Thirty-eight minutes is a very long wait for someone like Jinx, and she doesn't hide how annoyed she is.
She's wearing a pretty blatant pout as she opens the door, and then doesn't bother waiting; turning on her heel, she sulkily moves over to sit on her bed, back against the wall. Without saying a word, she pulls her knees to her chest, arms tightly wrapped around them.
"You don't need to look as though I'm here to escort you to your execution," Ash says teasingly as they step in and close the door behind them, their Dancer to their side, with the exact same tone they might have in any normal conversation. Like they didn't just threaten to stalk and ambush her explicitly against her will, with every indication they were serious about it.
(They were. Maybe not incredibly serious, because 'if John finds out about this, would he be displeased' is a meaningful level of cognition that's running interference here so that Ashton doesn't immediately default to the most asshole move possible, but Jinx? Jinx would make for a good project, if they really wanted to make her paranoid about it.)
She makes a face at Ash... but there's no hostile retort, no pointing out the obvious, and no... signs of her responding, at all, for a moment. She stares down at her own feet, turning some thoughts over in her head. Trying to sort reality from cruel hallucination from warped opinions...
It's a lot, but she does finally find her voice. Or, well, more precisely? Her willpower. It'd be so much easier to just shut down, but part of her genuinely doesn't want to. Not now, not yet...
"Feels like I was gone for so long... Yet... there was that whole other life, on top of it all... Who..."
Jinx looks up at Ashton, something that's a strange mix of empty and desperate in her eyes.
There's no sympathy in their gaze. No disdain, no cruelty or hatred, but still: no sympathy. She'll get that other places, won't she?
"We'll get to that. Before you get too far into your own head, though, I'd like to hear exactly what you wanted the results of your fun little experiment with arson to be."
It's very hard not to slip all the way into her own head, and just sink entirely... but the direction change works. She lets out a heavy sigh.
"Heh... experiment... I guess you could call it that."
She mutters that, and there's a moment where it's completely random rambling about tests and experiments. But, she does finally come to a conclusion.
"The Necromancer... brought me back after there was... There's nothing for me! Not home, not here! Why even bother?! I'm just gonna keep fucking it all up, losing everyone, so... why not beat myself to the goddamn punch??"
"The thing is," Ashton starts, clasping their hands together, "I tried that. Because I was certain I was going to fuck it up anyway, and everyone needed to be reminded that I was a monster, and that they should cut their losses early; I was certain I could never graduate, and fuck them all for wasting their trust on me, I didn't deserve it. I'd just force everyone to give up on me before they could choose to do it on their own time."
She tips her head a fraction of an inch. "So for that, I killed four people. I stalked them for days to be sure they'd be easy to slaughter. Two of them let me into their cabins because they trusted the face I was wearing, and I killed them in their beds as they tried to help me. If John had been ten seconds later in stopping me than he was, I would've killed five.
And did it work? Take a wild guess." Given how close they are with John, with Sokie -- it's not a guess at all. Jinx has working eyes and ears and she's literate. She can draw the correct conclusion here.
"I'm a worse and far more unforgivable thing than you are, love," said with frankness, though the love is almost kind; unless Jinx has massacred cities and children for kicks she's a far better person than they are, "and it didn't work for me, either. All the people who care about you are going to see is that you're in a great deal of pain, and that makes them want to be there for you even more. Tough luck."
Maybe it would work if she'd shaped her social circle in a very different way, but she didn't. And if there's anyone it's completely impossible to chase away by being a nightmarish fuckup and trying to destroy the good things you have so nobody can take them away from you -- Ash fucking tried to make John consider them a lost cause. It would never have worked, no matter how hard they tried.
At no point do they look at her with any negative emotion in their eyes, nor really any positive one either. They just look at her with understanding.
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no subject
She's wearing a pretty blatant pout as she opens the door, and then doesn't bother waiting; turning on her heel, she sulkily moves over to sit on her bed, back against the wall. Without saying a word, she pulls her knees to her chest, arms tightly wrapped around them.
no subject
(They were. Maybe not incredibly serious, because 'if John finds out about this, would he be displeased' is a meaningful level of cognition that's running interference here so that Ashton doesn't immediately default to the most asshole move possible, but Jinx? Jinx would make for a good project, if they really wanted to make her paranoid about it.)
"I do really just want to talk."
no subject
It's a lot, but she does finally find her voice. Or, well, more precisely? Her willpower. It'd be so much easier to just shut down, but part of her genuinely doesn't want to. Not now, not yet...
"Feels like I was gone for so long... Yet... there was that whole other life, on top of it all... Who..."
Jinx looks up at Ashton, something that's a strange mix of empty and desperate in her eyes.
"Who even am I...?"
no subject
"We'll get to that. Before you get too far into your own head, though, I'd like to hear exactly what you wanted the results of your fun little experiment with arson to be."
no subject
"Heh... experiment... I guess you could call it that."
She mutters that, and there's a moment where it's completely random rambling about tests and experiments. But, she does finally come to a conclusion.
"The Necromancer... brought me back after there was... There's nothing for me! Not home, not here! Why even bother?! I'm just gonna keep fucking it all up, losing everyone, so... why not beat myself to the goddamn punch??"
no subject
She tips her head a fraction of an inch. "So for that, I killed four people. I stalked them for days to be sure they'd be easy to slaughter. Two of them let me into their cabins because they trusted the face I was wearing, and I killed them in their beds as they tried to help me. If John had been ten seconds later in stopping me than he was, I would've killed five.
And did it work? Take a wild guess." Given how close they are with John, with Sokie -- it's not a guess at all. Jinx has working eyes and ears and she's literate. She can draw the correct conclusion here.
"I'm a worse and far more unforgivable thing than you are, love," said with frankness, though the love is almost kind; unless Jinx has massacred cities and children for kicks she's a far better person than they are, "and it didn't work for me, either. All the people who care about you are going to see is that you're in a great deal of pain, and that makes them want to be there for you even more. Tough luck."
Maybe it would work if she'd shaped her social circle in a very different way, but she didn't. And if there's anyone it's completely impossible to chase away by being a nightmarish fuckup and trying to destroy the good things you have so nobody can take them away from you -- Ash fucking tried to make John consider them a lost cause. It would never have worked, no matter how hard they tried.
At no point do they look at her with any negative emotion in their eyes, nor really any positive one either. They just look at her with understanding.