#but regardless...

Especially when she's younger, fresh off the loss of her family, still very clearly in distress, when even Silco can see she's in need of a Modicum of tenderness At Least. Can she manage to crack him.

So if when should happen to find her in her room, up, bouncing around, Dancing to some old records he found while taking over the last drop, when he was expecting catatonic sulking.....

and the song, achingly familiar, conjuring images of dim lights and sticky floors and a pleasant buzzing in his head while he looses himself to the music, his friends around him, the toils of their lives outside forgotten for the briefest of moments to joy and energy and the freedom of movement.. Then in front of him, this little girl, His little girl, Felicia's little girl, Vander's.......

All blue hair and big eyes and boney limbs..

Something breaks and something heals(if only marginally) and She's grabbing at his hand and laughing and dragging him the rest of the way down the stairs pleading, Begging; come play, just this once Pleasepleasepleeeeease, no serious lectures or work or lessons, just have fun with me!! C'mon!! Please!!!

She's smiling, it's the first time she's smiled in Weeks.

It's the first time he's smiled in weeks, possibly longer.

He startles realizing his own face has betrayed him, reacting behind his back, he's quick to try and push it back down.

What has been dredged up by this tableau are not memories he wants to revisit Fondly. That sort of sentimentality invites Weakness.

And Silco is not weak.

But Jinx... Oh but Jinx.

Her little hand wrapped tightly around his, twirling herself around as she continues to implore him to join in..

What other choice does he have?

With purpose he relaxes, his face softens, he follows her out onto the surface of the stuck-fast propeller blade she's claimed as her home, and he Dances.

It's not like it was, the music is tinny coming from the single conical amplifier and echoing off the walls of the fissure, the noise of it doesn't Thump in his chest like it did back during late nights at the bar, and he keeps his good eye open, not letting himself get too lost in it lest he, or Janna forbid Jinx, stumble off the Very precaious edge of the propeller blade.

But still it's exhilarating, to move like this again, a little taste of freedom after years of locking himself in tighter and tighter boxes.

Jinx is sufficiently impressed by his moves, she never would have guessed her so typically rigid father could be quite so.. elegant!

He returns the compliment, though in truth she dances with the sporadic, rythmn-less steps of a child, but he must admit her speed and coordination are laudable.

The dance goes on, the music distantly and sweetly, sickeningly, familiar. The unbridled force of life exuding from Jinx keeps Silco soaring until the last track fades and he comes back to himself, notably quite out of breath, and aching in his knees. Has it really been So long....?

He feels the weight and rot of the years falling thickly back onto his shoulders. But the twin beacons of light in Jinx's eyes as she rushes over to put a new record on the machine holds the shadows at bay just a little longer.

He joins her seated by the little cobbled-together record player jinx had made herself and huffs a small apology that her old man likely won't be up for another round, but he'd gladly help her listen and sort through the pile of records, as it appears she was doing before he arrived.

She seems.. a bit deflated, in the way children are when they can't conceptualize the aches that come with getting old, butsits back and happily leans against his shoulder all the same, accepting the offered assistance.

Silco knows this moment won't last. He suspects Jinx does as well.

At some point he'll have to return, the armour retightened, the boxes resealed, all righteous speeches and harsh direction, soft edges filed to steely points with purpose and intention.

Every part of him planned and crafted into the man he Needs to be.

He cannot show weakness, he has work he must do, power to seize, industries to drive, deals to make, a revolution to build, and a daughter to raise into a prodigy, a shining, immutable symbol that proves He was right all along...

Eventually... Anyway.

Right now vindication and revolution can wait, for right now she's just a little girl, with the man who is now her father, experiencing an unexpected moment of comfort in a world made otherwise of pain.

And Silco will try, as hard as he can, to stave off the rot inside him for this brief, damnable, moment of sentimentality as long as possible, he will try.

For Jinx's sake, for Felicia's, for Va- His own.

For how he needs this moment as much as she does. And for how little he wants to acknowledge that.

Yes, soon, he will have to get up, leave his little girl to her own devices once more, and return to his empire of criminal machinations and mad science.