Surface Pressure

by TheOV

Summary:

A shift in fortunes, at first seemingly for the better, leads to the loss of everything their family had ever known, except one another. Driven from the undercity, can Vi, Powder, Mylo, Claggor, Ekko and Vander find the balance between not letting unresolved trauma set fire to their bonds and not letting inaction and unspoken grievances pry them apart, anyway? Left in an unfamiliar country, an unfamiliar environment and with limited knowledge mostly stemming from a decades' old weekend of survival training, can Vander hold it together long enough to assure his charges survive while struggling with the consequences of failures past?

And who is it that has her eye on the two youngest transplants to this contradictorily peaceful land of war and conquest? Rating for safety.

Chapter 1: Chapter One

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

 

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Chapter One

Vi tried to push herself up the incline and up tight against the window to the little, damp, dirty basement filled with little more than old ruined furniture and a mattress she doubted even Benzo slept on anymore. Upstairs, she could hear the sound of his boots and Vander’s fading as the azure clad enforcers escorted Vander out into the street. Fuck, she thought, though she wanted to scream it instead. Shaky arms weren’t cooperating and the way the window was set back into the wall, angled up toward street level did not help her any. She could hear her heartbeat as well as she could the voices of the enforcers out front. Yet, seeing them was a whole other problem. 

 

Through the window was a green haze. It was nothing new, of course. Part of the reason most of the lights down in the undercity were this same hazy green was because they were passively fueled by the fumes and vapors produced by most of topside’s mining and refining. The haze she was glaring through, twisting and pressing to one side just to make out the shape of three enforcers and Vander with Benzo at their side was a combination of weather conditions, the time of day and the density of the vapors coloring the world. She hated it all. The enforcer woman who was not bothering with her mask came to a sudden halt and Vander and the others followed suit. Judging by the way he stood with his arms at his waist and in front of her, Vi thought he was cuffed. She clenched her fists as this enforcer ordered someone to ‘stop right there’. The woman was authoritative, cocky, assured. 

 

She was also in the wrong neighborhood.

 

A blur blocked Vi’s sight of either enforcer or Vander as something large and dark charged toward the group. Half of them backed up just out of her sight but the attacker, whatever it was, lifted the enforcer woman off of the ground in one rapid upward motion. Her eyes widened for the fraction of a second she had left and Vi thought she saw their color for just a moment. Then all she saw of the road or its enforcer occupant was red. Vi’s throat clenched shut around her breath as her mind processed the image of the enforcer’s torso having been torn quite literally in half. Shock forced her forward and upward, as close as she could get to the window to look between the splatter of blood blocking most of her view. Her left shoulder was shoved at a sharp, unnatural angle into her neck. 

 

She pieced together the next voice was Benzo’s but it was rapid and low and angry and she couldn’t understand what he said. The large rotund man moved forward with some sort of improvised weapon in hand and speed she hadn’t expected. Vi tried to follow his movement to see what he was after - but the dark blur was on him in a moment. A flash of gray and… purple? Vi called out a warning that would go unheeded, but another voice cut across the scene. A lower, gravelly voice barked out an order, simultaneously authoritative and somehow leisurely, as if the words escaped at their own pace and the world waited for them.

 

“Don’t bother with the waste. You’ve always been such a disappointment.” Despite the words, whoever or whatever killed the enforcer a moment ago now lifted Benzo from the ground effortlessly. “Not even worth killing, really.” She heard the wall above her shift as Benzo cracked against it. He landed just out of her sight. One of the enforcers from before - one of the men with Vander, spoke up and Vi shifted, the stained wraps around her fists tearing slightly at the unnatural way she tried to claw at brick to stay as close to the window as she could. 

 

“What the hell have you done?” the enforcer demanded, and she got angle enough to see part of Vander alongside this man. “This wasn’t the deal!” VI sucked in a breath, eyes wide. Vander was not the only one making deals with enforcers, then. To her right, through a layer of the first enforcer’s blood, she spotted another man as he emerged fully from the smog. His right hand eased forward to toss a leather sack at the enforcer. Not tall, just thin, the man strode predatorily toward the hulking creature bent half over in the middle of the street but looked at this enforcer who was halfway through unmasking as if to identify himself when he had to stop to catch the bag. 

 

“Deal’s changed,” this man with the strange eye informed the enforcer, calmly. Coins fell from the pouch, landing in the blood at the enforcer’s feet and Vi knew they were in trouble like she’d only ever seen once before. A staircase with a bad step, a locked door and a whole room separated her from the people on the street. By the time she’d done the math that she was not getting out in time to help, the gray form was on Vander, who tried to raise his cuffed hands defensively. Two swings of massive fists told her this was a person of some kind but unlike anything she’d ever seen. Those two swings dropped Vander to his knees, which was in and of itself enough for her to want to scream. It was not why she screamed. 

 

Vi slammed on the window, calling at the top of her lungs. Desperate. She wanted more than anything to be in the fight, to be on the street, to draw these strange people away from Vander and to her. On the ground she saw Vander’s lips moving, but whether he was talking to Benzo or his attackers, she did not know. The words could not make it past the glass or her cries. Her right fist ached as it came dangerously close to shattering the glass. An arm fell in front of the window - a large one she could guess to be Benzo’s as a tuft of dark hair appeared to the left. 

 

And then, just like that, Vander was dragged off unceremoniously by the gray and purple mass of a person - drooling a trail of some kind of vapor-light purple liquid behind him and pulling Vander through it like half-forgotten trash. All in seconds. All without preamble. All without any more words or any sign that the creature doing it understood what he was really doing and what he was dragging along behind him. 

 

Neither he nor his equally strange, oddly calm boss heard or cared about her screaming. Neither of them cared her throat was raw, her hands ached and her eyes blurred and stung. Neither looked toward her little window out into the world before they disappeared into the vapor green tinted smog and took Vander away from her. She was glad, glad they would never know that as she sank to the floor of that damned basement and buried her head in her hands, she felt like the little girl wandering a body and gore strewn bridge who had cowed at the bloodlust in Vander’s eyes all those years ago. No, no! No! No!

 

Vi raged and screamed and cried, because there was no one and nothing in sight to hit and breaking down the door would not get her out in time if they intended to kill Vander. Inevitably, though, she had to roll onto her side, push up to her knees and wipe snot and spit and tears away with the back of a filthy hand. Whether it was minutes or hours later, she didn’t know. But she damn sure knew that if Vander was dead, so were the people who had done this. That included the dirty enforcer. A click came from above her as she got to her feet. Fists raising, she moved to the bottom of the stairs, dropping into a fighting stance and waiting. She did not remember hearing the door open above but then again she was only just becoming aware, in a way, of her own body. If someone was coming back to clean up witnesses, it didn’t matter if they had escaped her notice or not on approach. 

 

Vi readied to beat whoever came down the stairs after her until they stopped moving. If she was lucky, they wouldn’t know about the bad stair. 

 

“Vi -?” Her eyes widened and she lowered her fists as the voice of her sister’s best friend and, frankly, Benzo’s half-adopted son/half-shop hand sounded from beyond the door. He opened it slowly, and seemed to be wincing, puffy eyed as he did so. This told her both that he didn’t know what he was going to find on the other side of the door and had opened it anyway and that she was not the only one who had witnessed what just happened. Benzo’s voice, pained, followed the sight of him, telling her to ‘get up here.’ 

 

Two dead enforcers - one of them apparently a higher up, Vander beaten to hell and Benzo thrown like a rag doll - and Ekko had seen it all? 

 

“Little Man,” Vi sighed, making way up the stairs. Ekko, seeing no threat in the room with her, practically sunk, tension leaving his body as he stepped back to let her out of the basement. She skipped the sixth step and made it to the front room of the shop in time to see Benzo throwing his weight against a grandfather clock to hold it. His nose had a new hook to it - but he looked mostly whole. Except she suspected there was a reason he wouldn’t put weight on his left leg. Vi was about to speak, but a flash of white hair and off-white shirt warned her that Ekko was about to pull a Powder. She had her arms open in enough time to catch him and not get thrown off balance as she squeezed the boy back. He held tight to her midriff though, uncharacteristically seeking the physical contact, face pressed into her arm. Gods damn, he probably saw it better than I did, she realized. Ekko could’ve been peeking around the side of the shop or looking down from the roof. He probably knew things she needed to know. 

 

“I’m gonna find a damn crutch in here if it kills me,” Benzo declared after only a second of this hug, throwing himself around the shop like a drunk and knocking things off of tables and piles with enough noise and chaos to make Ekko cringe. She wasn’t sure if it was fear or just knowing he would probably have to fix half the broken things in the shop when this was all over, but the thought was erased as Ekko pulled slightly back and suddenly stood on his toes, whispering right into her ear. 

 

“I followed them. Old cannery - three stories tall, end of the Lanes, west side. They took him.” An answer to a question she had not yet asked brought her some relief. The relief dragged the fire kicking and screaming back to the surface with her. She no longer felt as cold or far away when she squeezed him again and whispered her own thanks right back. Ekko pulled away and as she moved toward the door, he tried to help Benzo find something slender but sturdy. Looking out the front door and to her right showed her the sight she expected: one pool of blood, mere feet away and in its center an enforcer’s corpse, eyes wide and empty. A few feet away, one splatter of blood and two piles of gore marked the passing of the enforcer who seemed to have been in charge of the situation and in cahoots with Vander. That was a story for Vi to demand another day. 

 

“I’m coming with you. We’re getting to the Last Drop,” Benzo sounded more like himself now, not as angry, but certainly almost gasping in pain. Seeing no signs of a successful find in the way of an improvised crutch when she turned back toward the room, Vi moved over to Benzo’s left side and threw one of his somewhat meaty arms over her shoulders. “Well, alright then. Let’s go.” 

 

They were on the street with Vi shifting under the man’s significant weight before Vi thought to look for the last enforcer, but that one had picked up his literal blood money and left already. He was nowhere to be seen. When Ekko started to turn his head in the direction of the gore, Vi spat. 

 

“Close your eyes, Little Man, and hang onto my arm.” Despite being as prone to arguing as Powder, the boy lidded his deep golden eyes and did as told without another word. Vi thought he’d already seen enough for one day, frankly speaking. “You know,” she told Benzo as they passed the bulk of the mess and now followed a trail of blood and glowing purple something smeared across dirty cobble, “the guy with the wonky eye paid off the last enforcer. They were in on this together.” 

 

“I remember,” Benzo grunted, as he jarred his leg. Despite the fact that she was practically carrying half of his body weight, it was clear each step was agony. It was clear to her his leg was broken. “The man with the strange eye, his name is Silco,” Benzo tells her. “And he’s more dangerous than you’re probably thinking.” Vi didn’t want to tell Benzo that right now the only thing she was thinking about beyond the moment was punishing Silco in a way that even Vander would probably scold her for. The kind of punishment where Silco learns the taste of his own teeth. The trip wasn’t looking like one that was going to be easy or fast and that ran counter to her best instincts. 

 

“You know, I could go without you - you don’t have to hurt yourself like this. Ekko, you’re good to open your eyes.” The hand on holding onto her arm released her and she glanced sideways at Benzo, whose own dark eyes were locked on hers as if to dissuade her of this notion through glare alone. Yet - the effect was diminished by agony that made the man’s face contort as he forced in a breath. 

 

“No. Made Vander a promise and I’ll be keeping it.” 

 

“I’m sure he’ll thank you when he’s back,” she said, making damn sure that he knew that if his promise was to take Vander’s place, she wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the only man she’d known as a parent since the battle that had taken her and Powder’s birth parents, not to mention Mylo’s and Claggor’s. 

 

“I’m sure he will,” Benzo said as they rounded a corner onto a more main-street, one of the titular Lanes named after one of his and Vander’s fallen cohorts. A little bit of joviality tried and failed to find purchase in his voice as people turned their eyes toward the trio and muttered but did not do much else. “Maybe a round on the house now and again.” Vi snorted. 

 

“All your rounds are on the house, Benzo.” 

 

“Don’t remember anything like that,” he led in. “That mystery probably explains itself, though.” Vi laughed but it felt as forced in her ears as it had in her throat. 

 

“There we go,” Ekko declared from close enough to her left to surprise her, pointing down the road. The light on the outside of The Last Drop was still on. That had to be a good sign. 

 

Despite this, a few minutes later, Ekko was unsuccessful in turning the knob on the front door to the bar that doubled as her and her siblings’ home. She nodded to her right, and Ekko read her instructions pretty clearly, ducking around the corner and moving a false brick out of the wall around the corner. Retrieving the spare key hidden behind it - one of Vander or Powder’s ideas, she thought - Ekko let them in without much more stalling. The familiar smell of beer and cleaning supplies told her that Vander had left the shop in the middle of a wipe down. No one, conscious or otherwise, waited for them in the bar, so Vi hurried to a nearby chair, and heaved Benzo, who hissed out her name as if to slow her down, onto a table. She raked her eyes around the room and they landed on the wall above the bar, earning her frown. 

 

“What broke your leg?” she questioned the shopkeeper as she got a really good look at it for the first time, backing away. The angle it hung at - dear gods. It made her stomach churn. For his part, Benzo grabbed the nearest tall chair, and rammed it under his arm as if it would serve as a crutch. Might for a time, she thought as Benzo fought for his breath and Ekko moved toward the back room that contained the staircase down into the basement. He stroked at one of his large muttonchops. 

 

“Truth is, I don’t know, lass.” Vi turned away from him, realizing she wasn’t going to be getting anymore useful information and blew past Ekko on her way downstairs. By the time she reached the door to the staircase she could hear, with some relief, Claggor and Mylo talking below. By the tone, Mylo was arguing with him over something. She didn’t have time to waste, throwing open the door as Benzo called her name and hurrying down the steps two at a time. Claggor and Mylo, frozen on the spot over a table full of objects she hadn’t gotten a good look at, seemed caught off guard, if fired up. Didn’t they hear us come in? 

 

“Where’s the-” Vi tried to ask after Vander’s gauntlets, having noticed their disappearance from above the bar after dropping Benzo off at the table moments before. She could hear Benzo and Ekko above her but before she could really talk, the boys in front of her called her name and a set of footfalls warned her to turn around. Locking eyes on a head of blue hair plowing right toward her at its owner’s full speed, Vi lost her sense of focus and her fury dulled with it. She did not get her arms open in time, and Powder threw herself at Vi’s midriff, burying her face against her for a tight, almost desperate hug. Not like Ekko’s, but so much more - primal. Like she was the only thing that could bring Powder any joy when the truth was she had no joy to bring. 

 

Powder had to be thinking - waiting, wondering the same question the other two had on their lips:  ‘Where is Vander?’ Vi wasn’t sure what to tell them, what to say. A few minutes ago, maybe an hour ago, she had left her bag at the foot of the stairs and walked out fully expecting to never see them or anyone outside of a topside prison again. Yet - Claggor and Mylo anxiously watched her as Powder pulled back and looked up. Now it’s Vander who’s gone? No. Vi still found no words as her sister looked up at her, fear slowly replacing the relief on her face at Vi’s appearance. Her eyes shot sideways as she sought not to look at a fear she could not calm. 

 

The gauntlets were sat on the table behind Mylo alongside a small pile of nothing weapons. Nothing that would ever do anything against whatever this Silco man had working for him. She reached down to pat Powder on the shoulder and moved forward, trying not to look at any faces which might show recognition of how utterly lost she looked and felt. Her left hand hefted her bag off of the ground and she pushed past Mylo and grabbed at the gauntlets. 

 

“Slow down,” Mylo exclaimed, his own darker brown eyes looking askance beneath a furrowed brow. “Those are Vander’s. Where is he?” 

 

“Don’t you go worrying about Vander, he’ll-” Benzo’s voice from the top of the stairs had drawn the others’ attention as if they had not realized he nor Ekko were there, but Vi wasn’t about to let him talk the boys out of what needed to be done. She spoke over him as forcefully as she could and saved asking forgiveness for later. 

 

“An old cannery at the end of the lanes. They took him,” Vi announced. She heard a sigh above her but was turned not by Benzo, but by Claggor’s hand on her shoulder. 

 

“Took him?” 

 

“Who?” Mylo asked simultaneously. 

 

“I don’t know,” she answered, trying to force herself away from the way that truth made her feel. “Some guy called Silco. I don’t care, I need to help him.” 

 

“We’ll go with you,” Mylo immediately chimed out, reaching for the junk weapons on the table. She didn’t track why this was what made the lump rise in her throat but blamed it on the mental image of Mylo in the hands of that gray creature instead of Vander. 

 

“Whatever killed those enforcers was … it was like nothing I’ve ever seen. It tore them apart. Ripped her in half and it - it.” Her eyes began to sting as a sob pushed up from her throat. Sounds of movement and clattering from the room she shared with Powder couldn’t distract her, because the one thing she could not do right now was cry. Vi shut her throat against it and covered her eyes with her hands, inhaling slowly and exhaling twice as long. Unfortunately, Claggor and Mylo tried to offer comfort, hands on her shoulder and back. It did not help her suppress the tears but the thought of Vander at the mercy of whatever this creature was sure did. 

 

The somewhat musty scent of the basement filled her nose as she inhaled again and moved her hands. 

 

“You’re not doing this alone, Vi,” Claggor counseled. 

 

“He’s our father too,” Mylo hurried to add. “Do we know exactly where this place is?” 

 

“Ekko followed them,” Vi answered quickly. 

 

“Did he, now?” Benzo mused from the top of the stairs, and again, the others looked up toward him as she grabbed at one of Powder’s inventions near the base of the stairs. A sort of flare signal rigged up in the frame of either an old unexploded bomb or maybe the weirdest spyglass she’d ever seen.

 

“The old cannery next to the docks, west district,” she continued, ignoring Benzo as she turned about to find Powder there, five feet away, with a small suitcase likely containing one of her handmade grenades or something of the sort. It stopped Vi in her tracks again and she thought she would never get hold of herself if this kind of thing kept happening. Powder’s faintly blue-tinged gray eyes gazed eagerly, even earnestly up at her. The whole thing felt like an equation for disaster - one that Vi had to erase from the board now, as hard as she could. 

 

Vi moved forward, exhaling. 

 

“I need you to sit this one out, Powder,” she told the girl, who lowered her suitcase and looked upset, even insulted. 

 

“What?” 

 

“You’re not coming.” This was not the answer Powder wanted at all and her sister all but stamped her foot, braid shifting side to side at the force of Powder’s shaking head and insistence. 

 

“I’m not afraid.” 

 

“It’s too dangerous,” Vi told her, hoping, praying she’d understand and just drop things as she gripped the strap of her own backpack and adjusted it. The briefcase hit the floor at Powder’s feet. 

 

“B-but families stick together, you said it yourself!” Vi wanted to growl, but she swallowed the flash of anger. It was like Powder thought they were having an argument she was going to win because she was so smart instead of this being Vi putting her foot down for the sake of saving the bluenette’s life and making it so she only had to worry about ONE person who might not be able to defend themselves once they were inside. 

 

“I know what I said -” this time Powder cut her off and her heartbeat picked up. 

 

“I want to fight, I can help!” 

 

“You’re not ready,” Vi said, putting all the firmness of a Vander who was done with a conversation into her voice. Instead of responding with even dejected surrender, Powder’s somewhat rounded sickly pale face looked as if, as if Vi had slapped her. It hurt. It hurt to cause it. It hurt to see it - but Vi was sure the girl would understand, eventually. Vi reached out. “You’re all I have left,” she told Powder, placing her hand on Powder’s cheek. For a moment, her sister leaned into the touch as she so often did and then Powder pulled back. Vi tried not to let it hurt her as she looked down at the signal flare in her left hand and pushed it toward Powder on impulse. “I can’t lose you. So - here. If they come for you and you get separated from the others, take this and run like hell.” Powder grabbed as the flare was pressed into her chest. “It doesn’t matter if you’re on top of the council building - you light this up, and I will find you one way or another. I promise.” 

 

Powder had kept her mouth shut during the diatribe, but Mylo and Claggor were getting antsy behind Vi and Powder clearly still wanted to argue. The flare had been one of Powder’s creations and Vi looked down at it with the sureness that it would work. Wrapping her now empty left hand around the back of Powder’s neck, she leaned forward and pressed their heads together, eyes closing. Powder closed hers as well and Vi took a slow, deep breath. She could hear Powder stifling tears. She could hear Benzo moving at the top of the stairs. She turned away to see Ekko’s eyes staring down at her and Powder. Claggor and Mylo were already up and behind him. 

 

She had no choice but to hurry after them, turning her back on the sound of a half-formed sob and reaching the top of the stairs. No sooner had she shut the door behind her than Benzo moved in their path, as if to block her exit. And now this, she thought, wondering just how long Vander would be mad at her if she had to bowl over Benzo when he already had a broken leg and was leaning against one of Vander’s chairs just to stay standing. For that matter - would Ekko forgive her? She glanced sideways at the boy to find him looking at her and Benzo both with concern and regret. 

 

“You can’t go like that,” Benzo told her in a hurried whisper. This wasn’t what she had expected, and she blinked, halfway to asking what he meant when he clarified, causing Mylo to let out an exasperated sigh. “You can’t leave her here, with nothing to do, lost, waiting and scared and her entire family gone to fight together.  If you weren’t about to walk into danger I’d cuff you upside the head, myself.” Vi again, blinked. 

 

“What do I do then?” she asked him, voice not so low or quiet or kindly. 

 

“You go down there and tell her you need her help. Hell, tell her the truth. Tell her we’re in danger. Tell her she and Ekko need to make this place or my shop, or whatever, a fortress.” As much as she wanted to scream at him to get out of her way, Benzo had a point. Vi shoved her bag into Claggor’s hands and turned right around as Mylo protested. 

 

“We don’t have time for this!” 

 

“If we don’t, we’re fucked anyway,” Vi told him, which felt pretty honest. She opened the door and it broke her heart that Powder was standing where she’d left her, arms crossed over her stomach and turning in on herself the way she did when she thought someone was angry at her. Powder hadn’t moved at all. The girl lowered her head as Vi hit the bottom step. 

 

“Powder, you need to do something for me.” 

 

“I know, I know,” she called, eyes squeezed shut. “Wait here and stay out of the way.” 

 

“No, Benzo’s hurt. Ekko’s scared. You need to take care of them for us, because if this goes bad, they’re the only ones who’ll look out for us. Help Ekko make it so any topsider or laner who walks into this place or Benzo’s when we don’t want them to doesn’t walk out without help.” Powder’s eyes slowly opened and she looked up as if Vi was some amazing sight to behold. “Doesn’t matter to me where you all choose. As long as you’re safe and we have somewhere to hide out after.” 

 

“Really?” she asked. The hope hurt.  

 

“Let’s be honest,” Vi told her. “Who’s better for the job?” 

 

“Vi,” Mylo called from above. “Let’s move!” Vi nodded his direction and glanced back. 

 

“Remember what I said, Powder, even if I forget sometimes. What makes you different makes you strong. You’ve always proven it.” Because the words felt important, because they were true, because they felt like the only words she’d spoken in several minutes that sounded like her own, Vi emphasized this - and Powder gave a resolute nod as tears faded from her eyes. And Benzo was right again, she thought as she ran back up the stairs. How fucked up would it have been to be Powder, hopeless like they were back on the bridge when the family needed her most? 

 

It was surprising, with her whole world so wrong, that everything outside of The Last Drop was so normal. If anyone on the streets even knew that something was up, that Vander had been taken, they were all acting like it was none of their business and she guessed that was right: how many questionable things had Vander kept them from getting involved in especially over the last couple of years? Nonetheless, the three of them were unharassed and barely noticed tearing past vapor-lamp after vapor-lamp on the street, dodging everything from Laners out about their business to a cart being driven by some topside engine that would probably make Powder and Ekko both giddy at the sight of. 

 

Neither the Lanes nor the old dock district gave them any trouble. Within minutes they were out of the view of the pale, tired faces of the rest of the undercity and instead, much to her surprise, were finding their path across the roof of an old abandoned fish cannery as free of obstacles as the grounds around it had been. Not one to overthink, Violet took the ease with which she, Claggor and Mylo managed to move silently across the roof at face value. Especially after the near miss that involved Claggor nearly putting his leg through the jagged glass remains of a busted skylight while they were observing the top floor of the building. The place looked empty down below and the top floor looked to be little more than empty walkways, debris and an elevator, now. The freight elevator was about the only thing on the top floor with any light other than that dim haze from the outside so Vi signaled with one swipe of a hand that they would move to a better angle to get a look at it. 

 

“Let’s be quiet and fast,” she hissed at Mylo and Claggor as they took one last look from this skylight and saw yet again no sign of any persons. Entirely unguarded, the building seemed a poor choice to keep Vander alive in. It was as if Silco, whatever his goals, thought no one at all would come for him. Idiots.  “Get Vander and get out.” She spotted the glance between the two, recognized she was being uncharacteristically cautious and quiet to their eyes and let it go. They had not seen the things she had, or more specifically the thing . The thing which had downed Vander in two strikes and dragged him away like he was nothing. The thing which had torn a person in half.  The thing that tossed Benzo like cardboard. If it was here - if he was here - they were in trouble no matter how quiet things had been. 

 

Continuing to nearest the edge of a shattered tile roof, she got another look inside through yet another skylight and was sure that not only was there a vapor-lamp on in the freight elevator - but something was casting a shadow from it. Vi exhaled and signaled with one hand to Claggor and Mylo before finding the cleanest looking section of this skylight, without glass, and grabbing hold of the frame. Vi dropped. For a half second, her arms bore her body weight and then she flung forward, to a support beam running along the side of the wall as it climbed up toward the roof. This was easy. Keep it up and we’re home in time for dinner and Vander’s answering all my questions. 

 

Halfway down, the two sections of the beam reached a split into one and she made the choice to jump, landing easily on hands and feet. It was better that than risk falling trying to climb it. Vi turned round. Most of the catwalk ahead and to her left, as well as the walkway they were already on, was lined by a rusty iron railing supporting a low wall. Vi was rather concerned about sticking her head up over it in case someone was looking up from below that they had missed.

 

Yet, she risked it to get a look at the freight elevator and her heart leapt in her chest as she saw a large, wide form sat in some sort of chair. While hard to be sure, it looked right to be Vander on the first glance. Claggor landed fairly stealthily for his size and Mylo was down even quicker and quieter, but every little sound made her wince as she crouched and listened. Still, when they were all three together and pressed against one of the low walls near the entrance to the catwalk, Vi saw and heard no sign of Silco or his enforcer friend. She held up a finger to freeze the other two in place, took a breath and peeked up toward the elevator. 

 

Sure enough, on second glance it was stopped on this floor and, backlit by a vapor-lamp, a bruised and eye-blacked Vander was strapped, hunched over, into some kind of restraint chair. The elevator was the kind of rusty death trap undercity kids would play in, much to their parents’ chagrin if they were lucky enough to have parents. Truth was - everything around here was rusty as hell. Every rail, even the walkway beneath them was likely iron that had fallen into disuse and broken down at an accelerated rate with all the shit in the air they breathed. Mylo tapped her on her back and she turned back to them with a nod to find them both waiting. Keeping low, Vi led them forward. It looked like there was no one, sure, as they crouched and nearly inched toward the catwalk. Peeking around the corner confirmed that Vander was bound by some kind of shackles at the wrists and ankles, not strapped in around his chest. She wished it had been simple straps holding Vander there. 

 

He did not seem to be moving. From here, Vi couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but the large, pepper-haired bearded man was in reach. 

 

Vi led them onto and down the catwalk. She could feel rust flaking off of the catwalk under them as they walked. Why spring for nice steel when you can just abandon the place in a few years? Try as they might, they couldn’t hurry anymore, not without making more sound than she wanted to risk. Vi hoped the place was actually as inexplicably empty as it looked. Despite their caution, every time her foot or the others’ feet hit the catwalk just right she could hear the whole thing shifting and creaking faintly. A metal pipe Claggor had picked up as a weapon when she wasn’t paying attention brushed the catwalk floor as he moved, he was crouched so low. That was kind of impressive for his size, she thought. Then again, her brothers were usually impressive. 

 

The three made it down the length of the catwalk without hearing anything to tip them off that they had been caught. Vi hurried to Vander’s side the moment she crossed the threshold into the elevator, throwing her hood back. Quite suddenly, she saw Vander’s eyes, aimed toward the floor, open faintly, and he exhaled hard before spitting blood onto the floor. Oh thank goodness. She glanced over her shoulder as Claggor and then Mylo joined her. His eyes opened wide as he looked up. At least, as wide as they could with one blacked and swelling. 

 

“Vi?” Not thinking as hard as she probably should have, she reached forward all at once and embraced him. Mercifully he did not act as if the action hurt him. “What are you doing here?” he hissed as her hand came to rest on the back of his neck. His eyes searched hers as a smirk rose to the surface. She’d actually been worried about this? Vi wasn’t sure she wouldn’t make fun of herself for her fear in short order. Relief reminded her, though, that at least some part of her had expected to find the worst when they arrived. 

 

“We’re breakin’ you out,” she told the man and though she was practically whispering, unexpected giddiness snuck into her words. “Mylo.” The boy let out a huff and began to dig into his belt as he moved toward Vander’s right arm. She saw him produce his lockpick. 

 

“How did you get in?” Vander insisted, a trail of blood drying at the corner of his mouth, matting his thin beard. “There’s guards everywhere.” Vi shook her head quickly as Mylo started his work on the lock holding the metal shackle over Vander’s right wrist. Good. Smart , she thought. Get Vander’s right hand free and there was nothing saying one of these old rusty restraints might not be breakable by Vander himself. Vi gave a look around the elevator taking note of the door and its simple slide mechanisms and latches. They looked functional. If they needed to, this thing probably still moved. Assuming it had power. 

 

“It was easy,” she said as she took a step or two and started to pace. “Found an open window and -” That’s right, Vi told herself. It was easy. It was way, way too easy for someone who could sweep in and kidnap Vander . Her own eyes widened as she turned back. Her realization wasn’t mirrored in Vander’s face but it damn was it mirrored in his shaking voice. How could I be so stupid? 

 

“Oh, god,” he inhaled sharply. “You have to get out. Now!” Vander looked more sickly than he ever had by the pale green light of the vapor-lantern. Vander’s words were barely out of his mouth before a voice she had hoped to never hear again unless it was begging for mercy sounded off from the far side of the floor - a voice whose owner had approached without her hearing, somehow. As she turned around, even the sounds of Mylo’s lockpick went quiet. 

 

“Welcome.” Silco sounded… different. He sounded even more assured than before and that idea made her sick. Overtop a dark red pinstripe shirt she could not hope to find anything so tacky as in her dresser, the stranger with the slicked back dark hair wore a gold-lined black vest and some sort of frilly ascot. Like he was mimicking the attire of the topside, and poorly. The man coming into the frame of the doorway of this elevator had a build and a height closer to Mylo’s than anyone else’s, half his face sunken as if some part of it beneath the surface was missing, not to mention heavily scarred. Nothing about the man slowly and sarcastically clapping stood out more than his eye - a blackened sclera with a vibrant orange iris, again unlike anything she’d seen before. Any curiosity about his features was driven away by his smirk. 

 

“You have my congratulations,” the stranger said in a slightly lilting voice before he turned directly toward them. Footsteps she should have heard before now sounded out right on his heels and before he could finish his next sentence she lowered her arms to her side as the guards Vander had said were everywhere surrounded and even buried Silco one or two people deep, as if to protect him. “But I am afraid this will be a very short reunion,” the man added as a large figure from the back of the group began to push his way past everyone else. Heavily tattooed and not-so-heavily haired,a man she thought she could almost remember the name of slipped past most of the comparatively smaller underlings at Silco’s side, working a jaw covered by a tattoo mimicking that of a skeleton’s. 

 

This new stranger with the knife momentarily distracted her from Silco not because he was trying so clearly to appear predatory but because seeing him struck Vi with the enraging realization that she had seen almost all of these people in The Last Drop, and recently. The big guy (she thought his name could be Buzz or something of the sort) held in hand a fairly long, curving knife that looked actually well made. Putting this on display and clearly threatening her, Silco continued. Despite his guards, Vi thought privately that it was not impossible she’d be feeding him his teeth soon, after all. Running certainly wasn’t an option anymore. 

 

Which means you know what you need to do, Vi told herself, feeling Vander’s iron gauntlets bounce against her shoulder as she shifted. 

 

“Have you heard the rumor?” Silco questioned the air, rhetorically. Posturing and bragging. “Vander the coward fled town with his children.” A beat passed. “And they were never seen again.” Vi exhaled and ducked out of the doorway. Claggor, with some metal junk found on the ground, tried to pry the restraint to Vander’s left arm up. The junk shattered instead. Vi turned her attention away from it as she reached about and shoved her left fist into one of the armored gauntlets, gripping an internal rod that she was very likely not supposed to know existed. She had only ever tried these gauntlets on in secret. Vander was watching her and she saw it from the corner of her eye as she quickly strapped this one on and slammed her right hand into the other, gripping the strap with her gritted teeth and tightening it as hard as she could. Neither her hands nor her wrists were near as strong as those of the wide armed man in front of her, the one whose visage twisted with a look that put the words ‘panic’ and ‘shame’ in her mind. 

 

“Claggor,” Vi spoke as firmly as she could, channeling her inner Vander. “See if you can find another way out of here.” 

 

“Okay,” Claggor answered, but though he lowered his goggles over his eyes he only paced back and forth two or three steps, as if thinking. 

 

“You don’t have to do this,” Vander exclaimed lowly, half whispering. His voice was desperate and he was, Vi knew without a doubt, wrong. 

 

“Yes I do.” When he called her name next, it was in panic. She turned her back on that panic and locked her eyes on the big man, whatever his name, who was already crossing the catwalk, blade in hand. He looked like the largest in Silco’s entourage and still she didn’t think he could match Vander. He moved slowly, heavy enough to hit like a wall if he knew how to fight. Worse still, he was armed. 

 

That didn’t strike her as the worst news, in fact Vi marked it as lucky. In her mind if you put two people in a fist fight, it wasn’t clear until the chips were down who would win. Give one a weapon though and they’d either be quick and cruel and skilled with it or so cocky they’d get themselves in trouble. 

 

In hopes of inspiring a similar and unnoticed mistake in her much, much bigger foe, Vi did not raise her fists and put up her guard. At least, that was the reason she intended to give Vander if he asked. She didn’t want to admit she wasn’t sure how many times she could raise her guard with the massive iron gauntlets on her hands. Somehow they had not felt this heavy last time she wore them. Vi did not get a good count of the number of people behind the big guy as she approached but wouldn’t be surprised to find that it beat a dozen. She drew out her approach, crossing as much space on the catwalk as he would let her and found with some relief that yet again the hulking, round man with knife in hand and allies at his back seemed uninterested in putting up any kind of guard, sitting completely exposed and open. This is a stupid risk, she told herself, but it looked like it had paid off. 

 

The stranger eased forward a few steps when she came to a stop. As her right foot slipped back behind her left and pivoted, heel coming off of the ground, he drew closer, intent on intimidating. It was like he didn’t get that her family and life were on the line, like being scared of him was even an option. Vi exhaled at what felt like the last moment before a horrible decision and slowly raised her gauntleted hands. If this idiot doesn’t put up his guard I could have him down in seconds but only if I do it right the first time. Mylo - don’t take too long. She had to buy time. 

 

Looming above her, ‘Buzz’ cracked his neck, turning his head with a casualness about his movement despite his face remaining this disinterested, half-threatening mask. Eyes drilled into the back of her head - an awareness of Vander watching her. She felt Silco’s eyes on her, too, though. Something was said or done she did not catch because the big guy turned back as if to get an order from Silco, as if she was no threat. You’re never eating whole food again. Vi squinted and waited for some sign that this was too good to be true. Seconds passed during which she tried to keep her breathing calm and then he snorted and grunted. 

 

Then, as if she had written his battle plan for him, he reared back with the knife wielding hand, throwing most of his weight on his back leg. The other hand, instead of guarding his face or neck or body, just extended pointlessly in front of him as he drove forward for a blow intended to drive his weapon clean through her. Vi just faintly bent her knees and nodded. For once in her life, she was wearing something that could handle that kind of attack. Vi brought her gauntleted left hand up and around her face a bit further than she normally would and despite being rocked on her feet by the force of the blow the blade impacted the side of the gauntlet meaninglessly and probably dulled its edge in the process. Behind her guard, Vi smirked - a smirk which was gone before she did something, frankly, unwise. 

 

Vi broke from good boxing form. 

 

Pivoting slightly on her rear foot and twisting at the waist she brought her gauntleted fist up with all of the force she could muster from her body and then had to stretch to make up the difference in their height. Likely to land much more off balance than she wanted, Vi nonetheless breathed out as she struck, intent on the error not costing her a damn thing. Even through the gauntlet her hand sensed the cracking she could hear in her ears. The looming moron took the shot so perfectly to the jaw she could not have hoped for it. The sound of his jaw shattering accompanied blood, spit and a tooth emitting like a fountain up from his mouth. She landed as well as she could, but did not immediately drop into a boxing stance. The weight of the gauntlets made it hard to recover quickly. 

 

Speaking of weight, Vi felt the catwalk shake and shudder as the big guy went down. The girl brought her fists back up and scanned the crowd in front of her as she wrote off, or at least tuned out the people behind her. She had not heard sign that even one restraint had yet been unlocked. Vi resigned herself to holding off a lot more than just this one guy and all she could do was hope they were as big of idiots as he was. Vi ducked lower, bringing her fists up to guard (perhaps even a little too high, given the excessive size of the gauntlets) as a dark-jacketed woman rushed forward with what looked like a sharpened metal sign. 

 

Sluggish, Vi ducked under and weaved around to the woman’s right to avoid the first swing of the weapon which, for all its ugliness, could probably cleave a pretty deadly blow into her. As the woman brought her improvised blade around on a back swing, Vi turned and delivered a sharp left jab. Before she could even watch her foe collapse, Vi was ducking under the swing of her next attacker, one she had only seen coming at the very last moment when he was already on top of her. Turning back, she did not bother to land a solid blow, instead ramming the heavy gauntlet like a club against his shoulder with as much wild force as her body could manage and praying something broke between increasingly quickly coming breaths. 

 

Vi exhaled hard through her nose as another taker came, a man who looked like he wanted to be the first guy but hadn’t eaten himself to the right size yet. Vi rammed her knee into the surprise  attacker’s gut for added good measure and hoped that a busted arm and crying kidneys would put an end to his threat as she hurried toward the wannabe ‘Buzz’.  I push you back, not the other way around, Vi wanted to scream at them, but that would make it harder to focus. She would push this whole fucking city back if she had to! They’d know her family was off limits. Vander could speak all the peace he wanted but sometimes for things to change, the bully had to be beaten into the dirt. 

 

Violet was not as quick as she wanted to be. 

 

The first blow she took was by Buzz’s thinner, younger cousin whose kick caught her hard in the shoulder, sending an intense pain radiating through her. She didn’t stop to analyze the pain, bouncing against the railing on the catwalk which shuddered beneath her. Her left hand came round to block a blow aimed at her face, pale arm trying to drive her to the ground. Some of her form and tact momentarily lost, she pivoted hard on her back foot and saw the moment of widening eyes and panic that made this topless man realize he had fucked up. She enjoyed it as her right hook struck him on one side of his skull and sent the other side bouncing off of the railing on the other side of the catwalk. That one’s done, she told herself. This time, however, Vi knew even before she looked to expect another. It didn’t hurt that the greasy, red haired woman with a knife was breathing like something wounded and the size of Vander. 

 

An elbow meant for Vi’s skull was easy to weave around as Vi bounced from one side of the catwalk to another and with a swift right jab broke the redhead’s nose and probably a good bit of her face, all told. The redhead bounced into the opposite railing and landed on the ground as Vi got low once again and was rushed by a blonde man with yet another damn knife. This one an easy target- he lifted his chin as if asking for an immediate uppercut. In case it was a trap, she surged forward and dealt two jabs to his gut instead and he doubled right over. His knife clattered to the ground below but it was at a cost. The heavy gauntlets slowed her in raising her guard up as the next guy came in and she had to move forward to make it harder for him to swing what looked to be a pipe with a blade stuck to the end. 

 

Violet gave this man a right cross for his efforts and watched the head with the bound, pale dreads bounce painfully off of the catwalk. Keep going. More. Or everyone’s fucked. The problem was, her arms had begun to burn as sharply as her lungs. Vi’s wraps were stained with blood, mercifully not her own. However comforting and familiar they were, they felt too tight all of the sudden and all of these things made the threat of the brunet in front of her far, far worse. Feeling the need to lick his blade, this man in front of her who smelled, frankly, of piss and sweat, was able to nonetheless get in past her guard with one thrust of his blade. She ducked back easily enough - but raising her arms was a struggle. His laughter kept getting swallowed up by the sound of her own breath as she tried to stop gulping air through her open mouth and focus on breathing through her nose. 

 

The second blow, mercifully, went above her head anyway, but Vi still took it as a sign to get low and raise her guard no matter how much it hurt. It definitely hurt, especially in the shoulder that had taken a blow from a quick and errant kick moments ago. The piss-soaked stranger’s third stab was caught between the gauntlets and she was just thinking how great it was to fight without bare hands when her mistake cost her. Both hands focused on this - she had left herself entirely open to another blow. A slender bald feminine form behind this brunet moved round to deck Vi firmly in the jaw. She collapsed sideways into the railing, seeing spots even as she tried to predict her attackers’ next moves. Don’t. Go. Backward, she told herself. Go. Forward.

 

An elbow from the thinner, bistre-skinned striker was as close to what she’d been hoping for as she was going to get and left at least that foe open enough for a counter attack. Vi threw herself off of the railing and shoved the unarmed combatant to one side before spinning around on her back foot to swing at the armed man more wildly. The gamble not paying off as she desired she came away from the encounter with a sharp cut across her right arm as he swung back. The sharp, stinging pain brought with it fear again - fear that she was seconds away from being overwhelmed and somewhere - somewhere behind her her family was about to watch her fail them. She had to put them out of her misery fast - because more were sure to come. They hadn’t stopped coming yet. 

 

Vi ducked low as the unarmed woman she had just shoved aside came in for a rather cheap blow and with a lunge Vi pivoted her smaller and frankly clearly more trained body toward her, right arm delivering a jab she was fairly proud of. The problem was that it had been several seconds since any punch she’d thrown could be even charitably described as fast or in standard form. So Vi doubled down. While not a trustworthy, strong or particularly powerful shot for her, Vi jerked her left arm around for a left cross and dropped the piss-smelling attacker to reveal, frustratingly, a taller, shaggy haired man with a massive hammer over one shoulder who not only took, but stayed standing after the messiest, poorest uppercut she could remember giving a person in her life. Chest now heaving far too hard to be normal or take proper control of, Vi spat what she hoped was not blood. It did mix with blood, sweat and spit on her chin, though. 

 

Vi brought her guard up, ducking low as the hammer-wielding man wildly slammed the flat of his boot into the gauntlets in a blow that would have normally crushed her nose and ended all of this. Instead, it just knocked her, unbalanced and exhausted, to the ground. That was likely to have the same effect, if she did not act quickly. Vi had not realized it, focused as she was on failing arm strength but her stance had either gotten sloppy or her legs weak, because she was no longer upright. Cold, jagged rusty grate pressed against her body for the moment she let herself process it, but she pushed quickly to her feet as her current foe came toward her. From the corner of her eye, a boy she had last seen threatening her with a knife, street trash the others had called Deckard took something from Silco and swallowed it in a gulp. The something was glowing pale purple and reminded her of the gasses used to make various colored vapor-lamps. It also reminded her of the thing that had dragged away Vander all that time ago. 

 

Oh… oh fuck. 

 

She could not focus on Deckard. The hammer wielding kicker brought his weapon down at her, forcing her to roll aside and bounce off of the railing on her right. A growling, grunting sound reached her ears, tinged with agony. Something was happening behind her attacker to the boy beside Silco, but she turned her attention away. 

 

Despite not being up on her feet, she sat fully up and scooted before throwing both arms up to guard her face even as she ducked forward and under a low, exhausted swing. Wielding that heavy hammer was clearly hurting her attacker as much if not more than these gauntlets were her. 

 

It was sloppy and only had a fourth of the force it could have if she were standing, but as her attacker’s missed hammer blow rattled the catwalk, she drove her fist into his ribs, enjoying a clear cracking noise. The boy, Deckard, began to scream with a voice not entirely his own and she glanced long enough to see him paling, growing and graying. With confirmation that this was who had killed the enforcers, hurt Benzo - taken Vander from her … the rage surged back and it brought what it always brought: fire. 

 

Vi’s arms and legs screamed as loudly as her chest but she still got to her feet, head low and fists up when the hammer swinging, bare-chested and sweat soaked man who had driven her to the ground took one more swing. Off kilter, he dealt little more than a glancing blow with the heavy metal head against her gauntlets. Yet, it nearly doubled her over. Violet gulped in a burning hot breath and, recognizing that he was struggling to lift his hammer, shattered his jaw with a desperate right hook. 

 

Alarmingly, she saw movement from a couple of people she had already put aside with lighter blows - and movement from Deckard. Silco and a woman she recognized but could not name watched from the far side of this level of the factory as Deckard shambled forward like the subject of some great experiment. Vi felt no pity at the sight of him, stretched and otherwise deformed, just a bit of fear and a whole lot of contempt. You let this happen to you. Now easily two feet taller than Vander, the very muscles in his body still growing, a blonde head roared in agony as he tried to reach her. One of Silco’s lesser goons, trying to stand up from his spot against the rail, drew Deckard’s rage and was summarily grabbed and tossed over the side to fall to a nasty death below. 

 

Vi’s arms hung low and she let them. Every time she managed to lift them it was a miracle and she did not think there were many more miracles in this body when even breathing hurt. It felt as if she were sucking in flame and only resisting coughing through great effort. 

 

One more miracle. The kind that finishes the job, whether it finishes you or not. 

 

Vi exhaled and half expected to see smoke. Her family was behind her and in front of her Deckard spat, dropped or bled purple, as if the contents of the vial had replaced his very blood. His eyes, not unlike Silco’s save for a violently cyan iris in place of an orange one, regarded her in one moment as prey and in the next as nothing. Three seconds passed before any idea occurred to her and by that time, Deckard’s change looked to be complete. He was no longer crying out in pain which seemed to be bad news to her. Feet, don’t fail me now. Vi lifted bloodstained gauntlets. If her legs didn’t want to hold their stance, then they didn’t need to. Deckard was just one more braindead idiot at Silco’s side. 

 

Vi charged forward with a painful exhale. If this didn’t work - it won’t matter. Game over. Vi let her left hand fall as she approached the eerily still mockery of the boy she’d beaten down days ago. He was not even turned entirely toward her. Having her hands up would make balancing for what she needed next impossible, anyway. The metal creaked beneath her feet. When she counted six feet between them, Vi leapt and found purchase on the railing of the catwalk. Moving the gauntlets with intent and focus provided her more balance than she’d hoped for - and she only hoped she got them back up as she leapt into the air. 

 

Vi raised both hands above her head as she hurled herself forward. 

 

She could only hope she hit him hard enough in his head now that he did not get back up. That she took his life. 

 

The pink-haired brawler had no time to consider the moral implications of that thought . One moment she dropped toward her target with a cry and the next she was hanging in mid air, with an oversized hand grasping her by her throat. In the far distance, Vander made a call that sounded half cognizant underneath her gurgling, gagging attempts to breathe, to struggle, to kick. Her feet found purchase on neither floor nor foe. 

 

“This is between you and me!” Vander roared.

 

Way, way too late for that. 

 

“You had your chance,” Silco’s voice drew her eyes his way as she struggled to breathe and then what breath she had was driven from her lungs and she was no longer looking at Silco but at the ceiling. Shifting on the ground, she reassessed that she was not under Deckard’s hand and she was down one of her gauntlets. And that’s a retreat, Vi told herself, turning to crawl as quickly as she could back toward the elevator. Her legs were weak, barely cooperating. With one gauntlet down and not sure where her next surge of strength could possibly come from, Vi gave up the fight. Vander called her name, but Vi didn’t answer. She just crawled. 

 

Deckard’s footsteps shook the catwalk around her, following, stalking, a cat playing with a mouse. Claggor, in front of her, cursed and then forwent any pretense, taking the end of his pipe and beginning to batter bricks clean out of the back wall of the building. One way to find a way out, she thought, but she couldn’t help but wish he’d started that earlier. 

 

Vi wasn’t sure if she hit a burst of speed or Deckard was playing with her, but moments later she pulled herself into the elevator and yanked herself up by the handle on the elevator door. With a heave, Vi made her body weight do the work, slamming the door shut and damn near dropping her to the ground at the end. With her free hand, she slid the latching mechanism into place and then both of the locking mechanisms. She was promptly nearly knocked onto her ass a moment later as something, Deckard, she presumed, caused the rusted, faded green door to shake on its  rail hard enough to jostle her. Vi turned her back to the door and dropped. 

 

Best to save whatever energy she had for running. I don’t know if I have any energy for running. 

 

Ass bouncing against the floor she looked dazed around the little cube lit only by a green vapor-lamp. For a moment she could seize relief at being with her family despite Vander still half-strapped into his seat. That moment was ruined within seconds by another strike against the door, harder than the last. Vi blinked and shook her head, breathing now through her nose, but still drawing hot and painful air. 

 

“You did good,” the words rang in her head, drawing her attention to the rather beaten looking Vander that spoke them. I lost and I don’t know if I can move and I lost one of your gauntlets, she wanted to tell him. Even that seemed like too much effort. After five more blows by Deckard, the door screeched as it began to bend inward. After six more blows from Claggor’s pipe, the outer wall bore a hole in it the size of his head. She watched with unnatural calmness and distance from the situation as Claggor paused as if surprised by his own success. Her opening her mouth to hurry him was cut off when he reared back and rammed the end of the pipe through a brick a bit below the hole. Vi hated even the idea - but she rose to her feet and threw herself against the door. 

 

Hold it, and we get out of here. 

 

She turned her eyes on Mylo’s work to find that at some point he had switched sides on Vander and now Vander’s left side was free. She had no inkling why he had switched and wasn’t about to criticize, though she wished Vander could take the last gauntlet from her and shatter the remaining locks himself. Vi was about to act on the idea when another blow to the elevator door behind her shattered the first of the locking mechanisms. The idea was forgotten as she pushed herself back against the door to keep it shut. Claggor began to rapidly jab away at another brick below the last and then began to work over the space between. If he can knock it out and widen it, even Vander can get out of that. 

 

Vi was nearly knocked to her knees by another blow as yet another of Vander’s shackles gave way. Claggor stopped with the pipe and began to shoulder check bricks, as if the force of his body would do it better. She couldn’t argue with him when two or three bricks fell loose. Vi turned her attention back to the door behind her as Deckard’s next blow, this one a body check, shattered the last locking mechanism, leaving her, a cheap latch and the door’s ever weakening structural integrity between them and this monster. 

 

Vi was struck by intrinsic knowledge of imminent death and danger. Something told her to hold her breath and she did. A moment passed and then another and - and Vander was free. Mylo exhaled with a loud, ‘whew’ and then hurled himself at the back wall to aid Claggor in his efforts to make a hole large enough. In a flurry of wild swings with hammer and boot, the pair managed to do just that over the next few seconds - earning an unfortunately concerning groan from the wall and structure around them. 

 

The door behind Vi shook again when Vander stood, hurling himself from the chair and against it.  

 

“You three go,” Vander spat. 

 

“We came here for you,” she gasped between ragged breaths. “I’m not leaving without you.” Vi watched Mylo swing out of the hole and somewhat recklessly, at that. When Claggor did not panic, Vi turned her attention back to Vander. 

 

“One day, you’re going to listen to me.” 

 

“I know,” Vi answered, with a half smile. The moment was cut short as a great force rocketed her from her perch against the elevator door and dropped her on her face. 

 

“Vi!” 

 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she groaned, rolling over and pushing to her feet. The last latch on the door holding it in place had given way, but unlike her and it, Vander had not. Instead of a follow up blow that would surely knock this door off its hinges, the shell of a boy on the other side of the door went silent. This inspired in Vi and Claggor both no small pause, but Vander barking his name sent Claggor immediately swinging out of the hole he had just put in the wall. With his head still above the edge, Claggor answered a few of her questions. 

 

“Ledge nearby, we can climb to a drainpipe and get down.” Still deeply unnerved by the lack of Deckard breaking the door down and ending all of their lives, Vi practically scampered forward. 

 

“Go, go, go,” Vander urged her. She got one look through the hole down and shook her head. 

 

“I can’t - not with,” she started to raise her gauntleted hand. 

 

“Drop it,” Vander ordered, and Vi dropped it. It clattered to the ground, bloodstained and in her eyes somehow pitiable in its separation from its partner. “Now, go!” Outside and below her as Vi hung in the opening, the damp cool air brushing her face, Claggor began to shift along the ledge below. Vi turned, grabbed hold of the edge of the opening he had made moments ago and dropped to follow. The last thing she saw before edging along that same ledge toward a nearby drainpipe running the height of the rusted, decrepit cannery was Vander sprinting toward the hole, himself. Part of the wall she had just climbed through gave way as Vander reached it. A glance down showed Mylo already halfway to the ground. 

 

Something’s wrong.

 

Deckard had yet to make a sound or an appearance and the air was too clear, too clean. Vi edged quicker and quicker to her left before swinging down to the windowsill below, relieved to find her arms more reactive and responsive without their burden. Vander hurled the remaining gauntlet to the dark street below. That’s it, Vi told herself as Claggor cried out in pain below her. It’s too dark. Something had rushed in and blown away the vapors and smog disrupting the all pervasive pale green reflection of vapor-lamps. The air smelled too clean, yes, but it smelled also of a storm. 

 

“Weather’s coming in, hurry,” Vi counseled down to Claggor, who now stopped easing himself down the pipe still to her left, and more slid down its length with his knees, crying out as he cradled his hand to his chest. “Claggor?” Vi swung from windowsill to the same drainage pipe which creaked and protested their mutual weights as Claggor joined Mylo on the ground too quickly, stumbling. Above her, Vander froze on gripping at a blood-stained part of the windowsill as a crash and a crack accompanied a mighty roar from the third floor. When he began to move again, it was in the opposite direction and no longer as calmly or carefully, throwing his body weight with some wild abandon and grabbing at anything he could - Vander made his way to yet another downspout. 

 

Vi had to admit she was damned glad for that when she watched it tear from the wall and barely manage to slow his fall. It brought him to the ground far, far too hard and well before Vi could climb down her own route. Almost ten seconds after Claggor landed, Vi was earthbound again with a last leap from four feet in the air. The wide-shouldered once revolutionary called out a command to run as he scooped up his remaining gauntlet, but it was as unnecessary as his next order. 

 

“LOSE HIM!”

Notes:

A/N: Well. I don't even really know where to start with this one. Like my other works, this is going to be something that sees pretty limited beta reading or editing. I'm still trying to piece together proper tagging. Right now this is slated to run 23 chapters of varying sizes and it deals a lot with a lot of people ultimately failing to process various mental and emotional traumas while healing from and receiving physical ones. Many of these characters, even in the main canon, were headed for brutal breakdowns. The worst things to happen to their lives either ended their lives or derailed those breakdowns and, in one case, lead to much, much worse in the way of manifestations of unresolved traumas.

Now, though, there's a whole family of people out there going through various personal hells and unequipped to address them in a home that is now hostile to them.

So, suffice it to say, this leg of the adventure is going to be heavy.

Now, I need to hit Post so I can't chicken out.

EDIT: 1/29/2025

Wow, this edit came much later. Hi, I want to preface this for anyone reading this for the first time.

In the build up and prewriting for Surface Pressure, I did some digging looking for official ages for the characters. Or at least ones confirmed by cast and crew. I apparently didn’t do a good enough job and ended up going with some theorized in online discussions.

As such, I wrote Caitlyn and Powder/Jinx each as being two years younger than Vi, who I wrote as being thirteen in Act 1, Season 1. I wrote this entire fic with that in mind, did prewriting for two more. Last week I turned up some statements made by actual cast and crew that give ages for Vi, Jinx and Caitlyn, at least relative to one another. I was very much off, as the gap in canon between Vi and Jinx/Powder is closer to five years and Caitlyn is basically the same age as Vi.

I’m gonna add a tag to both this story and the other I wrote with this in mind: Canon Divergence - Alternate Character Ages. By my original estimation and the mindset in which I wrote this story, safe to say Powder is eleven, Vi's about thirteen, Claggor and Mylo are both around the same age. I'm explaining this because honestly, at the ages in the original, actual canon, multiple plotlines here and in future stories in this series would be beyond inappropriate. At least one would be pretty gross.

Chapter 2: Chapter Two

Summary:

While it looks like the family has escaped the machinations of Silco and the wrath of his monster, one wrong move, one lowered guard, one moment of breathing might change everything.

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

---

Chapter Two

 

Two stories above Violet, the thing that was once called Deckard clutched something close to his stretched gray and purple-streaked chest as he bolted toward the hole Claggor had left in the wall for its efforts to keep them inside. Vi was the last of the four of them to start running, but even she had not needed told twice. Legs which had just supported her through a gauntlet of attackers, on the other hand, found the implication that she was going to move quickly or stably a laughing matter. As a result, Vi stumbled constantly forward. She was thankful they had not given out with her two stories in the air. Passing the front wall of the cannery, she heard instead of saw Deckard strike the wall of the building next to it. A thud sounded out as he landed. Not intent on checking his landing nor thinking too hard about what he might be carrying, Vi caught sight in the distance of Mylo rounding a corner into a smaller, but still quite accessible alleyway. 

 

Vi was the last to make it around that corner, having to leap over a collapsed and long ruined pile of crates. As she did so, she felt and smelled literal breath on her neck and a trill of fear that she thought she would never admit to another soul. Not on her life. Coming ‘round into the alley, Vi was forced to duck low enough to stumble so as not to bounce off of someone in her path. Vander stood waiting, Claggor’s pipe in hand. Less than a second later, there sounded a nasty crack and Deckard, who must have been moments away from grabbing her in arms that had torn a fully grown woman in half, screamed in a barely human voice as Vander struck the transfigured boy in the face. Vi did not look. She could not look. She could only run. Vander was still on her heels before she could register it. Vi was struck with shame as he wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her bodily, unsteadily, up and onto his wide shoulder. 

 

Mylo and Claggor were both so far ahead of them that they were already at the next corner, and Vi gasped out an apology to the air. 

 

“He’s gaining again,” Vander announced, but in the madness Vi did not know how he knew. Vi struggled to get out of Vander’s grip so she could run on her own and not slow him down. For the moment, he was strong enough to hold her frankly exhausted body in place. With a grunt, Vander lowered his head and she felt them pick up the pace as sure as she felt something heavy strike the wall of the alley just behind her head. Again, Vi did not look. She could not look. 

She didn’t look back as seconds ticked to a minute. As one minute became another. As they stopped pretending they were running anywhere specific, and simply committed to running. 

 

By the time Vander released her and she glanced back over her shoulder, now on her own two feet again, she did not see Deckard. She could hear from his enraged cries that he had fallen far, far behind. The problem was in the way Mylo weaved as he walked or Claggor’s arms swung wildly around and nearly under him as he walked. It was in the way Vi no longer tried to leap over objects in her path and instead slipped around them, the way she let herself bounce off of the walls of buildings when they took a corner at the last minute, directed only by Mylo’s instincts and little else. 

 

They were wearing down and Deckard was a monster. 

 

Before she knew it, Claggor was in the back beside her, his right hand clutched to his chest still, in a way that made her certain she did not want to look closely at it. When Vander nearly fell as they cut across a sub-lane, Vi knew they were running out of options. Mylo doubled back to haul him back to his feet and Vi hurried to do the same from the back. The best they could do was direct him to the left, cutting back the way they’d come but at an angle and into an alleyway. For a moment, she thought they were going to stop and rest - but….

 

“VANDER!” 

 

The animal cry that was Deckard’s voice sounded from far closer than she wanted. A block, if that. If he decided to get a vantage point, he would find them. 

 

“Go,” Vander wheezed and go they did. By this point, they were in a more populated part of the Lanes, weaving in and out of people and vehicles and even the occasional animal on the street. Mostly they just dodged garbage left lying in the streets by people who had no idea what else to do with it. She kept her eyes scanning the path ahead despite the fact that they burned like every other part of her body at this point. 

 

“C’mon, slowpoke,” she called at Mylo, three blocks down the line when they were finally in a part of the undercity where your standard vapor-lamps bathed everything in their pale green glow. Mylo took the teasing like a champ. He didn’t point out that the fact that the two of them were now at the front of the pack spoke novels about everyone’s failing energy reserves. Vi didn’t need it: she herself felt like a zombie shambling through now far more crowded roads. 

 

Vi allowed herself a moment of hope, yanking Mylo suddenly to the left and around a corner to get off of the main road. 

 

That moment of hope was all she had really ever had. 

 

Claggor and Vander were on their heels in moments and as they slipped right down yet another alley and crossed into a four-way, Vi’s attention to detail slipped and failed her. Beside her, Mylo turned his head to his left as they were turning right to weave back onto the main road. This was all the alert Vi had before a blur of gray came rushing down from a nearby rooftop. With  a wide underhand throw, Deckard hurled something at the two of them with the force of a bullet. That something that caught a shocked Mylo in the side of the head mid-turn and knocked him immediately over to the hard cobbled road. Vi watched her brother’s head bounce off of the stone with enough force it did so twice. Something distinctly iron-gauntlet shaped lay on the ground beside him. 

 

Vi stumbled, slid, and nearly collapsed on screaming legs as Vander called Mylo’s name. 

 

“No!” Vander shouted, drowning her own attempt to rouse Mylo. When she approached to haul him up - he did not look at her. He did not look at all. He did not move. He did not rise. He did not speak. Vi stooped low even on her knees to get right into Mylo’s face. She did not like what she saw. 

 

“No,” Vi echoed. “No, no no! This isn’t happening! This isn’t happening.” Eyes shut, Mylo lie completely still on the ground. With the call of a hunter falling on its prey, Deckard charged forward, feet audible on the road. The gauntlet Deckard had knocked her clean out of in the cannery lay on the ground beside her. Vi shoved her hand into it in a rage, hard enough to tear the flesh of her palm - but Vander ordered otherwise. 

 

“No, run!” 

 

Mylo was not moving. 

 

Vi was not running. 

 

“This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening,” she repeated, going low as she moved forward. A wave of warm wet covered her left hand as she grabbed at the internal grip of the weapon and the massive shell of a street urchin bore down on her like a falling stone. Vi was ready to swing when another, larger weight bodily tossed her into the corner of a nearby structure and let her drop to the ground. Rolling, she watched as Vander thrust the pipe in his hand forward, standing ducked low in the spot she was supposed to be standing in, his muscles straining and eventually being thrust backward as the weapon impaled Deckard. 

 

The vapor-purple liquid poured to the ground as Vander fell backward and scrambled toward Mylo on his hands. Claggor circled around to join him but Deckard screeched like tearing metal.  Cyan eyes no longer human in any way, he reared back, turned, and fled them on all fours, the pipe dragging a line of sparks beneath his body as he scrambled away from them. Vi could not think about chasing and finishing Deckard there, though in dark nights to come she would think of it obsessively. Instead, she crawled, head spinning, toward Mylo. The boy did not move. 

 

Vander scooped him up from the earth and practically out from under Vi as Claggor threw her arm over his shoulder and began to pull her away. Her free hand tried to grab for this boy who was her brother - who was her responsibility. Who might not be breathing. 

 

“This isn’t happening!” 

 

Vi could not think of anything but the boy in Vander’s arms. She could not think of her own pains or the herculean effort Claggor was likely making to carry her, or the fact that his right hand looked so wrong. Vander cradled Mylo’s head to his chest - but his eyes did not open. Dark red soaked the front of Vander’s shirt to degrees not even the death of the enforcer woman had managed to do to it. And all Vi could do was shout half thought out questions at Vander or Mylo. 

 

“Is he - is he breathing? Is he breathing?” When Vander continued running without answering, she called both their names. “Vander! Mylo!” Vander did not speak and the thought that he might know the answer already shattered something. She could almost hear it break. Flooded as her mind became with images of revenge on Silco and Deckard both, Vi barely noticed when they were back on the main road. She did not notice that it was raining by the time they reached The Last Drop, or that she was soaked so thoroughly it had to have been raining for some time. Images of Silco’s skull reduced to bone and gore reflected in the windows of the bar as Vander shoved the doors open with one hand and Claggor pushed her over the threshold. 

 

There was no one inside the bar but the jukebox was playing a soft, low song that tried to intrude on her mind and assert itself. 

 

Vi did not let it. Claggor deposited her on one table at the same time that Vander sent a single cup flying off of the bar and laid Mylo down upon it, beginning to reach, to touch at his neck with a pair of fingers. Something metallic bounced out of Powder’s favorite cup which had just moments ago been upturned on the bar. It bounced off of Vi’s feet as Claggor called Vander’s name and the man bent forward over Mylo’s prone form, muttering. “Thank god. Thank god.” 

 

Vi sobbed or wheezed or both, but she grabbed at the little metal cog at her feet as the song on the jukebox reached her ears. 

 

I hear but only silence 

Your voice is long since gone

My eyes are growing heavy

I wonder if you’ll notice

And cast your thoughts toward home.

Don’t come across the river.

You’ll find yourself alone. 

 

The song went dead and in the time it took Vi to upturn the table she had just been planted on it began to repeat. 

 

“What do we do?” Claggor asked. Vi swung around from the upturned table, intent on telling them exactly what they were going to do. They were going to hit Silco back and in a very public manner. Instead, her eyes caught on the fact that the shelves behind the bar were empty. She glanced down at her own blood coating a cog, not aware she had discarded the gauntlet she had been wearing among the ruins of the chairs behind her. 

 

“This was Ekko’s,” she said. “And it was under Powder’s cup.” Vander turned on her, looking lost in the face in a way that made her step back, before he shook his head hard. 

 

“They’re together then,” he said, and this thought quieted Vi’s mind enough to move toward the bar. Vander momentarily tensed up, but then relaxed as she slowed her approach. 

 

“They’re probably at Benzo’s. I told Powder it might be smart to make this place or Benzo’s hard to get into. If I were them, I’d choose Benzo’s. Less space, less entrances.” Vander nodded. “Was that wrong?” she asked as Vander gazed back toward Mylo, his eyes cold. 

 

“No, no, it was a good idea.” 

 

“It was Benzo’s,” she admitted, which Vander nodded at as Claggor interrupted. 

 

“Is it over, are we safe?” 

 

“I don’t know,” Vander answered, sounding quite honest in his confusion and conflict. Those emotions held his visage hostage. “But Mylo can’t stay here if we’re not here and I want him in sight.” 

 

“Can we wake him up?” 

 

“If he was waking up that easy, he’d be up by now,” Vander grumbled as he rounded back on her and Claggor. Vi winced, because she understood the rage. This was, all told, her decision to come and get him. This was her fault. Mylo was her fault. Vi squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed at her own anger and pain and shame in equal measure, seeking anything to make the moment make sense. “These people could come after us at any point - but Benzo, Powder, Ekko? Crafty. They could have a plan. We’ll move him but - but hitting his head can’t be good. Not waking up - can’t be good.” 

 

A crash of thunder sounded to emphasize the danger and Vi faintly became worried that on top of all of this, they might be about to face a half-natural-half-topside disaster. And Mylo is dying there. 

 

Because of you. 

 

Vander hurried around the bar, knocking barstools over and frankly, breaking the small dividing door that kept the locals from getting back there easily rather than bothering to open it carefully. Vi did not blame him, but didn’t understand. If the shelves above him were clear of booze, the ones below certainly were, as well. Probably taken for cleaning wounds and to keep them from being looted. Vander’s soaked and soiled top and his bruised face disappeared below the bar. 

 

“What are you doing?” Claggor asked, but Vi did not dare speak. Did not dare risk his anger. She might have killed his son. Some sort of cracking noise and a dragging noise sounded, followed by a click. Then Vander reached up with one arm to hurl a bag that sounded of coin in roughly her direction without looking. Vi caught it on reaction but it was frankly impressive to her that she managed it. Judging by its weight and where Vander was he had likely just dug their entire life savings out of the hidden safe between floors of the bar. 

 

I could’ve taken that hit. 

 

“Violet,” Vander barked, and she leapt right back to attention. “Take that Down Lane.” This twisted her stomach in a brand new way. Flashes of memory and little else, of a small shack whose inhabitants pretended it was a house, of a field of tents spread across the ruins of an abandoned quarry - of one of those parts of the undercity technically exposed to the sky but so deep beneath vapor and things which tore at the lungs that stars were a distant dream. Vi sucked in a breath. The Bottom. The place where you went to die. The place where she’d been born and lived a good chunk of her life. “Purple tent - black cap, flying a red flag. He’s an old friend of mine. A contact. You take that to him, put it in his hands and tell him we need topside supplies. We need medical expertise.” 

 

Vi wiped away her unexpected nausea at the idea of seeing The Bottom again with her own eyes and nodded. Vander rose too late to see the nod. He continued speaking as if he knew she were going to cooperate, nonetheless. Another roar of thunder warned her that it was pouring. 

 

“Vi.” 

 

“Yes,” she answered, exhaling at the lack of accusation or disgust in his voice. She tried not to focus on the desperation resurfacing.

 

“Get there without being seen if it’s possible. Do whatever it takes. We need help. Any means necessary.” She gave a quick nod and pink hair plastered to her forehead fell loose in front of her eyes. She swept it back. “We’re going to Benzo’s.” 

 

“Should I-” Claggor started, but Vi was already shoving the bag into her ruined hoodie and moving for the door. 

 

“No,” Vander answered. “I need you to-” Vi didn’t wait to see what he needed from Claggor. Outside, the streets were far emptier than seemed natural. The sound of thunder and the rain pouring down through any number of beams and grates and whatever else topsiders covered the undercity with was explanation enough for that, though. Likely, people were preparing for the worst case scenario: the flood. Vi put that potential aside and slipped into the alley between the bar and the nearest building, doing, perhaps, the predictable and beginning to climb. Though she had to stop and turn the wraps on her hands into bandages around the sliced palm of her left, Vi got up to the top of the building sooner or later - passing by mercifully empty windows. 

 

It was a guarantee someone squatting inside heard her once she got onto the roof of a nondescript ruined building next to The Last Drop, but she’d strictly only been ordered to avoid being seen as much as possible. Rooftops were the only way she could do it heading that far Down Lane and away from the docks. 

 

Strictly speaking, the journey was not a simple matter of getting from rooftop to rooftop. Vi still had to creep as low as she could across them, trying not to draw any attention from any number of windows in the city or potential passersby on the street. This did not take into account anyone who might technically be above her on one of the edges of the undercity. Moreover, she had only traveled for close to ten minutes before it got to the point where each running leap she took to cross the space between rooftops was riskier and riskier. Each alleyway was rarer than the last and each roof slicker from rain or more decrepit from age and neglect. The further toward The Bottom you got, the older and less dense the undercity became. The air only got thicker. Down here not even the storm could drive the fumes still being produced in mines throughout the undercity away entirely. 

 

Instead the smog was more brutal than ever, which might have been Vi’s only saving grace when she ran out of rooftop to cross by or dark alleyway to slink through. Vi berated every misstep she took and ever second that passed without an answer and a doctor. While a person could find themselves at The Bottom with just a little bad luck, the actual journey down there was not quick or safe.

 

Vi was grateful for the smog on one other point too. Once she got into the abandoned quarry proper, it hid squalor that made her current life look almost palatial. It was a squalor she still remembered and was relieved to get the sense that Powder didn’t, not really. Every few steps the shape of someone scurrying into their tent or underneath a pile of debris used as shelter got her attention. Almost every time it happened she thought she would see her mother coming through the smog at her. That was not a comforting thought when she imagined the woman ruined and bloodstained as she had been the last time Vi saw her. 

 

After a certain point she had to willfully dip, drenched to the bone, into the rows of debris shelters and tents to seek out what she was looking for. She did so without allowing herself to turn and look toward the shack at the back, the one that had once been used to hold machinery long before she was born. Voices called out warnings when she got too close, threats of having weapons of this type or that. She was not bothered: no one here would hold onto weapons more complex than a shiv because they could be sold for enough food to keep going. Vi ignored them for the most part, walking, hood up, with enough gold to change at least one life hidden in her jacket. 

 

It was alarming how light the gold felt in her pockets. It might have lasted the family only a few short weeks. 

 

Are we always so close to being back here? How many others are the same? 

 

When she saw the ‘tent’ she’d come to see, it was a malformed little thing, some sort of pitch black tarp spread over walls of corrugated metal that were all leaning in on each other with a soaked, filthy red flag hanging outside of it. Vi moved right to what looked to be its entrance, just a flap of canvas likely pieced together from the ruined sails of an old fishing vessel. Unsure what to do next, she called in a harsh whisper that she hoped could be heard over the rain splattering against the tent. 

 

“Vander sent me - can I come in?” Somewhere down the row, someone moaned as if in great pain or great terror and Vi did her best to tune it out. The canvas door, though, flipped outward and a man with a heavily receding hairline, dark round glasses and bound brown hair who looked all too familiar to her peeked out. A merchant, right? Vi remembered this much about him. Then for some reason - Traitor Trader? The words were shouted in a memory of her own voice, a younger voice. Vi’s mind reeled to recognize him as one of her parents’ friends from before the bridge. Where she hesitated, remembering the words of accusation she’d shouted at his retreating form long, long ago in realizing he had not died with everyone else on that horrid day, Vi was received far more warmly, or at least far more reasonably . 

 

“Come in, come in,” the man insisted, but he backed away so fast she had to remind herself he was not necessarily scared of her. Likely his fear was more for the fact that, like everyone else here, he was likely to lose everything and maybe even his life if the polluted rivers above overflowed. Because where else would they go but down? Vi did as told, noting that she had not even shown him the bag of money or offered a deal. He’s a friend of Vander’s. Let it go.

 

The inside of his tent was upsetting in its own way. A pile of clothes and cloth atop a long, low square frame served as a bed and a flat piece of cut corrugated metal like those mimicking walls lay on the earth with a chipped cup of water sat on it. She saw nothing that spoke of food. She saw plenty that spoke of discomfort and even fear in the man retreating from her as he lit his lantern and gave the place actual light. He stood with his side to her and as much as he unnerved her, he moved so that he was as far away from her as possible. Smaller than her even at her age and no matter how tired she was, she knew he could not be a physical threat. Yet, even the promise that Mylo was in trouble did not let her get over the moment until he spoke. 

 

“What can I-” 

 

“My - my brother. He’s been hurt by some kind of - of super powered goon of a guy called Silco and we need a doctor and topside supplies ASAP. Vander said you could do it.” Eyes magnified behind thick lenses widened. They looked bloodshot and tired. Vi pulled the bag from inside of her jacket and somehow that terrified him even more. She untied the pouch and shoved it right against his chest. He raised his hands quickly so as not to drop it, but topped backward onto his bed. As the contents became visible Vi wanted to retch. Oh yes, everything Vander had in the world in regards to wealth rested on the man’s lap, but there was something else, there as well. A key. A key to the very vault this bag had come from which meant it could only still contain one thing. The deed to The Last Drop. 

 

As reluctant and terrified as he looked, Vi felt like she’d just taken a blow to the gut. 

 

Like standing on the bridge again staring at her parents’ bodies, Vi was looking at her and her sister’s entire lives sitting in the lap of this man who had not yet spoken up and answered her. Vi opened her mouth several times and despite being soaked to the bone her voice rasped in a dry throat before she got the plea out. 

 

“It’s everything - everything Vander has. Even the bar, I think. It’s all of it. Please. Please help me save Mylo. If it’s not enough I’ll - I’ll do anything.” In that half second, her potential benefactor’s head whipped around to her as she shuddered and the walls shook under a brush of wind blowing down the Lanes. She saw his intent to reject her request in his eyes when he opened his mouth so she spoke first. “Please. I couldn’t take care of them.” 

 

That was not what she had intended to say, originally, but the shame and truth of the statement was another blow to what was already a fragile state of mind. She was still so scared of this stranger in front of her. He was small enough she could put him through the wall of his ‘home’ without a second thought. Yet, he quite possibly had power in this moment that she had lived her entire life fighting against. The power over who lived and died. Vi remained rooted to the spot, watching, waiting and reminded once more how weak she truly was, Silco’s ruined goons be damned. 

 

“I’ll need to get word to a topside contact and they might be able to be down here within the hour,” he exhaled, ending in a kind of pained groan. 

 

“I’ll go, I’ll send whatever message you want,” she insisted, moving forward. “I’ll go fast, quiet, it won’t come back on you. Nothing will.” Her movement made him pause, and she blinked away tears she could pretend were part of the rain covering her from head to toe. The burn in her eyes began to fade. Turning the contents of the bag onto his bed, this acquaintance from her youth opened it up and, grabbing at a vial of ink, began to scribble on, of all things, Vander’s coin purse. Mercifully pretending that Vi was not in tears, as well, the stranger finished his writing and moved to pass her the bag. 

 

The key on his bed, the one that would give him ownership of the only real home she’d ever had, burned in the peripheries of her vision. God, what have I done? 

 

“Take off that jacket or sweatshirt, whichever,” the man said matter-of-factly and Vi squeezed her eyes shut. She had said she’d do whatever it took, and if giving up a soaked and frankly now bloodstained jacket was what it took, she was fine with that. Confused, she heard clattering and thumping as she dragged it off and set it aside. It would fit the guy well enough, if a little large. However, when she sat it aside, the pile of debris she had written off as his bedding was on the ground at his feet, atop Vander’s entire life savings. What she’d marked as an improvised bedframe looked like some sort of trunk, and to her surprise, the stranger was picking through it and eyeing her as if trying to get an idea of her size. 

 

“I don’t think this will work perfectly,” he started with an apologetic frown and then pushed his glasses up his nose, pulling an old, faded green jacket with a torn hood out of the box, followed by a scarf. Why? “But I think you should wear these to get warm and keep your face hidden. You stand out, Violet, you always have.” Samuel. His name was Samuel. She remembered it now, pulled out of a far, far memory. “At least cover up your face and hair until you get to the bridge. Silco - Silco would kill you without a heartbeat.” 

 

“You know Silco?” 

 

“Of course I know Silco. He got my wife killed. He took your family, too.” The man raised his voice in a quick flash of anger and then swallowed it sharply. “And young Mylo’s, Claggor’s. We were all under his command - until he ordered us further. If Vander hadn’t come when he did, I wouldn’t have survived.” Vi blinked, unsure what to make of the revelations. First, the idea that Vander had been Silco’s equal or subordinate and not his boss when it came to the war with topside was jarring. Adding that to the idea that this merchant had not turned tail and run during the fight but instead been the last person in his unit to survive led to a quick flipping of a script she’d long since forgotten having read. 

 

No wonder he doesn’t look me in the eye. She wrapped the scarf around her face and pulled the jacket on all in one go, shoving the note written on an old leather bag into her pocket. These would get wet as easily as her own jacket but Vi had to admit the man was right about one thing. She wore the same jacket day in and day out. It would make it easier to find her. 

 

“Be careful, Violet,” the merchant counseled and a fresh wave of guilt chased out of the tent. She knew why he avoided her now, yet still spent time around Vander. To look at her, Powder, Mylo or Claggor had to remind him of friends who’d died. Mylo isn’t going to be like them, Vi told herself as she turned right outside of the tent and bolted for the edge of The Bottom. 

 

Between old machinery and scaffolding surrounding the quarry and leading upward, Vi thought she knew just how to get topside enough to reach the northern bridge without making it easy on Silco or his people to find her.

Notes:

A day early, considering tomorrow.

Whatever you celebrate this winter, I hope you made or make it a good one.

I'll have some chinese food and maybe some time with my outline for what's to come.

Thanks to those who are and will come along for the ride.

Chapter 3: Chapter Three

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Three

 

A mystery occurred to Vi as she hauled herself up beams of rain-soaked steel and iron and tried not to think about how utterly stupid the act was. Why, after lugging around and fighting with Vander’s massive gauntlets, were her legs far worse than her arms? She had long since abandoned her arm and hand wraps, save for the parts made into a bandage for her screaming left hand. Despite all of the effort of those arms, her legs were the ones that sometimes refused to move, refused to get her feet to the next indentation or hole in the beam to give her hold or safety.  Nonetheless, the amount of time she could save climbing versus trying to sneak across the entire city and up and around it to one route or another to topside - well, she hoped it was worth it. 

 

For time she did not count and would not reflect on well, a mix of rusty metal and jagged wood tore at her body and her clothing, including her new jacket. She avoided nasty cuts, but only by having had long years of practice running, jumping, climbing and crawling through a mess just like the beams she climbed, now. These, the remains of an undercity that was once promised to be the home of Those Who Made PIltover. Turns out, once they made it, you left them down here. The only real alarming thing her body was doing was that once again, as she shimmied and hauled herself up, up, toward the surface, breathing was uncomfortable. She drew in very hot breath that burned at her lungs, and rapidly. This did not stop her because it couldn’t: if it did, maybe Mylo died. 

 

Once at the top of the beam she had been working over long enough to no longer see The Bottom’s tent city below her, Vi tiptoed along the edge of the old, precarious patchwork of scaffolding materials. Having already gone upward, she continued onward, toward the surface and solid (if not exactly dry,) land. Every flash of lightning above her had driven a new fear of electrocution into her. Yet, something out there had had mercy enough that Vi was now sure that if she just pushed a little further, she could get away from the death trap that surrounded the place she had been born in. Halfway to the edge of the quarry’s maze-like cover, Vi’s right foot found a slicker purchase than she expected in a puddle filling the pitted surface of a steel beam. 

 

The short but forever long moment of rocking back and forth, arms windmilling, was its own kind of hell but as soon as it passed Vi inhaled and looked to her right. The urge to run the remaining maybe hundred feet that separated her and real land struck but, already imagining how upset or disappointed with her Vander normally would be if he caught her climbing something like this, Vi kept her cool. Forty, fifty, sixty feet passed creeping along with care and caution and focus and legs that felt like gelatin wrapped around pool noodles. Each thunderous report from the sky seemed to drive cold, wet and cleaner air into her face and lungs, but each breath still burned. When she was close enough to make out the nearest actual building to the structure she was on, a likely not entirely abandoned apartment complex in disrepair, Vi let that cool she kept go. 

 

The young teen took off at a run for the end of the rusty beam she was standing on. There it turned met with an old wooden walkway and then inevitably with nothing but thin air suspended just over dirt. From that old wooden walkway she bypassed questionable stairs down to topside’s ground level. Instead, Vi trusted her legs one last time and flung herself from the walkway, crossing a mercifully small gap to the back of the apartment complex on the northside edge of the old pit. Only once she was on that roof and had not fallen through did Vi let herself take a moment on her hands and knees. 

 

“The worst is over,” she tried to convince herself. “The worst is over.” She thought she could say or do anything through a clenched jaw and clenched eyes to slow and calm her breathing.

 

Threat after threat, from Silco to Deckard to the rotting, rusting scaffold around The Bottom had put itself in their path and, if one discounted Mylo’s current state, they had knocked those threats down. Whether it was Mylo springing Vander from restraints or Claggor springing them all from a building, We wormed our way out. All Vi had to do was be able to walk and run and maybe climb. Keep your head low. Don’t look enforcers in the eye. Find the address. 

 

The address in question was unfamiliar to her, but she knew from the street name that it was in a part of the city she’d just been in days ago. Residential. Hell, there might not even be that many enforcers in the area this late. 

 

If I can’t do this, what’s the point of me? Vi rose to her full height and exhaled. 

 

Having taken too long to catch her breath, Vi progressed more quickly. She trusted her common sense when it came to what she could and could not jump in her state and what structures looked safe enough to use to travel across. That trust ran out five minutes later the first time she misjudged her ability to leap and managed to survive the fall unscathed only by tearing yet another downspout off of yet another building and slowing her fall this time by ramming it into the structure she had just leapt from. Vi monkey-barred her way as low as the stretched downspout would let her and then slid down the part still held in place. 

 

She had made it to the ground safely enough, but it was the end of her confidence in her ability to do the things she normally could, tonight. 

 

Only a few more minutes of sulking from alley to alley, taking the roundabout path to her destination saw Vi, face covered, green hood up and head down as she crossed the bridge. It wasn’t that there was a law which prevented undercity travelers from heading topside. It was just that under normal conditions every enforcer patrol passed the bridge looking for easy collars and people to harass and vagrants to chase back to the undercity. If you couldn’t prove you had a reason to be up there, they held you at the bridge or turned you away until they could ‘check your story.’ 

 

This isn’t normal conditions. 

 

The enforcers had been raiding the undercity for the last few days and by now surely the whole corp knew that their leader had not come back from her last jaunt down into the ‘trench.’ In fact, Vi was surprised that the dirty pig on Silco’s payroll hadn’t come marching down into the Lanes with an army, by now. Come to think of it, topside’s really fucking quiet. 

 

Hey, Vi, she thought as she walked calmly down the length of the bridge to the northern topside, the Proper Topside, the City of Progress. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: how do you tell if an enforcer’s dirty? Her neck and face were bruised. Anyone who looked too closely would see that once she got into the well lit portions of topside. Boy, were they bright even from here. Her right eye had already begun to swell from a nasty blow delivered not by Silco’s goons, but by her own arm in the scuffle to make it out of her near miss with that last building intact. I don’t know, Vi, how do you know if an enforcer’s dirty?

 

Her pants were torn and ragged, her arm and hand wrapped with filthy bandages. Her shirt beneath this jacket was in ruins and and the one or two of her wraps not turned into bandages had absorbed just about everything one could imagine them coming into contact with. Realistically one look at her from an enforcer patrol was the end. She’d ping as a problem to even the meanest, dumbest enforcer she’d ever met. This meant she had only one choice once she got across, if she made it off the bridge at all. To ignore her better sense and climb. 

 

You know they’re dirty if they wear blue and gold. 

 

Vi counseled herself to both hurry and to think. These almost never worked at the same time, for her. Head low and hood up, Vi watched her feet as she walked. They moved shakily and uneven, almost dragging across the cement. She zipped her coat up with a huff and forced her steps to calm, to stay straight. To keep moving her forward. Reaching the far edge of a fairly utilitarian looking bridge, Vi realized she had crossed it for the first time without looking at the spot Vander had found them in. This did not invigorate her. Most of the smells of the undercity and even southern topside were beginning to fade. Not the smell of polluted river water. Not even the topsiders could avoid all of the consequences of their actions. At least they did not have to drink it with their safe wells and water treatment. 

 

Well, Vi thought as she looked up toward the first proper building near the bridge and found it surprisingly devoid of any sign of enforcer patrols. Maybe a bit of luck, after all. 

Someone who did not feel at all lucky, back in the much more faintly green-tinged undercity, was Powder. 

 

Shivering and soaked, Powder pressed to the side of Benzo’s shop. Just around the corner were two bodies she had tried hard not to look at. Two stories above her, she could no longer hear Ekko on the roof. She could imagine him nearly pinned to it by the storm like her hair was plastered to her forehead. Feet below, Benzo waited beside a rigged up alarm system, watching from the basement window to keep an eye on the other end of the road. That, and he’s not walking good anytime soon.

 

Powder did not feel lucky but as a series of bells gave a ring inside of the shop, she did feel some relief. Not from the non-harmonic tone, but its meaning. Powder peeked out around the corner and only regretted it a little. Above her, Ekko said something for the first time in a long time. Shouting above a gust of wind, he called out the name of the somewhat round boy stumbling around half of a person’s body and toward the shop. 

 

“Claggor!” Ekko’s voice must have been loud enough: Claggor slowed to look up. He was a mess. It didn’t help that he was soaked and had one arm pressed against his stomach, nonmoving. Did he break his arm or something?

 

“Little Man?” Claggor called back in return. Powder looked more closely, peeking out enough that Claggor saw her and almost laughed. There was nothing funny about the sight of Claggor, though. He was as soaked as she was but now she saw that his right hand had been shoved under his jacket. He was covered in mud and something that had to be blood splashed across his chest. She wanted to see him, now.

 

“Powder, stop,” Ekko yelled down as she took another step out into the road. Powder did as told and even slipped back to hide but Claggor’s injuries weren’t the only thing that made her shiver hard and left her stomach feeling wrong. Claggor was all alone. Alone, he moved toward her, instructed, she thought, by Ekko around to the side of the shop. No Vi, no Vander, and no Mylo. Claggor grabbed at the wall of the shop as soon as he could, moving toward the door and even gesturing for Powder to follow him inside. This time it was her turn to shout and stop him . 

 

“You can’t go through there,” she told Claggor. He turned and almost bumbled (she liked that word) in her direction. Powder ducked again around the corner and back under the overhang of the roof. She spat rainwater out of her mouth and wiped at her face. The moment that Claggor made it around the corner in the ruins of his favorite outfit, she took his right hand and pulled it out of his jacket. A loud hiss escaped his mouth and she took a look at it, immediately feeling a little sick about what she saw. Powder let that go as she could not immediately fix it. Instead, Claggor grabbed at her shoulder with his left hand as if he did not want to let go of her. Or like he’s gonna fall over if he lets go, she thought. That was definitely going to hurt them both if it happened. 

 

“Where is everyone?” Powder finally asked, because even though she was scared for the answer she needed it. Claggor’s eyes did not look good. They looked like focusing on her was hard or like he was nearly asleep on his feet. Actually, he rocked a little as he stood on the spot. Powder plucked at the neck of her sweatshirt, which had been pulled awkwardly by his grip. She continued, “Vi?” Two seconds passed. “The others, Vander? Mylo? Where is everyone?” Her eyes burned at the fight on his face. As Claggor tried to focus, she blinked waves of tears away and rubbed at her own eyes. 

 

It’s rain, she readied to defend herself.

 

After a moment, he squeezed her shoulder with the hand not held against himself and seemed to decide on an answer. 

 

“They’re all - all alive. Vander and Mylo are a little behind me.” 

 

“Vi?” Powder prompted. She felt like a tight fist in her chest wanted the answer before it would relax. Claggor grimaced which only made it squeeze,  squeeze at her heart, at her throat, her lungs. “Where’s Violet?” Powder insisted, though the words didn’t sound insistent. They sounded wavey and half choked. A blast of thunder put her on edge and drew out the moment of dread for two more seconds. 

 

“She went to get help.” 

 

“Help?” Ekko asked from close behind her. Powder looked back to see him hanging down from the second floor windows, having climbed off of the wet roof quickly and without her hearing or seeing him. Claggor gave a nod as Ekko tried and failed to wipe rainwater from his head, as if more was not rushing in to replace it immediately. “What kind of help?” 

 

“I don’t know,” Claggor answered a little more quickly, shaking his head very, very hard. He spun around to peek around the corner and down the road. “Some kind of doctor from topside. Look - where’s Benzo?” Powder’s questions momentarily cut off, she frowned. Grimaced, even. 

 

“In the basement watching through the window,” Ekko told him. “We can’t get in through the front door or the back. They’re both trapped.” The boy made a sweeping motion with his umber toned arms at her and himself. Proud. Powder understood but she didn’t think she could feel it right now. 

 

“Which door can you make safe the quickest?” 

 

“Why?” Powder asked, instantly. Had they done something wrong, after all? Something that might cause more trouble?

 

“Mylo’s bad,” Claggor answered, pulling his goggles back over his eyes so he didn’t have to keep wiping at them, water dripping off his face as surely as it did their own. “Vander’s bringing him but we won’t be taking him in through a window or anything like that.” Her eyes widened. Rainwater stung them. She inhaled. The hand clenched in her chest froze shut. 

 

“Powder,” Ekko prompted quickly. His face calmed as he took in her own, twisted in fear. “Powder,” he insisted, nudging her. This, at least, got her attention and got her moving. She wished she felt excited about how they’d done locking down the building like he did. 

 

“Front door,”  Powder declared, looking up at Claggor and searching for some small sign that everything was going to be okay. Why, why wasn’t Vi with her ? “The front door needs two pins pulled, a wire unhooked, another wire cut and then uhhh - if the ratchet is nearby we just need to loosen one bolt and we’re in.” Ekko’s smile broke and he nodded as if he agreed and she felt the fist in her chest relax. It did not unclench.

 

“Everything’s where we left it,” he told her with a thumbs up and then turned to scramble from windowsill to windowsill. He climbed right into the one relatively safe second-story window which they had been ducking in and out of for what felt like hours. Powder moved to follow, turning back for a moment as she reached up for the first floor window and saw Claggor following after. Soaked and clearly in pain, Claggor took a knee and put his left hand atop his right, readying to give her a boost. 

 

Instead, Powder crouched down in her boots and lunged, grabbing a ledge just above the ground floor window and just below the bottom of the second story windows. With one great heave and at least a little undignified leg kicking, Powder didn’t take her injured brother’s help and climbed up the ledge. It was a closer thing than she cared to admit that she had managed to keep her grip and get her balance on the side of the building. She gave Claggor one last look as if to grin and say, ‘See, I could do it!’ Claggor wasn’t watching anymore, though. He was not smiling or relaxed. Instead, the boy had taken up her spot at the corner of the building nearest the street and peeked around the corner, anxiously. 

 

Mylo was in trouble. Claggor was scared. Vi was not coming with them. 

 

Wet as the second ledge was, her left boot slipped the moment she put her foot down on it. Powder made it to a downspout that she could easily climb to cover the last of the distance to the second floor. It did not take any great effort to jump from there to the safest of the windows. That would be the window without any sharp objects waiting under it or nails holding it shut. 

 

Powder swung from the top of the frame into the room right behind Ekko. From there it was not a lot of work to retrieve Ekko’s stash of scavenged tools. Her own was in the pouch at her waist alongside the glowing blue orbs that had started all of this. She had to remind herself to skip over the tripwire they’d set on steps between the first and second floors.

 

Where the second floor was a combination of Benzo’s living quarters and Ekko’s workshop for repairing whatever it was Benzo wanted to sell, the first floor was entirely a shop. Right now, said shop was way out of order and ducking around everything from old toys to piles of books was annoying enough that she hoped any pursuers would fall and hurt themselves if they made it inside. At least, that was the excuse Benzo had given as to why the shop was in that condition and she knew it would be rude to point out how often it looked like that. 

 

“What’s going on out there?” Benzo inquired in a brief shout from below. As Powder hurried to the front door, a small screwdriver in hand, Ekko answered. 

 

“Vander’s coming, Mylo’s hurt bad, Vi’s going to get some topside doctor or something and Claggor’s watching the road from outside. We’re untrapping the front door.” 

 

“Got it, lad,” Benzo chimed, as if receiving orders instead of an answer to his question. “I’ll get things ready down here, an old mattress should work for Mylo. Oh, and I fixed the tricky step!” 

 

“Tricky step?” Powder asked as she knelt down by the edge of the doorframe. 

 

“It literally spins when you step on it,” Ekko reminded her, golden brown eyes locked on the apparatus the two had rigged up at this front door some time ago. “It wasn’t supposed to be a trap or anything, whoever built the staircase was either stupid, lazy or just evil.” Ekko spoke with enough bitterness that Powder thought if she prodded she could dig up a good story or two about Ekko’s run-ins with the ‘tricky step’, but this was no time to tease. 

 

This wasn’t even time to think about Vi or Mylo. 

 

Screwdriver in hand, she wedged it in behind the head of a pin and held it tight while Ekko took a hammer with an old broken wooden handle and began to beat the pin and its neighbor out of the side of the doorframe. Just to keep this tripwire mechanism from getting wrapped around anyone’s feet, Powder hurriedly grabbed Ekko’s ratchet, (in better shape than hers,) and loosened a little bolt that kept one end of the actual tripwire in place. Not bothering to dismantle the next trap, Powder took her own wire cutters and cut a second wire along the far side of the door frame. She pushed herself to her left as something slammed into the wooden floor where she’d just been sat.

 

The sandbag they had rigged up above the door to knock down any unwelcome visitor tore open as it hit the ground. 

 

“Dang it! I’ll get a broom.” Powder’s eyes widened at Ekko’s hurry and she dropped the wire cutters, turning to call for him to stop. Ekko, however, was fast. He was already at the door to the first floor broom closet and turning the knob. She watched the moment of realization on his face and sighed as Ekko ducked under a surprisingly effective spring trap. The spring sprung and hurled an admittedly empty toolbox out of the closet. Its course would have taken it above his head, even without the ducking. The metal toolbox made a racket before it bounced off the wall and to the floor beside Powder. She wasn’t going to be the one to point out the hole one corner had left in the wall to Benzo. 

 

“Sorry,” Ekko yelled over a crash of thunder when he glanced back sheepishly to find her glaring at him. She was the only one who’d been in danger from that trap. The boy grabbed a broom, dustpan and then oddly, a funnel before turning back to her. Oh, she thought, realizing he intended to try to put the sand in something and probably reset the trap. 

 

“Everything okay up there?” Benzo shouted. Simultaneously, Claggor called her name hesitantly from just beyond the wall to her right. 

 

“We’re okay,”  Powder squeaked, taking the dustpan from Ekko and moving to get the sand out of the way and into a nearby mop bucket. Before the two of them could finish, they had to scramble backward as the door was pushed open with a pretty strong heave. The man towering above her looked worse than she’d ever seen him. She wasn’t sure how well he saw out of one of his swollen, blackened eyes and the blood on his shirt was not entirely in line with a dried stream from the corner of his mouth. Vander, at least, looked down at the two of them. This was more than she could say for the unmoving and unconscious boy in his arms. Powder, scrambling back to get out of the way, did not have words for the sight of the blood caking Mylo’s head.

 

Ekko, mercifully, found some. 

 

“Vander’s here!” he shouted. “Vander, watch your step and go downstairs, tricky stair’s fixed.” Powder forgot to gasp. She forgot to breathe with Vander bloody and Mylo far from okay. Vander did not focus his gaze upon her and she could not immediately guess why. Was he scared for Mylo or was he mad she hadn’t come with the others to get him? Vander moved right to the basement door as Ekko pulled it open for him, and turned sideways, cradling Mylo like a little baby. 

 

“Powder,” Vander croaked without turning around. She looked up from Mylo’s unmoving mud an-/or-blood-stained face, to Vander’s in profile. 

 

“As soon as you’re done up here, come down. I want to talk to you.” His voice was quick and cool, but when he raised it, it sounded at least, assured. “Claggor, keep an eye out for Vi. Make sure she’s got help coming. If she says it didn’t work out, we’re going topside,” Vander announced. Powder backed up a step, bumping into Ekko who bumped back. She was not playing, though. The idea sounded like a bad one.

 

“Why?” Claggor prompted as he trudged into the doorway, wetting what was left of the sand she and Ekko still needed to clean up and spreading it over the shop floor to boot. “They’ll never help us.” 

 

“They will if their next sheriff doesn’t want there to be hell to pay,” Vander promised. The implied threat surprised her. Sounding quite like Vi, Vander began to sidestep down into the basement. Ekko was on his feet again, before her. Claggor stepped back out of the doorway, drenched in the falling rain once again. As Ekko hurriedly gathered the sand together so the two of them could reload their trap, Powder found she could not shake the image of Mylo and the blood caking the left side of his head, obscuring part of his face so that for a moment she had not recognized him.

 

“I’ve got this,” Ekko promised her, gesturing the broom handle at the bucket of sand as Claggor stared toward the basement door. “Go talk to Vander.” Powder’s head swung around toward Claggor. 

 

“Powder, it’s gonna be okay,” he said as they matched eyes. “Vi’ll bring help, you’ll see. She’ll be back any time now.” 

 

But Vi was not back any time now. 

 

Powder was somewhat relieved as she crept down the stairs into the musty basement. Its walls at least dulled the sound of wind funneling through the streets and the thunder almost stretching through the air above them. Relief was short lived. The old bed in the basement had been brought down from its position up against the wall and Vander and Benzo were leaning over Mylo’s prone and unresponsive form. Before today, before the mess on the street outside of the shop, Powder could not remember seeing so much blood on a single person before as she saw on Mylo. Well, no, that wasn’t exactly right, she admitted as she approached the two men trying to clean Mylo up with rags soaked in blood, water and probably alcohol, too, judging by the smell. 

 

There had been one day, starting in the streets between The Bottom and the bridge to the North. Vi holding her hand and then - and then the bridge and their parents. Vander. She could barely piece together the memories from the bridge itself but now and again the little bits of it, like the old lullaby, stuck in the back of her mind. Bits like Vander carrying her and Vi both over either shoulder across a lot of bloodsoaked ground. Fire in the air coloring everything an orange she had found kind of pretty, as if it were burning away the fumes and vapors that surrounded the undercity. Bodies. Bodies she could see but couldn’t remember and bodies that belonged to her family. 

 

Now there might be more bodies.

 

Why didn’t you go with them? Why didn’t they let me go? 

 

Vander grabbed her attention and her hands, raising them so that they were at nearly her eye level. For that matter - so was he. Powder was not standing where she’d been moments before. A certain softness had settled into the features of her father’s face. She was no longer near the bottom of the stairs but instead sat on an old couch to one side. He slowly lowered her hands and angled his head down as her own lowered, even kneeling completely to make sure he was in her field of view. Powder rocked on the edge of the couch because it felt like the only thing to do. Her thoughts of her family and Mylo’s potential death came out of order. 

 

They came fast. 

 

“Benzo says you and Ekko locked this place down pretty good.” She didn’t answer, her chest was screaming at her. “Powder - inhale.” The command was simple enough and even rather loving but it jarred her mind and she sucked in a deep breath she had badly needed. She did not remember holding her breath. Vander repeated himself. “Benzo says you and Ekko locked this place down pretty good - but you had to take some of the defenses down to get us inside.” Powder blinked and nodded. She hadn’t noticed the tears at the corners of her eyes but they fell. 

 

“Good job,” Vander told her. This sent Powder doubling over again. She squeezed her eyes shut for just a second. She could do this. “Great job. And I don’t know who made the call to move here instead - but that was smart too.” The man’s eyes shot sideways and she followed them to Mylo. “The Last Drop would’ve been too large to defend. I’m sorry we had to undo some of your work but I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud of you for protecting the family.” The next breath was more of a sob. She wasn’t so sure she had protected anyone but she did know it was all she’d wanted to do, all she had ever wanted to do. The moment Vander let go of her hands, she threw herself forward. Vander, even in this state, reacted a lot faster than Vi usually did. 

 

Pressed tight against his chest was safe, at least as safe as she thought she could feel in the moment but it also smelled of first, blood, sweat and something chemical she could not identify. It was not pleasant but Powder only pressed in closer, her shuddering shoulders tipping her off that she was still crying. It seemed like that was all she did, lately.  

 

“You did good, Powder. If either Silco or the enforcers come for us, nowhere’s perfect but you made us as safe as we could be. You did good.” The tears overwhelmed her and so she did not fight them. She let them flow. She let them come for minutes as surely as she let them come for seconds. She let them go until she did not care about or notice the smell of Vander’s bad day on him or the musk of the previously flooded basement around them. Until the bridge was a much quieter memory. Until Vander guessed at a fresh fear rising up to get her attention and rob her focus. 

 

“Vi’s going to be alright, too.  May not have your head for tinkering and machinery but she’s smart: knows how not to get caught and how not to get hurt.” Powder shook her head against his chest and then nodded in turn. The safe warmth of his arms was a wall behind which the Good Thing That Could Happen usually would. Behind that wall, she believed him that everything was going to be okay and Vi would be safe, back in no time. 

 

But Vi was not back in no time. 

 

Eventually, Powder pulled loose of Vander. Eventually, she helped him finish cleaning Mylo up even though he purposefully prevented her from seeing the wound on the left side of Mylo’s head. Eventually a pile of blood and mud soaked rags rested in the corner beside Powder’s suitcase of gear. Eventually, Vander and Benzo decided shaving Mylo’s head to get a better view of the wound was not worth it. The wound itself, now cleaned, was not as scary as what might be going on deeper. Yet, all of that took more than a half hour and still, Vi was not back. 

 

Once he had done everything he thought he could for Mylo, Vander climbed the stairs to the ground floor and Powder followed suit even when Benzo told her she could lie down on the couch, instead. Vander eased over the partially reset trap on the front door and stepped out onto the oddly abandoned city streets. Powder stopped just inside and frowned at the look on his face, understanding it. Unease. 

 

Even during a storm, Benzo’s shop was on a pretty big thoroughfare. Someone, someone should have come walking through. Vander made a beckoning gesture with his left hand and Powder moved out of the doorway as Claggor, his new white shirt now near see through from the storm where it was not soiled, dragged his sore, bruised and tired form into the shop and asked to be taken somewhere to clean up.

 

Ekko, who had remained sat on the counter this whole time, led Claggor up the stairs to the second floor, guiding him to step over the tripwire. Down below, Benzo, injured as he was, sat in a chair with his leg half immobilized by an old mop handle strapped to it and watched Mylo on the bed. Vander strode out into the street and around the corner, shutting the door behind him to watch from the spot Powder had held for what felt like an hour. Powder, though? She watched each and every one of them feeling freshly helpless, useless, worthless and worst of all, small. 

 

Where was Vi? When would Mylo open his eyes? She was a kid and knew very little about medicine, (or anything else as people liked to remind her because of her age and size) but she knew a head injury that knocked you out wasn’t a great thing and not waking up pretty quick after was bad. Brain swelling. Too many people died after being left in the street by the enforcers who beat them for Powder to know nothing about it. Was that what had happened? Truth be told, no one had told Powder the full story. Or really any story. Claggor and Vander and Benzo had bandied about a name, Silco, but she didn’t know the name. He just seemed like a horrible, scary monster off in the dark somewhere. 

 

At the top of the stairs Ekko practically waved his dripping shirt above his head as if the grand gesture was needed to get her attention and her cheeks flared when she realized it probably had been. Gesturing for her to come up, he backed away and let her take the steps at her own pace so that the tripwire was no threat. She glanced about once when she got to the top of the stairs but Ekko just pointed at an open door to a small bathroom. Inside Claggor was using what little safe fresh water Benzo had in his tank in small, careful spurts. With a clean cloth scrubbing at wounds on his arms, wrists and hands, he was not looking at the wounds. Claggor was irritating and reopening them, staining the cloth with blood and staring at the wall crossly, as if it had done something to upset him and now he was trying to prove a point by looking clean through it. Angry, but not there. 

 

Powder did not need to creep into the room; for he didn’t notice her steps anyway. She did, however, take care not to jostle the door and startle Claggor. 

 

“Lemme see,” she insisted, carefully, quietly. Claggor jumped, clearly not having been aware of her approach despite the fact she’d easily been in his peripheries. 

 

“Don’t worry about it Powder. I’m okay.” Between his refusal and gruff tone the concern that he might be angry at her somehow stuck around. 

 

“Let me see,” she repeated, more slowly. Claggor, of all people, had to understand that Vi and Vander were right and she could still do useful things to help. Claggor sighed and turned toward her. 

 

“It’s okay, Powder,” he said, putting the rag down on the water basin. “I’m fine.” 

 

No, Powder wasn’t a doctor but she knew fingers weren’t supposed to hook sharply to the left. Looking at his right hand had made her sick to her stomach before and it was only worse, this time. As if the sight made her stomach turn sideways, in sympathy. 

 

“Broken?” she prompted, feeling stupid at not being able to say anything else about the fact that the last two fingers on his hand were unable to fully open and were instead turning the wrong direction. 

 

“Think so,” he replied, not looking down at it, but instead down at her. His voice was slow and distant and sharp, so unlike his duller, calmer tones. “It sucks.” 

 

“It definitely sucks,” Powder agreed before doing the only thing she thought she could, moving carefully to his left side and giving him one brief hug. Hugging Claggor was like hugging Vander except he didn’t always expect it or know how to respond beyond a simple hug back and right now, with his hand as it was, she didn’t expect even that. In fact right now, she was just glad his eyes were focusing on someone again because the look of him staring through things was scary and familiar. 

 

“You’re gonna get wet and dirty,” Claggor protested, a little too slowly. Powder laughed. 

 

“I’m already wet and dirty, stupid,” she told him. “Besides I’m going outside with Vander anyway, so you should go downstairs and get under your blanket. Maybe Benzo can set your fingers? I brought all our bed stuff from home and Benzo has all the booze for cleaning wounds.” Claggor huffed but did not move until Powder released him. He had the same faint chemical smell about him as Vander and the same smell of sweat, but at least not the sharp coppery scent of blood. 

 

“When did you get so damned smart?” Claggor asked. It wasn’t mockery, but it didn’t exactly sound loving. It just sounded sad and scared. 

 

“I don’t know,” she shot back, unsure if the compliment was particularly accurate. This, for some reason, made Claggor laugh once. 

 

“Okay, I’ll head downstairs if you promise not to get yourself sick down there. Vi’ll kill all of us if you do.” Powder frowned, brow furrowed at the joke. She didn’t think it was very funny, with Mylo down below. Claggor grimaced, reading her face and then made his way downstairs. He’s right about one thing. I don’t want Vi chewing me out for getting a cold.  Claggor got downstairs with all the caution of someone who had had bad encounters with staircases in his lifetime, but Powder had other things on her mind. 

 

It was true that the front door was relatively safe to go through but she suddenly didn’t want to do that. Powder didn’t want to risk going out on the street with the fear that she might do so at the same time some kind of bad guy came marching up it. Besides, she’d seen enough of the blood washed off the road, coating the basement window and the two hunks of meat in enforcer gear. Why didn’t anyone move them? Powder was not about to volunteer to do that. No, leaving the little bathroom, she headed right for the safest window, climbed up on the table beneath it and frowned the moment she stuck her head out the window. 

 

The rain had only picked up, somehow. 

 

This is bad. 

 

If the storm kept up at this rate, things were going to go from bad for them to bad for the whole undercity, she thought as she carefully crossed out, and climbed down to the alley below. The water was already bad enough topside on this end of the river that cut through Piltover but flooding would drive that river hard down into the undercity proper, overflowing spillover and sewer systems and driving already poisoned water out of those and into streets. If they didn’t want poison in their streets, someone had to do something, soon. Powder landed on the ground and Vander spun on the spot, eyes sharp. It was enough for her to slow and stop, worried there was some form of anger aimed her way. Instead, his face softened. 

 

Benzo and Vander were usually in charge of the efforts of “minimizing suffering” during bad storms. This just meant keeping poison waters out of as many homes and away from as many drinking wells as possible. They kept things from turning into full on riots. What was going to happen tonight if neither of them were part of it? Powder didn’t have to be a grown up to know it had already rained too long. Even if it stopped now, floods were coming. How many people were going to get sick was the only thing that hung in the balance. 

 

“What are you doing out here?” Vander grumbled. Powder scraped up her courage and grumbled back at him. 

 

“I’m going to wait for Vi with you.” Vander snorted, apparently weighing whether he was annoyed or not. 

 

“It’s gonna get cold out here.” 

 

“I know,” she answered, pressing close to the wall and moving to join him. She was still more or less soaked, anyway. Why bother pretending she was going to be warm without changing clothes? She wouldn’t bother doing that until she was done out in the rain, anyway. Besides, she had questions. Questions about Mylo, Vi, him, and this business about working with the enforcers. Powder stood next to him as he turned back toward the road and tried to stay out of the rain beneath the roof overhang. She was a lot better at it than he was. Occasionally, Vander made a noise as he looked left and right that didn’t sound like worry or irritation. He was confused. 

 

“Wonder how bad the flooding’s gonna be?” Powder prompted. As if something or someone could hear her, a peel of thunder kept Vander from answering again. 

 

“Bad,” he said, flatly. “Things are about to get pretty rough down here.” Powder could read enough subtext to ask what he meant, but before she could he all but growled. “But where in the name of hell  are the enforcers? They should be down here by now.” This took her aback. Powder gripped at the neck of her sweatshirt and glanced up at him. Does he want them to come? 

 

“Isn’t it a good thing they’re not here yet?” she asked. Instead of answering right off, Vander took another slow scan of the road and then his response was unsettlingly distant, as if he was talking to a stranger instead of her. 

 

“I don’t know, kiddo. I wish I did.” Vander didn’t have questions. Vander had answers. He didn’t not know things. He always knew things. That was what Vander did. Everyone in the Lanes came to him and everyone in the Lanes listened. Powder was starting to feel a panic and lump rise in her throat in tandem. 

 

“Where’s Vi?” Powder hadn’t meant to ask the question. She’d meant to think it. Instead, it came out of her mouth a soft whining high whisper and unlike the other times she had asked already, she felt guilty for asking it now. Vander spun his head around hard enough to shake his hair loose from his forehead, one eye hidden behind swelling, the other behind hair. 

 

“She’ll be here.” This response was so firm and Vander that she accepted it. 

 

It didn’t keep her stomach from churning in excitement ten minutes later when Vander whispered directly to her. 

 

“Shh. Footsteps.” At this point, Powder was directly up under his arm. They were soaked to the bone and Vander was the only source of heat or safety near. Yet, both warmth and safety evaporated as she sucked in a breath and stepped forward with VI’s name on her lips. Vander clamped a hand over her mouth, large enough to cover most of her face. He shook his head once before leaning out to look in her place. The hand dropped and despite having been startled by his grab, she felt a trill of joy all the same. Then Vander’s eyebrows knitted together, not low as if annoyed or concentrating but upwardly, mouth hanging partially open and if she didn’t know better she would think that some of the rain rolling down his face wasn’t rain at all. Vander spun back around the corner, hooked both massive hands under her arms and began to move as he lifted her. She didn’t tense up because he scared her, but because he was scared. 

 

This look on his face was alien.

 

“I’m going to boost you up,” he whispered hastily. “Be ready to grab on. Get to the second floor, get inside, set that wire back on the front door and set up anything else you have.” Vander was lifting her into the air when she shouted her response. 

 

“What about Vi?” she questioned, feet leaving the ground and she twisted in his grasp to grab at the windowsill. Held high over Vander’s head, she felt almost safer than if she had been climbing on her own even without the rain. Yet - fear. All of it was fear. Powder grabbed hold and in a moment was free of his grasp and up on the second floor, hanging from the windowsill in question. “What about you?” 

 

“Don’t worry about us,” Vander told her with one solid nod, as if they were conspirators in the comment. As if she was not being told to shut the door and lock half her family out with something that scared Vander . Lots of somethings, by the sound of things. “Need you to do what you’ve already done once tonight. Trust us.” This rocked her back against the wall as she eased the window open and slipped inside. “Everything’s going to be alright, Powder.” 

 

Even before she and Ekko first became wrapped up in preparations for their traps and alarms, Powder hadn’t been able to quiet the fear that no matter what Benzo and Vi said, something would happen to her family and they would never come back. That fear was a dim spark suddenly set to gasoline. She looked out of the window and down at Vander, drenched, injured and filthy. 

 

“I’m not leaving, Powder. I’ll get out of sight but I’m not leaving. You need to do the same. Now.” This last was barked loudly, so she did as told and shut the window. In her panic, she nearly knocked the mostly empty table under her over and turned to find Ekko waiting on her at the top of the stairs. 

 

“What’s up?” he asked, turning his head quizzically. 

 

“We need to reset everything up front,” she announced, before rushing past him down the stairs. She barely remembered to skip over the wire across them. 

 

The next minute was a hurried mess of half-spoken ideas and collaboration. The sand was now in a bucket, not a sandbag, that someone had sealed by wrapping it and a potlid together. Ekko began resetting the tripwires on one end while she worked on the other, hammering in the pins from before. 

 

“Needs more,” she said as soon as the two of them had worked the pulley and wire to get the bucket of sand up above the door. Voices were starting to come through the wind and rain and she did not think any were Vander’s. Her eyes landed quickly on the grandfather clock. Ekko’s regretful eyes followed hers and he sunk into himself before nodding at her and hurrying to the basement steps. 

 

“Claggor! Come up and help! Vander wants the place locked down!” Powder pushed herself in behind the clock as Claggor’s heavy footfalls sounded from below. Benzo cursed but Powder tuned it out. With Ekko giving orders, the three began to push tables and chairs aside. Moving the grandfather clock, heavy and nearly restored, closer to the front door, she understood the hesitation in Ekko’s voice: he had been working on this for so long.

 

“What’s going on?” Claggor asked at the same time the three froze at the sound footfalls outside of the shop. Many. A man’s voice called a halt and Powder glanced up toward the shuttered front window. Claggor shushed her and reached to block her path to it, so she turned her eyes back on the clock. Trying to reason, to figure out what her plan had even been. Her right hand rose to curl into her hair as the sound of an enforcer banging on the door momentarily quieted the others on the street. 

 

“Open up!” Powder’s sight blurred, and she raised her other hand. Think, think!” 

 

“That is a lawful order from an enforcer of Piltover!” 

 

Claggor tried to shush her. 

 

Powder realized her mouth was open. 

 

The clock ticked. 

 

She could not think. Her fists were shut against her own blue locks. 

 

The clock ticked. 

 

The enforcer warned them failure to comply could mean ‘legal repercussions.’ 

 

The clock ticked. 

 

Hands on her shoulders.

 

Powder opened her eyes realizing she did not remember shutting them. Deep golden brown eyes stared into hers. Scared. Claggor’s did not have the golden edge to them. She blinked her eyes clear as Ekko registered in her sight. He was talking or at least whispering but she did not hear him. He was also pushing her arms down. His face blurred again in her sight but she heard him above in abstract pounding rain and pouring fists. Ekko hissed three words, whispered, over and over until they made sense and drew her toward the ticking clock. 

 

“Hurt, or slow,” he whispered. Powder gritted her teeth, arms falling to her side, the shop rushing back in on the edges of her vision. Claggor shoved the clock closer to the door. 

 

“ Hurt .” Claggor looked at her over the edge of the clock as if worried but Ekko let go of her arms and that felt like trust enough for her to release her own hair. Her scalp ached from the tugging she’d been caught doing. Ekko crossed the room back to Claggor - when did I move away? - and whispered something she could not hear. She watched dimly as Claggor readjusted the angle of the clock to be facing slightly more toward the front door as the knocking on it stopped. Someone continued talking on the other side of the front door. The questioner asked about whether or not they should leave the house but the masculine voice beside the first enforcer clearly disagreed. 

 

“This shop belongs to one of the ringleaders of the violence down here. We will be going in tonight one way or another.” Powder didn’t think they could stop that many people and none if they came in through the windows, instead. Ekko was just shoving something between the clock and the wall when a voice she didn’t really want to hear at the moment chimed in. Vander’s. 

 

“Marcus,” Vander called, pleasantly from outside and - above ? “Pleasure seeing you here. Been looking for Benzo, myself, lad. Either he’s off recovering somewhere or your friends killed him, after all.” Claggor, Ekko and Powder each became so silent she was sure the other two were holding their breath, as well. Oh, Vander was above them alright. He was on the roof. The moment of quiet passed. 

 

“Arrest that man,” the masculine enforcer voice ordered and someone else insisted Vander come down with his hands up. As if they didn’t know how climbing worked. 

 

“Oh, please do,” Vander responded. Judging by the creak above he shifted his weight forward. “But please, do a better job of it this time. My last attempt to surrender to you about, oh, three hours ago? That ended in at least two deaths and my own kidnapping. Members of my family still might die as a result of it. There’s gonna be a lot of people who have a lot of questions about what happened here tonight.” 

 

“Sir?” the feminine enforcer said from just on the other side of the front door.” 

 

“I’m very willing to be of assistance in clearing those up,” Vander continued. No one immediately spoke, so, Vander prodded at this hesitation. “I’ll head to the back and climb on down, now. Only safe way to do it.” Her adoptive father’s footsteps were drowned in a fresh sea of voices. Powder’s fists rose right back above her head. 

 

“No - no no no, please n-” Claggor’s hand covered her mouth quickly as he all but lunged for her, but if the arguing enforcers heard, they didn’t react. What she didn’t understand was why. Why would Claggor hold her back? They should be out there right now, fighting. They should be saving Vander. They’d already done it once, that night. This time she could even be with them, even if Mylo and Vi weren’t and Vi would be back soon. Vander had promised she would. Powder could not struggle out of Claggor’s arms and he either could not or would not hear her through his left hand over her lips. 

 

Her panic hit its peak and Powder bit him. 

 

It wasn’t easy but Claggor’s hands were like Vander’s: big and strong but meaty. She sunk her teeth into the left, earning a curse and a hiss from her brother and was loose and running for the stairs before it could even register. Powder got up four stairs before the world shifted under her feet and she fell backward. A sharp pain shot right up through her head. Someone said her name and she thought it was Ekko. Powder rolled, striking the floor at the base of the steps. 

 

Tripwire. 

 

Before she could check how badly she was hurt, her arms were pinned to her side and Claggor had her off of the ground. 

 

Outside, Vander was talking again, but not so loudly. It was hard to hear him clearly over other voices and the storm. 

 

“Spread out and sweep the area,” the boss enforcer, Marcus most likely, shouted over his underlings. “If anyone’s so much as breaking vagabond laws, they’re to go in a cell. They’ll be thankful, driest they could hope to be tonight.” 

 

From right outside the door, the woman who had been banging on it moments ago protested, again. 

 

“What about him, isn’t he the one who killed Grayson?” One second passed, and then another. 

 

“No, mistaken identity,” Marcus grumbled. “Can’t really blame us. One piece of trencher scum looks the same as another under all that filth.” 

 

“But sir-” a third voice tried to cut in. 

 

“Grayson was a good woman,” Vander spoke over that third person. “She deserved more than what she got.” 

 

“Sir,” the knocking enforcer reasserted herself. “My instructor told me about the Hound of the Underground. I’ve seen his picture. That’s-” 

 

“I said ‘mistaken identity’,” Marcus screamed. He snapped in a way that reminded her of Vi in a rage. “Now go do your job. Scrape up every bit of trash off the street and we’ll drag the truth out of them one way or another.” Powder’s head swam but she clenched her mouth shut, teeth tight together. 

 

“I think you know she deserved more, too,” Vander continued as if he had not been interrupted by multiple enforcers and many seconds. “If you need an ear, someone to listen, your friendly neighborhood bartender is here to lend one.” Claggor’s arm was wrapped roughly around her head. 

 

“As if I’d step into your den of degenerates outside of the course of my duties,” Marcus responded. Powder wanted to see his face. She wanted to see the man insulting Vander. Vander stayed quiet as this Marcus figure aggressively barked out more and more orders, his voice growing distant by the second but still sounding like Mylo when he was being his meanest and showing off. 

 

“Of course not,” Vander said quietly, before he leaned back against the front door, coming dangerously close to setting off one of their more sensitive traps. Ekko winced as the bucket shook above the doorway. Claggor held tight to her for several more seconds and only released her when Vander spoke. “Everyone okay in there?” he asked directly into the door. 

 

“Powder hit her head and I’m getting it bandaged. We’re fine.” Claggor answered in a forceful whisper that left her doubt she had the option of arguing. 

 

“You’re sure?” Vander growled into the door. 

 

“Yeah, Vander, we’ve got this.” 

 

“Good lad.” She looked up at Claggor. One glance taught her that the arm wrapped partially around her head hadn’t been to hold her head still. Fresh blood joined the rest of the filth on Claggor’s shirtsleeve and now she felt it sliding down the side of her head. 

 

“Come on, Powder, downstairs. Let’s wrap that up.” 

 

She didn’t want to listen to him as Claggor more or less pushed her toward the basement door. She wanted to go back outside with Vander but Vander wanted her to cooperate and Claggor was trying to help. She could feel a trickle of warmth down her forehead. So Powder went quiet and allowed herself to be checked by a tired Benzo who declared her not concussed and told her to get some rest on the old couch across the room. 

 

It took Powder time to do as told. For some moments, she stood defiantly, trying to process the things that had just happened, including some guilt for hurting Claggor. 

 

In the end, with no guarantee and less confidence that Vi would ‘be right there’, Powder curled up on the couch and tried not to look at Mylo on the bed across the room. After a few minutes, weight shifted on the couch when Ekko settled onto the cushion at the far end. She glanced up to take Ekko in. As soaked as she was and also as quiet as she was. Ekko clearly did not know what to say or do either but he was there. He was still sat there the last time she remembered any movement or sound before she slipped off to a sleep she’d thought impossible.

Notes:

So, long one, but I liked it for establishing progression past the more heavily action based stories and getting more character interaction in, a look at the direction things might be going.

I wanted to ask any of you reading this a question: would you prefer a sunday night/monday morning weekly update or a thursday night/friday morning weekly update?

Chapter 4: Chapter Four

 

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Four

Something very, very heavy dragged across a wooden floor far above Powder’s head. She rolled over fast, noting in a daze that something about her bed felt - different. Scratchy, almost. As Vander continued to get the bar open for the day above her head, the girl covered her tightly hsut eyes with one arm, having lost her pillow at some point in the night. Three more seconds ticked by before she noted something distinctly wrong about the sound in her bedroom. For one thing, Vi was not snoring on the bunk above her. For another, it sounded as if two people were muttering to one another on the other side of the room. Two masculine people. The room smelled of dirt and musk. 

 

Powder was not in the basement of The Last Drop. She was beneath Benzo’s shop of odds and ends. 

 

The day and night she had just experienced came back with the force of a bullet as Powder found herself no longer lying down but standing straight up upon the couch. Her heart hammered in her chest as if it didn’t like her sudden movement. Powder couldn’t even remember opening her eyes, much less standing up. From across the room, Benzo raised a hand to calm her from the old wooden chair he had been sat on most of the night. He clearly was not moving any better now than earlier. Come to think of it, it was not any brighter outside. This much she could see in the window above his head. Ekko peeked up at her from over the arm of the couch as if he had just scrambled off of it, startled, himself. 

 

“Calm down,” Benzo counseled. Powder felt for a second like she was spinning on the spot. “Your sister’s back.” 

 

This did not calm Powder down. Instead she was off of the couch and at the bottom of the stairs long before the basement door opened, fingers clenched against her chest and waiting. Just waiting. It opened with the expected loud creak after a few more moments. She caught snatches of whispering above, one of the voices unmistakably Vander’s. This caused Powder to look backwards and see that Mylo was still utterly unchanged on the bed behind her. The first stair protested weight upon it and she turned back as Ekko moved to stand beside her. 

 

It wasn’t Vi at the top of the stairs. Instead,the man at the top was a rain-drenched stranger in a fine white vest with golden trimmings over a dark brown pinstriped shirt. He carried a nice, dark leather bag in one hand that reminded her of a doctor’s bag. Other than the nice clothes and bag, the brunet coming out of the dark upstairs looked little like any topsider Powder had ever seen. In his other hand, he barely held onto what looked like a crutch made of several metal and plastic bits that had been rigged together. Some kind of brace offered support to his right knee. The man climbed down slowly, with his crutch-wielding hand balancing him against the wall as he did. Though he grunted at least once during the process as if it hurt a little, he did not complain. A set of heavy uneven footsteps later and eyes even more golden than Ekko’s peered down at herself and the boy in question as he grew nearer the bottom of the steps. His face was as pale as her own and even the tiniest bit sunken. 

 

Topsiders got sun and plenty of food. They didn’t look sick or pale or hungry. 

 

In short, something struck her as off. 

 

“Are you the topside doctor?” she asked, leaning slightly forward and in on herself as she backed away. He did not look as she’d imagined but that wasn’t the only reason. His impassive face unnerved her. Hope tried to battle her doubt and confusion but before he could even answer there was a flash of pink above the man and Violet began to descend the stairs much more quickly than he had. “Vi!” 

 

“Hey, Pow-Pow.” Vi chimed in. Her voice sounded tired and scared and hurt. It was not what she had hoped to hear from Vi. Her sister balanced another bag in her hands as Powder tried to calm her fears by looking to see if Vi was hurt. There were a few cuts and a lot of bruises and one of Vi’s eyes had swollen almost like she was copying Vander. Nothing looked terrible, though. It was the way Vi mimicked Claggor from before, looking nearly right through her that made Powder’s breath catch in her throat. 

 

“I am no doctor, I’m afraid,” the stranger announced as he hit the bottom step. His voice carried an exhaustion of its own but it also brought an accent she knew. He dressed like a topsider but the man now leaning against his crutch and moving into the room spoke with an accent identical to one common in the west of the undercity. Powder knew she’d been told where it had come from, but she couldn’t remember. This was confusing, but his answer was enough of a dashing of her hopes that she did not ask any questions. The lanky figure glanced about the room, eyes locked on Mylo as she and Ekko moved further out of his path and he dropped his bag at the foot of the bed. “I am an inventor of sorts but I have access to devices and supplies that might assist your - brother, I assume?” 

 

“That’s right,” Vi answered from behind him. An edge eased into her words that said she did not care for the man in front of her. Powder took another couple of steps back from him. The apparent inventor adjusted his crutch with the tweak of a small knob and then leaned against it for a second as he observed Benzo. Benzo gave a bow of the head in greeting. The two shared a brief flash of recognition in their eyes but did not explain. Powder filed that away. They had met before? Vi hit the bottom stair and took the bag she was carrying right to Mylo’s bedside. Powder said nothing until Vander began to descend the stairs two at a time with Claggor behind him. Vander carried something in his arms very carefully. To her it looked almost bucket-like or helmet-like. The stranger’s own eyes slipped from this helmet to Vander. 

 

“May I examine your son?” he asked, politely.

 

“Please,” Vander answered with a rasp. Like Powder had been earlier, Vander was drenched head to toe. He could join this stranger and Vi in that. 

 

It’s still raining? Her ears focused on the sound of rainfall on the road and the roof but before she could think too much about what that meant for the Lanes, Vi moved right up to her, eyes wide as if she had just noticed Powder standing there. 

 

“Your head,” Vi insisted immediately, reaching out to grab at Powder. “What happened?” Powder scrambled back as the topsider began to lean over Mylo, observing him without yet touching the boy. Shouldn’t he be looking at his eyes or something? 

 

“You’re all wet,” Powder protested Vi’s attempt to get hold of her. “And I’m fine!” 

 

“You’re hurt!” Powder paused in her steps as the larger girl in the unfamiliar green jacket exclaimed with some force. She had basically yelled this. The care and concern both hurt to look at and warmed her up in a way she hadn’t known she’d been cold. Still, Vi didn’t sound entirely right. Powder could see makeshift bandages made out of cloth around one of her arms and a hand. Her right eye had, again, swollen like Vander’s, though not as severely. Vi was hurt, too. “What happened, Powder?” Vi lowered her voice and softened it enough to topple Powder’s curiosity and concern from their throne. 

 

“I fell on the stairs while running around. It’s nothing, Benzo thinks it’s fine.” 

 

“I also said I hadn’t been a medic in half a decade,” Benzo added, unhelpfully in her opinion.  

 

“I’ll look at you next then,” the stranger announced as finally, one slender hand opened one of Mylo’s eyes carefully and the man flashed a small light from his pocket right in them. 

 

“I thought you weren’t a doctor?” she asked. 

 

“Shhh,” Vi hissed. Yet, the sickly pale topsider stood up, threw his weight a little more against his crutch and laughed, softly. 

 

“No, no, it’s alright. You’re right. I’m not a doctor. I have very limited medical training but I was born in the Lanes. We see things down here.” His eyes swept over the whole room but Powder could feel Vi going very, very still beside her. “Things none of us deserve to see.” The confirmation was enlightening, as Benzo would have said, but Powder looked up at Vi to find that she looked distrustful. Doubtful. She didn’t like or trust this man but had brought him anyway. Claggor scooted out from behind Vander and toward the bed as the stranger pointed his crutch momentarily toward Vander. “This device was made by an acquaintance of mine. It is but a prototype but should be able to tell us some things about what is going on in your brother’s head.” 

 

At the man’s gesture, Vander handed him the helmet with almost reverence. On the other hand, this as of yet unidentified former Laner tossed it under his free arm and limped right back to the bed, nodding at Claggor. 

 

“Please lift his head carefully and slowly.” Claggor, looking uncomfortable, stepped forward and did exactly as he was told. Vi moved forward and, so, Powder did too. With enough caution to be agonizingly slow to watch, the strange oversized brass helmet was slipped onto Mylo’s unconscious head. A series of four small lights sat on top and one or two little others rested at one side by a small black box she could not identify. Powder focused her eyes on the man now looking after Mylo. She had to strain to peek past Vi. Her sister had not moved from in front of her and would not release her shoulders no matter how she tried to move. Long pale fingers flipped several small switches, all unlabeled. Then, he turned a dial to the left. From one deep pocket, he retrieved what she recognized as a small battery which he plugged right into the black box on the right side of the helmet. 

 

Vi sucked in a deep breath quickly and Powder understood, though she could barely breathe at all. The thing looked both goofy and a little dangerous. Ekko clearly got it as he climbed onto the arm of the couch Powder had been lying on a moment ago and watched from a higher angle. She felt as if she was watching someone trying to set a very, very small and sensitive mechanism. On the helmet, several lights flashed up at once and a spark told her that one of the wires on the outside was not in great shape. 

 

“Hey,” Vi called out all at once. Powder reached up and seized Vi’s right arm as she had just been doing to Powder’s shoulder at the same time Vi reeled slightly back. The inventor lifted his crutch and pointed it right at her big sister’s face. 

 

“Have faith,” the brunet counseled. Powder could see everything from dislike to an intense desire to punch cross Vi’s muck stained face and Vi began grinding her teeth. Powder wondered if anyone else knew how close they were to trouble, here. A whirring sound emitted from the side of the small black box on the helmet, causing both sisters to jump. Vi spoke, so lowly that Powder strained to hear it all. 

 

“He wasn’t home when I got to his house. He was walked there, by enforcers. Either they don’t like or trust him or he’s their buddy. And something very weird is going on up there.” Powder didn’t know how to answer but took the words in. If this guy was actually buddy buddy with enforcers, Powder wasn’t sure she liked him. If he could help Mylo, though, she could get over it. 

 

“Yes, yes excellent.” The stranger murmured for a moment before shifting to the other side of the bed, toward the little black box. “It’s working. We’ll have our answers in relatively short order. Is anyone else injured? I have clean bandages and several salves to prevent infection.” Their - or at least Mylo’s - potential savior turned on the spot and swept the room with his eyes again. Benzo was the only one to find an answer, eyes locking on the man’s crutch. 

 

“Don’t suppose you have a spare one of those, do you?” he asked and when their guest saw where Benzo was looking, he shrugged. 

 

“I’m afraid not, but I can probably piece together something useful out of your supplies upstairs if you’re comfortable with that. You do not look like you will be walking so well for a while, yet.” Benzo waved it off. Powder knew he’d been trying to make a joke. 

 

“How long should this take?” Claggor asked in the immediate silence that followed. He was hovering over Mylo. Vi stood stiff in front of Powder as if the answer to this question was everything. Powder couldn’t help but think they were being stupid idiots. This felt like the first Time Powder had had hope all night. 

 

“Claggor,” Vander chimed in, still but a step away from the foot of the bed. “Patience.” 

 

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” the stranger said as if buying time to weigh his answer. Powder thought that was a good idea with the tension in at least one person in the room. “Soon. It’s attempting to do things with technology that even doctors cannot do so easily.” Powder was caught off guard when Vi turned and hugged her tight. She didn’t understand what exactly set Vi off, but this was better than tense Vi and her earlier protestations were forgotten. Powder seized hold of Vi and held back. Tightly. Once she was there, she refused to let go even when her sister tried to separate a moment later and Vi did not try again. She did, however, try to talk to Powder. 

 

“Vander and I saw the work you and Little Man did upstairs. Good job, Powder.” 

 

It was different when Vi said it. Who knew why, but it was. 

 

When Vander told her the same thing she’d felt overwhelmed enough to want to cry. She wanted to do it, here and now judging by the lump rising in her throat. The thing was this time she also felt better. Not a lot, but enough. Enough to feel like her head weighed a little less and that hand in her chest no longer acted like it was going to crush her on the spot. She felt better enough to feel like maybe she actually had helped that day. A little. A few tears rolled down her cheeks but she buried her face into the strange green jacket Vi was wearing so that she could blame any moisture on how soaked her sister was and so that she didn’t have to look around the room. 

 

She’d helped, so now they all knew she could. Powder shivered and Vi’s embrace grew tighter. Powder didn’t know what she would do if she lost any of them. 

 

A ding sounded a moment later, loud enough to pull Powder’s attention up. A sound oddly too smooth, like running water, emitted from the small box on the side of the strange helmet her grumpier brother wore. She watched a small line of pale paper emit from it and eagerly she wriggled in VI’s grasp until the girl released her and allowed her to move forward as the line of paper began to pass through the stranger’s hands. 

 

“What’s it say?” she asked quickly, coming to stand at his side by Mylo’s bed. 

 

“Would you like to see?” he asked quickly, gesturing with the end of the paper trying to slide out of his hand and to the floor. She nodded and quickly picked it up. Words began to slide in front of her eyes. She picked out letters in little black type font but couldn’t piece together what she was seeing. “It’s strange to read it this way but just think of it like reading in reverse. Right to left.” With this clarification, words started to make slightly more sense. Phrases shot by quickly as she struggled and failed to keep up with both the little printer on top of Mylo’s head and the strange inventor’s own reading. 

 

“Structural integrity as expected,” mused someone she was coming to feel very grateful to. “Skull density ab - abnormality.” The curious edge to his tone came and went as he continued reading. The problem was that from there things got harder and harder for her to follow. New words, (mostly medical she assumed), were thrown at her rapidly. Then the ticker stopped moving but not because it had ceased being produced. The strange man beside her had stopped feeding it to her. He was looking down at the part of the strip in his hands. At first, he gave a dispassionate ‘hmm’. Many of the things he’d said or sounds he’d made had seemed distant. 

 

Then he sighed. Long and low. 

 

“If the world were different.” Powdered lifted her head and watched contemplation and sadness play out on his face together. That was a new combination for her. 

 

“What is it mister - “ 

 

“Viktor. My name is Viktor,” the man beside her answered and then turned to Vander where he stood just a step from the end of the bed. “Would you prefer to have this conversation privately?” Powder dropped the paper in her hands, one end trailing down from Viktor’s and stumbled back. As if dropped into ice water, Powder’s breath paused a moment too long and she inhaled as Vi reached out and grabbed her to calm her down. Claggor’s eyes shifted downward to the bed and finally to the ground. Ekko appeared all at once at her side and just grimaced at her. 

 

“You know what life is like growing up down here. There’s nothing you can say that is worse than any of them have seen before.” Viktor considered this with a brief nod and then his eyes turned calculating. His free hand stroked at his chin. 

 

“According to my interpretation of these results and the fact that your son has not yet regained consciousness since this incident occurred, I believe he’s experiencing a kind of edema. In basic terminology, a part of his brain has swollen in response to physical trauma. In severe cases, without treatment, this could be a death sentence.” Powder shivered and did not fight as Vi pulled her into an embrace and because Powder would not let go of her shoulder, she came with. “I believe the severity to likely be lower than that . Under any and all such circumstances I’d still say seek treatment but we all know the reality we face on that front.” Vi’s breathing was heavy in Powder’s ears. 

 

“What can we do?” Claggor prompted. 

 

“You keep him still. You keep him calm. You speak to him in soft voices and say whatever you have to say.” That’s what they say before someone dies. Say what you have to say to them. Powder was young, not stupid. She felt like she was near panic but by the sound of Vi’s heart beginning to pound against her chest, Vi was covering that for them both. “If - when he awakens, you keep him in bed. He’ll need nutrients and hydration. I’ve brought a modified respirator that he is to wear as soon as this device is off his head that should ensure plenty of clean air reaches him. I’ve brought a few IV bags, enough to see him through half a week or so and some basic medical supplies. I wish I could do more but-” 

 

“It’s already worlds more than would’ve been possible without you,” Vander said with a sigh, looking down. He looked so tired. Above her, though, Vi’s breath sounded raspy and accompanied the growl of an angry dog. Her sister let go of her. 

 

“That’s it?” Vi hissed, almost rocking faintly back and forth at the force of her breath coming and going. Powder hung on, all the same.

 

“Vi!” Vander was moving past exasperation, quickly . 

 

“Excuse me?” Viktor asked, turning their way as Vander called Vi’s name. 

 

“We paid your friend everything we have. We gave him our home. All you can say is ‘food, water, air and talk to him’?” Vi’s mostly bare fists closed tight. Powder watched something dark seep into the bandage on her left hand. 

 

“I’m sorry,” the topsider answered. It sounded honest enough. It did not satisfy Vi. 

 

“I’m sure you are.” Ekko tried to move Powder to one side and out of Vi’s way but she stood her ground. “When you walk out of here you fuck off to a nice soft topside apartment with water you can drink. Food. You can forget all about this place and the people about to have their homes drowned in topside’s poison water. But we lose everything we had and you won’t do anything for him?” 

 

“There is nothing that I can do,” Viktor responded in a voice so quiet that Powder could not even pick out his emotions over her sister’s rapidly pounding heart or the sound of her lungs drawing and exhaling far too quickly. “I would give anything to change that. I have to.” Vi stepped away from her, despite Powder’s attempts to hold on, slipping around her and stalking toward the stranger who did not back away even though an idiot could tell Vi was angry and a threat. “He has to heal himself , now, Vi.” Vi threw her face damn near into his. 

 

“Don’t say my name like you’re one of us. No one who lives up there knows anything about us down here!” 

 

“Vi,” Vander and Powder spoke in unison. 

 

“Go bury your head in your fancy pillows and silk sheets and wait for the next fucking gala!” 

 

“Violet,” Vander’s voice was dangerously loud. Viktor, who had been watching Vi’s rage from mere inches away without blinking, looked down and away from her as if to give her privacy. “Sit down,” Vander ordered coldly when the pink-haired bruiser glanced his way. 

 

“I’m not saying anything that’s not-” 

 

“I said sit down!” Vander did not yell often but when he did it could inspire fear. Powder did not think she reacted even half so badly as Ekko. Despite being smaller, Ekko overwhelmed Powder with one hard yank, pulling her a step back in an attempt to get a little more space between he and Vander. Vi, on the other hand, opened her mouth, rocking backward as she dragged in a breath, ready to protest. Powder was ready for a blow up. 

 

The only thing that came out was a choked syllable and then air. Then the sound of gagging and gasping followed. 

 

“Vi?” Powder prodded, moving to get a good look at Vi’s suddenly pained face. Vi pressed her left hand against her chest and began to double forward. “Vi, what’s wrong?” 

 

“I-” her sister was cut off as if her very throat closed around the word. Or, more like the need to suck in air overwhelmed the ability to speak.

 

“Your sister seems to be hyperventilating,” Viktor said, which drew Powder’s eyes up to his face as he moved forward and took advantage of Violet’s leaning form to reach toward her face. “Hold onto her right hand, please.” Powder did exactly that, seizing Vi’s right hand as Viktor reached up toward Vi. When she recoiled back, he only pushed further and - pressed a finger to one side of her nose. 

 

What? 

 

“Wha-” Vi tried to ask, but the word was cut off halfway through by a rapid gulp of breath. The stranger looked like he was reconsidering a riddle and looked down at Powder. The middle finger of the hand pressed to Vi’s nose tapped the un-grasped side of it. 

 

“Cover your sister’s mouth, please. I need her breathing through there. ” Powder did not see reason to hesitate, reaching up and pressing her smaller hand over Vi’s mouth. It was not easy given her height, exactly, and she could not help but think of biting Claggor’s hand earlier. If Vi chose to fight at all, she would break away from them both easily. Then again, Vi wouldn’t hurt her. It also didn’t look like her sister knew what was happening any better than Powder. “There we go.” Vi continued to try to suck in heavy, hard breaths above her but it wasn’t working as well now and that only made her look of panic worse. Powder looked uncomfortably at Vander to see if she was doing the right thing. 

 

He looked as lost as Vi did, though, watching the scene unfold. Helpless.

 

“Now, listen to me, Violet. I want you to keep breathing and, yes, through one nostril. I know this is alarming but you can still get enough air.” Powder’s arm jostled as Vi shook her head harshly. Claggor started to move forward and speak. Vander took his arm to keep him in place. A second ticked by and then another before Vi pushed Powder’s hand away with one firm shove. Looking both scared and cross enough that Powder stepped back from her toward the bed, Vi kept her mouth shut. “Good. Good. Now, realizing you could open your mouth if you need to, just listen to me. Slow down. That’s it. Slow your breath. Ease it in.” 

 

To VI’s credit, she did just as she was told. Viktor continued to instruct Vi for a minute more, speaking in a slow and calm voice that did not match the concern on Vander’s or Claggor’s faces, nor her own for that matter. He simply spoke little words like, ‘Hold. Hold. Hold.’ and ‘That’s okay, that was better. Again.” For how simple and funny this all looked, it worked. When Powder took hold of VI’s left forearm (not hand) Ekko moved to join Claggor in removing the helmet from Mylo’s head as per Viktor’s instructions. She watched the soft way Claggor laid their brother’s head back on the pillow. 

 

After the minute passed, Viktor slipped back away from Vi, which most sane people would’ve done the moment they had seen her coming at them. 

 

“Better?” 

 

“Yeah,” Vi admitted, sounding both amazed and childish as if she was not getting something that she wanted. “Never had that happen before.” The older girl didn’t look at Powder or anyone else around her.” 

 

“Nausea? Tingling? It’s borderline impossible to tell if you’re sweating at this point.” 

 

“No,” Vi answered quickly and firmly. Powder didn’t believe her.

 

“Neither?” Viktor queried. 

 

“I said, no.” 

 

“Well, regardless, I would assume that was a panic attack. I want you to continue to try a few deep breaths in, slowly, hold five seconds and then out slowly for seven.” Whether Vi would try it or not he did not wait to find out, turning right to look at Vander. “Now, does anyone here know how to install an IV?” 

 

“Benzo and I have that covered,” Vander answered, voice deepened with some unclear emotion. 

 

“I figured as much. I will show the rest of you how best to switch out the bags and how to know when each will be done and then leave the rest to you.” 

 

When Vi went to sit down on the couch instead of staying by Mylo’s bedside for the instructions, Powder did not. She stayed by Mylo’s bedside trying not to stare at his face as she took in every instruction Viktor gave them. She listened to him tell Vander to keep Mylo horizontal for most hours each day for the next month, ‘ideally whenever possible.’

 

“At this point, any kind of fall is a risk he really cannot take and assuming he, well, when he awakens I suspect disorientation to be a given.” 

 

Vi’s next outburst of anger and Powder’s next jolt of frustration and concern came no more than a minute after Vander and Ekko saw Viktor out of the building. 

 

It was the announcement that for the foreseeable future they were all going to be staying here, at Benzo’s. Vander told them to consider it a camping trip but as none of them had ever been camping it more felt like sleeping in a tiny cramped damp place. 

 

They’d all done that, before. 

 

With Vander announcing he ‘had things to do’ and taking off, Powder set about helping take care of Mylo. She did her part to get him ready for a potentially long stay in bed, though she cleared out while Benzo took care of some of the worse parts of the process. 

 

This let her and Ekko find some peace on the second floor of the building, cleaning the workshop up. In this way, she kept herself calm and distracted until Vander came back to the shop around sunrise. Powder, having not gone back down to the basement in hours, had somehow lost track of the time and when the door opened she and Ekko watched Vander slip into the shop from the top of the stairs. 

 

Finally starting to feel heavy eyes, she nonetheless took the sight of a fresh wound on his face and another, some kind of cut across his chest. 

 

“What happened?” Powder asked, scrambling down the stairs with Ekko hot on her tail. Vander kicked off his boots right by the front door, freshly soaked and filthy. This made Powder realize that her own clothes were finally dry. For a moment she could’ve sworn somehow she and Ekko had surprised Vander because he turned back with a wide eye (the other still swollen shut) and blinked their way. 

 

“What are you two doing still up?” 

 

“Working on things in the workshop,” Ekko answered, honestly. He did not do half-truths or keeping things from Vander as well as Vi or Claggor did. Powder waited for Vander to give her grief for not sleeping as she probably should have been but instead Vander gave a quick shrug. 

 

“Got the sandbag wall up in the east,” was Vander’s only answer to their questions and Powder could tell from a glance that Ekko was as unsatisfied as she was. He pulled a very doubtful face for just about a half second and that more or less sealed it to her. Vander was hiding something. No one got clean cuts across their cheek and chest stacking sandbags. “Going downstairs and grabbing some clothes. Then I need the bathroom enough to clean up. You two should consider doing the same. May’ve dried out but still look like dried rats.” Powder shrugged, not wanting to make it easier on him to change the subject. 

 

“What happened?” Powder repeated. 

 

“Told you,” Vander said, sounding more sure of himself and even a little cocky as he stepped around the almost-obstacle-course she and Ekko had set up the night before. “We got the eastern sandbag wall up. The Lanes and The Bottom won’t be flooding today.” They let him get down three stairs before Powder glanced back at Ekko. 

 

“You think things got bad stacking sandbags?” 

 

“ That bad?” Ekko pointed out. “Not usually.” Powder nodded and was about to slip on downstairs when he lightly socked her on the shoulder. “Relax. He’s back. Let’s let him get cleaned up and check on the others.” It frustrated her that Ekko was right but if Vander didn’t want to talk he wouldn’t talk. She only wished Vi hadn’t picked up that same habit. They waited for Vander to come back up the stairs a moment later with a change of clothes for all three of them, laying hers and Ekko’s out on the workbench. He announced he was first because Benzo wanted him to stop dripping on his floors. 

 

Ekko probably felt the same. 

 

Powder was completely warm and dry and even mostly clean - though she had not taken off the bandage around her head because no one had told her when she could - when she crept back downstairs to the sound of Vander’s duller, more tired voice a few minutes later. 

 

“Made a deal with the new owner of The Last Drop,” Vander announced. This made Powder hurry downstairs where she saw Vi leaning forward, elbows on her knees. Vi was in the exact seat she’d been in hours ago when Powder left the basement so as not to look too long at Mylo or at the way Vi looked at no one. She rather hoped that particular part of the night ended now that the sun was up and vapor-green was filtering in through the windows. 

 

“I’ll keep working it, run its operations and share a portion of income with the owner. In exchange, we keep using it as a home. I’ll move into the common room downstairs, he’ll take my room and you kids will keep your rooms. Everyone wins.” Vi huffed at this but Claggor only looked the same way he had days ago when he received a brand new white shirt as a gift from the tailor. “Better yet,” Vander’s voice raised as if to drown out Vi’s huff and any complaints she might have as her arms crossed over her chest. “Eventually we consider it even and I’ll have earned the deed back.” 

 

“Yeah?” Vi started. Vander’s face fell immediately at her combative tone and Powder grimaced to herself. Ekko was perched up at the far end of the couch again but he slipped from the cushion onto the arm of the couch as if to not be quite so close to Vi’s clearly building rage. “When’s eventually?” Powder didn’t care, exactly. She was just glad to still have her home. 

 

“Bad news is we can’t really move Mylo right now,” Vander continued as if Vi had not spoken. “So we’ll be staying here for a while. I’ll open The Last Drop tomorrow - I’ll have to move back the drink - but you’ll all stay here.” Vander leaned back and with a swipe of a match against his knee, lit the pipe in his mouth and took a very, very long draw of the less than pleasant smelling but at least comfortingly familiar herb within. 

 

“What do you mean? Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Vi asked, as if she was going to scare Vander of all people. 

 

“Here,” Vander answered with a nod. One meaty hand pointed down at the stone floor. “Right here.” 

 

“We’re gonna hide?” Vi asked. Her tone was now ice cold. Vi looked first at Vander, who said nothing then to Benzo who shook his head as if he was not involved here. Claggor avoided her gaze and Powder looked quite quickly up at the rafters of the basement before she could be asked her opinion. “We’re really going to hide ?”

 

“Until Mylo’s healthy and I’m damn sure we’re safe?” Vander clarified, echoing Vi’s affronted, annoyed questioning. “You bet your ass we are.” A moment passed where the only sound was Vander drawing on his pipe. Powder saw Vi watching him in dead silence through wide angry eyes, mouth drawn as if she were sucking on her own teeth to keep from speaking. “Do we need to go upstairs for a private discussion?” Vander’s question sounded like he thought they were having a reasonable moment. Everyone else in the room knew that was not what was happening. Vi answered by nodding and climbing the stairs forcing Vander to rise from his seat on an old crate with a tired sigh. “See what an old man has to deal with?” he joked with Benzo. Benzo flashed a grin but only gestured with both open hands down to his busted leg as if to tell Vander off for complaining. 

 

Powder thought that point was actually fair. As for the Private Discussion on the second floor whose tones they could hear but whose words they could not, Powder simultaneously wanted and did not want to know. Maybe to distract them all, Ekko looked across the room at Benzo. 

 

“Can I stay here a few days, too?” The man answered in affirmative quickly and itched at his muttonchops. 

 

“Sure, lad, but I’m gonna need to rely on you to clean up the shop because if we don’t open in a couple of days and start making some sales, we’ll be in trouble. We can keep some defenses up at night on the doors and windows but after that we have to try to get back to normal.” Powder was excited for things to go back to normal and when the argument above finally ended and Vi returned to a spot on the couch, she tried to tell the girl as much. 

 

“When things finally get back to normal everything will be better, right?” Powder prodded and Vi gave a very half-hearted nod as she leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. Vi would not look at Powder or Ekko sat beside her. The two shared a glance at the look on Vi’s face. Sad, guilty, scared or all of them?

 

Benzo and Vander’s idea of things getting back to normal was anything but, normal, though. 

 

For two days,Mylo did not wake up. 

 

They were two very quiet, very uncomfortable days of Powder and Ekko tiptoeing around nearly everyone else while doing the things that needed to be done to get the shop ready and keep its entrances safe each night. During the daytime basically everyone stayed away from any window through which they could be seen. That meant the days were incredibly boring because there was only so much Powder could do on the ground floor where the windows were all shuttered. 

 

Two days. Boring. No, what was the word Vander had taught her? Monotonous. Monotonous days, full of Vi sleeping on the couch as if she did not know how to be awake, Claggor pacing the basement and Benzo throwing himself around the shop upstairs on an improvised crutch she and Ekko had made him.  

 

They were also scary days where every time she looked at her unconscious brother she stopped in her tracks for as long as it took to watch and make sure his chest was still rising and falling. 

 

When this was all interrupted by Mylo mumbling their names in confusion and trying to sit up, Powder thought relief was coming. Instead, after he had cleared his green eyes of whatever was keeping his sight blurry, Claggor told Mylo what was happening and that most of them were okay. Learning he was bound to this bed in Benzo’s basement was the end of any hope for his mood to be better than the grumpiness he’d carried with him of late. Within an hour or two of his awakening, Powder had learned what the new normal would actually be and it was just wrong. 

 

Whenever the shop was empty of customers, Powder hurried upstairs to help Ekko work around it. At night she sat, sometimes with Ekko and sometimes alone, in the pitch black workshop tinkering with and trying to fix things Benzo wanted to sell until Vi or Claggor or Vander came to get her. This was not because she liked sitting in the dark unable to turn on a light for fear of drawing attention to herself but because the basement was scarier than the dark of that workshop could ever dream of. 

 

The basement, most every day after Mylo woke up, was silent. 

 

Mylo hadn’t been being mean to Powder. He and Vi did not argue. It wasn’t even that for some inexplicable reason two of her siblings had decided without a word not to talk to one another. It was just that both were mutually silent toward everyone. In Mylo’s case he spent most of his time sleeping when not taking care of business, eating or drinking water. If she asked why, he would say that his respirator made talking ‘suck’ and didn’t she have anything better to do than bother him? Vi spent most of the same time on the couch,  with her eyes locked in silence on the ceiling as if to stare clean through it at a secret Powder could not see. When she was interrupted before she was ready to be, though, or when Vander spoke too much about the goings on in the rest of the undercity, Vi got grumpy, herself. 

 

Even spending hours muted, Vi’s anger grew worse day by day and all Powder could pin it on was being stuck inside. After all, Powder wanted to go outside sometimes, too. She had even snuck into Benzo’s room on the second floor and thrown open the back window just to look out at the alley behind his shop, once. Vander was insistent, though, that they stay inside. 

 

Powder could not remember since the days after he adopted them a time when he was so against letting them wander damn near as they wanted. It had to mean that there was trouble worse than enforcers but even trying to have that conversation with Vi had gotten her angry enough to practically yell that she didn’t care why Vander was scared, because she, Vi, was not. 

 

Powder counted the days until the new new normal came and mostly tried not to upset either  of them. Still, they became quieter and yet more volatile by the day. 

Notes:

A/N: Hiya, thanks for coming along for the ride. I am (begrudgingly) posting updates on my old twitter @LiSTheOV. However, I am hoping to get an invite code soon for Blue Sky and would be posting them there, as well, since I don't really care for using Twitter anymore.

So, from now on I'll be trying to update evenings Thursday or morning/afternoon Friday if I cannot on Thursdays. This should hopefully be the pattern I stick with for the story. As a heads up, I advise everyone to read the tags on this story and expect that any of these things are capable of occurring. I might still put warnings at the top of chapters if something particularly severe happens, but canon-typical acts of violence are absolutely fair game within this story.

I advise anyone who gets into this story and finds it interesting but its themes too heavy, to take their time with this story, not try to read too much of it at once or rush on through it. I really appreciate those of you who have, continue to and will come to read this.

Chapter 5: Chapter Five

 

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Five

 

No system was perfect in the undercity. It only took another five or so days before it became pretty common knowledge that Vander’s kids were living with Benzo for the time being. While this worried Vander, it had a major upside for Powder: she didn’t have to sit in the basement anymore. With the awkward silence blaring like a siren from both Vi and Mylo, Powder quit that post as soon as she could. Helping out around the shop, she did not have to listen to their nothings or to their grumblings when someone interrupted their sulking. If it was sulking. Whatever was happening was hard to watch and harder to hear and made her sick with nerves if she thought too much about it. Powder figured that if they were in any real trouble, Vander would take care of it. 

 

As such turned her attention now that she was relatively free to the shop above. 

 

Powder and Ekko were, even now, knelt with their heads in the grandfather clock trying to get exact measurements of a damaged cogwheel. Their hand-made ruler was too rigid and too long to get into the space, so Powder was making use of her fingers as a ruler. Behind them, Benzo chatted away quietly with a man Powder had seen many times in The Last Drop. The customer was stalling on making a decision about some kind of gift for his mother. Benzo kept trying to downsell the man (perhaps knowing something about his finances) but he kept coming back to a smaller clock on the table beside Powder and Ekko. 

 

“I just can’t give that to you for any price that seems reasonable to you, lad,” Benzo said, regretfully. “We’ve got something a little cheaper in the back. Just fixed up, but I’ll be honest. It’s not very pretty.” The customer, a gangly man with wild dark hair who looked like he’d recently taken a punch or two, hummed before asking if he could see this clock. Ekko brightened beside her. When he pulled his head out of the big oaken monstrosity he and Powder had been working on, it rocked dangerously for a second. Powder glanced back as he volunteered to go and get the customer’s potential purchase. 

 

“No offense, kiddo,” the gangly fellow said, voice raspy and dismissive. “But I’d appreciate it if Benzo came with you. If it’s the only piece in the shop I can afford, I’d like to be sure it makes it out here in one piece.” Ekko did look offended but Benzo gave the man one rather frustrated look and began to move toward the back. His makeshift crutch creaked and tapped aggressively against the floor. 

 

“Ekko, give me a hand, here,” Benzo called. The ‘back’ was a larger than normal closet with stacks of junk in it. Things that Benzo declared ‘not ready for sale.’ Powder didn’t know what kind of condition the clock was in if Benzo had it hidden away back there. He and Ekko disappeared into the closet and she turned her thoughts on trying to guess what she could take apart to try to find a cog that might half-fit. They’d have to work its teeth down to fit into nearby gearwork,  but that wasn’t even the hardest part of the process. The hard part would be getting permission to go out to the dumps and dig around for the piece to begin with. 

 

“Reminds me,” the customer grumbled, turning on the spot and leaning back against the counter. She ignored him for the moment, squinting at the new frustration in front of her. 

 

“Powder,” he said. “Right?” Powder looked up from the grandfather clock and nodded, though she felt a little unnerved at being addressed by him directly for the first time since he’d entered. He had waited until  the others disappeared through the door to the back. “I got distracted looking around. Kinda forgot that Vander sent me here for you, technically.” Powder furrowed her brow and sat down her bag of tools, turning to face the stranger more directly. 

 

“He did?” 

 

“Yeah, some idiot broke the jukebox at The Last Drop. He said something about you being the only one who could fix it. Wanted you to get there as soon as possible.” While jarring news in and of itself, she grabbed the tool pack right back up and gave a nod. What did they do to you now? 

If this guy was trouble, he wouldn’t be allowed in The Last Drop. Anyway, Powder would have agreed to fix nearly anything in the bar if it meant getting away from Benzo’s shop for just a minute or two. “Don’t worry about the others, I’ll let them know,” the man rumbled, itching at his chin as he turned back to the counter. “Gotta wait for my clock anyway.” 

 

“Careful with that, lad,” Benzo called from the back. 

 

“Sorry,” Ekko could faintly be heard over a clanging sound that she hoped wasn’t timepiece related

 

“Assuming it makes it out in one piece,” the customer added, looking back at her. Uneasy, still, Powder gave a nod and hurried over to the shop’s front door. 

 

“Thanks,” she told him, stopping right by the door to remember her manners.

 

“Don’t mention it.” Powder pushed the door open and stepped out into the thick, fume-y afternoon. Most of the vapor-green around her was from the gasses in the smoggy air itself, not from any external lighting being on at this time of day. Few lights were turned on when windows or open doors would suffice and not cost them an arm and a leg on electricity to begin with. Though, in a way that made little sense to Powder, electricity was more expensive after the sun went down, anyway. She hated it but had only been able to do little things to help counter it like set up a wood fueled water heater at the shop for the monthly occasions they got enough clean water to justify a real bath. 

 

When Powder started off down the road back toward the center of the Lanes, she found herself really wanting a real bath. 

 

She also felt very lonely. Powder didn’t normally mind being out on her own. Though it was rare she wasn’t with at least Vi, it usually meant she could take her time and walk as slow as she needed to. Maybe she’d turn a trip on her own into an excuse to stop by Benzo’s to see Ekko. 

 

Today she was just curious to find the road in front of Benzo’s shop empty again. It looked almost exactly like it did days before, though without the dead enforcers in front of it. When she looked back, Powder would think she should have thought more about that. Instead, she just kept her eyes forward and picked up the pace. Slipping down the street, she kept her head locked forward to not be accused of looking into any windows. That could upset some people. It was hard not to peek though, with the road so empty. Was everyone just staying inside because the smog was so thick today? 

 

Or did everyone else out on the street share Powder’s slowly creeping realization that something - something wasn’t right? 

 

It took Powder half a minute more to pick up the first reason that she was in trouble. Footsteps trailed close enough behind her that if she turned her head slightly to her left she could barely hear them just a moment or two behind her own. Whoever was behind her was trying to walk in time with her but wasn’t doing a very good job, at all. Powder glanced back despite herself and saw the customer from Benzo’s trailing sixty or seventy feet behind. His hands rested in his pocket and he was blatantly watching her. He did not speak at being noticed but when he smiled a mean, mean grin she knew she’d messed up. 

 

Oh no.

 

Powder kept her cool for another solid minute. At the edge of every alley or each intersection she expected to find people populating the streets. Every single time she was met with quiet and empty spaces. When she got past one of the largest intersections in the city, which led to one of the Lanes, she saw only one other person. This guy looked like he knew exactly what was happening and upon seeing her ducked immediately between two buildings as if to dodge her. 

 

Powder began to hum. Only two notes of the old lullaby her sister had taught her escaped her throat before she juked hard right at a clear alleyway, herself and rammed her tool pack into her belt so her hands were free. The man behind her called her a ‘stupid little bitch,’ but he could say all the mean things he wanted if she could get away from him. 

 

Powder looked between the two buildings on either side of the alley and chose the one with the smaller window sills and smallest decorative ledges. She did as Vi had been teaching her to do off and on all her life, but especially over the last year and a half. Powder grabbed hold of anything that looked sturdy enough to hold her weight and started to climb. A mix of window sills, downspouts and metal pipes that once probably brought poisoned water into the small workers’ housing building allowed Powder a quick climb up a dusty, grimey cracked brick wall. 

 

Powder didn’t know how long it took her to climb two stories but she did not look back until she had thrown herself over the edge and onto the roof. She glanced down long enough to see that the man was trying and failing to get up the structure next to hers. Powder decided, quite quickly, to run. 

 

In moments her legs pumped beneath her. Everything from gravel to trash kicked up around her as she sped across rooftops, across beams and stray planks of wood laid over the years between roofs by inhabitants who liked to sit up top with their friends or by others who relied on rooftop travel to get places without being caught. There were plenty that did what she and Vi and the others did every day. Compared to scaling steep roofs Topside a few days ago, even terrified for her life Powder felt like she was in way better control. Piles of bottles, piles of things she did not want to think too hard about lay strewn atop mainly flat, square structures. 

 

Yes, it was gross to suck in the thick, warm smog. It was even scary to look behind her and see Benzo’s ‘customer’ stumbling along six structures behind her by the time she dared to peek back . 

 

It beat the hell out of the empty streets below. Powder focused on her need to stick to buildings along small roads and alleyways as long as she could. If it meant the most out of the way route to The Last Drop ever, that still paid off. She was not letting some big dumb idiot who looked like he’d just gotten beat up get his hands on her.

 

Climbing across the roofs of Topside may have been hard but down here space was at a premium. Outside of the fabled Lanes themselves buildings were packed tightly together. All of her time learning from Vi and the others meant if she wanted to, she could travel the entire undercity up here. She just had to forget that structural supports and beamwork and dirt of the southern surface city waited sixty or seventy feet above her head. 

 

An unaware stranger could have been looking down at her from above right in that moment and she would not have known it. 

 

Powder absolutely noticed it when someone or something else was watching her as it climbed over the edge of a rooftop in her path, three or four buildings ahead of her. 

 

To her eyes he looked like a human man except that he was too big and thin-framed with shoulders and arms bulkier than they had any right to be. His skin, an unnatural gray, reminded her of Vi’s stories about what Deckard had become and - oh no! 

 

The street rat’s messy blonde hair sat on this person’s head. Enraged cyan irises rested against black eyes that were locked firmly on her. This was no man, but a monster, no doubt. Suddenly, she understood what could have thrown one of Vander’s gauntlets so hard as to nearly kill Mylo on the spot. Thick veins of something purple pulsed through every inch of exposed gray flesh  and poured out of a wound in his stomach. She could see into the wound from here . She could see the only reds or pinks she could spot on the thing that was once Deckard, a boy not all that different from herself or her family. 

 

Powder turned left and decided to run, leap and balance her way all the way right up to the edge of the nearest Lane. Further down that street, The Last Drop waited. That change in course was all it took for Deckard to start moving. It was alarming to see out of the corner of her eye. He tore from his own rooftop as if he were a machine, shattering tiles and brick as he went. His legs were longer than hers, for all the grief Ekko gave her about being a ‘giant’. Worse, he was faster than Mylo despite being taller and heavier looking than Vander. 

 

The first time she saw him clear not just the gap between two buildings but most of the next roof’s width in a single leap was the moment Powder turned all her attention forward. She simultaneously knew it would not matter. There was no one there to help and the Last Drop was still minutes out. 

 

The industrious Laner thought she heard someone call her name in the distance but a quick swing around showed no one who could be behind it. Behind her, her first pursuer had fallen so far behind at this point that he had given up. He was watching her from so far away she barely spotted him. The new one covered as much ground in a step as she did in three and her running could not fix that. The burning, sour air in her chest was not helping.

 

Powder’s only course of action left was to hope that someone, somewhere, would care.

 

“Help!” Powder cried as loud as she could. The unnerving way the vapors played with the substance of a voice did not settle her down. It was as if the words couldn’t even reach the alley walls below. She switched from yelling to outright screaming and tried for a second to look down below into doorways and windows for some sign of help. This only led to her stumbling over a shattered roof tile and sliding a good foot on its remains before managing to stay upright.

 

That had nothing to do, she told herself, with the fact that she heard Deckard land on the roof she had just left. Coming to the edge of a building, Powder glanced back. He loped toward her at pretty incredible speeds but there was one advantage she had that he did not. Last chance! Looking down, she threw herself from the edge of the roof under her feet to the opposite building’s second second floor windows. She sucked in a breath as she impacted with it, hands and feet first. Her hands ached as if she had sliced them up nicely but no great pain distracted her. Powder pushed right back off the old office building with her feet and tossed herself toward an old lead pipe running down the building she’d just leapt off of. 

 

In this way, Powder cut herself up a little bit but worked herself to the ground on a street adjacent to the Lane she lived on. Rolling out of the last five or six feet of fall and still holding her breath, Powder felt momentarily heady. 

 

Vi was right. Vi was right. She could do this. She was ready. 

 

Hopefully, she could find alleyways small enough for her to duck down but not allow Deckard to follow her. Hopefully. 

 

“Help me!” Powder screamed out into the city that was all she had ever known. Even as the cries died too soon, she turned right at the next intersection because turning left would mean the wider Lane next to her. She circled back around, behind the buildings she had just climbed down. The alleyway here was too wide but doubling back might at least momentarily confuse Deckard. He did not immediately follow her to the ground but there was no missing his first animalistic roar of rage. 

 

Powder nearly tripped over her own feet at the need to run it inspired in her. Or maybe that was just the old pile of sopping wet newspaper in the alley. 

 

“Please! Someone help!” Powder could’ve sworn she heard Vi’s voice but it was so small and far away she wrote it off as wishful thinking. Powder plunged further away from the Lane itself while still pushing in the direction of  The Last Drop. The problem was that this was the roomiest area in the entire undercity unless one counted The Bottom. 

 

Try as she might, seconds ticked by. She could not find a place that Deckard could not follow and less than one horrifying minute later, the boy turned nightmare monster emphasized this fact by dropping suddenly from a roof to the ground in front of Powder. She had to swing back toward the Lane to not run right into him. That did not stop her from smelling the strange mix of unfamiliar chemicals and too well known fumes coming off of him. Shimmering pale purple splattered across the ground beneath him. It poured from his stomach and splashing across her sweatshirt. She did not know what it was but its smell matched up with the mystery smell coming from Vander, Claggor and Vi the night that Vander had been taken. 

 

There was nothing for it but to run, run, run and that was what Powder did. Surrendering to the allure of the well lit and hopefully better populated Lane nearby, Powder charged out into the cobbled road, caked with runoff filth from minor flooding only days ago and bolted down it full tilt. Her arms occasionally windmilled to keep her from toppling as she slid on soggy garbage in her path. When it came to people, though, the road was empty. 

 

The Lanes were the kind of empty she had only ever seen in her nightmares about a second war with Topside, after enforcers wiped everyone out. 

 

Powder didn’t stop screaming. She was only six blocks from her home when a large hand covered her mouth and nose and an arm seized her around the waist. In one heft and heave someone lifted her up onto their shoulder. Looking down showed the gray, stretched arm, a pulsing purple vein near its surface. Powder kept making noise, as she had always been taught to when grabbed. She screamed into the hand that held her and in exchange her captor slammed her hard enough against the building to her left that her head rang. 

 

“Make another sound - they’ll never find enough of you to bury,” growled the man-creature. Obeying ran counter to everything she’d ever been taught but he did not sound like he was bluffing. Powder slammed her mouth shut and eyes as well as they began to blur and to burn. Hair pulled tight enough to add to her aching head as her braid sat trapped within her captor’s clenching elbow, Powder was forced to tilt her head back. If she opened her eyes, she would have to see Deckard’s own glowing cyan. 

 

Powder learned another kind of hopelessness.

 

She had been hopeless before. She was small and lived in the undercity and that meant you often got screwed over, as Vi put it. There had always been Vi or Vander to keep the big problems at bay, though. 

 

There was no Vi and no Vander when Deckard brought her right up to the doorway of some sort of old office building in the same district as the cannery Vander had been dragged to days before. It hadn’t been seconds since she’d been scooped up a few blocks from home but it hadn’t taken as long to get this far as she was sure it should have. 

 

As he approached, Powder was lowered enough to get a look at the people in the doorway. One was a man not much taller than maybe Claggor but he was rail thin and wore a dark vest and shirt that looked like he’d lifted it off of the body of a topsider. There were also the matters of his scarred left side and his left eye. Other than the fact that it was orange and sharper than Deckard’s cyan, it looked identical to that of the monster carrying here. The somewhat tawnier skinned woman behind him was taller, smoking casually away at a cigar. She was built in a way that reminded her a little too much of her elder sister. 

 

As Vi had put it: ‘Sucks to be small but I’m not wasting any space on anything that doesn’t make me hit harder.”

 

This last woman stared at her through lidded eyes and thick lashes and she was not sure whose glare was worse. She was disinterested and threatening but the man beckoning Deckard inside was anything but disinterested. He had already looked at her like she was a ticket to some kind of show. 

 

Most of the first floor was dead empty inside except for trash and dried mud. Half of the interior walls had been knocked down. There was not much there beyond a singular office with four walls, three windows and a heavy wooden door. Predictably, this was where Deckard carried her. He walked her right into the office, stooping low in the doorway. Then her world twisted as the boy turned beast tossed her, stained with whatever purple substance oozed from various holes on his body, onto a half-busted couch. Before she could scramble far enough away to escape the smell of the chemical within him in her nose, the man with the Deckard-like eye seized her right arm. His grip hurt. She didn’t know what his plan was but hesitated when he slapped, of all things, a handcuff around her wrist. Tight. She cried out in pain as it dug into the flesh. Deckard responded by leaning down and screaming right back into her face. 

 

The strange man wrapped the other end of the cuff around the leg of his heavy wooden desk. 

 

The only thing Powder had going for her physically was that she was small and fast. None of that mattered if you couldn’t get away. 

 

Powder learned what it was to be truly hopeless about escaping. 

 

She kept her right arm extended as far as she could so she could maximize her distance from the smell of Deckard as the person in charge here slipped around his desk and sat down. He threw his legs up on the table with such force that it reinforced that the desk itself was bolted to the ground. 

 

“My name is Silco,” he introduced himself, slowly, formally despite looking for just a second at the ceiling before he deigned to examine her. “I’m an old friend of Vander’s.” Powder grew very, very still for just a moment. Looking into his eyes did not bother her because one of them looked different than most peoples’. Enough non-humans lived in the undercity, rejected by Topsiders above that Powder had never drawn that kind of a dividing line around what features were ‘normal’ or not. 

 

She felt the urge to retch at the sight because, despite the fact this man had hurt or scared everyone she loved, he eyed her without an ounce of regret in his gaze. Powder lowered her head to block the sight but when Deckard loped forward she brought her left arm up and laid back against the couch so her arm could cover her face. Waiting, eyes open beneath her guard, she stayed quiet. No one else in the room spoke but Deckard moved back from her. He huffed and growled like an angry dog. 

 

If she did not look at Deckard, she thought she could stop herself from freaking out.

 

“I want to tell you something to set you at ease,” Silco spoke only after too long. One or two minutes had to have passed. Powder had no idea what had happened in that time. “I want to tell you that Vander and many, many others have failed you. You will bring me the key to fixing that failure. It’s just a matter of which solution to my -” he inhaled as if a thought had occurred to him, “to Zaun’s problem, comes walking through that door.” Powder curled inward. 

 

This time, you can’t freak out, she told herself, and so she focused more on keeping her breathing even and mouth shut. No tug of her right arm found any give to the chain or the desk. This place is empty. There’s no one around. No one to see or hear. Being shown the whole empty floor had been to reinforce that. It had to be. He wanted her to know where she sat and who was in charge as if there were ever a doubt. 

 

Yet, other than kidnapping and cuffing her he hadn’t done anything to her. 

 

“Please let me go,” Powder tried, pleading. She did not close her eyes. She did not move her left arm from over her head as she tried to bury her face between it and the ancient couch. If Deckard decided to swing on her, she was not having the first thing the monster hit be her face.

 

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, child. It’s not something I particularly enjoy, seeing you like this. To hurt a daughter of Zaun,and especially the child of such a brave man and woman. To know that you’ve been so scared by my attempts to fix this place as to make my name a fear. I would fix it if I could but, of yet I still do not have the solution. So you and I will have to be patient, together.” His voice was like smoke. Not the smoke that came out of Vander’s pipe but the smoke of a chemical fire.

 

“She reeks,” the woman in the corner complained. “Don’t you bathe?” 

 

“Sevika, be quiet,” Silco said, his tone no longer even the pretense of caring. The cold tone made her shiver.

 

“I won’t tell anyone what happened if you just let me go, please. I just want to go home.” When Silco spoke, it was with a familiar ‘hmm’ing growl as preamble. Powder did not try to place it but filed the familiarity away for later. 

 

“That would be counterproductive, child. I want people to know what is about to happen here, today. The day that Vander’s weakness and treachery destroyed his family.” Powder’s heart beat harder, uninterested in her promises to stay calm. This was the man Vi and the others had already squared off against and had to run away from? No, she reminded herself. They ran from Deckard. Deckard’s a monster. He’s just a mean man. “I hope it can be done with very little death. After all, any Zaunite lost in the name of cowards and traitors is a waste. But this Vander, at least, must die for his sins. He should know his family is ruined before he does, so he can know the pain he left myself and so many other ruined families.”

 

“No!” Powder called back, lowering her left arm from her head as she tried to argue but when she sat up, Deckard threw himself right into her face and screamed. His breath palpable in the room, Powder rolled sideways off of the couch and to the ground. It hurt, but she scrambled backward and pulled her knees up close to her chest, hunkering as low to the earth as she could. She breathed deep and tried to find somewhere to move to for the next few seconds. Somewhere to hide. She could not get under the desk from this side and even if she’d been able to, that was just getting closer to someone who wanted to hurt Vander. The couch was flat on the ground and there was no space to get under it. Powder could not reach the far corner of the couch with a chain at her wrist and certainly had no chance to get behind it. Frustration and fear dragged a sanother scream out of her which was no ploy to be heard by any outsider. 

 

“ Please! Please just let me go!” All she could do was lift her hands over her face and wait. Deckard neither backed away, nor attacked. She blinked enough to clear her vision for but a moment. Would the others mock her for crying?

 

“I do not want to hurt you, exactly, but I will if need be.” Silco did not lean over his desk to look at her or particularly move in response to what had just happened at all. Through freshly blurred vision she watched Deckard laughing in wheezing groans above her. “You would do well now to quiet down and let things play out. Let the grownups speak and handle business. The time when you and your siblings rise to your spots as sons and daughters of Zaun may yet come but it is not today. Today I will end what stands in my way.” 

 

The sound of shattering glass punctuated this statement. None rained down on her from above the couch. Instead, Deckard backed away from her as she scrambled to her feet and looked out of the window of the office, rubbing at her eyes. Silco looked grimly pleased as he stood and cracked his knuckles all in one go. She found his confidence as upsetting as his words had been.

 

“Deckard, one last chance to prove your value. Sevika: cut the girl loose but keep hold of her. Make sure she’s very visible to whomsoever appears.” Silco tossed a set of small keys underhanded toward the woman who had remained relatively quiet in comparison to the grunting, laughing, growling mess that was Deckard. “My friend and I have a visitor to tend to.” Powder could not, for the life of her, get to the other windows in this office to move the shades aside. When the woman called Sevika grabbed her cuff-chain to hold it steady, she figured the best she could do was calm down and wait for the opportunity to break loose. 

 

Once her right hand was free, instead of allowing her to rub at the pain in her wrist, Sevika took that wrist in one hand and placed the other on the same shoulder, drawing her arm up and behind her, and pushing her toward the office door. 

 

Only three minutes before the shattering glass, others struggled with their own panic mere blocks away. 

 

Only three minutes before Powder was let loose, Vi and Claggor tore past structures they’d never willingly go inside of. They had been searching the doorways and windows of various empty structures of the old ‘administrative’ district of the undercity for too long. Administrative, Vi thought. Fancy word for where the Topsiders sat while down below so they didn’t have to do any work or talk to any of the people who did. Neither one could seem to find any distinct sign of where Deckard had slipped off to with Powder under one arm after he got out of their vision. The headstart he and Powder had had on them and the unnaturally clear streets had allowed Deckard to keep a massive lead over Vi and Claggor. Neither one had much luck catching their breath: Vi did not think they’d stopped running in twenty minutes. 

 

To make it all worse, the relative ruin and desolation of every building in the ‘administrative district’ made none of them any more likely than the other to be where Deckard had taken her sister.

 

Violet was, to say the least, anxious. She looked across the road to where Claggor was engaged in knocking smog-ruined glass out of window frames with yet another salvaged bit of pipe. Judging by his grimace when he turned back to her, the structure opposite hers was as empty as all the others. Vi lifted her hand and gestured him on to the next on that side. She was about to move on to the next on her edge of the street when an unmistakable voice screamed only a block away. 

 

“No!” 

 

Fear and relief canceled each other out as Vi charged across the street. She skirted between the structure Claggor had just been checking and its neighbor with the full expectation that he was following. If it weren’t for Benzo’s watchful eye, she would assume Ekko was on their tail, too. Except, by now he would have caught up with them. Vi hadn’t spotted him once the entire effort to chase down or get Powder’s attention during her impressive but ultimately failed attempt to evade Deckard minutes before. It was safe to guess that they were on their own, now. 

 

This time, Vi thought as she and Claggor reached the doorway of an old office building, we  aren’t walking into any traps.  

 

Her arm shot out to catch Claggor across the chest and she nodded down to a tripwire across the entrance. Claggor changed direction. He led them the long way around the outside of the structure and to the back. During the process she got flashes through the windows of a single room in a relatively large empty space. Within it was a trio of moving shapes. One of these was large and gray and purple. 

 

Deckard’s presence wouldn’t and couldn’t stop her. She didn’t even know how he was alive but she knew she was going to fix that particular problem if she got her chance. 

 

“Please! Please just let me go!” Vi’s throat tried to clench shut but she forced a breath in.

 

At the back of the building, Claggor looked about for just a moment for an easy window to duck into and then shrugged, swinging the pipe and shattering the nearest. There was to be no element of surprise for whoever went in that way. Vi threw her old jacket down over the frame and vaulted inside. Landing on glass and general detritus, she gave Claggor a shake of the head and gestured to the other side of the building. With a nod he turned away to continue around from the outside. Better odds if we split up, Vi tried to convince herself. But are they? Better? She tuned the little voice of doubt in the back of her mind out. She was all set to leave Claggor at the window when Powder gave another cry. This one was suddenly cut short. That drove her idea right out of Claggor’s mind and he leapt in right after her instead, pipe in hand. 

 

For that matter, it banished all idea of tactics from her mind. Though most of the inner walls in the building were gone there were still enough load bearing walls to cut her off from sight of the room she’d already seen Deckard in. Vi was just coming around the corner of one such support to get eyes on it again when gray blocked her view of anything else. 

 

She ran throat first into an extended, thick arm. The blow sufficed to make her gasp and drop her to the ground of the office amid brick dust and probable decades of flood-deposits which, if she could get her breath, she’d be worried about inhaling. A step or two back, Claggor called her name. It echoed around the cavernous bottom floor.

 

Vi! 

 

Vi! 

 

Vi! 

 

The striker rolled immediately to her side and looked up, right arm rising to try to block a suspected oncoming blow but Deckard did not hit her. Instead, his fist curled into the neck of her shirt and he lifted her bodily from the ground. She waved for Claggor to stay back a step as her eyes locked on the creature’s. Behind Deckard, Silco stepped into view and beckoned them forward. Deckard, still lifting her with one arm, backed up as he carried her. Claggor followed behind her but she could not turn to see anything about him focused on trying to pry at Deckard’s clawed hands. 

 

“So, it’s the ‘opportunity’ solution which presents itself, after all,” Silco mused. “Much better than the alternative overall, if less immediately satisfying.” Vi shook her head. She failed to make any headway at pulling free of Deckard. He swung her around toward Silco like she were Powder’s stuffed bunny. Held mere feet from the man she had been having fantasies of robbing of various natural bodily functions, Vi found that she could neither control her own fate nor reach Silco.

 

“Hey!” Claggor called. The slender man turned his back on both of them. Cocky mother fucker.

 

“The sacrifices we make for our people,” Silco damn near purred. Whatever he was saying, he liked the sound of it. Clad in almost the same outfit as last she’d seen him save for a fresh layer of dirt, he smoothed his clothes out and then pointed toward the front of the building. “Drag her back to her sister and Sevika. Let everyone see they’re all alright.” The man behind most of her grief paused and then spoke as if reminded of something funny. “And, remember Deckard, they’re our guests.” Claggor continued on behind her but Vi, having finally gotten her breath back, had other ideas. 

 

As Deckard hefted her up to throw her over his shoulder, smearing an acrid purple substance across the back of her new jacket, she swung her right knee around and felt it connect with the side of his head. The contact sent pain up her leg. Yet, after an enraged roar and a slight weaving in his next step all Deckard did was shake her. Hard. Just days ago she’d beaten down nine or ten people twice her size but, just as that day, Deckard was another thing entirely. A monster. Nothing more. 

 

Vi’s first sight of Powder a few seconds later was of her horrified and covered in great amounts of whatever glowing purple hell was leaking out of Deckard from multiple locations which all looked like wounds. Well, that’s the end of your favorite sweater. Some old filthy bandana or handkerchief was stuffed hastily in her mouth, likely by the human woman hovering above her. Vi faintly remembered the woman holding tight to Powder’s shoulder and wrist as having been at SIlco’s side in the cannery and marked this one down as ‘Sevika’. This was a name she intended to remember as long as it remained relevant. 

 

It would lose relevance only when etched into a shattered and piss drenched headstone.

Chapter 6: Chapter Six

Notes:

A/N: Fair warning. I tried to do a little naming theme for the chapters of this story and it didn't really feel right. So, going forward, there probably won't be one unless something makes more sense to me. Anywho, wanted to remind y'all I post updates about updates on Twitter (however reluctantly) and I'm also on Blue Sky as theovlis.bsky.social . https://bsky.app/profile/theovlis.bsky.social

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

: 

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Chapter Six 

 

Deckard dropped Vi moments later at his feet as if she were a heavy bag broken free from its chains. This hurt in and of itself and did so just intensely enough she didn’t have a lot of time to respond before he hunched over her, grabbed her by the shoulders and sat her up. His hands now dug into each of them to keep her still on the floor. He thought he could scare her into cooperation. In front of her, Silco gestured for Claggor to move further into this more open section of the bottom floor. Here several cubicles and less than necessary walls had long since been picked apart for brick and timber and whatever pipes or wires once ran through them. Claggor did as told and after a moment she could turn her head to look past Deckard’s forearm and see him. 

 

He was still armed, at least. 

 

“Excellent,” Silco declared, gesturing between Powder and the two of them. Her sister was held by the arm, at Sevika’s mercy. The gag probably to prevent her from speaking or screaming again. “We’re all here, no one is hurt and you, Miss Violet, will be sat right there while we all hear a story.” Vi growled. “First, though, young man. Lower your weapon, stand beside her. Have a conversation like a civilized person instead of resorting to injuring those seeking to help this great undercity.” Claggor started to protest the implication that Silco was helping anyone, but Silco continued right over him. “As of now, the only one truly harmed is my large friend here who your sister has struck.”

 

Your friend who’s pouring out his glowing purple guts. The substance was hemorrhaging above, behind and across her back from a spot on Deckard’s stomach. She would bet gold the wound was related to the spot where Vander had punctured the stomach days prior. Had he been bleeding this whole time? More importantly, was this transformation, this change, so intense that it could let him bleed like this for days and not die? Claggor, reluctantly, lowered but did not drop his pipe. He stepped forward, drawing about even with her, if around ten feet to Vi’s right. Good. This was not close enough to Vi for Deckard to grab Claggor without moving. That at least gave them the hope that if he decided to do so, perhaps Vi could get loose. Ihe did not, Claggor might be able to get Powder free.

 

If the opportunity arose.

 

“Shall I begin?” Silco queried, bringing his arms behind his back and turning in profile to the rest of the people in the room. Powder tried to break free of her captor a few feet away and was roughly dragged backward by the woman. Powder looked cross, but her pale face was also tear and snot soaked. Adding this to Mylo being prone and bedridden made the idea of listening to any more of Silco’s diatribes enraging. So, Vi turned her attention on trying to pick out weaknesses in their foes’ apparently superior position. “I want to tell you a story about a time of war, famine and crisis and a man who was willing to act amid a sea of those who chose to sit and wait to die.”

 

Sevika’s body was pretty well covered between long pants, heavy boots and a low, sweeping jacket. This made specifics hard to come by but she did look like someone who had enough muscle that Vi didn’t want to take a punch from her. She did not immediately show signs of any discomfort or any part of her being a particular weakness. The same could not be said for her boss as he began to pace. 

 

“The man rose during this time of strife. Not out of a need or desire for power but because he could not sit and watch the village around him starve. He traded the safety of strong walls for the relative wilderness of hunting through the nearby forest. His family, after all, cramped from hunger and grew weak.” Silco spun at the end of his path and started back, turning his left side to her. Silco was slender enough and the damage done to half of his face looked, in this case, like nerve damage. That could suggest weakness and pain in the left side of his face. One good shot to the eye or the jaw could distract him or even outright overwhelm him. If I got on top of him, one blow could crush his windpipe. If that were to happen, he would not have any more control over the situation than her. Or over Deckard. 

 

“During his first hunt, he found in the woods, an old dog. Frail and scrawny, the dog was in the same boat as the village.The man’s family was hungry already and when he brought the creature home some of them thought they should leave it out to die - but the man, well, he saw potential. So the next day, he took the dog out into the woods with him.” Vi exhaled, blinked and listened. Deckard needed to be out of the way before someone could topple Silco. 

 

Dropping low, Vi chose this moment of distraction to try to get out of Deckard’s grasp. To be sure, when she jerked to her right nearly prone on the filth-slicked floor, his left hand did let go of her left shoulder. 

 

Only to whack her across the back of the head and seize it again. 

 

“The dog,” Silco continued, in his own world, “serves the man well at first. They go out to hunt and together they prosper, driving squirrel and rabbit and fox out to be shot, skinned and eaten. The man eats. His family eats. The dog eats. Everyone’s lives improve, however unpleasant it is for the animals driven from their dens or the locals who have to listen to their death knells.” Again, Silco turned, presenting his right side to her as he slicked back his hair. She didn’t think he liked looking disheveled. 

 

“But one day the dog decides the man’s methods are too cool and too calculating. That he does not speak to the dog in the right tones. That the food the dog receives is not enough to justify the cruelty ,” the last word was exhaled like an amused wheeze among the otherwise low but steady flow of words, “with which the animals of the woods were hunted. Never mind that they were feeding the man’s whole family. Never mind that the dog was growing strong when he’d been found on the verge of death. And so, one day the dog balks at the command to drive a fox from its den. Given the command a second time, this dog turns. The man who cared for the dog, fed him, defended him when his family wanted to leave the beast out to expire in pitiful hunger - is bitten.” 

 

Deckard’s fingers dug into Vi like a vice.Each time Powder so much as twitched, Sevika drew her right arm back further behind her, causing the young girl to wince and call through her gag. 

 

Silco shifted his sideways gaze from Claggor and then on to Vi. 

 

“What, then, is a man to do?” Six or seven seconds passed before Powder loosed a panicked sound and Vi looked back to see Sevika pulling the girl tightly against her to get a better grip on both wrist and shoulder. She did not like the placement of the woman’s hands. It no longer felt like she was just trying to control Powder. “Now I’m sure you’ve never had the luxury of a pet.” 

 

“Let my sister go,” Vi demanded. Silco continued as if she had not spoken. 

 

“So let me tell you, the decision to put down an animal which you feel responsible for, an animal you’ve trained and love, is pain. But it is so, so much worse, so much more painful to have that dog turn upon you.” Silco’s two eyes locked on Vi as he turned full on toward her and Claggor. “Now imagine that this is no dog.” 

 

“Wow, yeah,” Vi snarked, vitriolic. “You’re so amazing at subtext and metaphor, I didn’t realize you were using it!” Silco ignored the sarcasm as he had ignored everything she’d said thus far. 

 

“Imagine instead that that dog which bit you was her!” Silco turned, his finger extended back toward Powder. “Your sister. Imagine it was her who turned on you. That she did not bite you but instead tried to end your life.” Vi shut her mouth, cooling. She could take a guess or two at where this story was going. “Imagine your sister held your head beneath poison waters, your most treasured person and your best friend. Tell me, child, what would you do?” Vi did not breathe, waiting, hoping he would look away and not demand a response. Yet, it felt like a vain hope. 

 

She jumped at a voice too close and too clear to be anywhere but right behind Deckard. 

 

“We’ve both gone far, far beyond second chances.” Vi leaned her head back hard enough for her neck and shoulders to hurt, held in place as she was by Deckard. She did not immediately see the owner of the voice. Between the words and the widening eyes as Deckard rocked suddenly forward above her, Vi caught on enough to scramble out of his grasp. She wasn’t going to be crushed beneath the collapse of the titan above her. She got to her knees only to roll to one side as Vander, bloody-gauntleted hands and all, hurled himself upon Deckard’s already bleeding, bloated body. 

 

Silco had been so caught up in his soliloquy that even when Vi lunged from the ground beside Deckard’s body he had not yet gotten his guard up. 

 

Her body weight and a quick leap alone brought the scrawny, taller man to the ground, his two very different eyes wide and shocked. Footsteps right behind her promised Claggor was coming. Vi raised her right hand for a blow that would hopefully silence Silco and put an end to his story hour. 

 

But it wasn’t that blow that changed the dynamic of the fight. 

 

A bone-breaking crunch she was not responsible for cut into her focus. It was followed immediately by her sister’s muffled agony. 

 

Knees on Silco’s chest, right fist raised with no clear intent but to harm and quiet him, Vi looked up to see Powder on her knees in front of Sevika, with her broken right arm still in the woman’s grasp and turned wrong. 

 

No.

 

“Sevika, no!” Silco cried, head tilted upward. Pain and fear left Powder a mess at Sevika’s mercy. It did something very different to Vi. She abandoned Silco on the ground to whatever fate would befall him and charged the distance between herself and Sevika without hesitation. One of Sevika’s hands manipulated and tortured Powder’s broken arm as the woman turned to one side and all too easily avoided Vi’s reckless opening blow. 

 

Even if she had had the sense to get into a decent fighting stance, Vi could tell when she was outgunned. 

 

For ten seconds she threw every punch she could think of, pushing forward because hurting Sevika was the only option left to her. The woman holding her defeated sister hostage didn’t even bother to block most of them. With speed and surety that Vi was not sure she had ever had, herself, the older woman knocked the majority of them away with the outside of her left arm or simply sidestepped.

 

In the process, she dragged and jostled a sobbing Powder at her feet. When finally Vi felt her left fist make contact with Sevika’s chest, the woman played it off with little more than a stumble which only caused the small girl on the ground between them more pain. 

 

Behind her, Claggor gave an order in his best imitation of Vander. 

 

“Call them off or -” She glanced back over her shoulder to see Claggor with the pipe in his hand pressing against Silco’s throat. For all Silco’s confidence and assuredness, he was not strong enough to overcome Vi nor Claggor with his own hands. Behind them, though, Deckard had turned the tables and Vander was on his back now, gauntlets trying desperately to catch every wildly thrown hook as Deckard perched atop him. Sharp pain shot up Vi’s jaw but nothing felt immediately broken as she processed Sevika punishing her distraction. “Now, Silco!” 

 

“Let the girls go, Sevika,” Silco coughed as soon as Claggor lifted his weapon from the man’s very cuttable neck. “Deckard, stand down.” Vi stepped back from Powder and Sevika both to get an eye on Deckard who turned his head toward Silco and then spun right back around, fist coming back to continue beating Vander. Sadly for him, much as she had been distracted a moment ago, Deckard took a blow to the side of the head that seemed to ring his bell, the gauntlets now splattered with whatever served as blood in his veins, as well. Claggor began to lift the bar from Silco’s throat as Vander pushed out from under Deckard. “You heard your son,” Silco practically cooed at Vander from the ground. “Down boy.” 

 

The scene stayed frozen like that for a moment. 

 

Then Deckard scrambled back, clawing at something jagged and metal sticking out of his back. Vander stood rooted to the spot, eyes and nostrils wide in disgust. He did not stop looking at Silco. A surge of fresh anger seized Vi at the realization that Vander was thinking about playing the moment out. 

 

She hoped he did. 

 

She wanted Sevika on the ground, stuck in bed being spoonfed by her friends and family as Mylo was for his first couple of days. She wanted Sevika’s arm hanging useless and turned wrong like the girl lying released at Sevika’s feet. 

 

Powder. 

 

The fever broke. 

 

Powder was hurt and in tears, not even able to curl in on herself in the fetal position. She was badly injured enough to worry Vi.

 

Vander would never risk leaving her like that. He had never been that man. Continuing the fight would have been leaving Powder to that cruelty. 

 

“It’s done,” Vi said before Vander could even open his mouth to answer. Silco nodded. This woman, Sevika, sneered down at Vi as if Powder was not even worth mocking. 

 

“It’s done,” Vander answered with a nod. Deckard turned and fumed, storming off. 

 

“Get off of me, idiot child,” Silco ordered Claggor. To Vi’s surprise, Claggor hesitated even as Vander beat her to scooping Powder off of the ground. 

 

“This is going to hurt, and I’m so sorry.” Vander eased the girl’s broken arm onto her chest and then wrapped his own under her neck and legs. Powder cried out yet again in pain. He had not thought to remove her gag, so Vi did so, reaching up before Powder was out of her reach. This only let the girl’s heart wrenching wail sound all the clearer. “Claggor, come!” Claggor rolled off of Silco as Vi turned back, dragging his improvised weapon with him. She watched Sevika reach down and yank Silco to his feet. “Vi, let’s go.” 

 

“There’s a lot of dogs in the Lanes,” she told the thin form dusting itself off pointlessly. “Be careful history doesn’t repeat itself.” 

 

The threat was supposed to feel good, even gratifying. Instead, due perhaps to Powder’s audible pain as Vander carried her away or the calm and appraising way Silco studied her, it felt weak and toothless. 

 

As soon as they were out of the building, Powder trying to control her tears and breathing in at the same time, Vander demanded answers. 

 

“I want to know what happened,” the man said, looking straight ahead as he moved for the nearest alley that would lead to a Lane, his gauntleted hands holding Powder close to his chest. “Now, please.” It wasn’t that Vander had turned his gray eyes upon Vi so much as that Vi saw Powder’s own gray shoot her way, puffy and tired looking. Vi wanted to sink away from both of their gazes but did not. 

 

“Claggor and I were downstairs with Mylo. Powder was working with Ekko upstairs. I’m sorry,” Vi added, unsure who she was apologizing to but looking between Powder and Vander with a furrowed brow. She needed them to know that she would do anything to undo this. 

 

“Specifics,” Vander barked, and Vi looked sideways and down as the three of them reached the end of an alley and hit the cobbled main Lane. “Come on.” 

 

“Ekko and Benzo went to get something from the back for a customer. When they got back Powder and the customer were gone. Ekko came down to get us right off the bat but by the time we got out the door all we saw was Deckard running across a roof down the road.” Powder winced and looked away from her which made her feel all the worse. “We ran after because, well duh, but we didn’t even see Powder for half the chase and Deckard’s… he’s just so fast.” 

 

“Deckard?” Vander asked, loudly. “Who is that? Is that the kid - the one Silco changed?” 

 

“Yeah,” Claggor answered when Vi could not find her voice under Vander’s anger. The man’s face softened slightly, but only just enough to let himself frown. 

 

“Once he caught her he just left us in the dust. We just started guessing at buildings until we heard you, Powder.” Vi and Claggor both picked up the pace as Vander gritted his teeth. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She didn’t know if she was apologizing to Powder or Vander but knew Powder deserved it more. The vibrating sort of knot in her chest loosened a bit as Vander looked down into Powder’s eyes instead of watching where he walked. 

 

“Silco did this. Not you, not anyone else. This is Silco’s fault.” Vi wasn’t so sure she believed that but the potential that this was in part to set her at ease let her inhale shakily when she had been having trouble doing so. 

 

“My arm hurts bad,” Powder murmured, looking not down at it but at Vander’s chest. 

 

“I’ve seen this kind of break before, Powder,” the man told her as he returned to watching the suddenly even inexplicably populated road. Passersby they might have spoken to only days ago turned their heads and walked right past. Shop owners hawking their goods on the street looked clean through them as they waved this or that in the air to draw attention. “It’s actually not a bad one.” 

 

“It’s broken?” Powder asked, this time looking surprised as she looked at first him and then Vi. Vi thought her sister looked closer to amazed. Vander nodded but Powder examined her own arm atop her chest and then apparently thought better of that before looking at her. 

 

“I thought it’d hurt more .” Vi laughed and sniffled at the same time and an edge of levity even reached Vander’s words. 

 

“It’ll hurt but once it heals you’ll never know it happened. And look at you, ‘I thought it’d hurt more.’ There’s plenty of grown people who’d be sobbing right now.” The encouragement had a mixed effect on Powder, who wasn’t precisely crying anymore, but who did blink away freshly watering eyes. 

 

“Yeah, Pow-pow, you’re a tough bastard.” In Vander’s arm, Powder shook slightly, shuddering. 

 

“I was stupid,” she told Vi. 

“No!” Vi bit back when she heard the volume of her own voice and saw Powder’s wincing response. “No, no Vander’s right this was on Silco.” 

 

“Then why didn’t we take care of him when we had the chance?” Vi slowed, blinking as she glanced back at Claggor. The uncharacteristic snarl and cold words should have been a concern but she was all out of concern. It was all balanced on Powder’s chest beside her broken arm. Instead, she was just a little surprised.

 

“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” she prodded and Vander laughed once himself before answering, seriously. 

 

“If we’d done that who knows what his friends might’ve done to us. We’re together. We’re hurt, but alive. I’m glad for that.” Vander quieted as a passing fish-like vastaya with light blue scales looked just a moment too long at the four of them. The feminine vastaya looked away with a hard jerk of their head when they matched dark eyes with Vander, long whiskers shivering. Vander looked grimly satisfied. It was hard to deny that somehow Silco had influenced the undercity enough that, by design, the Lanes had been clear of people when it came time to grab Powder. Now, though few so much as acknowledged the four of them with a passing glance, people were almost everywhere, if hurrying about. 

 

Vander turned a little too quickly at an intersection a moment or two later. This forced Vi to backpedal and still managed to jostle Powder, who whined faintly despite her clear attempts to remain quiet and calm. Vi had broken a finger or two before, rather like the ones Claggor had taped straight and together to her left. She had never broken a major bone like Powder. She could only begin to guess at the nature of the pain. Would Powder actually accept how impressive it was she had recovered her wits about her so completely and quickly? 

 

Vi would see to it that she did. 

 

“I know just the guy to get you to,” Vander announced, answering Vi’s question about why they were leaving one of the Lanes. “But you’re gonna hate the next part until we can get you something for the pain.” 

 

“Why?” Powder asked, lifting her head just slightly to get a better look at his face. 

 

“Well, he’s gonna make sure your arm’s back in the right shape and that’s going to hurt enough,” Vander started. A jolt of anxiety crossed Powder’s face but Vi still thought the honesty a good idea as she and Claggor hurried to catch up again. “Then he’ll immobilize it.” 

 

“Immobilize it? Make it not move?” Vander gave a nod. “So a cast?” Powder prodded again, more quizzical than worried. 

 

“Exactly. It’ll be on a few weeks then, bam good as new.” Vi began to wonder if Claggor or Powder noticed the odd way Vander’s voice grew higher and higher pitched and even throatier every time he talked. She knew what swallowing guilt and tears sounded like enough from her own life. Especially when listening to Powder trying to put on a brave face. It all sounded, she thought, as Claggor rested a hand on her arm to get her attention, very unVander . She and Claggor shared a look that told her he had heard it, too. 

 

“Claggor, good idea to go back to Benzo’s and tell him to move Mylo.” 

 

“Move?” Vi asked suddenly, and Powder fell silent. 

 

“Can’t stay there,” Vander informed them. “Got a place in mind but it’ll be temporary at best. . Might buy us a day and that’s if we can get Mylo there without making things worse.” Vi bit her bottom lip and asked what she thought should be a question Vander had already asked himself. 

 

“Mylo’s supposed to be in bed though, right?” 

 

“I know,” Vander started, but Vi cut him off. 

 

“He can’t get out of bed. He can’t be moved.” 

 

“I know!” Vander yelled. This was not something Vander typically did and it made Vi wince even as she saw Powder do the same. “No arguments. No questions. Not on this. We have no choices, here.” 

 

Vi didn’t realize how completely he meant that, yet. 

 

Vander came to a stop a couple of very awkwardly quiet minutes later in front of, of all places, the shop of a tailor named Citaries. He did not knock or hesitate, just nodded at the door and both Vi and Claggor hurried to open it. Vander strolled right into the shop past a woman picking out an old, worn looking hat from the shelf nearest the door. Vi followed just in time to watch him match eyes with the old man with the graying hair and weathered olive complexion. Citaries was a friendly enough person from her few encounters with the guy but the sound he made as he pointed at one of his assistants made it clear he brokered no argument. The woman in question was in the middle of measuring a man in his thirties who was gripping at a coat, eagerly. 

 

“You, get me a pot of wax from the candlemaker,” Citaries ordered. The customer’s haggard face fell. The woman dropped her tape measure. She gave only a squeaked apology to the person she had been serving and squeezed past Vi and Claggor before Citaries could even push aside the curtain to the back of his shop. Vander, with  Powder cradled close, was the first person through the curtain. The customer shopping for a hat a moment ago made a noise akin to an apology and excused themselves from the shop after the tailor’s apprentice. Vi did not stop to contemplate any of this too closely before following Claggor back into the back room.

 

One look suggested it was more of a workshop made for sewing and resizing. 

 

“On the table,” Citaries told Vander. Vander was already halfway to carefully lying Powder down on a long, high table in the corner of the room. Or, at least as carefully as one could while wearing blood and goop soaked massive iron gauntlets. Vander dropped those to the ground at his feet as soon as Powder was down with a sharp hiss. Citaries hurried to toss a couple of boards and a log into the small fire in his fireplace, dragging away a metal grate sat overtop it. Vi moved very quickly over to the side of Powder’s uninjured arm as Citaries took to the side of the injury in question. The man swept a long pale wall of hair to one side as he leaned down. Powder grabbed at Vi’s right hand with her left. She was going to be using her left for just about everything for a while.

 

“Now, now, what happened to you, young miss?” 

 

“Sevika,” Vander croaked. “Arctus Vann’s girl.” The tailor gave a nod and brought glasses up from where they hung around his neck. He peered at the arm as if looking at a confusing picture, turning it this way and that and even moving it. All faintly, all to just tiny degrees. All causing Powder to grit her teeth, making her eyes water and making her squeeze Vi’s fingers hard enough she wasn’t sure they weren’t about to break. Finally, he laid the arm across Powder’s chest in a much more natural looking position than Vander had: hanging down and hooking around. 

 

“She had a hand on Powder’s wrist and one on the shoulder, kept pulling it back.” Vi started, but Claggor corrected her. 

 

“She did, but when she actually broke it, she just drove an elbow down into the arm while it was all stretched.” Instead of acknowledging either of them, Citaries looked into Powder’s watering eyes. 

 

“Is that what you recall, dearie?” Powder gave a nod and Vi was grateful Claggor had seen better than her. “Good.” This caused Powder to blink her watering eyes clear. Confusing enough to Vi, the ‘good’ took even Powder aback. “Broken, but clean enough.”

 

“Told her near as much myself,” Vander added. His voice seemed recovered and was even tinged with a bit of pride. “Powder takes bad news like a champ, of course.”

 

“That’s good, because Powder,” Citaries started leaning his weathered and lined face down to draw even with Powder’s. “This is going to be unpleasant in about a dozen different ways but in a few weeks, six or seven at most you’ll be very relieved this happened.” Vi’s first three fingers protested the pressure with which Powder squeezed her as the smaller girl nodded and Citaries responded in kind. Then the man slipped away and came back with scissors. “First - I’m sorry for your shirt.” 

 

“Hey, that sweater was getting old anyway, wasn’t it?” Vi asked to drag Powder’s attention away as the man quickly began to cut through the arm of her sweater and the tee beneath it. “Plus, face it, with Deckard’s chemical goop everywhere, we’re both gonna need new clothes.” Powder gave her a fairly brave nod but Vi read a lot of different emotions passing over her face. Loss, fear, shame, Vi knew them all in spades. She only lightly shook Powder’s good hand. This failed to distract her when the tailor crossed the room and came back with four nearly equally sized rods of wood. 

 

Vi’s words certainly couldn’t draw Powder’s attention when the man manipulated the rods around Powder’s broken arm and reintroduced that arm to the more natural looking position across Powder’s chest. The rods did, however, reinforce the relatively straight, rigid pose. 

 

Shortly after, Citaries began to wrap the arm in linens. 

 

“Look at that, guess I’m not the only one who wears wraps anymore,” she told Powder, playfully, but Powder didn’t bite. Between the wraps and the rods, it was clear that the process hurt like hell. Every time Vi thought they were done, Citaries kept going. The one time she opened her mouth to ask how long he’d be wrapping up and down her arm, Vander met her eyes with a dead stare. Vi did not try to ask again. The linens were not just turned around the arm, though: they wrapped down and between her fingers and thumbs. 

 

“I can’t use my hand?” Powder asked, earning a grimace from the tailor. 

 

“Better safe than sorry and keep the whole thing still.” 

 

Vi assumed things were nearly over for Powder when the assistant from before came in, holding in one hand a massive iron pot full of candles and handing Citaries a small, corked jar with the other. Citaries handed the jar right off to Vander and instructed his helper to put the pot over the fire at the back of the room and set the pot to warming. 

 

“What’s that for?” Powder prompted. 

 

“Once I’ve finished this bit, we melt down the wax, dip more linen in it and then wrap it around your arm before it can dry and cool. Do this enough, and it makes a big, thick shell. If you’re careful the cast will keep until you’re healed.” The bluenette nodded. Her mood was stabilized by her curiosity even if the pain clearly fought back. Sometimes Vi thought her sister’s mind was cruel to her. Other times, it distracted her from something like getting kidnapped and having her arm broken. It was a hard call to make. “I’ll even toss in a little sling to take pressure off that shoulder. You won’t be able to choose to move your arm out of this position for a while.” This did earn a frown but Vi paid attention to  how curious Powder was as Vander uncorked the jar and grabbed a ruler right out of Citaries’ apron. With pretty good care for how hard his hands shook, Vander tapped some of the gray powder in the jar out onto the ruler and held that end right in front of her sister’s face. 

 

Powder looked somewhat doubtful. It was Vander, though, so she only pulled a face. 

 

“I’d make you a tea or something nicer out of it,” the tailor told her. He slipped away from his worktable over to check the pot hanging above his fire as his assistant worked a wooden spoon around the pot’s melting contents. “But it really wouldn’t make it taste any better and you’ll want that stuff in you ten minutes ago.” 

 

“Go on,” Vander told her, softly. Vi watched Powder’s doubt vanish. She treated the ruler like a spoon and quickly licked the substance off. 

 

“Bitter, isn’t it?” the tailor asked without even turning to watch Powder wince at the taste.

 

“What is it?” Vi asked, and Vander tilted his head slightly as he corked the bottle right back up. He either didn’t know the answer to the question or misheard it. 

 

“In that small a dose? It’ll probably just make things feel a little less important, not to mention hurt less.” Vi did not expect it when Vander reached across the table and squeezed Vi on the shoulder. It was meant to be bracing, but the bruises in the shape of Deckard’s fingers complained. The caring gesture still hit home hard enough she had to swallow her immediate response to avoid letting it get the better of her. 

 

“I think I’d like that,” Powder muttered. 

 

“Your old man has a good idea on dosing and how often to give it to you,” Citaries called. “So none without him, understood?” 

 

Powder’s strength had always lain in her mind and how her hands could bring things from it to life. Now one of those hands were down at a time when Powder would most want to be using them to do something. Her sister

 

Vi couldn’t help but think that it could be all traced back to Vi’s desire to hurt Silco. 

 

It was jumping Silco that made Sevika do it.

 

Though Powder’s arm already looked bigger than normal under the cloth wrapped about it and its splints, the tailor cleared everyone else away from the table and began to dip new linen in the pot of warm wax when it had had time to melt. As soon as a bit of cloth was waxed, he immediately wrapped it overtop of the preexisting cloth. In this way, she watched Citaries layer on and allow the various layers to dry and harden together into a kind of shell. Impressively, Powder was asleep within one or two wraps of these wax-dipped swaths of cloth, presumably from the effects of the medication. 

 

In all, they were only in the tailor’s shop for an entire hour before she followed Vander (now carrying Powder while she held onto his gauntlets) back out onto the Lane with the procedure done. 

 

Instead of turning the three of them north toward Benzo’s shop or even The Last Drop, Vander unnerved her by silently turning south and leading her south-east through smaller roads as soon as he could get off of the Lane. 

 

Vi did not ask where they were going. She just held onto  the hunch in her heart until the older structures of the undercity thinned out and gave way, once again, to the road leading right to The Bottom.

Chapter 7: Chapter Seven

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Seven

Whether it was because the action had come to an abrupt and unsatisfying end or because she was here, it was easy for Vi to fall quiet again.

 

It was easy to curl up on the ground between a pile of ruined blankets and quilts laid out on the stone slab she used to sleep on four or five years ago and the scraps of cloth and tarp lying beside it. To her right and on the slab raised above her, Mylo either slept or pretended to sleep. To her left, Powder slipped in and out of consciousness in inconsistent fits. Clearly her medicine was wearing off. Smack dab between them, Vi laid on the floor where her mother used to sit and sing nursery rhymes and lullabies for her daughters. 

 

“Shh,” Vi whispered to Powder the next time the girl opened her mouth to drearily ask what was happening. “Just close your eyes and sleep it off, okay?” Powder tried to roll over where she lie on the pile of old clothing and torn, ruined tents.Vi took her left hand and kept her from doing so. She did not look at Powder. Nor react when Mylo muttered for them both to be quiet. She didn’t even bother checking the door as, in another part of the shack, Claggor left the building. 

 

She just waited for things to go quiet so she could again, too. Powder eventually stopped moving, emitting a frustrated sound at the pain. Not engaging Mylo had curbed his bad mood. She wasn’t even sure exactly what had him mad. Yet, every attempt she’d made over the last few hours to bring food or water to either of them had backfired. Mylo had only turned each and every offer down as if she annoyed him. Powder, hazy, just seemed scared or worried every time Vi brought her a cup of water or some of Benzo’s soup. 

 

It just reinforced a growing sense that there was nothing Vi could choose to do that wasn’t wrong.  

 

So now Vi simply ‘rested’, as Vander had put it and provided comfort whenever her sister stirred. 

 

The silence, the stone floor, the slab bed and the pile of debris Powder slept on were all like parts of a fever dream. Looking up past them all to the building around her made her wish she could question if she was awake. 

 

I promised this whole city would respect us, Vi thought as she blinked at rotting wooden rafters above. The whole one room building smelled like mud. Told her everything would be alright. Now we’re back here, at The Bottom, waiting for Silco to make his next move. When he did, Mylo would be down and unable to help. Powder would be down an arm and in pain. How did you let it get this way? Vi rolled back onto her side to look at her sister. Powder had faded back to sleep but her brow was furrowed even in rest. Whether it was by pain or something else, (maybe a bad dream?) Vi didn’t know. 

 

Can’t get the whole city to respect you if you can’t even get the undercity to stop kicking you, fuck up. Vi squeezed Powder’s left hand once and then exhaled. Let’s go. She pushed up to her feet and made right for the door of the otherwise empty building. Outside, somewhere was Claggor. Maybe he would have ideas on what they could do next. If nothing else, talking to him might inspire an idea in her. If they just got their own house in order, as Vander often said, and nipped this Silco thing in the bud before it got any worse then surely, surely they could go back to The Last Drop. Things could go back to normal. Actual normal. 

 

From where they were, there was little else to go but up. 

 

Outside of this shack was the lowest point. The absolute Bottom. The smog was just thin enough at the moment that if she squinted through vaguely green tinted filth in the air, she could make out the lumpy misshapen tents that the people who lived here were stuck in. Well, some of them. For one thing, the people Vander had talked into giving them the shack for the night would want it back in short order. For another, there were so many tents spread throughout the old quarry that no one could see them all from any one spot. Except on a very clear day, so far and few between in the undercity she couldn’t remember any. 

 

Vi had only taken a few steps outside before she heard a voice to her left, just around the corner of the shack. 

 

“I don’t know what to do, Benzo,” Vander’s words were a defeated admission she knew none of them were ever supposed to hear. Vi began to back toward the door, her already small spark of inner fire dimming and going out all at once. Then she saw Claggor and Ekko both peek out around the other corner of the house. Clearly, they were eavesdropping. Clearly they were warning her with their wide eyes not to out them.

 

Ekko probably followed Benzo down here, for that matter. 

 

“You need a new plan, my friend,” Benzo chimed in. Vi thought this was rather unhelpful since anyone with two brain cells to rub together could tell that. Weren’t you just about to use the old plan and go fight Silco? At Ekko’s insistent and impressively silent gesturing, Vi slipped around into their hiding spot instead of going inside. She fixed both her brother and her sister’s best friend with a disappointed glare. It did not work and it didn’t feel very convincing on her face anyway. Claggor held a finger up to his lips and Ekko again peeked his head around the corner. Wouldn’t matter anyway. Can’t fight Silco. He’ll just make another Deckard and another and another. However he does that. You can’t fight whatever that is. 

 

“Either I participate in turning the Lanes into a battleground to root Silco out when he’s clearly got people under his influence or Silco hurts my children.” Benzo made a vague if affirmative sound and, for a moment, shifted sideways enough on his crutch that Vi thought she spotted the corner of his eye as she peeked. If he saw her, Ekko or Claggor before they could hide again, he did not say anything. “I really don’t want to go back. I don’t want to plunge the Lanes into war with each other. Topside comes in to put it down, that’s a war on two fronts. That happens, I could lose the kids anyway or they’ll lose me. Everyone else’s families will be in the same boat.” 

 

“Been here before, haven’t w- pass that pipe, lad.” After an unceremonious pause during which Ekko rolled his eyes in slow motion. She glanced where he knelt just in front of and below Claggor, angled around the corner and tried to smile. She couldn’t. Benzo continued after he’d had his puff, “we’ve been here before, haven’t we? Only we were the pissed off kids of The Lanes.” Vi liked where that was going, at least. Make Vander see that sometimes the risk was worth it and maybe he’d lead them to -

 

“We were idiots.” Like the proverbial bucket of cold water, this froze Vi in place. His or Benzo’s pipe smoke rose slow, as if it struggled against a heavy jacket. It pushed up over the top of the building between them before it was lost in far, far worse pollution than itself. “We were idiots to think we’d ever force their respect like that.” Vi took one step backward, chest tightening. For reasons she didn’t try to understand, Ekko reached up and wrapped his hand around her wrist. The boy lowered his head and closed his eyes as if to emphasize that she should be quiet and listen. So, she did. 

 

“Way I see it, Vander, we’ve got three options now. First, you try to work with the enforcers. I think the best hope for that plan died days ago. Marcus is tripping over himself to keep Silco happy or stay out of Silco’s way. Neither one’s good for you. Second, you could put those gauntlets on and go back to being the leader a lot of people are hoping you’ll be.
I’d bet money some of Silco’s men would turn on him if there was a sane leader willing to do more than organize community action efforts.” Vander exhaled deeply a few feet away from her. 

 

“And the last?” 

 

“Well,” Benzo started. Even as she stared the opposite direction of the two of them with multiple walls between them, she imagined the way Benzo scratched at his mutton chops as he chewed over something Vander probably didn’t want to hear. “Last option I see is The Kutter.” Vi looked over Claggor and Ekko both. Neither reacted as if they understood what they were hearing. 

 

“Kutter? Could I really just… leave?” Claggor sucked in a breath next to her, which was fair. She did not want to release the one in her own  lungs. A very pregnant pause stretched painfully between the two men she could not see. Ekko, horrified, looked up at Vi. Was he trying to check on her? Could he tell she’d forgotten to breathe? Ekko looked as bad as she felt when she matched his eyes. She wanted to do something for him. She wanted to do something for herself, Claggor, Mylo, Powder, for anyone. 

 

But nothing had paid off.

 

“You can and you will,” Benzo answered as if he’d made up his mind and Vander’s both. “I look after our people and you look after our families.” Vi felt a tickle of curiosity among the ice cold sense of displacement but she was beaten to understanding what they’d just heard. 

 

Ekko nearly upset her and Claggor both as he stood straight up and ran right around two corners to get to Benzo. The both of them followed at a trot behind him. Vi did so in a daze. 

 

“What? No!” The force of Ekko’s voice made the air around him dance - something with the vapor, she thought. This wasn’t a protest:, this was a declaration. Ekko’s thin arms drew an X through the air in front of him as if to wholly reject what he had heard. When Vander and Benzo looked above him, Vi again froze in place. The two men shared heavy glances before one another and then Vander’s face only fell more, until he looked as low as she felt. 

 

“You’ll go with them,” Benzo insisted, only earning rapid shakes of Ekko’s head. 

 

“Hold on,” Claggor started. “What are we talking about here? We can’t mean-” 

 

“No, I want to stay here,” Ekko insisted. “I have the Home. I have the others and I have you. ” 

 

“And I want to keep you, lad,” Benzo told Ekko, which seemed to be an unspoken cue for Ekko to jostle Benzo with a tight hug that further upset the shopkeep’s leg. “That’s why you’d be going with them.” Vi managed to find her voice again and caught Vander’s surprisingly dodgy eyes. Leave. He doesn’t mean The Bottom. He means the Undercity. - and we can’t afford to go hide topside. 

 

“Go where?” she asked Vander directly. Vi told herself she didn’t sound like she was about to vomit even though she felt like it. Instead of answering or looking directly at any of them, Vander turned away and drew a very deep pull from his pipe. 

 

“Noxus,” Benzo answered for him as Vi clenched her fists tightly. “The Kutter is an old ‘friend’ from the Noxian underground.” The word Noxus brought to mind drawings she’d seen once of imposing tall towers where traitors to the empire were shoved to their death and large numbers of marching soldiers. Most of those soldiers in her imagination wore uniforms not unlike enforcers’. It brought to mind a place that would take your home out from under you and not even blink. 

 

“No,” Vi said, shaking her head in disbelief. She hadn’t even intended to argue but Vander didn’t seem to know the difference at the moment. His back still turned to them, Vander responded quickly. 

 

“Don’t,” he asked her. “Just don’t. It wouldn’t be forever, just for now. ” 

 

“No, not - just no, okay?” Vi pushed, trying to communicate the idea that she was not ready to give up. She he didn’t want to have to look into Powder’s eyes and tell her that she, Vi, had lost them their home because twice now she’d had a chance to beat Silco into a pulp and twice she’d missed the moment. “This - this is home, Vander.” 

 

“I’m sorry, Violet, you just don’t understand.” 

 

“Then make me understand,” she responded automatically. This wasn’t a question, it was practically her begging. Vander lowered his momentarily hiked voice as if he had caught on to that much. 

 

“I tried, Vi. I tried to make you understand, on the bridge.” Vi took a step back. His words, his discomfort and his lack of confidence during that talk had been jarring enough. He was sure that war, conflict with topside wouldn’t be worth it and people would get hurt. 

 

“But this isn’t topside,” she responded, glancing at Ekko and Benzo or Claggor for support. Claggor was the only one who would meet her eyes. “This is just some guy .” 

 

“War. Is. War.” Vander tipped back his head as if to look up at a sky buried beneath so much sickly air that it might not even exist and they wouldn’t know. “And do you think Topside wouldn’t get involved if we turned on one another and started killing ourselves off for them?” Vander might’ve been sure but he didn’t sound confident. He sounded scared and broken and - and it was pathetic. Yet, Vi had thought every single one of those things about her own concerns and fears. The thing was, Vander didn’t do scared or broken. That was for people like her. 

 

She tried to land on something she could say or do that would change his mind and yet Claggor had lowered his hands to his side and was watching the filth and dirt under his feet as if it were interesting. 

 

“You’re right. The options are to risk my family or wreck the Lanes . I won’t do either.” Benzo looked the lot of them over contemplatively. No answer lay in his familiar features as she shot pleading looks to Vander’s closest friend. Several words started to form and died on his lips, especially when he eased Ekko back from their embrace. Then he nodded. Ekko’s shoulders sagged as if despondent but the gesture was enough for Benzo to let down his guard and loosen his grip. The boy slipped from his hands and bolted into the shack Mylo and Powder yet laid in, probably unaware of the bombshell dropped. Vi could not remember how well the walls kept sound out. “Send word to Kutter, Benzo, if you can be a lad.” 

 

“Haven’t been a lad in a few years now, but I like to think I have boyish good looks,” Benzo tried to joke. Vi blinked and looked back at Claggor once again. Who the fuck joked at a time like this? Claggor had the same look of surrender on his face as Vander when their father turned back to them. 

 

“Vander,” she started, voice low and lilting a little as if to try to set him at ease as she came forward. 

 

“Violet, I can’t ,” he answered immediately. 

 

“Alright. I’m going inside,” the broad boy to Vi’s left announced. All at once, Claggor had lost his fight. A part of Vi couldn’t believe she was watching him walk away instead of argue. Even if sometimes passive, Claggor wasn’t a coward. 

 

“I have to keep us safe,” Vander continued as Claggor shut the door behind himself a moment later, between heavy, slow trudging steps. “I have to keep us together. I can’t let any of us get hurt and I can’t turn the Lanes into my own personal warzone.” 

 

“But Silco did. Silco’s already doing that,” she tried to reason. She badly, desperately wanted him to grasp onto the logic she herself was having trouble holding onto. Instead, the only swell of emotion she earned from her father was anger. 

 

“Well, I’m not Silco and I won’t do it!” Vander kicked hard at a stone at his feet which soared off into the smog. It didn’t come anywhere near hitting the shack or herself or Benzo. Still, the force of the action and the anger behind it cowed her more than him yelling at her. His shouting yesterday had been the first time she could remember him doing so outside of her directly endangering herself or one of the others. 

 

This was different than that.

 

Vi looked at the man who raised her, who really raised her. She remembered him clearer and more completely than she did her own mother or father and that had to go doubly so for Powder. Yet, after this eruption she saw him do something else new. Reminiscent of the aforementioned sister, Vander wrapped his arms about himself and leaned inward. That was what made Vi turn away. Not the yelling nor the kicked stone. It was watching the person she’d always counted on to chase away helplessness and self-loathing and dread crumble in defeat. 

 

That sent her into the hut where she laid back down between Mylo’s bed and Powder’s. Into the building where Powder asked rubbing at her eyes what was wrong,  why Vander was yelling and why they were back in their old ‘house.’ These were all questions that her herb-addled mind would probably let go of for a little bit longer if Vi didn’t answer. 

 

Besides, she couldn’t scrape up the will to make things clear. 

 

“You get some rest,” she told her sister with a shaking voice. “Everything will be okay,” she lied.

 

If I hadn’t focused on getting payback on Silco.

 

If I hadn’t let Powder out of my sight at Benzo’s. 

 

If I hadn’t let Deckard hit Mylo with that gauntlet

 

If I hadn’t let Deckard beat me. .

 

If I hadn’t given away that I was turning myself in to topside. 

 

If I hadn’t taken Powder topside when she wasn’t ready. 

 

If I hadn’t taken the job to begin with. 

 

Every step of the way, Vi could track a decision she’d made that led to the shit they were in. Her decisions brought Powder’s broken arm. Mylo’s groggy, sore anger, face half-obscured by his topside respirator. Now, she knew her choices had led them to lose everything else. The worst part was that all she could do was curl up on the floors of a structure she thought she’d left behind in the most desperate and painful parts of her past. Any moment, she expected to see their parents from the corners of her eyes, like scowling ghosts. 

 

Mylo couldn’t stand to take a leak and Powder was in so much pain she was drugged to a point of near incoherence. 

 

Almost lost them both, Vi told herself as she looked at her own bandaged left arm wrapped up below her to serve as a pillow. And it would’ve been your fault. It wasn’t like life in the undercity was good but it was their home. This was their life. She sat up when a jolt of self-loathing told her she did not deserve to sleep and buried her face against her knees. Slowly, Vi inhaled and hissed against her pants’ leg that she needed to stop feeling sorry for herself. 

 

Beside and above her, Mylo rolled over and whispered her name in curiosity. Vi closed her eyes and tried to think, but if anything that backfired. When was the last time she’d ever felt like this? 

 

“Vi?” Mylo prodded, no longer sounding grumpy but still groggy and concerned. “Vi what’s going on? You’re scaring me.” She pushed to her feet and took six hard, firm steps across the floor toward the door. Claggor stepped out from the other ‘room’ in the ‘house’ and slowed her progress. He looked hopeful, renewed. Most of all, he looked expectant. Behind her, Mylo and Powder both just looked confused. 

 

“What’s the plan?’ Claggor asked immediately, looking down at her hand. She found it clenched in a tight fist. “We going after Silco?” 

 

Vi could only gape, standing in the middle of the building with three people waiting for her to say anything to them. No, she thought, eyeing where Claggor had been sat a moment ago to find Ekko practically crouched waiting to jump up and join them. Anything to avoid being separated from Benzo. Vi wasn’t thick enough not to read heartbreak on the boy’s face. Her free hand covered her mouth. Why had she been trying to leave just now? What had her plan been? Mylo and Powder were asking questions at her back. Claggor and Ekko were practically at attention. 

 

They were all waiting on her. 

 

Willing to go to ‘war’. 

 

Vi turned on the spot to go back to her position between Mylo and Powder but they were both relatively awake and upset, aware, waiting. Several seconds passed before Mylo said her name again and she dropped both hands. Her fists opened and she returned to her spot between her injured siblings. With a thud, she sat down hard enough her tailbone complained and then she laid right back down and curled up. 

 

“I don’t know,” she said before she closed her eyes. She hoped they understood that that answer was to any question that they could reasonably, justifiably pose to her. She just did not know. The good news was that after a few days trapped in Benzo’s, she was used to losing herself in silence. The bad news was Vander didn’t stay outside forever. Presumably once Benzo had limped off to his shop Vander did come back in. The man’s large frame shook his seat as he settled on a bench that used to have a small table in front of it. Claggor and Ekko were already waiting there. 

 

“What’s going on?” Mylo asked Vander, uneasy beside her. She looked only at the pile of scrap cloth, cardboard and paper that served as Powder’s place of rest and healing. 

 

“I had a plan for us,” Vander started. “A plan where you all grew up safe. It was a good damn plan too. We all worked to make the Lanes a better place together. You were each happy and chased your potentials. Life was better. ” Mylo slowly sat up and Vi didn’t blame him. If she did not know what Vander’s coming announcement was, she would worry one of them had died. 

 

Vi felt Mylo’s eyes on her back, though. 

 

“That plan - it’s falling through. What do you do when a plan goes bad?” The question seemed less rhetorical and more genuine. He clearly wanted a response and maybe because he wasn’t so sure of the answer himself. Vi could not look up to give it. 

 

“You - uh, you improvise,” Claggor offered. 

 

“That’s right,” Vander agreed, voice fading to a whisper as he trailed off. Three seconds passed before he continued as if he had not paused at all. “That’s right. You improvise. You improvise so that you can get out of there, regroup and make a new plan.” 

 

“What do you mean?” Mylo and Powder questioned in unison. 

 

“We’re going to be leaving the undercity as soon as arrangements are made,” every time Vander paused, his final word softened and seemed to fade half-formed as if he did not have the breath to finish it. “We’re going to leave Piltover.” 

 

“ What? ” Mylo questioned, incredulous. 

 

“Lie back down,” Vander said by way of an answer. “There’s a good lad.” She did not hear Mylo listen. Instead she heard more movement above her and heard his leg swing down to the ground behind her back. 

 

“Vi,” Mylo chided as if leaning over her . “Tell him this is crazy.” This, at last, told Vi she had to sit up. Instead of fire, though, she drew her knees to her chest and gazed down between them at the dirt-smeared floor, arms hanging between. She shook her head. “Vi, please,” Mylo begged. 

 

Actually, without exaggeration, Mylo pleaded. 

 

“You know this is insane. We can’t run away!” 

 

“We’re not running away,” Vander told whatever distant thing he spoke to instead of his gathered family and their closest friend. “We’re regrouping. Drafting a new plan somewhere calm. A new way for us to be safe. To be together and find a good life and chase our potentials.” The words sounded pleasant but they also sounded hollow even when he cleared his throat, seemed to come back to himself and tried to speak them fully. “When - not if, but when it’s safe, we’ll come back and set things right. Set the Lanes right and take our lives back.” Vander sounded a little more like himself Vi thought, but to her she could hear the defeat he’d held in every line and muscle of his face outside while in talks with Benzo. 

 

“Vi?” Mylo sounded small and far away, himself, as Claggor nodded. Powder was dead silent but it hurt to look at them both. Her sister’s face was twisted into terror and Mylo’s was of someone being swept down a river and desperately hoping for a branch or rope to be tossed in his path. When Vi just shook her head, Mylo looked angry, hurt - no, harmed . She looked down at the ground again. A patch of dirt she’d just been lying on clumped along the lines of the leg she’d just had dug into it. 

 

“We do what we always do. We survive no matter what they throw at us and do our best. This isn’t forever, this is for now. This is until it’s safe for us to come home.” 

 

Vi couldn’t help but think that without them making it safe with her own two hands, it would never happen. She couldn’t help but worry about just how long she had left in the only city she’d ever known. 

 

As it happened, the answer was two days. 

 

Two very quiet days involving little food and even less leaving the little shack were all that separated Vander’s peptalk and this. A topside imported dock worker Vi could not remember ever seeing before hefted a sizeable crowbar up and secured it firmly against one wall of a sizable crate. Only feet away, she and Powder crouched in wait on the old, filthy docks of Piltover. 

 

Mostly populated by undercity workers, the docks were kept running and that was it. No one cared how they looked, or smelled or what condition they were in as long as ships could tie off and set sail. That meant that as Vi’s nose stung against the air from the coast, it could also smell the filth assailing her hands and feet as she paused beside her sister. 

 

The worker looked once at her and Powder, then pointedly down at the ground in front of the crate before beginning to pry. Muscles rolled and tightened beneath a fine blue dockworker’s  uniform and a rotund if pleasant enough face twisted with exertion. Then, with less a crack and more of the sound of wood dragging on wood, one wall of the crate, larger than the man who’d pried it open by far, fell to the docks with a thud. 

 

Vi winced. Powder tensed. The momentarily one-armed tinkerer held her breath beside Vi. The man in front of them did not seem half as worried about the sound. 

 

Powder and Vi got a good look inside of the box. As they had observed with the other four crates here on the bottom of this astoundingly sized stack of them, their cargo crate contained bolts of fine cloth and neatly wrapped stacks of pre-produced garments. Frankly, if Vi hadn’t already seen first a groggy Mylo, then Claggor and Ekko and finally Vander move aside the contents of their own shipping crates to find space to hide in, she would be suspicious that this was a trap. 

 

Part of her still was, but no one jumped out to arrest them. 

 

Instead, the topsider continued to look away until, with an exhale, Vi moved Powder forward. It was not likely to be particularly easy for her little sister to scoot large bolts of cloth out of the way with one hand. It probably wouldn’t be any easier to move through small spaces with a bulky cast holding her arm to the front of her. So, Vi had to go first. 

 

They crossed the small gap from their hiding spot in the shadow of yet another stack of containers bound for the bowels of the sizable only a few feet from them. Once right at the edge of the crate, Vi stepped in front of Powder, who stumbled back to avoid running into her. While her sister slid on what looked like fresh bird shit, Vi seized a pair of large plastic wrapped cloth bolts and, with a shove, pushed them wide to the left. As when each of the others climbed into their own crates, the topside dock worker technically saw nothing of their activities. Vi glanced back to watch him stare behind himself while Powder squeezed through the hole she’d made.

 

Vi followed only to find Powder awkwardly trying to sit amid a soft nest of unspooled cloth waiting as both seat and potential cover for them. 

 

“Move those bolts back in place,” the topsider grumbled and Vi, who had just been about to settle into a cramped space with her younger sister, half-stood back up, seized the bolts and did as told. A grunt and a heave later, the fancy bolts of cloth were back where they ‘belonged.’ Vi did not think she’d ever touched anything worth as much money. On her knees and without much room to turn around, Vi slipped and fell backward onto her ass at the end of the haul. 

 

At least she had some rich Noxian asshole’s goods to land on. 

 

The issue came when her elbow bounced off of Powder’s arm. This caused the girl to inhale sharply and even whine. Vi silently reached up to pet Powder’s head, which Powder responded to by raising her free hand to knock hers away. Unfortunately, they had maybe half of a foot of free space not taken up by their bodies with which to make these movements or any others intent on making their journey more comfortable. They couldn’t spend the whole time batting at one another. 

 

Vi put to rest a sense of hurt at Powder’s rejection. She could let that sit with a lot of other feelings, though it did not like a particularly deep burial.

 

The topsider heaved their container’s open wall back into place and with a whir of his rather large and gun-shaped electric tool, locked it back into place with the rapid tightening of two nuts. 

 

Vi looked to see Powder’s response to this. She expected to see her sister intrigued by this tool, as she had been each time he’d closed up a crate before. Instead the Powder was watching her, too. Her sister took a moment to realize she’d been caught. Powder looked back down and huffed. 

 

“Sound off,” Claggor muttered as Vi and Powder’s crate rattled with two final blows tapped on the side of the box. This was the same goodbye the strange topsider had given the rest of their family. “Claggor and Ekko here.” This voice sounded nearby and, to her imagination, it made sense if it was coming from the box directly to her left. 

 

“Mylo,” croaked the next voice from right in front of her. “Reiterating that this is a stupid idea and a stupid plan and if we wanna break out and run I’m all in.” 

 

“You are not,” Vander answered from off to the back. Or maybe  since it was facing the end of the pier, Vander was technically in the front of the pile. Vi wasn’t entirely clear why they’d been placed in the oversized crates on the bottom of a stack of boxes. To her that sounded like a great way for something to break and crush them but she was not about to ask. She did not think she’d like the answer any more than anything else said to her all day. 

 

A flexible metal band she’d seen the topsider carrying slammed against the side of their crate and the wood on that edge nearly splintered as that gun of his drove one, two, three and finally a fourth large bolt through the holes in said band and into the box. Between the sea birds, the water and the crane hanging from the back of the ISS Iconagra, Vi thought the racket would cover up anything they might say or do. Frankly, even with the crane hard at work on another load of cargo, she thought they could have a conversation and not likely run afoul of Piltover Port Authority. 

 

Very little light made it in between the wooden slats that made up the box to begin with, but the various bolts of cloth made a pretty good shield to hide them. It was dark enough that Powder were not so close that Vi should have been able to count the various strands of her braid, Vi was not sure she’d be able to pick out any details about her sister. The girl breathed slowly through her mouth. Powder was clearly trying to remain calm in an admittedly unfamiliar situation. It wasn’t the hiding or law breaking that was so strange, it was the whole idea of sneaking under topside noses onto a vessel, if Vi had to guess. She lifted the arm closest to Powder and carefully wrapped it around the girl’s back. She managed not to jostle Powder’s right arm or shoulder. 

 

“It’ll be okay,” Vi said. Beside her, Powder opened her eyes and looked up once, before blinking. Vi tracked movement from the corners of the bluenette’s eyes and knew tears were rolling down her cheeks. Tears that didn’t make immediate sense. “Powder?” 

 

“You’re not mad anymore?” her sister asked, immediately. “At me, I mean.” 

 

“What are you talking about?” Vi turned more completely toward Powder. It wasn’t easy, but they had just enough space to do that much, at least. 

 

“You didn’t talk to me at all yesterday or the day before,” Powder told her, voice low and cautious and eyes no longer meeting her own.  

 

Vi wanted to argue. The truth was, when she thought back, she couldn’t pin down a time her mouth had opened and words had come out. Confused, she tried to come up with a response but couldn’t land on one that didn’t make it sound like she was telling Powder ‘it’s not all about you.’ So, Vi took a moment to contemplate things from her younger sister’s perspective. 

 

Far from just having your arm broken and your life ripped away, imagine that the people you trusted and relied on the most all shut down at once. Including your sister. 

 

Vi squeezed Powder’s left shoulder with her left hand, nervous about giving her any kind of actual hug and hurting her right arm again. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Powder told her. She had not gathered that Vi wasn’t mad at her. Vi wasn’t sure if she was mad at all. She wasn’t sure what she’d been the last couple of days. “It’s my fault we’re leaving but please don’t be-” Vi released her completely and took Powder’s face in her hands in very clear, firm motions. 

 

“It is not,” she exclaimed. “You are not the one who fucked everything up.” From beyond the confines of their crate, Claggor growled a name. 

 

“Silco.” 

 

Mylo just grumbled. 

 

Vi was too focused on Powder to correct either of them. 

 

“I was - I was scared you hated me. I got hurt and then we had to leave and - and,” Vi exhaled, pulled Powder in close and knew the best thing for any of them that she could do was just let Powder work it out herself. 

 

It was true that sometimes her sister’s mind was very self-focused and self-centered. It wasn’t in a cruel or mean way, either. Instead it was like she lived on the edge of fear that everyone around her was one bad day away from hurting or hating her. It hadn’t been this bad even weeks ago, but things had only been getting progressively worse. Powder and Mylo had been clashing over the dumbest things even before the topside job.

 

Something had cut her thoughtful, creative sister’s blooming confidence off at the knees. 

 

“Shh,” Vi whispered. “I’m not mad at you. I’m just sorry. I’m sorry you got hurt. I’m sorry Mylo got hurt and I’m sorry we’re leaving.” Powder leaned her head against VI’s shoulder and simply waited out the moment. Vi felt like shit for having put all of them in this spot, for giving Powder an excuse to blame herself. As bad as she felt about having put all of them in this spot or having given Powder any reason to blame herself, it only became worse when someone reinforced her own complicitness in their fate. 

 

“Sorry doesn’t stop this stupid shit,” Mylo said from his own crate. If he heard that, then she was still talking too loudly. They all were. “Sorry doesn’t get our home back.” 

 

“Hey,” Claggor started. 

 

“All of you, be quiet,” Vander’s voice cut through multiple wood and cloth barriers, sounding clear and cross. “We get on that ship, they pry us out and you can talk all you want. Until we’re aboard and set sail, I don’t want to hear another word.” 

 

Vi was only stopped from curling into a ball by Powder pressed to her side. She had been responsible for some real fuck ups in her life, real mistakes with real consequences. She still couldn’t remember ever feeling like this before. 

 

Mylo calling her out so directly, while earned, felt like someone scooping her insides out with a spoon and dumping them out on the docks as if she were the morning’s catch. Her ‘new’ shirt, (someone’s hand-me-down as all things were,) already wet from Powder’s frustrated tears, wrinkled as Vi slipped sideways into a lying position and took the smaller girl with her. Powder’s hiss suggested this, too, jostled the injured arm. 

 

Vi just thought that they might as well get ‘comfortable’ with what space they had.

 

The two laid that way for a few minutes before a voice out on the docks spoke seemingly out of nowhere. 

 

The stranger had a thick accent Vi recognized as belonging to someone who was born speaking one of the two Noxian dialects, Va-Nox. Just about every kid in the undercity picked up a handful of useful words in the tongue and really, only ninety percent of those were curse words. Either way, the accent was so common in the west of the undercity it was nothing new or hard for her to parse through. 

 

“These crates will be on top of the ones above them now, once they’re loaded onto the ship.” Vi and Powder met eyes, wondering exactly who this stranger was speaking to only feet away from their hiding places. “Once they’re on board and we’re a quartermile out to sea, someone will have you lot out of there, bring you to the captain. She’ll give you a peppy talk and I’ll show you to some tight quarters in the cargo bay. Until then, lie on the nice rich peoples’ soft clothes and think how fun you get to use them before they do. And if a shirt vanishes, who’s going to know?” There’s no way this guy’s not talking to us, is there? 

 

“If no one at all understands what I’m saying, one of no one knock three times, please.”

 

Six, seven and then eight seconds passed before someone, she thought it to be Vander, rapped on the side of their cargo crate. 

 

“Good show, good show,” the man mused for a second before shouting. “Okay, got ‘em over here!” 

 

Immediately, Vi’s heart tried to kick its way out of her chest at the idea that their big ‘escape’ plan had been derailed so completely and suddenly. 

 

“That’s right, gentlefolk, I want this stack loaded on next, understood?” Having gone from exhausted and self-pitying to tense and back so quickly, Vi felt a deranged urge to laugh. They weren’t being sold out. They were being given priority.’ Oddly, it was Powder who stifled a giddy laugh with part of their nest of cloth. This forced Vi to use her own hand, instead. 

 

“And take it easy, this is precious cargo.”

 

Vi corrected her own thinking with some self-chiding. It wasn’t the crew they had ever been instructed to avoid by Vander or Benzo or their contact who could talk to this ‘Kutter’ and his people. It had always been the Piltover Port Authority. 

 

Then again, every kid in the Lanes knew not to cross the PPA because it was a one way ticket to trouble with the enforcers. I might never have to worry about enforcers again, she thought to herself. At least, not Piltover’s. 

 

However the lone man who had just been speaking to them had snuck up on them, his labor crew did not. She could pick out at least eight or nine sets of footsteps approaching and overhead something heavy creaking and shaking. For all the metal clanging, it was safe to say the crane was being lowered into place to load their containers aboard the hulking ISS Iconagra. She picked a few Va-Nox words out of the conversations happening among the crew around her but quite a lot of it was in Piltovan. She did grow a little more nervous as she picked out the notably hard consonants and drawn soft vowels of Noxus’ other common tongue, Ur-Nox. 

 

Powder began to burrow into the cloth beneath and around them and Vi decided, as dark as it was, she might as well follow suit. How will we talk to anyone? Vi questioned, pulling either someone’s quilt or an unwound bolt of fabric over both herself and Powder and pressing her forehead against the top of her sister’s. No one in the family, not even Vander, had let on knowing much more Va-Nox than the usual ‘fuck you’ and ‘your breath smells like Enforcer ass.’ She only hoped his time being taught by someone from the ‘Noxian Underground’ meant Vander was holding onto a trick or two he had never let on about. 

 

“That’s the hook,” Powder whispered right in her ear shortly after something heavy struck the side of the boxes above their own. Vi tilted her head up, then felt silly. She wasn’t going to see through solid wood. They heard a good deal of struggling and a thick click. Vi shushed Powder with a soft exhale. She was glad the situation had distracted her sister but she was also not sure who exactly might be standing outside until they were off the docks. Vi kept her eyes closed beneath the cloth where the air was warm and a little stifling. 

 

She did not open them when straps around the stack of crates they waited in went tight, nor a moment later when the box began to rock back and forth. She held them shut as she felt the box holding her lifted from the ground. Somehow, despite being in the dark, Powder must’ve known.  Vi felt her sister reach her left hand around at a very uncomfortable angle to grab Vi’s and squeeze. Vi squeezed back. 

 

Chains being cranked around some central point by an engine above them accompanied the surprisingly careful, slow ascent of their crates. They were dragged from the docks but not just left on the faded blue and orange vessel’s deck. Judging by the way that almost no light peered through the cracks in the container when they were finally still and Vi drew up the courage to peek, they’d been let down and into the cargo hold below. She wasn’t scared of any particular aspect of the process. Fear was not what had made her not want to look. It was just that she had not wanted to watch the moment they left the docks, to see the moment any hope at changing what was happening today slipped away. 

 

The straps the crane used to grab hold of and move them fell with a clatter to the floor of the cargo hold as the crew hurriedly unwrapped their stack. She could hear them at work well below her, which did fit with what the stranger on the docks had said about their boxes being on top of the ones they’d just been under. This meant they were probably a good ten or more feet in the air. It also made it easier to hear the sounds of the crew that dragged the straps away to bring the next pile of crates aboard and the ones hard at work at other tasks. 

 

While there was a good deal of curt, short professionalism, especially with what sounded like Piltover Port Authority officers, the crew itself seemed at ease and jovial. The bits of Piltovan she heard made her think they were talking in equal measure about their work and ‘Panel making his famous stew’. 

 

Over the next tense two or three hours she and Powder shared the occasional barely-visible confused look as they listened to the crew eagerly discussing basic supplies brought on board for them like treasured gifts given by loving relatives. She had heard people get this excited to have some toilet paper and toothpaste more than a few times, but the eagerness with which one woman of clear Noxian descent declared that the crew was now the proud owner of six brand new oil lanterns almost distracted Vi from the abhorrent wrongness of the day. 

 

It was all she could do not to laugh, but that passed very quickly and only left behind the oddity of it all. 

 

Other than a few loud clatters when tools were dropped and one near-accident across the hold involving a toppled crate, the rest of the cargo loading went on like this: relatively controlled but full of the most bizarre tidings of happy news. Though, she guessed she could understand the people sharing a sigh of relief at word that they’d loaded on an entire palette of Piltovan ale. When you were on the sea but off duty, exactly how much was there to do that did not involve food, drink or ‘fraternization?’

 

Won’t be any fraternizing, here. 

 

A general sense of hubbub and echoed calls in voices was the only warning the family received when it came time for the ship to ‘shove off’. Even the sound of raising what had to be a very heavy anchor was somehow missed in the ‘excitement’ of onloading the Iconogra’s cargo for its return trip to Noxus. Vi wasn’t complaining. Powder had grown used to the sounds enough that, though she was most certainly not asleep, she was calm and still and had stopped moving. This meant both that Vi was not elbowed in the ribs as frequently and Powder’s arm probably hurt a lot less.

 

What Vi was outright confused by was the fact that no sooner had she gotten some sense that the vessel was moving then there came a clatter of wood and metal against the side of their stack of cargo crates. 

 

“Get the ramps up there!” The same voice whose owner had come along to set them at ease when they were still firmly on the docks now called an order with no malice, but confidence and ease. Vi and Powder surfaced from their cloth cocoon with care and caution. Vi rose to her knees and silenced any protest from Powder with one raised hand before shouldering the nearest bolt of cloth aside. With that out of the way, Vi could press her face right up against the wall of the crate and peek through the gaps in the wood.

 

She could see down to a small sea (not that kind, clearly) of gray and red moving about on the floor quite a few feet down. 

 

“We’ve got a sick passenger,” the man continued. Vi blinked at this. Did they somehow know about Mylo or…? Sure enough, several long and surprisingly wide boards that would serve well enough for ramps down from their hiding spots began to rise from the small crowd below in quick, coordinated efforts. 

 

What couldn’t have been more than five minutes after the vessel began moving, the only sounds Vi could pick out around her were coming from two or three of the large, vaguely gun-shaped autoratchets she’d seen on the docks. These led not only to a quick unwrapping of the iron band holding their four crates in place as one unit but a quick lowering of the outer walls of each crate. Blearily, as soon as theirs fell, Vi crawled out first.. 

 

A cheerful looking vastaya sailor waited at the top of the ramp. One bear-claw hand extended toward her even as they pawned the heavy looking ratchet gun off on a pale red yordle who proceeded to repel to the ground carrying it. Vi followed the rope backwards, up above her head. The Yordle had been climbing down from atop the boxes. 

 

Vi got halfway down the ramp, a few steps behind the vastaya in the deep gray and red filigree’d uniform. Behind her, Powder awkwardly crawled the first few feet past the turned cloth bolt at the edge of their box and then stood with a stoop (even though she did not need to) to reach out with her left hand. The large, bear vastaya helped her down with a friendly growl of, ‘that’s the ticket.’ Once Powder was far enough down the ramp, the vastaya handed her off to Vi. 

 

Together, the sisters reached the floor of the cargo hold by climbing carefully down the steep makeshift ramp. Wearing a very similar uniform though with less decoration and far more red overall, a pitch black haired human man was talking to the yordle from before. Behind the two sailors, Mylo tried to wave off both Vander and Ekko’s attempts to get him to sit down. Though, he was clearly tired enough to lean against a nearby crate. 

 

“Essy, good work as always. No one looked twice.” The yordle gave a shrug. “Probably wouldn’t have known to peek but, appreciate you working your magic.” 

 

“It’s just a little of this,” the yordle said, glancing at Vi as they (she, Vi suspected to be the right pronouns) noticed the sisters watching. The sailor emitted a flash of light from their left hand which broke into individual yellow sparks and hung in place above her.  “And a whole lot of this.” Her right hand opened and drew the sparks in all at once, amusing Powder enough to earn a smile. Not even magic could yank one of those out of Vi. 

 

She just wanted to know that this day was as over as it could be. 

 

“Yes, yes, now do a whole lot of ‘this’ while double checking we got our whole order from Hoskel, please. If he fucked up and we don’t send word ahead, I’ll have to talk to port authority in person.” The pale red yordle’s wide tufted ears flicked once and came to rest curved above her head. This was either acknowledgment of her orders or an expression of disappointment, judging by the look on her face. She still slipped off to work without another word. 

 

Once Claggor had finished joining the rest of the family on the ground ( floor, Vi corrected herself) Vander made quick contact with each person he had not yet spoken to: a hug for Powder, pat on Claggor’s back, and a hand on Vi’s head. 

 

Then he turned toward the somewhat severe if sun-weathered looking man waiting in front of them with his hands and a clipboard behind his back. Vander stepped forward, offering a handshake and received it quickly and firmly in response from their benefactor. The stranger’s demeanor shifted almost immediately from ‘stern boss’ to a relatively affable grin. It looked far too pleased for anyone to have any right to wear, as far as Vi was concerned. 

 

Vander was, apparently, satisfied with the silent introduction because he turned back, drawing Vi’s attention in the process to the crew scrambling to essentially cover up any sign they had ever opened these crates. She watched blankly for a few moments as each of the cargo containers they’d just been in were sealed, rebanded and the ramps were wheeled away by two or three souls each. A couple ramps still had their coworkers aboard. 

 

“Your crew’s damned efficient at that,” Vander said, impressed enough Vi found it to be a little excessive. They just tossed a few ratchet guns around and pushed planks on wheels.

 

“Walk with me, you lot, captain’s at the other end of the hold and wants to talk. Nothing serious, just policy.” Vander shot a look back at Mylo who didn’t really react until Vi turned to look as well. At this, the boy scoffed and practically mean-mugged her. If he didn’t want anyone worrying about him, Vi decided she wasn’t going to waste the energy. Truth was, she didn’t feel very strong, mind or body at the moment. If Powder hadn’t taken Vi’s right hand as they set off toward either the back or the front of the vessel, she might have chosen to lope behind instead of bothering to keep up with the others. 

 

“Will do,” Vander answered. 

 

“We do this fairly often in both directions so we’ve got things down to a science here, if you want the honest truth. As long as you’re not topside - ah, that is to say top deck - within the next ten or twenty minutes you should be fine. Got to say, though, we do a lot more smuggling political refugees out of Noxus. Doing it in reverse is interesting, too.” The Noxian accent, thick as it was, seemed diluted by another tongue. Vi couldn’t place her finger on it but she was absolutely certain listening to the yet unnamed man ramble that he had been the one to talk to them on the docks. They want to leave Noxus and come here and here we are going backwards, she thought, bitterly. 

 

As opposed to the sunburnt, stocky and relatively built sailor leading them, the captain was tall, pale and the kind of rail-thin Powder was. She also couldn’t be mistaken for anything but the captain as she tasked each sailor in her sight, hanging on the bottom step of the crane as it eased down on its own, very large lift from the deck. Vi would bet anything the captain knew a thing or two about going to bed on empty stomachs and swiping bread to end a long hunger streak.

 

“Busy as hell today, so forgive the short introduction - we’ll do it right, later,” the captain called the moment her large, dark eyes landed on the family. “Won’t be any creature comforts on the ship, not really, but I suspect you’re used to that and if you’re leaving Piltover on this ship you aren’t thinking about it anyway. Good news is we have food and water enough for everyone and a friend of yours has paid for the journey, start to finish. If, however, you feel any undue pity for these sorry sods,” she gave a general wave of a hand toward the crew members scrambling away with their assignments, “over the next two weeks and six days, you go see that one,” the captain nodded to their guide who was wearing a very similarly plain uniform to her own, Vi thought. “They’ll set you up with some duties. Or you can sit back and enjoy the ride. Speaking of  - I’m told one of you shouldn’t be on their feet?” 

 

Vi was the only person present, including the person who’d led them the impressive length of the entire cargo hold, who did not turn and immediately point at Mylo. This meant she was the one of them who didn’t receive his frustration and attitude which she thought made a nice change. Ekko slipped away from Mylo to reunited with Powder where the two confirmed, oh so slyly, that they each still had the tool packs they’d ‘smuggled’ aboard under their shirts. The packs were well beyond the one bag of stuff each they’d been allowed to take. 

 

All the while, the lift the captain was riding continued to whir away a little too loudly for Vi’s taste. Everything here was a little too loud for her taste except, oddly, the sea. She could barely hear the sea, itself. To go seaside or down to the docks usually meant hearing the waves or the rocking of ships in the harbor. The activity around them blanketed all of that.

 

“We don’t know much about sailing,” Vander started, “but the rest of us can do some heavy lifting and hauling. Well - those of us with all working limbs.” 

 

“Good, but hear me, man: if you offer again I’m likely to take you up on it,” the captain spoke fine Piltovan and without much accent Vi could place. She half expected to trace her eyes over the captain’s white hair and her strangely youthful, unlined face and recognize the woman. Yet, Vi couldn’t place any specifics except to guess her to be older than it first appeared. The captain she practically shuffled down from the step she’d been stood on as the lift finally, mercifully reached the floor of the hold. 

 

Wouldn’t mind putting my bag down, she thought. 

 

“My right hand will bring you to your quarters. It’s down in the hold, sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Easier if we get boarded off the coast to avoid any government inspections if you’re already in a room made to look like just more crates.” 

 

They were summarily dismissed with only a few moments of back and forth between Vander and the captain which Vi tuned out entirely. She had been looking forward to finding out where they’d be staying while on the vessel. This was only so she could go to bed and not bother moving again for as much of the voyage as possible. Vi was not entirely pleased to discover a few moments later that the space they were allotted was basically one room the size of the common area of The Last Drop’s basement behind a wall made up of parts of the same kind of cargo containers they’d just been hidden in. On the inside curtains had been hung over the walls and the space had been filled by a small table, a loveseat and three cots rammed side by side. Someone had thrown in old blankets to make them more comfortable, at least. 

 

The “chairs” for the table were - you guessed it - yet more boxes. 

 

“Well,” Vi said upon giving one sweeping glance of the place after their guide opened the door. “Better on the inside than the outside, I’d say.” She didn’t want to offend the captain’s right hand by telling him that their attempts to make the room look ‘nice’ only made it feel smaller. 

 

“That’s the way I’d look at it,” the seaman agreed. Vander ducked in after her with Powder and Ekko on his tail. 

 

“Alright,” Vander nodded after one quick look around. “Not bad digs for being the cargo being smuggled. Mylo, Powder and Ekko: take the cots. Claggor and Vi can trade off on the loveseat.” 

 

“Give me a blanket and I’ll take the floor,” Vi responded with a shrug as she crossed the ‘room’ to a nearby porthole. There, she could look right out onto the sea. When she reached the edge of the hull she secured, finally, the sound of waves in her ears. At least things made more sense that way. 

 

The sunlight glittering off of the sea outside didn’t strike her as especially beautiful. 

 

“No can do, floor’s my bed,” Vander shot back, jovially. “You can’t have it.” Mylo dropped onto the cot nearest her with a word to no one else. For once she didn’t mark it down to his attitude. Her smaller brother looked utterly exhausted. She allowed herself one more look at a vast field of gray-blue water. 

 

“I’ll sleep in the cargo hold, then,” she shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.” After a few seconds of silence in the room behind her, Vi turned back. Most of the others had eagerly claimed their spots by setting down their bag, so Vi sat hers beside the table as Vander watched her. She looked away from his hesitant expression. 

 

“I was only kidding,” he promised, quietly. She shrugged, mostly to dissuade him of the notion she was worried at all. At this point, she could happily find a quiet corner to stuff herself into as she might have when she was younger and just spend the journey sleeping there. It didn’t really matter, anymore.

 

“Right,” the seaman at the door continued after another uncomfortable moment of silence. “Well, you can bring food back here from the galley come mealtime and eat as a family if you want. Or if you want the change of scenery, you can eat up there with the crew. Thing is, we can’t really spare anyone to run meals back to you. You’ll have to come on down, or up, in this case, and grab them. It won’t be great, we live off the few things we can grab from the sea while in port and whatever long-lasting rations can be brought on. Tonight’s a pretty simple fish stew but tomorrow’s as likely to be Sailor’s Pie as not.  Should be a few minutes still dinner’s served but we have fresh ingredients now we won’t have later so I recommend you take advantage.” Vi let Vander talk to the man and like the others simply sat herself on one of the crate-stools and listened. Vander turned down an offer of a ration of grog a day with a laugh before asking the name of the stocky man who’d helped them along several steps of this entire process. 

 

“Shit. Didn’t mean to leave you all in the dark that long,” their benefactor quickly said, as if to apologize. “Faire. I’m Faire.” Vi thought he was genuinely distraught at the misunderstanding.

 

“Vander,” her father introduced himself before pointing at each of them in turn. “This is Violet, Powder, Ekko, Mylo, and Claggor.” Each got a quick nod in turn that Vi did not bother to return. “Before you take off, do you know where we’re making landfall in Noxus?” The stranger gave a quick shake of the head. 

 

“Couple different ports and I don’t know which one you’ll be disembarking at. Captain should, so ask her when you come by the mess. She typically eats with the crew unless there’s too much paperwork or she’s ill.” 

 

“That doesn’t happen a lot, does it?” Vander asked, his voice lowering and brows knitting together. “Crew getting ill?” Vi thought he might be worried about Mylo with the way his eyes shifted toward the boy. Mylo gazed down at his nails, pretending to look utterly disinterested in the conversation the rest of them were openly observing. Brat. 

 

“Captain has some kind of condition,” Faire told them with a quick wave of a hand she hadn’t noticed was gloved before. Come to think of it, their other hand was not gloved. “Nothing commun- er,” the Piltovan word tripped him up for just a moment, but Faire stumbled into clarifying: “nothing that catches. Just flares up sometimes and she goes down for a few days. The rest of us only get sick if there’s bad food or water on board which typically doesn’t happen on the Piltover side of things. Our cook’s pretty damned careful on our way out of Noxus, too.”

 

Every time someone who had ever even visited Noxus spoke about the empire, Vi hated what was happening here, more. 

 

“Why? Is the water bad there, too?” Powder squeaked out from the edge of her cot between Mylo’s and Ekko’s. The two youngest of the stowaways were surreptitiously taking stock of their shared tool supply, mostly things like a rusty ratchet, a hammer and screwdriver with broken handles and similarly defective gear tossed into the dumps of Piltover. Vi had helped them scavenge most of it over the last couple of years in particular. 

 

“Not really,” Faire told her, leaning against the open door of their quarters. Vi hoped the conversation ended soon, as kind as Faire had been. She did not feel friendly or even slightly inclined to talk to anyone. “Not to be too mean about people,” he started regretfully, “but some people just don’t care. Anyway, back to work for me. Thought I’d let you know to pop down in say, an hour and lunch should be getting started. Dinner won’t be til long after sundown and might just be whatever leftover stew there is and bread.” 

 

“Lunch and Dinner as part of your pay? Not the worst gig,” Vander told him, though Vi noted the relief in his voice. Maybe he wanted the guy gone as much as she did. 

 

“You think that’s good, it’s too bad you won’t be here to see the first officer’s birthday. Really likes to show off, a real glory hog. Makes sure there’s proper alcohol on board.” 

 

“That so?” Vander asked with a raised eyebrow.

 

“First Officer Fairelund is kind of a preening egotist,” Faire said conspiratorially, gesturing to some symbol hanging from his uniform that she assumed was supposed to confirm that he was speaking about himself. “Don’t tell them I said anything, though.” As the young man with the leathery skin turned to get back to work, Vander chuckled and seemed truly at ease for the first time all day. Vi hoped this meant she could find a corner of the room to sleep in now and maybe wake up back home with this whole day having been the worst dream of her life.

Chapter 8: Chapter Eight

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Eight

 

“You know, sometimes I am jealous,” Vi admitted as she somewhat clumsily wrapped one long, carefully gathered chord of her sister’s freshly combed out hair around another. It was starting to get pretty oily, but the crew was on twice weekly showers. This was apparently due to some sort of malfunction with the systems, but, we’ll still have twice as many chances to get clean as usual, she thought, darkly. “Don’t have hair you can do stuff like this with - usually don’t want it, but it is cool.” Powder’s response, however, back turned to her, was to huff a little. 

 

“I’m not a little kid, you don’t have to talk to me like that.” 

 

“Like what?” Vi asked, a bit off put by the response. She’d just been trying to make conversation in what was otherwise an aggressively quiet room at the time. 

 

“Fake,” Powder shot back. Though she could not turn her head on her cot to look back at Vi, Vi could still imagine her sister’s face twisting grumpily. It didn’t help that it was still exceedingly early morning. Judging by the view out of the only porthole they had access to in their little hidden quarters, the sun had probably only been up for an hour or two. Something about the comment hurt enough that at first, Vi wanted to swallow her words and not really continue talking. 

 

“Powder, I’m not talking down to you. I’m just trying to help, here.” While an attempt to sound rational and reasoning, this just ended up a complaint. Vi heard the whine in her own voice and definitely worked to swallow that down. Her eyes slid sideways toward the last person she’d tried to help. Mylo, seeing her looking at him, huffed and turned to Claggor as if to engage him in conversation. Claggor, in contrast, raised both hands as if to steer clear of their tense moment. 

 

“I get it, but you’re not talking like yourself.” At the least, Powder sounded calmer and less upset with her and so Vi took the cooling down of the moment as a sign to turn back and continue the work of braiding her hair. Powder had long since taken over doing this herself. Vi frequently imagined it had to be annoying as hell, taking up time every morning. As annoying as it might be, it was now more or less impossible. Powder only had mobility in one arm. At least Powder’s pretending to put up with me trying to help. Mylo’s bitterness at her offering him a glass of water earlier had been not been cowing: Mylo didn’t scare her for a second. It had hurt, though. 

 

“You’re imagining things,” Vi said. The truth was, this was probably a lie. To a degree, she was talking ‘fake’. It felt as if she had a responsibility to sound more cheerful than she felt. That was both no easy task and not a very high bar to pass. She did not feel anything that was even distantly related to happy. Lying about that was better than telling her sister the truth. Viwas only really talking at all because she didn’t want Powder to get worried that she was mad at her again. 

 

That was a conclusion the younger girl had a tendency to get to entirely on her own. It honestly confused and scared her a little

 

“‘bout time for food isn’t it?” Claggor asked the room at large. He was either trying to change the mood as he turned back toward Mylo or just genuinely hungry. Vi felt no real harmonious hunger flare at the question. Faire had been right about one thing: the food became pretty basic, bland stuff after the first two days’ meals. 

 

“Four days,” Vi muttered low enough Powder and maybe Ekko could hear her. “Four days, out of more than two weeks. I almost wish I was seasick to have something to do.” The joke did not land, though a few feet away, Ekko lay with his head at the foot of his cot and smiled briefly up in their direction. Her fingers settled back into a rhythm, the old work familiar again and muscle memory kicking in. 

 

Vi was thinking mostly about finishing this and finding her escape from their hidden little home on the ship. She knew many of the crew shared barracks and even most of the officers doubled up. Half of them would probably kill to have only five other people in their room. 

 

Vi felt crowded all the same. Especially when she was forced to pay attention to her surroundings instead of just sit, rest and think. Usually it was an outside influence that forced that but, not always. Sometimes anger or guilt built up too strongly and chased her out of that sort of quiet distant, empty place she retreated to. Thinking about all that should’ve been a warning. Instead, a moment later, a wave washed over the bow and took her by surprise.

 

“Was this worth it?” Mylo asked, his words rather vague, his tone flat and almost searching. Vi’s eyes slid in his direction as she slowed. Sure enough, his own green were looking directly at her from beneath bushy brow. Unlike his words, his expression was not vague, flat or searching. Mylo’s eyes were angry. The anger made her stomach churn and put something she would never admit to being a lump in her throat.

 

It was hard not to trace the line of events that nearly stuck him completely prone on a cot in the cargo hold of a ship at sea back to the job topside in Piltover. 

 

What if the question he’d just asked came from those same thoughts? 

 

Was it worth it? Was this stupid job worth it? Shouldn’t she just have ignored Little Man’s intel and marked it down as too dangerous? 

 

“Hey,” Vi was brought back to reality by a hiss from Powder. “You’re pulling too hard.” She turned back to her sister. 

 

“Sorry,” she apologized. Her voice was low and forced out with some effort. “I spaced.” A snort escaped her smaller brother. Mylo ran one hand through thick, unkempt brown hair and turned away as if to look at something interesting on the ceiling. Vi watched the others pass back and forth a look between them: Ekko and Vander matched eyes around herself and Powder. Claggor, on the other hand, tried to get her attention. 

 

She knew what Mylo meant in the end. Were all of her shitty decisions worth losing everything? 

 

Of course not. But what was left to say or do? 

 

It’s so much easier to just be quiet, she thought. She secured the bottom of a long, thick braid of hair that was at least as good as Powder tended to produce and gave the girl a pat on the shoulder. Powder thanked her and even said her name in response. The words slipped in and out of focus. When she was quiet, the others left her alone more often than not. Better yet, when she couldn’t be quiet any longer, if she just held her tongue a few extra seconds when upset or angry Vander often turned a blind eye to her sneaking off to find Faire. She wanted to find Faire, now. They (not ‘he’, she’d learned) would put her to work throughout the ship. Her body would ache like hell by the time they pulled her off the task but she would always come back to her spot on the floor of their quarters feeling better. 

 

At least, she’d feel better able to be quiet again. 

 

I can’t get out of here before breakfast, Vi admonished herself as the idea to just get up and leave again for a trip to find the first officer struck her. They didn’t really do breakfast, per se but Faire had been letting them come up to the galley to grab some bread each morning to split between the group. Then, we’ll go get that. Vi rose from Powder’s cot and ran her hands over the knees of her old pants. 

 

“Vi?” Powder asked, cautious, curiously. Vander, however, got up from his spot at the table beside Claggor and a book borrowed from one of the crew. She noted how quiet he had been during the entire conversation and during Mylo’s questioning. It seemed abnormal but in the end what could he even say to make anything better? They were here and she had put them here. 

 

“I’m going to the galley,” Vander announced as he dusted off his hands somewhat meaninglessly. “Think Claggor’s right, gonna see if I can get us a bite.” 

 

“I need to stretch my legs,” Vi cut in as quickly as she could. She felt a couple sets of eyes upon her at the sudden exclamation but kept her own locked on Vander. Or, more precisely, on the ragged, blue blanket hung up to look like a curtain on the wall behind Vander.

 

“Then stay close - or just make sure someone knows where you are if you wander off,” he responded, sounding somewhat like his old self at first and then petering off a little bit as he crossed over to the door. The door, (if one stretched to call it that) was real in that it had hinges and all. It swung awkwardly, being too light. Vi was set to rush right out of the door when movement from just a step behind her told her Powder had gotten up and followed her. Vi crossed the threshold at Vander’s back and then looked back. 

 

A yordle - though, not the same engineer who’d apparently been helping to hide their presence from Piltover’s Port Authority - passed by with a quick nod of a shaggy green mane of hair in Vander’s direction. On the floor of the cargo hold, Vi fell behind Vander with Powder at the door behind her despite the fact that they weren’t supposed to ‘loiter’, strictly speaking. Vi glanced back at her sister after giving a nod of greeting to the sailor, herself. Vander pulled a good few feet ahead but apparently knew she was not right on his tail by the slow way he strolled. Powder waved at the stranger with her good arm and as soon as they were relatively alone, spoke her mind. 

 

“Are you upset?” Vi sighed, eyes closing, and shrugged. 

 

“I’m not mad at you or anything.” 

 

“Are you mad at Vander?” Powder queried, head rising as she did as if she thought she’d stumbled upon the answer to a question instead of a question itself. Vi knew every word she said was being closely monitored. Shrewdly.

 

“Good question.” When she thought about it, she couldn’t say no. There was a stirring of frustration there. She couldn’t pin down any one event through a haze of thoughts but she also couldn’t pretend she hadn’t been gritting her teeth at Vander’s faux cheer over the last three days. Sometimes, he pretended they were on some kind of topsider dream vacation. 

 

They weren’t. 

 

They were stuck away in a ship’s cargo hold, having lost everything. She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t snapped at him last night when he’d commented about how nice the sea air was, either. 

 

“Why don’t you let Vander worry about that?” This was not the right response. Vi knew that when Powder’s face fell again and she could see the muscles moving to form a pout. 

 

“I-” Vi had to choose her words carefully. Right now, honesty was more important than usual to Powder. “I don’t think leaving was the right idea.” 

 

“You wanted a fight.” Powder didn’t ask a question, she made a statement. Vi just nodded and noted with relief that Vander was no longer visible at the end of this row of crates. The only people likely to hear them right now were in their quarters. She didn’t care if they heard. “I don’t think this was like the other fights,” the mechanical prodigy in front of her continued. Vi waited for Powder to say more but she didn’t. Watching her sister so intently must’ve put some kind of pressure on her because Powder sheepishly pulled back. Again, her sister attempted to curl into herself but found that a bum arm prevented the gesture from having the full effect. “I’m going back inside.” 

 

Vi didn’t want to ask her to clarify. As Powder turned her back, Vi wanted to ask if the girl with the long blue braid was mad at her. After all, the question had occurred to her several times over the last three days. Even if she was not, she should be. She deserved to be. 

 

Distantly, a part of her mind mused that at least Powder and Ekko seemed to be okay. Not great, but handling everything better than the rest. Even Claggor was beginning to get cabin fever. 

 

Get to the galley with Vander. Maybe you get a piece of bread and go check out what Deteres told you? This thought was motivation enough that Vi shook her head hard and, despite the fact that she’d fallen behind somewhat significantly, hurried after Vander. Deteres (a very boarlike vastaya whose accent she guessed to be Ionian,) had let slip a rumor the day before that Vi had to know more about. If it was true, there was something, somewhere on this vessel that could actually change things, could actually help her, even if for only a few minutes. 

 

For what was almost certainly the first time since coming aboard, Vi broke into a run after Vander. 

 

“Hey!” A crew member in familiar red and gray waiting around a corner two or three stacks of cargo containers away from her shouted out a protest at her running by. After all, if they weren’t supposed to be hanging around down here they probably weren’t supposed to be sprinting. Vi didn’t care, though. As if some very cold, very dark home had a candle in the corner of the house, she couldn’t bring herself away from it - from the promise of just a little familiar warmth. The mystery deck hand was not the last to chew her out, though. When she finally turned the corner to where the nearest staircase up sat, Vander was waiting on the bottom step for her. He had his treasured pipe in hand even though she was pretty certain he had nothing left to smoke in it. Maybe he’s hoping to get his hands on some. 

 

“Violet,” Vander started, lowering that hand. “What the hell are you doing running around down here like that?” Vi gave a quick nod to show that she’d heard him and tried walk a little more calmly up the stairs past him. She hoped to move them both along. Vander’s voice lowered somewhat dangerously, in response. This served as a warning to listen. “Listen to me .You can’t go running around down here like that. Heard you coming from a mile away. It’s dangerous.” 

 

“Okay,” she agreed verbally this time, with a nod. This got Vander moving and together the two ascended the stairs before finding themselves in a little hallway one deck above. 

 

“This isn’t our home, you know, we can’t act however we want,” the phrasing and tone on this were softer. Very clearly, Vander thought things were calm. Vi could feel herself buzzing in her own skin. Something about his dampening her first excitement in days drew enough anger to the surface to override the fact that he was, strictly speaking, correct. 

 

“Not like we have one of those, is it?” she shot back pulling ahead of him. The way he picked up the pace should have been warning that if she went further down this road it was going to get ugly but Vi was already full steam ahead. “Oh, right, we do, we’re just turning our backs on it.” Vander stepped more fully into her peripherals and she saw the flash of anger battle with hurt on his face. It didn’t calm her. It didn’t warn her. Maybe it was damned past time they talked. 

 

“Stop,” Vander said, glancing around the empty hallway they walked. He was worried someone would hear them, instead. “Just stop.” Stop. Yes. That was what she’d been doing for days now. Despite how nervous it seemed to have made Powder, maybe it was the right answer. It was certainly what Vander wanted. He wanted her to stop, to give up. 

 

“We’ll be on here two, three weeks at worst and then we’ll be in Noxus. We’ll have a new home. A new life. We just have to keep it together until then and then -” Vander’s voice came low, hissed whispering and quick. “No Silco. No topsiders. No one who gets that anger of yours going.” Vi snorted, herself. She hadn’t been angry at Silco or topsiders, just now. “We just need to stay together.” 

 

“Oh, and what then? We find somewhere with new threats and new assholes and pretend we didn’t run away from home because we’re scared?” She was so caught up in her frustration that when Vander silently turned down a different hall toward the galley, Vi walked right past it. He was forced to reach out and take her arm to turn her to follow. Vander did not want to talk. He did not want to answer. It didn’t hel[ that two or three crew she didn’t recognize were coming toward them from the end of this hall. The silence stretched between them as footsteps bounced off metal walls. 

 

Vi hoped Vander was pissed. She hoped he was as angry as she was. 

 

“Why do you think it’ll be the same?” Vander asked several seconds later as the coming crew members finally passed them. Vi felt like Powder was jabbing a finger into her side in an attempt to annoy her with the way Vander slowly dropped his voice and then rose it all at once as if with ‘new found confidence’ as he loved to do during his pep talks. “What if it’s better? What if it’s good? What if we’re happy, Violet?” 

 

“First off, it’s Noxus. When they go to war it’s called a ‘Tuesday.’ Of course the people in charge will suck. Second, when’s it ever been good or happy?” she asked, crossing her arms despite being distantly aware how bratty it looked. This did not earn the response she wanted. 

 

Vander’s arm shot out to block her path, to stop her so he could turn and tilt his head at her. He looked hurt for real this time, staring pointedly into her eyes. That’s not fair, she wanted to yell at him. You don’t get to make me feel bad for feeling something. I can’t run away that easily! 

 

None of those words came out. 

 

“You actually believe that?” Vander finally spoke, voice calm despite the intense look on his face. So Vi, stopped in the hallway anyway, actually took a breath and thought about it. It brought her to a pretty simple conclusion a few seconds later. Happy, maybe, she thought, but good? When? 

 

Vi nodded in answer. 

 

“Just because things are bad now doesn’t mean they’ll never be good again.” That not answering the point she’d made only galled Vi further, so she just asked directly. 

 

“When was it good to begin with?” Vander crossed his own significantly meatier arms this time, eyes rolling as if to say, ‘the things I have to deal with’. 

 

“Really?” 

 

“Really,” Vi shot. “You worked so hard and we barely had enough money to keep the bar going. After that, we squeezed and stole to afford drinking water. And the food? I’m not stupid Vander. I know most of it fell off of the carts between the docks and topside.” Vander held his pose but, much like the night the topside ‘inventor’ had declared he could do nothing to help Mylo, Vi felt her breath starting to come fast and her own words slowly drowning beneath her heartbeat. “Do you think we did that topside job for fun? Who would want to hang around topsider fuck-” her voice, having risen steadily, would not have let her catch the obscenity if not for Vander’s warning call.

 

“Violet,” Vander scolded, flatly if rather firmly, brows knitting together. Her fists clenched shut. 

 

“Do you think we wanted to be around topsiders for fun? Get chased by enforcers because we really don’t get enough of nearly being beaten to death when they catch us digging through their precious trash heaps for scrap metal and broken tools?” Vi’s nails were short. They were always short. They still dug into the flesh of her palms as she clenched them tight. 

 

“It wasn’t perfect,” Vander answered as if conceding, his shoulders sagging. “But our family has always been safe and together and that’s so much rarer than you think.” Vander turned away without answering any of her arguments or any of her questions or quieting any fears. “It’ll be that way again - and better.” Vi held tight to the anger she felt toward his flash of cheery optimism. She wrapped herself in it the rest of the way to the galley. 

 

She let the anger linger in her gut as she shoved a handful of bread into her mouth ten minutes later.

 

Turning down the same hallway she’d just been having her argument with Vander in Vi climbed to the next deck up to search for Faire. By this point not feeling particularly subtle, she waved down the first uniformed individual she saw once a deck above the galley. That turned out to be a tired, coal dust covered man with no hair whose instinctual frustrated sneer reminded Vi too much of the person responsible for Powder’s broken arm. It faded fast when he turned around and his eyes landed on Vi. 

 

“Oh, thought you were someone else,” the man grumbled, rubbing his eyes. “I can’t work another double this week, I just can’t.” 

 

“Yeah - sorry,” Vi started quickly. The idea she might’ve interrupted someone exhausted on the way to bed didn’t feel great, but the girl hurried to clear things up. “I’m just wondering if you’ve seen Faire?” 

 

“First Mate Fairelund’s up another deck, with the person I’m trying to avoid, last I saw. So you have fun finding them and, if you need any help just look for a soul sucking vortex of menial labor and endless platitudes.” Vi blinked and the sailor gave a quick cough to clear his throat or maybe just distract from the tone of the moment. “And don’t tell Commander Peer I said that or I’ll be working doubles until we make port.” 

 

“Deal,” Vi said, before hurrying back toward the staircase behind her and up another level. She did not turn to look at the coal-dusted sailor but hoped he found his way to his rack.

 

While not top deck, the floor above them was high enough now that she could hear boots stomping around on top deck tending to one task or another. There was plenty of deck to cover so there were plenty of boots to be stomping. The only sailor she was looking for, though, was the first officer. It only took a couple of minutes of carefully combing through side halls before she spotted the shock of pitch black hair and much less ornate uniform that seemed to signify Faire’s higher rank. If she had to guess, they were coming out of someone’s office. Having not known the name before, Vi could now place Commander Peer’s name to the face of the chief engineer who stepped out to follow them. She did not look any more energetic than the man a deck below had, with the shuffling that propelled her along along behind Faire. 

 

Each met her eyes in turn as she approached but that did not stop their conversation one bit. In the end, she had to turn around to follow them as they passed her. Vi didn’t exactly interrupt, either. 

 

“Hold on, Peer,” Fairelund finally said after a good thirty seconds of her following behind the two. The engineer, a portly woman with dull tired eyes that Vi related a little too well to, paused in her complaints. Apparently her officers were too ‘mouthy.’ Can’t relate to that. 

 

“What’s up?” Fairelund looked over their shoulder back at her. Firm hard lines in their face, intensified by years of exposure to the sun at sea had aged the sailor so prematurely that it was still jarring any time she heard them speak. They sounded as young as, if not younger than, Vander. 

 

“I need to do something,” Vi explained, immediately. “Assign me anything, please.” This had been enough to get Fairelund to push some task at her the last couple of days. Before Faire could open their mouth and either dismiss her or give her a job, the chief engineer gave an empty bark of laughter. 

 

“Wish even half of my people had that kind of mentality. Tell you what, we’re shorthanded on cabin hands since someone had to be bounced two voyages ago. You could come down to the engine room if you promise not to touch anything you're not told to. Do some heavy lifting and free up some of my people so they can do their own jobs.” Vi seized on this immediately even as the first mate’s face fell. 

 

“Yes. Sure. I’ll lift whatever you want if you can just get me an excuse to have some time out of there.” It was more complex than just time away from the family, but these were people who had no reason to care about the complexities. 

 

“Wouldn’t be so fast to agree,” the same woman who’d just made the offer warned her, trailing off. When Vi tried to answer, Fairelund held up a hand to stop her. 

 

“You should think about it a second,” they cautioned as well, reticent about the proposal.

 

“Hey, relax. You don’t have to treat me like a little kid,” Vi promised them, but she almost swore it was her younger sister’s voice coming from her own mouth. 

 

“To my eyes you are still a kid and pretty damn young. Stout and strong, sure, but young. Damn sure not used to what you just volunteered for, so let’s make it simple and get this done with.” Fairelund didn’t sound angry. If anything, the first mate just sounded hurried as they started the trio walking again. Vi hurried to keep up. “You can help down in the galley. Chopping, cleaning, helping Chef Panel get lunch and dinner ready. You can head back down to the cargo hold and report to the quartermaster. He’s dealing with an issue with our manifest. Apparently the cargo set aside to be offloaded at our first stop - that includes you lot - isn’t lining up with the manifest.” 

 

“Something got lost?” Vi pondered. 

 

“Probably just misplaced during loading. You could help the crew reorganize and find the missing cargo. Or you can do what Peer suggested but -  that is back breaking labor for anyone, keeping the steam going.” That, at least, is familiar. She’d never had to do this before, but she understood the concept immediately, filling in the gaps with her encounter with the balding man a floor below. 

 

“I’ll do that,” Vi answered. 

 

“Hold on - let me finish. That means shoveling coal into a burning hot engine. You’ll be sweaty, sore, exhausted and covered in coal dust. You can call it quits any time but since you’re too fucking hard headed for that, I want you to know now.” 

 

“Thanks for looking out for me,” Vi replied flatly and humorlessly. “Now point me to a shovel,” Vi rounded on Peer, who did not seem as emboldened by her offer as moments before. Instead, the portly sailor only pulled a face as if she was more tired. 

 

“I’ll escort her down and show her how to get going. She can relieve Essy and get her back to clearing that pipe corrosion,” Faire informed Peer, who responded with a nod. “You just get upstairs and make your report.” 

 

“Aye,” the woman said, taking a clipboard from Faire. For just a second as she tugged at the gray jacket around her, the engineer looked doubtfully at Vi. As if she hadn’t made the offer herself, originally. Then, Peer turned off and Fairelund continued to lead Vi toward the nearest staircase. Though, a thought occurred to her. 

 

“Wow. So let me get this straight: you’ve got someone on the ship who knows actual weirdo magic and you have her cleaning corrosion off of pipes? It doesn't sound like I’m actually doing her a favor by taking over shoveling.” It should be to VI’s credit, she thought, that she’d waited for Peer to get out of earshot before she started half-heartedly giving Faire crap. The first officer did not bite on the bait, though, their expression hardening. A hand ran through the scruff on their chin and cheeks thoughtfully or because it itched. Vi did not envy facial hair on that front. 

 

“You sound like you’re having a rough time,” Fairelund said as their feet hit the top stair of a staircase on the opposite end of the ship from where Vi and the family were staying. Vi’s response was a noncommittal nod as she hurried down the stairs alongside them. 

 

“I’m sure you’re busy,” she said, hurriedly. “If you just tell me who to talk to down there I’m sure someone in the engine room can give me a shovel and point me toward a pile of coal,” Vi hoped to change the subject and shake Fairelund off. His footfalls kept even with hers, bouncing off of pale gray walls. 

 

“Not getting rid of me that easy. Anything happens to you down there and it’s me that your father and the captain take turns wanting to kill.” Vi shook her head and did not take that bait, herself. “You know, I know a thing or two about starting over, kid.” She immediately disliked the way this was going, both because she did not want a heart to heart with a relative stranger and because she did not like being called ‘kid.’ Vander barely got away with it. “But it sounds like this is a chance, to me. It sounds like things weren’t great before, or you wouldn’t be here. What if they could be good, now, though?” Vi at least thought there was one way in which this was an improvement. 

 

Unlike Vander, this absolute stranger to her could at least admit and understand that things weren’t good before. When Vi shrugged, though, Fairelund went on. 

 

“Noxus isn’t perfect. Not even a place I think I’d consider going back to, myself, but it is different than where you’re from. You get out of the cities and things are wider. Clearer. Emptier. You won’t have rich folk from Piltover breathing down your neck. You’ll have fresh water, fresh air. You’ll have options.” Given their Noxian accent, Vi had to ask. 

 

“Born there?” 

 

“Sure was.” 

 

“Then what’s it like?” Vi hoped to get a straight answer, because every implication anyone had ever made about the place to her made it sound like (an often blood soaked) hell. 

 

“Dangerous if you’re stupid, fine if you’re out of the way,” they answered a little gruffly, then playfully the sailor added, “so don’t be stupid and get out of the way. That’s an order.” 

 

Finally at the right floor, only a level above the cargo hold, Vi followed Faire out into the hallway and didn’t have the heart to tell them how unlikely it was she’d follow that order. 

 

What can you really do? Vi asked herself as the conversation came to an end. Vander’s in charge. We’re already on the ship. Reminding herself she was powerless in the situation did not help her mood, though. 

 

Down in the cargo hold and some hours later, someone else was trying not to feel so powerless, herself.

 

For Powder, it was already lunchtime when she saw her own opening to get out of the room the crew had given them to wait out their journey at sea in. Vander hadn’t been entirely himself when he came back with most of a loaf of stale bread and no Vi. That hadn’t been that strange: Vi had been running off every day since they came aboard and apparently doing whatever the first mate asked her to do around the ship. Powder was jealous that Vi had the capability but she, Powder, found the first mate a little foreboding. Like way too many of her family of late, their smiles did not reach their eyes, most of the time. 

 

“Hey, is it lunch time?” Powder queried, even though she kind of already knew the answer by the change in the sounds of the cargo hold. It sounded like a large group of people who had been working near their quarters had moved off all at once. While there was clearly still general work in the area, it was much quieter now. Vander, with an itching of the chin as if he had not just looked up from his borrowed book for the first time in three or four hours, glanced at the porthole and then around the room at the four of them. Mylo actually sat up in his bed at this, as if perhaps she was not the only one who found their breakfast less than filling. 

 

“Looking pretty close to me,” Claggor added. Powder couldn’t remember the last time they’d had two meals a day consistently. Much less three. She was excited as the others. Vander closed the book on the little table which looked as if it had been made from the discarded top of some sort of barrel and stood up. 

 

“Alright,” Vander agreed, passively plucking at the front of his shirt with a look of some discomfort. “But only after I’ve changed out of this damned shirt. I’ve been wearing it a couple of days now and it feels bad. ” Powder elbowed Ekko lightly as Vander crossed the room and began to pull off his shirt, digging through his small bag in the very furthest corner for a replacement. 

 

“What?” Ekko hissed. She didn’t let his tone bother her. He’d been taken by surprise by the jab and now looked around after spacing out in an alarmingly Mylo or Violet-like manner. 

 

“Can Ekko and I come with you?” The confusion on the boy’s face and the faintly furrowed pale eyebrows told her that Ekko hadn’t been paying attention to anything said in the last few seconds. She could probably write off anything she’d said in the last few minutes . That, at least, explained why he wasn’t answering her. “Claggor gets to go all the time and Vi got to go this morning so -” 

 

“Sure,” Vander replied without a moment’s hesitation, but not without difficulty given that his shirt was still half over his head as he did. There were a handful of very blatant bruises spread across his chest. She couldn’t help but imagine they had come from the big gray thing that replaced the street rat, Deckard. 

 

Relieved at not having to argue her case for being allowed out, broken arm or no, Powder hefted herself carefully to her feet. Moving the arm at all made her miss the powdered herbs that knocked her clean out when the pain was worst. Vander had not let her bring them with her for fear of them being caught on the docks ‘trafficking substances.’ She was pretty sure selling or trading drugs without a license was a one way ticket to jail. That didn’t stop most people, though. 

 

“C’mon,” Powder offered the still somewhat distracted Ekko her good hand. He took it in one of his, ran the other through his barely-there hair as if nervous and then stood up with her. “I want some fresh air.” Powder actually found it a little enjoyable the first time she stood up after a long time sitting or lying down ever since coming aboard: feeling the way the ship swayed and rocked under her feet was completely different than anything else she’d ever experienced. It made her think that under normal circumstances she would be trying to rig up some kinda fun balancing game for their arcade back home.  

 

“Wonder what they’re making,” Claggor drummed his own fingers against his leg. “Probably that weird pie thing, again.” Powder shrugged. It hadn’t been that bad. Vander had said it was mostly salted meat, anyway. Speaking of, Vander yanked his new shirt down around him with a firm tug, cracked his neck and worked his shoulders as if he was sore. 

 

“Hey - be happy you’re not on a longer trip. Way I hear it, sometimes the end of voyagers can be just a bit of ships’ biscuits and whatever grog you have on board.” 

 

“Does that mean we can have grog?” Claggor shot back, as if finding his sense of humor. At least Claggor still had one. Vi and Mylo had flushed theirs down one of the ship’s weird low-slung toilets the moment they came aboard.  

 

“Depends: does that mean you’re eighteen or older?” The boy’s face fell. 

 

Powder figured none of them were going to talk about the beer Claggor and Mylo had swiped from the back of a cart headed topside from the docks a couple months back any time soon. Her stomach, no longer driven solely by hunger, jerked a little at the memory of the night of drinking ‘adult beverages’. More specifically, it did not like the memory of the day after. Powder closed her eyes and waited for a wave of nausea, but none hit. 

 

“Alright you two,” Vander declared, turning his eyes on Powder just fast enough she had to catch herself to hide the guilty look on her face. Vander either did not catch it or did not comment because he just quietly jerked his head toward the door. The door did a great job of blending in with the rest of the ‘wall’ even inside the room and if she hadn’t seen it open a few dozen times, she might miss it. 

 

Powder reached it in only a couple of steps and opened it with her left hand. Favoring that hand still felt weird . As soon as she stepped out into the cargo hold, she forgot all pretense that the trip outside was for lunch and not just for her own need to escape their quarters. It’s not like she she wasn’t hungry but, in front of her, a somewhat feminine vastaya with a lizard-like snout and deep green scales was holding something cool.  

 

Held out in front of her was one of the very large ratchet-guns she’d seen the crew using the day they were first snuck aboard. The vastaya shoved the butt of it into the chest of a somewhat squirrely looking man, whose wince looked to be more because he was getting chewed out than anything else. Powder barely dragged her eyes away from the tool to pay attention to what was happening as Ekko and Vander joined her. 

 

“We don’t aim these at people, much less at me, and especially when the battery’s still attached,” the chiding was pretty light, considering that if someone jabbed the head of one of those into you while it was running it would probably hurt. A lot. Just the head attached to it at the moment was already bigger around than any of Powder’s fingers and probably Vander’s too, which was (to be fair) a better measurement of size. “Now, I’m due for a break. Try not to get anyone killed while I’m gone.” 

 

“Y-Yes ma’am,” the rattled looking man with the curled brunet bangs replied. He was nervous enough to try (and fail) to smooth wrinkles out of the front of his uniform with the battery pack of the ratchet. Powder controlled her snort. Still, their presence was finally noticed as Vander mumbled an ‘excuse me.’

 

He was trying to be quiet and not impose them on the situation, she thought, but unlike Ekko or Powder herself, Vander couldn’t sneak past the pair if his life depended on it. It didn’t help that they were right outside their door.

 

“Ah! Our passengers. Haven’t gotten a chance to say hello,” the vastaya quickly turned, all the tone of a disappointed parent slipping from her voice. Sharp yellow eyes, their irises snake-like, locked on Vander first, then Ekko and Powder in turn. Powder furrowed her brow without meaning to at the odd sense that she was looking into the eyes of someone dangerous. The woman didn’t scare her, but there was something about her presence that immediately made Powder look up at her, stomach jerking sideways. “Call me Porter, I’m the quartermaster aboard the Iconagra.” 

 

“Good to meet you, Porter. I’m Vander, these are Powder and Ekko.” The woman gave a firm nod of a deep green scaled head. Then from the ground at her feet she hefted up onto her shoulder a bag heavy with something metallic inside. The all-too familiar clanging and clinking of tools met Powder’s ears and even gave a still distracted Ekko pause. The two shared a quick look and Ekko gestured to his own tool pack still strapped to one hip at the belt. Powder’s was in the same spot on the opposite side. She saw the same question she had in Ekko’s golden-brown eyes: what kind of cool stuff do they have on here? 

 

“Yeah? Nice to meet you. Gotta haul some stuff upstairs and then it’s time for lunch. Care to walk with me, Vander, Powder, Ekko?” The rhythm of her voice was off. Powder couldn’t quite place it, but it was as if she was talking to them while a lot of her attention was elsewhere. While they could hear plenty of signs of people talking in another portion of the cargo hold, she neither saw nor heard anything nearby to distract the woman. Must be busy, being a quartermaster, Powder settled on. Before anyone had really spoken to agree, the sailor was off and Vander was following. 

 

This left Powder and Ekko little choice but to do the same. 

 

“Got a good look at some of that tech you lot are using earlier on my way through the hold,” Vander mused. “Lot of familiar manufacturer names.” 

 

“Well, say what you will about Piltover - and I’m sure you can better than me - but their forges and their workshops produce some of the best gear out there.” The woman gave a shrug and then tilted her head slightly. “Why? You one of those types that have your favorite manufacturers and everything else is ‘low quality trash’? I’ve had some of our engineers actually bore me to sleep going on and on about Talis hammers and wrenches being the ‘best in the world’.” Powder opened her mouth to protest the dismissive tone when she realized if she did she’d just prove this lady right about ‘one of those types ’. Then again….

 

“It’s not their fault Talis is the only company that makes collapsible wrenches that don’t break the first time you go to collapse them.” Powder shot back, causing Ekko to sigh dramatically as the vastaya turned those sharp eyes back on Powder, glancing over her own shoulder. 

 

“No, that would be those two. They’re the inventors in the making. More of mechanics and tinkerers right now - but just wait. Won’t be long.” Vander’s praise would have felt nice any other moment but it fell on slightly deaf ears as the ship’s quartermaster stared very pointedly at Powder and Ekko both. “Afraid they might have some pretty strong opinions on manufacturers from Piltover, though.” 

 

“Yeah, they’re all idiots,” Powder responded. 

 

“Even Talis?” the vastaya questioned, causing Powder’s face to flush. 

 

“Especially Talis. What’s the point in making a good collapsible wrench or hammer just to make the handle out of cheap metal that bends and dents so easy?” 

 

“Simple,” the woman answered, momentarily sticking a snake-like tongue out between her front teeth before turning away from Powder. “And being from the undercity I’d expect you to understand this: planned obsolescence. They need it to be a really really good tool - but not to last forever. If your tools last more than a generation in a family, that’s a family that has no need to purchase from you. Unless they’re just obsessed with getting the latest and greatest - at which point you already have them. Cheat and swindle every coin out of the people you can - it’s the Piltovan way.” Powder huffed because it made sense and because she didn’t like the slight edge of being talked down to in the woman’s voice. It was bad enough when Vi or Vander did it. 

 

She just couldn’t argue. 

 

“That makes sense,” Ekko whispered right at her. 

 

“I know it does,” she grumped in response, pointedly sighing in his direction. This just made the shorter boy grin which did nothing to help matters. 

 

“All I know for certain is Ekko here fixed any number of smaller to medium sized machines for a friend of mine back home and Powder’s basically fixed anything in our home that has mechanical parts since she was eight or so. Might take a few tries at first, but it typically works out. Besides, I hear they were working on building and fixing up machines for an arcade down in one of the lower eastern districts before we left.” This caught Powder by surprise. She lifted her head to see Vander look back and flash that ‘gotcha’ smile at her. “What, you thought I didn’t know about that?” 

 

“No,” Powder lied, quickly, trying to clasp her fingers around one another without really thinking about it. She quickly found it impossible in her current state. Every time she thought she’d gotten used to her arm being broken, she was struck by a reminder a little later on and it jarred her with memories of the woman with the dark eyes who’d broken it. Sometimes, those were worse than memories of being hunted or hauled away by Deckard. 

 

“So, you have much Talis gear?” the stranger prompted and Powder shook her head despite being unseen by the woman. 

 

“No, afraid we had to leave anything we couldn’t easily carry on ourselves back at home -” Vander was saying, starting to turn back to the vastaya as they reached the staircase. He cut off mid sentence as Powder and Ekko each reached for their tool packs. “You didn’t, ” Vander exclaimed, sounding upset. Sheepishly, she presented the pack strapped to her left hip and Ekko did the same thing. Hers was little more than a tied together roll of leather and cloth with a few broken tools inside. Ekko’s wasn’t much better - though at least he had a case actually made to hold (non-collapsible) wrenches. 

 

The vastaya glanced over her shoulder again and began to ascend the stairs. 

 

“Apparently not everything,” she mused, and Powder froze on the bottom step. The thing which had originally struck her as uncomfortable about the lizard vastaya in front of her hadn’t been how different her eyes were from humans’. Powder hadn’t been able to place it until just then. The upsetting thing was the cold, tired, only half-interested look in them, the distant gaze that said she was there but only barely, that inside her mind she was focused on something more important. It was a look she was growing to see too often from Vi and Mylo but worse, it was the look she remembered most about the woman Silco called Sevika. 

 

At Ekko’s nudging, Powder started climbing the stairs. 

 

“I can’t believe you two brought those with you. I specifically said only what you could carry.” 

 

“And we did carry them,” Ekko hurried to answer Vander’s frustrated grumblings. 

 

“I even carried mine myself.” The truth was, Powder was surprised Vander had only just now, days down the line, noticed that the two of them had smuggled aboard their tools. Everyone else had figured it out and at one point they’d openly checked their packs over together to make sure neither of them had left anything behind. This had been on their cots. In full sight of Vander. How’d he miss that? Powder had assumed they were in the clear when Vander hadn’t even commented but his frustration now suggested otherwise. Ekko was eager to change the subject, slightly.

 

“Since we’re going to be living together for a while, think we should pool them into one pack? Make it easier to move? I could carry them when we get off the ship.” Powder was reluctant to give Vander any reason to be upset with them or any ground to stand on in an argument that she couldn’t carry her own tools. It probably did make more sense to have it all together so they knew what they had at a single glance. 

 

“Bad idea - wait til you get wherever you’re going,” the vastaya cut across her at the top of the next flight of stairs. 

 

“Why?” Powder asked, instinctively wanting to rebel against her advice despite having made a good point earlier. The stairs rocked undesirably underneath her as she reached the next and she reconsidered whether she liked the feeling of the ship moving under her feet after all. 

 

“Because this way if you lose one bag you’ve got the other. If you have them all together and that gets lost while you’re traveling, then you’re out everything you need. Seems like exactly the kind of time a bag could go missing when you’re stressed out and on the road, am I right?” 

 

“Probably,” Vander answered for them, as if the quartermaster had been talking to him instead. Ekko gave a shrug but Powder decided, reluctantly, that the woman in front of them was at least the ‘think ahead’ type like Violet could be whenever the subject didn’t involve fist fights. “Well, we were off to the galley, so this is our stop,” Vander gestured to the next landing only two or three stairs above them. Powder still climbed a little more slowly because she was on the right side of the staircase and couldn’t reach out to hold onto the railing but somehow she kept up with Ekko. 

 

“Yeah?” the vastaya questioned, then gave a ‘hmm.’ “Think you can stay in there for five or so minutes? I wanna show these two something, but I’ll need to drop this bag off where it needs to go first.” As the woman jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Powder and Ekko, the two shared a quick glance. 

 

“Will do,” Vander agreed, quickly. “Probably won’t get through the line that quickly, anyway. Hungry sailors, and all.” 

 

“Depends what Panel’s serving,” the quartermaster answered, then turned back and caught both kids’ attentions. “Grab a seat after you get your food. I’ve got something I bet you’ll want to see.” Having successfully gotten both of their curiosities, the vastaya slipped away at the next landing to drop off whatever it was she was carrying with her. Turning off into tight, very plain looking metal corridors at Vander’s back, though, the three remaining spoke in unison. 

 

“What kind of tech do you think she’s got?” Powder and Ekko asked one another at the same time. 

 

“You two didn’t sneak anything else aboard, did you?” Vander asked without turning back to look at them. Powder stopped breathing. She did not turn match eyes with Ekko even though every instinct said to do so. To make sure he was paying attention. To make sure he’d heard Vander’s question. To make sure he was still on board. Instead, she kept walking. Silent. 

 

“Vander, we’re sorry,” Ekko said in response. Notably, he didn’t exactly tell Vander that no , they had not. Which was good, because Ekko hated lying and she sucked at it. Powder’s heart began to pick up. Her legs felt like gelatin but she internally chewed them out for trying to give out on her on a simple walk to get food. “We just thought it was important to have them when we got wherever we’re going. What if we need them to fix something? What if it’s something that helps us? A broken old stove or something. And they’re the most important - really the only things I have.” Vander did not immediately respond. 

 

Powder knew she should be thinking about that last sentence. She knew Ekko wasn’t lying about that. She couldn’t think about it. A cold dread had hold of her. She didn’t know how well she’d be able to lie to Vander and if he was mad about the tools then her and Ekko’s actual secret haul would probably make him explode. 

 

Choose better words, she told herself. 

 

“I understand. I know those things are important to you,” Vander finally turned and slowed his walk to look at them. Powder was quick to look at the ground, hoping he’d just think she felt guilty about the little wrap of broken screwdrivers and wrenches and the half of a hammer that made up the majority of her toolset. “I just don’t want anyone to get hurt or lost because they’re weighed down by extra stuff if the time comes we have to run from something.” Powder heard the word ‘someone’ underneath the ‘something’. 

 

“Do you think we’ll have to?” Ekko asked. She wasn't sure if the curiosity and hesitation in his voice were real or if he were changing the subject again, trying to distract Vander before he could realize that something else was going on.

“Probably not,” Vander admitted as he turned away and continued back down the hall. Powder sucked in a breath and her lungs, which had begun to protest, calmed. Yet, she did not shake the cold emptiness where a hungry stomach should have been even two or three dreadful minutes later when they stepped into the galley. 

 

To her eyes, it appeared like a school cafeteria from the topside comic books. The kind of place you might’ve seen on the grounds of their fancy academy or on the ground floor of one of their dorm buildings. Or maybe just in one of the less prestigious schools, which is where most of the comic heroes tended to be from. You know, to show how bad they have it, Powder couldn’t help but think with just a little bit of bitterness. 

 

The problem was the sound.

 

She did not think school cafeterias were usually full of loud raucous banter, the sounds and smells of people smoking or so many people who looked and smelled like they’d been in the sea. Uniforms hung partway open to reveal the undershirts beneath or were wrinkled or soiled by some substance or another. There had to be a hundred people packed into a room not made for half as many. 

 

Humans, yordles, vastaya and other peoples intermingled on long, low benches lining a series of deep wooden tables. Most of them seemed to be sipping at the likely source of the smell of stale beer in the form of very large, dingy and dented looking steins. In a way, it was like stolen peeks at The Last Drop during evening business hours even right down to the food she thought you probably had to be drunk to enjoy. Not that I’m complaining, she reminded herself. There’d been enough nights going to sleep on an empty stomach that she’d never really complain about the taste of food again when the other option was nothing. 

 

Vander, upon stepping into the room awash in a sea of gray and red-striped uniforms, angled more or less immediately for the line of sailors reaching halfway down one wall of the room. A metal countertop waited at the front. Steam rose from that direction and brought with it a smell that was surprisingly pleasant and porky. Powder pressed herself against the back wall immediately upon entering and tried, futilely, to pull her damaged right arm closer to herself. The cast really did not allow for that kind of movement. 

 

She waited for her stomach to come back and growl. 

 

“Hey,” Ekko whispered as soon as Vander gestured for the front and headed along one wall toward the end of the line. “Let’s go get in line, too. Maybe they’ll mess up and give us extra?” Powder smiled meekly at Ekko’s excitement which only managed to put it out like a candle blown out. His own grin faded. Ekko glanced at Vander’s back as someone across the room, laughing, told one of their tablemates to ‘pray for the answer, then!’ 

 

“Hey,” Ekko repeated. “It’s okay. He didn’t figure anything out.” This only hollowed her stomach right back out leaving a hole to be filled with that cold. 

 

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Powder told him. Before she could clarify, a familiar voice answered the laughing one from moments before, cutting across the room of strangers. 

 

“Like this?” Vi asked from somewhere beyond a row of people that Powder was relieved to see weren’t glaring at her as the outsider she felt in the moment. Not one even looked her way. The people in the room weren’t that different from her but the majority seemed to speak with intonations that marked them as Noxian. This just reminded her where they were going and what they were leaving. Powder tried to crane her neck at the same time as Ekko to find Vi among the crowd, but it took leaving the back wall and stepping to one side of the row of tables closest to them to make her out. 

 

Covered from head to toe in a familiar black dust, Violet was sat at a table on the far end of the room surrounded by a trio of dark haired humans. One of them had their hand over their face as if she could not believe what she was seeing. Vi’s hands pressed together over her head almost as if in prayer. Though her big sister looked to be laughing, she was turned toward the fifth occupant of their table: a sizable brown furred minotaur who had the same dust stuck to near every hair she could see. In fact, Powder would bet his natural fur color to be a lot lighter than it first appeared. She could mark this as only the eighth or ninth time she’d ever met a minotaur, personally. 

 

“Good start,” the man declared, lifting and draining his drink in the time it took Vi to crack an eye and peek at his face. “Still not gonna tell you, though.” From the corner of her eye, she noticed Vander leaving the line and angling toward Vi, having apparently seen or heard her, as well. Vi’s own hair was darkened by the dust within. Powder would have bet anything that if they went digging down below they’d find the ship ran on coal. You got used to seeing people covered in the stuff when they came out of the mines and went straight to The Last Drop. 

 

Ekko scrambled past her, forcing Powder to either follow or remain behind. Since both Vander and Ekko were now going to look in on Vi, she followed. Vi, who had disappeared at breakfast. Again. 

 

She and Ekko had met up with Vander and were working their way forward when, as jovial as the scene looked at Vi’s table, genuine pleading slipped into her older sister’s voice to such a degree as to make even Vander hesitate. It certainly left Powder curious about what conversation they were about to walk into. 

 

“Please,” Vi asked, clearly having not noticed them yet. “Please, you gotta tell me. I’m sure I can get Vander and the captain to give me the okay and I really need this.” Vander, barely missing a step, continued between rows casually. He approached Vi’s back and so too did Powder and Ekko. Powder shared a look with Ekko and saw that he was as concerned by the way this was sounding as anyone else. As the somewhat hollow-cheeked human woman uncovered her face and started to chide the minotaur (leaving behind streaks of oil where she’d just been touching said face) the minotaur cut across them all and continued in a booming voice with an accent she thought was very similar to Ionian. 

 

“Are you sure about this, kid?” he pushed as the trio came into easier listening range. “You know I’m going to be there, right?” 

 

“I’ve fought bigger,” Vi immediately shot back, leaning forward and placing her elbow on the table, hand up, as if to challenge the Minotaur to an arm wrestling contest. Powder couldn’t blame Vander for picking up the pace. 

 

Still, Powder thought, exasperatedly pulling a face in Ekko’s direction. Why lie?

 

Then again.

 

Deckard.

 

Not a lie, after all. 

 

The thought of the boy who’d carried her off to Silco was enough to put any hope of regaining the mood she’d had that morning to bed. That was nothing compared to the way that Vi shut down the moment she caught sight of the three of them having crossed the room to her. Vander did rather stand out not wearing a uniform and being among the tallest humans about. Powder watched Vi lower her hands to the table, sinking back into her seat and slouching forward. 

 

“Hello,” Vi greeted them, though the low dip of her voice making Powder sure none of them were wanted here. This hurt, but Powder could just add it to the list of things that were making her regret leaving their quarters today. 

 

“Violet,” Vander greeted in kind, much more cheerfully. “What is it you wanted to ask?” Vi sat back up, only reluctantly. She did not address Powder or Ekko. 

 

“I don’t know if you’ll like it but-”

 

“But ask anyway,” Vander shot back, with a quick nod of greeting to the two rather androgynous looking humans beside Vi, The woman who looked like she wanted to slug the much larger minotaur man and said minotaur himself. Vi gestured to the woman and the minotaur opposite of her. 

 

“Apparently the engineers have boxing matches once a week.” Vi started and then immediately picked up the pace of her words. “And I need to do something.” The sailors not just at this table but the next one over caught Powder’s attention. Near matching looks of raised eyebrows and curious glances shot Vander’s way told her they were all waiting for how he was going to tell off his daughter for wanting to get into fights with adults, strangers on a strange ship. Powder suspected Vi had better odds than they thought, both in the fight and getting permission to be part of one. 

 

“What’s the rules, gents?” Vander asked the rest of Vi’s table. The woman opposite of Vi sighed, smeared more oil across a hooked nose as she rubbed at it and then answered. 

 

“Pretty standard Carginite rules but we’re a little more strict on signs of injury. Ref thinks you’re even a little too punch drunk and that’s usually where it ends.” Vander addressed the next question over a mortified, slouching Vi’s shoulder toward the minotaur. 

 

“Got gloves?” The minotaur gave a nod, dislodging a small amount of that black dust which settled over the table around him. No one at this table was eating, which was a good thing, but Powder didn’t think it was good to get into your drink, either. The oil-slicked lady next to the minotaur was about to have to upturn her stein or drink what Powder thought was coal dust. 

 

“Got some spare,” the minotaur answered, his sharp jaw casually opening in a yawn. Vander gave a nod and then earned a handful of matching looks of confusion as he turned back to Vi. 

 

“Well, you heard them. You’re not really supposed to go for the knockout, here. Though if someone does have to get knocked out, make sure it’s the other.” Vi immediately opened her mouth, face contorted in frustration, as if to argue. Powder blinked. 

 

“That’s not fa- wait. What?” The pink-haired striker turned on the bench, nearly dislodging the drink from the hand of one of the ornately uniformed engineers to her left. Vi looked up in disbelief at Vander as if just processing she had been given permission. Powder wondered why she was so surprised. The minotaur and the trio of humans at the table, each of which dwarfed Vi to one degree or another, eyed Vander as if they didn’t believe him. 

 

Beside an oddly excited-for-a-rumble Ekko, Powder watched as Violet smiled. Brightened. Rose. Sat up straight. Her sister hadn’t smiled in days, actual days. Not once had a smile made it past the faintest quirk of the lips that was for someone else’s benefit. Powder knew the difference considering how often they were aimed at her. She really did not understand how fighting made Vi so happy when all she’d done lately was fight and get hurt. She’s only just now moving around again like she used to, Powder thought. 

 

“You mean I can?” 

 

“If the captain agrees, sure. Haven’t watched a decent match in some time, though,” Vander told the rest of the table. “If you let me get an eye on the fights, I’d appreciate it.” 

 

“Us too!” Ekko exclaimed beside her, drawing the rest of the table’s attention. “Vi’s gonna kick so much a-.” Powder’s left hand found Ekko’s mouth before Vander could even turn back to chide him. 

 

“Already on it,” Powder informed a rotating Vander, who just switched back to looking at Vi’s table and that nearest it. Ekko responded a little predictably - licking the palm of her hand and forcing her to pull it back with a silent protest, wiping it off on the shoulder of his shirt. 

 

“Gross,” she told him. 

 

“At least I didn’t bite.” Powder rolled her eyes. 

 

“Rest is on you, folks,” Vander declared. “I take no responsibilities for any loose teeth or crooked noses, savvy?” It was clear to Powder by looking from one bemused face to another that most of the people involved in the exchange thought this some kind of joke: who’d put his small teenage daughter in a boxing ring with big tough sailors? That possibility must’ve seemed much less likely when Vander gave Vi a pat on the shoulder, turned away and started without another word to the back of the now longer line. 

 

Vi put up both fists as if she’d already won a bout. 

 

“Coal dust?” Ekko queried not Vi but the minotaur opposite of her. 

 

“Keeps the ship chugging along,” the man shrugged two furry shoulders. “Considering showers on this dump are basically cold buckets of sea water dropped on you, though, it’s hell to get out of fur.” 

 

“Makes Vi look like a redhead,” Ekko teased. “Your hair almost looks normal.” Vi waved it off by wiping some of the substance from her cheek and brushing it over Ekko’s shirt when he made the mistake of coming into reach. 

 

“Do you get to say that when your hair’s white before Vander’s?” Powder chimed in, drawing Ekko’s attention to the handprint on his shirt to her, where he huffed at her. 

 

“Hey, you’re supposed to be on my side, Iris,” the boy argued, earning Powder’s confusion. 

 

“What?” she asked as Vi turned on her bench to look Ekko over, as well. 

 

“You know… Iris? Like the flowers? Some of them are really blue and -” Powder rolled her eyes. 

 

“It’s not a good burn if you have to explain it.” 

 

“Who cares!” Ekko reached out to take her remaining hand and lightly tugged her toward the back of the line. “Let’s go get something to eat. ” 

 

While in line behind Vander to get their own portions of fairly familiar fare (except for a helping of surprisingly creamy mashed potatoes - that was rare back home, to have that much dairy) Powder noticed the arrival of the first mate, Fairelund, who Vi had apparently made something of a friend of and the lizard vastaya quartermaster. The quartermaster still had the same bag but it looked heavier as her arm hung it at her side and she and the first officer had some sort of discussion just inside the galley. 

 

“What do you think she’s got?” Ekko asked her, as they rounded the bend of the line and finally found themselves in front of a hot table of food underneath various very warm heating lamps. The ever-present Chef Panel, a man in his fifties who walked with something of a hunch and a limp gave a kindly enough smile their way - or toward Vander in front of them - as he saw them.  “Bet it’s something really cool, Noxian make.” Powder shrugged, partially because she hadn’t recovered entirely from their conversation with Vander in the hall and partially because her attention shifted from Ekko quickly. 

 

Back on the far side of the galley, Vi jumped up from her seat and hurried between two rows of tables and the people sat around them toward the high ranking sailors at the door. Whatever was going on, Powder hoped she wasn’t about to do something stupid and get in trouble. She figured Vi was trying to get an in to talk to the captain. After all, Vander had said Vi needed the captain’s permission to be part of the fights and she was a hard lady to track down outside of mealtimes. She’ll probably be here soon if Vi would just wait. 

 

Her sister was known for patience even less than Ekko, who prodded her to remind her to slide her tray along the rollers in front of her. She gathered her portions of mashed potatoes, a bit of salted pork, warmed and softened in a bowl of broth and hard tack she’d need to soak in her tankard of water to have any chance of eating as Vander collected some for Mylo and Claggor. 

 

“Is it okay if we eat up here?” Ekko asked Vander, who shrugged immediately. 

 

“If you stay close to Violet and come back down when she leaves, sure. Just try not to get into any trouble, you two?” Powder had pushed down some of the anxiety she felt in this new place but she hadn’t particularly intended to stay and eat here. 

 

“I don’t-” 

 

“We’ll eat with Vi,” Ekko told her. Vander, having not looked back at them, took this as directed at him and gave another shrug. 

 

“Suit yourselves, kids. Can’t say I blame you for wanting a change of scenery.” Vander balanced a heavy tray of food and drink and headed out the door of the galley. For Powder’s part, she had difficulty balancing her own tray with just one hand. kko helped significantly by putting her drink on his and carrying that. Turning away from the hot bar and watching over the heads of near a hundred strangers as Vander squeezed past Vi, the first officer and the quartermaster, she caught sight of the captain over the quartermaster’s shoulders and watched Vi rope Vander into conversation with her. 

 

Ekko, on the other hand, led her down the wall of the opposite side of the room, closer to the table Vi had been sitting at and found them a couple of chairs to drag over. The four already sat there did not immediately react, leaving Powder to wonder if they should be sitting there, or should have asked first. Then, one of the more andrognyous looking humans who had been sat beside Vi a moment ago, switched sides of the bench to sit beside the oil-streaked woman and gave Powder and Ekko a quick smile. 

 

“So, that’s your sister?” 

 

“Hers,” Ekko answered quickly. “I’m no relation.” Powder pondered exactly what made the difference at this point, but nodded as it was technically true. “Oh - looks like she can come to the fights,” he told Powder. Ekko nodded at the door where, when she looked up, the first two fingers of Vi’s right hand were pointed at the hulking minotaur only a few feet away from Powder right now in the classic ‘I’m watching you’ gesture. She looked grimly satisfied. Quietly, Powder took in a spoonful of the most appealing looking thing on her tray.

 

Mashed potatoes. 

 

Warm, creamy, a little salty. At first taste, it seemed like something only a topsider would eat. Then again, if one took away most of the dairy, she’d had this plenty of times before. Usually roasted, though. 

 

“What’s your name?” Ekko asked and when she looked up he was speaking to the minotaur. As Vi slipped out of the room (which per their promise to Vander should’ve been their cue to leave) the quartermaster started down the row toward them. Powder paid the woman and her heavy bag enough attention that she missed the answer to Ekko’s question. Any other conversation cut off quickly as the engineers at the table snapped off a quick salute toward a superior officer. The vastaya with the dark green scales gave a one-armed shrug in response and dropped on the table just to Ekko’s right, a bag heavy enough that the entire table shook. 

 

“Now,” Porter declared, her yellow eyes narrowing at Powder. “Nothing and I mean nothing in here’s that expensive or valuable so, even if everything were to be missing when I got back from getting my lunch, I probably wouldn’t notice.” The woman placed her palm flat down on the table and leaned lower over Ekko so that only the folks at the table could hear. “And neither would anyone who wants to keep their place on the ship. Clear?” No one spoke. No one answered. Powder’s brain struggled to push past the somewhat unpleasant feelings she’d had toward the woman back in the hall. It was harder to set aside the conversation that had come about because of their revelations of their tools to her. 

 

Then the words and their meaning registered in her head. 

 

Powder nodded at the same time Ekko tried to reach around the quartermaster’s arm toward the drawstring on the bag, earning her amused chuckle and a warning glare at the rest of the table. 

 

“We didn’t see a thing,” the minotaur told her, taking the grog from the engineer to his left, who seemed to have finally realized her face was covered in grease as she was trying to wipe it clean. The minotaur emptied the mug, much to her dismay. “Don’t have the chutzpah to have seen a thing.” The vastaya’s quick nod and sudden about face were all the warning they had before she slipped away to get her own lunch.  

 

“Wouldn’t recognize you if you did,” Porter called back, earning rolled eyes from more than half of the table. Ekko was not waiting for any other discussion and Powder couldn’t blame him. Beyond general curiosity to see what a decent set of tools in working order would look like, the idea that they were also going to be able to ‘borrow’ them from the vessel was exciting. Vander was going to hate it but Powder thought if she was sneaky they could split any tools gained up between everyone’s packs and no one would really notice until it came time to unpack. 

 

When Ekko’s golden eyes widened at the contents of the bag, not even a spoonful of mashed potatoes and salted pork could distract her anymore. 

 

The truth was that to a lot of people, the things Ekko dug out of the bag were nothing super special. 

 

“Four flatheads, good size range. An old Phillips’ head-” 

 

“Poor Phillip,” the person to Powder’s left mused, their round face split in joy at their dad joke. 

 

“Poor Phillip’s lover,” chimed in the other as of yet unintroduced human crewmate. The grease-slicked woman elbowed them in response and then had to do the same to the minotaur as he chimed in. 

 

“Poor Phillips’ other lover, probably at the same ti-” 

 

“Come on, they’re kid’s for fuck’s sake,” she grumbled as the minotaur raised both hands in an apology that would probably work better had he not been holding said engineer’s empty cup of grog in one of them. Powder rolled her eyes at the strangers. 

 

“Oh, here we go,” Ekko said, as if lamenting. He pulled next from the bag a trio of different sized and adjustable collapsible pocket wrenches. Powder could tell they were Piltovan by the design and writing upon the handle which could only mean - “They’re Talis.” Powder groaned. 

 

“They’re gonna bend,” she warned him. 

 

“Just because that one broke on you, ” Ekko teased, but the truth was neither one of them was looking the metaphorical gift horse in the mouth. Where does that even come from, anyway? Why would you look in their mouths? 

 

“I guess it’s cool. We need some kind of wrenches. We can’t rely on your ratchet for everything,” she admitted. Then Ekko pulled a small Talis hammer with a collapsed handle from the bag right after and Powder rolled her eyes through a smile. “That’s cool, I guess, but we probably shouldn’t throw away our hammer, just in case.” 

 

“Just in case,” Ekko echoed, dryly. They matched eyes and clearly recalled how she’d broken her own hammer. She couldn’t even blame it on having been made by the Talis forges. Ekko laughed. Powder joined him, feeling lighter, even a little excited. She pulled out her own tool pack again and joined Ekko in trying to fit rest of the items pulled from the bag, (a chisel and a couple of small files, one flat and one rounded,) into the two kits they had between them. 

 

“What are the two of you going to do with all that?” the minotaur whose name she’d missed queried as she was trying to imagine moving quickly with her right arm busted and the long thin file hanging out of the bottom of her tool pack on her hip. Ekko collapsed the handle of a wrench as long as his forearm down to a third of its size and closed the adjustable head tight then shoved the whole thing into the largest space he had in his own leather wrap. It would be nice to put these together when they got where they were going. They could handle splitting up the new stuff when the time came. There was no one she trusted better not to rip her off in the deal. 

 

A little excited, Powder actually decided to answer the stranger’s question but realized that she did not know. Pausing in his own motions, Ekko furrowed his brow at her, too. 

 

“The arcade’s back home, so what are we gonna do now?”The joint project of theirs that was the arcade room had been really fun. Exciting. Even after they’d revealed it to Vi, Mylo and Claggor, it had been their project and the first time she’d learned anything about motherboards or serious electronics from topside. 

 

“We’ll find something when we get wherever we’re going. Maybe we can make something useful? Or someone will have something needing fixed up and we can make some money.” Ekko seemed less bothered than she felt by the realization that their big joint venture in the arcade was functionally gone. It would probably be picked apart by the time they got back, if it wasn’t already. Powder nodded, noncomittally, looking toward the minotaur as if to say that was their answer. “It’s always helped before.” Powder didn’t want to admit how many times they’d scrapped together some materials to fix and sell something in Benzo’s shop just to get their hands on food or even the cheap comics from up topside. Her momentary resurgence of a good mood was quickly tempered. 

 

“So, you two are like mechanics down in Zaun?” asked the wide cheeked sailor with the mop of messy dark hair who’d just been elbowed moments before. Powder shivered and looked down at her clumsy left hand. She distantly wondered how she could make it more like her right as she tried to figure out how to respond. Zaun. She’d only ever heard the word from Silco. 

 

“What’s wrong - did I pronounce it wrong?” Powder shook her head and then quickly corrected herself by nodding. 

 

“No one really calls it Zaun, I think,” Powder explained. “I’ve only ever heard one person.” 

 

“Sorry,” the sailor backstepped. “A few years ago that’s what everyone was calling the lower city.” Their voice sounded genuinely apologetic so Powder quickly shook her head. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” 

 

“It’s okay.” 

 

“The only person we’ve ever heard use the word was a really really bad guy. He hurt people. It’s probably not fun for Powder to think about but,” Ekko hurried past. “We like to make things and fix junk lazy topsiders toss out - you know, the people in the rich city. Lots of it can be fixed if you just learn and then you sell it back to them or to the original manufacturers and poof, you actually get to eat.” Ekko sat his now overloaded tool pack down on the table. “Powder used to fix air compressors. Oh, and she made a machine that made like 30 paintballs a minute back home. We were working on fixing up and making brand new arcade games before we had to leave.” 

 

“Not just mechanics, inventors. Engineers in the making,” the minotaur corrected the person down the bench from him. This, for some reason, felt like praise that made Powder blush when he turned his eyes back on the two of them. She looked down. 

 

“Not really,” she answered at the same time Ekko responded differently. 

 

“Yep,” Ekko’s response was far more confident but when he processed hers he backed away from the titles somewhat. “Okay, maybe I just fixed things until recently but we made new machines all the time together. So, yeah, kinda.” 

 

“I guess that’s true,” Powder admitted, closing her pack as best she could and looking up. They had, after all, basically made her paint gun and the machine she used to manufacture and fill the paintballs from pieces of broken machinery and scrap lying around and part of the barrel of a really old musket thrown away kind of thoughtlessly.  

 

“Damn, got a couple of bonafide geniuses from the city of progress,” the minotaur sounded impressed as he turned toward the woman on his left but it was Ekko’s turn to pull a face this time, making a gesture as if being gagged. 

 

“Nah, nah, that’s ‘the topside’,” the woman responded, wiping a hanging, stringy bang out of the way of her eyes. “The lowercity, ah, undercity is different. Mom also says it’s the only reason topside makes any progress.” She spoke with a thick enough Noxian accent that Powder was given pause. 

 

“Your mom knows about Piltover?” Ekko prompted.

 

“‘Course she does, she was born there. On the surface, but in the south. Got a couple crew who came from the undercity too. I think. They don’t talk much about it.” The lady looked ready to continue, when the minotaur cut across her. 

 

“Tell you what, if you wanna put any of that genius to work around here, there’s something I wouldn’t mind you taking a look at.” The minotaur with what she was now certain was typically a pale khaki fur tone leaned in toward them and spoke conspiratorially. On Powder’s other side the last sailor, the quietest of the bunch grumbled. 

 

“C’mon man, they’re kinda going through some shit right now, don’t you think?” 

 

“I wanna help,” Powder chimed in quickly, to dissuade the strangers from stopping him from asking. “We can help.” Ekko had volunteered her for enough today that she didn’t feel bad volunteering him to assist and judging by the way he promptly unrolled both their tool packs, the slight boy beside her was ready to go. Ekko cracked his knuckles. “What is it?”

 

“Well, it’s a bit of an antique and if the wrong part’s busted there’s probably nothing on board to replace it, but,” the minotaur made one quick gesture toward a cupboard in the nearest corner of the room. “It’s in there.” Powder took hold of her spoon and rammed another spoonful of rapidly cooling potatoes and salted pork into her mouth and then hopped up. Despite her head start, having to protect and be careful with her arm meant that Powder was beaten to the cupboard by Ekko, who streaked around her, ran right toward it and pulled the doors open. 

 

The triumphant look on his face was not about beating her there, she saw a moment later as he turned to her. 

 

“Look, Powder, same manufacturer.” Powder’s own face brightened again at the sight of the nice, familiar curves of a jukebox that looked really similar to one she’d been inside of way too many times. They’d had to fix everything from booze someone had somehow managed to spill inside on circuit boards to little mechanical bearings breaking down from overuse. This was something they could do. Even if I am half worthless right now. 

 

Using one of their ‘new’ screwdrivers, Ekko pried open the false front of the jukebox which really typically only took and held coins, not really giving way to any of the internals. Then he began to push back the tabs on each side of the machine keeping the front in place. Powder tried to help, for what it was worth, using one of the other new flatheads at their disposal to start unscrewing screws on either side of that same frame. When it came time to get the ones on the right side of the jukebox’s facade she had some trouble turning her left arm to the right angle and had to step aside after bumping her bad arm hard enough on the cupboard to make her hiss in pain. 

 

“Dick move taking advantage of some bored kids,” mused one of the sailors at the table they’d just left. Powder tried to ignore them, even as she reluctantly backed away from the machine in question. More upset that she could not do anything in her current state, she knelt down beside Ekko and resigned herself to overseeing work on a machine she bet would look very familiar inside once they finally got it open and cleaned out the dust within. 

 

In the end, they stayed out more than a couple of hours after Vi had left the galley. Powder found peace in picking through most of the obvious reasons the machine might not be turning on. When it was all said and done she wanted to kicked herself because the answer turned out to be even more obvious than any of the possibilities she and Ekko had chased down. It was not turning on because it was not getting power. 

 

The power cord, somehow, had been torn half through and it took a crewman moving the cupboard to let them see behind it to discover this. This was not as bad a fix as it could’ve been. 

 

So Powder and Ekko were, after a short time, concealing their somewhat heftier tool packs under their shirts as they stood outside of the entrance to the family’s quarters with not but a handful of hours until a dinner of a salted beef soup. Ekko stuffed his own pack partway down the back of his pants, adjusted his belt slightly and pulled his shirt down over it as she did her best to do something similar with one hand and not much mobility. 

 

Inside, raised voices distracted her and made her clumsy enough to drop her pack to the ground. 

 

“Shoot,” Powder hissed, hurrying to pick it up as the door started to open. 

 

“I’m going top deck to get some air,” Vi declared, door pushing open. She froze in place, the look of almost abject rage sliding from her face as she took the two of them in. Powder noted her sister was still covered in coal dust. “You two better go face the music - you were supposed to come back when I did.” Powder felt a rush of guilt but it was quickly buried under Mylo chiming in from inside. 

 

Powder’s good mood was wiped away.

 

“Fine, just leave then. It’s what you want to do, anyway.”

 

“What?” Powder asked under Vi’s arm, trying to crane her head as she slipped past her sister. She just caught sight of her brother, Mylo, with his back turned toward the cot she slept in right beside his. 

 

“Shut up,” was his only response. Powder’s mouth shut more or less instantly, fairly certain that was meant for her. 

 

“That’s enough,” Vander called from his seat at the table across the room. “Both of you cool off. Mylo, I get that you’re frustrated but you can’t take it out on your sisters when they’re just trying to help.” 

 

“Vi?” Ekko queried as Vi squeezed past Powder and allowed her to step more completely into their room. Powder was not so certain she wanted to be back and wondered if it would be pushing things a little too much to ask Vander if she could go with Vi. Then again, behind her, Vi slammed her fist against the exterior wall of the room. 

 

Powder didn’t ask Vander’s permission to go with Vi and she didn’t backpedal out into the cargo hold again. She did wish she could, though. The hold was relatively empty of people at the moment other than Ekko and Vi. When Vander spoke her name quietly, curious, Powder shot him a look of pleading and shook her head. She closed her eyes and held her breath. 

 

“Yeah?” Vi asked Ekko after a handful of deep breaths. Powder could barely hear them through the door. 

 

“I’m scared,” Ekko said, plainly. This was not something he’d said to her and Powder was pretty sure that no one without their ear practically to the door would be able to hear. 

 

“Don’t worry, Powder,” Vander confirmed that thought a moment later. “I’m sure she’s just getting a breath.” Toying with the corner of the page he was on in his borrowed book about a whale hunter and eyeing Mylo’s turned back, Vander had not noticed that Ekko was not in the room with them. Powder pressed her ear more literally to the door, 

 

“”I’m scared and things are getting bad,” Ekko continued, and Powder was surprised to hear his very open, confessions laced with a sadness deep enough Powder felt it in that hollow in her stomach. “Benzo’s gone. Everything I usually do, everyone else I know is gone. Mylo’s angry. You’re angry. Powder’s scared all the time and it feels like something’s going to happen.” 

 

“Something?” Vi asked. She was closer to the door and sounded out of breath. Powder didn’t understand exactly what was happening. She did know the two most important people to her were keeping her out of the loop on how bad they really felt. 

 

“Something bad.” Powder hadn’t really put it into words, but as she became aware again (as she sometimes did throughout the day) of the rocking of the ship on the sea, this rang true of her, too. She, too, had been waiting for something else bad to happen ever since Sevika broke her arm. The woman whose face and scent of cigarettes Powder couldn’t get out of her head hung over her every time she tried to feel good . 

 

“Really bad,” Ekko continued. “I don’t want to go to Noxus.”

 

“Me either,” Vi told him. Powder thought that was the worst kept secret in the world. “But… don’t worry, Littleman.” She sounded a little more herself. “We’re going to be alright.” Powder slipped away from the door, unable to listen any further. 

 

The nausea she’d feared earlier settled into place. 

 

Ekko was right that Powder was scared but it made things so much worse to hear Vi promise Ekko that everything was going to be alright. 

 

Powder had gotten pretty good at knowing when Vi said something she didn’t even believe, herself. Ekko, it seemed, had not.

Notes:

Next port of call, Noxus. Let's get our first look at city life in the Noxian Empire.

Chapter 9: Chapter Nine

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

 

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Chapter Nine

Powder had read it once, spray painted on the wall of an old warehouse in the Lanes. 

 

When History doesn’t repeat itself, it still rhymes.

 

She got what this meant in theory but finally saw it in action the day they were supposed to unload from the Iconagra onto the docks of a big port city in northern Noxus. Smack dab in east-central Valoran, the city was situated in a part of the world a little colder than Powder was used to. With the ship’s engines off for a while, the whole vessel was starting to cool down when the door to their quarters was rapped on, twice. Powder, still balancing her bag in her lap, didn’t complain when Vi helped her get it over her shoulder. Claggor got up and moved to the door as Vander offered a hand to help Mylo up - much to Mylo’s furrowed-browed annoyance. 

 

On his own, Mylo didn’t stand up anywhere near as quickly as Ekko bouncing forward, though. 

 

“It’s time,” First Officer Fairelund told the family from the doorway. Their voice was as scratchy as ever and darker than usual. “We’ll be starting unloading in a few minutes - so my job’s to walk you to where crew disembarks. Your options are a ladder or a steep slope, but considering the state of a couple of you, we’ll be going for the ramp.” Vander grunted and Powder flushed. A ladder. Of all things, she was slowed down by a ladder. The others had taught her how to cross the empty space over alleyways, to go rooftop to rooftop, to climb any building that had a decent pipe or downspout or even excessive windowsills and decorations. 

 

Now, she couldn’t climb a ladder. 

 

Just as the day they were brought aboard the Iconagra, Powder started her first day in Noxus feeling useless and a little scared. 

 

“Come on,” Ekko encouraged her as Vander gestured the group of them to move. He stood kinda stiffly. His pack weighed way more than when they’d come aboard but he was trying not to show the side effects of their new finds . 

 

Out in the cargo hold, trailing along behind Vi and Mylo and beside Ekko, Powder could only describe it as cramped. It reminded her a lot of home: sailors from literally all parts of the ship’s operations were down in the hold. They were packed in pretty much shoulder to shoulder and really not shying away from curse words or loudly heckling one another to move faster, to lift more weight.

Or, to ‘find that fucking box with the fancy booze before I kick your ass with your own boots.’ 

 

Honestly, it was like a busy day in the Lanes. 

 

Top deck wasn’t much better. Vi had gone running around for the crew every chance she got. Claggor had helped out once or twice just to shake off the boredom of sitting in their quarters. Powder had never once been allowed above deck. They’d even been loaded into their crates that first day too quickly to really get a good look at the Iconagra. Now that she was up here, she noticed two things. One, because they weren’t in motion the rocking of the ship seemed even steadier but she felt it more keenly. Two, the smokestacks on the ship were massive and left no doubt how the vehicle propelled itself. They were still nothing when compared to at least one of the buildings she could already see rising from the city they were about to walk right into. 

 

The one that caught her eye the most as Fairelund led them past sailors too busy to stop and acknowledge his rank was huge. As big as, if not bigger than, the council building in Piltover. Tall and not too terribly thick, it was a brutal, brown stone brick structure, almost perfectly square and maybe a story or two taller than the aforementioned council building back home. It did not put on any pretense of being anything other than what it was. A big, tall, ‘fuckoff tower’ as Mylo would put it. 

 

Other than the banner bearing the Noxian flag hanging from it, it did not look to care for decorations: plain, stone bricks, periodic and small square windows with what looked like metal bars over them and nothing else that Powder could see from here. The structure might’ve been on the other side of the city from the docks they were moored in, but that didn’t stop it from looming over everything between them like a monster in the dark. 

 

When Ekko nudged her to keep moving and pay attention, she pulled herself back to the moment. Fairelund approached a part of the railing around the top deck that had swung open like a gate. It only took Powder a moment or two more of hurrying along behind them to see the very steep ramp leading down to the docks below. This wouldn’t normally freak her out but, with only one hand to balance herself and her pack heavier than Vander would have liked, Powder thought there was a good chance she’d fall. 

 

“Don’t worry, I’ll help,” Ekko whispered, the left side of his mouth quirking up in a smile. Embarrassed as she was, she needed it. 

 

Someone was waiting for them at the bottom of the ramp. Several very long, scary  seconds of Powder shuffling down the ramp with Ekko and Vi on either side of her later, she saw that it was yet another member of the crew. In this case, Porter, the ship’s vastaya quartermaster gave a very firm, serious nod as soon as the last three of them, herself included, had joined the others on the docks. The vastya smoothed down her uniform until it laid flat and, apparently nervous, cooly turned her attention down the length of the wooden docks under their feet. 

 

They both were and were not like the docks of Piltover. While there were just as many people, they seemingly all wore the same uniform. This was regardless of the fact that there were people from vastly different vessels. Even possibly private vessels since few looked identical. Even similar make and model vessels were painted differently or had modifications here and there. The docks were a sea of gray and red. No ship in the harbor flew any flag unless it was the flag of the empire. 

 

Now hidden by the larger vessels around her, Powder could not see the imposing tower from before hanging the same banner from its top. 

 

“Here’s how we’re going to do this,” hissed the woman with the deep verdant scales, tapping her fingers against her knee. “There is a cart marked with a red stripe at the end of this dock. When we’re in sight of it, the driver will be taking responsibility for you and I’ll turn away to go find the dockmaster. Until then, keep your heads up, stay quiet and act like you’re supposed to be here.” Vander exhaled and cleared his throat. 

 

“You heard her. Let’s go. Take it slow and steady. Try not to jostle anyone, they look busy as hell.” Powder craned her neck left and right as the quartermaster led them onward. It was true. Whether it were onboard cranes or dock-side loading crews, there was no shortage of cargo being moved about by maybe hundreds of people. Yet, Powder did not pick out a difference in any sailor’s uniform from the other except for maybe the small, decorative patch on the right shoulders. 

 

Come to think of it, how did any kind of port authority actually control anything that happened on these docks?

 

Ahead, Mylo and Vi slowed a bit. Well, to be more precise, Mylo slowed and Vi slowed to match, forcing Powder and Ekko (who suddenly looked rather anxious) to do the same. Neither Mylo nor Vi had spoken since they left their quarters. In this way, it was again similar to the last day they’d been in Piltover. To mark one last similarity, Powder was quickly consumed by a stretch of dread when she saw the cart in question. The vast ocean of gray parted long enough to give a peek at it. 

 

The driver was a man with the rather common thick, pitch black hair of the people local to the region. Underneath a very simple set of dark brown clothing, he looked lean and bore a mustache so thick she did not doubt it caught a lot of food when he tried to eat. He was not so alarming, sat atop the red-striped cart. It was the person he was talking to that concerned her. Though lacking the blue and gold of the Piltovan enforcers, the man talking to their driver dressed in black and red clothing and heavy looking, painted metal armor (as if he thought himself some form of knight) was absolutely an enforcer - or a guard, or whatever they called themselves, here. 

 

“Sh-should we hide?” Powder asked. Vander, two rows ahead of her, shook his head firmly without turning around. “But he’s talking to-” 

 

“Shush,” Vander told her, firmly. Powder slouched down as she followed behind, silent. The cart vanished once or twice more behind waves of people coming and going about their business. Not one looked at the new Piltovan transplants or their guide before the vastaya turned to the left quite suddenly and broke away from them. Without a goodbye, without a word, Vander became the leader yet again. On their own, Vander seemed determined not to break stride. Powder had to pick up the pace a little bit to keep up as even Mylo and Vi tried to move a little faster. Ekko did not.. She glanced back at one point, two solid steps ahead of Ekko to see that she was not the only one who was scared, here. 

 

Beside her, walking as if he was fighting to get his legs to listen to him, Ekko was shivering. No, he was shaking.

 

Powder was, too. 

 

A trio of fairly large and really muscled cows - or maybe oxen? - pulled the cart in question. Even from here, it looked to have a few crates and bags in the back. The animals did not seem to care much about anything happening around them, even as Vander drew them all close enough that both the guard and the driver turned their attention on the family. Vander stepped sideways, closer to Claggor as Vi moved up to his other side, leaving Mylo behind them as if to form a wall in front of him. 

 

Do they think we’re about to fight? 

 

She hoped not. 

 

Powder watched gold change hands between the very calm driver and the cool, dark-eyed guard. Then they were being spoken to in pretty passable Piltovan by the armored man with the sword on his left hip. 

 

“Lucky you. Welcome to a land of power, prestige and prosperity. Treasure your new lives as citizens of the Empire of Noxus and don’t take it for granted.” With a brief nod, the stranger turned to leave without another word as the driver waved an envelope  at Vander. Vander was not yet close enough to take it. 

 

“We’re grateful. We will,” Vander answered the guard, before quickly stumbling out a ‘thank you’ in Va-Nox, the slightly newer variant of the Noxian language. Powder basically knew a dozen words of it and most of them Vander would be upset at her for saying. She wondered if he was any different. Most people probably learn the same ones back home. The guard responded neither to Vander nor to the driver when he shouted something at the man’s retreating form in Va-Nox that Powder didn’t think she had even a guess at understanding. 

 

Powder blinked and looked sideways at Ekko, who just mouthed his confusion in a silent but still very readable ‘what the hell?’ 

 

Lots of very, very long seconds passed before Vander moved again, and for that reason, before any of them moved again. Like a single large held breath being released at once, the driver turned back to them and sighed. 

 

“Get your ass up here and introduce this handsome family, if you can.” Very good Piltovan hurried from the man’s mouth, if peppered with pronunciations ( no, inflections, she reminded herself) more familiar in Va-Nox. That made sense given the heavy accent. Powder thought there was some kind of friendliness to the words, though their tone was cool and flat. Vander did not move. 

 

“If I can?” Vander prodded. A fair question considering Powder didn’t understand what the man meant, either. 

 

“You look like you’ve gone and put on some weight since the last time I saw you.” 

 

“All muscle of course,” their father replied. 

 

“Not from where I’m sitting.” 

 

“Never did credit you with great eyesight.” While the tension in the voices were real enough, Vander’s calm told her that this was banter. The way Vi sagged her shoulders and seemed to relax said that she thought so too. The moment that Vander relaxed, though, Powder noticed that his shoulders sagged, as well. His whole body sagged. It just made him look tired. Like he hadn’t slept at all. 

 

Powder knew that wasn’t possible. 

 

She hadn’t slept at all and hadn’t noticed him get up. 

 

“Well, you heard the blowhard, let’s get you lot in the back.” With that, all pretense was dropped. Vander circled around to the back of the cart (giving the oxen a wide berth) where he lifted a board out of place across the back and dropped it down as if to turn it into yet another ramp. Powder was too uneasy about everything that had just happened to roll her eyes as Vander tried to help Mylo up into the cart. The older boy silently tried to pull his arm away from Vander three or four times. 

 

“I’ve got it, Vander,” Mylo complained the third time Vander tried to reach out for him. . 

 

“Shush up and let me help you get in, alright?” Vander said. Only, it sounded more like he was asking and, surprisingly, actually quieted Mylo down. Or maybe, not too surprisingly. As if to take a page out of Vander’s book, the still silent Violet pulled to a stop at the back of the cart. She pulled on the front of the old green jacket she’d recently gotten her hands on and then reached out a hand to Powder. Powder didn’t protest the help of her sister’s hand on her shoulder. She, unlike Claggor or Mylo or even Ekko who was scooting past her had no choice but to use the impromptu ramp to get up into the back. 

 

The back of the cart, as noted, was occupied by more than just the family a moment later when Vander shut the cart back up. The biggest of them all, Vander didn’t try to climb in back with them. Instead, he went right back to the front and climbed onto the low bench meant as a seat for the drivers. The lean guy, who Vander apparently knew, made a show of scooting over after Vander sat down as if to allow him extra room. Powder sat herself on the ground next to one of the small wooden crates halfway up the length of the cart as Vi sat down to her right. 

 

“What’ve you got for us back there?” 

 

“Seed grain for both winter and spring wheat and a few potatoes, in case you want a taste from home.” This confused Powder for a few seconds but Vander caught the meaning as she and Ekko turned to observe him and the driver from the back. Jarringly, the cart started to move all at once as the tawny furred creatures pulling it tried to squeeze in a turn on the small path separating the docks from the wider, cobblestone road running perpendicular. 

 

“So you mean we’ll be out-” 

 

“Out in the country, yes. Don’t worry. I figured you’d had enough of city life.” Powder opened her mouth to speak but thrown off  as she was, she couldn’t help but think that she’d never known anything but city life. Something new, though, she told herself as Vi frowned deeply beside her and scooted close to the wall of the cart. Ekko stood half up and sat down again a few inches to his right as Mylo threw his arms up on either side of him, along the cart wall. He’d very nearly elbowed the younger boy in the process. 

 

Powder sensed what was happening a moment before it did, having gotten good at reading Vi and Mylo’s strange swings of focus and attention over the last few days. 

 

Even as Mylo looked past her and Vi and out at the little patch of grass alongside the path, the focus faded from his eyes. To Powder’s right, Vi had leaned her head back to look at the sky, but the same damn thing was happening. They were just tuning out. Most feeling faded from Vi’s face beyond a small frown. Her eyes darted back and forth before trailing back up toward the sky. Powder had long since realized she was not looking at or for anything. Just, sort of leaving without actually going anywhere. 

 

They both just go away and when they come back they’re always so mad. Powder had yet to come up with a way to talk to Vander about how much this freaked her out. So, again she let the process play out beside and across from her and looked away. The three oxen pulling the cart directed themselves (or, more likely were directed) toward an actual road ahead. Within another minute or so they had left the racket of sailors tramping up and down the docks and ships being loaded and unloaded behind.  

 

“Also threw in some extra blankets and pillows. You won’t have enough beds where you’re going for all these bodies, Vander.” The driver continued as if everything was perfectly fine. As if he hadn’t just told them they were going to be living in the middle of nowhere, not even in a city. We know how to survive in a city. “You’ll want the extra padding. And - this envelope has your papers. Did the best I could on short notice.” 

 

“I know you did,” Vander assured the man, apparently taking an envelope from him that Powder couldn’t see from the back of the cart. She and Claggor both turned to try to get a look at it. Ekko even got to his knees craning his neck around to look between the men. Claggor was balanced uncomfortably atop a box in the front of the cart, though, blocking their view. The further they got from the docks, the lower the tone and volume in which the two men talked. Before long, they were turning onto a proper city street. “Vanderkin, hmm?” 

 

“Best I could come up with,” the driver muttered.

 

“Well, beats the nothing we’ve got now, legally speaking,” Vander declared, shoving the envelope in his pocket.

 

“What’s ‘Vanderkin’?” Claggor asked, looking between the back of both mens’ heads. 

 

“Your last name, as far as the Empire is concerned,” the stranger told him, turning back and looking at Claggor. The man with the thick mustache got a somewhat sly expression on his face as he observed Claggor and then shot a knowing look toward Vander. 

 

“Fine lad you have there,” he mused, a drawn, almost playful lilt to the voice. Powder wasn’t sure what he was getting at and neither, it seemed, was Claggor who turned back to the rest of them with a shrug. Clearly, he was as confused as she was. “Remin- ah shit.” The driver was distracted by a need to slow quickly down as someone stepped out into their path. A pedestrian, dressed in the grays and reds of a sailor, crossed right at the meeting of a road and their path without bothering to look once, much less twice. 

 

The street the cart turned onto wasn’t that different from the undercity back home, if you ignored the cleaner air, the open sunlight beating down rather harshly on her pale skin or the simple oil lanterns hanging from streetlamps everywhere. The similarities were undeniable. Though much cleaner, the streets were wide, thick pale cobblestone like the Lanes. The city structures around them, though, reminded her more of the tower which she could once again see in the distance. It hung over the city like it was an angry enforcer watching all, itself. The buildings around her were all made of large, heavy stone brick and looked designed to be scary, to her. They were towering, wide and square things with very little decoration that was not wrought iron. 

 

Even the simplest little shop in sight of the cart, bearing a sign with a large bull’s head on it, was otherwise severe looking. It might have appeared plain were it not for it being two stories tall and the small windows covered by dark wooden shutters or wrought iron grating. The clothing she could spot on passersby walking down the street wasn’t super fancy like topside in Piltover but they were certainly not dressed as dirty or ragged as anyone in the back of that cart. In fact, other than a few laborers who clearly worked on the dock, most of the people on the road around them were clean and well put together, freshly shaven, some wearing suits or dresses. 

 

It made Powder very aware of how pale and filthy the family all were. 

 

Though, to be fair, part of that came down to the Noxian tendency toward darker hair and deep tan skintones. 

 

“So, the fella trying to get some shuteye back there is Mylo,” Vander finally said. It was apparently time for introductions. The driver glanced back at them and Powder looked away from the road to where Mylo had crossed his arms and closed his eyes. She did not think he was asleep or even trying to. “Took a nasty hit to the head and needs the rest.” 

 

“Been there,” the driver responded, darkly.

 

“We have Claggor in the goggles, the young lady with the bum arm and the braid is Powder and the slightly older young lady who’s most likely ignoring us is my eldest, Violet. Which just leaves Ekko, who I would bet you’d be interested in meeting.” Across from her, Ekko froze while stretching his leg out on the floor of the cart and looked both a little anxious and surprised as the driver glanced back one last time. 

 

“Oh yeah?” 

 

“Benzo’s boy,” Vander said, lightly. “Found each other about five years ago, tha’ right?” 

 

“Yeah?” Ekko answered, as if not entirely sure. However, this exchange gave Powder an idea of what might be happening here and why Vander would have bothered introducing them to the driver in the first place.

 

“Are you Kut-” Powder started, leaning forward slightly only to sit back a moment later at the force with which he cut her off, despite the lack of any aggression or anger in his voice.

 

“Kutresh,” the man spoke loudly, as if finishing her question, then winked a sharp eye at her and turned his attention back to the road. This was just in time, as another cart came around the corner just a few hundred feet away and began to roll their way. “Yes.” That name was unfamiliar to her, but Powder couldn’t ask before Vander filled in the blanks. 

 

“Lots of people have nicknames, Powder, but not all of them can be used everywhere, if you understand.” Powder did understand. This all but confirmed that this mystery friend of Vander’s and the one who had made their moving to Noxus possible to start with, Kutter, were one in the same. 

 

The further they got from the rowdy area around the docks, the quieter the streets became. Almost eerily so. 

 

Powder watched Vi and Mylo for just a moment. To all appearances, Vi could just be looking around the street. People were certainly glancing at the cart as it passed. No one was glaring but there was enough judgment, enough questioning on the face of the nearest 20-something walking by them that Powder sank down in her seat. She tried again to fold in on herself next to Vi, who took no notice. Her sister continued staring clean through their surroundings as they headed further down a street full of shops. 

 

Powder could occasionally spot people leaving with baskets or bags full of their goods. It was an active, normal day for them. She just wasn’t sure if the twenty or thirty people within a few hundred feet of them on the road meant busy sidewalks or not. Back home, it would’ve been a sign of a quiet day. The wheels creaked beneath her and did not move smoothly over the jagged cobbles. The otherwise awkward silence caused by her mistake passed and Powder sighed in relief. 

 

“Well, it’s very good to meet you all,” Kutter told them without turning back. “I’m sorry to hear you’ve had to separate from family, Ekko. Benzo is - how it’s said - good people.” Powder saw the discomfort on Ekko’s face again. “Speaking of good people, young Claggor makes me think much of Bartholomew.” Vander glanced backward but not before Claggor and even Powder herself could wince. Kutter wasn’t able to see the way Claggor sat straight up with his attention on the road. Powder spotted another one of these guards on the street as they rolled by. She wore a simple black tabard over steel armor across the top and a low hanging metal skirt. The guard on the docks had been wearing something more completely armored and probably harder to hurry about in. 

 

This other guard’s outfit was simple enough - but Powder wasn’t sure how it’d hold up if someone shot at you. 

 

“That was my dad’s name,” Claggor finally said after three stupidly uncomfortable seconds. “At least, my dad before Vander.” Kutter made a low sound in his throat as they continued down the road. Powder saw Claggor gazing down at his own hands. It suddenly reminded her of him in front of the wash basin the night Mylo had been hurt. The look was a lot like the one on Vi’s face, the way he stared through them. 

 

“I’m sorry to hear he has passed,” Kutter finally said, calling Claggor back with the words. The boy’s round face screwed up as if he was trying to speak but couldn’t decide what to say. Eventually Claggor shrugged and simply stayed quiet. “Did you and he grow… close, Vander?” Powder furrowed her brow. 

 

“What?” Vander asked, turning full on to face Kutter. Powder was confused by the odd tone in Kutter’s voice - that same light lilt he’d had a few minutes ago when he’d seen Claggor the first time. Oh right, Powder realized, as the pieces fell into place. 

 

Claggor’s father, though Claggor didn’t talk about him very often, had been the one to give birth to him, being what Piltovans called transmasculine. The implication then, was that Kutter was asking if Vander and Claggor’s father had - Powder pulled a face and all but stuck out her tongue. She didn’t want to know about Vander doing that with anyone, thank you very much. Claggor got it next, but oddly he only turned to look over his shoulder at the back of Vander’s head as if very curious about the answer. 

 

Turning somewhat red, herself, Powder told herself to pay more attention to the road than any suggestion that Vander’s blood played any role in Claggor. 

 

Yep, she told herself looking down over the edge of the cart, those sure are cobblestones. 

 

The thing was, she couldn’t deny the resemblance between Vander and Claggor. She’d just always written it off because surely it would’ve come up by now, right? 

 

“It’s just that you and some of the kids share the same eyes, Vander.” Kutter continued his musings and though she could not see why he lifted his hand to his face she imagined him stroking that ridiculous mustache thoughtfully. “It’s hard to think there’s no blood at work, there.” 

 

This too, was a good point. She’d never really thought about it but she and Vi and Claggor really did have the same eyes compared to each other and to Vander. In her and Vi’s case this made some sense but when you added in Claggor and Vander, there were more implications being made by Kutter. 

 

Powder decided to never really think about it, again. 

 

Ever, ever. 

 

Vander cleared his throat. 

 

“What’s the name of this city, again?” the bulky man asked Kutter, not actually answering anything one way or another. She had questions enough to share a look with Claggor and Ekko and then turn toward Vi. Vi, apparently, had not heard or at least not cared about the conversation and the various implications therein. She was staring straight forward, practically right through Mylo. 

 

“Basilich,” Kutter apparently took the hint that this topic was not going to be discussed in any detail. Fairelund had said the name of the city before but Powder had forgotten. Something tickled at her mind, some old child’s story about a giant monster that Vi used to scare her with that had a similar name. Maybe the city was named after it? “Welcome to the city of Basilich,” he continued, voice darkening slightly. “Not the capitol of the empire but we’re not going south enough for that. It used to be, though, in Noxus’ early days. Many campaigns were once launched up and down the coast from the docks you climbed aboard. Some still are.” 

 

He sounded so casual about it, Powder thought, but she knew what they said about Noxus. It was always at war, always killing people, taking their lands and their homes and their stuff. It was like topside turned up to eleven and spread out over whole countries (or former countries) all over the east of Valoran. And we’re going to live here? 

 

Maybe, she thought as they turned off of this road and onto one heading west, maybe not being in the city would be good? It was the first time in her life she wouldn’t be, but she thought she could try it if it meant not seeing or hearing about any wars the Empire was fighting. 

 

“Don’t think about it,” she told herself as flashes of the bridge under a bloody, smokey orange-red sky tried to force itself to the surface. Powder stared down at her ragged boots for a second.

 

“Hmm?” Ekko asked, having been paying close enough attention to hear her. Powder, not having meant to say a word out loud, flushed and shook her head. A young guy by the road, maybe a few years older than Vi waved the cart down, holding in one hand a bouquet of bright red flowers and waving just one of them in the other. He shouted in something that sounded like Va-Nox, but with somewhat harsher, hard consonant sounds. It had to be Ur-Nox, she thought after her recent exposure to it, and Kutter called a calmer, if not jovial response back. 

 

“What was that?” Claggor asked. 

 

“He wanted to sell flowers, likely to throw at… march? The big showy march through town - what is the word?” Kutter physically prodded Vander in the side with his right hand. 

 

“Parade. There’s a parade? Some big military victory?” 

 

“Not sure why, just heard a crier promising a very important person would be at the head of it.” 

 

“How important?” Vander asked as Powder watched the young man gesturing very exaggeratedly. The salesman wore a wide grin plastered unconvincingly on his face.

 

“As important as it gets in the Empire these da-” Kutter drew quiet. “Well, -” the next word out of the man’s mouth was Va-Nox and Powder knew better than to ever say it around Vander. She had to sit up a little straighter to not be shifted around in the back as the cart slowed. She craned her neck to see what was ahead of them that made the man slow the great beasts pulling them along. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t be around for it - but, that looks unlikely.” 

 

“Should I be worried?” Vander queried as yet another guard turned to watch their cart as it inched by him toward what looked like a much more crowded street suddenly. A few blocks ahead, several carriages and carts, as well as generally thicker groups of people, were congregating. They were all moving toward and looking in the direction of a specific intersection. 

 

“Doubtful, let’s see what’s going on,” Kutter leaned forward and spoke in the softer vowels and harder consonants of Ur-Nox. The guard, hearing him, came over to the cart. Powder sat awkwardly, listening to a conversation she had no hope of understanding. Kutter’s words came more slowly after the first couple of exchanges between the men. Kutter switched back to Va-Nox at one point (though the guard did not), but Powder only knew enough to recognize that fact and not enough to really pick out what the driver was saying. 

 

For a few seconds the guard trailed alongside the barely moving cart. The change in the air, the rising sound of a lot of voices talking excitedly nearby roused Vi from wherever she’d been. Powder managed to piece together from her limited knowledge of Va-Nox that something was coming - probably the parade Kutter had mentioned. What would a Noxian parade be like? Full of streamers and confetti and litter people would have to clean up the next day and fireworks like back home? Somehow, Powder doubted it. 

 

Eventually, the guard stepped away but turned his attention on a carriage behind them. The oxen got their own cart going again. Powder counted thirty seconds of silence before Vander spoke. 

 

“Everything okay, Kutresh?” Vander pondered, using the apparently ‘safe’ name for the man now that there were so many people around them.Several were holding flowers but some of the pedestrians they passed heading the same direction were carrying something gray or brown the size of a fist or larger. She didn’t try too hard to get a look, more interested in what the lean man who was supposed to be a hero of the Noxian underground had to say. 

 

“Grand General Darius,” Kutter muttered in Piltovan. “One of the Trifarix - the three rulers of Noxus since Grand General Swain went and offed the emperor. He’s leading the procession from the gate all the way to the Proclama.” Kutter jerked his head sideways and Powder followed his gesture to the tall, looming tower that had been unsettling her all this time. Vi was still unaware of or just unphased by their situation, but Powder looked past her. The oddly rounded crown of the otherwise square tower stuck out at Powder for a moment. “I thought a direct route to the western gate would be an idea since we’re trying to get out of the city, but I was very wrong.” 

 

“Did they have any idea what it’s about?” Vander gestured backward as if to indicate the guard they’d just passed. Vander turned to look right at Kutter, but whatever he saw on the man’s face (which Powder could not see) disturbed him. “Not a war parade, after all?” 

 

“Better - or worse, depending on who you ask. They’ve caught a famous deserter - a traitor, even. Brought her back to be dealt with by tribunal. Run by the Grand General, himself, no doubt.” At this, Kutter looked back at the group of them in the cart and Claggor, who seemed to have regained his composure a bit, tried to catch Vi’s eye. Now, not because she was spacing but because her eyes were locked forward, Vi did not notice the gesture. Or if she did, Powder couldn’t see it. Claggor instead looked directly at Powder and then at Ekko, who nodded. 

 

They understood what this meant. 

 

This deserter was being brought back to be punished, probably killed. Maybe today, maybe in a few days, they’ll probably be pushing her off of that tower. First they have to parade her around. Powder shivered. Even Piltover didn’t do that to the people it put away or executed. 

 

“Maybe Vi’s right,” Powder whispered so only those in the back could hear her. “Maybe this was a really bad idea.” She unsteadily pushed to her feet, even with the cart moving. 

 

“Powder,” Vander chided, turning more completely than before in his seat. Powder ignored him, though, moving unsteadily as she gripped the side of the cart. With a plop, she scooted right next to Vi and pressed close against her side. This, it seemed, was enough to jar Vi from whatever state she was in. 

 

Powder did not answer Vander. Ekko moved further down the opposite side of the cart so he was sitting closer to Mylo - and to her. Mylo looked to have tuned in, as well. He, at least, knew enough that his face was grim, serious, eyes slightly shadowed. Oddly, for the first time in longer than she could name, when he saw her looking, Mylo gave a tiny, even supportive nod, then his bushy brows furrowed again. 

 

He wasn’t the only one who sensed a change in the air. Vi raised her arm to rest it around Powder’s shoulders. Powder was kidna surprised they’d gotten that much life out of either of her oldest siblings. 

 

“You okay, Powder?” Vi asked. 

 

“Did you hear Kutter or -” 

 

“No,” the girl admitted, and her cheeks darkened. “But something’s weird- where did all these people come from?” 

 

“They’re getting ready for a parade… one of the people who run the empire is bringing back a deserter from the army. To punish her.” Vi’s eyes darkened and sharpened. Mylo, apparently having heard, had the opposite reaction. Where Vi sat up a little straighter and looked about curiously, if cautiously, Mylo relaxed. 

 

“That’s all?” he said, sounding almost disappointed that something he considered ‘worse’ wasn’t happening. “Doesn’t involve us.” 

 

“They’re going to drag her through the streets? In front of everyone?” Vi asked. “That’s kind of fucked up.” 

 

“Language. Come to think of it, all of you keep it down.” Three more blocks passed in quiet, at least from the cart, before they were forced to slow again as another guard stood in the road. This one directed them to one side of it, to park the cart. The guard nodded and then turned his attention to the next vehicle as Kutter directed the oxen to a stop. Powder squinted at this man. His armor looked a lot more like the enforcers’ armor than either of the city guards here in Baslich she had yet seen. Of course, instead of blue and gold it was gray and black with red decorations. 

 

Wait, she told herself, not exactly. The armor was almost the same as the outfit worn by the guard talking to Kutter by the docks. 

 

Another Noxian man, dressed a bit nicer than the one who had been selling flowers, came up to the cart from the sidewalk as they came to a final stop. He held out a bag in his hand and spoke to Vander and Kutter - and even to Powder, Vi, Ekko, Claggor and Mylo. Powder’s confusion caused by not speaking his language was not helped when the man produced from the bag a fist-sized jagged brown stone. The exchange in Ur-Nox that followed between the man offering them stones and Kutter wasn’t short exactly, but afterward the stranger looked grimly pleased as he moved on to the carriage behind them.

 

“He was offering us stones,” Kutter explained before Vander could even ask. Powder thought that much was obvious, though. She was about to ask why before he continued. “I told him that my friend here was just here to show his family that the empire punished those who betray it. Nothing more.” 

 

“Anyone about to get hurt, here?” Vander asked bluntly. Powder couldn’t help but notice how nervous he sounded.. 

 

“It’s possible,” Kutter sat the reins down in his lap. He glanced back at the kids in the cart with a frown on his face which Powder thought a little patronizing and awfully obscured by the thick black mustache above it. “Those stones are for throwing. If you want to tell the smaller ones to look away, you might consider it soon. I expect to hear jackboots by the cartload any moment now.” Powder opened her mouth to protest only to find Vi’s hand over it. She clumsily tugged the hand out of the way with her only remaining one before Vi could clamp down. 

 

“I’ve seen worse. We all have,” Powder told Kutter, nodding to Ekko. Ekko, though he looked reluctant, nodded back. She’d never seen someone stoned before but knew what it meant from stories. Kids told each other that it might happen if you crossed the council topside. She thought she’d seen worse violence even before the last month or so. Vander looked back at the cart, regretfully even as Vi ‘Shhh’d’ her right in her ear. 

 

“She’s not wrong,” he finally said. She didn’t understand why his voice sounded so heavy.

 

“Then I advise you to stay quiet until this is over. Don’t look if it will bother you, but do not speak or draw attention as the people pass.” Kutter sounded as if he had more to say, as if the pause was to just take a breath but his brown eyes widened slightly and he turned sharply around in his seat. Unceremoniously, the man came down from the cart and stood just outside of it with his head tilted, listening. Powder understood why a moment later. 

 

It was faint, but she could hear the change come over the street they were on and the road blocked off from vehicle access only a couple dozen feet away from them. From being a moderately quiet area, the street had shifted to being utterly silent. Well, it was silent other than a dreadful, distant sort of whisper that at first Powder wasn’t sure she heard. Then the whisper rose as the people who had spilled off of this road and onto the sidewalks lining the one ahead of them began to speak to one another enmasse. 

 

She didn’t know what they were saying but this preceded the unmistakable sounds of bootfalls. Vi’s fingers laced into her own as the whispers broke to jeers and then to a chant. The city around them echoed this chant from street corners and windows and balconies quickly, as if they knew to do it, as if it had been planned or expected of them. 

 

The day in a city changed from a day in a city to an event in a heartbeat. It was like walking along in the street and being attacked out of nowhere by a feral dog you hadn’t heard or seen coming.  In seconds your day was over with no care for what had been weighing on your mind, what your plans had been for the day or what mattered to you. All that was left was fighting off the thing on top of you, gnashing at your limbs and face.

 

An entire four person family stood atop a three story, wide apartment style building just across the street from where they were parked. Others were climbing to the roof to join them. That family, including a child who looked younger than her, joined the chorus of chants rising in volume. It was a wave of sound crashing roughly in their direction from the western edge of the city. Her stomach clenched as it had only a week ago when Vander had come close to discovering a secret outside of the Iconagra’s galley. 

 

“They’re cheering for the Hand of Noxus,” Kutter translated, quickly. “Like - invocation . Like they’re summoning him.” 

 

“The Grand General you mentioned, right? Darius?” Vander posited. Kutter nodded silently. 

 

Only seconds later, Powder had the bizarre experience of looking for a storm cloud in the sky as she heard the sound of rain. Yet, none fell. The sky was clear. Her body cooled significantly. 

 

That’s not rain, she told herself as she remembered the middle aged man offering stones to them all. Ahead, on the road they sat at the intersection of and several blocks to their left, well out of Powder’s sight from this far back from the street, the people who lived in Baslich were throwing rocks. She could guess why, too.

 

Moreover, so many were doing that it sounded like rainfall.

 

Vi wrapped her other arm around Powder. That was fine. Powder found herself shivering. 

 

“It’s okay,” Vi whispered. “You don’t have to watch. Close your eyes.” Powder did not close her eyes. She just didn’t bother breathing any more than she had to. Trying to stay still and silent, Powder waited until the sound of the stone-rain grew louder, the boots more clear and undeniable. Then the first of the procession reached them as the chant from the city of Basilich grew to a roar around her. It was not the prisoner who came first. Six or seven rows of identically dressed people, human, yordle, vastaya and others, marched in rank and file. They were dressed not like the guards on the street, but like the one who had met them at the dock, like the one likely still behind their cart. 

 

This, Powder understood, meant that the ones on the last street had been guards and man on the docks had not. 

 

He, the armored person by their cart and the crowd marching by in formation, were not guards but soldiers. 

 

Carrying matching shining steel shields, their weapons hanging at their hips and dressed in full black, gray and red regalia, several rows of soldiers stretched out over the road they were parked adjacent to. Eyes locked forward, they marched in time like clockwork toys. Any number of enforcer raids on the undercity came to mind but she imagined this was a lot closer to the sights she would have seen if she could remember many details about the war. 

 

Vi and her mother had kept her away from every battle - until the very end. 

 

Vi’s face slackened beside her, but she clutched tighter to Powder’s shoulders. Powder did not want to tell her more athletic sister she was hurting her broken arm but she did adjust where she sat. Vi got it, Powder thought, and pulled her right arm back. She still clutched at Powder with her left. It was as if she did not think Powder could sit up without her support. 

 

The soldiers kept coming after those seven rows but the next line of infantry were not carrying shields. Instead, they each bent under and bore a portion of a huge wooden platform on their shoulders. It took seconds for enough of it to go by that Powder understood why they were doing so. When she did she felt sick at the sight. 

 

A man stood quite firmly in the center of this unnecessarily big platform. He was clad in armor the same colors as the soldiers beneath him, save for being bulkier and clearly custom made. The man with the trademark Noxian black hair, a cold blank face and sharp, hard jawline balanced perfectly as he was carried through the streets of Basilich. His back was straight, hands clasped tightly behind it and the large spikes protruding from his shoulder pads did nothing to hide his face. 

 

This person who could only be the Grand General Darius that Kutter had mentioned posed firm, grim and like a statue as he was hauled through the streets. 

 

A stone seat like a throne waited on the platform behind him, but he did not take it. He stood, he towered over the soldiers literally carrying him on their backs and the people on the ground around him, presented for even those on the balconies and rooftops along the road. Powder was sure he knew what he was doing, that he was playing the moment up. A massive great axe, near as wide as he was at the shoulders, glimmered as it leaned against the front of the throne behind him.

 

Grand General Darius did not move, did not speak and did not smile or wave as he was carried onward and past Powder’s line of sight, further down the large street ahead. He just glowered forward, matching eyes with no one and nothing and waiting. 

 

Powder would later think this man liked himself very much. In the moment, though, she just knew she didn’t care for him at all. 

 

Another series of ranks of soldiers marched past. Each was clad in what looked to be the standard gear of the army and several bore banners of not just the Noxian empire but also another banner Powder couldn’t identify. The chanting for the Hand of Noxus swelled and then began to quiet as more and more of these rank and file soldiers continued past. Silence didn’t take its place, instead, the jeering grew louder. 

 

The “rain”, too, became loud enough she could hear its difference from actual rain. Sharp cracking sounds undermined the whole idea of it being rainfall. It left the quiet safe little idea of a storm which she could’ve hidden in raw and open just in time for the sight of chains. Chains trailed from the hands of an entire row of soldiers at march. Vi raised a hand as if to block Powder’s eyes as the stones falling and the jeering worsened, harsher and angrier and louder but Powder batted it away with her left hand roughly. 

 

She wasn’t a baby. 

 

She could see this. 

 

She had to see this.

 

The chains were long, unnecessarily, and attached to something around and between the wrists and ankles of a well toned, if beaten looking woman. The prisoner was too young for her white hair. Powder felt sick at the sight of her. This lady, the deserter, was led bare through the streets of Basilich. Not allowed so much as a scrap of clothing, she was left exposed to the cool morning, the brutal sunlight and enraged strangers. Even from back here, Powder could see patches of purple and blue across her paler than average skin. The rain of stones pounded down from rooftops and, she suspected, balconies and from the street upon the woman. Though her hair was white, a patch of it bloomed violently blood red before Powder’s eyes. Even those down the street nearest her began to shout in a Noxian tongue and hurl their stones. 

 

The deserter did not stumble when she was struck in the head. She did not stumble until the soldiers dragging her along gave cruel and insistent tugs at her chains as if designed to make her stagger and nearly topple. To show off her helplessness. In just the small window of time during which Powder saw this woman, stones cut her back, her face, her chest and stomach and shoulders and struck her hard enough in the head Powder thought she would collapse. 

 

Instead, the stranger flinched and carried her body like a burden, forward.

 

This is… this is… Powder tried to reach out for Vander despite him being so far away. Vi, who did not understand what was in Powder’s head, held her tight. 

 

“I want to go home,” Powder said quietly, unable to tear wide eyes from the sight in front of her. “I want to go back.” Vi hushed her, softly whispering that she had to stay quiet but Powder didn’t think VI or anyone else understood. Watching this place’s idea of a parade, she would take fighting Silco a hundred times over ever seeing the rest of it. “Let’s go back, let’s go back to the ship.” 

 

“Powder,” Vander said, just loud enough she could hear him. “We can’t.” 

 

“We can,” Powder argued back, and she hoped she could be heard over the stone-rain. “We should.” 

 

“Quiet,” Kutter told them both. “Someone could be listening.” 

 

Take the arm, I just want to go home. 

 

Chains connecting to this deserter’s wrists, ankles and, upon second look, neck ushered her further along and Powder forced herself to watch even though she wanted to be sick. A collar rested around the woman’s neck. Now the deserter was almost equal with them on the road - almost aligned, at least. Powder could see her state clearer. It was a flash, a picture she wished she had not seen. Vi’s hand again tried to block her sight but this time, Powder did not argue. 

 

This time she let her. She’d already seen it all. There was no way it was going to get worse. She didn’t need to see any more. 

 

Beside her, VI’s leg jerked suddenly and Claggor hissed. Powder could guess at what was happening. 

 

“We’ve all seen worse,” Claggor echoed Powder’s earlier words, but his voice was low and scratching and growling like Vander. He also did not sound so sure. Vander shushed them but Vi lowered her hand, drawing a breath as if to speak - just in time for Powder to open her eyes and see a man not more than thirty or forty feet ahead of her, on a balcony, hurl less a stone and more a brick. Powder shut her eyes of her own accord this time. A noise in the back of Vi’s throat told her the brick had not managed to hit the woman. 

 

She was glad they were far enough back from the intersection. If they had been closer, she might have had to look the deserter or the general in the eyes. 

 

The rest of the parade passed behind the safe barrier of Powder’s own eyelids. She focused on the faint movement of her body as she breathed or the grasp of Vi’s hand in her own when the girl adjusted herself in her seat. Her left shoulder had someone else’s hand on it. It was small enough it could only be Ekko’s but she did not open her eyes to check. Marching boots and screaming angry (or maybe just excited) citizens of the empire were all far away. Cold. 

 

Dazed, listless and a little lightheaded, Powder opened her eyes several long minutes that might’ve been months later. She wondered if the way she felt was the way Vi and Mylo felt when they spaced out so much. 

 

The guard nearby - the soldier  - spoke in Ur-Nox, but Powder assumed it was permission for them to roll forward and proceed when Kutter got the oxen moving. Then, in Piltovan much worse than Kutter’s, the soldier addressed the cart directly and loudly. 

 

“I hope you learned valuable lesson,” the masculine form intoned darkly, eyes locked on Vander and then trailing over the rest of the cart. “Betrayal - treason. Is ugly, and devoid of dignity. No shield, sword or cloth will hide traitors.” He must’ve heard us speaking Piltovan. Powder rocked slightly in her seat as the vehicle rolled forward and decided that she was not entirely done with the back of her eyelids. 

 

The procession hadn’t been that long but it was still happening further ahead. Judging by the crowd of foot traffic cutting across the road they needed to turn down to follow it, some people had not had enough of the spectacle. She closed her eyes again against their eagerness, the devoted and excited way people even as young as her were hurrying in the direction of ‘rain’ and boots and chains and desperation and wrong wrong wrong . 

 

“Powder,” Vi started, quietly. “It’s okay, it’s over.” 

 

Powder recognized her continued back and forth movement for the first time but did not stop rocking. 

 

“I know. I need to do something. Just let me calm down.” Powder hoped Vi would not try to still her. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t get up and walk away. She couldn’t rush back toward the docks no matter how badly she wanted to. So she moved the only way she thought she could. At least, that was how she justified it, having caught herself in the motion. Vi’s fingers worked across her scalp, or at least she assumed they were Vi’s. Still, her sister neither spoke again immediately nor stopped her. 

 

Powder had seen enough of Noxus as a whole for a lifetime, much less this city. 

 

She did not open her eyes as they passed what sounded like criers announcing, according to Kutter, the appearance of General Darius at the Proclama. She did not open her eyes when Mylo asked who the man on a poster they were passing was and why he ‘looks like that general guy’. She did not ask more when Kutter answered that he was the general’s brother, a war hero rising in gladiatorial combat. She did not ask anything for several long minutes, unsure if she wanted to ask anything about this place ever again. 

 

“Powder, we’re almost at the gates,” Vander told her several conversation-filled minutes later. Powder had not participated in them, but had picked out bits and pieces of conversation about their surroundings. “If you can, try to stay calm a little bit longer. We’ll be out of the city in a few minutes and then things will be better, you’ll see.” 

 

For the first time, Powder questioned whether or not Vander was telling the truth. She didn’t think being ‘out of the city’ would make any of this better. It had still happened - no, was probably still happening far behind them. 

 

Why? Because someone didn’t want to fight a war? 

 

“This place is bad,” Ekko muttered beside her. Powder slowly opened her eyes. 

 

“You said it, not me,” Claggor added. Across the cart, Mylo had gone back to staring at nowhere and nothing. Powder did not want to turn to her right, toward Vi, and risk seeing the same thing. 

 

“Please,” Vander pled without turning around and looking at them, voice dangerously low. “Let’s just keep it down a few minutes longer, then we’ll be out of the city and have some air.” Powder angled her head around the for the first time in a long time to look ahead of her. Though they were surrounded by less buildings, now, they were bigger ones. Apartment buildings and office buildings, mostly, by the look of things. Still, straight ahead was what was unmistakably the gate to the city. Basilich must have been walled off. Powder hadn’t realized it was a walled city. Posters were plastered to the gate and the arch it was set into. Either side of this arch was simple thick pale stone that met the walls of the city and the dark wrought iron gates reached up to its full thirty foot height. Powder saw a second set of doors opened inward just on their side of the gates. These were stone, too, but massive and thick .

 

Clearly, they were not for day to day use. 

 

Two or three of the city guard in their simpler clothing and metal skirts were stopping both people on foot and in vehicles leaving the area. Powder could not even look at them. So she looked at the severe, later-middle aged looking man on the posters plastering the walls. She could not read any form of Noxian script but judging by his heavy looking armor and the long, thick cape he wore so like that of the Hand of Noxus, this must have been the other Grand General she’d been told about. His nose was hooked, slightly but he otherwise bore some similar characteristics with General Darius: a heavy, wide chin, thick looking head, and fairly broad shoulders underneath excessively weighty looking armor. 

 

After a moment, their cart was stopped by one of the guards moving on from the group of foot travelers ahead and, finally, Powder turned to look at Vi. 

 

Even when the guard began to talk to Kutter and the man reached for his coin purse, Vi did not look directly at anyone, either. Just as spaced out as Mylo, for a moment her eyes reminded Powder too much of the last time she had seen their mother’s eyes. Vi’s looked… dead. It was enough that she wanted to shake the girl just to look for signs of life but Kutter spoke in Piltovan. 

 

“This fine gentlewoman wants us to leave the cart so she can search it and us,” Kutter said suddenly, drawing Powder’s attention forward as his voice rose. “I’m explaining to her that you’re defectors from the weak and treacherous land of Piltover.” Laying it on thick, his voice rose slightly as he offered a few shining silver coins to the faintly sneering guard in front of him. Her eyes latched onto the money but Powder was not certain she understood a thing Kutter was saying. “That you’ve come seeking a life of safety, prosperity and glory under the empire, since Piltover can naturally provide none of those things.” Then, Kutter spoke again in Va-Nox. Though she only picked out one or two words at the most for certain, Powder could guess he was translating. 

 

Even as a cart stopped behind them and its driver was patted down, the woman just outside of their own cart took the silver in hand and gave a nod before asking a question in Va-Nox that Kutter shook his head to. After this, the gates were pushed open by the next two guards. They, as well as several people ahead of them and behind them, were allowed to exit the walls of the city of Basilich. 

 

“What was that about?” They passed under the massive stone arch and she looked up to see inscriptions in yet more unfamiliar script wrapping up along the inside of the arch. Vander, however, just looked poitnedly at Kutresh until his question was answered.

 

“She recommended we stay for the gladiatorial fight tonight. The great hero Draven is back from - ah -  the front lines to welcome his brother, the Grand General, to their hometown. He is supposed to put on quite the show. I had to tell her we were busy. Sadly.” 

 

“Really broken up about it,” Claggor was uncharacteristically, darkly sarcastic. That about summed up how Powder felt about the whole prospect of missing such a ‘show’, too.

 

Surprisingly, no one answered neither Claggor nor Kutter and so the sound of turning wheels and hoofprints against a much more loosely cobbled road dominated the air. Ahead, people on foot slipped off to the side of the road and allowed the cart by, as well as, she thought, the carriage behind them. Powder did not try to tune in to any of their quiet conversations as they passed a trio of Noxian humans now tramping along through fairly tall grass. She would not have been able to understand even if she wanted to. Instead, she turned her attention to Vi who had settled back down into her seat beside Powder and was now notably not looking at the field around them. 

 

Vi was still glassy-eyed and cool. Mylo had closed his eyes as if to tune the world out again, himself. The city walls were still close enough on their right side as they began to roll north along its western edge that she could see the individual titanic bricks that made up its surface. 

 

It was not the wall Ekko pointed to when he elbowed her in the side lightly and said, “look!” 

 

Powder turned her head and looked. At first she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be looking at. She saw no sign of anything scary or upsetting. Even Vander spun around to glance at the two of them and then follow their gazes. Claggor followed suit. By this point, and in part because of the way Claggor leaned faintly toward the left side of the cart to look over the edge, Powder understood what had Ekko so entranced. 

 

A sourceless, upsetting laugh bubbled up and escaped Powder before she clamped her left hand over her mouth in response. 

 

Before them all was a field of more green than Powder had ever even imagined. Just a minute outside of the city of Basilich and if she turned her back to the walls within which a horror show was unfolding, it was like being in a whole other world. Still covering her mouth, Powder’s widening eyes took in an expanse of grass and trees, bushes and plants she’d probably never seen or even read about before her. The trees thickened off in the distance, though quite a ways. This treeline, surely, meant the start of an actual forest. 

 

And the sky . 

 

The sky was like it was in topside: none of the undercity’s smog and most of the vapors and gasses emitting from the various industries still contained within the Lanes. Except, this sky was even cleaner than that! Clearer, bright and the unnaturally ( natural ) blue expanse was broken up only by the horizon or big, cartoony fluffy pale clouds rolling in almost waves through the air above them. 

 

Her only good hand, still over her mouth now fought with not a laugh she couldn’t explain but a strangled sob she was equally mystified by. 

 

Am I going crazy? She couldn’t help but think of the pouch strapped to the back of her belt. 

 

“The sunlight’s too bright but it’s so nice out,” Ekko said, with marvel in his voice that she only heard when he learned something new about the way machines or the world worked. “There’s just space… empty everywhere! And it’s so green . It’s… it’s a lot.” 

 

“It’s a lot,” Powder agreed, from behind her hand. Without looking back at her, Claggor gave an unsettled grunt. Most disturbing of all, though, was that as Powder lowered her hand and turned to her two remaining siblings, neither Mylo nor Vi were paying an ounce of attention to the conversation. Mylo had shifted and was now staring down at his hands. This felt more wrong than all the empty space in the world combined. 

 

How could you not fucking stare at all this? 

 

“Have you ever seen so much grass in your lives?” Kutter asked, voice thick with his accent and amusement in equal measure. He did not bother to take his eyes from the rockier, dirtier thin cobbled road. 

 

“No,” Powder answered in time with Ekko, who took the opportunity to draw close to her again. That was good. Ekko dragged her attention away from Vi and Mylo’s almost incorrect inattentiveness to the situation. 

 

“Grass is a topsider thing,” Claggor told Kutter, openly beginning to move boxes out of the way of him getting closer to the front left corner of the cart. This did shift the weight around a bit. No one tried to stop him. “Even then - not like this.” 

 

“Well, you go from being city people to country people,” Kutter declared. “The nearest place to your new home is a little village, forty minutes of good yak or oxen travel away. No people constantly in your face, breathing your air, soiling your water to make gold. None of it.” With this, the man turned back to them, emotions unmasked clearly for the first time since they’d first laid eyes upon him. 

 

And it was a transformation.

 

The Kutter, Kutresh, looked happy. He looked triumphant, as if to him even getting them to their new home and away from their old one was some kind of great battle won. The thick line of hair above his mouth twitched with a grimly satisfied smirk. 

 

Powder wondered if that was because he thought he’d talk Vander into helping the Noxian underground, now. 

 

“I won’t pretend you’re free,” the driver of the cart continued as his eyes went frontward. The words would be chilling if Powder did not already feel entirely off her balance. Ekko pressed his shoulder up against her own and with Vi so close by on her other side (no matter the state she was in,) Powder thought she should be able to hold it together. “But there will be days now, whole swaths of your lives where you can wake up, step outside and feel like you are.” Powder wasn’t sure of all of what the man was implying but Ekko beat her quickly to the question. 

 

“What do you mean?” Ekko pushed, almost immediately. Kutter’s shoulders sagged as if Ekko’s question had ruined his great impassioned speech but Vander just turned his head, looked side-eye at them all and then shook it.

 

“Don’t worry about it. If it ever comes up, that’ll be my problem.” 

 

“They should at least be taught the Empire of Noxus if they’re going to live in it,” Kutter advised Vander, who quickly rebutted. 

 

“There’s some things you don’t need to know until you’re old enough,” the former barkeep responded, with a firm nod. “It’s not a problem any of you are likely to face for at least a couple of years, anyway.” 

 

“So, I’m not old enough?” Claggor prompted. 

 

“I’ll think about it,” was all Vander said in response. “For now, all you lot need to know is what you just saw in Basilich. Just like home, there’s people in power. They have rules. They have things they don’t like. If you upset those people or break those rules, it’s as bad for you here as it is back home.” 

 

“Maybe worse,” Kutter mumbled, that ‘to be fair’ tone in his voice saying he was trying to argue a point, if reluctantly. 

 

“Maybe,” Vander agreed, but he sounded like he didn’t care about the conversation. “ That’s all you kids need to worry about, for now.” 

 

Powder convinced Ekko with a couple of nudges to scoot away from her a bit. He took no offense. She wasn’t driving Ekko off because she didn’t want to sit close to him, but so that the two could turn in their seats to look back out to the west. There, they had a stretch of verdant field larger than anything topside had at their disposal. The pair made of their first few minutes outside of the city a game. Whenever one recognized a plant, they had to point it out and name it before the other could. Neither had a particular advantage over the other as they’d both been taught about plants by books that had come into Benzo’s shop’s possession. 

 

Ekko always shared the books Benzo let him borrow or read even though he was probably one of the few people she knew who understood they were the most valuable thing in the undercity, except maybe food.  That was part of what made him so cool: Ekko knew the important things and was way better than everyone she knew at not sweating the rest of it. Better than her, at least. 

 

Between them both they identified half a dozen different trees and six or seven types of flowers spread across the wild lands around them. From up in the cart and moving along the road at a decent pace, it was hard identifying things like other more green plants and bushes beyond the basics. It did not help that everything was so damn bright. 

 

Is it going to be this bright from now on?

 

After a few minutes more the walls of Basilich could not really be seen from the road in any detail even turning and squinting. They were just faint lines in the distance. Also long left behind, though, were the cobblestones in the road. Instead, wide and surprisingly flat and clear, the road was a dirt path. It was large enough that the carriage behind them being pulled by a pair of horses could’ve sped up and passed them if it had not turned off of the road to a small cluster of structures close to the edge of Basilich long ago. Powder had had to admit as she watched that carriage disappear into the distance that there was something impressive and intimidating about the horses drawing it. She had never really been close enough to a horse to realize their size or how muscular their bodies were before. 

 

Now, she wondered how the first horses had been tamed and what kind of people were brave or stupid enough to try. 

 

Probably people like Vi or Claggor, she thought. 

 

Curiosity and wonder at their surroundings, at every new flower spotted amongst the grasses or even at the sight of the large, dark brown beast with the great branching horns Vander had identified as an ‘elk’ were sufficient enough to drive some of the fear and cold away. She was not even thinking about Basilich or her weird feelings at the sight of the lands around the city by the time she started to notice that their cart’s wheels were cutting across more firmly packed dirt. The fields around them were dotted by small structures and tamed, cut stretches of land. Powder could only guess that some time had passed when she started to pick up on the differences because of a sense that the back of her neck and her un-cast arm had been warmed by the sun above. 

 

The second sign that they were entering another city was not the sight of city walls or a great archway but the first time they passed land bordered by a low wooden fence. Those wouldn’t keep a kid half my size out of anything. Within minutes of this, the road they traveled had widened back out much as it had been nearest the city and structures began to come into view up ahead. None looked higher than a story, but there were more in the distance. A mix of stone, clay brick and heavy, dark woods, it was not a handful of structures the cart approached but an entire town. 

 

Even from the outskirts she could see it had nothing on Basilich, much less Piltover or the Lanes. 

 

“What’s up?” Claggor asked before she or Ekko could really be bothered. Powder had been more intent on soaking up the complete lack of people around them to do or say anything about the situation.

 

“Good opportunity to feed and water the animals,” Kutter told him. “Last chance for you to see a bit of the more - how it’s said - city side of Noxus. We can pull off the road in town and while the oxen eat, we eat.” Powder hadn’t thought she was hungry but the words got her stomach’s attention right off the bat. It growled even though they had eaten only a couple of hours before disembarking the Iconagra. “Someone will be making food to sell to those coming and going to the city.” 

 

“How long have we been riding?” Powder thought she’d ask. “I lost track.” 

 

“I’d guess a couple hours, considering,” Vander answered, finger pointing upward. Powder lifted her head to see the sun near right over them. “It’s close to noon.” This, at least, surprised her. Maybe her stomach growling made plenty of sense, with that in mind. 

 

“After all that time on the boat and so much travel ahead, don’t you want to stretch your legs? Use the mostly healthy bodies the gods gave you.” While the phrasing wasn’t what Powder would have chosen, Kutter had a point. Besides, not every city in the entire Empire could have such horrible things happening in it, right? 

 

Right.

 

“I really want to eat,” Ekko admitted, “but it’d be nice to stretch too.” Powder couldn’t remember riding in a cart this long in her life. Usually if anything was happening involving a cart it meant Mylo or Vi were stealing from the back of one while she and Claggor kept look out or distracted the driver. Claggor could carry plenty but wasn’t the sneakiest and she, even healthy, could only haul out so much.

 

“Kids are the same everywhere,” Kutter told Vander conspiratorially. “I suppose you do need all that food to grow - and you all look right and ready for a growth spurt.” Vander chuckled but when he glanced back and matched Powder’s eyes it was clear he was weighing Kutter’s words semi-seriously as he looked them over. 

 

“Think you’re right,” Vander said and he sounded pleased. “Though in my case I could stand to shrink in a few places.” 

 

“You mean right here, eh?” the driver challenged, reaching over to pat Vander on the stomach without releasing the reins, causing the oxen pulling the cart to jerk the vehicle right for a second. “Ope! My mistake, my mistake.” 

 

“Steady on,” Vander pretended to scold the mustachio’d Noxian. The laughter in his voice just made it clear all over again that somewhere in their pasts he and Kutresh had been close. Vander had affection for him even through the teasing. Other than Benzo, Powder wasn’t sure Vander had any friends he laughed with this openly and this closely. Whatever past her father held with the man hadn’t been all doom and gloom and practicing survival skills and war and stuff. They were friends. 

 

It was nice to think Vander had a real friend other than just Benzo.

 

It did not occur to Powder to ask the name of the town they rolled into at around noon. Instead, she leaned partially over the edge of the cart as they slowly rolled past the outer limits of the town and took in the sight of a settlement that was already super different than Basilich. The buildings were simple, sure, but they did not look designed to be plain and square and tall and unwelcoming. Instead, in familiar shades of brick browns and reds and oranges for the most part with trims made of grey and brown stones and dark woods, the town was more colorful than Basilich by far. Better yet, there were almost no Noxian banners hanging as the cart practically loped down the wide road cutting clearly through the center of this town. 

 

The people were different, too. Their clothes didn’t have a lot of fancy ornamentation, no one bothered to wear fine suits or dresses that she thought impossible not to trip over. Simple clothes, mostly in earthen colors, surrounded the cart. 

 

Surrounded, quite literally. 

 

The deeper into the town they got the more people were on the street. They weren’t quietly and seriously going about their business or cruelly heckling and stoning a defenseless naked woman being led through the streets by what felt like an entire army, either.

 

Most of them were just doing what people do: dragging goods from one place to another, stopping to chat, or even turning to curiously gaze at and wave at the strangers coming into their town. By the time Kutter found an empty enough space near the town center to pull over, Powder could see a bunch of kids from the village grouped together in a mass twenty or thirty people thick playing some kind of keep away game with a round, heavy looking rubber ball. The wide open grassy lot they’d taken over could easily have been the center of town, too. 

 

Couples, individuals and even whole families casually chatted and haggled and ate and relaxed on the outer edge of this lot. It was so night and day of a difference that for the second time that day, Powder felt like she’d stepped into a whole other world. 

 

When Kutter and Vander began to climb down from the front of the cart, that was all the warning Ekko needed. 

 

“Grab that bucket from the back, will you, and one of the bags with the black ribbons around it?” Kutter told Ekko as he started to throw himself over the side of the cart and down to the ground below. Regretful, Ekko did not push off from the cart and instead took hold of an overturned bucket and lowered it to the ground outside of the cart. While he and Claggor dug around for a cloth bag among the many in the back that matched Kutter’s description, Powder elbowed Vi softly. Vi gave a nod and shot her a faint smile. 

 

“Wanna get out and stretch?” Vi asked her, without any sign that suggested she had heard Kutter rambling about the importance of doing just that a moment ago. 

 

“Yeah,” Powder stood up and carefully walked around Vi. Her sister lifted the board that served as the back wall of the cart up and out of its position to allow her to more easily climb down. Vander was already at the back holding out both hands as if to lower her to the ground when Powder looked once at him, huffed in frustration and sat down on the edge of the back of the cart before sliding off. She landed on her feet without even a wince to show that she’d just shaken her bad arm up a good bit. 

 

“Fair enough,” Vander raised both hands almost defensively. “Just tryin’ to help, right, Violet?” Their father looked over Powder’s head toward her sister and when Powder followed suit it was to see Ekko toss himself over the side of the cart after the bag Claggor was lowering down. Mylo had tuned back in on the situation, too. He, like Vi, looked around the street at the small one story brick and timber structures with eyes that said he’d not really been too aware of his surroundings a moment before. Vi looked back at Vander, curled one side of her mouth into a weak fake smile and otherwise stayed still and quiet. 

 

“Mylo, how about you? Are you alright th-”

 

“I’m fine,” Mylo cut across their father as Powder took a chance to go under the man’s extended arm and over to where Kutter surveyed the landscape. The driver pointed to a corner of the grassy lot the large knot of kids were playing in, ranging from older than Vi to younger than Powder herself. In that corner was a small, squat stone brick structure she recognized as a well. 

 

“If young Powder and Claggor don’t mind putting the feed in front of each,” Kutter added, gesturing to the three oxen at his back, “Ekko and I will get the water and perhaps Vander and the others can find some food at that little market?” Powder expected this last to be punctuated by Kutter gesturing one arm at a building around them. Instead he pointed where the thickest grouping of adults were around the edge of the lot, seemingly talking with one another over blankets. Now she could see the blankets had a spread of various objects, sacks and crates lying atop them. This was closer to one of topside’s open air markets but even those had stalls and open structures instead of blankets. 

 

When Kutter held out a handful of coin for Vander, he and Powder, in turn, took their cues. 

 

With Vi not feeling it and looking more than a little upset at Mylo, (who was being sour and mean, himself) Vander left the cart with a promise to return with lunch. Powder and Claggor, though, pulled open a bag of what turned out to be just hay and had fun offering each of the three still very large cow-like creatures their first handfuls of their meals. The animals had no problem taking the food from their hands, either. Even by comparison to Claggor, Powder bet the largest of the three had a head almost as wide as a person’s chest. 

 

It made sense with the size there was an appetite to match and before terribly long, the bag which was not so much heavy as lumpy and large was emptied into three separate piles right in front of and beneath the animals. They had some difficulty at first finding their way to the food. Powder wondered if they weren’t supposed to be unhitched before being fed but she had no idea how to safely do that without maybe breaking something. Worse, maybe the big things would try to run off or wander if she cut them loose. 

 

Besides, they figured out a way to get their meals pretty quickly. 

 

Wouldn’t it have been better to stop outside of town and let them eat the live grass?  Powder wondered. She didn’t know a lot about that kind of thing but live grass probably had more good nutrients than dry, dead plants.

 

She could not lift the heavy bucket of water Ekko and Kutter brought back with one hand to help the animals drink, nor was it viable for her to do more than watch on their second trip back to the well to get another bucket for the animals to share. The little wench and pulley system that allowed Ekko to hook the bucket up, lower it down into the deep well and lift it back out without much trouble was cool to observe, though.

 

She wondered at how, left out and exposed so long, it had not rusted much more than it had. 

 

“Someone must be maintaining it, you know, replacing parts and stuff,” Powder told Ekko, who seemed to find the simple machine slightly less exciting than she did. He only shrugged. Powder caught him looking back over his shoulder at the big group of kids at play when they reached the cart. She kind of got it, too. The air here was just happier than it usually was down in the Lanes and definitely didn’t compare to the stuffy darkness of Basilich. 

 

While waiting for Vander to come back from the ‘market’ across the way, Powder learned from a very patient and cheerful Kutter how to hitch and unhitch the animals to the cart. He had not minded her asking and instead seemed a little excited to pass on some kind of knowledge. Though there was something distinctly forced about his relaxed demeanor, the good mood was real enough. This set Powder at ease with him but that only made her look at her surroundings in case there was some threat she didn’t notice, there . Other than having convinced herself for a moment that one of many people lounging around the town square was looking back at her (and even if they were, she was a stranger who’d just come to town) nothing she saw scared her. 

 

Vander’s return wasn’t as quick as Powder’s stomach would’ve liked. It did get Ekko’s attention and quiet the faint smolder that seemed to be coming from Vi every time Mylo made it clear he was annoyed at being stopped or grumbled that he thought he was getting a sunburn. Vander carried back a very full basket in which someone had loaded a couple of loaves of bread and an exciting amount of cooked red meat on a series of long wooden skewers. While the bread was not the freshest nor the easiest for her to tear off and eat with one hand, Powder took the first skewer Ekko grabbed for her when Vander came within arm’s reach without hesitation. Vander tried to return some coins to Kutter, but Kutter told him only to keep it and spend it the first chance he got on more food. 

 

It didn’t beat out the rare and treasured visits to one of the stalls in the undercity that you ate at when you came into unexpected (not to mention very little) coin or were having just a really bad day, there was something nice about the meal. Powder sat on the back of the cart, her legs dangling above the ground and ate while Vander and Kutter talked about adventures in the wilds around Piltover. She learned more about the land around her home listening to them than she’d ever learned in her life.

 

Things went as normal for a town around them. Powder saw a little more life in Vi’s face as she ate, though she thought the girl’s face was pinker than usual. 

 

Come to think of it, Powder started, touching at the back of her neck and earning a faint sting, the flesh there warm under her fingertips. Mylo might be right about the sunburns.  Powder couldn’t guess the last time she’d had a sunburn. She’d practically forgotten what they were like. 

 

It didn’t seem to be as big a problem for some of the locals: a little more tan in complexion with hair ranging from deep auburn all the way to black, they were a little more used to conditions. Powder guessed that made sense. 

 

“Hey,” Ekko said as Powder caught herself spacing out. “You good?” Powder nodded, halfway through biting into a piece of bread as one of the people from the nearest edge of that grassy town square turned and started to approach the cart on the far side of the road. The question made her slow down and think. Ekko’s earnest face twisted, worried about her. “You weren’t earlier.” Powder nodded again. 

 

He was right about that. 

 

“I’m okay,” she promised. It was true for now, at least. She didn’t want to think about earlier. She didn’t want to think about tomorrow. She didn’t want to think about living in Noxus.

 

The slight woman with the wispy, thinning gray hair who came and waved Kutter and Vander down looked like she might be a little older than Vander. Powder caught Va-Nox and Ur-Nox words as she spoke, though it already sounded different than the accent in the city of Basilich. It couldn’t have been more than three hours from the city but the words came out sharper in some ways and almost softer, as in literally quieter in others, some sounds nearly muted. Powder was lucky to make out a word as the woman drew a shawl around her shoulders and talked to Kutter who answered her in Va-Nox. 

 

“This nice lady is inviting the kids to come and play with others,” Kutter told Vander. “A road is hard and dull when you have all that energy. Well, that makes sense to me.” For just a moment Vander hesitated, his mouth hanging half open. 

 

“Tell her thank you?” Vander asked of Kutter. It sounded more like he was asking an actual question than making a request. Still, when Vander gave the cart behind him a nod, Powder, who was craning her neck to look at him, realized she was going to be dragged along by Ekko immediately. He hadn’t waited more than a second after the nod to push off of the cart beside her. “Well, you kids want to, go right ahead. I’ll come get you when it’s time to leave.” 

 

“Let us spend an hour here. It’s okay to see the good things in this place after all that unpleasantness,” Kutter counseled him. Vander again shrugged as if it was out of his hands. Powder wouldn’t mind seeing the ‘good things.’ This town certainly felt nicer, to her. 

 

“I’ll pass,” Claggor announced. “If I trip over some of those little guys out there, I’mma hurt someone.” Powder looked back at Vi, but she had turned in the cart to take up more space along its left side and lie back, head on a bag of what was apparently winter wheat seed judging by the little snowflake drawn upon it above words Powder could not read. 

 

“Come on,” Ekko encouraged, holding out a hand for her. Powder’s only working hand occupied by another chunk of bread, she lowered her eyebrows and shook her head, grimacing. Whatever the game they were playing (and she did not know it at all) it looked fun. It looked like the crowd of two or three dozen were having a good time. 

 

“There’s a lot of strangers,” she started. 

 

“Yeah, and I’ll be right there, too,” Ekko said, pressing his thumb to his chest. “Who’s gonna try anything with us both there? We could take ‘em.” Not only was Powder no longer so confident about that after all that had happened back home, that just wasn’t the point. She didn’t want to embarrass herself in front of a bunch of people because she could barely run or move, much less kick or catch or throw a ball. These things seemed to be whole point of the game and she wasn’t really in great condition for any of it. “It’s okay to be scared you’ll lose, I guess,” Powder stopped mid chew and squinted at Ekko as he shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. She swallowed the bite in her mouth. 

 

“You don’t even know the rules.” 

 

“Neither do you,” Ekko told her before looking away and grinning . “Which is why it’s weird you’re scared you’ll lose.” 

 

“I am not,” she insisted and then shoved the last mouthful of bread in, lowered her hand to the cart and pushed off of it. 

 

“Go get ‘em,” Vi encouraged, surprising Powder that the older girl was paying any attention to what was happening around her. Without matching Vander’s gaze, Powder hurried after Ekko. She didn’t watch his back but instead locked her eyes on the game. Behind her, Vander stumbled over the Va-Nox words for ‘thank you’ but Powder left that behind her, too. Scared? She’d show him. He was the one who ended every game of Lanewar they’d ever played with paint all over his ‘armor.’ 

 

When they passed a line of parents and families just enjoying the game unfolding in front of them, Powder still kept her eyes on the mass of kids. She expected that, in front of her, Ekko was doing the same thing she was: trying to figure out the game. 

 

It was basically a big game of pass with a chosen person in the center that was not supposed to touch the ball. She’d long since figured that out. However, now that they were closer and she came to a stop next to Ekko on the outer edge of the game, she was picking up on a few more details. The people closest to the central person weren’t keeping the ball away from them like the others. They had formed a ring facing out around that central figure (in this case, a girl maybe Powder’s age) and were leaping and jumping, reaching out and trying to grab the ball whenever it came close as if to get it for the girl. 

 

It wasn’t just grabbing at the ball as it flew over their heads, though.

 

Even as Ekko started to lead her into the group and people surprisingly parted and scooted to give them room to join the game without hesitation, she spotted a dark brunette Mylo’s size try (and succeed at) disrupting the flight path of a ball going over and around that center ring by bumping it with the top of her head. 

 

If it was just ‘keep away,’ there would be an easy way of winning, Powder thought as the ball came closer to their side of the outer ring and Ekko began to angle through gaps in the kids bumping against and off one another. It must be about getting close. Thrown from their side of the outer ring to the other, the ball flew over the head of a gangly looking boy from the inner circle who tried to do what the girl in the inner ring had done a moment before. He could not get high enough fast enough to block or disrupt the throw. A strip of cloth tying his hair back dislodged itself and was buried in the grass under foot quickly. 

 

The majority of the game was played by hand, she saw, not foot. 

 

I think I can do this, Powder told herself as she noticed how lightly and easily a boy half her size bounced the ball off of one extended hand and over to a friend who threw it, overhand, across the outer circle to another. The point is to get the ball close to the one in the middle and keep it from her and her friends. 

 

Powder settled into a pattern of watching which way the ball was passed, how the people threw it and how close it often came to the reaching hand of someone in the inner ring. She could hear the held breaths every time one of them got their hand on the ball and nearly took possession before it bounced off into another attacker’s grasp. It really felt kind of like attackers and defenders. Most of the game, when you didn’t have the ball, seemed to just be to stay mobile and standing. With this many people and this many legs going this way and that and trying to keep an eye on a ball that could be thrown from above down toward you at any point, though, that was part of the challenge. 

 

At one point, no more than two minutes after they’d joined the game, someone on the other side of the outer ring hurled the ball a little too low. One of the taller folk on that side of the inner ring managed to get a hand on it, knocking it far off course and slowing it down enough that Powder thought they’d finally be about to learn what would happen if one of the inner ring grabbed hold of the ball. Instead, only two or so feet ahead of Powder, a boy with a wild mop of dark hair the size of Vi jumped as high as he could, reaching out over the head of one of the ‘defenders’ trying to get the ball into the inner ring, and knocked it up. 

 

Up and backward . 

 

With only one arm she wasn’t really going to risk missing her reach and her bad arm getting hit by the ball heading right at her quickly. Instead, trusting that it wouldn’t be as painful as it looked, Powder crouched down as the ball came her way and took a good solid jump, bouncing the pale brown rubber off the top of her head. There was certainly discomfort at the impact but the ball was way lighter than it looked. It popped right back up and off to her left, mercifully away from the inner ring which had nearly gotten hold of it twice. 

 

Laughing, a boy a couple inches shorter than her reached out to support her as she landed on her feet and stumbled back. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt good but the quickly coming breath and feeling of her legs working under her to keep up was good. Good, like when Vi said she’d teach Powder to fight (even if she’d apparently forgotten), good, like when she practiced running, climbing, jumping and squeezing along tight ledges high above the Lanes with the others. 

 

Good.

 

Being one of the rare friendly phrases she knew in the tongue, Powder thanked the boy in Va-Nox. Only a few feet away, Ekko flashed a thumbs up her way and that proved to be a bad idea. Distracted, he let the ball fly right by him and into the hands of a slightly older boy who caught it. With a laugh that did not seem cruel, just playful, said boy bumped Ekko in the back with the ball. At first Powder and Ekko himself just laughed it off, preparing to get back to the game, but instead the boy started to nudge Ekko forward, calling loudly in Va-Nox. 

 

Powder didn’t understand the language well, but she pieced together what was happening when the girl with the deep brown hair in the center ring pointed at one of her ‘inner circle’ and shouted, apparently, his name. The smaller boy in the inner circle, shorter even than Ekko, happily bounded forward out to the larger crowd. Meanwhile, a confused Ekko slowly pieced together that he was supposed to take that boy’s place. The one freed from the inner ring looked excited which Powder got: this team was bigger and moved a lot more, basically controlling what direction the game went or where the knot of kids playing moved.

 

Ekko looked excited too, though. After all, the inner ring had the challenge. Powder had the sense that she and Ekko were being watched a little bit as she glanced about and the game continued. 

 

It wasn’t just the kids, though, who were looking curiously at her, but a couple of the other locals on the edge of the field. Nothing struck her immediately as really off about it: they were just new here and people probably had questions. Still, while she occasionally caught sight of Ekko through the little crowd, trying to leap and grab at the ball soaring over his head, bounce it, redirect it, what have you, the sense that something more was going on kept itching at her. At one point, Powder actually slowed and turned about back in the direction of the cart, looking over the shoulder of the boy who’d helped steady her a moment ago. She expected to see a couple members of her family watching the game. While Claggor, Kutter and Vander looked to be doing just that at the front of the cart, it was not their gazes that Powder matched a moment later. It wasn’t them that caused her to freeze suddenly enough she was nearly knocked over when the game began to move to another part of the field. 

 

That went to a citizen of the town who was dressed a little differently than the others. While not wearing some fine fancy dress, her hooded robes were decidedly more ornate than anything anyone else sat around the field or over at the little pop up market wore. It reminded Powder of something ceremonial from some topside government run parade or something. Slowing again, she watched the stranger notice her watching. Two dark eyes met her own, thick eyeliner surrounding them and dropping down from the center of each to make a small, jagged spike over the tops of the stranger’s cheeks. Those eyes then tracked away from her to what Powder could not help but notice was Ekko bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet after getting a finger on a ball flying over his head. The hair beneath this stranger’s hood caught the light, appearing a deep lavender. Her skin was paler but tinted almost the same lavender. Ekko did not notice the woman looking at him among the crowd of other onlookers watching the play. 

 

He did not see what Powder saw. 

 

The stranger reached into her robe with one hand and grasped hold of something within it about at chest height and then, straight out for far longer than it should’ve been possible, the woman watching Ekko pulled a long, pale wooden staff from her robe. It should not have been able to fit by any stretch of the imagination, turned in any way, underneath the clothing. Yet, the robe did not so much as ripple or shake as it ejected the staff and the stranger pressed the end of the wood into the earth. 

 

Neither Ekko, nor the people standing on either side of or behind the woman, noticed her vanish into thin air the moment the staff touched the ground. 

 

Powder surged toward the inner circle, ducking under another attacker’s arm and taking the next one’s elbow carelessly to her bad arm. She yelped. This had the side effect of getting Ekko’s attention, so he saw her coming and was able to shout out as she approached. Though they probably didn’t understand what he was saying, the nearest one or two kids to him looked over their shoulders, saw her coming and moved aside. Powder took his right hand in her left and gave it a tug. 

 

“What?” Ekko called over the general racket and laughter around her. 

 

“We need to go,” Powder told him, as serious as she thought she could make herself sound without letting on that she was nervous all over again. 

 

“What? It’s just getting fun, you had that great header a second ago!” 

 

“We have to go,” Powder repeated, this time marking down the term ‘header’ stolen from football. “Something’s wrong.” 

 

Though he was clearly not a fan of it, this time when Powder gave a tug Ekko followed, apologizing to the other members of the Inner Circle. The boy he’d replaced hurried to take his spot and Ekko waved once or twice over his shoulder to someone - Powder was not sure who - still at play. She didn’t explain and Ekko didn’t ask her to as they broke out of the edge of the game. Once they’d gotten some space from the kids and Powder had spun them both toward the cart, only then did Ekko clear his throat to prompt her. 

 

“Someone was staring at us.” 

 

“Lots of people are watching the game,” Ekko told her, gesturing to the crowd gathered around the grassy lot. Powder shook her head. 

 

“No, she was watching us. She looked at me and then she was staring at you and then she…” Powder wasn’t sure how much to say. Ekko usually was nice about not assuming the kinds of things the others did, that when she got scared or nervous or upset she imagined things. She hated when people did that. Still, this sounded stupid, even for her. 

 

“She what?” Ekko asked quickly. Maybe he was thinking, as she was, that they were getting awfully close to the cart. 

 

“She disappeared into thin air and no one around her noticed. No one else even reacted .” Powder looked back to see Ekko watching her as if waiting to see if she was pulling his leg. She dipped her head, widening her eyes and generally put on a face that said she was being serious and he was being stupid. This made Ekko shrug. 

 

“You sure she didn’t just move behind someone?” 

 

“She was standing still and then poof - someone who probably couldn’t see the game behind her was looking right through the space like she’d never been there.” Powder insisted. 

 

“Creepy,” Ekko eased in, and it didn’t sound like he disbelieved her. It sounded like he was starting to be as creeped out as she was. “Sounds like magic.” The word was scary enough, on its ownL she’d seen something else that worked like magic lately. Everyone knew what magic was, how dangerous it was and how mages could and used to do all kinds of terrible things without regular people being able to stop them. What else was disappearing in front of loads of people if not magic, though? Powder shivered.

 

“What’s up? That wasn’t long,” Vander called, as they got closer to the cart. It was still a little far to talk normally, so Powder just shook her head. Ekko, taking her cue, shrugged and hurried up to walk beside her, letting go of her hand. 

 

“It was fun, but we were still kinda hungry,” Ekko said as they grew closer, pretending to look around at the town. 

 

“Bread and a couple skewers left for ya in the back.” 

 

“Just the bread,” Mylo called, earning a sigh from Vander. 

 

“Bread left for ya in the back,” Vander corrected himself. 

 

“Maybe we get back on the road, after all?” Kutter mused. “Might mean you don’t have to spend more than a night sleeping in the back of a cart or by the side of the road instead of two.” 

 

“Sounds good to me,” Claggor answered before anyone else could. Powder went right to the back of the cart where she called Vi’s name twice before the girl turned to look at her. 

 

“Can you help me in?” she asked. She hated to admit that climbing back up onto the cart was a lot harder one handed than dropping down had been. Vi scooted her leg knocked loose the plank that normally served as the cart’s rear wall. While the wood settled into a good position to work as a ramp, Vi got up on her knees and reached out a hand to Powder. Between the balance Vi gave her and the ramp she got up into the cart and got her hands on a hunk of the remaining bread in the basket Vander had brought them earlier. Powder sat down closer to her original position in the cart, before the horror of the Noxian military ‘parade.’

 

Ekko pulled the plank back up and put it into position only after Claggor rejoined them. Kutter climbed back into the driver’s seat. Vander threw several curious and even concerned looks Powder’s way that told her he’d seen enough to question her story. Then he too climbed up at the front of the cart. Powder tore off some bread and passed it to Ekko and another piece to Vi, who at least seemed attentive enough for that.

 

“A shame neither of you got to be the Emperor,” Kutter said, which seemed like such a weird thing to say that Powder blinked at the back of his head several times in confusion before she dared to ask what he meant. 

 

“The Emperor?” she questioned, hesitantly. The word didn’t bring good things to mind, especially not here. The oxen pulling the cart took surprisingly little convincing to move. Before even answering her, Kutter had them off to the other end of the town. Ekko turned his head to watch the game somewhat sadly and Powder felt bad for ending his fun early. It had been fun. But that lady was weird, Powder told herself. She’d definitely been bad news. 

 

“The one in the very middle. They’re the Emperor. The ring around them are their guard and everyone else is The Traitor.” That was enough to cool the game off a little. Not just in Powder’s eyes, either. Ekko stared right at the back of Kutter’s head, confused and a little doubtful. “The point of the game is that you keep the ball moving. That way, Emperor can’t catch someone having it for more than ten seconds. But you can’t let the Emperor get the ball, either. If they do, they win. The losers ‘die’ which in a game that big probably means nothing, but when I played it as a kid the losers had to do some kind of… ah, punishment. Run a hard race, do a difficult task, you see?” Kutter looked back to see they were understanding, sounding wistful, mustache twitching over a grin. 

 

“Grim,” Vander mused. 

 

“The game was fun,” Ekko insisted, even if Powder was not so sure, now. “I didn’t think I’d like being in the inner circle but I nearly got the ball once. They got risky with it.” 

 

“That’s the point,” Kutter says. “If you’re a good player, a brave player, you tease the guards and the emperor. That’s the gamble! Try to get close to that ten count - then throw it close to them! But here’s a secret,” Kutter turned back to the road and nodded at a local passing by them on the dirt path and waving cheerfully. Powder recognized it as the boy who’d pushed Ekko to join the inner circle. Ekko hurriedly waved back. “The secret is the game doesn’t end until the Emperor wins. Emperor always wins.” 

 

The words hung ominously in Powder’s ears as she joined Ekko in greeting the boy. As he fell off behind the cart, she settled back against the edge. 

 

“I guess it also ends if parents scatter the game and threaten to make you sleep outside for shirking duties - chores, I mean. A village’s kids get caught playing during harvest or planting and you just know they’re all getting an… how it’s said? Earful? Yes. An earful that night.” Powder filed this away and once she buried the ugly implications of the game and the lessons it may have been trying to teach, she had to admit that Ekko was right: it had been fun. 

 

Maybe the village they were going to be living near played it, too? 

 

They did not stop at the next two towns they passed through which Powder found she did not mind too terribly much. For the most part, they were smaller than the first one. It was easier to sit quietly in the back of the cart beside one sibling who looked at the world as if she could see through it and across from one who, when he bothered to open his eyes, glared at everyone around him as if they’d pissed him off. 

 

In all the coming hours, she did not dare tell anyone else about the strange woman she’d seen in that first town. Either they wouldn’t believe her or worse, they would and would tell her that it was a bad thing or that she was crazy. 

 

All in all, as the sun went from high overhead to low in the western sky, she reflected on her first day in Noxus in a familiar way: it scared her. 

 

It wasn’t all the wide open space, though especially that evening, long past sundown, whenever she looked over the edge of the cart, that was intimidating. It was more the sense of dread that everything gave off. For every happy game she’d seen there was a prisoner being led in only chains around a city intent on injuring or killing her or a large poster of blood-soaked heroes whose faces cooled her at her core or, worse, the memory of the Hand of Noxus posed in front of his carried throne as if he cared for and feared nothing and no one. She was glad she hadn’t been able to understand the criers in Basilich and their ever colorful promises (as Kutter had described them that evening) that Ionia would be ‘brought to heel.’ 

 

What kind of place is this? Powder asked herself that evening, lying in the back of the cart and remembering Kutter’s promise that they’d be at the house within a few hours of taking to the road once the sun came up. Really, though, that was only one question in a long list. 

Why had Vi only spoken two or three times since the parade in Basilich? Why had the strange woman with the weird makeup been staring so intently at she and Ekko? Most jarringly, how had no one seen someone vanish in front of a town full of people?

Chapter 10: Chapter Ten

Notes:

Just a fair warning! I was not at my best while going over this chapter after the fact. So if you find a lot of obvious errors, many apologies.

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Ten

 

“And here we are,” Kutter’s voice had been more insistent and harder to ignore since they’d woken up that morning. Maybe it was anxiety about nearing their new ‘home’ or maybe it was the playful, jovial way he said everything as if he was just the happiest ‘everyone’s my best friend’ type in the world. Every word he said grated on her nerves. It was no surprise, then, that she tuned in to the outskirts of yet another small village. All told, it had to be what, the fourth or fifth they’d passed through since this all began? it didn’t look particularly different than the one before. She gave a thought to asking about its importance and then decided against it. 

 

Like each village before, Kutter slowed the oxen down before they reached the proper cluster of buildings that counted as the village itself and allowed them to ‘take in’ the surroundings. Much like the last village this meant looking at two or three little farmhouses dotting the tamed, mostly empty fields made of neatly lined rows of dirt as they headed further northwest. A mountain which loomed closer every time Vi bothered to pay attention to her surroundings was much moreso, now.  She’d guess it to be only a few miles away up north. The ground beneath the cart felt relatively flat but she also suspected if they were to turn that way they’d be walking up hill in no time. 

 

Vi hoped they weren’t going to be doing that. 

 

The farmhouses, when the cart came to them, were brick, mostly, pale brown and orange and roof shingles that were either clay or very, very thin cuts of stone arranged neatly atop one another and cascading down the steep slopes. She doubted the last and so marked it down to clay tiling. These three little homes were each paired with one or two smaller buildings that she took to be sheds and barns. All were sat firmly in the middle of land that, though she’d never gotten a close look at it before, had to be farmland. Though topside back home had gardens everywhere most of the food for it was grown well outside of the city limits and Vi had never gone further than the edges of Piltover before. That being said, though, the relatively straight rows of dirt, some of which were freshly upturned and very dark gave away the game. 

 

The homes were not that different than anything she’d seen at other villages they’d passed, then. Big farms, tiny houses, places to put animals or tools but nothing impressive. 

 

It was an impressive amount of nothing, though. 

 

It was so much nothing, so much greenery and so much land dominated only by trees to the north east that Vi kind of appreciated when they entered the village for a brief pass through. She could guess at the purpose of some structures as they pushed toward the village center: lots of smoke came from some kind of forge or blacksmith with an open yard and the distinct sound of metal against metal emitting from it. Lots of people gathered around some kind of village center with a stone table in it and kids cheerfully at play. The roads were more firmly packed dirt within the village limits which made the tired oxen (or at least, she would have been tired in their places) drag the cart much more smoothly over the roads. The structures were mostly the same brick as the farmhouses on the edge of town but some of the smaller ones weren’t even roofed with tiles, instead relying only on some kind of long dried grasses and reeds. Sometimes, it even looked like someone had spread tree bark over a plain wood board roof. 

 

Several children leered at the cart, curious behind a small fence near the city center. The building behind them was a pretty small house. Still sizeable enough for this village, though. Vi wondered what you did for a living out here if you weren’t farming or making something that farmers needed. Who did you even sell things to? 

 

The curiosity only increased when she counted her seventh wholly dirt road in the whole village. They were narrow paths, most looking to be curving off in one direction, as if the village was intentionally asymmetrical and curved in the same direction. Not even the road they’d been taking through the heartland of Noxus had had cobbles since leaving Basilich, or any stone at all except the kind that threatened to break a wheel or an axel. If there were three hundred souls in the village (a village Kutter had neither named nor spoken a single word about since entering,) Vi would be shocked. Vi herself was looking about a little too intently. Beside her Ekko and Powder hung half over the edge of the cart to watch the village go by. Many villagers were staring as openly right back at them. 

 

Oddly, though he was the most immediately obvious local among the folk in the cart, the villagers they rolled past stopped and turned their head to look at Kutter. And, though she did not know the language, she quickly realized Kutter was saying something different to each of the passersby in Va-Nox or Ur-Nox and that could only mean one thing. 

 

He was greeting them in a low, solemn voice by name. 

 

Not a single one seemed to know what to say to him as the cart turned to the left and for a moment jogged slightly south inside of the village limits. 

 

A few seconds later, a short older Noxan with masculine features and two low hanging thin lines of a mustache hurried from a squat building with some sort of fern painted on the door and stepped out into the road ahead of them. This forced Kutter to slow the vehicle down and for a second Powder tensed up beside Vi. Vi understood the instinct. It seemed confrontational when their cart came to a stop. 

 

Then, Kutter greeted the man by name and was presented from under the small fellow’s left arm a very soft looking linen blanket. 

 

A blanket. 

 

The resistance fighter behaved unexpectedly softly at the gesture. Vi watched Kutter bow his head very, very low and reach out to take the blanket with both hands. He left the reins balanced in his lap. Only when the blanket rested across Kutter’s knees did the small man move from the path and allow them to pass

 

Throughout the rest of their short trip through the village Vi kept her eyes on the way people interacted with Kutter. Instead of amiability or any kind of grudge the looks on their faces spoke of pity . It wasn’t just in the adults or the seniors, either. Vi spotted at least six people who looked to be her age or just slightly older on this side of the village alone. Their appearances and anything else about them faded pretty quickly out of her mind compared to the fact that each of them stepped to the side of the road and one by one when they spotted Kutter they were either whispered something by the people they stood with or recognized him on their own. To the last, each gave that same low bow of the head which Kutter returned. 

 

Most of the village wore similar plain linen and cotton clothes hand made and dyed earthy hues of browns, greens and blacks or not dyed at all. Vi’s clothing and the rest of the family’s clothes, in comparison, stood out for their varied colors and more uniform, complex make despite how obviously ragged they were. Even Vi had to admit the cart’s occupants, herself included, looked even more ripe than they smelled. She did not spot a zipper among the crowd but the buttons she spotted were small and metal and that made sense: who out here was casting plastic? Vi herself couldn’t begin to guess how plastic was produced but the question did make her realize something. She had yet to hear a single sound suggestive of a machine more advanced than the windmill back on the edge of town..

 

Save for that windmill, which hadn’t even been functional, she couldn’t remember seeing a machine other than a cart or carriage since the little generator running near the town square where Powder and Ekko had played their big weird ball game. 

 

Nearly another hour of travel passed before Vi put together what the importance of the village was.

 

Having faded in and out of focus throughout an uncannily tense and silent ride after they made it through the village, Vi had not questioned why Kutter did not speak even when Vander tried to engage him. She only came to when the man cleared his throat. The thick, deep woods on either side of them swallowed the road up and almost corralled them more north than west for the first time in a while. 

 

“The woods used to cut the farm off from the village entirely, but a few decades back the village came together to clear the road up. It helped everyone.” Vi had not minded the silence but when she turned her head in vague interest, Powder looked relieved. Vander even sounded excited when he latched onto this and began to ask questions in a way that reminded Vi of Powder: rapidfire and trying to appeal to the man’s need or desire to talk rather than what, brood? Was that what Powder thought of her when her sister questioned her as rapidly? 

 

“What can you tell us about our new home? Haven’t said a ton.” This got Vi’s attention, too. Even Mylo turned toward the front of the vehicle. 

 

“It’s not going to be pleasant at first,” Kutter started. 

 

“Why would it be?” Vi asked, not sure why the words had come out of her mouth despite how true they felt. 

 

“Quiet down in the cheap seats,” Vander chided ‘playfully.’ Why the hell do you always give me crap for being quiet if you just tell me to shut up when I say something? Vi opened her mouth, intent on asking the question but the sound was aborted when Powder proceeded to plant her only good elbow in Vi’s ribs. This actually forced her sister to turn her body 180 and face out from the inside of the cart because of how they were sat. 

 

“Ow, fuck,” Vi hissed. “Don’t do that, Powder.” The girl lowered her head, blue hair hanging low and unbraided today to cover the back of her sunburnt neck and try to prevent it from getting worse. Vi had no such protections and had come very close to putting one of those scratchy looking bags used to store grain or rice over her head for the same purpose. Powder immediately sulked beside her, visibly pouting which only caused Vi more frustration. 

 

Why was she not allowed to respond when people said or did things? Why was she the one who had to shut her mouth? 

 

Does no one else realize how fucked up everything is?

 

Once the trees began to thin out again, Vi swallowed her frustration and hurt pride. She lifted Powder’s sulking head with her left hand, pointing to the north and the west so that they could join the others in starting to look. Nearly the whole cart started to search for the farmhouse Kutter made it seem they were supposed to take over. It only took a minute or two more to hit the first signs of farmland: straight lines in fields and relatively clear land. In this case those fields had been slightly grown over by tall grass that looked sharp enough to cut and weeds she thought reached up to her hip. Some patches of former cropland were full of wildflowers that were rapidly becoming, while not familiar, at least not as jarringly strange of a sight as they would have been forty-eight hours ago. 

 

Beside her, Powder looked taken with the land around them. That was the only way to say it when she saw her sister’s eyes slowly widening, lips curling, the way she took it in as topside art snobs stared and eyes darted about fancy paintings. Ekko and Claggor whispered something to one another and laughed but Vi did not look at what they might be pointing at. Instead she followed Powder’s eyes to the younger girl’s new discovery. Set far back from the road and still a ways off in the distance she saw the first sign of their new home. 

 

Surrounded by a very thin layer of trees a little north of the road, more of a semi-circle than anything were a pair of small sheds with a good distance between them. Their roofs looked to be dark, probably clay tiles again, but otherwise they were simple, pale brick. 

 

“There it is,” Kutter finally spoke again. Vi was not sure how long it had been since she’d interrupted his last monologue, so she kept her mouth shut. “Ten acres of land. Part of a stream runs right through it and you could follow that north-west to a nice wide patch to bathe in with good tree coverage, if you’d like. I might recommend it.” The man’s voice took a playful edge and he elbowed Vander lightly. Vi thought she saw Kutter’s age on his face when he turned to face her father. He might’ve had a decade on Vander though he rarely acted it given how quickly he hopped up and down from the cart and moved to haul things which looked too heavy for his lean frame. 

 

“You’ll need to plow the fields of course and won’t want to wait too long to start planting.” 

 

“Of course,” Vander agreed, though Vi detected an edge of hesitation to his voice that she did not try to analyze. 

 

“Afraid last I looked, most of the tools had been given away but I’m sure you’ll figure things out: smart kids; resilient father.” Vi did not speak, she kept her mouth shut even though her instincts told her this was a perfect time to make a smartass comment. “If you look, you should see the ruins of the old stable just off the path cutting from the road ahead. Bit further back, though, that’s the goal. The tool shed and the house.” This made Vi and Powder share matching looks of concern.

 

Neither of the only two standing structures either of them had spotted were what Vi would call a house . Tall and thin and made of the same brick as everything else they’d seen throughout the day, one structure looked immediately to her like a simple toolshed with a steep dark roof. The other was longer but just as tiny. She’d originally assumed it to be just a little extra storage. 

 

After passing multiple two-story farmhouses or at least one-story houses that took up more space than the shack back at The Bottom, was this smaller second building really the place they were expected to live in until - until what? Vander found his courage again or Silco died? 

 

“Where’s the house?” Claggor asked, both saving her the embarrassment of the question and setting her adread of the answer. 

 

“The other structure in the tree line,” Kutter answered. “A couple hundred feet closer, to the east of the shed?” Beside her, Powder grimaced and Vi frowned tightly. 

 

That was exactly what she was scared he was going to say.

 

When she checked with Claggor, the boy looked almost dumbfounded. Mylo was apparently aware enough of what was happening to lean forward and place his face in his hands. For just a moment, Vi thought he was about to cry. When he lowered his hands a moment later they had clenched into fists and he was gritting his teeth around a long sigh. That kind of anger, so close to all consuming that he had to grind his teeth against it, was very un Mylo. Powder and Ekko stayed silent but she spotted their swapped looks of worry as Kutter continued. 

 

“It’ll be a tight fit. One room, brick walls, clay roof, nice fitted wooden door and well made reed shutters on the window. It won’t be easy and we might have to drag out what little furniture’s in there,” Kutter spoke as if making small concessions to someone, but no one else was pressing him. They could see the place’s inadequacy to hold six people with their own eyes. Even as the house grew closer, it did not look any bigger. 

 

“Got a bed in here?” Vander asked, though he tried to keep his voice light and even. 

 

“Should be, and big enough for two people even if one of them does have your gut,” Kutter added. Vander chuckled but Vi counted this as at least the fifth time the man had called her father, in nice words, ‘fat.’ With Kutter being slim and clearly in some kind of fighting shape she wasn’t sure how kind hearted the joke was. It was like he was trying to wheedle at Vander. It was like he was trying to plant seeds of doubt or motivation or both. 

 

“Well, Mylo can use that until he’s back on his feet and then you can all scrap over it,” Vander mused, looking back and away from their new ‘house’ in the distance. Vi wished she had an excuse to look away, too. She just wanted it to appear larger as they got closer and it did not look like that was happening. 

 

“It’s a tight squeeze but I’m sure you can find a fix for that sooner or later. Might want to see about - what do Piltovans say. Bunker beds?” Vi closed her eyes finally. Before the Iconagra she couldn’t remember sleeping in a room with anyone but her sister and biological mother and father, at least not outside of emergencies like their stay in Benzo’s basement. Certainly, she’d had some semblance of space to sleep in, in the long term.

 

This was starting to sound long term. 

 

Vi was smart enough to know that the sound she heard faintly almost every night through the walls of their basement bedrooms back home was one of the boys snoring like a chainsaw. She had long since decided given his size that it was probably Claggor. Faced with the idea of trying to sleep packed into a tight space with five other people and that in her ears, Vi was starting to think sleeping outside in the wild was preferable. If only there had been a tent somewhere in this cart she would have begged Kutter to leave it behind. 

 

Vi had not seen a tent in the whole of a day’s travel.

 

Finally, the oxen were led to turn them off of the road and onto the smaller, rockier dirt path that led up to “their” new property. Try as she might, Vi couldn’t resist looking about their surroundings, eager to see something that told her that Kutter was playing a practical joke and there was actually a well hidden house nearby at least the size of the shack she’d grown up in down in The Bottom. 

 

She did not see much they had not spotted from the road, though. Individual fields seemed to be marked off at their corners by small stone posts with some sort of carvings on them that she did not have time to see the details on. She did not care to try, though. 

 

The vehicle pulled off well before reaching the semi-circle of trees around their new house. 

 

Kutter sounded quieter than he had most of the trip as he advised them to jump out and explore their land, saying that there would not be too much more time before nightfall. Vi took note of the statement and lifted her head to the sky to find the sun still almost directly overhead. Clearly, the man’s estimate about how quickly that they would reach the property from their camp site the night before had been off. Vi exhaled slowly as their guide began to untie the animals from the cart and lead them to a patch of tall, green grass near the treeline. 

 

“Vi?” Powder prodded a moment later. “Come on, let’s get out.” Vi shrugged and listened as Ekko and Powder yanked the back of the cart open and eased down the ramp one at a time to the ground below. They’d long since proven not to need it on the way down, but she didn’t question them. Claggor’s departure over the side of the cart was much more sudden and notable: the whole damn vehicle shook enough that Vi opened her eyes and gave up on trying to calm down. Claggor and Ekko had already stepped away from the cart and started to pay attention to petting the oxen that had brought them there by the time that Powder, looking insistently up at Vi, convinced her to get up and climb down from the Cart. 

 

“Want me to help get you into the bed?” Vander asked Mylo, his voice low and quiet as if not to expose the question to Kutter for Mylo’s sake. 

 

Mylo had no such compunctions. 

 

“I don’t think I’m going to get lost,” Mylo told him, loudly. The words were biting, sure, but he spat them out as if cursing. “I’ll go myself.” Vander hesitated as Vi turned back to watch, but backed away from the cart. Mylo eased himself off the back of the vehicle and immediately, if stiffly, began to march toward the small structure that was supposed to house them for the near future. Not sure what to do next, Vi hung near her sister and Ekko even as Claggor picked a direction roughly toward the house and took off. 

 

Ekko and Powder were not content to hang out by the cart while Vander and Kutter talked for very long though. 

 

Vi, at some point, had to have spaced out a good bit because when the two younger kids started nudging her along, Vi couldn’t pin down what anyone had said since Mylo had left the cart. Yet, the oxen were already unhooked and tied to one of the field boundary markers across the path. 

 

Powder and Ekko immediately pulled her toward the rubble from the old, stacked-stone structure on the grounds. On first glance, the size and count of the blocks suggested the structure had been bigger than the house itself. Not just by a little bit, either. What was this place? Vi had to wonder as she observed the mess. Why did it collapse and why hadn’t people been living in it instead of that dinky little shack at the back? They clearly had had a choice and Vi wasn’t sure why anyone, even living alone, would choose a smaller living space. 

 

Even the basement of The Last Drop drove her crazy, sometimes. 

 

As for the house itself, it sat much further back down the path than the collapsed stone building.  An old lantern hung from a large nail dug into the brick wall, right beside the front door. It was like a porch light, though there was no porch to speak of. The overhang of the roof was a little larger than she had expected it to be, though, and she thought she could huddle under it easily during a rainstorm and still not have to worry about getting wet. The front door was not ‘wooden’ as Kutter had implied. Well, it was but not well fitted planks or a large door cut from a tree or anything of the sort. Someone had made the door out of the same very straight, hard wooden sticks as the shutter on the only window the building had. 

 

Almost as soon as they saw this, Powder and Ekko looked at one another and then with silent nods, turned as if to leave and head around the house. This time they were apparently content to leave her behind because they did not say a word and Vi did not care to follow. Likely they were going to check the ‘tool shed’ if Vi had had to put money on it. 

 

“Oy, stay right here,” Vander called from only a few steps behind them. Vi looked back and saw Claggor following him. “We’re all gonna see the new house together. As a family.” Ekko stopped and turned around, Powder reluctantly following suit a moment later. Vi thought Ekko’s expression was a little sour. Then again, she felt pretty sour, herself. 

 

Vander stepped right past her and pushed open the door which is when Vi noticed that Kutter had not followed them up to the house. 

 

Even Vander hesitated before stepping inside and Vi took only a second’s look through the door before understanding why. She slipped in behind him, shoulders slumping. 

 

Inside was exactly what she feared. It was cool enough and a place to shelter from the warm sun but lit only by the light being let in through the now open door. The room was both packed and empty. In one corner of the single-room home was an old wooden end table beside a low bed. Mylo sat perched on the mattress. It had no bedsheets on it and the pillows looked ancient and flattened. A stack of newer looking blankets near as tall as she was sat beside Mylo as Vander ordered him to get ready to lie down. 

 

Instead, Mylo rose to his feet. 

 

“I’m going to go take a leak,” he announced and for once Vi did not fault him for his attitude: he’d gotten the first look at the place. Having only been inside for a few seconds, she was starting to feel like pissing on something, herself. Silco’s headstone seemed like a good target for them both. Mylo passed her without looking at her, though he did not really look at anyone so she tried not to take this one personally. Vander moved the blankets aside and began to make the bed with one of a handful of sheets as Powder, Ekko and Claggor joined them inside. 

 

In the other back corner of the room was a small oven with a stove sat atop it. Both looked like they burnt wood for any sort of heat or fuel as did the simple, small stone and brick fireplace beside it. This explained the small chimney sticking out of the roof, at least.. In that same corner was a pair of small chairs and a low table but Vander already looked at them like they were in the way, face cross even as he used them to momentarily house the blankets that had been stacked on the bed. 

 

And the dining room set was in the way, to be fair, because six people between eleven and forty three years old were going to be trying to sleep in the room. Maybe, maybe if she and Powder got cozy as if they were really little again, that bed could house two of them.

 

Everyone inevitably sleeping on the dirty stone floor was going to be getting cozy, anyway, unless they wanted to follow her first instinct and not sleep in the house. Really wonder how long I could sleep outside with a heavy blanket and my bag as a pillow, Vi thought, shifting the bag on her shoulder. If anyone got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, they would surely be stepping on everyone. Wait. There’s no bathroom. There’s no outhouse. Vi foresaw a lot of pissing and worse in the distant treeline of the woods in that moment and tried to scrape up indignance or frustration but after their mutual flare up in the cart neither emotion came very strong to her. 

 

Within a minute of Vander making Mylo’s bed, he had turned to Ekko and Claggor and told them each to grab a chair. Having immediately given up the idea of eating anywhere but on the floor, Vander turned the kitchen table up on its side and began to haul it out front. Back in the kitchen corner, there was not much but they still had more than she was coming to expect from this place. Other than a counter as wide as she was, there was no workspace. A stack of three wooden buckets sat in the corner beside the front door. None of them looked to have any lids. Two pots, two pans and only five (already not enough) clay bowls awaited them, each of these hung on wooden pegs sticking out of the back wall of the room beside an alarmingly slim three spoons and a spatula. A few empty pegs on the wall suggested that, as Kutter had said, the place had been looted after - after what? 

 

Had they even been told why the house was empty? Vi couldn’t remember. Honestly, she couldn’t remember much of anything about the rest of the day so far or the night before. Had she slept well? Had she slept in the cart or in the grass by the side of the road? Did Kutter or Vander start a fire? Had the night been cold? Vi was halfway through the idea that she should be bothered by the near complete blank in her memory before she shrugged it off. The rest of the house being mostly (very little) empty floor space, Vi followed where the rest of the family led. In this case, that was toward the shed a small trip from the back of the house. 

 

She followed them from the one room home like she was reading one of Powder’s borrowed (or stolen) comics out of order. The moment made no sense and held no meaning to her because it was utterly unreal. Powder pulled a face as they got around to the side of the house and Vi heard the sound of Mylo’s stream as he took a piss around back, true to his word. Vi kept her head turned away from him, pointedly looking at the shed just in front of the back tree line, each tree young and thin still but reaching up to the sky as if it could not get enough of the relentless sun above. It was not like the woods on the edges of the property where even from the road she could see trees large, old and strong looking, gnarled and wide with branches reaching out. 

 

Vi distantly observed her own actions and that of her family as they examined the ground around them. Ekko commented on the doors in the earth at the back of the house and Vander told everyone, including Ekko and Claggor, to turn around. By this point, Mylo had finished his business and presumably fucked off back to the freshly made bed, so Vi did as she was told. Claggor and Ekko left their chairs behind halfway to the shed and came back to the two flat, panel wood doors set right against the earth behind the house. Vander leaned down and grabbed one of the short chains tied to a round handle. With one heave he yanked one of the doors open. 

 

Vander must’ve found them clearly opening easier than he expected, and louder, too as they cracked against stone right below the layer of dirt surrounding them. 

 

Ekko was the first down the earth-dusted stone stairs and Vi only briefly ducked down there to take a look around before hurrying right back up. Like the house itself, there was no light down there that they did not let in from outside. Old shelves like the one under the only window inside the house above awaited them, below, set into the walls over a dark, dirty stone floor. A few empty bags and an old wooden crate with a broken top were all the cellar held. 

 

“We’ll haul in the grains and potatoes later, probably the rice Kutter brought along too,” Vander called down the stairs after she slipped out. He did not head down, yet, himself, but Claggor’s curiosity got the better of him and when Ekko had cleared out the larger boy and Powder slipped down after him. As they shut the doors behind them again, Vi thought that maybe once all those bags of rice and grain were out of the way they’d have enough space to actually stretch out in the cart. 

 

Then she remembered she would not be getting back into it and was struck with a hollow and cold feeling that she thought had little to do with any nostalgia or love for travel by cart. 

 

I really don’t want to stay here, do I? Vi thought, dispassionately. 

 

“We’ll need to get that spring wheat planted soon,” Vander said, not quite corralling them toward the shed and away from the wood-raftered cellar. He was anxious beneath his pretense of calm and patience. Vi knew nothing about how to even start to farm crops and Vander didn’t look like he did, either. The man frowned, turning out toward the farmland. Vi looked out at the nearest of the fields just a ways outside of the ring of trees around them. Where Vander likely put his attention back on the moment at hand, Vi must have lingered too long: she felt not Powder but Ekko tug on her hand to get her moving after the others toward the shed. 

 

“Ways to get food in the meantime, though. We have time before we need to plant, anyway.” Vi wondered if Vander sounded unsure of himself when she tuned back into the conversation. A harried looking Claggor tried to get her attention a moment later by turning back and looking pointedly at her. Vi only nodded at him as this confirmed her suspicion that Vander knew was getting in over his head. They all were. 

 

A few seconds later Ekko’s grin bloomed as he pulled open the door to the shed and turned away to gesture their attention to it. She saw what she hoped the others saw: the smile did not hide his hard eyes. Ekko did not do hard eyes. This happiness he was showing off for the rest of them was fake. Vi looked away and at the nearest edge of their fields as Vander passed by her to gaze into the shed. Ekko, for what it was worth, came to join her. 

 

“I wonder what kind of plants they have out here in the woods?” he asked. Vi turned back to him and wondered again if none of the others around her saw it . The most obvious giveaway was how Ekko’s smile didn’t change as he talked. “I’ve read about a few things that are supposed to grow in forests, but not a lot. That kinda stuff doesn’t come down to the undercity so often.” Neither she nor Ekko himself bothered to look into the shed, and he had been the one to open the door. 

 

Vi just knew when his eyes met hers a moment later that she was supposed to be feeling or doing or saying something. 

 

“Not sure,” Vander answered Ekko. “We’ll need to be pretty careful about that sort of thing. Easy to make yourself sick. I had survival training with someone who lived here, so I have some ideas but even I wouldn’t trust myself about many plants and definitely no mushrooms right now. More ‘n half of ‘em will put you on your butt if you don’t know what you’re doing. And the other half will kill you.” Several quiet seconds of milling around later, Vander looked back toward the house (Vi thought ‘shack’ was a more appropriate term, which was familiar enough) and shrugged. “Think I’ll be heading back.” 

 

With no other ideas, Vi turned to follow him. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Powder look hesitantly at Ekko’s back and Ekko in turn looked pointedly at Vi. Shit, she thought. There was definitely something she was supposed to be saying. 

 

With no answers, Vi headed right back with the others to the house and peeked in again. It looked a little different with the table and chairs gone but even lying down they would still be packed in nearly like sardines. The bed was large enough that upon second glance it probably could house two people. At least, Mylo could share space with Ekko or Powder on the old and hay-stuffed lumpy mattress, but Vi wouldn’t wish that fate on either of them right now. 

 

Vi slipped inside and shut the door, the last of the family to enter. 

 

She didn’t take her eyes off Mylo. 

 

Her recently grumpy brother looked so small lying on the bed though, watching and listening to the room as Ekko tried and failed to get anyone talking. 

 

Even Powder answered her friend’s excited questions about how fun it would be to go explore the woods with a half-hearted ‘yeah.’ 

 

Vander scooted a small metal grate stored in the gap between the fireplace and the stove-oven combo as Powder and Ekko found seats near a corner of the front wall of the house. Vi watched him count the cookware, paying attention, herself, to a large clay pot and the bowl and utensils from before as if the number would have changed in just a few minutes. She was about to find a place to sit down and just close her eyes and push the whole morning away when Powder called out loudly and a little desperately . 

 

“Someone say something. Someone talk about something .” Even Vander stopped his pointless reassessing of their kitchenware to look back at her. Mylo looked surprised at the outburst but it had had the benefit of drawing Vi a lot more back to the moment. 

 

“Powder,” Ekko started slowly, though he sounded as much relieved as concerned. Before he could try to calm her down, she continued speaking past him or over him. 

 

“Like food! What’s the plan, foraging?” 

 

“Foraging?” Claggor asked. “Don’t know the word.”

 

“Scavenging. Scrounging,” Powder said. 

 

“Like we usually do,” Mylo added. It was the first half-constructive remark Vi could remember him making in ages, and a fair point to boot. They’d scrapped, struggled, scrounged and scavenged their whole lives.

 

“Maybe we could hunt, too,” Vander mused, leaning sideways against the only counter in the house. The only workspace at all. This pulled Vi even further into the moment, a moth to the flame. She brought her own flame with her, too. 

 

Frustrated indignation drew out a scoff. 

 

“Well, what should we hunt with? Sticks and stones?” Vi asked Vander directly. He did not immediately answer, instead turning his eyes on her with a look of disapproval. He didn’t like her tone but she did not give a shit, in the moment. “None of us know a damn thing about hunting and its not like we have any weapons,” Vi pushed herself into the last corner of the house that did not have anyone in it, nearest the front door. This worked doubly in that she had an out in case she wanted to leave this conversation. Searching gazes dug into her as she waited for a response. Heavy air hung around her, not horribly warm but so, so humid. 

 

“Well, someone did it at one point,” Vander finally conceded, as if trying to be casual and playful. He still looked away from her. He still looked away from them all and neither offered a real answer nor owned up to where his decision to run away had just stuffed and stranded them. “We have some twine. We could make some sticks and stone into spears, maybe set up some snares.” 

 

“I have an idea?” Powder was clearly trying to get into the conversation but Vi’s mouth was already open and words were already rushing out a lot faster than that little stream to the west they’d finally seen from the front door of the shack. 

 

“And then what?” Vi let loose. “Because I don’t know shit about hunting or tracking or any of that crap.” 

 

“Then we’ll learn,” Vander told her, now turning his back completely on them and looking up at the pegs on the wall. “Together.” 

 

“From who? Do you know more than you’re letting on because no one here knows shit and soon your pal Kutter’s gonna be off doing whatever he does and we’ll be stuck here -” 

 

“Kutter has been not just good to us but generous. Try to say his name with a little more respect.” 

 

“It’s not about him!” Vi’s yell did not echo: the room was not large enough for that. She still felt her voice rise in pitch and volume and tear its way from her throat. Her eyes watered but she blinked tight against that. No way in hell was she going to cry, here. “It’s about us not dying because we’re in the middle of nowhere with nothing!” 

 

“There’s enough rice to carry us through the winter, Violet. We’ll be fine. We get the fields planted and we’ll even have excess.” 

 

“Um, I - um,” Powder started, again, before her voice cut off.

 

“You can’t live forever off of rice and potatoes and wheat,” she shot back. She hated the calm, reasoned way he said her full name when she wanted him to get mad and frustrated and admit the truth: he’d stranded them out there because he wanted to run away from their problems. 

 

“People have done it for centuries,” Vander replied, voice rising, himself. 

 

“People who know how to hunt and get meat!” 

 

“ Hey! ” Claggor did not raise his voice often nor get angry with people with any ease. Now, his own shout sounded like a crumbling brick wall. Vi’s neck cracked, sore as her head whipped around to look at the boy. Did I sleep bad? Claggor looked miffed , large fists clenched and pressing into his hips. Vander had not turned back to look at them as if staring at empty pegs where things someone had long since taken once hung would make them remanifest. “How about you two listen to Powder for a second, maybe? No one else here’s giving us any dam- dang ideas!” Vi heard Claggor swallow both the curse and some vitriol and looked past him to Ekko and Powder. Her sister was sat in the other front corner of the room looking around at them all, horrified.

 

Her sister was scared. 

 

Sometimes fear erupted into a bit of an overblown response for Powder. This often involved her doing things that made no sense for her to do, practically: things that hurt her. As if predicting this possibility, Ekko had hold of Powder’s good hand. Vi didn’t blame him. She could see how close her sister was to full on panic and started for a second to move, squeeze past Claggor and Ekko and comfort the girl. Then she stopped, because she was the reason this had happened. Vi clenched her fists tightly shut behind her back. I was yelling. Yelling over Powder. Yelling at Vander. 

 

Now that Vi had a second to breathe, she could only dig her nails into her palms and shut the fuck up. 

 

Vi wished Claggor had just yelled that at her to begin with, instead of saying anything else, or better, that Powder had just told her to shut up. 

 

“Powder,” Claggor said, as if prompting the girl. Vi did not think she could look at her sister for the second so she looked at Vander. After a moment more, Vander finally turned around and faced them. His face was red and eyes a little bloodshot. 

 

“Powder,” Vander followed suit. “I want to hear what you have to say. We all do. Right?” Vander’s eyes caught her own.

 

Vi nodded.

 

“Please?” Vi asked. A shaky exhale meant Powder was taking control of herself. Vi waited. Ekko released her sister’s hand. That at least meant he thought it was working. 

 

“I have - have an idea. I think. I think I can’t do it with one hand - or maybe I could, maybe someone will have to help but we could make bows.” Vi flushed, having not really thought about a bow. She had never so much as seen one in actual use. Again, not outside of the comics. “Bows could - could…” 

 

“Go on,” Claggor encouraged and Powder shook her head. 

 

“Bows might be the easy part,” Powder said. “I think I know how they work but the arrows are hard.” Vi seized on this quickly and tried desperately to put herself where she belonged: on her sister’s side and not in her way. 

 

“You know that much about bows?” Vi tried to muster sounding impressed and, to be fair, it was impressive. Then again, Powder had made her own paintball gun, put together an air compressor from spare parts and rigged up a way to manufacture paintballs all in less than a week with scrap and garbage. Maybe it shouldn’t be shocking. Powder, hesitant at being asked this directly, shook her head slowly no, yet looked up and spoke the opposite with soft hope in her voice. 

 

“I - enough, I know enough I think.” Vi looked around the room again and wondered why it looked different all of a sudden. 

 

“Then it’s settled,” Vander declared. “I know a good idea when I hear one. Claggor, in the morning you help Powder find whatever we need and then your priority is firewood. Try not to mix up the two, though. Shame to burn the good stuff.” His eyes, looking a little darker than usual, turned on Ekko and Vi. “Vi, you and I do a lap around the property then dip into the woods first thing in the morning to see if we can find anything of use, food or otherwise. Ekko, you’re a bright kid and good with your hands but also, sharp eyes. You’ll be really useful on either front. Your choice.” Ekko brightened up a bit at this, set at ease after Powder’s momentary upset. Even Powder’s good shoulder lowered with some relief. 

 

Vi remembered Benzo distracting Powder when she and the others left The Last Drop to rescue Vander, though, and Vi marked this moment as feeling very similar. 

 

“I’ll stay and help with the bows. Claggor and I can be Powder’s hands like when I helped you fix the jukebox on the ship,” Ekko told Powder, who reluctantly responded with a nod. “If we go ask now, maybe we can talk Kutter into leaving his knife? It’s really good for carving.” 

 

“If you’d like,” Vander nodded. “Go ask.” 

 

“And what can I do?” Mylo asked in something awfully close to cooperation. Two very uncomfortable seconds passed before his face fell again and his mood soured. “Right, I lay here and stay out of your way.” 

 

“No,” Vander corrected him. “You lay here and get better so we can put you to work when you are.” 

 

“Joy,” Mylo replied with a roll of the eyes. The expected annoyance surged, but it was from a distance and felt or sounded like someone else’s annoyance in her ears. Claggor did not let any quiet settle in or any new awkwardness seep through the cracks just yet. 

 

“What do we do for water?” Claggor prodded. “I haven’t seen a well.” 

 

“Then there’s no well,” Vander said. “No reason not to put it close to the house if there is one.” Vi frowned at this but looked at the stack of buckets beside Vander. “Just means we’ll need to take the pot and a couple buckets down to the stream and boil our drinking water. Nothing we haven’t done during the odd tough time and no risk of topside run-off getting into it.” 

 

More happened that night, but looking back on it, Vi would see a lot of the rest of that day in flashes. 

 

Powder and Ekko tried and failed to get her to join them as they went out to explore the property with Vander insisting they not leave it without he, Claggor or Vi. Claggor and Vander went down to the part of the stream that cut across “their” land and at some point those four went out to sit at a fire with Kutter and talk. 

 

Though Vi spent a portion of her night out there she couldn’t have nailed down any one particular thing said except for the time Claggor had called out in pain from behind the house and stumbled back with Ekko, explaining that he’d tripped over some branches piled up back there he hadn’t noticed the first time. Ekko had jokingly pointed out that he’d done so mid-pee and Claggor had snapped at him that it wasn’t funny. 

 

The truth was, that first night Vi tried to just breathe and think as little as possible because thinking had led to the argument that had scared the hell out of Powder, earlier. 

 

Kutter’s Piltovan was decent and she listened to his words around the fire, hearing a good bit of it. She picked up that he was involved in Vander’s survival training and the two men shared stories during which Vander revealed that, yes, everyone he could get out of the city into the wilds around Piltover were involved, too, including most of their biological parents. So, Kutter had met them. Plenty more was said on the topic that she didn’t really care about. 

 

In the end, Vi was inside with Mylo staring at the dying embers of the fire in the hearth long after a chaotic and unfortunately burnt meal of straight rice which Vander and Kutter shared a drink over. Though Kutter intended to camp out near the fire, the others started to file in and back out, getting ready for bed and throwing down blankets on stretches of dirty wooden floor. 

 

Vi was sat near the corner Powder and Ekko claimed. Yet, even sitting there while the two tried to settle in and lie down for bed was a bit much, a little too crowded. 

 

Claggor came next and Vander not long after. 

 

No attempts made by any of the family to engage Mylo were very effective as they each made a fair show of finding their space and lying out on the ground atop one or two blankets. Vi didn’t have much to say either. 

 

The first time that night that someone had to ‘use the bathroom’ (code for going out into the dark and doing your business somewhere no one was likely to step) Vi was stepped on. To her credit she did not growl or even roll over as Mylo nearly tripped on her right arm.. Though, in retrospect she thought she ought to have been more worried for his safety: Vander had been clear that his brain was not to be bounced around any and there was a chance a good fall would do just that. 

 

The real problem that began to wheedle at her and pushed her further and further from sleep that first night was that the room smelled. 

 

It smelled like dirt and it smelled like six people in close quarters who hadn’t been able to bathe properly in weeks. Two of them snored. Any time someone rolled over they woke the people next to them and earned grumbling and sniping. Vi slipped in and out of sleep in this manner, not sure how long she had rested in any given segment of sleep. She just knew she’d been woken up often. 

 

She had felt some hope when Ekko quietly whispered that he was giving up his spot so Powder and Vi had a little more room and tried to climb into the bed next to Mylo. That hope had vanished five minutes later when Ekko grumbled about Mylo elbowing him in his ‘sleep’. Vi doubted Mylo slept through the complaint, though. 

 

Eventually, long after they’d begun the attempt, there was only one person who was actually sleeping with any consistency of success: Powder, somehow. Vi wasn’t sure if it was impressive or worrying but she was damn sure jealous and growing more frustrated by every passing toss or turn in the room. Claggor snored but Vander was worse. He slept fitfully, moving frequently in his slumber and sometimes, oddly, would stop his own snoring and his own breathing entirely. Then he’d come back after an alarming number of seconds with a mighty sound like an animal choking. 

 

It was far, far worse in these close quarters than their fake shipping container room. 

 

Everything outside was unnervingly quiet. There was no sound of the city and no sound of waves, no sound even of the fire Kutter was likely sat around alone. 

 

The third time she felt herself nudge Powder by accident even while she was trying desperately to keep her arms pressed tightly to her sides, Vi loosed the filthiest string of curses she could think of under her breath and stood right up. This caused a shift from the bed.

 

“Go to sleep already,” Mylo complained at Ekko, who neither responded nor listened because Vi heard the boy crawling across the bed to climb out of it. To his credit, he had to have tiptoed around Powder’s feet in the faint light from the low fire and then Claggor’s head. 

 

Somehow, he beat Vi to the front door and pushed it open. Vi stopped, remembering Kutter showing them how to light the lamp hanging outside and found a little twig by the fireplace, which she hurriedly lit in the hearth and took outside after him. She was not at all concerned about being barefoot, at this point. Digging around for her boots in the room would have caused too much of a ruckus. She shut the front door very carefully and then lifted the hood of the lantern, as she’d been taught, to light the wick. 

 

It took a little fiddling and in the end Ekko both saved her a burn and successfully got the lantern going by moving her hand aside and pushing a lever that lifted the walls of the lantern on its own for her to light it. With no more hesitation, Ekko turned his eyes and gestured with his head upward. Since they were still under the roof out front she looked up at the underside in confusion before realizing she was being silently asked to come around back with him. 

 

Ekko rolled his eyes at her even after she got it, but she did not complain. Instead, she made to follow. 

 

Kutter’s fire was nearly out, over near the path. The man was laid out prone beside it in the distance. He was either asleep or passed out from whatever booze he had in the flask he and Vander had passed back and forth earlier. Ekko made it as far as the shed a good ways away from the back of the house before he finally spoke. 

 

“Wait here a sec, gotta pee,” he told her, before handing her the handle of the lantern and slipping away. Vi filled the empty time by lifting the lantern and opening the door of the shed she had not bothered to look into the first time. Setting aside the two chairs and the table from the kitchen corner, the little shed was surprisingly clear. The first thing that caught her eye was a large and heavy looking metal contraption that even by the light of the lantern she could not immediately identify and then a low, short-fingered rake, an ax and a hammer. Looking up to see if anything was hung on the wall, she caught sight of a tarp that she thought had come out of the cart and - and a hole in the roof of the shed the size of her head. 

 

Fucking great. 

 

Ekko came back before she’d finished glaring at the hole as if it was the source of all of her problems. He looked between her and the shed before his face fell even further than exhaustion and everything else about the last couple of days had already pulled it. She did not know whether it was the shed or herself that caused it. 

 

“That’s not much,” Ekko gazed in at their pitiful supply of tools. “Not even with the knife Kutter gave us.” Without anything else to say and the reminder yet again that she was supposed to say something, Vi seized onto her first instinct. 

 

“We’ll be fine,” she told him, mnuch as she had back on the ship. She still did not know it for sure, but if she could convince herself, she thought maybe she could convince him. 

 

Marking it down as a fairly cool spring night, when they left the shed behind Vi went back inside the shack as quietly as she could and grabbed one of the many large, heavy looking quilts stacked in  the corner of the room. No one spoke their annoyance or objection to her entry or exit, so she simply shut the front door back behind her and turned to where Ekko sat with his back to the front of the house just to the right of the hanging lantern. 

 

She hurled the quilt at him, earning a surprised intake of breath dangerously close to a gasp and then, while he struggled to unfold the it, Vi walked over to her sister’s best friend and dropped unceremoniously into the grass beside him. She spread the quilt over the pair of them as well as she could. after a moment or two of looking unsure about something, Ekko shrugged and gazed up into the night sky. Up at stars Vi appreciated in brand new ways. 

 

It really is a whole other sky, Vi thought as she settled down a little. She’d seen this sight a handful of times from the deck of the ship and once the night before while on their way to the house to begin with, but here and now, the sky felt different. It only took a minute or so of stargazing for Ekko to relax and to look, in the moment at least, happy. It made a nice change from the false face he’d worn all day that no one else had caught on to. 

 

Vi pondered whether they should even bother going back inside right now. The only one in there having a good night was Powder and with the extra space on the floor maybe Claggor and Vander would get some sleep. 

 

“You think Benzo’s going to be okay?” Ekko asked her, hesitant and vulnerable. Vi knew what she was supposed to say and so she said it. 

 

“Yes.” The answer was short and sounded so forced she cleared her throat and tried again. It did not help: her own voice sounded like it was coming from someone talking through a radio from far, far away. “Yeah he will, he’s been through worse than this, right?” At least, Vi thought he had. He’d been part of the fight against topside, like Vander. 

 

“You sure?” 

 

“Totally,” Vi lied, insistently. Still, Ekko’s next words took long enough that she thought he’d seen right through her lie. She almost didn’t react at them being something she hadn’t expected. 

 

“Are you going to be okay, Vi?” When Ekko sounded young - even little in her ears, it dragged Vi down like a diver in a deep pool of water. 

 

“Don’t be stupid,” she insisted, a little more clearly and loudly than strictly intended or wise with people just on the other side of the thin wall at her back. “You never have to worry about me.” Vi leaned toward him a bit and attempted to look and sound a bit like a real egotist just to play it up for laughs. It did not work.  It did not cheer Ekko up. He saw clear through that and her attempt to reassure him, judging by a surge of anxiety in his golden eyes. She felt guilty for that. It felt like it was her fault. 

 

Then again, in a way, it is your fault he’s here. 

 

She reached over to rub Ekko’s back as she might with Powder, unsure if he’d take to the gesture. 

 

“If you want, we can hang out out front for a while. If you fall asleep, I’ll watch out for ya.” 

 

“What about you?” Ekko asked, shrewdly. 

 

“Not tired,” she lied. “So get some rest.” Given the next wave of anxiety playing out on his face, Ekko either did not believe her or she had misunderstood his question, somehow. 

 

Ekko had always been okay with a hug but she’d never really known him to be cuddly before in the way Powder might be inclined from time to time. So, this time, when Ekko scooted over and pressed to her side forcing her to lift an arm and place it around his shoulders or be pinned between them, this more than anything he’d said or done since they started their sea voyage, said that Ekko was not okay. 

 

No one but maybe Vander yesterday had really used the words around her but Vi knew that Benzo didn’t just keep Ekko hired on at the shop because he, like Powder, was kind of a whiz with machines. Benzo treated Ekko like his son, the way Vander treated the rest of them like his kids. 

 

Maybe she, Powder, Claggor and Mylo had lost their lives but they still had their father. 

 

Ekko had lost them both. It was a heartbreaking realization. That was your fault. 

 

Vi squeezed his shoulders tightly in one curled arm. 

 

“I love you, Little Man. You know that?” She lowered her head and waited until Ekko nodded, though he didn’t meet her eyes. “We may not be Benzo but we love you. It’s going to be-” this time, her words choked her. Her words and her guilt dug in her throat and she could not say it. She could not lie to him. She could not speak the word, ‘okay.’ The shame settled into the space where the word should be and pushed it aside, familiar like someone who’d been away for weeks but when you came upstairs one morning he was sat at the bar eating a cheap breakfast as if he’d never left. “We’re in this together. ” 

 

If she couldn’t lie to comfort someone, she could at least ape Vander. 

 

“Okay, Vi,” Ekko said, earnestly. It hurt to think he might have taken her words at face value. 

 

She could almost hear, beneath the conversation, Vander telling her, ‘those kids look up to you.’ 

 

Vi was not sure she’d sleep that night after all.

Chapter 11: Chapter Eleven

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Eleven

 

By the rising and falling of the sun, Vi knew it had only been three days since the family had practically piled themselves into their new home during a first semi-disastrous attempt to sleep in it. Those three days had been weird. Weird and full of quiet and tension and just low, dark feelings. 

 

So, Vi was glad to be alone. 

 

Vander hadn’t been particularly certain about letting her go out and off of the property on her own but she had just waited with her eyes locked on him, silent until he made his mind up. She did not know if it had been guilt or not that had pushed the decision one way or another but he had relented. She was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, either. 

 

This was the closest to comfortable she could remember being since they stepped off of the Iconagra. 

 

The shadows of the woods’ thick canopy were cool and kept the sun off of her distinctly irritated face, neck and hands. The skin was pinkened and angry still . Who would have thought you’d get a painful sunburn on your hands of all places just from walking around? 

 

Vi was not out hunting as part of her wished she could be. They still had no tools to hunt with, particularly, except for two very unimpressive looking wooden spears. Vander and Ekko had tried to carve those with Kutter’s knife, but they looked to Vi like they’d break the first time someone tried to use them.

 

Powder and Ekko will figure it out in no time. 

 

Vi was not just out walking aimlessly in the woods and trying to get herself lost, either. Though, that did sound like a comforting idea sometimes. No, Vi had two goals in mind. First and foremost she kept her ears focused for the sound of running water. That meant she could always find the stream nearby and, so, always find her path back to the farm’. This had paid off a time or two already. She’d twice paid too little attention to her turns through the forest’s thick foliage and nearly found herself lost. 

 

Second, she was trying to find the signs that Vander said indicated ‘game trails’. 

 

This was what she did as for the third time she eased toward the stream that ran through the edge of ‘their farm.’ Vander had originally hinted it was a good idea to look for the trails leading off from the stream, since lots of things probably came there to get their morning drink. 

 

There was a third idea, however, that tickled her mind when she considered Kutter’s parting advice to her. ‘You can find as much looking up, as you can looking down.’ The first two days it had not paid off at all, resulting in a couple awkward falls of which Claggor and Ekko and Powder had each witnessed at least one. Today, even while she was scanning for paths of dirt through the undergrowth and signs of animal droppings, even as she angled back toward the stream, she watched the branches of the trees around her. It was kind of an active scanning motion, too. 

 

Today, on the third day, Kutter’s advice paid off. 

 

About sixty feet down a path that had to be one of these game trails (because it was too small to be a path made by frequent human steps,) Vi’s eyes were drawn to a particular, wide-leafed tree. At first that was because the tree was swaying wrong in the wind and that distracted her. Vi stopped wondering how far she’d already walked that morning or any number of other questions that liked to play out in her head when she was alone. She did know she’d been out longer than the hour Vander had allotted her, but, eyes landing on a bird’s nest in the wrong-swaying tree, she hoped eggs might smooth that problem over. 

 

Kutter had told her he thought they could ‘use the treat.’

 

He didn’t say anything about what to do when the tree was shaking in the wrong direction. Still, Vi thought that having something other than plain, barely salted white rice might make the meals feel more filling. 

 

Forgetting the strange way the tree swayed, Vi surged forward very quickly. She was so focused on the bird’s nest that it took until there were only ten or eleven feet between her and the tree to realize what was actually shaking it. 

 

An arm popped out from behind the tree and someone gave a grunt. Then, a moment later, Vi backpedaled quickly as a lean boy three or four inches taller than her landed on the ground and moved to press one shoulder against the tree with a sigh. He sounded like climbing the tree had worn him out. 

 

Before the stranger could relax, though, his bright green eyes landed on her and widened.

 

Halfway through his lean, the stranger practically stumbled to stay upright. 

 

Vi froze, close enough to pick out dark freckles across the top of his cheeks. 

 

I don’t know this person, Vi told herself. We’re in the literal fucking wild. On one hand, these were both true and she had no way of knowing what this stranger might want. On the other hand, he clutched something to his chest in a small brown bag and had just been climbing down a tree so probably he wanted the same damn thing she did: food. 

 

Vi took a step backward again, to show that she was not threatening his find. 

 

Only damn nest I’ve found, Vi thought, though, bitter. The first sign of wild food she’d seen out in the woods and she’d tunnel visioned on it so hard she hadn’t realized someone had beaten her to it. She hadn’t seen someone climbing out of the tree. With a grunt or a clearing of the throat, the stranger she marked as boy no older than her recovered his footing and looked pained. 

 

All things being equal, Vi was prepared to write it off as an unfortunate loss and a strange encounter in a place she wasn’t familiar with until the boy took a step forward. His free hand brushed against his thin cotton pants and he winced, still balancing the bag against the pale cloth top he wore. Vi wasn’t sure why but the gesture felt a little threatening, as if to warn her that he was prepared to fight. 

 

She did what she always did in response to that hint of aggression. 

 

Vi raised both of her fists, not in threat but defensively and rested them just above her jawline. This put a pause in the boy’s step and when he opened his mouth to speak she recognized Ur-Nox, the elder of the Noxian dialects. It was something she couldn’t pick a damned word out of at all. 

 

Vi decided to speak in very slow, clear Piltovan. 

 

“Go. Away.” This was firm and not the friendliest but it felt like the best way to diffuse the situation. Except the boy’s face screwed up in confusion too and he clearly didn’t understand her either. If he did, he was not listening. The boy took two more steps toward her, now holding the bag in both hands with a blink of jarringly bright eyes beneath raven black bangs so common to ethnic Noxians. Vi tried to read the eyes as she would any other threat. Was that confusion and was the confusion genuine? 

 

Did it matter? 

 

This was stupid. She didn’t think she was in any danger even if he intended to be a threat. His hands were full of eggs and looked scratched up and bleeding from the tree. Vi took a step back, lowering her hands. Then she took another and another before the boy tried again to talk to her.

 

With a sigh, Vi just turned away and hurried off.

 

Either he had been innocently trying to talk to her, which she couldn’t understand, or he’d thought her a threat to his meal. Either way, there was nothing she could do, here.

 

Not scared, particularly, Vi just angled back toward the sound of the stream and glanced over her shoulder a couple of times over the next minute or two. The boy did not try to follow, which was good. If she got into a fight already, Vander would be pissed. Besides, there was no reason for the stranger not to just take the food and go home since clearly he was out there doing the same thing as her. 

 

Thrown off by the exchange and still at risk of getting crap for being out in the woods alone far longer than she was supposed to, Vi reached the stream easily and followed it south east. 

 

Fuck. 

 

Another day coming home empty handed. 

 

Been out three days and always coming back with nothing. 

 

There was one upside, though. 

 

Not having anything to bring back to the others made it easier for her to stand at the edge of the woods a little longer once she reached the line where they gave way to the farm. 

 

Vi soaked in being alone, even if it reminded her of the silence of the world. 

 

We’ll have to figure out how to grow shit in all this dirt, Vi thought a few minutes later, looking out over the significant expanse of cropless fields on the western edge of the property. 

 

All Vi had to do was turn her head just right and she could split her sight between two nearly alien worlds. The rowed fields of grass and wildflowers waited on her and the thick, deep, shadow-soaked expanse of woods stood patient at her back. One felt empty and crowded at the same time and the other felt so foreign it made the most abandoned, ruined and rusted parts of the undercity seem welcoming and familiar. 

 

The sun was higher in the sky than she expected when Vi finally spied it and when she finally looked back toward the house she found Powder and Ekko approaching. One of them had spoken her name and despite the fact that their voices were so different she couldn’t pin down which of them it had been. Vi smiled their way. 

 

“Hey,” she called with as much cheer as she could fake. “Couldn’t find any of the plants you mentioned, sorry Powder.” Vi gave a quick one shouldered shrug and the girl with the busted right arm answered with the gesture’s mirror. Powder answered with tension in her voice that called Vi to attention. It felt like a knot in her neck pulled tight. 

 

“Not surprised,” Powder answered, though her head dipped slightly. “Vander said the plants here might be different than the ones we read about around Piltover.” This did not make Vi feel any less guilty at yet another return without so much as a handful of berries or something. Then again, guilty had become her bag of late. Maybe this just meant she’d managed to clamp down on her anger from before. “Vander’s making lunch,” Powder tried to change the subject or bolster the mood as they got closer. 

 

“Don’t need it, didn’t get anything anyway,” Vi answered, waving her hand. This apparently was not acceptable. 

 

“What - but that’s not-” Ekko started only for Powder to chime in. 

 

“He’s already cooking so either eat it or it’ll go to waste.” How many times had Vi said this to a sulking Powder? Was that what she was doing now, sulking and leaving it to her baby sister to be the mature one? 

 

How fucking pathetic can I get? 

 

“Someone else could have it - you two can split mine?” Vi suggested. This earned Powder’s frown. Worse still, Ekko looked uncomfortable at the thought. Weird, how familiar she was coming to be with Ekko’s discomfort after having never really seen it before all this started. 

 

“We’re gonna go back up to the house, okay?” Ekko asked her. Vi knew that the implication was that if she did not go with them, it would cause problems later. Besides, if she stopped worrying the two of them they might have an easier time. At least as easy as we can when most of the time someone has to sleep outside to avoid everyone being stepped on. Vi thought if she could just squeeze a little more time for herself that day before ‘bed’time, she was sure she could find a way to feel better. 

 

Then again, she’d made that bargain with herself the last two nights and had yet to see it through. Surely sitting alone before dinner somewhere quiet would help, this time. 

 

A cup and five bowls of rice waited for her when the trio got into the little house. 

 

“Welcome home, Violet. Worried you’d gotten lost.” Vander flashed her a smile over Powder’s shoulder. Vi did not take the bait. She knew she’d been out too long and he had already made his point. It wouldn’t help anyone for her to argue or complain, now. 

 

“Didn’t find anything,” she announced the moment she stepped through the door. Ekko squeezed in past her and began to kick off his boots to join the pile to the left of the front door. It would take Powder a little more work to do the same, so the girl skipped it. Vi figured she’d help with that before eating. Vander looked as if he had not expected the response even though it was exactly the outcome of her last two trips out into the woods. Yet he didn’t look disappointed, just a little sad. Vi shrugged this off as Claggor grabbed a bowl from the table and one of the few spoons they had to pass it to Mylo. Mylo took the bowl and not the spoon. 

 

“No biggie,” Claggor told her. “We’ll figure it out, right, Vander?”

 

“Right,” Vander agreed with one nod of a head of hair that was starting to become as shaggy as it was thin. As the rest of the room moved to grab their own food, Vi took the cup and went to her spot on the floor near the ones Powder and Ekko had claimed as their own. She first offered the food to Powder, who refused without meeting her eyes and flopped into her own seat. Beside her, her sister carefully tested how hot her own lunch was, given she was likely to be eating it with bare, not to mention grubby, hands. Vi held the cup up Ekko’s way when he came to join her and she saw how his eyes lingered on it as if considering the offer. Then he shook his head. Over Ekko’s shoulder, Mylo rolled his eyes at her. 

 

She just glared his direction until he looked the fuck away. 

 

“Eat,” Vander said, eyes locked on Vi directly. “And stop glaring at your brother. Everyone’s gonna wanna eat as much as they can. Can’t risk missing meals right now. Need to have plenty of energy for the days to come.” The words were simple but sounded dramatic as Vander dropped his voice and put that ‘mystery’ edge onto it. She could not make herself play along. Vi simply nodded in response and sat the cup down between her knees to cool enough she could scoop it out by hand. 

 

“A spoon,” Powder cheered a moment later when Claggor offered her the one Mylo had rejected. 

 

“Think that’s good, who needs a spoon or hands?” Vander insisted, suddenly, seizing on the change of tune. He proceeded to raise the bowl to his lips and attempt to eat straight from it. This had the effect mostly of making him look goofy and leaving rice in his beard. To the first, Vi assumed that was the point. 

 

At least Ekko laughed. 

 

“I’m kinda tired,” Vi said as she dipped her hand into the cup to find the rice not too terribly warm, after all. She had been late for lunch. “So I think I’ll get my part of the firewood done early.” Mostly flavorless and just a little sticky, the mouthful of hot rice did not particularly bother her. Compared to the idea of staying in tight quarters with the smell of dirt and people and the rising tide of frustration at their circumstances, at Vander and at Mylo, choking down another meal of bland, luke-warm rice was not the issue. 

 

Actually, she thought as she nearly choked on the third handful of rice, the frustration at Mylo wasn’t so much a rising tide as a wall that had finally been built between them. 

 

It was hard to look at him these days without feeling like a fight was coming. 

Only a minute or two after getting her hands on lunch, vi shoveled the last of it into her mouth. She popped up quickly enough that neither her sister nor Ekko could say anything before she made it over to the tiny countertop. A beaten up tin pitcher Vander had found inside one of the buckets stood waiting. She poured a bit of it into the cup she’d just been eating out of and threw that back to wash down the meal. 

 

Vi left the cub behind on the counter.

 

Vander, who had been leaning against it, was still very close to her when he spoke up to stop her from slipping away without any of them. 

 

“Hey, wait a second.” Vi did as she was told and stopped right by the door where she already had one of her feet inside of its boot. 

 

You didn’t help Powder with hers, Vi realized. She turned her head around not to pay Vander attention but to see that her sister was still wearing her own boots. More, her hair was still hanging down her back because Vi had rushed off that morning before helping with the braid. It’ll get tangled to hell if you don’t start actually caring about someone else. She only barely caught Vander’s question over the realization. 

 

“Want some company?” 

 

“No thank you,” Vi managed through a mouth that suddenly felt like she could do with another cup of water. “I wanna get some exercise while I’m out.”

 

“First Kutter and now you,” Vander started with a chuckle and a scoff. Vi blinked in confusion. “You saying I can’t keep up with you?” 

 

“No, I’m not,” she answered quickly. No, no she was not taking the bait. She did not want to joke about and pretend to be happy. Not even for him. After a quick hesitant second, Vander shrugged. 

 

“If you want to be alone, you can be alone,” Vander told her, sounding a little hurt but clearly trying to cover it up. “Don’t go too deep into the treeline this time and remember-” 

 

“Standing dead wood is the best wood,” Vi recited quickly. “But I’ll look for anything that looks dry at all.” Vander nodded with a small grin, clearly satisfied. She was not impressed at herself for remembering his guidance on the topic: he said it two or three times a day. You had to be stupid not to pick it up.

 

Vi followed the rule of thumb given to them all days ago and started her ‘personal time’ by gathering an armful of dry firewood. She shoved the load up under one arm and carried it with her toward the south-eastern edge of the farm, closer to the road that had first brought them in and the thick, if ominous, woods trying (and failing) to separate them from the village by more than just distance. There, Vi came to a rest at the foot of her own little secret. Just beyond the tree line and, thus, easy for anyone else to spot if they knew where to look, a sizeable and probably very old tree had fallen in the woods. Another tree had been close by to try and lend a hand and so, now, angled at a forty degree angle, the old fallen oak with its nice thick trunk laid against its neighbor. 

 

Vi thought it was a lucky find. It served well to keep up with her balance training. The actual act of climbing it was decent exercise by itself. Only about ten feet off from where she sat at the tree’s uprooted base, Vi had set up and tied together two piles of fallen branches into roughly flat bundles as wide as her feet were long. They were still sat in the position she’d left them the night before as a marker for a pretty good long-jump. At least, seven feet for a running jump was alright for her. 

 

She needed more, though. 

 

By the time I’m back in the Lanes I want to be able to clear a Lane in one good leap. 

 

That, at least, was what she intended to tell anyone who asked why she was doing it. 

 

“Let’s get started,” Vi told no one in particular. The truth was that her trip on the Iconagra had taught her something. A night of boxing or a day of hard, if mind numbingly boring, labor could shut the guilt up. It even dulled the edges of what felt like a cold, hollow part inside her chest. Vi dropped to the earth and began warming up with a few push-ups. If nothing else, it would help her wear herself out so well that even sleeping inside the cramped little shack that night would be an easy feat. 

 

The fights on the Iconagra had been fun and all and she had gotten fired up, but there’d been a certain unreality to them as well. 

 

Unlike everything else in her life, she’d been allowed to think about and enjoy those fights. 

 

After two or three quick sets of push ups, Vi got right to her feet and grabbed onto the fallen tree from one side. Far larger around than she was, it did not rock or shift or seem to care as she scooted, hand over hand, along and up the length of the side of the tree. In one moment, her feet were still touching the ground, but only seconds later she had progressed far enough she was hanging over the earth. The tree itself was steep enough that climbing it was an effort. Certainly as she got higher she was taking her health and safety into her own hands, doing it this way. The tree was tall, higher than some of the buildings in the undercity but still not particularly extreme in comparison to the things she would have been climbing on a day to day basis trying to get somewhere without being seen by enforcer or other unwelcome eyes. 

 

I might never do that again, Vi thought, dully, as she hung off several feet off of the ground along the side of the fallen giant. She stopped looking down and concentrated on the tree still holding her, eagerly embracing the strain building in her arms as she started to haul herself higher and higher into the air. Last time, she’d cleared a quarter of the tree’s length in height before she’d been forced to climb up onto the log and rest. 

 

Today she was determined to make it halfway and embrace both the fear and the strain. 

 

The two fight nights she’d been able to partake in aboard the Iconagra returned to the forefront of her mind. 

 

Normally, Vi thought, you weren’t supposed to have fun with a fight. She’d still been guilty of doing so many times but knew that strictly speaking fighting, outside of sport, was not supposed to be treated like sport. The matches on the Iconagra were the first time Vi had ever been certain it was okay to enjoy it. It’d been even weirder to be reminded where and how her form had strayed over the years from a proper boxing stance. Ever since she’d stopped learning from the undercity’s other, more experienced fighters, it had probably been going downhill.

 

Given how important they were to not getting your ass kicked, why had she ever stopped paying attention to her footwork and her stance? Vi didn’t get it, herself. 

 

For another hour, she made it her purpose to wear herself out. This began with the intent to climb the full height of this tree. The first time, she spent the climb hanging down over the side, and on the way down she eased herself down along the top of it. After that, it was nice to practice her long-jump again. She wished she had a proper wall sat up behind that to grapple onto and follow that up with a quick climb over. These were the kind of things she would have been doing back home to keep herself distracted and keep in shape, to constantly climb higher and faster, hit harder, land quicker, balance better.

This is stupid of you, Vi admitted as she took another run up on the ‘starting’ position for her next long jump. Without a lot of food or a variety of it with decent calories and protein, it wasn’t smart of her to burn off a lot of calories lifting heavy stones, scaling and climbing, running and leaping. Yet, this didn’t quiet the desperate voice telling her her best nights of sleep at sea had been while exhausted. 

 

Vi did not stop exercising, as originally planned, an hour later. She did not even stop when her legs began to wear out and instead turned her attention back to lifting and climbing beneath the thick, cool forest canopy. 

 

In this way, she was in the middle of swinging back down to the ground by sore arms from the fallen tree, about six feet above the earth, when someone shouted her name. Vi focused on her drop, or more specifically, landing without hurting herself. 

 

“Vi!” Powder called, loudly, from far closer than Vi had thought her first shout had been moments ago. She landed fine enough, though the instant wobbling of her legs told her she’d overdone it a little. Certainly, they ached. Then again, so did her arms and her eyes. This, Vi thought, was what she’d wanted and if she had stopped an hour ago, she would’ve just been left sweaty. Not tired, just sweaty and frustrated. Vi looked around the immediate little clearing just once, taking in that she’d only moved her ‘landing’ target for her jump training a couple of inches. Then she shrugged. It wasn’t about numbers, at the moment. “Vi, can you hear me in there?” 

 

Vi leaned down at the base of the fallen tree, scooped up the firewood gathered earlier and started back in the direction of the house. No sooner had she cleared the treeline than she could make out her sister’s careful crossing of the unfamiliar terrain of a grassy field still made uneven and rowed by plows past. For Vi’s part, she stepped out a little less carefully but no more quickly into the field to meet Powder. While the slight girl was taking care not to fall or hurt her healing arm, Vi was just coming to realize with each step that maybe she’d overdone it, a little. 

 

Powder wrinkling her nose as they got into range of one another was enough to tell her that she was not the only one who thought so. Sweat plastered her bangs to her forehead. Vi swept her jacket off. While it was much cooler under the canopy of the woods it was still a fairly temperate spring day. The jacket probably hadn’t been entirely necessary;  she was getting used to the cooler climate, here. Vi threw it over one shoulder and only hoped Powder didn’t have too much to say about her state. 

 

If she’d really overdone it, they might not let her into the house that night without a bath. Vi did not want to go and ‘bathe’ in a ‘stream.’ Nothing about that sounded safe or healthy to her no matter how many times she told herself this wasn’t like home. It was hard to imagine that no one was dumping anything up river. They were in a different place but people were still people: greedy, jealous and only thinking about themselves.

 

“So,” Powder said as the girls reached a more comfortable talking distance from one another. Eye contact broke as her sister’s deep blue-grays shot sideways. Powder was broaching either a question or a request and was nervous about the answer. “So you were teaching me parkour and other things before all this.” 

 

“Yeah?” Vi prompted, blinking. That had been true. Powder was a natural climber when she had use of both of her arms. She was even getting a good bit of length to her own long jumps. Vi had even managed to talk her sister into letting her teach her how to throw a jab. 

 

“Will you still? Even though we’re here?” To say the least, as Vi slipped by Powder and aimed them both toward the house, she was surprised by the request. More surprising was the implication that changing location meant she would stop trying to teach Powder anything and everything she thought the bluenette needed to survive. 

 

Do you know if anything you know about surviving helps out here? Vi asked herself. Quickly she buried that question right next to the other insistent voice. That one had yet to stop yelling that everything around her was wrong and she should be breaking every object in sight until she was given a chance to fix it. This wasn’t the time for either impulse.

 

“Sure, Powder.” Vi tried to sound both reassuring and excited but neither came out right. To a degree it should have been exciting, energizing even. Yet, even if Powder was ready, Vi didn’t think her sister was ready. Not after Silco. “The arm’s gonna have to slow you down, though.” Watching Powder’s face swing suddenly from relieved and even smiling to discouraged so quickly was jolting enough Vi hurried to fix it. “Hey, don’t be like that,” she encouraged as Powder slowly brought her left hand to rest against her right arm’s cast. “Even balance training has a chance of you falling over. It’s like Vander tells Mylo. We don’t want to slow down you healing or hurt you worse.” 

 

“But I-” Powder started to argue. Vi plowed forward. 

 

“But nothing, your hands do and make amazing things Powder. Not risking it. It’d be stupid to mess up your arm worse when in a few more weeks the cast could come off.” Powder’s huff was audible enough that Vi did not have to turn back. She slowly inhaled the scent of earth around her and tried to ignore the very clear smell of sweat. Free from the shield of the forest canopy, the sun beat down on her head and neck. She again remembered that her sister’s hair hung down like a curtain blocking that sun only because Vi had not stopped to help braid her hair that morning. 

 

“I just - I feel like I’m doing nothing,” Powder half mumbled at her back. Vi not only thought the feeling familiar but also felt like it was only half of something Powder wanted to say. When the girl did not continue, though, and let her sentence trail off, Vi tried to let it go. 

 

It’s probably just because everyone else has gone out into the woods looking for food and stuff and Powder’s only really been let out the once. 

 

“But you’re not doing nothing.” Vi insisted as she started to rotate her right arm to test just how sore she was. At least this time it’s not just from sleeping on that damn floor. A dull ache protested every single move she made. “Like, how’re the bows coming along?” She glanced back over her shoulder to her sister’s rounded, if slightly sunken looking pale face. Powder instead looked confused. 

 

“Didn’t I tell you this this morning?” Powder asked her. Vi couldn’t really argue. There was a pretty good chance she had. 

 

“Did you?” she asked, taken aback. “I’m sorry. I guess I spaced.” Vi slowed down so she did not have to turn back around and look away from Powder. Watching her sister’s face, closely, she asked again. “So, how are they coming?” 

 

“We have everything we need for Bows Take Two, but I still don’t know how to do the arrows.” 

 

“I don’t get it, why not just sharpen the end of a stick for now?” Vi queried. “Or find sharp little stones like Vander was talking about?” Powder’s concerned and conflicted face slowly smoothed out into a more thoughtful one. Vi turned back forward and continued back toward the house. 

 

“I don’t know a lot about how they work, but have you ever really seen a drawing of an arrow with all the feathers on the end?” Vi nodded, because she had at least seen illustrations though she had never particularly held an arrow in hand before, herself. “Well, I think the feathers are important.”

 

“How? Or why?” The ground beneath her feet began to level out as they crossed the far border of one field. A bit of relatively empty land separated them and the small circle of trees around their shack and shed. 

 

“Well, I just think they help the arrows go straight or maybe just go straight longer. Think about it: birds have feathers and they can fly straight.” 

 

Vi thought maybe that was tenuous logic but probably a closer guess than any she could make. 

 

“Okay, so what are we doing for bows 2.0?” she asked, instead of pushing further on the arrow topic. Vi saw no immediate signs that anyone else was outside this aging afternoon, so she slowed down to practically a stroll and began to work her left arm at the shoulder as she had her right, hoping to loosen something up. 

 

“The moment Claggor pulled the string back all the way on the first one, the wood just snapped right? So we grabbed a few straight sticks from different trees and we’re just gonna see which ones are more flexible tonight, and go from there.” 

 

“I’ll help,” Vi volunteered. That being said, she hoped she could focus enough without unwelcome thoughts distracting her. 

 

When they reached the house, Vi did not rush to go inside. Instead, she took a second to hang her jacket on the peg by the door which held their oil lamp. She had to admit that the hope was that airing the jacket out overnight would spare it from the worst of the scent of her workout. Vi turned back to see if Powder was ready to go inside but found her sister’s eyes caught by another sight. Off a bit toward the western edge of the farm, Ekko and Claggor were trekking back from the stream with a bucket and most of the (now clean) dishes from lunch in tow. There was no sign of Vander with them, so Vi figured he was sitting inside the house with Mylo. 

 

When Powder hurried out to meet the two of them, Vi gave serious thought to just going inside. Things weren’t exactly good for her with either Vander or Mylo in the moment, though, so she reluctantly told her legs to stop threatening to turn into jello and followed after Powder. 

 

“If he doesn’t stop burning the rice, I’m going to start trying to cook it myself,” Claggor declared a few moments later, waving the wooden bucket held in one hand forward to show off the pot sat inside it. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we actually have soap, but even with it, we just scrubbed this thing for like, half an hour.” 

 

“Ouch,” Vi said by way of answer. Ekko and Powder shared a quick look between one another which VI didn’t try to read too far into. “Get it clean eventually though?” 

 

“Yeah,” Ekko answered with a shrug as if the question needn’t have been asked. 

 

“Dumped the soapy water away from the river?” she asked. 

 

“Yeah,” Claggor responded in the exact same ‘well duh’ tone as Ekko had. 

 

“Cool, then Vander has nothing to complain about.” Vi wasn’t entirely certain why Claggor slowed down and squinted her way, but when she shrugged her right shoulder he dropped whatever question he had in his mind. 

 

“What’s that smell?” Ekko prodded at just that moment as they approached the house.

 

“Nothing,” Vi snapped, immediately. Ekko reeled back, slightly, but Vi just turned back toward the shack and pulled the door open. 

 

Like hell was she going to go sit in a creek. 

 

One look around the interior of their home turned up the expected: Mylo sat dutifully on his bed where Vander wanted him. It didn’t show, however, any sign of where Vander was. Mylo, for his part, lifted his chin in greeting and apparently read her mind as she regretfully stepped into the tight space and went for a little empty bit of floor to grab a seat. 

 

“Vander’s not around. Went to stare at the plow again. As if we could even use it or do anything about how dull it is.” Mylo’s tone was dismissive but not immediately hostile, so Vi just settled back against the wall and thought back to her first look at the plow. She had written it off as ‘a big rusty hunk of metal’ that she had not been able to identify. No one had ever really taught her that earth needed to be dug up and churned up so the ‘good stuff’ full of ‘nutrients’ was on the surface, or to break up roots and stuff. She knew now, though. She also knew that, because no one had touched their fields in a couple years they were kinda wild and if they wanted to grow anything in them, someone was going to have to find a way to move that plow. 

 

“Got the candidates,” Ekko declared a moment later as he and Powder followed her in in front of Claggor. While the boys sat down the dishes on the counter and disposed of the bucket, Powder sat down beside Vi giving her a close look at the cascade of rapidly tangling blue locks. Leaning up in the corner just beside the front door was a bundle about a couple of handfuls around of long, thin sticks about the same width. They looked a little small for bows, but Vi wasn’t sure she wanted to bring it up and risk sounding stupid. 

 

Ekko retrieved these and dropped onto the foot of Mylo’s bed, just opposite where Powder sat as Claggor settled down near Vi. She had to admit as he unwrapped the bundle that to her they just looked like what they ostensibly were: a bunch of sticks. Ekko passed one between slender fingers and seemed to test the way the wood bent between them before moving a hand to either end of the stick and all at once bending it. Vi thought he was going to snap it, but he did so fairly slowly and carefully and definitely pushed the wood almost to its breaking point before stopping short and letting go on one end. It sprung quickly back into shape as she, Powder, Claggor and Mylo watched. 

 

“Here,” Ekko said, slowly. “Careful with it, do it slow. You’ll see what the differences are.” Ekko held the slender stick out toward Vi, first, so she took it and did what she was told. Mimicking Ekko’s movements, she slowly, carefully bent it until she was sure it was close to giving out and then released it just as carefully. Whether it was because she was tired and noticed it more or because she was specifically paying attention to what Powder had said before about the differences between woods, Vi felt the wood push back with a decent amount of force. 

 

After a moment she handed this one off to Claggor and accepted the next from Ekko, as soon as he was done with his own test. Claggor gave the straight stick she’d just had hold of a more insistent tug this time but it still did not crack. 

 

“It’s about how it bounces back that matters,” Powder told them. “On the last bows the wood was really dead and dry so maybe that was part of it. Or maybe it just wasn’t a really good wood, either. I don’t really know what makes it work, so we just try a lot of them ‘til we find something really springy.” Claggor reached up and past Ekko’s shoulder to hand off the first rod to Mylo. In her own hands, Vi tried to detect a serious difference between this stick and the last but she had to admit that she wasn’t feeling it. 

 

Her arms weren’t shaking anymore, though. That was a quick and relieving turnaround. 

 

“I wish I knew more about how that all worked,” Vi admitted. Over Ekko’s shoulder Mylo looked down the length of the stick, then made as if to mimic the others’ behavior. Vi could see the moment, though, that Mylo pushed the stick a little too far and there sounded a fairly dull crack. Wincing, she actually expected to see Mylo react similarly, writing the incident off as an accident. Instead, the brunet (his hair wild and greasy as one might say for each of the others) stared for a second at the two shattered halves in his hand, then pushed them toward Ekko, still sat at the foot of his bed. 

 

“”I mean, if I could break it with the way I feel, how would that even work as a bow?” Mylo questioned, a little dismissively. Ekko only sighed and took the first shattered test case as Vi handed off the second stick over to Claggor. 

 

“Like Powder said, it’s not about being super strong, it’s about how springy it is,” Ekko told him. “Actually if it was really strong and rigid it’d break every time.” 

 

“Besides,” Powder shot, her left hand coming to rest against her cast again as if she wanted to curl in on herself, face falling, “these aren’t even the ones we’d use for a bow. They’re just to test. You don’t have to be a jerk about it, though.” A half second passed following this declaration. For a moment, Vi considered herself impressed; her sister so rarely just stood up to Mylo when outside of her element like this. The thing was, she knew her job was to help keep the peace. Vi looked between her bedridden brother and her castridden sister but found that neither paid her or anyone else any heed. If anything, the staring contest happening between the two served more to annoy and upset Powder than to cow her as Mylo’s anger sometimes could. For almost a full, very quiet minute, no one spoke. 

 

“Whatever,” Mylo declared in one vehement exclamation, before rolling onto his side to put his back to them all and yanking the blanket up over himself. Apparently intent on going to sleep, Mylo shut them out completely. 

 

Vi wasn’t sure why, but this and not the apparent act of disregard for Ekko and Powder’s project (which was intended to help them all get food, after all) pushed her right back over the familiar edge with Mylo. Every time her eyes landed on him, a mix of rage and guilt rose right back up. 

 

She kept her mouth shut for the rest of the brief test in which Ekko and Claggor passed about and carefully bent and released a few different woods, each tied with a small stretch of string. Vi did not ask about the string. Every time she wanted to engage with the conversation she looked at Mylo. Or, at least, at his back turned to them.

 

Each time, the unwelcome feelings rose back up in her throat like bile and she didn’t want to be social anymore.

 

“I’m gonna go check out my jacket,” she declared when it looked like Ekko and Claggor were debating which of the gathered candidate woods had the quickest and cleanest spring back. “See if it dried out.” 

 

“Vi?” Powder interrupted as Vi started to stand. She did not sound upset anymore, but Vi couldn’t put the cap back on what was going on in her head as easily. Vi just shook her head. 

 

“I’m okay, I’ll be right back.” Neither Powder nor the boys tried to stop her again, so Vi rested her hand for a moment on top of her sister’s and then slipped back out of the front door, shutting it behind herself as quickly as she could and coming to a rest just on the far side of the peg out front. 

 

Outside, her jacket indeed hung where she left it and felt relatively dry to the touch. It wasn’t her jacket that caught her attention after a moment or two. Movement off toward the south-east, off toward the road running alongside the farm drew her eyes. Something large and dark was coming downm, not the main road, actually, but had already turned off of it and onto the path leading from the road to their property. 

 

A cart. Almost definitely not Kutter’s. 

 

The beasts pulling this cart were not much shorter, but they were wider, heavier looking than the oxen pulling Kutter’s cart. Both of the forms up front were smaller than Kutter, too. One looked to be too short to be Kutter, even if his build was right and the other, the generally masculine form seemingly directing these massive bovines toward their shack, was barely five feet in height. Too tall, certainly, for a yordle, but getting toward the shorter side for an adult human. 

 

Vi wasn’t sure exactly what was happening. There was no immediate sign of armor or weapons on the people approaching, nothing to make her think soldier or guard. Yet, the ever-hollow, ever-cool sharp space where her stomach used to be had a very bad feeling in it when she took a second to get a look at the taller of the two travelers. 

 

Even from this far away, she would bet anything she actually had that it was the boy she’d seen in the woods that morning. 

 

“Vander!” Vi cupped her hands around her mouth and called. “Ekko, Powder, Claggor. Guys - we’ve got company, I think.” 

 

Vander, despite being ostensibly outside already, was not the first person to join her. That was Powder, followed quickly by Ekko and then Claggor. Vi kept her eyes locked on the approaching cart as it came closer and closer and made out a few details: there were a couple of bags and boxes in the back of the cart but only a couple. This suggested they weren’t from far away at all. Probably just the village they technically lived outside of. I don’t even know the name of where we’re living, Vi realized with a slight jolt. That nasty feeling in the pit of her stomach drowned out Ekko’s attempts to ask her what was going on. 

 

See, with each passing moment she became more and more sure of what was happening. The smaller figure was older and wore a thin white mustache. He was visibly related to the boy beside him, the one she was certain she’d raised her guard up toward in the woods. 

 

Did… did he tell on me? Vi thought, dumbly, before laughing out loud over now Powder’s attempts to get her attention. The idea that she might be about to get a lecture from Vander on what - protecting herself against strangers in the wilderness? It was stupid, it was ridiculous . 

 

“What’s so funny?” Powder asked, more loudly. 

 

“Nothing,” Vi responded. “Not a damned thing.” Her tone must have been harder than she intended it to be, because Powder slipped back and sidled toward the front door. Vi left coverage of the overhang of the shack’s roof. This meant she had a good head start when she went out to greet their arrivals. She did glance back after a few seconds, though, to see that Powder and Claggor were moving forward after her, however hesitantly on her sister’s part. Ekko was on their tail but seemed to be slowed down by trying, for some reason, to put on Vi’s jacket. 

 

It was way too big for him. 

 

It’s too big for me, Vi thought with a smirk and tried to hold onto the humor when she caught Vander emerging from behind the house wiping filthy hands on his shirt. 

 

Only fifteen or so feet away, the visitors’ cart came to a stop facing her nearly head on as she stepped onto the path leading toward the ring of trees around their house. Vi matched eyes with the boy around her own age. Black-haired and sharp of chin, his cheeks flared dark and the boy had the decency to look embarrassed as they matched eyes. Yet, he did not look upset or anxious which just confused Vi as to what was happening here. She blinked. 

 

“Hello!” Vander yelled from a good ways off, still hurrying to catch up with even Ekko, much less Vi herself. 

 

“Uh, right,” Vi started, turning to look at the elder of the two visitors. “Hi, I’m Vi.” Beside the small, elder Noxian, the boy scooted over in his seat toward the edge, closer to Vi and the approaching others. The boy shot a few words toward his older relative in, sure enough, Ur-Nox, a dialect she could at least recognize well enough even if she wasn’t sure she could piece together any words. None of them knowing much Va-Nox, even, Vi wasn’t feeling a lot of hope for any conversation.

 

Her defenses fell a bit at the oddity of the boy’s eager waving her direction a moment later before he spoke - in Piltovan. 

 

“Hello!” It took Vi a second to realize he was looking over her head and as such wasn’t actually waving at her, but at Powder, Claggor and Ekko approaching, and at Vander a moment later.  Still, to hear Piltovan from his mouth was promising at first and left her wondering why he hadn’t tried some of that in the woods if he’d just wanted to talk. Vi glanced back to see Vander picking up the pace as Claggor scrambled to piece together a couple of words in Va-Nox. Vi understood just enough to know they were now talking in circles. 

 

“Hello, welcome,” Claggor managed in a slightly more local tongue. The older, pale-haired man in maybe his seventies furrowed his brow as he settled his reins down. 

 

“Reckon those are yaks?” Vi asked out loud, half to have something else to say and and half to test if their visitors knew much Piltovan at all. 

 

“Reckon so,” Vander responded from a short ways behind her. “Big bastards.” Then Vander slipped up beside her and Vi felt a little bit of relief as the responsibility for the conversation was taken off her shoulders. The relief was short-lived when she realized Vander knew as much Va-Nox as she did. 

 

“Goodnight,” Vander said, offering a brief nod of greeting. Vi clapped one hand over her face in pure, embarrassed instinct. This was going to go really well. Vander made a quick gesture to her. “Violet.” She turned to ask what he wanted, but Vander was already on to pointing at Claggor. “Claggor. This is Powder. This is Ekko.” 

 

Without any real verbal response, the older man reached down to his lap where a basket balanced and handed it with a shaking hand to the boy, pointing immediately at Vander. This quieted Vander down as the boy responded to his ( grandfather, most likely, she thought) in Ur-Nox. Dark eyes unlike his grandson’s verdant green and somewhat thick pale brows turned on Vi, instead, and he nodded. Quite all at once, cradling the basket to his chest, the boy leapt from the cart and approached Vi quickly. 

 

Not entirely sure what was happening, she stayed on the spot, not particularly worried about any threat here and now. That did not stop her from feeling awkward as the boy came to a stop about four feet from her and popped open the lid of the basket, revealing four eggs no bigger than maybe two of her fingers in width. A dumbfounded Vi watched through pale pink bangs as the boy fished two of them out carefully and offered them to her with one hand. It was clear from darkened cheeks and eyes hesitant to meet her own that this was as awkward for the stranger as it was her, but she also read apology in his face. As if he thought he was making up for something. 

 

“I try to give,” the boy told her, slowly, drawing the ‘i’ in give out to an E. It was still pretty damn passable Piltovan for what she suspected was happening here. He confirmed it by speaking the next sentence less like he was finding words in his own mind and more like reciting them. “But I not know the right word for ‘stop’ without sounding… mean.” Someone coached him to say that much, she thought, glancing at the cart’s driver. The old man? 

 

In approaching her earlier, bag in hand, he’d been - what? Trying to share these tiny little black spotted eggs? Even all four of them wouldn’t be enough to feed the two people in front of her more than a little bite each. Yet, he’d seen a stranger obviously looking for food in the middle of nowhere and tried to offer them. 

 

She’d thrown up her hands and yelled at him and after all of that, run away. A little dazed, she tried to pick out any words she might know in Va-Nox that conveyed both the apology she reluctantly felt she owed him and a thanks but nothing but a few curses picked up from kids on the street came to mind. That was wrong, as she knew she had learned to say ‘thank you’ in the language. 

 

It seemed those words were just stuck somewhere out of the way at the moment. 

 

“Neighbors starve - you lose even if you don’t starve.” The old man on the cart spoke Piltovan with the same lack of familiarity, the same sense that he was repeating someone else’s words. Still, Vi could get the message. Powder, though, dug Vi out of the hole of her own creation she found herself standing in. 

 

“Thank you,” Powder piped up with a small squeak in Va-Nox, finding the words that had escaped Vi. The phrase was apparently close enough to its equivalent in Ur-Nox that the slightly older boy looked delightedly away from Vi to Powder and then back at his relative whose response was a bow of his head. 

 

“Please, take this,” the old man gestured toward Vander to come to the cart, but Vi turned away from that moment. 

 

“Thank you,” Vi mimicked her sister under her breath to the boy in front of her. His cheeks darkened again but he nodded quickly. It hurt a little to imagine what he might think of her: a scared little girl who’d run away from him when he’d just been trying to help. Past the boy, the yet unnamed elder handed a reluctant Vander a trio of old scrolls. 

 

“Give back when not needed,” the man said with a quick wave at her father. That’s actually a good amount of Piltovan, Vi thought, surprised. 

 

“Oh - oh, these look important - old,” Vander looked resistant and at the same time like he was trying to find words. This was concerning enough considering he was still speaking Piltovan but Vi forgot her embarrassment for a moment when Vander opened the first scroll with the other two carefully under his arm. In seconds, Vander’s face went from tired and hesitant to blank. Then she grappled with whether or not to look away because his eyes watered. 

 

Vander repeated Powder’s thanks in Va-Nox, even as Vi had. 

 

“I’m no expert,” he started, waving the scroll in his hand slightly. “But this looks like a guide to plants in the area. Even drew a little skull and crossbones next to some - poison, I’d guess.” 

 

“Yes! ” Vi jumped as the boy only five or so feet from her exclaimed in apparent joy. Either this was him demonstrating experience with Va-Nox or the word for ‘yes’ was about the same between the two dialects. He switched to a forced Piltovan, quickly. “Skull bad, danger.” In response, maybe, the older man said something in Ur-Nox that Vi didn’t catch and the boy just looked embarrassed again before quickly setting down his basket at his feet and tapping himself on the chest. 

 

“Caras,” the boy exclaimed. Vi was smart enough to piece together that gesture and repeated it herself. 

 

“Vi,” she said as she tapped against her own chest, despite Vander having just tried to introduce them moments before. This oddly seemned to set Vander on edge but she still noticed him wiping at his eyes from the corner of her own. In an echo of the chest-tap gesture, the driver of the cart introduced himself. 

 

“Orkis,” the man clarified in a quick, raspy voice she almost felt like she’d heard before. 

 

Ekko, Powder and Claggor followed suit, making their introductions only for Vander to hurriedly do the same at the end. Then, he held up a single finger and pointed to the house with his other hand. 

 

“One more. My son. Mylo. He’s sick.” Vi wasn’t sure if they were going to easily communicate so many ideas in about two seconds, but Orkis seemed to understand enough to nod and then call out to the younger - Caras, in their own tongue. Caras left a confused Vi holding a pair of small eggs and moved back over to the cart. With one big heft, the boy hauled a bag marked with what looked like a drawing of a wheat stalk out of the back and took it around, past the massive gray yak beasts and over to where Vander stood at Orkis’ side of the cart. 

 

Vi lost sight of Caras behind the yaks, but pieced together what was happening from Vander’s response even as Powder slipped around to get a better view. 

 

“You’ve shared enough, don’t you think?” Vander said quickly. “We don’t want to take too much.” She watched Vander hand off the scrolls, ostensibly to Powder, before raising both hands empty and shaking his head. The old man instead looked away from this scene and pointed at Claggor. 

 

“Claggor,” he repeated, as if to prove he’d paid attention to the name, and then crooked his finger in a universal ‘come here’ sort of gesture. Claggor did as bade, while Vi stayed mostly rooted to the spot she stood. She watched Orkis lean down and take the bag of grain from Caras, then shove it firmly into Claggor’s hands. Privately she was impressed at the old man’s strength: that bag, already damn near the size of his head, looked heavy. Claggor was thrown off balance by it, himself. Vander, looking defeated, joined Claggor in a brief if awkward laugh and Caras climbed down in a swift motion from his seat on the front of the cart. 

 

“ Come, ” Orkis said in Va-Nox before shifting back to Piltovan. “Orkis and Vander, we walk the field, yes?” For just a second, Vander hesitated, looking over the cart at Vi and Ekko. Vi just shrugged. She looked down at the two eggs carefully cradled in her hands and thought, again, that they were not enough to justify coming all the way out here. 

 

Yet, these two complete strangers had. 

 

“Alright,” Vander agreed. “Let’s do so.” Orkis, Vi noticed, despite standing straight and stable, did not reach Vander’s shoulder as the two of them cleared the cart and the relatively hulking shapes of the large yaks that pulled it. It was very different with Caras: the boy had already beaten her in height, something so far not even Claggor had managed. Even as Vander and Caras were heading off toward one of the fields, Ekko moved to join Powder and Claggor the other side of the cart. Vi reluctantly did the same as him. 

 

Caras was distracted when she got there, momentarily knelt down beside the hoof of one of the massive beasts that pulled the cart as if he had no concerns about getting kicked in the head. Vi thought even one lazy shot from one of the animals would cave in a skull. After a second, he glanced back up to find four sets of eyes watching him from ten or so feet away from the animals. His confusion cleared as his eyes landed on what Vi could only call Powder’s unfiltered curiosity . Caras grinned and gestured the four of them closer with one hand.

 

The problem was, the closer Vi got the more calling these animals ‘huge’ was an understatement. Nervous as she was to get so close, she was silently shamed by Powder, who took Ekko’s hand in her free hand and pulled the smaller boy forward two or three steps before stopping to glance back at Vi’s face. Her sister was looking for her permission, she thought. Or maybe just to see and tease if she was scared. Claggor, on the other hand, slipped right past the two younger kids and so VI shrugged trying not to let on how unnerved she was. 

 

It wasn’t just the size of the yaks. 

 

There was just something she didn’t trust about what was happening: a sudden visit, an apologetic sharing of food and information. 

 

She didn’t know why she felt that way, except that it wouldn’t have happened this way back in the Lanes. Thanks to Vander, the family had its fair share of friends and allies and people who’d share things and information with them back home. The thing was, though, when it came to food, you scrapped hard for it. If you lost the scrap, unless you had reason to really hold a grudge against the people who won, that was the end of things. Everyone just wanted to eat and live, after all and sometimes it really was every family for themselves. 

 

Claggor reached up to give one of the big beasts a pet on the back flank, but Caras held up a hand and the bigger boy stopped. With gestures and a hand on Claggor’s shoulder, the noxian redirected Claggor to the front of one of the yaks and gave a pat to one of the thick front legs that had gotten the cart out to their farm to begin with. First Claggor, then Powder, hurried to do the same. The two yaks didn’t mind in the least to find themselves suddenly the center of soft, if insistent attention. They were not just tame, they were surprisingly sociable even, turning to take in Claggor and Powder. The one on the right who was receiving Powder’s attention directly even leaned down to nuzzle her, forcing her sister to step back to avoid having her bad arm bumped. 

 

Yet, they were oddly calm for being surrounded by strangers.

 

Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be? Vi thought, as Ekko, emboldened, headed right over to the front of the same yak Powder had been petting. Maybe coming to the front was so that the animals always saw you and weren’t scared or surprised? Vi could understand that. Scaring something like that felt like a really effective way to die stupid. She watched Ekko run his fingers through the thick fur in front of him from a few steps back still. 

 

Strangers had been a mixed bag, of late, and to Vi that explained caution. If she just laid out the bare facts, she didn’t think she had a reason to feel as stupid or as guilty as she did watching her friend and family interact with Caras or the yaks. She’d been alone in the wild and a stranger had come up to her after beating her to the only food she’d been able to find. It made sense to be on edge, right? 

 

“Vi. Vi!” 

 

“What?” she asked, pulled from her justifying. She turned back to her sister, but behind the girl Caras was looking curiously at Vi herself. Very suddenly he looked away from both of the sisters. Powder reached out to pass the trio of scrolls that Vander had been given off to Claggor, who gave a brief shrug, looked between them under one arm and the bag of grain under the other. 

 

“I’m gonna go drop these off inside and I’ll be back.” 

 

“Okay,” Ekko answered for them, and Claggor left rather unceremoniously only after nodding at Caras who Vi was now trying not to look at. Powder stared right at Vi, though, without breaking her concentration. Ekko smirked back over his shoulder at her. 

 

“What?” Vi repeated, matching her sister’s gaze. After a few seconds, the message was received and Vi gave an exaggerated sigh. She cupped the two eggs in one hand and drew closer to the yak Ekko and Powder were paying attention to. Knowing she would not be free of her sister’s insistent stare or Ekko’s taunting smirk until she did so, she ran the fingers of her other hand through the damned yak’s fur. Or was it called ‘hair’ when it was so long and shaggy like this? Vi wasn’t sure but she knew one thing after only a moment or two of petting the large creature who turned its head to regard her. These animals probably did better than anyone back at that village during the winter time. They were also pleasantly soft to the touch. 

 

For about twenty minutes, Vi, Ekko, Powder and even Claggor again, waited with Caras as he tried to engage them in conversation. It was clear that kind of like their knowledge of Va-Nox, he didn’t know much conversational Piltovan. He clearly knew the first ten numbers in Piltovan and a handful of words on the scale of yes, no, hello and goodbye, but outside of that Vi caught on pretty quickly that he’d already demonstrated everything he knew. Their attempts to cobble together their similarly limited knowledge of Va-Nox didn’t let them communicate any better. Vi tracked Orkis’ and Vander’s progress along the length of an overgrown wildflower-filled field to the north. 

 

Even their attempts to explain how they’d gotten here failed pretty quickly as apparently their word for ‘water’ in Va-Nox didn’t translate the same way in Ur-Nox. It left Vi quickly wondering what they were supposed to do not just here and now but in life in general when they didn’t know how to speak to anyone in Noxus. She was about to excuse herself from the situation and go put the eggs inside when the usual happened. 

 

Powder corrected her.

 

It wasn’t an intentional correction, it just happened the way it always did so: naturally. Her sister showed her a way they could all learn. 

 

Quite out of nowhere in the middle of Claggor’s third attempt to explain their voyage along the coast, Powder interrupted by pointing at one of the big animals she was still happily reaching up to pet (they enjoyed having the space behind their ears scratched but there was no way in hell  Powder was reaching that) and called them by their name. 

 

“Yak,” Powder said. This caught Vi off guard enough to glance at her, brows furrowed, even as Caras did the exact same thing from a few feet to her right. Vi wasn’t sure when he’d gotten as close to her as he was but she only became aware of it the moment they shared their mutual ignorance through a look at one another. For some reason, it was Vi’s turn to feel her face flush. “Hey, hey, hey,” Powder said instantly, waving her left hand to get their attention and then pointing at the Yak again. “Yak,” she repeated. 

 

“What are you -” Vi started, but then she and Ekko made matching sounds of realization. 

 

“Oh, good call,” Ekko encouraged and Caras brightened up a second later, before hesitantly pointing at the animal and speaking a word in Ur-Nox. Powder hurriedly gestured at the beasts again and repeated the word that escaped Caras’ mouth. Caras’ face split into the goofiest grin Vi had ever seen, full of relief. 

 

“Yak,” Powder repeated, then repeated the word in Ur-Nox, which sounded very close to a rude Piltovan word to Vi’s ears. The relief on his face only grew and then, as if finding himself back in his element, Caras moved toward the Yaks and patted one, before repeating the Ur-Nox word. 

 

Powder quickly waved her left hand to get his attention again and then pointed at the nearby beast and held up a singular finger. 

 

“Yak,” she said, before holding up a second finger. “Yaks.” As Vi, Claggor and Ekko paused for a moment to observe the interaction, Powder repeated this a second time, leading comprehension to dawn on Caras’ face. 

 

He held up a singular finger while patting the front shoulder of the nearby yak and spoke the word from before, something that came out close to ‘fakka’, though Vi couldn’t begin to guess how to spell it even in her own alphabet, much less the Noxian alphabet. When he held up a second finger and spoke again, it was to show he’d paid attention to Powder, too. 

 

“Yaks,” the boy said, emphasizing the S hard enough it came out a little bit like a ‘z’ sound. Then he gave them the Ur-Nox word. “ Fakkae”.  Vi thought that would be where the brief but very positive interaction would end, but she was so wrong. 

 

This opened the floodgates and for every remaining second that they had, Powder and Ekko eagerly took full advantage of his willingness to share language. Vi did her best to pay attention as her sister directed them through the process of learning the singular and plural nouns for egg and eggs, for cart, wheel, wheels, crate, blanket, even hay. It was not a conversation, per se, but it was a start and it wiped away most of her awkwardness except for when she remembered she was carefully cradling a pair of tiny eggs to her chest and that their meeting that morning had started this whole thing. 

 

Caras was doing about as well remembering half of the Piltovan words thrown at him as Vi was in Ur-Nox. It was hard to say with Claggor how well he grappled with most of it - he wasn’t a quiet person but he didn’t really talk out the things going on in his head very often. What was damn clear, though, was that Ekko was soaking this up as eagerly as Powder. 

 

Vi was halfway through trying to talk Powder out from climbing under the cart and trying to squeeze Ur-Nox words for every damn part of the vehicle out of Caras when she saw Vander and Orkis (Vi thought at least she’d remember names even if nouns weren’t going to be her bag) approaching from halfway across the field, having nearly reached them without any of those gathered noticing. 

 

Ekko and Powder didn’t let this stop them. Vi tried to follow as they quickly grabbed the words for ‘scroll’ and ‘sack’ or ‘bag’ out of Caras, who despite the onslaught of information and questions just seemed happy. Vi had to admit that compared to her earlier concerns and anxiety she wasn’t on edge anymore. 

 

She watched the boy of broader shoulder climb onto the cart a minute or two later after helping his relative up ahead of him. Vander, beside Caras, tried to communicate ideas to Orkis she thought it unlikely he would understand in Piltovan. All at once, what had originally struck her as a concerning arrival had turned into a coming departure she did not want to happen. 

 

This time, Caras was allowed to drive the cart and the family quickly scurried back as the yaks turned around on the too-small ‘road’ on their property. Once the beasts were aimed at the main road, both of their visitors turned back toward them. 

 

“ Goodnight and thank you,” Vander called in Va-Nox, and Vi thought this time the words were at least appropriate. Still, it was not Vander that Caras looked directly at as he waved and said what she assumed to be goodbye in Ur-Nox. Vi tried to focus on the words and memorize them, since it was at least something more conversational than ‘wheel’ or ‘yak’ but she found herself distracted by the smile twisting his lips, both goofy and somehow unsettling . 

 

Nothing made much sense as she watched the vehicle pull off. Claggor swept down and tossed an arm around Ekko’s shoulders as he waved back. Vi became intensely aware that there should have been one more person beside her watching the strangers leave‘their land. 

 

In the shack, alone since their visitors had arrived, Mylo had missed the entire experience of meeting Caras and Orkis who had, apparently, genuinely just come to offer them gifts. She glanced back over her shoulder at the shack. If she even brought it up, it would only make things worse and upset him. Vi still thought that if she was locked up in that shack all day and things like this were happening outside of it, she’d be pissed off, too. 

 

Day three on ‘their’ farm threatened to come to an end as strange as its beginning had been.

 

“Let’s go inside,” Vander declared, frowning slightly as the cart grew smaller in the distance and finally reached the road. “I’ll start dinner a little early.”

Chapter 12: Chapter Twelve

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Twelve

 

Vander was still watching the old clay pot of rice boil when he explained why he’d been frowning ever since Orkis and Caras had left an hour or so prior. Given what was sat over top of the rice as it boiled, Vi hoped the meal did not burn, this time. She was still a little too aware of the two small eggs hard boiling to be more easily split among them. There was no way anyone was getting a mouthful of egg out of the deal and yet, Caras and Orkis had come from, presumably, the village just to bring them. Well, the two eggs and a bit of extra grain. 

 

“So,” Vander grumbled, voice still sharpened with the same slowly growing tension that had stifled all conversation since their return to the shack. “Either I wasn’t listening to Kutter well enough or the lad’s losing his edge. If I understood Orkis right, we don’t have long at all to get the fields plowed and planted if we want a harvest of spring wheat. And, we do want that.” Two or three seconds of silence passed during which Vi’s stomach twisted and she was not sure how hungry she would really be. 

 

“Okay,” she prompted, lifting her chin and trying to get Vander to continue. 

 

“So?” Claggor followed suit, gesturing for Vander to come out with it with one circling hand. Considering Vander’s back was still to them, this was a little unnecessary and unhelpful. 

 

“So, all those things we needed to take time and figure out - no time.” 

 

“But you said we had enough to make it through the winter already, right?” Powder asked. 

 

“Probably, but when I said that I meant if we wanted really lean times,” Vander answered. This shut the room up again. Powder drew her still booted feet up and brought her knees closer to her chest, still blocked from doing so completely by cast and sling-laden right arm. “Out here, no safety net. No one to turn to for help. The nearest community sees us as strangers. I don’t think we can risk lean times.” 

 

Why didn’t you tell us that to begin with? Vi wanted to ask him the question. She wanted to yell it at him. She didn’t, though, did not yell and just clenched her jaw tight even when a gruff sigh emitted from Mylo’s bed. She did not turn to look at Mylo, either. 

 

“It’s not a move that makes sense, taking the risk. So we’ll get every bit we think we can planted and plowed this time. Take our time on plowing the rest and plant it all with the winter seed when time comes.” Vi grimaced and this time sought out her family’s faces. Claggor looked as anxious as she suddenly felt. She could not blame this entirely on the fear of ‘lean times’. Powder and Ekko were relatively neutral until they saw Claggor’s frowning flare of nerves and then both grew absolutely still. Mylo, notably, did not meet her gaze when she turned to check on him. 

 

“Then what’s the plan?” Claggor asked, his voice strangely distant and scratchy like his throat was dry. Every sound in the shack was starting to seem distant, though, like it was coming through the onboard speakers of The Last Drop’s jukebox. “I don’t know how any of this works.” 

 

“Well,” Vander said slowly, having seen something they could not and starting to move the pot with their dinner in it to one side. “We need to get the land plowed and we need to get it planted.” You’re just repeating yourself. “Better if we did it quickly,” he admitted, though this too was just a rehash of what he’d already said. Vi got the feeling he was making things up as he went along. “Problem is, no machines to pull the plow.” 

 

“So, how then?” Powder queried. She sounded smaller than usual .Vi could not make herself look his way, again. 

 

“Well, that’s when your next guess would be a horse or oxen or something but we don’t have any of those, either. So, in the morning, Claggor and Vi will come out with me to the shed. We’ll haul the plow to the field closest to the house and then we’ll hook me up.” Vander set aside the lid to the pot and fished out something with a wooden spoon, presumably the two little bird’s eggs. 

 

“Hook you up?” Ekko interrupted, half curious and half dubious .The boy rose to his knees as he asked. “Like, you mean you’ll pull it?” 

 

“Yes, I’ll pull it,” Vander echoed back, faintly mocking the doubt in Ekko’s voice. This did not erase the boy’s questions but Ekko did hurry to wipe the evidence of his second guessing off of his face. Vi just shook her head and looked down at the floorboards beneath her. 

 

“Aren’t they heavy?” Claggor asked the obvious question. 

 

“It didn’t seem too terrible while I was messing with it the other day,” Vander answered. Vi could not see him but could almost hear him shrugging as he began to line up a cup and the remaining bowls to dish out the familiar, plain, dinner. She took note of how humid the little room had become. “You hook me up to it and the two of you can help me by getting rid of rocks or stones that might slow me down in the field. Keep a look out for danger, that sort of thing. No idea what might be out in those fields.”

 

Vi glanced back up at the sound of Mylo rolling over in his bed toward the corner wall, his back turned to them yet again. Powder and Ekko communicated in their quiet way beside her with a look she did not try to decode.Frustrated at the sight of the back of Mylo’s head yet again, she did wonder if the two reactions weren’t connected to the same problem: the plan notably excluded all three of them. Mylo was supposed to be bedridden for a while more and Powder was one-armed for the immediate future. Ekko? 

 

Well, face it: Ekko was small. 

 

None of that stopped people from wanting to help when they thought there was something they could do. 

 

‘I’m coming with you,’ Powder had demanded upon learning that some strange man-monster had taken Vander. 

 

‘You’re not ready!’ Vi shook her head and began to lower it again before her sister’s voice distracted her for real. 

 

“What can we do?” Powder asked, the sulk already in her words. 

 

“Well, you can either spend the days working on the bows again or grab some of the seed grain and follow behind the plow. A plant as you plow sort of thing. No matter which, though, you need to know it’s hard, hard work. Or at least, it is from what I’ve seen and heard. Never really done it, myself.” Her sister and the girl’s best friend whispered to one another beside her and Vi only picked out faint, occasional hints of what they were saying. A quick back and forth volley was exchanged as Vander finally began divvying out the rice.

 

“Which is more important?” Ekko asked, which was probably a simplistic way of looking at it but also very like the two of them to get to the point. Vi smiled despite the conflict in her chest. 

 

“Probably the bow in the short term. Besides, if we were really so pushed for time we had to plant as soon as a bit of land is plowed, Vi or Claggor could do that.” Vi nodded to show that she agreed with Vander, mostly for Powder’s and Ekko’s sakes more than anything else. Claggor seemed less convinced but merely cleaned the lenses on his goggles, quietly. 

 

“And we have a better idea of what woods to try now,” Powder continued as if trying to talk herself into choosing the bows. 

 

“I can handle the ax enough to cut things down to size, too,” Ekko agreed. “Between that and whatever string you think will work, maybe we can get two or three prototypes made?” 

 

“Maybe two?” Powder said. “I don’t think we have the right kind of string for three. We-” 

 

“Three, two, what’s it matter if we just talk about it but never have them?” Vi lifted her head as Mylo grumbled his impatience and rolled back toward them all. Vander, still halfway through dishing out dinner, stopped and watched as Mylo cut across Powder’s response. “Rice ready yet?” 

 

It could have been a light comment and an accident in cutting off Powder, but twice in a row was enough for Vi. She was drawn back to the moment  by the edge in his tone, by the way Powder side eyed him and slowly shut her mouth, giving up the fight. Even the faint bit of positivity she’d tried to bring to the heavy conversation disappeared from her sister’s face. It was such a small reaction on Powder’s part but Vi felt immediately like a building fire let out of control. 

 

Her nails dug into her own palms as she clenched her fists and gritted her teeth. 

 

Why does she have to be tense and scared all the time just because he’s pissy?

 

“Tell you what?” Vi said, loudly and directly enough to draw Mylo’s attention. “I’ll hand you the first bowl myself if you’ll just stop being a dick for ten seconds while we try to figure out how not to starve when it runs out, mkay?” Mylo began to scoot back toward the wall behind him as if to sit up but whatever response was brewing behind green eyes was cut across. 

 

“Stop it and calm down,” Vander ordered firmly as he returned back to dishing out dinner. “We’re not doing this again tonight. We’ve got an early morning tomorrow - sun up early.” 

 

“All I did was ask a question, not my fault Vi jumped down my throat.” Mylo rasped at Vander’s back. It was Vi’s turn to get to her knees as if to stand up. 

 

“You wanna say that to me directly or are-” She was cut off by the sound of Vander banging the spoon against the side of the pot for several loud, very long and annoying seconds. Vi bit her lip as she looked down at her clenched fists. All she really wanted to do was strike someone. Ideally Mylo, but there felt like no coming back from that. “Do something!” 

 

“Do something,” Vi said a seconid time, loudly over the banging spoon. She locked her eyes firmly on the wall somewhere between Mylo and Vander and took very clear notice as the room fell silent again. She could feel her entire upper body move in time with the rise and fall of her chest as she drew in breaths suddenly too ragged and heavy for a resting state. Despite the room being relatively warm each breath felt cold. 

 

A few seconds passed in silence and Vi watched the empty spot on the wall between her father and brother and waited for one of them to talk. 

 

Neither did. 

 

She wanted to scream but if she just clenched her teeth shut she could resist the urge. 

 

Rice was passed around a silent minute or so later. Powder was quiet. Ekko was quiet. Claggor was quiet. Mylo was silent . The only sounds she could hear were her own grinding teeth and the wooden spoon digging against the bottom of the pot before Vander sat the spoon down. A bowl and a cup had been left unfilled. Vander turned to gather up the buckets as if he, too, were feeling a certain way and unable to focus. Vi eventually got up from her spot and moved to the counter to confirm her suspicion: Part of the reason she had been able to hear the spoon so clearly against the bottom of the pot was because there was a good amount of burnt rice at the bottom. 

 

Vi made sure the last bowl was as full of the remaining decent rice as she could and set it aside for Vander or whoever before scraping the bottom of the pot into a cup. Several sets of eyes, including Vander’s, caught on her as she took this one for herself. She was not going to be in a good mood, dinner burnt or not. Starting to turn back and go to her own spot with cup in hand, she was stopped by a larger hand closing around her left wrist. Vi did not struggle, she just looked up at Vander who took the serving spoon from the pot and dug it into the cup in her hand, digging out some of what was there before dropping it into his own bowl and replacing the bit he had taken with the contents from that. 

 

Vi did not want to match his eyes but he hadn’t let go of her. The first time she looked at him he looked curious. The second time, he looked serious. When he finally released her, Vi knew that it was clear that she’d tried to take the worst of it for herself and he had caught her. What was weird was that somehow she felt worse at Vander stopping her and splitting that burnt portion between the two of them, instead. In a way, it felt like he accepted her making that choice for herself, for them. While she expected that to feel validating because it was the only damned thing she could choose to do for herself or anyone around her, it actually hurt a little. 

 

Vi returned to her spot, her little pile of blankets near Ekko and Powder and tried to put into words, at least in her head, the specifics. She’d yet to really tame the weird mix of guilt and hurt and rage at play in her head. At some point or another Ekko had taken back his normal spot from Powder which put him between the sisters. So when Vi felt a little bump against her shoulder, an encouragement for her to lighten up, she did not need to look to know that it was Little Man trying to help. She still did turn his way as Claggor passed a bowl of rice to him to hand off to Powder, though. 

 

Ekko smiled at her, cautiously, round cheeks rising. Vi could not fake the smile back, even though damn near everything that had upset her over the last two or three minutes had been not just her own doing but her own idea. 

 

The room was quiet as the last of dinner was passed out and this, she thought bitterly, was probably how Mylo wanted it. In the moment even she preferred it quiet, the tension matching the shitty way she felt inside. It was unfair to the others, though. For as angry as she was at Mylo or Vander, no one else had done anything to deserve to spend all night, especially a night before a big day, miserable and quiet. 

 

“Do me a favor, okay?” Vi started, voice shaky as she tried to put a thoughtful foot forward. “When you start working on the bows please just swing and cut that heavy ax away from you, always.” Ekko paused halfway through scooping up the first bite of his dinner and gave a nod. “We don’t want anyone else to get hurt.” 

 

Mylo himself snorted over his own bowl as he sat up back against the wall and she noted that the lucky bastard got one of the few non-serving spoons. 

 

“Say something?” Vi asked him, eyebrow raised. Four or five seconds passed in the pause before her brother looked back down at his bowl and she wondered why every attempt she made to make things better ended like this. 

 

Both during and after dinner, the shack was humid and stuffy and unpleasant. 

 

It was nothing, though, compared to the sweat-soaked state Vi spent the next day in. 

 

“It’s not like it’s hot but can someone just turn down the sun? ” Vi called from just ahead of the plow, off to its left. Claggor’s response was somewhere between a grunt and a chuckle, but as distracted as he was with checking Vander’s path, he wasn’t exactly looking where he was going. “Hey, hey, watch your footing.” The larger boy stumbled, his left heel catching a ridge of earth still raised from a long-past plowing. With only one good pinwheeling of the arms, Claggor managed not to fall backward. He did, however, point at something lying on the ground in Vander’s path. 

 

The man in the space between them continued forward surprisingly steadily. More than one vein looked like it was threatening to pop on Vander’s neck and head as he took it step by step, dragging along the sizable metal contraption with its blade cutting through the topsoil. Vi could only spare the struggling man a second’s glance before hurrying forward, ahead of him and into his path. She reached down to grab what looked like a filthy stone off of the ground among the grass where Claggor had indicated, but instead came up with a fairly sizable clod of dirt. 

 

Vi crumpled it in front of Claggor’s eyes and slipped off back to her side of the path, within the small scrap of freshly upturned farmland. Claggor didn’t bother to look embarrassed and that was fine by her: he was as red and drenched in sweat as she was after hours with the sun baring straight down on them. At this point, Vi’s neck, face, arms and hands hurt with the warmth of something she’d only experienced once before on the way from Basilich less than a week ago: sunburn. 

 

A grunt from Vander and the sudden lack of sound of plow through earth signaled the man slowing as he caught up with them and they started to move forward. 

 

If Vi was sweating then Vander was sweat drenched . The plow itself, rigged up to him by a knot of old leather straps made to go onto far larger beasts, was heaver than she had ever expected just to carry out to the field. Once the blade was lowered into the dirt as it needed to be to do its job, Vi had not believed Vander would move it an inch, much less get as far as they’d gotten. 

 

It had been slow going, to say the least. 

 

It did not help that it had taken an hour or so before Vander had figured out how to keep the whole contraption from falling to one side or another. Until then, she or Claggor had had to either be standing on the small platform at the back of the plow to keep it upright (which added weight to the load Vander was carrying) or trotting along behind him and reaching from afar to try to keep the handles steady. 

 

From the way Vander stopped and shook before taking his next step, she saw the second option in her immediate future. Her arms weren’t that damn long and if they were she’d be a better fighter than she ever had been. 

 

“Gonna need some help here, gods damn it,” Vander grunted. Vi hurried back behind the plow and took up position behind it, reaching, stretching and straining to help take some of the load off of him and balance the tool out. Vander cursing was not unheard of. Vi had heard him curse plenty. She’d never been through such a long period of time where those were part of every sentence to come out of his mouth. In the last two hours unless he’d been grunting one of their names out to ask them to take up position behind the plow or look ahead of his path, nothing he’d said had really been alright for polite conversation. 

 

The strain evident in his voice and the pulsing vein standing out on his neck made her think, undesirably, of Deckard. Vi did not think she’d ever spent so much time directly under the sun before in her life and would be surprised if Vander couldn’t say the same thing. It had been the planting he’d warned Powder and Ekko would be hard work, but Vi did not see how it could be worse than this. She didn’t want to think of how little progress they’d made, how few times they’d hurried to help him turn the plow ‘round a hundred and eighty degrees and dug through the earth back the other way. 

 

“This is just one field.” Vi said out loud. 

 

“Don’t I fucking know it?” Vander groaned. One field, she repeated to herself, head turning to look right at the nearest of the small corner pillars marking the field’s edges, each etched with noxian lettering on them. With each step, Vander broke upturned roots and knocked down plants that reached often up to her waist. With each step, he turned rich dark soil to the surface. With each step, he drove more red into his complexion and strained his body and took them further and further toward what she was sure had finally come: the hottest part of the day. 

 

Each step made the whole effort seem impossible. 

 

Worse, Vi was not sure she could drag the plow an inch, in his shoes. 

 

Stop being so fucking negative. 

 

It was a nice thought, even reasonable. Still, Vander loosed into the quiet day’s soft wind another stream of pejoratives that would get you glances even in the Lanes. Not being negative was easier said than done. Despite a growing worry for his health, Vi had learned the hard way not to suggest he stop after the first time she’d fallen victim to that temptation. Vander snapping that they didn’t have a choice had sounded devastatingly desperate. 

 

While hurrying over sometimes uneven earth to grab or chase off potential hazards in his path was not much work by comparison, there was some pressure not to mess up the task of keeping Vander going straight and preventing either he or the plow from tipping over. She wasn’t sure either one would be back up any time soon if they did. 

 

At least you’re doing something again, Vi chided herself as her arms started to ache after mere seconds of the act of helping to balance the load. Without the ability to really practice and train like she used to she had worried she was going to lose something. Not even something physical. 

 

“Vi, trade off,” Claggor called. His voice was firm and confident but she knew enough to know she’d only been following behind Vander a minute or so this time and if Claggor was trying to take her spot she had to look pathetic. As Vander once again surged forward and she felt her legs protest giving pursuit, Vi felt pathetic. When Claggor was close enough to take hold of the two little handles on the back of the plow, Vi slipped aside, hissing out her own curse under her breath and pushed to get past Vander. It was harder than it should have been, given his current state. 

 

Instead, Vi came to a quick stop as Vander’s left hand shot out as if to stop her. Vi slowed as Vander did the same beside her. His brunet head dipped low. 

 

“Vander?” Claggor asked, cautiously. Vander did not answer. She watched his thinning head of hair and hoped he didn’t collapse. All she and Claggor could do was to slow and stop and watch as Vander came, growling and grunting, to a halt. It was shaky grind that ended with a heaving chest, a gasping breath and, a moment later, their father on one knee in the middle of the field. 

 

For a field that had been relatively well cared for until recently it had clearly taken all of the energy out of Vander. No matter how cool and distant Vi had been feeling lately, she was worried. 

 

How fast is this even supposed to go? Vi thought anxiously, looking to her left and back behind them. Vander’s breath came in jagged wheezes. Maybe we’re doing fine? The rows looked straight and clear to her , the upturned dirt damn near black. Dark. Fresh, with most plant material turned over and buried. That was the way Vander had said it should look. Vi was about to ask Vander what he wanted to do now, if he wanted a breath or something more when he answered ahead of time. The man grabbed the messy jumble of rigged up yokes made for larger creatures (and, multiple creatures at that) off of his shoulders and hurled them aside. The act was undignified and childlike and Vander’s bulky, shaking arms got wrapped up for several uncomfortable seconds in the yokes, flailing.

 

Vi moved forward to help but stopped when she noticed him tensing up even on one knee. 

 

“Endless fuckin’ slog!” Vander’s right hand pushed off of his knee. He had clearly been trying to stand up and take a step forward but collapsed right back down. His other knee now planted firmly in the dirt as well, Vander tried to growl. Instead, that last word came out as little more than a gasp. 

 

Then, quickly enough Vi was not sure he was not about to lose consciousness, Vander sat back.

 

One shared look with Claggor told her he was even more perturbed than she was. 

 

“Okay, that’s it,” Claggor released the handles of the plow, which held its position in the earth, if tilted to the left, and rubbed at his forehead just beneath where the goggles sat waiting. “I’m getting you water. It’s getting too hot for this.” Without waiting for permission or approval, Claggor bolted with impressive speed off from their unintended spot of rest in the field and back toward the shack where a pitcher and a pot of water should have been waiting and cooling. Hell, even just hurrying along behind and beside Vander had left Vi sore and thirsty: she couldn’t imagine having done what Vander had been doing for hours without even a break. Her legs, having done far less than even her arms at this point, were complaining. 

 

“Vander,” Vi asked after a solid minute (a painful minute) of watching him not just draw in ragged, heavy breaths on his ass in the dirt and grass of the field but also watching her father raise two fingers to his own kneck as if to check his own pulse. As if the vein was not visibly pulsating. As if she could not tell that pulse was dangerously high by sight alone. “You okay?”

 

“No, I’m not,” Vander told her and she could swear he was trying to snap at her like earlier. That was already unlike him enough to be upsetting but he clearly couldn’t draw the breath to snap. To grumble, even. Vi looked back toward the shack but Claggor had barely reached it by this point and thrown the door open. If they had been in almost any other field on the property he would’ve still been on his way there. 

 

“Okay, that’s not right,” the man said lowly, voice breathy and without any of its usual gravitas. “I’m okay, but this isn’t working. I’m not the young man I like to pretend still looks out of the mirror at me.” Vi did not know what to say. All she knew was that her insides felt cool in the moment and it had nothing to do with any piss-warm breeze they were getting assaulted by. The parts of her body exposed to the sun, on the other hand, radiated their own heat. She might’ve been imagining it but it was as if they did so to the beat of her own heart. “There’s a reason topsiders back home have their machines do this kind of work. It’s less painful, more accurate, quicker. It’ll be another day and fucking change before even an acre of land is worked at this rate.” 

 

“Vander, we -” 

 

“If I was a smart man, I’d have asked Kutter how long we had. We could’ve started the very next day we arrived. Probably be damn near done right now thinking about throwing ourselves into the stream.” I don’t know about that, she told herself. Vander grappled at a nearby clod of dirt with his left hand and hurled it aside. 

 

If we’d started this right after we got here, no one would’ve gotten used to the place. No one would’ve been ready. 

 

“Could we trade off?” Vi asked him, gazing at the bundle of straps and ties and buckles on the ground behind him. “I’ve been selfish standing back and pretty much just watching all this time. Doing the easy shit. Claggor and I could team up and you can keep the damn thing balanced.” Vander gave one hard laugh, one hand resting on his stomach. At first, it sounded dismissive enough to make her grit her teeth and prepare to argue with him. In the next moment, he looked up from the earth for the first time since coming to a stop with pride enough in his eyes that she felt bad. 

 

The door to the shack flew open in the distance with just enough of a wooden cracking sound that she heard it. Vi looked at that rather than the look in Vander’s eyes and saw Claggor start to step back out of the shack. Just as suddenly, he turned and ran right back inside. She could barely hear him from the distance between them, but Claggor getting angry was rare enough she knew what it sounded like when he yelled at someone. It was enough to draw Vander’s attention, too. Still sitting on his ass in the field, Vander scooted around to look past the contraption he’d been hauling and back toward the shack as the door shut again behind Claggor. 

 

The yelling did not stop immediately. 

 

“It’s probably bad of me to say it, but I’d take you up on that if I thought it mattered at this point.” Vander sounded only half engaged with the conversation. Vi understood when they could no longer hear Claggor’s voice. For a few more seconds, Vander tried to get hold of his wheezing and coughing and heavy breathing, and Vi watched the shack. “Maybe if I’d been - I’d been smart enough to do that from the start we might’ve gotten a couple extra hours out of me, but it probably wouldn’t be worth it.” Vander pushed some of the breath away from his words and found his voice. 

 

“I’m going downhill pretty quickly, Violet.” She did not think he was speaking just about the here and now. Vi opened her mouth to ask more of the side of Vander’s head as he sat in profile to her. She just didn’t know whether or not she’d like his answers. Vi dropped that particular line of conversation, instead. 

 

“You done for the day?” Back up at the shack, Claggor again threw the door open and stalked back out, before breaking into a run. Not toward them, but a little more off to the north than they were - toward the stream. Carrying a bucket. Clearly, there had been no water waiting inside and with Ekko and Powder supposedly on the other side of the property working on bows in the shade, that left very little question about who drank the last of it. 

 

“Gonna need a break at least,” Vander replied, tracking Claggor with his eyes. “Then I’ll give it another couple of hours.” 

 

“I think he’s going to get water,” Vi explained. 

 

“Damn it,” he sighed. Vi dropped to the ground beside him, squashing down grass that could easily hide some small animal or another if they hadn’t been making enough noise to scare it off. 

 

“After the break, we’ll help pull. We only need one person ‘steering’, anyway,” Vi replied, drawing air quotes with her fingers. 

 

Vander did not answer, but after a few more seconds, his breathing began to calm again. Concerningly, he flopped backward, resting his head atop the yokes he’d just been wearing and turning his face up toward the sun-filled sky. 

 

“Vi,” Vander sighed, and she saw that not much of the red of his face was retreating even as he calmed down. They were all going to be burnt for a while. “I’m doing the best I can.” 

 

“I know,” Vi promised, though she was a little confused as she blocked the sunlight from her eyes with one bare, unwrapped but dirt-coated hand. “That thing’s heavy as hell, Vander. Don’t worry about it, Claggor and I can help.”

 

“No,” Vander replied, not opening his eyes and instead accidentally mimicking her actions by covering his eyes with the back of one hairy, sunburnt arm. “I mean with everything. I’m doing everything I can, here.” 

 

Vi did not respond quickly, instead weighing how or if she even should. On one hand- 

 

“That,” Vander said, cutting off her line of thought and turning his head to face her. He opened one eye beneath the shadow of his arm. Vi froze. “That’s the problem.” 

 

“What is?” she asked, immediately on edge. What had she possibly done wrong this time? Vander’s gray eyes looked darker, deeper, like a hole you could slip into and never be found and he watched her. Like he was reading a book. 

 

“You, being quiet.” 

 

“I’ve never been good with words,” Vi shrugged, dismissing this. 

 

“You’ve never been good with talking, you’re fine with words. Besides, there’s a difference between being ‘bad with words’ and being silent and not talking to the people who love you.” Vander surprised her by sitting up again so quickly. Vi looked away from the speech, to look for Claggor coming back. Vander wasn’t taking her own feelings into account in the least. “I get it: you don’t like this place - and it’s not what you want, and it feels like running away. But your family is here and needs you.”

 

“I’m doing everything I can, too!” Vi shouted, throwing up both hands. She wished she had something in easy reach to throw. Oddly, though, Vander’s response to her frustration was to look at her until she looked back and then to not. 

 

“I’ll accept that,” he told her with a surprising amount of trust in his voice, though he sagged when he said it. The large man placed an elbow behind him and leaned back on it even though it looked like an act that should hurt. 

 

And it was quiet. 

 

The duo sat in the grass taking what little comfort a passing breeze had to offer until Claggor came rushing past them with a bucket in hand. 

 

“Got some water, I’ll get it into the pot and bring it out to cool down. We’ll get some in you as soon as we can,” Claggor promised Vander from a couple dozen feet off. 

 

“Come sit out after you get it on the fire?” Vi suggested. 

 

“Can’t do it, doubt Mylo would pull it off once it’s done boiling. I’ll be out when it’s time to cool it down or come grab me if you need me. Maybe I can talk to Mylo or something,” Claggor started to turn away from them to continue toward the house. 

 

“Don’t bother trying too hard,” Vi called his way, waving a hand. The way Claggor sideeyed Vander, instead of acknowledging her directly, told her that this wasn’t well received. 

 

“Think you’re being too hard on him Vi,” Claggor started, lifting his goggles and itching at his forehead. They had left a clear mark against his sunburnt face. “But this really isn’t the time to make me defend the guy, thanks.” There was just enough of an edge to Claggor’s voice to tell her that she could end up on the wrong side of his shouting if she fucked up, too. Vi only sat quietly until Claggor was out of range to chat with again and moving back toward the shack. 

 

“You think there’s a chance Claggor’s right?” Vander asked her, calmly. He sounded much more like himself, so Vi didn’t feel bad at all at rolling her eyes and shrugging this off. 

 

“You clearly have your own thoughts on it, so just go ahead and say it.” Vi turned a little further back toward the shack to not have to crane her head and she caught sight of Ekko and Powder in the distance behind it. While each of them was carrying a shape that looked a lot like one of those long, straight sticks for a bow, Vi recognized the pumping arms and excited faces of a footrace. She wanted to smile, but the conversation soiled even that image in her mind. The duo in the distance raced away from the edge of the wood and toward either the shack or the shed. 

 

“You’re old enough to know what I’m going to say about it before I do,” Vander responded. “This isn’t the time and it’s not helping anyone.”

 

“Tell it to him,” Vi snapped immediately. She only hoped he was tired enough not to snap back. “If he could stop making Powder feel like shit for five seconds I wouldn’t want him to heal up faster so I could punch him in the face.” 

 

Vander’s exhaustion did not dull his response. 

 

“Don’t joke about that,” Vander shot, seriously. Hurt and anger and disgust in his voice battered against her thoughts worse than many physical blows she’d taken. When the man continued, it seemed like he would get on a roll but with great effort, visible on his cross face, Vander stopped himself. “You don’t - I mean, I don’t think you realize how close we came to losing him.” Every argument Vi wanted to make to counter this sounded pathetic in her ears and all came down to ‘no one else tells Mylo to stop being an asshole.’ This was true, but Vander played the ‘he nearly died’ card like a shield. 

 

Vi didn’t answer him. 

 

She didn’t answer the next three probing attempts he made to get her talking or bother looking at him when he grunted and said she was acting like a child. She wanted to scream at him that he was not acting like a father. Vi did not bother to speak again when they got back to work or the handful of times that Claggor sarcastically thanked her for volunteering him to help pull the plow. She couldn’t blame him: she had the same thought, herself, numerous times. 

 

The sun was nearly down before she heard Ekko yelling over the sound of her own teeth grinding and her uncouth imaginings of the noises Silco would make if they had just been dragging this heavy plow across his chest, instead. 

 

“Vander! Claggor! Vi!” 

 

The yelling got her attention, but she was not the only one. She and Claggor slowed, wrapped in the yokes of the plow. She looked at Claggor whose breath was coming in gulping heaves next to her. Neither one turned back until Vander called out their names. Vi, unnerved by the sudden urgency in both Ekko’s calls and Vander’s, slipped easily out of the yokes since they weren’t tied to fit a person her size at all. The sudden loss of the weight of the plow and the leather both threw Vi a little off balance as she turned around. Beside her, Claggor struggled to do the same thing. 

 

Wanting to swear a few times, herself, Vi nearly doubled over from the effort of having gotten the weight off her. There was, however, distraction enough from the stress coming down the main road along the edge of the farm. 

 

Judging by the familiar large, thick gray furred creatures hauling behind them a cart and the short and tall lean figures sat side by side at the font of it, Orkis and Caras were back. As before, they turned off the main road and started down a much smaller dirt path onto the property but there were a few differences. First and foremost, as Vi and Claggor drew even with Vander, the man held up four fingers. 

 

Vi counted twice as many yaks as before hauling the cart and as soon as the blood rushed back to her brain she wondered if it would be pathetic to cry.

 

“You don’t think -” Vi started, looking up at Vander as she tried to find a way to ask if these strangers were coming to save the fucking day without sounding either flippant or tiny. Vander’s returned gaze was conflicted, his jaw set and mouth grim before the man gave a sigh and started off out of the field and toward the path the apparent grandparent and grandchild were coming down. Vi caught sight of Ekko and Powder sharing a high five by the shack. 

 

Vi’s attempt to follow Vander started with her stumbling, twice. She did not even mind that Claggor had to catch her to prevent her from tripping over upturned earth the second time. The two of them still managed to get up toward the path not long after Vander. She still felt damned conflicted when they got out of the fields and onto the path the cart ahead of them followed. Vander clicked his tongue ahead of them. It was as if to say, “that’s too bad.” 

 

Not too terribly far off, Ekko and Powder were rushing out to meet them, at least as easily as they could rush with one steadying their broken arm. Ekko, though, held a new bow prototype. To Vi’s eyes it was strung and ready. Just behind him, Powder carried a similar sized stick in her remaining hand. The string hanging down from one end suggested it only needed to be strung before they had a second ready. 

 

The brief hope for a future meaty dinner did not do anything to satisfy the conflict within. 

 

“What brings you out here tonight?” Vander queried in Piltovan as the cart drew closer. Vi realized that it was not slowing down. As quickly as both Powder and Ekko and Vander, Vi and Claggor were moving, the cart still blew past each group. Orkis playfully waved as the massive hairy beasts hauled the cart forward. Vi was no expert but the way the cart skipped along the uneasy path suggested they were going a little recklessly fast. 

 

She did not have time to get sight of the other person on the cart except to see Caras suddenly drop both hands to grip onto the seat between his legs as if he did not want to be bucked from it. 

 

Their visitors were well within the small treeline surrounding their shack and shed before the cart came to a stop. Now following Powder and Ekko, Vander led them on a fruitless attempt to catch up with the cart before Orkis and Caras did what Vi suspected they had come to do. It was fruitless, too. 

 

Far before even Powder reached the cart, Caras flung himself down from the seat with an excited whoop, as if the rocky ride down the dirt path had been exhilarating. What threw Vi off was that when he grabbed something long and wooden from the cart he took it almost right up to the house before picking a patch of tall, thick grass. The boy doubled over once with the spike of wood held in both hands and drove it halfway into the earth with one, solid thrust. 

 

The hell is that? she wondered. It would’ve been pointless to ask at this distance, even if she was sure they’d understand her question. While Powder and Ekko were now close enough they could’ve comfortably spoken to at least Orkis, the rest of them were still behind. 

 

It did sound like Powder tried to engage Orkis in conversation but whatever his answer it must not have cleared anything up because Vi heard her call Caras’ name as he moved back to the cart and began to untie two of the extra yaks from their reins. A long, braided rope Vi hadn’t really seen him grab hold of was wrapped around and through a hole in this big wooden protrusion sticking from the earth. By the time Vi and Claggor had reached the cart with Vander not far behind, her question was pointless. 

 

“What are you doing?” she asked. The question was basic enough she hoped one of them got it. Caras, his pitch black hair sticking wildly up at all angles smiled that same goofy grin. The boy stood back up from tying off the animals, looked across the little clearing at her with something hard to pin down in his green eyes and then answered her. 

 

“Yaks! Fakkae! ” Vi was impressed with herself that she had at least picked up a singular new word from their brief conversation before. It was enough to know what he was trying to say. She even let herself, briefly, smile at the realization until she saw Caras’ eyes start to widen, still locked on her. When he flushed, she looked immediately away at Orkis who had conveniently started to speak in Ur-Nox. 

 

No sooner had she done so than Orkis turned his head to the right and grew silent, making another exaggerated gesture of greeting with his diminutive arm. Vi followed the elder’s eyes to the shack. Framed in its doorway, Mylo had just finished a roll of his eyes and now, looking frustrated, turned and went back inside without responding. Vi licked her lips because they were dry and it was better that than growling out her own frustration. 

 

For one thing, to hear Vander talk Mylo should not have been getting out of bed for anything short of the bathroom and a couple of small walks a day to stave off  ‘atrophy.’ In a rare but not shocking moment, that was a word Powder had had to teach her . The bigger issue in Vi’s mind was that there was no reason to be a dick to two people who had yet again just ridden to their rescue for what had to be (an admittedly suspicious) lack of personal gain. There was no way these two looked at any of them and thought they had a thing to offer. 

 

“I’m  - sorry,” Vi called quickly at Orkis. She pointed to the now empty doorway once the man looked back her direction. “He’s sick.” The explanation felt weak but at least it was in words she had reason to believe he might understand. Notably, there was a lot less Piltovan being thrown around by their visitors today. That just reinforced her belief that most of the words they’d gotten on their last visit had been given by someone else. Didn’t mean she was any less grateful for the attempt, though.

 

Orkis nodded in a way that made her think he genuinely understood, though his face was hard to read as half of it was hidden under either the unruly hair growing from his head or the mustache. By the time Vi looked up, Ekko had just climbed into the back of the cart with Caras’ help and was unloading large bundles of dead grass into Caras’ and Claggors’ arms. Not just dead grass, dry grass. Hay. Feed. 

 

“Take these,” Orkis said in Piltovan, drawing her attention back. He was looking over her shoulder to Vander, who stood only a few feet away. Still, when she turned to look, he matched her eyes for a moment. Acknowledged her. She thought she liked this old guy. Once again, words escaped him that sounded just a little off, as if he was piecing together sounds and not meaning. “Plow for three days, plant for two more. After that too late. Small or sickly plants.” Just short of petting one of the ‘Fakkae’ still attached to the cart, Vander lifted his own head up to Orkis. 

 

Vi did not have words to measure the relief on his face except to say ‘a lot.’

 

Her attention was grabbed by Caras’ voice calling out to her in a quick rapid jumble from the other side of the cart. The boy stopped a few syllables in, looking a little embarrassed. Hovering just a few steps behind him, Powder piped up. 

 

“Try again,” she encouraged. Caras lifted an arm and rubbed at the side of his neck as if the muscle there was sore, but his lips quirked upward and he did as the small bluenette behind him encouraged. 

 

Vi wasn’t sure if she should thank Powder or glare. 

 

“I like to be with you again.” Vi could piece together the sentiment just fine. If she hadn’t already been sweating from the day’s activities she would have probably felt warm. His words and gaze were so pointed at her that there was an inescapable implication. He was glad to see her again,  not Claggor and Ekko who helped him unload the animal feed. He wasn’t talking to Powder, who hovered right behind him hanging out damn near at his shoulder, clearly itching to ask him more questions. 

 

Vi buried that implication in a dark corner of her head somewhere. 

 

“Hi,” she responded, feeling the need to speak quickly and answer the unspoken greeting. Immediately, feeling like an ignoramus, she scrambled for a better response. Instead she only seized on an Ur-Nox phrase Powder had taught her they first day she’d met the boy. 

 

It was, at it’s core, still basically, ‘hello.’ 

 

As stupid as she felt, that smile bloomed back into place on Caras face. The wide shouldered noxian laughed as if amused and then looked around. At first Vi thought he was looking away from her embarrassment. Instead, he gazed at the people and the places around him with… with joy.  

 

People are supposed to be like that, Vi thought, jarred. It was as if she had forgotten over the last couple of weeks. People are supposed to be happy. 

 

Orkis called Caras’ name from the cart between them, drawing both Vi’s attention and his. Whatever was said next in Ur-Nox, she hadn’t a chance to follow it. However, from within a small pants’ pocket, Caras pulled either a folded piece of paper or a crushed scroll and made as if to wrap around the back of the cart, looking at Vi directly as he held it out.

 

Instead Orkis barked out something else in Ur-Nox and, his face definitely darkening with embarrassment now, Vi watched Caras change directions and move around the front of the cart. Toward Vander. 

 

“What’s all this?” Vander asked Caras, moving away from Orkis and around the gray furred bovines still attached to his cart to meet Caras halfway. Confusion drove away awkwardness, both in Vi and Caras himself. The raised eyebrows quickly knitting together suggested he wasn’t sure what Vander was asking. Vi moved to join Vander as the two met up, and Vander unfolded the paper before showing it to Ekko and Powder. Vi only got a look when he turned it back to himself. 

 

“That’s a map,” Ekko said, as if half exasperated Vander hadn’t figured it out on first glance and half excited.

 

“Back to the village, I think,” Powder finished. 

 

“Or somewhere on the other side of it,” Vander clarified as Vi stood on her tiptoes to look over Vander’s shoulder. She caught both Claggor and Caras watching the undignified display and immediately stopped. Her brother rolled his eyes at her. That level of sass was not typically in Claggor’s wheelhouse. 

 

“That Orkis’ farm,” Caras explained, apparently intent on letting what he’d seen go without a lot of teasing. Like I can help it, Vander's a freaking giant and I’m not. 

 

“RIght, I think we saw it on the way here,” Vander said with a nod. “Thank you,” he told Caras directly before looking back at Orkis. “We’ll bring them both back to you fed and watered.” 

 

“Just if any of you want to… vis-it,” Caras strung together as if unsure of the words. Vi was going to mostly ignore the statement as innocuous when Vander turned away from Orkis and to her - and then back to Caras. Caras looked up at the sky as if to note how clear it was. She saw the start of a smile playing on Vander’s lips. It was Vi’s turn to look away, examining the creatures now hitched out near their shack. 

 

“How did you know?” Vander asked Orkis and this drew Vi’s attention enough to watch the older man point at Caras, then at his own eyes and then again at the field. This, Vi hadn’t exactly guessed. 

 

“Were you watching us?” Vi asked Caras. She only needed a good half second of the knit eyebrows and the faint frown to know that Caras hadn’t quite figured out what she was asking. Still, the answer seemed obvious. Vi warmed at the cheeks. She also did everything she could not to acknowledge that fact this time. Maybe ever again. She did see Caras flush as well. 

 

“I look for food,” Caras told her, pointing at the nearest edge of their property. No, pointing at the nearest edge of the woods . 

 

Right, he was probably out there scavenging, too. For the most part she and others had been trying to do the same thing since they first got to this place. It had turned up very little. Almost nothing. Maybe I need to bring Powder with me. She seemed to understand as much as any of them could about the papers Orkis had given them last time. 

 

All of this made Vi wonder though: if Caras was out in the woods looking for whatever few bits of food he could gather by hand, were he and Orkis any better off than them? 

 

They’ve got animals, feed and a cart. That’s not nothing. 

 

“Thank you, again,” Vander started, trying clearly to find friendly words to exchange with someone who didn’t have a depth of Piltovan vocabulary. 

 

Orkis’ response was a friendly wave and when he spoke again it was to apparently tell Caras to get into the cart. 

 

“We go. Orkis say, sleep. Work better after.” Vi was taken aback as Caras climbed into the cart. Unlike most of the rest of the conversation where it sounded as if Caras was weaving sounds together someone else had taught him, this felt like someone who’d learned the words and was excited about showing that off. A lopsided grin pasted itself right back into place on the boy’s face when he met her eyes and saw that she understood. Vi thought maybe he’d really been trying. 

 

The actual act of the yaks turning the cart around was as impressive as last time. It threatened to drive them off the small dirt path just as surely. With Orkis’ careful coaxing the cart got turned around in only a few seconds. The gathered family observed a few seconds of silence beyond the sounds of the loaned fakkae to her right eating at the grass beneath them. Apparently that was too much silence for some. 

 

“I think he likes her,” Powder stage whispered to Ekko only five or six feet away. 

 

“Shut up!” Vi shot back, immediately. For a moment, Powder partially recoiled as if afraid she was actually mad and then her sister laughed. No, worse, she giggled. Vi smiled despite herself and her own rolling eyes. Powder hadn’t laughed properly in weeks and it hadn’t been for lack of most of the family trying. Before the Iconagra at least, Vi thought. She looked away and started back toward the animals to check how well they were tied up, shaking her head. The rope was damn near the thickness of Ekko’s arm, but these were big animals.

 

“Think she likes him?” Ekko asked Powder a moment later. 

 

“Hey, she can hear ,” Vi shot over her shoulder. 

 

“That’s a yes,” Claggor answered, having been quiet throughout almost the entire visit. Vi felt just the slightest bit betrayed 

 

“No it’s not,” Vi called, trying to sound bored instead of slightly annoyed. Vi had not thought she would hear a playful edge in Claggor’s voice for the rest of the day. Not as tired as the two of them were to their very bones. She couldn’t recall the last time Powder laughed freely, exactly, or the last time Ekko had wanted to tease and joke with anyone but Powder. 

 

Why is it that every time they show up, everyone feels better? 

 

“You know what?” Vander called. It did not sound as if he’d moved from the spot he’d watched their benefactors leave from. Vi could faintly still hear their cart, suggesting they hadn’t even made it to the road, yet. “They’re right. We’re calling it for tonight. Claggor, go get the tarp. Vi, get the blade out of the dirt. You two cover the plow up really, really damn well. We’ll do other things. Get firewood, have dinner.” 

 

Vi wanted a river’s worth of water to go with that rice but figured she could just do them the favor of scooping up  a little more water to boil before bed. Around her, the family, sans Mylo, came alive. Claggor started off at a fairly quick pace for someone both his size and as tired as he had to be. Powder and Ekko began to chatter back and forth about their bows. Vander wasn’t done though. Actually, as if he had not realized he had paused long enough for Vi to reach the loaned yaks and begin to look over the ropes tied around them, Vander continued. 

 

Like he thought he’d just taken a breath. 

 

“Tomorrow, we’ll take turns leading or driving, or whatever the word is. We get as much land as we can plowed. Powder, Ekko, we’ll need you two coming behind us and planting seeds, covering them behind you. I think I know about how far apart to do it, but don’t worry. I don’t expect you to keep up with the plow. Every bit of head start we can get between now and when we all work together on planting will save us a lot of time, though. Might mean that much more food, too.” 

 

“Is anyone going out into the woods tomorrow. you know, to look for food or other things? ” Vi stopped halfway through acknowledging the nudge of one of the yaks with a pat to turn and look back at Powder. The shorter girl was watching her right back. Vi squinted at the leading, lilting tone in her sister’s voice. When this made Powder wither a bit, Vi dialed back the glare immediately. Maybe they were all still a little more raw than usual, herself included. 

 

“Not tomorrow,” Vander answered as he finally started moving. Apparently assuming all instruction was done, Claggor shot a look Vi’s way from a few feet away. The two shared a shrug at Vander’s disjointed thought processes. He was just trying to figure out what to do with new tools, probably. She watched her brother try to clean or knock dirt from his hands as he turned and resumed a trek to the shed for the tarp and decided she ought to get back to the field to do her part. Yet, again, as if distracted and suddenly finding himself, Vander continued three or four seconds later. “We should focus all our energy on getting the fields plowed and planted. Before we run out of it.” 

 

“Run out of energy?” Ekko asked. 

 

“Yeah,” Vander responded, sounding more his considering, thoughtful self as he patted the spot on his body where once upon a time his pipe would’ve been waiting. Instead, she thought it was inside and didn’t know if he had any more herb, tobacco or otherwise. “No two ways about it,” the man continued looking down at himself as if to realize he did not have his trusty pipe on him. “This is going to be a tough time. We’ll make it through, but it’ll be tough.” 

 

“Why’d you ask about the woods?” Vi prompted her sister through much, much less squinted, suspicious eyes. Ekko looked up from reading the map Caras had given them but he was watching Vander, as if trying to read his face. No one was sure if Vander was actually done or not. The man moved past them but not toward the house. He looked like he was moving to meet Claggor on his way back from the shed. Vi, for what it was worth, knew she needed to turn around and head back out to the field to raise the plow blade. 

 

“Well, Ekko and I wanted to come next time you go out there.”

 

“Sure,” Vi shrugged. “I was going to ask you anyway but it gets boring fast.” 

 

“Well I did read the stuff Orkis gave us,” Vi wasn’t going to argue or even explain that she’d already acknowledged that. She liked watching her sister lift her chin confidently again. 

 

“Won’t hurt to have extra eyes,” Vi told her before reaching out and ruffling an unsuspecting Ekko’s growing pale hair. The boy was still turned, map in hand, watching Vander slip around the back of their shack. 

 

“Hey!” Ekko grumped, finally drawing his attention back to his surroundings. 

 

“Hay’s over there,” Vi nodded toward the two or three hay bales nearby, turning away and waving off the protest. “I could go for a noogie next time if that’s what you want.” 

Maybe… maybe this was when the magical ‘getting better’ that Vander talked about was supposed to start. 

Notes:

And so, we reach the end of the backlog. Everything else is being written life - so I look forward to seeing how next week's comes out. Hahah. Thanks everyone who's come along for the ride so far.

Chapter 13: Chapter Thirteen

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Thirteen

 

Vi had forgotten that half-hearted hope that everything was going to get better. 

 

Around her the sun hung low in the sky, dipping out on yet another day. Vi? She hurt in ways she hadn’t since Deckard and Silco. Vi’s arms and shoulders sagged, weighing her down as she slowly trod over plowed earth on legs that were no longer even pretending to cooperate. Silco had never struck her though she had pinned the man to the ground herself. She’d missed her chance to hurt him properly as his bitch had hurt Powder but she had still taken a beating at Deckard’s hands. Her scrapes and bruises had all faded but either her muscles weren’t entirely healed up or the last two days had been more work than any she’d had in her life. 

 

Beside her, taking lumbering steps that suggested his own exhaustion, Claggor rubbed at his eyes, before hissing. 

 

“Don’t rub dirt in your eyes then,” Vi told him, though the jab felt half-hearted in her own ears. Claggor waved a dirt and sweat covered right hand dismissively her way and tried to blink his eyes clear. The boy groaned at the gesture and immediately reached around with his left hand to try to rub at his own right shoulder. When Claggor finally opened his eyes and looked not at the shack or the field but behind Vi, he frowned and pulled a face that spoke of disgust. 

 

Vander looked pleased with himself trailing behind her, brushing a hand over the side of one of the yaks he carefully led back toward the shed. Vi was glad they did not have to try to dispose of the plow themselves. There was still something about the fact that the bulky man had the energy to look pleased that she felt some kind of bitter about. 

 

At the edge of the field they’d been working, Ekko and Powder waved even as Vander continued onward, leading the beasts of burden. 

 

“How long do you think we have left?” Vi asked Claggor in what she thought was a low tone as she eyed her the sling her sister had made to let her carry a maybe quarter-full bag of seed grain at her side. Instead of Claggor, Vander was the one who called back over his shoulder from ahead of them. 

 

“A day and a half at this rate, before we’ve plowed down enough I feel safe. Then we have to start helping Ekko and Powder with the planting.” Having finally quit the field, Vi thought she should feel the levity she heard in his voice. Claggor stooped low at the edge and picked up one of the spare grain sacks, still tied shut. Slinging it over his shoulder, he gave a quick nod to Ekko and Powder. Ekko’s was only maybe half again as full as Powder’s. 

 

Those things are damned heavy. 

 

Looking over the younger of those working the fields that evening Vi only saw her own exhaustion echoed in the way Ekko and Powder began to borderline shuffle behind Claggor. Still new to it all and tired, not to mention hampered by Powder’s arm, the two had barely planted the first field they’d managed to get plowed. In fact, if she wasn’t mistaken it still had some empty rows in need of careful seeding. If one included the smallest one nearest the house there were a total of about six fields on the property, separated by the boundary markers of the previous residents. 

 

They were plowing most of those, apparently. 

 

“I’m so tired,” Powder confessed. Planting had proven not to be as simple as stopping and dropping a seed. It did make Vi wonder what it would be like when they had to plow and plant all the fields. Vi tried to squeeze a little energy out of her legs and bypass her siblings and Ekko but the best she could do was draw even with Claggor. This meant to be heard by Vander, she had to shout over the sound of the plow over the earth and the animals the man was leading. 

 

“Hey, Vander!” The two groups going in mostly the same direction, it wasn’t hard for her to be heard. Still, somehow the echo of her own voice in the rapidly darkening evening caught Vi by surprise and forced her to hesitate. Night time out here was beautiful, but she really didn’t like the idea of being out working in it and it was coming on, fast. 

 

“What’s that?” Vander called back, voice hoarse. He sounded a little closer to tired in that moment. Vi tried to forget the look of him straining under the weight of pulling that damn plow through the earth just days ago. 

 

“Do we have a lot of land or a little?” Vi asked. To her, it was a lot. The others with her perked up in turn, if only barely in Claggor’s case. Carrying the weight of the bag of seed apparently did not help anything. 

 

It felt like a fair question. Vi had never seen much land at all without a building on it until they came into Noxus to begin with. Vander contemplated this as they continued up toward the shack. A cool breeze forced a shiver out of her. A few seconds passed during which she shared a quick look with Claggor, equally confused. In the end, Vander didn’t answer her question. 

 

“It’s a good two acres more than we should need to live, according to Kutter. So we won’t be doing all of it this time, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Not even annoyed at the implication that she was being lazy or something (okay, a little annoyed), Vi shook her head. Not that he could see from ahead of them. 

 

“Not complainin’,” Vi explained. She just kind of wanted to know. Was it a lot? Or barely any at all? She covered a momentary flash of disappointment up by forcing aching legs forward so she didn’t have to speak so loudly to be heard. “I’ll be complaining when I wake up on the floor in the morning, but I’m not complaining right now.” Claggor chuckled behind her and this made her slow right back down, forgetting her intent to catch up with Vander in the first place. 

 

The chuckle made her think of the tall, dark-haired boy with the crooked smile who had dropped off the animals that made this all possible. It made her think of his unintentional reminder: people are supposed to be happy. 

 

Vi tried to perk up as she listened to Vander unhooking the plow from the yaks. She focused on the fact that they were done as he called her over to cover the plow in the tarp waiting by the front door. A couple buckets of water waited by the hitching post and Vi had to admit that if Claggor chose to gloat over the idea of going down to the stream and getting those during their little lunchtime pause, she would allow it. 

 

Now, instead of their sore bodies having to trail down to the stream to water the great animals Ekko helped Claggor tie down, the animals could go right for their food and water the family could relax. 

 

Predictably, the bulky beasts did just that and went right for hay and water. Vi snorted at the single mindedness but she couldn’t judge them. Looking back she could see similar motives in Powder’s eyes. Vi herself was already thinking about the pot of water and rice waiting inside to be made into a bland, if filling, meal. 

 

Once the animals were secure, Vander made right for the front door and Vi lost out to Claggor and Ekko for being right on his heels. 

 

“Been thinkin’,” Vander led in as he opened the door. Past him, Vi could see Mylo sat up in his bed, rubbing at his eyes as if freshly risen from sleep. Vi hadn’t noticed if he’d gotten up that day at all even though Vander had admonished him the last time he skipped his ‘physical therapy.’ “Mylo,” Vander greeted. Powder could hear the soft smile on his face even without seeing it. Powder pushed right past her, Claggor and Ekko and into the house the moment Vander left a space big enough for her to get by him. 

 

Her sister unceremoniously deposited her sling of grain just to one side of the door. 

 

Someone’s gonna have to carry that back to the cellar, Vi thought with no small amount of dread. 

 

She caught sight of Mylo returning Vander’s smile as the rest of them followed the man into the shack and set about removing boots. When Mylo saw her watching his eyes moved slowly over her and his face fell. Like he’s remembered he’s an asshole, she thought as Mylo frowned and then looked at the wall opposite of the spot of his bed. No, not at, pretty much right through. Checking out. The same way Powder accused her of doing. 

 

“Claggor, Vi,” Vander continued finally, once he’d removed his left boot. Vi stripped off her own boots and hurried to help Powder with her own. The tinkerer was doing a good job on her left boot just with the heel of her right. “I want you two to split your time 50/50 between helping me drive the plow and helping Powder and Ekko get the planting done. If we get a little ground made up, maybe we can switch off. Last day of plowing, Ekko and Powder can learn about driving the thing.” 

 

In the hearth, a very low fire smoldered. The fact that Vander could kneel down there and transfer a nice warm coal from it to the stove meant that Mylo had at least gotten up to tend that over the day. She watched, not sure if she was looking forward to the stove getting roaring or not. On one hand it meant food but on the other it would get warm in the shack very fast. 

 

Vi was almost distracted enough at the idea of sweating all night after sweating all day to miss the reaction to Vander’s declaration. 

 

Claggor simply shrugged and Vi got it: the two of them were sore enough that it didn’t matter what Vander told them to do tomorrow. It was going to hurt. Ekko, who had dipped back out of the shack for reasons unknown and was only now returning, still barefoot, looked excited at the idea. Power’s eyes and grimacing face were much more dubious. The yaks alone were many times the size of either Powder or Ekko. The two of them directing the beasts would sound unlikely. Vi had already learned how simple it was to turn the plow, though. Orkis had loaned out two very well trained (or behaved), if monstrously large cows. Not cows, yaks. Fakkae. 

 

Vi had never really thought about domesticated animals before, except as a luxury she couldn’t afford to have or a creature to be pitied when food was nonexistent.

 

Vander hadn’t mentioned one name and this escaped no one’s notice. Slowly but surely all eyes turned Mylo’s way, including her own. He had not looked away from the stretch of the wall several feet to the right of the door Ekko had just shut again behind him. Ekko crossed this space quickly but quietly, as if standing in Mylo’s field of view was uncomfortable. 

 

Apparently sensing the tension, Vander looked up from where he shut the door to the stove’s fuel department. 

 

“Ah, right. Look, I’m sorry, Mylo,” Vander started, following their gazes to the isolated boy on the far side of the room. If a room this small has a far side. “I just don’t want you out there risking it. I’d rather you stay down another week, just to be damned sure.” 

 

“Topside guy said a month,” Mylo countered before Vander had even finished speaking. His head whipped around equally quickly. Mylo was very on edge. His furrowed bushy brows and sharp tone put her on edge immediately, too. This was something that Ekko clearly noticed as he quite quickly dropped onto his blanket and distracted powder by tugging on the sleeve over her good arm. Powder sat down with an equally undignified thud as his own. She watched mutual amusement at their clumsiness and soreness and tried to work loose the feeling of a knot forming in her neck. Powder’s chuckle and Ekko’s grin didn’t deserve to be overshadowed by Mylo’s shit or her own. 

 

“It’s been a month,” Mylo continued when Vander did not respond within a second. Vi’s stomach dropped out and she leaned back against the wall, feeling a little floored. The thing was, she believed him. Considering how long they’d hidden in the shop or laid on the ship, a month almost made sense. 

 

They’d been here, though, on this farm in Noxus barely a week. Maybe not even a week. 

 

Has Mylo had anything to do but be an asshole to Powder and sit and count the days, she asked herself, coming to wonder if that was actually healthy. 

 

“And I still don’t want to risk it,” Vander echoed his earlier thoughts. That had been about driving the plow, though. 

 

To actually ask him to stay cooped up that much longer, was it fair, Vi wondered? Mylo had barely any idea about the place he lived in even compared to Powder and Ekko. Those two had been following the rules and not sneaking off too deep into the woods alone, unlike Vi. Claggor had roamed the place more than Mylo had been allowed. 

 

“I can help out even if it’s not that, ” Mylo insisted. “I don’t want to stay in this bed.” A little bitter, Vi thought she’d have killed to spent all day in bed, not to mention sleep in an actual bed again. She couldn’t make herself. It wasn’t like it was Mylo’s fault. Vi turned her eyes on Vander and sighed. She was going to have to start an argument with Vander if he didn’t want to act reasonable. 

 

“In that case,” Vander said as he filled the clay pot they cooked in with rice and began to rinse it in his tiny little ‘kitchen’ corner of the shack. “You humor me tomorrow. No joining us in the field, but you’re welcome to carefully go down to the stream, take a bucket, get water, boil it up, let it cool and keep it coming through the day. The faster we hydrate the better off we all are, the quicker we’re done.” Vander stopped mid twist and turn of his hand, knocking loose whatever it was that coated individual grains of rice so that he would be forced to dump out some pale, off-white byproduct. The man turned back to the group as a whole but Vi was watching only one person. 

 

Mylo. 

 

Mylo shrugged as if he did not care about this concession but Vi noticed the way he turned in as Vander continued speaking. If Mylo thought this was fair enough then Vi was going to shut her mouth and let it go. 

 

“Some of you weren’t doing that great on drinking water throughout the day. I get you’re all tough, used to running and jumping and climbing but hours and hours of sustained labor is not something you’re used to. You don’t keep hydrated, you don’t keep going. You’ll get sick.” Despite opening her mouth at first impulse, Vi decided as she saw the hard look in Vander’s eyes that she should let the comment go. She wasn’t going to be the one who told him he was off base. It was like Vander had no clue what a day of picking through dumps back home for materials for Powder or anything of value to sell to Benzo was actually like. There was the obvious careful climbing and moving shit out of the way for hours to consider but you also did plenty of sweating and running for your life when someone reported you to the enforcers. 

 

Topsiders always reported you. 

 

They didn’t want the junk until they saw a ‘trencher’ trying to earn enough not to starve. Then it was theft and most enforcers made sport of the resulting beatings. 

 

“So, just everyone take a little more account of their needs tomorrow, speak up when you need a break, stay hydrated and we’ll all work faster. The sooner we get the field planted, sooner we can get those bows a proper workout and hunt down some meat. Sooner we can get to some sort of calmer, simpler life. Some time to relax. To recover. To get used to this place.” Even Vi was starting to think about tuning out of the conversation when Vander, who was looking the room over, raised an eyebrow. Vi turned to look where he was. Powder had her hand over the lower portion of her face, especially around her nose and mouth. 

 

“What?” Vi prompted, though secretly she wanted a glass of water more than anymore conversation or out of touch preaching. 

 

“It stinks in here,” Powder complained, making a show out of squeezing her nostrils shut.  As people who’d lived in close (though nowhere near this close) quarters through months of not being able to bathe, Powder’s protests were really saying something. When Vi stopped to pay attention, she was right. The shack wasn’t quite gag worthy but it was approaching it. The room smelled as one would expect: sweat and body odor and dirt. When Vander chuckled and made that ‘hmm’ in the back of his throat, Vi felt a faint sense of dread that something she’d been dodging since they got here was now unavoidable. Plucking at an admittedly sweat-soaked shirt she closed her eyes against the oncoming order. 

 

“Probably right about that,” Vander said, “we all probably smell ripe as hell. Ekko, Claggor, you two first. Down to the stream.” Ekko, who had just been sagging his seat as if ready to lie down, suddenly sat straight up. 

 

“What?” Ekko asked. He sounded as if someone had just told him to go walk barefoot on broken glass. Fuck, there it is, Vi groaned internally. 

 

“Take a change of clothes each, get as clean as you can, wring what you’re wearing out a few times and we’ll hang them to dry somewhere when you get back. If that doesn’t work, we’ll use a bit of soap and everyone will be doing their own laundry.” Vander sat the pot down on the stove with a thud, and carefully hefted a bucket of cooled, already boiled water back up to cover the rice in the pot. Claggor pulled a face at his back, exasperated. 

 

“Just… just take a bath, in the creek?” Vi thought ‘creek’ was the right word. Even Powder and Mylo exchanged dubious looks. Reasonably Vi knew it shouldn’t be an issue but it felt counter to everything they’d ever been told or taught. 

 

“Yep,” Vander told them. “No poison in these waters, kids. No excuses.” Neither Ekko nor Claggor moved as they grimaced at each other around Vi. Vi watched this curiously before she, too had the thought they were sharing. Vi looked right back at Powder. She and Powder were probably next, after all. Vander had somehow not realized something that everyone else in the room had. 

 

“Vander,” Claggor led in, “do you know how to swim?” Vander paused for a second as if taken aback, lowering the bucket in his hand to the ground and rocking slightly on his heels. A short but hard exhale escaped their adoptive father. Like a muffled chuckle. He looked the lot of them over once before turning back. 

 

“Yeah,” he replied, quietly. “Survival training, remember? When Kutter came to-” his voice came slowly, low and distant. Vander swallowed and then grabbed hold of some bravado that sounded forced to VI’s ears. “But you kids would have no reason to, right?” When he glanced back, Vi nodded. “Good news then!” 

 

Vi sincerely doubted she would define whatever he was about to say as good news. 

 

“The stream’s slow and shallow. You’ll be fine. Ekko, Powder, just don’t go out in the center if it looks like it’s moving fast. The rest of you are large enough you shouldn't have to worry. Looks pretty tame - though who knows how it’ll get if we actually get any damned rain.” Her own heartbeat picked up. A quick read of Ekko’s and Powder’s shared shrugs and the doubt still firmly in place on her sister’s face told her that they had half-heartedly accepted his answer. Vi felt silly, childish even for her own fears. Vander was right: the water in the stream was not from Topside. It was also shallow and steady and she’d never seen it - 

 

“You know what?” Vander cut off her train of thought plopping down the now empty bucket by the stove. “New plan,” the man scooted the pot of water and rice to one side. Vi heard it slosh and for some reason shivered. “Vi, Powder, you’re up first. Ekko and I have a surprise or two for you all.”  Powder’s eyebrow quirked and Ekko brightened up, but Vi just sighed, resigned to facing the irrational fear a little sooner than expected. 

 

“That’s right,” Ekko exclaimed, as if he had just remembered whatever Vander was referencing. As the boy leaped to his bare feet and made for the door, he called a halfhearted explanation to Vander. “Heading for the cellar!” 

 

“Don’t forget the jars in the back left corner,” Vander responded. Vi knew that two of the jars were just their limited supply of salt which they’d been rationing out because Vander thought they could use it better pickling vegetables or salting meat than just using it on rice. Why they’d need both, Vi didn’t know. “And you two, scoot!” 

 

Vander turned a cheerful face on Vi and Powder both as Ekko shut the door behind himself, rushing out of the shack with energy she wouldn’t have expected from the boy. Moments ago he’d been all but shuffling into the house, as if he could barely lift his feet. Somehow, while he wasn’t looking, he’d also picked up his and Powder’s bags of seed grain before rushing out the door. Whatever this big idea was, it had lit a fire under him. Vander opened the door to the oven compartment. built into the old iron stove. 

 

They hadn’t had an excuse to use that so far. 

 

“Alright,” Vi sighed as she reached for the bag that had carried two of her outfits from the undercity beneath Piltover all the way to Noxus. She groaned at the ache of her legs, the way her arms hung heavily at her side, and pushed the door open. Mylo dosed for the moment on his bed as she looked out front, pulling open the little door made of not much more than sticks. 

 

There was almost no sun left in the sky when she stepped out and caught sight of Ekko slipping around the back corner of the house. Bag in one hand, Vi spent the next moment or two reaching into the darkening grass around the house and feeling about before she came up with a small twig in hand. Even bending down to fumble for that much hurt. Vi shot a quick sideways glance at the yaks to find the big beasts about a hundred feet out from the house, now at a well earned rest after enjoying their own dinners. 

 

When Vi dipped back in to light the twig in the fireplace (the stove was definitely heating up next to it) Powder had not yet gotten up and come to the door. Vi lit the lantern hanging out front with the twig before discarding it and leaning back in the open door. She lifted the lantern from its nail with her free hand, pretty certain they were going to need it for the trip back, if not the trip to the stream. 

 

“C’mon, Powder, let’s get it over with,” she called, craning her neck but failing to see Powder in her usual spot from the doorway. 

 

“I think I’m okay,” her sister shot back. Vi could imagine the girl trying to avoid Vander, Claggor or Mylo’s eyes. “I can wait - maybe another day. Maybe after the cast comes off?” 

 

Mylo, apparently, had not fallen asleep after all. 

 

“Nuh-uh,” the boy sounded amused and drowsy. “She who smelt it dealt it: you stink too.” Vi made sure to stick her head just far enough in the shack that Mylo could see her roll her eyes at him, but he did not look to care. The boy just smirked at the corner that Powder had to be sitting in. Vi reached in the hand holding her bag and gestured for Powder to join her. 

 

“C’mon.” This time, she could hear Powder get to her feet and shove a change of clothes under her good arm. When the time came, Vi stepped aside to let her sister out of the shack and shut the door with a nudge of her shoulder. 

 

“I’ll help you wring out your clothes when we’re done,” Vi promised, tilting her head roughly north-west toward the stream, a section just where the farm gave way to the woods. Powder didn’t respond, didn’t even match her eyes, simply watching a patch of earth to one side as Vi headed out. They, of course, had to stop and detour to let her sister visit the yaks, though. They even managed to avoid a few crap piles on the way. As her sister dropped her own bag and reached up to pet one of the big beasts on the side of the face, Vi resisted the urge to hurry her. 

 

The animals were at ease and at rest. 

 

Powder was not. 

 

“What’s wrong?” Vi prodded as one of the yaks leaned its head into the petting. 

 

“It’s so dark and - and I don’t know how to swim and,” *Powder sighed and muttered just barely loud enough for Vi to hear. “I really don’t want to get sick.” Vi exhaled and dropped her own bag at her feet just to place a hand on Powder’s head. The girl’s hair was in disarray, braid trying and threatening to come undone. Frankly, it was also pretty greasy. 

 

“Don’t drink straight from the stream and you’ll be fine,” Vi sighed, moving her hadn to pat Powder just once on the back hard enough to start moving her away from their four legged guests. Her sister grabbed her own bag, and so Vi did the same and got them moving again. “This isn’t like home. You’ll see. You’ll feel better, after. “

 

The truth was, Vi certainly felt better after. 

 

There was no small amount of discomfort about bathing in a wild body of water, obscured by trees, in the middle of nowhere and all in the rapidly darkening twilight to boot. Worse, when she finally gave up on trying to tame Powder’s hair with only the lantern’s light and water from the stream they both shivered in cool night air as they dressed on the edge of the stream. That all being said, there was no doubt that cleaner clothes and body both chased away some of the stale melancholy that had threatened to reassert itself the moment they finished work for the day. 

 

She and Powder tried and failed to wring every last drop of gross from their work clothes without letting any get lost in the water. They laughingly agreed to retire the outfits to only days when they expected to be doing hard labor, so that they could at least spare what little clothing they had left. The duo eventually trekked back up to the shack to let the boys go get cleaned up. This included Vander, so Vi and Powder were put in charge of watching the rice boil and keeping an eye on their surprise.

 

The surprise being a handful of unsprouted potatoes being baked at first in the oven (and then right on the coals in the fireplace, when that had proven not to be quick enough) Vi absolutely devoted her attention to that. When it came time to pull the rice off of the stove, Powder had trouble moving it one-handed, so Vi traded off jobs at that point. 

 

In the end, they had a pretty standard dinner in a bowl (or cup, in one case) of lightly seasoned brown rice (apparently, they’d had a mixture of white and brown in storage the whole time) and the slightly blackened, ash-covered roasted potatoes from the fire. There was no cream or anything of the sort, but apparently a little bit of vegetable oil and salt had been left for them by their benefactor. Ekko and Vander’s conspiring to bring them a gift paid off. 

 

Dinner was quiet but a little more enjoyable by all parties concerned. Afterwards, Vi relaxed as Claggor and Powder were assigned to doing dishes. She was asleep before they even made it back from the stream. 

 

The night was calm compared to the labor of the day and she felt better than she had for a long time.

 

The next day was different, too. 

 

Every day, though, had been different than the last since they’d come to the farm and at the same time different than anything she’d ever known or actually imagined. 

 

Stopping to take a deep breath that smelled of the rows of dark soil at her feet, Vi lifted her head up toward the sun and then slowly stretched her back. This day, the work was calmer than the day’s before it. Today, Vi felt okay. 

 

She hadn’t felt okay since before the Topside job. 

 

The sun had driven away the night’s cooling and had quickly gone a little too far, as far as she was concerned. Even the most careful of them to avoid being in direct sunlight were looking at refreshed and renewed sunburn. 

 

As Vander had suggested, Vi had taken up work planting with Powder and Ekko for part of the day’s efforts in the fields. This mostly meant moving along parallel lines of upturned soil, spreading seed over it. Powder and Ekko, in their own rows on either side of her, were keeping up or occasionally pulling ahead. She wasn’t sure whether she and Claggor, having taken turns helping Vander drive the plow throughout the day, should be fresher and quicker than Powder and Ekko or more tired and sluggish. 

 

She was sure that they were making quicker progress with three people on planting as opposed to two the day before but also that - 

 

“We’re not catching up with the plow today,” Ekko said, and Vi grimaced as she looked back down and began to let a couple of grains of seed pass through the fingers of her right hand, stopping slightly and continuing forward. Vi didn’t answer, but she’d been having then same thought, herself. Instead, focusing on the job at hand she felt distantly relieved to have taken part of Claggor’s last planting ‘shift.’ It wasn’t inherently better or worse than driving the plow in the long run but it was quieter. She didn’t know when ‘quieter’ became a good thing, but it was wanted. Even when Powder and her best friend found the energy to talk and joke with one another over her, or to Vi herself, it felt like the job had her in a rhythm that was comfortable. 

 

Spread the seed, shove dirt overtop it with the inside of her foot, however frustrating that could sometimes be to guarantee the seed was covered well enough, and then move on. It was repetitive and quickly coming to be familiar. With no choice but to get the fields planted if they wanted to be fine for winter, Vi embraced the work and tried to use it to manufacture a sense of peace. Powder, in comparison to herself and Ekko, was having a harder time of the job with just the one arm and Vi was starting to be worried about the safety and hygiene of Powder’s dirt-caked cast, but didn’t really think they had a ton of options, on that front. 

 

“Ask her,” Ekko hissed, drawing Vi’s attention as he shuffled, momentarily walking sideways and hunching over his row to face Powder directly, while still dropping seed on target. 

 

“Ask her yourself,” Powder shot back. To Vi’s ears she sounded cranky, or anxious or both. 

 

“Talking about someone without them noticing works a lot better when they’re not between the two of you,” Vi called, lifting her eyes back to Powder. Her sister had returned to dropping seeds between her own fingers and shoving mounds of soil with her own feet. Whatever had Ekko so excited, Powder wasn’t particularly worried about it. Then again - the girl looked sideways at Vi and then immediately looked down and hurried forward to spread a little more seed when she realized she’d been caught. Maybe she’s just trying to look uninterested. 

 

“Whatcha wanna ask me?” Vi looked between the two before turning her attention back to her task. They could only spread a few seeds within a range of about a foot before having to stop and cover them up. She wished here was a better way to do that part, at least. 

 

“You’re gonna keep teaching Powder parkour and hot to hit and things like that right?” Ekko asked before she’d finished prompting them. Vi blinked and slowed a little. A couple of seeds slipped out of her hand without her intent as she swiveled around to look at Powder. Powder again looked up once and then right back down at the hill of dirt she was making with her booted foot. Vi thought it’d be impressive if any of them got their boots clean again. 

 

“I never agreed to teach you to fight,” Vi told Powder, confused. Her sister winced and frowned a little so Vi hurried to clarify. “That’s only because I didn’t know you wanted to. I thought you got bored after the only time I tried to show you how to throw a jab.” 

 

“I - I think I do,” Powder started. “Want to learn how to fight like you, I mean.” 

 

“Yes!” Ekko’s victorious hiss broke the tension of the moment, but Powder wasn’t looking at either of them as the girl grabbed a new half-handful of seed from the bag tied into a sling around her good shoulder. Vi watched her sister continue down the line and hurried to get back to work. Though, now she had to actually concentrate enough to talk while she did so. She felt tired enough that that was actually going to be impressive. 

 

Even thinking while she did something that needed focus wasn’t usually the best idea. 

 

“Why?” Vi poked, directly. She’d been trying to keep her tone even but it must’ve come out harsh or something. Powder didn’t lift her blue-grey eyes from the ground; instead her sister’s head lowered a little more, shoulders hunching forward. If it weren’t for the cast she’d probably be trying to curl in on herself again, the way she did when nervous someone was angry. The cast preventing her from making herself as small as she usually wanted to look was something Vi had noticed. She wasn’t sure it was a bad thing. 

 

“Powder,” Vi tried again, much more calmly. “Tell me why?” 

 

“Because I don’t like being scared,” Powder answered. It was one of those honest and probably completely accurate statements that sometimes made Powder sound much younger than she was. It was also the kind that usually lit a fire in Vi and made her want to batter down anything in her sister’s way. 

 

“Why do you think that’ll make you not scared?” Vi pushed again. She wass trying to remember how Vander had presented her one of the first lessons he’d ever taught her, back when she was learning how to box. It did not land the way she’d wanted. That was clear when her sister sunk more and more into herself, her next small throw of seed missing its target completely. Powder hurried to correct the error but Vi gritted her teeth. 

 

Dumbass, she chided herself. She’d made Powder think she was making fun of her, maybe? Vi wasn’t always too clear on reading why Powder felt something, but she could at least read what she was feeling. This was someone who felt not good enough. 

 

“Lots of people are scared when they fight,” Vi said again. Powder almost burst back into life with her next question which was enough to make Vi hate to respond honestly. 

 

“Are you?” her sister asked, kicking at the earth beneath her. 

 

“I mean, sometimes, but I don’t really think about it,” she drawled, then again hurried to explain. “That’s only because I only really fight when it’s for fun or I don’t have a choice. Then, I can still think someone’s scary but - um.” Vi wanted to word it right, but also didn’t want to state it too plainly. Because no one needed reminded of the reality of life back in the Lanes. The truth was though, if she was getting into a scrap back in the Lanes, there was probably something important riding on it. “I just don’t really have the choice to get scared.” 

 

“Well,” Powder slowly looked back up at her and Ekko as they continued along their rows. Vi hoped she’d done a good job with the seed spreading and covering ove the last few seconds but found she could not really remember. This made her focus a little more on the movements of her body. “When the purple-gray guy got me I -” Powder’s voice faltered. Despite the fact that it was a warm enough spring day and they were and had been out doing labor under the sun for so long she was starting to feel like her skin was on fire, the words made her immediately cold. It had nothing to do with the breeze in the air in that moment. “I just wanted to be able to do something other than yell.”

 

Vi checked with Ekko, who was only looking at Vi herself hopefully until caught. 

 

Powder’s not ready to fight Deckard. Fuck, I’m not ready to fight Deckard. Powder’s not ready to fight anyone. Vi was sure of this, but if it made Powder feel better to know how to fight, at least in theory, then what was the hesitation? 

 

“Sure.” Powder and Ekko were athletic for their age, even down in the Lanes. They would be more than fine learning something like that or Vi wouldn’t have started to teach Powder months ago before she thought Powder had lost interest. 

 

“What?” Having pulled ahead in her own row, Powder now looked up, surprised. Ekko was relieved and excited on the other side of her. Too excited, really, considering at most she’d ever really shown him the same jab she had tried to teach Powder. 

 

“I said I’ll teach you. Both of you. But fair’s fair. Powder has to teach us what she knows from Orkis’ papers about the plants out in the woods.” This seemed like more than a fair trade even if Vi didn’t have the heart to tell her sister she’d probably have to spoon feed Vi everything the pages said. 

 

“Okay,” her sister agreed when Ekko prompted her. Eagerly, the girl shrugged her good shoulder as if it was no big deal. 

 

While Vi toyed with plans on how best to start teaching them how she knew how to fight, they continued on in their planting and when a row was completed, would move on to the next. In this way, they moved up and down the fields, spreading a bit of seed, covering it up and going on. The process was laborious. Her back hurt. Her arms and legs hurt. Still, at least the day was predictable and she knew what to expect as it grew longer and hotter. 

 

Break that afternoon was a mixed bag. For one thing, she was so glad not to be stumbling over uneven ground and at rest with her back to the wall of the shack. Its roof didn’t have a huge overhang but with her back right against the shack, only her legs were exposed to the harsh sun. Moreover, thanks to Mylo being allowed on his feet, there was a whole pitcher and an entire pot of cool (or at least ambient temperature) water waiting for them. 

 

On the other hand, when she thanked Mylo for it and looked over to where he sat by Powder only to find he was ignoring Vi entirely, it galled her a bit. More than a little bit. 

 

And Mylo wasn’t done there. 

 

“The bows ready yet?” Mylo asked Powder, who had clearly just spent all day in the fields. She was covered from the knees down in dirt and had it smeared and smudged across her hand and face. Vi and Ekko weren’t much cleaner, her ‘work clothes’ were definitely going to need another rinsing and wringing out. Hopefully earlier, today, because they had night dried completely overnight and were still a little damp when she put them on that morning. (Not that the sun had let that bother her for long.) 

 

With Vander not mentioning either Vi being ignored or Powder being heckled over something she’d clearly been too busy to work on, Vi swallowed a flash of frustration alongside a long drink from the bowl of water clutched in her hands. 

 

“As ready as they were yesterday. We can make somea arrows soon but I’m not sure how straight or far they’ll fly.” Powder’s voice and tone tended downward and Mylo rolled his eyes. Vi sat aside being ignored and marked this as strike one. 

 

“Well,” Vander drawled instead of saying anything to Mylo, “what would you need to make them fly straight. If we can’t get it, we might be able to find some kind of alternative.” 

 

“Powder and Ekko already had an idea on that, right?” Vi interjected, eager to bolster both of their spirits. Ekko and her sister looked not just exhausted but a little disappointed, too. Vi thought that they, like herself, had been hoping for a big lunch. Vander ‘wasn’t sure we have any daylight to waste’ though. 

 

Ten minutes in the shade with some water wasn’t a horrible consolation prize, though. 

 

“We think we’ll need feather or something like that,” Ekko recounted with a nod. “There’s a reason arrows have them attached - probably to make them fly straight.” 

 

“Maybe we can trade something once harvest comes in to get our hands on some. Or maybe bag some kind of game bird.” Vander sounded like he was musing to himself, but the idea of chicken in a bowl or on a plate made her stomach growl. Vi didn’t think they could really wait until harvest to get their hands on some meat. The idea obviously appealed even less to Mylo. 

 

The boy gave an exasperated sigh and leaned forward as if exhausted, arms resting on his knees. To look at him, you’d think he’d been out in the field with them instead of lying inside most of the day. 

 

The sigh made Powder’s shoulders sink. 

 

 “Either way, hunting will have to start soon,” Vander added.

 

“Finally,” Mylo exclaimed. The anxiety creeping slowly into Powder’s hunched body, up to her face, told Vi they wouldn’t be taking her sister hunting for a while. Vander, on the other hand, was lost in planning what needed done. 

 

“I reckon Ekko and Mylo will start practicing with the first bow in the mornings. Me and Vi in the afternoons, Powder and Claggor in the evenings right before sundown. I’ll set up a target or something once we get the fields planted.” The man scratched at his chin, stubble now growing out of control into a beard. “Though, Powder, you’ll need to wait until you’ve given your arm time to heal up.” 

 

Vi didn’t have to watch Powder slouch down a little further to know this was bothering her. Powder couldn’t do everything that the rest of them were trying (and usually failing) to do. Worse still, her sister might have some ideas on how to do them better if she just tried them. Powder always said she learned by doing, that watching how things worked was a close second but just not the same. It was why she was always scraping her knees up when she first tried to climb and leap larger and larger gaps or higher and higher walls. It was why Vi used to have to constantly watch her to avoid Powder getting cut on rusty old scrap in a junkyard and getting sick. 

 

“Cheer up,” she encouraged, trying to speak with some pep when all she felt like doing was closing her eyes and falling asleep in the shade. “Lots of things you’re doing fine with one arm. The rest like the bow and what we talked about earlier? It’s coming.” Powder just shrugged and shook her head as if to dismiss this. “Besides, how much planting have we already got done because of you and Ekko? That’s still with you having one hand and having to carry that heavy ass bag around strapped to your shoulder.”

 

Mylo snorted but did not make eye contact with anyone. Scoffing, as if Vi was exaggerating or something. 

 

Vi could swear that just for a second, Powder had started to hear her and lift her head a bit, but Mylo’s attitude immediately put her back down. 

 

Vi inhaled. 

 

Strike two. 

 

She fixed a glare on Mylo who just looked away. 

 

Being allowed to get up and out of bed should have made his mood better but instead his attitude was worse than yesterday’s. 

 

Vi was halfway through formulating a response, lip curling, when Vander interrupted. It was not to put Mylo in his place, either. 

 

“Probably ought to get back to it!” The man spoke like he was trying to make sure Vi could not respond, could not tell Mylo what she thought about his shitty attitude, the way he mocked everyone who was working as hard as they could. “Head start or not, we’ve still got a lot of planting to do.” 

 

“Should we switch up and start planting the potatoes we diced?” Ekko seized onto the idea, starting to push himself back to his feet. No one else rushed. Even Vi hoped Vander took a second or two to consider before he answered. The longer he did, the longer their rest. 

 

“Been thinking about tha’,” Vander drawled, thoughtfully. He also sounded older than she was used to him sounding. Something about the breathier, higher tone. “I don’t know if they grow potatoes here, usually, but they’re supposed to be pretty hardy. Kutter went through the trouble to bring us some, so we’d have something familiar. So we might as well give it a try.” Ekko, brightened a little, which at least lightened the mood. On instinct she turned to match eyes with Claggor only to find him trying to catch Mylo’s gaze. Claggor looked frustrated. 

 

Come to think of it, he’s barely spoken since we sat down. Claggor, quiet as he could be, usually engaged with whatever was in front of him. Catching her looking, one brother broke off his attempts to flag down the other and shrugged, an act she mirrored even though she wondered at the scowl on his usually impassive face. 

 

“I’ll show you where to stop planting the wheat and where to start planting the potatoes. We don’t have nearly as much of one as the other - and I’m worried they’ll need extra attention.” Vander took a lurching step forward, which suggested Vi was far from the only one with dully aching limbs. It still beat the hell out of trying to pull the plow, themselves. “Good thinking, kiddo.” 

 

Vi did not commend on how hard Ekko struggled to look less pleased than he was as he finally got to his feet. The younger boy had not been himself lately. Not that any of them had, of course. 

 

“How much do you think we’ve got plowed?” Vi changed the subject before anyone could possibly come along and wreck Ekko’s good mood. After helping Powder up, Vi got her legs to cooperate with only one or two shaky steps. 

 

“Two acres? Two and a half at the most.” Vander’s reply was very neutral but a slight edge warned he wasn’t in the mood for any complaints. 

 

“How many are we looking to get done this time around?” The man scratched at his beard, an action she caught Claggor mimicking behind his back. Vi smirked thinking this simple play, but, then, she could swear he was starting to show more than a little stubble of his own. 

 

“Shouldn’t be any less than five. Even that’s pushing it. Since we have enough people to split up the work to plant and plow at the same time I’m willing to push it a day more than Orkis thought we should - he seemed to think we’d start PLANTING in three days. Well, we’re already ahead of that curve.” 

“I can help plant, put us a little further ahead.” Mylo’s eager voice made her jump; she had not expected him to follow them away from the shack. Though he moved a little slowly, himself, Mylo looked excited to move from water and fire keeper to part of the planting effort. Despite the fact that she had the sudden urge to scream in his ears until his head began to hurt again, she understood the notion. “I mean, Powder’s doing it fine with her arm. I can do it with my head.” Vi watched the back of Vander’s head, until the man turned around, face serious and a little cool. 

 

“You sure about that?” As Vander spoke, Mylo gestured a little widely with the old tin pitcher, which threatened to spill. 

 

“I am,” Mylo insisted, looking more hopeful. He also looked as if they were still back home: the greasy build up in his hair was distracting, weighed it down and made him look like a drowned rat climbing aboard a frozen platform. 

 

“Won’t have you on the plow, still. Too easy to fall off and get hurt and I’m not satisfied all’s well yet. Since we can’t get anyone to look at you, you’ll have to play it safe.” 

 

“Fine, sure, whatever,” Mylo shrugged. “But I can do things.” 

 

“Don’t whatever this one,” Vander’s voice rose and the group, to the last, stopped their preparations to walk back out to the field or to get to work hooking the animals back up to the plow. “I need you to look me in the eye and be honest with me: are you sure you’re okay to do this? You feel alright? No vertigo, no memory problems no - nothing else?” 

“I’ve been in bed for more than a month.” Mylo’s exasperation was starting to seep back into his voice, chasing away the excitement visible on his face. “I can help. I’m not broken.” No, not exasperation, desperation. 

 

“Never thought you were,” Vander shrugged in the corner of her eye. Vi could not look at Mylo. He was practically begging Vander to just let him help out and it felt cruel to look directly at that. “Just wanted to keep it that way.” The man began to pop the knuckles of his right hand with a sigh. “Alright, you  join the others in the field for the rest of the day. Tomorrow too, if everything goes right. Head to the cellar, grab a bag with the waved lines above the wheat stalk drawn on it. Get out to the field with it and follow Powder and Ekko’s lead.” 

 

After being relieved, even a bit proud for just a moment, Mylo’s deflation was almost immediate. Huffing, the boy came dangerously close to strike three by crossing his arms and shooting a doubting look at Powder, in particular. If it weren’t for the fact that the shorter girl shot it right back, as if to imply she wasn’t so sure he could do what she had been doing for hours, Vi would have snapped. 

“Don’t act like that. They’ve got two days’ head start on you.” Vander, having made a point hard to argue, turned back around. Mylo, getting what he wanted, still found a way to sulk as he headed around behind the shack and toward the cellar doors, where they’d just been sitting moments ago. Perhaps sensing it was time to get serious again, Powder suddenly spoke, drawing Vander’s attention from nervously glancing over his shoulder back at the corner Mylo had just turned. The question gave Vi pause. 

 

A breeze brushed across the irritated, warm skin of her neck and reminded Vi, though, that maybe there was something to be said for getting things done fast. Actually, out from under the shade, she was starting to faintly hurt everywhere skin was exposed to the bright glare above. Vi gritted her teeth and kept quiet. 

 

“If certain vegetables grow wild here, can we - uhhhhh - grow them not wild?” Vander, eyebrow raised, considered this as he paid attention to her and not the sulking boy likely descending the cellar stairs. 

 

“Like what, then?” Vander sounded honestly curious in a way that told Vi she was not the only one who had not learned a damned thing from Orkis’ and Caras’ gift of knowledge. 

 

“Well, in the papers Orkis and Caras gave us, there are some kind of wild carrots and radishes around.” 

 

“Have you ever even had a radish?” shouted Mylo from around back. It didn’t immediately seem disparaging but with Ekko, Claggor, Vi and Vander watching her, Powder shrunk a little as she shook her head no. 

 

“Me either,” Vi admitted. “I don’t think.” Claggor shrugged and repeated the same as he stretched his back. 

 

“Yeah, me either.” His voice sounded different filtering through the rising sound of her own heartbeat. 

 

“You know what?” Vander cut across, not addressing the little moment of tension. “Worth a try. For next time, though. We’ll go and try to find some seeds in the village and maybe do a little garden outside the house if we find anything else in the meantime. For now, we have to make due with what we’ve got.” 

 

And just like that, the rest of the day began. 

 

It had a decidedly different tilt to it than the morning’s efforts. Back out in the fields, Vi switched off with Claggor. This meant she mostly guided the plow. To be more specific, she guided the fakkae. With Vander occasionally reminding her of how to convince the great beasts to do one thing or another shortly before she would’ve remembered on her own, it all felt stressful to her. It was sore work, leaving her shaky. Nearly thrown off the plow twice, she still managed to keep her feet planted and stay standing. 

 

She did learn a few things, though. 

 

The yaks did not give a damn about her extra weight driving the plow. She couldn’t blame them. She felt lighter, weaker and sorer than usual, but she was also nothing next to Vander, sizewise. With Vander leading them, they moved much more slowly. When he tried to lead them by walking behind the plow as Vi and Claggor had done two days prior, it didn’t work out very well, either. It was messier, more stressful on him and led to the animals slowing down, anyway. 

 

The two talked during the process but it was only in the lightest sense of the word, only discussion about what was immediately in front of them. 

 

When it got dark enough, finally, that Vi and Vander couldn’t really see the terrain and so couldn’t guarantee they or the beasts weren’t going into a hole, Vander called the day’s work at the end of the next row. She stepped off of the back of the plow and was hit immediately with a sense of how strange it was to not be moving forward. A wave of dizziness came next and by the time that Vander lifted the plow blade itself out of the earth, she had taken two or three steps in an unknown direction and deposited the nothing in her stomach into the soil. 

 

“You okay?” Vander asked. The truth was until a few moments ago she would’ve said that she was just tired, a little dizzy and sore. Now, stopped and thinking, she recognized how queasy she felt. Simultaneously, she was also ravenous. Ravenous was another one of those words she liked to wonder at the source of, under other circumstances. Right now, she just wanted to gather the strength to answer her adoptive father. 

 

“Think I am,” Vi answered. When she tried to spit the foul taste in her mouth out into the soil with the rest of it, she couldn’t gather much if any saliva. Two or three other attempts similarly failed. 

 

“You walk behind. No need to ride back right now, I’ll meet you by the house.” She nodded instead of speaking and as Vander started the animals back toward the shack she averted her eyes from his occasional look back toward her. Instead, she looked for the others. Ekko and Claggor squinted at her from further back in the field, while Powder and Mylo were distracted heading back to the cellar with their own seed sacks. 

 

If Claggor and Ekko were still standing where they’d stopped their work, then Vi was impressed. It might not look like much to an outsider, but the boys and Powder had gotten a lot of the field they’d started the day planting done. Having been part of the effort, herself, she knew damned well how impressive it was they’d nearly wrapped it up in the last four or five hours. A soft thudding in Vi’s head forced her to turn her attention away from the others and focus on her footsteps. 

 

She hoped Vander would buy that her weaving steps were down to dodging around mounds of soil. 

 

Back up at the shack, Vi unhooked the animals from their reins and carefully got them back into the ropes tying them to the stake Vander had moved out to a different part of the ‘yard’ that morning. That alone took her long enough that Claggor and Vander had time to heave the plow into the shed, that Ekko and Powder had grabbed buckets and fed and watered the yaks together. As for Mylo? While Vi struggled to stay focused enough to tie the animals back to their stake, he caught her looking at him, shrugged dismissively and gone right into the house. 

 

Vi did not have the energy nor the stomach to get upset. 

 

“Alright then, Violet and Powder, grab your cloths and get down to the stream. Clean up, wring your clothes out, get back here so the boys can do. We all need a damned bath.” 

 

And though it took Vi and Powder longer than usual as Vi felt half asleep and a little disoriented the entire experience - Powder had to actually lead her to the stream, at this point - they did clean off in the stream and return to the shack to trade off. As the boys headed out to do the same thing, some reluctantly like Mylo and others more enthusiastically, Powder and Vi watched the pot of boiling rice on the stove while Vi helped her comb out her hair. 

 

The whole time, Powder did look at the pot with nearly as much interest as Vi did. It was clear she’d lost all taste for or interest in their recurring meals but didn’t complain. No one did. It just meant that maybe you didn’t like the food but you had it. 

 

Despite feeling ill, Vi was in a good mood from the day’s exertions, until just about halfway through dinner. 

 

“So, when are you gonna work on the arrows?” Mylo asked Powder pointedly as the rest of the family sat eating in silence. That one question started the chain of events that led to VI’s first good mood in weeks being ruined. 

 

“I won’t,” her sister responded, firmly. “Ekko’s gonna. I can’t with my hand like this.” Momentarily frustrated, Powder glanced down at her dirt-caked cast. Mylo rolled his eyes, slowly, exaggeratedly. Instead of addressing Ekko or just changing the subject, Mylo adopted a long suffering tone in his voice and then - then a condescending one. As if mocking her - mocking her injury, probably. 

 

“Okay,” he started slowly, then enunciated as if she couldn’t understand him. “But - when - are - they - going - to - be - done?” Vi, who had inhaled half of her dinner so quickly Vander had told her to pause so she wouldn’t be sick, sat her own bowl down. Powder fidgeted with the spoon in her good hand. Vi blinked slowly against her own exhaustion even as Powder clearly did the same and waited for what was sure to rise to take its place. 

 

When Powder finally looked up from her own dinner and at Ekko, her voice was quiet enough Vi strained to hear it. 

 

“Wanna try some tonight?” the girl with the perhaps irresponsibly long blue locks asked. Ekko stopped, lowering his own spoon. Vi had just been about to take another bite of her dinner but the exhaustion and anxiety rizsing on Ekko’s face as he realized multiple people were watching him stopped her. His eyes darted between Mylo, Powder and Vi herself. 

 

“Sure.” Ekko shrugged a bit, but there was no missing the delay and the regret in his voice. Vi knew he was lying, that he was tired. Last night, he and Powder had fallen asleep with their dinner in their laps. Tonight they looked no better and Powder had not even argued Vander’s earlier order to go down to the stream. 

 

Mylo practically glared at the two of them. Powder’s response was so… so soft. 

 

“Okay, after we finish.” 

 

Vi did not feel the flash of anger until after she’d already started to shake. She turned her eyes toward Vander who looked back at her and then nodded. A grim satisfaction, a sense of ‘ finally, he does something’ grabbed hold of her and Vander cleared his throat. Vi couldn’t help herself. She sneered at her brother. 

 

“I think that'll have to wait until planting’s over, honestly, you two.” The sneer faded. The sense of relief and hope and even gloating disappeared. Fell out from under her. Ekko sunk a bit but not in defeat. She knew the relief for what it was when he immediately scooted back against the wall behind his ‘bed’ and rested his head against it. “More important things to do, for now. Smarter you all eat, get some sleep and then we’ll figure it out. Also, next time you go down to the stream, take the bucket with you and actually wash your clothes. Wringing it out isn’t the answer. They won’t last long if you don’t, and the smell in here tells the story.”

 

Vi wasn’t sure if it was the rage making her noseblind or something else. She didn’t smell anything in particular and couldn’t help but wonder if Vander wasn’t just adding something irrelevant on to distract from the fact that he hadn’t told off Mylo at all. Or the fact that t Mylo was now angrily eating his dinner and grumbling to himself about how they’d never eat meat again at this rate.

 

Make some arrows yourself, then, Vi thought, bitterly wishing she could shout it at him. She wanted so badly to say it out loud, but she knew she couldn’t. Between Powder’s promise to teach her and Ekko about the wild plants in the area and the practically tasteless bowl on her knees (not to mention her fear that Vander knew nothing about baking bread) Vi understood the desire for something else to eat. Hunting and scavenging wasn’t less important but it was less pressing. 

 

And it didn’t justify Mylo getting away with his shit yet again. The boy grumbled from his cushioned mattress, king shit of the shack. 

 

Vi took efforts to shovel the remainder of her food in her mouth as quickly as she could and quietly formulated her plan even as an unruly silence overtook the room. 

 

“Vi, slow down.” Vander chimed in another reminder after her earlier reckless eating. But the food had made the nausea retreat - not the opposite. Or maybe it was the anger. Either way, her stomach was the only part of her that didn’t feel like hell. It just felt cold and empty. 

 

“Can’t,” she shot back. Just to make a point, she made sure to do it through a full mouth. This earned at least a smile from Ekko. Nothing had reached Powder for some time by that point as she looked quietly down at her own meal. “Gonna sleep outside tonight.” 

 

“What? Why?” Claggor’s incredulous question surprised her. He had to be smart enough to know that she wanted to batter their brother upside the skull with the bowl in her hands. Better to retreat than respond. That was all she fucking did to problems lately: ran from them. 

 

“Worried about the yaks,” she lied, matching no one’s eyes and not even letting herself really look up to read any body language. It was better that way. Her blanket felt thin beneath her, anyway. What was the point of trying to pretend to be comfortable in this shitty little shack where an asshole ruled and everyone else had shut the fuck up and deal with it?  “Who knows what kind of animals are out there. Plus, it’s no better sleeping in here. I’ll stay right by the door like last time.” 

 

“I-” Vander started strong, as if he was upset or had something very important to say and then he just burst with a slow sigh. “Alright,” Vander shook his head. “I guess it is a hell of a sight - the night sky here.” He wasn’t wrong, but that wasn’t why. The shack felt like a tiny fucking sardine can and she was feet away with two people who pissed her off. 

 

Earlier when their eyes met and Vander had given her that nod, she’d assumed he was finally putting his foot down on Mylo’s douchebaggery. Instead, he’d talked more to Ekko and Powder about how they needed to go to sleep early, instead of doing the thing they hadn’t wanted to do that night in the first place. 

 

Vi didn’t think she’d be able to keep quiet if Mylo pulled anything else tonight. It felt like her brother being a dick and Vander letting it happen was becoming a constant. 

 

Worse still, she really had been in a good mood today - as good as she could be, at least. 

 

Vi left her bowl in her spot, took her backpack and a roll of clothes to use as a pillow and walked right out into the dark, cooler evening. She pulled on her “new” green jacket as she went. Face blank and steady, Vi barely managed more than ten steps from the shut front door before she let it out. She threw a frustrated, sloppy punch at absolutely nothing and no one and let the curse she wanted to be screaming out circle around her head instead. The animals ten or so yards away noticed nothing and that was for the best. She didn’t care to spook them, anyway. Tied out as they might be, they were large enough if they wanted to get away, they probably would and if they wanted to run over one of those small two-legged little things always hanging around them who was yelling her head off, they would. 

 

Still, the exclamation of frustration was muted and weak and left her feeling both childish and powerless. She hissed out a breath, long and low as she aimed a middle finger right at the house. When even that felt pointless, Vi walked to the far corner of the front of the house and - doing as she promised, sat down with her back against the other side of the very same spot Powder was likely to be leaning against. Or, at least that’s what she thought she was doing, hoping to listen in in case any more trouble arose. Instead, as soon as she sat down, she heard her name spoken from the front door, which she hadn’t noticed open. 

 

No matter how numerous the stars, there was a difference between a lit room in the shack and the dark night outside. She was still adjusting. 

 

“Vi?” With a sigh, Vi looked up from where she stared at the grass in the dark beneath her feet. The outline of Powder against the firelight from inside -  not to mention Mylo complaining about her letting the heat out - got Vi’s attention. 

 

“Hey, you’re letting out all the warm air. Helloooooo?” Even listening to her brother felt a little bit like watching someone steal their hard earned food and wave it in their face as he ate. 

 

“Hey,” Vi managed in response to Powder, voice low. Her eyes had adjusted enough to note that the thing dragging the ground in front of Powder was a blanket. Vi didn’t question it. If Powder thought she was less scared of the ‘great outdoors’ in the dark than she was annoyed at Mylo, Vi couldn’t blame her. 

 

And that of course, ignored the problems of sleeping side by side pressed in like puzzle pieces even if most of the furniture in the building had been moved out and into the shed. That just couldn’t make up for the fact that the room was made for, at most, half as many people as they had. 

 

“Shut the door, geeze!” The door clattered shut behind Powder as Vi clenched her fists tightly around grass beneath her. She heard Vander half-heartedly chide the boy, but not for being an absolute ass. 

 

“Try getting some sleep, will you?”  Vander advised. 

 

Outside, Powder crossed to her and sat right down beside her, struggling to spread the blanket she’d brought over both their laps. Vi helped, but stayed quiet. Powder didn’t immediately talk and her face was hard to read in near pitch black but the way Powder hunched down as she sat made her state pretty clear. They would need to sleep soon if they wanted to be up and eating breakfast by sunrise. Vi knew this but she also knew her body hadn’t exactly grown still from the earlier bout of rage shakes, that her head still ached and her mouth was still dry and she still faintly felt like she was spinning. 

 

Minutes passed in solid silence before Powder scooted close against her.

 

“We should lay down a bit,” Vi finally advised once Powder seemed a little more like herself. Though it was uncomfortable to do, they managed to get down in the grass, half lying under the overhang of the roof and again, together managed to cover them both up. Rigging up a couple of pillows out of the contents of Vi’s backpack took a little bit longer, but leaning back against hers instantly made sleeping on the ground seem like a much more viable idea to Vi. 

 

Unlike with Ekko that first time, there wasn’t any marveling at the beautiful dark midnight blue starry sky. Or at least - if there was, two more minutes of quiet pass without Powder verbalizing any of it or Vi being able to really process it over her own anger. 

 

“Thanks,” Powder finally chimed in as she rolled toward Vi, whispering it against her elder sister’s shoulder before she turned to lay flat on her back.  Between the soft tone and the quiet volume Vi could’ve missed it, but she didn’t. She didn’t miss her sister’s voice weak with an exhaustion she wasn’t sure had anything to do with planting fields. 

 

Vi shook her head, jarred a little from her anger. 

 

“For what, Pow-pow?” Vi wanted to sound loving and light but felt weak and wrong. 

 

Am I getting sick? 

 

The truth was, she couldn’t name a reason anyone around her would need to thank her. No matter how many times she traced the series of events that landed them in Noxus, well, she still found the fault of their presence here firmly on the ground at her feet in a dozen different ways. 

 

“For not getting mad when I made Mylo mad.” Vi scoffed and gritted her teeth, tilting her head up enough to pretend she could stare right up at the stars through the roof above her. 

 

“You didn’t make Mylo mad. Mylo’s just mad.”

 

“He’s also not deaf,” Mylo called at them from inside. Gods, I hate these thin ass walls.

“All of you shush up and get to sleep. It’s going to be an early morning!” 

 

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Powder,” Vi continued as if neither Vander nor Mylo had spoken. “None of this is your fault.” 

 

“It feels like it is,” Powder admitted in a slow, breathy, shaking voice. This only pissed Vi off further. If Mylo hadn’t been hurt, Vander would’ve laid into him for the way he was treating everyone. Now, Vander just felt bad for him. 

 

But that wasn’t Powder’s fault, either. 

 

“You’re wrong,” Vi promised her, very much assured of that. 

 

She knew where the fault lay, after all. 

 

Chapter 14: Chapter Fourteen

Notes:

Author's Note: Whew. Okay. I'm definitely late on this one. The truth is that this chapter was affected by a mix of mental health issues and a tiny bit of an IRL disaster that frankly I was not very affected by compared to others around me but it kept me out of power and internet for a couple of days. Additionally, partway through I had a bit of an idea and I need to look at and potentially slightly alter the outline of the next 2-3 chapters. So while this is late, next week's/this week's might be later. (But, who knows, maybe not?) I'm sorry about that, but really appreciate y'all who read and enjoy. Now, let's see how planting goes.

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

---

Chapter Fourteen

 

Powder didn’t know at first why the hand shaking her shoulder wasn’t hurting her, until the idea of left and right arms came back to her. She opened her eyes with a groan to see that the sun had not yet risen. It wasn’t even threatening to, yet. Ekko was only really visible at first by outline, with the dim firelight from the front door behind him disappearing as someone inside pulled it shut. Ekko reached over her and shook Vi’s shoulder, too. 

 

The older girl lay on her side, back turned toward Powder and curled inward. It didn’t seem like a very ‘Vi’ way to sleep. Is she cold? 

 

Vi had been acting tired and sick the night before. 

 

Damp grass was the first thing Powder’s fingers touched when she dared to come out from under the blanket. 

 

“Wake up,” Ekko yawned out at them. Vi responded to her own shaking awake a little less gracefully than Powder, who had yet to find the energy to speak. 

 

“Wake up yourself,” Vi argued. 

 

“That didn’t make any sense.” Powder only interjected this around her own yawn. She couldn’t see Ekko’s face, the dark world still blurry to bleary eyes but she could imagine him rolling his own at her sister. 

 

“Vander’s waking the others up. Breakfast’s almost ready.” 

 

“Yay, more plain rice,” the elder of the sisters muttered. Powder scooted far enough down the length of the blanket they’d curled up under the night before to stretch without bumping into either her sister or best friend. The night before came back in a drip at a time, squishing through the grate of what was either a very good or very bad night’s sleep. Only time and shaking herself awake would clear that question up. Vi hunched forward as she sat up, burying her face under one hand and displacing reddish-pink bangs damp with the same ‘dew’ covering their blanket, the grass and Powder’s own hair. 

 

She just wondered if they had time to braid it before going out to the field. If they didn’t she might  overheat real quick. 

 

This thought connected to another drop of the night before and Powder’s palm slapped into her own forehead with a very audible ‘ smack!’  

 

“Powder?” Ekko sounded worried but Powder just crawled forward another half foot or so and stood up. 

 

“Vi, are you - feeling better than last night? You know, you looked sick.” 

 

“I was sick.” Clearly, her sister was starting the day grumpy. Her face now free of its own hand-sized prison, Vi started to fold up the blanket from the night before and gather up the stuff used for their pillows. She didn’t, however, forget Powder’s question, something Powder was relieved about. Repeating herself sounded like a good way to piss off Grumpy Vi. “But, I guess it’s better now. I don’t feel so dizzy.” 

 

“Vi, you idiot,” Powder groaned. “It’s called heat exhaustion. You need to take more breaks.” 

 

“We can’t afford to take more breaks.” Vi shot this off as if it was the end of the conversation but - Powder squeezed her good hand shut and walked into the shack, leaving both Ekko and the stubborn brawler behind. As soon as she opened the door to see Claggor shakily pulling on the same shirt he’d been wearing the day before and Mylo putting a pillow over his own face to shut out the light and sound, Powder turned to Vander. 

 

“Mornin’,” he greeted cheerily, despite the fact that the sun hadn’t risen. “Grab some floor, we’ll have breakfast very soon.” Powder didn’t even hear the sound of boiling water from the pot. It had to be close to done. Claggor stumbled back from the doorway as she stalked in, shut the door behind her and grabbed Vander’s attention. 

 

She ignored the sound of her sister and Ekko both calling her name from the front yard. 

 

“Vander?” 

 

“What’s up?” Across the tiny room, Vander was lining up glazed clay bowls and a large earthenware cup on their very tiny counter. Ekko or Vi or both opened the door behind her, but she barely stepped forward to let them in. The rest of the evening came back to her but not even the memory of Mylo or Vi’s cranky moods cowed her, here. 

 

“We gotta start taking more breaks. I think Vi-” A hand clamped down tight over her mouth. 

 

That was enough to stop her. That was enough to grab her by the throat and tear her from the tiny little shack, back to the eastern coast of Noxus, and sharply south, past the gleaming City of Progress and into a gutted, rusty, dirt and mud slicked office building in the undercity. 

 

Powder tried to lift both arms, futilely trying to knock Deckard’s hand away from her mouth. She needed to breathe to scream . Her right arm, of course, could not make the trip. 

 

“Think Vi what?” Vander asked, his back still turned to them. She didn’t understand why he was so calm when Silco and the others wanted to hurt him and didn’t stop to think that there shouldn’t be a wood stove in the office. Powder opened her mouth on instinct and nearly bit at the hand over it since she couldn’t knock it away. The only thing that stopped her was when she saw not the strange purple-streaked gray of Deckard’s arm but the bright, angry, blistering pink arm of someone incredibly sunburnt. Her own neck hurt in that same angry warm way. Leaving her hair down, after all might protect it from the sun. 

 

The sun. 

 

Beating down on the open grass and dirt and fields.

 

In Noxus. 

 

Vi turned her around in one quick movement and held a finger to her lips, shaking her head and Powder’s fear calmed.

 

And then the calm turned to anger. She pushed off of Vi with a half-hearted shove. Her sister let go of her, looking hurt. It was like she didn’t think Powder was going to be mad having someone scare the hell out of her first thing in the morning. 

 

“Nothing,” Powder and Vi answered in unison. Powder heard the anger in her own voice and regretted it immediately when Vi’s hurt became less theoretical and very obvious. Powder went back to her spot in the corner of the room and got out of the way as Mylo rolled out of bed. She sat down in time to see Ekko coming around from behind Vi. 

 

Instead of waiting there for breakfast, Powder grabbed her bag in one hand and hefted it up. 

 

“Hey, wait for me,” Vi called as Powder hurried right out the front door into the deceptively cool, still dark morning. “You’ll need a hand , remember?” 

 

“Jerk,” Powder called over her shoulder. She didn’t know if Vi was trying to make a joke or just remind her she couldn’t even get dressed alone anymore. The last thing she wanted right then was to rely on her sister for something like this. 

 

“Why does everyone think it’s okay to do that?” Powder asked herself out loud as she rounded the front corner of the house and headed to the little shed a ways off. Even though there wasn’t supposed to be anyone out on their land, she didn’t want to change in the open. At least down by the stream they had a hard treeline of coverage. 

 

She didn’t look at the fields they were likely to be working in, didn’t look at the debris pile near the cellar doors at the back of the shack. She didn’t slow down when she heard Vi following her. What she did do was try to ignore the quiet voice telling her that she was overreacting and might piss off her sister. I’m the one who’s mad. I’m the one pissed off. She was tired of being treated like either a baby or someone who could just be strong armed into shutting up or doing what they wanted her to and the worst part of it - 

 

“I was just trying to help,” she shouted at Vi as she pulled to a stop outside of the shed, dropped her own bag and yanked the cheap wooden door open with her now free hand. Powder rounded on the girl behind her and found Vi stopped a few feet further back than she’d expected. Her sister wasn’t glaring at her, or looking apologetic. Instead she was staring into the grass at her feet with a look of concern on her face. “Vi?” 

 

“I think I still feel dizzy and queasy.” 

 

“It’s not - you know…?” 

 

“What?” Her sister raised her eyes for a second as if trying to understand what Powder was getting at. Powder was mentally going through euphemisms for a funnier alternative than ‘aunt flo’ when the fighter got the picture. “No - no. Not that.” 

 

“Then I was right. You gotta tell Vander. You need to take the day off. You’ll get sick.” 

 

“You’re as sunburnt as I am.”

 

“You’re getting sick. Vander said it could be really bad if the sun got us sick,” Powder stepped inside but left the door open, so Vi followed, rolling her eyes and dragging Powder’s bag in with her. 

 

“We have to get the food planted. I can take care of myself.” 

 

Powder believed the first. She wasn’t sure about the second. She also didn’t know when she’d gone from angry at Vi to worried about her again, but Vi always did that to her.

 

Once they’d changed and gotten back into the shack, Powder stared pointedly at her sister until Vi grabbed the jug of water waiting for them and poured herself a glass. Powder noticed it was already almost empty and would have found the idea of going to get a bucket of water herself a little much to handle with just her bad arm, but thankfully she didn’t have to carry it alone. Thankfully there was someone who never put his hand over her mouth and told her to shut up, someone who always listened and always talked honestly to her. 

 

Someone she could trust to never lie to her. 

 

Breakfast was ready by the time she and Ekko got back from the stream and sat the bucket down near the fireplace. Powder had just decided to relax and eat when she heard something that made her stomach a little upset. Just helping herself to a pinch of salt for her rice from the tiny little pot Vander kept it in, she paused when he turned away from dishing out the last bowl and spoke to the room at large. 

 

“Today’s simple. We’re on planting - Vi’s on the plow.” She craned her head to get a look at Vi. They weren’t the only ones in the room who held themselves like they had a bad sunburn. Powder had already spotted the way Ekko kept trying to roll his already short sleeves up as if his arms hurt where the shirt and arm met. Vi looked more surprised than the dread Powder had expected to see on her face. 

 

“Me? Just me?” Vi asked through a mouthful of rice. The girl reached for water, but missed and nearly knocked over her cup. 

 

“Just you,” Vander replied, balancing a warm bowl on his knee as he, too, sat down. “You’re lighter than me or Claggor, you’ve had as much time learning to steer them as either of us and know how to plow a straight line. You know to look out for stumps or anything we don’t know is coming. You can do this.” For just a moment, Powder wanted to argue with him. She felt like this was the worst thing to ask Vi to do right now. She wanted to open her mouth and tell Vander she was worried about her sister. 

 

Then she saw the way Vi’s right fist clenched against the knees of her pants and the way her sister shot a sharp glance her way when Vander took a second to take a bite of his breakfast. 

“I’ll bring Ekko and Powder up to learn from you. Just an hour or so each, this time around.” Vander nodded to the two smallest people in the room. While Ekko was fairly neutral beside her (maybe more neutral than usual, she thought he was upset or tired or nervous) Vander must have read Powder’s own mood on her face. “You two can practice more with Mylo when we don’t have to hurry and have all the time in the world.” Powder nodded, grim faced and nervous. 

 

“I can’t wait,” Ekko said from beside her, sounding a little more like himself as he lifted a half-empty bowl. Only Vi and Mylo had slowed down their breakfast. 

 

“Mylo, Vi - eat,” Vander called. This was becoming a familiar refrain. Mylo came back from wherever his mind went that brought the scowl to his face, but Vi just shrugged, looked down from the ceiling she’d been staring at and went back to eating. 

 

“Yaks are so cool. Messy, but cool,” Ekko continued as if Vander hadn’t interrupted. It was common, at this point, for Vander to cut someone off mid sentence to bring Mylo and Vi back down to Runeterra. Powder tried to swallow both rice and anxiety. 

 

“You only say that because you walked into that pile last night,” Claggor teased, causing Ekko to pout, before shrugging with a roll of his eyes. Vi’s smile at the banter didn’t make Powder feel any better. 

 

“Violet,” Vander used Vi’s first name more than anyone else did, even more than Powder. He just tended to do it to make a point or get her attention. The two matched eyes and Powder hurried up her eating. “I’m really relying on you this time, and I’m sorry. But I know you can do it. I’ll give the fields a quick comb for any surprises and then join the planting. You run into any problems, call for help. Right off the bat. Can’t have you getting hurt and it’d be a shame to let those two big bastards get hurt, either.” 

 

“I wouldn’t let the yaks get hurt.” Vi sounded the picture of ‘scandalized’, like upset or offended that Vander would even imply such a thing. The girl winced as she threw up bright red-pink arms in discontent. Powder couldn’t help but think that Vi not saying she wouldn’t let herself get hurt was intentional. She kept her mouth shut, though, and just kept eating as quickly as she could without choking or burning her fingers.

 

“Sure, now eat.” 

 

“Hey, Powder?” Claggor prodded as Powder caught the moment Vander’s words stopped her sister from joining Mylo in staring into space. For weeks now, since Benzo’s basement, the two of them had been oblivious to the worried looks the rest of the household passed between them. 

 

“What?” Powder asked the larger boy when she again decided to keep the promise she’d made an almost begging Vi in the shed: ‘give me one more day, I’ll pull it together, you’ll see.’ 

 

“Had an idea: you don’t want to hang the bows in the shed, right?” Powder frowned and shook her head. 

 

“I dunno, it’s got the hole in the roof. That’s why everything in there’s so rusty. Probably not good for the bows. Drying them out when they’re staves is one thing, leaving them to get rained on is another.” The round boy shrugged and continued to his point. Only… Powder was struck by how much smaller he already looked than he had when this all began. It’s only been a few days, but I think we’re eating worse than we did back home or something. 

 

“Well, what if we start that lean-to thing Vander was talking about after we get done planting? We can just hang them up in that. At least they’ll be under a roof but out of the corner. Someone almost stepped on one of them last night.” Claggor didn’t turn away but she could have sworn his eyes started to drift in Mylo’s direction at this last. With one glance at the corner of the room, she could see how that was not a good place to keep the bow. 

 

“It’s either that,” Vander offered, “or maybe hang ‘em from some of the empty pegs over the kitchen.” 

 

“Good idea too,” Claggor admitted with a shrug. Powder knew though, what the faint fall of his chin or the slight dimming of his excitement meant. Claggor had really wanted to build this lean-to thing. 

 

“I dunno, might be smart just to get them out of the way,” Powder muttered, which brightened both Ekko and Claggor at once. 

 

“Think so too,” her best friend chimed in. The little piece of Ekko that liked fixing clocks and other machines was easier to tempt than even Powder, but if he was interested, maybe it would be fun. 

 

“We should try it - Vander, tell us again how it’s done?” 

 

The remainder of breakfast passed with her distracting herself from worrying about Vi when she clearly didn’t want worried about. She pulled this off by wheedling Vander into describing how he was taught to make a lean-to shelter, best as he could and answering Claggor and Ekko’s questions. Together they asked everything Powder might have asked and even some things she hadn’t seen coming, so she could just sit back and listen and think about it. 

 

Most of the process struck Powder as really doable with what little tools they had and when she brought up weatherproofing it, Vander had suggested that their tarp layered with sticks, mud and grasses on the outside would make a pretty good big wall and roof for it. If they built it so the other big wall was the side of the house and filled in the gaps at the back tightly enough, Vander seemed to think it would be warm enough for people to sit in until winter hit. 

 

This was distracting enough and kind of fun to think about. Powder still didn’t forget her earlier anger or her morning’s worries. Vander went out to wash out the pot and then started boiling the water she and Ekko had brought back.

 

By that point, most everyone had finished eating. 

 

“Hey, can I go with Vi and learn how to hook up the plow to the yaks?” she asked Vander as the stiffly moving man and Claggor prepared to head out to grab seed. Claggor was still fumbling with yanking on his boots, though, so she thought she had time. 

 

“Me too!” Ekko sounded affronted that she hadn’t included him. Maybe it had been mean, actually. It was rare for her to earn that tone or the frown splitting his face. Powder noted that his cheeks had begun to hollow just a little bit. 

 

“Sure, but then hurry out and get to planting.” Vander’s response distracted her. 

 

There was no part of this whole plowing and sowing process that went quickly. Not even preparation. Once everyone (including Mylo as the day before had,) had dressed and hydrated (an effort that she and Ekko had at least assisted in making easier) there was still the matter of hauling grain up from the cellar, which she was next to useless with and getting the plow out of the shed around back. Here, too, she stood back and simply watched from Ekko’s and a yawning Mylo’s sides as Vander, stiff and slow, took hold of one end of the contraption and Claggor lifted the other. 

 

With their combined efforts, they had the old iron thing up and in the air - if only a foot or so. Powder thought that Claggor’s right hand was way too close to the little mechanism that lowered the blade of the plow, but she didn’t want to say anything and jinx it. Instead, she stayed still with Vi at her back so they had a clear and easy path around to where Vi and Mylo had led the two borrowed yaks. Powder felt, as she often did when people exercised their strength around her, reminded of how weak she was in comparison. 

 

Even at her best, she’d been quick work for Deckard and Sevika and Silco. 

 

Except for Ekko, the guys grabbed a bag of grain each and headed down the hill away from their little shack and toward one of the two fields left unfinished on that side of the property. Powder watched them go with a wince as Ekko carefully filled the bag rigged up to hang over her good shoulder with seed. His own bag was twice as full. 

 

“Hey,” Ekko stage whispered, trying to grab her attention before Vi got finished leading the two big bovines over to the plow. He waved her seed bag obviously, even a little obnoxiously her way, but with Vi’s back to them and the others heading out to the field, she was the only one to see it. She was also the only one who saw the questions in his face now that he was wide awake and ready to start the day. 

 

Powder didn’t want to answer any questions about how she’d been acting that morning. She didn’t want to talk about her earlier freakout, in part because she was starting to feel really stupid about it. To claim you weren’t a little kid and could handle yourself and then freak out over absolutely nothing didn’t look or feel good. She didn’t want Ekko, of all people, to look at her with pity. She’d seen that once or twice before and it still hurt. . 

 

When after a second Vi was standing still glancing off into space and not saving Powder from the awkward moment, Powder took it into her own hands. Ekko’s face fell when she spoke, but Powder had a question. 

 

She kind of wanted to kick herself for not asking last night, as it was kind of an important one and that was the first time in a long time she and Vi had been alone for a long period of time. If she hadn’t been so upset this morning after promising Vi she wouldn’t mention to Vander that Vi was feeling sick, that might’ve been a good time too. 

 

But she’d been “ sulking”, then. 

 

“Vi, you think things will be okay again?” She paused and waited to see if the question would reach her sister or if the girl was using the last few moments of calm to be off in that distracted, far-away place. The response came just late enough that, (even clearly a bit put off by Powder not answering him,) Ekko caught her eyes, like he didn’t know if Vi even heard her. 

 

“Whatcha mean, Powder?” the girl finally asked. She came to life almost like a toy whose switch was flipped or key was wound. Vi started moving her body but not the big old docile animals on the other end of the ropes she carried, closer to the metal and wood contraption that was the plow. Powder watched her untangling the reins wrapped around the steering handles of the rusty tool. 

 

“You know what I mean,” Powder insisted. Ekko certainly knew, judging by how still he got, stopping with a double handful of grain right over her own bag. 

 

“Look, we’ve got each other, more clean water than we know what to do with and Vander says enough food to get through winter. If we harvest this in the fall and plant more right after harvesting, we don’t have anything to worry about, right?” Vi’s voice was still too low, too false. She’d gone from being honest about how she felt right back to pretending not to hate it here. Powder’s stomach clenched tight around cool dread. 

 

Had she upset Vi that much this morning? 

 

“That sounds like a lot of work all at once.” The grimace was evident in Ekko’s voice but she couldn’t turn to look. Instead she kept her eyes on her sister and her body still as the girl shrugged and succeeded in separating the two animals’ reins, finally. 

 

“Probably.” 

 

“That’s not what I mean.” Powder forced the words out even though she wasn’t sure if this conversation was such a good idea after all. Was she imagining the distance in Vi’s voice? Was it just exhaustion instead? Or illness? Powder wasn’t always the most talkative when she was sick, either, after all. Was she overthinking it or was she making Vi angry, too. The same way Mylo did. Had she driven her sister away?

 

“If you mean Mylo,” Vi started as she set the two sets of leather reins apart and then started to lead the animals closer, “he’ll calm down eventually. I guess. If not, I’ll give him an earful.” 

 

“I don’t just mean Mylo.” Powder knew if she turned and looked she’d probably see Mylo and Claggor by the edge of the fields, putting down their extra seed bags and getting ready to pick a row to start. 

 

“Okay, then what do you mean?” This time, Vi dropped all pretense of what the three of them were supposed to be doing hanging back by the shack and stared pointedly through dull eyes until Powder answered. Powder’s shoulders sunk a little. 

 

“You don’t have to pretend not to be mad.” Powder didn’t think it’d matter, anyway. No one who knew Vi couldn’t tell she was livid. She was usually angry within the hour of waking up and carried on that way almost all day. Except, maybe, since they’d started out in the fields. “It’s just - as long as you’re not mad at me.” 

 

“Or me,” Ekko hurried to clear that up. “I’d wanna know!” 

 

Confusing Powder, Vi seemed at first flabbergasted by this and then indignant, watching her under furrowed and slightly raised brows as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Then her sister huffed, cheeks darkening and she turned back to the animals looking so frustrated that Powder wanted to shut up. 

 

So, she did. 

 

After a moment or two,Vi started walking them through attaching the reins to each of the yaks. She offered to let them strap up the second of the animals and it wasn’t nearly as hard as Powder had thought it would be. She still felt like an idiot when she couldn’t do it without Ekko’s help. The day she got her right arm back had to come soon or she’d just be useless forever. 

 

“See? You guys nailed it.” Vi sounded a little more herself at the end of the quick lesson, starting to turn the animals around and lead them down the slight decline and toward the fields. Powder and Ekko, their own seed wheat secured, followed. “And Powder, it’s going to be okay.” The encouraging tone had returned but at least this time the response was so generic she had no reason to doubt or believe it one way or another. 

 

“So who are you mad at?” Ekko asked. Powder had tried a couple times to get to the heart of that question. She was just getting the feeling that Mylo was not the only one of them that Vi was getting fed up with. That was why she was scared that she might be starting to make Vi mad: if the others could, then wasn't there at least a chance that soon, maybe, especially after a morning like that one, Vi could lose patience with her, too?

 

“Don’t wanna talk about it.” This was Vi’s only answer at first. 

 

“Why not?” Powder prompted, a little slowed by the need to pay attention to her balance as the hill momentarily steepened and then leveled out completely. 

 

“Because I’m mad, duh. Besides, I’m just a jerk, remember?” Even when Vi turned back to stick out her tongue, Powder exhaled slowly but heavily through her nose. She didn’t want to joke and play around or argue, even if she felt a little bad about ‘lashing out’ earlier. (At least, that was what Vander called it when Vi was mean to someone who’d done nothing wrong.) Powder knew nothing was okay, right now. She wasn’t okay. Vi wasn’t okay. But if her sister wanted to be like that, fine. 

 

“We should go after the others,” Ekko nodded in Claggor and Mylo’s direction. They were already heading out toward the far edge of the half-planted field they’d left off on last night. 

 

“Okay,” Vi answered before Powder could even decide if she wanted to protest. “I’ll see you guys whenever Vander sends you my way. I’ll show you everything we’ve figured out about steering and stuff.” The reddish-pink haired city-dweller turned farmer continued on toward the still unfurrowed land on this side of the property. Ekko started off toward their morning’s work in the very dim, barely brightening morning. Powder, on the other hand, stalled on the spot. 

 

“I’m scared.” 

 

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” Vi told her, slowing for just a second. “If I can do it, you guys can do it.” I might ride with you, though, just to be your other arm.” 

 

“That’s not what I meant,” Powder said again, for the second time in as many minutes.

 

“I know, Powder.” Vi’s voice softened.. “See you soon, okay?” Not waiting, Vi and the beasts of burden carried on and Powder had no choice but to follow Ekko. Too much more stalling and Mylo would start getting annoyed at them. Ekko slowed long enough to let her catch up and then helped her to center the sling made of her quarter-filled bag across her body. Her sister heading toward the space next to the last row they’d plowed, Powder continued on to the edge of the field. 

 

“Thanks,” she told Ekko when they were far enough from Vi but had not yet gotten so close to Mylo and Claggor that they could be eavesdropped upon. “Sorry I didn’t answer earlier. I just feel stupid.” 

 

“Any time! And it’s okay, I get it. It just looked like you weren’t okay.” 

 

“I don’t think - it’s stupid.” 

 

“It’s not stupid.” Ekko sighed, slowing down and forcing her to do the same. She felt nervous all over again. “Just say it.” 

 

“I freaked out when Vi covered my mouth to shut me up.” 

 

“Well, yeah, but why?” he pushed. 

 

“I just - thought it was Deckard.” She looked down at her dirt-crusted boots as she rocked back and forth on her feet. Her legs, still tired from the last two days, protested the act. “Like I said, I know it’s stupid,” Powder continued after a second. “I don’t know why but I thought I was back home for a second and -” Powder didn’t know when Ekko started being the touchy-feely type. Maybe he’d picked up some of Powder or Vi’s habits, but he grabbed hold of her good shoulder and squeezed once. She looked up. 

 

“It’s not stupid,” the boy whispered and he was so serious and soft spoken that she froze to the spot. That was the least Ekko-like thing he’d said or done all morning, being so quiet when there was no need. “One time, something fell off of a shelf behind the counter back home. It hit Benzo on the head. It - it knocked off a few other things. Made a really loud clatter.” Powder was confused by the story and where it was going or what it had to do with her earlier. “I thought Benzo fell over because of the hit - but later I figured out he was dropping behind the counter. He was taking cover , Powder. It doesn’t happen a lot but it happened a couple times. Sometimes, people just go back to that kinda place, he says.” 

 

Unnerved and cool, Powder kept going as soon as Ekko let go of her. 

 

She hoped that wasn’t what this morning was about. She didn’t need another reason for people to think she couldn’t handle herself or do the things they did.

 

“I’m gonna ask for extra breaks today,” Powder warned him as they got closer and closer to having to get to work. Ekko nodded and drew up next to her. “Vi’s sick and won't’ let me tell anyone, but Vander made it sound like it could be really bad if we got too hot and got sick. So we’ll keep her cool.” Of course, Vi had to have known that ‘not telling anyone’ about this excluded Ekko. She’d have to be stupid not to. 

 

“How?” 

 

“First break we get, we need to get a bucket, fill it up at the stream and run back and drench her for one thing. Also, we gotta make sure there’s enough to drink.” 

 

“That’s why we went to the stream earlier?” Powder nodded. “Won’t she get mad if we do that, though?” Powder only nodded again, smiling a little at the thought. Ekko rolled his eyes and this made her smile more. A little of the cold in her gut released its hold and she relaxed just a bit. 

 

Ekko didn’t have anything more to say about her plan to both annoy and take care of Vi, (who deserved both right now, in Powder’s opinion) but he did pick up the pace out into the field to a row beside the one Claggor had taken up in. They were still crossing to the far edge of the field of neat furrowed rows when Vander started walking back across the untouched one nearby and toward theirs, perhaps to join them. There was still the big field on the other side of the property to worry about, too. 

 

“When we’re done planting what’s the first thing you want to do?” Powder considered Ekko’s question as she watched Claggor tiredly lean over to shove dirt over the spread seed with his dirty hands, coming to a complete stop to make sure the wheat berries were buried deep enough. (She wished she could do that instead of having to rely on shoving it around with her boots, but also it looked like it’d wear her out fast.) With a blink, she considered that what she really wanted was to sleep and then do something that didn’t make her feel anxious, like they were racing a clock. 

 

“I don’t know. I guess we could go out into the woods again, you, me and Vi. Maybe she’ll start to show us some stuff again. I was never very good at punching, probably gotta start over. Or maybe we’ll go out there and find something good to eat?” 

 

“Now it’s my turn to say that’s not what I meant.” The boy leapt over one long, continuous mound of dirt to be on the other side of the row she was lining up to take on. Mylo was halfway down the row he’d abandoned the night before and they passed him by quickly. Powder didn’t stop to look at the boy to see if he was going to give them grief for falling behind. “I mean for fun.” 

 

This was a lot easier question to answer. A game had been tickling the back of her mind for a few days and she wasn’t entirely sure why. It was something they could do with just the two of them though. Or, at least it used to be. 

 

“Lanewar,” she shrugged. Ekko blinked once and then immediately started making excuses. 

 

“We haven’t done that in forever!” 

 

“Like a year,” she shot back. “At most. You’re just scared you’ll lose.” The boy’s eyes narrowed at her, which made her smile again. She could at least get under Ekko’s skin, as easy as she could Vi’s. 

 

“You don’t have any paintballs or a paintball gun.” 

 

“I can make something, like a slingshot or something. Besides: I don’t need it. You can’t catch me anyway,” she teased, picking up the pace just a little bit. This earned a lift of the boy’s now slightly more pointed chin. 

 

“Wanna bet?” The challenge rang in the air between them for only a second, before she looked down at her right arm in a sling and then right back up at him. 

 

“First to Claggor wins.” Ekko hefted half a bag of seed up on one shoulder after tying it shut. 

 

“One. Two. Three.” 

 

Despite the protesting of her legs or how hard it was to balance with a cast, a sling for one arm and a bag slung over the other’s shoulder, Powder ran. She ran and sucked in the strange air scented only by dirt and faintly the smell of the forest nearby. She ran and forgot the tension with which they were rushing to get the fields planted, forgot the way her face, neck and arms throbbed and radiated heat, forgot that she’d almost bitten Vi’s hand earlier, hard, and forgot a lot of other crappy stuff. 

 

But only for a few moments.

 

When Powder won, pulling to a stop a few seconds later, she was content basking in the victory as she lined up on her own row of earth. She didn’t have anything to say about winning. Ekko, on the other hand….

 

“No fair. You and your freakish long legs!” The familiar excuse was the same one he’d been making for the last two years. Still, she didn’t take it to heart. Powder squared up and grabbed a few wheat berries in her good hand. This was Ekko sounding like himself again, more really than he had in days. Happier, maybe. 

 

“I changed my mind.” Powder changed the subject. 

 

“Oy! You two be careful,” Vander shouted, now crossing over the boundary into the same field they were standing in from a ways off  to the north. “You can still trip out there!” 

 

“What about?” Ekko asked, though he stopped and turned and waved to Vander as if to say he’d understood. Powder did not. She didn’t want the seed wheat in her hand to go flying everywhere. 

 

“I wanna make something together when this is done, that’s what I wanna do.” 

 

“Like what?” Ekko untied his own bag and got started, himself - though Powder could see over his shoulder that Vi and the yaks were working their way slowly but steadily down maybe the second row they’d made since getting out to the field. She and Ekko really had taken up a little too much time talking but she hadn’t been about to have that conversation near Mylo. Or Claggor. Or Vi, for that matter. Definitely not Vander. 

 

When she shrugged in answer, Ekko shrugged right back. She took the teasing and put it on a list to get him back for, later.

 

“Just something,” she finally managed. Whatever it was they got up to, it’d be fun. 

 

“I’m in.” 

 

“Hey,” Vander shouted again from the far side of the field, where he now seemed to be taking a second pass at the land Vi still had to plow in it. Powder watched her sister’s head turn toward Vander and then back to the grassy earth in front of her as if fighting instinct. “Claggor - go help Mylo finish his line from yesterday. Let Ekko take that line, then you and Mylo go grab your own rows.” Ekko, pausing, matched eyes with Claggor and moved past Powder to her other side to take Claggor’s row. This did have the downside of putting Ekko a tiny bit ahead of Powder but she could use those ‘freakish long legs’ he complained about to catch up. 

 

“Gotcha,” Ekko shouted back at Vander at the same time that Claggor started to jog after Mylo. Neither of them moved very fast. No one moved very fast. Powder didn’t know what it would take to get the next two and a half fields planted but was starting to think everyone was going to be sick before this was over if they didn’t find a way to make it easier on them. Next time we start earlier. 

 

That was good, considering they were plowing and planting four fields this time and had two more not getting touched. One of those was as large as two of the others. 

 

“Vi’ll have this field plowed in a couple of hours and if we push really good, we could finish plowing way before tomorrow night. So the quicker we get these two planted, the better for everyone.” Powder wondered, as she started to work herself into the rhythm of taking a few steps, spreading seeds, backtracking to cover the seeds in the dirt and moving on, why they were starting on the edge of the field closest to the edge of the property after doing the opposite the day before. She wasn’t complaining, though. If they timed things out right it might mean they’d get to take their breaks in the shade provided by the trees bordering the woods - and they’d be closer to the stream. 

 

They might even be able to go cool off in it in the afternoon, which was something Powder never thought she’d welcome. If the ‘baths’ in the stream were going to end up making her sick after all, it was too late, now. They might as well use it to not burn under the sun. Once it rose, she expected every pink-red exposed bit of skin to start screaming at her. She wished she could cover every inch of herself without burning up all day. The best she could do was shade her irritated neck with hair that only made it more irritated. 

 

On that topic, it felt like the sun and temperature both rose faster that day than they did the day before. In just a couple of hours they’d completed several rows. The work was not the easiest even though at first she’d written Vander’s warnings about how hard planting would be off as exaggeration or underestimating her. The upside, though, was that Mylo was so tired that other than the occasional grumble and grunt, he didn’t really grump everywhere as he had the day before. Even when the sun had risen enough to begin to bother her sunburnt face and neck and arm and hand, she could talk to Ekko or focus on her work without having to worry about anyone or anything. 

 

And that was okay, but it got boring fast. The kind of boring that made you more tired. 

 

So she was kind of excited when Ekko called out her name and pointed toward the next field where Vi had already driven the yaks over to start plowing. She wasn’t sure what he was pointing at, at first. Vander had left his own row of planting a couple minutes prior to do a second sweep of the field so she thought that must be who Ekko was pointing out. When Powder lifted her head, deposited spare seed back into her bag and then shielded her eyes with the same hand, she expected Vander to have found something. 

 

Instead, with Vi’s back still turned toward him, the man was beckoning someone over to him from the treeline. It was far enough away Powder had trouble seeing exactly what the person looked like, but a quick glimpse of black hair and some kind of long, wooden tool handle drew her eye enough to justify stopping and squinting. When she spotted that their visitor was someone masculine and a little taller and wider than Vi, she pegged that Caras had come to visit. 

 

This time, instead of riding down the road on the front of a yak-drawn cart, he could have come from the enviously shady forest. 

 

At just the point where Caras began to pick up the pace approaching Vander with whatever tool he had in hand, Vi and the yaks made a turn and Powder marked the moment Vi realized who was coming to join Vander in the field she was working on. The girl’s sunburnt face froze blatantly enough to be clear from here but Powder was more curious about what their guest was carrying. 

 

“That Caras?” Ekko asked, as if he wasn’t so sure. She nodded.

 

“Oh yeah, it is.” 

 

“Probably here to flirt with Vi,” Mylo rasped out. If he was anything like Powder, it was through a dry mouth. She didn’t engage with that and Mylo continued his row, moving right past her and Ekko. While Caras waved with that big, swinging wide gesture at Vi, Powder watched his other hand. 

 

“That looks a lot like that weird little rake in the shed,” Powder told Ekko, whose brow furrowed immediately. 

 

When Caras and Vander started moving again and Vi paid attention to plowing a straight row, Powder and Ekko got back to work. That being said, she did notice that Caras wasn’t coming right to them. Instead, over the next minute or so he jogged ahead of Vander and over to the field’s boundary post to pick up a spare bag of seed grain they’d left out for whoever emptied theirs first. 

 

“He’s gonna help?” Claggor asked from the opposite side of her as Ekko. It sounded like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “I should feel bad but - just glad.” 

 

“I know,” Mylo called back from a few steps ahead of even Ekko. “I’m worn out. ” Powder shot a look at Ekko then at Claggor, who shook his head as if he could read her mind. Taking his advice, she did not point out that Mylo had only just started helping out. 

 

“Hello!” Caras called out as he hurried across the field. It sure looked like he was going to take up his own row. Vander, for his part, coughed once harshly as he tried to hurry after the boy. “Hello!” 

 

Powder waved her fist in the air in greeting, still closed like a tight claw around seeds. She did not want to spill any. 

 

“Hello!” Caras called, again, not toward any one of them but, as if speaking to the lot. This time he drew everyone’s attention his way as he came to a stop. 

 

“I don’t know exactly, but I think he wants to show us something.” Vander rasped behind the Noxian. Caras came to a stop in the middle of an otherwise untouched row of upturned earth from the end of last night’s work, and spread a few seeds from his bag. Powder was confused why he’d start in the middle of the row, but then the boy brought the rake in his hand down and - and. 

 

Powder wanted her right hand back so she could bury her face in both of them. Feeling stupid all over again, Powder watched Caras gesture with two fingers to his own eyes and then down to the ground he’d just spread seed over. Then, with both hands on the rake he dragged it, and the soil, over the seeds. In way less than half the time it would’ve taken her to kick dirt over and easily half the time (not to mention with more accuracy than) it took the others to cover seeds with just their hands, the older boy with the loose, sweat soaked sleeveless top buried the handful of seeds he’d just spread under a little more than an inch of soil. 

 

It made sense. 

 

And it made her flush with self-derision. 

 

Why hadn’t she thought of that? What else was that stupid little rake there for? 

 

“Oh gods we’ve wasted so much time,” Vander sounded like he felt as stupid as she did. Caras caught eyes with Vander and nodded toward Powder while offering the end of the rake to the man. Just across the row from her, Ekko looked a little mad. He was kicking himself, too. 

 

“Should I go get ours?” Ekko asked. 

 

“No, no, this one is ours,” Vander replied, looking down at the old, faded wood handle of the rake. “Right?” Powder wasn’t too clear on how much Caras understood of Piltovan except to think not much at all, but the boy gave a nod as if he got the question, at least. 

 

“Well, damn, good idea, Caras.” Vander patted the boy on the shoulder with one loud, thudding hand, but Caras didn’t buckle under it like she or Ekko might’ve. Instead, he just looked proud of himself. No, wait, he just looked happy. Vander was right. They might’ve already had this field planted if they’d just thought of that. They’d probably be way closer to caught up with the plow if they’d just thought of that. “New plan,” the veteran of at least one war announced, sounding so overwhelmed she thought he was putting it on to make people laugh. “Caras and I do things the old fashioned way - and I’ll take over your row, Ekko.” 

 

Vander pointed at Ekko and either guessing or comprehending the conversation, Caras offered the handle of the rake to Ekko. 

 

“You go behind Powder and do what Caras was just doing. That way, you two will probably be quicker than the rest of us.” Powder rolled her eyes at the implication that she needed help, but she had to admit that it was hard and really clunky and probably not very accurate to try to cover seeds properly with just her feet. Ekko didn’t hesitate, though, trading off the half bag of seed he was carrying to Vander and taking the rake. When Caras surprised her by heading for the end of his own row, bag in hand, Ekko shot her a look of challenge. 

 

They were going to outplant the others. Ekko wasn’t having it any other way. 

 

Powder moved quickly and could still spread the seeds pretty accurately. Ekko wasn’t super fast at first, having to get the hang of how much force and how much dirt to shove over on the seeds. Once he got the hang of it, though, he was easily able to keep up. In fact,  once they got into the groove Powder and Ekko started to make really good time. Possibly more upsetting yet when she thought about it, the rows looked less messy and maybe even a little straighter than what she’d done before, which she hoped meant more stuff could grow in it. 

 

It was such a difference that by the time that she and Ekko finished their first row with access to the rake, they’d left the others in the metaphorical dust. Though, that wasn’t entirely metaphorical. Caras was still doing pretty good, to his credit. When Ekko nodded toward an empty row of earth to start on, Powder held up a finger and hurried back in the way they’d come as a new idea occurred to her. 

 

Ekko called her name reluctantly, but followed. 

 

“Hey,” Powder called at Vander’s back. “Vander, got an idea!” This, at least, caused Vander to pause and turn his head to look over his shoulder at them. 

 

“What’s up?” 

 

“We finished our row. We can start a new one, or we can hand off the rake for a few minutes and go look for a couple smaller branches that have lots of strong little sticks off them. You know, we could use them like the rake. Split up into teams of two. If we find good ones, this goes way faster.” Powder didn’t want to admit that it’d probably just go way faster if Ekko planted and someone with good arms followed him with the rake. She might be able to run faster than Ekko, but the truth was she slowed everything down right now. 

 

Vander hummed in his throat, looked them over once and then shrugged. 

 

“Go on, pass the rake to Claggor,” Ekko leapt across Vander’s row and hurried over to the bulkiest of the siblings as Vander raised his voice. “Ekko and Powder are gonna try to find us some things to use like the rakes. Claggor, grab the rake and follow behind Caras, the way Ekko was with Powder.” 

 

“Okay,” Claggor answered, trying to raise his own voice in response and just managing to sound a little exhausted. It’d been maybe two and a half hours and they were already all burnt out. Then there was Vi to think about, all alone in the next field. She was sick, on her own on the plow and probably starting to get warm and thirsty. Powder had an idea about that too, but thought it was smarter to at least follow through on her first idea. If they could find a couple good substitutes for the rake it’d probably make it easier to convince Vander they could afford to rest a little more often. 

 

“Anything already down is probably too old and brittle,” Vander shouted at their backs when she and Ekko started to run to the nearest edge of the woods. “Stick to the property line!” 

 

“We know!” They’d probably already picked up any wood still on the property that was already down, though. She wasn’t going to say that to Vander and make him rethink her plan.

“I think I can break off a couple big enough ones if we find any low hanging.” Ekko sounded like he was thinking the same thing she was, so Powder nodded and the two of them made for the nearest patch of shade before starting their survey. In retrospect, she was surprised Mylo hadn’t complained about them leaving him behind in the field. He must’ve been tired, to not take the opportunity. 

 

As it turned out, they spent longer away from the planting than she thought they would. It was not actually that easy to find a long, straight, low hanging branch with enough strong enough little nubby sticks that it could be used like a rake capable of pushing around hunks of heavy, dark dirt. It was harder to find two and harder still for Ekko to break them off high enough they were still comfortable to use. The sun had settled into a far higher position in the morning sky when they got the second one and broke off enough of its weaker pieces at the end, determining that it would do. If whoever used it dragged the whole thing sideways through the dirt instead of straight back and forth, it might do half as well as the rake. 

 

Still, it had to be better. 

 

They got back to Vander long enough after starting that she was worried her next request would be dismissed, outright. Even if he approved, Mylo might mock her and say she was just trying to get out of work, but every time she looked at Vi, the girl hunched a little more forward on the plow. She was worried. 

 

“This one’s ready,” Ekko declared as Powder leaned against the first one, its fingers pointing upward. To demonstrate, he dragged the second make-shift rake through the grass at his feet and when nothing cracked, they mutually declared it ‘good enough’. Getting back to the field was easy and quick but Ekko loudly voiced their mutual regret about leaving the shade as they got nearer and nearer to an expectant Vander a minute or two later. 

 

“My arms and face are screaming at me.” Ekko complaining was one thing, the way he sounded like he was getting actually upset about it was another. The truth was, Powder was getting worried too. Vander had been right about Vi being a lot faster on the plow than he or Claggor but what were the chances, really, of them getting all the fields plowed today? Planted by sundown tomorrow? Because the truth was, Powder didn’t think they’d last much longer than that without needing a few days off. 

 

She was fairly certain that she’d seen real blisters on Vi’s arm. That had to come from the sun, because it was the only thing she could think of to explain it. She didn’t know a lot about that sort of thing but blisters from sunlight sounded like a really bad sign. She just didn’t know how long it would take Vi to forgive her if she brought it up to Vander. Especially because Powder was pretty sure that the other person in the family Vi was mad at was Vander.

 

“How’d it go?” The man in question called as they got a little closer, choosing to slow down. He lifted the neck of his shirt to wipe sweat from his face. It smeared dirt made mud across his chin. Thirty or forty feet off and the other side of Vander completely, Claggor hurriedly rushed to keep up with Caras, who was chattering away in mostly Ur-Nox to the bigger boy. He must’ve accepted that his partner in the process wouldn’t be able to understand him and just talked because it was boring not to. They were still making quicker process than either Mylo or Vander. “You were gone a bit.” 

 

“We had a little trouble, but here,” Ekko said, handing one of the impromptu rakes off to Vander. The man stalled, settled his seed bag at his side and gave the little branch a look. It was about as thick around at the base as the handle of their rake, so it was at least fairly sturdy. Powder had watched Ekko test it. “It’ll work,” Ekko promised. “Probably not for long, but it could make this field and maybe the next way faster.” 

 

“Good stuff,” Vander praised as Powder passed off the remaining branch-rake to Ekko. No matter which way you cut it, she wasn’t going to be able to use it half as well as he would. “Alright, grab a row and go, we finished yours off. Mylo and I can team up.” 

 

“Hey, uh, Vander?” Powder tried to sound nonchalant and a little sleepy. That part wasn’t hard: she was definitely tired. “I’m starting to feel really sick and really warm. Can we take an early break, maybe an extra one?” The conflict on Vander’s face, even a little bit of guilt trickling into it, immediately wiped away his satisfaction with their rigged up little tool. “You said heat exhaustion was bad.” 

 

“It - it is.” Concern dominated Vander’s features but his eyes didn’t linger on her or Ekko. He didn’t even stop to look at Mylo who he’d been so worried about a couple days ago. Instead, the man’s shaggy, faintly graying hair shook as one singular dirt-caked mass when he looked past Caras and Claggor all the way to Vi. Vi was making really good progress in the next field, but it was as if Vander - knew. 

 

“You already know.” Powder accused, sour and a little upset. Then she corrected her tone when Vander raised an eyebrow her direction. “You already knew she was sick.” 

 

“Sick, is she, now?” Vander growled, voice low. “Told me she was fine.” Even if Powder had blushed when she lowered her head she didn’t think her face was getting any pinker. She did, however, keep her eyes locked on the dirt between her boots. 

 

“Promised not to say anything,” she muttered. 

 

“That’s fine.” Vander waved this off as if he understood and would keep it a secret. “Didn’t, really. Didn’t tell me anything I wasn’t already pretty sure of. Biggest reason I put her on the plow and didn’t have her and Claggor trading off. Stuck in the sun, sure, but at least she’s not running up and down the fields planting. Besides, she is the only one of us who can ride that thing without slowing those big fellahs down.” Guilt crossed over his face and the man raised a grimy hand to his lips. 

 

A practically ear shattering whistle shot out from between two fingers partially obscured by the fuzzy undefined mass of beard growing on Vander’s face. 

 

“BREAK TIME! Claggor, bucket of water from the stream, get it to the house. Mylo, drag out the pot from this morning. Everyone else, get to the shade, now.” Those in the field around him damned sure heard his voice and even Caras quickly took his cues from the rest of them setting down their bags of seed but, in the next field, Vi and the yaks continued moving. “Damn,” Vander sighed, and at this Claggor and Mylo made for the house to grab the bucket and the water and Vander went to chase after Vi. 

 

“Hey,” Powder waved down Claggor as Ekko rushed over to Caras and immediately began to show off their improvised rake. 

 

“What?” Claggor didn’t turn around and come back to her, but he did stop and stretch and glance back to pay attention. His face was almost as pink as hers, finally. When he took those goggles off his forehead later, it was going to look stupid. 

 

“Bring down an extra empty bucket, please? Ekko and I need it for something.” Claggor shrugged and that was all the answer he wanted to offer, apparently. The boy turned away to follow Mylo’s stiff, slowly plodding body back up to the shack. Powder grabbed Caras’ left hand when he got into range at her insistent gesturing. She corralled both of the boys over to the nearest edge of the forest, at least a little closer to the direction of the stream while Caras tested one of Ekko’s impromptu rakes. 

 

Caras took a second to realize he was being pulled along, but after a quick stumble they got moving. 

 

“Strong,” Caras told Ekko, waving the rake around. “Maybe work one or two -” and then the boy paused in his speech and looked around as if trying to find something. She realized he was reaching for a word when he said something in Ur-Nox a moment later.  

 

“Days?” she asked, releasing his hand and pointing up at the sun, tracing its usual path through the sky. It was her best guess on how to communicate that kind of passage of time. Caras pulled a face as if he wasn’t sure and simultaneously nodded and gave a one-shouldered shrug. Ekko looked pleased at the implied compliment and Powder practically sagged with relief as they continued toward the blessed shade in the distance. 

 

The relief came at the idea that Vi would be able to cool down again, at the idea that Vander had seen what was happening to her sister and had planned for it from the moment they’d woken up that morning even if she wished he’d done it differently. There was also relief that her legs, which had long since moved past whining about being put back to work, would get a little pause. No matter how things were between Mylo, Vander and Vi, Powder’s plan was to make this break fun. 

 

And it was, at first. . 

 

It was fun to sit down in cool grass under tree cover after the sun had just spent the last couple of hours making her want to peel off her own skin. It was fun when Mylo brought a pot and a pitcher of water and a few bowls and a cup to drink it from. It was nice to see her sister get something to drink when Vander finally got her off of the yaks and Claggor had finally watered the animals. 

 

The real fun started when people had had a chance to drink and stopped sighing or groaning in relief or pain, when the shade began to cut into the ever worsening ache of sunburns. Because then, inevitably, there came the questions. 

 

“What brought you ‘round these parts?” Vander asked Caras. For a few seconds,the boy planted between Ekko and Vi continued to lounge unsuspectingly in the grass, hands behind his head. Then, he caught onto the fact that almost every set of eyes were on him. Down the line, Mylo had rolled onto his side and was resting his eyes in the shade. On Caras’ other side, Vi was suddenly paying great attention to the mostly empty bowl of water in her lap. Despite the fact that Vi’s appearance worried her (there was no doubt about it now: she had witnessed small blisters on her sister’s arms from the sun and Vi’s sunburns had gone past their deep pink to the red, red, red) she drew great joy from watching Vi try not to engage with the situation. Claggor smirked into his own drink. 

 

“Why I come?” Caras questioned. Vander grunted an affirmative. 

 

“I in woods,come say hi. See friends in field, no tools. In- ah - ah - horreo - good tool.” Powder tried to file the Ur-Nox word away but for once it went in one ear and out the other. She could still piece together the story, she thought. However, when she shot a sly look at her sister expecting to see some sign of the embarrassment she’d shown to every one of Caras’ other little signs that he liked her, it didn’t come. 

 

Instead, Vi was scrambling to her feet. A bit of water still in the bottom of her bowl spilled partially down one leg and partially into the grass as she got up, stumbled a few steps away from them and was immediately sick. Powder winced, rooted to the spot for a second, and shuddered, hoping she didn’t feel nauseous, herself. Just a few feet away was an empty bucket she had intended to douse her sister with before the girl returned to the field. Now, she was scared that wasn’t going to do anything to really help. Now, Vi was having trouble even drinking water. 

 

Powder’s own skin screamed at her whenever the sunlight touched it. Was she close to being as sick as Vi? What could they do about it? Vander sat up and turned in his seat to watch for several seconds and Powder was struck again by the shame on his face. 

 

“Powder, take your sister down to the stream.” Vi made a displeased grunt or groan as she wiped her face with the back of one hand. “Find the shadiest place you can and sit with her. She needs to lie in there and cool off. Wouldn’t hurt you to do the same thing. After that - we need a new plan, because this isn’t gonna work.” 

 

“No,” Vi spat, standing back up and placing her back against a nearby tree. If her face looked red a moment ago, now it was crimson. Powder pushed up to her feet. The fact that Vander was suddenly worried left her twice as much. Maybe there was something to be said for being indoors or under solid earth most of the time back in the Lanes. Because the truth was, she was getting close to wanting to shout every time someone so much as brushed against her good arm. “No, I can keep going. We’ve got a field and a half. If I keep going, we get the fields you wanted planted plowed today. We all work on planting tomorrow, and we’re done. We’ll have enough food.” 

 

“Doesn’t matter. You told me you were okay, you’re not okay. You’re done.” Vander’s stern tone was harsh and not what Powder wanted to hear right now. The problem was, he was right. 

 

“That’s not fair.” Vi was standing straight up again, fists clenched at her sides. “We’re so close. ” 

 

“Yeah, we are.” His voice dipped low, but calmed at the same time. “And a lot of that’s on you, especially today, but you’re trying to make the kind of mistake people don’t come back from.” That shut Vi up, the girl’s squinting eyes and huffing anger quelled under the unwelcome look of surrender. Powder went to her sister and found that she was not the only one to stand up. Caras didn’t say anything, but he did approach Vi slowly and reach out a hand. 

 

By the looks of things, Violet was as confused as Powder was, herself. Eventually though, Caras reached Vi, leaned down and took her right hand and lifted her arm slowly. That was enough to irritate Vi’s sunburn, judging by the way her body tensed even further than it had moments before. Powder stayed a step or two behind the boy, watching as Vi, eyes locked on his face, relaxed her fist and opened her hand. He turned her arm inward slightly and grimaced as he took a closer look at it. 

 

Powder did too. 

 

If there’d been any doubt earlier, it was gone now. 

 

Vi had a couple of small, but still ugly looking blisters on her lower arms. 

 

“When this is done, no one does any more than we have to do before evening. We’ll take a few days off. Any hard work is done in the cool of the evening, any unnecessary work isn’t done. Powder, go do what you’re told.”  Vander didn’t say that kind of thing to Powder very often. He didn’t need to remind her to obey, she usually just did. If not for fear of upsetting someone, then just because he was always looking out for them. She certainly didn’t need any other encouragement, this time. Powder reached past the local in front of her and Caras smiled lopsided at her as he released Vi’s hand into her own. 

 

“I go too, to… river. Back soon, then - ” Caras paused, grumbled in the back of his throat, spoke what sounded like a full sentence of Ur-Nox and then continued, “I… drive aratro.” In this way, Powder learned the Ur-Nox word for ‘plow.’ 

 

With Powder on one side of Vi and Caras a step or two behind her on the other side, they went to do as Vander had said: take Vi to the stream. Her sister didn’t protest any further and didn’t even seem to have much to say: she hadn’t spoken since Caras took her hand. She hadn’t spoken a lot since sitting down with them by the edge of the woods, either, though. 

 

While Powder had wanted to get back out in the forestry around their new home, this wasn’t what she’d had in mind. 

 

They were only thirty seconds into a nearly five minute trip to their shaded bathing spot when Powder realized that she hadn’t paid attention to how Mylo, Claggor or Ekko were responding to how sick Vi was, or to Powder getting up and leaving them behind. Were any of them close to being as sick? Had she missed it?

 

The whole moment was still weird on so many levels. 

 

Here, she was walking down a barely familiar path in a wholly unfamiliar part of the world. Dirt and faint plant decay chased away the smell of sweat, but only barely. Moreover, if one discounted her silent, red-faced sister, (who had yet to speak and had already stumbled over two sets of tree roots in a few seconds) then, Powder was out here with someone it was hard not to still think of as a stranger. The boy was still half again as tall as she was and built as if he might be able to keep up with Vi in a brawl at her best. 

 

Vi certainly wasn’t at her best. 

 

Yet, every time Powder got a little nervous and shot an anxious look over her shoulder, she found Caras’ face screwed up in careful concentration as he followed maybe a step and a half on Vi’s heels with both hands half-extended. Back home, it would look like someone waiting for their moment to pounce or grab someone. Even Powder’s anxiety didn’t run that far out of control. Caras was so focused on making sure he could catch Vi if she tripped and fell he wasn’t even looking where he was going. 

 

For that matter, Vi was frowning at the ground between her own feet.

 

Powder was on her own leading the three of them. If the prior few nights of dusktime baths in the stream hadn’t taught her the way, they were probably in trouble. 

 

“Guess I fucked up again.” Vi finally lifted her head. Relieved, Powder picked up the pace as her sister began acting less like her spacy, uninterested or un here self, and more like the sister Powder knew wouldn’t take getting sidelined for being sick lying down. “Sorry Pow-pow.” Powder wasn’t sure what to say because she wasn’t sure what Vi would listen to. 

 

“You didn’t.” Powder told her, making a face. “Don’t be stupid.” This was a conversation that Vi had had to have with her from the other direction like, a billion times. “You can only do what you can do. That’s what you always say to me.” 

 

“Yeah, I guess so.” 

 

“You… too sunny.” Caras sounded as if he was trying to explain to Vi what was wrong with her. “Too… warm.” Powder was going to let the moment go past or think of some way to explain that they at least knew that much when Vi made a sound almost like she was choking and then laughed. It wasn’t a very normal sounding Vi laugh, but it was loud enough Powder tensed up. It reminded her way too much of her reaction to the view of the wide open, grassy wildflower fields visible from just outside of the gates of Basilich. 

 

“No one’s ever accused me of either of those things, before, Caras.” This was the first time Powder could remember Vi ever using the boy’s name and despite his confusion when she looked back, Powder smiled and had to hunch her shoulders a bit to hide her own laughter. Vi squeezed her hand, softly, but it was enough to annoy her own inflamed skin. 

 

It was still good when Vi started to laugh again, because at least she did not have to hide her own. 

 

“Not really.” Powder giggled despite herself. She could make an argument for her sister being warm but sunny, especially lately, would be a lot harder to justify. 

 

“Funny - what?” Caras questioned and Powder’s smile only grew wider when she looked back at the dumbfounded boy. 

 

“Thank you,” she told Caras, no longer remotely uncomfortable about his presence. She didn’t think Vi would be able to pretend much longer that Caras didn’t think she was cute, or something like that. Even if he ended up being the nicest person either of them had ever met, he was just a little too keen on being nice to Vi. The boy rubbed at his shoulder and shrugged his confusion away. 

 

Considering how shaky Vi’s legs were, she wasn’t able to protest much when Powder gestured Caras over to help her ease Vi down into a cool, slow running part of the stream. They started with just sitting - and frankly, Powder sat with her. She had to keep her cast out of the water, but soaking every other inch of her clothes and herself sounded just fine. 

 

It was just weird. 

 

She couldn’t help but think about how stupid what they were doing would be back home as she and Caras helped ease Vi into lying down next, just barely in the stream’s path, by pouring cupped hands of water over her. If someone was sick, the last thing anyone would say to do was get into water back in the undercity. That was just a ticket to getting sicker. If some of the sickness was about heat and not just the sun blaring right down on Vi for the last three days, the advice would do wonders, here.

 

Eventually, she sat by Vi’s side as it came time for her to lie back. A little less put together than she’d probably want to appear, Vi batted both Powder’s and Caras’ hands away from her and did it herself, easing herself back on arms that had to protest the act. On her end, Powder tilted her head upward to take in the slight overhang of the forest canopy above them. When she did, though, she couldn’t see it. 

 

All she saw was - bucket. 

 

Powder had just enough time to tilt her head further back, eyes wide and her betrayal written all over her face before she had to squeeze her eyes and mouth shut. The image of Ekko’s sneaky grin as he upturned the spare bucket full of cool water from the stream over her drove away even her shocked question: how did you sneak up on us? 

 

The water felt colder than some topside drink full of more ice than liquid as it splashed over her head, cascaded down her neck and through her hair and slid right down the back of her shirt and pants. Her body jerked forward like it was trying to get away from the sudden cold, but there was nowhere to go. When her breath froze in her throat, she heard Ekko give a great guffaw of excitement and enjoyment and she simultaneously grabbed at three half-empty threats she thought she ought to hurl his way. 

 

“Asshole!” Powder sputtered out her response before sucking in a deep breath. 

 

“Language,” Vi murmured from a foot or two away as if she had any right to correct her. 

 

When she finally opened her eyes again, Powder wasn’t sure who to glare at: Vi lying nearby with a smug, sleepy grin on her face in the shady waters or Ekko and Caras who were now doubled over laughing beside one another while the empty bucket rolled at Ekko’s feet. Instead she rocked forward for a second until the moment of shock finished working through her and… couldn’t stay mad. No matter how soft, how half-hearted, Vi was laughing again. No matter how tired he was, Ekko continued to treat her as he would’ve back home, not someone half broken like Vander and even sometimes Vi saw her, but like his friend he wanted to get one up on. 

 

And Caras? 

 

In the moment, Caras seemed like just one of the gang Vi might’ve hung around with in the Lanes and introduced her to. One of those people that were really Vi’s friends but treated Powder nice enough. 

 

That was okay, too. 

 

She didn’t hate that Caras was here because he wanted to help her sister or that Ekko was here because he wanted to get her goat. 

 

“Help me up.” Powder lifted her head back up and frowned at Ekko as if upset. He rolled his eyes once, like she was killing his fun and came over to offer his hand. She thought that was one of the dumbest things she’d ever seen him do. All it took was to reach up really quickly and yank and though he jostled her bad arm on the way down, she had Ekko soaked, as surely as she and Caras had done Vi. Much more quickly, too.

 

Powder stole what little time she could, the cold water chasing off the warming morning and pain from her own worsening sunburn. Vi stayed mostly quiet and only moved to itch her nose once or twice. With Ekko sat on the stream’s bank behind Vi’s head, herself on one side and Caras on the other, Powder didn’t worry that maybe her sister would fall asleep or, worse, pass out in the water. There were people there to take care of her. However Vi felt about it, (the fact that she now had her eyes focused mostly on the canopy above suggested she was tuning out of the moment as much as she could) her sister didn’t give anyone much grief for the next few minutes. When Ekko started to worry they needed to be getting back to the field, though, Vi was the first to rise. 

 

“Yeah, yeah.” Vi’s voice was softer than it had any right to be. It sounded like she’d hurt her throat when she’d gotten sick earlier. Vi sat up carefully in the shallows of the stream and though both Ekko and Caras readied themselves, she was able to get to her knees and then her feet, outfit soaked thoroughly.  Powder still ignored her sister’s silent offer of help up, instead relying on Ekko’s own. Vi’s face, still deep red, took on a little more life. She looked sour, though. 

 

“I’m sorry for what I did this morning, Powder.” Vi gathered all of Powder’s long, soaked blue hair carefully in one hand and brought it fully behind her back. It splattered against the back of her shirt in an unpleasant way. It was kind of like getting hit with a wet sponge, in a way. “Fucked up then, too.” 

 

“It’s okay.” Powder inhaled and then confessed to Vi, in front of Caras, what she had told Ekko earlier. Not that she thought Caras was likely to understand all of it, but possibly enough to be embarrassing. “I - I thought you were Deckard. I thought I was back in the office building. I freaked.” She waited for Vi to express concern or maybe to overreact all together and tell her to tell Vander about it. Instead, with the deep brown top she wore hanging heavy on her frame, Vi leaned a little further forward and exhaled slowly, as if it was a big effort. 

 

Powder kind of recognized the gesture and the way Vi subtly tugged at the hem of her shirt for what it was: an attempt to unstick her shirt. Powder’s own clung to her back unpleasantly. At least she was still cool. 

 

“I’m just sorry I did that to you, Powder.” For some reason, whether or not this was intentional, this second apology came out like Vi was talking to a little kid, again. Kind of the way she’d talked to Powder half of their journey aboard the Iconagra, as if she was keeping the way she really felt to herself. 

 

Powder didn’t answer. She let it go, because she didn’t want to argue or make her sister mad in this state. 

 

They made it back to the spot where Vander, Mylo and Claggor were waiting, all in all maybe an hour after they’d left their bags of seed behind in the field. Seeing the lot of them soaked through, Mylo didn’t even bitch about them ‘screwing around’ more than a few seconds, before he and Claggor decided to go do the same thing, themselves. This left Powder, Ekko and Caras all present to awkwardly look at the grass, the trees and the earth when Vi started to plead with Vander the minute their brothers were out of earshot. 

 

“Vander, I feel better. I feel better than I did this morning. I’m good to go, just put me back on the plow.” Vander, who had not even greeted them beyond a brief smile and a stiff nod, finally spoke. 

 

“Not a chance. You’re to go up to the house, sit in the shade. Cool down. When you get tired, go inside and take over the bed. You get to feeling better, then maybe you can walk into town with us tomorrow night. Unless Caras decides to take the yaks back tonight, we’ll deliver them, ourselves.” 

 

“But we-” Vander raised his hand, placed it lightly on Vi’s shoulder and shook his head once. Again, Powder noted his hair moved all as one matted mass, thanks to all the dirt and sweat and thought he could use a dip in the stream, himself. 

 

“No, Violet. Go. You did great.” 

 

Powder felt a lump in her own throat as she swallowed down a last mouthful of cool water but her sister’s eyes hardened, her face turned blank and distant and Vi nodded. A few steps away, Caras smiled at Vi, trying to just be friendly and cheer her up when the waterlogged striker turned to walk away from them. His face smoothed out and fell when Vi didn’t match his eyes, but instead vaguely quirked her lips in the direction of the field several feet behind him. 

 

“ Grazzie. ” Under other circumstances Powder would’ve teased her sister for having taken this long to remember the Va-Nox way to say ‘Thank you.’ It must’ve landed close enough to Ur-Nox, because Caras brightened again just a little. Caras rattled off a response in Ur-Nox, but when Vi shrugged, he translated. 

 

“It mean, I like to be with you again.” This time, Vi made a sound like a breathy laugh and waved her goodbye, which Caras returned much more enthusiastically before she started up toward the house. An awkward silence spread between those who remained until Vi was out of earshot. Ekko’s golden brown eyes bounced between hers and a new glass of water for several seconds and all Powder could do was sit where she was, waiting. 

 

It took Vander until the boy swerve back to interrupt the uncomfortable moment. In the meantime nothing drew her eyes away from the sight of Vi’s back as she cut across the field they’d just been planting on her path to the house. Alone. 

 

“Well, let’s get started. If anyone starts to get dizzy or nauseous, let me know.” This declaration came as soon as Claggor and Mylo were again in earshot, this time firmly soaked down themselves. 

 

“Sounds like eating at Izzy’s,” Mylo muttered. Claggor frowned down at Mylo, with enough intensity Powder would’ve pulled away from him if that had been aimed her way. Mylo did not. He just slowed his steps and fell behind their bigger brother. Vander sighed heavily and Powder was only brought back to herself and her earlier calm when Ekko patted her once on the back. Her pale blue top and slightly deeper blue hair were still soaked, so it made a comedic squishing sound. It was hard to ‘sulk’ through that.

 

“Not funny, this time.” It was rare for Claggor, of all people, to give Mylo grief. 

 

She didn’t hear Vander say anything specific while they headed back to their bags of seed and Caras excused himself over to where the yaks ( ‘fakkae ’) rested near a now empty water bucket. She still suspected that while she, Caras and Ekko were gone something had been said, because everyone, even Mylo, was moving slower when they got back out into the fields. Vander stuck to planting alone but Mylo followed Claggor with one of Ekko’s improvised rakes and Ekko stayed close on Powder’s tail with the real one. 

 

Powder was distinctly aware that Vi was not around to teach them anything about driving the plow like Vander had originally planned. 

 

Very distinctly. 

 

For the first few minutes after settling her seed bag around her shoulder, every time Powder looked past Ekko back at the shack, she saw Vi sitting beneath the lantern hanging by the door, shaded and staring down, down, down at the ground. When they’d covered the rest of the row the two had left off on before the break and Vi was still in the same position, Powder thought she’d fallen asleep there. After all, they’d both slept pretty close to that spot the night before and Powder really wanted to do the same again once the sun was down and it was a nice cool night. 

 

After a couple more hours, though, when the sun was firmly at its highest point in the sky, Powder noticed her sister was not in the same patch of shade and couldn’t mark when she might have last seen her there. The truth was she’d quickly fallen into the work because she wanted to be done. Just like Vi had, just like everyone else. Her arm and neck ached. The very top of her head beneath her hair protested the sun above. Parts of her face stung when she smiled or frowned and the longer they went the less Ekko spoke. As if he was getting frustrated, too. 

 

The good mood she’d tried to gather from their mid morning break was all but gone by the time the field was planted. Even with greater care and comfort being taken, the new practices Caras had shown the family about planting had paid off. There was no way they had not more than doubled their planting speed with that simple knowledge. Powder somewhat bitterly admitted to Caras she wasn’t sure how long it would’ve taken one of them to come up with the idea on their own. 

 

Sometimes, in moments like these, she thought Vi was right about something: this wasn’t like home; it wasn’t fair to expect them to figure out how to be ‘farmers’ in a few days. 

 

While planting had sped up, Powder was a little flummoxed by the fact that plowing had, too. It wasn’t that it didn’t make sense Caras knew how to do all this. She was pretty sure at this point that with all the animals they had and all the seed they’d brought the first time she met Orkis and Caras, they were farmers themselves. Somehow, though, she’d thought that Vi was pushing the yaks as fast as they could go without wearing them out or getting sloppy. If anything, Caras’ was plowing more straight lines, cleaner, evenly spread out and straighter. 

 

Though he smiled and waved on the off chance he caught them looking his way, it wasn’t with the same wide grinned enthusiasm he showed when waving down Vi. Powder hadn’t called her sister out on his friendliness toward her earlier because Vi was clearly sick. Actually, she’d been very good about that, so, she was totally gonna keep an eye out for her first chance to tease Caras about it, instead.

 

By the time she looked up from mostly quiet work to find that Caras had successfully plowed down yet another field  and was heading to the other side of the property where Vander had marked one last field for this season’s planting, they were well past high noon. The day was warmer, the sun beaming straight down and any good that had been done by dousing their work clothes in the stream had long evaporated. Her own skin felt on fire. 

 

She soaked up every single second in the shade that their afternoon break afforded her and didn’t even complain when she went to the shack to look in on Vi and found that her sister had fetched water from the stream and prepared it for them before curling up into the bed Mylo had claimed since they’d gotten there. Vander was not as pleased when she’d come back with a full jug of water early, leaving no doubt about who was responsible for it being ready. When she’d thought to ask Claggor or Ekko to pick up the pot and bring it out, too, Vander had volunteered instead. 

 

She was glad to have seen her sister’s eyes looking a little more like herself when they opened at her coming inside the first time. She was even more glad not to be there when Vander came to chew Vi a new one for apparently ignoring his instructions not to do anything but rest. 

 

“Any idea what to make?” Ekko asked her several minutes later, when Vander’s return and the cross look on his dirt and sweat smeared face made Powder practically bury hers in her own bowl of water. She didn’t want to see him angry, right now. I’m so tired of everyone being so mad. 

 

“I still don’t know. We could work on something to help cool us down. If we had the dumps back home, I’d try to make some kind of fan. Or maybe we could make some kind of water filter for before boiling it? Everything we need for that might be out here.” She took another long drink as Vander settled the pot beside Claggor, dropped into a seat and retrieved his own bowl for a sip from the tin pitcher. 

 

None of them commented on the fact that occasionally they still had dirt or something else settling at the bottom of the pot they boiled water in every morning and night. (It was more often on days like today.) 

 

“Well, she’s been told if she leaves that bed before sundown I’m locking her in there. Same thing tomorrow, too. We’ll be getting our own water.” It was like Vander was utterly oblivious to the vibe or Powder’s own attempts to avoid talking about or acknowledging it. Or maybe he just didn’t care. 

 

“It sucks to lose her this close to the end,” Mylo grumbled. 

 

“She probably thinks so, too.” Claggor’s response was short, calm, but somehow stopped their brother in his tracks. “But she looked like shit going down to the stream this morning. She’s gonna get really sick.” 

 

“She is really sick.” Vander spoke with finality. “Frankly, thinking about not letting her go down to the creek tonight. Food, water, sleep, you know?” Having been quiet for the last minute or two himself, Caras piped up at this from beside Mylo where the two were passing back and forth the water jug and desperately trying to quench the same dry mouth Powder had. Powder did not read too much into Caras drinking from the bowl Vi had left behind. It wasn’t deep, it didn’t mean anything except that they had almost nothing to eat or drink from here. 

 

“Yes! Drink, sleep, cold.” Caras nodded encouragingly but Vander took it more like agreement and nodded at the boy, looking pleased, either with Caras or himself. 

 

The bowl only feels like it means something because Caras took her job and she’s stuck inside waiting. 

 

“She knows how I feel now.” Ekko looked up from the one real drinking glass of the bunch and raised an eyebrow. Powder lowered her head immediately, mortified. Asshole, asshole, asshole! She berated herself in her head; that last comment had been intended for the same cavernous, empty skull. She eased her eyes shut and just focused on breathing as a lump returned to her throat. That wasn’t nice, or fair but….

 

It was true. 

 

Powder couldn’t count the number of times Vander or Vi had told her she was too little for something and she’d been left behind while everyone else went to do or see or find something. The worst might’ve been when Silco took Vander but it hadn’t been the first time. 

 

When Powder tried to avoid Ekko’s eyes it was to find Mylo and Vander both looking at her. Vander looked concerned but Mylo, Mylo’s face was different. For just the half moment until he realized she was looking and turned away with a dismissive eyeroll and something like a sneer, Mylo looked sympathetic. 

 

He had just been told he wasn’t ‘ready’ for anything except for travel for a month. 

 

“You two could try to make a thresher.” Vander’s voice came slowly, like a minecart picking up speed before hitting a downhill slope. (Powder definitely didn’t have any first hand experience in regards to how quickly those could get out of control fast going downhill, nope.) “It’d save us a lot of time in the next few weeks.” 

 

“What’s a thresher?” Ekko looked hooked, having forgotten her slip up, her silly little baby tantrum about her sick sister. 

 

“Good question. Saw one once in Piltover. It was huge and we don’t need that, but they’re used to beat up and break up the wheat stalks to separate the wheat from the wheatberries - the seeds we’re planting and the stuff that gets used for bread or porridge or whatever you choose. By the time we harvest, the wheat should be pretty dry, kinda gold-brown, yellowed. So just kind of breaking the stalks helps. Then we’d just have to find some way to dry it all out and we could give the stalks to Caras here for some feed.”

 

Caras nodded eagerly and this time, spoke in Va-Nox, as Vi had hours ago. 

 

“ Grazzie !” What he’d probably intended to come out cheerful just sounded gasped out, as the boy rushed to swallow a mouthful of water to speak.It also suggested he was getting better at understanding or guessing at what was being said in Piltovan. 

 

Powder started to consider Vander’s idea. 

 

“I think they feed it up or down into the machines, something inside spins really fast and beats them up, knocks the seeds loose and drops them down into a bin or something below. We could just use the tarp, this time, maybe?” 

 

“Okay, how do we do that?” Ekko asked. Though he wasn’t looking especially at anyone, Powder knew the question was for her. She exhaled and fought down the voice still insisting she was being a huge jerk to VI in her absence and began to pluck at the hem of her own shirt with her free hand. She wondered how she’d ever get the smell of sweat and dirt out of it, if they didn’t have enough soap to properly wash clothes out here. 

 

“A crank, obviously, but I don’t see how we’d make one except out of wood and I don’t know what we use to keep it spinning. What kind of lubricant do they have out here? We don’t even have, like, oil or fat or anything.” Ekko frowned and itched for a second at his left arm with his right hand before hissing irritation. 

 

“Oh yeah,” Vander interrupted. “That stops, now, everyone. You don’t want to scratch at sunburns. Once they actually start healing they’ll itch like a devil.” Powder didn’t like the sound of that. They already hurt. 

 

“If we could make a big round rod with a bunch of pegs or something sticking out of it - like maybe nails….” Ekko trailed off and Powder frowned. “Same problem though. No nails and wood pegs would probably break if we tried to make something like that.” 

 

“Wait, I think you’re on the money. There were a couple of big, long, round cylinders in there when I saw it.” Vander’s encouragement was nice, but Powder grumbled as she fell into an old habit and rubbed at her cheek, only serving to upset the skin there, too. 

 

“We don’t have nails for rods, but maybe some short rocks jammed into wood?” 

 

“Yes!” Ekko sounded more himself in his excitement but then immediately returned to his crabby grimace. “But still no way to make a crank that doesn’t stick and grind and stuff. If we can even get it to turn, it’ll take forever and be really tough.” 

 

“Is there a dump nearby?” Powder called down the line, trying to get Caras attention. The boy responded with a look of embarrassment, as if he didn’t quite follow, and shrugged. 

 

“Tell you what, we’re bringing the yaks back to Orkis tomorrow. We’ll go through the village, I bet they’ve got a butcher there and we might be able to price or bargain for some fat in exchange for something. Maybe someone there will know if there’s anything nearby like a dump but I bet we’d need to head somewhere bigger to find the kind of things you’re looking for, around here. We can look in on pricing for nails and have something to look forward to or save up for later.” Powder watched Vander lean past Claggor to pat Caras once on the back, to put the boy at ease, but noticed the slight wince this earned this time. She wouldn’t be surprised to find Caras a little sunburnt, himself on the back. 

 

Dinner that night was a whole other thing. 

 

First and foremost, once Caras left a couple hours before sundown, work had slowed a little because Claggor had to finish off the last of the plowing. He had managed it and other than the two fields left intentionally untouched for this season, all that remained to do was finish planting. On the other hand, once Caras left it was a little bit like a machine that had come unbalanced. They had two teams of two planting and got the second field almost completely done, meaning they did not even have a long day of planting ahead of them. 

 

That was a plus…

 

But Mylo had just gotten more and more sour as the day went on. 

 

Now, with his own food balanced on his lap, he rotated between complaining about how hard the stretch of ground that Vi usually claimed as her own was going to be to sleep on and just zoning out until inevitably reminded to eat or drink by Vander. Vi wasn’t doing much better. In fact, if anything, Vi was scaring her again. She seemed to have taken whatever Vander said to her to heart: since they’d come in, Vi had only gotten out of the old, lumpy straw-packed bed once, to weakly head off into the treeline to do her business.

 

And it should’ve been a good thing that Vi wasn’t responding to any of Mylo’s complaints or his occasional sneering. 

 

Vi also wasn’t at all excited about the baked potatoes, coated in salt and pepper and oil from the little clay pot in the cellar the way she had been last time. She didn’t respond to any attempts to engage her except to answer surface level questions and shrug off anything she’d have to think about, coming off kinda bratty herself when she wasn’t staring into the distance just like Mylo. 

 

“So the last field - we can do the ‘seed’ potatoes there?” Ekko asked as Vander began to dish out a smaller portion of rice for each of them to go along with the potato. Starch on starch at least left her stomach feeling full and distracted her from the fact that she felt like every exposed inch of skin on her face and neck was an old radiator burning out of control. 

 

“Sure can.” Vander sounded barely awake, himself and Claggor had already dropped his potato on his knees nodding off over his dinner. None of them had made it down to the stream to clean up, yet. By the time they finished eating it would be pitch black out there. Powder wasn’t going to be making that trip alone and she damn sure wasn’t going with the boys. So, she hoped Vi was up for the walk. “They’re a bigger pain to plant and harvest and we probably don’t have enough to fill the field up, so we’ll do as many as we can, then spread the wheat seed. Think we’ll have to cover the potatoes up a bit more, so it might be a harder plant, but at least we know a trick now.” 

 

Vander gestured a thumb to the old rake leaned up in the corner, inherited from the farm’s prior owners. 

 

“Thank the gods Vi here scared the dickens out of Caras in the woods one day.” The man sounded like he was joking in general or trying to gall Vi into a response, but her sister did not lift her head from her dinner for several more minutes, until Powder brought up the idea of a bath before it got much darker. 

 

The dark didn’t stop her, though, from insisting that she wanted to sleep outside again. It didn’t stop Vi from talking Vander into letting her do the same thing. It didn’t hurt that Vi and Powder had ganged up on him, arguing that it was going to be cooler outside at night anyway and this way Mylo could get his bed back and stop whining. (Mylo had not been a fan of the comment but had held his tongue, perhaps out of fear that Vi might take his bed that night anyway if he annoyed her. Powder didn’t think there was a good chance of that.) 

 

And so, it seemed like a good end to a kinda bad day to lie down in the grass outside of the house with Ekko on one side and Vi on the other - to look up at the starry sky that had never before tonight held her attention like it did Ekko’s. It felt like a tiny bit of hope when Vi murmured her promise that she was feeling better and she would sleep in during the day while they all worked so she could start to teach them how to box, just like her. 

 

The cool night air on her face and exposed arm, the full stomach, the faint taste of salty, crispy potato skins on her lips and Vi having helped her comb out her hair after the dip into the stream all set her to have a good night’s sleep and forget how much her body hurt at least until morning when they got up and finally finished. 

 

Things had just ended a little too well. 

 

When she woke up it was not a surprise to find it still dark out. What was a surprise was that she opened her eyes to the pinprick-filled sky above her and not the face of someone trying to shake her awake for breakfast. Uncharacteristically, Vi was faintly snoring to one side of her. She badly wanted to roll over onto her right side but didn’t want to risk slowing her arm’s healing down. So instead, when Powder felt a pain in her left shoulder from lying on that side too long, she turned away from facing Vi and onto her back. She intended to briefly look over Ekko to make sure he was actually asleep and then close her eyes.

 

They weren’t out there, alone, though. 

 

Like a forgotten nightmare remembered during the worst part of the next day, Powder was struck by the sight of a person standing in the distance. Surrounded by a strange light with no source that left her far, far too visible for the time of night or how far away she was, a woman waited on the edge of the last field they’d managed to plow that day. Sight blurry from sleep, Powder still made out a faint lavender mass at the top of the form’s head. She froze in place, head turned, and watched this woman watching the three of them. 

 

There was no way of telling how long the stranger bathed in concentrated moonlight had been standing there, either. 

 

Seconds? 

 

Hours?

 

Even with the inexplicable light, the distance didn’t let Powder make out the strange makeup around the woman’s eyes but the longer she stared the clearer the stranger’s pale indigo skintone became and the clearer it became that she was leaning against a long, wooden staff. Powder slowly began to slide her left hand toward Vi. She stopped when she heard a voice from nowhere as if it were ringing in both of her ears… or maybe just in her mind. 

 

“ Please, do wake them. By the time they stir, I’ll be gone and they’ll think me a dream, child.” Frozen yet again on her back, Powder continued to crane her neck and stare over Ekko at the woman. More alarming than the strange voice inside her own brain was how sure she was that the stock still stranger wasn’t even looking at her, but at Ekko.

 

Powder knows it, with certainty: this was the same woman from the first town they’d passed through after Basilich, the one she’d been sure was watching her and Ekko both. The one who’d pulled a staff from inside of her robes without making so much as a ripple. The one who’d vanished into thin air without anyone else reacting. The one who knew magic. 

 

“ The boy - does he know about the package buried behind the little house? ” Powder exhaled all at once and struggled, struggled to suck in another breath. “ I see, he does . Good. ”  Bone crushing guilt struck as if someone had punched her and terror followed right behind it. Powder knew the difference between fear and terror now. Deckard and Silco had taught her that. She curled her hand into a fist and her toes tight. Wake them up, Powder told herself, but every breath felt shallow. When she finally tried to call Vi’s name, it came out like a raspy gasp from someone… very close to dying. 

 

Despite lying right next to her, neither Vi nor Ekko heard her. 

 

She did not think she could drag her eyes away from this woman in the distance, this stranger throwing words into her head. 

 

Powder had only told one person where she hid that bag and why she’d snuck out the very first night they’d tried to sleep in the house. It hadn’t been to go pee like she’d insisted to the others, either. 

 

That was Ekko, so there was no good reason this stranger would know about it the little leather pouch under a pile of brush just to one side of the cellar doors. 

 

It wasn’t just a voice thrown into her head, in the next moment. 

 

Even though she knew she was lying in the grass in Noxus a second ago, Powder watched like a ghost flying around behind herself as she crossed the big room of some topside apartment (no, the topside apartment) and the other Powder slipped out into a little hallway. 

 

“ I’ve seen what he will do with that power - and what he will not. At least, what he will not do here, in this turn of the clock. But you are so much harder to pin down, child. ” The other Powder, (the one who still had a body and a will and wasn’t stuck witnessing something awash in fresh terror and faintly aware of a need for the bathroom,) was reaching out for a series of small little orbs in the next second. She had not needed to go into the room they were in or open the chest containing them. In one second, the other Powder had been outside in the hallway and now she was stood near a table next to a large chalkboard loaded with numbers and symbols. 

 

“What will you do?” The other Powder was so pale and thoughtless, munching on someone else’s sandwich, handling a strange, glowing blue orb. So stupid, stupid, STUPID! STUPID! STUPID! STUPID! STUPID! 

 

“ What name will Piltover know?” 

 

The other Powder froze in the hallway, halfway into the main room where her sister was whispering insistently for her to hurry. Someone was fiddling with keys outside of the well painted door. A young, feminine voice seemed to tease or chide a more masculine one. The other Powder turned, still too stupid. Still too fast. 

 

“Delight or destruction?”

 

The room the other Powder tore through was not unlike the sitting room in the Last Drop’s basement. Unless one counted the fancy metal contraptions, pretty oakwood tables and the well stuffed couch cushions, the full bookshelf and a painting on the wall in bright blues and greens. The greens were washed out - every other color was washed out as she heard a tiny ting-ting above her own unheard shouts for help. The other Powder hesitated as she ran, realizing she’d dropped part of her only really interesting find. Then all that was visible inside was blue. 

 

Most of the room was blown away or vaporized. In flashes, she watched in her ghostly state as the other Powder and Claggor and Mylo were hurled back against the railing of the balcony, nearly tossed over. Below Other Powder, a pillar on the side of the structure shattered. The whole floor they were on shook at its very structure. A chunk of stone dislodged from the side of the apartment building as a blast of blue lightning shot out over the head of Other Powder and the people she’d nearly killed.

 

“ Powder? Or Jinx?” 

 

The chunk of stone plummeted to the ground. Dressed in ridiculous fineries with a dress flared twice as big around at the bottom as her shoulders, a topsider out on a stroll on a beautiful, sunny warm day was crushed. The hunk of masonry once responsible for keeping a building full of people safe and stable left visible a hand sticking out from beneath it all too clear an uneven crimson red splatter on the stone. 

 

Whistles and boot falls filled her mind. Lumber and dislodged furniture followed parts of a wall and a bit of the floor to the ground. Somehow most of the explosion had gone down, below the level it started on. 

 

STUPID! STUPID! STUPID! 

 

Shame and guilt drove the Powder in Noxus to be able to move. It pushed her head and whole body down under the blanket. It buried her hand in her hair and it filled her mind with flashes of her secret. 

 

It brought her back her voice. 

 

“No!”

 

Vi shot up to one side of her, Ekko rolled all at once onto his stomach and scrambled out from under the blanket. Her left hand stopped tugging at locks and curled, balled and beating against her head, against her stupid stupid stupid brain and the deep chuckling that spread through her veins. The stranger’s laughter gave way to another woman’s, entirely. 

 

The second voice was higher, dark and cold, laughing at someone’s suffering like it was the funniest joke in the world. The high pitched laughter and her own screaming almost drowned out the sound of the little wood door to the shack being nearly knocked off its hinges. 

 

“POWDER!” Vander’s voice was close and loud but she could not stop screaming. She couldn’t stop screaming because she needed to hear it, everyone needed to hear it. It had to be true that

 

“THAT’S NOT ME! THAT’S NOT ME! THAT’S NOT ME!” Her own fist slammed into her right eye, missing its target: the side of her head. Sharp pain seared through her face and then the blanket moved. Someone pulled it away. Someone exposed the stars. Someone showed her the image in the sky of blue lightning that existed, it seemed, without radiance or lux and visible to her and her alone before it faded. “THAT’S NOT ME!” Someone held Powder’s hand back from the fight. 

 

Vander and Vi were at her side, Ekko standing just at Vander’s shoulder as the man knelt down and Vi crawled to her knees. Claggor’s face was visible over Ekko’s shoulder and Mylo’s over his. 

 

“I’m sorry!” She turned her head from Vander to Vi to Ekko, but none of them snarled and shouted at her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have touched them. I'm sorry, I’m so sorry!” 

 

Why weren’t they yelling at her? 

 

“Powder!” Vi shouted, finally giving her the expected input. Her head snapped around to her sister and her eyes clenched shut then threw themselves right back open.  “Listen to me, you were having a dream. ” 

 

“She said you’d say that!” 

 

“She who?” This time it was Vander who took her by the chin and turned her head ‘round to match his eyes. She could not make herself, though. Powder tried to pull her wrist free of Vi’s grasp at the same time she wiggled her head away from Vander but - she was tired. So tired. Vi released her as if out of putting and Powder curled herself tightly around her broken arm, protecting it though she could not say from who. 

 

“The woman who was watching Ekko and me.” 

 

“Who - when?”Vander repeated and she no longer saw him but could imagine him looking around for someone and seeing nothing in the dark. The light from the open window and door of the house and the fire in its hearth was the only light Powder saw, now. 

 

“She was at the town we came through. When we played ball with the others. She was watching me and tonight she was watching Ekko and talking to me. She - she knows things.” 

 

“What kind of things?” Vi whispered her question, like it would make Powder not hate herself. “What does she know?” 

 

“She knows I’m - I’m…”

 

“She knows you’re what?” Vi laid a hand on her head and Powder shouted out the truth she’d never admitted to herself into her own knee as she tried desperately to raise it practically to her face. 

 

“She knows I’m a jinx!” A long sigh met the exclamation. Her hand was still not free and that was wrong because she had to - to - to knock it out of her - to knock Her out of her - to punish. Vi slid down onto her ass and Powder felt through Vi’s grasp on her that her sister wavered, dizzy. This made sense. The world spun around her and Vi was the only person or thing that remained stationary . 

 

“Powder, you’re not a jinx.” As soon as she dared to open her eyes, to look up at her sunburnt, maybe even sun poisoned sister in the pitch black, a loud rattling drove them shut again. The front door to the shack slammed tightly closed. Powder rolled back and forth on her side, jarring her bad arm. She sucked in a breath through the pain and tried to stay herself enough to talk and listen. “You had a nightmare.” 

 

“And it’s okay.” Vander spoke as if finishing Vi’s thought in his own voice. “But think about it. You’re so far away from that town. Almost a full day by cart. Wouldn’t make a lot of sense for someone to travel all that way here just to give you a scare, would it?” It sounded like the man she faintly understood as a warrior, a fighter, was trying to make her laugh. He just didn’t understand. “Why would they know you, or Ekko, or any of us, either?” 

 

Powder shook her head. 

 

“I don’t know but she knows - she knows secrets,” Powder whispered, trying to put this thought out to Vi alone, but Vi just shushed her. Not cruelly, sure. It was an attempt to be comforting, but it was also dismissive, like Powder was just hysterical. She knows too much. 

 

“I’m gonna take Claggor and get a look around just to be sure. How about that?” Vander asked. When she did not immediately respond he started to stand and she managed to pull Vi’s hand along where it held her just below her wrist, so she could point in the direction their visitor had been standing. Vander left her side without another word and he was much softer on the front door as he went back inside and came out a moment later, lantern in hand. 

 

A second set of footsteps suggested he’d gotten Claggor as he said. This all took less than a minute, a minute during which Ekko took Vander’s place beside her but did not really say anything. A minute during which she could not see the disbelief she heard in Vi’s voice on the girl’s face or it would crush her. A minute during which she hoped Ekko finally and fully believed her. As the sound of Claggor’s and Vander’s footsteps grew further away, she lifted her head from beneath her good arm, and sucked in a deep breath through a stuffy nose. 

 

“Ekko, you gotta show her the thing near the cellar.” 

 

“What are you talking about?” Vi and Ekko spoke the same words but with clearly different tones. Vi, confused, Ekko in disbelief and discomfort. 

 

“You’ll see,” she told Vi. “The woman knew about it. So you better too.” At this, she dared match eyes with the friend she counted on almost as surely as she counted on Vi herself. Ekko, calmer than her by far, still frowned as if a little nervous and then nodded her way. 

 

“Come on.” She didn’t miss the dejection in his voice. She and Ekko were of a mind about the little blue orbs buried behind the shack that they were supposed to call home: they could be used if they could just be understood. She did not want Vi to tell Vander about them and get the two of them in trouble or take them away anymore than Ekko did but if this creepy magic woman knew about them, Vi needed to. 

 

At least, she hoped her sister was the least likely to scream at her the refrain running in a part of her mind both in her own voice and in one a lot like it - but so much crueler. Stupid! Stupid! STUPID! 

 

“I’ll be right back, okay Powder?” She did not answer but looked past Vi up at the sky. No unnatural lightning missed by others arced between the stars, this time. Instead, it was just stars. 

 

How had she never noticed before how creepy all the quiet was? She wanted the sounds of the Lanes at night. She wanted them real bad. 

 

Powder clenched her free hand at her side, no longer tempted to strike out at herself or the wrong voice or the stupid stupid stupid even when there was too much of the last. Her eye ached. She was a little worried she’d really hurt it but it was hard to say if everything was blurrier than it should be or not, when she was fresh out of sleep and fresh out of tears and fresh out of energy. 

 

She didn’t know how she’d get up to help plant. She wasn’t sure how she’d had the energy to get up yesterday morning, either. 

 

After a few moments, the sound of brush being cleared away around back came to an end and it took a surprisingly short amount of time before Vi learned what was buried behind the house. 

 

“Holy shit, are you fucking kidding me?” Her sister sounded confused and angry and maybe a little scared. Powder returned to her side. It was easier to move, side to side, just slightly and ignore the urge to ball her fist up again. 

 

“We have to get up early, you know. Aren’t you too old for nightmares?” Powder did not look at the window. She knew who stared out of it. She could imagine his mocking snarl. Self control faded and she grabbed tight to her own locks because at least then the urge to swing that fist might pass. At least her hair hung loose tonight. It did not hurt as badly, even though part of her scalp was burnt beneath it. 

 

Vi did not say anything about what she had to have seen when she sat back down beside Powder. The girl’s familiar, safe arms wrapped the blanket over the both of them and then wrapped itself over Powder, forcing her hand free and to one side. A few seconds more passed and she found she did not remember when Vi came back or when Ekko joined, lying down beside them and tilting his head back up. 

 

“I’m here.” She lifted her head, trying really hard to smile. The smile didn’t come, but a question did. 

 

“Do you believe me, Ekko?” she asked over Vi’s arm and tried to ignore her sister’s eyes on her. Was that pity, anger or fear those eyes were drilling into the side of her head? 

 

Ekko’s response was a look of conflict and the hurt was immediate. Even in the dark, her clever friend must’ve seen just how much it hurt because a moment later he lied to her. 

 

“I do.” 

 

At least he’s nice enough to lie.

 

Chapter 15: Chapter Fifteen

Notes:

I could not begin to describe the myriad of things that got in the way of writing (much less posting) this chapter. I hope it's still enjoyable but I gotta say I can't promise next chapter will be on time, either. I'll do my very best, though life has not actually let me do a full, proper clean up of the outline yet.

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

---

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

Vi had just reached the twenty hour mark since the last time she’d been sick (mostly without anyone noticing, she thought) when she thought that the heavy, oppressive woods around both sides of the road leading to the nearest village made it look later than it was. Technically, somewhere nearing the horizon on her right side, the sun was still in the air. You could not tell by looking west, though. Limbs and leaves blocked its path from her eyes. 

 

That was fuckin’ fine by Vi, too. 

 

She’d thought her deep red arms, face and neck were hurting the morning before, before Vander had pulled her off of the plow and sent her to bed. (She could not remember him ever having done that before, and it only worsened the sense she’d royally fucked up, again.) Tonight, even with the sun hidden in the trees, she learned that the worst had yet to come. The pain was neither better nor that much harsher but it had been joined by a faint, persistent itching that she had a horrible feeling was about to get worse. 

 

To make the whole thing worse, even having just finished four or five very hard days of work, they were taking the trip to return the animals to Orkis slowly. As a family. And she was the reason they were practically crawling along. 

 

“I think I wanna sleep out front again tonight,” Ekko told Vi from a few feet away after a quick wave of his hand to get her attention. “I’m gonna get too hot inside.” Vi nodded agreement but even that caused her neck to hurt. 

 

“Yeah - the itching’s worse when I’m hot.” Following her response, Powder made a noise of frustration, like a groan. Vi didn’t have to look at her to know that she was in similar agony as she shuffled along beside Vander, up ahead of them. Her sister had the added bonus of sporting a self-imposed black eye that no one had yet to comment on. 

 

Vi had briefly considered telling the girl that it made her look like she’d been in a scrape and come out on top, but then the memory of freezing in place looking down at the pouch of small, glowing blue orbs buried behind the shack drove away all sense of humor or cheer. Spending the rest of the day inside at Vander’s insistence while her family finished planting had not helped that, any. 

 

Speaking of sunburns, Vander was not handling his well, either. Though he didn’t complain about it with words, she noticed how he winced whenever someone (or one of the animals he was leading) as much as brushed against his arms. It wasn’t just the three of them, either. Ekko  walked with his arms stiffly at his sides and she thought she’d caught him frustrated to the point of tears around lunch time, trying to find a way to sit with his back against the outer wall of the shack without hurting himself. 

 

Despite being as burnt as the rest of them, Claggor seemed to be the least vocal about his pains. Mylo, on the other hand… 

 

“This fucking sucks, man,” he called, raising a hand to itch at the back of his neck. Claggor elbowed him quickly, silently, but not without a small smirk on his face to stop it. 

 

Vi couldn’t disagree.

 

“Language,” Vander called back from the front of the two massive yaks he and the aforementioned slumrat with the black eye were ‘leading’ along the road. Vi wondered again how these two walls of muscle and flesh and bone didn’t just run down everyone in their way and go do whatever in the heck they wanted. “And you know what, if you want to keep sleeping in the dirt, have fun. Just - stay closer to the door this time. Maybe all that big open darkness fed into how things went last night, eh?”

 

“It wasn’t a nightmare!” Powder didn’t raise her voice often. It was incredibly rare. It was rarer she did so in Vander’s presence and unheard of to do so to Vander. Vi still heard the pout in her sister’s tone. 

 

“More room for us anyway.” Claggor looked intent on changing the subject when she glanced down the line of them. Ekko, on the other hand, just kept his eyes on the road a few steps ahead of him. Like he didn’t want to lift his head. Having been in bed or in the shade all day, Vi wasn’t sure, but she was starting to worry Ekko and Powder had had some kind of argument during the day. “It’s gonna be bad when it gets too cold to sleep out there anyway.” 

 

Claggor’s round, red face fell, too. 

 

“Wonder how much it would take to use all that stone and rubble from the old stable, maybe mill some wood somehow and make another structure, get us some more space.” Vander liked to talk big, unreasonable projects and in the moment Vi didn’t even have the energy to point out that none of them knew how to mill wood. The honest fact was, Vi could see a lot of work in their future but the shack was too small for all of them and while it was fun to sit under shady trees like those lining the lane around her or sleep out under a blanket and look up at the stars, winter wouldn’t wait forever. It also just wasn’t really comfortable sleeping outside. 

 

On the other hand, she was tired of Mylo walking on her in the middle of the night when he needed to take a leak. She was tired of Vander or Claggor snoring making a racket she could not tune out. Worse, she was already starting to have nights where the odd moments where it sounded as if Vander had stopped breathing entirely really freaked her out. Lying in dirt and grass was not a long term answer to any of those problems.

 

At least this idea sounded like a step up from Vander’s ‘lean-to’ idea. 

 

“We could build something.” Powder engaged with the topic and the way Ekko clued back in and hurried to catch up at least put Vi to some ease. 

 

“Probably nothing that’s gonna meet PIltover safety standards and no survival training covered this. I still think I might have some ideas. If we put in a little extra work, we could make something long term.” This last sentence actually distracted Vi the fact that something like a quarter of her body was screaming at her. She wasn’t the only one. 

 

“Long term?” Claggor prompted. 

 

“Well, this is our home now.” Vander made the statement as if it meant nothing. As if it wasn’t not-so-subtly writing off the idea of going home any time soon, to their real home. “What if we expanded on it by building a log cabin off the back of the shack? Or the front?” 

 

“Do you think we could?” 

 

Vi wished she understood why Claggor’s sudden interest, even faint hope, hurt a little. One quick match of the eyes with Mylo (who was in the middle of pushing his bangs away from his sunburnt forehead) showed him to be angry. She looked away and ahead and told her legs to stop complaining. 

 

She’d already had a day off. 

 

“Don’t know much about it myself,” Vander admitted. “But maybe someone in the village knows a thing or two.” Vi was so busy sliding back back into a familiar rage at the idea of abandoning their actual home and a mixture of despair and frustration at being unable to stop it that she almost missed Powder and Ekko talking as the duo fell back behind Vander. She was about to try to tune into their conversation when Ekko piped up. 

 

“Powder has an idea!” 

 

“Shh!” Her sister was quick to press a finger to her lips and almost comically recoiled from the gesture when even that hurt a little. She still looked as if she would like to go back in time and prevent Ekko’s outburst, though. Mortified a little, or nervous. Nervous that - 

 

“What a surprise.” Vi didn’t say a word, she just rammed her right shoulder sideways and pushed Mylo, stumbling, a step or two away from her. “Hey, what the hell?” The boy was cross, now, but at least he was done with the fucking snark. The shove wasn’t enough, though. She desperately wanted to turn and throw herself at him. She wanted to drive one of her painfully clenching fists just once into his stomach and take the wind from him for a few seconds. Anything to shut him up. 

 

Anything to do something about something. 

 

Anything to - 

 

Ekko pulled her back to her senses and judging by the way his arm trailed off in front of him, Powder was trying to hurry them back up toward Vander, away from where Claggor was now weaving to his left to put himself between Vi and Mylo. Mylo huffed as he hurried to catch up but Vi thought he just ought to be glad he was still standing up.

 

“Well, I was saying I didn’t see any log cabins or even a lot of wood in buildings and she said there might be a reason.”

 

“I just meant - “ Powder slowed, hesitating, and then spoke up as she fell back in line with an insistent Ekko. “Maybe they know things that are better to build with here. Or ‘longer term’. We could look at how they do it in the village.” A grunt from up ahead told Vi that the man with his lengthening faintly graying hair carefully hand-combed back on his head had heard and considered this and seemingly had no idea that she’d shoved Mylo aside. 

 

She just hoped none of them had any idea how much physically weaker she felt after just doing that. 

 

“Alright then, that’s part two of our trip to the village. Tour around it. Look about. Meet some folk maybe - “ Mylo groaned in aggravation and Vander continued emphatically, still not turning to look behind him as they trod the dirt road through the darkening woods. “And be on our best behavior. ” The smaller of the boys threw what were normally pretty skilled hands in the air as if in surrender. This time, Vander somehow knew what was going on behind him. “You’d think after being stuck inside all this time you’d be happy for a night out somewhere different.” 

 

“I just don’t wanna walk back home in the dark.” Mylo sounded as if he was defending himself to some sort of attack. 

 

“Why? Scared?” Vi didn’t say anything because this shot earned Mylo’s glare but also told Vi that Powder, whose voice shook through the taunt, was no less spooked by the idea. Beyond just being tired, Vi hadn’t thought about the fact that they might be walking back home with only the light of a single lantern to guide them. She hoped nothing was going to be out looking for a late night meal in those woods. 

 

“What are you talking about? Night’s great! ” Ekko sounded more himself but also weirdly less freaked out than Vi herself about the concept. “More stars than I’ve ever seen in my life.” 

 

Yeah, that’s what it’s like not having dirt or smog over ya. Vi didn’t voice this, not intent on taking a page out of Mylo’s book and ruining other peoples’ fun and excitement. Besides, Ekko’s enthusiasm even looked to have calmed Powder down. The girl slowly unwound beside Ekko, still walking beside him hand in hand despite the fact that a moment ago she was trying to pull the boy away from Mylo. 

 

Speaking of Ekko, he got started on the idea of studying how the locals built buildings the minute they got into sight range of the village edge. By the time Vi realized they’d arrived and looked up from the ground beneath her shaking, lead-heavy legs, Ekko was pointing at his third structure in a row. 

 

“There, look, another one. All the wood on the outside is around doors and windows, but not really built into the walls or anything.” 

 

“They have to have some wood in them, though,” Vander countered. “At least in the roof, like our house does.” 

 

“Okay, sure,” Ekko agreed, as he and Powder slowed down several steps ahead of Vander and the yaks. “But it looks like any wood’s mostly inside.”

 

“Like, beams to hold up big roofs or maybe just the frame of the house?” This time, Powder chimed in and Vi let her attention wander again as Claggor voiced his agreement and she, Vander and Mylo stayed quiet. Fact was, the trip here had been harder on her than she’d expected. Every step felt like a labor and she just wanted to sit or lie down. It was so much easier to think about being in her blanket asleep and unaware than deal with the way large parts of her body ached or the growing sense that something was very wrong around her. 

 

A few minutes and who knows how far down the road later, Claggor accidentally pulled her back to her senses. 

 

“Wonder what they’re doing?” He looked to be asking Mylo, who did not bite, mostly shrugging but still following Claggor’s gaze. Vi did too, to see the start of a fire in the nearly waned light. Five or six people, one of whom was carrying a torch that might have just been used to light some kind of large campfire, turned to examine the family as they passed by. Up ahead, someone strolled off of the road and into the grassy little square those people were in, their path only lit by a lantern being held oddly, backward, behind them. This made sense a moment later when Vi caught the sight of a fairly well built woman, carrying a big iron pot by the handle in both hands over to the fire. 

 

The sky was already nearly black. THe light from windows, torches and the occasional lantern like the one shining a light on this lady’s path were really the only light here not coming from the rising moon. On the other hand, it was finally starting to cool and she did not feel quite as itchy. She did still feel like sweat was causing her shirt to stick to her upper back. Vi hoped she wouldn’t have to go down to the stream for a second time upon their return to the farm. Right in that moment, pushing herself to catch up with the others, Vi wasn’t even sure how well she’d make it back to the farm. 

 

“Come on, come on. We’ve had our look at the buildings and whatnot, let’s get these animals back home before it's much later and maybe we can find someone here in town to answer questions.” Vander hurried them forward, which just meant that he missed the free hand of whomever was carrying the lantern waving in their direction. 

 

Vi waved back. 

 

“You know, I could just stay here and meet up with you on the way back.” Mylo sounded hopeful as he floated the idea, gesturing sideways to a small bench on the edge of the little grassy square. 

 

“Ooh, ooh, me too!” Ekko’s excitement at the idea didn’t immediately make sense to Vi, though. Then again, maybe he was just as tired as she was. Maybe they both were. Vander’s response was preceded by a quick shake of the head. 

 

“Nope, don’t need anyone wandering off alone.” 

 

“I promise not to. You wanna stay here too, right? See the village a little?” Vi watched the boy look hopefully toward her sister. He seemed shocked at her immediate shaking of the head. Vi wasn’t shocked though. There were already eight or nine people gathered in the village square around this little fire and the family knew none of them. Of course Powder didn’t want to sit around a bunch of strangers in the dark. 

 

“Come on. Let’s keep it moving.” 

 

They kept it moving. However reluctant legs and feet to continue forward, there was promise of sleep at the end of the journey. It was enough to motivate Vi to keep moving, at least. 

 

“You couldn’t have a moment like this back in the Lanes,” Vander declared several minutes later. Vi, lost deep within her own thoughts, stumbled quickly as her right foot hooked over a loose stone at the edge of the road. It was Mylo who reached out all at once and caught Vi before she could stumble. The effort nearly bowed him, which was all she needed to see to know exactly why he’d wanted to stay behind in the village. Vander just kept his head tilted up, toward the sky now showing more than one star as night threatened to drop like a cage around them.

 

“Geeze,” Mylo grumbled, wincing and reaching up as if to rub at the spot where his arm had collided into her in his attempt to stop her from hitting the ground. Vi straightened up and lifted her head. She exhaled, decided not to give Mylo any grief for acting as if she’d just struck him intentionally and sagged, saying nothing. “Oh yeah, you’re welcome Vi-” 

 

In the middle of what was no doubt going to be another scathing criticism and aggravating complaint rolled into one, Mylo fell silent when a moment later Claggor jabbed him once with a sizeable elbow. Actually, that wasn’t entirely right. More, he drew in a deep breath, stumbled to one side and then started to complain at Claggor, who cut them all off. 

 

“Hey, look.” Vi followed the boy’s thinning arm and pointing finger toward a light bobbing across the land off to the north of the road. Behind it, she could see the undefined outline of a building. It had to be one of the houses they’d passed on their way into the village for the first time, set back in the middle of several neatly plowed fields. 

 

In retrospect, all of that cleanly plowed and planted land was fucking impressive. Or it would be if it wasn’t so exhausting to think about. 

 

A small flare of anxiety rose as the light continued bouncing toward them. The thing that threw her off the most was how low to the ground it actually was. Maybe another lantern, it had to be carried by someone of Ekko's height or smaller. 

 

“Hey, Ekko, that’s not you out there, is it?” she asked, teasing lightly. Beside a suddenly aware Vander and a tense Powder, Ekko turned back to scoff at her. 

 

“I haven’t seen any Yordles around here, come to think of it.” Claggor’s observation was probably a legitimate one and actually kind of interesting but Ekko took it as yet more teasing and this time played along. 

 

“Hey, I’m not that short,” he protested. Her swelling anxiety quieted at the humor and the way Vander’s ease soaked into her younger sister, leaving Powder to squint curiously at the approaching light from the edge of Vander’s own lantern. 

 

Then Vi caught sight of a large, thick mustache and a lined face and felt silly. 

 

Of course, we’re here. 

 

Orkis was nearly at the road before he finally called out something to them in Ur-Nox. Vander responded by raising the lantern to nearly his own face level and shouting out his own hello in Piltovan. It must have been unexpected because the person she could easily guess was Orkis paused in his tracks. From a bit behind him, a second voice echoed across the relatively open land between them. 

 

“Hello!” Caras’ voice was accompanied by a sly grin appearing on her sister’s face, as if her nerves about the unusual setting were wiped away by the need to tease Vi. A moment later, Powder shot that look at Vi and ignored her returned warning glare. 

 

“We’ve brought back the fakkae, ” Vander continued, voice still raised, as he handed off the lantern to Claggor. It must’ve been heavier than Claggor expected because for a moment the light dimmed as the lantern dipped and then the boy brought it right back up to level with his goggled face. With both massive ropes in hand, Vander started to lead the animals off of the road and toward Orkis. Vi followed, privately surprised Vander had learned and remembered the word when she hadn’t. Or, at least she hadn’t consciously. 

 

By the edge of the road, Vander stopped them. 

 

“Wait here, I wanna talk to Orkis for a second.” 

 

Orkis at this point shouted out a second greeting as Caras caught up with him. 

 

“Hello - come, come, bring with you.” That, it seemed, was good enough for Vander. 

 

“Vander, what if -” 

 

“Don’t worry, Powder,” the man waved her concerns off quickly. There was no what if that Vi foresaw that made Vander going on a walk with a guy he had 20 years and probably a hundred pounds on that much of a risk. “Caras. You good?” 

 

“I… behaving good,” the boy sounded confused at the question and Vi laughed. Okay, so there was still the language barrier issue but Vander didn’t stop. Leaving the rest of his tired family at the roadside lit by their lantern, he traversed a small dip off the edge of the road with the yaks at his back and made for Orkis’ lantern. When the relative darkness had almost completely hidden him, Mylo grew visibly tense. Perhaps it was how tired she was or the relief of being done with planting. Perhaps it was the oddness that the only thing she could smell was a little bit of sweat and grass and dirt. Perhaps it was the way a hard to fathom number of little pinpoints of light began to wink into life in the sky above. 

 

Vi forgot how mad she was. Just for a moment. 

 

She patted Mylo on the back, winced at the pain of sunburn in her hand, and shook her head when he looked back. 

 

“Don’t worry about it. We’re okay.” His response was to shrug and frown a little before stepping away, to remind her of the fact that part of her wanted to push him down the little decline into the ditch along the side of the road. 

 

“Thank you for this, so much, Vander said as he and Orkis and Caras met nearby. She watched Orkis’ mustache bounce when he shook his head. 

 

“Neighbors starve - you lose even if you don’t starve.” Orkis repeated. The words sounded a little less clear or familiar on his tongue but that was enough for Vander. The two eldest folk headed off toward what Vi guessed was a barn in the distance with the yaks at their backs, taking Orkis’ lantern with them. Caras hurried to reach their own light and Vi lifted her head. Maybe half the reason the stars looked brighter here was the lack of any light from the village. 

 

Sure, it couldn’t compare to Piltover or even the undercity for number of light sources but it was definitely way darker out here than back in the village. 

 

“Violet,” Caras said in greeting as he got closer and her face warmed, which was not desired under most circumstances but especially not when she felt like it was already heated. 

 

“Call me Vi,” she hurried to correct him, in part because from the corner of her eye she could see Powder making a ‘kissy face’ at the two of them, much to Ekko’s amusement. This way, at least, she wasn’t yelling at her sister. 

 

“Vi,” Caras repeated, patting Claggor on the arm in greeting and earning a pained grunt. Mylo moved to one side when Caras tried to do the same but the smirk on the Noxian boy’s face made it clear he knew what he was doing. That smirk faded as he rounded on Vi again. “You… sick?” 

 

Vi shook her head no. 

 

“ Ita est.” Powder moved forward to peek around Mylo and answered in what sounded to her ears like Ur-Nox, at least in part. Va-Nox overlapped well enough with it that Vi got the idea that Powder was contradicting her.. 

 

This time Vi didn’t try to argue. She just sighed. When Powder back to Ekko a second later, Caras caught Vi’s attention and raised one hand to his left eye, the one which was blackened on her little sister’s face. The question was implicit but Vi shook her head slowly, and quietly. He shrugged it off, but Vi marked him asking at all down for later consideration. 

 

For his part, Caras reached a hand down to his belt and pulled a small bottle from a pouch tied to it, corked and obviously mostly full. When he offered it, Mylo whistled faintly. 

 

“What, got moonshine in there?” he asked, tone curious or hopeful or both. Vi was about to roll her eyes at Mylo when Caras demonstrated more knowledge of Piltovan than she had ever expected of him, once again. The dark-haired boy paused with his arm outstretched offering Vi a drink, his brows knitting together as he looked first at Mylo then at the moon hanging in the sky. Finally, Caras shrugged as if to say he didn’t understand. 

 

“It’s okay, I probably shouldn’t drink like this.” Caras shook his head in a mirror of her own refusal and offered the bottle again. 

 

“Water,” he said, still looking as if he had missed something about the conversation. “Good water. We have… ah.” The arm holding the bottle fell and hung for a second as the boy looked away and up into the sky as he often did while trying to find or substitute words. The next three words rattled off too quickly for Vi to keep up with. “We have.. water hole - water pit.”  There was a little too much to keep up with.

The truth was there were a load of reasons not to drink water when one was sick back home. Like if the water might make you sicker. 

 

But here - 

 

“You mean a well?” Mylo asked, and drew a roughly circular shape in the air around himself and mimed pulling a heavy bucket up. For a second, Caras didn’t seem too sure but eventually he nodded, relieved. 

 

“Well. We have well.” Caras punctuated this by splitting his far too energetic face with a smile and offering the bottle again.

 

For all the trouble of just trying to find a word to communicate this, shouldn’t she drink? Besides. 

 

She was thirsty. 

 

Vi took the bottle, uncorked it with a faint ‘pop’ and sniffed once. Except for the somewhat expected earthy scent of a fired clay bottle, she was given pause by the fact that the water inside carried no smell. It was probably cleaner than the water they boiled and drank on a daily basis. Actually, scratch “probably.” I’ve poured out the debris at the bottom of the pot enough times to know better. 

 

She took a very small sip and started to give it back when she caught Powder’s elbow in her own ribs and Caras gestured for her to take an actual drink. Vi glared down at her sister and again found no purchase with the look. If anything Powder was trying to mimic her glare right back, which actually annoyed her. Vi turned away from the blue-haired little smartass and took a longer sip before handing it back this time. 

 

“Now try saying ‘gratias’?” Powder suggested. Before Vi could respond at all, Caras held up a finger in Powder’s and shook his head. Then the boy spoke slowly. 

 

“Tibi… grātiās… agō.” The lesson was clearly being aimed at Powder, but, reluctantly, Vi had to admit that the drink was enough that her throat and tongue didn’t feel like cotton anymore. 

 

“Tibi grātiās agō.” Vi chimed in, giving it her best try, though she felt inexplicably embarrassed as her tongue stumbled over unfamiliar sounds. 

 

“ Nihil est.” Whatever this meant, and Vi could guess from context, Caras quickly waved off the moment, took back his water and recorked the bottle before putting it back in its place at his waist. Then the boy gave a smaller than usual smile at the space between his feet and nodded like he was satisfied. Vi didn’t know what to make of it. “Yaks back soon - Orkis surprised.” 

 

And like that, Caras changed the subject.

 

Cool night air blew past them. Vi still felt a tension in having a bunch of darkness at their back and the way that everyone, even Caras, stood fairly close to stay in the light of the lantern Claggor still held said she wasn’t the only one. On the other hand, there was no worry that someone looking for an easy target to rob or an enforcer looking for a target to beat on was waiting in the darkness. In fact, other than predators she’d never seen but been warned about, Vi couldn’t think of anything in the dark other than Powder’s nightmares to make the approaching night feel scary. 

 

If she wasn’t tired, she wouldn’t want the walk to the village to end. As it was, though, she was exhausted and needed sleep, soon. 

 

“Well, it’s because you helped us,” Claggor told him, hurriedly. The truth of the statement struck home and drove away the good, pleasant thoughts. She knew what Claggor meant: if he hadn’t been there yesterday it would’ve been down to Claggor or Vander to drive the plow and that would’ve been much slower and one less person planting. This truth left her in the same dark, low place she’d spent the last day and change in. 

 

“Happy I help.” 

 

Vi believed Caras. She just felt guilty and annoyed, and so she turned her attention back skyward. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the Noxian in question was doing the same thing. 

 

“We go - food and drink at airus. ” Vi couldn’t quite figure out what that word meant and didn’t really engage. Mylo, on the other hand, sure did. He perked up like a dog on the street smelling roasted rat. “You come with?” 

 

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” the more wiry of the boys declared. He sounded, for the first time, excited about the trip into the village. 

 

I need to get over this, Vi told herself reflecting on the full 180 she’d turned in the last thirty seconds. From content and even a little happy, Vi now find herself unable to pu;ll her eyes from the sky for fear that someone would see inside them everything she felt : guilt, anger, weakness. Everything, everything would be so much easier if she just stopped caring. STopped being angry at Mylo and Vander. Stopped worrying about Powder. Stopped feeling guilty about losing them their home, about flaking out on plowing and planting, about Mylo getting so badly hurt when Deckard chased them down or about Powder getting scooped up by the same fucking monster and having her arm broken. 

 

She just didn’t know how to do any of that. For a few seconds, she’d been able to look past it and now every single failure rushed right back in to fill her up. 

 

Vi didn’t lower her head or speak again until Vander and Orkis rejoined them. After a few seconds, Ekko, Powder and Claggor all stopped trying to get her to join in. 

 

“Orkis wants he and Caras to walk back to the village with us,” Vander announced as soon as Orkis’ lantern-light joined with Claggor’s. Speaking of feelings, Vi had a feeling she wasn’t going to like where things were going. It was starting to sound like they might not be home and in bed any time soon. “Apparently there’s a little gathering and a person or two in the village who speaks Piltovan.” 

 

“Caras says there’s food and invited us.” Vander had barely paused long enough to breathe before Mylo interjected. Excitedly, Caras nodded to back him up and Powder squeaked out her request from behind him. 

 

“Can we go, please, Vander?” 

 

Must be hoping for something more than rice. 

 

Vander, on the other hand, glanced around at the group, at Caras and then Orkis as if thinking. He looked remorseful, even hesitant and Vi thought he was calculating how to reject the request with the least pushback. However, after one last sweep of his eyes over the various excited faces around him, the big guy shrugged. 

 

“Well, we gotta go back that way no matter what and we’d be rude to say no after everything they’ve done for us.” While Powder and Ekko shared a high five, Vi steeled herself to a longer night and Claggor pumped a fist, Caras rattled off something in Ur-Nox, which Vi figured to be him translating when Orkis responded and the boy chimed in. 

 

“Orkis say, we just being good neighbors.” Vi didn’t think ‘neighbors’ was a term used for people who lived an hour and a half away almost but that wasn’t the thing at question here. She could let that go. 

 

Why can’t you let everything else go? 

 

For all that everyone was teasing her about Caras supposedly ‘liking’ her, Ekko and Powder spent the trip back into the village hanging off the boy’s every word. Vi didn’t much partake but she did pay attention to their attempt at a conversation about planting and plowing with him at least as much as she did the dull throbbing protesting of her legs or the fact that her hips were starting to hurt a little less dully. Eventually that attempted conversation broke down into another round of the three of them sharing words, teaching each other Ur-Nox and Piltovan. 

 

At least the tension loosened back up. 

 

She might have been dead on her feet tired, but she did not feel an ounce of annoyance when Orkis addressed her as the next farmhouse between Orkis’ house and the village proper came into view. 

 

“Caras say… sun get you. Maybe why sun hiding, yes?” Though it took a second to really understand what he was saying (more because she was tired than anything else) she smiled at the man’s joke. 

 

“It can hide a few more hours, please.” 

 

Ten or so minutes further down the road, it was the first house in the village that caught the group’s collective eye and quieted conversation briefly. 

 

Vi was kind of jealous: it was maybe twenty minutes from Caras’ and Orkis’ home to the village, way less of a journey than the hour it took to get there from their farm. If she lived this close, she’d at least be able to convince Vander to let them go somewhere with buildings and people when they weren’t busy. 

 

Maybe there were people there with things she could… could… well, Vi had never been shy of lifting from wealthy Topsiders and those who profited way too much off the work of the undercity. In this village, whatever it was called, she had yet to see any sign of such striking inequality. It didn’t look like anyone lived that much better off than anyone else. Except, perhaps, that those who had farmland didn’t have to worry as much about food. The place seemed on the surface to be better in that way. She couldn’t justify stealing anything from the village but maybe there would be a way to make a deal for things they needed if going into town wasn’t an event that took a good chunk out of the day. 

 

Maybe someone in the village could pay for labor or firewood. Maybe they’d be able to trade for the things Powder and Ekko wanted to help them make a thresher, like animal fat and nails, screws and things they didn’t really have. Or maybe she could just earn them more tools so that everyone would stop complaining how few they had or maybe she could earn enough to buy an animal to help pull the plow the next time the need arose. 

 

Maybe they could just get some meat. 

 

When Orkis turned them off of the main road through the center of the village onto a smaller, darker one curving north-west at the first intersection they hit, Vi grew confused. After all, she’d been assuming that the little gathering they’d been invited to was in the city center where they’d already seen several people apparently cooking. Instead, they followed the north-west curve of a smaller, gravely dirt road, past tiny patches of green grass wrapped in stick or plank fences and little homes of reddish-orange and golden-brown brick. 

 

“Where are we going?” she asked the man. 

 

“Friend,” Orkis responded, the thinning white hair atop his head a bit disheveled from the wind. He did not turn around or lift his lantern any higher. Vander gave a shrug from behind Orkis and Mylo made a sound in the back of his throat to Vi’s right that made it clear he was not as pleased about this idea as he had been earlier. With the way her legs and hips ached, she was not, either. 

 

“Orkis take us to friend house.” Caras’ voice behind her, where he walked side by side with Claggor, turned Vi’s head. “Zenneene and Sinnan.” 

 

“Who are they?” Caras scratched at the back of his neck and his head rose again, eyes wandering in that way that said he was searching for words. 

 

“Zenneene know all plants. Sinnan is daughter.” 

 

There was a lot less light on this road by which Vi could look back and read Caras’ face. Thankfully he was hovering right beside claggor, who was still carrying their lantern, though it hung low at his side. No one on this little road had any lit lanterns or torches hung outside their doors or their little gates so only the occasional window not shuttered or obscured by curtains let any out onto the road. 

 

Oddly, as if he was thinking the opposite of Vi, Orkis lifted his own lantern to his face and blew out the flame. Then their benefactor turned to her, shoved the lantern into her hands and she was holding the dim lantern in confusion. When Orkis pointed at Caras, Vi passed it back to him, with Ekko hurrying to get his hands on it as an intermediary. 

 

Vander turned, eyes locking on Claggor as if to suggest the boy do the same. When Claggor made to raise their lantern, though, Powder’s only free hand grabbed onto his arm and she shook her head. Vander shrugged after a moment of hesitation. 

 

“Here.” Claggor handed off their own lantern to Ekko, who fell back to hang out beside Powder. 

 

This meant they continued down the road in only very dim light from the one lantern at the back of the group or the moon and stars above or the occasional bit peeking out of a house. There wasn’t much of that, either but it did draw Vi’s curiosity to the structures. She probably ought to have been paying attention when Ekko, Powder and Claggor were studying them, too, but now she took notice. 

 

There wasn’t a lot of difference between the buildings: they were mostly small, roughly square, their roofs thatch or tiled, and their walls almost entirely built out of brick. The tallest one she could see around them in the darkening night was only maybe two stories in height by Piltovan standards and looked like it was supposed to be a shop. Outside, at about eye level on the wooden front door, someone had painted a sign on it. Vi didn’t know enough about plants to know the difference, but at least recognized it as some kind of leaf, painted in a green that looked barely faded, even against the darker, untreated wood. 

 

This building with the small roughly octagonal windows also had the only door they’d seen in a couple of minutes that was lit by its own lantern. 

 

Orkis turned off of the road at this structure, voice rising to call out in Ur-Nox in what she thinks is a playful tone. He came to a stop at the end of a short walkway off the road and then rapped once then twice a full half-foot below that leaf symbol painted on the door. 

 

A moment later the door opened, revealing a woman in her mid thirties with auburn red hair and maybe a more significant tan than you might see even topside. If one discounted that tan and her clothing, though, she lacked the familiar dark hair or deep brown freckles, deeper golden-bronze to bronze-ochre complexion Vi had come to expect from Noxians. Judging by the way Powder caught her attention and tilted her head vaguely in that direction (free-hanging blue hair catching in the wind), she was not the only one thinking it. 

 

The woman greeting Orkis in Ur-Nox with a basket shoved under one arm came off as distinctly Piltovan. 

 

With her free hand she gave a quick wave to the family behind Orkis and Caras, and started to greet them in the same tongue before hesitating. With a blink, she looked back at Orkis, who murmured something Vi could not understand and then gave a wave. Caras returned it. 

 

“Hi there,” the stranger greeted the family. “You’re the recent - uh - grafts, right?” 

 

“What?” Mylo asked as Vi tilted her head. 

 

“You know, like grafting plants?” Powder answered for them, shaking her head. 

 

“We didn’t have a lot of plants back home,” Ekko continued. “Nothing like out here.” 

 

“True enough.” This was Vander’s addition to the conversation before he cleared his throat and made to follow Orkis up the walking path to the door. He did, however, stop in his tracks when the woman shut her front door behind her and stepped out to join them instead. “I’m Vander, that’s Ekko, these are my kids. Claggor there by Caras, Mylo there beside my youngest, Powder and my oldest here is Violet.” 

 

“Good to meet you,” the woman who Vi assumed was Zenneene greeted. She shifted the small basket, filled with a trio of little clay jars inside of it, switching it to her off hand.  “Zeneene Zavik. You’re from… the undercity, I assume?” Zeneene turned sideways outside of her door, hair immediately caught in an unexpected breeze. With her right hand now free she lifted it to hold her hair in place and carefully blew out the flame in the lantern above her door. 

 

She could’ve been born in Piltover and then come to Noxus when she was little, Vi thought. She certainly spoke Piltovan with as heavy a Noxian accent as Caras or Orkis. 

 

“So, are you from topside?” Vi asked as a strange relief washed over her. It was weird to think she might ever be excited to meet a topsider, but she was. Zenneene shook her head and drew a really uncomfortable, scratchy looking woolen shawl tighter around her shoulders. 

 

“Mother was,” the woman answered once the breeze passed and she had begun to lead past a cheerful looking Orkis back to the road where the other still stood. Vander held the gate around the little yard open as if being gentlemanly. “But she said I had to know her tongue as well as father’s. I’ve tried to pass it on, but - ”

 

“It’s so nice to hear,” Powder blurted from behind Vi and the woman slowed a moment to observe the diminutive inventor. Her green eyes narrowed just long enough and swept just quietly enough over the rest of them that Vi wondered if she wasn’t evaluating why the girl had a blackened eye. Then, Zenneene chuckled. 

 

“Oh, I bet it’s hard, surrounded by a whole new language.” 

 

“Caras is teaching us though,” Ekko insisted, nudging Vi. “He’s helped out a lot, right, Vi? ” The boy shot her a sideways glance and Vi glared in return. 

 

“Yeah,” she said, and then dropped the glare when she spotted Caras’ smile blooming back into its space on his face. Orkis spoke to Zenneene quickly, who responded by shaking her head and answering in Ur-Nox. 

 

“Orkis here is… ‘tickled pink’ that you finished planting today, it seems.” 

 

“Why’s that?” Vander posed as Zenneene slipped out of the gate and turned down the road as if to head head back the way they came. Despite being basically Vi’s height, the stranger had long strides and Vi dreaded having to hurry to keep up with her. Within five seconds the redhead was striding past one of the few sizeable trees still standing in the village, two buildings down from her shop. 

 

“Because it’s Sementalia Primus, of course.” Sure, the stranger answered this question nonchalantly as if it was something they should already know but that wasn’t why Mylo snorted. It wasn’t why Vi rolled her eyes when Ekko looked away and kept his mouth shut or Claggor waved his hand at the two of them as if to tell them to cut it out, without even bothering to cover up his own smirk. It wasn’t the reason Powder sighed loudly and declared ‘ugh boys!’ 

 

Vi thought it was to this stranger’s credit that she did not comment on the reaction. 

 

“It varies from place to place, usually a regional governor declares when it comes but here we just follow Basilich’s decree. Basically, a couple days after planting ends in the spring for Primus or winter for Sementalia Secundus - “ 

 

Vi hadn’t intended to bite. She hadn’t laughed, herself or even cracked a smile the first time. It was just that the sound Powder tried to pass off as a sneeze a moment later had to have been a snort. For some reason, that cracked her and Vi had to hide a smile behind her own palm. She  looked away when she caught Caras looking very confused in her direction. 

 

There was no way she was explaining anyone’s reaction to him.

 

In response to the various stifled and not-so-stifled responses, Vander shot a warning look at her and Claggor more than anyone else. Yeah, because we’re not the ones trying to keep the others quiet, or anything, Vander. 

 

“- we usually have a big dinner in the village center. Help keep everyone strong, keeps the mood high. We have similar festivals after each harvest, ( Messisalia Primus and Secundus) but that usually involves a lot of games. Wrestling, racing, climbing and boxing and ah - ah… what’s the word? Well, think of spear throwing. Javelins! That’s the word! Oh, and lately lately long jumping is popular. We have a lot more kids around your bunch’s age than we used to.” 

 

“Oh yeah? Sounds like a good time. Always at the same place?” Vander asked, though he seemed to be trying to include Caras and Orkis in the conversation as well. To be sure the awkward moment passed, Vi just wasn’t matching anyone’s eye for a few more seconds. 

 

Though, the harvest festivals sounded fun except for the nagging suspicion she’d be dead tired at the end of a harvest. 

 

“Every time, at least here in this village. It used to be a big building, a hall where people met, but a storm damaged it badly about a year ago. We haven’t quite been able to excuse building a new one. Everyone just kept using the lot for gatherings, anyway. Anyway, the feasts at sewing time or harvest time are always the same, here. Everyone who can pitches something in, and everyone who can’t comes and fills their stomach just the same. Might be a few games played at both, but nothing like after harvest.”

The family now trailing along behind Zenneene and Orkis were absolutely part of ‘everyone who can’t.’

 

“Not a bad idea.” Vander sounded genuinely a little more awake and alive and a little more like the man once respected back in the Lanes. “I like it. Back home, all we had was community.” Vi slowed, both because this brought her thoughts back to the familiar refrain of ‘I can’t believe we ran away’ and because her legs and hips were killing her. Beside her, someone - and she was surprised to find it to be Caras- slowed to match her. 

 

Vi wasn’t even sure when he started walking by her. 

 

This might be the first time Vander’s called the undercity ‘home’ since we got here. 

 

“Well, out here all we have is community.” Zenneene put an emphasis on the ‘we’ that Vi thought was supposed to pointedly include the whole group now turning off onto the main road through the village. “Maybe it’s the same everywhere there’s trouble: you have to help those around you. No one wins if anyone starves.” 

 

“That’s what Orkis is always saying.” Ekko’s observation echoed her own thoughts on the matter. 

 

“Good. Grandpa Orkis here knows what he’s talking about. Non ita est, Caras? ” While Vi couldn’t follow the last part as the woman with the basket under her left arm swung around to look at Caras, she did mark it down as confirmation of her suspicion that Orkis was the boy’s grandfather. When Zenneene’s paler face split into a grin, Vi peeked over at Caras to find him watching her. It was more the way he suddenly looked away that embarrassed her enough to observe the road beneath her feet. 

 

“Can you show us any really cool places in the city?” Powder asked, apparently finding Zenneene so comfortable to talk to that she forgot to tease Vi. There was no way her sister hadn’t just noticed the deeply awkward moment four feet ahead of her. 

 

“Powder.” Vi felt a little flash of annoyance at the cautioning, even warning tone in Vander’s voice and she wasn’t completely sure why. Vi clenched her fists tightly. We just worked our asses off in the fields and crammed too many of us into a dirty little shack for however long. Maybe we just want to know about the nearest piece of civilization a little? 

 

To be fair to Vander, though, it was something of an ask for someone you’d just met. 

 

“Don’t think city’s the right word but, sure. We’ll drop these herbs off for the stew, see what kind of roasts and loaves they’ve got and then I’d be happy.” Beside Vi, Caras began to hum. That was new. She’d never heard him hum before. She couldn’t really follow the melody, but it sounded lively. It sounded like energy. 

 

How the hell did these people have so much energy? 

 

“Once we get to the convivia - the feast, we’ll check in before that tour. My daughter should be there, she’s probably about as old as some of you. A little younger than one or two, maybe. She and I will introduce you to some of the people here. Especially the most important.” 

 

“Who’s that?” Powder asked, sounding genuinely curious and recovered from Vander’s light scolding. 

 

“You know, the kind of people you want to know. Like the hedgewitch , the smith, the - ah, mayor, that sort of thing.” Vander nodded, reluctantly, and reengaged with the conversation as if he was afraid that if he did not one of them might ask the stranger for something else. This isn’t exactly like him, Vi admitted to herself. 

 

“Sounds good to me.” Powder and Ekko shared an excited look, one even Mylo briefly mirrored. Claggor, though he looked almost as tired as her, lowered his shoulders and resigned himself. She slowed herself to keep looking over her shoulder at the larger boy: he was still practically shuffling and this made Vi realize that she was too. Their excitable impromptu guide to the village had to have slowed down to accommodate them or she and Claggor would’ve been left way in the dirt. 

 

Vi felt at ease around this lady, just a little. 

 

As for the tour of the village, it didn’t come quite like Vi thought Ekko was expecting. With Zenneene at the head, occasionally chatting with Orkis or Vander about the planting season, they made their way back toward the village square which had apparently once had some big communal building in it. Along the way, the redheaded woman, a little shy of Vander’s age gestured here and there, pointing out structures that wouldn’t immediately make sense to Vi to show off. 

 

Here was the home of two of the oldest village elders, with its crooked shutters and broken fence. There sat the hut belonging to the best weaver in the village. Oh, and across the way, the only real mason in town has a little place she keeps her workshop in. Things like that. 

 

Powder and Ekko took a lot of interest in the village Blacksmith’s home and the workshop visible behind it 

 

Shocker, Vi thought to herself as Ekko had to be stopped by Powder of all people from breaking off from the group for whatever reason. 

“Relax,” Zenneene advised with a little smile on her face as she slowed them to turn and observe Ekko trying to get a look over the little fence around the property at the smith’s workshop, as if it were not a wide brick structure just like most of the others in town. “The windows are all dim. He’s probably across the way.” With a jerk of her head, the stranger drew their mutual attentions across the street to the little city square from before. 

 

With the knowledge she had now and the addition of a few standing torches and hanging lanterns (not to mention two more fires in the center of the square) Vi could now make out the faint lines made by foundations left behind by the lost building. The idea of a big hall for the whole village to meet and eat in on a daily basis or even just for special occasions was nice, though. Vi liked it. It wouldn’t have worked back home, but she got it. 

 

Over the general lines of stone and brick, over even the tops of individual blades of grass she slowed to observe the party (because that was the only word for it) starting within. Near the center, someone had hauled out several blankets, two or three tables and a few pillows that looked big enough for Vander to sit on them. In the actual center of the square though, two or three fires were being actively tended by people. 

 

The largest of the three had almost as many people just sitting around it as there had been in the square on their first pass through. 

 

There had to be three times the number of souls here, though and Vi’s tired eyes struggled to really take it all in. 

 

When Orkis, Caras and Zenneene managed to cut through Vander’s hemming and hawwing to get him to agree to join them, Vi’s biggest hope was that they’d be able to find somewhere to sit. She wanted to sit down and take off the grass and dirt stained boots, to take off her jacket and soak in the cool air for just a little bit. She wanted to (not for the first time) sit and question whether she liked the smell of grass and dirt or if it was just better than what she was used to. She wanted - 

 

Well, Vi didn’t expect to be shuffling along behind Vander as he and in many cases the family as a whole were introduced by Zenneene and Orkis to a number of people Vi had no chance of remembering. After about the sixth awkward Ur-Noxian ‘hello’ from Vander, Vi started to tune out a lot of the faces and names being thrown at them. Right or wrong. 

 

Didn’t anyone here under the dancing fire light comprehend what it was like to feel tired? 

 

Or was it just that she and the others were so easily worn out, so weak in comparison? 

 

Since the square was not quiet (one or two people were playing some kind of woodwind instrument and there was a lot of chatter and laughter) she did not pay attention to a nearby shout in Ur-Nox. Vi was nearly toppled over after the eighth or ninth such introduction when someone about Ekko’s height blew past Powder, ducked under Caras’ arm and squeezed between him and Vi. She stumbled to one side as Zenneene interrupted her introduction of a young man carrying an armload of firewood to turn her eyes on the new arrival. 

 

The exceedingly friendly woman began to chide the new arrival to their circle in a mix of Ur-Nox and Piltovan. 

 

Vi didn’t need the Piltovan to hear the mom tone in her voice. 

 

“You have to be more careful,” was only the start of the chiding. Deeply uncomfortable, Vi blinked and took in the form of the girl now grimacing down at the ground beneath her bare feet in a manner that suggested she didn’t feel guilty so much as uncomfortable at being called out. If the light were better here, Vi was fairly certain this girl’s hair would look as red if not more than her mother’s, though longer and wavier. Not as rail-thin as her mother, this shorter and more athletic looking girl struck Vi as probably a really good runner. A little deeper of complexion than Zennene, she also bore thicker brows and deeper brown eyes than her mother’s blue. 

 

It was still hard to miss the resemblance. Especially in the little gestures as the girl shot back answers in Ur-Nox to her mother’s chidings: she talked with her hands as Zenneene did and when those hands should’ve been idle they instead worked against one another like the stranger was trying to wipe them clean of what she was being chewed out for. 

 

“Now try a proper apology - and don’t be shy,” Zenneene encouraged in Piltovan, as the wood-baring villager maybe four or five years Caras’ senior shrugged and made a quiet escape from the awkward conversation. 

 

Lucky fucker. 

 

“Sorry,” squeaked the Noxian, with a flash of a smile at Ekko and Powder, then a second apology to Vi directly. “Sorry, I got excited.” Vi waved it off as Vander chuckled. “I’m just really hungry.” 

 

“Me too,” Vi admitted with a shake of her head and as real a smile as she could muster. It was not much of one, either. When Caras raised his eyebrows beside her as if to ask the younger girl in the pale dress for an apology of his own, she just tapped the side of her nose. Vi didn’t understand the gesture but Caras immediately rolled his eyes. 

 

They clearly knew one another well enough to bother each other. 

 

Zeneene’s encouragement for her daughter to not be shy became evident pretty quickly as a joke. 

 

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Sinnan. Are you the new people from down south?” The words came out in a rapid flow, this was someone comfortable with Piltovan but not so concerned about speaking slowly or clearly. Her eager introduction was aimed right at Vander first and foremost. However, before he could so much as answer (and he had opened his mouth to do so) she swept her eyes across the rest of the group and brightened up. “Finally, more kids our age! Yes! We can get a good game of Coniuratio going!” 

 

“I’m uh, what’s that?” Powder queried, only to be immediately answered. 

 

“Uhhh it means something like ‘plot’ or ‘plan’. Kind of a big game with the Emperor or Empress in the center and everyone trying to get the ball to them or keep it away.” 

 

“We played that one,” Ekko said, excitedly. “Back when we first got here. It was fun, but there were a lot of people.” 

 

“The name means ‘conspiracy’,” Zenneene informed Vander in something of a stage whisper which Vi could not miss. Her stomach jerked, but she too faintly remembered Ekko and Powder running off to a big circle of kids kicking or throwing around a big rubber ball. Sinnan took an excited step away from her mother to peek past Vi, Mylo and Caras at Powder and Ekko. After a second, the energetic girl beamed. 

 

“You both have pretty hair.” For just a second, Vi caught matching looks of wide-eyed surprise or hesitation on Ekko’s and Powder’s faces. Then Ekko’s visage shifted to one a little dismissive as he looked away from Sinnan. 

“Thanks?” Vi recognized the shyness for what it was and the gesture of him reaching up to run his hand through it. Right now, his pale white hair was longer than Vi had ever seen him let it get. Powder, on the other hand, whispered something Vi couldn’t quite catch. 

 

“Mother says you just finished planting?” 

 

“That’s right.” Powder gave a nod. “It’s why we’re all kinda tired.” Instead of catching the hint, the energetic, shorter of the two redheads shot around, threw one arm over Powder’s and Ekko’s shoulders and began to usher the two of them forward. 

 

“You finished just in time then! Good job. En age!   We’ve got fresh bread and butter and goat cheese and the rest is cooking!” The words tore a rumble from Vi’s stomach. There was the smell of meat in the air, too, however faint, coming from a nearby fire she couldn’t get a good look at from here. Then there was the matter of that big pot from earlier. It might have been for some kind of soup or something. “The wine’s this way.” 

 

“Wine?” Vander asked, turning his head ‘round toward Orkis. 

 

“Don’t worry,” Zenneene countered, patting him on one broad arm with her free hand. “It’s the way water is kept drinkable here, a little bit of wine is added to it. You would have to drink quite a lot to feel its effects.” The lady shifted her basket to her good hand and leaned around Vander. “You lot limit yourselves to the same amount you’d drink of water. You’ll never know the difference except we don’t have to boil it.” For a second or two, Sinnan attempted to lead Powder and Ekko toward food and drink but the two hesitated, Ekko watching Vander’s response and Powder, Vi’s. Vi, on the other hand, shot a glance sideways at Vander, who shrugged. 

 

“Well, when in Noxus,” he said. 

 

“What?” Zenneene asked, sharing a confused look with Caras. 

 

“Just a saying back home.” 

 

At this point, Vi dipped her head briefly and then, with Claggor and Mylo on her tail, followed Ekko, Powder and Sinnan, toward one of the tables a couple of folk were lingering around.  She could hear Sinnan rattling off in Ur-Nox for a few seconds over the laughter of a nearby woman at something said by an older man sipping at his own drink. Then, the girl corrected herself. 

 

“I’m going to introduce you to all the other kids of the village.” Vi didn’t know why this felt like a threat to her, but she foresaw a busy night. 

 

By the time they reached the table in question Vi glanced back to see Zenneene and Caras excuse themselves from Vander and Orkis, Caras to join them and Zenneene to carry her basket over to the larger of the three fires in the center of the square. While the two mechanical prodigies of their group talked on with Sinnan and they stood roughly in line for some kind of food or another (Vi could not see past Claggor to see what it was) Zenneene’s appearance by the fire prompted a small flutter of cheer. 

 

Vi watched the crowd part for her and over the next few seconds she opened the three little jars she’d brought with her and deposited them into the now open top of the pot over the flame. The problem was, the moment the lid was removed from the pot Vi’s nostrils filled with the strange but pleasant smell of the stew within. Twenty or so feet off, it still smelled strongly of beef and maybe something sweet, strongly enough to stop even Sinnan in her tracks as she cut a hunk of flat crispy bread from a small circular platter on the table ahead. 

 

This, at least, paired with the way that Mylo and Claggor began to crane their necks to get a look at the pot told Vi she wasn’t imagining it. 

 

Never mind her desire to be home and asleep: Vi hadn’t smelled meat in a long time. 

 

While Ekko’s requested tour of the village was cut short, as the moment of excitement at the stew faded among them the tour of the people of the village began all over again. 

 

Sinnan was unfortunately energetic, but at least had the benefit of being fairly bubbly. As soon as she had smeared a piece of this crispy bread with some kind of pale, nearly liquid cheese, Sinnan began to introduce them to every passerby at, or who even came near the table, explaining in Piltovan who each person was. Some actual loaves of bread waited, and when space opened around the table, Mylo and Claggor were quick to take it up. Behind her, Caras laughed, reminding her he was there. Vi turned back to see what he found so amusing, but unsurprisingly it seemed to be the eager way Claggor tore a fist-sized chunk of one of these fluffier loaves off. 

 

Vi didn’t find it funny, but didn’t want to sound like a jerk. 

 

There was no way she was the only one of her family who was really hungry. 

 

After a little bit of nudging her way in, Powder found a spot beside Mylo, and pulled Ekko up behind her, while Sinnan continued to introduce people. 

 

Getting the food was one thing, but Vi caught Vander’s face across the table ( when did he even get here ) when he finally got some food of his own and realized she was not alone in her discomfort. 

 

The Noxian woman who looked to be running the table was called Helene, if Vi remembered Sinnan’s rapid introduction right. The moment Vander had his bread, Helene waved a spoon at Vander to get his attention and pointed him to a small bowl of this very soft cheese or to a larger bowl of butter. She did so with such a kindly look on her face that Vi was surprised to here Vander try to turn the offer down. 

 

“Oh, no, I shouldn’t -” A loud “SHHHHH” emitted from the mouth of this well built lady a little older than Vander in her knee-length gray dress and then she again gestured for him to put something on his bread. Vi got it. Bread was great - but butter or cheese? That started getting closer to a meal. His face a little sheepish or remorseful around his unruly beard, Vander took a spoon and spread a bit of the really soft cheese across one side of his bread with the back of it. This caused Helene to grin at him, even to wiggle her eyebrows in a gesture Vi refused to translate and adopted father and daughter matched eyes over the table. 

 

Vander shrugged as if to dismiss his own and her awkwardness - something shared by maybe Claggor and Mylo but certainly not by Ekko or Powder. They were already eating as Sinnan bounced on the spot beside them, like staying still was against her nature. To her credit, Vi kept the doubt and shame off of her own face as she took an offered spoon from Helene and used it to do the same thing Vander had just done. 

 

We’ve just gotten here and we’re taking food from people who aren’t topsiders. Somehow, it felt worse that those people were freely offering and sharing it. Vi would nick a couple of loaves of bread from the back of a cart back home in a heartbeat, but someone not that much better off than themselves offering it - Vi would’ve hesitated. 

 

On the other hand, she was really hungry and there was meat here. She could now see some kind of animal being roasted over one of the other fires. She could smell red meat cooking in the air. 

 

She hoped it might make her feel better. 

 

“Hey, Sinnan?” Vi called as soon as she and Claggor excused themselves from the table and wandered over to the others. Mylo found a stretch of earth nearby and as she watched, plopped down. Ekko rammed a good amount of his bread into his mouth, as if he thought it was going to jump from his hand all at once and run off. This just earned Powder’s laughter and a smile, which Ekko returned through a full mouth. 

 

“Yes - uh? Oh no, I didn’t stop to get your names.” The sound of Sinnan’s palm meeting her forehead was sharp and audible. Vi wanted to laugh, but she was sort of curious about something so she kept fairly serious. 

 

“I’m Vi, that’s Powder and Ekko. Mylo’s sitting down and this big guy’s Claggor. That’s Vander -” 

 

“He adopted most of us,” Powder clarified, quickly. 

 

“Most of us,” Ekko said. “Not me.” 

 

“Okay, okay, I’ll remember that,” the girl declared, rubbing at her temples as if trying very hard to focus. “What do you want to ask?” 

 

“Can you tell me how to say thank you, in Ur-Nox. Your mom did a few minutes ago but I-” 

 

“Oh my god, you already forgot?” This jab from Powder didn’t stop Vi from waiting curiously, but Sinnan didn’t slow down, either. 

 

Actually, that was a lie. Sinnan did slow down. 

 

With her own hunk of flat bread no doubt cool in her hand, Sinnan fell back a step toward Vi and Claggor, scooting around Ekko’s side. 

 

“Sure,” she said, then leaned in and very clearly and slowly spoke with almost the same cadence as her mother had. “ Tibi… grātiās… agō. ” From behind Vi, Caras repeated it in the same slow way. 

 

Vi flushed and slowly echoed them under her breath, before breaking away. Vi came to a stop in front of Vander who was still watching the whole scene as if looking about for Orkis, though he hovered near the fires like the rest of them. Vi wasn’t sure if the man was keeping an eye on them or just hungry, too. 

 

“Hey, got his attention, and then pointed back at the table laden with bread and butter. 

 

“What?” Vander asked, following her gesture. 

 

“Go back over there, tell her ‘ Tibi grātiās agō. ’” Vi enunciated as best she could, trying to perfectly mimic the pronunciation Sinnan taught her, and the man hmmph’d, lifting his heavily bearded chin. 

 

“Lecturing me about manners now, are we?” 

 

“No, but I think she’d like to hear it from you .” When Vander merely gave her the look, the one suggesting she drop the subject, Vi raised both hands and backed away. That being said, she did notice when Vander began to slowly back toward the table, arms still crossed over his chest. They both nearly stopped in their steps when Mylo called out from nearby.

 

“Thanks. Hey, Claggor, got any manners left?” Vi swiveled her head back to her siblings and Ekko. The young guy they’d been introduced to earlier was no longer carrying firewood, but was passing out small (probably wooden or clay, admittedly) cups to the others, Mylo included. Sinnan had just slipped away from Mylo after pouring him something out of a large, clay vessel of some kind. It honestly just looked like a big pot someone had painted on. She couldn’t see what was being painted, but when Caras waved her down with not one but two cups in his hand, Vi hurried forward to take one. 

 

Claggor, whose cup was already full, stumbled over himself. 

 

“Uh, thanks, Sinnan. Sorry.” 

 

“ Nihil est. ” 

 

Mostly for practice, when their new guide at this party poured Vi her own glass of something faintly sweet smelling, Vi thanked her in Ur-Nox and received the same response Claggor had, in a cheerful, sing-song tone that made her wonder if Sinnan actually somehow slept on her feet and moving. 

 

If life was different, would Powder and I, maybe Mylo have dark freckles like that? Like, if we had a lot of sun? Will they start showing up now? I mean, if our skin ever goes back to normal at all. 

 

The odd, intrusive thought came and went and Vi decided dwelling on how different their lives were was a waste of an already exhausting night. She just wanted to relax. 

 

“Vi’s Ur-Nox - very good.” Beside her, Caras drove away the idea of simply relaxing with this one comment, in a low voice damned near in her ear. 

 

“Thanks,” was all the response she could muster, looking back toward the fire. Vi took a long drink of the cup in her hand around the same time her sister did. Powder looked momentarily confused at the taste and Vi got it. Barely sweet, it was mostly a little sour. Yet - it didn’t taste anything like beer. She couldn’t compare it to undiluted wine, since she didn’t know what that tasted like, either. 

 

It wasn’t bad, necessarily and gave one more idea on how they could get clean drinking water without having to boil everything. What if they could make this stuff back on the farm or if they knew how to dig a well. 

 

Wait. 

 

Vi immediately rounded on Caras, who found the turn apparently quick enough to be startling. 

 

“You got this from a well, right?” Vi gestured down at the pouch tied to his belt and then mimicked drinking with her free hand. 

 

“Well?” Caras questioned. “Umm… water? From water hole?” 

 

“Yes,” Vi nodded encouragingly. 

 

“Yes, I got from water hole.” Vi paused and almost turned to Sinnan for help but when she looked at the girl, Sinnan, Powder and Ekko were talking about something or someone the Noxian had pointed out. Despite how exhausted the undercity street rats had to be, they were both smiling as the conversation played out. She didn’t want to interrupt if she didn’t have to so she spoke very slowly. 

 

“Caras. The people at our farm before us, did you know them?” The boy dipped his head in a hesitant nod, as if trying to follow her. The mental image of the collapsed stone, brick and wood on the farm’s property hung in her mind. “Did they have… fakkae ?” 

 

“Not yaks - smaller things… boves. ” 

 

“Okay - but did they get water for them from the stream every time?” Vi asked this so quickly, Caras looked a little overwhelmed and then sheepishly shrugged in confusion. Vi held up a finger, nodding and turned to Sinnan. “Hey, Sinnan, could you do me a favor?”

 

“What’s that?” Sinnan shouted back, over the noise in the yard. Powder and Ekko also turned to watch Vi. 

 

“Can you ask Caras if the people who lived on our farm before had a well for water?” Sinnan shrugged and translated it without a thought, but Powder immediately straightened up, so quickly she bumped her bad arm against Ekko. She did not even seem to notice. Caras took a second to think and then gave Vi an answer directly, though he still sounded confused. 

 

“It.. on front of animal house.” 

 

“Son of a bitch .”  Vi whipped her head around - but Vander was not in easy earshot. Claggor and Mylo were. “We’ve had a well out there this whole time.” Claggor closed his eyes as if the idea was a little too much to acknowledge but Mylo - 

 

“You mean no one went and looked? ” 

 

“No,” Ekko hurriedly answered Mylo, who was still watching them as if affronted. “We didn’t know what it was. It just looked like a bunch of rubble to us.” For just a second, things got a little somber between them. Or maybe tense. Mylo glared into his own cup of watered down wine and after a few moments in which Caras and Sinnan both reflected tension on their faces, Vi threw her unoccupied hand up and left them to tell Vander. 

 

By the time she’d returned to her sister, Ekko, Claggor, Mylo, Caras and Sinnan, Vi had forgotten Mylo’s frustration and was not on guard. She hadn’t forgotten, though, that somewhere out there, meat awaited them. 

 

Her earlier guess as to how many people around her age were in the village was wrong. Over the next hour or so, Sinnan introduced about twenty people that she could guess to be between the ages of eight and sixteen. Vi had expected that, like so many other people, they might sit somewhere down in the village square, maybe near a fire. She had hoped as much, at least, but even as tired as they had to be, Ekko and Powder (dragged along by their new friend) hauled VI from introduction to introduction. Vi quickly came to suspect that Sinnan took some enjoyment from bouncing them around the square, face always plastered with a grin.

 

It didn’t disappear until, at Powder’s prompting, the redhead introduced them to a man standing near the western most fire, where someone was still roasting the better part of an animal carcass on a metal spit. It was large enough Vi couldn’t really pin down what it was but if they were back home she’d be suspicious about its provenance. Sometimes, when things were desperate, peoples’ pets vanished. That, in turn, sometimes led to people disappearing, too, though in revenge. 

 

The man examining the spit as it turned in a wooden frame turned around as Sinnan plastered a respectful if still cheeky smile in place and began to introduce him to Claggor, Ekko and Powder. Vi hung back beside Caras and another boy whose name she’d already forgotten. This man Sinnan flagged down looked to be balding way too early and was maybe as old as Vander if one squinted a little. 

 

He stepped back from the fire and the conversation around it, dressed in a long  leather apron and otherwise simple, plain, wool pants and a dark top she couldn’t get a good look at. A little shorter than Vi himself, he was dark-eyed and bushy browed, face slightly pockmarked. As he smiled briefly at them, she caught a whiff of the smell of smoke from him that threatened to overwhelm even the vampire’s. This was the kind of smoke that came from burning coal or charcoal. 

 

“This is master Vavros Pati.” The man squinted Sinnan’s way for a second, as if trying to understand her and then corrected her in Ur-Nox. The girl’s eyes rolled slightly which clearly he wasn’t a big fan of but the stranger simply placed one hand on his hip until Sinnan complied and turned to the gathered group at large, gesturing for Vi to come and join them. To her right, Caras was still in conversation with his taller, longer haired friend, so she slipped forward without saying anything. She still caught sight of Caras noticing her as she did. “Sorry, let me try again. This is mister Pati. He doesn’t like ‘master’. Thinks it’s stuffy.” 

 

Getting a little closer, Vi could read a bit more about the man. While still fairly fit, he was noticeably missing a slice out of the lobe of his right ear. 

 

“Hi, I’m Powder, this is Ekko and Claggor - oh, and Vi!” For a second, just a second, Powder looked back at her as if surprised and then guilty. To Vi, the idea Powder had forgotten for just a second that she was around and was having fun on her own with other people was a good thing. So she responded to the tinkerer’s serious expression by sticking her own tongue out. This at least earned Vi a roll of Powder’s own eyes. 

 

Sinnan hurried to translate, though Vi didn’t think that was really necessary. 

 

“He’s the village’s only real smith now - and one of only two carpenters, too.” It had taken a second but after the showing of some level of respect to the man, their guide had fallen back into her eager, quick ways. Each word came faster than the one before it. “Mother says he’s indes- indes-” the girl paused, looking shocked at being tripped up by words, then said, “really important.” 

 

“Indispensable?” Powder offered in a hushed whisper, but Sinnan seemed not to do quiet. 

 

"Indispensable! That one!” 

 

“I just help,” Vavros Pati declared. Between the dark little chuckle in his voice and the surety of the statement, the leather-aproned man confirmed her suspicions that he knew some words Piltovan, after all. “Only help.” 

 

A hand wrapped just lightly around her right forearm. She knew it was light - but it didn’t stop her from wincing and pulling away from it. She brought both hands in close almost instinctively but even Vi was in control enough to look before raising them. Caras stood a step or two away, his face apologetic at her withdrawal, but he did nod very pointedly at the bigger fire in the center of the village green. 

 

She wasn’t sure what he had seen or what she was supposed to make out between torch, lantern and firelight but a second after a loud, deep dull metallic thud rang out and one voice after another began to shout the same word into the air. It spread to the fire they stood nearest very, very quickly. Then it carried on beyond. 

 

“ Copadia! Copadia!” 

 

It sounded a little bit like a disconnected, tongue-in-cheek kind of cheer to Vi’s mind and it wiped away both her thoughts of the pain in her arm or her slight overreaction. It ended the blacksmith’s introduction to the family because Sinnan again tossed an arm over Ekko’s and Powder’s shoulders and started to direct them toward the big fire again, with shouted encouragement for Claggor, Caras and Vi to follow. 

 

She didn’t argue. 

 

A few minutes and a couple of confusing incidents involving retrieving bowls from a nearby set of blankets later, Vi learned that Copadia was a word for a beef stew full of all kinds of spices she’d never had before. There was also something a little sour to the broth which carried a faint sweet smell in a way that she couldn’t shake the suspicion was not that different than what most folk out there were drinking. (True to Zenneene’s word, she didn’t feel a thing after drinking an entire glass of that wine on a relatively empty stomach.)

 

“Is like a beef soup with lots of special spices and herbs and raisin wine,” Sinnan told them when Powder asked what the bowl Ekko was carrying for her actually had in it. Vander, who had since rejoined them by the stew pot, did interrupt. 

 

“And uh, Sinnan, how much, uh, wine do they use in this? ”

 

“I dunno, I don’t know how to cook too good,” the barefoot girl in the gray dress shrugged. “Go get some, you have to push your way to the front if you want any before it gets low.” Vander laughed once as Mylo immediately turned his shoulder toward the cauldron and squeezed himself into a very small gap in response. “See, your brother understands,” she counseled Powder. 

 

“I think I’ll sit this one out,” was Vander’s response. 

 

“No, you won’t!” Vi turned her head at the exclamation, knowing it could really only be one of a handful of people. Zenneene approached, alongside a tall elder of the village Vi knew she’d technically been introduced to that night and couldn’t remember a damn thing about. “The way Caras says it, you’ve been living on grains only. Get some meat in you - going too long without is bad for the mind and body.” 

 

“How’s it bad for the brain?” Ekko asked, curiously as the two new arrivals to their circle approached. Sinnan was clearly eager to drag at least Powder and Ekko away to sit down and eat somewhere, and Powder was no less excited but couldn’t carry both her cup of wine and her stew this way. So, Ekko held both. Vi wondered if she shouldn’t offer to do it, but again got the sense that the little blooming friendship that could be in front of her was more one belonging to those two.

 

On the other hand, there was Caras….

 

“You’ll always feel hungry, you’ll start to feel sad and cranky. Lots of fighting and brooding.” Ekko had the good grace not to speak the thoughts she could read crossing his face but Powder on the other hand turned her eyes right on Vi. Vi just raised her chin and ignored the girl. 

 

“Alright, alright.” With a sigh, Vander admitted defeat and took a bowl offered by a nearby man from the village with him, up to the cauldron. 

 

“We can all go sit down,” Sinnan offered with one gesture of a covered arm. A sigh of Vi’s own passed her lips and she watched relief settle into her sister’s face. 

 

“Yes, yes we can.” Claggor brightened up as he rushed to respond. The girl laughed and Caras reached past Vi to pat the wider boy on the shoulder. 

 

“Claggor very tired, yes?” For his part, the begoggled boy tried to shrug and play it off as a joke but there was really no hiding that every second each of them was standing or walking was something of a miracle. At this point Vi wasn’t sure how many of them would be able to walk in an hour and make it home, to say nothing of tomorrow morning. 

 

Embracing the idea of dinner, though, Vi told herself to ignore how weird it sounded to her to make alcohol part of a stew’s broth. It must’ve been normal here, after all. 

 

Sitting down as a small group was nice, for the short time it lasted. While Caras and his friend, Cuinte, chattered away to one side of her in Ur-Nox and Powder, Ekko and Sinnan continued to get to know each other, talking about just about everyone and everything around them, Vi embraced the quiet. She embraced the cool grass under her and the way she and Claggor could eat, soaking torn shreds of flatbread in the strangely spiced stew. She cherished her first taste of meat since the Iconagra, both in the stew and when someone brought around a few pieces of the deer that had been cooking over the other fire. 

 

Sometimes, she, Mylo and Claggor even talked to one another over the meal like things were normal again. 

 

Well, when the circle wasn’t dominated by relieved sighs at the heavier meal than any of them could remember eating even during the Iconagra trip. 

 

Eventually, Orkis made a pass by to greet them and Zenneene came by without Vander, who Vi spotted helping Helene clean her own table down and deliver what was left of the prepared bread to whomever the two of them could reach. 

 

“Mrs… Zavrik?” 

 

“Yes, Miss -?” Powder opened her mouth to answer the question posed by the older of the two redheads in their circle and then hesitated for a second. 

 

“I guess my last name is Vanderkin, now. It used to be something else but -” 

 

“But we don’t really remember it,” Vi lied. She did remember their biological parents’ surname. It just honestly, truly did not matter, anymore. 

 

“Well, Miss Vanderkin, what can I do for you?” Zenneene took a very long draw from her cup of wine. Vi couldn’t imagine putting down the stew in the bowl on her lap for anything. Not even if the wine would actually get her drunk.  

 

“Do you think you could ask Mr. Pati to show us his forge?” Vi took a very long sip from her stew and had to stifle her urge to laugh at her sister’s really one track mind as she caught a piece of rich fatty beef between her teeth. Chewing and savoring the treat, she looked across the street at this man Vavros’ house which she’d been utterly uninterested in on the way here. She lost the moment around her, the sound of the conversation or even the laughing tone in Caras’ voice as he said something to her about the situation at hand and focused on the copadia. 

 

In fact, she was so focused that until she came back to the sight of a hand held out at almost her face level to help her up, she had no idea that their little corner of the party was moving. Caras hovered above her, his wine glass still in one hand and the other empty and waiting. A half-finished bowl of stew on her lap gave Vi pause. She glanced around to find Vavros and Vander leading Ekko and Sinnan a few steps away as Powder struggled to get up even with Claggor’s assistance. Cuinte, the taller, somewhat frailer looking boy Caras had been talking to with eyes almost as dark as Vavros’ stooped low and without much warning, wrapped one arm under Powder’s arm, hauling her up in one big shift. 

 

A flare of annoyance passed through Vi at the sight, especially given how her sister jumped and clearly felt self-conscious at the act. Cuinte stepped away, touched two fingers to the side of his head in a gesture a lot like a cocky salute and then hesitated for just a second, one hand outheld as if expecting Powder to fall backwards. Her own hand grabbed at Claggor’s for just a second and then she shrugged it all off as if none of them had seen the way she wavered on her legs. Vi let the protective instinct pass. 

 

The stranger now striding away from her sister had just been trying to help, maybe in a playful way. Powder still did not look back at him, as if to hide the obvious embarrassment on her face. Vi sighed, decided not to be an asshole, and took Caras’ offered hand only after apparently amusing him by swallowing the remainder of her stew in two seconds flat. No way in hell was she going to be letting an ounce of it go to waste. 

 

She and Caras barely managed to silently convince Mylo to stand up and join them from a couple feet to Vi’s right. 

 

“Alright, alrigh’,” the wiry boy gave a yawn and then pushed to his feet before being nearly knocked over as Caras tossed his own arm around Mylo’s shoulders and started to usher him forward. A moment later, Cuinte came hurrying back, hair swept over one shoulder and arms full of round, big red apples. Vi could count the number of apples she’d eaten in her life on one hand and there were more of them in this older boy’s arms than she had fingers on that hand. 

 

“Sinnan!” The boy cried, and then reared back with his right hand. At the edge of the light of a nearby torch, the girl lifted her head from beside Ekko. Thrown like a ball, one apple soared across the feet between them but was scooped out of the air by Ekko, who promptly stuck his tongue out. Cuinte yelled something in Ur-Nox, and she faintly heard Sinnan tell Ekko to pass it forward, there’s more coming. Ekko started by passing the apple up to Vander, who was only half-paying attention as he handed it off to Zenneene. 

 

After a few seconds the group reformed across the street, at the edge of Vavros’ property, each toying with a drink and what looked and felt like a fresh, red apple that smelled tart as hell to Vi. Though Vander peeked in briefly when it came time to head through the gate and to the forge and workshop, he, Mylo and Claggor mostly stayed back, as if not particularly worried about the almost complete stranger leading Ekko, Sinnan and Powder into the small building in his backyard. 

 

Caras, Cuinte, Mylo and Claggor struck up a very interesting semblance of a conversation with one another, mostly routed through Caras about what the two older boys did around the village for fun. It was clear Vi was supposed to be involved, but her attention wandered, and not just to the complaining pair of legs under her. 

 

Vander. Vander was exceedingly relaxed. Though he’d been spending enough time that night chatting with Helene that even Powder had commented on it under her breath not to Vi but to Ekko and Sinnan. In a weird way, Vi felt like groups had formed during the completely unexpected little party. Zenneene, Orkis, Vander and Helene had looked at ease with each other despite the fact that most conversation went through Zenneene one way or another. Even though Mylo looked a little less into the conversation than the other boys, Caras and his friend Cuinte were getting along with Claggor and Mylo well enough. Ekko and Powder had someone about their age and either took to her or were taken by her very quickly (as Sinnan seemed to have a very pronounced, energetic and honest personality). 

 

Really, that just left Vi. 

 

And it did hurt but it also made a little bit of sense. 

 

Rather than be a bummer for anyone else, Vi went in with her little sister and stayed a few feet back the whole time, splitting her time between observing the crowded, tiny workshop or the big brick forge and looking at the houses on the next street over. Unlike many of the villages they’d passed near the coast where people tended toward simple, lighter structures, everything she could see from the back of Vavros’ property was heavier. Long, brick houses or squat brick shacks, it didn’t matter. The only light thing was that some of them used what looked like dried grasses for roofing. 

 

That didn’t sound very effective, to her, but what did she know? 

 

“You having fun there, Violet?” she lifted her head from her reverie, hanging out by the back fence and watching as Ekko and Powder circled the big, brick furnace as Sinnan followed, lighting their path with a torch borrowed from Vavros’ workshop. Of all people, it was Sinnan’s mother, Zenneene, who had broken from her group and come to what, talk to Vi? Or maybe just to keep an eye on her daughter. 

 

“I’m fine. Hey, do people grow potatoes out here? I think we mostly saw wheat.” The woman with the faintly rounded face scratched her cheek and then shrugged the same one-armed shrug Caras often did. 

 

“I’ve eaten them before, of course, but I don’t know how well they’ll grow here. Wheat and maize do fine. Maize does fine everywhere, I guess.” At this, the small wooden fence in front of Vi threatened to bow a bit as the woman leaned against it beside her. Vi frowned at the sense of examination she felt under Zenneene’s gaze and hurried to follow this last comment with another question. 

 

“You farm a lot?” 

 

“No, no, I mean I have a kind of big herb garden but, I’m not a farmer.” The young woman looked ruefully amused and then gazed up at the starry sky above them. “I’m a herbalist, Violet. They call me a word that means something like ‘hedgewitch’ around here, but that’s more of a joke. Really, I just know what herbs are good for food or work for medicines and what kinds of mosses help with pain or make good teas for indigestion.” Vi nodded. 

 

“Kind of like a pharmacist.” 

 

“Kind of, I suppose,” the woman sounded a little bit as if she was mocking the term ‘kind of’ but Vi didn’t read too far into it. “What happened to your sister’s eye?” Cold pouring out from her stomach to her extremities, she raised an eyebrow at the lady. “Fight with one of your brothers? You?” It only took a moment more before Vi laughed. Once. 

 

“You’re trying to find out if someone’s hurting her. No it’s nothing like that, I promise.” When the stranger just slowly raised both of her own eyebrows as if doubtful, Vi said, “only one person has ever hurt my sister in her whole life.” She looked back across the fence to watch the way Powder still carefully kept distance between Ekko and her right side. “And she’s back home in the undercity, waiting for me to break her nose.” 

 

“Is that why you all left?” Deeply uncomfortable with the thread of the conversation and with the tension rising in her chest that made her want to squeeze her hands into fists all over again, Vi nodded. 

 

“That’s part of it. Bad person did bad things and we had to leave to keep it from being worse and because Vander didn’t want any of us getting hurt. But I-” 

 

“But you want to punish this girl who hurt your sister.” 

 

“Woman,” Vi corrected. “A grown up, but yes. A lot.” 

 

What she didn’t understand was why the lady in the dark britches smiled and stood straight up, reaching to the sky. 

 

“Thank goodness. I was hoping I was right.” 

 

“Hmm?” 

 

“You just all seem like nice people but it was hard to miss that you’re all crimson red and your sister is hurt.” 

 

“She gave herself the black eye,” Vi admitted, spinning the story to not embarrass her sister. “Moves around a lot during bad dreams. Almost hit me a couple times, not much room at our new house. The sunburns are just because we’re-” embarrassed all over again herself, she shrugged. “We’re not used to being in the sun and we had to get the fields planted.” 

 

“Hey, I understand. I just wanted to make sure. Especially since I think my daughter likes you all, quite a bit.” 

 

“Those two, maybe.” Vi smiled despite herself. Because Ekko was laughing and Powder had her head in one of the openings on the front of the furnace and pulled it out with a little soot in her hair and grin on her face. “I’m really glad.” 

 

“You are, aren’t you?” 

 

She wasn’t sure how to answer that or respond to the sad look in Zenneene’s eyes. 

 

“Well, don’t let me bother you. I’m going to go find Orkis and Vander again. I can see everyone’s alright, here.” The stranger looked out at where her daughter stood beside Vavros torch in hand but Vi didn’t know that that was who she was talking about, after all. 

 

Vander was convinced to finally head home by Mylo not long after the little tour finished and Vavros Pati (with Sinnan and Zenneene translating) had answered close to thirty or so questions from Claggor, Ekko and Powder. Though they’d had their fill of an onion and beef stew, pieces of venison, big old hunks of fluffy or flat breads and multiple cups of a slightly sweet but mostly sour wine, there did not look to be much less exhaustion in the shuffling steps of the family heading home through the darkness. 

 

What there was, was less misery and more light as Caras had loaned them his family’s lantern so they’d have more protection against, apparently, wolves. 

 

Vi had passed on Caras’ warning to Vander but not within her sister’s earshot. 

 

She didn’t think the family’s relaxation or exhaustion either one was caused by the weak, watered down wine as much as finally experiencing an end to the rush to plant and maybe just… a good night. She might have felt a little melancholy and even unnerved by her conversation with Zenneene (who, to be fair, had been trying to do the right thing) but…

 

She marked a smile on every face but Mylo’s during the trip home and that was way better than things had been lately. 

 

Powder and Ekko were chatting happily away near Claggor (who was carrying Caras’ lantern,) in their own world. Vi and Mylo stayed closer to Vander. It was nice not to feel hungry or thirsty or to be thinking about the next meal. It was nice to still faintly feel the taste of beef on her lips. 

 

“About brickmaking,” Vander started. “Now that you’ve had a look at Vavros’ setup, do you think we can do it?” 

 

“Oh yeah, totally,” Ekko chimed in in response. Even Vi rolled her eyes when Powder nudged him and he hurried to clarify, “if we can figure out how to make a kiln.” Powder and Ekko knew a lot about, like, gizmos and machines and mechanics and stuff but she didn’t know why Vander expected them to know anything about any of this. Powder, though, continued. 

 

“I mean, I know the difference between dirt and clay but I don’t know where to look for it or how people make it into bricks. Not just the shape but actually like, big strong building bricks.” 

 

“Still,” Claggor interjected. “Do you think I could walk back to the village tomorrow myself if I’m not too tired?” Vander glanced back over his shoulder.

 

“Why’s that?” 

 

“Well, Zenneene might be able to point me at someone who knows how.” 

 

“Not a bad idea,” the man sighed. “It’s a walk but not as bad as I worried it would be. I’ll come with you if ah, everyone else promises to stay on the farm while we’re gone.” 

 

“Fine by me. I’m fried. I can’t wait to sleep in. Not like there’s anything better to do out here anyway.” Mylo wasn’t exactly talking to Vander, more like conspiratorially chatting with Vi herself. Vi understood, too, but she did have a different thought occur to her as he leaned in her direction. 

 

“I don’t know. Planting’s the first time I felt like I’ve done anything since we got here.” Mylo’s eye roll reminded her they were not on the best of terms. She’d practically forgotten through the haze of a belly full of food and drink. 

 

“Well, next time we need to plow you can teach Mylo, Powder and Ekko, then. That’ll buy you more to do.” Vander sounded like he was teasing a little, or threatening. Vi didn’t care. It wasn’t the worst idea she’d heard. “No surprise it went faster with someone lighter on the plow.” 

 

The rest of the trip home, Vi felt a little smug at how quiet Mylo was, but she didn’t really have much to say, herself. 

 

To Vi, at least, the problem the next day was unexpected but perhaps not as surprising as it should have been. She slept better than she could remember sleeping in her life, despite the fact that she and everyone else (save for Claggor, who apparently had the bed that night) were stuck lying on hard ground. No nightmares woke her sister and she did not hear the front door to the shack open even once to suggest anyone so much as got up in the middle of the night to relieve themselves. 

 

But the next morning….

 

It felt weird. 

 

It would’ve made sense if the first thing to throw her off was that they not only broke their habit from the last few days of being up well before dawn but on top of that slept in almost much later than any of them would’ve back home. That wasn’t it, though: when she woke up, she had no memory of being stirred in the night and felt like her head had just hit the pillow. She didn’t miss the lost time. 

 

Quite the contrary: her eyes struggled to open at all as Vi first rolled from one side onto her back on the cool earth. Every muscle in her body screamed, “TIRED!” Her sunburns ached. Her arms and legs protested at the very concept of moving. In the end, Vi had given in. It had taken Claggor shaking her awake to even get Vi to entertain the idea of first sitting up, an action that took too long and left her far, far too drained. 

 

All she wanted to do was go back to sleep from that moment on. This still wasn’t the biggest problem the day had to present to her. 

 

The biggest problem for Vi, at least, was that the moment she did get up at the speed of spreading moss, take care of obligatory morning needs and occupy the shed long enough to change clothes, she didn’t know what to do.

 

That just left more room for every part of her mind and body to tell her to lie down. Stop. Sleep. 

 

The same unsteadiness and lack of direction had hold of most of the family despite what looked like higher energy levels in the case of Mylo in particular. On her trip back to the shack after changing she saw Mylo dragging Claggor along to a stop in the distance. On the far end of the hillside upon which their shack was set, the two were stood at the edge of the collapsed structure which they now had reason to suspect might have a capped off well inside of it. 

 

Gods, I hope there’s some kind of hand pump or something hooked up to it.

 

Through the open front door to the shack, Vander was cooking yet another pot of rice for breakfast. 

 

She couldn’t have been the only one thinking would not live up to their dinner the night before. 

 

Neither Ekko nor Powder were immune to the strange haziness of the morning. Ekko eventually emerged from the shack with a bucket hanging from one hand and the other rubbing at his eyes. Behind him, Powder turned one of their prototype arrows over and over in her good hand as if trying to examine or test it. Vi didn’t point out that that would be easier if the girl’s blue-gray eyes opened more than halfway. 

 

“Thanks, Ekko,” Vander rasped from within the shack. Ekko’s response was an overly tired yawn. “Y’all stay out of the sun as much as possible.” This reminder brought the pain in every bit of exposed skin back to her mind and she scooted back toward the house to get under the shade. “We’ll grab water from the stream for now until we know more about this ‘well.’” 

 

“Okay.” Powder looked a little sharper at the mention of the well, but only barely. Despite answering, most of her attention seemed to be on the arrow. 

 

“Violet, tell the boys to get out of the sun.” She glanced in through the open door where Vander had just caught sight of the boys on the other end of the hill and was now gesturing with one large, hand carved wooden spoon at them. She shrugged.

 

“Sure, then I’m either going to sleep or going with Powder and Ekko. I need to stretch.” 

 

Mylo responded to her passing on Vander’s message with a dismissive wave of the hand and Claggor by gesturing toward the remains of the wellhouse and barn (or maybe it had been a stable?) as if that changed anything. Vi let it go after that: she’d done her part and she didn’t feel like arguing with either of them or anyone else. 

 

Instead, she hurried to catch up with the two friends now waiting by the front door with near matching looks of impatience. As a trio they ventured back out into the woods, along an old game trail and to the stream a few minutes’ walk from the shack. Once they reached it, Vi came to a stop in the shade of a nearby tree, not ready to fill up a bucket and start back yet. Watching the stream, Vi confessed her excitement about the idea of getting to bathe that evening in it. The walk home the night before had left most of them a little sweaty and for all the anxiety about the stream she’d gotten used to being able to get clean at the end of any given day. It beat the hell out of waiting for safe water and weekly or even monthly scheduled showers back home. 

 

The good mood brought on by this idea didn’t last too long, even if Ekko and Powder clearly shared the same anticipation.

 

To call breakfast bleary and quiet was an understatement. Vi herself didn’t know what to say to anyone once they were sat down out front. No one, it seemed, could bring themselves to stay inside and away from the breeze as the day started to warm. At least watching the fields they’d just planted was better than looking up into the old wooden rafters of the shack’s ceiling. Kind of. Vi nearly fell asleep over her breakfast and she was far from the only one caught doing so. 

 

Still, even with some shade the heat was unpleasant on their sunburnt skin and no one was in quite the good mood they’d had the night before. With her lost for words and Mylo being Mylo (which lately was to say he was being kind of a dick and not often answering anyone who spoke to him) a lot of weight fell on Vander, Powder, Claggor and Ekko to carry on the conversation. They sure tried two or three times but it all fell flat. By the time breakfast was over even the bright green grass and the deep brown, almost black fields looked duller. 

 

Not a single cloud passing in front of the sun brought enough relief to justify leaving the shade. Some of those clouds, though, did look a little threatening.

 

When Vander and Mylo went to wash up the dishes and Ekko, Powder and Claggor grabbed every tool they had in the shack to take them out to the shed, Vi chose to go with the second group. Even still, attempts to pay attention while they took stock of things failed. She listened, but felt listless and mentally fried , despite the fact that she felt a little less tired than when she’d first woken up. Eventually, and she wasn’t sure exactly how the conversation got there, the three of them started again to talk about how they might make a kiln. 

 

“I think we just build one out of bricks,” Claggor finally offered after a minute or two of idea tossing. “If we can just get some from that mason lady back in the village? I mean, it just has to trap in all the fire.” Maybe it was the talk of ‘trapping in fire’ but Vi tuned in mostly to make sure nothing stupid or destructive was being discussed. “Then it has to funnel heat up and to the bricks right?” 

 

“I guess.” This was Powder’s response to it all, a little uncharacteristically, but it also seemed to be the end of the conversation for now. Vi felt the sun beating down on her neck and realized that Powder’s hair was still down from the night before - and could use a brushing. The younger sister didn’t seem to care, though. It looked like it was making a bit of a curtain over her own neck, in the moment. 

 

Come to think of it, no one had really tried hard to tame bedhead, that morning, Vi included. 

“Hey, has anyone noticed how quiet it is outside at night?” Claggor asked, changing the subject without warning. Vi exhaled and leaned forward past him to peek into the shed. She was glad someone put it into words because sometimes (like the night before) it was disturbing as hell. 

 

“Yeah. The whole way back home and all the way until I fell asleep I just kept thinking - what the hell?” Vi wanted to rub at her eyes but didn’t want to irritate the skin of her face as she tried to peer into the shaded interior of their tool shed. “Like, why’s it so quiet? What’s out there?” 

 

“Wolves, apparently.” Powder looked a little sour and a little concerned at this, so Vi just wrapped one arm carefully, for both their sakes, around her shoulders. 

 

“Yet you still wanted to sleep out front. You’re a stone cold badass, Pow-Pow.” Powder rolled her eyes. The gifted slumrat’s black eye did not look any better this morning. If anything, somehow it looked worse. Like she’d taken a pretty rough hit. 

 

Then again… she had. 

 

Vi quickly chased away the memory of grabbing in a panic at her sister’s hands to prevent her from doing more and more damage to herself, only the night before last. 

 

Inside the shed, paired with the few tools they’d brought out from in the shack, Vi counted a tarp, a knife, a rusty ax, a little rusty rake she now understood the purpose of, a rusty plow, an old hammer, a couple of yokes meant to hook animals to the plow and two Bow 2.0s. 

 

“I don’t know if they’ll be any good,” Powder finally said, and when Vi shot a look at her sister beside her the girl had been clearly watching where Vi was looking. Powder nodded right at the bows. Ekko quickly hurried to counter. 

 

“Only one way to be sure, right? Try them out.” 

 

“When are you going back out foraging?” Powder asked, apparently ignoring Ekko’s implication that they should be practicing with the bows. They hadn’t had time yet. This might even be the first chance they’d had since the two weapons were finished. “We had a deal right?” 

 

“We did.” Vi nodded and then regretfully turned her head off in the direction of the stream where Vander and Mylo should hopefully be nearly done with the dishes. “If we’re going out today it should probably be before you and Vander leave for the afternoon,” she told Claggor, who raised a hand to pluck at his top as if it was already starting to stick to him. 

 

“Ugh, right, I did say I wanted to go back into town to look into a couple things last night.” 

 

“Yeah, you did.” 

 

“All I wanna do now is go back to sleep.” 

 

“Me too,” Powder confessed. Yet, she’d been the one to suggest going out ‘foraging.’ Vi had to get used to the word. 

 

During planting, the few non-sprouted potatoes added to their meals had been a nice boost alongside the rice. All in all, though, the stew and the roasted deer meat from the night before reminded Vi how badly she needed protein. She’d been making observations about the others for so long, Vi had been a little disturbed last night to observe that she, herself, was getting smaller. 

 

Since she didn’t have much fat to burn off, that meant she was losing muscle. Claggor might’ve had a bit more of both when they arrived, but now as he shut the door to the shed, she knew he was getting close to the same boat as her and Mylo didn’t really have anything left to burn off. The boy paused, confused by her examination as he made to head back to the shade and shadow of their shack. 

 

Some of us might be in trouble.

 

“What?” 

 

“Nothing,” Vi clenched her fists and exhaled slowly, trying to shake the cobwebs. It was time to get to work and her body was just gonna have to bitch about every single step.  “Alright, Powder, Ekko, grab those papers Orkis gave us. We’ll go meet Vander by the stream and see what he says. Maybe we can get two or three hours out there and find something while I’ve got some energy. Plus, I don’t feel as bad as I did yesterday.” As the words left her mouth she had to admit they were a lie. 

 

Sure, she felt a little different, as far as thinking a little more clearly but that wasn’t really a good thing. Everything about the morning felt dreary. Parts of her limited exposed skin threatened rebellion for the sun. The only real upside was that she felt less nauseous and bad (that sense that something was wrong inside her, which could not be named) today. The little blisters on her right arm weren’t as painful as they had been. 

 

Still, she was a little worried that if she didn’t get them out and doing things fast, her will to do anything at all would evaporate. It was really hard to argue against when every part of her wanted her to do nothing else.

 

“Alright! Maybe we can dig up some new mats for more arrows? Or maybe we’ll find a nest like the one Caras found. It could have feathers in it.” Vi blinked, flushing for a moment at the memory of her first encounter with Caras and maybe even a little at how comfortable she’d come to be around him in just a handful of days. Then the embarrassment shifted again and, though she cursed herself for it right after, she smacked herself firmly on the forehead at the realization. 

 

“I could’ve gone back to that nest and looked for some kind of feathers.” 

 

“Why not now?” Powder queried as they strayed a few steps away from the shed. Looking back from over Powder’s shoulder, Claggor’s face said he rather wanted to split off and get out of the sun. 

 

“Don’t remember where it was.” This admission earned her a long suffering huff from her sister. Vi couldn’t remember the last time Powder had sighed at her like that. 

 

“I’ll grab the papers,” Ekko announced, before hurrying off toward the house.

 

“Yeah, I’m going in too,” Claggor drawled. “Powder, think about any kind of tools we need. Maybe we can make them or maybe… there’s something else we can do.”

 

“Without a dump to pick through for mats I don’t know how much we can make.” This answer accompanied a dip in Powder’s head as Ekko got out of earshot. She looked hesitant, as if worried what she was saying was going to upset them. Vi opened her mouth to correct the notion, but Claggor just itched at the top of his head and turned his back on them to look toward either the shack or the pile of stone that used to be a well house and barn. 

 

“I’ve got an idea about that but if it doesn’t work we could try out stone knapping?” 

 

“You want to steal a rock?” Vi asked. As the words formed in her mouth she became suspicious she was about to earn the dual looks of exasperation and doubt shared by her sister with the much taller boy to Vi’s left. She held up both hands and lifted both eyebrows to warn them off: she wasn’t in the mood to get any grief right now. 

 

“Are you- No! Didn’t any of you listen to Vander talking with Kutter on the way here?” Vi’s shoulders dropped and she momentarily chewed on her bottom lip before chasing away the hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. Truth was, she barely remembered the trip. Surprisingly, though, Powder cut in. 

 

“So, what is ‘stone knapping’ then?”

 

“You too?” Claggor adjusted his goggles just above his forehead as if they were already on his eyes and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. However, his eyes were sharp and he caught the way Powder tried to withdraw into herself a second time at this response. Claggor wasn’t exactly the brightest guy around when it came to other peoples’ inner workings but he cared and Powder wasn’t hard to read. “Dude, this is right up your alley,” this still came out like disbelief and a scolding. “We can ask Vander about it tonight. I don’t know how to figure out what the right kindsa stones are but it sounds like Kutter’s the one that taught those survival classes Vander’s been talking about.”

 

Alright, this was ridiculous. 

 

“How did I miss that?” Vi interrupted. She expected to be teased about not paying attention or for Powder to ask if Claggor was making that up. Instead, they shared a second look between themselves apparently at Vi’s expense and Claggor crossed his arms over his chest in unfortunate mimicry of Powder’s own stance. He wasn’t trying to make himself look small or hard to notice but she recognized caution and even worry in both faces before she could hear it in their voices. 

 

“Vi…” Powder’s tone did carry the telltale concern, the trailing edge that suggested she was worried about what she was about to say. When her sister’s eyes left her and trailed off sideways, Vi stayed quiet. This sounded like a serious conversation, on the level of the revelation of the little package hidden behind the shack. “I-” 

 

“Okay, Vi.” Claggor didn’t cut people off, very often but his own worry sounded to be tampered by exasperation. “Vi, you’ve been a little out of it ever since- “ losing steam, the boy shrugged two meaty shoulders and then rubbed at his upper lip as if it itched. “Actually you’ve been really out of it ever since Mylo… got hurt.” Vi shrugged in response. She wasn’t sure why all the tiptoeing around and dancing around it. 

 

“It’s whatever,” she dismissed, hearing the sound of the shack’s front door reopening to suggest Ekko was on his way back. Claggor had yet to be able to get out of the sun like he wanted. 

 

“It’s not whatever.” Arms across his chest, the bulkier boy stood up straighter and took a step closer. It wasn’t a threatening gesture but it did force her to pay attention to him. Behind him, Powder was looking anywhere but at her. “I’ve been wanting to bring it up but I dunno anything about this. You’re scaring us. You and Mylo. Except for planting, it’s like you’ve both barely been here with us.” 

 

“What? What does that even mean? I’ve barely left that shitty little shack since we got here.” 

 

“It means last night you missed a dozen good chances to tease Powder while we were out in the village.”

 

“What?” her sister chimed in. “About what?” 

 

“You’re not that stupid,” he told Powder, who blinked at the dismissive tone in his voice when Claggor glanced at her. “Vi might’ve missed it, no one else did. Definitely not Ekko. ” The larger boy turned back on Vi and kept going. 

 

“You tripped over a tiny rock on the road outside of Orkis’ house. You space out through almost every conversation that doesn’t involve being pissed at Mylo, which you always are, and do you even remember how many times Ekko and Vander had to keep reminding you to eat this morning?” 

 

This, at least, gave Vi pause. She did know that Vander and Ekko had both been insistent she eat. Actually, if she stopped to think about it, Ekko was usually giving her grief to hurry up and eat so that he, Powder and Vi could go outside and hang out somewhere just before bed. The last few days had overridden that, but even then….

 

“Powder and I kept count.” She lifted her eyes back up to Claggor. Hesitant, but hopeful, he watched her as if waiting for something big to happen. Like he wanted her to say or do something. Like he really needed her to say or do something. Instead, she shot a quick glance to her sister and felt a little angry and alarmed to see the same look on Powder’s face. 

 

“Twelve times,” Powder continued, like being watched by Vi made her feel like she had to say something here. The shorter girl broke eye contact after. 

 

“What?” Ekko asked from behind her, forcing Vi to turn and acknowledge his return. She hadn’t heard him coming back at all. “I tried to tell you all this already on the boat and when we first got here.” 

 

He had. 

 

Vi sagged on the spot and shrugged as she shook her head. 

 

“I’m - sorry?” 

 

“No, no, sorry. Fuck,” Claggor’s frustrated grumble drew her eyes from Ekko, who clutched at the now squashed little scrolls of paper with a shrug of his own. “I didn’t say this right. We’re not mad, dude, we’re scared, freaked. I never do words right.” 

 

“That makes two of us, then,” Vi found the energy to promise him. She nodded to Ekko and then to Powder who seemed content to rejoin the conversation now. “These two can cover us on that. Mylo too, if someone does the thinking for him.” 

 

Several seconds passed. Several seconds of a warming morning with the sun she had been ordered to stay out of as much as possible beating down on her. Several seconds accompanying a resurgence in the nausea she didn’t think she could blame on the heat. Then Vi turned and started for the nearest edge of the property, the nearest nicely shaded treeline. 

 

“Let’s go see if Vander’s cool with us going out. We might find something before afternoon.” She did not know how else to end the conversation than to pretend it was already over. Powder and soon Ekko’s footsteps sounded behind her as the two moved to catch up. She heard them exchange some words, but for a few seconds stayed firmly inside her own head. 

 

She’d promised herself twice already to get herself under control and stop freaking others out. She hadn’t done so. She’d run the gambit from hurting to worrying Powder to even scaring Claggor and Ekko. The truth was she didn’t know how to help it. When she just let herself sit and watch nothing, worry about nothing, none of it was complicated anymore. The guilt was quiet, the anger was quiet and the hurt was quiet. 

 

She really fucking needed that kind of quiet. 

 

“Don’t be mad,” Powder requested from her right side a few moments later. The shade of a big, wide-branched, deep brown barked tree Vi had been eyeing as a good climbing tree blocked a bit of the sun and provided immediate relief to the itching she felt in her scalp as she warmed. Vi knew she probably ought to address this, especially when Ekko caught up to her, too and did not say a word. 

 

“I’m not, I just didn’t know it was so bad. I’m just - I’m just being quiet. I’m just trying to be…” just trying to be better. Just trying not to deck Mylo. Just trying not to scream at Vander. Just trying not to feel like I want someone to beat the shit out of me. Just trying to fix things and why aren’t I allowed to do that? 

 

“Vi, you look mad.” 

 

“I don’t know.” This was the only response she could offer her sister. She didn’t bother to say any more on it, not even when Powder wormed her remaining hand into Vi’s and squeezed as hard as she could. 

 

“Okay. Sorry, Vi.” She shook her head. Powder, Claggor, Ekko… none of them did anything they needed to be sorry for. The three of them were just dragged into all this stupid bullshit and she was the one dragging them into it over and over again. 

 

Last night’s little party in the village and all the good it brought seemed not just far away but miniscule. Meaningless. Nothing in the face of everything behind it. 

 

“You think about tools we could use too, okay?” Ekko asked her after a few moments of silence. “Especially anything that can help us make things for practicing, like you promise? You remember, right? You’ll teach us to fight?”

 

“I paid attention to that at least.” Vi snorted, though her own joke was far from funny. Her arms hung like lead weights at her side. Her legs shuffled forward only with protest and shaking. 

 

Neither Powder nor Ekko looked that much better, if more stable on their feet. 

 

Yet, they went on with their day. 

 

After days in direct sunlight, being out in the woods was definitely a little nice. Once the trip was approved by Vander they were free to find a wide enough space to walk and just venture deeper in. It was so much cooler in the woods and the shade of the canopy really took away from agonizing over and suffering through the sunburns. Not just for her, either. Out of touch as she might’ve been lately according to them, Vi could still notice how Ekko and Powder first got much quieter and then much more talkative as they started scouring for any kind of useful food or woods or even the motherload: a nest. 

 

A little further north along the stream than where they typically bathed or washed clothing or dishes, Vi was brought to a stop as Powder pointed out a big old tree not even ten feet away from the water. Vi thought on her first trip out in the woods she had to have gotten this far north, so likely her eyes had passed right over the tree. She had not seen the little green orbs her sister was eagerly pointing at. 

 

“Once those little nuts get brown and ripe, we can crack them open and boil them a couple times, then we can grind them up and make a bread or maybe just add it to the rice for different flavors.” 

 

“Wait, they’re nuts?” Vi asked, surprised. “They’re bigger than peanuts or something. I mean, bigger around.” Powder shrugged. “So they’re not good to take now?” 

 

“No,” Ekko answered as the girl pointed to a part of the paper he was holding. “We figured out this word - that’s fall. Like, we gotta wait for the fall.” 

 

“Well, let’s try to remember this place, then.” Vi wished she had something she could do to mark the tree other than ripping bark off of it or carving into it with a rock. They didn’t, though, so Vi headed back to the stream, grabbed the first stone she could spot at the water’s edge and carefully carved a small arrow pointing straight up into the bark of the tree. 

 

Once they got a few minutes further north, Vi turned them east away from the stream and decided to widen the search a little. 

 

While Powder spotted the acorns hanging from the tree, Ekko found something a little different but maybe something they could actually use then and there. 

 

At one point, the pale-haired boy stopped them to call Powder’s attention over to a series of plants growing in one of the rare, semi-sunny gaps between trees. With her sister’s help, he identified them as herbs for cooking, though neither he nor Powder knew for sure how to pronounce their written Ur-Nox names. 

 

A little later, those herbs were joined in Vi’s bag by a few fistfulls of leaves from a bush he spotted that was apparently used to make tea. 

 

“It’s cool how fast you guys figured all this out,” she told the both of them as the two searched the immediate area to see if there was anything else growing in this patch. “You got used to this stuff quick.”

 

“I don’t know what else we were supposed to do,” came Powder’s response. It was completely without insult, injury, accusation or even bitterness but something about it still made Vi shut her mouth. 

 

Vi had only meant that she would be scared she was digging up the wrong plant, or something. 

 

Her thoughts took another less than happy turn as they moved on, straying to Powder’s nightmare.  Vander and Claggor had searched the entire property and seen no sign of another person. The woman Powder had imagined or dreamed had known Powder’s secrets but could not have been real. This again reminded Vi of the secrets buried near the cellar door, covered in dirt and debris. 

 

Underneath the umbrella of the deepening forest, Vi felt it all fresh. The shame and guilt that she, Vi, had set all this in motion and brought the enforcers down on them by taking the others to that job. She had fucked up with Silco, fucked up protecting Powder and then in the end, run away. Left. Abandoned the undercity full of hungry people. Run from her problems. Run from the bullies. 

 

In the end, they’d done everything Vander had taught them not to do, because she’d forced Vander’s hand. 

 

I don’t think I can do it like they can. Vi confessed this newest fear to herself as Ekko regretfully informed Powder that a plant she’d stopped to look at didn’t look to him like the drawing she thought it resembled. 

 

The rest of the trip was a little more somber and she knew her quiet and the way she couldn’t strike up conversation was the reason. 

 

It wasn’t without one more victory, though.

 

When she wasn’t letting herself just be led by her sister or Ekko she kept her eyes up as they had theirs down. This did mean that on their way back out of the forest a bit later, she caught sight of a nest in a tree. It had been a close thing, though, as the roughly round mass of dried grass and twigs and whatever else almost looked like just more of the sprawling tree they’d been moments from passing by. 

 

Convincing Powder and Ekko to delay their return home was not hard: announcing she’d found a nest had excited them both. 

 

Climbing the tree, on the other hand, especially having to jump to reach the nearest sturdy limb, was a pain. It wasn’t just an effort. It was hard . Her legs didn’t want to cooperate with the opening leap. After her second or third disgusting failure at getting up that first branch, the bark tore at and angered her inflamed arms and hands. It scraped at and threatened to tear her jacket and shirt. It left her covered in little shavings of it. Worse still, every branch she reached for after always felt just a little higher up than she thought it had been from below. 

 

Every inch of height she gained came at the cost of arms threatening to let her go and just fall and legs that buckled when she tried to step wrong. 

 

Vi really wasn’t sure if she could land safely, much less on her feet if she fell.

 

She ignored Powder every single time the girl asked her to climb down or called out her name at a near slip. 

 

Every single time. 

 

Vi took too long for her own tastes but eventually got her head up and over the nest and caught a few details all at once. As tired as she was, as hard as she clutched to the tree, she felt just a little bit more energy seep away at the sight of six little eggs inside the nest alongside a handful of small feathers. Maybe, just maybe they’d be large enough to help with the arrows? She wasn’t sure. She was sure that on a nearby branch, there was a bird with very similar colors to those feathers mean mugging her. 

 

Six small eggs. 

 

A mother bird’s entire clutch. Maybe they belonged to this barely larger than fist sized bird with the pale orange beak aimed in her direction. 

 

Below her, unaware of the sudden debate she was having, Powder and Ekko looked up, expectantly, hopefully. Anticipation was written over every inch of their faces. Ekko, so down lately compared to his exceedingly cheerful self and her sister, standing there with a casted arm that had to frustrate her on a daily basis. They were also all really sunburnt and the herbalist in the village, Zenneene, had sworn up and down last night that they needed protein to heal and to feel better, that not having it messed with their heads. 

 

“Sorry,” she told the bird much more loudly than she intended. Feeling guilty as she had been earlier, Vi reached over and grabbed at several feathers, shoving them into her bag with the herbs while she watched the bird. It turned sideways, as if readying to fly off, one dark eye still fixed upon her. Vi grimaced. Finish the job. One for each of us, she reminded herself, looking at the nest. But then… she watched the bird hesitate, on the brink of flying off but for some reason still alighted on a branch just out of her reach. 

 

Vi took three of the eggs and told herself she wasn’t being cruel to this animal or betraying her family by not grabbing all six. 

 

They both felt like lies and so she eased them into the old grain bag slung over her shoulder as it had been over Powders’ a few days ago. Vi climbed down but her arms threatening to give out and the pain that every movement caused her made it less a climb and more a barely controlled descent. She ignored Powder and Ekko both when she hit the ground and her legs immediately buckled. 

 

It took all her focus to grab hold of her bag so it didn’t thrash around instead of trying to catch herself as she fell. 

 

Her head hit a bit of exposed tree root but Vi didn’t make a sound. It throbbed dully, but at this point if she paid too much attention to it she didn’t think she’d want to get back up. 

 

“Vi!” Powder’s footsteps came quick and intermingled with Ekko’s smaller strides. 

 

“I got them,” Vi promised. There was no excitement or hope in her sister’s eyes when Vi held up the bag and began to slowly sit up. Ekko bounced on the spot beside them, not quite as worried looking as the taller girl to his right but still anxious - and hopeful. 

 

“Is your head okay? That looked like it hurt?” The question poured from her sister’s mouth all at once but oddly all Vi could focus on was the fact that the clothing the three of them had chosen to wear out that morning was the same they’d worn out in the fields, herself included. It was looking more than ragged. The cuffs of Ekko’s pants had starting to tear. 

 

She didn’t answer as she pulled herself up to her feet by leaning against the tree and yet more nothing as the sound of wings flapping overhead told her the bird they’d just stolen from was moving off. 

 

“Feathers?” Ekko asked, hopefully, holding out both hands to cup them. 

 

“I’ll show you when we get back,” Vi promised and, without waiting for an argument, forced her shaking legs to start carrying them south. “Might sound like a waste not to keep going but it feels like its getting later. Plus if anything happened to these it’d really, really fucking blow.” 

 

It’s not because I’m hurting. I’m not hurt. I’m not hurt. 

 

Once she got a little distance between herself and the tree, Vi didn’t feel nearly as low emotionally as she expected but both of the others followed her lead and stayed dead silent on the way home. 

 

Vander and Claggor were late coming home from the village that evening, late enough that Vi had to endure Mylo complaining that at this rate, they’d never get dinner. 

 

In the end, though, the two did return without Orkis’ lantern and seemingly a good deal more tired than when they’d left. The boys, sans Vander, took off for the stream to bathe and dinner started. While the water was coming to a boil Ekko retrieved the plants he and Powder had found on their little trip and showed them to Vander. 

 

Vander recognized them as basil and lemongrass and after a brief discussion with Ekko, agreed to help her and Powder try to transfer any further examples they could find of it into a garden they’d plant out front. 

 

“Maybe Zenneene can help?” Powder had suggested. 

 

“You mean Sinnan.” Ekko had not matched anyone’s eyes but had sounded a little teasing. 

 

For Vi’s part, she wasn’t completely sure she tasted a huge difference in the resulting dinner unless she got a bit of the plants themselves in a bite of the pale rice in her bowl. She did try very hard to be mindful to eat and pay attention to the people around her but at some point Claggor and Powder’s earlier warning was demonstrated to her explicitly when she found herself watching the pattern on the blanket underneath her and Ekko lightly nudged her back to attention with one arm. 

 

“Sooner you finish eating, the sooner you and Powder can get down to the stream. You were the one complaining about being sweaty earlier.” Vi smiled but swinging her head around made it clear just how much she had tuned out. A dozen long, straight slender rods sized and shaped pretty well like arrows lay arrayed in front of her. A few wood shavings still laid across Ekko’s knees and their good knife was sheathed beside him as Claggor took one of the arrows and began to turn it around in his hand. 

 

There was no sign of sunlight coming in through the small, still open window above her head. 

 

When Ekko reached again for his knife, took another of the prototype arrows and began to cut a notch into one end, Vi grabbed a handful of dinner and shoved it unceremoniously into her mouth. Her half of a tiny boiled egg made it into that mouthful. 

 

The front door sat wide open as the window did and the lack of Vander in the room suggested he was outside rinsing dishes. Mylo, across the room, watched Ekko work curiously enough but still quiet. 

 

“Alright, time for our secret weapon?” Vi leaned forward to get a look at her sister on Ekko’s other side as the boy nodded. From within her pocket, Powder dug a small, plastic tube. A tube of Mega Glue. Wedged into the tiny space between the two tinkerers rested the tiny bag they’d filled with tea leaves, herbs and feathers. It was this last category of item Vi expected the two of them were planning to pair with the glue and their arrows. 

 

Vi couldn’t even guess how long she’d been spacing out. She was the only one who still hadn’t finished dinner. 

 

Damn it. 

Chapter 16: Chapter Sixteen

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Sixteen

 

“Bullshit!” 

 

Powder’s eyes jerked open. She raised her good hand and wasn’t entirely sure what it was she was trying to grab with it but something had just been right in her face. She was pretty sure of that. The light of a dying fire in the hearth and faint lines of sun peeking in through the blinded window above her showed nothing hovering over her but she sat up all at once when the cry that woke her was followed by the slamming of the door. Her blanket still tangled around her cast, Powder scolded herself to move a little more carefully. Her heart was already hammering against her chest, though. 

 

And this was how the morning started. 

 

Ekko’s grasp on her left shoulder caused her to turn and take in the sight of the boy. His face split into a small, hopeful smile, like he hoped she wouldn’t be freaked out. Ekko was already sat atop his bedding with a bowl balanced in his lap so she wasn’t surprised when he produced a second from beside him, tucked between his bedding and Vi’s. 

 

“Kept it warm for you.” Ekko’s smile faded quickly when Powder turned her head so that her left ear was facing the front wall. She appreciated the gesture but somehow didn’t like the sound of food right about then. 

 

“Vi, dude, chill.” Claggor tried to placate her sister from out front, voice a little desperate or irritated, himself. Vi just growled in that way that ended in half a shout. 

 

“None of that, ” Vander chided from somewhere in their vicinity. 

 

It was like they didn’t realize how thin the wall was that they must be just sitting against. 

 

Because she didn’t want to be mean, Powder reluctantly took the offered bowl of food (much the same as last night’s meal) and looked around their one-room home. Above her, yellow light was filtering in through the cracks in the window’s reed blinds, so she could safely assume the sun was up. Wow, I did oversleep. Back home she’d never have been up before the sun, but since planting it was weird not to be. 

 

While Powder couldn’t hear Mylo out front she also didn’t see him anywhere in the house. Given that he was half of the reason Vi got angry, it just left more mystery. Mystery that left her tense from head to toe as she sat up more fully and carefully uncovered her bad arm. 

 

The other reasons Vi got this angry, angry enough to scream and growl and rage were stupid little things, things that came out of nowhere and things her sister didn’t seem to realize were stupid to get angry at but it really set her on edge. It sucked to listen to her angry, to think about what might come after the arguments. 

 

“No, this is total bullshit.” 

 

“Language.” Vander’s voice was low enough she had to strain to hear it. Beside her, Ekko looked to be trying to mind his own business and eat but there was no way he was deaf to most of what was happening outside, either, right? She couldn’t be the only one who felt like she had to listen to this. 

 

“He can’t keep getting away with this.” The growl had returned to her sister’s throat. The kind intended to tip people off she was really done with whatever was going on. Most people recoiled from that growl. Most people back home had seen her throw hands when she made those noises. Most people knew not to make her mad or upset one of the family unless they wanted Vi to either slug them or publicly stare them down until their friends made fun of them for retreating. 

 

She’d seen it way more times than she cared to count. 

 

This wasn’t the undercity and these weren’t other street punks. This was Vander. 

 

“With what?” Vander asked, which was apparently the wrong question. 

 

“ With EVERYTHING!” Her sister wasn’t burning out, judging by the near shout, she was just working herself up to a real rage. Powder, balancing her bowl on one leg in particular, shifted around when Ekko nudged her. “ With fucking everything, Vander. No one stops him!”

 

“Hey, eat up,” Ekko hissed under the pause of Vi taking a breath outside. An unnatural lack of response followed her sister’s anger so Powder started to grab for a handful of still warm white rice when Ekko reached out offering her a spoon he had clearly been hiding to ‘surprise’ her with. She flashed a quick smile, because it was thoughtful. The smile just faded quickly beneath a rising tensing of her muscles. “We’re going out to the woods with Vi as soon as the sun goes up, remember?” 

 

“Maybe that’s what I’m worried about,” Powder muttered to herself. Upon seeing Ekko silenced and conflicted, she flashed him her own reassuring smile no matter how fake it felt. As false as it must’ve looked he returned one back that was no more convincing, this time. That was okay though. 

 

“It’ll work out, okay, Violet?” Vander hadn’t spoken in so long she’d begun to think he had walked away from the conversation. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but was still rare. . 

 

It’s not okay! He’s just getting worse and I’m getting tired of it!” Powder winced at the implication: Vi was going to be the one to do something about it. It was hard not to guess who the ‘he’ in this conversation was. 

 

“What’s happening?” she whispered, leaning a little further forward. The muscles in her back were starting to complain at the tension and lowering her head only made it worse. But she didn’t have to look up and face whatever bullshit was happening outside. Ekko’s response, though, was to silently point past her. She turned a little, scooting on her butt and followed his gesture with her eyes to the corner of the room. 

 

There should have been two bows and about a dozen new arrows propped against the wall in the corner where, when open, the door would have hidden them. 

 

Instead, behind her boots and Claggor’s there was only one bow and no sign of any of the arrows they’d worked on the night before. That made no sense so she looked back to Ekko for answers, brow furrowed. 

 

“Mylo woke me up getting up early. He took them and left before anyone else could wake up. I tried to tell him not to but…” Ekko finished with a shrug but Powder did not think a shrug described it. Mylo had probably been really rude to him. He only ever seemed to want to be rude to people, lately. 

 

“Mylo’s having a hard time.” This sounded like the start of some kind of explanation or excuse on Vander’s part, but when Vi fired back immediately, Powder went back to eating her breakfast. Shoulders hunched, neck and back tense and her toes flexed to have some outlet for the jitters that were taking up residence somewhere in her chest. 

 

“Bullshit! We’re all having a hard time!” 

 

She ate in quick bites, rapid and a little mindless, as if finishing the meal would finish the argument out front. It made Ekko happier, at least. Vi went back and forth with Vander for almost a full minute in a foul temper, repeatedly implying someone needed to do something about the way Mylo was acting in a higher and higher pitched tone. Vander just kept… well, telling her to calm down and to trust him. Over and over. Until apparently even Vander had had enough. 

 

“The subject is closed. I’m the parent, you’re not. I’ll handle Mylo.” A loud thump suggested something had hit the wall not too far away from exactly the spot opposite of her on the other side of the bricks, causing her to jump. The better part of a spoonful of rice spread across her bedding and legs, thankfully clumped together in little chunks. Ekko started to talk but Powder shook her head rapidly. Her near crimson cheeks were warmer still than when she’d woken but even this was not what caused her to finally set aside her breakfast and drag her legs up to herself, wrap them, and bury her face. 

 

It was the sound of Vi’s parting shout to Vander. 

 

“I’ll believe it when I see it!” 

 

Vander called after her sister a couple of times, in a louder voice each time. Powder just held her breath and tried to count down from ten as she’d been told to try many, many times in the face of fear. 

 

No more yelling Vi. 

 

Things were quiet again. 

 

If she was going to relax, it would be right now. 

 

After another minute or so, Powder responded to Ekko’s nudge by stretching out her legs again, grabbing her breakfast and discarding the spoon entirely. She dug in with her left hand and began to messily make an excuse for not wanting to talk or look at anyone by stuffing her mouth. Ekko wanted her to hurry up and eat, after all. 

 

“Why can’t they see it?” Claggor asks, frustration seeping into his own voice. 

 

“I don’t know, lad.”

 

“If they’d just talk to each other-” 

 

“She’s right about one thing.” Vander paused to clear his throat before continuing. Claggor did not try to fill the silence. Powder just squeezed her eyes shut and kept eating. “I haven’t been a good father, lately.”

 

“Vander, she’s just angry, you know that’s-” 

 

“Took until the rush to plant the fields to make me see it. All this time they’ve just been sitting there suffering. Hell, we’re all suffering. I’ve gotta figure out how to fix it somehow.” 

 

Claggor didn’t try to speak. 

 

Powder didn’t open her eyes. She did, however, eat as if it had been a week since her last bite of food, something she hadn’t known in a long time but couldn’t forget. 

 

She couldn’t remember hearing Vander this open and sad and powerless except maybe for the night Mylo got hurt. 

 

She wasn’t hungry. Not at all. Iif she stopped Ekko would interrupt her and annoy her into continuing, though. 

 

Another mouthful. 

 

“They’re not really here, are they Vander?”

 

Chew. Chew. No water nearby. She could get up and get it but that meant maybe making noise and being heard by those outside. No. 

 

Swallow. 

 

“Smart lad. No, I don’t think either of them are. Think we had ‘em for a bit out in the fields.” Another mouthful. Chew. Chew. Chew. 

 

“Powder?” Ekko prompted, but she squeezed her eyes shut tighter and stayed leaned forward. Tune it out. It’ll calm down and I’ll calm down. 

 

“ Think they had something to focus on and then we lost them again.” Vander didn’t sound like someone who had a plan. He sounded like someone saying he’d lost his favorite shirt and just had to give it up for gone. 

 

“What are we going to do?” Claggor’s question was met with the same response Vi kept getting and Powder wondered for the first time if Vi wasn’t right to be mad about it. Was it possible that Vander was lying when he said - 

 

“I’ll figure it out. You let me worry about that. Everything’s going to be okay.” 

 

“You sure?” The biggest of them, the one who never really questioned Vander or Vi when they said something, Claggor sounded younger than her at the moment. The change was so jarring that she nearly dropped her half empty bowl. 

 

Chew. Chew, chew, chew! 

 

“I’m sure, kiddo.”

 

Three or four seconds passed before she heard the front door start to open inward, so she sat up straight fast. Her back hurt when she did so. Some kind of sharp, hot pain traveled maybe four or five inches up from her mid back toward her shoulder blades. Powder tried not to look like she had been eavesdropping and though her mouth was full of rice she shook her head insistently through oddly blurry eyes at Ekko to warn him off as well. 

 

Vander was the first inside, dipping his head down to make sure he did not hit it on the door frame as he spared her and Ekko first a glance and then a sideways smile. 

 

“Mornin’, you two. Alright?” Powder responded to his question with a closed mouth smile, forced wide to suggest she had her mouth full and couldn’t tak. Then she told herself, chew. Chew. Chew. “How about you, Ekko?”

 

“I’m alright.” Ekko responded a little too quickly. Powder could only read worry on his face though, so she tried not to overthink it. She’d freaked out a little and now he was worried about her. It wasn’t the first time and it probably wouldn’t be the last even today as much as she hated to admit it. 

 

“Well, that’s good, at least. Powder, looks like you’re almost done.” She nodded but the moment she swallowed (something getting harder to do with large amounts) she immediately began to dig at her bowl for the last few grains. “When you and Ekko are finished up, I want a hand down by the stream. Gotta get some of the burnt bits dug out of the bottom of the pot, give everything a quick rinse.” Powder nods. She could at least carry the cup and bowls used to eat in if she was careful and they took it slow. She had decent enough balance. 

 

Powder swallowed again. 

 

“Then boiling water and scrubbing the rest?” Vander gave a nod and Powder thought it weird he’d never really asked her to help with this before. Then again, with only one hand still , she was probably the worst equipped for it. 

 

“Some of them that could work, but it won’t be enough for the pot. That’s where the soap comes in.” Powder nodded. Occasionally, (she suspected he was trying to start them on a schedule of once a week) they even used a bit of that soap on themselves but he didn’t want them rinsing it off in - 

 

“We don’t dump any of the soapy water near the stream, right?” Vander again answered with a nod, and this time smiled a little. “Or we’d be just like the people polluting the rivers around Piltover.” 

 

Instead, Powder found herself several minutes later sat with Vander not far from the bottom of the fill the house sat on. Between a bucket of water fetched from the stream and the soapy pot, the air took on a nice scent like oranges around them. Oranges were another thing they almost never got their hands on down in the Lanes but she missed them a lot. For all the fruit they’d managed to get bits and pieces of in the village days ago, none of it had scratched that itch. Speaking of that night….

 

“Shouldn’t we find out if we can use that well?” Powder asked Vander as she scrubbed very hard with her only free hand at the inside of the wet clay pot balanced on her knees. Vander, for his part, was using a similarly thin gray cloth to her own to do the same to each and every bowl before dipping them in a second bucket of water to rinse. What used to be the wellhouse in question was just a trip up the hill and behind them, its own rubble mixed in with the stones that were once a barn. 

 

“Maybe,” he mused. Powder found herself at ease for the first time since waking up, so she didn’t rush to get any more information out of him. Then again, ‘maybe’ seemed like a stupid answer. Of course they should be trying to figure out the well. 

 

“Imagine how many trips we could save down to the stream?” 

 

“True.” Again, it seemed like Vander was trying to avoid engaging with the subject for some reason and she was about to prod again about it when he added, “but on the other hand if we do get it up and running it might not be safe to drink without boiling, anyway. We’ll have to figure out how to test it. Even then, it’d only be for drinking. Not for washing.” 

 

“Why’s that?” she asked, slowing and shifting in her seat on the ground to rub the inside of her left arm against her side. It hurt, but at least, for the moment, that stopped the itching. Unlike her face and scalp. Of course, they outright hurt, too. She couldn’t wait to get out of the sun and into the shade. They probably should’ve stopped in the shade, she thought. Long, sunburnt fingers continued their work and protestations in kind. 

 

“Wells aren’t really bottomless.” Duh, she told herself. He doesn’t want to run out. “And we have no idea how long that well’s been there. I haven’t even really gone to look at it.” 

 

“Claggor and Mylo did,” Powder informed him, pushing hair to one side. Today, for some reason, having it down bothered her. It kept moving into her face and eyes, kept getting trapped under her when she sat down or leaned back, kept rubbing at the inflamed skin of her forehead and making it worse. She wasn’t sure if it was that or the mention of the brother who had taken their arrows and gone off before everyone else had woken up that made her fist tighten around the thin cloth rag in her hand. 

 

She just scrubbed harder. 

 

“Yeah, I heard. Apparently it’s a little buried over there.” Movement caught her eye as she pulled her hand loose and turned the pot up to spill warm water out into the grass. A bit of debris spilled out with it at her feet, so she turned her attention toward the movement in the corner of her eye. Coming back almost perfectly along the same route that they typically followed down to the stream, Vi was approaching in long, quick, even strides. Her sister’s shoulders were stiff beneath the jacket that Powder thought it was too hot out to wear. Vi hunched slightly as she walked. 

 

Her sister’s bad mood was way far from over. 

 

On the other hand, when Powder started to feel around for any sign of anything else stuck to the inside of the pot, Vi did not start to yell or say anything at all. She just made for the shack, not cutting south along their property to approach Powder or Vander. Powder followed the girl with her eyes as Vi started to climb the hill. Judging by the way her right hand hung at her side, Vi was holding onto something. Powder had a horrible feeling, based on the fact she couldn’t really see anything from there, that she could guess what it might be. Something long and thin. 

 

“Can I head back?”  Vander nodded once without answering but when this gesture drew her attention she could tell he was also watching Vi. The look on his face was soft but sad. He stopped Powder with a little grunt and held out to her a stack of about three bowls which she cupped close to her chest above her right arm with her left arm. Powder got up and carefully turned to climb the hill. 

 

Vi was quicker than her, though, and closer to the house. 

 

Once she reached the front door, Vi pushed it open to go back inside and out of the sun. From her angle of approach, Powder could see Claggor standing in the entrance as if he’d just been about to step outside. She picked up her pace as the two exchanged words. She still couldn’t reach them before Vi shoved something toward Claggor who stepped outside to join her. Vi, on the other hand, left the boy confused and a little lost looking when she shot past him into the house.

 

At least she isn’t yelling, Powder told her tensing chest muscles and neck when the door shut loudly behind the pink-haired fighter. At least, she certainly looked like someone who would pick a fight, still.  

 

Still standing just under the shade of the roof’s overhang, Claggor caught sight of her trying to hurry toward him with bowls in hand. He grimaced and held up what Vi had found. Powder slowed in her tracks at the sight of one of her arrows on display.. 

 

Or, at least it had been one of her arrows. 

 

Even from a good twenty feet away she could see that the first inch or so from the tip down had split nearly in half. 

 

Powder no longer hurried to catch up to him, frowning. 

 

Are they too soft? If that was the case, Mylo wasn’t going to let that go and Vi wouldn’t let him not letting it go, go. There’d be more yelling and maybe worse. It seemed like ‘maybe worse’ was always on the table nowadays. Like an explosion on the edge of - Powder picked up her pace, eyes slamming shut. In the back of her head she could hear an explosion, intermingled with a high, unhinged laugh. 

 

Stupid. Stupid. STUPID . 

 

Powder kept the bowls tightly wedged between her cast, her left arm and her chest as she hurried to the door. Claggor stood at the ready, apparently sensing something was wrong. He peered down at her when she opened her eyes long enough to see how close she was to the door. She ducked low when she reached him, setting the bowls down on the ground to his right and then quickly, heart pounding all over again, slipped into the shade and sat down. 

 

“Powder?” 

 

The explosion repeated in her head, sounding more like the crack of thunder at first, and then deepening. 

 

“Powder, you okay?” he asked again. This forced her not to shut her eyes and drove away the echoing boom. Powder inhaled sharply and pressed back against the house. The door opened as the moment drew her sister back outside. “What’s up?” Claggor sounded a little lost on what to do.

 

“Nothing,” she hurriedly answered. “Nothing you’ll believe, anyway.” 

 

“Then try us?” Vi asked, coming around the corner of the doorway while Claggor frowned at her. He gripped the broken arrow tightly in his hand. She looked between the two: frustration and anger on VI’s face and confusion on Claggor’s, as if he was lost in those woods just beyond the farm. If she actually told them what was going on in her head, she would only make the day worse. Besides, now that she wasn’t thinking directly about it - 

 

“Just let me sit down, okay?” 

 

“Okay, Pow-Pow.” Vi’s nickname for her came out strained and stressed despite the affection behind it. “But we’re still going out to look for more stuff we can use. Maybe we’ll find more of the wood you used for the last batch of arrows. Maybe we’ll score some more eggs?” 

 

Powder shook her head sharply. 

 

“The arrows didn’t work, that wood wasn’t any good.” 

 

“You don’t know that.” Vi rushed to correct her. 

 

“Yeah,” Claggor agreed, encouragingly. “They could be fine.” 

 

“Maybe Mylo’s just being stupid with them,” her sister continued.  Powder drew her knees back up and exhaled, burying her face against them for a few seconds as best she could around her casted arm. her face against her knees as best she can around her right arm. “Well, okay, but five minutes and we’re back out.” She knew her sister was trying to sound like she was excited and not angry but it didn’t work. 

 

Powder knew her sister better than anyone in the world. 

 

Vi was angry. Vi was still angry when they’d already grabbed Ekko from where he’d gone down the hill to see Vander. She was angry when they slipped into the forest to find it cooled off the morning a little less than it had the last time the three had gone out all together and she was still angry when she started leading them in widening semi-circles throughout the woods, through brush and over tree roots. 

 

When Vi was angry her footsteps were angry. The way she moved her eyes around a room (or, in this case, a woods) was angry. Everything she did was angry. She breathed angry. She wore it like the dirty green coat hanging off her shoulders. Ekko didn’t miss it as the two of them spread out a few feet on either side of Vi and started to scan the ground for any nice patch of sun that might be holding wild vegetables or herbs. He kept glancing over to his right (and Powder’s left) to look at Vi as the walking talking rage machine swung her own eyes over the trees in the area.  

 

Powder wasn’t sure how much Vi was seeing and she wasn’t sure about herself, either. After chiding herself, Powder thought hard about what she wanted the most: wild carrots, radishes or some kind of berry bush. They needed any of these to start adding to their diet. She wanted fruit, too. There were supposed to be fruit trees in the area but she hadn’t really spotted anything since the tree with nuts hanging from it which wouldn’t be ripe for weeks and weeks still. 

 

Powder tried to let go of being aware of how upset her sister was but everything drew out Vi’s ire. Grumbling, huffing, grunting accompanied any time Vi went over slightly uneven ground or had to step over a downed tree branch. Worse, looking past her, Powder could see Ekko consistently stopping to look and check on her, not Vi. 

 

Then again, maybe this was just bothering him as much as it was her. She slowed with her left hand brushing the bark of a nearby tree and peered down at a patch of plantlife she hoped more than thought she’d seen something familiar in. As Powder slowed to dig out the papers Orkis gave them, Ekko tried to fill the uncomfortable quiet. 

 

Which was fair: sometimes she felt like the woods were always uncomfortably quiet.

 

“I asked Vander about the arrows.” This caught Powder’s attention and even Vi’s as they slowed in their circuitous, slowly expanding loop spreading out from one half of the property line. 

 

“What’d he say?” Powder asked, unsure she wanted to know the answer. Ekko, though, shrugged as he stood back up from examining his own patch of greenery in the little spaces between trees. 

 

“He mentioned they were told to put the tips of little wooden spears right on the edge of a fire to make them harder somehow. Maybe we just need to do that?”  The problem with that was that if there weren’t any arrows left to do it with, that still left them at square one. Powder opened her mouth to say this, but Vi spoke the thought first. 

 

“Yeah, if we have any left after .” Powder would have been put off by the bitterness in her sister’s voice but they were definitely thinking of the same problem. Who knew if Mylo would even bother to bring any back unbroken? 

 

“I guess?” Ekko started, as if just to placate Vi. Powder wondered if that meant she was thinking too negatively, too. “But he promised to show us how later.” After a brief pause they continued to move forward, still spread out and watching their individual little avenues. Powder lifted her head to look up as she crept on but neither bird’s nest nor a fruit bearing tree caught her eye. “What do you think the fire does?” Ekko called after a few more seconds of silence. It was a good question. 

 

“I don’t know.” Curiosity pushing out her anxiety, she tilted her head and checked to see if Vi had any ideas. The older girl pulled an apologetic face when they matched eyes and her sister shook her head. “I mean, my first thought is - why wouldn’t it just dry the wood out and make it really brittle or easy to set on fire?” 

 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” While Ekko called his agreement, Vi slowed down and lifted her head to the branches of a nearby tree. 

 

“Would a spear really be a bad idea for hunting?” Vi asked. “I mean, if it’s the right size and straight I bet you could throw it pretty good.” That idea made Powder uncomfortable in the same way, if not more than the thought of what the arrows were supposed to be being used for. 

 

Remember what Vander and Zenneene said though. We need it. Powder knew first hand even before they ran to Noxus what it felt like not to have meat - protein - for a while and they really could only get so much and certain kinds from certain places before they had to find meat. She got it. 

 

It was easier to miss with Vi or Mylo, since they weren’t as big, but Vander and Claggor were already getting smaller and hadn’t they only been here a week or two? Haven’t we? Powder stopped again in her tracks just as Vi let go of the thought about the spear and started to move again. 

 

“Wait, how long have we been here?” Powder asked. She didn’t know, for sure. 

 

“We only stopped a second ago,” Vi waved her hand as if to dismiss a concern. “Don’t worry, we’ve got all day except for helping get firewood.” It took Powder half a second to figure out what her sister was talking about before she rolled her eyes at the misunderstanding. Ekko came to a stop several feet ahead of them and whatever he’d thought he found must’ve turned up as nothing, because he looked disappointed. 

 

“No duh! I meant on the farm.” She hadn’t meant it to come out sounding so annoyed, but Vi’s eyes did sharpen her way for a second, narrowing. Powder went quiet, trying to read whether her sister was angry at the outburst or still just angry at everything. 

 

“Ten days? Eleven?” Ekko answered but he did so questioningly. This was a guess and it was better than Powder’s: she felt like it had been longer than that. “I don’t think I really counted on the ship. So I don’t know how long we were there.” Powder snapped with her left hand and sighed with relief, feeling silly. 

 

“ I counted. Two whole weeks on the boat, then if it’s ten days here… we’ve basically been gone a whole month.” 

 

“We’re not gone.” Vi’s voice was firm as she strolled off but she also sounded almost a little hurt. Like Powder had said something mean or wrong and now Vi was not looking at either of them but scanning the ground beneath and in front of her with hard gray-blue eyes. “We’re right here. ” Vi didn’t bite her head off or anything and the stomping around and huffing cooled down but for the rest of their trip her sister talked less. She moved quicker. It got hard to keep up with her and stay balanced with her arm stuck like this and the space between the trees so small.

 

That was one upside. 

 

Her pain had been getting better. Well, the pain in her arm, not in the suddenly cracked and peeling skin of her face and neck and arm. Unless someone bumped into her or she bumped into something else she barely noticed the pain anymore. It was just a little tender, stiff and sore stuck in one position. Also, she was more than a little embarrassed by this but, the cast smelled . 

 

She couldn’t get her right arm wet or clean, after all. 

 

How much longer will it have to stay on? 

 

Vander had told her when she first got it how long the weird mix of wraps and wax held up by the sling keeping her neck sore would have to stay in place. Now, though, when she should’ve been counting down to how long until they could take it off she couldn’t even remember the conversation. 

 

That was weird, right? 

 

In the end, the entire 3-4 hours out in the woods turned up a few more things that she was sure were from the food herbs Orkis (or someone, at least) had drawn up sketches of. Truth was, as they emerged from the coverage of the woods into the harsh light of the sun, she wasn’t sure about the value of them all. Her insistence on trying to replant them and grow them by the house hadn’t been met with any resistance from either her sister or Ekko and the three of them had dug several plants whole from the earth. 

 

Powder didn’t know how long they’d survive like that, so when they got back and managed to get up the hill, Vi and Ekko made for the shed a bit further back and Powder headed toward the house. Sat outside, Vander had observed their approach since exiting the forest. Now he watched her getting closer and she matched eyes with him as she drew up even. She did hesitate for a second when something struck her as different about him and it took a few seconds to make the connection that he’d shaved. She could see his chin and cheeks again, looking just as red as the rest of his face and irritated through uneven patches of scruff where it looked like he’d not done too well shaving. There was even a pretty nasty looking cut on the right side of his chin which, as he watched her approach, he continued to dab with some of the torn cloth rags they’d found in the cellar. 

 

“Are you alright?” The two spoke the same question in unison. After a surprised second Vander laughed at her. 

 

“Just tried to shave. With a dull knife. Probably got off lucky.” He laughed off the moment but Powder only paused a few feet away from him and waited for him to move the cloth, showing the wound. The cut was longer than she wanted to see but not as deep as it looked at first. Like Vander had taught her recently, the face and the head could bleed a lot. It didn’t mean it was a bad injury though. Not like Mylo’s. 

 

“Vi and Ekko are grabbing the ax and a rake and we wanna break up some ground by the house for a little garden. We’ve got more basil and lemongrass but we don’t know about the third plant. It was growing in big bunches and it looked just like the drawings on Orkis’ papers. It’s probably some kind of food.” Vander nodded, considered the rag in his hand and then carefully ran his thumb along his jawline near the cut. When it came back dry he looked satisfied enough, discarding the cloth and rising to his feet. 

 

“I’ve got an idea, then!” Sounding pleased either with them or with himself, Vander rounded the back of the house and turned immediately to his right as if to head toward the cellar. Powder followed from a few steps back, curious but unable to resist her eyes easing to the old brush and fallen tree limbs just a few feet away from the cellar doors. 

 

This was why she caught on early when Vander didn’t stop at the little double wooden cellar doors kept shut by a chain stretched between them. 

 

Instead, as Vi and Ekko started to hussle back over to her, expressions slowly growing dark, Powder’s breath caught in her chest as Vander made to grab at the debris as if to start hauling it away. Immediately, Powder licked her lips as she tried to come up with something, anything to make him stop. 

 

“H-hey, wait,” she said. “We should - we c-could -” Vander glanced her way but didn’t let go of what he had hold of. His eyes slowly narrowed when she stuttered through a failed excuse. Don’t, don’t, don’t, she pleaded, mentally. Not there. Not there. 

 

“Hold on,” Vi cut across her stumbling. “Not there. Better to do it around front don’t you think? That way we can keep an eye on it without having to go out back plus maybe it smells nice when we’re sitting under the roof?” Vander turned his head slowly from Powder to Vi and released the branch. 

 

“Okay,” the man acquiesced, though he continued to squint Powder’s way for several seconds. He did, at least, miss the way Vi sagged in relief and Ekko visibly exhaled a held breath. Powder tried to fix a smile on him, tried not to let on how cool she felt. She could hide the shame and flushed cheeks under the sunburn but sometimes, she thought he had to be able to see the feeling of her stomach clenching up written all over her face. Vander was worried or suspicious or both. His eyes, very like her own, did not leave Powder’s face until Vi and Ekko reached them at a jog. Ekko had the rake in one hand and Vi kept the ax up against her shoulder. 

 

The bright grass on either side of the little path they’d made between the house and the shed was high enough to reach Ekko’s waist. 

 

“Hey, Powder, wanna go inside?” Ekko said, shoving the ratty wooden handle of the rake in Vi’s direction. “You wanted to show me that other plant we found in the papers, right?” Though she hesitated, Ekko tilted and lowered his head, teeth gritting, as if to say,’figure it out, already!’ Vi nodded encouragingly, with that fake smile plastered on her face. The same one Powder and Ekko had shared earlier. 

 

“Yeah sure, let’s do that,” she answered, shakily. She could feel Vander’s eyes on her all the way around the corner of the house, until it blocked his sight. 

 

Her ‘secret hiding place’ wasn’t such a good idea, after all. How long had she expected that stuff to stay there? What was to keep Vander from wanting to dig the ground up for a garden just like the one they were suggesting in the future? 

 

Once Ekko joined her around the corner, Powder shushed him with one finger and listened. 

 

“You know what that was about?” Vander asked from the cellar doors. Realizing they were coming around front quickly, she pushed the door open and hurriedly called for Ekko to follow her. As if he thought she was being silly he hesitated for a second and pulled a face but eventually joined her inside. Once hidden by the walls of the house, she moved over to the blinds at the window and listened. 

 

“ Not sure, but I’ve got ideas.” Vi sounded grim. 

 

“ Care to share with the class?” The only man she’d ever really known as a father wanted Vi to tell him what Powder was so worried about. All she could think was that she hoped Vi was still mad enough at him to lie. That was a hope she felt guilty about that night, long after Vi had finished braiding her locks. 

 

“Vander, I’m watching out for her.” 

 

“You usually are.” 

 

“ What does that mean?” The pitch of her sister’s voice rose even as they stepped a few feet away from the wall. If Powder hadn’t been standing with her filthy boots on her own bedding to listen at the window, she wouldn’t have been able to follow the conversation. 

 

“Just what it sounds like. I’m choosing to trust you because you’re usually looking out for her. But if something is wrong, I need to know.” 

 

“No more wrong than usual.” She didn’t hear anything but a thud and a grunt from Vi for a moment after that. As if giving her time to do whatever she was doing, Vander did not immediately answer. After the third such thud, however, he continued. 

 

“ We both know that’s not true.”  Vander was trying his ‘I’m disagreeing with you but being polite about it’ voice. Vi didn’t respond too well to that lately but Powder could almost hear the shrug in her sister’s answer. 

 

“ Yeah, I guess you’re right. ” To Powder, the response sounded a lot like Mylo’s ‘whatever’, though. Powder exhaled slowly and leaned against the wall. The cold hard fist squeezing her deep in her gut did not loosen its grip. In fact, she was starting to feel a little sick to her stomach. They couldn’t really afford her throwing up and losing food though, so Powder told herself to calm down and pressed her head against the blinds. 

 

“We gotta move them,” Powder whispered when Ekko stepped up right beside her and opened the blinds to peek out. Other than the light spilling in between the blinds it was pretty dark in here. The fire had been allowed to go down to coals. Vander would probably want them to keep it from going out entirely, though, so Powder crossed the room and poked at the coals with the end of one log. When she got no immediate reply, she eased the log down onto the coals only after she spread a handful of little twigs from the other side of the hearth beneath it. 

 

Not having tried to do this before, she knelt down carefully in front of the little fireplace and tried to blow the embers back to life. Little pinpoints of orange and red throughout white, gray and black slowly grew stronger and stronger. The moment she pulled back to breathe, though, she did not pull back far enough. Smoke burnt its way down her throat and lungs and she began to cough. 

 

“Okay.” Ekko did not rush to take over or correct her, because he knew she wasn’t incapable like the others sometimes thought. “We’ll move them, but we have to tell Vi this time since she already knows about them and it needs to be somewhere we can get them back easy if we need them.” Powder nodded and started to speak, but their door creaked at that moment and began to open. She hurried to go back to trying to blow air into the embers to make flames. 

 

From the corner of an eye stinging from smoke, she caught Vander coming inside. The man gave an itch of his left cheek and a little nod. He paused by the door, keeping it open long enough for a little bit of a breeze to blow across her. Ekko pulled away from the blinds quickly, trying to pretend he had not been observing them or that they hadn’t been talking about something that would definitely make Vander mad. Vander did not seem to notice. Instead he pointedly looked at the fireplace. 

 

“Good catch, we do wanna keep that going a little. Can I show you a trick?” Powder did not argue, backing away on her knees and sitting up to suck in a cleaner breath. Vander knelt down beside her, too, forcing her to shift off to one side a little bit. Over the next minute or two, he coached her on how to do it. He didn’t show her. He talked her through step by step how to get a glowing ember to turn into a small, crackling flame in little pieces of tinder like the twigs they kept nearby. 

 

“The important part of it all is the first thing I said,” Vander reminded her as soon she had a little dancing flame starting to spread around the base of the quartered log she’d added to serve as firewood. “It’s still good practice when the embers are big like this, but especially if they’re tiny or nearly gone or you’re making them yourself from some other kind of process - you want to go gentle blowing on them. Right now they’ll hold up pretty good and you can kind of really let them have it as long as you don’t blow the fire out. In the future you might be in a bad spot though, so, remember: gentle.” Vander turned on his right knee to look at Ekko, who had been hanging at his shoulder between the two of them for half of his instruction. 

 

“You got it too?” Ekko nodded and as the fire began to spread and hopefully ease in toward the firewood. She carefully added a smaller, halved log atop that and flashed a hopefully calming smile Ekko’s way when he nodded his praise. The icey clenched fist in her gut had loosened up during the process of getting the fire going again. They didn’t need it going hard or high, just enough to keep a bed of coals in the fireplace for evening. In fact, when Vander sighed his way to his feet (a pop sounded from his knees) he went immediately to the blinds and pulled them up, letting in the sun from outside, but also the light wind. 

 

Powder withdrew from the path of the sun coming through the window and the front door both, for the moment, to her corner of the room. 

 

“So-” Vander started, voice low, syllable drawn out. The tone suggested he had something he wanted to say. Powder wasn’t sure what, but she hurried to direct things away from any questions that might make the day worse. Even if it probably can’t get any worse. 

 

“How do you do fire hardening?” Powder asked him, words falling out in a quick jumble. It didn’t hurt that this got Ekko’s attention and he turned to watch Vander eagerly. Powder got it. She did want to know how it worked and all, but she was also just trying to avoid Vander asking why she’d been so stupid as to get freaked out behind the house. 

 

“Oh,” Vander mused, again raising a hand to scratch at his neck. The shave did not look to have taken away from the desire he had to itch, probably down to the fact even his skin was starting to peel. Ekko’s cheeks were starting to peel, too. Powder became aware of her own wish to itch both her cast-bound and free arm. A little too aware. “Truth is I could tell you what we were told to do, but I don’t know why it works. We were taught a couple ways to do it but if you’re thinking about those arrows of yours, this is how. You two get close to the fire.” Powder frowned, as she’d just gotten her irritated face away from the warmth, but she did get up onto her knees and shuffle over to the flames to kneel there right beside Ekko, as Vander hovered just above them. “Grab one of the bigger twigs.” 

 

Ekko, being closer to the correct side of the hearth, grabbed hold of one of the wider ones and brought it out. 

 

“That’ll do, lad.” Vander encouraged and then hunched down even further over the two of them. It was actually a tiny bit too close of quarters for Powder, but she waited and as soon as Vander had taken Ekko’s hand and guided it he backed off of them. She watched as Ekko positioned the twig as told, just a couple inches over the height of the flames. “What you’ll do is take hold of the farthest end of the arrow, get the point right above the flames like that, and then you’ll start to turn it. Slowly and carefully.” 

 

“It won’t burn?” Powder asked. “The arrows aren’t that much thicker.” Vander only shook his head when she looked up at him. She sat back on her haunches as Ekko tried an experimental turning. It became evident quickly that you wouldn’t be doing all the turning in your wrist. 

 

“The tip might char a little, get a little black, but that’s okay. If it starts really smoking, you’ve overdone it and maybe you’re holding it over the fire too low or too long. I still don’t know if we’re supposed to do that with arrows and I’d still rather try to knap you some arrowheads but the last batch I tried ended up more like square heads.” Powder shrugged at this. Maybe soon she’d be able to try, too?

 

“I’ll help next time,” Ekko told Vander, earning a pat on the shoulder as he released the twig in his hand into the fire. “Thanks for showing us.” 

 

“Yeah, any time,” Vander promised before moving to lean against the wall near their only tiny little bit of counter space adjacent to the stove. “It’s kind of like baking the wood. It dries out but doesn’t burn. It should be harder, so maybe that’ll help it break through things. But it might also make the tip snap easier.” She wasn’t sure what to make of this but added this whole process to the list of things to try. 

 

“ Powder , Ekko, come tell me if I did this right?” Powder pushed back up to her feet and glanced out of the doorway to see Vi waving the rake at them from a few feet out from the house. With a sigh of her own, Powder turned and tilted her head that way. 

 

“Thanks Vander, I’m gonna go help Vi.”

 

“Oh, alright then,” Vander shrugged, though he certainly looked like someone that wanted to say something else. “You lot be careful out there.” 

 

Outside, Vi was joined by Powder and Ekko at a little patch of churned and upturned earth. Whether it was necessary or not, Vi had apparently tried to use the rake and the ax to make it look as if someone had plowed four or five straight lines through a patch of grass almost four feet long and two feet wide. Powder was kind of impressed but felt a little guilty when she saw the way it hurt Vi to even wipe her sweat-pinned bangs from her forehead. Weird enough seeing Vi with bangs, she thought. 

 

“Hey, you guys. How do we do this from here?” Vi picked the little makeshift shoulder bag that Powder had been carrying seed around in at planting time from the ground and opened it. Sitting on top of a bunch of dirt and soil dug out of the ground in the woods, several different plants had been lucky enough to not be crushed in the process of getting home. Really impressive considering they were carried back by an angry Vi. 

 

She looks calmer, right? Powder tried to tell herself, peeking up from the plants Vi showed her to her sister’s face. Powder took her best guess and took hold of one or two plants that looked like the lemongrass they’d already found. 

 

“I think we just try to plant it so anything that looks like roots are buried, right?” Ekko prompted, coming close to carefully pick a few more out of the bag. He sounded hopeful, but the truth was they were all just guessing. 

 

“Let’s try it.” Vi’s encouragement was quick and seemed heartfelt enough. Powder sighed, leaned down and started to use her good hand to clear out little holes to replant the contents of the bag in, one at a time. They did their best to guess at how much space they might need to grow. In the end they were as sure about that as they were that any of the plants would survive the transplant at all. 

 

“We need to move my pouch,” Powder whispered to Vi halfway through the process. Ekko paused beside her sister as the two settled one of the mystery plants she’d forgotten to ask Vander about into the soil on the opposite side of the patch from the basil. Discarded grass and weeds whose roots still clung to dirt rested to just one side of their first attempt at a small garden. She only hoped they got something out of all of this. She had to admit, when she wasn’t feeling sorry for herself, the little slices of the lemongrass were actually kind of nice. The plant, in this form, almost made her think about some onions she’d seen - the long ones with tiny white bottoms and deep green tops. 

 

“You sure?” Vi hissed back, clearly unsure herself. “Those things are really dangerous to handle. If I’d thought about it, I would’ve told you not to bring them in the first place.” Powder shrugged, shoulders hunching a bit and looked back down to the garden. She wanted to tell Vi she was wrong in the same breath that she wanted to apologize in. The truth was they were dangerous and there was at least one person who wouldn’t be- 

 

Powder shook her head really really hard. 

 

“I’m sorry,” her sister told her quickly, moving around Ekko to grab hold of her hand. “I didn’t want to sound mad but, Powder, I really don’t want anyone else to get hurt. After all that’s happened, it’s not worth it.” 

 

Powder wasn’t so sure. That topsider woman was dead because of her. That was really really bad but these little orbs… Powder didn’t want to get rid of them. They were power. They were more power than any topside electricity, ever. That mattered, right?

 

She felt like every breath she took was a little too shallow. Like she wasn’t getting as much air as she expected. Powder fixed her face to hopefully not show any signs of discomfort. 

 

“Where do you want to bury them?” Vi asked, trying to fill in the silence while Powder looked past the point where her sister’s hand grabbed at hers. She watched the earth under her feet and tested a long, soft inhale. Again, it felt like it came a little short. “How would we mark where we hid it?”

 

“Bury them near a tree.” It was Ekko who came up with this solution and Powder felt a little stupid that she hadn’t thought of it, herself. “We pick a tree near the farm and we can cut into the bark like you did with that one Powder pointed out by the stream. That way we always know which it is.” Vi turned her head, looking almost directly north and pushed out her lips for a moment, pursing them as if in thought and then nodded. 

 

“I know just the one.” Vi glanced back toward the house and when she did Powder turned to look too. Claggor had come back and apparently gotten right up to the door without any one of them noticing. His arms looked to be full of a few little round stones which he quickly carried inside. Powder shrugged when Ekko glanced her way but guessed it had something to do with what Vander and Claggor had been talking about for the last couple of days about making arrowheads. 

 

This did remind her, though, that no one had yet seen or heard from Mylo and the sun had been up for hours. 

 

Powder breathed a little more quickly to make up for feeling like she wasn’t getting enough and ignored the way her arms tingled. They were usually busy itching, anyway. This was better right. 

 

“Hey, Vander?” Vi called as she hurried a few feet over to the front door and Powder was suddenly struck by the fear that maybe, just maybe, while they hadn’t noticed Claggor, he had overheard them. Looking past Vi, though, she only caught sight of Vander coming to the door and Claggor slipping in past him. The boy made no sign that he’d heard anything. Powder wasn’t sure she was ready to tell anyone else about the little, glowing, blue secrets hidden behind the house. 

 

If Vi’s reaction was anything to go off of, Vander would flip his lid. 

 

“We’re gonna go walk around the farm a bit,” Ekko told the man before Vi could. 

 

“Haven’t you lot had enough of that yet?” Vander looked directly at Powder which really hurt. Like she was the weak link. Like she couldn’t keep up with everyone else. She did not know what to say. Actually, she thought like if she said anything at all, someone would notice something was wrong. She was trying to do the opposite of draw attention to herself. Vander held up both hands as if in apology and then withdrew. Claggor, peeking back around the corner with his arms free, shouted out to them. 

 

“Could you guys grab your part of the firewood while you’re out if you see any that works?” 

 

“Will do,” Vi agreed. “Where’ve you been?” Vi was sick and throwing up from the sun two days ago. You’re not looking at her like she can’t do it. Sometimes it was really like everyone knew something about her that she didn’t, except maybe Ekko. 

 

“Hunting rocks by the stream.”

 

“‘Hunting’ rocks?” Powder asked, rushing the two words out but noticing that she sounded sick or upset to her own ears.

 

“Claggor thinks he and I should try round two to make some of those arrowheads,” Vander called back through the open window when Claggor withdrew from the doorway again. The man’s face appeared in the window frame. “Been taking turns looking for stones that chip right whenever we go down there. Flint or chert, I think. After that - we get to look like idiots trying to learn how to break rocks into an arrowhead size - or shape. I almost - ALMOST made a half passable knife once. It could cut through a rope, at least.” 

 

Despite being an actually interesting idea, making a knife out of a rock, Powder wanted to get moving quickly before Vander asked too many more questions or anyone asked them to do anything else. Besides, she could see when Vi turned back to look at her and Ekko that the girl was about to check out of the conversation if they didn’t hurry. Vander could clearly see it too, because he looked past Vi hesitantly and then told Powder, perhaps confused as to the source of her anxiety as she clutched the empty seed bag close to her chest. 

 

“Don’t worry too much about all this,” Vander told her. “We’ll try some fire hardening and we’ll try to make some stone tips. We’ll do a mix and we will figure it out. Powder, Ekko, you two did great with those bows.” Powder was about to thank him and try to make their escape when he added, “we might need you to try to scrape together one more - depending how things go.” Ekko nodded quickly. 

 

“Can do!” 

 

Powder wasn’t so sure that they did great on those bows. She also wasn’t sure where they’d get more string for a third bow, either, though maybe they could find something in the village. She’d never seen one of their bow 2.0s in action and definitely hadn’t been able to try to pull one back yet. The whole talk was enough to annoy her all over again that Mylo took all the arrows and went off on his own. Even if they had ended up not working too well, Vi or Claggor could probably still have tested how the other bow was working. 

 

Powder tried not to pout or sulk or think too much about it as they got away from the conversation and around back behind the house. After all, right then what she needed the most was to calm down. She watched Ekko and Vi stopping to listen and peek around the corner to make sure they weren’t being followed. Staying out of the way, she also paid attention when Vi turned and all at once began to shove aside the brush near the cellar doors. 

 

“Point out where you buried them,” Vi hissed as she started yanking and pulling at the various branches. Something big clung to the old rotten wood, wrapping two or three of the downed branches up as Ekko hurried around to help untangle them. Powder came around the bunch to help Vi pull with her one remaining good hand but they were both stopped a second later when Ekko found what was wrapping several of the branches up together. 

 

It was a bag. Simple leather a lot like her pouch, as Ekko started to heave to pull it free she at first feared that it would be her pouch. Then it became clear it was heavier than that. She and Ekko had not had to move a bag like that the day they hid the pouch full of gleaming blue exploding topsider orbs. The boy yanked hard a third time and dragged a bag none of them had seen in days out from the mess of brush. 

 

The bag was Vander’s and it looked full to bursting. When Vi dropped the branch they were holding, it slipped from Powder’s left hand and onto her sister’s foot. Vi cursed in a forced whisper twice before getting to Ekko’s side. He handed off the bag and Powder, though curious, did as Vi told them to do: she and Ekko pushed aside some of the remaining brush and began to pull away clods of dirt and roots to get to the pouch they’d buried there the night they first arrived. 

 

Curiosity did slow her digging down before they had hold of the pouch because Vi untied the top of Vander’s bag, looked down into it with wide eyes that slowly turned angry before she tied it shut and threw it aside with a very loud thud. No, no, no. Powder didn’t want or need angry Vi right now! Whatever she’d seen that upset her so, Vi channeled that energy like she used to into her fighting or climbing or exercise: she helped them dig, so quickly that it felt like almost no time at all had passed before Ekko was carefully cradling her favorite pouch against his chest and Vi was warning him not to even move holding it. 

 

Ekko listened, too. He did not give it to Powder when she reached for it, a small part of her wanting to look upon the things inside which had caused all this trouble. A different piece of her wanted to make sure the pouch was never opened. Powder took another long breath as a test. It tasted hot in her mouth and on her tongue. It definitely didn’t feel like she was breathing as much as she should’ve been. Vi kicked dirt back into the hole they’d just made, hid Vander’s bag beneath the brush again and tried to set everything back the way they’d found it.

 

Powder locked her eyes on Ekko, who stood rigid and anxious with the pouch in his hands as if he could explode at any second. 

 

Powder couldn’t argue with his fear, either. 

 

She wanted to feel that little tingle the orbs inside left on her fingertips, though. 

 

Shouldn’t she be ashamed of that? 

 

Vi took Powder’s bag from Ekko the moment she was done, clutching it tightly to her own chest and starting down the hill to the north, toward the woods. Powder did not try to talk Vi out of holding onto it any more than she had tried to talk Ekko. Instead, she walked much more slowly down the hill in this direction as it was a path she was unfamiliar with and did not match anyone, even Ekko’s eyes. 

 

She really liked that pouch, too. It would probably start breaking down in the dirt, though. The things inside wouldn’t, though. 

 

Powder hadn’t noticed when she started breathing heavily. She hadn’t noticed the cold hand tightening again in her stomach or the prickling sensations going up her back. Not until it was too late. Not until she imagined those six little blue orbs shattering in the bag. Not until she saw the balcony wall on a topside apartment building nearly buckling and giving way as she, Claggor and Mylo bounced off of it. Not until she saw the woman  on the streets crushed beneath a chunk of nicely fit together pale yellow stone bricks. 

 

The next thing that Powder knew, Ekko had her left hand in his. She blinked away the blur over his face to spot his furrowed brows and discontent. However, both of his hands overtop of hers left questions about whose hand was pressing into the right side of her face and why her head and chin hurt. A sweep of her eyes showed Vi hovering over her just to one side. Powder was sitting. 

 

Powder did not remember reaching the bottom of the hill, much less siting down. A few feet ahead of her was a big, wide tree she’d passed dozens of times before already and hadn’t paid a lot of attention to. In a “ Y ” between two sets of tree roots, there was a patch of freshly dug earth. It stood out to her even in her confused state. Above it, carved into the bark of the tree was the head of one of her little toy monkeys from back home. The ones with the banging cymbals. Powder frowned. 

 

“How’d I do?” Vi asked her, softly, following her gaze to the tree. The carving wasn’t quite right but she didn’t say that. Instead, Powder tried to understand why she was hurt. She hadn’t fallen down the hill or her right arm would probably be yelling at her even feeling like it was. Powder tried to raise her hand to her chin but Ekko’s own just continued to grasp at it. He didn’t say anything, he just watched with that same look of concern she was starting to see on his face more often now that they were together practically every minute of every day. 

 

I freaked out again, didn’t I? 

 

She didn’t want to ask that, either. 

 

Instead, Powder tried to smile at Vi as her head pounded. Trapped between her and Ekko’s hands she could see a few long blue hairs clutched. Her chest was burning, she was still breathing in very, very hot air. 

 

I don’t remember freaking out this time. 

 

Shame freshly ruling, Powder did not know what to say. 

 

“How did you get so many of those back home?” Vi asked her, again nodding to the etching of the monkey on the tree. Powder thought maybe Vi had done it. 

 

“We - uh, we found a pile of them someone threw out topside,” Powder told her. Her throat hurt a little. Her voice sounded scratchy and her nose stuffy. I freaked out a lot. I cried. Mylo’s right. I shouldn’t do this. Normal people don’t do this all the time. “We got a whole bunch because -  because they’re loud and they have a lot of moving parts. So we can use them for things. Distractions. Alarms. Other stuff.” 

 

“Other stuff?” Vi asked, slowly releasing Powder’s face after rubbing at the spot on her chin which hurt. 

 

“Boom,” Powder told Vi for clarification. She then let out a laugh she didn’t really understand. 

 

“Well, no need for boom out here, huh?” Powder didn’t answer her sister when the older girl looked the tree over one more time. There was no pouch to be seen, so somehow she’d even missed them being buried. 

 

Good. 

 

She wasn’t sure they should ever be dug up again, after all. 

 

At Vi’s prompting, Powder stayed where she was while her sister went to get a change of clothes for both of them. In the meantime, Ekko waited with her and filled her in on what had just happened. 

 

“You kinda went quiet on the way down the hill but I didn’t think anything was going on until we started digging up a spot and you sat down. Then you sorta just -” Ekko hesitated, itching at his peeling left arm. Powder could take a guess at what she ‘sorta just’ did and she frowned down at her left hand. Her jaw hurt. The side of her head hurt. The top of her head hurt. She still had a black eye from days ago. There was really just one good explanation for any of that. 

 

“Lost my shit?” she finished. Ekko didn’t answer, but he did scoot closer for a few seconds and rest his arms across his knees. Not really sure what to do with herself or say for herself Powder just hung her head and tried not to expose her face to the very hot sun almost directly above them. If it weren’t for the shade of the very tree they’d buried her secrets under, she’d probably be itching worse than she already was. 

 

Ekko shrugged the moment off as no big deal but to Powder, she still felt bad. It was embarrassing. It made her want to find some shady patch of the forest and hide in it for a while. Or, maybe that was the noon sun, too. This was so different from being back in the undercity. 

 

“Hey,” Vi shouted from above them, forcing Powder to turn in the grass and look up to see her sister climbing down behind them. “Sorry, Ekko, ladies only on this one.” Ekko responded with a quick wave to her sister and got up to head inside. Powder lifted her hand and took his for just a second, to give it a squeeze of thanks. When she let go he just grinned, wiped grass from his pants and shrugged up at Vi. 

 

“Then I’m getting out of the sun. Be waiting on you when you get back. Maybe Vander and Claggor are working on this stone knapping stuff.” Powder toyed with dirt and a blade of grass between the fingers of her left hand as Ekko started back toward the hillside and Vi continued her descent down. The two had to have passed and probably even said something to one another on the way, but Powder kept her attention down. She just felt better this way. 

 

Why do I do this? Why can’t I be normal? I can. I’m going to be, this time. 

 

“Come on, up and at ‘em.” Powder lifted her head a few seconds later to see Vi rounding in front of her, offering her left hand with their clothes shoved under her right arm. 

 

“Sure we should go do that now? It’s still bright out.” 

 

“What’s the odds anyone’s gonna be down there to see?” Vi asked, with a shrug. Powder wasn’t so sure. After all, she didn’t know exactly where Vi had run into Caras when they first met and no one knew where Mylo was, right about then. “What’s the odds anyone who is manages to walk away when I deck ‘em one good?” Judging by the quirk of her sister’s lips into a smirk and the way Vi waved her right fist once, she was trying to cheer Powder up, make a joke. 

 

Powder still wasn’t sure she wouldn’t get down to the stream and lose her nerves. 

 

“Face it, we both smell like we could use a scrub down. Plus, it’s getting warm and it’s probably good for the sunburns while they’re healing if we keep clean.” When Powder didn’t immediately take her hand, Vi relented. “Tell you what, you go first and I’ll keep watch. Once you’re done, do the same for me?” Powder nodded and exhaled. 

 

That she could live with. Vi wouldn’t let anyone sneak up on them and probably wouldn’t let them get away with it if they tried. She took her sister’s off hand with her own and stood up as Vi yanked her once to her feet.  

 

Like she said, who’s really out here, anyway?

 

“So,” Vi led in in the same tone Vander had tried to use on her just a short while before. “You wanna talk about what happened at the tree?” Powder shook her head once and then started walking, as best as she could guess, sharply east and toward the stream. “Why not?” 

 

“Because you won’t believe me,” Powder replied. She felt like she was going to be accused of pouting again, but it was true. Vi didn’t believe any of what she had to say. 

 

“You keep saying that, but you won’t tell me what it is I don’t believe.” Vi thought she was making a good point, hurrying to pull ahead of Powder which Powder did not mind. What her sister said wasn’t exactly true, though. She absolutely had told Vi everything the night the lady watching from the fields had shown her what she’d done back home. Vi hadn’t believed her, she’d told Powder it was a bad dream and that was that. 

 

The girl flexed the fingers of her left hand and then balled them into a fist at her side. 

 

“The lady.” Powder inhaled and then just started to talk so that hopefully Vi wouldn’t cut her off to tell her she was imagining it. “The one no one believes was here? With the big wood staff and the face make-up and stuff? She showed me what happened up topside the day we tried to steal that stuff. When one of those orbs exploded… you all almost got hurt and someone… someone below did.” Yet again, she could feel her breathing pick up but she kept herself under control by turning away from Vi. The breath still came warm but at least she felt like she was getting enough of it, now. If she didn’t have to see her sister when she confessed this, somehow it wouldn’t be so bad. It might even make it easier to be told she was imagining things for the hundredth time in her life. 

 

Vi slowed down, though, killing her hopes and reached a hand out to stop Powder. Powder tried to walk right through it but Vi did not move her hand. Powder wasn’t interested in being mean to her sister, so she stopped too. 

 

“Powder, I know it was scary. I know that day topside was scary, but it’s just a bad dream, right?”

 

“No,” Powder shouted down at her own feet, still not able to bring her eyes up to meet Vi’s. “No, that's just it! I didn’t imagine it. I didn’t imagine any of it. Why would I want to imagine that!?” 

 

“Not imagined.” Vi insisted. “Nightmares. You’ve had them before.” Powder laughed again, but this one was a short, humorless bark.  

 

Before? What her sister hadn’t figured out yet was that Powder had had one or two nightmares every night since the woman had come to her and shown her all of this. She wasn’t even sure if Ekko had realized it and she really didn’t bother trying to hide anything from him. 

 

“You know they show us things we don’t like and wouldn’t want to see.” Vi was speaking more slowly now, but her voice was low and quiet like Powder had made her mad or something. As if that was so hard to do, nowadays. 

 

“I told you you wouldn’t believe me.” Powder’s boots were clean once. She’d even managed to get them clean after dips into the topside dumps. Now she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen them not caked in dried mud and dirt. She let her eyes fade out of focus and just kept them down. If she waited, Vi would move on. 

 

“Powder….”

 

“But I know it wasn’t fake. I know that person on the street was there. I know… she… died and I-” 

 

“Powder!” Her head shot up at the harsh, biting report of her own name in her sister’s mouth. She met eyes with the girl’s, which were sharp and angry and - no, just sharp and angry. Really really angry. Powder’s left arm wrapped across her just just above her right as she waited and looked right back down. “Even if someone did get hurt down there, it wasn’t your fault. Some topsider was messing with shit they don’t understand. Something fell. It could happen to anyone. And it really comes down to how stupid it is to leave exploding things sitting around.”

 

“That… doesn’t fix it.” Her breath came out with a shudder as she dared again to lift her eyes. This time of her own accord. 

 

“There’s nothing to fix. We don’t even know anyone actually got hurt!” 

 

“They did and it’s my fault! ” Powder lifted her chin daring Vi to disagree. Maybe she even hoped Vi would convince her, somehow, that she hadn’t set off an explosion and caused… that. That red pattern, spreading out from broken masonry, that smear across the street that was so very like the one left by the enforcers Deckard killed a couple days later. That person who wasn’t going home to her siblings, her parents or her kids. 

 

“No, Powder.” For all Powder’s hope, the next words that came out of Vi’s mouth hurt and made her want to scream in her sister’s face. Vi wasn’t the only one allowed to get mad. “It’s my fault. I took us on that job. I put you in that spot. I’m sorry, Powder.” She tried really hard to curl inward a bit and start walking again. Tried hard not to show Vi her face as she looked away. The answer she’d been hoping to get instead felt like Mylo telling Powder that she had messed up everything. It felt like being called a (“Powder Or Jinx?” ) 

 

Powder was opening her mouth to tell her sister how much she sucked when rustling in the woods drew her attention and someone popped out from behind a tree in the distance. 

 

Vi turned to observe, too. 

 

Just lightly lit by a canopy-piercing beam of sunlight, Mylo came into view with one bow over his shoulder and a grain sack with a lot of arrows sticking out of it over the other. She wondered how many in there were broken and how many weren’t. For his part, Mylo looked tired and sopping wet, like he’d just gone for a dip in the stream without bothering to take anything off or even wipe the hair out of his eyes. 

 

Despite being almost perfectly on a path to walk right into the two of them, Mylo didn’t say a word. He looked right past them both. Meanwhile, to Powder’s right, Vi’s face had hardened into the kind of look Powder wasn’t stupid enough to yell at if she didn’t want an earful right back. Vi didn’t run after him. She didn’t yell. She didn’t even react when he walked within eight feet of the two sisters and didn’t say a word or even look at them. 

 

Instead, Vi began to quietly propel Powder off toward the stream with a curled upper lip and eyes that looked like she might not even see the very trees in front of them without a hand. Powder gave that hand, taking the lead but stopping to look back every few minutes. 

 

The bath had its upsides. Feeling fresh and clean was the biggest of them though cooling down worked, too. Her neck and face felt a little less angry after. She had to work hard to keep her cast from getting wet as usual and Vi had forgotten to grab a cloth so she could easily wash what she couldn’t splash, but Powder did the best she could with her hand and the shirt she’d been wearing all day. It needed a good wringing out, anyway. The hardest part of the process was her upper back but despite the fact that they’d both been mad a few minutes ago, Powder even at Vi, her sister was a good sport about helping. 

 

Once they’d both had a chance to clean up, found shade to hide in while they dried and Powder no longer felt as upset by Vi not believing in her ( after all, what’s new about that ) she did her best to keep still as Vi assisted in hand-brushing out her hair. This was not something that Powder could easily do with just her left hand and difficulty bending and turning. All in all, the process took so long that Powder almost wondered if they hadn’t somehow wasted all afternoon and were coming back in time for dinner when she saw that the chimney was puffing away a little too heavily for just keeping coals going. 

 

Cleaner than when she’d started the day and with her hair tame enough Vi could probably get away with loosely braiding it before bed, Powder stepped through the open door into the house a little more confident than she expected. 

 

“What’s up? We doing lunch today?” 

 

“We are,” Vander told her, quietly. His tone said he wasn’t in the mood to talk and sure enough the pot they typically cooked rice in was boiling away when Vi called her back outside to lay out their clothes in the sun to dry. They did so, weighing them down with a few little stones near the garden Vi had dug by hand earlier. Vi did not hurry through the process, instead doing it all one-handed just like Powder had to. Powder didn’t think she was being mocked, either. Judging by the blank look on her sister’s face, Vi would much rather have been back in the woods. 

 

Powder would’ve too. 

 

Vander was stirring in leaves of foraged basil to the pot by the time they finished, apparently having drained off the rest of the water. Ekko got Powder’s attention as Vander gestured for Claggor to start bringing over bowls, something Claggor did with worry on his face. Back on the bed in the corner, Mylo had kicked off his boots and was now sitting back against the wall with the bow he’d taken and the remaining arrows lying at the foot of the bed. 

 

He did not look like he’d taken time to actually wash up, now that she was this close. 

 

“Mylo first,” Vander told Claggor, which Powder didn’t think Vi would be a fan of. Claggor took the bowl over to Mylo, who gave a very assured, cocky nod and took the bowl. The boy didn’t question that he hadn’t gotten a spoon and instead just sat the meal down on his lap to give it time to cool. “Now Ekko, Powder and Violet. I’ll get yours and mine ready.” 

 

“Okay, Vander,” Claggor promised, his voice still tense, eyes so like her own still looking about the room waiting for what was coming next. Even when Vi settled down into her seat Claggor kept shooting looks her way. For all Powder’s own worry about Vi’s reaction, Powder herself had to admit she was really annoyed seeing Mylo sit there so smugly. Powder settled herself down this time between Ekko and Vi, trading Vi spots for the moment, with Ekko nearest the door. She did not get up until it was her turn to get a bowl from Claggor. Chunks of lemongrass were visible on top. There was a tiny bit of salt sprinkled over it. 

 

She hadn’t noticed Vander do that, but the little pot of salt was still nearby. 

 

In the end, Claggor took his own food over to his spot beside the bed and a really uncomfortable silence kept her still beside Ekko who, like Claggor, was sweeping his eyes around the room to wait for what came next. 

 

The moment Vander claimed his own slab of floor and sat his lunch down, Powder had an inkling of what was coming. 

 

“Everyone sit back, be quiet and let me speak for a moment, alright?” Vander paused and looked at each of them in turn as if someone was going to be stupid enough to interrupt his serious voice already. When he had finished the circuit, the man looked pointedly back at Mylo and lifted his chin. “What you did today was wrong.” 

 

It was the most direct she could remember him chewing Mylo out and it still felt light compared to speeches she’d heard him giving Vi about being nicer to Mylo. 

 

Was she just feeling extra angry at Mylo today or was Vi right that Mylo was getting off easy lately?

 

“What?” Mylo asked, sitting up. He looked stunned for a second, then hurt and then angry all over again, himself. His fists clenched more tightly than even Vi’s as Vander held up his hand.

 

“I said be quiet and let me speak, didn’t I?” Mylo’s mouth shut hard enough she heard his upper and lower teeth click together. Powder smiled and immediately worked to hide that smile, because it felt like a mean one. His reaction had been funny, though. “What you did today was wrong. It was a problem and it was stupid, too.” Mylo displaced his bowl of food from his lap to the bed beside him and leaned forward, eyes dimming and lip curling as Vi’s had when she’d seen him coming home earlier. 

 

“What do you mean? I went out trying to find us food, didn’t I?” 

 

“What you did was,” Vander leaned forward, himself, toward the bed. There were still a few good feet between them so no one in their right mind would take it as a threat. If anything it looked like he was poking fun at Mylo’s tough guy act. “You took one of the only two bows we have, all of the arrows Ekko carved for us and you left with them before we knew how any of them worked and if they were ready. You left without saying anything to anyone or asking permission. You knew you were doing wrong or you wouldn’t have snuck out before we were all awake. The worst part is, you did this when we’re here in a new place we don’t know very well and you were gone all day.” 

 

Powder counted slowly to five before anyone spoke again. 

 

“Anything could’ve happ-” 

 

“Well, it had to be done.” Mylo leaned back as if he was waving away everything Vander had already said or would have said had he not been cut off. “Someone had to get out there and try to bring in some actual meat. We can’t keep going like things are, obviously.” The boy started to reach for his food but stopped when Vander started again. 

 

“Not like that, it didn’t have to be done. Anything could’ve happened to you and none of us would’ve known.” Powder hadn’t noticed Vander about to get on a roll but he spoke quickly and steadily and awfully calmly for the lip he was getting. We had a plan to spend the day split between bow practice and firewood gathering for all of us. No one got to practice and you pawned your portion of chores on the rest of us.” Mylo laid his hands in his lap but they were still clenched shut. “Claggor and I could’ve used a hand hunting stones for making into arrowheads. But without knowing what you were doing, I had to let the others go out looking for food.” 

 

“Yeah, and did they bring any actual food back? No. ” Mylo had not begun to shout but it was getting close. Enough that Powder froze in her spot, especially when the boy gestured almost directly at her. “Same as me. Are they getting yelled at right now?” When Powder opened her mouth to answer she had no clue what it was she was going to say. Her arm shook slightly at her side. When she saw Vi preparing to do the same thing beside her, Powder shut her mouth quickly and, looking guilty, Vi saw this. 

 

As if she was doing it for Powder and Powder alone, Vi shut her mouth. Powder’s didn’t stay that way. Her teeth began to chatter. A strange mix of angry and scared of another loud screaming match, she leaned forward in her seat and then rocked back. While listening, she let the action repeat. And again. And again. 

 

This entire morning had sucked . 

 

Were most of them going to suck now with just a few nice spots like their time in the village? 

 

Powder matched eyes with her sister and watched the guilt in them. It was enough to make Powder, in turn, feel guilty enough to forget she was mad at Vi. That wasn’t something she could honestly say happened that much. She didn’t usually have to get mad at Vi but when it happened it was trouble. Annoyed all over again at two of her three older siblings, she tried to speak once more. This time, Vander let out a long slow sigh and in a deep, rumbling disappointed voice, really pissed Mylo off. 

 

“Everyone needed a chance to practice. Come on, I know you’re better than this.” Mylo nearly upended his lunch as he shot straight up in the bed. 

 

“Like everyone got to-” Powder couldn’t figure out what the boy was going to say next but he just grabbed at his shirt with his clenched right fist and tugged and tugged and growled. “Fuck! The bow wasn’t for practicing! It’s not a toy. It’s to get us something to eat.” 

 

“I know you’re better than this but I guess you’re choosing not to be, right now.” 

 

That was the last straw, apparently, for her brother. Mylo managed to climb off of the bed without overturning a bowl of rice and left his lunch behind as he scrambled to his feet. 

 

“Whatever!” With one angry push forward, Mylo rushed right for the door. Ekko had to scoot hard to one side to not get hit when Mylo yanked the door open. Unfortunately the only way for him to scoot was right into her, pushing her hard against Vi. It was a dull, thudding pain, but deep at the spot where her right arm bounced off of her seething older sister but it was enough for Powder to suck in a breath mostly on instinct. 

 

Because a week ago that would’ve hurt really badly. 

 

The door slammed shut behind Mylo as hard as such a light door could and Claggor reached out a hand to help Ekko sit back up so Powder could, as the boy was half lying atop her. Powder, on the other hand, looked to her sister. 

 

Vi stared hard at Vander, expectantly. Her eyes were the only part of her face to wear her anger honestly but Powder grabbed at the bedding beneath herself as soon as she’d set up so that her left hand had something to hold onto. It was too late for her lunch: half of it was spread across Vi’s lap. It went falling to the floor when her sister stood straight up. 

 

“Yeah,” Vi growled at Vander after another very tense silent moment. “That’s exactly what I thought you’d do. Nothing. ” The words came out slow and heavy, the ‘s’ sounds drawn and hissing as Vi forced air out through her gritted teeth and her nose. Vander didn’t say anything back to Vi’s accusation as the girl stepped onto the end of the bed and around Powder and Ekko, dropping to the ground between Ekko and Claggor and heading to the door dangerously. 

 

Dangerously, like she was ready to raise her fists and swing. Dangerously, like Deckard had just drawn a knife on her in the streets before he’d turned into a monster. This went beyond ‘Mylo is about to get an earful’. This went beyond her sister’s shouting this morning. This was cold angry. This was (Silco) danger angry. Vi got to the door and pulled it open. 

 

“You kids don’t have to take turns hurting each other.” Vander’s words stopped Vi at the door, but only for a second. Powder thought Vander both right and wrong. They were totally trading off being mean but Vi was moving like and had the facial expression she had the night they left Powder behind to go and get Vander back and come home with Mylo half-dead. Vi wasn’t looking to yell at someone. 

 

“Vi, please don’t,” Powder whispered past Ekko. “Please.” 

 

The spell broke and her sister’s shoulders sagged. 

 

“Fine,” Vi spat. “I’ll sit out front for a few. By the garden. I’ll let him go.” 

 

“Stay?” she asked a little more hopefully, wishing she could reach out to Vi past Ekko. She wasn’t close enough to the door even if Ekko hadn’t been there. As for Ekko himself, he had joined Claggor in awkward silence but still shot Powder a look of encouragement when she spoke. “Just stay here and eat.” 

 

“Can’t.” That was all the answer Vi had to give. “Can’t.” 

 

Her sister didn’t shut the door any softer than Mylo had but Claggor still looked relieved as Vander buried his face in his hands. Powder wasn’t relieved. 

 

“That went better than I thought it would?” he suggested, like he was trying to bring the mood up. She understood why he’d think so but, Powder thought differently. Sure, she was always scared and that was half of what Mylo teased her about but this time she thought both Vander and Claggor were underestimating how bad things were. 

 

“Not now, Claggor. Eat your dinner.” This was Vander’s last word on the subject, it seemed. No one corrected him on the idea that it was lunch and not dinner. She hoped it didn’t mean they wouldn’t be eating before bed, especially because they were probably only eating now because Mylo hadn’t had breakfast. 

 

They don’t get it. What if Vi and Mylo hate each other now? What if things never get back to normal? 

 

In the end, wouldn’t that be Powder’s fault too? Because one way or another, she couldn’t do anything right, anything normal, anything as good as the rest of them. 

 

“Hey, bright side,” Claggor chimed in, not having apparently taken Vander’s warning to eat and not talk to heart. “The other eleven arrows aren’t broken. We could try fire hardening the tips after lunch.” 

 

“Okay.” Powder nodded her agreement and started to eat what little remained in her own bowl after the spill. She kinda hoped she could talk her way into having a bit of Mylo’s, since he’d been the one to make her spill hers and she didn’t fancy all the dirt. They’ve all eaten worse, though, haven’t they? 

 

“I wanna grab the knife and work on a few more arrows. We’ve got a few sticks that look about right out in the shed.” Ekko’s enthusiasm was tampered a little when Vander grunted, drawing their collective attention his way. 

 

“Don’t do the tips. I think Claggor and I could work on some more knapping tomorrow morning after breakfast. We keep practicing and we might be able to make something half decent for an arrowhead. Stream’s got good stones for them. Must've been around for a long time - or maybe it used to be bigger.” The tension of the moment was far from diffused but Powder seized onto this mostly so she didn’t have to think about anything else that had happened that morning. 

 

“I think the stones we need, flint mainly, are usually found where running water leaves it.  At least - Kutter always told us to look in river beds.” Considering this for a second, Powder asked another question. 

 

“Why did you do all that survival training stuff? Were you camping a lot?” 

 

“No, lass.” Vander sounded older and so, so tired. “Not for that. Also, Kutter was probably more the assistant to the teacher than anything else, now I think about it. 

 

“That wasn’t an answer,” Claggor told him and Vander shrugged with one shoulder. 

 

“Once upon a time I thought fighting a war was a good idea, remember? Everything you can learn about surviving with as little as possible is useful.” Vander turned his oddly dark eyes upon Powder and continued. “Remember that, you lot. War’s a lot of things, not a damned one of them good but most of all its loss and deprivation.” 

 

Vander nodded as if at his own advice and Claggor echoed it but Powder wanted to pretend not to understand, a little bit longer. 

Chapter 17: Chapter Seventeen

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Seventeen

Unlike the ugly morning before, Powder remembered the nightmare she’d just been struggling through clearly when someone shook her, carefully, awake. The quiet into which she opened her eyes was almost the same quiet in which she’d fallen asleep. Tense. Or maybe that was just her because of the nightmare. There were no lines of sunlight reflecting on the wall across from her and above the bed. Last night the bed had been Ekko’s as per the new plan of taking turns using it but it was empty, now. 

 

In their little cooking corner, Ekko heaved the pot of rice (she assumed) from the stove top and onto the little corner counter. Above Powder, Vander stooped low as he shook her awake. Sat where Ekko usually kept his bedding, Vi was already awake. Her sister sat up with her back to the wall behind them and did not speak as Powder stirred. Vi didn’t even look up at Vander, who was leaning half over her, too. Though he’d gone to sleep in Vi’s usual spot, Claggor was not sat beside Vi. Instead, Claggor looked to have displaced Mylo and reclaimed his spot on the floor near the bed. 

 

Mylo sat in the corner nearest the door and, like Vi, had not yet looked up to speak. At least he was there this morning, though. Beside him the bows and arrows (half of which were now fire hardened at the tip) they’d made were still leaned up against the wall. The quiet felt less intense and unpleasant than the night before the longer she waited, so Powder yawned and tried to get up. 

 

Powder rubbed her eyes with her left hand. Her black eye and her sunburnt face took offense to the rough treatment. She looked up through still blurry eyes up at Vander. What she could see of his face was serious as he stood back up to full height, but not unkind. His lips quirked briefly and then he started to turn on the spot. A second sweep of the room confirmed that she was the last to get up. A third showed her Ekko’s and Claggor’s frowns. Neither of them looked all that happy to be awake. 

 

Are they still not talking? Powder wondered, looking briefly between Mylo and Vi. 

 

Vi had only said a handful of words yesterday after a really really ugly blow up over lunch. Most of those had been to tell Vander she was going out into the woods to work off some steam. The last had been mostly to thank him for dinner and tell the room at large goodnight just after sundown. Really early. Mylo had said even less. 

 

“Morning.” Powder told Vander first and then looked over to try to catch her sister’s eye. The braid they’d done in awkward silence the night before was still in place on Powder’s head and she carefully pushed it off of her right shoulder and behind her with her left hand. Beside her, Vi lifted her eyes for a second, offered her that fake, placating smile and looked right back down to hands lying half curled in her lap. Powder hadn’t gotten a good look the night before after Vi’s return from the woods. Now that the fire had been stoked for a still cool, dark morning she could make out scrapes and even what looked like a nasty bruise spreading across the first couple of knuckles on Vi’s left hand. 

 

She’d been out hitting things, obviously. 

 

At least it’s things and not people. 

 

“Good morning!” Ekko was the first to say anything to her, voice laced with false cheer. Or maybe it wasn’t false cheer and she was just overthinking things. She certainly felt bad, though. Just, generally bad. She always felt ‘generally’ bad after freakouts and she had basically had two the day before. One way worse than the other. 

 

Ekko grabbed a spoon and started to fill the first bowl sat beside the pot with a good scoop of white rice. She spotted chunks of something dark (most likely a stray bit of basil) in the mix. He was about to start on dishing out a second when Vander returned to claim his cook duties, took the spoon from Ekko and pushed the bowl the boy had just filled toward him. 

 

“Go on, lad, have your breakfast. Thanks for the help, though.” Ekko shrugged as if to say, ‘whatever you want’ but she spotted a more genuine turn of the lips as Ekko hurried to sit at the end of the bed nearest her with his breakfast in hand. “Alright you lot. Sit up and listen up.” Powder scooted back toward the wall, slowly putting her weight against it as Vander reached down to hand Claggor his own breakfast and returned to dealing out the food. Vander kept his side aimed turned toward Powder and Vi, which at least let him see most of the people in the room. 

 

Mylo was sitting in his blindspot. 

 

“Things are different,” Vander told them, dropping a second, smaller scoop into the third bowl before turning to walk it over to Mylo. Mylo didn’t say a word and his face barely changed when he took the bowl in both hands before nodding. “This isn’t what any of us are used to, maybe not even what any of us want.” Powder sat up straighter and rested her good hand in her lap as Vi’s gaze slowly lifted to Vander filling another bowl. “We all have things and people we miss, right?” Vander spooned a second scoop into the fourth bowl and then turned around a little before looking obviously at Ekko. 

 

Once Ekko matched Vander’s eyes, the boy nodded but turned his attention back to breakfast. 

 

“If we’re going to make it here, though, make it through the winter and not be utterly miserable the whole time, things are going to have to work a certain way.” Vander crossed the room to pass a bowl into Vi’s hands, but she immediately sat it down in Powder’s lap, forcing Powder to hurriedly grab the hot bowl and move it away to cool. Vander did not stop in his flow to acknowledge Vi doing so but Powder still tried not to match his eyes when Vi did this. Don’t overthink it, don’t overthink it. 

 

“No one’s going off alone without telling anyone. No one takes a tool we might need without permission. No one does anything stupid and reckless, especially when they’re hurt. ” Powder lifted her eyes from the dirty wooden floor at this. With Mylo more or less healed up she was the only one walking around hurt, right? Unless he doesn’t just mean broken arms and stuff. What had Vander said yesterday, that Mylo and Vi were both ‘hurting’? “Okay?” Vander prompted. “There aren’t enforcers here but there’s plenty of other ways to get hurt. Okay?” 

 

With the last of their bowls in hand and full, Vander turned on the spot to look at first Mylo and then Vi, pointedly. 

 

Two seconds of almost painful silence said he wanted an answer. 

 

Vi shrugged, as if only doing so to move them along. Mylo studied this gesture and did the exact same under Vander’s gaze. Frustration crossed the recently shaven man’s face, something she hoped she’d grow used to seeing soon. Then Vander turned on her and the look was not entirely gone from his face when he prompted again: 

 

“Okay?” 

 

Shoulders slumping a little, Powder nodded. After a second she answered with words, too. 

 

“Okay.” 

 

Vander handed off the last bowl to Vi and went to fill one of their thankfully plentiful clay cups with rice for himself. Ekko, as if prompted by the sight of the cup, got up to fill one with water for himself, so Powder pushed to her feet carefully to do the same for herself and Vi both. Vi wasn’t going to do it for herself after all and after choking down her breakfast yesterday without anything to drink she wasn’t gonna repeat it. (Plus, Vander thought part of her evening’s nausea had been that she hadn’t had enough to drink.)

 

While they took turns getting their water for the morning, Vander stepped aside and continued and, boy, did he have plenty to say. 

 

“We need to start by talking about what we have and what we need. So let’s be very honest. We have enough food we can maybe, maybe make it through winter. When we harvest, we’ll have more. That shouldn’t be the problem and we have a pot to cook in.” She swallowed against a small rise in anxiety and took a long drink of water from her glass before setting it down on the counter and starting to pour out one for Vi. It was hard to do even from the pitcher one handed, but Ekko came back around and steadied it with his other hand. The smile on his face then didn’t look fake. The one she felt on hers didn’t feel fake. 

 

“And I know you don’t like just having rice, so we’ll need to learn how to cook other things. We’ll learn together. We have an old plow, the yokes to attach to a couple of animals. We don’t have the animals. We have one good ax, a decent rake for clearing away brush and a decent hammer. We have our second bow prototype and a dozen arrows.” 

 

Powder cut in here as she handed off Vi’s water to her. 

 

“Eleven,” she grumped even while Vi mouthed the words ‘thank you’ to her. 

 

“Right, eleven now,” Vander clarified, still standing right in front of the warm stove. Actually, it was a little hot in there this morning. Powder was not the only one watching when Mylo rolled his eyes at Vander. She would’ve gotten annoyed but she caught the way Vi’s free hand clenched shut in a fist. Powder sat back down on Vi’s right side, whispering to her sister. 

 

“It’s okay, really.” Her own anxiety was reflected back in Ekko’s face across from her, but Vi did not answer her. 

 

“What we really don’t have is enough space, enough tools or enough firewood for winter. So, we’re going to do what Claggor suggested. We’re going to make what tools we can make for ourselves out of wood, stone and a little ingenuity. We’ve got all that in spades.” Powder turned her attention in part to the bowl beside her as she settled her cup down next to it and brought it over into her lap. Like the morning before, Ekko, who had managed to get his hands on one wooden spoon, flicked the other her way. She didn’t catch it, but did manage to bounce it once or twice before pinning it between her good arm and her chest. 

 

Was that why he went to help out Vander when I got up? She wondered. To get two of the spoons? Sneaky. 

 

“From now on, we gather enough wood for the night and a little extra each day. Store the night’s wood by the fireplace like we have been and the extra in the shed. We do that, then come winter we’ll have a little supply. Scavenge standing dead wood, right?” 

 

Mylo cut off Vander’s rallying speech a little obnoxiously. She didn’t blame him for the question, though. 

 

“What about food, though? We actually gonna harvest enough to be ok?” 

 

“Absolutely,” Vander said by way of answer, with a quick nod. For his part, Mylo sat back a little more in his seat, no longer as rigid or defensive. He’s scared, Powder reminded herself. Mylo had been scared a lot out here. “So. Someone goes out hunting each morning right before sunup, tries to bag whatever beasties they can. Someone else goes out looking to scavenge not long after. Both in pairs. The two pairs don’t overlap - because it’s easier to scare off the animals if they do. No one goes out alone. Pairs, always. The rest of us work around here. Keep things clean, take stock of what we have, figure out what we need, gather wood. If we just do these things we’re going to be fine.” 

 

Powder exhaled and reminded herself that Vander wouldn’t say something like that if he didn’t believe it. Then again, she used to think the same thing about her sister and that wasn’t necessarily true. 

 

Feeling guilty at the thought, Powder tried not to look straight at Vi. 

 

“If we get unlucky with meat, yeah, it’s not going to feel amazing. I know I’ve already started to feel a little lighter on my feet and in my head. We might start feeling a little weak and sleepy. Might get grumpier, too, which for some of us is going to be an impressive feat.” No one laughed as the man moved the mostly empty pot of rice from the counter back to the stove. “But we focus our efforts in the mornings while it’s still warm like this. Hunters out, scroungers out, pairs only, and the rest of us keep things clean here, take stock of what we have and what we need, do our part in gathering wood. Each day, we’re going to rotate. Hunting. Gathering. Landkeeping.” 

 

The lecture went on, so, Powder started to eat then and there. 

 

“Everyone gets chores, everyone does their chores. Everything else comes after. That’s how we keep the family together and keep it warm and fed. This time next year,  we’ll have more time to prepare and plant. We probably won’t need to be as aggressive about it. Maybe we’ll even have more on the house? I know this sounds like an awful lot but we still will have downtime. Plenty of it. Time to relax. Time to have fun and time to do things like learn to make what we need to keep going. First priority will be to go out looking for wood for a simple lean-to against the house. We can build it together and get a feel for how that works. Won’t be much but I could sleep in it and give the five of you a lot more room inside.” 

 

From almost at Vander’s feet (demonstrating just how little space they really had inside) Claggor incredulously shook his head of shaggy brown hair. 

 

“Wait, Vander. I’ll sleep in something like that. You don’t have to.” Vander’s answer was an immediate wave of his hand to dismiss Claggor’s earnest, wide eyed offer.

 

“I’ll do it,” Vander corrected him in a voice that said he wasn’t going to hear anymore arguments.  “At least until winter. Then we’ll have to squeeze in again and make do. But by then we’ll all be better off.” 

 

“Will we?” Mylo again questioned Vander’s insistence that everything was fine. Only, this time she didn’t hear the bratty edge to the question. This time, even not looking at him, Powder only heard the nerves, the fear that maybe Vander was trying to ‘sugarcoat’ things. ( I like that one, sugarcoat, Powder thought, determined to use the word more often.) 

 

“We will if we stick together and take care of each other.” Vander’s response was a mixture of equal parts chiding and comfort. Powder didn’t look up to see if this made Vi or Mylo feel guilty or not. Then his voice picked up and lost the softer tone. “Now, since some of us are acting like we can’t control ourselves, I’ve got no choice but to act like we can’t. So, needs list and chore list, daily.” 

 

Powder groaned despite herself and when she looked up again Ekko was grimacing. The rest of the room was dead quiet again. This made Powder look around. Mylo and Vi were seething in unison from no more than about ten feet apart from one another. At least they could agree on getting angry at every little thing even if neither of them could admit it. Powder felt mean for the thought but only a little. 

 

“Until we get it together, we’re going to have to have it spelled out for us. So.” Vander sucked in a deep breath and pointed directly at Claggor. “Claggor and Ekko, once sun’s up enough to see you’re taking one bow and five arrows around back. I’ve set up a little pile of sticks and leaves to work as a target. You two trade that bow off, do it until you get a good feel for it and how it fires, how the arrows fly. Next time we get the chance to head to the village, we’ll find Zenneene or Orkis and see if they can help you figure out what to do to improve them. Someone there has to know a thing or two.” 

 

“Okay,” Ekko answered, sounding relieved. Powder felt silly again. They’d been in the village and even met two people who spoke good Piltovan. They could’ve asked about arrows. If people hunted around here for their meat then someone had to know a thing or two about it. 

 

“We’ll plan to do that in the next couple of days, I think, head into town. Anyway, three hours of target practice, stay under the back roof and in the shade as long as you can. Then get something to drink and take another hour down at the stream hunting flint or chert like I showed you, Claggor. Show Ekko how to find some, bring it back and try to see if between you two you can’t figure out a thing or two about the arrowheads. Come noon, you’re done except for helping with water and firewood.” Vander inhaled again and turned in Powder’s direction. 

 

“Powder and Vi, as soon as you finish breakfast grab the other bow and six arrows and get out in the woods. You’re on hunting today, no more than six hours, no less than four.” 

 

“What? She can’t-” Vi and Mylo both paused halfway through mirroring each others’ words, shot one another a glare and then shut up at the same time. Powder clenched her hand around her bowl because she knew exactly who the ‘ she’ who ‘ can’t’ was. The surprise on both their faces, though, was a little funny so Powder chose only to lean forward, stick her tongue out at them both (rice and all) and let it go. Yeah, it hurt a little but she’d show them what she couldn’t do. 

 

Back home, until she’d fucked up and gotten grabbed by Deckard, Vi had finally believed in her. Finally told her she was ready. 

 

Now it’s back to ‘she can’t.’ 

 

“Your arm might take you out of the running for practicing with the bow but you wanted to see how it works and see what we can do with it, so you two are out there.” Vander talked directly to Powder. “And don’t stick your tongue out with your mouthful.” Powder tried to keep the smile from her face and half failed before she hid it behind her waterglass to help wash down her breakfast. “Hunters go no further than maybe two hours out from the farm. The rest of you, no further than an hour for now. And Mylo?” 

 

The boy with the wild bedhead leaned forward in his seat, eager to hear what his job was. 

 

“You and I are washing up from breakfast then we’re going out with those papers Orkis gave us.” Mylo thumped back bodily against the wall with a sigh and picked his bowl back up. 

 

“Oh, boy, plant watching!” The shout was not a happy one. His eyes rolled hard in his head. Vander, though, played along, tone cheerful. 

 

“That’s right! And we’ll be on the look out for nests and bee hives, as well.” 

 

“Bee hives?” Mylo and Ekko asked in unison, one annoyed and incredulous and the other curious. Ekko’s excitement rubbed off on her, so she waited for Vander’s explanation with a raised eyebrow. Ekko looked close to falling off of the edge of his seat, though, so comically that as she snorted into her water she thought it had to be a show to tease Mylo for his fake enthusiasm. 

 

“Bee hives. You want to talk about liquid gold? It’s called honey. We find honeycomb and not only do we get another flavor on our palettes, we get a big boom of energy. That’s pure sugar. If we can just figure out a way to filter it and ration it out we could do some pretty nice things with it. Could even add it to bread when we start baking it.” Vander patted the side of the stove beside him, then winced as if it was still pretty hot, which made sense. It probably had as much fuel in it as the nearby fireplace it shared a chimney with. 

 

“It’d give us something sweet, at least.” The man looked as if he was genuinely a little excited at that idea and would’ve gone on except Vi spoke up and this time it wasn’t to tell Powder she couldn’t do something. 

 

“That’s - I didn’t do that at all while I was out there. I never would’ve thought of that.” To be fair, back home they didn’t get many bees down in the Lanes. Ant time they did run into any, Powder and Vi made a habit of booking it in the opposite direction after some really bad stings they’d gotten alongside Vander when they were younger. Wait, Powder told herself. Was that what he was trying to do back then? 

 

Powder faintly remembered Vander poking a hive on the surface, south of the river separating the undercity from Piltover with a long stick. She’d still been really nervous around him and hadn’t been outside in what felt like a long time. Those first couple of weeks with him were kind of barely there when she thought back on them, though. She remembered the stings, though. She remembered crying until she’d seen that Vi wasn’t. 

 

“Yeah well,” the man shrugged, “you lot aren’t allowed to have all of the good ideas. Maybe, just maybe, the old man has more rocking around up in this head of his than you wanna give me credit for.” 

 

Powder definitely wanted honey. The only candies they’d ever really been able to get with any frequency had all been made out of honey back home. They’d been special treats, rare, but not impossible to afford if they had one or two really good months.  It’d be nice to have it again, out here. 

 

“Okay, we gotta remember to look up more,” Powder told Ekko who only nodded his agreement with a mouthful of rice. 

 

“Gotta remember to finish your breakfast and get you and your sister out into the woods before sunup, too.” Vander sounded a little more light hearted at the chiding but she did start eating a little quicker. 

 

“What do we do after all that?” Claggor asked him. Vander itched at his chin, wincing as his nail dragged across the cut he’d given himself shaving yesterday and then dug his first handful of his breakfast out of the mouth of an old clay cup. 

 

“You and Ekko call it quits as soon as Vi and Powder are back. Mylo and I will probably be back not long after that and frankly, come afternoon as long as we get firewood I don’t care what you all get up to as long as it doesn’t involve getting lost or screaming matches.” Powder shook her head when she felt Vi tense up beside her, like she might argue with Vander about the ‘screaming matches’ shot. Vi watched from the corner of her eye and huffed out her frustration instead of arguing, though. 

 

“What about the lean-to thing?” Claggor prompted, apparently not tuned into the fact that some of them wanted the conversation over. This did grab Powder’s attention a little, but not enough to stop eating. 

 

“Fair point,” Vander conceded before shoveling some of his meal into his mouth and thoughtfully chewing. “Let’s say we start that out tomorrow as a family after Vi and Mylo make it back from that day’s hunt. Unless they get something - at which point we’re having a stew and celebrating and then we’ll get to work. Sound good?” Claggor didn’t answer. Instead, he looked over Vi and Mylo both, then looked at Powder herself to make sure he wasn’t the only one who’d caught that. 

 

He wasn’t. 

 

“Why both of us?” Mylo asked, a little too loudly. Vander’s face dimmed as he turned back to Mylo. “Look, I just mean, there’s only one bow that gets to go out while we’re practicing with the other anyway. Do we really need two people?” 

 

“Yep,” their adoptive father answered, voice level. “Because no one goes alone and, before you ask why; because I said so.” Vander momentarily mimicked Mylo’s affronted tone before his voice settled into its usual gruff, matter-of-fact spot. “Anyone got a problem with that?” 

 

Beside her, Vi opened her mouth to lodge a complaint but Vander didn’t give her the chance. 

 

“No? Well that’s great then!” Powder swallowed another mouthful and washed it down as Vi shut her mouth. Five seconds of silence passed before Mylo again broke it. 

 

“So who gets the bow tomorrow when we’re hunting?” 

 

“Work it out,” Vander replied immediately, firmly. This time all pretense of a pleasant conversation left his face and he put both Vi and Mylo in his line of sight. “Trade off maybe or say one of you gets it this time and the next one next time. Play ‘rock, paper, scissors.’ Hell, see who can recite a nursery rhyme quickest. I don’t care. Just work it out, got it?” This time, Vander gave space for objections and when none came Powder thought that would be the end of it. 

 

Only, it wasn’t. 

 

Vander looked at each in turn and barked loudly enough that Powder jumped and would’ve again spilled her breakfast if it was not already halfway gone. 

 

“Got it?”

 

“Got it.” Vi sounded very upset to be agreeing. 

 

“Good, now everyone eat. Pay attention to what you’re doing today. No one’s getting hurt. Let’s get to it.” 

 

Does he keep talking about no one ‘getting hurt’ because of me? 

 

Powder did have a fresh bruise across the left side of her sunburnt chin in addition to her still tender blackened eye, after all. 

 

Powder didn’t ask. 

 

She really didn’t think she’d like the answer. 

 

Powder found herself out in the woods with Violet almost two hours of northward walking later and still the sun had not completely risen. At least, she didn’t think so: the coverage of the canopy overhead was so thick it might be getting bright for those back on the farm. Here, though, a breeze just cool enough to make her think about missing her old blue sweatshirt brushed past her and through a dim patch of light ahead. Vi didn’t slow or stop to acknowledge it. 

 

Powder had spent so long already tensely awaiting the moment her sister might actually draw back the arrow she held nocked (clumsily, Powder suspected) at the ready. Ever since Vi had told her she thought they needed to be quiet and only really talk in whispers, Powder had been unable to shake one thought. If everything went really well, the way the family hoped it would, Vi was going to use something she and Ekko had made to kill an animal. It was a thought that kept popping up as she looked around them and tried to stay on her sister’s heels. 

 

The woods hadn’t felt this wrong in days. 

 

It always felt a little weird, though. There were elements of home to the woods: there wasn’t a lot of open space to yourself, things were closed in and you could barely see the sky and there was a really good chance something out there thought she might make a good target. It was still weird to smell dirt and little else in the air. There were no buildings, no signs of civilization. Powder usually didn’t hate it. Today though, probably because of why they were there, she wasn’t so sure. 

 

“So,” Vi drawled. “If I take a shot, if we even see anything worth shooting at… I’m probably not gonna hit.” Vi hadn’t really said a lot in the last few minutes so Powder thought that was a weird thing for her to start with. “Haven’t had time to even try this before. But if I do shoot, let me know if you see anything I’m doing wrong, okay, Powder?” She drew her eyes closer, away from far off flashes of greenery amid brown tree trunks and dirt and watched her sister’s face, earning a quick nod from the older girl. 

 

“Okay.” Powder was fine (content, even) to leave it at that and not confess that she wasn’t really sure how to do what Vi was asking her to do. She could probably have made another paint gun that hit what you aimed at but she was just guessing with the bow. Powder wasn’t sure about the wood or the long lines of some kind of string they’d found in their Kutter-given supplies that they’d used to string it with. 

 

“Vander ever tell you about this fire hardening stuff?” Vi asked next, still at a low whisper before turning away and continuing forward. 

 

“A little, while you were still digging the ground up for the garden yesterday.” Powder answered freely but didn’t want to linger on that. The day before had sucked from morning until bedtime and she wasn’t sure the suck was over yet. You’re starting to sound like Vi, she told herself. 

 

“Did he tell you how it worked?” 

 

“Kinda,” Powder started, then confessed as quickly, “but I don’t know if he knew any more than we did when we thought it was about drying out the wood to make it strong.” Her sister chuckled for just a second. It didn’t sound happy but it was better than huffing and sighing and growling like yesterday. Better yet, despite having been quiet for the last few minutes Powder thought Vi was actually with it, actually there with her. 

 

“I wanna tell you something.” Powder seized on what might be one sign of a good mood and started again to watch the path ahead of her sister as best she could from behind her. “But I don’t want to make things worse. Will you promise not to let it make you mad or sad?” This slowed Vi and when she looked back Powder half expected her to be cross but instead Vi just looked a little nervous, herself. 

 

“You can tell me anything. Always.” Powder wanted to believe that, still. She’d let herself believe that. 

 

“Vander and Zeneene were talking about what happens if we don’t get a lot of meat. Like we’d be ok but tired and probably cranky and, um,” she inhaled a little. “Is it already happening?” Vi raised an eyebrow to prompt her to go on or just to say she didn’t understand. “It’s just, we’re still getting up early like during planting but I think everyone’s going to sleep earlier. So we’re sleeping longer. Me too, I think.” 

 

“Well yeah.” Vi snorted and returned to her creeping through the gaps between trees quieter and way more careful than Powder could remember ever hearing her move. “We’re beat, dude. Pushing to get those fields planted was tough and we’re all still burnt to hell and I still don’t feel back to normal.” 

 

“You don’t?” This was news to Powder. Not very welcome news, either. The truth was she still felt even three or four (she couldn’t remember) days later like her legs got tired faster. Come to think of it, they were already starting to feel a little heavy. The two of them hadn’t even been jogging. They were basically creeping like they were sneaking around the basement of The Last Drop trying to stay up all night without getting caught.

 

Powder was proud of how many times she’d managed to stay up longer than Claggor or Mylo. It wasn’t often, but it happened. 

 

“No. I guess it comes down to us doing a lot more exercise.”

 

“What?” She started out talking a little too loudly, and Vi gestured with one hand for her to calm down. Powder lowered her voice and continued. “No way. It was different and all but we did all kinds of stuff back home.” 

 

“Not like this,” her sister countered without turning back. 

 

“You, Claggor and Mylo were out running every night, you were always down the street using that old punching bag at night until we got the boxing machine set up.” Vi’s left hand, still holding one arrow between two fingers gestured for her to continue without bothering to argue. 

 

“And?” 

 

“I just…” Powder stopped and huffed. The little twirl of her sister’s hand made her feel rushed. It was weird how little things could do that. “Are we really okay? Because I know some of us are getting a little smaller. Vander basically said so, himself.” Using the back of one of her bruised fists, Vi itched at her own chin and continued onward. Powder noticed a difference between them: the way her own head was fixed forward but Vi’s was slowly turning left to right in a really tiny arc. 

 

“I think we might’ve been in trouble if we hadn’t gotten the fields planted.” Vi spoke so seriously even through a whisper and the words sounded so heavy in her mouth that Powder didn’t think her sister was going to hold back. “Like, really bad trouble like right before Vander opened the Last Drop. If you can remember that. It was a long time ago.” Powder could, but barely. 

 

Most of what she remembered was that it was really, really bad right after the fighting stopped. Things weren’t safe and there was always a lot of yelling and swearing outside. Outside had been a place she and Vi never went without Vander, either. They would only eat about once every other day, she thought. Powder had the vague sense Vander had eaten less often.

 

That’s probably why he went after the beehive, that one time. The same reason he was looking for one, now. 

 

“I don’t remember how long it lasted but it was bad.” For a moment the only answer was something that sounded like flapping wings to their left that drew Vi’s attention and earned an annoyed growl or a twig snapping under her foot. “But now we did it? We’re okay?” 

 

“I dunno, I think so. Don’t think Vander was lying to us or anything. I mean, I think we need meat - protein, I guess. Without it I think we’ll lose a lot of muscle, but it’s not gonna be anything like back then. Especially if Vander actually knows how to bake bread.” Despite annoyance a second ago at what might’ve been a bird flying away nearby, Vi sounded like she was trying to be funny. “If not, I guess I haven’t had porridge in a long time.” 

 

“Oh.” Powder didn’t actually know what porridge was supposed to taste like but she’d seen people lining up to pay whatever scraps of coin they had for it before, back in the Lanes. Every time they’d come away from whatever little shop or stand carrying the bowl Powder thought it looked like slop . 

 

“I just don’t want you to worry. Vander says we’re good, so we’re good. We’ll figure it out. But now we need to quiet down a little more. Make sure nothing above a whisper.” 

 

“Okay.” Powder promised again. She expected another long stretch of silence to emerge but as they approached a bigger gap between two trees than normal, Vi stopped to lean against one and brightened up a bit. 

 

“Gods, as soon as we’re free tonight I’m gonna find something heavy, like a big branch and try to do a little lifting. I don’t want to get any weaker. Just started feeling good again after that stew and that deer.” Vi hesitated and then added, “you know, if I’m gonna teach you and Ekko to throw some good punches we might need to find some smaller ones for you two after you heal up. Get those noodle arms working.” 

 

“How long?” Powder whispered back, hoping maybe Vi had paid better attention than her back then. She definitely wasn’t going to tell Vi what she thought of her for saying she and Ekko had ‘noodle’ arms. “Until the cast can come off?” 

 

“I think a couple more weeks. We’ll ask Vander, though,” the girl hurriedly added as she glanced back at Powder. Powder just nodded again and lowered her gaze. “Hey, Pow-Pow.” She lifted her head. “We’re not looking for plants right now. Animals. So look up. Eye level. Try scanning.” 

 

“Scanning?” 

 

“Looking slowly from one side to another while you’re walking. Like when you’re surrounded by a bunch of people who you think want to fight.” Vi held up her left pointer finger and slowly dragged it from her left side to her right, eyes following it. “Just like that.” 

 

Powder did look up and when her sister started forward, she did as told. Powder’s gaze began to slowly slide left to right around her. 

 

“That’s how you do it? You know, when you’re in a fight?” 

 

“Until you know who’s coming at you, good to at least look. Same thing here. Until we have a target, keep on the lookout. Just don’t forget to look ahead of you, too, sometimes. Don’t wanna walk into a tree. Or fall over.” A teasing edge to her voice told Powder that Vi was definitely in a better mood than yesterday. “Hate to have to tell Ekko about that. ” 

 

Once again, Powder didn’t take the bait of Vi’s teasing. Though it probably would’ve been more fun if she had because she always had the memory of Caras helping Vi to the stream during planting to bring up. Then again, Vi had actually been sick enough that day Powder had been a little worried. Apparently she still wasn’t one-hundred percent, so maybe it wasn’t worth joking or teasing about. Yet. 

 

The remaining couple of hours of their hunting trip consisted of working back toward the house. With little more than a few birds heard, Powder felt both down and relieved when it seemed like they wouldn’t come across any animals to shoot at, after all. However, not more than maybe half an hour north of the house, Powder spotted movement on a tree a little ways ahead of them. Her eyes shot back to it without really thinking too deeply and she stopped dead in her tracks. Ahead, Vi did the same thing a couple steps later. 

 

In silence, when Powder had her sister’s eyes on her, she slowly raised her left hand and pointed toward the tree as she tried to process what she’d seen. It had been halfway down the exposed trunk of the tree. It still took a few seconds for her to realize she’d witnessed a slightly brighter brown move against a slightly darker brown in the early morning forest light. She knew at least enough to guess what might be to blame for that. 

 

“Squirrel, that tree, halfway between the lowest limb and the ground,” she whispered. To her sister’s credit, Vi lifted the bow quickly. The arrow slipped off the string and nearly hit the dirt before Vi caught it. 

 

“See it,” Vi muttered. She tried to get the arrow back in place quickly but by the time she had and even started to pull the bow back, the squirrel moved in a rush. This let Powder see it as well as Vi had, but only for a second before it was up and around the back of the tree. From there, it would have had an easy time climbing out of their reach. Powder’s heart was banging against her ribcage by the time that Vi had had her fill of staring at the tree hoping she could spot it again. “Fuck me ,” her sister spat.  

 

No more words passed between them until they reached the farm which made Powder more than a little nervous that she’d messed up somehow. 

 

Maybe she’d taken too long to see it or too long to tell Vi what she’d seen? Either way, the little creature had gotten away and while she didn’t hate that, shouldn’t she have hated that? 

 

“Sorry,” Powder rushed to apologize to her sister as soon as they reached the edge of the last shade the forest had to offer them before the sunlight jabbed at every little exposed bit of her. “I wasn’t fast enough-” 

 

“What? No, that’s my line,” Vi told her, shaking her head in denial, eyebrows knitting together like she was a little frustrated. “You saw something I didn’t see. You told me where it was and did it without spooking it off. You weren’t holding the bow or some other weapon so I don’t know what else you could’ve done. I fumbled the arrow.” In retrospect, Powder thought that made sense and it set her eat ease. “You did fine. And before Mylo gives you any shit, he came back empty handed too. Also, the bow wasn’t hard to pull back but it was a lot more work than I thought.” 

 

“Is that bad, you think?” she asked. “I think that’s a good thing because then it shoots the arrow farther and I think we have bad arrows so we need that.” 

 

“If that’s what you think, then I’d go with that,” Vi encouraged her. “Though I don’t know that the arrows are bad or anything.” Powder shrugged and felt, cautiously, a bit more hopeful that at least something sounded right about the bows. When she felt a slight watering in her eyes Powder quickly blinked away and stepped out after her sister into the morning sun. 

 

The sky being clearer than usual might’ve been nice under other circumstances. For now it made Powder hurry a little faster than she normally would to the foot of the hill. She slowed down as she started climbing it, though, because she didn’t want to fall down. Within a few seconds, Vi was on her tail. A little surprisingly, Vander appeared around from the front of the house and gave a wave. The way he had been talking, he and Mylo probably should’ve gotten back after her and Vi. 

 

The brawler made a ‘hmm’ing noise in the back of her throat as Powder waved back. She tried not to read too far into it. 

 

When they reached the top of the hill and made it around to the front of the house, Powder pointed Vi’s attention toward an exciting development. The older girl, halfway to the door, stopped and turned to follow Powder’s eyes to their little garden, first dug at all the day before. It had been expanded to be a few feet longer and wider and there were a handful of new plants that looked to have been hurriedly planted a few inches apart. 

 

They still had to wait and see if any of the plants that she, Ekko and Vi had planted the day before had a chance of surviving, but it was kind of exciting to see more. 

 

“Little worried I damaged their roots too much for them to grow,” Vander’s voice sounded out from the window, causing Powder to jump a bit as she turned back to the house. She hadn’t even heard the blinds raised. “But we also harvested a little. Was surprised to see something I recognized, and we found a big old patch of it. We picked enough to have some. I’ve got it breaking down in the pot on the stove. Doesn’t smell great, but it’s got good stuff in it.” 

 

“What is it?” Powder asked, though she was also eager to get inside, out of the sun and sit down. 

 

“It’s something like spinach. Smells like it, too. My mother called it Fat Hen. Grows in plenty of tough places. Never thought I’d run into it, but -” Powder frowned as she turned away and walked right up to the garden, kneeling down. Looking the leaves over, she thought she recognized their shape as one she’d stared at over and over again in the papers Orkis left them. “Damned glad we did.” 

 

Behind her, Vi kicked off her boots just outside of the door and headed on inside, so Powder hurried to do the same. Even crouching down and standing up was beginning to feel like work, so as soon as she could sit down it’d be good. Whatever this wild spinach was supposed to taste like, it smelled a little fishy in the house when she followed Vi in and leaned back against the wall to begin working her boots off with just her feet. 

 

Once her sister sat down the bow and the little bag of arrows, though, it was like a signal to Mylo. Ekko and Claggor sat on the floor atop Vi and Ekko’s bedding within a spread of chunks and flakes of a darker gray stone spread around them. Powder didn’t even have time to take a closer look before the person she kind of least wanted to hear from spoke up. 

 

“Did you get anything?” Mylo asked. He did not sound hopeful. He sounded… cocky. Full of himself.  Ekko raised a hand in greeting, but Claggor, whose hands were both occupied by rock, just nodded before shooting a concerned look Vi’s way and looking back down at what he was trying to do. 

 

Clack. She watched a big chunk of stone break away from the one in Claggor’s left hand as he struck it with the one in his right. She wasn’t sure how you were supposed to control it and shape the stone but was interested in watching and finding out. First, though…. 

 

“Obviously not.” Powder was impressed by how even Vi kept her voice when Mylo had already managed to upset her. 

 

“Did you even take a shot?” he asked. “You didn’t, did you?” Mylo leaned back against the wall beside their corner counter. Above him, a handful of small objects hung on the wall. Right above him, though, hung what looked like a flat, wooden spatula. Powder wished it would fall on his head right about then. When Vi’s mouth turned down into a frown, Powder spoke first. 

 

“Yeah, at least she didn’t waste or break any arrows.” Vander did not interfere or correct them and Mylo had little to say back to that. So, Powder let it go and was just relieved that Vi did the same so that they could sit down and maybe her legs wouldn’t really start hurting instead of just aching

 

“Are you getting any good ones?” Powder turned her attention on Claggor and Ekko and though she could not learn by doing, she paid close attention over the next couple of hours. Well, if one discounted the time it took for them to eat a lunch of rice and soggy, kinda gross tasting greens. 

 

It was interesting, watching Vander, Claggor and Ekko at first, then Mylo and Vi as well. One by one they tried to basically learn how stone broke when cracked together so that they could strike one stone with the other in the right place. The goal was to break off light but sharp, triangular flakes of stone. Better yet, this looked to be one of those things Vander had been taught back then that he’d really paid attention to. He couldn’t put the process into any better words than he had the fire hardening, but it paid off. By the time most of the stones Claggor and Ekko had brought back from the pond were in pieces too small to use and needed to be swept out of the house, they had (either by skill or accident) four options for arrowheads. 

 

One of them looked too thick if Powder were to guess but even if only three of them worked it was better than nothing. If they could make a few new arrows and wedge these into the end or something, surely they’d hurt anything they hit. 

 

That thought made her uncomfortable so she let it go quick. 

 

“Alright,” Vi said as she finished shaking shards of pebble-sized flint out of her bedding out front. Beside her, Vander was doing the same to Powder’s. “Vander, Ekko and Powder asked me to keep teaching them how to fight.” From just inside the front door, Powder leaned around the corner. “I wanna take them down to a good shady spot near the woods and get started on that.” When Powder glanced behind her, Claggor looked up with some surprise at her and then Ekko. Mylo was already halfway through rolling his eyes from where he sat on the side of the bed. 

 

Powder was way more interested in what Vander had to say. Ekko, still holding the four potential flint arrowheads as if proud of them, hurried with heavy steps over to the open door to listen, as well. The sun was pretty high over the head but a breeze brushed across the both of them that felt really good on Powder’s face. 

 

“Thinking we’ll start with stance and how to throw the basic punches and then we’ll start drilling that in over the next couple of weeks.” Just a few steps away, Vi looked at Vander expectantly, maybe even with a glimmer in her eyes that said she was ready for an argument. Or, maybe she was just excited. Powder didn’t know. There were always arguments, lately. 

 

“Not to judge but, you sure this is a good time?” Claggor asked out the open door from behind her. “Powder only got the one hand she can use.” 

 

She was about to turn around and glare Claggor’s way when Vander looked not at Vi as he folded up Powder’s bedding, but at Powder and Ekko directly. The man’s face was starting to look a little better from his sunburn, if one discounted the peeling and the nick he’d made trying to shave the morning before. Better than Vi or Claggor, definitely. Powder tried to get a read of his expression but it was surprisingly difficult to pick out. Ekko took a step out the front door in his bare feet. 

 

“That’s what you want, Ekko, Powder?” Beside him, Vi looked downright hurt and wadded her own blanket up under one arm, stepping away from Vander. Powder wasn’t sure what it was all about, but she could see the fire fading on Vi’s face. Her bigger sister looked like Vander had just grounded her for something she hadn’t done, a mix of angry and hurt and just a little helpless. 

 

What’s going on? 

 

“Yeah it is,” Powder rushed to answer. When Vander again turned to look at Ekko the boy started to roll his eyes - and then stopped. Powder caught that and doubted Vander had missed it. 

 

“Well, yeah. Vi was already showing us how to throw punches back before all this, but now we’re always together and always stuck here. So why not start again? It’s more fun than just walking around in the sun.” Maybe Ekko sounded a little grumpy but even putting that aside, Powder didn’t miss the implication. Sounding kind of bratty and a little annoyed, Ekko drove home that they were stuck here, that there was nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. 

 

Technically there was the village but after the morning’s talk about not going too far off without permission, Powder wasn’t sure if Vander was going to let them start walking there every day without a reason. 

 

Vander shrugged, turned away from Ekko and back to Vi. Whatever he was going to say, he only managed a syllable before he paused at the sight of her. Like he hadn’t known Vi was upset a second ago, Vander’s face softened and the man placed a hand on Vi’s shoulder, careful not to irritate her sunburnt arms. The long look the two shared made Powder… squirm. Nervous squirming, almost. 

 

She got the feeling they were both saying and thinking a lot about each other with that look or saying something she couldn’t catch onto. 

 

It just felt like at any point things could go back to as bad as they were the day before. 

 

Then Vander shrugged and Vi relaxed a bit but the excitement did not immediately return to her sister’s sharp face. 

 

“Don’t go too far from the treeline and, no one gets hurt, got me? Get back before sundown for a bath before dinner or it’s gonna be a cold walk back from the stream. It was way cooler last night than it’s been lately.” Vander took Vi’s bedding from her softly and Ekko stepped to one side of the doorway just outside it, Powder echoing him on the inside so that Vander could come back in. 

 

If they were going to get started, Powder wasn’t sure if it was a good thing they’d had lunch or not. At least she felt nice with a stomach full of food. 

 

“What about us?” Mylo asked. 

 

“Same as them, other than doing your part to get an armload of firewood, you’re free to go.” Vander walked right past her and plopped down at the foot of the bed Mylo was sat on, beginning to pry off his own boots even as Powder grabbed hers in her left hand and slipped out front to sit down and start working them on. It was still hard getting them on and off one handed but it came a little easier now that bending forward didn’t hurt her right arm. 

 

“I might try to go get some more flint and keep practicing on the arrowheads.” Claggor sounded excited by the idea. Powder might even have been going with him if she’d had both hands. 

 

“Practice can only help,” Vander agreed. “On my end, I think it’s time to dig out this old wellhouse and what shape everything’s in.” 

 

“Should I come with you?” Claggor asked instead. Powder peeked back inside to pay attention, as this struck her as important. 

 

“Your call. Your free time, your choice. Doesn’t hurt to have someone trying to make the arrowheads if that’s what you wanna do - but if you stay at the house at least you can hear me shout if I need a hand.” 

 

“I kind of want to know about the well,” Claggor admitted, dropping a rock about the size of his middle finger onto the floor in front of him and getting up. Mylo just rocked back on the bed looking to all the world like someone close to lying down and going to sleep. The bed was hers that night though, so he had better get what use out of it he could. It was only the second chance she’d had at it since they first moved in. “I’ll come help you for at least a little while.” 

 

Once Powder, with Vi’s help, managed to get the boots on her feet tied back up (it was way easier to untie them with one hand than the other way around) the trio took off from the house. They walked straight north along almost the same path they’d taken to the tree. The one Vi had buried her favorite pouch under. At first this made her anxious but as they got farther and farther away from the house to where they couldn’t even hear Vander or Claggor’s voices down by the well house, Vi explained herself.

 

Meanwhile, Ekko continued walking off the little path and through grass that was sometimes near as tall as him as if he hadn’t heard Vander warn them about snakes when they first arrived. 

 

“Our ‘climbing tree’ has really good shade under it and some flat ground. It’ll be a good place to practice this time of the day.” Vi explained, glancing back up at Powder behind her, still trailing down the hill. “Plus, we need to get used to being able to be around it, right?” Powder inhaled, knowing that Vi didn’t mean ‘we’, she meant ‘you’ . 

 

Powder nodded yes. The shade made by the tree and those around it kept the grass from growing too wild and out of control. Add in the bonus of keeping the sun from burning them and it seemed like a good idea when Powder stopped and thought about it. Still, once they reached the tree it was always kind of there even when she didn’t look at it. Even when she turned her back on it to look up at Vi, waiting, there was the sense of it being there, behind her. Like it was waiting, too.  

 

Her sister matched eyes with her and for three very long seconds said nothing before offering a closed fist out to the both of them. It wasn’t a common gesture for Vi to use with her but Powder returned the fist bump before the girl shared the same with Ekko. 

 

“Alright, let’s go from the basics.” Vi grunted at this, looked up and paused in consideration before shifting. Powder watched the way her sister ducked slightly, back leg shifting, turning at a slight angle. Vi even leaned just a little forward as she brought up her hands, balled into fists. “Let’s talk stance. How to stand when you’re in a fight and why it’s a good way.” Vi turned to one side, moving quickly and throwing a punch right out in front of her. “Then we’ll talk throwing punches and the right way to do them. Maybe a jab? After that, we can talk about what happens if you start throwing punches wrong in a fight and we’ll finish with footwork. Because that’s really important” 

 

The truth was, Powder remembered a lot of this stuff. Or, at least, she thought she did. Vi had tried to teach her lots of it before, before their topside job that went so wrong. 

 

“You remember school?” her sister prompted them both. 

 

“I remember when Andy taught us how to read?” Powder offered. Ekko only shrugged. His schooling was about the same. So was Vi’s, for that matter. 

 

“Yeah, well that’s all the school people like us get,” Vi shrugged, herself. “Well, you’re gonna have a lot of homework.” 

 

“We’re always ‘home’,” Powder shot back, cheekily. When her sister’s face darkened just a little, frown starting to appear, Ekko distracted her before Powder could think too much on it. 

 

“What is it, then?” 

 

“Well, after I show you through and talk you through the right stance and the jabs, you’re gonna start practicing them. I’ll be watching to help out. We’re gonna get you doing them right and then doing a lot of them. Like, a whole lot. ” The sour look on Vi’s face disappeared and slowly, excitement snuck in to replace it. “C’mere and line up over there, will ya?” 

 

With a roll of her eyes she could not entirely suppress, Powder moved closer to Ekko (and the ‘Climbing Tree’ as Vi was now calling it) and stood a foot or so away from him. In the meantime her sister took a second to stand up straight, arms at her side and then closed her eyes as if imagining something. 

 

“Okay, so it’s like this.” Vi slowly shifted her right foot to the side a little. “Start standing up straight, feet about as far apart as your shoulders.” Powder did as told, scooting a little bit further away from Ekko to give them more room. Though Powder took a second to physically look down at herself and line up her legs, Ekko overdid it a bit. “No, only as wide apart as your shoulders,” Vi repeated, making a gesture with her two open hands to suggest the boy bring his legs closer together. 

 

This time, Ekko looked down as Powder had at himself and did as told. 

 

“Good. Now bring your left foot forward just a little bit and keep the right one where it is. We want you standing a little turned, but mostly straight for now.” This one was still easy enough and a familiar instruction. She and Ekko quickly got that part down and, judging by how he rocked a bit on his right foot, he remembered what was coming next, too. “Your left foot. That’s your ‘lead’ foot, because it’s leading where you’re going and what you’re doing. It needs to be far enough ahead of the back so you can put your weight forward on it when you throw a punch, but get too wide a gap and there’s no balance. Shoulder width is just about perfect.” 

 

“Did mean your shoulders or mine? Because…” Ekko was cut off by a sharp glance from Vi, like she wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not. Powder knew he was even before a smile broke on his face, though. “Okay, okay.” 

 

“Now, your lead foot is gonna be your left - it’s gonna be on the same side as the hand you use for a jab.” Vi had yet to talk much about the hands now hanging as fists above her jawline, but when Ekko raised his in the same way, Powder hurried to match him. It felt really goofy with just her left hand, though. “Plant the lead foot flat on the ground or floor or whatever, and raise the heel on the back foot just a bit. Doesn’t even need to be a full inch. Just enough to get your toes down and your weight on the ball of the foot. Easier to turn and pivot and move that way. Am I going too fast?” 

 

Powder shook her head quickly. 

 

“Nah,” Ekko answered. Vi’s eyes opened a little wider as if coming back to herself. “You showed us all this already.” 

 

“I know, I know. Just - it’s important. So we’ll keep going. You’ve both got halfway to the next step. Powder, bring your fist up a little bit more and you wanna keep your elbows tucked in right beside you.” For a moment Vi watched Powder try to fix what was critiqued and then the girl turned her attention on Ekko. “Same to you, elbows in, Ekko.” Glancing sideways, she watched Ekko pull his elbows in close against his side. “Good, yeah like that. You see this?” Vi returned her fists to the same position. 

 

“Whenever you throw a punch, whether you miss or you hit, whether it hurts them or they shrug it off or they fall down knocked out cold the next thing you do is the same: you get your hands right back here. Right here. Just like this.” Vi shook her fists just slightly in place to emphasize, and so Powder stopped to think for a second. Just to remember how she’d tried to practice a little bit before, when she still had both her arms in working order. “Now, the last part of a good boxing stance, I think.” 

 

Vi looked down pointedly toward her own feet so Powder watched Vi’s legs as the girl barely bent them. 

 

“This looks weird at first but it’s not bad. Just a little bit of a bend. Keep your weight split juuuust about the same between your front and back leg. Do it and tell me how you feel about balance.” Powder started to mimic the gesture but she immediately felt a little strain on her knees and felt like she looked a little goofy. “Good, Ekko, but not so low. Same on you, Powder. You’re just going a little too far.” She eased up slightly and - “Powder, keep that back heel up.” Flushing just a little beneath her sunburn, she hurried to correct herself. 

 

She used to make that mistake back in the Lanes, too. 

 

“Ekko, how ya feeling?”

 

“I dunno, good? I guess.”

 

“Good balance?” Vi asked, words quick and almost like one of Vander’s barks. 

 

“I think so.” Before Ekko could finish his response, her sister’s eyes were on Powder. Waiting for the same answers. 

 

“I dunno, I think I’m doing it right.” 

 

“I think so too,” Vi nodded, face so sincere that Powder believed her. 

 

Then, quite without warning, Vi began to punch. At least she was only punching the air. She moved quicker than Powder would’ve liked for trying to follow along but, by this point in her life with Vi, Powder knew how to recognize a couple of left jabs being thrown and it didn’t take a genius to understand the words ‘uppercut’ or ‘hook’ either. 

 

“Shadowboxing,” Vi explained as she continued to ‘strike’ the air at a steady but still quick pace. To her sister’s credit, each time the girl’s punch ‘landed’ she immediately brought that hand back, shifted her body back into position and tucked her chin in behind the raised fists. “Though what I do probably isn’t good boxing because no one’s coached me in two years. It works, though.” Powder wasn’t sure if this was the truth or Vi was just down on herself. 

 

“How do I…” she paused halfway through her question and let her shoulders and left fist drop. “I can’t really do all that.” Vi shook her head quickly. 

 

“Hand back up,” her sister said, not responding at all. Powder frowned but did as she was told and only after that did her sister continue. “It - Ekko, elbows in, dude.” At first, Powder was worried Vi sounded annoyed but instead a laugh seemed to bubble up in her throat. “Okay but the whole point of shadowboxing isn’t just throwing punches. Which, you can still throw some with your left hand, but the other part is about doing all the other things you’re supposed to do.” 

 

“Like what?” Ekko asked. 

 

“Like keeping your knees bent, Powder,” Vi chided, and Powder hurried to crouch just a little. “Like while you’re throwing punches, being able to keep your stance right, remembering your footwork, knowing how to move. Knowing how to move like I showed you back home. That sort of box step I showed you. It’s about all of that and throwing punches, right now. Right now you’re both gonna stick to left jabs because I want you focused more on your stance, your breathing and the box step.” Vi relaxed for a second and then tilted her head. “Powder, you can still throw a jab with one hand but if it jostles you around enough it starts hurting your other arm, just keep it up in a guard. Even if you never throw a punch, getting used to getting guard up means you protect your face better. Practicing your box steps means you know how to move without breaking stance. Also means you get better at pivoting and turning without breaking stance. For me, that’s always been harder.” 

“I’m gonna look silly,” Powder argued. Without thinking about it, she stood back up to full height and saw Vi’s slight lifting of the eyebrows just a second too late. 

 

“So what? Who’s gonna see? Who’s gonna laugh?” Vi dismissed the concern but pointed with her left hand at Powder’s knees. She quickly bent them just a little, copying her sister’s legs as best she could, shifting forward on her rear foot. “Ekko? Doubt it. Me? No.”

 

“What about Mylo?” Ekko asked. Powder was just glad someone else said it and not her. 

 

“Mylo can’t laugh at you. I watched him learning how to get his guard up and he drops it way more than me .” That all being said, Vi breathed heavily out of her nose, snorting. “Worst part is, and don’t either of you tell him I said this or else, he’d be really good at it if he just practiced some.”

 

“Why’s that?” Again, Ekko beat her to a good question. 

 

“He’s smaller than you are.” Powder told her sister. 

 

“Yeah?” Vi asked, starting to move, side to side, back and forth, ducking and weaving as if to avoid oncoming hits while throwing the occasional left jab. Beside her, Ekko watched this carefully, so Powder squinted and tried to focus, too. Especially on the feet and how this box stepping worked. “Do you think Claggor and Vander are the only ones who can throw a good punch around here?” Powder shrugged, one armed. 

 

“If you two learned how to hit fast and hard you’d probably scare me more than Claggor.”

 

“Not Vander?” Ekko pretended to be hurt, lowering his hands to clasp one over his heart.

 

“Not a fair comparison - fists up - you’ve seen what he can do. My point, if you’re done giving me crap, is you’re both small and fast.” 

 

“Is that a good thing?” Powder asked. Vi shrugged. 

 

“Not a bad thing. Especially not fast. If we just forget Deckard, most of the people who’ve kicked my ass did it because they were faster and knew how to throw a punch.”

 

That was the first of the new insights Powder learned into how Vi thought about fighting. At first, the idea that she hadn’t thought about how important it was to be quicker than the person you were fighting seemed silly. It’d make sense if it was better to get a hit in without being hit, rather than taking a bunch of punches and trying to go for some kind of knockout. 

 

“Anyway, spread yourselves out a couple more feet and come forward. Keep in stance, keep your guard up. Keep that back foot turned a little, push forward off of the ball, and bring that front foot forward to match. Remember, you always bring that back foot where that front foot’s facing. It’s the lead foot. It’s the leader. Like this.” Vi bounced forward a step, toward them, and then back. 

 

“But your front leg’s the leader - it’s going first?” Ekko countered. 

 

“What? Huh….” Vi hesitated and then after a few seconds of looking angry in a way that didn’t make sense, her face brightened. 

 

She was getting mad at herself, Powder realized. 

 

“I think I know what’s up. I’m gonna do that real slow. Watch my legs, not just my feet.” Powder squinted, and Vi moved very carefully forward, feet still positioned just a bit apart, one at an angle and partially up. “My front foot’s lifting, because it’s going to go forward first. It is leading, but it’s the back leg that lets you go forward. You’re putting weight back down on that back foot and pushing off, to move forward. Then shuffle that back foot forward, same position. Make sense?” 

 

And the words did make sense, but Powder hadn’t seen it. 

 

“One more time?” Powder requested, quickly. Vi showed no sign of impatience, just bouncing backward a step, then slowly demonstrating. This time, Powder watched her back leg, the way it tensed a little as she pushed forward off it, and things made sense. Actually, a lot of things Vi used to say about throwing a punch made a little more sense. “You’re not just throwing your left leg around, you’re pushing in that direction. Just like walking normally, right?” 

 

“Yeah, honestly.” Vi confirmed. “It’s just that when you’re trying to do this you need to think about it because you gotta know how to use it when you’re pushing off that foot. Now, your turn. Keep your feet like I’m showing you, and come in. We’ll go side to side next.” Focused a lot more than she normally would be on the act of stepping forward, Powder kept her knee bent and came in, toward Vi, leading with the foot that was closer to straight than the much more angled right foot. Beside her, Ekko did the same. 

 

“We got two or three hours and we’re gonna use them,” Vi announced with a nod when they had done as told. 

 

She tuned in hard as the lesson continued. Having not seen Vi this fired up outside of planting time, Powder got kind of excited with her. Even though she felt self-conscious, less sure at least than Ekko, Powder could pretend to ignore that. They were worked through moving in and out or going to their “leading side” or their “back side” without ruining their stance and it actually was hard for her to keep the steps, the way she had to hold her feet, the way she had to bend her knees and keep her arm up all at once in her head at the same time. It didn’t feel impossible though. 

 

Besides, this was what she’d asked for. Twice. Vi may have given up or just forgotten to keep teaching her the first time, but this time she sounded excited about it. 

 

“Alright alright, now give yourselves six feet apart. Keep me in your line of sight,” they were told a few minutes later. “Now from the start. Up straight. Feet as wide apart as your shoulders. Turn your body just a little a bit, right foot back, like five o'clock on a clockface if your leading leg’s at twelve. Left foot forward.” Powder hurried to correct what felt like little imperfections in each part of how she was supposed to stand but very quickly found it a little much to worry about at once. She took them one at a time, instead. “Back foot, on your toes a bit, on the ball. Leading foot, same direction but a little straighter. Flat. Knees bent just a little like you’re just about to squat down and - Powder, try like… wait, like this. Watch my knees.” 

 

All over again, Vi demonstrated the stance and once Powder and Ekko were back in it, Vi started to show them a left jab again, more slowly this time. 

 

“Hands up, just above the chin, right between chin and ear level - knuckles toward the sun. Elbows in, Ekko. Great.” Vi sucked in a breath. “Now here’s where you gotta focus a little more. Split your weight between both legs and we throw a left jab. Try it.” Vi’s left arm came forward in an exaggerated but still just a little fast to follow punch. A few feet away, Powder saw Ekko’s arm swing out and she hurried to do the same; she was fairly sure she had a straighter jab than his. 

 

Vi didn’t break her stance once as she hurriedly closed in on Ekko and flicked him hard on the chin. 

 

“Hey,” Ekko complained, mostly playfully, before lifting both fists back up to his chin. Powder just barely got her left hand up in time not to suffer the same fate when she realized Vi was rounding on her. “There’s just kind of a lot to think about!” 

 

“That’s the hard part,” Vi shrugged as she backed away from Powder almost effortlessly holding her stance, practicing exactly the kind of steps she’d been talking to them about. “You’re not remembering just one part of it. You’ve gotta deal with the whole thing. You both forgot to get your hands back up and tuck the elbows in. In a fight that means whoever you hit has a door wide open and they’re not gonna flick you.” Vi kept in position, guard up. “Hands back up, ten jabs, and then turn to your left. Ten jabs, then move to your new left. Ten jabs, turn right back. The whole time, I want you thinking about how you’re moving. Remember to pivot on that back foot to turn. Remember to think about how you’re sidestepping. I’ll do it with you but if you drop your guard, slouch too much or get your feet out of position and I’m throwing a pebble at you.” 

 

Powder started to say that didn’t sound like the best way to teach them. She wasn’t even sure where Vi was going to get a pebble on short notice. All such complaints stopped when she caught sight of Vi’s raised eyebrows and pressed lips. 

 

“Go on.” Her sister sounded like Vander a little. Vander never tossed pebbles. Unlike the half-sleeping zombie or rage machine she acted like lately, though, this Vi smiled and joked and it wasn’t fake. She moved like the girl Powder had always looked up to, one of maybe two people who actually thought the things Powder was already good at and enjoyed doing mattered. Her and Ekko. 

 

It felt good. It made her feel hopeful to see her sister more like that. 

 

Vi stopped her own brief stint of shadowboxing after four quick jabs and then pulled back that left hand. 

 

Powder received her first pebble to the knee. She wasn’t sure how long Vi had been holding onto it. 

 

“Focus,” Vi implored. “That’s the whole point. Like you gotta practice it to learn it.” By the time Powder finished her huff she found that Ekko had already turned on his rear foot and was facing right at her profile. 

 

Not getting left behind again. 

 

Feeling very silly and praying that no one was watching them from up the hill behind her sister, Powder brought her hand back up and extended her first jab very quickly. Vi held up both hands, though, one still curled in a fist as if she was holding onto something. 

 

“Okay,” Vi said immediately, eyes traveling over both of them. Powder felt even more silly. “I see what I did wrong. Lemme show you a jab again but this time I’m gonna show you where to look while I do.”

 

Once back in stance, Vi ‘threw’ her left jab and then gestured with her right hand which had been guarding through the punch to draw their attention to her face.

 

“What just happened?” 

 

“You threw a jab?” Powder asked, raising an eyebrow at the obvious question. 

 

“Yeah, yeah but specifically. Break it down.” At this, she looked away from her big sister and back at Ekko, whose grimace and shrug said he wasn’t sure where to begin, either. “Okay, then… treat it like one of your machines. You gotta know how all the different pieces move right? Watch me. I’m one of your machines - figure out how I’m doing what I’m doing?” Much, much more carefully and slowly, Vi threw three of those punches over a three seconds, each time bringing her fists back up to her chin. “Now, break it down. What happened?” 

 

Powder grimaced, herself when she looked at Ekko to find him shrugging again and lowering his arms. 

 

“Okay, I’ll do it again.” Powder sucked in a deep breath and held it while she watched. Think about it like a machine, she reminded herself. Like a machine. Lots of moving parts. With that thought in mind, Powder let down her left arm. This time, Vi moved almost in slow motion. 

 

“You’re not just punching, ” Ekko said. Powder nodded in hurried agreement and then, cautiously, not wanting to say it wrong, turned her head to one side and took a shot. 

 

“It’s like you’re moving - no, pushing the punch forward. Off the back foot. Just like when you move. Your head moves too - eyes focused forward and your other hand comes closer to your chin.”

 

“Yeah, to protect it better right?” Ekko asked, hurriedly.  

 

“Right, the ball of my back foot, part right behind the toes. I used that to push forward. Why?” Maybe because Powder had given the first answer, Vi looked right at Ekko with this one. 

 

“I don’t know.” He answered honestly, though he didn’t sound the least bit ashamed of it. Powder wasn’t always as brave as he was. She felt like it was a problem when she didn’t know something someone asked her about. 

 

“Think about it,” Vi started. “What’s the difference between this -” she raised her left hand all at once and threw it out right in front of her, “and this?” This time, Vi did as they’d observed, pushing forward as her left fist extended in maybe a quarter of the time she might’ve normally completed the motion. Ekko just blinked, reflecting her own confusion in the moment. “Hey, you’re both smart. Talk it out if you gotta. I don’t care who tells me as long as you both get it.” 

 

For a moment or two, Vi left them to their own devices, demonstrating the left jab a few times while both ducking individual invisible punches but also stepping from side to side in stance. Sometimes she moved at a normal pace, sometimes very quickly but often her sister slowed down to demonstrate. After the third left jab, Powder noticed that Vi had discarded her jacket back up by the house and left her sunburnt arms exposed. 

 

Maybe it’s easier. Maybe the jacket slows her down? 

 

“Why don’t either of you have your guard up? Powder, get that back foot up, too.” Powder sulked for a second, since they were supposed to be thinking, not boxing, but did her best to get her left fist up to her chin when Ekko lifted his. 

 

“Okay,” Powder said, frustrated. 

 

“What makes something hit harder?” Vi asked them when silence threatened to settle back in. This got Ekko’s attention and he turned his head around to catch Powder’s eye behind his fists. 

 

“Force,” Ekko said, though he wasn’t answering Vi so much as prompting Powder. 

 

“Okay, what’s force?” Vi asked again. 

 

“Mass times acceleration?” Ekko offered, which drew Powder’s attention away from his feet and how he was holding his elbows kind of tight against him and the fact she didn’t think his arms were as big as they had been last time she’d really paid attention. Not that they were that big to begin with but he’d been really proud before, showing off growing muscles whenever he had the chance. 

 

“What?” Powder asked him. “What’s that mean? ” 

 

“Just something I read in some old topside book?” Ekko started, then shrugged and looked away from her. Was he embarrassed? “But it makes sense. It’s how big and heavy something is and how fast it moves, right?” 

 

“That makes sense,” Powder agreed over top of the knuckles of her left hand. “Just never heard anyone say it like that. 

 

“Okay, so I don’t totally follow but I guess that sounds right to me?” Vi chimed in from a few feet away, still. Powder’s left hand started to lower and immediately Vi hurled one of the little pebbles she was holding across the space between them and bounced it off Powder’s stomach. 

 

She raised her fist again, squinting at the amusement on Vi’s face. If she didn’t know better she’d say her sister was having fun with this. 

 

“I push off on the ball of my foot so that when I twist the arm straight to hit, I’m going faster and putting more of my body weight into it instead of just swinging my arm. And I’m not just moving my head. I drop it in and tuck the chin in near the shoulder.” Vi lifted her pointed chin up a bit as if to underline this. “Do you know why?”

 

“Why?” Ekko dropped his hands, earning a pebble to the chest. He just sighed, though, and put his guard right back up. 

 

Vi opened her mouth to give the answer, then shut it and looked thoughtful before starting again. Like she was trying really hard to say the right things. Powder recognized the behavior from herself. She usually had to stop and think a lot about what words to use or people wouldn’t understand. Worse, they might misunderstand and then get mad. 

 

“Well, I dunno if it’s the right answer but the reason I always thought was because it’s easier for you to turn your guarding hand toward someone trying to hit you. Plus when you bring the fist back, instead of having to reset stance immediately you’ve got the shoulder guarding part of your face, your fists guarding the rest.” 

 

“This is actually -” Ekko started quickly, like he’d barely taken time to start processing Vi’s answer. 

 

“Kinda fun?” Powder finished. “Like… the body is kind of like a machine.” 

 

“Isn’t it a machine? Just not metal and oil and stuff.” Ekko challenged, and Powder shrugged. 

 

“Cool,” Vi started. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it and you both know I think you’re nerds but practice now and nerd next.”

 

“Pretty sure you can be a nerd about throwing punches instead of tools and gears and stuff,” Ekko teased back. Powder didn’t. First off, Powder didn’t think ‘nerd’ was a bad thing. Second, something about the excitement and the soft tone of Vi’s voice when she used the word made Powder smile. It felt a little like her sister’s own, stupid way of saying ‘I love you’. It felt like things used to feel even a month or two ago. 

 

“From where I’m sitting they both pay off,” Vi answered with a shrug. This too was its own complement but- “Both of you face me, get back in stance. Ten jabs, push forward with that back foot, punch out that arm, lock your wrist before the hit and you want to be hitting that imaginary face that totally isn’t Mylo’s with those top two knuckles.” Vi lifted her own left hand and demonstrated by running two fingers across the first two knuckles. 

 

Vi paused a moment in her demonstration, head tilting as she stared down at her hands. 

 

“Huh.” 

 

“What?” Ekko asked. Powder wasn’t waiting for any answers. She knelt down as quickly as she could and felt around with her left hand, grabbing a pebble that had been tossed at her earlier and throwing it a little wildly at Vi. It bounced off of the girl’s neck or collarbone and her sister raised one hand to grab at the point of impact, looking surprised for a second before turning to squint right at Powder. 

 

“Keep your guard up,” Powder told her, smirking. 

 

“I just realized I haven’t worn my wraps in a while,” Vi answered Ekko, not biting on Powder’s bait. “Back in stance. 10 jabs, move to your left, 10 jabs, then turn.” 

 

“It was the other way around the first time!” Ekko joined in on the teasing, a little more loudly. 

 

“Don’t care, get to it,” Vi cut across him. 

 

It was an experience and a half to focus so much on how every part of her body was positioned, how she moved and how to use the way she moved. Whether it was two hours or four or six it wouldn’t have mattered: Powder started to sweat pretty quick once Vi started drilling them and was going to be worn out no matter what. They switched between the jabs and just focusing on “footwork” in what Vi intended to be ten minute intervals along with a lot of time to just stand or sit in the shade. 

 

But whatever they did, Vi was either watching like a hawk and correcting every single little thing they did wrong or she was doing the drills along with them. 

 

So, Powder was sweaty and thirsty when they started back up the hill, but she was happy. It felt like Vi wasn’t holding back on them. She wasn’t mean about any of it, if anything she was too hard on herself when it sounded like Ekko or Powder hadn’t understood something. In fact, Powder was starting to wonder if a lot of the times she thought she’d said something to annoy Vi, her sister was actually upset with herself about some kind of misunderstanding. 

 

It was the first time she got an inkling as to how hard Vi was on herself. 

 

She still climbed the hill feeling super tired but with more energy than she’d expected as she talked away with Vi and Ekko about the practice and about trying to do it every afternoon. Vi insisted most of their focus over the next couple of days was gonna be footwork, but they’d keep drilling on the jabs before starting to throw hooks or uppercuts. Powder didn’t care. Maybe it was being part of something Vi loved so much or the way she, Ekko and Vi got to do it together or putting it all in the new mindset of the body just being a big fleshy machine… It was fun. 

 

Powder didn’t want to go getting up in some big guy’s face and trying to fight for her life but she would eagerly do this ‘training’ with Ekko and Vi as long as she could. Part of her also did want to learn the machinery behind throwing the hook or the uppercut, now that she was thinking of it like that. She thought it’d make it easier for her to remember how to move now that she had a better idea of why. 

 

By the time they made it to the shed out behind the house, the trio had already gotten wind that something was going on back home. For one thing, Powder could hear a masculine voice she wasn’t used to, one carrying the familiar tones of a Noxian accent. For another, as they swung west so they weren’t walking right up to the back of the house, Powder could see the two oxen tied to the front of a cart paused just at the bottom of the softest slope of the hill. It was the same path Caras had led the yaks he and Orkis had loaned them up days ago. 

 

“Oh, I think Caras is here to see you,” she told Vi, playfully when she caught sight of the cart. Vi waved a hand though, to quiet her down so she could listen to the voices out front. One was absolutely Vander’s, though Powder couldn’t quite make out what was being said. Another, though, was softer and more feminine. Vi picked up the pace a little and Powder hurried to jog after her and Ekko as the two pulled ahead. Ekko stopped jogging as soon as he got a little further clear of the house and slowed to let her catch up. 

 

A little smirk rested on Ekko’s face, though Vi remained facing forward and did not slow down very much in comparison. 

 

“Not Caras and Orkis,” Ekko told her. A few moments later as they were rounding the corner, she caught sight of three still very new faces to her. The village’s smith, (who’d been introduced to them as Vavros and Zenneene, the village’s herbalist sat with Vander in the grass outside of the shack, apparently in discussion over a couple cups of water. Vander’s hair was wet against his head, and pushed back maybe in an effort to look cleaner or tamed. His hands were absolutely dirt caked, though. 

 

In an off-white long-sleeved shirt whose sleeves were being used to wipe sweat off of her face, Sinnan laughed a few feet away from the corner of the house they were rounding, at something Mylo had just said, judging by how pleased he looked with himself. Then the laughter stopped and Sinnan, Claggor and Mylo saw the three of them. 

 

“Salvete, omnes!” Powder didn’t understand the words coming out of the girl’s mouth as she finished wiping sweat from her forehead but she caught the wave of a hand brightening smile and could piece together a ‘hello’ when she heard one . What she hadn’t expected was for Sinnan to bolt from her spot right at them, passing by Vi in a flash and before Ekko could so much as think about teasing Powder the way he had a second ago, their new friend with the dark auburn hair and mostly Noxian complexion was right upon them. 

 

Ekko was the farthest forward of the two so he was dragged a step or two with Sinnan who threw an arm across each of their shoulders and gave a quick if hearty squeeze. It jarred Powder’s right arm a little but she didn’t complain. Truth was, Powder liked Sinnan. She was funny, nice, pretty and the only one near her and Ekko’s age who knew Piltovan even if there were sometimes she forgot a word. (It wasn’t like Powder could judge, knowing about five or six words of Ur-Nox, herself.) 

 

“Ekko! Powder! It’s good to see-” suddenly the Noxian stepped back, smile still on her face but eyebrows raised. “You’re covered in sweat. ” Powder winced, wondering if she smelled bad or something, but Ekko just shrugged. 

 

“We were practicing something. When did you get here?” he asked. Sinnan shrugged it off and her generally cheerful face returned to normal. Powder hadn’t yet seen it in daylight, though and couldn’t help but notice the way the girl’s eyes widened as she started speaking, quickly. 

 

“Vavros wants a apprentice, so we come to ask your brother. No… came to ask.” Sinnan gestured to Claggor, who Vi had gone ahead to talk to. Powder wasn’t looking at Claggor, though. She swung her head around so fast she could hear her neck pop. Their new friend from the village took a step back. “What is it? Are you…. Alright?” 

 

“Yeah, what’s up?” Ekko asked her. Then his voice lowered and he leaned forward at the same time. “Wait, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” When Powdered turned her attention from Vander in conversation with a brightly dressed Zenneene and a soot smeared Vavros, she saw in Ekko’s eyes that yes, they were having the same thought: what if they could learn from the somewhat severe faced man with the big bald patch atop his head? 

 

When, a second later, Vander called Claggor over to them with a wave of the hand, Powder went to join them quickly. She could hear Sinnan and Vi call her name at the same time but knew from the sound of the feet behind her Ekko was coming too. 

 

It looked like to Powder that Zenneene was translating between Vander and Vavros, as she quickly rattled something off in Ur-Nox to the man and then looked back at Vander and Claggor expectantly. Sat in the shade of the roof, the whole exchange looked friendly so….

 

I gotta try. 

 

Powder came to a stop behind Claggor, who looked back at her in momentary confusion before likely piecing it together himself. 

 

“Um,” Powder started, only to see Vander shut his mouth. Whatever he had been about to say, she was clearly cutting him off. Now almost every eye out front was on her. Sinnan, Vi and Mylo behind her and Zenneene, Vavros, Claggor and Vander in front of her. Even Ekko shot her a sideways glance encouraging her to continue. 

 

“Everything okay?” Vander asked her, curiously. “We’re almost done here, I think.” Powder shook her head, then when he looked concerned she nodded to correct her answer. Yes everything’s fine, but no they weren’t almost done. Not if she had anything to say about it. 

 

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

 

“Can it wait? I don’t wanna be rude to our guests,” Vander told her with a nod in the direction of Vavros and Zenneene. For a second, Powder almost withdrew but if she didn’t speak up now she might not get a second chance. Ekko nudged her as if to tell her the same thing. 

 

“Hi,” she hurriedly greeted Zenneene (who looked amused in that way that made her feel small and stupid when people looked at her) and Vavros, who seemed a little less cheerful or maybe just more serious than when he was showing off his furnace a few nights ago. Maybe she had interrupted something. After a moment or two, Vander shrugged, pushed to his feet and with a hand on her shoulder led her a step or two away. 

 

“I… want to ask if I can learn too,” Powder got up the courage to get out all at once. “Right Ekko?” Ekko hurried to nod his assent but Vander’s brow immediately furrowed. “We can learn all kinds of things from someone who knows what they’re doing instead of trying to guess at it.” 

 

“I get it, but your arm -” 

 

“How long?” Powder asked him, cutting the argument off. “How long until it’s good.” 

 

“Another… two weeks at best,” Vander started. 

 

“Okay, then I won’t get to do as much as Ekko or Claggor for the first couple of weeks but please. Please, let me just ask him.” Powder became distinctly aware she wasn’t as quiet as she’d intended to be when she looked around and caught Mylo listening. He wasn’t the only one. Her cheeks heated when she realized Ekko was stood right beside her because he wanted to do the same thing and Vi and Sinnan were close enough to hear. To hear her beg. She swallowed and tried again with a calmer tone even as her heart rate rose. Powder tried not to acknowledge the embarrassment. 

 

“Please.” Vander eyed her directly, then looked right over at Ekko. “I might be able to figure out how things work but I don’t know how to make things brand new. I mean, not really. I can learn though! Right Vi?” Powder turned to her sister for a little support. Vi looked surprised to be asked at all which was silly. Ekko on the other hand, looked pointedly at Sinnan, leaving their new friend looking as confused as Vi. 

 

“I believe you,” Sinnan told Powder with a shrug as she came closer. Ekko reached out for a high five and when Sinnan didn’t immediately react, instead just prodded her lightly with his elbow. 

 

“Of course you can learn how to do it, Powder.” Vi sounded like she was answering an obvious question. “You’re the smartest kid I know.” Powder huffed. The support was nice but she wasn’t just a little kid. Feeling warmer in her cheeks, Powder shrugged at this. Mylo rolled his eyes and headed toward the house without saying anything. Vander only shot one look at his back as he turned to go inside before looking right back at her. “It could be dangerous.” 

 

“Then I’ll be careful,” Powder told him. “I’m not a baby. I’m not a little kid anymore,” she insisted. If everyone stopped thinking about her that way it would make everything easier. If people just believed her when she said she saw something or heard something or could do something. Vi was starting to, again, right? She’d agreed to teach them how to fight again. 

 

“That’s exactly what a baby would say,” Mylo chimed in as he crossed the threshold into the house. Powder clenched her jaw and glared his way but then Vander accidentally drew more attention to the conversation when he turned toward the doorway and spoke very firmly. 

 

“Shush. You’re not helping,” he told Mylo. Again, he lifted his chin in Ekko’s direction. “You’re sure it’s what you want, too?”

 

“Yes, absolutely. Can you imagine all the cool stuff we could figure out how to do?” Ekko asked. Like Vi, he seemed not to understand why he was even being asked the question he was answering. 

 

“We’ll ask,” Vander finally said before gesturing them over back toward the house where two of their guests sat. “Come sit down in the shade with us. Same with the rest of you. And - whatever deal Claggor and Mr. Pati work out, you two will need a different one. You’re both too young to work a lot of hours and we need all hands we can get on deck to keep the family afloat.” 

 

Yet, he led the way. She followed behind Vander with Ekko at her side and Sinnan bobbing up and down on her feet behind them. Powder was starting to guess, for the second time, that her new friend had way more energy than anyone else around her. 

 

“Right,” Vander said as he dropped back into his spot against the wall of the house and gestured for the others to join him. “What are the odds you’d be okay with a couple more hands and sets of eyes?” he directed the question right at the balding man in the cream colored top. Mr. Pati leaned forward. He must’ve understood enough because he looked over Ekko and Powder with a squint. Beside her, Ekko smiled wide, a little crooked. Powder just met the man’s gaze and found it to be a little bit of an over the top searching look he wore on his face .

 

“Probably a lot less time for the both of them and Powder here will need to take it easy for the next… two weeks to let her arm finish healing.” As Sinnan dropped into the grass beside Ekko, Vi called from over top of them. 

 

“They’re pretty smart.” As Vi hovered nearby, Zenneene said something, probably in translation, very quietly to Vavros. “Those two know things about machines most and tools most adults don’t know where we come from.” This could’ve made Powder even more red in the face, but she was probably already the color of a bright apple. Still more serious or stern than she remembered, Vavros gazed across and slightly down at her and then at Ekko. 

 

“It’d be fun to learn if you’ll let us? We won’t get in the way.” The still very unfamiliar man made her a little more anxious about being in his presence long term with just Claggor and Ekko nearby with his surprising hesitance to say anything one way or another or even change expressions. With a word or two to the herbalist beside him, he prompted Zenneene to translate again and then the two shot a few words back and forth that Powder tried to listen to, if for no other reason than to get more familiar with the language. 

 

Vavros raised a finger and pointed at Claggor. 

 

“Four days, every week. An hour after sun up until two hours before sundown. Long days. I make sure you have good food, long… pause to walk around Airus and relax, then back to work.” Then the man turned his gaze on Powder and Ekko and for once she was the one who grew more eager instead of shrinking away. “You two… two ah….” The man looked stumped, actually laughed (killing his severe image for just a split second) and then turned to converse with Zeneene again. 

 

“Two mornings each week,” she clarified. “You’ll work in the mornings and when Claggor goes on break you’re done. You can spend time in the village before you come home.”

 

“Ah, didn’t think about that. That’s a long walk back on your own.” 

 

“Vander,” Powder started. “We-” Vander held up a hand to stop her while mulling over his own words and then shrugged. 

 

“You’ve walked worse streets. Just stay on the road. No wandering into the woods and getting lost.” 

 

“Sure!” Ekko agreed enthusiastically. This time when he held up a hand for a high five, after Powder reluctantly returned it, Sinnam followed suit. This made Ekko happy, at least. 

 

“If time need change, we change,” Vavros told Vander directly with a slow nod which the older of the two men returned. “This one - Claggor, two bag grain at harvest, four silver a week, in coin or… trade. We can make tools for you here. That one say you don’t have enough.” This time, Vavros looked directly at Powder and Vander snorted. 

 

“Bet she did.” 

 

“You, two silver a week,” he said, pointing at Ekko and then to Powder. “One silver a week until arm better, then two.” When Powder looked at Vander to see if this sounded good he seemed a little lost, though kept his mouth shut. Vi herself only shrugged and Ekko raised his eyebrows back at her. Sinnan though, hurriedly whispered right at Ekko and Powder despite them all being so close anyone could’ve heard it. 

 

“Say yes! We can even go places together before you go home those days. I can show you all the best parts of the village! Oh, you didn’t even get to see the pond right outside!” The girl was so earnest that it made Powder smile even if she felt warm in the face again. Something moved in her stomach. Finally, she looked at Claggor, who was also part of the deal and she shrugged. 

 

“I wouldn’t mind learning,” he told Vander. “It’d be kind of nice to know how to make things around here instead of leaving it all to everyone else and four silver’s more money than I’ve ever gotten even in our best three months of jobs. We could use it to get some actual meat in our diet if the hunting doesn’t work out. Besides, extra food at harvest? We’ve done more for less, right, Vi?” Vi’s response was more a grunt than anything else.  

 

“Well, Claggor’s decided. So, it’s up to you two? Accept Mr. Pati’s offer?” It kind of surprised her that Vander didn’t have anything else to say. That he was really leaving it up to them to decide. She didn’t know if the offer was fair or not but the more she thought about it the more she had to accept she and Ekko would be there for less time so it was fair they probably earned less and she wasn’t going to be able to do everything the others were until she got better, right? Maybe not much of anything at first. 

 

Oddly, Ekko didn’t rush to say yes, either. 

 

“It’d be weird to do it without you,” Ekko told her. For the second time in about a minute, Powder felt a weird little jolt in her stomach like something jumping around in there. “Come on.” 

 

“Yes, please.” Powder told Vavros. One side of his mouth rose a bit and he nodded. “When can we start?” 

 

“Ah. One week,” the man said. “That way Zenneene teach me words to teach you.” Excited, Powder looked back to where Vi was stood up near the door. Her older sister was frowning, though, looking down, maybe checking out of the conversation or maybe just… worrying. That hurt a little, but Powder told herself to get over it. Vi had already believed in her more that day alone than the last two weeks. 

 

She’d show them she was right, that she wasn’t some little kid who couldn’t take care of herself. 

 

“Now, you’re sure you can afford to teach three people while you’re doing all that hard work?” Vander asked. Zenneene, who had barely said a word that wasn’t translating, smiled warmly in Powder’s direction for some reason, before again clarifying for Vavros. Sinnan tapped powder once on her good shoulder, reaching around behind Ekko and squeezed it once. 

 

“You did good,” the Noxian told them both. “Vavros…” she trailed off, pausing, looking for a word with her blue eyes trailing across the sky. Eventually, she settled on its Ur-Nox equivalent and Powder couldn't follow. When she shook her head, Sinnan only squeezed her shoulder again and then elbowed Ekko as he had done to her earlier. “You did good too.” 

 

Powder wasn’t sure why she felt watched when she caught Vi looking down at them a moment later. She looked away. 

 

“Yes, yes,” Vavros nodded twice. “This one, Claggor, big, strong like ox or yak. These two, Ekko and Powder, yes? Small hands good for many tasks.” After a quick word to Zenneene, though she didn’t translate it, Vavros looked satisfied and tapped his fingers together. “WIth extra hands, maybe we don’t just catch up. Maybe we make things in village nicer.” That did raise a question Powder wasn’t too sure about. 

 

“What’s it called?” Opposite of her, Zenneene lowered her cup from halfway to her mouth. One slow blink of confusion showed that Powder had better hurry up. 

“What is what called, dear?” the woman with the round, pale cheeks asked. It sounded like she wasn’t sure which conversation they were having. 

 

“The village.” Powder’s eyes shifted from Zenneene’s face to her own hand in her lap when the incredulous look only intensified. “Kutter might’ve told us but I don’t really remember?” 

 

“He calls himself Kutter?” Zenneene asked. Her voice dipped kind of low in a way that reminded Powder of Vi when she was starting to get angry. It gave Powder a pause and she did not lift her eyes until Sinnan nudged Ekko, who nudged her in turn. Powder nodded. 

 

“The village is called Airus,” Sinnan told her. 

 

“Airus,” she repeated, trying the name out. 

 

“Yep,” Zenneene chimed in across from her, smoothing down the front of some kind of frock and sounding back to her usual self. Neutral, if not a little chipper. There was something about the woman’s slight frown when Powder finally lifted her head again that told her something had just happened she wasn’t privy to. Powder looked back to see if her sister had caught on to whatever it was and felt the same tension but when she did see Vi, the girl had stood up and stepped away from the house. 

 

Her sister looked as if someone had socked her hard in the stomach. 

 

“Sorry - I just - I just forgot something.” Vi’s hurried apology came out in a mess of hesitation. Powder held her breath when Vi turned to her right and hurried around the corner of the house and out of sight. 

 

“Vi, wait.” Powder started to get up to follow. Was Vi mad about something? Or scared about something? Did she think that Powder and Ekko were going to blow off what she was trying to teach them now that they were going into the village to learn from Vavros?

 

“I’ll go,” Ekko told her. She stopped. “You can stay.” It was said so casually but she didn’t understand why he wanted to go after Vi. Or to go after her alone. “Hang out with Sinnan.” 

 

“Okay?” Powder hesitated and settled back into her seat. “Just make sure she doesn’t think we don’t want to practice anymore with her or something.” She tried to read Ekko’s face but he just plastered on a fake smile, like he was trying to be polite around the adults. His eyes weren’t exactly right, though. Was Ekko scared of something? 

 

What did I miss?

 

“I don’t think that’s it, but I’ll tell her, Powder.” She heard the implied promise in Ekko’s voice but also the way he drew it out and hesitated before following Vi around the corner. Vander’s worried eye at his back only lasted a moment or two more before Zenneene redirected the conversation. 

 

“So, looks like you’ve got a little garden just over there?” 

 

“Yeah,” Vander hurried to jump onto an obvious, easy topic. “Transplanted some fat hen into it earlier. What my mom might’ve called it at least. Wild spinach. Not sure how well it does being brought to new soil, though.” 

 

“You might want to be careful with that plant.” The herbalist pursed her lips for a second, turning to look back toward the garden a few feet away. “It might grow and box out the rest of your garden. It’s very hearty.” Powder was looking at a few blades of grass between her knees when she heard movement just a foot or so away. 

 

“Hey,” Sinnan whispered as she scooted closer. Powder, feeling anxious and awkward and not sure what was going on with either Vi or Ekko, shivered and looked up again. “Can you show me around?” 

 

“I dunno what to show you,” Powder admitted, though she raised her eyes. The Noxian girl’s smile bloomed quickly into place in a way that struck Powder as familiar but hard to place. “What?” 

 

“Show me your favorite place, then?” That one stumped her for a second. Sinnan climbed to her booted feet a little quicker than Powder could’ve and offered her a hand up. Though she felt embarrassed needing it, Powder did take it so she could get up a little faster. 

 

I can’t show her the game room back home. That eliminated her actual favorite place. The place where it was just her and Vi and Mylo, Claggor and Ekko. Where she and Ekko could make things that made them all happy. Where she’d seen her sister’s eyes shining as her boxing machine came together and where she’d utterly embarrassed Mylo’s smug butt with her paintball gun and the target range. Man, that took a while to make. I bet someone’s already busted it up. 

 

Actually, thinking of it that way, Powder had one, probably stupid, idea. Sinnan gave a wave to her mother and then took Powder’s left hand, trying to lead her away from the adults. 

 

“Oy, you two don’t leave the farm, got me?” Vander called. 

 

“We promise!” Sinnan shouted back before Powder could. That was a heck of a promise considering she didn’t know where Powder’s ‘favorite’ place was but at least Powder wouldn’t be making a liar out of her today. Instinctively, she tried to wipe off the grass that was probably sticking to the backside of her old, soft woolen pants. This just reminded her of the hand holding onto hers. 

 

Powder hurried to be the one leading at that. 

 

Out in the sun she felt immediate aggravation to her face and arm but she knew exactly where she was going: down the hill to the west and across the widest field they had on the farm to a patch of shade not more than a few feet beyond it. 

 

Sinnan didn’t immediately speak, but judging by her casual humming, was in a good mood. She definitely had an easier time with the trek down the hill between the two of them. Of course it wasn’t so bad on Powder either, since they were able to take the least steep way down, period. With only a handful of days, four or so since planting, Powder thought, there were still no signs of growth at all in the fields. She wasn’t sure how long that was supposed to take. Either way, it made it easier to see the raised rows of dirt the seeds were planting in and walk between them. 

 

Powder didn’t want to risk that somehow stepping on one would make the seeds buried in it not grow or something.  

 

Once on the far edge, Powder tried to let go of Sinnan’s hand, but the girl didn’t immediately get the message. It took an extra moment. Then, her new friend began to look about the edge of the field, or toward the nearby treeline seeking something.  

 

Feeling silly, Powder explained. 

 

“This is the first field we ever planted,” she explained with a shrug, as if it was no big deal. This didn’t help her feel less awkward about it, but Sinnan’s response wasn’t to blow it off like she worried it would be. 

 

“What? Really? Ever? Mother and me help others plant their fields all the time. Everyone helps, everyone benefits.” It wasn’t that she thought she heard judgment in the girl’s voice but she was suddenly really worried that Sinnan would judge them, would judge her. 

 

“We didn’t have land or fields back home.”

 

“Really? No land?” she asked. Instead of sounding judgmental, she sounded a little sad. This wasn’t what Powder wanted either. Quickly this was starting to feel like a bad idea. Still, Powder answered. 

 

“Not really. Just a building. The road was right next to it and another building right after that.” Sinnan slowly shook her head of darker red hair than her mother’s and hmm’d. 

 

“Right, so you lived in a city. I’ve only ever been to one, a few times. Near the sea. Or ocean? I never remember what the difference is.” Powder opened her mouth to chime in but realized she couldn’t either. “Lots of water and really pretty, anyway. So that’s why here?” 

 

“Not really.” Powder shook her head and pointed off a few feet, leading them toward the relief of the nearby shade at the edge of the property. This was probably farther out than Vander would’ve wanted but they weren’t leaving the farm, technically. “Here.” This time Powder took her hand and pulled her forward. “When we finally got the first field planted we took a break together. Even Vander and Vi who were plowing another field at the time. No one was arguing or sad. We were all super tired and thirsty but it was fun. ” 

 

Mylo wasn’t there, Powder reminded herself and immediately felt really guilty. 

 

“Almost all of us, I guess.” 

 

“Family was happy, because you weren’t done working but you were working together. It’s actually fun helping mom with stuff sometimes or sometimes Thana has me help her making clothes to practice my weaving. Especially since she had that loom built.” Sinnan’s genuine happiness at making things with this Thana person or helping her mother out with plant stuff was nice to see. Powder could see it was real in the way her smile reached her eyes. 

 

It was weird to her that more people didn’t know when smiles were fake or not. 

 

“I guess that’s why.” Powder shrugged. The truth was for just a few minutes everyone had been too relieved and tired to be mad or sad or scared. Vi had laughed. Vander had smiled. But Mylo had been stuck inside. 

 

“You saw my Airus. I saw your home. I’m happy.” Sinnan said this so simply, so honestly, that Powder felt warm again. “I wish Ekko was with us. He’s nice. Funny.” Powder nodded. She hadn’t technically gotten to see Sinnan and Zenneene’s home except from just outside the font door but maybe just the village was close enough for now. “You want to go find him? Or did he find us?” 

 

Powder cooled it on the thinking for just one second when, confusingly, Sinnan looked away from the house and further down the treeline to point. 

 

Even though he’d apparently gone to follow and talk to Vi a few short minutes ago, Ekko was now jogging out of the edge of the woods. His golden-brown eyes were wide and he looked really upset, maybe even a little scared even from all the way back here. When Sinnan started to move, Powder berated herself for not doing the same sooner. For some reason, Ekko only picked up the pace until he was practically running right at them. 

 

Not just like he was playing either. 

 

Ekko was running like he, Powder and Vi or Claggor had just been caught by Enforcers digging around one of the topside's dumps. 

 

“What’s wrong?” Powder shouted as the boy came to a stop beside the two of them and pointed back over his shoulder. Without turning, he gasped out his question and then doubled over to suck in a deep breath. 

 

“Do you see that?” Powder angled to look around him but back the way he’d come there were only trees, tall grass swaying in a breeze. She shook her head even as Sinnan tried to get a glimpse of whatever it was herself. The redhead tugged at her right sleeve suddenly but shook her head, too. 

 

“I don’t see anything?” Powder told her. 

 

“Was it some kind of animal chasing you?” Sinnan asked, suddenly sounding the least bit serious for the first time ever. The way her eyes narrowed and her voice hitched, maybe she was a little scared. Oddly, Powder hadn’t been until then. Ekko looked winded and sad. Sinnan looked nervous. It was probably smart of Powder to be a little nervous, too. 

 

“I think… I was seeing things. Imagining it.” Ekko told them, staring straight down at the ground. “Let’s go back to the house?” This was the last thing Ekko said about whatever had happened after he left to follow Vi, for the moment. 

 

They stayed a lot closer to the house after that and generally talked about the kinds of animals that were out in the woods. Sinnan once again informed them that there were wolves with nice big teeth and even bears out there, but she thought they were more common further north, toward the mountain looming ever in the distance. 

 

Powder hadn’t spared much thought about the mountain after the first couple of days. 

 

After another hour and change of boring small talk, the adult visitors called the visit complete and Sinnan reluctantly got onto the cart with them. Though, Powder was pleased to hear her say that it wouldn’t be so far to walk, so she was going to come over more often when her mother let her. Zenneene hadn’t immediately responded but the woman wore a cheerful enough smile, so Powder hoped they’d see more of each other soon. 

 

Then again, if she and Ekko and Claggor were going to start walking to the village multiple times every week, she’d see Sinnan more often anyway. 

 

When it came time for the cart and the oxen to depart, Powder waved her goodbyes as Claggor eagerly chattered to Vander about using his first pay period to try to find someone who might have meat to sell them in the village. There had to be really good hunters who would appreciate some silver, after all. Right? As soon as the cart was turned around and heading down the path  back to the road, though, Ekko pulled her aside. 

Still sounding a little sad and a little afraid, he confessed in one jumbled breath exactly what he’d seen on the edge of their property. 

 

Exactly who he’d seen. 

 

“I told you it wasn’t a nightmare,” Powder whispered back to her best friend as he finished describing a human woman with deep indigo hair watching him from the woods and ‘showing’ him things. Things in his mind. She wasn’t sure if the look on his face at her response was hurt or guilt or what exactly it was all about, but no one else was around to give him the only thing that might help a little. 

 

So, Powder hugged Ekko and didn’t wince when he squeezed back. 

 

For Ekko’s part, he never did explain exactly what the strange woman who’d been spying on them both showed him. Powder didn’t ask. If he didn’t want to say it, Powder wasn’t going to make him. After what she’d been shown, she could only guess. 

 

“Vander’s right,” she told him as the two moved back to rejoin the others. “I’m not going anywhere alone for a while.”

Chapter 18: Chapter Eighteen

Notes:

This is a bit of a heavy chapter as some are punished for avoiding their issues instead of discussing them. One more than the others, mind you.

For a more explicit warning: this chapter contains a fairly severe response to unresolved trauma worsened by the so far mostly unadressed post-traumatic stress. It will contain elements that can be upsetting to those who have experienced similar trauma responses in the past. As there has been an undercurrent of this real issue facing this character for a long time, now, it might not come as a surprise to many of you.

Many chickens come home to roost. Some get overshadowed by others. Ignoring those that are, though, can be a huge mistake.

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

---

 

Chapter Eighteen

 

A couple of weeks changed more than Vi expected it would but way, way less than she needed it to. A few days of calm had been enough to get Vander off of the warpath. This meant he had lightened up on them always needing to be in pairs. Not so much on the morning meetings about who had to do what each day, though. For the second time in the last week, Vi found herself doing her assigned duties combing through the woods in the early morning light not with any of her siblings but with a new friend. 

 

Caras. 

 

Vi hurried along behind the Noxian boy down a game trail she’d already traveled a couple of times. It was a little impressive he could move so quickly while holding the big, unwieldy pointed stick he called a spear. Vi couldn’t pretend that the deer tenderloin and liver someone in Airus had been nice enough to sell them (for the better part of Claggor’s first paycheck, of course) hadn’t played a huge role in having the kind of energy that let her keep up with him. Meals of rice balls wrapped around thinly sliced deer liver hadn’t exactly sounded appealing at first, even with the addition of some kind of onion-like herb added into the mix. 

 

The meat had stretched enough for two meals, a dinner and a breakfast. Though it didn’t feel like a full reset and the sense of feeling good wore off in a day or two, Vi no trouble keeping up with Caras even a few more days down the line. That was impressive, too. One thing she hadn’t really pieced together about the boy until their last trip out was how fast he could move if he thought he saw something they could use. 

 

Unfortunately, the charge he was currently on that she hustled to keep up with ended up a dead end. 

 

A few seconds later, the slightly more broad shouldered of the two came to a very quick and sudden stop just in front of a patch of dark green that she would’ve written off as like any other. Caras frowned at the ground and said something that sounded very rude in Ur-Nox to it, as if the plant had done something wrong. Yet, instead of accompanying this with a flash of anger, Caras sighed, shrugged and turned his smile back on her. Vi shook her head and turned to look around them.

 

She might’ve felt a little better energy wise, but between them Vi was the one who was really annoyed. 

 

Just a few moments before, Caras had stopped so suddenly in front of her that she’d nearly walked into him before he’d broken into his spear-wielding sprint. The reason for the stumble  was the same thing he’d rightly called her out for twice already. That was why she raised both of her empty hands before he even opened his mouth. 

 

“Not paying attention,” Caras told her, teasingly. She was already in the middle of an apology, but that frustration she was grappling with threatened to turn on him. Vi exhaled hard through her nose and dropped her palms to her side. “Miss little furry one.” The boy propped his obviously handmade wooden spear handle against his shoulder and measured maybe a foot apart within his hands. “Big fluffy tail.” 

 

“Sounds like another squirrel,” Vi grumbled. She’d never quite forgiven herself for the one that she hadn’t even shot at when she first saw it. 

 

“Squirrel,” he repeated, lowering his hands and taking hold of the shaft of the spear. For a moment he played the word across his tongue and then shrugged. “We go?” Vi nodded. She had yet to really bother explaining how she was feeling to Caras. That was partly because of the honest fact that he knew more Piltovan than she knew Ur-Nox and that still wasn’t much. They’d agreed to split anything they found (and, technically, they were supposed to be looking for useful plant stuff, not hunting) but beyond that more complex conversations were complicated. Harder to pull off. Probably easier to mess up.

 

Vi messed those up often enough to know. 

 

She turned away when he lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe sweat from his face and thanked whoever was listening that no one else could see them. Vi looked on further down the path and admonished her warm cheeks.. 

 

Pay attention. This is the one thing you can do for everyone and you’re fucking it up. 

 

“Your… brother. With -” Caras again brought his spear back to rest and gestured up above his mop of raven hair as if mimicking the shape of Mylo’s own when it sat untamed. “Mylo. He make mad?” That was how conversation usually went. He talked to her in broken Piltovan and filled in with Ur-Nox words and hand gestures whenever he couldn’t find a word and she responded the same way with really simple, 4 or 5 year old level phrases in Ur-Nox and a lot of silly hand gestures to fill in the gaps. 

 

They didn’t talk much but when they did it was honest and the weather was unusually warm under the forest canopy that day, so Vi didn’t try to hurry them along. 

 

After all, she’d already told him she was arguing with Mylo, though in not so many words and he knew that she got tired easily, at the moment. If she could admit those two very personal things to someone she felt like she’d only spent time with five or six times, then she could admit the rest of the problem. 

 

Truth was, she was getting used to the bright eyed Noxian boy two years her senior and his wardrobe of apparently exclusively brown and gray linens and wool. 

 

“Yeah, I guess. He hasn’t really stopped making me mad, lately,” Vi told him. Even though this wasn’t a good thing and shouldn’t have earned this response, Caras smiled his wide grin and looked a little amused and a little happy. Even being a weird response, it made her more sure he understood what she was saying, rather than the other way around. Her first instinct about Caras had been dead on: he was goofy, a little carefree in the kind of way she wasn’t used to people really being. At least, not people who weren’t younger than seven or just adults hurriedly drinking themselves to death. 

 

“It’s not just that, though. I was having fun teaching Powder and Ekko how to box but it’s really hard to step up training when they’re always tired. I’m always tired. Shadowboxing is supposed to be a really good way to practice your footwork and throw a few punches but lately its all we can get the energy to do.” She stopped after a few seconds of rambling because she knew there was no way Caras followed all of that. For his part, though, he certainly looked to be trying, not rushing them to get moving again at all. 

 

Vi did start moving, at this thought. Caras drew up side by side with her. 

 

“Hard to play when tired,” he said. It made what she, her sister and Ekko  were doing sound more childish than it really was, in Vi’s opinion, but he had gotten the point. “Hard to have fun.” 

 

“ Ita. You’re right on that.” The trio had gone a little harder the day after the venison score but even then they hadn’t done much more than shadowboxing for a half hour or so more than they normally would’ve. Afterward, Ekko had been utterly exhausted and had fallen asleep over his own dinner. Powder had outlasted them both that night. The food the family had at hand most easily just wasn’t going to be enough to sustain any attempt to really pack on muscle or training harder than they were already doing. 

 

Hell, the only members of the family that had really come to Noxus with any fat on their bones were definitely having it slowly stripped away. 

 

Powder’s still dropping her guard. Ekko’s footwork is still really sloppy. You can focus on those things, at least, with the way things were. 

 

“It’s harder to talk to everyone,” she admitted to Caras. That much, he got. The boy dipped his head in a nod and then pointed at his eyes with two fingers before pointing them all around the two of them. It was another way of reminding her to pay attention to their surroundings. 

 

She knew she’d asked him to, but she still felt a little annoyed and a little silly. She was complaining to someone who she still didn’t know very well. 

 

It was easier to get annoyed than ever. It was easier to argue with Vander and Mylo especially on days when Claggor or worse, Claggor, Ekko and Powder weren’t around. Probably that was why, lately no matter what her morning jobs were, once they were done she hurried to the woods to practice and keep her training up with her stance and her punches. Well, either that or to meet up with Caras. 

 

They’d only been officially sent out together by Vander and Orkis once or twice but that didn’t mean Caras hadn’t been coming by in the afternoons. At first, he tried to play it off as if he’d done so by sheer accident. That had only served to embarrass them both. Vi had felt a lot more at ease with him when he just admitted the thing Claggor playfully guessed at to her when he was out of earshot one day: 

 

Caras just came to spend time with her.  

 

To his credit, Caras had learned how to throw a good jab, too. He’d even been really patient about teaching her how to use a spear to check thick brush for snakes that she didn’t want to run into, how to hold it and how to thrust it if she had any reason to stab with it. Vi was considering making one of her own to take with her when she wasn’t going out with one of the bows. 

 

It was just that the practice made her think of what having to do that to an actual animal would feel like that held her back. 

 

Her extracurricular lifting, her practice either by herself or with Caras and even the other exercise she’d done to keep herself in shape when they first arrived had all slowed down. Some of it had outright stopped. 

 

Because she was tired. Because they all were. 

 

She tuned into her surroundings as Caras pointed toward several short little stalks sticking out of the ground in a still dimly lit patch of earth that looked like it might get some sun throughout the day. He didn’t gesture for her to come with him as he veered off to the right and hurried over to them but if she didn’t, he would do what he always did when hoping for her to follow: stop, look right at her with that sideways smile of his and wait. 

 

So she followed. 

 

“Very good. Make any food good,” Caras told her, gesturing down to the little, deep verdant shoots at his feet when he stopped and looked back to find her only a step or two behind him. He held out his spear to hand it off to her and she took it without hesitation, moving to squat down beside him. Hestarted to carefully pull at the earth around the plants. After a few moments, he pulled up what almost looked like the lemongrass Powder and Ekko had found once or twice. It was a little larger and thicker with a more obvious little bulb at the bottom. 

 

These sure looked like the fabled wild growing green onion Vander always said he hoped they could find or buy. 

 

All in all, she shoved almost a dozen into her bag after she and Caras finished dividing the haul. Not to mention finished all of the digging. She was very careful not to damage the roots any more than necessary, as Vander insisted they’d be able to plant those. 

 

They talked a little more than usual after that, walking much more comfortably through the woods. She didn’t feel any more energetic or happy that morning, or anything, but it filled the quiet and the woods was one of those few places she wanted the quiet filled. At least when she wasn’t actually hunting. Caras’ filling the quiet was also starting to get to be familiar. 

 

Speaking of, after just a minute or two Caras began to tell her about a holiday coming up in the winter that had something to do with the days being shorter. He described as best he could, in quick, sometimes garbled words, how they had a real ‘festum noctis’ which seemed to involve lots of food like the party a couple of weeks prior. It also meant music, games, dancing, a fire that burned from sundown to sunup. It was hard not to see he was excited for it. 

 

Especially when he screwed up his face and carefully told her: 

 

“I want Vi to come with me to festum .” 

 

The words sounded well rehearsed but not so awkward or foreign to his tongue as last time he’d done something like that. It was the seriousness of his tone and the look on his face that caused her to hesitate. Even though she felt a little warm in the face again, Vi nodded as she handed him back the spear she’d been holding ever since they’d finished gathering the onions some minutes before. 

 

His signature smile pushed that serious look off his face post haste and he tipped the spear forward, pointing ahead of them before quickening his steps. 

 

For a second she hurried to follow after him wondering if he’d found something. It quickly became evident, though, that he was just struck by a burst of energy she didn’t have, so she hung back for a second or two and quickly Caras got the message. 

 

Vi didn’t find anything else of real note during that trip out, at least as far as food they could take back home. Neither of them did. 

 

Before turning them back toward the farm, though, Caras did take her to a small pond three or four hours away from her property. At first, she worried (and, she wondered what it meant about her that she worried) that it was his attempt at showing her somewhere romantic or something. Truth was, Vi wouldn’t have known how to react to that, wouldn’t have known what you were really supposed to do with that. 

 

When he began to point to a tree awfully close to the pond, though, she learned otherwise. 

 

“In many weeks, it have big red apples. Sweet,” he told her. “Take few home and they make good sweet pie.” 

 

“I’ll remember the way back here,” she promised him, very seriously. She wasn’t sure if the confusion on his face after her promise had been about not understanding what she was saying or why she was saying it. He had just assured her that he would show her again, if she wanted him to. 

 

Vi forgot until it was too late and she was home and Caras was gone to ask him if the pond might have fish in it. 

 

All in all, it wasn’t a bad start to the morning, by any means. Furthering their plan with their front garden of just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck, Vi severed the rooted ends from her green onions with their only metal knife and planted several in what space there was left in the garden. It wasn’t much. This was a painless process and even quiet. Vander and Mylo were off in the woods and to the west with one of the bows.

 

Her plan was to take a few of the arrows and get in a little practice, herself. Now that they (read here, Ekko and Powder) had learned from a hunter in Airus how to make actual ‘fletching’ out of animal sinew and carefully shaped feathers gathered from birds that were actually big enough to do something to the arrows, Vi felt like she had to learn all over again how arrows flew. 

 

It also kept her from thinking too much about being alone on the farm. In the silence. Somewhere she still didn’t really want to be. 

 

As much as it could be, the remainder of the morning wasn’t bad either. She didn’t have to hear Mylo say something snide when he bothered to talk and she didn’t have to watch Vander do nothing about it. The hand pump someone had attached to their well once upon a time was broken but the last occupants had stuck hinges on the well’s cover, letting them move it back and forth to let them at the water below. Mylo and Claggor had even rigged up a little system to make it easier to drop in and pull up buckets full of the stuff. 

 

So Vi had good, cool, clean water no more than a couple minutes’ slow walk from where they’d set up their practice targets. Better yet, she didn’t have to boil it. 

 

As happened all too often, though, a morning that wasn’t so bad gave way to a day that seemed determined to suck. 

 

Eventually, Vander and Mylo returned without having bagged anything and that didn’t mean anything good for Mylo’s mood. As long as Vi put on a front of cooperation and friendliness, though, Vander didn’t ask too many questions when she made the excuse of going to spend time ‘training’ alone under the ‘Climbing Tree’. (Vi was fairly sure she was the only one who’d ever climbed it.) 

 

Vi split her time beneath the tree between a little bit of shadowboxing and a whole lot of dozing, sat with her back against the bark. Perhaps unwisely, she sat just in the ‘Y’ between two long, gnarly roots right above the buried little blue orbs that had blown up a little part of Piltover. At some point, between spacing out, giving herself neck pain by sleeping sat straight up or trying to shadowbox in brief intervals so as not to wear herself out, Vi opened her eyes to catch the sun hanging pretty high in the air. 

 

This meant the afternoon had arrived but, given that she had not been woken up yet by Powder or Ekko, they had chosen to stay late in Airus. Probably to spend time with Sinnan, the often enviously energetic girl they’d befriended the night of that little festival in the village. 

 

Festival. 

 

Vi sat straight up as a question occurred to her hours too late and her gut clenched. 

 

Did Caras ask me on a date? 

 

Worse. 

 

Didn’t I say yes? 

 

Somehow, someway, Vi hadn’t made that connection at the time. 

 

Within a few more minutes she saw movement on the north side of the hill and vaguely made out the shape of Vander coming halfway down and looking in her direction before going back up. Given the time, Vi thought that it was his way of reminding her about lunch much more subtly than he would have if Powder and Ekko had been down there training with her. When he didn’t wave or shout to her, Vi didn’t wave or shout back. She didn’t climb the hill to eat even when the thought made her stomach growl. 

 

Vi kept to herself for most of the afternoon. She enjoyed the little bit of the cool the shade offered her even though it struck her as a warmer day than the one before. She watched pale  white clouds ease across a shining, bright blue sky. She observed the faint lines of green caused by the growing wheat peeking through the deep brown soil of the fields. She breathed in fresh air and was happy that it wasn’t raining like just a couple nights earlier. Mostly, she stayed alone, which didn’t feel natural but did feel better than being up there with Mylo or Vander. Much less both. 

 

Eventually, though, she grew thirsty and hungry enough to start climbing the hill. The sun had started to drop low enough that the sky’s striking bright blue was neither so striking, nor so bright, for that matter. When she, regretfully, angled toward one side of the house to head inside, Vi caught sight of a head of thick pale hair peeking up to the west. A few moments later, Ekko crowned the hill, pumping his fist in celebration. Off in that direction she caught the tones of her sister shouting something. Powder sounded offended . Or annoyed.  

 

This just spurred Ekko on a little more, so the boy shouted his victory and jumped in place for a second before turning around and spotting Vi.

 

He waved twice, fairly excitedly and she couldn’t bring herself to potentially drag him down. So, Vi waved back. 

 

Despite her head start, Ekko was on the side of the hill closest to the house so he easily beat her to the door. That was okay, though, she was not inclined to run. Instead, she hung back until Claggor and Powder crested the hill. Claggor had an arm thrown around Powder’s shoulders, while the other held onto something small and probably wooden as he looked it over, before passing it back to Powder. 

 

Powder held it in both hands, looking pleased with whatever Claggor had to say about the object. She was still the first of the two to see Vi and also waved excitedly. Unlike Ekko, though, when Vi waved back, Powder’s smile faded a little and she just looked worried. Vi angled away from the house (she could already hear Mylo talking inside and that would’ve been reason enough) and toward her brother and sister. 

 

When they got close enough to one another to talk, Claggor nudged Powder.

 

“Show her.” 

 

Vi raised an eyebrow as Powder, with a hesitant look on her face, held up the object in her hands. 

 

“It’s stupid but I put this together with scrap wood so we could carry home some nails.” Vi held out a hand and carefully took a wooden box about as long as two of her palms and maybe just about as tall as once. A pair of tiny pieces of what looked like damaged metal attached to what she assumed was a lid. “One of the hinges was broken and the holes for nails and screws were crooked so we didn’t wanna put it on the guy’s window but- “ 

 

The box was actually kind of heavy for what looked like thin, pale and heavily sanded down wood. In careful, wide letters carved into the top of the box, someone (Powder, she suspected) had labeled it: ‘Vanderkin.’ Vi popped it open and looked inside to find it was shallow but full of long, flat-sided iron nails much larger than the ones holding its hinges in place. She shut it after a few seconds and then raised an eyebrow at Powder. 

 

The fact that it was labeled with their new legal surname (at least, as far as Noxus was concerned) did not escape her. 

 

“So why’s it stupid?” she asked, calmly. “Because everything I’m seeing looks pretty cool. I didn’t even know you were doing any wood work at all.” 

 

“We aren’t, except for handles for tools and stuff,” Powder admitted, rubbing at her left shoulder with her right hand. For not the first time, Vi had to suppress a frown at how much smaller her sister’s right arm looked than her left. “We just had some spare stuff laying around Vavros was gonna throw out or melt down so I asked if I could and he said yes.” 

 

“It’s cool. Plus, who cares if the hinge is broken? It’s ours, right? You try shoving these into one of those grain sacks or something and they’d just poke through.” Vi lifted one corner of her mouth and offered Powder back her creation. 

 

“See? What’d I say?” Claggor told her, chuckling once hard enough his shoulders shook. “We’ve actually gotten to help on some cool stuff lately. I think he’s about to take us off nail duty.”

 

“You do?” Powder sounded hopeful. “It’d be cool. We barely got to help out at all with that hammer.” 

 

“Eh, he just wants us to be sure we’re ready.” After this, her sister’s face brightened a bit and Claggor let out a long sigh. “I’m whooped. I’m going in to see if there’s any water.” 

 

“I grabbed some four or five hours ago so unless Vander and Mylo got really thirsty there should be some. Then again, they were out hunting this morning so maybe they got really thirsty.” Claggor shrugged even as he flashed a thumbs up and headed toward the house. Powder, though, hung about in the area. 

 

“You’re not upset or anything, right? That we came back late?” 

 

“Nah.” Vi hadn’t been upset to skip practice. A little disappointed maybe, but her being lonely wasn’t Powder’s or Ekko’s fault. “Hang out with Sinnan?” The question was asked with honest curiosity but Powder still looked a little hesitant before nodding in response. Vi wasn’t sure whether Powder thought she’d be mad about that or was worried Vi was going to join in on the teasing, but neither was the case. 

 

Vi did think Claggor and Ekko had a pretty good case about Sinnan, though. She’d only really gotten to see the three hanging out together about four times, most of those with Zenneene and Vander nearby, but Sinnan did gravitate toward Powder and often hung off her in a way that even Ekko really didn’t. It was possible there was a little ‘puppy love’ style crush at work. On the other hand, Caras acted similar in how happy he seemed to be to be around Vi- 

 

Okay, maybe that wasn’t an argument for ‘on the other hand’ at all.

 

Whatever the case, Vi didn’t want to tease her sister about it. Powder hadn’t ever really had a close friend outside of Ekko. Crushing involved or not, Vi wished she’d ever had a friend as close as Powder and Ekko or Powder and Sinnan. (Not that she’d admit it out loud even in the same country as Vander, Claggor or Mylo.)  It was especially impressive given they’d known one another less than three weeks. On the other hand, these last three weeks felt like the longest year of her life. 

 

“Wanna head on in?” Vi asked, trying to chase away Powder’s concern. “Show Vander the stuff you guys made?” This brightened her shorter, thinner sister back up and Powder started back toward the house with a little more spring in her step. 

 

A few days ago she comes back with a brand new iron hammer and she’s excited. Tonight, a box of nails and she’s practically jumping up and down. Vi smiled to herself as she fell in line behind her sister. Last week she comes back with her cast off and all she says is, “now I can finally start making things.” Sometimes, Vi thought, you’ve got a one track mind. 

 

“What’re you working on next?” Vander asked from just beyond the door when Powder pulled it open with her right hand. Despite her concerns that she’d take forever to get used to using her good arm again, Powder was now doing so without thought. 

 

“For us?” Claggor asked. “I dunno, but I asked Vavros and he said he was fine with us bringing in our ax to be sharpened. Around the village, I think Vavros said something about everyone bringing in tools for repair and sharpening and stuff..” Vi followed Power into the house, which felt like a horrible idea when Mylo started to speak immediately. 

 

“Why would we bring the ax to the village? We’ve got a whetstone, can’t we do it?” 

 

“Vavros has more experience and better tools.” Vander told him with a shrug. As Vi entered, Vander was sat at the end of the bed which had its deep brown top sheet back in place after having laid it out to dry during breakfast that morning. He had one of the buckets at his feet, half full of water and was pulling from it a long strip of something reddish brown and soft looking. When she stopped by the door, considering whether she wanted to take her shoes off or keep them on until they went down to the stream to clean up, Vi took a second to watch. She wasn’t sure exactly what he was holding, but Vander began to easily pull it apart into long, thin strands that looked stringlike, before setting these aside in a small pile growing at his feet. 

 

“And he knows how to do it better than me. We’ll stick to using a whetstone for the knife. Let your brother and sister clean up the ax.” 

 

“What are you up to?” Vi asked, surprised she got the question out before anyone else. 

 

“Practiced on a few long strands of grass most of the morning, but I think I’m gonna make a little cord out of all this. Like a little rope. I don’t know how long it’ll last if I even manage to do it right, but we need a place to hang clothes so they can dry properly during the day. Makes it easier to justify giving everything a good wash.” Vi started to shrug, but the truth was she could use something more than just wringing out her three or four tops and her jacket. “Besides, it’s my first time making rope since I learned how to do it. It’s good to try and get old skills sharp.” 

 

“Just as long as it’s not ‘animal sinew’,” Powder pulled a face. “Yuck.” Vi smiled at her sister and slowly eased the door shut despite the fact that it wasn’t getting cold in there any time soon. That was when she noticed that dinner was waiting on them, in the form of a covered pot. 

 

“Vi, mind dishing it out?” Vander asked when he saw her watching it. She nodded. 

 

“Finally. I’m starving.” She ignored Mylo and the sense that he was giving her and the others a little grief for holding up his dinner. 

 

“Me too,” Claggor agreed. 

 

While dishing out the first bowl with a flat wooden spatula, she caught a whiff of the long, thin onions she and Caras had found that morning. They smelled sharp but looking in she couldn’t tell if the little flat pieces of deep green she was seeing were their stems or pieces of lemongrass. She didn’t think they had any basil left, though Powder had commented that morning on how fast it was growing in their garden. That might change, soon. 

 

“First rope,” she said quietly. “First meat in that ox stew a couple weeks back. Lots of firsts.” If she just tried to think about it like that, Vi wondered if she could feel excited about all these new firsts in this new place. 

 

“First time we brought home anything we made completely by ourselves,” Claggor said, nodding toward the box of nails Powder carried. Vander lifted his head from stripping out pieces of what she wondered weren’t oddly red bark and looked Powder’s way. She was still holding the box and looked a little bit like she’d been trying to get it to go unnoticed. 

 

“What’ve you got?” Vander asked as Vi finished filling the second bowl. Two bowls took up almost all the space on the counter that the pot hadn’t, so she handed them off to the two nearest people: Mylo and Claggor. Neither one said much of anything, though Claggor at least smiled her way. Vi told herself she didn’t care that Mylo didn’t even look at her as he took it and tried to focus on her sister. 

 

“It’s just a box,” she explained. “With some nails we made in it.” 

 

“Claggor did the hinges, we all did the nails inside and Powder put together the box with one of the hinges we messed up on and one good one and just some scrap wood,” Ekko explained. Vi noticed he hadn’t spoken much since she and Powder came inside, instead sitting down on his bedding. He didn’t look exhausted but he’d definitely been quiet. “It’s pretty cool.” Powder shrugged again as if to say it was nothing, but Vander hung whatever he was stripping little lines away from over the edge of the bucket and reached out for it. 

 

Vi filled a bowl for Vander and sat it down on the bed beside him before getting one for Powder and Ekko both. Vander examined the box for a few seconds, popped open the lid and checked the nails inside before turning the box around to look at the hinge. 

 

“That’s not so bad,” he told Claggor. “Just a little crack.” Claggor shrugged as if it was no big deal but Vi thought otherwise. She thought he was kind of proud of the things he was learning to make, same as the others. She had a bowl in Ekko’s and Powder’s hands and was just filling one of the cups for herself when Ekko brightened a little. 

 

“Hey, speaking of firsts, there was the first batch of arrows with real fletching. Oh, and the new arrowheads. I think they’re shooting farther.” Sounding very much himself, Ekko brought the conversation back around that direction. Vi decided not to worry about him for the moment. 

 

“I think so too,” Vi agreed, trying to reorient. Think positive, she told herself even though she swore she could feel someone pushing a finger into the back of her neck from exactly the angle Mylo was sitting. Like he was needling her from afar without ever saying a thing. “I practiced with them this morning and I think they’re hitting where I aim a lot better.” 

 

“Then there was the first time Powder accidentally punched you,” Ekko went on. “Thought she’d hurt you.” Vi kept her mouth shut on that one, faking a little laugh. She wasn’t going to risk upsetting her sister by admitting that Powder’s glancing blow on her when she was distracted had actually left a bruise she’d been careful to hide under her jacket until it cleared up. Come to think of it, she told herself, cracking a smile as she glanced back at her sister. It’s been a while since…. Well, it was hard to finish that thought. 

 

It had been a while since Powder had gotten really freaked out and since the things that came with that: the hair pulling and even the occasional fist-induced self harm. No bruises. No black eyes. Powder had started getting up before almost any of them in the mornings, though, which was weird. 

 

“Or that time you accidentally hit Powder and she nearly cried?” Mylo prompted him. It was really the chuckle in his voice that sounded cold and humorless which immediately turned Vi one-eighty from trying to hold onto a content mood to pissed. When she turned around with her half-full cup of rice in her hand, she found Powder already glaring at the boy. She couldn’t wipe the same anger off her face, so she turned back to try to avoid trouble by just not looking at him. 

 

Her chest and neck felt warm, like the early stages of a sunburn, though. The warmth rose in her face as she caught her arms starting to shake. Vi sat her cup down hard on the counter beside the pot, dropped the wooden spatula and turned right back around. Vander had not so much as stopped what he was doing to eat, much less react to Mylo. 

 

“Why do you have to do that?” she hissed his way. The room grew pretty quiet and still but Mylo only looked down at his food. 

 

“Do what?” he asked, with a one-shouldered shrug. He hadn’t so much as looked at her all day. 

 

“Act like a giant pile of yak shit , that’s what!” She clenched her fists shut, jaw working side to side as he snorted. 

 

“Beats smelling like one.” 

 

“Hey,” Vander called across them. She turned to look at the man, hoping he was going to do something for once, but before he could continue, Mylo did.

 

“What, were you and Caras rolling around in a compost heap?” 

 

“Hey!” This time Vi didn’t bother to pay Vander any attention. She took two fast steps toward the boy she’d been raised with for almost five years and leaned hard down toward him, face reddening. 

 

“The fuck does that mean?” she asked. Mylo raised an eyebrow at her, though the way his lips no longer quirked in a smirk and the way he’d sat down his bowl of rice and onion told her he knew damned well he’d fucked up. He was waiting, ready for her to say or do something. She was pretty ready, too. 

 

“Hey, if the shit fits -” 

 

“Shut the fuck up,” Vi told the boy, voice as low as she could make it and leave it audible. “For just once in your fucking life -” 

 

“Alright, you two, get outside!” Vander found his voice. “I want you down the hill and running the length of the field and back. I want to hear you gasping for breath when you get back in here. Understood?” Vi stood back up to her full height. Vander’s serious face didn’t cow her. His furrowed brows didn’t bother her. The fact that he was still sitting there, playing at making string instead of doing something about Mylo’s attitude forced her fists closed in anger. 

 

Mylo did not move. 

 

The room stayed quiet. 

 

Two seconds passed before Vander looked up to find Vi still glaring in his direction. She could feel the snarl forming on her face. Mylo still did not move. She didn’t look down at him to see what he looked like or how he was feeling. She did not care. For the first time she could pin down, Vi did not care how angry anyone in their one-room little shack was at her. Damn sure not Mylo. 

 

“What are you doing?” Vander questioned her, now stopping at his work. The growl in his lowering voice broke into a short shout. “Move!” Vi did not move. Someone jumped elsewhere in the room. 

 

Something had happened without her noticing. An argument with Mylo had turned into something more. She’d had dozens of such arguments with the boy since their evacuation from the undercity but somehow, this was different. Somehow her neck was tense and her body shook and she didn’t think it was from fear. Her teeth began to chatter. 

 

Her breath felt very cold easing in and out. Actually, she felt cold all over. 

 

Vi thought about a lot in the span of about three seconds.  She thought about telling Vander he was a coward for not doing something about Mylo. She thought about telling him he was supposed to do something about Mylo. It was his job, he was the parent, right? She thought about telling him he was a coward not just about Mylo, but in general and that’s why they didn’t have their home anymore. It was his - 

 

Vander stood up to full, impressive height suddenly enough he knocked his dinner over on the recently cleaned bed sheet and the bucket of water and whatever else over across Ekko’s and Vi’s bedding. It was also fast enough to actually startle Vi and that only made her angrier. She took a step back and then another and then, growling herself, threw the door open and hurried outside. 

 

There was almost no light left in the sky at all. How had that happened? She spun around almost as soon as she was clear of the threshold to see Mylo rushing out on her tail. When he broke off and walked a few steps away from her she shut him out of her focus. Vi backed up a few more steps as Vander slammed the door hard behind himself. The man raised one hand, pointing roughly in her direction and then Mylo’s and after he tried and failed to find words, pointed down the hill toward the field he’d just told them to run. 

 

Vi didn’t run, but she did descend the hill in silence, unable to stop snarling. Unable to calm down. Unable to make her legs feel steady. Unable to stop shaking. Breath came quicker and quicker as she descended the hill in record time, even for it being the easiest path down. Something that might’ve taken five minutes on a good day, normally, took little more than two before she and Mylo were just about at the bottom of the hill. 

 

When she looked at Mylo, his eyes wide, she didn’t feel pity or regret. All she felt was the urge to shove him. To try to provoke him into taking a swing so she could finally - finally - 

 

“Don’t you dare make that face at me ever again,” Vander shouted. There was no pretense at calm conversation. One moment, Vi was staring at Mylo and in the next second Vander had stepped in three long strides right into her personal space, towering above her with that finger in her face again. 

 

“What face?” she asked, just to really goad him into saying that she was finally looking at him like she was pissed at him. Then, maybe he would finally admit he’d fucked up. 

 

“That one. That sneer. I see it. Don’t. Ever. Do that. Again!” His shoulders rose and fell quicker than even hers and that was saying something. Vi did not back down. She wasn’t scared he’d hit her. She’d never known Vander to use violence to get his point across and frankly that was part of what pissed her off. She almost wanted him to swing at her, too. Not just Mylo. Fuck it, both of them! It would be so much easier to have something she could do about anything! 

 

“We may not be blood but we’re family. Family, damn it!” His voice drowned out even the wind and the loud, chirping insects she’d been hearing from the edge of the woods the last few nights. “We’ve always operated on the principle of basic respect. It seems like right now you two are having trouble remembering what that is - and I won’t have it!”  Vi pushed her face up into his. 

 

“What are you going to do? Drag us halfway across the continent to run from the guy you couldn’t kill and then kick us out?!” The words were still coming out of her mouth when she realized she’d gone too far. It’d been too far for a while. So far she felt like a whole other person. Someone who hated people she was supposed to love. Someone backwards. 

 

Mylo shuffled back several steps. Vander reeled back as if she had punched him in the face. Oh, and Vander’s face. 

 

It was far, far too late to turn back. 

 

Vi knew hurt when someone wore it. She knew hurt. Powder wore it too well and too often for her not to see it hiding among the rising tide of rage that was often more her domain. Not since the day Vander had first plucked them off of that fucking bridge and dragged them away from blood and death had she ever winced at his anger. After all, having seen him in a bloodthirsty frenzy only to have him turn around and so gently, fucking kindly carry her and Powder away from the site, she never thought she’d see an anger in the man that would earn a flinch. 

 

Vi flinched that night. 

Vander raised his left hand as he found his feet. Vi curled in on herself in an unconscious mimicry of her sister’s own fearful habits when Vander roared. Not shouted, but roared. It was more instinct than fear, she would tell herself later, that made her watch Vander’s left when it moved. It wasn’t aimed at her. Instead, Vander swung his body hard to his right and shook with the roar as his left hand released his almost entirely empty rice bowl. 

 

“That! Is! ENOUGH!” Vander told them. Vi heard the bowl hit the ground in the half second following this shout. “Enough from you and enough from you! You want to act like mouthy little brats? Hurt each other? Hurt the family?” His eyes were wild as his head craned from her to Mylo. “You want to ruin everything we’ve built together? Then don’t look to me and pretend to be confused when you lose the people closest to you!” Vander spun back toward the hill and started up it in hard, loud steps. He was shouting again a moment later. “I give up! Do whatever the hell you want, you ungrateful brats! That’s it!” 

 

She hung in the spot, arms wrapped around her midriff, damned near doubled over for another ten agonizing seconds. What snapped her out of it was the first time she heard even the start of a syllable out of Mylo’s voice. She stood back up and whipped her head back around to him. Mylo went quiet. Eyes wide, nostrils flaring and fists clenched, Vi gave herself a full second to feel something other than anger and another full second to decide whether or not to jump on him. 

 

Instead, in almost complete darkness, Vi turned around on the spot, aimed as best as she could at the road that led into Airus and took off at a sprint. 

 

“Vi - VI! VI, PLEASE!” Deep down she knew the actual terror in Mylo’s voice. She thought he might be following but when she looked back to tell him to fuck himself, she couldn’t see him. 

 

Vi kept running and actively refused to think about the fact that Mylo had just shouted after her in literal, visceral fear and she had ignored him. 

 

There were a lot of reasons why Vi would never forget that night. 

 

Sometimes, when she hated herself the most in the months to come, leaving Mylo there at the bottom of the hill when he was clearly scared out of his mind would be the worst of these. 

 

Vi barely felt her arms and legs give any protest as she ran full tilt for the road. Once she felt no more grass beneath her feet, she turned right and did not slow down. Vi was waiting for the moment when the road would cut through the woods, waiting for the moment leaves hid her from the emerging stars and the rising moon. Waiting for the moment she disappeared into the night. 

 

In the meantime any sizable stone or stick she could see in the failing light bore the brunt of her anger. She sent one after another flying off into the distance with angry kicks before continuing forward. By the time the trees started thickening out on either side of the road, though, she could no longer see any such thing. She could no longer see anything further than her hand in front of her face. 

 

And somehow that felt good. 

 

Vi ran as hard as she could for another couple of minutes and still pretty damned hard for about eight more before she had to slow to a stop. 

 

When she no longer swallowed huge mouthfuls of breath, Vi erupted. 

 

“DAMN IT!” The shout played poorly with the echoes of the forest but she repeated it two or three times just to pretend someone was shouting back at her. 

 

Could she do this? Could she just run away? Even for a night? 

 

“How fucking stupid would that be!?” With a grunt she buried her face in her hands. She did not cry. She hadn’t cried since this all began and why?! Why not? Why couldn’t she? She’d never do it in front of the others but here alone, when she could not even see herself? Why not? She wanted to. It would be so, so much easier, wouldn’t it? Better than so much anger. And she was mad. So mad at Vander and so mad at Mylo and so mad at herself and she couldn’t do anything about any of it and - “And I HAVE TO!” 

 

As much as Mylo needed to be smacked upside the head she didn’t want to hurt him even if part of her thought he deserved it sometimes and Vander, well that wasn’t even a question. He was the only adult she could remember well who’d believed in her. Her mother and father probably had but she hadn’t even been the same person then. Vander was her dad and now… 

 

Now he was done, seriously done and so was she . It couldn’t keep happening and she knew it as she hurled herself down on what she hoped was the side of the road and not the middle. She could barely see the outlines of tree trunks. 

 

This can’t keep going on and why can’t he fix it!? Why is he done with me when all I’m trying to do is the right thing? 

 

“And saying that all I want is to hurt people? To hurt the family? To hurt Powder? FUCK YOU!” When this last echoed off of the trees around her she became aware she was thinking this all out loud. Clenched fists pressed against the side of her head as she pushed to her feet and started to pace the dirt road. “All I want to do is hurt us but you’re protecting us all by doing NOTHING BUT RUN AWAY!? I’M the asshole!?” 

 

“He thinks I’m a pissed off little kid,” she told the dark around her. “That I’m not trying to help us - I’m not trying to help us.” She spun on her heel as if to talk to the empty night to her left. “I’m not trying to help us!?” Her first rapped once against her skull, not enough to do more than sting. “I’m not trying to - WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M TRYING TO DO!?” Vi flung her arms wide and spun again back toward the direction she thought led back home. 

 

She did not care that she wasn’t sure. 

 

“WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M TRYING TO DO?!” Vi forced every last ounce of breath from her lungs before bending down, sucking in a breath and shouting it again at the earth itself. “WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M TRYING TO DO!?” No one answered. Of course they didn’t. Jerks. Thoughtless pricks! Not one of them knew. Not one of them really cared. 

 

All she wanted was something to hit. 

 

“WHAT DO YOU THINK. I AM TRYING. TO DO!? All I ever do is for you! YOU’RE ALWAYS LOOKING AT ME! YOU’RE ALWAYS WATCHING.” She swung at nothing but it didn’t feel satisfying. It felt unbalancing and she was already off balance enough throwing her head back and standing straight up again. Cold air poured right back through her nose and mouth into her lungs. “WATCHING. WAITING. WAITING FOR ME TO FUCK UP. WAITING FOR ME TO FIX EVERYTHING. WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M TRYING TO DO!?” 

 

These words poured out time and time again, aimed at different corners of the night. She turned and turned and Vi demanded the answer but all she got was the sky and the forest mocking her with her own words. 

 

Vi found herself sitting down again by the time her voice started to go. 

 

“Just wasting time and watching it all burn, huh, kid?” Someone laughed in her right ear, whispering. She threw herself to one side and on all fours at the voice, low and unfamiliar but feminine in the foreign darkness. As she’d stopped shouting, the night had stopped shouting back at her. But it wasn’t that easy. 

 

Vi scrambled to her feet looking around for the source of the words but there was no one in the dark beside her. 

 

While she couldn’t place the first voice, Vi recognized the second immediately. One she’d only heard a handful of times but couldn’t forget. 

 

Deeper, masculine, a little rough in the throat but words steady like smoke seeking the skies, Silco had followed her all the way to Noxus. Back left, he was just out of sight. 

 

“This should be simple. Put an end to this tonight.” The statement was an order but when she craned her neck to see the man it came from, he was nowhere to be found. It was not as quiet a whisper as the first, either. More firm and assured. Her fists were already balled when she raised them up, to guard at her face. She got a whole step toward the sound of Silco’s voice before she heard footsteps heavy right behind her. Vi spun around, ducking an expected blow. 

 

None came. There was no one and nothing. 

 

And then the second voice sounded out, further off the side of the road, in the dark and Vi finally recognized it. 

 

Sevika. 

 

Somewhere in the dark a woman who’d sat in The Last Drop night after night above their fucking home and then turned on their family and broke Powder’s arm was stalking her. So was Silco. Vi didn’t know what the broader woman was doing, exactly. Probably, she was dressed all in dark clothing as she usually was and hiding just on the edge of VI’s vision. Waiting to get the drop on her? 

 

She’d show them. She’d show Sevika. 

 

“Guess I’ll just take care of this one before I finish what I started with her sister.” Vi broke into another sprint, boots throwing dirt and stone aside as she rushed off the path and toward the voice. 

 

“I’ll kill you first, you backstabbing piece of-” she rounded the trunk of the nearest tree to the voice and threw an unhinged right hook intended to catch Sevika off guard more than it put Vi off guard. The hook flew through nothing and Vi pushed forward to keep from falling over. To keep moving. To pass the next tree and the next and the next, huffing in air as she sought desperately to catch sight of the woman. 

 

She wasn’t sure how long she ran. The crunch of twigs under her feet were too loud for her tastes, though. 

 

The next time she heard someone speak, it was Sevika again, only practically from right over her right shoulder. Vi turned. Someone, (Silco, she thought) spoke in the distance but Vi tuned out his words. Silco wasn’t the first threat. 

 

She rounded on Sevika with fists raised and running on instinct slammed a left jab out. There was no one there, no one behind her. The only thing she caught was a dark blur of movement from the corner of her left eye that must be Sevika. It lingered, a vague outline out of Vi’s reach as if sidestepping her was nothing. Just like she’d done the day the stupid, pitiable dead bitch had hurt her sister. 

 

Vi charged that blur. 

 

“Why bother?” Sevika teased her in the night. “You gave up a long time ago, didn’t you, little mouse? Run and hide!” 

 

“NO!” Vi rushed in but with each and every step she took forward, Sevika, barely a shape in the black, moved further back into the night. The woman slipped from even the grasp of the little moonlight that could pierce the trees around them, dipping behind trunk after trunk as Vi tried not to fall or let her get away. Sevika couldn’t escape. She wasn’t going to let the woman hurt Powder or anyone else. 

 

Each time Vi thought a lunge would bring her into reach of the woman, her fist passed through thin air. It might’ve been a whole minute of this cat and mouse game before she finally got close enough to Sevika to make out specifics, or maybe Vi’s eyes had just adjusted. Either way, the woman was circling her, face slowly forming in the shadow of the night. 

 

“NO! OVER AND OVER. NO! EVERY FUCKING TIME! NO!” Vi told her, unaware the words would have made no sense to even herself. 

 

“Already turned your back on half of ‘em haven’t you kid?” Vi was going to shout her denial at the woman when Silco chimed in from a distance behind her and she came to a stop instead. 

 

“I wonder… if you have value after all.” Vi spun on the spot and didn’t intend to stop until she had a better idea of who was where. 

 

“FIGHT ME!” She didn’t care which of them came forward. Someone had to come. Fuck, they could send Deckard after her and she’d be happy. This shit, having her chase them around in the night… it… it was a waste. A waste of a good chance to fix everything, to do what she had to do. Vi surged back behind her toward Silco’s voice when she caught sight of the cherry of a cigarette in that direction.

 

It wasn’t Silco’s, either. 

 

She didn’t question it. 

 

Sevika’s eyes were almost the only thing clear and visible behind the cigarette, but Vi didn’t even try to strike her. This time, Vi hurled her entire body into the lunge and still found herself collapsed on the ground. She pushed right back up immediately to her feet. Her right shoulder screamed a protest for the first time since this all began. 

 

 “JUST FIGHT ME! JUST FIGHT ME ALREADY!” 

 

“It’s a lot more fun to watch you fall over.” Sevika taunted, once more cloaked in the forest night. “Be a pleasure to show you what it’s actually like to lose everything. Everything that matters. Is that what you want? We can start with that mouthy little shit brother of yours.” Vi started in the new direction of Sevika’s voice when she heard something that gave her a new jolt of hope. She didn’t question why her attackers seemed capable of disappearing from one sport and appearing in another. It never occurred to her. 

 

“Don’t bother,” Vander’s voice pierced the darkness from somewhere to her right. A faint bit of hope, a faint bit of promise erupted. If he was out there, he’d find them. They’d beat the hell out of these two fuckers and go home and get The Last Drop back and she’d be okay. She’d be okay again. Vi lifted her head looking for the voice’s source but saw nothing but a tree to her right. “She doesn’t care about him anymore.” 

 

“It’s not true,” Vi shouted at her dad’s voice. He had to hear her. He had to help her. They could fix everything here and now, tonight. Footsteps sounded to her left. Sevika was moving closer. “If you’d just be our father! If you’d give him an earful. If you’d actually stand up for us. Not just me and Powder but any of us. Or yourself! You don’t stand up for any of us so how am I supposed to!?” The sound of footsteps to her left got louder and joined a flash of movement. Instead of screaming words meant for Vander to a wide gnarled tree he must have been stood just behind, she threw herself toward the movement, right arm pulled back and ready to hook around to break Sevika’s jaw. 

 

No Sevika. 

 

But someone who had to have been behind a nearby tree was running away from her deeper into the night. Someone with long, currently unbound wild blue hair. 

 

“Powder! Wait!” Someone followed Powder. Someone with wide arms and cruel, cold, dark eyes. 

 

Vi chased Sevika, somehow phantomlike, into the dark instead of the woman getting her hands on Powder. It didn’t take long for the dark to swallow Powder whole. Vi might’ve tried to use this, to grab at Sevika and slow her down long enough for her sister to get out of there but Sevika always stayed just out of reach. Without pulling ahead enough for it to make sense, she lost Sevika behind a tree and when she rounded that tree, the woman was not there. 

 

Someone else was waiting for her. 

 

When she rounded the tree, she was forced to stop to not bowl over Mylo who was only just getting to his feet as if he'd been on the ground a moment before. He wiped his hands on his pants and pointed off, straight ahead of himself. Not in the way she’d last seen Sevika running. 

 

“They're this way. Come on. Claggor's up ahead.” He sounded encouraging but scared before he took off. Vi hurried to follow but it only took a few seconds for the wrongness of it all to hit her. Something wasn't right. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Everything was wrong. She saw no sign of Sevika or Powder. She couldn't even hear their footsteps crashing through the woods in the night. No, everything was wrong. 

 

Especially when Mylo slowed down a few seconds later and rounded on her. Especially when he opened his mouth and sounded so much like Silco. 

 

“You’ll run off into the dark alone to save her - but you hate me. Why didn’t you save me?” Mylo lowered his hands to his hips and waited and Vi was again forced to stop not to knock him over. Confused, she gasped out a question, sucked in breath like she didn't know when she'd have it next. Her fists were so tight, they hurt.  

 

“I - what?” 

 

“Why didn’t you save me, Vi?” It was still Mylo's voice but the words eased out too low, dark, harsh. Too easily, too. She couldn't help but look up at his head, at the bandage wrapped around it and the nasty red-brown stain left behind on it. 

 

“I tried. It was too fast. It was too-” she wasn't sure what to say. Too sudden. Too quick. Or she was too distracted. Too thrilled with the fight like some kind of fucking psychopath. 

 

“Bullshit! Why didn’t you save me Vi?” He took a step forward and she shuffled back, still mostly in stance. Her own reaction upset her. 

 

Vi had never been scared of Mylo in her life. 

 

She was scared, now. She had been, since the moment she ran from Mylo and Vander at the foot of the hill. Scared in ways she hadn't even realized until now. 

 

Vi managed to buy herself enough time to raise her fists into a defensive position when Mylo lunged at her after a second of an odd, eerie staring match. She bought that time only by throwing herself to the ground. 

 

Mylo had stopped trying to learn how to throw a proper punch shortly after Vander first offered to show them. 

 

That didn't stop his first blow from landing. She felt the impact of it, harsh and brutal. Before resorting to covering her face with her arms entirely, she took two more shots. Not from the person she'd expected to be hit by, either. 

 

The first shot caught her in the jaw, the second in the shoulder and the third in her ribs. 

 

“I – I – I NEVER STOPPED TRYING! WHY DID YOU?” Mylo shouted right into her face but his voice had finally faded away entirely. Her throat hurt. Silco's own voice emitted from her brother's throat and Vi didn't understand. It was too much and too far and if she didn't start swinging back soon Sevika or Deckard or Silco would find them and then they'd both be dead. “NOW WE'VE BOTH LOST HIM! YOU DON'T GET TO TAKE HIM, TOO!” 

 

Vi rolled them because she didn't want to think about what Mylo meant with Silco's words. The 'Him' had to be Vander. Vi rolled them both because she was still stronger. Because she could control this, because she could control him in a fight. Because fighting was the only thing she was good for and he'd at least finally learn that if it was the last thing she did. When she reeled her arm back to return the favor with a few hard shots of her own, Mylo was not beneath her. 

 

She balanced on her knees and on one hand atop dirt and grass and twigs. 

 

Vi scrambled back and onto her ass and began to crawl backwards when she looked around and saw the forest around her awash in orange light. 

 

Orange, like Silco's eye. 

 

Watching. Waiting. 

 

Watching from the sky. Staring straight down at her through the trees. 

 

Maybe he’d planned it all right from the beginning. 

 

Light in this pitch black night entrapped her and she still couldn't see the road anywhere. Her head cracked hard against something and she stopped moving but tilted it back, expecting to be looking up the trunk of the tree. Pain shot through her skull, throbbing, dull, but deep.There was no tree. All she saw was Sevika. Sevika. Finally in reach. Finally touching her. Curling down toward her. The woman's right hand trailed behind her, holding tight to long blue strands of Powder's hair, dragging her sister along the ground behind her. 

 

Sevika's left hand brought that damned cigarette up to her lips. The woman's right boot hovered only a foot or so above Vi's head.

 

Vi tried to raise her arms up to block the boot, but she knew in her heart she wouldn't make it. This one stomp could easily put an end to her. 

 

Then someone grabbed her arms, trying to pin her arms to her side to make it easier on Sevika.

 

Vi was hurt beyond words to lower her gaze and find that it was Vander hovering over her, pinning her arms to her side. Confusion, though, was the only thing that stopped her from squirming, kicking and fighting him because the boot didn't come down. When she looked up,  Sevika was gone. 

 

It was a tree she'd just rammed her head against. 

 

Powder was gone. 

 

No one was making a sound besides her . 

 

Vander's face was a foot above her own, lit in profile by the lantern hanging in Ekko's hand, behind him. 

 

And Vi could not stop screaming and it hurt her throat. It hurt so bad. It felt like she'd never stopped. 

 

“LET ME GO! LET ME GO!” 

 

Vander did not listen. 

 

“Sevika’s got - she’s got Powder and I think maybe Deckard grabbed Mylo or something – he was here a second ago and we -” Vander shook his head hard, emphatically and held tightly onto her as Ekko crept closer, like she was the thing out there he was scared of. 

 

“No one has anyone. Except you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you , Violet.” She shook her head and tried hard to make him listen. Just LISTEN! 

 

“No, LET ME GO! No, you don’t understand. Sevika… Silco, they’re here. They heard it all. They’ve been watching us and they know everything! You have to let me go!” This did not jar Vander at all. Something wet and sticky stuck leaves to her right arm. A twig pressed right into her ear and it hurt. She jerked hard enough trying to get free to knock it loose but that was the least of her worries. 

 

“They’re not here, Violet. You, me and Ekko. We’re the only ones out here. Silco might be able to slither out of sight but Sevika stomps around The Last Drop just like you when she’s angry. You don’t miss that woman. She’s not here. They’re in the Lanes. But you are here .” Vander pressed his face closer to hers so that he was almost all she could see when she looked upward. 

 

“No, no you don't understand, you don't under-” but Vander had been talking to Sevika. He'd said those horrible things about her to Sevika. And… and he would have known she was there.  “I don't – I don't understand.” 

 

“Vi, Vi, there's no one else here.” Her head spun as she craned her neck up and over a bit to look at Ekko. The boy was so scared but so fucking earnest and he was never someone that doubted her. He never doutbed her, even when she fucked up again and again and again. Maybe he's the only one who still believes in me. 

 

Vi slowed. She stilled. When she'd silently laid in place staring at Ekko for three very long seconds through dry eyes, Vander released her. The man still hovered over her on his knees as if waiting to grab hold of her again. 

 

Vi stayed still. Parts of her body ached and other parts were screaming. Her right palm was soaking wet and when she lifted it, it was clear it was bleeding from four jagged little marks across the palm. A fist clenched tighter than it had ever clenched. Her right arm was still sticky and it hurt. She wasn’t sure what part of her body she was talking about when she spoke next.

 

“Why does it hurt?” she asked. The night did not answer. The ground swallowing drops of her blood  from this wound up did not answer.  

 

“Probably ran yourself into a few trees, lass.” Vander said, slowly. She was confused. She didn't know what he was trying to say. Trees had nothing to do with this . Vander slowly shifted on his knees but stayed kneeling at her side. “I was so scared. So scared you’d actually run off. I tried to follow-”

 

She looked away from him and up at the sky. Trees. Trees still didn't let her see the stars but the light of the lantern showed her the shape of branches and leaves above them. There was no giant eye in the sky watching her and how stupid was it to think that?

 

“I thought about it,” she croaked through a throat that really seemed to want to punish her for every sound she made. “What’s the point? Everyone I care about is back there and home’s weeks away even on a steamship. What’s the point?” No particularly strong emotion emerged and she did not feel the urge to move herself from the spot. 

 

“Violet, I shouldn’t have said some of those things.” Vander sounded comfortable starting this conversation with Ekko there but she wasn’t sure she was. If Vander cared, at all. “When we heard you - you don’t… you’ll never… I - I - I just lost my cool. I just- ” Vander faltered. His voice fell quiet. When he didn’t continue for a moment, she looked at him and frowned, feeling a little far away from the moment but maybe able to understand what he’d told her when she tried to warn him about Sevika and Silco. 

 

“They were never here tonight, were they?” she asked. Vander looked confused for a second, then hurt and then worried. Vi looked away from him. She didn’t want to see him looking hurt. That was his easy way out. 

 

“They weren’t.” Ekko chimed in for the first time in a minute or so, anxious as hell.  “They’re not here.” 

 

“I’m not gonna give up,” was all Vi could think to say. She wasn’t sure who she was talking to or exactly what she wasn’t giving up. 

 

“I know,” Vander told her, quietly, softly and then he leaned in toward her and she was aware of one of his arms wrapping beneath her knees and the other beneath her shoulders. Then she was being lifted into the air. Vi didn’t fight. She didn’t fight at being carried, didn’t fight when he turned them around and started to trudge through the woods.

 

 It felt like a very long time until anything mattered enough to speak again but the lantern light still showed trees and leaves and undergrowth around her when she did. 

 

“Mylo can’t get away with the way he’s treating her.” Vi told the air somewhere near Vander’s shoulder. She was still trying to accept that she’d imagined that entire attack and the trunks of the trees around her weren’t hiding Silco or Sevika or, worse, Deckard. 

 

They didn’t attack you. You went after them. 

 

Vander kept moving. Maybe toward the farm. Ekko followed along off to one side but he was just out of her line of sight. 

 

“And what about how you treat him?” Vi craned her neck down to Vander. He didn’t want to let the argument go and neither did she but she also couldn’t rally the energy. Her throat ached. 

 

“Someone has to.” It again came out as a croak. “Always making fun of her and sneering down at her, demeaning her.”

 

“And I’d argue you’re doing the same thing to him.” 

 

“If someone else would do something about it, I wouldn’t have to.” The last bit of energy went into hope that Vander would finally hear her. Finally, do something. She’d said all of this so many times, though. She had to make him understand. This felt like the only chance she’d ever get. 

 

“You don’t have to. You could choose the high road.” 

 

It had backfired and she was angry again in a distant way. Like she was listening to a story about a character doing something stupid over and over again. The fear wasn’t distant, though. She was so fucking scared and no longer entirely sure why. Even literally in Vander’s arms, she was shaking. Her teeth still chattered.

 

“Not gonna let him make us feel like shit anymore.” 

 

“I didn’t say that,” Vander told her. “You just don’t have to react the same way.” Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. The sound of snapping sticks and twigs. Not bones.  

 

“Why won’t you do anything about it?” The energy to shout hadn’t come yet. She wondered if it would. “Powder trusts you. I trusted you.” Vander’s jaw slammed shut and he kept forward for a second. Ekko took this moment to attempt to put an end to the conversation. 

 

“Vi, let’s just go home and sleep?” Vi ignored the boy. Didn’t turn to try to see him. Didn’t even question why the light around her seemed to bounce up and down a little. 

 

“Because everyone’s unwell,” Vander said, voice flat. “Mylo’s unwell. Claggor and Powder, even you and I Ekko, we’re not well. And Violet - I’m scared you’re in trouble. We’re all hurting and I’ve only just come to realize how much that includes you. None of us has a surefire fix and the harder I push on your or Mylo right now, the harder you push back. Neither of you stop to think I - I’m doing the best I can for everyone.” 

 

I’m doing the best I can, Vander had told her, seriously, struggling for a breath in the fields during that failed attempt to plow the earth with his own body. The words echoed even though they had not been spoken in weeks.

 

What little fire she’d gotten back rushed out of her. 

 

“Can’t sit by and let it happen,” she whispered to him. “Don’t understand how you can.” Vander shook his head. 

 

“It hurts that you think that’s what I’m doing but one day I hope like hell you can understand.” 

 

“I’m not giving up,” she repeated, no longer watching the man. “I’m not going to just lie down and hurt and let him hurt her. If that means I’m a bad person. If it means I failed you… just get in line.” 

 

“What are you talking about?” he asked her without looking at her, either. 

 

“I took them on the job. I took Powder on the job. I didn’t see Deckard throwing that gauntlet at Mylo. I didn’t watch Powder close enough at Benzo’s and I didn’t crush Silco’s throat when I had the chance. I didn’t kill him. “ She exhaled. Had she ever said all of that outloud? Certainly not to Vander. It didn’t feel good or bad. It just felt like a scene from a puppet show she was catching in passing. 

 

“Kill Silco,” the man muttered as if he thought what he was hearing was funny or repugnant or both. “You’re not listening to me. Trying to kill Silco is how I put the Lanes where they are now. It’s how I put us here. It’s how I cost us the home you miss so much.” Vi wasn’t going to argue. He might’ve even been right. 

 

Her attention was called by Ekko, rushing to pull ahead of them and contradicting them both. 

 

“You’re both wrong,” the boy declared, which was enough it might’ve normally stunned her into silence. Arguing with Vander in this kind of situation didn’t seem like him. “Benzo talks about the war all the time. About how you were always trying to take the quickest route to end it. How you were always trying to save people after fights. Anyone, whether they were our people or not. He says Silco was like a mad dog but he’s glad you didn’t put him down. Because it would’ve broken you. He says the man you are now is the one you were always on the road to being and you got there fast and maybe less people died because of it. And - Vi.” 

 

Ekko paused until she turned her head to look right at him. He looked a little smaller than usual. His cheeks looked a little more sunken. He needed more to eat. 

 

“I was the one who told Powder about that topsider that came into the shop. You did that job because of me and I still don’t think it was my fault. I don’t think it was yours or Powder’s either and all four of you are beating yourselves up over it. Plus, I’m with Benzo and Vander: I don’t ever want to know what it’s like to kill someone. Not after what it did to Powder.” Vi rocked in Vander’s grasp as the man stopped and swung his head around quickly. 

 

“What?” Vander demanded. Ekko momentarily paused at the tone in Vander’s voice. Vi blinked blearily at the boy. 

 

“The explosion topside. It killed someone.” Vander’s stop was an opportunity. Vi didn’t want to be carried. She started to try to squeeze out of his grip but probably would’ve fallen to the ground if he hadn’t hurried to assist her in standing up properly on her own shaking legs. Everything was shaking. 

 

“Grayson… said as much.” Vander said this as much to himself as to the two of them and Vi couldn’t place the name. Grayson. Who? It felt important but all she could do was push herself away from Vander and lean up against the nearest tree until she trusted her legs again. “But how would Powder know that?”

 

“That woman. She showed her.” Ekko spoke firmly, as if that was a full thought even though it left a lot of questions. As strange as it sounded, Vi took a guess at exactly who he meant. 

 

“You mean the one from her nightmare.” Vi said this more than asked. 

 

“It wasn’t a nightmare and wasn’t like - like whatever you were seeing either.” Ekko informed her. 

 

That’s right. You were seeing things. Hallucinating. Losing your mind. Coo-coo like a clock twice a day at 13 o’clock. 

 

“I saw her too.” Ekko insisted, now looking right at Vander and lifting the lantern to emphasize the complete lack of humor on his face. He was not joking. “Someone watching me from the woods. She looked just like the person Powder told us about.” 

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Vi asked, but she could not even growl in frustration. Not just because of the pain but because she could not seem to access the anger. It was there, sure, but deep. Far away and fading.

 

“Or me?” Vander chimed in. “Or Claggor or Mylo or anyone ?” 

 

“Because,” Ekko told them, and he spoke bitterly at them for the first time, slowly and emphatically, drawing each syllable out and even raising his voice a little bit. No more evidence was needed that people had fucked up. “You. Don’t. Listen. To. Us.” Vi closed her eyes and shook her head. “She’s real and she knows shit.” 

 

“‘Shit’ like what?” Vander asked. Ekko didn’t rush to correct the swear even though Vander often got onto them for it and Ekko didn’t cuss much around the man. “She knows Mylo calls Powder a jinx. She knows about the pocket watch dad had. It was the first thing I ever learned to fix. She knows that -” Ekko stopped, mouth hanging half open and without his facial expression changing from the bitter, unimpressed look he wore, he let that thought die and went on. “My point is, Powder blames herself and that’s why she does have nightmares now. For real. Almost every day.” 

 

“She does?” Vi asked. “How did I not-” 

 

“You miss a lot when you’re spacing out or asleep,” Ekko responded quickly. She didn’t sense any judgment from him but it still should have hurt. It didn’t hurt, but it should have. If she were normal. If something wasn’t broken. Ekko wasn’t the type to be cruel or cold so he was probably just answering her question. “I just don’t want everyone to keep hurting.” 

 

Vi considered what she had to say next, now that she was sure she could speak without screaming. She tried not to think about the fact that she’d gone out into the middle of a strange woods in the dark and screamed at and tried to fight people who were not there and wasn’t even sure how long it had all lasted. She focused on what felt like the most important message she had for Vander. 

 

“I still think Silco should’ve died. He would’ve killed you. He would’ve killed Powder. He’d kill any of us and Deckard almost killed Mylo. When it happens to him, I hope it hurts. I hope it hurts a lot.” Vander opened his mouth to speak but Vi shook her head. If she just explained why she did what she did, he’d have to understand. “I don’t know how not to get mad about everything that happened back home or topside and I don’t know how not to get mad when I see Mylo picking on Powder. And I feel guilty. Like they're both my fault. “ 

 

And that hurts.

 

“That’s the same way I don’t know how to stop feeling guilty when I watch my family suffer because years ago, I failed the person closest to me. Worry I’m doing it all again with you lot. Letting you down. But I’ll tell you what worked before and what will probably work for you?” he offered. Vi couldn’t take the offer even if it was genuine care that motivated it. 

 

“What?” she asked. “Let me guess. Time?” Slowly, more feeling seeped back into her arms and legs and most of it was pain. The pain did wake her up a little bit more. A little too much. Like before, in the road, the words began to spill out like a waterfall pouring over the edge. “Just sitting on my ass and hurting and hurting and hurting and all of us hurting and Mylo hurting Powder and me saying nothing doing nothing and hurting and hurting and failing and failing over and over again when this is all my fucking fault and on me to fix!?” Vander raised both hands as if to calm her but it took swallowing hard to stop the words from pouring out faster. 

 

They almost felt like someone else was spitting them from her mouth.

 

“Patience. Practice. Practice letting go. Practice forgiving yourself. Especially for things you can’t control. And, yes. Time.” 

 

“But I could control it,” Vi insisted, not moving. Not raising hands. Not trusting her legs or arms or eyes. “If I was allowed to. It’s -  I - fuck .  You tell me it's my responsibility. You tell me I have to take care of us but you won’t let me do it.” Vander started again to interrupt but this time Vi did not swallow the waterfall. She didn’t try to restrain what something wanted to get out of her. She spat the words out.  “It’s bullshit and I don’t know what the fuck you actually want from me, Vander.” Vi’s throat strained as she cursed. “FUCK!” Unlike the faucet for the words, the rage did not come pouring out like she wanted. Nothing did. Her feelings were just a trickle pooling in a puddle somewhere far away from her. “I should’ve been the one Deckard took out. Not Mylo. I should’ve had the broken arm. Not Powder.” 

 

Ekko shook his head but Vander’s mouth hung open uselessly. He stayed silent and looked guilty. Vi thought she hated it and it made her hate him, too, a little bit. 

 

“Tell me what I’m supposed to do,” she asked him. “You can’t make everything my fault and my responsibility and stop me from doing anything about it and expect - “ 

 

“Violet, you’re not listening to me. You’re not hearing me. You think you are but-” Vander’s attempt to talk bullshit and get out of the conversation had to be shut down and thankfully she had words in spades for the first time in her life and it was the only thing that almost felt good.  

 

“‘They look up to you.’” She quoted him, directly to his face. “ I have to make the right choices. I have to make the right decisions. I have to do what’s best for us. You said. YOU SAID IT.” Vander shut his mouth and instead of answering he just looked so pathetic and self-servingly sad. Her fists curled but uncurled almost as quickly. Punching something would’ve been more productive than this conversation. 

 

“It wouldn’t have fixed anything if you got hurt, instead,” Ekko told her. The thing was, Ekko was smart. He had to get it. So she turned on him. He’d understand.  

 

“It would’ve been better,” she told the boy with the lantern. When she watched him look hurt, she couldn’t understand it. On the other hand, she didn’t hate it the way she did the look on Vander’s face. Contempt joined the puddle of feelings when Vander opened his mouth and tried not to address anything she’d said, not explain how she was supposed to take care of everyone like he’d told her to when he WOULDN’T LET HER. 

 

“This is what we’ve been doing, Violet.” He spoke like he was begging her to listen. To understand him. The lines about his eyes had never looked so deep as by that lantern’s light. “You, me and Mylo at the bare minimum. We’ve been wallowing. Whether it was feeling bad for ourselves or feeling guilty or feeling like it’s wrong to leave our guilt or our sadness. We can’t keep doing it. Violet. It hurts everyone around us. I don’t know if I can get out of this hole without you either falling in line or on my side. You’ve always been one of those two - I don’t know what happens next without it.” Vander exhaled. “I’m not the best father. I never expected to be, didn’t become one in the normal way and I don’t regret it for a second but it means I fuck up. I didn’t learn to do it right, if anyone does. Sometimes I don’t think anyone does.” 

 

Vi was immediately split. Half of her felt some of the fire return, leaving her so spitting angry that she wished someone would lift an actual boot and kick him in the ass. Half of her felt small again. Small and young. 

 

“So, it’s wrong of me to say it but I need you on my side.” Vi sucked in a deep breath. 

 

“I need you too,” she admitted. She felt a sob in her throat but it didn’t bring tears with it. They stayed in that far away puddle. Her voice was more hoarse than before. “So please, do something. I can’t.” 

 

You won’t let me and you still won’t tell me why. 

 

Ekko grabbed at her hand with his free one. She winced when he took hold of the injured one and he had to feel the blood across his palm but he held on. Vander watched the pair of them for a second and then confessed something that was no secret to anyone present. 

 

“I buried something when we got here,” Vander told her. Vi held her breath. Beside her, Ekko was uneasy, too. “In a pile of debris out back. Moved it since, hell, even tried to put the garden there to have an excuse to do this. ” Vi didn’t know what ‘ this’ he meant but the man gestured roughly between himself and her. “I’d guess you lot found it and that’s why Powder didn’t want our garden there.” Vi looked sideways at Ekko, wondering at her luck. She felt no guilt for keeping her sister’s secret and lying to Vander’s face by omission, here. “If you promise me, promise me that you’ll never EVER raise them against friend or family, they’re yours, Vi.”

 

Vander seemed to think this would fix the anger she felt toward him, the resentment. If anything, it only flared up. It only eeked out of the puddle and into her mouth as the waterfall of words in her head threatened to wrench her jaw open.

 

She wanted to promise him. She wanted to promise him she wouldn’t use them against the family but she also wanted to scream at him that he was just doing it again . That he was putting it all on her. That if he wasn’t being a coward he would put those gauntlets on again and fix what he ( she) had fucked up. To pass them over to her now, when he expected her to fix things he wouldn’t let her fix…. 

 

“Vi?” Ekko started from her side, and she realized she was squeezing his hand with her blood-slicked one. She was rigid and still, glaring at Vander and the man opposite of her was confused, concerned, conflicted. 

 

A voice, low and smooth again chuckled from the darkness. 

 

Vi ignored it. Because it couldn’t be real. 

 

But something else changed and she didn’t know what. She relaxed her grip first, and exhaled. 

 

Vander made his choices. He wants me to make choices, too. He probably wants me to make the same choices but he doesn’t get everything he wants. 

 

It didn’t make Vander evil, but it did make her feel bad. This, though, was one of those things he wanted to emphasize could be solved without violence. Without being angry. Maybe, if she just let go of the fact she was going to have to let him down, he could be right. Because she would have to let him down. He was so scared of fighting that he wasn’t willing to really do it anymore. 

 

She was willing. Or at least thought if her mind didn’t break, she would be willing.

 

“That hurt,” she told Vander. Her voice stayed level without any effort. Dull. Well, that was better than shouting, right? Her throat certainly thought so.

 

“Violet?” Vander kept in place a few feet away from her and watched her cautiously. She stared back. She did not blink. 

 

“That hurt. Made me mad to think you think I’d use them to hurt anyone in the family. Pisses me off you think that’s what I want. Hurts that I have to take care of everyone but nothing I do is good enough. Hurts you made me think you were done with us. I’m angry I don’t know if I understand you or if you understand me. Angry the only thing I’m allowed to do is hurt. Because that is what you keep telling me. But I’m not fucking Deckard. I’m not fucking Silco and I’m not you.” Vander lifted his chin so she lifted hers right back, trying to meet his eyes. “I think Mylo needs pushed on his ass and told to shut the fuck up and listen. I don’t want to kill him. I don’t want to actually hurt him and it makes me angry you’d think it.”

 

At least, it made her angry before. 

 

Right now she wasn’t sure if she was anything.  

 

“I don’t think -” 

 

“Then why did you say that?” she leapt on the denial fast. It wasn’t worth letting him finish his sentence if he was going to change the subject too soon. “About me promising not to use them against the family?” 

 

To her muted surprise, he even gave her an answer that actually satisfied her. Even just hours ago it would’ve relieved her. Either way, it convinced her that her father didn’t think she was a monster. 

 

“ That wasn’t about you, that was about them .” Vi tried to process the statement as Vander chuckled darkly. She shut her mouth to do so. She’d expected his anger. “That was what I promised myself they were for, after the war. Never, ever to hurt, only ever to protect.” Vi could accept that, but there was something he needed to understand before he even considered giving her those. 

 

“Vander I’m not going to be you. It’s not a bad thing to be you and I wanted to for a long time but we’re too different right now.” This was something she was actually a little scared to admit. “I can’t sit by. I can’t. I don’t think I’m going to be you.” 

 

“I hope not.” Again, she had expected an argument. Not that response. Vander’s face was blank but the words sounded a little bit like that same self-pity. Vi shook her head and squeezed Ekko’s hand mostly to feel the pain it caused in her own. 

 

“I don’t know what to do next,” she confessed. 

 

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you since we started plowing, Violet: now that we’re here, neither do I.” It didn’t feel as cold as it had minutes before but with exhaustion rushing in, she summed it up as best she could. 

 

“I’ll never use them to hurt any of us. I never wanted to hurt any of us.” Vi let the next few words stew in her head and then said them. “I just want to fix what I have to fix. I still don’t get why you won’t let me, but I’ll try to keep quiet.” Before the waterfall could start to flow again, Vi shut her mouth and swallowed. She swallowed hard. In the end, that was what she might have to do. She’d swallow it, as much as she could. She’d swallow every shitty thought, every thing that hurt, every thing she couldn’t fix straight down. 

 

Maybe something would change with this magic ‘time.’ 

 

“How about the three of us be smart and don’t stand out in the dark any longer? Let’s get back home.” Vander proposed after a few more seconds. Vi nodded. Ekko nodded. 

 

But Vi still felt like less than she used to be and smaller as she walked back home in Vander’s shadow cast by the lantern light. 

 

Ekko, his hand grasping at her own, led her . 

 

Violet swallowed that down, too and the words did not flow. 

Chapter 19: Chapter Nineteen

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Nineteen

 

Back on the farm, Powder hadn’t moved for a while from the open doorway of the little wooden lean-to built up against the side of the house. In the absence of their only lantern, the only light she had to see the world by was the little moonlight that filtered through the clouds hiding the stars. Sitting right in the doorway at the foot of Vander’s bedding Powder kept her eyes focused to the south. Occasionally, wind grabbed at the tarp spread over the leaning wall that gave the shelter its name. The long, hardy sticks woven between two crossbeams along the outside of the tarp kept it mostly in place. They just didn’t keep her from jumping at the sound. 

 

Powder had barely moved since the screaming started. Just to come from just outside the door of their house to sit in the lean-to. When Ekko decided to go with Vander, he had looked surprise she didn’t want to follow. She hadn’t been able to imagine going with them. She hadn’t been able to imagine what she might’ve seen. The voice she’d sat and listened to sounding in the night, in the far distance, could’ve only been one person’s and it left her stomach full of dread and cold because who knew what was out there? Who knew what it meant that the screaming and shouting went on? Who knew what it meant that they’d actually heard it from so far away? 

 

Worse, who knew what it meant that the sound had stopped? 

 

So Powder sat, with her knees tight to her chest and her arms wrapped firmly around them. She hadn’t done this in a while: her right arm hadn’t let her. She tried not to think about Vander telling Vi and Mylo that he gave up on them. She tried not to think about what that meant for her siblings. Mylo had gone inside and not even looked at her even though at the time he’d had to walk right past her to do so. The other sibling in question had been gone for a period of time Powder wasn’t really able to guess at. Maybe a half hour? 

 

It felt like hours. No, that was bullshit. It felt like days. 

 

If he’s done with them, could he be done with the rest of us soon? 

 

Powder started to suspect she heard something in the unnatural quiet of the night. One or two sounds that might be an animal’s yips or something of the sort. She blamed it on something out in the fields to her right, to the west, long before she got worried about it. They’d had animals wander onto the farm before and they almost always left on their own at the sound of the door to the house opening. Usually that was because someone was running out with a bow in hand. At first, Powder just wrote this off as something like that. 

 

Her eyes stayed fixed to the southern edge of the hill, looking over and past the ruins of a barn and a well house. She stared into darkness that her gaze could not pierce where a road ran roughly south east to west below their farm, connecting it and beyond to Airus. She waited. She rejected any thought about the argument or what came next and only nearly broke down once in a thirty second span at the idea that something out in the woods might have gotten her sister. That her sister might not come back. 

 

It only took about a second of entertaining the thought for everything to feel meaningless, hopeless, helpless. 

 

She hadn’t felt those in a while, but Powder had just told herself to fight it a little bit longer. That little bit had been enough to let the feelings dull a little.

 

Something, though, seemed off in the western fields. Something seemed off in the way the edge of the field looked in the corner of her eye. Something hard to place. Powder let go of her own knees and pushed forward, crawling out of the wood lean-to on all fours, even though she could’ve probably walked on her knees or something and made it easier to stand up after. Powder just didn’t care about that. Once she’d gotten just clear enough of it to turn her head in that direction, things made a little more sense. 

 

Down in the dark, earthen field and still a good ways away from the bottom of the hill, a little point of soft orange light spread a faint glow across its surroundings. Cold and still scared she scrambled to her feet and hurried down the hill a little more recklessly than ever before. After no more than five or six seconds, her foot caught something and she took a tumble. Luckily, though her knees hurt when she slammed down into the earth, her actual fall only included one very confusing roll down the slope before she came to a stop and got herself under control. Lying in the tall grass, Powder had to step by step break down how she’d ended up on her back. It did convince her pretty quickly to get herself back to her feet and actually look where she was walking (for what little good it did her in the dark) as she descended. 

 

About halfway down, Powder stopped again and squinted out at the field, hoping the lantern would show who carried it. 

 

And, it did. 

 

There were three people in one of the two western fields and Powder held her breath as she squinted hard. Ekko had to be holding the lantern. She just knew it. Even here, she could tell just how low the light was. The thinner of the two (taller) forms behind him was right on his heels but looked like they were trying to walk exactly in his footsteps.

 

No, he’s pulling her along.  She was walking, though, so that meant that Vi had to be okay. Right? The screaming hadn’t been as bad as it sounded? 

 

With the revelation of these three shapes, the third broader and hanging back a step or two, Powder convinced herself that it was okay, again. She’d barely heard the screaming, earlier, after all. Maybe that wasn’t just because it had been so far away. A part of her knew this was wishful thinking at its best: the fact she’d heard it at all meant it had been loud. The kind of loud she would’ve run from if she’d heard it up close. 

 

Powder didn’t think she could wait. 

 

She started back down the hill at an unsafe pace again, almost a jog, but this time she kept her eyes locked on the ground in front of her and managed to make it down and to the edge of the field by the time the trio approaching were halfway across it. Powder moved at a rush to meet them, having both an easier time in some ways and a worse in others running across the soft dirt of the field. 

 

The larger shape hurried forward as if maybe, just maybe he’d seen her coming. After a few moments she actually caught sight of Vander’s outline so clearly it could be no one else and that meant the others had to be Ekko and Vi. Eyes welling up despite deriding herself for it, she just began to run. It didn’t feel bad to run again, normally and not worry about toppling over. The idea of getting to her sister’s side faster, seeing Vander and Ekko and Vi all home safe distracted her from berating herself further. 

 

Powder blinked away the near-tears so that there wouldn’t be a sign of them when she got into the range of the lantern light. Vander pulled even further ahead so that when she reached him and came to a stop he could run a hand over the top of her braided head of hair, soft smile on his face. She fell very quickly in line with the others and drew even with Ekko, who lightly bumped his shoulder against her, in a playful imitation of a shoulder check. She would’ve smiled, except that when she glanced past Ekko’s awfully neutral face, Vi definitely wasn’t smiling. 

 

In fact, Powder almost froze at the idea that her sister, no more than three or four feet away from her, did not know she was there. Vi stared straight ahead over the spot where her hand joined Ekko’s. Something dark ran down the woman’s arm from her hand and looked to be smeared across their mutual grasps. Vi looked clean over Ekko’s head, mouth tightly closed and eyes dull. 

 

When Powder opened her mouth to speak, not even sure exactly what to say, Ekko shook his head at her. 

 

Powder fell in line again, not beside Ekko, but beside Vi. With Ekko leading, her sister kept on a straight path. She did not speak. She did not look like someone who was doing a lot more than walking. Powder had seen this look before. It went well beyond when Mylo or Vi spaced out and stared off at nothing. This was the ‘thousand yard stare’ Vander sometimes talked about. The one that he told you to be kind and gentle and maybe a little bit quiet around because ‘best case scenario is they’re thinking through a lot of pain.’ The worst case scenarios weren’t something Powder could think about. Not in regards to her sister. 

 

She saw Vi come a little bit back to life when they reached the edge of the field and had to start climbing the hill. They still had a fairly soft incline here, compared to elsewhere they might try to climb but Ekko did not let go of Vi’s hand. Even when she started to move her head and look at her feet, look around them, Ekko held tight. When it looked like Vi might’ve tried to let go of him, Ekko held tight. When Vi looked down at Powder and used her left hand to tap Powder’s forehead, Ekko held tight to her right. Vi did not explain the brief tap of a finger with either words or facial expression. 

 

When they finally did all reach the top of the hill, Ekko steered them toward the front of the house and Vander relieved the boy’s free arm of the lantern. A few moments more and the lantern hung on its nail beside their front door, Vander’s lean-to was shut up again and Vi managed to convince Ekko to let go of her hand with a silent tug. Vander paused near the front door as Vi approached him, then turned and sat down with her back to the wall, just below the lantern. Powder watched for Vander’s response to this but it was honestly not comforting. 

 

Vander looked down at Vi for several seconds with an expression that smacked of resignation and then nodded, pulling open the front door to go inside. 

 

“Don’t you stay out too long if it gets cold.” He didn’t look at any of them as a little bit of light from a higher-than-expected fire in their hearth danced across his recently shaven face. (This time he’d avoided cutting himself as badly as the last.) “Ekko, come inside for a second, okay?” 

 

Powder reluctantly watched Ekko go, frowning as he shrugged at her and slipped by. He hadn’t said anything. None of them had until they reached the door. The closest to a conversation she’d gotten was the friendly gesture he’d given to her when she first reached them in the field. Ekko disappeared inside behind Vander and didn’t shut the door completely. 

 

It hung half open. 

 

She could watch the firelight from the fireplace play across the doorstep. 

 

Powder turned her attention back on Vi and moved to sit down beside her. Vi did not jostle. She only looked down at her right hand which Powder thought was stained with dried blood and might have some kind of wound in the palm. Then she looked a few inches above that hand and probably at the ground. Or through it. Powder scooted close enough Vi could’ve hugged her or she could’ve hugged Vi but she didn’t. Powder left her sister some space even though she badly wanted just that brief normal reaction to know Vi was alright. 

 

She continued to feel total dread imagining what came next. So maybe she expected to feel relief when, half a minute later, Vi finally opened her mouth to speak. Gray-blues locked on the darkness where their well sat, Vi’s voice came out flat and blank without much feeling in it. It was also hoarse and raspy. Which made sense with all the screaming, loud enough it had echoed through the night and momentarily made her think some kind of animal was being hurt. 

 

“I’m sorry, Powder. I’m going to really try this time, okay?” It didn’t sound like her sister really wanted an answer. It almost didn’t sound like Vi knew what the words passing her lips really were. Like she was making silly sounds. “I’ll try to be a better sister.” 

 

Powder didn’t know what to say, but she believed that Vi meant it. The thing was… she’d never thought Vi was a bad sister. 

 

She just wanted her sister not to be so angry. 

 

Powder eased in and grabbed onto Vi carefully. She did not like the monotone in her sister’s voice but she was more scared by the way Vi sat in her seat rigid and did not return the hug. The whole damn night was scary. 

 

“You are a good sister,” she told her, and felt no embarrassment at saying so. She also got no response, though and wasn’t sure if Vi heard her. Powder kept Vi’s right hand off of the jacket and the pants Vi liked so much, instead setting it down on the grass. Otherwise, it’d stain. She would’ve been worried about the hand normally, but it seemed like it’d mostly stopped bleeding. 

 

It took a lot of control not to ask questions but she didn’t. Vi brushed a few leaves off of her right arm, but Powder didn’t know to look at it and wouldn’t discover what held them there yet. 

 

Eventually, Ekko came back out front to get them. 

 

“Hey,” Ekko spoke for the first time since making it home. He’d changed into a different, darker gray shirt. “Powder, Vi?” She looked up from watching the patch of earth her sister was staring at and trying not to wonder what Vi was really seeing there. This got Vi’s attention enough to turn her head Ekko’s way when Powder met his eyes. The only times she could really remember Ekko talking in this voice, it was to one of the younger kids in the ‘shelter’ (read here, abandoned building with people sometimes looking in on the people inside) he lived in in the evenings. Or, it was to Powder herself after a really embarrassing freakout. 

 

This time it was for Vi. 

 

“Vander thinks we should all sleep inside tonight. So let’s go in, okay?” Powder watched her sister even as Ekko did and felt similar relief to what she saw on his face with Vi cricked her neck and seemed to come back to herself a little. Powder still hurried to her feet before Vi to offer a hand to help her up. She was surprised (not to mention closer to pulled off her feet than she wanted to admit) when Vi took it and hauled herself up. 

 

They crossed the threshold into the house. Vander was sat on the floor near their cooking corner because his bedding was still in the lean-to. Vi’s was still wet from Vander’s bucket spilling earlier. Powder had almost forgotten. It was in the wrong spot, though. 

 

Standing just a foot or so from Vander, Claggor poured a glass of water which, judging by the way he was trying to get Vi to look at him by stepping into her line of sight, must’ve been for her. The older girl only shook her head twice and moved right to her soggy blankets. 

 

“Vi, you can take the bed tonight,” Claggor tried to offer, as it was his night in it. Vi did not answer. She just sat down with a heavy thud on her bedding which had been moved to lie between where Ekko and Powder normally slept, instead of just to Ekko’s left. Now lying wrapped up in Claggor’s blanket, Mylo didn’t acknowledge their entrance.

 

Powder ignored him right back. 

 

Powder was grateful someone, probably Ekko, had swapped Ekko and Vi’s spots because she’d been about to request Ekko trade with her, anyway. She wanted to  be close to her sister a lot more than she wanted to be in the corner of the room that night. With a little bit more light now that they were inside, Powder settled onto her own bedding. Guided by hearthlight and a little less immediate panic she noticed things that the lantern almost directly over their heads outside had hidden. 

 

Vi had little scratches almost everywhere Powder could see skin. They made Powder think of one of those little jagged bushes she’d stepped in once a week prior. One scratch on Vi’s right cheek was less than little but seemed to have already stopped bleeding and there were numerous little twigs and even a leaf mixed into VI’s tangled hair. Something, maybe dirt or maybe a bruise, darkened Vi’s throat. 

 

But there were also four very long, already crusted over scratches down Vi’s right arm. Debris, leaves, plant matter stuck in what must’ve been the drying or dried blood from these wounds. Vi flopped over in her soggy bedding and rolled onto her side, facing Powder. The scratches were pressed down against the floor, after this. If Vi noticed the pain or the wet blankets or the smaller wounds across her body, she did not react to them. Those four scratches down Vi’s arm stood out to Powder the most. 

 

They didn’t look like twigs. 

 

They looked like they’d been made by fingernails. 

 

Opposite of Ekko, Mylo lay where he was when they entered, turned on his own side so he only had to look at the mattress of the nearby bed and not at any of them. Powder didn’t remember hearing him saying a word since he’d come inside and told the ceiling of the room that Vi had run off. This was what had first prompted Vander to start pulling on the boots he’d just taken off in a huffing rage that had made her hide her face to begin with. 

 

Powder remembered how mad she’d been watching Vander and Ekko leave the house to start down the hill. Then the screaming had reached their ears and eventually Claggor had gone back inside while she stayed out and listened. 

 

Now Powder wanted to know what happened.

 

Neither Vi nor Mylo spoke for the rest of the night, so the first test of whether either would go back to normal or whether there would be peace or whether everything was about to really, truly go bad would be in the morning, probably. All Powder knew was that even if Vander was to kick Vi and Mylo out of the house, she’d be going with her sister even if she had to sneak out in the dark to do it. 

 

Maybe they could even go to Airus. Maybe someone there could help them. Maybe Claggor and Ekko would come, too. Maybe Vander would take it all back. 

 

Maybe they’d just starve and die. 

 

Powder did not expect to sleep. She just laid in the quiet and the fear and kept her eyes and mouth shut. 

 

Sleep did eventually come to claim her and with it came dreams about the Lanes, cobbles covered in blood, while she tried desperately to steal food from carts passing by. The drivers always threatened her with Enforcers or shoved her back so hard she fell and hit her head. One pulled a knife. The whole time, The Last Drop waited across the street, sign lit and windows showing a full house. 

 

Dream Powder hadn’t been sure what would’ve happened if she’d gone inside. 

 

That sleep, unpleasant as it would later be in retrospect, ended as abruptly as it had begun. 

 

It ended because she was bumped into by someone swinging their arms. It ended because the morning was coming and it had to be as disturbing as the night before. It ended because a hand bounced off her chin, not hard enough to really hurt but hard enough she could not sleep through the ache and the shock. Powder’s eyes opened wide all at once and she sat up, shoving her bedding down toward her ankles as quickly as she could. The air was full of the sound of snoring but it also held movement. Beside her, someone had pulled Vi’s covers up around her shoulders at some point in the night and her sister was thrashing. That was the only word for it. Thrashing. Like she was trying to fight someone off of her only the someone was a blanket wrapping around her. The movement quickly became so violent, Powder had to scoot away and press against the wall. 

 

She was not the only one awake, though. 

 

Ekko, coming close to taking an elbow to the face, shoved Vi as hard as he could while sitting up and whispered sharply for her to ‘wake up’. The sound her sister made in response was like someone had sucked all of the breath out of a shout and then Vi inhaled and her eyes opened and Powder knew it was over. But Powder heard a shuffling off in front of her in the near darkness where the only light was a few nearly dead coals in the fireplace. 

 

She barely made out Mylo’s heavy eyebrows in the darkness. From the bed beside him, she heard movement and creaking and Claggor sat up. Mylo rolled over and buried himself in his covers. 

 

Only Vander continued to snore, seemingly unaware. 

 

Three seconds of a dazed Vi looking around the dark left Powder holding her own breath and then Vi sat up and unknowingly mimicked the way Powder had sat for ages waiting for her return the night before. Vi pushed up and pressed her back against the wall behind her, dragged her filthy booted feet up her own bedding and pressed her forehead against her rising knees. 

 

“You okay?” Powder whispered to Vi, cautiously. 

 

“Yes,” the girl told her knees. Powder mostly saw her sister’s unusually messy, twig-filled hair. It was longer than she could place it being in years.  “Just a bad dream. They’re not here. I don’t hear them. ” Powder didn’t ask any questions but she wondered to herself the last time she remembered Vi waking up from a nightmare. She wasn’t sure she could remember such a time. 

 

Slowly but surely, Vi settled back against the wall and did not lie back down. Vander was still asleep, his unnaturally loud snore a good promise of that. When neither Claggor nor Ekko moved to get any further up and, eventually, Claggor settled back down in the bed, Powder tried to go to sleep. Tried not to watch Vi staring down at the floor. Tried to ignore her worries for her sister and her fears that somehow, everything had changed. 

 

She had hoped they’d feel sillier when she woke up. 

 

After all, Vander had taken each of them in by choice. He always thought about them and talked about the importance of protecting the family, keeping it together. He always seemed to know when Powder was at her lowest even if he didn’t always know how low that was. He was their father and he paid attention and he cared. 

 

They hadn’t been born as his kids, though. One day, one really bad day when everything had changed, he’d decided to take them in. 

 

What if all it took for the opposite to be true was one day, one really bad day when everything changed? 

 

If last night wasn’t that kind of day, what day was?

 

Powder tried to go back to sleep. Claggor occasionally shifted in his sleep or stopped snoring all together, making her think there was a good chance he had woken up. She could hear nothing from Ekko, or Mylo or Vi. Even lying in the dark so close to her sister, she heard nothing but the sound of breathing. Vi just sat and did not speak. 

 

It was almost as scary as the screaming had been. 

 

Powder slept fitfully for what felt like a couple of hours. Again and again she jerked awake at imagined sounds and bad thoughts that crept in and out of her head in the form of half-shapen dreams of running from Deckard down the main road through Airus and not recognizing any of the buildings or homes on the street. Eventually, she stopped trying to sleep. She kept her eyes closed and listened to the breathing in the room. Mostly her sister’s.. 

 

Powder was tense, neck and back muscles aching by the time she gave up and opened her eyes. The faint outline in the dark that had to be her sister had not moved since she’d first sat up. Powder didn’t say anything to her, not even when she too got up and joined Vi, resting her head against Vi’s shoulder and hoping she would speak first. Vi did not speak first. 

 

Slowly but surely the morning rolled in. Claggor stirred five or six minutes before Ekko and only whispered a good morning after getting the fire going low in the fireplace and turning to find her and Vi sat up. He looked a little taken off guard, as if he hadn’t realized. Powder guessed he hadn’t seen them up through the sleep in his eyes. 

 

It seemed like the embers had nearly gone out overnight. 

 

Mylo moved just enough under his bedding that Powder marked when he woke up. He did not roll over or speak to anyone himself. By that time, Ekko had already snuck out the door to find a place to do his morning business. They really needed a better solution for that but for the first time Powder didn’t know if she’d be around to see it. 

 

Had they finally been enough of a problem that Vander might give up the responsibility and trouble of dealing with them?

 

For Ekko, Mylo and Claggor, the morning was spent in uncomfortable silence and poor attempts to sleep - or to fake sleeping. Powder was alarmed to find she couldn’t even begin to guess what Vi was doing or thinking or feeling sat beside her in the dark and almost entirely unresponsive. She, though, very quickly lost herself in panic kept in check only by the expenditure of energy through a slow, steady fidgeting back and forth. Rocking. Tapping her legs with her fingers. 

 

This went on unabated for a few minutes before Powder’s left hand was grabbed slowly but unexpectedly by Vi’s right. She could feel dried blood and scabbing along her sister’s palm, but did not move her hand as Vi held loosely to it. Powder stopped the drumming and just tried to focus on the fact that Vander had never shown a sign that taking care of them might be something he’d ever quit on before the night prior. 

 

She was still trying to calm her fears down with that kind of thinking when Vander began to stir in the blankets he’d brought in from the lean-to at some part of the night. Powder ceased moving at all and squeezed tightly to Vi’s hand with her own for the first time in some minutes. A few more seconds passed and Vander’s breathing picked up. She caught sight of him sitting up and lowered her eyes. Waiting. 

 

Another small pause passed before she heard a yawn. 

 

“Mornin’, everyone.” It was Vander who broke the silence that none of them had dared break for hours. With two words, the anxiety drove up through her throat as a stifled sob and she exhaled shakily. Vi’s face didn’t change. She didn’t look up or talk but Powder knew her sister was still there with them when the girl squeezed her hand, back. No one else moved or spoke for a few more seconds and then Vander’s voice, still gravely from sleep, kicked back in. He did not immediately match any one person’s eyes. “Powder. Violet. Ekko. Claggor. Mylo. Let’s get the day started, okay?” 

 

And, just like that, they did. Claggor kicked his way out of his blankets and scooted off the edge of the bed, not having to be careful not to wake up or step on Vi since she was already sat up. 

 

“Gonna go take care of business,” he announced in a sleepy, gruff voice. She watched as Claggor fished out his goggles from his bag, placed them on his head and wondered for the first time why he wore them everywhere. Mylo, reluctantly, grunted something that might’ve been words, and also pushed up. Neither one bothered with their boots as Mylo followed Claggor out the door. Powder lifted her head to find Vander holding their pot, full of water and ready for the morning’s meal to begin. 

 

He hadn’t even started to fuel the stove though. The door hung open and the chamber was empty. By the light of the fire Claggor had stoked earlier, Vander was watching Vi, beside her. His face was sad and very tired and even worried. What Powder didn’t see on it was anger or any sign that he was actually about to try to throw any one of them out of the house. Guiltily, Powder looked back down and away from the man. 

 

She’d told herself time and time again throughout the morning, hadn’t she? He was their father. He loved them even if he didn’t always know how to say it. Sometimes people say things. It doesn’t mean they mean them, she tried to remind herself. It didn’t help, though. Powder couldn’t break the fear that he might’ve meant it last night even if he didn’t this morning. Next time there was another blow up like that, he might just decide he’d been right after all. He could just throw someone out. 

 

This whole time, everyone could’ve just… gone away. All at once. 

 

When Ekko whispered her name across Vi, Powder found she couldn’t answer him. 

 

“Vander,” Powder started. “Please don’t - “ She looked up to try to watch him but found it too scary to do. “Please don’t make us leave.” Powder didn’t have to see the pot to understand the next sound was of it hitting the stovetop, hard. Like she’d made him angry. “We’re gonna do better. I can do better.” The words sounded familiar to her but she was having trouble thinking past the end of the sentence. “So there won’t be as much fighting and no one has to go anywhere.” 

 

“Powder, stop it.” She closed her eyes tightly when the man spoke from across the room. “Powder. I need you to look at me, because I need you to really fucking hear me.” Vander cussing was odd enough before all of this. Powder had never heard him cuss at her. She lifted her head a little. “Open your eyes and look at me, Powder.” She did. Beside her, Vi stirred a little and had also lifted her head to look through bleary eyes at him. 

 

Vander crossed his arms over his chest and with a face steady and firm as any other he’d ever worn, he spoke directly to her. 

 

“I don’t care what I said when I was being a bullheaded bastard. There is nothing that could happen that makes me throw anyone out of this house. There is nothing that you’ve done wrong here to set any of this off. There is nothing that Violet or Mylo could say to me that changes that we are a family. Every. Single. One. That goes for you, too, Ekko.” Vander craned his head to look at Ekko, who at least could hold the man’s gaze when she, Powder, couldn’t. “Love Benzo like a brother and would be proud to have a nephew and him be you. Neither of you, none of you,” he corrected as they heard the door start to open. “None of you have done or said or thought or felt a damned thing that changes that we are family.” Powder craned to look around but whoever was in the doorway hung back for a second. 

 

“Come here, please.” Vander’s voice stayed calm as he asked, so she did as she was asked. Powder got up and, careful not to bump into Vi or Ekko, she approached Vander only to find herself lifted off of her feet when he grabbed her in a single, tight hug for a few seconds. “Powder. It’s so important to me that you all get this through your heads. Family doesn’t stop being family because we fight. Family doesn’t stop being family when we’re far away from each other or when we say or do things that hurt each other. The only time family stops being family is when someone makes the choice. I don’t care how angry you all get with me, arguments and fights aren’t going to make me make that choice.” 

 

She grabbed tightly back at him, buried her face into his shoulder and took a deep breath. Because that made sense. 

 

Sometimes bad people had to be cut out but that wasn’t happening here. Just because someone was angry or mean one night, it didn’t mean they were bad people .That they couldn’t make up. 

 

But Powder didn’t think she could’ve kept going without hearing it from Vander himself. 

 

When she was back on her own feet, Vander hauled in Claggor and Mylo from where they’d paused in the doorway. Claggor ruffled her hair, partially upsetting the ever loosening braid and told her not to be ‘stupid’ but Powder just took it as his way of telling her what Vander had. Vander took Mylo by either shoulder and for several seconds watched him before just giving each shoulder a light squeeze and stepping back to give the older boy his space. 

 

Powder didn’t feel stupid , she felt relieved. At least, she did until she sat back down beside Vi, whose expression had barely changed. Vi followed Powder with her eyes when she sat and it was almost a little eerie the way her sister didn’t immediately say anything. The anxiety lessened when Vi just lightly bounced her right shoulder against Powder’s left. Ekko again whispered her name across Vi and Powder tried to smile apologetically at him. After a few moments meeting his eyes, reading that he was sad and worried just like she was, instead she nodded. She nodded hoping it would tell him she was right there beside him in being freaked out about Vi and Mylo and everything else. When he returned it and stood up, she took it to mean the message had gotten through.

 

“I need the bathroom,” Powder admitted before getting up to pass Vi to the door. “I’ll be right back, Vi, alright?” Her sister didn’t move or answer beyond a barely perceptible nod aimed at her own feet. 

 

“Hey, Vander, can I help with breakfast?” Ekko asked. She caught his eyes for just a second and could slowly see the smile settling back on his face. Trying to pretend the night before hadn’t happened seemed silly, but she thought that might be Ekko’s strategy, so Powder thought she’d try it out too. 

 

Breakfast was about what she’d expected it to be. Vander took the only knife they had and, after giving it a wipe down, sliced up a handful of very long stalks of green onion. It joined the rice already boiling away in the pot and once the cooking was done and he’d had time to let it cool, Vander scooped out quite a bit of the rice and onion mixture and did something he’d only done once or twice so far. 

 

Powder watched Vander use his hands to form it into a small (well, small for Vander’s hand anyway,) rice ball. The ones they’d occasionally get their hands on back home usually had fillings, which was probably what had inspired Vander to use the venison and lemongrass as a filling for the last batch. This time they were plain except for an extra sprinkling of salt and pepper (which Powder knew they did not have much left of, either) and the colorful, mostly green specks of onion throughout. It took a little extra time and Mylo looked displeased at the longer wait but in the end Vander lined up twelve pretty big rice balls on the counter and let them come and grab their breakfast. Ekko took care of passing around water and things seemed almost normal. It didn’t take Mylo long to remind her, though, that other people saw the morning differently. 

 

“So,” Powder started, holding one in each hand as she moved back to her own bedding. They were awfully warm. It had to have hurt to roll them so quickly, they must’ve been very hot when he started. She was careful not to risk dropping one. “Zenneene and Sinnan gave me some ideas for better wood for the bows. We can salvage the string from the old ones when we get the new ones ready. They showed Ekko and I what kind of trees to look for.” 

 

“What’s the point?” She had barely managed to sit down when she realized Mylo was talking to her. It was the first thing he’d said all morning and it was already so negative. She glanced sideways to see if Vi was stirring to argue or to go and get her own breakfast. Vander answered the second possibility by bringing over half if Vi’s food probably so as not to fill her hands. Or maybe because one hand was still covered in dried blood. Vi took it, looking briefly up at him and faking a smile. It was still more than she’d done for Powder all morning. “We’re never gonna see anything or hit anything with a bad bow and bad arrows and no one knowing how to hunt. We’re just gonna starve if we try to use those.” 

 

Powder did frown at this. 

 

The new arrows were better than any they’d had so far. The bows did what bows were supposed to do and probably would for a while, still. 

 

She wanted to tell him he was being mean and to just shut up. She wanted to tell him to try and do it himself if he wanted better bows. She wanted to ask him what he’d done to help any of them out since they got here. 

 

She didn’t. 

 

Because Mylo sounded honest and anxious. Not like he was trying to insult her but like he just didn’t think anything good could happen. 

 

Then again, that was only because Mylo didn’t think she could do anything right. Now he was also doubting Ekko, though. She looked over at Ekko to see how he reacted but when he shrugged and sat down the last cup full of water, settling the pitcher on the floor by the counter, she huffed. 

 

“Really,” Powder promised Mylo, looking directly at him. “I think they’ll work way better, with the new wood.” 

 

“Agreed,” Vander chimed in. Powder had to admit she’d been hoping he’d say something to Mylo. Vi wasn’t wrong about that. It would only make things worse if she said that, though. “We’ll try to work it in tomorrow, when I’ve got at least you and Ekko back all day.” Across the room, Claggor grimaced. 

 

“Sorry about that,” he started. “I know we’re not around as much.” 

 

“Nothing to be sorry about. What you three are learning is useful for your futures. Doesn’t hurt us to have folks around who know how to make things from scratch, either.” This time, though, Mylo rolled his eyes at Vander and Powder didn’t feel too sorry for him when he started to basically accuse her, Ekko and Claggor of being lazy. Disguising it as a complaint didn’t hide what he was actually trying to do. 

 

“But it does mean we have to do more work here by ourselves.” Mylo was carefully holding one hand under the riceball he’d just bitten into. It was threatening to crumble. Powder looked down at hers wondering if that meant they were too dry or something. He directed his next question at Vander. “What happens when we have to harvest? Do they just get a free pass?” 

 

Powder didn’t try to measure Ekko’s response because even if he was calm she wasn’t. She was angry and scared that if she said Mylo was being a jerk, it’d start another huge fight. Beside her, Vi stared right down at the ball of rice in her hand. She had been doing so ever since Vander gave it to her. This was worse than spacing out. This was the sense that her sister wasn’t there with them taken to the extreme. That thousand yard stare from last night. 

 

Vi hadn’t actually moved since Vander handed her the food. Like she’d been staring through it ever since taking it from Vander and looking at Vander directly for the first time that morning. 

 

“Of course not.  We’ll all do our work, as much as we can. We’ll make whatever changes to the plan as we have to. Things’ll work out.” For Vander, that was the end of the matter. He looked ready to get the house in order, clean up the scraps of inner bark he’d been making twine with and start doling out assignments for the day. Even as he hunted down a shirt to change into, though, Mylo continued his insults. 

 

“I mean, Powder can stay back. Vavros doesn’t need a j-” 

 

“Shut up.” Powder looked Mylo right in the eye and spoke as loudly as she could. Vander froze in the corner of her eye and the fear she’d spent the morning in rushed back in. This isn’t helping. This isn’t helping. I’m messing up. 

 

“Go shut up yourself,” Mylo replied. He sounded bored where she’d sounded angry. He bent down to take a bite of his riceball but almost at the same time Vi stood up all at once. The movement paused everything else in the room. It was mechanical in nature, with all the feel of a simple machine running, the repetitive clang-clang-clang of cymbals on one of those toy monkeys. Two seconds of silence passed before Powder slowly stood back up herself and reached out to Vi. 

 

Mylo lifted his head and he did not look bored. Vander stood by. Quiet. He did not match Powder’s eyes when she tried to catch his. Some fear of his own showed on Mylo’s face and Powder reached up to take Vi’s hand. Hers was shaken off, softly. Vi’s eyes were darkened by a heavy brow as she stared down at Mylo from three or four feet away but her fists were clenched and mouth closed. Powder thought her implied promise not to fight with Mylo anymore was already out the window but then Vi’s eyes passed once across the room, just as empty. They skipped from Vander, to Ekko, to Powder and Claggor and then Vi stepped over Mylo’s outstretched legs, crossed to their little kitchen corner and reached right around a scarily silent Vander to grab the nearly empty water pitcher from the floor. 

 

When she stood back up and walked back toward Powder, she thought Vi was going to sit down with it and eat the food she’d sat by the backpack that served as her pillow. Instead, Vi turned the pitcher of water upside down above Mylo’s head. He didn’t even have time to wince, instead looking gobsmacked and confused as he, his own backpack pillow and blankets were splashed with cool water. Looking like a drowned rat, he stared up at Vi in silence as if she was not the person he had expected to see there. 

 

He did not know what to say and Powder liked that just fine. Now there were three sets of bedding that needed dried in the sun. Powder had almost entirely forgotten about Ekko’s getting caught in the crossfire the night before. 

 

“Hey. That’s not okay. Not acceptable.” This, finally, was what brought Vander’s voice out. Vi wasn’t shouting or yelling and she didn’t throw a punch or even raise a fist. This was what made Vander finally lift his head from his breakfast and his preparations for the morning. Powder was starting to understand why Vi was mad at him, but that didn’t mean she thought it would help anything. Maybe Vander was right and sometimes you had to accept you could get mad at family. That didn’t mean it felt good or it fixed problems. 

 

“I’m going down to the stream to get some water.” This was Vi’s only answer. She crossed back to the counter to set the pitcher down and grab a bucket. Her voice didn’t waver from its monotone at all. Judging by the lack of change in her face Powder could’ve assumed her sister hadn’t heard Vander at all. 

 

“We have the well,” Ekko whispered her way. 

 

“Then I’m going to the stream to clean up a little. I’ll pull up some water on the way back.” Vi took two long strides to the door and then turned back to look at Powder for no more than half a second. “Powder. You want to come with me.” 

 

“I do?” she asked. 

 

“You do.” Powder carefully grabbed both of her riceballs and the one of Vi’s she’d already received but not eaten. For a second, she worried Vi wouldn’t slow down to let her get on her boots. Then she realized that those boots were still in place from the night before. On her feet. Powder grabbed at her backpack and Vi’s: they at least had a change of clothes for each of them. She hurried up to follow her sister out the door. Vander didn’t try to stop her, even when Powder turned her head and looked back at him to see if he was going to. Ekko didn’t try to follow, instead choosing to sit quietly and eat. He still looked conflicted when Powder shut the door behind them. 

 

“That was… different,” Powder said. She wanted Vi to start talking. She wanted Vi to smile or to frown. She wanted her sister to look at her or just to look up and around them at the pre-dawn morning view of the hill. Vi pulled on the jacket Powder had somehow missed her grabbing in stiff, jerky movements as she headed right for the eastern slope of the hill, bucket discarded by the door. Powder hefted her bag up over her left shoulder but Vi’s hung heavy in her right hand. 

 

The brawler glanced over, reached out and took her own bag from Powder without much warning and then broke the silence. 

 

“Yelling wasn’t working.” No fire seeped into Vi’s voice. No life. “Maybe a night drying out everything will.” It just didn’t sound like her sister. Powder watched Vi’s back as the girl continued forward and drew up next to her. This was how she caught the shaking of Vi’s arms and shoulders. Powder couldn’t mistake that. 

 

“But you’re still mad, aren’t you?” she asked. 

 

The first emotion Powder had heard out of Vi since her shouting match with Vander and Mylo the night before erupted into her sister’s answer. She knew what shame felt like and knew what it sounded like and it was so wrong that shame was what grabbed hold of her sister and dragged her back to the world. Vi was usually strong and confident and eager and lately, yes, angry. 

 

“I am and I don’t know what to do with it and I’m sorry.” The words started out as slow as before but as emotion spread into them they came quicker and quicker. Powder stalled on the spot. The apology sounded different than the one the night before. This one was wrong. It was gross and it made her nauseous and somehow even worse because it sounded real. Powder had the feeling that if she didn’t find some way to change the subject or do something she was on the verge of seeing her big sister in tears.

 

The answer came almost at once, though it was unexpected. It was also simple. 

 

“Vi, I have an idea. Can you - can I catch up with you?” 

 

“Okay,” Vi answered. The word became a sigh, became a shaky exhale before something much closer to the flat affect replaced the guilt. “Powder, be careful okay?” 

 

Powder didn’t answer, what she did was as Vi started her descent down the hill, she doubled back to the shed, hurriedly eating at the breakfast occupying her hands. She pulled the door open a few seconds later, cold in that way that had nothing to do with the temperature. That sense holding one’s breath against a distant but approaching trouble. Looking up, quietly, she acknowledged how their little patch on the shed roof of bark shingles and debris blocked the view of the sky, and grabbed the first two empty grain bags she could feel out with her hands in the dark. The small bundle of them stashed beside the door were intended to be used to store threshed grain seed they were supposed to harvest in the coming weeks. (The threshing was something she and Ekko might finally be able to work on making a machine for.) 

 

Powder didn’t think two missing bags would be enough to cause them too much trouble, though. She shoved them into the mouth of her own backpack and then put it into place on her back so she could more easily feel around in near complete darkness. She did so cautiously until she reached what she was looking for: atop an old crate, wrapped in a little bit of cloth, was a jagged rock a little bigger than her palm that Claggor had shaped and cracked away at until it might serve as a back up knife for if their real one wasn’t available. 

 

Powder didn’t intend to go back into the house for the real one, so this would have to do. 

 

Knowing Vi was going to inevitably have to wait for her on the edge of the farm, Powder didn’t waste a lot of time on her idea. With the stone in hand she wandered a bit away from their typically trodden path between the house and the shed, grabbed a bunch of grass in the other hand and cut away at the base of the blades. She did this four or five more times, holding the cut grass against her side with her left arm until she was satisfied enough to try the idea that had just occurred to her. 

 

It came from memories of watching her sister training to fight and from Vi’s frequent complaints they didn’t have a lot of the gear she wished they did to help teach Powder and Ekko. 

 

In the end, Powder was forced to do this a couple of dozen times just to get the effect she wanted on the first bag, stuffing it near to bursting with curled and wrapped bunches of grass blades until it began to hold a round shape on its own. Once she had an idea of how much grass she needed, though, the second one only took another minute or so to gather materials for. To her surprise, the sharpened stone served as a nice knife, letting her make quick, straight cuts through pretty big bunches of grass. 

 

If she’d had the idea a few days later, it might’ve been a faster process, still. Vavros had already promised to have two sickles ready for them before harvest time. They were supposed to be started any day now. That did cut into their pay, as Vavros took a silver piece a week from one of them at random until costs were covered. It didn’t matter, though. They had nothing out here to spend money on other than food and tools and maybe clothing and while none of them were as easy to come by as they might’ve been in Piltover or even the Lanes, she had an idea of how much the materials cost Vavros to make these tools. 

 

They weren’t as expensive, even with how rare it was to apparently get traders to come out to Airus. 

 

Powder took each bunch of grass she cut and curled it up loosely against another to make a thick mat of them and when the second bag looked almost the same as the first she tied them both just barely shut and began to descend the hill to catch up with her sister. Vi was nowhere to be seen when Powder began to look for her and this drove her to some concern until she finally caught sight of the girl right at the edge of the farm. Barely visible in light that had not yet really reached from the far edges of the sky to the ground, Vi hadn’t abandoned her. 

 

It was just dark and Powder wasn’t over the night before or the rest of the morning so far, for that matter. 

 

Her backpack in place on her back and her surprises for Vi trapped under one arm, she came to join Vi, who did not immediately ask what Powder had turned back for. That was okay by Powder: now that they were out she wanted to get through the woods as quickly as possible and to the stream. She had never been out in them this early in the morning, because other than that first time she had not again gone hunting. All it had taken was asking Vander once to let her sit it out and he assumed she couldn’t do it. 

 

Him and everyone else. 

 

The longer she was outside the longer her eyes adjusted to the light levels, though. Vi didn’t say anything at all when Powder joined her, only nodded and led them into the woods. Powder trusted that they both remembered the way to the stream, so didn’t think too much about directions, just tried to squint and stare and see what she could see under the canopy.

 

It wasn’t much. The little bit of light in the distant corners of the morning sky had not yet succeeded in invading the woods. By this point, the path they usually followed was clearer and wider than it had been when they first arrived and normally little things stood out to her as familiar in the lines of the trees and underbrush along the way. Now, Powder just hoped her sister could see better than she could. 

 

This was confirmed a few cool, dark and unnerving minutes later during which Powder looked about herself for the shine of eyes in the gloom but found none. At first, she thought she might’ve imagined the sound of the still calmly flowing stream and then it came clearer and louder. As soon as they reached the shore of the creek, Vi began to kick off her boots and shed her pants. Her sister looked eager to wade into the water and clean up but Powder still wasn’t that brave. 

 

She sat down her backpack and the two bags that served as her surprise and chose not to push them, yet. Vi would ask or she would bring it up afterwards. Relieved by the dark morning that might serve as a cover, Powder took to the edge of the stream and had her own bath. (If one could call it that without a tub or soap.) Considering she’d been able to bathe before dinner the night before, this felt a little unnecessary but if nothing else she hoped it would help her feel better. 

 

She also washed away dirt and mud on her hands from the grass gathering. 

 

Her sister was a little more slow and deliberate about the process. Powder hurried to rinse herself down, scrubbing at any patch of skin that looked discolored or anywhere that was typically dirty so she could get back out of the water and dry off. Vi on the other hand, carefully cleaned away dried blood from her right hand, washed away dirt from wounds and worked fingers through her wet hair to knock loose twigs and whatever else might be in the mess, as well as tame it. This reminded Powder to do the same, so she started the tedious process of unbraiding her hair while she sat in a patch of grass that would normally be sunny during the day. 

 

It was probably time they got their hands on some more soap from the village, because even daily rinsing and meticulously finger-combing through her very, very long hair was not enough to keep it from build up and getting greasy. Once that happened, it meant tangling would follow and untangling her hair when it was really bad was a nightmare. Especially because the one thing Powder would not risk was damaging it. She liked her hair long. It was just hard to keep healthy. 

 

While Powder tended her hair and Vi stopped to wash spots that must have had wounds Powder couldn’t see in the dark, she let herself wonder if Vi had just gotten scratched up in the woods last night. After all, there didn’t look to be any signs she’d been hurt by an animal or a (another) person and Powder had already seen one or two scratches on Vi’s face or arms that looked like branches. The only sign of any damage done by a person were the long scratches down Vi’s right arm that her sister took the most care in cleaning. 

 

Those had to be from Vi’s own fingers. 

 

Light slowly settled into the sky visible over the stream as Vi wrapped up washing and came to shore, too. Perhaps feeling a little too exposed with the morning starting to brighten, Vi retreated to the thicker shade of the trees where it was still nearly dark. Powder picked up her things and followed suit once she was satisfied with combing out her hair and at least trying to rinse it out. 

 

The rest of her would be dry way before her hair.  

 

When Powder went back to her bag to start getting dressed, she took the opportunity to bring Vi’s bag back to the shade with her, as well as her surprise. The light finally piercing the shade just enough to give Powder a look at Vi’s face told her that the girl was not back to normal. Not even a little. Still, this time Vi got curious about the two bags of grass and once Powder at least had her underwear and a shirt in place (a shirt which was immediately soaked through in the back by her hair) she demonstrated her idea in silence. 

 

Powder untied the top of one of the two, near full to bursting bags of grass. She shoved her hand into the back of the bag, with most of the grass pushed toward the front. The bag definitely strained with the addition of her hand but as she used her right hand and her teeth to pull the strings around it shut, she held her left hand up at her sister. Powder waited. 

 

Powder waited and waited. 

 

Four or five seconds passed. 

 

A little light came back into Vi’s face, but she was very confused until Powder began the process of trying to do the same thing with the other bag. The light brightened. For a moment as Powder struggled to get the other bag tied around her wrist without losing or displacing grass, VI’s eyes widened and she hurriedly reached up to help tie the string around the neck of the bag on Powder’s hand. 

 

“Holy shit, Powder.” All at once it was as if her sister had been gone all night, not come back with Ekko or Vander and hadn’t even reappeared most of their morning so far. It was as if she was finally watching Vi return from running off last night. “Punch mitts!” A little, burlap sack full of bunched up and wrapped grass made Vi smile. I made Vi smile, Powder corrected herself. Relief forced her to laugh as Vi prodded the front of her impromptu mitts over and over as if testing them. Powder was proud. 

 

“We could use these to help you two practice.” 

 

“Not just that,” she told her sister, a little surprised by how out of touch Vi was with how bad she looked and sounded. “It can help you out, too.” 

 

“What?” Vi asked, letting go of Powder’s wrist and running a hand through her own hair to straighten it out. 

 

“You need to work off some steam right?” Powder held up both hands a little higher, almost up in front of her face to make a point. 

 

“What? With you?” 

 

“Yeah, why not with me?” she asked, frowning. Vi wasn’t going to get away with blowing her off this time. Not this time. Not when it was something her sister might actually need. 

 

“But we need to get back to the -” 

 

“-what will happen if we’re gone five extra minutes?” Powder insisted. “Or do you just think I can’t hold up my hands for five minutes?”

 

“I could slip up and -”

 

“You’d never hurt me on purpose. So, what’s there to think about? Why don’t you think I can do this?” When her heart started beating a little harder against her chest Powder realized that part of this might be about her and not just Vi. She stood her ground, though, and didn’t even stop to ask when Vi recoiled a little and looked again, like she might break in a way Powder had never seen before. Vi inhaled, and exhaled then looked serious. 

 

“I know you can. I just don’t want you to think you have to.” Vi took her backpack which Powder had brought nearby and started to dress hurriedly. Powder turned to one side to offer some privacy, which was funny to think about considering they’d just been bathing and air drying a few feet apart. 

 

“Okay, why would I think that?” Powder questioned the brightening woods around them. “This was my idea. Not yours.” Vi grunted while she dug around in the pack. 

 

“Fine, then. Give me a second.” 

 

While Vi finished dressing Powder suffered through the most ridiculously comical trouble she’d made herself maybe ever. With her hands still in the burlap punch mitts she struggled to pull on her own pair of pants. It took effort to pull them up, even more effort to tug the draw strings that held them in place tight and bury them in her waistline to hopefully keep her pants up until she could actually tie them. 

 

“Hands up, Pow-pow.” Powder turned back around to face her sister when Vi spoke and sounded so much like herself. Confidence had snuck back into Vi’s expression and voice via the path left by excitement and light and just a little bit of life. Powder hoped this helped the way even Vi seemed to think it would. Plus, Vi was right. 

 

It would be cool to actually hit while practicing her punches. Maybe they’d actually get good at it. Maybe they could practice better and not have to practice as long. 

 

Maybe her sister would keep smiling, just like this. 

 

“Straight jabs and crosses,” Vi said, voice trailing off and rising questioningly. Powder hurried to get into stance and get her mitted hands up. Immediately the not-tied pants felt a little looser so she gave up rather than risk the embarrassment of them falling down in the middle of practice. The mitts had been a struggle to tighten once even one of them was in place. She hadn’t wanted to take them back off so quickly. 

 

“Sure, but one second.” Vi held her own stance while Powder pulled the string to loosen the bag around her right hand with her teeth. Her sister even smirked a little when she watched Powder try and eventually barely succeed in loosely tying her pants’ drawstring with one gloved and one ungloved hand. Powder didn’t even mind. It was funny and Vi did not look or sound gone. 

 

Once both mitts were back in place and she was back in stance, Vi pushed forward slowly, softly and carefully. 

 

“Don’t let them drop,” Vi warned her. “Or I could mess up and get you in the face.” Powder stuck out her tongue.

 

“No duh!” She started to give Vi a little grief for worrying about her so much when they were just practicing. Before she could go any further, though, Vi’s first punch struck her right mitt. Then the next her left. Powder was not rocked off her feet but it was jarring. It was a little hard for her to keep her balance when Vi threw a really hard punch. There was also the other problem: Vi’s own reactions whenever Powder even responded to a punch were conflicted. 

 

Even though the bags were so full of grass that it was straining with the added mass of her hands inside, Vi’s harder punches stung a little. It wasn’t bad pain, but it was enough that occasionally she’d wince and Vi would start to slow down. Her sister would hesitate until Powder glared at her. Then Vi would get going all over again. This happened two or three times before Vi finally got the message. 

 

When her sister fought, when she really fought it was scary. Impressive, but scary. It was kind of cool from this side of things, though. Especially with Vi having started to teach her how to do the things Vi was doing. It only took Powder a minute of this practice to see something she’d been doing wrong with her own right crosses. Of course, this meant her left hand took the brunt of one of Vi’s right crosses and that had nearly knocked her over the first time. 

 

It was all still a little new but it didn’t make any of it less impressive to watch how Vi did it. Powder was still having trouble with her own crosses and now she knew she was putting too much weight into it. 

 

“You don’t put as much of your weight into the right cross as I thought,” Powder told Vi. She was surprised to find that she was already starting to breathe a little heavier. 

 

“I wondered if that was what you’ve been doing,” Vi said, jabbing forward with a light left jab. That was not as heavy of a hit but she still felt the knuckles of Vi’s hand dig into her. Vi winced sharply as if something hurt her about the punch, but Powder didn’t lower her hands and her sister didn’t hesitate to continue. “That’s probably how I get hit the most, putting too much weight into the cross and them - wham. ” 

 

That wasn’t something Powder wanted to experience so she made a note of it. 

 

Powder didn’t share that her right arm was still much weaker than her left. It was probably obvious. She didn’t bring up that she nearly toppled again when her sister struck hard with her left fist against the right mitt. 

 

It paid off two minutes later when Vi suddenly opened her mouth and spoke as if it were any other day. 

 

“Powder, I know you’re both tired when you get back from Airus on work days but I really want you and Ekko to try and work on your crosses. And I don’t want you to overly focus on your right hand.” Vi threw three very quick jabs and Powder struggled to keep her hands fairly stable. 

 

“What - why!? It needs it, right?” It seemed smarter to her to really focus on her right arm after all of its time not part of the practice. 

 

“Your right arm’s already getting used to all this. Yeah we need to work its muscle back up, but your left arm’s still the one you’ve used the least overall. Your punches with your left could fall behind really fast.” Powder nodded, though it was reluctantly and she caught herself breathing a little heavily as she put more focus on keeping the mitts up and stable. Her right hand did still feel less familiar with everything though. She felt silly all over again trying to teach it, in a way she had been starting not to feel with her left. 

 

The actual exercise of all of the shadowboxing was nice. These mitts just proved to her that she could be doing more to learn all of this. 

 

“If you ever get bored or tired of it, though, I won’t be upset if you stop practicing with me. Just promise that you’ll at least practice alone sometimes. Just a little, to keep the basics down. A quick right jab puts an end to a lot of bullshit if someone doesn’t see it coming.” Vi’s voice quieted a little bit and the fire faded. She sounded sad, again. While it was good her tone wasn’t flat again, Powder was annoyed and set on edge. 

 

This time it was Powder who growled and stepped back, dropping her hands. Vi came incredibly close to what she’d feared might happen before, and nearly caught Powder with a swing like Ekko did once. 

 

“Time out!” 

 

“Okay, okay, but keep your hands up until you get the timeout next time,” Vi scolded. She looked a little confused, all the same. 

 

“Why’d you say that?” Powder asked her. When Vi just blinked, unsure, she continued. “You were having fun. You were happy again. Do you think I should stop?” In retrospect, she felt self conscious for the first time since they’d left the house. 

 

“No,” Vi promised with a shake of the head. “I just… I understand we’re different people and you probably want to do the things you like.” 

 

“I like this,” Powder insisted, raising her practice mitts and glaring right up at her big sister. Vi needed to react. She needed to talk. Powder couldn’t let her go quiet again. Not like when they’d first woke up. 

 

“Do you, really?” Vi challenged. 

 

“Yeah!” Powder almost shouted. Vi smiled but Powder wasn’t quite ready to let it go. “I don’t think I wanna go getting into fights or anything but I like this. It’s fun to learn how to box or to fight or whatever you wanna call it.” 

 

“You mean it? You don’t - you’re not saying it for any other reason?” This confused Powder , now, so she just shook her head and pulled a face like Vi was being dumb. To Powder, she was. It had to come down to it that Vi was looking out for her one way or another, though. “What about Ekko, you think?”

 

“He’s the one who convinced me to ask you again,” she told the taller girl, shaking her head in disbelief. 

 

“Then maybe it’s time,” Vi said, sounding thoughtful and a little excited and Powder was confused. 

 

“Time for what?”  When Powder started to lower her hands, Vi again reached out and put her right hand just below the place the bag was tied around her wrist. She gave it a little look, toying with the grass in the same way as before, poking bits and pieces. It didn’t look playful this time. Maybe it hadn’t been messing around last time either. Her sister was still excited but she also looked thoughtful. 

 

“Well, if we can make two more of these and just move the ‘padding’ around we could make gloves. The kind boxers use when they’re just having matches or practicing.” To demonstrate, Vi started to push the grass around her hand beneath the surface of the bag, but it was actually a little bit of a tight fit. 

 

“And?” Powder prompted. If she didn’t know better, she’d say her sister was ready for them to actually try boxing each other. 

 

“ And, if we can find some way to make protective headgear, you two could practice on each other.”

 

Oh, she actually was. 

 

“What?” Powder asked. “Really?” She was surprised at her own excitement in her voice. 

 

“It’s the next step,” Vi shrugged. “Sparring. If you want. If not, we can keep practicing like this. Either way I’ll have to find some way to make small bags - probably out of this kind of thing. Vi looked up from examining Powder’s creation. “This was really smart. I wouldn’t have thought of it.” Powder forgot to be embarrassed by that praise. The flush in her cheeks was a different compliment. Just the idea that Vi thought maybe she and Ekko were doing well enough to start ‘sparring’, that she was ‘ready’, made her happy. 

 

If she showed Vi she could do things without needing help, her sister would start listening, again. 

 

“By the way, Powder? Thank you.” Watching her sister, Powder was again struck by the fear that maybe she really had almost lost her last night. That Vi had only barely come back at all. Between every dark thought she’d spent all morning trying not to think too hard on and Vi’s violent nightmare, Powder was just more sure than ever that something very bad had happened to Vi. She looked down at her sister’s right arm and the four long gouges down the length of it that were thankfully shallow.

 

Vi moved her arm back when she caught Powder looking. 

 

“Thanks for what?” Powder tried to cover the moment, gazing up only to find that she was being watched closely, with wide eyes full of regret. “I just held up bags of grass.” 

 

“No,” Vi shook her head and wiped the regret from her face. “Guess I’m not making sense.” Her sister quickly wrapped Powder up in a hug, so different from her non-response to Powder’s the night before. “Just, thanks.” 

 

“You’re welcome, I guess.” Powder offered as Vi squeezed her tight enough that her breath, which had already started to slow to normal, almost entirely escaped her. 

 

Once they’d gotten their shoes on and rinsed out their clothes from the day before, Powder and Vi made their way home from the stream. As tired as she felt when they left the house, she felt a little better on the way back. This was a good thing since technically she and Ekko were going to Airus to practice with Vavros and she had very little time to get Ekko and Claggor and get on the road. 

 

She couldn’t help but wonder, though. 

 

What would Vi do at home, without her or Ekko or Claggor? Would there be a fight again? Would Vi still be there when they got back? 

 

For that matter, would anyone? 

 

Powder told herself not to think that way again. 

 

She, her brother and her best friend made it into Airus just after sunrise, though perhaps a little later than usual. Plenty of people were already up and preparing for the business of the day, many going out to hunt judging by the spears and bows while others still carried baskets out of the village into the woods. Yet more were tending one or two smaller “livestock” animals in small pens behind their homes. 

 

The well currently close to the center of the village already had a line forming near its rusty looking little hand pump. 

 

Vavros welcomed them without much pomp and circumstance. As was often the case, he was quiet and to the point when it came to his words, telling them that this morning they would continue working two anvils to craft nails quickly, trading off and cooperating as necessary. Only, he didn’t really use those words. His Piltovan was far worse than Zenneene’s or Sinnan’s, worse even than Caras’. 

 

They still managed to communicate ideas fairly well. 

 

They didn’t exactly ease themselves into it, either, so Powder had to bury the morning’s anxieties under the focus on her work. That wasn’t so hard on the grand scale of things, but it still took a little time and just when she thought she’d gotten into the rhythm of the work, gotten used to the heat of the forge that warmed the metal up and made it malleable, Vavros found his voice, leaning against the doorframe of the little workshop built behind his home and near the forge. 

 

“You know why I make you make nails first?” Vavros asked. Ekko and Powder, who were trading off hammering out a nail on the nearest anvil to the workshop, swapped positions. Powder handed off the hammer. They were trying to match this one to the last they’d produced as perfectly as possible in width and length. 

 

“It’s safer and doesn’t ruin as much metal if we mess up?” Powder asked. Ekko set the hammer aside, frowning at the nail on their anvil. Beside them, Claggor kept going, drawing the length out of the metal with heavy but careful strikes. They’d been doing this, working only on nails and sharpening tools for a week and change and it was just getting to be that, to Powder, it was growing mundane. A little bit. Mundane didn’t mean bad, though. It just meant she was getting confident in it. Maybe even a little more competent.  

 

“Some material can recover,” Vavros answered, his voice stern though only his eyebrows knitting together really spoke of the seriousness of his question. Ekko grabbed the tongs and eased the end of their dark iron nail right back into the heat of the furnace, nestling it among the flame. “Material not reason. Claggor. You know?” Claggor looked up from making more precise, softer blows to the tapering point of his nail. 

 

“Uhh,” Claggor said, lifting goggles from his head as he lowered the hammer. For once, he was not the only one wearing any, either, as Ekko and Powder were both similarly equipped. Protective gear, apparently. “Let’s see. It’s a good simple shape to start with?” For a few seconds, Vavros squinted at Claggor. This habit used to kind of scare or at least worsen Powder’s anxiety. She’d since learned that it was the look their teacher wore when he was considering someone’s words. 

 

“That good reason. I would sound smart if say any of those, but no. Still not reason.” Sometimes, Vavros was severe. In that way someone who was a little stressed and a little stretched thin could react quickly without talking to the people around them about what they were doing, Vavros could come off as distant. She’d finally grown used to it and here he was unnerving her all over again by throwing back his head and laughing. 

 

“Then, why?” Ekko asked him as he eased the nail back out and brought it in the tight grip of his tongs back to their anvil. 

 

“Because,” Vavros started, crossing to a small pile of iron nails that had been forged the day before. He picked one up and held it up at eye level before looking the three of them over. “This is the most important thing we make here. Maybe plow and sickle first, but then this. Without nail, furniture not stay together. Chairs and tables would falling everywhere, people breaking their seats when they sit down. Some roofs fall. Then I have more work to do to put it all back together.”  

 

Powder smirked to herself at the pride in the man’s voice at the last sentence. Perhaps playful, the tone of someone wearied by the prospect of saving the whole village was, at least, a disruption to the disruption. They’d fallen into work that morning almost as quietly as he had. Maybe this was his way of trying to snap them out of it. After all, she couldn’t remember a morning since she and Ekko had started working with Vavros that they weren’t talking while they worked. 

 

The village’s only dedicated blacksmith had no way of knowing what nasty evening or uncomfortable morning had them so quiet. This might have even been his way of worrying. 

 

“I get it,” Ekko nodded seriously, tone even. “Nails hold the village together.” The boy was straight faced but there was no way that answer wasn’t a pun. Powder groaned. Claggor groaned louder, which at least made Powder laugh, so it wasn’t all bad. The smell of smoke from the furnace chugging away in front of them and the heat aside, she liked this part of her day. 

 

So Powder relaxed and told herself to focus on the moment and not the rest of the morning before. 

 

“Very good, Ekko.” Vavros laughed once, though it sounded semi-humorless to her ears. Oddly, this might be the first actual praise beyond ‘this will work’ that Powder had heard him give out and it was on one of Ekko’s puns. She’d begun to think that ‘this will work’ was the prematurely bald man’s idea of high praise and still wasn’t convinced otherwise but she did catch the brighter look on Ekko’s face and the return of his ‘game face’ when he handed off the ball peen hammer to her and moved aside. 

 

Powder rotated back in and got back to work, taking a swing at a small strip of iron intended to help shape the side and draw out the length of their nail just a little bit more. It didn’t do as much as she’d intended, but the metal was still warm enough to work, so she focused on that part of the task, what with the head of the nail already mostly shaped. These were not the nice, perfectly rounded nails she was used to being produced in topside, but had four flat sides, a square head and a wider, sharp point. 

 

Even with her weaker right arm and the smaller size she and Ekko both had compared to Claggor or Vavros himself, the hammer concentrated all the force (as Ekko put it) into the hit just fine. As small as she usually felt in comparison to Claggor of Vavros, the tools didn’t care. The metal didn’t care. As long as they could keep the metal warm and swing a hammer, she could actually do this. 

 

It didn’t hurt that actually getting to make the kinds of things she would’ve dug out of boards in trash piles back home was really fucking cool. Hopefully soon they’d be able to move on to - 

 

“We need start sickles and plowshare for family.” Vavros declared, having not yet gone back to his work. Instead he stayed posed in the same position in the door to the workshop that, in part, separated his back yard from his front. “You need sickles and scythe for all the cutting.” 

 

“Yes,” she hissed, offering her left hand for a fist bump, which Ekko quickly with a glint in the eyes that said he was having ideas. 

 

“Yeah but why the plow?” Claggor asked the man. “We already have one. We could bring it into town, sharpen it. Grind some of the ruse off.” This time, all good cheer left his face and Vavros shook his head, once. It was the gesture of someone who said that the topic was closed. 

 

“Tools carry luck of family who buy them. Family live there before have bad luck.” Powder raised an eyebrow. 

 

“Did they?” Ekko prompted, before nudging Powder to get back to it. She did. If there was any chance that today they finally graduated to shaping a blade and practicing the lessons on bending metal he’d given them themselves, she would hammer out whatever number of nails was needed. Between the three of them, it wouldn’t take long. “Why?” 

 

“First… oldest child taken into military. Then middle. Then youngest leave until he bring you all here.” Powder blinked in surprise behind her goggles and nearly missed the nail altogether with the next blow intended to smooth out one side of the length. “Parents got sick while gone. We bring them to the village to help - but nothing we can do.” 

 

“Powder, you might need to warm that back up.” Ekko suggested, passing her the two heavy leather gloves he’d just had in hand. The ones she should’ve been wearing already. Feeling sheepish and glad Vavros had somehow not noticed, she lowered her hammer and hurriedly put them on. This made dealing with the tongs harder, but safer. Assuming Ekko had not left the nail in long enough before, Powder put it right back into the furnace and paused, stepping back to get a breath. 

 

“New plowshare, new sickles, new ax and new scythe. Then family have own tools and can make more.” Instead of hurrying them on to one of these projects or going back to whatever project he’d been involved with in the workshop, Vavros stayed nearby as he often had during their first week, watching and listening. Ekko engaged him pretty quickly about their plan for a thresher and Vavros focused on the boy while he talked. This gave Powder a little relief in that she didn’t feel hovered over while she finished up the nail they were working on and then carefully sat it aside near the others made that morning to cool. 

 

She’d been surprised by that part, learning that there were some things you didn’t quench to cool them down. Nails were a good example. Quenching made them hard but also brittle. 

 

“I hear of things like this,” Vavros told Ekko when he finished describing their idea of two rollers with shortened nails sticking out of them, rolled together as wheat was fed down, to try and break the wheat up. She wondered just how tall the wheat stalks would actually grow. Would they need to feed them down from somewhere higher up or could they just stand over the machine? “Most families have way to thresh. You have yours. Is good. Perhaps lots of parts, but smart. I help you make these ‘gears’ you want.” 

 

Setting aside the terrible morning, there was one other upside to the days when she worked in Vavros’ forge with her brother and Ekko. It wasn’t a lack of stress. Sure, no one was fighting here and it wasn’t that kind of tense but Vavros had also made it clear how important his work here was to the village. Now it was their work, too. So it wasn’t all fun and games or playing around. 

 

The thing was, she felt like she was figuring something new out about her brother. Like she understood him just a little better now or maybe they just talked more now than before they started. Claggor just seemed different already than he had been back home: he was a little more talkative and open and paying more attention to how the people around him felt. That was really the biggest difference but it was a good difference. It just felt like he wanted to talk more or she could figure out how to make him talk more. 

 

They were still early into it, though. Still learning about metals and how certain ones reacted to certain things and that was really cool, too, actually. Exciting. This angle of things was really something she didn’t think she’d ever get to learn, or at least use, if she was still at home. If she got good at it, she could do more. Make more. That was the part that excited Ekko more than just the learning. Getting to do things. 

 

Claggor was different. He didn’t hate the work but she figured out really fast that it wasn’t the part that made him excited. It wasn’t the part that made him chatty and happy. Claggor liked it when he finished and he was holding something in his hands he got to help make. He liked the end products. She could get that. She liked that too, though maybe not as much as him. She certainly hadn’t stared down at the first nail she’d made with a silly smile on her face long enough that Vavros had had to tell her to get back to work. 

 

Maybe, she thought as she continued hammering away. Maybe it’s how I feel about my ‘gadgets’. Gadgets was Vander’s word for them. To her they were machines like any other. When one of those was finished, when it worked, she definitely got excited. It made her want to laugh at everyone who’d ever doubted her and show them. Maybe they were more similar that way, after all. 

 

Vavros had not gone back inside but instead was inspecting the batch of nails made the day before when there came another interruption to their morning routine. 

 

Someone was knocking on the other door to his little close-quarters workshop. There being no other way for anyone to get where they were, that meant someone had come looking for them. 

 

“Powder, please.” Vavros tilted his head toward the door and then locked eyes with Claggor. “You finish.” Claggor, whose hammer was down because he had just finished his own nail, crossed to where Ekko was getting a long drink from a pitcher on the table out back and tagged in with Powder. Happy to rest her arms anyway, Powder wiped sweat off of her forehead with the back of one gloved hand and probably smeared soot or oil in its place. 

 

She went in through the open back door of the workshop and only slowed for a second to look at what Vavros was working on (by the looks of things he was replacing the cracked handle of a chisel) before opening the door. That was long enough of a stall, though, for the person on the other side to be mid knock when the door opened. Framed in the doorway, her right hand in a fist to knock and her hair pulled back behind her head, Sinnan paused when Powder opened the door. 

 

Powder’s face lit up but a little voice in the back of her head told her she should’ve used that time to brace herself. Almost immediately, Sinnan hurried over the threshold and grabbed Powder in a big hug. It was quick and tight like any Sinnan hug, but still left her feeling warm afterward. She still had to laugh at Sinnan’s energy, and squeezed back. This was far from the first time Sinnan had come by while they were supposed to be working but given that Vavros had yet to complain, Powder stepped aside and let her in. 

 

“You’ve got something here.” Sinnan poked her on the forehead. “And here,” she jabbed at Powder’s left cheek. Powder raised one gloved hand and threatened to return the favor. 

 

“You will too if you keep doing that.” The promise might’ve been friendly but it was heartfelt. Sinnan shrugged as they emerged from the workshop back into the forge area in the backyard. Though, the word yard might have been a stretch: there wasn’t a blade of grass to be found. 

 

“Go for it,” she dismissed the threat. “I’m gonna be covered in dirt and leaves when I go home anyway.” The girl looked down at her cleanly stitched, pale top and frowned. “I should change first. We’re going to be preparing and drying and chopping and jarring all kinds of plants. All day. Mother says it’s time for a ‘ big push’ .” 

 

Claggor turned around to wave one hammer-wielding hand in a way that might’ve been threatening in any other context and even Ekko called out a greeting. Vavros didn’t have much to say, though he did nod at Sinnan in a brief hello. Instead of coming to join them even for a second, Ekko put down his water and threw a third set of gloves on before taking the tongs and beginning to heat up a small piece of iron to begin another nail. 

 

“Why’d you come?” Powder asked, then realized that probably sounded rude. “Not that I’m not happy you’re here.” She hoped the Noxian girl would think the color in her cheeks was from how hot the forge got. Not for the first time she found herself second guessing something said around the redhead with the wide, dark freckles. It was like sometimes her brain just didn’t work when talking to her until it was too late. 

 

Instead of taking offense, Sinnan jabbed Powder in the left arm with one elbow. 

 

“You won’t get rid of me that easy.” Powder lifted one corner of her mouth in a small smile but didn’t miss Ekko rolling his eyes from the corner of her own. Sinnan either did or didn’t comment. “I hear your first bunch of bricks are ready.” This, however, got Claggor’s and Ekko’s attention both. For just a second, there was no sound of metal hitting metal in the forge at all. 

 

“Finally!” Claggor called. This surprised Powder both because she hadn’t thought he was as interested in the project she and Ekko were planning with them and because it had actually only been about four days since they asked Vulci, a twenty-something guy in the village learning from the mason, to put the order in. He hadn’t been sure how many they could send the family’s way at once but a price had already been set and a quarter of the payment already made. 

 

Maybe they’d get a quarter of the order. 

 

“They say they’re leaving soon to bring the bricks and the mortar.” Ekko pumped a fist for just a second and Powder found her smile plastered on her face. The crappy morning was slowly becoming a distant memory. She wished it would stay that way but once she went home that meant facing whatever had happened in her absence and whatever the afternoon would hold. 

 

A pile of bricks, though. That was good. If they just found a little bit of energy, maybe they could start building the kiln in the shed. It already had a hole in it, so that was a good place to make  some kind of chimney. If we can just get our own kiln, we could make bricks, too. It wasn’t too clear what building they were going to work on, yet. It also wasn’t clear how they’d make the bricks. Powder was sure they could do it, though. She was sure she wouldn’t have to buy from Vulci and his teacher again once they got the kiln built. Not if they just got some practice in. 

 

“Been thinking about the roof,” Powder told Ekko, Claggor and Sinnan as she joined Ekko by their anvil. “For whatever building we try and make.” 

 

“Me too. I think we need to do tiles,” Ekko chimed in, animatedly. 

 

For a couple brief minutes, Powder hammered away on the metal Ekko had warmed in the furnace. She was so caught up in talking to the others that she didn’t really feel tired but traded off with Ekko when he came forward and held out a hand for the hammer. Listening to Sinnan and Claggor chatter away about the windmill Orkis’ neighbors were trying to fix on the far side of the village, Powder headed back over to the table their water sat on, poured herself a cup and leaned back against the table while she took a drink. 

 

Then something happened that put the visit in a new light. 

 

“I don’t really know how it works, but the wind turns parts that turn the grindstone,” Sinnan shrugged. “Something must not be turning.” Powder pulled the gloves off to give her hands a little time to air out as she leaned her hip against the table, weight balanced between that and her free hand pressing down against the tabletop. 

 

“It only takes one gear breaking,” Ekko sighed as he turned attention to trying to shape the head of the nail. This was done by hitting the piece of metal just above the shape they’d traded off pulling out of the end of the singular long, thin rod of iron. He balanced the metal, still just orange with heat, against what almost looked like (and basically was) an iron wedge on one end of the anvil. With each blow, he turned the far end of the rod and struck again and the wedge pushed aside the burning hot iron above the nail. This prepared the metal to be broken off with another tool. Powder didn’t know what the tool was called but it both helped break the metal and shape the head of the nail. It was really a cool process. “Or one pulley or chain or anything. ” 

 

Powder was so focused on the work and how happy she was in the moment that she jumped a little when she felt something move under her left hand where it rested on the table. 

 

When she turned to look, though, she hoped neither Ekko nor Claggor had seen the jump. Because she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with the teasing when they found out what had scared her. Having found its way under the palm of her left hand, Sinnan’s right now sat on the table beneath it, palm up. The girl’s fingers closed around her own hand. 

 

It didn’t feel anything like a moment where Ekko might hold her hand while they were running off somewhere and it certainly wasn’t like holding onto Vi’s. 

 

Sinnan held not too tight but not too loosely and didn’t say a word when Powder turned red again. Powder didn’t move her hand either, though. Despite a sense that her arms and legs were suddenly cool and her heartbeat was up a bit from the scare, it felt… nice. The smile she caught on the shorter girl’s face was different than she expected though. A little lopsided and wide, it was a lot like one she’d seen on Caras’ face a few times. 

 

The one he only smiled at Vi. 

 

Powder didn’t mind it but she felt like she was standing too still. She felt like she should be moving or saying or doing something. Anything. Even when Sinnan turned her dark blue eyes away to watch Ekko start to reheat the future head of that nail, Powder felt like those eyes were watching her. 

 

Being neither stupid nor too young to know what was going on, Powder was nonetheless stumped on what to do or say. 

 

In the end, she held Sinnan’s hand while she could and when it was her turn to trade off with Ekko she let go. Judging by the flash of Ekko’s eyes to their hands as he turned back toward her, he still saw before she could hide it. While she got her gloves on and took hold of the tool that would be needed to shape the head of the nail a little more, Sinnan dragged Ekko back over to the table and told him he was sweating too much and needed to cool down. 

 

She was probably right about that. Powder had had to back away from the forge in the middle of whatever she was working on a lot at first. 

 

Powder grabbed the tongs in her left hand and the tool whose name she needed to learn in her right and pulled the nail from the fire. 

 

“That was quicker than last time,” Sinnan told Ekko. “You’re getting better.” For just a second, Powder wanted to remind the girl that she’d been working on the same metal, too. She didn’t quite understand the impulse and when it slipped by, she eased the end of their future nail through the square hole in the unnamed tool, leaned the whole thing against the anvil and pushed. White hot, the force was enough to separate the thin iron that still held their project to the rest of the iron rod and almost immediately she began to beat what metal stuck up over the small square hole down into a wider head. 

 

“I guess.” She could hear the shrug in Ekko’s voice but couldn’t really look up from her work, tongs replaced by a hammer. 

 

“No guess. You’re getting good at this.” Sinnan nudged him. “Say it, or I’ll ask Vavros.” 

 

“What?” He sounded taken aback. 

 

“Admit it,” Sinnan insisted. “It’s good to admit when you’re doing good!” 

 

“I-” 

 

“Oh, mister-” Sinnan started, and then cut off suddenly. When Powder lifted her head, Ekko had one gloved hand over Sinnan’s mouth. 

 

“Fine, fine, I think I’m getting faster at it.” Ekko dropped his hands to his side. Perhaps sensing some disturbance, Vavros looked up from examining the products of yesterday’s labor. Powder quickly finished the nail and knocked it loose from the tool that helped form it. Tongs in hand, she ditched the nail beside the pile of their day’s work and hurriedly put the same iron rod back into the forge to start it heating up so she could begin another one. 

 

“And better,” the apprentice herbalist told him. 

 

“And better,” Ekko agreed. When Powder looked back, he was on the verge of laughter.  Powder turned her attention back to her work but did notice that it was like her left hand remembered the feeling of Sinnan taking hold of it and just staying there. In the little dirt floored, she tried not to think too much about it and get distracted. Still, when she traded off with Ekko and joined their guest by the table again she was a little disappointed when SInnan didn’t take her hand again. 

 

Even the idea of doing it herself was hard to think about without feeling stupid, though. 

 

Sinnan was only allowed to stay a few more minutes before Vavros finished what he was doing on the far side of the forge and cleared his throat. 

 

“Sinnan, time for you to go. You three, finish what you work on, then rest of today we work on the sickles.” This got the attention of each of the wide man’s apprentices, even Powder. Though they’d each been allowed to help on things like attaching the handles to tools or sanding wood for the same purpose, they’d never been involved in the forging part of anything but nails. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, Vavros had once had them take some practice swings at a blade he was forging with a couple of different hammers to demonstrate their uses. 

 

This was way different though. Powder stood straight up by the table and even Ekko hurried to beat out the head of the nail they’d been working on. Once he was no longer swinging his hammer, Sinnan wrapped one arm around Powder’s shoulders, pulled her forward and threw the other around Ekko’s. She squeezed with each arm and then let go. 

 

“I should get out of the way, then.” Sinnan declared. Powder could see that funny smile on her face though, when she turned to look at Powder. It was visible just long enough she thought it impossible Claggor and Ekko would miss it. Worse, even Vavros might see it. Somehow that felt embarrassing. “You’re both excited. Don’t want to distract you.” Powder thought she should say something to this but when Ekko only shook his head Powder shrugged. 

 

“I’ll be busy today when you’re done here so I’ll come over tomorrow when Caras does.” Ekko snorted.

 

“Oh, someone’s coming to see Vi, huh?” Ekko wiggled his eyebrows at Powder but she couldn’t join in on the joking like she might’ve before. 

 

Not today. 

 

There had been times before where she thought maybe Sinnan was just a little extra touchy feely with her friends. Powder had seen plenty of people like that back home. And, sure, Sinnan liked walking around with an arm over her friends’ shoulders. Not just her and Ekko, either, but other villagers she hadn’t gotten to know yet. However, in the (really short) time Powder had known Sinnan, she hadn’t seen the girl holding anyone else’s hand. 

 

She definitely hadn’t seen Sinnan smile like that at someone, in that way that made the freckles on her upper cheeks stretch a little. 

 

Does she ‘ like’ me? Almost as soon as the question occurred to her it felt like one she’d already suspected. A little more surprising was its follow up. Do I ‘ like’ her? 

 

Was that why she felt so weird as she watched Sinnan slip out the front door? It felt like there was something she was missing. Like a joke was going around she hadn’t caught the setup for and she really wanted to know. She felt like the fire in Mr. Pati’s furnace was hotter than usual despite all of this happening in the open air. 

 

“B-bye,” Powder called out even after the door shut. Ekko snickered. It was short but impossible to mistake and as she turned around to find Vavros gathering an actual long ingot of iron for their next project, Powder tried to hide her blush by dipping her head. That much metal was going to take time to heat up and Powder used that time to hang back. She paid as much attention as she could when Vavros began loading not one but two sizable pieces of iron into the fire, one for each anvil. 

 

She couldn’t deny she had questions, though, about a topic other than forging. 

 

Watching the start of one of their family’s new tools and even being a part of it was something, though, and as they divided the labor between her, Ekko and Claggor on one anvil and Vavros on another, she tuned back in fast. She and Ekko hit with less force than Claggor and Vavros but he reminded them as soon as they got started that force was not everything. It was enough to remind her how, even in their first day working with (or for) Vavros, she’d realized how much she’d gotten wrong about making metal tools and weapons and things. 

 

One didn’t, for instance, just heat up iron and beat it into a shape and then - well, it just wasn’t always that straight forward. Sometimes you had to bend the metal, shape it with a hammer, heat it up and bend it more. Sometimes you used tongs and heavy metal pliers. Some things wouldn’t work when the metal was too hot the same way it was hard to shape and hammer metal when it was too cold. There were reasons and times to get some tools really really hot during the process and quickly quench it. There were times you couldn’t or it would hurt the tool. 

 

Maybe her biggest surprise had been that quenching buckets could use a kind of oil in them that most people around here used for cooking oil. Vavros’ buckets certainly did. 

 

She’d had all kinds of assumptions from peeks made at drawings or art or blueprints or just metal tools themselves that had turned out wrong. That just made it only more fun to learn what was right. Sometimes the right answers seemed so obvious she felt stupid at the revelation but all in all, Powder felt like she was doing more, learning more, being better. It didn’t hurt that Vavros didn’t treat her any differently from Claggor or Ekko. 

 

He didn’t doubt her. He didn’t scold her differently or try to baby her. Not even when she got nervous or upset about messing up. 

 

Until the night prior with the argument between Vi and Mylo and everything that followed, the last few days might have been the best since they’d moved to Noxus. Between boxing and starting to learn to make the kinds of stuff she used to rely on dumps for, she felt like she was being better. 

 

Of course, watching Vavros at work had a way of reminding her she had a lot more to learn. 

 

On the other anvil, Vavros made use of the same forge and quenching bucket as they did. He only sometimes called one of them away from their blade to help him on his own. He worked while watching their anvil and instructing them step by step, detail by detail. He often stopped them to use his own work to demonstrate. All that being said, even though he was teaching as much as (if not more than) actually forging and even though there were three of them on one anvil and one of him on the other, there was still a huge gap in progress. 

 

In the time it took them to start getting the metal down to the right width, Vavros had done that and even managed to bend and draw the right shape out of his own metal. Before they finished heating the blade so they could start their first bend, Vavros had beaten his iron shape down into a pretty good approximation of a farming sickle. Even with Claggor taking the lead in bending because of his size and strength, they could not keep up. 

 

She didn’t track how long it took them. Her attention slipped away from matters back home or if Sinnan holding her hand meant something and she focused on heating metal and hammering and how much force she had to put to bend the metal, to curve it and not break it or ruin the work they’d done and have to start over. Vavros still had to tell them several times to slow down. 

 

Still, he did some of what she thought had to be the hardest parts of the process nearly alone. 

 

“Remember,” Vavros counseled as Claggor said as much to Ekko. “Biggest difference between starter and master is time. The longer time you practice and learn the shorter time it take you to do things you learn to do many times for years.”  Powder got his point but the difference was extreme . Guided almost entirely only by his voice, they spent almost an hour switching off following the man’s instructions. When he set aside his own work to come and talk them through it, to counsel them on maintaining proper grip on the hammer and being careful how they hit, she worked more slowly so she could pay better attention. At one point, he had Claggor move to an ‘assistant’ role for Ekko and Powder. At another, the opposite was true. 

 

When she looked up from the work, she could see it was nearly noon, nearly time she and Ekko would be told to ‘go on.’ Vavros swore up and down he still had plenty of work to do on his but she couldn’t help but note the difference between their two products after what had to be two hours. 

 

“Ready when ready,” Vavros reminded her when he caught her comparing the two. “Not before. No rush, or tool fall apart.” Powder shook her head hard. 

 

“I won’t rush. I just hope I’m that good some day.” This made Vavros snort and she wasn’t sure what to make of it because she’d meant that seriously. 

 

By the time she and Ekko were forced to hang up their aprons and gloves and sent packing, Powder realized she had almost forgotten their visitor had come by at all.

 

Almost. 

Notes:

After a slight adjustment of my outline for 18 resulted in functionally an entire chapter being added to this story... well, here we are. I enjoyed this chapter a lot for the sake of the shift happening here and the contrast being drawn between the friendships developing. Also, I suppose, for one scene in particular highlighting a moment that shows us just how far narration broke down at the end of the last chapter. We're nearer the end game now, but this is just one little story about the beginning.

As such, the larger tale is just getting started.

Chapter 20: Chapter Twenty

Notes:

In which Vi tries to keep herself and everyone else together, tries to behave like she normally would and starts to wonder at the futures of those around her.

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

---

Chapter Twenty

 

The rain poured and poured. No matter how badly she wished it to stop, it paid the desire no heed. As a result, Vi frequently looked up the rigid, rusty hunk of metal she was struggling to haul herself up through a wall of her own hair plastered over her eyes. Every couple of seconds, a shout sounded above her so she knew she wasn’t alone on the climb but she couldn’t stall to listen for it. Every second she hung like this over The Bottom and its haze-cloaked tent city below her, her arms and legs threatened to buckle and drop her to her death. 

 

So Vi kept climbing. Left over from some improvement or reclamation effort promised but never fully delivered from, the network of scaffolding was unsafe to stand on, much less climb. It was already stupid as hell to be climbing in the rain. The world smelled of rust, mold, smog and sweat. 

 

“I’m almost there!” The call came from further above her than she expected. Try as she might, when she craned her neck up to catch sight of Ekko, her hair and the rain and the smog and the gloom hid him from view. It was gloom all the way up and all the way down. Vi struggled to hurry and her arms and legs shook. She slowed down and they threatened to surrender. They didn’t hurt but they wavered. There was no correct answer except not to fall. Vi looked and felt around herself as she climbed to try to find a beam to step into and give her arms time to rest. Eventually she was forced to press her face against the edge of the rusted iron she held onto and use it to brush her hair from her face. It only cut her once along her forehead.

 

She’d had no idea she’d let it get this bad. 

 

Vi wanted to shout for Ekko to keep going, but she also felt bad rushing him. 

 

There was no end to the ways this could go wrong but they were doing this for the same reason. 

 

Somewhere above them her sister was waiting. 

 

Considering the night air wasn’t full of the sound of shouting, she had to be unconscious or gagged again. Deckard’s doing, probably. 

 

To Vi’s left and right she could see no cross beams. She couldn’t even see the nearest edge of the quarry that later became The Bottom. It didn’t make a lot of sense. 

 

Nothing did. 

 

“I’m almost there!” Ekko called again, sounding just as panicked as the moment before. 

 

The beam she was climbing, the beam he was climbing above her, began to shake. Once or twice it shuddered heavily and she didn’t even have time to worry for this boy she’d known for so many years. Her right arm gave out mid climb and her left foot failed to find purchase and then it was over. 

 

Then it was over and she was falling. Somehow the beam shook out of view and she turned and readied for the end. The tents grew inexplicably tall through the smog until they looked like - they were - treetops. She was a breath away from crashing through boughs and down to the forest floor. 

 

Then someone shook Vi again and her eyes opened. She sucked in a hard breath. A very dim firelight showed the face above her to be Powder’s, hesitant but firmer than expected. Vi immediately grabbed at the arm that had just took hold of Vi and gotten her to safety somehow. 

 

“Vi? Time to get up,” Powder told her, in a voice that said Vi had to listen. “We’re about to start breakfast.” And Vi realized she was hanging over neither city nor woods, she was not falling. She had been shaken awake. Powder stood beside the bed Vi had gotten to take the night before and waited. Though Vi read nerves in her sister’s face the girl was trying hard to remain calm and neutral and even a little soft. 

 

Vi did not let go of her sister’s arm for a few seconds because Powder was here and not missing again. Because Vi was beside her and not chasing Ekko’s voice (and only his voice) up unsteady scaffolding through a storm. The rain hadn’t stopped entirely though. She had thought she might feel less stupid if she didn’t talk about the nightmares. The look on Powder’s and Claggor’s faces told her that everyone in the room was aware of this one. 

 

Claggor had stopped near the foot of the bed halfway from getting up from his usual spot beside it. He was still rubbing sleep from his eyes in a way that made him look a little childishly uncoordinated. 

 

Still, steady rain pounded down dully on the roof above. 

 

The rain was real; the rest of the dream had not been. 

 

She let go of Powder’s arm and carefully sat up. A quick look around the room found that no one had yet rushed out into the downpour for their morning business. Ekko knelt near the fire, feeding it a couple of quartered logs. Mylo was sat in her usual spot, still, but he was not trying to get any more sleep; he was already changed and holding a bow across his lap. Even his boots were on. Vander, whose hair hung around him in wet scraggly bits that suggested he’d only recently come into the shack from his lean-to, was rinsing rice for the morning’s meal. 

 

If there was anything down in the cellar to add into it, Vi didn’t expect anyone to volunteer for the trip outside. At the very least there was no thunder to accompany the rain, no storm to add to the unpleasant memories of the dream and no risk of poisoned waters sickening the family. 

 

Vi sat herself up against the wall where a headboard should have been and closed her eyes again. The usual sounds and smells of the morning came: shuffling feet, sighing and yawning, smoke from stoking the coals back into flames. She kept out of the way and kept quiet. Around her, having learned a lesson from the last couple of weeks, the others were rolling up their bedding for the day. She needed to do the same and get her blankets off the bed and shoved up into a corner, too. She just couldn’t make herself get up, yet.

 

Her arms and legs didn’t hurt but they felt heavy. They felt heavy in the mornings a lot, lately. She wanted to give herself time to shake that off. Since Ekko and Powder weren’t in Airus for the day, Vi wanted to keep them going on the new punch mitts and keep them drilling through shadowboxing. If she expected them to do the practice, she had to be able to keep up with it, too. The duo were just getting used to the punch mitts. 

 

Vi didn’t want to be too tired to make use of the chance. 

 

Slowly but surely people began to talk. Ekko and Powder spoke on and off about what they wanted to do that day, what would be fun or useful. She thought they were talking around her promise to step up practice, though. Probably because they were worrying about her. Vi wasn’t letting them off that easily. Claggor talked about how muddy he was going to be by the time he reached Airus even if it did stop raining. 

 

“When it stops, I want to go out alone with the bow.” Mylo’s request got Vi’s attention enough to open one eye. Blank faced, Mylo hadn’t really moved from the spot against the wall opposite the foot of the bed. She looked right down the length of the bed at him. He did not match her eyes or anyone else’s. “I think I might have a chance. I know we’re supposed to go in pairs but we know this place better, now.”  She shot a quick look at the little kitchen corner of the shack. Vander was carefully draining away the water from the rice’s soak and wash into a bucket to be tossed out the front door. 

 

Once Powder had said bucket and had thrown open the door to do so, Vander carefully filled the pot from another and started breakfast boiling. 

 

“Okay.” This was the entirety of Vander’s answer. It was slow but firm and final. Clearly, the man wanted to say nothing more on the matter and Vi swallowed her own thoughts right down. She turned her attention back down and closed her eyes all over again. Once the rain stopped and there was light enough to see what they were doing outside (she saw none of that light through the cracks in the blinds on the opposite wall) she, Powder and Ekko could get a little training in. 

 

That would be much, much better than being stuck inside the shack. It might even be fun. 

 

“I need to go with Claggor today, into Airus,” Vander broke a few seconds of silence with the exact same tone in his voice. When he spoke again, it had softened. “I want to make sure we’re paying a fair price for all of this he’s doing for us, all things considered.” Vi again opened her eyes.

 

“Are you worried about something?” she asked him, keeping her own tone neutral for everyone’s sake. She certainly didn’t want to upset Ekko or Powder. The thing was, Vi was worried about things. So it was hard not to hear worry in everyone else. She couldn’t shake the morning’s nightmare from her head and with it she failed to shake the fear that she might start to hear things which were not there, some time very soon. The splash of the water from Powder’s bucket across the ground momentarily cut off conversation before her sister hurriedly shut the old wooden front door. 

 

Powder shivered even though it could not be that cold outside and sat the emptied bucket down.

 

“Not sure,” Vander shrugged. Then he turned to look right at Vi through his own wet bangs and let her in on his thinking. “It’s just that if we were back home, you pay the person teaching for apprenticeships. He’s paying us.” That was true. Vi hadn’t really stopped to think of that. Her hands clenched together in front of her as she frowned. In the Lanes, you taught your family any skills you were lucky enough to have that might help them get by. You didn’t typically spread any of it much further than that without incentive because it meant less time you could be spending feeding yourself. 

 

“Well, they are doing a lot of work,” she offered. “Maybe it’s balancing out?” 

 

“Agreed, saw it ourselves, haven’t we? You lot are learning well and all. If Ekko hadn’t pointed out the differences in the handles and the little imperfections in those sickles, I wouldn’t have known the difference.” Vi looked about to see how this praise was received but Powder wouldn’t meet his eyes and Ekko, though he looked excited at it, didn’t show a lot of pride in his eyes. Only Claggor smiled down at his bedroll beside her. “I just want to make sure we’re not ripping the man off. The plowshare was something else entirely, and the trouble went through to get it delivered. Between that and the gears for that hand crank on the thresher…” 

 

Vi understood what he was thinking. 

 

They owed a lot of their success so far to Orkis and Caras but the tools they had access to because Claggor, Ekko and Powder had basically started working for the village blacksmith were going to make life easier. 

 

“So, I’ll head out when you do,” Vander told Claggor, who had yet to really move much further than he had when she first woke. “Might be a cold, wet trip if it doesn’t calm down out there, though.” Claggor sighed again and started to slowly work his arms and shoulders as if sore. When he did not object, Vi thought this might be a good time to try to get Vander to give her a small concession of her own. 

 

“If Mylo’s going out alone, can Powder, Ekko and I stay around here and work on their boxing? We can go out and try to scavenge something up if you think it’s a good idea, but as wet as it is, we’re more likely to bring back mud than food.” Vander shook his head as he turned his attention back to the pot on the small iron stove beside him. 

 

“Whatever you all do is your choice but I want you to stay close to home. And, Vi, I’m leaving lunch and dinner to you. I might be late, for all I know. Want to see if Claggor here can teach me a thing or two about metal working.” Powder actually pouted the barest amount from across the room before sitting down on the end of the bed Vi still occupied. She thought it was because her sister felt Vander was implying that she couldn’t show him a thing or two but Vi just nodded and grunted an affirmative. She could not tune out the worry. She could not ignore the way her ears strained to listen to the rain and make sure it brought no voices with it. 

 

It hadn’t happened in the days since her hallucinations but she could not shake the idea that, at any point, her own brain would turn on her again. 

 

“What’re we gonna work on, then?” Ekko asked, balancing atop his own rolled up bedding. Vi tried to fix her attitude, tried to sound normal, tried to sound happy. It didn’t work. 

 

“Well, your hooks are getting sloppy as hell - heck - and uh, Powder, I want to nail down what’s going on with your right upper cuts because you gotta get your hands back up and guard after.” 

 

“Upper cuts?” Vander asked the pot in front of himself. “Sounds like you’re really teaching them how to fight, huh?” Something about the words sounded forced. Like he wanted to talk about something else: maybe the nightmares or maybe the argument. Probably just the fact that three short nights ago she was hearing and seeing things, lost in the woods along the roadside and if she hadn’t apparently been screaming bloody murder for ten or fifteen minutes straight they wouldn’t have found her. 

 

Near Vi’s feet, Powder looked nervous at the drawn out silence so Vi tried to end it. 

 

“I am, ” Vi told Vander. “Told you I was. Everything I know at least.” When Vander began to turn around to face her, she hurried to leave him less room to speak. “I - uh - would you help, some time?” This was a ploy. It was a peace offering but also a smokescreen to get him not to ask or say anything more. Not to stop them because she didn’t know what else she could possibly do to stay calm if he stopped the last thing she had to look forward to. 

 

Instead of dissuading her of the idea of training Ekko or Powder, he looked taken aback by the request. Vander nodded after a moment of hesitantly searching her face for something. The scruffy stubble on his cheeks was slowly starting to grow back in. 

 

“Good, but I don’t think any of the gloves we’ve made will fit you well,” she continued. Let him bite on that and not second guess his continued approval. 

 

“You’ve got gloves?” The man sounded dubious. That was fair. They weren’t really gloves but at this point, it was all they had. 

 

“Sort of,” Powder shrugged. “Old seed bags with grass in them.” 

 

“Not a bad idea,” Vander returned to watching the pot which was relieving enough Vi at least let tense muscles relax. Powder brightened back up a bit. “I’ll see if I can’t do you one better, soon.” 

 

“Cool,” Vi agreed and then looked Ekko and Powder over. Ekko continued to balance atop his bedding and showed signs of stirring, either eager for training or for breakfast. Underneath a cheerful face, though, Powder just looked sleepier than Vi expected. 

 

“Thing is, if Mylo’s out hunting you three are on firewood duty. Enough for the night-”

 

“And a little more,” Powder finished. Vander nodded without looking back at her but VI could’ve sworn there was just a little bit of attitude in Powder’s voice. She was watching Vander’s back with a neutral expression, though. Vi marked down that the ax was in the shed, not in the little brick shack with them. 

 

Attitude, huh? We can work that out with training. Too bad we still don’t have a good fix for headgear. Get them sparring and maybe I’d be able to get involved soon. 

 

“Hey, Vander?” Vi looked back at their father. “You have any idea what we could do for headgear? So no one’s getting hurt if we try to spar?” 

 

“I’ll think about it,” Vander answered very quickly. Claggor stood up beside her to start to stretch his legs. This hid Vander from her view so when he had nothing else to say on the topic she just hoped she hadn’t pushed too far. She wasn’t sure if he really approved of the three of them training. It had never been a problem before but maybe he didn’t trust her like he used to. She couldn’t entirely blame him, either, if she was losing her marbles.

 

Then again, she’d never really played marbles with any of the other kids in the Lanes. Maybe she didn’t need them. 

 

The rain ended around the same time as breakfast. Vander and Claggor left shortly before sunrise, around the same time that Mylo took off with the bow. This left her, Powder and Ekko more or less to their own devices. She lounged on the edge of the bed looking for the energy to get up and start what she knew should be the good part of the day. Eventually, whatever the pair of mechanical prodigies were talking about ran dry and the quiet in the room served as a reminder that she was supposed to be saying or doing something to get them moving. 

 

She found she couldn’t though. They had hours. The ground was bound to be wet and muddy, still. This wasn’t good for either the wood gathering they had to do or for training. They could try to do it inside, but even with only the one bed for furniture there wasn’t enough space for the three of them to spread out. That meant any training they did do was going to be with them packed beside one another. 

 

No, that wasn’t going to do the trick. 

 

So, what’s the point? 

 

Ekko stood up from where he was sat near the door and twisted the knob to pull it open. The light outside wasn’t intense, probably due to it still being very cloudy. Still, it let in just enough to cast his profile in shadow when he glanced back and nodded Vi’s way. 

 

“Hey,” Ekko broke the silence. His eagerness was tamer than usual, but the smile stayed fixed in place. “It’s looking pretty good out but it’s still wet.  We could do this just out front?” Vi searched for words to explain why she was hesitating or an excuse to lie back down. There was only one thing she could think to say that didn’t sound whiny and self-centered and there was no way in the world Vi was going to give voice to those fears in earshot of either of them. 

 

So she sighed and got up to grab her things and get changed and in no time at all she was outside. 

 

The smell of grass filled her nose but it hung heavier in the air than before and felt deeper, somehow, in the way that a sound could be higher or deeper. Maybe it was better to say it smelled earthier. What little sunlight was making it through a sheet of gray clouds was enough to start the stalled out process of warming the day up but she was already worried about just how humid it was going to get. Damp clung to every blade of grass and even to the legs of her pants and her boots for daring to step outside of the shack. Better yet, water wasn’t exactly pooling on their hillside, but she still nearly slipped in a muddy patch of bare earth only a few steps clear of the front door.

 

“Last one to the well’s on punch mitt duty first,” Vi told Powder and Ekko when the two pulled a face at her like she was making them wait in just the few seconds it took her not to slip and fall on her ass. Vi expected either resistance or complaint but instead Powder turned and immediately bolted, her braid whipping around at the suddenness of the spin. Ekko, too, was caught off guard. 

 

“No fair!” His words caught up to Powder judging by the bursting ‘ha’ of laughter she shot in response. Ekko, on the other hand, did not catch up. Vi jogged along behind him but kept an eye on the sprint. It wasn’t even ground or dry ground or even trimmed grass the two were dashing through but they still found the energy to run. Powder’s lead was closed significantly but she was still the first to touch the rocky raised side of the old well. 

 

Still, they both ended up having to wait for Vi after all that. 

 

It took them both longer than it should have to recover from the short run, before their breathing returned to normal. It hadn’t been this bad before and Vi knew why. Try as they might, they needed to eat more and they needed more meat. They needed to get some running in and to build more muscle. They needed, they needed, they needed. 

 

At least in the Lanes they could have bartered for or pilfered fish with some regularity.

 

When a brief flare of anxiety rose up, Vi closed her mouth and swallowed it back down. 

 

She’d just keep them on the same kind of schedule as before and step it back when it became necessary and they would be fine. 

 

“You know we haven’t gone out running in a while. Or practiced anything else.” Her sister mused to Ekko. 

 

“Yeah,” Vi admitted as she drew closer. Powder watched her, trying, Vi thought, to read why that was. She didn’t intend to hide it either. “It doesn’t feel like any of us have the energy to keep up with it and we kind of have to pick between drills with our boxing or running or climbing.” Ekko’s eyes angled to the north, toward their ‘Climbing Tree’ but Powder notably kept her eyes locked forward. Vi didn’t miss the tight pressing together of her lips, though. Powder didn’t want to think about the tree at all. “Maybe some harder cardio after firewood, yanno? Get the heart pumping a bit.” When neither said anything to agree or disagree, Vi squared up toward them, placed her hands on her hips and smiled. 

 

She hoped it read as real enough. 

 

“Alright,” Vi tilted her head down slightly. “I’ll throw on the punch mitts, first. Ekko’s next because he lost the race. But, until then, Powder, toss Ekko the gloves and me the mitts. Then get into stance and focus on footwork and jabs. Get some actual ducking and weaving in there, too.” 

 

“Okay,” Powder looked a little disappointed for just a second but it passed as she fished out the ad hoc gloves and mitts from her backpack. Vi caught the first set. 

 

“Yes, ma’am,” Ekko called. Vi stopped and squinted at him to measure whether this was cheeky mockery or not but he looked enthusiastic when Powder handed off the gloves to him.  So, Vi shrugged it off and got to work. Quickly learning from past mistakes that had almost (or actually) gotten her punched in practice, Vi mostly left Powder’s shadowboxing to her and kept her focus on Ekko. 

 

“You on the other hand,” Vi told Ekko, taking the drawstring of her left mitt and pulling it tight. “You’re going to give me some hooks.” He took what looked like a pretty good orthodox stance, so Vi hurried to do the same. “Got me?” 

 

“Got you,” Ekko agreed. She watched his playful expression meld into a focused smile and faintly intense eyes. In practice, she generally liked those eyes. It told her he was taking her seriously. Vi still appreciated it almost as much when he or Powder were just enjoying themselves. 

 

“Alright.” Unlike Powder’s first time with the mitts when Vi told her to keep the hands up and guard, she kept her own lower and gestured briefly with one to tell Ekko which hook to throw. On occasion as the drill settled in and she was fairly certain Ekko knew what the point of it was, Vi shot a glance at Powder. It used to surprise her to see her sister working herself into a sweat at this practice, to even think that Powder was serious about learning how to fight. It didn’t, now. 

 

It didn’t feel as good as it usually did. Even without any particular focus or any special thing driving her, Powder’s jabs were coming quicker and straighter. She held good form, as much as Vi could tell from a glance and, yes, was even ducking under or dipping around imagined blows. Vi began to lead Ekko around an equally unreal boxing ring. It existed only in her head, memories made up from the one rigged up on the Iconagra and even older memories from a real one down in the Lanes she hadn’t seen in a year or more. 

 

Vi watched the movements and the angle of her friend’s slender legs and ignored that they were smaller than they used to be. She kept moving and meeting Ekko’s punches with the opposing mitt and told herself just to slow things down when he began to breathe heavily a little more quickly than she expected. She also noticed the good: the way she felt his left hook down her entire arm, the way he weaved to one side, dipping as she swung her mitt just short of the space above his head and the way he finally exposed that he was overreaching on his right hooks so she could correct it. 

 

Vi also noticed that when her arms started to feel the strain and her steps started to feel more unsteady and unsure, Ekko did not slow down. A few feet away, Powder was still shadowboxing. She was still going even though Vi would’ve normally stopped her minutes before to cool down. Yet, despite coming into all of this with less muscle than her and doing all that extra work in Airus, they weren’t slowing down. Strain was visible on both faces: Ekko’s smile sagged and for as much as he was sweating, Powder’s face was already drenched in it. 

 

The thing was, Ekko wasn’t the only one with that look in his eyes. She was starting to see it in Powder’s eyes too, but she couldn’t focus there. Not while doing her best for him. It wasn’t determination, it wasn’t steeling one’s self, it was just serious. They were serious about what they were doing. Like they were thinking over a problem that had stumped them for too long. 

 

Well, if they had that kind of energy, Vi didn’t get how, but she would put it to use. It wasn’t any kind of secret that usually she enjoyed not just the practice but watching them become more confident. She couldn’t count the number of times it had been the only thing to keep her motivated after chores.

 

That’s what this is, Vi realized as she pushed her left hand forward to catch Ekko’s right hook. They’re feeling it. 

 

It was a little overwhelming to think that maybe, one day , Ekko or Powder herself might understand this thing she wasn’t sure if it was safe to admit: there weren’t a lot of feelings that compared to being a fighter who was good at her fight. She missed the feeling. Watching these two firing up, Vi would’ve given a lot to be back on the Iconagra on fight night and boxing people twice her size or bigger. 

 

Vi just hoped neither of them would need to use it for a while. This place, after all, was different than the Lanes. 

 

“Powder, break. Go back and grab a bucket so we can have some water. Ekko, switch over to shadowboxing. I want you working on your footwork.” 

 

She didn’t hurry to drill Powder on the mitts like she had Ekko for several minutes. Once Powder retrieved a bucket, Vi got them all some water and set them to rehydrating. She was going to save Powder’s turn with Vi in the mitts until the end of their training. To prevent that from coming quickly, though, Vi kept them going through footwork until she could sync up their rests. When the break was over and even Vi had sat down and drank her fill, Ekko took the mitts himself. She helped him pull his tight before assisting Powder in getting both gloves in place. 

 

“Okay, same thing,” Vi instructed them,calmly. “Only this time, I’m on the sidelines.” Surprisingly, there was no hesitation from either side. This had technically been something she’d had them do once before. Last time, she’d caught the nerves either felt at the chance of hitting or hurting one another and taken over the mitts quickly. This time, even if those nerves arose, Vi thought she’d let them play it out. Sometimes the things that scared you were exactly what you needed. Other times, not so much. “I’ll call out the combo, you do it. I call out duck, then Ekko you carefully arc a mitt above her head, Powder, you duck and weave. No one goes getting hurt.” 

 

Paused on the spot, neither one forced her to remind them of their stance or bending their knees. Powder crouched a little too low but corrected it quickly. Then she leaned a little more forward, hunched just a bit. Like she’d picked up one of Vi’s own bad habits. Ekko, on the other hand, stayed very still. 

 

“It’s not my fault she’s a giant,” he taunted, playfully. 

 

“Not my fault you’re a pipsqueak,” Powder retorted. Her lips quirked and the intense glimmer in her eye brightened. Ekko lifted both mitts up almost as high as he would if he’d been guarding. 

 

“You’re not that much taller.” This broke the less familiar look on her sister’s face, the one that went a little bit beyond confident and all the way to competitive. Powder frowned her way. Even Ekko looked a little less in the moment so Vi shrugged and moved on. “Okay then. Deep breath. 1. 2. 3. Go.” She clapped once and Ekko readied his hands. 

 

“Jab. Jab. Hook.” Powder stepped forward and jabbed with her left fist, twice and then - and then put her back foot flat on the earth. The right hook struck the mitt Ekko raised to call it to but Vi could tell Powder hadn’t even noticed what she’d done with her foot. “Powder, get that back heel up! You’ve got this. Left jab, right cross.” Powder followed instruction and this time even as plainly as Vi spoke, her sister did not slow or second guess herself. 

 

She watched the thinner girl’s left arm retract. Powder’s shoulder rose just faintly and then she pushed her weight into the jab. Just as quickly, the girl brought her left fist back and reset her guard before turning and pushing with her the core of her body. Powder brought her right around for a hook that struck Ekko’s own right mitt. It sounded like a good hit. For just a second, Ekko’s arm wobbled. 

 

“Jab.” Vi insisted, and Powder again struck out with her left hand. “Cross.” Again Vi turned her attention fully on the mechanics of her sister’s swing. Ekko had been messing up with his cross, Powder with her hook and her uppercut, but there were always only so many explanations for those kinds of errors. “Cross.” The right cross looked surprisingly nice and clean, though and swung properly for the distance still stood between herself and Ekko. Vi grinned to herself as Ekko began to shuffle them back and forth, rocking a little at the force of the right cross. Yes. That’s not bad.  “Jab. Cross.” This time, Vi kept an eye on the left jab. Again, it was a simple hit and the only thing Vi wondered was if Powder was extending her reach enough . She had long arms and long legs, compared to Ekko. She could be using her advantage better. 

 

“Duck!” 

 

Ekko came forward, raising his mitted right hand and hooked it high over Powder’s light blue head of hair. She ducked the ‘blow’ and weaved in the opposite direction. 

 

“Let’s get moving,” Vi clapped again, trying to make sure Powder was listening to her. “Get to stepping. Ekko, you’ll lead the movement. Step in, knee bent, step out. Powder, same thing to you. Actually, let’s do it this way. Ekko I want you stepping back right before the blow. Powder, you step in and deliver… left jab.” Ekko got his hands back up as if to guard and then shuffled back, extending his right hand. Powder shuffled forward and then impressed Vi by immediately centering herself before doing so again and delivering her punch. “Come on, keep moving. In a real fight, you don’t leave openings or you get dropped. Left jab, right cross, right cross, right upper and left upper. Then repeat.” 

 

Powder looked sideways at her and Vi saw the doubt starting to worm its way into her sister’s gaze. Instead of indulging that doubt at all, she shook her head and looked pointedly at Ekko. As if she was ignoring Powder’s fear. This time, she supposed she was. 

 

“On that left upper, if you don’t keep those knees bent, I’m giving you shit about it all night. Lean and swing.” Powder turned away, exhaled and stepped into a left jab. When the first uppercut came, Vi sighed at herself. Not out of any sense of disappointment in Powder, but more in frustration that she hadn’t seen the problem earlier. Her sister’s ‘gloved’ fist soared up past the mitt. “Powder, you’re punching too far up. You want to punch through the other guy, sure, but not into orbit. You gotta be able to snap your arm right back after. Trying to deck the clouds, even if they deserve it today, isn’t gonna help.” 

 

“Okay!” Powder shouted. It made Vi smile despite the slight edge to the response. 

 

Practice went on like this for some time. Vi watched Ekko’s general stance while he was in the mitts and she watched Powder repeating the last set. At one point, Powder took a softened blow to the side of the head probably caused more by both of them tiring out than anything but Vi grinned when she winced for a second and then shook it off. She wouldn’t have said anything  at all, especially given the padding, but she couldn’t help but think about Vander’s insistence that no one got hurt. 

 

“Careful,” Vi counseled sternly. She could see sweat soaking into the clothes of each of her ‘students’ and had noted the sustained, heavier breathing. They were getting tired. “Okay, you two. We’re gonna finish this off with a big combo and then take another water break. Push through this last bit and then we get Powder in the mitts. Left jab. Left jab. Right cross. Left hook. Right upper. If you push that hook too far, it’s gonna go bad.”  Ekko looked momentarily conflicted as he stared over the top of the practice mitts at Powder but the look of pain was fading from her sister’s face already. 

 

The padding helped, that hit couldn’t have hurt nearly as bad as the last one, but maybe they’re just getting used to this. She hated to think about it, but Vander would’ve been proud. The thing was, this was something Vi wanted for herself. Teaching the two of them to punch was just about the only thing she felt she was doing right. 

 

“Relax, you two. You’re doing fine. Back to it.” This was how Vi sounded for the next few minutes. She called out punches or instructions for Powder to duck an oncoming blow. She razzed them for straightening their legs too far or lowering their back foot or not keeping their arms up. These little missteps started to mount, though. Was it because they were starting to get tired or because they were starting to have fun with it? 

 

Either one was a good explanation.  

 

Ekko had spent the last three or four minutes in almost complete silence other than his breath and the occasional grunt as he moved or his mitt was struck. His eyes were sharp and his face fairly neutral. Over the same amount of time though, a smile had formed on Powder’s face that Vi had never seen before. It went well beyond the excited competitive look from before. Vi’s earlier jarring realization had been that maybe one or both of them might understand the way she felt when she enjoyed fighting. 

 

Maybe that day was more possible and closer than she thought. 

 

“Keep your head and shoulders ready to move when you’re ducking and weaving. You wanna hold your form but not be so rigid you can’t move out of the way,” she counseled just a minute or so down the line. Vi circled around the outer edge of the duo and raised one hand to call a break. She stopped herself, though, when she saw that someone was watching them from halfway up the hill, off to the east, on the side closest to the path leading onto the farm from the road. 

 

Vi recognized the flash of auburn hair and the energetic bounce of the approaching figure without hesitation. She had slowly grown less concerned about and more at ease with the Noxian girl coming their way. It was likely she was there to see Ekko and Powder, given that she had planned to come by a couple of days prior. The good news for Sinnan was that she looked dry, despite the early morning rain.  

 

It might have meant the end of training for a while, maybe even for the entire morning but at least they would be happy. Sinnan slowed down on her approach so Vi let the others keep going. It was a little weird to see the girl go from energetically hurrying their way to all but strolling, like she had all the time in the world. However, the sight of the practice held Sinnan’s attention.

 

“Last push. Ekko, right hook!” Ekko, who was wearing the practice mitts, looked surprised, but he did as she bade him. Powder was so caught off guard by the sudden change of the dynamic of the practice session that she very nearly took it on the shoulder. It was the flat of Ekko’s heavily padded hand so it would not have hurt much. Still, Vi smiled when her sister got low and weaved to the right. This let her duck under Ekko’s intentionally slow, wide swing. 

 

“Hey!” Powder called out, sounding a little hard done. Vi just barked. 

 

“Give us a 1-2 combo, Powder. Box step, 1-2, step back. Repeat until I call a stop. Focus. Focus on each other. Focus on your bodies. Focus on your stance and your movement. Go.” It was impressive to see the transformation that followed in each of them but she had this inkling it might be even more impressive to someone who didn’t know much about what they were doing. Sinnan continued approaching quietly. The arms she liked to gesture with while talking were practically pinned to her sides. 

When the redhead got close enough that Vi expected Ekko to see her, Sinnan came to a stop and stood very still. Her boots and dark britches were stained from the mud of the trip but she otherwise looked comfortable enough. Powder delivered the second instance of the combo particularly accurately and quickly. Vi looked over the top of Powder’s head to watch Sinnan’s face behind her. Powder was red in the face from exertion. Sinnan’s eyes were as wide as Vi could remember seeing them. Ekko’s own energy reserves were starting to run low. 

 

Sinnan wasn’t looking at Ekko, though. Her deep blue eyes were fixed on Powder from just a bit to one side and behind her. A little bit of awe and a whole lot of surprise transformed the girl’s face. Vi nodded to herself and before Powder or Ekko could start the whole process all over again, she clapped her hands again. Loudly. Hard enough that the mostly healed wounds on her hand ached. 

 

“Alright, that’s it. Break time,” she shouted. “Gloves down.”  Ekko lowered his shoulders and opened his mouth with a big grin on his face to speak. Before he could, though, Sinnan whooped, loudly and began to clap herself. By the time Powder turned her sweat-soaked head around, her entire face was dark red. Vi would bet money that it had less to do with the practice than her sister might claim. 

 

The warning Claggor gave Powder, that the others had noticed something Vi had missed the night of their little feast in Airus had never made more sense. Powder looked as if her sunburn from planting was back on full blast. The Noxian girl’s face looked almost stretched by the smile it presented like an award. Then Vi noticed something that really sealed her suspicions. When Ekko called out to their guest, he sounded anxious. 

 

“Hey, Sinnan,” Ekko’s smile stayed in place but Vi could see the way the rest of his face smoothed out. Vi thought, however begrudgingly, that this was all a good thing. All of it. 

 

Sinnan had never been by on her own before, though, so Vi thought she ought to ask a question. 

 

“Your mom knows you came by, right?” Sinnan’s answer was accompanied by a quick nod.

 

“Yes,” she answered, cheerfully. The girl’s right arm rose and gestured off vaguely around herself. Vi had seen the gesture before but usually when Sinnan was rapidly speaking about something. She really talked with her hands. This time, though, it didn’t quite make sense. Sinnan lowered her arms back to her side, grimacing for a second before hurriedly covering it up. Vi didn’t comment and didn’t know what to make of it, but Powder did catch Vi’s eyes and she no longer looked embarrassed or surprised. 

 

“So, what now?” Ekko asked Vi as he wiped at his forehead with the back of his forearm. She wasn’t sure that was going to do much for him, though, considering he was sweating from just about all over. 

 

“Now break, then either we do more or you three could just hang ou-” 

 

“Don’t let me stop you,” Sinnan cut in quickly. Vi wondered if her cheer was a little more forced than before but let the moment go. Sinnan didn’t give her time to ask, anyway before she was talking again, right hand flung in roughly Ekko’s direction. “That looked very… impressive.” 

 

“So, then what do we do?” Powder asked Ekko, directly. 

 

“I’m gonna get in a little practice of my own. Especially footwork,” Vi told Ekko when he looked like he was searching about for an answer. “You three do whatever you want as long as you aren’t gone for long. Or just stay close enough I can hear you if you shout. Or the other way around.” Vi didn’t want to think too much about shouting coming from the woods. Not after her own episode. 

 

“Why are you practicing fighting?” Sinnan questioned as she came closer and drew into a more comfortable chatting distance with Ekko and Powder. Vi tried not to watch any of the trio too closely, but she wondered where the question was going. “No one learns how to do that here. If you do, then when the army comes through they’ll take you and make you work for them.” 

 

Well, she thought, having just started to scoot away and get some space for her own practice. Fuck. 

 

Vi took that and added it to a teetering tower of thoughts that scared the shit out of her. 

 

“We came from a place where it’s normal to learn to fight or bad things could happen,” was Vi’s only answer. The words came out of a dry mouth. 

 

“Yeah, lots of people who might wanna rough you up. Right, Powder?” Ekko questioned. Powder reluctantly nodded and Vi wondered if she wasn’t thinking about Deckard. Then again, maybe that was just because Deckard kept showing up and dragging her off again in Vi’s own dreams. “So we’re learning how to box.”

 

Vi couldn’t quite catch what Sinnan said next over the sound of her own long exhale as she got herself back into stance. Whatever it was, though, Ekko’s grin returned and he seemed deeply pleased by it. Even Powder was starting to relax. Then again, Vi noticed Powder had yet to say much of anything to Sinnan. As they stripped away grain bags and grass fashioned into mitts and gloves, Vi started with simply keeping her own guard up and moving. 

 

Before she could add a few jabs into the mix, Ekko called out. 

 

“Hey, the three of us are going down to the stream. It’s hot. ” Vi nodded once his way but took a quick peek at Powder just in case. The taller of the two girls, Powder looked at ease with the idea. That, too, should have made Vi happy, seeing her sister getting confident and comfortable again. Her attempt to get back to her own footwork was halted again just a moment later. Not because Sinnan turned and called something back to her when the trio were only a few steps away, but because a tension she had mostly forgotten about was rising in her stomach. 

 

“Caras wanted to come too but Orkis is making him help around their farm before harvest.” Jolted out of her own odd shot of anxiety (for some reason aimed at the three of them), Vi turned her head. Caught off guard, she could only think of one response. 

 

“Oh.” Ekko laughed and raised a hand to cover his mouth. Vi stalked right over to the discarded pile of ‘training equipment’ and reached down for one of the gloves. “Go on before I change my mind and put on the gloves myself,” she warned him, furrowing her brows in their direction. Snickering a little less, Ekko nonetheless turned and led Powder and Sinnan off toward the northeast. It all felt and sounded carefree and fun. 

 

Vi was conflicted. On one hand her first instinct was to give up practice and follow them. On the other hand, Ekko had specifically asked if the three of them could go down to the stream: she hadn’t been invited. 

 

Huh. That actually hurt a little. This made Vi frown and furrow her brows yet again. She made for the nearest shade, which was the roof of the shack and berated herself. This is a good thing, idiot. They’re making friends. They both deserve more of those. Besides, Ekko’s gotta get the picture fast. Stay out of the way. 

 

That was what Vi did. She settled into the shade and considered Ekko and the fears she thought he was harboring. She considered Powder and the look she’d worn a couple short minutes ago, sweating up a storm and swinging with surprising control and stamina. She considered Sinnan and the crush Claggor seemed to think the Noxian had. 

 

Then she considered other things: she needed to find or make wraps for Powder and Ekko, she needed some for herself and she needed a better, more permanent way to make gloves. Powder’s first attempts at boxing gloves were already flattening out and wearing down. Even if Vander couldn’t come through with something, Vi had to. 

 

It didn’t take long for her rest and her thoughts to turn into feeling lost. It took even less time until feeling lost turned into silently watching the grass beneath her and trying not to think. It seemed to take no time at all until she heard Powder’s, Ekko’s and Sinnan’s voices all over again. 

 

It was sudden enough that it surprised her to her knees. One quick sweep around the area with her eyes turned up no sign of the sources of those voices. For just a second, panic took her. The fear that she might be imagining the voices again kept Vi on her knees by the front door. Hearing things was how it started last time, after all. Except, after a second she more clearly heard her sister. 

 

“Ekko, stop or you’re gonna fall!” Powder counseled her friend loudly, exasperated and on the verge of laughter. A pealing cackle that Vi didn’t recognize as belonging to either Powder or Ekko (and thus had to be Sinnan’s) sounded out. If Vi was hearing things again she didn’t expect it to be just people being… happy. Intent not on being seen like this, shocked and out of sorts on her knees, panicking about the sound of people talking and having fun, Vi shot to her feet. 

 

She very quickly took up a stance there by the house and returned to her shadowboxing. How long was I out of it? 

 

A glance up at the sky suggested not a great amount of time had passed, so she hadn’t been staring at the earth for hours. It had to have been long enough, though. She couldn’t place what she’d been doing or thinking about that whole time. Absolutely nothing. Just like Claggor and Ekko tried to warn her about. She’d spent all that time gone, again. 

 

She’d just have to pretend she’d spent it practicing. 

 

After a moment or two the voices grew louder still. The people she expected to (hoped would) accompany those voices crowned the hill a bit further back to the north. They were soaked damned near head to toe, too. Vi hadn’t really noticed her sister letting her hair down and tried to pick out if it’d been in its typical loose braid all day. Or maybe her mind was starting to let her down in different ways? Like memory. 

 

Either way, Powder’s hair hung comically down around her. Vi understood Ekko’s laughter as Powder tried to sweep it all behind her. 

 

He could joke all he wanted but soon he even he would have to push his hair out of his eyes after a dip: it was just starting to get long enough to droop down and hang in coarse, thick little curls instead of sit near shaved as he usually wore it. Not that he seemed to mind. Then again,  Vi’s own bangs were starting to get in her way and the typically shaved sides of her hair were growing out. It just wasn’t giving her nearly as much trouble as she was used to in efforts to keep it tame and clean. Being able to wash up a little more frequently, even if only rarely with soap, was making it a lot more manageable. 

 

Vi found that she’d stopped moving and let her guard down. Something about the approaching trio brought the tension back. 

 

Everything’s changing. They’re changing. I’m changing. Claggor’s changing. Mylo’s changing. Vander’s changing. 

 

Change had never really seemed scary before. 

 

Sinnan watched with great interest when training got going again and Ekko took up the gloves and Powder the pads. Vi, despite surprise that Sinnan was interested at all, at least noticed that. The air was different, though. Whether the break had been enough for Powder and Ekko to lose momentum or something else had shifted, it felt like it never kicked back up to high gear. Probably, they were tired. Probably Vi was. Maybe, in the end, it was even just Vi’s own mood. 

 

Eventually, after another half hour or so of practice, Vi called it. No one argued. There wasn’t much in the way of exertion after that until they started off into the woods for a little bit of gathering firewood. Their guest was even kind enough to help and wouldn’t hear anyone suggesting she didn’t need to. Suspicions only grew as Vi watched the way that the redhead hung near Powder at all times, even when she was engaged in talking with Ekko about coming to the village to play a game of ‘Conspiracy.’ 

 

Despite Sinnan’s help, firewood scrounging wasn’t as quick as it could’ve been. 

 

“We’re going further and further every day just to find wood that works well,” Powder observed. Vi grimaced at the small anxiety spike in her sister’s voice but only shrugged. 

 

“Just means maybe we have to cut down a tree or two to get us through winter.” 

 

“Probably,” Sinnan agreed, eyeing a fairly bulky hunk of exactly what Vander told them to look for: standing dead wood. The issue wasn’t the weight so much as how high the branch with any heft to it hung over their heads. “The sooner, the better. Gives it time to dry out. Sometimes it can take a really long time.” Vi thought the tree might have been some kind of pine in life but the truth was Powder’s and Ekko’s attempts to teach her the specifics of identifying plants out here weren’t exactly paying off. When it came to trees in particular, she just wanted to know if something bore fruit or worked as firewood. 

 

“You know, it’ll be bland but if you want to stick around for dinner, Vander wouldn’t mind.” Vi looked between her sister and their guest. Powder didn’t match her eyes but at least Sinnan stopped staring at the tree long enough to answer Vi. 

 

“Thanks, but mother would be mad if I didn’t come back before sundown.” 

 

“At least you have a little while before you’ve got to go, then.” Again, Powder turned her attention off to the north. 

 

Sinnan turned back around to size up the aforementioned dead tree. Ekko gathered a few bits and pieces of it that had fallen and might still be useful. Powder watched their guest curiously, head of wild hair tilted.

Vi? Vi froze on the spot and paid attention to none of them. .

 

A distant voice tore through the air, like a shout. None of the others reacted to it, though. A moment later, she thought she caught the very quiet, distant sound again but, again, no one else so much as blinked. Vi tightened the grip her right arm had on the firewood and she faced forward, determined to ignore the voice. To ignore any voices that might follow it. 

 

It’s happening. It’s happening. 

 

The Noxian girl backed up several steps and charged forward all at once. Vi’s eyes followed her, curious, but curious from a distance. Like she was watching some topsider playing from the south end of the bridge between the undercity and Piltover. Sinnan leapt. She kept rising even after Vi expected her to come up short of her apparent goal, but she grabbed hold of the branch with both hands and didn’t show a sign of panic when it immediately broke under her weight. The apprentice herbalist came down and actually managed to land pretty well on both feet, loosening up a bit right before the landing. 

 

Vi would’ve been impressed except that she was worried about something more than that. 

 

The shout sounded even closer, this time. It’s happening. Despair at the idea her mind was betraying her again made Vi want to sit, as if she’d taken a particularly strong shot to the stomach. Only… only… Only, this time, Sinnan turned toward the voice after landing and Powder followed suit. Even Ekko stopped grabbing at debris in the area. Even he tilted his head in that direction. Her arms and sides tingled under a wave of relief. It was quickly wiped away by the need to pay attention, but at least this time when she recognized Mylo’s voice shouting out from the woods, she knew he was real. 

 

“Take as much of that as you can carry and get back to the house.” Vi dropped her armload of wood and turned a little more directly north than they already were, listening and staring. 

 

He shouted again, loudly in the distance. It sounded like the kind of yelling that would strain the throat. Vi’s own still felt scratchy from time to time after her night alone in the woods. 

 

Well, shit. Vi started to hurry away from the others, in the direction of the shouting. 

 

“Hey, wait, we should come too!” Powder shouted. Vi waved behind her to dismiss the idea. Powder and Ekko could take Sinnan back to the shack. That would probably be for the best. She kept her focus in front of her as she broke into a run.

 

It’s not nighttime. Even through the canopy, she could see the twisting, gnarled roots of trees sticking up near their bases to trip her up. She could pick out thick plantlife that might get in her way or those stupid little bushes with the pointy seeds that dug into your pants or legs and hung on tight. 

 

Silco and Sevika aren’t here. The only voice she heard was Mylo’s. His next shout sounded closer. He didn’t sound hurt but, was he scared? There were a number of things out here that struck her as pretty scary. She hadn’t seen a wolf or a bear, herself, though. What if he had? What would it mean if they were getting closer to the farm? 

 

He’s real. By Mylo’s next shout, Vi was slowed down by confusion. He was closer than before but panic didn’t seem to be the motivating factor in his calls. He wasn’t screaming in fear. Instead, she could pick out excited words. 

 

“YES!” The sound bounced through the cooler forest air. “YES, YES, YES!” Realization swept aside confusion and Vi grinned as she picked up the pace again. Maybe, just maybe she was running faster than before. The closer she got the clearer it became that Mylo was celebrating. After a minute or so more she caught sight of him between a few trees moving at a jog toward the farm. In one hand he held aloft the bow he’d taken out with him that morning but the other held out something else, something big and gray and brown. 

 

Mylo’s green eyes finally spotted Vi as she took in the sight. He sucked in a deep breath and raised both arms. 

 

“Dinner!” Mylo shouted, excited beyond any other words. He grinned proudly over the distance between them and extended a decently sized rabbit - larger than she thought rabbits got, for sure - in front of him. It dangled, still, save for the jostling of his movement as he angled right at her and came to a stop nearby. An arrow was still sticking through its side, wet and red. It looked as if Mylo had broken the little animal’s neck. 

 

“I thought you were hurt,” Vi told him, tearing her eyes from the animal. For a second, she had feared the worst . At least, when she realized he was real and not her imagination. The sight of the animal, exciting for a second, was starting to take on a different tone. 

 

“Okay, but dude, dinner, ” Mylo insisted, shaking the animal in hand and watching her now with far more serious eyes. Sharp eyes. Don’t ruin this. Let him be happy. 

 

“Dinner,” she agreed. Mylo nodded once. She spotted a little blood on his right hand. He didn’t seem to notice it. His smile and his pride came back. 

 

“I don’t know shit about skinning it.” 

 

“Me either,” Vi shrugged. “But we better figure it out. Rabbit soup.” She was going to reach out to take the animal but stopped when Mylo started moving again. 

 

“You’re welcome,” he told her, voice low as if upset she had not yet said the words he seemed to need to hear. This annoyed her deeply, at first. The idea of thanking Mylo for just about anything still sat sour on her tongue. It wasn’t as if he’d apologized, even once, for anything he’d said or done. Vi inhaled and it helped her to swallow everything she wanted to tell him down. She could almost feel her retorts in her throat, forcing down plenty more to follow. Vi followed Mylo from a few steps back. 

 

“Thank you,” she said a minute or so further toward the farm. Other than that, she stayed quiet, even when Mylo shouted out joyously. Annoyed as she was and as wrong as she felt at holding back every feeling and every thought and every word, she had to admit the idea of some real meat was exciting. Especially some they had not purchased, but gotten on their own. With Ekko’s and Powder’s hard work on the bows and arrows and Mylo’s hunting. 

 

Vi hadn’t been part of this success, at all. 

 

When they reached the bottom of the hill, Vi looked uphill to see that Powder, Ekko and Sinnan were hauling up the last of the wood they’d gone out and gathered. Mylo waved his kill in the air at them when they turned back around at his shout. Powder crossed in front of Ekko and said something right in Ekko’s ear before angling for the front of the shack and presumably going inside. The other two followed suit after Ekko waved back but Vi didn’t think much of it. 

 

“I’ll go get the good knife and we’ll figure out how to skin it, together.” At least between the two of them they had less of a chance of messing up Mylo’s big success. Instead of agreeing, though, the boy just a step in front of her turned back with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. He shoved the animal into her arms unceremoniously and shrugged as he turned away from her, showing the back of his head. 

 

“Together? I hunted it. You skin it.” Vi squinted at the back of his head for a moment until she felt the mass in her arms. Cold and still. She swallowed hard at another fountain of words trying to bubble up in her throat. They tasted especially foul. She did not want to think in much detail about what she was holding. Mylo turned back around again, angled around her and started off to the northwest., shrugging when she didn’t answer. Likely, he was heading to the stream to clean off his red stained hands. 

 

Vi climbed the hill with her jaw clenched and their first hunted food in her arms. She sat it down behind the house, near the cellar doors and did not look closely at it. Vi slipped around the house and pulled open the door. No one was inside, so she quickly grabbed the pot, a bucket and the knife. Dipping back outside, she looked down to find that her pale time-grayed shirt had a spot of blood on it. Will that ever come out? 

 

With the knife inside the bucket and the pot tucked under one arm, Vi didn’t head back around behind the shack immediately. She angled toward the log lean-to off the side and found the door open. Even with the three occupants sat side by side atop Vander’s bedding, there was not a lot of room inside. Powder sat squeezed into the space between Ekko and Sinnan and did not immediately look up when Vi reached the door. Vi wondered if the positioning was intentional, or not. Things were almost definitely going to get a little awkward on that front. 

 

“Mylo got a rabbit. I’m taking it down to the stream to get it ready. It might not be a bad idea for you to come with me.” Ekko gave a quick nod of his head, pushing his hair back on his head. Powder, on the other hand… 

 

“I’ll be a second. Sinnan, will you give me a hand within something?” One very heavy second passed before Ekko got onto his hands and knees to better crawl through the door to the lean-to. Sinnan shrugged but Vi wasn’t sure that Powder even saw her response. 

 

“You want me to wait for ya?” Vi asked as she stepped out of Ekko’s way. He climbed back to his feet pretty quickly, but she could tell the boy’s arms were worn out from the work out they’d already gotten. 

 

“No,” her sister answered quickly. 

 

“I’ll help,” Sinnan promised. Though she was looking at Vi, Vi didn’t think the girl pressing her thumb into her own chest was offering to show Vi how to skin the rabbit. More likely, it was about helping with whatever was going on with Powder. Whatever had her sister’s face almost as anxious as Ekko’s. 

 

Reluctantly, Vi left her sister and Sinnan by the shack and retrieved the killed rabbit. She carried it off toward the stream, leading Ekko behind her. A sneaking suspicion that something was going wrong kept creeping up the back of her neck. Each time she swatted it away because, well, meat.  Whether Ekko was feeling tired or could sense that things weren’t as cheerful as they probably ought to be, he didn’t try to engage her. She didn’t look back to try to read him. Turned on its head from the night she hallucinated Sevika in that woods, Ekko followed her in silence. 

 

By the stream, Mylo had removed and was now trying to scrub at his shirt in the water. He looked like he’d plunged his head into the water, too: his hair hung down at all weird angles, his face dripped. Despite a little frown as he tried and probably failed to entirely remove whatever offending stain was bothering him ( probably the same one bothering me) , he grinned again at their appearance with the rabbit and other tools. Mylo swung his free hand in the direction of shore and Vi followed the gesture to a large, flat rock upturned on top of a fallen tree trunk. 

 

Vi angled over toward that and pulled the rabbit from the bucket, laying it on the rock. Someone had done a fairly good job of cleaning mud off of the stone. Just not well enough not to leave evidence of the act. Ekko hung back a step or two but again didn’t have much to say as Vi turned the dead creature onto its back and tried not to look at its face. Vi didn’t think she’d want conversation, anyway. She took hold of the knife and swallowed against yet more words when Mylo interrupted her. 

 

“Remember what Vander said. If you cut the bowels, all wasted.” 

 

“I know,” Vi insisted. She started to lower the tip of the blade to the furred skin just below the rabbit’s neck. The whole rabbit was way larger than she’d imagined. Just as the steel tip started to pierce the hide, though, Mylo spoke again from the edge of the stream. 

 

“And, if you don’t fuck it up, we can use the hide and -” she could feel the instantaneous flow of adrenaline. Her heartbeat picked up quickly. The urge to shout at him to go the hell away tasted as foul on its way up as on its way down when she clamped her teeth tight, swallowed and hissed her response through them. 

 

“I know. ” Her jaw ached. Now her hands were shaking. Vi looked up at a new source of noise: the sound of footsteps shuffling in their direction. Ekko glanced between her and Sinnan and Powder, who were approaching, still a few steps too far back to see too well. 

 

“What are you waiting on?” Mylo heckled, pulling on his sopping wet shirt. Vi pointed with the hand not holding a knife at her sister and Sinnan but Mylo just grumbled. “So what!?” It was all Vi could do to ignore the boy. Adding insufferable ego to his resume was really a step too far. She exhaled loudly through her nose. Ekko came to the rescue. Again. 

 

“Good job, Mylo. This thing’s huge!” She looked back to see Mylo’s sour expression fading and decided that if ego was what was at play it might be easier to stroke it this time. 

 

“Yeah,” Vi forced out, and tried to hide how much it pained her to say it. “Great job.” For just a moment, she felt conflicted watching an actual smile appear on Mylo’s face for the first time in a long time. She even couldn’t help but contrast it with the panicked sound of his calling after her, back on that shitty night. Just when it seemed like she might feel kindly toward the boy, though, he rushed to ruin it. Mylo’s smile faded fast and he just looked bored and impatient. He twirled his hand once or twice to tell her to get a move on. 

 

Why are you like this? Vi wanted to shout at him. She did not. Swallow it down. 

 

As the last two arrivals got close enough she thought they could both see what she was doing in detail, Vi took the knife and carefully punctured the skin of the animal. Not too deep. Just cut the skin. Don’t cut deep or you’ll ruin it all. He’ll be insufferable. Careful despite her shaking hands, Vi slid the knife down over the belly, stopping to pull at the flesh as if to keep it away from the guts beneath. Whenever possible, she did not push down on the blade. 

 

Above all, she did not look at the animal’s head. 

 

She focused on the mechanics. The knife cut through the skin. She pulled it back from the flesh. When she was looking down into a bloody, fleshy colored pile of what almost looked like small, gross smelling ropes, Vi put the knife down and reached in, wrapping one hand around the mess. She pulled until the part she wanted to keep from rupturing was pulled up and away from the rest of it. Vi took the knife back up and cut only as necessary to disconnect the unwanted parts from the rest of the organs. Now only one purely mechanical tug of something slick and meaty would see the intestines and guts torn from the body. Before she could do so, though, Vi gagged despite herself. Her hand was red with the animal’s blood. 

 

“Don’t forget to check the liver,” Ekko hurriedly reminded her. On instinct she responded to him just as she had Mylo. 

 

“I know!” Though, she had almost forgotten. “If it has white spots on it, we’re supposed to toss the whole rabbit.” 

 

“Nice hunt,” Sinnan told Mylo as Vi tried to find the liver among the complete mess that was the inside of a dead animal. Despite herself, Vi looked up toward the Noxian girl. An unmistakable retching sound drew her eyes to the taller girl beside her, to Powder. Her sister was hunched over with her hands clasped tight over her mouth. The mechanic took a step backward when she realized Vi had stopped what she was doing and was watching her. Powder shook her head, eyes darting about as if not sure what to do, as if - Oh. The hands over Powder’s mouth were clenched into fists. 

 

As if she was on the verge of one of her big panics. 

 

“Powder, close your eyes, okay?” Vi called. The girl hesitated. Her eyes were watering. A second, clear retching sound came from behind Powder’s hands. 

 

“Oh gods, here we go,” Mylo groaned. “Every-

 

“Breathe.” Vi spoke over Mylo. Powder visibly took two very deep breaths through her nose. Ekko looked frozen in place between Vi and Powder. Ekko might have wanted to learn how to gut the rabbit but he was obviously more worried about her sister. This gave Vi an idea. There was one person there who probably actually knew how to gut and skin an animal. She didn’t need to watch Vi struggle through the process. “Sinnan, could you take Powder back up to the shack?” 

 

“Shack?” 

 

“The house,” Ekko clarified quickly. Sinnan nodded once and reached out to wrap one arm around Powder’s shoulders, clearly trying to turn her about. Ekko looked as conflicted as Vi felt. She wanted to stop what she was doing to help but there was already, literally, blood on her hands. Mylo came fully ashore, shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest. Powder let Sinnan turn her about and Vi watched the wall of blue reaching down toward Powder’s lower back wave as she hurried three or four steps away, then stopped to retch again. 

 

Mylo turned his attention on the rabbit, almost staring through it. While her sister started back toward the farm again, this time with Sinnan at her side, Vi turned her attention to the guts of the rabbit. She reached forward to get hold of the intestines but her hands were still shaking. She felt so uneasy, so sure to foul the meat up that when Mylo spoke, she had to stop entirely. 

 

“Finally,” he sighed. “Let’s get-” 

 

“Mylo, stop it,” she said, firmly and blankly.  Her hands clutched at one another. “Don’t piss me off or I’m going to slip up and mess this up. Do you get that?” 

 

“Wouldn’t be my fault,” Mylo dismissed her. He started to look away. “Sounds like a y-” 

 

“Mylo!” she shouted, turning to look directly at him. He shut up, eyes widening. “Do you want some actual meat?” Even wet, she could see the faint smudge of red on Mylo’s shirt. She hoped it would come out. She hoped the blood would come out of hers. They only had what clothes they’d smuggled onto the Iconagra, after all. 

 

“Yeah.” 

 

“Then shut your mouth and watch unless you have something useful to say!” Vi turned her attention on the task at hand. Speaking of, she carefully took the mess of bowels and guts in her right hand and gave a tug. Her cuts must’ve been high enough, because she was able to yank the guts wholesale from the animal and smelled nor saw no sign of spilled refuse.

 

“Yugh,” Ekko exclaimed. Vi suppressed another urge to gag that still had nothing to do with the smell of the animal and hurried off into the woods to find a place to drop them off. When she was finally satisfied she’d gone far enough, Vi hurled them into a bush and then turned right back around. She looked at neither Ekko nor Mylo as she rinsed the blood and anything else from her hands in the stream and then came back to the still largely untouched carcass. 

 

Vi took her best guess at what was kidney, lung or heart and carefully cut the liver from the cavity of the animal’s stomach. She raised the organ up to eye level and hurried toward the brightest patch of sunlight she could see, standing smack dab in the stream up to her ankles. Deep, dark red and fleshy it didn’t seem to have any of the white spots she’d been warned meant to throw the whole animal out. 

 

“It’s fine,” Vi announced, turning back to Mylo and Ekko who were now hanging close to the carcass. “And I think everything went fine with gutting it but I need to get the skin off it if we’re gonna get it in a stew.” She was halfway back to her work and confronting if this was the moment to cut away the rabbit’s head or not when Mylo decided to be an ass, again. 

 

“Who says that’s what we’re gonna do with it?” Mylo asked. She gritted her teeth as she reached the animal and began placing the extracted organs into the bucket. Not only had Vander told them it was easiest and best way to make use of the animal and not let it go to waste, there was also - 

 

“I say,” Vi insisted, without looking at him. “I’m in charge of dinner tonight.” 

 

“I hunted it,” Mylo raised his voice. This made Vi pause in the middle of reassessing how to skin the rabbit to turn to look at him. Mylo quite literally thumped his fist against his own chest as if to assert that he was the boss here. “What if I want to roast it?” Vi licked her lips. Looked down at the rabbit’s big dead eyes and her blood soaked hands. All she wanted was to knock him off his feet and tell him to stop being a selfish fuck. She must’ve done a good job hiding that thought, swallowing it down with all the rest because Mylo was sneering at her when she looked back up at him. 

 

Like a dare to cross him. 

 

The urge to turn and shout wordlessly right into his face until she ran out of breath was only barely edged out by her promises to Vander and Powder. The thing was, when she rolled over and let Mylo get his way, Vi could not meet Ekko’s eyes. 

 

“I’ll set aside some meat for you to do that, then?” Vi offered through clenched teeth. Even though this compromise felt crushing and shameful, it wasn’t enough for Mylo. He huffed and crossed his arms over his chest again, so Vi set down the knife and stepped away from the log to round on him. “This isn’t about your fucking ego. Don’t you realize how bad off we’re getting?” 

 

Vi watched her brother’s anger intensify. She watched his jaw start to work left to right and saw lines form between his thick eyebrows. If he pushed back here, what would she do? What would she say? Mylo’s mouth shut and Vi turned away from him, nose up, only when she was sure it was going to stay that way. For just a moment she caught Ekko watching her from the corner of her eye and even more than a moment before she could not match his eyes. 

 

“We’re probably not gonna get much use out of this hide with the way my hands are working but fuck it. We need the food way more.” Vi did her best to slow down as she removed the hide. She didn’t get control over her shaking entirely throughout the process, but it did get a lot better when she paused at the effort to cut through the neck of and remove the head of the rabbit. (At least it would stop looking at her.) 

 

Once she got the hide off of the body she set it aside. It was mostly intact, save for a couple of holes and the points where the body met the legs. She did her best to strip as much meat from the head as she could stand and then quickly rinsed the body and the flesh in the stream in the bucket. Vi did not speak throughout the rest of this process. It was much easier for her to toss the whole carcass into a pot of water, rinse her hands off and prepare to go back home. Ekko surprised her by taking the bucket before she could and rinsing it clean in the creek. 

 

For the first time that Vi could mark, she walked back into the shack expecting to find her sister there without Ekko or a member of the family. Sinnan hadn’t ever been in their home either, to her knowledge. Powder looked a lot calmer as Vi ducked into the house, though she was perched on Vi’s rolled up bedding while Sinnan sat on Ekko’s beside her. The taller of the two girls tensed when Vi entered, until she saw no obvious sign of the rabbit. Then Powder’s gray-blues latched onto the pot. She looked sicklier and paler than she had since planting. 

 

“Rabbit soup,” Vi told her, lifting the pot before crossing to the stove to sit it down and cover it with the lid. “There’s still potatoes, so I figure I’ll cut what’s left of them up and put them in, too.” Vi glanced over their wood supply by the fireplace. The fire was mostly out in the hearth, smoldering and low. She didn’t know, though, whether the stove or the little grate made for the fireplace was the best tool for the job of this stew. She’d never really cooked in her life. Until then, it had only really been Vander. The best she could say was that she’d watched pots boil for him. 

 

“I’ll go get the potatoes,” Powder volunteered, getting right back up to her feet. Ekko had just come in behind Vi and behind him, Mylo. Vi got the sense Powder wanted to get out of the shack more than she wanted to help with dinner. Ekko and Mylo took turns kicking off their boots by the door. “Okay?” Vi nodded quickly. 

 

“I’ll help,” Ekko offered, though his feet were bare, now. Sinnan stood up to do the same but didn’t say anything and Vi pretended not to see the confused look Ekko shot the Noxian. Mylo sat down on the edge of the bed. In the end, Vi decided that they really needed to be sure the meat was completely boiled up. So, she chose to put the grate over the coals of the fire and carefully slide a few quartered logs beneath the grate. While Powder, Ekko and Sinnan headed back to the cellar, she tried and failed five or six times to start the fire. 

 

What surprised her was when Mylo quietly got up from the bed, walked over and knelt down beside her. He used the end of one chunk of firewood to bring hotter coals to the surface and dropped a handful of the smaller twigs around it before moving the firewood back. She watched him get the fire stoked in seconds. Yet, he had not been rushing. It was the first time he’d been calm or patient since returning with his kill. 

 

“Might be smart if I start it now,” Vi told him as he got back up and returned to his seat. “But maybe just a simmer. I don’t think we want to get it really going until the potatoes are in…” Mylo just shrugged. “Well, either way, we’ll just have to keep it hot after that until Vander and Claggor come home. Shouldn’t be too hard with the lid on and maybe a really low fire in the stove?” The boy didn’t answer so Vi gave up her attempts to have a normal conversation with him. She wasn’t even sure what had possessed her to try considering a few minutes ago she’d been quietly hoping he would trip over his own ego on the way up the hill. 

 

When the others returned and Powder started rinsing potatoes off in a bucket of water without even being asked, Vi turned her attention back to them. Vi diced the potatoes with their knife carefully as each was handed to her. She couldn’t help but notice that Powder didn’t speak. Neither did Ekko. For the first time she also caught Sinnan looking a little self-conscious when she matched Vi’s gaze. Again, Vi chose not to think too hard on it. 

 

Things were going to work out with the three of them. She was pretty sure of that. Ekko just needed to actually talk to Powder about the fear Vi suspected he was harboring. 

 

“Potatoes might overcook by the time Vander and Claggor or back if you put them in now.” Vi paused as the silence was again broken by Mylo, who didn’t look at her but did lie slowly back down on the bed to stare up at the ceiling. There was no accusation, insult or rage in his voice. 

 

“Good thinking,” Vi told him, even though the words were just as bitter as all the rest she’d said to him thus far. As the fire started to grow in the little brick hearth, though, she wanted to say more, to try again to have a conversation with him. To thank him. It was just that his behavior so far had pissed her off enough she was afraid if he started up again she would rip him a new one. She’d come so close to breaking her promise earlier not to really let him have it, not like she wanted to, not like she thought he deserved. 

 

Swallow it all and it’ll be fine. 

 

When Vi settled the pot over the flames and Powder led the other three out of the house without a word, she was left alone with him. 

 

This lasted for a few more seconds until Mylo sat back up, grabbed at the arrow she’d removed from the rabbit’s body and began to clean it with a handful of big, green leaves pulled from his pocket. 

 

Vi left him to it and left the front door open to boot. The shack had started to smell a little smokey. 

 

The stone arrowheads were clearly working to some degree. This was the first real confirmation they’d gotten. Powder and Ekko had already been excitedly talking about trying to make metal ones. Now, Vi wasn’t sure what Powder would think. Maybe actually eating the rabbit would change the girl’s mood, but Vi felt a little bad. 

 

A couple years prior, Vi, Powder and Mylo had come across a dead cat in the Lanes. Vi had looked away from it. Mylo had shrugged and pretended not to see it. Powder, though, Powder had paused, forcing them to turn back and wait for her. Her little sister had stared at the dead cat for almost half a minute and then spent the next day or two half in a stupor before she’d finally cried. 

 

Vi couldn’t help but think if she’d really been looking out for Powder, she’d have remembered that and not invited her down to the stream. 

 

Somewhere halfway between the well and the shack, Ekko was shadowboxing. She could hear him even from here as he cheerfully explained to SInnan, as best he could, what the one-two combo was in exaggeratedly excited words. It was almost adorable. Vi didn’t interrupt or offer any input even as she approached them. Powder was smiling again, though it looked weary. Ekko was smiling again, though he looked distracted. Their new friend looked a little genuinely entranced. 

 

Despite the ugliness minutes ago, they stood along the flattened grass path between the shack and wellhouse and they were smiling. Pleased. Happy, even. Standing in the sun. Having fun. 

 

You’ll fuck it up. Vi stopped on the spot. Powder wavered on her feet behind Ekko’s back, seemingly playfully mocking his efforts to duck and weave. Sinnan absentmindedly worked fingers through her own hair, trying to tame it but clearly trying also not to laugh too hard at Ekko’s expense. Ekko was actually throwing pretty decent left jabs and right crosses. Feeling ever more like sleeping or brooding, Vi knew the unwelcome thought was right. She would ruin it. 

 

Vi turned to look back at the shack and focused on her duties with regards to dinner. She could see right into the door, but did not have an angle from here on Mylo. Mylo had at least stopped her from overcooking and ruining what might be the last of their potatoes until harvest.  

 

Should I toss some rice in? It’d definitely cook. Like the potatoes, the rice would have to go in late or it would be overcooked. She turned her head back toward the trio, wiping bangs from her eyes and watched them for just a second more before lowering her shoulders. She angled off the path toward their herb garden. Might be a good idea to toss in what I can from this. Do we have any onions left?  

 

Vi dropped into the grass and exhaled slowly. Best to sit alone and sulk alone, because, for fuck’s sake, why make anyone else feel worse? Besides, she actually caught the smell of some of the herbs in the garden when the wind hit them just right and it was nice enough. The plants looked mostly better now and Vander’s experimental cutting the tops off of the herbs and pulling out any plants that didn’t look to belong was paying off. 

 

I gotta help him more with this, I gotta do something useful. 

 

She pressed her hands into her face and wondered the same thing about herself she’d wondered about Mylo. Why am I like this? Mentally, the word ‘this’ was doing a lot of lifting. There was plenty wrong with her. More than Mylo, Claggor or Powder knew, for sure. Unless, did Ekko tell her? Was it possible her sister knew her head wasn’t working right? 

 

“Fuck,” Vi told her palms as her fingertips grazed her hairline. “Please no.” The day had started off well enough, training with Ekko and Powder. Mylo being a dick aside, him bringing home meat should’ve only made it better but she felt worse instead. Darker. Maybe it was hurting Powder by exposing her to gutting the rabbit. Maybe it was the constant nagging feeling that she could be hearing little things around her, like wind or snapping twigs or birds and that maybe they weren't real. That her craziness was hiding itself in all the real stuff, waiting to really let her have it.  She just felt quiet and alone. Come to think of it, she’d felt alone since the move and it was only worse when others were around during her lows. 

 

How stupid was that? 

 

“Are you okay?” Vi paused and then plastered a fake smile on her face. She looked up from her hands into Sinnan’s eyes as the girl leaned down toward her. A few steps behind, Powder and Ekko wouldn't match Vi’s own gaze but looked concerned. 

 

“Yep!” The lie couldn’t be convincing but she had to tell it. The redhead tilted her head for a second, smiled and shrugged. Vi mimicked the gesture entirely without meaning to.  

 

“I’m going home now,” Sinnan told her. “It was fun hanging out.” With the others, maybe, Vi thought, as she looked back down to the mud caked on her own boots. 

 

“You good for it?” Vi asked. 

 

“Hmm?”

 

“Is it safe for you to go back alone?” This time, Sinnan shrugged and Vi lifted her head again at the motion. She was being observed by the Noxian through big, deep eyes. Vi envied the girl’s quick return of energy as Sinnan shook her head and placed her hands on her hips. 

 

“The woods don’t scare me, ” Sinnan insisted, round eyes squinting for a second as if unsure if Vi was insulting her or not. “I don’t know why you’re sad, but… hope you feel better.” It took Vi a second to understand that the stinging in her eyes was because they were watering. She reached up to rub at them with the back of her hand. Even though her hands were clean she still hesitated and looked down at them expecting to see blood. “Did I say it wrong?” 

 

“No,” Vi promised. “I’m okay. Guess I’m just tired. Kinda glad you were here, Sinnan.” She wished she had her jacket on, despite the sun doing its best to warm her. It would’ve felt safer, less exposed and less as if everyone could see the things she wanted hidden. 

 

Vi wished she knew exactly why she was sad, too. There was sort of a long list of options to choose from but none of them should’ve overwhelmed excitement at Mylo’s success. 

 

Then again, Mylo’s the one who bagged it and he’s sitting inside sulking alone, too. 

 

When Sinnan had left them, Powder and Ekko kept her company by the garden, eventually pestering her into getting up and letting Ekko put on the practice mitts for her. Vi tried to put the conflicting feelings, the anger and the general unease and dark things into the practice. She tried to punch them out of herself. She had no success at calming down, though, until she started showing them certain combinations she favored. She even let Powder call out combinations and only had to correct her once or twice to explain why a certain combo would probably be bad for Vi to try in a fight. 

 

She just couldn’t regain her better mood from the morning. She couldn’t get back her hope. 

 

Even when she saw Vander and Claggor coming off the road and toward the hill and she ran to add the rice and potatoes to the stew, they didn’t come back. 

 

Ekko and Powder went off to check on Vander and Claggor at her recommendation, but this had an added benefit. When Vi pulled the pot from the fire to add herbs and rice and potatoes, Mylo watched her pull the rabbit from the pot and pull as much meat off of the bones as she could. Not wanting to worry about freaking Powder out with the process, Vi worked as quickly as she could while focusing as little as she could on what exactly she was doing and managed to get most of the bones into the bucket and the meat back into the pot. 

 

Vander and Claggor led Powder and Ekko back into the house looking ecstatic. Vi quickly got the pot back over the fire and got out of the way when she saw Claggor start across the little room to Mylo. Mylo barely had time to sit up before he was heaved half off of the bed. Claggor squeezed their brother in a very tight hug, shouting out his own excitement as Mylo had now two hours prior. 

 

Mylo tried to push him off, announcing that Claggor smelled like smoke and sweat but Claggor held on for a second or two more before finally releasing him. Vander stopped halfway through taking off his own boots to praise Mylo, too. 

 

“Good job, lad. We owe you for this one.” Vander ruffled Mylo’s hair, but Mylo didn’t immediately respond despite the grin rising back to his face and color coming back into his cheeks. “First bowl’s yours then.” 

 

“Checked the liver like you said,” Vi promised when Vander looked her way. “Most of the organ meat is in the pot.” She shot a look at the bucket that held the bones in it and before Vander could even ask his next question, she moved to grab hold of something else waiting within it. 

 

“Most?” he questioned. “Something off with one of them?” Vi shook her head as the man carefully kicked off his remaining boot by the door. 

 

“Saved this to roast over the fire,” Vi explained. Vander raised an eyebrow as she lifted the small heart out of the bucket. Across the room, Powder hung by the door, looking uncomfortable. “Something you to us once.” It wasn’t a large organ, this little lump of red-pink flesh, but it was something. Something they could roast right over the fire. 

 

In fact, as the pot returned to the heart, she carefully laid the heart over the grate. 

 

“Ah, right. The heart goes to the hunter, especially for his first bag.” Vander nodded. “Smart lass.” Powder looked even more uneasy at the conversation so Vi readied to change the subject to having dumped in rice and potatoes but… Mylo. Mylo wasn’t looking at Vander or at her but at Vi, eyes searching, face slack. A little bit of disbelief. 

 

Vi’s only response was to nod. She had promised him she would do exactly this, save him something to roast. Given what Vander had said about the heart of the kill, it made sense it would go to Mylo. 

 

For the rest of the night the house smelled like smoke and rabbit. None of them got a lot of meat but they all got some. A couple of mouthfuls, at least. Vi took her soup from one of their cups alongside Vander. Neither one of them had gone to retrieve the bowl broken in the fields. Neither one of them commented on it. 

 

“We had a visitor,” Vi told him after the first round of the stew was dished out. 

 

“Suspected as much when she came by the forge and promised to say hi earlier. Didn’t see her on the way back.” After a long drink of his own soup, Vander lowered the clay cup and turned his attention on Ekko and Powder, who were sitting atop their bedrolls and staying uncharacteristically quiet. “You know, I watched what you three do all day and I told Claggor but I wanted to tell you lot, too.” Ekko lifted an eyebrow and even Powder paused with her bowl up to her lips. Her cheeks were darker than Vi would expect. “I’m proud of you all. There’s smiths back home in the Lanes who’d be lucky to do half as well. And the new ax?” Vander gestured to an object Claggor had dropped by the door on his way in Vi hadn’t paid attention to. 

 

He showed off their newest tool and to Vi it looked clean and solid enough. The handle was either stained or made from a different wood than the other tools’ handles had been. 

 

“We’re starting an order for another family in Airus tomorrow. By the time you two come in in a few days, we’ll probably be on another. You’re gonna be on that one too.” Claggor seemed to sense that Ekko was feeling left out without even turning to look at him, because he hurried to include Ekko and Powder both. “Gotta get everything ready or fixed up for winter and harvest.” 

 

Since the entire meal passed without Vi regaining her hopeful or good feelings from the morning, she entertained what would do her some good. One of the biggest things weighing on her mind at the moment was the concern she’d start hallucinating again and not know it. That was the scariest part of seeing things: she’d believed they were real. Hadn’t known the difference. There was one topic she hadn’t broached with either Ekko or Powder that needed handled before then. 

 

Before she and Powder went down to the stream to bathe, Vi pulled Ekko and Powder out front with her, and none-too-subtly, too. She did not answer Vander’s question when he called her name in confusion. 

 

She had to make sure that the moment she actually went crazy, she knew it for certain. She hadn’t really put those words to the fear until then. 

 

So Vi asked Powder and Ekko both to describe the woman they had each seen watching and spying on them so that if she ever saw the woman herself, she wouldn’t write it off as that very moment. 

 

They obliged, too. Vi was momentarily distracted from her fears by the way her sister described the woman and the night she’d sat down in the fields below the hill and somehow made herself visible to Powder even though it was dark and far away and shouldn’t have been possible. Similarly, Ekko thought he shouldn’t have been able to see this stranger as deep into the woods as he’d encountered her the day he’d tried to follow Vi’s escape into the woods from the awkward presences of Vavros Pati and Sannin and Zenneene Zavik. The day the two of them had asked to be able to start learning with Vavros to begin with. 

 

Maybe more disturbing than either of them being able to see this stranger when she should’ve been obscured by trees or darkness, though, was the description of how it felt to have someone talking right into their heads. 

 

“Then there’s the showing you things,” Ekko said. “Like me sitting alone outside of The Last Drop, or dad’s old pocket watch or a man’s leg turning into nothing but skin and bones.” He spoke these words so dispassionately that it might’ve fooled her if she hadn’t known Ekko so long. “Or just seeing people leave.” Ah shit. The boy’s golden eyes shot sideways at Powder but Powder didn’t catch it. She was so busy looking down at her own hands, conflicted. “Anyway, I know where the watch is so it’s messed up she could show me it.” 

 

“Where is it?” Vi asked him. Powder slowly came back to herself, but Vi was not the only one who's good mood that morning was gone. 

 

“It’s with Benzo. I gave it to him right before I left.” Vi exhaled. Powder did, too. All at once. Powder put an arm around her friend’s shoulders when Ekko started to shrug off the moment. 

 

“Benzo’s probably thinking about you too,” Powder told him. Ekko didn’t really look either of them in the eye but a small, sad smile tried and failed to settle on his face. He still did not pretend the conversation meant nothing. That was a plus. 

 

“Benzo’s…” Ekko shook his head. “Benzo’s my dad. Like Vander is yours. I just never thought about it before. Being here, with you guys, I get it.” Powder squeezed him briefly and then lowered her arm again. 

 

‘I give up!’ Vander had shouted, hurling what was left of his dinner into the field.

 

“I really want to see him again. I really want to go home. I want to tell him.” 

 

“I want to go home too,” Vi promised Ekko. “Every minute of every day. I want to help with whatever Benzo’s doing for the Lanes, too.” The words didn’t taste like lies on her tongue but she hadn’t really thought about it that way before. Benzo was probably fighting the fight they’d started. It was a fight she wanted to be fighting. It was a fight she could win and make everything better. 

 

“I don’t know,” Powder answered just as quickly. Ekko rubbed at his own eyes as she had earlier by the garden and just shrugged. He looked a little defeated, but quickly shook his head to knock it away. 

 

“Of course not,” Vi told Powder, okay with the change of subject. “You’ve got a giiiirlfriend .” Her sister huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. 

 

“So I should get back inside-” Ekko started, trying to change the subject. Maybe because Powder had already had enough trouble just recounting her description of the woman spying on them. Notably, she hadn’t talked about her visions again. Vi knew their secret. That was why Vi wanted this moment, though. She wanted the normalcy. She also hoped, just a little bit, that maybe Ekko would say what was on his mind about Powder's new friendship. 

 

It would take an idiot not to notice that Ekko had mixed feelings about all of this. 

 

“Do not!” Powder insisted. Ekko did not speak his mind. 

 

“Maybe not, but I think you waaaaaaant one,” Vi teased again. “Think she does too.” Then, rather seriously, she opened her mouth to ask Ekko what he thought. This, at least, could lead to a useful discussion. 

 

“Caras asked how you were doing yesterday,” Powder shot back before Vi could even try. “Too bad he couldn’t come over today.” 

 

Vi raised both eyebrows her sister’s way but she shut up. 

 

And she felt a little more normal. 

 

Chapter 21: Chapter Twenty-One

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Twenty-One

One month. 

 

Vi’s eyes opened slowly, reluctantly. The firelight was stronger than she expected it to be, bouncing unsteadily across the old wood raftered ceiling. Paired with the sounds of movement around her, this meant that everyone else was probably up. 

 

One whole month. 

 

She rubbed at her eyes as Ekko stooped down and sat a bowl on the floor beside her. Powder did not seem to notice or acknowledge her, on Vi’s other side. Vi managed a grimace as a ‘good morning’ to Ekko, and then slowly sat up. Rice, again, but with a few simple herbs from the garden run through it. Vander’s doing, no doubt, but he was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Claggor. The fact that the bowl was waiting on her left her feeling ashamed and a little confused as to how she’d slept through the morning. Ekko was still working on his own breakfast but Mylo and Powder were each done. 

 

Her head felt like it was full of cotton as she swung it left and right quickly. She picked up on tension in the air even before her sister spoke again. That’s right. That’s what woke me up. 

 

“I said I don’t care. ” Powder grumped. To Vi’s right, the girl finally noticed her waking when Vi started to sit up. A mix of guilt and anxiety flashed across Powder’s thinning face before what had her sister in a foul mood first thing in the morning became clear. Vi did take note, though, that unlike herself and Ekko, Powder and Mylo were both changed and ready for the day. No sunlight peeked through the blinds above her head, still. Or if there was any, it wasn’t enough to really bother her. 

 

At least she hadn’t overslept that much. 

 

“Why not? Why don’t you ever go out hunting? You could go with me.” Mylo’s offer didn’t sound very genuine. Instead, his voice held a teasing edge to it. His recent successes with the bow had really bolstered his confidence but instead of translating that into anything useful, he’d just been using it to show off or give people grief. Even Claggor hadn’t spoken to him the day before, tired of his chest thumping. 

 

Powder shook her head once. 

 

“No? Why not?” 

 

“Because.” This was supposed to be all the answer that was needed, as far as Powder was concerned. Even if Vander would have finally spoken up and shut Mylo down, he wasn’t present. There was no one there but the four of them. Immediately on edge, Vi had to clench her throat physically shut against the urge to tell Mylo off in the most explicit language she could summon. Swallow it down. 

 

“Because you’re scared?” Mylo prodded. 

 

“Shut up! I can go if I want. I could go out right now!” Powder’s response was more explosive than Vi had expected or thought she could handle first thing in the morning. Beside her, her sister bounced on the spot and nearly stood up in her annoyance. Vi rubbed hard at her own eyes and readied herself to be the only one who would put an end to this. Technically, Powder was right: they had three fresh bows and fletching enough for almost two dozen arrows with sharpened and fire hardened wood tips or small flaked stone tips. It had been easy to make the choice to expend time and energy on bows and arrows given the success they’d had over the last week or so. 

 

That morning marked the end of their first month in Noxus and they’d bagged a whole rabbit and two squirrels in all that time. It wasn’t much, but it had improved moods, even if all of it had been within that last week or so. The thing was, part of the reason Powder hadn’t gone back out hunting since that first occasion had been the actual act of bagging and everything that had to come next. That much was obvious to Vi. It had to be obvious to the boy tying his boots and straightening out his ever more wild hair. 

 

He knew why Powder didn’t hunt; it was giving her grief for it that Mylo was interested in. 

 

Vi had learned the evening of the rabbit that Powder had thrown up not far from the stream after  she had come down with Sinnan and found Vi trying to figure out how to skin and gut the kill. To be fair, Vi had found the whole thing unpleasant, too. Still, despite Powder’s discomfort, she’d eventually had the rabbit stew. Her sister had not been present for either of the squirrel guttings and the truth was Vi didn’t think Powder would do great at hunting. She didn’t think Mylo was going to drop the issue on his own, though. 

 

Vi exhaled. 

 

“Mylo, shut the hell up and grab a bow. As soon as I get breakfast down me we’re out of here.” Mylo grunted, shrugging her off and staying exactly where he sat at the end of the bed. Vi glanced now at the girl glaring holes into the side of his face. “Powder, I’m the one going out with Mylo today. Not you.” Her sister shrunk back in her own seat to Vi’s right and Ekko slowly turned his head in her direction. Concerned. These two responses made Vi bite down on her frustration and lower her voice. “Where are Vander and Claggor?” 

 

“Claggor’s going to the village early because he gets to do a full day with Vavros.” Powder sounded downright jealous. Pouty, even. “Vander’s cleaning the pot so we don’t have as much to do when you’re done.” At that, Vi reached over for her bowl. Mercifully it was still warmer than room temperature. The bitter edge in her sister’s voice faded when Vi took her first bite. “I told them to let you sleep,” Powder added, conspiratorially. She had her hair braided and in place. That  reminded Vi that if she didn’t find a simple way to cut her hair shortly, she would need to start thinking about doing something similar. 

 

“Yeah, you slept so long we’re gonna be late getting out there,” Mylo chided. He had not yet gotten up to grab his bow or arrows, at all. Vi silently gulped down a large handful of rice before hurrying to the water pitcher and pouring herself a glass to better force it down. For being a total dick, Mylo was right about that. Vi didn’t intend to stall them any longer than needed. 

 

“You were having another bad dream last night. It - it looked like it went on for a while.” Powder told her. There was no pretense anymore, about those. Vi had given up trying to hide the nightmares from Mylo almost as soon as they’d started. In this tiny room, everyone knew how everyone slept. Then again, that meant Vi had woken Powder up. She frowned at her food, curious how long her sister had sat up, observing Vi’s nightmares. 

 

“Don’t remember it this time. Guess I’m lucky.” Distantly, though, Vi thought she remembered being very scared of something or someone in the dream. On the other hand, Powder looked quickly between Vi herself and Mylo, which made Vi’s stomach sink, given the timing. With a fast glance back toward Ekko, who had been quiet so far, she found him unwilling to match her eyes, though he forced a small smile. 

 

Vi hoped Mylo didn’t know more about this nightmare than she did, herself. 

 

Ekko and Powder started to talk around an idea they had for some kind of tool, in the moments that followed. It was going to require a few smithed metal pieces, so they were talking over the size and shape they needed to make them but Vi didn’t pay much attention. She used their plotting as a shield to make it easier to ignore Mylo huffing and puffing and acting like an ass while she hurried to fight down a small bowl of rice, lemongrass and rosemary. She was not sure if she was a great big fan of the combination but that barely registered as an important thought. 

 

Vi didn’t bother to change from the night before. Once she sat her bowl down, she told Ekko and Powder to stay close to home, (Powder notably would not look at her, after that,) pulled on her boots and grabbed one of the bows and a small grain sack with about six arrows in it. She was out into the warm, muggy morning before Mylo even got off the bed or Ekko shouted a goodbye. Soft light from the rising sun washed over her. It didn’t feel good, like she’d hoped. The morning wasn’t even temperate; just humid, thick, warm. 

 

Vi couldn’t wait to be under the leaf canopy: at least there it might be cooler and stay cooler as the morning progressed. Down the hill, a dark shape that had to be Vander was approaching. It stopped and lifted a hand, waving what looked to be their pot, so Vi waved back as Vander’s outline solidified to her tired eyes. Mylo, moments ago still steps behind her, surpassed Vi all at once and headed right for the northernmost edge of the hill. This, too, struck her as dickish, so she flipped off his retreating form, ran a hand through her hair once or twice to straighten it out and push it back and then followed him. 

 

After making excuses for days on days, Vi had run out of ways to dodge this: she was about to spend a minimum of four or five hours with nothing to do but walk through the woods with Mylo. On Mylo’s end, he was at the true height of his assholery and had even started dismissing and ignoring Vander and Claggor. Claggor had tried to give him a taste of his own medicine by ignoring the boy right back the night before but Vander….

 

Vander had just insisted that Vi had to go out with Mylo that morning. He wanted them to get along. He wanted her to find some way to fix it all. She knew the way, but he’d already made it clear she wasn’t allowed to really let loose on Mylo and tell him what a dickend he was acting like. All of this struck her as very unfair but she also didn’t have an excuse she could make to get out of it. 

 

Vi followed Mylo into the woods but, as often happened when she thought about this boy that had been like her brother for the last few years, Vi’s mind went in circles until the ideas threatened to pour from her mouth in a waterfall of angry jabbering.  She wanted to tell him off for harassing Powder like that but lately that had only made him act worse toward the girl. She wanted to tell him off for the way he was acting toward her or Claggor or Vander, who was constantly bending over backwards to accommodate Mylo’s shitty, shitty attitude. That would only make him worse toward her . 

 

It was enough that Vi started their morning trip off already resolved not to speak to him unless it actually involved their hunting. Over the next three or four hours, whenever he opened his mouth to try to bait her into an argument or just generally be abrasive, it absolutely worked. The few times he seemed intent on getting a response from her, though, Vi stared daggers through him until he turned around and went back to the hunt. This left her little to do but scan the woods around them, keep her jaw squeezed tightly shut and try to stay cool. 

 

That was hard to do. 

 

While it was probable that the shade above cooled the woods down a bit in comparison to being out around the fields or up on the hill their little shack was sat upon, it was still humid. It was still warmer than she’d expected. Even the scents of the woods hung differently in the air. Between once or twice weekly trips out to try to scavenge up food with Caras and twice weekly hunting duties, the smell of earth and the refreshing but almost alien smell of the fir trees, even decaying wood, had all come to be comforting. 

 

How frustrating that they seemed a little off when she could most use the comfort. 

 

At least the thickness did not change, too terribly, the sights and sounds around them. 

 

The humidity itself worsened as the sun rose higher. More often than she cared to admit she caught herself starting to sweat when, truthfully, the only thing they were doing was walking northeast. Very rarely were they even exposed to direct sunlight. It became clear to her that Mylo was wearing down, himself. Bolstered by his earlier victories, he’d taken the lead in their trek from the start. Where he went, she followed because it was so much easier than trying to talk to the boy. However, he’d begun to move more slowly in the last half an hour or so. The truth was, Vi found that relieving. They’d wrapped back toward the farm and off to the north again over and over and she was starting to really lose track of where they were. 

 

She was happy, then, when Mylo raised a hand in the air and came to a stop. Hoping he’d just chosen to give up for the day, Vi slowed and eased over to a nearby tree to lean against it. Tension in her legs told her she was far from done but was, at least, starting to wear down. The light coming through the canopy was so bright that the sun must’ve been near its highest point in the sky. Noon was coming. 

 

The moment Vi began to move toward the nearby tree for some support, Mylo waved his hand hard left to right and she stopped because she did not know what the gesture meant. Beneath their feet very little plantlife, whether greenery or tree root, was visible. They were on one of maybe dozens of suspected game trails she’d looked at before and they had not heard more than the flapping of wings the entire time. Now, though, Mylo had his back to her and was trying to draw her attention elsewhere. He turned his head very slowly as the one free hand briefly pointed two fingers toward his eyes and then off to their right, off a little bit to the east. 

 

Vi followed the gesture while Mylo started to ease down just a little bit. His legs were bent almost as if in mimicry of her boxing stance. Vi very much did the same thing in hopes it would help her concentrate, help her understand why one of his hands was slowly reaching up and for an arrow from the makeshift quiver on his back. Vi stared into bushes and tree trunks. She looked past fir branches and oaken knots. She tried desperately to get the knee of her pants to unstick from her knee cap. 

 

None of these actually helped her see what caused Mylo to start slowly, slowly pulling an arrow. Vi hadn’t noticed when he last put an arrow away, either. 

 

Unable to see the forest for the trees, she spent three more seconds staring off to the east, still and holding her near orthodox stance. Then Vi decided that Mylo was definitely messing with her. She exhaled through gritted teeth but when her eyes shot his way he had turned his neck just enough to glare at her with an intensity she hadn’t expected. Then his bushy head of hair shook as he turned back around with all the seriousness of a fight about to erupt. 

 

So when Mylo began to lift his bow, Vi tried hard again to see exactly what it was that had caught his eye. Something had to be standing amid plantlife she couldn’t name or maybe skittering up the side of a tree nearly the same color as it, hiding from her view because she was too focused on being angry and miserable and suspicious. Fucking squirrels.

 

Then again, the last two times she’d even seen a squirrel it was because first Powder and then Caras had pointed them out to her. 

 

Her eyes started to water as a bead of sweat dripped into one and even after blinking it away she had no idea what was causing Mylo to begin to pull back the bow. Vi caught the tail end of an inhale followed by no exhale. Mylo was holding his breath. Unable to see his face from her angle just over his right shoulder she could only imagine it still bore that dead serious glare from before. 

 

If the animal hadn’t shifted around to get at a thicker patch of greenery or maybe just to find new earth to dig its nose into, Vi wouldn’t have spotted it before Mylo took his shot. 

 

Half hidden behind a tall, leafy bush-like plant, something small and brown-gray twitched and then took a step further out of cover. Well, that wasn’t fair: it wasn’t that small. In fact, the pig-like creature rooting around in the earth was bigger than the rabbit and the two squirrels they’d bagged put together. It was certainly larger than anything Vi had even seen out there at anything resembling a range to hit. 

 

Mylo had taken aim at some kind of boar or wild pig. Vi knew now why he was holding his breath and held her own. String pulled back, Mylo’s arms had to be starting to strain. If he didn’t fire soon, they could shake and throw off any shot. Still, she kept quiet. Mylo made sure day in and day out that it actively hurt her to admit this, but he was the only one of them who had hit anything with these bows that wasn’t a non-moving practice target made out of twigs and grass. Since she had not gotten her own bow or arrow ready in time, the very best thing she could do was stay still and not risk giving anything away. 

 

If you’d just trusted he wasn’t playing a joke on you, you could have an arrow notched, too. That’d be two shots at it. 

 

In the moments it took her to really take in the outline of the beast and its large tusks or the fact that they were far enough away from it that this was a definite long shot, enough time passed that Vi thought Mylo should’ve fired. Looking at the back of his head, she thought perhaps he’d hesitated or was taking a long time aiming. Her excitement started to ebb when he lowered the bow slightly, arrow tip pointing too low to hit the target. It did not immediately slow the beating of her heart, though. As angry as she was at him, she certainly didn’t want him to miss or to give up entirely. 

 

When he pulled the bowstring back again and raised it, Mylo fired off the arrow almost all at once. He exhaled a little more harshly than she did as the arrow sailed away but she released her held breath all the same. Before she could even really process that series of three or four events, the arrow slammed hard into the earth. To Vi’s eye, it struck really damned close to the right flank of the animal. 

 

The boar turned around and bolted off through thick greenery before Vi could even track what was happening. She was momentarily left with little more than the impression of muscle working beneath dark fur and rustling bushes. It had been a hell of a shot from some distance and frankly, pretty impressive. Vi readied to offer a word of encouragement, readied to speak for the first time in hours. 

 

From that missed opportunity came one hell of a diatribe. 

 

“Fuck!” Mylo growled deep in his throat as he stood back up and kicked at the earth at his feet. “Stupid pig. Stupid trees.” Over the next thirty seconds, the boy cursed up a storm and blamed, in a rapid but low voice, everything and everyone around him. The wind was blowing the wrong way. The bow was a piece of shit. The arrows sucked and didn’t fly far enough and should’ve hit if they were good. If Vi hadn’t made so much noise it wouldn’t have heard him and gotten away. 

 

She gritted her teeth throughout the entire angry rant. It was unnerving but infuriating. She’d been impressed moments ago that he’d gotten as close as he had. Now he again worked hard to make her regret holding any positive feelings for him. Trying to take being blamed on the chin, Vi held herself quiet when Mylo got back to full height and started to stalk over to his arrow where it stuck up out of the ground. 

 

It was a damned good thing that she had, too. There was just enough of a wind blowing through the woods that, paired with her shooting back an insult or just telling Mylo to put a sock in it, she wouldn’t have heard what came next. The first sound was animalistic to the core, a squealing that was unquestionably piglike, but loud and distant. The second sound, though, was a cry of pain. A woman’s cry of pain. 

 

Multiple paranoias immediately stopped Violet in her tracks. Mylo didn’t quit moving for another couple of seconds, either, which gave Vi more time to worry: had she imagined the voice? Was it finally a hallucination? Was this the moment it actually happened? She’d been on edge and there had been five or six little incidents like this where she’d thought something she was hearing was entirely in her head because no one else had reacted to it at first. Mylo, however, came to a stop right in front of the arrow and after yanking it out, stayed quiet and facing forward. 

 

When he finally looked back at her, it was not with rage or accusation on his face, just with furrowed heavy brow and concern. 

 

So he had heard it too, right? Without taking his eyes off her, Mylo answered the question by tilting his head roughly in the direction of the sound. 

 

That opened the door to the next fear: maybe, just maybe this was the woman Ekko and Powder had both seen watching them at one time or another? Their descriptions matched up; a hood, dark purple hair and pale indigo-pink skin. Vi took two or three steps forward before breaking into a run through the brush even with her bow across one shoulder and her own bag-quiver bouncing on her back. 

 

“Wait up!” Mylo’s voice registered higher than it should be. Nervous, maybe. 

 

Vi did not wait up. Once really aware of what she was doing, Vi picked up the pace over uneven, wild terrain. If that shout had come from someone who had been stalking her sister and Ekko, sometimes in the dark, Vi wasn’t going to slow down. She wasn’t going to ask questions. She was going to lunge and she was going to swing. If actual magic was at play, Vi didn’t want to leave any openings for this woman who had given Powder nightmares or shown her the things she’d seen. 

 

Vi prepared to strike again and again until she was sure that they were safe. 

 

Fists coming up to chin level, she hurried through the bush. Five, six, seven seconds of running past the spot where they’d seen the boar to begin with, there was no sign of the animal. There was, however, a fallen tree in her path. Vi leapt the trunk in a quick stride. Unable to help it, she imagined that this was going to be just like the terrifying night that had taught her that everything she thought she knew about her own brain had been wrong. 

 

It wasn’t a woman matching her sister’s description of their stalker that Vi saw when she landed on the other side of the log. Her eyes caught a flash of human skin and the shape of an arm. It was not a hallucinatory Sevika there to lure her deep into the woods lying in the grass and dirt, all splayed as if someone had knocked them to the ground before Vi could. It wasn’t anyone Vi immediately recognized, at all, who must’ve been responsible for the shout. Instead, lying in the grass not five or six steps away, a frail looking, feminine figure had crumpled by the base of a wide oak tree. 

 

She might even have hit her head on it on the way down. 

 

Unfortunately for whoever this was, she was in a familiar condition: emaciated did not begin to describe the late twenties or early thirties-something woman on the forest floor before her. An upper back length wall of white, filthy hair framed the woman’s sunken face. Even from here, Vi could count every single one of the stranger’s ribs. In a turn of events that struck her as very important (though, she could not say why,) the only real clothing the skeletal woman in front of her wore were shattered shackles around wrists and ankles and a metal collar stuck around her neck. Beyond that, she had made some attempt at wrapping cordage made from material in the woods and scraps of filthy cloth to cover at least some parts of herself. 

 

And it all struck a chord for some reason. 

 

“Shit,” the words slipped out, first in surprise and then in a little bit of anxiety. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” Though she kept on her guard, Vi couldn’t help but notice the sensation in the bottom of her throat. She had the sense that words were ready and waiting to spill out, the waterfall to escape her, the pipe to burst. Eyes locked on the woman on the ground, Vi saw no sign of movement. The boar was nowhere to be seen and the bony shape in the earth was firmly unconscious. 

 

Vi dropped her hands. 

 

The boar was running right at her, Vi realized as she looked down at her unclenching, still unwrapped hands. She quickly raised one back up to press over her own mouth. Having plenty of experience second hand and even some little experience first hand with the state of starvation, Vi would’ve been more impressed to find this stranger still standing if she’d actually been run into by the animal. Skeletal didn’t begin to cover it. Even Mylo and Powder and Ekko as the smallest among them had not lost so much muscle or weight since their arrival in Noxus as to look as bad. 

 

This wasn’t ‘rough living’. This was ‘on the brink.’ 

 

Vi could almost see the shapes of the individual bones of the stranger’s right arm curled up against her midriff. 

 

“Holy shit,” came Mylo’s very similar response at the sight as he finally caught up with Vi and then immediately turned and looked away from the woman. Whether this was about trying to be polite and protect her ‘dignity’ or because the condition the white haired woman was in was familiar and disturbing, Vi did not try to guess. She only lowered her hands long enough to answer. “Wow.” 

 

“She’s barely eaten in weeks,” Vi guessed, though it was half a question. Half dead from starvation.  

 

“Is she alive?” he asked, only daring to glance back at her once. Vi shook her head because she did not know and it was not an unfair question. She crept forward, unable to help but notice the earth caked over her boots as she came to a stop right beside the woman. When even the rustling of plant life and several cracked twigs had not awoken her, Vi eased herself down on protesting knees and outright knelt beside her. She placed her ear right above the stranger’s mouth. 

 

From this angle it was hard to miss the severe scarring across the woman’s upper body and legs. Scars like Vi had never seen before. There was nothing to keep the stranger warm at night, barely enough material here to keep her dignity. There were no signs she had tools or anything at all besides the metal of chains and cuffs and scraps of cloth wrapped around her. How the hell hell long had she lived out here? 

 

Unless… she’s from Airus? Other than maybe Mylo, Vi had spent the least time in Airus and easily could’ve failed to recognize someone even if she had encountered them directly at the feast just after planting. I’d remember someone who looked like her in the village, right? 

 

After a moment of waiting she heard the sound of and felt the starving woman’s breath and sighed to herself. 

 

“She’s alive, but I’m worried she fell and hit her head.” Vi stood back up. No way in hell was Vi ever going to underestimate a head injury, again. She turned back around to Mylo to suggest he help her get this woman up, but, a couple feet away from the stranger’s side, Mylo looked darkly back at Vi. He lifted his recovered arrow and pointed its tip toward the nearest wrist, where a metal cuff still sat with a handful of chain lengths hanging from it. Confused, Vi turned to look at the cuff, wondering if it had cut the woman or something but she saw no more than the sores she would’ve expected. Vi glanced back to find Mylo looking roughly southwest. 

 

“We should get back.” He did not match her eyes when he spoke and that was probably for the best. 

 

It was like being dunked into the stream at midnight quite without warning to realize exactly what Mylo was suggesting. This wasn’t his idea of a joke. This was… she couldn’t believe he’d even suggest…

 

“No way. You’re not actually - I’m not leaving her here!” You, of all people? 

 

“She’s cuffed,” Mylo told her. “Don’t you get what that means? That means she should be in a jail.” This was it. This was the moment. This was the line too far. This was the point where her promises to Vander and Powder both had to take a back seat. There was no way that she was going to leave someone to die out there. Not for Mylo, not for anyone. Her fists clenched shut and Vi lifted her chin. 

 

“Who gives a fuck? Mylo, if even half of what everyone we’ve ever met here says is true then the people who put people in chains here aren’t exactly nice. They’re actually pretty shit. We don’t know she even did anything wrong and even if she did starving to death in the middle of nowhere isn’t -” 

 

“What if she’s dangerous?” Mylo retorted without letting her finish. The only thing that kept her from erupting on him was that he kept his voice awfully even. The thing was, she didn’t pity the fear creeping into his expression. More than anything he’d even said to Powder over the last week or two, the idea he wanted to leave this woman out here made her sick to her stomach. 

 

Who the fuck had Mylo turned into!? 

 

“Right now she’s not dangerous to herself, much less us. Look at her.” Mylo kept his eyes locked on Vi so she sucked in a deep breath and shouted at him. “I SAID, LOOK AT HER!” He blinked and momentarily leaned back as if she’d taken a swing at him. The action was enough to jar him into turning to face the lady at her feet who had not even stirred at the yell. “If this was the Lanes we’d never leave her-” 

 

Mylo hurled the arrow in his hand off to his right as hard as he could. The gesture reminded her of Vander losing his cool and hurling a clay bowl off into the fields to shatter somewhere unseen a couple of weeks prior. Like Vander, Mylo followed it up by screaming right back at her and shutting her down for several seconds. 

 

“This isn’t the fucking Lanes , Vi!” Mylo stomped one foot forward and Vi sneered at the idea he might be trying to scare her. “It’ll never be the Lanes! Stop, stop, stop trying to make it like home! It’s not home! It will never be home!” He didn’t look as angry as he sounded. No, seething, his body shifting up and down in time with heavy, rapid breaths, Mylo looked horrified. No, not horrified. Panicked. Actively panicked. Something she’d expect if an Enforcer was right on his tail. 

 

Panicked at what? This half dead woman who Vi wasn’t entirely sure would ever stand up again without their help? 

 

That made no sense. 

 

‘It’s not home. It will never be home!’ She wanted to process that but - 

 

“You’re right, it’s not the Lanes. But right now, I don’t know how to get through to you, I don’t get what’s going on in your head.” Vi told him, instead. “So, I’ll meet you halfway. We’ll bring her halfway home and then go talk to Vander.” Without waiting for his approval, or waiting to see how his face changed, she turned her back on Mylo and knelt back down to carefully lift this woman’s right arm and get it around her shoulders, holding tight with her left hand. To her surprise but immense relief, Mylo silently stepped over the prisoner’s body and did the same on the far side of her. 

 

Between the two of them, they got her up in no time. 

 

The way Mylo breathed as they started to wheel back toward the house remained the same as moments before: heavy and deep and out of time. The night she’d learned that he could die from Deckard’s errant toss of one of Vander’s gauntlets had been like that for her. She’d felt like that. 

 

“Are you alright?” Vi asked, but Mylo only shook his head twice. Was that to tell her to shut up? Was it to answer her question? She wasn’t sure. He moved badly. Poorly coordinated. It took him half an hour to calm down and act normal about the still silent and very much not conscious woman they were mostly dragging through the woods. (She had an inch or two on Vi and was certainly taller than Mylo, so there was no keeping her entirely off the ground.)

 

In almost the same amount of time again, they found a spot to leave the woman which was a little closer to the farm than Vi had originally promised. In all that time he did not speak. It was not until she’d sat the stranger with the pale hair, (covered in mud and who knew what else) up by a tree that Mylo finally spoke. 

 

“Vi.” Mylo’s voice was unsteady but at least not at a shout, not angry, just nervous. The boy stared unabashedly this time at the target of their rescue. He was not glaring or leering, either. The genuine nerves turned Vi around and stopped her from running right off toward the hill to find Vander. “Vi, I remember her.” 

 

Violet, who didn’t understand how she could’ve ever seen this woman before in her life, stood up to her full height and did something that probably would’ve upset him normally. She talked to him as she might have spoken to Powder during a particularly bad freak out. 

 

“Mylo,” she started slowly, to give his name time to get his attention and maybe set him at ease, “how do you mean?” 

 

“Basilich,” he almost croaked. That name at least rang a bell. “The city our boat landed at when we got here.” He tore his eyes away from the woman and matched eyes with Vi long enough to see her moment of recognition. She understood better now how scared he’d been to bring this lady back. She still thought it was out of character for him to outright refuse, but the nerves made sense. This was the woman who they’d watched led through the clean, sleekly cobbled streets of Basilich in chains and nothing else, being stoned and shouted at. 

 

Again, she placed her hand over her mouth. What did I do? To bring to their farm someone that the people in charge of Noxus would do this to, was it the wrong decision? When Mylo turned away from the recognition, looking neither more convinced nor accusatory, Vi decided the only route forward was to apologize to Vander later rather than stand there and dwell on it. 

 

That did not stop her from mouthing every curse she’d ever heard right into the hand she held clamped over her mouth until she cleared the treeline at the farm and let it drop to her side. 

 

That explains the scars. A lot of fucking scars. 

 

They found Vander luckily well before they had to start to climb the hill. The sound of him swinging the ax at a large, long dead tree just beyond the treeline led the both of them in that direction. This whole experience had thrown Vi off enough she’d forgotten until she heard the sound that it was supposed to be warm or humid. She wasn’t entirely certain she would’ve wanted to be doing that alone in this kind of weather. 

 

Vi jogged side by side with Mylo in quiet toward the noise, fairly certain who they would find at the other end. Sure enough, Vander was mid swing, having cut almost halfway through the old dead fir when he caught sight of the two of them huffing and puffing their way southeast toward him. She looked sideways expecting to see Mylo waiting for her to speak. After all, it had been her insisting they bring this deserter back to the farm and him trying to talk her out of it. Instead, though, Mylo raised the hand not carefully holding his own bow and got Vander’s attention. 

 

“Everything alright, you two?” Vander called. For some reason this just made Vi pick up the pace. Mylo did not move quite as quick but did not want to be left behind and Vi let herself get right up to a tree beside the dead wood being cut down before she even dared to try to speak. By that point, Vander had lowered the head of the ax to the ground and was watching her through his own furrowed brows. She leaned her bow up against the tree beside her and sucked in a breath. 

 

“We found someone in the forest,” Mylo got out before Vi could find the words. “She’s in really bad shape, Vander.” 

 

“She’s - she’s,” Vander leaned the handle of his own tool against the tree he was just cutting down with it and strode over to the two of them. Mylo set aside his own arrows and bow as Vi shook her head and tried to formulate a quick way to tell the full story. Vander pressed three fingers under her chin and forced her head back up when she looked away at his approach. 

 

“What’s going on?” he repeated. “Someone from Airus in trouble?” Vi shook her head. 

 

“No, no, we remembered her. The woman from Basilich.” The man’s blue-grays darkened a little as he searched her own, then looked over at Mylo. Vi grabbed his attention back by finally landing on exactly what to say. “There was the deserter, or whatever, right? The one they paraded around and stoned? It’s her.” 

 

“What?” Vander asked, now looking to Mylo for confirmation. Mylo nodded but also shrugged. 

 

“I mean, I think so. She looks… more like a skeleton than anything.” Vi nodded her agreement but, that was still an understatement. 

 

“Busted chains and cuffs and a collar but she’s really bad. Like, starving to death and almost there. I think she even hit her head and we couldn’t, um, decide what to do but I couldn’t leave her there and -” 

 

“And you’re sure it’s the same person?” Vander asked Vi directly, now, hand moving to rest on her shoulder. She shivered at the squeeze and realized she hadn’t really thought about the feelings in her arms and legs for a while. They ached. “Same prisoner and all?” 

 

“We both thought so,” Mylo told him when Vi again nodded. Hair fell down over her eyes, so she wiped it away. It was sweat-soaked or just wet from humidity. “She’s way smaller now, though. Like they didn’t feed her much in prison.” 

 

“Or she just broke out, ran and couldn’t risk going to anyone for help,” Vander continued, darkly. His whole face fell. His whole posture changed to sag slightly. While the man looked concerned he did not look like he realized how close by this woman was or how bad off she was. Vi had to make it clearer. 

 

“Vander, she’s nearby,” Vi clarified. He did not fall into the old trap of looking sad or disappointed but there was still hesitation. That much, Vi understood. After a quick glance around herself revealed no sign of Ekko or Powder nearby, Vi asked, “what if she’s dangerous?” 

 

“Should’ve thought of that before you brought her over here,” Mylo told her, arms crossing over his chest. Vi turned to find him close enough she could get right into his personal space. 

 

“Do you ever think about anyone else?” Vi asked him. “Ever? At all? At any point, do you think about anyone other than yourself?” To a certain degree, the question was genuine as much as it was angrily spat through a dry mouth. Back to looking surprised or scared, he opened his mouth to answer. Why are you surprised when you act like a bag of ass that someone’s gonna get mad at you? 

 

“This isn’t the time. We need to get all this back up the hill, grab the sickles and make some kind of bed of grass and a pillow in the shed. I’ll go get her if you point the way. We’ll bring her some food and water and I’ll sit out here with her and wait for her to come to.” It was a wonder of a transformation. As Vander spoke, he stood up straight again. Surety returned to his voice. Confidence. He wasn’t asking anyone anything or making suggestions. He told them what to do. Vi wanted to listen. 

 

Vi was so relieved to just be able to listen. 

 

“If she’s not come ‘round by morning, we’ll send one of you for help from Airus.” Vi very seriously considered asking him not to go that far. Part of her was scared that Mylo might be right and she’d just brought someone very dangerous to their door. Who knew what would happen if anyone else found out about her? It wasn’t like they knew all the people in Airus and how they thought or what they would and would not do if it might benefit them. 

 

As if reading her mind, Vander gave her shoulder a small shake. 

 

“If she’s as bad as you say, she’s going to be lucky to wake back up, much less be a danger to any of us.” 

 

“Hmph.” Grabbing his bow and his bag of arrows, Mylo walked right past Vi, seized the handle of the ax and started walking back toward the hillside. He could be pissed at her all he wanted. It was true it wasn’t their responsibility and it might bring risk but - 

 

“What if she hit her head because of the boar?” Vi asked out loud. It would make sense. 

 

“Boar?” She didn’t miss the hope in the man’s voice. 

 

“Mylo got really close to killing a boar but it got away.” 

 

“Did he hit it?” 

 

“No,” Vi answered quickly. She wasn’t following the man’s train of logic. She didn’t know what this had to do with anything else going on. 

 

“Damn,” Vander spat as he released her. “Was hoping I could send you two out to track it down in case it bled out.” 

 

“No, he got close but it ran and it might’ve run right into her. She was off in that direction.” Vi told the man. She still wasn’t sure what either of them were waiting for. Given Mylo’s permanently shitty attitude, she probably was going to be setting this stranger up with a grass bed alone. 

 

“How close to you?” Vander asked, hooking that same hand around her arm and turning her around to gesture her forward, back into the woods. It seemed like he’d already forgotten the order he’d just given them both. Or maybe he needs someone to walk him to her and thinks Mylo will actually do something for someone else for once. Vi didn’t argue. She turned. He plucked at the neck of a ragged gray top to let some air beneath it and followed her. Vi barely had time to snag her bow on the way by the tree. 

 

“She was kind of close, why?”

 

“Think she was following you?” Vi slowed down for a step or two but had to get right back up to speed to match his pace. She hadn’t even thought of that possibility and Vander could clearly read it on her face when he turned back and frowned, scratching at a freshly stubbly chin. “Well, it’s possible. She might’ve been waiting to see if you got anything. Could’ve come to try to beg for part of it.” Vi wanted to feel more at ease as much as that made sense. 

 

“Or maybe she hoped we’d hit something and then lose it?” Vi offered, trying to embrace the positive options because the idea they might’ve been stalked by someone who meant them harm and Vi had just brought the very same person back to their home where her sister slept felt daming. “Like you said, to track it?” 

 

“Maybe,” Vander agreed. She told herself he sounded sure of this. Either way, she led Vander at a jog through the woods to the tree she’d left the woman sat against and found no sign that their ‘guest’ had woken up or even shifted around. As soon as Vi pointed in the woman’s direction, catching sight of nothing more than a dirt-caked human leg, Vander had lengthened his strides with a grim, deeply upset look on his face. It wasn’t quite as unnerving as Mylo’s panic had been, but it still slowed her. “I wish you kids didn’t have to see this.” 

 

“What?” Vi questioned as he came right up to the deserter they’d first seen a month ago in the city of Basilich. Now the similarities were undeniable, though she thought they would’ve all been forgiven for not making the connection given how much smaller the already svelte woman now looked. Vander shook his head. 

 

“People. People like this.” 

 

“People starving? We’ve seen it before.” 

 

“And we got close to experiencing it again,” Vander told her before unceremoniously kneeling down, wrapping an arm beneath the stranger’s neck and legs and hefting her up as if it were easier even than carrying Vi out of that woods days ago. The parallels of the moment did not escape her and she did not want to think on them for too long. “Can’t tell you how glad I am Orkis told me to get the fields planted.” Chains wrapped around the woman’s left wrist clanked against Vander’s chest. “It’s time we diversify if we want to not be miserable come harvest time.” 

 

“Diversify?” Vi questioned. She seemed to only be asking him things, now. It was familiar. Comforting in a strange way even though nothing about this scene was pleasant. Vander turned very carefully on the spot and just as suddenly as they arrived he started off back toward the farm. She watched the man cradle a soldier turned deserter’s neck and head as if they were an infant in his admittedly still rather wide arms. 

 

“I wonder if I can remember how to make a snare trap. I should’ve tried a long time ago. We could set up a trap line in high traffic areas. Snag more little things like rabbits without all this fuss and muss.” While that sounded great and all and a part of her wanted to shout at him to tell her why he hadn’t tried that already, she also couldn’t imagine thinking about things like food and hunting and trapping at a time like this. 

 

“I don’t -” she couldn’t bring herself to answer or formulate a good response. Vander craned his neck to look just behind himself at her and she hurried to follow. 

 

“Don’t worry about me. Talking’s helping me think.” If that was what Vander said was happening, then the least she could do was quiet down and let him think. It made sense, at least. 

 

“Alright.” 

 

To her surprise, cresting the top of the hill and coming around to the west did show the door to the shed wide open. A larger than expected patch of the grass between the shed and the shack had been cut away awfully low. They’d been advised not to try to do too much grass cutting without a scythe, but honestly if Mylo had done all this in the time it had taken for her to lead Vander to the deserter and come back, Vi was impressed. They could probably get away with using the sickles for the sake of cutting away at the tall and sometimes sharp blades of grass nearest the shack, making it safer to sit out front without worry of snakes or other small animals hiding in it. 

 

She caught first a flash of the steel of the sickle as someone came through the open door to the shed. Vi frowned as Powder stepped out, followed by Ekko. While Ekko wasn’t wielding the other sickle he did seem to be helping with the process. Like, maybe helping to haul back what was cut? 

 

The problem was, if Powder was cutting and Ekko carrying the grass back, then what was Mylo doing? 

 

Vi turned to look at Vander and felt a flare of annoyance at the way his eyes met hers and then immediately shot away so he could pretend not to notice what she had. Vander had given Mylo and Vi pretty explicit instructions to gather up grass for a makeshift bed. Instead, here stood  Powder and Ekko in the same outfits they’d used for planting, paused in front of the shed and watching the stranger being carried in their direction with wide, shocked eyes. 

 

Though Vi wasn’t close enough to hear, Ekko and Powder exchanged words through lips that barely moved as if they didn’t want to be noticed. When Powder grimaced and nodded, that seemed to be the end of the conversation. The bluenette slipped away without a word or gesture of greeting and started cutting a patch of tall, green blades of grass between the shed and cellar door. Ekko hung back for his part and called out to Vander. 

 

“We’re working on a pillow, now!” Vander nodded in his direction but did not speak. Vi shot a look at the man’s face. Blank and stony, Vander apparently wasn’t going to say a damned thing about Mylo pushing off a job he’d been given on Ekko and Powder. The urge to complain about it came on so fast that her mouth was open before she knew what she was doing. Vi again clenched her teeth tightly against the threat of another waterfall of angry words. 

 

“Fucker,” she hissed. Vander looked sideways at her, finally, so she glared right back. One second of very uncomfortable silence passed before Vander looked away again. She swallowed it down and did not ask herself if she’d thrown the insult at Mylo or at Vander. It didn’t matter ultimately, as long as she kept the rest restrained. Fists clenched tightly at her side, Vi broke away from Vander. 

 

“Hey,” he called when she got a step or two away. Vi rounded on the man ready for a fight, ready to scream down his self-pity and advice to kiss ass and let Mylo keep it up. She readied for him to tell her how severely she’d fucked up by bringing the stranger to them in the first place. Instead, unable to relax her fists, she watched Vander once more look her over and then say, “start a pot of rice for lunch. Make sure there’s enough for her, bring it out when you’re done.” 

 

Vi decided that between the options of telling him to make Mylo do it for once and just getting away from the situation, she wanted to be gone. Vi turned back around without answering and headed right for the cellar door. To do so, she had to pass by her sister. Powder was laying clumps of grass neatly beside one another as she cut, bending down to drag the tool through the green and standing back up to move on just as quickly. Vi didn’t have a chance to envy her energy. 

 

She had to fix a big fake smile on her face, flash it Powder’s way when her sister called out her name and get down into the cellar to grab supplies for lunch.

 

Vi cooked in silence. Claggor’s absence for lunch meant he was likely eating something provided by his teacher and employer, probably something that included meat. ( Oh fuck me, Vi thought as she realized this applied to Ekko and Powder when they were in Airus for the day. No wonder they have more energy than me.) It also meant that the only one in the shack when she entered was Mylo, who had kicked off his muddy boots right beside the door and thrown himself on the bed. He looked up briefly when she entered with a hefty bag against one shoulder but did not rise to help her. 

 

Vi dropped the bag by the door and looked back into his disinterested green eyes for several seconds before shaking her head at him. She could snarl and spit, shout and bang things around but until the day she finally grabbed him and shook him until he listened, nothing was going to change. It didn’t matter. Vi crossed to the kitchen corner of the room, put the pot down on the stove and, after retrieving the bag and depositing a good amount of rice into the pot, poured water from a nearby bucket over top of it. 

 

“If this somehow burns,” Vi started as she shoved a large handful of trigs and a couple of quartered logs into the stove’s blackened firebox, “while going to the well, you’re eating it.” Mylo snorted and kept his eyes on the ceiling. 

 

“Like to see you try and make me.” 

 

“No one can make you do anything, Mylo. You’ll just pawn it off on others or make it everyone else’s fault.” Shutting the door to the firebox, she grabbed a second, empty bucket and left the shack before any more could be said to the boy with his hands behind his head and a look of satisfaction written across his face. At this point, Vi was running out of ways she could imagine responding to him that wouldn’t upset everyone around her. 

 

Vi did not do much more that afternoon except sit inside her head and worry, plan and seethe. She cooked their lunch and made sure Ekko and Powder came in to get a bowl when they got back from an unconnected chore. When Powder pointed out that she hadn’t eaten, she told her sister that she had while Powder and Ekko were out gathering firewood right before lunch. Since only Mylo had been in the house at the time, not Powder nor Ekko nor Vander would know she was lying. 

 

When she dropped off a bowl and a pitcher of water for their guest and Vander, she hung near the door and waited to see if there was any sign that the Noxian deserter was waking up. Vander didn’t even look at Vi as he informed her that he’d checked the platinum-haired woman for bad head wounds and found none. Vander thought she was just exhausted. Vi similarly didn’t look at him when she turned away to leave him in the shed with this skeletal stranger. 

 

Wanting time to herself, the brawler descended the hill on the north end and came to the Climbing Tree. The Secret Tree. She used its shade to shadowbox alone and generally just exercise. She used the exercise to wear herself out and stop herself from the aforementioned worry, planning and seething. Left feeling hard done by Vander and Mylo and guilty all at once, there were just a lot of thoughts in her head, unwelcome. She almost wished, though she would not say it out loud, that they were rushing to plant the fields again. 

 

Vi worked herself to the point of shaky arms and legs and a proper sweat throughout the early part of the afternoon. More than simple shadowboxing or even the more general practice of stance, Vi gave herself the kind of workout that wouldn’t have been a real problem back home. Out here, though, with no promise of significant protein for herself, it was half pointless and maybe a little bit risky. 

 

Each time she settled into a different exercise to start her first set, it did have the added benefit of forcing herself to focus on her body and what she was doing. It did distract her from her thoughts. If anyone so much as came to look for her, that afternoon, Vi did not hear or see it. Once the shadowboxing had her heart up and her breath heavy, she switched to sit ups. When she felt she’d done ten of the sets she’d sat out to do five of, she switched to push ups. When these caused her arms to start to burn, Vi laid on her back in the earth and switched to a simple elbow to knee crunch. 

 

It progressed like this for hours and Vi did not relent. Only once her entire body was sore and her legs threatened to rebel at the very idea of a new set of squats did she take to a quick walk along the treeline to try to cool down. She had no idea how long she’d had her heart rate up or how long it had really been since the last time she’d given her body even this calm of a workout. Mercifully, the sun was sinking low enough in the sky that dinner was imminent. This time, she intended to eat. 

 

It was a little bit of a struggle to make it back up the hill when she finally chose to try and Vi swung right by the shack to find Mylo exactly where she’d left him: in bed. Vi grabbed her bag and Powder’s and went to look for her sister. Vi hoped they could get an early washing up done and be back before the sun had finished dropping below the horizon. On a hunch, she started her search by peeking around one side of the shack to look at the shed. 

 

The shed’s old, crooked wooden door was shut, which was new. Ekko and Powder were predictably right outside of the door with their ears against the wood, still dressed for labor. Curious about what they might be listening to, Vi approached. Even the act of trying to make her steps light and soft was an effort for aching, throbbing legs. It wasn’t pleasant, entirely, but it brought a relieved smile to her face that she was more focused on that than the constant internal monologue in her head of late. 

 

It took the mechanic duo longer than Vi had expected to notice her approach. Maybe she’d moved a little too loudly or suddenly, but Ekko shot an eye her way and raised a finger to his lips. Only when Powder noticed that did her sister do the same. Vi nodded quickly to say she understood even as she stood thirty or so paces away. Then she raised her hands, one holding her own backpack full of clothing and the other Powder’s bag, which Vi realized likely still contained some of the tools she’d brought over from home. 

 

It would explain the weight difference. 

 

Powder frowned in her direction but Vi raised both eyebrows and tilted her head off roughly in the direction of the stream. She didn’t mind Powder rolling her eyes at her before breaking away from the door to approach. Not intent on ruining Ekko’s fun (because, frankly, she hoped her sister would fill her in on what the two had heard) Vi waved the hand holding her own back roughly in his direction and started off to the northwest. Ekko flashed a thumbs up to Powder as if to promise he would keep listening. 

 

He does like to eavesdrop, doesn’t he? She smiled to herself and waited until Powder caught up with her (which she did easily) before shoving the younger girl’s bag into her arms. Vi couldn’t blame Ekko: historically, listening in on stray conversations had paid off for him. 

 

“You okay?” Powder asked her, quietly, as Vi hesitated and then picked a careful path to start her way down the hill. Powder followed along behind her without a problem. Her sister sounded nervous about the conversation, as if she didn’t want to bring up the last four or five hours which Vi had spent entirely on her own, wearing herself out with whatever decent exercise came to mind and sweating as more than she had in days. 

 

Vi didn’t answer the question for a good half minute, until she was sure her protesting legs, especially sore from the knees down, weren’t going to give out. In that time she’d made it a quarter of the way down the hill or less and Powder seemed to be humoring her with how slow she slogged along beside Vi. 

 

“Just a little sore from a workout,” Vi lied. There was far more than a little muscle soreness at work. For one thing, it was more strain than usual: she hadn’t been working these muscles like she might’ve been back home and they were not happy to get even this half taste of the old routine. For another, she had to admit she was actively hiding from a lot of her worries. “What’d you all find out at the door?” 

 

“She’s awake,” Powder told Vi, which on one hand was surprising but on the other made sense in that there would be no other reason for the duo to have been listening in. Vi glanced sideways at her sister and wondered quietly if Powder was getting taller or she was just imagining it. “And she’s a ‘deserter’ which obviously doesn’t have anything to do with food but-” 

 

“It means she abandoned their army,” Vi chimed in. Powder’s cheeks darkened and the girl tapped herself on the forehead with two fingers. 

 

“Well, duh. Desertion. That explains why they arrested her.” Powder sounded a little derisive of herself at first, then the girl’s voice darkened and softened, grew more anxious. “I don’t know why they had to do what they did to her. Back in Basilich.” Vi had been wondering whether the others would make the same connection Mylo had, and that answered the question. After the parade that had seen their guest dragged through the streets unclothed and pelted by stones, Powder had closed her eyes and not opened them again until they’d gotten out of the city. Vi hadn’t been so out of touch as not to realize that. 

 

“Are you okay?” Powder shrugged, looking down in a way that partially hid her face behind the braid resting over her right shoulder at the moment. Vi tilted her head down to try to get a better look at her sister and almost lost her balance in the process so she took the shrug as Powder not wanting to talk about it and let it go even though she had a sense that she should not. “Well, if that’s all she did, I’m glad I brought her back here.” 

 

“Why?” her sister asked, though she did not look up much higher than it took to observe the path down the hill. 

 

“Well, from what Caras says,” Vi started, trying to pick the right words. “Noxus is basically just stealing everyone’s land and stuff. They find a place that has what they want and they send their soldiers in to fight armies and take over cities.” With a quick glance at her sister, Vi asked, “would you fight for them? I sure wouldn’t.” Powder lifted her face again. Instead of fear or discomfort, she looked sadly contemplative. A very large frown settled into place and Vi was relieved to get some insight into what her sister was thinking a moment later. 

 

“So, it’s like Topside but worse?” 

 

“Pretty much, yeah,” Vi told her. She wondered what her sister thought of that. How did it feel to her, when she was so happy here, to know that they were living in a place that did everything they hated about Topside and then some? “But-” 

 

“But what?” Powder cut in when she started to trail off and consider whether this might finally be a segway into talking Powder into helping her push Vander to take them home. Instead, Vi had to turn her attention back to the subject and problem at hand but it was with a stomach that felt emptier in a way that had nothing to do with skipping lunch. “Vi?” 

 

“Well if anyone comes looking for her, they can’t find her here.” 

 

“They’ll be mad,” Powder agreed. Vi clenched both her occupied and empty hands into fists again and decided it was smart to be very honest here.

 

“Not just mad.” 

 

“They might hurt us, or arrest us,” Powder added, to show that she fully understood what was going on here. “It really is just like the Enforcers.” 

 

“Sure, but that won’t happen,” Vi promised. “Vander said he’ll send her on her way if she wakes up so, we’ll be fine. I’m sure of it.”

 

“Will he, though?” Powder prodded as they finally hit the bottom of the hill. Then her sister took the lead and Vi followed at a slower pace. They angled widely around the Climbing Tree, which was fine since it would’ve been out of their way, anyway. “She looked really, really bad, Vi.” 

 

“She is.” Powder had as much reason as Vi did to know what people looked like in the last stages of starving. Now, usually this was because of sicknesses that made it so you couldn’t eat but sometimes, very rarely, because no one around them had enough food to share. How many of the wasting illnesses in the Undercity were caused by all the shit Topside dumped in the water? Vi slowed down a little more and at first Powder didn’t notice and began to pull very far ahead. “She hasn’t eaten in a long time.” 

 

“Shouldn’t we help her?” Powder asked frowning. The frown deepened when she turned back to look at Vi and found her lagging so far behind. Vi saw a flash of something in her sister’s eyes that she immediately pretended not to have noticed. If she thought too hard about Powder showing her pity at the sight of her falling behind, Vi was not sure how she’d react. Instead, Vi hustled on burning, sore, tight legs. 

 

“We didn’t leave her out there. We gave her food. What else should we do?” 

 

“I dunno. Take care of her until she’s better?” 

 

“I guess,” Vi shrugged and pulled up alongside her sister in the dying sunlight. A pinkish hue settled over the fields around them. The beginnings of real wheat stalks peaked up through the sun-dulled dirt of those fields, but the failing light made them look less healthy than the midday sun did. “But it’s like you said, yourself: if they find her here they might arrest us. Or worse.” Powder turned her attention back to the trip to the stream, rummaging around in her bag with her right hand as she held it against her chest with her left. 

 

While her sister picked out a change of clothes from the bag, Vi did the same and waited. She waited for Powder to argue and bring to life the very tiny voice in the back of her head that said they were taking the coward’s way out to send this woman away. Or maybe, Powder would regretfully agree and Vi would finally be able to quiet that worry once and for all. She realized she hadn’t unclenched the fist still holding the strap of her bag yet. Tension had settled into her neck. 

 

“I thought this place would be different.” Powder finally said. Though she sounded low it was not so much to explain the way Vi’s heart broke for her. Is she naive or am I jaded?  

 

“Maybe it will be,” Vi hurried to lie. She didn’t trust that her perception of the truth wasn’t fucked with by how much she wanted to be home. It also probably wouldn’t be fair of her to dash her sister’s hopes and dreams so casually. The truth was, Vi didn’t know how Powder could’ve tricked herself into thinking something that stupid. Her sister was smart and had heard all the stories about Noxus that the rest of them had. Vi quietly and harshly thought that Power must have been lying to herself this whole time. “Maybe we can stay out of the way of the military people and we can be fine, Powder. At least until it’s safe to go home.” 

 

She hadn’t even intended to add in that last part.

 

“Ekko wants to go back. Bad.” Powder was again unwilling to look at Vi as they neared the edge of the woods. 

 

“We all do,” Vi shrugged. 

 

“Do we?” Powder challenged, quickly, though hesitantly. 

 

“Right. You said you didn’t. So, why? It’s home.” Vi thought the question to be fair enough and calm enough. Still, her own problems and fears must’ve come through despite herself because she felt a tightness in her cheeks as she tried to hold a smile. Powder’s arm that was not carrying the bag tightened against her chest and the mechanically inclined sister hunched significantly. Not hesitant, fearful. 

 

“It - it’s dirty. It smells. We never know when we’re going to eat. We get a bath a week if we’re lucky. We pay lots of money just to have good water to drink. We always have to steal or fight. Digging through the dumps is illegal so if we want to make anything we’re constantly running from Enforcers.” Powder’s head moved, as if she were reaching her neck out to bite or chomp at something. The words started to come more quickly. Vi thought the whole thing sounded too familiar. Not the words, but the way her sister sounded like she was losing control of her voice. “Enforcers are always beating people and leaving them to… to die.  They’d never help one of us like you and Mylo did for that lady.” 

 

‘Mylo would have left her there to die!’ Vi wanted to toss this at her sister, to interject. While it might’ve interrupted the rapidly worsening topics of conversation and the rising tension and panic in her sister’s tone, it might have also just upset or scared her. Instead, Vi tried very hard to listen over her own beating heart and hear her sister. Nothing Powder was saying was wrong. 

 

Vi shifted her bag to hang over one shoulder. 

 

“Silco’s there and probably still hurting people. Why would we go back? ” Vi blinked as Powder looked back at her, hesitantly. 

 

“Don’t you miss anything from home?” Meat had certainly been easier to get. As long as you didn’t mind paying most of what you made in a week for a bit of it. Or stealing it. 

 

“Mom or dad, maybe. The little parts I remember about them.” Powder suddenly closed her eyes and made herself smaller when Vi took a quick step toward her sister, heart aching. Vi started to reach out, stomach churning, but stopped. Because Powder was still panicked even though she had been silent for almost a second. Even with Powder’s bag in one hand, both arms were wrapped around her stomach. She was still hunched, trying to make herself a smaller target. For what? 

 

No one but Deckard and one very unlucky Enforcer had ever laid a hand on Powder. Vi had made sure of that. Yet, Powder had always flinched like that when she was worried someone was mad, like she was scared of being struck or something. Vi wished more than anything in the moment not for a route home, but to understand why Powder reacted that way. 

 

“But mom’s gone so why… why go back?” 

 

“Because it’s home,” Vi answered the question as best as she could. There was more to it but that felt like the best summary of her thoughts and it was so hard to explain the rest, the sense that she’d done something wrong by leaving without finishing things with Silco’s people. Look what they’d done to Powder? Look what they’d done to Mylo? Look what they’d done to their family? What were they doing to everyone else!? Powder shook her head but then nodded and did not act as if she was scared of Vi’s hand that reached out to push Powder’s braid behind her head so Vi could see her better. Yet, the mechanic did not uncurl or release herself. 

 

“This could be home,” Powder sucked in a deep breath and yelled down at her feet. “Everyone I love is right here! We have water and we’ll be ok on food and everything’s beautiful and I get to learn things. Vander isn’t making just enough money to keep the building open. We’re not stealing anything! None of us are getting hurt and the air doesn’t taste like copper! ” The next breath came just as heavy as the last and quicker than Vi expected. 

 

With the unnerving feeling that she would not be able to look down at her sister much longer, Vi did so. She watched and waited for Powder to continue but her sister had frozen and stopped and was not looking at her. What about Benzo? she wanted to ask, but did not because it was unfair to ask of Powder. What about the guy who set your arm when you broke it? What about Samuel and everyone who used to come into The Last Drop every night? What about all those people at The Bottom? What about everyone sucking in air and water that’s gonna kill them? 

 

Somehow, those didn’t feel like Powder’s problem. 

 

They did feel a little like Vi’s: until recently that was Vi and Powder and all the rest of their family. 

 

She didn’t have to kneel. There was not that much of a height distance between herself and her sister, but Vi did hunch forward a bit toward Powder 

 

“Could you look up at me, Powder?” The question was less a command and more a genuine concern. Could her sister just please lift her head and hear Vi on this? Please. Slowly but surely the head of blue hair rose and Powder’s eyes, so like her own but wider, opened again. They looked a little watery, but there were no outright tears. “It’s okay that you like this place and it’s okay that I miss home.” 

 

A little too stunned for Vi’s taste, Powder’s brow furrowed but she remained quiet. God, has she been worried about me this whole time? 

 

“It’d be okay if you missed home and liked this place. For me, leaving home like it is and staying here feels bad, right now. It feels like I’d left you behind somewhere, hurt. Can you imagine how that would make me feel?” Powder nodded, matching Vi’s eyes finally and Vi nodded alongside because of course her sister was capable of that level of empathy, she just needed an insight into Vi’s mind. “Just because I feel that way doesn’t mean I’m mad that you’re happy here. I’m never gonna be fucking mad seeing you happy.” Vi tried to chuckle at the absurdity of the idea and earned a brief smile from her sister. A smile. A little bit of normalcy. Maybe they needed that again. 

 

“You still get angry a lot, when you’re not going away. Not the really bad kind like a couple weeks ago, but the kind from before. From the boat.” Vi wasn’t sure what her sister meant, exactly. Had she been ‘going away’ differently, lately? “And not like when you sleep extra. I don’t mind. It’s okay. You’re up later and we both have nightmares.” Vi swallowed. Everything Powder said sounded true, including the accusation that she was angry a lot. 

 

She swallowed it down because she didn’t think she’d ever make Powder really understand. All she could do was take it. 

 

“I wish I wasn’t like this.” Vi wanted Powder to hear her and believe her: if she could be different, if she could feel differently, she would. Every time she tried to not think about things for too long, though, every fear and every annoyance and everything that hurt her and made her mad came back so much worse. “I’m sorry I’m making this harder on you.” Powder shook her head to dismiss the apology. “It’s okay that you like this place and if we ever get to go home it’s going to be okay to miss it.” 

 

Vi squinted at her sister’s face, her lips rose and she added: “It’ll be okay to miss the people here. Certain people especially.” The girl in front of her turned pink in the cheeks after a second of bewilderment etched over almost every feature. Then, annoyance flashed across her face, pushing aside the confusion. Rubbing at her eyes with her free hand, Powder stomped off toward the stream all at once, leaving Vi to follow a few steps behind. 

 

“ Stupid Vi,” her sister grumbled ahead of her, shaking her bag with the hand holding it. Vi stood back to full height as her sister did the same thing. She smirked at Powder’s straightened back, very convinced that in the moment they were thinking of the same person. Forcing her own backpack higher up on her shoulder, Vi followed. Normal means I push Powder’s buttons once in a while and she pushes mine. Normal means we all push each others’ buttons once in a while. 

 

Maybe, just maybe Vi needed to think about that idea. 

 

For the rest of the night, Vi pretended that everything was as close to normal as it could be given the decision she made shortly after her conversation with Powder on the way to the stream. With that decision in the back of her head that no matter how much she wished to be home she couldn’t risk having this place pulled out from under them without warning, Vi started the two of them back from the stream in time to meet Claggor at the front door. The boys split off for their own washing up and Vi made sure to bring in enough from their well to fill a fresh pitcher of water. 

 

She ate dinner in relative quiet and ease and didn’t pay much attention to Mylo, who at least talked with Claggor a little bit. She didn’t bite or show much interest when Vander decided to go and bring their guest staying in the shed her dinner. She ignored the spat between Claggor and Mylo over who had the bed that night and after dishes had been rinsed and sat aside, she offered to help Powder redo her braid for bed. Powder rejected the offer, so Vi settled down on the far side of Ekko from her sister and talked quietly with him for a few minutes that night about how useful it would be if they could finally get a kiln built and bricks made. 

 

In all, she kept quiet and laid faced away from either Ekko or Powder so that neither would be able to tell that she was not sleeping. Vi tried to stay still upon the two layers of blanket separating her from the hard, dirty wood floor and listened to the sounds of some breathing growing steadier as the night progressed. She kept her eyes closed and waited for the sound of Claggor’s snoring and, finally, for Vander to leave the shack and head to the lean-to for his own bedding. She could hear him rustling the sticks, leaves and twigs that made up his improvised door into place even through the walls. 

 

Then she waited an agonizing ten minutes further, counting each second in slow, mind numbing, painful stillness. Her hips and back and arms and legs all protested lying so still on the floor after the workout she’d put them through earlier. Regardless, she picked out no unexpected sound from anyone else in the room over those ten minutes. Just as patiently as she’d laid and waited, Vi slowly worked her blankets down around her ankles, trying to move as little as possible, to rustle nothing, and then climb to her knees. Claggor’s snoring did not stop and across from her, Mylo was turned to face toward the side of the bed. Neither Ekko nor Powder made a sound but she stopped to look their way. 

 

Not an open eye or even movement to be found. 

 

Vi counted it to be barely three hours after dinner when she finally got to her feet and began to ease open the door to the shack. 

 

Vi never saw and would only learn some time later that she was being watched during her ever-so-subtle egress through one barely open golden-brown eye. Knowing that Ekko had caught her sneaking out wouldn’t have stopped her, anyway. 

 

She didn’t bother with her boots despite the potential stupidity of the act: who knew what was out there to step on in the dark. While it was very dark outside of the shack, the moonlight and stars provided a little more illumination than expected. It still took time to adapt to the low light compared to inside where the fire in the hearth still cast a pretty orange hue across the room. Vi took that time to carefully lift the lantern from beside the door. That, paired with the match Vi had swiped out of Vander’s bag earlier in the day, would come in handy. She listened intently for the sound of a rumbling snore emitting from the lean-to. It never really came but since he had not stuck his head out of the shelter and chewed her out, Vander had either heard nothing or questioned nothing. 

 

It wasn’t unusual for one of them to get up in the middle of the night to find some place to have a piss. 

 

She still took long, soft, slow steps until she turned the right front corner of the shack and had all of its length between her and the lean-to on the opposite side. Only then did Vi step a little more calmly and firmly through the damp evening grass and quickly made for the shed with the makeshift patch over the hole in its roof. The air around the toolshed still smelled sharply of the grass that had been cut away hours before. She didn’t have time to stop and enjoy the cool breeze compared to the morning’s humid, warm start, either. 

 

Vi came to a stop right outside of the little wooden door to the shed and knocked just once upon it with her right hand hard enough that no one inside who was awake could miss it. 

 

“I’m the one who found you, or at least had you brought back,” Vi said lowly right into the door. Her heartbeat rose, a flash of anxiety she hadn’t expected caused her to hesitate. “I - I’m coming in to talk.” Vi stopped and listened. Two then three seconds passed before an equally low, somewhat gravelly voice sounded an actual response. 

 

“Alright.” 

 

Vi opened the door without much hesitation and slipped inside, leaving the door open to let in a little bit of light. She held the lantern up and fished the match from her pocket, striking it hard against the side of the lantern. In the flash of the orange light from the opening flare, Vi saw who she had come to deal with. She must have surprised the stranger because the deserter was sat up on her bed of grass laid out beside the bricks Ekko and Powder had been dancing around turning into a kiln for days. Vi vowed to help hurry that process along. 

 

She lit the lantern and allowed them to take one another in for a moment before slowly shutting the door. 

 

Setting aside what she might’ve looked like to this woman, Vi could only note the lack of a transformation. The stranger wore a pair of Vander’s pants tied tightly at the waist by a bit of twine and had used the same string to tie off excess cloth from a shirt that had to have belonged to Vander, as well. Regardless of her efforts, she still looked like she was wearing a blanket beyond the one that was wrapped around her shoulders as she sat up in the shed. 

 

While Vi observed her, the woman with the brighter than expected golden eyes rose to her feet and, leaning back against one wall, lifted her right leg to rest it atop the aforementioned stack of bricks. If Vi looked as half-dead as this woman did, she would want to stretch out what muscles remained, too. The disgraced soldier’s eyes were wide but bleary looking after sitting in the dark for so long. Her ankle cuff clattered against the bricks. The sound was enough to get Vi started talking while their guest stretched. Two empty bowls sat by the bed. 

 

Disregarding her own sitting out lunch for reasons she didn’t entirely grasp, Vi had not seen Vander eat at either lunch or dinner. 

 

“No one knows I came out here. I’d probably be in trouble.” Only once the words were out of her mouth did she realize this woman must have understood her. She’d spoken to Vander and Ekko and Powder had picked up details about who she was and her big escape. Something about fighting in Ionia. There was space here for a conversation they could both understand. 

 

Good. Vi inhaled. Then let’s get this done. 

 

“Then why did you come, I wonder?” the stranger asked, pushing her platinum locks to one side. It looked as if Vander had brought her water out at one point: she looked cleaner than the dirt-caked mess she’d been when Vi had found her. She generally had the kind of complexion Vi had come to expect from this part of the world but her eye color and hair color were a little out of the ordinary out there. The excellent Piltovan was even stranger, unless one counted Zenneene or Sinnan. 

 

“What were you doing out in the woods?” Vi let her question serve as answer enough. “Were you planning to hurt us?” With a wince and a bit of struggle, the stranger dropped her right leg back down to the ground and then turned so she could keep in profile to Vi but also begin to stretch her left leg. Maybe she already has an idea why you’re here, she told herself. The woman frowned and then made sure to look Vi in the eye when she answered. 

 

“I wasn’t going to hurt you. I admit I wanted to take some of whatever you scored, so I followed you for some time. I was hoping that the way I look would induce either pity or fear enough not to interfere.” Then the woman turned away and went back to slowly leaning down so one thin-fingered hand could touch the toes of her left foot. “I’m a trained fighter and maybe one of the best in the Empire but I think a particularly rough tree root could defeat me in battle at the moment, kid.” 

 

Kid.

Damn, did Vi hate that word. 

 

She just knew any protest would only make it worse. 

 

“Other than… three bowls of rice, now, I’ve had two bowls of prison gruel in over a month. Now the only thing I want is to be on my way.” 

 

“Good.” Vi emphasized the word and then the next even more firmly.   “When?” 

 

“Pretty soon.” The woman stood back up and after one or two moments, stepped back from the bricks and gestured to them, her golden eyes locking on the lantern. Vi took a step to cross most of the inside of the shed and settled the lantern down to free up her protesting arms. “Before sunrise.” 

 

“Good,” Vi repeated and then rubbed at her nose with her newly free hand. “Good.” 

 

“Funny,” the deserter chuckled. “Your father at least pretended to hide his Piltovan accent at first. Trying to cobble together enough Va-Nox to confuse me. You didn’t.” 

 

“Guess I’m not as smart as him.” Vi shrugged. However, all amusement left the hollow cheeked face across the shed from her and her guest tilted her pale head. 

 

“Or you didn’t want to waste our time. In case you’d like a much more shining excuse.” Vi weighed her next words very carefully, because it was true that she empathized with and felt for this woman. It was also true that now that she was getting to see her awake and moving way easier than she had any right to be in that condition, though, it was a lot harder to weigh the empathy against the potential threat the soldier held. 

 

“We don’t need any trouble. Not from Noxian soldiers,” was the explanation she settled on. Her attempt at having a firm but reasonable conversation and at sending this woman packing now was interrupted by the most unexpected of statements from the guest. 

 

“I understand. You don’t want them to find your cache.” That was a word that stopped Vi in her tracks. She wasn’t sure what else it might mean but in her world it meant a hidden supply of weapons like what the Undercity had in spades from the time during the war. Hell, many people thought another war with Topside was inevitable and so still hid weapons of all sorts away even at the risk of Enforcers finding them. 

 

The problem was, Vi knew that couldn’t be what the taller, frail looking woman in front of her meant because the only weapons they really had were three improvised bows and a handful of arrows. Unless she meant the two ugly little stone knapped knives kept in here. We probably should’ve moved those out of here. 

 

“What cache?” she asked. The as of yet unnamed stranger pointed toward a patch of dirt on the shed floor. 

 

“The things hidden beneath that door.” Vi moved roughly to where the soldier gestured. 

 

“There’s no trap door,” she told the woman, wondering who between them was the crazy one, after all. With a sigh, the lady approached and Vi stepped out of caution. With a groan, the woman with the steel collar around her neck bent down, dug her fingers into dirt and yanked upward. A small metallic ring came up with her hands and as Vi watched in surprise a trap door like out of the damned comics rose from the dirt. 

 

If you’d asked Vi what she thought was below the dirt that served as the shed floor, she would have guessed more dirt. 

 

Vi took hold of the door and pulled it the rest of the way open, gazing down into a dark gap in the earth. 

 

“I’ve seen these before,” the woman counseled. “They’re either panic rooms for when the military comes recruiting or they hide weapons intended for rebellion. I don’t know which -” With each word the soldier spoke Vi became more and more conflicted about having brought her here to begin with. What if there was something in there and she tried to trade information about it to buy her freedom? What if there wasn’t anything in there but Noxian military came by and found the hole anyway? 

 

“We’ve only been here - lived here, like a month!” Vi insisted. “Whoever lived here before that, whatever they did wasn’t our fault!” She clenched her fists tightly and slowly moved to step herself in between the stranger and the door. The woman held up two open hands though and lowered her voice again. 

 

“I’m not judging or condemning. I’m the last person who could. I just assumed that it was why you wanted me gone.” 

 

“No,” Vi told her with one hard shake of a shaggy head of hair. She thought of reaching for the lantern to look into the hole but wasn’t sure she wanted to know what lay within. What if there were weapons in there? Until she lowered the lantern down into that hole or even brought it closer she could claim all she’d seen was a dark hole in the ground. “We don’t want to go to prison for harboring a deserter.” 

 

Again the woman in Vi’s father’s borrowed clothing shook her head. This time she looked darkly amused but the face was somewhat more unsettling for how thin and bony it was. 

 

“Oh, kid, you won’t go to jail for that.” Vi blinked, surprised by the words enough not to rebel against the title ‘kid’ or grow nervous as the stranger shut the trap door right beside her. The warrior began kicking dirt back over it in slow, methodical pushing motions that reminded her of Powder covering a seed with earth with the inside of her boot. Confused, Vi had to push the issue a little bit more. 

 

“We won’t?” she asked, incredulous. 

 

“Of course not,” the soldier responded with a shrug and turned to face Vi head on for the first time. She looked a little unsteady on her feet. “Your entire family would be taken to the capitol or Basilich, perhaps, and put on stage somewhere public. They would chain you up and hang one of you each sunrise and each nightfall. Assuming you were not one of the two listening at the door earlier, there might be enough of you that it would take a couple of days.” Vi’s stomach churned at the idea that bringing this woman back to the farm could doom them to death but even more at the knowledge that their guest had noticed Powder and Ekko creeping outside of the shed even in her condition. 

 

“Where do you think you fled to from your gleaming city, child?” Vi exhaled sharply through flaring nostrils and lifted her chin. If this lady wanted a stare down, Vi was fine to give her one. She took a step forward but still the deserter didn’t show a bit of fear. 

 

“I lived in the Undercity. Not in Piltover.” When the stranger tilted her head, Vi waited. 

 

“Tell me about the Undercity.” Why? She wondered. Why would you care? 

 

“You wanna know? Fine. It’s the space dug out and left by all of the stuff that makes Topside rich. They’re the people who live in pretty apartments and houses and mansions. We’re the people who steal and fight for food and drink water that kills them because all our rivers are bad and the only clean wells cost everything you have.” Vi jabbed herself in the chest. “We do that every single day with Enforcers breathing down our necks with guns and knives and swords and those stupid fucking bolas they like to knock you down with so they can beat you easier. We don’t live in a gleaming city. We live in their trash dumps and old mines and rotted buildings and basements.” 

 

Vi wasn’t even sure what had made her so worked up; maybe it was just the insult of comparing her to a Topsider by someone who probably never lived like she had. 

 

Except she has. Kind of. Vi told herself when she saw the rail thin arm sticking through one of the overlarge sleeves of Vander’s shirt. 

 

“I understand,” the woman said, and Vi wasn’t sure she’d go as far as to say that. How could she understand? “You must think you’ve found a natural paradise.” 

 

“My sister does,” Vi shrugged. “My brothers do. At least one of them.” 

 

“Not you?” 

 

“I don’t care.” The response came through gritted, hissing teeth. 

 

“Why not?” 

 

“Because I have to go back and fix what I broke!” A familiar pain in her fingers told her she was clenching her hand too tightly. A sensation she hadn’t felt in days returned, the ghost of the stress she’d put on her right hand, the night of phantom Sevikas and Silcos. 

 

“Then you and I are kindred spirits. It’s why I go now to Ionia: to fix what I helped break.” 

 

“No offense or anything,” Vi started, tilting her head back toward the door of the shed. “I don’t want to be your kindred spirit. I just want my family to live, right now.” 

 

“Are you sure?” Vi glared up at the woman for asking such a stupid question. However, at the moment it was as if they were the only two people on the whole farm. That did not scare Vi or disturb her as much as she thought it might. “You just said you have to go home and fix what you broke. That’s more than just wanting your family to live, certainly. Much more.” Vi considered this for a few seconds before relaxing her hands. 

 

“Fine. ‘We’re not so different, you and I.’” The deserter snorted again and when she spoke next sounded more jovial. However, the snort and the retort were separted by a harsh cough which necessitated the soldier clearing her throat three or four more times. 

 

“I’m thinking we’re not, the longer we talk.” Her guest stood up straight, swept her pale hair back behind her ears and carefully rotated her right shoulder before nodding, apparently satisfied with what she felt. “If you ever want the aide of one not so different, send word to the Ionians that you seek one called Konte.” 

 

“How would I even do that?” Vi wanted to laugh. Send word to an entire country? Sure. She’d charter an airship to drop flyers across the whole land. For that matter, how was this lady going to get across the world to fucking Ionia? 

 

“I am sure you’ll find a way. And I am sure that you want me gone, so I will go now.” For a moment, Vi just stepped aside as if to gesture for the woman to go ahead and be her guest. However, an inkling of an idea, something she had not been planning all day like a good chunk of this conversation struck her. The stranger whose first name was probably not Konte got a good step or two in and was at the door when Vi acted on the conflicted impulse. 

 

“Wait. Do you… do you know-” the stranger turned back and watched her patiently through eyes a little too bright in the light of the lantern. “Do you know a woman, um, pale, almost indigo skin. Thick eye makeup. Dark hair. Likes to wear a hood. Likes to talk without moving her mouth?” Those golden eyes widened, momentarily giving Vi hope she might learn something and then with speed and strength the street rat hadn’t been expecting, the skeletal woman charged her. 

 

It didn’t take long for Vi to find herself off her feet and on her ass, staring up at the strange from the bed her sister and Ekko had made the woman. Pain shot up her back and arms as she found her hands down at her side to cushion the landing. She looked up into the face of the stranger, completely off guard in every way she could imagine. Like the small dog brought in, out of the rain only to lunge at you. Silco’s face came to mind, but she buried it quickly.

 

“ Are you working for her? ” The soldier hung over Vi, her expression the very definition  of ‘backed into a corner and willing to fight’. Vi readied herself to have to do the same from the point of view of several disadvantages, none of which outweighed the stranger’s severely depleted state. “Are you with her!?” Vi, sore, jumped when she realized she had not answered and was being asked again. For the second or third time she thought she heard the woman’s true voice, not the soft, weakened tone she’d been wearing for the start of the conversation. Barking and intense, very like an annoyed Vander . 

 

“No,” Vi called right back into her face, which did not seem to be a good enough answer for the woman looming over her. “But if you touch me again I’ll break every bone I can get my hands on.” Vi didn’t want to let on her sudden lack of confidence. 

 

She’d beaten, as a thirteen-year-old, people several times her size. Big dumb overconfident people who hadn’t been trained how to fight like she had and probably didn’t have a reason to practice as much as she did. This was an apparently once renowned warrior of the Noxian empire, thin from starvation or not, it was possible that being on the ground put Vi at enough of a disadvantage she was still in some danger. Plus, if I were her, the first thing I’d do is use one of those cuffs on her wrist to crack me in the skull in a fight. 

 

The threat did its job, sort of, as the stranger smirked again and stepped back from her. It was not as assured a smirk as Vi expected so maybe she was overthinking things. Still, the strength of this woman had surprised her. One or two of Silco’s goons had been weaker than her and theoretically had eaten a lot more. Vi stood up when she saw she had space and dusted herself off, which was ultimately kind of a wasted effort. Her bedding was dusty and dirty, the floor of the house was dusty and dirty and her hands were covered in it from the floor. 

 

Really, they needed to do some cleaning. 

 

“Tell me what you know,” Vi demanded. “Because this lady keeps coming around here and showing up in front of my sister or our friend in the night. Shows them things. Tells them things. And I don’t like it.” 

 

“What kind of things?” the woman asked, stepping back toward the door to the shed and resting a hand on the handle. 

 

“Things about their past, for one. Things they shouldn’t have to think about. And things they don’t understand and neither do I.” That was as true as it was vague: some of it made sense to Vi. Showing Ekko things about his past and his time with Benzo or showing Powder the things that had happened Topside, she didn’t know why anyone would do something like that but at least the ‘visions’ made sense for them. Ekko had described being shown some pale stranger’s leg withering away in a flash of blue. Powder had told them that the woman spying on her kept asking about Powder’s future and how Piltover would see her. That made no sense. 

 

“If you or them see this woman again, you all have to not listen. ” Their guest insisted. “They must tune her out but they must not act against her. ” Intensity and life seeping back into the soldier’s voice without the implicit threat of her questioning a moment ago, Vi chose to stay still and listen. “I know her as rumors and whispers on winds blowing in from every power in the country. She is a being of great and dark magic who once had her claws even on the strings of my fate before I cut them in front of her. That is all I know. I cannot know her goals but if they serve the empire, you can be certain they do not align with any of yours.” Vi tried to parse the warnings, the apparent background between these two strangers who’d both found their way to her farm at separate times 

 

Odd that she liked the one who had attacked and threatened her just then a lot more than she did the other. 

 

“Never let them go with her. I fear they will not be themselves, if they’re ever seen again.” 

 

“She gave one of them nightmares she’s still dealing with right now. The other gets nauseous every time she’s mentioned. They won’t go with her.” The stranger held a finger to dry, cracked lips. 

 

“Yet.” The woman said. “They won’t go with her yet.” Vi didn’t waste time arguing: this lady didn’t know Powder or Ekko like Vi did. Neither one of them would ever go with the creepy magic lady who’d hurt Powder like that and upset Ekko to boot. “Best I go, now more than ever. If this place is part of a web she weaves I will not be a fly caught within it.” 

 

“Neither will I. Neither will Powder or Ekko.” 

 

“Good,” the woman answered, and then trailed off. “Good.” Turning the handle of the door, she looked back at Vi one more time anxiously. “It’s unwise of me but I’ve already given you one of my names. If she’s listening, she already knows I’m here. I am called Riven. You know my…  family name. You know where I’m going. If I make it there and one day you need aid, I will try to return the kindness you’ve shown me today.” 

 

“I’d give you my full name, but I think you might be a little fucking unhinged.” Riven Konte, exile or deserter, soldier or warrior, whoever else she might be, laughed once. 

 

“You didn’t tell me you were smart as well as funny.” Without awaiting a retort, Riven pulled the door open with an obviously shaking hand and fled the light of Vi’s lantern, slipping out into the dark and away. 

 

Vi waited exactly sixty seconds and fathomed all she had heard before taking the lantern up from the bricks that would one day, hopefully soon, make up a kiln. She left the shed and made not for bed but to the north lit by her lantern.  Putting the lantern down at the foot of the Climbing Tree three or four long minutes later, Vi climbed high enough that the individual blades of grass in the dark were hard to pick out and settled on a sturdy enough looking branch, staring into the dark to the next nearest tree and wondering. Normally, she might have tried to make the jump to it, but she suspected it would break and then she would. 

 

Left with more questions and doubts than she had when she’d gone to see their guest off and away from the farm, Vi settled in where the branch met the trunk and stared off into the woods to contemplate each and every one. 

Chapter 22: Chapter Twenty-Two

Notes:

A/N
This might be a little rougher than some of my others. As some folk might know, most of what I post here is first draft material. I still try to give it a read over and some tweaks here and there. This one in particular I really only finished right before posting.

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Twenty-Two

 

In the two days since the deserter from the Noxian army had left the farm long before dawn, Vi’s conversation with her had yet to stop bothering her. Basically every part of the conversation was still bothering her. That tension, that frustration and conflict had done a number, too. She’d been spending most of her time that didn’t involve chores or training up Powder and Ekko by herself. In very rare instances, Vi had indulged in training with them, but she just couldn’t really push them to train her up. 

 

Considering that training was the only thing that she could nail down to keep her mood up, Vi had been doing her best to stay quietly in her own corner of the farm. Trying to do familiar things, trying to work on regaining as much muscle as she could, Vi had almost entirely checked out of hunting over the last two days, despite multiple attempts by Vander to get her and Mylo to go right back out. The truth was, she had not done well with the bow. She could admit that. 

 

The thought of going out into the woods for several hours with Mylo had no appeal, anymore, either. Somehow, on the days when Vander took out the bow, he always had Claggor or Ekko with him. 

 

This day, it was Claggor accompanying Vander around another part of the woods. She, Ekko and Powder were following less familiar paths leading off in the direction of Airus for any kind of edible food they could get their hands on. No mushrooms, though. None of them were confident enough for that. 

 

“I made plans,” Vi announced after one very lengthy period of silence on her end. In all the time she had not spoken, Vi had also not kept track of what the others were talking about or looking at. She wasn’t sure, even, how well she’d paid attention to the still brightening woods around them. Part of her distraction was worry about the deserter. Part of her distraction was anger at Mylo or Vander for trying to push them together. Part of it was malaise. The rest, well, she couldn’t help but think they had to be very close to where she’d tried to fight off phantoms of Undercity dwellers days prior. 

 

“What kinda plans?” Ekko asked, walking off trail a bit to her left. Powder was generally hanging around in Vi’s vicinity, rhythmically patting the bag slung over one of her shoulders, absentmindedly. This stopped when the girl tilted her head up and raised an eyebrow Vi’s way. 

 

“There’s a pond back west, some. I wanna be there in about an hour or so. We should swing back that way? Caras said he’d come by. Maybe with all of us, we’ll find something around the pond?” Vi made the gesture good naturedly, but had to pretend not to notice Powder rolling her eyes and turning away. She even pretended not to notice Ekko’s cheeky smile. On the other hand when the boy reached up to stretch (in that way that involved leaning just far enough back that it looked painful) and slowly turned to lead them west, Vi tuned back into the conversation. 

 

“Anyway, I think it’s gotta be animal fat. I don’t see any other options.” Beside Vi, Powder nodded, though she looked a little annoyed about something. 

 

“It’s probably gonna be expensive, but I guess we can do it. I wanna do a test run, but we might not get the chance.” That’s right, Vi told herself. The thresher. After days and days of discussing it, Powder and Ekko had gotten ahold of a few sheets of paper in Airus and used charcoal to draw out and diagram the whole machine in what felt to Vi like no more than two hours. Then again, after having had days to think about the thing, maybe they’d already had it built in their heads. 

 

Vi had seen the two do that on projects they were excited about, before. They’d spend hours, days, sometimes even weeks talking over all kinds of measurements and materials and then sit down with paper and a pencil and knock out a whole big thing in one go. Actually, that was kind of how her punch training machine back home had been designed. Powder and Ekko had spent three days talking about almost nothing else and then bam, one day Ekko had come over with a couple of pencils and a few sheets of paper and the two had sat down on the basement floor and planned it all out. 

 

“I think we should at least set up the kiln tonight,” Powder announced after another minute or so of silence beyond their breathing, their footsteps and the wind. This got even Vi’s attention, and not just because of the fact that hidden in the floor at the base of the pile of bricks was a trap door that only Vi knew about. The kiln meant that they could start trying to make things out of clay. Like bowls and cups and plates, sure, but also more bricks. 

 

With enough of those, could they really make more room for everyone to sleep? 

 

Vi listened to the two talk out measurements for the kiln, how small it will have to be if they want it in the shed, that sort of thing. She was pretty sure she’d heard all the numbers before but as she raked her eyes over a patch of greenery that she was hoping would have been berry yielding bushes, Vi asked a question. She even thought it was a smart one.

 

“Why do you want it inside?” 

 

“Well, this one’s gonna just be for small stuff, right? So we can make a bigger kiln after, if we have to. This one might as well go inside.” Ekko’s response didn’t strike her as an answer. 

 

“Okay, but why? Explain it like I’m me. ” Neither took the obvious bait to razz her a little, no matter how much she wished to raise the mood just a little more. Ekko scratched at the side of his head, worked one hand through his hair and then continued in the same conversational tone as before. 

 

“Well, we don’t want it getting rained on or anyone touching it and getting hurt. Plus we don’t need anything big right now. So having it inside and safe is fine, too. Having it outside but having some kind of roof hanging over it might be alright in the future, though, for a bigger one.” Ekko continued loping along, setting the pace for the three of them and spoke just as slowly. That was okay, though. Vi didn’t mind too terribly if they ended up missing Caras that day. There would always be other chances. 

 

“Good idea,” Powder said. Vi shrugged. If it didn’t hurt anything to have it in the shed, then maybe there was no good reason not to. “I know the first thing I want is plates. Then spoons.” This got Vi’s attention. Spoons would be a really good idea but….

 

“Can you make spoons out of clay?” 

 

“I’m gonna find out.” Vi grinned. The carefree shrug showed that Powder wasn’t overthinking things, for once, and the smile on her sister’s face was infectious. “Then a second pot… then bricks.” Powder rubbed her hands together, face a little excitable, maybe even a little greedy. “Okay, maybe we can set up the kiln tonight, but tomorrow we gotta go hunt for clay, bring a bunch home and get it drying. Then we’ll need to figure out sand and mortar if we wanna actually lay any bricks.” 

 

“That might be the hard part. I think the only one in town who has a lot of sand is Arruns and he’s probably not gonna let it go easy. Maybe he’ll put us in touch with his supplier next time they’re around?” Even as Ekko proposed this, he sounded regretful or doubtful. 

 

“Maybe, but we can probably get enough with a couple of buckets from the stream to start us out?” Powder sounded brought back down to earth, but not in any kind of negative way. The two were just getting down to business.

 

“Sand?” Vi interjected. 

 

“Yeah, you mix it into the clay so whatever you make doesn’t crack when you fire it. Which is basically just drying it out and making it really strong at a really high heat in the kiln.” Firing was, at least, a concept Vi thought she understood. She didn’t bother correcting Ekko, though. She had basically asked him to talk to her like she was clueless and that was generally true. “So whatever we decide to make we gotta have enough sand. We gotta make sure we get the clay dry enough and broken up fine enough. Neither of us have ever done it but we got to watch Arruns working on a batch last week. So I think we can do it.” 

 

Only these two saw someone do something once and thought they could do it without any more practice. 

 

“Plus, let’s be real, the first few times we try anything more shapey than a brick, we’re probably just gonna have to break it up, anyway.” That was surprisingly defeatist for Ekko, but maybe he was just trying to be realistic. Vi personally hoped he didn’t start doing that too often. Powder frowned but shrugged it off and turned her attention back to plantlife around them. 

 

Vi did notice Ekko didn’t really meet her eyes when he caught her watching him. 

 

The pond itself was one Caras had shown her once before, which had an apple tree growing nearby. Strictly speaking it was only a couple of hours away from the farm, but the trio had wandered far enough away from ‘their’ property that it took a little more than the hour she suspected they had to breach the treeline of the small clearing. By that point, Vi had come to take the lead mostly because of the fact that as they got closer and closer she had had to make more than a few guesses as to the exact path to take to find their goal. 

 

Ekko and Powder had long since dropped the subject of their plans for the kiln and were instead talking excitedly about the easiest way to get their sand and clay mixture right. Between the duo’s motivation to do something which could start down a path of improving their lives in Noxus and the fact that the three of them had found basically nothing of use, Vi figured that they were due for a trip home in relatively short order. While they were planning, she had been, too, though. Vi had a list in her head of what to get up to once she got back, too. It was reconstructed from her old workout routine, and she thought she could pull most of it off with what they had in the shed or the shack or what could be gathered around the farm. 

 

While her mood wasn’t particularly high, she at least had that to look forward to and concentrate on, so that she felt fairly balanced when she caught sight of Caras pacing the far edge of the pond from where the three came around the corner of a big oak tree. His shirt clung to his body in a way that suggested he’d just come from a dip in the pond and the spear he often carried out on his own hunting trips lay discarded where she thought he must’ve climbed into the pond. Given his attachment to the weapon, it was weird that he looked like he’d forgotten it. 

 

“Hey, hey! Salve!” Ekko shouted from just a few steps behind Vi, hands cupped around his mouth to let the voice carry a little further. Powder hung even further back and was fooling around with a long, flat stone she’d picked up from the forest floor, absentmindedly. Caras perked up at the yell and raised both hands. The gesture was odd enough that Vi tilted her head when he turned their direction. Caras’ face twisted in first amusement and then… embarrassment? 

 

He lowered his hands and, keeping pace with his earlier shuffling back and forth, made to come around the southern edge of the pond over to them. Actually, with each step he picked up the pace a little more. Urgency settled into the muscles in his face, something she wasn’t sure she’d seen except for once or twice when he’d tried to charge down movement in one bush or another, hoping to get into range to throw or thrust his spear at a ‘perdix’ which he described as a small brown bird that doesn’t like to fly. 

 

Since it was unlikely he was trying to hunt the three of them for dinner….

 

“Esne…. bene?” Vi asked, nearly exhausting her ‘conversational’ Va-Nox. In response Caras both shook his head, eyes wide and then nodded. So, that obviously cleared things up. “What’s up?” Caras stopped short of them as Ekko crept up to Vi’s side, curious himself. Powder remained back a step or two, though she was now clearly paying attention to what was happening around them. Caras made one or two gestures, mouth half open. Vi now recognized this as meaning he could not think of how to start what it was he was trying to say. 

 

“I… see people. In the woods. Are you… bene ?” The boy raked his eyes over the three of them. Though she felt them heavily on herself, Vi shrugged off his concern until a quick glance at her sister showed the girl frowning and creeping closer to Vi and Ekko. Maybe Powder was thinking of this woman who had appeared to herself and Ekko. This idea inspired Vi, on the other hand, to think of Riven. Maybe the woman had been slow leaving the area and hadn’t moved on yet? After all, she wasn’t in good shape even if she had been able to manhandle a surprised Vi. 

 

“If you’ve seen someone out here in the woods, it might be smart not to say anything about it-” Vi wanted to hint to him that there were things worth keeping a secret but before she could formulate how to continue, he shook his head and waved both hands palms out in front of him. 

 

“No, people! Many people. In woods. Far - that way.” He gestured blatantly north but also more specifically in the direction of the mountain in the distance. “But some come close. Hunting. Is family hunting? Vander or Claggor or Mylo?” Vi nodded, stomach twisted like a knot. 

 

“Yes,” Powder answered, suddenly more alert. When Ekko turned back to share a glance with her younger sister, Vi felt like maybe she was missing something. 

 

“We should… tell them. Warn them?” Caras looked to Ekko, not to Vi for confirmation that he had chosen the right word. Ekko nodded and Caras mirrored it then turned his attention Vi’s way. He had no smile, today. The best he could give them was a nervous grimace. Her mood dimmed a little, heart rate rising. 

 

“We should be worried?” Ekko asked. “Because I feel like we should be worried.” 

 

“We should,” Vi agreed, then turned to face the two she’d walked into the clearing with. “These people could be out looking for someone.” She emphasized this last and Powder’s frown suggested that she’d already had the same thoughts. Ekko couldn’t hide his own frown from Caras as Powder stood behind Vi, so Caras caught on, himself. 

 

“What wrong?” he prompted, with surprising firmness in his voice. Unless trying to teach Vi something, Caras was very soft spoken. Today, his tone was as sharp as his eyes. 

 

“Better for you if you don’t know.” Vi made sure the answer was slow and as unambiguous as possible. 

 

“Are you in trouble? Is family?” 

 

Vi looked again back at Powder and Ekko and threw up her hands to say she wasn’t sure. 

 

“I don’t think so, but we should still find Vander.” She wasn’t sure how best to do that, except to head the direction that she thought Vander and Claggor were going and start to make noise. “Ekko, Powder, remember that song you played like 20 times on the jukebox that one day and Vander basically said no more for a week?” 

 

“Yeah?” Powder sounded utterly dumbfounded at her bringing that of all things up. 

 

“Hope you remember how it goes.” 

 

Scavenging up anything food related generally forgotten entirely, Vi led Caras, Powder and Ekko to the west, as that was the general direction she’d seen Vander and Claggor heading off, that morning. Eventually, along this path, they would run into the stream that the family typically washed in. There was nothing saying that those out on the hunt never crossed the stream, but Vi could not recall having ever done so with Vander or Mylo. 

 

So Vi, Powder and Ekko periodically filled the air with the sound of off key singing as minutes passed. Regardless of how poorly executed it was, neither Claggor nor Vander would fail to recognize the sound, not to mention the fact that its lyrics were in Piltovan. Eventually, one of them would have to call out, if only to shout for them to shut up and stop scaring off the game. 

 

“They might be somewhere else completely,” Vi said as the group came upon yet another game trail angling roughly toward the stream. “But Vander’s been focusing a lot around a little clearing near the creek. Something about berry bushes that aren’t ripe yet.” Caras shrugged in the way he did when he didn’t follow what someone was saying. It might not have even been about the words chosen as much as the fact that it was hard to hear her over the others. 

 

At the very same time as she’d tried to engage Caras, Ekko sucked in a deep breath and led, Powder chiming in with the backup vocals, which were sort of answers to the rest of the song’s call. Though they were horribly off key, their voices echoed throughout the woods around them and it made absolute sense they might’ve made Vi hard to understand. 

 

Travis, bring that hammer down! 

Bell’s rung, get ya underground! 

(Clang clang!) The foreman’s feelin’ awful sour

Travis, bring that hammer down! 

 

Vi grimaced Caras’ way and just gestured for him to keep following. 

 

“Ol’ Travis Kant was a coal man,” Ekko sang, almost immediately followed by Powder’s answer. 

 

“Oh, man!” she exclaimed. Vi sucked in a bit of a breath to join Ekko, aware that like uhhh, just about everything that didn’t involve climbing or fighting she was outclassed by either her sister or the girl’s friend. She did sort of hope neither Caras nor anyone else called her out for being tone deaf. She hoped she could at least follow the tune. 

 

Thought he’d be a painter but life had other plans

Papa lived his life in between silver cans

Travis, don’t get lost too soon!

Folk so in dark they don’t see the light

Breathin’ coal fines near day and night

Old men and women livin’ all on spite

Travis, don't get lost too soon! 

 

Through several renditions of the whole damned song, taking turns trading off leading and singing near the top of their lungs, they swept west. The little story told by the song never really occurred to her to think about until later. All Vi cared about was that it overcame the weird way sounds tended to die deep in the woods. The woods did not like echoes the way the streets of the Lanes did. That just encouraged her to sing louder when she led. All the while, Vi listened in between verses and the chorus for answering calls of any type. 

 

For far too long for Vi’s taste, none came. Just a little bit of fear that something might’ve happened to Vander or Claggor settled in and let her voice waver but she chased it off with the thought that they just as easily could’ve turned back already and gone home. She kind of wished she’d sent Ekko or Powder back to the house to warn Mylo and wait for Vander or Claggor to come back. She hadn’t though, and was not about to do so now. Frankly, she liked them close, for now. 

 

For all his own anxiety earlier, Caras remained calm and unbothered by what might sound like weird behavior, to be running through the forest shouting music in a strange tongue when they were worried about a large group of people out in the woods. The fact was, if doing this drew those people Vi’s way, then at least she could get an idea who they were dealing with. Caras may not have known the words but quickly picked up the tune from their singing and Powder’s humming and hummed along, beating his hand along the outside of one thigh in time. It was this gesture that made Vi realize he’d forgotten his spear at the pond. 

 

Something really had freaked Caras out about the people he’d seen. 

 

“Caras,” Vi said when she stopped to draw a breath. Her mouth was dry but she still forced out words she wasn’t sure about: “Everything’s gonna be okay.” 

 

“I feel like … something I don’t know.” Caras’ answer was accompanied by a head tilt but he did not slow. Vi grimaced as he looked pointedly in her eyes. Earlier, Caras had clearly picked up that they were worried about ‘lots of people in the woods’ for their own reasons. “You can tell,” the boy encouraged. The truth was, Vi kinda believed him. She thought she could tell him what was going on, but there was a risk. 

 

“I could tell you but it might be worse if you know.” 

 

“I’m good at keep secret.” He sounded a little chiding, a little reassuring and maybe even a little hurt. Even if it had only been a month since they’d met, Vi could understand the hurt. He and his grandfather had done a lot to help them. She and he had been out in the woods looking for food together, had agreed to (and actually managed to) evenly split finds time and time again. Hell, their first meeting ever, the boy had tried to give her some of the food he’d found first fair and square. 

 

“We found someone in the woods. Two days ago.” Vi held up two fingers. It was still undeniable that, for all they’d already been through together, if Caras was the type to want to get them in trouble one way or another, telling him about the deserter gave him great ammunition. “We found her in the woods. Very hungry. Starving. Brought her back to the farm. She was in cuffs and chains.”

 

“Cuffs and chains?” he repeated, slowly. Vi nodded and with her right hand mimicked drawing a line around her left wrist. She then mimicked pulling at something around her neck. It was the best she could do to think to communicate the idea, not knowing enough of his language. He licked his lips in thought and then immediately frowned. “Jail?” Caras asked, voice dipping lower than she thought she’d ever heard it. 

 

He sounded serious enough to stop Powder in the middle of a verse of the song. 

 

“She was in jail, yeah,” Powder told Caras, sounding small again, even hunched forward just a little bit when he turned to pay attention to her. Again, like she was trying not to get hit with something. 

 

“We never found out why,” Vi told him, cutting across Powder. She felt bad for the lie but that was the piece of information that if Caras did not know and they pretended not to know, maybe they could get out of trouble if these people apparently walking through the woods to the north were who she feared they were. 

 

Vi gestured for Powder to continue singing. 

 

Not a one of them had a throat that wasn’t a little sore when, an hour after joining up with Caras, Vi sucked in a breath at the end of the umpteenth repetition of the song. 

 

(Clang clang!) The foreman’s feelin’ awful sour

Travis, bring that hammer down! 

 

While waiting for Ekko or Powder to take up the next rendition, something caught Vi’s ears and instead of take time to worry that she might be imagining it, Vi reached out with both arms, stopping Caras on her right and Ekko on her left. Powder came to a halt about five feet off to Caras’ side. She turned toward what sounded like a voice, pointed in that direction and closed her eyes to listen. 

 

“ Travis, where ya wanna be?” someone, and it was deep enough and loud enough it could only be Vander, was singing from later verse. “ Travis, where ya wanna be? ”

 

Powder, relieved, sighed loudly as Vi opened her eyes and hurried the four of them over toward the sound of Vander’s voice. 

 

“ Deep underground where you can’t hear this song, or in a dive bar sippin’ cold ones in your daddy’s seat?” Though she was as relieved as Powder at finding the others, Vi did not, could not relax until they were all together. So Vi pulled ahead and trusted Powder and Ekko to keep up with her if they wanted to. Caras certainly could. 

 

She was just starting to make out the vaguest lines of a broad-shouldered person in the woods when they, Vander, spoke out. 

 

“That you, then, Violet?” Only at hearing his voice did a laugh escape her that was absolutely about relief. 

 

“Me, Powder, Ekko and Caras.” 

 

“You know you’ve scared off anything that might’ve been around, right?” Though it took her a second more to see him, Claggor did not sound as annoyed as he might’ve wanted to. If anything, he was very calm about the odd situation. He and Vander matched pace, shouldering their holsters and even wrapping the bow around their opposite shoulders one after another to make it easier to navigate the tight spaces between trees. Vi slowed at that point, glanced back to find Caras behind Ekko and Powder only a few feet off and decided to take the lead. 

 

“Yeah, but we gotta talk.” 

 

“Wha’s wrong?” Vander’s call was no longer so loud but a certain concerned edge had seeped into it. “Is it about Mylo?” What about him? Vi wanted to ask. Genuinely. Because she couldn’t see how Vander had drawn a line between where they were and anything relating to the one person who wasn’t out there with them. 

 

“No, Caras saw something in the woods up north a little bit. You need to hear this.” As the two groups got into more comfortable range and were able to see one another clearer, Vi was a little sad to see no sign of a kill on either Vander’s or Claggor’s person. That, however, was going to have to take a back seat. She turned to Caras and waved for him to tell Vander and Claggor what was up. 

 

“Just a little north from farm… I looking for food. See lots of people hunting and cutting trees. Big group… wearing the same outfit - army clothes.” Vi’s stomach dropped out and she paled: Caras hadn’t mentioned that detail. 

 

“Caras, if you want to help me, do you think you could show me to them?” Vander asked, shrugging off his bow and arrows and handing them unceremoniously to Claggor, who managed to at least sling the second improvised quiver onto his back. 

 

“Maybe,” Caras said, though he also nodded in affirmative. “I think they come from near sea and camping in foot… hills?” Caras hesitated on the word. Vi had taught it to him personally when talking about the mountain to the north of the village. Vander nodded, though, confirming that he at least understood. Vi felt like she was going to throw the morning’s breakfast up. 

 

“Well, if they’re just now getting firewood, they probably got in around the same time we came out here, right around dawn. Or they’ve been here all night and were getting some together for breakfast?” Vander was just guessing. He knew no more or less than any of the others. “We’ll head back to the farm, get some supplies and then we’ll go.” 

 

“Yes, but why?” Vi thought Caras might have a good point, even if she kind of suspected the answer was ‘because we have to know.’ From the Noxian boy’s point of view, this probably sounded like a stupid idea. 

 

“Gotta see it for myself, but if you don’t think you can go you can draw me a little map of what you saw and I’ll go on my own.” Caras hesitated at this, frowning. Vi froze on the spot when his verdant eyes looked her way. She didn’t want to guess why he was looking at her and only hoped that when he nodded a moment later it was not because of her. 

 

“I go, but Orkis be very mad if I not come back by night.” 

 

“Then we’d better hurry,” Vander looked up and in the direction of the mountainside despite the fact that the woods were too thick here to get a good look at it. Vi did the same, wondering how far the foothills really were from them and if Vander and Caras could possibly make it back before nightfall. It was only three or four hours after sunrise, sure, but they were talking about a trip that was definitely further than any of them had ever gone from the property. Hours and hours of travel. 

 

“I’ll come with you,” Vi volunteered. Claggor agreed with a nod as Vander looked about, looked up at the sky and then turned and headed roughly south. The man shook his head, though. Vi frowned. 

 

“Hell no you won’t.” Powder nudged Caras’ shoulder to let him know they were going and the two of them pulled away from Vi’s side to follow. She caught Ekko watching her response and grimaced instead of cursing, instead of clenching her fists, instead of growling. Vi followed the others as Vander continued. “If anything goes wrong I’m counting on the two of you two getting everyone out of here and take care of them.” Oh, look, there were the clenched fists. 

 

The very idea was fucking wrong. 

 

“Without you?” she asked. 

 

“If need be. Only if need be,” Vander insisted without turning back. That was why he didn’t see the uneasy way Ekko slowed beside Vi or how Claggor gaped at his retreating form. That was why he didn’t see Powder surge forward and was taken off guard when she seized onto his right hand and visibly tried to slow Vander down. It didn’t go as well as she hoped and she was actually dragged half a step forward before Vander came to a stop and managed not to topple the both of them over. “What?” 

 

Uncharacteristically misreading the situation, Vander began to look about the lot of them for some sign of something that might explain Powder’s attempt to stop him. It was like he didn’t realize he just suggested some future where he might leave and never come back. As if he didn’t realize he’d talked about a potentiality in which they were stuck in an unfamiliar country with almost nothing, potentially in trouble with authorities and certainly without him. 

 

Coward, she wanted to spit in his direction. 

 

“You can’t go, then!” Powder tried to sound like she was giving a command. Tried to sound insistent and sure. She just sounded upset, instead. Not even the furrowed brow or the scowl hid the insistence and distress in her voice. Vi slowed as she, Ekko and Claggor reached the two. Caras hung off to one side, silent but looking conflicted or embarrassed. “It’s just going to be worse if you go and look and maybe you don’t come back. You can’t!” 

 

Vander shrugged at first but that did not dislodge his hand from Powder’s grasp and he was not the type to yank it loose. 

 

“If trouble’s bearing down on you, Powder, it’s always better to know. It’s always better to look. It’s always better to be able to prepare.” Sincerely believing his words, Vander nonetheless seemed to have missed the reality of the situation. The mere implication he might leave and not come back had changed the whole equation for Powder. Frankly, in a way, it had changed things for Vi, too. She was with her sister on this one: this was way too risky. “Besides, it’s probably nothing and I’m just some poor, immigrant farmer hunting to get some meat on my family’s bones before the winter comes.” 

 

He smiled, cheerfully. The cheer was fake and it did nothing to persuade Powder to let go of his hand until they reached the farm. Her sister did, however, resign herself enough to let them get moving again. Vi wished Powder hadn’t given up so easily. She wished Powder would stand her ground however she had to: yell that he couldn’t go, throw a fit, threaten that they’d all follow him into the woods if he did. Hell, Vi was half tempted to make that last threat, herself. 

 

Vi stayed tempted the entire very hurried trip ‘home.’ She watched, dumbfounded, when Vander sent Ekko down into the cellar to get him a small bag with a bit of rice in it. Piece by piece, Vander scavenged up a kit for a trip out that might last all night: his backpack stuffed with a couple of blankets, a pitcher full of water with its lid tied shut, rice, a small leftover pan that didn’t even have a lid, the firestarter, stone knife from the shed, a bow and at last five arrows. All Vi could do was stand back beside Ekko while Powder followed Vander from shed to shack to lean-to, clearly hoping her presence would convince him to rethink his plans. 

 

Powder didn’t beg, or cry or throw a fit at all. Her not rushing back out of the shack when Vander did suggested Mylo wasn’t inside. Vi didn’t hear Vander say a word to the boy, either, so he must not have been. She figured she’d have to go looking for him when Vander was gone. As soon as his packed bag was on his back and he’d found some way to tie the quiver-bag to it, Vander could have said goodbye to the family. Instead, he gave a brief nod Vi’s way, then Claggor’s and Ekko’s and lastly, Powder’s. That was his goodbye. 

 

“You find Mylo and tell him I’ll be back. I love you kids.” No, that was his goodbye. Worrying about Mylo, when he clearly didn’t c- 

 

Stop it, Vi told herself because even she didn’t believe the thought she’d felt forming. 

 

Vander looked himself over from head to toe: thin, ratty gray shirt, old worn out boots and a pair of slacks that he’d probably gotten third or fourth hand back home. If it rained or they were outside and a cold night came upon them, it’d be entirely up to whatever kind of fire they could build. 

 

They. 

 

Vi turned to say something to Caras, hoping she could talk him out of his promise to Vander and maybe convince Vander to stay in turn. Caras, though, only nodded directly at her, as if promising the opposite. The simultaneous ease and intensity of the promise, followed by his lopsided smile, took the wind out of her sails. You’re just worrying too much. Because you’ve gotten weak. 

 

“Hey. Caras.” Powder spoke for the first time since they’d started climbing the hill back up to the shack, for the first time since well before they’d even made it back to the farm. Caras turned to look at Powder, who stumbled over what sounded like very passionate words nonetheless. “ Pater… meus … est. Illum domum re- re … .” 

 

“‘ Illum domum re dūcitō ’,” Caras responded in a way that sounded like he was correcting her. Powder only glowered in his direction, but Caras nodded. Leaving Vander’s side, Caras approached Powder, who did stop glaring but otherwise didn’t back down. He patted her once on the top of the head in the way that annoyed her when Vi did it and, apparently, answered her. “ Omnia bene erunt. Everything will be good. You get good at this.” 

Vi wasn’t sure how direct the translation was, but since he bothered to translate at all it was the only part of the exchange she understood. 

 

“You’re getting better too,” Powder huffed. Vi felt a little annoyed, herself, not knowing what had just passed between the two. Whatever it was, though, Powder walked away from them. So that meant either it had been enough to upset Powder (she looked no more or less upset than she had in several minutes) or she no longer thought there was anything she could do. Vi assumed the second to be the case. 

 

“Alright then, Caras, show me the way?” Vander prompted. He looked regretful as Powder headed back toward the cabin. 

 

“I’m going in, too,” Claggor told Vander, “I still gotta get to Airus and I should really be leaving. Gonna drop off my stuff and take off.” Vander nodded, muttering something about Claggor being a ‘good lad.’ 

 

“I show you.” Caras turned and pointed northward. Out here, without the canopy above them, Vi could look up at a figure on the northern horizon she sometimes stopped to think about (in as much as she wondered about its height) but otherwise typically ignored. Jutting up from the earth was an honest to the gods mountain. Before coming here, Vi had never actually seen one outside of drawings. “We go so far the floor go from flat to all uphill. Maybe little more. Don’t know where they camp.” Vander nodded, though to Vi that was just another mark against this plan: they didn’t know for sure how far they had to go. 

 

“Well, if we want to get you back to Airus before sundown so Orkis doesn’t tan my hide, let’s get moving.” With Claggor inside packing up, Powder inside probably moping or worrying and Caras hurrying off toward the northern end of the hill with only a wave in her direction, Vi was left standing, watching Vander follow with only Ekko at her side. Ekko surprised her by reaching up and putting an arm around her shoulders, giving her a quick squeeze of a hug and then, as if the moment had been too kind, lightly shoving her. Vi allowed herself to be nudged one step to the side but shook her head. 

 

“Let’s go, Little Man. You and Powder grab the bows and get over to the practice targets. I’ll come with you after I’ve found Mylo.” In response, Ekko just turned off to the west and pointed vaguely in that direction. 

 

“Try not to fight, okay?” Ekko made a passable attempt at sounding teasing about it, but it seemed more legitimate a request than a joke. 

 

She found Mylo after a little more searching than she wanted. Even with Ekko pointing her in the right direction, it took her a moment or two to spot him by the disruption he made in the tall blades of grass alongside one of the western fields. She trekked down the hill to meet him carefully but still with a little bit of urgency to her steps. See, the rest of the family, and even Ekko and Caras, only know about the obvious threat: these people could be looking for this Riven Konte woman and might figure out that they’d housed her there.  No one except the ex-soldier and Vi herself knew about the other risk. 

 

She hadn’t been able to figure out how to tell any of them about what might be sitting under their toolshed. Why she thought Mylo was the right choice for this revelation, Vi couldn’t say. She needed him to be the right choice, though. She needed someone to help her get ahead of the issue and maybe they could come up with a way to handle it before any more unwelcome visitors reached the farm. 

 

“Hey,” Vi called when Mylo finally turned his head to acknowledge her approach a minute or two later. The still low-hanging sun was not yet a threat to sensitive skin but she still didn’t understand how this felt like a pleasant activity to him: the grass always just irritated her skin and made her itch. Mylo didn’t really sit up, nor did he wave or show any sign that he read her anxiety in her quick approach. Then again, even if he had seen it, would he have cared? 

 

“Saw everyone coming back to the house together,” Mylo told her, which was a little surprising. If he had seen all that, why hadn’t he come to ask any questions? Not so much as a bushy eyebrow raised her way as he closed his eyes and nonchalantly questioned, “what’s up?” 

 

“Caras told us some people - probably soldiers, are camping to the north. They’ve been coming south in the woods, probably hunting.” 

 

“So?” 

 

“ So, ” Vi shot, frustrated by his dismissive tone or the way he placed both hands behind his head and looked almost like someone trying to sleep. “We just had a deserter from their army. In our shed.” 

 

“Yeah, days ago.” He was either completely missing the danger of the situation or just blowing it off. Vi wasn’t sure which and she wasn’t even sure which would’ve been worse. A distant idea, almost like it had not come from her, crept into the back of her mind: was it possible he genuinely didn’t understand the threat? Was he just not thinking? That didn’t seem like Mylo. 

 

“Two days ago. Two,” she emphasized. “And if they come south looking around, they might have questions about her. They might go digging around and - and I need to show you something.” Mylo opened one green eye and finally bothered to arch an eyebrow. 

 

“What?” 

 

“Something I haven’t been able to figure out how to tell the others about.” Vi clarified. She wanted him to read that the situation was serious. She wanted him to understand she was asking for his help. 

 

“This isn’t a waste of my time, is it?” was all the response he could muster. Vi licked her lips and then clenched her teeth against a few insults. 

 

“So busy lying down - again?” She didn’t feel bad about the jab. She didn’t. Absolutely not. 

 

Mylo rolled onto one side to look directly at her, grumbling. 

 

“Just tell me.” 

 

“There’s a trap door on the shed floor. That woman found it right before she left.” 

 

“And?” he gestured angrily with one hand for her to get to the point. Without even the pretense of chill in his voice, she threw out her own calm. 

 

“And it’s probably got something in it. I just haven’t gone down to check it out. I was hoping you’d have my back because it might be trouble.” This last admission felt silly, weak. Why would she need his help to even look? The truth was she wanted someone there with her, to see whether it was a stockpile of weaponry or just a hidey hole. She wanted someone to bounce ideas off of. 

 

“You can go into a room by yourself, Vi.” Mylo sighed and rolled back over. 

 

You just wanted someone to help you shrug off responsibility, Vi chided herself at the same time, before she could even process his response. 

 

When the thought occurred, Vi wasn’t sure who she was angrier at: him, or herself. She damn sure knew who she could most easily turn that anger on.

 

“Why do I bother trying?” Vi threw up both of her hands. “What happened to you? Really, what happened? ” He didn’t answer. He didn’t look back her way. He didn’t acknowledge her frustration or confusion and didn’t acknowledge that he’d basically just told her to fuck off when she’d come to him asking for help. Then again, hadn’t she done the same thing, just days ago when she’d turn and run to the road in one of her own fits, all while he called for her and clearly wanted her to stop and talk. Worse, he’d probably wanted her to stop and reassure him. 

 

Mylo didn’t answer and for all that she still felt horrible about that night, in the moment she couldn’t come up with anything to say. Vi left him lying in the grass in the warming morning air nearest the edge of their little green-lined wheat fields. Unsure what to do with her anger, her fear or her hands, Vi clenched her fists tightly at her side and climbed the hill back up to do the last thing she wanted to do: drag Ekko and Powder into this business with the trap door. 

 

The truth was, though, she at least needed someone to watch her back if she was going down there. Digging around through more than one partially collapsed rusty, filthy building had instilled not to do so alone in all of them. Mylo used to understand that. 

 

Powder and Ekko were exactly where Vi expected to find them when she got back up the hill. Though they’d clearly stopped to bring out the pitcher and three cups (thinking of her, perhaps?) out of the shack, they had gotten on with target practice without her. Powder was sending an arrow into the middle of one of the makeshift debris targets Vander had put together some time ago. They were getting harder and harder to keep together as their materials decayed, but even from a few feet back Vi could tell that Powder’s aim was as good as ever. Whether it was throwing stones, a slingshot or a paintball, Powder was good at aiming. She was good at shooting. That was half of the reason Vi had trusted the bows she and Ekko made to begin with: they were the exact two people she’d have chosen to make them, anyway. 

 

Ekko was coming along, fairly well, too. Lately he’d been hitting, according to him, his target once out of every ten shots. That didn’t sound like a lot to Vi, but it had only encouraged Ekko to step up that practice. 

 

She almost hated to interrupt, especially since she needed to get a few shots in, herself. 

 

Vi waited until Ekko had released an arrow and Powder had not yet nocked hers before she cleared her throat, loudly. Powder lowered her bow slightly and turned back in Vi’s direction. She looked grim, still, anxious and a little like she was scared Vi was bringing bad news. In a way, Vi supposed she was. Ekko stared for several seconds at where his arrow had pierced the target only a few short feet away, and then also gave Vi his attention. 

 

He looked calmer than her sister, but maybe not as neutral as Vi had expected. If anything, Ekko’s face said he was ready for something. Neither one of them moved or really said anything until Vi told herself to calm down and used both hands to gesture for them to do the same thing. If she didn’t get herself under control they would all just spend the next few hours freaking out. If she could at least put on a face, she could keep most of the freaking out in her own head. 

 

“Hey, I could use your help checking something out, but I’m gonna need you to keep it a secret, for me.” Immediately, relief washed over Ekko’s face, confirming for her that doing something to distract themselves was the path forward from there. They didn’t know for sure that any trouble was coming to their land; until they did, she was bringing all of the anxiety on herself. Mylo didn’t help, Vi admitted, but you gotta get this under control. 

 

“Okay,” Powder agreed immediately, though she still sounded like she was expecting bad news. Too serious. Too dark. Too sad. Too focused on Caras and Vander following unfamiliar land toward what was probably a military encampment. Without much more hesitation, the duo leaned their bows and improvised quivers against the back of the shack right beside the cellar doors. Neither pressed too quickly for more information but Vi thought it was the best way to start getting their minds off of the unknown and onto problems that the three of them could at least grapple with. 

 

“So, I went to talk to the lady we found in the woods before she left that night.” Vi admitted. This was something she had not openly told either. Vi noticed then that Ekko’s surprise looked feigned but did not yet make any connection or assumptions. Powder didn’t look surprised, herself, though, just more and more anxi- no, annoyed? 

 

“You did what?” Powder frowned. It was just short of a pout, but Vi could sense the disappointment. “You didn’t tell us?” 

 

“I didn’t.” Vi hauled open the door to the shed with one hand and leaned the other arm against the doorframe. Powder didn’t have a response except to furrow her brow and glare at Vi. “I wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to… be a problem.” Yeah, that worked out great. “Anyway, when I went to talk to her she showed me something hidden under the dirt.” 

 

“What?” her sister prompted. Ekko on the other hand went right past Vi and on into the shed. He began to kick away at the dirt unprompted until Vi heard the thin metal clank of the handle to the trap door. 

 

“Door,” Vi tilted her head in Ekko’s direction to say he’d already found it. Ekko leaned down to grab the little brass ring that served as the handle. “She said they’re usually for hiding something, around here. If we have a place to hide and anyone comes by that we don’t want to see, then maybe we could hide everyone down there. But it might not be empty and I need to check it out. I could use someone nearby to make sure I don’t do something stupid  - “ 

 

“That’s a real concern,” Ekko told Vi as he opened the trap door. Vi continued immediately as if he’d never spoken. 

 

“- and get hurt without anyone knowing.” She made sure to let her eyes linger on Ekko a little bit as she emphasized the word ‘hurt’ but he knew the threat to be a joke as well as she did and responded with rolled eyes. She still smirked when he apologized a second later with a smile on his face. With the daylight spilling in, it was a bit brighter but as she and Powder joined Ekko beside the hole in the floor of their shed, she could only see a clear, earthen floor below. 

 

There was barely enough space for her to crouch. She was probably going to have to crawl once she got down there. This might not be a viable option for hiding Claggor and Vander, much less the family as a whole. 

 

“It’s really small. Should you be the one who goes in?” Powder questioned. Vi decided to give her sister a little bit of grief. 

 

“Well, why not?” She was just formulating how to ask if Powder was calling her fat when Ekko interrupted. 

 

“I’ll do it,” the boy volunteered  

 

“Not gonna let you get hurt down there,” Vi told him, but Ekko shrugged and threw up both hands, looking at her as if she was being stupid. 

 

“I’m going into a hole, Vi, not climbing a junk pile.”  Ah-ha! Vi seized on this. 

 

“Which you have a bad habit of doing.” Wearing what she thought to be a playful pout on his own face, Ekko nonetheless crouched down right on the edge of the little hole. There was no ladder down, though, so he pushed forward and dropped in without another word. Even with his body mostly in the way, she could tell he landed just fine. The thing was, even Ekko immediately had to get on his knees to get any further into the hole. Is this what they mean by ‘crawl-space?’ 

 

Ekko’s head got just out of sight of the opening at Vi’s angle when he called up to her. Powder looked to still have an angle, though, because she knelt down and squinted into the hole. 

 

“Boxes.” 

 

“Crates,” Powder corrected him. He grunted. 

 

“It’s hard to see what’s in them but -” Vi knew what was going to happen before it did, of course. If the hole had not been for hiding people, it was probably for hiding things someone didn’t want found and their visitor had suggested that might be weapons. Sure enough, a moment or so later she heard the sound of metal against metal and Powder leaned back as Ekko pointed something shiny and steel back up through the hole. It was thin, sharp and looked like the tip of a sword, even to her uneducated eyes. 

 

Powder was too busy being curious and surprised to catch Vi’s own jolt of fear. 

 

“Put that back,” Vi ordered. Though her tone caught Powder’s eye and even made Ekko pause in place, he did as he was told, drawing the short sword back into the hole he knelt in. Clinking and banging accompanied its return to one of the boxes below and then Ekko crawled right back to the hole, stood up, and reached up to grab the edges of the trap door. Vi took one of his hands as Powder grabbed at the other and together they had him up and out of the hole without him having to struggle to pull himself up. 

 

“How many crates?” Vi asked as soon as he was sat on the edge of the hole with his feet dangling over the edge. She was suddenly very aware that the only reason they could see anything in there was that the door to the shed was open and if anyone wanted to look through and see what they were up to, they could. When she looked back that way in paranoia, no one, not even Mylo, stood in the doorway observing them. 

 

“Like, four? Some kind of barrel too. They’re all full, I think. They were heavy. Hard to see what’s in all of them, but , I mean, we can guess.” Vi frowned at Ekko, who looked nonplussed. He hadn’t quite put together why she was unnerved. She nodded for him to get out of the way and when he was back on his feet she shut the trap door and began to immediately cover it with debris and dirt. 

 

“Move the bricks,” Vi told them. “When it’s time to build up the kiln, maybe you make it right on top of the door.” 

 

“What?” Ekko asked. Powder, though, who had finally started to think the same way Vi was, backed away as Vi started just that process. Ekko looked between the two of them for a few seconds before shrugging and joining in, grabbing a brick in either hand and helping Vi and stack them as they had just been a few inches to the right. 

 

“We won’t be hiding down there. If someone comes digging around and finds all that shit, we’re in trouble.” Vi was just dragging her eighth and ninth bricks over when Powder finally spoke again. 

 

“No. No, no no.” She turned back to observe her sister but Powder backed right out of the shed, shaking her head. “Not again.” Vi paused in moving the pile over and followed Powder right out of the shed. Even someone who didn’t know her sister could probably have read the signs of a full blown panic coming, so Vi didn’t hesitate. She took both of Powder’s hands and told herself it was to comfort the girl, not because she thought Powder might self harm in her own fear. ( That was a lie. )  

 

“Listen to me.” Vi was intent on cutting this off before it began. Powder always recovered more quickly that way and sometimes it even helped her keep calm against whatever fucked up thing happened next. “We’re going to be okay. They’re not even this far south, right? So they probably won’t come here. Might not even think about this. We’re probably too small a village or something, and we’re not even that close to the village. We hide the door, stay low, don’t cause trouble or go wandering off and getting lost and we’ll be fine, right?” Powder shook her head. 

 

“You mean like going and spying on their camp?” Ekko asked. 

 

Yes. 

 

That was exactly what Vander was doing. 

 

“Not helping,” Vi counseled the boy all the same. He returned to their work. 

 

“Sorry.” 

 

When her sister’s breathing picked up, Vi held both hands tightly. 

 

“It’s okay, Pow-pow. We’re here. We’re safe. Come on, how many times have we shook off Enforcers by just walking down an alley they didn’t expect. We’re way south of this army and they might not even be out here looking for her. Probably just off to go find another country to steal from.” This too, failed to help. Powder gripped Vi’s hands back, though, and met her eyes. “Slow, careful, deep breaths. Okay?” 

 

“I just don’t want - I can’t - “ Vi nodded when Powder failed to find the words and began to shake her head. There weren’t tears in the mechanic’s eyes, but the fear was clear and palpable. 

 

“I know, I know. I’m worried too, but we’re probably just overthinking it.” 

 

“But they’re down there,” Powder nodded back to the shed. “What do we do about that?” Sounding a little more herself, problem solving, Powder posited a good question. Vi smiled at her sister, who smiled back as if not entirely clear what drew the response from Vi. The thing was, she’d asked them along because, more than the rest of them, Ekko and Powder liked problem solving. They were good at finding a problem and nailing a solution and even usually enjoyed it. 

 

Vi’s only recourse to trouble was to throw punches. These two at least had some useful ideas. 

 

“We talk to Vander, right? He could have an idea.” 

 

“Maybe we give them to Vavros to melt down?” Powder prompted. Ekko shrugged but looked regretful when he called out of the shed. “That much metal’s gotta be valuable. 

 

“Vavros says melting down steel’s tricky, right? That’s definitely steel.” After a beat and without anyone even thinking of interrupting him, he added, “still not helping, sorry.” 

 

“No, you’re right.” Vi looked back over her shoulder at Ekko. “It’s good to rule out ideas early.” 

 

From that point on, she tried to distract herself, Powder and Ekko, too while they waited for Vander to come back from up north, Maybe Vander and Claggor would come back from Airus together, since Vander might take Caras back home or maybe Claggor would just know something.  Each time they started to speculate too much, Vi redirected them. At first it hadn’t been hard: they had to gather their fair share of the firewood for the day, and that took up a fair amount of focus and time. 

 

Then, with just a little nudging and prompting, Vi had been able to convince the two of them to start trying to make the various little pieces for their threshing machine. They’d only gotten half the frame whittled out of one particular branch when Powder had stood up to leave the shack anxiously and Ekko had put down the knife and, in silence, shook his head at Vi. Clearly, it wasn’t going to be that easy to get her sister’s mind off of things. Not that Ekko was unaffected, himself. His tension was just louder but more still: he did not pace, but he rubbed his hands together frequently and often stopped to glance out the window and sigh when he noticed the sun higher in the sky. 

 

“Sorry, it was a good idea.” Ekko set down the knife beside the short wooden leg with the wide, mostly flat end serving as part of the frame of the future machine. “I just can’t really focus - and, yanno.” He gestured at the door Powder had just hurriedly and almost silently left the room through. Vi pushed herself up from the foot of the bed and shrugged to tell him it was alright. 

 

“We’ll figure something out.” 

 

Mylo had come up from down the hill when Vi and Ekko poked their heads out to check on Powder. Vi’s own unease ticked up at this, because she wasn’t sure what the two had been talking about but Powder shrugged dismissively and turned away from him. In return, he looked smug. The smug look vanished as soon as he saw Vi, and he just sat back against the front wall of the shack and pretended that he wasn’t doing something that Vi would have been pissed about. 

 

“It’ll be hours still until Claggor’s back and no idea how long on Vander.” For the first time all day, Powder sounded as frustrated by the situation as scared about it. 

 

“It’s probably no big deal, why whine about it?” Vi didn’t even look at Mylo, she just lifted her right shoulder and shrugged at Powder. There was no good answer she could give her sister. They could hurry into Airus to look in on Claggor but if he knew nothing more than they did it would be a waste of time and they might miss it when Vander came home. It was getting close to lunchtime, too. 

 

Then there was the little problem of the fact that Vander had basically ordered them all to stay close to the farm. 

 

Powder was not usually one to outright disobey Vander and it wasn’t like it would do them much good, in the long run, beyond letting them feel like they were doing something. 

 

“How long do you think it’d take him to get to the mountains?” Ekko asked Powder, who looked up, even though Vi knew that the shack sat between her sister and any view of the mountain. Vi hung back in the doorway and thought for a moment or two. Her sister shrugged. “Four hours?” 

 

“Maybe six?” Powder countered. She began to absentmindedly play with the hem of her shirt. Neither one of them sounded particularly sure. Vi didn’t have a good guess, herself. The mountain was large and always looming to their north, a constant but little else. It was far away. “I mean, a lot of places are still flat here or the fields would suck to plow and plant, but when you get closer it’s gonna be worse? Lots more hills like this one and bigger, and you probably just start going uphill eventually and don’t stop ‘til you’re on the mountain anyway.” 

 

“We should start going further and further out. Learn more about that kinda thing,” Vi suggested. “Plus, who knows what’s out there that we just haven’t found yet. New plants? Maybe bees, like Vander said?” 

 

“Oh yeah, honey, ” Ekko sighed dreamily at the very thought and even Powder’s smile peeked back out from behind the nerves. 

 

“I know there’s gotta be stuff we’re missing even close to home, but maybe going out further will give us better chances?” Vi piggybacked onto Powder’s slowly growing excitement. 

 

“Maybe some water big enough to have some fish worth catching?” Powder shrugged but when Vi felt her own stomach start to rumble she decided to drop the food angle of things. Mylo simply looked off in the direction of the capped well and either was, or pretended to be, uninterested in them and the conversation. “What would you wanna find?” Vi tried to include the boy. 

 

“Somewhere else to go.” This was Mylo’s only answer and it felt just rude and dismissive enough for Vi to give up again. 

 

“Look,” Vi swung her attention from Mylo to Ekko and Powder. “Vander’s gonna be fine, okay?” She waited one or two seconds but instead of reassuring either one, Ekko looked tense again and Powder turned roughly in the direction of Airus as if she thought if she stared really hard she’d see through the treeline and be able to check in on Claggor that way. Vi sighed. “You ready for some mittwork?” she offered. 

 

Neither immediately seemed into it. 

 

“Sure.” Powder answered, but Vi wasn’t sure if she knew what she was saying yes to. There was a sort of distracted quality to the response. 

 

“We don’t have to; I just don’t want you to sit around worrying.” 

 

“That’s your job, isn’t it?” Again, Powder did not turn back to look at Vi, but there was a pretty clear edge to her words, this time. 

 

“What’s that mean?” Vi questioned even when Ekko looked ready to change the subject. 

 

“You’ve been doing it all day. It’s why you were sitting inside with us just now. Why’s it so bad when we do it?” To that, Vi had a lot of answers, none of which sounded perfect. The truth was that it wasn’t good for Vi, either. Still, sitting over Powder and her best friend and worrying over keeping them distracted was closer to solving a problem than she’d come to any other problem she had on her mind, lately. 

 

“Guess it is my job, then,” Vi played off the exchange. Powder was trying to make a point, if in a slightly bratty way. It wasn’t fair of her to expect no one else to be freaking out a little bit if Vi was freaking out, too. “You know what, changed my mind. You do have to come put on the mitts. We’ll do some mitt work, get a little shadowboxing in, work up a sweat.” Then, after a pause, Vi tapped her chin. “I wanna see you roll and slip a few and we’ll talk pull counters, same side returns, the stuff you do so you don’t end up on the back foot.” 

 

Powder sighed but at least stood up a little straighter and stretched. Ekko popped the knuckles on one hand absentmindedly but she took it to be a sign of some excitement. He, at least, was paying attention to her. 

 

“Go grab the gloves and mitts and head for the well.” Vi had a reason for sending the two of them off on their own and when, hemming and hawing a little, Powder joined Ekko in heading around back to the shed to get their ‘gear’, Vi waited until she was sure they were out of range. Then she turned to look down at Mylo. He lifted his head and stared directly up at her. The look on his face told her that her own carried the right amount of seriousness. 

 

“When I get them distracted, the gauntlets are down in the cellar. Bring them up and put them in the corner by the bed, alright?” This seemed like a fair request. It was a handful of small steps down the cellar, after all. Instead, Mylo snorted. 

 

“Get them yourself.” He sounded so bored. 

 

“Mylo, will you just shut the fuck up and help me out, here? If -” Mylo sat up straighter and placed a hand down on the ground as if to push himself to his feet. He did not quite get to that step and she was glad because a part of her would’ve wanted to put him back on his ass if he’d tried to get into her face all of a sudden. 

 

“Why? Why pretend you’re gonna fight? Running away is all we do now, remember?” Struck again by the reminder that Vi had left Mylo standing at the bottom of the hill the night of their biggest argument yet, Vi shut her mouth and recoiled. She watched the boy as he turned his head, snide little look disappearing from his face and then he again seemed to be staring off toward the well. When she heard sound behind her, Vi glanced back to see Ekko disappearing around the corner of the house all over again: very clearly he and probably Powder too had been eavesdropping. 

 

Mylo again looked uninterested. 

 

“Why do I bother?” she spat, before rounding the corner of the shack, and pointing over the heads of a surprised and momentarily guilty looking Ekko and Powder at the shed. They did not need told again what Vi was pointing about and she didn’t want to yell at either of them; it wasn’t their fault that she wanted to shove Mylo face first into a pile of Topside’s wasted, rotting produce. 

 

Vi retrieved her gauntlets from behind several bags in the cellar. All nearly rustless iron and brass, the heft hunks of metal were shoved under her arm as she crouched her way back up the staircase and out into the sun. Even if they hadn’t overheard her argument with Mylo it would now be impossible to pretend to Powder or her equally mechanically gifted friend that her talk with Powder had put Vi into the mindset of preparing for the potential of a fight. 

 

With their individual pieces of equipment in hand, Vi, Powder and Ekko mutually hesitated over the distance between the shed and the cellar doors when Vi emerged with Vander’s old war-time weapons in hand. She deposited the gauntlets inside, hidden behind hers and Powder’s bedrolls without a sideways glance to or a word to Mylo who seemed determined to move around as little as possible that day: he was now lying outside beneath the overhang of the roof with his eyes closed. Meanwhile, the other two carried fairly freshly stuffed bags of grass fashioned into boxing gloves and punch mitts over to the well. There was no shade there, but there was very little shade up on the hill, in general: the small ring of trees around their shack were young, new, thin and fairly spaced out. 

 

Still swallowing down another river’s worth of anger and hurt at her brother, Vi went to join Powder and Ekko. She caught sight, as she turned away from the shack, of Mylo looking at her again, and glaring. Vi did not want to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging it, even if it did make her feel cool inside. Whatever his problem was, if she thought about it too long she’d want to do something about it. 

 

“Alright, I don’t care who puts on the mitts and who puts on the gloves but get them on.” Vi clapped to get the others’ attention as soon as she was close enough to be comfortably heard. Jittery, she watched the two shrug at one another and then Powder pulled on the gloves. Ekko helped her get the last one tied and so Vi obliged him with the punch mitts, taking time to make sure that the new padding was going to be enough for even one session. The truth was, they needed better stuffing. These wore out and ground down quickly. 

 

While she helped Ekko tie the string around the second punchmitt, she matched his eyes. 

 

“You good?” 

 

“Yeah,” Ekko shrugged. “You’re right, we just gotta stop worrying.” He didn’t sound convinced but she appreciated the bravado, patted him on the shoulder and tied the string fairly tightly. When he had a second to twist his wrist back and forth to test if it was too loose or too tight and did not have a complaint, Vi stepped away. 

 

“Alright then, get in here Powder. Simple 1-2 combo, then Ekko, we want a slow hook. Powder, I want you to duck and slip. We’ll add a few steps once you’ve gotten a little warm up.” For her part, Powder nodded. Mouth still set grimly, the shorter girl lightly smashed her gloved fists against one another and waited for Vi to step out of the way. Hopeful that everyone would be doing a little better in just a few minutes, Vi did just that. 

 

She was left to stand on the side and watch the two of them, occasionally asking questions about what they were doing, how their stance felt, how their feet moved. This wasn’t to get answers which she could observe or guess at, herself, so much as to get them thinking. Powder had only worked through the combo in question once before Vi frowned in her direction. While it was clear that even Ekko’s stance was sloppy that afternoon, Powder’s was a mess. She stood nearly completely square to Ekko, straight legged and stiff backed and her guard was already way too loose. 

 

“Hey, hey, Powder?” Vi called, and Ekko slipped back a step so Powder knew she could stop and turn her head safely. When Vi matched eyes with her sister, she furrowed her brows and spoke flatly. “Vander is going to be fine. You’re not if you don’t get your shoulders up, elbows in and keep that book foot up. You already know what you’re doing wrong with your legs.” Powder exhaled sharply through her nose. A few hairs not quite long enough to stay perfectly trapped within her braid hung down over her sister’s forehead, fluttering with the snort. Vi raised both eyebrows and angled her head back toward Ekko. Powder turned away, exhaled and nodded. 

 

To her credit, for being annoyed and a little attitude-prone, her sister focused up and after a second of thought, got herself back into stance, tucked her elbows in and brought her guard back in tight. Ekko confused Vi by momentarily leaving his own, better but not perfect stance but before Vi could start in on him, he corrected the bend of his knees and the angle of his rear foot. Honestly, for barely a couple of weeks of practice, the both had a pretty good stance when they stopped to focus. 

 

Like Mylo, they had plenty of potential as fast, dangerous fighters. If they learned to really work someone over half as well as the aforementioned brother could (despite not training much at all, nowadays) both could easily be the kind of people Vi would want to avoid in a fight. Squaring up against a person twice her size was one thing. Someone quicker than her was another, she thought as she observed Ekko. Someone quicker than her who might soon have better reach - well, that was a problem. 

 

Vi smiled to herself at the thought that Powder might not realize what a threat she could be with training, that Ekko might not realize his height and his speed made him a serious danger. 

 

They’d get it, eventually, though. 

 

Vi clapped her hands, hard. 

 

“Take it from the top.” 

 

Vi made sure to get back to asking questions when she needed them to think about what they were doing. She instructed, as well as she thought she could, when she wanted them to imagine or do something new. When it looked like they were both warmed up and Ekko even managing to enjoy what he described as the ‘passive’ side of training, Vi added in movement, instructing Powder to respond to Ekko’s swing by moving in and around, tapping him briefly on the shoulder - not swinging. 

 

There would be time for that when they were actually sparring, or when she, Vi, decided to put on the mitts, herself. 

 

“It’s been a weird few days between the escapee in the woods and everything else but you gotta understand Vander’s smart and not gonna get himself in trouble. He’s on a walk with Caras.” Vi started quite out of the blue when she noticed Powder starting to slow down a little. “They’re gonna look at what’s going on and come back. It’s going to be okay.” Surprisingly, Powder just nodded and delivered with her left jab to the left punch mitt before bringing her guard back up and setting up for a quick right cross. 

 

It was Ekko, catching that right cross in his mitt and responding by swinging up above Powder’s head who contradicted Vi. 

 

“It doesn’t feel okay.” Despite her compliance just a moment ago, Powder shouted out her agreement. 

 

“Right?” Powder prompted as she came out of less of a slip and more of a roll of the blow, still stepping into Ekko’s left side and landing a very light hit with the end of her glove on his shoulder. It was not the most complex sequence she’d had them working on, but the first time she really tried to focus either one of them on counters or slips. Regardless of the conversation at large, Vi grew excited at seeing a relatively clean demonstration of what she’d been trying to teach. 

 

Both clearly understood the importance of the moment, glancing at one another and then Vi before continuing through when she did not correct or admonish either one. 

 

“Why?” was all Vi managed to ask several seconds later, through a grin that could not be suppressed even by the day she’d had so far. “Why’s it feel bad?” 

 

“Something’s just fishy, ” Ekko insisted. Like when they were at work on a problem for one of their machines, Ekko and Powder seemed to share their thoughts entirely without words. As Powder landed her right cross, she picked up the answer. 

 

“Why hasn’t this happened before? It’s been more than a month.” 

 

“We don’t know that their army doesn’t come by here all the time, ” Vi insisted. Though, privately she thought that that was a poor argument to make anyone feel better. If anything, the idea made her more sure they needed to get those crates and that barrel out from underneath their shed. Ekko received the blow on his mitt and swung again above her head, a little more quickly but no less precisely, so Vi let it go. If they wanted to pick up the pace, that was up to the two of them. It’d probably help in the long run. 

 

There would also come a time they’d have to talk about actually landing blows, but that wasn’t until they had better, thicker gloves. 

 

“Okay, but right after the white haired lady goes by?” Powder asked. 

 

“I get it, it’s weird - Powder, tight guard, chin down. You gotta work on this, it’ll come in handy some time. Now, I get that it’s weird, but it doesn't mean anything bad is happening, right?” She didn’t want to think that she was just trying to convince herself. It was still an undeniable fact that thinking about Vander and the apparent soldiers in the woods was a lot easier when her mind was partially occupied with training. 

 

“Maybe,” her sister answered, sounding calmer despite slightly faster breathing. It still didn’t look like the younger girl wanted to, or was able to, believe Vi unquestioningly. “But what if they are looking for her, Vi?” Vi opened her mouth intent on telling Powder that they would just all deny, deny, deny and hope for the best. She was shamed into shutting her gums when Powder slipped Ekko’s hook a little more cleanly and came around, tapping him on the left shoulder and stepping back. “She wasn’t in good shape. All she wanted was not to fight in a war.” 

 

Vi had been thinking about them. Powder had been thinking about Riven. 

 

Cheeks flushing, Vi tried not to let on how selfishly she’d been thinking. 

 

“Well, if they’re looking for her, they won’t be looking to bother any of us, will they?” With Powder’s back turned to her, Vi crept forward, noticing a recurring problem in the way her sister held herself, the way she went back into her stance after slipping Ekko’s ‘blow’. “Will they?” Vi repeated, mostly to buy herself time to get a better eye on the situation. In something close to a good stance herself, she followed, turning along with them over the next two repetitions. 

 

“I guess not,” Powder admitted reluctantly, though it sounded like it wasn’t something she liked saying. Vi understood that. There was nothing pleasant about the idea of someone in that lady’s shape being chased down by armed soldiers. Back home, she might even have tried to interfere. 

 

“Come on, Powder, 1-2, slip and get around to the side he throws the punch from. Ekko, done with the hook. I want to see crosses at the end of the combo.” Sure enough, when Vi shuffled around behind Powder’s back and followed her through coming around to Ekko’s left side and turning the pair around, she watched as Powder righted herself, brought in her fists but did not immediately bend her knees again. “Powder, if you don’t bend that knee a bit, you’re gonna get whacked.” 

 

Vi reached out to tap Powder on the side of her too-straight rear leg but got something of a shock. Hearing Vi so close to her, Powder backed away from Ekko and turned in her direction. Either by sheer instinct or because all of this practice was doing nothing to alleviate her anxiety, Powder reacted to Vi reaching out to tap her on her right side as if responding to one of Ekko’s swings. She stepped to Vi’s own right side and Vi half expected she was going to be socked by her sister. 

 

Her eyes traveled down when Powder almost tilted back slightly but kept her hands up so that all Vi could see of her the girl’s face had been sharp, almost angry eyes. 

 

Vi was very glad she looked down and could bring her bare hands together to catch the knee driving right up into her stomach as her sister’s very long rear leg drove her forward. Vi wished she had the punch mitts on as she caught the knee by the skin of her teeth. It hurt, and the jolt nearly rocked Vi back and it felt… good. Until it didn’t. 

 

One moment, Powder had moved and was violently driving her left knee up and at Vi, forcing Vi to turn to even be able to guard. In the very next, the girl looked confused by the situation she found herself in as Vi pushed back hard enough on the knee to force Powder to stumble back. The thing was, she’d intended on pushing Powder entirely over and onto her ass. Vi stepped back but did not bother to stay in stance. Something between shame and utter bemusement colored Powder’s red face. Even Ekko gave the girl a wide berth for the moment. 

 

It was definitely far more than Vi had expected. 

 

“What was that? ” Vi asked her sister immediately. Still looking confused, Powder shook her head. 

 

“I don’t know… I guess… it felt right?” 

 

“Okay, well, feel it another time.” Powder looked down, as if she thought Vi was scolding her. Mostly Vi wondered if it had actually been an instinctual reaction or if Powder had been getting annoyed. The question seemed answered by how surprised her sister looked to be at her own reaction. To quiet any fears of anger, Vi squinted sharply at her. “Tryin’a’ get fancy on me?” 

 

“I guess,” Powder huffed down at her hands and then turned back around toward Ekko, no longer looking quite as nervous. She’s tense. You surprised her. She’s been practicing slipping blows and firing back. Frankly, it’d be weirder if she didn’t react at all. Shaking her head, Vi stepped right up behind Powder, used the front of her knee to force Powder’s own to bend and then took her sister by the forearms and put her hands right back up in a guard, even when Powder rolled her eyes. Vi released her. 

 

“I mean, maybe there’s something to it. That had a lot of force behind it and you were still half stable. If I’d had more warning I might’ve been able to make you pay for it, but as quick as that came, I dunno.” As Vi got a little space between herself and Powder and Ekko started back forward, she rotated back around to Ekko’s side, patting him on the shoulder. He didn’t respond to the silent praise verbally but his surprise at the moment was gone and replaced with an excited smile. “Bad news is I wouldn’t know how to help you turn it into something useful. I mean, I’ve got guesses, but we’d be doing it trial and error. I’m more about the fists than the legs.” 

 

“What do you mean ‘Something to it?’” Powder asked, eyes tracking Vi and not Ekko as Vi slipped behind him and around. 

 

“Well, you’re already tall for your age. Most of it’s in the legs. Maybe you should learn how to fight bringing your legs into it. I don’t know. I just know if I tried to help it’d all be guess work.” Reasonably she could imagine what would work the best against her if someone was using their knees and when it might be a bad idea but the only thing she really thought she could figure out how to teach was what she knew and what she’d been taught. This would be so much easier if Vander would help teach. 

 

It would also be better for her. She needed someone she could spar with, someone she could swing at and not have to worry about hurting them, someone she could trust to actually throw a punch at her without worrying about her. 

 

Vi wanted badly to feel the way she felt when she was fighting. 

 

“Humor me for now and focus on your whole body. Your stance is getting sloppy.” Powder nodded and agreed to humor her, returning to stance as Vi had just very physically demonstrated. Secretly, though, she decided to ask Vander about Powder’s situation next time she was neither worried about nor utterly pissed at him. “Back to it, let’s go. We’re switching up in five minutes.” 

 

“Have you ever seen anyone try to work kicking into boxing?” Powder still sounded preoccupied as she delivered a quick jab and brought her hands back, chin a little lower than strictly necessary. Vi laughed, which did give her sister some hesitation before she swung the right cross. 

 

“That is literally what it’s called. Kickboxing. It’s a little different but I think a lot of concepts carry over. I just know jack shit about it. I really don’t think I’d be a good teacher, but if I’m the only one you’ve got I’d be willing to try if you want to.” 

 

“I do.” Powder insisted, moving under Ekko’s left hook and again tapping him on the side. Vi wasn’t sure but she thought this blow was no harder, though far quicker than the last. 

 

“Makes sense, yanno, with your long mutant legs.” 

 

“Why don’t you just be a pipsqueak about it?” Powder taunted Ekko right back. Vi couldn’t see his face, but whatever Powder saw made her smile a very wicked grin. Like a few days earlier, they ‘squabbled’ even as they visibly grew more and more enamored with the training. It was all in good fun and seemed to wipe away the last of Ekko’s hesitation, at least. While they traded handware with one another, Vi considered how or at what point in Powder’s training she might teach the girl to mix it up like that. 

 

She felt immediately in over her head. 

 

“I think I can teach you both to be good at fighting like I do. The more I think about it, though, the more I don’t know the best way to transition to working in the legs. I could ask Caras if anyone in the village does anything like this?” Vi made the offer as she came in close to help Ekko tie shut the last glove. “Or maybe Vander knows a thing or two. He did start my training, and all that. 

 

“You… want someone else to teach me?” Powder hesitated, as if unsure she was hearing Vi right. The moment of hesitation threatened to replace her sister’s eagerness with anxiety so Vi quashed that quickly, turning back even as she absentmindedly ruffled Ekko’s hair. He grumbled behind her about being treated like a kid. He even sounded like he’d been hanging out with Powder more than ever. 

 

“No.” Vi had to make sure she emphasized this looking directly into her sister’s eyes. It was absolutely not about not wanting to train Powder. Actually, she thought she’d hate the idea of having anyone else take over. “If anything, I’m hoping someone might be able to teach me and I could teach you. Or maybe we all three could try to learn at once from someone. ‘Cos you two are right. You should use what you got, and we’ve got legs. Powder might get a leg up on us, but we could all figure something out.” 

 

Ekko groaned a step or two behind her, and Vi felt gratified at how her pun had landed. She pulled tight on the string of one of the Powder’s punch mitts and tried to read her sister’s face. 

 

“I don’t know, maybe it was a bad idea.” The talk of bringing in an outsider must’ve been what made her sister nervous. “Maybe it’s not worth it. I’d probably mess up, anyway.” 

 

“What do you mean? ” Ekko asked, exasperated. She could imagine the frustrated hand gestures he must’ve made without even seeing them. “If you’re messing up boxing, I’m really messing it up, because I’m doing the same things you are. Why would this be any different?” 

 

“True,” Vi backed him up. 

 

“I just don’t like the idea anymore.” Powder insisted as she stepped back from Vi and looked past her, back at Ekko. At least the bluenette didn’t look too particularly anxious or upset anymore. Vi wanted to get that excitement back on their faces and in their movements. 

 

“Alright.” On the surface, Vi slipped out from between the two and relented. “We’ll just experiment, the three of us, and try to figure something out together, then? Could be fun.” Inside, Vi was a little disappointed that Powder didn’t even wanna try to find someone who might know more. Then again, maybe that had more to do with Sinnan’s warning: if people knew you knew how to fight you might get drafted when the army comes looking. 

 

Overall, the mood brightened back up as they got Ekko going on the same combination of punches followed by slipping a hook and coming to Powder’s attacking side. The playful trash talk took a little longer to get going again but when it did they each gave as good as they got and most of the time it sounded like goading, encouragement more than trash talk. So Vi did not interrupt except to change up instructions or question Ekko (‘What are you doing with your knees, right now?’ or ‘Do you think your guard is up high enough?’) 

 

At one point after a particularly quick execution of the combo, Ekko reached out for a high five from Powder, who responded by tapping him on the chin with the end of the punchmitt. 

 

It didn’t stop either of them from looking pleased with themselves when they each stepped back to reset. 

 

Finally, at least, Vi felt she had successfully distracted both her sister and Ekko from the morning’s alarming revelations. 

 

She had not, however, entirely distracted herself. She had not quiteted the sense that she needed to do something else, something more. Something. About everything. About anything. 

 

Vi poured that tension into the training. She felt she could let them unleash a little more when one of them was in the gloves and she was in the mitts so after Ekko had had the same amount of time to really warm up as Powder, Vi took the mitts from Powder and changed up instructions a little bit. Against Vi, neither Ekko nor Powder were to hold back on slipping and delivering a ‘return’ for fear of hurting her. She still wanted it to be just a light tap on the side or the shoulder, but they had better not hold back landing it. 

 

That helped. 

 

It helped to be moving and leading one of her ‘students’ (Vi immediately hated the idea of thinking of either of them that way) while the other shadowboxed or just got some water. It helped to be able to trust the person with the mitts to swing controlled but quicker punches and force first Ekko and then Powder to move more quickly, more precisely themselves. It helped her heart to start hammering and her arms and legs to stop jittering to be able to focus on more complex combinations of movement and blows, to see her Ekko and Powder excited for learning to punch and to move from this angle. 

 

She couldn’t help but think, though, that neither one got as fired up in training with her as they did with one another. 

 

Vi was not able to keep energy levels or focus up indefinitely, though. Every time they took a break long enough for one of them to get a look at how much longer their shadows had grown, it was harder and harder to get either of them back into the zone. It probably didn’t help that they’d more or less trained through lunch, none of them thinking about it until it was too late. Eventually, when the sun was hanging low and Ekko pointed to a rotund form down the hill and on the road to the north, Vi decided dinner and bathing was an absolute necessity. 

 

Though unquestionably their longest training session, Vi still felt jittery as she joined the other two sweat-soaked ‘combatants’ in carrying their training gear back to the shed. A few times, Powder or Ekko would stop to look back north, a frown on their face, but after Vi nudged them forward they would continue. Eventually she threw an arm around either one’s shoulder and marched them clear past the shack. 

 

She knew why they were hesitating: the person they’d seen on the road was almost definitely Claggor coming home from a day’s work in Airus. There hadn’t been a sign of Vander or anyone else trailing along behind him. 

 

“Mylo, when Claggor gets here, send him my way, will you?” she shouted at the shack. She didn’t wait around for Mylo to answer, didn’t think he would bother to say anything to anyone at all. Instead, once Ekko and Powder had tossed the gloves and mitts into the shed, she kicked the door shut to keep herself from staring straight through the pile of red-orange bricks covering the previously unknown trapdoor in the floor. When she finally got a chance to look them both over, Ekko was wiping sweat from the side of his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt and Powder looked to be watching her own hands with a curious expression on her face. 

 

“You got the bug,” Vi told them both. “Don’t deny it: you had fun.” 

 

“Wasn’t gonna deny it,” Ekko shrugged. “It really is fun. I didn’t know… I didn’t know I could do this.” 

 

“Why not?” Powder asked, without looking up. “I knew you could.”  Brightening yet again, Ekko’s smile stretched ear to ear to the point where it looked almost painful. He rubbed absentmindedly at his right shoulder with his left hand as if sore, but Vi recognized the embarrassment for what it was. “I didn’t think I could but - I think I can actually throw a punch.” 

 

Vi shouldn’t have laughed. It should have been sad that her sister underestimated herself so damned much about so many things. And, it was. Still, there was something about the understatement that momentarily doubled Vi over in laughter. 

 

“No shit?” she asked the earth between her feet. “I’d say you can do a little more than that.” She shook her head hard because she knew she ought to stop laughing, or Powder might think Vi was mocking her. “Oh, damn,” Vi sucked in a breath and looked up at her sister through her own rosey-pink bangs. “Powder, you two are getting this.” It was true, in its own way: for maybe less than two weeks of total practice time, they were coming along fine. Sure, she frequently had to correct something about the way they held themselves or threw a punch but that was down to repetition, practice and discipline. 

 

If one set aside those things that came only with time and dedication or those things Vi had not yet started working with them on, they were doing fine. Either one could do way more than ‘throw a punch’ if a fight arose and they kept their cools. To demonstrate, Vi stood back up, lifted her fists into a loose guard. 

 

“Hands up, both of you.” She insisted. Though they were tired and the three of them probably smelled, at best, of pure sweat, Ekko and Powder both cooperated. “Remember what you’ve been practicing all day?” No sooner had Powder nodded than Vi stepped toward the girl as Ekko moved to one side and swung out with a very slow, autographed left jab. For just a second, she thought her sister was going to freeze up at the sudden movement but, by the same token, Vi had probably slowed her punch down a little too much. 

 

Powder easily slipped to Vi’s left and poked her firmly in her left side. Vi leaned away from the poke, because it did hurt a little and turned back to Ekko. Without a warning, she did the exact same to him and received a very similar response. 

 

“It’s not easy. It’s never gonna be perfect and there’s always someone better than you waiting to remind you of it, but you guys get this.” She grabbed Ekko by one shoulder and reached for Powder’s with her other hand, only for the girl to pull, leaning faintly back with her left shoulder and meet Vi’s hand with a lightly swung fist. Vi grinned and grabbed onto that, instead. “It’s cool .” The praise was honest, natural, but had the surprising result of making Powder’s cheeks darken. Ekko looked away. 

 

Neither one had the smile off their face by the time Claggor came to find the three of them sat against the wall of the shed soaking in the last, cool dredges of the day.  

 

“Yo,” the soot-smeared boy greeted with a tired looking lift of one hand as he rounded the corner of the shack. He dragged his feet as he approached, and Vi raised whistled lowly to herself. Between half-open eyes and the sluggish way he was moving, she’d bet he was more tired than any of them. Most of his belly had given way over the last month and was already much harder to pick out, but she still would’ve pegged him as having the most energy of the lot of them on a day to day basis. 

 

This blacksmithing shit is that much more work than our workouts? She wondered. If that was the case, maybe pushing not just Ekko and Powder but Vi herself a little harder today hadn’t been a bad thing, after all. 

 

“Hey,” Ekko greeted. Powder pushed herself to her feet and Vi did the same sensing the tension rising in her sister’s expression. 

 

“Mylo said something was going on, or something?” Claggor sounded a little disoriented but also not too comfortable, himself. Supposing they were all anxious about the same thing, Vi could guess at the answer to the question they all wanted to ask him. 

 

“Mylo’s being a dickhead as usual,” Vi waved Claggor’s concern off. Ekko looked away quite at once, as if not acknowledging her comment. “We just wanted to know if you saw Vander back in Airus before you left. Caras did say they’d have to be home before sundown and I’d say it's almost here.” Claggor rubbed at the back of his neck while shrugging with the opposite shoulder as Vi gestured out to the west where the sun was kissing the treetops in the distance. 

 

“Yeah, I was worried about that too,” Claggor replied, which more or less sealed the deal on their last hope for any timely answers. Powder’s arms sagged a little beside her and Vi reached out to pat her sister on the shoulder. Still clearly beat, Claggor tuned into the air around him and after glancing past them at Ekko, he grimaced. “Haven’t seen either of them.” For just a couple of seconds the proclamation hung there and then Ekko got to his feet too and started to wipe down the backs of his legs, knocking grass from his pants. “So… Noxian army, huh?” 

 

“I guess,” Vi frowned as Powder’s fists clenched and then relaxed. “Either way, we’ll know when he gets back.” 

 

“What if he doesn’t?” Powder asked before Vi could go far enough to suggest she and Powder get washed up and start dinner. 

 

“What?” Claggor clearly didn’t understand the question. Vi hadn’t missed it, though. 

 

“What if he doesn’t come back? What do we do then?”

 

“We wait for him to come back,” Vi answered firmly. 

 

“But what if he got hurt or something?” 

 

“Caras wouldn’t just leave him,” Claggor insisted. “I couldn’t see him doing that. Doesn’t seem like his style.” Though Vi smiled briefly at the words and personally agreed that Claggor probably had the measure of Caras in that manner, Powder wasn’t satisfied. Or maybe it was just that they were finally being let in on the worries in her head. 

 

“What if Caras got hurt? What if-” 

 

“Powder.” Ekko cut across her even before Vi could do. Eyebrows raised, she watched Ekko approach her sister and pat Powder once on the back hard enough to make her take a step forward. Powder blinked. “You’re the one always telling me to have more faith in people.”

 

She is? Vi wondered. Powder’s cheeks darkened and if the slap on the back hurt she didn’t show it so much as look immediately embarrassed. 

 

“Everything’s going to be alright, Powder. I promise.” For some reason, when Vi chimed in, the effect was different. It was like her sister took it as some kind of scolding because she went dead quiet and once more tried to appear small, as she curled in on herself, arms wrapped across her own midriff. Claggor looked expectantly at Vi as he ran his fingers through his dirty, thick brown hair, clearly lost for how to handle the situation.  

 

What’s she gonna do if she does get taller than me? Can’t hide then.

 

“Okay.” Powder only barely managed to get the word out. 

 

“I get it, though,” Claggor told Powder, sympathetically “It felt like things were gonna calm down for a while but here we are again.” If that wasn’t a good summary of the last few weeks, she didn’t know what was. 

 

With the tension of Vander and Caras still being unaccounted for fresh in their minds, the family went about their evening almost as they normally would’ve. Ekko, Mylo and Claggor took the first trip to the stream for washing up and Vi used the time to get a bit of rice on the boil and cut up a handful of small green onions. She didn’t really keep a close track on Powder but, at one point when curiosity got the better of her, she peeked out the window to find her sister almost experimentally shadowboxing alone. As if she’d never done it alone before. 

 

Vi had only lowered the blinds over the little window back in place as carefully as she could so as not to tip Powder off that she’d been observed. Once the boys were back, it was her and Powder’s turns to clean up and it was refreshing to feel like she had actually worked up a sweat that day and could clean it off. At first, when dinner was done cooking, she had set some rice aside for Vander but, after catching Mylo eyeing it, had passed him the bowl and promised to make Vander whatever he needed when he arrived. 

 

So, with a full stomach of a warm, if bland dinner, Vi waited for the others to finish their own. Several times she tried and failed to get conversation going, but Claggor was nearly asleep sitting up and Powder could not keep her eyes from the front door for long. Mylo was as uncooperative as usual and Ekko didn’t seem to know what to say. Eventually, Vi took the dishes and a bucket of water out front to do as much of the washing up as she could by the light of the lantern. 

 

“Hey, wait up.” She glanced up, halfway out the front door with the freshly lit lantern in hand to find Claggor climbing back to his feet from atop his bedding, only seemingly half aware. Powder looked up to follow his progress and Ekko even set aside the half-finished shell of their thresher machine as Claggor rose. “Don’t worry about it,” he assured the two of them. Mylo did not look particularly worried, either way, and merely tilted his head back on his own bedding (it was Ekko’s turn to take the actual bed) and closed his own eyes. 

 

Vi held the door open until Claggor stepped out after her. Despite his assurances to the others to ‘not worry about it’, Vi was coming to understand Claggor’s ‘we have to talk’ voice. Some days he made pretty good use of it when talking to Mylo. At least, until he got annoyed at one of Mylo’s moods. When she caught Powder staring at Claggor’s back as he crossed the threshold, she raised her eyebrows at the girl to throw her sister off and hopefully break her concentration on whatever she imagined was happening. 

 

Vi sat the two buckets down at her feet, one with a couple of cups and four bowls sat in its bottom and the other full of water fetched from the well some time previously. Without waiting for Claggor to say what he’d come to say, she sat down beside the buckets and got to work on a quick, preliminary rinse to get crap out. The pot was going to be the bigger pain in the ass. It always was. 

 

“Well?” Vi asked as she splashed a fair bit of water from one bucket into the other for rinsing. “What’s up?” The question did sound unnecessary and forced even to herself. Of course what was up was that Vander was still gone and they had no way of knowing if it was an innocent absence or if something bad had happened up north. Vi was already trying to decide what to do about it beyond sitting and waiting another full day. 

 

“Are you and Mylo fighting again?” Claggor asked, clearly keeping his voice low intentionally. Knowing full well how thin the walls really were, Vi lowered her own to match. Though, first she snorted. Not only was this so far off the expected topic that it amused, it was just a silly question. 

 

“When did we stop?” 

 

“It seemed like you did, for a while.” Satisfied that every stray grain of rice had been removed from the first of the fired clay bowls, Vi sat it aside to her left and got back to work. Just over her head, the lantern bore light down on the area around them. In a way, she was sat in the least direct path for the light which at least meant she wasn’t blinding herself, this way. 

 

“Because I’ve been keeping my mouth shut and letting him treat everyone like dog shit,” Vi spat, bitterly. She hadn’t meant to say anything at all, much less words so laced with anger. If she didn’t swallow them back down, now, they might not stop flowing. Yet, when she grabbed hold of the next dish in turn, Vander’s bowl which she’d given over to Mylo, she gripped tight enough she could feel her knuckles straining. 

 

“We gotta fix this, Vi.” Claggor sighed, and in his own apparent exhaustion the larger boy dropped on the spot, crossing his legs and sitting mere steps outside of the front door. There was almost no sunlight left in the sky. The stars and the half moon were the dominant forces in the young night. 

 

“Why?” she shrugged. “What even made you ask?” 

 

“Because Mylo’s stopped looking at anyone again. Didn’t look at anyone all throughout dinner. Didn’t you even notice?” 

 

“The only time he ever looks at people nowadays is when he’s about to say something fucked up.” The odd interaction, earlier, where it looked as if he and Powder had been having words came to mind. 

 

“Why do you think he does things like this?” Vi set aside the second bowl and tried very hard to answer Claggor’s question neutrally and to clamp down on her rising anger and frustration. In the end all she managed to do was hiss the bitterness through teeth clenching hard enough to hurt her. 

 

“Why should I know? He won’t tell anyone what’s going on because he can’t open his mouth without being a prick.” 

 

“He talks to me sometimes,” Claggor shot back. Now she was sure he was trying to make a point. She didn’t want to listen to it, but knew she had to. Vi began to work her fingers through and around the outer rim of yet another bowl while glaring down at her work. If she looked up at Claggor, as angry as she felt, she didn’t think she’d be able to keep some of that frustration from going his way. After all, he was the one pushing some kind of issue without coming out and saying it. 

 

It was both like him and not. 

 

“Well, he doesn’t talk to me. Unless it’s to act like nothing and no one matters.” 

 

“Don’t you act the same way about him?” Vi stopped her work. The sound of her hand swishing through water or their dishes clattering together ceased entirely. In the moment, the accusation could have come from Vander. He’d thrown it at her often enough. She lifted her eyes and though Claggor hardly cowed, his own face went from sleepy and relaxed to deathly serious at the anger in them. 

 

“I try to make things like they used to be all the time. Every time I try to act like he and I are back to normal, he goes out of his way to be worse. Don’t you fucking make this my fault, too.” Claggor didn’t respond to the request masquerading as an accusation. “It’s hard as hell to be nice to someone who doesn’t want to do anything other than hurt everyone around him.” Though she’d started out speaking very quietly and lowly, each word now came out as a forceful whisper. Someone with an ear to the door could probably hear and there were definitely a couple of people inside with a tendency toward that kind of behavior. 

 

“That’s really all you think he wants? I don’t think so.”  Claggor reached up to itch his chin. Vi got her hands on the third bowl and yanked it out of the bucket to examine. Clear of debris at least, she set it aside and reached for a cup, which would take a little more work to get clear. In the meantime, she set her jaw and tried not to lash out again. At this point she wasn’t sure it wouldn’t be a little warranted. 

 

“Well, I wish I knew what he wanted.” 

 

“Me too,” Claggor replied immediately. “Wish I knew what you wanted, too.” Vi again quit her work and placed both hands on the rim of the bucket between her knees. Is he trying to piss me off, she wondered as she leaned forward against the bucket. Because it’s working.  She held tightly to the wood rim and licked her lips once or twice before deciding to give a little bit of the truth because the whole would be a long and rambling rant. 

 

“I want to go back in time,” Vi told him and gestured with both hands to her left. “I want to use Silco’s ass,” she moved both hands now to point to her right, “to beat Sevika’s face in. Then I want to go home. I want The Last Drop. I want The Lanes. I want things back to normal.”

 

“Aren’t they better than normal, now?” 

 

“No!” The less full but certainly filthier of the two buckets nearly upended itself as Vi shouted her answer to a question she was fucking tired of answering. Powder, Ekko, Vander, now Claggor? If they wanted answers, they’d get them. “No, because we’re not home and everyone back there is probably dealing with Silco’s bullshit and Powder and Ekko are being followed by some weird woman doing strange magic bullshit to their brains and Vander is acting like a coward and Mylo’s being an asshole to everyone around him and I’m -” she smashed her right fist against the rim of the bucket. “I’m angry!” Suddenly aware she couldn’t afford to break anything, her left fist struck her left leg, hard, three times in rapid succession. “I’m angry all the time, always, ever, and I don’t know what to do about any of it! I can’t fix anything!” 

 

Deep, dull throbbing pain shot up the inside of her left thigh and she hissed as it felt as if the muscle there had contracted and would not release. 

 

“What do you mean about Powder and Ekko?” Claggor asked, surprisingly calm in the face of what felt even to Vi like herself coming unhinged. He proceeded to toy with his goggles, apparently unphased. Impressively, the question stopped the waterfall of anger in its tracks, dammed up the river and let her grab hold of something reasonable and logical. She still struck herself one more time in the left thigh and exhaled. All pretense of not being overheard by the people inside long gone, Vi answered. 

 

“The nightmare a couple weeks ago? Not a nightmare. The lady’s real. Ekko saw her, too, and our deserter? The prisoner? When I described this lady to her, she knew who I was talking about. Claggor sounded serious again as he leaned forward with his palms on either of his own thighs. It didn’t seem like a threatening gesture but she found Claggor far too into her own bubble of personal space when he finally made what she would later concede to be a good point. 

 

“When were you going to tell us any of this?” Vi did not concede in the moment. Unable to fully control her frustration, unable to fully let go of the jaw clenching anger, she threw her hands into the air. 

 

“What’s the point? What’s the point in any of it? What can we do about it? Nothing, right? We’re stuck here. Whatever Silco’s doing at home is whatever, can’t fix that. Fuck knows how many people he’s hurting because we pissed him off. Then this lady talks into your head and shows you shit, comes and goes as she wants. Vander’s too scared and sad to do anything. Mylo won’t talk to me like a fucking person and everything I try to do to fix any of it goes wrong.” She was aware she was repeating her answer a few seconds ago. She was equally aware that it might not make sense if she couldn’t slow down and explain why. The truth was, to her, there was nothing she could do about any of it. It didn’t stop her from wanting to try or being frustrated but why was he pushing her so fucking hard? 

 

Claggor leaned back and whispered again. 

 

“You haven’t tried just asking him, over and over, until you got an answer from him. Mylo, I mean. It’s what you would’ve done before all this and I don’t know why that’s changed. Just like the rest of it: this doesn’t sound like you.” The comment was so simplistic, as if it was as easy as asking, when she’d asked a hundred times what her brother’s problem was. 

 

“What doesn’t sound like me?” she managed to growl out. 

 

“Giving up.” 

 

For just a second the rage reared up. She wanted to dump the bucket of clean water on his head, she wanted to ditch the half-rinsed dishes and the rinse water outside the front door and walk away. She wanted to cuss Claggor out or tell him to get on his feet and throw a punch, stop hiding behind insults. All of this and more rested on the tip of her mind as she stared directly at Claggor and saw that his exhaustion was very real. Especially around the eyes. 

 

It took the wind out of her sails. 

 

“I’m not giving up, Claggor.” The words came out with vitriol, but she still sat back and stuck her hands into the water to return to her work, grabbing for a bowl, cup or spoon, whatever came. The large wooden spoon used to stir the rice came next so it was an easy job. “I’m just being real. What am I supposed to do?” 

 

“That’s the problem,” Claggor interrupted in a voice that made her think of Vander. “It used to be, ‘what are we going to do.’” Vi snorted. 

 

“Fuck no it didn’t.”

 

“Maybe not for you,” he shot back. “But for me, Mylo, Powder, it was we. It was always we.” 

 

“But it was always my fault when things went wrong.” 

 

“Maybe to Vander, but not to us.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why you think you’re alone.” 

 

“I’m just being real here. What do you want me to do, Claggor? I can’t fix this!” 

 

“You’re not listening, Vi and it’s not like you. We’ll fix it together.” His right hand reached out and rested on the rim of the bucket, sloshing the water around for a second as if to get her to stop and pay attention to him. So she did. Setting aside a second spoon, Vi lifted her head and - 

 

“How? How do we fix any of this?” The question was said at normal volume, because she hoped someone else would hear. She hoped someone had the answer. 

 

“I don’t know,” Claggor admitted, looking back down at his hands for a second before shrugging. He really seemed tired.  

 

“Me either. If you come up with something, tell me. I’ve got nothing. All I can do is what I’m doing.” 

 

“Washing dishes?” Claggor let go of the bucket so that she could get back to work. 

 

“Don’t be a smartass, it doesn’t work for you.” 

 

“Yeah it does,” he dismissed. “It just works better for you when you’re acting like yourself.”

 

‘Not like you.’ Vi was starting to wonder exactly what that meant. Of course she wasn’t acting like herself. Even setting aside her worries about her own head, the way Vi normally faced down things that bothered her was to deal with them. Usually with a fight, but not always. The thing was, Vander hated it when she did that and had made it clear he didn’t think it was the answer. 

 

“If you just tell me what you want me to do I’ll listen. Until then don’t make it harder. I hate everything that’s happening right now.” 

 

“Everything?” Claggor questioned. Vi seized the same cup she’d been trying to rinse off earlier and did the work, staring down into the murky, messy rinse water and not at her brother. “Like actually eating and having all the water we want and being able to take something like a bath?” 

 

“You sound like Powder, now,” Vi responded, voice raised a little more to tease the person she thought likely to be listening in. 

 

“Cool, now I know I’m right.” After a pause, Vi set aside the first cup and Claggor added, “back home we don’t have Caras either.” 

 

“Shut it.” 

 

“Come on, I’ve seen the way he looks at you with that big dumb smile on his face.” 

 

“Maybe he’s just dumb?” she deadpanned. “I’ve never seen him catch a squirrel but he runs full blast at one every time he sees one.” Claggor snorted, groaned and rubbed at his eyes. 

 

“My mistake, then.” Vi lowered her voice and whispered to Claggor something she wasn’t sure she could tell Powder or Ekko and certainly not Vander or Mylo. 

 

“I don’t know why,” she admitted, looking up just slightly to gauge Claggor’s tired reaction. Her cheeks darkened despite herself and she hoped that the light source directly above her kept them in shadow. “But I don’t think I’m into him like that. He’s cool but there’s… nothing there.” 

 

She’d started to suspect that when she realized she’d agreed to a ‘date’ at some upcoming party and felt dread instead of anything else. 

 

“You might wanna let him know that,” Claggor answered with a shrug. It was an entirely neutral response, not judgmental or negative in the least. The thing was, of all the things Claggor had said to her already in that conversation, this was the one that left her feeling lowest, feeling let down. It would take a few hours before she really got it through her own head that she hadn’t explained herself well and Claggor couldn’t have understood what she was getting at. 

 

Caras was a nice person. He did seem ‘into’ her. He kept up with her in energy. If you ticked off someone’s idea of handsome, it probably applied to him and he was generally laid back and more intent on fun than being brooding or serious. She sometimes thought that if one put a pair of boxing gloves on the guy, he sounded like exactly what you’d expect her to be into but - but there was nothing . The most she felt beyond basic friendliness with the guy was nerves that she might fuck up an interaction with him. 

 

With Caras seeming like exactly the kind of guy even she thought she’d be into, a very small part of Vi was left to worry whether or not she was a little more wrong in the head than even she knew. Maybe not being into Caras was just one more way in which she wasn’t normal? 

 

When Vi didn’t really engage Claggor again on the topic and Claggor seemed to have gotten his questions about Mylo and Vi herself out in the open, the conversation died. She proceeded to rinse off the last few dishes in relative quiet, dump the filthy water off a ways from the shack or their garden and prepare for the real pain in the ass: burnt rice at the bottom of a cooking pot. Claggor retrieved the pot before heading in for the night.

 

Vi took her time cleaning the dishes. Long enough that Powder came and sat beside her, then Ekko, before both gave up and headed back inside for sleep. It wasn’t, as she thought they suspected, avoidance after her and Claggor’s very loud and public conversation that kept her out front. It was just the hope that at any moment Vander would come up the hill. 

 

He didn’t. 

 

She put away the dishes and laid down on her bedding between Claggor, (who had taken up Ekko’s usual spot while he had the bed) and Powder, who remained in her corner. A fitful sleep seemed promised, but it took its time coming to her and brought with it a most confusing dream. 

 

Instead of a nightmare of all the monsters waiting back home, unleashed, she dreamed of a good night atop the roof of The Last Drop with her siblings and stolen (though not from Vander) beer, something they’d only really bothered to do once before. She dreamed of laughter and safety - for up there, neither topside nor the undercity could reach them - and a little bit of peace. A few stolen drinks, her sister and her brothers at peace and watching the lights of the Undercity, and they even spotted Benzo and Ekko walking down the lane below. 

 

It provided absolutely no comfort when she woke up in Noxus, in the tiny brick and wood shack and walked barefoot out into the still dark morning to check Vander’s lean-to. 

 

The lean-to was empty, but she was not alone out there. Somehow, in the dim light of a nearly dead fire, she had missed Ekko abandoning the bed. As she turned around from peeking in to the improvised shelter attached to the shack, the boy was standing but a few feet away, near their herb and vegetable garden. Though he had the lantern in hand it was not burning. Probably because he did not want to use the oil. Still, it was unnerving enough to turn and find someone she had not expected to see outside that she rubbed at her eyes, slowed herself down and made herself talk to him. 

 

“Hey, you okay?” Vi called, as Ekko approached. When he got closer, even the dull light of the moon above was enough to see the answer to that question. She did not comment on puffy eyes he wiped at, nor the way his breath hitched when he tried to answer. 

 

“Yeah, I just woke up early, I guess.” She was impressed he’d snuck by the lot of them without waking anyone. Even Vi was fairly certain she’d jarred Powder and Claggor awake on her way out the door just moments before. Which was fine, because Claggor deserved it for a snore that sounded like mining equipment going off mere feet from her all night. Ekko did not stop until he’d come right up to her though, and turned to stand, looking toward their garden at her side. While it was not an explicit request, she got the feeling he just wanted someone to be around, so Vi stayed. 

 

Her feet cool in damp early morning grass, she threw an arm around his shoulders for a quick squeeze and then led right back to the garden he’d just been sat by. It was not a horrible place to sit, hell, sometimes it even smelled of the herbs growing in it. Not right then, precisely, but sometimes. She inhaled the earthy scent so unlike the dirt one sometimes found in previously flooded parts of the Undercity. 

 

Strictly speaking, save for Benzo, everyone she’d dreamed of seeing was there with her. Yet, she did not think that going inside, even if Ekko came along, would bring her the comfortable, shared happiness of her dream. She couldn’t joke with Mylo. She couldn’t tell ghost stories in the dark to a room full of exhausted sleeping people who probably just wanted to wake up and find the man most of them called a father home. 

 

So, even as Vi did not question signs Ekko had been crying that morning, he did not give her any grief when she sat with her knees to her chest beside the garden and did not get up for a couple of hours. Cool as it might be, the fresh air was nice. Vi did as she knew she should, though, and at least went inside long enough to wake up the others when the first color started to seep into the morning sky. Breakfast simmered away on the stove under Claggor’s watchful if bleary eyes and Vi returned to sit outside with Ekko until Powder came and got her. 

 

They took their turns in the privacy of the shed getting changed and Vi even went inside long enough to eat her breakfast in a silence that she could not break. 

 

She was back in her spot by the herb garden with Ekko and Powder both at her side when, right before the sun had fully risen, shapes emerged from the woods, well beyond the southern face of the hill. On the old dirt road below someone stepped out of the shade who was slighter than Vander had ever been, even since their arrival in Noxus. The next person to emerge was even smaller than the last and almost a head shorter too. While unable to make out many details from where they were, Vi was not the only one who stood up and walked toward the southern face of the hill. 

 

By the time she, Powder and Ekko reached it, a third form had followed the others out from behind the treeline. 

 

This one was shaped about as she would expect and, squinting, Vi guessed the figure pulling ahead of Vander to be Caras. That meant that the lighter haired individual between the two would only really be one person. Tension left Vi’s shoulders and she threw an arm around Powder’s as Caras and Sinnan walked ahead of Vander, turning very early off of the road and onto their farm without bothering to take the path leading up to the western side of the hill. Powder let loose a long sigh at Vi’s side and Ekko nudged her shoulder twice until Powder reluctantly gave up a high five. 

 

Still not sure exactly what to make of the morning except that Vander was finally back and looked uninjured from all the way up there, Vi worked her neck this way and that, trying to loosen up even more. It was possible the rest of the morning was going to be a little uncomfortable. Especially after her talk with Claggor the night before, Vi could no longer pretend around the others not to see Caras’ slightly bumbly flirting for anything other than what it was. 

 

Even setting aside her own confusion, there was also Sinnan. 

 

Powder wasn’t dumb enough not to realize by now that this girl all but hung on Powder’s every word when they were together. 

 

While she was unsure how to react to Caras, what to tell him or how, at least he wasn’t pushy about it. As for Sinnan, Powder clearly didn’t mind whatever silly crushing might be going on and Ekko’s response to the other girl was generally favorable. So Vi intended to mind her own business. It was just that if there was ever a day they needed to spend with just the family, this one probably was it. There was a lot to talk about, after all, and she wasn’t sure she wanted any of it to happenw ithin earshot of Caras, much less Sinnan. 

 

After a minute or two, the figure that could only be Vander waved one large wide arm exaggeratedly in their direction and the two smaller forms ahead of him hurried to follow suit. Vi returned the wave as they continued forward and glanced back to the shack. 

“Vander’s coming,” Vi shouted loudly at the boys inside. It only took a moment or two before Claggor opened the door and replied. 

 

“What?” 

 

She cupped her hands over her mouth and repeated herself. 

 

“Vander’s coming!” From the window of the shack, Mylo shouted something her way that sounded snarky but thankfully she was far enough away she couldn’t even hear him. He was almost as hard to see as Vander and the others were, much less to hear. Apparently Powder picked it up, though, because she looked back and pulled a face toward the house. Vi let go of her but did shake her own head. It wasn’t worth any kind of argument. 

 

Retreating back toward the well, Vi posted up on the edge of the lidded structure and waited. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the first to peek over the hill and the first to really reach them was Sinnan. She broke off from the other arrivals to run ahead and Vi caught Powder bracing herself. When the redhead reached them (losing a boot in the process, somehow) she laughingly wrapped an arm around either Ekko or Powder and yanked them both into a very excited hug. Instead of a direct greeting, she talked hurriedly about something unexpected. 

 

“You won’t believe what I found on the way here!” Ekko tried to wriggle out of the hug but when he did even he smiled a little as the Noxian girl pulled what looked like a ball of leaves and stems out of her right pants pocket and held it out to him.  “It’s usually hard to find. I’m lucky today.” 

 

“What’s that?” Ekko leaned in close to get an eye on the plant, picking at one or two leaves before Sinnan released Powder and held it out for Powder as well. To Vi, it just looked like any other mass of plant matter she might walk past a dozen times in the woods. 

 

Caras crested the hill next with Vander on his heels, a bag slung over his shoulder. 

 

“It helps people to stop bleeding quickly and keeps the wounds from getting… sick?” Sinnan questioned, looking between Ekko and Powder both. 

 

“Like, infected?” Powder prompted. Sinnan nodded quickly. “What’s it called? Do you think you could help us make a copy of the papers Orkis gave us so we could all read them? We could add this to it.” With relief and excitement in equal measure in her sister’s voice, Vi shot a look at Ekko. Though he looked pleased at the idea and Sinnan eagerly agreed, Ekko had taken a step back. Like he was hanging on the perimeter of the other two. 

 

Caras held up a hand as he approached but when she waved back and it remained raised, she was confused until he got so close he could only want one thing: Vi high fived him, then got up and sidestepped to get a little more personal space. 

 

“We make it home before sundown. Orkis not mad.” As Caras made this proud declaration, Vander mimed wiping sweat from his brow. He looked like he’d actually had a pretty good bath, though, now that she thought about it. Not like someone who’d spent all day wandering the wilderness the day before. 

 

“You did?” Caras nodded and flashed a quick thumbs up learned from Ekko. 

 

“Orkis didn’t think I should risk coming back home in the dark,” Vander said apologetically, working his hand through his hair. If Vi didn’t know better, she’d say it was shorter than she remembered. It looked like he’d gone and gotten himself cleaned up in his absence. Looking past her, Vander nodded quickly and she turned to see Claggor reaching them, still barefoot. “Hope I didn’t worry you lot too much.” 

 

Quiet descended upon Powder and Ekko, Claggor didn’t respond and Caras and Sinnan seemed to catch on that something was in the air. For reasons Vi didn’t quite understand, she impulsively lied. 

 

“Of course not. We’re fine.” She did not meet anyone else’s eyes. 

 

“Good, then. Looks like that camp was their military but by the time we got a good look at it they were packing up and headed further north around the mountain. Think they’re moving on.” Vi let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and exhaled hard enough to feel dizzy. By the time she took another breath she felt a giddy sense of release from anxiety. She laughed despite herself and shook her head at the worries and scenarios she’d just had going through her mind. 

 

“You okay?” Caras questioned. 

 

“Yeah,” Vi answered quickly, patting the boy on the shoulder. “Yeah, I am now.” 

 

“Is good.” After a pause he raised a shoulder to show off that he had a bow and a quiver strapped to his back. “I brought this. We hunt together? Split what we find.” Vi glanced over at Vander. Technically, they tended to go out before the sun had even fully risen so someone was out in the woods when the animals first started getting up and moving about. No one had wanted to go out to do anything, much less hunt that morning. 

 

“Sure. I’m sure as hell not going out today, I need some rest. ” Vander did look beat in the same way Claggor had the night before. She could swear that the bags under his eyes hadn’t been there yesterday but they looked too thick for one hard day or one rough night of sleep to explain. In fact, after one or two more awkward seconds of staring Vi plucked at the sleeve of her jacket and looked away. He looked worse than Claggor had the night before. Way worse. 

 

“I could get some breakfast going for you -” 

 

“No, no,” Vander waved her off before reaching out to rest a hand on Powder’s shoulder. “Had breakfast with Orkis and Caras, here. Sinnan caught us on the way out of the village and asked to come spend some time with Ekko and Powder but scored us a little bread for the trip home from Helene. I’m stuffed.”

 

“Powder, maybe.” Ekko muttered under his breath only a step or two away. Vi found the tone surprisingly jaded, and looked over at her sister and the Noxian girl to find both of them a little red in the cheeks. Unlike Powder, who hesitated a moment too long before replying, Sinnan seemed on her game that morning. She reached out and prodded Ekko in the chest. 

 

“Don’t be like that. I like spending time with you,” she insisted. “You’re funny, quick, smart.” Ekko played along, pretended to preen under the praise but it rang as hollow to Powder as it did to Vi. She could see her little sister looking between the two with a little bit of nerves to her expression. 

 

For Vi, this exchange was the last thing she needed to be absolutely certain: Ekko was worried, either because he was jealous Powder was hanging around someone else or because he thought he was about to lose his friend. Many things about his behavior over the last few days, especially when Sinnan was brought up or was present took on a different light with that confirmation. Still, she remained as convinced as she had been a week ago that he and Powder needed to talk it out. 

 

So Vi stepped away and as Claggor uncharacteristically gave Vander a hug that looked to surprise the man, she gestured for Caras to follow her back so she could get a bow and some arrows of her own. 

 

“Gonna go on out then,” Vi called back to the others. Caras grunted agreement and followed. When she looked back at him it was clear he had something to say or ask but before he could get a word out Powder cut across him. 

 

“I want to go with you.” Vi looked in confusion at her sister, at Ekko and at Sinnan. When she looked next at Claggor, he shrugged. Vander said nothing. Powder shot a glance at Vander and then back to Vi and placed her hands on her hips. “I said I want to go with you.” Powder’s raised eyebrows and hard eyes seemed to boast that no one else was going to get Vi out of this situation. The thing was, she didn’t understand what the hell her sister was talking about. 

 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Vi started, hesitantly. Even if just Powder came along and not Ekko or Sinnan that was three people out there. That was more noise. Besides… it was Powder. 

 

“I made these bows. Ekko made the last ones. I helped him make the arrows. I should be allowed to go.” She wasn’t wrong, strictly speaking. Powder crossed her arms over her chest in that way that said she wasn’t budging. Vi looked between her and a hesitant Ekko and then shook her head. 

 

“Why would you want to?” she asked, as Caras scratched awkwardly at his left arm with his right hand. Clearly confused, herself, Sinnan tried to catch Ekko’s eye to figure out exactly what was going on here. Vander stayed quiet. If she didn’t know better, she’d say the man had even stepped back from Powder and the others. 

 

“Because I can?” Powder challenged. 

 

“Not good enough.” If her sister was going to be a brat about it, Vi wasn’t interested in talking about it. She gestured ahead of herself, catching Caras’ green eyes and turned away. Powder huffed but again Vi didn’t understand as she turned to look at the shack to the north. Why would Powder want to go out with the hunters and why would Vi want to put Powder through that kind of trouble when she remembered really well what just seeing a dead rabbit did to her? That was to say nothing of the two squirrels Mylo had gotten that Powder had not even looked at before they went into their own stews. 

 

Caras said a reluctant, apologetic goodbye before turning to follow Vi and she was about to brush off the really weird moment as unimportant next to the otherwise good news of Vander’s return and the Noxian army getting away from the farm. They only got a few more steps before Powder made Vi turn red in the face and look back. 

 

“They just want time alone so they can flirt and kiss or whatever,” Powder stage whispered to Ekko. 

 

“Oy, cut it out,” Vander finally found his voice. Vi watched him ruffle Powder’s hair and then gesture for the others to disperse. “Go have fun and we’ll just call this an off day.” 

 

Vi did not wait for her sister’s response. She looked into Powder’s eyes until the girl looked away guiltily and then Vi left to go and grab one of the bows. 

 

What a morning.

Chapter 23: Chapter Twenty-Three

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

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Chapter Twenty-Three

 

It had already happened a few times that Vi was woken up early by a nightmare she couldn’t quite remember. After the awkwardness of the last morning with Vander coming home, Caras and Sinnan visiting and her brief argument with Powder, the day had been tense. Nonetheless, it had been quiet, so Vi had almost had a little bit of hope that there wouldn’t be any nightmares waiting on her. Still unnerved and unable to remember what had dragged her back to the waking world, Vi started her morning by sitting up dully and looking about. Vander had stirred, already, though barely. He was blearily knelt by the fireplace feeding it kindling, instead of wrapped up in his bedding in the lean-to. 

 

She couldn’t shake an immediate sense that it wasn’t so early, after all. 

 

To Vi’s left, Ekko was still asleep near the front door. The equally dormant fire made it hard to be certain until she was sat the rest of the way up and had rubbed sleep from her eyes, but Powder was not in her usual spot in the corner. Vi didn’t have to look to know that Claggor was still present and asleep: his snoring echoed off the rafters. After a blurry look about the room, Powder was not the only one missing. Vi sucked in a breath and yawned, sitting up more firmly and scooting back against the wall as she pushed her blanket partway down her legs. 

 

“Where are the others?” She asked when she finally managed to finish yawning. She gestured not at Powder’s empty sleeping spot but the bed opposite of her which was completely empty. Mylo’s sheet was crumpled into a ball thoughtlessly at the foot. One of the only two pillows they had was discarded to one side. 

 

Vander’s attempts to get the fire going were made clumsy by sleep and served at first to do little more than put the smell of smoke in the air. Between the cool morning temperature as she ventured out from under her blankets and the mystery of Mylo’s and Powder’s absences, Vi began to wake rather quickly. 

 

“Must’ve run off to do their business or something.” At first, she simply nodded. That made some sense, especially if one accidentally woke the other up on their way out the door. Tilting her head up, though, she traced very faint lines of light along the edges of each individual piece of the window blinds above her. Outside, the dark sky must’ve been already (though, barely) starting to show color and light. Their sleep schedules off after yesterday, it seemed like everyone had overslept. 

 

Maybe not everyone. Vi thought to herself as she shook her head and her eyes locked onto the corner of the room nearest the front door. We’re definitely late for breakfast. Her gaze lingered for a second too long on the space and she started to get the sense that something was wrong. Four, then five seconds passed before Vi scrambled forward to her knees because she knew what had caught her attention.

 

“No they didn’t, Vander.” She couldn’t quite control the surge in the volume of her voice. She couldn’t quite control a reactionary jolt of nerves. Claggor rolled over in his bedroll but Ekko stirred a little more completely, eyes opening as Vi glanced about the room for any signs that would contradict the idea that had just struck her. 

 

“Hmm?” Vander grunted. He did not turn to look at her at first, though judging by the way he shifted on his knees he must’ve knelt on something that hurt them. 

 

Once he did turn, though, Vi pointed to the corner of the room that had had her attention for the last few seconds. It was where people leaned against typically help them get shoes on or off and the place you hung by when you were waiting to for someone to follow you outside or not. It was a place that should’ve had, in addition to everyone’s shoes, two bows. 

 

The corner was missing two pairs of boots and two bows that should have been leaned up against it were also conspicuously absent. 

 

“Look.” 

 

All but six of the arrows were missing, too. 

 

“Oh,” Vander groaned after turning to follow her gesture and staring at the corner for a few seconds, himself. She heard the exasperation in his voice as Vi got to her feet. Ekko started to rise beside her, to sit up. 

 

“What’s going on?” Ekko mumbled, barely audible. 

 

Vi could imagine what had happened.

 

Right fist clenched at her side, she steadied herself and pushed her hair back with her left hadn. She could see the morning’s events clear as day in her mind. Mylo might have risen early and found everyone sleeping in. Choosing to go hunt without waking them, all he had to do was get up and get started and he could have jostled Powder if she were sleeping a little less heavily. Then would come the teasing, the goading about how her sister never went out hunting. The jabbing and nagging until… 

 

“Mother fucker. ” The best case scenario outcome played out, next: they actually found an animal and Mylo hunted it, with Powder watching. Who knew how much even that would mess her up? He’d probably tease her about it, demanding she carry the corpse back to the farm. Worst case scenario, he could try to goad her into shooting whatever they found. “Which way did Mylo say he was going today?’ Vi asked Vander. 

 

“Okay, okay, maybe you should just -” With both hands held up to placate her, Vander wore the clear look of ‘it’s too early in the morning for this.’ Vi happened to agree, which was why she was going to put an end to it quick enough to have breakfast and hit the reset button on the day. Vi stepped over Ekko and found herself right at the door. 

 

“Maybe you should,” Vi spat back, dismissing whatever excuse he was going to vomit out for Mylo’s newest antics. “I’m going to go and actually do something about this.” She took hold of the door handle, looked over her shoulder to where Claggor had finally stirred. It was hard not to think back on his criticism: before this, she would’ve never let Mylo’s attitude get this out of control without pushing for an answer as to why. 

 

“What’s going on?” This time, Ekko sounded less like someone asking a question in confusion and more like someone demanding an answer. Claggor began to leverage himself up into a sitting position but, by the door, Vi was still waiting for Vander to answer her question. Then again, Ekko or Claggor might remember last night’s conversation, too, and might be able to tell her which way to look for her sister or brother. 

 

Gods, the sun was barely sneaking over the horizon outside and her heartbeat was already audible in her ears. She’d only been standing up for less than a minute and first thing in the morning she was angry. Boiling angry. Shaking-hands-angry. 

 

“Mylo and Powder went out into the woods before we got up,” she announced to the room at large, hoping Claggor and Ekko were both awake enough to take her full meaning. Ekko frowned, turning his head to look past her into the corner of the room. Surely he had to notice exactly what was missing: he’d been one of the two to make the absent bows and arrows, after all. His frown only deepened and he rubbed at either golden eye with either hand. 

 

“She wanted to go hunting yesterday,” Ekko murmured. Vi nodded, but the reply was not the answer she wanted. The boy was trying to untangle his legs from his blankets but she needed someone who was awake already. 

 

“You think that’s gonna go well?” 

 

“I don’t know,” he sighed. Vander, to Vi’s surprise, began to pull on his boots, still without answering her. If Ekko wasn’t awake enough to really follow what was happening yet and Vander was being as intentionally unhelpful as he had been of late, Vi wasn’t going to hang around. A soft puff of cool, early morning air caught her in the face as she stepped barefoot onto the earth just outside of the door. 

 

“I should’ve known one of them was going to do something stupid like this,” she growled. There was all the chance, with how Powder had been acting the day before, that her first imagining of the morning’s events was wrong. There was the chance that it went a little more like so: Powder, waiting for Mylo to wake up, could have demanded to go along with him since Vi hadn’t let her go the day before. Either way, it had the potential to end the same: with her sister carrying another scar. Maybe even a self-inflicted one. 

 

Why? Fucking, why? 

 

“Why’s that?” Vander demanded as he thumped one foot down and pushed up to follow her. She intended to hold the door open no longer than it took her to answer. If he got up in time, then he did. If he didn’t, she was going to take her chances looking for Mylo and Ekko on her own. 

 

“Because I think she has it in her head she has to hunt for some reason. Mylo doesn’t make it any better, mocking her about it over and over again.” The snarl already curled her lips, the stream of words already threatened to become an angry, vulgar waterfall. 

 

“About what?” the man asked, a little thickly. Vi blinked at him, dumbfounded, but assumed he was still half asleep because assuming he was intentionally trying to piss her off wouldn’t help. She let go of the door and he got to his feet just in time to catch it. 

 

“About. Not. Hunting.” Vi emphasized. The man nodded and squeezed his eyes shut tightly for a second before opening them and hurrying out the door. Vi caught one last look of a conflicted Ekko stood behind him, mouth half open before the door closed. The safest bet she could make, given how Mylo normally liked to start his mornings when she went out with him, was to head down the northwestern side of the hill and make for the stream. From there, she could angle east unless Vander decided to answer her question on the way down the hill. 

 

“I thought she’d gotten over it by the time I Caras and I got back, but I should’ve seen this coming. I pissed her off and she sat on it all day and -” Vi exhaled sharply through her teeth and started off at a jog which broke into a run after only a couple of steps. “I just should’ve seen this coming. I should’ve stopped and talked to her better instead of just saying no. I don’t know if it would’ve changed anything but-” 

 

“Violet,” Vander called from a few steps behind. He caught up with her quickly, his voice mingling with the air rushing past her ears. The singing insects of the night had all but fallen silent. She couldn’t really hear anything but her own breathing, the air and Vander himself.  

 

“And fucking Mylo! I don’t know why but I didn’t think he’d do this shit. Why don’t either of them just listen?” 

 

“Violet.” Vander repeated his call and this time Vi acknowledged it not by turning to listen to him but by picking up the pace even more. In her head she turned over the prior day: Powder, Ekko and Sinnan had kept away from her most of the day even after she and Caras got back from the woods, spending their time in the shade at the edge of the western field. No one had been outright rude, but Powder had stayed quiet all night, barely spoken to reject Vi’s offer to help her redo her braid for bed and had not really answered many of her questions on their way down to the stream to bathe that night. Vi had taken it as sulking or wondered if maybe her sister hadn’t been made aware of Ekko’s fears relating to Powder and her new Noxian friend. 

 

The last thing she would’ve guessed is that her sister might’ve been angry enough to do something like take off without Vander’s permission or her own and go do something that so clearly would’ve hurt her. Then again, this isn’t the first time she’s hurt herself. 

 

“She’s not ready for this. She’s not meant for this.” Vi clenched her right fist again as the terrain started to ease downhill. In a moment or two there would be no easing about it: this hillside was steep almost everywhere but the southwestern edge, lined with sharp grass and unfriendly plant growth the whole way down. 

 

“Are you sure , Violet?” Vander cut her off again. He was still only a step behind so she turned back to look over her shoulder at him. He had his shirt on backwards and the laces of his right boot hung untied around his feet. The last thirty seconds or so of cold air and the sight of the stars fading into the slowly brightening sky above had woken him up a little further. The question, though, made almost no sense to her. He clearly needed a little more time. 

 

“What the hell do you mean?” 

 

“Are you sure she’s not ready for this?” Vander’s answer was calm, if showing signs he was a little winded under furrowed brows. She looked away from his very similar eyes the moment she saw genuine concern and care in them and focused on the intensifying decline. 

 

“Yes.” For almost a minute more, she stupidly ran down the steep path. Twice she nearly fell. Ten times she felt her bare feet land on something just sharp enough to make her wince. Vander was silent save for his own breathing picking up so that she was sure that by the time she reached the bottom of the hill he would be ready to answer her questions. She still did not slow to wait for him. When her footing gave out and she slipped, Vi waved her arms and rode the muddy path down until she’d stabilized and ignored the grunt coming from her father that might’ve been her name. 

 

As she reached the bottom of the hill, she wiped her brow quickly, knocking aside bangs and unlikely beads of sweat. 

 

“Which way did Mylo say he was going this morning?” Vi asked again, looking back to find Vander another twenty feet up the hillside, taking longer but slower, measured steps. He held up a hand to stop her, but the tension rising in her neck and her shaking hands and the way her stomach seemed to flip made her want to argue. Vander nodded his chin roughly directly north, and Vi turned away from him to take off that way. 

 

He’d finally given her the answer she needed to hopefully put an end to this before it ruined their entire day and much more, so of course Vander asked something to simultaneously leave her spitting angry and no longer so sure of herself. 

 

“Don’t you think it’s possible that what you’re scared of is that Powder is ready for this?” She took one long, hard step away before being stopped in her tracks. Vi whipped around quickly enough that muscle memory saw her bend the knees as if ready to slip out of the way of an incoming punch. She ignored that overreaction because she had something more important to do than wondering if Vander was the one who’d lost his mind weeks ago. 

 

“Just say what you have to say, damn it. I can’t think about this shit. I can’t think about anything other than knocking Mylo on his ass.” 

 

“Then slow down and pay attention,” Vander barked, raising his voice for the first time in days. The lines around his eyes looked deeper as he frowned at her and narrowed them. To her immense annoyance, he came to a stop at the base of the hill himself as if he thought doing so would make her wait for him. If he thought she wouldn’t leave him behind,  he was dead wrong. She felt herself glaring back, she felt the snarl still on her lips. She did not want to stop. 

 

“You’re not gonna make me turn around and go back inside.” Nonetheless, it was Vander. So she did, stop. Just for a moment. Just to give him a chance to say his piece. 

 

“Is it possible you’re not ready for this?” He wasn’t mocking her. He wasn’t talking down to her or shouting at her but the words were earnest and firm and loud enough to reach her through everything else she was feeling. The dam gave way to the river, to the waterfall, and it was all Vi could do to hold back the most vulgar of thoughts in her head as she threw her arms up. 

 

“What? For Powder to go out into the woods, maybe be forced to kill something because no one will tell Mylo no and put him in his fucking place? Ready for it to fuck her head up? Ready for her not to talk for days or maybe to do something to herself in the middle of a freak out when  the only one there with her is Mylo who doesn’t seem to give a fuck!? Is that what I’m not ready for, Vander?” 

 

“No.” The man ignored her bait but it pleased her to see his annoyance, to see how hard it was for him to do so. On the other hand, the fact that he didn’t immediately address her points just kept her mad enough to curl both hands into tight balls. Each second that passed was one more second she wasn’t putting an end to this shit. “Is it possible you’re not ready for your sister to grow up?” 

 

The words hung in the air between them and Vi was very glad he wasn’t in reach. 

 

The question, absurd as it was, blocked up the waterfall. All she could do was sputter, disgruntled. 

 

“She’s eleven! She’s Powder !” Vi pushed her head forward more for emphasis than anything else but felt a new fresh surge of anger when he mocked the gesture as he answered back. His exact expression suddenly rather hard to read, Vi wanted to be done with the exchange and leave him there to be useless in this situation, if that’s what he wanted to be. 

 

“That’s right, she’s eleven. She’s at an age when people start learning and trying new things and want to be able to do them for themselves. She’s at the age you stole your first bottle of whiskey and hated it so much you tried to stash it on the roof before I caught on.” Not even the revelation that he knew that particular secret shut off her anger. “She wants to make some decisions for herself, that much is obvious.” 

 

“She can’t kill things, Vander. You don’t know how bad the nightmares have been for her since that lady put those things in her head. You didn’t see how she nearly threw up all over herself when she tried to watch me skin that rabbit. You didn’t watch her shut down for days because of a dead cat in The Lanes and then listen to her cry at night. Powder doesn’t kill things.” Vander came nearer her but Vi did not stop talking. She didn’t stop her shivering hands. Her head thrashed left to right with each breath, her fists swung unevenly at her side. Her heart pounded in her throat, just below the source of the waterfall. “She can’t.” Vander grabbed for her shoulder and Vi tried to avoid being caught by him. He was too quick or she was too out of sorts. He squeezed a little tighter than was perhaps ideal and brought his head down to her level so she could not possibly miss the care, the concern, the fear and the understanding in his eyes. 

 

“Maybe you’re right. She might not be ready for that, yet. ” Vander counseled, voice returning to normal, maybe a little too soft, even. Vi shivered and she wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the damp, cool grass brushing against her. “But I also think you’re holding on too tightly to Powder being a kid and needing your protection and that’s going to go bad, Violet. It’s going to be a problem over the next couple of years. Because it’s going to be true , but it’s also going to piss her off.” The man’s free hand gestured between his chest and hers as he angled his head to make sure she could not easily look away from him. “I’d know first hand.” 

 

“This isn’t the time,” Vi insisted. They could talk about them and about how bad he felt for blah blah blah when Powder wasn’t possibly in trouble and, if necessary, after Mylo had mud on his ass from being knocked on it. 

 

“This is exactly the time.” Vander jostled her shoulder before letting go and surprising Vi by pulling past her and angling toward the treeline in the distance. “Maybe the only time, because right now you’re listening to me.” She wanted to object to Vander’s back that she listened plenty. She just didn’t always mindlessly agree, even if she almost always obeyed. “We’re gonna try and find them. We’ll try to make sure everything works out alright today. But believe me, soon, really damned soon, you’re going to have to let your sister make your own choices and learn her own lessons. You’re gonna have to know when to step in and interfere and when not to.” Vi stumbled after him. “Because she’s growing up and I think part of the reason you two butt heads now and again is because you’re ignoring that. And it’s selfish of you.” 

 

Selfish, Vi fumed. Selfish, like moving your family halfway across the world to run away from your past. Selfish. Selfish my- 

 

And yet, hadn’t she accused herself of being selfish, many times, lately? Or at least being stuck in her own head? 

 

As the trees up ahead became clearer, Vi tried to land on a good response. In the end, it was to  question Vander. The dam holding back words and questions and feelings that weren’t useful let loose another bit of spill over that threatened to get out of her control. 

 

“How the hell do I do that, then? How do I know when I should step in and when I shouldn’t? How do I know I won’t fuck that up too!? How do I know I won’t do something like what got us here?” 

 

Selfish like sulking when you should’ve been watching Powder. Selfish like letting her get grabbed by Deckard. Selfish like letting her get hurt so Vander thought he had no choice but to take you all away. 

 

“You figure that one out, you tell me.” Vander began to take longer, even strides. It was not as fast as Vi wanted him to be moving but she matched his pace easily. She did not like his non-answer and buck passing. “I didn’t do it right with you.” Jolted, she managed to hold back her arguments. 

 

“I said it before, when Ekko and I found you in the woods: I let you down, Vi. I put you and the others here in this situation. This is my fault. If I’d been a better father, you wouldn’t have had to go Topside to begin with. Maybe- ” 

 

“Oh shut up!” Vi hissed at the man. “I made the choice to try to help, I made the choice to try to do something for the family. That was my choice.” 

 

‘You said it. YOU SAID!’ she had shouted at Vander on the night in question. Hadn’t she insinuated that everything she’d done to get them here had been his fault because he’d told her to take care of everyone? Were those words true? Did she still believe them? 

 

“I just should’ve seen it coming and done something to prevent it. If I had maybe we’d-” 

 

“What? Be spread out across the Lanes stealing food from the back of every cart to pass us by?” Vi asked him. “You and I both know that was the only other option if we wanted to keep The Last Drop going last month.” Vander looked back over his shoulder at her and pissed her off all over again. 

 

“So what you’re saying is this place isn’t so bad?” Vi pushed past him rather than shoot back and thought about his overall point. Off to her right she could almost make out the outline of their Climbing Tree. Vi had no sooner left the property line and crossed into the woods before she winced, stepping on and breaking a twig or something of the sort. It hurt more than she’d expected. The bottom of her left foot burned. She did not acknowledge it. 

 

“Maybe I have to figure it out and decide to just let her make her own mistakes or whatever, soon. But it’s not gonna be today.” Vi wouldn’t be able to look at own reflection if she didn’t try . 

 

“Fair enough.” Vi thought Vander was done and would take the lead again or at least stay quiet so they could start to listen for the sounds of her siblings. They couldn’t have been gone too long: the woods were barely bright enough to see the terrain around her. Instead, he said something weird. Something that dulled her anger with discomfort. Something that made Vi feel sickly and weak. “You also shouldn’t have to be her mother. You’re just a kid. It isn’t right.”

 

Vi did not look back at him. There was a part of her that had always kind of understood that regardless of Vander, her parents’ deaths had left Powder to her. A part of her had taken Powder as her responsibility, a part of her would’ve done anything for her sister because the people who’d brought them into the world weren’t around to do it. The thing was, until recently, she’d never had reason to doubt that Vander might do the same for her sister or herself. 

 

“I’m not. ‘You’re the parent’, remember?” she mimicked his own insistent declaration at him. He grumbled behind her but it might’ve had something to do with the loud snap of a stick under his feet at the same time. Vi’s eyes began searching the faint outlines of bushes and weeds for signs of a person or maybe a game path. Vander only pointed more insistently from behind her to the north. She nearly fell to an errant oak tree’s root, reaching further from the forest floor than she’d expected. 

 

“That’s how it should be,” Vander answered just when Vi thought the uncomfortable moment had passed. “But like it or not, you go beyond just what a sister should have to do.” She shrugged and grabbed at the hem of her shirt to have something to hold onto for a second before the discomfort buried itself under frustration and anger and pain.  

 

“Just doing what I have to,” Vi dismissed this. This had to stop. This was distracting. This was confusing and uncomfortable and she now had a lump in her throat and conflicting voices telling her to stop and to run. 

 

“For the people you love.” Vander sounded like he thought she was finishing her sentence. Maybe, without her knowing it, he was. For all her discomfort, physical and mental as she stepped on a sharp stone, it was the most honest conversation they’d had since she told him she wasn’t going to be him. She’d probably sounded like such an ungrateful jerk, but it had been true and honest and something she thought he deserved to know. 

 

The woods were different than their fields. Cooler, sure. Darker, yeah. Full of things to step on? Absolutely. Stone, stick, prickly plant or root there was so much for Vi to injure her bare feet upon. It only took a couple more minutes for the bottom of her other foot to start burning, not much longer before they were covered in at least mud, damp from the morning’s wet. She would not have been shocked to find them bleeding, though. Vander did not say anything and did not pull ahead of her. So Vi did not slow down. 

 

She ran and she listened between her own harsh breaths and rapid, awful footfalls. 

 

Vi wished she had her coat. She wished she had her boots. Her feet hurt, badly.  She wished she could hear voices speaking, a bowstring being drawn back or an animal calling. More than anything else, Vi tore around each and every tree in her path as she ran north and hoped she could put a stop to this shitshow before it was too late. What do I even say? What do I even do? 

 

She wasn’t sure if even Powder would listen to her, much less Mylo, if she asked the girl to turn around and just come back to the shack, have breakfast and let it all go. 

 

No. No, it couldn’t be that simple. Again, Claggor’s words came back: ‘ You haven’t tried just asking him, over and over, until you got an answer from him.’  

 

Would it actually be that easy? 

 

There was no time to stop and appreciate about the dark, morning woods, the things which she usually did, no time to enjoy the scent of pine and earth and little else. There was no time to revel in how the lines of trees looming over her in every direction reminded her of the almost comforting way the structures of the Undercity tended to make you feel surrounded. No time. 

 

Not because she was anxious or her feet were hurting or because she felt something sticking out of the bottom of one of them. But, because she’d only been running for a handful of minutes before the dim morning, the straight lines of trunks and the obscuring obstruction of bush and underbrush gave way in the distance to the unmistakable outline of a set of shoulders and thick neck-length hair hanging around someone’s head. Vi opened her mouth to shout at what must be Mylo, but Vander quite suddenly hurried forward. 

 

He was at her back in a second and his hand over her mouth a moment later. Instinct said to fight. Instinct said to kick. Instinct said to go find her sister. 

 

Except that Vander’s other hand was pointing past her at the level of her eyes to the unmistakable shape of a bow pointing out from behind a tree a few feet in front of Mylo. The bow looked strained: behind the tree, someone had the string pulled back. Someone, who had to be Powder. Both at the wrong angle and too far off, Vi could not see why Powder had the bow at the ready but she was sure that the girl must be looking at a target. 

 

Silence was broken. 

 

“C’mon, take the shot already,” Mylo counseled. That confirmed her worst fear. Vander might have covered her mouth but he had not grabbed hold of her. He also had not blocked her eyes: the bow was shaking. The hand on it was shaking. Powder’s shaking. Her sister had had so much trouble pulling back these bows when she first made them, but now… now Vi was not sure that this was a strength problem. She shrugged Vander off and continued forward. Neither person in the distance seemed to hear her, but step by step it became clearer the mess of wild, matted hair standing up at odd angles was Mylo’s. 

 

Vi got much closer in but three or four seconds, close enough she should’ve been heard by her siblings but was not. Vander held up a single finger at her side and slowed Vi. It seemed to counsel her to wait. It reminded her that she might have to choose soon to let Powder make her own decisions. Even the ones Vi thought might hurt her. Vi had told him that day wasn’t this one, but now faced with the people she’d come out here to find, Vi hesitated. 

 

What did it say to her sister if Vi stopped her, now? 

 

What happened to, ‘you’re ready’? What happened to trusting her? 

 

“Unless you want to eat rice or bread or vegetables for the rest of your life, shoot.” Mylo sounded dispassionate, cool. If one specific tree was not in the way, Vi could have seen her sister’s face, or at least her outline. She could have tried to circle around to get a look at it, but a moment later the problem was solved for her. For reasons that probably made sense to Powder, she took a step backward as she let go of the bow and, sure enough, Vi could read wide eyes and a mouth hanging half open, even from several feet away. Even in the barely-there light. 

 

An ‘eep’ which might have been hilarious in other circumstances escaped Powder’s mouth as she fired and, yes, Vi unmistakably heard an animal rustling in the undergrowth. 

 

One thing she was fairly certain of as Mylo sagged his shoulders and visibly deflated was that Powder had missed. Pissed at letting Vander get into her head after all, pissed at her own hesitation, Vi tore off. More junk on the forest floor shredded her feet. She wasn’t sure how much of the conflict and ache on her sister’s face was real or imagined in the morning’s twilight but the eyes, unnaturally wide and shocked were inescapable. 

 

“Vi was right,” Mylo told Powder in the moments before he became aware that Vander and Vi herself were present. “I was right. Everyone knew it. You don’t belong out here. You jinxed it.” The last clear impression Vi had of her sister before she finally gave in to her anger at Mylo’s taunting was of the girl curling in on herself. Then Powder might not have been standing in the small, four or five feet wide clearing at all. 

 

Vander’s voice rang out but she did not care to hear the words. 

 

All Vi could see was the moment Mylo realized she was charging him. The way his mouth slipped open in abject shock as if he never thought she’d see or hear the shit he was saying. He was caught with his hand in a cookie jar, like he both knew and didn’t know what was on her mind. He’d used her name just to, what, discourage her sister? Vi swallowed the waterfall of angry shouts and insults but let her instincts win out. His lips moved, he may have even spoken her name. 

 

Her brother’s eyes widened until they were as big as Powder’s had been a moment before. Mylo. Sharp jawed, sharp tongued but good with his hands. Mylo, who could swipe an entire crate off the back of a cart for them without the driver even noticing as long as someone vaguely distracted whoever was up front. 

 

Mylo, who’d once been the only person before herself to even try to get her stuffed rabbit down from the wires above The Last Drop. 

 

Vi didn’t sock him. 

 

She did turn her shoulder and crash bodily into her brother’s chest and smile savagely to herself as he left his feet and landed firmly on his back. She did savor the moment he actually showed himself to be aware of what was coming. She did enjoy the idea that for just a moment he might be feeling like he was put down, by someone who he could not easily fight back against, that for circumstances beyond his control he was made to feel momentarily inferior. For just a second, he had to know how he made Powder feel every time he opened his mouth. 

 

Then things around her turned back to normal. Instead of the rapid understanding of (and decisions about) a plan of attack that almost made the start of a fight feel like slow motion, everything here came quickly. Mylo was staring straight up into the sky because he had not even had time to keep his eyes on her on the way down. Powder, in the outfit she’d done their planting work in, had turned back toward Mylo but jumped away from Vi when she came rushing in. 

 

Vander was closer on Vi’s tail than she’d expected but he had not been quick enough to stop the moment she’d been almost craving . Now that it had arrived all Vi could do was stare around the clearing and hate it. So she’d shoved Mylo over, that hadn’t changed anything except to momentarily shut him up. She hadn’t stopped Powder from being put in the position of having to try to kill for her food. She hadn’t stopped the tears marring Powder’s wide-eyed but otherwise mostly just confused face. 

 

“Violet!” Vi could hear in her own sister’s voice that Powder had only just realized who had knocked Mylo off his feet. Powder still took another step back and Vi prayed her sister was not scared of her. 

 

Vi hadn’t fixed anything. 

 

“Hey, hey,” Vander called but as Mylo sat halfway up to get a better look at Vi through his own still dumbfounded eyes, the taller of the two girls turned and raised a finger in Vander’s direction to shut him up. 

 

“No,” Vi told the man. “You don’t stop this unless you’re willing to do it with your own two hands.” The words were not a challenge. They were a fact. Vander was going to have to get between them if he wanted to stop her. Or he could choose to believe what she’d told him: she didn’t want to hurt, she didn’t want to harm. She wanted to fix. If he couldn’t trust her when she most needed someone to trust her, then that was his problem. At her feet, Mylo recovered enough to switch from confused to pissed . She leaned forward, faintly down in Mylo’s direction. Sniffling reached her ears, Powder suppressing sobs or maybe trying to find words. The good news was, Vi had the words. 

 

“What is your problem? ” 

 

Despite whole flowing rapids of anger and hurt and betrayal pouring out of her at once and despite knowing she probably shouldn’t have pushed Mylo over or enjoyed it even for a second, Violet kept her voice relatively level. She reached up with both hands to push her hair straight back. Mylo glared up from the ground, placing his hands down on either side of himself as if to sit up. 

 

“I’m just trying to teach her how to hunt,” he spat back. “Not my fault she can’t do it. Just add hunting to the list.” His right hand gestured wildly in Powder’s direction. 

 

“Shut the fuck up!” It didn’t feel good to shout like she’d hoped it would. It didn’t even feel like arguing with Mylo. If Powder had been shaking moments before then Vi was absolutely trembling. She might have been yelling at phantoms in the dark again for how out of control she felt. Her shoulder hurt. Her feet hurt. They felt unimportant. “What is your PROBLEM? ” 

 

“I already told you -” Mylo started, again starting to turn toward Powder who was now a few feet to Vi’s left, clutching the arm of the bow to her chest but otherwise nearly doubled over in that way that always made Vi feel bad. 

 

“What is your problem?” Vi asked again, as loudly as she could. She could still feel Vander hanging behind her. Four feet… five… and finally staying out of the way. He’d always kept clear when Mylo was having a go at Powder, but the minute Vi started to let loose on the boy he usually stepped in. Not today. Not now. If he did it wouldn’t help, anyway. Why was Mylo’s hair so filthy and matted? Why were the cheeks of his sharp face so gauntly sunken? 

For a moment his own anger faltered. Conflict and confusion crossed his face and then he scowled all over again and started to rise to his feet. 

 

“Get over yourself, Vi.” The boy was barely on his knees when Vi lunged for him. She did not pay attention to his reaction, but seized him by the collar of his shirt and used what strength she hadn’t lost over the last few weeks. Before he knew it, Vi heaved him up and onto his feet. Not expecting it, Mylo nearly lost his footing as soon as she sat him down but she did not let go of him. Her own blue-gray eyes stared directly into his green. She watched the moment his anger and disgust chased a new jolt of surprise out of them, from less than a foot away. 

 

Then movement drew her eyes to her left. It was little more than a twitch, a shaking of low, hunched forward shoulders as Powder either fought more tears or simply jumped at the sudden movement. The one thing that was obvious to Vi was that Powder needed her. Her sister needed her, right now. She could see the fear and the conflict and the unexpected guilt on Powder’s face. Whether it was the situation as a whole, the fight, or Mylo’s go to insult (chosen because it always hurt Powder) her sister was in pain. 

 

Powder was only a few feet away and looked the kind of scared that Vi remembered feeling when she watched Deckard carrying the younger girl down the Lanes, the kind of scared Vi felt every single time Vi remembered she had hurt herself trying to fight figments of her imagination, lost in a strange Noxian woods. But, again, Claggor could be right: maybe she needed to make Mylo answer her shouted question for her own sake, for her sister’s sake, for the family’s sake, far more than Powder needed comforted. 

 

I’ve been fucking this all up. 

 

“Everyone else, go home.” Vi swung her head around from Powder to Vander. The man froze, dumbfounded, and then amused in a way Vi didn’t entirely like but understood. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t trying to bark this out with the same presence which Vander used to get their attention when he was absolutely serious. Right or wrong, Vander had placed some responsibility for all of this on her shoulders and he wasn’t willing to take it back, so he had to trust her. “We’re gonna figure this shit out.” 

 

Vi did not look directly at her sister again. She turned to stare straight at Mylo, still holding tightly to his collar. He lifted his chin and scowled at her. Vander reached out to Powder who hurled herself the few steps between the two of them and was swept up into a hug. She tried to ignore the sound of her sister’s tears but was struck, as she had been that shitty night on the road, with the belief that just being able to let that shit out was a thing she kinda envied. It was wild how embarrassed people sometimes acted about it.

 

“Hey now,” Vander muttered to Powder. “Relax, relax. Everything’s fine.” Her sister exhaled sharply behind Vi’s back, though the breath still shook in a way that said she wasn’t calm, yet. “It’s all going to be okay. They’ll have a talk - just a talk, and then they’ll both be home. You and I will just go start breakfast, okay?” 

 

“I’m sorry,” Powder called, loudly. Vi did not think she was talking to Vander but really hoped she wasn’t talking to Vi or to Mylo, either one. Yet, there was no reason for Powder to shout her apology if it was aimed at Vander. Vi did not turn around. She did not look at Powder, still. So she saw the brief flash of frustration on Mylo’s face, then debate and then the scowl returned. When he rolled his eyes, Vi only tightened her grips on his shirt collar. 

 

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Vi told her, though she could not help but hear the anger and irritation in her voice. “ You didn’t fuck up.” 

 

“I did. I thought I was - I’m supposed to be - I thought I was older now so I thought I’d be better. I thought I’d do better.” Vi held so tightly to her brother that her fingers hurt. She gritted her teeth as much to keep herself from looking away from Mylo’s pale, drawn face. Hearing Powder’s words hurt, though. They hurt so much she wanted badly to make someone else feel that hurt but - 

 

That won’t fix it. That won’t fix it. That won’t fix it. That won’t fix it! 

 

Vi didn’t stop trembling as Vander corrected Powder but she did note how much quieter he sounded. 

 

“Nonsense,” he insisted. “Come on.” Two sets of footsteps replaced their words and eventually space muted her sister’s tears. Vi began to count to ten in her own head as her eyes focused back in on her brother’s face. When she stopped gritting her teeth, they chattered instead. She felt like she was barely a whole person, more like a collection of loose joints shaking and bouncing and bumping. Somehow, despite being held onto by someone who could not, Mylo was able to stay still.

 

At the ten count, Vi started to count again and otherwise stayed where she was and kept staring the boy down. This wasn’t an intimidation tactic: she wanted Vander and Powder to be as far away from them as she possibly could. She was sure that would be the best way to get answers out of him. She was sure that was how she’d be able to tell him every thought she’d had about the way he was acting, even the ones that weren’t based on anger. 

 

Vi wanted to tell him about how she’d tried to give herself to the Enforcers the night they lost Vander. It was possible only Vander and Powder knew about that. She wanted to tell him how before she left home she’d thought about the conversation she’d had with Powder about the rabbit on that damned powerline. She wanted to tell how she’d thought about the way it had made her feel when they were younger and he had tried to get the damned thing down for her. She wanted to scream and ask where that Mylo had gone over the last year or so. She wanted to know why he couldn’t be the person he used to be, why he couldn’t treat Powder like he used to treat Vi ? 

 

Vi wanted so much. 

 

She pulled him a little closer when she got to ten the second time. Mylo lifted his hands to knock her own away but she couldn’t have that. She couldn’t have him walk away from this. She couldn’t let him screw up the way she had the night Vander had all but threatened to disown them both. She couldn’t let him get far enough away from her that he might somehow realize she felt as poorly about herself as him. 

 

No sooner had he broken her grip on his shirt collar then she seized it again and shook him hard, once. 

 

“What the fuck, Vi?” 

 

“What is your problem?” she hissed through chattering teeth and trembling lips. She’d fought people near as big as Vander and no fight had ever left her shaking like this. Vi couldn’t land on what it meant. All she knew was that she’d been there long enough to adapt to the dark or the sun had risen a little further because his face was clearer than it had any right to be. Her breath was fiery on the way down her throat but every little breeze against her body was icey cold. Every part of her was clammy. 

 

“What is your problem!?” She croaked directly into his face. “What is your problem!? You’re being an ass. You’re being an asshole to Vander. You’re being an asshole to Powder. You’ve actually managed to be enough of a dick to Claggor and Little Man that they don’t know how to handle you.” She laughed because in a deranged way it was funny to think that Mylo had finally pissed off Claggor and made Ekko wary of his attitude. 

 

“Oh yeah, you’ve been a saint to Vander, haven’t ya, Vi?” She leaned in closer than she meant to. Close enough to see every pore on his face, to note the blemishes that hadn’t been there last time she paid attention. Her every movement, voluntary and involuntary felt exaggerated and overdone. 

 

“You’re right.” Mylo seemed more stunned by the admission than to find her face damned near an inch from his. “You’re right and I gotta work that out but we’re not talking about me right now. We’re talking about you.” He hesitated, so she shook him by his collar, again. “YOU!” He grabbed at her right hand in what seemed like a confused gesture but this time he could not shake her as easily. Gods, does he not realize…? “Why can’t you just be nice to her? Why can’t you just not be an ass to me. Why can’t - why can’t -” more rational words failed her so she just spoke even if she sounded like a child. “Why are you acting like such a monster? Why are you being so mean? ” 

 

Mylo seemed to sag with an exasperated sigh that did not sound real or match the look on his face. 

 

“Blah, blah, blah,” he only half rolled his eyes. “Let go of me.” He was trying to act dismissive but angry and scared and deeply upset were obvious all over his face. The levity in his words was shallow. He had to know she knew it. He had to know she knew he cared about the conversation , whether that was only because he was so mad at her or for some other reason.

 

“Why do you act like you don’t care about her - like you don’t care about any of us anymore?” 

 

Vi had, many times, been on the wrong end of a stranger lashing out in the streets. Usually she got away from them or got the better of the situation. She had never experienced Mylo exploding, before, in the way he had experienced her own anger over the last couple of weeks. The boy tried to pry her hands off of his shirt but however whole-hearted the attempt was, it did not work. She didn’t even have time to register the change in his face before he opened his mouth and finally, finally, finally engaged. Mylo fired back at her with the most bitter cry she’d ever heard come from her brother’s mouth. 

 

“FUCK YOU, THAT’S WHY!” When he could not pry her hands from him, he shoved her shoulders harder than she’d expected without any kind of space to add force to the motion. Vi finally released him and stumbled backward rather than take them both to the ground in a tumble that might end with one atop the other with a fist raised. Mylo did not try to run. Instead he got back in her face. “ ME? I don’t care about us!?” As she assumed he must have had to deal with on her end, spittle flew from his lips as he shouted loudly enough to hurt her ears. She was pleased to see his fists balled up but it did not stop her from shaking and jittering. 

 

Violet did not put up her guard. 

 

“ I don’t care - about us? ” He sounded momentarily amused, as if he was asking the thin air beside him to listen to the absurdity of the words. Mylo was affronted. “BULLSHIT,” he shouted, turning right back ‘round to face her directly. She could not suppress either her sneer or her wince. “You’re such a dickhead. Such an asshole! A bastard! A bitch! A prick! I - don’t - care - about - us !?” Mylo sucked in a new breath, nearly at the end of his lung capacity, indignant and angry and no longer scared and maybe Vi was pleased about that, too. 

 

“Mylo -” 

 

“No!” He put his finger directly in her face and her eyes momentarily crossed focusing on it. Other than the unending tremoring of her body she held her ground and moved as little as necessary. “ You shut up Vi! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Hands pressing tightly against the side of his head, Vi was struck by the realization that she was hearing one of those waterfalls of held back words running loose and free from her brother’s mouth and he was starting to sound as lost to them as she felt to her own. 

 

Mylo looked away from her for a second with his temples in his hands and his face twisted like he was in physical pain, then he released his own head and began to gesture wildly. 

 

“It’s Powder this,” he growled. “ Powder that. You coddle her. Every time she messes things up, bam, there you are excusing it. Every time she stubs her toe, there you are looking after her.” Vi opened her mouth to cut across him but he again put his finger right in her face. “It’s ‘ what do you need, Powder’ . It’s ‘are you okay?’ Then when she does something right or even when she fucks it up, it’s like she can’t do no wrong.” His chest was heaving as hard as hers was. Mylo’s voice was as strained as her own. “The worst part is we all know you mean it. Like, you mean it. ” 

 

“I -” 

 

Mylo shut her up without the use of his hand when he locked eyes with her in the most simultaneously invasive and self-exposing action she had ever been part of. 

 

“Why aren’t I good enough?” he demanded, his thick dark eyebrows raising and green eyes wide and clear and oh, gods so fucking earnest. This threw Vi off more than all the shouting in the world could have. The proverbial cold bucket of water spilled and robbed her very literally of her breath. “Why can’t you ever be proud of me!? I got Vander out of that chair. I’ve gotten us in and out of buildings. I’ve swiped shit that weighs as much as I do from Topsider carts and got us food. Why can’t I do anything good enough to make you happy, Vi?” 

 

Was his voice getting deeper? Were his eyes watering? 

 

“Why is it always ‘ Shut up Mylo’ ? Why is it always ‘ You fucked up, Mylo’?” He had not pulled back. He was still close enough to her she could feel each word breathed her way. She could not break eye contact. She could not speak. She could not move and for just one second she could not even shake. 

 

She could not even shake. 

 

“Yeah, I ran my mouth to that punk street kid and it brought Silco down on us. I get it, Vi!” Mylo gestured at her with both hands as if asking for something. “I fucked up!” Mylo announced to the air around them. “I fucked up and it messed everything up but you can bet your ass if it was Powder who did it you’d be over it already.” None of this made sense. None of this was what she’d expected to hear. None of this computed. None of this fit. 

 

None of this was right. 

 

“And why?! Because she’s a little younger? Two years. Such a big gap, ” even his attempt at sass came out wrong, not as cutting, not as real, “she definitely needs you treating her like a baby. Vi, when we were her age you were harder on yourself than her! So is that what it is?” She was just starting to think about how much she wished he’d swung at her, instead, when he said something that forced her to suck in the breath of air she had been missing. “Or is it because she’s your blood!?” 

 

Hit me. Just hit me. She remembered the Noxian forest and the approaching dawn them for the first time in almost a minute but where she was had never mattered less. Hit me! 

 

“Mylo I-” Where his words flowed maybe beyond his own control hers were having trouble getting around the lump in her throat. Hit me. 

 

“Are the rest of us not good enough for you?” His head turned at a sharp angle that had to hurt, that looked as unnatural as the anguish sounded in his voice. “Because she’s blood? One day, when she grows up and goes away are you just gonna disappear, too? Because we’re not your real family? Is that it?” Longer and longer pauses punctuated each sentence but no matter how much Vi tried she could not figure out how to interrupt him. “Because if it is, you should say it. Tell me! Tell me I’m not good enough so at least I fucking know why!” 

 

Gods, please just hit me. 

 

She had not known she could feel guiltier but that seemed to be a well she found deeper and deeper depths to every day. Quite all at once Vi felt and heard and finally understood every time she and Mylo had argued over the last couple of years, all the times Vander had told her in not so many words that she was the ‘leader’ of the four of them, that they ‘looked up’ to her. She saw in new, painful light every single time Mylo’s face had gone blank when she criticized something unkind he’d said or done since the showdown at the cannery and every time he’d gone to bed to get away from their arguments or the tenison, every time he’d turned away toward the wall so he didn’t have to look at her. 

 

Please, just do it. 

 

“Do you even love us? Me? Claggor? Vander? Little Man?” He wouldn’t swing. He just wouldn’t swing. She had - she had to do something. She had to stop this. She had to. Vi stepped in toward him but he reached out and shoved her back hard. When he didn’t continue speaking she pushed back in because she could. Because it was the only thing she could think of doing that had any chance of helping. Because it was better than running away with her tail between her legs. 

 

Vi wrapped her arms tight around Mylo and squeezed, though her chest hurt and her body shook once again. The truth was, he struggled. He tried, twice more, to shove her away. Wordless, unnatural shouts filled her ears. Vi held on, because if she did not she really would have failed him. Unable to see his face as she stared into the woods over his shoulder, it took her a second after he stopped fighting and went slack to realize what was happening. 

 

It’d been more than two years, probably, since she’d seen or heard Mylo cry. Vi squeezed tight and stared straight ahead unblinking because if she blinked she might finally cry too and this time it would not be okay. That would be wrong. That would be letting him down. 

 

“Mylo,” she started, raising her right hand to the back of his neck and cupping it there. “Shut up.” He only cried harder, so she squeezed tighter with her left arm. Maybe too tight. “You’re right, okay? You’re right. I feel like I have to look after Powder different.” Vi pushed the words out and hoped they landed as she meant. She hoped he understood what she was trying to say. His shoulders shook. 

 

“Maybe it’s because she’s younger or maybe because she’s felt like my responsibility since I was like, eight. You’re right. I look out for her. But I love you guys, too, and you have to believe me.” Vi continued to stare ahead, holding on and waiting. If he wasn’t going to punch her, he had to hear her. “You’ve got to believe me. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. You’re my brother, Mylo. Claggor is my brother. Vander is our father.  We are family. Blood means something, sure, but family is family.”

 

“I just want - I just…” Vi did not want to interrupt him, but she tried to encourage him to spit it out, no matter how much it hurt either of them. 

 

“Just say it, Mylo. We’re here. So, just say it.” 

 

“I want you to be proud of me , too.” Vi could not squeeze him any more tightly with her left arm so she dropped her right hand to his back so her right arm could make up the difference. “I didn’t mean to fuck up with Deckard. I didn’t mean to get hit. I’m FUCKING sorry.” Exhaling shakily and trying not to think too hard about how much she was hurting, Vi tried to show him how wrong he was. Mylo had to know how wrong he was. 

 

“You didn’t - it’s not - it was never about -” 

 

“It was!” Mylo exclaimed suddenly, still nearly yelling in her ear. Though it did not hurt, he pounded the flat of his fist once against her shoulder, softly. “It was, wasn’t it? Because Vander told us we were losing everything and you left me laying there in bed. You didn’t tell me what the plan was to keep our home. You left me laying there. You didn’t talk to me about it and then - and then you gave up and you wouldn’t even tell me why! Why wouldn’t you talk to me, Vi?” 

 

It would be so easy to be overwhelmed by guilt, to apologize and show how sad she was that he ever thought she blamed him for getting hurt. It would be so easy to act just like Vander had when she had confronted him , asking him to fix what was going on between herself and Mylo or to fix them losing their home or to fix anything or to take the responsibility away.  Vi swallowed those feelings down hard because it had pissed her off and hurt her when Vander did it instead of answering her, like maybe he hadn’t really listened. It didn’t worry her precisely, but she was surprised at the sudden sense of calm settling in. 

 

Not calm, no. 

 

I just know what I can do to help, now. 

 

Vi shook Mylo again, much more softly this time to jolt him out of that thought process. 

 

“I wasn’t mad at you.” The words were a promise she hoped he believed. “I didn’t know what to do. I felt guilty. I felt like it was my fault you got hurt. I couldn’t look at you or Powder without hating myself or Silco or both of us. Sometimes I still can’t. I couldn’t drag you into my freak out, either, because it was my fault you both got hurt. Because I forgot we were in it together. I just - if I could’ve just taken down Deckard in the cannery I might’ve tossed Silco out a window or two for fun and missed all of this. Then you wouldn’t have gotten hurt. She wouldn’t have gotten hurt. Vander wouldn’t have gotten hurt.” Mylo shifted in the hug and finally returned it. 

 

I hurt Vander, too, and Ekko.

 

“I thought you hated me. I thought I’d messed it all up so bad you’d never trust me again. Or maybe just you never really cared. All you’d say was how much of a fuck up I’d been and then I went and proved you right and…” 

 

“Shut up,” she repeated, insistently shaking her head atop his shoulder. “You didn’t ‘fuck up’ by getting hurt. You got hurt. It wasn’t your fault.” Vi sucked in a shallow breath and tried like hell to make him hear her despite how difficult it was to get the words out. “I don’t think I could’ve said half of what you just did. I’d be way too scared, so listen. I am proud of you and you don’t have to be sorry about Deckard. If I could’ve seen him coming I’d’ve done - I’d’ve done so-” 

 

“You’re my big sister, too, Vi.” She still felt so cold, so shitty, so shameful, but Vi laughed despite herself. 

 

“I think I’m two weeks older, stupid.” 

 

“It’s not about that.” That was not Mylo. Vi mostly released Mylo to glance behind herself, where Claggor was only a few steps away from them, his arms crossed over his chest and a smirk on his still very round face. The feelings of her cold, aching feet and chattering teeth rushed back. 

 

“I know you love us, Vi.” The larger of her brothers didn’t talk down to people, but he was speaking very slowly and emphatically, as if he didn’t think she would understand him otherwise. “I think you show it the same way Vander does. But if I’d had any idea that’s what Mylo’s been thinking about, I would’ve wanted to shout at you myself.” Claggor uncrossed his arms and used his hands to emphasize as he nearly echoed Mylo: “You’re our big sister, Vi. Do you get it?” 

 

Mylo sucked in a deep breath in a way that reminded her of Powder’s earlier attempts to calm herself down and Vi patted him on the back before releasing him. She wavered back a step (and her right foot protested, loudly) and made sure Mylo lifted red-lidded eyes to her face. 

 

“You might as well let it all out,” Vi told the boy, echoing something she’d told Powder once when she was very young and trying to hide her own tears about their parents’ deaths from Vi. “Secrets out: you’ve got a heart. Never able to take that back now Claggor’s seen.” Claggor did not approach, hanging back a few steps behind the spot she’d last seen Vander. 

 

When Mylo laughed, a knot smoothed out in the muscles of Vi’s neck. Even if it was not happy laughter or whole-hearted, it did not sound as upset as he had for the last several minutes. 

 

She didn’t know how to process a lot of the things she’d just heard or even pieced together herself. If so much of all of this had come down to Mylo worrying all this time that he was going to or had already lost her, then she got it. If it was all down to Mylo wanting to know that they were still family, that she still cared, it made sense. It didn’t excuse how he’d treated Powder but it might’ve made Vi a little less bothered about how he’d treated her. She could understand that fear. It was simple and at the same time so embarrassing and scary a question to ask: ‘do you actually care about me?’ 

 

She’d danced around asking Vander that question, once.

 

Vander. 

 

With all the times that Vander had told her, ‘they look up to you’ how had she never understood what he was really telling her? 

 

Not, ‘you’re responsible for them’. Not ‘you’re the leader.’ At least, not exactly. 

 

Was it possible he’d been trying all this time to say, ‘ you’re their big sister’? 

 

She had plenty to feel like shit about but it could be swallowed down for now with so much else. Here and now she had to show Mylo his fears were unfounded. Feeling guilty could come later. After she tried to fix it. 

 

I have to fix it. I have to fix it. 

 

Maybe she could. Vi’s eyes trailed from Mylo to Claggor. 

 

Maybe we can. 

 

Vi took a couple of experimental steps away from Mylo on a hunch and winced as sharp pains shot up each of her legs. 

 

“Um, guys?” Vi grimaced, feeling bad for changing the subject. She looked for the nearest tree to tip toe over to. “I think I stepped on something.” Even carefully not putting the heels or the flat of her feet on the ground, each step was unpleasant and nearing very painful. Vi put her hand against the bark of the nearest tree and used it to help her sit down more carefully. Despite her pain and everything else, she laughed too. 

 

How stupid can I get? Vi stared down at the toes of her feet. 

 

When Claggor came over and he and Mylo did take a look at the bottom of each foot, neither one looked very pleased at all. Vi knew the grimace on Claggor’s face well enough to know it meant trouble. 

 

Shortly after, Vi regretfully allowed Claggor to throw one of her arms over his shoulders and support some of her body weight. It was pretty clear that things were not over. Mylo trailed along behind the two of them with his bow in hand and arrows in their bag but he would start to speak every few moments and then stop. On Vi’s end, her own body seemed to think she was coming physically and mentally undone. She could not get over her jelly legs or kick the shivers and the chattering teeth. 

 

And there was no end to the onslaught of ideas and fears and possibilities of all the things she had misunderstood or ways she’d acted without thinking or just times she’d just plain failed.  

 

Over a few short minutes a few thoughts occurred to her that she had no idea where they came from. Often they seemed far removed from her current situation: 

 

If Claggor really got another growth spurt, he’d probably end up as tall as Vander. 

 

Off and on, ever since encountering the strange magic woman in the woods while trying to find Vi, Ekko had let drop hints that this woman had said something that had hurt him.  He hadn’t said what it was. 

 

The reason that particular problem scared Vi so much was not because the stranger upset Powder and Ekko. It was because Vi had no idea how magic worked. If this lady was a threat, she was a threat Vi couldn’t even pretend to understand. 

 

Claggor, Ekko and Powder were doing useful, worthwhile things in Noxus. She, Mylo and Vander weren’t. 

 

Other thoughts were at least a little related and might be the result of ideas she didn’t even know she was grappling with: 

 

The only thing Mylo had ever wanted from her while he was bedridden hadn’t been her pity or even her taking care of him: he’d wanted her to treat him like she always would’ve and talk to him about what was happening. 

 

She and Mylo had been at each others’ throats for more than a month straight. 

 

Mylo hadn’t been taking care of himself. He’d routinely come back from the stream having knocked the dirt off himself, but otherwise hadn’t taken a lot of efforts to stay clean. Like he couldn’t be bothered and she’d seen it. She’d noticed his hair or his face or the odor about his clothes more than once, and hadn’t asked. 

 

Claggor had been waiting for her to do something this whole time, too, but he might not have been the only one. Whenever he was scared about something, Ekko had come to her time and time again up until the night he’d seen her lose her shit in the woods. 

 

These thoughts and way more rushed around her head in a way that made it really hard for her to grapple with any one of them for long. As soon as she started to pick at the implications of one idea, another would surge to the forefront, more desperate for recognition. 

 

She could make out the detail of the bark on passing tree trunks and see the shifting of whole treetops in the wind. The sun was nearly up by the time she realized being dragged out of the woods wasn’t the answer.

 

To her chagrin, Mylo traded off with Claggor at one point and Vi found it hard to look at him without the urge to ask a question or try and reinforce that she’d never been mad about him getting hurt. Well, she’d never been mad at him that he’d gotten hurt. A part of her worried that if she insisted too many times he might start to disbelieve her, and wouldn’t that be worse? Whenever their eyes matched, he frowned. Not cold, not dismissive, but like he knew as well as she did that this talk hadn’t solved their problems. 

 

It was a nice change to not feel annoyed when she looked at him, though. Time would tell, but she worried the frustration would be replaced by guilt. 

 

“I’m sorry.” Vi scoffed, snorting to herself even though nothing happening was particularly funny. They had to be getting close to the farm and right now Mylo bore at least a good portion of her weight. “I think I better go down to the stream instead and clean up my feet.” For a moment, Mylo drew still and Vi worried he was going to give her grief. Instead, still frowning, the boy turned about as if he wasn’t sure which way to go and then turned them to their right, pointing roughly west. 

 

“I’m gonna go get help. Vander, or something.” Claggor insisted from behind them. Vi shook her head even if she could not turn back to look at him. 

 

“I don’t need help, help. I just need to get a couple of slivers or something out of my feet.” 

 

“There was a lot of mud and a lot of blood,” Mylo told her, flatly. He kept his eyes fixed ahead of them, so she did her best to walk mainly on the balls of her feet. Vi watched his face for anything but the uncomfortable frown he’d had on it for the last few minutes. She did not argue with him. She didn’t really say anything else. She just felt silly, after all of that, to be relying on Mylo to take her down to the stream. 

 

She hadn’t been in a fight or taken a fall or any of the things that she could usually blame being injured on. She’d just jacked up her feet because she’d been too angry to stop and put on her boots. If Vi hadn’t wanted to see where they were walking so that she didn’t trip the both of them up, she would’ve buried her face in her hands at her own stupidity. Finally deciding there was no not making the whole thing awkward and no not feeling stupid, Vi just sighed to herself. She tested the flat of her right foot because walking on the ball was painful. 

 

The flat of her foot burned sharply during the attempt so she went back to slowing them down and practically tip-toeing to the stream. After her experimental step, though, her right foot throbbed rhythmically , as if following the beat of her heart. 

 

She heard water well before she saw it, but also heard the flutter of wings as a bird passed from one branch to another over their heads. 

 

As if they were emerging from a tightly packed street on the edge of the Undercity, Vi and Mylo finally broke through the tree line enough that she could see clear sunlight reflecting off of water. The woods gave way to a small patch of overgrowth which in turn gave way to muddy, and sometimes stony banks. She sucked in a breath that didn’t feel fire-hot on the way down her throat and stared at the little body of water they bathed in, a little disbelieving. It really only was three or four feet wide, here, and she couldn’t say she’d seen it much wider. 

 

Vi wondered again at the idea that back home she wouldn’t dream of cleaning wounds in water that hadn’t been both boiled and treated or come from their drinking water. 

 

When Mylo did not immediately let go of her as they cleared the treeline, she reluctantly let herself be led to the water. After that, there was nothing for it but to ease her right foot into the creek and try not to set it down in the mud. She was relieved when he let go of her and waded a step or two away, though. More space to think. 

 

The water was cool and not entirely bad on her feet but rather than quell the pain it just caused the feeling to change into something duller and deeper. Vi was starting to get genuinely worried about how bad the cuts on her left foot might be when she found a fairly flat stone beneath the surface of the water to set it on so she could shift her weight from the ball of her right foot. 

 

She quickly learned it was the heel of her right foot she should’ve been worried about. 

 

“Did you mean it?” Vi paused and turned her head Mylo’s way for a second. The morning sun splashed across his face and made clearer the things she had seen but refused to acknowledge: he looked tired, sad and his skin had broken out in acne he’d never really had before. She carefully placed pressure on her left foot and it cried out an instantaneous objection. Vi did not look too closely into the waters around her: she did not want to worry more just because she saw blood. 

 

“Mean what?” she asked him after giving him a couple seconds to clarify. “Said a lot of things over the last few minutes. I meant them, but I wanna know what you mean.” Mylo cleared his throat, opened his mouth and then looked away from her. So she looked away from him and downstream as she tried to let the water’s natural motion do the work of cleaning her feet. You know what won’t be good enough. 

 

Vi wasn’t looking forward to ruining one of her four shirts by treating it like a rag to scrub the bleeding wounds most assuredly awaiting her with. 

 

“Do you mean you’re not just going to leave some time?”

 

“Where would I even go? You guys are everything I have. The only thing I have.” Vi shrugged before having to momentarily lift and reach out with either arm make sure she did not fall over. Balancing on one injured foot in running water, actually hard to do, who knew? 

 

“What about Caras?” Thrown through quite the loop by the question, she turned to furrow her brow in his direction. 

 

“What about him?” 

 

“What if he… I dunno. What if you two -”  Her cheeks warmed. This was not a conversation she’d expected to have with Mylo any time soon. If ever. 

 

“Okay, first, I don’t think that’s likely to happen.” This was something she had been thinking about a little much since her talk with Claggor, too. Yeah, Caras was a good guy and both more interesting and smarter than he seemed to like to let on to people. Try as she might, though, Vi couldn’t pin down a time she’d had the proverbial butterflies around him. She’d even thought once that there was something there but the more time they spent together the more sure she was she’d just been uncomfortable because no one had ever really looked at her that way before. 

 

She’d gotten tolerant enough of it but…. 

 

“Second,” Vi exhaled sharply through her nose. “I didn’t mean none of us would get lives or people or homes of our own. I just mean we’re family and that didn’t change. That doesn’t change. We don’t abandon each other.” Vi looked pointedly at Mylo and when he momentarily met her eyes, frowning, she knew exactly what he was thinking without him saying it. Mylo leaned down and scooped water running from the stream with his hand, splashing it hard across his face and then repeating the gesture. 

 

“You left that night we fought with Vander.” The statement was devoid of judgment. If he was emotional at all, it was anxiety and something that sounded like relief to her. Vi already felt like shit about that decision. She clenched her fists for a second at her side, unsure if it was in response to physical pain or emotional ache. She slowly lowered both of her feet into the water, ready to try to slosh back towards land. 

 

“Yeah.” Vi winced as she got back to ‘dry’ land and regretfully turned to mess up her favorite pants and sit down in the mud. She dragged her right foot up and back to cross over her left leg, hoping to examine her own wounds. Vi immediately winced. For being the one that hurt the least, it had multiple open wounds she could see almost in profile. A couple of silvers that looked like parts of twigs stuck out of it and still far too much mud made it hard to tell how bad off she was. “I did.” If what he wants is for me to tell him shit, I’ll tell him shit. “I ran off. It wasn’t okay. I did it.” Vi sighed. “I got ten minutes out, I think, then realized how stupid I was being.” She lifted her head to find Mylo crouched a few feet away by the stream, still rinsing his hands in the cool water. 

 

“Then things got bad, Mylo.” He looked up from his reflection and Vi grimaced at the raised eyebrows and hesitation. “I started to kinda hear and see stuff that wasn’t there. Still don’t know if it means I’m crazy or not but you were out there. Powder. Vander. Silco and Sevika both. Except none of you were actually there. Ekko and Vander showing up helped put an end to it.” She glanced down at her right arm. Four shallow cuts had run the length of it for days which did not and could not have come from anything other than her own fingernails. 

 

She still didn’t remember when that happened. 

 

“It scared the hell out of me.” He held still and barely seemed to breathe. Like the rest of them, his clothes were starting to look dingy and hung at awkward angles around his thinning frame. “Never seen - you just really miffed Vander, is all. Bad.” 

 

“I know I did.” Vi shrugged. “But I think I needed to say some things and he needed to hear them.” Vi didn’t know what reaction she’d expected from revealing to Mylo that she’d started losing her mind, but ‘none’ hadn’t been on her bingo card. He traced long fingers through the water still, to the point where they had to be numb. “Family’s supposed to get on your nerves.” 

 

“Thought you were going to hit me earlier.” Vi considered this, with a frown. No matter how much they’d been arguing, had it been right that a part of her had really thought about socking him? 

 

“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it. A lot.” When Mylo’s eyes trailed back down to the water she licked dry lips and added, “doesn’t mean I was right.” 

 

“I think maybe I should take a little time off your bad side.”

 

“You’re right.” Vi smiled despite herself, an air of false bravado in the retort. He snorted and exhaled all at once and then sounded more like himself. More reassuringly, his face relaxed. She hadn’t even realized how tense it was. “While you’re at it, careful getting on Powder’s bad side, too. She hasn’t figured out she has a scary rear uppercut but it could be bad news if she does.” Instead of getting irritated at the mention of their sister or at Vi praising her, Mylo smirked to himself and looked away from her up at the stretch of exposed morning sky above. 

 

Vi could hear people approaching from the farm. 

 

“I know,” he told Vi without looking at her. It was the closest thing to hearing him praise or even talk positively about any of them since this all started. “I was watching that time she got you with it by accident last week. You sure hung onto that tree for a long time after.” 

 

“Yeah… kinda blacked out for a second there.” Vi thought about telling him not to worry: he still probably packed a better punch on average in a brawl. The thing was, as often as Ekko and Powder practiced, that reassurance probably wouldn’t hold true for long. If they could all just find a way to build a little more muscle, training would go a lot better. Vi could try to reset herself and maybe even make some gains. 

 

“There we go.” Vander’s voice reached her ears. Vi looked over her shoulder to see Ekko barely able to peek out from around the man. Ekko watched them with obvious trepidation for the moment. Vander had Vi’s boots hanging, tied together, over his left shoulder. He had yet to turn his shirt around the right way and she wasn’t sure why it struck her as so funny. Vi snorted to herself as she turned right back around to face the stream. Powder hung back behind the both of them with a bowl in hand. Vi was surprised to find herself hoping it wasn’t breakfast. 

 

Her stomach was still doing unwelcome flips. 

 

“Claggor’s cooking,” Ekko called to the two of them. “So, yanno, we better get back soon.” Vi couldn’t remember if Claggor had ever been left in charge of any meal, before. Ekko’s doubt could’ve been warranted for all they knew. Vander reached her first and he gestured with one hand for her to turn around so he wouldn’t have to kneel in the water to get a look at the injuries on the underside of her feet. 

 

When Mylo turned to look upstream, Vi frowned at the dirt and debris still clinging to the back of his shirt and pants from when she’d shoved him over. However, she lost sight of him, herself, scooting around to sit facing the opposite direction. Vander dropped right down into the wet earth himself as Ekko and Powder came closer. Without warning, Vander took hold of her right foot and lifted it and was enough to send a little jolt of pain through her that made her toes clench. 

 

She winced. He read the pain on her face. 

 

Vander reached out to Powder, who offered a tattered cloth she didn’t recognize as one they used for cleaning. It was at least soaking wet from the soapy water in the bowl. Now that the younger girl had come close enough Vi could crane her neck and see that her other hand held something green and leafy. She looked up from that into Powder’s face while she tried not to think about how cleaning her wounds would hurt. Powder, anxious, gazed between herself and Mylo. As soon as her little sister was looking her way again, Vi shrugged. 

 

“It’s gonna be o-” she was cut off mid assurance when Vander pressed the rag directly to a wound on the underside of her right heel. If she’d been asked, she would’ve expected the cuts along the flat of her foot to be the bigger problem. It took all she had not to fire off a few of the filthiest words she knew in Piltovan into the air. Instead she groaned. Vander clicked his tongue, watched her face until she’d calmed a bit and then went back to cleaning. 

 

Ekko trailed off behind her, probably to head to the water. She heard splashing and imagined that she, too, was standing in the stream instead of this . However uncomfortable that had been did not compare to the ache she felt each time Vander tried to clean a new wound and the rag came away filthy with blood and/or dirt. After a minute or two more, during which she was acutely aware no one was speaking, Vander released her left foot and returned to holding up and examining her right. 

 

Neither one seemed to make him very happy. 

 

“Left one’s a mess but that right foot’s not good. ” Vander informed her with a heavy brow. She knew what it sounded like when he wanted to scold or lecture her but was holding back for one reason or another and right then she was lucky not to be getting one hell of an earful. “At least one wound on that one that’s pretty deep.” 

 

“Which is why we’ve got these,” Ekko said. She tilted her head back. Wading out of the water in his own bare feet, he produced a few strips of cloth and several pieces of at least one torn grain sack. 

 

“And these.” As Ekko approached, Powder produced the green plant mass from her left hand and waved them Vi’s direction. They just looked like leaves to Vi. 

 

“What’re those?” 

 

“Helps stop bleeding and keeps things from getting infected?” Vi knew quite well who had given them the plant the girl offered her. Powder smiled through still puffy eyes and Vi decided not to tease her about how good a thing it was Sinnan had come by to see her yesterday. She was just glad her sister wasn’t upset anymore. Vi still had something she needed to say to Powder though, when the time felt right. 

 

“Well, thank you Sinnan,” Vi muttered to herself, looking up at a large, white fluffy cloud passing overhead. It was weird, now that she stopped and thought about it, how the Noxian girl had always made her a little nervous. Was it really down to what looked like a pretty innocent crush this girl had on Powder? Vi had thought it was about being nervous about the family getting used to life in Noxus. Now she wasn’t so sure Vander that hadn’t hit closer on the mark earlier when he suggested she was being too protective. 

 

“Vander, I think you might be right about a few things.” Vi didn’t want to look the man in the eyes when she confessed this, or look too directly at her sister. Instead, she thought about a Topside child she’d once seen pointing out various clouds to his parents and naming them as various animals or objects. She’d never been one to stop and cloud gaze. 

 

“Oh, that’s good,” he bantered back, casually. “Hate to think I’m losing my edge.” Powder did not have patience for the exchange and waved the bundle of leaves to get Vi’s attention again. 

 

“Okay, so this is gonna be gross but either you can chew these up or I can. Just not too small, okay?” Vi looked back down from the sky when Powder shoved the ball of leaves practically into Vi’s face. Vander gestured for Ekko to pass him the makeshift bandages and once he had them, the man looked between Vi and the plant. 

 

“Why?” she asked her sister. It didn’t sound particularly clean to her. 

 

“Helps them stick, I guess and brings out the stuff inside that’s supposed to help?” Stick. She looked down at the leaves, feeling a little bemused and raised an eyebrow. 

 

“So we’re going to chew them up and put them in the bandages?” Vi questioned her sister. Powder shrugged, though, and just offered the plant again. Vi sighed, took the leaves, balled them up and shoved them all at once into her mouth. It was a lot easier than asking Powder how sure she was. 

 

The herbs were bitter and strong and she only spent  or two seconds chewing before spitting them out into her right hand and balling them up. Vi started to reach down toward her right foot but Powder smacked her hand once, took the chewed leaves and surprisingly didn’t even pull a face. Well, she didn’t make a face until it came time to apply the herbs exactly where Vander pointed her to silently. 

 

Vi didn’t need to be able to see the bottom of her own right foot to know it had to be a pretty big wound Vander was worried about in particular. Sinnan’s plant didn’t bring the familiar burn of alcohol cleaning a cut. Just like with the act of cleaning it with the rag, applying the stuff directly to the wound irritated it, prodding leaves into open flesh in a way that just didn’t feel natural and left it throbbing as Vander began the process of wrapping the bottom of each foot. 

 

He did so first with more of the mystery cloth, until she felt a little bit like she was wearing a proper set of wraps along the length of either foot, stopping just short of her toes. While that was uncomfortable enough she was struck with fresh pain and irritation as he took the strips of torn grainsack and used them to tie the bandages in place. She was too busy trying not to whine much about the pain to worry about anyone else, how they were feeling or reacting. She even closed her eyes at one point, feeling her heartbeat in temples. She focused on that until a heavy thud sounded just to the left of her hand and when she opened her eyes, her boots awaited her. 

 

“Now,” Vander demanded as he stood back up and rubbed at his legs as if his knees ached. “Put on your damned boots.” The man dusted off his hands and crossed his arms. Powder poured out what water was in the bowl out a ways from the stream and took the cloth Vander had cleaned Vi’s wounds over to the creek to rinse it.  

 

Vi put on her damned boots. 

 

She didn’t have time to feel guilty for worrying anyone when she was busy feeling stupid for getting into the situation in the first place. Why had she really rushed out without them? Waiting on Vander to get ready, she could’ve shoved her feet into her boots. Even if that hadn’t been true, what was the big hurry that an extra minute would’ve been a big loss? For all she knew, she’d already been too late to stop Powder from having to take a shot at an animal. In the end she ended up letting it happen, anyway.

 

Why hadn’t she just taken a second to think and avoid messing up her feet?

 

Back home she absolutely would’ve: no one who had the choice walked around the Lanes barefoot. That was a one way ticket to infection city. 

 

“Hey,” Vi called out to Powder as she slowly and tentatively stood up. Immediately it was clear that a little cleaning and cloth bandages were not going to be enough to take away the pain. There was some value in the compression from the bandages but she had the feeling that if she didn’t sit back down some time soon, she’d be hurting the same way she’d been on the way to down the stream in pretty short order. Powder looked up and back at her as Ekko took the opportunity to flick the girl in the face with cold water from a foot away. 

 

She watched Powder glare into Ekko’s smirk. Then the time felt right to say her piece to her sister. 

 

“I was wrong, Powder.” This drew the girl’s attention back around from the idea of plotting vengeance on her friend. Vi became very aware that Ekko, Mylo and Vander were all in easy earshot and that, at no fault of Powder’s own, Vi and Mylo had just had an argument about Vi ‘coddling’ her sister. The girl nonetheless paused.  

 

“What?” Powder crossed her arms over her chest, trapping the bowl between them and herself and stood clean up with the washrag resting over her right shoulder. Vi watched the way she started to hunch in on herself. 

 

“I was wrong. I should’ve listened to what you wanted. Should’ve let you come with us. Not just yesterday but - you’ve tried before. I should’ve listened. Just wanted you to know.” Vi nodded and was about to turn away and leave it at that when Powder tried to push off the apology. 

 

“Maybe not. I couldn’t -” 

 

“You don’t have to.” Vi insisted, not looking either Powder or Mylo in the face. She did match eyes with Vander, who shrugged impercetibly as if to say he didn’t think she was doing wrong. “You don’t have to shoot if you don’t want. You could still come out and help. Maybe you see something when whoever you’re out with doesn’t and they shoot. Or maybe you take the shot when you’re ready. You should still be a part of it, if you want to.” For just a second when Vi looked back at her sister, Powder was her hesitant self. 

 

Then Powder’s face smoothed and she nodded and she uncurled . It only brought half a smile to the girl’s face but it was enough. Vi didn’t feel like smiling too much, either. She shrugged one shoulder when Vander placed a hand on the other and turned her back toward the path they’d been taking to the farm. 

 

“That’s enough of all that. Let’s get you back to the house. You’ll be off your feet for a couple of days.” Vi hadn’t intended to argue with the man when he tried to shuffle her along. However, she took one experimental step forward before his words registered and she swung her head right back around. 

 

“A couple of what?” The idea of just sitting on her ass for two days was kind of an affront. 

 

“You heard me,” Vander lifted his scraggly chin and pointed again back in the direction of the shack. 

 

“It’s okay,” Powder called from the stream, just now coming ashore. “Claggor’s going to town in a little bit. He can tell Caras so he can come take care of you.” 

 

“Push it,” Vi warned her sister without turning back. Vander tried twice to make Vi put some of her weight against him so she wouldn’t be stressing out her feet. She eventually relented. “Let’s see how that works out for you.” Ekko laughed from somewhere by the stream but it was Mylo that Vi looked for when she shot one last look over her shoulder. He hung back at the edge of the creek a little awkwardly, so she tilted her head in the direction of the house to encourage him to get moving. 

 

Mylo didn’t entirely catch up with her until they emerged from the woods near the northern edge of a western field. That didn’t mean he was silent on the way back, like he had been over the last two or three minutes, though. At first he wanted to tease her on how long the pieces of twig Vander had pulled out of her right foot were. However, in the relative quiet between spurts of conversation she mostly listened to, she did hear something that she thought it was best she didn’t acknowledge for fear of annoying the boy. 

 

He confessed during a little lull in the talk to Powder that Powder had been the first of them to see the rabbit she’d taken a shot at that morning, and that he wouldn’t have seen it without her. Whether it was true or a peace offering or even just trying to support Vi’s own view that having Powder as another set of eyes out in the woods would be helpful, Powder thanked him. Vi thought she should pretend to have missed that, too. 

 

“Don’t think this means you won’t be running mitt drills,” Vi promised Ekko a few minutes later when she was lowered down onto the edge of their singular bed and the boy made a big show of gesturing impressively toward the boots which she’d just disposed of near the door. Ekko did not break his exaggerated pose, pointing both open hands toward her shoes. She could take her a few lumps, as ridiculous as she felt about it all. 

 

It was nothing compared to the more serious screw ups and failures she was still trying to grapple with. 

 

“I’ll sit outside and watch if I have to.” Vi added this to Powder. “So, no matter how much he deserves it, no ‘accidentally’ decking Ekko.” Her sister rolled her eyes, but, across the room Claggor finally spoke up for the first time since their return. He hurriedly slung rice into various bowls and cups throughout the room. She did not need to ask to know that he was late. He usually left for Airus just before sunup. It was almost bright outside, now. 

 

“Here,” he said, nodding toward a bowl on the tiny bit of kitchen counter they had to their name. Claggor didn’t seem to have any questions about how much longer it had taken her to get back to the shack. “Breakfast.” 

 

“Speaking of,” she sighed. “I guess I won’t be hunting any time soon.” 

 

“I could go back out. Didn’t really get started.” Mylo made the offer but shrugged it off at the exact same time. 

 

“Well, you’re the only one of us who’s gotten close to a big score.” Vi didn’t want to push the issue but he might be their best bet at some meat and she knew one thing: it wouldn’t hurt her to get some protein in while she was healing up. 

 

“I’ll go with you - after we eat,” Vander promised Mylo. Vi was kind of looking forward to the quiet. If the other two got back to work on the thresher or could handle practicing alone, Vi wanted to spend the day thinking. She’d done a lot of that lately, but now she felt as if she’d been thinking about all the wrong things. That, and it was already starting to wear her down to act like she didn’t feel gutted at the moment. 

 

“I gotta get outta here,” Claggor informed them as Vi continued just such an act. “I’ll drop by Orkis and Caras’ place, ask him to come take care of you.” Forgetting to feel bad or guilty or sad for a moment more, Vi lifted her eyes from where Powder had just passed her and Ekko both a bowl and raised an eyebrow at the back of Claggor’s head. 

 

“What do you think’ll happen if you do?” she asked, squinting his way. 

 

“Nothing if I can walk and you can’t!” 

 

“I’m not supposed to,” she corrected, placing the still steaming hot bowl down on her right knee. Even through her pants it was burning hot. “Doesn’t mean I can’t.” 

 

“No, it means you won’t.” Vander took his own breakfast from Claggor and settled into a space between the low fire and the rest of the room. His back had to be warm. “We might only have a few weeks until harvest and sewing. Can’t have you off your feet for that.” That was a thought. Vi sighed and leaned forward a little bit, feeling tired. At least she was still now. At least her teeth weren’t chattering. At least she felt like herself; just a version of herself that would’ve probably walked off into the woods to be alone that afternoon if she’d been permitted to. Powder sat down atop Vi’s still unfolded bedding while Ekko balanced on his bound bedroll as if it were a chair. 

 

She did not argue with Vander and didn’t really bite on what little conversation there was. A little morose himself, Mylo talked about going a different direction out into the woods because they’d probably spooked animals away for the day where he’d started. Claggor shoveled the entire contents of a cup of overly wet rice into his mouth in a hurry and then left the house only with shouted goodbyes. Ekko wondered out loud if the days were getting cooler or warmer because the last couple had been mild but before that, not so much. 

 

Only Powder really shared Vi’s quiet, though. Perhaps more than the last few days combined, Vi felt horrible. Despite confronting Mylo actually resulting in a conversation that wasn’t a fight, despite the fact that it had come about because she wanted to fix something, well, she just felt worse. It had probably been the second worst month of Vi’s life and in that time she’d done a lot she never would’ve guessed: learned how to plant wheat, shoot a bow (as well as she could, at least) and even speak a few words of a brand new language. 

 

She’d even started to actually get her sister and Ekko into the kind of shape where she might start to bet on them in a fight with people around their own size. 

 

But in all that time the only problem she had maybe fixed was one she’d caused by just not talking to Mylo, by not thinking past her own self-pity. Sure, it was similarly indulgent to complain about that, but the morning had not left her feeling good. She wasn’t even sure she felt better. What, in thirty some days in Noxus and two weeks on a boat, had she actually accomplished? Did they have their home back? No. Was Silco out of the picture? No. 

 

Perhaps the worst thing was that that same time had given her so many questions she still couldn’t answer. 

 

Was she ever going home? Was she losing her mind? Were Ekko and Powder, specifically, in danger that even Vander must’ve felt helpless against? 

 

He hasn’t even talked about it since that night. 

 

“You know,” she exhaled and looked up. Her thought was washed away when she looked around the room to find only herself and Ekko remaining. There was no sign of anyone else. When did Vander and Mylo leave? When did Powder? Vi resisted the urge to ask Ekko where her sister was when the boy looked up from what she guessed to be some kind of wooden crank shaft he was making out of handcarved round rods. “Uh.” Ekko’s pale eyebrow raised. “Never mind.” 

 

“Okay,” he shrugged one shoulder. “Powder went over to the well real quick.” Vi nodded at the boy and after a second of racing thoughts and fears she thought it best to still keep to herself, she finally scooted back on the bed. Even bringing the heels of her wrapped feet into the action hurt, though, so she did not quite get her back against the wall. 

 

“Hey, Ekko?” she drew his attention back from taking Kutter’s knife to one of the rods. Vi groaned as she laid her legs flat and took pressure off her feet. 

 

“What?” 

 

“Are you okay?” The question was long overdue. Or more, pushing the issue was long overdue. Time and time again he’d come to her for help when things in Noxus or on the Iconagra got bad. That was, until he’d found her lying in the middle of the woods fighting specters. Either he didn’t think she could help him anymore or he felt bad about bringing whatever had him worried to her. The problem was she felt she’d never really done anything other than tell him that ‘everything will be okay’. As nice of a thought as it was, Vi wasn’t sure it had helped anything or if he’d believed her, after all. 

 

“I’m okay,” the pale haired boy responded, looking at her as if she was being stupid. “I stayed here this morning and didn’t go running out there barefoot, remember?” Before he could so much as nod his head in the direction of her discarded boots Vi waved her hand to blow off his ribbing and continued wriggling back until she was sat more comfortably on the bed with the wall at her back. 

 

“Mylo got me thinking about some shit and no matter what, none of us are disappearing on you.” Ekko tried to appear confused by the statement, shrugging and looking back down at the wooden rod in hand. “Seriously. You’re not losing us.” Vi didn’t buy the confusion. She recognized the way he wouldn't meet her eyes pretty well. It might’ve been a bad habit he’d picked up from Powder: he usually wasn’t particularly shy. Then again, this was one of those things that was hard to talk about . 

 

“I know.” 

 

“Even if Powder makes a new friend it doesn’t mean -” Ekko looked up all of a sudden, clearly embarrassed. 

 

“I - I know!” He was insistent, putting down the knife and the crank he was working on in front of him. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, though, so he immediately picked the rod back up. 

 

“Just because bad shit happens and we lose people sometimes doesn’t mean you’re losing her, or me or any of us.” If Mylo could make an assumption like he had, Ekko was certainly capable of making the same one. She’d already seen signs he was getting nervous about Sinnan hanging around Powder and maybe even a little hurt and trying to pass it off as joking with her sister. 

 

“I just - I don’t know.” Again, Ekko shrugged and looked ready to move on. So again, Vi pushed. There was no way in hell she wanted to see Ekko feel like Mylo had. She didn’t want to know what it might look like if Ekko decided that he’d lost his best friend. She could remember how lost she’d felt at the idea of losing Vander and being left there, in Noxus, with no home and without the rest of her family.

 

“I’m serious. You’re stuck with us. End of story.” The boy sighed. Instead of continuing to try to not engage, he set aside the crank again and turned to look directly at her. One hand pushing back his growing hair, he continued to try to find words. Vi decided to give him a second or two, this time. 

 

“I just - it’s stupid, but I don’t want to, you know.” She didn’t know, exactly, but she could guess how that sentence might end. When he didn’t finish within a moment and, knowing she had no idea how long she’d been spacing out or when Powder might return, Vi just fell back on telling him what she wished she’d been told that evening Ekko had led her back to the farm. She fell back on telling him what she wished her blood parents had told her before they’d gone off to the bridge. 

 

“Whatever else happens, you’re not going to be alone.” 

 

“But Benzo is,” Ekko replied, almost immediately. Vi closed her eyes but nodded and didn’t open them except to look down at her hands. 

 

“Sure he misses you too, Little Man, but everyone knows you run with us. He probably thought that made you a target. He was probably right, too.” When she glanced up at Ekko, he looked to reluctantly accept the response. That wasn’t exactly an issue solved, but she hoped it at least acknowledged how he was feeling and what he might be scared about. “For what it’s worth, he just wanted you safe.” 

 

“Doesn’t make it feel any better.” She could peg him talking about missing Benzo in front of the others. She couldn’t really mark a time he’d talked about how it made him feel bad. Vi nodded her understanding, though, and began to think about whether or not she wanted to lie down and just let herself drift off. She thought she’d spend the day moping instead if she tried to sleep. “Vi, I think you and I are the only ones who want to go home.” 

 

“I don’t think so.” Vi glanced over to the front door of the shack, where only her own footwear and Ekko’s awaited. She wasn’t sure if the boy had ever explicitly come up to her and told her he wanted to go home, before. “There’s Mylo, who I’m pretty sure never wanted to leave and maybe doesn’t want to be here any more than I do. Everyone else probably misses home too, even Powder. It’s complicated for them. Not complicated for you or me but who knows, maybe it will be.” She decided to level with him on one thing, though: “I’m not sure what Vander wants. Bet he’d go back if he could, though.”

 

“What happens if we ever can?” Good question. 

 

“I don’t know,” Vi admitted. There were cobwebs in the rafters overhead. She stared at one for several seconds. “Guess we’ll figure that out together if we get the chance.” 

 

“Alright.”

 

“Just do me a favor.” Vi looked back down from the aged wood above to where Ekko had picked up the pieces of a crankshaft he was making better fit together. “Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t run off to go back without us. I don’t want to lose you anymore than you want to lose Benzo.” Vi had originally thought to say this as a ‘well, duh’ type statement. An expression of affection, more than anything else. 

 

That’s why it scared her when Ekko sighed too heavily, too shakily, as if she was genuinely asking him not to do something he’d been thinking about. It scared her enough to give up some of the ground she’d made in scooting back to move over to the edge of the bed nearest Ekko and hold out her right fist in his direction. After a second during which an alarming amount of thought crossed his face, Ekko leaned forward and bumped her right fist with his left. 

 

“I’m think I’m gonna see if Powder wants to go find something to make a brick mold,” Ekko told her as he pushed to his feet. When she only nodded, he crossed over to the front door, waved both hands like a magician trying to draw your attention away from his trick and then made a show of putting on his boots. Vi’s smile was plastic, but she kept it in place for a few moments  longer. “When we get one made, you gonna put us through mitt drills?” 

 

“Yeah,” Vi promised. He rolled up the legs of old jeans too wide and too long for him and left her in the shack, finally alone except for the very faint sound of a low hearthfire. As soon as the door had shut behind him, Vi leaned back, grabbed the pillow and shoved it under her head then curled up quietly on her side. She faced away from the rest of the shack and looked only at the wall, the corner the bed sat in. 

 

Vi closed her eyes tightly. 

 

I don’t know if that helped anything but I had to try something new. 

 

Try as she might, she couldn’t dig her way out of feeling bad. She did as promised: sat out front under the roof and mostly stayed off of her feet while walking Ekko and Powder through some training with the punch mitts. She wished not just for their sake but for her own that they had a heavy bag she could really let loose on. She’d plastered a fake smile on her face and for most of the afternoon even managed not to space out, or fall down many deep holes when it came to the thoughts still running through her head. 

 

Between Claggor the day before and Mylo that morning, she felt as if she’d been doing everything wrong over the last few weeks. Worse, she felt like she’d barely been trying, barely been paying attention, barely done anything productive. It would have been so easy to focus on this, to second guess everything she’d said over the entire last month and change. It just felt like maybe it would be wrong of her to ‘go away’ the way she often had when they first moved. 

 

That didn’t mean she didn’t take opportunities to find moments to not be around everyone. It was easier to pick at little thoughts and feelings and pull individual threads without worrying that she was upsetting or freaking anyone out when there were less people around. Mylo spent the day leaning more toward quiet than not and he and Vander failed to come back with any meat, but had found themselves a surprise in the way of more of that wild spinach Vander liked so much. They had a dinner that was a little different from the one before. 

 

Ekko and Powder talked through the email about spending the next day gathering clay and maybe even sand from the stream. Claggor eventually returned with the relieving news that they hadn’t made him so late to Vavros’ forge that the man was angry. Vander finally started again on making cordage from bark of one kind of tree or another with the idea of twisting it into twine they could hang clothes from. 

 

And at some point or another Mylo even apologized to Claggor for ‘ignoring you the day before.’ It had clearly been awkward for Mylo and the room falling silent around her had made it clear the others knew. Claggor’s response of just shrugging and telling him they were square, now had been exactly what Mylo seemed to have wanted. He remained quiet for the rest of dinner but Vi could’ve sworn he’d smiled the next time Claggor’s back was turned. 

 

Her brothers definitely handled feelings differently than her. Sometimes way worse, sometimes way better. After all, at least those two hadn’t waited more than a month to talk it out. 

 

She joined Vander just outside the shack when it came time to wash the dishes in a little bit of soapy water. Thinking about how Mylo hadn’t been taking much care of himself, or the way just about everyone was starting to have to deal with longer hair (save for Vander himself after his relatively fresh cut) Vi wondered about something. During a pause between bowls, sat at Vander’s side, Vi broached her question. 

 

Overhead, the clouds were starting to clear out of the night sky which was still almost blue to the west. 

 

“How much soap do we have left?” 

 

“Not enough,” the man admitted with a grimace. He hauled a spoon up, rinsed it off in a second bucket and sat it aside on top of half of an old pillow case, the other half of which was now wrapped around her feet in shreds. Vi didn’t comment on the fact that they’d only had two pillowcases and that meant Vander was doing without. “Enough for now.” She considered this for a second. 

 

How long was now going to be ? 

 

“Ekko asked me something. I told him we’d have to figure it out when it happened but I don’t know.” Vander nodded very slightly. She could see his features about as well as he could see the dishes with light from the open front door spilling out. She did not try to keep her voice too low. What was the point of pretending not to have questions or not to be worried? “What’ll happen if we ever find out we can go back home?” 

 

She wasn’t surprised when he tilted his head as if to signify he was thinking and then stayed quiet for quite a few seconds. Honestly, if he’d had a good answer ready from the beginning, she’d have been surprised. Vander finished wiping out another bowl and rinsing it before he did give her the answer she expected. Try as she might, this just made her feel a little more dejected. 

 

“I don’t know.” The whole day had been mellow and now diamond-like pinpoints of white were starting to fill the sky. Now it was time for them to start to calm down from the day, to start getting ready to sleep. She was still thinking about the same things she’d been focused on since being practically carried up the hill that morning, though. Vi, shoulders drooping, decided not to push the issue. After washing out one of their larger clay mugs, though, Vander did continue. “Safe to say I know where you land on the issue. Ekko and Mylo too.” 

 

That confirmed her suspicions about some of Mylo’s comments to her and the way he’d lashed out when she talked about home a few days prior. 

 

‘ Stop, stop, stop trying to make it like home! It’s not home! It will never be home!’ Her brother had sounded so desperately hurt by a mostly imagined comparison of Noxus to The Lanes. If she hadn’t been so busy being mad at him, she might’ve asked about that, she might’ve worried about that. 

 

“But your sister’s happy here, eh?” Vander prodded, like he wanted her to agree with him. He was right, of course. This was supposed to be, judging by the tone of his voice, one of those ‘conspiratorial’ conversations where he really opened up to her. “Has her own demons still, worse than I ever knew. Still happier than I’ve ever seen her when those demons go quiet.” Sure, but there’s a literal magic woman that sometimes comes by and harasses her, Vi thought about arguing. She didn’t want to burst Vander’s bubble because she was starting to wonder if he was trying to convince himself as much as her. 

 

“Claggor’s getting a good chance. New things he can study and learn. Ekko too. You and Mylo could have those same opportunities, I think.” Vander lowered his rag back to the rim of the wash bucket and made sure to make eye contact so that she couldn’t retreat from the conversation. When she didn’t immediately give way, couldn’t immediately come up with a response, Vander continued to make his point. 

 

“There’s a lot of chances here we wouldn’t be able to afford back home. You could do like those three are. Learn things, things you enjoy, things that set you up for the future.” His eyes were a little uncomfortable. There was just a little bit of pleading in them. It hadn’t seeped into his voice but she could see it. It would be easier for Vander if she just suddenly loved it here. 

 

The problem was, Vander was either lying to himself or trying to lie to her to spare her feelings about something. 

 

He was wrong to say she could do the same thing. Powder and Ekko were obvious: they were really smart mechanically. Ekko could fix almost anything and if you put an idea in his head he didn’t stop until he made it happen. Powder tinkered, recreated or even invented things from scratch like it was easy for her, even if they usually took a lot of fine tuning to make work right. Claggor was strong and liked making things, clearly had a talent for it. Mylo had proven time and time again he was good with his hands if he took a notion to put them to use. 

 

Vi, though? 

 

I’ve never made anything in my life. 

 

The things Vi was good at didn’t build or create anything. They broke things. She could fight. She could run. That was about it. 

 

There was no fight here for her that wouldn’t bring down a mountain on their heads. With time, she might be able to learn to keep the fields planted and harvested or how to hunt better. She might be some muscle for people needing work done around the village of Airus. That was different than what Ekko, Powder and Claggor were doing. They’d found something they were good at and had fun doing and were making things better . 

 

“I don’t know,” Vi settled on saying when the man did not look away from her. “I don’t have anything like that.” He sighed and shrugged a shoulder and she thought for a second of shouting at him that he already knew that. He had to know that she hit things and that was about it. It was all she’d ever learned to do outside of reading. She did not shout. Instead, after a few seconds, she pushed the conversation back to The Undercity. “What would it take for us to go home?” 

 

“For starters, we’ll need Silco handled. Pretty clear he’s just gonna keep coming after you all.” Even in her desire to make any argument that would get her back where she belonged, Vi couldn’t pretend that ‘maybe Silco forgot about us’ was even worth the breath it would take to speak it. The strange little man was clearly good at holding a grudge long term. “Considering I haven’t gotten any messages from home in all this time or even seen Kutter, don’t think it’s happened yet. Maybe not any time soon.” 

 

“You think Benzo lost?” This one, Vi did whisper for Ekko’s sake. He could be near enough to hear. She looked over her shoulder and found the doorway to the shack empty, though. That didn’t really mean he wasn’t listening. They were sat only a foot or so from the front of the shack. He and anyone else in the room could have their ears at the window. 

 

“Lost?” Vander looked like he didn’t like considering the idea for a second. Maybe it was too real for him, maybe just something he didn’t want to think too hard about. Her father shrugged his right shoulder and tried to play the awkward pause off. “Maybe, maybe not. But he probably hasn’t won, yet. We’d know. He’d at least send word to get Ekko back and there’s ways for news to travel that are faster than ships on the sea. Airships, for one thing.” 

 

“Will you take us home when Silco’s out of the way?” That was the question she’d meant to ask him to begin with. He’d done his best to answer what she’d actually gotten out, so she didn’t hold it against him. Though her stomach threatened to churn her dinner over in anxiety, to his credit, he leveled with her immediately. 

 

“I don’t know,” Vander said softly, words barely loud enough to overcome the sound of him washing the last of the dishes. “It’ll depend on when. It’ll depend on what the family wants.” Vi nodded but closed her eyes. In a way, it wasn’t a particularly shocking answer. He did not reveal anything he’d been playing close to his chest. It was just the confirmation of an idea she’d let herself think about once or twice but never for too long. 

 

Drawing her knees up, she rested her arms against them and her head against those arms. Her forehead felt very warm. She just felt a little warm, in general.

 

You can swallow this, too. You can, Violet insisted to herself.

 

“So, we might not go home again.” Vi thought if she allowed herself to say it, she might be able to get used to it. Vander, though, reacted as if she was being difficult by just stating the obvious. He sighed. She frowned but kept her eyes closed and did not grab at her own anger. She felt low enough without it, for once. 

 

“Would it be so bad?” he asked, as if just hoping she’d admit he was right. 

 

“Yes.” Vi insisted. “Tried this conversation with you before. With Powder. With Claggor. It would be so bad.” The idea that that whole life was gone and she’d never be able to go back and square the score or keep her promise to Powder to earn the city’s respect - it all felt bad. It felt wrong, like she’d failed. On top of it all, however poor conditions were, she’d been born there, grown up there. “It would be so bad.” 

 

“I think you could like it here if you opened up more. If you were here more. At least you’ve got someone ‘round Airus that wants to be your friend. You’ve got your family, here. Plenty of people don’t even have those things . ” Some of her family was buried back home, though, and had died trying to make that home better. Who was she to run from the same promise?

 

“Even if I loved it here, it isn’t home. ” It would be nice if he tried to understand how she felt even if that understanding changed nothing. She wasn’t sure if he did, or if he could. 

 

“Well, worst case, there’ll come an age you can set out on your own. I could try to wrangle you a ride back there.” Vi lifted her head long enough to look at the grass at her feet. She played with the idea for a second and then shook her head with Mylo’s face firmly in her thoughts. 

 

“Can’t.” She wasn’t talking to Vander, which is why she leaned her forehead back against her arms. This was her promising something to herself. “I shouldn’t leave everyone.” She did not see much or hear anything other than wind and water, so she missed Vander’s expression when he tried a different approach to trying to force her to like being here. 

 

“You used to say that all that fire, all that trouble you were getting into back in the Lanes was because you wanted Powder to have a better life.” Vi opened her eyes again and looked up this time. He looked like he was trying to speak delicately to her, trying not to piss her off. “I think you should think about whether or not she has it, whether or not we all have it.” She wasn’t a fan of having those words thrown back at her. They had been true. They were still true, she thought. 

 

“What about everyone else back in the Lanes?” 

 

“Well, that was always the question I asked myself too.” With one final splash in the rinse bucket, Vander finished the dishes and began to work his neck and shoulders to loosen up muscles. “You said you didn’t think you were going to end up like me, but I’m not so sure you got away from that soon enough, kiddo.” Vi tried that idea on for size, too. At one point, Vander had wanted to fight for the Lanes. Just because he stopped fighting didn’t mean he stopped caring. 

 

Vander spent more time trying to help out ‘their people’ than anyone else Vi knew, even when all he had to give was time and labor. 

 

“Think it’s time to go on in.” Vander glanced once up at the sky she’d been watching earlier. She followed suit, seeing for the first time in a long time that some of the stars above her weren’t exactly white. One or two looked to have shades of red or orange about them. When they’d first arrived, she’d spent the night out front multiple times. 

 

With everything going through her mind it sounded like a good idea, again. 

 

“I think I’ll stay out here tonight.” Vander took a second or so to get to his feet, grabbing at each bucket and hefting them up from the ground. 

 

“You sure about that?” Vi nodded in response and then began to scoot forward carefully, so that she could turn and lie with her head sticking out from under the overhang of the roof. If she was going to sit up and brood, it might be nice to have something pretty to look at when she wasn’t brooding. The ceiling of their little one-room shelter did not serve that purpose. “Pretty sure they were going to let you have the bed tonight.” He prodded, trying to tempt her into going inside with him. 

 

She spun on her rear and leaned back slowly, reaching her injured feet for the wall of the shack. Vander shrugged when she did not immediately change her mind. 

 

“Fair enough. I’m gonna go empty these then see if someone will bring you out a pillow and a blanket. It’s starting to get too cold to do this.” She flashed a smile briefly in Vander’s direction but wasn’t certain he had light enough left to see it by. Vander left her be after that and she listened to, more than watched, him leave, returning after a good solid minute or two with the buckets emptied, dumped no doubt down the northern face of the hill. 

 

Vander wished her a goodnight in a tired voice and she returned it even though there really felt like very little good about it. The morning had been hard but at least informative. The rest of the day had dragged on. The night however, had sort of kicked her last hopes of seeing home any time soon to the curb. 

 

“Violet,” Vander paused in the door, a bundle of their freshly cleaned dishes balanced atop the buckets in his arms. “I know this doesn’t feel good now but it’ll get better.” 

 

“Okay.” Vi hoped he was right. She hoped soon she could silence her regrets, because he clearly would rather she not talk about them. 

 

Vander shut the front door behind him. Vi kept her eyes on the sky. She looked for signs of the clouds she’d been eyeing earlier but as far as she could tell from where she lay there really weren’t any. The waning moon was clear and sharp. The same unending circles of thought that she had been stuck in for a month or more kept her company with the same sharpness . That was sort of how she expected the whole night to go. 

 

A few minutes later, the door opened again. Glancing down the length of herself, she was a little surprised to see Mylo emerge with her backpack in one hand and her bedroll under the other arm. He hesitated on the threshold and it felt polite so she gave a brief wave, then looked back up. 

 

“Hey,” Mylo offered, throwing her bedroll underhand so that it landed near her head. The bag he took a second to actually walk over to her. Though, she didn’t think it was nearly heavy enough it would’ve hurt him to toss it, too. “Are you - are you okay?” 

 

“I don’t think I have a choice. So I will be. Just not tonight.” When she looked back his way, unable to make out his eyes in the dark, he nodded. “Are you?” Mylo considered her question for several seconds as she sat up and began to unfold her blankets. When she had mostly laid out one of them, though still folded in half lengthwise, he landed on his answer. 

 

“No.” Mylo was quiet. Even a little hesitant. She didn’t really have anything better to say to his answer than he had to hers so she was quiet to give him space to continue. Instead, he jerked his right thumb over his shoulder. “Ekko and Powder wanted to crash out here, too, but Vander thought you’d wanna be alone.” 

 

Instinctively, after morning ended and training ended, Vi had sort of shut herself off from the others. It’d been easy: she’d worked out the best ways to make herself alone even in the same room as the rest of the family and Ekko or Benzo a while back. She’d employed the same tactics day in and day out once they climbed aboard the Iconagra. Lately, she’d even taken to actually spending large portions of her afternoon away from everyone, venturing into the treeline and finding somewhere shady to exercise or just to sit and nap. 

 

Instinctively she opened her mouth to confirm the idea. The thing was, she’d really started to feel alone, the last few days. She felt lonely. It was lonely to feel like the one most driven to get home. Outside of Powder and Ekko’s training sessions, outside of planting the fields weeks ago, outside of one pleasant dream that had left her devastated and sick to her stomach when she’d woken up, well, Vi was tired of feeling lonely. 

 

If anyone was gonna get that, then maybe it was Mylo, considering the things he’d confided in her that morning. 

 

“I don’t,” she told the boy only a couple of steps from the door already. “I don’t want to be alone.” I’ll be better. Vi kept the last promise to herself. She’d tried to make it once or twice to others but thought she’d fallen short. Mylo nodded once, a little slowly, and then went right back inside without bothering to shut the door. She clearly heard him tell Ekko and Powder that Vi was fine with them joining her and it took little more than half a minute before they emerged with their own bedrolls in their arms. 

 

Powder was the last of them to step out. She shut the door behind herself and did not say a word. Ekko crossed over Vi at her feet and moved around to her right side while Powder approached on her left. 

 

Outside, they had the space to spread out a little bit, have a little more room and still be close to the house. That wasn’t exactly how it played out. While the three were spared being packed in like sardines, no great amount of distance split the spots the duo placed their bedding down from hers. She amused herself watching them measure out right angles from her without stopping to greet her. When they finally settled down it was with little more than three or four inches between their heads and her own. Vi looked back up at the night sky in the middle of the whole routine. 

 

Ekko snickered quietly from just a few inches off when Powder had trouble getting the layers of her bedroll open. 

 

Given the strange woman who’d come wandering around their land and left Powder and Ekko so upset, Vi thought it unlikely they were coming out because they wanted to sleep out front. 

 

“Thanks,” she told them both without looking down at either. Ekko hummed under his breath for a moment, pretending not to hear her. 

 

“What for?” Powder asked from Vi’s other side when he didn’t take the bait. Vi turned her head and tilted it back, craning her neck a bit to look at her sister’s face in profile. 

 

“For looking out for me. You always are.” Vi looked right back up at the sky. “Both of you. I’m not stupid enough not to notice that.” 

 

Neither responded and that was alright. She hoped the night would be like before the disappearing woman had come and bothered them to begin with. She didn’t think she would’ve kept her cool those first few nights in Noxus without the ability to lie outside in cool air and watch the coolest thing the country had to offer her. Those had been the closest to good nights this place had given her. 

 

She wasn’t tired enough to sleep yet, but did not immediately fall into that brooding place. 

 

“Do you think mom or dad ever saw anything like this?” Vi grew very still and picked out a patch of sky directly above her to trace its stars with her eyes. She kind of wanted to ignore the question. Vi knew the answer. Powder knew the answer. Ekko knew the answer. There was no way any of their parents had ever seen a sky like this one. When no one pressed, Vi thought the moment would get away from them and they could just enjoy seeing something people didn’t get to see in the Undercity. 

 

She bet even Topside didn’t have all these stars. Also, what was with that weird band of the sky where the stars were closer together? Had she even noticed that before? She chuckled at the idea she might’ve had four or five nights out front like this and never seen that before. Vi was actually about to raise a hand to point it out to the others but stopped when Powder started to hum the same notes Ekko had a few moments before. 

 

Somehow, when her sister’s did so, Vi recognized it. She genuinely smiled at the opening notes of the old lullaby their blood parents had sung to them. When humming gave way to words and Powder started to sing to herself, Vi allowed a moment of indulgence and then followed along. 

 

‘ Dear friend across the river,

My hands are cold and bare.

Dear friend across the river,

I'll take what you can spare.’ 

 

Vi inhaled, and joined in. It wasn’t until Ekko joined, though, that Powder raised her voice to match his volume. It wasn’t until Vi heard their three voices together that something started to stir in her stomach. 

 

There was more to the song once upon a time. She only remembered bits and pieces, snatches of lines from other verses. The largest chunk she could recall was a pair of lines that she never sang to Powder after they’d lost their parents. She’d understood even before that age that those two lines were the song ending with the death of the ‘singer’. She’d been afraid that even if she could remember the whole song, the ending would just make Powder think about their parents. 

 

Vi hadn’t consciously thought of those lines or that decision not to teach them to Powder in a long, long time. 

 

Just when she’d thought that, against all odds, she might have a good night after all, Vi felt her eyes watering up. She tried to follow along with the repeated verse but her words came out throaty and wrong. There came again, all at once, the lump in her throat from that morning. Lately it had been an empty threat, a promise of tears that never came. This time - this time, Vi slammed her right hand over her own mouth. 

 

‘We raise no mighty towers,

Our homes are built of stone.’

 

That night in the road, before the hallucinations took her for a ride, Vi had but begged the dark to just let her fucking cry. Now, as it tore its way out of a place deep in her chest, she felt like every part of her body had lost its strength all at once. When the first tear fell she blinked, trying to push it away and regain control. Her right hand clamped harder over her mouth but there was no stifling it when she finally cried, mo squeezing her throat shut against the sobs. 

 

Powder’s voice sounded too damned much like their mother’s. 

 

‘So come across the river,’ 

 

Vi whispered the most selfish complaints behind her hand and closed her eyes tightly. She shuddered, shook despite herself as she spat out things she wouldn’t be able to look the rest of her family in the eye if they heard. 

 

We could have been so much more back home. I could’ve been so much more. I don’t know what I am, here. I could’ve fixed things. 

 

If everyone else got to air their feelings, Vi was allowed to at least whisper hers into the palm of her hand. 

 

‘And find the world below.’ 

 

The other two fell quiet at the end of the verse but Vi did feel Powder reach up and rest the back of her hand on Vi’s shoulder. She didn’t have the heart to tell them why the song would never be the same for her again. 

Notes:

So, here we are. The last chapter of Surface Pressure done and dusted and at last actual communication among the family. It took them a hard month of trying to hide from their struggles, but piece by piece the dominoes fell. There should be more written in this timeline in the future, hopefully not the too distant future, either. For now, though, hang tight for one last surprise in this story next week. Really, truly, thanks for anyone who read along with all this. It's been a story that has meant a lot to me.

Chapter 24: Epilogue

Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I do not own. This is entirely a work of fan fiction for personal amusement and fulfillment. I make nothing from this and own none of it. 

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Epilogue

 

When they first planted the fields of ‘their’ farm the sun had been brutal. It had been so hot she’d gotten sick from it. If she’d known then that by the time of their first harvest she would’ve considered that weather pleasant, Vi wasn’t sure she would’ve had it in her to go through with it. 

 

To say that the summer sun had been glaring down on them over the last day and a half was an understatement. Even taking risks of overheating by wearing her jacket and keeping its hood up, her hands and lower arms were awfully pink and even raising her eyebrows made the skin of her forehead sting. 

 

Her face was nearly as red in a day and a half of summer sun as it had gotten during three days of planting in the spring. 

 

Other things were better, though. They all knew to cover as much of themselves as they safely could in loose layers and they took easily three times as many breaks to sit in the shade and drink water. While the scythe made by Claggor, Ekko and Powder was nice for cutting down the grass around the shack and the shed, it wasn’t really precise enough for harvesting the spring wheat. That was where the pair of sickles they’d gotten to take part in forming came in. There was no doubt in Vi’s mind that they would have been in the fields another day or so with the wrong tools or no tools at all. 

 

She laughed to herself and despite it irritating her burnt face she dragged the back of her left arm over her forehead to wipe away sweat. One and a half days to harvest half of the planting-ready land the farm had to offer didn’t seem like a bad deal, to her. 

 

It was a little weird though, a little surprising to be nearly done so quickly. She turned the sickle over in one hand and looked about herself. Done is probably not the right word. Off in the direction of the small chunk of one field that they’d planted potatoes in, Mylo was driving a pair of borrowed oxen and their plow over the earth. Vander thought there was a chance harvesting the potatoes had left enough crap behind they’d need to plow it before planting their cooler months’ crop of wheat in maybe two or three weeks. 

 

The man in question stood between the two largest western fields, just far enough away to be hard to talk to even if she shouted, and from there oversaw the last of Mylo’s work. 

 

Vi was fine with that. She didn’t mind being part of the last harvest team. She didn’t mind that they’d probably only have two weeks without the aches and the sunburns they’d gotten from the harvest before planting the next batch. Vi was just happy that they could stop once the last bundle of wheat was dropped in the sunniest parts of the field and relax a little before starting to thresh because, damn it was hot. Last time they hadn’t taken enough breaks or celebrated any amount of progress; it had been push, push, push, push. 

 

Tonight? 

 

Tonight she was going to celebrate it, even if that meant sitting on her ass as much as she could and drinking a couple of pitchers of water all on her own. 

 

“I think you got it.” Ekko sounded confident and reassuring as he and Powder came around to the field from the path leading up to the western edge of the hill. Last time Vi had seen either of them they’d been sent to give a last check of the recently plowed eastern fields to make sure there weren’t any surprises. Powder looked a little comical with one of Claggor’s shirts on, tied at her waist but at least with sleeves long enough to keep most of her arms hidden. Her face was still bright red from the heat or sunburn or, really, both. 

 

Ekko did not look much more fashionable with an old off-white long-sleeved shirt he’d been given by Sinnan that had apparently been her father’s. It sat too wide on his shoulders. Vi herself, wearing a jacket that had been practically tatters when she’d gotten it, couldn’t judge. 

 

“I dunno,” Powder shrugged. She had some length of Vander’s hand-spun twine hanging off of her shoulder and was playing with one end, barely lifting her eyes from her path. “It doesn’t look like it’s off but if I messed it up I’ll have to try to make a new one.” Ekko seemed to shrug this off as if it wasn’t a big deal, and then reached back and nudged her. Powder looked up and caught Vi watching the two of them instead of finishing her - and everyone’s - work. As the two headed over, it was Claggor stepping away from a shock of wheat a little closer to the southern edge of the field that caught her attention. She waved with the sickle in one hand in his direction. 

 

“Hey, wanna do the honors?” Vi called to the rounder boy. Even from there she could see him nod but she could also see the way he hung forward as he walked, clearly exhausted. Claggor had been hauling around and stacking bundles of cut in the fields for the last couple of hours. It only seemed fair to trade off with him for the final patch of the yellowed stalks they’d put all this work in for. It also had the benefit of letting Vi clock out. Kinda. 

 

She got to turn her head away from the sun and stay still at the edge of the south western field nearest the hill, not more than five or six feet from the path leading from the road to and from Airus. It didn’t take Ekko or Powder or Claggor long to join her. When she looked up she found Vander heading their way, as well, though it would definitely take him longer. 

 

The noon-time breeze carried very little cool or comfort but she turned to face it anyway, hoping that this one wouldn’t feel like putting her face into an oven. 

 

She was disappointed as the warm air pushed her hood back and revealed hair that was unruly and a little stringy with sweat. 

 

Vi handed Claggor the sickle with her right hand as soon as he arrived. She would have been pleased to have her new wraps around her hands for the labor, except by the time the idea had occurred to her they were already starting to turn pink. 

 

Claggor turned the handle of the tool over once in his hands as he knelt down. He grinned widely and reached for several stalks of wheat. Claggor was impressed with his, Powder’s and Ekko’s handiwork. Powder pushed a few strands of hair that had escaped her braid behind one ear and then began to measure out a length of twine, presumably so one of them could tie up and cart off what Claggor was cutting to the next shock. There was still plenty lying all around them that needed similarly gathered up and then stacked so that the tops of the wheat were aimed at the sky.  

 

“It’s wild we did this,” he laughed to himself, glancing up at the trio around him as he cleanly cut through the base of the stalks and managed again to lay them down pointing toward the east, in the way Orkis had shown them to. It had done wonders in making it easier to gather and bundle. 

 

“Yeah, these things worked great.” Vi had to give credit where it was due, and it was absolutely due. Despite what he was holding, Claggor shook his head as if they were not talking about the sickle. 

 

“No, I mean, it took days to get all this plowed and planted and almost no time to get it picked. Or, harvested, or whatever.” Claggor laid another couple of patches of wheat stalks down in quick succession. “And between last week and Mylo over in the potato field now, no more plowing.” 

 

“Ugh, good,” Ekko sighed as he and Powder quietly fell back into bundling the harvest. Vi didn’t want to think about how much they’d already hauled around and how much work it was probably going to be to drag it around for threshing. “It’s fun and all for five minutes and then you’re just bouncing up and down and trying not to fall and trying to keep big dumb animals going in a straight line.” Considering how much he’d been a fan of the yaks and the oxen, anyone who hadn’t been around for his fall last week would’ve probably been confused by Ekko’s sudden annoyance with the animals. 

 

“Not their fault you fell over.” While Powder teased Ekko and notably forgot she’d also taken a topple the first time she’d started driving the plow, Vi started to help Claggor gather the last of the wheat. She hated to be the one to bring the conversation down but there was one thing they had to keep in mind. Vander, making pretty good time going perpendicular to the nice, neat rows of earth, had nearly reached them when she rained on their parade. 

 

“We’ve got twice as much to plant. It’ll be okay, but it’ll suck. Unless someone’s come up with a way to make that faster?” Vi wasn’t kidding when she paused and looked right at her sister. Given that for almost a week Powder and Ekko had been hiding some project they’d been planning from the rest of them, she eyed the duo with hope that they’d been working on something to speed up planting and get them all out of the sun quicker. Ekko shrugged, though, sort of destroying that dream.

 

“Maybe we could.” Powder turned on the spot to squint to the west, staring down the length of one row of upturned earth still more or less covered in their harvest. Vi started to gathering a nearby armful of wheat into one pile and paid more attention to Claggor smiling almost viciously to himself as their sickle cut through it and called a more or less official end to their first harvest ever . At least, the harvesting part.

 

“But probably not this time,” Ekko finished, as if to really kick Vi’s hopes in the butt. Vi held out a hand for a high five and Claggor returned it with more effort than she’d expected it to take. If her arms ached (and gods, they throbbed) then his couldn’t be much better. Then Ekko got her attention by turning to Powder with his hands rubbing together conspiratorially. “But what if we could make something that you load all the seeds into, and it drops them where you need it. Like a wheelbarrow that just shoots a seed right into the ground or - or just drops them and maybe it pushes the dirt over it for you?” 

 

“I’d like to see that,” Vi encouraged, not entirely selflessly. “Now we’ve got to plant the whole damned property.” 

 

“Eh, but we need it,” Vander admonished her a little as he came close enough to engage. Sweat soaked and as red as Powder if not a little worse, his hair was slicked back as much by sweat as by his hand. “Gives us enough room to stay fed year ‘round, might let us move the onions, carrots and radishes out of that little farm, let us grow more. Besides, we get enough crop, maybe we help out folk in Airus the way they’ve been helping us. Can’t pretend we’d be doing too well without Orkis, Caras, Helene, Zenneene or Vavros. Even Thania hooking us up with her brother’s oxen?”

 

Vi got it. 

 

“I know, guess it’d be nice to give something back even if it’s just some wheat or flour.” Thania, the village’s mayor, had been pretty quick to send her brother their way when she’d found out they had no animals of their own to pull the damned plow. Given that Vi couldn’t remember talking to the woman after they’d been introduced at that festival, it had been nice. 

 

Wonder if there’s another festival, party thing coming up? 

 

“We can also sell some extra if we got it. Make some money, maybe have meat more often that we don’t have to bag ourselves.” 

 

“Oh yeah. ” That idea was clearly a hit with Claggor, who stood back up and cut a length of twine from the bundle Powder was still carrying before stepping aside and gesturing for her to tie up the wheat Vi had just gathered. Powder shrugged, though it was clear she was as tired as the others, and did so. 

 

“Yeah, I get it,” Vi promised. She didn’t need the value of planting the fields laid out for her. It was just hard to imagine it was going to go nearly as smoothly as this harvest had. Other than one scare with a snake, Ekko and Powder each taking their tumbles and the time Vi and then an hour later Vander had walked into the same hole in the middle of one of the eastern fields and each nearly rolled their ankles, it had all gone alarmingly well. “It’s just gonna be a lot unless we can get a few more of those rakes we were using to cover up the seeds and maybe start breaking up the work?” 

 

Vander counted off five fingers and looked around at the five people standing in the area as Powder finished tying off that batch and moved on to the nearest. (They hadn’t really been going in straight lines when it came to choosing where to bundle over the last couple of hours.) Then he pointed back over his shoulder where Mylo looked to be wrestling with lifting the blade of the plow out of the dirt. 

 

“My math says, four main fields each split in half by a strip of grass and one smaller field. There’s six of us out here. So let’s do that: we’ll break up planting. Powder and Ekko can take a field. I’ll take another, Claggor gets his, Mylo his, you get yours. Whenever someone gets done, rotate into the next field and help the next person.” 

 

“You mean whoever gets the smaller field,” Claggor added, though he didn’t sound particularly bothered. Vander shrugged. 

 

“Maybe we draw lots for it.” 

 

Vi knew she’d made the suggestion about splitting up the work but it sounded a lot harder to plant an entire field alone and a little more boring. She stripped off her jacket and tossed it over her left shoulder. In comparison to her hands and face, her arms were still barely pink, but they were warm. The summer air that was dry and unpleasant to Vi’s face was downright comforting on her arms. Once it was secure in place she grabbed the nearest bundle of wheat stalks and hefted it up onto the same shoulder. Again, it only felt fair to not make Claggor finish stacking bunches of wheat alone. 

 

“Might be a late lunch,” Vander announced. “I’m thinking onion, carrots and cheese filled rice balls?” While it sounded like a better meal than they’d had in a couple of weeks, it did give her pause. She was beaten to the obvious question by Ekko, though. 

 

“When did we get cheese? ” 

 

“When I get back from dropping off the oxen, that’s when.” Now the picture was coming together. While she would rather eat sooner than later, they hadn’t had any solid source of protein in a while and cheese was better than rice for that. Plus, she barely remembered the goat cheese spread from their first big visit to Airus but she did remember it as tangy in a way she wouldn’t have expected. It sounded like a good mix. “If you wanna make it go faster, wait about an hour and a half after I leave then start chopping up some carrots and the green onion into really small strips. Boil up a bit of rice when that’s done and hopefully I’m home by the time it cools down.” 

 

She left the others to hear the rest of the instructions and headed for the hillside to dig their rice stores out of a cellar that was already starting to feel cramped with just the potatoes in it. She had no idea how they would store all this wheat. The answer was probably that they wouldn’t: they’d have to thresh as soon as the wheat was dry enough and get the seed down there, leaving the rest to be moved as necessary. Mylo was already starting to lead the oxen that way himself, presumably so no one would have to lug the plow up the hill like Claggor and Vander had had to once or twice when they first came to the farm. 

 

The oxen did pretty well going up the less steep face of the hill and she absolutely did not beat them to the top. Considering her wobbling, throbbing legs, that did not surprise her. 

 

Once she’d done her job of fishing out their rice and he’d done his job of dropping the animals off by the shed, Vi and Mylo rejoined the work in the field for another entire hour of hard labor just cleaning up what wheat still needed bundled and stacked. As their harvesting efforts broke up for the day and people went to cool off or clean up or just hydrate, Vi and Mylo both had their last jobs to do. Unfortunately, both of those jobs meant the two of them going back up the hill they’d just come down an hour ago, and neither one liked that idea. 

 

She watched Mylo struggle to unhook the plow from the beasts in front of the shed. When she got to the shack and around back, Vi didn’t try to push any conversation on him; he was clearly cursing in annoyance at how fiddly it was to get the yokes off of the oxen. He still at least nodded in her direction even if he looked pissed off, and went about dragging animals away to tie them out by the house. 

 

It would take at least the two of them to get the plow back into the shed and that was assuming they could do it without tripping over bricks. 

 

Vi opened the cellar doors and snorted despite herself for the second time in as many hours upon looking down into it. She just wasn’t sure how they’d store even all the wheat berries? Dump them on the floor? There was no way they had enough grain bags. Then there was the winter crop. When it came time to harvest that they had best gotten rid of everything they just picked because otherwise there was no way it was going to fit. 

 

 Looking down the stairs she didn’t know what they were going to do. They hadn’t had a clue how much wheat they were growing until it was too late and even then hadn’t really realized how much space it would take up or how heavy it was. There had to be almost two hundred pounds of potatoes down there already. Shoving the wheat they’d harvested in without a good plan for storing it was bound to fill the little dark room to the brim. Vi stooped low as she eased down the stairs and squeezed past the dangerous looking contraption Ekko and Powder called a thresher. Vi spent an unclear amount of time reorganizing former grain bags which were now overflowing with brown skinned potatoes of various sides, each bag close to thirty pounds. 

 

She thought they took up almost a tenth of the small cellar, alone. There was no making it look nice and very little making it easy to walk around in there, especially when they had nowhere else they could easily put the prototype thresher. 

 

“Whatever,” Vi groaned to herself when she’d glared at the cellar by the sunlight streaming in for a minute or two. They were supposed to be passing off the wheat stalks after threshing (and after something called ‘winnowing’) to a few families raising goats and other smaller animals in little plots in Airus itself. That would spare them most of the space the stuff was gonna eat up and if neither Vander nor anyone else on the farm knew how they were going to store the grain, maybe Orkis would have ideas. Surely it wouldn’t be too hard to find something. Some kind of big old bin like Orkis had, maybe? It was cool enough down there that when she stuck her head up and didn’t see Mylo back by the shed waiting for her, she shut the doors and let herself sit for a good five minutes in the refreshing dark of the cellar. 

 

She wasn’t willing to risk falling asleep down there and not being around to help hurry lunch along. The first time Vi felt her eyes growing heavy in the dark she left that otherworldly comfort behind and climbed back out into the early summer day’s afternoon. The plow was no longer outside the shed, but the door was still open and she could clearly see Ekko leaning against the doorframe. Vi plodded along quietly enough and thanks to them having actually used that scythe on the grass between the shack and shed, managed to sneak up on the two to peek over Ekko’s shoulder. 

 

Ekko jumped when she got close enough but still gestured over to the big, blocky orange and brown brick kiln taking up most of the space inside the shed. It had forced most of their non-plow tools into the shack or Vander’s lean-to. Powder, who had clearly been sweeping ashes from the bottom of the kiln, flashed Vi a thumbs up with a blackened hand and placed it against the kiln to show that it had finally cooled enough to touch. 

 

The most recent batch of brick, not counting the ones from the night before, was stacked as tall as Vi herself along the far side of the shed. There were some pressed into a corner on the other side of the kiln. Given how many she’d seen them pull out of the thing the last time, there was no way they could fit this most recent load in the shed. Vi looked in past Ekko and then turned to glance back at the house as an idea occurred to her. She might not know a lot about the process of actually building with brick, but she could at least stack it. 

 

Without her even getting the idea out of her mouth, though, a part of her mind protested that her arms and back were already in worse pain than her legs. 

 

“So,” Powder sounded hopeful as she led in, and Vi turned to watch. It was Ekko her sister was paying attention to. “What do you think? One more batch? It might be enough.” Ekko looked between the extant piles of brick and then shook his head. Despite the fact that the only clear space left in the tool shed was occupied by Powder and the plow, the idea that the two of them hadn’t filled it with enough brick over the last couple of weeks was kind of impressive. 

 

“How big of a workshop are you guys actually thinking of building?” Vi asked. They’d walked the outline of the planned footprint and it was almost three times larger than the shed, but still. It was starting to get ridiculous. 

 

“I just don’t think there’s enough to finish a wall.” Ekko sounded regretful, but it was otherwise casual enough that Vi thought maybe she’d misheard him. 

 

“Wait, what? A wall? ” The idea that they weren’t even a quarter of the way through kind of put Vi on the back foot. How were they going to build this workshop, much less any kind of addition to the house? Multiple days of digging up clay and gathering what sand they could find at the bottom of the stream hadn’t even finished a fourth of this workshop. 

 

“Yeah,” Powder, with a fresh smear of sweat and ash across her forehead, frowned. Vi understood, now, why neither of them had been very talkative about all this for a while. It was possible they’d started to realize what Vi suspected: they were in way over their heads on this project. She frowned and asked what she thought to be a no-brainer question. 

 

“How much did the guy in Airus charge us for the bricks you used to make the kiln?” Ekko and Powder grimaced. 

 

“Kind of a lot, ” was all Ekko wanted to answer. Powder, though, had no compunctions.

 

“About thirty silver pieces, so like, 30,000 bits?” Vi shook her head, leaning back for a second as she took her best guess. At two silver for each of them per week, even if they gave this guy everything Vavros paid them, they’d likely only just paid off the kiln. She furrowed her brow. This isn’t doable. We can’t build onto the house by digging up the ground all over the stream by ourselves and we can’t pay that kind of price. 

 

“What was the guy’s name?” 

 

“Why?” Powder asked, cautiously. She looked worried.  “We asked Vavros and Helene, they both said it was a fair price.” She thinks I’m mad, or something? 

 

“Yeah, I get that, but what was his name?” 

 

“Vulci.” Ekko tilted his head and repeated Powder’s question: “Why?” 

 

“Because,” Vi answered and shrugged to try to seem uninterested. The truth was she wanted to think of some way to help, to hurry things along or maybe get them some kind of discount on more bricks so that they didn’t spend the rest of their lives digging up clay and sand and whatever else. She didn’t have any good ideas at the moment, but maybe Vander would have one. For now, it was best not to get any hopes up and the least she could do was start helping them process what they had. “It’s not gonna be warm much longer, so we need to get what clay you do have shaped and dried out, right?” 

 

“I guess,” Powder shrugged in clear mimicry of Vi’s attempt to act aloof. Vi squinted her eyes at her sister just long enough for Powder to drop the mockery. 

 

“We should do as many as we can tonight.” Her sister sighed and Vi got it: she was sore too. Usually the source of depthless energy, Ekko surprised her by sharing Powder’s hesitance. For a moment he glared right at the kiln as if it was the cause  of all his problems and then threw up his hands in irritation. 

 

“Fine. It’s just mixing clay and laying out bricks. We’ve got this.” Vi considered how much her own arms and back hurt and how much the two of them probably hurt too. If she was going to spend her ‘celebration’ night mixing and working clay then maybe she could get the others to pitch in too. 

 

“Least we could do is help you out,” Vi sighed. She was not thinking about a workshop. That wasn’t what had her so motivated. She wanted to see them add on to their little shack. Even one room the size of the first would give them space. Vi looked down at her own sunburnt hands and wondered if the clay would at least feel nice on them. “We should probably move as many of the ones that are already done out of here to give us space to work. Maybe under the back roof?”

 

Vi looked over her shoulder and at the shack. There wasn’t a lot of space under the roof’s overhang, especially with the cellar doors in the way. It might still free up a lot of floor space. Resigned, she patted Ekko on the shoulder. 

 

“I’m gonna go piss off Mylo and Claggor, try to get them on board. If Vander hasn’t already left for Airus, he’ll probably get on the road as soon as he hears what we’re planning. I sure would.” Leaving Ekko and Powder to uncover their unfired and unshaped clay reserves, Vi started back toward the shack. She found a pitcher of still well-cool water waiting on her when she came around front but she also found her brothers, soaking wet from the hair down from presumably dousing themselves in water from the stream. 

 

Or maybe it had come from the well, since it seemed unlikely they’d had time to go down to the stream and back. 

 

Either way, they were sat dripping on bare stretches of floor just inside the door with it still hung wide open to let in a breeze. There was no sign of Vander or of oxen, so it was safe to say he was leading the big beasts back to Airus already. 

 

“Yo,” Vi called to get their attention. “It’s time to move, mold and lay out more bricks. We don’t have near enough clay and that guy in Airus charges an arm and a leg. Sooner we get these done, sooner we can figure out a better way to get them.” Vi paused outside the door as Claggor looked up at her, mouth hanging open as if he couldn’t believe what she was suggesting. Mylo slowly closed his eyes, tilted his head up slowly and mouthed something very rude to the ceiling. She took it to be him cursing a god rather than insulting her. “C’mon, I bet there’ll be some space for someone to sleep in that workshop when it first gets built. Not to mention more room to make more stuff we need.”

 

Claggor slumped, looking both annoyed and exhausted as he lifted his goggles off his head for the first time all day. They’d apparently come in handy when wrestling with all the wheat. Mylo, on the other hand, continued to stare up into the rafters long enough Vi thought he was actually gonna argue. It wouldn’t piss her off too badly if either one said no but she was actually surprised at the hesitation. Sitting in the shade shaping bricks sounded like a cakewalk compared to their morning. 

 

“Fine,” Claggor groaned, before putting his face into his hands and half shouting into the gap between them. “It’ll be worth it when we actually have our own rooms.” Instead of amused at his reaction, Vi actually found herself stopped in her tracks. 

 

“That’s… wow.” She gazed over their heads into the tiny room beyond. With the effort taken over the last couple of weeks to keep the rafters clear of cobwebs and the floor as clean as possible it had lost much of its dusty smell, but it was still tight spaces for sleeping five, much less six people. Her own room, though… “I’ve never had a room to myself. Not that I can remember.” Claggor opened his hands and stared through the gap at her. He looked like someone playing peek-a-boo with a toddler and she laughed for a solid second or two. 

 

“You really haven’t?” he asked. “Not ever?” 

 

“No, ever since I remember I had to share it.” She shrugged and then looked at Mylo as he rubbed at his eyes. 

 

“Well, if we actually work our asses off and make it not all Powder and Ekko’s problem, maybe we can do some real expansions.” Mylo stopped rubbing his eyes at Claggor’s response and for a second scowled. Vi caught his eye and recognized the conflict within it as the same thought he must be thinking occurred to her. They were talking long term again. 

 

“Oh come on,” Claggor demanded of them. “You guys can’t tell me you want to sleep on the floor anymore. Once we get a workshop and maybe some money to buy lumber we could make bed frames, we could even get a bunch of bricks fired up and get enough space to bring the table back in. No more eating on the floor. That doesn’t sound bad.” 

 

“Why would we buy lumber?” Vi asked. “There’s trees everywhere. ” 

 

“Uh, duh,” Mylo answered for Claggor, doing an unintentional but accurate impression of Powder, down to the unimpressed look on his face. “Because you need a mill to turn trees into boards and stuff.” 

 

“Doing it by hand is hard as hell so no one does it,” Claggor agreed. Vi frowned, though. 

 

“We’re gonna need wood to help do the roof of the workshop, won’t we?” 

 

“I took care of that one already,” the rounder of her brothers jabbed himself in the chest with his own thumb. When prompted, he continued. “Helped Orkis bring down those trees last week for the winter, remember? There were a couple more that were in the way of expanding one of his fields so he said if Caras and I brought them down and dug out the stumps he’d help us get squared away on whatever we needed to build the workshop.” 

 

“Whatever we need?” Vi asked the question slowly, very clearly so she could be sure what he meant. After all, what they really needed were more bricks. Apparently, way more. Claggor hesitantly nodded. “Well, I’m not gonna ask him to buy us a bunch of bricks or something, but maybe he’ll have an idea how we can earn some cash to pay off this Vulci guy.” 

 

“Why? We’re making our own right?” Mylo looked a little like he thought he was missing the thread of the conversation. Vi hadn’t let either of them in on the revelation she’d just been witness to in the shed, yet. 

 

“Yeah, but Powder and Ekko don’t think we’ve even got enough for one wall, yet.” 

 

“Ugh!” 

 

“It’s going to be worth it,” Claggor said as he started to stand up and turned to help up Mylo. 

 

Vi rolled up the sleeves on her ragged jacket and repeated Claggor, over and over again under her own breath as she made for the toolshed. 

 

“It’s going to be worth it. It’s going to be worth it. It’s going to be worth it.”

 

Ekko and Powder were already lining the ready bricks up along the back wall of the house. Other than the plow, a few bags of sand and a bucket of dry mix for mortar sat atop the bricks in the shed, so they had to be moved to give them all better access. Vi set those temporarily beside the table Claggor had mentioned, which was leaned up against the back of the shed. Powder waved at her arrival but still looked more grateful when Claggor and Mylo meandered around the corner of the shack. Mylo carried the water pitcher in one hand. 

 

Honestly, for all that she wanted to complain, it was not the end of the world to drag the big pile of raw clay her sister and Ekko had dug up around front of their shack and near the shade. It was not so bad to sit in that shade and mix sand into the clay with Claggor while Mylo helped the other two shape one or two more brick molds out of little more than sticks and twine. Once that was done they settled into a kind of assembly line. 

 

Vi continued mixing sand into the clay. Claggor broke off chunks and roughly shaped them before passing them off to Ekko, Mylo or Powder to press into their molds. It was impressive for her to see how quickly the four of them got into rhythm. Claggor had about three well sized chunks of clay set aside for the others in the space of time it took to mold one brick. The molder then carefully placed the brick off to one side to lay it out in the sun to dry. It meant they’d have to be careful where they walked for three or four days, but then there would be a big batch ready to be fired. 

 

Vi hoped Ekko and Powder had worked out the sand and clay mixture. Most of their first batch had cracked inside the kiln. They’d just broken them up with a big stone to put them back into the next batch’s clay, but still it would be a shame to lose all this work. 

 

She felt a little bad when Vander came back with a small woven reed basket under one arm and she hadn’t pulled up, washed and cut up any onion or carrot. Vander had waved off her guilty apologies and merely looked impressed at the number of bricks they’d at least molded in his absence. 

 

Personally, she agreed. It was really tiring to do the mixing of clay and sand and not mess up the ‘ratio’. It looked more involved still getting the right amount of clay into each mold and getting them set in place without too much struggle. Though, each time a row of unfired bricks was finished, Ekko, Powder and Mylo had to scoot further and further from the shade. It wasn’t easy but this part went faster than she’d expected. They had gotten through the remaining raw clay by the time Vander put the pot of rice on the stove. 

 

In the end, Vi looked over six columns of a dozen drying bricks and felt damned impressed with what they did in what couldn’t have been more than two and a half hours. No one hung around to gawk or congratulate themselves long, though, because the sun had only worsened its assault. It beat down on them now without mercy or even the morning’s cooler breezes to balance things out. 

 

“Hey, that was a lot,” she encouraged the others as they began to make back for the shade. Ekko looked pleased enough with progress and while Powder didn’t seem to be upset she did look as tired as Vi’s arms felt. Even Claggor, now muddy faced, struck her as more or less done with the day fairly early. Mylo immediately headed inside and before Vi could even make it to the door to look in, emerged with his backpack slung over one shoulder and announced he was going to clean up. 

 

Ekko followed soon after but Claggor hung about for a few minutes and helped Powder unload the last finished batch of fired bricks. Vi spent the same time taking over chopping the onions and carrots under Vander’s guidance; she still felt bad for not doing as he’d asked before. It took her a second or two to get them cut thinly enough for what he wanted, both because the knife was probably starting to dull and because Vander wanted each vegetable practically shredded. 

 

She wasn’t sure why that would make for a ‘more even mix’ with cheese produced from the basket he’d brought home with him but she followed instructions all the same and he sat on the end of the bed and drank his fair share of water. Though she was reluctant to get into the stream and clean up while it was still so light out, Vi and Powder eventually settled on just scrubbing down their hands, necks and faces so they could make it back home in time for lunch. There was nothing and no one stopping them from going down just near dark for a more thorough cleaning under the cover of twilight. 

 

Vi was still fried by the time lunch was actually ready. The bricks lay drying out in the sun but she and everyone else stayed in the relative shade of the shack, window and door both open to encourage breezes. With his whole bedroll under his head like a pillow, Ekko dozed off and on and honestly looked pretty pleased when he was asleep. Vander ended up giving up on filling the rice balls with the mixture of cheese and veggies because it was the “wrong kind of rice” for rice balls, explaining the last batch’s more crumbly nature. Instead, he began to evenly mix the cheese and veggies into the pot. 

 

Powder lay the wrong way across the foot of the bed, toying with some small triangular piece of iron she had not explained the purpose of but according to Claggor had shaped on her own out of some scrap from one of the smithy’s projects. Mylo had stopped complaining about his arms and legs but was apparently still thirsty as hell. Vi didn’t hate the way her body felt: it wasn’t pleasant but it meant she’d gotten a workout. 

 

Claggor? Well, he spent the time either staring up at the rafters looking grimly satisfied or joking back and forth with Mylo about something whenever the smaller boy came up from a pitcher of water he was nearly knocking out on his lonesome. 

 

She hoped like hell the hot summer day gave way to a cool evening quickly, though. She could not imagine lighting a fire in the hearth and even the heat from the stove made it a little stifling in the room. 

 

They’re worth being too warm or having sore arms, Vi told herself. Mylo responded to some comment Claggor had made about him looking goofy with his face in the pitcher by starting to mimic Claggor carrying more and more exaggeratedly large bundles of wheat. Claggor had started pushing it as the day went on. At one point, one had been near as wide as he was. Ekko laughed, barely awake. Vander grinned over Powder’s head as she watched the display. 

 

It was an entirely different afternoon than any they’d had in Noxus. Mylo was probably in his liveliest mood yet, out of relief if nothing else. Powder seemed a little more into the little piece of metal in her hands than any conversation but also looked really calm and kind of absently happy. Ekko wasn’t tense. Vander was quieter than usual but looked like he might be happier than she remembered seeing him. 

 

It was really Claggor, Vi thought, who might’ve surprised people back home with how he was acting. Out of all of them, he’d changed the most. 

 

That wasn’t saying much: it still wasn’t a wild shift in behavior or anything and, steady as he was, she didn’t expect one. There was just a lighter side to her brother lately. Claggor was less serious and it had taken coming out here for her to see what she’d always thought of as him being ‘thoughtful’ as him actually being more serious than people gave him credit for. 

 

Vi chose to try to enjoy the moment and not think about anything outside of it save for the meal Vander was putting together. 

 

It still hurt to think about home and she wasn’t alone in that: it had taken a lot more time for the others to learn to talk about it properly, but they missed it, too. In their own ways, even the people who thought they were happier here missed home. Most of them weren’t hurting at its absence every single day, though. 

 

Vi thought if she just tried a little harder, then on days like this she’d be able to say the same. 

 

Some day.  Please. 

Two or three hours after he and everyone else in the house had fallen asleep, Ekko woke up in the middle of the night. The fire was already starting to burn down so when he lifted himself up to look around and see what woke him up, he cast a very long shadow across Vi and Powder wrapped up in their own bedrolls. He hadn’t expected to find either sleeping soundly but neither one so much as twitched in their sleep over the next couple of seconds, so neither had woken him in the middle of a nightmare. 

 

Claggor wasn’t snoring, but looking down the length of himself to the bed he could still see the lumpy outline of the larger boy beneath his own blanket. Mylo was completely still in his own bedroll. 

 

Ekko rolled back to his left, facing toward the hearth and was about to shrug off suddenly waking up. The pressure and discomfort of an immediate need to go pee kicked in the moment he closed his eyes. It was only because he didn’t wanna piss off anyone else in the room that Ekko didn’t groan in frustration. He pushed down his covers as quietly as he could while still moving quickly. 

 

His arms felt better than they had when he’d gone to bed but it was clear pretty quickly that his legs weren’t happy. He rubbed at his right knee for a second through the denim, then got up. While it was pretty warm inside, the last few nights had been cool. So, even though he really needed to go, he stopped and leaned his shoulder against the wall by the door and yanked on his boots. He didn’t bother to tie the laces; at this point, he just wanted to keep his feet warm. 

 

Ekko shut the door behind himself when he hopped out into a slightly cloudy night. For a moment he looked off to the southeast where, if his eyes were better, he would’ve been able to see the bricks they’d spent part of the afternoon laying out to dry. Mixed feelings on those, he curled his toes in his boots and then stifled a yawn. He turned to head north. Beyond the shed, not far from the edge of the hill, the thickest patch of trees around the house awaited. 

 

He only got a couple of slightly weaving steps beyond the western corner of the house before he started to get a sense that things weren’t quite right. Sure, it was kind of scary to not be able to see where he was walking and basically have to navigate by outlines and little else, but that didn’t explain the slow sinking feeling in his stomach. Two more steps and he began to get the sense that he better keep looking ahead, to the north. 

 

It was like when he used to sneak out at night to show the older kids he’d been sharing shelter with that he wasn’t scared. Sometimes he’d just get the sense to keep his eyes ahead and not turn and stare down any side roads or alleys as he completed whatever task those kids swore up and down he wasn’t brave enough to do in the middle of the night. He’d usually listened to the fear and not turned to look around him. One night, he had actually chosen to face those feelings. 

 

Keeping that night in mind, Ekko left the house behind. Even from a good few feet behind the house he heard Vander’s chainsaw snoring from the lean-to. It should’ve been familiar and comfortable by that point. Instead he jumped and hoped the cover of night hid the reaction from any prying eyes. Eventually he passed by the old toolshed, swinging wide around it. It didn’t make any sense, but what if someone had been waiting in the door of the shed to jump out at him? 

 

See, that was what he’d learned this feeling meant the one time he’d ignored it back home. Ekko had gone out wandering on a night just like this, save for a few vaporlamps that had lit that evening up. Like many nights he was dared to go and get something or wake another kid’s friend up from another building. Ekko had developed that sense that there was danger just to the left or the right and as long as he didn’t acknowledge it, he’d be fine. Only, that night he’d ignored it, he’d turned and looked down a side alley to find a face he didn’t recognize staring out of the dark at him. 

 

That night he’d narrowly escaped pursuit by a strange man he’d never seen before or again. 

 

Tonight, Ekko tried very hard to obey that warning his body seemed to be giving him. Forced to tread through a part of the hill whose grass they hadn’t cut, he found two or three fairly close together trees and did his business in near record time. Throughout the process he listened for someone else walking through that same tall grass or the cracking of twigs or something to give away what was going on. Actually, he hoped to hear a growl or a yelp or some sign that some kind of animal in the area had wandered onto the farm. 

 

Animals go away if you can scare them. People… 

 

He hadn’t gotten but another five or six steps back toward the back of the shed when he heard movement to his left. His neck and shoulders tensed and especially the muscles on that side hurt a little. That night, he came to a stop twenty or so feet from the toolshed and for the second time fought the instinct to ignore his surroundings. 

 

Damn, he thought immediately after. That was dumb. 

 

Craning his neck to the left despite how wrong it felt, Ekko froze in place to find himself again watched from the dark.

 

She did not glow. There was no light source around her. She gave off no light at all. Yet, this woman only a few feet away from him in the middle of a Noxian night looked to be lit by bright sunlight. In clear detail that didn’t make sense at night, in vibrant (if pale) colors, someone he’d only seen once himself stood again in the dark, this time closer than he’d ever heard of her coming. 

 

Instead of the dark flowing robes he and Powder had both seen her wearing before, the woman now watching him from behind painted eyes was dressed in a purple and white dress, complete with frills and a handbag. It looked lively, cheerful and, most pointedly, it looked like something he’d have seen Topside. Her right hand still gripped the long staff from before but it looked different, too, as if someone had brought the shape of a crescent moon out of steel and gold and fused it to the same staff she’d had before. 

 

Tired and grumpy and scared, Ekko refused to stay still and let whatever was about to happen happen. He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at her. If she chased, he would run. If she lifted that hunk of wood and metal she was holding, he would run. Other than that, he wanted her to go away and didn’t want her to know how scared he was . Stomach lodged somewhere firmly in his feet, Ekko glared and told himself the shaking was shivering. 

 

Magic. Actual magic. 

 

This time, the stranger with the deep indigo hair actually opened her mouth to talk. He heard her voice in stereo, both naturally from her lips and so wrongly inside his own head. It was like they were his own thoughts in her voice. She tilted her head as she spoke and it was almost like this time she was trying to act normal. Her cocky eyes and otherwise weirdly blank face didn’t help her act. 

 

“There you are.” 

 

There you are. 

 

“It looks like you’ve all gotten quite comfortable here.” 

 

It looks like you’ve all gotten quite comfortable here. Isn’t that just great? 

 

“W-what do you want?” Maybe if he shouted it loudly enough she’d go away for fear of being caught by the family sitting inside. Or maybe she’d just actually answer the question and that might be either good or really really bad. Ekko squeezed his right fist against his chest and wondered if maybe, just maybe, he should try to fight her if she got close to him. He had been trying really hard with Vi’s training. Vi  even said he was starting to hit pretty good. 

 

So… 

 

“It’s never been what I want that’s brought me here, Shatterer.” Ekko squeezed the arms at his chest more tightly. Last time she’d kept calling him that, asking what he wanted to ‘shatter’ first. Shatter, like breaking glass. Ekko tried to ignore when the sights she’d shown him before  resurfaced: just a few pictures in his head. They’d just shown him Powder and Sinnan pulling further and further ahead of him on a trail through the woods. Over and over. For a very long time. 

 

Like she wanted him to ‘shatter’ whatever that was. 

 

“It’s only ever been what you all want. What you want to see. What you want to be. Where you want to be.” The thoughts of her last visit and the promises she’d made, that very soon he might be a broken cog in a big clock, were pushed aside by a new image. Like the others it felt like a flash of a memory but it wasn’t anything he’d ever actually seen before. It was just a second, a peek at a raised wooden walkway along the edges of the walls of the Lanes. He’d seen it a million times and the various buildings and ‘homes’ built into the wall it ran along. 

 

Only this time, he was up there and standing just beside him holding a vapor lantern, was Benzo. Benzo was smiling grimly at him and saying how glad he was to see him.  This piece of a memory that wasn’t a memory was gone as quickly as it came but just like the ones of Powder and Sinnan, it burned into his head. 

 

He tried to land on something to say. Some way to get rid of her. Some way to make fun of her. Some way to hurt this stranger the same way she was hurting him. Fully awake in the cold night air, the cuffs of his pants wet from the evening grass, he didn’t know what might do that. How did you hurt someone who could put things in your head? How did you hurt someone who knew all your secrets? How did you - 

 

“I don’t want to hurt you, Ekko.” She sounded so upset at the idea, even though she could’ve only gotten it by digging around in his head. 

 

I don’t want to hurt you, Shatterer. Sometimes one voice did not match the other: this one did not sound bothered at all. 

 

“You could be with him, right now.” The woman reached out one pale indigo hand in his direction and he felt his left fist clench just like the right. He did not uncross his arms, especially because that was his first instinct. “You could be in The Undercity and leave Powder’s family here. They’re getting very used to things, planning for planting and tomorrow you’re even going to get an invitation to another festival. Why don’t you leave them to their new home and let me take you where you really belong?” There it was laid out: she claimed to be following him in the middle of the night to what, do him a favor?

 

“Of course,” the woman continued, voice mournful even though its twin in his head sounded amused. He was getting tired of thinking something and her hearing it. Really, he should be talking, he should be talking loudly. “Of course I want to do you a favor, child. I want to be your friend.” Tempted and terrified in pretty equal measure, Ekko’s heart rate picked up. He was pretty sure from what he and Powder had both seen that this lady was magic. That meant she could probably do it. She could probably have him back in the Lanes looking for Benzo before he could even get back to the house for his bag. 

 

“Why do you wanna be a ‘little kid’s’ friend?” Ekko all but shouted this at her despite the space between them. She didn’t outwardly react but he swore he heard a frustrated groan in the back of his head. Sure that she would just go away if there were anyone else around to see her, Ekko held his ground and demanded answers. That was the thing about this lady: she was magic but she used it to hang around and upset him and Powder. If she was really trying to help someone, why not come by in the middle of the day and talk to Vander? Why not show herself to one of the older kids? “If you want stupid kids to mess with you don’t go looking for the ones from the Lanes, duh.” 

 

He hadn’t quite stopped shaking. This lady was no less scary now than she’d been last time. He was kinda happy he’d already gone to have a pee. It was just that he was sure that voice of hers that only talked in his head had gotten mad just now. That meant she wasn’t so weird that he couldn’t bother her. If he could bother her, maybe she would go away. 

 

“Children in trouble deserve help.” 

 

Children in trouble should know when to be quiet. 

 

“I think you want something from us! You won’t say what it is so it’s probably bad. People don’t say what they mean because either they don’t know or they’re hiding it. You know what you want, don’t you?” Now, there could be no pretending: whether she was reading his mind or not, he was shouting every word. “Or maybe you’re the one who’s stupid.” The insult sounded childish even to him. The woman, who had been holding her head at the same angle for almost a full minute, shrugged suddenly and straightened it up. 

 

“It’s a risk then. Do you want what you want enough to take risks for it, Ekko? Do you want it enough to sacrifice for it?” With her mouth she called him Ekko. In her mind she called him ‘Shatterer’ and she shoved images of every kindness Benzo had ever shown him to the forefront of his mind. It had been plenty. 

 

Little things at first: food when he needed it, a ‘job’ fixing things around the shop, space in the workshop he could sleep in if he wanted it and eventually the offer to turn the shop’s basement into his bedroom. He hadn’t taken that offer, since he’d had shelter with others living on the streets like himself but now Ekko regretted that. 

 

This asshole knew that. That was why she showed that memory to him more than once. He hadn’t realized Benzo had looked and sounded a little hopeful when he’d made that offer. Now he knew and, worse still, now he knew why. If he’d paid attention to Powder and Vi and Mylo and Claggor better, he’d have figured it out a long time ago. Benzo had turned into his family and now who knew if he was- 

 

“Stop it!” Ekko insisted. He wasn’t sure if those were really his thoughts no matter how true they rang. He didn’t know if she was putting them in his head like the images just to make him listen to her. He didn’t know what else to do but to tell her no and try to get someone else to come out and see her. He was annoyed to feel a little lump in his throat. Annoyed she’d gotten him to act like a kid. Annoyed that he was so scared. “Yeah, I wanna go back but not I’m making a deal with people I don’t trust. I don’t trust you. You hurt and scare people.” 

 

“I show people the truths others keep from them. I show people the truths they keep from themselves.” 

 

I’ll show you the truths the future holds. I’ll show you the truths you keep from yourself.

 

Fuck you. He thought directly at her, hoping somehow she’d read the words just through his glare if not by magic. 

 

“Do you not want to know where your Benzo is right now? I could show you. Call it a show of good faith.” 

 

Nothing about this lady said she was a good person. Nothing said she really wanted to help and Vi had been told - Ekko closed his eyes. No. Vi had made him promise. Vi had come right out and asked him not to do this, not to leave to go home without them and without saying anything. She missed home, too, but she stayed. If this lady knew what he was thinking then either his next trick wouldn’t work or it wouldn’t matter but he followed through anyway. 

 

“I don’t make deals with people when I don’t even know their name.” The laughter in his head was cruel and cold. 

 

Oh child, what a waste of time. Even those who think they know the secrets of all that is see only white on that page of the tome. The laughing hurt. Seeing the small twisting smile on the strange woman’s face somehow made it hurt worse. In their desperation for purpose they’ve pinned it on me like a name: LeBlanc. 

 

“Well, LeBlanc, I don’t have any faith.” 

 

“Act. Or your future is not what you want it to be.” 

 

Act. Or your future is again to flee. 

 

He hated that the threat worked a little bit. He hated how much the idea scared him, how it rooted him back to the earth in thought. If he went with her, if she took him back to the Undercity, he could find Benzo. They could be together again and he could make it up to the man, tell him about realizing that Benzo was his dad. After that it didn’t really matter, did it? He could go back to scrounging around for parts and fixing clocks and little trinkets and scavenging.  Honestly unlike Powder and the others he didn’t really have to steal for food very often: Benzo’s shop usually made enough to buy them bread and liver and fish. That was way better than some people got. 

 

Like Powder and Vi, Mylo and Claggor and Vander. 

 

All the people he’d be leaving here. 

 

Then there was the matter of what this lady really wanted and the things that the prisoner lady had told Vi. 

 

“I don’t know what I want it to be or any of that stupid crap. I know who I want in it and if I can’t have all of them, then that sucks! But I don’t think I’ll like it if I do what you want. Used to think the smoother the talker the less you should trust them but you’re not even smooth.” Across from him, the lady frowned briefly, clicked her tongue and then again shrugged. In the process the staff twitched in her hand and Ekko lowered his arms to his sides ready to run. He knew how to run. 

 

“You’ll change your mind eventually. I’ll just wait, shall I?” This woman, this magic lady, this LeBlanc wanted to sound like a doting grandma. Comforting. It was so fake, especially with her other voice laughing so unpleasantly in his head that it had begun to ache. 

 

“I don’t think so!” Ekko shouted back at her, his fists clenched at his sides but slowly rising to just above the level of his chin. I hope not. I really hope not! 

 

“Ekko!” He swung his head to his right. Lantern in hand, Claggor jogged in his direction over uneven ground. Behind Claggor, barely visible in the shadow he cast, Mylo followed. Further back still was Powder, running quick enough to keep up with Claggor. A taller form looming up behind her had to be Vi. For just a second his arms tingled, he laughed and his eyes watered a little bit but the lump in his throat was gone in an instant. Claggor’s eyes were so wide in surprise it would’ve been funny if Ekko hadn’t just been so freaked. 

 

Someone else saw her. Now they’ll believe us. When he looked back for the woman who claimed to have no name, she was not there. Ekko lowered a guard that had never fully risen and stepped forward as Claggor moved to one side. Sure enough, Vi had caught up with Mylo, her face sharp angles and squinting, angry eyes. Powder got to Ekko at the same time as Claggor, though and he flashed her an immediate thumbs up, trying to promise her he was okay in the seconds before she hugged and released him. 

 

He was okay, now. The others had finally seen this lady: Mylo stared daggers through the empty space she’d just been standing and Vi was still angrily rubbing at her eyes as she looked about for the woman. More importantly, they’d heard him calling and come looking for him . The big, wide person whose outline emerged from behind the shack in the dark pulled it all together. Though he would not have seen the woman himself, even Vander was coming. 

 

Vander had to believe him and Powder if everyone else had seen her, too. 

 

“Who the hell was that?” Claggor demanded as he got close enough to reach out and take Ekko by the shoulder. Powder scrambled out of the way for Claggor. 

 

“That was Powder’s ‘nightmare’.” Ekko matched Powder’s eyes and grinned when she smiled. He hoped he sounded smug enough to really drive home that everyone else had been wrong to ignore Powder and then him. “You know, the one only Vi and I believed her about?” 

 

“I believe you now, ”  Mylo told Powder, before stalking right over to the spot LeBlanc had been standing. He waved his hands through open air where her stomach would’ve been as Vander caught up with them. The man must’ve heard enough to get a sense of what was going on, because he nudged Claggor aside as Vi briefly patted Powder on the shoulder. Vander knelt down all at once in front of Ekko who decided not to roll his eyes no matter how much it felt like he was about to be talked down to. 

 

“Someone was out here with you?” Vander asked him. Then he looked sideways at Vi and back to Ekko. “This woman you’ve both been telling us about?” Ekko nodded when he was sure he was being watched. Finally.  

 

“Saw her with my own eyes, Vander,” Mylo insisted, though he sounded more confused than anything. “Honest.” Claggor chimed in his agreement but he was clearly a little more scared than Mylo. 

 

“Me too,” Powder reminded them all. 

 

“You told us. We didn’t listen.” Vi sounded annoyed and disoriented both. “What did she want?” When Ekko looked Vi’s way, Vander put a hand on his arm to draw Ekko’s attention back to the man. So Ekko shrugged and answered the question honestly, holding Vander’s gaze. The answer turned Vander’s frown to a look of horror and then a look of cool anger. Ekko still didn’t like Vander’s anger. 

 

“I think she wanted me.” 

 

“I don’t like that, Vander.”  Claggor crossed his arms over his chest. “She scared the hell out of me and I just saw her for, like a second, before she just poof - disappeared into thin air.” 

 

“I think she’s bad. Bad news. But I think she’s used to getting what she wants.” Vi rubbed at her chin as he finished and then she and Vander asked the same question. 

 

“What’s she want with you?” 

 

“I don’t know.” Vander let go of his arm and ruffled his hair before Ekko could see it coming and get out of the way of the big wide hand. He wanted to be annoyed but seeing the others come around the corner of the house one or two at a time and run over had chased LeBlanc off and maybe a bit of his fear with her. He felt better with Vander and Powder and everyone else nearby and was suddenly pretty sure there was a reason this weird magic lady only came by when someone was alone. 

 

Alone. Or scared. Or sad. Or all of them. 

 

“I don’t think it’s anything good. The deserter said this lady was bad news. Said not to piss her off but not to give her what she wants.” Vander shot a look sideways at Vi and he looked actually surprised to hear that Vi had gone to talk to their last unexpected Noxian visitor. Ekko didn’t know why; even if he hadn’t watched her leaving the house that night he would’ve put money he didn’t even have on Vi going to ask questions. “Shit. I’m glad you’re okay, Little Man.” 

 

The nickname chased away what was left of his midnight jitters and even the little bitty voice in the back of his head that reminded him he could have been with Benzo right then if he’d taken the deal. So he tried not to let it embarrass him. He was still thrown off when Vander pulled him over and gave him an unexpected hug. Ekko closed his eyes. He didn’t think he could match any of the others’ eyes when he hugged Vander back. 

 

It was different than a hug from his parents or one from Benzo had been. There was still something there that felt nice, safe. 

 

“Dunno what I would’ve done if we’d lost you, Little Man.” He squeezed tight to Vander for just a second longer than he thought he could without feeling a little embarrassed. Vander let him go when he let go and Ekko still didn’t match anyone’s eyes for a second or two. They didn’t have to miss Vander like he had to miss Benzo, though, so they couldn’t judge. 

 

Ekko wanted to go home more than most of the people around him did but he didn’t want to just up and disappear on them. Even if he’d made a deal with this weirdo and actually gotten home to Benzo it wouldn’t have fixed things. Everything he felt about not knowing if Benzo was okay or not getting to talk to him would just be how he would’ve felt about everyone he’d left behind in Noxus. 

 

Even if the worst things happened later, they weren’t happening now. 

 

“I wanna go back inside.” 

 

“Me too,” Powder agreed. He lifted his eyes from the lantern light splayed across grass blades in front of him. Powder showed him the thumbs up, this time, to cheer him up. So he cheered up. “Last one in’s a pipsqueak.” 

 

“Wha-” Vander started to ask, clearly confused. The words registered in Ekko’s head a little quicker, so he shot around Vander who was still knelt a step or so away and Powder arced around Vi to get a quicker, straighter shot back to the house. 

 

Ekko ran ahead while he had the lead and he did not look back. Not for Vi calling them ridiculous or Vander shouting for them to be careful. 

On a slightly cooler day a couple weeks down the line, Powder leaned back and sucked in a breath. Either hand gripped tightly to a wooden handle coming off of the haft of their scythe. The top of the haft rested against her upper left arm like she was cradling it. Even for her, the two handles weren’t too far apart to hold onto but she still felt awkward with the tool. The small semi-circle of grass cut by Caras’ demonstration at least gave Powder a guideline on what it should look like if she did it right. She looked away from everyone else and at the grass after she caught Vi biting her lip and even Ekko faintly wincing. 

 

So what if it felt a little long for her? Powder didn’t have to use much of her upper body strength to pull the scythe through the grass. Like Caras had shown, it was more like stepping from side to side and just having the blade cut in the same direction. The tool wasn’t even that heavy, so it wasn’t like it spun her around or threw her off balance. A nice swath of grass fell next to its already cut brethren. Powder grinned. She could totally use this thing even if it was taller than Ekko and probably close to her own height standing on end. 

 

“Good job,” Caras praised from a step or two away. Despite having just shown her, Claggor and Ekko how it was used, he had taken an extra step back when Powder took the first swing. Afterward, Ekko and Claggor made their own test cuts on the same stretch of ground which didn’t really matter to the rest of the day. They filled their time waiting for Vander and Mylo to return from the toolshed that way. Only a couple dozen feet away from the shed, four pegs had been barely pushed in the ground to help them draw out the floor plan of their future workshop. 

 

That was where they took the scythe when Mylo peeked back out of the shed, carrying a handful of very flat stones that were about to really help out. Vi was the one Caras handed off the scythe to in the meantime, shocking no one . While her sister got her grip right on the tool, Powder took an instinctive step further back from the twine outline stretched between the pegs. Even trusting her sister as much as she did, Vi was holding a very big, very sharp blade. Powder had sharpened it herself when it was first made and knew better than any of them that it had a dangerous edge.

 

It took less than a minute for Vi to use the scythe to clear most of the height from the grass and weeds growing where they intended to start (prematurely) building the workshop. In fact she tried to go so quickly that at the end her sister’s aim got a little sloppy and the blade bit into one of the wooden pegs holding their outline in place. Show off, Powder thought to herself. Okay, so Vi had said she didn’t like-like Caras. That didn’t mean she wasn’t trying to impress him when he was watching her so closely. 

 

Once the scythe was down and her sister had gotten out of the build site, Powder nodded over to Ekko who, like the others, had been gathered around watching. He looked way more impressed with Vi than Powder herself. Ekko pointed off to a line of string running the length of the rectangle and headed off to pace that out. They’d measured the string originally using a ruler they’d had to make themselves because everyone else measured in meters, here. With the ruler being a stick that had since been misplaced (or burned), all they could do now was carefully measure out each side by paces and hope the width was still half of the length. 

 

Powder carefully counted out 10 paces heel to toe and paused at the end of one of the shorter sides while Ekko approached her along the length of one of the longer. 

 

“Twenty, give or take a little.” Powder held up ten fingers in response and Ekko flashed a thumbs up. That all made sense and, given the size of the bricks they’d been making, it made it easier to guess how many they needed. She didn’t have the specific number in her head yet, but it was definitely more bricks than they had ready. “Okay then,” Ekko glanced back at Mylo, who hesitantly handed over one of the long, flat gray stones to Ekko and then to Powder. He kept one for himself, looking annoyed and then tossed the last one underhanded over to Vi. 

 

Not expecting it, apparently, Vi grumbled as she caught it. Claggor held out a hand to the taller girl and took it so he could trade jobs with her. Mylo still pulled a face at Vi and received one in return. Powder did not worry too much about it. They really hadn’t argued in weeks. She knew why Mylo was annoyed. 

 

The four quickly took up position on their own sides of the rectangle and began to dig along the edge of the building site using rocks instead of a shovel. It felt like a really silly mistake for none of them to have thought about a shovel considering Vavros had been willing to work with them to get whatever tools they needed. Everyone had been thinking about firewood and harvesting and not about digging. For now, they’d have to make do with what Vander called ‘hand shovels.’ They looked a little more like stone ax heads to her. 

 

“Make the trench four fingers wide and as deep as your wrist,” Powder said. 

 

“Four of my fingers or four of yours?” Claggor asked as he took up the other long side of the rectangle. There was a difference but not a big one so she tried really hard and almost managed not to roll her eyes at him. Almost. Claggor looked satisfied at annoying her. 

 

“Yours,” she shrugged before driving the flattest edge of the stone in her hand down into the earth. The next few minutes were hard, but she spent a good amount of the time just breaking up the roots of the grass in the space where her side of their little trench was supposed to go. Swinging the rock down hard enough to go through the earth and the roots wasn’t as easy as she expected and Vander had sounded pretty worried the stones would crack if used too hard. So, she tried to strike a careful balance. 

 

Vander grabbed a bucket and headed downhill for the stream while Caras and Vi retreated to the shed to do their part. Occasionally, Powder looked up to see Ekko doing much the same as she was or to watch how easy it was for Claggor and Mylo to actually pierce the ground and pry up little chunks of dirt. While the work warmed her up quickly, she didn’t sweat the details. 

 

It didn’t matter too much if one side of the trench was too wide because dirt could be filled back in the gaps once the foundation was put down. It didn’t matter if they went too deep because they could take a stick and measure afterwards and fill back in any space they didn’t want. It was really just a matter of clearing all loose dirt out on the bottom layer. Since they weren’t going to bother with wood floors in the workshop and cement was hard to come by, there was no need to do any other work on the inside of the outline except maybe to break up the remaining grass and skim a layer of earth away to get rid of it. 

 

So Powder dug. Mylo grumbled for a moment or two before falling into a rhythm and mostly just acting impressed that rocks broken off of other bigger rocks were doing a good job as shovel heads. Claggor was happier about it. Powder could see him smile every once in a while at this little stone tool he had made. Ekko was more focused than the three of them combined though: he kept his head down dug fast along what would eventually be the eastern wall of the place. 

 

When she started to sweat, Powder just reminded herself it was for the workshop and all the cool things they could do with it. She also thought about the wrapped package Caras had brought to the farm with him that morning that Vander had had him put down in the cellar, calling it a surprise for dinner. It could’ve only been meat, some kind of big limb maybe from an ox or a yak. While not a mindblowing amount of food it loomed in the future like a promise that kept Powder going fairly quickly. 

 

She wondered if it was all the training she and Ekko did with Vi or not, but felt like she wouldn’t have been able to keep up this kind of work for very long back before they’d left the Lanes. After a few minutes, Caras returned alone carrying a short but fairly wide stick, as if broken off of the end of a branch. He joined her on her edge of the future workshop and helped her digging. During the process the boy caught her eye and pointed to a gouge along the length of the stick he was using. 

 

“For… mensurae . To show how deep hole is.” Powder nodded as he showed off how it worked: when his hand was measured starting from the flat end of the stick, a horizontal gouge in the bark lined up with a spot just below his wrist. Powder felt silly she hadn’t thought to do the same thing.

 

“Thanks.” Caras shrugged, but he was obviously happy. Conversation finally started to kick off and of course it was about food. Ekko wanted to know what everyone’s ‘dream’ dinner would be. For the most part, Mylo and Claggor talked about the little stalls in the Lanes that sold cheap foods that were still more expensive than they usually could afford to visit. Powder’s favorite was run by a fish folk who sold soups made from the parts of crabs and lobsters and shrimp that Topsiders were too good to eat and whatever fish he could get his hands on.

 

“I miss Jericho’s Slop Shop.” Powder chimed in during a pause in the conversation. Admitting this was enough for her stomach to start growling. The sound was thankfully buried by someone joining unexpectedly in on the talk. Powder quickly got back to digging. Since Caras had helped her out, she figured she should hurry and help someone else finish their side. 

 

“I hear that,” Vander interjected, drawing her eye for just a second. He settled a bucket of water down in front of the shed and then stepped inside. Only a couple of seconds later he came right back out with the rake in hand and headed their way. “You know what his secret is, don’t you?” the man prodded her. “Jericho, I mean.” Powder shook her head as she looked back up at him. The sun being behind his head, she lowered her eyes again to her hand shovel. “He puts a little bit of lobster stock in most of his soups when he can or something else special he gets his hands on. Especially the cheap ones. Doesn’t always break even, but that’s why he’s got loyal customers. He looks out for you.” 

 

When Mylo finished his trench first, he took his ‘shovel’ and started to break up the rest of the ground inside the twine outline. Powder quickly realized they’d done things out of order when Vander took the rake to it, too, and they made a bit of a mess while getting the greenery out of the borders of their future workshop. Ekko made quick work of cleaning out his side of the trench as a result. Once she and Caras shared a high five over their side, Powder helped Ekko finish his own. 

 

When they stepped back to take a breather, each a little more worn out, Powder asked what Ekko thought of their work. For a few seconds, he walked around the outer edge, looking at the rectangle from different angles and checking if the pegs holding the twine were still stuck straight in the ground. Then he gave Powder two thumbs up and nodded once. 

 

“It’s good!” She shared a sigh of relief with Claggor. Mylo looked back at Powder and then at Ekko as if to ask what was next. 

 

“We putting down the bricks now?” Powder shook her head, though. There was one thing to do first. 

 

When it came to installing the support beams for the workshop, Powder and Ekko helped by digging the holes. Other than that, Powder stayed pretty clear of her sister and the larger of her two brothers hauling around four pretty solid, long and thick beams of some kind of pine wood. Caras grabbed the little bit of mortar he and Vi had mixed up with the ratios Powder gave her and Vander poured what he could of it into each hole only in the moments before Claggor or Vi lowered a beam into place. Once they were satisfied with the first, Powder ran yet more string over to the next beam and wrapped it around a spot along it height they’d already marked with charcoal. 

 

Ekko and Mylo used this string to make sure that the two posts were both standing straight up and level. This happened two more times before they sort of had no choice but to start the work that was probably more of a pain. (Literally.) 

 

“You work like machine, yes?” Caras mused, watching Ekko as he stepped back from one pole and Claggor from another. Claggor kept his hands out in front of him like he was gonna catch the beam if it suddenly fell. The Noxian whistled, impressed. It sounded like something he’d picked up from Vi, if you asked Powder. When she glanced around, though, it was hard to pretend he was wrong. They could work together really well when everyone was on board. 

 

Claggor, Ekko, Mylo and Vi each stood at a corner of their future workshop, keeping an eye on the support beams a moment or two more to make sure the strings between each stayed straight. Vander was in the middle of grabbing more water. Powder? Well, her next job at least probably wouldn’t be as much work. When Vander came back with a full bucket and the others had gone inside to get a drink, she dragged Caras with her to the shed because Vi was busy and he’d been part of mixing the smaller batch of mortar. 

 

The roof’s the hard part, Powder reminded herself as she looked between a bucket of dry mortar mix, the bucket they’d used to mix the last little bit in and a full bucket of water. This part was just heavy. Not hard, she told herself, immediately ignoring the little voice reminding her she was just guessing about almost everything they were doing or following Vulci’s instructions. 

 

Powder shook her head because she couldn’t let herself get worried about that, now. Since she hadn’t stopped to look up from their work in a while she was a little thrown off that the sun above was no longer rising but instead dipping in the sky. 

 

Can’t really put anything inside until there’s a roof to make it inside, she reminded herself, trying to get herself back on task. Caras paused beside the water bucket and hesitated, as if worried about how quiet she was being. He’d never picked up everyone else’s problem of treating her like a weak little kid who’d start crying at the drop of a hat but times like this Powder could tell he’d caught on that something was wrong with her. 

 

Still a batch of bricks to fire. No way we’re getting done today. 

 

“What do we do?” Caras finally asked, interrupting her. She couldn’t even remember what had her feeling so nervous and upset, so Powder looked back his way instead of up at a sky full of flat white and gray clouds. “Like before?” Powder shook her head no. 

 

“We need more, now. Plus. ” The tall Noxan with the freshly shaven head nodded. Powder thought again about asking him why he’d shaved it all off. If it was about heat, he would’ve done it much earlier in the summer. It was practically autumn, now. Powder huffed to herself, annoyed she’d let herself get worked up over something and dragged the cover off of the dry mortar mix.  Without really thinking about what else to say, she started to drop handfuls of the powder into their mixing bucket. She was mostly measuring by eye to figure out how much they needed. They didn’t have the tools to measure it out the right way. 

 

Caras knelt down by the bucket and reached out, offering to help. Powder shook her head, but did follow his example by kneeling down by the buckets too. 

 

“You can do the water, okay? I’ll just watch to make sure we don’t use too much.” 

 

Caras answered with a vague gesture that Powder took to mean that he did not mind either way. After a second or two more, she followed the way his eyes slipped off to the right when her sister came around the corner of the house. Vi started heading their way with a couple of cups in hand. Powder smirked to herself, put down her head and kept doing what she was doing. That way she could concentrate and Vi might not see that she was about to give Caras hell. 

 

“Rather be doing this with Vi?” Powder asked him. It was half teasing, but also kinda serious. She was curious if he was really still crushing on her sister. It might not end the best for him if he was and she didn’t like the idea of him being upset. Caras, already tan enough to give Mylo a run for his money, blushed and then laughed. He gave away how good she’d gotten him by running his hands through hair that basically no longer existed, as if to push it out of his eyes. Then, green eyes narrowed and his long rectangular dark brows knitted together a little bit. She marked this as the first time he’d ever really teased her back ever. 

 

“You wish Sinnan was here instead of me?” Powder’s own cheeks darkened and she turned her attention completely back to the transfer of dry ingredients. There was something about Caras finally teasing back that made her smile. Maybe he was actually comfortable with them, maybe they were actually friends and maybe he wouldn’t be so bummed out when Vi finally let him down easy, which Powder hoped she would do soon. 

 

When Vi got over to them and handed off a couple of glasses of water, Powder took a very long drink from one of the cups with the hand that wasn’t covered in mortar mix. While she talked Vi and Caras through the ratios of the mix and stepped away to let Vi take her place, Powder started to get excited. It was like they’d put so much time and money and energy into the workshop and sure it wasn’t gonna be done tonight but… it was almost there. For them. For her, Ekko and Claggor mainly, but for all of them. Once the roof was on and the chimney built, they could move any other clay firing into the new kiln. Maybe someday soon they could get their own furnace for working metal. 

 

For now, just having a place to make things or work on them or just to sharpen tools that didn’t stick you with sitting on the floor in the house and people trying not to walk on you or whatever you were doing would be awesome! 

 

“Hey Caras,” Powder paused on the edge of making her escape from the duo. He began to lift the water bucket, ready to carefully tip it up a trickle would flow into their mixing bucket. The boy paused halfway through tilting the object in his hands and watched her face. Vi raised an eyebrow her way, too. “You’re right. Ego… volo… eam hic? ” Caras blinked and then squinted again at her as if trying to work out what she was saying. He grinned slyly and shot a sideways look at Vi. Powder knew that if he was the type to tease too much she’d just given him ammunition and only hoped he didn’t arm Vi with it in turn. 

 

“What’d I miss?” Vi asked, as Powder’s cheeks warmed up again. This time there was no way Vi and Caras could miss it. 

 

“Powder getting better at Ur-Nox. That very good.” She looked down. It hadn’t been an easy confession but Caras was nice, and actually listened to people when they talked. He was easy to confess to . “ Dicam ei. ” She had a pretty good idea what the word ‘Dicam’ meant there. Context could fill in the blanks. She shook her head. 

 

“No thanks.” Caras laughed. Vi crossed her arms over her chest getting mortar mix all over her shirt and her arms. 

 

“I’m starting to get paranoid here. Are you talking about me or some-” 

 

“Hey, Powder!” Ekko’s shout came from the future building site. This being her moment, Powder took full advantage of the situation to get out of that conversation fast. 

 

“The mortar came out great last time, just use the same ratios,” Powder told her sister before wiping her hands together and turning to leave the work to them. Vi called out her name in protest but Powder knew they could get it done. They’d managed it the last time. Vi just wasn’t always confident about making things. She left them behind and headed over to join Ekko. That was still close enough that Vi could keep shouting at her if she wanted. 

 

It wouldn’t be Powder who’d look silly, though. 

 

She and Ekko started to work out where they wanted the door to the building to go and the two windows and even where they’d build out the chimney. Ekko suggested a third window on the back wall and he and Powder quickly made plans to put together a third window frame for it. Even a temporary one made of sticks would work until they got a good one in place. Vander hung around and gave frequent tips but mostly acted like he was just trying to keep an eye on everything all at once. Between the mortar mixing and her and Ekko laying little stones along the outside of the rectangle to show where things were going, and Claggor and Mylo off getting the bricks from around front, there were a lot of balls in the air. 

 

“Think an arch over the front door would be cool?” Powder prodded Ekko. Vander laughed in a way that made her wonder if she didn’t sound childish to him, but Ekko liked the idea. 

 

“Yeah, let’s do it!” The problem was neither of them really knew how to make one, so they decided for now to just plan for a regular doorway. There was always the chance to go into Airus the next day and talk to the mason. He had to know how people did that. Vavros’ workshop had an archway over the front door and though it sounded silly Powder just thought it’d be cool to do the same. 

 

Over the next hour things went from talking to doing really fast and damn was it cool! Eager as Ekko was to start laying the bricks, Powder might have planned ahead to make sure she got her hands on the first one. She used one of those digging stones to slap down some of the mortar Caras and Vi had mixed together. She set the brick into place on the outside of the front left support beam and grinned at her victory at getting to place down the first one. 

 

When Ekko rolled his eyes but still gave her a fist bump she got out of the way and spent some time just putting down mortar for whoever was doing the brick laying. It was important to use enough but not waste it, either. She worked with Ekko to show the others how they could at build simple shapes like a rectangular doorway and square windows into the design from the start. With all the measuring more or less done, Ekko, Caras and the family shared the task of laying a ceremonial bottom (or a foundation) layer of bricks, the last of which Vander put down himself. 

 

After that, the only time they really slowed down was to make sure that the bricks were in the right spot or that enough of the mortar got put down to make sure they stayed in place. Other than having to make a couple of half-bricks to help shape the doorway and windows, putting the bricks down was the easy part. Whenever someone’s back or arms got tired, someone else was there to take over. Caras even helped out. As that first hour slipped on to another the walls started to rise. The outline of the chimney base took shape and they laid out the start of a new kiln just like the first one so they could work it into the build the easy (and probably safest) way. 

 

The bricks from the old one could just be used later on. 

 

Powder traded off on making the kiln and its chimney fit into the build only with Ekko, because it was probably the fiddliest part and she thought the two of them could make it look the best. They’d definitely be able to make it work but she wanted it to work with only one change to their first design. It would’ve been really hard to stick the chimney on the kiln if they still loaded it from the top down. So, a gap on the front they covered up with special bricks like a door would have to do. She didn’t think Claggor or Vander would be able to reach in and put things in or pull them out, but everyone else could get away with it. 

 

By the time they were more or less out of bricks that were ready, their new kiln was built at the base of the workshop’s future chimney. Cooler yet, the walls looked like walls. It’d been fun to step back once or twice and watch the building take shape around her. When they had no choice but to basically stop for the day, she walked through the empty doorway of the unfinished tiny building and pumped a fist in celebration. No one back home got to go around building anything that wasn’t like, scrap metal and wood huts. 

 

They’d made a brick building bigger than their own toolshed. Well, kinda. 

 

It wasn’t done , not even if you ignored the missing roof, but they’d brought in the wooden window frames to help shape the walls around them and done something similar for a door frame made to the exact measurements the village’s carpenter had given them for the door he was working on. The walls were tall enough that even Caras and Vi and Mylo had to stretch to lay anymore bricks. Meaning everything like that was probably down to Claggor and Vander. It sucked but Powder figured she wasn’t gonna do much more building with her own hands unless she had the mother of all step stools.  

 

It was the shell of a kiln inside the shell of a workshop, with only a tarp to cover the kiln but it was so cool . 

 

It was also progress. When she stood inside of it she could imagine the tiled roof and the wooden rafters connecting it to their wooden suppors. She could imagine light coming from the kiln’s firebox. She could imagine pushing open a window to let heat out. She could imagine sitting down at a table and trying to make bowls and other useful things out of clay. She could imagine, at least. 

 

“How’re we gonna actually make the roof?” Vi asked her, drawing Powder back to her senses. She had just been standing in the middle of the space and staring up into the sky. A little annoyed at the interruption she answered maybe a little childishly. 

 

“That’s the easy part. The hard part’s the rest of the supports. More wood supports and then smaller pieces to attach the tiles to.”

 

“Tiles?” Mylo asked her through a window frame still lacking a window. It was still almost like someone outside talking to Powder inside, though . She laughed. Weeks and weeks of getting clay and sand and making bricks ( and buying way too many ) and in just a few hours they had the thing half built. They just needed more wood to finish the inner frame and the roof’s frame and some nails and tiles. “Like, the clay ones on some buildings back in town, yeah?” Powder nodded his way as he combed his fingers through his hair to knock loose what looked like a little bit of their mortar half dried in it. 

 

“Yeah,” Ekko answered for her, poking his head half in the open doorway. Vi jumped, surprised by his appearance. “It’s the best way to do it that we won’t have to change all the time.” Powder nodded agreement but she kept her eyes on Ekko and how brightly he grinned around the not-quite-a-room. She wasn’t stupid: until it was turned into a real workshop with like, shelves and benches and stuff, the building was probably gonna be used as space for someone to sleep in. Her first, if she got her way. 

 

But it wasn’t just more room. 

 

It was special because it made Ekko happy. It made Powder excited. It was something they worked on as a group: her family, her best friend, their new Noxian friend and a lot of help from people in Airus who were pretty nice once she got to know them. Even Vavros wasn’t the crab she’d thought he would be. It had taken her long enough that she felt a little stupid just to figure out he was deaf in one ear and that was why sometimes it looked like he ignored them. 

 

They’d gotten lucky. 

 

A few short hours after they’d begun, Powder stooped down to more neatly drop an extra load of firewood before, beside her, Mylo did the same thing. Vi and Claggor continued to stack other wood up almost like a pyramid for a big campfire just a few feet away from the front of the house. Not down the hill by the road like Kutter had done that first night before leaving them here. When she turned around to look for Vander, he had the lid to their pot in his hands and was using it to carefully walk a very hot looking coal over to the campfire. At the same time, Caras and Ekko came around the corner from their trip to the cellar. 

 

Caras was carrying the same wrapped package from before, some kind of oxen meat covered in cloth the same texture as their grain bags. She didn’t know if it was Vander coming that got Claggor’s and Vi’s attentions but she knew she was watching Caras. Her stomach instantly growled even though at that point the only cooking any of them had done was putting the rice pot on the stove inside. 

 

“Not much for seven people, but Orkis thought good to share,” Caras waved the package around as he began to jog over. 

 

“He comes and helps us build stuff and brings meat.” Mylo shook his head beside Powder. “Caras, buddy, you’re gonna make the rest of us look bad.” The Noxian tilted his head in confusion but Mylo shook his own as if to say not to worry about it. Ekko broke off from Caras and went back into the house to get one of the little metal grates they sometimes sat over the hearth for cooking. They didn’t use it often, since they had the stove and its oven. 

 

Before Ekko could get back, though, Vi knelt up a bit to get a good look as Caras unwrapped one thick leg of meat. 

 

“You give potatoes from harvest, so we want give this.” 

 

“It was nothing,” Vander reassured the boy, though he did not look ready to say no to the offer of the meal. Ekko passed the grate to Vander once he got back and the man put it on the outer edge of where the fire would go. Vander put the burning coal into a bunch of dead and dry  grass nested inside of the wood. Vi brandished their knife and offered to start cutting up the meat so they could cook it more quickly. “The potatoes did good. We’ll be able to grow a good amount of them in this soil, so long as we have some seed potatoes left by planting time.” 

 

Before Powder could say anything on the topic, she caught Ekko waving at her from the corner of her eye. When she looked at him he brought his hands up to eye level and mimicked aiming down the length of a weapon and pulling a trigger, pointed in no particular direction at all. She immediately shook her head no, immediately jolted out of too good a mood. She knew what the hand gesture meant, knew exactly what he wanted her to do. Her eyes shot from his frown to Mylo’s arched eyebrow. Mylo totally saw that . She looked down before he could ask any questions. 

 

She could feel him watching her, anyway.

 

Yeah, she’d thought about telling everyone about the secret project she’d been working on for the last couple of weeks but she still had… reservations. 

 

Unlike most of her projects since moving to Noxus, she’d done it on her own, except for Ekko being her tester. She’d even made a few adjustments based on his answers to her questions about how her new creation performed. It was different than how they’d worked together in the past, especially on things like their game room back home. It was still nice. It was always nice to do stuff with Ekko. It was good and it usually went well even when it went wrong. Ekko got that better than her, the idea that things going wrong just taught you how to do better next time. She got upset sometimes when something she made didn’t work but Ekko just usually worked it out. Maybe that was because he mainly fixed things back home while she spent more time trying to make things. 

 

Tonight she didn’t want to show off her new creation for one reason: she didn’t want to bum anyone out. 

 

“I can’t wait for the flour,” Claggor suddenly groaned. Powder wondered if he was feeling sick, because the only food she could think about was the red meat Caras was now cutting into thin strips with their good knife. She did wonder how long before they’d get the portion of their grain they’d sent off to the miller back as flour. It hadn’t sounded like he was taking that much of the finished product for pay. 

 

“Question is,” Ekko jumped on board the conversation, probably trying to cover up the awkward moment with Mylo. “Will Vander be able not to burn the bread?” 

 

“Hey,” the man called without turning away from his work. She could hear the sound of grass and twigs starting to burn. “I can, I’d imagine. Baked a loaf or two in my time and we’ve got a nice oven in there.” While Caras laid the long, thin strips over their cooking grate, Vi used one of Mylo’s stone knives to cut larger chunks from the leg, which she skewered on a series of little sticks Powder and Claggor had gone to collect earlier. The skewers were thicker and chunkier and even had thin slices of carrot in between each hunk of meat. 

 

Powder wasn’t gonna complain which she got her hands on when cooking finally finished but hoped it could be a little of both. At Vander’s prompting, Claggor shoved a smaller pan under the grate, apparently to catch the fat dripping off it. 

 

She thought about plopping down into the grass there and then and just having fun with the smell of the food cooking and the way the sky was starting to darken and change colors as they got close to twilight. (She didn’t think there was any chance Caras was making it back to the village before, but there was always space for one more, even if Powder suspected he’d have to use the lean-to for the night.) The thing was, she wasn’t all that tired, yet. The air was cool up there and as soon as the fire got bigger it was gonna be warm sitting too close. 

 

Sure, hauling around and laying bricks wasn’t easy. Her arms hurt a little bit but there’d been so many people that they’d been able to share the load. Besides, the pain in her arms now was nothing compared to how she felt after their first planting, much less the second. 

 

“It’s not just bread, you know,” Vander insisted as he pushed back on his knees and started to stand up from the first moments of a fire. “We can make noodles, we can have dumplings. I don’t know about you but the first time we get big game, I want dumplings. ” Mylo shrugged but Powder had to admit she agreed more with Claggor across the fire from her: he sighed and sat back as if he really missed dumplings. 

 

She did too. Fried dumplings. Soup dumplings. Steamed dumplings. That was a good way to make just about any food better, especially when it was the kind of meat Topsiders just didn’t want. 

 

“Or there’s sausages,” the words escaped Powder’s mouth before she’d finished imagining the last time she’d had a warm sausage with onions on it slathered in relish on a bun. That’d probably been, what, a year ago? Forever. 

 

“I don’t know what you’d do for a casing,” Vander shrugged. “A thin dumpling could be close.” Powder nodded and was about to turn and ask Caras what his favorite food was because it seemed weird they didn’t know after everyone’s conversation earlier. Before she could ask, though, Ekko stage whispered something to her from behind Vander’s back. 

 

“Psst, Powder. This is a good time to show them the thing!” Ekko, having more or less blown her cover, looked pleased with himself. She didn’t know why. He had to know it would make Vander all weird. Didn’t he remember the paintball gun? 

 

“No, it’s nothing,” Powder shook her head, keeping her voice low. This was the wrong thing to do, clearly, because even the people who had been cutting up meat for part of their dinner were watching her when she looked up a moment later. 

 

“What is it?” Vi skewered two pieces of carrot in a row on a freshly cut stick because she was not paying attention to what she was doing anymore. Her sister didn’t notice even after the fact and reached for a chunk of raw, red meat, lips pursed slightly in concentration. Concentration on the wrong thing, Powder thought, dejectedly. 

 

Claggor raised an eyebrow and piled on. 

 

“Hey, is this that secret project I’m totally not supposed to notice you’re always working on at the smithy?” Claggor looked smug when she winced, so she turned to look at Vander instead. 

 

“I just don’t want anyone to get upset.” Freshly back on his feet, Vander began to dust off the knees of his pants. 

 

“And why would we be upset?” 

 

“Because,” she grumbled. “Because you didn’t like me making the paintball gun or the one for shooting those rubber balls.” Vi lowered the stone knife to her side and sat up a little straighter next to Caras. 

 

“Powder, you didn’t make a gun somehow - “ 

 

“No!” She shook her head and raised both hands to calm her sister down. Vi looked momentarily guilty. Though, weirdly, Mylo was just disappointed. “No, I don’t have the tools or half the stuff I need for gunpowd-” 

 

“Powder.” Vi hissed, as if chiding her for something. She stopped talking and sort of just held still. This… this was why she didn’t want to tell them. They didn’t get it. If someone tried to hurt them they fought. After all this training with Vi and Ekko she might even be able to fight like them, too. That didn’t mean she liked the idea of getting hit. It didn’t mean she didn’t feel better with other options. It wasn’t like they were really safe out here. It wasn’t as bad as dodging enforcers back home but….

 

“This is what I meant,” Powder told Ekko, who frowned and slumped his shoulders a little, looking sorry. “This is why I didn’t wanna say anything yet!” 

 

“You’ve made it.” Vander dragged her attention away from Ekko, who offered an apologetic smile at her. Powder shrugged to say she wasn’t mad, just…. Ugh. “So you might as well show us, right?” 

 

After a second or two of hesitation and way too many eyes on her, Powder left the others behind and dipped back to the shed. From behind the first brick kiln she pulled a wrapped package out that was mostly flat but about as wide as her chest. It didn’t take her long to get back to the fire out front but she could tell that work on cutting away meat from the bone had basically stopped. Ekko was now back to trying to encourage her without saying anything. 

 

Since she didn’t think she could talk her way out of it, Powder uncovered her creation and presented it immediately to Vander. Jittery, Powder started by showing him the small, slim wooden rod that served as the body of a bolt, a projectile kind of like an arrow. Then she handed off the thing that had taken the real work. Despite being nervous about how he’d deal with it, she was kind of more nervous about whether he thought it was good or not. 

 

Powder was almost as proud of this as she had been the machine that had let her make her own paintballs. 

 

Vander took her prototype in his admittedly very large hands and turned it over. It looked right in her own hands but in his meaty ones it came off like a toy. Handheld and fairly light considering there was nearly as much iron in its design as wood, Vander held onto her small, handheld crossbow. Its grip was shaped like a pistol’s. He lifted it to eye level and stared at the trigger mechanism which both unnerved her and made her cheeks warm a little. 

 

A small part of her held her breath, waiting for him to comment on that piece in particular: the trigger had been the most annoying part of it all. Not even making the limb out of solid iron had been a bigger pain in the ass. He stared long enough at it that she wondered if he knew how difficult the trigger had been to make. Then his stern mask slipped and she saw him look proud.

 

“I couldn’t think of any way to do compressed air for the rubber balls or the paintballs, so I made this instead.” 

 

“Okay, but why?” Powder turned her sister’s way. Vi had her eyes on the crossbow and looked like she wanted to get her hands on it.  Powder hoped she waited until she’d washed them: her sister was holding and cutting raw meat. Mylo came over to Vander to get a good look. For being so hard to impress, Mylo observed it with open curiosity and a little bit of excitement. It was as close to a “good job” as she was going to get. 

 

“The bows are still kinda hard to pull back, especially if you have to do it over and over again like when you’re hunting or practicing.” 

 

“So you made this for hunting?” her sister asked. Powder was forced to shake her head no when Mylo and Vander both turned around to watch her. Vander nodded and it was Claggor, not Ekko who caught Powder’s eyes and gave her an encouraging nod. Ekko’s eyes widened a little bit and pale eyebrows rose as if to tell her to get a move on. So Powder got a move on. 

 

“No.” 

 

“Okay then. Why don’t you tell us why?” Vander sounded so calm that she hoped he’d accept her answer because it wasn’t much different than when he’d asked why she’d moved on to the guns that shot little rubber balls at targets instead of paintballs. 

 

“Because I feel better having something to shoot with.” Powder again produced the only bolt she’d yet made, with its stone tip salvaged from an arrow Mylo had broken early on. “I don’t want to hurt anyone but I’m way better shooting something than I am trying to do anything else if… if…” 

 

“I get it,” Vi announced with a shrug. Surprisingly calm for the topic at hand, she suddenly returned to cutting beef from the bone. After watching her elder sister for a second, Caras smirked at Powder. She hadn’t even looked at him, more nervous about how the rest of the family would take her new weapon. “I didn’t even start to feel better until I started training again. It’s a little bit of that and a little bit of ‘what if we have to protect ourselves’, right?” 

 

Eager for the understanding, she told Vi yes. The relief drove a smile to her face. She was always able to count on Violet. Always. 

 

“Besides,” Vi didn’t look away from the meat again but dropped the mood a little bit by stating the obvious. “Maybe you should have something like that. We don’t know what this LeBlanc wants.”  Powder wondered exactly what the boy in the ragged beige top beside her sister knew about the lady who kept sneaking onto their land to give Powder and Ekko shit, anyway. 

 

Had Vi even mentioned it to him? If not, Caras didn’t seem too weirded out by the conversation. He seemed at ease all of a sudden and content to continue shaving down the meat of the ox leg. 

 

“But do you think it would work for hunting?” Mylo suddenly asked, breaking the tension for once. She got why the idea excited him. He’d been doing most of the hunting alone or with one other person for weeks, going out almost every day. He had to get tired pulling back the bowstring, too. She shook her head though. 

 

“Not this one,” she tapped the device in Vander’s hands, having to stretch to do so more than she wanted anyone to acknowledge. “Too small. But I made it with wood, a knife and a few pieces of metal. I could make bigger ones. Ekko and Claggor can help me with them, and they’d go faster. They’d be good for hunting bigger things. You’d only have to pull back the string once every shot and maybe we can even make them better to aim. I’m still working out the sights on mine.” Mylo lifted his eyes from the crossbow to her, hanging on her every word for once. 

 

In a rare position where he was completely listening to her, Powder continued. 

 

“The hardest part was the spring for the trigger.” 

 

“What about the arm?” Mylo pointed to the limb of the crossbow and then corrected himself. “The limb, or whatever. That one’s metal. Could they be made out of wood?” Powder shrugged, forgetting to be nervous anymore.

 

“I think so but I don’t know if it’d be strong enough. I’d have to ask Vavros. He might know better than me. We could make an iron limbed one for hunting, though. It’s not that heavy. If we can pay for the metal to make the pieces and Vavros lets us use his forge and stuff, it’d only be a few days of work.” 

 

For the first time in about a minute, Vander joined in on the conversation as he handed the weapon back to Powder. She was happier with it than ever given how quickly everyone got on board with her making and having it. They knew she wasn’t some stupid little kid who was gonna shoot herself in the foot with it or something. They were from the Lanes. Sometimes you had to have something like this. 

 

“Would you be okay with that, Powder?” Vander asked her, suddenly more serious than when she’d shown him the crossbow to start with. “Making something like that for whoever goes out hunting?” Very confused at the dipping of his tone and the way he wasn’t even worrying over her as hard anymore, Powder nodded. Why wouldn’t she be? It wasn’t that much work now that she’d done this one. It might even be a little easier, now. 

 

“Yeah? I don’t think I could make anything better without tools we don’t have and stuff.” Caras reached out with the hand that had been holding the knife a moment before and Powder brought the crossbow around the campfire. She gestured for him to get up and come over and carefully placed his hand on the grip of the crossbow. She aimed the weapon away from the others and away from the house and toward the ground. When she was sure Caras was watching, she pulled back and set the string, loading the bolt into place. 

 

“Now you just do this,” Powder counseled the boy, and curled her finger in the air as if she were pulling a trigger. Caras nodded, humming his enjoyment and then lifted it quickly, holding it almost perfectly and even showing he could tell how to use the sights. He fired the crossbow bolt into a random patch of grass and just like when Ekko shot test shots, Powder tried really hard to follow its path. 

 

This time, she lost it pretty quick and didn’t pick it up again until she saw it sticking out of the dirt.

 

“Shoots very fast,” he sounded pleased and maybe a little amused. Maybe to him it felt like a lot of extra stuff just to shoot a bow. To her, it meant a lot less trouble not having to pull a string back over and over and over and over again. He handed the weapon back and went to get the bolt. 

 

“I’m glad you showed us.” Powder turned back to look across the top of the flames between her and Vander. The fire was finally really roaring. “I may not like the idea of you running around with weapons, might not like that you guys still don’t feel safe, but you've all been doing this long enough and maybe we're not as safe as I wanted us to be.” Vander grimaced and then shrugged his right shoulder once. It must’ve hurt to admit it. It kinda hurt to hear it, but she still thought they were safer than back home. For now LeBlanc had only said or shown them things… things Powder wasn’t gonna think about today. It wasn’t like the worry about an enforcer beating someone up in the street and leaving them there all busted up or worse. 

 

“You've had to get used to worse than carrying a crossbow,” Vander finished. He met Powder’s eyes with his own and she involuntarily smiled. He looked hesitant but again gave that one-shouldered shrug. “I trust you. Just remember: it’s an in case of emergencies or hunting thing only, understood? Outside of that, you don’t even aim it unless it’s at a practice targets.” The last sentence was basically word for word his warning about the rubber ball gun she’d made for their game room’s shooting range. 

 

Only, this time he sounded less upset but even more serious, which didn’t make sense. 

 

Powder promised him what he wanted to hear because it wasn’t like she wanted to shoot anyone. It was just, what if Vi was right about LeBlanc? What if she came back one day and decided to just take whatever it was she wanted. Powder didn’t want to find out if she could actually fire the crossbow at anyone. It wasn’t the same as bouncing rubber off of an enforcer’s helmet or absolutely wrecking Ekko’s scrap wood shield with paintballs when they faced off in Lanewar. 

 

“Mylo’s right, though. A couple crossbows could be useful if we want to eat like this more often.” Vander nodded to Caras, who extended the crossbow bolt Powder’s way. She took it back. “Caras and Orkis won’t always be treating us.” 

 

“Vander.” Powder turned around when Vi blurted out his name nearly before Vander could stop talking. Claggor shoved the grate and the pot under it closer to the fire and started to help Caras lay out his strips of meat and Vi’s skewers for roasting. “There’s something else you need to know about.” Her sister looked hard faced and dead set on something before reminding Powder of something she’d almost forgotten about. “Something under the shed.” 

 

Vander looked bemused, but Powder blinked at the idea that she hadn’t thought about the stash hidden under the floor of their toolshed in a while. 

 

“The prisoner,” Vi started seriously, causing Vander to immediately frown. “She told me her name when we talked and showed me a door hidden in the floor. The kiln’s over it right now so I can’t show you what’s inside but Ekko took a look. Lots of swords, arrows and bows. The sword he showed me was made out of steel, not iron. Really clean and nice looking.” Vander’s eyes slowly slid to Caras, who in turn shrugged at Vi. Powder was fairly certain he knew enough Piltovan by then to pick up what was going on around him. “Kutter’s family, or whoever, was up to some stuff,” her sister finished. 

 

“The son must have put them there,” Caras chimed in. “Orkis thinks he was rebel and ran away to protect his parents.” Five or six seconds passed during which Vander eyed Caras like he was trying to get a measure of the boy. Caras didn’t look away or seem bothered by it the way Powder thought she would if someone Vander’s size stared her down. Then Vander tilted his head to one side and eased an eyebrow up. 

 

“Orkis probably has the measure of it, more or less. Kutter was my contact in the Noxian underground.” Caras stopped transferring skewers over to the grate and looked eye to eye with Vander. He looked awed and a little scared and Powder got it. She’d looked at Vander that way when they first went to live with him, she still remembered that part. It’d taken a long time to believe he didn’t want to hurt either of them but by the time she’d finally figured it out they were moving into The Last Drop and Mylo and Claggor were already there with them. Kind of. At first, Mylo hadn’t stayed there every night.

 

“If Kutter turns up, we’ll have him move them,” Vander declared. Powder could tell Vi wanted to say something else. She could see the look of opportunity on her sister’s face and as anxious as it made her, Vi did let whatever idea she had go. After staring dejectedly into the fire for a second, her sister looked back over at Powder. 

 

“The crossbow’s really cool. It’s cool you guys still have your own projects even if you and Ekko are a really good team.” 

 

“We’re still working on fixing little things,” Ekko chimed in as Powder warmed up even though she was trying to keep back from the fire. “The big ones will be even better.” 

 

Powder kind stayed out of the talk for a few minutes as Claggor questioned whether they could make one that fired the arrows they’d already made and Ekko assured him it was probably doable. Mylo tried to advocate for using the arrows under the shed and Vander chased that notion away with the response of ‘like hell we will.’

 

While she thought Mylo was right that it would save her and Ekko a lot of time making stuff, she didn’t wanna push it with Vander. Eventually, Vander told them to ‘drop it and just enjoy dinner.’ 

 

“While you’re at it, I haven’t heard anyone thank Caras.” This being actually kinda crappy, Ekko chimed in a thanks to the embarrassed Noxian and she joined in the chorus of thanks that followed and didn’t let Caras pass it off as no big deal. 

 

“One of the oxes didn’t like the heat. It was sad. It helped us for a long time. This way at least, it helps us again. And our new friends.” Powder got out of her own head and fading anxiety when Ekko whispered into her left ear. 

 

“Hey. It’s better now that it’s out, right?” 

 

“Mhmm.” Powder stepped a little bit away from the fire, The crossbow was suddenly really light in her hands as she pinned the one bolt she had against the bottom of the device. Ekko followed and when she thought they had enough space between themselves and the others, she told him something that felt really important. “Also, Vi’s wrong. It’s fun to do stuff alone sometimes but I only did this one alone because I wanted to be sure I could. It’s way better making things with you.” 

 

Ekko didn’t answer for a second. He blinked at her like Vi’s comment hadn’t hit him the same way it had her and then smiled really very wide and Powder saw him relax. She hadn’t thought he was all tense but maybe he’d been worried about how upset she’d gotten at first when he tried to talk her into showing off the crossbow. She knew what a relieved laugh sounded like when she heard it, so she jabbed him with her left elbow in the arm. 

 

“Hey. Omnia bene erunt, right?” 

 

“ Omnia bene erant, ” Ekko answered with a nod. Powder didn’t get a chance to correct him. Caras suddenly stage whispered at the two of them, making it clear their conversation hadn’t been as private as Powder had wanted. There were only a few feet between them and the fire, though. 

 

“ Erunt. ”

 

Ekko shrugged as if to say, ‘that’s what I said’ and headed back to the fire. Powder followed and so she was actually close by when she finally saw the other shoe drop for her sister. Vi was about to figure out why she was having trouble learning even really simple things in Ur-Nox. 

 

“Are there multiple ways to say the same word?” Vi suddenly interrupted her work, putting the stone knife down entirely again in the grass. Caras looked very confused her way. Vi got up and crossed to the other side of the campfire in five or six steps, grabbing the boy’s discarded walking stick he liked to take around the woods. Vi waved it to get his attention. “Like, this is a stick. If there’s two or more, they’re called ‘sticks’. But there’s more ways to say stick than that in Ur-Nox, aren’t there?” After a moment of consideration, Caras nodded. 

 

“Ah! Yes!” Powder grinned Ekko’s way, which was apparently enough to get Vi’s attention. 

 

“What are you smiling at?” 

 

“You, just now getting it,” she shot back. 

 

“Lots of words for a thing or a place. Usually change the word by changing sound at the end. I think it depend what the stick is doing.” Caras reached out for the stick, so Vi brought it back around to him. When he took it, he shook it a little. “This help me on long walk. It is called baculum or baculo… baculi. Stick for hitting people is fustis, fustem, fuste, fusti. But….” 

 

“It depends on how the thing is being used in a sentence,” Ekko told Vi, which was better than Powder would’ve been able to say it. Her sister immediately started to rub at her temples even through her longer-than-normal pink hair. Powder again thought about all the raw meat Vi had just been handling and pulled a face. 

 

“Fuck me, I’ll never get that !” Caras, who couldn’t reach her, used the end of his walking stick to tap her on the shoulder. Vi paid attention to him. 

 

“I still make mistake and I talk Ur-Nox since almost as small as Ekko.” 

 

“Wha-” Ekko’s mouth hung open at Caras. Mylo laughed in a way that sounded like a donkey baying. It was not his usual laugh but it was a real one. Again, she couldn’t remember Caras razzing Ekko before and the shot had landed. Beside her, Ekko gaped at the Noxian and when the surprise finally passed, squinted intensely. Caras laughed it off though, and pointed at Powder. 

 

“You shoot good, yes?” His eyes looked back at the crossbow she was holding to her chest. Powder started to shrug but Ekko cut her off, sounding annoyed. He was still a little sore. 

 

“She’s the best shot here!” 

 

“Arguably,” Mylo snorted.

 

“Wow, big word,” she shot back. She wouldn’t have wanted to risk teasing Mylo a few weeks ago when he was being so mean she didn’t wanna be alone with him. Now, he rolled his eyes at her like it didn’t matter. That was how she knew she’d gotten at him.

 

“Next time more light out, show me.” There was just enough challenge to their friend’s words that Powder looked up at the sky. It was dimming off to the west now, but there was still some light to see by. Powder pointed her chin in his direction. 

 

“Sunlight’s for the weak.” There was still some in the sky after all. Caras’ green eyes were all excitement and fun, so Powder nodded over toward their practice targets. They were still nothing but sticks and grass, but at least had some string tying them together, now. Without waiting for him accept the challenge she headed back behind the house. “Come on.” When she looked back, Caras and Mylo were on her tail. Mylo was clearly not ready to give up his title. 

 

That’s okay by me , she thought, kissing her crossbow as she watched Ekko start to follow the others. She was the best shot she knew. Mylo and Caras could both bring it. 

 

I’m ready. 

 

Notes:

And there we have it. The next story in this sequence is still in the early outlining portion. Hopefully soon? :) Be interested in hearing any thoughts folks have about the story! And while I'm at it, thank you so much for coming along for an emotional ride.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of In Your Lanes