Step To Me

by MarimbaMama

Summary:

I’m rewriting canon and making it a role swap, both just for fun and to give the characters the development they deserved but didn’t get

This story is not abandoned, but updates are slow ‼️‼️

Chapter 1: NOT A CHAPTER

Hey yall, I wanted to try my hand at a little swap AU (which has basically become a canon rewrite), I’ve been mapping it out and started the writing process these past few weeks, so I hope to start sharing chapters with you soon :) In the meantime, here is some important context for what I’ll be writing, since my goal is to make this my own rather than a copy of some other swaps I’ve seen here:

 

• I will be deviating from canon prior to the big accident, however the writing will start with that night and all changes leading up to that point will be expressed through the narration

 

• This will still loosely follow the canon series of events, but it will be a bit heavier as I plan to explore the characters and their minds more than canon did (aside from Jinx ofc), as well as take on different interpretations so as to fit the new character placements. It will be a split PoV as we follow the five main characters of this story

 

• Ekko will be taking Jinx’s role in the story, but he will NOT be in partnership with Silco in the same way she was

 

• Jinx will not perfectly mimic the canon Ekko, but she will lead the firelights (with help from another character), will still go by Jinx, and will still face the same mental health struggles she deals with in canon

 

• Caitlyn will not be an enforcer, she will instead find herself operating elsewhere, though she will still be the Kiramman heir and will still be a partner to the enforcers and the council rather than a member of their ranks

 

• Vi still goes to Stillwater following the accident and is still freed by Caitlyn, and Vi will be reunited with Jinx much sooner than canon. She will closely follow her usual season 1 arc, with only minor changes happening, and her divergence will not begin until closer to season two

 

• And finally, the addition of a fifth mystery character. He will be an enforcer in Marcus’s squadron and will eventually cross paths with Caitlyn, finding himself roped into the central plot

 

That’s about it for our main cast, as the other storylines (Jayce and Viktor, Mel and Ambessa, etc) will remain about the same. My ultimate goal is to pull off a switch up while keeping the cast all true to themselves. I’m so excited to get this story rolling for yall and I hope you guys are too! Chapter One is coming April 1st!!

Chapter 2: Shouldn’t Have Done It (Now There’s Blood In The Water)

Summary:

The beginning of the end—a retelling of the big accident that led our five main characters to where they are now

Notes:

I’m so excited to finally share this!!! It’s been about 6 weeks in the making and I’m glad to finally get it rolling! I apologize if this one feels rushed, I am not a fan of doing more than one PoV on the same event so some perspectives will be shorter than others. Once we get to the real story, things will flesh out more. Also, every chapter title will correspond to a song since my goal is to create a playlist for this story, to set the tone and stuff. This one is Can’t Stop This by Thousand Foot Krutch, so go check it out!

Wherever you are, light it up and I’ll find you

 

Ekko watched from the corner as Vi and her brothers hurried out of the basement. This plan she had was foolish, and he knew it. He knew the moment he’d tracked Silco and Vander to the cannery that the former was baiting the kids, and he’d told Vi as such, but she paid it no concern. All she’d cared about was getting Vander back. And he understood, he really did; he’d watched as Benzo was torn to bloody shreds, as his second father left the world—left him far too soon, and he’d give anything to have him back, so he understood why Vi was being so rash. But he also knew that what she was doing would only end badly.

 

“I’ll be back soon,” Powder grumbled, standing from the bed. “I can help them.”

 

“No!” Ekko shouted after her. “You need to stay here.”

 

“I know how to help!” She reached into her small belt pocket and pulled out a handful of glowing blue gemstones. “These things in my monkey bomb, it’ll work this time I know it!”

 

“You can’t go, Pow,” Ekko reiterated. “It’s a trap, no one is safe. You stay here, I’ll see if I can sneak up to the building and use your bomb if you want to try it out, but you can’t go.”

 

Powder sighed. She paused to think, her face scrunching up in its familiar way, then pressed three of the jagged stones into his palm and the painted face of her monkey in the other hand. Ekko slid them into his pockets and watched as she held the flare Vi had given to her.

 

“If you have to go, take this too in case something goes wrong. I’ll wait here as long as you promise to make sure Vi is okay.”

 

Ekko took the flare and hugged his best friend tightly, the weight of what he was about to do settling in his chest. “Nothing’s gonna happen to us. And don’t stay here, we can’t risk Silco and his goons coming after you when they realize you aren’t with us. Find somewhere to hide. I’ll light this when I’m safe, and you can come find me.”

 

Ekko couldn’t believe he was doing this. It left a bitter hollowness in his chest, watching Powder leave the room, taking in every detail as if for the last time. He stood in the cluttered expanse of the basement until he was confident she was far from him. And with a final sigh, he took the first step towards the cannery, to go save the people who had become his family.

 

What had started as a light drizzle when Ekko’d arrived at the Last Drop turned into a downpour when he left it. The rain fell so heavily that he could barely see where he walked, but he would keep going. Vander needed him. Vi, Mylo and Claggor would need him when this plan of theirs inevitably went awry. He clutched his pocket tightly, not allowing the gems to leave his grip for even a moment. His mind was awash with thoughts that came and went like a cyclone. The memories of that cold night as he watched his family die. The screams and the fighting, the gleam of her knife and the red of his blood. The dead weight of his baby brother’s body in his arms. Their faces urged him on faster. It wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t.

 

The sight of the cannery looming above him set Ekko’s blood ablaze as he crouched in a darkened alleyway nearby. The dark sky and black clouds only added to the imposing presence of the old building. Everyone was in there. Enforcers and chembarons wandered the perimeter, planted at every creaking door, every shattered window. Two floors up waited the only available point of entry, a ladder leading to a large open window. Ekko’s heart sank; he had been correct. Silco had baited the kids, and Vi bit. Unsure of what to do, where to go, he simply waited in the darkness of that shadowed alley, allowing himself cover and a perfect vantage point. The inky black was enough to conceal him, until an explosion lit the world in red, and Ekko took the timely distraction to make his way up that ladder.

 

The rain made the iron rungs slick as Ekko climbed up the side of the building. Each window he passed he dared a glimpse inside, and each time he only saw more blood, more crumpled bodies. And there at the top, at the second floor window, he took one last peek and saw Vi barreling through an army wearing only her street clothes and Vander’s famous cast irons. The sight both relieved and unnerved him. The bodies weren’t his family. But all those people had been after them.

 

Ekko wouldn’t go through that window. It was too open, he would be too visible, and there was no sign of Vander or the boys. He would only be getting in Vi’s way. He hopped off the ladder and walked the narrow balcony outside the windows. The catwalk Vi stood atop led to two opposing rooms. He figured the room to her back which she so avidly defended was where Vander was being held, likely where Mylo and Claggor waited as well. The room would be about a hundred feet in front of him, if his guess was correct. He continued walking.

 

He knew he was in the right place when the sounds of shouting and banging became clear. With barely a second of hesitation, Ekko took Powder’s crystals from his pocket, but he was suddenly unsure. She’d had a handful of these things, and after hearing about the massive blue explosion topside, he knew these were more potent than anyone realized. Powder gave him three stones. He slid the other two back into his pocket and slid the lone gem into her monkey bomb. He didn’t want excess devastation, he just wanted to blow this wall open so everyone could escape. He should’ve wheeled the ladder over with him, the fifty foot drop below him would be fatal for an otherwise intact body, and Ekko knew these four inside would not be leaving intact. With one last prayer to gods he didn’t believe in, Ekko gave the switch a twist and set the monkey loose.

 

Ekko had barely gotten a few steps away when the toy detonated. A burst of blue sent him flying off the ledge and down into the black world below. He stared desperately into the wrecked wall as long as he could, hoping to see his friends walk out with Vander in tow. But all he could see before the blue overtook everything, was the crushed body of Claggor and the desperation of Vander, bleeding and dying, as he took a hold of something before fleeing the room. That wasn’t supposed to happen. 

 

The impact of the ground below left Ekko in a daze. The world spun above him, blue and red as smoke and flame collided. By some miracle, the two remaining stones hadn’t been impacted, and they lay glittering in his pocket as if begging to join their triplet in the disastrous wreckage. He stood, bracing himself on the stone wall behind him as he retched. He had to find Vi. Claggor was gone, but she was okay, she had to be. He took one step, and another, and more, and found his way to the wide bay doors of the cannery.

 

Inside, Vi knelt over something, keening like a forgotten dog. The mass beneath her shuddered and glowed sickly purple, before heaving a final shake and fading. Ekko recognized that face, those large, gentle hands. Ekko approached Vi slowly, avoiding the urge to look down at the dead body of Vander. The lump in his throat gave way to heaving tears, utter horror as the realization set in: he had killed Claggor. He had killed Vander. Mylo likely lay crushed beside his brother, and Powder had already fled. Ekko couldn’t signal her, not to this. He couldn’t be the one to tell her that he had gone so wrong, that her bomb had worked too well. It would crush them both. He had to let her go. His family was gone. Vi was all he had left.

 

At the sound of his voice, Vi turned around. The pain on her face was foreign; Vi was never anything but strong, a pillar in the endless storm of Zaun. He shook his head, avoiding her eyes.

 

“This—this wasn’t s—supposed to happen,” he whispered. “I made it weaker. This wasn’t supposed to happen, I promise!”

 

“You did this?” Vi whispered. “Why?”

 

“It wasn’t—”

 

Ekko had been terrified to look up from the floor, not wanting to risk seeing what became of Vander, or what may have become of Mylo should he be nearby. But when he raised his gaze to meet Vi, what he saw was much worse. The anger in her eyes terrified him, and the truth that it was solely directed towards him was an invisible fist around his heart.

 

“I thought I told you to stay home.”

 

In that moment, Ekko felt his fear wash away, replaced by burning rage. He would not take the brunt of the blame from her; he had set the bomb off, and he would never forgive himself for what came of it, but Vi was the one who ran off on this fools errand even knowing how badly it could end, and he would not let her shuck more blame that wasn’t his onto his shoulders. He stood straighter, finally able to meet her eyes.

 

“You needed my help, I told you that this was a trap!”

 

“I know it was a trap!” She screamed, and Ekko flinched back on instinct as her hand reached out and struck a harsh blow on his nose. Briefly, as Vi’s hand came to grip on his jaw, his mother’s face replaced Vi’s and sent poison through his skin. “Why do you think I had you and Powder stay home?! The rest of us had it handled, but you didn’t listen, you never listen, and my family is DEAD!”

 

Ekko sobbed, the pain of her grip and her words eating at him like termites on wood searing. My family she’d said. Not ours. Ekko should have known it would happen; he’d spent these three years with Vi terrified that she would leave him just like Raya had, but she’d insisted time and time again that she would never abandon him. What a load of good that had done, and here he stood facing Raya once more in Vi’s body.

 

“Let me guess, you dragged Powder along with you and killed her too?” Ekko didn’t respond, didn’t want to say anything about her and risk any remaining thugs hearing about her whereabouts. Vi seemed to interpret as much differently. “Of course you did. Mylo and Claggor were wrong to trust you. They were the ones who went out on a limb for you, and you killed them. Just like you killed everyone else.”

 

“I didn’t mean to!” Ekko shrieked. “I was saving you!”

 

“You didnt save anything! If you hadn’t gotten involved everyone would be here now! You really are—”

 

“Vi.”

 

The voice was unrecognizable, but it came from deep within the rubble. Vi hadn’t seemed to recognize it either, but it gave her pause, and Ekko watched as the realization of what she had said washed over her face, melding with her rage in a bitter conglomerate. But she was right, and Ekko knew it. He hadn’t realized that they were actually managing, because from the looks of it, Silco had been wiping the floor with them. It was all his fault, and he should’ve just stayed out of the way. It was true then, and it was true the night Kor and Papa died. Bodies replaced his shadow, every one of them a victim of his own failure. Ekko didn’t protest as Vi released him, stood and walked away. He watched in numb shock as she disappeared into the dark and wet night, feeling the heat of the raging flames behind him.

 

It wasn’t long before a new shadow lingered over him, and two, then five. Ekko lifted his eyes to meet the cold, unforgiving ones of Silco. Silco had baited everyone here. He had started this. But was it really his fault everyone was dead? They could have escaped, if Ekko hadn’t intervened.

 

But they wouldn’t have had to escape if Silco hadn’t done what he did in the first place.

 

“Hello, boy,” the silky, conniving voice came.

 

Ekko paid him no mind, words eluding him, and stood. He ignored the outstretched hand of the evil man before him, turning his back to him and walking through the burning ruins towards the other side. He wouldn’t risk passing Silco by and getting jumped. He would not follow him. The urge was there for a fleeting moment, to give in to the single gesture of kindness amidst the unyielding heartache, but this was not the right man. And Ekko would never allow himself to be so vulnerable again. This was the second family he had destroyed. He had prayed to the gods earlier, and this was their answer. He was not meant to be loved. He was not meant for something good. 

 

As Ekko exited the wreckage on the other side, gazing at the inky abyss of the ocean below, he sealed his heart in stone. He would care for himself, as he should have always done, and he would not be helping anyone anymore. It seemed any time he tried, disaster struck. He was not meant to do good, he saw that now. But he would not follow in Silco’s footsteps. He would not bring about disaster. He would simply do what he should have done from the beginning: allow fate to weave his tapestry for him, and allow whatever happened as a result, to just happen. It was better if he stopped trying to be something he wasn’t. A hero. He was no hero.

 

He was nothing at all.

 

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

 

Vi should have never opened her mouth.

 

She knew, even as those cruel words poured out of her, that they had never been about Ekko. They had been about herself. She knew that everything that just took place was on her. He had been right, and she was too scared and full of herself to listen. But the sight of Vander’s body, dead, mauled and pumped full of Shimmer before her, sent static through her being. The words were cruel but they were alive, and nothing she would think to herself could stop them from pouring over her friend’s shaking figure.

 

She should have listened to Vander. She had tried, she sent that message to Grayson knowing that the council needed its punching bag, and that she should learn to take some accountability. But Vander had caught on, had taken her place, and Vi still hadn’t learned responsibility. It was her job to care for the family in his stead, but she had led them all to their deaths, had burned her bridge to the only one left alive. Vander would be disappointed. Somehow he always was. But that didn’t matter now.

 

A voice rang out through the flames, it spoke her name. There was no way the voice had been real, but the perception of it finally gave her raging lips pause. Ekko was collapsing before her, every bit of a self she’d helped build up in him falling to pieces with every word she spoke, and now that she had finally ceased, when she released her hold on him, he looked exactly as he did when she had met him; scared, broken and empty. The look on his face, the blood that poured from his broken nose onto her bandaged knuckle horrified her. With a sigh and a silent plea, she took a step back and left the building. She needed to breathe and reset before she did something irreparable.

 

If she hadn’t already.

 

The look on Ekko’s small face in that moment would be one to haunt her forever. It was the very same as the day he had shown up at Vander’s, when he and Powder fought. She had already met him weeks prior, but there was something about the pain he carried, how quick he was to anger and how he seemed to only find relief in fighting. She just needed a minute, then she would go back and make things right.

 

But she was too late. She took one look back to make sure he had waited, and he had been gone, Silco in his place. She barely had the chance to chase the bastard down when chemically sweet cotton smothered her and bathed the world in black. When she woke up, it was to steel bars, and mildew, and decay and complete, dark isolation.

 

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

 

His back ached as he shifted, brick and concrete displaced by the movement. All around him was fire and the thick smell of blood. Too much had happened for him to properly gauge, but the memories came back to him in pieces as he blinked away the gray, and he kept his head trained forward in order to avoid the sight that he knew lay just beside him. As he stood, he counted every injury he felt on his person, every ache and pain. There were too many to track. He heard a voice in the distance, Vi. Vi was okay, but where was she?

 

He exited the room, stepping over debris and bones towards his sister’s voice. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard her so raw and bitter; she was alive but what had been the cost? His brother? Vander? Powder? The regret he felt at the thought ate at him. He had been mean to her, and she must have been here, that was her monkey by his brother’s body, and she must have been gone. The agony in Vi’s voice was proof enough.

 

He called out to his sister, hoping for once to get her attention without the typical irritation. Maybe she would be there for him, maybe if they had each other they could find out where to go from here. Maybe she would know, since he sure as hell had no idea. At the sound of his voice, she went silent, but just as he laid eyes on her, all he could see was her back. Whoever she had been speaking to was long gone.

 

He tripped over himself trying to get to her before she disappeared. He couldn’t lose her too. But she just kept walking away, and away and didn’t stop even as he called for her. Everything hurt, his leg dragged behind him idly. He wouldn’t be able to catch her, she was moving far too fast. By the time he made it out of the warehouse, she had turned a corner and faded from view. There would be no finding her; by the time he made it to said corner at the rate he was moving, she would likely be miles away. He debated turning back around, to search for the bodies of his brother and sister, but that would not do him any good. Seeing them wouldn’t bring them back to life. 

 

Instead, he kept walking, ignoring the pain that seared every inch of his person. He kept walking until he found that damned bridge, and stared up at it with a mix of disgust and hopelessness. If he had never opened his mouth, this never would have happened. Vi was right. But if he couldn’t find her now, he had to do right by her until he found her again. Tonight was not just on that freak who stole his father. It was on the enforcers who lived in his pocket and did whatever they were told like circus animals. With a sigh and a lingering sense that he was about to do something tragically wrong, Mylo took that first step towards Piltover.

 

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

 

Jayce had done it. Caitlyn watched with joyful eyes and a wide grin as he was welcomed back into her home, Viktor by his side. His dream of Hextech had worked. But as happy as she was, she was still worried. The memories of the week prior had haunted her, only heightened by the response of the council. Four children had died, alongside the face man of the Undercity, Vander. Marcus had been one of the first on the scene, and he had confirmed it was the doing of Hextech, a gemstone likely stolen. Caitlyn remembered her mom going before the council, speaking out in her love for Jayce, that his experiment was too volatile even if he claimed it was under control now.

 

Jayce had understood. He’d been sad, but he understood. The council claimed it didn’t matter; that the four children had it coming for stealing in the first place. And so Jayce’s dream lived on. She could see the way it weighed on him, though. It certainly weighed on her.

 

Caitlyn stood from her seat on the steps outside the manor, walking down the narrow walkway towards the property gates. Jayce would be plenty occupied, and the thought of those children sent bugs loose under her skin. They were bottom feeders, they were dirt, she had been raised to believe this, but that was one place where her parents and she had never seen eye to eye. Casandra had always carried a bite of sympathy, but they were still tadpoles at the end of the day. But they were people. Caitlyn saw it in the few trips she’d taken across the bridge with Jayce. In the way the kids played games with tin and paper rather than inflated soccer balls, the way alleys became homes, and bugs became meals. They were people, and they were suffering.

 

But she was a councilors daughter, she was heir to house Kiramman. The only house that had ever done anything to support the Undercity. She couldn’t risk defaming the only house of significance to offer aid to the Lanes, else she risk cutting off the little help they had. And so she stayed quiet, in her own place.

 

The sun had nearly set over Piltover, and the bars of the gates were cool to the touch as she slid them open. She walked down her street in silence, watching the city’s normal routine of shutting down for the night, families returning to their homes for a cheerful dinner. She brushed her hair behind her ear, feeling the gemstones stacked up her cartilage. These could feed a Zaunite family, give them a dinner like the ones Topsiders ate every night.

 

Caitlyn nearly missed the sound of heaving in the narrow street she’d walked past. She had once considered it an alley, until she’d seen what a true alleyway looked like on her first trip to Zaun. This way was clean and near empty, which only made the stink of bile and body odor more prominent. But what stood out to her the most was the sound of a child’s cries. A child seemingly much younger than she. She wasted not a second, moving to find the child who had been curled up beside a dumpster, shaking and sobbing. Her face was green and her nose bleeding, her bones jutting out just a little too much, the bile she’d smelled pooled beneath her. She was sick, and she was starving, and Caitlyn could recognize by her ill patterned clothes that she was Zaunite. The most shocking detail had been the single braid that fell down her back, the exact blue of Caitlyn’s own eyes. Swallowing, Caitlyn knelt before her.

 

“Are you alright?”

 

What a stupid question, she’d thought to herself. But none of the other options seemed any better. Are you sick? Clearly. You must be hungry. She likely couldn’t keep much in her, given her current state. Would you like to come with me, so you can sleep somewhere inside? No Zaunite would trust that, and with good reason. And so she left the question open ended.

 

The girl sniffed, gazing up at Caitlyn with cloudy eyes. She didn’t reply for several moments. Then in a frail whisper, “I’m scared.”

 

Caitlyn’s heart sank. She hadn’t considered that as an option. She had seen many things in Zaun, but fear was never one of them. She had learned quickly that to be afraid was to be suicidal in the Undercity, and so fear simply didn’t exist. But this little girl was here, and she was trembling, and Caitlyn may have been the only one to show her any care.

 

“What are you afraid of?”

 

“My family is gone, and my home is ruined and I’m so hungry and he won’t stop following me!”

 

Caitlyn tensed, looking around for the mentioned stalker. Even here, for a man to be following a young girl was only trouble. But upon seeing nothing, she turned her attention back to the girl who continued, “He won’t hurt you. He just stares.”

 

“If you’re hungry,” Caitlyn told her, ignoring the girl’s recent comment that had set her on edge, “you can come with me. I have plenty of food in my home. Mother is throwing a small party, and she always prepares too much.”

 

She expected the girl to say no, to stand and run. But instead she only stared up at Caitlyn with desperate eyes.

 

“Promise?”

 

“Of course. We have food, and a space for you to clean up and sleep. Whatever you need.”

 

“What’s your name?” The girl stood slowly, grime and blood staining her mauve leggings.

 

“Caitlyn. How about you?”

 

The girl paused, staring at her hands, at the mess she was. Back at Caitlyn. She didn’t reply. Instead, she walked towards the end of the street, peering around the corner. Caitlyn hurried after her, taking her hand. She ignored the girls flinch, and she ended up settling into Caitlyn’s presence.

 

“Why are you helping me?” She wiped her running nose with her free hand. The more Caitlyn observed, the more this girl seemed to only get older. She looked about ten, but her behavior was more of Caitlyn’s own age. “I could tell as soon as you saw me. You know I’m not one of you.”

 

“Because no child should live homeless and starving when they’re surrounded by houses full of food. And because I have a name here. No one will bother you, as long as you stick with me.”

 

The girl heaved a sigh, tears falling once again. “You sound like Vi.”

 

Caitlyn smiled gently, hoping it was the correct reaction. “Who is Vi?”

 

“She was my sister. She died last week, so did my brothers and my dad, and my best friend. She told me she would find me but she’s dead and it was all my fault.” Caitlyn hated how numb the little girl had been, how devoid of emotion that sentence was. She knew that the death of her family would send her to her knees, but this girl had carried on somehow. But looking back at the mess Caitlyn had found her in, maybe she hadn’t. “You remind me of her. She used to say that a lot. That as long as she was around, she would keep me safe. But now she’s not around. Maybe you could be my new sister?”

 

Caitlyn had been unnerved suddenly, as the manor came back into view. Her father, three siblings and friend all died last week. Was it coincidence that Vander and those four kids had also died last week? Had all four kids really died? Were one or more of the kids previously uninvolved in whatever mess arose? Because suddenly, Caitlyn was sure that the girl who’s hand she held was one of the very girls who had broken into her family’s lab, one of Vander’s two daughters. Though, she wasn’t too put off by the idea. People go to unspeakable lengths to stay alive, it’s something anyone knows. And seeing the girl face to face shed a new light on the situation. Jayce had been sympathetic towards those four kids from the start, and now with this girl beside her, Caitlyn began to see herself in agreement with him.

 

She squeezed the girl’s hand. “So I could. I would like to know your name though. If I should have a sister, I should know what to call her.”

 

The gate creaked as Caitlyn slid it back open, welcoming the small girl through. Her mother would have much to say, but Caitlyn was prepared to do what she could for this girl who had gone through hell and walked out the other side.

 

“My name is Jinx.”

Notes:

I hope to post every 1-2 weeks, but I doubt I will be able to keep much of a regular schedule due to how hectic my life is, so I apologize in advance. I hope you enjoyed though, and I can’t wait to share the next parts with yall!

Chapter 3: Have You Met Another Like Me?

Summary:

Ekko is so not okay guys
A series of snapshots detailing Ekko’s journey between the accident and how he ended up with Silco

ALSO!! Make sure to go check out @dokinana on Instagram, she is an AWESOME artist who has made lots of super cute swapped Timebomb arts and has inspired bits of this fic, as I had found her while I was still mapping out the storyline and I am obsessed so pls go give her a follow, she deserves it!!

Notes:

Major TW for this chapter!! Contains explicit mentions of SH and attempted rape. Skip the first chunk of this one if either of those bothers you (sections are split by <><> markers), summary will be in the end notes

Song tag is “Chapter 1: Present” by Riell. It’s a short little thing but it’s meant as an introduction and it’s a good kickstart for Ekko’s story 😁

The air was frigid, but Ekko barely felt it.

 

Even with the lack of food, he’d grown several inches in the past year and a half. His clothes had stopped fitting him long ago, and he’d resorted to sewing together scraps of cloth until they resembled an outfit, the only article he’d dared to keep being the orange scarf Benzo had gifted him all those years ago. Though, scraps only did so much against the bitter winter cold. But fortunately, unfortunately, Ekko hadn’t felt it. He hadn’t felt much since that night, the all encompassing numb eating him from the inside out.

 

The blade in his hand was cold but the blood that ran down his bicep was warm, steaming in the cold night. He knew what Vi would have said, but Vi made it clear how she felt about him now, and this was the only way to purge the Nothing. He’d had it coming; this was the hand that killed them all. It was only fair that it should suffer too. The nightmares had been constant, and they’d all told him as such.

 

The alley he’d made his home was empty, silent. It was the perfect time of night, where the sky was blackest, and even the most avid of partygoers and drinkers had returned to their homes. Ekko was sure he was one of the few still awake in this corner of the Lanes. He looked around, to the wall at his right, the mouth of the alley at his left where only trash moved in the wind. This was all he knew anymore. Hiding here was the only way to keep Silco from finding him.

 

Ekko was sure Silco would give up eventually, yet he never really did. Ekko was worthless, he was nothing at all, and he’d made it clear to all his goons, and yet the pursuit continued. He wasn’t sure what it was Silco wanted with him, but it terrified him. He would kill himself before he let that bastard touch him, and the blood flowing from the gashes in his arm only proved that, but Silco had been undeterred.

 

A sound from outside the alley sent Ekko to his feet. He prepared himself for the usual game of running from whoever it was that found him any given time, whether it be druggies looking for some coin, or thugs seeking someone to beat up, or the rare but terrifying man in the mood for something Ekko hated to give. The wall was damp where he leaned against it, preparing to scale it and away when whoever had found him this time showed their face.

 

It was a young man. Drunk, stumbling and staring intently at him. Ekko swallowed. Seemed this would be one of those nights from Hell. He turned to climb as he had done many times before, but the weakness of his right arm combined with the wet of the wall left him stranded, and the man only grew closer, and Ekko’s heart only beat faster.

 

A fire lit inside Ekko’s chest, a weeping thing, as the drunk grabbed him by the face, sparing no time but going straight for what he came to do. Ekko wanted to force himself back, away from reality where he didn’t have to face this, but it hadn’t worked, never had. And so, as always, he was left in his husk to feel every wrong brush of a hand, every nauseating sweep of a selfish tongue. He couldn’t even cry out, his voice had fled, tears flowing heavily in crushing silence. He was stuck, and he was aware, way too fucking aware. He wanted to die.

 

Ekko had a choice to make and he knew it. He had never been anything out here, and he knew he could just as easily trap himself inside his own mind and wait out the terror. But if he was honest with himself, as he swiped at the blood that had stopped flowing, as he hopelessly tried escaping, he was tired of being nothing. He had spent so long just running. He ran when Orlon died. Ran when Benzo died, when Vi left him, all those days when the world came for the remaining penance he must have owed, the price to pay for the deaths he’d caused that night. He was tired of running away scared. Why did he still have to suffer? Hadn’t he paid enough?

 

Ekko stopped thrashing, instead turning to the man who mindlessly continued his lewd escapade. Ekko didn’t deserve this and he knew it. He had stopped owing fate long ago, had paid for the suffering of that night with his voice, that hadn’t been used more than a handful of times since it came to pass. He was tired of being punished; he knew he had deserved it but when would it be enough?

 

He made his decision the moment the man took a hold of his boxers. He would get free, but he would not run. He was tired of being nothing, because nothings were the ones who faced this life of abuse and suffering as he had. Perhaps this was not a punishment from fate, but a lesson: if he wanted to live, if he wanted to thrive, he had to become something. And the only way to become something in this pit was to be someone to fear. He had to fight back, had to take the pain inflicted on him and return it tenfold. So when the drunk man pulled Ekko ever closer, he used the harsh momentum to throw his head forward, ramming into his nose and effectively breaking it. Alcohol-thinned blood flowed freely from the rapidly purpling appendage, and Ekko, savoring the sudden buzz under his skin, ripped his arm free and landed a strong uppercut to the man’s jaw, leaving him dazed as Ekko took him by the neck and drove him at the brick, rendering him quickly unconscious.

 

It was no wonder Vi loved to fight, Ekko realized as he stared down at his assaulter’s body. The sparks in his bones were addictive, and while Vi fought to to protect the family, Ekko took pride in the fear that briefly laced the man’s features. This was one person who would no longer try to mess with him. The first of many, he hoped. He was no longer nothing. He had only gained the fear of one person, but that alone meant that he had already begun to claw his way up. He would continue to hone in on those lessons from Vi, and when the next goons came for him, he would make sure they knew that he was no longer anyone’s toy. He wandered out of the alley that had become his home, working towards the old arcade. He was itching for a fight, but there weren’t many people out and none had yet done anything to warrant it. And more than that, he was itching for something to free the bugs from beneath his skin. He just wanted something familiar, even if it only made things worse.

 

The stones under his feet wobbled as Ekko made his way down these streets for the first time in months. The hair that brushed his shoulders and upper back had been overstimulating amidst all the other regular Undercity chaos, but there was little he could do about it, so his only option was to leave it be.

 

The streets were a maze, and it had always been something of a struggle to navigate, but even if Ekko had gotten so twisted about that he had no idea where he was, the arcade had been one place that Ekko would always find his way back to, no matter how turned around he became.

 

Sure enough, after a long several minutes of walking, Ekko found the shattered stained glass that separated his second home from Hades. The remains of that beautiful window lay scattered on the pavement, leaving behind an eerily man-sized hole giving way to the arcade. Ekko had forgone the door, stepping through the ruins and cherishing the bite of glass in his feet that brought him back to his body, gazing at the games that were still intact. By Vi’s favorite old fighting game, the scoreboard still hung on the wall. Only Claggor had ever stood a chance against Vi through the years, purely by his sheer mass that he had learned to use to his advantage, but Vi still held the top seven slots with scores anyone else could only dream of. But Ekko would try, damn it he would try. He needed to fight like her to survive, and he needed to fight better than her to prove that he wasn’t nothing anymore. But in that moment, with the tactile reminders of his old family, Vi and Claggor’s names on the wall looming over him, Powder’s ghost kissing his shoulder, and the sensory memories of the past two horrific years flooding his body, he sank to the floor, weeping and screaming and begging just for one good moment, and he just couldn’t stop. He wanted to live. He wanted to die.

 

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

 

Ekko knew his nights at the arcade had paid off the first time he saw someone flee at the sight of him.

 

He had been perfecting everything Vi had taught him, had gone scores further by taking his own approach. Vi had fought defensively, and she blocked with her face way too much. Ekko had worked around this and had learned to fight in his own way, and as the usual thugs continued their occasional stunts against him, he’d stopped running and started fighting back, and quickly the people of Zaun had started to realize that he wasn’t cheap fun anymore. He had put on weight, just a bit, had become imposing enough to put a powerful face next to a powerful name.

 

Ekko had snagged some fruit from a distracted merchant in the busy core of the Lanes, not far from where he grew up with Benzo. He was no longer as scared of the general public, even if he still wore a target on his back by the lack of people at his side. He hadn’t made a single friend since that night a little over two years ago. This was fine with him, no friends or family meant no one else to kill. So he told himself.

 

Silco had taken over the Last Drop, something that infuriated Ekko deeply. That bar was Vander’s livelihood and legacy, and Silco had smeared it. Ekko had been noticing lately, some new drug circulating around the streets of Zaun, specifically the blocks surrounding the bar. Shimmer. It lived up to its name; whether it was smoked or snorted or injected, the substance exuded a sickly purple glow and left its consumers strong for a time, then horrifically deformed when its effects wore off. Ekko had tried to do what he could to remove it from the streets, which only resulted in fights. It was a win-win in his mind; he saved a person and had one more name to add to his rapidly dwindling good conscience, or he got to punch someone bloody. It seemed he was never anything but angry anymore, so the fights came as a reprieve rather than a failure to him.

 

It was no surprise to Ekko when he came across a few young men in an alley, mid deal. The two older men must have gotten docile batches; they seemed in good health despite clearly having dabbled in Shimmer before, given their knowledge of the drug and the faint fuschia glow in their eyes. The third boy was young, probably about Ekko’s own age. He was Vastaya, and Ekko had no idea how the drug, even a tame dose, would affect someone non-human. He strode into the alley and ripped the purple pouch from the young Chirean’s hand, which garnered more of a reaction from the two grunts than from the Vastayan himself.

 

“I’m sorry,” the first man smirked. “I dont see any cash in those hands of yours. Why don’t you give that back to its rightful owner before things get ugly?”

 

“Is this your way of trying to be scary?” Ekko rolled his eyes, opening the pouch and dumping its contents into a nearby puddle, and watched with glee the two men sputtering over its loss. He ripped the bundled wad of Notes from the second man’s hand while he was distracted and passed it by to the quavering Vastaya boy. “You ain’t shit. And drugging children? Is this how far we’ve fallen? Get lost before this ends up in your throats.” Ekko sneered, brandishing the knife he’d carried with him in a sheath under his scarf.

 

The two men had to be all bark, no bite, as they ran off the second they saw the blade’s wicked gleam. Ekko turned back to the boy, who watched him with terrified curiosity.

 

“They told me it would make me stronger,” he whispered. “But that’s not true, is it?”

 

“Only partially,” Ekko replied, avoiding the boy’s violent green eyes that he could feel boring into his face. He slid the knife back into its sheath and adjusted his scarf to conceal it once more. “You would be stronger for a moment. But it will leave you deformed, addicted and in pain. It’s not worth it. And that money would only go to Silco. All that fucker’s ever done is trash this place.”

 

Ekko turned and walked back out of the alley, stopping at its mouth when he heard the boy trailing behind him.

 

“I don’t know what’s safe and what’s not around here,” the boy said, confidence creeping in. “Whatever it is you do around here, I want to do it with you.”

 

“No,” Ekko whispered. “You don’t.”

 

He ignored the boy’s questions behind him. Ekko would not admit that he had felt a tad fond of him. He seemed like he could be a good friend. But Ekko remembered what became of the last friends he’d made, and he would not bestow that fate upon this boy. Besides, Powder’s Ekko was dead, and the Ekko that lived on didn’t make friends, didn’t deserve nor want them.

 

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

 

The night was quiet, too quiet. Ekko swore he had caught more Shimmer deals than ever lately, and he was only counting down the days until his luck ran out. He was hoping it came soon.

 

Whatever was in the latest rounds of Shimmer was much more potent than past batches. The users were getting stronger, prices were getting higher and busts were only getting Ekko bluer and bloodier with each fight he walked away from. It had been months of near daily confrontations, and as much as he loved the thrill, Ekko was tired of being in pain. He was tired of losing. All he’d wanted was to do some measure of good for Zaun without any strings attached, in a way that ensured he came out on top, but he wasn’t strong enough to fight alone anymore. He missed Powder.

 

A girl had found him last week, bleeding out in an alley after being stabbed one too many times. Ekko could tell she wasn’t from here, her hair was too clean and her clothes too colorful, but she had found him, and by some miracle, had a med kit on her to stitch him closed again, even as Ekko begged her with all the strength his brittle, unused voice had to just let him die. He hated that there was now a person out there—a Piltie—that he owed something to. She had tried to pull one over on him, insisted that if he wanted to continue fighting, to do it with her and her little sister in a safer manner, but Ekko refused. He would not bond with anyone down here. At best, his curse would kill him and cause them pain for a short while. At worst, it would kill them.

 

Since then, Ekko hadn’t gone on a single Shimmer hunt. Since then, he hasn’t left this alley full of trash and piss he crouched in. He had waited until the girl had left, then dug his fingernails into the wound, clawing out the stitches and watching the thick red blood seep down his belly. In a strange way, he felt better. This was something he could control, in this dizzying mess of uncertainty he had found himself thrust into lately.

 

He couldn’t help but wonder when it all would end. Everything had been a whirlwind lately, and Ekko missed the days of actually winning fights. How was he supposed to make a difference if all he did was lose?

 

Maybe he wasn’t meant to help. He’d always thought if he could work alone, maybe he wouldn’t have anyone to hurt. But it seemed Ekko himself was included in that demographic. Vi was right about him, once again. If he just never got involved, everything would be fine. He was so sick of hearing her voice in his head, a thought on loop that just never ceased. But soon, hopefully, it would end. The wound Ekko had reopened had gotten infected, the pain gnawing away at his body and mind, until most moments it was all he could think about. It wouldn’t be long before it took him, he hoped, and he would finally be through this miserable nightmare he’d called life.

 

Ekko felt rather than saw the imposing presence lingering a few feet from him, the light outside the alleyway wrapping her in a twisted green halo. She was a large woman, so he wasn’t sure why she thought she was sneaking up on anyone. He tilted his head back to stare up at her, gingerly crossing his arms over the oozing wound on his torso.

 

“Come to finish me off?”

 

The woman grunted and stepped out of her shady corner. Ekko recognized her immediately and felt the fight slowly return to him. Sevika, Silco’s right hand. He knew why she was here, and he wouldn’t go with her. He stood slowly, ignoring the rush of vertigo as his blood drained to his feet. He stared her down with all the anger he’d accumulated over the years, but she was unfazed.

 

“You dumped five thousand Notes worth of Shimmer into the harbor,” Sevika grumbled. “Silco’s been looking for you.”

 

“Well tell him to give up already, he’s not getting me.”

 

“I don’t think you have much of a choice.” And with that, Sevika’s prosthetic arm shot out, infused with Shimmer and more powerful than it had been the last time he saw her five months ago.

 

Ekko barely made it out of the way in time, wound smarting as he twisted awkwardly to avoid the projectile. He lunged forward, knife already in hand, but he had gotten weaker since the last time he had fought. Sevika had noticed his wound almost immediately, so it took her no time at all to overpower him, only a well aimed drive of her metal arm into the gash sent Ekko to his knees, blind with pain. He felt something rupture beneath the festering skin, and right then, he knew it was finally over. He didn’t protest when Sevika grabbed him by the arm and began walking somewhere. He would be dead before she got wherever she was going. And he found that even when he was staring his own demise in the face, he didn’t mind it one bit.

 

“I was right, you know,” Ekko whispered as he watched the neon street signs and intoxicated people hurry by.

 

Sevika huffed. “And what makes you say that?”

 

Ekko grinned, exhaustion weighing on him like free falling water. “You know exactly what you did. You punched me where I was weak. That wound was necrotic. I can feel the toxins moving through my blood. I’ll be dead in minutes. So, I did in fact have a choice. You just made it for me. That pig isn’t getting me.”

 

Sevika only rolled her eyes, though Ekko could tell she realized she’d misstepped. He felt it in the way her pace increased. Silco didn’t want him dead. What was Silco planning with him?

 

The weight of the situation didn’t hit Ekko until he was being lugged through the doors of the Last Drop and up a set of stairs, somehow still alive. He was about to face the man who had killed his dad, and he would have no strength to fight back against whatever Silco planned to do with him in his final minutes. His vision had already begun to gray at the edges, and all he could focus on was the imposing figure of the man above him.

 

Silco and Sevika were conversing, Ekko could feel the vibrations of their voices in the air around him, but he couldn’t make out many of their words. But he could make out the gentle tone of voice that Silco used when he had spoken to Ekko. Could barely decipher the last few words to leave his mouth: …have they done to you, boy?

 

Ekko glared up at him with all the strength he had left, but still, Silco only wore sympathy on his face. He didn’t understand. The man simply picked him up gently and laid him on a table, shouting something about Doctor and yellow skin. That was all Ekko could get a grasp of before his world turned upside down.

 

The first clear experience Ekko had in the past two hours was the prick of a large needle in his belly, directly above his wound, immediately followed by a second in the back of his neck at the base of his skull. The pain that followed was horrendous, like he was being set ablaze from the inside out. In that moment, everything became clearer, yet veiled in white all at once. He could see the machinery bolted to the ceiling, dangling above him, the vats of purple fluid—Shimmer—he realized with no small horror. He caught sight of the syringe feeding that very fluid through the needle in his gut, feeding Shimmer into his body as a horrifically scarred man cut into him. He tried to flee, screamed and begged and tried anything to get away, but he realized that while he was incognizant, he must have been strapped down. He couldn’t move.

 

The agony only grew worse as the hallucinations began. Fleeting apparitions of all those he’d killed, of Vi, taunting him as she forced him to lay witness to the ruin he’d wrought. His body writhed and seized as the pain only grew, but his mind was locked onto the burning face of Powder, who had likely followed him into the cannery that night. He was stupid to believe she would obey him and run. The faces of Claggor, Mylo, as the initial explosion crushed their bodies. Of Vander, thoroughly disappointed, open in his regret to take Ekko in those many years ago.

 

And then came Raya. His first and nastiest oppressor, she replaced the Doctor above him, hacking away at his body with no lack of joy as her black eyes bore down into him, grateful to be through with her worthless son. Ekko hoped the pain killed him, pleaded to her, to the Doctor, to just stick the knife in his throat and be done with it, to just stop forcing him to suffer. He could feel the Shimmer coursing through him as it melted him from the inside out, rebuilding him into something new. This was different. This wasn’t the powdered stuff from the streets of Zaun, this was something horribly stronger.

 

It may have been minutes, may have been days, but the pain ended nowhere near soon enough. Ekko had given in and receded into the darkness of his mind when the pain became so unbearable he felt his grip on sanity begin to fade. He entered his body again to feel not pain, but the dull aftershocks of something unfamiliar. His body no longer felt like it was his, but when he let his gaze drift down, the wound on his gut was gone, only a puffy pink scar in its wake. Sevika was gone, the doctor lingered off in the distance, and beside him sat Silco, rubbing circles into his shoulder. Ekko tried to back away, but it seemed the restraints hadn’t yet been lifted.

 

“Are you feeling alright, boy?” Silco asked, likely upon realizing Ekko had woken up.

 

Ekko didn’t deign him with a response, instead observed the Shimmer around the room, the blood on the floor that he knew with some sickening feeling was his. In the background, that Doctor was at a sink, rinsing off a plethora of tools. Ekko recognized the very knife that had plunged into his flesh before the Black took over.

 

Silco clicked a toggle, and Ekko’s head was freed from its restraint. He took Ekko’s chin and forced him to meet his gaze. But once again, rather than disgust or rage, he was met with sympathy.

 

“I take it your defiance means you are feeling more yourself?”

 

Ekko wanted to fight back, use his renewed strength to make Silco pay for what he’s done, for whatever he had ordered be done to him just now, but he was still restrained. And the more he wished to do something, anything, the more obvious it became to him that he was only lying to himself, forcing feelings that had long since died. A small seed began to bloom in Ekko’s mind: was it worth it to keep fighting? He had only wanted to die, and yet he couldn’t even do that. Maybe the gods were trying to tell him something. He lately couldn’t stop the flow of Shimmer, couldn’t fight, couldn’t even die correctly, couldn’t do any of it right, and all his efforts to avoid Silco had only led him to that very man. He was so tired of being lonely, so tired of being worthless. He had tried to become something on his own, and he couldn’t do it. He hated the idea of siding with Silco, but maybe the man’s status could be of use to him. What other options remained?

 

“I want to help you, boy,” Silco said. “I was there that night, I saw what she did to you. Just like her father to hurt her friends the first chance she gets. But I can help you, we can show the world that it was wrong to discard us and our people.”

 

Ekko stared up into Silco’s eyes, one healthy, one black with rot. He only saw genuine affection there. For him? Silco cared for him? He couldn’t deny Silco’s words, Vi had given up on him, Ekko had tried to save her, had tried to explain and she beat and left him. It was a pain Silco understood, he realized. He had stolen Benzo from him, but had he lived, would he have given up on him too? Maybe Silco’s only crime was taking Benzo from his life before he had the chance to forsake Ekko the way everyone else had. But Silco had seen Ekko’s worst, had pursued Ekko these two years despite all he had done. Had offered him the very thing he had sought out for so long. Ekko didn’t want to take part in the atrocities Silco was committing, but maybe he could change his mind somehow? Or maybe he would stick to his plan and use Silco’s status as a safety net, or a ladder to build himself back up. He was beginning to realize that there was more to this man than his Shimmer operations. Maybe this could help him. Maybe there was someone in this world who still wanted him in spite of everything.

 

“Okay.”

 

Silco blinked, the only surprise he allowed to show. “Have you no fight left in you? I’m shocked you would be so agreeable so suddenly.”

 

“You have what I want, you clearly need me, and I have nothing else left to give. So, okay.”

 

Silco clicked more toggles, lifting the restraints from the table and effectively freeing Ekko. He eyed the boy warily, and Ekko recognized what Silco was doing. He was giving him the chance to flee. He anticipated deception. But he had no more room to run. If he went back out, he very well may end up dead on his next bust, and it seemed Silco knew this too. And Ekko could feel it: the strength of this new body. Silco had promised him a second chance, a better Zaun, had already given him an enhanced body to get him there. He hated the idea of owing anyone anything, but he knew that Silco owed him just as much.

 

After all, Silco was not one to pursue something out of his own comfort. If he chased something so avidly, it meant he needed it, had a plan for it.

 

Ekko could sense Benzo stirring in his death, furious with him for the deal he had just made. But what was it to displease one more person? He had already pissed off half the Undercity, torn both of his families to bits. This may be the final nail in his own coffin, but he could bury that past in it. Build himself up a third time. And this time, he would make sure he made it count.

 

The new power in his body only seemed to grow as Ekko continued to use it, even for something as simple as standing from the table or walking across the room to follow Silco up a flight of stairs. Ekko couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t been in pain, had moved so freely. Even if the purple glow of his veins was off putting, he now knew why there was such a high demand for this stuff. It would not stop him from trying to get it off the streets, however. It needed to be regulated, and if Ekko could manage to convince Silco to control its use, perhaps his choices would be worth it.

Notes:

Am I cruel? Maybe. But it’s for the plot guys ✨
As I said at the start, Ekko and Silco will not have a father son relationship the way he and Jinx did. It would be very out of character for Ekko, and it would take away from the flow of the story. Ekko is very much a control oriented person, everything he does comes with reasons and backup plans for backup plans. He isn’t someone to jump head first into something for the sake of comfort. He views this relationship with Silco as a reluctant partnership, and is only in it for his own gain. There will be more Ekko content soon, right now I am focused on building everyone’s characters and how they become who they are. I hope you all enjoyed, and chapter 3 is on the way soon!!
(I also want to acknowledge in case of any confusion: I am writing Ekko to be selectively mute, and this is something that will be heavily emphasized in future chapters, and has also been discussed in other stories in this universe. It is a headcanon of mine, and I wanted to do something with it 😁 I say this bc I would normally just flesh it out in the writing but I feel like this is one of those things that can come with a slew of interpretations (it did for Isha) and I wanted it to be set before I continue on, as I feel it is an important part of his character)

Part 1 summary: Ekko has spent the last year and a half homeless and living in an alley, and has no one but himself to take his pain out on, but when a man finds him and attempts to assault him, he learns that maybe it’s time he stops giving in to cruelty and fights back, then goes to the old arcade looking for something familiar.

Chapter 4: There’s Only Silence After Flooding Rains

Summary:

Jinx and Caitlyn’s lives in the few years following the accident

I’m sorry this one is late guys 😭 I overexerted myself at work last week and lost nearly all use of my hands for a couple days so I couldn’t get any writing done 😞 but we’re here now!!

Notes:

It’s the chapter you’ve all been waiting for!! It’s a split PoV between Caitlyn and Jinx, centered around Jinx’s first few years living with the Kirammans and it’s lots of fun 😁 I love the potential those two have, they could have been so close if not for what happened in canon, and it’s nice to make them more friendly with each other
Chapter title is taken from the song “The Saint And The Sinner” by AViVA

The flashlight in Jinx’s hand was the only light she had to work with in this room, black with midnight and not even a star to brighten it up. Jayce and Viktor’s lab was a mess of machines and tools and mishmashed parts, but she needed the workspace to make this happen. Her makeshift shop setup in the room Cassandra had given to her only came with so much space, and that meant there were things she had to do without. Things that she could only get in Jayce’s lab.

 

Behind her, Caitlyn carried a light of her own, standing at the door and keeping an eye out for anyone who may be awake and about. It was common knowledge that it took a considerable feat to make Viktor sleep more than a wink, and he tended to make his rounds about this time. But Jinx couldn’t get caught. Not with this.

 

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Caitlyn asked. Jinx could see the way her light faintly shook in her hand.

 

Jinx had come to realize these past fifteen months that she and Cait were two sides of the same coin, opposites that balanced each other out. They had both pushed each other out of their comfort zones, and the growing pains never seemed to stop, but everyone around them could see the ways they had grown. Jinx was not the shy little orphan girl anymore, and Caitlyn had begun to outgrow her mother’s imposing shadow. But right now, that meant that Cait swallowed down the second thoughts about this impromptu operation that she had planned herself, while Jinx looked around for the solder gun and air purifier she needed.

 

“Yes, the air purifier is kinda important if we’re going to be building gas masks. Keep up.”

 

Jinx felt the familiar gauzy texture of the purifier filters, meaning the machine itself must be nearby. She slid three of the filters into her coat pocket and continued searching nearby until she found the black and gold box atop Viktor’s desk. She almost felt guilty for taking it; she knew he relied on it to breathe some days, when his autoimmune system failed him, but she would return it in a few hours, before anyone noticed it was gone. And she would return it with a portable version as well. She held the flashlight in her teeth and took the heavy box into her arms, and followed Caitlyn out the door as quickly as she could with the additional fifty pounds she carried. She was going to have some fun.

 

Her footfalls were considerably heavier with the extra weight in her arms, but she and Caitlyn made it back to the former’s room without a hitch. The room was more suitably lit to allow for Jinx’s work, and the moment she set the heavy box down, she began carefully disassembling it and making a mental note of its makeup. It was surprisingly simple in design, a gauze filter attached by the top of the contraption, held up by pins and topped by a metal grate of sorts. Beneath it were a slew of pipes and gears and a small beaker of cloudy water that somehow hadn’t spilled on the way over.

 

Caitlyn sat beside Jinx, but the latter hardly noticed as she worked. She knew Cassandra would lay into her about doing any sort of experimenting without the supervision of an adult. But now she could argue that she was supervised, with Caitlyn recently turning nineteen. She knew Cassandra would call bullshit, but it was worth the shot.

 

“How do you plan to make this work, exactly?” Caitlyn inquired.

 

Jinx hummed. “I need to mimic the metalwork in this purifier, or at least find out how exactly it functions so I can make my own portable version that creates the same results. What good is an air purifier if you can only use it in one place? The enforcers’ masks are crude and expensive, they’re meant for able bodied rich people.”

 

Jinx took a few steel bits and soldered them together, putting together a makeshift ventricular joint. She hooked it to a separate steel plate and stuffed the ventricle with bits of gauze she’d cut from the larger filter. This would be the start of the internal composition of the mask, and once she got the outer shell welded together, she would attach this to the external air duct, allowing the polluted air to flow through the filter and into the user’s lungs. But it would be another couple of hours before that happened. She sent Caitlyn off to bed, seeing how exhausted her sister was becoming, and continued her work. Hopefully by morning, Jinx would have a completed prototype to offer Viktor.

 

“You realize if we get caught Mother will probably end up banning you from the lab for a year,” Caitlyn grumbled.

 

“Which is why we don’t get caught, sweet cheeks.” Jinx flicked a toggle on the filter and watching the vent on the mask open. “If you’re so scared, you can go to bed. I won’t tell anyone you were involved.”

 

“No, I want to do this, just…” Caitlyn ran her free hand down her face. “Be careful. We also don’t want to break Viktor’s only breathing aid.”

 

“You underestimate me, Cait. I’ve got this. I may not have the same fancy education as you and all your Topside buddies, but I’m not an idiot. I learned from the best, and you should’ve seen him, he—” Jinx shook her head. Thinking about him never ended well for her, almost always it lead to a bad mood at best and a complete psychotic breakdown at worst. She blinked the memories away and focused back on the task in front of her. “I know what I’m doing.”

 

And she did. Jinx had known what she wanted to do, if nothing else. It was her invention that killed her family just over a year ago. There were days where Vi’s face, where Mylo and Claggor’s faces, followed her around shady corners, taunting her about how she never would make something worthwhile, that all her efforts only led to pain. That Vi was wrong when she said the creations would work one day. But every time, Caitlyn had been there to remind her that she was worth more than her creations because to her, Jinx was the best sister she could ever ask for. Jayce was there to remind her that good things take time, that it took him years to crack artificial magic, and he had another many years ahead of him before Hextech was perfected, and he had started it all in his bedroom with a family that built hammers. Viktor would remind her that it didn’t matter what people said or where you came from, because he too came from Zaun, from a family that rejected him, and he had built himself from the ground up and found himself working alongside some of Piltover’s greatest minds. Of which he included Jinx. So now Jinx knew what she wanted to do; she would build something to heal, rather than hurt. She would let her learnings from Jayce and Viktor, from Ekko, her best friend who gave his life for hers, guide her in the details.

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

This hadn’t happened before.

 

Jinx could have sworn Mylo was dead, yet there he lingered, a shadow in the corner just behind Viktor. The two scientists were doing their latest demonstration of Hextech, putting on quite a show for Cassandra, who stood beside Caitlyn near the lab door. But as soon as Viktor moved his arm, a grandiose sweep, Mylo was gone like smoke in the night. Jinx shook her head and focused back on Jayce. She just needed more sleep.

 

The Hexgate prototype, as Jayce had called it, spurred to life once again, one tower beside Viktor against the wall, and the other in the center of the room where Jinx continued tinkering, trying her best not to let the thought of Mylo get to her. She had been hearing his voice in her head for months now, and she’d even taken it to Tobias, who had assured her it was only her own negative self image manifesting, and thus began working with her on managing her anxiety. She hadn’t brought it up again; she knew he hadn’t believed her.

 

Jayce picked up a little black washer from his work bench, grinning as he tossed it as his end of the model Hexgates. When it impacted with the blue membrane of its surface, it faded from view and reemerged on the other side, falling neatly into Viktor’s hand. It landed with a sharp blue shine that hit Jinx’s eyes just so, and suddenly she found herself staring at the ruins of the cannery.

 

She knew she shouldn’t have followed Ekko then, shouldn’t have set that little explosion to get the guards to let up. But she knew if she could do just one thing, just one little thing before she fled like she’d promised, then maybe she could have something to brag about when Vi and Dad came home safe. But they hadn’t gotten home safe. They hadn’t gotten home at all. The blue gleam of the room around her proved that. The ruins of that night had come for their penance, they would haunt her until she crawled into a grave of her own alongside her family. Was she here? Was she at the cannery? It was all unclear as the blue only got brighter.

 

Mylo was back again. He waited for her in the shadow of the hexgate prototype, the sapphire glow highlighting the sneer on his face in agonizing detail. The way his brows furrowed, lips turned up just slightly at the corners like he was holding back a laugh or perhaps a mocking jab. She looked to him, away and back, but he still lingered. This wasn’t a shadow, this was real. Mylo was here, and he was angry.

 

“Jinx!” That didn’t quite sound like Mylo, and yet his mouth had moved. He laughed at her as she flinched, hugging herself tight, her arms a shoddy barrier between herself and the memories she wished not to relive.

 

“Stop calling me that! I’m not a jinx!”

 

Her hair was brushing her arms, it sent fire ants up her skin, it needed to go go go—

 

“Jinx, take a breath.”

 

It was Vi. Was she angry or was she disappointed? Both, perhaps? She sounded like she may have been sympathetic, and yet still that damned word came from her lips. Her body covered in blood as that blue explosion crushed everyone in its wake. The smoke swallowed her vision, everything was on fire.

 

Tobias, Caitlyn, get her out of here, I’ll disassemble everything

 

The words barely registered around the rest of the roaring in her ears, but she recognized those names. Caitlyn. A friend. She loved Jinx. Not Powder. She loved the broken, cursed version of her. But it was suicide, she would be cursed too. She would become a shadow, just like Mylo who followed along beside her. Whispering that name, that horrible word.

 

Claggor waited for her, wherever it was she had ended up. His shattered bones leaving his ghost a disfigured husk, and yet his words came out all the more clear as she began his own tirade. Such a quiet boy, but he hadn’t held back for Jinx, not today.

 

“Jinx, you need to tell me what’s going on.”

 

Jinx, jinx, jinx, the screaming never stopped. The shadows grew closer, larger, Vi, Vander, Mom, Ekko—oh Janna, Ekko—they all swarmed her vision, consuming her eyesight, circling her like hungry dogs. She needed them to go away, they were dead, and she was to blame, so why the fuck couldn’t they stay that way? Why couldn’t they leave her in her own suffering? The memories were reminder enough, hearing their voices in her head whispering day in and day out was mind numbing, but this was destructive, violent. They all glowed in their own hues, so that no matter how hectic the visions became, she would always know exactly who stood before her, who spoke which words. It was torture of a special kind. It needed out.

 

A hand gripping hers shook her out of her spiral. She yanked it away, gripping her hair for something familiar, but the touch had broken the spell, and she could look behind the neon scrawl to see a recognizable, tangible face, a head of indigo hair and eyes that glowed like topaz.

 

“Focus on me, sister,” the familiar girl whispered. She had a name, Caitlyn, her name was Caitlyn. This was her sister who took the place of Vi, who was here to love her when Vi couldn’t. She didn’t call her a Jinx. But she was, Caitlyn was here with Jinx because Vi was dead and it was her fault. “Keep your eyes on me, don’t worry about whatever else you see.”

 

Jinx tried, oh she tried, and she made it halfway. Her breathing was back under her control, her skin loosened it’s iron grip on her body, but when she opened her eyes again, Mylo was still there. He was still laughing.

 

“Look at me, little sister,” Caitlyn whispered. It occurred to Jinx now what she was doing. Jinx had never told her new family the true origins of her chosen name, and in a moment of weakness, it had become a greater trigger. Caitlyn, so perceptive she was, had been sure to avoid it, but she was at a loss, Jinx had no other name, not anymore. It burned with Vi. “Look at me.”

 

She did. Caitlyn’s eyes were soft with sympathy, her hands holding Jinx gently by the shoulders. Vi’s face flashed over hers for a brief moment, a twisted mask, before fading again, yet her voice continued to mumble in her ear. That much would never change. It all clicked, in that moment. Jinx couldn’t keep her shit on its leash anymore. She had her nightmares, had choked herself on her own sobs in the quiet of the night, had spent many nights hiding from them as she lay in that large, empty bed, the cold space taunting her with the distinct lack of a sleep-fighting Vi, or a sprawled out Mylo or a clingy and noisy-sleeping Ekko. She had her moments of panic as Cassandra reminded her just the slightest bit too much of her mom in all the wrong ways, hiding the shake in her hands as she ate dinners nicer than anything Vi could have scraped up as a kid. She battled the never ending confusion when the voices in her head blended too well with reality, leaving her disoriented. But Jinx couldn’t keep any of it on a leash anymore, not now that the apparitions had become visible and Jinx had lost it in front of everyone.

 

Mylo faded from view when Caitlyn shifted her stance, standing just to her right where Jinx’s eyes had lingered. All she could see now was Caitlyn, her sweet shoo in sister who, in this moment, knew her like even Vi never had. The sight of her, the full, unblocked view gave her racing mind pause, and suddenly she could breathe again. No one could hurt her, not with Caitlyn here.

 

“Are you back with me?” Caitlyn whispered. Jinx could barely hear her around the whispers, but they were one whispers again, so she could consider herself level again. She nodded.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me that you were seeing things?” Tobias asked. “When you had told me it was only the voices sometimes, it seemed like anxiety but this…this is something else entirely. You should have said something, kiddo.”

 

“Its never happened before,” Jinx argued, frustration welling up in her chest. She was used to not being believed, but for some reason, this time felt different. “I hear everyone all the time, they’re never quiet. But I haven’t…seen anyone yet. And they were so loud.”

 

Tobias hummed. “I’ll be keeping an eye out. In the meantime, let me know if anything changes so I can—”

 

“Father, shoo! We can fix this later when she’s not so jittery,” Caitlyn interrupted. Tobias glowered at her, but nodded and left the room back towards Jayce and Viktor’s lab. “Are you feeling alright?”

 

Jinx nodded. She figured the tension under her skin would linger for some time, and that the right now was as good as she would get for the time being. Little flashes sprung up here and there, slight glimpses of black, but there were no more ghosts, no more screams of the dying. A hand in front of her face.

 

“Focus on me,” Caitlyn repeated. “Do you know what triggered you, so we can make sure to avoid it in the future?”

 

Did Jinx tell her the truth, about her past and who she used to be before everything collapsed? She had been relatively open with her; telling her the stories of when she and Vi used to stay up playing board games with their mom when she was alive, about Claggor sneaking her drinks—real alcohol—from Vander’s bar when he wasn’t looking, how Ekko built his very first hover bike with her help. The fun things. But when it came to the heavier things, the night she saw her mother bleed out, when Vi had assumed she was too young to even remember, the times Claggor and Mylo ganged up on her to get her in trouble with Vander or worse, Vi. The day she got food poisoning from bad street food that nearly sent her to an early death. And of course, the cannery explosion. Powder remembered this place; remembered Jayce by the tools he used, the same tools in the shop she’d helped rob. If she told the truth, would Caitlyn put the pieces together? Would she realize who it was that had been living under her roof all this time and kick her to the curb?

 

It was likely Cassandra would, and Tobias, definitely. But Caitlyn, Jinx didn’t think so. Jayce was a basket case, but Viktor, Jinx had learned, was Zaunite too. She was sure she could at least count on Caitlyn and Viktor if worse came to worst. That was one thing about Piltover that thoroughly confused Jinx: in Zaun, trust was easy. No one earned it. Family was lucky to get a shred of it. The only thing one could really trust in, was that no one was truly trustworthy. There was always something greater at play. But in Piltover, people had the security to trust people. But some were still better than others. Trust went to those people loved, but love to Pilties was trust to Zaunites: hard to earn, and came with strings attached. But Jinx supposed there wasn’t much else she had to lose. Her old name could stay dead, but Caitlyn of all people deserved to know the truth. She took a breath to steady her racing heart.

 

“The Hexgates. They flashed, and the blue made me think of the explosion that killed my family. It was my fault, I took those hexgems and made a bomb with them, and it killed them all.”

 

Jinx didn’t want to hear what Caitlyn had to say, but her response was one of few that she hadn’t expected.

 

“I know.”

 

Jinx shot up, staring at her with wide eyes. “What?”

 

“It was Jayce’s gems that created that bomb, so we were some of the first to hear about the explosion. Four children perished, and you lost three siblings and a friend that night, you say? I knew you were involved from the night I took you in.”

 

“And you let me stay? I kill people, Caitlyn! I’m dangerous!”

 

“It takes approximately four hours to make it from that corner of Zaun to the upper sectors of Piltover. Two hours, just to make it to the Bridge of Progress from there. But we heard about the explosion within thirty minutes, because of our radios. Enforcers scoured all of Zaun trying to find the fourth remaining child, since two bodies were found and the third was in enforcer custody. It only took them an hour, with all the help they had. Meaning between the fatal explosion and the final report, ninety minutes had passed and there was no sign of you. Meaning you would’ve had to be out of Zaun before the explosion happened. Therefore, you didn’t kill anyone. The bomb may have been built by you, but you weren’t the one to detonate it.”

 

Jinx could have laughed. Of course Caitlyn knew that. The words made her feel oddly better. But one thing stood out: only two bodies were found. One was arrested, and one was supposedly her. But Jinx knew it wasn’t her. One of her family members was unaccounted for, and one was still alive. Caitlyn was good, but Jinx knew she would only be able to offer so much information. The words lit a fire in her. She couldn’t care less if Mylo had been one of those bodies; they had never loved each other, not really. Claggor, she was indifferent; his affection for Ekko made him a good guy in her book. He was so distrustful that anyone he deemed a friend was gold hearted, but she herself was never close with him. She hoped to the gods that Vi and Ekko were still alive, still out there somewhere. But that would mean that one of them was in prison. And the other, only the gods know. Jinx would bide her time, and she would find a way to get whichever two members of her family remained, and she would bring them home to her. She looked up at Caitlyn with a new drive behind her eyes, and nodded. 

 

I didn’t kill them. But I’ll bring them back, I will bring them all back.

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

Even after two years, Jinx still hadn’t quite gotten used to the concept of family dinners. Sitting at a table lined with cloth, eating real food from fine china, food that hadn’t come from a dumpster or a shady stop. It was all so bizarre most days, but slowly, Jinx had found herself beginning to adjust.

 

She sat beside Caitlyn at the large table, both across from Tobias and Cassandra. Once again, it was quail and greens for dinner. No matter how much Jinx begged Cassandra to let her make one of her comfort meals, a vegetable soup cooked of whatever produce and questionable meats Vander could find, she had always turned her nose up at it and insisted that they all eat real food. Jinx was resentful of the blatant classism, but she would not antagonize the woman who gave her everything.

 

Jinx could feel the tension in herself, in Caitlyn as well, as the two ate in uncomfortable silence. Cassandra had been deep in conversation with her husband about the affairs of the day, a proposal of the council to double down on rebellion in the Undercity. It was hardly rebellion in Jinx’s eyes; protesting on the Bridge of Progress hoping to ease the financial burden on the people and give them homes to live in, but Piltover only saw defiance, as usual. As Cassandra laid out the plans in greater detail, Jinx felt her anxiety only grow. If this were put into motion, not only would the current homeless population fall further into poverty, even those with homes faced the risk of losing them. Cassandra seemed to think it was a great idea, to make the people earn the money they wanted by clearing out practically half of the Lanes to build more factories and facilities to create more jobs, and it may have worked, Jinx knew that. She knew Cassandra was trying. But flattening the Undercity’s own land, destroying existing Zaunite homes and family run shops to plant more Piltie businesses, would force people to live on the sidewalks when they weren’t run into the ground working themselves to the bone. And Cassandra also seemed to have too much faith in her council counterparts; Jinx knew it would not be honest work, it would be slave labor. Nevertheless, Jinx continued to sit in silence, listening to Mylo behind her scold her for turning her back on her own people.

 

Caitlyn turned to her as she winced slightly, seeming to recognize her internal struggle. She was still the only one Jinx trusted with the complexities of her broken mind. She took Jinx’s trembling right hand, tapping out patterns of four, silently urging her to pace her breaths. Jinx squeezed back in thanks, and returned to her dinner. It was bland, she wished it was vegetable soup.

 

The moment Cassandra deemed dinnertime over, Jinx and Caitlyn stood to clear the table, sharing evening chores like they did every night. Cleaning the dishes of the day, straightening up the sitting room and mopping the kitchen floor. Tobias insisted on having one of the hired hands do it, but Jinx found it calming, to be able to do something so idle, so domestic, to make this living place she didn’t deserve look nice for the people she shared it with.

 

Water splashed up her forearms as she scrubbed the cassserole pan from lunch, sighing when her ponytail slipped over her shoulder and dipped into the water. Beside her, Caitlyn dried each dish Jinx washed and set them back in the cabinets.

 

“She can’t do that,” Caitlyn whispered. “She’s going to hurt so many people.”

 

Jinx nodded. A plan began to form in her mind, half baked and wholly stupid, but it was growing anyhow. She couldn’t allow this, but she knew she was in no position to stop the council, all the Zaunite orphan girl she was. She set the clean dish on the counter for Caitlyn and dried her own hands. The remaining dishes were only silverware, and would take half a thought to clean, but she wanted Caitlyn to have her full attention.

 

“I’m going down there. Tonight.” She replied.

 

Caitlyn nearly dropped the glass dish as she whipped around to face her. Jinx ignored the dumbfounded look on her face and picked up the next dish, still paying attention to whatever she would say. Likely something she wouldn’t want to hear.

 

“You can’t go down there! It’s dangerous!”

 

“It’s my home, Caitlyn. And it’s in danger.”

 

“Do you know what could happen to you?! You’re barely thirteen, it’s not safe for you to walk alone here in Piltover, let alone in the Undercity.”

 

“I’ve been going on missions down there since I was seven. I know my way around. I’m not going to stand by and let anyone ruin the place I grew up because Janna knows Silco’s done enough damage as it is! You can worry all you want but you aren’t stopping me!”

 

Caitlyn sighed. She placed the dry dish back in the cabinet to her right and eased the door shut. “I won’t try to stop you. But I want to go with you.”

 

“Absolutely not!” Jinx held her arms across her chest, gripping her biceps tightly. In the past two years, Caitlyn had helped her to reconcile with the night of the accident; why Vi had forced her to sit on the sidelines. Ekko had followed along to help against her orders, and her entire family died. All this time, she had worked to understand that it wasn’t her fault, because she hadn’t been there and was in no way involved, but now, a new light was being shed on the situation. If she goes alone, she’ll have a chance to fix things, but if she dares to try and bring her inexperienced sister, things can only end in disaster. She would tie Caitlyn to those fancy marble pillars outside if she had to, she was not coming. “You’ll only get hurt.”

 

Caitlyn grumbled. “I’ve been taking shooting lessons with the other cadets. I’m able to defend myself.”

 

“It’s not just about defending yourself, it’s about the fact that you’ll have a target on your back. People will recognize my face, I’ll be in enough hot water on my own, but everything about you screams rich Piltie girl. They’ll gut you alive and sell your parts. You need to stay where you’re safe.”

 

“Alright, that’s some crude imagery,” Caitlyn gagged. “But point taken. What if we wore masks? If we can conceal ourselves, maybe we’ll be safer?”

 

“I don’t understand what part of you’re not coming isn’t making sense to you. But I will wear a mask, thanks for the suggestion.”

 

Caitlyn took her wrist, prying her fingernails from her arm where they had begun to draw blood. “Hey, it’ll be alright. I understand why you’re scared to bring me along. But I assure you, we’ll be safer as a pair than alone. I’ll follow your lead, no questions asked.”

 

Jinx shrugged her off with a groan. Caitlyn’s blue eyes shone with something Jinx hadn’t seen in a while: passion. The insatiable urge to do something good, the desire for justice she hadn’t seen since Vi was alive. If her sister was here, she’d be proud of Caitlyn. They would butt heads nonstop, they were too similar in all the wrong ways, but Vi would admire her bravery, to risk the cushy life she knew to help those with less.

 

“I’m leaving at midnight. Be ready or I’m leaving without you.”

 

🧁

 

Caitlyn stood in Jinx’s doorway right as the old grandfather clock downstairs struck midnight. She had foregone her enforcer’s cadet uniform in favor of her black and blue riding clothes, only used a handful of times when Cassandra had sent her off with Grayson to learn to ride on horseback. They were a bit small on her now, the blue skirt only falling to her mid calf and the leather top hugging her chest a little too tightly, but they would work. Jinx wore her own all black attire, leggings, short shorts, and a sleeveless halter top. Something to keep her covered but allow for easy movement, something Caitlyn learned she favored when she joined her for cadet training one day. She had easily beaten everyone in the flexibility category, and moved with an almost unnatural fluidity, all speed and precision to Caitlyn’s blunt force and Abel’s brute strength. Her blue tattoos stood out against her pale skin and dark clothes, but they were fresh enough that Caitlyn was certain they wouldn’t be an identifiable feature.

 

Cassandra and Tobias were both heavy sleepers, something Jinx always sneered at, but it made sneaking out easy. The city was alight with stars as the two girls made their way across the Bridge of Progress, venturing from the quiet of Piltover midnight to avid Zaunite nightlife. All around, punks wandered from bar to bar, sampling shitty drinks and starting fights, brothels were alive and lit in various pinks and blues, and junkies took up residence on the streets and in alleys. Jinx navigated the streets with practiced ease, keeping her head held high and her strides easy. Caitlyn did her best to do the same, feeling awkward next to Jinx’s bold presence despite standing a head and some taller.

 

Caitlyn had no idea what it was Jinx was looking for, but kept a lookout of her own on the off chance anything seemed off. The noises and smells were oppressive, and it had begun to disorient her. It only grew worse when the smell of blood began to fill her nose, so thick she swore she could taste it. From the angle she was facing and the speed she’d been moving, she figured it had come from two alleys back, on her left. A wound that bled enough to smell that strong had to be fatal. She reached out to stop Jinx, who turned to face her with brows furrowed.

 

“What’s the matter?” She asked, carrying way too much authority for someone her age.

 

“Someone is hurt, we should check and see if they’re okay.”

 

Jinx shook her head sadly. “If we stopped for every injured person down here, we’ll never make it ten feet. We have to keep going. We’re getting close to the hub of the Lanes, we’ll be able to gauge the council situation better from there.”

 

“I will not leave a person in need to suffer. Just wait right here, I will be back in a moment.”

 

“Caitlyn—!”

 

“It’s in an alley, I’ll have cover on three sides. Just let me make sure everything is alright.”

 

Jinx shook her head again and sighed. “You’re asking to die, sweetheart. Whatever, but I will be waiting right around the corner.”

 

Caitlyn nodded and went back to that alley. Sure enough, she found a boy dressed in rags crouched by an AC unit, clutching a wound, four inches across and about three quarters of an inch deep by her guess. He looked up with a snarl when she approached.

 

“I just want to make sure you’re alright,” she whispered. She took the med pouch she wore strapped to her thigh, carried with her everywhere she went out of precaution. “That needs to be stitched. It’s too deep to heal on its own.”

 

The boy was silent, but the look on his face told Caitlyn enough. You aren’t touching me. Caitlyn took out a needle and sutures anyway.

 

“You’ll bleed out if we don’t sew it back up. I’ll clean it first, that way it doesn’t get infected.”

 

The boy couldn’t have been older than fourteen, but the look in his eyes was hollow, like he truly hadn’t cared if he survived the wound or not. Caitlyn hated her mother in that moment, hated the entire council. This boy was one of millions down here, one of many who had been destroyed by the cruel living conditions, who had just given up, and who would be affected the most by the council’s recent proposal. Something had to change.

 

Caitlyn took the boy’s lack of even a nonverbal response as consent, and began stitching the cut. She felt bad; numbing agents were so heavily regulated that they weren’t kept in medical kits, so she had to work quickly to avoid him being in pain any longer than necessary. Even as the needle continued in and out, though, he hardly gave her a second thought, aside from the mumbled pleas that came too quietly for her to hear. It was like he hadn’t even cared if he lived or died. It crushed her.

 

As soon as she had finished, the boy had all but shooed her away, disappearing even deeper into the dark alley as Caitlyn made her way back to where Jinx waited. That boy was a shell, barely half human, and it was on Piltover for allowing a whole nation full of people like him to fall so far. She simply shared a look with Jinx, not having the proper words to say but needing to convey just how horrific this was. Jinx seemed to agree, and pulled Caitlyn along without another word, making way for, rather than a central position of Zaun, what the former had called the Fissures. A corner of Zaun so desolate, a breathing wasteland, where no one dared to live, could live. Jinx said she had an idea, and Caitlyn didn’t think she had ever heard such frightening words.

 

The walls were damp and jagged, stone on every side, and Caitlyn would have been lost without the hand she extended to the cool rock, guiding her through the black. Ahead of her, Jinx continued on, as if she had walked this path many times before. Perhaps she had. The smell of mildew was nauseating, yet simultaneously refreshing, a shockingly mundane smell to replace the many that clashed in the Zaunite sky. 

 

“Where are we, exactly?” Caitlyn grumbled for the umpteenth time. She knew she wouldn’t get a real answer, but hoped Jinx would at least give her something.

 

“Our conversation earlier made me think. I have an idea, we’re almost there, just give me one minute.”

 

The one minute turned into four, and Jinx was fumbling through the dark, brushing aside gravel and brush to reveal a cavern lit brightly by the gibbous moon. Caitlyn couldn’t help the gasp that left her lips as she gazed up at the magnificent tree towering above her, branches like arms reaching for Piltover’s finery, and the clean air it provided. The stone walls climbed hundreds of feet, and the grass was almost green. All through the clear night sky, little firelights fluttered about, their emerald glow lining the place in an extra layer of beauty. It was what Caitlyn imagined heaven to look like, even as a Piltovian royal. She couldn’t imagine how it would look to a Zaunite. How it looked to Jinx.

 

“Ekko and I used to come here all the time,” Jinx whispered, as if not daring to break the fragile peace. “Vi would, too, sometimes. Ekko always got turned around, always needed me to lead the way. But it was our place for a while.” She sighed, and Caitlyn could see in real time the years of grief and heaviness easing off her delicate shoulders. “We were the babies of our little family, and it wasn’t always fun when Vi or my brothers bossed us around, so sometimes we’d just sneak off here. Our original goal was just the Fissures, but we found this place by accident, and I happened to remember the way. Ekko just liked the mystery, he had fun getting dragged around and rambling while we went. Those were some of the best nights of my life.”

 

Caitlyn took Jinx’s hand in hers and squeezed. She had heard many stories of Ekko over the years, and she knew that the bond they shared was once in a lifetime. She knew there was no replicating such a connection. But she knew she would do her best to be a good sister, a good friend to her, in his absence. She looked around again and noticed the smaller details; the little scribbles on the wall, the stick hut by the base of the tree. The few toys hidden inside. This place was a haven. She wished she could live down here.

 

“It was Ekko’s dream to help Zaun.”

 

Jinx approached the little stick hut, Caitlyn close behind, and took a small notebook out of it. It was coated in dirt and dust, untouched for so long. As Jinx flipped through it, Caitlyn noticed little doodles, firelights and owls and an imposing, older Jinx with a long braid down her back and stripes from shirt to shoes, with a gun in each hand and a huge smile on her face. Ekko’s dreams for the future.

 

“He didn’t ever tell me much from before we met, but from what I could guess, it was rough. He always wanted to just make Zaun a safe place to live. But he was scared, of Piltover and the enforcers, of the goings on down here, the fighting and the brutality. My family always preached the offensive approach, to fight back and take power and equality for ourselves. But then they actually did it, and none of them made it out. And now I’m wondering if Ekko was right, to just take what we have and make it work for us.

 

“What you told me earlier reminded me of him. There are so many people hurting down here, and they do need help. And when you made that comment about having cover, it reminded me of this place. They won’t find us here. If we bring the sick and the wounded to us, they can get a second chance at life without having to sleep with one eye open.”

 

“It’s a wonderful idea,” Caitlyn smiled. She loved the thought of being able to help in a way that didn’t end in more casualties. But the thought nagged at her, that this would only be putting a bandaid on a bullet wound. Jinx was looking at this from a Zaunite perspective, something she hadn’t lost for a moment even while she lived up in the top rungs of Piltover. Looked at is as a way to hide from the violence. But Caitlyn knew better. She had been through enforcer training, she had known the workings of the sheriff’s mind. A lack of defiance from Zaun wasn’t a token of submission to them. It was a sign that they had grown comfortable, complacent. And many of the enforcers didn’t like a complacent Undercity, least of all Markus. They wanted Zaun to be afraid. They wanted terrified submission, not comfortable obedience. Fear was the only language they spoke. And Caitlyn knew, it was either be afraid of them, or make them afraid of you. If this was to truly work, they had to create something Piltover was scared of. “But we need something more.”

 

Jinx raised an eyebrow, hands on her hips. “And how would you define more?”

 

“It won’t take long for Piltover to know something is up when the homeless and the sick suddenly start disappearing from the streets. They will abuse and hunt us until they find out what’s going on. And they will burn this place to the ground. Your idea is amazing, but we need to fight. There is no avoiding it. If we run with our tails between our legs, they’ll continue to harm this place. It’s either Zaun fears Piltover, or…”

 

“Or Piltover fears Zaun.” Jinx finished. She sighed, holding her head in her hands. “Every time I watched family go off to fight, they died. But… I guess you’re right. We’ll need to fight safely though. No running in head first like my sister.”

 

“So we conceal ourselves and we don’t go out without a plan,” Caitlyn offered. “The enforcers are trained to never forget a face. If we cover up, they can’t track us. They operate in groups of six to nine officers. We bring several people when we go out and outnumber them. They tend to prefer long range combat, because they know Zaunites aren’t afraid to get in close, but there are some who are quick to get up in others’ business. We bring close range fighters, many won’t be prepared.”

 

Jinx stared up at Caitlyn, eyes wide and a faint grin on her face. She smiled. “You know what, I’m glad I brought you with me. I was just gonna come down here and cause a scene like my mom always did. But I like the way you think. We might just have something going for us this time.”

 

“Wait, hang on—” Caitlyn started. “You want me to—”

 

“What, you don’t wanna go fighting your own people? Where’s the girl you were two minutes ago?”

 

“I was just thinking aloud, I hadn’t thought we’d actually create something of it!”

 

“Well we are. You heard your mom. The council wants to tear down half the city for their own gain. We can only fit so many people up in this bitch, if that land is destroyed we’ll be out of options. We can take in the suffering and find others who will fight back. It’s like you said, fear is the only language they speak. And now more than ever, they need to listen. So make your choice. Cozy up on mommy’s couch while millions are displaced, or stand up for something that matters. Your choice.”

 

Caitlyn huffed. She knew Jinx was right. And Caitlyn had been prepared to go through with this. But the idea of starting a war between the twin cities, of being on one side of the warfront while her family and all of her friends stood on the other, was heavy. She wanted to do good by Zaun, but she would have to give up everything she’d ever known to do it.

 

Like Jinx already has, you mean a voice in her mind nagged. You remember how you found her. She already lost everything when she came to Piltover. And she’s still in this fight.

 

Are you?

 

“I’m with you,” she said. “You tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

 

“Nah, sweetheart,” Jinx giggled. “You’ve already made it clear you know more about this than I do. I may be a native, but you’re the one with the brains. We’re on equal ground.”

 

Caitlyn grumbled, she loved Jinx, but she was going to be the death of her. “Alright, I will oversee any plans you make to fight, but like I told you, close range fighting is best, and I am still an enforcer cadet; I do better at long range. I make the plans, and you can carry them out. I will remain here as long as we are on site and I’ll work with the refugees, get them back on their feet and shaped up to fight.”

 

“I like the way you think. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

 

But it was. It would be worth it, but damn it, it was so hard. Caitlyn could already see the disappointment on her mother’s face, the shame on her father’s. But it would work itself out, it had to. For Ekko. For Jinx. For the boy in the alley, and all the others like him. For Zaun.

Notes:

I hope you all enjoyed this one!! Chapter four is in progress, and I’m so excited to keep going! I’m grateful for all the support this story has gotten so far, your excitement makes me so happy ☺️

Friendly reminder that I will reply to your comments but if you ask for spoilers, you will not be getting any 😊 I will not be ruining the story for you or anyone else, just trust that everything will come out in its own time!

(Also if anyone here does metalwork pls ignore the badly written first chunk, I pulled everything out of my ass and I doubt any of the terminologies are correct)

Chapter 5: Do You Believe That Time Heals All Wounds?

Summary:

I am sorry I’m late guys. The ao3 curse has caught me. I will discuss further in the end notes, but I want you guys to know that even if updates may be slower in the coming weeks or months, that I am not abandoning this story.

Notes:

I hope you all enjoy this chapter! This one is all about Vi and her years in Stillwater, and my song tag for this one is The Older I Get by Skillet 😁

The stone floors were more jagged than they looked. Vi wished she hadn’t smartassed her way into solitary again.

 

Vi had spent two years in Stillwater prison, longer than most people had even survived. She’d gathered in her time here that by the two year mark, most of the inmates had either been mentally broken and released on good behavior (complete cognitive shutdown), killed by other inmates in fights, or simply couldn’t handle the abuse and killed themselves. Vi had made it two years, and she’d learned her way around. She learned that Tuesdays were chicken day at dinner, which meant she would have to fatten up on Mondays to avoid the foodborne illness that came from poultry that was never cooked properly. She learned that there wasn’t true solitary here, due to the dense population of Stillwater, so solitary had been either the condemned cells beneath the ground where sunlight dared not travel, where even sheriff Marc-ass forbade prisoners be held, or a damp dirt pit by the edge of the island, twelve feet deep and covered by an iron grate. She learned that there had been a fighting ring organized under the enforcers noses, a way for the inmates to get their energy out and sometimes even steal a coin or snack from enforcers who’d been forced to abandon their posts to break it up, at the expense of a prisoner or two spending the rest of their miserable week in solitary. She’d learned that oftentimes, she preferred solitary over her regular accommodations, a cell shared with two others, a man and a woman who had a habit of getting a little too handsy with each other most nights; sex, fighting, or both at once.

 

She’d learned that in here, pretty words get you nowhere. Outside, on the streets of Zaun, Vi had made a name for herself. Thugs would take one look at her and back off with tails between their legs, and when that didn’t work, a well timed threat did the trick. But in here, no one mattered. Reputation didn’t exist. It was a clean slate, and the only way to work your way up was to win enough fights, but the second someone beat you, it was back to the bottom you go, and the cycle repeats itself. Her name meant nothing anymore, nor her status as the Hound’s eldest daughter. The Hound was dead, and his reputation with him.

 

Vi was startled out of her thoughts by a metal beam ramming her grate ceiling. The guards’ wake up call each morning. She sat up from her threadbare mattress with a sigh, the ever present ache in her shoulder twinging with the sudden movement. It was Wednesday, and she was hungry after skipping dinner last night. She was grateful that she did as the sounds of retching and the smell of even worse hit her, but she was still hungry and she was ready to eat something, if only enough to keep herself going.

 

The prison commons were emptier than usual, even for a Wednesday morning. Which meant Vi got a whole table to herself. A chance to sit in silence and eat her burnt egg in peace. Maybe if she was lucky, she would get to use the prison gym to work out her energy for the day without a whole bunch of men sharing the room with her. Not that they were bad; more often than not she enjoyed boxing with them during mandatory training days, the witty banter they’d shared, especially the day of her eighteenth birthday when the gym goers snuck her a strawberry cupcake from the guards station to celebrate, the very first time she’d had such a thing. She loved the time she spent with them, but she just wanted space to herself today. There was this pit in her chest, this feeling of dread she couldn’t shake, and she hoped that punching until her knuckles shattered would help.

 

After breakfast, Vi made good on her wish and crossed the prison grounds to the gym. Several men and even a few women were spread about the room, though far less than usual. Vi called it a win. She found her favorite punching bag along the far wall, hung it and began her usual day. 

 

794

 

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The evening was quiet, unnervingly so.

 

The prison guards were loose lipped, and it didn’t take long for the usual gossip to work its way around the grounds. There had been a huge fight on the Bridge. A rebel group no one had ever seen or heard of before, causing a scene up at the lower rings of Piltover. Stealing food, defacing government buildings, and burning down a tea dispensary. According to one inmate Vi had spoken to, the guards had called them Firelights. A small group of cloaked and masked Zaunites, led by what looked like a young girl, someone who hadn’t seemed the troublesome type. And none of them had been caught, all eight people escaping over the bridge and into hiding. It had the guards livid.

 

Vi worked her way to the commons for dinner, if the guards were even in the mood to feed anyone tonight. She found her people standing in the chow line and stood at the back. She wasn’t in the mood to fist fight someone for a better spot, and the food didn’t smell appealing enough to bother hoping for a hot ladle. Around her, murmurs sleuthed about the room, exaggerated retellings of the events topside, about a girl taking down half a dozen enforcers single handedly, or how she punched Marc-ass himself in the nose and broke it. Things Vi was sure had to be a stretch. Marcus was too chickenshit to actually enter into a fight, and his little cronies wouldn’t let anyone close enough to land a hit.

 

There were talks of other happenings as well. Of Silco, who had risen to power the night Vi was tossed in this pit. About this drug he and some doctor had whipped up, quite possibly the same one that turned Vander into that beast, that transformed wimpy little Deckard into a raging hulk. If it had made its way into the hands of the common man, Vi knew Zaun was royally fucked. She hoped those rumors were only rumors.

 

The one that set her most on edge, however, was the talk of a scrappy little merchant’s boy that had found his way into Silco’s inner circle. There weren’t many merchant’s boys Vi could think of, not ones that Silco would have any reason to take an interest in, but if there was anything she knew about Zaunite merchants, they were greater cons than even Silco himself, and a young boy would be the last one anyone would look to as a deceiver. There was only one boy to come to Vi’s mind; one who had been there the night of the accident that ended in her imprisonment and the deaths of everyone she loved, the one who took the brunt of Vi’s self driven rage. One who had seen Silco up close, who was as familiar with him as she was. But Vi knew better, Ekko wouldn’t do that, not willingly. The thought of Ekko being in Silco’s pocket horrified her, because the only two possibilities then would be that Silco had taken him by force and abused him, or that Vi had fucked up even worse than she’d imagined and Ekko had gone willingly. Either way, she prayed to every god and goddess that would listen that the boy in the rumors was someone else.

 

Vi took her food with a grimace. She had no idea what had even been dumped onto her tray, but it was gray, lumpy and smelled like sludge. She felt her appetite flee immediately. Nevertheless, she took the food and sat down. Her acquaintances surrounded her at the rickety round table.

 

“You actually took that shit?” Dawes asked. The brute swept his stringy blonde hair out of his eyes just so Vi could see his shock in full.

 

“Well what else am I supposed to eat? I’m not about to starve to death in here and I already skipped breakfast this morning when I found something with way too many legs crawling in it.” Vi drove her fork into the slop, sighing when it’s dull prongs slipped off an overcooked something. She threw the fork down and picked up a lump with her fingers, holding her breath as she slid it into her mouth. It was surprisingly hard and unsurprisingly bland. She couldn’t name it if she tried.

 

“I’m just saying, the amount of money in that bastard’s pocket, he could be so kind to give us better shit to eat,” Dawes grumbled. Vi wasn’t sure if he meant Marc-ass or Silco, but both could apply.

 

“You know he doesn’t actually care about Zaun,” Marron grumbled. “If he did, he’d be fighting to get Shimmer off the streets, not push more of it out.”

 

“What, that’s news to you?” Vi sneered. “You all know what landed me in here, you know Silco doesn’t give a flying fuck about anyone but himself and his own agenda.”

 

“Yes, yes, Silco killed your big bad daddy, everyone in here knows the story. But here’s the real kicker,” Lonnie smirked, “rumor has it he has a new little bitch, and it’s one of yours.”

 

“Don’t you talk about my family that way! They’re all dead so you know whoever started that one is full of shit!”

 

“Even that little boy with the fugly face paint? What about that little blue haired girl I’d seen wandering around Zaun dressed like one of Babbette’s whores? Still haven’t figured out which one is in old Silco’s pockets.”

 

“You think it’s both?” Marron cackled, a sleazy grin on his face as he sized Vi up. “They’re probably fucking in Silco’s office as we speak.”

 

“Now quit that, asshole,” Dawes warned, “keep your pervy fantasies to yourself.”

 

Vi knew they were all trying to get a rise out of her. They did this all the time, made sure to say just the right thing to get her riled up, and she had learned better than to fall for it, but the way Lonnie and Marron were behaving had her shaking with rage, and the hand that swung out and landed square on Lonnie’s jaw had been on autopilot. She felt like a spectator in her own body as she leapt out of her seat and on top of Lonnie, landing punch after punch and kick after kick to every square inch of the woman below her. The woman would be blue and limp when she was done with her, Vi would have it no other way.

 

The guards must have been eager for something to do, as they usually paid no mind to fights like these, but today they actually bothered to try putting a stop to it. Vi didn’t give in though, feeling something frail inside of her shatter as the thoughts of Powder or Ekko chained to Silco’s wicked agendas, forced to follow along in his sick shadow, being abused or hurt as a means of further smearing Vander’s memory and legacy. The shattered bubble inside of her left jagged pieces, weapons in her hands as her fists made Lonnie’s face home, raining down strike after strike as tear after tear fell from her eyes.

 

She didn’t give in when one guard became two and two became three and then four guards were scrambling to tear her off of Lonnie, who had gone silent and still below her. One eye was sealed shut and purple with swelling, the other ruptured and oozing, staining her wrapped hands with pink lymph. Vi’s right hand throbbed faintly as she was pulled further away from Lonnie’s body, gazing apathetically down at her head that had caved in on itself on one side, blood and brain matter spilling beneath the grotesque sight. There was no way she had survived. Vi didn’t care. The fluids that sprayed her face and ran down her arms didn’t matter, the crushed bones in her hands didn’t matter, the sobs that left her lips or the retching of younger inmates as they dared gaze upon Lonnie’s body didn’t matter, not now. All Vi could perceive in the midst of it all was the thought of her baby sister, her adopted little brother, in Silco’s evil hands.

 

The world was a blur as Vi was dragged through the commons and down stone hallways, two guards to each limb, but Vi hadn’t fought, she simply watched as the room around her passed by in a watery haze. Every corner she turned, she saw the shadows twist and sneer, mocking her. The guards around her shouted, at her, at each other, but the ringing in her ears drowned them all out. She felt like a spectator in her own body, until the moment they passed through a set of steel doors and outside into the dark, damp night. The chill of the salty air brought her back to herself, and she could see with startling clarity, her baby sister lingering by the solitary pit at the edge of the island. Her blue hair hung in her eyes, damp and unbound, her eyes red and teary. Suddenly the hands on Vi’s body felt constrictive, smothering. For the first time in the last fifteen minutes, Vi found the strength to fight back.

 

The guards hadn’t expected Vi’s sudden movement, so it took little strength for her to break free of their grip and move towards Powder. Their reflexes, however, hadn’t been lost, and Vi only made it about three steps before they had her back in their meaty hands. They continued to pull her, this time with greater force and strength, towards the solitary pit, away from her sister.

 

One guard in particular, who Vi recognized as Francis, retaliated against her wordless cries with a slap to the face. The impact went unnoticed to Vi, who could only stare at the mirage of her baby sister as she faded from view until she was gone altogether, her words ringing in her ears.

 

Why did you leave me?!

 

“Powder!” Vi cried out, not caring about how nuts she may have looked. “Powder, I’m right here!”

 

“You sad little bitch,” Francis sneered. “You won’t be getting any of that where you’re going.”

 

“No, you don’t understand!” Vi shrieked, desperately hoping to be heard over Powder’s cries in her ears. “I need to get to Powder! She needs me!”

 

Two guards kept a bruising grip on her arms while the others unlatched and lifted the grate above the solitary pit. The rain and the ocean air left the dirt floor swampy and damp, the stone walls slick. Blood stained the walls where desperate prisoners tried fruitlessly to climb their way out, slashing open their hands and feet. Upon lifting the grate just enough, Vi was thrown down into the pit, a sack of potatoes discarded.

 

“You freaks are all the same,” Francis spat. “Get yourselves hooked on shit and throw tantrums when you can’t get any. Well now you can sit in here and think about what you’ve done!”

 

“Give me my sister!”

 

“Your sister isn’t here!” The other guard shouted, his black hair slicked to his forehead by the rain. “Guess we’ve found ourselves a supplier.” Their voices faded into the night as they walked away, the fourth line guard sealing the grate above Vi’s head. “Send a team out, find that bastard and take everything. We don’t need any more druggies in here killing people for spite.”

 

Vi fell to the ground, her feet and backside sinking into the sludge, screaming into the sky, cursing whatever gods had led her to this fate. She just wanted to help. She just wanted to save Vander. But where had that gotten her? He was dead, Mylo and Claggor were dead, Powder and Ekko were out there somewhere, alone, probably scared and hurting. And Vi was here, fed and sheltered but beaten and forgotten, alone, scared and hurting in her own way. Powder’s silhouette lingered on the opposite side of her pit, blood seeping down her face. Vi ignored her. She was cold. She just wanted her family back. She had to make things right.

 

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Vi spent a week in the pit. A week spent drinking rainwater and starving when the guards would forget to feed her. A week of seeing her family’s ghosts lingering in puddles and shadows, a week of crying until her head pounded. She was bored and she was hungry. 

 

She had taken to laying on her back and staring up at the clear sky through the cell grate to waste away her morning, until she blinked out of her daze to find the grate being lifted. Part of her wasn’t quite ready to leave this place of solitude, even if she was desperate for a warm meal and a blanket. But rather than send a ladder down for her to climb her way out, another woman was tossed down into the pit with her.

 

“Since you pigs can’t seem to cut the bullshit this week,” Francis grumbled, “we’re out of solitary cells for you people. So now, you two can share the pit for the remainder of the week. Please, try not to kill this one, 516.”

 

The grate fell shut with a heavy clang, and Francis walked off, whistling some angry tune to the wind. Vi sat up with a groan, leaning up against the wall to get a look at her new cellmate. The girl seemed way too delicate to belong in a place like this, her curly brown hair freshly washed and her prison wear neatly worn, as if brand new. Her eyes, a brown darker than the dirt she knelt in, gazed upon Vi warily. A lamb in a butcher house. Sad.

 

“The fuck did you do to get in here? Steal a shiny bracelet?” Vi grumbled.

 

The woman bristled. “What, am I not rugged and jacked up enough for you? For your information, I started a riot up in Piltover. Set a low tier nobleman’s workshop on fire. Took them days to find me.”

 

Vi stared at the girl inquisitively. She didn’t seem the rebellious type, but she supposed those made the best rebels. The girl had a defiant air about her, the more Vi observed. She saw it in the way the girl held her chin high, even locked in a dirt pit that could sink into the ocean at any time. The way her hands danced along her leg in methodical taps, as if itching to move. Her pale skin was unblemished, but she hardly seemed afraid to get down and dirty.

 

“Well, princess isn’t scared to cause a scene. You might just fit in well here.”

 

“I would certainly hope,” the woman grinned. “Because it doesn’t seem like I’m getting out of here anytime soon.”

 

“Well then, Princess Upstart, you got a name?”

 

“It’s Amelia. What about you?”

 

“Vi.”

 

“Well, Vi, what about you? How’d you get in here?”

 

“In Stillwater or in this pit?”

 

Amelia grinned. “Why not both?”

 

Vi laughed, wiping her dirty hands on her leggings. “Well, I landed in Stillwater after I was accused of robbing Topside. I did, of course, but the enforcers couldn’t prove it.” This drew a laugh from Amelia as well, and the sound made Vi’s heart flutter, just a little. “As for this place, I bashed a girl’s brains out with my bare hands. She had it coming.”

 

“I’d say,” Amelia nodded. “Seems very much the eat or be eaten type of place here.”

 

The two girls sat in the silence, listening to the crash of the waves below them and the squawking of the gulls above them. Vi would never admit it aloud, but she was glad to have some company in here. The solitude had begun to become oppressive. 

 

It wasn’t long before guards returned to the pit, one woman sliding the grate open just enough to slide two boxes to Vi and her new cell mate before sealing it once more and walking away without a word. Amelia took one, and Vi, the other. She opened the cardboard lid carefully and peeked inside. There waited a sandwich, a plum and a pouch of water. All fresh appearing. Vi closed and reopened the box, checking to be sure she was seeing correctly, and huffed in surprise when it was still there.

 

“They haven’t fed me in days,” she said, “and we don’t usually get food this fresh out here.”

 

Amelia smirked. “I may have flirted with that same guard when she hauled me out here earlier. Seems my charm got through to her.”

 

Vi smiled and took a bite of her sandwich. It had to be the freshest thing she had eaten in nearly three years.

 

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Vi winced as the needle hit a particularly sensitive spot.

 

“Sorry!” Amelia yelped. “Went a little deep on that one!”

 

“I could tell!”

 

Vi laid her head between her knees as Amelia continued working, tattooing a labyrinthine pattern of gears and gadgets along Vi’s lower back. Vi had the idea one day, a way to make something of her time here and a way to take some control over her body after one too many beatings by courtesy of the guards who were in a perpetually foul mood. After being thrown in solitary together two years ago now, Vi and Amelia managed to convince the guards to move them to the same cell. She was never violent with me, Amelia had said. If you’re worried about where to put her, I would probably be the safest bet.

 

They had talked nearly every night in between the guards shifts, talked about their lives before Stillwater, their families. Vi shared stories from her childhood, nights that were just her and Powder against the world, nights of drinking mocktails at the bar with Vander and Claggor, of pissing off enforcers and breaking into Piltover outposts with Mylo. Nights full of joy and love. Amelia shared stories of her family who waited for her on the Ionian islands, who had probably given up on her after two years of silence. Of her little brother, who she was sure wouldn’t give up, because he was such a dreamer that nothing seemed impossible to his childish mind.

 

They shared the stories of what had really landed them both here. The story of stealing from Piltover that had led to the death and disassembly of Vi’s found family, the story of how Amelia had only been on a trade boat, hoping to find something enriching to do away from home. She had gotten caught up in some riot happening in the city and when she found her face on wanted posters, she decided that if she would be hunted despite her innocence, that she may as well go down swinging. So she found her way to some important seeming building and set it alight. She then proceeded to turn herself in, making a mockery of the enforcers, so that if she had to go down, they would too. My father always said my attitude would land me in deep shit, but at least it was worth it to drag a few pricks through hell with me.

 

Over time, their talks had grown more intimate, then more suggestive, until one night when one of the older inmates somehow got his hands on a whole crate of Noxian wine and shared it among his and Vi’s wing of the prison, and she and Amelia drunkenly fucked themselves stupid. After that, their relationship had become something confusing, tense, but refreshing all the same, cold water on a hot day. They bounced back and forth, friendly conversations to intense intimacy and back again. But for now, they sat in the silence of the cell they shared, the only sound the tap of the stick and poke tattooing working its way up Vi’s back.

 

“What made you choose this design?” Amelia whispered. “I’m not judging, just curious.”

 

Vi hummed. “In Zaun, everything you are, everything that succeeds you, you build it with your bare hands. I like the imagery of this, I guess. And also, Powder and Ekko both loved to tinker. It was all they did most days. And now, they’re all that’s left of my family. This is a good way to keep their memory alive. Not that there are many other options in here.”

 

Amelia tapped Vi’s waist with a cold finger. “Alright, that section is done. What do you say we call it quits for the night and start again tomorrow? That should be our last session.”

 

Vi nodded. “As long as you pick a different part of my back. I’m not looking forward to having you poking around what’s already swollen.”

 

“That’s understandable.” Amelia closed the stopper on her ink vial and slid her tools back beneath her cot. “Is there anything else you want to do, or are we just getting some sleep?”

 

Vi paused, sliding her shirt over her head. “If you’re asking for sex, I think doing that while my back is swollen and probably bleeding isn’t the best idea. I was just going to sleep. I’m up for just sitting in silence or chatting or whatever, though.”

 

Amelia sighed. “I understand. Well, is there anything specific you were hoping to talk about or is this the part where we start running our mouths until the guards beat us unconscious for being too loud?” She laid down on her ink stained cot, back to the wall and gazing intently at Vi.

 

“Well just don’t be loud and we won’t have to worry about that, now will we?”

 

“Ass.”

 

The cell was silent for several minutes. Vi spent the time staring at the dashes carved into the stone above her bed, 1907, one for each day spent in here. She lay in the silence until she was sure Amelia was asleep, her heavy breaths filling the silence.

 

Vi stood from her bed and waked to the back corner of the room. She had to piss. By the waste bucket, she had found a loose stone in the floor, and over the past several months, she had been hiding her own little trinkets underneath. Needles, stolen from Amelia’s tattoo pouch, a fork from the commons, fallen cloth. It all had its own uses, and Vi intended to make good on that tonight.

 

Once she had finished seeing to her needs, she lifted the stone and took the collection of items that waited there. She had to be quick if this was to work. If the position of the moon through her cell window was correct, the guards shift change would be within the next ten minutes. The witching hour guards were the lousiest, too sure of the ease in their shift and too squeamish of the perceived haunts of the night to properly do their jobs, and the other shifts knew it. For Vi to do this now would make success more likely, and would wipe out a whole slew of guards.

 

The moment the bell rang over the intercoms, quiet and baritone, Vi took one last look at Amelia, sleeping deeply and unaware of what Vi had planned, and slid the tattoo needle into the lock of her cell door. The designs were crude this high up, another nod to the guards’ arrogance, and the door came open without a struggle or sound. Vi held it open just enough to slide through before easing it shut again, locking it once more.

 

The halls were silent, the floors were damp and the air smelled of mildew and salt. There weren’t many inmates being held on this floor, and the bad smells that came with them were lesser by result. Every step she took echoed along the stone walls, despite her best efforts to stay silent. Her thoughts were eerily still, even as knew she was risking everything. She thought she’d be afraid, trembling in her skin and breathing heavy, but her body was calm, and only two thoughts bounced back and forth through her mind.

 

Powder

 

Ekko

 

The elevator seemed to almost taunt Vi as it sat before her, barely fifty feet away. The sign above it glowed sickly red, and when Vi was sure no guards lingered nearby, she approached it and clicked the toggle by the door. The hard part was done, she assured herself. 

 

The moment the door opened, Vi’s heart sank to her feet. The shift change had arrived, and the three guards in the elevator stared right down at her. She saw the moment they recognized who she was, the twist of their faces and the click of their weapons. Vi looked for ways to sneak past them, but she knew there was no way around. She would try anyway, she couldn’t stay here any longer.

 

Vi ducked as the first guard swung his cattle prod towards her head, white lightning crackling about the iron. His guard was down on his left side, and the woman to that side favored her left, so Vi took the opening where both were weak and lunged through the small gap, but fell forward when a leg shot out and knocked hers out from beneath her. She hadn’t even hit the floor when a large hand took her by the neck, picked her up again and threw her down the hall back where she had come. She winced when she landed flat on her back, and the ache of her fresh tattoo sparked to life.

 

She stood again, ignoring the pain. She did not make it here just to give up, not when the elevator was so close. Her mind was a maelstrom, whipping winds and screams, powderpowderpowder never ending, she needed Powder, she needed her baby sister, she needed Ekko, she needed to hold them both in her arms and tell them that everything would be okay, that it had been too many days months years but she was home now and she was never leaving again. She needed them. They needed her. And she wouldn’t give up on them again. She feinted right, then lunged to the left, around an outstretched arm and back towards the elevator. The open doors taunted her, beckoning her inside with the promise that she would never make it. She would try anyway.

 

Vi was too focused on evading the two guards before her, and forgot the third guard that lingered beside them, until he had an iron grip on her wrists, pinning them behind her back. She flailed and pulled, but he was relentless, and she was stuck.

 

“You thought you made it, didn’t you?” The pale haired guard teased. His grip on her wrists tightened impossibly more, until Vi was sure her bones would snap. “Did you forget, 516? No one gets out of here. Not alive.”

 

Vi hung her head, staring down at the stone beneath her and allowing her dirty hair to hide the fear on her face. She had been planning this for weeks, she thought she had every base covered, but the guards weren’t due to land on her floor for another two minutes. She calculated wrong, and she had heard the stories of people who’d tried escaping before her and failed. They hadn’t survived.

 

Vi hadn’t fought when the guards dragged her towards the elevator, clicking a series of toggles and taking her up impossibly high. She hoped the guards killed her quickly. She needed Powder and Ekko and she knew they needed her too, but she just couldn’t keep up. She knew whatever hell waited for her at the other side of this elevator would make her beg for death. She only hoped her family would be okay.

 

The guards dragged her out of the elevator at the top floor. There was no light here, the halls were black as midnight and not even a breath could be heard. The silence was so heavy it seemed to swallow the sounds of the four’s footsteps as they passed rows of empty cells. All Vi could focus on above the pain in her wrists was the smell, horribly oppressive, rotten. People had died here. This was where the ones the guards wanted gone, the ones who pushed their luck just a little too far, ended up.

 

Vi’s mind was a haze until she landed heavily on the floor. The floor was harsher than it was below, not smoothed out by hundreds of bustling feet, and the stone dug into her arms deeply enough to draw blood. The air was sweltering, the heat of forty floors rising to meet her. It only made the smells worse. The nausea gripped her like a vice, so she couldnt tell when the movement around her was the spinning of her own head or the guards hauling her around like a puppet cut from its strings.

 

“You know the fun thing about this floor, 516?” The female guard laughed. “It’s that no one up here lives longer than a few weeks. If you wanted to get out of here so badly, all you had to do was ask. Now you’ll have a whole floor to yourself.”

 

“Fuck you,” Vi spat.

 

The woman frowned. Vi supposed she was hoping to appear threatening, but all these guards were the same. Vi was over it; beat her ass or don’t, but don’t drag it out.

 

“It’s like you’re trying to die,” she said. “Unfortunately, we don’t do that here. We don’t offer the easy way out.”

 

Vi was prepared for the foot that rammed into her side, but she wasn’t prepared for the steel toe that effectively shattered her lower ribs. She coughed, but the air got caught in her throat, and she could only wheeze until a proper breath could make its way in. Each one she drew, however, only left more pain, the break in her rib smarting with every inhale. She could barely pause to recover before that same boot came down on her knee.

 

“I need you to remember that you cold be cozy in your own cell right now,” she sneered. “But you decided that wasn’t good enough for you. You know exactly why you’re here, and you need to realize we’ve been kind to you and all you other trench trash, but we don’t owe you anything. And if you can’t be happy with what we gave you, you can get so much worse.”

 

Vi sighed. This time, she expected the boot to the head.

 

The time blurred as hit after hit rained down until Vi could feel her blood pooling beneath her onto the hot floor. The heat from the stone left her covered in burns at least to the second degree and left her blood on the ground steaming into the dark air. She winced when a foot landed on her fresh tattoo, and she hoped the woman hadn’t heard her. Vi realized at some point in her haze, the other two had left, likely to return to Vi’s floor to ensure no one else pulled a stunt like hers. And unfortunately, it seemed the woman was the more perceptive of the bunch.

 

“Hit a sore spot, did I?” She laughed. “Nice design, I’ll say. Your bitch is good with a needle.” Vi couldn’t stop herself from screaming when she felt a blade tear through her lower back, hip to hip. She could feel blood and ink pooling in the dip of her spine, and it made her nausea grow. “Let that be your reminder if you manage to live up here: it doesn’t take much to ruin a good thing.”

 

The woman took Vi’s wrists again, hauling her like a sack of potatoes down the hallway, somehow getting darker still, the smell only growing worse until Vi swore it was its own living thing. She had to be one giant bruise, covered head to toe in blue and black, the feeling of every hit and kick lingering on her skin. She wished she could think of Powder in these moments, when giving up seemed so tempting, but all she could think of was the pain.

 

Vi’s cell was at the furthest, darkest end of the hallway. The cell was dry unlike her previous one, but she almost wished for the dampness. The dry heat here was oppressive, it burned her throat with every breath. The gate on this one had a more complex lock, something a needle or fork couldn’t pick, and the key her guard used to open it as at least a size of Vi’s hand. It swung open with a groan, and inside Vi was thrown, landing on her broken leg and biting through her tongue to stifle a scream. The gate fell shut quickly, sealed by its own weight.

 

“If you behave, you might get a meal or a bed in a few days. I hope you enjoy your quiet time. You aren’t leaving.”

 

Vi didn’t bother watching her as she walked off. She simply stared up where the wall met the ceiling. By some small mercy, this cell came with a tiny window, a few inches each way, which Vi knew meant light during the day, if only a little. But now, the only light in the night was the jade glow of a chittering firelight perched on the brick. Vi watched it, still and silent, until it fluttered away, taking its glow and leaving her in true darkness.

 

1908

 

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Vi didn’t bother counting the days after they moved her to the 40th floor. It was hard to even tell when a day had passed. 

 

She had been let out only twice in the last year and a half. Once was enough to sneak back into her old cell so Amelia could finish her tattoo and talk a while while she was out, and the second, she hadn’t lasted long, after she made sure to hunt down and gut Marron with her bare hands the moment she had the opportunity. After that, she hadn’t been let out anymore, and once again that same guard had pummeled her within an inch of her life. From there, she had been met with many guards, anyone who was in the mood to hit something and decided the punching bags downstairs weren’t enough. She never knew if she’d be fed or beaten, every day was something different.

 

She had even escaped the mandatory exercise days by living up here. A potential blessing to some, but the time she was given to punch and kick and beat on the bags or her friends were all that kept her sane most days, and after one too many days of being stuck in here, still and alone, she had resorted to using the wall as a punching bag of its own. Her hands were in perpetual pain, a few fingers broken and crookedly healed, but the pain and the sweat grounded her, kept her going one day at a time.

 

The darkness was never truly gone, but there was only an hour or so each day that the sun shone through her tiny window just enough to let her see something beyond the black. Her eyes had long since adjusted to the lack of light, but she enjoyed the chance she had to see. She sat on her thin, dense mattress in the corner, humming to herself. At some point in the last month, was Powder’s eighteenth birthday. Vi couldn’t remember what today was if she tried, but by the estimated number of days she’d spent in here, her birthday was close or had already recently passed. Her baby sister was an adult, and Vi couldn’t be there with her to celebrate. She needed to punch something, and the wall, worn slightly by the constant barrage of hits, beckoned to her.

 

It had been so long since Vi had been here, she swore the nerves in her hands had died long ago, and the punching no longer gave her the stinging pain she craved. Her hands still moved, so Vi knew she wasn’t out of the game yet, but sensation had left her bones. She punched anyway.

 

The passage of time was interesting here. The sun hit her window at a slightly different time and angle each day, leaving her sense of the hour skewed. Vi could have been boxing for minutes or hours when she heard something she hadn’t heard in ages.

 

Footsteps. Gentle ones. Two sets of them.

 

She continued on anyway. The guards liked it when they thought they had caught her off guard. It made them enjoy beating her ass into dust even more when they thought she hadn’t been prepared for the pain. She kept going until the two pairs of footsteps became one, a delicate gait, that stopped outside her cell. Vi didn’t hear the jangle of keys. And the guards never hesitated. Someone else was here.

 

Vi lowered her hands slowly, missing the buzz in her arms. Part of her didn’t want to see who waited outside, just across the red line placed to keep her from reaching through the bars and attacking her spectators. But part of her was curious. She hadn’t had a docile visitor in so long. She turned to face the cell gate. On its other side stood a woman, she looked about Vi’s own age. Vi could tell she had come from outside the prison, likely from Piltover; her hair was dark and clean, her clothes vibrant and free of wrinkles. Vi huffed.

 

“Who the hell are you?”

Notes:

Before I start, here is your trigger warning.
I know I haven’t been as quick with my updates as I would like to be, or said I would be, and I’m really sorry. The thing is, my aunt, who was my best friend and one of the few good things I had for much of my life, passed away suddenly about a month ago. That did contribute last time as well when I took longer to update, but my injury also played a part. But it came to my realization since then that my aunt’s death was by suicide, and I have tried to keep going on as normal but between that and an unrelated health decline, it’s just been so hard for me to keep going most days, knowing that I lost someone so special so tragically. It’s taking most, if not all of my energy just to get through work and I have been a bit of a couch potato. I will admit that I have been struggling greatly, but this story brings me so much comfort, so I have no plans to abandon it. But after the news of my aunt’s suicide, I made the decision to rewrite this chapter and dedicate it to her. I want everyone to remember that no matter how hard things get, no matter how much things may hurt, there is always something to keep living for, and there are so many people out there who love you. Vi is a wonderful example of this, both in my own story and in canon. I hope none of you ever forget that. You are all loved dearly. Here’s to you, my friend, I’m terribly sorry I couldn’t be there for you when you needed me most, the way you were for me, but I know you are happier now and I can’t wait to see you again one day 😊

Chapter 6: Put Up A Shelter, But That Never Stops The Rain

Summary:

Jinx comes to the realization that things are not as they seemed for so long. Caitlyn makes a new friend

Song tag for the chapter is I’m Sorry by Besomorph

Notes:

I’m so sorry I was gone so long. Idk that I even have a good reason aside from simple writers block. But I am back now, and I will make it up to you with an extra long chapter (approximately 10.5k words)
Enjoy!!

Jinx threw herself down onto Caitlyn’s plush bed, staring up at the pale jade canopy. By the door, Caitlyn slid her boots off her feet, ignoring the smudges of dirt and paint marring their black shine. She sighed.

 

“Jinx, can you please change your clothes before you throw your dirty self all over my clean sheets?”

 

“Too late!”

 

The day’s operation had been an outstanding success; it had been a simple Shimmer bust, a routine task for Jinx and her sister by this point, but in raiding and destroying this batch, they had caught wind of something even more important: information. Detailed reports of some new thug in Silco’s inner circle who had been running Shimmer operations of his own as of late. This particular incident had not been his doing; rather Sevika’s, who apparently had not cared much for the boy and had no problem ratting him out.

 

Caitlyn had been more interested in the admission than Jinx was, ever the detective as always. The whole walk home, she had been rambling about all the minuscule clues she had picked up and the whispers she’d intercepted from careless grunts. Jinx had hardly cared; she thought it beneath her to give in to the gossips of the man she had sworn to take down, but Caitlyn had persisted, much to Jinx’s annoyance.

 

Caitlyn huffed as Jinx kicked her shoes off, sending them sailing across the room and by the wall next to Caitlyn’s. “Are you ready to hear me out about that boy yet?”

 

Jinx sat up with a frustrated groan. “Are you seriously still going on about this?”

 

“This could be important, Jinx!” Caitlyn sunk into the bed, delicately as ever. “This is someone who not only lives in Silco’s pocket, this is someone the others hate. There’s a civil war going on in the Undercity, a battle of gangs, and even within gangs. This could help us take Silco down!”

 

Jinx rolled her eyes, but deep down she knew Caitlyn had a point, as always. This was why she  had been dubbed the brains of the Firelights. The group had grown in the past two years, including Zaunites of all ages and races. Jinx had met a sweet young man on the streets, a Vastaya boy named Scar who, though timid, was a spectacular fighter and skilled with a gun. A good help to Jinx on the rare occasion when long range combat was needed. Even within the base, there were stray Zaunites everywhere, helping with everything from missions to humanitarian aid. It had become more than Jinx ever imagined possible, and it was all because of Caitlyn’s quick thinking, so who was she to doubt her now?

 

“Fine,” she sighed, sitting up in the bed and tugging at the elastic that held her hair atop her head, shaking it out as the blue locks tumbled down past her waist. She had been growing it out since the day Vi and the rest of her family passed from this world, only trusting Caitlyn to dust the few wispy ends once a year. It was her own timestamp, a testament to how much time had passed, how much she had grown, in the time they’ve been gone. “But you promised me a hair day, and I’m not agreeing to anything until you make me look cute again.”

 

Caitlyn giggled. “So I did.”

 

Jinx slid off her stiff, dirty pants, leaving them on the floor and soaking in the more pleasant feeling of Caitlyn’s silk sheets against her legs. She should probably change out of her shirt too, but she was still grossed out by the idea of what waited underneath. Her chest, however small in comparison to Caitlyn’s, showed her what she didn’t want to face: that she had grown up. Fifteen and a half years old now, she was almost as old as Vi had been when she passed away at sixteen. She had already outgrown Mylo and Claggor, thirteen and fourteen respectively. She didn’t want to outgrow Vi too.

 

Caitlyn stood from the bed and crossed the room to her claw footed wardrobe. Jinx watched as she swung open its creaky wooden door and flipped through several hanging garments, pausing on and unhooking a purple jumpsuit and a black skirt. She tossed it to Jinx from where she stood, then pulling out a navy dress—likely for herself, as that wasn’t a color Jinx typically favored.

 

“What is this?” Jinx deadpanned. “I don’t need more clothes.”

 

“Apparently you do, your shirt is stuck to you like mites on a dog and you’re refusing to take it off for whatever reason.” Caitlyn gestured again to the clothes that lay in a heap before Jinx. “Those should fit you; I outgrew them years ago and never got around to donating them. Try them on.”

 

Jinx stared down at the pile of clothes in disdain. She could never have imagined Caitlyn wearing such plain clothes, especially with her social standing, and Jinx herself knew she would never be caught dead in something without an excessive dose of bedazzling. She picked up the strapless jumpsuit by the shoulders and held it up before her as Caitlyn continued to rummage her closet. The chest came with a sewn-in bralette, and then it clicked exactly why Caitlyn insisted she had outgrown it despite it clearly being tailored to her height. The rest of the suit continued to suit her sister’s hourglass frame, and Jinx knew even if Caitlyn thought otherwise, it wouldn’t quite fit her narrow body, or her personality.

 

She remembered the wardrobe that stood in her own room, pink to Caitlyn’s indigo and emblazoned with rhinestones and spray paint to Cassandra’s chagrin. Over the years she had grown less timid about owning more than three sets of clothing and slowly, it had grown more full of various styles and cuts of clothes, though some of her older attire still remained. Most had been cut up and repurposed, all but the outfit she had worn the day of the accident. That was another memento that she didn’t want to do away with for fear of losing out on the memories it held. It had been washed, and that was as far as she had ever allowed it to go. But today, she had an idea.

 

While Caitlyn was focused on her own wardrobe, mindlessly slinking through outfits and muttering to herself, Jinx waddled out of the room, uncaring of her half dressed figure, carrying the clothes with her down the hall to her own bedroom. Inside the ornate wooden door, she was met with blessed familiarity, the atmosphere that always eased her nerves post-mission. Her walls, gray at one point in the distant past, now painted in cartoon portraits of her own making. She and Vi, in their trademarked magenta and cobalt tones at least twice on each wall; holding hands with each other, with Vander, with their mom. Spattered paint in the shapes of monkeys or smoke or giggling little creatures filled the space where Vi and the girl Jinx used to be did not. It left the room a rainbow of neon and festivity, despite Jinx’s knowledge of the many mental breaks that led to the painted displays. Even the bed was decorated with swirls of pink and green fabric; flowers, firelights, even the shoddy ticking clock embroidered right in the center. It contrasted wildly from the rest of the house, and Jinx would have it no other way.

 

As soon as the door slid shut, Jinx ran for the closet, depositing the clothes on her bed as she went. She made a decision that she may regret in a day or two, but right now, she felt higher than the gods. She took her old clothes from their hangers in the corner of the wardrobe, the pink and purple tanktop on one and the cobalt shawl and pants on the other, and laid them on the bed as well. And before she could talk herself out of it, she took the pair of safety scissors from her bedside table and began cutting the tanktop down, stripe by stripe. Pink, purple, over and over until she was left with the two piles of stripes. She moved on autopilot as she continued working, cutting the skirt into a style more asymmetrical, shorter in the front compared to the back, and frowned as she held it up to her hips for a look in the mirror. Something was missing.

 

Jinx returned to her closet and dug out the black leather corset that she had been given to wear for formal Kiramman occasions. Oh, Cassandra would kill her. She had already decorated it with sparse little gemstones, nothing absurd but enough to spice things up. Now, Jinx flipped out the hem, taking the needle and some white thread from her dresser, and wove tightly the skirt to the corset. With the long hours of embroidery practice over the years, it only took her a matter of minutes and a few small pokes to the finger before the skirt was fully attached. She held the piece up before her once more, satisfied with her work. Setting it aside, she reached for the purple jumpsuit again. Now she was ready to use the strips she’d cut; the strapless design of the clothing would do her no good.

 

The pink straps were little struggle to attach; two over the shoulders and one down her sternum, all conjoined at the fourth strap she wore around her neck. It was a bizarre, unique design, just the way she’d liked it. The rest of the fabric, she hadn’t quite decided on what to do with yet, but she would figure it out later. For now, she slid the jumpsuit on, stepping in one leg at a time and pulling it up to her shoulders. Sure enough, as she let the hem go to slide her shirt off, the chest fell back to her hips, with nothing there to hold it up. She took the neckpiece and tied it off behind her neck, and with something to hold it in place, the clothes fit rather well. She was surprised, to say the least. She would have to hem the ankles, that were about five inches too long and pooling at her feet, but she could figure it out another day.

 

She was in the process of lacing the corset-skirt around her torso when her door swung open. Caitlyn paused in the entryway, staring at her with wide eyes. She shook her head and huffed, grinning.

 

“I guess I was a bit overexcited, I didn’t even realize you had left the room, but clearly you left long enough ago now to stitch yourself an entire outfit.”

 

“Hey, I did pretty good, I’d say?” Jinx grinned. She laced the strap of the corset and did a dramatic spin, giggling as the skirt flared around her like a halo. “The jumpsuit was a bit big, but I made it work.”

 

“My mother will hang you from the ceiling by your hair but yes, you did good.”

 

“I wouldn’t do that,” Cassandra drawled, staring at Jinx from the doorway, arms crossed. “It’s only the skirt attached to the nice clothes I bought you, I assume?”

 

“Yep! All the rest is from Caity’s closet! She let me keep it!”

 

“Don’t call me that.”

 

“Well, it matches at least, so as long as you leave it at that, I don’t mind.” Cassandra walked into the room, pointedly ignoring the graffitied walls. She held up the skirt and looked at it with a scrutinizing eye, leaving Jinx feeling twitchy. “I see you actually paid attention when I taught you how to sew. Nice work.”

 

Jinx beamed. As kind and welcoming as Cassandra was, she had always been cold and distant, and approval from her was rare. Her kind words left Jinx feeling cloudy; light and floaty.

 

“Mother, we were planning to make a trip to the Undercity tonight,” Caitlyn said as Jinx continued fiddling with the stitched hem of her skirt that Cassandra complimented. “We need to swing by that shop again for parts for Jinx’s next project.”

 

Cassandra sighed, but Jinx knew a lie when she heard one. They both knew even a trip to the store would worry Cassandra, but there was more at stake here. Caitlyn would not give up until she found that boy. If not for her girlfriend Adison, Jinx would assume she had ulterior intent. But her obsession with the boy was a bit ridiculous if you asked Jinx. Nevertheless, so many successful missions had been sanctioned by her, so if Caitlyn wanted to do this, she would follow her.

 

“Be careful, you two. You know how I feel about you going down there.” Cassandra approached Caitlyn and hugged her tightly, the latter’s height towering over her mother. Cassandra had never been a hugger, and Jinx couldn’t help but wonder if something was happening that she didn’t know about. She sighed, taking the cloak that hung on the hook by her door and tying the cord around her neck as her foster mother approached her too. “Are you sure you want to go? I know the last time was…triggering for you.”

 

Jinx knew what she meant. Cassandra had been the last person to even try discussing Jinx and her mental health, but upon daring to pass by the Last Drop on a recent mission with the Firelights and seeing Silco’s henchman at the door, the bar alive and well, but twisted into something obscene, so unlike the legacy Vander had left behind, sent Jinx down a ravine of panic and dissociation that took days to pull her out of, and even Cassandra had been forced to acknowledge the elephant in the room that Jinx was not doing well, and may never again. But Jinx was older now, she had learned how to handle the complexities of her mind for the most part, and she knew that the last fracture was a one off.

 

“I’ll be okay, I promise. And even if I’m not, I’ve learned how to handle it.”

 

Cassandra nodded, but the pinch of her lips and the narrowing of her eyes told Jinx she didn’t believe her. If there was one thing Jinx knew about her, it’s that her intuition was oddly uncanny, and if she was so unnerved, Jinx felt like she should be worried too. But even if she didn’t care about that boy Caitlyn was so insistent on finding, she was always itching for the next mission and she didn’t want her mother’s anxiety to hold her back. Caitlyn, as usual, was unaware of her mother’s internal dilemma and all but dragged Jinx out the door, barely giving her a chance to lace her boots. At least the rest of her outfit had been put together. Jinx sighed. Caitlyn hadn’t even done her hair.

 

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Jinx should’ve listened to Cassandra. The uneasy feeling she’d had since she crossed the bridge hadn’t left, rather it had only amplified with every step she took. The streets of Zaun had always been dim, foggy, but there was a new weight to the atmosphere that hadn’t been there previously. Even Caitlyn walked with one hand on her gun, her eyes, barely visible through her mask, darting about as she led the way.

 

They didn’t take the usual path to the Firelight base, rather they walked the worn stone path towards the Last Drop, the Heart of Zaun. Silco may own it now, and it pained Jinx deeply, but it came with an advantage: it made him easier to track down.

 

Jinx had never given much attention to the rest of the street that her former home lingered on, but she couldn’t help but pause when she passed by Benzo’s old shop. The place had meant little to her, its value held only by the boy who once lived within its walls. But now, a sickening wash of red over its door made her pause.

 

Caitlyn paused shortly after Jinx had, and both found their eyes locked on a man, whimpering and crying, pinned to the wall by a sword directly through his solar plexus, another small knife lodged hilt deep in the hollow of his throat. Jinx blinked away her shock and ran to help him.

 

“No!” Caitlyn shouted from behind her. “If you pull that out he’ll die instantly!”

 

“He’s gonna die anyway, fuckface!”

 

Jinx’s hands shook as she held the man around his torso with one arm, using the other to dislodge the sword from the brick without disrupting the stab wound. She set him on his feet and he instantly fell to the ground in the pool of his own fluids, all strength gone. 

 

“Who did this?!” Caitlyn exclaimed. “Do you know who it was?!”

 

The man couldn’t respond, sputtering around the knife in his throat, sending more blood dribbling down his chin. He only pointed to the blade in his gut, etched in the hilt a minimalistic hourglass. His hands were pale, unnaturally so, his fingernails sickly blue. The light in his eyes was fading rapidly, his breaths shallow and short.

 

Jinx had seen that insignia before, on multiple Shimmer busts, painted on walls. It was all over the Undercity. She knew that the man before her was on Death’s threshold, his eyes taking on that sickly dull glaze. She whispered an apology as she slid the sword out of his body, paying no mind when Caitlyn gagged at the sight of the blood that spurted out of the wound for a moment before weakening to a steady flow upon the stop of his heart. She held the blade in her hands, the blood sticky under her fingernails, and ran a finger over the engraving. She used the dead man’s shirt to clean the red from its surface and paused when she observed the bronze shine of Piltovian metalwork. This was a stolen sword.

 

Jinx turned to Caitlyn, who was still spitting the remains of her dinner into the grass. She wiped her mouth along her sleeve as Jinx handed her the blade hilt-first. “This is one of yours. Enforcers have been down here.”

 

“No shit, enforcers have been down here. Wait—” Caitlyn observed the hilt more closely, pointing out the engraving for Jinx to see. Sure enough, the insignia had been thoughtfully carved overtop another printed logo: a capital letter M calligraphied in gold. “This belonged to one of Marcus’s soldiers.”

 

“Marcus as in sheriff-of-Piltover Marcus?” Jinx asked. “What the hell would his people be doing down here? Patrolling Zaun is either grunt work or a punishment.” The sentence left a sour taste in Jinx’s mouth; to know her people were not only seen as pests, but as a chore or a punishment.

 

“I’m not sure. Once we find that boy, we can go back to Piltover and figure out what’s going on.” Caitlyn slid the sword through her belt loop, taking Jinx’s hand and making to lead her onward towards the Last Drop. Jinx ripped her hand back.

 

“I think getting those pigs out of my city should take priority!” Jinx walked back over to the man behind her, dagger still lodged in his throat as blood began to clot and scab around the blade, the skin surrounding it already black with necrosis. She vaguely remembered this man; she had never learned his name, but he had frequented the Last Drop while Vander was alive. They had been friends. She slid the blade out gently. “Our people are dying!”

 

“You and I both know they would be dying either way down in this cesspit!”

 

“Yes, you’re right, but back before you fleabags showed up and started terrorizing us we only had to worry about each other! Now there are innocent people fighting a war on two sides and all the while the people who are supposed to be protecting us are only contributing to the issue! It wasn’t normal to see bodies on every street corner ten years ago! It wasn’t normal to learn to lie before you learned to walk! And yet here we are.” Jinx sighed, tossing the knife she had taken from the man’s throat at Caitlyn’s feet and wincing as the blade’s edge screeched against the stone. “I think we should worry about this boy you’re so obsessed with later, and focus more on the enforcers that are coming down here with war contraband.”

 

Caitlyn sighed. She stared down at the knife at her feet, and Jinx watched a myriad of unspoken words cross her face. Frustration, guilt, anger. More that she couldn’t name; the complexities of life outside her own fragmented mind were often more than she could grasp most days. She knelt down to pick the dagger up, even her manicured hands standing out against the dewy cobblestone.

 

“You’re right. I apologize,” she whispered. “The war between our people has worsened these past years, and it extends far prior to the issue of this man. But I do not want to let our trail go cold.”

 

Jinx blinked. “What trail, exactly?”

 

Caitlyn gestured absently to the sword at her side. “This may be Marcus’s weapon, but this engraving is familiar. I believe it’s tied to the man we’re searching for, and it’s likely that he was the one who used it, who killed the man behind you. If he had one of Marcus’s swords, odds are high he either got in a spat with an enforcer, or even scarier, there is a mote of corruption within Marcus’s squadron. Either way, it’s even more important now than before that we figure out who’s behind this.”

 

“So what are you suggesting we do, exactly? Because I can tell you right now getting everyone else in on this is a bad, bad idea.”

 

Caitlyn’s eyes flicked to the left, her lips quirked to one side the way they always did when she was laying a mental map. After a minute she hummed to herself.

 

“I’ll head back Topside and meet with Marcus and his squadron, to try and figure out what’s going on. You stay here and look for whoever that symbol belongs to.”

 

Jinx balked. “You want me to—”

 

“You know your way around much better than I do, and you’ve made it clear that I stand out down here. I am a councilor’s daughter and an enforcer, so Marcus will be familiar with me and thus more freely spoken. You will be alright.”

 

Jinx sighed. The nervous feeling in her chest returned tenfold; she hadn’t been alone in the Undercity once since the day she lost everything. She had always been down here with company, whether that be Caitlyn, or Jayce or even Viktor once, though the smoggy air left that visit short, his lungs unable to handle the pollution. But she had never been alone.

 

“Okay,” she whispered, ignoring the way her small voice shook. “We will meet at the Bridge in four hours. Zaun side.”

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

It was a short walk to the Last Drop. Jinx had used a spare strip of purple cloth to braid her hair behind her, the damp tail of it striking her thigh with every step through the rainy night. Before her, the neon glow of the Last Drop lit the night in green, the puddles in the street glowing with its sickly reflection. Somewhere in there was Silco. Somewhere in there was Sevika.

 

She may have been down here alone, but in the shroud of the dark and wet, her family lingered. Staring, taunting, tormenting, as they always had. One moment it was Mylo’s burnt orange outline beneath a tattered shop awning, the next it was Vi’s magenta in a window, or Vander’s green or Claggor’s beige. They all followed, making sure she knew how they felt about her coming back to this place alone after all these years.

 

She had opened up more to Caitlyn and Tobias about the ghosts and their constant pestering, and after one severe episode that came without a trigger, they had seemingly decided ptsd wasn’t the cause anymore, doubled down and took her to a doctor, where she had been diagnosed with something called schizoaffective bipolar disorder, which no one in the family truly understood, but they had gathered enough that it was something best kept under wraps. Tobias had flipped a switch in the year since then, seeing her less as a daughter and more as an anomaly, something to fix. She was grateful to him for wanting to help, she knew it was how he showed he cared despite his struggle to emotionally connect, but she hated feeling like a problem to be solved. With that, and Cassandra’s fear to speak on the situation, Caitlyn had become her crutch in all of it, but now Jinx was here, back home, and her sister wasn’t with her. It was the most alone she had felt in years, even with the overlapping voices in her ears.

 

Jinx had taken herself to the back entrance of the Last Drop; going through the front and passing by the many patrons—witnesses would be a dangerous idea. There was very little light in this alley, and dangerous in its own way, but safer given the situation. She could hear the booming of raucous music through the bricks, pink light and cigar smoke leeching through the gap beneath the steel door. She approached the door, then paused when she glimpsed on the wall a spray painted hourglass, identical to the one on Marcus’s sword, this one in neon blue. She ran a finger over it carefully, and it came back smeared with teal. The paint was fresh, this had been put here within the last two minutes. A stone dropped in her gut, and in that moment she knew that the eyes she felt boring into the back of her head were not one of her hallucinations.

 

She turned slowly, holding her breath as her pulse jackrabbited in her chest. Behind her, shrouded by the smog, waited a boy about her height. She couldn’t make out much through the veil, but his frame and his glowing magenta eyes stood out like stars on a moonless night. Jinx gripped the knife that she wore in her belt, but the boy only gasped quietly.

 

“Powder?” He whispered. Jinx paused, she recognized that voice. It was deeper than she’d remembered, thinner as well, but not one she would ever forget.

 

“Ekko?” She hated the way her own voice trembled, the name tasting foreign yet sweet on her tongue. “What—what are you doing out here? How are you here? I thought you died!”

 

“I could say the same,” he said, running forward from the wall to throw his arms around her shoulders. “It’s been… it’s been so hard without you, Pow Pow. You were gone.”

 

“I waited for you, every day for two years.” Jinx buried her head in the crook of his neck. It was bony, and hot, and so him. “I looked for your flare, but it never came, and I thought you had died too and—”

 

“I’m here, Pow Pow.” Ekko leaned back from the hug, his hands still on her shoulders. His eyes had always been brown, rich and warm like turned earth in spring, but now they, even the veins of his face and his tears too, glowed vibrantly pink, the workings of a Shimmer user to Jinx’s horror.

 

“What—what happened to you?” She whispered. “You’re different.”

 

The more she observed the boy who was once her best friend, the less she recognized him. His hair had grown longer, though buzzed from the temple down, his once black coils now a sickly white, his former coloring hanging on at the tips of the braids that sat on his shoulders. His skin, once warm, now ashen and marred with scars. Burns and deep gray gashes across his torso, the more horrifying horizontal slits in a row along his bicep that could only have been self sustained. His body had changed, and as she awaited his answer, it came to reality that his bubbly personality had as well.

 

“You all left me,” he mumbled eventually. “I had nothing left.”

 

“They didn’t leave! They were killed, Cassandra told me herself!”

 

Jinx recognized her slip up immediately. No councilor was as recognizable in this place as Cassandra Kiramman, the wannabe savior of the sumps, who had only managed to prolong the suffering of the people. She saw the moment her words registered in his mind. He retracted his hands as he took a step back.

 

“You’ve been Topside this whole time?” He sneered. The love in his eyes vanished too quickly for Jinx to register, and she had to wonder if it had even been there at all. “Our home has gone to shit and this whole time you’ve been kicking back with a councilor?”

 

“I had no choice, I had nowhere else to go!”

 

“Oh, bullshit! Do you know what’s been happening down here?!”

 

Jinx paused. She knew how dangerous it could be to expose her identity as a Firelight, especially being one of their leaders, but damn it, she had to make him see, she wasn’t an enemy or a runaway. Ekko shook his head.

 

“Of course you don’t.” He extended a hand to his left, a gesture to the Bridge that loomed in the distance, its red light ominous in the night. “Just get out of here, go back to your fancy new mansion. I’ll be down here making sure our people don’t starve.”

 

Jinx’s gaze zeroed in on Ekko’s hand. On it was a threadbare, fingerless glove, but that hadn’t been what her eyes were drawn to, rather the white hourglass hemmed into the fabric. The very same design that had been left all around the city, that was still drying on the wall behind her. Her gut twisted.

 

“What have you done?” She whispered. “That man, at Benzo’s—”

 

“What were you doing at Benzo’s?!” He shouted. “You had no right—”

 

“Oh, like you had any right to kill an innocent man?!”

 

Ekko scoffed, the pink of his eyes almost seeming to glow. “And who told you he was innocent? He broke in and started grabbing whatever his pockets could fit and insisted that it didn’t matter because he and all of his buddies were dead and had no more use for it! Now I see how true that was.”

 

Jinx sighed. “And what about those Shimmer smuggling operations? I should’ve known you ended up addicted because the Ekko I knew wouldn’t stand for that.”

 

Ekko glared. “Shimmer saved my life! I was dying and I would have if Sevika hadn’t dragged me to Silco’s place!”

 

A brief memory flashed through her mind’s eye; the blood that coated the walls as she and Vi hunkered down in that basement, as Benzo had been torn to pieces and Silco had dragged Vander’s half conscious body away, never for Jinx to see again. She remembered the horror that man had rained down, the Shimmer beast that followed in his wake. Benzo would hate what Ekko had become, but another look at the slices on his arm told her he probably already knew that.

 

“It’s not too late for you Ekko,” she whispered. “I know how it feels, to wonder if anything could possibly get any worse, to feel so alone. I’ve seen what that pain can do. I had to watch Vi spiral after we lost our parents, but she bounced back. I know you can too.”

 

“And what? Follow you back to paradise and pretend things aren’t still shit down here?” Ekko leaned down to pluck a half eaten winterfruit from the ground. “Pretend that I haven’t been surviving off of this? Just give up what I’ve become here so I can live in ignorance with the rest of Piltover? Silco may have done bad things but Powder, those Shimmer operations bring in money, more than you could possibly imagine. It’s the only way to keep our people fed.” He threw the beetle-eaten fruit back to the ground.

 

“You really think that money is going to food?” Jinx balked. “Have you seen how that man lives? That money goes directly into his pocket and you’re only helping him do it!”

 

“Of course I see how he lives, I live there with him! He saved me and even if he’s a disease to humanity he’s all I have! And you don’t get to accuse him of anything when, may I reiterate, you’re living Topside with the Kirammans!”

 

“At least they don’t deal in drugs! Just come with me Ekko, it doesn’t have to be to Piltover, you can come with me, we can lead the Firelights together and do what we always—”

 

“That was you?” He exclaimed. “All this time, it’s been you?”

 

“Someone has to keep our people safe!” She had used his own words against him, something she knew he hated, for annoyance at the patronization, but she needed him to listen. She understood where he was coming from, she really did, but she barely recognized the boy in front of her anymore, and now more than anything she just wanted him back. The version of him she grew up with. “We can help you too! Just come with me and —”

 

Jinx yelped when Ekko’s fist swung out, landing a harsh blow to her nose. The force of the strike sent her to her knees, her blood mixing with the acidic rainwater puddled beneath her. Her eyes watered by default, but the haze over her vision didn’t filter the unadulterated hatred on Ekko’s face. It was as unfamiliar to her as two left feet. He stared at her, at her blood on his hand and sighed. She looked for any trace of regret on his face. She found none, only anger and deep, gnawing pain.

 

“Just go. I can’t stop you from getting in my way, but I sure as hell won’t be helping you, and I will never go anywhere with you. Quit trying to play Savior Girl and just…give up on me. The boy you’re looking for died five years ago. And you’re not the Powder I remember. She would’ve done her damn best to put Zaun on the map if it meant keeping her family safe.”

 

Jinx stood, wiping the blood from her face with a closed fist, letting her tears and the rain wash away what remained. She looked at him one last time, at the boy who lived in her friend’s body, who had become what they both hated, though perhaps she had done the same. “You’re right. I’m not her anymore. It’s Jinx now. I’ll see you on the next bust, Firebug.”

 

Ekko grinned, but it was laced with malice, she could almost envision the venom spilling from his lips as he spoke those final damning words. “I look forward to it, Jinx.”

 

The rain was falling harder now, a white film over her vision as she left Ekko in that alley. In the corners of her eye, even over the roar of the rain, Ekko’s apparition took form. A scarlet thing, with narrow eyes and a gaping mouth that screamed and didn’t stop. The rain left an acrid, sour smell to the air, mixing with the smells of stale beer and rot as she walked down the streets, her muscle memory leading the way back to the bridge as the screams got louder and neon replaced her vision, until she could barely tell her right from her left.

 

It had only been two hours since she and Caitlyn had parted ways, and it was likely her sister had only just made it to enforcer headquarters by this time, but Jinx approached the bridge anyway. She and Caitlyn could reconvene on Piltover side, the other end of the bridge. She needed out of Zaun, needed a place where her collapsing mind wouldn’t get her taken advantage of. She tore the braid from her hair, feeling the weight of the rain unwind the three loosely woven strands. It was heavy, with water, with memories of the past that had faded. Maybe the cutting of her shirt earlier had been an omen. Maybe by choosing to let go of the past that haunted her, the past had come back with a wicked vengeance to chase her the moment she stopped running.

 

Thirty minutes of walking across the bridge, and the screams hasn’t stopped or abated even slightly, her vision tainted with scarlet until it was all she could see. The real world and her false senses blurred together to create one disorienting mess. She wasn’t sure she was at the Bridge, was this the Bridge or was she back at the cannery again? Vander’s burning apparition in front of her made it hard to tell. Had she ever made it out at all?

 

She sat down where she was when the spinning got so fast that she couldn’t see anything else. She took her loose hair in fistfuls and yanked until she registered the sound of it snapping halfway up the shaft. She knew it was wrong but it was the only way to convince herself that she was real. Was she real? She couldn’t feel the hair in her fingers, couldn’t feel it as it broke free from her head. She laughed into the silence, she had become a ghost. She vaguely registered the people on the other half of the bridge, trudging along to Zaun and paying her no mind. She didn’t exist. She tugged again, no, she was real, Caitlyn would come for her soon.

 

You know she won’t, came Mylo’s sneer, perfectly timed as always. Why would she? Why would anyone? She has a job to do, and you’d just get in the way like always.

 

He knelt before her, grinning. She kicked him, feeling the jolt as her hip hyperextended itself, and watched as he vanished into vivid smoke in the night. He wasn’t real. But she wasn’t either. Maybe Ekko was right, maybe they all had left.

 

It clicked in her mind, in that moment, what she had realized years ago, that only two of her four family members had died that night. She was right, Ekko had survived, but that would mean one of her siblings was arrested, the other two dead. What if Mylo was real? What if he wasn’t gone?

 

The thought sent her world plunging into black, her mind overcome by every possible scenario. Mylo, finding her at the Kirammans, attacking her just as Ekko had. Mylo, turning her into the enforcers, telling them that she had been the cause of the hell that had descended on Zaun and Piltover. Mylo, killing her, the way she had killed Claggor and Vi. Vi was gone, Vi was gone, and she was left alone with Mylo. Vi had left her, and no one would stop Mylo from finding her just to make sure she knew she deserved everything that happened to her. She wished she had died in Vi’s place. Vi wouldn’t struggle with this, Vi practically owned the world. She stayed on the bridge. She would wait for Caitlyn to come back.

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

🧁

 

Caitlyn hurried down the streets of Piltover with as much dignity as she could muster, staring down the headquarters that loomed in the distance just beside the council building. Today was Marcus’s office day, so rather than doing field work like he did the other six days of the week, he found himself confined to his desk. It made finding him easier.

 

The rain had followed her to Piltover, but the acidity had remained on the other side of the Bridge, and the rain that fell on her now was pleasantly cool. She still wore her hood up and mask over her face, lest she be caught and recognized. The rain wold feel wonderful on her burning face, perpetually hot and unhelped by the miles of speedwalking, but she would have to deal with it.

 

The door to the headquarters squealed as she eased it open, the hinges rusty and in desperate need of oil. She walked down the halls, whispering a silent apology to the cleaning staff as she registered the trail of water she left behind her as she went. Marcus’s office was in the second hallway in, the third door on the left. The biggest office the building had, if not by much. She figured it was likely he was in a meeting, but she let herself in anyway.

 

The first thing Caitlyn noticed upon entry was the little red haired girl seated in a little wooden chair beside Marcus’s cluttered desk, fiddling with a toy horse. His daughter, only three by the looks of her. She bore little resemblance to Marcus himself aside from the piercing shape of her eyes and the downward tilt of her lips, much of her appearance a match to the woman displayed in photos on the wall.

 

“Is there something you need, officer Kiramman?” Marcus sneered. “Or are you just here to be a nuisance?”

 

Caitlyn simply walked over to the desk in silence, unsheathing the sword she carried on her hip and laying it on the desk before him, hourglass emblem face up. Marcus looked at it, then up at her.

 

“I found this in Zaun. Nearly hilt deep in some grunt’s chest. I want to know how this ended up down there.”

 

Marcus blinked. “And I would like to know how you ended up down there.”

 

Caitlyn rolled her eyes. “You are aware my family is in partnership with the Talis family and the Hextech industry, are you not? If I am sent to retrieve parts, then I will, and where better to find quality materials for cheap? Viktor does know where to find the best goods for unbeatable prices. It’s unfortunate that I found that poor soul hung to the door of his personal favorite store like a prize elk. Now, are you going to tell me how exactly your weapons made it down there, because I am certain they didn’t walk themselves there.”

 

Marcus sighed. “Where exactly did you find this? Do you know who was using it?”

 

“I do not,” Caitlyn admitted. She wouldn’t be able to admit where she recognized the logo without outing herself and her affiliation with the Firelights, a massive thorn in Marcus’s side since day one, but if there was one thing Caitlyn was good at, it was improvising on the spot. “But I saw that symbol on the handle, it matches with much of the graffiti I see near the Heart of Zaun. Whoever took it wants to make it known that they were involved.”

 

Marcus nodded. He took the radio that lay on his desk and clicked a series of buttons along the side, holding it to his lips. “I need my squadron in my office immediately. All of you.” With the concise command, he set the device back down and returned his attention to Caitlyn. She was sure his men and women lingered nearby and would arrive in minutes or less, so she would have to make this private discussion quick.

 

“Sir, I can’t help but worry about the situation in the Undercity,” she insisted. “We never send anyone with significant rank down there, and now I find one of your weapons confiscated and defaced? I can’t help but worry about how bold the Zaunite people are becoming.”

 

“I understand your concern,” Marcus said, not bothering to mask his indifference. “But I assure you, everything is under control.”

 

It was with that unfortunate timing that Marcus’s enforcers filed into the room one by one. Four men and two women, all cold faced and armed to the teeth, stood along the far wall just inside the door. The one to the far right raised a timid hand in a pathetic attempt at a wave.

 

“You…asked to see us?”

 

“I did,” Marcus nodded. He held up the sword Caitlyn laid before him and pointed it at each individual one by one. “What have I told you about leaving your toys out where people can take them? Officer Kiramman was off on a shopping spree and found this buried in a man’s body. I see all of you have your weapons on you, so I’ll be speaking to the metal smith to see which of you had yours recently replaced.”

 

The six all nodded almost in unison; the sight seemed eerily rehearsed. Enforcer training was strict, but it seemed these half dozen took the rules quite literally.

 

“All of you are to stay out of Zaun for the time being until you can learn to manage yourselves better. It is not your place to station yourselves there, especially when it is evident you cannot defend yourselves against simple vermin. You may go.”

 

Five of the six saw themselves out in a hurry, all too eager to return to their own work. The sixth, however, a wiry, tawny skinned boy who had to be fresh out of the academy, lingered by the door.

 

“Are you sure everything is alright, Marcus? He asked. His eyes darted back and forth between Caitlyn and Marcus, an edge of anxiety to his expression. “Should we send others down there in our absence?”

 

“Not yet,” Marcus replied. “If I can’t trust you six, I don’t know who I can trust. Also, believe it or not, I do value the safety of my enforcers above all else. If those pests manage to wipe themselves off the map that quickly in your absence, then so be it. I’ll keep a close eye on the happenings across the bridge. Now, you and Caitlyn, go bother someone else. You’ve already taken enough of my time and this isn’t work I can just put off for next week on my next office day.”

 

Caitlyn nodded. She followed the scrawny boy through the door and slid it shut behind her with a sigh. She couldn’t help but feel like there was something he was hiding. Marcus hated his office days; if he truly wanted to, if he truly cared about the situation, he would have tossed everything aside until he got to the bottom of it. Beside her, the boy spoke up in a tense whisper.

 

“I’m heading to the gallery down the street. Follow me.”

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

“What is it you wanted my time for so badly? My little sister is waiting on me for game night.”

 

“I’m sorry, but it’s important.”

 

The gallery was empty this time of night; Caitlyn and the enforcer being the only ones inside while the owner lingered outside for a cigar break. He perused the shelves of trinkets and oddities, presenting a calm, laid back front despite the tension in his shoulders. Caitlyn followed him carefully; the poor boy looked one wrong move from bursting like steam in a pressure cooker. He paused in front of a watercolor still life mural and faced her.

 

“Marcus is lying to you. To all of Piltover.” The boy whispered, his voice shook with every word, but Caitlyn knew a lie when she heard one and this boy spoke with nothing but full conviction. He believed what he was saying, at the very least. Caitlyn knew Marcus was lying, that much was not news to her, but for this boy to drag her out where they were isolated and to tell her as such meant he came with details. She waved him on, and he continued. “None of us lost our swords. That one was his. All of our hilts are wrapped with silver tape to signify our status, but none of ours come with that symbol. It’s got his initial because it’s his. He’s been going down to Zaun, at least once a week. But it seems like he’s getting careless.”

 

Caitlyn stared at him, floored. She shook her head, this was one of Marcus’s top men, likely the one he cared for even above the others given he didn’t threaten him for daring to linger in his office after his dismissal. And he wasn’t even loyal? Maybe Marcus was getting careless, or maybe he wasn’t as smart as he let on. But she still had one question. “What business does he have down there? Dealing with the Undercity population is what he has the cadets for. He’s always been clear how he feels about the sump rats.”

 

The man shook his head. “Look at my name tag. Tell me what you see.”

 

Caitlyn narrowed her eyes, but did as told, and as she gazed at his right pectoral panel where lingered his badges and awards, she noticed a distinct lack of any name tag at all. The man nodded.

 

“Those tags are for last names. I don’t have one, so no tag for me. I come from Zaun, I’ll tell you, he takes to us more than he lets on. But it also means he’s more careful with his words when I’m around. He’s doing business in Zaun, that much I know, but beyond that I’m not sure. All six of us are entitled to different information he has, but none of us get to speak to each other on any of it. We aren’t assigned on missions together, aren’t allowed to bunk together, aren’t even allowed to associate with one another outside of Marcus’s office. It’s a security measure, to make sure if any of us would be tortured for information, that we can’t spill everything, but it also ensures that if anything would happen to him that his work can continue on.”

 

The boy moved on to the next painting as the store clerk returned from her smoke break, placing herself behind her rickety wooden counter. Caitlyn paused for a moment, giving herself the opportunity to process the information. She would have to speak to Jinx.

 

“Why are you telling me all of this?”

 

The boy hummed. “Because whatever he’s doing down there, it can’t be good. And he’s not hiding his tracks as well as he should. Also because I know you weren’t down there simply to shop. You’re suspicious too, and it’s just nice to have someone else who sees what I do.”

 

Caitlyn nodded. “I’m also pleased to know that this corruption isn’t all encompassing. But I really must be going. Would it be appropriate for me to ask for your name, so I can stay in contact with you should the need arise?”

 

He nodded. “It stays between us, it’s not safe for my name to be tied to me. But it’s Mylo. Be careful out there, go have fun with your sister.”

 

Caitlyn couldn’t help but notice the pain in his eyes as he spoke the words. But she supposed his business was his business.

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

Caitlyn was an hour early for the proposed rendezvous when she stepped foot on the bridge. She knew she wouldn’t need as long as Jinx may have; her brief conversation held in comparison to Jinx’s detective work, but what she did not expect to find upon making it halfway across the bridge was her little sister hyperventilating, bleeding and crying in a ball against the bridge banister.

 

“Jinx, what the hell happened?!” She exclaimed, running over to her sister’s shaking form. When she looked up, Caitlyn noticed first her nose that was black and unnaturally crooked, blood staining and crusted around her nostrils and upper lip. “Who did this?”

 

Jinx babbled on, no rhyme or reason to her words, as Caitlyn took a cloth from her pocket and wiped what she could of the dried blood. Her words were fractured, she spoke of a boy, of death, of a fight and Shimmer and that damned hourglass. Of that name, Ekko. Caitlyn pieced together the rest on her own; Ekko had been the boy they were searching for all along, and he hadn’t been dead like she thought, but Shimmer had changed him for the worse. Caitlyn pulled her sister in closer, and when her hand brushed Jinx’s back, she met the blunt ends of her hair, only sitting along her shoulder blades. The remains of her blue locks hung from the bridge’s iron bars, blown away by the wind and caught on their rungs. The offending knife sat by Jinx’s feet, the very same one Ekko had used. Caitlyn picked it up and slid it through her belt.

 

“Come on Jinx, we need to get home.”

 

“I can’t go.”

 

Caitlyn squeezed her hand in both of hers. “I know you’re in pain, I know he hurt you. I’m sure he’s continuing to hurt you right now. But he can’t get to you at home. And we need to get that nose checked. Black and purple aren’t quite fitting colors on you.”

 

Jinx nodded slowly. Caitlyn couldn’t tell she wasn’t quite back to herself, nowhere close, but she was responding to real stimuli so she was at least able to perceive her surroundings around the chaos of her hallucinations, so it was a start. She was wrong to spring something so heavy on her sister so suddenly. The odds of what happened, actually happening, were very slim, but even if it hadn’t, she should have known better than to leave Jinx alone in a city that was already one massive trigger. She would have to make it right. She supposed Scar would have to take over the missions for the time being while Jinx recovered. And Caitlyn supposed a good way to start making it all up to Jinx would be to follow through on the hair day she had promised. It may look a little bit different than before, but she knew it would be appreciated all the same. She could talk about her meeting with Marcus and Mylo later.

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

It was two years before Caitlyn had ever needed to interact with Mylo again.

 

The Firelight missions had changed dynamic drastically, becoming fights between Jinx and Ekko while Caitlyn and the others operated in the background. It frustrated the team from time to time, however there was also a type of understanding. But now, something else was amiss.

 

The day was supposed to be good. Cassandra had finally given in and allowed Caitlyn to be a real enforcer, rather than simply tossing the title her way while she lingered in the classrooms she had snuck her way into, and even though she was supposed to spend the day, Piltover’s annual Progress Day, stationed in what may have been the most boring job ever, it would be enough. Her mother finally saw her as capable.

 

While she idled here, Jinx was leading the day’s Shimmer bust. The Shimmer industry had been growing more bold, not shrinking with each fallout but rather growing; overproducing to compensate for the lost revenue. And today was the biggest day of the calendar year. The perfect time to sneak in illegal goods unnoticed.

 

The issue Caitlyn had been faced with, however, was the issue of the corruption that had only spread through the ranks of the enforcers. Jinx was set to have finished her job twenty minutes ago, and already, she was hearing about Sevika and Ekko being present at the bust, one dead enforcer being caught with a pocket full of Zaunite currency. Caitlyn supposed she had gotten lucky, her parents tent being set so close to the blimp Jinx was to rob under the guise of shopping around for discounted trinkets, so it was little struggle for Caitlyn to slink off the moment Jayce left to do his speech, wandering her way into the blimp.

 

She kept her camera handy at all times these days, building up an arsenal of evidence and proof of corruption for the inevitable collapse of the enforcer hierarchy. But today, she would use it for documented today’s incident. She would have to be careful to hide any ties she had to the Firelights, but she knew she could make it work.

 

The more Caitlyn dug around the site, the more frustrated she became. This wasn’t a typical operation. There were several Piltovian individuals involved, enforcers or not. They were unused to smuggling rings, that much was clear. Laying in clear view was a shipping receipt, stamped with a Piltovian seal, scorch marks with traces of copper—only found in Piltovian bullets due to its abundance and malleability. More of those hourglass insignias, placed beneath the main holding area of the blimp, a place no one who wasn’t intentionally let in could access unnoticed. She took her last picture just as Marcus wandered his way in.

 

“Interfering again, I see?” The sheriff crooned from behind her. “We’ve been over this.”

 

Caitlyn sighed. She knew her parents would have her head for sneaking off in her very first mission, but everything about this situation had Marcus written all over it. Since their meeting two years ago, she had been taking more careful notice of his day to day whereabouts, his activities, and his association to the Undercity frightened her. The corruption ran deep, she knew this now, but she just needed more time.

 

“You and I both know a drug operation takes priority over keeping people from staring at my mother too hard!”

 

“And you and I both know,” Marcus replied, “that I am your superior, and what I say, goes. This isn’t mommy’s tent, which means you don’t call the shots here. Get out before your badge lands in my hand.”

 

“This kind of thing takes more than one individual—”

 

“Which is why I have my crew.” Marcus walked over to Caitlyn, ripping the badge from her chest, leaving the fabric torn over her rib. “You can consider yourself stripped of your role for the time being, seeing as this is your fifth time going behind my back. You can earn it back by taking the grunt shift at Stillwater, effective immediately. We’ve had a few killed in fights, and I don’t have the men to spare at the moment.”

 

Caitlyn bit back a sigh. She would be thrown on the first tram to the prison, and if she remembered correctly, it left from the headquarters in twenty minutes. She gave up and allowed Marcus’s crewman to drag her along with one arm, the other held up in a white sling. She wouldn’t have time to go find Jinx, couldn’t beg for an out without either sounding suspicious or upping her punishment. She only hoped Jinx would be well enough without her. Scar had learned how to handle her in her episodes over time as well, though they all knew he didn’t quite have the effect Caitlyn did. But Caitlyn would give it a week and report back.

 

 

The ride to Stillwater was near silent, guards every eighteen inches. Caitlyn supposed she was supposed to be a guard as well, though she didn’t feel very commanding at the moment. She felt rather humiliated. This was a step even below Zaun patrol, this was the last chance pit stop for unruly enforcers before they found themselves on the other side of those bars.

 

As she was led in, she was met with a large Vastaya man at the entrance. One by one, prisoners were given numbers and sent off to Janna-knows-where. It sickened her that the number was in the 2,000’s; how many of these people were truly guilty? She knew it couldn’t be many.

 

“Kiramman Junior, how the hell’d you end up in this dump?” He grinned, his hundred-plus razor sharp teeth gleaming wickedly in the lamplight.

 

“By pissin’ off sheriff one too many times,” her guard laughed. Beneath the goggles, Mylo’s eyes flicked to hers, then back at the Vastaya.

 

“Well,” he grinned. “I can smell your frustration from here, Mini Kiramman. I got a deal for ya.”

 

Caitlyn groaned. “And what, exactly, is this deal? And will I at least get something positive out of being here or am I going to have to throw myself off the cliff side?”

 

“I’d say you’ll find it pretty worthwhile.” The man pulled out a folder, an inch thick and worn to high heavens. On its front was stamped a number: 516. Three digits; this inmate had been in here for some time. “You’ll find 516 upstairs. If by some miracle she hasn’t died from heat stroke yet, the lot of us haven’t had the chance to pummel her face in here lately, and we don’t want her getting too comfortable.”

 

Her stomach twisted. This place was worse than she’d expected. She could feel Mylo’s eyes lingering on her back as the two of them approached the elevator to land on the 40th floor. A place Marcus had overtly prohibited the use of. The fear in Mylo’s eyes told her that even he himself had lines he wouldn’t dare cross, lies he wouldn’t dare utter, and this was one.

 

As the elevator slowly slid its way up the cables, Caitlyn flipped through the file. There was no name on record, a few poor pictures. The only identity this woman had here was her number. Paper after paper detailed many a fight she had been involved in, two murders stamped at the top of the pile. But at the bottom of it all, where should have laid an arrest report, nothing was. There was simply a note in handwriting both recognized as Marcus’s.

 

Do what you must to this one. She does not leave, does not speak to anyone outside these walls. As far as the world is concerned, she has already perished.

 

It was signed at the bottom by that very same gold M that decorated each of his weapons. Caitlyn and Mylo sighed in unison. An innocent woman thrown behind bars, and she was somehow roped into Marcus’s schemes. She would be freed today. Something told Caitlyn that everything was about to change.

 

The elevator sputtered to a stop at the 40th floor, the doors opening with a groan. Immediately the smell of blood and decay hit her nose, sending her head spinning. The halls were dark, damp. She led the way, the one of the pair to have both arms in working condition, both held tightly to her lantern. The further down the hall she walked, the more noticeable the sound of methodical thudding became. It came from the very end of the hall, where the darkness took on a physical form. Beside her, Mylo took out a flashlight of his own, gripping it weakly in his bad hand while his able left hand carried his dagger. The thudding came from three cells down. Two cells. One.

 

Before the final cell was painted a crimson line, exactly twenty two inches from the iron bars. Caitlyn approached carefully; the line was there to keep the contained woman from assaulting her through the bars. Inside, the woman paused her barrage of punches to the stone, turning her face to Caitlyn’s. Her magenta hair was a shock to Caitlyn, the intricate tattoos along her skin hardly an afterthought. She glared at Caitlyn with sharp gray eyes that consumed her attention immediately.

 

“Who the hell are you?”

 

The words didn’t shock her so much; she was sure 516 had grown accustomed to the occasional switch of guards. What caught her by surprise was the single word that passed Mylo’s lips.

 

“Vi?”

Notes:

Whew! I’ll be honest I wrote most of this in just one day in a sudden burst of inspiration and I realized I had completely deviated from the plot I had originally mapped out, so bear with me as I try and reroute the story bc I’ll be honest I do like the way this went. I hope you all enjoyed!!

Chapter 7: I’m so sorry

I hate to do this.

This story is all mapped out in my head, and I do look forward to writing it. But I just need a break. My job is just too much. I am being torn to shreds and abused at this establishment. My coworkers are making dumb mistakes that I am left to try and fix. I am taking on the workload of three separate people all at once because half my establishment is incompetent and I get the brunt of the fallout. I am being punished for mistakes I am not making, and when I am told my work is subpar, I ask why and my superiors don’t even know the answer to that question. I work 6 days a week and still find myself guilt tripped for not doing enough and for desiring better pay, as I make 3 figures a month. My body is falling apart, something is always in pain. And through all of that, the establishment as a whole pretends I don’t exist. I am not present on any online or social media platforms, and as someone in a commission job, that is killing my ability to grow as a professional.

All of this is eating at me, and I’m slowly becoming more and more depressed by the day. All I have the energy to do anymore is sleep and drag my feet through work. I barely have the strength to even eat or speak to people. I haven’t typed a word or picked up a pencil in days. I’m really sorry to have to pause this story, but I’m just not functioning anymore.

I am currently searching for a new job where I can be treated with dignity and respect, and maybe with that I will start to feel more human again. But as much as I want to write (and I really want to, and I have tried so, so hard to just get something ANYTHING out) I have nothing left to give right now. This story means so much to me, and I can’t express enough just how grateful I am for the support you all have given me. It is one of the few things I look forward to anymore. I will be back, hopefully soon :’)

Love yall, and again, I am truly sorry…

Notes:

I’m here with an update for yall. It is 7/18 now and I am in the final stages of the hiring process for a new job in a much better place. I will continue my old job as well and practice dual employment, though it will sit on the back burner and my hours will be few, as there are still people at my current job that I love dearly. As of right now, I have an in person interview set for 2 weeks out and am set to officially start the job in 6 weeks. I am already feeling hopeful about my circumstances and I am working my way back to writing. I am hoping to have a chapter up by the end of the month. I apologize for the long wait, and thank you all for your patience with me. Here’s to a new chapter for the story and for me 😊

Chapter 8: I’ve Gotta Live With The Choices I Made…

Summary:

Mylo begins his journey in the enforcer hierarchy, and it’s not at all what he believed it would be

Notes:

Hey yall
I am so sorry for that… extended break I took. I will leave the last chapter (the authors note) up because I hope to maintain complete transparency with everyone. This chapter may seem short, but it is NOT the full chapter, this is part 1, and I will upload the second half when it is complete. I feel terrible about leaving yall hanging for so long, and I wanted you to have something at least. Mylo’s character is proving difficult to navigate and his chapter is going to be a longer one, so this first half is still a decent length. But I hope you all enjoy. I don’t know when the second half will be completed, but I am aiming for soon. My mental health is improving, even though my physical health could be better (I just passed a kidney stone… again… and I am fighting off a cold now) so I should have better luck with writing. I also want to update by saying that after nearly a month of job hunting and several interviews, I have landed a new job at a wonderful place!! I am feeling much more myself and I am getting my confidence back slowly, so I hope to return to a somewhat regular schedule with this fic. Thank you all again for your patience, and I hope you enjoy!

Title song: Lucy by Skillet

Mylo huffed as he stood along the finish line, staring back at what he could see of the course he just ran.

 

He had expected lots of things when he was unwillingly drafted by the Enforers. Lessons on how to make children cry, how to intimidate men twice your size without even looking at them, just general education on how to be the biggest piece of shit you could. He hadn’t expected to be made to run a ten mile course during endurance training. He could run, he’d done it for years trying to escape these very people. But when he was running for chore rather than to save his own hide, suddenly it felt much more intense.

 

He looked down at himself, the sweat and blood that ran down his legs, more toned and tawny than they’d ever been. Mylo made sure this past year not to take anything for granted; not his bed, nor his clothes nor the food on his plate. He made sure to make the most of it all; sleeping the full allotted hours now that it was safe to do so, even when his cadet friends insisted he join them for the occasional night on the town. Clearing his plate every night at dinner, even when they put Blind Holly in charge and she ended up scooping everyone hefty portions, because he knew that if he didn’t it would go in the trash, and he remembered how vehemently he hated the sight of good food in waste bins. He took it all in gratitude, and he had found himself shooting up in height, towering over at least half his squadron, putting on bulk to go with it. He looked down at himself and saw that, the months of proper love and care for his body that had been unavailable to him in Zaun, and it had paid off.

 

He fell in line with the rest of his squadron, he for once not being last. Beside him, down the line, five other men and women stood, all older than himself only slightly. The sun was high in the sky, leaving the blonde woman next to him rapidly burning, her skin already a pale pink. Mylo wiped the sweat from his forehead, silently begging it not to drip down into his eyes. The commander didn’t appreciate a lack of eye contact.

 

“You all know why we are doing this today, right?” Commander Arenz barked. Mylo stayed silent, unsure if she wanted an answer. “If you are all so eager to run from a fight, you can run here as well. Have we learned our lesson yet?”

 

A chorus of yes ma’am’s rang out down the line, but Mylo stayed silent. He knew he was right to run; they would have all died if they hadn’t, not to mention the people they had been chasing down were innocent. They reminded him of the day he and his family broke out of Jayce Talis’s apartment, though rather than taking something high end, these kids had simply taken clothes. The squadron had been sent to deal with the issue, as the commander had put it, but Mylo hadn’t seen an issue at all. He had let the kids go, and the others, confused, stopped as well, and the kids had made it across the bridge and out of their jurisdiction. Commander didn’t like that. It seemed she didn’t like his silence either. She stalked over to where he stood by the end of the line, her perfect gait a threat of its own making.

 

“I am confident you heard me, cadet,” she whispered. “Don’t think I’m unaware of your part in this.”

 

“I’m not apologizing for anything. Those kids need the clothes far more than anyone here.”

 

The commander grinned, and the sight sent cold water down his spine. “Is that so?” Mylo swallowed the lump in his throat as she took the switchblade from her belt and him by the shirt collar, pulling him forward and out of line as she held the blade to his Adam’s apple. “Strip.”

 

“Well you could at least take me to dinner first—”

 

“Do you want to run the course again, cadet?” She pressed the knife closer. Mylo knew she wouldn’t cut; this was something she did frequently when cadets fell out of line; it was a humiliation tactic rather than a genuine threat. It didn’t make Mylo’s heart pound any less though. “They need clothes so badly? Give them yours. Your wardrobe can replace the items that were stolen today. You can earn your closet back. One day.”

 

Mylo huffed. He slowly unbuttoned his cadet uniform, one gold button at a time, as his fingers trembled. The other cadets watched on, snickering amongst themselves. The blue and gray coat sat limp in his hands as he folded it up in the appropriate ceremonial manner, the gold star facing upwards, shining in the intense sunlight.  He passed it over to Arenz, who held out her arms, waiting. She didn’t drop them.

 

“I believe I asked for all of them, cadet. Hand them over or you will be running again.”

 

Mylo blinked, choking back his embarrassment as he slid down his pants, then folding them, followed by the gloves, the undershirt, the shoes, even the socks and Kevlar, until he was left in nothing more than his underwear. He shoved all of the items into the commander’s waiting hands.

 

“And don’t you ask for these too,” he mumbled. She nodded once, tucking the bundle of clothing under her arm and continuing to pace as she spoke to the line. The sweat on his skin, now exposed, left him suddenly cold.

 

He purposely tuned the commander out for the rest of her rave. He didn’t want to hear it; he was already embarrassed, cold, and pissed off, and he didn’t feel like listening to her any longer. He knew he was right, but leave it to an enforcer to weaponize their own arrogance. His skin prickled with every brush of wind along the hill, leaves dusting his feet as they went. It was several more minutes before she released them. Mylo didn’t get his clothes back.

 

It was a 2 mile walk back to the barracks. Mylo was grateful for the room and board, even if they were shoddy even by Zaun standards, as they were his only accommodations by that point. He would never make enough of an income to get himself a place to live up here. Piltover was run on nepotism and inheritance, its residents started their adult lives with the money their parents’ coffers had provided for them, they had used that money to build themselves up even bigger until one day that money went to their kids and the cycle began anew. Mylo didn’t have anyone to kickstart his adulthood, he didn’t have the grants to invest into something greater. Being a nameless, penniless soldier was all he could do, and he found himself paying his way through life in blood rather than coin, and unlike Zaun, blood didn’t buy much here.

 

He sighed as the heat, normally oppressive but now welcoming, hit him as he stepped through the threshold of the cadet barracks. The building kept three floors, and Mylo hadn’t worked his way up yet, so he still resided down here, on the first floor where whiny, rickety bunk beds lined every wall, stacked three high, and the bathroom was without walls, the showers only masked by a satin curtain. His bunk was among the closest to the bathroom corner, rejected by other Piltovian cadets for dislike of the smell. He didn’t mind though; the smell of candles, cinnamon and jasmine in scent, clean linens, and freshly washed hair was almost too foreign to him. The more pleasant smells made him feel even more out of place. 

 

He went to his bed in the back of the room, unsurprised to see his chest already open and scavenged, all articles of clothing removed from it, except for a single, headquarters-provided pair of white linen pajama shorts. No socks, no shoes, not even underclothes. Just those shorts.

 

“Nice panties, shithead!” A voice across the room sneered. Wade, one of the older recruits, always picking at someone—typically Mylo—to make himself feel bigger despite being the only year three cadet in a regime that typically asks two years before promotion. “Almost enough to tuck away that small dick you were trying to make up for earlier!”

 

Mylo rolled his eyes. He wouldn’t let the words get to him. Wade couldn’t hurt him. Wade couldn’t even pass basic training. But he’d admit the words still stung a little. Not so much the insults themselves, but the reality that Mylo was hardly any better than Wade; talking up a storm to mask his own incapability. He sat down on his threadbare mattress, coughing at the dust that billowed from it. He slept here every night, and somehow there was always more debris.

 

The door swung open with a bang, and Akira entered the barracks with a scowl. It didn’t take him long to locate Mylo on his mattress and barrel his way over. Just nice, Mylo thought, he had managed to irritate the calmest person here, the only one who had dared be friendly with him. 

 

“You just had to piss her off, didn’t you?!” He hissed, throwing his jacket down on the bed beside Mylo’s. “I had to keep her from restarting your two years, and in return I had to rerun half the course and gave up my dinner privileges for the night.”

 

Mylo sighed. “I’m sorry, man, you didn’t have to do that.”

 

“No, I didn’t,” Akira grumbled. “But I’m nice enough to go hungry for one night so you don’t have to redo a year and a half of time. But you’d know a thing or two about being hungry, wouldn’t you, trencher freak?”

 

Laughter arose around the room, poking fun at everything from Mylo’s scrawny size to his appearance that remained dull throughout all the work he did to improve himself. He didn’t have the clothes to hide behind anymore, and everything, every scar from alley fights, every stretch mark from the sudden growth spurts that came with a healthy Piltie diet, even his left foot, almost two inches smaller than his right due to a broken growth plate from a heist gone wrong three years ago, it was all on full display, and stood out as a glaring reminder that despite what he had done, he didn’t belong up here.

 

“I say we make him sleep outside,” Wade grinned. “Put him out with the rest of the dogs.”

 

Laura shook her head, her bunk along the opposite wall with the other girls. “When you leave dogs out all night, they whimper and whine. He’s quieter where he is.” She winced as she massaged aloe salve over her sunburns, the result of the day’s run.

 

Mylo had the instinct to defend himself, to say something equally stupid in return and make her and the others back off his case. Nothing anyone said or did would make him regret his actions of that morning. But he knew defending himself against Pilties would only bring about more trouble in the end.

 

“You can’t punish trencher trash by letting them live like kings,” Wade argued. “You wanna teach him to shut his fucking mouth, he needs to spend a night out where no one would bother to hear him.”

 

Mylo hadn’t even noticed Akira reaching for him again until his wrists were held in the bronze skinned boy’s iron grip, the other hand taking a fistful of his hair. Mylo yelped when Akira began to move him towards the door, corralling him like a cow.

 

“I just don’t wanna see him tonight, I don’t give a damn about punishment,” Akira grumbled, kicking the door open as the men and women inside the barracks laughed, and Mylo found himself thrown like a sack of rice face first into the dirt outside. The door slammed shut behind him, the damning blow to his own pride.

 

He picked himself up with a grimace. His nose bled profusely from the impact he made with the ground, his hands pinned over his head as he was thrown keeping him from catching himself. He stood up anyway. He was sure he was a sight for sore eyes, bare chested and bleeding a river from his face, he looked like the very thing kids told stories about around their campfires. He heard the lock on the barracks door latch behind him, sealing his fate.

 

Mylo began walking. If nothing else, he didn’t want to be seen sitting directly outside and face further punishment for being out after curfew. The streets glowed faintly under the streetlights, their yellow haze turning the dark world to numerous shades of buttery gold. The air was chilly now, a contrast to the heat of the day. He would have to find some place to crouch soon so he didn’t fall sick from the cold. But in this part of Piltover, buildings and warehouses were packed so closely together that there was nothing, no alley or park or even a gutter to hunker down in. Just empty streets and homes of happy, cozy families.

 

The thoughts of tonight were no different than they’d ever been, though now, they came with a viscous dose of fear. Mylo thought again to the photo that lay in his storage chest, beneath the wood paneling of the bottom. Safe from prying eyes or greedy hands. The photo that had happened to be in his pocket the night of the accident, the photo of himself, Vi and Claggor on their favorite job: snagging hundreds of Notes’ worth of jewelry from a stand at Piltover’s Progress Day celebration three years ago. It was the only photo he had of his family, one of very few that even existed to begin with. He could remember every detail, every little thing about that photo. The fear in Claggor’s eyes, residual from the job, mixed with the shining grin of excitement as he beheld the rubies and copper in his hands that he had managed to snag. The calm, easy smirk on Vi’s face, her confidence palpable even then, wearing every piece of jewelry she had on her person, creating piercings where there were none so that she could wear her earnings proudly. Mylo remembered his own posture in that picture; giddy, ecstatic, looking not at the bulky camera but to Vi, the one who had orchestrated the job and who had known what to do even in the case of unexpected circumstances. She always knew what to do. She would know what to do now. But she was gone.

 

Mylo had no idea where he was, lost in his own head as he walked. Though wherever he found himself now, he knew it was somewhere in the Elites’ sector, mansions and lush gardens lining the cobbled street. Beside him stood the imposing figure of the Kiramman estate, tall and proud, where the shadows of the two Kiramman girls lingered in the upper window, a dark silhouette against the silk curtains. He kept walking.

 

If Vi had been here, she would have found a place for them all to hide by now. Mylo had no idea how she did it, always somehow knowing the best places to hunker down even in areas new to her. Mylo had asked her so many times, and she had always said the same thing: go where the people are and hide somewhere among them. If enforcers want to find hideaway criminals, they’ll look in the isolated places because they don’t expect convicts to stay where they can be recognized. She would throw on a cap and a sleazy whiskey grin and no one would look twice. If Vi were here, Wade and Akira and Laura would have had their faces bashed in one by one a while ago, and Vi would have crowned herself queen of the barracks.

 

There are lots of things Vi would have done in Mylo’s situation. And every single night as he lay down to sleep, more things came to mind. She had spent so many sleepless nights after jobs telling him how to do better, how to fight harder and win bigger. She had bled and ached to learn these lessons, and she handed them over to Mylo on a silver platter, and rather than heed her advice, he continued to play around, because he was too young then to realize just how important it was that jobs go perfectly. Vi’s skills in a fight, in a heist, were unmatched, and Mylo had grown up believing that a failed job was simply not bringing home enough shiny jewels. But as he watched his brother’s body become crushed under the weight of fallen cinder, it hit him like a slap to the face what a failed job really looked like.

 

Since the enforcers had drafted him against his will, practically the very moment he had stepped foot in Piltover following the accident, he had spent his fair share of nights outside. It seemed everyone of even slight significance took every opportunity to punish those beneath them. One word spoken out of turn, outside. Mission gone wrong, outside. The commanders called it conditioning, turning recruits into robots programmed to do what they are told, when they are told, and how they are told. But Mylo never quite fit that mold. For all his fragility and incompetence, he was unbreakable. Even if he had to spend another night outside.

 

It wasn’t far from the Kiramman estate that Mylo found a back alley with a dumpster. A good place to hunker down; protected from sight and wind and the worst of the sun. He sat down in the shadow of the garbage bin, pulling his knees to his chest and sighing. He thought of that photo again. His family. Of how he had become part of the very thing that contributed to their early passing.

 

He thought of the fourth person, missing from the family photo. Powder. His heart clenched in his chest at the thought of her, as it had every time he did, but he would not let her memory fade. He had forgotten the exact blue of her eyes, the precise length of her hair, but he would never forget the joy in her eyes as she had been allowed to go on her first and last real job. How she had bounced on the balls of her feet, her excitement too big for her small body, the way she had run to Little Man’s workshop on first instinct, her love for the boy tangible already. He would never forget the way Vi waited for her, for every leap that seemed too big, every treasure too heavy, every thought too angry. Mylo remembered how much she looked like him in all the ways that mattered. They had been the same soul in two bodies, so young, so anxious, so desperate to prove themselves and to be heard. Powder had gotten the affection from Vi that Mylo had always so desperately craved, and he had treated her badly out of jealousy, this much he would regret for the rest of his life, as he carried that monkey’s ceramic head in his pocket everywhere he went. 

 

Now, here, in this forgotten place in a town he never belonged in, he sat curled up in the gilded mirror of his old home, cold, bleeding and alone. Now, he could almost feel the lingering thrill of a job, the warm presences of his brother and two sisters beside him, he just needed to reach that tiniest bit more. But now, he had no strength left. He let the feeling go, and embraced the cold.

 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

 

“And just what do you think you’re doing out of the barracks, cadet?”

 

Mylo startled awake to see the face of the sheriff looming above him. With a poorly hidden tremor in his body, he stood at attention, giving the scraps of energy he had to pay this man the proper respects.

 

“I apologize, sir, it won’t happen again. I was kicked from the barracks again, I needed a place to sleep.” Mylo paid no mind to his hand that trembled in its salute, the other stiff and straight at his side.

 

“I gathered as much. You aren’t quite good for listening, are you?” Marcus’s gaze was cold as steel on a winter’s day, his uniform crisply ironed as always. He sighed. “Well, come along, now.”

 

Mylo fell into step beside the sheriff, walking down the street that was slick with dew. The morning was near silent, the city just waking up, the gentle breeze a yawn from the distant mountains. Early enough that Mylo had no concerns about people seeing him undressed, though he still much appreciated the cloak that Marcus held out in offering. It was delicate, yet heavy over his shoulders.

 

“What is this I heard last evening, a certain cadet handing over stolen clothes to stray trenchers?” The sheriff asked, just as the silence had begun to grow comfortable. Mylo shrugged; there was no use in lying, not when the sheriff likely had the entire incident report already laid on his desk. Mylo felt the retort sitting on his tongue, automatic and prepared to spill from his lips, but he bit it back. The commander was one thing, the sheriff was another.

 

“Calm yourself, boy. I am not angry.” Mylo stared up at the man with a mix of shock and hesitant gratitude. The sheriff continued walking as if nothing was amiss. Mylo adjusted the cloak over his back. “You think me heartless. Cold. You need to, don’t forget that; it is how we keep you cadets in line. But I do not despise the people of the Undercity. Are they not deserving of basic necessities as well?”

 

Mylo pursed his lips. The sheriff had to be baiting him somehow. It was no secret amongst his squadron that he was from the Lanes, and it was the Sheriff’s job to know the ins and outs of every single soldier under his command. Marcus had to know who he was, where he came from. But Marcus had said he wasn’t angry at what Mylo had done, so what was about to happen? The looming anxiety set his skin prickling.

 

“They are, sir,” Mylo opted to reply. One of the first lessons he had learned here; when in doubt, agree with whatever his superiors say, after his casual disagreement over a petty dispute left him hungry for two days. “That’s why I let them go.”

 

“I would have done the same, in your position.” Marcus picked a mote of invisible dust off the collar of the cloak Mylo wore. A gesture one could interpret as affectionate, though Mylo knew better. “I have a reputation to uphold here. Though it is unspoken knowledge, that no Sheriff these past decades have truly upheld the Topsiders’ universal hatred for our twins across the bridge. I applaud you, truly.”

 

Mylo blanked, for the first time since Vi was alive, genuinely unsure of how to respond. He had seen cadets flogged for less treachery. But the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. He remembered what Vi had told him that night on the way to the cannery: that she had blamed herself for Vander’s kidnapping. The former sheriff had partnered with him and he offered himself to her to be taken prisoner in order to protect the Undercity, and Vi had attempted to take his place. It was a known thing here, that Marcus could only aspire to be as good of a sheriff as Grayson had been, and it seemed that the statement carried even more truth than what was publicly believed. 

 

“So… can I have my clothes back then? Because Commander ordered her lieutenant to take them all. As much as I’m grateful you aren’t angry I think I’d rather have my clothes than a word of approval.” Mylo would not consider himself grateful; this was still an enforcer, but if he could get something out of it, he would take the opportunity.

 

Marcus huffed. “You will have more than that.” Before them, the office buildings of the Enforcer headquarters loomed, blue and gold banners hanging from every column, blue trim on every windowsill and door jamb. The lawn before it was perfectly manicured, bushes and flower gardens lining the footpaths. “I had a little… passion project of sorts in mind. And I need to be sure that those I involve can be trusted, can align themselves with my goals. And you seem like a good boy. If you would, follow me inside?”

 

Trembling, Mylo followed. The last time he had been here was when he had stolen a sergeant’s rifle a little over a year ago, waving it around and scaring a whole school of kids into fleeing the building. He had been dragged here and beaten black and blue; for stealing a weapon, for traumatizing a massive group of young children, for threatening violence, until a frenzied chemist had let himself in, rambling in a daze about the presence of a lethal, odorless chemical in that very building, that without Mylo’s intervention, every child would have asphyxiated and died. Upon questioning, Mylo had kept his answer simple, both for the pain of moving his mouth and the frustration of being assumed the villain: I grew up surrounded by lethal chemicals. I know what carbon monoxide poisoning looks like. Those kids had minutes or less, I couldn’t waste precious seconds leading them out gently. Especially when no one in my squadron even believed me and I would have led the evacuation alone.

 

But now, he was being led through these doors as a welcome guest rather than an unruly cadet. The halls seemed much more beautiful without the lining of fear between every tile. Marcus led him up several sets of stairs, up to the top floor, what was known to remain barren with the exception of the sheriff’s pristinely decorated office. In it was a large desk, a chair on each side, and it was clear which chair was the sheriffs, even if it wouldn’t have been situated behind the cluttered desk. Off to the side, a tea table sat, already complete with a steaming teapot and four china mugs. Marcus sat himself at the tea table, signaling for an informal conversation. Mylo did the same.

 

“I have not even gone to the council with this yet,” Marcus began. He took the teapot and filled his own mug, marked by a miniscule chip in the handle. He filled a second mug for Mylo, and the latter held it and sipped carefully, only out of courtesy. It was black tea, he could recognize. He had never been a fan of tea, his only brew of choice being the blend Vander always brewed, a mix of peppermint and lemon tea, both common in Zaun for their medicinal purposes. Up here, Mylo supposed, tea was for enjoyment, rather than healing. “I was hoping to find them this morning, however I passed you by on my way. Fate is a funny thing, leaving me just the boy for the job as a sign that my plan was meant to be.”

 

“And, if you don’t mind me asking,” Mylo interjected, feeling impatient. And hungry, quite hungry, “what is this plan exactly?”

 

Marcus seemed to sense Mylo’s feelings, extending to him a pre wrapped muffin that Mylo recognized from a bakery up the street. It was bloomwilt berry and cinnamon. Both bitter on their own, but likely good together. Mylo took a bite as Marcus continued. “There are two cities to keep in line; leading the enforcers cannot be a one person job. Sheriff Grayson tried, but even a woman as commanding as she was only one woman. And even she became corrupt. My goal is to create a squadron of my own; men and women that I can trust to lead well alongside me, in order to ensure efficiency and integrity.”

 

Mylo nodded, chewing on his muffin slowly to avoid the obligation to respond. Mylo remembered Grayson; she had been Vander’s friend. She had only wanted to do what was best, stretching herself thin and risking her job to make sure casualties in Zaun were few. She had genuinely loved the Undercity, and it had cost her life. He thought over Marcus’ words, his desire to carry on what Grayson began, to double down and make sure that her fate wasn’t repeated so that both cities could be better run. It all seemed honorable. However, one sentence struck him as odd. Mylo would hardly consider Grayson corrupt. By Piltovian standards, and by textbook definition, perhaps, but to Mylo, she wasn’t corrupt as long as she operated in the best interest of the people. It left him curious, if Marcus saw Grayson’s equity as corruption, what the former would do when given the proper means.

 

Vander’s voice came to Mylo in that moment, sudden. Words that were not meant for Mylo’s ears. Words about responsibility, about caring for others, that defending the ones you love doesn’t always mean throwing fists and carrying a sword. It can mean calm silence in the face of adversity, because you know that one day, through quiet resistance, the playing field will balance itself. He remembered Vi’s response, that there needs to be a reminder of who the Undercity really belongs to. They had both wanted what was best, and both sought it in different ways. However, these past months showed Mylo that they both had been wrong. Vander’s complicity led to his own wrongful imprisonment, and Vi’s aggression led to Claggor, Powder and Vander’s deaths. It didn’t matter what anyone in the Undercity did; Piltover would always find a way to screw them over somehow.

 

However, Mylo knew Vander was right about one thing: Piltover loved to parade its enforcers around, a show of small cocked strength. Mylo was an enforcer now, something he wrestled with every night as he slept, as the voices of his siblings sneered at him for betraying everything he was, but it was all he could do to keep himself going. Being an enforcer was the promise of food and a bed. And now, if he took Marcus’ offer, being an executive level enforcer meant that he wouldn’t have to fear the enforcers showing up in Zaun, because he wouldn’t be one of them. It meant he could fight like Vi while also showing patient resistance like Vander. It meant that he could fight for his people with an army at his disposal, and a sheriff that wanted the same thing he did. He wouldn’t be an underground rebel like his fallen family, he would have what he needed to fight openly.

 

Mylo knew there was one more piece of this puzzle, one more thing that would set him on the right path. He needed more than Vander’s patience or Vi’s strength. He needed Powder’s daring. He needed the ability to go beyond what he previously thought possible, he needed the courage to take on more than he believed he could handle, and he needed the heart of steel to take the word no as a driving force rather than a roadblock. He needed her bravery, something that Vi and Vander didn’t have, not in the way she did. Mylo could see it, even when she was tiny. She had the capacity to do amazing things, not by any skill of her own, but by the refusal to let a lack of skill define her. Mylo regretted her fate more than any others in his family, because while everyone else viewed him as their responsibility, she was his only younger sibling, she was someone he could take care of, someone who made him feel like he could contribute. But rather than showing kindness, his power trip had diminished her, and now he had no way of going back and making it right. Mylo would do this for Marcus, and Vander and Vi would drive him, but Powder would be his motivation. She had wanted a safe city, a home where she could live freely and creatively, and he would give it to her, even if he didn’t want to admit that it was because of him that she would never see it.

 

“I’ll help you,” Mylo said. He balled up the muffin’s paper wrapper and dropped it in the nearby trash bin. “If your point was to ask me to join this squadron of yours, I’ll do it.”

 

Marcus grinned. “I thought you would. In that case, don’t worry about your old clothes. I have something better for you.”

Notes:

I hope you all enjoyed, and part 2 should be up soon!! Thank you all again for your patience 😊