[ nothing is quite under the bridge just yet, but neither have they burned it down. a shaky truce born of mutual guilt, of a truth that's too big to swallow in just one bite. her hands disappear under the table, short and jagged nails picking at a scab on her knuckles until it weeps, distracting herself with the sting of it as she tries to remember things as they'd happened. there are things she can omit — Jinx's breakdown, how her ultimatum had been to force her to choose between Powder and Caitlyn and Vi just couldn't do it, the entirety of that broken dinner table full of trinkets and keepsakes from her dead family, how she'd watched her sister slip further and further out of her grasp with every reminder of what she thought they had together pushing her ever more into her madness. Silco had won — not because he'd been the one to make a monster, but because he'd loved Jinx when all Vi could see was Powder. ]

Caitlyn's fine. She was with me. Us.

[ Vi, Jinx, Silco, and Caitlyn. not a place her brother would want her, but also not the place her brother was, a relief in and of itself. ]

Jinx used that gemstone in a weapon and fired at the council building. It looked like... [ a bomb. a nuke. a streak of blue hell across the bloody sky. in the end, she struggles to find the word, drifting off with a troubled shrug. ] I couldn't stop her.

[ she could barely prevent her from turning her gun on Caitlyn. ]