Chapter Text
“I thought babies were supposed to be cute.” The red, screeching blob in the healer’s hands is one of the ugliest things she’s ever seen.
“She just came out of you . Of course she ain’t gonna look pretty.” She glares at Sevika, who she knows is joking. Yet it niggles at a little vulnerable part of her.
Upchuck was definitely cuter. Not that it was a competition. But if there was, he would win. She doesn’t like that.
“If you had a baby, it’d probably come out looking like Smeech.” she snaps back. Sevika rolls her eyes. Jinx knows the woman despises that moldy carpet ass looking yordle.
Silco is at her side, offering her water which she gulps down greedily. Her whole body feels sticky, like she’d just taken a dive through the scrap heap.
“Do you want to hold her? She’s healthy. ” The healer holds it out toward her.
Choked screams emanate from it and she doesn’t really know if she does. She should though, right?
It’s so small, probably small enough that it could fit in one of the healers’ hands if he wasn’t doing the ‘supporting the neck’ thing.
“I guess I could.” She gives the wriggling lump a look.
He places the baby on her chest, where it lays against her bare skin. Almost immediately, it stops screeching and wiggling, curling up against her.
Her. This lump was going to be a person. She couldn’t see it. It just looked so— not human. She was wrinkly and round, light and very red. Her head was kind of… long, with a thin smattering of light brown hair at the top. The little mouth was round, with thin lips that opened and closed like a fish. Her eyes were still closed.
Swallowing, Jinx looked down at all the limbs that were curled up into that tiny little body, and counted ten fingers and ten toes. Janna, they were so small. Was this real?
She also passes something called a plass-en-tah, which also, funnily enough, shoots out a lot of blood with it.
“Eheh. Looks like a murder scene in here.” She giggles. Something has to be funny about this.
This humor is immediately squashed by the fact that they tell her she’s going to be leaking blood for like two weeks and she has to not do “strenuous activity” for like a month or something.
What the fuck. She does all the work for this baby and what does she get in return? Suffering.
Silco promises to bring her things to do, but she’s planning ways to circumvent this. She’s already been trapped in this stupid, dank bar for two weeks and she’s not going to last much longer.
Choosing not to think about it, she unbuttons the dress and brings the little blob’s face down to her breast. Pinkie taught her about Upchuck’s difficulty eating the first few days, so she doesn’t expect too much. Still, it’s clear her kid is not winning this race because she practically shoves the kid’s face into her nipple and the baby seems to be trying, but failing badly.
She guesses babies might need a little more time to figure things out right away, being just shot out into the world and all, but damn if it isn’t slow. After about ten failed attempts, with Sevika stepping in to help her reposition, the baby latches on.
It kind of hurts at the beginning, but then it becomes kind of tickley. She can probably handle this if it’s all she needs to pretty much keep the kid alive. Right?
Jinx looks up at Silco. “This is so weird.” He is staring firmly at the wall as he nods along. What a big baby.
She turns to Sevika, too, and the woman smirks.
“What, Sir ? Can’t handle breastfeeding? Didn’t take you for a prude.”
Silco just sighs harder. “Have you thought of a name, child?”
A name?
Fuck. She forgot that people have names. Even little scrunchy-looking screeching vomit bombs.
“Uh. No? Anyone have any suggestions?” She's kind of lost here. She doesn’t think she can name her like one of her inventions. It is kind of funny to think about a kid running around with a name like ‘Mouser’ or ‘Fang-Face’.
Not that ‘Powder’ is exactly a very conventional name. She thinks about her mom and the stories that Silco had told her. Why would her mom name her Powder? Not that people didn’t have weird names around here but Violet was so normal. Would it be weird if she named her kid ‘Whiskers’ or some shit???
“Your mother– she had a nickname that your father liked to call her. Although Connol did so because he knew how much it annoyed her.” He gets this weird far-away look in his eyes.
She guesses it can’t be too bad to have a name based off of a nickname. “So? What is it?”
“Isha.”
Not bad. Not bad at all.
“I don’t hate it. I guess you’re going to be named after your dead grandma, Scrunchy.”
And then the baby, as if in protest, lets go and starts squirming, mouth opening and closing like she’s trying to find her food again.
Janna-damn it. This baby is actually an idiot.
The first few days aren’t that bad.
She just does everything that Pinkie tells her, changing the soil-cloths and feeding the kid when she cries.
It’s nice sometimes, when she can just fall asleep with the baby on her chest.
Jinx is still uncertain about whether or not she wants this kid. But for until now, it seems like she’s not going to fuck this kid up too bad.
The kid— Isha— is kind of dumb. It still takes her a long time to figure out how to eat. Isn’t it supposed to be like… instinctive or something? She keeps letting go and not being able to latch back on no matter how many times she tries to reposition her.
Should she be worried?
Okay, she actually takes back the easy thing. It’s exhausting. Sevika gives her a break sometimes, taking over watching the baby for a little while she’s in between stints, but everyone is tired. Silco is no help, and seems to be avoiding the baby, though sometimes giving in when she begs him to watch the kid while she takes a nap. Both of the adults are now full time dealing with small uprisings among the lanes and dissatisfied people, and they, Silco especially, don’t have much patience for a baby.
The constant wailing is hidden by heavy soundproofing they install in the room, stuff that Sevika tells her the brothels use for the extra private rooms. It’s to keep the patrons upstairs from hearing. That doesn’t help her though. When Jinx is in the room, it feels like she’s in a void where nothing exists but crying.
Janna. This baby experience is so much better when it’s asleep. She can’t even play with it yet. The kid doesn’t really react much when she hands it something.
Living gets more bearable when she’s able to walk without feeling like everything is spilling out of her, and when the baby is sleeping she sneaks out to the bar and gets her cavernberry juice. It’s the best it’s ever tasted.
Jinx hasn’t been able to do anything she likes because she’s afraid to leave the kid alone. The voices keep telling her Isha will die if she misses something. Even though she has her tools and shit in the room, all the joy has been sucked out of it, because she’s just too tired.
She drags herself back down to the bedroom. As soon as she gets there and notices the baby is still asleep, she passes out.
She is losing her mind.
Jinx is used to the noise inside her head. Sometimes it gets loud enough to really mess her up, but this? This is a new kind of hell.
This stupid, fucking baby would not shut the fuck up.
Logically, she knows it’s not the baby’s fault, but it doesn’t stop her from wanting to chuck it out the window if it doesn’t stop. (Not that there is a window, but we support figurative defenestration here)
She.
Jinx reminds herself that the baby is a girl and it is hers. That doesn’t make her feel anything different. She presses the pillow harder against her ears. Her whole body aches.
If she’d known how much worse it would be after the baby was born, she would have immediately given her away. She’d rather give birth to a hundred babies and be done with it than be at where she is now. She needs to get out of here.
Grabbing her cloak, she shoves out the door, leaving behind that horrible grating wailing that has haunted her nonstop in sleep and waking for the past two weeks.
She should feel bad for leaving. She doesn’t.
Jinx runs, but there’s an impossible weight bearing down on her, as if she’s crashing her way through the streets.
The wind tears at her clothes as she manically climbs up toward the promenade. She doesn’t know what she needs but it’s away. She needs to be away.
Her hands are slippery with blood and she’s pretty sure she’s almost fallen twice on her way up. Jinx doesn’t care.
At the promenade, she dashes toward the usual store. When she sees pink, she makes a beeline for the figure sitting by the window.
“Kit? What the fuck, Kit. Are you okay?” Pinkie looks in horror at the crazed figure standing in front of her.
She hates you. You look horrible. You’re scaring her. Haha, a monster in the street. That’s what you always were. At least now, you look like it!
She doesn’t even have the coordination to fight the voices. Why fight when it’s true?
Catching her reflection in the store window, she sees a ragged creature with bloody streaks on their face and deep, dark bags under their eyes. The sodder between the glass fractures her reflection.
Janna, she’s so ugly.
She turns to Pinkie and falls to her knees. She screams, tears forging trails through the blood on her cheeks. Upchuck starts crying and she can’t take it. She just wants it to stop. She can feel the judging eyes of passerbyers
Fists beat against her head. They’re her own. It’s too much. If she doesn’t hit herself she’s going to strangle the baby. And then she really would be a monster, wouldn’t she?
The wailing stops but her voices don’t and she’s drowning, she can’t breathe.
What a fucking failure. It’s just a baby, you’re just weak. You deserve to be alone. You don’t even love this kid, what a faker.
When she opens her eyes, Pinkie is holding her arms, stopping her from pummeling herself. Her lips are moving. They’re sandwiched between a tent and a wall.
Jinx breathes, loud and uneven. Reality filters back in slowly.
“--- with me?”
“Huh?” she croaks.
“Can you hear me?” Pinkie’s voice is grim and low.
Jinx stares at her, not processing until the girl repeats it again. She nods, eyes glassy.
Upchuck is nowhere to be seen, but she doesn’t have the energy to ask.
Pinkie’s hands uncurl her fists and she pulls her up, even as Jinx’s body protests. Everywhere is sore.
“Kit. Look at me. Who’s blood is that?”
Her eyes focus onto Pinkie’s, and she looks away. Janna, she’s such a fuck up.
“Mine. It’s just mine.”
Pinkie huffs.
“Just yours? That’s lovely.” She roughly wipes down Jinx’s cheeks with her sleeve. “What’s got you showing up here looking like you just lost a scuffle with yourself?”
Jinx sucks in a breath. She waits until she thinks she can talk without throwing up.
“I can’t be a mom. I suck and I’m going to end up killing her.” She whispers.
Pinkie eyes her. “What do you mean?”
“I just— it was too much. It— she cries all the time. It’s like a Jannadamned siren wee-wooing me into the fucking abyss. I don’t sleep. I saw myself, in my head, squeezing her until she stopped. I just wanted her to stop.” she confesses, shame dripping down her head and shoulders like boiling oil.
“You’re fine.” Pinkie smoothes her hair down. “It's crazy, what you're saying, but babies drive people crazy. It’s okay. Janna knows I went half mad.”
“No, you don’t get it, Pinkie. I don’t love her. Sometimes she’s just an ‘it’ to me .” Her voice is full of self-loathing. “I’m a monster. Moms are supposed to love their babies.”
Pinkie stares down at her, framing Jinx's face with her hands.
“No, you’re not a monster, Kit. Janna knows I would have gone crazy, too, if I didn’t have other people to take Aron when my eyes felt like they were about to crawl away.” she laughs darkly. “I was doing errands for other people just so I could get away from my own kid. You’re not a monster.”
“Okay.” It’s not the same. Pinkie doesn’t get it. Jinx is the danger, and she’ll always be. Something has to be done. And she’s been weighing the pros and cons in her head for a long time. “I’m going to give her away.”
Pinkie blinks.
Her eyes go sad. “What’s her name, Kit?”
“Why do you want to know? It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Is it so bad that I want to know? This is the first time I’ve seen you in almost two months.”
Jinx hesitates. “Isha. But that’ll probably change when she goes to her new family, anyway.”
Pinkie nods. “That’s a beautiful name. If you give her away, don’t let them take that away.”
“What? Why?”
“That name is something she’ll have from you. To know that a piece of you goes with her even if giving her away is something you have to do.”
Jinx is startled. She’d thought that Pinkie would have tried to convince her otherwise. Instead, the girl accepts it. Accepts her. Even though she’s so disgusting that she wants to crawl out of her body.
No piece of her is good for the kid. But her mom was clearly a great person, if Silco is to be believed. So maybe it’ll fit for her granddaughter.
Pinkie’s hands ground her.
“Okay. Yeah.”
The world opens up a little more.
She comes back to Sevika holding the baby with one arm in the middle of the room (I’d have her babies >:3), giving her a hard look. When she explains, the woman tells her to call someone over if she needs to get away. Jinx nods, half listening.
Silco already has a plan to find Isha a family. He tells her that the people coming to see her are some of his associates from Noxus
Relief pulls her from her funk, whatever it was. It makes taking care of the baby— Isha, so much easier. She wakes up, feeds her, and then if she cries, and none of the other things work to make her stop, she steps out and comes back in later, knowing that the kid is going to have someone who can be actually good to her later.
Maybe it’s fucked up of her, but she knows she’s not good enough, that she’s not a good person. So she’ll just accept that.
Isha still has trouble latching, and it makes her kind of worried, but she also knows she can have the patience for that until her new family probably will be able to do it better than her— real adults, instead of a fourteen year old fuck up.
Wait. She’s fifteen. Isha was born just a few days before her birthday.
Crazy.
When the day comes, she dresses the baby in a colorful stitched together outfit she’d made herself from some of her old clothing. She looks… cute, with her big blue-gray eyes and drool spilling down the corner of her little mouth.
Jinx thinks she’ll miss Isha, even if the baby has been a pain in her ass.
“I dressed you up for your new family, Ish! Isn’t your outfit so pretty!” Isha shakes her fist. “I know right? They’ll love it. And they’ll love you. They have to.”
Even though I can’t .
A knock sounds from outside the door, and she rushes to open it. An olive skinned woman walks in, covered in metal and leather. Dark kohl lines her eyes and her cheekbones are sharp. She looks kind of vicious, but who is Jinx to judge?
Still, it puts her on edge.
“This is the child you spoke of?” Her accent is crispy (idk what this means, but it's attractive) and direct. She turns to look at Silco, who stands behind her in the doorway. “Yes, this is her. She needs a home and we hoped you could offer such.”
“She is quite small. How old is she?”
Jinx steps in to answer. “She’s four weeks old and she might be small but she can screech your ears off. She’s not weak.”
Her cheeks are red with indignance. So what if Isha’s small? That doesn’t make her a worse baby.
(Jinx didn’t know that she was small for a baby. Aren’t they all supposed to be small? How small is too small?)
The woman nods. “I will take her. She will be cared for and raised with discipline.”
She’s kind of weird. Who says that? Some sort of boring ass dictator with too much time on their hands?
“Will you love her?”
“What?” the woman turns to look at her directly for the first time.
Silco gives her a look, but Jinx is adamant.
“Will. You. Love. Her?”
The woman hesitates before replying, “Yes, affection will be present where necessary with child-rearing.”
That’s a little bitch answer. What kind of fancy horderve-ruffle-duvet-baguette (I apologize sincerely to the french language and the word ‘ruffle’) language was this? Jinx narrows her eyes.
“Isha— that’s her name— has trouble latching when she’s eating. You’re going to make sure she can eat, right?”
“She will be adequately fed.”
“And she gets gassy when she drinks a little too fast so make sure you bounce her afterward.”
“The child—”
“Isha.”
“Isha will be properly cared for,” the woman says, annoyed. “ You need not worry. She will have very experienced caretakers to assist her.”
“She-”
Silco puts a hand on her shoulder, reassuring her with his grip
“Shartha will care for this child like her own. She has promised me this child will have a multitude of opportunities and will be content.”
The woman nods along.
Jinx breathes out through her nose.
This is it. This is what she wanted, isn’t it? It feels more hollow than relief ever did.
The woman takes some of Isha’s stuff and stalks out. Isha is still in her arms, head light, yet feeling so, so heavy against her shoulder.
“You’re going to a real home with real parents, kid” she whispers to the baby. “You’re probably going to grow up to be like one of those princesses in the books. All rich and beautiful and shit.”
Isha just gurgles, some drool trailing down her collarbone. She definitely won’t miss that.
Another woman, a ‘nursemaid’, a baby taker-carer, she’s told, comes to take Isha from her arms.
For a second, she’s tempted to hold on and never let go. But then it’s gone, and she hands her over.
And just as quickly as they had come, the woman and nursemaid step into a chem-cart and leave.
She stares after them. But she doesn’t move.
Silco’s hand on her shoulder feels more damning than comforting.
He pulls her to face him.
“It was for the best, my dear. The child will receive the attention she needs and you can return to normalcy.” he scans her eyes for something but she feels empty.
Not sad, not happy. Nothing.
He cups her face with his hand and she instinctively leans into it. Usually she would be warmed at the gesture. Again, nothing.
“If you need anything let me know, Jinx.”
She retreats to her room and lays down, staring at the empty crib.
The scribbles start to overtake her vision, painting an echo of her the baby in it.
Jinx grips at her sheets, her hands balled up into fists. The voices start to whisper.
She can’t make them out at first and shoves her face into her pillow.
But they grow. She can’t run.
They increase in volume, all saying the same thing.
You left her.
Her eyes snap open.
“No, I didn’t. She’ll be happier there.”
You LEFT her.
“She’s safe from me! From you. Why can’t you just shut up and let her be happy?”
And what if she’s not. It’ll be all your fault.
Mylo hisses into her ear.
“No. No. Nononono. You can’t do this to me.”
She grabs at her ears.
But what if?
Jinx leaves again.
This time, she’s just going to check if they make it safely to the bathysphere dock, that’s all.
He catches a glimpse of a cloaked figure jumping roofs nearby. They move quickly, as if something chases behind. He checks the other direction but sees nothing.
Something compels him forward, though, and he follows silently. He’s supposed to be staking out the bank building, tracking a lead toward a particularly large shipment of lumber. One that they desperately need.
Why he follows this random figure is a mystery to him and beyond. Then he catches a glimpse of blue from underneath the hood and suddenly, his questions are answered.
Powder— Jinx. Whatever she was. He aches to follow.
He doesn’t even know if it’s actually her.
His footsteps slow and he watches her disappear between buildings. She seems to be watching something below.
Something's wrong. Go to her.
He mentally slaps himself. If she didn’t need him then, she definitely doesn’t need him now. So he turns around, heads back to his perch and pointedly doesn’t think about her. He has things to do.
She’s lost to him. She’ll never be the person he's looking for.
Really?
He can’t help but feel that he’s missing something.