Work Text:
There are far worse places to be chasing a fool’s hope, a false lead, Caitlyn thinks as she steps off the airship, than Ionia.
“If you’re going to keep standing there and staring,” comes the voice from inside the shop, “you might as well come in closer. Who knows, you might find something you like, 美女 pretty lady.”
Caitlyn huffs softly at the typical Ionian endearment, stepping over the raised entryway into the store.
The smell of gunpowder is stronger here, foreign but familiar, a different tinge from the smoke of her gun, not different enough to not be comforting. The walls are dusted a faint grey, splashes of neon color in the corners where they haven’t quite been scraped off.
In the back there’s a big table, a wooden frame crisscrossed with wires, blocks of soot black with chunks sliced from them, small round spheres drying on racks that wrap around the room.
If there’s even a single spark here, the whole building will be gone before you can say pow.
Caitlyn draws closer to the person in the back, to the woman sitting on a small wooden stool, bent over an empty cardboard sphere the size of their heads, clearly engrossed in the careful placement of charges into the firework shell.
“That’s rather large,” she says as she lowers the hood of her cloak.
Pink eyes jerk up at her in surprise.
“It’s been a while—” the words come slow “—Jinx.”
“This is quite the workshop.”
“It’s something,” says Jinx, flat. “I need the space. Lets me participate in the summer festivals from time to time. Good publicity.”
Kiramman hums like she already knows. Maybe she does. In fact, she probably does. That’s probably how she figured out where to find her. Yeah.
Damn.
Must have been the pastels from last year. Knew she shouldn’t have—
“Are you not going to offer me tea?”
It’s been five whole years and in an instant Jinx is reminded of just how annoying it is that that face comes with that accent.
“No,” she says, because she’s petty like that. This is her studio. Her space. She can do whatever the fuck she wants and she’s doing just fine, thank you very much. People like her explosions here. They’re brilliant and she knows it.
The Princess can fuck off back to Piltover for her fancy tea.
“If you’re not going to buy anything,” she says, “you can leave.”
The moment the words escape, Jinx realizes she’s made a key tactical error.
There’s no universe after all, in which Caitlyn Kiramman, lone surviving heir to the Piltovan Kiramman fortune (no small thanks to yours truly oops) can’t afford to buy anything she wants.
The twist of those lips, the glint in that eye—why the fuck is there only one eye—tells her Kiramman knows this too.
Shit.
“Ah,” a long finger reaches out to touch the drying block of gunpowder paste, not yet shaped into the balls that would be fit into fireworks.
Jinx holds her breath, knows one spark could kill them both, knows that any self respecting setup would have different rooms, maybe even different buildings for the explosives and the other firework components.
She knows Kiramman knows this too, knows she’s doomed, almost can’t wait.
It's sparring all over again and don’t get her wrong, Ionian merchants drive some tough ass bargains but this kind of sparring? Grinding the sharp edge of her wit against a stone, seeing where the sparks land and what will blow?
Why, she hasn't had that in five whole years.
The taste of gunpowder is now back on her tongue and it is addictive.
Jinx watches as Kiramman picks up a small chunk of the wet paste and fucking rolls it around bare fingers.
“My family has expansive property. You’d have all the space you want and you won’t have to worry about expenses. In exchange—” A pause. That ocean eye holds her gaze “—your fireworks will headline my New Year Gala. What do you say?”
My New Year Gala.
Jinx grins, wide, shark teeth and pink sparks.
“At least take a girl out to dinner first before you take her home, princess.”
It’s unsurprising to find out that Kiramman can wine and dine with the best of them. Jinx doesn’t even know how it happened but a fucking carriage pulled up and the next thing she knows they’re standing in front of an establishment so understated the door has no sign but the curtains are inlaid with gold, the floor marked with jade.
Tastefully too, which is the most annoying part.
Actually, that’s not the most annoying part.
That’d be the waitress who has clearly been flirting with Kiramman this whole dinner. There’s that special kind of coy smile, the high fluttering laugh, the lingering look that’s not subtle in the slightest, only to be dismissed without so much as a glance. It’s pretty sad, really. Sadder when everyone knows vapid can’t possibly be the princess’ type.
Surely it isn't. Is it?
The door to their private dining room closes behind the waitress who’s just whisked the empty plate of the most delicious dumplings in the world away.
Never let it be said that money cannot buy happiness.
She grins, another one of those specialties that’s all canines, well aware that the footsteps aren't quite out of earshot.
Jinx pushes her luck.
She always does. It’s fun, lights a little fire in her veins that she hasn’t felt since she first set foot in this town.
It’s a little chase, a little game and she does so like her games.
“Bet if Vi,” she drawls a name she hasn’t said aloud in five years, “were here, that waitress would never dare.”
The teacup stills in Kiramman’s hands, that single blue eye bright, almost grey in the candle light.
Then the porcelain is placed back onto the tabletop, so delicately it doesn’t even make a sound.
“Violet,” says Kiramman and in those three syllables Jinx hates how she can hear the depth of fondness, “would be the one flirting with the waitress, if she were here. Sometimes she likes them a little giggly, a little fawning.”
Jinx narrows her eyes.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it does.
“And that’s fine?”
The slightest tilt of Kiramman’s head, the sudden weight of an unbroken gaze.
“She always comes home to me.” The curl of lips. “And I to her.”
Interesting.
“Huh,” Jinx says, elbows on the table, chin in her hands. “Never thought you had that in you, toots. Sharing?”
Kiramman’s eyebrows raise.
“Freedom.” Another short pause. “Thought you’d understand that the best of all of us, Jinx.”
Jinx shrugs.
“I do,” she says. “I just didn’t think I’d see it in you.”
Then she grins, just because she’s always been a little too curious for her own good.
“That waitress isn’t your type?”
Kiramman picks her cup up, lifts it to her lips, and takes a small sip.
Jinx watches her throat bob in a swallow.
“Not her,” Kiramman says. “No.”
Jinx should have known.
Of course the princess would have a villa, even in Ionia.
Of course she would have grounds.
Of course she would have a whole fucking—what is this even. It’s not a manor. It’s not a mansion. It’s buildings upon buildings, long corridors, courtyards, walls half the size of the fucking neighborhood, if there were a neighborhood here but there isn’t. No neighborhood, just this estate. Just bamboo groves and perfectly groomed gardens and the emptiest fucking house she has ever seen.
Of course Jinx is moving in.
She’s not crazy.
There haven’t been any explosions today, Caitlyn notes as she closes the book that Vi picked out for her trip.
She’s not sure if that’s a good thing.
Perhaps artists have their own processes? Perhaps expecting instant destruction was a little too much?
The girl that Vi described to her over many long, restless sleepless cloudless nights as Powder had been brilliant and kind, soft, loved, an innocent soul put into a body born into circumstances she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemies.
Caitlyn closes her eye.
The wraith Caitlyn had known as Jinx had been no less sharp, shrouded in a razor-thin edge of instability, tinged with a weariness that was bone-deep, a terrifying loneliness and a destructive desperation.
She takes a deep breath, knows it all too well, the feeling of paint on her skin, metal on her teeth, blood under her fingernails, petals falling from her hands.
She lets that breath out slow, forces the tension from her shoulders.
She made her choice years ago, made it for the girl who’d saved her life, made it for Vi, made it, above all, for herself.
She hadn't regretted her choice then. She doesn’t regret her choice now.
Now.
Now, there is a woman who lives in the east wing of her house and makes fireworks for the local summer festivals, a woman she knows nothing about, starting over in a distant land.
Starting over.
Caitlyn opens her eye to the pink of the setting sun, gets up from the window seat, leaves her rifle by the armrest.
She might just have to find out what that looks like.
She doesn’t see Kiramman around.
Probably busy off somewhere doing rich people things, Jinx supposes, has to catch herself in a chuckle because is there anything out there that’s more of a quintessentially rich people thing than paying for an artist to take residency in your own home?
Probably not.
She rolls out another ball of the charges, closes her eyes for a moment, lets the color explode in showering sparks in her head, feels the grate of the heat against her ears, drinks in the shockwave.
One shade of electric blue stays burned right there on the back of her eyelids.
Jinx has never slept well, not even after two nights in the softest bed known to humankind.
Silk sheets, a mattress that supports the full curve of her spine, curtains that block out the stars and she still can’t sleep.
It’s just a thing. One of the things like the spark of her pink eyes whenever she catches a glimpse of them in the mirror in the bathhouse—can you believe there is a whole fucking bathhouse that’s squeaky clean and so goddamn empty? It gleams of new cypress, smells beyond heavenly, opens out to an even larger open-air pool.
And it’s all heated. Always heated. Clean, clear water flowing endlessly. Probably mineral water too, judging by the feel off it on her skin.
She thought Piltover had it good, but no, Ionia takes the cake.
She could float here forever, if she’s honest.
Well, if she didn’t know that she probably shouldn’t pass out in the hot water, that is. She’s unhinged, not stupid.
Jinx soaks in the water, looking up at the stars.
Ionia isn’t too far off, isn’t far north like Freljord is, but it’s a little different and so here too the stars are different. Same sky, she knows, as the one that hangs over Zaun shrouded in cloud.
The same sky that she’s never seen.
Kinda sad, huh.
She rolls over, lets the water grip its warm hands on her scalp, emerges, water dripping down her nose.
Forever is a long time.
She sinks in a little further, blows bubbles into the water. She’s probably not supposed to, but who’s gonna stop her?
Almost as if on cue, like she fucking jinxed herself, she hears the sounds of the shower turning on.
Oh shit.
Now, it’s been two days and she’s been raring to go, wanted to see Kiramman to dig a few of her rusty claws in, see what comes out besides coin, but well, not like this. Not in the bathhouse. Like, maybe, she doesn’t know, over a meal. In a corridor. Hell, even walking into the workshop. Anywhere where she can needle her and see what the hell is going on behind that one eye—how is there only one eye? That thought pisses her off.
But that’s also a thought for later.
Now she has to figure out an exit strategy because she does not, does not, definitely does not want to bump, inadvertently into the Lady of the House, Princess Kiramman herself while they’re both butt fucking naked.
She could jump the fence, knows she’s faster than Kiramman—there really aren’t many people faster than her, if it comes down to a single moment.
But there’s no way she wouldn’t be heard and if that rifle that Kiramman totes around isn’t for show… It probably isn’t for show. Nothing Jinx has noticed about that woman is for show. Not the long sweeping dresses, not the earrings that drip from her ears, the jewels sparkling on her neck. No, each of those serves a specific, pointed purpose.
And so does that rifle.
Which, if she doesn’t get it right, will probably be stuck in her face.
Call her a pickle and stick her in a sandwich.
Or however that saying goes.
Jinx groans into the water, into the steam.
Fuck.
Then she decides she’s going to suck it up and deal with it. There’s only one way out of this, only one door out into the rest of the estate and Jinx isn’t going to run from, of all people, Kiramman.
She’s allowed to be here.
She’s the artist in residence.
She can use the baths whenever the hell she wants.
So she shuffles closer to the shower area, sees a pair of bare feet leading up into legs—jesus this woman is long. Jinx takes another deep breath, waits for the water to stop running, then reaches over and taps Kiramman on the left shoulder.
“Hey, toots,” she says and instantly regrets it, finds herself dodging out of the way of an astonishingly quick hand that had tried to grab her wrist and probably, she doesn’t know, try to fucking snap it, judging from the movement.
Instead, three feet away, she stands there in the steam in shock as Kiramman freaks the fuck out.
There’s no other way to describe it.
The eyepatch is gone but that’s not even what Jinx sees, just a wide electric blue eye spinning wildly around the steam-filled room, can hear the hyperventilation, can see the moment Kiramman shatters, arms gathering around herself, eye unfocused, starting to stumble backwards—
Jinx catches her.
Against her better judgment, Jinx catches her, warm fingers on cold skin.
“It’s ok,” she says, about as soothing as she can manage, because she knows what this is, she knows what this is all about maybe a little too fucking well. “You’re ok,” she says.
The eye finds hers and widens even further.
It’s the pink, isn’t it? It’s always the pink. Always the goddamn pink.
She never wanted that. She never has.
“I got you,” Jinx mutters, looking down and away and fuck if that isn’t the same line she used the last time, just different. Different. She hopes Kiramman can hear just how different.
“You’re alright. I—” she takes a short, deep breath “—I’m not going to hurt you, Caitlyn.”
Well, thinks Caitlyn as she stares at herself in the mirror in her bedroom, hair limp, water dripping down onto her shoulders, that was embarrassing.
She takes a deep breath, closes her eye, feels the chill of the early autumn air on her damp skin.
It felt like she was right back there in that shower, stumbling backwards up at the caricature of a monkey, that grin, that sparkle of pink, paint on her skin that won’t fucking come off.
She takes another deep breath, slow, feels the shudder go down the length of her back, curl into the droplets of water that drip off, onto the floor.
A small puddle is forming. She’s not sure she cares.
Why now?
It’s over. It’s all been over for years.
Jinx has lived in this house for two whole days and nothing happened. Nothing.
This too, this was nothing. This was—
She squeezes her eye shut, shoving the cold sinking of her heart back down into her stomach, wrapping the lead in her own two hands.
It’s been over.
It was never personal.
She’s let this go.
She has, she did.
Maybe she hadn’t.
She watched the shop for a week and didn’t see anything but merchants, didn’t hear anything but the clink of coins, the rustle of paper, the loud laughter of children being handed little sparklers made from the leftover scraps of gunpowder.
She knows.
Jinx being normal is not new.
Jinx being decent is not impossible.
The crackle of Hextech gunpowder blue bursting through glass, the release of a choking grip, Caitlyn thinks of Jinx saving her life what almost feels like a lifetime ago, thinks of warm hands on her shoulders, of the wide, shocked pink that had blinked away the moment their eyes met.
Cait, she’s changed.
She takes one more breath, slower than the last.
She’d kinda forgotten about that, to be honest.
Jinx sits on the floor, knees pulled to her chest, clothes soggy.
A lot had happened that night five years ago and honestly in the midst of all of that shit, the fact that she’d abducted Caitlyn Kiramman from the fucking shower to get back at Vi really doesn’t rank very high in the list of things she remembers. Things like killing Silco and losing Vi all over again.
But now as she’s curled up outside an equally ornate door, she remembers being up there in the beams, watching the endless clean water pour down on a deep blue head, steam in the bathroom, the scent of rosewater and gunpowder.
So she hasn’t entirely forgotten, but—Jinx buries her head in her hands, groans.
It would be so much easier if Kiramman just went back to Piltover. Like maybe yesterday. That’d be nice.
Would have been nicer, really, if that woman hadn’t just waltzed right through the door of her firework shop looking all put together, inviting her into her house.
Well, why don’t we turn back time while we’re at it, hm?
Hah.
She’s too old now to believe in wishes magically coming true so she’s gonna have to find a way to say something about it, at some point. Somehow.
Something.
She’s not sure what she’d say.
Sorry, maybe.
I didn’t mean it. Not that way.
Wasn’t really trying to y’know, traumatize you for fucking life or anything.
It was never about you.
The growl gets stuck in her throat.
All of that sounds like absolute chicken shit even if it’s true. Sounds like excuses, like lies, like the kinds of words people say just to make themselves feel better, never mind anyone else.
And Jinx, Jinx isn’t like that.
She’s not.
Her own wet hair is between her fingers and she tugs on the loose, unbraided strands growing longer now, past her shoulders, feels the water drip down her wrists.
She could run.
It would be even worse, running. But she has, and she could.
Could pack up the workshop, grab a couple of coins on her way out—the princess leaves them in bags, whole bags of gold and silver by the door that she’s sure no one will miss—and she could start over somewhere else, deep in the bowels of the beast, far away where this time, this time, this time at fucking last she can’t hurt anyone ever again.
Fuck.
This was a mistake.
This was all a mistake.
She should never have moved—
“Jinx?”
The word is soft, a little hesitant. She’s not sure she’s ever heard her name, this name like that before, looks up, just as the weight of a towel is draped around her shoulders.
“My father used to say,” says the warmth that sits down next to her, “that going to sleep with wet hair would give you a headache.”
Jinx buries her face in the fresh terrycloth, fists clenching in the stupid soft material as hands start to dry her hair, firm but unhurried, just the way Vi used to.
Fuck.
Fuck Vi and her stupid big heart.
Fingers press against her scalp through the cloth and this too, this too—Jinx squeezes her eyes tight shut like if she does she can keep the bottom of her heart from falling out.
She doesn’t succeed but the hands pause only for a moment, then they continue, gentle.
Fuck Caitlyn Kiramman.
“If you’re asleep—”
“I’m not.”
“Well, I suppose the point is quite moot then.”
Jinx’s head raises from the towel, her bright blue hair a little frizzy from the towel drying. Caitlyn has to resist the urge to run her fingers through the long strands, to smooth them down.
“Was moot to begin with,” says Jinx, eyebrows raising slowly. “If I’m asleep—If I’d been asleep I wouldn’t have heard you.”
“Fair.”
She reaches out to pat Jinx’s head gently with the towel, not really sure why she does, only that she feels like she wants to.
A hand snaps out, lightning fast, grabbing hold of her wrist, grip surprisingly strong.
Caitlyn looks down, looks at the missing middle finger, then back up at pink eyes glowing soft in the night as they look back at her.
“Yes?”
Something crinkles over Jinx’s face. It isn’t anger, isn’t disgust. It disappears before she can figure out what it is, isn’t sure she’s seen it before.
“Don’t push it, toots.”
There’s a small sparkler on her windowsill when she wakes the next morning.
Jinx glares at the fire.
The fire waves back, the wrong fucking color.
She takes a deep breath, holds it deep in her belly, lets it sit in there and swirl around the in between bits of her ribs. Then she lets it out, as slow as she can manage.
Damn those Ionian gurus for being right about, of all things, breathing.
The fire is back to orange now which, well, fair. She hadn’t put a large amount of the compound into the flame. This is just the testing stage. Experimentation. It’s fine that it doesn’t work. It’s not supposed to work right away. That’d be weird. That’d be a kind of strange magic.
That’d be nice.
She’s always been good with pigments.
Pigments are easy. You just gotta find the right kind of stuff and make it small and mix it with other kinds of stuff, of course bearing in mind general chemical stability and compatibility with the container’s materials.
She could do that in her sleep.
Has done it in her sleep, probably.
What is sleep even, anyway.
She stares back at the fire.
Firework colors though, are chemistry. They’re the perfect slice of light, an excitation that forces an electron up, then down between the gaps of energy, emits that at one exact wavelength to give you a single, pure color.
Jinx flicks copper powder into the flames, watches them go up blue-green, close but wrong. She takes a pinch of salt and watches the fire go yellow, digs into her strontium for deep red, and, just to make herself feel better, dips into her secret stash for the pink that had taken her a whole season to perfect.
She sighs, flopping down on the cool wooden workbench.
Of all the colors, all the colors out there, all the other easy as shit colors, why does the one she wants have to be the one shade she doesn’t know how to make?
“Oh good,” comes the voice from the doorway. “You’re still up. Great. Awesome. Now just—”
Caitlyn looks up, over the wine glass.
“Jinx,” she says. “Good evening to you too.”
Jinx waves a hand as she steps in like she doesn’t need an invitation. Perhaps she doesn’t. “Yeah, yeah. Great evening, wonderful weather, all that.”
Then she pauses, her head tilts, a wave of blue tilting with her, the loose overcoat practically falling off her shoulders. Caitlyn does not reach out to straighten it.
“Am I interrupting, toots?”
Caitlyn follows her gaze to the bottle, at how empty it looks. Well, that is rather… unbecoming, she’d say if she were in company who’d give a shit about stuff like that.
She’s not and they both know it.
“No,” she says. “Just a nightcap.”
She places the glass down.
“Good,” says Jinx who clearly does not give a shit. Before she can blink, Jinx has pressed a single wooden sparkler into her hand—Caitlyn has always known Jinx was fast but seeing it in person is breathtaking.
She looks at it.
It looks ordinary, smells of cedar and fire.
Then she looks back at Jinx.
“Well?” Jinx returns the look, unflinching. “What are you waiting for, princess? C’mon, light it up. Let’s have a looksee.”
There’s a buzz in the air, an excitement that flits around Jinx’s shoulders, a spark, almost, a sparkle of pink that strikes her all of a sudden of the cherry blossoms in full bloom.
Caitlyn’s fingers tighten on the stick.
“A looksee?”
Jinx rolls her eyes, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Hurry up. We haven’t got all day.”
“It’s night.”
“Yes, smartass, and it might be day soon if you keep this up. C’mon.”
The energy is almost contagious, makes her want to sip at it, breathe it into her lungs, hold it in her chest.
So she does.
“If you’re in such a hurry, you can light it,” she says, holding it out loosely in her fingertips, bouncing it in half time to her heartbeat.
Jinx raises her eyebrows.
“Alright,” she drawls, “Sorry to make you do something so uncouth as light it yourself, princess.”
Caitlyn says nothing.
Jinx huffs, quiet.
In the dim moonlight of her sitting room Jinx’s hands draw close to hers. They are flecked with black dust and silver stars, pale like first light, slender but strong. There is the flick of the flint wheel, a low blue glow from the flame, and then the sparkler catches, the hands draw away.
It’s white, at first.
Caitlyn looks through the sparks, looks through them, watches Jinx, watches the way those shoulders are tense, the way her head turns a little like she does and doesn’t want to see.
The sparks turn blue, a light blue-green, almost teal. It’s a gorgeous color, one she’s never seen before in the sky. It’s brilliant, beautiful, the fertile river winding past rice paddies in the midday sun.
Then there’s a growl.
Caitlyn raises her eyebrows, about to say something to the frown on Jinx’s face, is too slow when Jinx snatches the stick from her hands and disappears, leaving only the smell of gunpowder in her wake.
The first week in Ionia had been a good break, might even have been a good omen for her remaining time here, all quiet, unhurried, relaxed meals at some of her favorite childhood places without the recognition that usually comes with it.
She should have known that would not last, especially not after that one rather last minute request, shall we say, for a reservation at that delectable dumpling establishment.
Worth it, for both the food and the company.
The purported privacy?
Perhaps not so much.
She picks up the thick lilac invitation, scented with jasmine, text embossed in a flowing but almost gauche gold foil. The next one, a pale mint green, somehow manages to have a whole pearl embedded in the softest paper she’s ever touched.
Now people know that the Kirammans are back. Now the social calendar she’s avoided for most of her life awaits. Piltovan diplomacy is one thing; Ionia, a whole other.
Caitlyn places the invitations down.
Is it time? Does she want to?
She picks up the family insignia, the jade stamp smooth to the touch, the legacy of centuries heavy in her hand. She runs a finger over the underside, each etched edge still sharp.
Surely the fireworks she has already paid almost a small fortune for deserve an audience.
She has no proof that they will be any better than the images she’d been sent, the tip to get her out here in the first place, but even those, even those had been spectacular.
Vi mentioned it once, stars in her eyes.
I wish you'd seen the things she could make, love.
I have, she didn't say then, is glad now that she hadn't because it would not have been true.
Caitlyn puts the stamp back down just as there is a soft knock to her door, just as she begins to wonder why she hasn't seen Jinx in days.
“Come in,” she says, and is surprised to not find blue hair.
It’s not that it’s never been like this, Jinx thinks as she stares up at the ceiling of the workshop in the middle of the night, at the beams that look back down at her and laugh.
Well, it’s never been exactly like this. Sure, she’s had setbacks before—goodness knows how many shells have exploded on the ground, how many have been just wrong .
But even then there had been progress, something to say hey you’re on the right track.
Now?
She flicks another pinch of powder into the flames.
It is still the wrong blue.
There's always been something immensely interesting about watching a craftsperson work. The focus, the energy, the excitement, the hushed silences, the spinning of cogs behind sparkling eyes.
Caitlyn has always loved watching someone create.
Now she stands outside the workshop, looking into it at the small flame on the desk, flashing with various shades of blue and sometimes green, watching the way Jinx’s hands go to her head, her sides, the edge of the table.
It is a whirlwind of energy, sparks and flames, the sputtering and fizzing of things coming to life. Sighs and grins and groans, the furious scribbling on paper that goes up in ashes a moment later. Watching Jinx forge beauty from the fire is endlessly captivating.
She's not sure why she hasn't visited earlier.
She knocks on the doorframe and pink eyes rise to meet her.
“This stuff—” Jinx swipes at the edge of her mouth “—is fucking heavenly.”
Kiramman raises her eyebrows.
“Anything would be fucking heavenly if one hasn’t eaten.”
Jinx snorts. Trust Kiramman to find a way to make the words ‘fucking heavenly’ sound like a description of the weather.
“I have, toots.”
The eyebrows stay up.
“What?” Jinx picks up another piece of whatever spicy seafood this is. Man, there’s something awfully nostalgic about the flavor. She isn’t really sure how, or what it is, but it’s good. Really good.
“The chef tells me that despite your appalling meal schedule, which, trust me, was also grounds for concern, they’d been getting especially worried over the past few days because you haven’t been touching much of your meals.”
Jinx shrugs and chews.
“Been busy.” She takes another piece. Damn, this shit really hits the spot. “Sue me. Why’d you care anyway?”
“It would be awfully inconvenient for you to pass out, considering the investment I have in your work.”
There’s laughter in those words, the hint of a smile on those lips, a twinkle, almost, in that eye.
Jinx flips Kiramman the bird with her metal middle finger and then shoves more food into her face.
“Are you just going to sit there watching me or are you also going to eat?” She jerks her chin in the direction of the unwrapped sandwich. “Didn’t know they did sandwiches in Ionia.”
“Of course they do sandwiches in Ionia—” Kiramman’s fingers peel the wax paper away delicately to reveal what is kind of not actually a sandwich “—this is not a backwater and my chef knows what I like.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever.”
Five minutes later, Jinx resists the urge to pick up the bowl and drink the sauce. She does look at it though. And she does think very seriously about it. If Kiramman weren’t here, she might actually do it. Fuck her sideways, this shit is so fucking good.
“Same time tomorrow?”
That goddamn eye is laughing at her, she knows it.
I found her.
She scratches that out from the missive.
She's alive.
This too she tears from the page.
She's different.
You were right.
Caitlyn stares down at the words, at the soft glow from the candlelight twisting in the black drying ink.
Then she picks the slip of paper up, sets it on fire, watches it lick its way to ash on her fingertips.
Jinx groans two hours after lunch the next day.
Kiramman raises her eyebrows, looking up from whatever those pieces of paper are that she’s been reviewing for the past few hours.
“Is something the matter?”
Jinx stares back at that eye that haunts her sleep.
“No,” she growls and stalks back to her powders. “Nothing’s the matter.”
A neutral hum.
“It’s just not working,” Jinx mutters.
Kiramman’s eye goes to the small burner, to the flame that’s been on for Jinx doesn’t know how many days. Then it goes back to her and it glows, almost, in the dimmed lighting of the workshop, glows that damnable elusive shade of electric blue.
“Can I be of any assistance?”
The groan Jinx groans is even longer and deeper now.
“No,” she mutters into her hands.
She counts her lucky stars that Kiramman doesn’t push it.
Caitlyn looks at this latest invitation, a pale red, simple, stamped with the utilitarian black that the Ruling Council favors, this one for lunch.
This one, she knows, she cannot decline.
Jinx’s head is slumped on the table at lunchtime when Kiramman shows up again, for the third day in a row with a basket and what the fuck, is that a rifle slung over her back?
“Looks like you need to let off some steam,” she says. “And I think I know something you might like.”
The shooting range is in a bamboo grove, shielded partially from the wind by the tall, tall grass that reaches almost to the sky.
The targets are ridiculously far away.
Jinx says so, squinting out at the small splotches of what are probably straw mats woven so tight they’re practically armor, at the black dots that mark the actual zone.
Faster than she can say more, the gun is on a shoulder, cocked and—fucking hell, had it been loaded this whole time?
Kiramman is insane.
There’s a bang, not even the slightest wisp of a cloud from the spotless barrel, no dust cloud by the target. Something tells Jinx she doesn’t have to look to know that there’s a bullet embedded in the middle of the straw.
Goddamn.
Call her a mop and dip her in a bucket because that was clean.
Kiramman’s lips curl as she ejects the casing faster than Jinx can blink and in the afternoon sun filtering through the leaves her eye is bluer than ever before.
“Too far away for you? I can have them moved if you don't think you can do it.”
Jinx glares back.
Then it strikes her.
Hah.
She stalks closer, slinks around Kiramman in that long hunting coat.
Jinx leans in close, close to the rifle, closer still to Kiramman who doesn't move, so close she catches the hint of rosewater over the note of gunpowder, places her metal finger on the muzzle.
“How touching,” she grins, baring her canines. “You haven’t moved them because you think I can do it, mm?”
Kiramman’s eye is fixed on her and that unwavering determination is one of the things Jinx has always hated and admired in equal parts.
That eye flicks down, then up so quickly she might have missed it if she hadn't been paying attention.
Kiramman draws almost imperceptibly further away.
Her tone drops.
“I'm an excellent teacher, Jinx. You’ll make it if you can keep up.”
Shivers go down Jinx’s spine.
She gets to watch another shot, watches the press of the rifle into muscle, can hear the silence, hold the stillness on the tip of her fingers placed on Kiramman’s elbow, the cloth not moving in the slightest until the recoil.
There is no dust cloud.
It’s scintillating, electricity sparking off her spine because Jinx knows exactly how hard it is to do something like that. Her shots have always been about a more frantic movement, picking the right moment, holding out for a spark of serendipity. Kiramman is the exact opposite, the mirror surface of a windless pond, the sharp silence of the sunrise, smooth movements that could only come with endless practice.
It’s fresh, almost delicious.
Jinx can’t wait to sink her teeth into the metal and tear out a chunk but she knows that’s not how this works. She wants to figure out how it works.
Wants to see if she can do it too, wants to know the trust was not misplaced.
“It’s all form,” says Kiramman, reloading without even looking.
She holds out the rifle.
Jinx takes it.
It’s weighty, not heavy. She hasn’t found anything heavy in a long, long while. Comes with the glowy pink eyes. Part of the whole package.
She steps up, closer, angling her body the way Kiramman has, hips pointed at the target. She lifts the gun to her shoulder. The wood is smooth to the touch, warm on her skin.
Then there’s the lightest of touches to her elbow.
“In,” comes the single word.
Jinx tucks her elbow closer, can almost hear her own heartbeat in her ears.
The slightest swish of air, then her focus on the target is broken by navy and cream. Kiramman walks in front of her barrel, drags a finger down the metal, fingertip settling close to her cheekbone.
And they called her insane. Janna above.
“Closer,” Kiramman says.
Jinx shifts the press of her face to the gun, feels the warmth of a body next to hers.
“Good,” comes as almost a murmur above her ear. “Now, lightly, after the exhale.”
Jinx almost chokes as a finger slides in, curls around hers, low pressure against the trigger. Rosewater surrounds her.
Stars, this woman will be the death of her.
She hits the target and in that moment Jinx wishes she could bottle the way that eye glows proud in the sunlight.
It makes her want to run right back to the workshop.
Caitlyn paces in front of her desk.
She might have crossed the line today, might have gone just a little too far. Not that Jinx hadn’t seemed interested—Caitlyn never would have dared if she hadn’t caught at least the slightest lingering look, no, she’s not quite that forward.
But had that been too much? Giving Jinx a whole rifle to use whenever she wanted to just because those pink eyes had gone so wide after hitting the target? It’s a little much, isn’t it? At least it isn’t the heirloom one. She’s not quite that far gone yet.
What is that word Vi likes to use?
Simp.
She sighs again.
Vi would probably laugh at her, that full belly laugh, the one that dances in her eyes.
You’re overthinking it, cupcake. It’s fun, you’re having fun, no one got hurt, it’s all good. And, here that damned shit-eating grin with those canines showing swims into her mind, you know I like it when you have fun.
“Toots,” says Jinx two days later in the workshop, “don’t you have somewhere to be or something to do? Or do rich people just y’know, do nothing?”
Caitlyn looks up from her book. It’s a good book. Vi has excellent taste.
“Sick of me already?”
Jinx flips her the bird but there isn’t much force behind it. Caitlyn would hide her smile behind the text but Jinx’s single-minded focus on the shell in front of her means it isn’t necessary.
“Fortunately for you,” she says as she closes her book silently, “I’ll be quite busy for the next week.”
The blue hair snaps up faster than she expects. It almost feels like there should be a question but it’s just pink eyes holding hers.
Caitlyn tilts her head.
“I’ve spent enough of my time here running from my social responsibilities. Vi was right. Someone’s got to get you a worthy crowd for your work. Audiences don’t just form themselves. ”
Jinx’s eyes don’t shift.
It would be unnerving but now she just finds this curious, so she waits.
Jinx swallows, is the first to break away, back down to the gunpowder in her hand. Caitlyn watches her knead it into a ball, then watches those movements stop, watches shoulders square, has a feeling she knows what they’re about to discuss.
“You haven’t told her yet.”
“No,” says Caitlyn.
“I know,” says Jinx. “She’d be here on the next airship if you told her. I know you haven’t.”
The gunpowder ball squishes flat between fingers.
“Why?”
“It’s not my place to tell her. It’s yours.”
Jinx’s eyes are a little wild when they fly up. “I—” her jaw clenches “—I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to. I have all this and I—”
She gestures, one hand black from the explosives that curls back down into a fist and Caitlyn gets it, she does. She’s known this for years.
“You don’t have to.”
Jinx looks at her like she’s grown an extra head.
She shrugs.
“If you’d wanted to, you would have, wouldn’t you?”
True to her word, there isn’t a single day in the week she has left that doesn’t have at least two social appointments. Lunch with members of the Council, tea with a family or other that Father’s mentioned once to have a keen interest in pyrotechnics, a little ostentatious but not problematically so. Dinner with a family on the other end of the table just to balance it out.
The Kirammans have danced this to perfection in the past and while a younger Caitlyn wouldn’t have cared, this Caitlyn been through enough to know the value in alliances, to know the power in words.
It’s so much work.
There’s so much that the family seneschal had gladly organized, prim notes of what to say and who to say it to. Reams of sketches, suggestions of attire and jewelry, when to dig out the treasured sapphires, when to keep them tucked away, who they’d been purchased from three hundred years ago.
Caitlyn leans against the cool glass of the carriage, getting a headache just thinking about all of it, wishing she were back in the corner of the workshop with her book and chemicals fizzing in the background.
She’d rather spend her last week here with certain other company but beggars cannot be choosers.
“Hold still for a moment for me, will you?”
It’s taking just about all of Caitlyn’s mental faculties to keep the stem of her wineglass in her fingers as Jinx leans in close, so incredibly close. The ever-lingering scent of gunpowder is strong over a base of what might be the yuzu citrus shampoo from the bathhouse but that is honestly the last thing Caitlyn is capable of thinking about right now.
Right now Jinx has both her hands on the arms of the chair.
Their noses are less than an inch apart, Caitlyn realizes, swallows before she finds her eye drawn back to the intensity of the pink gaze.
Jinx hums.
Jinx must be able to see her. It doesn’t always go both ways but this time it most certainly has to, with how close they are. She wonders if the cherry on her breath from the wine is obvious at this distance.
“Is there something I can help you with?”
Then Jinx’s head tilts as if this is the first time she’s actually seeing her. There’s a note of surprise, almost, then Jinx slips right off the chair. Cool air rushes in to fill the space, the light brush of chill on her arms.
Jinx paces around the room, chin in hand, night slippers dragging on the floor with each step.
“It’s just not right,” comes the annoyed mutter. “No matter what I do, it’s—I want it to be better.”
Jinx looks right at her.
“I need it to be better.”
The intensity of the stare is almost oppressive, would be unnerving but for the fact that there isn’t even the slightest hint of malice, simply a pure unbridled curiosity.
It’s breathtaking.
She can’t take it.
Caitlyn breaks the gaze first, places the wine glass down on the desk before she turns back.
“Some things take time.”
“Do I have time?”
Caitlyn raises her eyebrows. “The New Year’s Gala isn’t til the New Year. You have quite a few months to perfect what you’re making.”
Jinx looks down, says nothing for a moment, nails playing with the soft flesh of her finger, this time not drawing blood, only pressing light into the skin.
“But you’re going back soon, aren’t you?”
Ah.
“Yes,” says Caitlyn.
She can see the slow breath that Jinx takes in, the way her shoulders rise fractionally.
“When?”
“In three days.”
Three days.
Jinx groans up at the flame of the burner that is, most definitely, fucking laughing at her.
Seventy two hours isn’t a lot of time.
She flops onto the wooden tabletop, stares at the blue flame through the clear glass of a beaker.
Maybe she’ll feel better after she shoots something.
It turns out that she does, in fact, feel better after emptying seven rounds into the targets after lunch the next day. Jinx can see the shots are a little off-center but you know what, she doesn’t care.
There’s something really satisfying about the recoil of the rifle, about the way the bang reverberates through the bamboo then melts into the wind, that particular flavor of gunpowder that even the best shells don’t lose. It’s nice to have something finally fucking come up Jinx.
She’s really not usually so bad at this. It’s just—she growls as she ejects the last casing—it’s just that every time she closes her eyes and thinks about the exact shade she’s trying to get, it feels different.
She feels it now too and turns.
Kiramman stands there in what must be traditional Ionian garb, long flowing lines of silk, bolts of the deepest indigo and navy shimmering with what can only be the rich embroidery of silver, rivers of platinum dripping from her ears, down past that collar.
But what always draws her is that single eye.
Now it is the slow, unhurried return of her gaze. In the last two weeks it has been the light sparkle of amusement, the darker widening in surprise. The pale almost silvery hint in the night, the breathtaking intensity of lightning in the sun. Now in the shimmering afternoon sun this blue warm like the sparks of a new discovery—
Oh.
Caitlyn has memories of warm summer nights only starting to lose their swelter, the merry clinking of glasses, the soft laughter of bellies round and happy, then the hush that would go over the party.
She’d find a spot next to Father and Mother, ignore the space they’d saved between them, sit down on the picnic mat that is spotless, no less clean than the sofa. Mother would give her with that long-suffering look, would purse her lips though the disapproval never really reached her eyes, would help her hold her snacks as she gathered her skirts and leant against the soft two-seater.
The faint sweetness of the grass, the sugar of the candied fruits, the refreshing chill of the jasmine tea that she gets to put ice cubes into in secret, then finally, finally the quiet murmur broken by the soft whistle, the gold sparks of the very first firework rising into the dark sky.
She knows this will be different.
Jinx is a genius but there are things that take weeks to craft, that would be a waste to fire off for an audience of one. This is not going to go on for a whole hour, not going to light up half the sky, might not even be higher than the tops of those trees she’s always dreamed of climbing.
She doesn’t care.
Jinx bounces on the balls of her feet, a mixture of pure energy and the slightest tinge of a tense nervousness which, to be honest, before these last two weeks, would feel almost entirely alien. Now it doesn’t feel out of place. It feels normal. It feels real. Feels right.
“Ready, toots?”
“Ready when you are,” she says.
The smile she gets in return is brilliant in the warm glow of a single matchstick. Caitlyn watches Jinx’s hands draw closer to the corded cotton strings, to the long fuses that trail off into the shadows in the grass.
She idly wonders how funny it would be to see the entire empty Kiramman estate go up in a sudden gigantic blaze of pyrotechnic madness, has that thought process quickly cut off by the orange sprites of flame whipping out in more directions than she’d previously assumed.
Then she sees it, sees the golden trail stretch upwards before it dims, almost disappears. She tracks it with her eye, has a guess how high it’s going—higher than she thought it would.
It’s a burst of light, the sound following close, a deep rattle in her lungs.
Caitlyn steals a glimpse to her right and is rewarded with the blossom of cobalt blue reflected purple back at her through pink irises, a grin shining back in the light of the full ring of pink sparkles that has gone up shrub height, falling in a shower before fading into twinkling silver.
It’s beautiful but more than anything, the setup has been meticulously arranged, the timing perfect.
It’s impressive.
Jinx bounces up to her feet.
“Didn’t really have time to set them all with automatic timers,” she says with a shrug.
Caitlyn watches her disappear past the trees, the buzzing energy muted by the rustling of the wind through the bamboo leaves. The estate is quiet now, the remnants of the first round of fireworks hanging as grey wisps in the sky, the smell of gunpowder surrounding the picnic mat, even the cicadas quiet.
Just as she starts to wonder if she should have a pond put in to break up the silence, bright blue hair bounds back over to her, settling down on the picnic mat.
The next round of fireworks is deceptively simple, eight small chrysanthemums somewhat ordinary until she realizes that each is climbing above the next, exploding into bursts of gold at a regular interval, perfectly spaced as they stack higher and higher into the sky.
It’s a marvelous display of control and she says so, gets a wink for her efforts that warms her from the inside out. There are three more rounds, low candles dense and startling bright, spiralling whistling blossoms cracking into the calm darkness, waterfalls of light painting the edges of the trees pale pastel.
The night stays lighter now, clouds in the air.
Jinx beams before she gets up again and hops off, this time behind them. It doesn’t take her very long at all, maybe a heartbeat, before she sits back down, not quite in the same spot but closer. The hem of her loose Ionian robe pools over space between them.
Caitlyn pretends she doesn’t notice, takes a sip of her iced tea, rolls it in her mouth, smooth and floral before she swallows.
“What’s next?”
“My trademark—” Jinx’s eyes suddenly go very wide and the words cut right off “—oh shit, I—fuck.”
Caitlyn raises her eyebrows.
“You’re not about to blow up the whole estate, are you?”
Jinx’s head shakes vigorously but her hand clenches into a fist on the picnic mat. Her eyes are still wide as they look back. She looks like she wants to run.
“Well—” Caitlyn puts her glass down, shifts her hand just a little so her fingers brush Jinx’s trembling ones “—It can’t be that bad.”
She hears the intake of breath.
“I can afford a few buildings,” she teases.
The snort she gets back is a little thin.
Jinx’s lips wobble a little into a grimace, “No, it’s—”
Before Caitlyn can place the look in her eyes, the sky explodes into a broadly grinning monkey.
It’s a jolt to her heart, a skipped beat, fire in the back of her eye, ringing in her ears that she blinks away at the sudden grip of a hand, cool and trembling on hers.
This monkey is different. This one is a bright pastel pink, neon green, cool blue hung wide in the sky with round eyes and a happy smile. It’s perfectly framed in the dark, centered beautifully.
She chuckles.
The tense fingers on hers relax.
“That’s very well done,” she says as the last of the sparkles fades into darkness. “Managing the rotation of the shell to ensure the image isn’t distorted can’t have been easy.”
Jinx swallows, looking at her like she’s waiting for the shoe to drop, for the shell to fall out of the sky unexploded. “It wasn’t.”
Caitlyn nods.
“I know,” she says. “And the monkey too, I thought that was adorable.”
In the waning moon she thinks she sees relief first, then a small, faint smile, feels it in the warmth of fingertips that brush her skin.
“Yeah?”
The question is quiet, a little soft.
“Yes,” she says. “I liked it.”
Jinx swallows, doesn’t say anything, just holds the gaze, fingers stilling.
Caitlyn looks away, looks down at her almost empty glass of iced tea, contemplates lifting it then decides she doesn’t have to.
“Is there more?”
Jinx nods, then she gets up, the lilac silk of her robe dragging against the picnic mat.
“One last one,” she says, then her pink eyes disappear once more into the darkness, the falling petals of spring blossoms when the wind blows.
The ring of gunpowder cloud sits heavy, not oppressive in the still night, the edges already beginning to curl away.
Caitlyn finishes her tea.
Jinx comes back as she has this whole evening but this time there’s a thin white line in her hands that trails off into the bushes.
This time she sits so close their knees are but a hair’s breadth away, smoke and yuzu. This time she holds the fuse out, pale fingers pressing the cotton into Caitlyn’s hands. This time she flicks the lighter on, the pale blue glowing between them.
“Do us the honors,” the grin is wide, luminous, cheeky even. “Princess. Or would you like me to light it for you this time too?”
This time Caitlyn tugs the line closer, lights the fuse, feels the heat flash past her fingers too fast to hurt, watches the flame flick off into the grass.
Two heartbeats later an ocean bursts open around them, waves of blue and green rushing, fighting, spilling over each other, washing high over the trees, so close she can feel the shockwaves on her skin. Colors she’s never seen like this before meld into each other, sparkling in the night, fading out, then in again, the deepest pools under a cloudless winter sky, the warmest lakes of glacial melt, an aurora that spans the heavens.
She has turned, about to say something, not sure what really, when there is a single, single long whistle rising up into the heavens, the same sound that has its claws dug in the soft parts of her chest, holding it close and tight, so incredibly tight.
A single electric cyan blossom lights up the darkness, hangs shimmering long in the air.
Caitlyn knows exactly what color that is.
The shade is perfect.
She’s known it would be, but it’s one thing to know, one thing to test it in the darkness of her workshop. It’s a whole other thing to see the color reflected perfectly in that eye, to see the light held there, shimmering until everything fades back into darkness.
Caitlyn’s eye glimmers in the light of the half moon.
Jinx has memorised the color of that iris, now a bright blue flecked through with silver, sharper than the sky blue silk that flows over shoulders and pools in exquisite silver embroidery. (That single outer robe probably costs more than this entire show put together.)
The entire show.
She knew she could. She knew she would.
But seeing it now, the cool autumn air threaded through with the smoke of her shells, the gunpowder cloud hanging, mingled with the leaves on the trees, it hits her that she has.
She’s done it.
She did it.
She—
She watches in almost detached surprise at the soft touch on her hand, finds herself holding her breath at Caitlyn lifting her hand closer, can’t take her eyes off the way Caitlyn’s eye is fixed on her.
Soft lips kiss her knuckles, warm, gentle.
A shiver shoots down her spine, tingles sparking at her ankles, disappearing down into the grass. Jinx doesn’t even realize her breath is still held until it leaks slow from her in time with the stutter of her pulse.
“You’re brilliant,” says Caitlyn. There’s a small smile and this lights her eye up a new shade of blue that Jinx has never seen, a color that she wants to hold onto forever.
So she does.
She closes the distance and kisses Caitlyn, pulls her hand from hers, fists up and into the soft silk, the sweet floral on her tongue, passes the taste of gunpowder between them, catches the way that eye flutters shut, seals the stars in the depths of that eye into the hollows of her heart as Caitlyn kisses her back.