falling downwards into the light

by liesel_fogel

Summary:

Silco, drugged and injured, stumbles into the first place he recognizes- the Last Drop. Vander, who assumed Silco was dead, sees this as a chance for reconciliation.
Unfortunately, Silco does not feel the same way.

Set three years after the Day of Ashes, so pre-canon but post-drowning.

Chapter 1

Notes:

I'm headcanoning that Claggor and Mylo don't get adopted by Vander until a bit later, so they won't be in this fic (for now).

TW in the endnotes.

 

 

Silco stumbles his way through the dingy back alleys of the Lanes, clutching his wounded side and praying he can find some old, familiar hideaway to pass out in before his pursuers catch up to him.

It's just finished raining. The air is thick with fog, wreathing the nighttime chemlights in a sickly green aura and lending the once-familiar Lanes an unearthly, eerie atmosphere. Sickly green puddles litter garbage-strewn streets, the neon reflections of the chemlights above swirling in technicolor oil slick on black asphalt. 

His body is growing colder by the second, the only sensation in his numb hands the hot blood that trickles from between his fingers. It's coating his palms now, so he uses an elbow to brace himself against the nearest wall as he pauses, panting, to hunch over and stick two blood-slick fingers down his throat to vomit.

What comes out is a vile black mess—blood streaked with yellow bile and thick, viscous strands of the mysterious pink concoction his kidnappers had forced down his throat. He's pretty sure it's not poison at least—that would be too kind, and besides, they wanted him alive. They had been pretty clear about that, during the– days? week? he can't be sure—they'd had him locked up and at their mercy. Of which, very clearly, they were lacking. 

Under different circumstances, Silco would be… impressed at the inventiveness of some of their tortures. As it is, having been subjected to a multitude of very unpleasant devices and ministrations over the past few days, of which he may still not survive, he's unable to feel much of anything save numbness and vague horror at what he has gone through.

But he will survive. He's survived growing up an orphan in the lowest layers of the fissures, a dirty little thing from the Sump. He survived the mines and the Gray and countless cave-ins, beatings from Enforcers and foremen or just those bigger and stronger who didn't like to be told no. He survived Vander, clawed his way out of the Pilt only to find himself strapped to a table in Singed's cave of a lab, and had come out stronger for it. Silco will survive this too, he just—he just needs to find a safe place to… stop. To rest. 

Head spinning, Silco forces himself to carry on. He hasn't been able to purge himself of all of the drug they'd given him, not by a long shot, hardly a few specks of it in his vomit. Which means it's already in his system and will start taking effect soon, if it hasn't already. 

His whole body is trembling, shaking violently, vision growing increasingly blurry. The chemlights sear into his eye and his skull feels like it's being squeezed in a vice. He can't—he can't think—he knows he was escaping, but from what, from where— he doesn't even know where he is.

A wave of pain, starting in his side, seizes through him and he glances down to see the hilt of a knife protruding from below his ribs. When—when did that happen— he can't remember but he needs to find somewhere—somewhere safe–

Almost hyperventilating, Silco looks around frantically, even as the corners of his sight grow black and fuzzy, and—there.

He can't say how or why, but as soon as he spots the small door, low-set and inconspicuous behind several tin garbage pails, a familiar recognizance of safety rings in his mind. He shoves aside the pails, knocking one over with a clang, and lifts up the chipped clay flower pot behind to extract a key concealed underneath.

Another wave of pain runs through him, and he groans as he jabs inefficiently at the lock with shaking hands, fresh blood drip-dripping onto the cobblestone. It takes him several tries to get the key in, and even more to turn it as his hands are slippery with blood. 

At last he manages to open the door and lurch his way inside, at which point he promptly falls down a flight of stairs and passes out in a crumpled, bloody heap in the basement of the Last Drop.

---

Powder wakes first, to a scratching outside the door. She rolls over, dismissing it as a stray cat, but the door slams open and something—no, someone—plummets down the stairs and collapses just next to her bed. 

She kicks the bed above hers to wake her sister, but Vi has already jolted awake at the intrusion and is slinging her legs over the side of the bed. She leaps off, landing with a heavy thump next to the figure crumpled on the floor.

"Stay there, Powder," she commands, stalking around the body in a half-circle.

Having just turned twelve years old, Vi is irritatingly determined to play the part of the mature older sibling and has taken to bossing Powder around with gusto. She's even begun to exclude her, suddenly preferring sneaking in to watch cage fights with the older kids to going mudlarking with Powder. Even more infuriating, she hardly ever brings Powder along on these illicit excursions, using the excuse that it's "too dangerous" whenever she doesn't want her little eight-year old sister trailing after her, which is often. 

Increasingly, Vi's bossiness has been getting on Powder’s nerves, making her more determined than ever to ignore her older sister's warnings. So when Vi tells her to stay in bed and not come closer, Powder elects to ignore her and do just that. 

As Vi goes to switch on the light from the top of the stairs, Powder hops out of bed and crouches next to the figure.

They’re crumpled in a heap on their side, wet chin-length hair matted and clotted with blood covering their face. She puts a hand on their shoulder and rolls them over, letting out a little shriek when the face—more specifically, the eye, lidless and black as tar, with a pupil like glowing embers and surrounded by mottled, scarred flesh—comes into view. 

"I told you to stay there!" Vi hisses, rushing down the stairs. The light is an old repurposed miner's carbide lamp rigged to the ceiling, and it takes a while to warm up enough to reach a peak of sickly yellow that’s hardly bright enough to cast a shadow.

As the light grows, illuminating the room, so does what they can see of the body. Including the knife in his side and the steadily growing pool of blood beneath him.

"Dad!" Powder, ignoring her sister, screams, not moving her gaze from where it is fixed on the man's face. "There's a dead guy in the basement!"

---

Silco jolts to consciousness with a wet, gurgling wheeze, pain surging through his body. 

"Oh shit! He's alive—Pow, get away from him!" A young girl's voice to his left is saying.

Silco opens his eye a crack and then slams it shut, vision too bright and swimming with streaks of light, searing his skull. The floor is simultaneously rocking and spinning beneath him, as if he were strapped to a spinning carousel on a boat caught in a powerful storm.

A drug—there had been a drug, forced down his mouth, but by who? Where? Here? For that matter, where is here? 

"Dad! Dad!" Another voice, also a young girl, is screaming, this time on his right. "The dead guy's waking up!" 

Then he feels tiny hands, warm and gentle, brushing the hair from his face. Cradling his throbbing head between them, laying it in her lap as she sits cross-legged behind him. 

He dares to crack his eye open again and this time it’s a little bit better, the overhead light blocked by the inquisitive face of a small girl of about eight with shocking blue hair, looking less scared or shocked than would be expected for a child of her age when faced with a deformed, dying scrap of a man. But then again, she is a child of Zaun, and Zaunites are used to this sort of thing.

Where am I? Silco tries to ask, but all that comes out from between his bloodied lips is a slurred "Whuh?" 

"Don't worry," she whispers. "Our dad is super nice. Not our real dad, technically, he's our second one, but he won't hurt you, promise."

His vision is still blurred and he can't make out her face properly, but her voice… that hair…

No. No, it can't be.

There’s a noise from above them, a door opening followed by heavy footsteps, and the girl looks up. "See?" she says. "Here he comes now."

Silco manages to lift his head just enough to see the man in each and every one of his nightmares for the past several years standing at the foot of the stairs. 

"What the—Silco?" Vander says incredulously. 

Silco absolutely does not let out a tiny squeak of terror. He scrambles up onto his elbows, adrenaline buoying him through the pain that rips his insides.

Fear and panic floods his synapses—he must have been brought here so Vander can finish off the job of whoever stabbed him in the first place—the drug must be to ensure he can't fight back this time, won't escape—Vander is working with them—

Silco can taste the chemical sting of the Pilt runoff on his tongue, feel his windpipe being crushed beneath those monstrous hands. His throat is closing up and he can't breathe, can't breathe—

No. He is Silco and he survives. And whoever stabbed him had been foolish enough to leave him with a weapon. 

"Get—Get behind me," he rasps, propping himself on one elbow and waving at the two children gaping at him with the other. Everything is blurred, but he knows those children, he thinks. He does not take his eye off of Vander. He can't.

Silco grits his teeth, bracing himself, and grips the handle of the knife lodged inside him, ripping it out with a grunt and points the dripping blade at Vander. He barely hears the shrieks of the children over the ringing in his ears, one yelling "You know him?!" 

Vander, for his part, just looks confused, though he raises both his hands in a placating gesture. Silco isn’t fooled—Vander could effortlessly wrap those hands around his throat and squeeze until his eyes pop out of his skull. He could enclose his head inbetween them like a vice and crush his skull as easily as he could an egg. He could—he could—

"I'm not gonna hurt you," Vander says slowly, though he looks unsure of his own words. He takes a small step closer and Silco scrambles backwards as best he can, elbow slipping in his own blood. He somehow manages to keep the knife fixed on Vander, though it trembles visibly, the light flashing off it nauseating. 

"Liar!" Silco snarls. His vision is tunneling, the corners of his sight black. "This was you, wasn't it—you sold me out, you're here to finish—finish what you started—"

His voice is thinning, growing reedy and pathetic—he can’t breathe, can’t breathe— Vander is so close, too close, and the children—the children had tried to help him, what if Vander hurts them, too—

"I didn't even know you were alive." Vander, for some reason, sounds pained. His face crumpled in on itself. 

He moves to take another step closer, but when Silco flinches, a pained whimper escaping his lips, he aborts the movement and stands awkwardly, flexing his hands into fists then relaxing them repetitively, an old compulsive habit Silco hasn't seen for years. 

Silco doesn't believe him. "Girls," he rasps, shaking with the effort of staying conscious. He can't tear his gaze away from Vander long enough to look at them, but he can feel their presence behind him. "Leave—run, now—I'll hold him off as long as I can—" 

There's a pregnant pause, filled only with the wet rasping huffs of Silco's shallow breaths. Then—

"You're insane," declares the older girl. The floorboards creak as she shifts her weight.

"Vi, no!" Vander shouts, stumbling forward, a moment too late. Vi kicks Silco in the head and he goes out like a light.

---

Benzo is the closest thing they have to a doctor in the Lanes, especially at this time of night, and he's there within minutes of Vander's call, still dressed in his nightclothes and carrying his medical kit bag.

There's no spare beds, so they spread an old sheet over one of the bar tables and lay Silco on it. Powder and Vi take Vander's bed for the night as the basement has a still-warm puddle of blood in it, and are ordered not to leave until morning. 

"I thought you said he was dead," Benzo says, staring down at Silco, arms folded across his chest. "That you—" he makes a slicing gesture over his throat. 

"I did," says Vander. "Or, I thought I did." 

Benzo harrumphs. "Bloody cockroach. I told you he was bad news from the start. If you'd'a just listened to me then…"

"I know," Vander acknowledges wearily. It's something they've been over at least a hundred times by now. 

"And, just to get this straight, you called me here to fix him? Are you sure that's for the best?" 

"What?" Vander's gaze snaps up, brow furrowing. 

"What I'm sayin', Vander," Benzo explains, not impatiently, "is that maybe we should just… let nature take its course." 

"You mean, let him die." 

Benzo winces. "Who knows what sort of muck he's got himself mixed up in nowadays. What if that follows him here? To you, to the kids? To the Lanes? All I'm saying is, it might be… easier. Less trouble for everyone if he were to disappear. For good, this time."

Silence blankets the room. Vander looks down at Silco, considering. He's a pitiful slip of a thing, dripping wet and filthy with blood and grime. His chest rises and falls with weak, wheezing breaths that stutter and rasp like the exhaust pipe of an ancient motorcar.

Vander takes in his disfigured, scarred face, the monstrous lidless eye permanently open. It glares back, accusatory. You did this to me. 

A wave of revulsion washes over Vander, surprising even himself with its vitriol. It seems inconceivable that this dirty pile of limbs had once been beautiful, loved. Maybe Benzo is right, it would be better. Less trouble for everyone. 

And yet, he can't shake the tiny glimmer of hope that's crept into his chest, laid inside the hole in his heart that's been cold and barren since he wrapped his hands around Silco's narrow throat and forced him under the Pilt's oily surface.

He's missed Silco. And if there's a chance, however miniscule, that he could... not necessarily fix things between them, he's hurt him too much for that, but ameliorate the situation somewhat, have him back in his life again… he'd curse himself forever if he let this opportunity pass him up. 

Vander swallows, shakes his head. "No, he says. "Help him. Please." 

Benzo tuts and mutters something defamatory under his breath, but slams his medical briefcase on the table and opens it, withdrawing two pairs of rubber gloves. He hands one to Vander.

"Alright," he sighs, snapping on the gloves. "Let's get to work."

Together they strip Silco of his clothes, having to cut some off, which Vander knows he'll be furious about if—when—he wakes.

He's not wearing underwear and his pants were hastily put on, buttoned half the way and missing a belt. Vander doesn't want to draw premature conclusions, but it makes his stomach churn violently, a sour taste on his tongue which only gets worse the more they catalogue Silco's injuries. 

Like many Zaunites he's always been on the scrawny side, especially those brought up in the Sump like Silco was, but now he is positively gaunt, bordering emaciated. His stomach is concave, hips jutting out like cliffs, and they can see his ribs clearly enough to tell just from sight that several of them are cracked, out of place. 

The stab wound they treat first, Benzo stitching and bandaging it neatly. When they set up a drip IV, the veins in his forearms are already bruised purple, poked and protruding. If the red, pus-filled and bloodied open sores ringing his wrists and ankles are anything to go by, Silco wasn't injecting himself and he certainly wasn't doing it willingly. 

Most of his fingernails are missing and the empty beds glisten red in the lamplight, making Vander's stomach churn.

It reminds him of After, when he had bandaged the defensive wounds Silco left on his arms, and found several of his fingernails embedded in the scratches and gouges. He must have torn them clean off in his desperation to escape Vander. He hadn't even noticed until it was too late. 

Vander takes his time bandaging each finger where the nails have been torn off. It feels like penance. 

Silco used to paint his nails rich, dark colors; deep maroons and velvety plums, or most often a black like the soot that was eternally caked into every crevice of their being. It was one of the few frivolities he allowed himself, always filching a bottle of polish or two from the dresser of whatever Piltie mansion they'd be pilfering that night. 

"They say eyes are the window to the soul, but that's false," he'd remarked once, as Vander watched him idly painting his nails a smoky gray. "It's the hands." And he'd held one up to his eyes, twisting it this way and that, and flashed a knife-like grin when he'd caught Vander staring, entranced, at his nimble, bone-white fingers. 

"And what do your hands say?" Vander had leaned over the bar, running a finger up his inner wrist, feeling a sense of victory as Silco's pulse quickened under his fingertip.

He was able to wrap his forefinger and thumb around Silco's bony wrist with room to spare, and held it in place while he made a show of inspecting it thoroughly. Silco let him, observing blankly as Vander tilted it up to catch the light, ran a light fingertip over the thick calluses built up on the palm and fingers, traced along the soot caked into the creases in his palm. 

"You tell me," Silco had said back, resting his head on the palm of the hand not held by Vander and looking up through hooded eyes with a quirked eyebrow and a snide twist of his lips. 

Vander hummed, pantomiming contemplation. "A hard worker," he'd said, tapping the calluses, meeting Silco's eyes as he spoke. "Strong an' independent. Capable of carrying a heavy load."

"Heavy loads, you say?" Silco had smirked, but Vander ignored the bait, tracing along his long fingers. 

"Not afraid to get dirty." Vander rubbed at a spot of soot on the side of his palm until it was smeared over his thumb as well. "But despite that, an attraction to beauty."

He raised Silco's fingers to admire the fresh coat of nail polish, the way it shimmered under the light, until Silco withdrew his hand, watching him with a contemplative look in his eyes.

"An attraction to beauty," he mused. "Are you calling yourself beautiful?"

"Are you saying you're attracted to me?" Vander had retorted. 

"Would I be here if I wasn't?" Silco had said wryly. "Or did you think I was screwing the barkeep for free refills of that watered-down swill you call whiskey?"

"Well, you certainly drink enough of it to keep me guessing," Vander laughed, and leaned far enough over the counter to close the distance between them with a kiss.

Now, Silco lays there, looking just as corpse-like as he had when Vander left him on the riverbed. His long, gorgeous fingers are broken, twisted into painful-looking contorted shapes. They look like sad pale twigs, crooked at bizarre angles and dotted with purple bruising. 

Vander fashions crude splints from spare wood he keeps for repairs. Benzo is watching him, so he resists the urge to press a kiss to each of Silco's broken fingers as he splints them, like he does for Vi and Powder (Between the two of them, they manage to accrue a dizzying amount of cuts, scrapes, and broken bones, and now whenever Vander bandages anything he automatically feels the need to "magic kiss the boo-boo better," even though they're both too old for that sort of nonsense by now).

Vander wouldn't even know where to start with Silco. 

There are a myriad of fresh burns and cuts littering his body, some that look like hot metal has been pressed against his skin until it seared like a steak, and others with almost elegant-looking tendrils of red, cracked skin extending from the central burn, as if he had been electrocuted.

When they turn him over so they can wrap bandages around his chest to hold his broken ribs in place, there are long bloody lines of whip marks on his back. Some need stitches. 

The whole time, he and Benzo hardly speak. The silence between them is punctuated only by occasional requests to pass the bandages or salve.

It's several hours, well past daybreak when they finish. Benzo collapses on a chair, head in his hands. Vander wordlessly brings him a drink. 

"He'll survive," Benzo says tonelessly. The hand, lifting the drink to his lips, is shaking. 

"Thank you." 

Benzo sighs, swirls the drink around in his hand, eyes following the ice cubes as they clink together lightly. "There's not much more I can do for him now. I have no idea what to do about the face, that—that eye—"

He shudders and takes a large gulp of his drink, grimacing as it goes down. "That wound looks older than the rest, but it's not properly healed—infected, by the looks of it. I can't even imagine how that one came about—must hurt something awful." 

Vander hangs his head and absentmindedly rubs the bracer on his arm. "That one was me," he admits. 

There's a clink as Benzo puts down his drink, and then he scoots next to Vander, wraps an arm around his shoulders. Vander leans into him, despite himself.

"You did what you had to," Benzo murmurs. When Vander shakes his head, he doubles down. "Silco never would have agreed to Grayson's deal. He’d’ve let the Lanes burn, so long’s it took a couple’a Enforcers with it.”

Vander says nothing, only stares morosely at his hands, so Benzo presses on.

"You did the right thing," he insists, giving Vander's shoulder a squeeze. "He couldn't see a lick past the end of his nose, nothing 'cept his ridiculous dream of Zaun." His voice hardens, turns mocking. "How many died on the bridge because he decided to get uppity? How many starved in the blockades after, or were beaten to death by Enforcers, or got shipped off to Stillwater?"

"None of that was his fault," Vander grumbles. 

"He threw the first cocktail. Fuck, Vander, he'd made crates of them. And what did he say to you after, when we'd tallied the dead?"

Vander groans and leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees and rubbing his forehead tiredly. "That it was an acceptable loss. That it was worth it if it taught Piltover to fear us."

He and Benzo have had this conversation hundreds of times, when Vander's deep in his drink and lonesome in the bar late at night. Missing the sound of a pen scratching and pages turning, a polished fingernail tapping the counter in thought, accompanying him as he polishes the glasses and sweeps the floor. Their shared, comfortable silence had been so loud, in retrospect. Vander doesn't think he'd ever experienced true silence until Silco was gone. 

"He never would've stopped," Benzo insists. "How many do you think would have died if he'd been allowed to keep going? How many more Bridge incidents? You know we can't fight Piltover. The only option is to work with them. That deal, the one that gave us peace? That got us the Lanes, less Enforcers wandering about, that opened the blockades, that got everyone back to work? He never would have let that happen. You had no choice, Vander. I'll tell you as often as you need to hear—Silco needed to die. You did what had to be done."

"Maybe you're right." Vander rubs his face, hard, as if attacking it with sandpaper. 

"Of course I'm right," Benzo asserts. "So what are we gonna do, now that the rat has crawled out of his hole?"

Vander sighs. "Don't talk about him like that," he says wearily. He groans again. "Maybe—maybe there's some way I can salvage this." 

"Stick that knife back in him and give it a twist," suggests Benzo. "Before he does it to you."

"Stop that," Vander chides, giving him a perfunctory slap on the arm. "I know you never liked him, but—he was like a brother to me. He might be a right dirty little bastard, but I miss him, despite everything that happened. And he came here, when he needed help. Maybe he feels the same."

"That's assuming he has feelings," mutters Benzo. But he slaps his knees and pushes himself to his feet, groaning as his joints pop.

"I'm gonna get me some shuteye," he declares. "You'd best get some yourself." He twists around, giving Vander a meaningful stare. "But make sure to lock up all the knives 'fore you do. Keep one under your pillow. Don't let your guard down 'round him just 'cause he's half dead." 

Vander sighs, gets to his feet as well. He shakes Benzo's hand. "Thanks," he says, sincerely. "Really. I owe you."

Benzo waves him off. "Just clear my tab, will you?"

"Done." Vander opens the door for him, squints in the artificial light. "Take care, now."

"I will. You look out for yourself, Vander," Benzo warns, leaving the Last Drop. "I'll be back tomorrow, make sure you haven't been gutted."

"I can handle him," Vander promises. "I killed him once, didn't I?"

Benzo purses his mouth. He wavers, looking as if he wants to say something, but ultimately gives Vander a final, silent wave and vanishes into the fog.

 

 

Notes:

TW: vomiting, being drugged without consent, mentions of possible SA, description of injuries, mentions of torture

i hope you enjoy! i love silco but unfortunately for him i also love whump.

also i realized after writing that in the show powder and vi never called 'vander' dad but it works for this fic so i'm leaving it in. sorry lol

Chapter 2

Notes:

TW in the endnotes.

Silco wakes with a jerk. A fresh wave of pain sears through his side and he bites back a groan. He's on a couch that stinks of cigarette smoke and spilled beer, the smell as nostalgic as it is comforting. As his eyes adjust to the dim light, he realizes where he is and it feels like a blow to the chest. Inconceivably, he is in his old office and hideout, the basement of the Last Drop. 

It's changed somewhat—his desk and chairs are nowhere to be seen, replaced by a chest of drawers with one leg missing, propped up on a stack of old books. There are stickers on the walls, and nonsensical crayon scribbles scattered here and there at about shin height on the clapboard. If he cranes his neck, he can see a pair of bunk beds behind him, the beds messy and unmade, littered with stuffed animals.

So Vander turned his office into a child's bedroom. Good to know. More importantly, how did he get here?

Silco closes his eyes and takes a long breath in through his nose, trying to force his heart to stop racing. It's hard to concentrate through the pain. His whole body feels like one giant, throbbing wound. 

The last thing he remembers… Volkage, chembaron of the Entresol, manufacturer and purveyor of the latest popular street drug, crystal ecstasy. His small, beady eyes and sagging jowls looming over Silco, meaty thumb and forefinger digging into his cheeks, forcing his jaw open. Feeding him a sickly sweet, viscous pink mixture and pinching his nose until he swallowed; his breath, hot and wet against Silco's neck.

“Our usual tactics don’t seem to be working on you,” he had said. His voice was a slimy thing; it oozed. Silco could practically feel the filmy residue of it on his bare skin. “Impressive, really. So we’ve decided to try some… baser methods to help you cooperate.”

He'd knelt down, unlocking the manacles on the chair legs holding Silco’s ankles in place. As he started the complicated process of unbuckling Silco’s breeches, Silco clamped his oily head between his thighs and swiftly broke his neck.

Convincing one of his henchmen to uncuff his hands had been simple, as had stealing his pistol and shooting everyone in the room dead. He staggered out of the cell, shooting his way out of Volkage's factory, taking a knife to the gut in the process, but with the adrenaline rushing through his system he hardly noticed.

Silco made sure to smash several chemlamps along the way to what he hoped was the exit, holding them to the blackout curtains long enough for them to catch fire. The flames ate through the flimsy fabric, and by the time Silco stumbled out of the factory and into the sour-smelling foggy night, the entire building was ablaze. He didn’t wait long enough to see what would happen when the fire reached the crystal ecstasy labs in the lower levels. 

From here his memory grows spotty. He remembers vomiting, trying to expel the drug from his system. The pain starting to kick in; the growing pressure to find somewhere safe, somewhere he recognized. A child’s voice—“Dad! There’s a dead guy in the basement!” And then, nothing.

He supposes that in his drugged, addled state, he must have dragged himself to the place he once considered safe. Home, even. He can scoff at his naivety now. Vander hasn’t killed him yet, but Silco doesn’t harbor any fancy pretenses that he won’t snap his neck the first chance he gets.

He tries to move, but pain sears through his abdomen and he falls back into the cushions, defeated. More than that, there's a chain cuffed to his ankle, secured to somewhere behind him, a pipe most likely. Silco is almost flattered that Vander considers him enough of a threat to tie up, even when he's in this state. 

With that thought, the basement door creaks open and Silco turns his head just in time to see it slam shut again, followed by the light pitter-patter of a child's footsteps. Moments later, the footsteps return, followed by two more sets, one heavy and booming, the other similar but less loud. 

Once more, the door opens, and the stairs creak painfully as Vander makes his way downstairs, followed closely by Violet and Powder. 

"Why are you here?" Vander looms over Silco, arms crossed over his broad chest. Silco tries to hide the intrinsic jolt of panic he feels at the sight, the way his body urges him to flee, flee and never look back before those arms are holding him down again and his lungs fill with filthy, poisonous water…

Silco realizes his breath has caught in his chest and forces himself to take a deep breath. He must not show weakness. Yet he can't resist turning his head to the side so he doesn't have to look at Vander anymore.

No, wrong move, because now he's not in his direct line of sight and he could—he could be slipping on his gauntlets right now, he could be readying his fists, he could be—anything. Silco jerks his head back up, meets Vanders eyes. He will not be intimidated. 

Silco wets his lips, forces a sneer. "It's nice to see you too, Vander." 

"Dad?" Powder pipes up, tugging at Vander's shirt. "Who is he?"

"Go upstairs," Vander commands, narrowing his eyes at Silco, an unspoken threat hanging between them. Keep your mouth shut or else. 

"But Vander-" protests Violet.

"Upstairs." Vander urges. 

"Why is his eye like that?" Powder asks, fully ignoring Vander's order. She tugs insistently at his shirt as if doing so could pull the answer out into the air.

"Oh, Powder," Silco rasps, turning his attention to her. "Don't tell me you've forgotten your Uncle Silly."

"What?"

"Huh? Vander, is he telling the truth? Vander?" Violet and Powder both erupt in confusion. 

Vander's mouth forms a grim line. He says nothing, merely glowers down at Silco even as his two daughters vie for his attention. 

"You can't be Uncle Silly," Violet decides. "He didn't look like- that. And he's dead, Vander said so."

"Violet!" Vander scolds, and she snaps her mouth shut in sullen silence. 

"Is that so?" Silco raises an eyebrow, even though it hurts, tugs at his ruined skin. "And how did he say I died?" 

"That's enough!" Vander shouts, and Silco can't stop the full-body flinch in time. Pathetic. "Girls, go back upstairs," he commands. Neither Violet nor Powder move. 

"Why does your voice sound different? And what happened to your eye?" Powder asks quietly. She's got a stuffed animal held to her chest and she looks genuinely worried, concerned, for him—for him!—her wide blue eyes damp with tears that have yet to fall.

Silco can't help but soften, somewhat. It's been years, but she's always been his favorite. He honestly didn't expect her to remember him at all, she was so young the last time he saw her. 

"I was—" Silco swallows, suddenly apprehensive. His eyes flick up to Vander, just for a split second, then back at Powder. "I was in a fight with someone, and they hurt me very badly. My voice box—that's the part in your throat where the sound comes from—got crushed, and my voice changed. I sound like this now. My eye, my face, it got hurt too and—you know how people tell you not to play in the Pilt?—Pilt water got in and made it worse." 

"Does it still hurt?" Powder asks, looking stricken. 

Silco can't meet her eyes now, either. "Yes," he admits, feeling Vander's gaze burning into him like fire. 

"But it'll heal, right? You'll get better," asserts Vi, putting an arm around Powder's shoulders. 

Silco fights a grimace. "No," he says. "It won't." He is suddenly aware of how much everything hurts. His scars itch and he wants to scratch them, but he can't even raise his arms. Even breathing is a struggle, his cracked ribs aching with every inhale. 

"Violet. Powder. Upstairs. Now." Vander's voice is a low rumble, eerily calm. There's no arguing with that tone of voice, and the girls both know it. They traipse upstairs miserably, casting a few lingering, guilty backwards glances at Silco.

They close the door behind them, and then it's just Silco and Vander, alone in the still, dark basement. 

Silco is the first to break the silence. "Poor Vander," he mocks. "Did killing me hurt your feelings? It must have been so hard for you." 

"What's hard is Felicia and Connoll not being around," Vander shoots back. "The girls, having to grow up without parents." 

Silco looks away. "I didn't mean for that to happen," he says tiredly. "You know I never wanted them dead."

"No," Vander agrees. "You wanted to kill some Enforcers and didn't care who would pay the price." 

"I wanted Zaun!" Silco snarls, eyes blazing. He tries to sit up, but a pitiful gasp of pain slips out and he settles for remaining where he is, as demeaning as it feels. "I wanted a future, for all of us, not just the Lanes!"

"If I hadn't stopped you, there wouldn't even be a Lanes! You would have gotten us all killed!" Vander slams a fist against his thigh and Silco flinches, his eye widening, tracking the movement of his fists. 

"So you stand by what you did, then," Silco surmises, still watching Vander's fists warily. "You killed me and you feel no remorse at all."

"Of course I do!" Vander growls. He can see the effect his mood is having on Silco. His body is tense all over, breathing shallow as if preparing to flee. His eye keeps darting all over the place—Vander's hands, his face, the hatch that leads to the outside, the door to the rest of the bar, as if mapping out potential escape routes. "I can never forgive myself for what I did to you. I should never have put my hands on you to begin with. I'm so sorry, Sil, really I am. For everything."

"Don't call me that," Silco snaps. "You've lost that right." He scowls, then winces as it tugs at his ruined eye. "I was an idiot for not leaving you the first time you hit me."

Pus dribbles from his eye socket, but he hardly seems to notice. "I thought that was how all relationships went. Too naive and loveblind to know any better. After all, I had always been getting smacked around, why should I expect you to be any different?"

"Silco…" Vander trails off. "I'm sorry." It's the only thing he can think to say. 

"I trusted you," Silco spits. "I never trusted anyone like I trusted you, and you betrayed me. You disfigured me, you strangled and drowned me in the Pilt, and then you just left me there. You didn't even have the decency to finish the job." 

"You stabbed me," Vander points out, though he regrets it the moment it leaves his lips. 

"You were killing me!" Silco snarls.

"You deserved it!" Vander shouts back, and Silco recoils. Raw, unfiltered hurt shows in his eye, in a brief tremble of his lips on the unscarred side of his face. Vander hadn't realized until then that Silco's whole left side of his face was paralyzed, and the knowledge leaves him feeling cold, hollow, more guilty than he'd like. 

"Felicia was my friend too," he says, quietly, and his voice shakes, just barely. "I never intended—I just wanted to help—"

"I don't care what you intended," Vander cuts him off. "The result is the same, no matter how good you claim your intentions might have been. Which I don't believe for a second, by the way. You threw the first cocktail. You started the riot. If it wasn't for you, they'd still be alive."

"The Enforcers brought high-power military grade weapons to a small protest," Silco argues back. "They were planning to make a demonstration out of us from the start. We had nothing but a crate of homemade explosives and our fists. It was already going to be a massacre, that's what they wanted. I wasn't going to let them think we'd go down easy. And neither was Felicia."

"You keep her name out of your mouth," Vander growls, hand twitching into a fist. "She died because of you."

"At least she died fighting! You just gave up." Silco spits, full of venom.

His eye blazes with hatred and Vander wants to hit him for it, for insisting that Felicia's death was somehow justified because it happened for his cause, for not having the decency to regret his actions that led to her death. For not dying quietly and staying dead. Then he realizes there's nothing stopping him, so he does, curling his fist back and letting it fly into Silco's jaw.

His face snaps back with a pained yelp. He clearly hadn't been expecting the hit and lays there, stunned, for a moment, breathing heavily. Then, without warning, he lifts his head slightly and spits a globule of blood mixed with saliva directly into Vander's face.

Just for that, Vander hits him again, cracking him across the nose. He feels the sickening crunch of cartilage under his knuckles, the loud snap of bone cracking accompanying Silco's hoarse cry of pain. 

For a moment, Vander thinks he knocked Silco out, but his eyes are open in a look of sheer panic and terror. His mouth opens and closes and he makes these wet, gasping noises, like a fish on dry land, convulsing slightly. One hand claws at his neck with enough force to leave long red scratches gauged into his skin. Vander can't figure out what's going on until he realizes that Silco is choking—he's on his back and he just broke his nose, so the blood is flowing down his sinuses and throat, suffocating him. 

Quickly Vander clasps Silco's shoulder and turns him onto his side. He spits out blood, retching and wheezing, tears pooling in his one good eye. Any composure he had previously is lost—his whole body is trembling, eye frozen in distant terror. 

"Sorry," Vander mumbles automatically. He reaches out to touch Silco's shoulder in a meagre attempt at comfort, but Silco flinches hard at the movement and curls in on himself, breath beginning to quicken. 

Vander takes a step back in the hopes that might lessen Silco's panic, but it seems to have little, if any, effect.

"I'm sorry—" Silco gasps, inbetween short, shallow breaths. "Vander—please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—I didn't mean to—Vander, please—" He chokes on nothing, rapidly approaching hyperventilation. His body twists and convulses, fingers clawing at empty air. 

Watching him, Vander feels sick. At the time, he hadn't heard Silco's pleas over the roaring in his head, hadn't seen the fear and betrayal on his face. His memory of the incident is clouded in red and choppy at best. 

Vander knows he will never be able to forgive himself. But life is busy, with raising the girls, running the bar, and keeping the Lanes in order, and it's been enough to keep him distracted, keep him from lingering on unpleasant, guilt-filled memories, for the most part.

But Silco… Silco will never be able to forget. Every time he looks in a mirror, he'll see the gruesome reminder of what Vander did to him. There will never be a day where he won't be forced to contend with the memories of being beaten, strangled, and drowned. 

Silco is still twitching, sobbing silently. The hyperventilation seems to have abated somewhat though, so Vander supposes that's good. He used to be able to calm Silco down when he'd wake from one of his nightmares, or fly into a panic or rage-filled frenzy. In fact, he was the only one who could, and he'd held it as a sort of pride. The sole person who Silco absolutely, above everyone else, trusted and found comfort in.

Now, he is the source of Silco's nightmares. Years worth of careful trust he'd built up with that scared little sump-rat he'd chased down and cornered in an alleyway for filching his lunch, destroyed, with no hope of ever getting it back. 

Vander watches Silco, not impassionately, for a moment longer before deciding there's nothing he can do so there's no point in staying. He pulls the blanket over Silco's thin, quaking shoulders, a stab of pain going through his chest as he instinctively flinches at the movement, cowering away from him even when his eyes are far off, seeing something that isn't there. His lips form soundless words Vander can't make out and doesn't really want to. 

"I'm sorry, Sil," Vander says to him, before forcing himself to turn away and walk up the stairs back to the bar. "I really am." He turns off the lights and closes the door, guilt stabbing at him when he turns the lock. It hurts, but he can't trust Silco. Not anymore.

---

966 AN

Vander's first impression of Silco had been that of a pitiful, pathetic filthy little thing, hiding behind greasy, matted long black hair that was teeming with lice.

His clothes were ragged and far too big, shirt perpetually falling off his bony shoulder, and similarly afflicted by fleas and with a strong odor of burning trash. Vander felt sorry for the kid and let him keep the stolen lunch, and like a mangy, starved stray cat that has been kicked one too many times to risk getting close enough to touch, yet still desperate for any scrap of affection, the kid took to following him at a distance. For over a week he became a perpetual shadow of Vander. He'd hear tiny footsteps from behind him, but every time he turned around he would just barely catch a glimpse of lank, oily black hair before the kid would disappear round a corner or down an alley. 

Finally, tired of this charade of cat-and-mouse, and fed up with Benzo's incessant teasing about his "guttersnipe stalker," Vander took to leaving out food at night. He'd sit a couple paces away to make sure no one else took it, and waited. The first couple times, the kid would dart forward, grab the food, and run away without even a second of eye contact, cringing away from Vander's gaze as if it hurt to even be seen. 

Some days the kid wouldn't show up at all, and more often than not they'd have a limp or new bruises blooming like purple and yellow carnations under their skin. They always hid behind their hair, so Vander never even got a full look at their face until about a month after he first cornered the kid in an alleyway, when the kid finally, finally relaxed enough to sit where Vander had placed the food and eat it there, albeit at a safe distance of a couple paces or so. 

The kid had a black eye and bruised cheekbone, and was probably male, Vander deduced, though he could never really be sure. The kid was maybe ten or eleven, still at that androgynous age where sex was indistinguishable one way or the other. They were awkwardly lanky, all knobbly knees and pointy elbows, as if their limbs had grown first and the rest of them had yet to catch up, and so skinny and covered in scabies and flea bites it made Vander itch just to look at them. 

That was the first time the kid spoke, too: a simple, barely-voiced, "thanks," and then scarpered before Vander even had a chance to reply. It was three more times before Vander got the kid's name (Silco); and five before he found out where he lived (the Slums, though he came to Vander's neighborhood near the Black Lanes to pickpocket and steal food). 

Benzo had warned him against collecting strays, as he called it- "too many mouths to feed and not enough to go around," he'd say, and while he wasn't exactly wrong, it was just one kid and he hardly even ate that much compared to what Vander or Benzo could easily put away.

Besides, Vander and Benzo's dads were both Bilgewater sailors on the same shipping (smuggling) boat, not due back in Zaun for another three months; and their mothers both worked long shifts and slept at the factory dorms most nights, too tired to make it back home. There weren't really any adults around to notice that they had somehow suddenly gained an extra child.

So despite Benzo's complaints, Vander continued feeding Silco. Silco kept showing up, and at one point he just never really left.

When Vander found him sleeping under his porch, he let him inside to sleep on the couch. And when the kid had screaming fits of nightmares that left him sobbing, insensate, and clutching to Vander with every ounce of strength in his ropey arms, Vander let him sleep in his bed with him for the night. And when it became apparent that the nightmares were a regular thing, well, it was just natural for Silco to share Vander's bed permanently. 

Vander had always been chubby and prone to outbursts of anger from a young age. He’d grown prematurely, bigger and stronger than the other neighborhood kids to the point where parents would urge their children not to play with him for fear of Vander accidentally hurting them (which was a valid fear, as it had happened on several occasions).

For Vander, having someone who saw in his stocky frame and thick arms safety and protection, rather than a litany of potential acts of violence, was a huge boost to his self-esteem. Sure, he had Benzo, but Benzo was two years older and could be a bit of a bully. Plus he was Vander's cousin and they lived together, so he didn't really count. Silco, though- Silco was all his. 

"Aren't you scared of me?" Vander whispered to Silco one night in bed, Silco curled up by his side.

Silco opened one eye. "No?" he said sleepily. "Why would I be?"

"Be—because I'm, you know," Vander gestured at his body, roughly three times the size of Silco's. At thirteen, already one arm was thicker than both Silco's legs, despite them being barely three years apart. "Bigger and stronger and all that." 

Silco just shrugged. "I'm good with a knife," he yawned. "If you try to hurt me, you'll get hurt worse." He opened both his eyes, frowning as a thought came to him. "Do you want to hurt me?" he asked warily.

"No!" said Vander, a bit too loudly, causing Benzo to throw a dirty sock he had lying on the ground by his mattress at them and whisper-yell at them to go the fuck to sleep. 

"Of course not!" Vander continued, in a lower whisper. "I would never hurt you!"

Silco nodded. "Then that's all right then, isn't it?" He closed his eyes again, snuggling in a bit closer to Vander. "Besides," he said, already half-asleep, "I like that you're big. It makes me feel safe. Plus," he pressed the soles of his ice-cold feet to Vander's legs, "you're warm." He yawned again, scratched his nose, and promptly fell back asleep. 

Notes:

TW: mentioned child abuse, abusive relationship

hi hi me again!
this chapter is kinda short sorry so i decided to post it relatively quickly.

originally i wanted this fic to be a sorta typical hurt/comfort and reconciliation fic (and it is still that, dont worry lol) but then realized while writing it that vander and silco are both too fucked up to just... forgive and get back together just like that. toxic old man yaoi for the win!!

disclaimer: i am in no way trying to romanticize or glamourize or eroticize abusive relationships, i do not condone abusive partners, if anyone ever treats you like vander, dump their ass and run!
i am writing them in a mutually destructive and unhealthy relationship because to me that's more interesting to write, read, and explore. this is a work of fiction, please don't come at me lol

Chapter 3

Notes:

TW: abusive relationship/intimate partner violence, Vander

Silco doesn’t remember falling asleep, but at some point he wakes up in darkness, nose and jaw throbbing painfully. There’s a small nightlight, and through its meager glow he can make out the outline of a bucket, and next it to some toilet paper and a bottle of water.

It hurts to sit up, and even more to stand. He has to hold onto the wall for support as he pisses into the bucket, but he’s grateful that at least Vander gave him something to use, rather than forcing him to call for help or more likely, lay in his own urine. Then a wave of intense sadness, bordering on grief, washes over him, weighing him down. To have come to the point where he is grateful for a bucket to piss in, that the chain around his ankle is long enough to permit him at least a minute degree of movement. And by Vander, no less. 

Silco collapses back onto the couch. He pulls the threadbare blanket Vander left over himself, up to his nose and breathes in the scent deeply. It stinks of sweat and cigarettes, but it’s better than the hot, musty smell of his own urine. 

The blanket isn’t large enough to cover him fully, and his bare feet poke out, frigid in the unheated basement. Everything hurts. His bad eye stings, and just moving his head makes it feel like he’s being stabbed in his eye socket.

Silco isn’t sure how long the chembaron had him for, but he thinks five days at the least. Singed warned him not to go over ten days without an injection, fourteen as the absolute limit. Any more than that and the infection will eat into his brain and cause irreparable damage. Well, more than has already been caused.

For the first time in a while, Silco is completely at a loss of what his next actions should be. Even if Vander lets him leave, he can’t go back to where he was squatting, an abandoned dry goods store down in the Fissures, cloaked under the poisonous cover of the Gray. Someone sold him out, and the place is almost certainly being watched. It’s a good thing he stores all his files in a separate location, so it's not a huge loss, but it does put him in the irritating position of having to start all over, again. 

The only person he can be sure had nothing to do with this whole affair is Singed, who has no stake in Silco’s workings but is well invested in keeping his “favorite test subject” alive. Vander, he’s pretty sure has no idea what he’s been up to and definitely isn’t working for any chem baron, but he can’t trust Vander not to turn on him and finish what he failed to do three years ago. 

Still, in the state he’s in, he can hardly even walk. He has no choice but to rely on Vander not to kill him, just long enough until he can escape. The very thought of it fills him with dread and a searing anger, rage at Volkage for putting him in this situation, at Vander for taking him in and bandaging his wounds, only to cuff him by the ankle like an animal and hit him, even going so far as to break his nose. 

Just like old times, Silco thinks bitterly. Though Vander had never hurt him that badly, before the Pilt. He’d underestimate his strength and grip Silco’s arm a little bit too tight, leaving bracelets of purple bruises, or shove him around with too much force, often resulting in cracked bones, lumps on his head where his skull was knocked back against the wall. At his worst, he’d punch Silco in the gut, causing him to double over, retching and clutching his stomach pathetically. He’d be sore for days, even moving around the bar a struggle. 

It was these times that Vander was at his sweetest. He’d kneel at Silco’s bedside and apologize profusely, kissing Silco’s knuckles tearfully and promising to never hurt him again. He'd say he loved Silco more than anything and that he never meant to hurt him; that his anger got the better of him but it wouldn’t happen again, he swore, never again. 

Vander's weak-willed regret and his overbearing sympathies made Silco cringe. Just own it, he'd want to say. You knocked me around. So what? We both know I can take it. And that I'll get my comeuppance, one way or the other.

Silco couldn't understand Vander's blubbering guilt. He'd much rather Vander treat him like an equal, rather than tiptoe around him, slinking like a chastised dog. Hell, he'd be more angry if Vander tried to pull his punches when they fought, as if he didn't respect Silco to be an equally dangerous opponent. Vander was just physically stronger, and sometimes he lost himself. That was fine. Silco could always bring him back, and he knew Vander would do the same for him, too, when the rage that was constantly simmering under his skin boiled over.

Besides, they both knew Silco could give back as good as he got—what he lacked in physical prowess he more than made up for with impressive array of knives and quick wit. He knew just what to say to hit a man in all his weak spots, eviscerating him verbally until his ego was a pile of shreds. It was like foreplay, almost; Silco and Vander dancing around each other, going in circles, lashing out with tongue, blade, and fists alike. 

And when the adrenaline and hot blood scourging through them reached a pitch, they'd fall on each other, tearing at their clothes. They'd fight in a different way, biting and clawing and begging for release. When it was over, they'd collapse, sweaty and satiated, sporting equivalent numbers of bruises and bite marks. For a while, all would be well again. Their plans were aligned, the sex sweet, words tender.

Inevitably, like trying to kill a weed by chopping off the buds rather than pulling it out, roots and all, their relationship would sour again. The cycle would continue. 

Despite this, Silco never expected Vander would ever properly hurt him. Vander's rage was a part of him, and it was justified. How could one born and raised in Zaun not be angry, not have the desire to tear down Piltover brick by brick with their bare hands? The only difference was that he actually had the power to do that, and Silco loved him for it. If that anger was occasionally aimed at him, so be it.

Ironically, it was Felicia who first noticed and grew concerned. Silco remembers her inadvertently witnessing a particularly fierce bout between him and Vander, where Vander had slammed him against the wall so hard that he bit through his lip with the whiplash, then kicked him in the stomach when he collapsed on the floor, causing him to curl up in agony like a pillbug. She had shoved Vander off of him, yelling and jabbing fiercely at him until he stalked off, cowed.

Connoll had come and together they'd scraped him off the floor and half-dragged him to their flat, Silco's arms slung over each of their shoulders. He was dizzy and delirious with concussion and could hardly walk straight. In the end, Connoll had had to carry him up the stairs on his back in a fireman's hold. 

"You don't have to put up with this," Felicia had told him, dabbing at his bloody lip with a rag. 

"I love him," said Silco, because it was the simplest explanation. 

Felicia frowned at that, leaning back and twisting the bloodied rag between her hands. "I love him too," she'd said, brow furrowed. "Just as I love you. You two are like brothers to me. I don't want to see you hurt, either of you. Least of all you hurting each other."

Silco gave a half-hearted shrug. "It's different with me and Vander."

She eyed him for a moment. "If Connoll ever hit me, the way Vander hit you tonight, what would you do?" she asked.

"I'd kill him," said Silco, rolling his eyes at the futility of the question. "Obviously." He knew what she was getting at, but it wasn't like that, not with them.

Vander's violence was as much a part of him as his kindness. Whereas Connoll was never a violent man to begin with. Loving Vander meant loving all of him, including the kiss of his fists and the heaviness of his hands. "But it's not the same," he insisted. "Don't look at me like that, it's not."

Felicia sighed. "He could kill you, you know," she said. "One of these days." 

At that, Silco had scoffed disbelievingly. "He won't. He'd never. He doesn't—he doesn't hurt me bad, it's nothing serious, really—just a sort of game we play."  

She watched him doubtfully. "Has he always hit you?"

"No!" Silco insisted, then winced as a sharp pain ran through his skull. "Just—just recently. Past year or two, maybe. You know how it's been, with me organizing, and him manning the bar—we don't always see eye to eye anymore. That's all, it's—"

"You're making excuses." Felicia cut him off. "He didn't used to, and then he did. And let me guess—it's getting worse. Less time in between fights. He hits harder than he did before, stops being afraid to leave marks."

Silco pressed his lips together, saying nothing. A chill ran down his spine. She was right. He'd noticed himself, that the game they had been playing had gotten… fouler, as of late. Silco's barbs turning pointed and nasty, Vander's fists flying out at increasingly slight provocations. 

"If you really love him, you want to stay with him, then you have to work this shit out," Felicia insisted. "Talk to Vander. Tell him if he ever hits you again, you're gone. And you—you've got to stop egging him on. Stop flirting with bar patrons to make him jealous, or pointing out his mistakes for everyone to see—don't give me that look, you literally do it in front of us all the time." She reached out, put a hand on his. Her calloused miner's hands were rough and weathered like bedrock. "That's the only option. It's either fixing your shit, leaving him entirely, or just waiting for the day when he inevitably kills you. Trust me."

Silco swallowed, looking at her hand on his. "Okay," he'd said, throat dry, and intertwined their fingers. "I'll figure something out. We'll make it work." 

Silco had slept on their couch for several nights, helping out with childcare in the meantime. He read bedtime stories to Violet and Powder, played darts with Vi and made various noises of amazement at the abstract neon works of art Powder presented him with. He returned to the Last Drop with hope in his chest. 

Two weeks later, Vander drowned him in the Pilt. 

 

Silco shivers at the memory and pulls the blanket tighter around himself. He hates his past self, almost as much as he hates Vander. How weak and pathetic he was. Desperate for Vander's love and willing to settle for not even the bare minimum of human decency if it meant he had him all to himself. 

This time, he swears, he will not settle. If Vander ever lays a hand on him again, he'll cut his fingers off, one by one. The old Silco, the weak Silco, died in the Pilt and good fucking riddance. He doesn't need Vander anymore, doesn't need anyone. He'll free Zaun by his own damn self. He'll show them all.

---

967 AN

As was ever the case in Zaun, it was inevitable that the good times would not last. 

Around eight months since Silco had surreptitiously moved in with Vander and Benzo, a tall, thin man with a hooked nose, thick black hair, and icy eyes just like Silco's came round, pounding on the door with such force Vander thought it might splinter before he could even open it in time. 

"Where's Sil," he demanded. 

Vander wrinkled his brow, feigning innocence. "Who?" he asked. He was not a convincing actor. 

The man just shoved him aside and stepped in, seizing the first item he saw, which was a mug of tea, and throwing it at the wall. It shattered in a spectacular explosion of tea and porcelain, leaving a brown dripping stain on the wallpaper. "Sil!" he barked. "I know you're here, you little shit."

Before Vander could say anything, Silco emerged from behind the couch, shaking. Instantly the man grabbed him by his hair, pulling him up so high that Silco was stumbling on the tips of his toes just to keep his scalp from being ripped off. 

"So this is where you've been," he sneered. "Thought you could slip one over on me, did you? Run off with me best silver, pawned it no doubt, 'n keep all the coin yerself, eh?" He dropped Silco suddenly, kneeing him hard in the gut as he fell. Silco collapsed, wheezing, to the floor, and immediately curled up into a little ball, tucking his legs into his chest and covering his head with his arms. It was a fluid, practiced motion, one that he clearly had enough experience with for it to appear natural, second nature. 

The man raised his foot and stomped down on Silco's exposed ribs, hard. There was a loud crack, and Silco screamed. Vander, for all his righteous consideration of himself as Silco's protector, was still just a thirteen year old boy, and therefore absolutely terrified, frozen into inaction. 

"Filthy—little—brat," the man spat, punctuating each word with a kick to Silco's midsection. Silco cried out in pain at each kick, and finally Vander found the courage to move. 

"Stop hurting him!" he yelled, and barrelled into the man with his shoulder, knocking him to the ground. 

The man groaned and sat up, rubbing his head. If he was angry before, now he looked furious, almost purple with rage. "You fucking little—" he started, and got to his feet, drawing a knife from inside his jacket. Vander raised his hands into fists like a boxer he'd seen at a cage match and took a nervous step back. 

"Da, no!" With shaking hands, Silco crawled to his hands and knees, then managed to stumble to his feet, standing in between the man and Vander. He was doubled over, one arm still protectively circled around his abdomen, but he glared up at the man with seething eyes and gritted teeth. 

"I'm sorry," he forced out. "I'll give it back, honest. This—this was all me, so don't—please don't hurt him, Da." 

The man's eyes narrowed. He looked for a moment like he was considering Silco's words, then curled his lip and wordlessly shoved him aside, striding boldly over to where Vander was standing, twirling his knife in his hand as he went. 

"I think," he said idly, "that you both could learn a lesson on what happens—" He slashed out with his knife and Vander dodged to the side, but just barely, and now his back was against the wall. "—When people disrespect me." He lashed out a second time. Again Vander ducked, but this time the knife nicked the left side of his head as he went down. It was a thin cut, but instantly blood welled up and started dripping down into his eye, obscuring his vision. 

Vander blinked desperately, trying to guard his head with one hand and wipe the blood from his eye with the other, but he couldn't see properly. There was a blur of motion, a knife swiping just by his face and then—

A thick, fleshy puncturing noise, followed by a gurgle, then a low moan. Vander wiped his eye, blinking, only to see the man sink to his knees then crumple to the floor, blood spurting out of a thick gash in his neck. Behind him stood Silco, panting, eyes wide with panic. Clutched in his hand so tight it pierced his skin was a thick shard of the mug the man had smashed against the wall just minutes earlier. 

The man pressed a shaking hand against the gash in his neck, but Silco must have stabbed him directly in the artery, and already a huge puddle of blood had formed beneath him. 

"Sil—you—" the man wheezed, pale and shaking. Silco dropped to his knees, blood soaking through his pants immediately. His lips twisted and he raised the shard again, plunging it into the man's chest with a feral cry of anguish. Blood splattered across his face and hands like a pox.

Vander watched, horrified, too stunned to speak, as Silco stabbed the man—who by this point Vander was pretty sure was his own father—again and again, mouth torn in a terrible, sobbing wail. 

"Sil—Silco, stop!" Vander finally managed to speak, voice shaking so hard he could barely form the words. "He's already dead—Silco, for fuck's sake, stop!"

Silco paused mid-motion and looked up at Vander, as if just remembering he was there. His eyes focused somewhat and he let the shard drop from his hand. He had sliced open his palm in his furor, deep enough that Vander could see a glisten of muscle, but hardly seemed to notice.

"He… he was going to hurt you," he said in a tiny voice, sounding incredibly young and lost. "I couldn't let him—he was going to hurt you." Tears tracked a clear path through the blood staining his face and he reached out a hand to Vander, his eyes pleading.

Vander couldn't help it—he flinched away. He tried to fix his expression, to display something other than horror and dismay, but his face felt stuck, his body frozen save for the instinct to flee, to not let Silco touch him. 

Silco's face crumpled. More tears rolled down his cheeks, dyed pink by the time they dripped off his chin. "Vander, please," he pleaded. "I only—I only wanted to help, I didn't mean—"

"What the fuck is happening." Benzo interrupted, stepping through the still-open doorway and dropping his bag on the floor with a thud. He looked down. "Oh, Holy Janna." He took a stumbling step back, then another. "What. What the fuck. What have you done?"

He tore at his hair, distraught. "You!" he pointed a shaking finger at Vander. "You brought this—this freak, that filthy little sump-rat into our home—I told you, I told you he was no good—fuck, oh, fuck!" He paced in circles, hands on his head. He looked down momentarily and saw his boots were tracking blood on the floor and let out a little shriek. "We can't have Enforcers coming here, Van! If they start sniffing around, they'll find our dads' gear!"

"I'm sorry," Silco sobbed, completely coming undone in a way Vander had never seen before, not even in his worst night terrors or crying fits. "He was going to hurt Vander—I didn't know what else to do—" 

"Bullshit." Benzo stomped over to Silco, on his knees beside his father's body, and yanked him up roughly by the elbow. When Silco's legs failed, shaking too much to support him, Benzo simply dragged him to the doorway. "Vander, you stay here. I'm taking this one to the station." 

"No—wait," Vander tried to say, but his jaw was stuck, voice useless. He could only watch, frozen and pressed against the wall, as Benzo dragged a sobbing, tearstained and blood-drenched Silco out the door. Already a small group of rubberneckers was forming, old women in headcloths and lace aprons whispering amongst themselves and pointing. 

"Vander!" Silco was shrieking, voice desperate and hoarse. It sounded like the cry of a dying bird. "Vander!"

 

Notes:

every morning silco looks at himself in the mirror and says to himself, "you are a badass bitch. you feel nothing and piltover will be crushed to dust beneath your heels." and then he immediately goes to chainsmoke while listening to old records on repeat and definitely does not cry whenever "our love" comes on. he's so totally over it, you guys.

ive been really enjoying the responses i got to the last two chapters so i figured i might as well go ahead and post the third chapter because, well.... why not :D

Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Take Two

Summary:

Soooo I ended up rewriting this chapter, oops.
The first part of chapter 4 is the same, but from the flashback (969 AN) onwards, it's completely different, so even if you've already read chapter 4, please just read the second part because a lot changes!

Notes:

so i was looking up information about 19th century coal mining for the next flashback section i'm writing, and realized that the first version of this chapter was Not Historically Accurate!! (gasp) and because that is Unacceptable to me i ended up researching 19th century shaft coal mining as well as blasting methods/roles and occupations within the mines and on the surface, etc and got a bit carried away...

yes i completely rewrote the flashback scene set in the coal mines.
oh also i made a cover because i'm cringe and i wanted to

im so sorry but please do read the NEW & IMPROVED part 2 of chapter 4!! otherwise the rest of the fic will not make sense.... ahaha... sorry.....

 

The next time Silco wakes, it's to a fiercely whispered argument between two young voices, a mere couple of feet away. 

"Hurry up, go empty the piss bucket! It stinks in here!"

"Why do I have to be the one to empty the piss bucket?" Powder complains. 

"Because I'm oldest and I said so." Violet crosses her arms. Neither of them seem to notice that Silco is awake and watching them. He makes no move to change the current state of affairs. 

"You always say that! It's so not fair, I'm telling Vander." Powder pouts, but picks up the bucket with one hand, holding it out dramatically as far away from her and pinching her nose shut with the opposite hand as she plods up the stairs, floorboards creaking beneath her slight weight.

Silco shuts his eye quickly, in case Vi turns and sees him watching. He's not entirely sure why he feels the need to hide, to lie in wait collecting information by eavesdropping on two literal children, but he does so anyway.

Powder is back within a minute, darting down the stairs and hopping off the last two. 

"He's still not awake?" she whispers, already affixed to Violet's side. Without waiting for an answer, she declares, "I'm gonna wake him up."

Silco decides now is as good a time as ever to make his wakefulness known. "No need," he rasps, drawing the thin blanket away from his face with one shaking hand. His third and fourth finger on his right hand are bandaged together, and it makes grasping the edge of the fabric tricky. "I just woke up." He forces a minute smile.

Powder instantly darts to his side, but Vi is reluctant, staying where she is and eyeing him suspiciously, her arms folded.

"Are you really Uncle Silly?" she asks, jerking her chin up in an attempt at intimidation. It's a gesture Silco recognizes from Vander, and it sends pangs of both fondness and loneliness through his chest. 

"Cross my heart, hope to die," he promises, making the familiar gesture weakly. 

"Lemme see your ear," Powder demands, and without waiting for a response, kneels down and brushes a lock of greasy hair away from his right ear facing her. She squints at him for a moment, then turns back to Vi, giving her a thumbs-up. "He's got the same piercing holes," she says, and stands back up.

She grins down at him. One of her canines is missing and he's momentarily startled until he remembers—she'd be around eight or nine by now. He hadn't been around to see her lose her first baby tooth, he realizes.

With Vi they had made a celebration of it, closed the Last Drop for a night and had everyone over. She'd been presented with a toy hammer which she then used to torture them endlessly for months by whacking anything and everything within grabbing distance, until the hammer was mysteriously "lost" in the basement of the Last Drop. Maybe it was still here, hidden under the loose floorboard Vander used to hide the good Noxian wine back in their bootlegging days. 

Nostalgia battles fury, anger at Vander for stealing this from him. Not only was he pronounced dead to the world, he missed out on so many important moments with Powder and Violet, his own godchildren, that he'll never get back. He can't afford to let his rage consume him, not in front of the girls, so he swallows it down for now. 

"C'mere," he says, and holds his arms out, ignoring the pain that shoots through his chest and side. Powder rushes into his arms immediately, and he can't stop the pained grunt that escapes as she jostles his injuries, but when she tries to jerk away, concerned, he puts an arm around her thin shoulders and holds her to him.

He hardly even notices the pain—brushing a hand through her vivid blue hair and pressing a kiss to her forehead is the greatest bliss he's experienced in a long while. Her shoulders quake and there's a hot wetness dripping onto his chest where her face is, nose smushed against his collarbone. Her breath is damp and stuttering as she sobs, "I m-missed you," voice muffled. 

"I missed you too," Silco admits, and if his good eye is feeling a bit misty, it must be from the dust in the air of the mildewy basement. He raises his head slightly to meet Violet's gaze where she's standing, chewing her lip, torn between going to hug Silco like a kid or not giving in and remaining (in her own eyes) a cool, aloof, almost-teenager. "I missed both of you," Silco says quietly. Violet caves, kneeling down next to Powder, one hand on her back and one around Silco's neck. 

"We thought you were dead," she says, voice thick. Powder continues to cry silently into his chest. 

"I almost was," Silco confesses, putting his other arm around her and petting her hair. She's cut it short and shaved on the sides, and he runs his crooked fingers over the stubble on the back of her neck. "I was—" he almost says lucky, then cuts himself short. Lucky is not what he'd use to describe waking up on Singed's operation table, the months of torture that followed.

"I survived," he settles for. It's close enough to the truth, even though sometimes, when the pain in his eye and shattered face is excruciating to the brink of unbearability, when the hate and the rage that burns in his chest feels like it's tearing him apart, he wishes he hadn't. 

"Why didn't you come back." He feels Powder's betrayal as much as he hears it. Her voice vibrates like the call of an insect against his ribs. 

Silco sniffs, throat constricting. He blinks furiously with his remaining eyelid, teeth biting into his bottom lip to keep from making a sound even as the corners of his mouth waver, droop downwards. "I wanted to."

He barely dares to voice the whisper, and his chest seizes suddenly. A tear escapes the corner of his eye, travels down his hollow cheekbone and lands in Powder's hair. "I wanted to come back so bad." His voice quivers traitorously, ribs aching with the effort of containing what could either be a sob or a scream. His damn eye continues leaking, tears dotting Powder's hair like dew as she soaks his thin shirt with her own. 

Silco hates himself. He cannot bear to be so weak, pathetic, crying alongside literal children.  

He knows, he knows he cannot let himself be this sentimental- he needs to be strong, unfettered by the useless bonds of empathy, or he will never be able to do what he knows he'll need to do. He must harden his heart to anything that could stand in his way or could potentially be a liability, and yet. And yet. He cannot bear to let these two little girls, these two insignificant, useless, sniveling children go. He hates Vander for tearing them away from him and he hates himself for caring so much in the first place. 

Holding Vi and Powder close, feeling their breaths tickle against his skin, he can feel his old, discarded, weak self, the version of Silco that loved and was killed by it, resurfacing. It's as if he's wrapped his hands around his ribcage like the bars of a jail cell and is prying him open, crawling out of his carcass.

He hates, he hates, but Gods does he love as well.

The tears continue to fall and it's Vi who breaks away first, wiping her nose on the back of her hand and standing up, glaring down at him. "So why didn't you?" she demands, hands on her hips. Her eyes are still rimmed red, cheeks shiny. She looks so much like Felicia in that moment that the ache in Silco's chest only grows. 

"I—" Silco opens his mouth. A thousand excuses flit through his mind, none of them sufficient.

Thankfully, he's saved from having to answer when the basement door swings open, making him jerk at the sudden noise. Powder jolts with him, but doesn't leave, her arms tightening around his neck. She's stopped crying, but she seems determined to continue to hold on to him like a particularly stubborn barnacle. Silco can't say he really minds, but he's worried how Vander will respond, if he'll anger at seeing Powder and Vi with him.

Let him be angry, he thinks viciously, and adjusts his hand on the back of Powder's head. He strokes her hair comfortingly as he aggressively smears the tear tracks off his cheek with the palm of his other hand. 

Vander's footsteps are thunderous as he descends the stairs. He stops at the foot of the stairs, a steaming bowl of what looks like porridge in one hand.

Silco watches the way his eyebrows draw together, his eyes scanning Violet and then Powder, kneeling next to the couch, flung over Silco. His gaze narrows in on Silco's hand on the back of her head and his expression darkens. 

"Powder, Violet," Vander says, a forced joviality to his voice, though the tension is so palpable the air practically rings with it. "Thought I told you not to come down here." 

"Powder wanted to see him," Violet explains. 

Vander nods once, slowly. "I can see that," he says. "Powder, let Silco go. Give the poor man a rest." He's never been a good actor, and his awkward, fake lightheartedness is grating. 

Powder shakes her head, smearing snot across Silco's chest and shoulder. "Mm-mm," she denies, hugging him even tighter. Silco doesn't mind the pain; the way Vander's expression twists as if he's been forced to swallow a pint of lemon juice more than makes up for it. 

"She's fine as she is," Silco says, giving Powder a reassuring pat on the shoulder. 

Vander ignores him. "Powder." He raises his voice, only slightly, but it's enough to make Silco stiffen, eye widening momentarily before he forces his face back into its previous nonchalant expression. Powder doesn't notice, but Violet frowns, looking between the two of them, a puzzled look on her face. 

"Leave her." Silco's voice is low, a thrum of danger hidden just below the surface.

Vander's shoulders stiffen. "You need to eat. You can't while you're lying down with her half on top of you. You hear that, Powder, sweetheart? Up you go, let Uncle Silco have his porridge." At that, Powder's arms loosen and she draws away reluctantly, sniffling. Her face is blotchy and red, bangs sticking up and messy, eyes and nose red and her lips set in a pout. 

"It's alright, Pow-Pow," Silco reassures her. "You can sit next to me, how about that, yeah?"

She's already nodding, but Vander interrupts with a firm, "No." Silco shoots him a warning glare, but he takes no notice. "You girls have your breakfast all ready upstairs. Go on, eat it before it gets cold. I'll stay down here, got to have a talk with Uncle Silco." 

Vi is still watching them, frowning as she catalogues the way Silco tenses when Vander speaks. The way his fingers tremble like dead leaves as he brushes through Powder's hair one last time, fixing her bangs and cupping her cheek briefly, all while Vander glowers down at him.

She's still frowning, trying to process the bizarre, fraught nature of their interactions, as she takes Powder's hand and leads her upstairs.

---

Vander sets the porridge down on the floor temporarily and goes to grab two pillows from the girls' bunk beds. Silco watches him warily, eye narrowing as he approaches. 

"Right," Vander says. "Let's sit you up." He reaches out for Silco's shoulder, but freezes when Silco jerks away from him. Vander sighs and drops his hand.

"I'm sorry for hitting you yesterday," he apologizes, hanging his head. "I didn't mean to—I just, I just lost—"

"Lost your head," Silco finishes bitterly. He rolls his good eye and turns his head away. "Save it. I've heard it all before. Next is, 'I'll never hurt you again, I promise.'" He glances back at Vander, raising his eyebrow coldly. "Am I wrong?"

"I'm trying to apologize," Vander says through gritted teeth, but drops the subject. He glances at Silco's nose, not as crooked as it was when he left him last night, though the cheekbone and eye socket are bruised an angry purple and ringed with sickly pale yellow. "Is your nose—"

"Re-aligned it myself last night." Silco cuts him off. "Really, was my eye and the whole left side of my face not enough for you?" he jeers. "You had to go and smash my nose, too?"

"I'm sorry," Vander says uselessly, because it's the only thing he can think to say. 

"And I said, I don't want to hear it." Silco tries to raise himself up on his elbows and barely manages a couple inches, groaning as the stab wound in his torso and the stitches on his back stretch painfully. "If you're truly sorry, you never—never—raise your hand against me again. Next time, I'll cut off a finger. One for each hit." 

Vander sighs. "Understood." He holds up the pillows. "Can I help sit you up?"

Silco clicks his tongue in irritation. "Fine." He watches Vander warily, forcing his body to remain still as his hands approach.

Still, he's tense, muscles solid as a rock as Vander wraps an arm around his shoulders and props his torso up enough to slide the two pillows behind his back, allowing him to sit in a semi-upright position. It's as if he's bracing for a hit, preparing to flee even though there's nowhere he could go. Gently, Vander pulls his arm back, eases Silco onto the pillows. He hisses through his teeth, and Vander's brow creases in sympathetic pain. 

"What trouble did you give the Enforcers this time?" he asks, aiming for a lighthearted tone as he balances the bowl of porridge on Silco's lap. 

"Not Enforcers." Silco has trouble grasping the spoon with his splinted fingers, but he manages to scoop up a spoonful of porridge. His hands are shaking so badly though, that by the time it reaches his lips half of it has been spilled down his front. Even then, a bit dribbles out of the left side of his mouth, his paralyzed lips unable to seal around the spoon properly. 

Vander tries to pretend he doesn't notice, but something must show on his face, because Silco scowls at him and defiantly takes another spoonful of porridge. This time is a slight improvement over the first spoonful, but still his top is quickly becoming a wet collage of porridge grains and splotches. 

"Volkage," he says, teeth clinking against the spoon. 

Vander inhales sharply. "The chembaron?" His fingers twitch and Silco flinches just with that minute display of anger, even as his face remains carefully composed, defiant. 

"Unlike you," a shadow flits across Silco's face, "I've been busy." 

"Busy dealing with chambarons," Vander deadpans. "What the fuck are you doing messing around with chembarons?" He runs a hand through his hair, distressed. "Fuck, Sil, what the hell did you do that made them do—do that to you?" Another thought occurs and his eyes widen. "Did anyone follow you?" he demands, grabbing his shoulder desperately. 

Silco doesn't seem to hear him, eye wide as he catalogues Vander's hands, watching the one on his shoulder warily. His breath quickens, chest rising in short, rapid bursts like the beating of a small bird's wings. "Let go," he says, voice choked. 

Vander barely registers the plea. "Dammit, Silco, did anyone fucking follow you?" He shakes Silco by the shoulder and he lets out a short cry of pain. 

"Let—go—" Silco gasps, face pale and clammy. 

"Answer me!" Vander orders, thumb pressing into Silco's clavicle with enough force to leave a mark. He shakes him again, Silco's head bobbling dangerously on his thin neck. "Sil—"

"I said, let go!" Silco roars, and Vander is struck in the face by a thick, hot mess of porridge. The bowl cracks across his forehead then falls to the floor, shattering upon impact. Vander rears back, surging to his feet in a burst of anger. He wipes a hand through the muck on his face, the other already curled into a tight fist. His lips peel back from his teeth in a growl, vision clouded in a red haze and—

Vander freezes. Silco is bracing himself, hands raised above his head defensively, his body curled in on itself. It's the exact same posture he'd adopted instinctively, so many years ago, when his father had stormed in and begun beating him. 

Vander remembers the putrid scent of his fear, the way he'd cowered and whimpered in pain as his own father kicked him hard enough to break bone without a second thought. The way Vander had been too scared to act, frozen in place until well after Silco had already been dragged away, and the promise he'd made to himself, alone with the still-warm corpse of Silco's father. 

I'll always protect him. While I'm with him, no one will ever hurt him again. I swear to Janna, Sil, I'll keep you safe.

He hadn't had a chance to act on that promise until several years later, when they met again by pure coincidence, but he'd held it sacred for years. When had he stopped? When had he forgotten his vow? 

He hasn't thought back on their past for so long, he has no idea when his sincere faith that he would, against all odds, keep Silco safe had faded away, replaced with weary acceptance and disillusionment. In Zaun, nothing was guaranteed safe, least of all a wiry punk with dreams of revolution and burdened with a seething indignation that weighed more than himself.

Vander, for all his strength, was powerless to protect someone who didn't want to be protected in the first place. 

And somewhere along the way, the injustice of it all, the guilt Vander felt when Silco came home with bruises and bullet wounds from Enforcers, morphed into resentment, which in turn grew to a gnawing bitterness that transformed him into the very thing he hated. He hurt Silco and it felt like dying and being reborn. The helplessness he had felt at being insufficient, unable to protect Silco from the world's evils, was, ironically, replaced with a heady, dizzying rush of power. 

He and Silco had nothing save the scraps that Piltover afforded them, and later the meager allowances they scraped together by the skin of their teeth. From birth, every Zaunite knew they were alive only by the mercy of Piltover, and that mercy was liable to be exhausted at any time. Their fates were not theirs to control, but subject to the passing whims of Enforcers. At least when Vander was the one to hurt Silco, he had power over who was hurting him and how much. He hadn't even noticed his own control was slipping, until, of course, it was far too late. 

Vander drops his fist. He sinks to the floor, ignoring the puddle of porridge surrounding him, and mechanically begins to collect the porcelain shards of the bowl. He feels so heavy, all of a sudden, unable to even hold up his head. 

He hears a slight rustling above him as Silco tentatively unfurls his body from the protective cage he's sewn for himself with his own limbs. His breath is still shallow and quick, short little gasps of panic, but as Vander remains where he is, picking up the broken pieces of crockery, it evens out, calming somewhat. 

"No one followed me." Silco's voice is hoarse. "I made sure to kill them all when I escaped."

Vander nods once. "Good." He dares to look up. Silco is watching him contemplatively, eased back against the pillows. There's still an air of wariness about him, like a bird with a broken wing forced to accept aid yet remaining distrustful. Vander knows he deserves nothing less, but Gods, it hurts to have become the sort of man that instills fear in the ones he loves. 

"I shouldn't have shook you like that," Vander says. "I'm sorry." 

Silco blinks. "You were about to hit me," he says slowly, as if his mouth is reluctant to even form the words. "Why didn't you?"

The question stabs through Vander like a knife to the chest. He's impaled on it. "I was," he admits. 

"But you didn't. Why?" Silco looks genuinely confused, and the fact that he can't seem to comprehend why Vander wouldn't hurt him shakes him to his very core. 

"I… I remembered," he tries, not sure how to explain. "When we were kids, and your father—"

Silco takes in a sharp breath, eye widening, but keeps his mouth shut, waiting for Vander to continue. 

"You made the exact same…" Vander raises his hands over his head slightly in a loose imitation of Silco, cowering on the couch just minutes before. "That. As when your father had hit you. It made me remember, and I—" He swallows, suddenly finding it hard to speak. "I realized I was the same as your father. I never wanted to be that kind of person." 

Silco looks down at his lap. "I haven't thought about him in years," he lies. Vander is not the only monster in his nightmares, just the most recent. 

He raises a hand to his face, tracing his scars absentmindedly, a contemplative look on his face. “You hurt me worse than he ever did,” he says casually. There’s no hint of malice, nothing to insinuate that he was intending to provoke or harm Vander. He states it as blandly and dispassionately as he would the weather. 

The silence that follows is unbearable. Vander feels as though the floor is peeling away from under him, that if he looks down there’ll only be endless, yawning darkness. He’s falling on solid ground, nothing to support him. 

Silco lifts his head slightly and looks straight at Vander, one hand still trailing down the lines of scars bisecting what used to be his cheekbone. Looking directly into his sickly black, glowing eye is nauseating. 

“After all, I didn’t love my father. And I held no pretenses regarding him either, I knew from the start that he never loved me. But you, Vander…” He turns away again, hiding his face from view. “You ruined me.”

“I never intended- I never wanted any of this to happen,” Vander pleads. 

Silco barks a short, sardonic laugh. “I never intended for Felicia and Connoll to die,” he says. “Yet here we are.” 

Vander swallows, not wanting to acknowledge his own hypocrisy. 

Silco’s profile, the scarred side of his face hidden from view, looks just as it had three years ago, albeit minus a significant amount of weight. It brings back a torrent of memories, assaulting Vander with reminders of what he lost. No, not lost—what he destroyed. It’s unbearable. 

Vander doesn't think he's missed Silco as much as he does in this moment, tormented with his presence just a hand’s reach away and yet farther than ever. He can’t even touch him without causing him to flinch. 

Vander misses Silco, his Silco so much it feels like a gaping wound. He misses his joyful snark, his easygoing manner, the way his face would light up with determination and ambition when discussing something he was passionate about. Fiercely independent, brimming with righteous indignation and self-assurance. He'd always reminded Vander of a crow—proud, cunning, and beautiful, despite being seen as pests. Dirty creatures that survived by scavenging garbage. Like a crow, he was both aloof and fiercely territorial. Attracted to illogical, shiny things. Get too close and he'd peck your eyes out, but earn his trust and he'd eat right out of the palm of your hand.

It had made Vander feel so special, to be privileged enough to see Silco's soft side. To hold him when he'd wake in the depths of night, crying and disoriented from a nightmare and be able to calm him with just a few words and the caress of his hands. It was Vander, only Vander who had the ability to turn him into a sobbing, trembling, inconsolate mess with just the twitch of his fingers. And after, he'd hold him in the tub and wash his hair, Silco limp and pliant, soaking up Vander's love like it was all he needed to sustain him. 

Vander doesn't realize he's crying until Silco looks at him and his face twists, stunned, mouth slightly open. Vander reaches up and traces his cheek, feels the wetness beneath his fingertips. He collects a tear and looks at it disbelievingly, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, the moistness shining in the dim light. 

"I loved you more than anything," he whispers, as a means of explanation. "And I ruined it. I ruined us." 

Silco closes his mouth, swallows. He gives a short, terse nod. "Yes," he says simply. "You did." 

Vander feels torn apart. He knew it already, but somehow hearing it confirmed by Silco is worse by tenfold. 

"Promise me," he croaks, tears pouring openly down his cheeks, soaking into his beard. "If I ever hurt you again, you'll cut off a finger. Okay? Every time I hurt you, one finger." 

"You're assuming I'll stay long enough for you to hurt me again," Silco says, though he looks troubled. 

"Please," slurs Vander. He's got a shard of porcelain in one hand, but it's not sharp enough to cut. "I hurt you yesterday. Two blows, that's two fingers, yeah?"

Silco gapes at him. "You're not serious."

Vander pulls out his boot knife, presents it to Silco hilt-first with shaking hands. "Two fingers," he asserts. "Your choice." 

Silco takes the knife, watching Vander warily. Then he takes a deep breath, shaking his head. "Not today," he says. "Can't make a clean cut." 

"I deserve it," Vander protests. 

"Yes," Silco agrees, oddly calm. "Just not right now." He twirls the knife in his hand, watching as the blade catches the light. "I'm keeping this, however." 

Vander wipes his face, smearing porridge even further into his beard. "That's fine." 

"And I want the ankle cuff off," Silco demands. 

Vander hesitates. "I don't want you to leave," he confesses. “Not when I finally have you back.”

"I will not be your prisoner," Silco snarls. 

"You can't leave when you're this injured," Vander protests. "It's suicide." 

"My life is no longer of your concern," spits Silco. “You lost that right when you fucking drowned me.”

"If you leave now, it'll crush Powder and Vi," insists Vander. 

Silco pales and presses his lips together, face taut. He looks away. "I'll come back," he mumbles. Vander doesn't believe him for a second. 

"The cuff stays on." He stands, gathering the shards and heads to the stairs. "I'll be right back down to clean up." 

"Fuck. You." Silco is trembling with rage, eyes burning. "You can't keep me here."

"Be right back," Vander promises, and begins to ascend the stairs.

“No—no, don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare—Vander!” Silco screams after him. “I will not be your prisoner! Vander!”

Vander closes the basement door behind him with a light click, cutting off Silco mid-tirade. He can still hear his voice coming up from the basement, though the words are no longer distinct. 

Vi and Powder, sitting at the bar counter, gawk at him. Both are frozen in place, mouths hanging open dumbly, a spoon of porridge halfway to their lips. 

“He’s fine,” Vander lies quickly. “Just a bit… upset.”

Through the door, a muffled “Fuck you, Vander!” can be heard, followed by a loud banging noise as Silco slams something heavy against the wall. 

“That why you got porridge on your face?” Vi is the first to recover enough to speak, though she seems more amused than anything. 

Vander sighs, shoulders drooping, and heads to the kitchen. “Something like that.” He disposes of the shattered remains of the bowl and turns on the sink, bending over double to wash his face. It’s taking too long to scoop up water in his hands and wash, dried flakes of porridge sticking to his skin and caught in his beard, so after a couple of seconds he elects to just stick his entire head under the tap and scrub.

It works, but has the unfortunate effect of splattering water everywhere, soaking through his shirt. He decides to just take it off, balling it up and tossing it to the side. He prepares another bowl of porridge—Silco’s lucky there was some leftover—and gathers up some old dishcloths and heads back to the basement door. 

“What happened to your shirt?” Powder wrinkles her nose, looking vaguely disgusted. 

“Got porridge on it,” Vander gestures awkwardly with his free hand. 

“Yeah, I know, but why not put on another one?” 

“In case I get porridge on that one, too,” Vander explains, reaching for the door handle. He can still hear occasional muffled shouts—Silco is not one to give up halfway, and if he wants to scream at someone, he’ll scream at them, whether or not they’re there to hear it. 

Vi frowns. “What the fuck are you two doing down there?” 

Vander gives a one-sided shrug. “I wish I knew.” He cracks open the door and heads back down the stairs.

---

How dare he. How dare he. That patronizing, paternalistic fucker. Silco has half a mind to stab him the moment he gets within range of his knife. He will not be chained like a, like a fucking animal, reliant on Vander for care and protection. He’s injured, yes, but he can take care of himself, he doesn’t want nor need Vander’s “help.” Especially when said “help” is more for Vander’s sake than his own. Silco has no pretensions about that. 

Vander doesn’t care for him anymore, though he might claim the opposite. If he cared, he would have looked. He didn’t even bother to check if Silco was still alive when he abandoned him by the riverside. Just returned to the home that they bought and erased all traces of Silco from the Lanes, spreading the lie of his death without a second thought. Vander got to live his charmed fantasy of family, all while Silco rotted away in the Sumps, alone save for the hallucinations and the ever-present pain. 

And now Vander has the nerve to feel sorry for him, to insist Silco needs his blundering attempts at playing nursemaid, when Silco has survived far worse than his current injuries and done it alone. If Vander is so concerned by a mere few days of torture by a handful of incompetent chembaron cronies, where was he when Silco was strapped to a metal table, Shimmer coursing through his veins and burning him from the inside out for weeks? Where was Vander when the dead flesh rotted and the rivergrubs hatched inside his poisoned eye socket, and Silco could feel them wriggling, squirming around inside his skull, crawling out through his defunct tear duct? 

Vander doesn’t care for him. No, Vander wants to assuage his guilt, wants to play savior so he can convince himself he can heal the wounds he dealt Silco. He wants to cosset Silco and assuage his anger, force forgiveness, so that they could go back to the way they were, playing at being lovers, still thinking they could make a difference with their inane petitions and protests and amateurish guerilla warfare. 

Silco’s lips curl. There’s nothing Vander can do, not at this point, that could ever make Silco forgive him. If he had looked for him, in the After, maybe. If he had come for Silco and apologized, had cleaned his wounds like they had always done for each other after fights, if he had stayed. Then there might have been a chance. 

But Vander never came, never even sent someone else to look for him, for his body. 

Vander had said that he thought Silco was dead, but if that’s the case, why was there no funeral, no ceremony held? The other victims of that day were memorialized. A shrine still stands on the Bridge and is tended to regularly, but Silco is not included in any of the photographs or lists of names.

He knows; he’s been there before, to lay flowers and offerings to Felicia and Connoll. It’s like Vander erased him completely, as if he never existed. His face disfigured to the point of unrecognizability, voice damaged beyond repair. His name wiped from the records. 

Being forgotten is almost worse than dying, because it's just an affirmation of what Silco has always known: he doesn’t matter. He is nothing. A dirty, filthy little thing, born of the Fissures and condemned to die there. No matter how hard he scrubs the soot and the blood from beneath his fingernails; no matter how many hours he dedicates to self-education or how smart his dress, how polished his speech, that’s all he’ll ever be and all anyone will ever see him as. 

Everything he’d ever worked for, years worth of backbreaking labour building up his name and reputation, dragging himself from the very literal depths of Runeterra— crushed the second Vander wrapped his hands around his throat.

No, Silco will never forgive Vander. He can cut off his whole damn hand for all he cares. 

 

The door creaks open, followed by Vander’s telltale thunderous footsteps. Silco doesn’t bother to look up, electing instead to face the wall and ignore him entirely for as long as possible. The footsteps stop just behind him.

“I brought you some more porridge,” Vander says quietly. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t throw it at me this time.”

Silco shrugs. 

“It’ll taste bad if you let it get cold,” he warns. There’s a pause as Vander waits for a response. When it becomes apparent that he will not be receiving one, he sighs and sits down on the floor, setting the bowl by his side. “I understand you’re upset,” he says, “but I can’t—I can’t just let you leave.”

Where Vander can’t see, Silco rolls his eye.

“You can’t even sit up on your own! How were you even expecting to leave, crawl your way back to wherever you’ve been staying? It's reckless and idiotic.” There’s a rustle as Vander changes his posture. “And—I have a duty to the Lanes as well. Dealing with chembarons never ends well, you must know that. And if you’ve brought that into the Lanes…” Vander inhales sharply. “I need to know. I can’t in good faith let you go and trust that you won’t bring harm to the Lanes, intentional or otherwise.”

Silco scowls. “It’s taken care of,” he growls. 

Vander shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t take you at your word anymore. That’s not enough, Sil, you’ve got to tell me what you’ve been up to.”

“It won’t come into the Lanes,” Silco says. “Aside from that, it is not your concern.”

“And how can I know that you’re telling the truth? I need more information.” Vander runs a hand through his hair. “Please. I—I have to keep Vi and Powder safe.”

Fuck. 

A day ago, Silco would have laughed in Vander’s face. Why should he care for these two children in particular, over the other thousands of children in Zaun? Uniting the underworld, rising up against Topside and liberating Zaun—that would improve the lives of all the children, surely that was more important than Vander’s measly dilapidated neighborhood, a handful of insignificant brats. 

Now, though—just the fleeting interaction he’d had with Violet and Powder, holding them in his arms and feeling their tiny heartbeats flutter against his sternum—so small, so young and breakable—whatever scraps of his former self had been hibernating deep within himself were resurfacing, pounding against his skin. He still does not agree with Vander, but he can… sympathize, to an extent. He does not wish for harm to befall them, if he can help it. 

Silco groans out loud and rolls back over, ignoring his ribs protesting fiercely. He extends his arm, still determinedly not looking at Vander. “Pass the porridge,” he demands. “And get me something to drink.”

---

969 AN

It was his second week working at the colliery. Vander was sixteen, so it wasn't by any means his first job, but he was new to coal mining and this was the first time he had been this deep underground. This part of the mines, Pit C, or, as it was more crudely called by the miners, Janna's Asscrack, was the deepest section and by far the most dangerous.

Regulations called for workers to rotate every two weeks to avoid Fissure Madness, but the regulations were only there for show and were in no way practiced or enforced. Vander had spoken to an old miner—or, old by miner standards, meaning he was in his early forties—whose skin was deathly pale and papery to the touch underneath the thick black coating of coal dust, who claimed to have not been to the surface in over a year. 

Technically, Vander shouldn't even be working so far down the pit, given that he had only just started on as a smasher working on the pit bank, breaking up waste rock with unwieldy metal gauntlets.

Most of the hewers he'd met had been working at least two years or more to build up the type of specialized experience and knowledge needed to cut enough coal to meet quota whilst managing not get themselves blown up. But apparently a member of a stoping crew, a man named Big Mo, had gotten crushed in a roof failure due to the props buckling, and they needed a replacement of his size and strength to continue work as soon as possible. 

The pay increase would be significant—as a hewer, Vander could get paid piece rate, meaning he could earn more for every extra ton of coal he cut over the daily quota, rather than the measly day rate he was currently earning. There had been several times when he had shown up to the colliery and told there was no work for him that day, leaving him to trudge home with empty pockets and an emptier stomach. As a hewer that far down the pit, as long as he kept quota, he wouldn't have to worry about there being no pay that day. Vander was willing to take the risk.

Big Mo's body hadn't even been dug out of the rocks when Vander bought a pickaxe and a Davy lamp on scrip and signed on for two weeks in the depths of Janna's Asscrack.

 From the pit bank it was a two-hour journey in a cramped double deck cage, so crowded there was no possibility of sitting. The first inset had long since been depleted of ore, but rather than retreating—removing the pillars holding up the cave roofs of the cleared-out rooms—they were turned into underground bunks for the miners, dormitory sections divided by the wide barrier pillars. 

At the first inset, Vander was met by Connoll, the shift-boss of the crew he'd be working with. He was a shortish, slim-set man, older than Vander by no more than a few years at best, yet was entirely bald from what Vander could make out beneath his helmet. 

Vander's first impression of Connoll was that he was stoic and reserved, based on the fact that he made very little facial expressions, as if his mouth were the only movable part of his face. He was proven wrong within minutes as Connoll kept up a steady stream of commentary regarding everything from lamenting the poor quality of the company store's canned food to expletive-laden descriptions of the overseer, all delivered with the same deadpan expression. His speech was ardent and passionate, and deeply incongruous to his brick wall of a face. Vander liked him immediately. 

Connoll showed Vander the dormitory their crew currently occupied just long enough for him to drop off his pack, and then they were back in a cage, descending a sub-shaft to the working. 

Vander could hear the working well before he laid eyes on it. The sound of metal hitting rock repetitively by hundreds of pickaxes echoed far up the sub-shaft, accompanied by the rumbling of coal tubs being hurried over the rolleyway. The cage jerked to a stop at the inset, a low cavern supported by rectangular wooden props and iron bolts. Vander was forced to walk stooped over, neck already cramping by the time the rolleyway tracks split off into two separate drifts.

Connoll waved him over to the leftmost one, pulling him to the side just in time to avoid getting run down by two filthy-faced boy putters, working in tandem to push and pull a tub of coal. They were both drenched with sweat, coal-stained drops of perspiration dripping from their close-cropped hair.

Vander's breath caught in his throat. Both putters couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve, but that wasn't what startled Vander. He was used to children working; after all, he had done it too, hauling barrels at the shipyards for his father. He didn't know anyone who hadn't started working some way or another by the time they lost their milk teeth. 

No, it was the leather girdles strapped tight around the boys' waists, from which they were chained to the coal tub. Heavy padlocks swung from the buckles of the girdles, clinking against the chains with every straining step forward the putters took. As they passed, Vander could see identical black tattoos on both of their right shoulders, exposed by their matching white sleeveless shirts. A cog, the symbol of Stillwater Prison, and below it a set of initials and a series of numbers. 

Connoll must have sensed Vander's disquiet. "They're leased out from Stillwater." He nodded in the direction of the ore skip, to which the putters had been headed. "We got a lot of 'em down here. Damn shame it is, but nothing you or I can do anything 'bout." The corners of his eyes crinkled upwards. Vander supposed that must be his attempt at a reassuring a smile. "C'mon," he said, and clasped Vander's shoulder amiably. "Let's steady on inbye, yeah?" 

Vander nodded, a lump in his throat. He looked over his shoulder one last time, then followed Connoll further into the drift.

Connoll took him through a low cross-cut, for which Vander had to traverse crouched so low to the point he was practically crawling. Even then, his back and shoulders scraped against the roof painfully. They passed a pair of hewers, lying on their sides to cut away at the underside of the coal face, creating a ledge. 

"Not far now," Connoll promised him. "Our section is just down here." 

The cross-cut fed into a new drift, thankfully slightly higher than the cross-cut but narrower. 

A female miner with strands of purple hair slipping out from underneath her helmet straightened up from where she had been laying tracks for a new rollway heading, wiping the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand, leaving coal dust streaked across her face.

Vander hardly noticed; she was grinning fiercely, teeth looking startlingly white contrasted with the black smearing her face. It was the first time he had seen someone smile since he'd started working at the colliery. More than that; her smile was directed at him. 

"Hi!" she chirped, throwing out a hand. "You must be the new kid." 

Vander took her hand with a nervous chuckle. "I suppose I am." 

Her smile only widened. Despite his initial apprehension, Vander found himself mirroring her, lips splitting open so wide it almost hurt. It felt rusty, as if it had been so long since he'd last actually smiled that his muscles were weakened from disuse. 

"I'm Felicia," she said. She jerked her head towards the coal face. "You wanna meet the rest of the crew?"

---

Vander had thought Connoll was talkative. Compared to Felicia, he was practically mute. She'd ask Vander a question, and before he even had time to answer it she'd have moved on, commenting on something completely unrelated to the question she had just posed. Keeping up with her train of conversation was dizzying; she hopped from topic to topic like a stone skipping water. 

"Is that an… Entresol accent I detect? No, you wouldn't be down the pit if you were from Entresol- Factorywood? It's Factorywood isn't it. My auntie lived up in Factorywood, she was a spinner at the—the—what was it called?"

She paused for a second to think and Vander opened his mouth to answer, but before he even had a chance to speak she had snapped her fingers, exclaiming, "Englesbarn Textiles! It was Englesbarn Textiles. Her name was Sandra, I think she lived in Block 3 of the company house but I don't remember what room—anyways, did'ya know her? Had red hair and kind of a mullet situation going on; I told her it wasn't flattering but she never listened. Aunties, you know what they're like." 

She said this all without stopping to even take a breath. Vander was beginning to suspect that in the unfortunate event they encountered chokedamp, at least Felicia would survive.

Connoll, for all his former loquaciousness, seemed perfectly happy to walk along silently, absorbing Felicia's chatter and interjecting with a barely-voiced hum of agreement at the expected intervals. 

Felicia took the liberty of introducing the two other crew members to Vander, providing him with so many unnecessary details that he couldn't recall the actually important information, like their names or position in the crew. There was Mel (he thought, but couldn't be sure), a heavily tattooed man with a build to rival his own, who instantly wrapped him in a huge bear hug and slapped his back with enough force to make even Vander wince. According to Felicia, he was a remarkably good ice fisher but absolutely terrible at playing the jaw harp. How she knew this he had no clue.

Then there was a stout man with a thick beard and even thicker accent whose name was either Davros, Stavros, or some combination of the two. Felicia described him as "possessed with the ability to talk to animals, the mules just love him for some reason, I swear," and Vander saw his cheeks flush pink with humble pleasure underneath the wild bramble that was his beard.

By the time this dizzying round of introductions had finished, the fore shift was almost over.

"Welcome to the crew," Connoll said, and unless Vander was mistaken, the corners of his lips were tilted ever so slightly upwards. "Everyone good to head up outbye?" 

"Connoll!" Felicia chided, knocking him in the shoulder with her fist teasingly. "You forgot the Canary." 

Connoll stiffened. "Right. The Canary." Whatever modicum of emotion had been on his face was instantly wiped away. "You all go on ahead. I'll go fetch the Canary, it's time to swap shifts anyways."

"What's the Canary?" Vander asked, as Connoll led them down a low-roof crosscut that fed into an equally cramped drift. The Davy lamp was frustratingly dim, and Vander had to watch his feet as he walked, stooped over, to make sure he didn't trip on the rollway tracks. 

"The Canary is…" Connoll broke off. "It's not a great term. It refers to an expendable member of the team." 

Vander stopped dead in his tracks. "What?" He looked up and immediately knocked the back of his head against the low roof. 

"I don't like it either." Connoll paused, hunched over by the edge of the rollway tracks just ahead of Vander. "Come sit with me a minute."

They sat against the side of the tunnel. Vander was grateful for the opportunity to unfurl his cramped back, but he had a niggling feeling that Connell was about to tell him something that would instantly deplete whatever optimistic impressions he had accrued until now. 

"You remember those two Stillwater kids from earlier? The putters?"

"Yes," Vander answered cautiously. An uneasy sense of trepidation welled up in the pit of his stomach. 

Connoll sighed. "They were Canaries—convict kids leased out from Stillwater. They don't all do the same shiftwork, it depends on their size and, well… luck, really. The smaller ones usually start out as trappers- they open the trap doors to ventilation shafts so's air and coal tubs can get through. Most important though, they're sorta like… our indicator for if the Gray's coming." 

"Your indicator." Vander repeated. "For the Gray." 

"If they see or smell the Gray, there's a button they push that sends an alarm through the section. They then have less than a minute to get out of the trap before it's sealed off with metal brattices for at least twenty-four hours. Even then, once we hear the Gray bell, we have to evacuate the district within minutes, then seal that off, too. If they don't make it back to their crew in time, well."

"But…" Vander could barely hear his own voice over the rushing in his ears. "But there's one trap and ventilation shaft per district, they'd never…" He couldn't finish. 

The working was on a long, horizontal level mined using the room-and-pillar method, with rows of parallel drifts intersected by crosscuts to create a massive underground grid of rooms. Wide, hundred-foot long barrier pillars of the unhewn original rock held up the roof, additionally supported by wooden props and ribs. 

There were generally two colliers for each room, and each district held a maximum of seventy people, meaning each district could be up to thirty-five rooms, separated by ventilation curtains. Which meant that depending on where the trap was located and how large the district was, the trapper might not have any possibility whatsoever of getting out within the required timeframe. 

"Yes." Connoll confirmed. "We lose a lotta Canaries that way. Or to damp—chokedamp and whitedamp mostly. Sometimes the little ones fall asleep and forget to open the trap regularly for airflow. The furnace underneath keeps burning, and, well..." Though his face remained blank as ever, he wrung his hands nervously in his lap. 

"The slightly bigger ones, they get paired in teams as putters, like the two we saw earlier. And those coal tubs are heavy. If they get too tired, lose their footing going up or down a slope—"

"They'll get crushed."

Connoll nodded. "If they're older or stronger but still small enough to get in the really tight spots, we have the Canaries help with the undercutting." Vander must have looked confused, because Connoll nearly tripped over his words to explain. "That's when you lie on your side to cut away at the base of the coal seam. You want to make a ledge, right, so when the coal face is blasted it falls to the floor easier."

"We passed two people doing that earlier," Vander noted.

"Yes. The Canaries are good at wedging themselves in there, right under the ledge to keep picking at the coal face, where us big kids can't get to." 

"Big kids," mused Vander. He supposed that to a coddled, naive Piltie that sixteen could still be considered a kid. It seemed unfair that the Pilties got to act like spoiled children well beyond even their thirties, whereas almost half of all the actual children in the undercity wouldn't even make it to twenty-five. 

"We make 'em light the squibs, too." Connoll said. Vander wondered if he had misheard him. 

"Light the what?"

Connoll just looked at him blankly for a good moment, then his eyes widened by a miniscule degree. "Right," he said. "Forgot you're used to surface work. You know what blasting is, yeah?"

Vander nodded.

"Good. The hewers—that's us—drill the bore holes, set the charges and tamp 'em in, but most will have the Canary use the needle to pierce the charge and put in the squib. It's a sorta paper straw with black powder in. Once it's lit, it burns down through the tamping and sets off the main charge- that's just more black powder in blasting paper. We all go a couple hundred feet away, round the corner, the Canary lights the squib, and hopefully they come runnin', too."

"The trouble with black powder—squibs, too, really—is they're unpredictable. If there's even the tiniest spark—you're fucked. And there're sparks often. If the powder isn't distributed equally throughout the squib, which it never is, it won't burn equal, neither. Sometimes the squib dies down, you think—they do that sometimes, call it a half-fire—so you go to check it out, and then it reignites and—you're fucked. You can't really time the blast, you just have to hope. And if there's firedamp or too much coal dust—"

"Lemme guess, you're fucked," Vander finished for him. He pressed his palms to his forehead. "So this—this whole using kids to do the most dangerous work—that's just normal down here?"

"There's no shortage of Stillwater sump-snipes," said Connoll darkly. "And the Company makes a fortune off it. Why should they stop?"

"Because they—they're just kids!" Vander slammed a fist against his thigh. "And they send them down the pit to get themselves blown up, or—or locked underground with the Gray, it's disgusting!"

"That's not even the worst of it."

"You're shitting me."

Connoll chewed his bottom lip. "You'll see tomorrow for yourself."

Vander shook his head. "No," he said fervently. "Tell me."

Connoll hung his head. "I hate it," he muttered. "I hate that the foreman makes 'em do it. Should be the other way round, the foreman should be the one who has to—"

"Has to what?" Vander was getting impatient. 

Connoll lifted his head slightly, staring straight ahead, a deep melancholy in his eyes. As ever, his face was perfectly composed. Vander wondered if all emotion had been leached out of him, like a baby that learns not to cry once it realizes that no matter how loud it wails, no one will come. 

"They have the Canaries detect firedamp."

Vander frowns. "I don't understand. What's so wrong—"

"This is how they do it." Connoll spoke over him. "Before us piece or day workers come down the shaft, they send the Canaries to walk the levels. The Canary wears a thick sackcloth, or whatever thick clothing they can get, soaked in water. They carry a long pole, and on the end of that pole is—"

"A candle," Vander guessed, horror beginning to sink in. 

"Precisely. If they come across a pocket of firedamp—well, they best hope it's a small one, and that they can drop down to the floor quick enough so's it don't burn 'em up. Otherwise it's bye-bye birdie." His lip curled slightly. "Sometimes we come down the shaft and it—it smells—" He broke off. "But so's long as the firedamp is burnt out and the hewers can cut coal, all's okay with the Company."

Vander had no idea what to say, so he settled for the one phrase that never let him down. "Fuckin' Pilties." 

"Fuckin' Pilties," Connoll echoed. He exhaled a long sigh that seemed to go on endlessly.

"Each crew has their own Canary, but unless we request 'em specifically for something, like undercutting, they have their own guard foreman to assign 'em to other tasks, like trapping or deadwork. But our Canary—he's come down bad with something, and that piece-of-shit guard foreman never lets any of 'em get a moment's rest no matter how sick they are, an' he beats 'em if they can't keep up. So I've been putting in requests for our Canary and then just having him do trapping. At least then he can sit."

Vander felt sick himself. "That's good of you," he managed.

Connoll waved it off. "We've had this Canary over a year now. He's a tiny little thing, but somehow he's lasted the longest out of any Canary I've seen. Plus he's a genius at blasting—we're not supposed to, but we have him prime and lay all our charges, and somehow he's not missed once. I guess I've gotten attached to the little sump-snipe."

"How old is he?"

"Not sure," Connoll said. His brow furrowed a tiny increment. "Eleven, twelve, maybe? He's pretty small. Can never remember his name, either, we all just call him Canary." He at least had the good sense to give a microscopic, apologetic wince. "Usually we don't learn the Canaries names," he explained, awkwardly. "They're gone pretty fast, see."

Vander didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. Connoll seemed to have run out of things to say, or perhaps he sensed Vander's fear of awkward silences and was feeling particularly charitable. He slapped his knees and stood up, groaning, one hand on the small of his back. Vander could relate; he was sure he was going to have a sore neck the next morning from hunching over all day.

They reached the trap door, a small wooden door as wide as the tunnel and about four feet high. Vander could tell it was reinforced to keep out—or in—the Gray, with the edges plated in metal. He noticed an emergency lock button on the outside of the door and his stomach churned, a sour taste blooming at the back of his tongue.

Connoll rapped on the trap door. "You still in there, Canary?"

There was a dry, hacking cough from the other side of the trap door. "Where—" he coughed again, "else would I be?"

The boy's voice was lower than Vander expected, at least from Connoll's description of him. It was hoarse and had a nasal twinge to it—the illness, Vander supposed. Still, something seemed familiar about it; not necessarily the voice itself but the intonation, the sarcastic lift to it. It made Vander's brain itch, he knew this voice—but that was impossible. 

Connell's eyes softened. "Just checkin'. Shift's up, you gonna come on out?"

Another cough. "It's supposed to be twelve hours. Not six." Again, the stubborn antagonism, even when offered help. It brought back memories of—of crooked teeth, cold feet, eyes of sea-glass green. Raking his fingers through greasy black hair, trying to pick out the lice. Blood. So much blood.

"Felicia's already called for a replacement. It'll be fine, you can rest in our bunk and I'll take you back once it's hit the twelve hour mark. Jelico'll be none the wiser."

There was a pause as the boy deliberated, then the trap door swung open. It was pitch-black inside the trap and with the meager light provided by his own Davy lamp, Vander couldn't see anything beyond the door frame. 

First from the trap came a hand, the fingers long and pale, spiderlike as they gripped the doorframe tightly. A skinny leg emerged, clad in the overlarge khaki canvas trousers that Vander recognized from the putters earlier as the Stillwater Prison uniform. It was patched in several places, but the fabric was ripped in the center and a knobbly knee, the skin scraped off and patchy with dried blood, peeked out. "If I get flogged for this, I'm sprinkling thallium sulfate in your food." 

"Good, it would be an improvement." Connell's voice was fond. "Come on, I wanna introduce you to our new crew member."

The boy's other hand groped at the opposite side of the door, fingernails split and dirty black. He was feeling around, Vander realized. After sitting in pure darkness for six hours, even the laughably skint amount of light his Davy lamp provided would hurt the eyes.

A second leg joined the first, balancing shakily on the door frame. The boy pushed himself out helmet first, bent over to get out of the short opening. He lurched forward, stumbling a couple steps. Vander caught him automatically without even thinking, both hands on the boy's thin shoulders. 

The boy raised his head, squinting slightly, and slapped one of Vander's hands away, tilting his too-big helmet back from where it had fallen over his face. He brushed away the greasy black bangs that were hanging limply over his eyes irritatedly and blinked repeatedly up at Vander, blown black irises surrounded by sea-glass green slowly shrinking as his eyes adjusted to the light after so many hours alone in the dark.

"This is Vander, our new hewer," Connoll introduced. "Vander, meet our Canary. His name is, uh…" 

"Silco," said Vander. "His name is Silco."

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(feel free to use/save/share btw, I thought these sources might be interesting/helpful for other people suddenly extremely interested in coal mining and/or wanting to write fic about it :)

Notes:

wow so turns out coal mining is actually sooooo cool??? anyways I entered a research, outlining, and writing black hole from ~8pm friday night until...now, which is almost 10:30pm saturday I guess so thats. hm. a long time to be awake since i got up 6am friday but NEVER MIND

basically i rewrote the flashback section in this chapter to:

a) have the correct (as best as i could, probably still made some mistakes tho) terminology
b) have more accurate descriptions of what the Canaries (in my fictional universe) would do, based on actual child laborer jobs in pre-1842 UK (and the US as well for that matter)
c) have more accurate depictions of mining methods and technology

i know this is a fictional universe but also some discrepancies i want to address:

- in the concept art for vander and silco in the mines it looks like they're wearing helmets with carbide lamps attached, but carbide lamps weren't invented until the 1890s and i'm basing the tech in my fic on the mid 1830s (pre-invention of Bickford's safety fuse) so i have them using the Davy lamp instead, which was invented in 1815

- all the jobs i have the Canary kids doing are real, apart from:
- the whole 'getting suffocated by the Gray' thing because the Gray is not real (even if it is likely based off of chokedamp i think?)
- the kids being the ones do undercutting and to light the squib- the blasters did all that
- detecting firedamp- this one is real, but it was done by the fire boss (like the foreman, in charge of safety in the mine). and yes they did it like how i wrote, by walking around MINE with a CANDLE and hoping to not get blown up. wow what a time.

another thing to address:
funny how i never learned about it when i went to school in the US, but:
convict leasing was real and practiced in the US and still is (just in a different way than it was post-civil war).
the motivations behind it tho (at the time, but also still today tbh) was very specifically hatred towards african-american people; greed/desire for financial gain; and to uphold white supremacy.
the disease, horrible conditions and extreme violence within the convict leasing work sites but especially the coal mining ones was equivalent to ww2 concentration camps.

as such, i want to make a note regarding the convict leasing plot point in my fic: though i am using some historical accounts for reference and general information, the convict leasing depicted in my fic is NOT in any way meant to be representative or a depiction of the actual historical practice of convict leasing.

convict leasing was a brutal, racially motivated genocidal enterprise by several companies in conjunction with the US govt to kidnap Black citizens and force them into slavery. i feel like to write a fic based off of that would be like writing fic based on the holocaust, i.e. highly unethical and just gross behavior.

this is a fictional universe with its own fictional problems and the convict leasing is something that happens in this universe but is IN NO WAY meant to be indicative of an allegory to real convict leasing.

Chapter 5: Chapter 5: Part 1 (Present Day, Present Time)

Summary:

Silco schemes and Vander reminisces.

Notes:

hello! this chapter ended up being really really long, so i'm splitting it into two parts, and just releasing both at the same time. also reminder that if you didn't read the new rewrite of chapter 4 yet, please go back and read that first (starting from the flashback portion at 969 AN), otherwise the new chapters won't make sense!

please heed the new tags as content warnings have been updated.
CW for this chapter in the end notes.

Silco groans, pressing the palm of his hand to his bad eye. It's throbbing, heat pulsing along the optic nerve. It feels like a lit match inside his skull. How much longer can he go without Shimmer? If Vander doesn't let him go soon, he'll be dead in a week. 

"You okay?" Vander's returned, holding two drinks. One of them is half-full and the other has barely even a shot's worth of liquor, poured over ice. Vander hands Silco the tumbler with the insultingly scant amount of whiskey and he squints into the tumbler, upper lip drawing back in distaste. 

"Is this a joke?" he sneers, and holds the tumbler back out. "Don't insult me."

"You haven't eaten properly in days, looks like. You're practically a scarecrow, there's no way I'm giving you any more'n that 'til you get some more food in you." Vander nods at the porridge. "Eat up." 

"This is demeaning," mutters Silco, but he takes a spoonful of porridge, holding the bowl up close to his mouth so there's less chance of spillage. "And why aren't you wearing a shirt? If this is some misguided attempt at seduction, it's having the opposite effect."

It's a lie, Silco is having trouble tearing his eye away from the mossy patches of greying hair traversing Vander's considerable chest and stomach. He's softened somewhat, the bulge of his belly hanging slightly over his belt in a way that Silco finds damnably endearing. He supposes he's lucky he's in too much pain for his lower half to become visibly interested.

"You got porridge on my shirt," Vander explains. 

Silco rolls his eyes. "So put on a different shirt."

Vander shrugs. "I don't want to do laundry." 

Silco groans in disgust and exasperation. "And to think I used to live with you." He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Whatever was I thinking." 

"You were the one leaving ash and half-finished drinks everywhere," Vander reminds him. "Used to drive me crazy. And you stubbing your cigarettes out on whatever was closest. Burnt a hole in my favorite chair. Just use an ashtray like everyone else, fuck's sake."

"I don't want to carry around an ashtray, it's inconvenient." Silco rubs his forehead; the throbbing behind his eye hasn't lessened whatsoever. "Are you finished bickering about irrelevancies, or shall I get on with it? You wanted to know what it is I've been working on, yes?"

"Yeah, alright then." Vander leans back in his chair, takes a sip of his drink. "Let's get on with it."

---

Silco manages to finish half the bowl of porridge before he lets out a long exhale and leans back against the pillows. He allows his head to fall back, exposing the long line of his pale neck. He swallows, Adam's apple bobbing, and Vander can't help that his eyes are drawn to the movement, to the pretty ridges of his throat and the slope of his collarbone. He remembers how Silco is sensitive just under his jawline, always whimpering and squirming deliciously underneath him whenever Vander laved at the delicate skin there with his tongue, teasing him with the barest scrape of his teeth.

"What do you know of the Eye of Zaun?" 

Vander mentally kicks himself and tears his eyes away. Not the time, he chastises himself, not the time. 

"Not much," he answers, truthfully. He scratches his beard. "Some sort of, I dunno, an information broker, yeah?" He's heard the name before, he's sure of it, but he can't remember the context. Just a smattering of vague warnings—the Eye deals in secrets, has connections even in Piltover's council. Whisper a word against him and you'll never be seen again.

But Zaunites have always been more interested in hearsay and rumor-speak than fact. Vander knows not to take anything any of his customers say seriously without solid proof, and especially not when they're deep in their cups after a long day's work. 

"Well done," says Silco sarcastically, performing a mocking show of clapping his hands. Vander bites back a twinge of irritation. "But yes. Information broker is certainly… apt. I've been collecting information on all the chembarons, industrialists—anyone with a significant amount of power in the undercity, really."

"You're the Eye of Zaun," Vander realizes, leaning forward slightly. The title suits Silco, he thinks. After all, whenever anyone looks at him, that'll be the first thing they notice. That horrific void of an eye. 

"Do try and keep up," Silco says, drily. "Yes. I am the Eye of Zaun." He tilts his head intentionally, so that the light catches on the glowing ember in the center. It pulses slightly, the bitter orange dancing like flames, and there's the barest hint of a wince. "Fitting, yes?"

"But where… how are you getting this information?" Vander's eyes narrow as a thought strikes him. "What are you planning?" He tries not to appear suspicious or judgemental, but the menacing rumble of his voice betrays him.

"Don't look so alarmed. I'm not planning some nefarious deed, if that's what you think." Silco waves a hand languidly, the display of unaffected nonchalance somewhat betrayed by his splinted fingers, the trembling of his wrist. "My goals have not changed, Vander. Just my methods."

"And those methods are?" 

"Nothing that concerns you or the Lanes." He makes a show of inspecting his fingernails, despite the fact that most of them are missing or clipped down to the cuticle, wrapped in filmy white gauze. 

"Not before, maybe, but it does now! You brought it here when you decided to use my basement as your hiding place!"

"Our basement," Silco hisses. "I have every right to be here. And for that matter, I didn't decide to come here, I was drugged. I wasn't thinking straight. If I was, I certainly wouldn't have come here. "

Vander throws his hands up. "Okay, okay, our basement, sorry. But you're here now, and I need to know why." He releases a long, tired exhale, forcing himself to unwind some of the tension that's built up in his neck and shoulders. "Benzo and I spent hours finding and bandaging all your injuries. Someone tortured you."

His voice cracks. "Please," he begs. "What are you mixed up in? Why is a chembaron after you?"

"Was," Silco corrects, stubbornly. "I snapped his neck. And did you say Benzo? Benzo took care of me? You must be joking."

"He did try to convince me to let you die." Vander grimaces apologetically. Benzo and Silco had never gotten along, even from the start. And certainly not after Stillwater. 

"Predictable as ever," Silco mutters under his breath. 

"That's besides the point. You're avoiding my question." Vander takes a sip of his drink, keeping his eyes fixed on Silco. "What business did this chembaron have with the Eye of Zaun?"

Silco picks at the blanket, avoiding his gaze. "I was blackmailing him."

"You were what?!"

It's not the most criminal act Silco's done, not by a long shot. Vander isn't sure why he's shocked; it's not even the first time Silco's blackmailed someone. He was a natural at it, somehow always knew just what to do to really get under someone's skin; finding the one truth they'd never want revealed and using it to toy with them like a cat with a mouse.

Back then, though, he had Vander at his side. No one would dare try to retaliate, not when he was backed up by the Hound of the Underground. 

Silco gives an awkward, one-sided shrug. "I need the cooperation of all the chembarons. Some of them are easily persuadable, some are… not."

"And what do you need their cooperation for," Vander asks, flatly. He does not like where this is going. Blackmail is one thing, but dealing with chembarons… that's a departure from his usual tactics by far. 

Silco finally turns his head to face Vander. He raises an eyebrow. "Isn't it obvious? I'm uniting the Nation of Zaun."

Vander stares at him, agog. "That's insane."

"Is it?" Silco's tone is light, but there's an underlying current of danger. "The undercity has lost focus, everyone squabbling like rats over tiny scraps of land. Which is exactly what Topside wants, for us to be too busy killing each other to kill them." His voice rises, swelling with conviction. "Only united can we liberate Zaun."

"And how does working with chembarons lead to a united and independent Zaun?" Vander is still disbelieving. It wasn't so long ago that Silco would lead long tirades about the tyranny of the chembarons, profiting off the exploitation of their own people, to anyone who would listen. Vander distinctly remembers one time at a Factorywood strike they were picketing, where Silco almost kicked a scab to death for insinuating they should be grateful to the chembarons for providing employment. 

"It's very simple, really." Silco looks smug. "I ingratiate myself to one of them and offer my services to help them take down their rival. I do the same with said rival. I provide just enough information to convince both of them that I am truly on their side, and that I am working as a double agent for them against the other."

"So if they catch you with their rival, you can explain it away as collecting information for them. Clever. But I still don't see where this is going."

Silco straightens up, slightly. He's pleased that Vander called him clever, he can tell from the way his eyebrows quirked upwards when he said it.

He'd always been weak to praise, starved for it. Give him a compliment and he never knew what to do with it, would either rebut it fiercely or go quiet and bury his face in a book or glass of whiskey, ears pink. Vander had always found this quirk of his adorable and yet somewhat sad. Silco could take on the most vile hatred and abuse without even a blink, but show him an inch of kindness and he'd crumple like a tower of cards. 

"Come on, Vander," he says softly. His eye is glimmering. "You're smarter than that. Think." 

"You're pitting them against each other. Having them take each other out," Vander says. "That, I can tell. But what good does that do you?"

"What happens when a chembaron kills another chembaron, Vander?" Silco traces his lips, trying to hide the ghost of a smile. 

"They consolidate the other's assets—oh." A chembaron would kill the other, then seize their land and assets. And then another would come along, one of them would be killed, and the winner of that conflict would acquire an even larger payoff. The amount of properties and assets owned by each chembaron would go up, but the overall number of chembarons would go down. 

"Precisely." Silco grins, sharp as a knife.

"What are you aiming for?" Vander asks. "A small number that you can control? Or total control for yourself?"

Silco scoffs. "Please." He waves a hand dismissively. "I'm not naive enough to think I could maintain absolute control over the undercity by myself. But I don't need to, I just need to control a few of them . And if I play it so that they're loyal to the cause and willing to front some expenses, well. I did help them make their way to the very top, it's only fair that they contribute towards the cause." 

Vander can't help it: he laughs. Once he starts, he can't seem to stop, pressing his face into his hands as he chuckles.

"What?" Silco snaps. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing," Vander laughs, "It's brilliant. You're brilliant." He wipes away a tear. "Don't get me wrong, it's an absolutely insane plan. But if anyone can pull it off, it'll be you." 

Silco seems stunned, like he doesn't know what to make of this. His mouth snaps shut, the tips of his cheeks dusted a light pink. 

"I mean it," Vander presses. "It's genius."

"Yes, well." Silco coughs awkwardly. "There have been some… slight hiccups, of course."

"Right." Vander nods. "Volkage. What exactly were you blackmailing him with? What for?" Vander can't help it, he's curious. 

“It’s all very fatuous,” Silco sighs. “Volkage was distrustful of me from the beginning. He kept seeking reassurances that I was truly on his side and not Chross’s, and his demands grew more and more ridiculous. He was right in a way, of course, but it was pissing me off so much that I decided to get my money’s worth from the whole ordeal.” He rolls his eyes dramatically.

“The man had a gambling habit, which wouldn’t have been such a problem if he wasn’t such a dreadful player. He was in terrific debt, borrowing from money lenders left and right, knowing he’d never have the ability to pay it back. Of course, this was all kept secret from his family, allies, and investors.”

“Ah.”

“Indeed.” Silco nods sagely. “As information is my business, I pay a monthly stipend to all of the major moneylenders in the undercity, in return for a register of their clientele, how much they owe, and to whom, which is how I came about this knowledge. I also knew that Volkage is in possession of the land title for a tasty bit of real estate—the old abandoned cannery on the wharf. It wouldn’t even cost him anything—it’s hardly as if he could sell it, and I’ve been eyeing that property for a while.”

“So you threatened to expose him unless he signed a property deed over to you.”

“All things considered, a fairly reasonable proposition, don’t you think?” Silco cocks his head queryingly. Vander can see the barest hint of a wry smile on the unparalyzed side of his face. He’s enjoying this, Vander realizes, savoring the ability to soliloquize at length about his schemes, most likely for the first time in a very long while. 

It used to be one of the things he most loved about Silco—he was not a talkative person by nature, though he was good at it. He had always seemed most comfortable scribbling in his journal or listening intently as Felicia and Vander conversed, head in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other, interjecting with witty, acerbic remarks when he felt like it. Silco was someone who knew better than anyone the weight of words and understood that a few, carefully selected words spoke far louder than a deluge of them. 

When it was just the two of them, however—Silco, sitting quiet at the bar, nose in a book or his journal as always and Vander clearing up the last of the dishes—Vander would ask, “What’cha thinkin’ ‘bout, birdie?” and relish the way just that simple question seemed to light a fire inside of Silco.

He’d sit up straighter and lean forward a bit on his elbows as if to whisper a bit of juicy gossip in Vander’s ear, brushing his bangs back behind his ear excitedly, never mind that they always flopped back down to their usual position a couple moments later. Vander loved the way Silco’s eyes lit up, shining, as he’d explain at length just what it was he had been thinking so intently about, sometimes for hours. Half the time Vander couldn’t understand what he was talking about, but he loved to listen to Silco speak anyways, witness him possessed by a fire of knowledge and the burning desire to be acknowledged. 

Silco was clever, frighteningly so; intelligent and calculating in a way that only a rare few in a generation are. Unfortunately, he also recognized this; that he was smarter than just about everyone else he’d ever meet, and was painfully aware of the unease this instilled in others. He’d learned the hard way that standing out invited the eyes of Enforcers and guard foremen alike, and would only result in a beating, or worse. Still, he couldn’t seem to help it sometimes, as if there was a force compelling him to speak up just to see what would happen, like a child sticking their hand in a fire to see if it was hot. 

Vander had chided him at those times, too young to know any better and terrified for Silco’s safety. He’d beg Silco not to provoke the guards, that if he could just learn when to shut up then he wouldn’t get hurt. He’d regretted it later, apologizing tearfully, but the damage had been done. It was a long time before Silco felt comfortable enough to let Vander in on his true thoughts and feelings again, and Vander doubted he’d ever learned to trust anyone else with his true self, save maybe Felicia and Connoll. 

Even then, it was only in those rare moments when Silco let his barriers down and allowed himself to gush excitedly about his ideas, which could be anything from synthesizing liquid nitroglycerin to the ancient history of the Oshra va’Zaun people, that Vander felt like he was seeing Silco at his most raw and unfiltered self. He’d always thought Silco was most beautiful when he was lecturing, and could have listened happily for hours, irrespective of his topic of choice. 

Vander feels the same way now, even with this new, unfamiliar Silco with a disfigured face and mismatched eye. The passion that had shined from within when he was a teenage idealogue spitting diatribes against Piltover is still there, lighting him up from the inside, not having waned in the slightest. He can see it in the fervent crease of his brow, the indignation that sparks in his eyes. 

“Vander?” Silco’s voice cuts through his reminition. “Are you listening?”

“Of course,” Vander assures him, hurriedly. This, too, is familiar.

“Hm.” Silco peers down his nose at him haughtily, then clears his throat and resumes his speech.

“As I was saying, I thought it to be a reasonable request. Unfortunately, Volkage was not a reasonable man. I believe he was also dipping into his own stash—crystal ecstasy—and it made him paranoid, delusional, among other things. He seemed to think I wanted the cannery so I could have a space to manufacture crystal ecstasy myself and take over his business, which I can assure you, is the least of my interests. He also wrongly assumed that I could not possibly be working on my own and for my own interests only, and demanded to know the names of my accomplices, and at whose behest we were employed. Which, obviously, I could not give, as they do not exist.”

“So he tortured you.” 

Silco’s face twists. “I would hardly call it torture.” 

Vander, absurdly, wants to laugh. Of all things to be contrarian about, of course this is what Silco picks. He’s the same as ever, refusing to see himself as a victim, because in his mind, to be a victim means that someone was stronger than him, which then implies that he is weak. Even though it couldn’t be further from the truth. And Silco will never, ever show weakness willingly. It’s the same circular logic that he employed viciously against himself in their youth: if he is a victim, then he is weak, and since he must not be weak, he is no victim. 

Of course, he’d never apply said logic to anyone else—when Felicia got her arm broken by an Enforcer, Silco had raged and paced for hours, alternatively comforting Felicia and strategizing furiously on what their revenge should be. But when he himself was targeted and attacked by a whole group of Enforcers, he’d been furious with himself for not noticing he was being followed, for not being able to stab them all.

He’d gotten his revenge, of course—he always did. But he didn’t seem to understand that one could be a victim of something and still be strong, or that getting revenge didn’t necessarily erase the trauma of being victimized in the first place. From the looks of it, he still doesn’t. 

"You were whipped," Vander says slowly, not wanting to provoke an argument. "Your fingers were broken, fingernails missing, you were covered in wounds that neither Benzo nor I could figure out the cause of. If you hadn't come when you did, you'd be dead."

"Please," Silco scoffs, disbelieving. "It was—it was hardly anything. He was… overzealous, in his blundering attempt at interrogation, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Obviously." Silco grits his teeth. His fingers curl into the blankets and he winces, but holds the position, unwilling to cede even the slightest subconscious gesture to his injuries. "Stop looking at me like that."

"Looking at you like what?" Vander cocks his head innocently. 

"Like—like—" Silco's crooked, broken teeth flash in the light as he splutters, searching for the right response. Benzo said they made him look like a weasel, but Vander has always found his slight overbite and chipped front teeth endearingly adorable, charming in an unpolished, Zaunite kind of way. "Like I'm weak— pitying, all wet-eyed—I am not one of your strays, Vander, I don't need your help."

"You have it, anyways," Vander says automatically. He sighs, aching for his pipe, and leans back in his chair. "I don't pity you," he says, truthfully. "I just hate to see you hurt." 

"Then you shouldn't have hurt me," Silco snaps, dragging the blanket up and wrapping it around his shoulders tightly. His bare feet stick out at the end. They are pale and very thin, the tips of his calloused toes purple from cold. Vander has bandaged the sores on his wrists and ankles, left by what he presumes were restraints, but he worries that even with the bandage on, the ankle cuff will chafe and worsen his wounds. 

"No," Vander agrees, "I shouldn't have." He pats his pockets for his pipe, before realizing it was in his shirt pocket, which is currently wet with porridge and balled up in the kitchen somewhere. "But neither should have Volkage. Nor anyone else." 

"Yes, well. I killed him, so it's in the past now. It's really nothing to make such a big fuss over." 

"But it is!" Vander insists. He pinches the bridge of his nose, frustrated. "How long did he keep you for?"

"Volkage?" Silco frowns. "I can't be sure, but five days or so, I think. But what does that matter?"

"Five days," Vander repeats, incredulous. "Five days of torture. And you think that doesn't matter?" 

"Stop calling it torture!" Silco all but yells, tugging the blanket even closer around himself, like a subconscious attempt at self-comfort. He hunches forward, bringing his knees up slightly. Even as he postures and throws his voice around, he's making himself smaller, limbs close to his body as if for protection. Preparing for assault. "I was fine!"

“Really. So you could have left at any time, then? You had full control of the situation, and were just choosing to—what? Spend five days restrained and at the mercy of a megalomaniac, chem-addled madman?” Vander knows he should just leave it, that continuing to provoke Silco like this will only fuel his animosity. But he, like Silco, has always been stubborn and unwilling to concede his side for the sake of unity. It’s what drove a wedge between them in the first place. 

“You have no idea,” Silco rasps, “of what I have been through because of you.” A hand rakes its way down the scarred side of his face, bandaged fingertips resting lightly on the patch of torn and inflamed skin beneath his exposed eye socket. He’s shaking again, whether with barely-contained rage or recollections of terror, Vander doesn’t know. “Or of what I can handle.” 

“No,” Vander agrees, “I don’t. You can tell me, if you want. I’m willing to listen.”

Silco huffs out a single, incredulous scoff. “I suppose you’ll see for yourself in a few days,” he drawls, “if you don’t let me leave. What happens when the chemicals and the filth in the Pilt mixes with your blood. What I’ve had to do to keep the infection at bay.” He taps his eye once, twice with trembling fingers, as if to make a point, though truthfully Vander doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. Silco must have realized this, because his good eye narrows accusingly. “You really have no idea, do you?” His voice is deceptively light, sing-song and teasing. 

Vander swallows. He shakes his head. 

“Do you think my eye just happens to look like this?” Silco angles his face towards Vander, exposing more of that hideous, unnatural eye. Looking at it makes him feel sick. The black sclera is slimy, as if covered in a thin film of oil, and the iris moves only partially in accordance with his good eye, sometimes moving with it, other times staring straight ahead or roving around independently. It reminds Vander of a rotting fish eye, though he feels guilty just for thinking that. He’s the one that caused this, after all. 

“No,” he says, quietly. Defeated. 

“No,” Silco confirms. “After what you did, Vander—I was comatose. Braindead, for all means and purposes. That happens, when you’re deprived of oxygen for long enough. So congratulations, Vander, you succeeded. You weren’t mistaken when you thought me dead—you did kill me, in every sense of the word.” 

“No, I—but—but how?”

“How am I still alive, you mean?”

Vander nods, not willing to trust himself to speak.

“Hm. Unluckily for you, a certain… I suppose doctor isn’t exactly the right word, but let’s call him that for now—found me. A topsider, actually—well, former topsider. Apparently Piltover considers human experimentation unethical—that is, if it’s performed on topsiders. Obviously they couldn’t care less if it happens to Zaunites.”  

“No,” Vander gasps, dread sinking in as understanding dawns on him. 

“Oh, yes,” Silco says blandly, though there’s a sick sense of satisfaction evident in the way the corner of his mouth puckers upwards. “Apparently I’m the first ever survivor of his… experiments. But it is just that—an experiment. Not a cure. And certainly not permanent.”

Whatever semblance of a smile was present fades, replaced with a look of grim acquiescence. He turns his head again, obscuring his discolored eye. The one that remains visible is distant and unfocused, seeing something not there. "There is a… drug, of sorts, that keeps the infection at bay. But go too long without taking it, and the infection returns. As you can no doubt see for yourself." 

Vander has, in fact, noticed. It's hard not to. The puckered skin around the eye is red and inflamed, and tears of pus bubble up from inside his eye socket, which Silco wipes away with his thumb and a grimace every so often. Tendrils like purple varicose veins radiate out from the wounded eye. Vander can't tell if it's a trick of his imagination or if he's just so tired that he's hallucinating, but in the dim basement the purple veins seem to glow gently, like the light of a bioluminescent fish. 

"So, you see, you really do have to let me go." Silco extends his cuffed ankle deliberately. "Or, of course, you can just keep me here and watch me die an even slower, more painful death than the first time you killed me. Your choice." 

Vander stares at the ankle cuff, deliberating. Benzo's warning—don't let your guard down 'round him just 'cause he's half dead—rises to the forefront of his mind unbidden. Silco still has the knife Vander let him keep, he remembers, though it's tucked safely out of view for now. But Silco is watching him intently, an eager glint to his eye. Predatory. 

Vander crosses his arms. "No," he denies, shaking his head. "I don't believe you." 

Silco's face falls, features smoothing out into a perfectly blank mask. His eye, though—his eye burns with hatred. "Then I hope you enjoy the show," he says curtly. "To be specific: a fever, then hallucinations. Once the seizures start, there's no coming back from that." He bares his teeth. "Don't worry, I won't take up too much of your precious time. I'll be dead within the week, and then you'll be free of me forever." 

"That's not what I want," Vander tries to protest, but Silco turns away, rolling back onto his side with a hiss. "I just… I need proof."

"Oh, you'll get your proof," Silco snarls, voice muffled from facing the other way. "And you won't be the one who has to suffer for it, either." He pulls his knees to his chest, wrapping the blanket tighter around his shoulders. "Just go. I do not wish to speak to you any further." In a slightly smaller voice, he appends, "The girls, however, are welcome."

Vander tries a couple more times to apologize, explain himself, but he might as well be talking to a brick wall. It's not long before he gives up and heads upstairs.

Notes:

CW: discussions of torture, discussions of non-consensual human experimentation, imprisonment, denying medication

Chapter 6: Chapter 5: Part 2 (969 AN)

Summary:

Vander grapples with his ideal of being Silco's protector and the reality of life in the colliery.

Notes:

hello! this is part 2 of chapter 5, and if you haven't read the rewritten version of chapter 4 yet, please please read that before reading this chapter, otherwise nothing will make sense!!

also this chapter gets pretty heavy. CW in end notes and please heed the updated tags!
thanks for reading!

969 AN

"So you two know each other?" Connoll asked, breaking the silence between the three of them on the long, awkward cage ride up to the first inset. 

"Yes," said Vander, at the exact same time that Silco responded with a sullen, 

"Hardly." He followed up by shooting Vander with a poisonous glare. 

Cowed, Vander fell quiet, at least for the time being. He didn't want to get into an argument in front of the shift boss on his first day. Connoll eyed them both curiously, but wisely decided not to ask any further questions. 

Still, Vander couldn't resist shooting small side glances at Silco every couple of seconds or so. He almost couldn't believe this was reality, that he was actually standing side-by-side with Silco; close enough he could reach out and grab his hand, if only he had the courage to do so.

After all, it was a known fact in the undercity that when someone was sent to Stillwater, they were generally never seen nor heard from again. There were all sorts of grisly rumours flying around the undercity regarding what sort of horrific tortures and abuses the prisoners were being subjected to up at Stillwater, but learning the truth was somehow worse, especially when confronted with the effects of their system of penal servitude face to face.

Whatever weight Silco had managed to put on while he had been in Vander's care was long gone. Vander could see his ribs through his back, the ridges of his spine and sharp, knife-like shoulder blades even through his filthy undershirt. His eyes looked sunken into his skull, weighed down with dark purple eyebags from years worth of exhaustion and sleepless nights. Patches of scabies rashes dotted his stick-thin limbs, which he scratched at absentmindedly with split fingernails lined with black grime.

The same tattoo Vander had seen on the two putters from before was inked on the back of his shoulder—a cog, followed by a series of numbers. The tattoo was marred, the cog bisected by a white scar line that began at the top of his shoulder and continued down under his shirt. He was close enough to make out the letters beneath the Stillwater emblem: SW #135714, and beneath that in smaller letters, 966AN-981AN. LEASE.

It wasn't difficult to parse—a Stillwater prisoner identification number, succeeded by the sentence. Fifteen years of forced labor, leased out to the highest bidder. 

It made Vander's blood boil and he almost wished the work shift wasn't over, if only so he could take a pickaxe to the coal face to hammer away the rage he felt at seeing Silco, his Silco subjected to such an unjust and harsh punishment. A child convicted to fifteen years of hard labor, and for what? Murder, yes, but it was obviously self-defense. Silco had been a scrawny slip of a thing, barely a hundred pounds soaking wet, and the man he killed, a full-grown adult. How any system of so-called "justice" could rationalize a penalty so disproportionate to the crime committed was beyond him. Was there even a trial? Had Silco even been given a chance to speak for himself, or had an adult, anyone there to argue on his behalf? 

Of course not. It went without saying. Vander knew how topside perverted the concept of justice when applying it to those from the undercity. Everyone did. But he had never before felt such rage as he did then, seeing what topside had subjected Silco to. Was subjecting him to. It was a good thing he was in that cage, otherwise he might have marched up to the first foreman with a Stillwater badge he saw and throttled them on sight. 

Silco coughed into his elbow, a deep wet cough that ripped through him, forcing him to practically double over. He swayed on the spot, one hand curling into the wire mesh of the cage for support. Vander instinctively put a hand on his back to steady him, feeling slightly ill at how clearly he could feel Silco's bones beneath his palm, as well as odd ridged lines arcing across the skin—scabs, he assumed, but from what?

Silco immediately jerked away, shrugging him off even as he continued to hack and cough, shoulders spasming from the force of expelling whatever was caught in his lungs. It seemed to go on for minutes, and Vander feared it might never cease, but eventually it settled down. Silco spat out a glob of black mucus, wiping his nose and mouth with the back of his hand, and stared out the cage at the brick-lined shaft blankly, tired resignation shadowing his face. Malnutrition and exhaustion had aged him prematurely, to the point where in the heavy shadows he seemed more a tiny, weathered man of forty rather than a boy of just thirteen. 

Finally the cage jerked to a stop and they stepped out, Connoll putting a hand on Silco's shoulder and nodding to the cage winder, Vander following behind. The cage winder nodded back, raising a finger to her cap in greeting, but the guard foreman standing beside her, Stillwater badge pinned to his heavy khaki canvas jacket, extended his arm out in front of Connoll's chest, blocking them from proceeding into the inset. 

The Stillwater guard brought a clipboard up close to his face, bristled mustache twitching as he consulted the pages before peering down at Silco. "Back," he ordered, bored. Silco turned and pulled his hair away from his neck with one hand, presenting his back to the guard, expression dull. It was clearly a procedure he was well used to, merely one of the everyday humiliations of life as a Canary. 

With the thick tangle of black hair out of the way, Vander could see several thin raised lines of hypertrophic scars, still shiny and pink, extending out across his shoulder blades from beneath the stained undershirt. They looked to be relatively recent, no more than two to three months old, edges jagged from where they had gotten infected or otherwise not healed properly. Vander's breath caught in his throat at the sight and he bit the inside of his cheek, fierce enough to taste blood. 

He'd hoped, naively, that Silco was being dramatic when he'd joked about being flogged by his supervisor. Evidently he was wrong, because those were undeniably scars left by some kind of whip or lash. He'd seen similar ones on his father's back, a thin pale spiderweb of scars half-hidden by waves of thick grey back hair. According to his father, he'd gotten them as a teenage shiphand who wasn't very good at keeping his mouth shut and following orders. He hadn't thought much of it, as a kid, save a vague pity for the boy his father had once been and thankfulness that it wasn't something that he had to go through. 

But this—this was different. They had whipped Silco. They had whipped Silco. 

Vander saw red. His fists were shaking by his sides, the bite of his fingernails in his palms one of the only things keeping him tethered to reality. He'd kill someone for this, he thought, it was only a matter of when and who. 

The Stillwater guard's bushy eyebrows joined together, eyes narrowing as he peered at the number on Silco's back, then examined his clipboard once more. He looked up at Connoll. "This one's not on this level's register," he said, an accusation underlying the words. 

"No," Connoll confirmed, hand returning to rest on Silco's shoulder, turning him back around whilst tugging him slightly closer to himself protectively. "We got a new member joining our crew today, but he got in a little late. Thought the Canary could finish explaining how we do things, help him get settled in." 

The eyebrows raised slightly as the guard cast a second, appraising glance at Silco, beady eyes running up and down his body in an almost leery fashion, before flicking over to Vander momentarily. "And you chose this one?" He released a disbelieving laugh, shaking his head slightly. "Bit young, isn't he?" 

Connoll's lips thinned. "That's not what he's here for." 

"Hm." The guard clearly didn't believe him, but didn't seem to care much either way. "You'll return him when you're done?"

"I'll take him back to the bunks myself," Connoll promised. "You won't have to do a thing." 

The guard scrutinized them one long, agonizing second longer, then shrugged. "Two cogs." 

Connoll's jaw clenched. "I just got scrip." He dug in his pocket for a second, drawing out a crumpled piece of yellow paper. 

The guard clicked his tongue irritably. "It'll do. Next time, though—no cogs, no Canary. Got it?" He snatched the paper from Connoll's hand and waved them through, letting out a low whistle as Vander walked past. 

"Big fella, aren't ya," he remarked, and Vander didn't like the way his eyes followed Silco one bit, a snide grin partially visible beneath his walrus mustache. "Try not to split the poor kid in half."

Vander hadn't even realized he'd turned on his heel, fists raised at the ready, until a firm hand wrapped around his wrist and pulled him back, sharp. 

Connoll shook his head silently, eyes wide and cautionary. "Don't," he warned, barely audible. Vander bit back his fury, staring hopelessly after Silco, who was walking on ahead, either oblivious to Vander's distress or simply ignoring it. "I know," Connoll said, softer. "But don't. There's nothin' you can do." He jerked his head. "C'mon." 

They caught up with Silco, still mute and withdrawn, stalking between the wide barrier pillars with his arms folded across his chest and face set in a permanent pout. He was slumping, as if weighed down by the too-big miner's helmet that bobbled on his head as he walked.

As they walked towards the dry rooms, Vander could hear his breathing; short rasping gasps that rattled with every inhale. He desperately wanted to talk to Silco alone, but didn't know how, especially since privacy seemed to be nonexistent down in Pit C, with so many bodies occupying such a cramped space. 

Before they could enter the living quarters, they had to go through the dry rooms and change, hang up their work clothes on large hooks descended from the ceiling and leave their boots and other belongings in personal lockers. There were two large dry rooms, separated by brattice cloths. Womens' voices chattering could be heard even in the mens' dry room, and it made Vander feel unusually self-conscious, even though he knew there weren't any women able to see him. 

Connoll pulled back the brattice cloth that served as a door to the mens' dry room for them and Vander stepped inside with a grateful nod. Silco hung back, one hand scratching nervously at a patchy scabies rash. 

"I haven't got a change of clothes," he mumbled, eyes skittering to the side. 

"You can borrow something of mine," Vander offered. He'd left his pack in here, after all, when Connoll brought him to the dorms previously. He still hadn't seen the actual living quarters, only having time to drop his pack off and change. 

Silco opened his mouth as if to argue, then seemed to think better of it and shut it again, lips curled in a small pout. "Fine," he said sullenly, and ducked under the brattice cloth,, following Vander into the dry room.

Once inside, Vander rummaged through his pack and handed Silco a flannel shirt and a pair of boxers, since it was obvious no pants of his would ever fit. Silco was probably only slightly longer than a pair of Vander's pants, and half as wide. He turned away politely as they changed, but he couldn't help glancing out of the corner of his eye as Silco pulled his undershirt off over his head, exposing the scars on his back. 

It was as Vander suspected—five long, parallel whip scars like tally marks traversing Silco's slender back from his shoulders down to his hips, light pink where they tapered at the ends but still red at the thickest parts in the middle. But there was more than just those five—countless older, pale raised lines criss-crossed his back, layered on his body like a topographical map of scars. The longer he looked, the more he saw; and the more he saw, the more he wanted to ram his fist into the rock pillar. He probably would have, had there not been the possibility that it would cause an outburst and bring the roof caving in on all of them. 

Silco was what—ten? when he first got dragged off to Stillwater. Ten years old, and they fucking whipped him. 

He must have made some sort of noise, or perhaps Silco just felt him staring, because suddenly he whipped his head around, catching Vander observing him. 

"What," he snapped, immediately throwing on Vander's shirt to cover himself up. The sleeves were far too long and he had to shake his hands out of them before he could button it up. He was already wearing the boxers Vander lent him, but there wasn't much point since the hem of the shirt ended just above his knobbly, bruised knees. 

"Nothing." Vander chewed his lip. "I'm sorry." 

Silco scowled. "Why." 

"I—" There's too much that Vander wanted to say, but now that he had the opportunity to do so, his mind went blank. "I let you down. I was scared, I froze, and I let them take you away—I should have protected you—"

"It's fine." Silco cut him off. His voice was dull, expression flat and unreadable. 

"But I—"

"I said it's fine." Silco finished buttoning up the shirt and turned away. "Are you done?" Without waiting for an answer, he pushed aside the brattice cloth and stepped out of the dry room.

Connoll was already outside, waiting to guide them to the crew's dormitory. He put one hand on Silco's shoulder protectively, steering them both through the maze of rooms and pillars lit by dim chemlight and marked only by numbers chalked on the rough stone pillars. Several colliers they passed along the way called out in greeting, Connoll returning the gesture with a wave or tip of his cap.

A few even gave a friendly hello to Vander, obviously clocking him as the new guy, but no one acknowledged Silco whatsoever. It was as if he wasn't even there. A ghost, accessory to their party. Vander thought he caught a couple pitying glances, perhaps a sorrowful grimace or two, but almost everyone they passed averted their eyes, gaze skittering over Silco as if pretending he wasn't there in the first place. 

The rooms their crew currently occupied for the two-week duration of their rotation were 13D and 13E, named for drift 13, crosscuts D and E. The men were in D and the women in E, but most of the time save for bathing and sleep, the brattice cloth divider between the rooms was raised, creating one long, thin room that they shared. Each room had four sets of metal bunk beds shoved along the walls created by the rock pillars, each bed equipped with a mat barely two inches thick, a top and bottom sheet, and a thin blanket. 

For bathing, they had a metal tub and a bucket. Groundwater from the sump was filtered through sand, boiled, and then pumped up to the higher levels of the colliery via steam engine, where it was then repurposed for bathing and drinking. They had to haul buckets of water from the pump all the way to their room for the bath, a long and arduous process, so crews would generally bathe properly only once a week, going in order of seniority. Vander was newest, meaning he'd enter the bath last, having to wash as best he could in silty water black from everyone else's dirt. On the six days a week where they didn't use the tub, the miners would simply wet a cloth and wipe themselves down as best they could. 

The toilet was a similar affair: each room had a bucket and roll of paper. The bucket was collected and emptied out into a larger tub every morning by, as Vander later found out, the Canaries. The tub was then hoisted up to the surface and the foul mess dumped into the Pilt. As such, the entire level was permeated with the sour smell of body odour and coal dust, laced with undertones of urine. 

Despite this, the atmosphere was jovial—it was dinnertime, and the promise of food, drink, and an evening of low-stakes card gambling had the workers in a tired, yet cheery mood. Vander could hear snatches of merry, off-tune singing as they walked. 

At last they got to 13D and 13E. Felicia, Mel, and Davros-or-Stavros were sitting on the floor, backs propped against the bunk beds. There were three metal pails and an assortment of cans strewed on the floor around them, a can opener lying abandoned on its side next to Mel. They all looked up as Connoll, Vander, and Silco walked in, Felicia's lips stretching in a wide, sunny smile. 

"Welcome, welcome!" she crowed, raising her arms excitedly and waggling her fingers. "Oh! You brought the Canary!" She scooted slightly to the side, patting the spot next to her. "Get down here, wanna talk to ya more about that idea you had for the squib redesign." 

"I brought him here to rest, Felicia," Connoll warned, settling down across from Felicia. Vander eased himself to the floor beside him, feeling unwieldy and overlarge in the cramped space."Evenin', fellas." He nodded at Mel and Davros-or-Stavros, who nodded back reticently. 

"Pshaw," Felicia waved a hand dismissively, "kid's gotta eat first, don't he?" She nudged Silco with her shoulder, giving him a conspiratorial wink. He had sat down carefully next to her, tucking his knees to his chest and resting his chin on the uninjured one. He brushed his floppy, ragged bangs away from his face and gave her a small, shy smile in response. Vander felt a twinge of jealousy at the starry admiration he could see in Silco's eyes. 

Mel made eye contact with Davros-or-Stavros and jerked his head upwards, a silent invitation. 

"Gonna go play cards in 9F," Davros-or-Stavros grunted, getting up and pulling Mel to his feet, following him out of the room with a back-handed wave. 

"Have fun!" Felicia called after them, Connoll throwing in a wave. 

"There should be some bread and salt pork still in the metal pails, and we got cans of beans, too," Connoll told Vander, reaching over and dragging one of the pails closer to them. "You bring your own fork?"

Vander had. He forced himself to tear his eyes away from Silco, who was smirking as Felicia whispered something in his ear. His narrow, pointed face, large eyes and overbite gave him a mousy appearance that increased when he smiled, something Vander had always found horribly endearing. To see it aimed at someone else awakened latent feelings of irritation that he couldn't quite explain or place the cause of. He speared a piece of salt pork and chewed on it angrily, hardly tasting it. 

"You want the rest of my beans?" Felicia shook an open can in front of Silco's face, the contents making a sloshing sound. 

Silco perked up. "Can I?" He took the can from her eagerly and tilted his head back, pouring beans straight into his mouth. 

"Better than that shit they feed you in the bunks, eh?" Connoll gave Felicia an approving nod when Silco wasn't looking, chewing with his eyes closed in an intense look of satisfaction.

Vander was grateful that Connoll and Felicia seemed to be doing their best to look out for Silco, but he couldn't help feeling… not left out, exactly, but despondent. Guilty. That should have been him, watching over Silco, keeping him safe and warm and fed. If he had been stronger, braver, more quick to act, then Silco wouldn't even be here, half-starved and whipped like an abandoned dog.

"You can have my bread, too," Vander said quickly, thrusting a piece of the hard, mealy bread at Silco. "And my beans." 

Silco set the now-empty can down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "...Thanks," he said, narrowing his eyes at Vander, though he took the proffered piece of bread, breaking off a piece and putting it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, cheek bulging out, which only added to his rodent-like appearance. 

"I missed you," Vander said desperately, without thinking. 

Silco swallowed with a loud gulp. "Is that so." He tore off another piece of bread, the corners of his mouth downturning into a scowl. He dropped his head, letting his bangs tumble over his face like curtains, obscuring his expression.

"Wait," said Felicia, looking back and forth between them. "Vander, you know the Canary?"

"His name," Vander said, trying to keep the growl from leaking into his voice, "is Silco." 

Felicia's eyebrows raised. "Really?" She poked Silco's cheek. "Silco, huh?" 

Silco started to say something, but whatever it was was quickly cut short by a series of thick, hacking coughs. He dropped the bread, clutching at his chest while the other hand slammed onto the floor to hold himself upright, arm shaking under his own weight. Once he started coughing, he couldn't seem to stop, fingers clawing into his shirt desperately as he struggled for air. 

"Shit!" Felicia curved an arm around his shoulders, rubbing his back. "Breathe, Canary—no, Silco—Silly, yeah? C'mon, you can do it, breathe, Silly." She thumped his back with the heel of her palm. 

Vander saw Connoll starting to get up, so he rushed to Silco's other side to get there first. It was petty and stupid, he knew, but he wanted to be the one to help Silco, even though he couldn't rationalize why. 

"Hey, hey, Silco," Vander murmured to Silco in the low, gentle voice that had always helped him calm down after a nightmare. "You're gonna be okay, Sil, just breathe, yeah?" He rubbed Silco's back comfortingly, brushing his hair out of his face with the other. 

Silco's eyes were red-rimmed, mouth open and gasping. He looked frighteningly pale, and with a jolt Vander noticed his lips were turning blue. Felicia must have noticed it too, for he heard her draw in a sharp, alarmed inhale. 

"Connoll," she said, voice tight.

"Get him into bed," Connoll commanded, already pulling back the blankets on the nearest bunk. "On his side." 

Vander hooked an arm under Silco's knees, holding his shoulders with the other, and lifted him easily— too easily, he thought—and carried him over to the bunk, laying him down gently. Together he and Connoll rolled him onto his side, Connoll thumping his back in the same way Felicia had. It produced a hollow noise, like an echo from the space inside his ribs. 

Silco continued to cough, hand fisted in his borrowed shirt, back seizing with every rattling choke of a cough. Felicia held his free hand in hers, one hand stroking his hair back comfortingly.

"C'mon, Sil," Vander pleaded, kneeling beside him and rubbing his back. 

Silco let out a great, hacking cough and a thick glob of viscous black fluid flew out from between his lips. He sucked in a deep inhale of oxygen desperately, eyes wide and terrified. His hand was gripping Felicia's so tightly that his knuckles were white. The inhale set him off coughing again, but this fit was shorter, less violent before he was able to spit up another globule of black mucus. For a while it seemed all he was capable of- hacking up clods of black inbetween gulping down as much air as he could before he inevitably set off coughing again. 

Tears dripped from his eyes, sliding across the bridge of his nose and leaving a small puddle of damp in the thin sheet beneath him. His lips and teeth were stained with specks of black. At some point the intensity of the coughs diminished, as did the amount of mucus he spat up. By the time it ceased entirely, he'd either fallen asleep or passed out from exhaustion, mouth slack, chest rising slowly in shallow, wheezing breaths. 

"How long has he been sick?" Vander asked, still rubbing Silco's back. His chest ached at how small he felt, how fragile. 

Connoll and Felicia looked at each other. "Bit over a month, maybe," said Connoll. "He's not getting better." 

"He's not getting worse, though, either," Felicia pointed out, then winced. "Well. Not that much worse." 

"He got caught in the Grey," Connoll explained. "Made it out the trap, but not the district. Got sealed in for a whole day with it." 

"He what?"

"It's a miracle he's even alive." Felicia smiled down at him fondly. "Janna must've been watching over him. This kid's gonna be someone special, I know it." 

"He survived the Grey," said Vander slowly, turning to glower at Connoll accusingly, "and you put him back in the trap?" 

Connoll grimaced apologetically. "I know," he said, shaking his head. He looked down at Silco unhappily. "I know. But it's the only job that'll let him get any rest. An' I worry 'bout havin' him do the hewing and the blasting so often, too. Breathin' in all that coal dust can't be helping." 

"It can't be worse than him getting stuck in the Grey again," protested Vander. "And how—how do you think he feels, having to sit in the dark, in the trap, for twelve hours—"

"I'm doing my fuckin' best!" Connoll struck his thigh with his fist agitatedly. "I know you care 'bout him and I'm sorry, but it's your first day and you still don't get how things work 'round here yet. I'm tryin' to keep him alive, I promise, which is a helluva lot more'n most other shift bosses you'll meet down 'ere. So cut me a li'l slack, will you?"

Vander hung his head, ashamed. "I know," he said. "I'm sorry." 

Connoll sighed and ran a hand over his bald head. "S'alright. I get it. I'm glad you're here, honest. It's good to know he's got someone who cares. Gods know he needs it." 

Silco shifted in his sleep slightly and they both looked down. He jerked, head tossing to the side, pained expression on his face. He let out a sound that sounded like a cross between a whine and a whimper, brow furrowing. His legs started to kick out restlessly, arms moving spasmodically like a broken wind-up toy. His breath picked up speed, sweat beading on his brow and the whimpering became a regular occurrence. 

Vander sat up straight. This, at least, was something he knew how to deal with. 

"Hey," he whispered, giving Silco's shoulder a little shake. "You're okay." 

Connoll tapped Vander on his back. "C'mon," he said. "We should go, leave Felicia to it." 

"What?" Vander frowned. "No, don't worry, I know what I'm doing." 

"No," said Connoll, "you don't. If he wakes up 'n sees a—a bigger man, he panics. Trust me." 

"I'll take care of him," Felicia tried to assure Vander, but he wasn't having it. 

"He knows me," Vander argued. Silco let out a small cry, kicking out in distress. Vander had had enough. He shook Silco's shoulder more firmly. "C'mon, Sil, you're okay. You're just having a bad dream." 

Silco shot upright, panting. His eyes were wide and owl-like, hair hanging over his face. Clumps of it were plastered to his forehead with sweat. His gaze skittered across his surroundings wildly, as if he didn't know where he was.

"We should go," Connoll hissed, wrapping a hand around Vander's wrist and trying to pull him away. 

Vander ignored him, reaching out a hand towards Silco. "Hey, Sil," he whispered. "There's nothing to be scared of, you're safe. I'm here for you, yeah?" 

Silco's eyes narrowed in on his hand and he jolted back, breath growing even more shallow and ragged. There was no recognition in his eyes when he looked at Vander, only instinctive, blank fear. 

Vander didn't understand. "Silco," he tried, hearing his voice crack pathetically. "It's me." He reached out again and this time Silco scrambled backwards on his elbows until his back collided with the metal frame of the bunk bed.

"No," he gasped, pressing himself further against the metal, even though there was nowhere for him to go. "No!" He raised his skinny arms protectively, choking on a sob. 

Connoll tugged on Vander's arm again, harder, and this time Vander acquiesced, almost paralyzed by shock. Connoll led him out of the room, but Vander turned back, peering through the curtain to catch one last glimpse of Silco.

Felicia had her arms around him, rocking him slightly and humming something he couldn't catch. As he watched, Silco's body finally slumped, night terror dispelled. Ropey arms, still shaking somewhat, wrapped around her middle and tentatively hugged her back. He buried his face in her chest, shoulders shaking in silent sobs. Felicia kissed the top of his head, whispering something in his ear that made him choke out a strained laugh, and continued to rock him until he quieted entirely.

Connoll laid a heavy, warm hand on his shoulder and gently pulled him away.

They sat together in silence against one of the pillars, Vander trying to process what had just happened, Connoll watching him concernedly.

"He didn't recognize me," Vander managed, finally. His voice was thick. He smeared a tear from his eye with the palm of his hand, hoping Connoll didn't notice. "How could he not recognize me?" 

"I don't know," Connoll murmured, rubbing Vander between his shoulder blades. "I'm sorry."

He hated that it actually made him feel a tiny bit better. He was sixteen, he was basically an adult. He wasn't supposed to cry, or feel this lost, or need an adult to comfort him. He was supposed to be the one comforting Silco—that was his job, that's what he had sworn to himself he would do if he ever got the chance to see him again. Not even a day in and he'd already failed. What was wrong with him? 

"I'm supposed to protect him," he said, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them, hiding his face so Connoll couldn't see the tears that were beginning to flow down his cheeks, hot and shameful. "And I couldn't even do that. What's the point of me if I can't even—if I can't keep him safe?" He choked on the words, wishing he could curl up into a little ball and disappear. 

"It's not your fault," Connoll assured him. His thumb drew calming circles into his skin, but somehow that only made it worse, because it was. It was Vander's fault—if he had only been stronger, less afraid, none of this would have happened. 

"He was scared of me," Vander sobbed. "Why—" He curled his fingernails into his arms, focusing on the sting, trying to force himself to stop crying. 

"It's not you he was scared of," said Connoll. "He can't help it. I don't know what it is, but it's not your fault, nor mine. He's just—he just gets like that, sometimes." 

"Who?" Vander forced out. "If he's not scared of us, then—" He sucked in a deep breath, trying to will the tears to stop. "I'll kill him. Whoever it is, I'll kill him." 

Connoll sighed. "I'd help you," he said, and his hand came up to ruffle Vander's hair. It felt nice. Vander didn't think someone had ruffled his hair like that in a long, long time. He'd always been big, and that meant he was treated like, well, like a big kid, expected to behave like a teenager when he was still barely ten just because he looked like one.

He hadn't minded. He'd liked to be given more responsibility, to have adults treat him seriously like he was one of them. It made him feel strong and important, like how taking care of Silco had made him feel. Trusted, needed, dependable. Sometimes, though… sometimes Vander wished he didn't always have to be the strong, sensible one. Sometimes he wanted somebody else to be the adult for a change. 

Connoll sighed, consulted his pocket watch. "We'd better bring him back to his bunk," he said. "Can you carry him?" 

Vander sniffed, wiped his face on his shirt. "Yeah." 

---

Silco had fallen back asleep, this time joined by Felicia. They lay side-by-side on the bottom bunk, Felicia snoring on her back with her arms and legs akimbo, Silco half on top of her, arms still around her waist, drooling on her shirt. Connoll huffed a small laugh upon seeing the two of them, his gaze warm and loving, face softened by a gentle smile. It was possibly the most emotion Vander had seen him express yet.

Vander untangled Silco from Felicia and hauled him up, his head lolling back limply against his chest. 

"Ready?" he whispered, not wanting to wake either of them up. Connoll tore his gaze away from Felicia.

"Yeah," he responded. "Follow me." 

They collected Silco's Stillwater uniform from the dry room, though they didn't attempt to wake him and have him change. They both agreed that he needed the sleep. Connoll lit up his Davy lamp and led Vander down a slope roadway by the water pump station that he hadn't noticed before. The slope wasn't very steep, but the roof was low, and they descended in a partial crouch to a sub-level just beneath the first inset, which Connoll informed Vander was informally called "the bunks." 

Once the slope ended and the floor evened out, there was a metal grate with a padlock on it and sitting in front, slumped over a desk and snoring loudly, was a Stillwater guard. 

"Should I wake him?" Vander whispered, eyeing the padlock.

Connoll thought for a moment, then shook his head, pointing silently at a ring of keys hanging off a carabiner attached to the guard's belt loop. Vander watched, somewhat awed, as he knelt down and swiftly removed the keyring without tugging on the belt loop or jangling the keys enough to wake the guard. 

It took him a couple tries to find the right key for the padlock, but he got it open and slid the grate open, wincing as the rusted metal made a groaning noise. The guard snorted and they both froze, but thankfully he didn't wake and both of them were able to slip through the small gap he opened up. 

The moniker "the bunks" was accurate. Rows and rows of the same metal bunk beds the miners used were lined up against each other, extending all the way to the far end of the room, split up only by rock pillars. However, these bunk beds were just that—the bunks, with no mats, no sheets or blankets, nothing. There were two Canaries to one bed, sleeping tangled together on the bare metal.

The smell in the Canary bunks was somehow worse than in the collier's living quarters, thick and putrid with the scent of disease and old, rotted blood. It was uncannily quiet—put a bunch of kids together in a dormitory and Vander would have expected there to be whispered conversations and hushed giggles, maybe some light thwacks of kids fighting lightheartedly. There was none of that, save some soft snoring and quite a few coughs and sniffles. Vander could plainly hear some kids crying softly, either awake or in their sleep he couldn't tell. 

They walked through the bunks, searching for the one that corresponded to Silco's prisoner identification number, 135714. Several of the kids were awake, the light of the Davy lamp reflecting in their eyes, but none of them made a noise, just followed them with their eyes. More than a few had a cuff around their ankle that was chained to the metal bed post, presumably to stop them from escaping.

They passed one teenager, maybe a bit younger than Vander, lying on their front with their torso wrapped in bandages, blood staining through the white gauze. Vander tried not to stare, but he couldn't help thinking—had that been Silco, before? Cuffed to a metal bunk, unable to move save for on his belly like a worm, back slashed open from the guardsman's whip? 

They found Silco's bunk. A brown-skinned teenage girl with a shiny black bob was lying on her side, snoring loudly. Vander noticed a cuff around her ankle, the skin slightly chafed beneath. Apart from that, she looked healthy, robust, her arms free of scars and weight average. She must be fairly new, Vander assumed, and felt a stab of disgust at the fact that he could tell based on how unmarked and healthy she was. 

Gently, Vander laid Silco down on the metal bunk, careful not to disturb the girl. He stirred slightly, but didn't wake. Connoll put Silco's uniform, folded, under his head like a pillow, then jerked his thumb towards the exit. Vander nodded, gesturing for him to go on ahead. He wavered for a split moment, then trudged back towards the grate, leaving Vander alone with Silco.

Vander kneeled down and brushed Silco's sweaty bangs up off his forehead, pressing a light kiss to the pale skin. His brow furrowed for a moment, but then he sighed in his sleep and began to snore softly. 

He lingered, soaking in the sight of him, face relaxed and unguarded, innocent.

"I'll get you out of here," Vander whispered. "I promise."

Notes:

CW: forced child labour, whipping, sickness, child abuse, implied sexual abuse of minors, slavery

hiya and thank u for reading! it'll probably be another 1~2 weeks before the next chapter, but this one was pretty long so hopefully it'll tide you over until the next one.

next time: without shimmer, silco isn't starting to look too good...
thank you so so much to everyone who reads, bookmarks, leaves kudos and comments!!!

Chapter 7: Chapter 6: Interlude

Summary:

Silco and Powder share some bonding time.

Notes:

short chapter this time, sorry! there's more i wanted to write for this chapter but it's been several weeks since the last update so i figured it would be better to just release what i had written.

CW for this chapter in the end notes

Vander's barely been gone ten minutes when the basement door creaks open. 

"I told you I don't want to talk," Silco yells. He's lying on his side, palm pressed to his forehead, trying to ignore how the throbbing behind his eye is only getting worse. 

A pause. 

"Sorry." Powder sounds sheepish and Silco internally curses himself. 

"Not you!" he calls, trying to shape his voice into something more amicable. "Just Vander. C'mere, Powder, you want something?"

Her footsteps are hesitant as she plods down the stairs. She's got a big cardboard box in her arms that appears to be rather heavy based on the way she walks slowly, making her way down the stairs one step at a time. It makes a big thump when she sets it down beside the couch. 

Silco pushes himself upright, hissing through his teeth as it sends waves of pain through his skull. 

Powder approaches the couch but doesn't join him. She stands just a foot away, picking at a loose thread on the hem of her shirt and gnawing at her bottom lip. 

"What is it, mouse?" Silco asks. 

"Istoleyourstuff," she says, all in one breath. 

"What was that?"

"I stole your stuff," she confesses, gaze fixed on the floor. 

Silco tries not to let his brow furrow, it makes his eye sting. He attempts a comforting smile, though it wavers at the edges. "What're you talking 'bout?" He gestures weakly. "I don't exactly have anything for you to steal. Though I'd ask that you at least let me keep the blanket." 

She doesn't laugh or even crack a smile at that, merely continues staring at her feet, mouth twisting as she chews at her lip guiltily. 

Silco tries a different route. "Come on, I promise I won't be mad. You can tell me, whatever it is." 

She fidgets, warring with herself. "Promise?"

"Would I lie to you?"

She frowns. "No," she decides, after a few seconds. She lifts her head, sheepish. "I took your stuff. From—before. When we thought you were dead."

Oh. 

Silco's eye darts to the cardboard box she's dragged behind her. He can't make out what's in it, and he can't really remember what would even be in there. Just about the only thing he and Vander didn't share was clothes, and even that was dubious, as Silco had liked to wear Vander's jacket or sweaters sometimes, despite them being far too large. 

Vander would always get a little pink in the face and awkward whenever he wore his things, and Silco had enjoyed watching him stammer, steam practically erupting from his ears. He'd demand Silco take it off, to which he would refuse, and Vander would chase him around, trying to pull off whatever he was wearing. It almost always ended with them both half-clothed in a tangle on whatever was the closest available flat surface or secluded corner. 

"That's fine," he tells her. "I don't even remember whatever it was that I had here. And anyways, I'm glad that someone special took them." 

He'd hoped that would brighten her mood, but if anything she looks even more downcast. "I ruined them. Like I always do."

"I'm sure you've done no such thing." He raises his eyebrow. "What exactly makes you say that?"

She kicks at the floor. "I doodled in your books," she admits.

Silco can't help it; he laughs. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that." She gapes at him, disbelieving. "I daresay you've likely improved them."

Journals and paper don't come cheap in the undercity, and Silco has a feeling that with him out of the Last Drop's smuggling operations, Vander hasn't placed quite as high a priority on books as he had. He can't fault her for being curious, least of all for the desire to create.

He waves a hand, gesturing for her to come closer. "Will you show me?"

Powder hesitates, then nods. She drags the cardboard box over by the couch and seats herself on the edge of it, in front of Silco's abdomen so he can read over her shoulder. She takes out a book at random. 

"The Chemistry of High-Energy Materials: Explosives, Propellants, and Pyrotechnics." Silco reads the title out loud. "Not exactly stimulating reading material for a little girl." 

Powder shakes her head, bangs flopping. "No, I liked it."

"You actually read it?"

"I wanted to know how you made those fireworks," she explains, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear shyly.

For a moment Silco worries she's referring to any number of the explosives he'd synthesized for his "operations," but then the memory comes back to him and he relaxes, settling back against the back of the couch. 

"Yes," he muses, absentmindedly tracing the scars on his lip. He'd made some homemade comet fireworks for a celebration—Felicia's birthday, he thinks.

It had been a simple task, to make the tiger tail stars and fit them in a paper aerial charge around a bursting charge of black powder. It was well worth a sleepless night's worth of work to see the looks of wonder on his family's faces as bright golden sparkles erupted and arced across the artificial sky.

Powder had been obsessed, begging him to let her light one off until he finally relented, holding her hands steady as she lit the charge and then sweeping her onto his shoulders to run a safe distance as the shell shot out of the mortar tube. She'd whooped, waving her tiny fists, ribbons of light reflected in the safety goggles Silco had forced her to wear. 

"Did you figure it out?" he asks, trying to drag himself back to the present day. He'd forgotten that—the good times. 

In the After, even his softest memories had been tinted with betrayal. It was too painful to remember what he'd lost—no, what had been torn away from him—so he'd cast all sentiment from his mind and buried himself in his task of uniting the undercity.

There was no joy to be found there, but it at least allowed him to ignore the incessant ache in his heart. He'd been able to outrun the despair that was constantly chasing after him, tangling around his ankles, threatening to trip him and cast him down, down into the abyssal recesses of his own mind.

"Potassium nitrate, charcoal, sulphur, and a binding agent," she lists off, clearly basking in the chance to show off. "Formed into stars. Pack them in a paper charge with black powder for the blasting charge and a time fuse. Use black powder for a lifting charge and a quick match on the outside for ignition."

Silco breaks into a grin and claps as best as he can with his mangled, bandaged hands. "Very good." He ruffles her hair and she squirms, but she's beaming. "Clever girl." 

"I can make chrysanthemum fireworks too," she says proudly. "Almost. It's hard to get it even." 

"Yes," Silco agrees. "You have to get the spacing between the stars perfect." 

"Will you show me? When you get better?"

Silco freezes. I won't get better, he thinks, but he can't possibly tell her that. I'll die here. Chained to the wall. The infection will spread, the fever will rise, and my brain will boil in my skull. "I…" He opens and closes his mouth uselessly. 

"You will get better, right?" Her eyes are round and very, very large. Her bottom lip trembles. She gasps down a shaking breath, and then another. "Uncle Silly?" She fists a hand in her hair and tugs, a whistling in her throat as she sucks in air like she can't get enough.

"Pow—" Silco reaches out but she twists away, curling in on herself and hyperventilating. 

"Shut up!" she screams. "Shut up! He won't die, he won't, he won't!" She pounds herself on the head with a fist, knuckles cracking against her skull. Fat tears roll down her cheeks as she shrieks at something that only she can see or hear. 

"Powder!" Silco grabs her by the wrists and pulls her close to him, her wrists crossed over her chest. He holds them steady so she can't continue to hurt herself. She yells out and tries to squirm out of his grasp, but he manages to keep a firm grip on her and tugs her up fully onto the couch.

"Shh, shh." He tries to comfort her, though he feels as panicked and unsure as she is. "It's okay, mouse. You're okay. It's just us, yeah? Just us bozos." 

She's sobbing, but she's calmed down somewhat and wriggles closer to him. It's a good thing they're both slim, Silco thinks, otherwise they both wouldn't be able to fit on the couch. 

They're laying on their sides, Powder on top of the blanket and him underneath. He's curled around her protectively like a shield, left hand around her arms and holding her hands so she doesn't try to harm herself, his other hand running through her hair in a way that he hopes is soothing.

Vander used to do the same for him, he remembers, when he was still a terrified runaway with sudden, senseless attacks of terror that he couldn't understand. It had helped him, then. He hopes it's helping her, now.

"I d-d-don't want you to d-die," she sobs. Her quaking shoulders press against his cracked ribs. 

"I'm trying my very best not to." He's trying to sound reassuring, but he doesn't think he's doing a very good job at it. He doesn't want to lie to her and say with absolute certainty that he'll be fine. Most likely, he won't. 

"Try harder," she pouts.

Silco hums in response and lets her hands go. He rubs her back, feeling as her breathing resumes a normal pace.

"Do you…" He's not sure how to ask this in a sensitive manner. "Do you sometimes see or hear things that no one else can?"

She stills. Slowly, very slowly, she nods. She wipes her nose on her arm. "'M not crazy," she protests, sniffling. 

"I don't think you are, mouse, that's not what I'm saying." 

She cranes her neck to look at him. "You don't?" 

"'Course not. Why should I?"

She sticks out her bottom lip. "The other kids say—"

"Who gives a rat's ass what some idiotic sump-snipes say," says Silco. "They call you crazy because they're not half as brilliant as you. They'll never see the world the way you do, and they feel stupid 'cause of it, so they call you names to try and feel powerful. That's all there is."

Powder blinks back tears. Her mouth performs a funny little twitch, as if she's trying to keep from smiling. "You think so?"

"Oh, mouse." Silco props himself up on his elbow so he can kiss her forehead, right on the temple. "I know so." 

She lets herself smile, at last. It's a weak, shy gesture; wobbly as if she might dissolve back into tears any moment. "But no one else sees or hears them," she argues. "Doesn't that mean I'm—"

"So do I," confesses Silco. "Sometimes. Do you think I'm crazy?"

She rolls over to face him properly, the couch quaking under her. "You do?"

"Not often. But yes." He gestures at his black eye. "Sometimes I see things that aren't there, in my funny eye. Or hear—" He cuts himself off. The things he sees and hears at night, in his dreams, or when he's alone and the solitude is creeping in… they are not things to be discussed with small children. Least of all the ones that involve Vander. 

It's usually when the infection gets bad, when he's gone too long without a Shimmer dose, that the hallucinations start to kick in. But even in the Before, there had been… incidents.

Times when he'd hear his father's voice, hissing at him out of the darkness. Out of nowhere, the sudden crack of a whip, making him jump. He'd catch a whiff of rotten eggs and mildew, the telltale scent of the Grey, and he wouldn't be able to breathe, choking and gasping for air until whatever came over him had passed. The guard foreman's breath in his ear, sneering filthy insults as fingers dig bruises into his hips. 

She gapes at him, awed. Silco's not sure how to feel about telling her this secret, one he's never even told Vander (though he's sure he must have suspected at some point). He supposes it's better that at least she knows she's not the only one. 

"What do you do?" she asks. "When it happens? How do you know it's not real?"

"Sometimes there's nothing I can do," he admits. "I get very scared. And I just have to wait for it to go away."

"Is that what happened when you fell down the stairs?" she asks. "You didn't recognize us. And you were scared of Vander." She giggles, as if it's inconceivable to ever be afraid of Vander. 

"Yes," he lies. "Yes, that's exactly right." She'll find out the truth someday. But he'd rather that not be anytime soon. "If you ever are unsure if something is real, or you're hearing or seeing things that upset you, you can always ask. Ask me, Violet, Vander, or anyone else you trust if they can see what you're seeing. And if they can't—it doesn't necessarily make it go away, but it might make you less afraid." 

"I don't get afraid," Powder protests. "I'm not a baby." 

"Yes, of course. How silly of me to assume you're burdened like the rest of us with occasional fear, at your ripe old age of… what? Eight?" 

Powder sticks out her bottom lip in a pout. "Nearly nine." 

"Nearly nine," repeats Silco, widening his eye as if impressed. "Well. That changes things. Do pardon the transgression." 

She eyed him skeptically. "You're making fun of me." 

"I would never." Silco feigns being scandalized, making an 'O' with his mouth and bringing a hand to it delicately like a Piltie aristocrat. Powder giggles and there's a sudden pang of pain running through his chest that has nothing to do with his cracked ribs. 

“You’re silly.” Her laughs sound like bells, light and clear. She reaches up to poke at the scar bisecting his upper lip, tracing it upwards with her index finger, unconcerned in the way young children often are when it comes to breaching others’ personal boundaries with their curious, grabby little hands. 

He’s tense at first, but soon relaxes and lets her run her finger over the divots in his skin. Her touch is light and ticklish, at least when he can feel it. He hardly has any working nerve endings on that side of his face. Just patches of dead skin, paralyzed flesh he can neither move nor feel. The second week after waking up, he’d sunk a knife point a couple centimeters into his cheek, watching disbelievingly in the mirror as blood welled up and oozed from a wound devoid of sensation. 

“Silly? Perish the thought.” 

“You’re literally called Uncle Silly,” points out Powder. She draws circles around the flattened area under and to the left of his bad eye. “What happened here?”

“Wild armadillo attack.” 

“There aren’t any armadillos in the undercity,” she giggles. She circles the area again. “It’s like your face got pancaked.” 

“And there’s your answer. I got pancaked.”

“In an armadillo attack?”

He makes a careless shrug. “Why not? Armadillos can eat pancakes, too.” 

“That’s not what pancaking means, silly!” She flicks him in the middle of his forehead. 

“How would you know? Have you ever been pancaked?”

Powder scowls and drops her hand. “Why won’t you tell me?” she sulks. “You got hurt real bad.”

“Yes,” acknowledges Silco quietly. “I did.”

She frowns, thinking. “Was it Enforcers?”

“No,” says Silco. “No, it wasn’t the Enforcers.”

“Hm.” She casts her eyes down to the couch, picking at a loose thread. “Enforcers killed Ma and Da,” she tells him. 

“I know,” says Silco, lightly. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s not your fault.” Her bottom lip wobbles. 

But it is, Silco thinks. If it wasn't for me, they'd still be alive. If I hadn’t invited them, despite knowing it was going to be dangerous. If I hadn’t been so reckless. If I hadn’t thrown that bomb.

“Are you scared?” She peers up at him. Her eyes are clear, blissfully unaware of the dirty truth dragging him, kicking and screaming, into the depths of the Pilt. "Of what hurt you?"

"Sometimes," admits Silco. 

She nods. "Don't worry," she says seriously. "Vander will protect you. He won't let anything hurt you." 

Silco carefully keeps his face neutral, but something must show because her frown deepens. "We had a fight," he tells her delicately. "I don't think he likes me much anymore, I'm afraid."

"That's stupid," she says, bluntly. "He loves you." 

Silco rubs his temple, grimacing. The pain is back, pounding like a hammer on the inside of his skull. He has no idea how to discuss what happened between him and Vander. Avoiding the subject entirely clearly isn't working. Powder's too clever for that, too intuitive. "Maybe he used to, but—"

"You didn't see him after you died—after we thought you died! He spent months looking for you, every night! He cried, like, all the time. He wouldn't even put a memorial candle on the bridge, 'cause he said it was bad luck, in case you were still out there."

Silco freezes, fingers at his temple. "He looked for me?"

"Uh, duh." 

He pauses, letting that sink in. "I didn't know," he says, faintly. 

"You're welcome," she says, smug. "Will you two make up, now?" 

The hope in her voice stings. He allows himself to envision it, just for a moment.

Waking up next to Vander in their old bed, sharing lazy foul-breathed morning kisses. Not forgiven, but perhaps… an agreement, of sorts, to leave their mistakes in the past and try to move forward. Family breakfasts, drawing with Powder, playing cards with Violet. Working out of the Last Drop, dealing his petty secrets and whispering in chembarons' ears with the assurance that they'd never try anything with Vander watching from behind the bar. 

He's hit with a pang of longing so strong that it physically hurts. Maybe he doesn't have to go through this entirely alone. He may never be able to feel fully safe around Vander again, but they could at least work together. It would be easier, uniting the undercity and from there, organizing a single resistance against topside, with Vander on his side. 

But then he remembers Vander's eyes, blaring with rage. Hissing, "You deserved it." Breaking his nose, chaining him to the wall. Not believing him about Shimmer.

"I'm sorry, mouse," he says. "I don't think that's possible." 

Her face falls. "But you want to," she insists. "I can tell."

"It's not that simple." 

"But why?" 

He sighs. "We fought. He blames me for—for your parents' deaths." He pauses, letting that sink in. "So, you see, I don't think there's much chance of us making up." 

"But I don't understand," she protests. "You didn't kill them! It was Enforcers!"

"I started the fight," Silco tells her, gingerly. 

He can remember the moment vividly: Benzo, next to him up at the front line. Felicia and Connol were somewhere behind him. He'd had a fight with Vander the night before, and they hadn't come together, though he knew Vander was there somewhere. He'd promised to be there, and he kept his promises.

He hadn't heard what the Enforcer had said to provoke Benzo, but all of a sudden he was calling the Enforcer a "blue-bellied Piltie cunt" and had spat in his face. 

Enforcers were on him in seconds, dragging him from the front line and throwing him to the ground. One kneeled on his back, grinding his face into the asphalt while a second was fixing handcuffs around his wrists. 

Silco's blood ran cold, then hot. He remembered, all too well, how that felt. The suffocating pressure on his back, the bite of the cuffs in his wrist. He could practically hear Benzo, yelling, out of his sight. 

"Don't hurt him! You don't have to arrest him, just—just take him to Hope House, he just can't stay with us—"

And then, Stillwater. The factories, the mines. 

Benzo would never last. 

He heard the guard foreman's voice, hissing in his ear—you're a feisty thing, aren't you? Good, I like when they fight back. There were ropes burning his wrists as he struggled, the lurid pressure of unwanted hands. 

No. They could not take Benzo. He wouldn't let them. 

Silco reached into his waistband and withdrew his latest invention. 

His previous "cocktails"—liquid nitroglycerin in a glass bottle with a safety fuse and blasting cap attached, were too volatile, could explode unexpectedly if shaken or dropped. By mixing liquid nitroglycerin with sandy clay he collected from the banks of the Pilt, he could shape it into solid, cylindrical bars. Attach a blasting cap of fulminated mercury and a safety fuse, and he had a stable bomb far more powerful than any charge he'd laid in the mines. Better yet, it could be carried subtly and securely, lit or set anywhere, or even thrown should the situation arise.

Vander had hated it, said he'd gone too far. Silco thought he hadn't gone far enough. 

Silco struck a match, lit the fuse. He could still feel the guard foreman's breath on his neck. The sting of a whip arcing across his back. 

"For Zaun," he'd said, and threw the bomb.

 

"I know," Powder says, nose wrinkled in confusion. "I saw. I was watching from a rooftop. Vi and I both were." 

"Then you also know," he says. "If I hadn't done that, your parents would still be here." 

"That's stupid," she tells him, with the certainty that only very small children carry. "The Enforcers had guns. I saw. They might have been killed either way. Or maybe they would have lived, and gotten killed by Enforcers at another fight." She jerks her chin up defiantly. "Either way. It was Piltover that killed them. Not you." 

"Yes, well," stammers Silco, trying to hide the intense gratification that's welling up in his chest. He blinks rapidly, eye suddenly misty. "Vander didn't agree." 

"Then I'll go tell him," she decides, and hops off the couch. 

A jolt of panic runs through Silco. "Wait!" he yelps. It's pathetic, but he doesn't want her to go just yet. This might be the last few days he'll ever have to spend with her, after all. And he doesn't want her to cause Vander storming down here, accusing him of poisoning her against him. 

Powder pauses, one foot already on the bottom stair. 

"Come here," he says. "Please." There's a pounding behind his temple, and pus is welling up again in his bad eye. He can feel a fever coming on, sweat trickling down his back even as shivers run through his body. “You were going to show me your drawings?” 

He hates the slight tremble in his voice, the way it's shot through with vulnerability. Clinging to a child for comfort. Disgusting. 

She wavers at the foot of the stairs. "Yeah, okay," she chirps, and bounds over. "I'll talk to him later." The couch bounces under her weight as she settles back down and picks up The Chemistry of High-Energy Materials: Explosives, Propellants, Pyrotechnics.

"Yes," Silco agrees, desperately grateful. "Yes, you do that." 

"And after, can you explain the chapter on nitrating compounds to achieve high energy?" She opens the book, flicking through it. Silco catches glimpses of neon crayon scribbles, notes jotted down on bar napkins and pressed in-between the pages. 

He smiles. "It would be my pleasure."

Notes:

CW: panic attacks, memories/flashbacks of implied SA

hello! thank you for reading! sorry this isnt as long or complete as my original plans for this chapter. it doesn't really carry the plot that far forward but i wanted to add in some powder and silco bonding time so i'm marking it as an interlude.

my outline for next chapter is very juicy though so please look forward to it! most likely within the next 2~3 weeks, i'm going to be a bit busy soon (gonna be the official photographer for a satanic goth fetish event ayyy) and also i cant keep staying up until 2am writing asdfjasdkf

i do have some other vanco/zaundads fics in the works that i'm also finishing up that are not whump/angst. so if you need a break from the misery that is this fic and want to read 10+k of solid filth and smut, please subscribe or keep an eye on the tags! :D

as always, thank you so much to everyone who kudos, comments, bookmarks, and reads this fic!!! comments and feedback bring me life and keep me writing, so thank you times ten thousand!!

Chapter 8: Chapter 7

Summary:

Benzo and Vander discuss what to do with Silco. Vi decides to get answers for herself.

Notes:

hello hello!

decided to post this chapter for day 4 of zauntrio week, since it sort of matches the theme(ish).

Vander's just finished putting in a round of laundry when Benzo shows up, medical briefcase in tow. 

"Glad to see you're still in one piece," he says, seating himself at the bar. "How goes your little rat infestation?"

"Don't call him that," says Vander, tired. He sets a cup of coffee in front of Benzo and sits across from him, taking out his pipe. 

"I'll stop callin' him that when he stops lookin' like one." Benzo extracts his own pouch of chewing tobacco, packing a pinch in the corner of his mouth. “So? How is he?”

"Alive and kicking. Literally." Vander points to a bruise on his cheekbone from when he'd brought down a bowl of soup and some coffee to Silco around midday. 

"Oof." Benzo winces. "Where is he now?"

"Basement. Cuffed his ankle to a pipe, but—" Vander rubs his temples. "I feel awful 'bout it, Benz."

“Not as if you’ve got much choice though, is there?” He chewed on the tobacco with a wet smacking noise Vander had found uniquely irritating when they were teens. By now, it hardly registered. “He’s dangerous, can’t trust him.” 

Benzo leans in, looking over his shoulder to make sure none of the children are around. “Listen,” he says,  noxious tobacco-breath slapping Vander round the face. “The night he showed up, Volkage’s mansion was burnt to the ground in some kinda explosion. An’ when they went to recover bodies, half of ‘em had bullet holes right in the skull. Don’t that sound familiar?”

Vander packs his pipe, avoiding Benzo’s beady gaze. “What’re people saying?”

“Chross is claimin’ responsibility.” Benzo wrinkled his nose in disgust. “But everyone knows that sorta flashy maneuver ain’t his style. There’s been rumors ‘bout some Eye figure, an associate of Volkage who went missin’ ‘bout a week ago. But I figure he musta been one of the poor fuckers who ended up with a bullet in their skulls, since no one’s heard a peep ‘bout him since.”

“Mm.” Vander strikes a match, lights up. He puffs on his pipe, the buzz of nicotine giving him the strength to look up and meet Benzo’s eyes. “That’s ‘cause he’s locked in my basement.” 

Benzo goggles at him. “Fuck right off.” 

“Think about it.” Vander urges. “The Eye of Zaun. You saw his face, what’s the first thing you noticed?” 

 “You’re joking.” Benzo’s face falls as Vander’s expression remains impassive. “Silco is the Eye of Zaun?” He laughs darkly, disbelieving. “So that’s what he’s calling himself nowadays. Pretentious bastard.” His chuckles are almost fond. 

“No worse than Hound of the Underground.” 

Benzo grimaces. “Fair point.” He chews his tobacco. “So what sorta mess did the Eye of Zaun get himself into, that has the late great Volkage’s mansion in ashes and the Eye himself showin’ up in the Lanes, lookin’ like he lost a fight with a meat grinder?”

Vander takes a puff, leans in close. “It’s complicated,” he says, “But he’s got a plan.”

“‘Course he does, the bastard’s always got a plan,” scoffs Benzo, unimpressed. “And never a good one, might I add.” 

Vander fills him in as he chews, placid expression gradually growing animated.

"That's ridiculous," Benzo says, once Vander’s finished. He spits into an empty snuff tin he'd withdrawn earlier from his pocket. "It would never work. He'd just start an all-out war in the undercity." 

"See, but here's the thing." Vander shakes the ashes from his pipe and begins to repack it, watching Benzo's reactions as he speaks. "It's already working. I looked into it—remember that old bastard Cockrell, used to run skin trade down the Sumps? Poisoned, and guess who took over his holdings and territory? Margot, from the old United Brothel Workers group Sil was in with. And Pilchard, owned all them textile mills in Factorywood?"

"Our mums worked under him, 'course I remember." Benzo's tone is sour; he's watching Vander uneasily, as if he can't quite recognize him. 

"Missing, with Renni from the garment workers' division of our old party in his place. He's doing it, Benz, he's replacing them one by one with new blood that isn't on Piltover's payroll."

"Vander…" He trails off, visibly unsettled. "Please tell me you're not thinking of working with him again." 

"No! No, of course not."

Benzo breathes an exaggerated sigh of relief, slumping over his coffee with his forehead in his hand. "Oh, Janna's sweet merciful bosom—by the Gods, Vander, you really had me worried—"

"I'm thinking of asking him to move back in and conduct his meetings at the Last Drop." 

"You what." 

“Think about it,” Vander urges. “You don’t trust him, I don’t trust him, and Sil never trusts nobody—it’d work for all of us. I can keep an eye on him while he’s doin’ his business, make sure nobody tries anything like what happened with Volkage. And if he’s doing anything that’ll come back to the Lanes, I’ll know.”

Vander reaches across the table, as if to grip Benzo’s hand, but falters, leaving several inches of empty space between them. “C’mon, Benz—don’t they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” 

“They do, but I don’t think they say anything about murderous ex-lovers 'cept to stay the fuck away.” Benzo leans back and crosses his arms, working the tobacco in his mouth. 

“Sil and I were like—”

“Like brothers, yes, we’ve all heard it.” Benzo rolls his eyes. “You two weren’t like no brothers I ever knew, even from the start. Janna’s sake, Van, whenever he looked at you it was like he was breathin’ clean air for the first time. An’ you— you’d break the arms of anyone who even looked at him funny. That’s not normal sibling behavior, Van.”

“Also,” Benzo adds, “I never seen brothers goin’ at it in an alleyway or a storeroom or where-have-you like you two. The amount of times I caught an unlucky eyeful of your blindin’ white buttocks as you pounded that greaseball into whatever flat surface was available—not exactly brotherly, I have to say.”

Vander groans, covering his face with his hands. “We thought we were so subtle,” he mutters, cringing. 

“Subtle? Fuckin’ hell, I could hear Silco yowling like a backalley cat in heat from four buildings down! Remember Marion, that old bird that lived in the flat right below yours? Her ceiling would shake an’ plaster dust’d rain down on her whenever youse were humpin' 'n thumpin' and whatnot."

“How d’you even…”

“How do I know? How do I know?” Benzo jabs the air angrily with his finger. “She thought she was haunted ! Had me round to do repairs—the plaster on the ceiling cracked, by the way—and begged me to stay the night, she was so terrified!”

“Oh, dear.” Vander winces. Benzo carries on, red patches blooming on his nose and cheeks as he unleashes a tirade that has apparently been building up for quite some time. 

“Imagine my shock, waiting to hear this ghost’s supposed wailing, threatening this poor ol’ woman ‘e was gonna possess her—come right inside ‘n fill her up, make her scream—an’ I hear my dear ol’ cousin Vander fucking the lights outta his supposed sump-rat brother!”

Vander snorts mid-inhale and chokes on his pipe, puffs of smoke clouding out his nostrils. He thumps his chest, eyes watering. "Whoops."

"That's all you have to say for yourself? Whoops? Swear to Janna, I couldn't look you in the eyes for a full week, you randy bastard!" Still, Benzo chuckles at the memory as Vander wipes tears from his cheeks, shoulders quaking with silent laughter. 

He sobers up quickly, however, twirling his pipe between forefinger and thumb and watching it somberly. "I loved him so much, Benz," he says. His voice cracks with emotion, eyes shiny and red, and not from the pipesmoke. "I thought he was dead and—and now that I have a chance to have him back— I can do it right, this time, I can keep him safe—"

"Can you?" Benzo interrupts. His voice is firm, but not unkind. "You couldn't before, and now he's upped the stakes—this isn't like your smuggling ring back in the day, or even later, when he dragged you into that really nasty business with the bombings—he's messing around with chembarons, Van. You saw what Volkage did to him—you wanna get yourself mixed up in that? The Drop? Your girls?"  

"No—'course not, but I—"

Benzo holds up a finger to silence him. "I'm not finished," he says. "You think Silco would feel safe here? With you?"

Vander hangs his head. "I could—" 

"No." Benzo rubs his temples tiredly. "No, Van. I'm sorry, but—you're not seeing straight. His first instinct when he saw you was to rip a knife outta his own gut to try and fight you off– and I don't mean to hurt you, I really don't, but you tried to kill him. And, from the looks of it, clawed off half his face in the process. That's not just gonna go away."

There's a squeak from the staircase at the back of the bar. Vander and Benzo twist simultaneously to discern the source of the noise, but there's nothing there. 

"Damn mice, gettin' in the bar again," Vander grunts. He shrugs and turns back to his pipe, twirls it in his fingers and stares into the bowl miserably as if an answer to his woes could be found there, packed among the tobacco. 

"You're right," Vander sighs, and rakes a hand through his hair, weary. "It's just—if there's something I could do—I know we'll never be what we were before, and maybe that's for the best, but I can't just let him go, either."

"You have to." Benzo pats his hand awkwardly. 

"But I can't." Vander balls a hand in his hair, eyes distant and frantic. "The girls love him. Powder especially—already they're inseparable, can hardly get her to leave his side as it is. And you know how I worry 'bout her—she's different, and far too clever for the likes of me and the rest of the Lanes. Vi's the only friend she's got, but Vi needs space of her own to grow."

"No." Benzo shakes his head, reeling. "No. Please tell me you're not thinking what I think you're saying."

Vander shrugs, sheepish, eyebrows raised in apology.

"You think Silco should be her—what, her special playmate? Have you listened to nothing I've said? He just massacred a mansion full of fuck-knows how many people, he's working with chembarons—chembarons, Van, proper druglords an' pimpers an' artificers! And you want him hangin' round little eight-year old Powder?" Benzo scoffs, incredulous. He sits back, crossing his arms self-righteously. 

"You don't get it," Vander says, desperately. "Powder's not—I love her to death, but she's not normal. Which is fine," he adds quickly, raising his hands in defense. "But I worry she'll blow herself halfway to Noxus an' back, the way she keeps experimenting and tinkering and whatnot. And I've got the Drop to run, I can't keep an eye on her all the time." 

Benzo groans and rubs his face wearily. By the time he pulls his hands away, it's shining-red and raw. "I repeat: you want Silco. The fucking Eye of Zaun. To babysit Powder."

"Yeah," says Vander. "Yeah, I do." 

Benzo buries his face in his hands. "You're gonna make an early death of me, Van," he bemoans. 

"He can help her, Benz!" Vander argues. "You remember what he was like, a real fucking genius with the chems—if he weren't born a sump-rat he'd've been one of Piltover's finest by now! Powder's just how he was—is— suckin' up every book in sight, head exploding with ideas."

"Yeah, but—"

"Just last week she was askin' me how to use hydrogen, hydrogen something—fuck, I don't know, that's the point. Sil could at least set her on the right path, make sure she's not puttin' herself in harm's way."

Vander slumps over his pipe and buries his face in his hands, exhausted. "When Vi was her age, the only experimentation she was interested in was seeing how many beans she could fit up her nose." 

Benzo pats the top of his head. "I don't exactly approve, but I see what you mean. Still," he presses,"you'll have to work something out. I mean, you can't just keep him chained in your basement forever."

"Ah, yes," says Vander, and lifts his head. "About that." 

---

Vi manages to clap a hand over her mouth just in time, hiding above the stairwell and out of Benzo and Vander's line of sight. Still, she hadn't been able to fully conceal the shocked gasp that slipped out when she heard Benzo's accusation. 

You tried to kill him. Clawed off half his face.

She doesn't believe it. She can't. 

Vander was the one who'd hurt Uncle Silly to the point where she didn't even recognize him. She'd even kicked him in the head, thinking he was insane to be terrified of Vander—because how could anyone be scared of Vander? 

She feels queasy. This can't be right; there has to be a mistake, somewhere. She's misheard, or Benzo's got the facts wrong. Either way, she certainly can't ask Vander.

What could she even say? Hey, thanks for taking us in and all, but did you happen to try to kill Uncle Silly? 

Vi has never been as attached to Silco as Powder is—Uncle Silly, she'd called him, unable to pronounce Silco as a toddler and the name stuck—but still she has nothing but fond memories of the slim, shadow-like man who'd dance with her mother to strange songs on the vitriola, hold Vi's arm steady while guiding her aim at the dartboard.

Two eyes that glittered with quiet humor; high cheekbones and thin, unmarred lips affixed in a wry smile. An angular, narrow, symmetrical face, not one torn to shreds and emotionless, slack on one side. 

Her Uncle Silly had strode firm and wide, carried himself with understated elegance, hands steady and confident whether trimming her bangs or pulling a cog out of empty air from behind her ear. The wraith called Silco in the basement is unable to even fix his lips around a glass and drink without dribbling down his chin. His hands shake constantly, and he shies away from eye contact as if it burns. 

She needs answers, and she isn't going to get them from Vander, or the infamously tight-lipped Benzo. There's only one person she can ask. 

Squaring her shoulders, Vi tiptoes down the stairs, past Vander and Benzo, fully engrossed in their conversation, and slips into the basement. 

Both her and Powder had been warned to stay away from the basement after last night. Silco had fallen asleep while reading to Powder and apparently, in his fever, begun saying odd things and thrashing around on the couch. 

Powder had run to get Vander, who, after checking on Silco, immediately barred them from the basement. It was in case whatever Silco had was contagious, he'd said. It had seemed reasonable enough an explanation at the time, but now Vi's not so sure. 

Not wanting to turn on the overhead light in case Vander sees the light poking through under the door, Vi grabs an old Davy lamp. It takes a couple tries to light the wick with matches and she almost burns her fingers closing the metal mesh over the flame, but it flickers to life steadily and provides enough of a glow to see by without the potential hazard of alerting Vander. 

Uncle Silly—no, Silco, she still can't reconcile this pathetic, torn-apart figure with her proud Uncle Silly—is asleep on the couch, blanket tangled around his legs. A thin sheen of sweat glistens over his pallid skin, hair damp and oily. 

As she watches, his good eye swivels underneath his eyelid, the lidless black one whirling in its socket. She thinks he can't see her, but still she freezes, afraid to have that ghostly stare fixed on her. His lips part, dry and cracked, and he grimaces, letting out a small groan of pain. 

He kicks out. A metallic clang draws her attention down to his ankle, so pale it's practically the same color as the bandages wrapped around it. A lump swells in her throat, choking her. Painful-looking bruises blossom from underneath the bandages, looking especially fierce from their lurid purple contrasting with his ashy skin. That's not what disturbs her.

On top of the bandages is a metal handcuff, the type she's seen hanging off of Enforcers' belts. It's attached to a chain, leading to another cuff around a metal pipe affixed to the basement wall. 

This has to be some sort of mistake. Vander wouldn't do that to Uncle Silly– he wouldn't chain him to the wall like a rabid dog. This creature can't be her Uncle Silly, he can't, because Vander had loved Uncle Silly and he would never, ever do something like this to someone he loved. She's sure of it. This has to be an imposter, a monster wearing half her Uncle Silly's face, someone dangerous. It's the only possible explanation. 

And if you're wrong? a tiny, niggling voice pipes up. If this is Uncle Silly, and Vander's hurt him? What then?

Vi shakes her head to free the thought, but it's too late; it's already taken root. She takes a couple steps closer to Silco-Not-Uncle-Silly. The small radius of light the lamp provides falls over his eye and he shudders awake, wild-eyed and gasping for breath. 

Instantly, she leaps back, swallowing anxiously around the lump in her throat as Silco-Not-Uncle-Silly coughs and clutches at his chest, torso jerking violently with each cough. He groans in pain and tries to roll onto his side, arms trembling weakly beneath him. He's not wearing a shirt, just bandages wrapped around his chest and abdomen, and there are red spots bleeding through on his stomach and dotted all over his back. 

"You shouldn't be down here," he rasps, with that horrid, gravelly voice. 

Uncle Silly always spoke in a gentle baritone, smooth like polished wood. He'd swear up and down he was a terrible singer, but he'd end up humming along, foot tapping whenever Ma put on one of her records. Before long they'd both be singing loudly, arm-in-arm, skating and twirling across the room. 

Vi remembers Uncle Silly leading her through a variety of folk dances, bent double at the waist so he could hold her hand through the winding, circular steps like working a needle through fabric. In-out, in-out, right over left, a tap and a hop, then back again, heels clacking joyfully on the floor. 

She'd stumbled over the dances' names—bulgar, freylakhs, hopke tantz— just as much as she had the steps, simple as they were, once they sped up up up until they were flying around the room, dizzy with laughter, to collapse on the floor, ceiling spinning. And laughing, singing, holding her other hand throughout it all, was—

"Felicia," Silco-Not-Uncle-Silly says, and Vi's breath catches in her chest. 

"What?" she whispers, thinking she must have misheard.

"You shouldn't—" he reaches an arm out, as if to shoo her away perhaps, but cuts off, wincing. "If the foreman catches you—if Jelico catches you—I'd say he'd have the skin off my back, but we both know it's too late for that." He jangles the ankle cuff, insouciant. "He's suspicious as it is, says Connoll's been requesting me too much; keeps accusing me of—" He stops himself; face twisting, nauseated. 

He looks very young—not his physical features, obviously, but the way he holds his face, the manner in which he speaks– eye wide around the corners, some of the tension in his brow faded away. Earnest and innocent, but there's a hunted quality to him. A rat, cornered into a trap. His eyes dart around nervously as he speaks, never focused on any one spot, and a minute tremble affects his hands, curled into the blanket possessively as if it'll be torn away from him at any second.

"I'm not…" Vi croaks, but can't seem to make herself finish. It doesn't really matter. Silco-Not-Uncle-Silly's eye is hazy with fever, forehead shining with sweat. 

"Tell Connoll not to request me for a couple days, a'ight?" he asks, giving an unsteady, sheepish smile. It's lopsided; the scarred side of his face doesn't move at all. "Won't be much use, anyhow. Guards must've whacked me somethin' good. I—I don't remember, but fuck, my head—" He inhales sharply, pressing a heel to his bad eye. Pus bubbles out from the socket, spilling down his cheek and he cries out, sharp and pained, the yelp of a sick dog. 

Unable to stop herself, Vi takes a shaky step closer, the flame caged inside the Davy lamp dancing over them both. In the light, he looks even worse, his good eye unfocused, the bad eye covered in a thin film of mucus. There are red scratch marks all around it, asymmetrical and frantic. When she looks at his hands, she sees the cause—some of his fingernails are missing, bandaged over with gauze, blood soaked through where the nailbeds should be. 

"How bad does it hurt?" she asks, free hand flexing anxiously at her side. 

Silco-Not-Uncle-Silly gives an unconvincing laugh. "Don't look so concerned," he says, sucking in short breaths through his nose to mitigate the pain. "Doesn't suit you. Nor does that haircut—handy, though, don't gotta worry 'bout your braid getting turned into an impromptu squib." He grinds his palm into the eye socket, groaning in pain. "Janna fuck. How long have I been out?"

"Not long," she lies, not sure why she's keeping up this farce. It hurts. 

She misses her Ma every day, though she can't let herself show it. She's got to be strong enough to support Powder, and if she realizes that Vi is just as messed up about their parents' death as she is, then she'd withdraw and keep her pain to herself, not wanting to bother Vi with it. So she buries her grief and cries alone on the rooftop only once Powder's safely snoring, oblivious.

"What am I like?" she asks, before she can stop herself. 

Silco blinks hazily. Vi feels awful for exploiting his fevered misconstruction, but— 

But her mother's face is fading from her memory. She can remember bits and pieces: swimming blue eyes, the comfortable smile that made her face its home; laughter quick and loud like firecrackers. But try to conjure up a complete, solid image of her Ma and the pieces scatter; the memories blowing away like dust. 

"Wh—what do you mean?" he falters; rubs his chest over the bandages, wincing. 

"How would you describe me, as a person?" Vi begs. "Who is Felicia?" 

He drops both hands and reaches out to her with bandaged, splinted fingers. Anxiously, she lets him hold her free hand between his, overheated and sweaty. 

"What's going on?" He sounds so uncertain, young and afraid. "Did our plan get found out? Are they coming for you? Is that why you let yourself get shorn like a—"

"Excuse you, I like my hair," Vi cuts him off obstinately. "Just tell me. Please. What kind of person is Felicia?" 

He rubs a twig-like thumb over her knuckles. "You're—" he swallows, voice suddenly thick. "Truthfully? You're like a big sister to me. I know family isn't worth shit—believe me, I know, that's how I ended up here, but—but you make me wish—" Silco shudders. 

"You've never hit or made fun o' me, and you stand up for me, even to the foreman—which is fuckin' insane by the way, you've got Fissure Madness for sure—but you try 'n protect me all the same." He squeezes her hand lightly. "You're fierce, damn stubborn when you want to be, an' can make me laugh, even if there isn't anything worth laughin' 'bout—Felicia, you're the best big sister anyone could hope for." 

Vi bites her lip, fighting back tears. 

She had no idea. 

Uncle Silly had always been her uncle in that nebulous way where every adult man was an Uncle and every woman was an Aunt, and she had no idea who was related and who wasn't. Not that it really mattered, especially in Zaun. Family was family, and it was an unshakeable fact she'd known for as long as she could remember—Uncle Silly was family. As was Uncle Van .  

It wasn't until after her parents died that they'd started calling him Vander. It wasn't something that was decided, it just happened—after the Day of Ashes, she didn't feel much like a child anymore, too old for Aunts and Uncles. She dropped the Uncle, and Powder, as with everything her big sister did, followed suit. Uncle Van became Vander, and Uncle Silly was gone forever. 

They never talked about it. Vi and Powder quickly learned not to bring up Uncle Silly. Vander would get teary-eyed, fragile as eggshell—one wrong step and he'd crack, either lock himself in the bathroom and run the shower to disguise the loud, gulping sobs; or head out to the scrapyard with his gauntlets to punch craters in sheets of discarded metal. 

They papered over the Uncle Silly-shaped hole in their lives and carried on, as if it never existed. As if he never existed.

"I'm sorry," she chokes out. "We abandoned you."

"Don't say that—it's my fault, after all." Silco blinks, eye wet and red-rimmed. "Janna, I wish you were really here," he croaks. 

Vi feels her spine turn to ice, dread crawling up her ribs. "What?" 

"I'm hallucinating again, or—or I'm dead, or close enough." His lips twist into an awful smile, grim and complacent. "Have you come for revenge, dear sister?" He clutches her hand tighter, desperate.

Vi can't find anything to say. She gapes at him, mouth opening and closing uselessly like a fish drowning on land. 

Silco seems to take her reaction as an affirmation. His eye closes, miserable and resigned. "I never intended for things to happen the way they did. I never—" He chokes on the word. The shudders that echo from his chest are hollowed out with grief. "It should have been me, on the bridge," he says, voice crushed, a broken accordion whistling. "It should've been me." 

Vi feels sick. She tries to back away, but Silco's grasp is too tight, and she's afraid that trying to rip out of his hold will hurt him. 

"I always knew," he gasps, searching her eyes and she's frozen, paralyzed by horror, "that my life would come to an end at someone else's hands. I'd made my peace with that; it's the price any young, foolish revolutionary must pay. But I—I never thought—" A sickly yellow tear dribbles down his scarred cheek, the pus overflowing. "I never imagined— why, why did it have to be Vander?"

The floor falls out from under Vi's feet. She gags, tastes bile—Silco's hands on hers are hot and wet and slippery and she tears away, swallowing down gasps of stale basement air. 

No. No. It's not true. It's not.

Vander loved Silco. He'd never— he wouldn't—

The door creaks open. Vi's stomach drops—she backs away and turns off the lamp, diving under Powder's bunk bed just in time. Forcing a deep inhale, she holds it to slow her breathing, heart thudding a vicious tattoo against the chilled stone floor.

"...told me he's been takin' some drug," Vander is saying, boots thumping down the stairs. "To keep the eye infection from killin' him. An' that if he stops takin' it, he'll get a high fever, then seizures, and then…"

"Die?" suggests Benzo. "Sounds like an addict, tryna avoid goin' through withdrawal."

"That's what I thought, some sorta made-up excuse to get me to let him go—"

"Why didn't you?" Benzo interrupts. "If he wants to leave, let the bugger go!"

"He can hardly walk! I can't let him leave like this, he'll get himself killed! And– and I loved him, once. Maybe a bit of me still does." Vander sighs. "That's besides the point. What I called you here for is– he's got a fever. A bad one. Shivering and sweating and groaning, the whole lot. Can't even keep soup down, spit it up all over himself. I don't know what to do."

They've reached the bottom stairs. Vi watches as two sets of boots clod over to Silco's couch. The footsteps reverberate through her body, flattened against the unforgiving concrete.

"Here to finish me off?" Silco's voice is like gravel; cold and hard and unfeeling. But she can hear the hurt that underlies the words. The hopelessness. "I see you brought company." 

"Believe me, I'd rather not be here either," retorts Benzo. 

"No one's gonna hurt you, Sil." Vander sounds pained, weighed down with exhaustion. "We just wanna help. Let Benzo take a look at you, yeah?"

"Don't patronize me," Silco snarls. "Neither of you touch me." 

Another snarl, and Benzo and Vander's boots jump back. 

"Why does he have a knife?" Benzo screeches. "Where was he even keepin' it—"

"I wanted him to feel safe!"

"You gave it to him?!"

"Stay. Back." Silco hisses. She can picture him, coiled back, viper-like, clutching a knife with broken hands that never stop trembling. 

"Not gonna hurt you," Vander promises, and his boots tread forward gingerly. Taking care to announce his movements. "Will you drop the knife, Sil?"

"Not a chance," Silco spits. 

Again, Vander sighs. Vi hears a few grunts, a gasp and a harsh cry of pain, and the knife clatters to the floor. 

"No, no—get away, get away!"

"Hold his wrists so he doesn't claw my eye out—yeah, over his head, like that. Thanks, Van."

"No, no, no, no—" Silco chants a desperate prayer. He's kicking and thrashing; she can hear the chain clank, metal on metal, couch creaking and groaning in protest.

"Hold—still—" Benzo grits out. "Lemme get a look at that eye." A sick, wet noise—Vi imagines Benzo poking into Silco's diseased eyeball, pinching the inflamed flesh around the socket, squeezing out pus and she fights back a gag—and then there's a scream. 

It sounds torn straight from his lungs. His voice crackles and breaks, then gives out entirely and all that's left are hoarse, wet moans of agony. 

When Vi was eight, she'd witnessed a burning building collapse. There'd been a man, leg crushed beneath a concrete block. Unable to push it off or crawl away, trapped. 

Vi stood, watching. Uncomprehending, at first. And the flames swooped in, vultures diving for carrion. They reached out hot tongues, sampled the shape of him and dived back for another taste. Their merry crackle was not enough to drown out the man's screams as they engorged on flesh, devoured meat and fat sizzling off the bone. 

His scream haunted her for weeks afterward. She'd hear it in the crying of a sick baby, in the piercing alarms that drifted up from the colliery, in the screech of metal wheels on rails. It wasn't the sound itself that scared her; it was the sick, hopeless fear, the knowledge of agony to come—and then, the suffering—torment worse than could be envisioned, petering out into voiceless nothing, consumed.  

She'd hoped never to hear it again, and yet she hears it now, woven in with Silco's excruciating howl.

"What did you do?"

"Nothing—I just tried to get a look at the inflamed area—shit, Van, this isn't good." 

"I know—"

"No, you don't—he's burning up. If we don't bring his fever down, his brain'll boil in his skull." 

Vi claps a hand over her mouth, just barely managing to stifle the horrified gasp that creeps out.

"Do you have anything that can do that?" Vander sounds frantic in a way she's never heard before. He's always been stoic and level-headed, sighing with mild irritation at the most vicious of bar fights as if they were nothing more than a minor inconvenience. He's dependable and steadfast, the eye of a storm.

Now, he sounds terrified. Vi can't even picture what expression his face is making right now; she has no frame of reference. 

"No. Nothin'. I could get it, but it'd take at least a day an' a half to get one of my lads to nick it from a topside pharmaceutical. He'd be gone by then."  

"Gedoff me—don' touch, don'touchme nononono—" Silco slurs, keeping up the constant refrain underlying Benzo and Vander's conversation. He's still kicking and thrashing, but the movements have weakened. She can tell from the chain jangling; it's more subdued than before, and the couch merely issues muted grunts and wheezes in complaint.

The fact that Vander and Benzo are able to ignore his pleas, or at least to speak over them, makes Vi feel very, very cold. A block of ice forms in her stomach. This is not the Vander she knows. 

Unless the Vander she knows has been a lie all along. 

It's not true, it's not, please Janna don't let it be true—

"Benzo, please." Vander's voice is thick, clogged with tears. "Please— I can't—I can't lose him again—"

"Fuck, fuck you—gunna, I'll kill you f'r this—don't you dare— no no no no no—" Silco's voice rises in pitch and agitation. Frantic, as if he can't stop himself—the desperate babbles of a condemned man, pleading with the executioner as the noose is wrapped around his neck.

"Here's what we're gonna do." Benzo's voice is firm, if a bit unsteady. "Run a lukewarm bath—lukewarm, not hot, not cold, alright? Make a cold compress for his forehead, get as much water as we can in him without him chuckin' it up, and… and hope for the best." 

"No no nonono—stoppleasestop it hurts ithurtsithurts stop—don' touch me, don't—" 

"No one's doin' anything, Silco, so jus' calm yourself, alright?" Even as he orders Silco, Benzo sounds uneasy. Disturbed. His boots shuffle in place, shifting weight from one foot to the other nervously. 

"I don't–" Vander swallows. "I don't think he's seeing us right now."

"What'cha mean—oh. Oh." Benzo's voice drops. "From…?"

"Think so," Vander says, gravely. "You go on ahead an' run that bath, yeah? I'll bring him up in a minute." 

"On it." Benzo takes the stairs two at a time, eager to escape the basement, and with it Silco's rattling, increasingly incoherent mutterings. 

As soon as he's gone Vander squats so he's level with the couch. Vi can see up to his torso, watches his elbow extend to the couch. He's touching Silco, she assumes. 

"Sil, birdie," he whispers. "I'm so sorry, love. I should'a listened." 

"No—don't, stop—hurts—no, no no don't—" Silco carries on, oblivious. From the sound of it, he's still flailing, though they've been whittled down to weak jerks and twitches. 

"I'll make this right, I promise. You hearin' me?" Vander's voice catches. Rusted with grief. "C'mon, Sil, please." He chokes on a sob. "I'm gonna touch you now, okay? Got to free your ankle." 

A key turns in a lock, ka-chunk. Chains clunk and drop to the stone floor. 

"Don't you fucking touch me!" A thud. Flesh meets flesh. Cartilage tears, bone crunches.

Vander bellows in pain. Blood speckles the floor. "Fuck, Sil," he curses, nasal and stifled. "Think you broke my damn nose." 

"Shit," he mutters, and staggers to his feet. "Suppose it's only fair, but—fuckin' ow." 

"Tol' you not t'touch me," Silco rasps. “‘M not, not weak—I’ll claw y’r fuckin’ eyes out—”

Vi’s never heard Uncle Silly like this, either. Coarse and gasping and desperate. He was always impeccably put together, down to his shoes, which were real Ionian leather (stolen, naturally) that he'd polish and clean every week without fail. 

Vi had liked to watch him do it; wrinkling her nose at the foul smell as his long, elegant fingers worked over creases and smoothed out wrinkles. 

"Feel that?" he'd say, and let Vi rub the boot tongue between her chubby fingers. "Soft as silk." And she'd stomp around in his steel-toed boots, iron-heavy and boat-like on her small feet, and imagine herself to be very big and tall and fearless like he'd seemed to her then. 

He seems so small, now. Whittled down, a wire frame and matchstick limbs. He reeks of fear and rage, but mostly fear. 

"Are you back with me, Sil? Do you know where you are? Who I am?" 

"None o' youse fuckin' touch me—"

"Sil, it's just me here, you're not seein' right." Vander pleads. "Will you let me help you?

"No, no no—you're all th' same, I know what y'r help costs—ain't worth it f'r an extra bit o' that moldy shite y'call bread—I won't, no, no–"

There's a pause as Vander thinks. Vi imagines him standing there, toying with his beard as he weighs his options. 

"Janna forgive me," he mutters, scarcely audible, and strides past her bed to the shelving by the stairs. He rummages, knocks over something with a loud clunk but doesn't pause in his search at all. He finds what he's looking for—at least, Vi assumes so—and returns to Silco, who is still twisting and muttering nonsense in some hallucinatory nightmare. 

"I'm so sorry." Vander sounds sick with disgust. "Fuck, I'm so sorry."

Vi holds her breath, chest thumping. She wishes, viciously, that she had gone mudlarking down by the river with Powder that afternoon. Right now she could be blissfully ignorant, knee-deep in pools of mud.

"Stop, don't—no—no no nononono please no please, no nono—" Silco's voice rises in volume and panic, until the words fade out and there's nothing but injury and terror. It's the howl of a beaten fight dog, throwing itself relentlessly against the bars of its too-small cage. 

There's some sort of tussle happening—she's not sure what exactly, but there's a slap of skin on skin, the couch bucking and rocking, a whisper of rope. The howls crumple like wet paper, dissolving into horrid, choking gasps. 

And throughout it all, Vander's tear-stricken apologies."I'm sorry, Gods, I'm so, so sorry." 

Rope hisses and groans, knots tied and creaking. The couch is still, silent apart from Vander's heavy breathing and Silco's awful, panicked sobs. 

"I had to tie you up, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—I'm trying to help you, I promise." 

Silco doesn't respond. He's still sucking down short, ragged breaths. 

"Gonna pick you up now, 'kay?" Vander's still talking, as if cajoling a spooked cat. 

She hears Vander groan. His back cracks as he takes Silco into his arms. 

"No," Silco starts again, and this time it's terrified, pleading. Were it anyone else, she'd call it a whimper, but not… not him. Not her Uncle Silly, he doesn't whimper. He'd never. He'd be dead before he showed any fear at all. 

Vander shushes him gently, like he would Powder when she was a toddler and had one of her fits. "You're gonna be okay, Sil," Vander whispers. "I'll fix this, promise." 

Silco doesn't seem to hear him and keeps up his pitiful chant. The words blur into muddled nonsense, then fade away entirely as he's carried up the basement stairs. 

Vi desperately hopes Vander is right. But she doesn't know if she believes him, that it's going to be okay. That he can fix it, that it can be fixed. 

She's not sure if she'll be able to fully believe anything he says ever again.

Notes:

sorry its been so long since the last update! i've been working on a handful of other projects and that ate into my time for writing this fic. i do unfortunately have a job and also need to sleep and stop staying up past 3am hopped up on stimulants so i can write toxic old man yaoi haha

ive also been working on trying to improve my writing, so this chapter is in a bit of a different style than how this fic started, i hope it doesn't seem out of place or unnatural. and to anyone who recognizes the dances silco taught vi--hello brethren :)

next chapter is silco pov so uh. its gonna be even more depressing. sorry
one comment=one hug and a blanket for silco lmao

thank you to everyone who reads and leaves kudos, and thank you especially to those who leave comments!!! they make my world go round and keep me motivated to write so thank you thank you!