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Chapter Text

Vi doesn't really understand who pulled what sort of levers, for her to be walking free again after only two months in a Piltovan holding jail. Something to do with being a child, with showing mercy, taking some metaphorical high ground. Something that made Marcus grimace, fuck him.

She hates how he acted in what he calls her "best interests" and very much are his own selfish motivations. Vi is certain he knows Silco, since he was there when Vander was taken yet left to live. A cog in that man's twisted plans. Anything that makes Marcus unhappy has got to be worthwhile, even if it puts her life in danger.

She doesn't look back, crossing the bridge. She knows where she last saw her sister, but she also knows where to find her quickest, and Powder is all that matters now. 

She's all Vi has left in the world.

The Last Drop is under construction, and the sight of it, all distorted under metal scaffolding, cables like thick veins running up the facade to feed flashy neon signs, feels deeply wrong. Everything in Vi's life has been wrong since she fell down those stairs at Benzo's. Was shoved down them. Ever since that geartoy monkey slapped the doom of everyone she ever loved.

It feels so wrong, she doesn't even know how to fix things. She can't even make up her mind or come out with a plan that she can enact... alone. She has goals—get Powder back, get even with Silco—but nothing material. She's only got her fists and thirst for revenge. And now a creeping unease at the sight of her second home, shedding its old skin and becoming someone else's.

A rough hand grabs her by her jacket's collar and Vi twists around, ready to strike. She's brought short by the sight of Sevika flinching back, her grip on her clothes still strong but pushing her at arm's length.

'You—' Vi growls.

'And you!' Sevika cuts her off. 'I know someone who'll be very happy to see you...'

'This is all Silco's doing, isn't it! Not satisfied with killing Vander—' her voice doesn't falter, but her gut twists '—he has to take over his place too, destroy his legacy and—'

'Yeah yeah, you can cut that out and save it for him,' Sevika says, shoving Vi towards the Last Drop. 'The someone who'll be happy is Powder. She's been asking after you.'

Vi's vision narrows and her breath hitches. She has feared this. Every night on her jail's cold metal bed she's tossed and turned, mind going from Silco killing Powder to him keeping her just to hurt her, unable to pick which would be worse, and incapable of considering a happier alternative.

'He's got her...' she gasps. 'What did he do to her?'

Sevika waves a hand, the only one she has, Vi notices now. Her entire left arm is gone, her sleeve pinned up.

'Go on. He's expecting you.'

Vi frowns, takes a step back. Everything's all wrong. She was supposed to strike first. To gather intel and then devise a surprise attack.

'How?' she asks.

Sevika smirks. 'Who do you think got you freed? Think Pilties would have spared you, after your big fuck-up and looking for you this badly for so long?'

Vi grits her teeth. She ignores Sevika's taunts as she walks around the Last Drop, to the back door, the real entrance to her old home, strange as it has become.

No one stands in her way and she shivers at the sensation of déjà-vu. There are workers in the bar's main room, but they don't pay her any mind when she pokes her head in. The downstairs room has a new lock on it on the inside, but it's undone, and when she cracks the door open she's dismayed to realise almost nothing has changed. The couches, the beds... Well, their bed is bigger, better, and covered in a lot of signs that her sister is still the one using it. There are geartoys everywhere, and paint—so much paint and chalk.

'Powder?' she asks the empty room.

She looks up, but she isn't hiding in the pipes above.

'Powder...'

There is no one here, no tension in the room, no held breath. She closes the door and takes the stairs, the ones that lead up to the new floor built above the bar. The only place left for her to check, where she's meant to go. Expected.

To the den of the beast.

Chapter Text

Still no guards, not in front of the brand new office, nor inside it. No one is standing between Vi and the man she wants to kill so badly, just a desk and chairs. But Vi has been burnt once already, so she stands her ground, wary.

'You piece of shit!' she spits instead, slamming the door behind her.

'Why, you're welcome,' Silco replies, observing her from his seat.

Vi snorts. The audacity of the man.

'Why did you bother freeing me? So you can kill me yourself? Is that your plan?'

Silco grimaces with disdain. 'I think you mistake me for the wrong sort of man. I don't particularly enjoy inflicting suffering. If I wanted you dead, I certainly wouldn't need a front row seat for it.'

'I think I know exactly the sort of man you are. I saw you kill Vander!'

'Yes!' Silco bites out. 'I know you did. And you know nothing of who Vander was to me. What he did, who he really was... You don't know half of it.'

Vi snarls. She's not going to listen to that sort of shit coming from him. 'I know Vander was a good man!'

Silco smiles and it throws her a little, how sad and knowing it is.

'That he was,' he agrees. He waves to the window behind him. 'I'm having a statue erected for him. He deserves it.'

'Trying to buy the local's love?' she grinds, clenching her fists. 'Nice try, but it won't work.'

'I don't need the local's love, Violet.'

Vi blinks. 'How'd you know—' She frowns. She'd never even heard about Silco before that terrible night, that only leaves... 'What have you done with her?'

'With Jinx?'

'What?' Vi gasps, taken aback. 'No! Why d'you call her that?!'

Silco shrugs, unbothered. 'Well, she insists it's her name, no matter what I say. It suits her too.'

'What did she tell you? What have you done to her?!'

'I don't need to be told anything. I know your name because I knew your parents.'

Vi recoils, her indignation dying on her lips. He has to be playing with her emotions. It can't be real.

Silco's smile turns into a grimace. 'They worked for us, so of course I knew them. I wasn't surprised when I heard Vander had taken you all in.'

'How would you...' Vi wracks her brain for memories, anything that would hint that Silco was part of their past. Any mentions of the name. She comes up empty and disbelieving. Her parents had been strong supporters of the uprisings that ended on the bridge, but they'd followed Vander. 'There's no way they ever worked for someone like you.'

Vi wishes she could sound more certain. Silco looks unimpressed. He rasps his knuckles on his desk. 

'What do you think, Violet?'

'It's Vi...' she mumbles automatically.

'Do you think I am some nobody who just appeared one day to kill Vander out of some petty grab for power?' Silco continues, ignoring her. 'You think I wanted to take over the Last Drop? What you feel for Jinx—'

'Powder!' Vi says.

'What you feel for your sister, I felt for Vander,' he continues. 'We shared food, shelter, warmth, plans, dreams, everything. We were like brothers.'

She gives him a horrified look and takes a half stumbling step forward. 'So how could you?'

'Ah. The real question is how could Vander?' he leans over his desk, fingers tracing along the scar on his cheek, his amber-black eye fixed on her. 'He betrayed me, tried to kill me. Tried to drown me, to be precise. Did you ever ask him why he always wore a vambrace on his right arm? No?'

Vi stays silent, not wanting to gratify him with the knowledge that she had, and that Vander had shrugged her off, refusing to explain.

'I stabbed him there, that night, to free myself. Nothing bad mind you. Nothing... disfiguring. Guess he was too ashamed of the memory to look at it. I don't have that luxury.'

'Why should I believe you?' she asks. She can't deny Vander and Silco knew each other, even Benzo had called out his name that night. Yet they'd never mentioned him to her, or any of them. The secrecy reeks of guilt, and it lends too much weight to Silco's words, but if Vi is ready to accept she'll never know the full truth of it, she's not about to believe the words of a backstabber. 'Why should I ever believe anything you say?'

'Oh, you don't have to. I just thought I'd offer... Insight.'

He sighs and leans back into his chair. Now that confusion and fear have dulled the edges of her bloodlust, Vi looks at him properly and finds him looking tired. Not that she knows what he looks like on a good day, but the heavy bags under his eyes are noticeable. He's remarkably unthreatening. Just a skinny body in well fitted clothes.

'I'm the one who recruited your mother,' Silco continues, voice low and monotone. 'She'd just had you at the time. Bounced you on my knees when you were about this big. Selene was an amazing chemtech. Never rested. She believed in it too, the dream I shared with Vander. Now... there's just me.'

She won't listen to this, she won't believe any of it. 'Where is my sister?' Vi growls.

'Somewhere safe. I wanted to talk to you first.'

'What's second?'

'Your reunion.'

'Oh yeah? What's the trick?'

Silco sighs again and rubs his forehead.

'I have to say, Ji— Powder is a lot more endearing than you are.'

Vi smiles at that, despite herself. 'I bet.'

'There's no trick. I want to ask you some questions, and then you can see her.' Vi glares at him and he waves for her to sit down. 'What have you got to lose, exactly?'

Nothing, Vi realises. She could probably overpower him, though she's certain he's got tricks up his sleeves. There's no one else in the bare room, no furniture to hide behind. And if he holds on to his word then, well...

She takes a seat.

Silco nods and reclines back into his own oversized chair. He looks at Vi down the length of his nose.

'Assuming I return your sister to you, where will you go?' he asks.

'None of your business.'

'Ah, no, this isn't how this works. I ask, you answer seriously and only then do you see your sister.'

Vi grits her teeth and says nothing.

'Where, indeed,' Silco says when it's clear she won't answer. 'And what will you do with her?'

'I'll look after her!' Vi snaps, the answer ready enough this time.

'How?'

'I—'

How? Vi's sitting above the only home she had, empty now. She never pulled a real job in her life. Not even a successful rescue. She's got no trade but thieving and every last enforcer knows her face. Whatever living she'd make in the Lanes, she'd have to scrounge. Maybe, if she keeps serious with boxing, she could make her fame in the rings, but competition is harsh and the price of losing too steep.

'My suggestion,' Silco says, pulling her out of her thoughts, 'is that you look after your sister here.'

Vi gives him yet another startled look. The constant jumping around from surprise to confusion is starting to get really old.

'Here?'

'Yes. Here, under my care.'

'You?' she spits, jumping to her feet. 'Under your care? Are you serious? Do you even hear yourself? How could I—'

'What other choice do you have, exactly? Hmm?' Silco cuts in, raising his voice. 'Who will you turn to? The Foundling House you went to before Vander stepped in? Bit old, aren't you? Who else is there? I've been asking you, and you haven't been answering. Where would you go? How would you provide for your sister? Here are answers for you. You stay at the Last Drop, you keep her happy. I'll provide.'

Vi scans his face, peers into his dark eye, searching for the real answers. The ones that would make sense.

'Why? Why would you want that?'

'Haven't you been listening?' Silco asks, a tinge of frustration in his tone. 'I loved Vander. I respected him, for a long time. Even after he turned on me—because you can always respect strength, and because he gifted me... new perspective. That night I offered him to join me again, and I wanted him to accept.' 

He spits the word like it hurts to even speak it.

'I wanted to have him as a brother again, to fool myself into trusting him.' He slams his hands on the desk, making Vi stumble back into her chair. 'Jinx is in pain. She made a mistake that cost her everything. Her father, her friends, her sister.'

'Yeah. All because of you!' Vi protests.

'Where the blame lies doesn't matter. Blame goes all the way back to the first night I met Vander—to the day Zaun split in half. The point, Vi, is that I know exactly what it's like to be betrayed and to lose the person you thought would have your back forever. To suffer at their hands.'

Vi crumples into her seat. Did Powder tell him that too? 

'I... I never meant to hurt her.'

'Too late. Again, blame isn't the point. I took your sister in because I saw so much of myself in her. I know exactly what it felt like, being there, in her skin. Maybe you didn't try to drown her, but she's still a wreck.'

Vi's got no fight left in her. She looks at this strange rat-like man, with his strange eye and strange plans, speaking too much sense for her comfort. She waves for him to go on.

'That betrayal, that pain... I know what it'll be like, in ten years, twenty. And Jinx, she's...'

Vi feels her gorge rise. That's fondness, she's sure, on Silco's face.

'I don't want that for her. When I heard Marcus had gotten his greasy little paws on you and was trying to put you away secretly, I knew I could make some things right for her, so she doesn't have to go through what I did.'

Vi buries her face down in her hands. It feels wrong. Wrong. Her entire world gone, and a new one offered back, looking almost the same, just short of most of the people who mattered. It feels wrong to have come here wanting to kill Silco, and have him be the one to hand her the best possible outcome instead—the opportunity to look after Powder, to make things right, to keep her well fed and clothed, to stay together.

'You were trying to kill me, just the other day. You want me to believe all this... That you'll do all this... for Powder?'

'I needed Vander on my side or gone.' Silco says, matter of fact. 'Having the four of you rally half the Lanes and become a pain in my neck was not an option. It was nothing personal against you.'

Vi presses her eyes harder against the ball of her thumbs, to squash her tears before they can flow out. Nothing personal against Mylo and Claggor. He says it like it should make sense and hurt less, but it feels like a chemical burn across her chest.

'Two of us more manageable than four?' she rasps.

Silco shifts and she looks up, suspicious. He's gotten up and is putting his coat on.

'Don't kid yourself,' he says flatly. 'I won't tolerate you making problems for me, so behave. Now come. You can think about your answer on the way.'

Chapter Text

Sevika is waiting at the back door and gives Silco a nod and Vi a cryptic look, but she doesn't follow them. Nobody does. They walk in silence, Vi tense and ready to come out punching at any provocation. None come. People don't even seem to want to look at them. 

They walk towards the quays and take a turn for the industrial district just as Vi starts wondering if he won't take her back there. To the old fish market's cannery she still has nightmares of, where her life went up in flames and blue lightning.

They stop in front of a large, squat building without windows on the ground floor.

'Wait here for a second,' Silco says, knocking on the massive metallic door.

A whole minute passes before it opens with the sound of complex locks shifting and releasing. Vi can't get a good look of the person standing in the shadowed doorway, only sees Silco leaning in, whispering in a low voice.

'Silco!!'

Vi didn't think her day could get any weirder or worse, and the sound of her sister's voice, calling that name with such excitement and hope... She can't tell which it is. Weirder or worse. 

Powder ducks under the hidden figure's legs and launches herself at Silco. Vi watches, helpless, as he comes down on a knee and brushes stray hair from her face with delicate fingers.

'Someone's here to see you,' he says. 'Like I promised.'

Then Powder looks and sees her.

And it's worse. It made it worse, Vi decides, so much worse—because Powder takes a step to the side, deeper into Silco's arms, her hands grabbing his coat to keep him close.

'Powder—' she gasps, taking a half step forward, hesitating.

Fuck it. Vi runs for her sister, slamming bodily into Silco at the same time.

'I'm so sorry!' she cries, clutching her close. 'I'm so sorry I hurt you. It wasn't your fault, I know you wanted to help, I should never—'

'Violet? Vi! Is it really you!?' 

Powder pushes her off to have a look, her eyes scanning her face frantically like she might be a fake, welling with tears when she realises she is real. Vi tries for a smile. 

'Yes, it's me. I was in prison, that's why I couldn't come back sooner—oh, Powder, I'm so sorry—'

But Powder isn't listening. She's too busy crying, her skinny arms wrapping with the strength of metal clamps around Vi's shaking shoulders.

'You're back.' She sobs, her small body convulsing with the force of them. 'Please stay! Don't leave me again! Please, please! Don't leave! Stay with us!'

Vi hugs her tight, rocking back and forth. Vander's last words ring in her mind and Powder's pleas in her ears. 

'I'm never leaving you again,' she whispers. 'I promise you.'

And she knows it's the truth, even if she has to eat from Silco's hand for years to come, she won't be leaving Powder alone again.

Vi insists on carrying her sister on her back, once she's exhausted herself with all the crying and screaming and hugging and fallen asleep. Silco disentangled himself from them at some point, leaving the sisters to reconcile and going to talk to the person still observing them from the doorway.

Powder tried to apologise, again and again, and Vi kept trying to convince her it wasn't her fault. 

She's done a lot of thinking, in her piltovan jail—in that tiny grey box of a room with a single window too high to reach or see out of—her mind feverish with memories of that night, replayed endlessly so she could cut up the blame and parcel it out.

A slice for Powder, who'd set her geartoy monkey loose, another slice for the explosion in Piltover that had to be more of the same and had started everything. A slice for being a Jinx. 

A slice for herself, who had said that to Powder's face. Another slice for not finding the right words to persuade her to stay behind at the Drop. 

A slice for Mylo, who made Powder feel so useless all the time, and yet another for Vi, who had let it go on for too long.

A slice for Vander, for never mentioning the name Silco, for leading the attack on the bridge that killed their parents. 

Always more guilt for herself, for slapping Powder, for not hearing Marcus creep up on her, for not being stronger, faster, cooler-headed.  

Eventually she'd come to realise that the whole cake belonged to that mysterious man, who'd materialised out of the billowing Gray and set everything ablaze. If anything is anyone's fault, it is Silco's. 

Not that Vi could say that to Powder, right then and there. As soon as she promised her she would stay and never leave her again, the deal was all but sealed. Powder is fine, at least. Heavier on Vi's back than ever. She hates to admit it but Silco hasn't lied. Powder trusted him easily and she's been well fed, if nothing else.

'What will you do?' Silco asks as they make their way back towards the Last Drop.

'What do you think?'

Silco looks down at her with a stern expression.

'You're not a child any more, so excuse me for treating you like an adult, Vi, but I'll need more than flippant comebacks from you.'

Vi grunts. She hates this, him giving her what she wanted, and now treating her like someone who's got a choice and whose word matters. This is no choice at all... and she'll still take it.

'I will stay.'

'And you won't make trouble?'

'I'll look after Powder, and I won't make trouble—if you don't give me reasons to make any.'

Silco nods, satisfied. 'We have a deal then.'

'Yeah, guess we do...'

Chapter Text

Silco wasn't lying about Powder hurting, either.

There's the nightmares.

Sometimes Powder screams and tosses and has to be shaken awake, sometimes Vi sleeps with her and wakes up in sheets soaked with her sister's cold sweat, sometimes she wakes alone, and finds Powder in Silco's arms, the two of them sprawled out on one of the couches.

He tells Powder he understands, that he has some too. He tells her about dreams of hands clutching at him, dragging him down, holding his head under water—of buildings collapsing on top of him—of turning bodies over in the murky waters of the Pilt and recognising all of them, until he's staring down at his own dead self.

Vi would protest that it isn't the way you reassure a scared kid, but she doesn't want to talk about dreams at all. She wishes hers were nightmares too. 

Instead she dreams of her parents, of Vander, of Mylo and Claggor. She dreams of mundane things like walking the markets together. Boxing together. Making dinner together... She envies Powder her explosions and Silco his lookalike corpses. At least to them waking up is an improvement. 

There's the anger.

Sometimes directed at herself, sometimes at Vi, often at everyone else. Worryingly often directed at no one in particular.

'She's got ghosts,' Silco says when Vi confronts him about it. 'Hers are simply more tangible than others.'

'That's bullshit! She's unwell. I just don't know how to fix it.'

'You are fixing it by being here,' Silco replies calmly. 'Her ghosts will either go away or she'll get used to them.'

There's the tears and the mood swings and the defiance.

Vi had planned on undermining Silco's whole operation. She'd figured she would snoop around, pry for weaknesses, strike back in good time. But Powder is turning into a full time job, and Silco is unbothered by secrets.

He doesn't seem to lie to them, and it drives Vi crazy. When she asks about the goal of shimmer, he just tells her.

'I need serious funds to clamp down on every last chembaron and gang, and for people to grow acclimatised to it. When it's time to strike, it will give us an edge against enforcers. In the long run we need unity, no matter how it's achieved.'

When she asks about the end goal at the end of that long run, he waxes poetic about the Nation of Zaun. About living their life without enforcer boots on their throats. About respect. And who wouldn't want that?

Powder is all sold. Fully on board with Silco's plans and eager to please. Half their disputes come from Vi trying to temper her. She grows more abrasive and more independent, with Silco always taking her side, calling her Jinx like it's the cutest of pet names, encouraging her to keep meddling with her "gadgetry" as he calls it, getting her books on them and all the materials and tools she needs.

Vi stops counting how many times she's argued with either of them about that word she regrets speaking so much.

'My sister isn't a Jinx! You need to stop calling her that!'

'You don't understand what it means to her, hearing that word used positively, instead of as a curse.'

'Oh? Become the jinx to control the jinx? You don't get to control bad luck!'

Silco doesn't seem interested in controlling Powder however, or even Vi. Powder's emotional outbursts don't phase him, nor does Vi's prying and poking. When she asks something he won't discuss, he simply tells her the topic is off limits. He's straightforward and without much artifice. A lot like Vander.

Powder loves him for it. Vi hates him for it.

Then there's the affection.

For her, and for Silco—the last person Vi wants to be sharing her sister's love with.

One morning early on, Vi wakes up alone and panics. She scrambles up the stairs, calling Powder's name, even calling out for Jinx when no one answers her.

She barges into Silco's office and here she is. He's sitting in his chair, feet up on his desk, Powder reclining on his legs, her own feet up on his chest, and they're tossing something between them.

'It's for you!' Powder says.

'But I got it for you!' Silco retorts, sending it back at her.

'But I painted it to make it new.' Powder says, throwing it back.

It's a mug, Vi realises. A mug with a monkey face drawn on it. Or it looks like one, with the handles standing for ears.

'So now it looks more like you,' Silco says, still playing along.

He's smiling as they toss the mug back and forth.

'It's a frowny face so it looks like you,' Powder insists.

Silco catches the mug and turns it around, making an exaggerated frown. 'Right, right, I see the resemblance.'

'Hah!' Powder exclaims. 'So you keep it.'

'But then you have no mug.'

'I prefer glasses.'

'Heathen,' Silco says, giving a flick to Powder's bare toes. He turns his attention to Vi then, still rooted on the spot in the doorway. 'What about you? Should your sister deface a mug or a glass, for your personal use?'

'Vi's already got a mug,' Powder answers, 'and I also made it for her!'

'Yeah...' Vi says, a little breathless. 'Yeah, it's got fists on it.'

'They go POW POW!!' Powder exclaims, mimicking the punches. 'So it's like I signed it too!'

'That tracks,' Silco admits, looking back down on his mug. 'I guess I really must be frowning too often.'

Powder follows Vi down to eat some breakfast after that, but Vi can't shake her unease. Powder's emotions are simple and clear. Silco's... Silco is either an excellent liar and actor, or he genuinely has fun with Powder. Vi doesn't quite buy the first, and she refuses to accept the second.

The frowny-faced monkey mug stays on Silco's desk, steaming with tea every morning.

Chapter Text

'You should go!' Powder exclaims.

'I should stay with you,' Vi counters.

'I'm fine. Just go!'

'You're not always fine, and I promised you—'

'Urgh!' Powder slams a foot to the ground and balls up her fists. 'I know what you promised! You said you'd stay with me, and you have! Sis' he's giving you a job! Don't stay behind because of me! I wish I could go!'

Vi shakes her head. She throws the gloves off and unwraps the bandages around her knuckles. The old boxing machine grins at her in Mylo's doodled face.

Things are better, nowadays. The first time she came here to train and Powder accompanied her, they had to leave right away after she broke down into hysterical tears. Now Powder rarely hears Mylo or Claggor's voice, even here. She doesn't often come along when Vi trains though. She's found the ruin of an old ventilation shaft she prefers to hang out on, down in the Sump, where she can test her toys by tossing them overboard when she's done with a new design, only endangering bats—and herself.

Powder, for all that she's doing better, is still obsessed with anything that'll go boom.

Vi had tried to protest that Silco was being too lenient when he let her claim the place, but he'd waved her concern away.

'It's important to her,' he'd said. 'She needs to feel like she can master the one thing that failed her, so it never happens again. Let her detonate whatever she wants down there.'

Vi had insisted she could hurt or kill herself.

'Do you not trust her?' Silco had asked, curious.

'Don't you trust me to be fine for one day?' Powder asks her now, looking upset.

Vi tosses the rags to the ground and takes two steps to swallow Powder in a crushing embrace.

'No, it's not that,' she says. 'It's not you I don't trust.'

'Vi!' Powder exclaims, jamming her fingers into her ribs to make her let go. 'Why can't you trust Silco! He's done nothing but—'

'No, not Silco,' Vi says, tightening her grip until Powder squeals.

She lets go then and holds her at arm's length, giving her a serious look. She takes a deep breath... sighs... and lets the truth out.

'It's me I don't trust.'

'Oh.'

'Of course I'm scared you'll blow yourself up, or that Silco is up to shady shit. Yeah, I worry about that too.'

Powder rolls her eyes. She's growing cheeky, Vi thinks. Silco's a bad influence that way for sure.

'But what if I fail?' she continues, tightening her grip on Powder's shoulders. 'I know you won't— I know it won't be like last time, if I leave. I trust you. But I've never done something like that before and if things go wrong and I die or end up all broken, then I won't be able to protect you any more. And I promised I would.'

Powder dives down between her arms and bodies her. Vi gasps, surprised by the force of this hug, if it could be called that.

'You can do it Vi! You're the best.' Powder buries her face in her chest. 'I believe in you, Silco believes in you, why don't you believe in yourself?'

'I don't know,' Vi says, hugging her back.

She's got her own ghosts, they just don't talk to her.

The job goes too well. She's over qualified for it, and it's painfully obvious, to none more than the man she's got sprawled in a pool of his own piss and spit.

'You get back in line,' she says coldly, boot squeezing the man's dislocated shoulder, 'or next visit you get from us won't be so nice.'

Vi strolls out of the place, the rest of the gang hugging the walls, making no move to help their leader off the floor.

'Same goes for all of you,' she says over her shoulder. 'Maybe pick a smarter boss.'

She takes the long way home and stops at Jericho's for a bowl of whatever is the evening's special. It warms her chest, but it's more to do with the sauce than anything.

Vi isn't certain what to think of this feeling... how good it was, punching that idiot's lights out and flattening the two goons that had stood in her way. Her knuckles itch more than they hurt. She'd wanted more of them to challenge her.

Silco chose the assignment well. That gang killed five kids during an attack on a shipment of shimmer. They just wanted in on a good drug that was still worth a lot on the street. Vi hates the shimmer of course, and makes herself as much of a pain as possible about it. But if Silco asks her to straighten that kind of murderous idiots, her distaste doesn't really enter the equation.

So that's a job done, for the man she swore to kill, yet eats breakfast and dinner with, more often than not, and shares Powder's love with, always. That's a job completed successfully, on her own. A landmark she used to crave so badly.

'More of the same, Jericho.'

Vi looks up from her empty bowl, startled.

'What are you doing here?'

Silco turns his whole face to her, because the black eye doesn't carry expressions very well, and he apparently wants to cock an eyebrow that badly.

'Jericho's is old as fuck,' he says.

Vi snorts, surprised, and Jericho guffaws loudly, not even turning back or gratifying Silco with a comeback.

'I used to come here with Vander all the time. It was a pain, afterwards.' He leans over the counter, propping his chin up with one his hand and drumming a rhythm with the other. 'I had to scout the place up first whenever I wanted to come, to avoid bumping into Vander or Benzo.'

Jericho slams a bowl in front of him, and Vi, bolder than usual, dives her hand in to steal a slice of fish.

Silco gives her an unimpressed look and a small smirk before digging in.

'Couldn't you... talk it out?' she asks after a moment. If the fish won't get her rebuffed then why not go further. 'I didn't know you knew Benzo. I mean, until...'

Silco sighs. 'It's awkward, isn't it, since I killed them all. Well, in Benzo's case the kid killed him. I'd have let him be if he'd stayed put. Benzo was no leader and he would have come to heel eventually.'

Vi shakes her head. The past is so soaked with blood, she doesn't know why she bothers asking.

'They wouldn't have talked to me.' Silco continues, talking around a mouthful of fish. 'I tried eventually, since we were still the heads of our movement and people relied on us for guidance even after—' he focuses on the fish, licks his fingers, lost in thoughts. Vi isn't surprised when he doesn't finish that sentence. 'Then Vander met with Grayson and made a deal with her. The late sheriff.'

'Yeah... Ekko told us. I couldn't believe it either but... it was for peace, wasn't it?'

Silco gives her a derisive look.

'Yes, the Peace. If you knew how close we were to achieving our goals, maybe you would call it something different.' He leans closer to her, his voice growing hoarse in a whisper. 'Didn't you feel like your parents died for nothing? All this bloodshed and then what? Vander cowered away from the cost of the final push. He knew—'

Silco straightens up suddenly, cutting himself short. He tosses some coins on the counter, takes the towel Jericho hands him and makes to leave.

'What did Vander know?' Vi asks, following him.

'Never mind that. I didn't come here to talk about the past.'

'Something tells me you didn't come for the excellent spiced fish either.'

'A little bird told me you were dragging your heels.'

Vi frowns and trots up to him, grabbing him by the sleeve and tugging.

'You had me followed?'

Silco stops and turns to her with an easy smile.

'How old are you again?'

'You know.'

'Indulge me.'

'I'm almost sixteen,' Vi says, a touch defiant.

Silco isn't one to treat her like a child. He never has, actually. He doesn't discount her like one, but also doesn't indulge her the way he does with Powder. Not that she would let him.

'Right,' Silco says, 'I hope you'll excuse me if I had someone keep an eye on the fifteen year-old I sent alone to teach a lesson to a gang of twelve adult members.'

Vi grimaces with sudden realisation. 'Don't tell me you were worried?'

'Maybe.'

He tilts his head, looking down at her, waiting for her to say something, maybe snarking that it's not possible for him to have such emotions. But Vi doesn't know what to say, or how to feel about any of this either.

She grew up believing most of her problems could be solved with her fists. When they weren't, Vander was there to talk sense into her. Now what sense she has to spare she spends on Powder, trying to keep her grounded, to cut these weird spells of hers and overpower the voices that talk in her ears alone when she's upset.

Vi is left feeling adrift, without anyone to lean on. Silco looking at her like that, pretending to care, it only highlights her loneliness.

'I'm glad you're in one piece,' he says when it's clear she has no comeback for him.

Vi snorts and looks away. 'Please. You knew exactly how it would turn out. They weren't a challenge.'

'Any number of things could have happened. Let me be glad everything turned out for the best.'

She gives him a glance, but again, he looks like he means it. They walk back to the Last Drop together in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

Chapter Text

Sevika makes a pain of herself every day and night, every opportunity she gets, taunting, teasing, grimacing at Vi behind Silco's back. She doesn't give Powder any shit, Vi wouldn't let her—Silco would never let her either—but for Vi she's always got a jibe at the ready, or a sneer, a jutting elbow or shoulder.

Vi isn't sure what her problem is. She's the fucking betrayer. She's the one who abandoned Vander when it mattered most.

Silco says nothing. He sees it all, of course. Vi knows him better now, more than she ever dreaded to. She knows he notices these things. He can't punch for shit, his knife work looks decent but nothing flashy, he's a vicious fighter but then anyone alive at his age and line of business has to be. 

No, Silco's talent is people. He's aware of everything going on around him, predicts the way people will react, plays mind games with them and always ends on top and two steps ahead.

He's seen Sevika act up—she's hardly subtle—and said nothing.

Deal with it yourself is what it sounds like to Vi, and any other situation she would have put Sevika on her ass on the first day, but then...

I won't tolerate you making problems for me, so behave. That he'd said loud and clear, and surely laying Sevika out qualifies as making problems? She's Silco's second in command, and she rules with a lot of his trust. Some days you almost can't tell who runs the ship. There's a lot of punching to do, and Silco is rarely on the front lines.

Anyone Vi recognised from that night at the old cannery and who is still hanging around Silco's operation has gotten to eat some of her fists. Even Mek got his rematch. She couldn't lay him out again since Vander's gloves were lost in the fire, but Mek is ponderous, too straightforward and much too slow to learn. The type of guy who relies on his brawn and looks and never bothered to learn any serious technique. She clapped his ears and used his own hulking weight to drop him on his ass. In public. 

The same evening Mek offered to introduce her to his tattoo artist, like that brawl had made them buddies. Everyone either respects her now or gives her space.

Only Sevika remains a thorn in her side. Only she feels out of bounds. 

Vi rubs her shoulder where Sevika just bumped into her. It's not painful, only her ego is bruised. She watches Powder, sitting cross-legged on Silco's desk, carefully applying makeup on his scar while talking like a machine gun.

'So all of this to ask me for more linion cable,' Silco says when Powder finally gets round to her point. 'You know you can just ask.'

She pouts and pats the tip of his nose with the makeup pad. 'It's the most expensive.'

'I don't remember ever sparing any expenses for you.'

Vi rolls her eyes. The two of them are disgusting.

'So you'll get them?'

'Sure, just give it a couple days.'

'Whoop!' Powder jumps up and twirls on the desk. 

Silco rubs his nose and looks at Vi, ignoring Powder's antics. 'What about you?'

'What about me?' Vi asks, trying her best to sink into the couch, like he'll ignore her if he can't see her.

'Don't you want something? I'm off shopping, it seems.'

Like Silco will get his arse out of his office to get linion cables himself. Put a nice jacket on and walk them to Bridgewaltz market, like a happy little family.

'I'm fine.'

'Are you?' Silco asks with one of these shit eating grins of his. 'Don't you want new gauntlets maybe? You look like you dearly want to punch something.'

'What if I want to punch someone?' Vi says, jerking forward.

Powder jumps onto the couch next to her and crumples across her lap. 'Who is it? Who are we beating up?!'

'Just because you're starting to get decent at fighting doesn't mean—'

'Whoaaaa!! I can't hear aaaaanything you sayyy!!' Powder exclaims, slapping her cheeks in fake horror. 'What are you saying? "Please, Powder help me"? It's okay Vi, I will!'

Vi rolls her eyes.

'Delightful,' Silco says in a mock sneer. 'What beautiful sisterly love.'

'Oh, shut up!' Vi snaps.

He grins and waves a hand to shoo them away. 'Go beat up whoever you have to beat up. You only need my permission if you plan on killing them. You've already made your way through the staff once.'

Powder jumps up and pulls on Vi's sleeve. She gets up slowly though, digesting Silco's words. He's not looking at her but thumbing through some reports. Shimmer has been released in bulk now, and Silco does all of his own bookkeeping.

Is that a permission? Vi wonders. She wishes she had Powder's freedom. That inherent belief that Silco means her no harm and will indulge her, no matter what.

He has too. So far.

Vi misses Vander and the relationship she had with him. Knowing she could fuck up big time and just ask for forgiveness, and get it with a side of good advice.  

'You sure you don't want a little explody toy to gift Sevika?'

Vi whirls around to look at Powder and nearly trips down the stairs.

'What did you say?'

Powder gives her one of the most disgustingly pitying looks Vi's ever received.

'You think I haven't noticed?' she asks, and when did her little sister start sounding so cocky?

'Yeah, I mean, she hasn't been hiding it but still...'

Powder laughs and jumps down the rest of the stairs in one go. 'You clench your teeth so hard whenever you see her, you get veins standing out up here—' she taps her temple.

'I don't think blowing her up is a solution.'

Powder shrugs. 'Could make a glitter bomb, just to get her to think twice about bothering you. I'll just jinx her!'

Vi laughs at that, and punches Powder's shoulders. She's growing so fast, but this is ridiculous. 'So who's protecting who now? No, for Sevika to respect me, I need to teach her myself.'

'So maybe get the gloves Sil offered.'

Powder pushes the back door open and Vi follows her out without thinking.

'Why do you think I'd need gloves?'

'Her new arm wouldn't make it a fair fight.'

'Her new arm would barely make it a fair fight,' Vi says with a scoff.

Powder's got a point though. Sevika is stupidly strong, and ever since she's gotten the arm powered by shimmer instead of a standard chemtech augment, she's been unbeatable. Her form is a little sloppy, probably because of how different the new arm feels. Vi can see herself beating her... But she can also see that mechanical arm shatter her bones as she tries to block.

'I don't feel like asking Silco anything,' she says instead.

Powder rolls her eyes and kicks a can, scaring a rat down the alley. They're heading towards the old game room, Vi realises.

'Why?' Powder asks.

'You fucking know why,' Vi says without animosity.

'No, I don't any more,' Powder replies. 'I understood, when you came back. But like, Silco's just so nice to us. I like him! So I don't understand any more.'

'He killed Vander, Powder! I just can't forget that!'

'I killed Vander!' Powder screams in a sudden outburst.

Vi stops dead in her tracks, taken by surprise. It's been months since Powder's last flare-up. 

'I killed Mylo and Claggor and everyone!'

'No—'

'You were there!'

'Silco admits to it himself!'

'Yeah and he says Vander betrayed him!'

'Even if he did, that doesn't make killing him okay!'

'So why is it okay that I killed Mylo and Claggor? I'm a Jinx who killed everyone!'

'No! You were trying to help, I know you were! Silco was trying to kill him! He got what he wanted!'

'Vander got mom and dad killed, and then he wanted to care for us!' Powder snaps, 'I was on the bridge as well! I remember that too—don't you? Silco cares for us the same way!'

Vi is clenching her fists so hard she feels her nails digging into the flesh of her palms.

'They're not the same...'

'Yeah. They're like, two different people! Crazy, right?'

'You know that's not what I meant!'

'All I hear you say is that you can't trust him, you can't like him, you can't even ask him anything, when he'd just give it to you! He isn't scary, he's never hurt us!'

'You mean, after he tried to kill me?'

'Yeah,' Powder says, 'I do.'

Vi stares at her, breathing hard, furious. Her palms are aching, her knuckles itching to hit something. Then she looks up, eyes caught by the familiar neon sign. They're here, at the old game room. She looks back down at Powder who's biting on her lip like she's trying to keep tears in check. Her eyes are dry though, and she's pointedly busy with the door's lock.

It's a little scary, like she did this on purpose, leading them here knowing they'd both need to vent some steam by the time they arrived. But Powder steps out of the way after opening the door.

'Where are you going?'

'To blow stuff up.'

'Powder—' Vi sighs. 'Look, I'm sorry, I'm not upset with you. I shouldn't yell.'

'It's fine,' she says, 'you're not yelling.'

'No but, you know, I shouldn't get upset like that, I—I know you like him.'

Powder looks away, cheeks puffed out. 'He likes us too.'

'Yeah, I know he likes you, it's obvious.' 

It's even obvious he loves her. She would know, she does too.

'He likes you too!' Powder insists. She sounds accusatory, like Vi's at fault somehow. 'You just pretend not to see it!'

'I really don't see it. He just... He keeps me around for you, and hey, I'm grateful. I don't want us to be separated again, okay?'

Powder shrugs and turns away to leave.

Vi can't have that. Not after what she just said.

'Hey! Powpow!'

She turns around on her heels, her braids swinging. 'What?'

Vi tilts her head towards the shooting range.

'You sure you don't want to stay? You know, I could use some help. My aim is still crap.'

'You don't even like guns,' Powder says, squinting her eyes at her like it's a trap.

'No, but I like my little sister showing off how much cooler than me she is with them.'

'Mmh. But will you show me some new moves in exchange?' she asks, hesitating.

'No,' Vi says, 'you still need to improve your footwork, but yeah, I'll let you practice on me.'

'I'll just hurt my hands,' Powder says with a laugh.

She comes running, argument forgotten, and Vi is all too happy to serve as a punching bag.

Chapter Text

One week later Vi wakes up to a colourfully wrapped up box on the low table between the couches. It has ribbons and wires tying it up, and so much paint that she can't tell what the paper's colour is, underneath it all.

There's a tag on it that says Vi, but then "Vi" is also scribbled all over the present, just in case she didn't notice...

'What the...'

There's a quick knock on the door and Silco pokes his head in.

'Vi, have you seen Powder?'

'Huh? No. I just got up and found this.'

Silco takes one peek at the box and looks so unsurprised that Vi's got a feeling he already knows what's in there.

'Figured she'd be done with that project. Why isn't she here then?'

'I don't know,' says Vi, pulling on a ribbon. 'Silco, what's in it?'

The man steps in and comes down the stairs. 'Far be it from me to ruin a good surprise!' he exclaims. 'Maybe Powder will be summoned by you opening it.'

'Just—' Vi lifts the present and finds it surprisingly heavy. '—what is it...'

'I believe you might actually find out if you opened it,' Silco says mildly as he reclines in one of the couches.

'Don't you have some chembaron to subdue?' Vi replies testily.

'Sevika's on it.'

'Some new people to hook up on shimmer?'

Silco waves a hand dismissively. 'Never been my responsibility.'

'Some kneecaps to pop?'

'That's your job,' he says with a grin.

Vi groans and turns her attention back to the box. She strips it of its paper and finds the cardboard itself covered in doodles of explosions, a cracked skull and...

'Is that Sevika?' she asks, amused.

Silco sits back up to take a closer look and lifts his one eyebrow. 'Mmh, with a lot of artistic licence, maybe.'

Vi pops the lid and gasps. Inside the box are two beautiful metal gloves, painted in bright colours. She gives Silco a glare, her breath coming a little short.

'Did you—'

He shakes his head, his teal blue eye clear and bright as he says 'Don't look at me like that, I didn't order those for you. Powder did ask for a lot of unusual raw materials and a new blow torch. I figured she was up to something good.'

'Powder made those?' Vi asks, marvelling as she lifts one of the gauntlets out of the box.

'Can I see?'

Vi hands Silco the glove, more of a gauntlet really, and takes the second one out. She slides her hand inside it and the fit is perfect. She's overwhelmed with memories of that night, months ago now, yet still as vibrant in her mind as yesterday, her fingers curling over the bar in the middle of Vander's cast iron fists, finding it too large for her still, the weight of them too heavy on her arms. She'd only managed with them because she'd been running on adrenaline and hyper-focused panic, but these—they're made for her. The handle moulds to her fingers, the inside is all padded, the weight well calibrated... 

'The soldering looks sloppy, but they're really well put together,' Silco comments, and Vi can't help but agree.

She sits down on the couch opposite, resting the heavy gauntlet on her knees. It's articulated around the wrist. She turns it over to admire the paint job.

'What am I going to do?' she asks, fingers trailing along the jagged lines of explosions drawn over the knuckles. 'I don't feel like I can even scuff the paint on them.'

'Take it easy on Sevika then.'

She stares at Silco and he stares back. Which sums up a lot of their relationship, Vi figures.

'What?' he asks at last. 'I'm not blind.'

'I know you're not.'

'Don't scrap her arm either,' he says, putting the glove down on the table between them. 'It costs a lot of money I'd rather not spend right now.'

'Are we not selling enough shimmer to the poor and destitute?' Vi asks in fake concern.

'You just eat too much,' Silco fires back without blinking.

She frowns. 'You eat twice as much as I do and you've got nothing to show for it.'

'All goes to my brain,' he retorts.

Vi doesn't have time to come up with the perfect rejoinder as the door slams open and Powder comes screaming in.

'Nooo!! You opened it already!'

'It was right there with my name on it!' Vi laughs. 'Powder, did you make them?'

Powder comes to a stop and twirls happily before punching the air.

'They're cool right? I wanted to make individual fingers, but it was too complicated.'

'You'll get there,' Silco says, confident.

Powder beams at the compliment.

'Yeah, I guess you will!' Vi agrees. 'I'm looking forward to it.'

'Won't you make a weapon for me too?' Silco asks, sounding petulant.

'You don't need one,' Powder replies with a laugh. 'You've got us!'

'You're not a weapon,' Silco objects, twirling one of her braids around his fingers. 'Although maybe your head is hard enough to serve as one.'

'Powder isn't—'

'Oh, I was talking about you,' Silco says, grinning at Vi.

'Were you?' she asks, grinning back and lifting the fists up. 'Now that I've got both on, I'm actually dying to test them.'

Silco chuckles and gets up. He doesn't loom—the way Vander did by virtue of being so tall and burly—but he's got that larger-than-himself aura that makes one hesitate. Like no punch could truly connect. Vi used to think she could take him on and win easily. Knowing him as she does now she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would win. She could kill him. Yet he feels more untouchable than ever.

Silco wraps Powder in a hug and kisses her forehead.

'I was looking for you, my little Jinx. I'm going out—' a glance to Vi '—off to get some kneecaps busted. Important kneecaps, I have to be there in person.'

'I thought that was my job,' says Vi.

'Oh, can we come?' Powder asks at the same time. 'I've got this new gear bomb that—'

'No sorry, not this time. Besides I have a feeling you'll want to stay with Vi and wait.'

Powder gives Vi a puzzled look and she shrugs. Is he expecting her to take Sevika on today? She has to try the gloves first!

'You'll find some blueprints on my desk,' Silco continues, talking to Powder. 'I'd like you to have a look at them when you can, alright? I want your opinion on them. And yes, sorry for encroaching on your territory today Vi, I'll find you someone to punch soon enough, unless you want more responsibilities next time.'

And just like that he's off, leaving them to do whatever they please. Just soft requests and suggestions, no hard set rules, no obligations... It's incredible how easy going Silco is with them, especially given how tightly he runs his business.

'Vi, Vi!' Powder jumps up and down in front of her, showing off two colourful grenades. 'Let's go find Sevika!'

'Ah, but Silco just asked me not to kill her or destroy her arm.'

'It's okay! This is a smoke bomb, and this is a stink one.'

Vi hums like she's taking it into consideration. 'I'm not sure I want to grapple with someone covered in whatever stinky mix you've created.'

'Oh! Right.' Powder looks deflated for a second before smacking the two grenades together, making Vi wince. 'I have just the thing! Flashbangs!'

'Wait, Powder! I think the smoke bomb will be enough!'

Vi runs out of the room with the metal fists on, enjoying the weight of them as she pumps her arms, running after her sister.

Chapter Text

In the end the confrontation with Sevika comes naturally, and Vi doesn't have her new gauntlets on her.

She is sitting at the bar in the Last Drop, enjoying the song that's just come on, sipping on her drink. She's just come back from another stint on Silco's behalf beating some people up and the alcohol is helping to loosen sore shoulders and dull the ache in her thigh. She fell down in a metal heap in the confusion of battle and she knows the bruise will be deep.

The barman, a man called Erik, just two years older than Vi and incredibly skittish considering he's holding Vander's old job of man-pouring-the-drinks, gives a nervous look behind her shoulder and Vi just knows she's coming.

Sevika sits herself on the stool next to hers and everyone else at the bar suddenly feels like playing a game or sitting at a table. Vi ignores her pointedly, not that it matters in the end.

'Heard you got pushed around a little today,' Sevika says, accepting her drink with a silent nod. 'Nice of you to make an effort.'

Erik smiles weakly and finds a stain to polish as far down the counter from them as he can get.

Vi sighs, and her exasperation bubbles up. 'What's your damn problem, Sevika?' she asks. 'Why are you always crawling up my ass about everything?'

'My problem? It's you!' Sevika replies, dead serious. 'The whole of you. The way you're just... hanging around, not pulling your weight.'

Vi slams her glass on the counter and turns to face her. 'What are you even talking about?'

'You know exactly what I mean. You don't belong here.'

'I never wanted to be here at all!' Vi exclaims. 'I don't need to explain this to you of all people!'

'Yeah! And you're still sticking around, with that piss poor attitude of yours,' Sevika says in a low growl, leaning close. 'Breathing our air, eating our food, dragging your feet and looking down on us all for wanting to be here!'

'So what? You look down on me but I can't look down on you? I'm only here for Powder. I don't care why you like it here.'

'Yeah, you're only here for your sister, while we're working on something big, larger than any of us.'

'You're working on addicting everyone to shimmer!'

'Shimmer's just a tool! And it's part of the plan. Even Powder's in on it, crafting her little bombs and coming along on stings. Silco took the time of day to explain this shit to you, what more do you want?'

Vi clutches the seat of her stool to keep her hands from bunching into fists. The moment she forms one, she knows, it'll fly of its own volition into Sevika's infuriating face.

'I want my family to not be... betrayed and dead,' she says instead. 

To her surprise Sevika doesn't rise to the bait.

'You know what your problem is?' she asks instead in a surprisingly calm tone.

'Yeah, go on, teach me something I don't know about myself.'

'No, your problem is your age.'

'What? Like if I were in my twenties I'd just love it here? Not mature enough to enjoy being the protégée of a... a shimmer -baron?'

Sevika shakes her head, downs her glass and hops off her stool. She jerks her chin towards the back door and walks away without waiting for Vi to follow. The entire room seems to hold its collective breath as Vi slowly stands up and walks after her. She's tense, regretting now the warm bloom of alcohol in her chest. Vi psychs herself up for a back-alley brawl, wondering if she should just dip into her room to grab the gauntlets.

Sevika doesn't seem interested in violence though, when Vi joins her outside she's got a cig lit and is blowing out smoke rings. Vi keeps her distance all the same.

'When I was a little younger than you are now, I was running with Vander, Silco, Benzo and Talia,' Sevika says without preamble. 'My older sister. She was their age, I was just helping where I could, same as Powder does here.'

Vi tries to hide her surprise. Unlike Silco, Talia is a name she's heard here and there. She's one of the many dead of the rebellion era that ended in the uprising that claimed her own parents, and the look on Vander's face whenever she was brought up, well... Vi never asked questions, and nothing was ever volunteered.

'I... didn't know you had a sister.'

Or that Sevika ran with Silco and Vander. She doesn't exactly like the sound of that. Even if her resolve has long since eroded in the face of Silco's openness, she'd rather hold on to her grudges and not believe what he has to say about his past with Vander.

'Can you believe I also had a mom and pop?' Sevika snarks, blowing a long stream of smoke in her direction.

Vi goes to lean against the opposing wall, well out of reach. 'I'll make an effort and try to imagine it,' she says, waving for her to get on with her point.

Sevika curls her lips disdainfully and turns her glare down to her feet.

'Back then things were shit. Proper shit. I know you spent some time in the orphanage in the slums. Do you remember what it was like, living down there? Imagine the same but with more pollution, more poverty, more death at enforcers' hands. More gang violence tearing the place apart.' 

Sevika's voice has this monotone, far away quality to it, her eyes remain fixed to the ground like she can see it reflecting scenes from the past. 

'You weren't even born so you can't remember the slaughter by the quays, it didn't cost you your family. Your parents died fighting for the cause, at least.'

Vi doesn't protest. She's never seen Sevika like this before. Never heard her chain that many words, actually. There's an air of despair to her that reminds Vi of that feeling, when her jail door locked behind her every day. 

'Things were already going to shit when Talia died. Soon after everyone was taking sides—suddenly Silco was gone and speaking his name was basically forbidden. I was young. Stupid. I followed where I was pointed. So I followed Vander and Benzo. By the time I learnt the whole truth, Vander had his peace with Grayson and everyone wanted to forget.' She blows out smoke through her nose, eyes still riveted to the ground. 'I lived my life, bided my time. I was hoping Vander had it right and that things would get better on their own. Do you know who convinced me I was following the wrong man?'

Vi's mouth is dry by then, but she croaks the words anyway. 'I did.'

'Yeah girl, you sure did.' Sevika agrees, finally looking up at her. 'You broke into the wrong place, made a little mess, didn't even kill anyone and suddenly I was having flashbacks to my childhood, watching enforcers beat people dead for not knowing the answers to their questions, all the way down to the slums.'

She flicks the end of her cig away, blows the last of her smoke, and stares at Vi, eyes cold and steady, pinning her down.

'There was no fucking peace. Just an illusion, like smoke. We'd lost all that time, not even preparing ourselves to strike back. Vander had no plan.'

But Silco did. Silco had been preparing for years... Silco who used to run with Vander, Silco who led the uprisings, Silco who still dreams of a free Nation of Zaun.

Sevika takes three steps to bridge the gap between them, jabbing a finger in Vi's chest.

'You don't remember how shit it was, but I was there at the beginning, I lost my fucking sister to this fight, and I lost time to Vander's weakness. It fucking guts me to have to see you every day acting like you're too good to join the cause, like you didn't set all of this into motion by trying to prove yourself and fuck the Pilties! As you should! You're acting like a child, and Silco's just letting it slide to drive me crazy, I fucking swear!'

Vi growls and pushes Sevika away from her. 'I'm not a fucking child! Silco doesn't treat me like one!'

'Like fuck he does!' she barks. 'Last I checked there's only two people here who get to dick around doing whatever they want. You and Powder—you're basically his daughters!'

'No!' Vi screams.

She comes out swinging wildly, knowing straight away that it won't connect. Sevika side-steps her and brushes her fist aside.

'Get a grip. Yelling won't change anything.'

'Fuck you!'

'I'm not into kids.'

'And I'm not into traitorous vermin like you.'

'See, if you weren't the boss' second favourite daughter, I'd beat you bloody for that.'

Vi stops herself short. It's a new skill she's been polishing for Powder's sake, this ability to cut herself from her anger, to take a step back and not escalate. Sevika just rubs her so badly in the wrong direction... She takes a deep breath, considers the problem at hand.

Silco. Silco killing Vander. It all boils down to that.

Silco wrapping Powder in a hug and kissing her, Silco letting her dance on his desk and paint on his things, Silco getting annoyed or even infuriated and never, ever reaching out to hurt. Calling her his Jinx and making her smile.

Silco looking at her with a smirk over Powder's head. Sitting down next to her at Jericho's and letting her steal his food. Silco offering to buy her something she'd like, never pushy, never demanding anything, just... being there. Respecting their deal. Crafting his revolution, one shimmer addict at a time, one defeated gang bending the knee after another.

Just a year ago Vander had had to talk sense into Vi, making another speech for peace, walking her up to the bridge and its sad little memorial for the dead—not a great representation, as most didn't have pictures of their loved one to spare for it, and even more of the dead had no one to care enough for a candle.

Just a year ago she was advocating for striking back. Given a choice that night, she too might have taken Silco's side, if not for Vander.

Vi spits on the ground. She would have preferred a fist fight to this. Understanding Sevika only makes her harder to stomach.

'What if I hit you first?' she says at last, figuring maybe it's not too late to vent her feelings that way. 'Will that make it okay?'

Sevika laughs and waves her away with her mechanical fingers.

'You really love punching people, and yet you keep acting like you don't want to dirty your hands.'

'You're still going on about this,' Vi grinds.

'You're the one who asked me what my problem was. You should be glad I don't solve them all with a punch.'

Sevika spits too, for good measure, and turns for the back door.

'That's it? You're just gonna leave?' Vi calls out after her.

Sevika stops in the doorway and looks at her over her shoulder. 'Why don't you find out what you want to do for yourself?' she asks. 'Why don't you give it a hard think and pick a side? Not what Vander wanted for you, but what you want for yourself. You can come back for a beat down then.'

Chapter Text

Sevika's words fester at the back of Vi's mind. They're simmering there as she sits across from Silco at dinner. They bubble up when he redoes Powder's braids with expert fingers, talking to her in low tones, making her laugh. They overflow and choke her when he squeezes her shoulder on his way out of the room, touching mindlessly and wishing her good night.

Vi tries to keep her confused feelings down, tries to look away from the mess of them. It's ugly, and she wants to be good. To do Vander proud and be a kinder person. She goes to punch the boxing machine every day and random idiots in the streets when that doesn't quite cut it. She's ready to pick fights with everyone but the person she truly wants to smash to pieces.

Vi's a mess, and she knows it. The better Powder gets, the worse she becomes, like they're trading sanity.

One afternoon after a brawl that leaves her with a painful split lip, she comes down the stairs to their room and finds them there. Napping on one of the couches. One of them snoring in a wheezy breath, she can't tell which.

There are empty glasses on the low table and pastry crumbs over scattered papers and more blueprints—chemtech suits painted over with thick pink veins—some new shimmer-based toy Silco wanted Powder's opinion on, no doubt.

Vi sits on the table and looks at them.

Silco is dishevelled, his tie draped over the back of the couch. His lidless eye swivels around, following the action unfolding in his dreams. Powder is laid over him, tucked in his arms, sleeping with her mouth open and drooling into his red shirt. The paint stained fingers of her right hand are curled under his jaw and left streaks of pink there.

All Vi can think about is how she used to sit on this couch next to Vander, and talk about... Anything, really. How Powder never napped in his arms. How she could just reach out for her gauntlets and smash Silco's head in.

End it all in one blow, right then and there!

Soak the old couch with blood and vengeance.

But he's so good to Powder, and she's here too. Exhausted after... whatever they were doing. Brainstorming, plotting, just eating snacks dipped in tea, enjoying each other's company.

Silco's great with Powder. He listens to her, includes her in his work. He makes her feel like she belongs in a way that almost makes Vi envious.

Every day she goes on missing Vander, and every day Powder loves Silco more like a father. Each time Vi considers revenge, it becomes a greater betrayal to her own sister. A sacrifice of her happiness.

Sometimes Vi wonders if it isn't too late. If she wouldn't lose Powder forever, for striking back. She isn't sure how much of their relationship is insurance to Silco. Is he using her sister as a shield? Vi swallows hard. Maybe, but... 

Would he need to come down here for that? To get covered in paint and drool? To learn to braid hair and let himself be poked and powdered, his eyebrow drawn too high or too thin, or a little crooked, on purpose.

Powder doesn't need that much attention, he's just... he's just spoiling her. Because he wants to. Likes to.

You're his second favourite daughter, Sevika taunts in the back of her mind.

Vi gets up and turns to her bed. She unhooks the gauntlets and carefully takes them out of their individual cover—the ones Silco gifted her, saying it'd help against scuffing the paint too soon, damn him—she clips them to the leather harness she made for herself, keeping them snug against her hips.

She leaves the room without a second glance.

She's got too many uncertainties and too many doubts, and she knows exactly how to dispel them.

Kiramman.

That's the name Vi pinned at the back of her mind during her sham of a trial.

Kiramman, the people who owned the studio they raided, almost a year ago.

Out of everything Sevika said, Vi can't help but agree on that one point. Their hit had not been anything newsworthy. No one had died! Buildings collapse often enough in the undercity and nobody cares. Zaunites die at the hand of enforcers for far less provocation! The loot had been lost, and it'd been pocket change to the pilties, not even properly locked or guarded.

Except for the crystals Powder had gotten... Vi is certain those must have been valuable.

Silco claims it had been an Arcane blast that night. Something that one of his shaddier contacts with experience in magic has apparently confirmed. He believes the crystals are still being researched at the academy, where a second blast took place on the same night, and has since been covered up.

So, fine, the crystals were dangerous, the sort of barely legal stuff you have to get abroad and import through smugglers. And that was the kicker! Pilties could get their hands on such dangerous contraband, stuff that was responsible for destroying their own property, but it was them who needed to pay for all of it! 

Kiramman.

The family that had them hounded, that had the Undercity torn apart for a retribution on a scope zaunites don't even dare dream of. The injustice stings, but it's a familiar ache.

In the end Vi is mostly curious. She wants to see exactly what sort of person wields such power, to destroy and ruin lives without ever showing themselves.

She makes her way up and up, through the more discreet paths connecting the two worlds, wary of being seen. She climbs on the roofs and looks at the city shimmering around her, the afternoon sun rippling over burnished copper and flashing across arching windows.

She pulls her hand-scribbled map out. It has been an absolute pain to gather intel on all the Kiramman properties. They're all over the place, all more outrageous than the last. Some out of the city borders, far out of her reach.

In the end she picks the one in the high residential quarter of Piltover, in the outskirts of the Academy district. It's slow going with the gloves heavy against her lower back. She needs to adjust her movements to the new weight, but she burns some of her feelings that way and puts Silco and Powder napping together out of her mind.

This, it's what she's great at. She runs on automatic and it feels good. Freeing. Nothing taints her enjoyment of the heights.

Vi is almost sorry she's arrived when she hits the blue tiled roof of her destination. The building under her is impressive enough to be the home of a councillor, which tracks. It makes chembarons look like market peddlers by comparison, and Silco's already more humble tastes just don't compare at all.

There are stained glass windows as tall as the entire facade of the Last Drop, for crying out loud! Gilded keys decorate everything.

Vi drops along the gutters, and after a little scouting, lowers herself on a balcony with drawn curtains. She's on the inside of the building, looking down on a huge inner courtyard. It even has room for trees! Trees!

She sighs, hands brushing the metal cusp of her fists mindlessly.

To wake up to this. To leave your room to breathe in crisp clean air and walk out under the shade of a tree that's yours and yours alone... That's the sort of privilege that needs enforcers to protect.

The sound of a door and voices reverberating into the courtyard cut through Vi's thoughts and she squats behind the railing.

'—hope to see you distinguish yourself,' an all too familiar voice rings out.

Vi twitches. She brings her hood up to cover her bright pink hair and peaks over her cover.

Sure enough, Marcus is walking alongside a young woman. She looks about the same age as her, with dark blue hair straight as curtains. She looks very cute, and it's extremely disappointing to see her click her heels at Marcus.

Vi can't make out her words, only Marcus' reply.

'No, she'd be proud of your decision, I know it.'

He clasps a hand on the young woman's shoulder. Vi wonders if she's a junior enforcer or a clerk of some sort. She's dressed in frills with a shining gold cravat that would feed Vi and Powder from Bridgewaltz's best food stalls for weeks.

'I understand your parents don't approve of your choice, but Grayson told me about you. The one Kiramman who could outshoot her—'

Vi is too busy picking up her jaw from the floor to hear the rest of that sentence. That girl is a Kiramman? That cute little thing in bouffant silk sleeves? She shakes her head. After all, even rich pilties have to be young at one point... She can't be the one who turned the Undercity inside out in search of them. It has to be her parents.

'—heading home now, but I'll be seeing you tomorrow before you join your class,' Marcus says.

The young Kiramman salutes again and watches Marcus go. Vi would stay and stare at her some more, but the sheriff is a much more compelling target now. She jumps for the roof again and makes to follow him, not noticing the sharp blue eyes that catch her movements and follow her.

Chapter Text

Marcus lives in a house that makes the Last Drop look like a dump and yet is itself a dump compared to the Kiraman's estate. The windows are plain, without stained glass, the roof is made of tin plating, and there is no yard, just rows of flowers and a couple chairs by the entrance, right by the road. Still looks nicer than anything Vi has ever stepped into (not counting the court room or the raided research lab). She sits on the edge of the roof, enjoying the last slanting rays of sun against her bare arms.

She reviews her plan, such as it is. It's not much of one, really. She just wants to tug on the leash Silco has her on, to test how far it will actually go. She's confident now that whatever he does to her, he'll never harm Powder, not even in retaliation.

Whatever Vi actually is, it's clear Powder is Silco's favourite daughter. Sevika can have that one.

Marcus hasn't been home for long when the door opens again and a young woman comes walking out of the building with him on her heels. Vi glances down over the edge of the roof, watches money change hands. The woman pats Marcus' arm, brushes strands of blond hair behind her ear and turns away. Vi follows her with hungry eyes. What is it with Marcus associating with all these pretty women?

She looks back down to him, notices how he's sitting at one of the outside chairs, his uniform jacket undone, lighting up a cigarette. Vi doesn't need longer than a cigarette. She slinks down from the gutters to the balcony below. Pilties' obsession with them makes everything so easy. Since they don't get toxic runoff trickling from above, it's only fair they get unwanted visitors instead.

Vi pulls Mylo's old multi-tool out, the one he'd left behind at the Last Drop, not the one that was presumably melted to slag in the rubble of the fish market's cannery. Vi has been practicing—it's just Powder and her now, she can't just be the best punch of the... group—duo—whatever. She has to do more.

The windowed door doesn't give her any trouble.

Vi pads quietly through the room. It's a library, with a desk made of solid wood and brass, documents scattered across the top. She doesn't stop to look at them, but when she sees leather bound notebooks she stops to flip through the pages. The first two are mostly filled with scribbles, but she finds a blank one. It has a supple plain leather cover and thick white pages. It's a little large and she didn't bring a bag, so she tucks her shirt deeper into her pants, closes her belt one notch tighter and secures the notebook there, between her shirt and her belly.

Silco gets Powder all the paper she wants, but this is really nice quality, and the fuck you of the gesture makes it extra sweet.

She tiptoes out of the room and walks down a large corridor, passing a gilded mirror and vases filled with flowers. His lounge is airy and bright, even if the sun has disappeared behind the building across the street.

There's a rage susurrating in Vi, louder and louder. An anger building like pressure beneath her ribs, making her struggle for breath.

She glances into the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, back to the lounge and its peaceful airs… Everywhere she looks, things shine back at her. New. Valuable. Casually lying around. Clean. Themed, even. There is so much, and none of it scrounged, broken and mended. All of it in the possession of someone who would separate her from what little she owns and everyone she loves, for the crime of wanting the smallest fraction of the same comfort and wealth.

Yes they'd been stealing, but how else were they supposed to get anything, down in the Lanes? She'd wanted to make a name for them, to prove they could pull a real job, that their skills had value, that their names were worth knowing. To show other trenchers they were grown up... and to show pilties that they couldn't escape the children they left behind, just by building higher and better.

She'd been all too happy to hit the academy district. Some researchers with gold lined pockets had felt like the perfect mark. It makes her nauseous now to see an enforcer's home be just as ripe a target.

She's seething as she puts the gauntlets on.

She doesn't need to steal any more. Silco is out there, amassing a fortune the only other way possible in the Undercity, building an empire on pain and addiction. So instead Vi brings her wrath down with a wordless cry, smashing a low table to pieces. She curls the articulated gloves into fists and crushes a record player into scrap metal, punches a mirror, swipes the top of a commode clean before shattering it.

She pants hard, the anger stabbing deeper through her ribs, begging to be let out, asking for more—

A cry. Faint, behind the wall she's facing.

Vi freezes, suddenly scared that she wasn't alone on this floor despite her cursory inspection. She walks back into the corridor, to the bedroom that opens on the same balcony as the office library. The whimpers are coming from inside. Vi takes a couple of steps into the room and then she sees it, in an alcove in the wall by the bed: a crib, half hidden behind curtains, a mechanical mobile with stars and planets moving silently, and under it a baby too young to care, whimpering and swinging its own fists like it too rages against the world it was just born into.

'You—'

Vi turns around, meeting an equally wide-eyed Marcus standing in the doorway. He's panting like he ran up the stairs. There's no fury in the man's face, just pure, absolute terror. He only glances away from Vi's eyes to look at her gauntlets, resting on the crib's wooden frame.

The baby decides it has been ignored long enough and begins to scream.

Marcus looks back to Vi, his expression worth a thousand words.

'I—' she starts.

I just wanted to make you pay, she could say, but it would sound like a threat.

I didn't know you had a kid, would be honest, but would she have done things differently if she did?

How does it feel, to think you're about to lose everyone who matters? Is what she'd say, if she were the spiteful type.

I'm just sorting my own mess. You're just collateral. Is the truth she will not speak.

You've got a good heart, Vander's voice whispers in the back of her mind.

Vi darts away from the crib, letting the curtains fall back over it. In one punch the door to the balcony crunches open. She has the left glove back into its harness before she even steps out of the room, and both tidied away before she launches herself over the railing.

She catches the adjoining neighbour's balcony and shimmies up to the roof again. She takes a single glance back, but Marcus hasn't followed her. She suspects no one will. As she runs back to the Lanes on a high of raging adrenaline she can't help but think she's achieved everything she wanted—maybe even a little too well.

All she has to do now is wait.

Chapter Text

'I can't have that.'

'But you can, Marcus, you most certainly can.'

'No. She was in my home, armed!'

'So you've been telling me.'

'She was threatening my daughter!'

'Ah, yes, your newborn daughter. Congratulations are in order! I wonder that you didn't tell me, I would have sent you something. And for the mother's funeral too. My condolences.'

'Like what?' Marcus gets his ass maybe 30cm off the stool before Mek's meaty hand clamps down on his shoulder and yanks him back into place. Marcus doesn't even give him a glance before launching into his tirade. 'Vander's daughter armed with mechanical fists? The moment I told you I took care of her you went and blindsided me without any warning, and now I—'

'I gave you an opportunity, back then, and you messed it up.' Silco leans forward, a finger pointing to Marcus' chest and the sheriff insignia gleaming there. 'You've managed to make the best out of the situation in the end though, haven't you? Vi's release hasn't taken your fame and glory away, has it?'

'What was the point of any of it if you're just going to let her roam the city unchecked!'

Silco leans back against the sofa, long fingers tapping a familiar rhythm on the wooden back. He closes his good eye but the dark one remains riveted on Marcus.

'Vi isn't roaming and your precious Piltover is safe,' he says. 'I'll talk to her and make sure she understands where the boundaries lay.'

'It's not enough!'

Powder's shoulders shake with silent laughter. Vi gives her a nudge and puts a finger to her lips to remind her to be quiet.

Powder shakes her head and rolls her eyes like Vi is being silly. Or Marcus. Probably both. Then she cocks her head and opens her hands, revealing two small grenades. It's the sticking sort she has just developed and started putting on everyone's back, right until Sevika taught her what a serious choke hold could feel like.

No! Vi mouths, making wide eyes and shaking her head vehemently.

'She needs to learn about consequences!' Marcus exclaims below them.

Powder makes a pleading face, hides one grenade and shows off the other.

'It's just glitter!' she whispers.

'Silco will kill us!' Vi whispers back.

'No he won't.'

'Marcus is important,' Vi objects.

'Vander's daughter is nothing but trouble! First she blew up the Kiramman lab, then baited Grayson and I down on that night, and now this! If I catch her again I—'

Silco lurches forward abruptly.

'Vi is off limits,' he says, the warning clear in his ice cold voice. 'She's off limits today and she's off limits tomorrow. Both of my girls are, every day going forward.'

And there it is, Vi thinks, some indescribable feeling overwhelming her.

'But she—'

'There are no buts, Marcus. I will make sure she understands that you're a valued member of our little operation. Our plans for a prosperous and peaceful Zaun. We wouldn't want to jeopardize this over a little gripe, would we?'

Marcus grits his teeth loud enough to be heard from the rafters. 'I don't ever want her near my daughter again.'

'If I had no idea you had a baby, I'm sure she didn't either. Vi is an amazing girl—and a busybody, yes—but she isn't a mind reader. It was an accident.'

'She broke into my house and destroyed my property by accident?'

'No, I'd imagine that was probably a bit of personal revenge.'

'And she gets away with this?'

Silco sighs and stands up, going to his desk. 'Don't worry, as I've said, she'll recognise the gravity of her actions.'

Powder scoffs and quickly covers her mouth, giving Vi a worried look. But no one glances up at them, as Silco has gone around the desk and all eyes are on the small locked box he's taken out of it. Vi knows it's where he keeps what he calls "pocket change" and its use is reserved for days like today.

'Here,' he says, putting a handful of coins in a handkerchief and tying it up. 'I hope this will cover the damage.'

Marcus looks at the proffered bundle, the coins glinting at him from an open corner of the makeshift bag. Vi can't see his face from up here, but his silence is long and heavy and she can well imagine the muscles bunching on his jaw. Fuck him anyway. She scraped a few things, sure. She understands he got scared too, for his new daughter who apparently cost him his wife. Plenty to be sad about, and yes, now Vi regrets going. It was a bad impulse, and there were plenty of other ways she could have pushed Silco's buttons. But for him to come here and whine and whimper, to try and make her out as a monster who would have hurt a defenceless baby! And he thinks she called the old sheriff down as a trap? What a joke. Either his memory is hazy or he's an idiot. Most likely the second, Vi decides.

She glances at Powder quickly, wondering if the glitter bomb isn't that bad an idea after all. Marcus gets up before she can make up her mind, bribe disappearing into his pocket.

'Don't make me come down for something like that again,' he says, trying to sound threatening and coming across like he's barely saving face. He stomps out with Mek on his heels.

The door closes behind them and Silco sighs. 'I do remember explaining how Marcus fits into everything, didn't I?' he asks without looking up. 'Please think before you act.'

Powder swings down, holding on to a beam. 'Silco!'

He looks up just in time to see her drop right over him. Silco grunts and staggers back as he catches her.

'Oof—I think we'll have to stop that particular game, very soon,' he says in a strained voice. He kisses the top of her head as she wraps her arms around his shoulders. 'You're growing so fast.'

'Growing muscular,' she declares, sounding smug. 'Check those out!'

She leans back to show him her arms, flexing her tiny biceps.

Silco laughs. 'How is Sevika treating you?'

'I don't like her. She isn't nice.'

'She's training you because I asked, not as a favour to you. She tells me you're a good student though.'

'Yeah! I mean, I don't like her and I get to punch her if I'm fast enough, so it's great, I love it! Soon I'll be stronger than Vi, just you watch!'

'Isn't Vi also training with Sevika?' Silco asks, glancing up to look at Vi directly.

'She mentioned it but I haven't gone yet,' Vi says, turning away.

'Why don't you come down?' he asks.

His voice is soft, his tone unthreatening. Of course it is. He isn't even upset with her. He defended her against Marcus. Fucking called her amazing to his face. Vi could tell herself that he was riling him up. That it's just Silco's special brand of loyalty, extending to her by default... but she's been fooling herself long enough. 

The simplest solution is often the best one, that was something their mother used to say. She was talking about the gadgets she brought back home to fix, but she claimed it applied to people as well.

The simplest solution here is a Silco who laughs at her crude jokes over breakfast, who shares stories like it matters that she hears them, who squeezes her shoulder and lets her steal his food and finds her jobs most suited to her skills, thanks and praises her and... defends her from Piltover's sheriff. Who looks up at her now with worried eyes.

Vi pulled on the leash as hard as she could, only to realise there wasn't one. Sevika was right and Vi has been blinding herself for weeks. Maybe months.

'How far along are you on that gadget I ordered?' Silco asks, turning his attention back to Powder.

'Well, since you won't let me test it on people any more, I'm not actually sure. I made a metal dummy and it's pretty scratched up, but I'm not sure how it would affect a person. You know, since they're not made out of metal? If I keep tuning it down it'll be a joke! Like my glitter bombs.'

'Mmh. Why don't you take Mek and a couple of people and find yourself some test subjects?'

'What? For real?'

Vi snorts, thinking about Mek's reaction to the news. He's been one of Powder's main victims when it comes to testing her most pesky mechanical designs, but somehow he always patiently gives her a pass. Vi isn't sure if Silco gives him hazard pay or what. Maybe he's the type to be extra tolerant of children—right until he's ordered to kill them.

'Yes,' Silco says, putting Powder down. 'Sevika is still out, but Mek will know where to go. Tell him we're overdue picking the Reddies apart. If he can find you some of their rabble, it would be great.'

'Oh, you're the best!'

Vi watches Powder explode out of the room, screaming Mek's name from the top of her lungs.

'Nice work,' she says.

'Your sister has a delightful one-track mind when it comes to her gadgets, and it is as useful as it is endearing,' Silco says, making his way back to the couch. 'I'd like to talk with you, when you're done sulking in the rafters.'

'I'm not sulking!' Vi protests.

'Come down then.'

She sighs. Always two moves ahead of everyone, that's Silco. Now if she refuses to come down she'll be sulking, and the whole not wanting to be treated as a child thing will begin to fall apart.

She navigates the mess of metal beams, already covered in doodles by Powder, and falls down heavily over the carpet to spare Silco's desk from the impact of her metal tipped boots.

She considers the room and her sitting options. She won't take the stool Marcus vacated. It's basically the seat reserved for the people who come into this office to get bullied. The chair is fine, but far away. The table would bring her knees-to-knees with Silco. The couch would mean equality, right next to each other.

She chooses to remain standing instead. If Silco thinks anything of her choice he doesn't show it.

'What do you want to talk about?' Vi asks, crossing her arms and frowning to hide how embarrassingly stupid the question is.

Silco's lips twitch in a half smile. 'Relax. I'm not about to give you a dressing down,' he says. 'You don't know your own limits, Vi, but I won't insult your intelligence by telling you why paying Marcus a visit was stupid. You're well aware of it.'

Vi shifts from one foot to another and remains silent. She's not going to play games with him. He's just taking the scenic route.

'I'd like to understand what motivated this particular outburst. It's not like you lacked opportunity before, so why now?'

'I just saw him,' she says with a shrug. 'I followed him and got upset when I saw his home.'

Silco gives her an incredulous look. 'You'll have to do better than that. We both know you're acquainted with Piltover's decadent architecture and undue privilege. You were running laps around enforcers up there not a year ago.'

Vi sighs and fidgets before catching herself and crossing her arms again. She should definitely have gone after a gang instead of Marcus. At least then she could come up with ready excuses.

'I won't be angry,' Silco continues. He pulls a herbal cigarette out of his vest's inner pocket and lights it up, a clear message that he's in no hurry to end this conversation. 'No matter what drove you to it. But I want to understand. If the cause is something that can be helped, then I—'

'You always say that!' Vi exclaims, her temper bursting out of control. 'You always say you want to help!'

She would have appreciated Silco's stunned expression more if she weren't so upset.

'Is that wrong of me?' he asks, confused.

'Yes! No—I—' Vi throws her arms into the air and turns on her heels, pacing to the door and back. 'I wish you wouldn't, because it's just—I thought if I caused you some problems, you'd treat me like everyone else.'

Silco's confusion morphs into something else. Concern tinged with amusement, maybe. 'Vi, if anyone else had gone and wrecked the sheriff's home against my orders, I'd gift-wrap them for Marcus with a bow. Perhaps alive, depending.'

'See! Why should I be special! You told me not to make problems and yet it's like you don't actually care if I do!'

Silco blinks at her and says nothing. That's when Vi realises she's gone and told him everything he needs to know. She sighs. Maybe he's right, and she doesn't know her own limits. She never has. Vander was always there to find them for her, to remind her of their existence when she crossed them.

'I stayed for Powder,' she says in a strained voice. 'I never wanted to become—' She waves her hand, trying to encompass herself, Silco, the world around them. Whatever they are now.

'I see,' he says, getting up. 'Boundary testing, then.'

'Sure, call it that,' she says with a defeated shrug.

'Go get dressed,' Silco tells her. 'Wear something warm, we're going up.'

'What? Sevika isn't back yet.'

Silco chuckles. 'I don't work for Sevika, and the Drop doesn't need me sitting in the office to function. Now go on, it'll take us a while to get there.'

'To where?'

'You'll see,' Silco says, mysterious.

He opens the door and waves for her to go and get ready. She runs down to her room to put a jacket on, mind racing. She has no idea what's going on and where he wants to bring her. All she knows is that this wasn't what she'd expected, or how she thought this conversation would go.

Chapter Text

When Silco said they were going up, he meant it. They take two elevators to the Promenade, the highest level of Zaun, short of the few spires that fly over the edges of the canyon. From there they can see Piltover in all its glory and the towers of the bridge that separates them from it, the one so often drenched in blood.

Silco leads her away however, through a small open air market where they stop to buy mulled wine in paper cups before walking to the Northern side, where the view gives on the Sun Gates below and the Pilt passing through them to spill into the sea.

He picks the bench with the best view and lets out a deep sigh. Vi seats herself next to him, repressing a smile. Whatever her feelings for the man might be, she can't deny he's a hard worker. She can easily imagine it's the first time in a long while that he's sat down somewhere without business on his mind.

They sip their wine in silence. Vi waits patiently, in no hurry to continue the conversation from where they left it. When Silco pulls out another herbal cigarette she knows he's ready to talk.

'My mother brought me here, when I was about seven,' he tells her, waving his lighter around to encompass the Promenade. 'It was my first time seeing the sun, since I was born and raised down in the Black Lanes.'

'Oh, I—' Vi stops herself short.

Of course she didn't know. She has pestered Silco a lot in the months they've spent living together, but she's never asked about him, really. His past. It's a little callous, she realises now, how strong her opinion of him is, compared to how little she actually knows.

'Yeah, you could live your whole life down there without knowing what the sun is at all,' she says instead.

'My mother told me she resented her own father, for bringing her here too. That she would have lived happier not knowing about it—all this blue sky, crisp air, that horizon that curves away as far as the eye can see.'

Vi gives him a curious look. 'What did you think?'

'About what? The sun? Once I was over the glare... I didn't think much of it,' he says, and pointing to the white peaks of Piltover, 'I was too busy shifting my worldview, realising there was a completely different world squatting right on top of mine. I'd never really understood how close and yet how completely out of reach Piltover was.'

Vi grunts. She might have had more opportunities to venture up and see the sun for herself as a child, but the feeling he describes is universal among poor zaunite kids. 

'I hate to break it to you,' she says, 'but this isn't my first time up here.'

Silco chuckles, and Vi feels a traitorous glow of satisfaction. It's not an easy thing, pulling a laugh out of that man. She can't help feeling like it's an achievement each time she does.

'I didn't bring you here to enlighten you about the sun's existence.'

'Why then? For the scenery? Nostalgia?'

'Because this is out of either of our... territories.'

'Ah. Neutral ground.'

'Precisely,' Silco says, blowing a plume of smoke to the sky overhead. 'Now child, tell me what pushed you to test your boundaries one year in. I expected that sort of behaviour months ago'

Vi chews on her lip and considers her options. There are none, really. Silco says he brought her here for neutral grounds, but it's also quite the roundabout trip for a conversation they could have continued in his office. No matter what she tries, she's unlikely to get away without explaining herself. She might as well come clean.

She explains her confrontation with Sevika, tells him how she'd believed herself different from Powder, treated as an adult, someone doing the job of looking after the child he'd taken a strange fancy to—and nothing else.

When he takes another silent draft, waiting for more, she just caves and confides in her fear that everyone else is already seeing her differently. Treating her differently too. That she won't remain Vander's daughter much longer.

'Are you concerned that people thinking you my daughter instead will somehow erase your past with Vander?' Silco asks, not unkindly. 'Other people's opinions rarely ever matter, Vi.'

'It matters if they treat me differently for it!'

'And so what? People treating you differently for living with me was always a given. You should have considered that before accepting our deal.'

'Stop calling it a deal,' she protests. 'Like I had any choice!'

'You didn't even try to negotiate.'

'Was I supposed to? You're—'

She waves the whole argument away with a frustrated grunt. He's being manipulative and he knows it, she knows it, it's not even worth talking about.

Silco smiles, puffs out some smoke with a pleased look. 'I see you're slowly learning to pick your battles.'

Vi sneers at him and gulps the last of her mulled wine, welcoming the warmth of it. 

She bites the bullet.

'Tell me, what do you really want with me, Silco? I didn't get what you wanted with Powder at the start. What could you see in my... my jinxed little sister who'd just blown your whole operation up. I seriously thought you only wanted to hurt her.' She waves her hands as if to dispel the idea. 'I get it now. You're good with kids, you like her, she gets to feel useful while you get the benefit of her experiments, it's win-win for you two but... what about me? Powder doesn't need me as badly any more, I just... I don't get why you got me out of trouble with Marcus. Without saying anything, you know?'

Silco snorts. He reaches towards her and Vi doesn't flinch away, taking the flick to her forehead stoically.

'You are a fool, if you think your sister needs you less now. It's barely been a year. You're both still just kids.' He jerks his chin towards the city sparkling above them. 'If you were little pilties, you wouldn't even be out of school yet. Do you think you can graduate out of sisterhood at the year's end, come Jubilee?'

Vi looks away, feeling her cheeks heat up. That had been pretty stupid to say, and she just knows he is going to rub her face in it.

'Your sister will always need to know you've got her back,' he continues. 'It's a special feeling, to have someone you believe you can rely on—always.'

He takes a deep draft of his cigarette and lets his head fall against the back of the bench. Vi looks as the smoke rises in a fat ring and Silco cuts through it with a finger.

'If I could get Vander back,' he says, staring up at the sky, 'if I could get him fighting at my side again... In a heartbeat, I'd have him.'

Vi sighs and sinks lower into the bench next to him, she crumples her empty paper cup and shoves her hands deep in her jacket pockets. She looks over to the horizon, reds and purples bleeding into deep blues as the sun kisses the sea.

'You're getting lost in your thoughts again,' she says.

'I'm not,' Silco retorts.

'So answer my question.'

'Well, that was the first part. So long as Powder's alive—and that'll be longer than I'm around, I should hope—then she'll want to be able to rely on you. Just because she doesn't wake up every second night from her nightmares or screams at her ghosts doesn't mean she's ready to just be on her own, or without you.'

'Look, I get it. I shouldn't have said that, okay?'

'Good.'

Silco takes his time finishing the last of his cigarette before flicking the end of it over the railing. Vi doesn't press him. A year ago she would have. A year ago she wouldn't have been sitting next to him at all, their elbows brushing, companionably looking at a sunset from a Promenade viewing deck. She gets a little dizzy, thinking about it. Like she can see herself from above, sitting there next to him and wonder—

Who's this girl?

Who's this young woman who knows that the best way to get something out of Silco when in this particular mood is to just wait him out? Who is she, to care for his opinion and wait on it at all? Who is she, trying to get answers from him she'd never thought to ask anyone before?

Vi knows why her parents loved her. It's what parents—the good ones—are supposed to do. She knows why Vander had taken them in. He'd led their parents to their death. He felt guilty. He mentored them and loved them because he was a good man.

Why does Silco do anything though?

'You haven't made a name for yourself yet,' he says at last. 'You're just a blank canvas. A kid with a hot head and strong fists. To people you're Vander's daughter, or the little thief who got enforcers to come all the way down to the slums, or Silco's new protégée, or a pink haired brat with a pissy attitude, and nothing else.'

He shifts on the bench, crossing his legs and facing Vi, looking her in the eyes as he goes on, tone almost conspiratorial.

'Once upon a time, I was just a boy hunting for clams in the Pilt's mud. I would fight other kids to go through the pockets of the corpses floating down the river.' He shrugs. 'I wasn't always Silco the—what did you call me to Sevika? A shimmer-baron?'

Vi gasps and bares her teeth in a horrified grimace. 'Sevika told you about that?!'

Silco grins and waves a hand. 'No, Erik did. You said that at the bar, what did you expect, exactly?'

'The little snitch!'

'Don't beat him up, he's the first barman I've met since Vander who doesn't help himself from the till, I want to keep him around. And I like it anyway. Shimmer-baron. Very fitting.'

He turns back to face the sea, leaning forward to prop his elbow on his knee, resting his chin up in his palm, long fingers tapping along his cheeks and nose.

'Almost all of us come from nothing, Vi,' he says without looking at her. 'We come from Zaun, where nothing great ever lasts. We begin in the muck and most never rise from it before returning to it. I was just Igni's little mite, and then I was Ahika's adopted son—for a very long time. Didn't have time to even be Kory's anything, before he died. When I finally made a name for myself, became just Silco, no one called me by my father's name any more, or my mother's. No one even remembers them now. They just went back to the muck.'

Vi wonders if Silco funded the statue of Vander to keep that from happening to his old friend turned enemy. Clearly he's got him on his mind a lot more than she would ever have suspected, but sometimes she wonders if it isn't some sort of masochistic impulse instead. Everything is about the struggle with him. The cause.

'So you're saying I should go out and make a name for myself.'

He glances at her. 'You're smarter than that,' he chides.

Vi rolls her eyes. 'Okay, you're saying it's fine for me to be "Silco's daughter" for now because I have time to "become" Vi. But it doesn't change my problem. I don't want people to see me like that. And I still don't understand what you want from me.'

'Must I want things from you?'

Vi frowns and shrugs. 'I don't know... Don't you usually see people as tools? I mean, even Powder is useful to you and you're always getting her more books on mechanisms and all sorts of gadgetry.'

Silco's expression cools, his teal eye frosty.

'I'd like to think my... appreciation of Powder isn't related to the usefulness of her contraptions,' he says in a tone daring her to contradict him.

'You know what I meant! In comparison to Powder, I bring you nothing.'

Silco smiles, thin lipped and malicious. 'Maybe these long, painstaking chats are the highlight of my week,' he says. 'But have you ever stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, I might grow fond of you too?'

'I...' Vi takes in a sharp breath and lets it out in an erratic chuckle. 'I hadn't, no.'

If the idea ever came to her she pushed it away. There was comfort in believing her animosity returned. It's easier to hate someone who hates you back. And hating Silco feels like a duty by now.

He sighs, and on his breath the last rays of the sun disappear behind the horizon, as if he blew them away.

'When I found your sister next to Vander's body I figured she'd tell me where you went. I was ready to threaten her, if that was what it'd take. I saw too much of Vander in you after that display and I wanted you dead... But she... hugged me. Said you were gone. That you abandoned her. I know—' he waves her objections away before she can voice them. 'Marcus probably saved your life that evening, you know.'

Another one of his spells of silence, crammed full of unspoken words. Vi has noticed he reserves them for the people closer to him. Powder, Sevika… herself. The official Silco—the boss, shimmer-baron Silco—is all snark and instant repartee. 

'I figured that wisp of a child could become useful one day,' he continues. 'I've grown to be resourceful myself, after all. But it wasn't long before I was seeing too much of myself in her.'

He turns a glare on Vi.

'Think of me what you will, I'm not so heartless that I'd want to watch a child go through what I did. It was hard enough as an adult, and she's just a mite.' He smiles fondly. 'She grew on me so fast, I was helpless within the first week. Yes, I let her help and develop her talents. Powder just wants to feel useful. I don't think she cares, not the way you do.'

'But when you had me freed, it really just was for Powder, wasn't it?'

'No, I was curious about you. I regretted not speaking with you first, on that night. I saw potential in you—as a tool, yes maybe. But try as you might, you've also grown on me since.' He looks away, expression suddenly serious. 'I hope there isn't as much Vander in you as I see of myself in Powder.'

'What do you mean by that? Vander loved us, Silco. He took us in.'

'I know.'

'He gave us a home and fed us and clothed us and lo—'

'I know! But don't make the mistake of making him out a hero for it,' he cuts her off. 'Wouldn't want to think the same of me, would you?'

That brings Vi short.

'Vander was— He wasn't the man you thought him to be. Nor who I thought him to be. I believed what we had was special, that it would last forever. Even as he kept my head under water I had this moment of... of doubt.' He shivers. 'Like this couldn't be happening. Not to us. You want to be Vander's daughter but you know so little about him. You've met the kind Vander, the peacekeeper. The retired killer. I wonder if you'd want to be the daughter of the Hound. The beast of a man who helped me build the Lanes. Do you have any idea how much blood caked on the gauntlets you were swinging? How many lives Vander took with them? And without? Not just enforcers either. Do you have any idea what it took, what the two of us had to do, to create the Zaun you've grown up in? And it still wasn't enough... Not even close to what we deserve.'

Vi stares. She would protest, but memories swamp her, saturated with red smoke and the copper smell of blood—enforcers shooting people point blank, her parents lying dead, and Vander like a ghost in the haze, pummelling a man to death with heavy swings of his fists. She remembers Powder clinging to her and pushing her behind her back as Vander approached them, like she could protect her at all.

But he'd been kind. He'd dropped his gauntlets to embrace them and pick them up. She hadn't thought to fear, after that. Hadn't pushed, when her more prodding questions went unanswered.

If she could excuse that bloody past without questioning it, why can't she do the same for Silco?

'Vander's gone,' he says, cutting through her thoughts. 'His memory will linger—but it's just us now. Powder and you, and me. Nothing will erase what Vander did for you. Or what he did to me and what I did to him.'

Vi's shoulders slump and she hunches forward, the fight flying out of her and leaving her deflated. It rings like the truth, in her ears and in her heart.

When Silco wraps his arm around her shoulders she doesn't shake him off.

'One day people will forget about me, but they will know your name, Vi.' He leans close and speaks softly—earnest, like it's a promise. 'You and Powder, you will be known for yourselves. You'll earn your place and more. You'll show them. You'll show them all.'

Chapter Text

Sevika doesn't care much for Vander's leftovers and she doesn't understand why Silco insists on keeping Powder around. 

Crying, snotty mess she is, always hiding behind Silco's legs. Needy little mite sucking all his attention while the operation is at such a pivotal point, and Sevika with a stump of an arm not even properly healed—aching and aching, forever out of balance.

If the kid fucks any more of their plans, Sevika will wring her neck, Silco's bleeding heart be damned.

If he would just drop her at the foundling house and spend half as much money on it as he does on Powder alone, he'd be making a difference for a dozen kids, not just the one brat. But Silco doesn't care about the foundling house, he cares about the Cause and about Powder, who calls herself a jinx and wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, talks back to disembodied voices, rages at random and makes a mess whenever she tries to help with her tinkered gadgets.

Sevika knows the kid is all fucked from blowing up her entire family, but that also included Sevika's left arm and several good people she'd known for years, so her sympathy is limited.

The first weeks are the roughest. Sevika's never felt so helpless in her life. Even as a child, even when she was sick, even when someone bigger was beating on her, at least she'd had her entire body at her command. At least she'd been whole.

Silco moves her to a cot at the foot of his bed to look after her. Getting the Last Drop back was the first thing he did, while she lay unconscious on the chopping block. Move into his old room, Kory's old room, and now she sleeps there like a wounded dog. She doesn't mind. It's almost fitting, in a way.

He's shown her plans for a fancy prosthetic. He thanked her too, wrapped her in an awkward hug, like back then, when Talia had died and Silco returned from the raid drenched in her sister's blood. Hands shaking, even after they were clean, wrapping around her shoulders because there was nothing to be said.

Wherever Sevika goes she bumps into Powder. Jinx. Whatever. The kid looks at her with frightened eyes. She knows she's responsible for her injuries, and Sevika tells her anyway, just to be sure. The fright turns into something else over time, a mutual aversion Sevika can't quite explain.

She's never been very good with kids in general and girls in particular. Which is odd considering she likes women well enough. Maybe it's lack of experience—her mother wasn't around to teach her how a woman is to treat a child, and no one will mother you for free, down in the Undercity. Maybe it's because looking at Powder reminds her of her own painful past. Maybe it's because she's a little shit who painted on her face while she slept.

Sevika doesn't get why she's here. Kids just get in the way. They get hurt. Silco knows that perfectly well. At first she figured it was some sort of ploy. She wondered if Silco was up to something sinister. She had left him to do what he'd needed to, at the old fish market cannery, but she is uncomfortable with the idea of hurting this lone child. Powder has no one left. She's no threat. Dump her with the other orphans and be done.

Sevika got that wrong, of course: Powder definitely has someone, since she's already captured Silco's heart. Being the closest in his orbit, Sevika gets a front row seat to everything, the messes Powder makes as well as Silco's inexorable downfall.

Despite it all she still can't quite believe her ears when he tells her he tracked Vi down and plans to take her on too.

'If you were going to feel that sorry for Vander, you shouldn't have killed him,' she snaps, leaving out the sir and forgetting the whole underling thing for a moment.

'I'm doing it for Jinx,' Silco retorts. 'Vander's dead. He doesn't get to care.'

'No, but you do. Not sure why though.'

He turns on her, cold and dominating. 'This isn't up for debate. Marcus assured me she was dead, the fucking idiot, and I'm not putting Jinx through the same betrayal I suffered! Not if there's a chance Violet would have stayed for her.'

Sevika bites on the words that first come to her, and the next ones too.

Silco schools his features into a more neutral expression, his teal eye searching her face. 'I'd hate to lose you, Sevika. I hope you can give them a chance.'

She smiles. She likes the ruthless cunt. Always has. Capable of opening the door for you to leave forever in the same sentence that tells you how much he values you. Up to your interpretation.

'I believe in what you're working on,' she tells him, 'but don't make me waste my time the way Vander did.'

Silco grimaces like she's offered him slime on a rusted spoon. 'If you catch me straying so far from the path, please feel free to yank me back and give me a good shake.' He rasps his knuckles against the desk. 'Now's not it though. I suspect Violet will actually help.'

He's right: Powder calms down dramatically after Vi joins. Sevika would be glad for it, if it didn't come at the cost of having Vi around in the first place. It's a little like replacing one ill for another. Powder sleeps through the nights and is almost civil, while her sister sulks everywhere she goes, sneers at anyone but Silco and Powder, the first out of fear, the other out of love.

Sevika is on the receiving end of her stink-eye for months, like she personally offended her somehow. Another perplexing girl-child thing. What has she ever done to either sister?

She considers punching better manners into her. Maybe then she'd fear her the way she does Silco. It could be interesting too, as they've sparred before, outside the Drop. Vi already leaned into her punches then. She’d packed a lot for a child her age. Truly Vander's daughter.

'Sometimes I feel like he's looking at me through her eyes,' Silco tells her one night when deep in their cups. 'There's so much of him in her, that anger that only knows how to—' he takes a swing at the air. 'Sometimes I wonder if she'll drown me too.'

'You're overthinking this,' Sevika tells him with a laugh. 'She'd just punch you to death. Probably wouldn't take too many.'

But she agrees. There's that edge to Vi, that Sevika recognises all too well, for seeing it in mirrors and polished metal and still ponds of tainted water. Anything that'd cast back her reflection, when she was younger. She understands that rage, so she can respect it. The talent too. Kid's nothing if not dedicated. 

Sevika isn't surprised when Silco asks her to train both sisters. Powder needs an edge, but Vi is different, getting stronger isn't what she needs. The way she's putting on muscle, in a few years she could have the upper hand on her, Sevika thinks. Still, brawn isn't all there is to a fight, and she'll never unlock her real potential if she can't extinguish that flame—that anger that gets the better of her and keeps her from thinking on her feet.

Anyway, Vi isn't coming to the training, so that's that. Powder though is there on time and ready to swing. She's nimble and fast, and she keeps getting faster. One day she lands a blow to her ribs, and Sevika can't help but grin. Powder looks up at her, half-awed, half-terrified she'll get pummelled for it.

Sevika laughs in her face. 'Good job. Now do it again. And harder, you're weak as cave lice.'

When things come to a head with Vi, Sevika thinks of Powder, actually. Smiling and chattering endless nonsense at her as she wipes sweat away and accepts the water she hands her. Powder asking her to repeat a move, again and again, and demanding to be corrected, growing frustrated with herself for not catching on faster. Powder who insists on coming along on raids, diligently covering Sevika's back, throwing her gadgets around, never getting in her way. Powder showing her sketches she's done, hasty blueprints for fixes meant to improve her new mechanical arm, discussing its maintenance with her. 

The brat has grown on her. It's almost like Sevika has started to... not mind her.

It's what stills her hand when Vi pushes her too far. She would have gotten into her right in the middle of the bar room, if not for Powder; kicked her black and blue for all to see, that no one gets to talk back like that, not even the boss' kids. But Sevika gets it now—what Silco meant that day, about Powder needing Vi. She's gone from a total pest to a good kid in a few months. It just turns out that Vi also needs someone... but if she won't find that someone soon, it's the back of Sevika's hand that'll get there first.

In that confrontation at the bar she uses her words instead of her fists, the way Silco taught her, many years ago, when he enlisted her to copy pamphlets with a bunch of other kids.

'You're all good at boxing, but this is a different kind of punching, you see,' he'd said, smiling at them as he handed out charcoal pencils and recycled sheets of grey paper. 'When you use the right words on someone, it's like you punch them right in the brain.'

Brain to brain punching. Sevika had thought it hilarious, and it had worked well enough to trick them into copying for him all afternoon. It's a lesson she's never forgotten, and she hones her words, makes them count. An opponent can be thrown off balance by a well placed taunt, sometimes defeated before the battle has even begun.

It's a total knock-out with Vi. The word daughter as good as lays her out. Sevika leaves her to stew on it for a while. She expects she'll be back soon for a second round. She doesn't expect her to go take her anger out on Marcus. Nobody does.

Sevika is quick to add things up, and she makes herself scarce. It's a surprise when Silco doesn't bring it up, and an even bigger one when Vi shows up for training along with Powder the following week.

'You're done sulking?' Sevika asks her.

Vi rolls her eyes like the snotty teenager she is. 'I was not sulking.'

'You're done acting like a kid?' she asks again.

Vi sobers up and gives her a serious look. Powder observes them, glancing from one to the other, her hands suspiciously out of sight.

'Yes,' Vi says at last. 'I am.'

They train just the three of them together until it's clear Sevika needs to enlist some victims. Ran could use the practice, and she feeds them first to Vi.

'Why you do this to me, Sev?' she asks after the first KO. 'I thought we were friends.'

'I'm saving your life, dumbass,' Sevika tells them. She toes into their side, nudging them until they roll over and drag themself up. 'If the kid can lay you on your ass, what's to say you'll survive the next raid?'

Ran grimaces, teeth red with blood. She's a sight, and Sevika tells them that too. 'We'll be taking the whole factory district next month, you know what's coming. You can pick something pretty to be buried in, or you can come for training and show Vi who's boss.'

Ran comes and the training becomes a four person affair. She tries, and improves a lot, but Vi is just too quick a study, always ahead, even if she still gets it all wrong.

'Stop rushing! Fighting isn't about your fucking feelings!' Sevika yells at her. 'Keep your guard up, stop using your chin to block blows, you're not making a point here! Again!'

But she's good, the little fucker, she's fast on her feet and she still leans into her punches like she's on a mission to demolish her opponents.

Sevika's stump itches something fierce, where the metal digs into flesh. She wants to shimmer up, to take Vi on seriously. But she's not quite there yet, and she suspects Silco wouldn't let it slide now, if she bruised her up too much.

'Use your head,' she spits at her. 'Think. Think!'

Vi growls and goes on the defensive, blocking when she can't dodge, her strikes too sluggish to connect. Sevika trips her up and calls the training off.

'You're too slow. Guess you're done learning for today.'

Vi huffs and turns away to unwrap her fists, but she doesn't protest. Ever since the Marcus incident, it's almost like she listens.

Powder is giggling, being a little shit to Ran, dodging her strikes and refusing to engage.

'Get serious!' Sevika snaps. The three of them will be the death of her, she thinks. 'I'm inviting Mek to join tomorrow if you won't get serious.'

'As a punching bag?' Powder asks. 'Do it, I'd love to.'

'He'd grind you into blue paste,' Ran snarls as she dives to punch again and Powder darts away laughing. 'What the fuck, how do you—c'me here!'

'Sevika, I... I'm not sure I can do this again tomorrow,' says Vi, turning back to her with bare hands, rolling her shoulder and looking like it pains her.

'You're too sore?'

Vi looks away like admitting her back hurts is some grave sign of weakness she'll never recover from. Sevika prays to no gods, but she silently asks to be blessed with patience all the same.

'Can't talk? Did I clap your ears too hard?'

'Yeah, I'm sore!' Vi growls. 'I don't know why, it's just getting to me.'

Sevika laughs, a quick bark, genuinely amused.

'I'll tell you why,' she says, slapping the back of Vi's head. 'It's because you aren't used to getting hit anymore. Come on. Ran, go get some pocket change from the office. We're off to the baths.'

Powder is enthusiastic; it's not the first time they've gone together. Silco dragged the two of them to the public baths twice after Powder was taken in. Sevika isn't sure why, since they went to a mixed family bath; it wasn't like he needed her to babysit Powder. Maybe it was some misguided attempt at bringing them closer together. Powder had splashed her in the face, kicked her as she tried to swim and proceeded to lose her fucking mind over Silco's backpiece, voice so shrill Sevika had thought the glass windows would shatter. Not exactly a resounding success. 

'You said you don't like the public baths, last time,' Powder notes, sidling up to her as she pays for their entrance fees. 'What's different now?'

'Silco isn't with us,' Sevika tells her with a devious smile. 'If you annoy me I'll fucking drown you.'

Powder laughs, that little unhinged cackle of hers, head tilted back, and punches Sevika's arm like she's a riot.

'I don't like the public baths because they're public,' Sevika tells her when she has calmed down. She hands her a cog for a locker. 'When you know the right people you can get into the private baths, on the upper levels.'

'Like the ones that chembarons have?'

'That's right. Just you and your friends... If Silco could be bothered, he'd buy us one.'

'There's a shower at the Drop though.'

'Dream big, kid.'

The four of them go to the indoor ladies bath. The rooms are small, lit with warm chemlights, the walls tiled in blue, green and white, mosaics of waves and Janna's blue birds in geometric patterns.

Sevika hounds the kids about proper shower etiquette before they all go hog one of the smaller baths, discouraging anyone else from joining with pointed looks, Ran clicking their metal fingers on the ceramic edge and looking a lot more threatening than they actually are.

Powder asks them all to rate her impression of a dead body and starts floating face down.

'Too many bubbles,' Ran tells her.

'Alright, I can be a log—'

'What's the occasion?' Vi asks, coming to sit next to Sevika, her towel folded over her head.

Sevika closes her eyes and lets herself relax. It feels like heaven, her tension unknotting, her metal prosthetic forgotten in the warm water.

'It'll help loosen your muscles,' she says.

'No way,' Ran snarks. 'I heard you in the lobby! I bet you're hoping if the girls bitch enough, Silco will finally get us a bath down in the Lanes too.'

Sevika gives them a chilly glare. 'Forget it. Can you imagine the amount of pipes he'd have to run down to get clean water to the Drop?'

'It's a pipe dream,' Powder declares smugly.

Sevika can't help her snort but she kicks the girl under the water. 'Don't jinx it, I want to believe. He could still buy us one up top. I'd take a fucking lift for the privilege.'

'What would Silco do with a bath anyway?' Vi asks.

'Who cares what Silco would do? It's what we would do!' Ran whines. 'Getting a steam after every workout? Fuck yes! Full on parties in there? Yes? Just relaxing like this, but for free? Ooh... Yeah I mean, it'd be a fucking treat.'

'Maybe Silco would even use it sometimes and relax for more than five minute,' Sevika adds. 'A woman can dream.'

'Can you imagine, though, if he owned the one private bath in the Lanes?' Ran cackles, splashing water at Powder like a child. 'Like he isn't getting enough attention already.'

'Attention?' Vi asks, frowning. 'What do you mean?'

'Like, you know—' Ran makes a crude gesture that clarifies everything.

'What? Who even wants to fuck him?' Vi exclaims.

Sevika laughs at the girl's honest shock. 'Oh, Vi. Plenty of people do.'

Vi turns fully to her, disbelief etched deep on her face. Behind her Powder unleashes an underwater attack on Ran and Sevika is the one left to explain the reality of things to this poor kid.

'All you see is the man you hate,' she says, 'but he's got the chiselled face, the prowl of a dangerous man. The eye is creepy, I'll give you that, but a bit of creepy just spices things up. And then there's that intensity he has, and now all the power? The money? Silco's a whole package. I've watched him get interest as long as I've known him and I've known him for a very long time.'

Vi looks understanding for a whole second before something else dawns on her and makes her frown again. 'Wait, are you into him?'

Sevika scoffs. 'If he weren't a man, I might be.'

'Oh. Oh, right, okay,' Vi mumbles, wide-eyed and a little red in the face. 'Huh. Makes sense I guess.'

Sevika considers taunting her some, maybe asking her what's her type, but Vi's mind has already lept ahead.

'What's with that person who lives not far from the docks that he always visits alone?'

'Ah, them. They're super shady.'

'You gonna be more specific?'

Sevika shrugs. 'Can't.'

'What, you don't know them? At all?'

'I was only at their place for a couple of days after Powder's debut as a firebomber.'

Vi squints at her but doesn't take the bait. 'So? What was it like in there? What are they like?'

'It was like a physicker's room, what do you want me to tell you? I was on an operating table half the time. They're not even the one who treated me. The building has several floors and one has a physicker who I think works for them.' She shrugs again. 'I don't know what they're like, never got a good look at them. Mek saw them. Actually, Powder did too.'

They turn as one to Powder, busy trying to bite Ran's hands as they pull on her cheeks.

'What?' Ran and Powder ask in unison.

'Tell us what Silco's dodgy friend is like,' Sevika demands.

'The one you were with when I came back for you, remember?' Vi adds.

Of course the instant Powder realises she has something they want the little shit grins and shakes her head no.

'Come on, Powder, give us something!'

'I'll take you with me tomorrow when we go to Renni's cultivair,' Sevika offers.

But Powder sticks to her guns and leaves them to stew in their speculations. 'They're awesome though!' she tells them. 'First time we were there, they had a leatherback in their courtyard! Second time they had a drake-hound!'

'Doesn't matter anyway,' Sevika says, sinking back into the water with a contented sigh. 'Saw enough of them to know they aren't Silco's type.'

Vi winces. 'Do I even want to ask?'

'It's not really a secret, kid,' Ran laughs. 'He only ever—Aaah—can't you fucking leave me be for one sec—'

Powder squeals. Sevika silently wishes she could fully submerge herself in the bath and get some quiet. People are staring, discreetly but insistently. She ignores them, because it's easier than trying to police Ran and Powder.

'Okay, so tell me,' Vi prods.

'You're not gonna like the answer,' Sevika warns her.

'Just spill it!'

Ran makes a strangled noise and Sevika isn't sure if they're laughing or Powder is successfully drowning them. She gives Vi a pointed look.

'Silco's type is Vander. Big, strong, violent. Vander-shaped.'

Vi blinks at her, processing. 

Sevika could go on. She could say more. It drives her crazy that these two stupid men made each other and their relationship as good as taboo. Silco won't bite your throat off for talking about it but Vander... It's impressive actually that he managed to raise kids for five years without ever name dropping Silco. It baffles her that anyone would go to such lengths to hurt themselves.

Anyway, Sevika's pretty sure Vi doesn't know about them, and as she watches her get used to the idea and the obvious implications, she doesn't have the heart to be the one to break it to her.

'I've never seen him bring anyone back to the Drop...' Vi ventures, looking at Sevika with some trepidation, like she might contradict her. 'Certainly not anyone looking like Vander.'

'Yeah. Silco's not interested.'

'Why? Didn't you say he's got a lot of people who are?'

'Sure, but I don't think he cares.'

'He's married to the cause now,' Ran chips in. 'The boss is a heartbreaker.'

'So how do you know he has a type?'

Sevika rolls her eyes. 'Did I punch you too hard? Does it rattle when you shake your head?'

'Boss wasn't always a heartbreaker,' Ran snickers. She quickly shuts it under Sevika's glare.

Vi taps a finger to her lips, thoughtful. 'Mmh, but he does go out in the evening sometimes, so maybe he has someone? Maybe he goes to them instead of bringing them back? To avoid gossip?'

'I don't think so,' Sevika says, shaking her head.

'Why? Do you know where he goes?'

'No. I don't care where he spends his evenings so long as he doesn't ask me to tag along.'

'Really? You never followed him? Not once?'

'No.'

'You have to be lying.'

'Silco's my boss,' she huffs. 'Why would I even care.'

Vi slaps the water, spraying everyone. 'Oh, cut the crap, Sevika. You've got a brain to be curious with!'

'Debatable,' Powder chips in, in such a perfect Silco imitation that even Sevika finds herself laughing.

All good things come to an end however and soon it's time to leave.

Sevika goes through the motions of getting dressed on automatic, letting her mind drift as she dries and combs her hair. Vi is talking with Ran and Powder comes to Sevika looking for help. She's used one of the driers and her hair looks like one of her bombs blew up in her face.

'You should cut it,' she tells her as she wrangles the blue strands back into messy braids. 

'But I don't want to.'

'What if someone grabs one of them during a fight?' Sevika insists, tugging on the braid she's making. 'They're a liability.'

'You're a liability,' Powder retorts. Sevika tugs harder, making the girl yelp. 'Ow— Don't be mean!'

'Then don't be stupid.'

'I'm not stupid! I like it. I like how Silco braids it. It doesn't hurt when he does it.'

Sevika grunts and starts the second braid. The mechanical fingers sometimes catch hair between their joints, there's nothing for it, even if she's careful. 'It's crazy to me he isn't asking you to cut it. I'm sure he'll agree with me once someone grabs one and hurts you.'

'I'll have to be so fast no one can ever catch me. Then I can put weights at the ends and use them as weapons!' Powder gasps and twists around to look up at Sevika. 'I could strangle people with them if they're long enough!'

Sevika sneers at her. 'Why would you want to do that? Sounds stupid.'

'What if I was saving your life?'

'That would be a story worth telling over drinks,' she admits, smiling at the scenarios it conjures. 'It'd have to be pretty wild, if it came down to that. Here you go, now hurry and get dressed.'

Sevika goes to wait in the lobby, and Ran is the first to come out and join her.

'That was unexpected,' Ran tells her in a low voice, a touch malicious. 'You bonding with Vi over Silco's blight of a love life? What's next?'

'Me punching your teeth in?' Sevika deadpans.

'Oooh... well, someone should take the night off, and I know where you go.'

'Not a bad idea, actually,' Sevika says, thinking about her favourite parlour.

She has several contacts there (which is the polite thing to call spies) and her visits are always very... satisfying. She's distracted by the thought as she strolls outside, wondering if the belly dancer will have news on the Reddies' boss, and if Toka would be free, when Vi approaches her and cuts through the pleasant haze.

'Erm, Sevika?'

The kid looks like she's being affected by the hot waters too, with a dizzy air and drooping eyes, skin glowing like she got her first good scrub in a decade.

'What?'

Vi fidgets, passes a hand through her still damp hair, shifts her weight around and finally makes eye contact.

'Thank you for bringing us here,' she says, and she looks like she means it. 'I feel like... I feel...' she shrugs, makes a confused grimace. 'I guess I feel like a boiled potato, if that makes sense?'

Sevika tries not to laugh. There's been too much of that already for one day.

'No, seriously,' Vi continues, looking earnest as hell. 'It's like there's no bones in my body, my back doesn't hurt any more. It's like Arcane magic!'

'You're welcome,' Sevika drawls. She remembers Ran's comment earlier and leans into the girl. 'Tell Silco how amazing you thought it was, maybe he'll buy us one for real.'

Vi smiles. 'I understand why you'd want that. Phew...' She rolls her shoulders. 'I feel brand new. But I still don't think he'd indulge me that much.'

Sevika's taunt—second best daughter—hangs unspoken in the air between them. Vi doesn't push, Sevika doesn't pull. It's like a truce, the two of them coming to some understanding. 

Maybe Silco is onto something with his get-along bath sessions. Maybe they can bring people a little closer. At least close to tolerating each other. 

Chapter Text

Vi is woken by a familiar sound in the middle of the night. 

It's been a while since Powder woke her up with a nightmare. Vi rolls over in their bed, hand questing blindly, and reaches out for her sister. They each have their own bed now of course, but they still prefer to share. The new ones are just so wide, it feels weird, having so much space for themselves. 

Vi is confused when her hand lands on Powder's back and finds her sleeping soundly and quietly. She brushes bleary eyes and waits in the semi-darkness. Here it comes again: a whimper. A wordless cry of suffering. Close enough for her to pick up, but not coming from this room at all.

She rolls off the bed, fully awake, giving Powder's shoulder a shake.

'Wh—'

'Wake up,' Vi murmurs. 'Something's not right.'

She climbs up the steps and gives a glance to Powder to make sure she's getting up before tiptoeing out into the corridor. The noise comes again, clearer now and just the floor above. There's the storage rooms there and Vander's... well, Silco's bedroom.

Vi freezes, thinking back to her conversation with Sevika a week ago. Maybe Silco did get tired of sleeping alone every night despite the interest. Maybe those are that sort of moans... But when she hears it again, the sound is strained. A single syllable, taut and distorted by pain. Vi runs up the last few steps and grabs the door handle of Silco's room.

'Silco?' she calls, pressing her face against the wood. 'Are you there? Are you okay?'

'Violet?' Powder calls from downstairs, sounding confused and groggy.

Vi only hesitates for a moment. She has been avoiding this room all this time because she didn't want to see it changed beyond recognition, all traces of Vander erased from it. She's never had a reason to step in, and the door is usually closed. Only Powder ever darts in or out of it, welcome into Silco's life like no one else is.

Vi's discomfort is not worth this suspense however, and if the cries of pain are actually cries of pleasure... Well, she can go to the bar and pour some Noxian fire bourbon in her eyes before draining the rest of the bottle. It won't kill her.

The door opens with a soft click.

'Silco?' she calls again.

She takes a peek inside and immediately realises that he's alone and that something is really wrong.

'Powder!' she yells before darting into the room, not waiting for her sister to scramble up the stairs.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Vi notices how little things have actually changed. There's a new carpet and lamps, and a mirror on the wall by the desk, but the desk itself hasn't changed, nor have the drawers, or the bed. She jumps on it, focused on the man struggling in the middle of it.

'Silco! Silco—hey!'

She grabs his thin shoulders to shake him, but his body is arced like a coil, muscles rigid, his back almost off the mattress. His good eye is screwed shut, his bad one rolled up almost high enough for the omnipresent iris to disappear from view.

Powder yells, rushing in. 'What's happening? Sil?! Silco!'

She runs around the bed to get to his other side, her fingers coming to stroke his bloodless face, wandering down his chest, his arm, a fluttering dance of panic.

'It looks like some kind of... of seizure,' Vi says, equally uncertain as to what they should do.

Silco slumps suddenly and falls limp into the mattress, head rolling bonelessly. His skin is clammy with sweat, burning hot under Vi's hands. His breathing comes ragged and laboured.

'Silco! Silco!' Powder calls, her voice choking up with tears. 'Don't die, don't die too, please! Don't leave us!'

Vi doesn't think, she just goes into action mode. She squashes her own rising dread, and grabbing Powder's arm, pushes her off Silco.

'We've got this,' she says, trying to sound authoritative. 'Powpow. Listen! You need to go check if Sevika is home.'

Powder's eyes are glazed over, fixed on Silco's face, and for a moment Vi thinks she isn't hearing her at all, but she shakes herself.

'Sevika. Okay.' She nods and sprints for the door.

'Hold on,' Vi whispers to unconscious Silco before going out as well.

She heads for the bar, grabs a clean rag and soaks it in the sink before hurrying back to Silco's side. She pats his face and brushes the hair away from his forehead before folding the rag down over it. He gasps at the cool touch, his good eye finally fluttering open.

'Vand—' he gasps, the name drifting unfinished.

'No, it's Vi, sorry to disappoint.'

'Vi? I...'

'Don't waste your energy talking,' she says, cupping his jaw and turning his face to her so he can see her with his good eye. 'I've got you. Powder is looking for help.'

As if on cue, Powder's hurried stomping announces her return.

'Sevika's not here,' she exclaims, breathing hard. 'I checked everywhere! There's only Mek and Dustin on guard duty—oh!'

She runs over and lunges across the bed when she notices that Silco is conscious.

'Sil!' she sobs, crowding Vi to get to him.

'Pow...' he whispers, exhausted, teal eye unfocusing before closing again.

'Powder. Go send one of them to find a physiker,' Vi says. 'There's one two blocks down, on—'

'No.' Silco's fingers curl into Vi's shirt, giving it a weak tug. 'Need... The doc... Doctor.'

'Singed?' Vi asks, confused. 'Why?'

Silco's face contorts in a pained effort and she immediately presses her hand to his chest.

'Forget it. It's alright, we'll fetch him. Powder, just tell Mek where to find him.'

But Powder is rooted on the spot again, her hands and eyes locked on to Silco's prone form. There is a far away quality to her gaze this time, like she's looking beyond him, to some terrifying inner vista.

Vi sighs. She can only imagine what Silco dying would do to her. What seeing him like this, for all the world like a man about to breath his last from lung blight, all wan and febrile, must do to her already.

'Powder. It will help. Focus, you got this.'

'I'll go get him myself,' she whispers.

'What?'

Silco stirs, opening his eye again, hazy as it is. 'No, Pow...' he tries to protest.

'Just send someone,' Vi repeats.

Powder shakes her head. She scrambles off the bed, the far-away look replaced by stone cold resolve. 'No. I'm going. I'm way faster than Mek and he's dumb as a rock, he'll get lost or something!'

Vi grunts. She can't dispute that logic. It might be wiser for her to go, but the image of Powder, alone and fretting helplessly over Silco's body convinces her this is the right decision. She extricates herself from Silco's side and follows Powder outside, closing the door behind them.

'You remember where to find him?' she asks.

'Yeah, of course.'

'It's a long trip...' Vi says, hesitating.

She wishes Sevika were here. Not a feeling she's accustomed to. But Powder is looking dead set on this, and Silco has been showing Vi, day after day, how confident and happy it makes her to be trusted completely. Anyway they're short on time and options both.

'Alright,' Vi says, 'but I want you to take a gun with you, okay? Some of your gadgets too.'

Powder gives her a wide-eyed look. 'I don't have a gun though.'

'Take the one from the rafters.'

It's always there, in Silco's office. He had Vi tape it to the ceiling after it became obvious the sisters wouldn't ditch their new habit of perching in the rafters and listening in on his meetings. He doesn't seem to mind the company and has never asked them to leave, but he also expects them to make themselves useful, if things ever turn ugly, and to protect him—and themselves. Powder also hangs some of her emergency "toys" on strings to the beams, in case killing isn't the best option. That gun is the only one that's not under lock and key at the Drop, as far as Vi knows.

'I'll be fine though,' Powder says half-heartedly. 'I'll just run.'

'I know you can move around fine,' Vi tells her, 'but you'll be on your own, it's the middle of the night, and then you'll be escorting Singed... You heard Silco object, right? I'm sure he'll also feel a lot better if you're armed. I know I will.'

Powder frowns. 'You sure?'

'Powpow.' She grabs her shoulders and gives her a reassuring squeeze. She's had such a growth spurt this last year, she's catching up to her. She's strong too, but she doesn't see it. 'You're the best shot I know. You're scary good. I trust you, okay? Keep yourself safe and Singed too, and come back quick.'

Powder gives her a look then, something akin to the adoration she rains on Silco whenever he brushes her cheeks or pats her head and tells her he's proud of her progress.

She jumps into Vi's arms to give her a brief hug. 'Thank you.' When she steps out, her eyes are brimming with tears. 'Do you think he'll be alright? He has to be, right? He can't leave us...'

Vi bites her lip. 'I don't know,' she admits. 'Let's hurry and I guess we'll see.'

Powder sniffs and nods. She turns around and bolts up the stairs to the office. Vi goes back to the bar to cobble up a tray with a bowl of water to dip the rag in again and a glass for Silco to drink from.

Then she goes to the door and works the lock. Mek is standing right outside. He turns and gives her a curious look. Dustin is a few steps away, talking to some people, no doubt enquiring after shimmer.

'Mek, I need you to be extra careful tonight,' Vi says.

He snorts and grimaces disdainfully.

'No, I mean, you can't let anyone in. Not even a desperate chembaron, alright?'

Something lights up in the hulking man's eyes then and he turns to face her fully, blocking her from view of the street.

'Is the boss okay?' he asks, real concern in his voice.

Vi hesitates for a moment. She hears the distant slam of the backdoor closing behind Powder. She gives Mek another once over. He'd been there that night. He'd obeyed Silco without questions. He's still here today, still obeying faithfully. It's very clear he fears Silco, as all his employees and followers do, all very aware that a faux-pas will not be rewarded with kindness. But Mek is in charge of enough missions—often set to protect Powder—that Vi suspects Silco actually trusts him. At least enough for her to take a deep breath and tell him the truth.

'I don't know. He's got a fever. He can't be seen until he's better. Not like this.'

Mek tilts his head. 'Is it the eye?' he asks. 'He had the fevers too, after Vander.'

Vi blinks at him, startled. The drowning from Vander? That's more than fifteen years ago. Has Mek been around for that long?

'You need to get Singed,' the man continues. 'He kens what to do.'

'Yeah, Powder already went to fetch him,' Vi says, a little awed.

This is the most words she's heard coming out of the man's mouth, ever, and all pretty on point too.

Mek nods, satisfied. 'No one will come in,' he agrees. 'Sevika?'

'Yeah, she's fine. Tell her what's up if you see her. Powder and the Doctor will take the backdoor.'

Mek snorts again, in acquiescence this time, and turns back to the street, looking alert and rolling his shoulders. Vi locks the door. She grabs her tray from the bar and hurries back to Silco's room.

Chapter Text

Silco is delirious.

He tosses and flails, calls out more names than just Vander's. Some Vi has heard before—like Talia, Ahika or Kory, the legendary Noxian mercenary who'd built the Last Drop—and some she doesn't recognise, like Minty or Tushka. Twice he calls after Powder and once for Jinx. Another for Sevika, and then—

'Vi... Vi?'

'I'm here. It's only me.'

Only her, alone and struggling, afraid she's doing something wrong, or not doing enough, and that such errors might have terrible implications. She feels at a dead loss as she refreshes the rag and pats his burning skin. She can't think of anything else to do. When she tries to mop up the sweat pooling in Silco's throat he cries out, grabs her hands and yanks it away with surprising force.

It takes Vi a moment to cycle through her confusion and realise... She's never really touched him before. No one but Powder does, and even when she wraps her arms around him, she never squeezes his neck.

Vi recalls Silco recounting his drowning, or even the last fight with Vander. His dreams too, of hands choking him, holding him under water.

She sighs. 'Sorry, I won't touch your neck again.'

Silco huffs, almost a laugh, and he's looking at her and seems to be seeing her too.

'How are you feeling?' she asks, trying not to sound as worried as she feels. 'Do you know what's happening to you?'

'Pilt,' Silco rasps. 'Toxins.'

'Huh.' So Mek had been right. But for the fever to return after so many years? Vi shelves her questions for later and places the rag back on Silco's forehead. 'Powder will be back with Singed any time, just hold on.'

But his head lolls into her hand, eyes chasing ghosts.

That's when she notices it, and starts really panicking: the amber-black eye is different. The iris is warped out of shape, the pupil blown out. Vi grabs his burning face and leans close to make sure. The deformed pupil is still glowing with that strange inner light, but something is definitely happening to it.

'What should I do?' she asks the room, sitting back up and looking around like a solution will present itself, materialising out of the bare walls.

Silco shivers under her hands and for the first time that night the fear that he might actually die, right here in her arms, coalesces and becomes real. Vi is wracked by her own shivers as dread curls cold fingers inside her guts.

What a blessing it would have seemed, not so long ago! Silco dying of natural causes, leaving Powder devastated but Vi's hands clean... She would have relished the idea.

Now though, holding him close, unsure what to do besides refreshing the rag every so often, her feelings are a lot more complicated. He's so... frail. Thin and sallow. Vi can't help the twinge of protectiveness. With his shirt clinging to his chest, she can see the outline of his ribs as he struggles for breath, and the open front of it reveals more scarred skin over corded muscle. He's like a different man, without the intensity and vigour that usually animates him. 

She swallows against the dread cramping her throat. Silco dying... She isn't sure Sevika would keep Powder and her around, or be so kind if she did.

Kind.

Yes, Silco's been kind to them, and Vi just can't wish him ill any more. There's too much to be grateful for to want him dead. 

She can't despise him.

She can't hate him.

She wishes she could take it all back.

For the first time, Vi sees him not as just Vander's killer but their carer. A busy shimmer-baron who makes time for them; who, despite Vi's hate and frequent accusations, despite Powder's rages and wildness, treats them like his only family.

'You got this,' she whispers to him, holding his hand, squeezing it tight. 'Just hold on a little longer...'

Silco's only reply is his rasping breath and pained whines. They measure the interminable seconds as she waits. It's an eternity and a half, it seems, before Powder finally returns with Singed.

Vi never suspected she could be so glad to see the man. She doesn't trust him. Not only because he created shimmer, but also because he's so... off. He was badly burnt in the fire at the cannery, courtesy of Powder, yet doesn't appear to hold a grudge. It's generally hard to tell how he feels about anything, given how monotone his voice is, and with half his face bandaged at all times. He creeps Vi out—yet tonight he's a welcome sight.

'We found him like that,' she tries to explain, 'like he was having some sort of attack! And his eye got worse, the black one.'

'Can you help?' Powder asks anxiously. 'You can, right?'

'Yes, yes,' Singed says as he crosses the room, sounding remarkably unconcerned. 'This was bound to happen, I was prepared for it.'

Vi frowns, confused. 'Is— Is this chronic? Like it happens often?'

'Not exactly. Give me some room,' Singed demands, waving her away from the bed.

Vi climbs off and grabs Powder, holding her close. They go to stand at the foot of the bed to observe Singed work, and he doesn't protest or ask them to leave. He bends over Silco, removing the rag and pressing his fingers to his cheeks, pulling on the darkened skin around his wounded eye, taking his pulse at his wrist and nodding along to himself all the while.

'I see,' he says, without elaboration.

Vi bites her lip rather than question him, but Powder doesn't share her restraint.

'What is it?' she asks. 'Is he going to live?'

'Live?' Singed scoffs. 'Of course. He has survived much worse. He's only relapsing because he hasn't been following my instructions.'

There's a hint of emotion there in his voice. Annoyance, Vi thinks. He places his bag on the bed and pulls out a large syringe filled with a yellow liquid. Vi clamps down on Powder's shoulders, to keep her own uneasiness contained as much as her sister's.

'What is—'

But Singed doesn't pay them any mind and plunges the needle right into Silco's neck. He barely has the time to pull it back out before its effects take hold and Silco jerks upright, screaming, hands clawing at his chest.

Vi and Powder both stumble backwards, stunned. Silco looks right at them before falling back on the bed.

'Vi!' he shouts hoarsely. 'Powder!'

They remain rooted in place, watching as Singed bends over Silco again, a different vial in his hand. It looks like shimmer, but is pink rather than purple.

'Consider this a courtesy warning, I didn't have to wake you up,' Singed says mildly. 'You should have started the treatment months ago.'

'I—I don't want—' Silco protests, voice breaking.

'Your wants don't matter, my friend. You'll lose the eye, if this continues. Don't let all my research be in vain over your qualms.' Singed glances at Vi and Powder. 'You're scaring your girls as well.'

He loads a strange contraption with the pink shimmer and beckons Vi and Powder closer.

'You will have to continue the treatment as he recovers,' he tells them, showing them how this other syringe works, as it's what it turns out to be, and how to load it with shimmer. 'You place it over the eyeball and press here, let me demonstrate.'

Vi cringes with disgust as she realises what Singed is about to do. For all of Silco's protests he holds very still as Singed works on him. Vi isn't sure what makes him cry out, the stab into his eyeball or the pink shimmer, or both. She looks away, focusing on the empty vial.

'What is it?' she asks.

Powder is sobbing and crawling over the bed to hug Silco now that he's conscious, even if worse for wear. Singed hands Vi the syringe and shows her how it breaks apart.

'It's the medicine I've prepared for him,' he says, 'that he should already be on. He has to take it five times per day for the next week, directly in the eyeball. After that he can move to twice a day for a month. I will visit during that time to see how the degeneration has progressed. You should come get me if he has a persistent fever despite the medication, or if the iris continues to deteriorate at a fast pace. I expect he will have lost more of his vision, and he'll also be more sensitive to light. There's nothing to do about it besides continuing the treatment.'

'O-okay. But I mean, what's the medicine? Is it shimmer?'

Singed blinks at her blankly, his bag packed and already thrown over his shoulder.

'Yes. Of course, a variant. Here, that should suffice until then.'

He hands her eight small vials of the glowing liquid and Vi stands there, her sleep deprived mind struggling to shift under the weight of this new development.

Shimmer, in its current iteration, is a drug, not a medicine. An enhancer. It gives people a boost of power and health, for a fleeting moment. The chemicals themselves aren't any more addictive than serpentleaf, or so she's been told, but power most certainly is.

It wasn't always like that either. It took a lot of refinement to take the edge off the side effects. Lots of early users suffered permanent deformities, though nothing as horrifying as what had happened to Vander.

Silco had explained, because he always does. He told Vi how his plan then had been to use shimmer to give people an edge during an attack on Piltover. Everyone would have been given a single vial, to use like a weapon. Withdrawal would have been shit and it wouldn't have mattered one bit, because Piltover would have been shocked into submission by then. Scared off from ever trying to police Zaun, forced to give them their freedom, or suffer another attack.

The explosion had almost ruined everything. The shimmer had gone up in flames and Singed nearly died. 

Now Silco and his entire operation, they sell a high, a sensation, and a physical boost, depending on dosage. Nothing that would let you crush an enforcer with your bare fists.

He'd explained that too, right away, what the new goals were. Money, influence, a slow and complete takeover of the Undercity, to unite people for when the time came. Selling the refined shimmer got people acclimatised to it, and let him finance his other projects, the ones that would free Zaun. Shimmer has many uses, and Silco many ideas. Powder, too, has her ideas for it.

Vi doesn't want to even think about it. She hates it for what it does to unsuspecting people, and for the nightmares she still has, full of bright veins over misshapen muscles, glowing blue eyes looking down at her, the fading pink of Vander's...

Shimmer, as far as she knows, is just Silco's horrifying means to a crafty end. But medicine? It would change everything!

By the time her brain has processed this new reality, she has to run to beat Singed to the door.

'Singed! You have to tell me more.'

'Vi—' Silco calls out weakly, 'don't...'

Singed glances between them as if hesitating, then shrugs and side-steps Vi to get out and to the backdoor. Ignoring Silco's protest, she walks out after him.

'Singed!'

'You shouldn't talk to me, child.'

'Why? Is this some secret Silco asked you to keep?'

Singed stops, his hand on the backdoor's handle, and turns his one good eye to her. It's the opposite of Silco's, and his wounded one is... a lot less appealing to look at. Still, he manages to convey a sense of wry amusement with both of them.

'No. I work with him under a contract, you see? It's part of our terms that I should never try to come in contact with you or your sister.' He chuckles, a bone dry sound. 'I mean you no harm, but Silco understands me well and prefers to be cautious.'

Vi frowns, confused. 'He's afraid you'd hurt us?'

'I wouldn't. But not everybody carries the same understanding of hurt and so he set boundaries.' He shrugs, clearly not fussed. 'I understand him as well. I had a daughter too, once.'

Vi lets that go right over her head and refuses to even think about the implications. 'Alright, but we're here now, so can you at least tell me about this medicinal variant of shimmer? How come we don't sell it like that?'

'Ooh, I see,' Singed says with a nod. 'Yes, it would sell for a high price, but it is very complicated to manufacture. The refinement is not the same crude process your father uses to make it into a drug.'

Vi's eyes twitch at all of Singed's assumptions, but she lets it slide. 'Can it be done?'

'Well, yes.' He flicks his wrist in a dismissive gesture meant to encompass the vials he handed her. 'It is simply a demanding process. I could not make it in large quantities at the moment.'

'But it's possible?' Vi presses.

Singed contemplates her in silence and Vi feels his gaze cool.

'You should talk to him.'

'To Silco?'

'Yes.'

Singed turns to leave, pushing the door open and stepping out. He gives her one last glance over his shoulder.

'Don't let him exert himself for the next three days, even if he gives you a hard time.'

With those parting words he walks away and is soon swallowed by the Gray. Vi locks the door behind him with a frustrated sigh and hurries back to Silco's room.

Chapter Text

Vi stands in the doorway to Silco's bedroom, rolling on the balls of her feet, a little circumspect now that he's awake. Powder is asleep in Silco's arms already, the gun and three grenades still attached to her belt. Silco's breathing is noticeably easier, and he cracks his eye open to look at Vi.

'Are you alright?' she asks, coming closer.

'Better,' he croaks, sounding like there’s plaster stuffed down his throat.

Vi unhooks Powder's belt and takes it and the vials of shimmer to the desk. She puts everything away in a drawer before coming back to the bedside. She grabs the glass of water and propping Silco's head up with one arm, she helps him drink. He needs a couple of breaks but finishes the entire glass.

'Do you need more?'

'No,' he answers, smiling wanly at her. 'Thank you.'

Vi sighs, relief flooding her even at so small a sign of improvement. 'Don't mention it.'

She lifts Powder up and lays her down on one side of the bed, then goes to fetch a clean shirt from the drawers. She sits on Silco's knees and pulls the sweat soaked shirt over his head. Putting the new one on is as good as wrestling a dead man, despite his efforts to help her. She has to tug on his arms to move him from the side of the bed he's drenched right through as well. Silco is surprisingly heavy, considering how scrawny he is, and it's a miracle Powder doesn't wake up during their tussle against gravity.

'Much better,' he whispers gratefully, wrapping an arm back around Powder.

Even asleep, she rolls into the touch and comes to nestle at his side. Vi sits down next to him cross-legged in the middle of the bed and resumes her work with the rag, wiping his forehead and temples as well as the pink streaks of shimmer-tinted tears that ran down his face.

'That was scary,' she says, speaking the blunt truth. 'Don't do that again.' 

He starts to protest and she presses the cloth over his mouth, leaning in to give him a meaningful look. More like a glare. 'Singed said you weren't taking his medicine.'

When she takes the rag away, Silco's hand falls against her knee, a failed attempt at shooting up to catch her wrist.

'Don't... don't be alone,' he rasps. 'With him. Singed.'

Vi rolls her eyes. 'Then don't give us a reason to go fetch him in the middle of the night, huh? How does that sound? Think you can manage?'

Silco huffs and closes his eye. Point in her corner. She huffs too, venting her frustration as much as the residual fear still clinging to her mind. Singed hadn't been impressed, but to Powder and Vi at least, it had looked like a close brush with death.

Her fingers are still trembling a little as she folds the rag over Silco's forehead one last time and reclines next to him, propping her head up. She focuses on her breathing, trying to calm down. Silco gives her a curious look and she pointedly avoids it, petting Powder's hair as she looks about the room.

She can finally take the time to notice how familiar it remains, how few personal belongings Silco brought in. Her fears had been unfounded, she can recognise Vander's room—maybe more than she likes.

'Did you have to keep Vander's bed?' she mumbles, not really expecting an answer.

'What?' Silco asks, startled. 'No... No, it's mine. My bed.'

'Well yeah, I guess it is now but—'

'No,' he cuts her off, and an indignant grunt turns into a full blown cough. He rolls on his side, curling around Powder as it racks him. Vi rubs his back as he spits the words '—T'was mine, before. Some—sometimes Vander slept with me... Sometimes down. In your room. Talia and Sevika too... They would crash down there.'

Vi freezes, her hand as if glued to Silco's back, her eyes to his knife-sharp profile.

'You lived here before? At the Drop?'

'My mother and Ahika both died. So Kory took me in... After he died too, Vander moved in permanently. The Drop... It was mine.' He sighs and rolls onto his back. Powder whimpers in her sleep and buries deeper into his shoulder. 'Kory left it to me. Vander took it from me.'

'I—'

Silence stretches in the room, heavier now that Silco's breathing has calmed. Vi looks for things to say, objections she can raise...

She used to come to the Last Drop with her parents, before the bridge. She would mind Powder and play with the other kids while the adults discussed strategy and politics, all boring topics to her then. That's where she'd first met Mylo, who came with his mom, as well as Claggor, who lived at the Drop, already adopted by Vander.

Vander was the Last Drop, and the Last Drop was the centre of the uprising and the heart of the Lanes. Vi can't dissociate them.

She hates this, she thinks, a touch bitter. She hates how her vision of Vander has started to blur. How all these new truths are shaping him into a man she'd never known.

She finds no words to protest or object with. Silco's claims are easily proven. Vi could just ask anyone old enough to corroborate his word, so she knows it has to be the truth.

A voice whispers to her that Vander must have had his reasons. That maybe he was justified. If he tried to kill Silco, after all, what's stealing his property next to that?

But that's not the Vander she knew... And not the Vander she wants to know.

Silco gives her knee a weak pat, bringing her back to the present. 'We can talk... later,' he whispers.

'Yes,' she agrees. 'Later.'

The history between Vander and Silco is something she's avoided long enough. Then there's shimmer as medicine, another thing she badly wants to question him about. 

Vi lies down. She rests her head on Silco's shoulder with a sigh, covering Powder's small shoulders with an arm. Silco's body is still too warm, his breath too raspy, but he's fine. He'll live. Things will go back to normal, and he'll explain everything, the way he always does. Whether Vi believes him, whether others confirm his stories... She can worry about it later. For now she can close her eyes and—

Vi is woken once by Powder getting up and leaving the room, but she curls into the warm body next to her and drifts back to exhausted sleep.

No sweet memory haunts her dreams. She doesn't dream at all, in fact, and wakes up groggy and confused. Something's odd about the room—this isn't her bed, this isn't Powder—she shifts, brushing the sleep from her eyes, and Silco's arm drops from her shoulders.

Memories of the interrupted night flood back in—the fever, the panic, Powder running for Singed, the pink medicine, Silco talking to her with drug-induced clarity.

She dispels her anxieties with a quick check. His breathing is slow and even and his cheeks are no longer clammy—a little warm but nothing like last night. His dark eye is looking down, fixed by a sleep too deep for dreams.

Vi takes a steadying breath and lies back down. Using his arm as a pillow, she stares up at the ceiling. There's peace, in the quiet of the room, in the evenness of his breathing. The silence lays over her like a weighted blanket, a soothing bubble of time during which nothing needs to happen, just the next inhale and the following exhale.

She thinks of Vander, who also looked up at that ceiling, apparently like this as well, listening to Silco sleep next to him. What was he feeling then? She wonders what stories he would have told her, if she'd known to ask. If the past had not stood so dark and bloody, so impenetrable with guilt and hurt.

She thinks about what he'd told her and what it would mean for her to do good, in this world she lives in, in this odd new family she's assembled without even noticing.

Vi does what Sevika asked her to. She makes up her own mind, chooses her own fights.

'You've got a good heart,' Vander had said. 'Don't ever lose it, no matter how the world tries to break you.'

It was that good heart that had led her to give herself up. She'd chosen to take responsibility. She'd chosen peace, and she still doesn't understand why Vander had been so willing to risk everything and everyone else, and taken that choice away from her by throwing her down into that basement.

Then she'd lost it anyway, that good heart. She has been trying to puzzle it back together ever since.

'We're all allowed to make mistakes,' Silco told her once, early on after she moved in. 'Nobody is perfect. What matters is how we learn from them, how we try and correct them.'

In the end, Vi chooses peace over violence once more.

She lets go of her anger, of her hatred. She lets go of the past. Her throat clenches tight as she tries to let go of her own mistakes—of Mylo and Claggor's ghosts, the brothers she naively led into a deadly trap—of Powder's blood darkening her palm.

To excuse herself so she can move on, become someone else. Someone better, someone good.

She's tired of keeping up all the hard work of resentment, of always staying alert for some low blow that never comes, for the spring of a trap that wasn't laid. It's wearing her down to nothing, this envy for something that is offered to her.

She just wants the hurt to stop.

She lets go of it all—relaxes like a fist unclenched, fingers slowly unfurling, stiff and inflexible.

Tears pool then spill, running down her temples and into her hair. Pain bubbles up and explodes out in a flurry of silent sobs, voiceless staccato cries that shake her whole. She doesn't protest when Silco stirs awake and folds his arms around her, enveloping her in a hug without question.

He brushes her hair, rubs slow circles into her back. He shushes her, tells her it's alright, and Vi buries her face into his chest and cries, holding on to him for dear life. 

It has to be alright. She wants it to be alright. 

She spills all her feelings into his shirt, until she's run dry and his hands stop and his breathing deepens again.

Vi sniffs and carefully extricates herself from his embrace. She feels... hollow. In a good way. Lighter. Like a weight was lifted, not from her shoulders but from inside her very ribcage.

Silco is fast asleep next to her. Looking down at him now, it doesn't hurt. It's more... bitter-sweet. 

He'll never know about the kiss she pecks on his forehead before leaving the room.

Chapter Text

It's still early; the only indication that the sun has risen over Zaun is a subtle shift in the light's quality—a warmer tone of toxic fog clinging to the windows, more uniform than during the neon lit nights.

Vi climbs up the stairs to the deserted main room of the Last Drop and finds Powder sitting alone at a table. Well, she's sitting with Mek, but he barely counts, for all the space he takes. It's rare for him to chain more than five words together after a night shift (or ever—last night was truly an exception). While Powder is shovelling in her breakfast, he's enjoying his dinner, although you can never tell for sure what meal Mek is eating because he'll only ever be tearing into some meat.

'Where's Sevika?' Vi asks them.

Mek shrugs and Powder imitates his gesture before looking up at him. 'Steak got your tongue?' she asks.

Mek uses one of his over-large fingers to push Powder's bowl closer to her, a silent plea to mind her cereals and leave him alone.

'Did you not let her in during the night?' Vi insists.

Mek shrugs again, but sensing Vi's thinning patience, makes an effort to vocalise a 'No.'

'She has the keys to the backdoor, right?' Powder points out. 'Maybe she came in early, did you check her room?'

Sevika doesn't live at the Drop, but Silco's expansion included more storage and a small lounge-like room next to his office. It has a fold-out couch often used by staff who need to crash for a while—when Sevika isn't using it as a secondary bedroom and office of sorts.

'Is the boss okay?' Mek asks Vi.

'I already told you!' Powder exclaims, smacking his hand with her spoon.

'He's better now,' Vi supplies, smiling at her sister's antics and Mek's grimace of distress.

'I'll go give him his injection when I'm done,' Powder tells her, suddenly serious. 'I'll do them all today, it's easier that way.'

'Alright, if you want to,' says Vi with a shrug. 'You can do them all forever.'

She isn't going to fight Powder for the privilege of stabbing someone in the eye, not even Silco, no matter what her feelings on the man may be. The idea of poking anyone's eyeballs makes her shudder.

Vi cobbles up a small snack for herself in the kitchenette and scarfs it down before going up to check on the lounge. It's dark, with Dustin snoring on the fold out couch, but a string of expletives leads her to Silco's office, in which she finds Sevika angrily rifling through papers.

'Hey, we need to talk,' Vi says, trying to sound serious enough to get Sevika's attention. 'Did you hear about last night yet?'

'Don't know what you're talking about,' Sevika mumbles without looking up.

Vi supposes she should be happy she bothers using her words at all. She steps in, closing the door behind her and bracing for a complicated conversation.

'Silco got sick,' she says. 'Powder had to run to get Singed in the middle of the night.'

Sevika freezes, papers crumpling in her grip. She turns to Vi, squints at her, shoulders rolling. Suddenly she feels twice as large. 'Where is he?'

'In bed!' Vi says, holding her hands out instinctively, caught off guard by the animosity of Sevika's expression. 'It was a fever, something to do with river toxins still in his body.'

She recounts the events of the night and watches Sevika relax as the story unfolds.

'Yeah, I wouldn't want to stab myself in the eye with Singed's hot sauce either,' she says with a dark chuckle. 'Is he awake now?'

Vi shrugs. 'He wasn't when I came up. Doctor said he needs full rest for three days, anyway.'

Sevika lets go of the papers and leans against the desk, tapping her fingers to her lips, grey eyes cast down to the floorboards as if searching for answers there. She hums to herself for a moment before looking up at Vi.

'We need to keep going as if nothing's wrong,' she tells her. 'We just started a fucking gang war, this timing is terrible. We can't afford to look weak and I can't split our forces to leave a decent guard at the Drop. Business has to go on as usual. '

'Yeah, the Reddies, I know. But it's not like Silco would go in person, right? He just needs to be "busy in the office" for three days, then he can actually come up and show his face.'

'That's easier said than done,' Sevika growls. 'And who's supposed to look after him? You?'

Vi frowns. Sevika and her have been... getting on, recently. They train together, and Vi respects her skills, if nothing else. Sevika's also got a terse sense of humour that Vi appreciates a lot more now that she isn't constantly on edge around her, or the butt of half her jokes. They've put pointless jabs behind them, so Vi isn't too sure what Sevika is getting at, with this question and its abrasive tone.

'Yes? I'll look after him. Powder is taking care of his medication. It'll be fine, it's just three days.'

Sevika draws up to her full height as she crosses the room. Vi doesn't flinch, but the sight of Sevika bearing down on her like that is seriously intimidating and makes her skin tingle.

'It's three days, but can I trust you?' Sevika demands in a low voice, threatening. 

Vi takes a half step back. 'With Silco?' she asks, confused. 'Sure, I—'

'Don't look at me like that, brat. I can't run this business alone like nothing's wrong if I don't know he'll be safe for certain.'

Vi squares her shoulders and glowers up at her, irritated now. 'What's with you? I could have killed him a million times over the last year, but I didn't!'

Sevika snorts. 'Not killing him and looking after him aren't the same thing.'

Vi grimaces. Her glare is so intense that she looks away, fixing her eyes on the middle of Sevika's chest, barely resisting the temptation to look down at her own boots. She has a point, and Vi can't exactly blame her for her distrust. She's made no secret of her dislike for Silco over the past year.

'He's looked after us all this time,' she mumbles. 'It's the least I can do.'

'I can't hear you,' Sevika growls.

'Yes,' Vi answers, loud and clear, looking back into her eyes, her jaw set and her shoulders squared. 'You can trust me. And Powder.'

Sevika holds her gaze for a few tense seconds before huffing and stepping back, returning to the desk and its mess of paperwork. 'Who else knows?' she asks.

Vi sags with relief. She walks after her, joining her by the desk. 'Just Mek. I don't know if he told Dustin, he was on guard with him all night.'

'I'll find out. No one else hears about this, not even our people, hear me? I'm getting Ran into this, they'll do daytime guard duty. Mek can continue with his night shifts.'

'Ran?' Vi protests, baffled by the choice. 'A strong breeze could bend her in half!'

'They'll do, they have a reputation.'

'As a wimp!'

'Just because you can bench press them doesn't make them a wimp. Everyone knows Silco trusts Ran, so no one will fuck with them if they say the boss is busy.'

'What if I don't trust her?'

Sevika gives her a perplexed look. 'What? Did you forget how to swing? Are your gauntlets just to trash piltovan furniture? You're the last line of defence, you're the only person you need to trust.'

Vi blinks at her, taken aback. She isn't sure what's more shocking: the encouragement, Sevika's implied trust in her, or the fact she knows her gauntlets were only used to redecorate Marcus' living room, so far.

'Who else do you want instead of Ran?' Sevika asks her, and again Vi stalls, confused.

'Are you giving me a choice?'

'I'm asking.'

Vi gives it a good thought, watching Sevika go around the desk and start pulling out drawers with annoyed grunts. She hates to say it but the realisation comes quick: no, short of Mek, who climbed in her opinion a lot last night, there's no one else she really trusts in Silco's ever growing operation. At least Vi feels like she knows Ran.

'Ran will do,' she says reluctantly, and doesn't miss Sevika's smirk.

Vi decides it's high time to change the topic and get some answers to the questions she went to sleep thinking about. Or try, at least. 

'Hey, tell me, is it true that Silco used to own the Drop?'

'What's prompting this?'

Vi shrugs, trying to look casual and feeling anything but. 'Just something Silco mentioned when he was conscious last night. About Kory giving him the Last Drop... And, uh, Vander taking it from him?' 

Sevika stops her search again and gives her an appraising look. 'It's public knowledge. Ask anyone.'

Vi tries to swallow, but her mouth is as dry as her throat. She coughs against the uneasy feeling building in her chest. 'But Vander—'

Sevika sighs and rubs her forehead like the topic is already giving her a headache. 'I shouldn't be the one telling you about this. Why don't you ask Silco?'

'I mean, I will but...' Vi chuckles despite herself, genuinely amused at the idea. 'Come on Sevika, help me out here, the more I know the less awkward it'll be.'

'You fucking wish. I don't envy you, honestly. Stuck between those two, even with Vander dead.'

Vi doesn't flinch, but she also doesn't back down. She stares and waits, crossing her arms.

'What do you want me to tell you, anyway?' Sevika says eventually. 'You know everything already, just piece it together. Silco owned the Drop for... maybe three years? Four? I don't know. When Vander took over, Silco was gone and no one knew why, but Zaun back then...  it was barely the Lanes. It was different.' She shrugs with her one good shoulder. 'People disappearing without explanation was very common. Especially around Vander.'

'D-didn't people ask?'

'Yeah, of course they did. Silco was a leader, he was respected. And these two, they were always joined at the hip. So yeah, people asked.'

Vi feels dread building. She can guess what Sevika's answer will be when she asks, 'And?'

'And Vander would backhand them, if they were lucky. Soon people stopped asking. I didn't even suspect Silco was alive for several years.'

'So...' Vi lets out another chuckle, increasingly manic to her ears. 'They really were together—Vander and Silco?'

Sevika grunts and gives Vi the closest to a pitying look she's ever seen on the woman's face. 'Yeah, but I'm not having that conversation with you. Want to guess why people thought it best to forget about them being a thing too?'

Vi bites on her lip, imagining Vander's eyebrows coming down in a threatening frown, his grey eyes cooling, his easy smile turning into a scowl. She's seen him get into that sort of mood with problematic visitors, people who fucked around in the Drop. She can well imagine how scary it would be, antagonising him over something as sensitive as... Whatever the situation with Silco had been.

'Would Silco even want to talk to me about it, if I asked?'

'Guess you'll find out and be the one to tell me,' Sevika says, deadpan.

Vi really isn't looking forward to it, but she knows that conversation needs to happen. Silco agreed, last night. Later, he'd said. But he'd been feverish and pumped full of drugs. Would he even remember?

Vi needs to ask anyway. She needs to know, even if she only gets Silco's side of it, even if Sevika will only confirm anything he has to say. Vi is afraid of what she'll discover, sounding the new depth Vander is taking on, but she feels compelled. This slow unveiling of Vander's character is too much like prodding in the dark, finding that the man's shape she knows by heart gains a monstrous outline—fur and claws and fangs that she struggles to accept. She needs to cast light on it, to know for sure. 

She doesn't want him to become someone else—that person she'd glimpsed, but never known... Yet she also can't go on with blinders, lying to herself when everyone else seems to know so much more.

'I wonder if you'd want to be the daughter of the Hound,' Silco had asked her, and she hadn't known then what to answer. She'd like to think so; that she could always love Vander, no matter what. That he would have loved her even then, and been kind to her—but really she still doesn't know.

'What are you looking for,' Vi asks Sevika when she's done swearing her way through the desk's third drawer.

'The deed for that fucking warehouse I have to give Renni for her troubles.'

'Oh, that. It's under the books on the coffee table.'

'Fucking hell!'

Sevika brandishes the sheet of paper triumphantly and folds it into her pocket before turning to Vi. 'Alright, I'm off to find Ran, you talk to them to coordinate. I want you to buy food outside, don't cook in the kitchen if you can help it. Grab money from the pocket change box, and go to a different market stall every time, don't just go to Jericho's. Buy for Ran as well. Keep the back door locked.'

'Yes, boss. Of course, boss.'

'Don't,' Sevika warns. 'I could get used to this.'

'Oh, my bad, that won't happen again then.'

Sevika rolls her eyes and leaves, her feet hammering down the stairs. Vi stands alone in the office, looking at the mess Sevika left behind her, a smile playing on her lips. She can already hear Silco's outrage at the sight of it, so she starts gathering the papers up, smoothing the crumpled ones and putting them all under the heavy ashtray Powder gifted him in a neat pile.

She picks up his mug with its monkey face. She figures she should bring it down to him. He'll want to use it. He hasn't spent a morning in his office yet without it steaming with tea.

Black asarguso from Noxus, Vi knows. Bitter shit like burnt pine cones—she doesn't get the appeal.

She rubs her face, a dull ache blooming behind her eyes. She's tired from the broken night and... she isn't sure when everything started being so... normal and domestic, almost. When the office became a place she spent so much time in, that she knew where some important papers were kept, or even when she memorised the exact type of tea Silco favours.

She does remember being up in the rafters, listening in on a conversation about the Noxian smuggler who carries that tea, among other things, going silent. Alna—the woman in charge of everything smuggling related along with her brother Kino—had explained the docks were buzzing with talks of unrest along the coast. Rumours of war, of a Noxian grand general raising hell.

All Silco had cared about was how it would impact trade in the Lanes.

Vi shakes herself. She recognises her sister's footsteps approaching.

'How is he?' she asks Powder when she comes in.

Powder closes the door and leans against it. She's looking a little pale, Vi notes. She puts the mug back down on the desk and walks up to her, worried.

'Powder?'

'He's awake,' she answers at last, her voice small and eyes downcast, wringing her hands. 'I gave him the medicine. It's... It's kinda scary what it does to him. Did you talk to Sevika?'

Vi gives her little sister's shoulders a squeeze. They exchange a look, and Vi hopes her feelings are carried across. That she too was scared, she too finds this difficult, she too wants things to get better. But she must be strong for Powder, so she smiles and summarises her conversation with Sevika, leaving the details about Vander out of it.

Powder doesn't share her misgivings about Ran. She nods, looking relieved.

'That's good, he'll be safe, between you and Ran. It'll... It'll be okay. I just— I—'

Her eyes fill with sudden tears and she brushes them off angrily, swatting Vi's hands aside when she tries to embrace her.

'Why is it like this?' Powder exclaims, anger bleeding into her words.

She starts shaking. Vi grips her elbows, trying to stabilise her, but it only gets worse, her breath coming in shallow and rough. The tears course down her cheeks unchecked and her lips bare her teeth in an angry rictus. 

She looks at Vi, glares at her—past and through her—as she asks, 'Why? Why do they all die!? Why do adults always... Why do they die and leave us behind?'

'Silco didn't die,' Vi objects in a strangled voice, rubbing Powder's arms, alarmed by her reaction. 'Don't say that.'

She hasn't seen her get this upset in a while—she gets it, the night has been really rough—but talking like they're off to cremate Silco... It makes the hair at the nape of her neck stand on end.

'Mom, dad, Vander! They all died.' Powder leaves their adoptive brothers unnamed, but Vi can hear the space they take, in each of her shallow breaths. 'What if Silco leaves us too?'

'He won't!' Vi protests, swallowing against the sudden lump in her throat, fighting her own rising panic at the idea. 'Singed wasn't even worried!' 

'I don't care what Singed says!' Powder yells, snot and spit flying. She balls her trembling fists and tries to shake Vi off, stomping her feet and kicking. Vi grunts as she takes a hit in the shins but doesn't let go. 'If he dies then it's only Sevika and she's always fighting and just the other day she was stabbed in the arm and it's still not even properly repaired! Shut up!' Powder screams, hitting her head. 'Shut up—I'm talking! And if she dies too then we have no one, and Silco, he—'

'Powder! Powder!' Vi calls, grabbing her wrists, pulling her close. 'Stop! Stop it! No one is gonna die! No one else is here, it's just you and me. And Silco. Silco, who's fine, thanks to you! He's not leaving us, okay?'

'You don't know!'

The words hit Vi like a brick in the sternum. Of course she doesn't. But what's a big sister to say to that? Her palms turn cold and clammy. Her nose stings and her vision blurs, her own tears threatening to overflow. 

She thinks of their mother, kissing them and telling them to be good and stay put, that she'd be back for dinner—their mother, staring up at the sky, unblinking in the heavy smoke. 

Her voice cracks as she says, 'Nobody does! We never know when we'll die! But I'm certain—'

'You could die too!' Powder cuts her off, voicing Vi's greatest fear—dying and leaving her behind. Powder gasps suddenly. 'But it was an accident!' she snarls, looking aside, 'I would never kill her!'

'Stop, Powder, listen to me—'

'There's nothing— Nothing you can do! Nothing I can do!'

'You don't need to do anything!' Vi snaps, raising her voice, hoping she can shout louder than the ghosts. She shakes Powder like she can dislodge them too. 'I'm certain Silco would never leave you! Or me!'

'But what if he—'

'Stop it! Just—stop!' she pleads, tears breaking at last. 'No more what-ifs! He just got sick, okay? And now he's better. We're going to look after him, alright? And in just a few days he'll be back to being his mean old self.'

'He's not mean,' Powder protests, choking up.

Vi lets go of her wrists and wraps her in a crushing hug. She's so tall, she thinks, burying her face in her hair. She's growing up fast and the world is just as scary as ever, just as hard and cruel, and Vi still so helpless. She can't even protect her from the voices in her head.

Powder's shaking turns into heavy sobs, and Vi finds herself crying too, her emotions muddled and confused, overwhelmed; her sister's turmoil pulling her along, down into dark waters. They cry together, teetering from side to side, Powder's lean arms wrapping around her like a vise, fingers digging painfully into her back.

'I don't want him to die,' she mumbles, face pressed against Vi's chest. 'Not ever. I don't want him to be hurt—by anyone.'

Vi squeezes her tighter. There's no promises she can make. No reassuring words that wouldn't be lies. The Undercity is dangerous, and Silco is kicking trouble wherever he encounters it. He flirts with chembarons, pushes all the sheriff's buttons, crushes gangs like he's on a schedule... It's a wonder no one's even tried to kill him yet—that they know of.

It's a dark irony that the person who's come the closest to succeeding is Vander, striking from beyond the pale, dragging Silco back down into the Pilt with this relapse.

Vi sighs. There's only one truth she can share that can mean anything to Powder right now. 

'Yeah, me too. I don't want him to die either.'

Powder sniffs and looks up at her, doubtful. 'You’re only saying that for me.'

Vi shakes her head, gives her a sorry smile. 'No. I'm not. I get it. He really likes both of us. You were right. I just didn't want to see it, so I didn't listen. I'm sorry. And I— I just don't want him to die either, okay? Can you imagine if we had to work for Sevika?'

Powder smiles back weakly. 'She isn't so bad.'

Vi frowns. 'When did you two get so chummy?'

'Sevika's a bitch—'

'Powder!'

'—but she cares as well. Silco told me she asked him to show her how to braid because she didn't know how.'

'For your hair?' Vi asks, letting go of her enough to catch one of the long blue braids.

They come down to the middle of her back now, and she's got two of them. Silco won't let Vi near Powder's hair, after her first time cutting her fringe. He's the one with the products and the brushes, trimming it and weaving metal beads in the braids' strands. Powder behaves like a prized puppy, enjoying the grooms like the attention is her Janna-given right. Vi suspects that if she would just let him, Silco would do the same for her hair too—the thought makes her shudder. But Sevika, learning to braid?

Powder sniffs and brushes her cheeks dry, rubbing her snot off on her sleeves, her rage finally subsiding. 'It's the servos in her hand,' she explains. 'The joints catch the hair, and she can't separate finger movement. They're like a mitten, she can't even move them laterally. I've been trying to find a way to reduce the size of the servos, because if she had one per finger—'

Vi nods along and lets Powder nerd out until she's gone and lost her with jargon and the fine details of Sevika's future hand, that will be so much cooler and let the woman actually give people the middle finger too.

'Anyway I let her do my braids even if it pulls my hair because she's kinda cute when she tries.'

Vi laughs. That's pretty devious on Powder's part. She dries her own cheeks, trying to make herself look composed and serious as she takes a step back and says, 'Sevika won't need to look after you anyway. Silco isn't going anywhere, and I won't either.'

Powder looks at her silently, chewing on her bottom lip.

'What?' Vi asks. 'I promised, didn't I? I'll protect you, no matter what. I-I'll protect... everyone.'

'Even Silco?'

Vi huffs. This feels like a repeat of her conversation with Sevika. Again she finds herself justifying her intentions towards the man, making promises she would never have expected herself to make.

A year ago she would have laughed if you'd told her she'd swear to have Silco's back. She would have snarled if you'd told her she'd mean it too.

Yet here she is. Swearing. 'I promise.' And meaning it. 'I swear, Powpow. It's you and me, and him—I won't let anything happen to you, or anyone you love.'

The words don't weigh her down. They're not a lie, not even a half truth.

Powder considers her silently and she seems older, gazing up at her with that serious expression. Vi resists the impulse to say more and defend herself from unspoken accusations. She's making a lot of efforts to trust Powder, but trust is a two way street, and Powder has to believe her too, on her own, or else no promises Vi makes will ever hold any value.

Finally Powder claps her hands and smiles. 'You're a real class act, sister,' she says.

Vi squints at her suspiciously. 'Do you even know what that means?'

Chapter Text

'It looked like you were going to die.'

'I know. I'm sorry, Powder.'

'I was scared.'

'I know.'

'You're not missing an injection ever again.'

'No, I promise.'

'Even if I'm not here to do it for you.'

'Even then.'

'But you swear, Sil?'

'I said I did—here...' Silco extends his pinky finger for Powder to take. She looks at it, dubious, maybe even reluctant, before curling her own around it. 'As Janna is my witness, I will never miss an injection, so I am not sick again, and don't worry Powder.' He almost leaves it at that, but cautiously adds, 'If I'm sick it'll be from something else.'

'You're never getting sick again,' Powder insists, shaking his hand violently.

'I can't promise you that. Also, Powder, my darling, can you get off my chest? You know I'll die if I can't breathe, right?'

Powder stares down at him owlishly from between her bony knees. Silco closes his good eye and the sight of her becomes completely warped and hazy. He lets out a breath like a death rattle, ramping up the dramatics.

'Nooo!' Powder yells, but she rolls off of him. 'Stop it, I hate it! You're the worst!'

'Powder! Stop hitting him!' Vi exclaims, entering the room. 'Can't you see he's on death's door?'

'Hey! Not you too!'

Silco opens his eye and watches Vi warily as she closes the door and walks to the bed with bags of take-away food. She gives him an equally circumspect look but says nothing.

Earlier that morning after Powder had injected him with the cursed thing Singed had the guts to call medicine, he'd felt better and tried to get up, managing to dress without keeling over. He'd been struggling with his tie when Vi had walked into the room.

'Don't be a pain,' she'd said with such a look of frustrated disappointment that Silco had crawled back into bed without protest.

It's all he can do not to complain. There's nothing he could say that wouldn't come across as whining or sulking.

'I've got lunch,' Vi declares, showing off her bags.

Powder fetches a towel and drapes it on the bed like a picnic blanket. Silco doesn't waste his breath trying to convince them he can walk to the desk and sit to eat. If they want to pamper him so badly, he can let them have their way.

'Jericho's?' he asks.

'Can you smell it already?' Vi takes out folded cardboard boxes and stacks upon stacks of towels. Jericho's doesn't do cutlery. 'I figured this would be an easy pick for the first meal. I know you like it, but you'll have to recommend me some other stalls. You like spicy food, right?'

Silco accepts the box Vi hands him, nodding silently. He's not entirely sure what to say or how to take this development. Vi's never taken an interest in his likes or dislikes before. Last night clearly had an impact on both girls, but this is an unexpected outcome anyhow.

'Get something from the Noxious Noxian!' Powder exclaims. 'Silco likes it.'

Vi raises a sceptical eyebrow. 'I think you love it, more than anyone else I know.' She opens two boxes and gives Powder hers before starting to dig into her own. 'I'm not sure why Sevika insists we should buy food outside.'

Silco's already chewing on a mouthful of fish but Powder beats him to the answer anyway.

'It's because people would see you cook and bring the food through the bar twice a day, and since we always eat in the kitchen, it's super suspicious. Especially if no one can talk to Silco at the same time.'

'This, exactly,' Silco agrees.

Vi frowns, looking from Powder to him, perplexed. 'It's such a small thing though? And we're a bar for half the day and a nightclub after ten, I don't think people pay attention to stuff like that?'

'You shouldn't assume,' Silco tells her, licking his fingers. 'We don't have bouncers during the day. Anyone determined enough to stalk us out could manage without problem. Worse, some of our friendly regulars could find that such unusual intel can sell for a lot of money, especially right now.'

'Yeah well, if only we hadn't started another gang war,' she replies, a little bitterly.

Silco shrugs. 'I'm sorry I couldn't time my relapse to our busy schedule.'

Vi rolls her eyes, clearly not amused. 'Did you have to anyway?'

'Have to what?'

'Crush the Reddies? Any others? They're not getting on your turf.'

Silco frowns. Sometimes Vi is like that. She asks perplexing questions that she already knows the answer to, or could easily answer herself. Usually it hides a greater concern she won't voice directly. Powder too has a tendency to beat around the bush, but for her it's when she wants things she's too shy to just demand. Silco isn't sure this time what Vi is getting to, so he takes her question at face value.

'You know we need to. This isn't about turf. We need to retake the entire factory district. The whole of Zaun.'

'You're only going to give that district to Renni, so she can rule the same way the Reddies do, and nothing will change!'

'Of course things will change—for the better. There won't be any more gang violence, first off. And Renni's on our side. She'll get richer, she'll owe us even more, and things will be more stable. All the trash who won't come to heel can be swept up and gifted to Marcus. Make him look good filling up Stillwater, bringing peace to Zaun.'

Powder snorts and chokes on her fish, but Vi isn't sharing her sister's amusement.

'You're so cold,' she says, giving Silco a cold look of her own.

He sighs and reclines back into his pillow, half his food left untouched and his appetite all gone. Powder gives him a darting glance before diving into his box and scarfing down a whole strip of blue herring. He pushes the box her way, nodding for her to have it.

Vi is always more compelled by passion than rational arguments. She reminds him of Vander that way too. Always looking for the warmth of strong emotions, for a latent anger to justify their actions. 

Silco considers giving her the whole truth, for a fleeting moment. Spit the hateful memories of times passed, when the Pilt ran red. Explain how two gangs fighting over the rich territory of the deep docks and their foreign boats had started it all—just business as usual until some geniuses had set fire to a Piltovan owned warehouse to flush out enemy members.

Then the enforcers had come in droves, and brought on them the greatest carnage in living Zaunite memory.

Silco knows Powder and Vi were on the bridge during the last uprising. That Selene died there. He could try and explain that the quays that day had been his bridge—countless Zaunites' bridge—yet it'd been so much worse. There'd been no Lanes, back then. Enforcers hadn't feared them. The people there hadn't been fighting for their freedom, but for their lives.

When he closes his eye he can see it still, even through the over-bright haze of his cursed one.

News of the attack had spread like wildfire across the Undercity. Silco remembers running until he was about ready to cough out his lungs, knowing Ahika was down there, gone earlier that day to try and mediate between the two gangs.

It had been mayhem.

People were fighting and stumbling through the thick, acrid smoke of the fire—gunpowder mixing with the stench of burning bodies and sublimating chemicals. Silco tasting the earthly copper of the mud, red with blood and caking cold against his skin. The confusion and the noise—all the screaming, the guns firing, enforcers shooting people point blank—getting splattered with someone's brains, realising that bullet had been meant for him. The blind, panicked scrambling to get away from the dark barrel tracking his movements—

And then the dying scream of an enforcer, saving Silco by distracting his would-be killer. Seeing the outline of a boy so large he dwarfed the man he was killing... That's not how they met, because the madness of that day had separated them, but it was the first time Silco had seen Vander.

Breaking a man's neck with his bare hands. 

And Silco had been glad. He'd turned around and scrambled to his feet, desperate to find Ahika, but the sight had warmed him. He'd hoped the boy would live, and himself too. That he could find him again, after. Thank him, maybe.

There's no version of that tale, however, that doesn't make the wrong point, that doesn't bend these two girls further out of shape. Vi and Powder don't need more reasons to hate Piltover or their enforcers. They don't need more sympathy for him, or for people dead before they were even born. There's no moral here they don't already know by heart and believe in.

There's no point to the heat of old emotions.

'Gangs have to go because they're a pure negative,' Silco says instead, trying to sound reasonable.

'But we're a gang!' Vi objects, pointing a sauce covered finger at him.

'We're what it takes. When they're all gone and it's only us, we can call ourselves whatever we want. More importantly, we'll have peace beyond the Lanes alone, and when Piltover turns their attention on us—'

'Oh, oh, wait, I got this—' Powder exclaims, waving him down and starting to enumerate on her fingers. 'We will have a united front. No divisions in our ranks, a single person presenting terms. Uh— We'll be able to coordinate strikes and, err... Make sure the movement continues if things get tough... What else? Government something?'

Vi scowls but says nothing.

'That should do it,' Silco says, smiling at Powder. 'It's just one step, Vi. There's no one else to police those streets. It's enforcers or us. How do you think Vander and I carved out the Lanes?'

'Distributing candy?' Powder snarks.

'If that's what Vander called his cast iron fists, then yes, we distributed lots of candy.'

Vi sighs. She runs her finger along the inside of her empty meal box, licking the sauce without saying anything. Whatever the real problem is, this conversation hasn't unearthed it.

'The Noxious Noxian would be great,' Silco declares. He yawns, fighting to keep his eye open. 'You can try the Ionian stall next to it as well. Sayuri's.'

'Their pickled radish is gross,' Powder protests.

'Then I can buy something else for you,' Vi says.

'I just want Noxian sticky dumplings every day!'

'But Sevika said—'

Silco drifts into exhausted sleep without hearing the end of the argument.

Chapter Text

Silco is uneasy with his dreams. He has not mastered them, no matter how hard he tries. Going to sleep is surrendering more control over his mind than he's quite comfortable with. 

During the day his goals are well-defined. His drives move him forward and shape the world around him. The monsters are known, harnessed, exploited. At night however his mind is free to turn against him, and it often does. The monsters there are all of his own making, but he has no authority over them.

He's grown so accustomed to dreams of water and drowning that they're almost more of an annoyance than anything.

It'll be a room filling with the thick red sludge of the Pilt, come to claim him at last, or Vander chasing him down in the shallows until he catches him; sometimes he's already swimming underwater, breathing like a fish until the water inexplicably thickens and chokes him.

But mostly it's Vander.

Silco almost doesn't mind. It's better to see him that way than when he dreams of his callused hands cupping his face and caressing, delicate, like he might bruise. Handing him a cigarette he rolled himself. Wrapping around his wrists and giving him a tug to help him crest the last ledge of the Old Hungry, to enjoy the view of Zaun spread below them. Jumping together and flying down the fissure like gliders...

At least when Vander chases and drowns him, Silco wakes up without regrets or nostalgia.

One of the many changes Powder brought with her, and later Vi, is fuel for his treacherous psyche. New fears, to stoke old fires.

Dreams of Powder falling down the chasm and Silco's hands coming up short.

Dreams of going through all the rooms of the Drop and finding neither of them anywhere, or any trace of their existence. Of Sevika looking at him, perplexed, asking, Who?

Dreams of running through thick fumes, Powder's arms gripping too tight around his neck, Vi's hand slipping from his, falling behind with a cry, devoured by the formless mass of enforcers chasing them.

Dreams of knife wounds weeping away life, of his useless fingers incapable of staunching the flow, just as they'd been, with Talia. Of a world gone red and a life gone dry. Of his girls' lips turning purple and grey, eyes lacklustre and final breaths rattling out.

Nightmares.

The sort he won't admit to anyone, even if he wakes gasping from them, clawing about his bed, tears running freely from his lidless eye.

Tonight though he's dreaming something more mundane. He's cooking in his mother's old pot, stressing over the fact there won't be enough for everyone, and that Vander won't eat onions, but Vi loves them, and Powder only wants Noxian sticky dumplings anyway—when the dilemma is resolved by a soft knock on the door, waking him.

Silco's right arm is paralysed, so his left hand flies under the pillow, pawing for the knife there—

Powder shifts, mumbling, and Silco's mind catches up with his surroundings. She's sprawled against him, pinning his arm down. Vi is lying sideways across the bed, her legs cast over both his and Powder's, snoring softly.

They're a positive heap and Sevika is smirking at him from the open doorway.

'What?' he hisses under his breath, staring more metaphorical daggers at her in the gloom.

The woman schools her features into a neutral expression and makes the hand sign for the all clear signal.

Silco points at her and folds his left hand in a snappish question. 'What are you doing here?'

'Checking on you,' comes Sevika's one-handed signed answer. Then she points her finger at Powder and makes a face, signs the word "luck", but Silco knows she means to say favourite.

He scowls at her and waves for her to go away. She shrugs and leaves, her smile never truly fading.

Silco lies down in the quiet, listening to the girls breathing. It must be early morning, if Sevika is up and about and the Drop silent. The small window doesn't ever let in enough light to tell the hour. Not like sunlight can trickle this far down in the Lanes anyhow.

He ruminates on that hand sign, its meaning. He doesn't actually have a favourite.

Sevika teases him about the girls relentlessly, calling him sir and acting all meek when he snaps at her, but unlike Vi she knows exactly where the boundary lies with him, and toes it artfully.

He leaves her to her fun, and everyone else to their speculations. People will talk anyway, and the more they discuss which of Silco's new daughters is his favourite, the more they'll internalise they can't mess with either of them.

No, he doesn't have favourites, but it's hard to resist dotting on Powder when she, unlike her sister, is ready to soak up all the affection he has to give.

Silco rolls on his side, shifting Powder to free his arm. She mumbles a swear but doesn't wake. He extends a hand to brush Vi's hair from her face and stops himself just short, doubt suspending the gesture.

He remembers her distress, just last morning. The way she'd felt so much smaller, curling against him and crying—he still isn't sure why. The stress from the night? He doesn't remember much of it, just confused snatches of her talking to him, a blur of pink hair, Powder's hands tugging, her tears falling on his face... It must have been frightening. He hadn't known to warn them. He hadn't expected he'd need to.

Faintly, he hopes she's feeling better, though he knows he won't ask. Vi's got the same sort of indomitable soul as Vander, and such people... their tears make Silco's heart ache more than anyone else's.

He lifts the hair from Vi's face, pulling wet strands out of her mouth and tucking them behind her ears. It's getting long. He wishes she'd let him trim it.

It feels like a small miracle already, that she's here at all. For now it's enough.

Silco isn't sure if the injections are making things better. They seem to keep the fever at bay, but they feel increasingly painful, the shimmer burning through his nerves, pulsing into his head.

Powder is careful. Downright meticulous even, always checking the levels of shimmer beforehand, testing the mechanism, peering down at him for a whole minute with her tongue poking out to make sure everything is as aligned as can be.

When he gets the worst stab yet Silco can't help his scream, or the way his body convulses. Powder jumps off of him with a cry of dismay and scrambles on the floor, hastily dropping the syringe on the bedside table.

She starts crying and Silco squashes a knee-jerk rush of annoyance.

He's the one in pain! He's the one still suffering from an odious betrayal. He's the one who should be crying! But this isn't her fault—it's not even his fault—and he's already killed the one culprit.

Silco leans over to grab her and drags her back on the bed and into his arms, shushing her. There's nothing left to do but to wait it out, wait for the tears to drain and cheeks to dry, for the shimmer to do its work and time to pass and the doses to reduce in frequency. For this torture to become another routine.

'There's no one,' Powder prompts him in a shaky voice, her small hands alighting on his face, fingers tracing the dark outline of his scar.

He looks into her grey eyes, whose tint seems to get bluer every day, and runs his thumb over her own unmarred cheeks.

It's the beginning of the mantra the two of them developed in the days after the cannery and the fire and death, when Powder's ghosts were most vivid. Silco's never had those, so he hadn't known what to do to keep her from talking to the dead so often. This ritual was his best attempt at dispelling them for her, anchoring her back to the present, to who she still had.

'There is no one,' Silco repeats.

'Just you,' Powder whispers.

'And me,' he says, smiling. Then he starts again. 'No one.'

'Just you.'

'And me.'

'And Vi,' Powder adds with a small smile.

Silco rolls his eyes. 'Technically correct, I suppose.'

Powder chuckles, and he sees it as a victory. She's right anyhow. She has Vi too, and he's glad for it.

Powder settles down, grabbing one of her notebooks and returning to her research. She's incredibly studious, with single-minded focus and a fascination for all things new and unknown, especially if they can be tied back into her engineering projects and gadgets. 

She's also proving to be unusually needy, never leaving his side and always sprawled on the bed with some part of her touching him, even if just the tip of her toes against his legs. Any other time it might have grown tiresome, but she offers some distraction. Vi has banned work documents, and Silco knows Ran is up the stairs, officially keeping people from going to his office, but he's under no illusion that this extends to him as well. 

He shifts and struggles with himself, uncomfortable. Between injections, the fever sometimes returns. His back is always sore, his neck stiff. The shimmer is distorting his senses. It's like he's recovering from a beating, or a cold, or both. It's confusing, and he feels miserable.

Despite his aching body, he makes for a restless patient. He's done more than his fair share of convalescence over the years, especially after Vander's attack, and he hates finding himself there again. Tied to a bed, trapped in a room, deprived of freedom and dependent on the goodwill of others...

Singed had not been nearly so accommodating a caretaker as his girls are proving to be, but the feeling lingers, like a bad after-taste.

Vi walks into the room without knocking, barely visible under an armful of books and a bundle of fabric balanced precariously on top. 

'Here,' she says, toppling the books over the bed. 'That's everything you asked, isn't it?'

Powder hums appreciatively as she goes through the scattered tomes. Right now she's going through a maths phase, and Silco has been forced to scour Piltovan bookshops to keep up with her demands.

"The Algorithm Design Manual" says one of the newer covers. "Yukihara's Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers" says another. "The Chemistry of Explosives" is already well thumbed and annotated, as well as "Principles of Chemistry and the Organic World". 

"Mathematics and the Imagination" is the first book Silco got for her after realising she had a genuine talent and a wild appetite for knowledge. She's read him passages over the months, her enthusiasm for the topic rendering the rather dry subject almost interesting.

He picks up a small volume he's never seen before, the green leather cover embossed in silver letters. "The Mechanics of Gearwork: How to Construct and Maintain Them."

'What's this?' he asks, frowning. He doesn't remember buying it, but he knows he would have if he'd seen it.

'I bought it,' Vi says, sounding defensive.

'It's so cool!' Powder exclaims. 'I already finished it twice. Look, page twenty six, I'm going to make a chemical timer just like this one. It'll trigger the jaws of my bombs and count down the time to the explosion at the same time!'

Silco smiles and says nothing, observing the cryptic molecules and chain reactions presented by page twenty six.

Vi has been so reluctant in asking for anything—anything at all, really, even bare essentials—that Silco has long resigned himself to forcing a stipend on her. Once every other week, while she's out, he throws a piece of folded paper on her bed with coins in it, and never mentions it. Vi never brought it up either, but he's happy to see she's putting the money to good use.

She looks at him now with a touch of defiance, as if expecting a remark, but Silco keeps his attention on the mechanism Powder is so keen on.

'You'll have to talk to Renni about sourcing some of these chemicals,' he says, pointing to some of the more obscure names on the page. 'I'm not sure I can find some of those for you.'

'I already talked to Sevika about it!' Powder informs him.

Vi sighs as she puts down her pile of fabric on the desk, and Silco feels an irrational rush of giddiness when he realises what it is. That's her hobby. What drawing is to Powder. She's been so secretive about it that it had taken him several months to puzzle it out. He'd figured Powder wasn't needing as many clothes as she ought, given how frequently she tore them apart. And then she would appear with new leg warmers or a new top... Because when she isn't punching people, Vi sews, and Silco is in some disbelief to see her bring out her current project like this in the open.

'Oh! And this one!' Vi fishes a small red book from between the folds of fabric and turns back towards the bed. 'It's the only book I could find in your office that wasn't about some boring accounting or politics,' she says, looking about the room like a bookshelf should manifest itself out of the bare walls. 'I don't know if you should have it though. Isn't reading painful?'

Silco takes the red leather-bound novel from Vi. It is his; has been for a long time. A small novel by a Noxian writer he'd met during his time abroad. 

'I'll be fine,' he says, contemplating the small tome and its familiar story. 

He's read the book a dozen times or more, anyway. He knows it by heart. It follows the adventures of an Ionian demon hunter named Rakan, who is plagued by incredible bad luck. It takes him most of the book to realise he's actually the victim of a curse, and rely on the friends he's made during his travels to break out of it.

Silco likes it. It's simple, and he's always found Rakan's time in Bilgewater relatable. Besides, it's a signed copy. 

Vi climbs on the side of the bed and snatches the book from his hands. 

'Hey—'

'It'll be bad for your eyes,' she declares, authoritative. 

'What would you have me do?' he protests, working hard to repress a frustrated snarl. 'I can't stare at the ceiling all day.' 

Vi gives him an unimpressed look and opens the novel, flicking through the pages until she's at the start. 'I'll read,' she says. 'You stare at the ceiling.'

Silco huffs, the sense of disbelief deepening. Vi, reading to him? He squares himself against his pillows, struggling to find a comfortable position. Powder caps her pens and rolls over, propping her head on his leg, crossing her fingers over her chest and smiling with smug satisfaction at her sister. Faintly, Silco wonders if she set her up to this. 

'There once was a man named Rakaniritan'dai,' Vi says, eyes almost crossing as she stumbles over the name, 'who would threaten to kill anyone who wouldn't just call him Rakan—wait, what the hell is this book?' 

Powder snickers and Silco smiles. 'Read on,' he says, closing his good eye.

Chapter Text

Later that evening, as the music starts playing above ground—the loud and obnoxious flow of cash income—a knock comes on the door and Powder goes to open it. Vi left a while back to buy food and has yet to return.

'No, you can't,' Powder says to the person waiting outside. 'Go away, brick head.'

Silco sighs. 'Let him in!' he calls out.

Considering the late hour and the current state of secrecy they live in, this can only be Mek, he thinks. Sure enough, the hulking man comes into view, but takes a hurried step back when Powder makes a snapping sound, clicking her teeth like some rabid animal ready to bite a chunk out of him.

'C'mon kiddo,' Mek protests weakly. 'I gotta talk to the boss.'

He gingerly grabs the back of her shirt and lifts her up, turning around and switching places to drop her into the corridor. Predictably, Powder starts kicking. Silco suspects only said secrecy keeps her from also screaming her head off.

'Powder, please,' he calls again, 'let me have a word with Mek.'

'But Sil—'

'Go upstairs and show your face a little, won't you? Two days without you terrorizing someone might look suspicious, after all.'

Powder sniffs but reluctantly does as she's told. Mek closes the door behind him carefully before coming to sit on the edge of the bed. Silco scoots up against the headboard, folding his legs to make more room for the over-large man. As if they were hiding in a cramped back alley, staking some place out, or packed in a bar's small booth... as they often were, in their younger years. And just like back then, Mek silently tugs on his shirt, twisting around to show Silco his exposed lower back. His skin is red and angry around the black and green lines freshly tattooed just over the waistband of his pants. 

Silco groans. 'You didn't get this one because of me, did you?'

'Old time's sake,' Mek says with a sly grin.

'Idiot.'

Mek huffs derisively and waits for Silco to get over himself.

Years ago in the cannery's basement, Silco, too feverish and out of it to properly follow a report on Vander's actions, had absent-mindedly remarked on Mek's lack of new tattoos. They'd had a ritual, for as long as they knew each other and Mek had started getting ink: he would show Silco his latest addition, Silco would nod approvingly, and that was that. 

Yet it had taken Mek several months to track Singed and Silco down after Vander's betrayal, and here he'd been, after all that time, looking exactly as Silco remembered him, without any fresh ink.

'Was no point.' Mek had answered him then, shrugging. 'Thought you were dead, a while.'

Silco had been in too much of a haze to think much of this exchange, but on the following day Mek had returned with his eyes almost swollen shut by tattooed eyelids.

Silco had called him an idiot back then too.

'It's nice,' he admits after a while, taking another look at the broken curve, connecting back to the complex design running down Mek's back. 'Is it your whole left side finished then?'

Mek nods. 'Unless I go below the knee and down the forearm.'

Silco rolls his eyes. 'Of course you will. You're not even forty. Plenty of time to add on to it.'

Mek laughs, pleased, and Silco can't help smiling along.

'How has it been, outside?'

'Boring,' Mek says, crossing his huge arms over his chest.

Silco cocks an eyebrow, surprised. 'Your little birds aren't singing?'

'They just sing the same as Sevika's reports.'

Mek's hulking appearance and taciturn demeanour make most people dismiss him as a mere musclehead, and not a very bright one at that. The boss' head-basher in chief, as it were. His mean-spirited humour and flashy looks also contribute to this misperception. He's big and impressive, sure, but Mek isn't a proper trained fighter. His real talents lay in the network of workers, merchants, artists, whores and sump-snipes he's nurtured and developed over the years. If there is an interesting rumour floating around, it is usually Mek who will hear of it first.

'Lots of chatter, in the refineries down by the Brand,' Mek continues, frowning as if scouring his memory for anything worth mentioning. 'Lint says the little twerp worries we're coming for him eventually.'

'Naturally. Finn wouldn't have gotten where he is at such an age if he were a complete idiot. He has to expect he's on the list. Just keep your informants well rewarded. I want to give the kid a chance to come around on his own. He's ambitious and we could make something out of him. Another chembaron on our payroll would be good.'

Silco sighs, rubbing his temple, a faint feeling of guilt trickling in. It's like he's already suffering from Vi's disapproval, even though she doesn't know he's talking business with Mek. Well, he hopes she doesn't. Mek pats his shoulder with a massive hand and brings a finger up to his lips, tilting his head towards the door. He fishes Silco's metal flask out of a pocket and hands it to him.

'What is it?' Silco signs, incapable of repressing a small smile.

'Good stuff,' Mek answers in a low voice and satisfied tone. 'To keep you happy.'

Silco takes a sniff. Noxian fire bourbon. Hot stuff more than good stuff, really. He nods and Mek beams at him.

'Hide it,' he whispers, nodding towards the door again.

He appears very pleased with himself, bypassing Silco's security—if you could call Powder that—but he's also clearly nervous at the prospect of the girls finding out. Singed hasn't expressly forbidden alcohol, but the girls are taking things a little too seriously and Silco wouldn't put it past them to lecture him if they found out, or worse. He's grateful for Mek's foresight. 

'Oh, I will,' he promises.

He takes a swig, smacking his lips appreciatively. He closes his eye, lets the world go bright and warped, focusing on the warmth spreading through his chest.

'Good stuff, Mek,' he says, looking up at him once more. 'Thank you.'

Mek shrugs his massive shoulders and takes his leave, smiling all the while.

Powder returns with smudges of paint on her face and a grim smirk that makes Silco wonder who exactly will be complaining to Sevika about her when she returns. He doesn't ask though, just watches as she clambers back on the bed and starts doodling on her drawing pad. 

She's in a mood, Silco notices. More silent than usual, destroying sheet after sheet of paper, rolling them up and throwing them at the wall with increasingly frustrated grunts. Silco leaves her be. Everyone's behaviour has been somewhat offbeat since his relapse, and no one as much as Powder. Anyway, she immediately perks up when Vi returns with food. A sweet smell wafts in as she steps into the room, excusing herself for being late. 

'I ran into an old acquaintance,' she explains while Powder enthusiastically sets up their usual bed-spread picnic set up. 'Mellie—do you remember her, Powder? She runs her own stall on Bridgewaltz now. She makes these pastries, I just had to buy some. She says hi, by the way, you should go pay her a visit.'

Powder's hands freeze and her smile vanishes. She sounds distant when she mumbles, 'Yeah, I remember her...'

Vi gives her a curious look along with her portion of fried noodles, but doesn't question her. Silco makes small talk with Vi as they eat, both of them keeping an eye on Powder, who remains sullen. By the time Vi is handing out the fried cream puffs she bought for dessert, Powder has started to kick the bed with her feet in an erratic rhythm. She wolfs down the pastries messily, without a word.

Vi gives Silco a quizzical look and he returns a half shrug. She sighs and gets up, cleaning the remainder of their meal before excusing herself. 'Sevika caught me getting in. I promised her the rest of the pastries.'

Powder grabs one of her books and Silco pats her head while she reads, propped against his side. He plays idly with her fringe and watches her mood worsen. 

'What's the matter?' he asks with a weary sigh. 

She's fidgeting so much she's nearly torn a page off. She snaps the book shut and throws it across the bed, huffing.

'I-I don't know if I should tell.'

Silco frowns. 'If you don't know, then you definitely should. Did something happen when you went upstairs?'

She shakes her head, eyes screwed shut. 'No.'

He waits, watching her wring her hands and avoid his gaze. When she starts biting on her nails he asks again. 'Powder? What's bothering you? I can't help you if you won't tell me.'

'Oh no, I don't need help. I'm fine! I've just... I've been thinking. Vi kinda reminded me.'

'What about?'

She glances at him, and he hates the look of thinly veiled fear in her eyes, like she's afraid of his reaction. He can't have that.

'Why won't you tell me?' he asks, insistent now. 'Whatever it is, I won't be upset,' he assures her.

She shrugs as if to say she isn't so sure about that. Silco grabs her wrist and tugs gently until she looks at him. 

'Powder. My Jinx. I'm your family. It's Vi, and you, and I. We're all you have. You know this. You can trust us. You should trust us. We'll never leave you, no matter what you say. So why don't you tell me?' When her eyes start to fill with tears, Silco's heart turns to ice. 'Did someone hurt you?' he asks, trying to keep calm.

Powder shakes her head no again and looks at her feet, the tears rolling down the side of her face. 'Shut up,' she mumbles, kicking the air. 'Leave me alone.'

Silco sighs and grabs her arm near the shoulder to pull her into his lap. He envelops her into a hug. 'You're not alone, but it's just you,' he tells her, 'and me.'

'Yeah... No one else.'

'That's right. And I'm not leaving you alone until you've told me what's troubling you. I'm worried now. Did you talk to Vi already?'

'No,' she says, brushing her cheeks dry. 

Silco waits for her to decide herself, and after some gnawing on her lip, Powder glances up at him, looking almost guilty.

'I was out the other day, and—'

'When?' he cuts her off.

'Ah, huh... two weeks ago.'

Silco keeps smiling at her encouragingly, although his instinct leans more towards a scowl. Two weeks of mulling over something that clearly bothered her, and him only learning about it now?

'I was at Vander's statue,' she continues. 'Drawing something on the base with my chalk crayons. It always gets washed off when it rains... Anyway, I saw someone there.'

The chill returns to Silco's chest, cold tendrils running down his spine. 'Did they threaten you?' he asks.

He's known about that risk from the moment he took Powder in and found something stirring in his heart—a protectiveness on a scale he hadn't felt since Vander. Years and years without this feeling haunting him, and suddenly here he was again, fretting. At least Vander had been more than capable of looking after himself. Powder, or Jinx as she demanded to be called at the time, could barely get through the nights on her own, let alone defend herself.

He'd known if he kept her close, if he claimed her as his, she'd become a target. So long as he has competition in the Lanes and beyond, Powder will be at risk. Seen as his weakness. He'd had two choices then. Guard and train her, or surrender her.

Now here he is, with Powder snug in his arms—she's shaking her head vehemently, tugging on his shirt.

'No he didn't! It's fine! He would never!'

'Who is this, Powder?'

'It was my friend. Little Man? Ekko?'

Silco searches his memory, finding the name familiar. 'Did he work for Benzo?' he asks, unsure.

'Yeah! Do you know him?'

'White haired boy?'

'Yes!' Powder says, excited. She immediately deflates and looks away. 'He was surprised to see me. He said... he said he thought I was dead! He thought Vi was dead too.'

'I take it he hasn't come near the Drop since that night?' Silco asks.

He figures Benzo's protégé would have no reason or desire to risk crossing paths with him, after what he'd let Deckard do, on that night. Silco can't find it in himself to feel any regret over it. Benzo had been Vander's friend and their old group's fence, but Silco had never liked or trusted him and the feeling had always been deeply mutual. Benzo had also never respected him, not even with five enforcers dead at his feet. He'd been stupid enough to come swinging, so as far as Silco's concerned, he'd had it coming. 

However, Silco wouldn't expect this Little Man to forgive him. He doesn't mind. If anything, he understands.

Powder shrugs, still looking away. 'I was so happy to see him,' she says, sounding as far from happy as humanly possible. 'I didn't know where he'd gone since Benzo's closed... And he was happy to see me too! So we started talking, and he lives with a group now—they call themselves the Firelights—he was telling me about them and then, he said I should join! And Vi too. That it'd be great.'

Silco clutches Powder tighter. That won't be happening. 

She leans into his embrace, laying her head against his shoulder. 'I said I was already living here.'

'At the Drop?'

'Yeah. With you.'

Silco can imagine the young boy's reaction. If he'd been half as fiery as Vi on their first meeting, it would not have gone well.

'What did he say?'

Powder sniffs and turns her head, pressing her face into his shirt. 'Said he didn't believe me.'

'That's all?'

'That I couldn't want to stay with... with a killer. That you killed Vander. I said I know that and he just—'

Powder throws herself back then, teeth bared, hands balled into fists.

'He looked at me like... like a fucking enforcer rat! He said he couldn't believe I'd change like that. I said I didn't change! I didn't! I said Vander killed my mom and you love me and who cares about Vander anyway and—'

'That's alright—'

'He called me crazy!' she exclaims, cutting him off. 'He said he couldn't believe Vi would live with you too and—'

'Calm down, Powpow, it's alright,' Silco says in a soft voice, trying to soothe her and curtail the explosion of emotions he knows is coming.

But Powder starts shaking, snot running down her nose, tears coming out faster, her grimace giving her a feral look. She presses her fists to her eyes and lets out a heavy sob.

'He said you were killing people with shimmer! I said it's not true, and he said that he knows people who died because of it. So I told him that's their fault!' She slams her hands back down into her lap, and Silco takes them in his to keep her from hurting herself. 'I told him it's not like that any more. I tried to explain—about the plan—but he wouldn't listen. He kept accusing you and I said— I said I don't care about shimmer and to shut up!'

She gasps then, and looks away abruptly, her shaking subsiding to mere shivers. There's a beat of silence. Another.

'I punched him,' she says then, voice very small. 'He's bigger than me but I punched him the way Sevika taught me and he fell down like a bag of bolts.'

Silco bites down on a 'Good,' knowing that's not what Powder wants to hear right now. Still, it's deeply reassuring to know that Sevika's lessons are bearing fruit and that Powder is willing to use what she taught her.

He brushes her wet cheeks and gets the snot out of her face with the cuff of his sleeve. She still has some blue paint residue on her face, under her left ear, and under the curl of her chin. She sniffles and lets herself be handled without protest, acting half her age.

'What happened then?' Silco asks when she doesn't continue on her own.

'He left. He looked at me like I was a demon. He... I think he was crying? I was gonna say I'm sorry but he just ran off. I was— I didn't know what to do.'

Tears well up in her eyes and run free again, without sobs this time. Silco sighs and brings her close. He thinks about what to say as she silently soaks his shirt through. He rubs slow circles into her back, pensive. He's torn, really.

The dead man inside of him stirs in its watery grave, calling out for reconciliation. That man, that younger Silco, once had many friends. It knows the pain of losing them—to illness, to violence, to misunderstandings and arguments. It wants Powder to make up with her friend. Wouldn't that make her smile? Wouldn't she be happier, loved by everyone who knows her? She deserves it.

But the survivor who rose from the Pilt hopes the boy chokes and dies. He caused her all this distress, and for what? Just another fair-weather friend choosing outrage and betrayal over trust and faith. Powder deserves better.

He kisses the top of her head and grabs her shoulders, pushing her back. She's grown a lot over the past year, and she's turning into a bony teenager, slight and bird-like under his hands.

'I'm glad you told me,' he says, tilting her chin up to look her in the eyes. 'If someone ever makes you feel terrible like this again, you should tell me, alright?'

Powder nods, looking a little less dejected.

'What do you want to do?' he asks then. 'If you don't want to ever see him again, you don’t have to. But he's your friend, so...'

He doesn't even want to say it.

Powder goes back to biting on her lip, thinking. 'I don't know,' she says at last. 'I don't think he wants to see me again. But I'd like to apologise. I shouldn't have hit him. I-I don't want him to hate me.'

'Right.' Silco sighs. She's just too young and too nice. Nothing that time won't remedy, unfortunately. 'I'll have Mek find out more about those Firelights. In the meantime you can think about it, how does that sound?'

'You're not mad?'

Silco blinks, surprised. 'At him, yes, but not at you, never at you. Why would I be?'

Powder looks away, guilty. 'I mean, he called you all these terrible things...'

'Powder. I'm sorry to break it to you,' he says with a faint smile, 'but I have killed quite a few people.'

'I know that.'

'I also helped create shimmer. And sell it.'

'I know! But he thinks—'

'Powder!' Silco interrupts her, waving a hand to silence her. 'Do you think I care what your little friend thinks of me? Do you think I sleep any worse because people think poorly of me?'

'You already sleep like shit,' she mumbles, a half smile tugging on her lips.

'You have very little room for criticism on the topic of bad sleep,' Silco counters, unamused. 'You woke me up with a nightmare last night. Again.'

'You were in it!'

'Isn't that great. What was I doing?'

Her smile widens and her eyes shine, but not with tears. 'I'm not telling you,' she says.

Silco grunts and goes back to the topic at hand. 'Everything I'm doing here is for us, Powder. All of us. But many people don't care for it, or don't see what I'm trying to achieve. There's no pleasing everybody, but you can ignore them instead. It doesn't matter what Ekko thinks about you, alright? He'll come around, or not. But you're you, and Powder is perfect, no matter what he thinks.' 

Powder gives him that owlish look of hers, listening intently, and he doubles down. 

'You have so many qualities. You're strong. You're smart and creative. I don't care what this boy thinks of you. If all he can see is a demon, then he's a blind idiot.'

'He was just upset...' Powder says. It isn't a protest, more like a detail she feels the need to highlight. 'I get it. I was upset too, after Vi left. Oh—'

She grabs Silco's face, each hand cupping his jaw. She gives him a wide eyed look and leans forward, her knees digging into his side.

'Don't tell Vi about Ekko! Please?'

'Why? Wouldn't she want to know he's alive?'

'Well—'

Silco immediately regrets asking the question. He grabs her wrists and gently pulls her away.

'You don't want to tell her the whole story,' he guesses.

'It would just upset her... I don't want her to go after him.'

From her downturned gaze and pinched mouth, Silco knows she's not telling him everything, but he lets it go. Whatever her reasons, he agrees with the idea. It's been a taxing week for everyone, and Vi doesn't need the upset—nor Powder, from telling the story again.

'I won't say anything,' he promises. 'It's our secret.'

'You swear?' Powder demands, holding her pinky out.

He entwines it with his own. 'If you promise to tell me, next time you're upset.'

'Alright.'

'Good.'

They shake on it.

Chapter Text

Silco's first morning back behind his desk is uneventful.

Vi rolls out of bed first and tells him in a hushed voice that she'll be out all day. Everyone gets more freedom, now that he's finally released from his bedroom prison.

Despite his excitement, Silco gets started late. He sips on his tea in bed, waiting for the pain of the first injection of the day to fully subside. Then he has to forcefully push Powder out of the bedroom.

'I can dress myself alone.'

'But—'

'You can tie my cravat when I'm done,' he declares before closing the door firmly behind her.

She ends up doing his makeup too, taking her sweet time with it before asking him to rebraid her hair. Only then does she retreat to the office's rafters.

Silco summons Alna and Dustin first, listening to their reports and giving them work to do and orders to spread out among the crew. Dustin asks a few too many questions, maybe suspicious of his unavailability in the last few days. Alna acts like she's none the wiser. Maybe she doesn't care. Either is fine for Silco.

He isn't thrilled to find himself exhausted after so little work, but he pushes on, going through all of Syd's accumulated reports.

Syd is Silco's lead chemist, trained by Singed and now in charge of their single completed and running factory. He's old crew, and it shows: 'I'm including a list of parts I want to have in my hands before I listen to any more complaints about output volume,' is scribbled in the margin of one of the papers in the man's neat hand. 

'Stop hiring idiots and get some kids off the streets for me. At least I can train kids!! Fuck, I could train a cat to do this job, but not the fuckos in that last batch. ASK IF THEY CAN DO MULTIPLICATIONS!! I'm not running a candy shop!' is adorning the bottom of a wholesaler's receipt.

Silco sighs. Syd's got a mouth on him but they both know he's right. He puts the reports down to go and make a show of himself at the bar and have a quick lunch there. It's a quiet day, and no one comes to bother him. Maybe it's the usual aloofness his new status in the Lanes grants him, or maybe it's fresh fear: Sevika has been busy with the Reddies, and all reports indicate quite a few heads rolled.

Before too long Powder comes searching for him, tapping her cheek in a wordless reminder that it's time for another one of the bloody injections. At least it gives him an excuse to get back upstairs.

He collapses into his desk chair, half relieved to get away from prying eyes, half dreading what's to come. Powder sits herself on the edge of his desk with her feet on the seat of his chair on each side of his legs, pulling him close. She cups his jaw firmly, placing the monstrous contraption over his dark eye.

'Here we go,' she says in warning.

The now familiar flash of white hot pain rushes through his nerves. Silco grunts, teeth sinking into a whine before it can escape him. He presses his face down into Powder's lap, shuddering, and she wraps herself around him, shushing and caressing the back of his head like she can will the pain away.

He stays like that a while, getting his breathing under control and listening to her humming. He tries to focus on the affection Powder gives without qualms, on her voice, and how glad he is that his pain doesn't make her shirk away from him any more.

'I'll make a better design, if you want,' she says.

She cups his face again, her thumbs pressing into his cheeks, lifting his head up to make him look at her. She's so hazy now, his perfect girl who only ever wants to help.

'I'll make one with a smaller needle and a faster mechanism. This one isn't right.'

Silco smiles. Powder might appear hazy, but he recognises the headstrong expression well enough. The hints of the Jinx he'd gotten to know before Vi joined them, who took everything as a challenge and wouldn't take no for an answer.

'I would love it if you would,' he tells her. 'Make a prototype and we'll visit the Doctor to show him and get his opinion.'

'I'll make him cry too,' she declares in a self-assured voice, not a shred of a doubt in her words. 'He'll be ashamed his design was so shit.'

Silco sighs and leans back into his chair, shooing Powder off the desk. 'I doubt he designed it—or cares. He likes to tinker but he's no engineer, the way you are. I bet it was just some contraption he had lying around.'

'What?' Powder exclaims, hands clutching her braids white knuckled, the very picture of indignation. 'You're joking, right?'

Silco shrugs. 'He works from a damn cave. I'm not sure what you expect from Singed.'

'That's— But— Isn't he like...' Powder huffs suddenly, throwing her hands into the air. 'I'll show him!'

She grabs her notebook from the desk, stuffs a handful of crayons into her back pocket and off she goes to the rafters, mumbling insults under her breath, using the knotted rope to get up there and bringing it up after her.

Silco smiles to himself, watching her get comfortable on one of the larger beams and immediately start sketching. He's curious to see what she comes up with.

He turns his attention back to his paperwork, using the spell of clarity granted by the shimmer for as long as possible. The writing makes his eyes swim, and it takes him a while to find the best distance to read at. The last time he'd had to adjust so much was after Singed had first worked on him.

The memories make him shudder all over again. Silco had been prepared to lose his eye and depth perception. It had seemed like a small sacrifice at the time, to survive Vander. He'd been in such disbelief over the attack—his survival had been this miraculous second chance that felt too unreal to believe in, especially after the fever had set in.

He still doesn't remember most of that time. Snatches, here and there, like a man breaking heavy waters for a desperate gulp of air before diving back down, swimming into dark currents, too close to death.

Singed had saved the eye in order to experiment on it and observe it. When Silco had first come to and realised what he'd feverishly agreed on, he hadn't thought to protest. What was selling a broken part of himself? He was alive against all odds, what were pacts and promises made in earnest? They were barely worth the notice.

Now though... he wishes the damn eye would rot away and give him peace.

The numbers in his ledger are bad enough without the headache looking at them is inducing. Shimmer is selling faster than they can make it, and the price is volatile. Syd's suggestions (demands, really) would push Silco to involve the chembarons. Sevika's handwriting makes him want to cry, but at least the progress on her front is much more satisfying. A whole gang has come forward demanding to join rather than be next on the chopping block. The Reddies' boss is cornered and half the factory district is already in Silco's grasp. She's doing an excellent job, as usual.

As if summoned by the thought, the door slams open and Sevika herself stomps in. She comes to an abrupt stop when she realises Silco's there.

'Huh, you're up?' she says, surprise overriding her customary politeness.

'My three days of horizontal torture are over, yes,' Silco answers mildly. 'And you're back. How did things go today?'

'Isn't it too soon to get back to work, sir?' she asks, ignoring him. 'I've got things under control.'

Silco squints his one eye at her, annoyed. 'I'm fine.'

She shrugs and looking up, barks a loud 'Jinx!'

'Ogre!' comes the quickfire reply from above.

'Shut up!'

'What do you want, Ogre?'

Sevika waves a bag, loose metal pieces clinking noisily inside it. 'Got the pieces you needed from Dessur's. He included the tools for it, said you'd need a micro something-whatever? It's the last of what you wanted to assemble the hand, right?'

'Oh yeah! Awesome!' Powder comes crashing down on the carpet and snatches the bag out of Sevika's hand. 'Alright! Let me get my toolkit, I'm not using Dessur's trash.'

She explodes out of the room, still yelling about wrenches and grease pots. Sevika gives Silco a pointed look, already turning to follow her out.

'You should rest,' she says. 'Today was fine, nothing for you to worry about.'

'I have a lot to catch up on!' Silco protests, stabbing a finger into his ledger. 'And a lot to worry about.'

'Fine, I'll let Vi know then. Jinx, wait up!'

'What—' the door slams behind Sevika. 'Was that a threat?' Silco asks the empty room.

It was, as it turns out.

Vi takes less than five minutes to arrive and Silco braces himself for an argument. She walks into the room with a bundle under her arm and a frown on her brow. It's a new expression on her. Not the frown she wore for months—disapproval, disgust, resentment—or that of frustration, that was always so quick to quell any smile or laugh she might have let escape by accident.

This new expression is one of... concern. Evaluation. Silco much prefers it and hopes it's there to stay, or at least replace those other frowns.

'How are you feeling?' she asks. She doesn't leave him time to answer. 'You look tired. Sevika's got a point, you know. It's your first day back. You should take it easy and call it a day.'

'Is that it then?' Silco snaps. 'Are our roles so far reversed that you're here to mother me?'

Janna help him, is that a smirk, pulling at the corner of her lips? Mischief, shining in her powder blue eyes?

'Reversed? Did you ever mother me? I didn't notice. Anyway, if you didn't push yourself so much, I wouldn't need to mother anyone.'

Silco grunts, hands coming up to massage his temples and the lingering ache under them. 'Fine, fine. But I'm not done.'

'Yes, you are.'

He shoots her a warning look, but she isn't paying him any attention. She's fumbling with her package. It looks like a box, wrapped in a piece of tied cloth.

'What is it?' he asks, curiosity piqued.

Vi hesitates, shifting her weight from one foot to another, biting on her lip. 'It's for you,' she says. 'But I'm only giving it to you after you're done working.'

Silco holds his emotions in a tight grip, refusing to show how easily she hooked him and how badly he fell for that one. He tries to convince himself he'd been approaching his limit anyway as he closes his ledger shut and brushes paperwork to the side.

'Fine. I'm done. Who is it from?' he asks, tapping the desk lightly to indicate she should set the box down.

'Ah, er... from me,' Vi says.

Silco looks up at her, startled, but her eyes are fixed on the knot she's undoing, studiously avoiding his gaze. The fabric reveals a flat wooden box with brass corners and filigree clasps. Silco brings it closer. He immediately guesses at the content, but is still surprised at the sight of the neat rows of cigars within.

'For me?' he asks again, too perplexed to accept the gift for what it is.

Vi nods silently. She's leaning against the desk, lips pursed, her usual cocksure attitude replaced by bashful nervousness the likes of which Silco has never suspected her to be capable of.

With delicate fingers he lifts one of the cigars and brings it up to his nose. He closes his good eye as he inhales. It's lifeleaf, for sure, but there are scents mixed in he's never sampled before, and he's tried a lot of different smokes over the years. Back in the day, when Vander and him had been busy establishing the Lanes, it hadn't been uncommon for merchants to tip them in smoke. It wasn't just good for your lungs, it was also a status symbol. Still is. Not everyone can afford the good stuff.

And now that, Silco thinks as he twirls the cigar between his fingers, that's some good stuff, alright.

'It's a new type,' Vi explains, a sudden hurry in her words. 'Lifeleaf cut with serpentleaf and, er—woodlace? I think the guy called them "Mentuat"?'

'Ah, the old Shuriman for breath.'

'How do you know that?'

'I read books,' he says, tilting his head towards the small bookshelf full of all the dry tomes that had impressed Vi so little when she'd gone through them. He turns his attention to her. 'You got these from Renni's cultivair? How much did that cost me?'

Vi shakes her head. 'It didn't cost you anything, I got them with my own money.'

Maybe catching the meaning behind his amused smirk, she shakes her head again, knuckles rasping on the desk.

'No. My money, my time,' she insists. 'I talked to Renni this morning and did a quick job for her. She needed someone spooked.'

Silco gapes at her, properly stunned now. 'And... she paid you...'

'In cigars, yeah, that was the deal. But I picked them?' she notes, a touch defensive, like the way she went about obtaining them makes the gesture any less valuable.

He waits for a moment, half expecting this gift to come with an explanation, or even demands, but she just looks at him in silence, diffident, waiting for his reaction.

'I—'

The swell of emotion takes him by surprise. For a moment he doesn't know what to say, or how to say it. If this were Powder all he'd have to do is open his arms for her to dive in. Vi though... Silco gambles and reaches out, fingers brushing the back of her hand.

'Thank you, Vi.'

She doesn't shy away, on the contrary. She turns her hand over, squeezes his fingers.

It's an odd shake, awkward, hasty, leaving the both of them flustered by such an unusual display of affection as they retreat from it.

Silco keeps a straight face, his smile small, not pulling on his scars too much, but in his chest a warm feeling spreads. A private sense of victory—something akin to the satisfaction of a young boy, finally getting to pat the head of a feral cat fed for long weeks.

That's what Vi seemed like, for the longest time: a stray, or more like a reluctant guest—looking longingly at the door, coming and going and wishing they had some other place to stay, some other place they could call home. Someone who doesn't claim a chair, doesn't hang their coat, who you're never sure will even be there in the morning.

Silco had been relieved, honestly, when the girl had trashed Marcus' place and returned to hide in the rafters of his office with her sister, more curious of his reaction than afraid of it. It was her first blatant sign of trust.

Still, he's not sure how they've gotten this far without him seeing it coming.

Vi shakes herself, brushing her pink hair back with both hands. 'I was wondering as well, about that talk,' she says. 'Do you remember?'

'Ah,' Silco twirls the cigar between expert fingers. 'Is this later?'

She shrugs. 'Technically, right? I figured I'd wait until you're better.'

'How considerate,' he remarks wryly. He fumbles through a drawer until he tracks down his guillotine cutter. 'What do you want to know?'

'Should we go for a walk?' Vi asks, nodding towards the door.

Silco shakes his head. 'No, not this time. Whatever you want to know, I would rather not speak it outside these walls.'

She shrugs and goes to sit on the couch. She gives him a silent look, a little tap of the cushion next to her. Silco grunts, grabbing his lighter and making his way over.

'Don't get used to bossing me around,' he says in a low growl as he settles down next to her.

Vi smiles, amused, and no frown comes down to dissipate her self-satisfaction. 'I'll try.'

Silco lights his cigar and takes a curious first draw, long and slow. It has a rich taste, full bodied and woody, with notes of hickory and oak under the familiar tang of lifeleaf and the more sour serpentleaf. The finish is short and sharp, reminiscent of mako nuts.

'Amazing,' he says, genuinely impressed. He hands the cigar to Vi. 'Try it.'

The girl makes a face. 'I'm not sure about them.'

'Cigars?'

'Smoke.'

Silco frowns, then grins. 'Don't mistake this for the crap Vander smoked in your face for years. It's excellent, and it's good for you.'

Vi gives him a resigned look as she takes the cigar from him and gives it a tentative draw. She lets the smoke out a little too soon, but to her credit she doesn't cough or try to breathe any of it in.

She gives him a surprised look as she hands the cigar back. 'Huh, I wasn't... I don't know, I wasn't expecting it to be this... alright?'

Silco keeps his comments to himself, but he finds it hilarious that the girl gifted him a whole box of quality cigars without truly appreciating the value of her gift. Not that it changes the impact of the gesture alone.

He serves them water and squares himself comfortably on the other end of the couch, facing Vi.

'Ask your questions then,' he tells her, resigned. This is as good as this conversation gets, he figures.

Chapter Text

Vi folds her legs under her onto the couch, turning to face Silco, leaning forward. She seems honestly curious as she asks, 'So, how did you get the Last Drop?'

'I told you, it was given to me,' Silco says. He tries to leave it at that, but again Vi hits him with that look of disgusted disappointment... He grunts, looking away. 'What else can I say? I simply inherited it from Kory after he died.'

'But how did you even know him? He was a famous Noxian bounty hunter! Why do you never mention him?'

Silco laughs, rueful. 'He was a barman, Vi. And then a leader. He helped us establish the Lanes, helped us fight back the enforcers. And then he died. There's no glory, no great tales of adventure I could share about him. Nothing as exciting as what Vander might have shared about himself.'

'Vander didn't like talking about the past,' Vi says, her frustration growing. 'I understand! But I just... I want to know. Every time I tried to bring it up, he would shut the conversation down. He never even mentioned you, and now that he's dead, everyone suddenly feels so free to say how you two were so close, it's...' She waves her hand, as if trying to dispel the angry words she was about to speak.

Silco sighs, sinking deeper into the couch. 'I'll tell you. You might not like it, but I'll tell you what you want to know.'

'So explain how you and Vander met. How you got the Drop. Why did he take it from you?'

'Those are very different stories,' he warns. He promptly raises his hand to stop her protest. 'I'll tell it chronologically.'

He starts with his first proper meeting with Vander, after an abridged description of their encounter during the Red Pilt massacre.

'It was a happenstance. I saw him run by. Recognised him. I thought he needed help, he had three goons after him. By the time I caught up to them, two were on the ground and Vander was stabbing the third to death.' Vi doesn't flinch, but Silco can already tell she's not going to like what she's going to hear, before the end. 'I introduced myself, explained I owed him a drink, at least, for saving my life. I brought him back to the Last Drop. It wasn't the place you knew, but it was still a hub. Kory was helping my father—Ahika, my adoptive father—organise a mass unionising movement.'

Silco takes another long pull of the cigar, relishing the rush it gives him. Something to distract him from the quagmire of the past.

'It's a boring story,' he says, looking up at the ceiling. 'Two young boys, wanting to help the adults as they fought against the system. Well, it wasn't just us. Vander brought Benzo in. I was already friends with Talia and Tushka. Others joined, Yuri, Minty, Mek. Selene and Erik, your parents...' he waves a dismissive hand. 'It was a team effort. We were all very close, brothers and sisters against our oppressors. Most of them are dead now of course, many before you were even born. With our help, my father freed the mines. He's the one who signed the treaty that moved the refineries down to the Pilt.'

And many, many more improvements whose consequences, so many years later, are so intricate and widespread that Silco can barely explain them. The Undercity of his youth was a slave pit in all but name, a sewer for Piltover's progress machine. It had used people like coal, burnt them up and spat out their broken husks. He can't imagine what the Undercity would have gone on to look like, without the decade long war on Piltover that Ahika had led.

He's the man who taught Silco how to dream and showed him what a free nation of Zaun would be like. Could be like, if they worked hard enough to achieve it.

'All our hard won victories came with a hefty price,' Silco continues, stabbing the air with his cigar. 'But Vander and I decided that if business could be so good down here, then there was no reason not to make it work for us too, us first. Zaunites.'

'The Lanes,' Vi says, nodding. 'You created them together? I used to think it was just Vander.'

'Yes, well, the victor writes history, doesn't he? It was Vander and I, with Benzo and Talia. We built our own network. There's more to the Lanes than meets the eye too, it's a well oiled machine that keeps Zaunite money in Zaunite pockets. It helped rally people to our cause.'

Silco stares back up at the ceiling, blowing smoke into a fat ring.

Everything, always going full circle. All his accomplishments, like rings of smoke.

'I thought people believed in the cause. Our dream. I did.'

'What dream?' Vi asks. 'The nation of Zaun?'

'Is there anything else worth dreaming of?' Silco asks her tartly. 'Of course, Zaun. When my father spoke of it... It was like a fire lit in his eyes. People would lean in closer, warm themselves up to those flames. People couldn't get enough of it. The Nation of Zaun... it felt like it was within our grasp. Something we could achieve together. I wrote pamphlets for it. Vander, he—'

No, he, Silco, he had believed in it, and believed Vander did, too. In the end however, he has no proof Vander ever truly shared that dream, no matter what sweet nonsense he whispered to him over their pillow. No matter what gilded futures he painted in the hollow of his jaw, between kisses.

Maybe it had all been lies. Or maybe some people can stop believing, just like that. Silco will never know which it was.

'I thought Vander believed.'

Vi bites on her lip and gives him a look he can't quite decipher. 'He must have,' she says, speaking carefully. 'That's why he led the attack on the bridge, isn't it?'

'I don't think so,' Silco says, equally careful. 'You're too young to know, but something happened back then—'

'What?'

'Just, standard, I suppose. An enforcer killed a child. I wasn't in the city at the time, I don't remember the details, but a mob formed and the enforcer was killed. Vander coasted on it.'

'Did he? I... don't remember much,' Vi says, gaze distant. 'From that time.'

It'd been months of unrest, then she'd lost her parents, moved in with Vander... so no wonder. Silco grunts and offers her the cigar. She accepts it without protest this time and does a better job of keeping the smoke in.

'I'm sure he hated Piltover enough to lead that uprising, but if he truly believed, he wouldn't have made that deal with Grayson. Anyway... eventually my father died.' Silco speaks the words flatly, taking the cigar back from Vi. 'I'd rather not go into details, if you don't mind. He meant a lot to me. To many of us. Suddenly I was leading the movement with Vander. Over time it had gone from unionising to obtaining our independence and the creation of the Lanes. Even chembarons were supporting us. Nothing like the ones of today, mind you. Everything was... lesser, back then. Except for gangs, I suppose.'

'You're working hard to change that,' Vi notes with wry amusement.

Silco harrumphs. He expects Vi to broach the topic of gangs again, but she only scoots closer, nodding for him to continue.

'That's when I moved into the Drop,' he tells her, rasping his knuckles on the wall next to them. 'My parents were both dead. I could have stayed in our rooms in the Blacks Lanes, but Kory offered.'

'Wow. So you lived together with Kory?'

There's a touch of awe in her voice still, despite his attempt at tempering her expectations.

'Yes. For a little less than a year.' Another draft of the cigar, to soothe his nerves. 'You have to understand, Vander was killing enforcers. A lot. It was kill on sight. We ambushed them, particularly patrols. The rule was to leave no enforcer alive to report. That way they couldn't pin anything on someone in particular.'

'You and Vander?' Vi asks, frowning.

'And others. But Vander was always keen for it. And good at it. If someone needed their head bashed in, it was usually Vander's job.' He waves at himself to make his point. He doesn't exactly have the physique of a head-basher. 'It worked for a long time. People were united, no one was going to rat us out. Enforcers started being afraid of coming down into the trench. Patrol in the lower levels was becoming a death sentence.'

Vi grimaces. 'I can't imagine the Council let that happen?'

'No. Eventually some well connected lieutenant died, and since they couldn't pin his death on anyone in particular, they decided it was time to crack down on all of us and set up a blockade.'

Vi blinks, surprised. 'On the bridge?' she asks. 'It... it all sounds a lot like last time.'

Silco gives the girl a grim smile. 'It does, doesn't it? History has this way of repeating itself. Trust me, if I have my way, the next blockade will be the final one.'

'So, what happened?'

Many things, all at once, everywhere. Silco had had so little control over the madness of those days. The Lanes had still been a fledgling creation, people had not looked to them for permission before lashing back against Piltover. But in the middle of the chaos, one crucial thing had happened: mass arrests.

'Kory was captured and sent to Stillwater,' Silco says. 'Talia died. Things started slipping from our control. The Lanes were working and the enforcers staying out of the Undercity, but commerce was completely strangled. The blockade was doing its job. We already had nothing... Then they sent Kory back to us.' He shudders. 'In two separate body bags.'

Vi's eyebrows shoot up, her mouth opening in a silent oh shape, shock written all over her face. 'That's how he died? I heard—'

'Many exciting stories, I'm sure.' Silco chuckles darkly. 'I'm trying to tell you, reality is much more boring. More brutal.' He shrugs, waves the cigar in the air between them. 'Anyhow, that's how I inherited the Last Drop. I simply was seen as Kory's successor, no one tried to fight me for it. I mean, Vander was— Vander lived with me, I don't think anyone was brave enough to try.'

Vi stares at him in silence for a moment before frowning. She taps his knee. 'What are you doing? You're not ending this story here are you?'

'I answered your question.'

She rolls her eyes. 'Come on, Silco, what happened next?'

'What do you think? People started wanting out. Vander and I, we were... respected. We ran the show in the Lanes but we didn't have the panache of Kory or Ahika. We were very young, we didn't have decades of good graces and reputation to capitalise on. Chembarons were fighting gangs, and gangs were targeting anyone trying to run an honest business. Meanwhile the Council was starving us out.'

'So? How did you break the blockade?'

'We didn't,' Silco bites out. He takes a drag of the dwindling cigar to wash out the sour taste of the words he's about to speak. 'The sheriff did. He was a huge Vastaya called Amekon. Always figured him to be a stone cold idiot. He kept pushing his enforcers down into the Undercity for us to attack...'

'But he wasn't?' Vi asks, frowning. 'Stupid, I mean?'

'Well, that's a matter of points of view. I still think he played into our hands. But he also fought for us against the Council. Apparently he argued against the blockade every day and threatened to quit over it. I assume the Council got tired of him and finally lifted it.'

'Oh. So... Do you think he kept sending people to try and police the Lanes? Like some do-gooder enforcer?'

Silco scoffs. 'I don't like thinking about him at all. He was in charge when Kory was taken, as well as when he was returned. I don't care what Amekon thought he was doing. All I know is that he learned his lesson, and from then on enforcers became a rare sight and didn't feel so free to kill or maim on a whim. Vander suggested we off him anyway.'

'Did he? Did he kill him?'

'No, I made him see reason. The man had his uses. He was predictable.'

Again he lets silence settle between them and Vi nudges him. 'Then?'

Then, the betrayal. Then, the next great cornerstone of his life.

'Nothing,' he says at last, the word escaping him like a sigh. 'We went back to focusing on the Lanes. I was trying to hold everyone together. Yes, there was suffering. But we were so close! Industry had ground to a halt, but Topsiders had been haemorrhaging money as we went hungry. The breaking point was near. We could make our dream come true. And Vander—'

He swallows against the lump in his throat. Vi leans closer, expression intense, grip tight over his knee.

'What about Vander?'

'He was violent.'

'I know that.'

'And impulsive.'

She doesn't say anything then. The Vander she knew, Silco guesses, had mellowed enough to hold his temper and make careful decisions.

'He had a propensity for rages,' he continues. 'He'd just see red. People were very careful around him. You watch a man fly across a street once, you remember that. But Vander and I— We...'

'You were... together, right?' Vi asks, hesitant. 'I kind of gathered that. I mean—talking to Sevika, and then you're always, you know, saying you loved him and all that...'

She looks so embarrassed, Silco has to repress a smile. 'That's right. Do you have any questions about that?'

'I— uhm... Did he...?'

It's clear she has questions, but her embarrassment seems even greater than Silco's reluctance.

'Vander courted me, if that's what you're asking. Don't ask me why, he was the one with the "devilish charm". We were already inseparable.' He shrugs. 'He meant everything to me. Falling for him wasn't exactly difficult.'

Vi shuffles, drawing back from him, her hand going up to twirl a lock of pink hair. 'I don't get it. How long were you together?'

'Six years.'

It almost doesn't hurt to say it, but Vi's confusion is a special kind of painful. She brushes her hand through her hair, a little shaky, making a mess of it.

'But... Weren't you close then? I mean, six years?'

Silco isn't about to explain how close. The tenderness, the slow back and forth, the getting to know each other, finding the time to breath and relaxes into each other's presence.

How their camaraderie had morphed into friendship and then something else. How they always could be themselves, with each other, and not the person they were known for, on the streets.

How much he'd let himself believe—how Vander's eyes had sparkled as he listened to him rave about his visions of the future. Their future.

All the vows and soft spoken promises.

All the painstakingly built trust, like a dainty lace, woven over years, till it was the prettiest thing Silco ever owned. His trust for Vander. The belief he'd always have his back. Silco's love for him, that he naively thought would always be returned.

He'd been soft. He'd dreamt too loftily, shared too freely. They'd gone through so much together, after all, and that lace of trust and love had been forged in the fires of jealousy, hunger and violence—a lattice of purest steel, tempered by many challenges.

Now, looking back through the haze of his life, Silco thinks he misses that feeling more than Vander himself. That trust, the emotions it elicited, those hadn't betrayed him—and for as long as it lasted, it had been beautiful.

'Yes, we were close,' is all he says. 'As close as you can imagine.'

'But— Silco. What happened? Vander—the Vander I know, he wouldn't...' Vi interrupts herself, sighs, and manages to look even more miserable. 'I get it, maybe the Vander I knew wouldn't have drowned his loved one, maybe the Hound would but... I just don't understand.'

'Different person, different times. The Hound's impulses, acting on Vander's rage.' He's the one who reaches out to Vi now, mirroring her pat to the knee. 'What he did to me—he'd never even dream of doing to you. Any of you. I'm certain.'

'But drowning you? What for?'

'Power.'

'What?'

'I've told you the story before. Power doesn't come to those—'

'Yeah, yeah,' she cuts him off. 'It comes to those who would do anyth—' she pales, suddenly catching his meaning. 'No.'

'Yes. Vander taught me that lesson.'

Vi looks like she's about ready to dismiss everything he's ever said to her, and he leans in closer, suddenly afraid. He doesn't want to lose her. Not like this, not after all this progress.

'Vi. He wasn't the man you knew. He wasn't even the man I thought he was, and I shared his life for a decade, and most of it we were— Look...'

He sighs, resigned, and picks the story back up where he left it, speaking in a slow, careful voice. Trying to make sense of the nonsensical.

'After the blockade, when we'd gotten the Undercity back on its feet, we... we needed to make choices. Hard ones. Before things slipped away from us. We had the people's respect but that only goes so far, when people are hungry. I wanted us to gather for a big push. Frighten the Council. Show them that even after months of their torture, we still had it in us. That we wouldn't be cowed so easily. Vander... He wanted us to give up, fall back. Focus on the Lanes instead. He was being vague, talking of regrouping and striking again, later.'

The argument had made sense, but Silco had been scared. If Piltover could take men—monuments, really—like Ahika and Kory, and break them like mere dolls, what would they do to them? The time had felt right. He'd insisted. He'd expected to be listened to. Followed.

He'd been their leader. Vander had been the charm and the muscles and the rage. Benzo was the fence, the business man. Mek, as always, was the word-on-the-streets. Talia was dead, and Sevika was just angry and hurt. They all were. But always Silco was the dreamer and the planner, the one who coaxed people immune to Vander's charisma. They discussed things, but mostly it was Silco who decided on their next move.

On that day Vander had other ideas, it seemed, and was less inclined to back down.

'We argued,' Silco says. 'We were walking down the docks, the two of us, coming back from a meeting that had gone... poorly.'

Silco had stabbed a man in the throat and Vander had punched a couple others unconscious—if not worse, Silco had never found out. They had made their point and things hadn't escalated further, but they'd been buzzing with nervous energy. The walk back home, under the miserable acid rain, had been a terrible time to start a quarrel.

Vi looks at him with big eyes, locked on to his lips, hanging to his every word. Her features are twisted by a foreboding grimace.

'I was furious. He sounded like... Like Zaun wasn't worth fighting for. Like we could stand five more years of their toxic runoff just to try again from the beginning. He sounded like he was settling for scraps.' He sighs, slumping back against the couch. 'I told him that.'

More precisely, he'd asked if he was maybe sucking on some fat Piltie tit while the rest of them were starving. He'd made an effort to make it hurt. He'd been young and stupid and good with words and he'd never ever been on the receiving end of Vander's violence. Never thought he would be. Never learnt to fear him.

He takes a last angry draft of the cigar, finishing it off and crushing the stub in the ashtray Powder gifted him, with its pink and blue scribbles. He blows his smoke like it can take away with it the lingering sting of that old betrayal.

'Next thing I know I'm flying. Then I'm in the water, confused, unable to feel half my face.' His fingers creep up to his scared cheek with a will of their own, tracing the old hurt. 'He jumped after me and I could tell, from his expression—'

Cold fantom fingers cramp around his throat. Shivers run down his spine and his hands grow clammy. He rubs his palms against his knees. He's never said these words and he doesn't want to.

Vander betrayed me is an easy sentence, well rounded. It smacks of copper and ash and he's used to the taste of it.

The details—the toxins eating through his nerves, the panicked realisation that his death was flowing into his lungs, the inexorable weight of Vander's hand clamping back on his shoulder when he thought he'd freed himself—voicing those feels like exposing more of himself than should ever see the light.

But Vi is listening, silent, serious. They're knee to knee and lost in his past together.

'I knew it. That look on his face. Maybe you know the one I mean.'

She shakes her head. 'I don't think so.'

He smiles despite himself. 'That's good. Because it stays with you, and not in a nice way.'

'So you ran?' she asks.

'For sure. As far away from the quay as I could. Vander was born in the Entresol. I figured he didn't know how to swim, so I'd be safe if I could make it out of the shallows.'

A beat of silence—Vi's gaze growing sadder. 'But you didn't make it,' she murmurs.

Silco waves a hand, encompassing the whole of him, the whole of the last twenty years.

'He—'

He'd caught him by the hair. The long hair he loved so much, that Silco had already had to shorten, after it had gotten damaged by chemicals. Vander had bitched and moaned as he trimmed it, perched like a gargoyle on the edge of the bed, holding the mirror like being complicit in this bit of hairdressing was a personal punishment.

He'd dunked him under water, iron fingers wrapping around his neck.

'He tried to drown you,' Vi says, 'It's okay. You don't have to explain again, I know. I get the idea.'

Silco closes his good eye, craving a darkness Vander and Singed conspired to deny him.

'I hated him for what he did to me.'

Taking that precious lattice of trust, destroying it in the grip of an inexorable fist—effortlessly, as if it were made out of nothing but smoke—leaving Silco a shattered mess, a one eyed monster painstakingly shedding its old skin and trying to grow comfortable in the new one.

'I made my way to Singed.' He taps the left side of his face to the scars the makeup barely conceals, and the eye nothing can ever fix. 'It took him months to get me out of danger and back on my feet. By then Vander had overtaken the Drop. Why, you ask?' Silco smiles, thin and cold. 'Like I said, it was our place, our seat of power. Now it was his alone and the Lanes followed him.'

'And no one spoke your name...' Vi murmurs, eyes downcast. 'Sevika said... She said she didn't know you were even alive?'

'I don't think he spread any rumours, but they spread themselves. He made the Lanes impossible for me to live in.' Despite his best intentions to keep his animosity to a minimum for Vi's sake, bitterness creeps into his words. 'I couldn't even go to Jericho's without scouting out the whole market. Some shopkeepers would refuse me service, out of fear of crossing Vander. Between him, and the eye, the rumours... I was made into a pariah. Oh, I hated him for a long time, but I respected him as well.'

Vi cocks her head, visibly confused, but doesn't interrupt him.

'It was such an insane action, but he meant it. He owned it. The lesson it taught me... There's monsters inside all of us, Vi, and I wasn't facing mine. I wasn't using it. But Vander—hah!' He laughs. Not out of amusement, but some indescribable emotion—purple and cold and earnest. 'Vander embraced his monster. He harnessed it. And in the end, no matter what it cost us, he got what he wanted. He showed me that the only way to defeat a superior enemy is to stop at nothing. To become what they fear.'

He huffs, and on impulse reaches out to squeeze her hand. She lets him. She squeezes back, jerking her chin for him to go on.

'I let a weak man die, that day, in the Pilt. The one who was reborn could respect Vander, despite the hate, could learn his lessons on ruthlessness. Sacrificing the Drop was a small thing. I came from nothing, and losing Vander was—'

Much worse than any building.

'I remade myself, my dream never faltered. I started again, with Mek and a handful of followers.'

Vi carefully takes her hand back and folds it into her lap.

'Do you remember, a while ago, we were eating at Jericho's, and you said you tried to reach out to them? Vander and Benzo?'

Silco nods. She'd been paying attention. 'I sent a tube. Pneumatic, sealed. All proper, with an official runner. Return address at the station in the private boxes.'

Vi grunts. 'Right. And you never heard back from them?'

'I don't even know if Vander even read it.'

Vi looks pained at this conclusion. 'So he never got back in touch with you.'

'No.'

To be fair, he'd been out of Zaun for many years, on and off, preparing a much longer con, but he'd rather not get into the details of that with Vi now. His one remaining eyelid is already starting to weigh down.

'Could you have missed it?' Vi insists, like she's trying to bring Vander and him back together, somehow.

'Vi, I had my people keeping an eye on him. Even on you. If he tried to find me, he did it without me, or anyone else noticing.'

'I just—'

'He apologised,' Silco concedes. 'At the cannery. Said he never forgave himself for what he did.'

He smiles wryly, remembering the hot flash of disappointment at hearing the words he'd craved so badly, in the early weeks after the betrayal, while his left eye cried blood and pus. But he doesn't share that sentiment with Vi. He wants her to have this. This little part of Vander who felt sorry, who believed he'd grown to be a better man, no matter how preposterous Silco might find the idea.

She relaxes visibly, like it's exactly what she needed to hear. A reassurance that her Vander wasn't a sham or an illusion. Silco forces himself to speak, because this is what he wants—a happier Vi, at peace with Vander, if it can make her be at peace with him, too.

'He did it for you, you know. The peace with Grayson. He never said it but... I know it's what really drove him.' Made him weak and soft, caged his monster, because he saw no other way. A narrow-minded beast of a man, that was the Vander he should have known. 'It's what he wanted. He wanted to protect you.'

She looks at him, and there's a little of Powder in her owlish gaze, large eyes shining with repressed tears. Piercing blue.

'And you,' she asks, 'what do you want?'

She's asked him this question before, but this time it's different. It puts him next to Vander. It's a question about the future, about what he'll do for them, how far he'll go.

Silco leans forward, squinting to try and make Vi come into full focus. He takes her hand again, in both of his, and marvels still, as she allows it.

'I will destroy the Council,' he says. 'I will tear them down, if it's what it takes to make them let go. I will create a Zaun where you'll be safe from them, able to shape your own future without a gilded boot pressed on your throat! I'm doing this for all of us, Vi. The sons and daughters of Zaun, and you, and Powder, my daughters. I will protect you, not by keeping Piltover's monsters tame, but by removing them entirely.'

He feels the heat climb in him, as it always does when he discusses this future he sees so clearly.

'I will separate us from Piltover's parasitic body. I'll bite the hand that holds us down, make them too afraid to ever try to get a hold of us again. And you... You'll shape our new nation. You're the future of Zaun. You'll be free.'

Chapter Text

'I still find it crazy you have any idea what you're doing.'

Powder laughs, that nasty little gurgle she does when she's mocking someone. 'You know, this shit's so simple I think even you could learn to do it.'

Sevika grunts at the jab but doesn't move. She can't, really, since Powder has her left arm in a literal bench vice. Her mechanical hand lays over her workspace, splayed open, its components scattered, wires spooling out and sparks flying as Powder works away.

'Why don't you teach me then, if it's easy?' Sevika asks, and though she makes it sound flippant, she's curious to hear what the girl will answer.

Sevika learnt to do basic maintenance on the original prosthetic Silco got her, but with each repair and replacement, the thing's gotten increasingly complex. She can already tell at a glance that she won't know how to replace the tiny servos Powder is connecting to the base of her fingers. She doesn't even have the appropriate tools. It doesn't sit well with her, the way her arm is becoming a foreign object, something only others can understand and fix for her.

Powder unsticks her nose from her magnifying lens and gives her a scrutinising look.

'What?' Sevika prods. 'Not smart enough to explain it?'

Powder arches a dark eyebrow, a smile tugging at her lips. 'You know you can just ask, right? You can even say "please", I hear it increases your chances of—'

'Yeah yeah, cut the crap. I need to understand how my own hand works.'

Powder shrugs and turns back to the lens. 'Sure. Just get some spares from Dessur, I'll show you how to install them next time you wreck it. We can work on the blueprints together, you know. You only got to ask.'

Sevika harrumphs. That was way too easy. Not that she expected Powder to put up a fight, but half of the girl's personality revolves around being contrarian for the sake of drama. That, and stressing people out with glitter bombs, which is her idea of fun.

Sevika lets her work in silence. The chasm is like a dark and quiet sea around their small island of warm chemlight. Powder's doodles, bright neon colours brought to life by secret blacklights, crowd them like monsters of the deep. Beyond, down the blades of the repurposed propeller fan, is an ever increasing amount of knick knacks and cobbled furniture. There's even a couch that Powder found on the streets and bullied Mek into carrying down here, now barely visible under piles of books and rolls of fabric.

The other side of the central shaft, which serves as a circular workbench, is Vi's side. It has a framed picture of Vander and his four kids, the gauntlets Powder made for her, and an old sewing machine. The industrial type. Sevika has no idea where and how Vi found it. It was just there one time when she came to fetch Powder.

'I wish you wouldn't break it so often.'

Sevika turns her attention back to the girl. 'What was that?'

'I said,' Powder repeats, loud and condescendingly slow, 'that you sure get your ass—and arm—beaten a lot.'

Sevika snatches one of Powder's long blue braids with her free hand, intent on giving it a painful tug, when a sudden electric jolt rushes through her shoulder, up her neck and down her side, making her gasp and drop the braid.

'Tsk, tsk. Behave yourself, Ogre.'

Sevika laughs shakily. 'Did you just... You did. You little shit.'

Powder twirls a tool between her fingers, a devious smile stretching over sharp teeth. 'Want more zap?'

Sevika shows her open hand, palm out. 'I'm fine.' Her skin is tingling along her spine.

Powder hums, satisfied, and turns her attention back to her work. 'You should still stop getting stabbed,' she says.

'You're still going on about that?' Sevika groans.

For weeks Powder has been giving her a hard time for coming back from an impromptu fight with a damaged plate in her mechanical arm. It was nothing she couldn't fix herself and Powder had not helped at all, hovering over her while she worked, badgering her to hear the story. It was such a non issue, and even more so now, yet Powder keeps nagging her about it.

'It was so lame!' she exclaims, waving her arms around and ramping up the dramatics.

Sevika scoffs. 'Excuse me that single-handedly wiping the floor with six men was lame because I got scratched.'

'You got stabbed, like a lame, lame ogre.'

'It's almost like you're worried about me,' Sevika says sweetly, seeing an opportunity to rile her up.

Sure enough she frowns at her, miffed. 'I'm not.'

'Almost like you care...' Sevika croons.

'I don't!'

'Of course you do, and I'm glad for it! Giving me all that top notch servicing, going extra, just for me! How sweet.'

'You're a bleeding ass!' Powder exclaims.

'You kiss Silco with that mouth?'

Powder makes a face Sevika wishes she could take a photograph of. It'd make a fine memento.

'I don't like you,' Powder declares, not managing to summon a better comeback despite some furious squinting and gnashing of teeth.

'Yes, you do. I don't know why, but it's nice.'

Sevika isn't even lying.

Back when she was hanging around Vander's Last Drop, Powder had been a non-entity for her. Vi at least shared her passion for punching things. Powder had just been this mousy child, always at her sister's heels like a clingy shadow, easily dismissed.

Not ten months ago, Sevika was still daydreaming of Silco seeing reason and dumping her into a foundling house. It's baffling, how much the girl has grown on her since. She's not a little shadow any more, but the apple of Silco's eyes, one of their best chemtechs, and a dedicated student of hers.

Not that she'll tell her any of that... Silco's doting spoils her enough already.

'Maybe it's a disease,' Powder says drolly, turning back to Sevika's hand. 'Sevikaitis. Or maybe you're a parasite.'

'If anyone is latching onto anyone else, it's definitely you.'

Powder cackles, delighted. 'The greater Jinx worm! With hook teeth and poison and—oh!' She turns back to Sevika with a hopeful look. 'You checked my new design? What do you think about the poison darts idea?'

'I think it's not my style. Also, I don't want to handle poison darts every night so I don't shoot myself in my sleep. Sounds like a pain.'

'But you would get range!' Jinx insists.

'I'm a brawler. I'm all about closing range.'

'Urgh! And getting stabbed!'

'Give it a rest, kid. Unlike you, I can punch.'

Powder grumbles and starts ranting about all the different augments she could do to turn Sevika's arm into a super-weapon, each more frivolous than the next. Her voice grows louder, echoing in the crevice's walls all around them, a chorus of excited Powders slaying hypothetical enemies.

'But you need the range, it's so important! I've got this book on magnetohydrodynamics, that's all about plasma, and with a plasma blade you could—'

'Look kid, daydreaming is fine,' Sevika cuts her off, a smile tugging at her lips, 'but Silco's never letting you get your hands on half the stuff you're talking about. Using chemylon to power an engine? I don't want that in my arm, and Silco won't let you even look at a barrel of the stuff from across the city.'

'But...! It's such an easy engine to craft! And it's the only compound powerful enough for it!'

'You'd need a whole lab! Even our best filter masks wouldn't cut it. Why don't you use something else to power your plasma-blade-whatever engine?'

'Nothing's powerful enough,' Powder whines.

'Not even shimmer?'

'You'd be overheating within...' she rolls her eyes up into her skull, lips moving as she counts. 'Just under four minutes.'

'I could kill half the enforcers in Piltover in under four minutes with the weapon you're describing.'

'Yeah, but—'

'Jinx,' Sevika interupts her again. She leans forward and pats her shoulder. She's minuscule under her hand, and Sevika still struggles with the idea that she knows what she's doing, or talking of doing. 'I'm glad you're... doing this. Fixing my arm and all that. You're being... very helpful.' It's painful how brightly the kid's eyes light up at the words. 'All I want next is for you to show me how to do my own fixes, alright?'

Powder squirms on her seat, twirling her tool between nervous fingers and looking like she can't decide if there's a compliment in there she should take or if Sevika's trying to put her down.

She sighs and presses her nose back to her magnifying lens. 'I will,' she says, serious. 'I'll show you.'

She finishes her work in silence, bobbing her head to some inner tune she doesn't care to share. When she's done, she releases Sevika's arm from the vice and shouts a happy, 'Tadah!'

'Can I connect it back?' Sevika asks, cautious.

'Yes. You're going to need to do exercises to recalibrate. You haven't been using your fingers properly for a whole year.'

Powder's grin has an edge. She knows whose fault that is, but she's not apologising. This hand, all the new augments, it's how Powder tries to make it up to her. Or so Sevika thinks. Why else would Powder bother?

Sevika flips the switch that connects the nerve endings of her stump to the wires of her prosthetic. There's no burst of pain this time, and no feeling of wrongness. She's gotten used to it. When she tries to move her hand, she isn't constricted, the way she's felt for the past year. Her fingers curl, one after the other. With some effort, she extends her middle finger. A burst of giddy laughter escapes her. She's been wanting this so badly, and here it finally is! She spreads her fingers sideways, and though the metal creaks in protest, she gets them to move.

'Good,' she says, meaning awesome.

Powder's smiling at her, lapping up her approval, all while undoing her braids, fingers combing through her long blue hair. It comes down to her hips already, and still she won't cut it.

Sevika frowns. 'What are you doing?'

'Testing your new abilities,' Powder says. 'Here, rebraid it for me.'

She shakes her head, making it curtain in waves over her shoulders. Sevika sighs and gets up, standing behind her. She gathers up her hair, and with some effort, curls her fingers to partition it.

'I'm only making one braid,' she warns.

'I can live with it.'

It comes easily. The movements are slow, but lifelike. Sevika's glad to be at Powder's back. She wouldn't want her to see the expression she knows is stretching across her face as the braid takes shape between her fingers, neat and tidy, her mechanical fingers working individually without problem. As they should.

As they used to.

Chapter Text

Sevika's got a spring in her step as she returns to the Last Drop. Yes, she's feeling pretty beat, and yes, spending time latched on to Powder's workbench is always mentally taxing, but everything's going according to plan with her offensive, she's managed to get Vi the alone time with Silco she needed. That should be the perfect opportunity for those two idiots to get over themselves, and now she's got a brand new hand, almost better than her old one.

A great day, overall. She happily slaps Dustin's empty head on her way through the bar, waving to friends and taking the steps to the office two by two.

She doesn't hear the shouting until she's nearly there, the voices muffled by the loud music of the club below. She rushes to the door, worry flashing through her before she recognises Vi's voice. Even then, her mind jumps to unpleasant conclusions. She'd assumed Silco and her would talk things out. Didn't the cigars help?

'Who's getting murdered in here?' she asks as she steps into the room.

Neither Silco nor Vi so much as glance at her. They're standing in the middle of the office, Silco half leaning against his desk, arms crossed over his chest, while Vi is doing some sort of back and forth on a tight loop, gesticulating wildly as she speaks, her voice a few decibels short of yelling. The cigar box is open on the low table, one of them already gone, its stub in the ashtray. Whatever is going on here, the gift was accepted and opened, so there's that at least.

'—our reputation would just be horrible!' Vi is saying. 'It’s already bad enough!'

'Piltover's opinion doesn't ever matter!' Silco almost-yells right back. 'They'll never give us approval on anything, because then it would have to be followed by some sort of recognition or reward. Stop deluding yourself, it's been centuries, Vi! Centuries of Piltover fucking with us while telling us we're a part of them—are them! That they need us the same way we need them... But we all know that's not how this works.'

'I thought you wanted respect! For all of us!'

'And they won't give it willingly! Piltover doesn't respect our progress. In their eyes, they're the only ones truly capable of it, while we just tinker!'

'Yeah, and they only use us, I know. But if we did this, we'd be bringing something to the table that's just ours! They didn't create it and they don't control it, so they'd have to recognise us for it!'

'It doesn't work like that, child,' Silco bites out bitterly. 'It never does. You're too young to understand—'

'Oh, spare me, grandpa!' Vi exclaims, throwing her hands up over her head. 'Shimmer's new, you can't predict—'

'Of course I can! You have no idea how many of Piltover's "great discoveries" belong to us. To Zaun! You could never guess, because they suck us dry of our ideas and claim everything they want like it belongs to them.'

'You're being dramatic.'

Sevika realises she needn't worry. If they're this happily at each other's throat about politics, then they've definitely gotten over themselves. This is good, actually. They can let some steam out. And excellent for her, too, she thinks, squaring herself on the couch and taking out a cigarette: it has to be the best show she's seen since Vi laid out half of Silco's gang with Vander's old gauntlets.

She lights up, careful not to grin openly. Silco gives her a brief look before turning his attention back to Vi.

'Zaun doesn't write history books,' he says, waving his hand to his bookcase for emphasis. 'Piltover does. They write our history for us, and you'll never find a reference to a Zaunite inventor in there, because they've stolen and appropriated everything we ever achieved and claimed it as theirs. Also, might I remind you that the inventor of shimmer still is Singed, which is nothing but a cute moniker for disgraced scientist Artemius Sindrell. The former partner of Councillor Heimerdinger, no less. A good Piltovan, "crafting the future of Piltover" from his cushy Undercity lab, that's how they'll spin it.'

Vi growls, bunching her fists at her sides. Sevika leans forward, ready to grab her by the scruff of her neck if she gets any funny idea on how to win the argument.

'So what!' she exclaims. 'Silco, we have the opportunity to change everyone's life with this medicinal shimmer. Why don't we? What if Piltover appropriates it? Let them say it's a Piltover thing, what difference would it make for us?'

'What diff—'

Sevika watches as a thick vein juts on Silco's temple and the muscles bunch along his jaw. Wow. She hasn't seen him lose it like this since... Since before Vander's betrayal and his disappearance, actually. A sobering realisation. Vi is pressing all his buttons at once, and it's a testament to Silco's fondness for the girl that she isn't eating the floor right now.

'You're not seeing it. You don't understand them,' he says, hands curling into claws before him, like he could hold Piltover in his grip, break its spine and crush it. 'Vander cursed you all by making them look peaceful and meek, but the moment they realise shimmer's value they will come down from their towers looking for it, they will find ways to synthesise it themselves, then kill anyone involved in its creation and start manufacturing it Upside. Then they will brand it, label it, and sell it by the vial at a price tag no one short of the chembarons will be able to afford! You will have given them total superiority over us and against any future revolt.'

Vi takes a step back then, blanching. Sevika would take pity on her, but Silco's words are the simple, bleak truth. One she clearly needs to hear.

'You'd give enforcers the ability to heal on the go and survive anything we could throw at them. Imagine if they discovered what can be powered by shimmer...' Silco pants, teeth clicking, his mismatched eyes burning. 'Shimmer survives only because Piltovans think it's a drug and our latest brand of depravity. They tolerate it because they think Zaunites getting high to cope with their sorry lives makes us easier to keep under their boot. Escapism over revolt. And we're doing it to ourselves, how fantastic!'

'Yeah okay, I get it,' Vi says, 'but this is a different type of shimmer. Can't we use the drug to cover up the medicine?'

Sevika gets it too. She'd been injected with the stuff after her nerve graft, and it had worked wonders to shorten her recovery. It would be a game changer if it could be sold to Zaunites in that form. She also gets how someone as sanctimonious as Vi would consider it to be superior to the shimmer they currently make and sell and the thing they should be focusing on instead.

The problem of course is that Silco is right on every point and that Vi isn't seeing the bigger picture. Piltover would never let them have anything that could give them an edge.

'Vi, you've got the wrong idea about shimmer,' Sevika cuts in, calm and steady, hoping to diffuse the tension and give Silco time to cool down. 'You're only looking at it as something you hate.'

Same as she does—used to do—with Silco.

Vi blinks at her like she's only just noticing her presence. 'What do you mean?'

Silco goes around his desk and busies himself with a bottle of bourbon. Sevika takes his silence as his blessing for her to go on.

She gives Vi a level look. 'You saw shimmer used against you the way it was first intended to be used against Piltover. I heard about what it did to Vander. I get it. I get why you hate it. But it's not the same any more. And it's not used in the same way.'

Vi stops her pacing long enough to let out a loud, exasperated huff. 'I know you're using it to finance the whole operation and research shimmer-based motors, but—'

'Not just,' Sevika cuts her off. She waves her cigarette around, pointing for Vi to take a seat. She takes a long drag, waiting for the girl to obey before continuing. 'Shimmer ties the chembarons to us.'

Vi rolls her eyes, slumping into the seat. 'Great. Why do we even bother with them anyway? Are we going to collect them all?'

'I thought you were friends with Renni now,' Silco chirps, joining them with three glasses between splayed fingers. He hands Sevika bourbon and Vi water. 'Don't you see the value in having her backing us up?'

'Ha-ha, yes, bestie Renni!' Vi says with mock glee. 'She's a shark and she benefits more from us than the opposite!'

'It looks like it now, but the entire district we're gifting her, the shares into shimmer, it's all a big hook,' Sevika explains mildly. At least no one is screaming any more. 'We want unity, by any means. We don't want anyone biting us in the back when we turn on Piltover.'

'So we bought her off with drug money.'

'No, we didn't buy her,' Silco corrects. 'We addicted her.'

Vi frowns, confused. 'What? To shimmer?'

'No, to wealth. Power.'

Silco sighs. His voice is raspy from all the shouting. Sevika notices the bags under his eyes, the sheen of sweat over his upper lip and his temples, and the slight tremor in his hand as he brings his glass to his lips. She quietly decides she's going to frogmarch him down to his room the moment the conversation is over.

'The whole point of running the Lanes like a business, Vi, is that the people who benefit from it can't really get back to how they used to operate, not if they have a choice,' Silco continues. 'When everyone benefits from a thing, they tend to become loyal to it for their own sake. Shimmer is very profitable. Involving the chembarons in its production makes them both richer and more powerful, but it ties them to me on a short leash. We own the factory. My chemists are crafting it. Singed is as loyal as he can manage. From the moment a chembaron joins our cause, we hold them by the purse strings, if not their good heart.'

'They're already loaded, how can you guarantee they'll stay loyal long term?'

Sevika laughs. 'You don't know rich people. Chembarons, they're like Pilties, just born on the wrong side of the bridge.'

'I really don't get it,' the girl whines. 'Renni's already one of the richest women in Zaun, does shimmer make that much of a difference?'

'It does,' Silco says with a nod, sipping on his bourbon. 'She knows about every coin she gets from associating with us, and she's already done all the mental calculus of where it'll land her in the future. We're an investment she can't do without now. None of them will be able to.'

Vi's grimace slowly morphs into a look of dejection. 'All because they don't know how to manufacture shimmer...'

'Exactly. Also, building the factories, maintaining them, paying the workers, housing the kids to keep them off the streets, it all costs money, logistics... all things they're happy to leave to us. We can create our own little council soon, each with our own responsibilities. Teamwork. For the cause.'

The word comes out bitter and twisted. Even Silco can get tired of his own cynicism sometimes, Sevika thinks.

Vi groans and leans forward. She rubs her face with her hands. Her expression is conflicted, yet she sounds determined when she says, 'Making medicinal shimmer is still the right thing to do. We could be careful. If your chembarons are so loyal, then they wouldn't betray us to Piltover. I mean, it'd be against their own interest.'

Silco makes a matching groan of his own. 'Medicinal shimmer is a variant that is extremely hard to refine. The only equipment for it is in Singed's possession and he can barely make enough to keep me and his own experiments going.'

'Then make a refinery that's extremely hard,' Vi pushes. 'With all that sweet shimmer money, you can afford it.'

'Or I could make a second shimmer factory and start meeting the demand for it. Contrary to popular belief, we're not yet making a profit here!'

'Or you could do both! Get your rich chembaron friends to invest in it!'

'Not if your medicinal shimmer refinery is a money sink,' Silco counters. 'It's not the chembarons who would talk anyway, but the people. How are we to sell this new medicine profitably in secret without people spreading word of mouth, exactly?'

Vi opens up her hands like she's presenting them with a gift. 'Here's a big idea: how about we don't sell it? How about we just gift it to people who need it?'

Sevika and Silco share an incredulous look.

'That's everyone in Zaun,' Sevika says. 'Who doesn't need a health boost down here? And what do you want to do after you flood the streets with a cure-all and put every last cultivair and rebreathing station out of business?'

'Shimmer can't do that anyway,' Silco grumbles. 'It's got horrible side effects. It's not a cure-all.' He rubs his left cheek as he says it, like his scar is smarting just from thinking about it.

'But we could do good! Some real good for people who have it the worst,' Vi presses, voice low and urgent. 'We could... I don't know, open a small clinic.'

'Enforcers would be on your ass within a week,' Sevika objects.

'Make it mobile! Go to the people directly! Have deals with physikers! I don't know! There's something we could be doing, but it's like you're not even willing to give it a thought!'

'I have!' Silco bites. 'I've had years to give shimmer a thought. You know better than to accuse me of winging it!'

'All I want is to do some good...' Vi says, her eyes shining an awful lot like she's about to cry. 'And you keep saying you're doing this for all of us, like it's to our benefit, but what's the point of having a nation of Zaun if we've destroyed it ourselves? What are you going to do with a nation of junkies?!'

Silco blows air through his nose in an explosive snort. 'Vi, I suggest you go for a walk. Go late at night, take the highwalks, then through the entertainment district, down the spiral staircases to the Black Lanes, and back up here via Factorywood. If you manage to do that loop without being offered to buy ten different types of drugs or more, I'll finance whatever crazy project you want. Point is, my goal is to free Zaun from Piltover, not its addiction problem.'

Vi gives them both a sullen look. 'Why won't you even try?'

'Try wh—'

'Try to devise a plan! I don't know.' She melts into her chair, miserable. 'I don't know...'

Sevika gives her boss a sideways glance. He's not saying anything, his mismatched eyes lost into the depth of amber liquid swirling in his glass.

He's going to cave, she realises, shocked.

'Alright,' he says, looking back up at Vi. 'I'll talk to Singed about it again.'

'You will?' Vi asks, dubious. 'Really? You're serious?'

'Yes. It doesn't hurt to ask for his opinion.'

'But if he says—'

Silco waves his hand with finality. 'We'll continue this conversation then. I think that's enough for today.'

Vi grumbles as she gets up but doesn't protest. She gives the two of them a look over her shoulder before leaving, like she's got something burning her lips. Whatever it is, she keeps it to herself.

'Thank you again, Vi,' Silco calls after her.

She waves his thanks away as she leaves, closing the door behind her.

Sevika eyes the box of cigars. She's curious to know how things went, how the conversation ended in a shouting match, but she knows better than to ask. Anyway, Silco follows her eyes and turns a piercing gaze on her.

'Did you know about this? She did a job for Renni to get them. She gifted them to me,' he says, sounding rather incredulous.

Sevika hums, pretending to think about it. 'She asked me for advice on picking gifts for people...'

'And?'

'And we agreed you'd enjoy some good smokes. That's it. I definitely didn't pick those for you.'

'I see...' He sighs and closes the box carefully.

The silence grows heavy and Sevika shifts, uneasy. Silco's thinking about Vi's demands, she's certain. He's got rot-brain when it comes to the girls, she told Vi as much multiple times. In this case however she really wishes he wouldn't yield.

'Sir... You can't seriously be considering this.'

Silco's scowls are always so threatening, thanks to the eye, but Sevika knows this one has no teeth. 

'I've only agreed to discuss it with Singed again.'

'All your points were sound. We can't afford to draw attention to ourselves, not now. This medicinal shimmer... She'll get over it.'

If she can get over Silco, Vi can get over anything. She only needs time.

'No, we can't afford Piltover taking an interest, but we have Marcus... And anyway, Vi needs something to do. Something more engaging than busy work and head bashing. She shouldn't be doing Chembarons favours. She's in a position to make demands. She needs to realise this.'

'What else would you have her do?' Sevika asks, genuinely curious. 'I can take her out with me more often, but we've already got the muscle.'

'Well, I was thinking...' Silco gets up and goes to his desk. He grabs a sheaf of papers and browses through them thoughtfully. 'Syd has been wanting more help.'

Sevika gawks at him. 'Syd? Chemist Syd? You want to introduce these two? Isn't Vi trouble enough already?'

'I'm considering,' he corrects her. 'I'll talk to Singed first, and you need to finish this business with the Reddies. One thing at a time.'

On that they can agree. She gets up and opens the office door, giving Silco a pointed look. 'After you then, sir.'

Silco stares at her balefully and they glower at each other for a few seconds before he caves in with a heavy sigh. Sevika walks him to his bedroom door and wishes him a good night in her most polite and neutral voice. If she enjoys the tart glare Silco shoots her, she doesn't show it on her face.

Chapter Text

'I don't want to do this.'

'I know.'

'Why do I have to do this?'

'You know.'

Vi grunts and rubs her face with both hands. It's early, she's groggy, and there's no hour late enough in any day to make this palatable. Sevika smirks at her unsympathetically, shuffling a deck of tarot cards to train the new mechanical hand Powder made for her.

The Last Drop is an unusual hive of activity in these early morning hours. Everyone who's anyone in Silco's gang is here, sipping on coffee and preparing themselves for the big event: the Reddies' boss has finally capitulated and they're to meet to discuss terms. Mek has already left with a group of people, to secure the building in which the talks will happen. Everything is very hush-hush and Vi doesn't even know where that is.

Both her and Powder have been asked to come along, Silco declaring this to be the perfect opportunity to teach them about leadership. Vi doesn't mind that. No, what she struggles with is that Silco decided this would also be the perfect opportunity for her to make a public show of good graces towards Marcus, dispelling the all-too-correct rumours that she destroyed his home.

'I hate Marcus,' she grumbles through gritted teeth. 'He's a fucking chemspill.'

'Nobody likes him,' Sevika retorts, 'but if you want to be respected, you have to learn how to put your feelings aside.'

'Urgh, stop it. You sound just like Silco.'

'And you sound like a snotty child.'

She does, Vi knows, but she's unhappy enough to double down. 'Why can't you be the one to give it to him?'

She twirls the box in her hands, making it spin on the tabletop, ignoring the angry whisper at the back of her mind compelling her to crush it between her fists. The more rational voice in her chimes in to remind her that it would only delay the inevitable.

'It's not my gift to give,' Sevika says. 'I don't have to apologise for shit to Marcus. You should have thought harder before trashing his place.'

'Yeah? So why wasn't Powder forced to apologise to him?' Vi asks, more to prolong her whining than out of any sensical argument.

'Powder never trashed his place.'

'She trashed his uniform once.'

Or so Vi's been told. That particular incident had happened before Silco was even aware of her imprisonment.

'And Silco made her apologise on the spot,' Sevika points out.

Vi makes a strangled noise, her frustration bubbling up. 'But giving him anything is just... Urgh! It feels so wrong.'

'Isn't it for his kid?' Sevika asks, pointing to the box in Vi's hands. 'Just think about it that way, if it helps. It's not actually for him.'

Vi grunts, but before she can come up with any other complaint she's distracted by the sound of feet running down the stairs. Heads turn to watch Piltover's sheriff descend into the room.  Vi makes an effort to swallow both her pride and her resentment as she calls out his name and beckons him over to their table. Marcus glowers at her and doesn't slow down.

'Sheriff!' Sevika calls in an authoritative voice.

That gets him to veer towards them, if not to ease up on the glowering. 'What?' he asks, snappish.

Sevika jerks her chin towards Vi and Marcus turns to her. Vi looks up into his face, finding much of her reluctance and hatred reflected back at her. Her hands are frozen over the box. She still doesn't get how being nice to him can be of any use.  Sevika stomps on her foot under the table and Vi shakes herself, hastily plastering a polite smile on her face. 

'I got you this,' she says, presenting the box, every word like acid reflux burning her throat.

Marcus looks at it suspiciously, with its small handle and cute logo stamped on the sides.

'What is it?' he asks, and by the tone of his voice he's already made up his mind that it must be some sort of trap, something that'll explode in his face. A fair assumption.

'Erm... it's for your daughter,' Vi clarifies in a low voice. 'I was hoping to get past former... mistakes.'

Marcus' eyes widen a fraction before he checks himself and gives her an equally stiff and fake smile.

'I... can't,' he says, without even checking the content of the box.

Sevika chortles happily, leaning forward and clicking her mechanical fingers over the tabletop. 'Sheriff, you take bribes all the time. Just think about this in the same way.'

'Bri— What? No, I—'

'It's sweets,' Vi cuts him off, opening the box to show him. 'Cream puffs from Bridgewaltz market, and cupcakes. A friend of mine makes them. It's, uh... it's a Zaunite recipe. I figured your kid would enjoy it.'

Marcus blinks at her slowly, and for the first time in her life, Vi sees a genuine expression on his face that isn't anger, outrage or resentment.

He's baffled.

He ticks an eyebrow up, purses his lips, and in a careful voice says, 'She isn't old enough for sugary foods. She's a toddler. She just started eating solids a few months ago.'

'Oh—'

Sevika barks a laugh, slapping her knee in delight. 'Wow, good job, Vi!'

Vi feels a blush creep over her neck and burn her ears. 'I— I didn't know...'

People are staring at them, and her embarrassment is slowly veering into frustrated anger. Marcus, maybe sensing her emotions, maybe wanting to be out of the Last Drop as fast as possible, takes the box from her and gives her a sharp nod.

'It'll... just be more for myself,' he says stiffly.

He grimaces at Vi, she grimaces right back, strained politeness cracking at the seams. Clearly Sevika is the only one enjoying herself in this conversation.

'Is that all?' Marcus asks, closing the box again and tucking it under his arm.

'Yes,' Vi says, relief flooding her.

'I'll be seeing you after the talks,' Sevika adds, businesslike. 'Don't forget to bring in reinforcements.'

Marcus nods and turns on his heels, hurrying out of the bar without another word. Conversations pick back up behind him and Vi feels safe to bury her head in her arms.

'Janna! That sucked.'

'Why did you buy pastries for an infant?' Sevika asks her, amused.

'How am I supposed to know what infants eat?'

'I don't know, ask around? You could have asked Renni while you were there, haven't you seen her new mite?'

Vi snorts and rasps her knuckles over the tabletop. 'I already got a full lesson on gift giving from you. I thought I was good to go. Like hell I'm talking baby stuff with Renni. I don't get it, I always liked sweets when I was a kid—when I could get them.'

'Yes, a kid, not a toddler. Giving sugar to toddlers is how you end up with children like your sister.'

'Ha-ha. You're so funny, Sevika.'

'I'm aware.'

Vi drops her face from her arms, pressing it right against the table, like smushing her nose and grinding her forehead against its cold and sticky surface could somehow quell the overwhelming tide of frustrated feelings swelling inside her.

'I bet this is all pay back,' she grumbles.

'What's that?'

'It has to be!' she exclaims, looking up at Sevika, frowning now as she connects some dots. 'This is just Silco torturing me. That's his style, isn't it? He'd totally set me up like this...'

Sevika gives her an incredulous look. 'Silco doing what to you? Girl, you make no sense.'

Vi slaps the table, not minding now the attention she draws to herself. 'For our argument about shimmer!' she says in a forceful whisper. 'We got worked up and I yelled at him, I knew I shouldn't have. He's got it in for me now with this Marcus humiliation thing! He's never going to listen to me about the medicinal variant and—'

Sevika laughs. Not an amused snort, nor her usual short bark, but a full throated laugh, head tilted back.

Vi frowns at her, confused. 'What?'

'You just reminded me of Vander,' Sevika says, almost giddy. 'Sharp one second and dumb as a rock the next.'

Vi feels a flutter at the comparison, even though it's meant as a double insult. 'Your point?'

'I think you've got it all wrong. Firstly—' Sevika unfurls a metal finger with a smug smile '—you have to get along with Marcus, or else you can't work with him. Nobody is asking you to like it, but he's one of our best tools. Get over yourself. Secondly... I think Silco probably respects you even more for standing up to him. You made your point, used solid arguments, and you didn't back down. Silco isn't the type to lie, especially not to you. You're being impatient, as usual.'

Vi squints at her. 'A compliment? From you, Sevika?'

Sevika gives her a serene smile. 'Not at all. You must be hearing voices.'

Vi huffs and leans back into her chair. Sevika has a point: Vi has yet to catch Silco lying to her. She simply struggles to take his promises at face value, and yes, maybe she's being impatient. There's nothing that could be done to make interacting with Marcus more palatable, so maybe she's projecting there too.

Ever since that heated conversation about shimmer, Vi has been feeling adrift. The three days cooped up in Silco's room gave her some cabin fever, yet she ended up spending most of her time afterwards down at her sister's lair, now very much her own as well, sewing up a new jacket for herself. Even as she worked on it, she fought a sense of aimlessness. Like her own hobby was just a distraction, something to hide behind and keep her busy while Zaun went on being the same shithole, and herself powerless to make a difference.

She can't make Zaun a better place, but she sure can make herself look flashier! It had been a small and bitter comfort. If Silco would only listen to her, she thinks, they have the potential to make a change that isn't steeped in suffering. But he hasn't broached the topic again, and she has stayed away. The only real conversation they've had in recent days was for today's briefing.

'These things take time,' Sevika continues, as if reading her mind. 'We've got a war on our hands, like it or not. Let Silco sort this out first. I personally think it's stupid and risky to indulge you, but I'm sure he will.'

Vi perks up at that. 'Do you really think so?'

'Mmh. I've told you before. He can't say no to you or Powder. I'm starting to think that'll be my job soon.'

'Isn't it already?'

The room breaks into an excited hubbub as Silco finally appears, coming down the stairs with Powder on his heels. She's wearing the harness Vi sewed for her, with its reinforced chest plate and bandolier packed to the brim with her bombs. She's armed to the teeth while Silco is wearing his one good coat, hands slicking back his hair and looking like he's out for a casual stroll to the upper levels. Vi gets up and picks her gauntlets from where she left them under her chair. She's wearing her own harness, tight around her hips and thighs, and she straps the gauntlets into place.

'Is everyone ready?' Silco asks, surveying the room.

'Better be,' Sevika says, joining him and Powder. 'Mek is already out talking to his people. They've been keeping an eye on the place. Everyone else knows their job.'

On cue, people start filtering out, Sevika too, giving Vi one last glance before the door closes behind her. Dustin, Ran and Oba are the ones falling into position around Silco, Vi and Powder. Their little group is the last to depart, Erik the barman locking the Last Drop's doors behind them.

There's something strange about heading out like this with Silco. Walking behind him, half listening to her sister's excited chatter, Vi can't help but see the picture they must form. One of the most powerful men in Zaun and his two would-be kids, brought along to learn how to bully people into submission... Although Vi and Powder both have a reputation in their own way now, and given how they're armed, they could look like bodyguards.

Vi isn't sure picturing herself as one of Silco's goons is any better.

The walk isn't long, they only climb a couple of levels before they come to a stop in front of a small bakery. Looking around Vi can see people she knows in every direction—and nobody else—leaning against walls, sitting on crates, chatting and playing with the weapons they take no care to dissimulate.

'Didn't we bring in a lot of muscle for this?' she asks Silco. 'Are we killing that guy in the end?'

'Oh, so we are killing him!' Dustin says excitedly, teetering back and forth.

'No, we are not.' Silco stabs a finger in the middle of Dustin's chest. 'Don't kill anyone on your own initiative.'

'But what if we need to?'

'Use your common sense,' Ran says, rolling her eyes.

'No, use Ran's common sense,' Silco counters. 'Don't attack anyone on your own unless she or Oba are doing it.'

Dustin's enthusiasm wavers only for a moment. 'I bet they'll attack anyway,' he says with a serene smile. 'Those Reddies are na-asty! '

Silco glances at Powder, then Vi, before looking up, and she could almost swear there was a flicker of doubt, dancing in his mismatched eyes.

'We're here to discuss terms of surrender,' he says flatly. 'Sevika will be doing the sweeping with Marcus.'

The side street by the bakery quickly narrows and hits the fissure's wall in a dead end. The building on the right side is covered by scaffolding, and though it's currently deserted, it's clearly being used, repairing a large crack in the facade. Vi figures Silco arranged for the workers to take a day off to clear the way. He and Powder share this tendency to over-plan everything.

'See the window there?' Silco continues, pointing to a large wrought iron window on the opposite building on the left side of the street. 'That's us. You can come down the gutter, to that grate, then land on that balcony.'

'I see it,' Vi says. 'It won't be hard.'

'It won't be needed,' Powder says, sounding exasperated. 'We won this already.'

Silco's mouth thins to a fine line, but he says nothing.

'Doesn't hurt to be prudent,' Oba says, patting Powder's head. 'Santer is a dangerous man.'

Santer. That's the name of the Reddies' boss. Vi had forgotten, that's how little she's been paying attention to this whole thing. Unlike Powder, she hasn't been much involved with Sevika's strikes on the gang.

'Ah, about being careful!' Powder exclaims, digging into her pockets. 'I made those for you. Here, have one!'

She presses a small vial into Vi's hand. It's a slim silver tube that almost fits in her closed fist, with a pin at one end. Powder has one for everyone.

Only Oba seems reluctant to accept it. 'Is it pink again?' she asks. 'Last time I used one of your smoke bombs it completely ruined my outfit...'

'No, this one's blue!' Powder says. 'It's even better.'

Oba grunts, resigned, and pockets the bomb.

They make their way into the building. Shops turn into storage and homes, but Vi doesn't see anyone on the way up but more of Silco's people, guarding every floor. Ran and Dustin sweep the room that was selected for their meeting. It's only a little larger than Vi and Powder's basement room and has been stripped down of everything but a small desk and two chairs.

Vi goes to the window, working its latch to open it. The whole frame comes sliding aside. It's so tall, it might as well be a door, albeit one leading to a six stories drop to the ground below. There are signs that there used to be a railing, but it was cut off and removed.

'I picked this place on purpose,' Silco says, appearing suddenly at her side. Vi doesn't start, but it's a close thing. If Silco notices he's spooked her, he doesn't show it, instead leaning out of the window and pointing to several places on the facade below. 'See here? Then that ledge. That's the way down to the grate. Kaleb is over there.'

The hulking man is sitting on a small stool outside the bakery at the corner, a sandwich in hand and almost managing to look like an innocent worker on his lunch break. He's far from being alone however, and Vi can spot his twin brother not far off, chatting with Antep and a petite woman called Liurna. She has a thing for poisoned needles and throwing knives—usually also coated in poison.

Vi glances back to Silco. 'You're not expecting this to go well, aren't you?'

He gives her a wry smile. 'You've noticed.'

'I mean...'

She waves a hand to encompass everything, but it's not just the amount of people Silco brought with them, armed and vigilant, or how meticulously the venue was chosen, or even how insistent he is about the escape route. It's the edge to him. The doubt in his eyes. How quiet he's been all morning.

Vi has never seen Silco afraid, so she can't know for sure if this is it, or if he's nervous, or upset. Their argument stands like an invisible wall between them—a fence built atop their old grief, keeping her from asking directly.

'It pays to be ready,' he says. 'I have history with Santer.'

Vi frowns, confused. 'Weren't you going to mention that?'

'I did. When I repeatedly mentioned how slimy and dangerous he is.'

'Silco, that's everyone who runs a gang in Zaun, minimum.'

His smile crinkles the skin at the corner of his good eye. The amber-black one remains fixed and emotionless even as he laughs.

'It's nothing personal,' he clarifies, waving his hand as if to dispel her ideas. 'Santer has been around a long time. It's never a good sign. The older the crime lord, the more dangerous. He was already in power back when Vander and I were struggling to keep Zaun united.'

'Oh.' Vi puts things together on her own. 'He dropped you, didn't he?'

'We never had his explicit support, but he attacked others while we were fighting the blockade,' Silco says with a nod. 'He's got a long history of being a...' He makes a vulgar gesture rather than choosing a word to define the man. 'If you think I'm heartless, you're going to enjoy meeting him. He's something else.'

Vi hasn't thought Silco heartless in so long, the comment takes her by surprise. It used to be something that bothered her actually, how his blatant love for Powder kept her from thinking him heartless. It would have made hating him so much more straightforward if he were.

Not that she'll tell him any of that. Instead she smiles. 'You make him sound like a real charmer—'

Oba's yell is the first hint that something's wrong. Vi and Silco turn as one to see Dustin and Ran dash to the door. The huge cloud of smoke that bursts into the room as they open it is the second.

Chapter Text

Silco and Vi rush to meet Powder at the centre of the room, putting the desk and chairs between them and the doorway for some modicum of protection. There are confused shouts and grunts, disembodied by the thick, acrid smoke. It rolls over them like an impossible fog, making Vi cough and her eyes water. Outlines of flailing limbs never resolve enough for certainty, and she keeps her gauntleted fists up in a guard position, unwilling to join the melee in such chaos.

Silco keeps Powder firmly behind him, left hand clenched over her shoulder, his right on the hilt of a knife. Vi immediately recognises it: it's the dagger he killed Vander with. She'd confronted him about it ages ago, before she knew what it meant to him.

'It's my knife,' he'd said, deadpan. 'I use it for many things, including, but not limited to, killing people.'

A knife he'd once gifted Vander, then stolen back to save his own life and later mete out his vengeance. Now he brandishes it in a sure grip, held between Powder and danger.

'Over there!' Someone shouts from the invisible scuffle, and it's not a voice Vi recognises.

She tenses, scanning the fog. It seems Dustin was right; Vi only hopes he lives long enough to brag about it. Silco turns to Vi, and though she can barely make out his expression in the dense smoke, the urgency is clear in his tone as he pushes Powder towards her.

'Go! Get out of here!'

Powder begins to protest. 'No, Sil— Aah!'  

Someone—a burly woman—grabs her by one of her braids and yanks her backwards. Vi doesn't have time to react: another attacker appears in her periphery, barreling towards her. Without hesitation, she turns on her heel and slams a heavy fist right into their chest. She can feel the bones crack through the gauntlet. A man she doesn't know collapses to the ground like a bag of bolts, coughing up blood.

Vi whirls around to go after Powder, who is screaming and struggling against the woman's grip on her hair, but Silco beats her to them. The smoke is thinner near the window and Vi gets a proper view of him diving under the swing of the woman's makeshift club and bounding back up, knife flashing.

The woman tips back, unbalanced, Powder's severed braid in her fist. Before Vi can even blink, Silco plunges his knife into the side of her throat. He rips it out in a shower of blood, and she collapses bonelessly to the floor.

Vi swallows hard, wrenching her eyes away from the expanding puddle of blood to focus on her sister. 'Are you okay?' she asks as she hurries to her, shaken.

Powder's panicked screams turn to warbles of furious indignation. 'My hair...!' she says in a strangled voice. 'My—'

She runs shaky fingers into the hair that spills over her shoulder, the cropped braid unspooling itself. Her face contorts into an expression of hatred the likes of which Vi has never seen on her. Before she or Silco can say anything to soothe her, Powder unpins and launches two grenades in the direction of the door.

'No!' Silco yells.

'What ar—'

The detonations hurl Vi to the ground.

Her ears are ringing furiously, and her mouth tastes like plaster and blood. She scrambles to get back up, but her gauntlets get in the way. Something hot is running down her face and into her eyes. She blinks, confused and disoriented. She can't see Powder anywhere. The desk and chairs are gone. The explosions cleared most of the smoke, and she can make out bodies strewn across the floor. Some are moving, but not all...

A man crawls towards her on all fours, looking just as dazed, a sheet of blood covering the right side of his face. This is exactly what she must look like, Vi thinks as they stare blankly at each other.

Then it clicks: this is another face she doesn't recognise.

She lunges at him, releasing her left gauntlet to grab a handful of his shirt and slam his face into the ground. The man grunts in pain but lashes back at her, first trying to push her off before latching onto her sleeve and dragging her down to the floor with him. Their scuffle is weak and pathetic, but Vi manages to get on her knees first, pinning him down, and that's all she needs.

There's a flicker of emotion in the stranger's eyes: abject terror as the gauntlet descends on his face. Vi sees and registers it, but her blood is beating a mad tattoo in her ears, her fist moving of its own volition. His nose shatters with a sickening crunch. He claws at her face, and she hits him again and again—to protect, defend, to crush those who'd attack her family, injure her sister—

'—Vi!'

Hands grip her shoulders from behind, and she yowls, trying to twist around and attack this new threat. She's pulled to her feet by the lapels of her jacket.

'Vi, stop!' Silco says, shaking her. 'He's dead. Hey! Listen to me! Vi, you need to take Powder and go!'

Vi blinks. She looks down and yes, the man at her feet is dead, his life coated as gore on her gauntlet. Memories of the bridge wash over her like a bloody tide. The smoke is grey now, not red, and it's the taste of copper on her tongue, instead of the tang of the enforcers' tear gas. But she's the monster beating someone's head in with an iron fist, all the same.

'Hey! Snap out of it!'

Silco grips Vi's jaw, twisting her head away from the dead man, forcing her to meet his mismatched eyes. He brings her nose to nose with him, until the whole world is teal and black and gold.

'Get yourself together, I need you.'

'S-Silco?'

His scar shows through his smudged makeup and his hair falls dishevelled over his brow, but his gaze is steady. He's not even frowning. He looks impossibly calm. 

'You must protect your sister,' he says, enunciating each word carefully. 'Keep her safe. I want you down there. Stay on the balcony below the window if the ground isn't safe. Remember where Kaleb is?'

'Street corner, bakery, yes,' Vi says, the plan reasserting itself in her mind. She knows where to go and what to do. She can't believe she even lost track of it all so completely. 'Yes, okay.'

'Good.' He picks up her discarded gauntlet and shoves it into her arms, pushing her towards the window. 'Powder! Go!'

Powder is already outside, furious tears in her eyes, but she doesn't protest and disappears over the ledge.

Vi ties her gauntlets back to her hips with shaky fingers. There's blood everywhere. She turns to Silco. Behind him she notices Dustin sprawled on the floor among other bodies. Oba keeps someone at bay with a knife, and behind her Ran grapples with a man twice her size, her eyes blazing with shimmer glow. From the noise alone, it's clear there's more fighting going on behind the half-shattered door. 

Less than five minutes have passed, yet Vi feels like she's been trapped in this hellish place for hours. This is a full on attack, all the way to the last lines of defence. They're bailing through the window! This is a worst case scenario on a scope Vi hadn't even entertained. Panic finally seizes her as the gravity of the situation becomes clear.

'Aren't you coming?' she asks Silco.

He shoves her again, leaving a bloody handprint over her heart. 'Go. I'll be fine.'

'But y—'

'Obey me, Vi!' 

'Violet!' Powder calls out from outside. 'Come on!'

Vi swallows against the fear knotting her throat and turns around. She sits over the windowsill, swinging her legs into the void. Powder is already moving down the gutter, and Vi gives one last hasty tug to secure her gauntlets before scrambling after her.

She's barely cleared the window's ledge when a man comes to teeter on the brink of it, gasping, arms windmilling as he fights to keep his balance. From his bulk and jacket, Vi thinks it's the one who was wrestling with Ran.

Vi hesitates. She could yank on his ankle. She's just killed a man with her own fists, what's one more? Before she can make her decision, Silco's metal-plated boot comes slamming square into the man's guts, sending him tumbling over Vi's head with a shrill, short-lived scream.

Powder calls out again, and Vi searches the facade until she spots her sister waving at her from a tiny cornice. Vi swings her legs, catching her toes on a flimsy window railing to reach a better handhold and finally shimmy her way down to Powder, latching onto the grate next to her.

'Are you alright?' she asks, panting. 'That was... pretty bad...'

Before Powder can answer, another death cry splits the air above them. They twist in unison, leaning out and straining to get a better view of the window.

'Who was that?' Powder asks.

'I don't—'

A figure comes hurtling out, kicking from the ledge and flying across the divide, trailing smoke, coat fluttering in their wake. Vi's heart slams into her throat.

It's Silco, plummeting through the air.

The world seems to slow down—her breath solidifying in her lungs, eyes strained, unblinking—a second crystallising into an eternity.

To Vi's complete shock, Silco doesn't actually tumble to his death, but breaks his fall into the scaffolding across the street, catching on a beam and vaulting to another before landing on a wooden platform. He scurries down the rest of it with eerie grace, apparently unscathed.

'What the fuck?! How can he do that?' Vi asks, baffled, mind tripping over itself.

'What? You didn't know?' Powder asks, managing to be surprised at her. 'He's like a gecko.'

Acrobatics are not something Vi's ever associated with Silco. She isn't sure why, considering he's a slum kid just like them. She watches him catch himself on another metal bar and swing around hard, launching himself to the ground, rolling and springing back up to his feet with his knife back in hand.

'Fucking hell!' she hisses, still in disbelief. That was impressive.

'Vi, let's go!' Powder calls again. 

She's several stories down already, and Vi hurries after her. The shake in her hands has spread to her arms, and she's grateful when she reaches the ground. Her head is pounding, her ears like a choir of screeching cats, and she feels nauseous, which isn't helped by the sight of the body of the defenestrated man they have to skirt to join Silco at the bakery. He's not the only dead person around, and Vi can see at least two more with throwing knives sticking out of them. Several of Silco's goons are passed out—or worse—against the doorway of the building. 

The rest of the street seems completely deserted. Windows are shuttered and locked shut, and the bakery has turned off its lights. The little sign behind the vitrine claims they're closed, the staff most likely cowering behind the counter.

'Ah, girls—there you are!' Silco says as Powder bodies him. He looks relieved but doesn't return her hug, maybe mindful of his grimy hands, the back of them still coated in blood. 'I'm sorry for your hair.'

Powder grunts, face pressed to his chest.

'Boss,' Kaleb interrupts them. He's holding a weapon that's probably a knife to him but a sword to anyone else. 'Let's get you out of here, Antep says the way's clear.'

'Right.' Silco wraps his left arm around Powder's shoulders and gives Vi an appraising look. 'Are you alright?' he asks.

'I think,' she answers after a moment of introspection, incapable of being more specific. 'I'm in one piece. That was... I know you warned me but... I never expected this Santer to be such a charmer.'

Kaleb steps behind Vi and presses a large hand to her back, pushing her to a trot as they hurry back to the Last Drop.

Silco still looks perfectly poised as he smiles. 'Yes. A real charmer indeed.' Then his lips twist into a cruel leer. 'I think he'll be disappointed to find that Sevika can out-charm him.'

Chapter Text

'You may find this will hurt.'

It does. The shimmer burns like fire in her veins.

Vi gasps, digging her nails into her palms. She has a brief surge of understanding for Silco, who always cries out during his own shimmer injections and bangs on about side effects. Her skin crawls, nerves sizzling, all the way down to her fingertips and toes. Her headache compounds, the pain that had been like a budding throb blooming into fractal agony. And then—

Then nothing. Her muscles relax and she slumps like a boneless heap into the couch. Powder grabs one of her hands and gives it a squeeze. Vi can barely squeeze back. She lets out a shaky sigh. This is much better. Cracking her eyes open, the light doesn't hurt any longer, and her nausea is receding. The ringing in her ears dims. Even the pounding in her head starts to ebb.

'Vi? Are you... Are you alright now?' Powder asks. Her eyes are red from crying. 

Vi manages a weak smile.

'Look over here,' Singed says with a pat on her shoulder. 'Follow my finger. Yes, good, good. Now don't flinch, I'm going to shine a light in your eyes. How would you rate that discomfort?'

'From the light?' Vi asks. 'I don't know. Not comfortable, but—'

'Excellent,' Singed says, cutting her off and standing up. He pats himself down, pocketing his instruments and turning to Silco. 'She's fine,' he declares. 'Good as new, both of them.'

Powder grunts unhappily, and Vi mimics her. Good as new is quite the exaggeration, but considering how bad things had gotten, she lets it slide. Not like her throat is up for much protesting; it still hurts with that nasty rawness you always get after you've been sick.

'So she's not gonna die?' Powder asks, crawling into Vi's lap and folding her arms around her neck in a protective hug.

Vi smiles, embracing her sister back. 'I feel... pretty alive.'

'She was never going to die in the first place,' Singed says mildly.

'Do you hear that, Santer?' Silco says with fake cheer. 'It seems you get to die with your skin still on your back after all!'

Santer, the leader of the Reddies, is kneeling naked on the carpet at the centre of the room, his arms tied behind his back by the same intricate ropework that shackles his legs. Sevika had dragged him into the office just before Singed's arrival, and Silco has been promising him all manners of torture, if Vi's condition turned out to be dire.

A little dramatic, considering Singed had quickly declared it was a simple concussion. He'd worked on Vi while Powder and Silco recounted the events of the altercation, all the way to her collapse in the street, vomiting everywhere.

Singed had surmised a chunk of the desk, or maybe the door, must have hit her in the head when she was thrown to the floor in the explosion—a theory aided by the splinters he pulled out of her scalp—before unceremoniously injecting her with some of his infamous medicinal shimmer.

Vi doesn't remember getting knocked by a chunk of flying desk, but she doesn't doubt the doctor's verdict. Her memory of the whole thing has a hazy quality, the order of events garbled. When she thinks back on it, all she sees is a dead man's face, beaten to a pulp, all she hears is Powder's screams, and Silco calling her name. 

'Want me to take the trash out?' Sevika asks, nudging Santer in the ribs with a metal tipped boot.

The man huffs, but says nothing. He keeps his eyes fixed on Silco, who is sitting on the edge of his desk, cleaning his dagger with a rag. Kaleb and Karluk are also in the room, crowding the place. They wait patiently, burly arms crossed over their chests. From the malicious glint in their eyes, they very much hope to be Sevika's garbage men.

'No, not yet,' Silco says. 'I'm not done.'

'I am, however,' Singed declares, shouldering his bag. 'Do you need me for anything else?'

'Yes,' Silco says. 'See to the wounded downstairs before you go. I'll have your payment delivered to your lab.'

Vi represses a shiver. From what snatches of conversation she's gotten while her head was killing her, Singed's payment comes in the form of dead Reddies. She isn't sure she wants to know what part of shimmer research requires corpses, or if that's even what he wants them for.

'Now, where were we?' Silco asks as the door closes behind the doctor.

'With you wasting my fucking time,' Santer growls. 'Why don't you get on with it?'

Silco stabs his dagger into the desk and stands up, folding the cleaning rag and daubing it with more alcohol.

'If you were in such a hurry to die,' he says in a silky voice, 'you could have spared me this pointless fight and offed yourself.'

Santer laughs. It's a coarse sound that fits him well. He's a rough man with chiselled features, scarred lips and a heavy jaw. His limbs have been thinned by age, the skin on his belly is sagging and creased, but you can tell that at his peak he was an impressive man. His back is mangled with old scar tissue, lumpy in places where he was shot or burnt. It's a gruesome map of suffering, and Vi can't help but wonder if that's just him or if it's what any crime lord can expect, living to his age.

Maybe Silco's on to something, she thinks, with his desk-bound style of management.

'You're an upstart puppy,' Santer says, sounding pretty bold for a naked man in restraints. 'Didn't think you had it in you to go after Vander, but I should've known you wouldn't stop there. You've won, what else d'you want me to say? Do the honourable thing and don't toy with me.'

'The honourable thing? Tell me, does it taste foul, when you speak of honour?' Silco asks. There's no anger in his tone, but he's brusque when he grabs Santer's jaw and starts dabbing the rag on his bloody temple. The man struggles like it smarts. 'I never expected you to have much honour to go around, but for you to renege on your word for peaceful talks and try to kill me in such an underhanded way...'

Silco's eyes flutter in Vi and Powder's direction, but he doesn't mention them. Vi is certain he's far more upset about them being caught in the crossfire than himself. She hugs Powder tighter, sharing the sentiment. If her sister had died...

'You would have done the same,' Santer protests. 'Stop your nonsense and get to it.'

'Ah, but I haven't decided yet, since flaying you is off the table. How should we take care of you?'

'Crush his skull?' Karluk offers, curling a massive fist around an imaginary head.

'Nah, crush his neck,' Kaleb says, shaking his head. 'Last longer. He'll feel himself die.'

'Just stab him and be done,' Sevika says. 'I'll cut his throat.'

Vi grimaces. 'Must it be so messy?'

'Excellent point,' Silco says. 'I don't want to stain the carpet.'

'That's not what I meant—'

'We could hang him from the rafters!' Powder exclaims excitedly.

Silco paces, walking around Santer, trailing his fingers over his bare shoulders. 'No. No, I think... Yes, I think I have an idea.'

The man tries to curl in on himself, the ropes squeaking as they strain to keep him in place.

'This isn't the first time you've stabbed me in the back,' Silco says, more threatening now.

'Grow up,' Santer spits. 'Can't believe you're still banging on about that. It was just business, and two decades ago.'

'Yes, greed without loyalty... At least I can't accuse you of ever being inconsistent. You've always been the sort of pest that kept us from fighting off Piltover.'

'You still think you can manage that? People don't care about your dream, Silco.'

'You're right, but I don't need them to. As you say, I only need to make it business.'

'Killing me won't help.'

'Oh, it will. But don't worry, I'm not going to kill you. Give it a day though, and you'll wish I had.' He kicks Santer's leg. 'Get him out of here. I want you to personally escort him to Singed's lab. Alive.'

Sevika laughs. Karluk and Kaleb yank Santer off the ground, carrying him out between them like a bag, using the ropes as handles.

'You're no better than I am!' Santer cries out, breathless. 'I'll fuckin—'

The door slams shut behind Sevika, leaving the man's threats up to the imagination. Vi stares, emotions roiling inside of her in a tangled mess. She refuses to think about what'll happen to him. If the fate of the corpses was unpalatable, this...

Deep down, she knows she should be more than just disturbed or put off. She just watched a man being sentenced to death. But what's that, compared to being the executioner herself? And would she have done any less, if the decision had been hers to make?

She kisses the top of Powder's head, shoving everything else aside but the warm embrace of her sister. Silco comes and sits on the couch next to them. He slides his fingers under the mess of Vi's hair, pressing his palm to her forehead.

'Are you truly alright?' he asks, concerned. 'I know how Singed is. If you're still in pain, then—'

'I'm really fine,' Vi says, brushing his hand away. 'You're fretting, old man.'

'Yes, yes, well, I have good reasons, for once.' He turns his attention to Powder, who lets go of Vi to launch herself at him. 'How are—oh, Powpow, don't cry.'

'But I jinxed everything again!' Powder says with a sob. She clings to Silco, so she doesn't see how Vi grimaces at her words. 'I almost killed Vi and—'

'Janna, can you two stop it already?' Vi exclaims, her temper suddenly boiling up. 'To hear you guys I was on the brink of death the entire time!'

'Well—'

'No! You need to stop! This wasn't even my first concussion! And you didn't jinx anything, Powder. The Reddies did. Santer. No one even died from your bombs!'

At least, no one from their side, although Dustin will be needing some new teeth. It's not clear yet if it's from the explosion or someone punching him square in the face.

Powder sniffs, looking up at Vi. After a moment of quiet consideration, she turns back to Silco with teary eyes. 'What about my hair?'

Silco sighs, brushing his fingers through the shoulder-length strands of blue hair. 'Better your braid than your neck, child. I would sooner have you bald than dead.'

'Waah, don't say it!' Powder exclaims, balling fists into her hair like the word bald alone is a curse.

'I can cut it for you, if you want,' Vi offers, knowing full well neither of them will let that happen.

Powder jumps up, hands out between her and Vi as if to ward her off. 'I-I'm fine!'

'I'll do it,' Silco declares, tone final. He gives Powder a thoughtful look. 'We'll make it a nice cut. Maybe we can braid your hair close to the scalp, so they can't be grabbed? Or a functional bob, like Sevika's?'

A knock on the door interrupts them, and Oba pokes her head in. She seems worse for wear, with a painful looking split lip and dried blood caking down the front of her leather top. Ruined once more then, just not by one of Powder's smoke bombs.

'Syd's here, boss. Says you called him in?'

'Oh, yes,' Silco says, startled. 'I did, didn't I.'

Oba gives him a nonplussed look.

'Let him in.' Silco gets up and goes to Powder, cupping her face in his hands. 'Why don't you go wash up, child? Comb your hair and get the mirror and clippers out of my room. I'll be down there soon, we'll fix this mess together.'

Vi wrenches herself out of the couch, grunting noisily through the whole ordeal and noting sourly that the shimmer injection did nothing to help the shaking of her exhausted arms or the dull ache in her knees. She still feels battered and weak.

Silco stops her with a hand on her shoulder. 'Stay, this is someone I'd like you to meet.'

Powder and Vi exchange a glance and Powder shrugs before darting out of the room. To Vi's surprise, she recognises the man who steps into the office after her. She's seen him around the Drop for as long as she's lived there, she simply never knew his name. He's rather unremarkable, middle aged, with mousy hair and plain features that easily settle into a frown. He's got only a handspan over Vi, and she thinks she might win an arm wrestle.

'You wanted to see me?' he says, eyeing Vi warily.

'Yes. Syd, this is Vi,' Silco says as introductions.

'Yeah Silco, I know...'

'Vi, this is Syd,' Silco continues, undeterred by Syd's lack of enthusiasm.

'We've met,' she says. 'Kinda. You're the guy who spat on Marcus' shoes right? And got tossed through the game room's window.'

Syd crosses his arms over his chest, defensive. 'That's right.'

He's also the one who'd accused Vander of protecting his kids over the interest of the Lanes, before leaving with Sevika. He knows she knows, she was right there, but Vi can't exactly hold it against him. Deep down, she'd agreed with him, at the time.

'That was pretty cool,' she admits, bowing her head in acknowledgement.

Vi recalls being furious at the realisation this man was part of Silco's gang all along, but she'd never gotten around to clapping his ears when she was doing the rounds of Silco's staff after joining. She hadn't seen him at the cannery, and besides, Marcus haters have to stick together.

Syd dips his head back at her in silent acknowledgement, but he doesn't relax. He turns his attention back on Silco.

'Did you ask me here just to formally introduce me to Vi? Should I have introduced myself to Powder as well, just now? Or can I go home?'

'Spare me the sarcasm,' Silco says, holding up a hand. 'I've asked you to come to meet your new helper. Your complaints were heard, and so I'm entrusting Vi to you.'

'What?' Vi and Syd exclaim in unison. Vi's shock doubles when Syd crosses the room and grabs Silco by the shoulders.

'Sil!'

'Syd?' Silco replies, exasperation dripping from that single word.

'Why are you doing this to me?' the man whines.

'Syd.'

He smirks. 'Sil?' 

Silco growls. 'Stop it!'

'You stop it. I asked you for a qualified second. She—' he points to Vi '—is not that. If I didn't know you better, I'd think you were pulling my leg.'

Vi stares at Silco. Is she dreaming, or can she hear him grind his teeth from here? What's with these two anyways? Not even Sevika would dare to be this bold with Silco. Or this handsy.

'You said you'd rather train someone than inherit incompetents,' Silco protests, jabbing a finger into Syd's chest. 'As I recall, you said you could train a cat to do the job. I think Vi is probably smarter than that.'

Vi snorts. 'Well, thanks.'

Silco swats Syd's hands away and elbows him in the ribs roughly. 'As you might notice,' he says, turning to Vi with a mild smile on his face, 'Syd is old crew. I've known him even longer than Mek.'

'And this is how you treat me,' Syd groans, making a show of rubbing his side like Silco mortally wounded him.

'Syd sometimes thinks being old crew means he can do anything he wants...' Silco glowers at him. 'He'd be wise to remember that's not the case.'

'Yeah, that'll sound a lot more threatening when you've got someone who could even dream of replacing me.'

'You're not nearly as irreplaceable as you think you are.'

'No one else could run your factory on the skeleton budget you got us on. Fire me, Sil, I dare you. I'd love to listen to you cry outside my door. I'd give you a week, because I know you're stubborn.'

'Money doesn't just appear when I rub my fingers!'

'Up the price of shimmer, what do I care!'

'Keep your nose in your chems, Syd, business is my purview. Shimmer is at the best price it can be, right now.'

Vi looks from one man to the other, almost too entertained to interrupt them, but her curiosity gets the better of her.

'Erm, Silco? What about being a helper?'

Silco sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. 'Yes. As I was saying, Syd needs help down in the factory. And you... Your ideas concerning medicinal shimmer are good, Vi. At their core. I understand you want to do good for the Lanes.'

'The whole of the Trench,' Vi cuts him off. 'Not just the Lanes. All the Undercity deserves better.'

He waves an appeasing hand. Syd looks at her curiously.

'You want those things, but you have no idea what you're talking about. You don't understand shimmer, how it's made, what it costs...' He waves his hand again, as if to dispel all the things Vi doesn't know. 'I'm giving you the opportunity to learn. You have two months. I want you to shadow Syd and learn from him, and once you're capable, you can start enquiries into the medicinal side of shimmer.'

Vi teeters on her tired feet, thinking for a second her concussion has returned as her head spins. Her, working on shimmer? Becoming a chemtech? It's a baffling idea, but she understands what Silco means by it. All this time she thought he was pushing her away, unwilling to listen to her proposal, or even upset with her for bringing it up, and yet...

'I've arranged for you to talk to Singed as well,' he continues. 'In two months time, I want you to present me with your report. You get to try and convince me again. Support your case with numbers and hard facts. Don't be too proud to admit it can't be done if that's the conclusion you come to. It's an evolving situation, there might be a place and time for—'

Silco huffs as Vi tackles him into a hug.

'Thank you,' she says, squeezing hard. 'Thanks, that's...'

'Vi,' Silco gasps, tapping her shoulder. She lets him go and he takes a big gulp of air. 'Alright, glad to see... that you're keen,' he says, patting himself down.

Vi is beyond keen. She's wanted an opportunity to make a difference so badly, and she knows one when it's offered to her.

'What's this about medicinal shimmer?' Syd asks.

'Vi will explain her... ideas.' Silco says. 'Indulge her but don't be afraid to tell her the truth either.'

'Not a fear I've ever known,' Syd says, smiling. He winks at Vi.

She smiles back, a blend of excitement and exhaustion washing over her. 'When do I start?'

'Let's give it a couple of days for you to recover,' Silco says. 'I'll get you a new rebreather as well.'

'Do you have any experience working with chem compounds?' Syd asks, and though he's still smiling, there's a knowing air to his expression.

'I'll make sure she reads up on the topic,' Silco snaps. 'And you'll get your money and parts, as soon as we start dismantling Santer's place. Stop harassing me in your reports.' He turns to Vi once more, grabbing her arm and pulling her close. 'And Vi... I don't want you alone with Singed, under any pretence. Am I clear?'

'Why?' Syd asks. 'Girl looks like she can defend herself.' 

Silco doesn't even glance at him. 'It doesn't matter. You're underestimating Singed. Everyone is. I wish you'd all stop that. Take Ran with you if you're going to his lab and Syd can't come.'

Vi shrugs. It's a small promise to make. 'Alright.'

'If I hear you're meeting Singed alone,' Silco continues doggedly, 'I'm putting an end to your little project, forever.'

'I said alright!' She grabs his wrist, but doesn't pull him off. 'I understand. I won't talk to Singed alone, I'll be nice to Syd and I'll assemble the best report you've ever seen... even if I have no idea how.'

Silco relents and lets her go. 'You can talk to Mek, when he's done fixing his mess and hunting down Santer's mole. He's the only person who really knows how to write one.'

'My reports look perfectly fine,' Syd grumbles.

'Yes, yes,' Silco says, clearly not paying attention. He makes his way to the door. 'You two can go and organise yourselves and get acquainted, I don't care how you handle it, but one last thing...' he points a warning finger at the two of them. 'No ganging up on the sheriff.'

Vi and Syd exchange a sly look and a grin. This is promising to be a lively couple of months.

Chapter Text

I received some excellent suggestions for hair for Powder, and I think buns, with or without dutch braids going up or down her head is ideal. Someone suggested she put spikes in her braids and a friend suggested extensions attached to the buns... And like, YES. Imagine both! Colourful braids with bullet casings, colourful ribbons, SPIKES but also if you yank it hard it comes loose like a lizard's tail and you're Oh-so fucked!

Vi also gets a new haircut, with long top and shaved on both sides. Powder can braid it sometimes. Silco gets no chance but he wishes.

Secretly, I think Silco is even sadder than Powder about this. Less hair for him to groom and play with (；⌣̀_⌣́)

A scene, maybe from after Powder's hair regrows, in a couple of years? Vi still not enjoying the hair grooming routine.

Chapter Text

Ekko went to the seaside once. He had followed Benzo on a supply run shortly after he'd moved in with him. Their contact was peddling serious contraband and had insisted on meeting in a small cove out of the city's bounds, refusing to throw anchor at the sun gate docks or the lower piers of the Undercity.

Benzo had dealt with the pirate—because that's what he had to be, right? All shady and secretive, with muscular, tattooed henchmen rowing their cargo to shore—while Ekko wandered down the beach. It had been his first time seeing real waves. He'd removed his shoes, delighting in the sensation of the sand getting between his toes and the cold shock of the surf. He'd watched with fascination the coming and going of the sea, the way it tugged at the seaweed, wrapping their icky tendrils around his ankles.

Using a spyglass he'd brought along just for the occasion, Ekko had raked the horizon, spotting the pirate's ship and absolutely nothing else. Unlike the busy shores of the Pilt and the congested view of the estuary at the gates, there was nothing as far as the eye could see. He'd stood there, gazing at the vast emptiness, until something had pinched him, taking him out of his reverie.

Looking down, he'd seen a crab, dark green and yellow, small claws prodding at his foot curiously. Ekko had laughed when a wave came in and snatched it away.

He'd followed, watching the little creature struggle. Each time the tide overtook it, the crab found itself cast further down the beach and had to painstakingly scuttle back to wherever it wanted to go. A particularly rough wave had picked it up and tossed it on its back, its many legs kicking the air uselessly. Ekko had set it to rights and watched it scamper off.

He'd found it strange, how this thing lived on this beach yet appeared at the mercy of the waves. Would it drown, he wondered, if it was dragged into the ocean? Would it dry out without it? It had just been a moment in an otherwise hectic day, but it had stayed with him for some reason.

As Ekko sits on an abandoned balcony with a view of the Last Drop, the little crab is back on his mind. They're the same, he thinks. One moment all is well, the next he's swept off his feet, tossed around and struggling.

There always seemed to be a friendly hand to pick him back up. Benzo, after his parents' death, then Scar, after Benzo's and everyone else's... Seeing Powder at Vander's statue had felt like the greatest twist ever. He'd spent an entire year thinking she was dead and avoiding the Last Drop and its entire level like the plague, but she'd been there all along! And Vi too! He'd been ecstatic!

But every time things were going for the best and he could move onwards—the wave returned. Always the wave, picking him up, as Powder said they were living with Silco, tossing him around, as she screamed that Silco loved her, that Vander didn't matter.

He'd run back to the tree he now calls home with tears streaking down his face and his jaw smarting from Powder's punch. When did she even learn to hit like that? It wasn't fair.

It still isn't. It only gets worse when he returns to the Last Drop to check if Powder was right. He can't imagine she'd lie about Vi, but he also can't believe Vi would... want to live there, with the man who killed Vander, Benzo, Mylo and Claggor. The man who's poisoning the streets! There has to be something else going on.

He spends hours scouring the plaza far below with the same trusty spyglass he'd once used to scan the horizon on that beach. And eventually, the back doors of the Last Drop open, and instead of a pirate ship, it's Vi he catches in his sight.

She's grown a bit, looks more muscular. She has her pink hair tied back in a bun with the sides shaved. She's walking shoulder to shoulder with Sevika. They have their heads bent together like they're gossiping. Vi jostles her, and Sevika elbows her right back.

They're laughing.

Ekko runs home before he can see more. There's a painful fist in his ribs and he can barely breathe. It's the dark tide of fate again, but this time it's not leaving. It's staying right there over his head, suffocating him.

Why would Vi stay? It doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense! Through his panicked gasping, Ekko almost wishes he could be back to thinking they're dead. It had been simpler then. Grieving is easier than trying to understand why.

Vi saw Sevika choose, they all did! And forget Sevika, what about Silco? Ekko knows Powder. He spent so much time with her. They would talk and talk, and even when they didn't, even with others around, he'd still look at her and listen... So he knows she's hurting for attention. She always wanted to help and felt like she couldn't, or that Vi wouldn't let her. She's always tried to impress her sister. Ekko is sure Silco could find a way to manipulate that. Maybe he makes her feel like she can really help and messes up with her head, somehow. But Vi?

Scar comes and finds him when he skips dinner. Not everyone in the Firelights lives in the rickety houses they've built at the base of their hidden tree, but almost everyone gets together to eat before going back home. Many wouldn't find a meal waiting for them there anyway.

'What is it, this time?' Scar asks, a little brusque. 'Same girl?'

'No,' Ekko mumbles. 'I just... I found her sister.'

Scar sighs and sits on the edge of his bed. Ekko stays with his forehead firmly pressed to the wall.

'You gonna try and explain to me how that's bad news again?' Scar asks.

It's not a real question. He's expecting Ekko to complain.

'I don't know,' Ekko says, grumbling. 'I didn't talk to her. She's... together with her sister.'

'Great,' Scar says, deadpan. 'They're both alive and well. I'm happy for you. For real. Now get over yourself, Little Man. You thought they were dead. You've got to be the luckiest guy, even if you got in a fight, at least you get to try and fix it. Talk to that sister, find out what's really going on.'

Ekko sighs heavily but says nothing. Scar has been a shoulder to cry on ever since he came back distraught over Powder, but he doesn't really get it. He lost his own sister and would give anything to be in Ekko's shoes. He also doesn't know who Powder and Vi are living with. Ekko hasn't told him or anyone, just that they're with someone he hates. He doesn't dare explain. He's sort of afraid Scar would stop pushing him to talk to them to sort it out. Or worse, say he should forget them. Ekko respects Scar's opinions, and he really doesn't want to fight with him over this.

He wants to rescue Powder—Vi too. If she's still the Vi he knows, there's no way she wouldn't want that... but he isn't sure Scar and the others would be okay with it if they knew who might come looking for them.

It's not that Ekko believes Silco really cares, but he's as bad as a chembaron, and everybody knows you don't take from them, not ever, not anything.

It wouldn't be fair to surprise his friends either. They'd need to be prepared for a mission like that. They'd need to make plans.

'I'll keep watching,' Ekko says. 'She wasn't alone so...'

'Right.' Scar gets up and leaves. 'So, you're cool with me eating your share of dinner then?' He calls behind him.

Ekko flies out of his bed and runs after his friend. He barely saves his meal from Scar's claws.

Despite Scar's best intentions and all the work that goes into building a half-decent base, Ekko always finds time to stake out the Last Drop. He can't pull himself away, no matter how it hurts. Just as he told Scar, he wants to watch. Really, he wants to understand. He hasn't given up on Vi, not yet.

So Ekko sits on shadowed cornices, rusty pipes and empty balconies and agonises over it all, biting down on his nails. He sees the sisters come and go, and, when he can stay hidden, he follows.

It soon becomes evident that Vi is out all day almost every day, while Powder has no schedule. Sometimes she's out with that mountain of a man all covered in tattoos; sometimes she’s with a black haired woman with a mechanical hand Ekko doesn't know either. Far too often she's out with Sevika.

For a while, Ekko almost convinces himself that it means they're just working there. Maybe Powder misspoke, or maybe he misunderstood when she said she "lived with Silco". Silco couldn’t possibly love her. It's asking a lot, but if her and Vi are working for him the way he used to work for Benzo—to get a roof over their heads—then he can definitely help them.

They can leave the Drop and become Firelights. Vi would be great with everyone, and she'd love Scar in particular, Ekko just knows it. Powder could help design the place. Then things could go back... almost... to the way they used to be.

His hope first wobbles after he hears rumours of the raid on the Reddies gang—people are saying there was a bloodbath, that Silco slit the boss' throat himself, that he was protecting his daughters. It's finally dashed one afternoon while walking through Bridgewaltz market. Ekko isn't even following anyone; he got an offer for a gig fixing parts on a stall and just finished working there.

He spots them from a distance. Powder is loud; Silco is hard to miss. Vi is there too, and that black haired goon, skulking behind them.

He pulls his mask back down hastily and his hood up. The mask is in the shape of an owl's head. It's a gift from Aliyah, a new chirean member who is crafting one for every Firelight. Ekko makes a note of thanking her for it again later. He follows close, pretending to browse a couple of stalls down from them, fidgeting and feeling like the mask might not even cut it, somehow. 

He can't hear what they're saying, but he can see how close they’re standing to each other. Vi is talking, making sweeping gestures with her hands. She's frowning, but not like she's unhappy. More like she's talking about something serious.

Silco grabs her by the neck, shaking her like a puppy by its scruff, and Ekko tenses, ready to rush over and tackle him, for what little good it'd do. But Vi swats Silco's hand away and leans close, smiling. She jabs a finger in his chest. Whatever she says, it makes Silco laugh.

Just then Powder runs back to them with a pastry in hand. Ekko gasps when he notices her braids are all gone. It's just some plaits running along her scalp and ending in two buns at the nape of her neck. She steps on the metal tips of Silco's boots, standing on her toes and reaching up to push the pastry in his face. He takes a bite of it without hesitation. Whatever Vi says next nearly makes him choke on it. Powder runs off again, stuffing the rest of the sweet into her mouth while Vi pats Silco's back.

It's so... so ordinary. They're acting like any family—a happy family. It's like when Vander was alive... but with the wrong man. The wrong girls. It's like the Vi Ekko used to know is gone. Like she really died at the cannery with Powder and they both got replaced by these... these fakes. Either that, or they've changed so much that he can't recognise them anymore.

Ekko has never felt more betrayed in his life.

Scar finds him over Benzo's.

It's not called that anymore of course. It's a new shop owned by an old Demacian lady selling fabric and clothes. But the top floor is still empty, and Ekko left his old hammock there. Even though Scar's never been, he knows this is where Ekko used to live. It takes him a while, but he comes eventually.

Ekko just knows it's him by the sound of his footsteps and by his appreciative whistle when he steps into the small room.

'What a pad. Must have been hard to leave it behind.' Scar comes to loom over Ekko, nudging him through the hammock. 'I get it though, couldn't resist my charm once you met me.'

Ekko glowers at him from behind the arm he has thrown over his face. 'That's not how it happened.'

Scar laughs and goes to lean against the wall, arms crossed. 'I know, I know. We got lucky discovering the tree together and not me first or anything.'

'Go away, Scar,' Ekko groans.

He doesn't have it in him to play nice, not today, not after that encounter at the market. He came here to get away from everything, to let the dark waves swirl over him. He doesn't want to be poked and prodded or made to laugh.

Scar doesn't listen to him though—he never coddles when he gets in these moods. He always pokes and prods.

'Let me guess,' he starts, 'you saw these girls again? And this time it was worse. Did you talk to the older one?'

Ekko hides back behind his arm. 'N-no.'

'No you didn't see them, or no you—'

'They're with Silco,' Ekko snaps suddenly. He sits up in his hammock and pins Scar with a baleful glare. 'They were Vander's kids, and now they're Silco's kids. Get it?'

The chirean blinks, surprised, and for a moment Ekko is reminded that Scar’s just a few years older, not like an adult or anything. They're in this together, and it's not fair of him to take it out on Scar.

He sighs, looking down. 'I'm sorry I didn't tell you right away. I should have.'

Scar sighs too and kicks off the wall. 'Yeah well, at least things make a lot more sense now.'

He comes to a stop right in front of Ekko, arms akimbo, looking at him with his piercing green eyes.

Ekko squirms and scratches his chin, looking away. 'I was gonna tell you.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah. I mean... You'd hear about it, eventually.'

'It's nice to hear it from you, but...' Scar ruffles his hair and bounces on his feet, hesitant. Then he meets Ekko dead in the eyes and jabs him in the chest, the same way Vi had done to Silco. 'You've got to stop grieving for living people, Little Man. And I know it's hard too because they're your old posse but... you've got to stop living for these girls.'

'I'm not—'

'Don't bullshit me,' Scar cuts him off. 'We've been together almost every day since we met. I know you. You think you're so subtle?' He taps a clawed finger under his right eye. 'I see more than you can dream of, little human, I see when you've been crying and you think I can't tell. I see when you blush and I see when you lie, because you can't lie for shit.'

Ekko grimaces. 'Alright, you're making some strong points here but... I'm still not living for them.'

Scar huffs and crosses his arms again. 'What do you do in your time off? When you leave the tree?'

'I—well...'

'What I'm saying is that you've got to make a choice,' Scar continues, undeterred. 'You can't keep sneaking off to spy on them whenever you can. Either forget about them and move on, or make an effort to reach out again.'

Ekko blinks, surprised. 'You wouldn't mind? Even though they're... you know. With Silco?'

Scar shrugs. 'Oh, I don't like it. But you say they're your friends, right? Surely they wouldn't hurt you just for trying to talk?' He waves his own words away, smiling thinly. 'I mean, hurt you more than a punch to the face. We should spar more often.'

'We should,' Ekko agrees darkly. He can't believe Powder got ahead of him in fighting. Life really isn't fair. He sighs, shoulders slumping. 'I can't forget them. No way. Sometimes I wish I could. More than anything I wish I could go back. Like, to before? Before Silco's whole...'

'Take over the Lanes and start his shimmer business?'

'And kill my friends and all... Yeah, that.'

'Gotta move forward,' Scar says, shaking his head. 'You can't have it back.'

'I know, I know,' Ekko says.

He wishes he could, often enough. He gets lost in his memories, lying in bed late at night, making up a thousand might-have-beens. Scar's right though. He's gotten worse ever since he's met with Powder.

'Do you think they could join us?' Ekko asks, testing the waters.

Scar cocks an eyebrow, not thrilled. 'How about you start by talking to them, and we can take it from there.'

Ekko falls back into the hammock, sending it swaying. 'I hate it when you do that.'

'What? Being right, measured, reasonable, intelligent? Wise, even?'

'Yeah,' Ekko grunts. 'And humble.'

'Oh, that reminds me!' Scar flattens his ears back, hands pawing at his pockets. 'Ah! Here. Look what I found you.'

Ekko, knowing when he's being baited, jumps off the hammock to go have a look. It's a silver timepiece, designed like a pocket watch but more like... a chrono? It looks small, nestled at the centre of Scar's large hand, but it's bigger than any chrono Ekko's ever seen.

'Whoa, where did you find this?' he asks, impressed.

'Someone traded it for cheap. It's broken, but I figured you'd like to try and fix it.' Scar curls his fingers over it before Ekko can take it from him. 'Did you eat tonight, or did you just cry in your hammock?'

Ekko rolls his eyes. 'No mom, I haven't eaten yet.'

'Right, let's go then. You can have it when you're done eating.'

'Mom, please—' Ekko whines, wiping away imaginary tears. 'I can't wait that long!'

Scar laughs and walks off, the silver chrono dangling from a string around his finger. 'Come on, son,' he taunts, 'you can do this.'

Ekko laughs too, and he knows he's completely lost, once again, to his friend's poking and prodding. Maybe Scar is wiser than Ekko gives him credit for. 

As he steps out of his old abandoned home, Ekko swears to himself he's done running away from Vi and Powder. Away from the present. He'll confront them and try his best.

As Scar says, they can take it from there.

Chapter Text

Vi barely has time to get her arms up before the beaker explodes. The smoke gets everywhere anyway, clogging her mask and blotting her goggles.

'Not again!' she exclaims before falling into a coughing fit. 'This is... it's the third time!'

'The third time this week,' Syd corrects with emphasis. 'I know.'

Vi yanks her goggles off with an exasperated grunt. She has to use the back side of her apron to find a clean corner to wipe them on. 'This sucks,' she says.

Syd laughs, crossing the lab to come inspect the damage.

'Considering how you're breaking all my beakers and test tubes, I think I'm the one who gets to say this sucks.' He gives Vi a derisive look from behind his own clean goggles. He'd been wise enough to retreat to the furthest corner of the room before she started the experiment. 'You even broke a crucible Vi, I didn't know that was possible.'

'Mmh... Yay for science?'

Syd gives her a long suffering look. 'You need to learn how to use a burette without killing us all. It's really not that hard...'

Vi grits her teeth. It is hard. To her. It's been way harder than it should, and her progress has been slower than she wanted. Or expected.

'Don't be so dramatic,' she says with forced cheer. 'I haven't killed anyone yet.'

'Because I'm not letting you touch the hard stuff,' Syd says in protest, tone suddenly serious. 'And don't say yet, for the love of gods, don't tempt fate like that.'

Vi smiles sheepishly. 'I don't need to touch the hard stuff to do my job here... right?'

Syd waves at the table, strewn with shards of broken glass, dollops of simmering goop, and the dark soot of the explosion's smoke. A small mayhem compared to some of the catastrophes Vi has witnessed on Powder's side of their own shared workbench, but still a disappointing mess, yes.

'It would be nice if you could master the basics,' Syd says. 'I know you're making progress on the theory but at this rate—'

'I'll get there, don't worry!' Vi cuts him off, not wanting to get into the topic of her repeated failures. She points a finger at him. 'Not a word about this to Silco, alright?'

'Oh, I don't need to say a thing. My expense report will speak for itself. Now, go get yourself cleaned up.' Syd half pats her on the shoulder and half pushes her out the door. 'And then go home. That's enough damage for today.'

'Don't you want help cleaning up?'

Syd sighs and looks back towards the half-destroyed bench. 'No. My lab and I need time to heal these new wounds together.'

Vi rolls her eyes. 'Please, Syd, you're so—'

'I'm so your boss,' he quips. 'Listen to me and get lost. I'll take you to Singed's tomorrow, and you can blow his equipment up, for a change.'

Vi grimaces, but her rebreather mask hides the expression and Syd has already shut the door in her face.

This is another thing Vi is iffy about. She understands that she has to spend more time over in Singed's dank cave to get all the information she needs for her report, but her first visit has majorly put her off the place.

Unlike Powder she'd never been before—she'd had no reason to. Vi is still a little upset that her sister never dropped a word of warning to prepare her. Apparently she doesn't find the place disturbing, despite its organs in jars, bones cobbled together in articulated skeletons and stashed on shelves covered in ominous tools whose purpose Vi could only guess at.

'He's not a chemtech,' Syd had whispered to her when she'd shot a confused look his way. 'He's an alchemist.'

Singed had given her a tour as he recounted the brief history of his research on shimmer, how he'd first discovered the properties of the mushrooms by accident. On their own they're a mild euphoric, but Singed had kept up his experiments and finally decanted something promising by mixing in his secret ingredient.

Vi had smiled at that. 'What is it? Love?'

Syd had guffawed, while Singed blinked at her, confused. 'No,' he'd said, deadpan. 'Waverider kidney.'

Vi wasn't sure what she'd expected, but that was pretty par for the course. He even kept the enormous newt-like creature in a creepy floor-to-ceiling tube, plugged directly into a shimmer subtractor.

That explained a lot of the organic instruments they use in Syd's lab and the factory. The fact that Singed hasn't found a way to extract his medicinal variant without his waverider's direct involvement also explains why Silco put so little faith in her idea of mass producing it.

Vi also gives a lot more credit to Silco's worries around Singed now. She isn't sure what Silco thinks he's capable of, but she gets the... vibe. She has no intention of breaking her promise not to be alone with him.

Maybe she'd end like the waverider, plugged into a tube and tested on. It had looked dead—like a pickled shimmer mummy—yet it twitched, its claws curling and uncurling.

'Vi? You got a moment?'

Vi comes crashing out of her rather unpleasant trip down memory lane, grateful for the distraction.

She turns towards a short, purple-haired girl jogging in her direction. 'Yes, Mei?'

The girl comes to a breathless stop, a fist bunched into her side. Mei has spent her entire life in the Sump, and it shows. She's got the wheezing characteristic of lung blight survivors, and although she's the same age as Vi, she's much shorter and frailer. 

'I was... hoping I could ask you... a favour?' she says, voice muffled by her rebreather. 'One of my girls crafted something, and I wondered if you could... you know... pass it on?'

Mei is one of the leaders for the orphan children who work here and live a few levels up in the factory's barracks. Those kids who don't have a home to return to, or a bed in one of the orphanages. Mei has ten kids of various ages under her direct supervision. She hands Vi a small parcel, just a piece of rough cloth, covering a... well, a rebreather? Vi turns it over, bringing it close for inspection in the corridor's dim light.

It's nowhere near the quality of her own model. Vi is using a zaunite design made by craftsmen on the Promenade level, for sale to Piltovans, with high quality filters—Silco insisted. What Mei just handed her looks much clunkier, with crude soldering, mismatched parts, and unpadded edges that would chafe and hurt if worn all day. However it achieves the same style of filtration as Vi's, and if scrubbed regularly, it would grant a lot more protection than the basic models commonly used down here.

'Wow. Who did this?' Vi asks, impressed.

It honestly looks like something Powder could have cobbled together.

'Airini has been working on it... for months,' Mei says, standing proud, shoulders back and arms akimbo. 'She finished it a while back, but she felt like... you know... it was sort of pointless. I told her to talk... to you. But she was too scared... so I'm doing it for her.'

Vi laughs. Many workers in the factory are afraid of her. There was a general misunderstanding about her when she first arrived. Apparently someone introduced her as "the boss' daughter", a title she still doesn't care much for, but it's pretty accurate. Except that to the workers here, the only boss that matters is Syd, who can be a bit of a taskmaster.

Everyone was on eggshells around her for days until the truth came out. Her being the boss' boss' kid sparked mixed reactions. Some people have relaxed significantly around her, while others keep avoiding her like she's a snitch. Mei falls in another category altogether. 

'Could you show it to the boss?' she asks, pointing to the rebreather in Vi's hands. 'I think if we could manufacture it... or at least make some for the younger kids... And we could assemble them ourselves... if we got more of the same parts. I watched Airini do it and it didn't look that hard.'

'Okay, I will. I'll show it to my sister too. Maybe she'll spot some improvements she can add.' Some padding around the nose, Vi thinks, and maybe some straps to make it fit on the younger kids. 'I think it's a great idea.'

For all her projected confidence, Vi can see Mei deflate a little, all but sighing in relief. Maybe she is afraid of her.

Vi isn't sure how to feel about it. She still isn't used to being seen that way—used to this sort of privilege. She has always wanted respect, but what she gets here in the factory... it's not something she's earned.

She mulls over it as she changes clothes and makes her way back home.

Vi knows that if she'd gotten Powder away from Silco as she'd first intended after getting out of jail, she would have dreamt of getting a job in this sort of factory. She's never heard of such a good system elsewhere in Zaun. They could have lived up in the barracks. The kids who do so are paid less since they're housed and fed, but between the two of them, they would have been able to save some cogs.

But of course it's Silco's place, and it makes shimmer. Vi wouldn't have allowed it, couldn't. And since she accepted his deal anyway, she's all the way at the top instead. She isn't so stupid as to not see her privilege. If she really wanted to, she could learn to make cocktails and spend her days behind the bar at the Drop. Sevika's right; Silco would probably let her.

As if summoned by the thought, Sevika opens the Drop's backdoor just as Vi reaches for the handle.

'Well, you're back early,' Sevika notes as she steps out, holding the door open. 'Did you blow up the place?'

'No, why would you think that?' Vi says, frowning. Word can't travel that fast.

Sevika gives her one of her infuriating pitying smiles. 'I don't think you cleaned your face as well as you think you have.'

Vi feels a flush creep up her neck. It's so dark down in the factory, and all you get to clean up is a wet rag and a cloudy mirror. She must have missed some soot.

'Work is...' she means to say fine, but Sevika's curious expression makes her snap her jaw shut on the word. 'It's been rough,' she says instead, letting frustration bleed into her voice. 'Pretty much non-stop, and I don't even have any free time anymore.'

'What do you need free time for? It's just two months.'

'I don't even get to spend time with my sister! Whenever Powder catches me, she starts drilling me about chem compounds and moles.'

Sevika laughs at that. 'Yeah, I know, it shocked me too that your sister's smart.'

'Well, she tries to rub off on me but... It's almost been a month already and I got nothing to show for it.'

Nothing but headaches. Powder and Syd have come together to form an ungodly alliance, seemingly determined to blend Vi's brain into a pulp with manuals on chemistry and lectures on more science than Vi can shake a fist at. When she isn't learning, she's running experiments and doing maths problems. She's started to dream of equations. Vi also suspects Powder is enjoying her new role of at-home teacher a tad too much.

All of that, and yet she isn't much closer to understanding the full process behind shimmer's synthetisation, let alone its medicinal variant.

'My progress is so slow, it's killing me,' she says with candid disgust.

Sevika's smile splits into a toothy grin. 'Well, at least you're self aware.'

'And you've got no sympathy to spare,' Vi says with a laugh.

Sevika shakes her head. 'None.'

'Why would you—'

'Ha-hah, don't even try!' Sevika cuts her off. 'I'm not going to listen to your complaints. I've got places to be. Bring it up to Silco.'

Vi scoffs. 'But I—'

'No. I was against sending you to Syd,' Sevika says, stepping right up to Vi and grabbing her left bicep in a cold metal grip. Her voice is low, husky, like she's sharing a secret. 'I think you're a great boxer, Vi, and if you keep at it, you could become excellent. You and I, we could do this job together. You want to play with shimmer instead? Fine, go crazy—but I'm not a shoulder you can cry on.' She releases her arm and steps away. 'Try Silco's. Believe it or not, he cares.'

Vi is sure he does, but how can she go to him to complain when this is something she asked for? She can't show that sort of weakness.

She watches Sevika walk away, thoughtful. Maybe a little bit of weakness could be alright, if it buys her more time?

She stops by her room to clean up properly and change before looking for Silco. Surprisingly she finds him in the bar's main room, poring over a stash of documents with Mek. It's still early, so the music isn't loud, and people are chatting as they drink and play pool or cards. It's almost like Vander's Last Drop.

Vi shakes off the thought. Mek sees her approaching and gets up smoothly, nodding at her silently as they pass each other. She falls into the still-warm seat across from Silco.

He glances up at her. 'Ah, Vi, good to see you.' Just as quickly, he's back to perusing his papers. 'How is it going?'

He seems tired. His jacket is starting to look seriously shabby.

Vi clicks her tongue and leans across the table to fix his collar.

'You need a new jacket,' she says.

'I need many new things,' he replies, letting her work without so much as looking up. 'If only I were a piltovan, born with a silver spoon in my mouth.'

'Instead you only got a silver tongue.'

That makes him look at her. 'What are you accusing me of now?'

'Nothing! Listen. I need to talk to you about some things.'

'Things, plural?'

'Yeah. First, this...'

She pushes the rebreather prototype across the table. Silco picks it up and examines it carefully.

'Did Powder do this?' he asks. 'It's a bit crude for her, but...'

Vi leans forward again, drumming a quick, excited rhythm on the table. 'Right? I thought the same when I saw it. It's from a girl who works at the factory. Mei wants to know if you'd send them parts to make more.'

He gives her a thoughtful look. 'What do you think?'

'That Powder could make one per worker in a matter of days. I think this girl—Airini—should work with her on that.' Vi hesitates for a second, but she knows Silco well by now. She knows he'll hear her out, that disagreement doesn't come with disapproval or punishment. 'Honestly? If she's this good then I think she's wasted down there. She should sell those for us and make fair money from it.'

Silco nods slowly. 'Her skills could be put to better use.' He jots down Airini's name on one of his papers. 'Talk to your sister about it and we'll see.'

Vi can't help her grin. She loves this sensation, the warm feeling that spreads through her chest when she's helped to create real change, that using her new privileges makes a difference.

'What else?' Silco asks, pushing the mask back towards her.

Vi picks it up and fiddles with it, wondering how to phrase her demand. She didn't really stop to think about what to say, and Sevika's weird mix of friendliness and disdain left her wrong-footed.

'What is it?' Silco insists, frowning now.

Vi chooses to frame it as a question, and stumbles on her words as she asks, 'D-did you send me down there with a different purpose? Than making the report, I mean. Down with Syd.'

Silco's frown deepens. 'What do you mean?'

Vi sighs and leans back into her seat. She's botched it. She may as well go all out.

'I mean, did you set me up to fail? Is it like... an elaborate trick for me to discover how hard chemtech really is and how far out of my depth I was, making such suggestions? About shimmer, you know. Show me I'm wrong?'

Silco puts down his papers and stares at her, his mismatched eyes scanning her face, her clothes, her hands.

'How is it going?' he asks again, insistent now.

Vi grimaces and says, 'Just wait for Syd's bill.'

Silco snorts and shakes his head. 'Syd knows better than to send me a bill right now.'

'He won't have much of a choice if I keep exploding half his lab,' Vi says tartly.

'Right.' Silco cocks up his good eyebrow. 'So I take it's not going great?'

Vi shrugs, palms up, coming empty on every level. 'I'm not even sure. I know so little about this whole chemtech thing that I can't tell you how bad it's going. Just that it doesn't feel like it's going fast enough.'

'Mmh... Powder was excited about your progress,' he says, and he makes it sound like a question.

Vi grunts and slides down even further, legs out, hands drumming on her thighs. 'Powder ambushes me with maths problems whenever she sees me. I've been avoiding her.'

Silco lets out a bark of a laugh. 'Good luck with that,' he says, sounding genuinely amused. 'Is something else bothering you?'

Vi chews on her lip, unsure of what to share. Silco hasn't answered her question about whether he's set her up to fail. And he's Silco, not someone she's ever felt like she could really confide in. But now he's giving her a look... Like a kicked puppy or something.

'Look, I don't mind,' he says, 'but Vi, if you don't think it's doable, please don't be afraid to—'

'It's not that,' she cuts him off. 'It's just... It's more complex than I thought. I need more time.'

He looks surprised. Pleasantly so. He fishes two cigars out of his jacket's inner pocket and offers one to Vi. She accepts graciously. She's taken to smoking as well recently. The air down in the Sump is thick enough to chew, and you can sort of feel yourself dying a little every time you cough, like it's a receipt from your body. Syd smokes too and deals out cigarettes like bonuses for good work.

Silco lights them up and pushes his paperwork to the side, giving her his undivided attention. 'Do you truly need an extension?' he asks. 'Are you utilising your time the best you can?'

'Those are two different questions.'

'Well then, answer them both.'

Vi leans forward and blows smoke in his face. Silco stares at her, unfazed, and blows his right back.

'Alright, alright!' She sits back and decides she's got too little left to lose. 'When Vander was teaching me how to box... I never took that long. Or sewing, or fixing machinery. I've been learning how to use Mylo's lock picks. Dustin is helping.' She rubs the back of her head, embarrassed. 'I don't know. It just never takes me this long to learn new things? But here, even with clear instructions, I'm still failing more often than not. I'm blowing stuff up!'

Like her sister would, but Powder does it gleefully and sometimes on purpose.

To Vi's relief, Silco doesn't laugh, smirk or snicker. He takes a slow drag of his cigar as if taking his own time to collect his thoughts.

'I see,' he says, serious. 'It's a common problem.'

Vi frowns. 'It is?'

'For people like you and I, yes.'

Vi glances around the room, trying to make sense of the comment, like she could spot something obvious that sets them apart from everyone else. She doesn't think she has much in common with Silco, besides a hatred of Piltover—and love for Powder.

'Everyone has their preferences,' Silco continues. He points to the bar, where Mek is sitting and nursing a pint, no doubt waiting for their conversation to be over. 'Mek is burly, but no fighter. He plays to his strengths in other ways.'

Yes, Vi knows exactly how much of a non-fighter Mek is. She'd been the first to be surprised when she'd managed to lay him out in a single punch to the jaw, and even more surprised to learn his specialty is in secrets and rumours.

Silco points to the ceiling and the office above. 'Sevika's preferences are more physical. She's a good follower. She thrives on accomplishing goals.' He points to Vi next. 'Your sister is driven by her curiosity. She likes to feel useful, neon colours and explosions.'

An extremely fair assessment, Vi has to admit.

'They've found their speciality, their niche, and they don't have to push out of their comfort zones too often. If you were to do the same, you could keep learning to fight. Specialise. You could become a bruiser for me. With your quick fists and your personality, you could climb up pretty far.'

It sounds eerily like Sevika's own proposal moments ago. Climb up the ranks? And share her job? Be Silco's second right hand? Is that really what everyone seems to expect of her, and the best she can be?

'What are you getting at?'

'It's not what you've chosen, is it?' Silco says. He's silent for a couple of breaths, like it's a real question, but Vi has no answers for him. 'You want to show people about your vision. Medicinal shimmer, a better Zaun... You want to be right about it, and to be a leader.' He gives an angry slap to his ledger. 'That means you have to learn skills that don't come naturally to you, and use them even if it sucks the joy out of your life. You think I like adding numbers? Bookkeeping is the definition of tedium. But you're the same as I am, Vi. Good at leading others, and with a destination in mind. Your self is your best tool, and—'

'Don't give me the inner-monster speech,' Vi cuts him off with a warning finger. 'My inner monster doesn't know a thing about chemtech.'

Silco huffs, smoke coming out of his nose like a dragon. 'I'm talking about the dreamer in you. If you believe in your vision, you'll suck it up and keep at it.'

Vi closes her eyes and groans. This is a pep talk. Silco is giving her a pep talk, and it's actually quite touching. She takes a deep drag, lets the serpentleaf sink into her before puffing it all out. 'Okay... But can I have an extension?'

'No.'

Vi jerks upright. 'Really?'

Silco smiles at her like a cat with cream on its whiskers. 'I think you misunderstand what I'm asking from you. I'm not expecting you to become a chemtech, Vi. Not in two months anyway. I want you to understand shimmer and make a plan of action. If it convinces me, it's Singed and Syd who'd have to crack medicinal shimmer, not you.'

Vi gapes at him. 'But Syd said... the basics... I'm still not good enough to... Wait, I'm not supposed to be able to make shimmer from scratch?'

'I never asked for that, did I?'

No. He never did. She remembers all their conversations on the topic; there weren't that many. He never asked her to become a chemtech... She just went with the flow, did what Syd asked... But she only has to prove it's doable, suggest how, not actually do it herself. Which means no more shattering of crucibles and playing around with explosive goop. No more letting people dictate how she spends her time, and how many maths problems she has to solve. It means she set herself up and only has a month to course-correct!

'I suggest you talk to Syd,' Silco says mildly.

'You bet,' Vi exclaims before springing out of her seat. 'Thanks for the talk, Silco. Appreciate it. I'll see you later!' 

He gives her a small wave, his nose already back into his paperwork.

Vi bursts out of the Last Drop with renewed energy and purpose. It's not late yet, and Syd is probably still at the factory. She has to talk to him and doesn't want to do it in front of Singed tomorrow morning. Fucking Syd. Slimy bastard really was going to make her decant mushroom juice until he turned her into a certified chemtech and made her his right hand! She's going to rub his ears off his head.

Vi is still imagining torturous punishments for the man when a shadow jumps out of a dark alley and blocks her path. She stops, falling into a defensive stance, fists coming into guard position automatically. This is a deserted street amid long abandoned buildings, connecting two old staircases between Entresol and the Sump. The perfect place for an ambush, and her new friend here is masked and hooded. 

'Make way,' Vi says, voice steady. 

Whoever this is, they're small. If they don't have a gun she has no doubt she can take them on and toss them aside, but she'd rather not fight. Just closing her fists like this, she can hear the disgusting echo of skulls crunching under her knuckles.

'I don't want to hurt you,' she continues, opening her hands in a sign of peace. 'But you're being creepy and standing in my way.'

The dim light catches on the edges of the mask. A chirean design? In the shape of a bird's face. Strange. Vi has never seen anything quite like it. 

'It's true then,' the stranger says, their voice muffled by the mask. 'You really work for them.'

They grab the mask with a gloved hand, the other open to mimic Vi's gesture. The whole thing comes off, pushed over their head, throwing the hood back and revealing their face.

Vi's arms go slack at her sides, her jaw hanging open in shock. It's a face she knows.

'Ekko?!'

Chapter Text

In all his years in Piltover, Viktor has never gotten entirely used to sunlight, or at least not used to it getting inside his home and rudely waking him up. 

Sunlight is brighter than any neon, and uncomfortably hot. Also, if it's waking him, it means he never made it home, and is in the camp bed in the lab's storage room. He groans and rolls back, seeking a cool corner to continue sleeping, only to bump into something—something warm, that takes a lot of space, and snorts when nudged. 

Viktor cracks an eye open, and sure enough, Jayce is jammed against the wall, hogging the last of the shadows and snoring softly. Viktor's befuddled mind jolts awake with a half-panicked thought, but no—they're both fully dressed.

He scrambles off the cot, back screaming with pain, and slowly stretches as he makes his stumbling way to the chair on which his vest is draped. His cane is nowhere in sight. A quick glance at the chrono on a nearby shelf tells him it's only six in the morning. Which means he's slept two hours, and explains why he walks into the doorjamb on his way out.

It does not, however, explain why he collides with a young woman in the corridor. This isn't Sky, their new assistant. Sky doesn't have blue hair, and he isn't that sleepy.

'Wh- Oh, sorry, I—' He catches himself on the wall, wincing at the lancing pain between his shoulder blades. His neck is stiff as a plank too. Crashing on the lab's cot is almost as bad as sleeping at his desk. 'Who are you?' he asks, squinting blearily at the child—because on closer inspection it's a gangly teenager he's just bumped into.

She grabs the lapels of his vest and straightens them out, swift hands tugging and smoothing. 'There, there,' she says. 'Did the noise wake you too? I only came to check on it.'

Viktor frowns, confused, and thinks back on what woke him up. 'I... I don't recall... No, no. It was the sun. I think. But how—'

'Yes, the sun is annoying, isn't it?' she says, sounding miffed. 'What's it doing being up so early?'

Viktor nods in agreement. No matter how close to the top of the fissures you live and how often you can see the sky, the sun being up and casting shadows in the morning is an alien concept to most Zaunites. It's good though, it gives him more daylight working hours in the summer.

'You said there was a noise,' he asks, brain painfully lumbering back to the matter at hand. A noise, a child in his lab... 'You didn't... explain.'

'Oh, it was nothing!' the girl says. 'Nothing's broken at least, so you're all good!'

'But you are—'

'From the lab under yours! Like I said, there was a noise, so I came to check it out.' She takes a step back and waves him down the corridor towards the lab. 'You look like you really need coffee. Actually—' she darts close again, up on tiptoes, bright blue eyes as good as dissecting him. 'You look like you need more sleep.'

'I'm fine,' Viktor says, defensive. They're close to cracking the resonance pattern needed for the tower design the Council is waiting on. He'll sleep when they're done and construction begun. 'Really, p-perfectly fine. Coffee, yes. Good idea.'

The girl backs off, straightening her own academy vest. 'If you say so. You sure you don't want help?'

Viktor pushes himself off the wall with a grunt. 'No, thank you, you did enough.' Even though he isn't sure what she did at all.

She shrugs and gives him a short bow and smile before turning around and leaving, satchel tucked under her arm, the two blue buns at the back of her head bobbing with the cadence of her feet. At last the lab's door closes behind her, and after relishing the silence for a second, Viktor makes his way to the coffee machine.

He sits next to it and listens to its low purr as it works. It's a splendid contraption, all automatic. It takes no time to get him a steaming mug. It's one of the first things Viktor insisted on purchasing for the lab, not that Jayce put up much of a fight. If they were going to drink astronomical quantities of the stuff, they weren't about to waste precious time brewing it. 

Viktor is halfway through it, slowly rotating last night's unresolved rune-set in his mind, when his eyes drift past the rim of his cup to the papers scattered on the floor. At first he doesn't make sense of the sight in front of him. Messiness isn't rare in their lab, but slowly the facts trickle in, and his coffee-infused brain adds them up.

That's a lot of papers. The windows aren't open, so no gust could have blown them off the workbenches. It also doesn't explain why the entire room is such a mess. There's instruments overturned, their arcane tuner has been pried open, their small bookshelf is empty, its content strewn about. His cane is hooked to the top of the chalkboard, his equations gone, replaced by doodles.

Viktor's coffee threatens to come right back out as sudden anxiety punches him square in the chest. It looks like a break in. Chaos. Actually, it's one missing wall and some rubble short of looking just like Jayce's lab, after last year's fateful explosion.

'Jayce?' he calls, voice wavering. 

Hadn't the girl mentioned noise? She'd also said everything was fine. Viktor's sleep deprived mind finally sees it all: how young she'd been—younger than the minimum admissible age—how large the vest she'd worn, ill fitting. There are no labs underneath this one; it's a big lecture hall. And who comes to check on noise with a satchel? A satchel!

Viktor jumps up to his feet. 'JAYCE!'

Chapter Text

Powder walks. Long strides, yes, but she doesn't run, even if her heart is pounding like crazy and her legs are vibrating with urgency. She keeps her chin high and her shoulders nice and slack, the satchel tossed casually over her shoulder.

It's a trick Mek taught her. 'Running people look suspicious,' that's what he'd said. 'Clutching loot to your chest also looks suspicious.'  

So she does neither and walks through the streets of Piltover like she belongs, thumbs hooked into her belt. Well, at least she tries.

Maybe there's an upside to having been interrupted so early, as there's almost no one out. Yet Powder can't help feeling terribly out of place, like every glance her way is a suspicious one no matter what. She can't hide how patched her pants are, how cheap her shoes. She's got a zit that's been bothering her for days on her forehead, and she's already been feeling like a shooting target without the added pressure of blending in with Pilties.

She dives into narrower streets, picking up the pace when she finds them empty. When she spots a convenient walled garden, she jumps the fence. Out of sight, she drops her satchel and does that other trick Mek taught her: off goes the academy vest she stole, the brown pants and blue shirt. She swaps them for her backup clothes, shimmying into well worn overalls. She folds her costume neatly and packs it next to her wads of stolen documents.

She feels a burst of pride now that she isn't so stressed out by her slow-walk escape. She did it! She stalked the stupid guy who was researching the gems, found his new lab, got in...

Woke the other guy up.

But that doesn't matter. She completely blindsided him and got away with some sweet reading material.

She undoes her buns next, combing her hair loose with her fingers. Powder has a kerchief Oba gifted her, black with a pink geometric pattern. A bit too eye-catching maybe, but it's her favourite, and it suits this look, since the grey overalls have matching pink patches at the knees. She ties it over her hair, clearing her face and hiding most of her hair.

When she comes back out, she's just another Zaunite going home after a long night shift Upside. She even takes the Rising Howl. She bought tickets just for the occasion. The funicular isn't empty, but she blends in, and the real workers are too exhausted to give her a second glance.

By the time she slips through the back door of the Last Drop, she's positively vibrating with excitement. She has to smother her giggles as she tiptoes down the stairs to her room. She wants to wake Vi first and let her know. She'll be proud of her. She has to be, this is Powder's first big mission alone and she pulled it off!

Powder is confused not to see Vi in their bed. She checks the chrono on the wall. Seven is way too early for Vi, or anyone at the Drop—except for Silco, who sometimes goes to bed later than that.

She comes down the room's stairs, and that's when she sees her: Vi is slumped on one of the couches, feet up on the low table, snoring softly. Powder bites her lip in sudden realisation. She must have stayed up all night waiting for her.

You always mess something up. But it was meant to be a surprise! She couldn't warn her; it would defeat the point!

Powder sits next to her, torn between giddiness and anxiety. She shakes her softly. 'Vi? Vi.'

When she won't budge, she grabs Vi's shoulder and yanks—

'Wah! P-Powder?' Vi lurches sideways, confused, feet scrambling off the table. She gives Powder a bleary look. 'What— Wh-where were you?'

'Well... I was doing something. I was busy...'

Vi rubs her eyes and frowns. 'I was waiting for you. Were you out all night?'

Powder looks away, scratching her cheek. 'Yeah. Kinda.'

'Powpow you can't...' Vi sighs. She grabs Powder's wrist and gives her a tug. 'You're only twelve. The Undercity is dangerous, you can't stay out at night alone. You have to warn me or take someone with you. Are you all right?'

Powder's anxiety dissipates, and the glee wins out. She grins from ear to ear as she fumbles with her satchel with her one free hand. 'I wasn't down here!' she says. 'I was up in Piltover.'

'What?'

'Look!' She pulls out the wad of papers.

Vi lets her go, taking it from her. Her frown deepens as she goes through the sheets and their gibberish notes. 'What the hell is this?' she asks, confused. 'Where did you... It looks like what was in that workshop we hit...' Her eyes widen then, and she looks up at Powder with something like awe, maybe even some excitement of her own. 'Where did you find these?'

Powder slaps her hands. 'Yes, you got it! I found their new lab inside the Academy! I didn't even have to break any locks—I got a jacket uniform from some Piltie clothesline—and I just walked in during the evening, hid and waited... They took forever though, I thought they'd go home in the evening, but they stayed up all night! I would have come home faster otherwise. Anyway, see this? And this? They're clearly working on the same gems I stole. But you see that drawing? It's blueprints for something big, Vi. And they're using the gems to power it. I'm going to read everything and bring it to Silco, he'll be so pleased!'

'What the... What is it? Is that a tower? Is this supposed to be... Yeah, the handwriting is awful, but that says Piltover right? Is it supposed to go at the top of Piltover?'

Powder nods. 'Mhmm. They had an even bigger schematic on a blackboard. It's very very big.'

Vi slouches back into the couch with a sigh that seems to deflate her. 'Yeah, right. Silco is going to love this for sure. But Powder—' she hands back the papers with a very pointed look '—no more solo expeditions without warning me. Can you imagine the backlash if you'd been caught?'

Powder smiles, unbothered. 'Yeah? Marcus already hates my guts. And then he'd have to escort me home in person!' She laughs, genuinely amused by the idea. Marcus giving her a ride in his sleek black car, lecturing her the entire way...

'Look, I'm sure Silco will have his own opinion about that,' Vi says, waving the whole thing away. 'I was waiting for you because I wanted to talk.'

'What about?'

Vi lets out an even bigger sigh, almost disappearing between the couch's back cushions. 'Why, Powder?' she asks.

Powder blinks at her, confused. 'Why what?'

'Why didn't you tell me about Ekko?'

Powder's stomach drops all the way to the sump, to mythical Oshra Va'Zaun and beyond. Fuck. It's not like she forgot. She's been waiting for Ekko to come and find her again so she can apologise. But he hasn't. And every day that goes by and she hasn't told Vi, it's harder to bring it up. So Powder sort of... not quite forgot, but pushed it aside. 

Now it's here, biting her in the ass.

'He told me he talked to you almost two months ago. Why didn't you tell me he was alive? Two months Powder... That's kind of fucked up.'

Powder chews on her lip, wrings her hands. Coward, coward, coward. 'I— Ho-how do you know?'

Vi scoffs. 'How do you think? He ambushed me on the way to the factory.' She smiles a little at that. 'Never even heard him coming. He saw me going in and out of the factory, saw the gloves and assumed the worst.'

'What?' Powder asks testily. 'That you're actually good enough to make shimmer?'

Vi glowers at her, but the effect is ruined by an enormous yawn. She glances at the chrono and goes right back to glowering at Powder. 'You could have let me sleep,' she says, getting up with a grunt. She extends a hand to Powder. 'Come on. Let's make some hot drinks, and we can continue this talk.'

Powder accepts her hand, but she drags her heels the whole way to the bar. The thrill that kept her running all night has dissipated, and she too feels the strain of the hour. She's grateful for the warm milk Vi hands her, sipping at it to delay answering awkward questions.

Undeterred, Vi opts to share her side of the story. 'He was pretty unhappy,' she says, swirling her own drink but not touching it. 'I assumed it was because of the misunderstanding about what I'm doing down at the factory. I mean, I get it, you know. Took me long enough to get used to the situation, to Silco. And I was living with him, not just hearing rumours.'

Powder cringes. Working with Mek she's heard a lot of these rumours too. She thought it was fun to see how the truth got amplified, distorted, sometimes on purpose as Mek sowed little lies here and there. She hasn't stopped to consider what it would be like for Ekko, to be at the very end of that chain of distorted hearsay. She frowns at the thought. If Ekko wanted the truth, he only had to come and ask her himself.

'Turns out,' Vi continues, 'he was actually angry because he thought I was ignoring him. He thought you'd told me about him right after you met, whenever that was.'

'A bit before Silco got sick,' Powder mutters around the rim of her cup.

'Yeah so, ages ago.' Vi finally takes a sip of her milk. She stays silent for a while, as if hoping Powder will say something—which she absolutely won't. 'He's our friend, Powder. I thought he was dead or gone all this time. Why hide it from me?'

Or maybe she will. 'He's not our friend,' she says through gritted teeth, feeling a blush creep up her neck. 'Not anymore. He said so himself!'

Vi cocks an eyebrow, curious. Maybe pitying. 'Did he really? Did he say he isn't our friend?'

Powder huffs. No, he hadn't said it plainly, but she isn't stupid, she got the idea. 

'When I told him we were living here with Silco he called me a liar. Like, he didn't believe we could be... Happy. I know you're not... not always. But I am! He couldn't imagine we were staying because we wanted to. He said Silco's just a killer.' She raises her hand to cut Vi from saying he is, like Powder doesn’t know already. Like Silco himself didn't agree. 'He didn't listen to a word I was saying, even when I tried to explain!'

'Explain what?' Vi asks.

'Explain why Silco's a good dad!' Powder says, warming up to the conversation despite herself. 'And he acted like that's not possible at all. I also tried to show him how the shimmer, the gang wars, everything he was hating so much–how it's all part of the plan. But he kept saying Silco must be tricking us and how we should come live with him and his new friends. Said... Said it wasn't possible you could like living here.'

It had sounded a lot like she could though, like she has no standards. That implication, also unspoken but bright as a neon sign, still hurts.

'He said I was crazy,' Powder concludes, crossing her arms.

'And did you punch him?' Vi asks.

Powder squirms on her bar stool, resisting the urge to jump off and bolt out of the room. 'He had it coming,' she mumbles. 'I thought I'd apologise when he came around again. He knows where we live, right? Guess who never came back.'

Vi hums, drumming her fingers on the counter. She doesn't seem angry, but there's something in her eyes anyway. Something that makes Powder squirm even harder.

'Are you mad at me?' she asks, unable to resist the building tension.

Vi shakes her head. 'No, I'm...' She looks down into her drink, and Powder could swear she's about to cry, which would be a complete and total disaster. 'I guess I'm just sad.'

Alarms go off in Powder's mind. Vi, sad? What’s Powder supposed to say to that? To do? She's not usually the one doing the supporting and encouraging! Vi's never told her much about her emotions... Not even after the bridge and their mom... Even after she returned from jail in Piltover...

Powder wonders how often Vi feels sad but doesn't say. Doesn't share it. Like she can't trust her with her feelings unless Powder's being a Jinx and losing her shit. That seems to be the only time she really opens up.

'Why?' Powder asks, for a lack of anything better to say.

Vi doesn't look up from her glass of milk. She stares at it intently, like she can divine her answer from its ripples. For a moment Powder thinks she won't reply, but eventually she looks up and says, 'I just thought we were... closer than that.'

That's not the sort of answer Powder expected. 'Closer? You mean you and I?'

'Yeah. You know. I thought you trusted me again by now.'

'Oh.'

'You were afraid I'd want to go, right?'

Powder gives a baleful look at her glass, unhelpfully empty by now. Coward. 'Shut up.'

'Powder...'

'It's fine,' she says, waving Vi's concern and Mylo's nagging voice away in the same shooing gesture. 'It's not that I don't trust you, I swear. I know if you had to choose between me and Ekko, you'd pick me. You promised, right? And anyway we're sisters. But I felt like... You still didn't really like it here, and I thought you'd want us both to go, and if I said no, you'd stay because of me, but you'd be miserable again. I just didn't want you to know you had a choice, I guess? Makes it easier.' She rubs her eyes, embarrassed. It sounds so awful when she phrases it like that. Manipulative and mean. Like she trusted Vi with one thing but not with the other. 'I'm sorry. I should have trusted you completely, but I— I... I was so angry with him! And then Silco was sick, and I was scared out of my mind. We were so busy, and then the ambush happened and you were sick!'

'I get it, I get it,' Vi says, rubbing Powder's arm.

'Every day I forgot to mention it, or it didn't feel like the right time. And then it started to look like maybe he'd never come back, so I just...'

'Powder. I get it. It's fine. I'm not angry with you. I just wish you would trust me completely.'

Powder nods, miserable. Her eyes are stinging with unspilled tears. Vi is definitely crying, and that feels so awful— because it's your fault. You're always the one making her cry.

Vi yanks Powder off her stool then, the muscles on her arms bulging as she just... lifts her into her lap like she weighs nothing. She crushes her into a bear hug, and Powder wraps her arms around her waist, burying her face into her neck.

'I'm sorry,' she mumbles. 'I'm really sorry. I won't keep secrets any more.'

'You can have secrets,' Vi says. 'But some things you shouldn't keep to yourself.'

Powder freezes, keenly aware she hasn't told Vi yet about Silco. Is that a secret worth keeping?

'Mmh, Silco knows,' she says, biting the bullet. 'I was upset thinking about Ekko, and he made me tell him.'

Powder can feel the rumble of Vi's laugh reverberating into her own ribcage. 'Of course he does. Well, see, there was nothing to fear. It's not like Silco would ever let either of us go.'

'Mmh. True. But you—'

'Would have gotten over it,' Vi says, giving Powder an extra squeeze. 'Powder, please. Please just trust me. I can be a good sister, okay? I'm trying. And I really do like it here.'

Powder leans back to look up into her face. There's no lie in her sister's clear blue eyes—Vi's a super awful liar anyway. 'You mean it?'

She nods. 'Yeah. Took me long enough but... I like some of the people. It's lively. I guess it feels different, since we're all working for the same goal. And I hope I can do real good, if I can convince Silco to invest in medicinal shimmer.'

Powder scrambles off Vi's lap and returns to her stool, laughing all the while. 'You're so silly, sis. All you have to do is look real upset when your report doesn't work. Cry a little. Then he'll do it anyway.'

'Let's hope it doesn't come to that,' Vi says. She goes around the bar to refill their glasses. 'I'd rather not base my plans on making poro eyes.'

'What did you tell Ekko then?' Powder asks, accepting her refill of hot milk.

Vi smiles. A tired, tiny smirk. 'I think I convinced him,' she says. 'It took forever. We talked for hours. I get you, he really wouldn't believe me when I said living here was good. Of course I would never have stayed if it weren't for you. Not because you liked Silco, just because I don't know how I'd feed you and keep you safe. If it were just me, it'd be different. Honestly, I think Ekko got lucky. From what he says, he found some good people and a secret place to make into a home. Maybe we could have joined if we'd run off together that night.' She shrugs. 'But we didn't. I... left you. But if—'

'No more what-ifs. You said so yourself,' Powder interrupts her, waving an accusatory finger.

Vi smiles. 'You're right. Anyway, I think he got that. The conversation about shimmer was—' she lets out a loud phew and theatrically wipes her brow. 'It was a different beast.'

'Did he think Silco messed with your brain?'

'Pretty much. All he can see are the addicts from the early months when Silco was peddling raw shimmer. I explained what I'm working on, how these people would be the first to benefit from it. How I hope we can cure the tumours and curb the addiction. He said that sounds like a scam, that all Silco did was dilute shimmer and flood the streets with it, calling it a party drug and...' Vi hesitates.

'And he's not wrong,' Powder finishes for her. She sucks on her straw noisily, trying to diffuse the darkening mood. They've had enough bad feelings for one day. 'It's not just diluted, but we're really cranking it out. So how did you convince him?'

'I tried to recruit him.'

'You what?' Powder exclaims, choking on her drink and falling into a coughing fit. 'Re-recruit?'

Vi's smile turns smug. 'Yeah. I offered him a tour of Syd's lab and a demo of the medicinal shimmer. I explained Silco's arguments against it. Next thing you know, we're not arguing about why I'm making shimmer, but how the variant can or can't be distributed. He seems to believe he and his friends could defend the shipments or the physikers using it if enforcers show up. So I asked if I could put him down on my report as part of the security. Keeping the shimmer mobile until we figure out a way to make a permanent dispenser.'

'Did that work?'

'He said he'd think about it if I could prove to him that it's real and that Silco would actually finance it.'

'Wow. Sis that's... Actually smart.'

'Hey.'

'What? You won't cry for Silco, but you'll spin tales for Ekko?'

'I said nothing but the truth.'

'Your tears could be the truth too.'

'Whatever. I don't like Silco thinking I'm...'

'Weak? A crybaby? A darling daught—'

'Enough already!'

Powder is exhausted; surely she can be excused for a little cackling. Vi doesn't look impressed.

'Anyway,' she says. 'Whether he decides to help or not, I told him to come and see you.'

That shuts Powder right up. 'You what?'

'You heard me.' Vi jabs a finger down into the bar between them. 'You're going to give him that excuse you planned and then play nice. We all had a hard time. Ekko might never excuse Silco or like him, and you have to accept that.'

'And will Ekko accept that I like him?' Powder asks in a huff.

'Well he better. I told him to cut you some slack. You two have been friends since you were babies, and I'm not watching you throw it away without at least trying. The rest is up to you both.'

'Yeah...' Powder mutters. 'Thanks.'

She might sound sullen, but the truth is that she's missed Ekko a lot. She'd been overjoyed when she'd seen him. That's why it all hurt so much. She won't say it, but she's glad Vi has given them a second chance. If Ekko actually comes. She hopes he does. 

Powder goes to promise she'll try her best, but a huge yawn interrupts her. Vi immediately yawns too. 

'Dammit!' she groans. 'Stop that.'

'I was up all night. I can't help it!' Powder says with another jaw splitting yawn.

Vi rubs her eyes and waves at her. 'Come on, bed time. Oh, and when Silco skins you alive for your unsanctioned trip to Piltover, you're on your own.'

'He would never,' Powder says, a little less certain than she'd like.

'Guess we'll see.' Vi says with a smirk. 

Chapter Text

Everyone in Silco's office listens to Powder with rapt attention. There's Vi, perched on his chair's armrest, Mek and Sevika, standing on each side of his desk, arms crossed and expressions clouded, and Syd, chain smoking on the couch. Silco mustn't look any happier than them, for all that he makes considerable effort to keep from wringing his hands or curling them into fists. Powder is unbothered by her moody audience and goes on blissfully with her exposition, never faltering even with Sevika interrupting her with requests to 'Dumb it down,' or exasperated 'You're losing us again.'

Powder backtracks and explains things in simpler terms again and again. The diagrams she details and the processes she walks them through may be complex, but the idea behind them is easy enough to grasp: Piltover is readying for a technological revolution, and they're not taking Zaun along with them.

They are planning to make the Sun Gates and its vital maritime traffic a trivial afterthought. They will displace commerce to the top of a spire four times the size of their highest tower. Worse—considering the potential of the gems—Piltover is preparing to weaponize Arcane magic. Anyone trained in the application of runes would be able to harness the gems' power. They would become a mage and an engineer rolled into one. Powder, by the sound of her present rambling segway, is halfway there herself already.

'I'm sorry I have to ask this,' Silco says, interrupting her musings on a Zaun-wide self-purifying sewer system, 'but are you sure.' He makes a helpless wave, encompassing Powder, her scattered papers and notes, her theories and conclusions.

'Yep,' Powder says with a matter-of-fact shrug, not taking offence at the question. 'There's this big unknown where the Arcane is involved. It's all dependent on the energy in that heebie-jeebies world... They don't understand that at all, but the runes, it's all, like, maths. It's very logical actually. Just like numbers in your ledgers. They're boring but they don't lie.'

'Well, fuck,' Syd says, blowing a large ring of smoke.

Silco rather agrees.

'And you understand all of this maths?' Mek asks. 'You couldn't be making some... error?'

This gets him a squinty-eyed look, but Powder shrugs again. 'I read a lot of their notes while I was there, but the papers I have—' she shakes a wad of loose notes she's been reading from on occasion '—they're like a manual, a summary of all the things they know and rules they understand, and then some of the things they don't understand too, all listed with ideas of experiments and everything. It's super tidy and clear. There's even like, a... what do you call it again?'

'A table of contents,' Vi says. 'And she's right, I picked it up while she was writing down her notes on the tower, and honestly it's not that hard to follow.'

Mek and Sevika share a sombre look before turning to Silco. All eyes are on him, but the pressure comes from above. The overwhelming sensation of an enormous object, hurtling down towards him at high speed. A momentous collision with fate, once more dealt by a Piltie hand.

The feeling of powerlessness that seeps through the cracks of Silco's resolve pools in his guts like a frozen sludge. For so long working against Piltover was working against other Zaunites. Vander and his status quo, the gang leaders and their constant warfare, the chembarons and their conflicting goals, factory owners and their traitorous Piltie boot licking. Those are hurdles he's had to clear in order to shape Zaun and give them a fighting chance, but those are also adversaries he always understood.

What is he supposed to do against Arcane magic? How are they to compete, or even survive, if commerce abandons their docks?

Silco allows himself a single sigh. Any more and it'd just open the floodgates of a cold rage he doesn't think he could control.

'Mek.'

'Boss? I swear there was nothing on the streets.'

Silco glares at the burly man, makes him dance a bit from one foot to another, but he stands his ground.

'Am I supposed to believe this has been kept quiet since...' That would be since Vi and Powder's infamous escapade Upside, blowing up a Kiramman lab with one of those gems. 'How does something this big remain secret for well over a year? Especially considering this Talis boy was put on trial? It was known then that he was working with magic.'

'The fewer in the know, the tighter the secret,' Mek intones like a mantra. 'Something like this? Must be the Council and a handful of people at the Academy, tops.'

'Not even Marcus?' Vi asks.

Silco glances up at her, and she gives him a sweet, shit-eating smile, not even trying to hide her prejudice.

Sevika scoffs at the suggestion. 'Do you think Marcus would keep such a secret from us all this time? That he's even capable of lying like this?'

'He doesn't need to be lying if he's not talking about it!' Vi counters. 'It's not like any of us thought to ask him. Marcus is a snake. He tried to have me sent to Stillwater without a trial! If that Councillor lady hadn't insisted on seeing me, I—'

'You're entitled to your grudges, Vi,' Silco cuts in, brushing the back of his hand against her arm to appease her. 'And you might be right. I agree that Marcus is the first person we need to squeeze about this. Mek.'

'Marcus. Yes. I'll take care of him myself.'

'All right. Activate everyone on your network, particularly your brothel birds. Have a chat to Babette personally as well. Impress on her that sharing information on this matter is now compulsory and free of charge. A favour to Zaun. We need Pilties to start talking. I want to know how far this has spread. If this tower works as Powder says it will, commerce will never be the same. I simply can't believe our dear Councillors aren't already elbow-deep in contracts.'

'We should look into airship companies, if the blueprints are correct,' Sevika points out, stabbing a mechanical finger in one of Powder's drawings of an enormous spire. 'There aren't that many airships on the market. Not enough to replace the boat fleets.'

'Sure, you do that,' Silco says with a nod. 'Talk to Renni as well, and reach out to Chross. If he wants to claim he's got the best informant network, he's going to have to prove it.'

He rubs at his temples, feeling the latent tension coalescing into a headache for the ages.

'Silco?' Vi asks. 'Are you all right?'

'Do you need your drops?' Powder asks.

'I'm... as fine as I could be doing,' Silco tells them through gritted teeth. 'I just wish I could have the Council tied and lined up here.'

So I could kick their heads in, one by one.

Powder sniggers, and Sevika smiles knowingly. Mek is busy counting on his fingers and mouthing a silent list. Syd is staring vacantly at the ceiling and Vi... She's looking at him with eagerness. Waiting for more orders, more solutions.

Silco leans back in his seat, biting down on another sigh. No matter what he does, they limp behind Piltover. There is no catching up to them, it seems. His new policies are finally starting to come into effect, and already they aren't enough. Everything in Zaun is on the verge of becoming obsolete in the face of this hextech.

Unlike before however, he's in power, and he isn't alone. He has more support and more sway. He may not like it, but he'll have to hurry the schedule along.

'We'll just have to move forward with our own Council,' he declares. 'Sevika, you know what to do.'

'Isn't it too early?'

'What's the status with Finn?' he asks, turning to Mek.

'His position in the factory district is solid. Not sure if his assassination business will take off on its own.'

'Give him a hand, then. Both of you. Gratitude goes a long way. By the time we sit him on this new Council, he'll be eating from our hand. They all will. They have to.'

'Just don't promise shimmer to any of them,' Syd says. For once the man sounds deadly serious. He stabs his fifth cigarette in the ashtray and fumbles for a new one. 'We're at our limit down there, and several organic vessels have decayed faster than anticipated.'

'Well, have you talked to Singed about it?'

Syd gives him a pained look. 'Are you questioning my ability to run the most basic functions of my own—'

'No, no! Janna forbid I suggest anything,' Silco exclaims, rolling his eyes. He doesn't miss Vi's grin. These two... 'Just keep the place running, you'll get your new factory.'

'What about us?' Powder asks, squirming. 'I could go back and get some gems, you know.'

'Please tell her she's dreaming,' Vi says. 'I've been telling her, but she won't listen to me.'

'Because I can. It was so easy!'

'And now they'll have security and be expecting you!'

'No they won't!'

'Vi's right,' Sevika says. 'It's too risky.'

'Except it isn't!' Powder exclaims, getting heated. She comes forward and slams her papers on the desk. 'If I get caught Marcus can just bail me out.'

Vi scoffs and goes to say something, but Silco interrupts her. He leans forward and takes one of Powder's hands between his. He brushes her knuckles with his thumbs, the little bumps so small and delicate. She's like one of Janna's blue birds, fleeting on the strongest of fissure winds, fierce and unafraid. She may not be the wisest, but she's the boldest.

'Powder, the game has changed,' he tells her softly, willing her to listen, because he knows just how bold Powder can be when she sets her mind to it. 'What you brought us, all this... It changes everything.'

'I know,' she says, surly. 'I get that.'

'And when the game changes,' he continues, 'so do the pieces. The way we control Marcus... It would be very difficult to replicate with a new sheriff. We can't afford to lose or compromise him now. He's so deep in Piltover, this new situation makes him much more valuable.'

Powder is making a face, and Silco doesn't need to look back to know Vi is pulling a worse one. Mek and Sevika do a decent job of not looking openly amused. Syd, still busy creating a serpentleaf smog, smashes his sixth stub in the ashtray.

'I could just ask the guy then,' Powder says. She takes her hand back to ruffle her papers, looking aggrieved. 'Maybe he'll give us one, or tell us where to find our own.'

'You want to go chat with the man you robbed?' Syd asks, sounding equally delighted and incredulous. 'What makes you think a Piltie would even listen to you?'

'He isn't a Piltie.'

Mek coughs for attention and quietly corrects her. 'Talis is a noble house.'

'Yeah, duh! That's the guy with the chin. The other one—' Powder stabs her notes insistently, over the name penned in one corner '—Viktor? The one I bumped into when I was leaving. He's Zaunite.'

Silco holds his breath. Everybody does. For a few seconds, all you can hear is the faint hum of voices rising from the bar below. It's early, so things are quiet—so quiet Silco can hear his own blood pounding in his ears like the bass of some frantic jukebox song.

A Zaunite boy working on Hextech? A traitor? Or the greatest mole of all time? The possibilities make his head spin. 

'Are you sure?' Sevika asks, breaking the silence.

Powder laughs like Sevika is joking.

'No, this is serious,' Silco whispers. 'Are you saying this man... He's not an assistant?'

'No, they work together. Half the notes are written by him, and you can really tell because his writing sucks—big time.'

'And he's—'

'From the Promenade, from the sunny bits,' Powder says, imitating the accent distinctive of that area. 'I'm not dumb.'

'No one is saying you are,' Silco says. 'This is just...'

Mek picks up where he trails off. 'Just something more for me to look into. I got it, boss.'

Silco nods. 'You do that. Have Oba help you.'

Mek leaves without another word.

'So, what about us?' Powder asks again, annoyed now.

Silco waves for her to wait. His mind is firing on all cylinders. He needs to think. The game pieces have changed, yes, and he has many moves to plot out before he can even get a good read of the board.

Syd laughs. 'I know what you're going to say.'

'Do you now?' Silco bites, glancing up at him. 'Enlighten me then, because I hadn't made up my mind.'

'You're going to ask me to talk to Singed about him too—the Zaunite boy. Because he still has contacts in the academy, and because there's no way Heimerdinger isn't in on this secret. If Singed is out of the loop, he'll want to fix that as soon as he hears about this new tech's potential.'

There's a series of clicks as Sevika drums her fingers against the desk. She gives Syd a thoughtful look and Silco a wary one. 'Can we trust him with this?'

'What, me?' Syd squawks.

'Not you, dickhead. Singed.' She doesn't expand, but she doesn't need to.

Silco is torn. Singed has been nothing if not supportive of his projects—not politically, of course, Zaun could be burnt to a crisp and the man would gleefully devise a study and go sampling the ashes—but he has worked tirelessly on shimmer, with a drive often bordering on obsession. Yes, Singed has his own uses for the stuff. It would be hypocritical of Silco to reproach him his experiments. They were always opportunistic collaborators, brought together by coinciding interests.

Still. The man's personality being what it is, his loyalties being as they are, his morals... or lack thereof... Could Silco trust him? Absolutely not. Should Singed be informed of the situation? Eventually, yes.

He shakes his head. 'No. No, I don't think that's what I want you to do.' Silco pats Vi's knee and shoos her off his chair. He points to her, to Syd, and says, 'You two, you have to keep working on shimmer—the medicinal variant—we're making it happen.'

'What?' Vi and Syd ask in perfect unison.

'I still want your report, Vi. Wrap it up as soon as you can and bring it to me. Then I want you back working with Syd and Singed as needed to make it into a reality. Take Dustin with you. Make him into your shadow. You're not going out without him. Don't let them bog you down with experiments. You're managing this project, not playing chemist.'

'But Silco—'

He waves Syd's protest away with an impatient gesture. 'Shimmer is our advantage. You will get your new factory, and we'll equip it so it can also create the medicinal variant. Figure out how to make it happen, and don't mention hextech to Singed. I'd rather wait to have a better grasp on it all.'

'I...' Vi gapes at him, at a loss for words.

'You,' Silco tells her, 'made some very compelling points. Singed will be distracted by the problem of manufacturing, and you should focus on how to safely deliver your medicine across the fissures.'

'Ooh, but isn't that wh—'

Vi slaps a hand over Powder's mouth. 'Yeah, okay. I've made some progress on that front. Got some ideas.'

She gives her sister a pointed look, whatever this is all about, and hurries out of the room, Syd close on her heels.

'Are we done?' Sevika asks. 'You got me quite the laundry list here.'

'What about meeee!'

'Yes, we are done,' Silco tells Sevika. He leans across the table, opening his hands again in invitation to Powder. 'No need to worry,' he tells her, 'you too have a lot of work ahead.'

She approaches, tentative. She slides her hands in his and asks, 'I do? What is it?'

'You have to study,' Silco says. 'You, my Jinx, have to become Zaun's first hextech artificer.'

Chapter Text

Ekko assembles his trusted friends among the Firelights for an important meeting. They crowd in his workshop after everyone else has either gone home or gone to sleep, waiting expectantly for the news that justified such secrecy. The room is kept dim, lit by a single lamp. Tya is entertaining Scrapper and Melany with a story about Dip falling from a ladder this morning—his bucket of paint had followed him down and somehow landed over his head like a helmet, drenching him. 

Scar slips through the door with a silent nod to Ekko and perches on the edge of the desk. With the all clear, everyone turns to Ekko expectantly, and he doesn't disappoint them. 

He comes clean about Vi's offer, his past alongside both sisters, and their new ties to Silco. A bit of a row ensues—angry, shouted whispers, questions in rapid fire, elbow nudges and taps on his knee demanding Ekko's attention from all sides, voices raising and raising until Scar has to shush them all—and for a moment in the madness Ekko wonders if this wasn't a massive miscalculation on his part.

Still, he far prefers this to making the decision alone.

He remembers Vander's last day all too well—how he'd called the shots for the whole of the Lanes. Ekko remembers leaning against the wall, parsing Vander's every word, staring at his broad back, wondering just who else knew about his deal with the enforcers and how people in the room might react, if they were told. It was shocking enough to him that Benzo was in on it. At the time he hadn't understood at all.

He remembers people pushing, demanding, being ignored and leaving angry. The same people who now run shimmer factories and rule the Lanes instead of Vander.

How differently would things have gone if Sevika had been there for him instead of switching sides? Had he truly been weak? Ekko isn't sure, but what he knows is that in the end Vander had been alone. When Silco had killed Benzo and taken him, no one had gone after him besides his kids.

It's not what Ekko wants for himself. He's got Scar, and Tya and Melany and Scrapper... And he wants them to make this decision with him. They must have a majority or not commit at all.

It's a bit of a struggle to separate what he's seen on his tour of the shimmer labs and factory with Vi, from what he knows of her, or what he believes—wants to believe.

'How can you be so sure she's not lying to you, if she's changed enough to become Silco's daughter?' Tya asks pointedly, their steel coloured eyes cold under furrowed brows.

Ekko doesn't have ready answers to that either. How do you judge how much someone has changed? Did he ever know Vi that well to begin with?

He'd wondered about that as he walked behind her through the factory, watching the thick chemtech gloves swaying at her hip. She'd walked with confidence, leading him from room to room explaining the process as they went. She'd been comfortable talking to workers who approached her. It was Vi the leader he'd always known, yet it also wasn't the Vi he knew. She'd never cared much for chemtech even though it had been her mother's trade. But Ekko thinks it suits her, and he wants to believe that deep down she's the same person. That change isn't all bad.

Hasn't he changed too, in all those months?

'I checked the science, as much as I could,' he answers instead, avoiding the sticky philosophy of the question of change. 'I believe her. She has Silco's official support and she's really trying to make medicine out of shimmer. She even showed me, on a rat.'

'On a rat. People aren't rats,' Tya retorts.

'Thanks for your input,' Ekko says testily.

They roll their eyes. 'You know what I mean.'

'Yeah, and you know what I mean too. I just don't think she made it up to lie to me.'

'You only think that because she's your friend. You should have just mapped the factory so we could blow it up.'

'Tya...' Melany whispers the name, and like a spell they calm down, slumping in their seat.

Ekko rubs the back of his head, unsure how to sway them. 'Look, what's the benefit of lying to us at all?' he asks the whole room. 'They don't even know it was us on the lower docks. Nobody ever needs to know about that hit. We can keep quiet for a while and see where Vi goes with this. If her medicine really works, I think bringing it to those who need it most is perfect for us, especially if I can finish my board prototype. We'd be faster and more mobile than anyone, enforcer or not.'

'We'd be working for fucking Silco!' Tya spits, lurching forward again.

'Calm down,' Scar says, stepping in. 'We aren't selling our souls here.'

'We kind of would be though,' Melany says, her voice barely audible. She folds her hands in her lap, pulling at her sleeves reflexively to try and hide the purple marks that spread down from her arms. She looks up to Ekko. 'You said they wouldn't stop making shimmer... So isn't working with them going against everything we stand for? Aren't people coming to us to flee shimmer's impact?'

That's true, but it's precisely why Ekko wants to work towards a world in which shimmer isn't a threat any more.

Almost every week there are new members joining the Firelights. Orphans, struggling parents... Many affected by shimmer have found their way to the tree. Ekko is glad for that. He really is. But he also feels overwhelmed. He's just thirteen, and the most experience he has is as a mechanic, not keeping people alive. His friends are a huge help, but people look up to them for solutions to their problems and guidance in the community and... it'd just be easier if they didn't have to. Hadn't lost their loved ones, their jobs or homes.

If an alliance with Silco can make such a future happen... he feels like they have to try.

'I understand,' he says. 'I also don't want anything to do with the drug. But again, we'd only be helping protect the medicinal variant.'

'Which we'd see tested before committing to anything,' Scar says, nodding along. 'Make sure it's the real deal.'

'Exactly.' Ekko smiles, glad for his friend's support. 'We can promise to come for her great reveal, and nothing more. Take it from there.'

'I'm for it,' Scrapper declares, crossing his burly arms over his chest with finality.

Those are his first words at this meeting, and Ekko bites down a sigh of relief. Scrapper is the most unreadable vastaya Ekko's ever met; his long, drooping ears never even twitched during this conversation, his slanted yellow eyes, like a cat's, never giving anything away.

Tya is still frowning, unconvinced, but Melany is rubbing her hands furiously, building up to something important.

'I-I think... maybe... I could test for it?'

Ekko blinks at his friend, surprised. He opens his mouth to object, shuts it, opens it again to ask if she's sure, shuts it again. Melany is twenty. She's second oldest after Scrapper. She managed to get off shimmer with a lot of help from the community. She knows best what she wants for herself. Ekko can't make that decision for her—shouldn't try to.

Scar, clearly thinking the same, simply says, 'If you don't mind?'

Scrapper nods his agreement. 'Mmh, yes. It would help... to have feedback from someone we trust.'

'All right! I... I'll do it.'

Ekko brightens, realising they might well be going forward with the idea. 'So, are we doing this?'

Scrappers chuffs. Melany nods and smiles. Scar shrugs, but Ekko knows how to read his body language—he's all for it. Meanwhile, Tya's body language is the polar opposite. They don't answer, giving Ekko a smouldering glare, shoulders up to their ears, hands balled into fists over their knees. 

'I don't like it,' they say through gritted teeth.

Ekko hesitates, unsure what to say. 

'Hey,' Scar cuts in, leaning forward to nudge Tya's elbow. 'Stop pouting. How about we go on a tour of that factory too, you and I? Meet the girl and see if she's truly ready to trust us?'

Ekko holds his breath and waits. All eyes are on Tya now, the tension in the air thick enough to cut with a knife. 

They shoot a glower at Scar, but finally relent and throw their hands up in the air. 'Fine. Sure. Guess it's a good way to see more rats getting miraculously cured!'

Ekko stammers through promises that he'll ask Vi in the morning, and the group finally disbands, all in agreement to try and trust Silco's people, just this once. 

When he collapses into his cot, Ekko tosses sleeplessly for a long time. He isn't sure Tya can be convinced, and afraid they might leave if they end up collaborating with Silco. He's left to wonder if this is how Vander had felt, looking down into Sevika's own steel eyes. 

Decision made, Ekko moves fast. Vi agrees to his terms, pleased to hear about Melany volunteering. She tells him where to find Powder, adding in the same breath that she knows to expect him. Bit of a trick move on her part there, but Ekko feels like he had it coming. He'd gone back to Vi first because with her there was this edge of business—and also, maybe, because she didn't sock him in the jaw—but he can't avoid Powder any longer. He's waited long enough, been stalling, almost. 

No more of that. He makes his way to the sump, following Vi's instructions until he finds the sisters' new lair, as she called it.

Powder is there, hunched over a workbench made out of the central shaft of a broken aeration rotor. The place is surprisingly furnished. There's an old couch, a low table, stacks of fabric, boxes overflowing with gears and machine parts. A crate is stuffed with rolled blueprints. Another is full of... explosives?

It's far down in the sump, real quiet place, nothing below it but a drop into darkness. Peering down, Ekko wonders what he'd find if he were to glide to the bottom on his hover-board, when he finishes it. Does it go all the way to Oshra Va'Zaun? Vander had told him stories of it, years ago. He'd explained how explorers still came to Zaun just to climb down to it and visit its crumbling halls, in search of knowledge, or treasure, or both. He'd rented out his services as a guide when he was a child, sometimes carrying back loot.

'Just stones and knick-knacks,' Vander had told his disappointed audience of starry-eyed children. 'The kings of old aren't buried down there. At least not anywhere I know of. But who knows? Maybe one day a mine shaft will dig deep enough and bore into an old tomb.'

Ekko watches as Powder tosses something away from her. It bounces on the rotor blade with a metallic klink before falling over.

The explosion is loud and bright. It tears off a large chunk of wall, and Ekko realises with wry amusement that there's probably nothing to see but rubble under this particular spot.

'Congratulations,' he says as he drops down on the blade below him. 'Your bombs are finally working.'

'Took you long enough,' Powder says in reply, never looking up from the bench.

'Yeah... Sorry,' Ekko says, making an effort to sound contrite. He is sorry, after all. 'I shouldn't have—'

'No no,' Powder cuts him off, swivelling around on her stool and stabbing the air with a pencil. 'I'm sorry.'

'But—'

'I shouldn't have punched you.'

'I called you names!'

'I was angry!'

'I was angry too!'

Powder rolls her eyes. 'Yeah, but punching is worse.'

Ekko bites down on a retort. It kind of is worse, and anyway he doesn't want to argue. 'So... if we're both sorry, can we call it quits?'

Powder sighs and turns back to her workbench, pushing another bomb away and hunching herself over a large notebook. 'Sure,' she says tersely.

Ekko sways back and forth on the balls of his feet, hesitating. Their friendship has taken a beating too, and the issue of Silco seems to loom like a ghost, chilling the air between them.

'I've been talking to Vi,' he says, trying to find a way to bring up the topic. 'About helping—'

'I know,' Powder cuts him off.

'Well, I mean...' he huffs and goes around the central shaft to grab the other stool. He drags it over and plonks it next to hers, sitting down like he belongs here. 'Vi said— She explained that Silco has been really... erm, nice.'

'Yep. Nicer than Vander.'

Powder observes him intently, like she's waiting for him to blow up in her face at the words.

'Yeah, she said that too,' Ekko replies with a sad smile. 'That he's extra nice to you, like you're his real daughter.'

Powder shrugs like she's dismissing his words, but she seems pleased. 'Vi too, you know? He likes her too. I think he'd like you as well.'

Ekko grimaces. That's maybe asking for too much, right now. Powder's smile returns, and Ekko finds himself grinning back. It's been so long... They haven't really seen each other... Smiled to each other... Since the moment they first reunited at Vander's statue. She looks a little different, with her short hair braided close to her scalp and ribbons running through. Her eyes seem bluer too, under the chemlights. She's taller. Maybe taller than him—another one of those unfair things.

Instinctively, Ekko lurches forward, wrapping Powder into a crushing hug.

'I missed you,' he says, burrowing his face into her neck to hide the tears pricking his eyes.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' she mumbles, holding on tight. 'I still want to be friends. Can we still be friends?'

'We are,' Ekko says with a sniff. He breaks up their embrace, giving Powder a very serious, if tearful look. 'I'll meet Silco if you want me to. I'm just... I'm afraid, for my friends, you know?'

Powder laughs, rubbing at her own eyes. 'Your friends? What for? Silco knows about them and your tree.'

Ekko's breath catches in his throat. 'Y-you... You told him?'

'I told him you offered me to come join, so he had Mek check on you. Mek's our secrets guy, he can find out anything. Oh, Janna! Stop squirming, you're fine. Silco doesn't care about your tree. Didn't you say you talked to Vi? He wants to fix the shimmer situation too, you know?'

'Does he, for real?'

Powder shrugs again. 'Why don't you talk to him?'

Ekko rubs his forehead. 'Okay, I see what you're doing.'

'Heh.'

She turns back to her notebook, twirling her pencil between expert fingers. Ekko leans over the bench, propping his head up and watching her work. Within minutes it's like she's forgotten he's here at all. She's frowning now, and biting the end of her pencil.

'It's a nice notebook,' Ekko comments, running a finger over the paper.

'Yeah, I know. Vi got it from Marcus.'

'The sheriff?' he exclaims, suddenly worried Vi is getting friendly with more insufferable people than he can cope with.

Powder nods, malice glittering in her eyes. 'She broke into his home and stole it. She wrecked the entire place! You should have been here when he came down to whine about it.'

'Oh!' Ekko slumps with relief over the bench. 'Damn, you scared me for a second.'

Powder laughs at his expense, high and bright. 'You thought she made friends with Marcus? Wow, Little Man, you got an overactive imagination.'

'That's rich, coming from you!'

Ekko is surprised when Powder sighs, slapping her notebook with an open palm. 'Yeah, yeah, Jinx and all her crazy ideas, I know.'

'You're not a Jinx.'

'I can be if I want to,' she snaps back.

'All right,' Ekko says, holding his hands up in surrender. 'What's jinxing you, Jinx?'

Powder bites her lip, and Ekko immediately recognises the expression. She's got a secret burning her lips. He sits straighter on the stool, bringing his feet up and wrapping his arms around his knees. 'Go on,' he says, 'I'm listening.'

'You can't tell anyone though, okay? Do you remember the tip you gave us, that started it all?' she asks. Powder and secrets, not a good mix. Ekko nods to urge her along. She drums her fingers on the workbench, hesitating a little before launching into her story. 'Well, I found gems at their place. I never told anyone but Vi, but those turned out to be arcane crystals.'

Ekko sits through the entire story, about the gems causing the blast in Piltover, Powder's makeshift monkey bomb creating the explosion at the cannery—which is news to him and sends him spiralling, thinking what it must have been like—and then tales of breaking into Piltover's Academy, finding the same lab, stealing the same researcher's notes. He listens with increasing disbelief as she runs him through their content, and the researchers' plans for a tower portal that could send ships anywhere on Runeterra. She explains the obscure symbols and what they mean as best she can, when she's figured them out at all.

He blinks at her when she's done, reeling with the implications. 'So you can do magic?'

'The gems can.'

'But if you get one, you could—'

'Do a lot, yeah, so long as you make the runes work. It's all just logic based.' She slaps her notebook again. 'Silco wants me to show him everything I can think of. All my ideas for the gem he wants us to get for Zaun.'

She sighs again, hunching over the notebook. Ekko traces her jaw with his index finger, runs up her chin and stabs into the corner of her mouth, pulling it into a forced smile. She turns to him with a frown and opens her mouth—no doubt to bite—but he's already pulled back and flicks her nose.

'Ow! What's that for?'

'You're moody for no reason,' he tells her. 'You're literally sad because you have too many crazy ideas for magic? When your beloved Silco wants all your ideas? What's the problem here?'

'No, it's more like... I already know what he'll want? This feels pointless.'

'Yeah? What's that?' Ekko asks, curious.

'I mean, there's no way he'd let me spend our one gem on Sevika's arm,' she says, showing him a sketch of a mechanical arm with a blade that emerges from between the fingers. A doodle in the corner shows the blade expanding in a sort of shield. On the next page there are two large metallic gloves with spiked knuckles. Powder taps them and says, 'I don't even think Vi wants gauntlets anymore. All she cares about is shimmer this, shimmer that...' She flips the page, revealing much more detailed blueprints for some sort of medical needle. 'This I can make myself fine anyway. He'll want the water purifier.'

'Silco? Why?'

She pushes the notebook towards him. Ekko takes it and starts scanning the new spread of pages. The notes are messy, scribbled everywhere around a large—and very approximate—map of Zaun's fresh water pipe system, as well as some of the sewers.

'Because it'll be good to all of us,' Powder says. 'And because Pilties won't notice. They don't drink our water, not ever. But if we fixed up some ventilation and the Gray disappeared—'

'Then they'd know we're doing something... magical,' Ekko concludes.

Powder nods. 'It's always about the "Children of Zaun" with him. What's good for the Sons and Daughters of Zaun? It's the clean water. But it's so much work, and I can't even prove I got the runes right unless I have a gem.'

Ekko thinks back to the kids that had greeted and followed him around as he toured the shimmer factory with Vi. How they live in barracks in the low levels and get a free meal a day. Almost as good as his Firelights, except they're spending their days making shimmer. The Children of Zaun... That's him too. His Firelights too. It doesn't sit well with him that Silco thinks he's got any right to fight for him, but the prospect of magical clean water again changes things.

Wouldn't it be worth it, to let Silco claim them as his people, if it meant they wouldn't have to test the tap water every day with a flame to see if it lights on fire?

Something catches Ekko's eye. 'I don't think that's enough pumps,' he says, pointing at the offending number. 'With the pressure you must be putting through the system, you'd need extra—'

'No, it is. The maths—'

'Just show me your equation.'

Powder stabs her pencil in the corner, underlining some scribbles. You'd think she's encrypting her work, but it's hardly voluntary. Of course Ekko is used to it, and he's always been good at decrypting Powder's handwriting by virtue of having an even worse one.

'What...?' He frowns as he follows the numbers. They're correct, as far as he can make out, but they still make no sense.

Powder giggles next to him and taps a group of runes under the equation. 'This,' she says, 'makes the entire system work on the pumps we already have.'

'But... but that's...'

She grins at him. 'Magic.'

'So, you make an entire bypass at this point, with the new pipes covered in those runes and then... All the water that flows through them is...'

'Pure as Janna's breath,' Powder says, suddenly serious. 'I need the gem, and also probably some way to hide it? But then, yes. That's all there is to it. If I got the runes right.'

'If you got the runes right...' Ekko whispers, looking at his friend with wonder.

He thinks of the air purifiers she mentioned earlier, and of light, all the things that are corrupted in Zaun. Fresh air, direct sunlight, it's the things that allow his tree to grow and his Firelights to thrive. Could the runes make artificial light? They could grow so much more of their own food if the clean water could be used to restore what soil they have. Then it dawns on him.

'We could do... What's it called? Hydroponics!'

Powder claps her hands excitedly. 'That's growing food just on water, right? Yes! Let me add it to the list. Also, we could close the loop, isolate the sewer system.'

'Ah! We could fix all the leaks!'

'Replace the entire thing,' she says, shaking her head. 'We could make a backup rune pipe in there, in case the first one is found!'

'Ooh, or use it as a purifier for chemical spills!'

'Yes, yes!'

Powder flips to a new, blank page and jots the idea down. Ekko reaches for a pen of his own and starts writing on his side of the notebook. He's so excited by the ideas they discuss that it takes him forever to notice how they're leaning into each other, shoulder to shoulder, heads down together, like they used to, way back when. 

He's got a silly smile plastered on his face and a warm feeling, deep in his chest. He doesn't have a word for the emotion, he just knows he's got his friend back, and it's the best thing in the world.

Chapter Text

The first time Caitlyn Kiramman takes the Rising Howl funicular into the Undercity, she has to leave so fast that it would be a stretch to say she's even been to the Undercity at all.

The second time she comes better prepared, with sturdy, no-nonsense clothes and her trusty rifle holstered at her back. She is jumped just as quickly, and the woman intent on mugging her is so relentless, Cait has to fire a warning shot into the air and keep her rifle trained coldly at her aggressor's chest to stop her from giving chase.

Again she scuttles back to the Rising Howl.

The third time she finally makes it to Bridgewaltz market. She goes several levels down on foot before realising she's being followed. A quick headcount convinces her to run back up the stairs and off again to the funicular.

The thing starts to feel poorly named. It's a howl of defeat, a rising whimper of shame, petering out as she ascends to the streets of Piltover.

Cait gets out and walks up to the edge of the fissure, frustrated. She kicks a can over the edge and watches it disappear into the green smog the locals dub the Gray. She stares, intent, like its toxic swirls hold the answers she seeks.

She's smart, she knows she is. She has the grades and academic achievements to prove it. Yet Zaun is a hard puzzle to crack, and not the kind she has studied before. Time and time again, the Undercity resists and rejects—not her investigation, but her. She's repelled like a foreign body, like a drop of oil in a vast sea.

Cait has to be missing something obvious, and it can't be the gun. She looks down at her simple purple blouse, her sturdy brown pants. Her pockets filled with ammunition are closed by brass buttons, the only glint of metal she allowed herself, besides the reinforced tip of her boots. Ah, and a touch of silver filigree at her collar.

It has to be it, her outfit. It can't be her accent after all, since she never even has the time to speak before Zaunites single her out.

It doesn't help that she's not been allowed to visit the place since she got lost in Bridgewaltz as a child. A stranger had looked after her and helped reunite her with her father. She hadn't been scared, not as far as she remembers, but the conclusion had been a general ban on Zaun.

In the end, Cait has taken more trips to Noxus Prime than to the shadowed half of her own home city. The enormity of this truth dawns on her now. After all, she would know exactly how to dress and act if she were walking in Noxus Prime's great bazaars or its rowdy boardwalks.

Cait sits down, her legs dangling over the edge. She peers into the Gray and considers her options.

Her parents, obviously, are out. Sara, the closest thing to a friend she has at the academy, sometimes goes to the higher levels of Zaun to shop. Cait might still ask her for pointers, but she doesn't want to say too much. Sara already does a lot by covering for her on days like today, when Cait's parents assume they're studying together.

This leaves Jayce and his partner, Viktor, who is a Zaunite and ought to be able to walk her into the Undercity himself if she asked. Cait kicks her feet, annoyed. It would be so easy. Viktor is nice, but Jayce is her friend. She's used to depending on him. Instead, she has avoided both of them. Their lab has been crawling with enforcers since the robbery. Marcus has taken a special interest too, interviewing them at length, or so Cait heard from her mother.

The culprit still hasn't been found, and Cait simply can't afford attracting the slightest bit of attention. She also can't afford Jayce or Viktor letting anything slip about her interest in Zaun. If it gets out that she's been using her free time to investigate an unreported break in at the sheriff's home, well...

Cait doesn't want to shoot her career in the face before it has even gotten started.

'Hey, you're not gonna jump, are you?'

'Wha—!' Cait startles and reflexively leans back, scrambling to her feet.

She turns around, sheepishly brushing herself down, and comes face to face with large blue eyes and long, pointed ears drawn back with concern. She sighs, relieved. It's only the cat-like Vastaya girl who operates the Rising Howl. Cait has overheard passengers greet her before.

'You're Mariri, aren't you?' she asks. 'I'm sorry, I didn't want to worry you, I was just... Uhm, looking.'

The girl smiles, and her ears perk back up. 'I am. Mariri, I mean. And that's good. You wouldn't be the first, you know? Popular spot, here.'

A shiver runs down Cait's spine. Glancing into the fissure, she can see roofs, the fuzzy contours of metal balconies... But the smog swallows everything without a hint of ground in sight. She knows it's a long way down.

'Really?'

'Sure. Pretty big drop,' Mariri says, matter of fact. She comes to join Cait at the edge, her long tail balancing behind her as she leans forward. 'Did you drop something, then?'

Cait chuckles. She nearly dropped her motivation, yes, but her curiosity burns too hot. She just can't let this go. That flash of bright pink hair. The screaming child. The sheriff's windows shattering open... And then the silence. The lack of report. A Zaunite attacking Marcus' home without consequences.

It's a mystery the likes of which she can't resist. One that led her to defy her parents' edicts, to lie and make her way to Zaun.

Now if only Zaun would let her in...

'No, I was really just lost in thought. Not bad thoughts!' she adds hastily. And then, on impulse, Cait opens her arms to show off her outfit. 'Mariri, what's wrong with me? I keep trying to head down to Zaun but... Clearly something isn't working.'

Mariri blinks at her once, twice, looking Cait up and down. And then she laughs—a full bellied laugh, mouth wide open, revealing a spotted palate and gleaming, pointy teeth.

She slaps Cait's shoulder. 'That's why you're always back so soon when I take you down? Don't blink at me, of course I noticed. You're getting in trouble?'

Cait feels her cheeks heat up as she mumbles half-formed excuses before settling for a 'Yes, maybe. I don't know.'

Mariri shakes her head, but her grin isn't mocking. More like Cait told an excellent joke. 'How rich are you, Piltie girl?' she asks.

'You can call me Cait.'

'You didn't answer my question.'

'Look, I know I'm—'

'Rich enough you never made your own clothes?'

Cait gapes at her, baffled. 'No, of course not. I— We... buy them.'

Most of her clothes are tailor made, actually. Her family retains several seamsters and a designer. But there's no need to paint a target that large on her forehead.

Mariri nods knowingly. She pinches Cait's blouse, rubs the sleeve between the pads of her fingers.

'That's super nice, but... you don't look like you could afford it.'

Cait frowns, confused. 'Excuse me? I thought the problem was that it was obvious I'm a Piltovan?'

'Well yes, that's what I mean. You look like a defenceless mark.' Mariri runs a claw along her hip, as if testing the trousers' fabric too. 'If this is you trying to pass for one of us... Then with a shirt like this? What is it? Satin? Unpatched? At your age? You'd have to be some big shot's daughter. No chembaron would dress their kids from Piltie shops anyway. Bad look. And no chembaron's got a kid like you either.'

'How do you know that for sure?'

'Everybody knows. You know all your nobles and Councillors' kids, don't you? Wouldn't want to offend them if you run into one, right?'

Cait blinks, startled. She does. It's not like there's many of them. And she is known—at least in Piltover. It has been a constant issue for her at the academy, and in those escapades to the funicular. She bites down on a smile. Mariri is making an excellent point, precisely because she doesn't realise who she's making it to.

'So you mean someone my age can't have such a nice blouse?'

'Sure, you can!'

Cait frowns. 'All right, that's confusing.'

A steam whistle pierces the air, and Mariri pulls a beaten timepiece from a pocket. She clicks her tongue. 'That's me,' she says. 'Look, the only way someone like me gets a blouse like this is by stealing it, you feel me? Then I'd cut it up, refit, make it look nice, you know?'

Cait scoffs, amused. 'This isn't nice already?'

Mariri rolls her eyes. She stabs the air with a finger as she steps backward towards the funicular. 'Get fabric for free. Do the bins, go to scrapers. Sew your own clothes. Stripes! And bring me the leftovers, I'll make myself some ribbons.'

Cait bites down on the objection that she doesn't know how to sew. 'I'll try!' she says instead, waving at the girl.

'And don't wear silver trim! Then no one will want to knife you for your things, Piltie girl!'

'It's Cait!' she yells, hiding her collar with her hand. 'And thanks for the tips!'

Mariri opens the door of the funicular and climbs in. The small crowd patiently waiting to board shuffles forward, presenting tickets. Cait watches them, the girl's words still ringing in her ears. Stripes, yes. There's lots of them, on pants, shirts, headwraps... She spots a woman with a shirt made of mismatched fabric sewn together at awkward but intentional angles rather than along seams. Like the fabric the shirt is made of was itself a bale of patchwork.

Cait hadn't noticed. She looks down at herself with new eyes. Silver and brass. The metallic accents on the Zaunites boarding the Rising Howl are all iron and steel. A flash of copper on a broad man's chest...

She bites her lip, heat suddenly returning to her face. Is it all it was? A fashion problem? Could she be this out of touch?

The whistle pierces the air again in a harsh howl. The wheels groan into motion, joining the cacophony. With a puff of white steam, the funicular disappears over the edge.

Caitlyn turns around and walks away, a new fire to her step. It's half an hour to the Sungates and its wholesale markets. There are scrappers there. She'll find cloth. She'll get to the bottom of this mystery on her own, even if she has to turn into a seamstress along the way.

Cait takes her work to the patio to enjoy the last rays of the evening sun, but also to get away from everyone and finish her sewing in peace. Clearly, she underestimated her father's ability to hound people down across his own halls.

'Caitlyn, I understand.'

She resists firing back that no, he really doesn't. Her father means well, but even if she weren't lying to him, he still wouldn't understand. Neither he nor her mother truly get why she's chosen to become an enforcer. They just accepted it—grudgingly.

'You can't help what you are,' he continues. 'None of us can. And... I know it must be even more difficult for you, with this choice of... of career. But—'

The needle stings, draws blood and low tone swears. Cait licks the red bead before it can fall on her work. Not for the first time, she wonders if the faded brown of old blood wouldn't make the trousers look more authentic.

'—I still think there's no need for you to be taking things this far. I wish you'd talk to us if you're having problems.'

Cait sighs and finally looks up, exasperated. 'Dad. Learning how to sew isn't a cry for help.'

'Then what?'

His face is open, curious. Cait can read worry in the frozen set of his smile, the cant of his eyebrows and his stiff pose on the edge of the sofa. Her father is desperate for an answer that makes sense, because his daughter picking a commoner's craft as a hobby—a hobby not carefully selected for her, not approved by them—is... what? Shameful? Scary? Frustrating, at least. Baffling, clearly.

Her entire life, she's been pushed from one task to the next, one study to the other. She was trained to become who she is now. And sure, she always liked learning languages and shooting. No activity had been really worth fighting for, right until she met Jayce. The experiments he'd been conducting were so intriguing and bold. She'd cried and fought to be allowed to help and shadow him.

They hadn't been working together for very long when the explosion happened. Her parents reacted just as when she got lost in Zaun. Here she was, completely fine, just a little ruffled, and a whole world was closed off to her.

Cait clicks her tongue. 'You said I could do it,' she says in a non-answer.

Tobias shuffles closer on the sofa and pats her knee. 'Well, of course, but...'

But they never expected her to stick with it. They expected her to come to her senses after the first pricking of her fingers. Cait forces a smile. 'If it's such a problem to you, I'll stop when I'm done with the pants.'

It's not like she'll need more after that. She hopes she can buy different outfits once in Zaun.

'My darling, you're not a problem! And your interests are...'

A servant walks into the room, wheeling a tray of tea things in front of her. Tobias thanks her and sends her away. For a moment he's fully distracted, all his attention on the brewing leaves. He's always enjoyed mixing and pouring drinks, from tea to whisky and foreign cocktails. It's his one hobby, Cait figures. The one he got to keep when he married into the Kiramman family.

Finally he hands her a steaming cup, forcing her to put the trousers aside.

'Your interests being varied is a good thing,' Tobias continues. 'Curiosity is a fine quality.'

'Yet you'd rather I just talk to mister Bocc, watch him work but not actually try it out,' Caitlyn replies, careful to keep the topic squarely on the action of sewing.

Tobias leans close, eyebrows high and voice falling to a conspiratorial whisper. 'No, no... But if you'd tried to make a dress for the upcoming assembly, I think your mother would not have minded so much.'

Cait frowns. 'What about you?'

He shrugs, dips a biscuit in his tea and takes a nibble. 'Like I said, I'm just concerned by your motivations. All this commoner garb... I know it's hard to blend in when you innately don't belong in a community. You could probably dress a certain way to deflect attention, but Caitlyn... Your classmates will never be true peers. Your speech, the way you carry yourself, your education, your connections... You can't erase them. Even if you wanted to, people wouldn't let you.' A chunk of biscuit crumples and sinks to the bottom of his cup. Tobias sighs and looks at Cait with a small smile. 'I want you to be happy, and I believe that should come by being comfortable with who you are.'

Cait takes a sip of her tea to hide her astonishment—and a pinch of guilt. It's not a great feeling, receiving such heartfelt advice when she's lying about her reasons. Lying about a whole lot of things, these days.

She puts her cup down, takes her father's hand in hers. His fingers are long and slender, his palm uncalloused by any work. There's a permanent ink stain on his right middle finger. Hers are red and wrapped in plasters. She gives him a squeeze.

'This is who I am,' she says, meeting her father's eyes dead on. 'I'm enjoying this. It's part of... of something greater.' If only she could share. If only she could trust her parents not to take everything away from her again at the first sign of danger. 'I promise I won't continue, once I'm done. I... I just need...' She hesitates for a second, and opts to speak the truth—part of it. 'I just need to understand. I thought I did, that I could learn it all from books and observing, but I was wrong. It's just like I said, back when we were arguing about the academy, remember? I love understanding and figuring out mysteries.'

Her father scoffs. 'Are your low-levels classmates such a fascinating mystery to you?'

'Sort of, yes? I mean dad, how can I police people I don't understand?'

A spark of worry lights in Tobias' eyes. 'You're not planning on learning to cook next, are you? I'm not sure we would—'

Cait barks a surprised laugh. 'No! Never! Aah, sorry, but that's so funny... You know I couldn't cook to save my life.'

'So how are pies not an unbearable mystery to you, then?'

'I've seen the cooks work. Look, sewing doesn't make my fingers smell like garlic and vinegar for a week.'

'And the pricking?'

'Bearable. Anyway, you know how to sew too!'

Tobias shakes his head. 'Only people's muscles and skin. Suturing isn't sewing.'

Cait rolls her eyes. 'Whatever. Double standards.'

'I just want you—'

'To be happy,' she finishes for him. 'I get it. So, uhm, can I go to Sara's tomorrow then?' She lays out the pants between them, surveying her work. 'See, I only need to finish the hems and add the buttons. I'd like to go down to the market with Sara dressed like this, you know? Experience what it's like... It'd make me happy.'

A half lie. But her parents will be at a political fundraiser that afternoon and well into the night.

Tobias hums, turning the cup in his hands and looking into his tea like it holds the answer for him. 'Maybe... Maybe you could take one of our men with you?' he says.

'What?' Cait exclaims, stunned. 'Why would I ever— Dad! I'm studying to become an enforcer! I can look after myself. You know I can. I'll take my rifle, if you're so worried. I'll be with Sara.'

Tobias waves a hand in defeat. 'All right, fine, do that. But don't mention anything to your mother. I'll tell the butler to expect you home before midnight. No sleepovers. I mean it.'

Cait nods dutifully and makes honest promises. She finishes her tea in one gulp and turns back to her sewing with renewed enthusiasm. Her father takes his time drinking the rest of the pot and happily monologuing about all the drama that has been unfolding ever since the Emerald clan's leader publicly announced she was seeing someone, and that someone turned out to not only be a Zaunite, but a Vastaya one. Every last noble family and clan has an opinion on the topic, and he's still going strong when Cait snips the last thread on her trousers.  

Cait is grateful for the disguise her new clothes afford her as she boards the Rising Howl the next day. From all her father's gossip, it seems that now is not the time for a scion of the Great Houses to be seen favouring Vastayas, and Mariri definitely looks like she's getting the favour of the year when Cait hands her the small pouch containing the strips of fabric she cut from her blouse. When Mariri reveals the silver filigree of the blouse's collar, she makes a strangled grunt and slams back against the funicular's wall.

'It's really not that much,' Cait protests preemptively. 'That's not even a gram of silver, you know? But you can say you stole it from me if it helps!'

'You don't get it,' Mariri says in a whisper.

Cait has to lean close to hear her over the metallic groan of the funicular's wheels. 'What is it?' 

'You don't know...' Mariri looks up with big, shiny eyes. 'This sort of work, so pretty... if I sell it to the right person in the Black Lanes I... I could get enough to feed my brother for months!'

'Oh.' Cait takes a moment to adjust. Mariri wouldn't be wearing the collar. She'd be selling it to care for a sibling. Yet another possibility she hadn't thought of—but she's used to the feeling by now. 'Can't your parents...'

'What parents?' Mariri asks with a laugh. In a flash her eyes are dry and the pouch disappears into some hidden pocket. 'Parents are for Pilties. No, it's okay, I'm joking, don't say anything. I know kids who have parents, and I'm sure Pilties aren't immortal, even if you sure look like it to me. But yeah, it's just Kren and me. He works down in the sh— ah, in a factory.'

'How old is he?' Cait asks, afraid of the answer.

'Seven. He's very smart, and a great climber! He makes good money fixing pumps up high.'

The girl is brimming with pride, her whiskers almost vibrating. It's clear she won't accept any pity from anyone, Cait least of all.

'Must be nice to have a sibling,' she says instead. 'I always wanted one.'

Jayce can feel a little like that, sometimes. Like an older brother who left home. 

The Rising Howl comes to its first grinding stop, and Cait is suddenly brought back to reality and all its exciting prospects.

'Looking good,' Mariri says, giving her a thumbs-up. 'Don't gawk at things when you get to Bridgewaltz. Frown. You're off on business, 'kay?'

Cait nods both in understanding and gratitude and steps off into the dusty street.

At this level, everything has a green cast to it, sunlight filtered through toxic gas. Every puddle has a shimmery tint, some oily film. The posters are crumbling, layered thick over each other, or painted straight onto weeping stone.

Zaun also exists in a perpetual gloaming. Neon signs fight for her attention, lending false colour to the smoke and steam that rises from countless grates and cracks.

In some places the stench is pungent. It feels like it's eating the inside of Cait's nose, making her mouth tingle. There's no getting used to it, but there's also no helping it. Nothing would paint a bigger target on her than wearing a rebreather mask.

In the end, Zaun looks and feels like an industrial ruin sinking into cursed mist, the landscape of some adventure story Cait read in books as a child. There would be a demon lurking in the deepest level, and the adventuring heroes would need to find some ancient artefact in order to defeat it.

Cait checks her timepiece before securing it inside her shirt. She hopes this new outfit will be her artefact.

It's made of sturdy tan cotton with mismatched sleeves, one with herringbone and the other taken wholesale from her original blouse. Asymmetry is all the rage in Zaun, apparently. Her pants are patchworked together from three different fabrics with knee pads she made herself. 

She's very pleased with the result. There had been a distinct pleasure in seeing her plan come together, each piece of her costume bringing her closer to success. Walking through the stalls of Bridgewaltz once more, Cait feels downright smug.

She browses the wares on display, careful not to appear too curious. She still buys a small notebook that comes with a pencil tied to the cover. Then she stops to buy dumplings from a Noxian merchant and sits herself on one of the buckets customers use as stools to eat their meals. No one pays her any mind.

This is another revelation from Cait's previous trips: she'd been in such a hurry, she must have looked harried. This time, she's determined to take it slow.

She's almost done and ready to leave again when a familiar word freezes her on the spot.

Sheriff.

Cait turns around, eyes firmly on the stalls ahead but ears wide open. There are two men and a woman sitting next to her, hunched over their own buckets, sharing the contents of a steaming box of sticky dumplings. The woman, Cait can tell at a quick glance, is sickly. She clutches a ratty shawl over thin shoulders, eyes downcast, dark hair falling limp over her face.

'I don't know—' she says, the rest of her words lost to the market's hubbub.

'It's the perfect occasion,' the larger of the two men says. He sounds dogged, like he's been repeating this argument a lot. 'Who cares if the sheriff will be there? You don't know how much they'll charge in the future, so you should go now.'

'Antep says they'll never charge nothing,' the other man says.

'Never charge anything,' the woman corrects. 'But who knows.'

'Yeah, so? Why not go now?'

'If enforcers are there—'

'Enma, it's just a rumour!'

'Everything is a rumour,' the woman—Enma—protests. 'The medicine, the sheriff, the test...'

'You got an invite though, no?' the man with poor grammar chips in. 'All official like? Silco's folks, they'll protect you if the sheriff recognises you. You worked for them before, right?'

Cait's heart stammers. She risks another look, but no, this is definitely not the young woman she'd seen bursting out of Marcus' apartment. Just how many Zaunites is he involved with? What sort of crimes could someone as fragile as Enma get up to that the sheriff would notice?

'I'll be here,' the first man says.

'I can come too!' the other exclaims. 'Won't let no one send you to Stillwater, shimmer business or no!'

Enma sighs and pushes herself to her feet. 'All right, all right. You two will be the death of me.'

'No, it'll be shimmer. So this is good. You can be rid of it.'

'Eyy, let's go! Let's go or we'll be too late!'

Despite a rush of trepidation, Cait carefully, meticulously folds her cardboard box, then walks to the trashcan to dispose of it. She even stretches and pats herself down, fixing her hair. She doesn't start following the trio until they're almost out of sight.

This is such a fantastic lead that she has to make an effort to keep the spring out of her step.

She can't exactly come down to look for girls with pink hair, but rumours about Marcus? Fantastic. What sort of event could this ragtag group be so keen to attend? Why would Marcus be there and what does shimmer have to do with it?

There are no protests right now, no strikes or dissent. The entire past year has been incredibly quiet. Not a single enforcer died in the Undercity. There's even reduced patrols. Cait has snooped through the rosters, she knows.

So just what is going on?

She follows Enma and her two friends down much farther than she's ever gone. Before long the only light around them is artificial, and Cait has to check the time to make sure night hasn't fallen while she wasn't paying attention.

Tailing people is taught at the academy, in a short class focusing on undercover work. While Cait feared her first real life attempt might attract attention, she quickly realises it won't. They aren't the only ones making their way down. A little crowd is forming around them, finally joining a larger one.

They've reached a small plaza. A car and a carriage block off the streets on either side of a building adorned with an enormous neon sign in the shape of an eye. People come and go from it, carrying crates, bags, and a shocking amount of blunt weapons. Enma isn't the only sickly person present, but most of the crowd is made of sturdy and scary looking Zaunites. The sort of people who don't need weapons to hurt an enforcer.

Chills run down Cait's spine when it finally dawns on her that she may be in over her head here. Whatever this test is, unlike Enma, she wasn't invited. Cait weaves between people, doing her best impression of someone looking for a lost friend, but really she’s searching for a shadowy spot she can square herself away in until the crowd has dissipated.

Whatever the rumours say, there are no enforcers. Cait doesn't count; she's years away from graduation. She just wants to see if Marcus comes and—

A steel band folds over her throat, stifling a squeak before it can escape her. Cait is lifted off her feet, turned around.

It's a hand. An enormous, meaty hand, gripping her like a ragdoll. Its owner looms over her, stark blue eyes under heavy, tattooed brows. The tattoos creep down his face to his impossibly broad shoulders and around a trunk-like arm.

Cait kicks and thrashes, and it's like hitting a brick wall. She grabs his wrist—she can't even reach around it with both hands—the man's a monster, a golem!

He frowns and brings her closer. 'Who sent you sneaking here?' he asks in a gravelly voice, perfect for a man made of stone.

Cait can't answer because she can barely breathe. She can't answer because the truth would get her killed even faster. She won't answer because she's furious! What has she done wrong this time? What gave her away?

Screw you, she mouths silently.

If she has to die not knowing, then let this man not get any answers either.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Stars dance at the edge of Cait's vision when the golem finally relents and shifts his grip to her clothes. She dangles there like a cat held by the scruff of its neck, coughing and frantically praying for the shirt's seams to hold. She takes in big gulps of air, not minding the sting of it. It's the pain of relief, proof she still lives.

'I asked who sent you, little snitch,' the man says in a low, threatening voice. 'Answer.'

Cait would sooner bite her tongue off, and she's about to say as much when someone approaches them, barking orders.

'Mek! Put her down!' It's a female voice. Young but authoritative. 'Come on, what are you doing?'

'My job,' the man replies, shaking Cait like she weighs nothing. 'Caught me an intruder.'

'Yeah, and I'm still asking you to put her down.'

The golem called Mek turns slowly, ponderously, and Cait can finally see who's speaking.

She's young, all right. Maybe a little younger than Caitlyn herself. Sturdy—no, muscular. A white jacket with silver clasps frames her bare arms flatteringly. Her hair is longer now, tied back, but the same bright shade of pink. There's a notch at her lip, and her cool blue eyes are fixed on Cait with horror.

The horror of recognition.

It's the thief who'd been snooping around their estate, that Cait followed to the sheriff's home. The one who barged out of his window and fled on the roofs. It's exactly who Cait has come looking for!

'I need answers,' Mek says. 'It's a Piltie.'

The pink-haired girl makes a moue. 'How can you tell?'

Pretty brazen question if she recognised her, but Cait is curious to know as well.

'Acting like a snoop, clean as a bar of soap...' Mek plucks the notebook Cait bought in Bridgewaltz from her back pocket and tosses it to the girl. 'Ready to take notes.'

The notebook is empty, of course—not a good look, Cait realises belatedly—and it's not like Mek is wrong either. She did come here to snoop.

'And this?' A weight comes off Cait's shoulders and dread coils in her chest when she realises what he's taken. 'Rifle? Foldable? You ever seen a model like it?'

'I have, yes,' the girl says with stony calm. 'Let her go. I know her.'

Silence. Cait is too afraid to glance up at the man. Afraid he'll snap her neck.

'Mek. She came here to see me. I'll take care of her.'

'But the boss—'

'The boss what?'

'You're the boss,' Mek says with a displeased grunt. 'She's your... guest.'

Cait figures he means that the privilege of ordering him around comes with responsibility over her—and that's all right, because she doesn't plan on being difficult. When her feet touch the ground, her knees nearly buckle. Her rifle is tossed overhead. The pink-haired girl snatches it out of the air and gives it a cursory examination before putting it under her arm and jerking her head sideways. 

'Let's go,' she says tersely.

Cait doesn't need to be asked twice. She rubs her throat gingerly and hurries after her rescuer. 'Thank you for—'

The girl whirls around, catches Cait's arm in a painful grip. 'Shut up,' she hisses through a tight and very fake smile. 'Just walk next to me and act natural. Like we're friends and you always planned to visit, got it?'

Cait could point out that people have been staring from the moment Mek nearly strangled her, that being dangled a meter off the ground isn't very natural, but she decides to abide by the shut up order and nods.

The girl leads them through the crowd, waving at the people who call out to her but never slowing down. From those exchanges Cait gathers that she's called Vi, and that whatever is happening here today seems to be her doing.

Then they cross a line—one drawn by a series of enormous goons with crossed arms and mean mugs—and the crowd thins. On this side, people walk briskly and don't stop to stare at them or point fingers. They carry things in and out of the building with the neon eye. Cait looks up at it, its broken outline, sickly light... It's clearly a bar of some sort, but looks like it has bodies buried in the basement. Cait wonders with some trepidation if that's where they're heading—if she’s about to join those bodies, neatly disappeared. She looks at Vi, still clutching Cait's arm in one hand, her rifle in the other. Can she trust her? Is this a rescue? Is Vi an ally?

'Here she is!' a man exclaims joyfully as he slams into Vi, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. 'The star of the day, my very own, sweet apprentice!'

'Stop it,' Vi says, letting go of Cait to try and free herself from his embrace. She sounds harsh but is smiling. 'Stop trying to ingratiate yourself.'

'Oh, but I don't need to, do I? Your successes are as good as mine!'

Vi goes to elbow him, but the man releases her and steps back, a smug grin on his face. He's painfully unremarkable overall. Same height as Cait, with short mousy hair, sallow skin, and the crooked teeth common among Zaunites. He's dressed in stained overalls, many times patched over. The gloves clipped at his belt are the same sort as the ones on Vi's hips. Thick, dark leather, with scorched fingertips.

'Are you ready?' he asks Vi, his tone lower, more sly. 'Public speaking's never been your strong suit.'

'Shut up. I memorised the damn speech.'

'Good, good. Don't screw it up now, apprentice mine. A lot's hanging on this little show.'

'Like I need you to explain my own plan to me,' Vi says with a bark of laughter. 'And besides, are you implying that I, your prestigious apprentice, could fail?'

The man skips and suddenly he's right there, wrapping an arm around Cait's shoulders before she has time to react. 'I don't imply anything,' he says. He gives Cait a conspiratorial look. 'Just friendly poking. Vi would never let us down, right?'

Cait opens her mouth to reply, even if her mind hasn't quite decided on what to say, but someone beats her to it. A cold voice, high, with a strong reverb and a touch of Noxian accent, coming from behind.

'I wonder if the same can be said of you, Syd.'

Cait looks up—up and up, to the speaker, a statuesque woman towering over them. Now she is remarkable. Her rebreather mask is high class, its silver panes reflecting the neon's light. Her eyes are piercing and just as luminous. Her jet black hair is pulled away from her face and fanning over her shoulders. Her outfit is all white and silver, absolutely striking, definitely expensive, and driving Cait mad. Clearly the issue with navigating Zaun isn't fashion after all—it can't be, not when Cait never even came close to this level of... dazzling.

'Renata!' Vi exclaims. 'You came!'

'Just in time to insult me, too,' Syd notes tartly, letting Cait go.

His playful expression is replaced by a more surly one. From how comfortably it sits on his features, it's obvious this is Syd's default.

'I'd never dream of making fun of a business partner,' the woman deadpans.

'Please, Renata, leave the humour to me.'

Renata ignores Syd entirely to focus on Cait. 'A friend?'

The key to navigating the fissures must be composure and aura, Cait decides. Because nobody sane would harass this woman in Bridgewaltz, or anywhere, really. Under her scrutiny Cait feels completely naked, and she has to resist the urge to clip her heels and come at attention.

'Yes,' Vi says, coming close and grabbing Cait by the elbow again. She really is getting manhandled today. 'She came to see the demonstration.'

Renata seems to accept that, and Cait's knees wobble as the full weight of her attention shifts to Vi. 'Don't let Syd throw you,' she tells her. 'The further he gets from his lab, the less his opinion matters.'

'Hey!'

'Thanks,' Vi says, and she seems to mean it. 'I'm glad you could make it, really.'

'Wouldn't miss this for the world. You've worked hard.' Renata turns to Syd. She lifts a hand, and only then does Cait notice it's mechanical. 'If you can curb that humour you're so fond of, there are people here we should talk to.'

'Investors? Here? You want to pitch before the demo?'

'Money doesn't sleep and contracts can be signed at all hours.'

'Whatever you say, Ren. Lead the way.'

Renata turns on her heels and walks away briskly. Syd follows, but not before giving Vi a thumbs up and a smile.

Vi sighs. 'That was way too close... Syd's one thing, but if Renata had started asking questions...'

'Is... Is Syd your employer, or...'

'In his dreams, maybe. No, our relationship's a little more complicated than that. Believe it or not, that was him being encouraging.'

'Did it work?'

Vi gives Cait a blistering look. 'It would have, if you'd chosen another day for your little escapade.'

'And Renata?' Cait asks, curiosity getting the better of her. She couldn't help but notice how similar her style was to Vi's, with the silver and white scheme.

Vi tugs on Cait's elbow and they start walking again. 'Renata is more like family. It's all very complicated—and none of your business, Kira... Urgh, what should I call you?'

'You could call me Cait? It's my name.'

'Yeah, that's the problem, isn't it?'

'Surely some Zaunites are called Cait?'

'None that look like you and the Kiramman daughter, no. I'm trying to save your ass here, so play along, won't you? I don't think my nerves can take another run-in, so let's hurry up and get you inside. We'll go through the back door and keep you out of sight until—'

'Vi! Here you are.'

Vi freezes. Cait looks at her, expecting a grimace and instead finding a blank mask; wide eyes, mouth hanging open, an automaton whose cogs jammed mid-routine.

'Vi?' the voice calls behind them, 'Who is this?'

The spell breaks and Vi snaps her mouth shut. She gives Cait a warning glance worth a thousand words before slowly turning them around, the vice on Cait's arm now so painful it's sure to bruise.

'Hey,' Vi says in greeting to the man approaching them. 'Was just going to the back, make sure everything's... uh... ready.'

Another remarkable Zaunite. Cait is getting her fill of those today. This one is tall, lean, hair slicked back, sallow skin a tone darker than Syd. Though his shoes are tipped with scuffed metal, his trousers patched, and his shirt subtly stripped, he's just as flashy as Renata. His outfit is black and red with copper highlights instead of silver and white, but the man exudes the same air of confidence and class.

What sets him apart is the eye. It's fixed on Cait, unblinking—lidless. Black and gold, warped... More warped than she remembers. Cait searches the blue one for a glint of recognition, and finds it wide, just as fixed.

'Who is this?' the man asks.

But he knows. Cait knows he knows. The understanding passes between them silently.

'Ah, err—' Vi fumbles for a moment, then exclaims, 'Cupcakes!' Cait stares, the man stares, and Vi fumbles some more. 'Uh... you remember, right, the cupcakes? Ah, from Mellie? My friend from... Bridgewaltz, right? That I got the sweets from, that one time? That's her. Cup—I mean Mellie. Yes.'

Cait laughs. Vi glowers at her but she can't help herself, can't stop at all. Maybe that laugh is a little nervous, maybe it's from all the tension suddenly leaving her. But Cait finally feels safe.

'You're Silco, right?' she asks the man. 'The pirate. Do you remember me?'

'The pirate?' Vi says, incredulous. 'No, he's—'

'Former,' Silco cuts in, nodding in acknowledgement. 'What are you doing all the way down here, little Cait?'

Cait smiles. 'You do remember!'

'How could I forget?' And he looks mighty displeased about it. 'I've only turned down a reward from a Kiramman once in my life, and that was one too many.'

'Hang on,' Vi says, stepping between them. 'How do you two know each other? And pirate? Silco, what the fuck?'

'Mind your manners,' Silco grates. 'We're in company.'

Cait snorts. 'Oh, please.'

Silco gives Vi a pointed look. 'I told you I used to travel a lot more.'

'Yeah, but a pirate?'

'Do you still have the ship?' Cait asks.

'No, I sold it. Look, Vi, I'll tell you whatever stories you want to hear later, but my concern right now is about this. You, waltzing in with a Councillor's daughter, and today, just... What do you think you're doing? You didn't invite her, did you?'

'What? No! What I was doing? Let's start with saving her from Mek choking her to death!'

'Thanks again for that.'

'You snuck in?' Silco asks Cait, his one good eye narrowed.

'I didn't know there was a thing to sneak into,' she says defensively.

'So what were you doing down here?'

'Well, I...' Cait hesitates.

This is the man who rescued her when she got lost as a child. It's the man she drew in her notebooks, eyes carefully detailed in her best pastels. She'd had a phase, after meeting him, where she fancied herself sailing around the world, shooting at enemy ships from the nest atop her tallest mast, hitting every time, no matter how wild the seas. Her pirate phase, which her parents indulged as a childish fantasy, and didn't mind nearly as much as her enforcer phase—which took so much effort to convince them wasn't a phase at all.

Cait needs to understand mysteries, unravel them. That drive is so high that the risk of trusting Silco, a man she realises is nothing like the sketched doodles of her childhood, feels inconsequential.

She takes a deep breath and speaks the bare, simple truth. 'I saw someone—Vi, I'm sure—break out of the sheriff's apartment. I followed her from my own home, so I thought I was dealing with a thief. I expected news, a report of the break in. But it never came. So I decided to find out why. Why would he let it slide when he's so... Do you know what the sheriff is like?'

Vi groans. Silco sighs. Both pinch the bridge of their nose in an identical gesture.

'Would that I didn't,' Vi mutters.

'Don't tell me...' Silco starts.

'Yeah, she's at enforcer academy,' Vi says.

Silco moves to rubbing his temples. 'This is bad. She can't be seen here. If anyone recognises her...'

'That's why we were heading in,' Vi says, gesturing to the building with some urgency. 'We should keep going.'

'Wait, so about the break in—'

Silco waves them forward. 'All in good time,' he says. 'First we need you out of sight. Let's go through the back door, we really don't need to run into Sevika just now.'

'Aren't I disguised enough?' Cait asks, now a little miffed. She's made it this far down, it's grating that everyone still seems able to see right through her. 'I even recognised you first, and we knew each other. I don't know anyone else here.'

Silco snorts. 'Shock you as it might, disguises aren't a Piltovan invention. You may not know anyone, but people may know you. There are six families on the Council and half of them don't have children. You don't exactly have a cohort of peers to disappear into.'

'But why would anyone... Why would people want to know about me? What I look like?'

'Maybe to kidnap you?' Vi says, sounding awfully jovial.

'Do you perhaps know the saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer?' Silco says.

'But I'm no one's enemy!'

'No,' Silco agrees, 'but your parents certainly are.'

They stop by a heavy door, also manned by a muscular goon. He takes one glance at Silco and wrenches the door open without a word.

The inside is surprisingly banal. Worn wooden floor, exposed pipes, yellow-green tinted lights, and the noise of chairs being dragged around and voices calling out to each other, presumably coming from the main room.

'Go down and find her something of yours to wear,' Silco instructs Vi, who finally lets go of Cait's arm. 'Stash that gun away, it's worth a decade of Promenade rent.'

'What, you want her to come back up?' Vi asks. 'To see the...'

Silco nods and turns to Cait. He looks stern as he says, 'I'll get you home safe once more, Kiramman, and you will owe me more than a button, this time. But you can't wander out until this event is done. The area won't be safe, given our guest list.'

Cait nods demurely, trying to hide her rising excitement. Whatever is going on today, she's about to find out. It seems like she's going to learn a lot more than she bargained for.

'This way,' Vi says, turning towards the stairs heading down.

'Ah, and Vi!' Silco calls. 'Hide her hair. No offense, Cait, but down here nobody but the priciest whores has hair this luscious.'

Cait laughs. 'I'll take it as a compliment.'

She follows Vi down into the dark stairway, heart racing, to unravel more mysteries.

Chapter Text

Silco's first impulse is to go find Mek and kick his shins in, but rationality dictates otherwise. 

He steps out of the Drop, pats himself down and strides back into the crowd with purpose. There are guests to greet and impress, hands to shake and elbows to rub. He usually enjoys this part of the game. A thin smile here, a veiled threat there... Everyone here today understands the rules of play. Most try to appear unflappable, happy to make small talk like this invitation isn't anything special. Others, like young upstart Finn, go out of their way to act annoyed by how long it's taking to get inside the building. As if their time is too precious to be wasted like this. Kitten roars, easily dismissed. 

Established chembarons like Renni and Chross are beyond such airs and openly quizz him.

'Why are so many physikers and surgeons here?' Renni asks.

'Why the secrecy?' Chross asks. 'Shouldn't you consult us, now that we've formed this council of yours?'

'Is this about shimmer or some new drug?'

Silco pats Renni's arm. 'You've been in this fight for a long time, friend. Surely you've learned patience over those years.'

'I've never needed much patience when it comes to you, Silco. You're usually so direct.'

Chross laughs, a husky, grating sound that shakes his jowls. 'That's because he never shows his hand. Even I never quite know what he's plotting. I suppose today is no different.'

Silco shrugs, as innocent as he can manage. 'Be that as it may, I'm not the one presenting today.'

This gets a reaction out of them both, but Silco has already turned around, striding towards the next group. Teasing, needling, hyping Vi's presentation up, that's what he's out here for, not answering questions.

He just hopes the girl can deliver. A lot is on the line, his reputation included.

Silco never makes it to the next cluster of guests—Renata materialises out of the crowd and pins him down with a stare. He swerves to meet her without missing a step. When Renata enters the picture, the path of least resistance is the one through her good graces.

'You made it,' he says, smiling in greeting. 'How was your trip? Our new friends?'

Half of Renata's face is hidden by a silver rebreather mask, but Silco doesn't need to make out her expression to read her displeasure. It billows out of her, written over every line of her body. She's an open book, one Silco learned to read as a child and has long known by heart.

'Our new friends are doing well,' she says, politely enough. 'You were right about that general. He's on the rise and open to business.'

A terse answer fit for their surroundings, but it's good news, so it can't be what's bothering her. Silco closes his one good eye, hoping this isn't about—

'What about your new friends?'

And there it is. Silco swears under his breath and kneads a fist into his forehead. Truly, Cait Kiramman is a walking headache.

'Renata, I—'

'Each time I come back from a trip abroad, you have a new child in tow.'

'This isn't like that.'

'I fucking hope not, Sil. Vander's kids are one thing, but the Kiramman scion? You'd be out of your mind!'

'The only person out of their mind is Mek,' Silco cuts in tartly, 'who apparently grabbed her by the neck and shook her like a common thief, just begging for people to notice. I guess it's my fault for not sending him Upside often enough.'

'And Vi? Who introduced her as a friend? Is she quite right in the head?'

'Vi is smart not to make a fuss in public,' Silco says pointedly. 'She took her downstairs to fix her looks.'

Renata huffs, uncrossing her arms only to place them akimbo. 'Don't accuse me of making a fuss when I'm talking as low as I can with this mask. I should be biting your head off for this. Today? Here? She could ruin everything.'

'Her presence changes nothing.'

Renata barks a happy laugh, throwing her head back like Silco just landed a perfect joke. Her eyes glint with malice as she says, 'You haven't been this delusional since the day you decided to try and recruit Vander again.'

Silco's left eye twinges, pain radiating with every heartbeat, the familiar, low pulse of anger. He tries his best to hide the emotion, but Renata knows him by heart too. They stare at each other, standing their ground. The crowd around them is shifting. People at the Drop's door have gotten their attention. The demonstration is starting.

'We should go inside,' Silco says flatly. 'The girl is young. I'll keep my eyes on her. I've got the situation under control.'

'And what situation is that, exactly?' Renata asks, mimicking his monotone.

'The one where I use my connection to Cait to impress how unwise and unhealthy it would be for her to share what she sees and hears here with anyone—'

'You're letting her go?'

'What else, Ren?' he asks, exasperated now. 'What do you want me to do? No harm can come to her, not here, not now.'

Another silent face off as the crowd filters into the Drop. Silco holds his ground. He's long since mastered an unblinking stare. Renata relents at last, sighing. 'Just don't try to adopt her, okay? You've got enough brats on your hands.' She closes the gap between them and grabs his collar firmly, pulling and smoothing. 'There, better. What's with this jacket's design? You really don't like symmetry, do you?'

'Symmetry doesn't like me.'

'Ha-ha. I missed your special brand of humour. Noxians only understand puns, and Syd nothing at all.'

'And I missed your mothering,' Silco retorts. 'I can't believe I managed to dress myself while you were away.'

'Neither can I.'

Silco rolls his good eye but says nothing in reply. He ushers Renata in and points her to the seat reserved for her alongside other chembarons. This conversation went much better than he feared. 

Everything is going better than expected, actually. The room is packed but quiet. Ran and Oba are shuffling and guiding people according to the seating plan, making sure chembarons have the best view behind the front row of physikers, who form a half circle around a central metal table on which Singed is arranging his tools. At the back of that table, on a ragtag assortment of stools, are all the managers and supervisors from Syd's factory, as well as key workers involved in shimmer production. Some of those are just children, sat on the bar's counter and drinking juice. Powder and her friend Ekko (and his friends) are on the edge of the mezzanine, looking down. Behind them, and all along the room's walls, are community members without direct loyalty to a chembaron, as well as Silco's more discreet associates. The smugglers who run the day to day of the Lanes. Brothel owners like Babette, and their new representative, Margot. Port officials whose true job is to rubber stamp Lane cargo. Union reps from Factorywood. Cultivair and casino owners. The leader of the Black Lanes and the head priest of the Grey Temple...

Everyone, it seems, has answered Silco's invitation. The Drop barely fits them all, and the excitement is palpable. A lot of eyes are on him, but Silco goes to lean against the back wall, well out of the limelight. Eventually Singed goes to his own seat, his preparations over. As if on cue, Dustin comes through the back door, Vi and Cait on his heels. 

Vi has done a good job with what little time she had. Caitlyn Kiramman is gone, replaced by a nameless Ionian girl. Perhaps a recent arrival in the city, still wearing a kakuri—a red and gold head wrap that hides her hair, the excess fabric turned into a scarf. Heavy makeup around her eyes ages her. The black leather jacket, a distinctly zaunite design, is one Vi recently outgrew. 

Cait is nudged in Silco's direction. She comes to stand beside him, stiff and awkward.

'I was told to act like I don't know you,' she whispers, 'but surely if everyone thinks I know Vi...'

'You're fine,' Silco tells her, repressing a smile. 'So long as you stay close, you'll be safe.' 

The girl's shoulders slump with silent relief. 'Is it really okay for me to be here? To see this? Not that I don't want to, but I... You know. I don't want to get in that much trouble. My parents—'

'Won't know you were ever here, if you don't mention it to them. An idea I cannot encourage enough.'

Cait grunts. She buries her nose in the red scarf and crosses her arms, as if she could disappear deeper into her disguise. Up on the mezzanine, Powder waves to try and get Silco's attention. He gives her a pointed look. Not now, it says, and Powder gets it. She makes a face—urgh, whatever—and turns her attention back to her friend. 

Silence blankets the room. Vi has stepped up on a box, a young woman at her side, Syd and Singed behind them, ready to play their part. The stage is set. The moment of revelation has come. It's time for a gamble, Silco's greatest leap of faith since the night he dragged Vander back to the cannery, and hopefully a wiser one.

He looks at Vi, the girl he's come to care for as a daughter. Perhaps with the same sort of warmth Vander felt—who knows—and he hopes, with all his being, for the sake of Zaun, but also for her own, that this day brings her real success. That her leap of faith is rewarded. Without the death, the destruction, the setbacks. 

That the people assembled here will believe in her dream.

Chapter Text

Vi opens her arms wide and greets the room. 

'Welcome to the Last Drop,' she says, loud and clear. 'Thank you for coming. Some of you already know me. For the others... My name is Vi.' This has to be the most underwhelming way to begin carving her reputation, she thinks, but hopefully actions will speak louder than words. 'We've gathered you here because you're the core of Zaun. I— We have an offer for you. But in order to make it work, you'll need to help us. All of you.'

The silence deepens, somehow.

Turning slowly on her heels, Vi feels her throat tighten. The room is more than crowded—it's packed. The physikers are at her feet, notebooks neatly balanced on their knees. Behind them are the chembarons, members of Silco's recently created council. Renni gives her an encouraging smile, Chross and Smeech are as unreadable as always. Renata signs a one handed good luck. Behind them, a sea of faces. The chembarons' goons, Silco's contacts, Powder and Ekko's Firelights, the early victims of shimmer Vi handpicked and invited herself... All these people, all these guests and their friends, they're all turned to her, watching her every movement. Hanging to her lips, waiting for her grand announcement.

A few are still looking at Silco, but he stands against the back door, stubbornly out of the way. The Kiramman girl is with him, leaning into his side, whispering behind her hand. Vi represses a shiver. She can't imagine what possessed him to allow her presence. He's the one who was so adamant about keeping shimmer's potential a secret from Pilties.

Caitlyn Kiramman has to be the Piltiest Piltie Vi's ever met, and hopefully ever will. And yet here she is. Here they all are. Waiting for her. And this madness was her idea. She glances at Singed. He gives her a tiny nod, his long fingers clasped on his satchel, ready for her signal. Vi braces herself. Everyone's attention feels like sticky fingers running over her skin. She smiles like she loves it. She can't show weakness here, not to this crowd.

Here goes nothing.

'I know most of you had extremely vague invitations. I know rumours have been floating about. I hope you'll all realise that secrecy was vital. Now that we're assembled here, let me clarify things for you.'

Singed hands her a vial for her to hold aloft. It's bright pink, flashing between her fingers. Murmurs immediately break out, hushed and urgent.

'A new type of shimmer then?' Chross asks.

'Yes,' Vi says, answering the room at large. 'A new type of shimmer. But it won't be available to you. Well, not the way shimmer is now. This is different.'

The physikers exchange looks, most likely adding things up, what with the invitations and their position in the room. The metal table with its drains, waiting for a body.

'This is a new variant!' Vi declares, voice carrying over the buzzing crowd. 'It has only medicinal properties. It isn't addictive. It enhances healing and creates new tissue without metastasizing. No more tumours.'

The hubbub increases. Chairs grate on the floor as people stand up, jostling. Dustin appears at Vi's side and slams a baton on the metal table, ringing it like a gong.

'Quiet!' he yells.

Silence returns, but nobody is sitting back down. Vi steps away from her box and gives a hand to Melany, Ekko's friend and Singed's first patient. She takes her place on the box and carefully starts to disrobe herself.

Predictably, a low murmur rises through the room again. The physikers lean closer, whispering to each other and pointing.

Melany's skin is milky white, marred by purplish swirls and the pink welts of fresh scars, but it's smooth. When she came to them with Ekko, her arms, shoulders and belly had been covered in the distinctive purple tumours of early shimmer side effects. Swollen, tender, and in constant pain, she'd been eager to try and so pleased with the results that Vi believes she owes her the Firelights’s support.

The surgeries are visible. Not every skin graft is pretty either. But the tumours are gone, and it obviously means a lot to the physikers.

'That is far too invasive, how could she survive?'

'Scar tissue looking like that despite—'

'—look at her navel, the reconstruction work alone—'

'How many hours did this take?'

Melany, standing proud in nothing more than briefs, takes her turn addressing the room.

'It took two doses of shimmer for the tumours to start growing. Or for them to stop disappearing; you know how it is. And the cravings... Even when I found a good community—' a glance up, towards Ekko '—people who accepted me as I was and supported me while I tried to quit... I kept thinking, if I had another fix, maybe the tumours would go away this time. Or they'd be worth it then, because I'd be powerful. When you're high on the real stuff, you're invincible. I hated Silco for what he did with shimmer. I— I still do. I know it's different now. I know I could smoke some and feel better for a little while. But that doesn't change what it did to me. What he did. To my friends, my community... I— I couldn't believe it when we got the offer to try this. Another shimmer variant?' She scoffs and waves her hand, dismissing the very idea. 'That had to be a bad joke, right? Well, I was ready to laugh and cry, because I wanted the pain gone. I would have done anything. I did, I guess.'

She turns around, showing her back, the scars between her shoulders. She moves her arms as instructed to show how her skin stretches.

'We did this just last week,' Melany continues. 'And I'm so grateful. I'm fine now. I still take injections because the pain isn't completely gone, and the operation...' she glances at Vi's special guests, shimmer addicts like herself, the people she's really selling this to. 'I'm not going to lie, it was horrible. Everything burned, like I was on a pyre instead of an operating table.' Vi returns her robe and Melany covers herself. 'But now I can breathe. I can use my arms fully. I can sleep on my side. It healed more than just the tumours. It's worth it.'

She steps down from the box, and all hell breaks loose.

'What do you mean, more than the tumours?' a chembaron shouts.

'To be so well healed in a week, how is that possible?' from a physiker.

'Let us have a closer look!'

'This is a miracle drug or something?'

Vi jumps back on the box, waving everyone down while Dustin beats a steady rhythm on the table. 'Hey, calm down everybody! I'll explain, but please—'

'Why do you say this won't be accessible to us?' Renni calls out.

'Good question!' Vi yells. 'I can answer it if you'd all shut the fuck up!!'

Powder kicks her heels, watching Vi wrestle the room back to a semblance of order.

'She's cool, isn't she?' Ekko says, as if reading her mind.

'Yeah. Crazy, right? And she worked so hard for this. I didn't even know she could be like that, you know?' Powder worries her lip, hesitating a moment before adding, 'I think Vander would be happy for her.'

Ekko gives her a complicated look. 'You think? Mmh... I was wondering.'

'Yeah? You thought about this too?'

'Sure, I did. Vander taught her how to fight, right? But she never does anymore.'

Powder shakes her head. 'Even though I made her nice gauntlets like his.'

'Don't you think he'd prefer that for her? The fighting, I mean.' 

Powder shrugs. 'I don't know, but he was always upset when we got into fights. So I think… he’d be happy for her now.'

'Hey.' Ekko wraps an arm around her shoulder, gives her a squeeze. 'I know it's weird if I'm the one saying it, but I think he'd be happy for you, too.'

Powder laughs, but it doesn't sound happy. 'Isn't that bad, though?' she asks, turning to face her friend. 'If Vander could be happy with how we are now... Doesn't that mean he'd be happy with Silco? Doesn't that mean they could have gotten along? Then Claggor and Milo would be alive. I wouldn't have... Vander would be alive. We could all work together.'

Beneath Powder's dangling feet, Vi has regained control of the room. She's explaining everything her new shimmer can do to a rapt audience, speaking as fast as she can, like it'll keep anyone from interrupting.

Powder can't imagine Vander letting her do that. Creating new shimmer, or letting her stand in front of that sort of crowd and selling it. She can't really imagine what things would be like if he were still alive. Silco may be good to them, but the way he's running the Lanes is nothing like Vander did. She doesn't need Sevika explaining that to her, or Silco's monologues. It's all very obvious—painfully so.

It's like Vander should be happy, but there's still no room for him. So how could he be? And if he couldn't be happy for them, does that mean he'd disapprove? Powder can't make sense of it. And with each passing day she grows more unsure that she should.

'I miss him a lot too,' Ekko says, rubbing her back.

'I don't.'

Ekko's hand freezes between her shoulder blades. He stares at her, and she stares back, unwavering.

'Really?' he whispers.

'Yeah. When I think about him I just see the... The monster. I hate it.'

'But—'

'He was working with enforcers, he never had time and he never listened, and he didn't try with Silco, and then I killed him and now we're here...' She jerks her chin in Vi's direction. 'And we're like "would he be happy?" and thinking he would. But then why'd he abandon us? Why couldn't he just—couldn't he do this for us? What's so bad about how things are now?'

Ekko grimace. 'I... I don't think it's that simple.'

'Pfft. You sound like Silco.'

'Ew! Powder!'

She elbows him and he yanks her ear. Scar hits them both squarely on the head. 'Behave.'

'We can talk about it later,' Ekko whispers, leaning in close again. 'But please, don't be sad! Especially not today. This is good, remember? You're the one who convinced me! For sure Vander wouldn't want you to be sad.'

Powder smiles. She isn't so sure, but she wants to believe him. She also doesn't want to fight with Ekko, not ever again. 

'Alright,' she says, 'forget I said anything.'

'Never!' 

'Just get ready! She's going to call you soon.'

'No, I agree with Vi,' Renni says. 'This is far too dangerous to sell in multiple locations. We can't afford a single vial in Piltovan hands.'

'We're more than capable of defending ourselves,' Finn shouts. 'I could keep a stash safe!'

The more Silco sees of that man, the more he's convinced that propping him up was a mistake. His only redeeming quality is the consistency of his greed.

'We've already devised a plan,' Vi says. And with a glare targeted at Finn, 'It isn't negotiable.'

'What's your solution, then,' Chross asks.

Vi raises a hand theatrically. 'Mobility.'

Her young friend, Ekko, jumps onto the mezzanine's balustrade with a shout, drawing eyes to him. They've rehearsed this next part a lot in the past few days, as it's in everyone's best interest if he doesn't decapitate anybody with that new tool of his.

'What is that?' Cait asks.

'The boy's creation,' Silco says tersely.

The demonstration speaks for itself. Ekko steps onto a board, and with a rumble and a blast of chemicals, he's airborne. It's a very tight loop around the Drop, but he somehow manages two whole circuits without slamming into the walls or dropping on anybody's head. He comes to a clean stop, landing on the table next to Vi and catching his board before it can escape him and fly off.

'I'm Ekko of the Firelights,' the boy declares, his friends hooting in support. 'Melany is one of us, and when we saw how she recovered, we decided we had to help, even if it meant working with Silco.'

'With Ekko's boards, the Firelights will be able to deliver and protect medicinal shimmer,' Vi says. 'They'll be mobile and able to escape enforcers.'

'And what if it's one of ours, going after them?' someone asks from the back of the room. 'You know people will want to get their hands on this.'

'If we're caught,' Ekko answers, 'we'll crush the vials. Better wasted than in bad hands.'

'You just want to keep a monopoly!' comes another cry from the crowd.

'No shit!' Renata exclaims, turning around on her seat and looking for the speaker. 'What do you think this is?'

'Actually, about that...' Vi turns to Silco, looking for reassurance. He gives her a small smile, and she gathers herself for the big reveal. 'We don't plan on charging much. Nothing at all for work related emergencies. It won't be anything close to recreational shimmer, anyway. This will be delivered to those in need only. We're looking at covering the costs of production, not profit. When we look at producing more, we'll be open to investors and even collaborators, but it'll remain non-profit.'

Confusion lapses into silence, like a scratched record skipping a song. Vi watches her words sink in. One chemtech rubs their chin; another frowns so deeply his eyes disappear. Renata is busy gawking at her with near comical shock on her face. The group of physikers exchange looks.

'Will we be... dealing with the distribution ourselves?' one of them asks, breaking the spell.

'No. You'll be working with us or with the Firelights,' Vi says. 'No shimmer stays behind after use.'

What she means, and isn't supposed to articulate just yet, is that none of them will be allowed to resell it after obtaining it. This new shimmer is a boon Silco's people are granting Zaun, not a product to repackage and profit from.

Everyone's attention shifts to Silco, seeking confirmation. It certainly sounds too good to be true. Silco gives them a warm, open smile, pulling at his scars. How he relishes this, their rapt disbelief. Vi was right, it seems—there may be a way to own them all without going through their purses.

'Yes,' he says, stepping forward and opening generous hands. 'You're hearing this right. The new shimmer isn't a grab for money or power. Although your respect and even gratitude would be welcome. Direct that last one towards Vi. She's the reason this is happening at all.'

'Why?' a young chemtech asks. 

The question sounds genuine, which speaks to the depth of their disbelief. 

Silco laughs mirthlessly. 'Aren't you tired of coughing blood, Kamy? Don't you wish a finger could be reattached instead of a lifelong prosthetic, if one can even afford that? How many brothers and sisters have we all lost to accidents and diseases Pilties can't name or imagine? To stupid infections gone untreated that any apothecary Upside could cure for a coin we do not own? I know how you see me, what you think of me. Those of you who remember the old me think I've gone sour. Those who don't think my obsession with a free Zaun is a cover for tough business. But the truth is that my dreams have not changed. I want your freedom. Our freedom! I just stopped caring how we'd get there.' He points to Vi. 'Luckily for you, she hasn't.'

Vi shrugs, looking awfully self conscious as attention returns to her. 'I just... All I've always wanted was for my sister to be healthy and safe. Don't we all? And in the Undercity...' She makes a helpless gesture. She doesn't need to elaborate, not with this crowd. 'I can't promise safety, but with glimmer? I think we can start to make "healthier" happen.'

'Glimmer?'

'Oh, yeah... I, uh, I've been calling it glimmer. It's shorter than "medicinal shimmer", right?'

'Well, it sure is a glimmer of hope,' Renni says, effortlessly officializing the name. 'One I can barely believe in, coming from Silco.'

'It's coming from me,' Vi insists. 'Trust me, I had to fight for it.'

'Oh, I believe you, dear. But if it's half as powerful as you claim it is, then it must be our best kept secret.'

Sevika, who Silco had entirely lost track of, steps from behind the jukebox to come to Vi's aid. 'We'll be holding a council meeting on the topic later,' she says. 'If you or your people have suggestions on how to improve the security around it, we'll listen.'

'As for proving my claims,' Vi says, 'I've invited some people here specifically for this. It's a demonstration of... glimmer.'

A woman jumps up, her hood falling back, revealing a face distorted by tumours. 'Me!' she shouts. 'I'll try it, please!'

'Oh,' Cait whispers.

'What?' She gives Silco a cautious look he recognises all too well. 'I won't be upset no matter what you say,' he tells her mildly.

'If you say so... I just recognise her.' She jerks her chin in the direction of the woman Vi has invited to the centre of the room, now swarmed by physikers. 'I overheard her discussing her invitation here. She was afraid Marcus might come, but her friends encouraged her to go. I actually followed them because I thought I'd find out more about Marcus.'

Silco looks at her thoughtfully. She's observing the procedure with a keen eye, clearly not put off by the woman's undressing and preparation for a public procedure. She hasn't protested or shied away from anything so far, her curiosity clearly overriding any misgivings she may have.

He wants to trust her. He wants to take her on a ship—the metaphorical kind now—and make her a gunner's mate. Someone who'll bat for him. An ally in high places. A friend to his cause. But she's just a child, what does she understand? Curiosity doesn't guarantee she'll like the truths she uncovers. The only thing Silco is sure of is that he neither can, nor wants to kill her.

Small steps, then.

'Marcus was not, and would never have been invited,' he says. 'I've made sure he doesn't come snooping.'

Meaning that somewhere on the docks a fight got out of hand and a warehouse is burning. The sheriff should have a lot on his plate right now and no time to waste in the Lanes.

'What's your relationship with him?' Cait asks. 

There's a light shining in her deep blue eyes, the same sort that illuminates Powder's own whenever a new thing catches her interest and a fixation looms on the horizon.

'A working one,' Silco deadpans. 'I'm afraid I can't afford to elaborate on that.'

'You can't, or you won't?' Cait asks, but she's distracted by Singed's brief and monotone speech explaining how to use glimmer. 'Is he really going to use a needle this big?'

Then the woman is screaming and straining against her bonds, and blood starts to flow. The physikers are lining the table, taking notes and helping Singed with his instruments. Around them everyone has abandoned their seats to stand and crane their neck for the best view. Only a few squeamish people are looking away.

'This can't be sanitary,' Cait mumbles.

'Spoken like a true Piltovan.'

She turns to meet his eyes. 'About that... Why the secrecy?'

There's a note of accusation in her tone, or maybe frustration. Caitlyn Kiramman clearly dislikes secrets kept from her. That, Silco thinks, is something he can remedy.

'Do you know what lumiol is?' he asks her.

'Of course. It's the chem compound used in most lamps nowadays. It's safer than luxeron.'

Silco nods, a thin smile settling on his face, heralding a swell of bitterness.

'And do you know who it belongs to?'

'You mean who sells it? I think it's manufactured down here, but it's owned and sold by clan Ferros, isn't it? At least the canisters have their sigil.'

'It is now, yes,' Silco says with a nod. 'But it was invented here, in Zaun. By a Chirrean called Trip.'

'I... didn't know that.'

'So I assume you also don't know that it was produced and circulated for free in Zaun for two years before Clan Ferros got wise to it? And you also haven't heard about them descending into the Undercity, raiding the warehouses and labs, stealing the formula, then going home and patenting it on a century lease?'

'I— What? You're serious?'

'You don't believe me?'

'No—I mean, yes, I just— I never heard of...'

'Why would you? Clan Ferros understands the necessity of projecting power and a positive image as much as the Kiramman house, I'm sure. Can you guess what happened next?'

'They... sold it. They still do... Even to Zaunites?'

'To those of us who can afford it.' He points to the greenish lights illuminating the bar. 'Most of us use luxeron, flammable or not. Even I can't afford to light my bar on lumiol. But that's not what I meant.'

Caitlyn scoffs. 'What did you mean? What else could they do?'

'How about killing Trip?'

She gapes at him. Her scarf falls off her face, and she scrambles to tuck it back into place. 'Do-do you have proof of that?' she asks, flustered.

'Oh, he was resisting arrest for some petty crime and died accidentally. A complete accident. Would talking to his living relatives help you believe me?'

'I... I guess?'

Silco gives her a joyless smile. 'Sorry, that might be impossible to arrange. It was Trip's invention, you see, but the production of Lumiol was his clan's business.'

'All dead?' she asks, the words ridding a heavy breath.

'Somehow.'

Caitlyn presses her fist to her brow, eyes downcast, face pale. For a moment Silco thinks he's gone too far, that she'll leave and never return. That he'll have to kill her after all. But instead she grabs his elbow, pulling him down closer to her. 

In an urgent whisper she says, 'I've heard stories. It's never told to me, you know, and it's never mentioned in class, but... Instructors will chat with students and tell stories behind closed doors... Sometimes they brag. I thought it was bravado. Hoped it was, at least. I mean, what kind of person keeps a kill count?'

Silco used to, for a while, when competing with Vander for most killed enforcers. But baby-enforcer Cait doesn't need to know that.

'I know there's corruption in the force,' she continues, 'I mean... My own mother can't stop herself from pulling strings behind my back. It's a real problem. I just didn't know it was that bad down here.'

Silco sighs. She's just like Vi. She's a good soul.

'And now that you know,' he asks, 'what will you do?'

Chapter Text

The surgery goes well, though you wouldn't know it at a glance. Singed clearly relishes performing for an audience and thrives on the agony he inflicts. The agony is at least purposeful: the more Enma hurts, the better she'll heal. Or so Singed had claimed when operating on Melany. Vi really wants to believe it.

She's struggling to keep Enma's jerking limbs under control, even with the straps tying her to the operating table. There's blood everywhere. It coats Vi's forearms like gaudy crimson silk gloves, overflows the table's rim before it can reach the drains. Fat, shimmering droplets of the stuff, pattering on her shoes, mixing with the sawdust they spread in preparation for this.

She may have been keen and willing, but Enma can't control her body, or help the way it arches and strains. No amount of soothing words get through to her, and Dustin has to come help. With the physikers, they soon have ten hands on her to let Singed work, and work he does—fast, precise, unperturbed by his patient's struggle. He excises chunks of misbegotten flesh with swift, remorseless cuts, tossing them aside in a bucket like gutted fish. Each wet, smacking thump burns the back of Vi's throat, but she keeps her eyes fixed and her hands steady. Singed proceeds, plunging his enormous needle into each gaping wound, and then... it's like magic.

All lean in, enraptured, to watch the flesh reknit itself. Once the cut is sealed, skin blooms over it, spreading like frost along a glass pane. Vi counts five of her hard breaths for an open wound to close, and three more for pink-raw skin to seal it. By then, Singed has already moved on to the next cut.

Enma shrieks and kicks, blood sprays and oozes, and Vi only presses down harder. She doesn't look away from the carnage. She doesn't dare.

This, she thinks, is the fruit of her labours. This is the price to pay for their freedom, their unity. She begged and pleaded with Silco to make glimmer happen. She hadn't realised it would turn out like this, but she can't shy away now. This is how they fix the mistakes of early shimmer and move forward. How they curry favour with people who associate Silco with nothing but pain. He would have sacrificed every Zaunite for his fight. He had sent many of them to smash themselves against enforcers, like eggs at a wall. Vi would right this wrong, grow a strong, healthy, loyal nation. Even if they have to suffer like this. Ultimately, with her way, more will live. Melany lived and recovered, Enma will—she has to. Many more to come. 

Yes. Better, healthier lives. Better chances. Brighter futures within their grasp. And then they'll be strong enough to break Piltover's chains.

Vi, elbow-deep in gore, looks up and catches Silco's mismatched eyes, arched by an approving smile. It's still weird to her how she has come to crave his approval. She feels the same hot buzz of satisfaction she once did when Vander praised her forms or her footwork. But there's more to this. The respect between her and Silco was so begrudging and slow to grow, compliments of his seem more... meaningful?

Earned, rather than expected.

Vi sees herself, as if removed, floating above the table, over the bewitched crowd, the mess of Enma's twitching body. She sees her own back, broader now, white and silver trimmed, speckled with crimson blood. Muscular arms holding a shimmer victim down. A horror scene of her own doing, her own idea—tearing raucous screams from willing victims' throats.

Would Vander approve, if he could see this scene? Approve of her actions, her good heart...

Silco had also intended for his original shimmer to be taken willingly. He'd planned to raise an army of monsters, people who'd only need a single vial to kill a dozen enforcers. Vi knows how bad things had been back then, and how her own mistake at the Kiramman lab had made things worse. She's certain volunteers would have flocked to him, begging for a chance to pay Piltover back. People would have downed his raw shimmer without an afterthought. People had. People still might, if asked.

Is glimmer so different? Vi isn't gifting it to Zaun out of the blind goodness of her heart, no matter what she says. It will have its uses. It will unite them for the fight ahead. A fight her glimmer will fuel. People will die, no matter what—there's just no reasoning with Piltover.

Different pitch, same end goals, same purple-pink chemical that makes Enma's blood scintillate under the warm bar lights.

Yes, there's the shimmer-suit project Powder has been working on now too, and the Arcane gems that change everything. But Vi is a part of this. Leading this project.

Every drop of blood, good or bad, will be on her hands.

The final cut sews itself up, and cleaning begins. Enma is washed, dried. Many trembling, disbelieving physikers help her sit up. She sways, and her eyes shine with a sickly pink that tints her very tears. The patches of freshly grown skin are pink too, gossamer thin over tender flesh. It'll heal in silver-grey and purplish scars, the way it did for Melany. It won't be too pretty, but that doesn’t matter. Enma is alive and able to stand. That alone is more than a proof of concept for the crowd.

'Incredible,' someone whispers.

Singed graces them with a smug smile. 'This is the refinement of decades of thankless work.'

'You'll get your thanks, old man,' Renata says, cutting him off. 'Zaun will sing your praises forevermore.'

Her words break some held tension, and the room explodes into chaos.

'This was tremendous!!'

'That she's even conscious—'

'—take a vial home for my son! My son!'

'Can this cure Lung Blight?'

'Singed, could you go over this part again?'

A metal hand locks over Vi's elbow and she's yanked away from the fray.

'Calm down, or we're breaking out the hose!' Sevika yells over the din as she shoves Vi behind her. 'Behave yourselves!'

Renni calls back, 'You don't have a hose here, unless it's tied to your beer tap, and I'm simply requesting we schedule a meeting about glimmer right now! We're all here, so let's talk.'

Behind them, Syd is attempting to rescue Singed from equally over-excited physikers.

A loud clap turns heads. Silco has pushed himself off the wall and is stepping into the spotlight. 'Are you all convinced?' he asks the room. 'And are we all on the same page about the necessary secrecy? Yes?'

Everyone agrees. How couldn't they?

'Then let us schedule that talk. Chembarons, to my office. Singed, you have the floor. Hold court if you must. Everyone else: the show is over, go home and digest it. Think about the new era opening before us. The consequences. The jump it'll help us take towards our freedom. Think too, of the experiments Singed can conduct on your sorry, twitchy carcass, if I get wind of this secret being leaked.'

There's a nervous laugh from somewhere in the room, but the mood is solemn, the silence heavy with brooding thought, only broken by one man, foolish—or brave—enough to speak up again.

'Silco, my son—'

'Will be the first in line for treatment, once we're agreed,' Silco cuts him off. 'Talk to Sevika. But remember that this drug is new and isn't a miracle cure. We'll keep experimenting, keep learning. It's what we do best, isn't it?'

A chorus of approving noises greets this statement, but spirits are more subdued. Vi half-expects the room to erupt again when Silco grabs her arm and turns them around, but the moodiness sticks. Enma's friends are at her side and helping her dress. The chemtechs whisper to each other in low, excited voices, stealing glances at her as they file out the door. Sevika, swarmed by the needy, is taking notes. The physikers rearrange chairs around Singed to let the cleaners mop up the blood. The fireflies are hugging and clapping each other's backs, following down the stairs on Powder and Ekko's heels. The chembarons are the most dour by far, their expressions tightened by the heavy mental calculus of power. They follow Mek to the office, and for a moment Vi is alone on the stairs' landing with Silco and Caitlyn Kiramman.

'Well done, child,' Silco says. He pulls Vi in a crushing embrace. She's too drained to try and wriggle out of it, but also too bloody to return it. 'You've succeeded, and with flair.'

Vi's cheeks burn. If he thinks so, then it has to be true. She feels the tension leave her like a breath held in for too long. She's almost dizzy. But there's still work to do.

'The Council—'

'Is my responsibility now. I'll iron things out and bring them all on board. You...' He jerks his head towards Caitlyn. 'Take her back up. In one piece.'

'What? Why me?'

'Why not you?'

'I can take the funicular,' Caitlyn says, freeing her face from the scarf. 'I'd hate to be a burden—'

'Then why did you come snooping?!' Vi snaps.

Caitlyn recoils from her, taking a shuffling step towards Silco. Vi sighs. The weight that had been pressing down on her shoulders has lifted. She's done it. But Caitlyn Kiramman's presence is the one stain on what would have otherwise been a perfect day. What sort of bribery will they have to resort to, in order to keep the girl in check?

'Don't be so hasty to scold her,' Silco says with surprising calm in his voice. He pats the girl's shoulder. 'Cait here has a very rare gift.'

'I do?' Caitlyn asks, not knowing Silco well enough to detect the sarcasm.

'Why, yes. Empathy. You came down here, you watched, you listened, and you let it get to you. You didn't bolt and run away, you didn't spit or cower.'

Vi can see the cogs turn in the girl's too pretty head. 'I— But— We all have empathy, you know we do. It's not a rare gift.'

Silco's expression frosts over. 'Barring the fact that no, not everyone has it, did you ever wonder why your parents wouldn't let you come down here? Why they never go themselves? It's not just about the danger. You clearly know how to look after yourself and your house has a small army, you could come here with a security detail. Yet no Councillor ever comes to visit their properties or meet their employees.'

That last word is dripping with more than just sarcasm, and Caitlyn struggles to answer.

'I, well—'

'You can empathise with us,' Silco continues. 'That's why they don't want you down here, scion of house Kiramman. It's why none of your ilk ever comes to Zaun—not if they have any empathy to extend to the likes of us, at least. You should see the working conditions in your family's factories. Tell me, do you like children? Do you like them with all ten fingers?'

'I don't doubt you!' Caitlyn exclaims, throwing her hands out as if begging for a truce. 'Look, I got... I got at least one friend from Zaun. Or a contact. I mean...' She gives Vi a hapless look, as if asking for help. She's not going to get any from her, but Vi urges her to continue with a jerk of her chin. 'You're right. I've been too naive. That's why I wanted to come, to see for myself and discover the truth, instead of just reading books. And I— I talked to a young girl who gave me lots of advice.'

Silco gives Vi a silent look—blank, emotionless, just inviting her to make up her own mind. You see? It says. Witness her.

Vi does. Behind the thick layer of makeup and bright fabric, Caitlyn Kiramman looks distressed and earnest. She means every damn stupid word.

'Then she told me about her brother and how he works in a factory, fixing pipes,' Caitlyn continues. 'He's seven, he should be learning his letters! They have no parents. Then I realised, every time I came to Zaun she was there, working, and she's so young herself, I... I promise I believe you. Maybe if our cities weren’t so divided…'

Silco grabs Caitlyn’s shoulders and gives her a single, firm shake. 'It's on purpose. Cait. That's the point of the bridge, the distance, the social stigma, the borders. They're here to keep us divided.'

'But—'

'Because nobody with empathy could stomach seeing our lives up close and continue profiting from it. How do you justify factories that devour children? That maim them, pollute the water they drink, the air they breathe? Only a monster could see these children, befriend them, and then send them back to slave in the mines, factories, docks and brothels.' He grunts and lets her go, long fingers fishing a cigar from his pockets. 'Janna knows we were all children, once.'

'So you don't ever come to see them,' Vi adds in a low, brooding voice, images of impossibly tall and distant spires glinting through the red fog of memory. 'You build high and you keep your business in numbers. You don't cross the bridge.'

'But you did,' Silco tells Caitlyn Kiramman, lighting his cigar. 'You crossed the bridge.'

Caitlyn stands stock still, hands clasped in front of her, downcast eyes suspiciously shinny.

Vi thinks Silco is saying it for her benefit, more than Caitlyn's. That this is why he'll gamble on a Kiramman and trust her with something so important, and that she should, too. Vi rubs her temples. Silco loves his mind games, but they're more Powder's speed than hers.

'What we're trying to say is that we hope you won't fuck this up for us by working your mouth,' she says. It doesn't hurt to speak plainly.

Silco groans.

Caitlyn gives her a wounded look. 'I wasn't planning to!'

'And if you do, even by accident, I'll—'

'Come break into my room with gauntlets before fleeing on the roof?' Caitlyn retorts.

Silco barks a laugh and slaps both of them on the back. 'A perfect understanding! Good. I have to go. Cait, come again, if you must. Remember what we spoke about. Curiosity is not a bad reason to cross the bridge, but it's more dangerous for you than you know, so next time send a tube and we'll arrange an escort. Invest in some makeup and stop carrying that damned rifle around. Jinx will make you a pistol if you ask her nicely.'

'Who's Jinx?'

'Don't call her that.'

Silco ignores them both, leaving a trail of smoke as he climbs the stairs to his office. 'Vi, be back by ten, we'll go celebrate.'

'Gotcha!' Then turning on her heels, she rams a finger in Caitlyn's chest. 'I wasn't joking, by the way.'

The girl smiles, revealing a perfect row of porcelain-white teeth. 'Did you make a single joke, ever? I didn't notice.'

Vi shows her some teeth too, more crooked, and in a less friendly manner. 'Did you understand what Silco said?'

'Is this a quiz?'

'Sure.'

'Then yes.'

'You're giving me a lot of attitude, Kiramman...'

'Please, call me Cait. And also, I really did. I get that I must seem naive to you, but I'm not an idiot.'

Vi motions for her to follow and leads her down the steps to her room to go collect her things.

'All I wanted to know was about Marcus—'

'Let it drop.'

'Is it that much more of a secret than what I just saw?'

Vi closes her room's door and leans against it, observing Caitlyn as she goes to the couch. Caitlyn is babbling about her snooping and all the effort she's put in to understand that one afternoon outside Marcus' house. How frustrated she is to have come so close to Vi, to all the answers she craved, only for her to refuse explaining anything.

Her words have this slight lilt that make them sound off.

Vi's heard a thousand accents—from the docks to the markets, to the Black Lanes—some while lounging on the beams of Silco's office. High Demacian and low. Noxian from all provinces. Ionian and its sharp vowels. The clicks of Shuriman. The rolling gravel of Bilgewater pirates and traders. They all feel more familiar than Caitlyn's.

Hers is an odd mimicry of Vi's, distorted, like an echo bouncing across the deep fissures. Even the accents of the Pilties Vi has rubbed elbows with in the Promenade and the lower levels of Piltover weren't so disconcerting.

It's the sound of wealth on a scale Vi's mind can't comprehend.

She tunes the girl out and goes to the tap to wash her hands, rubbing off as much blood as she can before changing her clothes. She understands Silco's position, but she can't stomach it. Caitlyn can't be killed, but how can she ever be trusted? She claims she understands, yet whatever Silco told her about Zaun, Caitlyn hasn't experienced it firsthand. Her precious empathy, her bleeding heart, has not been given that much cause to ache.

'Hey.' Vi jumps at the brush of Caitlyn's fingers, startling the girl back several steps. 'Sorry, sorry! I just... I don't think you were hearing me, and—'

'And what?' Vi asks sharply, fastening her belt and patting herself down. 'I only have to get you back up where you belong, not listen to your chatter.'

'I was asking you a question. And I meant it.'

Vi rolls her eyes. 'What is it?'

Caitlyn walks right up to her, clear blue eyes all dewy again, piercing through the dark makeup. 'I asked you what I could do,' she whispers, 'for you to tell me. Or to believe me. Ask me something. Anything.'

Vi blinks, startled. 'You want a trade?'

'If that works for you. A secret for a secret?'

Vi chuckles, shoulders slacking. This girl... 'You want to know about Marcus that bad?'

Caitlyn smiles. 'I have you right there. And I don't know when I'll get to see you again.'

Whenever you damn well like, Vi thinks, remembering Silco's open invitation. But it's hard to brush off the excitement in Caitlyn's voice. Like being in the same room as Vi is the luckiest thing that's happened to her. Like she's already looking forward to the next time.

Sense of flattery aside, this is an actual opportunity to test Caitlyn's honesty and willingness to cooperate. Vi looks down at her hands. She's got blood caked under her nails. Drops of the stuff is still glittering on her shoes.

Perhaps Silco's right. What's a trade with a Councillor's daughter, after today's work? Vi isn't fond of politics and mind games, but Caitlyn is offering honesty.

Let's test that.

'Fine. Let's get out of here. Fix your kakuri. I'd rather nobody recognise you as the girl Mek swung around.'

'You agree?' Caitlyn asks, so excited she actually stands on tiptoes before collecting herself. 'Sh-shouldn't we talk somewhere more, erm... Private? Like here?'

Vi shakes a negative. 'The princess has to be returned to her tower, and the sooner the better. Don't worry, nobody will come close, we'll have Oba and Dustin with us.'

'Ah, I feel much better already,' Caitlyn deadpans.

Vi bites her cheeks to repress a smile. The day has been so close to perfection, she doesn't need to ruin it any further by laughing at Kiramman jokes.

'Come on,' she says, waving Caitlyn up the stairs. 'And since you owe us, secrets-wise, start talking about that Pirate Silco nonsense. Everything you know.'

Chapter Text

Silco's speeches are good, but it's Vi's room that convinces her.

His power is so obvious. Everyone looks to him, hangs to his every word. Cait hears of a newly formed Council, sees some of its members in the crowd—a fearsome bunch, forming a dark mirror of Piltover’s ruling body—and already it's clear that Silco is in charge in ways Heimerdinger would not dream of.

So why is his daughter’s room like this? A dank, poorly lit basement under the bar? A ventilation shaft is repurposed as the sole window, spilling sickly green light into the room. The only other light source is oil lamps, all turned off. There's not a single piece of furniture that wasn't thrice broken and mended. Shelves full of clothes and fabric rolls are made out of crates nailed together. Photographs and posters on the walls are faded and peeling from the cold stone. The bunk bed is put together by hand with recycled wood. Shipping crates, Cait thinks, from the fragments of stamps still present in some places. The low table between ragtag couches is made out of a door and is covered in broken mechanical parts and tools. A large furnace squats in a corner, its piping snaking up the wall. In the winter they probably heat all the rooms from here. A line of damp clothes extends over it, and given the ambient chill, Cait can't imagine they'll dry very fast.

If Vi is Cait's Zaunite counterpart, then why is her bed tucked in a utility room like this? Why does it smell like damp and old beer? She looks while Vi washes her hands over a small basin, using a wet rag to wipe away the blood. No running water.

Silco loves her, clearly. They have power. They have some money. Must do.

The thoughts ripple out, connect. Cait is smart. She adds things on. She can't imagine it exactly, but she can infer now what the room of someone like Mariri and her brother might be like. If they even have one. She thinks, briefly, of her own room. Four times the size of this one, at a glance. She thinks of its large windows with view onto the courtyard, the family's prize Surcur tree.

It sets a tremor in Cait's hands. It's all so wrong. She feels lied to. She feels guilty. Like an intruder.

When Vi looks at her with a suspicious frown, asks her 'What is it?' like Cait could never say anything worth hearing, it suddenly makes sense. Zaun tried to repel her like a foreign body, time and again, because she is one—more than she ever knew.

Cait is all too grateful to share her memories of the pirate with the warped eye who once saved her from the indifferent crowds of Bridgewaltz market. They climb back up to that very same market, taking spiralling staircases and a maze-like path through gangways and backstreets carved into the rock of the fissure. Silco's henchmen—Oba and Dustin, as promised—lead the way and trail them. Anybody who tries to come near is shoved away, or backs off at a single gesture from Vi. Cait may have the more luxurious room of the two, but she wields nothing like that sort of influence.

'Why exactly do you want to know about Marcus?' Vi asks as they climb a steep staircase.

Cait pants and wipes her face. Vi gives her a mocking smirk that makes everything worse.

'It's n-not just about him,' she says in a huff. 'C-can we stop?'

'No. Come on. We'll take a break at the market.'

Cait groans but keeps climbing. She's already lost enough face being so out of shape, she won't fall behind as well.

'It's corruption,' she says between gulps of stinky air. 'In the force.'

'Yes?' Vi asks, nonplussed. 'What about it?'

'I-I don't know... How deep it goes. I want to find out.'

'With enforcers? Probably as deep as it gets. Surely you didn't need to come all the way here to figure this out?' Vi gasps, fake shock sparkling in her sky-blue eyes. 'Did you think it was an honourable, sacred position? Stewards of safety and freedom?'

'Stop teasing... It's... It's not that.'

'Then what?'

'You tell me!' Cait demands, exasperation bubbling up. 'Tell me why you went there that day and I'll explain.'

Vi's eyes cloud over and she stops, blocking the way. She looks down on Cait, looming over her from her borrowed height. She's blocking the light of the cracked fissure-sky, encompassing Cait in her shadow.

'It was me,' she whispers. There's only them on the stairs—Dustin above and Oba below, nobody else around to hear—and yet Vi speaks like the wind itself might be eavesdropping. 'You remember your lab in the higher city? I broke in with my siblings. We wanted something. Anything. To make some money and to prove we could pull off a big job. To show you Pilties that you aren't untouchable. Things were different back then. We weren't with Silco. Don't ask.'

Cait bites down on her questions. She's on the tip of her toes, hand tight over the railing, enraptured in a balancing act.

'Marcus came hunting for us. Me, my brothers, my baby sister. He wanted to catch us so bad he tried to kill her. Aimed a gun at her. And then...'

Vi's eyes unfocus. She looks right through Cait, back at a past that creases her brow and tightens her jaw. What happened? What won't she say? Will she ever share? But Cait knows better than to probe. She waits with bated breath for Vi to recollect herself.

When she does, it's like a curtain falling over a scene that was never meant for the stage. She smiles, and it has a touch of frost to it. She smiles like Silco does, when he talks of murder and mayhem.

'Things got bad. Your old sheriff died.'

'I remember that day,' Cait blurts. She'd looked up to Grayson enough to spill a few tears over the newspaper article, in the privacy of her room.

'Marcus was in on it. In over his head, but he's the reason the old sheriff died.'

'You can't be—'

Vi leans so close their noses brush. 'He didn't kill her,' she murmurs, breath hot on Cait's face. 'But he led her to slaughter. I was there. I saw it.'

'What hap—'

Vi's hand locks like a vice around Cait's jaw, squishing her mouth shut. 'My entire family died. My second family, I should say, because enforcers had already killed my parents. It's just my sister and I now. That day, Silco took her. And me? I was caught by Marcus. He came to the scene late. Too busy counting his coin, probably. He drugged me and dragged me away. I woke up in a Piltie prison. I was told I'd be sent to Stillwater. And for what? The lab was an accident! One of your own experiments got out of control and exploded the building. Nobody even died. Stillwater! I spent days in that cell, with a window so high up I couldn't see the sky. I wasn't sure my sister was even alive. I wasn't sure if I'd ever see the sky again. No chance to even take revenge.' Her hand is shaking. Her eyes too bright. 'All for a Kiramman lab! The nasty Zaun politics started when Marcus and his troops came to hunt us down, just children! I—'

She lets Cait go, just long enough to wrap her fingers around the back of her neck instead. If only Cait could speak. She'd tell her there's no need to hold her still—that she's not going anywhere.

'I was freed by one of your Councillors. The Noxian. Let loose in the city. I found Silco. Found my sister with him. And then one day the anger was too much, so I took my gauntlets and I went to look for you. For the Kiramman house. To see what life was like, for the people who destroyed mine.'

Cait swallows. Tries, at least. Her throat is paper dry, and her stinging eyes can't muster tears. 'Sorry. I'm sorry...'

'Don't be,' Vi whispers. 'I found you, and Marcus. I followed him. Got into his house and... vented off some steam. He probably had to redecorate the place. Had worse coming, honestly.' She grimaces. 'I didn't know he had a baby. I found her in her crib just when Marcus came in. I think with the fright that gave him, we're almost even.'

'That's when you fled? On the roof.'

'Yeah.'

'And Marcus, he—'

'Couldn't go hunting for me again. You see?' Vi's smile is cruel now, her eyes curved in icy slits, the notch in her lip pulled wide. 'Wouldn't do to lose face to the same trencher kid while his sheriff insignia is so fresh on his chest, right? And then what would he do? Come take away Silco's child, when Silco knows exactly how he became sheriff in the first place? He had no choice but to let it go.'

With these words, Vi lets Cait go too. The mood shifts, the spell broken. Cait stumbles down a couple of steps, gasping, digesting everything she's just been told. Her mind is racing. Pieces slot seamlessly into place, yet the puzzle widens as more questions arise. She's not liking the picture that solidifies before her. The sheriff, embroiled in secret plots? Being paid off on the day Grayson died? Zaun, it would seem, is not just the defiant underbelly of Piltover, as her teachers would have her believe. Nor the unruly industrial district full of brutes her parents claim it to be.

If our cities weren't so divided... She'd spoken the words not guessing at the width of the gap. Now she won't be so foolish as to make further assumptions.

They walk the rest of the way to the market in silence. Vi doesn't demand anything back, though she's due answers. Cait is too busy thinking. So busy, in fact, that she doesn't really notice the stall they've stopped at until she's sat at the counter staring at a bowl of raw fish.

'Are you joking?' she gasps.

Vi, already digging in with bare hands, mumbles a 'Mmh?' around a mouthful. Sauce runs down her chin and drips back into the bowl. 'Eat,' she says, elbowing her. 'Don't act suspicious. Also Jericho's is delicious so don't waste it.'

'I'll have it if she doesn't,' Oba says from where she stands, leaning against the end of the counter.

Cait stares, dismayed. She's eaten worse looking dishes, but at least they had cutlery. She looks up, to the various chipped knives and half-chopped creatures lining the stall. They'd also had more sanitary conditions.

She rolls her shoulders, silently psyches herself up. If she wants Vi to start to trust her, she'll have to be brave and just... try things out. She gingerly lifts a slice of bright green fish out of the bowl. It's cold and slimy. She closes her eyes and takes a bite.

And opens them again in surprise. The sauce is Noxian. She recognises it. The fish is good. Definitely slimier than she likes, but it's fresh and flavourful. There's more kick to the sauce than she remembers. The sting of it lingers on her lips.

'Is this... Is this a Bilgewater recipe?' Cait asks, for anyone to answer.

Jericho, the enormous Vastaya who prepared the fish for them, laughs throatily and answers in a tongue she doesn't know.

'That's a yes,' Vi says. 'That's where he's from.'

'I've had something like it before, in Noxus.'

'Bilgewater food's everywhere that has a port of even a half decent cove,' Oba says, finally leaning in and stealing a slice from Cait's bowl.

'If I could have a fork or even a skewer, I'd enjoy it more, but I'm sorry I doubted your food, mister Jericho.'

'You're supposed to bring your own,' Vi says. 'Okay, let's go!'

'What? Wait!' Cait darts after Vi, shaking sauce from her fingers and leaving Dustin and Oba to descend on the rest of her meal. 'Vi, slow down!'

But Vi presses on, her broad shoulders cutting the market crowds, inexorably leading to the funicular stop, to return Cait to her world. Cait catches up, sudden anxiety bubbling in her chest. They're so close now, and still Vi hasn't asked for her explanations. She hasn't asked for a secret back. She grabs her wrist, yanks. When Vi falls into her, Cait grips her elbow and keeps her close. She meets the girl's cold, beautiful eyes, and for a moment her mouth hangs open, words frozen in her throat.

The crowd flows around them; Oba and Dustin are back on duty, keeping them unperturbed, a small island of quiet in a sea of brash colours and pungent smells, alien bodies and whirring mechanisms. Between a stall of jewellery and dyes, in a pocket dimension just their own, Cait presses her lips against Vi's ear and whispers something she hopes will tie them together.

She explains the gem that blew up the lab and nearly killed Vi, how it has been refined, and how it'll be used to power a new technology that the Council is keeping as secret as possible. But soon it'll be unveiled. Already the construction for the tower has begun, and it'll change everything. Her parents won't stop talking about it, about the new business that'll open before them, how Jayce will change the face of Runeterra with his work.

Caitlyn, desperate to be welcomed back, desperate for Vi to trust her, gives her the word Hextech.

Chapter Text

Powder waits through all the back slapping and congratulating and high fives and cheering and jostling. She smiles and laughs and shakes hands and chitchats as expected. She acts, putting on her best happy face.

Well, she is happy. Things worked well for her sister's big day, and that means all their plans are going smoothly, which is very good and all. But she can barely contain her impatience. She keeps glancing towards the courier station and back to Ekko, blinking at him like in a secret code spelling out hurry the fuck up!

Ekko grins at her knowingly, not just because he's happy too, but because he likes to watch her squirm. He bounces after Scar, takes his board from him and flies overhead in a loop while his friends scream their heads off in delight. People look their way, curious. The hoverboards aren't meant to be a secret, so that's fine. Powder never knew Ekko to be that much of a show off though, and she's this close to abandoning him when he finally lands and entrusts the board to his friends again.

'You go ahead,' he says, hooking arms with Powder and waving off the rest of the Firelights. 'Just gotta go on a quick errand!'

'Don't be late,' Dip calls after him, 'Tya's been cooking!'

'We're not saving you none!'

Scar only nods. He's in on it. He's in on everything Ekko gets up to, these days, but Powder doesn't mind. The Chirean is surprisingly funny, and he makes things work between the Firelights and Silco's people. Also Powder's pretty sure he's got a crush on Sevika, which is downright hilarious .

'What are you grinning at?' Ekko asks, tracking her eyes to Scar.

'Nothing. Just be sure you invite him for our next sparring session, okay?'

'With Sevika? You sure? I thought me coming was already pushing it.'

'No, she likes you.'

Ekko purses his lips, unconvinced. 'I think you mean she likes punching me.'

'It feels like that, at first.'

'Getting punched isn't going to cure Scar of his disease.'

'The Sevika germs are strong,' Powder agrees.

They cackle, banging heads and laughing even harder. Powder's almost giddy enough to overlook the simmering doubts and fear.

'Don't tease him too much,' Ekko says. 'You can't control who you fall in love with.'

Powder shrugs. That's for sure. If love was a choice, Silco never would've chosen Vander, after all.

'Love is over-rated,' she says. 'Kind of a waste of time, too.'

'What's better? Oh, wait, let me guess: explosions?'

'Yes. And Jericho's. Noxian dumplings. Really bright and thick paint you can't wash away even with acetone...'

Ekko rolls his eyes. 'You're a freak.'

'You're boring,' she fires back.

He scoffs, fake-offended. Or maybe real-offended. But they've arrived, and Powder's back to being impatient and just a little nervous. Ekko's good at reading her, so he's quick to pick up on her mood.

'You ready?' he asks, which doesn't help.

'I... think so.'

Powder pulls out a metal pneumatic tube from her satchel, wax sealed but anonymous. She's about to do something stupid, she knows it. If it works, it'll be glorious. She'll get all the praise and bragging rights. If it doesn't? Well, Silco loves her. He'd never hurt her. He'll never abandon her—he promised. So did Vi...

'I still think it's a good idea,' Ekko whispers.

Powder gives him a level look. 'You think everything I do's a good idea though.'

'What? Did you drink some of Vi's glimmer?'

'Shut up, you do.'

'I always like your good ideas,' Ekko says with a shrug. 'You just got a lot of them, recently. Don't let it get to your head.'

'Just get used to it. I'm always right.'

'Silco has been spoiling you, this is bad.'

'Shut up, shut up!' Powder bounces on the spot. 'Ekko! Tell me what to do!'

'Just send it. We went over it already! And like I said, if Silco loses it, you can come stay with me for a while.'

'He wouldn't...'

'Then send it.' He wraps a warm hand over the back of her neck, draws her in till their foreheads touch. 'You're the smartest girl I know, and I'm not too bad, right? It’s perfect––risky too–but so was your hit on the Academy! If this guy's half as smart as we are...'

Powder looks down from Ekko's sparkling eyes, to the equally shiny metal tube between her hands. She sees her reflection in it, pulled in a long, narrow stripe, like she's made out of putty. She twists the tube and her face warps, squishing against Ekko's own reflection.

They'll both take the heat, if this fails. Marcus might hear about them again. If he gets his hands on this...

Ekko gives her a squeeze, grounding her, and then he lets her go.

'It's up to you,' he says, taking a step back. 'But I trust you.'

'If I mess this up,' she whispers, 'I'll be a Jinx for real.'

'Stop,' Ekko orders, crossing his arms. 'You can't think that every time you do something risky, and anyway, isn't that what Silco calls you?'

He only does it because it riles Vi up, and because he likes to remind Powder that she's strong. He has a more complicated way to go about it, long-winded speeches about weakness, self-confidence and ghosts of the past. He likes to talk about conquering fear. About overcoming limits. Jinx, he thinks, should own her mistakes, so that she won't repeat them.

If it goes wrong, sending this pneumatic tube would be a new kind of mistake, not a repeat. So, hey, maybe she'd get away with a promise not to do it again. Zaun, she thinks, needs a risk taking Jinx more than a good kiddo Powder.

She plucks a cog from her belt pouch and gives Ekko a shaky smile. 'Okay, then. Let's go find a courier.'

Sevika blows her smoke in a fat ring and watches it warp and thin, losing its shape in the serpentleaf haze they've been building all evening. Silco's office is as good as an aquarium by now, if fish could swim in smoke.

'A cog for your thoughts?' Renata asks, coming to sit across from her now that the last stragglers have been ushered out of the office.

'I'm not sure you want to peer inside there,' Silco mutters from behind his desk.

'I'll risk the horrors.'

Sevika smiles. Things really have changed. She blows another ring, this time framing Renata's face.

The last time the three of them had been alone in this room, the dynamic had been very different. Sevika's new prosthetic arm had been a deadweight at her side, her anger and frustration further weighing her down. She'd felt like she could go through the couch, through the fucking floor, to Oshra Va'Zaun. Silco had hardly been in better shape. Besides running a dangerous, under-powered coup in the Lanes with the last dregs of their shimmer reserves, he'd been wrangling Powder and her nightly demons.

Renata had waltzed in, freshly arrived from her latest trip to Bilgewater, and proceeded to chew them both alive for rushing the schedule and fucking things up. Of course the rush had happened thanks to Vander's kids, and for a moment Sevika had been on the same team as her cousin. The anti-Jinx team. Kick the brat to the curb, toss her in an orphanage and move on.

Sevika laughs, shooting a stream of smoke through her ring and destroying it.

'I think I've never seen a more rabid pack of dogs in my life,' she says, extending her hand to Renata for her promised cog.

'Is that what's making you laugh?' Renata asks, twirling a copper cog between her fingers, but not yet surrendering it.

'Nah. What's funny is how we even got here.' She glances towards Silco, who is still frowning his way through his notes. 'I'm proud of the girls, I guess. I don't think we'd be here without them.'

Silco looks up at that, as Sevika expected he would. 'Proud? Of Vi and Powder? You?' He laughs, a nasal little bark of a sound. 'That thought is worth more than a cog.'

Sevika gives him a thin, humourless smile. 'My purse is open, boss.'

Renata flicks the cog at her, and Sevika—showing off a little, because it never hurt anyone—catches it in mid-air with her prosthetic.

Renata squints at it. 'Nice. Is it...'

Sevika grins. 'Powder's creation, yeah. Kid's got talent.'

'Mmph. Maybe you do have things to be proud of.' Renata relaxes back into her chair, propping up her legs on the low table between them. She crosses her arms and gives Sevika a more serious look. 'I agree with what you said earlier though. These were some hungry dogs. I'm not sure the boy was a good choice.'

'Who, Finn?' Silco asks, coming around the desk to join them. 'You read my mind.'

Sevika scoffs. 'Anyone's mind, when they're forced to think about him. He's been bad news since he started stirring up shit in the factories. But now I think that wasn't even his idea. What do you bet he was following someone's lead? Someone who fell down from a gangway by accident since then?'

'We'll never know,' Silco says wearily. He accepts the cigarette Sevika hands him and lets her light it. He gives her a thankful nod before starting his own smoke rings. 'Finn's just another puppy to manage. We'll keep him on a short leash and make sure he doesn't get too many ideas.'

'You think your chembarons are bad?' Renata asks. 'You should come with me on my trip back to Noxus. Meet that general, your new client. Jericho Swain. He's a reasonable man, easy to deal with. The people around him?' She laughs, the sound distorted by her rebreather. 'Sand vipers, if vipers could use hemomancy.'

Sevika scowls at her cousin. 'We have it this good because we've got things under control. Noxus is—'

'Under control?' Renata barks, jumping forward in her chair. 'You made your glimmer demo in front of the uninvited Kiramman heir, and you have things under control?'

'What?' Sevika gasps. She looks to Silco, but he's blowing smoke rings at the ceiling, studiously avoiding both of them. 'In front of who?!'

Silco sags against his room's window, cooling his brow on the glass pane. Zaunites come and go outside, weaving around each other, begrudgingly parting for the odd passing car. Everything has returned to normal, the security cordon established for the demonstration dispelled and the Last Drop re-opened for the night. Music thrums through the floorboards, and Silco tries to relax into the familiar sensation after the shouting match in his office.

He shouldn't have to justify himself to Sevika of all people, but Renata knew exactly what she was about, and wouldn't let him explain things on his own terms. Calming both furies took a lot out of him, at the end of an already strained day, itself capping an exhausting week spent preparing for Vi's big moment.

It all paid off in the end, so Silco doesn't mind. Even Caitlyn Kiramman's presence may turn out to be a stroke of good luck. Sevika and Renata are too skittish to see it, and Vi may resist, consumed as she still is by her rancour against Piltover, but Silco's plans have given him many strange bedfellows over the years and he firmly believes that they'll need allies in Piltover eventually. Not to keep enforcing the status quo, as Vander had with Grayson, but to topple it, to carve a new future.

And Silco can see it. A glorious vision of Zaunite prosperity. Cait may not come into authority for another decade, but when she does—and she will, being the sole heir to her house—her attachment to his girls could change everything for them. For all of Zaun. It could render Silco's plans obsolete and redundant in the best way possible. Such a friendship, such an understanding, could tip the scales and crown Vi and Powder as the undisputed leaders of their new nation...

He closes his good eye, letting the shapes outside the window distort and blur, happily losing himself in that hypothetical future. But she comes running, breaking him out of his daydreams. A blue dot bobbing across the street, hurrying back to him.

Silco opens his good eye, an increasingly familiar pang nestling in his chest. His arcane artificer, his precious daughter...

Powder looks up, searching for him, and her smile flashes brightly when she sees him waving at her. She runs on, disappearing out of sight. In mere seconds she's hammering up the stairs, screeching his name. Silco doesn't have time to make it to the door before it flies open and he's smothered in a crushing embrace.

'I'm starving!' Powder yells, letting him go to give him a critical once over. 'You're not ready yet? Come on, we missed lunch and you said we were going out. Are you not wearing a cravat? You don't need one. Let's go! Let's go!'

'Yes, yes.' Silco lets himself be dragged out of the room and down the stairs without protest. 'Don't forget to tell Sevika.'

Powder grunts. 'The ogre will eat all the buns if she comes with. Vi said she'd wait for us in Bridgewaltz because she's gone up to the ferry. Who was that girl she was going with? I saw you talk to her.'

Silco laughs mirthlessly. How long can a Kiramman induced headache last for? 'She's Vi's new friend,' he says, unwilling to drop names in the Last Drop, even in the relative privacy of their quarters. 'She was visiting from Upside.' Powder shoots him an unhappy look, like she doesn't appreciate him joking at her expense. If only he were! 'I'm deadly serious. I think you'll get to meet her properly soon.'

'I don't want Piltie friends,' Powder says. 'Who would?'

Silco pokes his head through the tap room door to wave Sevika over, then turns his attention back to Powder. 'She'll be a useful person to know, even if you don't like her. But she owns a rare collapsible rifle. A model I've never seen before. Incredible craftmanship. I'm sure if you make friends with her, she'll let you study it.'

Silco can practically see the cogs turning inside Powder's mind. Things fall into place, and she smiles up at him. A cat's smile, with cream on its whiskers.

'Okay! Guess I'll try.'

Silco returns her smile and ruffles her sort messy braids. 'That's my girl.'

There really is no alliance he won't forge to protect her. There's nobody he won't kill, bribe or parlay with, if it means Powder and Vi's success.

It takes Vi a while to find them, but in the end she's faithfully guided by the sound of Powder and Sevika arguing. Silco is the first to notice her, and steps away from them to meet her.

He presses a hand between her shoulder blades, lowering his head in confidence. 'Home?' is all he asks.

'Should be. The working girl she spoke about is one of the funicular drivers, Mariri. She's a vastaya, the kid of the old fate spinner who was always set up by the temple in the Black Lanes, you know the one? Her brother works at one of Renni's factories.'

Silco nods pensively, already considering Vi's meaning without her having to spell it out. It freaks her out a bit sometimes, when she catches herself thinking the way he’s been teaching her to think. The calculus of politics.

'The parents are both dead I assume?' he asks. 'Well, never mind if they are, the boy can easily be brought in. I'll talk to Renni, you arrange room and board for them with our crews below. Double the boy's pay and get him trained on glimmer.'

Vi nods. Having Mariri on their side will help in case Caitlyn returns, and given how impossibly earnest she was to the last, she has no doubt she will, and soon. She says as much to Silco, then relates the offer she made, a bid for information.

'What did you learn?'

'The name of the Arcane technology they are developing. Turns out she's a close friend of Talis. He's calling it Hextech.'

'And what did you tell her?'

Vi hesitates. She looks into Silco's mismatched eyes, but sees nothing there to worry her. He's curious, but not tense. It's like he doesn't believe she could fuck it up, even though she's been repeating her conversation with Caitlyn Kiramman on loop for the last hour, wondering if she should have said something else, done something else. She spoke from her guts and wanted to scare that stupid girl, so far out of her depth, but was it the right thing to do?

Vi takes a deep breath and comes clean, the words spilling out of her in a hurried jumble.

'I told her I was the one behind the original lab incident, and how Marcus hunted us down and tried to jail me after getting my family killed. I told her the truth she wanted to hear about that day, that I trashed his place for revenge and that he couldn't come after me because he needed to protect his reputation, and that you know he led the old sheriff to her death. I told her I was there, saw it, but didn't tell her how it happened, just that his attacks while looking for us started shit down here, which is true anyway! I just... I wanted to make sure she couldn't share that easily, but also give her all her answers, so that if she comes back—' Vi stops, gulping for air. 'If she comes back,' she repeats, slower now, 'she won't be looking for those answers, right? She'll be back for some other reason. Because she wants to.'

Silco slaps her back enthusiastically. He grabs her shoulder and shakes her. 'Very well done! You're outdoing yourself today.'

Vi blinks at him, a little dazed. 'Really? That was the right move?'

'I wouldn't have done it any differently,' Silco says with a nod. He bumps their foreheads together then, and whispers: 'I'm very proud of you, Vi. Today is your day.'

The words wash over her like a tide. A complicated mix of emotions rises in her in response, a whirlwind of feelings. How can this man's approval mean so much? She feels more empowered now, more like an adult than she had while running from Piltover with a well earned pack of goods bouncing on her shoulders.

'Thanks,' she says. She's pretty sure her face is glowing the same shade as her hair.

Silco gives her another pat and lets her go, walking away and waving for her to follow to the Noxious Noxian's stand, where Sevika and Powder have escalated to blows while they talked. Sevika has Powder in a headlock with her mechanical arm, plucking a sticky dumpling out of her hair with her free hand.

Vi shakes herself. It is her day, and she was promised a celebration. She can pick her feelings apart another time.

'What's happening here!' she calls out, joining them. 'You couldn't even wait for me?'

'I just wanted one dumpling,' Powder says, pummelling Sevika's side.

'You eat mine, I eat yours,' Sevika retorts. 'What kind of world do you think this is, girl?'

'Let me go!'

'Jinx, come here,' Silco says. 'I'll get you another one if you promise to behave.'

Vi bites down on a smile at Sevika's look of outrage—no doubt because she's too old to beg for another dumpling too. They end up with one each anyway, wrapped in greasy paper so they can nibble on them as they cross the market. They stop at every other stall, gazing at the goods on display, taking their time. Sevika points out there's a lot more from Demacia now. Powder whines until she's given a note and free reign at the bookmonger. They pick up cigars, a jar of foreign honey, fresh inkpots, grilled calamari and seaweed wraps, and Vi finally singles out silver earrings on a jewellery stand.

'I want to get pierced up here,' she declares, pointing at her left ear. 'Oba said she'd do it.'

Just like that she has them, and a nose piercing besides, because Silco is being so free with his notes. She packs them away in a hidden pocket inside her jacket, flushing with pleasure.

'You're still waiting for me to get tattoos, right?' Powder asks her with a sudden look of anxiety.

Vi rolls her eyes. 'I already promised, didn't I?'

'Should we head home?' Silco asks, glancing down at his chrono. 'Tomorrow is another long one.'

'If you pick me up,' Powder says, wrapping her arms around his neck. 'I'm tired.'

'You're getting too heavy for this,' he says even as he complies. 

'I'll stop by Babette on the way,' Sevika declares.

'Yeah, I'm good,' Vi says when Silco looks to her. 'Let's go.'

And so they do. All four of them, chatting companionably, satisfied with their evening together, pockets flushed with well deserved rewards and treats. Vi can barely believe it, looking down the warped tunnel of time, to an era where Powder was all she had left in the world. But it's real. It's her present—no matter what the future ends up looking like.

They're going home.

- Epilogue -

Viktor isn't shocked when nobody asks him the right questions, but he's rather annoyed that nobody will listen to his answers.

On that fateful morning of the break in, Jayce had sent a runner to report it, then helped Viktor tidy up and figure out what was missing. Unlike his own previous lab disaster, there was no damage and no arcane gems unaccounted for, which was a universal relief.

Within minutes of enforcers arriving on the scene, it was being called a robbery. Once Viktor had explained nothing was missing besides a notebook, and that the doodles on the board were just mocking the tower's schematic (a particular string of equations was a rather clever joke on its shape and girth he hadn't cared to elaborate on), the robbery became something else.

'Espionage,' Marcus had declared after a moment's thought and a stroke of his chin. Neither him nor Jayce took Viktor seriously when he insisted their thief was from the Undercity. 

Well, on one thing they agreed: 'Of course a clan would hire this sort of... talent from the Undercity,' Jayce had said. 'Wouldn't want to be implicated if they were caught in the act.'

'What would a trencher do with that sort of knowledge anyway?' Marcus had added. 'Besides sell it to a great house or clan for a big payout?' He'd tapped his chin some more, an anxious rhythm. 'Maybe to a foreign power, if we're very unlucky.'

Industrial espionage became everybody's soothing belief of choice, the council included. As if imagining Noxus with Hextech was as dreadful and inconceivable as a smart Zaunite. Viktor's very existence seemed the exception that proved this unspoken rule. 

He's used to it. Or likes to tell himself so—his own soothing mechanism, to keep from blowing a vein, or something more explosive and damaging. 

So when the pneumatic tube comes to him, sealed for his eyes only, Viktor gives speaking up one last try. He waits for Heimerdinger's weekly visit, because rushing things would seem suspicious. Although, perhaps not. The professor is a kind Yordle, a good tutor, and a well of knowledge. What he's not, however, is a savvy politician, nor very empathic. It's unlikely he would have found a visit suspicious, even to discuss Zaun. 

'And how is your health, my boy?' Heimerdinger asks when they've finally run out of diagrams to peruse. 'Is it quite alright for Jayce to leave you like this today? Your operation was so recent.'

Viktor smiles at him weakly. The operation on his spine was months ago, but that would be a blink to Heimerdinger.

'I'm well, professor, thank you. Jayce is running an errand for me, but I don’t need him to tour you around the lab. Here, I have something to show you...'

The yordle's ears perk up as Viktor pushes a sheet across the workbench. He picks it up with a thoughtful hum, eyes already jumping across it.

'I see, I see,' he mumbles. Then he neatly places it down on the bench and smiles to Viktor. 'Lovely idea!'

'It is, isn't it?' Viktor agrees. 'Doable, you think?'

Heimerdinger jumps from his chair, startling his sleeping poro. 'Of course! I mean, what isn't possible? With your mind, your talent, and the resources the Council are pouring into your venture! The sky is the limit, if even that! I do recall seeing you fly quite well yourself.'

'I meant to develop it. Do you think the Council would agree to it?'

Heimerdinger stops in his stride and gives Viktor a startled look. 'A sewer for the Undercity? I'd welcome the idea, but I doubt you would obtain the funding to research it. At least not so early. It's a very neat piece of work you've come up with here, very cleverly done, but the resources it would take—and the technology, still unproven... These things take time, my boy. Perhaps you should submit something smaller to the Council's attention once the tower is built and made secure? That will give you a few years to refine the concept on paper.'

Viktor smiles. He nods silently, accepting the professor's words with as much grace as he can muster. Pushing himself to his feet, he leads the way to the exit, careful not to trip over the poro weaving between their legs.

'One last word,' Heimerdinger declares as he steps out of the lab and turns to look up at Viktor. 'I am sorry about this nasty business with the break-in. It seems Jayce has some tough luck with his labs! But I wanted to congratulate you for the way you've stuck to your work. Both of you are doing this academy—and me—very proud.' He bows, ears bobbing with the gesture. 'Continue in this fashion and you will go far! We will make Piltover into a shining jewel. Don't let yourself be discouraged if your goals take time to achieve.'

His speech finished and their fare-thee-well exchanged, Viktor locks the door and makes his way back inside, to his cot in the small room Jayce and him have taken over for their all-too-common late nights. He opens the latch of his small crate and digs through it until he finds the metal tube.

He goes to sit at the edge of the cot with it, slowly unravelling the original diagram tucked within. A sewer system, designed and labelled by the same hand that had mocked their tower as a phallic monstrosity. Unlike the rough sketch he outlined to show Heimerdinger, this is lovingly detailed and extensively labelled. There's a lot to take into consideration, after all, when you're planning something so ambitious. 

And yet it's so simple. The runes are correct, though Viktor is pretty sure he could come up with something more streamlined. The only reason the little thief suggests a single enormous pipe is secrecy. It would make more sense to split the work across several points and use four or five gems. 

Viktor rubs his brow with a bony knuckle. His nose stings at the simple memories of the fumes of the Undercity. The taste of the water, oily and acrid, is back on his tongue like he never left. He thinks of the colourful shimmer of the water other children swam into while his leg and shy nature kept him away. The colours of chemical spills. 

He tries to imagine the same scene but with the clear, pure water he sees every day in the fountains of Piltover. And he can't. 

Heimerdinger praises the little thief's work and encourages him to wait years for something that is ready now. Something that would save lives. Something Zaunites could arrange themselves, if only they were trusted with gems—or even trusted to think for themselves and desire such a thing. This isn't some monstrous tower. It's four freshly cast pipes and the water turned off for a couple of hours while they're swapped. 

What had Heimerdinger called it? A lovely idea. But not one he's in any rush to sponsor or even study. 

At last Viktor feels something rip inside him. Something that had already been thin and strained, and that he has no words for. He isn't sure it can be mended, but what's one more broken part, at this point?

He rolls the blueprint and carefully tucks it back into its tube. Pushing himself up with his cane, he begins to pack. The note he leaves behind for Jayce says:

News came from my family, so I will be away for a couple of days. Nothing serious, but I haven't visited in too long. Heimerdinger has been over and is pleased with our progress, so may I suggest you also take some time off? We drank more coffee this month than all of last year. 

He takes his own sketch of a closed loop, self cleaning sewer system with him, crumpling the paper and stuffing it in his bag before heading out. He locks the lab behind him and makes his way to the funicular. 

It has been a long time since he's seen any of his relatives. Once they're done catching up, maybe they can point him in the direction of Vander's statue, and from there, hopefully a meeting with his secret student. 

They have a lot to discuss.