. Silco realized how little he knew of her life before the Cannery. He had kept Vander under surveillance and only ordered reports on the older girl as she was being groomed by the Hound for leadership. He had never met Powder before that night. Silco and Vander been in Stillwater on an eighteen-month bid for union-organizing when Felicia conceived and birthed her last child. The duo had agreed to keep their distance from their friends and their children, for their own safety. The next time Silco saw Felicia and Connol was on the Day of Ash.

There very people left in the Lanes who had knowledge of the little girl. Sevika rarely encountered her and told him so as she tapped the fingers of her augmentic arm against his desktop. His second in command grudgingly shared what she remembered of the little girl she now despised. A few of the younger members of the crew had encountered her among Vi’s little gang. He also spoke to several vendors in the marketplace, Jericho knew her the best. All he got was ‘quiet’, ‘always behind Vi’ and the word ‘weird’ was bandied about frequently. Nothing was accomplished but making him want to kill Vander all over again.

Why was she always hungry? Why was she wearing threadbare clothing? Why did she live a bar’s basement? He had been a fucking Baron even if he never took the title. His family, his children, she should having been living better. Wasn’t that what they had always talked about while slaving away in the Fissures? Better lives for the next generation of Zaunites? He would keep all the promises that Vander broke. For everyone in the Undercity and he would start with her.

Silco decided he would save Powder from herself, from the path of self-destruction that he himself was once tempted to tread. The man held her during her rages. Listened to her scream about them. He couldn’t convince her they weren’t real so he took a page from the childhood Janna stories and said he knew how to appease them. Silco told her that spirits could reasoned with, with offerings and totems. That she should use her art to keep them away. It helped and gave her something to do during her manic phases.

Silco decided she needed be distracted as much as possible from the shadows that chased her.

He trained her, tasked Sevika (despite the large woman’s near rebellion over the assignment) with her physical combat training. The Eye of Zaun, as they were already calling him, personally oversaw the revolutionary education he believed she would need to not only survive the coming war, but to be one of its most decorated heroes. Spying, thieving, stealth tactics. He put a knife in her hand and taught her how a smaller person killed a bigger one. Silco taught her how to fight dirty and to show no mercy. She listened, she learned. The child was an eager student. She performed so well, right from the start, but one occasion always stood out to him.

Jinx performed her first execution at age fourteen. She asked to do it, demanded he watch her do it, Silco observed as she shot the handcuffed informant begging for her life without hesitation. The girl crouched next to the twitching woman and examined the bloody hole in her chest. Lifting her shirt and examining the wound, poking and measuring it as the snitch moaned. Jinx hooted and jumped to her feet, running over to him. She held up the pistol she used, a weapon of her own design.

“He worked! He worked! His name is Zapper and he works! I finally got barrel design right! The bullet went exactly I wanted it to go!”

Silco smiled at the gun and at her as she jumped up and down. Her braids, Janna how did her hair grow so fast, slapped against her ass. He nodded with satisfaction.

“Well done my darling. How shall you be rewarded?” No one got a pat on the ass for doing what he told them to do…...except for her. She giggled, held up her right arm and pressed a chipped pink nail from her other hand into her bicep.

“Zzzzzzzz” Jinx made a mechanical buzzing sound. Ah, the tattoos again. She desperately wanted ink and he had been saying no. Of course she had snuck away to do it behind his back but she was becoming a known figure in the Undercity. Known to belong to him and belonging to the Eye meant no tattooist would cross him after he let be known that any artist who touched her skin would lose all of theirs.

“I don’t know…...” Jinx glomped on him, sliding her arms under his coat and around his midsection. Then she stood on the metal tops of his boots, looked up at him. Jinx squeezed him hard, put her chin on his vest and batted her big blue eyes at him. He smiled. She was blinking in miner’s code. Spelling out his name with her fluttering eyelashes.

Silco’s heart swelled with pride and love. Such an ingenious manipulation mixed with real emotion. She was pressing his buttons like the he was the jukebox at the bar, Jinx knew she’d hear the right song eventually. Silco could admit that, she would win. He didn’t have any real problem with her getting tattooed. He just got….oddly mawkish when he thought about it. There was a part of him that didn’t want her to grow up. Tattoos were something adults got. Adults also sometimes left. Silco feared very little at this stage of his life but he did fear Jinx leaving him. But he could never let her doubt his commitment to her for instant. So he kept that fear, something they had in common, to himself. Better to let her think he was just being a control freak.

“Please? I’m adult now! Singed says so! I’m a fully grown Jinx! Five feet and three inches of pure awesome! They won’t stretch unless I get fat! And I literally can’t! You know much I eat and I still stay as skinny as a sump-cricket! Soooo……pretty please with dead Pilties on top?”

The man made a show of it, she wasn’t the only one who like to tease, of looking upward and clicking his teeth together as if he was still thinking about it. Jinx responded to his emotional manipulation as he knew she would. Squirming against him, rubbing her face against his chest and going ‘please-please-please’ in her best sing-song voice. Silco enjoyed that show of immature behavior for a few moments before sighing dramatically and replying with great magnanimity.

“Very well.”

Then she rewarded him for rewarding her. Jinx’s happiness was total sensory experience to Silco. The loud squeal of joy made his ears tingle like his favorite opera records. She leapt up his body and he moved his arms to catch her as she did. The strain on the muscles in his arms and back ached wonderfully, she was a bit heavier nowadays. But that weight felt right. Silco used the opportunity to sniff her hair and neck. Gunpowder, fried fish, blood, shampoo from five days ago, sweat and axle grease. His living eye fluttered, she smelled like home.

Jinx peppered his cheek with kisses. She had chapped, dry lips and her kisses were like sharp bird pecks. He treasured and mentally cataloged each one. The girl’s lips were smeared with flesh-colored makeup when she was done. Jinx always kissed the scarred side of his face.

Every time.

“THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!”

His daughter’s joy was reflected and poured into Silco. When Jinx was in moments of unguarded happiness, she was like the best whiskey he’d ever had. He drank in her as such, tasting her on his tongue. She filled him with a warmth that made his limbs tingle and pooled in his belly like soothing bath water. Silco felt instantly relaxed but completely energized at the same time. Like he was twenty years younger. How insane would he have to be to deny himself this feeling? Jinx leaned back in his arms and started babbling. Silco scanned her face. Brow smooth, cheeks dimpled by her grin, eyes lit and dancing. He had driven the shadows away, at least for a little while. She was happy young….woman. Yes, she was growing up on him but she was happy right now. How could he deny her that either?

Jinx deserved happiness. Perfect happiness.

So he spoiled her. It wasn’t just because every child of Zaun deserved be treated well. He would see that they were, some day. But Jinx was more than them, or anyone else. Jinx was special. In a way that he could not easily define. He ached, ached to give her all she desired.

Perhaps it was his guilt.

The gnawing self-hatred he felt when she was screaming in a corner and he couldn’t sooth her. The urge to punish himself in the same way when he saw fresh cuts on her arms and legs. He suspected her recent switch to elbow-length fingerless gloves and capri pants was because she didn’t want him to see. Silco tracked threats and possible threats every time he entered a room. A necessity in the type of life he lived. If you didn’t know what you were walking into, you might not walk out.

So when her eyes grew fearful and darted to something in the corner or when she suddenly whirled and stepped away as if someone was behind her, Silco reacted as well. It was instinct. His own eye looked for threats, his muscles tensed and readied for a fight and his body spiked with adrenaline. But there was no enemy there, no threat. Nothing real. Except to her it was. Whatever she heard, she was always cagey on they actually said or did to her, it hurt her. It was real to Jinx. And he couldn’t make it stop.

Silco was the most powerful man in Zaun, his reach extended across Runeterra thanks to Shimmer. He wrote a name on one of his papers and that person died. Every day he changed the lives of hundreds of people, for better and worse. The next generation of Zaunites were coming into the world that he made for them. Silco was proud of his accomplishments, they justified his many sins and mistakes.

But he had failed Jinx.

There was no killing what was already dead, he couldn’t rewind time and undo what she had done. The only thing he could do was help her move forward. Protect her, love her, guide her. Explain to her, as many times as required, how brilliant and brave she was. He would never give up on her, never. There was no mistake or misdeed that would ever make him betray her. Silco spoiled his girl not just because she liked or deserved it. Jinx needed every good memory, as protection. These moments were worth far more than hexes or time he spent to acquire them. They were so fleeting, more was always better than less.

“Can we go to Jericho’s? I want to tell you about what I want to get! You’ll never guess! Never ever! But I want you guess! You get three gues……”

“Uuuuhhhhhh.”

She was interrupted by a loud gargle of pain from the woman on the stone store of the storeroom he chose for Jinx’s first purposeful murder. She was still expiring. His girl had placed the shot low in the chest. Silco looked down at the small, circler wound and noted the lack of blood under the informant. No exit wound, she must have used a low-caliber round. Jinx her head around and glared down at the woman. The teen released him and slid down. She turned with flourish of braids and walked back over to the near-corpse. Jinx looked down at her, observing the woman gasp as she tried to form words but there was too much blood in her mouth for that.

Jinx cocked her head, her features went blank and the light disappeared from her eyes. Jinx lifted her left leg. She had taken to wearing clunky brown miner boots with metal kick-plates on them. Her voice was bland and even, her breath slow and steady.

“I was talking to my Silly. You don’t get to talk over me like I’m some kinda Powder.”

Jinx lowered her boot onto the bullet hole in the woman’s sternum. She leaned forward and pushed down. The snitch’s eyes widened and her mouth stretched in wordless scream and she flopped under Jinx’s boot. Her manacled hands trying to rise and remove the boot. Silco observed this with his hands behind his back. He watched Jinx smile as she watched the woman’s eyes. The teenager’s right cheek twitched, her breathing quickened and her eyes flickered in uneven blinks. Like a flicker-show starting up, he watched emotion return to her face, frame-by-frame. The girl sneered, shrugged her shoulders and pointed ‘Zapper’ at the woman’s forehead.

The echo of the pistol’s bark was still bouncing off the storeroom walls when she skipped back over to him, all settled and happy again. She smiled, showing him her little crooked fangs.

“So, food?” Silco nodded and held out his hand.

“Let’s go.”

Jinx holstered her new weapon and grabbed his hand, tugging him to the storeroom’s entrance. Silco never told her what the woman had done to earn her fate and Jinx never asked. She would come to enjoy killing. She enjoyed hurting people and toying with them before they died. Silco believed having the power of life and death over someone gave her the sense of control that mostly alluded her in other areas of her life. Plus, Jinx hated most people. There were few exceptions. Himself of course, Jericho and Babette was treated with a curious amount of respect. The best anyone else could hope from her is mild contempt and an acid tongue.

Silco encouraged this cruelty and arrogance.

First and foremost because the more she harmed others, the less she harmed herself. Second, cruelty was needed in this terrible world. Their enemies were merciless. The topsiders understood only malice, greed and fear, one had to become what they feared in order to defeat them. Silco realized that after the Day of Ash and Vander’s betrayal. He reminded Jinx frequently of that and it was the same as her sister abandoning her before dying. Well, before Marcus killed her for Silco’s favor but that fact would only hurt Jinx so he shielded her from it.

He also shared her low opinion of the vast majority of their fellow Zaunites. They were a hard, cruel and stubborn people. Shaped by Piltover’s oppression, made that way for survival. When they were free, they could become softer and kinder. But until then, they must be ruled with a firm, and at times, cruel hand. The people would forgive them after liberation. The gift he and his daughter would give them would far outshine anything they took away. Silco believed every sentient being in the Undercity deserved their freedom, that didn’t mean he wanted to be friends with any of them.

Lastly, because she didn’t need anyone but him. The behavior he enabled prevented her from forming any unnecessary connections that might distract or harm her. Silco was the only person she needed or wanted and he felt the same way. Jinx was all he required…...besides the revolution that is. She was his daughter, his student, his soldier, his…….everything. As was he to her. Anything Jinx didn’t or couldn’t get from herself, she turned to him for. As intended, as it should be.

He knew there were be complications.

Jinx was worth any complication. Any sleepless night where she vanished, any wound she inflicted or extra work required to clean up one of her messes or failures. Silco was ruthless when it came to cutting away what did not work. He had learned the price of half-measures and compromises. He wore that reminder on his face. He had decided he would do whatever was necessary to achieve his goal. Anything and anyone that got in the way of that goal was an enemy to be dealt with.

Silco was also self-aware enough realize that that he had tossed that ironclad rule into the Pilt when came to Jinx. She was his great exception. His great weakness. He ignored any stirrings of alarm within himself about her, all subtle and not so subtle warnings from others. Silco allowed her to walk, skip and run beside him. He gave her the chance that had been denied to him and so many others.

She was not weak.

She was not dirty.

She was not worthless.

Jinx was a genius, the future of Zaun. She was strong, fast and deadly. He lo…he was proud of her. She was a little girl who wanted to hold his hand…...she had…….

……...become a beautiful young woman who wanted him.

But this did not surprise him.

Jinx’s beautiful blue eyes had begun to regard him differently in the last year or so. She had always looked at him with hunger in her eyes. Like she wanted to devour him and he also felt that desire in every hug, every squeeze of her hand in his and when she slept burrowed against him, it radiated out of her like the physical heat did. But the shape of that desire was innocent. It was perhaps the only innocent part of the girl who sang happy little songs while she filled grenades with shrapnel. Silco treasured that innocence. Coveted it, kept it to himself and was revitalized every day by it.

No wonder she was so good at giving him his Shimmer injections. Jinx had been giving him new life since the first moment.
Life is not static though, everything and everyone changes.

She changed.

The hugs were filled the same energy but there was something new he recognized. Of course he did, he wasn’t fucking blind. Silco had been young once and Jinx didn’t hide it nearly as well as she thought she did. Jinx had an obvious yearning crush on him, as only a teenager could. The older man considered this natural. They weren’t related, they spent most of their personal time together and she was growing up. Love and lust were part of life. He didn’t hide that reality from her. As if he could, she had grown-up a quarter mile from a brothel and the bar downstairs always had people fucking in the booths, bathrooms or alleyways surrounding it.

Then there was that incident when she was thirteen.

It was inevitable that Jinx would discover those feelings and urges within herself. Roughly the same time her hugs and stares changed, it was reported back to him that she was skulking around Babette’s. That didn’t bother him. As long as she didn’t harm herself and kept the body count to a minimum, she was welcome to explore. It didn’t bother him. He was a randy whump at her age. This might be the ideal solution.

It was not.

Almost immediately after she started visiting the brothel, Jinx began to escalate with him. Frequent brushes of her knuckles against his as she walked next to him. Tapping her boot against his while they sat on stools next to each other at Jericho’s. Her graffiti on his personal effects began to change. The doodles on his clothes, cigar boxes and paper began to include more hearts, smiles, hearts with daggers and arrows through them and the bloody skulls had heart-shaped eye sockets. It was all rather childish, still innocent. Adorable even and she already did give him similarly themed cards on Heartseeker Day.

But Jinx, as he taught her and as was her natural inclination, didn’t stop or settle for less. She was prone to kissing his scarred cheek after injecting his daily Shimmer dose into his dead eye. Silco deeply valued this structured trust and intimacy. He knew she did too, she was as proud and possessive of it as she was of her braids and the care he gave them. Those kisses began to descend from where they usually landed under his eye. The flesh still trembling from his medication, they crawled down his cheek, shot by shot. Traveling the roadway of his despoiled skin and riven scars. They halted were they ended. At the left corner of his lips. She didn’t quite dare kiss him on the lips. But just as close as humanly possible.

It was a tactically brilliant decision as well. In the thirty seconds or so after the shot, he was all trembles and twitching muscles. He could not stop her and she also was daring him to do or say something about it. Clever girl, he was proud of the way she was boxing him in. Laying siege. That’s what no one else but him understand about her. Jinx was not just chaos, she was just so intelligent that no one but him could see the logic in her designs.

He responded the only way he could. He did nothing. He was surrounded by pink razor-wire and blue landmines. A wrong step could start a chain reaction. Jinx didn’t take rejection well. She’d pout for days and the bar staff would feel her wrath if he didn’t let her join a mission. Once, he injected himself when she was delayed and he was finding dead rats in his desk drawers and jacket pockets for weeks. But he could hold out. He had in abundance what she lacked, patience.

But then came the halter top and the beginning of the end of what they were.

She came in through his door, not a vent and not from the rafters. That alone caused his pen to halt its progress. Silco always looked at her eyes first, searching the blue orbs for any panic or distress. To see if she needed him. But there was cat-like satisfaction pooled in her eyes. A good mood, delightful. A new gadget must have functioned as intentioned or that new young bartender downstairs was currently covered in paint or some other unpleasant liquid. But then his blue-green eye fell down to her dark pink lips, arranged in a tight smirk and then…...wait, was she wearing leather chokers? Her…Fel…she used to…...then he saw what else she was wearing.

Black leather.

Silco’s mind glitched as his eye focused on it and his mouth dropped open. It technically covered her chest….technically. Jinx was wearing a black leather halter top, there were four open holes on the front, rimmed with bronze, with rope looped through them in a ‘X’ pattern. It went up in a V-shape on her shoulders and was clinched with a small belt at the bottom.

Clinched tightly.

Jinx was not a large girl. She was small, even after growing and it meant her chest was small too. Silco’s hand tightened around his pen as he found himself pondering Jinx’s breast size. Something he had certainly never done before. The top pushed her chest up and out. It put her on display. Her taunt stomach was exposed too. A belly as beautiful as the rest of her. The lines of her muscles were drawn like the lines on a map. The cloud tattoos on her right side didn’t obscure the view. No, they enhanced it, particularly the large one that curved around her stomach to sit on her hip….

Hips. His daughter had hips. How had he not noticed before? The halter seemed to accentuate all of her attributes. His gaze centered on her belly button and the little pouch sitting on her abdominal muscles. Those muscles formed a ‘V’ like an arrow pointing at her….his mind refused to picture what he suddenly wanted it to picture. But his mind could not stop his eye from seeing what was right in front of it. Jinx’s clothes were never fitted right. She refused to go to his tailor. Preferring old clothes from the boxes in the basement and the back of his closet. She used scraps and everything was either too big or too small.

The purple and black striped pair of capri pants she was wearing were too big in the waist. They hung off her hips. They had a pair of suspenders attached that were not being used, she had rolled the waistband down and was holding the pants up with an off-center spiked belt. The result was them being tight in the crotch. Very tight.

Jinx wasn’t wearing any underwear.

Silco’s mouth snapped shut and his eye flicked back to the inventory request in front of him, his started writing again. The look he gave Jinx couldn’t have lasted more than four or five seconds. But that was long enough for her eyes shine with victory and her crooked teeth to sink into her lower lip with delight. Jinx skipped over the desk and grabbed his Shimmer injector off the top. Grinning and spinning it around her finger as she came around the side to his chair.

“Injection time Silly Silco!”

The middle-aged man merely grunted at the teenager’s smug, sing-song tone. He turned his chair, expecting her to do her usual lean over his face since she wasn’t sitting on his desk. But Jinx had no intention of letting her new top go to waste. Silco had taught her to always put a knife in to the hilt when attacking someone. The office chair creaked as a hundred-twenty pounds as suddenly added to it. Silco was not just paralyzed by his decision not react to Jinx’s provocations but now by Jinx herself.

With same liquid speed she used on the rooftops and in combat, she pinned him to his own chair. Her knees came down on each side of his legs and squeezed them together. She placed her free hand against his chest and pushed him back against the red leather padding. Silco noticed more details now, he was supposed to look now. The hand that held his injector had fresh nail polish on it and there was new kohl under her eyes. Jinx leaned forward as he bent his head back. He did so gratefully, she was so close and her top’s new leather squeaked.

He did not look. Silco did not look at the swell of her chest sticking out of the side of her top. A top that was so tight that if he was looking, which he was not, he could see the plump curve of a of tattooed tit. A blue cloud. He had wondered, innocently, how big some of her clouds were. He had accompanied her last year to the finest tattooist in Zaun. Silco had stood there while Jinx had leaped and danced around the shop while she described what she wanted to the artist. The cat Vastayan had sketched the clouds and nodded at her while nervously glancing at the Chem-Baron. Silco hadn’t threatened her, he didn’t need to.

Her reputation was well-earned. She did the ink as instructed and all in one session as Jinx requested. It took hours. Hours Jinx spent lying on the couch while Silco sat on the other side of a privacy curtain. He listened to the buzz of the artist’s needle while Jinx stuck her hand through the curtain. He held it the entire time.

Silco did not look at the cloud that drifted out on her skin. He looked at her face, at his daughter’s smile as she lowered the injector to his black and lifeless eye. Normally he had to brace him for the pain to come but that day he welcomed the agony. The clarity and the punishment of it. He tried to convince himself that this would the worst of it but he knew Jinx too well. He reacted, she saw his reaction and know she smelled blood in the water. He taught his daughter to be a predator and Silco knew what she would do.

The halter stayed. Her touches lingered longer and her behavior kept escalating. The bathroom door never closed, her night shirts became shorter more tattered. She brought workers from Babette’s, male and female, and fondled them in the bar’s back booths. Always at times she’d knew he’d be returning to the Drop from some errand or meeting. But there was still hesitancy in her, Jinx’s behavior remained largely unchanged during their braiding sessions, along with administrating his injections, her most treasured acts of intimacy. That told Silco while Jinx wanted him to respond, she was still afraid of how he'd respond.

So he waited for the inevitable explosion. He was not accustomed to inaction or the fear that froze him in place. But as he knew from bitter experience, nothing was more explosive than love.

And he had armed this device himself. He would accept whatever would come of it.

Except losing her.

He would do anything to prevent that.

Anything at all.

Chapter Text

No, he wasn’t surprised by the naked girl on top of him. He knew this was coming, he just hadn’t known the when of it. And by the look in her eyes, neither did she. Jinx’s right cheek was twitching and he felt the shaking of her knee against his hip through the blanket. She was afraid and no matter what situation they were currently in, his reaction was automatic.

“Jinx….breathe.”

She let out a long shuddering breath. He felt her relax and she stared at him, scanning his face. Silco looked back as the final remnants of sleep vanished. He kept his eye on her face, this was too important to rush.

Look at her. She’s yours, take what belongs to you and end this pathetic farce.

The voice, the Eye’s voice, snarled through his mind. He ignored it. This wasn’t about him. This was about her. What he…...wanted didn’t matter. Did it? Was it so bad to want? Want didn’t mean have. Desire didn’t mean weakness.

The last time you entertained such logic, you ended up in the Pilt. You’re older now and the Dream is within reach. How can you be so fucking stupid?

That voice was slurred with pain. The pain he remembered when he was sitting in some anonymous hostel room with a gore-soaked bandage over his face and Vander’s knife gripped tightly in his hand. He couldn’t let go of it for days. He had been so afraid the man who he had loved more than any other person on the planet would reappear and finish him off.

Besides, she doesn’t really want you. She’s scratching an itch. Using you. Just like the other one did. Remember old man, at the end of the shift or at last call, no one wants to go home with a dirty little thing.

A voice younger than the rest but jaded and bitter beyond his years. That sneering statement would undoubtedly be accompanied by an angry flip of his long hair. Strange how old wounds never healed.

Jinx and him both had ghosts nipping at their heels.

“Silco?”

Her soft voice banished the echoes inside him and he refocused on her face. She was pensive, frowning and trying to read him.

“You haven’t given me the boot yet.” He scoffed.

“When have I ever done that?” She nodded but then looked at his steady, unwavering eye.

“But you ain’t looking at me either.”

“Oh? What am I looking at right now? Thieram in a Jinx wig?” She tittered and cocked her head at him.

“I want you to look. You’ve spent a freaking year not looking at me. Not how I want you to and I’m done waiting. So….look at me!”

The little commanding brat. He glared at her spoiled face, she glared right back, scrunching up her nose at him. But Jinx, the same Jinx that would make Sevika dislocate her shoulder before tapping out, crumbled first. After a minute her face fell and she looked down at herself, cheeks reddening.

“It’s because of the last time I did this, isn’t it?”

Oh fuck, he hadn’t even been thinking about that day. But Jinx apparently was, before he could respond, her hands shot out and she grabbed him by the lapels of his pajama shirt. The collar tore from the force of her yanking him up to a sitting position. They were nose to nose and Jinx began to babble at him.

“I’m not afraid! I’m not here cuz I’m a scaredy-Powder. No! This ain’t like that, you have to know that. Silly, I’m not scared. I’m not scared like I was before. This ain’t about you. It’s about me! Stop thinking about what that stupid little girl did…….”

Easier said than done.

****

Silco yawned and rolled his shoulders as he walked down the hallway of his private floor. It had been a long day. The production at that first Shimmer factory was finally at full capacity and Renni had broken ground on the second production site. The drug was in high demand throughout the Undercity and he was now officially the richest Baron and therefore the most powerful. Power had pleasant rewards and……responsibilities. He had to spend half the damn day with Finn, the Baron of the Slickjaws. The arrogant pup was trying to weasel more profit for himself at the expense of the revolution. Silco needed his weapon factories and had to play patty-whump with him. Then there was a miniature mountain of correspondence to review, bribes to hand out and Jinx had blown up one of the Drop’s delivery trucks while testing one her new rockets. And that all been before his mid-afternoon cigar and whiskey.

The rest of the evening was spent clearing paperwork and kill-orders. He didn’t see Jinx after his daily injection. She had been red-faced and apologetic about the truck. He had assured her that it was a trivial thing. But she had vanished anyway. He would give her the night to sulk in her new cavern before he sought her out. Right now, he needed sleep. The older man reached his bedroom door and swung it open. The bedside lamp was on and to his happy surprise saw a clump of blue hair sticking out from above the covers.

“I didn’t expect to see you this early.” He called out as he unbuckled his vest. Janna he was tired.

“I…I got something to give ya….to make up for the truck.”

Silco nodded as he took a set of pajamas out of the tall oak wardrobe opposite his bed. He went into the bathroom to change. A gift was unnecessary but he didn’t want to her feel worse. He slipped out of his day clothes and sighed with contentment as the cool silk hit his skin. Silco decided long ago that he was done living like a vagrant and he wasn’t a hypocritical fool like Vander. Being a freedom fighter didn’t mean he, or Jinx, had to go without good food, clothing or lodging. They deserved better lives and those lives could end violently at any moment. If he was to be assassinated in his sleep, it would on a soft mattress and in silk pajamas.

His quarter-hourly resentful thought about Vander done, his mind turned back to Jinx. He would dutifully admire whatever gadget she had made and remind her once again that she never needed to give him a gift. But he did smile. A small and genuine upturn of his lips, his real smile, as he walked back out to the bed. It still delighted the man that she made things for him. Silco marched over to the bed and grabbed the covers, sweeping them back.

“Let’s see what you have for me.”

And he did see what Jinx had for him. For less than a second before whirling around in shock. He closed his eye and counted to five before speaking again in a tight, emotionless voice.

“Jinx, put your clothes on.”

“I…I just….don’t be mad….I just wanted to, I thought you would want……” He raised a hand while keeping his eye closed, attempting to banish the image of her.

‘ Scrawny limbs, small nubs on her chest, concave belly. Narrow thighs, knobby knees covered in scabs. A hint of blue between them?’

“Please put on your clothes. You can explain after.”

He repeated his five count while he listened the sound of her whimpering and scuttling to the other side of side of the bed where her sleeping garments were piled. She dressed quickly and was already crying, fat tears sliding down her cheeks, when he turned around and instructed her to sit in the edge of the bed.

Silco knelt down in front of her and asked why she had done this thing. Over the next ten minutes, between sobs, Jinx told him. She had been at the bar earlier that evening, scribbling down new rocket designs on napkins. She was sure she could work out the kinks and make her rockets ‘super mega awesome’. Several of his soldiers came into the bar, dirty and tired from cleaning up the remains of the truck. They sat several stools down from her and one kept glowering at the girl. Then Jinx heard him say, loudly and on purpose, something unmistakable and unforgivable.

“Gotta be only one reason the boss keeps her around. The Eye must like them before they get moss on the sump.”

The other soldiers cringed and told him to shut up but the fool, that already dead fool, was determined to write his death warrant and kept talking.

“What? Her shit never works and we always have to clean up her messes. If she didn’t suck his cock and spread those two little sticks for him, why else would he put up with her?”

Then he laughed, an ugly braying guffaw. Then the soldier turned and leered at her, looking her up and down over his mug of ale. He winked at Jinx. She said it felt like he was touching her with his eyes.

He winked at her.

Jinx threw her glass at him and fled, retreating in confusion and fear to her cavern. Where of course, her ghosts laid into her. Screaming into her ear that the foul-mouthed prick was right and that’s what her ‘best friend’ had wanted from her all along. Then came long rants about how if she didn’t do what the man was talking about, Silco would leave her, just like Vi did. Then went on for several hours until she started to think they were right. So she came up here, got naked and waited for him to arrive. Jinx started to weep again.

“It’s what you’re supposed to do, right? I mean….I bleed every month now, so I’m big enough to fuck now, right? Then I wondered if you were waiting for me to do this? Was I supposed give it up to you? I’m yours, aren’t I? Like you said? I’m big enough! Mylo said its what big girls had to do. You can…...I’m useful…...PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME, I DIDN’T MEAN TO JINX IT.”

The girl lurched forward with a strangled yowl and collapsed into his arms. Silco hugged her tightly, rubbing her back under the single long braid that went down her spine and kissing the top of her head.

“Shush…it’s ok…...it’s ok…...shush. You didn’t do anything wrong and I’m not sending you anywhere. I will never, ever send you away.” She soaked the front of his top with tears but she finally hiccupped and stuttered to a stop. Silco tilted her face up to his with a finger.

“I do need you to do two things for me. Can you do that for me?” Jinx nodded eagerly.

“Good girl. First, who said that to you? Second, you are to sit here on the bed until I return.”

Three minutes later; a dressed, sans vest, Silco stalked by his office desk and snatched his old blade off the top. Nothing else would do for this. Sang. It was Sang who leered at her. Sang with the bushy eyebrows, studded tongue and forehead tattoo of a coiled sump-viper. He leered at her. He mocked her. He insinuated that Silco….that he wanted…...she’s little fucking girl.

‘But she does bleed and she is getting her curves…...’

He stopped on the stairs and smacked himself across the face. He wouldn’t think that. Not of her, not ever.

Sang must die.

Silco came down the stairs and into the busy nightclub/bar. He would scour the city, have Sevika gather a crew and it didn’t matter how long it took him to locate that bastard. Silco shouldered past the guard at the foot of the stairs and his eye widened as he scanned the bar.

That whump-fucker was still posted up at the bar, drinking his wages with his asshole comrades. How nice of him to save Silco a trip. He pushed through the crowd, coming up behind him, the pulsing lights and techno music masking his approach. He had mousy blonde hair, Silco grabbed a handful in the back and roared like a tiger. The Chem-Baron smashed his face against the bar counter. The soldiers around him shot to their feet, saw who was attacking and scattered like the rats they were. Silco lifted Sang’s head off the bar. His nose was broken and half his teeth were gone. A second slam took out the rest.

He grunted and yanked him back and off his stool, slamming the larger man to the ground. Silco kicked his hands away and sat on the gurgling man’s stomach. He leaned forward, grabbed him low by the throat and stuck his knife in his neck. Just an inch or so, right above the artery. The middle-aged man hissed through his teeth, his lips curled back in a snarl.

“Why else would I keep her around? As if a pathetic fucking Yordle-jabber like you would ever understand. But you don’t have to worry about that, or anything else.”

Silco pushed the knife through his neck. So fast and hard, the tip erupted from the other side. But he wasn’t done. Then Silco began to saw. Hot blood splattered his face and shirt but he didn’t flinch or stop. Silco sawed Sang’s neck open to the spinal column. He ripped up and sideways with the serrated blade and dropped it once the hole was big enough. Then he jammed his left hand in and pushed up his throat, grabbed the slimy tongue, felt a large metal stud under his thumb, closed his fist around it and yanked it back down through the hole he made. Another explosion of gore as his hand reappeared. The pink tissue poking out of a red blossom of blood and viscera. Silco stood and panted over the dead man, admiring his work.

What he had done was colloquially known as a ‘Bilgewater Bowtie’.

His face was now as red as his shirt. Silco took a deep breath, inhaling copper scent of Sang’s life. He tasted the man on his teeth, as if he used his mouth instead of his blade. People were looking at him as the music kept blasting. It didn’t stop, if they cut the music every time someone was killed at the Drop, they’d never hear a complete song. Silco looked over his shoulder at the bar. Thieram was already wiping the blood and teeth off the bar. He looked up as Silco raised his voice.

“Thieram, towel.”

Silco snatched his knife off the floor, bent over Sang’s cooling corpse and grabbed his tongue again. The meat was slimy but not tough. The blade slid right through the tissue with one stroke. The nervous young bartender scuttled up to him with a white towel. Silco wiped his knife off with it and then wrapped up the tongue with it. He nodded to the corpse as he walked away.

“Have that tossed in the Pilt.”

He headed back to the stairwell, the crowd parted around him, clearing a path. It was like seeing a shark, sated and no longer on hunt, swim through a school of smaller fish.

Jinx, uncharacteristically obedient, was still on the bed where he left her. She was looking down, frowning and whispering to herself. She was wearing an oversized white t-shirt with crayon markings all over it and a tattered pair of purple shorts. She had them pushed up and was viciously scratching her pale inner thighs with her nails.

“Stupid! Stupid jinx! He hates you now! He should hate you!”

“Stop that at once.” He rarely used his ‘Eye’ voice on her but he did now. She needed to hear him. Jinx stopped clawing at herself, lowered her shorts and looked up at him. Her blue orbs widened as he walked over to her. Silco grunted as he knelt before her again, his fucking knees ached, he needed to get out of the office more. He looked at the only thing he loved in this horrid world.

“First off, I don’t hate you. I will never hate you. Second, you don’t need to earn your keep or do anything for me to stay here. I didn’t claim you because I wanted you to do something for me. That will never change. You want to build toys instead of weapons? Ok. You want to become a map-maker? I’ll support that. You want to be a singer? I’ll build you a performance hall.”

Jinx giggled at that. Good, he broke the tension.

“Silly, you know I can’t sing worth shit!” He chuckled back at her.

“Yes, it is truly wretched. But in Zaun, if my girl is a singer, than you better believe that attending her concerts is mandatory. I only need one thing from you, Jinx. You just need to listen to me when I tell you something.”

She turned to the shadows by the wardrobe and her lower lip trembled. Silco put two fingers streaked with the drying blood of the man he just killed on her cheek and gently turned her face back to his.

“Listen only to me. Not to them, not to members of the crew, assholes on the street or anyone else. They lie, everyone but us lies. They always lie and you must not learn to listen to or let yourself be hurt by their flapping tongues.”

Silco took one of her wrists, turned her hand palm up and laid the folded-up towel on it. Jinx looked down with curiosity and opened it up. The thirteen-year-old girl gasped when she saw the severed tongue with the oversized brass stud in the center. Jinx brought the bloody gift up to her eyes and turned the towel to and fro before looking back at him.

“Whoa. This is Sang’s tongue?” Silco nodded.

“Yes. I took it from him because he disrespected you. You’ll be able to do that yourself soon when someone gives you shit. But until then, if anyone hurts you…...I will hurt them back sevenfold.”

Jinx’s eyes glittered and she smashed the towel and tongue against her heart. She sniffed and wiggled happily on the bed.

“You would do that? For me?”

“Of course I would. You’re…...very special to me and I made you a promise. I intend to keep that promise.”

The girl didn’t cry or laugh at that statement. Jinx just nodded and responded to the gore-splattered man kneeling in front of her.

“I love you Silco.”

His eye widened. Such a simple thing to say but it was said so matter-of-factly, like she was saying the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Jinx said it like it was simply true. He was very glad he hadn’t washed Sang’s blood off.

The Eye of Zaun couldn’t be seen blushing.

****

“……and start looking at me, Jinx! Because this ain’t like that day. And if you say it is, I will set this room on fire and never-ever-ever-ever speak to you again! This is really your fault because I’m not….”

“Jinx.” Silco held up a hand to stem the flow of nervous threats. The girl stopped and released her grip on his collar, he grunted and leaned back on his elbows, still looking at her face.

“Why do you want me to look at you?” He had to know. He could accept the truth. If she was just curious or just wanted to be assured of his love for her. Silco had promised her that he would do anything for her and he would keep that vow. But….there a part of him, a selfish and needy part, that wanted a different answer. That wanted her to be different from Vander and Felicia.

Was that too much to ask for?

He had given his entire life to others, to his city, to the Dream. Couldn’t someone give something back to him? Jinx smiled at him and lifted a finger. Silco frowned as poked his nose, scratching a chipped pink nail down the bridge.

“That’s why I’m not mad at ya for making me wait. I was getting all types of frustrated, after all, I had been laying out the Jinx buffet for months and ringing the dinner bell. ‘Rats eat free!’ I was wondering if Mylo and Claggor were right and you didn’t like me like that or didn’t think I was pretty enough.”

Silco, as ever, opened his mouth to defend her but the finger on his nose slid down to his lips and pressed down on them.

“Shush old man! I’m doing the lecture today! This ain’t about eating your vegetables or not stacking boxes of fireworks next to the furnace! This shit is important. I need you to hear me. So, be quiet and listen while it’s just you me and here. Oooook?”

He nodded, wondering how long he would last without a coup attempt if the other Barons knew he how meekly he accepted orders from this teenage girl. Jinx tapped her finger again his lips before swiping it over to his left cheek. She started idly scratching the scar tissue as she spoke.

“The last time we were here, I did it because I thought I needed to. I was…...I am…...so scared that one day you’re gonna stop loving me. Just like she did and just like how Vander stopped loving you.”

She slumped back on his lap, looking blankly at the wall above him. He watched her breath out slowly.

“We both got tossed like we were trash, huh? You fuck up and the people who say love you rip off their sister masks and it’s all your fault. Doesn’t matter if you didn’t mean it or if you trying to help. They’ll leave you if you fuck up.”

She said ‘sister’ but Silco blinked and it wasn’t Jinx sitting on top of him, it was Vander and his hands (so large, so strong) were around his throat. She was right, it didn’t matter what your intentions were or how sorry you were when came to betrayal. He should have seen it coming, he would have seen it with anyone else. But he couldn’t fathom Vander turning on him, even as Benzo and the other survivors blamed him for the disaster and massacre on the bridge. Silco was so shocked when Vander hit him. They been walking on the shores of the Pilt, arguing about what to do next and Vander turns and back-hands him into the water.

Later, he would discover that Vander had already made a deal with the Topsiders and part of that deal was that he, the more radical of the two, would be dealt with.

But there were other reasons as well. Two reasons that Vander was ready to kill him.

Felicia and Connol.

They......no, she was another reason he never saw the attack coming. Like Vander, Silco was consumed with grief. Felicia was dead. He was never going to talk to her again. She was never going to prattle on endlessly about her day again, she was never going to borrow money from him again while swearing to Janna that she would pay him back. He would never eat eel stew with her at Jericho’s again. She would never see her daughters grow up. He would never see that purple-haired brat’s crooked smile ever again.

Because she was dead and he got her killed after promising he would build her and her children a better world. That weight was like a full ore-cart on shoulders. But still, he wanted to fight. You didn’t give up, even when you trapped in the deepest, darkest mine shaft. You kept digging and clawing. Blisters and Bedrock, right?

Wrong. Vander showed him the truth and his own weakness that day. The Silco that survived was stronger and more determined. He would never miss anything again, he would never be weak again and he would never let anyone get close enough to hurt him like that ever again.

A vow that was now undone.

“I know you’re scared of me.” She rubbed his scars and smiled sadly at him.

“Not like how everyone is. You’re not scared I’ll shoot ya or blow you into baron-bits. You’re scared I’m gonna leave you if you give me that final thing. Just like Vander did. That hurt worse the eye, didn’t it? Not having his big hairy ass around?”

Silco stilled……and then nodded.

“I missed him, so much and for so long.” His was husky with the emotions he no longer allowed himself to feel about his dead brother. Jinx’s hand spread across his cheek and cupped it. Like a pipe bursting, he couldn’t stop the flow of weakness now. He turned his head and leaned into her touch.

“I know Silly, I know.” He shuddered and closed his eye. She understood, of course she did. Who else could possibly understand his pain but her? She spoke in a dreamy voice, happy and sure.

“That’s why I shucked off my togs and came to you tonight. All the math came together in my head. I was tossing Chompers into the black and being grumpy about you……boom! Boom! Boom! My brain exploded along with the last grenade! I understood Silly.”

She leaned back over and kissed the bridge of his nose and laid her forehead against his. Her fingernails scratched at his graying sideburns and she whispered while her eyes darted to the shadows.

“They were so mad. I had all bright colors in my brain and they roared off the couch to shut them off. That’s how I knew, they always wallop me when the colors are bright and as warm as the sun. Both the V’s were backing them up too. They screamed at me for hours Silly. But don’t you worry, I was smiling and dancing the whole time. Leaping from turbine blade to turbine blade, singing! ‘1-2-3-4, I can unlock my daddy’s heart forevermore!’ Just like with my boomers, there always a lot of jinxing when I’m still figuring them out. But once I have them down? Easy! Like haggling with a Piltie.”

Jinx turned her head back and forth, dragging her bang across his face. Her breath was warm on his skin. Her lips quite close to his.

“I understand now. Why we do the stupid things we do. Why you won’t look at me and why I spent so many nights at Babette’s without getting my v-card stamped. We’re afraid that we’re both the jinx. But it’s the other way around. My family is gone. We killed them, we kept killing them. Why? You had a million years before me to have a bitch and some grubbers but you didn’t, why? Because you were for me, even before I was born. We jinxed everyone else because it couldn’t be anyone else.”

Many people found Jinx hard to follow but Silco understood. He lifted his head to hers, he brushed his scars against her cheek and Jinx shivered. He put his lips next to her and whispered.

“It’s only us Jinx. I understand now and I’m ready to look at you if you still want me to.”

She shuddered and nodded. Silco placed his hands on the mattress and started to rise himself up but Jinx moved her hands and gripped his shoulders.

“Wait! Let me take this off first. So you can see properly.” She reached for his sleeping patch. A simple brown leather strap he wore over his dead eye at night to prevent the always open orb from drying out. He snorted as she ripped it off and tossed it away.

“You know I can’t see out of that eye.” Jinx stuck out her chin and shook her head.

“Yes, you can. Maybe even better than with your other one. That’s the eye that really sees me. Ever since the first time it ever looked at me. I want it to see me now.”

Silco didn’t argue with her, maybe she was right. It didn’t matter, what he did next was what mattered. The man sat up on his elbows as the teenager leaned back on his lap. Then Silco looked at her. This wasn’t about him seeing her naked. He had seen Jinx naked or near-naked many times, even before their relationship began to evolve. She never had any modesty and would only bathe if he washed her hair. No, this about him looking at her while she watched him do it.

It was like seeing her for the first time.

Jinx took his breath away, made his heart pound, made him feel…...younger. She was beautiful, as only a child of the Undercity could be beautiful. She was a like painting but the canvas was ripped and the frame chipped and tarnished. Crooked teeth. Scars on her arms, torso, legs, from bullets, blades and fire. Hands with calluses and healed chemical burns. The inside of her forearms and inner thighs had the signs of numerous self-injuries. He could never get to her to fully stop, just not to cut so deep. Jinx was the spoiled rotten daughter of the most powerful man in the Undercity but she was still a Zaunite. There was pain and toil woven into her beauty.

Just like Felicia.

But she wasn’t her mother and she wasn’t just pain and toil. No Zaunite was just that. Silco so desperately wanted her and every other child of Zaun to realize that. He would make them see that, he would make the Pilties see it. The Topsiders would recognize their beauty and worth. Silco would see it done.

No matter what had to be done to open their eyes.

Everyone should acknowledge someone as…...perfect as Jinx. Janna, why hadn’t he let himself look at her before? Her face had blossomed from a girl’s charm into a woman’s allure. High cheekbones, a proud nose and sensuous lips. The curve of her neck was worth a sonnet. Her shoulders thin, how could anything so thin also be so strong? He’d seen those shoulders bunch up and piston out an arm to slug someone twice her size. Silco would wrap one of his hands completely around one of the biceps on those arms. Small muscles but made of brass and iron.

Not just the hard plains of muscle on her. Now, he let him see her glorious softness as well. Her breasts were high and proud handfuls. Tipped with dusky pink nipples the size of cog coins, they prickled and hardened under his gaze. Jinx pushed her chest out further and he focused on the cloud that covered her right tit. It must have been painful on that soft tissue. But Jinx has never been afraid of pain and her clouds were very important to her. From her right wrist up to her shoulder and down her side to her hip and lower thigh. The pale blue, lighter than her glorious cerulean-blue locks, designs also floated on her hip and inner thigh. The trailed out over her lower belly right over the thick patch of curly blue public hair observed between her legs.

After their completion, he had asked the girl why she had chosen blue clouds. Jinx grinned and shrugged shoulders.

“They remind me of the sky and…...freedom!”

It was the only time she’d ever lied to him so purposefully, he saw it immediately. Jinx didn’t have a good Tarot face. Usually when Jinx lied about something, it was just a natural part of the conversation she was having; like saying she didn’t set up off a paint bomb while standing next to Thieram who was still dripping pink and blue paint all over the floor. But she never prepared a lie in advance. Except about the tattoos. Silco could never figure out why but it seemed like a small thing. He never pressed her on it.

It couldn’t be that important.

What was important is her reaction to his observations. Jinx was breathing in and out through her mouth, her eyes were glittering with expectation and her hands, hovering above his shirt, were vibrating with excitement.

Waiting for him to react was torment for her.

Silco decided words would be an inadequate way to start. His left hand came up, drifted over her hip and he placed the tip of his index finger against the edge of the large cloud that girded it. He touched her and she gasped as he inhaled deeply. A powerful jolt of electricity jumped between them, her knees clenched around him and Silco’s hand shook as he spread it across her marking. Then his fingers bent and he gripped her flesh and hissed at how good she felt. Soft, hot silk. Her skin pebbled under his touch and she thrust against his crotch. His nostrils flared and he lurched up as he felt her cunt rub on him. Silco’s cock jumped in his pajama bottoms. He grabbed the girl by the upper arms as she cried out.

“We’re real!”

“Yes. Yes, Jinx we’re real.” She leaned back in his grip and laughed. A raspy crackle that sent a shiver down his spine. Jinx bit her bottom lip and cocked her head at him.

“What do we do first, my good old rat?” Her tone was excited and sure. Silco hesitated, just for a second.

She looked so much like her mother. Jinx’s hair was a different color, she was smaller and Connol’s features were mixed in, but in that moment, she looked so much like Felicia that his heart skipped a beat. Was it what she said? The same bratty energy and desire coming off her? Or was it because being with her made the weight of twenty-five years of pain and regret disappear from his shoulders?

In another life, he had kept his promise to Felicia and built a world for this girl to grow up in.

In another life, she was never his because he didn’t get her mother killed with his youthful arrogance and rage.

In another life, one he always told himself he never wanted as he watched Felicia laugh on the dance floor from his barstool, Jinx was his daughter by blood as well as by bond.

But they weren’t living those lives. They were living this one. Silco didn’t know if Jinx was a reward or punishment from the gods. Karmic retribution as the Ionians believed. But Silco also knew he didn’t care.

Because he loved her and she loved him.

Jinx wasn’t her mother and he wasn’t that skinny kid in a miner’s bunk anymore.

Those people were long dead.

Silco and Jinx were very much alive. He slid his hands up her arms, over her shoulders and cupped her face. He whispered as he leaned in.

“This.”

Chapter Text

All his lies, rationalizations and denial died when their lips touched. They slipped away like an old-timer in his bunk in the last stage of Fissure-Lung. A taste of Jinx, a single taste of her made them disappear like smoke in the wind. The old man marveled as he kissed the teenage girl.

What an utter fool he had been.

A complete fool, leaving hexes on the table. Leaving this rose unpicked for a year. Simply unforgivable, he must spend the rest of his life making it up to her. Starting with a kiss. Silco held her face in his hands as he kissed her. Jinx wrapped her hands around his wrists as he tilted her face to his. His floppy sleep hair falling on her forehead as her long blue bang fell back. Her eyes were closed as he pressed his lips against hers. Salt, fried food, anxiety, anticipation and she moaned a little in her throat as they made contact.

Jinx was….a teenager. She pushed back like she was trying to headbutt him. Her nose poked his and she was pressing her lips together too tightly. Silco had a solution for that. His pointed tongue slid out of his mouth and pushed her lips open. Jinx’s eyes opened and bugged out as his tongue touched hers, she took to it like a bird to the sky. Their tongues lapped at each as she squirmed on his lap. He kept the lip-lock for over almost two minutes before leaning back to look at her. She was blushing. The girl who crept into his bed naked. The girl who he had seen murder, maim and destroy. She was smiling, so big that her cheeks were pushing his hands out. Jinx, the Loose Cannon, was blushing.

“Silly…...that was my first ever kiss.” He raised an eyebrow as his thumbs drew circles on those red cheeks.

“Truly? You’ve been going in and out of Babette’s all year and you never kissed any of her lovelies?”

“Nah. Thought about it a bunch of times but I always hesitated to pull the pin. It felt…...yucky.”

Hmmm and he had watched her pick a burrito off the street and eat it. Before releasing her face, he kissed her once more and she surged toward him, already moving more in time with him. His apt pupil. Silco needed information if they were going to continue. He released her face and reached behind him to arrange and pile the bed pillows against the large headboard. He leaned against them and beckoned to her.

“I think you need to tell me all about what you saw and did at the brothel.” Jinx frowned.

“Don’t ya already know? I know you had shadows on me.”

“True but just to assure your safety and stop you from burning the establishment down. I didn’t ask for details then but I want them now. Come here.”

Jinx grinned and stood. She kicked the covers off him and pounced on him. Silco laughed as Jinx the cat emerged. The naked girl was practically purring as she turned to the side and curled into his lap. Neither of them were pretending anymore. Jinx pressed her tits into his chest and rubbed her butt into his growing erection as Silco wrapped one arm around her waist and placed the other on her knee, fingers tapping against her inner thigh. She angled her head and completed the cat act by pressing one of her eyebrows against his jawline.

“Oh Daddy, I saw so many fun things there!”

His breath hissed from between his teeth at that word and her light girlish chirp. He turned his head and looked down at her. Jinx was studying his reaction. His naughty little thing. Inexperienced but not innocent. He responded by moving his hand up her thigh an inch.

“Elaborate my darling.” His tone was that of an indulgent father but the way he was looking at her wasn’t. His eye was full of hunger and his fingertips pressed into her skin. Jinx squirmed as she answered.

“I liked it there. No one gave me any shit. They know I’m yours so I could do whatever I wanted. And what I wanted to do was watch. I like watching people. Watching them fuck.”

She was grinding against his thigh. Silco could feel her heat on his leg and there was a wet spot on his pajama bottoms. His hand crept up her thigh another inch.

“Which did like watching better? Men? Women? Others?” Jinx laid her head on shoulder and reached out to the arm on her thigh.

“Turns out it didn’t matter. Scrunky is scrunky. I liked watching cocks going into cunts. Pretty boys sucking cock. Girls squealing on each other’s boxes and humping Yordles. I liked watching it all. I really like watching when people didn’t know I was watching. Babette has those secret peepholes in the rooms for intel gathering and I used them to watch.”

She pulled on his arm, hurrying his hand to her crotch. Silco didn’t let her, he pressed his lips against her ear.

“Don’t be shy now. Tell me what you did after watching.” Jinx inhaled and shivered at his commanding growl.

“I…started touching people. Letting them touch me. One gal sucked on my nipples and I jerked this guy off. He was so pretty, like a girl with his silky brown hair. He came all over his stomach. Another one put her fingers in me, I liked it. She wanted to kiss me on the cunt but when she tried, I smacked her so hard that her stupid mask came off. I made her stand up and face the wall. Then I put my fingers in her hole. Both of them. She cried when I put three up her ass and I liked that. Silly, please touch me, you’ve got touch me now. I never let anyone inside, please, please. I’ve waited so long……”

Oh he would and soon but she needed to confirm something for him. Silco snaked the hand she wasn’t tugging on up her back and seized both of her braids. He yanked her head back, hard and fast. Jinx cried out but not in pain. Silco exalted as he observed her reaction to the pain. He snarled a command, his teeth snapping, speaking as her father and the Eye.

“Tell me why you always stopped. Why didn’t you let any of them fuck you? Say it. Now.”

Jinx gasped, the muscles in her neck straining as he pulled harder. Her eyes glazed over and her nails ripped off the pocket off the front of his pajama top.

“Because the closer they got, the more their eyes swirled with the bad colors. The more I touched them, the more I could feel the maggots writhing under their skin-suits. THEY WEREN’T YOU. I NEED IT TO BE YOU. YOU. YOU. PLEASE DADDY, PLEASE.”

Silco moaned aloud at her confession as he moved up her thigh. Jinx yelped like a little puppy as he touched her cunt. His shoulders heaved, she was so fucking hot and wet already. Her curly blue pubic was damp as he stroked his fingers through it. Silco turned his hand and cupped her pussy, Jinx moaned as he squeezed her. Silco tugged on her braids again and she arched her back, pushing herself into his palm. Silco murmured and crooned as he felt that silky flesh.

“So soft and small, look how you fit right in my hand. Tell me Jinx, what do you feel now?” Silco bent his index and middle fingers and rubbed them on her lower lips. Her reaction was immediate and authentic. Jinx screeched and grabbed his hand, attempting push his fingers in. Silco laughed at her natural greed and rewarded her…and himself. The tip of his middle finger slipped past her lips and he closed his eye as he put the rest in.

Muscled, scarred and tattooed on the surface but softer than Ionian silk inside. He curled his finger and began to move it in and out. She clenched around him and her wetness dripped out of her. Silco held her head back as she started to babble.

“YES!!. Silly, oh Silly. Bright colors. Bright colors! This is was the missing thing! Fuck you Mylo, you were wrong! You were lying on me again! He does love me! He does!”

Oh, his lovely broken little thing. He would show her how much he loves her. Silco flung Jinx down by the braids in his hand. Twisting her as she slid off his lap. The girl laughed as she landed against the mattress, Silco on top of her, his hand still at her crotch. He added his ring finger and bent to get a good look at her. Jinx’s cunt was as perfect as the rest of her. Framed by curly blue hair, the lips being separated by his fingers were red, thick and engorged, filled with blood. Her clit was a glistening pink pearl poking out of her hood. Silco licked his lips as his wrist flicked back and forth, his fingers going deeper. Jinx moaned and spread her legs. The older man dropped her braids and laid his hand on her stomach and slid it up her rib cage to her other soft parts.

His large hand covered her left breast completely, Jinx was the ideal handful. Long gnarled fingers, tips forever stained with ink and tobacco pressed into her soft flesh while his thumb caressed the hard pink nipple that topped it. Jinx keened and arched her back.

“Oooohh……harder!”

Jinx’s breathy voice and urgent whine was as good as a command to him. His fist closed around her tit and he squeezed. She whimpered and kicked her ankles against the bed. Silco brushed his other thumb against her clit. The kicking increased and she slammed her fists on the bed as soon as he touched that nubbin of flesh.

“HARDER. HARDER. NOW. NOW.”

The whine had become a literal command. Yes, the stratagem was clear now. Silco gripped her breast hard and pushed his thumb against her clit as his fingers moved in and out of her. Jinx groaned with happiness and Silco looked at the cutting scars on her forearms and thighs. He clutched her breast harder and twisted, Jinx cried out with joy. He remembered her sounds behind the tattooist’s curtain. Amongst the buzzing the needle were happy little mewls and small sighs while her hand held his. The same hand which was at her cunt, she had stroked the thumb pressing against her clit. Silco turned his hand sideways and took her clit between his thumb and index finger and then pinched the protruding cluster of nerve endings as hard as he could.

“YES. THANK JANNA FUCK, YES. MASH THE BUTTON.”

He knew what Jinx was now. He knew what she needed. Her cunt convulsed and tightened around his fingers, she was going to come soon….but not on his fingers. Silco sat back on his knees, withdrawing his hand from her crotch. Jinx squawked with outrage as he lifted his fingers to his mouth and licked them.

“Hey! What the fuck? I’m a lit fuckin’ fuse over here……”

Silco hummed as he tasted her on his tongue. Jinx tasted like the syrup he occasionally had imported from topside for her morning flat-cakes. She was pure sugar, his taste buds tingled and his throat began swallowing automatically, he would need more. He would need to taste her every day or risk madness. Just like the Shimmer his dealers peddled on every corner, one taste of Jinx was enough to hook him forever. He responded to her complaining with a sudden slap against the cloud on her right hip. Jinx yelped, happily, at the impact.

“If good girls are patient, they get something even better. Are you a good girl Jinx? Or a bad girl?”

She bit her lip and he could see the gears turning behind the though blue eyes as she considered her answer. Silco unbuttoned his tattered pajama top and took it off as she rubbed her hip and smirked at him.

“I’m a good girl…...for now. Can’t make any promises if I don’t go boom soon.”

“I can see now that you will need rigorous instruction in the nights to come. Now scoot up and spread your legs.”
“Oh! You’re gonna…...Oh! Oh!”

As always, he let her off the hook. The girl scrabbled back on the pillows, eyes wide with anticipation. The older man shuffled forward on his knees and bent over her, Silco turned his head and kissed the inside of her knee. He held her leg up as he dragged his lips down her inner thigh. His tongue darted out and he licked the new and old scars he found there. Jinx let out breathy gasps as he showed her wasn’t afraid of her or her pain. Silco’s eye flicked up to her face
.
Jinx was happy. He had spent years studying her face, her reactions. He had learned to read her moods and emotions, he knew them better than she did. Eyes wide, no trembling or twitching of the cheeks and her mouth was open without her chewing on her lips. She was happy and relaxed. Eager, yes but not tense. The fear of rejection from earlier was gone and the ghosts that would always torment her were, at least for the moment, far away. Jinx was happy.

And now he would make her even happier. Silco dipped his head to the center of her. Jinx’s cunt was even prettier up close. Red, open and weeping clear fluid. Her musky aroma made his head swim, he was so thirsty for her.

Silco was good at this particular task, he always had been. Pleasing both men and women with his mouth, he had always enjoyed all aspects of sex. Life in the Undercity was often short, brutal and miserable. One learned to take pleasure where you could find it. But it had been a while since he had partaken in the pleasures of the flesh. Years in fact.

Not since Vander.

His betrayal had stolen many things from Silco. Love, trust, half his fucking face and the joy of touch. Vander had been the last person he hugged, kissed or fucked. The last person before Jinx whose touch didn’t make him want to flinch back. Years of isolation and celibacy separated them. Silco had discovered soon after the river that the he had lost his taste for physical contact, especially the intimate variety.

It all felt like drowning.

Until her.

Jinx wanted give herself to him. Wanted him to be her first. Silco understood the depth of that gift now. He wouldn’t have described it as melodramatically as ‘maggots writhing’ but he felt the difference as she did. No flinching, no tensing, no stomach-clenching. Touching Jinx felt like…...Vander……like Felicia but also different from either. There was something different to her, like in every other way, Jinx was special.

She felt like coming home.

And Silco knew all of a sudden, knew with absolute certainly, that she would be the last person he ever touched this way. As soon as his open mouth enveloped her cunt and Jinx’s moan filled the bedroom, he knew.

She tasted like home as well.

Silco extended his tongue and licked her pussy lips. Lapping at the engorged flesh and scooping up the droplets of cum that was already drooling out of her. Jinx didn’t need softness or teasing, his little girl needed her first orgasm from another person and she needed it right now. Silco shoved his mouth against her opening, wiggling his tongue inside. Jinx howled and he felt her hands smack against his head. She took fistfuls of his hair and pushed her hips against his face, bucking them and attempting to fuck his mouth.

Her enthusiasm was infectious, Silco pushed back just as hard. He put his hands on her crotch, framing her cunt. Silco spread her lips with his thumbs and flattened his tongue, swiping her from bottom to top. Each time, he would flutter the tip against her clit before repeating. Chipped nails dug into his scalp as he ate her out and the teenager’s screams filled his ears as she filled his mouth with her folds.

“YES. YES. YES. THAT. More! More! Faster! I want more! Uuuuggghhhhh fuck you daddy! Give it to me-give it to me-give it to me! A-ah-ah-aaahhhhh!!!”

Very infectious. Her babbling and directing of his head encouraged his performance. The middle-aged man was invigorated, he used to love watching people squirm under his touch. For years, it had just been fear and violence when people looked at or were touched by him. But Jinx was different, she didn’t fear him.

“Bite.”

The girl’s whine was accompanied by more urgent hair-pulling.

“Sil-Silly….I need….the…the feeling...give…give me….”

Jinx cried out as he bit one of her cunt lips, no further explanation was required. Silco’s sharp, uneven teeth worried at the tender flesh. He had always enjoyed a bit of pain with his pleasure. He always ordered a shot along with his beer at the bar. Most didn’t though, Vander didn’t. The Hound of the Underground had been famed for his ability to deal out and withstand pain but only on the streets. In bed, the giant had been surprisingly gentle. It had frustrated Silco at times but he never said anything.

There were no constraints now. She cried in ecstasy as he drew blood, his incisor making the smallest of cuts. The drop of vitae burned as it landed on his tongue. He growled and struck like a sump-snake at the real target, her protruding clit. Silco wrapped his lips around it and seized it between his teeth. Trapping it like an interrogation victim, torturing it with his tongue. Jinx’s butt lifted off the bed and her legs snapped like a whump-trap around his head. He moved his hands under her ass to hold her in place as he sucked on her clit.

“AAAAAAAAAA………”

The piercing cry reminded him of the work whistles at his factories. Silco licked faster as Jinx started to shake and convulse. Then he began to bite down, her thighs became an airtight prison around his head and his nose crushed against her mons pubis. He sucked at the nib as hard as he could, the muscles in his neck standing out. Jinx threw her head back against the pillows and howled.

“FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.”

His pain spiked with her pleasure, Jinx’s nails tore the skin and one of her hands flung back from his head with several salt-n-pepper locks wrapped around her fingers. His girl was a squirter, Silco released her clit as a stream of liquid hit and soaked his chin. The man lowered his mouth to her opening and began to drink and lap at the off-white fluid dripping out her. It was ambrosia, the stuff of youth and life. Sweet and filmy, like Ixtalian fruit juice. He pursed his lips and sucked it out, wanting as much as he could get. She wasn’t the only greedy one here. Silco’s tongue scoured every inch of her as she squirmed like a fish in a hook.

Jinx’s legs fell to his shoulders as her muscles switched from stiff to limp. She weakly batted at his head, begging him to stop and give her nerve-endings a break. The teenager collapsed against the pillows as he complied, shuddering and rubbing her hands up and down her face. He turned his head and kissed the sweaty thigh draped on his shoulder as she groaned.

“That…that was….I do it myself a lot….is every time like that?” Silco laughed as he sat up and back. He rolled his neck and moved his jaw around, it had been quite a while since he performed that act.

“Every time is different, even with the same person. You’ll discover this with me in the nights to come.”

She smiled, stuck her tongue out and cocked her head at him.

“More nights huh? So, we’re not going to stop?” He put his hands on her knees and squeezed hard enough to leave red marks on her skin. Jinx whimpered happily.

“Stop? Oh my darling girl, you will need to eliminate that world from your vocabulary.”

Jinx looked up at him, nervous and blushing scarlet again.

“Silly…there’s a room at Babette’s. It’s in the back, behind a heavy wooden door. It’s my favorite room to watch stuff happen in. It’s got all these amazing toys. There are chains, whips, wax, gags, racks and weird stuff like…I don’t even know what the little cage things are. It’s a place for hurting but good hurting. Everyone screams in there but they don’t want to leave. Do…do you know about stuff like that?”

“Yes. I am familiar with such things and that particular room as well.” Jinx gulped and bit her lip.

“Will you take me there? I need…...I want……to be in there. The colors, Silly. The colors would so bright in there and I wouldn’t hear…...them.”

He nodded as he slid over to the side of the bed. Pain made them silent. Pleasure made them silent. Jinx was just doing the math. And she didn’t want to do it alone. Silco stood, knees popping and turned, walking to the bedside table. He took a half-finished cigar out of the ashtray and relit it with a gold lighter that had a monkey scratched into it. He blew a plume of smoke from the stogie made with expensive Demacian tobacco toward the ceiling. The man looked fondly down at the naked girl lounging on the bed and rubbing a hand between her legs.

“Of course I will. When have I ever said no when you wanted to go to the toy store?” Jinx giggled and then got a sneaky look on her face. She rolled over and crawled over to the side of the bed, swinging her hips and ass as she got on her knees and grabbed the waistband of his sodden pajama bottoms. He grunted as one of her hands moved to the crotch and took hold of his half-erect cock. She rubbed up and down, looking up and batting her eyes at him.

“My daddy always gives me the best toys! And it looks like he’s brought a big one for me to play with!”

Oh, she had a grip on her. Silco down on her as she jerked him off through his clothes. Jinx rasp-whispered to him.

“Is your cock as pretty as the rest of you?” He smirked and took the stogie out of his mouth.

“Jinx, I’m quite literally in the palm of your hand. You don’t have to butter this ugly old man up anymore.”

SMACK

Silco never saw her move, the girl had such astonishing speed. His head was rocking back and his cheek already reddening when his brain realized that she had slapped him across the face. Jinx was standing on the mattress, suddenly several inches taller than him. Her body-length braids swung behind her as she got in his face, pressing her nose against his.

“Don’t you ever fucking call yourself that again. You are not ugly. You’re beautiful. You’re one of few things that are in this horrible, shit-filled crack in the earth that we live in.”

There was anger in her eyes, real anger. Silco was astonished, not at the violence but at the sentiment behind it. Jinx thought he was beautiful? That can’t be right, the astonished Baron thought as she cupped his face with both her hands.

“Jinx…...”

She silenced him with a kiss. First on the lips, then his nose, his forehead and finally she licked his scars. Her tongue traced its way from his eyebrow, around the black orb in its socket and then down his savaged cheek. Jinx spoke urgently.

“You’re not like them. The meatbags that buy your Shimmer, work the factories and mines and stuff their faces with poisoned food. I know you want to save them but you’re not like them. They all have static in their brains and worms in their hearts. They’re already dead and that’s why I don’t mind killing them. But you….we’re different. Let me show you like you showed me.”

Jinx bent and kissed his left shoulder, right on an ancient burn scar. A burst of boiling steam from a malfunctioning extractor drill had nearly killed him when he was ten, his first year in the mines. Her hands moved down from his cheeks and wrapped around his neck. Jinx pressed her thumbs against his throat and Silco gasped as he felt……

ecstasy.

He could never fear her. Silco had nothing to fear from Jinx’s touch, he was the only one on Runeterra who could make that claim. The man raised his head as she kept going down his frame. Kissing the wrinkles at his armpit. Tonguing the nipple that was bisected by a blade scar. Who had given him that? Some drunken asshole that the Drop when he was nineteen. Couldn’t remember the fellow’s name. He just remembered stumbling back as Vander roared and proceeded to beat him to death.

Jinx moved to his chest and kissed the faded tattoo over his heart. N.O.Z.. The Nation of Zaun. He had gotten it with Vander, Benzo and Connol. They all got the same flag-like mark on the night Felicia had given birth to her first child. Jinx knelt again as her tongue dragged his way down his still flat stomach while her hands returned to his waistband. She kissed his bellybutton and unceremoniously yanked his pajamas down to his knees. Jinx tilted her head and whistled.

Silco’s half-hard cock flopped into view. He was not a young man anymore but he was still rising for the occasion. That slutty old pride awoke at her reaction. What had Vander called him? Oh yes, ‘the skinny tripod’. Silco’s cock was almost nine inches when fully erect. Thick, veiny and covered with soft olive skin a shade darker than the rest of his body. It was hanging down and twitching from his thin patch of graying pubic hair. The foreskin was partially rolled back from the bulbous head and a pearly drop of precum was hanging from his slit.

Jinx was looking at it like it was new shipment of rocket parts from Bilgewater. She crooned at it.

“Pretty as a block of chem-tex attached to an Enforcer wagon. I’m always right! Bigger up close too!”

“Up close?”

“I told ya I like to watch people who don’t know I’m watching. Including certain rats in the bathroom. Hehe.”

“Naughty little girl.” She shrugged insolently.

“Don’t shower every day like a weirdo if you don’t want me to peep. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to talk to my new friend!”

Silco chortled as the girl turned her attention to his cock. Jinx wrapped her hand around the base of the shaft, lifting it up and giggling as it grew in her grip. The girl moved her fist up and down, watching the skin came away from the head and her other hand fondled his balls. Silco watched with amusement and growing pleasure as she examined his dick with determination.

“Hmm, saw this plenty of times down at the brothel. No big (heh) deal. Just like scarfing down a double-decker burrito at Jericho’s.”

With that charming comparison, she set to her task. Silco sighed and took a drag of his cigar as Jinx kissed the head and gave it an experimental lick. Then she opened her mouth and jammed the head in. His tender flesh scrapped her top teeth and he put a hand on the top of head and began to gently instruct her.

“Breath through your nose. Relax and don’t try to take it all. When you start gagging, pull back to the head. Aaaa, just like that. Lick the underside as you go. There you go, there you go. Good girl. Good girl.”

The normally intransigent teen was surprisingly obedient, eager even to follow his instructions. Silco palmed the back of her head, making small adjustments to her rhythm as she went. Jinx was natural, getting almost half his length in before stopping when the head hit her throat. Her mouth felt amazing; wet, almost too warm and he liked how her teeth kept coming down on his shaft, like she was constantly resisting the urge to bite him. But that paled to the view. Silco wouldn’t let his eye blink, watching her dark lips slid up and down his olive skin and leaving wet saliva trails.

“Stop moving.”

His command was obeyed and she became still as a statue. Silco chuckled around his cigar, if only this behavior could be replicated outside bedroom but he suspected this ‘good girl’ would disappear the moment Jinx left the bedroom. He moved his hands to the sides of her head, about four inches of his cock was still in her mouth. Jinx was poking the shaft with her tongue as he slowly moved his hips forward another inch and then back two. Jinx hummed and her eyes danced as she grasped what his intention was.

Silco began to fuck her face, breathing heavily as he watched his dick go in and out. He squeezed her head.

“You like this, don’t you? Being used by me.” Jinx moaned around his cock. He started thrusting a little harder.

“I always give you what you want. I’m going to use you Jinx, every night and in every possible way.”

He thrust hard, she gagged a little but didn’t flinch away. In fact, she grabbed his narrow waist and braced herself. Always determined to prove how tough she was. Silco was already planning her new ‘training’ regime. He had instructed her on so many things, it was he fatherly duty to see that she excelled at all tasks. He thrust faster, her cheeks puffed out, drool was dripping out of the corners of her mouth and her eyes welled with tears. She so pretty like this. Silco wanted to fuck her pretty face forever, he wanted to see the entirety of cock disappear down her throat, he wanted her to beg him to stop, he…….

…….had to stop before he came.

Silco hissed and stepped back, popping out of her mouth and grabbing himself by the base of his shaft. He closed his eye and counted backward from twenty. Jinx coughed, spat on the ground, wiped her mouth with the back of hand and looked up at him.

“Why did ya pump the brakes? Was I doing it wrong?”

“No, no sweet child. The opposite in fact, it felt too good and I don’t want the evening to end….abruptly.”

She frowned and then her face transformed into a happy smile. She reached out and tickled his thighs.

“You gonna stick that big old thing someplace else Silly?”

The answer she received was in the form of Silco lifting his cock up and placing the slimy head against her right cheek. He moved it up and down, turning it slightly as he did. Writing an ‘S’ in a mixture of spit and his cum under her eye. Jinx hissed, twisted her head and snapped her teeth a hair’s breath away from his cock before snarling.

“Answer me old man!”

Silco’s hand flashed out and he placed it on her shoulder and shoved the girl down on her back. The old man climbed on top of her and scooted Jinx back on the black sheets until they were both comfortably on the bed. He roughly spread her legs and pressed himself against her body. His chest mashed against hers, his cock against her stomach and he put his forehead against hers as he looked into her wild eyes.

“Yes….little girl…...I’m going to fuck you now.”

Jinx reared up and bit his lower lip, Silco groaned as she broke the skin. She was such a wild beast, he would enjoy taming her. He raised up on his elbows and knees, lip pulling away from her teeth and blood dripping into her mouth. His cock was throbbing against her stomach, he moved his hips and ass back, dragging it down through her pubic hair and Jinx moaned as the head rubbed against her clit.

He reached between them and took hold of his cock. Placing the head against her lips, hissing as he did. She was burning like a furnace. He rubbed himself up and down her lips, Jinx grabbed his shoulders and pushed her pelvis at his cock. Silco cried out as the head of his cock slipped through her entrance like a blade between the ribs.

“Janna! Fuck me!”

It was like sinking into silky lava. Lava that was somehow tight yet accepting. Jinx screeched and dug holes in the back of his shoulders as the first few inches slid in. Silco was so lost in the feeling, he missed the first agonized howl from her. He stopped and looked down at her grimacing face.

“Are you ok?” Jinx hooked a hand on the back of his neck and he winced as the nails dug into skin. She looked up at him and rasp-roared.

“Why did you stop?? I ain’t no fucking Powder who can’t take it. Stick that wrinkled fucking cock in me all the way! Right. Fucking. Now.”

Silco slammed into her. Sheathing himself inside the teenager completely. He almost passed out as he looked up at the ceiling, the muscles in his back and neck standing out as his teeth snapped together so hard that he cracked one his molars. Jinx arched her back, her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she went stiff like she was being electrocuted. They both spoke at the same time.

“So fucking tight!”

“So fucking full!”

It seemed like impossible math; he was too big and she was too small. They shouldn’t fit.

But they fit together perfectly.

Silco felt his heart swell at the thought. Well, hadn’t that just always been the case? The little girl and old gang lord. The bomb maker and the revolutionary. They had both killed and been killed by the people they loved. They were murderers and monsters.

The jinx and the dirty little thing.

Silco wasn’t looking at her like she was a murderous little jinx. His scarred face slackened and the cold, calculating blue-green eye that had watched and committed a thousand atrocities was filled with nothing but love. Even his black, dead orb seemed like it could see for a moment.

The girl shook her head and looked at his face. Silco could tell she wasn’t looking at the Eye of Zaun. The ruthless Chem-Baron or a dirty little thing that failed, that always failed, the ones who believed in him. Large ocean-blue eyes were filled something that no one since a dead redheaded girl ever saw. The others only ever saw indifference, cruelty or madness. But Silco saw only love; endless and devouring love.

Perhaps she’d been right all along and they were the only real people in the world.

“Silly…...Silly……I can feel your heart beating inside me. It’s so……cool!”

Her excited whisper got him moving again. Silco pulled back, his cock mostly withdrawing before sliding back into her cunt. Glove-tight, red-hot but there was no push back, no obstruction or hesitation from her. Jinx had been made for him. She belonged with him.

She belonged to him.

Jinx wrapped her arms around his neck as he began to build a rhythm, bumping her hips back, grunting and humming as she did. Silco thrust, again and again. He had fire behind his eye and it felt like she was sucking him in with each stroke. Jinx was pouring her heat into him as he poured himself into her. His muscles were working overtime but he felt amazing. No aches or pain. His face didn’t hurt for the first time in years.

The girl was like a shot of Shimmer, giving him strength. Silco pushed her legs back and straightened his own, getting a more even angle. He began to piston his hips in short, rapid thrusts. Jinx shrieked in his ear. He kissed her cheek and he buried himself in her and she almost broke his neck with her grip. Silco breathed her scent in deep. Sweat, sex, gunpowder, fried food and……axle grease.

“Uuuuughhh” Silco’s cry was animalistic, passionate and…...sad. But Jinx didn’t hear that as he suddenly tore her arms away, pulled out of her and grabbed the teenager around the ribcage. Silco hunched over her and flipped Jinx like a pancake so she was on her stomach. He fell on top of her, burying his face in her sweaty hair, the braid-holders scratching his chest until he knocked the blue tendrils out of the way.

He kneed her legs apart, she lifted her rear instinctively. Silco lined up his pulsing cock and thrust back in with one furious stroke. Jinx screamed into the mattress. The older man yanked her head up, putting one his arms around her neck. Fully mounted, he began to fuck her again. Their sweat-covered bodies merging as he was unwilling to separate them even for a second. He just rutted against her as she cried and wailed against his arm. Silco grunted as her pussy clenched him tighter than ever.

“Who are you here with?” Jinx pushed back against him, her hands scratching at his forearm.

“Yo-you! Silco!” He thrust into her again, snarling into her ear.

“Who do you belong to?”

“You! I belong to-FUCK-you!!”

Silco tightened his arm around her throat. Jinx began shake and choke. Her cunt crushed him as he cut off her air. He whispered to her.

“I belong to you too Jinx. Ride the wave, don’t fight it. Let me show you how much I love you.”

In as many ways as he could. He was about lose control as Jinx squirmed against him and around him. His ass moved up and down as fast he could move as he felt her start to pass out. He thrust as deeply as he could and felt her convulse, he loosened his chokehold and Jinx gasped as the oxygen hit her just as her orgasm started. Jinx let out a ragged wail.

“DADDY I’M CUMMING”

Jinx lurched forward and bit his forearm as hard as she could. The pain was intense as she tore into his flesh, he would bear the half-moon scar she left for the rest of his life. The pain also ignited his own orgasm. Silco screamed as fire filled him and curled his toes. His cock almost exploded as he began to come. He never thought of pulling out and even if he did, she would have stopped him. Silco bent his head and bit her ear as he filled her. Oh Janna, nothing and no one had ever felt this good before. His cock spat ropes of cum into the twitching teenager. Each pulse through his shaft was like its own orgasm.

It seemed to last forever and it devoured every bit of the energy that been building inside of him since he first opened his eye in the dark earlier. A mere hour ago but it felt like a thousand years had passed. Silco collapsed, gasping on top her as Jinx sucked on the wound on his forearm. After a few minutes, she elbowed him in the stomach. Silco groaned and climbed off her, his half-hard cock slipping out of her cunt with loud wet sound.

He fell on his side as she flipped over, panting. He looked down at her center. Her cunt was red, open and his cum was dripping out of her onto the bed. His eye traveled up her body; looking at the bruises and red marks dappling her torso, her purple and blue neck, and blood-smeared mouth. He reached over and wiped the damp blue bang off her forehead.

“Beautiful.” She looked at him with red eyes and whispered.

“Because of you.”

Jinx reached for him and Silco gathered her in his arms. Settling back on the crumpled-up pillows as she cuddled against his chest. He looked down at her.

“Would you like me to get you a towel so you can clean up?” Jinx shook her head and squeezed him tighter.

“I like how it feels inside. Like I have a piece of you forever. I wanna sleep now.” He nodded and reached out to bedside table, tugging on the chem-lamp’s chain and they were wrapped in comfortable darkness.

Silco rubbed her shoulder and listened to her soft breathing. He was beginning drift off himself when she yawned and spoke.

“It’s quiet. I think my brainpan got shook up in the right way. I don’t think I’ll have any bad dreams tonight.”

Silco kissed the top of her head.

“That’s good. I’m glad I could help.” He felt her teeth worry at his nipple in the dark.

“That ain’t why I did it. Just a happy….ya know, coincidence? I’d want to be here with you anyway. No matter what, I’d always chose to be here with you.”

He was grateful for the darkness, she couldn’t see his face work or how his lip trembled.

“You would? Not anywhere else…...or with anyone else?” She snorted and yawned again.

“Durr. That’s what I just said. Your ears old too? I’ll make you a hearing aid tomorrow. One that plays music. Good music, my music, not that fogey crap you listen to.”

He rolled his eye. What a life he had led, that somehow struck him as deeply romantic.

“Good night Jinx.”

“I want waffles for breakfast.”

“Of course.”

“And fried potatoes and whump-bacon. Oh, and lots of powdered sugar and butter for my waffles.”

“There will be enough to send you into a diabetic coma.”

“Good…...and nighty-night old man….my man.”

Soon, her snores filled the room and Silco found himself drifting off. His last thoughts were about the first person he ever loved, in any fashion. How she had smiled at him. She had been the first person to ever smile at him. Then he thought about her daughter, the last person he would ever love. Paths and choices. There was no going back, the only way was forward. Felicia belonged to the past. Jinx and him still had a future together.

Silco closed his eye and his sleep, like hers, was dreamless that night.