Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Silco makes the journey to Singed’s lab, the damp cave hiding between moss-slicked rocks, he does not expect a child to be there. The scientist makes no effort to hide the boy, but he seems to be of a shyer demeanor regardless—the first glimpse he catches of the child is a dark shape ducking behind a long line of glowing vials. 

He pays no mind to it at first—believing it another one of the strange, twisted creatures that Singed tinkers with. One of the things that, by silent mutual agreement, Silco doesn’t pry into in exchange for similar courtesy. He does not ask about the creatures in vats of formaldehyde, about the locket that the other man occasionally fiddles with, and in exchange, he brooks no inquiries about the darker sides of his own business. 

When he greets the man, however, with a quiet dip of his head, there’s the sound of a brief clattering behind him. He turns, sees a crooked wooden cane on the ground—seems it was dropped by someone—and a small, thin hand scrabbling for it. 

“Viktor,” Singed calls, voice soft but not unkind, “come out.”

The hand grabs the cane, and, with the implement’s help, a boy rises from behind the table. He has the look that all Zaunite children have—thin and hollow-cheeked despite the roundness of youth, clothes dirty and patchwork, hair unbrushed. Even the twist of his leg, foot turned inwards, is not entirely unique. Silco’s seen enough children like these, sick street rats with nothing to their name but what they can steal, that he feels less pity and more simple curiosity. 

Singed is a scientist first and chemist second, merchant far behind those two, and paternal not even upon the list. Logic suggests that the boy is yet another experiment, but the soft tone of the other man’s voice did not suggest that sort of relationship, nor the way he approaches without fear. 

The only wariness to him, in fact, is centered upon Silco. He stops a good distance away, leaning heavily upon his cane. He’d estimate his age around ten or eleven, but ages get murky once malnutrition and grime are introduced into the mix. 

“I apologize,” Singed says smoothly, “I did not know I would have a guest today. I hope his presence is not… objectionable.”

Silco cannot tell if he’s addressing him or the boy, which one of them is supposed to be the guest. Eventually, he settles upon a, “is he yours?”

Flat. Straightforward. 

“No,” is the reply, equally neutral, “not mine .” No elaboration on what, then, he is—experiment is still a possibility. Assistant, perhaps, but Singed is the type of man to work alone, and, failing that, take on a competent fellow instead of roping a child into his delicate sort of science. 

Doesn’t matter. Silco is here for one thing only—inquiries on Singed’s progress on Shimmer—and none of the man’s other affairs concern him. 

“This is a private matter,” he says, shaking any curiosity out of his mind. Singed nods in acknowledgement. 

“Go,” he says, waving the boy away with a pale hand, “feed Rio.”

The boy takes the dismissal swiftly, turning on a heel, limping away deeper into the depths of the cave. 

Finally, solitude achieved, he’s allowed to return to his business. 

In the progressing months and years, each time he visits Singed, the boy is nowhere to be found—not disposed of, though. He sees the signs. Various canes left leaning against the wall, outgrown or abandoned. Sometimes, the faint sound of uneven footsteps behind one or other of the walls. Most damning, a section of table cleared off in the corner of the lab, where a second inventor works with gears and mechanical trinkets instead of Singed’s signature chemicals. He finds a bit of interest in watching how the projects evolve, each time he drops by—simple at first, a toy boat, childrens’ trinkets, but soon they’re incomprehensible to his eyes, large sections of whirling gears and metal that seem to be only the base components of vaster things yet. 

Interesting, but he doesn’t comment on it. 

The moment of truth rapidly approaches, and that’s all he can occupy himself with, really. 

—

In the weeks after Vander’s disposal, he does not contact Singed at all. After that final culmination of his plan, everything is a jumble of grabbing all those disparate Zaunite threads and tying them into a neat little bow. Stepping into the vacuum of power as easily as plugging a leak, placating the chem-barons and the gangs and scouring the streets of dissidents. 

More pressing, somehow, is the girl. Vander’s girl. The blue-haired child, acting younger than her age of eleven, who’s done nothing but cry and attempt to cling to him, only peeled off by Sevika’s force—and who will, then, refuse to leave her alone. She’s a curiosity. An annoyance, at times, but those first nights, he watches her during the only times she’s quiet—when she’s sleeping—and tries to remember what she reminds him of. 

The boy, he realizes eventually, Singed’s boy, lab assistant, whatever he was. If he was ten, that day so many years ago, he must be nearing twenty by now. Why does she remind him of that child?

More than the physical similarities—of which there aren’t many, actually; as Vander’s daughter, this girl is far better-fed and cared for than that boy was—it’s the way she tinkers. 

He’s surprised, the first time he walks into his office and sees her taking apart his music box. It’s an old thing, a gift from some sycophant he can’t remember anymore, so the instinctive reaction is less fury at her touching his possessions than curiosity about what she’ll do with the parts. He stands there, watching her light fingers run over the fine gears, prodding and pulling, reassembling the entire thing into…

And then, she realizes his presence, startles and whirls around. There’s fear in her wide eyes, fear that he’s going to reprimand her, but it’s almost endearing, the way she clutches the box despite all that. He beckons her, stooping over slightly, doing his best to appear less intimidating than he knows he is. She takes the bait, pushes to her feet and slowly meanders closer. 

“What were you doing?” He asks, lowering his voice. 

“I… don’t know,” she murmurs, “I like crafting. I used to…”

She trails off, dangerously close to getting mired in the memories of times before, so he speaks before she can get too lost. 

“You’re good at it,” he praises, though in truth he knows next to nothing about this sort of thing. He is, to use that old phrase, a politicker first, a lord, a fighter second, and scientist far third.

Her eyes widen at the praise, looking up to him with the first sign of joy he’s seen, and it strikes him that perhaps she will be useful. Perhaps he can mold her into something that can help him as much as any army of brute fighters. 

To do that, though, she will need a mentor. A teacher. 

Perhaps it is because he’s been thinking of Singed’s boy, these past few days, but the idea strikes him and it seems almost like fate. 

—

The man has a new lab. Closer to the mainline of Zaun, though still hidden in a narrow back alleyway. Silco suspects that he still uses the one near the topside, hidden among the rocks, but this is the new location he was provided to visit, and he respects the man enough not to go snooping. 

They’ve had little contact even before he disposed of Vander—once Shimmer was finalized, there was no reason to keep going back. Singed’s enthusiasm for their partnership seemed to have waned, as well, after the accident that burnt him. 

He brings the girl himself. Vander named her Powder, but for some reason, the name doesn’t sit right on his tongue, and she flinched the first time he called her that—so, for now, she’s just the girl . Sevika lags behind them both—he technically needn’t have come; he has no doubts Sevika could do this errand adequately, but then again, this is unfamiliar territory. 

Despite all their distance, when Singed opens the door—far different from how he once looked, now completely bald, right eye clouded a murky sort of green and burnt scarring rippling down his face, the last remains of Professor Reveck cleansed by fire from his being—he nods as if he’s expected Silco all along. Which, perhaps he has. 

The new lab is larger than the old one, and already set up with tall vats that span to the ceiling, filled with glowing liquids and with misshapen things slowly spinning inside like dying tops. Jars cluttered along the shelves, bottles of miscellaneous chemicals, and—he notices—tucked into a far corner, a table cluttered with gears and tools. 

He allows himself the ghost of a smile. He guessed right. 

“I heard,” Singed says, no niceties such as inviting him to sit, offering tea. All familiar. Silco wouldn’t trust any tea the man gave him, anyways. “About your success.”

“ Our success,” he says, “it was your invention, too.” Laying it on thick. 

The other man simply nods in acknowledgement. He doesn’t respond, but the unspoken question is that of, so why are you here now ? 

“The boy,” he forges on, deciding there’s no use in beating around the bush—both of them appreciate directness—“Viktor, you called him? Is he still around?”

Surprisingly, when the reply comes, there’s a note of guardedness in Singed’s voice. “Viktor? Yes.” 

“Is he yours?” He asks, the repetition of a question from many years before. This time, instead of a certain no , Singed takes a long moment to think. 

“Not biologically,” he settles on, “but he has… lingered here.”

Interesting . As clear a declaration of affection that he’s given for anything outside of science, and also more clear tension to his frame than he’s seen before. The man has looked less uncomfortable elbow-deep in a bloody ribcage than he does, right now, at this line of questioning. 

Perhaps he means to strike back, because he gestures at the girl clinging to Silco’s side—currently looking around the lab in a mixture of fascination and horror—and echoes the question. “Is she yours?”

She tenses at the question, hand tightening around his coat, craning her head to look up at him. He tries not to meet her eyes—since the previous night, his praise of her inventing skills, she has upped her clinginess by a factor of ten. If he were to say no , he knows she would break. Fracture. Too many people, in her life, have left—if not all by choice. 

“Yes,” he says, and the lie comes as smoothly as all lies do, easily enough that a lesser man might think it was the truth. “Viktor is a tinkerer, is he not?” He asks, gesturing towards the corner table. 

“He possesses some talent.” Singed pauses, before continuing. “I do not mean to insult, Silco, but I would prefer he stayed with me.”

Ah. So he thinks that this is a mission for conscription—which is not actually entirely untrue. 

“I would not take him,” he says, trying to push all the reassurance he’s capable of into the words—he does not know what would happen if Singed believed himself backed into a corner, but he knows it wouldn’t be pretty—“but my… but here, I have an inventor as well. Young, but promising.”

The girl can’t suppress her smile at the promising . Singed’s eyebrow—or, perhaps it’s appropriate to say simply brow , given lack of hair—raises fractionally. “You want a tutor? Seek the academy.”

Just the mere statement is an insult, no doubt intentionally, but Silco controls himself. “As if they’d accept her, a Zaunite. Besides, is there not a reason you left?”

He doesn’t offer up a denial. 

“I would pay,” he says, the final seal upon the deal—whatever secret projects that Singed is working on on his own, he needs money, as evidenced by their previous longstanding relationship—“quite generously. You’d have protection, too. Upheaval is coming to the undercity. I could ensure you’re unaffected by the changes.”

If it was just Singed alone , he doubts that the last bit would have much appeal—the man is slippery as a greased eel—but he’s banking upon his feelings towards the boy that’s his-not-his. 

The gamble works. He knows it has, before the man even opens his mouth to acquiesce—by the loosening of his stance, the lowering of his brow. 

He turns his head fractionally, says, “ Viktor! ” Turns back, quietly addresses Silco again, “it’s his choice.”

“Of course.”

In the back of the lab, a door hidden in the shadows swings open, and out steps a boy. Boy nearing man, really—seems Silco’s estimate of age was correct, as he’s now a tall, thin figure suspended in the limbo between child and adulthood. Still, he’s hollow-cheeked, features angular, though he doubts Singed starves him. Seems that thinness is simply inherent to him. 

Otherwise, as he limps into the dim light, the broad strokes are the same. Still using a simple wooden cane, leg dramatically bent inwards, right foot curling towards the left. Even the expression upon his face calls back to the first time Silco saw him: wary, mouth drawn tight, curiosity hidden behind that veneer of caution. 

“Did you hear?” Singed asks. He nods, approaching ever-closer, stopping only a few feet from the group. 

“You-” he addresses Silco- “want me to teach her?” His voice is soft, faintly accented. 

“Yes,” he confirms. 

“What is your name?” He asks, and it takes a moment to realize that he’s addressing her . She shrinks back for a moment, looking up at Silco for reassurance, but he stays silent. Allow her to choose a name for herself, whether that be Powder or any other moniker. 

“ Jinx ,” she says, after a long moment. It startles even Silco—strange name, and the way she spits it out suggests that it’s not one she even particularly likes . Still, he doesn’t contradict her. Viktor glances back at Singed, and then again, looks down. 

“Jinx. Why do you do it?”

She’s silent for a long moment, puzzled. After a minute, he prompts her. 

“Invent. Create. Why?”

Again, silence, but this time because she’s thinking. Viktor watches her intently, waiting for a response, eyes a brown so light it borders on amber—both narrowed, focused. Reminds Silco of Singed, the way he decides upon a goal, does not let anything sway his course. He wonders what a child raised by that man’s particular psyche might turn out to be like. 

He wonders what a child raised by his own would. 

“It’s beautiful,” she decides, voice quavering with nerves, “it’s, like-” here, she falters, takes a moment to swallow before pushing on, “making life, and it can be anything you want it to be. And it can hurt, but also… beauty.”

It’s a child’s answer, all muddled and full of odd pauses, but Viktor draws back, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a smile, and Silco would wager it was the exact right answer. 

“Yes,” he says, “the machine really is beautiful.”

With the hand not currently leaning upon the cane, he reaches out. A handshake. Not meant for Silco. 

For the first time in days, Jinx willingly detaches from his side, taking a single step forward. Clasping his hand in hers, and now, independent and smiling and bright-eyed, she looks not only her age of eleven, but like a prophecy of something to come. 

They shake. 

Silco looks up, meeting Singed’s one-eyed gaze, and finds the other man is—if not smiling—satisfied as well. 

This will be a good partnership. 

Chapter Text

Despite Viktor’s origins, the undercity is unfamiliar to him. Much of the childhood he can remember was spent in Singed’s old lab—as close to topside as Zaun ever got, a place where the water was mostly clear, and children of both cities gathered to play. Shame to think that those golden years of early childhood, no Piltover or Zaun, just children scampering about in the sunlight, would soon rot into rivalry. The former becoming enforcers and the latter street thugs, all those tattered remnants of childhood simplicity gone to the wind. 

Of course, he never got that experience of playing anyways—nothing about his body was quite built for scampering . No, what he remembers is the darkness of the cave, bioluminescent plants entangling along slick walls, the sound of running water always present in the darkness. 

It’s dark here, too, deeper in the undercity, but in a different, more distasteful way. No sunlight manages to reach this low, blocked by smoke or the broken spines of jagged buildings, stacked one-by-one atop each other, crowding out the space like too many rats in a box too small. He misses the cave, for the fresh air and the open space and the lack of people. 

He knows the necessity of abandoning it, though: possibly-impending war means that no borderlands are safe, and now that he’s getting actual work , it’s more convenient, and also the secret third reason that Singed always skates around: he’s working on something that even Viktor isn’t privy to, and the cave is now a secret storage for whatever that is. 

He’s curious, but he knows better than to pry. If Singed means to tell him, then he will, and if he does not, then not a force in all of Runeterra will pry it from his lips. Something to do with his daughter’s coffin, he’s sure, something to do with the large, cloth-bound thing that he dragged into the lab after the explosion. 

When the three leave, with promises of returning for the first lessons tomorrow, Singed looks at him wordlessly, waiting for his verdict. 

“That’s Silco?” is the first thing he asks. He knows the name , of course, all of Zaun is passing those five letters around from mouth-to-mouth like a pipe. The new lord of this place, the source of the flaming plume of smoke that’s been clogging the sky for the past few weeks. He knows the face too: remembers it from years ago. When he was only a few months into working with Singed, insofar as ‘working’ meant feeding Rio and lurking around the cave, the man who’d come to talk on business . And business—that leads into the last way he knows Silco. 

As the man who, directly or indirectly, almost killed the man standing before him. The explosion. The burn. Viktor remembers staying up late, working—because otherwise he would not know how to expel his nervous energy—hearing a commotion at the lip of the cave. Rushing out to see Singed limping in, skin scorched red and blistered, bleeding bright Shimmer from all orifices.

He’s healed, in the weeks since, preternaturally quickly—a process that most certainly has something to do with the Shimmer—but during bad nights, Viktor still sees it. He never screamed , through all the pain, simply collapsed upon the floor and reached for Viktor’s hand. 

So ‘ that’s Silco’ is a statement woefully inadequate, filled in only by the silent language that both of them have learned to speak in. 

“He’s a powerful man,” Singed replies, rubbing absently at the right side of his face. The burnt. 

“Was I wrong to accept?”

“I can’t say.” He turns, shuffles towards one of the tables, one piled with jars of preserved creatures. Vermin, mostly—rats, insectoids, all white-eyed and suspended in greenish liquid. He does not reach for the jars, and instead, a roll of stained bandages and a pair of forceps. “The girl is an anomaly,” he adds, like an afterthought. 

Viktor steps forwards, leaning on his cane as he does. The leg is especially bad, today—has been, ever since they moved house to this new lab. Singed has offered Shimmer, or other modifications, more than once—but always, he denies. He’s seen what it does to the experiments, what it almost did to Rio, what it did to Singed after the explosion. Shimmer in the eyes, in the mouth, leaking from each pore of the skin and sparking where it touched burnt flesh.

“His daughter?”

Singed removes his mask, digs the forceps into the bandages running down his neck, slowly begins to peel. The skin underneath is pale pink and raw, bright magenta streaks running just under the skin. They pulse under the dim light. Viktor tries not to look away. 

“No,” he says, “no. Vander’s.”

“Vander? The one he killed?” 

He went to his bar, once, one of those rare moments that he wanted a break from the cave. A loud, energetic place, a crowd with strange looks for the crippled boy trying to force his way through. Never met the man himself—gave up before he was even halfway to the bar, let the chaos spit him back out. 

Singed hums in confirmation, dropping the chunk of bandage into a thin metal pail, starting work on the one below. “He’s been planning for very long. He plans something for Jinx too, I suspect.”

“Dangerous for us?”

This next bandage is a bit of a struggle—it wraps around to the back, a place that Singed can’t easily reach. “No,” he repeats, “he’s an honest man. Admirable.”

Coming from the mouth of a man who is, if not dishonest, never unwilling to bend a few morals. Viktor watches him struggle for a moment longer before stepping forwards. 

“Let me.”

With no protest, he relinquishes both the forceps and the bandages to him. It’s a ritual, at this point—the man does not ask for help, but he knows what’s good for him in the end. Without need for indication, he turns, and Viktor leans against the table so he can set his cane down and use both hands. 

With the metal implement, he slowly unpeels the bandages that cross his back and chest, discarding them to the side. Once that’s done, he unravels the new roll, begins to methodically recover the wounds. It’s all horrifically unsanitary, but the new drug running through Singed’s veins takes care of that handily. How convenient. 

“Did he not make that promise,” Viktor asks, once the final bandage is changed, “the first time?”

By which he means, of course, their original partnership—the one that ended with Singed collapsed upon the ground, waking only to tell Viktor they needed to evacuate. If that’s how this particular venture is going to end, he’d very much rather not.

“That was my own mistake. I became… greedy.”

“For?”

“You will see.” 

Singed steps away, running a thin hand over the bandages. A hint, and a reassuring one at that—not a flat denial, which he’s certainly never been afraid to give. 

You will see . 

Viktor’s looking forward to it. 

—

He misses Rio, at times, dead for about a year at this point. His introduction to Singed, the lab, and the thing that firmly enmeshed him into this place. The first success of Shimmer too: whatever dosage he gave her, it extended her lifespan by years past what it should have been. Of course, that success came with a thousand failures, rats and feral cats and fish, all of whom ended up swollen and bleeding and dying-

But it gave Singed hope for the project that he works on, the one they both pretend does not exist: whatever it is that has to do with his daughter. 

At night, he works, as per usual—on the components that make up his first true job. Different from what he’s been doing before, crafting little curiosities or machines to help Singed in the lab, but an actual commission—from the Frederson Chem-forge, one of the many he’d reached out to, and the only that’d replied. 

Singed is gone. Left at late dusk, and by all probability, will not be back until morning—off to the cave, to his secret experiments. It does not hurt to be excluded, not really, but it does concern him a bit—he’s felt nothing but a constant state of concern since the explosion, though Singed’s demeanor has returned to more-or-less normal.

He has better things to be concerned about than the scientist, though, at least right now—namely, teaching the child of the current king of Zaun. It’s the sudden realization that bowls over him, that being that he does not know how to teach , that has him frantically working so he can take his mind off of it. 

It was his parents that taught him the first basics of machinery: both were mechanics as well, working in the dark, rotating underbelly of Zaun, among the pipes and the steam and the gears that stretched tall as people. They died storming the bridge when he was young—another way he knows of Vander and Silco—but he tries to remember how they taught him nevertheless. Can’t scrounge up much of anything, besides a faint impression of a voice, the phantom feeling of hands guiding his. 

Useless. 

Singed’s never taught him anything, at least not in this realm. He’s the type of scientist that dapples in chemicals and dead things, and though they’ve combined their talents on occasion, scraping the surface of mechanical biomancy, it was always an equal partnership, not mentor-student. He’d entertained the idea of going to the academy when he was younger, in that unreal, wistful way that all childrens’ dreams are painted in. Not by enrolling, of course, they’d never let a Zaunite orphan enroll, but instead somehow sneaking in—but Singed cleared him of that idea as quickly as it came. 

“They’re small,” he remembers him saying, “small minds. I parted from Heimerdinger long ago, and there is nothing he could teach you that I could not . ”

Now, though, he wishes he’d gone, if only for some idea about how it all worked. Teaching. Their refined mechanics up there in topside, all smooth and gleaming white, must be so different from the mish-mash of things he cobbles together down here. When he was younger, he used to painfully make his way to the top of Zaun, places where he could watch those sharp-clothed academy students stroll the streets, talking about things he couldn’t hear nor understand. Never worth the days of pain that the act of climbing brought his leg, but he kept doing it anyway. 

Eventually, he gives up, both on trying to fix the section of chemforge and on considering this issue. Right now, he’s attempting to connect a few infinitesimally small bits in the back, but space is cramped and his fingers are not nimble enough to both screw, hold, and leave room to see in the narrow space. He may have to take the entire thing apart to get to it, and putting it together took two weeks on its own. It’s a beautiful creation, all gleaming metal and smoothly connected joints, and if he were to take it apart and put it back together, he has the sinking feeling that it would no longer be nearly so perfect. 

Like digging up a corpse, trying to breathe life back into the skin. Couldn’t be the same ever again.

So instead, he hobbles out into the main room of the lab, and attempts to tidy up. Shove jars back into their rightful places, drop tools into drawers, clean the beakers laying around. All useless, because Singed both will not notice, and will have the lab redirtied in a day, but it brings him some measure of peace. The work goes by quickly, even with his limited movement, and by the time that night is truly upon Zaun—the streets lit by glowing signs, the only life drunkards staggering down the street—he still has not figured out a solution. 

With a sigh, he slumps down upon his bed—a sagging mattress barely held up by cinderblocks and wood planks—and wishes he had not accepted. Shouldn’t have. Hadn’t been planning to, until the girl, Jinx, started speaking—until he saw the look in her eyes, bright and eager and full of more passion for the machine than he’s seen in anything but the mirror. 

That look is the last thing that still lingers in his mind, even after all else is surrendered to unconsciousness. 

—

Singed is back by the time the knock comes, which he’s thankful for. He allows Viktor to answer the door himself, absorbed in methodically sorting through the brains of an overgrown rat. 

Standing before it, in the alleyway, is the woman who’d come in Silco’s entourage the day before, and Jinx, the man himself nowhere to be found. Viktor can’t help but be glad for that—he doesn’t know how he’d possibly teach with that man peering over his shoulder at all moments. 

Then again, looking at the sharp expression on her face, she may not be much better. 

Jinx, however, is the picture-opposite to her—face bright, a smile already tugging at her lips, standing tall. A moment of hesitancy flashes over her expression, as she looks up at him, but it doesn’t quell the clear excitement thrumming through her. 

He steps back, murmuring a quiet, “come in.” 

She does so eagerly, and the woman slower, scanning around the lab, clearly looking for danger. 

“Viktor?” She asks him curtly. He nods, though surely she recognizes him from the day before. 

“And you?”

“Sevika.” The answer is sharp. Singed glances up at the name, some note of recognition in his gaze, though he soon turns back to the rodent’s cracked-open head. 

“My room,” he says to Jinx, nodding towards the open door. It’s a small place, cramped, nothing but the bed and the mass of the half-built forge in it. 

“Not so fast,” she growls, “let me check.”

She bustles off towards the room before he can tell her not to touch anything. For what’s essentially glorified babysitting duty, she seems rather serious about it all—then again, she works for Silco. There’s probably a lot of motivation to be good at her job. 

He follows, finds her poking through the space underneath his mattress. 

“I assure you,” he says, “it’s safe.” Not like he’s hiding a bomb in the room—what does she think he wants to do? Blow up a child, her, and himself?

She mutters something inarticulate, strides over to the far wall and leans against it. A vantage point to look at both the room and, in the lab beyond, Singed injecting the rat with a vial of glowing magenta. 

“You can sit,” he tells Jinx, indicating the bed. She does so, padding over to the spot with the attention of a child in a schoolroom, as if he’s some sort of actual instructor. 

On her lap, she holds a small brown bag. He nods at it. 

“What’s that?”

“Oh!” She opens it, and from inside, withdraws a handful of crude, clumsy tools—a screwdriver that’s hardly more than a rusted rod of metal taped to a block of wood, a small mallet with a chunk missing from the end. They look like something a beleaguered shopper trying to exert minimal effort would scrape up in the cheapest parts of the market, which he suspects is exactly what they are. “I brought my own tools. And Silco told me I should make something for you, so I thought-”

Here, from the bottom of the bag, she extracts something else, holds it gently pinched between two fingers and extends her hand for him to take it. He leans forwards, unsure of what it is at first glance—it is only when she drops it into his palm that he realizes. 

It’s a small butterfly. Deceptively delicately crafted—at first glance, it is nothing but a twist of wires, but as he examines it closer, he sees the shape of wings and even gossamer-thin legs. And, lining its back-

Gears. Experimentally, he prods at its wings, and they move , flapping up and down. Everything about it is so small, so carefully put together, that he could not imagine the patience it must have taken. 

“You made this?” He doesn’t bother hiding the admiration in his voice. Just the minutiae of the body and wings is enough, but to attach the mechanisms for it to move is beyond what he’d expected of her. 

She smiles wider, the last of the anxiety melting away. “Yes! Is it… do you like it?”

“I do,” he says softly. He glances at her fingers, the small hands of a child, thin and nimble, and has a sudden idea. “Come here,” he says, beckoning her forwards, towards the forge upon the ground. 

She obliges, slipping off the bed and approaching it—it’s almost as tall as her, and he’s gratified to see similar awe in her eyes. Singed’s appreciation for what he does is nothing more than the occasional comment on his talent, always said in a detached, observational sort of tone. It feels good to be recognized. 

“Inside,” he says, grabbing a flashlight off the top and shining it inside, “can you see that exposed panel?”

“Where it’s peeled back?” She asks, peering in. 

“Yes,” he says. 

Outside, there’s the clatter of a door closing. 

“Where’s he going?” Sevika asks immediately, making him turn, peer out the door. The lab is empty—Singed must have left. 

“I don’t know,” he answers semi-truthfully, “out.”

“Who’s he getting?”

“Nobody,” he says. Does she suspect an ambush? 

Her eyes dart down to regard his twisted leg, and he gets the ugly feeling that she’s currently considering how easily she could beat him in a fight—the answer is, very easily—before they flick back up and she lets out a low sigh. 

By the time he turns back to Jinx, she’s already halfway into the forge. 

“What are you doing?” He asks. Her voice, when it comes back, is muffled. 

“All you have to do is- is connect the green wires, I think, and then make sure to plug the switch in, and then I think you’re missing a part.”

“Missing?” he asks. 

“Yes, you need something to ignite the spark with, right?”

“I’d planned on installing that later,” he says, but she makes a sound of negation. 

“It’d be best here.”

He steps back, takes a moment to think on it—and, yes, it would be most convenient. For the first time, he smiles, and she extracts herself from the forge interior, blue hair a mess and a nervous cast to her mouth. 

“...Would it?” She asks, and he realizes he never responded to her last point. Suddenly, all that confidence is gone, drained out and replaced with something vulnerable. “You know best, obviously, you’re the inventor and you made this and-”

“No,” he says, cutting her off, “no, you were right.”

Still, she doesn’t move. He nods at the forge. “You were doing a good job. If you wish, you can continue with the wires.” He holds up his hand, wriggling the fingers slightly. “My hands are a bit too large.”

“Thank you,” she whispers, and for what , he’s unsure, but he nods anyways, watches as she returns to the forge. 

Must be an hour, maybe two, before Sevika steps off the wall. Currently, he’s walking Jinx through the construction of a filter, watching her fumble with the delicate meshes, but both of them pause as she approaches. 

“Time to go,” she says, huffing out a breath, “boss wants you back. Same time next week?”

The last question, she directs at Viktor, who nods. Jinx stands without complaint, dropping the filter—and he hesitates before speaking up. 

“No. Keep it.” 

Questioningly, she reaches for it. He nods. “You know what to do, no? Finish it by next time. Consider it… homework.”

The delight on her face at the prospect is both startling and slightly gratifying. He tries to smile back. 

Sevika fishes about in one of her pockets before withdrawing another brown pouch, this one jingling musically. She tosses it to Viktor, who just barely manages to catch it, the weight bowing his arm down. 

“For you and your father,” she notes, and steps out without waiting for his response, escorting Jinx with a careful hand on her shoulder. Even as they leave through the front door, he stands immobilized, carefully considering the pouch. 

Singed is not a father, not in the way that Viktor’s ever thought of him, even though he can perhaps see the logic in calling him that. But no, he had a father, one who died upon the bridge, and Singed is simply a man who fed, sheltered, clothed him, though he cannot think of an equivalent word for that at the moment. It has always felt faintly transactional in nature—always, Viktor has had a job, no matter how trivial, that he does in exchange for this bit of care. 

First, it was caring for Rio, and then it was as an errand boy and lab assistant, spending long afternoons hunting down rats in the gutters or ferrying chemicals to Singed during his experiments. Then, as he began to build, to tinker, it became creating contraptions for the lab, and now it’s this work, bringing in enough money to buy things like food while the other member of the household is off experimenting in the cave. 

Which, speaking of, he’s still not back from. Viktor leaves the bag of coins upon his desk before returning to his room, beginning the work on the nine other filters he needs to make. At least Jinx will take the load of one off of his shoulders. 

—

It is not until late night that Singed stumbles back in, closing the door with a heavy thud . Late enough that Viktor is usually asleep, but he had work to do, and besides, he tries to stay up and wait for Singed if he can. Does not want a repeat of that night of the explosion, does not want to be sleeping while the man bleeds out in the next room over. 

Tonight, he’s unharmed, though tired—he sits down at the lab table with a heavy thump, arms ridgid on the desk. Viktor approaches quietly. 

“You remember Rio,” Singed says—a rare occurrence, him starting the conversation. He nods. 

“Of course.”

“How did you do it?” He asks, swiveling around to regard him, “help her with the Shimmer. How was it done?”

“I… don’t know,” he replies, thinking once again of the giant salamander. Always affectionate, even in her last days, curling around his legs as he slept so she could share his warmth. He’d wanted to bury her, after she died, but Singed insisted on dissection—a process he was normally accustomed to, but in this case, sat out. Viktor left the cave during the process, spent those hours as she was cut to pieces sitting by the river and stretching his leg in the cool water. “Did you not find anything? In her blood?”

“No,” he says, “I’ve attempted distillation, but it is a fraught process. Little has come of it. Cannot preserve it, either—the meat spoils. Not physically, but the Shimmer inside does not take to being extended.”

He winces at the thought. Too soon, still. 

“All the ones before,” he continues, “and all the ones after, the Shimmer changes irrevocably. It is some malady that runs molecule-deep. In small doses—” now, he indicates himself—“it heals, somewhat. But what I’m working on requires too much.”

“What are you working on?” 

“A vast project,” is the answer, more crumbs of knowledge yet. The next words rest heavy on Viktor’s tongue, the words that he doesn’t dare say—that of his daughter. He knows, obviously, from seeing the room and the coffin, from doing his own bits of illicit research. Coming across the name Doctor Reveck , catching glimpses of a girl in Singed’s scratched golden locket. 

And Singed knows that he knows, because how could he not—has alluded to the matter, dancing around the topic with all the grace of a spy. 

It is part of the reason that he has never considered Singed his father, he supposes—because the spot of the child is long-filled. 

So he doesn’t say it, and instead shrugs, an uncomfortable movement with the cane. 

“I do not know how I did. Rio simply… survived.”

And how different it would’ve been, if she hadn’t.

Singed lets out a long sigh, the most emotion that he allows himself to show, before standing from the chair. “Perhaps you are uniquely brilliant. I’ll find the key. You should rest.”

Hypocritical words from the man that Viktor’s sure will stay up the rest of the night, but that’s another effect of the Shimmer. Honestly, that facet of the drug, the ability to need so little sleep, is almost as tempting as the prospect of fixing his leg. 

“The money is on the table,” he says. Singed makes no move to grab it, instead striding over to one of the long rows of jars upon the wall, selecting one with a litter of baby rabbits floating within. With his other hand, he reaches for a loaf of bread that sprouts clumps of glowing pink mushrooms. 

“Goodnight,” Viktor adds.

This, finally, garners a response. 

“Sleep well, Viktor.”

He doubts he will, thinking of Rio as he is, but the sentiment is nice.

Chapter Text

Silco has been out far more often, recently, but Jinx doesn’t mind. He keeps the nightmares away, fractionally, his presence, but she’s found something that does exactly the same: the task that Viktor gave her. 

So refreshing ! No rules, no admonishment, no telling her, Powder, stop messing around , or Powder, nobody’s ever gonna use anything you build , no, just letting her crawl into the belly of that great mechanical beast and come out victorious with its guts(soot and oil) plastered all over her. 

She loves it. 

What she doesn’t love is the late nights, when it’s too dark to build, and she has to lay awake in her bed and try not to think of the names she won’t allow herself to speak. Try not to flinch, when something explodes out there in the dark-dark night, try not to climb out of her small cot and find someone to run to. Because Sevika started locking her door, after the first time Jinx tried to find her, and normally Silco at least tucks her back in, but now he’s out quashing rebellions or whatever it was that he called it. 

What’s worse is, two days later, when she’s finished with the filter. Technically, the third time she’s done so—the first two, there were tiny, minute things to fix, sockets a millimeter out of alignment or mesh not stretched taut enough, but now it’s genuine perfection and she looks at it and there’s the sound of voices creeping in the edges of her brain, nothing to block them out anymore. 

There’s only one thing to do: which is to track down Sevika currently in the basement, punching at a sack of flour. Looking out at the room, something ugly and slippery flip-flops in her chest, because all the old couches and blankets and shelves have been removed to make room for the woman’s gym—and it’s so unfamiliar that she can hardly believe she used to share it with…

 Jinx stands at the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, waiting patiently for her to finish—which she doesn’t for a long, long time.

“Sevika,” she says eventually. The woman throws two more punches before finally turning her way, brow furrowed in a scowl. 

“What?”

“We need to go back.”

“What?”

“To Viktor’s,” she says, “I finished the assignment. He needs to give me more. And I can learn more.”

It’s a well-laid out argument, in her opinion, but Sevika’s face screws up, and she shakes her head. 

“No.”

“What? Why ?”

“Silco’s paying a damn bucketload for each lesson,” she starts, counting off on her fingers, “Silco’s out , and he can’t approve this, and I’m busy.”

Jinx stares at her for a moment. “But-”

“Take it up with the boss,” she growls, “but it’s gonna be next week.”

With that, she turns back to her bag, leaving Jinx to slowly ascend back up the stairs. There aren’t many others milling about in the space, the ground floor of The Last Drop, but that just gives her more room to appreciate the changes to the room. Most of the old decorations have been taken down, ripped, or otherwise disposed of, and now it’s a vast expanse of stained wood and nothing much else. It’s good, in a way, even if it makes the space wide and darkly unfamiliar, because it means that she can look at the wall and not imagine Claggor standing there, arms crossed, or Vi leaning against one of the ratty bar tables. 

She can’t think of that. 

Upstairs, it would be quieter yet, but she likes the level it’s at down here. Just loud enough to take the edge off her thoughts. Silco has yet to reopen the bar—he has to finish whatever street business it is that he’s working on, first—but some of his group hang around. They spare her no glances, used to her presence, and she doesn’t look at them too long either, afraid that she will see one of their faces, spark a bit of familiarity, be dragged back into the shadowed corners of her mind. 

Warily, she proceeds to the door, tugging on the fringes of her hair as she does. The small braid that peers out from under the rest of the mop barely reaches her shoulder. Vi braided it for her. Abruptly, she snatches her hand away, as if burned. 

Don’t look behind you . 

She doesn’t. Stiffly, she pushes open the door. Still, nobody stops her—seems that most of the group is instead occupied in rifling through the liquor cabinet behind the bar. A spike of fury at that—they’re touching things that aren’t theirs , stealing—but then she remembers that nobody will be around to reprimand them, and her heart skips an uncomfortable, sputtering beat. 

Nobody around, because of her. 

It’s her fault. 

All her fault. 

No!

This is what she needs to go to Viktor’s for—because in those two hours, sitting and learning, it was all calm and clear and nothing but razor-sharp focus upon the gleam of metal upon her lap. 

Deep breath. 

Silco told her, weeks ago, in those early nights when she couldn’t stop crying, deep breath . Never reprimanded her for crying—so different from Mylo’s mocking tone, whenever he found her curled up under the pillows—just told her how to stop. 

She likes that. 

Deep breath, again, and she peers out onto the street. Midday outside, though Zaun sees near-none of that light, and all the neon signs are just as lit as in the dead of night. It’s quieter than usual, too—all the normal market stalls are shuttered and closed, their inhabitants fled into their teeny hidey-holes. 

“Hey,” someone says from behind her, the words slightly slurred, “hey, isn’t that the boss’s kid?”

She whirls around, sees one of the gangly figures behind the bar point at her. 

“Don’t let her leave,” another one cautions, coming around the bar, and in that brief moment that they disappear into the shadows, she sees someone else. Not Vi or Claggor or Mylo or Vander but some homunculus made from all of them, reaching and chasing and there’s smoke in the air and her hands are burnt from the heat of the bomb, and she opens the door and flees into the street. 

As she runs, her hand snakes into her pocket, reaching for the small round ball tucked securely into the depths of the fabric. The last one. 

Footsteps behind her, chasing, but she knows these streets around The Last Drop just as well as she’d know anything, and she ducks into one alley, scales a rusted ladder, jumps from one roof to another before sliding roughly back down a slanted awning, landing roughly on her feet. Her pursuers are drunk, and less agile than her, and not trying all that hard in the first place, so by the time she allows herself a moment of stillness, there’s nothing else. 

She laughs, the sound bright in the open air. Ha! Take that! She’s still got it . 

Now, slower, she progresses down the street. It strikes her that she could just go to Viktor’s herself , but though the idea is tempting on the surface level, there’s a tug in her gut that stops her from navigating to the alleyway shop. Part of it is getting in trouble, of course, but that’s not much , especially because she’s probably already going to be in trouble from fleeing. No, it’s something that almost feels like fear. 

Not of Viktor, of course, because he’s kind , and if he wasn’t then she still thinks that she could take him in a fight, but it’s the other one. The other man, thin and tall and no more physically intimidating than Viktor himself, but she does not like his lab with all the creatures in the jars, does not like his experiments. Does not like the way that Silco carries himself around him: tense, careful, and wary. Whatever sort of person incites that sort of reaction from him , she’s automatically wary of. 

Though she bemoaned Sevika’s chaperoning, the first time, now the prospect of entering that space without her tall, solid presence is more than a bit intimidating. 

So, instead, she continues to wander. This road leads to the main market street, the largest one of them, and—judging from the babble of sound already reaching her ears—one that’s at least somewhat less abandoned than the rest. She’s got no money to her name, but that’s never posed much of a problem before—Ekko was always the best at pilfering from the edges of the stalls, at not getting caught—and, if spotted, at running away swiftly. 

Ekko. Where is he? He didn’t leave her, not like the others, but he’s not where he used to live.

So maybe she can find him! Find him, and Silco will take him in too, and then he’ll ask where the others are. What happened to Benzo. What she did, the bomb and the blood and the screams, and she collapses against one of the grimy walls, clutching at her head. The world spins violently, everything flipping upside down, and she can still hear Vi—she can always hear Vi, it’s just now, she cannot suppress her—and there’s wetness on her cheeks. 

Jinx!

Jinx!

Jinx!

“Jinx?” 

A new voice. It muddles with the ones still pecking at her head, until the speaker repeats himself, “Jinx?”

Familiar. The world clears, somewhat, though it’s blurred now not by her headache but instead by tears, and she peers out from between her fingers. A man on three legs. 

Except, not three legs, she realizes, wiping the last of the tears from her eyes, but instead two and a cane. 

“Viktor?”

A simple look upwards confirms it. She knew already, from the tone of his voice and that soft accent, but this is visual confirmation. There he stands, tall and narrow-boned, cane in one hand and leather pouch in the other, packed with things she can’t see. Must’ve come from the market. He looks nervous, out of his element, and looking at him now, she can’t help but agree. 

It’s not exactly that he doesn’t belong in the undercity. He looks Zaunite , no doubt about that, clothes simple and hardy, face set hard, worn. Clear in the way he holds himself, the little mannerisms like holding the bag close, so unlike the free, loose strides of topsiders. No, it’s less that he doesn’t belong in Zaun and more that he doesn’t belong on this street, in the open, away from his lab and looking like any random citizen. 

“Why… ah, are you here?” He asks. Part of that nervousness might actually be related to her , she realizes, and suddenly she’s embarrassed to be here crying on the side of the road. She is no better than she was as Powder, crybaby and weak and runaway. “Are you alright? Lost?”

“No,” she says, “not lost.” The last part of that sentence is the need to clarify—because she’s not lost , no, but also perhaps not alright. 

“Is Sevika..?” He asks, glancing around. The street is fairly empty, and none of the few shrouded figures meandering by are glaring or grunting or cursing, so he’s able to rule that out before Jinx even has to say no .

“I wanted to see you,” she blurts, which wasn’t really the reason she ran out of the lab, but is close enough and really the only thing that’s relevant now . “I finished it.”

But she forgot to bring it! She can picture it now, in her new room on the second floor of The Last Drop, haphazard on the floor and surrounded by scattered tools. Suddenly, she shrinks a bit, afraid that he will accuse her as a liar—but instead, he simply tilts his head, the corner of his mouth quirking into a smile. 

“That was quick. I should’ve expected that, though, no?”

Unsure how to respond, she nods wordlessly. He takes a step back, gesturing loosely to the road with his cane. 

“Perhaps you should be getting back. I’m sure your…” For a long moment, he hesitates, and she opens her mouth, Dad resting on the tip of her tongue. It’s so very close, but when she imagines saying it, she imagines Vander as he once was—strong and warm and laughing—and Vander as she recalls him now—laid low, snarling, screaming—and so she can’t bring herself to spill those syllables from her mouth. 

“-I’m sure they’re worried,” Viktor eventually finishes lightly. 

“Can I walk with you?” She asks. 

“Where are you headed?”

“The Last Drop.”

A flicker of surprise in his eyes—he knows the place, of course he does—but he dips his head in a shallow nod. “It’s on the way.”

He doesn’t turn to walk until she pushes fully off the wall, following in his footsteps. As she blinks the last of the tears out of her eyes, she’s glad that he never asked why she was crying. She’s glad she doesn’t have to think about that herself. 

From her vantage point slightly behind, she notices the further unevenness to his gait, beyond even that of the normal limp, showing clear strain trying to balance both his cane and the bag of supplies.

“Do you need help?”

“Hm?”

“I can carry that,” she says, indicating the bag. Eager to be of help—maybe, then, he won’t send her away immediately, and he’ll let her come back to the lab. The instant she thinks that, however, she also remembers the darkness, the sharp smell of alcohol overlaying the faint scent of blood, and the enthusiasm dies just as quickly. 

Still, though, if only to help him. 

“It’s heavy,” he says, but she crosses her arms. 

“I’m used to heavy stuff!”

“...For a bit,” he finally says, twisting to pass the bag over to her. It’s simple leather, lifted by two straps made of the same material, and she grasps it sturdily, heaves it up to her shoulder. There’s a wary look in his eyes, that first moment, like he thinks she’ll fall—or run off with the supplies—but though it’s weighty , she stands straight and smiles and tries not to let any strain show on her face. 

They set off again, and she smiles to see that his stride has returned to normal. The bag bumps against her hip, and she tries her best not to peek, but curiosity wins out in the end—inside, instead of the food and the like she’d been expecting, it’s simply bottles of darkly-labeled chemicals, scraps of metal, and, at the top-

“You can take it,” he says, and she startles, cheeks flushing at being caught in the act. 

“What?”

“The box of tools,” he says, “I bought it for you.”

She blinks at him, uncomprehending. “I have tools.”

“They’re not very good,” he replies, tone nearly teasing. She frowns. 

“Sevika bought them for me.”

“I guessed,” he says drily, and nods again at the bag. “Go ahead. Unless you would rather wait until next week, of course.”

She would very much not rather wait until next week, confusion aside, so she reaches into the bag lightning-quick to withdraw the heavy box at the top of the stack. It’s thin, but weighty, the edges lined in dark metal. Her face splits into a smile at the sight, and all insult from his previous words is struck down upon the realization that these are indeed way better. 

“Thank you! These are…” no words to express it in her brain, so all she can do is look at Viktor and grin and hope it imparts at least a fraction of her happiness. 

“Singed bought me mine,” he says softly. Singed must refer to that man—it’s a jolt of a reminder that they are, in fact, associated. “When I began to tinker. A brilliant mind can only be enhanced by quality implements. ” 

The way he parrots the last words makes it clear that it’s a quote—not direct words of his. Still, her mind snags upon that one word, brilliant , and she asks, before she can stop herself, “Am I brilliant?”

“It took me a week to configure my first filter,” he says, “granted, I assisted, but at your age, in two days? You could not be anything but .”

Nobody’s ever called her brilliant before. Impulsively, she rushes forwards, hugs Viktor. He stumbles back a single step, but skids the cane backwards, catching himself—and the other hand hesitantly settles upon her shoulder. He’s thinner than Vi ever was, bones where she had muscle, smells of metal and chemicals instead of leather and clean air. But they’re somewhere in the realm of the same age, and she clutches the box to her chest, and if she closes her eyes and turns her head it’s almost the same. 

The embrace lingers only a moment later before he extracts himself, clearing his throat awkwardly. 

“I’m… very glad you like it,” he says, “but I’m afraid this is where we part.”

Right. On one side, the path splits towards The Last Drop, and the other must no doubt eventually lead to his alleyway. 

“Thank you,” she repeats, quieter this time, sliding his bag off her shoulder and proffering it back up to him. He takes it wordlessly. 

“Next week,” he says, like a promise, and then turns down to continue stepping down the path. She likes that—a promise , because those can’t be broken.

—

So absorbed is she in the new tools, in the memories of the day, turning ‘brilliant’ around in her mind until it’s smooth as a river-worn stone, that when the door to The Last Drop opens, she startles. Sevika doesn’t know a thing about her escapade—must’ve spent the whole day sulking down in the basement—and the few subordinates that saw her escape aren’t breathing a word. Mutual silent agreement: because if they admit she ran away, then they admit they let her run away, so her little secret is tucked away just as safely as the blue gem still shimmering in her pocket. 

Despite all this, when the door below opens, there’s a spike of unfamiliar fear in her heart. It’s Silco, and she confirms that by perching at the top of the stairs, hidden by the bannister, and watching the man stroll in. These past few days, she has always greeted his return by running down, grabbing onto his coat and sticking by his side for the rest of the night, but today, something holds her where she is. 

Below, he looks around, expecting her as well—the confusion on his face is almost funny. 

At least, until he looks up the stairs, and despite her hiding spot, meets her eyes. 

Jinx! Someone says. 

It sounds like all of them. 

She flees back, back into her room, heart suddenly sparked into a quick hammer-beat, but there is nowhere to hide, no lock on the door, and what exactly is she hiding from?

Suddenly, she wishes Viktor had asked her why she was crying, because maybe then she could have told him something, and he’d have comforted her. Vi was always able to comfort her, with soft words, or failing that by gathering her into her arms and squeezing her until she started to laugh, so maybe he’d have been able to do the same, but he’s gone and Vi is Gone , capital G. 

And it’s all her fault. 

Jinx! Someone yells. 

Footsteps on the stairs. She scrambles into bed, because she’s unsure of what else to do, kicks the covers up around her feet until she’s in a half-sitting sort of position. She doesn’t like sleeping alone, doesn’t like the absence of the other kids’ breaths. Misses, even, the occasional kick in the middle of the night, sometimes—usually between Mylo and Vi—leading to a short scrap. It’s penance, sleeping in silence, and she wouldn’t even know if they were in the room because they wouldn’t be kicking or breathing, would they?

JINX! They all scream. 

The door opens. 

“Jinx,” Silco says, stepping fully into the space, “where were you?”

“Up here,” she replies. He crosses over to the bed, sits down. 

“Is everything alright?” 

“Yes,” she breathes out. 

“I apologize,” he murmurs, “for my absences. Everyone in Zaun wants a piece of the power. It’s like setting rattraps, keeping all the vermin away.”

“Oh,” she says, more a wordless sort of acknowledgement than anything. She wants, so badly, to do what she’s always been doing, these past few weeks, bury her hands in the coat and her head in his chest, let it drown out the world around. When she thinks of doing that now, however, there’s the smell of fire, Vi’s voice, her wide blue eyes aglow with flames. 

“Vander never did a good job of keeping them in line,” he says. The words coincide with a long, low scream that rings through her mind, and she flinches—lowers her head—only barely resists the urge to cover her ears. Vander. Vander. Vander. 

“So it’s that,” he whispers. The blankets bunch as he scoots closer, places a warm hand on her arm, tilts her chin up with the other. When she looks up, it’s into his eyes, one green and the other a pinprick of red. “Are you thinking of them?”

She pushes herself back, further away, panic rushing bright and hot in her veins. 

“I’m not angry, Jinx.” A pause, and when she still doesn’t answer, a peculiar sort of expression flits across his face. “Or would you prefer Powder ?”

A blow so strong that it’s as if he’d cuffed her. She flinches back, and he follows, arm snaking up from her hand to the back of her neck, the other settling across her back. 

“No,” she whispers, as he gathers her into his embrace. Not like the hugs of Viktor or Vi—this one is taut and poised on the edge of comfort, and she knows that it would be good if she melted into it, but she does not. “Not Powder.”

“She’s gone,” he hums, his chest thrumming with the motion, “and so are the rest of them. They left you all on your own, did they not?”

She relaxes just a bit more, cheek pressed uncomfortably into the buttons of his coat. When she nods, she knows he can feel it, because he continues. 

“Vander was a coward and a traitor. Your sister ran to the enforcers, ran to her death, rather than stay with you. Did they help you, even before? Vander had money plenty. Did he ever find you a mentor? Someone to cultivate your gift? Or did they degrade you? Leave you behind?”

She nods. In her head, Vi is hugging her, and then she’s throwing her off onto the cold, wet ground, shouting Jinx ! Silco’s grip tightens, and the image puffs away in a cloud of reddish smoke, and the voices are mercifully silent. She surrenders herself fully into the embrace, finally lets herself settle against him. This is how it is. This is how it will always be. 

“There’s only us,” he says, hand rubbing circles into her back, “they’ll always leave you, Jinx, and as the ones left behind, we must stick together.”

One final time, she nods. He doesn’t speak again—for a long moment, they remain there, suspended in the silence. 

Eventually, as all things must, they separate. He ushers her under the covers, pulls the sheets to her shoulders, departs with a quiet, “ Goodnight .”

Her dreams consist not of the usual—faceless figures circling her, calling her name, flame burning bright in the background—but something new. Silco’s embrace, which morphs into that of a thinner man, the clatter of a cane, which then turns into a child’s, and when she pulls back all she can catch is a shock of white hair and crooked grin.

Chapter Text

Five years pass, rushing like one of Zaun’s deep, underground rivers. 

Deep in the underbelly of Zaun, there is first one, and then two and then three and then dozens of figures shambling through the decrepit buildings. All emaciated, purple-veined, strange growths sprouting from their skin like tumors. Everybody knows Shimmer , near-nobody knows who made it, who sucks the life out of such victims and leaves them, floundering, alone. 

—

Jinx creates. In an old, abandoned airshaft, one of those projects meant to give air to the miners and swiftly-abandoned once those few precious strips of ore dried up, grabbing tools out of a black-metal box. A series of various inventions passing through her hands—parts of the various Zaun chemforges, and then weapons, chattering bombs and long, sleek guns. 

Sometimes, in the quieter moments, she turns about a small blue ball in her hands and looks towards a pile in the corner—a stack of failed prosthetic prototypes.

—

Viktor crafts too, expands from his small room to half of the lab—not that it matters much, anymore, since Singed hardly does any work outside of the cave—orders upon orders piling up. Frederson Chemforge, a rousing success, bringing dozens of those who’d previously brushed him off, back sniffing at his doorstep. The money is good, but the work sends him staying up late into the night, crouched over his desk. 

The leg has been bad lately, and, worse, a cough has arisen—that wet and meaty, wracking his chest and scratching at some deep internal membrane. Singed attempts medicine, most of which are thoroughly unpleasant in ingredient makeup, taste, and texture, but not much helps. 

—

Singed himself works as well, day-and-night under glowing purple plants and vines that spiderweb across the cave wall like veins. The corpses of two wolves rot in the corner, and his pale hands ghost over delicate balances of Shimmer, each injection careful down to a fraction of a fraction of the millilitre. Sometimes, he looks at the face of the man, and wonders if he would’ve done the same for his daughters. 

It will work. It has to. 

—

There are more, of course, a thousand lives winking and moving and flashing both undercity and topside. An expelled academy student tries not to think of magic, tries to count himself lucky for escaping exile by the skin of his teeth, but sometimes he cannot help but palm the blue crystals gathering dust in his cupboard. 

A white-haired boy gathers people to his side, all under the canopy of a great, green tree. In his free time, he tracks the movements of a girl he once knew. He’ll free her soon, he swears. 

A girl sits in a deep prison cell, rubbing at a fresh tattoo, wondering when she will next see the sunlight. 

Five years pass, and much is different, but much as well stays static and similar.

Chapter Text

There is enough work to drown a man, but Viktor’s rather good at keeping his head above water by now. Now, instead of Frederson, it’s Smeech and Finn and Chross, all the Chembarons clambering for a piece of the pie. Not only them, either—miners, too, seeking more ways to drill deep into Zaun’s soft underbelly and extract whatever innards lie within, and the mechanics who work on those gargantuan pipes and wheels that hold the city up. And, the worst clients, the ones who’ve slowly been drawn to his door like maggots to a carcass, those who seek weapons and armory. 

He obliges them all. Scatters mechanical bits of his genius across all of Zaun. 

Except it’s not all his , not really—at least a third, probably more, is Jinx. But she does not like the spotlight—he doesn’t like it either, but at least he’s more willing to bear it—nor does she like the responsibility, so it’s all up to him to front this order. None of it is too hard on the mind, really—he looks at the parts and sees the ways they slot together as easily as a child’s puzzle, but instead the body . He cannot sit for too long without the leg aching, cannot work for too long on the most intricate parts without fingers peeling and stiffening.

 Sometimes, as well, he looks at the parts scattered about the lab, both marvels and curses at how far he’s come. The simplicity of making toy boats is long, long past him, but that was a time he found more joy in engineering than the constant stream of clients nowadays.

Worst of all, though, is the cough—a persistent thing of one-and-a-half years, the sort of disease that grabs hold of him and yanks from the inside-out every single time. Now, feeling it coming on, he turns away from the hollowed-out pipe he’s hunched over and grasps for a stained handkerchief, hacking a few times into it. 

It’s the cycle: engineer, cough, stand and hobble a lap around the lab for his leg’s sake, return. The knock at the door is almost a relief—or, at least, something that startles him out of the fugue, forcing him to his feet. As he stands, he brushes down his pants, his shirt—both are simple garments, neutral white and brown, but tailored in a way that somewhat imitates Piltover fashions. What stands for professional, down here in Zaun, albeit with a few asymmetrical sections of cloth and loose, askew buttons. 

Hair tied safely up— really , he needs a trim; the hair is beginning to brush past his shoulders. He kept it long because Jinx loved to braid it. She’s old enough that she instead devotes her hair-care energy on her own braids now, but still, the brown locks remain. 

Opening the door, he expects Jinx. Long have they deviated from the weekly schedule set four years ago—now, she appears when she wishes, no more payment needed. Sometimes, it’s him that visits her in her own lab—a repurposed air shaft—but going down there is always a trial in bravery. Even on solid ground, he’s never the strongest on his feet, but the metal there is smooth and twisted every-which-way, a drop of a thousand feet stretching below. She installed ‘special Viktor handrails’, but even then, it’s all too easy to imagine himself careening over. 

As per usual, Singed is out, so it’s up to him to answer the door. Not that Singed would usually deign to answer it if he was there, but he crosses over to it, swings it open. 

It is not, in fact, Jinx—an unfamiliar face stares back at him. 

A boy with dark skin, white hair curled up in dreadlocks, a few chips of white paint scattered about his nose and cheeks, as if it was hastily wiped off. He does not have the look of most of Viktor’s clients—that is, an oily sort of wealth, the dark shadow of Piltover’s own money, some corrupted attempt to imitate their elite—but instead wears the ragtag sort of fashions that arise from doing the best with what you have. Torn coats and wide-legged pants, all laid over similarly tattered clothes until all the pieces semi-assemble into one full outfit. 

“Are you Viktor?” He asks. 

He nods. Another one of the downsides that comes with such engineering fame—loss of anonymity. More than anything, this has helped him understand Singed: the man’s a genius, but also a recluse, and when the type of clientele he attracts is the like of Silco, he understands why he does not do much to advertise his services. Why he slides under the radar. That’s why this lab is known more as the property of ‘Viktor, inventor’ than ‘Singed, chemist’. 

“You build,” the boy says, not a question but instead a statement. He nods. 

“I do. Are you here to commission?”

“Yes,” he says, clearing his throat, a nervous sort of gesture. 

“Come in, then.” He takes a neat step back, allowing him access to the lab in entirety. Singed’s touch is, if not gone, then lessened significantly—Viktor’s expanded from that little table to cover half of the space. Pair that with the steady disappearance of the jars, their relocation to the cave, and it’s both significantly less off-putting for the average observer and, somehow, less like a home than it’s ever been. Though it’s been years, he still sometimes wishes he were in that dark space, idly stroking Rio, watching Singed mix chemicals that sputtered and popped in bright flares of smoke. 

“How much do you cost?” The boy asks. He’s clearly unnerved—his eyes keep darting to the head of a stray cat, preserved in yellow liquid just behind Viktor—and the mere fact that he must ask is a sign that he does not, in fact, have what it costs. 

“Depends on the project,” he replies. 

“What if I have… a prototype?”

“Perhaps less,” he says. This beating-around-the-bush is tiresome—his least favorite type of client. Usually, what they want is either illegal or embarrassing, sometimes both, but he truly does not care. As long as they have money, he will do it: he asks no questions, leaves himself with enough plausible deniability to wriggle out of it at any time. Having Jinx’s support—and, by proxy, Silco’s—helps as well. 

Part of it is common sense, the other is an instinct built into him from his childhood. He’s used to keeping questions to himself—with Singed, they tended to remain unanswered, and usually for his own good. 

To his surprise, the boy swings the pack on his back around, unlatches it and begins to root around inside. From it, he pulls out a large slab of metal—‘slab’ is unflattering, but essentially what it is—a few chemical pipes running down the side and the belly, two thrusters upon the end. Clumsy, but not crude —the same unpolished look as any prototype. It reminds him of the small, filigree butterfly that he keeps by his bed. 

For a long moment, he stares at it, then looks back up at the boy. “What is your name?”

“Ekko,” he replies. “This is a hoverboard. Or, uh, meant to be one.”

He’s deeply curious why the boy is building a hoverboard, what he means to use it for, but he does not ask—sticks to his one rule. 

“This isn’t all,” he adds, “it’s the only thing I have a prototype for, but you make guns too, right? Weapons? If I wanted one of those?”

Viktor tries not to let his mouth curl downwards at the request. In truth, those are handled by Jinx—her specialty, in a way. A good thing, because killing machines aren’t his forte. They make money, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s a far drift from his childhood intentions of making Zaun safer, of eliminating some of the smoke that constantly clogs the sky. 

Hard to recall that his original motivation, working with the Frederson Chem-forge, was to revolutionize safety in the undercity—to streamline Chem production, eliminate the human element in such dangerous experiments. Now, over these four years and countless other Chem-forges, it’s become a job , a necessity. Expanding into weaponswork, more a mercenary engineer than any sort of Zaun hero. 

Still, he nods. “Yes. It’ll be extra.”

“How much?”

“A couple hundred cogs,” he says, “less, if you can provide materials. Let us say… at most, six hundred, ability to bargain down to four.”

Ekko pales at the words, and he expects him to balk entirely, leave and take his interesting little prototype with him, but instead, he nods. “If I have all the materials, and the prototypes, four hundred? What about three-fifty?”

Viktor raises an eyebrow. Is he really trying to bargain ? 

“Four hundred,” he says. 

“What if I give you food?”

“Pardon?”

“Fresh,” he says, “fruits and vegetables.”

There’s a light in his eyes excitement—a familiar sort. The excitement that comes from being so close to a dream. Again, it reminds him of another pair of eyes, and Viktor hesitates. Fresh food is hard to come by in Zaun, expensive if gotten, and he cannot imagine how Ekko would have access to it, but if he’s being truthful… 

He still almost says no. Because he’s not one for bargaining, and if he earns that reputation, then all of those cheapskate Chembarons with more money than brains will try to coax him down too. Because he doesn’t entirely trust the money or food Ekko could scrounge up. 

It’s the look in his eyes that sways him. All the others who commission him, it’s a dead flat fish-eye gaze, no care for the machine, just for the profit, or for the assistance. Which he’s never held a grudge over, necessarily, cannot hold a grudge in good conscience, given his own drift-away from the principle of inventing for the sake of it. Now, though, he looks at Ekko and sees perhaps a reflection or perhaps a future. A boy who built his own hoverboard, no matter how cobbled-together. Who he’s somehow sure will be trying to reverse-engineer his work the instant he passes it back into his hands.

Reminds him of how he used to view this sort of thing. Engineering for the sake of it, rather than for the end goal. 

“Twenty pounds.”

“Eighteen.”

“Twenty. Nothing else.” He likes Ekko, but not that much.

 “Fine,” Ekko says immediately, “three-fifty and a lot of food. Is that good?”

“Good,” Viktor murmurs, caught between annoyance and bemusement. “What is it, exactly, you want, then?”

He tells him, over the next hour, in surprisingly exacting detail—the gun is standard, something that Jinx can pump out in days, but it’s the hoverboard that interests Viktor truly. Powered by the chem-tech that runs just about everything down in Zaun, he wants speed, maneuverability, easy transport—the prototype floats, supports a human’s weight, but in a rather aimless, unsteered way. Runs out of juice in only a few minutes too, falling flatly to the ground in a way that would surely be deadly to any rider, if they were more than a pittance above the ground. 

“Can you do it?” Ekko asks. Viktor nods slowly, turning about the thing in his hands. 

“Yes.”

More than his usual projects, it interests him on a base level. Ekko leaves, returns hours later with a bagful of disparate parts, columns of metal and vials of glimmering green chem, as well as two bags full of jingling coins, and Viktor chips away at the board. 

The design is awful, firstly, from an aerodynamics point of view—too wide, too thick, and if he were to narrow it here, move those delicate glass chem-vials from the exterior to some protected interior…

The day whittles away before he even realizes, and it’s long past midday, the sun at a quarter-tilt in the sky, by the time he thinks to look up. The Chross Chem-forge lays abandoned on the floor, and Ekko’s armful of parts is similarly cluttering up the space, and his leg aches with a fury that sends bolts of pain clawing up the worn muscle. 

He stands gingerly, leaning on his cane for much of it. The wood is brightly-colored with splashes of pink and purple, courtesy of Jinx, and slightly stained from a chemical explosion, courtesy of Singed, but it’s sturdy as ever. He’s thankful for that, as he heaves himself into a standing position, takes a leaning step, and then another and another after that, shaking off the sedentary numbness from the joints and bones. 

It’s another ordeal to bend down, grab that bag of disparate parts, but he manages it eventually. He should go find Jinx, hand these over to her—and his leg aches at the prospect of walking so far, but he smothers that feeling with the lightness that comes at the prospect of seeing her. 

Off to the abandoned airshaft, because that’s where she usually is—and if she’s not there, then he’ll wait to return tomorrow. He could conceivably find her at The Last Drop, because that’s where she spends her time if not at the workshop, but he does not like going there. It’s even rowdier than it was pre-Silco, as impossible as that seems. 

And if he manages to force his way through the crowd, up to the second floor, then there’s a high likelihood he’ll have to talk to Silco, and that’s the thought that deters him more than the prospect of shoving past a mass of sweaty, drunk bodies. 

Jinx knows this, or at least suspects, but neither of them talk about him, so it’s not a topic that comes up often. It’s a bit of a tit-for-tat, too—because he’s noticed that she somehow conveniently only comes into the lab when Singed is out. In this respect, they’re even. 

So he leaves the lab, locking the door securely behind him—Jinx helped install an ‘exploding lock’, a while back, which is frightening but also probably necessary, what with how in-demand his services are—and then, it’s onto the rapidly-darkening streets. 

There are dark figures leaning against the walls, in the corners of the alleyways, the only signs of their nature being the distinctive purple veins. He tries not to look at them. Another reason that he’s not the fondest of Silco: the man pushes the drugs into the lanes, Shimmer, because it sells well and keeps addicts coming back for more. 

Granted, Singed developed it in the first place, but he’s not a merchant—if he had it his way, he would not be doing anything with the drug except experimenting on unthinking animals. He doesn’t seek addicts, doesn’t hook people with claws like daggers. He’s a better man. 

Or, at least, that’s what Viktor tells himself, and perhaps the effort it takes not to examine the groaning addicts by the roadside is to prevent himself from thinking about it too deeply. 

—

Jinx’s workshop is not far from either him or from The Last Drop, visible from the surface only as a scratched-up dome of metal, hidden on one of the edges of Zaun where the ramshackle buildings meet a sheer cliffside. This door is similarly trapped, but he has a key to the mechanism—fishes it out of pocket and unlocks the door. A click as the latch frees itself, the waiting bomb disengages—always the worst part—and then, he carefully steps inside. 

Jinx is there, he can tell at first glance—if not from her figure, huddled under a shoddy little blanket fort, then by her voice, echoing through the hollow space, “Viktor!”

He holds up a hand in a silent wave, because he feels that if he tries to yell back, it’ll come out only as a cough, before slowly starting on the perilous journey to the center of the space. One hand on the rails, and the other on his cane, trying to keep even footing on the twist of the fanblades. It’s all too long before he’s able to make it to the center, where she sits, waiting. Not working on anything, at least as far as he can see—one hand is tucked into the pocket of her pants, the other tapping out patterns on the metal. 

“Whatcha got?” She asks, nodding at Ekko’s bag. He slings it down, settling it heavy upon the ground, rolling his shoulder in an attempt to remove some of that residual ache. 

“New client.”

She leans forwards, hooking the bag and dragging it to her side. Instead of rifling through the contents, she just dumps the whole thing out straight onto the ground, sending another clatter ricocheting between the walls. He has to resist the urge to cover his ears—always so loud , when she’s around. 

It’s part of her charm. 

“Just a gun?” she asks, picking through the various components, “ boring .”

“Profitable,” he says lightly. She rolls her eyes, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. 

“Silco has me making them all day .” She waves a large, vague gesture towards one of the other blades of the fan, upon which he can make out a couple boxes that must evidently be full of weapons. He doesn’t comment on that. Silco has her using them too, and that prospect isn’t one he’s very happy about, but previous times he’s tried to bring it up, she’s simply clammed up into silence. 

“I’m being paid in food,” he replies, “fresh. You’ll get some too.”

“What?” Her eyebrows shoot up, “food?”

“And cogs,” he clarifies, “but I struck a deal.”

“ No ,” she says, mouth open in an O , “ you ? Bargain? Viktor, Defeator of Hagglers, Purveyor of Prices?”

His lips quirk up in a smile at the nicknames, and he moves closer, sitting down beside her. 

“It was a special project. And the client was quite…”

“He had the look,” Jinx says, catching onto his meaning. She points at her own eye, and then at his, then jabs her finger up , up at something unsure. “In the eyes, right? Aw, Vik, you’re such a softie .”

“Yes,” he replies, remembering that glint, the eager way Ekko followed every movement of his hands, eyes fixed on each minute little tweak. The look is an entirely inadequate way of putting it, and also the only thing he really can call it.

“See, that’s what they don’t understand, up there, topside.”

So the pointing up must’ve been indicating them. Should’ve guessed. 

“Pilties think you can teach it, but you can’t ,” she says, and he raises an eyebrow, but she holds up a finger in a shush motion before he can point out that they met due to tutelage. “Not in classrooms, or the academy, or whatever. You didn’t do that, sit me down all stuffy. You have to immerse yourself. Drown in the machine. Rebirth.”

He waits until he’s sure that she has no more to say, before asking, “Where is this coming from? I do agree, but…” 

But speeches about the nature of engineering are not the most typical fare from her. She deflates, just a bit, shoulders hunching in, and he scoots a bit closer. Giving her the closeness she likes—not even necessarily embracing, touching, but simply the presence of another person. 

One of the many stark divides between her and Singed, one of the small aspects of behavior he must remember when to switch on and off. 

“Just stuff,” she says, closing off. He’s a master at the art of minding his own business—if his childhood imparted any lesson, it’s that one—but with Jinx, it’s another one of the things that he’s had to change within his nature. Sometimes, she wants to be prodded, wants to be poked at until she opens up like a flower. Other times, of course, she’ll—figuratively—blow up if he pushes too far, but he’s pretty good at recognizing the signs and this seems to be a case of the former. 

“Is it Silco?”

The most likely culprit, given he’s unsure if she interacts with anyone besides him and Viktor. Sevika, maybe, but after spats with her , she’s more often angry than morose. 

“No,” she says, but runs that back almost immediately, “not really, I mean. Just some stuff he’s been talking about.”

Now, her pose is less hunched-in, sad, slowly tensing until she’s tense, hands fidgeting, and he takes that as his sign to stop prying. A moment of silence, before she suddenly leaps to her feet, runs to a small make-shift table to grab a long measuring stick. She moves so comfortably here—sometimes, she even vaults over the rails, makes her way down the long fan-shaft on the thin metal ladders that stretch to the bottom, and he must stand at the top and watch her with his heart beating panicked in his throat. 

It makes him a bit envious—more than a bit, if he’s being honest, but he also tries to tell himself that he’s beyond such childish emotions. Envy is a thing left behind in his youth, in the times before Singed, when he would crouch by the riverside with his toy boat and watch the other children leaping arcs over the sun-warmed stones. 

Loneliness is often the product of a gifted mind. 

Well, both him and Jinx are gifted, and both are lonely, so perhaps that is true in a way. 

She points the measuring stick at him and beckons with the other hand. “Stand up. I need to measure your leg.”

“Again?” He asks, though he obliges, rising to his feet. Always a difficult process, helped only by the unyielding sturdiness of the cane. “I doubt I have grown since the last time.”

“Just to check,” she says, “this one needs to be exact.”

He has to swallow down his next words—that of you don’t need to keep doing this— because firstly, Jinx won’t listen, and secondly, in some small way she does need to keep doing this. Not for his sake, but for her own—it’s a goal for her to work towards. A goal besides making guns and bombs and the like, whatever Silco demands and Viktor asks. 

In any case, she works on prosthetics for him, a nice distraction, despite the fact that none of them work as intended. They support , but they’re unwieldy, sometimes the source of even more pain than the unencumbered leg—the metal chafing against his skin, the joints pinching if moved wrong—so he prefers the simplicity of a cane. 

He’s fiddled with the idea himself before, but rapidly, he’s come to the conclusion that the only true fix would be replacing the leg entirely, and that’s a large step further than he’s willing to go. That, or something truly miraculous, magic that neither of them possess. 

“You’re so gloomy,” she says, guessing what he was about to say anyways, lining up the stick with his heel. “I’ve got a shiny new idea.” The top of the ruler protrudes all the way to his stomach, more than long enough to measure, and she counts carefully. 

He tries his best to stay still, but at the most inopportune moment, a cough strangles its way up through his chest—and he must let it out, doubling over slightly with the effort it takes to expel it.

“Woah,” Jinx says, “ careful .” She laughs. “Don’t fall down on me, here.”

Despite the humor in her voice, her eyes are anxious. He swipes a hand over his mouth, shaking his head. 

“Nothing to worry about.”

“Is Singed’s tea not working?”

‘Tea’ is a generous term for the liquid, which consists of some unidentifiable organic sludge boiled in Zaun rainwater, mixed with a chemical that Singed will not tell him the name of. Probably for his own good—drinking it down is hard enough already, and his tolerance for the repulsive is good , but probably not good enough to overcome the curse of knowledge. 

“It is,” he says, “slowly.”

Her mouth twists downwards. “You’re lying. Don’t lie to me!”

“It’s only been a week, no? Give it time. Patience.”

She mumbles something under her breath, but lets the topic go, realigning the stick to his leg. Finally, she notches the height of his hip with a small blade, making an indentation in the wood. 

“What was that about a new idea?” He asks, catching onto whatever she was talking about before the cough punctured the conversation. He expects a flood of babbling, chatter incomprehensible to everyone besides him and her—and sometimes incomprehensible to him, too—because she’s always eager to spill forth her ideas.

But no—instead, her face falls flat, and she shrugs as she steps back, swinging the stick away. “You’ll see.”

The phrase is all too familiar and all to foreign, both at once. He’s heard it from Singed’s mouth many times, but not from her. They share ideas, always. Even if he has little interest in her weapons, and she finds Chem-forges ‘easy and boring’, would much rather prefer to unstabilize them instead of make them safer, as Viktor does, it’s the conduit that runs between them, unbroken. 

He can’t entirely keep the affront out of his voice. “Will I?”

“Mhm. ‘ Patience ’, you know ”

She deliberately turns away, stretching out the ‘ patience’ into a long, sarcastic drawl, and he rolls his eyes. She is sixteen years old—hard to remember, with that deep age that surfaces from the depths of her blue eyes at times.  

“If that’s all,” he says, “I should return. It’s late, yes?”

“You can sleep here,” she offers, “ I do it. It’s pretty comfy.”

When he doesn’t answer, she huffs out a sigh. “Singed’s probably sleeping in his lab, you know.”

“He usually returns at night.”

“Fine, fine,” she waves him off, mock-exasperated, “go home. Boring.”

“Childish,” he returns, with a raised eyebrow, and she simply laughs. The sound is still echoing in the depths of the airshaft by the time he leaves, bouncing high and shrill between the walls. 

—

Him and Jinx, they talk about machines , but sometimes, not much else. He wishes it were different, but she has a way of cordoning herself off. Sometimes, Silco sends her off to Piltover, or down to the deeper parts of the lanes, and when she gets back, she does not talk for days. Those, he often spends sitting in the airshaft, both working in silence, until whatever switch governs her brain flips abruptly, and she’s back to cheery and upbeat. 

It was her suggestion to start selling weapons, and it was Singed who finalized the decision, when Viktor decided to consult with him. “They will kill each other regardless. We can stay above the pile, in this case.”

Those two agree more often than either would like to think. 

Still, now, he turns over the hoverboard in his hand and vaguely wonders if, perhaps, he shouldn’t have agreed with either of them and instead stuck to the Chem-forges and the mines. Jinx has killed—he knows this for a fact, nebulous though the evidence is—and, if not with his own shaking hands, he has too if only through proxy. 

Such is life in Zaun. If he had not found Singed—well, he would be dead, most likely, crippled Zaunite orphan—but if he wasn’t , then he’d go where most Zaun children go, into the gangs to fight each other or fight topside enforcers, whichever death came first. 

So he’s rather on top of things, all things considered, but for a moment he still misses that young idealist of five years back, trying to keep the workers alive. 

Before he resumes work upon the board, he opens it up and twists a few of the metal beams into a certain arrangement, twining a few wires between them. Again, as with many of ‘his’ little brilliances, this is Jinx’s idea—that of a signature. He brands each one of his inventions with a V , bronze and visible, but that’s for the public. This is for those who think to steal his creations: the arrangement of the parts in such a way that it looks vital, but actually, with a bit of squinting and imagination, forms the shape of a butterfly. 

—

The opening of the door is lost to a fit of coughing, late in the night, the hoverboard belly-up and eviscerated into a mess of wires upon the table. He’s still hacking into a handkerchief by the time he notices Singed, standing in the main room, backlit by the spare bits of light streaming through the murky windows.

It is not until he chokes down the cough, peers a bit closer at the man, that he realizes there is a long mark running down his side, the shirt and bandages torn open. 

He jolts up from the desk, or jolts as best as he can, stumbling forwards, the weak leg nearly giving out before he can steady himself on the table. Still, Singed doesn’t move, frozen in the middle of the room, and it reminds him of a night five years ago. 

In his rush to reach him, he stumbles over the remains of the Chemforge on the ground, catching himself only with his cane. Doesn’t let that slow him, moving as fast as he can to Singed’s side.

Only now does the man turn to regard him, eyes flickering across him—down, to the leg, and then up, to his eyes. 

“You’re hurt!” Viktor bends slightly to examine the gash. It goes from his armpit to his hip, deep and dark red, though even as he watches, the edges glimmer faintly with Shimmer, drawing slowly closer to each other. 

“It’s no matter,” Singed says. This can’t be the first time he’s been injured like this—the cut, large as it is, is closing up so quickly that it’ll be gone within the hour, and Singed is utterly unfazed. “Usually, you’re asleep at this hour.”

So he was trying to sneak in. Trying not to alert Viktor to the state of the wound. 

“I was working,” he replies. 

“So was I.”

A moment of suspension. In the silence, despite their closeness, the distance is vast and deep. 

This, too, used to be easier—never has the man been especially paternal, but when Viktor was younger, he would still care , albeit in an odd, sort of stilted way. Carefully stroke his hair on the rare occasions he cried; sit by his bed and give him long, solemn speeches about the state of the world, Singed’s version of a bedtime story. Recently, though, a slow buildup over the course of these past five years, he looks at the man and wonders if he still cares at all. If all he saw in Viktor was some distorted reflection of his daughter, and now that he’s older, sicker, different , that last tatter of affection is gone to the wind. 

He’s been considering moving out. Jinx will surely be able to find him a new lab. A space entirely his own—no need to share it with test tubes and jars at all, anymore. 

Now, though, is not the time to bring that up, and Viktor gestures at his bandages. “May as well change those.”

“May as well,” Singed agrees, strolling to the table with the forceps and the bandage rolls. Viktor follows, and what comes next is ritual. Lean himself against the table, grab the tools, begin to dig into the stuck fabric and peel it slowly away. These raw, weeping spots underneath are the only places that Shimmer doesn’t heal—the places that it touched and burnt directly. They look no different than they did five years ago, but he’s far more used to the appearance—no longer does it make him wretch. 

“How is your health?” Singed asks. Right—he heard him coughing. 

“Worsening,” he says, more honest than he was with Jinx. The man doesn’t abide lies—he will not rage at them, punish them, at least not Viktor’s. but instead take them at complete face value. He learned long ago, on childhood days that his leg was especially bad, or when he fell and scraped his arm on the stone, that if he says he is fine, Singed will treat him in that manner. 

“Sometimes, I see subjects that are near-unusable. Lungs tarred black, veins similar. You suffer from the like. Zaun’s curse.”

“And what do you do with those subjects?” Viktor asks, a peculiar tone to his voice that he himself can’t parse. When his hands ghost over the place of the gash, the area is entirely scabbed over, the edges still weeping bright beads of pink liquid that he’s careful not to touch. He unrolls another strip of bandage, begins to tuck it into place along Singed’s back, where his spine near protrudes through the delicate skin. 

“Shimmer helps.” 

Viktor’s hands tense around the bandages, the handle of the forceps cutting into his palm. He has to manually loosen his grip.  “I won’t take Shimmer.”

“I did not offer.”

“Indirectly.”

Singed heaves a sigh, his back curving away. When he speaks, Viktor can feel the thrum of the words through the thinness of the bandages, as if the man himself is hollow within.

“It’s a marvelous creation.”

“A dangerous one.” 

He remembers dying wheezes. The cave floor stained with purple. Rats with swollen snouts, cats with hair falling out in chunks, leaving behind only bare, lumpy flesh. 

Singed’s head turns fractionally, just enough so he can regard Viktor from his peripheral. “Is there a difference?”

He doesn’t answer. 

With a final press, the last bandage is secured, but his hand lingers for a moment. The man’s skin is cold, colder than he ever remembers it being. Maybe that’s the fault of the Shimmer too. 

Eventually, Singed speaks again, stepping away so Viktor’s hands fall limply to his side. “I’m close.”

“Good.”

Even as he says it, he’s unsure if it truly is. 

After Rio, Viktor learned very quickly not to get attached to any of the lab animals—giving Rio a name, spending time so closely with her, was the sort of thing that would have led to disaster, had they not hit the one-in-one-million chance of survival. The subsequent, many brief lab animals did not have near as gracious fates as she did. 

Singed never had that sort of problem—he’d name them, sometimes, stroke their small bodies even as he loaded injections into their bloated stomachs. Good for Singed is not good for anyone else, not usually. 

That’s all—the end of the conversation. Eventually, he maneuvers around Singed, back into his own room. Through the crack in the door, he watches the man stride over to a small potted plant in the corner, one with glowing red pustules lining its stem, snip a few sprigs off and proceed to a table out of his field of view. 

—

When he wakes up—still sitting at his worktable; he must’ve fallen asleep while working on the board—Singed is gone. Proceeding into the lab, he notices a small glass on the table, the liquid inside red, with unidentifiable clumps inside. 

A slip of paper half-covered by the glass says, in Singed’s distinctive, thin scrawl, drink . 

He does, after a long moment of wrestling with his gag reflex, holding his breath as he swallows the horribly textured liquid. 

It doesn’t help at all—he coughs only seconds later—but something about it is comforting nevertheless. 

Viktor stands there for a long moment, considering finding Jinx later today. To ask if there’s any good, empty property around Zaun. Stares into the empty glass as he thinks, into the last, glowing dregs of the medicine. 

Almost resolves to do it—until he imagines Singed, stumbling into the lab late at night, bleeding. Craning his arms, trying to reach his back, trying to change his bandages, but they’re hard to wrap for a single person. 

He sets the glass down. Later. 

He’ll stay a bit longer for now.

Chapter Text

Jinx is never afraid . 

Well, that’s a lie, but she’s not supposed to be! Silco wants her to be brave, fearless, on-top-of-the-world, and she’s good at that, even if she gets dragged down sometimes, but right now, she’s as wary as she’s ever been. 

And it’s of something stupid . Just a little rock. A small blue stone, in a small wooden box, and right now, she’s sitting cross-legged with the box right in front of her, petrified, afraid to open it. It’s not even the prospect of touching it that sends tingles clawing up her spine, but instead that of using it. Of trying to harness its energy, all that bursting power hiding in the clouds swirling within. 

“Open it,” she tells herself, knocking once on the side of her head. Trying to dislodge whatever guck in there is making her so… so trembly and scared and weak. 

Someone walks around behind her. Not someone, no, she knows it’s not someone, but she hears the footsteps all the same. Mylo, probably. He’s taunting her. Too scared of a box! Of a gem! A dumb little crystal!

Slowly, she creeps forwards, and with a deep breath, opens the box. It sits there in its small plush cage, glinting softly in the dim light, motes of blue refracting from interior walls. Really, she feels silly—scared of this? Before she knows it, a laugh is bubbling out of her, and she plucks the crystal from its resting place, spins it around in her hand. It sends small blue lines of light scattering across her pale palm. Beautiful. 

She scoots back, using her feet to push herself across the smooth metal, towards the latest prototype—different from all the braces that she’s tried before. Those usually go the way of Viktor using it for a day or two, before quietly removing them, and sometimes they mysteriously return to her materials box, disassembled. 

This one is not a simple skeleton of metal, but instead rounded plates overlapping, almost like armor or scales. Meant to fit snugly around the entire leg, thin copper wires carefully running down the interior in angular patterns, tubes criss-crossing across the outside. The interior is smooth leather, but the exterior is plated , so all of it can move and flex a bit like flesh. 

Should be perfectly fitted, and she grins looking at it. Only thing that could make it better would be a few explosions, but Viktor probably wouldn’t appreciate that. So straight-laced!

Oh well. She can paint it, maybe. 

In the center, where a knee joint would usually be, there’s a small hollow, perfectly fitted for one round gemstone. All the wires and tubes connect back to it, this one little divot, and she spins the gem around in the palm of her hand one more time. 

Blue flash. Fire. 

She shoves it into place, hearing the click as it settles, and suddenly, the leg flares up into a bright, rapturous glow, and she throws herself back, waiting for the boom . Hands over her head, eyes looking straight into the sketched gaze of a monkey-bomb, but there’s no sound, nothing but soft light. 

Slowly, she sits back up. 

“Silly,” she murmurs, giggling a little. No explosions! Just the glow that now permeates the entire airshaft, pale blue, small squiggles of unidentifiable glyphs suspended in the light. She swipes at one, trying to capture it, but it passes straight through her palm. Again, she laughs, louder this time, twirling one of her braids around her arm. Look at that! All this time, keeping the gem safe and secure and untouched, when she could’ve been doing anything with it. 

Though, maybe it was best that she saved it. Using it up in a bomb might’ve been fun , but if this leg really does help Viktor…

Once she crawls closer, directly over the thing, she can make out more details—all the tubes and wires are lit up blue, the source of the light, and the same color bleeds out from between the scales. Picking it up, she moves it around a bit, watching the way it brightens and dims as she manipulates it. One last thing to do, securing the gem with a small strip of metal and a touch of solder, and then really one last thing to do. 

She slips off her shoe, kicking it down the length of the fanblade, raises her leg, and slides it into the contraption. The crystal flares brighter, once again, and the entire thing contracts around her—fitting perfectly. Her leg is a bit shorter than Viktor’s, but it still feels so natural , like it was hand-crafted for her.  

Slowly, as she stands there, waiting to see if it does something like blow her leg off—which it doesn’t—the surrounding light dims, those strange floating sigils winking out. Now, the only illumination comes from the crystal itself, that and the dim blue lines of wiring. The leg is warm, even through her pants, snug and almost seems to pulsate like a second skin. 

One more moment passes before she’s satisfied that it’s not going to blow, and now, she experimentally bends her leg. The movement is quick , faster than the amount of force she’d put in would suggest, and strong . 

“ Woah ,” she whispers, then experimentally kicks out. Her leg shoots forward, again with force , so much that she unbalances, stumbles into the rail. Despite the impact, there’s no pain, the only sign of trouble being a brief pulse of the blue light. 

It takes ten minutes to get used to it, but soon, she’s hopping around on a single foot, laughing in delight—oh, Viktor’s eyes will pop out of his head when he sees this! 

For a final experiment, she rounds up, whirls around and kicks the railing as hard as she can. Out of everyone, she knows how strong they are—she welded them herself, and then reinforced them a bit more for extra measure—so it’s only a testament to the leg when the railing creaks, detaching slightly from the fan, making the entire structure shake. 

The prospect of the fan disconnecting and careening into the depths is the only thing that stops her from kicking more—but just barely .

Sliding out of the leg feels like coming up from deep water, her limbs suddenly so light and fragile out of the metal casing, and she really needs to find a way to get more gems, because imagine what she could do with this stuff! If the leg works this well, then imagine what something like gloves could do, gauntlets to box with. 

Vi would’ve loved that, probably. 

The smile falls off her face instantly, and she rubs at her eyes, trying to preemptively clear her vision. It doesn’t work. She looks back up, makes eye contact with a scribble of Mylo’s face high upon the fan, and suddenly the deactivated prototype leg seems to be vibrating, on the brink of a final explosion. 

“No,” she says aloud, “Go away. This is supposed to be happy .”

A good moment. She tries to imagine Viktor. Maybe he’ll smile, a rare occurrence—not his typical quirk of the lip, repressed smirk, but instead a real wide grin. 

It works, slightly, and the dark spots recede from her vision. Tomorrow, she’ll bring it to him—probably around noon, because that’s usually when he’s alone—but for today, she should be getting back. Silco gets tetchy when she spends too many nights sleeping in the lab. Probably doesn’t like having to do his injections himself. Big baby. 

Outside, the world is dark, which comes as a surprise. In the workshop, windowless and lightless, time is a sort of limbo, unmoving, and she can lay back and pretend that hours don’t exist, that she can stay forever in that bright, gleaming moment of creation . The few times that the world is mercifully empty, beautifully empty, no voices scritching at her mind and no hazy colors swirling in her vision. 

The moment the cool night air touches her face, though, all that goes poof and she must once again content herself with the fact that reality exists. 

—

The Last Drop is rowdy, as per usual, lights flashing through a dizzying series of colors overhead, the smell of sweat and alcohol and vomit filling the air. Jinx pushes through the crowd—usually, her presence makes the people balk, but none of them notice tonight, so she actually has to shove her way through a few times. Way more convenient in the earlier parts of the day, when it’s less party and more sad day-drinkers, but this is the consequences of her own actions. 

Different from how it once was. Louder. Less convivial. 

Don’t think of that. 

Finally, finally, she reaches the bar, and by proxy, the stairs that stretch up to the second floor. Scanning the bar, she spots Sevika immediately—a dark, hunched-over shape, nursing a glass of orange swill—and hops over the counter to reach her easier. 

She has to crouch to meet the woman’s eyes, and the minute she does, she jerks her head up to stare at the wall just over Jinx’s head. She bobs up, following the game, and then weaves left, right, each time obstructing her vision, before finally-

Sevika slams a palm down on the counter. “ What, Jinx?”

“Are you having fun?” She asks, leaning a bit closer, peering into the cup—and then recoiling when the smell hits her. Strong . Must’ve had a bad day. 

“No,” is the answer, curt and sharp. Jinx flicks the glass. 

“Drinking your sorrows, huh?”

Sevika snatches it away, and growls, again, “ What? ” 

“Where’s Silco?” She asks, the words rushing out with a sigh. Sevika’s no fun today—usually, she at least gives more than one-word answers.

“Up,” she snaps, and Jinx rolls her eyes as she vaults back to the other side of the counter, towards the stairs. The bouncer stationed there gives her nothing but a cursory nod—she’s recognizable enough, the whole blue-hair-braids situation, and then, she’s on the padded, quiet second floor. Compared to the first, even with the spillover of noise from the open stairwell, it’s downright tranquil . 

Silco’s office door is closed, but she pads forwards, pushes it open—and there he is, the man himself, leaning over some papers upon his desk. She closes it behind her and crosses the room to slump in one of the plush seats before the desk. He doesn’t look up. 

“Long time no see.”

“I was busy.”

“With?”

“Invention stuff,” she says, a catch-all term for her engineering, things that Silco wouldn’t understand if she explained—which she’s tried, many times over. He hums in acknowledgement, scribbles a signature upon one of the papers, pushes it to the side. The syringe lays, artfully placed, at the side of the desk, in a way that looks random, but she’s sure is not. He probably had runners waiting for her, got the information the minute she stepped foot into the building, made sure to delicately place it half-crooked like that. 

She reaches over the desk, picks it up. At that motion, he finally glances at her. She snorts. 

“You’re so easy to read.”

“Come here, then,” he replies, and she rises from the chair with a groan, crosses to the other side of the desk and kneels upon his lap, holding the syringe carefully all the while. Obligingly, he tilts his head back.

One eye shut, she lines it up carefully, the tip right above the warped pupil, and then pushes . 

He flinches, like he always does, rocking back in the chair as she tosses the spent syringe onto the table, waiting for him to finish his little dramatics. She used to ask Viktor why he never took Shimmer—seems like such an easy solution, a drop of healing and voila , you’re done, but as with most things in his life, it traces back to Singed. 

Experiments. A childhood full of dead creatures, bleeding pink onto the cave floor. Changing bandages, seeing the pink-streaked wounds that never heal. The way he describes it almost makes her afraid of the stuff. 

Finally, Silco sits back up, and she shifts position to sit upon the lip of his desk, feet still on his pants. 

“I have a letter,” he says, reaching for another sheaf of paper, this one in a small box. The outside of the box is decorated in colorful squiggles, all varying degrees of faded. Childhood artwork. 

“You have lots of letters,” she replies. He extracts an envelope, seal already broken—and it’s the seal that catches her attention. Pale white wax, embossed with… “The academy’s logo? What do they want?”

“It was sent to Singed’s residency.” He extracts the letter with a two-finger pinch, “I intercepted it.”

“Why?”

He half-smiles, looking up at her. “I intercept all of his letters.”

She takes the paper from his grip before he can offer it, unfolding it, crinkling it with the strength of her grip. The letter is thick and high-quality, a cream color that shines even in this dim light.

“Dear Viktor,” she reads, then pauses. “ Viktor ? Not Singed.”

“Keep reading.”

She does, scanning down the paper. Most of it is pointless formalities, long words that her eyes skate over automatically, but right there, in the center of the paper, is the meat of the matter. 

We’ve seen your innovative work in Zaun, revolutionizing production. The Academy would like to formally invite you to briefly speak at the 198th Official Progress Day, in honor of our undercity counterparts and their advancements in engineering. 

And then, after that, a jumble of details and times and ways to reach out to them, at the very bottom of the paper, an official-looking signature from Heimerdinger . Still, it’s that middle part that she’s focused on, that invitation up , up there to topside. 

When she meets Silco’s eyes again, his expression is blank. 

“They want him to speak?” She asks, “how did they find out about him? Why are they…”

“He’s been making waves,” Silco says, “even down here. All of my barons want a word with him, and so do half the mining corporations.” A pause. “Most of the brothels too, I’d guess.”

She wrinkles her nose at that. “But they’re Pilties! How’d they know ?”

“It’s their nature,” he replies, “we’re nothing but filth, until one rises to the top. Then, then it’s innovation, it’s survival of the fittest .” He takes the letter back from her, delicately, and she lets it go without a fight. “I’ll wager they’ll create a backstory for him. Find a way for him to have been topside, all along.”

“He can’t go!” She exclaims, a sudden, fierce protectiveness rising in her chest. Viktor’s older, supposed to be the protective one if they go by conventional dynamics, but she also sees him, sees the leg and the cough and the soft inner core that still remains. The part with a faint distaste for Singed’s experiments, the part that sometimes tosses a few cogs to the Shimmer victims on the street, even if they’ll just use it for more drug. Piltover might do something to him—she doesn’t know what , but they will. 

Maybe it’s that he’ll like them too much. Maybe it’s that he’ll realize they’re more suited for him all along. 

“On the contrary,” he says, folding the paper neatly, tucking it back into the envelope, “I think it would be good for the boy.”

“What? Why?”

“He might seek it out eventually.” Gently, he nudges Jinx aside, sliding her a few inches down the table to grab a lighter from behind her. Careful not to touch the flame to the paper, he melts the wax and firmly presses the envelope closed. “Better for him to do it like this than the alternative. Controlled—his first sight of Topside a show of excess and greed.”

“I don’t like it,” she says, the tone of her voice taking on a childish lilt. Silco leans back to regard her. 

“Is it jealousy? I know you have been working with him. Angry they don’t want you to speak during their little holiday?”

“No!” She exclaims immediately, “no, I want nothing to do with them! I’m just…”

“Worried,” he fills in, the word faintly disapproving. Disapproving of her worrying for him—an outsider, someone not exactly of their little family, someone all too intertwined with Zaun’s local mad scientist. “The boy’s of poor health. Pity. Nature tends to curb the brightest with some form of instability.”

“Does that include me?” She asks, and he tilts his head, reaching up a hand to stroke briefly along the side of her face. 

“No. No, Jinx, you’re perfect.”

She closes her eyes, so the only sensation is the coolness of the air, once his touch recedes, the absence of a hand. 

“Let him go,” Silco says. She doesn’t miss the other meaning behind the words. Let him go to Piltover, and let him go as a whole , let him fall away from her mind as all else does.

“Okay,” she says, sliding off the desk and back into his lap, He curls a hand around her waist in a brief embrace, handing her the sealed envelope with the other. It might be a lie. It might not. 

She cannot tell, sometimes, even about herself. 

When she’s tinkering, building, the world is silent and clear, no voices ridiculing her, no visions flashing in her peripherals. Moments like these, though, as she tucks the envelope close to her chest, are almost as good. 

—

It’s only supposed to be a quick nap, the next morning, as she spirits into the airshaft at dawn. A quick curl-up under a pile of blankets, but soon unconsciousness takes her and whisks her down to dark, burning places. 

She wakes to a sound, a bright ring that echoes through the shaft. Blearily, she rolls over in a way that would send her plummeting off the edge if not for the rail that catches her, cold bars hitting the bare side of her arm. 

The sound, it turns out, was the tap of Viktor’s cane against the metal fanblade. She rises, sitting up at the edge of the blanket nest, running a hand over her hair to smooth out the frizzier strands. 

Post-sleep delirium vanishes in an instant once she remembers what she has for Viktor. She meant to visit him later, around midday, but seems he’s found her first— not according to plan! Springing up from her spot, she dashes into the tent situated on the fan’s center ring without even pausing to greet him. 

“Morning,” Viktor calls from outside, voice slightly bemused. She returns the yell, grabbing at the many things that litter this space. His client’s gun, a standard-issue, one of the boring milquetoast models that she gives everyone, because people who buy weapons instead of making them don’t deserve the best. 

And, the more interesting of the two things, the leg . Glowing softly, the gem in the middle spinning in place. When she picks it up, it almost buzzes , and she pauses to stare at it. The thing seems almost alive sometimes, though that’s a childish idea, but she can’t shake the feeling when it responds to her inputs so well . 

“I was going to find you,” she says, backing out of the tent and turning to face him, “later! You came early. Ruined all my plans.”

“I, ah, was stretching my legs,” he says, apologetic. She shakes her head, smiling despite the mock-annoyance in her voice. 

“No, silly, don’t apologize. I just had such a cool show in mind and now I have to do it on the spot—” She clears her throat, proffers the gun, which he takes lightly. Probably some Chem-baron’s weapon, something for their petty little gang wars in the lanes. She doesn’t ask questions about mundane orders like these. Not worth her time. 

“What is it?” He asks, tucking the gun under an arm and nodding at the leg. Of course he’s zeroed in on it, anyone with more than half an eye for inventing would be drawn to it like flies to honey, and that thought reminds her of the third thing she has to give him. 

The letter burning a hole in her pocket. 

Later!

“A prototype. Sit down? Oh, and take off your shoes.”

After a moment of hesitation, he does, gingerly lowering himself to the ground, both legs splayed out straight in front of him. The bad one, the right, twists inwards, as it always does, and he softly kicks off his shoes. They’re nice leather, ‘marred’—by which she means improved—by her little scribbles. Silco got them for Viktor, his twentieth birthday, gave them to Jinx to pass on, along with a few insincere words about being ‘proud of his development’ and she had to tailor the right shoe to fit Viktor’s foot. Plus add a few of her personal touches. 

It makes her smile to see him wear them. 

“Another one?” The tone isn’t the most encouraging, but it dampens her smile only for a moment. Sure, perhaps her previous haven’t worked, but this one is different. He just has to see. 

“This one is… is way better, so much better. I was able to do that!” She turns, points to the dent in the railing. He peers at it, eyebrows raising in muted surprise, before looking back at the leg, new interest in his eyes. 

“What is this… ah, gem?”

She struggles for a moment on how to respond. People are talking in the back of her mind, a quiet river of whispers. “...Powerful.”

Without waiting for further questions, of which she’s sure he has many, she crouches and aligns the mouth of the leg with his foot. “Can I?” She asks.

“I trust you,” he replies. She flashes him a quick grin before slowly moving it up, engulfing his thin leg in the metal shell. 

It’s a perfect fit—her measurements were right. The scaled top rests around his hip, the bottom lightly supporting his foot, and the blue gem flares brighter, a faint, near-electronic hum filling the air. He reaches down to feel at the metal without prompting, running a hand down the overlapping metal plates. 

“It fits quite well,” he says, but she jumps to her feet impatiently and urges him to stand. She needs to see if it works—if this one, finally, has paid off, if the gem will be able to give her something instead of heartbreak. 

“It’s meant to go over your pants. Stand up!”

He reaches for his cane, currently on the ground, begins the slow process that always comes with rising—and she sees the moment that he realizes. Where, slowly, he takes his weight off the cane, experimentally lets himself stand with the strength of his legs alone. 

By the time he’s fully on his feet, standing straight, he’s staring down at the metal leg with a new light in his eyes. Jinx can’t contain her grin. 

“Is it good?”

“What is this?” He asks, bending over to peer as closely at the gem as he can. Experimentally, he raises the metal-encased leg, sets it back down again, “this gem, it’s powering it beyond… beyond comprehension.” With sudden intensity, he looks up at her, face slack and eyes wide. “Where did you get this, Jinx?”

Her throat closes up. Fire. Noise. The walls blowing out, enforcers rushing in, all your fault! 

It must show on her face, because that intensity fades in a moment, and he takes a halting step forwards. “Nevermind it. Don’t-”

“When I was a kid,” she blurts, the words all rushing out in an instant, “a heist. Some academy student, he had them.” 

“Piltover,” Viktor murmurs, “of course.” 

This line of conversation reminds her, again, of that third subject that she’s been putting out of her mind, but she shoves that into a little box. Plasters the smile back on her face. 

“Is it good?”

He smiles back—a real grin, teeth showing, takes another step, this one moving him past her. She twists around to watch him slowly walk all the way to the center of the fan, turn around, and pick up the pace as he returns. When they’re once again aligned, face-to-face, he drops his wooden cane onto the metal with a clang . 

“It’s a marvel, Jinx,” he says, “I could- I could run with this.”

“Want to race?” She asks. “To your lab.”

For a long moment, he hesitates. She can practically see him rotating the idea in his head, examining it from every angle. 

Then, he nods, turns and bolts towards the door. She laughs, leaping after him, braids streaming out in the air behind her. “ Cheater! ”

He doesn’t answer, throwing the airshaft door open and darting into the lanes. She pauses only to slam it closed before following.

Even with the newfound strength, he’s clearly unused to sprinting like this, form horrifically off, close to tripping over his own feet. Jinx takes to the rooftops, which might be cheating, but he cheated first so it’s fine , and besides, this gives her a good vantage to watch after him. Just in case. 

It’s not far, the space between his lab and her workshop, but she lengthens it by springing from roof-to-roof, taking a familiar, roundabout route. 

By the time they reach the alleyway, he’s slowed to a simple jog, and she swings off the roof to slide down a pipe onto the ground. Viktor’s breaths come heavy, another consequence of this being perhaps the first time he’s ran, but his face is still split into a wide smile. Her gaze strays to the leg, and the gem seems to be pulsing a touch faster, brightening and dimming in near-indecipherable intervals. 

“I let you win,” she drawls, and he opens his mouth to no doubt retort, but then-

Pauses. Coughs once, quietly, more a rasp than anything, and then again, this one louder. Bends over with the next, wet and thick, chest heaving as he continues to hack. A fleck of blood flies from his mouth, splattering upon the stained ground. 

“Viktor!” She exclaims, crossing to his side in an instant. Unsure of what to do, hands hovering over his side, what can I do, how do I fix this ? He coughs again, and she freezes, heart hammering in her chest, so loud that she can hear it beating like a drum, unable to help, unable to move or speak or think. A line of wetness trickles down her cheek, and she cannot even blink to disconnect the tear. 

He heaves in a breath, standing back to his full height, swiping a few more stray drops of blood from his mouth. 

She’d been so happy to see him run, but now, it’s curdled to shame and guilt and horror. 

Never should have asked him to race, god, that was so stupid , she knows about his cough. Fixing the leg doesn’t mean that whatever’s wrong with his organs, whatever’s wrong inside is better! What if worse had happened? 

What if it was all her fault?

Jinx!

There’s a hum in her ears, the sound of a babbling crowd. Darkness at the edges of her vision. 

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes, as he takes in another rasping breath, “I shouldn’t have, Viktor, I’m so sorry I didn’t-”

“No,” he replies, eyes fixed on some distant point above her head. “No, I should have known my limits. Thank you, Jinx, for the leg.”

When she doesn’t respond, he draws her into a soft embrace. He smells like he always does, surprisingly sharp—both from the tang of metal and cutting edge of chemical scents—but it’s concrete proof that he’s still here, still alive.  

No thanks to her. 

The blue crystal winks up at her. 

“I have something,” she mutters into his shirt. He draws back a bit. 

“What?”

“I have something.” Jinx has to force the words out, and they warble with a barely-restrained sob—but if she doesn’t say it now, she’ll never say it. She reaches into her pocket and withdraws the letter, no longer as pristine as it once was—now crumpled and stained. 

“What is it?” He asks, taking it, observing the seal. “This is from… the Academy?”

“It was sent to you,” she says. He raises an eyebrow, but does not ask why she has it, then. He can probably guess. 

“Read it later,” she says, backing away. Silco’s words— let him go . And, looking at him now, still half-hunched over, a smear of blood by his mouth, she can’t stay here any longer without faltering. Without the rush of voices in the back of her mind intensifying. “Maybe,” she says, and though the words hurt to say, she forces them out, “maybe you should go.”

“Go where?” He asks, voice still hoarse. She turns without answering, scales the wall of the building behind. “Jinx! Don’t-”

Don’t run , probably, but she’s already leaping to the next rooftop, and the next, heard still fluttering like a trapped bird in her chest, unable to stop . Her whole body is warm, hands numb, breaths coming in heavy, silent heaves, and eventually she crouches upon one of the flatter roofs, draws her knees close to her chest and buries her head in her arms. 

Running away was a bad idea, probably, she should’ve stayed there and made sure he made it inside safely, been there as he read the letter, but she cannot cannot cannot. 

Someone crouches beside her. Puts a phantom hand upon her shoulder, warm. The air smells like leather and fire and pungent, burnt Shimmer. 

“What have you done ?” Vi asks. 

Jinx hits out at the air beside her, whirling around for her hand to flail out at nothing. She’s alone. Nobody else here. Alone, in solitude, nothing but the knowledge that she ruins everything. 

Well, it’s not solitude, not really, not with the spirits always hanging around.

Chapter Text

By the time Singed returns, late at night, Viktor still hasn’t processed the letter fully. Nevermind the other events of the day: the leg, being able to run—what happened after—Jinx’s quick exodus. 

Biggest, though, is the letter, still clenched in his hand. Recognize his brilliance ? To speak at Progress Day? The event is in a week, and at the bottom of the envelope, is a single crisp train ticket. 

Singed comes in quietly, as he always does—no injury this time. Viktor keeps ahold of the letter even as he comes out to greet him. If he releases it for too long, he’s afraid that it will vanish. 

“No cane?” Singed asks, noting the biggest change immediately. Still cast askew in Jinx’s workshop—he’ll retrieve it soon, but give her time to reach homeostasis, first. 

“A new brace.” He extends the leg. The blue casts a soft light in the dark space, illuminating the nearby glassware in shades of azure. 

“Inventive,” comes the reply, and on any other day, Viktor would be glad to discuss this—it’s a large enough change, all on its own—but he cannot resist veering to the next subject, that of the well-worn paper clenched in his hand. 

“I received this today,” he says softly. Singed wordlessly extends a hand for it. 

“Not entirely unprecedented,” is the only thing he replies, eyes skimming down the paper. A moment later, he hands it back. Anticlimactic—all afternoon, the prospect has been bursting in Viktor’s chest, and now the only return for it is three simple words. 

“Is that all you have to say?”

“Essentially.”

Not the most motivating of responses. 

“I don’t know,” Viktor says, letting the paper flutter down to the table, “if I should go.”

“Why not?”

He struggles for a moment to articulate it—so many things crammed into this one action. They’re topside and he’s undercity—he cannot fathom them truly caring about what a single orphan is doing here, even if he is ‘innovating’. 

And that too is a stone that sinks low and heavy in his gut. A tether stretching from his stomach to the gun he’s going to give Ekko, to the many he’s sold already. Any lives saved via mechanization of the Chemforges, he feels at times, must be balanced out by those taken in flashes of bright fire and the strike of a bullet. 

“It’s not right,” is what he settles upon eventually, “up there, for me.”

“Oil and water,” Singed murmurs. The way he says it sounds like a quote, but Viktor can’t be sure. A moment passes before he continues, these words fully his own. “You should.”

“You truly think so?”

“It will be a spectacle,” he says, “they enjoy those. Helps them forget about us.”

Another long moment of silence. Viktor waits for the rest—he trusts that there's more to say along this thread of conversation. Sure enough, he continues. 

“Perhaps they will even offer you a spot.”

“To the Academy? As a student?”

Singed nods. “You’re a bright mind. They are Piltover, but they aren’t fools to ignore that.”

Again, there’s a weight to words—like it comes from something personal. Viktor looks at him askance, but he offers no further insight. 

A spot to the Academy, to those gleaming white towers. An image of his childhood self flickers before his eyes, for the briefest moment, a child of barely ten who climbs to the highest part of Zaun and tries to touch the towers with thin fingers. 

He recalls Jinx’s words. You should go . She must’ve read the letter—the seal did look a bit messy, for official Piltover communication.

“Would they really?” He asks. Tries not to let that sliver of wonder bleed into his voice, but it comes out anyways, in the lightness of the sentence, as if even the words themselves are trying to push up into topside skies. Singed shifts, and he expects a repeat of the scene from a decade ago—a light reprimand, insofar as Singed ever gives reprimands, a reminder of his own place rooted firmly in Zaun. 

“If they did,” he asks, eyes intent on Viktor’s, one dark and the other a milky wash of green, “would you accept?”

“I don’t know.”

“It might be good for you,” he says, now turning away—like he cannot bear to look at Viktor while he says this—“if you did.” In a few long strides, he crosses to the shelves against the wall. Does not reach for anything, simply stands there regarding the smeary visage of a hundred lined-up jars. Viktor follows instinctively, trying to catch his attention again, to get a clarification on what he just said. 

“A topside education? What about Zaun?”

“The air would benefit you.” Singed reaches out, runs his hand along the line of jars, before settling upon one of the smaller ones, fingers poised against the glass. Viktor leans in to make out the contents. A small pair of lungs, no doubt acquired from some vermin creature, pale white and dissolving into bits at the edges. When he breathes, he can so acutely feel his own, the rattling in his chest. 

“I don’t think it’s the air at fault,” he says. Perhaps part of it is the consequence of smog and smoke, but there’s the sense that this illness is bone-deep, an irrevocable part of him. Would remain even if he spent his life on topside, the weakness of flesh clinging to him in every possible universe. 

“Then—” he turns, finally looking Viktor in the eyes once again, “I would prefer if you vacated Zaun entirely. It will not remain safe here, in these coming weeks.”

It is the wording that makes Viktor take an instinctive step back, more even than the intensity of his tone itself. The insertion of Singed’s self into the equation: always, when he gives suggestions, it is phrased as a fact, not an opinion. 

“What is the danger?” He asks, trying not to let his voice sound accusatory. Singed doesn’t answer immediately—his eyes linger on Viktor’s feet, on the newfound gap between them. When he looks back up, there’s a new crease to his brow, nearly invisible. 

Still, he makes no effort to close the space, remaining rooted where he is, one hand still upon the jar. 

“I’m almost finished.”

“What is it,” Viktor asks, unable to stop himself, “that you’re doing?”

Breaking his silent, unspoken rule, the one he’s carried over from Singed to the rest of his life—prying. Asking questions. He has not violated it in a decade, perhaps more—seems, sometimes, that he was born with such a decree imprinted upon the soft folds of his brain, just as much as he was built with blackness in his lungs and a twist in his leg. 

Singed’s back curves as he slumps, hand sliding off the glass. 

“I had a daughter, once.” 

“I know. What of the impending danger? What does that have to do with—” Viktor gestures around the space, “— this ?” Ten years’ worth of secrets, of silence louder than words, bubbling up in his chest—he has waited, he has snooped, he has asked evasive half-questions, and now he cannot stand a moment of muddled conclusion anymore. 

“Science, more than anything, is the art of understanding sacrifice.” Singed gestures vaguely at his face, at the eye and the burn, at the bandages that wrap like many nooses around his crooked neck. “I have given up much. I would give up more. If preventable, however…” now, he takes a step closer, close enough to embrace, if both were to reach out their arms. 

Unfamiliar. Not the custom between him and Singed, no sort of touch at all is. Even with the brace, the strength of metal propping his brittle bones up, Viktor feels as unsteady as he ever has.

“...I would prefer some things be preserved,” he finishes, and there it is again, the insertion of opinion into his rhetoric— I would prefer . 

“Preserved?” He tries not to let any sort of disgust bleed into his tone. Reminds him of those small dead things floating in glass jars, never allowed to rot, reminds him of Rio’s corpse flayed open upon a dissection table, slender hands dropping bits of tendon and jelly into long glass tubes. Fails, probably, at hiding it, because the crease in Singed’s brow deepens—an expression that he can now recognize as hurt. Or as close as a man like him can feel hurt. 

“Accept it,” he breathes out, voice little higher than a whisper, “if they offer. My time at the Academy was… unpleasant, but perhaps not entirely useless. You were always better suited for Piltover, Viktor. I wish I had not recognized your genius. I wish you’d not been enamoured with mine.”

He’s breathless for a long moment, because the words are both the closest admission of affection he’s ever heard, and the harshest that Singed has ever said to him. 

“Suited for Piltover?” He finally manages, ignoring the parts of the statement that he cannot begin to reply to, not on the spot. 

Singed’s stare is steady, measured. He raises his hand, indicates a spot on the left cheek. “You missed a spot.”

Viktor touches the same point on his face, feels a delicate layer upon the skin flake off. His hand comes back powdered with deep, reddish copper, dried fleck of blood. 

“I won’t be lost, if I go there, then?” He changes course, reverting to an earlier bit of topic, because there’s no use arguing on the issue of weakness when it comes to his own body. He knows its failures more intimately than anybody else could, and he’s not the type of man to steep in denial. 

“If you stay,” Singed whispers, voice suddenly hard, though no less quiet, “and I must offer another sacrifice, I cannot stop. Not if it means she returns to me.”

As seems to be more and more common, Viktor is wordless, tongue thick and useless in his mouth. His hand falls down, flat against his side, and Singed turns without any further words, shambles to the door. It strikes him that he has not seen the man eat, sleep, drink, in years—there is no reason for him to return to the lab at all, no reason besides these small twilight conversations. 

Almost, he calls for him to wait, calls for him to return, but the words catch in his throat, and the letter still abandoned upon the tabletop seems to wink at him, and then the door is closing and the lab is empty once again. 

—

In the week preceding Piltover, he receives two visitors. Neither are Singed—an outcome not entirely unexpected, but one that still has Viktor’s head shooting up whenever a dim shape passes by the blurry windows, when there’s something that sounds like a knock on the front door. 

The first visitor is, of course, Ekko, returning on schedule for his parts. The hoverboard, Viktor finishes numbly, barely interested in the thing anymore, but Ekko’s face still lights up upon seeing it. In return, he tries to pass over two thick bags of food, but Viktor must do something he’s never done before—bargain. 

“May I defer the payment?” He asks, “until next week?”

Because, if he is to go to Piltover, then they’ll do nothing but rot. Singed will not return , let alone eat them, and in normal circumstances, he would simply pass the entire thing off to Jinx, but that’s connected to his second visitor. 

Two days into the loneliness of the waiting-week, he finally considers dropping by her airshaft, perhaps asking her once again about the letter, but that idea is quashed upon the morning of the third—upon which he opens his front door and finds his old wooden cane propped up against the wall. It’s a message. She could have dropped it off in person, would have done so upon any other occasion, but the impersonality of the exchange hints to him that he needs to wait for her to come to him instead. 

Instead, he spends the time poring over the brace. Prods at the blue gem a few times, which seems to be powering this entire contraption, but does not remove it from its spot—he’s afraid that, if he takes it out, it will not work the same once again. Somehow, the gem is more yet than a battery—the strength it lends him is beyond that of support . As if whatever power leeches from the stone is reaching, slowly, into the bone itself. 

So that it is, a week passed, and nothing to show but a deferred bag of food and a painted cane. On the sixth day, the night before he boards the train, he goes through the lab and methodically throws away every single jar. The large trash barrels within the alley rapidly become a mess of broken glass and pungent liquid, slimy carcasses pooling in their own juices, and he barely feels satisfied at all at the motion.

The morning of dawns with the same half-light that always casts over Zaun. He’s agonized over which bits of his mechanisms to take—decided eventually on a sliver cross-section of a Chem-forge and a prototype mining gauntlet—and now, he packs those into a leather backpack, heaves it over his back. Before leaving his room, he pauses upon seeing the small metal butterfly still sitting on a shelf above his bed. 

Without thinking, he grabs it, careful not to crush its thin wings, tucks it carefully into the pocket of his shirt, right above his heart. 

And then, he’s out, leaving the lab behind for what feels surprisingly like the final time. 

—

The train station is near-empty—the bored enforcer manning the station actually seems to think Viktor forged the ticket—but, eventually, he lets him through the thick metal gate and into the space beyond. Within the waiting room, it is a taste of Piltover already—the seats are a hazy off-white, there’s actual art upon the walls—but it is not until the train comes that he gets a true, unfiltered look of that. 

The leather is smooth and shiny, the edges of the train car lined in gold, and his mind automatically spins into how much he could get, prying some of that out of the walls and selling it—or even better, melting it down to reform for some mechanism—before he must curb himself. Cannot act like their topside stereotype of a Zaunite—savages, dirty animals, unused to the finery of civilization—but still, as the train smoothly rises upon the metal rails, he cannot help but gape.  

Those childhood views of Piltover from river-slick rocks did it no justice. From this vantage, it is a vista of white and gold, actual trees poking up from sharp-angled buildings, not a speck of dust in sight. He wore his best clothes for this, a semi-crisp white shirt and unstained overalls, but still, he feels grimy in comparison. 

It lets him out in a more grandiose station yet, and it’s here that he’s supposed to wait, as outlined in the letter, for Professor Heimerdinger . Enforcers line the place, but they’re all relaxed, all chatting idly—at least until he spills out of the train, lugging along his sack of various parts, and then it’s many pairs of eyes, all fixed on him. He knows where they go first—to his leg, the brace glowing faintly blue—and then to the bag, and then to the small tears and undone threads in his clothes, and then finally his face, which is Zaunite all on its own. Thinner, sharper, hardened from a life of the lanes. The room tenses, energy drawing tight, many sets of gazes fixed upon him. Enough that he does not dare to even move, remaining stock-still where he disembarked the train. 

The first sign of the professor is the brief clattering as the gated door opens, and the second is his bright tufts of orange hair. There stands a yordle, carefully groomed—is that correct terminology?—wearing an elegant, if miniaturized, blue suit. The only yordle Viktor knows is Babette, Madam of Zaun’s largest brothel, who approached him briefly a year ago to ask about mechanical sex toys. 

Needless to say, the professor is far different, neat and clean with tightly tailored clothes. 

“Viktor!” He greets, stepping forwards, holding out his gloved hand. He must stoop to shake it, but the grip is surprisingly firm. “I am so very glad to see you’ve arrived! Come, come!”

Without waiting for his input, Heimerdinger turns back towards the door he came from. Viktor can’t help a spike of vindication as he follows—directed towards those enforcers, whom he’s sure were slowly edging towards him as he waited. 

Already, he’s seen so many grandiose sights that Piltover from a ground level almost manages not to bludgeon him over the head again—but it is beauty on another, different level, tall buildings stretching up towards the heavens, the sky clear and bright overhead, streets clean and neatly cobbled. Decorations, assumedly for Progress Day, adorn the walls and rooftops. It’s a measure of self-control not to dislocate his neck, looking around, all returning to his earlier goal—to not be a Zaunite stereotype. 

“-the speech,” Heimerdinger says, and he realizes that he’s been talking this whole time, must hastily pull his attention back and listen attentively. “You, Viktor, will be a part of the student section.”

“Student section?”

“A small ceremony,” he says, “after my opening salvo, we invite a few of our most successful students to speak on their work. Small speeches, typically, only a few minutes. It has been long since we’ve honored a Zaunite!”

The words are clearly complimentary, but Viktor has to force a smile nevertheless. Never has this been advertised as something Zaunites can aspire to: if he had not made such a large ripple, down below, he doubts there would be a word breathed to any of the inventors below. 

“In any case,” he continues, seemingly undeterred by lack of response, “you will be the last on. I hope you’ve prepared a speech?”

“I have.” He finally musters a response, clearing his throat. “I brought a few examples, as well. Of my inventions.”

“Oh?” Heimerdinger turns to glance back at him, eyebrows lowering, “I suppose we can find a space. You needn’t have.”

Looking at him, as he leads them through Piltover’s streets, he can’t help but wonder about the professor’s association with his own professor. Singed mentions him sparingly, if at all, but there is enough to piece together that they knew each other once, and now—at least on one side—would rather have never known the other at all. 

The streets widen gradually until, after a long stretch of walking—he is thankful once again for the glowing brace—it spits them out into an unprecedented crowd. Of course, there have been many chattering people strolling down the road, but this is a crush, a mass that is disorganized, in the way all crowds are, but somehow orderly too. Nothing like Zaunite nightclubs, like the hordes that form in the undercity, packed tight and unyielding. Heimerdinger, small as he is, pushes through easily, dragging along Viktor in his wake. 

They move between stalls, many bright colors and strong smells, tents that reflect the morning sun back at him in vivid hues, until they reach a stage. Already lined up beneath it are six Academy students, donning clean uniforms of vests and tightly-tailored pants. 

“You’re after Junia,” Heimerdinger says, bumping into place at the back of the line and indicating a tanned girl who gives him an evaluating look before turning away. None of them have bags at all—no hefty inventions, lugged around in embarrassingly-large sacks—but does not let the flicker of embarrassment show upon his face. Neither do they deign to talk to him, but that’s expected enough, and perhaps not even personal—they do not even converse with each other, all facing the stage stiffly. Nerves, maybe, or competition, or any number of other factors that he would have no idea about. 

It’s only when Heimerdinger takes to the stage that he realizes his inventions will not, in fact, have a place found for them. 

—

Heimerdinger’s address is long, mostly a winding tale about the founding of Piltover, about its evolution over the two-odd centuries, greeted with a resounding round of applause. If nothing else, they’re patriotic here. 

The first student, a blonde boy, rises to the stage, nothing in hand—bringing evidence of invention truly was unneeded—and talks briefly about improving airship technology. The next, and the next, and the next follow. All their projects are interesting—mechanically—but somehow disconnected . Viktor listens with interest, as he always is when it comes to matters of invention, but when he attempts to imagine working on such things himself, it does not strike a chord. Hard to imagine tinkering with robot pets, or simplifying clock designs, when there is smog in the air and fights on the street and great, hacking machines that capture people and grind them to bits in metallic teeth. . 

It is not until the girl right before him, Junia’s, presentation that something truly catches his interest. 

“A plant,” she says, “carefully bred, able to siphon toxins from the air. If planted in large amounts, they could clear entire skies.”

When she finishes, and there is a brief interval for questions, he raises his hand before he can stop himself. From both the interest of a fellow scientist—and the interest of a Zaunite. She nods at him to ask. 

“How effective could they be within Zaun?” He asks. A brief jump of her eyebrows, like she had not even considered that. 

“Great, I believe. They work well in Piltover. We’ll plant them in the undercity soon.”

It would sound like an empty promise even without that momentary flicker of surprise—because of the last part. The important part. He almost doesn’t say it, but perhaps Zaunites are patriotic too, because he must challenge that. 

“Plants do not grow in the lanes.”

“These will,” she says brusquely, and then points at another raised hand before he can challenge that too. It is less malice, nothing like ‘Zaunites don’t deserve clean air’, and more ignorance—because how would they know there were no plants down there, without ever going down themselves?

He is still thinking about that when she descends from the stage, jerks her chin at him. 

Finally, it’s his turn. 

He brings the prototypes because he might as well, after lugging them all up here, carefully unwrap them from the leather and place them upon the stage. It is a long process that must take on at least two minutes out of his allotted five, but eventually, he’s ready, standing straight at the front of the stage. Maybe he was wrong, that night, about his cough, about Piltover air helping—because his voice is remarkably clear when he speaks the first line. 

“I am Viktor. A Zaunite.”

Nothing so obvious as gasps or whispers, but he catches a few widened eyes in the crowd, a few sidelong glances. Easiest not to let his gaze linger on any single person, but instead reduce the entire group to a hazy blue of tan and gold. He has talked with Chem-barons that control entire sections of the city before, talked with Silco— a group of topside students should be no obstacle whatsoever. 

“My years inventing,” he continues, “I have spent working on Chem-forges in the undercity.” A gesture to his right, the cross-section, pipes and wires twining through the metal. “Many used to perish, following exposure to such chemicals and heat. By changing the designs, however…”

As he speaks, sweeping his gaze across the crowd, it snags upon a certain point in the back. Not immediately—he passes by the spot once, then twice, then thrice, each time slowing fractionally until, finally, he isolates what it is that’s alerting him so much. 

A man is staring at him. 

Bad way to describe it, of course, because they’re all staring at him—he is the center of attention, after all—but this gaze is particularly intense. Unmoving, laser-focused, and a lifetime in the lanes has given a sort of sixth sense as to when he is being observed. 

The man himself is not an academy student—both out of uniform and a year or two too old, far enough back that Viktor cannot make out many independent details. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, and after only a moment, he pulls his attention away and tries to concentrate on his speech. 

It is the talk of engineering that captures them, the universal language that can bridge the barrier between even Zaun and Piltover. He’s not a bad presenter, he knows that well enough, but truly, it’s less any of his charisma and more the temptation of gears and wires that draws his audience to applause upon the final word. Viktor allows himself a single breath, a single exhalation of all his nerves, before bowing shallowly, descending the stairs. 

Somehow, Heimerdinger is already waiting for him at the base. His small, coiffed mustache twitches up in what Viktor assumes is a smile. 

“Marvelous, my boy! Any doubts… you’re a true talent, young Viktor.”

Far more convivial already, it seems, upon approval. Viktor gives him a shallow smile, gestures back to the stage, where his prototypes still sit. “Should I-”

“No, no,” the professor assures, “I’ll have them transported to the showing.”

“The showing?”

“Where most of them are running off to,” he says, pointing at the crowd of students, most of whom are rapidly exiting the standing area and streaming into the streets beyond. “You’ll be in attendance too— have to be, after that presentation!”

There’s movement upon the stage, and when Viktor turns to look, he sees two enforcers hefting the gloves and the Chem-forge into their arms. Seems that now he’s proved himself, as with many things, life is easier. 

How it always goes. 

“Down the street,” Heimerdinger continues, still pointing vaguely towards the same way most of the students are exiting towards, “in the fountain square. I’ll be there shortly. Business, regrettably, calls for now.”

Viktor manages a “ Goodbye, professor,” before the yordle bounds off, towards a group of important-looking people huddled in the corner. No longer does he feel quite so alone in this, after such a reception, though everywhere he looks, Piltover is still unfamiliar. Gleaming crown-jewel of a city, all neat and polished and more laughter than he has ever heard from presumably-sober people. All are clean, all are happy, and he notes that none look like him—namely, braced legs, canes, any sort of physical deformity at all. 

He is passing a statue of a tall, bespectacled man, when abruptly, someone steps out from behind it, blocking his path. The face is familiar, and he realizes only a second later— this is the student who was staring at him from the back of the crowd. Closer, he’s handsome, hair messily smoothed back with an excess of gel. Ragged stubble in the way that does not suggest purpose, but instead a man who’s skipped shaving for a few days, and does not do it all that well when he does shave. Face marred only by the expression it’s set in, brow low and mouth drawn back, tight and angry. 

Viktor pauses in his steps, hesitant. If this were Zaun, he’d think this was the buildup to a fight, but this isn’t Zaun, so he’s utterly out of his depth. Either way, it’s not a fight he’d win—the man is taller, wider, and no-doubt better fed. 

“Viktor,” he says, the name an accusation and greeting both at once. 

“...And you are?” He attempts friendliness with the tone. All he gets in return are narrowed eyes. 

“Your leg,” he says, “where did you get that?”

“It is an invention,” he replies, cagey, tone arch. He will not say Jinx’s name, doesn’t say it in Zaun and certainly won’t here, though the chance is vanishingly small they’ll even recognize it. He wouldn’t know if they’d even know Silco— however much the average Piltovian citizen knows about undercity politics is probably little. 

“No, the gem ,” he urges, taking a step closer, “was it you? Or your friends?” Viktor backs up in the same movement. He only stands physical closeness with one person, really, perhaps two if he really considers—though relationships with both of those are in the air, currently—and the man’s expression helps none of this closeness. 

Perhaps this is the lead-up to a fight. He surreptitiously glances around, but the street has emptied, the crowd moving to festivities beyond. 

“Well?” he asks. Right. He’d asked a question—which, really, Viktor doesn’t see why he expects him to answer, after all this strange posturing, strange fervor in his eyes. 

Viktor blinks at him. “Was what?”

“You know what,” he growls, leaning forwards a bit more, and Viktor tries to sidestep his form. He moves, blocking him, and now, both of them stand in the center of the road. 

“What is your name?” He tries again, “I do not know what you… ah, believe I’ve done, but I am sure it’s a misunderstanding.”

It seems for a moment like he’s going to barrel past the question once again, but eventually, he forces out a single word. 

“Jayce.”

Good. Progress. 

“Jayce,” he starts, taking another step to the side. This time, he doesn’t move to block, and he moves a step forwards, then another, further down the path. And, more importantly, closer to a crowd. “What is the issue with the gem?”

Jayce falls into step beside him, shoulders tense, eyes still fixed on Viktor. All of this traces back to Jinx in some way—she was cagey about the gem. Said it came from Piltover. An academy student. Jayce is not a student, but perhaps he was, once. 

He probably should have actually checked on that, but he accepted it without question because it was a new avenue, a way to walk. Sloppy. When she decides to talk to him again, he’ll push as hard as he can on this issue. 

If . Not when. In case he decides to stay here, somehow. 

“A few years ago, my apartment was robbed. There was an explosion. I was nearly- nearly exiled. ” His voice cracks with that last word. “The source of it, and what was stolen, was…”

“The gem,” Viktor completes, looking down at his leg. Remembering his brief interest in it, the week past, before deciding to let it be. Now, as with interrogating Jinx, he regrets not going further. Explosion ? 

Despite his newfound openness, when he meets Jayce’s eyes again, there’s no less suspicion in it. They’re nearing the crowd now, and Viktor relaxes a fraction at the sound of chatter that bubbles over the buildings. 

“I had no part in that,” he replies, “I assure you.”

“Who’d you buy it from, then?” 

Now, he hesitates. Cannot sell out Jinx—best to make up a lie. 

“I cannot remember,” he replies, “it was long ago.”

Again, the street widens, this time into a large square, fountain shooting high arcs of water in the middle. The edges are lined with various small pedestals and podiums, inventions perched upon them—he spots Junia, standing before a row of thin green shoots, and beside her, his own inventions. They’re out of place—everything else is sleekly-paneled, smooth, and though he doubts his own is any less masterful, they have none of that clean facade. 

“Viktor,” Jayce says, voice suddenly, eerily calm, “I can tell you’re lying.”

“Truly,” he says, quickening his pace so they can immerse themselves in the throng, “I am not.”

Jayce cuts his path off once again, stepping in front of him, tall and looming, forcing Viktor to move back once again. The man is healthy, of course, skin smooth and clothes clean, the marks of Piltover—but if he examines his undereyes, his face, there are small signs. Bags, wrinkles. Viktor would wager that this, somehow, is the cause of all that. The sort of thing that’s eaten away at him over the years, whoever Jayce was before all this. 

“You can’t come here,” he snaps, “can’t come here with that- with the gem, working ! How did you- you got it somehow, illegally, and now you’re flaunting-”

“I’m doing no such thing,” Viktor interrupts, entirely done with this. Now that there are people nearby, and he’s confident that if Jayce throws a punch, he’ll be pulled off before too much damage is done, he has no need to keep pretending cordiality. “You’re impeding my path. I suggest you move.” 

“How’d you make it work?” Jayce asks, and incidentally, does not move. At least he has moved to a different line of questioning—and with it, his voice changes, no longer so hard, melting into something that would be polite if not for that thin line of demand. 

Unfortunately, it’s no easier to answer. Again, it traces back to Jinx, and Viktor has to guess, make an approximation as best as he can. “The wires,” he starts—seems like a good base, given how they glow—“they align with the-”

When Jayce speaks again, he’s quiet, words a low hiss. “That can’t be it. I tried that. Magic isn’t that simple.”

Magic . The word silences him, makes the warmth of the brace all the more noticeable against his leg. In the back of his mind, there has been the faint notion that this cannot all be mechanical, and magic is an explanation for the ease that it supports him with, the way it seems not only to touch his skin but the bone beneath itself, but he still cannot quite believe that. Did Jinx..?

“Magic?” He whispers, equally quiet, caught in Jayce’s eyes, in some indeterminable wonder, “but… how ?”

Instead of answering, Jayce moves closer, close enough that he gets a whiff of his too-strong cologne, brows lowering once again, and hand reaching for him-

And then, someone short pushes between them, making Viktor stumble back and Jayce, as well, retreat. A shock of orange hair enters his gaze, and only now does he realize that a berth has formed around them, a circle bordered by many faces and many curious eyes, all peering at them. 

“Young men,” Heimerdinger says, “what is this about?”

He does not look at Viktor when he says this—instead at Jayce. Of course. Trust the Piltie over the Zaunite invite, and he waits grimly for the other man to say something about threats, something about Viktor’s fault. 

“We were talking,” he replies, all that hard accusation drained from his voice. Viktor raises an eyebrow. 

“Did not look like talking, Jayce,” Heimerdinger says, putting a hand upon his hip. “Don’t say you were picking a fight, young man.” His voice is not angry, exactly, or at least there’s a note of tired familiarity in it that softens the reprimand. Is Heimerdinger blaming Jayce for picking a fight? 

The professor’s gaze turns his way. “Was he?”

Viktor takes a moment to respond. Jayce has looked up, now straight at him once again, and still there’s that strange intensity in his eyes—though they don’t seem to be pleading for much of anything, don’t silently ask him for mercy. 

If they had been, if Jayce was mutely begging for Viktor’s mercy after all this, he would have ferried the blame, but instead—as he stares into those hazel eyes—he slowly shakes his head. “Talking, yes.”

Jayce’s shoulders slump, and Heimerdinger’s eyes narrow suspiciously, but after a long moment, he gives Jayce a light shove, urging him away. 

“Off, then, Jayce! I have business to discuss with young Viktor. And don’t go making more trouble.”

“Yes, Professor,” he says softly, with a dip of his head and a final flit of his eyes towards Viktor before turning and trudging into the awaiting crowd. Much of their audience has dissipated by now, no doubt disappointed, but Viktor’s glad for it. 

“I apologize for him. I did not think our citizens would have trouble with a Zaunite. Why, you’re as brilliant as any of them!”

They don’t have problems with him, not really, or at least—as he’s realized—not consciously, but instead the same sort of idle bias that curls hidden under the skin. Zaun as a whole is a different question, but Viktor, Viktor’s a frail inventor, with an even voice and interesting inventions, so they accept him in the same way as the river accepts the stone. 

Despite that, Viktor simply nods along, too tired to contest this thought. Heimerdinger begins a slow stroll along the perimeter of the square, and he follows in the silence that comes after his words. They pass one booth, then another, and then Heimerdinger turns back to look at him, and he knows what’s coming before the words even leave his mouth. 

Would know even if Jinx and Singed had not planted the suggestions in his mind, probably, would know just from the preceding statement and from the new light in the yordle’s eyes. 

“You’re brilliant enough to be a student,” he says, coming to a stop, “I pride myself on knowing talent, Viktor, and only regret not discovering you sooner .”

The words echo another conversation. A sentiment, semi-twisted, shared between two men who once knew each other. 

“Yes?”

“I would like to sponsor you a place at the Academy. A year on probation, of course, but following that- why, you’d have rule of the place, practically! Food, board, stipend. You would make great things in this city.”

The two people he values most both told him yes . Fairly good reasons, too. In all his time at Piltover, he has not coughed once, and with the brace supporting his leg, he almost feels strong. For a long moment of deliberation, he looks at Heimerdinger and the great white walls of Piltover, so different from Zaun. So disconnected . Nobody in this square, he wagers, has ever gone more than a level deep into the undercity. Not for no good reason; the lanes would chew most of them up and spit them back out, but still, he can imagine a life in Piltover, imagine it softening his edges, until the bright tents and the white clothes and the smell of fresh food in the air is nothing but normal . 

Perhaps he would have thrived here, had he come earlier. Zaun, though, Zaun has intertwined itself so irrevocably with him that he does not know if he could ever leave it behind. To leave Zaun is to leave the Chem-forges, is to leave the work he’s done there, in the streets—for something more impersonal, until perhaps he’s at the point of creating air-cleaning plants that will not even sprout in the deepest dirt. 

It’s to leave Jinx and Singed—one young enough that he does not want her to grow up without his influence, the other old enough that he cannot imagine growing without his . 

Still, the words hurt to speak, giving up this hazy dream of comfort. 

“I am afraid to say I cannot accept.”

Heimerdinger’s bright eyes widen, so much so that it’s almost comical. “No? Viktor, this is an opportunity! ”

“I understand,” he says, “but I cannot leave Zaun behind.”

“Your mission, the Chem-forges. I understand. Pity.” Heimerdinger sighs, running a hand through his hair, “in another world, perhaps. You would have made a great scientist.”

This, if anything, seals his decision. Viktor smiles politely, but the gesture comes out cold despite himself. “I believe I already am.”

“Of course,” he says, reassuring, “I meant a great scientist of the Academy, of course.”

Viktor nods along, but that’s not what he really meant, he knows. 

—

He departs from Piltover soon after that, peeling away from Heimerdinger and taking little part in the festivities. Partially for fear of Jayce cornering him in some dark alley, partially because he is purely tired . Perhaps it’s his imagination, a placebo after focusing too intently at the brace, but it seems uncomfortably warm and uncomfortably tight now. If he stares at the gem for too long, it begins to look like an eye, slowly twisting to follow his gaze. 

This past week, he’s been taking it off only to bathe, but maybe once he returns to the lab, he will let his leg sit free for longer. 

When he returns, however, opens the door to the dark, empty space, he can’t linger. Without its oddities and dead creatures, the lab is suddenly impersonal, a space unknown. A part of him—the largest part—knew that he would return to an empty space, because why would Singed be there, but a smaller section almost believed he would suddenly pop into existence to greet Viktor. 

He turns right out and walks back down the street, past the full bins of rotting chemicals, and into open Zaun. Instinctually, his gait veers towards Jinx’s airshaft, but he peels away, begins to take another series of paths. 

It is not until he breaks into the watery sunlight that he realizes where this subconscious wanderlust leads. 

A river, rushing between mossy rocks, leading to a dark cave. 

He lingers by the stream for minutes, watching the waters rush and skip over smooth, dark stones. Should turn away, turn back. Should probably, if he was entirely logical, go all the way back up to Piltover and ask Heimerdinger if he would please reconsider his offer. 

But he has broken so many of his rules, these past few days, that the slow steps he takes towards the mouth of the cave feel like only one more. 

It’s familiar and unfamiliar both at once. The purple flowers Rio used to eat are gone, all harvested or shriveled away, and the cave is somehow darker, more cramped—or maybe it’s simply that Viktor is taller now, eyes weaker. He makes his way through the mouth of the cavern, to the back wall, where there’s a simple stone door, blended enough with the rubble that it looks almost like another boulder. Cracked open—the barest line of light shines through. 

He pushes it open. Slips inside. 

Singed stands at a table, back to the door. He does not turn around. 

“I’m back,” Viktor says, announcing himself. The entire space is bathed in purple light—floor-to-ceiling tanks are filled with Shimmer, tubes running to and from them. Most, a veritable spiderweb of tubes, snake across the floor to a large mass currently covered by a sheet that hangs from tubes. The smell of rot, of death, overpowers even Shimmer’s distinctive, acrid odor. 

“You did not accept,” Singed says, still not turning. 

“Did you believe I would?”

“Perhaps in a delusion.”

Viktor walks up beside him, and the man silently shifts to the side to make room at the table. Before him is a syringe of the same purple liquid that fills all else in this room. He sets it down, picks up an empty one, begins to slowly fill that one as well. 

“What are you working on?” He asks, one final time of requesting this answer. Singed sets the newly-filled syringe down. Turns not towards Viktor, but instead the sheet-covered thing that hangs from the ceiling. 

“Do you truly wish to know?”

“Yes.”

Singed moves, maneuvers around Viktor and the table, towards the covered creature. And he’s sure it’s a creature, now—because there is nothing else that Singed could make. Because, if he looks closely, the cover moves up and down as if in the rhythm of breaths. Because, when scanning his memory, he can match it up to one other thing—to whatever it was that Singed dragged into the cave, after the night of the explosion, and would not let Viktor see. 

They walk together, towards it. As they approach the Shimmer tanks, his leg grows warmer yet, the brace vibrating faintly. Jayce’s words echo through his mind. Magic . 

“Before you see him,” Singed says, a single hand upon the dark sheet, poised to pluck it off, “remember that he was a good man, once.”

Chapter Text

At the same time as Viktor is packing, preparing to board a train off to Piltover Progress Day, Jinx slumps in the rafters of Silco’s office, braids dangling in the space halfway to the floor. The man himself sits at the desk below, poring over a thick sheaf of papers, occasionally sipping from a cup. Water, of course. He’s no day-drinker—that’s not fittingly refined for the lord of Zaun. 

She groans loudly, spinning a small gear around her fingers. Silence. Shifts, rolling over onto her stomach, huffing out a louder breath. 

When Silco still does not look up, she takes careful aim, and then flicks the gear down into his cup. It makes a little splash before sinking down to the bottom of the glass. 

Finally, he glances at her. 

“Jinx.”

“Silco…” She stretches out the last part of his name, mouth forming an O . 

“I’m working,” he says, reaching into the cup to pluck the wet gear out, throwing it into a nearby wastebin. She frowns. 

“I’m bored.”

“Usually,” he says, flipping to another sheet of paper, marking a few things off of it with a pen, “you work on your gadgetry, in those times.”

She’s silent at that, unresponding. For a moment, all in the room is the scritch of his pen, carefully marking things out. He’s right, because stupid Silco is always right, but she cannot bear to return to the airshaft right now. All she can think about, in fact, is Viktor ascending to Piltover, is seeing his face on their progress-printed mugs, hung up on tapestries from their towers, and he will never return to Zaun. 

Because why would he? All the others left her behind. He wouldn’t be the first. 

And she can’t even blame him, because she probably chased him off, after the race. Maybe the gem in the prosthetic will finally choose to blow, too. 

Hopefully it takes out a chunk of Piltover with it, when it does. 

She fumbles around in the dark overspace, looking for something else to chuck down there, but just as her fingers find a small screw, Silco stands, pushing his chair back. He moves until he stands directly beneath her, close enough that he could grab one of her braids, if he wished—though, of course, he doesn’t, hands neatly folded behind his back. She shifts, rolling over once again, so she can look down at him, face peering over the side of the ledge. Below, various painted cans, small hastily-cobbled structures, wobble slightly in the still air. 

“It’s because of him.”

No need to specify who, exactly, him is. She turns the screw about, watching the way it catches the light, sharp edges of white running around its domed head. Clenches her fist. The small spike of pain as it presses into her palm, its unyielding strength, clarifies the world a bit, brightens it all up. 

Silco hasn’t asked what happened a week ago—why she’s been spending most of her quiet hours in his office, instead of in the workshop, or otherwise out wandering around. Neither has he asked her to go out, shoot a few people, plant a bomb or two—and she knows it’s not because he doesn’t have jobs. Sevika’s been out every day of this week, and if Jinx wasn’t already clued in, she would be from the way the woman glares at her. Glares extra, really—there’s always a baseline of smolder . 

“You’re right,” she says, after she cannot stand Silco’s stare anymore, “I know , you were right. Gotta let him go! Can’t keep anyone around, y’know?”

“I know it’s hard,” he says softly. She snorts. 

“I shouldn’t be sad. Not like we were anything like real family. Hell, you paid the guy to hang out with me for a few years. Yeesh , right?”

Her voice is rapidly shrilling, she knows, and her hand tightens more around the bolt, fingernails finding purchase in the soft white of her palm, and she barks out a single laugh. Silco turns, delicately picks up his now-post-gear glass of water, makes his way to the doorway. 

“Pain fades.”

“Yeah?” She asks, and he nods a single time before turning the corner, into the hallway, off to refill his drink or look sinister or whatever it is he does. She sighs quietly, watching the last trace of him vanish beyond the doorway. 

She’ll talk to him later, when she administers the shot—always easier, in those brief moments, to let it all spill out of her in one massive wave of ramble. 

For now, though, she takes the opportunity of silence to swing down from the ledge, landing softly upon the carpeted floor. The hallway, when she peers around the door, is conspicuously empty, and her footsteps are quiet even in that stillness. Easy enough to sneak around inside, harder to find a way out without going downstairs, passing the bar where someone’ll probably rat her out. She can’t imagine Silco preventing her from leaving, but she’d rather not deal with the commotion downstairs, the pause that always settles over the room when she enters, fear hung heavy and low in all those idiots’ throats. 

Eventually, she settles on heaving open one of the windows on the second floor—dust flies off of it, and it creaks, probably the first time it’s ever been touched , let alone opened—but eventually, she heaves it high enough that she can duck and squirm onto the roof of The Last Drop. 

She tries for a long minute to close it again, but it seems to be solidly stuck, settling into the old, worn grooves of age. Again, she pulls, fingers digging into the ridge of wood, but they slip off before she can get a real grip on it. An inarticulate sound, strangled, half-between a scream and a groan, claws free from her mouth, and she collapses back onto the roof. Breath coming from her in frantic pants, heavier than any of that exertion would suggest. Nothing is going right, and nothing’s okay, and she turns, flees from The Last Drop, leaving the window open. Sevika can take care of that, when she finds it, and also take care of the yelling at Jinx, and take care of being a constant blowhard . She’s good at it. 

The streets of Zaun look like they always do, which is to say empty at first glance and crowded on the second. Empty, until the second pass reveals the shopkeepers tucked into brightly-flashing stalls, until it uncloaks the streets-behind-the-streets, small alleys that wind through and between the larger throughways, the tall bridges that stretch between spikes of rocky outcropping. Until the shadows peel back to reveal hunched figures, thin as dead trees, purple swirling through their veins. 

From her vantage point, Jinx sees it all—doesn’t even need a second sweep to capture all of Zaun. Her city. Her home. Silco likes to say that he has a finger upon its pulse, can feel every twitch and flutter and movement, but it’s not really that. That makes it seem vulnerable, rat at the mercy of a one-eyed feline, always a second away from getting its throat torn out. 

Reminds her more of the bombs she makes, her fingers settling gently on metal triggers, poised to pull . One movement wrong, and the thing explodes, takes a good bit of everything else out with it too. Maybe that’s simply because everything reminds her of things that go boom in the night, nowadays, but she perches upon the slanted rooftop and tries to imagine what it would take for it all to go up in flames. 

Not much, probably. She almost smiles at the thought, the first smile in a week, but just as quickly as the urge comes, it recedes. Tugged away by the drift of her gaze, by the way her eyes inevitably turn upwards. Piltover’s hardly visible from this angle, just a flash of white between tall, jagged metallic structures, but the glimpse she can catch makes her heart skip an ugly beat. 

No. Can’t do this here. She pushes herself off the rooftop, sliding to the ground, landing with a thump for the second time in as many minutes, a new destination in mind. Not an especially novel one—her airshaft, her workspace—but it’s familiar, comfortable, and cannot see the sky, so good enough . 

Halfway to the workshop, she pauses in the middle of the street. Cannot pinpoint what, exactly, caught her attention. After a moment, she resumes walking, unchanged—can’t look like a tourist, stopping like that is the first step to getting pickpocketed—but her eyes flit to the darker corners, and she tries to listen for any sort of anomalous sound. There’s the distant call of a merchant, the shuffle of footsteps, a faint buzzing from many lights arrayed around the street, Chem rushing through hidden pipes and narrow pathways. Her hand drifts to her waist, surreptitiously passes over one of the two small flashbangs that she keeps strapped to her hip. Beside that, a small, compact gun, good for a few bullets. 

Instead of continuing down the path to the airshaft, she turns down another street, and then another. 

Nothing, as far as she can tell, is especially out of the ordinary, but some sixth animal sense is ringing in alarm. She turns down another alley, into a narrower road, taking a circuitous sort of route back to The Last Drop. Looks like she might be able to get to the window before Sevika finds it after all. 

As she walks, concentrating upon the sound of her footfalls, she finally manages to isolate the anomaly. 

Behind each of her footsteps is a slight echo. Almost indecipherable, almost perfectly evenly matched, but someone’s getting sloppy. She speeds up, and there’s a millisecond where the footsteps are out of order before they realign again, slows and the echo returns, vanishes again behind the sound of her footfalls. 

Five years ago—give or take—she stood outside The Last Drop and listened to Ekko’s story, the specifics of following an Academy student with too much money and a gaping hole where a brain should’ve been. 

“See,” he said, prowling around in a circle, raising his feet in exaggerated sneaking motions, “you gotta copy their footsteps. I mean, that dumb Piltie wouldn’t’ve noticed even if I didn’t, I bet, but that’s how you get ‘em!”

“Seems too complicated,” Vi said, smiling, reaching over to knock Ekko once on the head, “and don’t teach Powder more about sneaking around. She’s shifty enough already.”

Ekko dodged, laughing. “It’ll help her someday! Right, Pow-pow?”

“Right,” she whispers, and then whirls around, hurling a flashbang onto a nearby roof. Without hesitating, she tosses the other to the other side of the street. She doesn’t see when they blow, shutting her eyes, but the dark behind her eyelids blazes white for a millisecond, and even through the hands over her ears, the pop is deafening. 

When she opens her eyes once again, plumes of smoke blossom from the roofs, and she takes to a run. No more footsteps echoing behind her own, but she’s still being followed, she knows . Eyes darting to the rooftops, looking for chasing figures—or, hopefully, writhing-with-bleeding-ears figures—but nothing, nobody. 

-Until there’s a sudden whir in the air and someone comes streaking from the heavens upon a blaze of green. Moving so quickly that she cannot make out anything but a blur of gray and brown. Faster than she can run, faster than the flashbangs would be able to hit, so she stops in the center of the road, withdrawing the small gun from her belt. 

Engineering clears her mind, always—that’s the constant of life—but fighting tends to do the same. Pity about the after-effects. 

She can deal with it later. What’s a few more voices, right?

“Don’t shoot!” The figure calls. Her fingers loosen fractionally on the gun. 

He slows. 

His face is covered by wood, a crude mask that looks something like a bird’s, all skin covered by a ragged coat and threadbare gloves. 

“Powder,” he says, coming to a stop before her, stepping off the board in a smooth motion. 

She drops the gun. Not of her own volition—but it is like all her body goes limp, a puppet with its strings cut, unable to hold onto anything but the sound of his voice. 

“That’s not my name,” she replies dully.  

He takes off the mask. 

A boy of ten years past looks back at her, his face as she has never seen it. Hair grown out, features molded and matured into something that none of her dreams have ever truly replicated.

“Powder,” he repeats, smiling, and she has seen him smile before, in half-memories and half-dreams and half-visions, but this one doesn’t look like those. It’s a different sort of apparition, a different breed of ghost, all his figures tugged around his face, tweaked slightly. 

Behind him, another masked figure on a hoverboard flits down, this one chirean or something of the like, judging by the ears, mask shaped like a skull. It is the thing that convinces her this is not another one of those quiet delusions: because she has never killed a chirean. Only the dead show up in her phantasms. 

Which means…

“ Ekko ?” she asks, still frozen. 

“I’ve been looking for you,” he says, and despite the smile upon his face—of which she does not mirror—he makes no move for closeness. “You… you’ve been hard to find, Powder.”

The world tilts on its axis, lines and colors splitting from each other. She blinks, and all is aligned again. Hesitantly, she reaches out a hand. Not close enough to touch him—to feel that, he’d need to extend a hand as well. 

Can’t touch him. What if her hand goes right through him? What if this is all another trick?

“That’s not my name,” she repeats, the words more instinctive than conscious. The chirean slowly settles into place behind Ekko, and she wants to tell him to go away , brush him away with the flat of her hand as she would an errant drawing, but then, another masked figure emerges from a side alley, also on a board. This one with a bird-esque mask as well, female by the looks of it.

“What?” He asks, gaze clouding over slightly. He doesn’t reach for her hand. 

“Jinx. I’m Jinx.”

“No,” He says, tilting his head in faint puzzlement. She does not like the worry writ out on his face, the look in his eyes. 

“How are you here?” She asks, trying to divert the conversation from her name. The words sound more accusatory than she’d like, but she cannot help it. Looking at him now, it’s a window into the past, a small sliver of another life. 

“I’ve been searching. Everywhere—bottom-to-top, scouring the lanes. I didn’t think I’d find you, of all places…” 

He trails off, but at the same time finally reaches out, touches the tips of his fingers to hers. Solid, warm, so far from the airy transparency of a dream, and she jerks her hand back in shock, stumbling another step backwards. 

“I heard your footsteps,” she says, jerking her chin at the board. He catches her meaning immediately. Of course. They always were so good at understanding each other. 

“Didn’t want you to hear the board. But I guess you have learned something, huh?”

She allows herself a smile. “Had a great teacher.”

“Nasty little bombs,” he adds, reaching up to rub at his ears. “They actually work , wow.”

“Great teacher,” she repeats. He gives her a questioning look, but she doesn’t elaborate. 

“I’m sorry it took so long,” he says, “I had to finish the boards, and then wait until you left that place .”

She blinks at him. The corner of her vision cracks and darkens, both at once, prompted by the tone of his voice, saying place —that of abject disgust. 

“It’s not so bad,” she says, trying to sound happy, trying to ignore the two other figures on hoverboards, both of whom look rather tense, “look, come back, and I’ll talk to Silco, and we can get you-”

“ What ?” He exclaims, shaking his head violently, “Powder, what are you saying? Go back with you?”

“And I’ll talk to him,” she continues, barreling over him—maybe if she repeats it enough, it will become feasible—“and we can talk, seriously. Alone.”

“What are you saying ?” He asks, taking a step back, now just as tense as his two subordinates or friends or replacements, whatever they are, “why are you acting like- acting like it’s home? I came to rescue you.”

“It is home,” she says, and perhaps it’s simply the movement of a cloud above, the shift of the sun in the sky, but the gun still discarded upon the ground glimmers briefly, snagging her attention. No. Look away . “Silco isn’t so bad, promise. I bet he’ll-”

“How can you- He killed them!” Ekko spits. Behind him, the chirean tenses, but Ekko holds no such caution, staring at her with eyes that reflect a fire long past, “Vander, the other kids! Benzo ! You can’t seriously-”

“They left me!” She shouts back, tears pushing at the back of her eyes, “he took me in ! I don’t need to be saved , Ekko. You’re too late.”

She laughs. Can’t help it. So many nights, curled up in her bed, wishing for a familiar face, and now she finally has one, and he wants to rescue her. Wants to spirit her away from The Last Drop and the Evil Incarnate, little boy savior, and it feels like joy when she shakes her head, joy in the same way that water feels cold when heated high enough. 

“What do you mean,” he says, all that volume bleeding from his voice—somehow, despite all that, it is no less angry—“they left you? You-”

Suddenly, he cuts himself off, but really, he needn’t have. She knows what words it is that claw at his throat, rabid creatures, wanting nothing more to spill them into the world. 

“What?” She asks. He deflates, hand dropping limply to his side. 

“Powder, please . Please come back.”

She smiles mirthlessly. Of course he wouldn’t understand. She cannot blame him, not really. 

Momentarily, it is years ago, and they’re arguing about who gets the last piece of sweetbread, but then the world cracks back into focus, and she darts forwards, grabs the gun upon the ground and sweeps a leg out at Ekko in the same motion. It almost catches him too, but that hoverboard dodges back just in time. Oh well. The gun is a good enough consolation prize. 

“I’ll bring you back,” he swears, and she expects him and his new friends to sweep back up into the skies, but instead, he surges forwards, grabbing for her. Shamefully, the first thought in her mind is flight , not fight , and she dodges further down the street, allowing him to overshoot her position. 

By silent cue, or mind control, whatever it is, the two others follow, all a whir of faceless fliers in the air. Ekko swings around, curves back around to make another grab. She darts into a side alleyway, where the sky is tangled up by clotheslines and tall buildings, but the woman follows, slipping between the narrow walls with surprising ease.

She follows the alley’s sharp right turn, feet skidding a semicircle into the hard ground, breaths coming heavy and fast—not only from exertion, but from a panic she has not felt in years. Worsened when she veers around another corner, finds that the alley ends in a tall wall, and the whir of the hoverboard buzzes in her ears, ugly. Looks around. Anything, anything, any-

A gutter pipe that runs down the side of one of the buildings, barely visible. She lunges to it, claws her way up, the metal digging into her palms, as much flailing and kicking as she is climbing. Throws herself onto the roof above, gritty stone scraping at her arms, tangling herself in her braids as she rolls, pushes herself up in the same movement. Ekko crests over the roof, the chirean further behind, and finally, the girl upon her board, who points at her-

A gun. 

A familiar gun. She knows the design. It’s one of hers , one of the ones that Viktor sells in her name. 

“Don’t shoot her!” Ekko yells, but the words are dull in her ears. That’s hers ! How dare she? No matter where she got it from, it’s rightfully Jinx’s. 

She lowers the gun. Good. If Jinx was shot with her own invention , that would be humiliation enough to throw herself off the roof. Her own, in her hand is cold, little more than a useless lump of metal for how much she’s been using it, but for some reason, that same panic that surges through her veins stills her shooting hand. 

“Powder,” Ekko says, coming level with her, “it’s good, where I want to go. Please.” Real hurt in his voice, now. It reflects the sound of something she has never heard—what he must have felt, in the days after the explosion, none of their old life left anymore. In a perfect world, they would have had each other. 

In a perfect world, it would never have happened at all. 

And it would not be her fault. 

“Right now,” he says, “I… I wish it didn’t feel like you betrayed us. Give me something , anything, to show you don’t really… you aren’t truly with him. Silco.”

Betrayal. Funny thing. It would be easy to go with him — not easy, actually, not the aftermath—but the action itself is so simple. Step forwards, take his hand, take that one bright, free moment of euphoria, flying through the sir. The world cracks a bit more at the edges, so close to shattering, her peripherals distorted by the things that flicker, and the girl upon the hoverboard moves, slightly, maybe putting away her gun, and Jinx sees a red-haired girl for that split second. Her hand tightens around the gun. 

Ekko holds out a hand, and she spins around, pulls the trigger. The crack of the gun echoes in the open air, and the girl lets out a choked scream, falls back, off her board. Ekko doesn’t move, frozen, but the chirean speeds forwards, grabs her before she can fall those shallow few feet to the ground. Without its rider, the hoverboard sputters, plummets to the ground, but he pays it no mind—instead, whipping out a gun from his own belt, firing at her. 

She’s already gone, moving, pausing only—at the last moment—to grab hold of the abandoned board, sprinting down the length of the roof and hopping to the next one. She turns briefly, fires blindly in the general direction of the chirean, but he moves easily, backing up, girl still in his arms like a sack of potatoes. She’s dead. Jinx can almost see her face, masked though it was. Surely, it’ll appear somewhere in her dreams tonight. 

Ekko rises through the air, and she trains her gun on him—so easy to shoot , just as easy as it would have been to leave with him—but, just like the former possibility, she does not take it. 

With one hand, he slides his mask down onto his face, but before it falls fully, she catches a shine upon his eyes.

“Jinx,” he says, barely loud enough for her to hear him over the distance. A thousand voices echo him, but she hears only his. Not an accusation, as Vi’s, or a simple name, as Viktor and Silco, but as something almost like a prayer. 

Almost like a plea. 

Then, before she needs to decide whether to shoot or to step forwards or to run, he turns smoothly, flashes off into the sky, nothing but a trail of green and the faint stench of Chem lingering in the air behind him.

She collapses to the ground, all the tension bleeding out of her, too tired to even consider keeping on watch for an ambush of some sorts. Chest heaving with the promise of a sob, but no tears come to her eyes, and it must be perhaps an hour that she simply lays there, hands over her ears and eyes squeezed shut. 

It’s something else that makes her return to alertness—not any sort of sound, any indication of people, but instead that thin coil of suspicion that is now curling higher and higher in her stomach. All stems back to the gun, that girl’s weapon, one of her standard-issue. No doubt, there are resellers everywhere, but something still itches at her. 

She looks down at the hoverboard still in her hand. Unsure, what, exactly, her eyes scan over it for—it’s good work. A bit clumsy in the corners, but still skillful, no doubt about that. Too choppy, though, too unpolished, to be the work of the other inventor she knows. 

Still. 

Perhaps…

She turns it over in her hands, prods at one of the screws holding a large backing plate in place. Digs into one of her pockets, pulls out a small screwdriver, and gets to carefully undoing the many that secure it in place. Eventually, when the ground is littered with bits of metal, she’s able to dig a fingernail in and pry the entire thing off. 

The inside is a remarkably shoddier job than the outside, but she picks through the wires, the metal rods. Tries to tuck them all back into their rightful places, winding them back in a way that only her practiced eyes can see, organizing the whole mess by little bits, and when she looks back at it, at the full picture of the disemboweled thing…

It looks uncannily like a butterfly. 

—

She almost slams into Sevika, walking into The Last Drop—it’s the other woman who dodges her , pausing in the middle of the doorway. 

“What happened to you ?” She asks, and Jinx suddenly remembers that she must have scrapes and scratches across her full body. Must look bad enough that Sevika skips straight past the reprimand phase, and into gruff almost-concern. 

“Scuffle,” she says, and her gaze turns to something more appraising. Not like Jinx to come back from fights like this—usually, she’s tucked away in some high alcove, shooting and tossing down bombs and only occasionally relocating when someone gets too wise to her location. 

“You win?”

“Yeah.”

Sevika grunts in approval, moving back out the doorway into the open. Jinx stares at her retreating back. Most civil conversation they’ve had in months . Maybe she’s found the key to the woman’s heart—meaning, of course, fighting. 

No use thinking about that now. No use thinking about that ever, actually—she can’t imagine a time where she’ll actually need to converse with Sevika for over five minutes—and she pushes it out of her mind as she moves towards the stairs. The hoverboard is heavy enough that her arms hurt a bit, after all this time, but she soldiers on up the stairs, into the quiet stillness of the second floor. The window she opened earlier, she notes, has been closed—and not without a bit of effort, if the scuff marks by the sill are any indication. She’d recognize the tell-tale scratchmarks—and occasional dents—that come from Sevika’s arm anywhere . 

She sweeps past that, into Silco’s room, where he is for once not working. Whatever it is that occupies him all day, she’s unsure—he always brushes her curiosity off with a quick explanation, which is usually because she stops caring after the first few seconds, but still , the amount of paperwork is absurd. 

At the moment, though, he lounges on the couch besides his desk, legs stretched out over the swathe of rich velvet, perusing through a book. A cigar lies in an ashtray, a thin plume of smoke coming off it and tinting the room with a leathery, almost sweet scent. When she walks in, it is at first practiced, idle nonchalance that turns his head, but the moment his eyes flit over her form, he’s throwing his legs over the side of the couch, standing, leaving the book forgotten upon the cushion. 

“ Jinx. What happened?”

She drops the board onto his carpet, but he does not appear to notice, instead walking closer, bending slightly to peer at the scrapes that mar her arms, legs, torso. It’s not bad ; he’s overreacting. Most of them are barely even bloody, but she leans into his careful scrutiny anyways, his worry, near-falling towards him. He catches her as she hits his chest, the embrace familiar, and repeats his question—this time, less panic, and more steely anger. “What happened?”

“Got in a fight,” she mumbles. His embrace tightens slightly, releases in the same moment. 

“With whom.”

It is not a question—it is a demand.

“Old friends,” she says, the word unfamiliar in her mouth, thick and gummy, friends . They’re not friends anymore. Haven’t been for a long time. Probably never will be again. She lets her arms fall, and he takes the cue to step away—moves behind his desk, pops open a drawer and from it withdraws a small tin of some sort of medicine, a square of cloth. 

“Did you kill them?” He asks, coming back around, carefully unscrewing the tin and offering it to her to take. She doesn’t. After a moment, he withdraws it, swipes a bit of it from the top with the cloth, takes her arm and begins to carefully rub it into the bloodiest of the scrapes. It stings, but that’s okay—brings a bit more clarity to her mind, clears away the rapidly-forming clouds.  

“Yeah,” she says. One of them. Not the friend. 

“Good.”

He lets the first arm fall, moves onto the other. It’s Piltover medicine, made from delicate herbs and fancy processes, the type of thing that costs an arm and a leg down here in Zaun, but Silco’s cut off enough limbs that he’ll never need to give one of his own. Looking down at it reminds her, once again, of Viktor up there on topside, and she cannot escape— her mind is a maze with some monster lurking behind every corner, and no matter where she turns, she cannot escape the mauling. 

Case in point, just as she pushes that out of her mind, her gaze falls upon the dropped hoverboard once again, upon its open stomach and the signature lurking within, and she screws her eyes shut. 

“Is that theirs?” He asks. She nods, still not opening her eyes. 

“He made it.”

“Your late friend?”

“No,” she replies, “Viktor.”

A pause. Silco’s voice, colder, darker, sharp enough to cut through the buzzing in her ears. “Did he?”

“He didn’t mean to,” she rushes, suddenly eager to defend him—scared of that frost that creeps over Silco’s every word—“I don’t think, it’s not… he didn’t know.”

“Are you sure?” Silco asks. A thunk from below, perhaps him picking the thing up, dropping it again. She nods. 

“He wouldn’t . He just sells it, it’s not… he wouldn’t .”

“Perhaps,” Silco says, and then, after a long pause, “he’s back, you know.”

“Back?”

“Did not spend long in Piltover. Did not look too happy about it, either, according to my reports.”

Reports . Fancy way to say, random underlings he paid a cog or two to go wait surreptitiously by the train station , but that’s not the important part, the important part is that he’s back . A spike of joy, and a spike of terror, and a spike of something she cannot name, something that is preternaturally loud and made of colors that do not exist. 

“Where?” She asks. Silco doesn’t answer for a long moment. She wonders what expression would be on his face, if she were to open her eyes. 

“You care for him,” he says, and she nods, no use in denying that. If having her not care for him was Silco’s goal, he shouldn’t have obligated him to spend time with her for the past half-decade. “Perhaps he wouldn’t ,” he says, echoing her words, “but all too often, I find those I cared for would .”

“No,” she says, firm, “Viktor’s different.”

“Vander was too,” Silco says, and she’s rushing down a different branch of the labyrinth now, and the air is growing warmer, she’s being chased by something she cannot see, and it is only his next words that interrupt that hunt. “He departed for the cave.”

“The cave?”

“Up,” he says, “near topside, the river’s mouth. Singed’s former laboratory.”

She opens her eyes. Silco’s meet hers, one red, the other green, face focused and intent. He’s stooping slightly to be able to stand face-to-face with her. 

“Is it safe?” He asks. She nods. He should know, better than anybody, that if she wants to leave, she’s leaving , but the question is not one of prevention but instead a simple ask, a question from one person who cares about the wellbeing of the other. 

“When you find him,” he says, “tell him I’d like a discussion. He has been… useful, but perhaps there is time for a few limits upon his services.”

She actually manages to smile at that, more about the look on Viktor’s face when he hears that than anything. Doesn’t speak in agreement, nor nod, but the assent is implicit. He steps back, sits upon the couch without looking, hand settling upon the table and inching towards the cigar, and she backs away as well, out of the room and out into the hallway. 

Still, her head is cloudy, and even she knows that perhaps she should pause, restock, rest, but really, that’s part of the magic of it. The best decisions happen with a little bit of craziness—and besides, if she lingers a moment longer here, she will curl up in a ball upon her bed and not exit for a week. Best to get the blood pumping, muscles aching, run off the last remnants of Ekko. 

Technically, she could leave through the front door with zero repercussions, but she pauses by the window, heaves it up again, and climbs out. Sevika will probably blow her lid when she finds it—and erase any of the goodwill that their little doorway conversation brought—and it’s petty , and should not be a priority anywhere upon her list, but it will also be funny, and she needs all the joy she can get, right now.

Chapter Text

It is a beast, is the first thing Viktor notices, as Singed whisks the fabric from its back. Mass of flesh suspended against the wall, its arms corded with muscles that look like tumors, hind legs haunched like a wolf’s and face an unrecognizable approximation of a human’s. Veins crisscross the mass expanse of its chest, snaking around to its back, and he has to hold back the urge to step away. It is a beast, and it is contorted, and it reminds him of Rio in some strange way. Never had he seen her like this, not even in death, but still, there is some degree of similarity. 

“What is it?” He asks. Singed reaches up, towards one of the many glass vials that protrude from its back, gives the top of it a gentle spin, tightening it. 

“Not what. Who.”

Bile rises in his throat. “Who?” He echoes.

“Do you recall Vander?”

Now, he does step back, away from the thing that breathes slowly, each in-and-out a low, deep rasp, away from the thing that, now he examines its face and body, he can see the shadow of something else within. A man wrapped within those many layers of flesh and Shimmer and metal. 

“How?” He croaks. Remembers. 

Singed, stumbling into the cave, dragging some large, covered thing behind him. Viktor ignores it, focused upon Singed himself, but when the man is finally stable and he attempts to move the thing himself, he is stopped with a sharp, “Do not mind it.” 

They left only a day later, off to the lab in Zaun proper, and this must be at least part of the reason why. 

“The Hound of the Undercity,” Singed proclaims, running a hand along the side of the creature’s stitched-up cheek, “brought down by the fox. I beheld an opportunity. Took it.”

“ Why ?” Viktor asks. “What does this have to do with your daughter ?”

“He was dead,” Singed says calmly, no sign of agitation in response to Viktor’s rapidly-raising voice, “but now, he is alive.”

Judging by the heavy breaths, by the warmth emanating from the body, that’s not a lie, but he still struggles to apply that sort of label to it. Alive is heartbeats, quick and fast, and light in the eyes, and if these closed eyes were to open, he cannot imagine them being anything but flat as those of a dead fish, dull coins. 

“No,” he says, summing all his thoughts into one concise word. 

“Perhaps not,” Singed says, “by some definitions of alive .”

“Which are?”

“That of the spiritual.” Singed holds out a hand towards Viktor, the very same that was stroking the creature’s face only a second ago. It lingers there, for a long moment, but eventually, he reaches out and takes it, letting the cold fingers intertwine with his. 

Singed guides his hand towards the face, and though his heart beats faster and faster, Viktor does not resist as he presses the back of his hand to the skin. Leathery and warm, warmer than he would have expected, the skin shifting slightly with each breath. 

“Biologically,” he continues, “Vander lives. Pulse, breath, and neural activity.”

“But the…” Viktor hesitates, unsure of what word he is looking for. Soul is the obvious, but that feels airy and fantastical, a nebulous concept that any ordained man of science should scoff at. Still, there’s no other word in his vocabulary for what it is that captures the essence of life and bottles it up into thick, golden syrup. 

“The psyche,” Singed substitutes, “has not recovered. Not as I have seen.”

A part of Viktor cannot help but think that’s a good thing. Good that Vander, the man he never knew and will never know again, will not see himself as he is now: a creature bound in flesh he never asked for, and that line of thought leads tremulously to that of his own leg, of the cough boiling in his chest, the flesh that he did not ask for. 

“Not good, then?” He asks. 

“No,” Singed says, “not ideal, no. But it is more than that. Far from escaping death, he has now left it entirely behind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Immortality,” he murmurs, “the final cure to the most prevalent of illnesses.”

“He cannot die?” Viktor’s hand is still settled against its cheek, but now, he withdraws it, the brief, dumb fear bubbling that by this tactile contact, something from that will transfer to him . 

“Not if I have succeeded,” Singed replies. 

“Will you know when you wake him?”

“In a way.”

The answer is evasive, and Viktor narrows his eyes, peering closer. “In what way?”

“The only way to test immortality,” Singed says, “is to invite death.”

“Of course.” 

Still, there’s something missing from the answer, and he rocks back, the threat of his stepping back enough to elicit an answer from Singed. 

“If released into the lanes,” he says, turning the Shimmer syringe about his hands, “he may wreak havoc. Many will try to kill him. It is the final test.”

“Wreak havoc,” Viktor echoes, eyes drifting to the long claws that jut out of the creature’s hands, to the mouth that no doubt hides fangs, if the other parts of wolf sewn to the body are any indication. “You’re planning to release it?”

“Yes,” he replies simply, and the way he looks at Viktor now calls back to childhood—when he’d attempt to teach him, back before Viktor’d grown fully into the bones of an inventor. Mixing chemicals for a litany of various effects, puffs of smoke or colorful smells, and always that expectation in Singed’s eyes, that which wanted briefly for Viktor’s admiration. 

Viktor cannot return the look. Cannot give him what he wishes— wonder . Not here, so close to the beast that was once a man, impossible biology welded to his every genome. 

“How could you?” He asks, before he can stop himself, “he was a man . And-” He actually laughs, overcome with incredulity, “-even after doing this, you intend to allow him to kill more ?”

“It is the art of sacrifice,” he replies, “and should it bear fruit, it may revolutionize-”

“This isn’t sacrifice,” Viktor says quietly, “it’s murder.”

Singed is silent for a long moment. Eventually, he bows his head. “Perhaps.”

“I did not think you would…” he starts, except, did he not? Singed has done much the same thing with rats and felines and birds, with Rio herself so many years ago, and what is a human body but simply all that scaled up?

Did he truly not expect this?

“You wished to know,” Singed says steadily, looking back up, “I will not apologize for misdeeds, many though they may be. I only hoped you would understand.”

“Understand? How could I understand this ?”

“With much consideration.”

He breathes in, an inhale that catches in his chest—it does not help in the slightest. The only thing he gets from it is a lungful of rot and Shimmer-smell, the urge to cough, the urge to back away out of the door and back into the open air of the river. 

“Viktor,” Singed says, stilling his feet from moving, “look at it from two lenses. The first, the one of a scientist. I have accomplished a marvel, reprehensible though it may be. Unlocking immortality is the first step to enlightenment.”

Despite himself, he tries. He looks at the creature, tries to feel not disgust, but only an analytical sort of interest, tracing over the neat seams in its skin where wolf-meets-human, focusing upon the marvel of bringing life from not a womb but a grave. 

It almost works. Some thread of interest tightens deep in his chest, some small part of his brain sparks bright with fascination, but he extinguishes the flame before it can catch on. No . Can’t let the impersonality of a scientist overpower the truth of this obscenity. 

“The second,” he says, “is that of a father.”

Viktor looks away, back into Singed’s eyes. 

“A father?”

“Can you understand the pain of loss?”

He has lost many. His parents, chiefly, and that was a hollow sort of thing that ate at him through the months and years following—somehow, though his mind drifts not to them but instead to Rio. He was young, when he lost them, and the pains of surviving as a crippled Zaunite orphan overpowered much of the subsequent grief. 

Rio, though, Rio was sharp and keening, dug into the soft inner parts of him and did not let go for quite a time. 

He nods. 

“For her,” Singed swears, “I would do anything. If this succeeds, if it is truly immortality, then I will need nothing more. Consider it a final step. The atrocity born of love.”

“I do not understand,” Viktor says, not from the perspective of one lens or the other, and Singed hunches over just the slightest bit more. He inhales before continuing, taking a steadying breath, “But I can… acknowledge.” Steps closer, runs a single hand along once-Vander’s face, down further into the fur that covers his shoulder like a carpet. “I will assist.”

“Why?” Singed asks. Not shocked, not exactly, but his eyes widen fractionally, examining Viktor like a specimen under a microscope. 

“If I don’t,” Viktor says, “nothing will change. You’ll continue, no doubt. Perhaps I can… I can contribute to its success. Ensure that nothing like this will ever need to be done again.”

“Admirable,” Singed says, reaching up as well, placing his palm flat right beside Viktor’s. “Moral, Viktor. You would have done well in Piltover.”

He smiles, though there’s no joy in the motion, just the acknowledgement of the absurdity within the statement. 

“No, I wouldn’t. Not after this.”

Meaning, of course, childhood in the lab, Singed’s soft words, Zaun’s claws dug firmly in his back and his lungs and his leg. 

—

It is only when he watches the lines of blood draining from the tubes inserted into Singed’s skin that he begins to have second thoughts, but by then, it’s too late. The liquid clouds the great cylinders that stick from Vander’s back, tinting the clear, green liquid an ugly shade of brown. 

“Are you sure,” Viktor asks, settling into a chair beside Singed, “your body can take this?”

“Shimmer does interesting things to blood,” he replies. With one hand, he still holds that syringe of the drug, and with the other, he clutches the golden locket always upon his person. “Mutates the cells themselves. Ups hematopoiesis by a factor of a hundred. The drug, diluted through my veins, is optimal for delivery.” 

Where the light hits the blood just right, within those tubes, the surface glosses with colors indescribable, a thin sheen over the deep crimson. Looks like the puddles that form on Zaun streets, the ones tainted by oil, iridescence gleaming upon their unmarred surfaces. Hypnotizing, if he looks at it long enough, the way the colors twist around each other, never lingering quite long enough to tell what they are. He has to forcefully pull his attention away. 

“So you will not die?”

“No. The body will adapt.”

With one hand, a practiced motion that indicates he has done this many times before, Singed opens the small gold locket in his hand. From his angle, Viktor cannot see much of anything, but he leans slightly. A sliver of color, what looks to be a girl, and then the locket clicks as it snaps shut. 

He looks up sheepishly, expecting some sort of reprimand for having been caught looking, but Singed is not paying much attention to him at all—instead, his two-toned gaze is focused on Vander, on the beast currently hanging from the ceiling. Leaning back in the chair, by force more than choice, chin tilted up and mask near-falling off his face to reveal the lipless mouth and exposed teeth it hides. 

“It may help,” he says, “to converse. For the sake of keeping conscious—this is… draining.”

“Of course,” Viktor says, and then pauses, mind not yet caught up with his mouth. He says the first thing he thinks of, both to harry along the conversation, and because it’s been eating at him—“Does Silco know?”

“No,” Singed says, exhaling a breath that might have been a chuckle, if from the mouth of a different man, “no, I imagine he would be opposed.”

“They were brothers?”

“Not biologically,” he says, “but family, still.”

Even without the tethers of blood, nothing so literal as the tubes that run from Singed’s arm to Vander, something bonded them if only for a brief time. 

“Silco killed Vander.”

Another huff of breath. Such an irregular affectation that it’s concerning Viktor more than anything—perhaps the blood loss is making Singed lightheaded, more prone to this stand-in for laughter. 

“Not mutually exclusive.”

“I did not say it was.”

Singed breath-laughs again, and Viktor smiles wryly in return. Surprising how much he has missed this, the pureness of a simple conversation, no odd secrets hanging above like the blade of a guillotine. Would prefer for there to be no beast strung up in the rafters, of course, would prefer for this openness to be spurred along by friendliness and not the delirium of blood loss, but he will take what he can get. It’s been far too long. 

“In any case, no, he does not. He would not understand.”

Not many would. Himself included. But he’s helping anyway, so that point’s pretty much null. 

“Do you intend to tell him?”

Singed shifts slightly, just a turn of his head so he can regard Viktor, slow and laborious—as if he is moving a mountain in that simple twitch of muscles. 

“We were partners only through necessity. May he never know. Him or Jinx.”

Right . Vander is—was—Jinx’s father too, in a way. She does not talk about him, mentions his name even less than she mentions her late sister’s though that is already a pittance. One of the things that she keeps mum in her chest and does not let even Viktor see. Sometimes, when they’re working together and she dozes off, she’ll murmur a name, or a mush of syllables that sounds somewhat like a name, but that is the most hints he’s ever received. 

“How much longer?” Viktor asks, as much to distract from the topic as anything. 

“A minute,” he replies. A veritable eternity, especially when Viktor does not have quite as much trust in the replenishing powers of Shimmer as Singed himself does. “What drove you from Piltover?”

“Hm?” Viktor asks, startled by the question. Hard to remember that he was in Piltover mere hours ago, among those tall white towers, speaking to a crowd of eagerly watching students. 

Well. Not all were students. Not if he recalls that disheveled man, the one whom Jinx presumably robbed. 

He catches on before Singed has to repeat himself. “Ah. Piltover. It was grand, but… distant.”

“I recall,” he says softly, and this is the reminder that Singed was once a professor up there as well. “We are of little consequence to them.”

“I can see how,” he says, remembering the brightness of the city, the look of the people—more than anything, that is the tell. Soft and happy and with little cares, or at least with cares that do not concern whether they will survive to the next day or not. “Easy to forget, with all that glamour.”

“I nearly did,” Singed says, “during my tenure in Topside.”

Viktor raises his brows, leans forwards a bit in his seat, interest caught. Singed is similar to Jinx in that way of never mentioning his past, except he does not even whisper in his sleep—that being when he used to sleep, of course. 

“Did you?”

“It was Heimerdinger,” Singed says, voice wispy and faraway, gone more to the throes of memory than Viktor has ever seen him—must, again, be delirium from the blood loss, because he could not imagine him divulging this in any other circumstance—“he found me, amateur chemist of perhaps nineteen. Brought me to the Academy, first as a student, then as a teacher. From mentor to colleague.”

“And you forgot?”

“Briefly.” He sighs, and this one is not a laugh, but instead a wistful—nostalgic—sort of exhalation. “But Zaun always reels its children back.”

He murmurs in agreement, gaze caught once again on the blood. Perhaps it’s his imagination—though he’s very sure it’s not—but the red has transitioned into a brighter purple, casting a faint glow over the rocky ground. Perhaps Singed notices too, because he pushes himself up, reaches with a hand for the cuff around his wrist. His fingers, normally so nimble and dextrous, struggle with the thick clasp, and Viktor stands immediately to help. 

In a moment, he’s undone the bracelet, opening it and carefully extracting the needle dug into Singed’s bony arm. The spot wells up with more purple-tinged blood immediately, but he turns, snatches a bandage off of a nearby table and wraps Singed’s wrist gingerly. 

He pushes up, trying to stand, but falls back into the chair at the same motion. Viktor holds out a hand, stilling him, his palm resting hardly a hair's-breadth above his skin. Always, the man’s been pale, but now, he looks positively ghostly, skin an ashen white. 

“Stay, for a moment,” Viktor murmurs, and he acquiesces, leaning back once again in the rickety wooden chair. “What next?”

“Next,” Singed says, and then, there is a noise. Both of them stop—it’s not the ambiance that rushes through this cave, not the bubbling of various beakers or the quiet rush of the river, but something that sounds almost like a voice. 

It comes again, closer, louder, and this time, he can make out both speaker and words. “ Viktor! ”

Jinx. 

Singed is not as easily able to recognize her voice, because no recognition dawns in his eyes, but he does catch the name, looking up at Viktor in silent question. He himself, though, is frozen, mind racing. 

“It’s Jinx,” he says, and Singed pushes himself into a straight sitting position, hands clenched tight around the arms of the chair. 

“Why?” He asks, voice calm, still tightly-controlled. Viktor swallows, trying not to glance towards the door. 

“I do not know.”

“Did you tell her about the cave?”

“No,” Viktor says, shaking his head. Singed’s tone is neither particularly angry nor accusatory, but still, he feels the need to defend himself. 

“Silco, then,” he murmurs, resignation heavy, weighing the words down. Always, the two men have danced around each other in the same manner as two wolves in a cage too small, but the way he says this now makes it sound like one has lunged and the other is laying on the floor, throat torn out, and Viktor cannot quite tell who is supposed to be who. “Go. Take care of her.”

He turns on a heel—so easy, now, with the leg, that it is almost second nature—and slips out the door. There’s quite the long tunnel of rock-strewn cave before it breaks into the open air, but before he is even halfway down that corridor, he can make out Jinx’s shape, standing and peering into the entrance. 

“Viktor,” she repeats, quieter, and then, “you’re really back.” She laughs nervously, brushing back her hair, a note of hysteria in the sound that has him drawing to a stop, peering at her more closely, “I was beginning to think…”

“What are you doing here?” He asks. He does not mean to be so sharp, would not usually be if he knew she was in a state like this, but the knowledge that her once-father is hanging in the cave behind him, even unrecognizable, tends to set him on edge a bit . 

In answer, she withdraws something from behind her back—a hunk of metal that he recognizes, as she flings it onto the ground to skitter across the cave, as a hoverboard . Familiar. 

“You know Ekko,” she says flatly, kicking it another good few feet towards him. He does not hesitate to answer—from her stance, the way she holds herself tensely, from the growing note of agitation in her voice, it would not be wise to hesitate. 

“Briefly,” he says, and, as she shifts, allows the light to fall across her pale skin, he spots the scrapes and cuts that mar her arms and legs. “Who is he?”

“An old friend.” She laughs again, stepping forwards over the hoverboard still upon the ground, looks up at him with wide eyes. “You didn’t know, did you?”

“What did he do to you?” He asks. Closer, those scrapes have clearly been somewhat treated, and they are far from the worst injuries he has ever seen, but it is less the physical wound and more the way she walks, the way she looks. Reminds him of her worst days, those ones where he clings to the rail while she tosses bombs into the depths of the shaft and only smiles once the smoke begins to curl back up. 

“Nothing,” she says. Is this a time to prod or a time to let it go ?

He decides on prodding. 

“Jinx, please.”

“Just a fight ,” she snaps, anger directed not at Viktor but instead at whatever situation just occurred, “dumb one. He shouldn’t’ve tried.”

“Tried?”

Instead of answering, Jinx rushes forwards—or, more like falls forwards—onto Viktor. In another time, before the new brace, he would have stumbled, but now he is able to take the sudden shift of her weight, stabilize her with an arm around her shoulder. 

“You didn’t know,” she says, and though it’s not a question, he answers. 

“No. Whatever he did, I had no part.”

“You wouldn’t do that ,” she mumbles into his shirt—despite the muffle, the last words are a sharp hiss, “you wouldn’t leave, would you?”

“Leave?” He asks, pushing all the incredulity he can into the tone, “No, never. Why would I leave?”

Again, she’s silent at the question, simply sniffling into his shirt. Long has it been since she was the teary girl who broke down one out of every four sessions—usually ending with Sevika escorting her out—but he’s returned to those moments all the same. Returned, even further back, to when he was that age, would cry because his leg hurt, or because he dreamed of the night his parents did not return from the bridge, and Singed would sit gingerly beside him, stroke through his hair and whisper words he must have whispered to another child, so long ago. 

Jinx, though, he’s worried. All too much turmoil lately, and not for the first time, he wishes that he could glance into her mind, see what it was that troubled her so. See if he could engineer some way, any way to help. 

Even with that in mind, though, he’s all too aware of the cave behind him. 

“You should go,” he says, “we are… experimenting.”

“You and Singed?”

“Yes. It may be dangerous.”

“Since when have you cared about danger?” Unexpectedly, she giggles. Nice to hear the normalcy in the sound, less-so the affront to his character.

“I’m quite safe,” he says. She steps back, quirking an eyebrow at him. 

“Not with yourself .”

When he opens his mouth to argue, a rush of memories—sleepless nights, hunched over various parts, sitting until his leg smarts below him, a few unfortunate incidents regarding hair and stray sparks—flow past him, and he must shut it again. 

“In any case,” he says, giving her a gentle nudge back, “we can talk later, yes?”

“Right,” she replies, nodding along, “The Last Drop. And you can tell me about Piltover. Did they fight you?”

At his pause, her eyes widen. “ Did they fight you?”

“Later,” he assures, toeing the hoverboard back over to her as he speaks. She bends, picking it up, now smiling—and strange to see how quick her mood changes; concerning as well, but he’s used to it—and with one final smile, she turns, walks slowly towards the light-

And pauses, at the lip of the cave. He stops as well, does not return to the workshop just yet, eyes fixed upon her. Slowly, her face tilts up, staring at the lip of the cave, a hand hooked into her belt. 

In a motion faster than he can capture, she whips out a small gun, rushes forwards and shoots into the air, into the area above the cave that he cannot see. He takes a faltering step forwards, and then another, and there’s a loud whirr in the air, a streak of green plunging down towards the ground, the rider upon it a blur of gray and black. Jinx whirls, shoots again, yells something inarticulate, something that sounds a bit like his name. 

He backs away, stumbling further towards the door. The person upon the hoverboard, whoever they are, pauses in the air—he makes out sharp, tufted ears, a mask shaped like the skull of some animal, and nothing else. Jinx takes aim, shoots, the air lights up with the sound of a shot once again. 

Behind him, the door opens. Singed. The man is still pale, but at least steady upon his feet. Pays no mind to Jinx and the firefight at the mouth of the cave, simply hisses roughly, “Inside .”

Viktor takes one final step back, trying to reassure himself that Jinx is alright—she has handled this before, handled fights, she’s actually killed while he is naught but an inventor—but he cannot quite bring himself to move. It feels a touch too much like the words she whispered into his chest, that quiet, you would never leave me . 

Dashed when Jinx pauses in her darting around to glance at him, to echo Singed’s words, “ Viktor , inside ,” the words torn away by another dash, leaping onto an outcropping of rocks he cannot see. Inside. Go inside. 

The shout does not drop only his attention, though. The one upon the board—chirean?—glances in the same direction, still suspended in the air, raises a clawed hand, a hand holding a pistol that he recognizes, points it steadily into the mouth of the cave. 

At him, Viktor realizes. 

Foreign concept. 

The air lights up, gunshot cracking through the space, and he feels no pain for a long moment, nothing except the blackening of his vision and a slow, seeping warmth. Someone screams, and he’s reasonably sure it’s not him, but he cannot tell much of anything at all.

Chapter Text

Viktor falls, and the interior of the cave is briefly bathed in a wash of blue as the gem upon his leg flares, bright enough that it approaches white, before dimming rapidly until there is hardly a glow at all. Singed kneels, scoops the body into his arms with sharp, controlled movements, and then Jinx must move, must run again as another stream of bullets tear into the stone walls beside her. She’s never selling guns again, or at least not without somehow finding a remote way to blow them up . 

“Did you care?” Her pursuer asks, sweeping closer, and she tries to back up, cannot, already pressed flat against the wall. She’s unused to fighting in an environment like this, so tight, no tall rooftops to leap up onto, especially with a flying opponent. The only reason he cannot rise high and snipe her from there is that she’s managed to shoot out one of the chem tanks tucked into the board, but still, he has mobility and height and speed. 

She doesn’t answer, instead shooting, aiming for the closest body of mass—his head—which he dodges easily, swaying to the side. 

“I cared,” he hisses, voice dark and low, “about Zora.”

Zora. Must be that stupid girl on the board, Ekko’s other friend. She stands beside Jinx and shakes her head slowly, disappointed, but when Jinx turns to snarl at her, she lifts her mask to reveal Vi, who snarls back, and she lets out a quiet groan in the back of her throat, barely restraining the urge to yell, scream at her to go away! 

Part of her wants to tell the chirean that she enjoyed watching Zora fall from the board, and another part wants to ask if Ekko told him to come kill her or if this is his own vengeful plan, and another wants to damn him, rush back to the cave, burst in to see Viktor sitting up and healthy and fine . 

Because he can’t be dead. 

No, no, no . 

“Jinx,” Vi says, admonishing, “you did it again.”

She takes aim, shoots, but her hand is shaking so much that the bullet goes wide. Perhaps part of that is the urge to jerk the gun towards Vi, though she knows that wouldn’t do anything. 

The chirean, in a smooth movement, hits out at her hand, breaking her grip and sending the gun skittering away, slipping into the river and then quickly gone, a dark shape indistinguishable from the stones. 

“I didn’t,” she whispers, an aside to Vi who looks at her with Mylo’s eyes and Vander’s smile and reaches for her with hands that drip cold water. When she shoves out at her, her hands go through nothing but thin air, and Vi jumps to her other side, still repeating, Jinx, Jinx, Jinx , once and again and again. 

Behind the chirean, there is movement. Someone, some indistinguishable human form, comes from the mouth of the cave, walking straight and silent, a spindly figure that she does not recognize as someone she’s killed. 

“Killed her,” the chirean says, and she flicks her eyes back to him, hardly able to find the strength to care about his little speech. His words, when spoken, are dark and heavily enunciated, no doubt forced out past rows of jagged teeth, and then muffled once more by the mask. He waits, perhaps waiting for a response. She gives one to him. 

A laugh. 

“Yeah. Guess I did.”

He snarls, surging forwards—not shooting, this is a far more brutal movement, more personal injury than the aloof spark of a ulley—and instead grabs her by the neck, slamming her back into the rock. More scrapes to adorn her back, just as the ones that line her arms, and Silco won’t like this, not at all. She would laugh again, if she could force any air through her throat, because why is she thinking of what he’ll like? He won’t like her being dead either, not at all. 

Lots of others will, though, so maybe it all balances out a bit. 

The figure from the cave approaches, clarifying into someone bandaged and masked, and she realizes suddenly that it’s not some wraith, some dead amalgamation of a thousand cobbled-together-half-memories, but Singed . 

Where’s Viktor?

She looks for him, but his amber eyes do not peer at her from out of Vi’s face, so she takes that as a good sign. 

“You happy?” the chirean asks, grip tightening. She chokes out something that might be a laugh, might be a sob. 

Singed is close now, almost directly behind, quiet enough—and the chirean is distracted enough that only Jinx has noted his presence. His eyes meet hers, even as her vision rapidly darkens, and he reaches for his belt, pulls from it not a gun or even a sword , nothing useful, but instead a small silver scalpel. 

Again, she laughs, not at her attacker but instead at whatever plan Singed has conceived. Give that mutt a papercut, yes, how useful . 

“He’s dead, now,” he says, “your friend, whoever he is.”

No ! She tries to shake her head, realizes there’s no point in arguing with the man currently choking her, and settles upon kicking out at him, a motion that does not faze him at all. All the colors in the world are fading and swirling like how Vi used to spin her around, when she was little, distorted in the corners by what might be tears and what might be inability to breathe. 

Singed takes the scalpel, does not slash out at the chirean, but instead cuts his own palm. This is what alerts him to his presence—or perhaps not that, but the small gasp Jinx releases, the widening of her eyes—and he whirls around, tossing her to the side, so she lands roughly on her arm. Aims his gun, and Singed flicks the cut hand at him, a few bright drops of blood arcing through the air, landing upon his shoulder, the rest dripping down to the ground. 

“What?” Jinx asks audibly, wasting her first inhale, must pause and wheeze in another gasp of breath. Worth it, though, for her bewilderment, for the calm way Singed steps back, even as the chirean shoots. A bullet lodges in what looks to be his uncovered shoulder and the thin man does not even flinch. More yet astonishing, especially because she knows how much those guns are supposed to hurt. 

Something rumbles. 

It comes from the cave. Singed moves, surprisingly quick, not back into the relative safety of the rock outcropping, but to the side, far from the mouth of the cavern. She stays where she is, a good distance from the entrance as well.

Another rumble, more like a growl, more like a creak, the sound that metal makes as it is torn away. All of them stop, suspended, still. 

From her limited vantage, she can see little, but the chirean—with a straight-on view of that dark tunnel—breaks from the hold of the stupor and backs up, ascends into the air at the same moment. Does not speak nor yelp in fear, but his stance lowers, tightens, and she rolls over slightly in an attempt for a view. Still cannot see a thing, and she tries to roll over more, but then her arm spikes in a burning sort of pain, forcing her to try no more. 

One moment, the world is silent, and the next, it is a mess of guttural noises, of the sound of something rushing. A shape bursts from the mouth of the cave, sending the chirean fleeing into the air, gone over into the dark towers of Zaun, and the shape that she cannot make out follows. It runs on four legs, distinctly bestial—but also far from those common canine mutts that scrounge for food in the lanes. For size , primarily, but the sounds it makes too, loud enough to shake the earth, and the distinctive purple shimmer that practically leaves a trail dissipating in the air behind its rapidly-fading wake. 

She heaves out another gasp, finally able to breathe right, though when she pushes herself up, her arm gives out beneath her only a moment later, and she falls roughly again. Singed, across the caldera, does not look at her, instead crossing to the mouth of the cave. Back inside. 

To check on Viktor. 

Viktor . 

Her fault! Led the attacker here, provoked the attacker in the first place, and oh, it’s always her fault , every single notch upon an ever-growing belt. 

“Wait!” She yells, despite herself. He pauses, hovering where light meets shadow, regards her with expressionless eyes. Again, she heaves up, this time distributing her weight on the other arm. Now, it’s easier to jolt to a sitting position; then, roughly, to a standing one. Singed is the one who was shot , as evidenced by the patch of red blooming upon his bandaged shoulder, but there is little strain in his stance, not even a hunch of the shoulder or a whimper of pain. Makes her feel like she’s overreacting. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, the first thing that spills out of her mouth, unexpected even to her—but out it comes, along with a welling of tears, along with a crack in her voice, “I’m sorry, I didn’t… I’m sorry, is he..?”

Wordlessly, Singed nods into the cave, turns, continues to make his way down into it. 

She follows. Because what else can she do?

Many steps patter behind her back, trailing behind. 

—

She has not seen this cave nor this lab before, but somehow, it’s already familiar. A wash of grey stone, lit by bright veins of Shimmer that dapple against the walls like sunlight through water. Still undoubtedly Singed’s , not Viktor’s—no sign of mechanical pieces, instead replaced with their biological equivalents, organs and disembodied limbs taking the place of gears and wires. 

More pressing, though, is upon a table, there is a body. 

Shirt stripped open to reveal his thin, pale chest, blooms of red so stark upon the skin that it looks almost fake. Singed reaches for another table, grabs something she cannot see, turns to walk up behind the body. 

“No,” she murmurs, heart crumpling in her chest, “no, no-”

“Not all is lost,” Singed says quietly, beckoning to her. She doesn’t move, rooted in her place, and after a second, he extends a hand, revealing what it was that he palmed. 

A syringe of purple liquid, bright and casting motes of light across his palm. He deposits onto the table, grabs another, this one empty, and before she even has time to wonder what he wishes to do with it, he plunges the syringe into his own shoulder, pulls up to extract a tubeful of gleaming blood. 

“Under the table behind you,” he says, voice clear and steady, “there is metal and wire.”

She turns, crouches, looks—and, yes, a tangle of wire and a few solid sheets of metal. She grabs them with numb hands, but their presence helps a bit—some sort of instinctive placebo, maybe, having the solidity of the machine in her grasp, or perhaps it’s more the distraction of doing something other than standing and staring. 

“Electric shock,” he says, once she returns, standing marginally closer to the table now. “I expect you could-”

“Yes,” she says, staring down at the supply in her hands, “yes, I can make something.”

Simple. Elementary. Hook it up to one of the tanks of Chem, watch the wires spark to life, sending currents of power shocking through the metal. She moves as quickly as she can, and in only a minute, she now holds two decidedly dangerous tools, one in each hand, protected from her hands only by a few stained, ragged cloths. 

“Shimmer,” Singed says, holding both syringes up, Shimmer-filled and blood-filled, needles pointed towards the ceiling, “is uniquely able to heal via domination. This sample has been enhanced beyond the simple street drug. In healthy bodies, the ensuing conflict between it and the immune system is enough to kill the host. In the near-dead, however…”

Looking at him now, he almost looks like a teacher—like she could superimpose his image into one of Piltover’s fancy schools, lecturing to a group of rapt students, but the notion flickers after only a moment, and there are no students or gilded schoolroom, just a cave and her and a body. 

“Just do it,” she hisses, voice strangled by the frantic pumping of her heart. He doesn’t: simply looks at her, lowering the needles, eerily calm and eerily composed. Does he not care? Unfazed by the death, unfazed by the body of someone he raised laid out upon that table. 

Except, as he lowers his hand, spinning the one of blood so it points down, there is something there. In the minute tremor of his hand, in the way he lingers directly above the body, needle a millimetre away from puncturing the skin. 

“He opposed it,” he says distantly, “never liked Shimmer. I offered it often, but Viktor held a… distaste for the augmentation.”

“He’ll die without it.”

“He’ll die with it,” he says, “simply later.”

“ Do it now! ” She shrieks, watching a single drop of blood run down the jagged shape of his ribs and down onto the metal table. If she was not holding the sparking wires, she would make a grab for the syringe herself, and even though she is holding them, her hand still twitches in an aborted attempt to take the Shimmer, inject it. “He can’t die, that’s not- he can’t , it won’t happen.”

If it does, then what will she do? 

Without a further word, Singed jabs , straight into his neck, depresses the syringe until all that blood is gone. Does the same with the one full of Shimmer, in a quick, neat motion, tosses both discarded syringes to the side. The network of Viktor’s veins light up beneath the translucent skin, all gleaming bright purple, lit from within. 

“The current,” he says, reaching out, and she passes the mess of wires and metal to him, transferring the insulated handholds of cloth from one hand to the other. “Start the heart. Circulate the Shimmer. With my blood in the mixture it is like… ah, inoculation.”

Back to that lecturing tone. It’s less desire to teach her, she’s sure, and more some obtuse way to ground himself. She does not respond. 

A moment of silence. 

And then, he presses the metal to Viktor’s chest, and his body jolts, spine curving to send him spasming into the air. That purple glow beneath the skin flashes once again, spreading from his neck to his chest, a spiderweb of veins that looks less like veins and more like a network of fungi, of some interconnected creature hiding beneath his skin. 

In the same moment as the metal touches him, the air flashes brilliantly blue, bright enough that she must hold up a hand to shield her eyes—it’s the gem upon his leg, within the brace, flashing. Triggered by the electricity, is her first thought, but it lingers even as Singed raises his hands, and when she gives into curiosity and peers closer, the gem is actually moving . Rotating frantically in its metal sheath, vibrating like it wants to escape, some frantic animal chained up in a cage. 

The air smells of burning meat, but the dark, charred spots upon his chest vanish almost as soon as they appear, quickly superceded by pale skin once again. When she peers at those red cavities the bullets left, they’re closing as well, scabbing and puckering in quick-motion. 

Those purple veins spread down both arms and up into his face, creeping down his torso where they’re dulled by the thickness of whatever organs rest in the hollow of his stomach. Extending down to his legs, where pants mask their brightness. Though his eyes are still closed, face frozen in a rictus sort of frown, his hands grip the table, white-knuckled, unyielding. 

Again, Singed connects the current to his chest. This time, the spasming is more violent yet. She takes a step back on instinct, away from the way his limbs bend unnaturally, spine curling at an angle that should break, raising preternaturally like a man possessed by a thousand ghosts, like there are many things all trying to escape from his skin. She swears that in brief flashes, she can see his bones outlined beneath the skin. 

A buzz fills the air—not the thrum of electricity, but a dull roar that comes from the gem , still struggling in its confines, and she opens her mouth to tell Singed to stop— because she recognizes that buzz, she remembers it, it is the sound that precludes fire —but it is too late. 

It bursts. 

The air blazes so bright that it burns her eyes themselves. Jinx lets out an inarticulate cry, but there is no real heat , no kiss of flame. 

Only a second later, the light fades. The brace is unbroken—Viktor’s body is unbroken—and the singular sign that anything happened whatsoever is a stray fragment of blue, thinner than a hair, upon the ground before her feet. 

That and…

And, in the small sliver of skin between Viktor’s pants and his shoe, she sees something strange. A glimmer. Not only the purple, Shimmer-tinged veins that have now spread from head-to-toe, but a pearlescent sort of sheen , that of fractalloid oil slicks and colors she can’t bear to look at. 

“It…” she starts, barely able to force that single simple word out for how violently her teeth tremble against each other, lips nothing but unyielding rubber, and besides, she would not know what to say after that anyways. It exploded , but not really, but it still did something , something that makes her want to roll up his pants and something that makes her want to run. 

Singed disconnects the wires from the Chem, rendering them heavy and inert once again, tosses it down upon the ground and reaches for Viktor. He seems utterly unconcerned with the bursting of the gem, with the mostly-hidden strangeness of Viktor’s leg. Instead, with hands that now visibly shake, he presses two fingers to the crook of his neck. Waits for a long second, and then-

Sags, bringing one hand down heavily onto the table. 

“He lives,” is all he says, and the weariness in the tone clues Jinx into the last part of the puzzle: that Singed did not know, fully, that this would work. 

“You didn’t know,” she says, stating the guess aloud. He looks up at her, and not for the first time, she must wonder how Viktor stands this man. Even with all she’s been able to read from him, none of it has come from his eyes , flat and unmoving and unnervingly intent. 

“I held a hypothesis,” he says simply, “he will wake.”

“Will he?” She asks, finally mustering the bravery step forwards again and put a single hand upon Viktor’s, one of the ones still tensed around the edge of the table. It’s reassuringly warm, not corpse-cold and rubber. When she settles her hand over his, the grip loosens fractionally, fingers unstiffening from the shape of a fist, spreading and splaying. 

“He will.”

She gulps in a breath. “I’m sorry,” she repeats, not the first time and not the last time. Beneath her hand, Viktor’s twitches, attempting to turn, and she raises her own to let it flip, palm up and fingers up. When she gingerly returns her hand, his fingers close around hers, grasping it tightly. 

“Who was he?” 

The attacker, he means. Little jugement in the question, but she shrinks anyway. 

“A… I killed someone important to him.”

A laugh bubbles in her chest. She must force it down. 

“The optimal way to avoid such situations,” he says, “is to ensure they do not know you were the murderer.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“Somewhat.” 

He steps around the table, towards the back of the lab, and her gaze follows him, then flits beyond, regarding the back wall that she has not had the wherewithal to inspect yet. Relatively normal, more of the same—meaning large tanks of Shimmer and jars of greenish animals—but, hanging from the ceiling, there’s a rickety sort of metal contraption, torn pipes and shattered glass littering the floor. Must have been where the monster came from, she knows instinctively. 

“What was it?” She asks her own question to mirror his. 

“Released earlier than I’d like.” Singed steps deftly over the glass, grabs some sort of metal tool from a back shelf—forceps, if she squints—turns and shucks off his outer jacket, revealing the full brunt of his own bullet wound beneath. Maneuvers so he can angle the tool towards his shoulder, digs in and pries the bullet out, a slug of dark black, all burnt and misshapen. 

Certainly not proper wound care—and she would know; she’s helped Sevika out more than a few times—but she doesn’t speak that aloud. The man knows what he’s doing, or at least he knows enough that he himself will not perish from a bit of impromptu prodding in the wound. 

“A dog?” She asks, remembering the canine tilt to its gait. 

“Of sorts.” Singed nods to her arm, still holding the forcep that clutches the bloody bullet. “You were injured?”

“Yes,” she admits. Adrenaline has dulled much of the pain, but she can practically feel it wearing off. The shoulder might be dislocated; she knows injuries well enough to sense that, and it aches with a sharp, throbbing sort of hammer-beat. 

In lieu of responding, Singed moves towards her. She backs up a step, but is curtailed from truly moving by her grip upon Viktor’s hand—though she could conceivably let go at any moment, it has instead taken upon the form of some unbreakable tether, a conduit running from her arm to his. Stupid thought, but there’s the niggling fear that if she releases him, it will somehow hurt him once again. 

“The shoulder,” he says, drawing closer yet, “dislocated. May I?”

Her brow furrows as she stares up at him—the man is taller than Viktor, which means far taller than her. She does not entirely trust his medical prowess, even—or, perhaps especially— after the procedure she just witnessed. 

Perhaps he senses that, because he tilts his head, speaks. “Better to fix it now. I was a doctor, once.”

She nods, a single minute dip of her head. He delicately places his hands upon her arm and shoulder, and then, with no words of warning, pulls . 

It snaps back into place, and with her good hand, she instinctively squeezes Viktor’s, barely biting back a scream. 

Singed’s hands do not fall away immediately. Instead, they linger in those places upon her shoulder, and she peers at him questioningly, poised on the edge of bolting. Silco has never said explicitly that he’s dangerous—much of her aversion is from her own choice—but, while the small rational part of her screams wariness, the rest does not exactly spike up in fear. 

Perhaps it’s those unreadable eyes. Nothing like aggressiveness, nothing like anger in them, but instead a peculiar sheen that looks almost like familiarity . 

Like nostalgia. 

“Thank you,” she says quietly, more to break the moment than anything, and abruptly, Singed’s hands drop to his side. He does not respond to her words, and whatever that strange look in his eyes is replaced with flat detachedness, a change near-imperceptible in any case. 

She offers one final squeeze to Viktor’s hand. Unlike all those previous times—of which were for her own comfort, more than anything—he squeezes back , and she jolts up hopefully, but his eyes are still shut tight, mouth still drawn in that tight downwards frown. 

Matches, in some way, the lump rapidly rising in her throat. Perhaps recent events are blunted by adrenaline and panic and the like, but still, there’s a concerning lack of urgency in her, a concerning lack of the knowledge that she’s to blame. Makes her want to find some quiet place to sequester herself away and prod at whatever tumorous malady it is within her soul that makes her such a curse , to tug at the malaise until she stops getting used to bringing doom to those she loves. 

“I should go,” she says. Already, those whispers and shadows that’d been scared away by concentration are creeping back, nesting like flightless birds in the corners of her vision, building up great walls that she cannot look past and crooning perturbing melodies through the folds of her brain. 

“Take him,” Singed says, “to The Last Drop.”

“What?” She asks. He backs away with slow, methodical steps, until he stands directly over Viktor, separated from her once again by the table. His good eye flits down, momentarily, to regard her and Viktor’s hands intertwined, but it returns to her face only a second later. 

“It is not safe here,” he replies. Ominous words. He pins her with his gaze, as solidly as a butterfly against a board, wings skewered. “Not for him, as he is. Piltover would have protected him.” 

He heaves a sigh, raising a hand as if to run it over Viktor—but, instead of deigning to touch him, he simply lets it hover above his chest, where his heart is outlined in bright bolts of Shimmer. “In absence of that, Shimmer will suffice.”

“Protected him from what?” 

“Don’t you know?” Again, he fixes her with that gaze, that which makes her feel as if she is being slowly peeled open from the inside-out, unraveled. Part of her, that with the voices and the darkness and the jagged lines splitting her vision, wants to quaver, but the other , the other, the one Silco raised and hardened and carved, keeps her back straight. 

“Silco may need your services soon,” she says, an oblique answer of her own, and Singed’s eye twitches in what might be a grimace or might be a smile or might be a muted show of pain from only just recently prying a bullet out of his shoulder. 

“So be it.”

Viktor’s head lolls to the side, mouth opening to let out a low groan, both of them snapping to look, Singed with just as much urgency as Jinx, despite his manner. 

“Okay,” she agrees softly, glad to get out of the cave, out of its suffocating walls and the glow of shimmer and the smell of rot, “I’ll bring him home.” Back to Silco, away from Singed, and to see Viktor’s amber eyes crack open again. 

“Oh,” Singed murmurs, reaching towards another table, one of the many crowded surfaces that are visual hell to parse through. She pauses, watching his pale hand extract something from the mess. 

He proffers it just like he’d proffered the syringe, before all this, and resting in the middle of the palm is something that takes her a moment to recognize. A tangle of wires, uncomfortably bloodied, some sort of mangled mechanism. 

“I believe this was yours,” he says, and it’s only then that it all clicks in her mind, and she recognizes it as the crumpled skeleton of a butterfly.

Chapter Text

Five years since his expulsion, and looking at the tall white towers of the Academy still makes Jayce’s chest twinge a bit. Worse, after he made the decision to attend Progress Day, moreso because of that strange Zaunite with the gem , the gem, the magic !

He cannot stop thinking about it—was entirely unable to sleep, the night before, as a matter of fact—and a part of him curses that. Five years since expulsion, and it’s only for the past singular year that he’s been able to fully put the thought of magic out of his mind. He’s made a pretty good name for himself, engineering for the family business, and really…

Really, he can’t regret seeing that Zaunite at all. Though it consumes his every thought, though that concept of magic is what has him ringing on the bell outside of the Kiramman household, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt as he waits to be let in. 

In those days after the expulsion, Cassandra Kiramman had had a rather low view of both Jayce and his friendship with Caitlyn, something about dishonor and bad influences and turning her daughter down dark paths, which, by the way, Cait needed none of his so-called influence to find trouble on her own. Still, she went so far as to bar Jayce from entering the home for a good week. 

A single morning teatime session with his mother’d fixed that right up. Whatever it was that Ximena Talis told Cassandra, during those few hours in the Kiramman parlor, Jayce still doesn’t know. Indeed, neither woman came out sporting any sort of bruises, nor even dissatisfied expressions—but still, he can’t help but be suspicious of his mother’s refusal to tell him whatever it was she said. The politics of middle-aged noblewomen, he supposes, forever a mystery to his brain. 

In any case, it’s whatever happened during that talk that lets him walk into the mansion, crossing quickly through the grounds. The tall, grand door sweeps open, and he steps inside, greeted by Cassandra, who stares at him with a veiled gaze that rests somewhere on the spectrum between hostile and begrudgingly tolerant . Despite his mother’s actions—and their weekly tea sessions—she’s never truly reverted to the affectionate, matronly air she took on with him pre-expulsion. Growing up and losing the childhood baby fat that made him cute and easily-forgivable probably didn’t help. 

“Caitlyn is in her room,” she says, nodding tightly at him. He smiles back, which she returns in the form of a miniscule twitch of her lips. 

He knows the house just about as well as his own at this point, navigating easily through the grand halls to Cait’s room. The door is cracked open, letting a sliver of light into the hall, and he pushes it open, peering inside. Tall columns stretch to the arcing ceiling, where a skylight lets light pour in to coat every surface of the room. It reflects off the various glass trophy cases lining the walls, all serving to make him put a hand over his eyes, walking blindly into the mess of light. 

“Ever heard of knocking?” Cait asks. He turns, following the voice, as slowly, the light fades—or he gets more used to it. She sits upon her bed, a book splayed out upside-down beside her. 

“Foreign concept,” he replies, crossing over to sit upon the couch beside the bed. She snorts. For a long moment, he hesitates to bring it up, but he cannot resist the urge for long. “I can’t-”

“Don’t,” she groans, leaning back, “Jayce, if that’s why you’re here…”

“Look,” he  pleads, wringing his hands together, “I saw him, and he lied to me. I know that he had something to do with it all.”

“And what,” she says primly, crossing one leg over the other, “are you planning to do about that? He went back to Zaun.” She snorts again. “Probably because of you.”

Probably . He’s been running that interaction back and forth through his head, this past day. Should have been charming, put on that persona that he knows he can—primarily because it’s the only persona he used to wear, back in his Academy days—charming, suave engineer. Probably should’ve, if he had the gift of foresight, actually shaved that morning, put on clothes that he had not worn three days in a row already. 

Not step out from behind a statue, ambush the guy. No, he could have met him in the plaza, asked first about those Chem-forges and gauntlets—both of which were interesting, genuinely—and then slowly steered the conversation to the talk of the leg. The gem. 

Well, hindsight is clear and foresight is blind, so it’s all null in the end. Jayce runs a rough hand over his face in annoyance. 

“Well, I was thinking that maybe your mother-”

“No,” Cait says immediately, “you’re out of your mind, Jayce.”

“I am,” he agrees readily. She huffs out another breath of laughter, but continues. 

“Remember last time?”

“Maybe if I can-”

“No,” she repeats. He slumps, tilting his head back to nest against the solidity of the couch, eyes roaming the ceiling. Hard to remember that time, five years ago, without wanting to shrivel away. Remember the feel of wind on his cheeks, so high above Piltover streets, feet trembling. Trying both to hold himself back, and to gather the courage to throw himself off. 

It was a quiet night. Nobody left in the academy, teachers and students gone, not even any errant cleaners or assistants to interrupt. He could have done it. 

Which he’s glad for now, obviously, the fact that he didn’t. Seemed like such a big deal at the time, the type of thing that he could never come back from, but he blames that particular delusion on the fact that he was twenty-two and probably sporting some sort of post-explosion head injury. 

Still, despite that, he must push past that memory to remember the ones before that—small blue gems, galaxies spinning about inside them, flaring at his presence like the blinking of an eye. 

“Do you even know it’s yours?” She continues, pushing as much sarcasm as possible into that last word, “where’d you get them?”

“Some treasure hunter in Shurima,” he says, “ far away. There’s no way any other could’ve been in Piltover. Or Zaun.”

She hums in acknowledgement, but at least now, there’s a bit of light in her eyes—that craftiness that he knows so well, that which Cassandra Kiramman has always tried her best to snuff, to varied results. 

“You don’t know that, do you?”

“I do,” he insists, moving his hand up to run it through his hair. “Look, I know I sound crazy, but I saw him and I knew. That was my gem.”

“Well,” she says, crossing her arms, “even if they were, you are not talking to Mother about this. She’ll positively perish.” 

He sighs, slumping down lower upon the couch. Cait eyes him warily for a long moment—and he knows it’s because she remembers those nights five years ago, too, during which he shut himself up in his room and she had to track him down, force him to eat and sleep—before standing, brushing off the hem of her dress. Not that she needs to; it’s just as pristine as everything else in this manor, but she beckons him to stand as well. 

“Let’s go to the garden.”

“For what?”

“C’mon,” she replies, brushing past him to the doorframe, pausing only to wait for him to stand before brusquely moving off again. He follows, as they move down a twist of hallways that turn in ways that’d make him dizzy if he hadn’t had enough experience with them already. 

When he was fourteen, a few years after arrival to Piltover—after experiencing magic— his mother’d come to Cassandra Kiramman, seeking investors for the business, and a girl with buck teeth and mischief in her eyes roped him into a game of tag while the grown-ups talked boring business stuff in the parlor. He’d gotten lost, that first time, ended up in some dusty back corner of the house. Started panicking, which made it especially embarrassing when Cait—a girl seven years his junior—had to lead him back out into the front, all the while trying to cajole his breaths into slowing

Upside to that little story is that they’d spent the rest of the meeting methodically exploring the house, lodging the line of each hallway as deeply into his brain as the veins that criss-cross the back of his hand. A left, another, then a right, past many portraits of many Kirammans, all straight-faced and solemn. 

And then, they’re breaking out into the garden, tottering onto the marble steps that preclude a large, lily-scattered pond, intricate wind machines positioned about the outskirts. When the breeze gusts, many petals fly loosely from the willow-like trees, and turn the machines about in ways that suggest something organic, that form faces in brief intervals out of a turn of plate metal and sunlight. 

“Something special to say?” He asks, and she looks furtively around—as if they are conducting some clandestine deal in a dark alleyway, instead of this sun-drenched garden—before speaking. 

“Wanted to make sure Mother couldn’t hear us.”

“It’s not that preposterous an idea,” he protests, but she shushes him swiftly, dropping down onto the concrete edge of a garden and patting the space beside her in invitation. He follows, the stone warm against his legs, the wind barely rustling through his hair. 

“No, not that. You know I joined the enforcers.”

“Yes,” He says, mildly interested in this new line of conversation—though, of course, still antsy to return to the topic of magic at hand. Truthfully, he’d always expected Caitlyn to go the same way as most Kirammans—which is to say, spend her youth traveling the world and dabbling in all manner of debauchery, before eventually donning back the hood of respectability and ascending to councilwoman—but this is perhaps just another form of that. A far less acceptable one, if evidenced by the way Cassandra threw a fit, but she acquiesced, eventually, to the small rebellion of a uniform and patrolling streets and stopping the occasional teenage shoplifter. 

“If someone really knows about your whole issue,” she says, “it’s a Zaunite.”

“Of course.”

Her brow furrows. “A Zaunite .”

He stares at her blankly, unsure what she’s reaching for with a conclusion so obvious. She reaches up, flicks him on the forehead, and he flinches back, putting a hand to the stinging spot. “ Ow . What was that for?”

“Checking if there’s anything in that skull of yours,” she snipes, “we can go to Stillwater. Poke around.”

“What?” He exclaims immediately, “that’s dangerous .”

“No more than Mother. And what else do you propose? We go to Zaun itself?”

“Maybe I can get Heimer to talk him back-”

She fixes him with a flat glare, and the words die in his throat, seeping away to pool in his stomach. Right. Probably not happening, and again, it traces back to him, him and his disheveled confrontation and the desperation to know, really, how Viktor’d cajoled that bejeweled leg into working. 

Because Gods know he’s tried. Prodded at those small blue gems, sent them skittering across the floor of his lab, held them up to the light and let the sun refract through them into a thousand tiny motes no larger than a pin-head. Hooked it up to all manner of power and flicked switches, sent bolts of bright electricity bouncing off its hard, smooth exterior. Always, though, they gave him nothing but the inertness of something dead, unable to ever be prompted into brief life. 

“Let’s go to Stillwater,” she says, patting him on the shoulder in a conciliatory, sympathetic sort of way, and he knows even from that simple movement that this is her way of placating him. They’ll go down there, among the refuse of Zaun, those that even the undercity crumples up and tosses away, and there will be nothing and soon he will go back home, all this newfound hope drained out of him. 

Back to the monotony of hammers and collapsible socket wrenches and optimal rivet designs, which he feels quite ashamed of for hating so—because it’s what’s earned House Talis a spot as even minor nobility, because it still helps , because it’s quite the privileged thought to abhor his work for the simple fact that it’s too boring . 

Still, despite the fact that he knows this means just about as much as looking at food fills the stomach, he nods, smiles in assent. 

—

Stillwater is perpetually, preternaturally under some form of stormy gray, clouds rippling like stones above their head, which makes the gondola ride all the more nerve-wracking. The sight of the ground below, so far yet so accessible , so easy to step off the edge and fall face-first into the kindness of gravity is all too tempting and all too reminiscent of another night, five years ago. He must look away, instead focusing on Cait, who’s utterly unfazed by the trip—even chattering with one of the guards standing ramrod-straight on the edge of the boat. 

The trip is only made more uncomfortable by the enforcer outfit she filched from the station, shoved him into, which he’s sure is at least a size too small. Probably two, judging by the way the pants slowly, surely cut off circulation in his legs. 

The platform comes to a screeching halt with just a minimal amount of waver, which is good—too dramatic, and he fears that he’d go stumbling off that edge. Cait must notice the way he peers warily at the mess of fog below, because she places a hand on his arm as they step off onto something that at least resembles solid ground once again. 

She knows about it—he spilled it all out, two years ago, a night with alcohol stolen from the cupboards and all laid out on the floor of her room, watching the stars through the skylight overhead—but they have not talked of it since, which he’s glad for. Best not to call back to such dark times. Best to shove them away into the lowest parts of his mind, send them skittering like rocks kicked from Piltover’s tallest towers to the dark underbelly of Zaun. 

Still, it’s present in the careful weight of her hands, in the way she ushers him quickly away from that cliff’s edge. 

The prison itself is a behemoth of rock that appears to touch the sky, all angular shapes and brutal symmetry, the sort of thing that looks like it could uproot itself from the earth and come crashing down on the cities bordering it. 

Slowly, the doors creak open, and it feels a bit like being swallowed alive to walk in. 

—

Cait walks with such authority that he can almost see an actual enforcer in her place—which is to say that he’s always known, on some intellectual idea, that she has a uniform and a job, but never has he had the chance to watch her do something other than busywork. The sort of jobs that Cassandra Kiramman pulls strings to get her put on; guarding the quietest, richest parts of the city, spending her hours escorting stiff-backed politicians around quiet halls. 

This, though, this is both unprecedented and unpermitted, and she slips into the role so easily that he finds himself trying to imitate her. Back straight, hands by his sides, trying not to tug at the cloying tightness of the uniform. 

Before them, the warden lounges at a tall, grand desk. Jayce, tall as he is, is not used to having to look up at someone, so this is an experience all of its own—the man is gargantuan. ‘Man’ probably in the loose sense of the word—he would eat his too-small hat if there were not a few drops of inhuman blood running through his veins. 

He leans down a bit, spreading across the desk, smiles a snag-toothed grin down at them. “What can I help you with?”

It’s Cait who speaks, her voice strong and assured, “we’re looking to speak with the prisoners. Maybe those…” she hesitates, eyes darting to Jayce, before continuing, “those taken in five years ago? Give or take?”

The warden laughs. “Eh, not too many of those around.” The smile sharpens at the edges, and there’s a new glint in his eyes, the sort of beady light that Jayce must try not to wince at. “Prisoners don’t tend to survive long here.”

That tone of voice, that inky thing that lurks deep in his flat eyes, invites commiseration, but Jayce waits a beat too long before giving it, and Cait looks abjectly unnerved, face twisted into a grimace. After a beat of taut silence, he reaches under his desk, pulls out a file and from that a few thin sheets of paper, slides it over the desk to them. Many grim photos, taken in dark lighting, with lines of thin black text proclaiming name, weight, height, location .

Cait grabs them with a quick, snappy motion, nodding only perfunctorily before spinning off. Jayce nods weakly at the man before following in her wake. 

—

The first of the files is useless—an old man, missing an eye, who begins to spit curses in some garbled language at them when they linger. The next, too, the prisoner either caught in deep slumber or purposefully ignoring their noise—whichever case it is, they remain huddled in the corner of the cell, unresponding.

Maybe dead. 

He tries not to think of that possibility. 

The next, and the next, and the next, all either hostile or—when they do deign to cooperate—unknowing, only blank looks in response to his ask about small blue gems , about resale and criminals and the like. His unease rises with each minute spent in this place, under the dimness of the light, nothing but his own footsteps and the shuffling of dark shapes behind bars. More and more, he knows that he does not belong here, Piltover engineer with a cleanly-pressed uniform and nervous mind. 

In one of the quiet moments, as they traverse the seeming miles between cells—because him and Cait certainly won’t talk, not here, it’s not the place for that idle sort of chit-chat—he tries to superimpose the face of the single Zaunite he’s ever truly interacted with. Viktor. Tall man, thin, handsome—if he allows himself to think that way; and even then, only in a sharp, fierce, frightening sort of way—and hardened, with an unexpected repository of knowledge bubbling in his mind. Admittedly, he’d been more preoccupied with that glow of the leg, when Viktor was presenting, but from what snippets he does remember, it all truly was fascinating. 

The man is undoubtedly Zaun, but still, he cannot quite imagine him in this place, crouched behind any of those bars. Then again, what about him being Zaunite makes him suited for this place? Do any of these prisoners truly fit, in a place so desecrated, so unyielding?

Jayce is still wrestling with that thought as they approach the next cell. Cait shuffles through the papers, leans over to him and whispers, “Last one . ”

There is nothing so obvious as victory or condescension in her voice, but still, the fact remains that this will be the last one, and it will probably be like all the ones before, and he will leave here with nothing but the concept that he will never find magic again. 

He remembers, on that night that he stood high and loose above the precipice, he’d wanted to jump not only to die , but for the possibility that he wouldn’t die. Foolish thought, but some small part of him had believed that perhaps, midway through freefall, that same blue-robed mage would materialize, suspend him in the air with the flick of a single tattooed hand, save him from death just as he had before. His own personal guardian, only for the most dire of straits. 

He’s disavowed himself of the notion nowadays–of course he has!—but right now, he’s suddenly reminded of that old notion, as sudden as the growing lump in his throat. 

They stop before the cell. The resident has their back to them, angular tattoos, what looks like some sort of approximation of machinery. 

Cait clears her throat. The prisoner’s head turns fractionally, side profile now aligned with her shoulder—a woman, it seems, younger than he’d have expected. Certainly the youngest of those he’s seen. Means that she must’ve been thrown in here in her teens , which sends an odd prickle of unease skipping up his spine. 

She regards them wordlessly out of one eye, not turning her feet nor back. 

“Five years ago,” Jayce says, jumping straight into the questions. Blunt, but niceties—for obvious reasons—do not tend to do well here. “There was a-”

“Look,” she says, cutting him off, turning away to face the wall once again, “whatever this is, I know nothing.”

Cait glances at him sidelong. He ignores her, trying to still the sinking of his heart. 

“A robbery,” he says, and she tenses, hands closing into fists. 

“If you’re gonna pin this on me, skip the intro. You can get right to beating the shit out of me.”

Not the worst he’s heard from the prisoners, but  his eyes still widen despite himself. 

“No,” he says, “that’s not- we’re just asking .”

She snorts. He meets Cait’s eyes. Continues. 

“A robbery. A few things were stolen, but chiefly… small, round blue crystals.”

She snaps around, facing him fully. He nearly stumbles over his words, but manages to finish without stammering. 

“Ended in an explosion. No culprits were-”

“Blue gems,” she says, voice rough at the edges, “was it- oh, shit .” A slow step forwards, not yet close enough that she could reach out and touch the bars, but she nears . Closer, now, Jayce notes a line of bruises on her shoulder, barely covered by a bandage. A few scratches that stretch down from the crook of her neck to the area under her shirt. What had she said earlier? Get right to beating the shit out of me . 

“We’re looking for information,” he continues, swallowing that particularly unpleasant bit of revelation, “about the culprit. Maybe sources.”

Unexpectedly, she laughs , the first sound of any sort of joy he’s heard in this place—indeed, it is out of place, as cursing in a temple would be, wrong . It’s more a scoff than a chuckle, but still, it has some sort of hollow, ringing quality, like the beat of a gong. The sort that lingers . 

“Oh, I can give you sources. I can find a source, probably. If you get me out of here.”

Her eyes meet his abruptly, and when he squints, he can make out a glimmer of blue—strangely relevant to their conversation—narrowed in, not anger or necessarily hatred, but instead some shifty sort of emotion that he does not think bodes well for him. 

The logical answer is no , of course, letting a prisoner out is insanity, especially given the fact that most would lie about anything to escape this place. 

Not that he could blame them. 

“You were an Academy student, weren’t you?” She asks, tilting her head, “the idiot who let himself get followed? Look, I can-”

“No,” Cait says, trampling over both the words twisting in his chest and the prisoner’s spiel, “are you insane?”

Though she regards the inmate with those words, Jayce is sure that they’re directed at him. 

“Let’s go,” she snaps, now looking at him, and the prisoner simply sighs, unmoving, no begging to be let out, no slamming against the bars in anger. When he doesn’t move, Cait puts a hand upon his arm, tugs until his weakened legs eventually give into the temptation of following. 

—

“What was her name?” Jayce asks, hours later, back in Cait’s room at dusk. Both her parents are out, at one of the many elite events that pepper every Piltover night, and so the house is vaster and darker and quieter than ever before. “On the papers?”

She shoots him an exasperated look, but answers. “Vi, I believe. Violet. No last name.”

“She knew something,” he says, currently pacing a circle in her room. She lounges on the couch, watching him with an expression that perfectly balances upon the line between bemusement and concern. 

“Maybe,” Cait allows, in that way others that lets him know she’s lying—she hasn’t changed the tone once , not since she was seven and stealing cookies—“but even if she was, she wanted to be released. That’s… that’s crazy, Jayce.”

It is crazy. He has no problem admitting that. But similarly insane is magic, is the forbidden, is a mage whisking him and his mother a thousand leagues away, escaping certain death with nothing lost but two fingers. Is the gaze of the many blank-faced councilmembers, unable to ever understand why he chases a dangerous, explosive pipe-dream so ardently. 

He does not quite understand himself, but at least once a week, he dreams of blue glows and heights and a hand running through his air, fingers leaving hot, buzzing trails wherever they touch. 

She must notice his lack of true acknowledgement, because she continues. “Besides, even if you- if she was truthful, only councilmembers can order release. Relax, Jayce. You did the best you could.”

“I suppose,” he says, to quiet her more than anything. The pinch of her mouth indicates that she does not buy that he buys it—but, judging from the ensuing silence, at least she is willing to let the topic drop. “I should leave,” he adds eventually, after long enough a silence that even his pacing feels awkward. 

“Right. Mother will be home soon, and you know how testy she gets when she’s tipsy.” Cait smiles, stands, leans forwards and hugs him perfunctorily before falling back onto the couch. 

A pair of muttered goodnights and goodbyes , and he’s pushing out of her room, delicately closing the door behind him. The path to the front door is a straight shot, but his feet turn right , not left, and he himself is not sure, exactly, why for a long moment. 

At least not until he finds himself stopping in front of the bejeweled doors of Cassandra Kiramman’s office, those that stretch high above his head. Pale white, made of some sort of wood that’s no doubt imported from far places and cut from exotic, dying groves, embedded with gems forged in the boiling underbelly of Runeterra’s mantle, and all of this poeticism is just to disguise the tremor in his hands as he—slowly—pushes the door open. 

It doesn’t creak. Of course it wouldn’t creak, no doubt this door is meticulously oiled, cared for better than some people care for their children, and he does not know why he thought it would creak besides perhaps the faint hope that it would alert Cait as to what he’s doing. What he’s about to do. 

He takes a step in. Another. There, upon the desk, is a small box, and when he gently flips it open, within, rests her seal. It depicts the Kiramman family crest in exacting detail, all etched painstakingly upon the flat bronze head. Absolutely reeks of officiality —it is the signature of a councilwoman, if used to seal a letter, it is the indication of authority and it is the only way a prisoner can be released. 

The box is perfectly illuminated by a shaft of moonlight that streams in through the window, like a spotlight—like it was waiting for him. 

Again, he remembers magic. Remembers fate. For why would he have been saved by the touch of the divine, if he was never meant to keep seeking it out? To tug upon that faint thread of destiny until he reached whatever rotating, deific center keeps all these disparate snags of mysticism from tangling?

Five years ago, on that precipice, he hesitated a second too long. Enough for the reasonable part of his mind to talk him out of jumping, for him to scare himself out of the kind way out. All his delicate little inner consciousness needs is a second, is half a second, to reel him back from this new proverbial edge, to whisper words like ‘this is stealing’ and ‘ this is worse than stealing, this is forgery to illegally release a prisoner who is perhaps lying to you ’. 

Already thrice, he has let magic, let the chance for wonder slip through his grasp. His rational mind pushes a bit, picking up steam, and if he lets it speak up fully, then magic will have been gone for the fourth time. 

He will not let it happen again. 

So, before the beast of common sense can get its claws into him, he reaches in, grabs the seal, and whisks out of the room like it will suddenly burst into a burning ball of blue fire. 

—

The seal burns a hole in his pocket the entire course of dinner, forcing down some unspecified sort of leftover pulled from the back shelf. It burns when he tries to do some last-minute work before bed, when he gives up and throws the prototype hammer onto the table, sending a pile of disorganized notes fluttering into the air. 

It burns even when he shucks his clothes off, takes a shower, when he lays in bed and still, there is an odd heat that bores deep into his leg.

Despite that, eventually, he manages to break into the world of slumber. 

Of course, his dreams are—as per usual—unforgiving. 

There is a small crystal spinning before his eyes, and he reaches out to grab it, but it moves away like a frightened animal. He grabs once again, and then-

And then another hand snatches it straight from the air. Pale, long-fingered. Following the arm leads him to a lean body, to a high-cheeked face. 

“That’s mine,” Jayce says, and the man tuts admonishingly. 

“You lost it. Finders keepers, no?”

He distinctly remembers Viktor’s eyes as amber, but when he finally raises his head to meet them, they are white. Not even white, necessarily, but purely the absence of color, the void left when they leave, and he gapes wordlessly, and then he is sitting up in his bed, blinded by nothing but the morning light. 

Strangely, the dream motivates him more than anything. When tendrils of doubt begin to creep in and wrap around his mind, he remembers the mage, remembers that brief glance of the cosmos, touches a single finger to the fragment of gem upon his bracelet. 

Another ride upon the gondola to cloud-cloaked Stillwater, another distasteful greeting to the warden, proffering a sheaf of wax-sealed papers—with the official Kiramman family crest, no less—and a journey down to Vi’s cell. She’s punching, practicing, or something of the like, when he steps into view. Senses his presence immediately, turns around, raises an eyebrow. 

“There have been orders for your release,” he says, and briefly, for the final moment, reconsiders. This is insanity in all objective analyses of the word, but… it is one minute detail that’s grabbed him. Her parting words to him—that of asking if he was an Academy student. Something he’d never mentioned. 

Lucky guess, maybe, but it means she knows at least a sliver if something. Besides, inmate 516, nothing on her list of crimes—not even anything so small as ‘petty robbery’—so it cannot have been anything bad, right? If she was locked up for murder, or the like, surely her papers would show something more than a blank stretch of white. 

And with one prisoner in this place of thousands, a single cog in a series of automata, will anyone even truly notice she’s gone? 

She takes a halting step towards the door. 

“Where’s your friend?”

“You’ll help me find it,” he says, “the gem.”

She half-smiles. Smirks, more like. “Sure, prettyboy. Sure. You’ll need to get those fancy shoes a bit dirty, though.”

“I can handle it,” he asserts, and though she raises a disbelieving eyebrow, she nods anyway. With only slightly-shaking hands, he unlocks the door of her cell, swings it open, steps back to allow her freedom to exit. 

She does so only a second later, warily, eyes not leaving his face. He does not look away from her either—perhaps half-expecting, in the narrowest parts of his brain, for her to leap upon him in attack, something of the like. 

Of course, she does not. Simply stops in front of him, cocking her head, the corner of her mouth twitching up in a smile. "Alright, then. Let's go."

"Where?"

"Zaun. Obviously." 

Chapter Text

“You’re awake,” someone says, before Viktor even truly realizes that he is , and he blinks groggily once-twice-thrice. Vision blurry, every molecule in his body aching in a unique way, a strange energy thrumming through his being, and it’s only once he shakes a bit of the cotton crowding his head that he can make out the source of the voice. 

Not that he didn’t know already, in some deep part of him. That smooth, suave sort of drawl only comes from one man in the Undercity. 

Silco sits in a tall grand chair, facing him, hunched with hands steepled upon his lap, almost laughably dramatic. Looks like one of those faded murals, worn statues that take form in the deepest parts of the lanes, those that depict old Gods and saints that people know better than to pray to anymore. This is not his office, as far as Viktor knows, but instead some small, dark, impersonal room in The Last Drop, nothing but a table against the wall, the chair, and the bed. 

Being faced with that man’s face one-eyed, scarred, is enough to shock the last of the sleep out of him. Less so about the physical appearance—he is rather used to one-eyed, scarred old men, after all—but moreso just the fact that it’s Silco , king of the undercity, who he has hardly done anything but exchange stilted formalities with before this point. 

“How are you feeling?” He asks, leaning forwards a touch more, not enough to suffocate Viktor, but enough to make him wish he could muster the strength to crawl back a bit. 

“Well,” he answers shortly, forcing the word past the crack in his voice. Silco smiles. It’s not reassuring. Now that he’s slowly waking, more and more in touch with his body, there’s more than that ache that bores its way into the center of his very being. A strange energy rests behind it all, buzzing and tight and kinetic, and it makes him want to stand and move , even so recently removed from grogginess. 

Silco withdraws something from his pocket, and Viktor catches a glimpse of metal, and for a moment, his chest aches like his heart itself is bursting at its seams. An instinctive flash of fear , fear that he has never felt before, it is a gun and he will be shot for the second time-

But then, the image clarifies, and it is nowhere near a weapon. Just a mirror. Silco raises a single eyebrow at the no-doubt petrified expression upon his face, proffers the small glass forwards. 

Just a mirror. Not a gun. 

Viktor takes it with shaking hands, unsure of why, exactly, it’s being offered to him.

The answer becomes clear the instant he tilts it up to regard his face. 

It is his face, no doubt about that, all the same planes of light and shadow that he knows as intimately as anything in the world, except-

Except . 

His eyes. 

He drops the mirror as soon as he makes eye contact with himself. It plummets, bounces off the lip of the bed, lands upon the floor with a dull crack that falls upon deaf ears. 

Because those were not his eyes. His eyes are brown, amber in light—not that Zaun ever gets much of that—like aged bourbon if he’s being complimentary, like the polluted rainwater, if he’s not. 

But those that he saw, those strange things inset into his face, were bright purple. 

“What did you do?” He asks, flicking his gaze up to Silco, who seems quite unbothered by the dropped mirror. 

“Nothing at all,” he replies smoothly, solidly enough that Viktor believes him. He remembers Singed’s words, from so long ago, an honest man . 

But that leaves…

Singed himself. 

His eyes, purple like Shimmer, and he recalls Vander’s massive body, those bright magenta lines running through him in the place of veins, he remembers many small creatures jerking and spasming and dying after injections of such a liquid. 

Viktor tries to stand, throwing his legs over the side of the bed. Despite the pain in every muscle, the movement is strangely quick and strangely strong, as if aided by another sort of strength that rests beneath the skin. When he tries to stand, however, his left leg, his bad leg, does not cooperate. No brace upon it, no cane in sight, and so he is confined to this bed and to Silco’s presence by no chains but his own flesh. 

His pants, he notices, staring down at his legs, are no longer the slacks he pulled on in preparation to visit Piltover, but instead some sort of thin, white material, clean and light. Matches his shirt. Somebody must have changed him. 

“Your leg, too,” Silco notes, nodding down.

“What?” Viktor asks, staring down at it. It’s still weak as always, still twisted in some undefinable way, but where the hem of the white pants ends and his ankle is revealed, there is something…

Slowly, gingerly, perhaps afraid to see what it is—afraid to see networks of purple veins bulging beneath the skin, sunken crevasses where the Shimmer has eaten away at flesh—he pulls the pants leg up. 

There is no purple, no signs of malignancy, but instead a strange… iridescence that coats the skin. When he bends down, peers closer, he can make out many pale colors, unnameable, that turn in on themselves and create dizzying patterns of holes-within-holes-within-holes, all writ out in shifting glimmer upon the paleness of his leg. 

He shoves the pants leg back down, covering the anomaly, and must hold in the urge to hurl. Doesn’t manage to push it down entirely, and the gag rises unbidden. 

“What happened ?” He demands, meeting Silco’s eyes once more. He leans back in his chair, all muted grandeur and lofty arrogance. He would look more at-home with a cigar, perhaps a flute of wine, but his hands are empty, thin fingers still steepled and intertwined, so it is somehow worse. 

“From what I gather,” Silco drawls, “you were shot. Our dear scientist brought you back. All of this…” he gestures loosely at Viktor, indicating not only eye and leg but all of him , skin and blood and hair and bone, “is a mere side effect.”

“Shimmer,” Viktor murmurs, raising his right hand and turning it about. Nothing strange here, all just as he recalls, and he places the hand to his chest. Where he remembers warmth and blood and a surprising lack of pain, just the feeling of all the world slowly fading away. “How long has it been?”

“Two days. Give or take.”

Must’ve been spent sleeping, caught in the half-limbo between life and death. The hand upon his chest clenches, pulling at the thin shirt, feeling the skin beneath. 

No bulletholes, no mars upon the skin at all. And another thing, one more in an ever-growing list: beneath the spot where there should be wounds, in the lungs that he has always known as some degree of scratchy, some degree of clogged, he can feel no pain nor blockage. No urge to cough, to hack up blood and mucus and all manner of lifeforce into the open air. 

“He… he brought me here?”

“Yes,” Silco says, simple and soft. He turns, rotating in the chair, and from behind it grabs something—a cane, Viktor sees, as he comes back around. Not his cane, the one all decorated by Jinx, but instead a new, plain one. He spins it around, gripping its end. Extends the handle to Viktor, who takes it with shaking hands. 

A moment to get reacclimated to it—funny how a single day without the cane makes it all the stranger, a foreign object in his grasp—but soon, he’s able to push himself into a standing position, tall enough that he now looks down upon Silco. The man does not rise to match his height—indeed, seems quite disconcertingly comfortable looking up. 

Still feels like he’s the one in power. 

Which he is. 

“Not yet,” Silco says, stopping him in his slow movement towards the door. Viktor hesitates, turning slightly to regard him. He gave him a cane for a reason—so he could stand, so he knows he can move—but now, he’s stopping him from actually using it, and it would’ve been easier no doubt to withhold the cane from him until Silco says what he needs to say. 

It’s all some sort of power play, some sort of statement on freedom and generosity and the like, and Viktor acquiesces to it, settles back down gingerly upon the bed. 

“You have many clients.” Once again, Silco spins about in his chair, this time reaching for a table and, upon it, a tall bottle of amber liquid. He proffers it to Viktor. No glasses, no sign of Silco wanting to partake himself. A strange tick in the ceremony that he’s clearly imitating, but Viktor, after only a second of hesitation, takes the bottle. Does not drink, for the small part of him that warns of poison and the smaller part that doesn’t want to swig from the thing like a common street vagrant, especially in front of Silco, but then again, what does he have to worry about poison? 

That Shimmer that now rushes through his veins in place of blood would take care of any sort of toxin. 

“I do,” he replies, swirling the bottle slightly, watching the liquid in it rock back and forth. 

“Quite the ascent. Especially for someone of your age.” The corners of his mouth quirk up in a smile. “Reminds me of myself. I was not a young inventor, of course, but…” he makes a lazy sort of gesture, “the point remains.”

In the cylinder of the bottle, Viktor catches another snatch of himself, face all paled by the murky glass, except— except for the glow of his eyes, all bright and lilac’d and he doesn’t need to worry about poisons, really, as aforementioned. As for the embarrassment of swigging straight from the bottle, that still stands, but the reminder that he has been changed , twisted, prompts him to unscrew it, tilt it back and swallow down a mouthful of the liquid. 

High-quality liquor, insofar as he’s able to tell apart the minute details of alcohol. Never had much of a role in his life—Singed never cared for the stuff, and his first experiences with drinking taught him nothing but that it only numbed pain temporarily, only to come back tenfold the next morning. 

Ah, well. He could do with some numbing right now, damn the consequences. 

“Thank you,” he finally manages, carefully neutral. 

“Recently, there was a new one, was there not?”

So that’s what this is about. He cannot say that he’s surprised, not in any sense of the word, but it is not pleasant either. A shiver of fear in his chest, a flutter of his heart as the beat stumbles over itself, but that sensation feels oddly more routine than anything. Like muscle memory. More the concept that he should be scared at the deep buzz in Silco’s voice, the barely-hidden implication of a threat, than actual acute fear.

Maybe it’s been dulled by the alcohol; though he took hardly a sip. 

More likely, it’s the shot. By which he means gunshot or Shimmer shot, he’s unsure, but it makes little difference in the end. 

“There was.”

He hums. Leans a bit closer, brings his hands back together and clasps them. 

“Who, pray tell, was it?”

He hesitates for the briefest of moments. Silco’s gaze narrows imperceptibly. 

“Did Jinx not say?”

He grimaces. “I’d prefer to hear it from you.”

Which Viktor takes to mean that she has not. Another moment of consideration, staring at Silco, turning about the issue of Ekko in his mind. He fought Jinx, hurt her, as did his lackey or friend or whoever that was upon the board. Not to mention that that one shot Viktor. 

He places his hand upon his chest, again. Feels the beating of a heart below, so strong , somehow stronger than ever before, enough that he almost believes he can curl his fingers into a fist and grab it, hold it to feel it flutter directly below his fingers. 

It’s some sort of atrocity, he’s sure, to give up a person’s name to Silco—with all consequences faced by that person, entailed—but he cannot bring himself to feel bad when he says, “Ekko.”

No flicker of recognition in his eyes. Something else alights though, the sort of gleam that echoes avarice, the need for information, but all that is now far out of Viktor’s concern. He presses his hand harder into his chest, maybe in an attempt to feel for any sign of bulletholes, maybe in an attempt to claw out his heart and watch it leak Shimmer from every orifice, behold some empirical evidence that he is now beyond human. Or, perhaps, behind human; whichever it may be, all that truly matters is that he can’t bear it a second longer. The hand holding the bottle tightens as well, warming the glass. 

“Is that all?” He asks a second later, once he realizes that Silco has nothing to say. Seems that he’s been waiting for the question, because he shakes his head, speaks again. 

“I’d hope for more discretion in the future.” 

“I don’t tend to do background checks.”

“You should start. If that is too much imposition -” derision in his tone—“then I am glad to provide a list.” 

“A list ?” As much disdain as he can push into the word. What he proposes is less a list and more a leash , the type of thing that he has deftly avoided for the past five years via never asking questions, never getting overly involved in whatever Zaunite politickers rise and fall and rise again within the span of a day. 

“Chem-barons are sufficient, no?” Silco asks, “they’re all in good standing. At the moment.”

“Will I be told not to service them, if they’re not?”

“Of course.”

“And the miners?” He asks, “the industrialists? All others?”

“Case-by-case. I can get back to you shortly.” 

“No,” he denies, the conviction unwavered by that slowly-growing tremor of fear, “I cannot, in good conscience, be…” be controlled , is the thing. Discretion isn’t an issue, necessarily—in fact, it’s probably a good idea to exercise some more caution in the future—but he does not want to be another one of Silco’s many pawns, a tool to be used as reward and punishment both. 

“If money is the issue,” he says, “I’d be glad to provide a stipend. For a few extra services, of course, but nothing egregious.”

“Not that.” He has enough stores of money, upcharges his current customers enough that it is not an issue—especially given Singed needs little in the way of food and the like. Besides that, though, it’s the principal of the thing. As always. 

“Or glory? Afraid topside will not recognize your genius, with such limitations?”

“No,” he repeats immediately, nose wrinkling. Silco’s lips thin with a smile. Good answer, evidently, and that almost makes him wish he’d said yes. 

“I see no problem, then,” Silco says, shrugging languidly, large predator sprawled out in a sunbeam, “I will acquire a list for you shortly.” He extends a hand. 

Viktor doesn’t answer. Doesn’t clasp the hand, either, and Silco raises an eyebrow, leans forwards fractionally. 

“It’s simply business , Viktor. I had much the same arrangement with Singed.”

“More than business, no?” He asks. 

“It’s all business, in the end,” he says, just as smoothly as all the words before, but this one rings as a lie. More from what Viktor knows of the man than his ability to read his face, more because Viktor knows—hopes—that he would not call Jinx simple business. 

Reminds him that he needs to find her, make sure she’s alright, ask her what, exactly, happened in Singed’s cave that made his eyes purple and leg fractalloid. The only way to do that, though, is to leave the room, and subsequently, the only way to do that …

He places the bottle unsteadily upon the bed. It will probably spill upon the cushions, the instant something topples it, but that’s not his concern anymore. Slowly, with that same hand, he reaches out. Shakes. Silco’s grip is tight and assured, hand warm. 

“Glad to see,” he says, standing. In the same motion, he keeps ahold of Viktor’s hand, and pulls him up as well. Surprisingly strong grip—he needs only a second longer to steady himself with his cane. 

Silco gestures graciously towards the door, sitting himself back down—for no purpose but the dramatic, Viktor supposes, for he can’t really imagine him spending very long alone in an empty room after his departure. 

After only a moment of hesitation, he leaves, closing the door behind him. 

Breaking into the hallway brings him to marginally more familiar territory—an empty stretch of carpet and vaguely-stained walls, windows lining the space every few feet. All similarly mundane, save for one window, to his right, which looks to have been shattered and then covered with a few planks of wood. He gives it a passing glance, before turning about, looking for any sign of Jinx. He’d half-expected her to be here , already, ear pressed against the door and eavesdropping, but she is nowhere to be seen at all. 

There are stairs to his left, which he carefully makes his way towards, peering down at the room below. No noise, which makes sense—it seems to be mid-afternoon from the view out the windows; not exactly the optimal time for the parties The Last Drop is known for—but he keeps a watch anyways, as he proceeds down the stairs. 

Nobody in the lower room except a gaunt, dark-haired man behind the bar. He jumps to attention when he spots Viktor, snatching up a cup and a rag, but relaxes presumably the instant he realizes he isn’t Silco. 

Viktor pays him no mind, surveying the room. No blue hair, no Jinx. Perhaps she’s behind one of the closed doors upstairs, or hidden behind one of the many in this room, but he does not want to linger around this place for a single second longer. 

“Jinx!” He calls perfunctorily, and the man behind the bar flinches slightly—but no girl comes out from behind a corner, no sign of movement, and Viktor needs to return to someone familiar. Somewhere he can roll up the leg of his pants and regard his leg, somewhere he can peer into his eyes and try and figure if a soul still swims in those murky lakes of Shimmer. 

Besides, he knows Jinx well enough to know that she will find him when she wants to.

So he pushes the front door open, breaking into Zaun’s open air, and again, it hits him. That sensation of breath , of inhaling with no limitation, of feeling like he could swallow the entire sky in a gasp and expel it once again, no problem. It is strange and dizzying and horrific, a wondrous reminder of what, exactly, he is. 

—

Viktor pauses before he enters the street that leads to his lab. No more forays to the cave—partially because he does not want to return there so soon after death and hasty resurrection, partially because he’s not sure what he’ll do if he sees Singed right now, partially for the simple reason that his leg might not hold out for that long of a walk—but in any case, he senses something . 

Takes him a moment longer to realize what, exactly. 

It’s the absence of the Shimmer victims. Those perpetually on the side of the street, groaning in soft noises. The spiritual side of him says that it must be some cosmic sort of taunt, some reminder of his nature, but the pragmatic knows that something must’ve chased them away.

The mouth of the alley approaches, and he pauses for only a moment before turning. 

Entering. 

There, near his front door, are two figures, cloaked in shadow from the rooftops overhead. Jinx and Singed , is his first thought, but they’re all the wrong silhouettes, and besides, imagining the two of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder is a thought far too strange to stomach. 

So, if not them, then the second conclusion to draw is Ekko and his ilk, but then, his eyes catch on something else. A familiarity to the shape on the right, the bulk of the chest and that sheer height , and it cannot possibly be…

It is that boy from Piltover. Jayce, was his name? Viktor stops at the mouth of the alley, and the leftmost shape—one that he can make out to be a woman, now that he looks closer, shortly-chopped hair and ill-fitting clothes—turns to the other, says, “told you.”

He backs up a step. Here to fight? Angry that Heimerdinger interrupted their previous confrontation? Likely explanation, except he cannot believe a Piltie could make it so deep into the underside. Only, perhaps he had help from his friend, the girl who’s clearly got some sort of root in the city. Not even only based upon the tattoos lining her arm, hardness of her face, but the simple feeling that all Zaunites know to recognize. Is she a hired thug?

“Viktor!” Jayce yells, holding up a hand. He backs away another, out of the alleyway at this point. Wherever the brace is, he could sorely use it right now—with his newly-cleared lungs, perhaps he’d even be able to actually run . “Wait- wait, I just want to talk .”

Not trustworthy words at all. Perhaps better to attempt to placate, though, than flee, especially given his current top speed is a hobble. Normally he carries some sort of weapon, a thin blade if nothing else, but he did not bother to do so on his trip to Piltover—and besides, his pockets have been emptied by whoever changed him. 

“If you are looking for the gem,” he replies, as clear as he is able, “I do not have it. Nor are there more in my possession. There is no benefit to come from robbing me.”

The girl laughs , and what sounds like a splutter from Jayce is hidden beneath that. “Huh,” she murmurs, taking a step closer, enough that a beam of sun is now able to drape across her features, “you really are a Zaunite.” 

“No!” Jayce exclaims simultaneously, his words overlapping with hers, “I’m not here to rob you. I was-”

“You were contemplating breaking in,” she drawls, turning back to regard him. He crosses his arms in a thoroughly embarrassed fashion. 

“Not seriously , Vi. Look, I’m not… we’re not mugging you. I swear.” 

If anything, at least this little exchange has sapped away any bit of Viktor’s fear. Still, though, he does not step closer. “What, then?”

“Just to talk,” he says, “about the gem. Please?”

“What about it?” He asks tightly, now wishing that he had not indulged in Silco’s bottle. Maybe it was poisoned, because his head is spinning in a way that does not seem likely to have been caused by so few sips. Even shifting more of his weight to the cane does not help—it’s not exactly a weakness of the body, but instead something that’s twisting his mind all about. 

Maybe Jayce senses that, or, more likely, he’s nervous being out in the open in Zaun—topsider as he is—because he nods at the building. 

“Can we go in?”

Viktor nods after a moment. They’re here anyways, and he would rather not have this conversation in the open either. 

“Good thing you did not break in,” he says, as he steps forwards and unlocks the door, listening for the telltale click as the explosive mechanism disengages, “I have more than a few security measures.”

The warning is to dissuade them from further attempts, more than anything. Only, perhaps Jayce does not truly possess the nerve to break in—but the other one does. She’s Zaunite to the bone. 

He pushes open the door, greeted by the dull room, barely lit by whatever watery sunlight manages to force its way through blurry windows. Again, what a shock to see not Singed’s many dead experiments, but instead a wash of empty space, all shelves left with circles in the dust where jars once sat, a few forgotten plants wilting in the corners. Jayce steps in without questioning, gaze darting around the space, but the other pauses in the doorway. What had her name been? Jayce’d said it, at one point—Vi, was it?

She’s examining the mechanism that sits upon the doorway, poised to blow at forceful entry. Not so stupid as to touch it, but her face hovers all too close to it for comfort, eyes roving down the delicate weaves of wires and small glass containers of Chem. 

“You make this?” She asks, swinging back around to regard him. The movement makes him sway a bit in a strange tandem, not entirely under his own control. Like instinct. Like something under his skin, clawing at his nerves. 

“No,” he replies, trying to push down the bile in his throat. 

“But you’re an inventor?”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” she murmurs, no way of telling what, exactly, she means by that. Another onset of nausea sweeps through his head and down his neck to pool at the bottom of his spine, and Viktor steps quickly towards a table, finding somewhere solid to lean upon. 

“Where is it?” Jayce asks. He takes a long second to answer, waiting for the wave of vertigo to pass, but it doesn’t, so he answers anyways. 

“Not here.”

“What? How ?”

He cuts him a glance that hopefully looks suitably annoyed. Never would this interrogation be very amusing, but right now is perhaps the worst possible time—right off the heels of another difficult conversation, and before that, death , paired with his stomach seemingly trying its best to claw its way up his throat. 

“I do not know where it is.”

“Do you have more?”

“No.”

Jayce’s fingers tighten slightly upon his pants, and though he stands quite nervously, far from any flat surface—perhaps rightfully afraid to touch anything—Viktor doesn’t quite eliminate the chance that he will start rooting through the drawers. “Only the one,” he adds, “and if that’s what you want, then it’s… gone.”

Fate unknown. If he had to hedge his bets, it would be that Jinx has it, and if not her then Singed, and Gods know what, exactly, either of them are doing with it. 

“That’s not important,” Vi says, speaking over whatever it is that Jayce has to say next, and he tilts his head fractionally. It’s not? And here he’d been assuming that this was all some elaborate, Piltoverian version of mugging. “Where’d you get the thing?”

“I don’t remember,” he says, parroting the lie from days before. The one that Jayce caught—and, sure enough, he shakes his head. 

“That’s not true.”

“What is it to you?” He asks, turning tracks. Going over everything he remembers of Jayce in his head—something about being a student, about being robbed, being expelled. Something about magic . 

“They’re mine,” Jayce blurts, and his gaze narrows, prepared to lambast that idea even more, but he continues, “and it’s not about the gems , it’s about whoever made them work .”

Ah. Well, he has no help in that area, and he respects Jayce enough to guess that he will know Viktor if Viktor lies about that sort of invention. 

“Look,” Vi says, leaning a bit closer, “we don’t care if you acquired them… uh, illegally. Big guy just got me out of Stillwater .”

Jayce flushes at the words, dark against his tan skin, most evident on the tips of his ears. Viktor raises an eyebrow, interest piqued. “Why are you assisting him?”

“Gratitude,” she quips, and at his expectant look, shrugs. “Personal investment.”

Seems that everyone has an eye on these gems now. Strange, after Jinx managed to keep them under wraps all those evident years since she’d stolen them—perhaps Jayce’d forgotten about them, until Viktor showed up at progress day, leg all glinting bright blue. Or, maybe more likely, he’d had no motivation, no final push to topple him over the edge. 

“So you got them from someone,” she says, “same person who rigged up your bomb?”

Perceptive. There’s something under this line of questioning, more than a simple guess, and he does not like the ticklish sensation of being found out. 

“How did you find me?” He asks instead, blatantly diverting the topic. Vi catches on, crosses her arms, but Jayce jumps to answer. 

“You’re easy to find. You’ve… you’ve, ah, done a lot down here.”

“I have.”

“A lot of good. The Chem-forges, helping make things safer…”

He’s as clear as topside windows, motivations perfectly polished into translucence. This is clearly some new angle that combines flattery and an almost endearing sort of honesty, which would not work on Viktor in normal circumstances and certainly doesn’t now, but he cocks his head, allowing him to continue speaking. 

“The gems, that’s what I wanted to do with them. Good— help everyone with that magic.”

“You do not need magic to help people,” he replies. What drivel—all this talk about helping others, all about the help of magic, from the Piltover boy. Probably born with a silver spoon in his mouth, if attending the Academy was any sort of indication—could he not have done a single thing, without the help of his precious blue gems?

“No,” he replies, quickly backtracking, “no, I mean, obviously not. But they-”

“And what is to stop you from innovating now ?” Viktor asks, brushing a hand out at Jayce, “buy more gems, wherever they came from. Continue tinkering with them.”

“I was expelled!” he snaps, hands clenching tighter, some repressed urge to gesture or wave or perhaps strike. 

“So? Does the Academy hold dominion over improvement?”

“It was more than expulsion! It was almost an exile .” 

“So?” He repeats, partially out of truth, partially just to see Jayce’s face grow more yet incensed. “If Piltover abhorred your experiments, then take them somewhere else. Not all ingenuity belongs to the city of progress . What were you waiting for? Permission?”

Vi snorts, a hand over her mouth, making no attempt to hide the laugh. Jayce swings around to her, face contorted, but it falls before he speaks a single word. Far from yelling, or slinging back some pithy retort, he simply slumps, eyes flicking down to regard the floor. 

“...Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

Viktor almost smiles. The words do little to chase away the fog in his head, that which numbs the tips of his fingers and thrums through each fiber of muscle in his body, but it does help a bit with the topic of vindication. After abdicating so much ground to Silco—because what else could he do?—it restores some bit of balance to have the upper hand in a conversation. 

“Okay,” Jayce says, talking more to himself than Viktor anymore, “okay, I guess… I guess we’re done. I-”

“Really?” Vi asks, straightening, hands falling down to her sides, “you’re done?”

He pauses, looking up at her. “Yeah. Once I’m back to Piltover, you’re free.”

“What?” She asks, then shakes her head, “you’re really giving up? I mean, the boy’s got a point, but he still knows something.”

“I assure you-” Viktor starts, but she cuts him off, stalking closer. He places a hand upon the rounded head of the cane, poised to push off the table, wishing not for the first and not for the last time that he had the brace tight around his leg. Unsettling, lifelike pulse and all, he would take it all for the ability to walk . 

“You can go,” she cuts to Jayce, “on your own. I have a few more questions for Viktor here.”

He almost expects Jayce to flee, to slip out of his door and into Zaun proper, but he does not—instead, he moves forwards as well, hands hovering defensively by his side. “Vi…”

She’s close enough, now, that he could reach out and touch her, and she could do likewise—though her touch, his instincts tell him, would likely be more akin to a strike.

“I don’t recommend whatever you’re about to do,” he says, voice steady and calm. There comes the unwelcome, wriggling thought that whatever she does do, he probably won’t be too affected by it either way, not with Shimmer able to knit together any injury sustained. 

Still. Rather not test that. Rather not get the reminder of inhumanity that tinges his being, now. 

“I don’t recommend lying,” she growls, moving to step closer. The movement, however, is aborted by Jayce—who rushes forwards, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her away. She surges back after only a moment, but that brief second of shock is enough for Viktor to sidle away, move behind the table as she breaks free from Jayce’s grip. Just that bare bit of movement sets up a new ache in his head, enough to send all his thoughts scattering in different directions, curtailing any attempt at a coherent response to the action. 

“What the hell? ” Jayce exclaims, and she leaps back, rubbing at her arm where he’d yanked her away. 

“Look, I told you I was looking for this. Maybe you had your whole moral, inventor moment, but I’m finding these gems.”

“Why?” He asks sharply, “why’re they so important to you ?”

Watching the argument warily, Viktor palms a syringe upon the desk, closest weapon at hand. It’s not much, but its delicacy is evened out by the high likeliness that it’s been used on things that should never come in contact with a human body. 

Vi laughs, running a rough hand through her hair. “Yeah, well, remember that robbery?”

“They never found the…” Jayce trails off only a second later, a stricken expression passing over his features. Viktor, distracted by trying to ascertain what kind of viscera adorns the tip of the syringe—and trying to tamp down that burning, delirious pain in his head—takes a moment longer to catch on. Long enough for Vi to say, softly, “there’s only one person down here who’d have spread them, I think.”

Her strange, familiar features are now cast in a new light, put under blue hair, slightly softened. His grip upon the syringe loosens, and were he not leaning upon the cane, he’s sure his knees would weaken more than a bit. 

“Your sister,” he murmurs, all the puzzle pieces snapping together in his head. This is the sister that Jinx does not ever mention outside of scattered, angry recollections, this is the source of the gem, all of them tied to her in one way or another. 

Should not have said that, probably. Did he say that? He cannot quite tell. All he can think of, at the second, is pain and Shimmer and Jinx. 

“What?” She asks, head snapping to face him, “my- my sister ? Is that-” She turns away, to face the door, face that intricate bomb that lines the wooden frame, new understanding dawning. “You know her.”

“Quite well,” he replies. She strides forwards once again, but now—thankfully—it’s less outright aggression and more determination that carries her stride, stopping her across the table from him. This time, Jayce does not follow nor intervene—he seems to be grappling with his own sort of revelation. 

“ Where is she ?” She demands, hands flat upon the table. He spins the syringe about in his fingers, considering it. Not to attack, necessarily, jolt forwards and plunge it in, but just the delicacy. Imagines it filled with Shimmer, imagines all that rushing through his veins. He should find her. Talk to her, really—ask who that was, ask what Singed did to him. Takes a moment longer to snag upon a thread of thought, that which being he probably shouldn’t tell Vi where she is . 

There is a reason that Jinx does not care to talk of her sister all too much, though he knows not what that is, and besides, if he wishes to talk with her of resurrection and the like, it would be best with no interruptions. 

“Down,” he says, “deeper in the Lanes. Near the mines. Maybe in the tunnels, I’m not sure.”

Namely, where she is not —about as far as he can get, in fact. 

“Okay,” Vi murmurs, breathing out, “okay. I’m… uh, sorry.”

He doesn’t respond to that. She takes his silence in stride, pushing off the table, moving back up to stand next to Jayce. 

“Let’s go,” she tells him. 

“Are we skating over you robbing my apartment ?”

“That was five years ago. Look, are you coming or not?”

“ Down ? I need to get back…”

“And there’s no time to take you all the way back up. ‘Sides, maybe my sister can teach you a thing or two.”

After a moment of hesitation, he nods. Viktor waits, patiently, for them to exit his workshop, paying little mind to whatever conversation they’re engaging in—at least not until there is the sound of footsteps and Jayce approaches once again, extending a hand to him. Not his hand, but instead a small card. Viktor takes it. 

“Thank you,” he says. “Look, just in case…”

The card reads, in small black text, Jayce Talis , and under that, a line of address that must lead to some Piltover home. To the side, is a small, simplistic crest, shaped like a T—and, when he squints a bit, a hammer. He looks up, meeting his eyes, and Jayce’s expression jolts in surprise. 

“Your eyes..? What-”

“Thank you,” he says decisively, cutting him off. He hesitates for a moment longer, hovering before the table, and then Vi calls his name impatiently, and he turns. 

A moment later, they’re gone, out the door. Viktor thinks briefly that he should move over and reengage the explosive mechanism, but he hardly takes a step before his legs give out and he must collapse upon one of the few chairs that litter the space. 

Really, he should find Jinx as promised, especially as the other two are far and distracted, but there’s a rushing in his ears, Shimmer like cotton all about within his mind, buzzing like a thousand flies, and the moment of rest rapidly falls away as time becomes something liquid and dull and rotten. 

—

It is dark when he finally returns to some semblance of consciousness, the entire world tinged with purple, some overlay that shades every corner of his vision. When he attempts to push up, all his bones and things that don’t feel like his bones scream in agony, but with an indeterminate amount of time and much effort, he finally stands shakily, making very good use of the cane. 

There is the visage of the lab, all in that same clutter, tables littered with those things he hadn’t elected to throw out in his mass cleaning. 

Make it to your room . 

That’s all he needs to do. Wherein he can collapse on an actual bed, instead of a table. 

One halting step, and then another, feet as heavy as if there were many pounds of rocks tied to the soles of his shoes. Someone had to take his shoes off, put them back on, when he was dead or recovering or whatever that state of being was, and that’s somehow more of an absurd thought than imagining them clothing him normally. 

He looks down at the hand that clenches the cane, the skin pale and near-translucent, observes what he can of his veins in such dim light. They run violet. Of course. 

What else had he expected?

His head sends out another violent burst of pain midway through the room, and he collapses against one of the shelves. For a moment, he’s quite thankful that he bothered to clean these out, because if he had to deal with some preserved rat liver spilling onto his neck, this situation would become somehow worse than it already is. That thought, though, is rapidly chased away by trying to ride out the wave of pain. 

The purple sheen over his vision bunches and contracts, darkening in some areas and lightening in others, the same sort of ephemeral patterns that appear when eyes are closed, unable to ever truly be traced out. They look a bit like circles and a bit like patterns and a bit like many things inside of each other and surrounding each other and looping inside-out in impossible ways. 

The door is very far, and then it is very close, and he can’t quite recall how he walked here, because was he not just leaning against the shelf like a man clinging to a plank of driftwood in a storm? 

He pushes it open, stumbling inside. 

There, upon the bed, is a small wooden box. He peers down at it—because it was not here when he left. Takes a moment to comprehend what’s in it: many tubes of purple that, after a moment of inspection, reveal themselves to be syringes. Not the kind that he’s used to, long-needled, but instead ones that seem suited to dose only a drop at a time, tips narrow and regimented. 

And there, upon the top, is a small square of white—a note scrawled on torn paper that, when he picks it up and raises it to his eyes, reads simply, adverse side effects may ensue. In that case, take a single dose.

He recognizes that spidery, slanted handwriting, of course. Without conscious control, his fingers tighten around the paper, creasing it, then tearing it, fingernails puncturing the thin scrap of parchment. 

It’s what makes it sink in, really. Singed must have been the one to do this all to him, inject him full of Shimmer and bring him back from the brink of the end, but that’s been an abstract sort of thing. Knowledge that exists with no real meaning—until now. Until the note and the many syringes of Shimmer and the contorted kindness in the fact that Singed left this for him. 

He drops the now slightly-tattered note, letting it flutter to the floor, and instead reaches for one of the syringes. Another flash of pain in his head, though not extreme enough to send him tumbling—thankfully—and when he focuses on his veins, he swears that they are pulsating in proximity to so much Shimmer. 

Clear that his body wants this. Clear that whatever malady has him swept up in its grasps will be at least experimentally alleviated by this. 

The syringe is warm, some internal heat put off by the liquid inside, giving the uncanny impression of something alive. His hand trembles, moving slowly towards his chest, as if magnetized, and for a second, he remembers Rio’s dissection. That momentary glimpse of her body he got before fleeing the cave to sit by the river. Split open at the center, but, more importantly, the heart— a mass of purple and pink and bright streaks of white, tempered only by darkness that ventured into the territory of indigo, still pulsing with some preternatural muscle memory, and is that what his own looks like too, now? 

If he doesn’t take this Shimmer syringe and dies—whatever that looks like, in this current state—will he be the one upon that table, again? Droplets of blood siphoned away to boil in triangular flasks over small Chem-powered flames, ribs carefully extracted and placed upon a table like some ghastly instrument, heart carefully placed in a green-glass jar?

The image pops into his mind of Singed hanging telling some nameless, faceless person about the most interesting specimen , and there his body hangs from the rafters, furred or scaled or feathered, and he has never feared the man before, cannot even say he is afraid of him now , but if it’s not fear then he can’t name the emotion that the mental image evokes. 

He drops onto the bed so he can use both hands, extends one and carefully aims with the other. A doctor nor biological experimenter he is not, but he knows the basics of injection, both from helping Singed in the lab and from learning basic first-aid. Upper arm seems easiest, and it takes only a cursory examination to pick out his veins—silver lining. 

Purple lining, technically. 

Normal procedure would necessitate some sort of disinfection, but from years of caring for Singed’s own health, he’s sure that the Shimmer will be able to handle anything he throws at it. 

Only one final moment, a deep breath, and then he pricks the tip of the needle into his skin, pushes down upon the specialized tip to expel a small amount of the Shimmer inside. Pain bursts at the spot of injection, radiating up and down his arm, a burn as bright as the sun that recedes almost immediately. It’s gone before he has time to flinch. 

Almost immediately after, the next effect takes hold—he’s hardly set the syringe down before his vision is clearing, pain abating, body as strong as it has ever felt. The only place this newfound strength doesn’t take hold is upon his leg, still aching familiarly. Seems that’s something even Shimmer can’t fix. 

After such intensity, the lack of pain is almost as jarring as its presence, and he must take a long few minutes to readjust. 

How long had Silco said it’s been? Two days, just about, since his presumably previous dose? He makes a mental note for future longevity. 

Though he’s still perched upon his bed, any desire to sleep is gone. Not only because the injection chased away any lingering shred of exhaustion, but also because, as with most things pertaining to his current state of life, he takes his cues from Singed: who, in this case, never deigned to slumber. 

Instead, he picks through the box of syringes—twenty-four of them in whole, each one containing perhaps ten doses, if he estimates right, and it’s easy to let speculation sweep him up in lieu of truly thinking about what he is. He turns, grabs a few spare parts off of the ground, and if he does not want to carry a syringe at all times then surely there is an easier, mechanical way to provide this automatic dosage…

The lure of the mechanical is enough of a relief that he sinks entirely into it, no more idle thoughts about hearts or cadavers or the act of being dissected by thin, bony fingers.

Chapter Text

Call it silly, but Jinx waits until she’s perfected the butterfly before she finally ventures back to see Viktor. Crouched in the airshaft, using tweezers to carefully attach each delicate fibre of metal to a long, thin, capsule-loaded body. The old butterfly, all a crumple of metal, sits to the side. She’d considered, briefly, trying to incorporate it into the new one, but after only a cursory inspection, that proved to be a useless task. The metal is burnt in some places, warped in others, not to mention bloody. 

That’s most of the reason she doesn’t touch it, really. Doesn’t want to see that reminder, see that empirical proof that Viktor did, in fact, bleed out and lay prone upon Singed’s table.

But no! It’s fine now, he’s healed, everything’s good and he’s not dead, she didn’t cause anything, it’s fine!

She bites her lip as she carefully solders the last bit of wing, both to maintain concentration, and to chase those darker thoughts away. The sharp sting of her teeth digging into the tender flesh is enough to shock her, briefly, back to life, to dull those voices that whisper unkind truths. 

A moment to let it cool, and then she’s lifting it by its delicate midsection, spinning it about in the air. The butterfly’s wings shine under the dull light, finer than threads, marbled by gossamer filaments of iridescence. It looks to be a cross between that and some sort of firefly, as judging by its bulbous back, filled with shimmering Chem. Not only decorative but also, also useful , and maybe it’ll help. 

In case something ever happens again. 

Which it won’t, of course. She’ll make sure of it. 

In any case, she bounds to her feet, steadying only momentarily against the rails before she’s on the move again. The airshaft is even more cluttered than usual, all her tools scattered about the space, not to mention the miscellaneous other projects. A few guns—because she will find a way to make good on her promise to never let someone shoot her own gun at her again—and, of course, the brace, tucked into a shadowed corner. 

She’s not yet at the point where she can look at that without vision clouding over, but from the cursory examination after carrying it back, it’s strange. Little sign of that blue gem at all—its small cage not even damaged , no sign of wear on the wires and pipes. She’d like to know how, exactly, it split into pieces so infinitesimally small that hardly a trace remained in Singed’s lab—let alone without hurting anyone—but at the same time, every time she considers that, there is the sound of screams and the smell of an oily fire, so she pushes that scrap of curiosity away. 

Deep breath as she steps out, back into the streets of Zaun. An instinctual pause, listening now for the sound of a quiet whirr, for footsteps, scanning the skies. Ekko didn’t know, is the implication from whatever it was that the Chirean growled at her, and she can’t tell if that’s better or worse. She can’t tell what to feel at all—so, instead of considering that, it also goes in one of the boxes deep within her mind, already near-overflowing with a mishmash of concepts and memories and all that manner of things. A strategy that Silco taught her, when she was young, box it all away, and it’s useful sometimes and useless others, because there are things that quite stoutly refuse to ever be shoved away. 

Like Vi. She’s not here right now, but she will be sometime soon, and just that thought begins to ghost a thin, jagged sort of line, cutting through the air like fracturing glass, so she begins to walk to shake it away. She rolls her shoulder experimentally as she goes. Silco had one of the medics give it a real look once she returned, panting and crying and hunched over, but nothing’s too wrong with it. Wrong enough that she’d be homebound, in any case. 

Oh, he’d had words to say and impositions to place, and she’d had to strap a few unwieldy bombs to her belt to be allowed to leave without (much) complaint, but she got out eventually. The Last Drop isn’t the most conducive to tinkering. Too many strange, ugly sorts of apparitions that ooze out from the walls, faceless, eyeless. Interrupting. She grimaces at the thought. 

Pity about the curfew though. Sundown . One of the rare things he’d promised to enforce—said he’d send Sevika out to drag her back in, if she did not make it back in time—but, really, she wasn’t going to be staying out all that long anyways. Not with Viktor still there, still asleep, a solid day later. 

By the time she arrives at The Last Drop, the sun is kissing the horizon, and Sevika is waiting impatiently inside, arms crossed and glaring daggers at any rowdy partier that dares enter her bubble of space. 

“I’m back,” Jinx says, and she flits her eyes up-and-down her form—checking for injury, maybe—before nodding tightly and pointing wordlessly up towards the second floor. “Is he up?” She adds. 

“Don’t know.”

Classic Sevika. Helpful as always. She snorts, darting into the crowd, pushing her way to the stairs. All these roiling, grinning, stinking people, all with no idea about the body upstairs, about anything , and she envies and hates them in equal measure. Only for as long as she’s stuck in the epicenter of the crowd, as she’s forced to endure the slickness of skin and the smell of breath-tinged alcohol, and then as she makes it to the stairs, they’re once again reduced to nothing but a mass of commotion. All these separate bodies making up one whole being, one creature of many limbs, many hearts, many minds. Not a singular creature at all by those descriptors, but the point stands when she compares it against the past. This conglomerate of a crowd is not like how this place used to be run. 

Then, she’d’ve known half the people here and Vi’d know the other half, and it wouldn’t be so rowdy. She could’ve seen someone else behind the bar…

No . Turn . 

She does, surging up the stairs in one burst of motion, leaving that first floor behind. Shove it away . 

Down into the indeterminate space at the bottom of her brain, dark and murky and full of sharks—that’s nice, sharks is a good thought—and she moves straight for the door to one of the many guest rooms on the second floor, where they laid Viktor out. 

The first strange thing is that the door is cracked open. The second, when she shoves it fully ajar, is that it’s empty. 

“Viktor?” She asks into the open air, dropping to her knees to—ludicrously—peer under the bed , which yields nothing. She stands, hesitates for a long moment, then goes charging out of the room and towards Silco’s office at the end of the hall, bursting in. 

He stands with his back to the door, peering out the murky green-glass window, turning fractionally at her rather loud entrance. 

“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come back in time,” he says, as she marches up to the desk.

“Where is he?”

“Woke and left,” he replies, turning fully, taking a step to lean over the desk, hands planted flat upon whatever papers are scattered across the burnished wood. 

“You let him?” She yelps, surprised and angered in equal measures, “he’s-”

“The boy wanted to leave,” he says, with a small, casual sort of shrug, “cruel to deny him that. I don’t believe our conversation agreed with him.”

She frowns in a way that she knows comes across more as a pout than any serious anger, but still . On one hand, it’s probably good that Silco’s doing things like respecting Viktor’s bodily autonomy, but on the other, he let him leave !

“It’s dangerous,” she says after a moment, “he should’ve stayed-”

“Jinx,” Silco cuts her off, voice inviting no reproach, “he’ll be fine. He knows how to take care of himself.”

She huffs out an inarticulate complaint, but judging from his stiffness, from the uncharacteristically hard tone of his voice, this is one of the few times that Silco will brook no argument, not even from her. 

“How was he?” She slings around, brushing a hand against the sharp edge of the desk as she saunters to the couch pushed against the wall. With a bit more floomf than strictly necessary, she collapses upon it, making sure to bring her knees up to her chest. And, more importantly, plant her shoes firmly upon the delicate velvet in the way that she knows he hates. 

Sure enough, his eyes flick down to the abomination of Zaun street-filth staining his fine furniture, but he doesn’t bother to reprimand her. Maybe it’s a silent bit of acquiescence from the sin of letting Viktor leave without seeing her . 

“Seemed healthy. Whatever it was Singed did, it was… nothing short of a miracle, if we’re being kind.”

“And what if we’re not?”

“That’s something I shouldn’t say.”

“Say it,” she dares, leaning forwards. 

“Then it’s something I sorely hope he never perfects. At least not without ample supervision.”

“Yeah? From you, you mean?” 

“Who else?” He makes a turn from around the desk, walking towards her with long, soft strides, and sinks quite delicately onto a sliver of space beside her, leaning back against the spine of the couch. She huffs out a long sigh, debating whether to do something so petty as lean away—but, after a second, that frail notion drops, and she allows her head to fall against his shoulder. 

“Tell me, Jinx. What really happened?”

“I did! That… he followed me. Shot him. Singed used Shimmer, brought him back.”

Silco hums, an idle, dissatisfied sort of noise. Truly, and she swears this isn’t just her being facetious, she doesn’t know what he wants from her. There are the details of that whole affair, laid bare, and already toeing the line of too much elaboration. She’s been good at boxing all those little parts in a little box and chucking that into the metaphorical ocean that laps at the walls of her skull, but prod any further, and the dams will break. 

“Ekko,” he murmurs, turning the name about in his mouth like a cigar, and she stiffens. Still , even through his whole interrogation schtick, through the panic that came from watching her limp through the front door, only able to half-support Viktor, she’s kept that name all locked up in her mind. Doesn’t know why , it’s not like she owes him any sort of loyalty—right?—but still, her hands tense automatically around the plushness of the cushion, and she can feel her head raising by millimetres. 

“How’d you know?” She asks. 

Though, of course, she knows. There’s only one person who could’ve told him. 

“Viktor.”

She pulls away completely, leaning now towards the other side of the couch, held up only by the armrest. Silco watches her distance with only a flicker of an eyebrow. 

“Old friend, hm?”

“We were kids.”

“One of Vander’s litter?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

He scoots an inch closer, reaching for her, places a light hand upon her shoulder. His fingers, where they touch her bare shoulder, are strangely cold—or, maybe it’s that she’s hot , burning with some internal malaise. She winces—it’s the shoulder that she hurt, and a large, mottled swathe of bruise still covers it—and he withdraws immediately, but the hand settles upon the couch, not an inch from her. Too close. Too far. 

“Jinx. This is important. I need-” The hand morphs into something else, not even Silco’s hand, but instead something that grasps and reaches and claws, raises, and she scrambles over the edge of the couch so quickly that she almost plummets to the ground, only barely managing to catch herself. 

“No! I’m not talking about this!”

He rises as well, far smoother than her clumsy descent, and she backs away a step, heart suddenly hammering out an unfamiliar, strange, frantic rhythm. Wall to her back, desk to her right, the only way out is past Silco and he feels like some sort of barrier as well, trapped, trapped, vision breaking and glass and shatter and blur and the walls are breaking, waves rushing in her ears. 

She sinks slowly to the ground, knees giving out halfway down, plummeting the last few inches. 

Silco doesn’t approach—maybe because he knows that she would not be able to stomach touch, at the moment, but somehow, it seems moreso that he doesn’t know exactly what to do. It’s been long since she’s broken like this. Though the cracks never heal, of course, not completely, but the last time she did, she was young and blind and easily comforted. Instead, he stays hovering feet away, hand still half-out, attempting to pet a rabid animal, a beast of many claws and many barbed teeth. 

“I can’t,” she whispers. Many voices speak with her. Some ghostly, ephemeral hand settles upon her shoulder, and she spins, though she knows that there is nothing there, she swears there is a flash of red hair, “I can’t- he’s, he’s…” he’s gone is the instinctual word that pops and fizzes upon her tongue, but he’s not, is he? At least as of now, if Singed’s monster hasn’t managed to tear him and his friends all asunder. 

He’s gone, but only in the sense that she chased him away, and that’s just about as final as death. 

Finally, after what seems to have been a long moment of deliberation, Silco kneels. He’s still far enough away that she doesn’t have to fear the burn of his hand, but this puts them closer, face-to-face, though she has the rapidly-rising urge to bury her head in her arms. Maybe, then, vision obscured, she can be somewhere else with someone else. 

“You don’t want him hurt,” he says, voice hardly a note above a whisper. Sounds like a trick question, but then, what’s the purpose—whatever punishment Silco doles out usually comes in the form of a half-hearted ultimatum that ends whenever Sevika gets bored of babysitting her. There’s no penalty for a bad answer besides the shame of being wrong. 

Of course, that’s for her . She has knowledge of his other punishments from laying in the rafters of his office while some poor thug wails down on a poorer thug, until bruises or breaks or whatever degree he determines is enough. But no , that doesn’t apply to her, even if when she reaches for that concept, she feels the flush of flame against her back. 

With that in mind, she gives what’s most assuredly a wrong answer. 

“No.”

He tsks , moves an inch closer, slow, steady. 

“Why?”

This, she’s not sure how to answer. Because they knew each other once, but the waves of time should’ve by all means eroded most of that tether. Because he didn’t hurt her, not really, he wanted to save her, even if through some misguided amalgamation of the brain. Because if he gets hurt, then it’ll be another person that she…

“I don’t know,” she murmurs, because all that is too much to put into words, and also two falsehoods in a row is too much. 

Another bit closer. 

“He hurt you. Hurt your friend. It’s only fair to do the same, no?”

“I killed his friend.”

“Still. Two wrongs versus one.”

The logic rings false, mostly because she knows that Silco doesn’t care a whit about this whole game of an eye-for-an-eye, he would take the entire corpse and leave himself utterly untouched if he could, but she grasps onto it anyways. 

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“And what of the damage, then?” Silco gestures loosely at his office, “rat in the kitchen doesn’t mean to spread filth, but into the trap it goes.”

“You can release them,” she says, and he snorts derisively. 

“And then what do they do? Come skittering back.” He sighs heavily, hands falling to land heavily upon the paneled floor. “We have to ensure that they cannot, anymore.”

Easier to think of this all if she transposes it over the metaphor of rats and cheese and warm kitchens. Ekko a squirming, twitching, gray thing, and Silco some mangy sort of feline, always stalking, always chasing. Unclear exactly what that makes her in this scenario—the cheese, maybe, but that’s all too placid and also all too pathetic because who wants to be cheese ? Maybe, instead, she’s the trap, she’s the thing that holds the temptation, poised to snap down upon that wriggling tail and keep it immobilized in time for the death of a claw. 

Still, metaphorical limitations aside, in this distant, impersonal sort of fashion, she can make her head nod in faint agreement. 

“I’ll find him,” Silco promises. She moves forwards— falls forwards is more like, tilts with no intention of hitting the ground. Sure enough, Silco catches her, and she unfurls, allowing herself to be pulled into an embrace. It’s unwieldy, mostly because she’s halfway sprawled across the floor, legs tangled into each other and only the upper half of her body supported, careful not to jostle her shoulder all the while, but for a brief second it is as comforting as the fire in the cold. 

“I need to see Viktor,” she says, after a long few minutes have passed. 

“Sleep, first. It’s late.”

“No,” she says, and the stupid word is already wavering , shaken by the new feelings rising in her chest, “no, now , I need to. He’s alive, right? He was walking?”

“As hale as anything.”

Hale is probably overstating it—he’s never been hale, even in the best of times—but she draws her legs close to her body once again, performing an odd sort of push-maneuver to right herself once again. 

“I have to.”

“It’s dark.”

“I’ll take Sevika.”

Her final gamble, and also her best. Silco hesitates for a long moment, eying her, and maybe it’s the tear tracts that still run down her face, or maybe her acquiescence to his earlier asks, but finally, he nods. 

“Fine.”

With that, he stands, holding out a hand to help her rise as well. Seems that he intends to escort her downstairs, which complicates her plans more than a bit, but she simply must bear it. 

Below, the party is in full swing, an unwelcome return to the world of noise and alcohol. Sevika sits at her usual perch, one of the tables tucked into the far back, surrounded by many other enshadowed figures, all with a hand of cards and a stack of chips before them. The moment she spots Silco, however, she rises, abandoning the game. Any complaints from her companions are rapidly stalled once they make eye contact with him as well. 

“Take Jinx to Viktor’s,” he says, once she draws near enough that he can be heard over the buzz of a drunken crowd. 

“What happened to curfew?” 

“Ensure that she’s safe,” he replies, ignoring that particular question. Sevika growls something inarticulate, but nods anyway, stiffly, in an apparent effort towards professionalism. Nice try. She couldn’t be professional if shoved into a topside suit. Jinx grins at her, and she winces, as if physically pained by the motion. 

“C’mon,” she snaps at Jinx, weaving them back through the crowd and towards the freedom of the door. 

The minute they’re further down the street than Silco can conceivably hear, Jinx turns to Sevika and says, “let me go and I’ll get you something. Cigars. Booze. Whatever .”

She crosses her arms, not even bothering to look at Jinx. “No. Not worth Silco having my head.”

“ Anything ,” Jinx pushes, “just name it!”

“ No .” The words are final enough that she can tell there’s no chance of bribing her, at least not in a walk this short, so she turns to plan B , which is to book it—but before she can even get so far as a step in another direction, Sevika’s metal arm clasps on her injured shoulder hard enough for it to scream , and she nearly collapses. 

“Ow!”

“Serves you right. You’re a slimy damn gutter rat.”

Begrudgingly, Sevika’s grip shifts to the elbow, low enough that it doesn’t feel as if her shoulder is being rebroken, but the threat of it all hangs into the air. Jinx shoots her a poisonous glare, which is unfortunately dulled by the darkness, but it’s the thought that counts. 

“If you don’t want to go to Viktor’s,” Sevika says, “Then we can turn around right now. Save me my goddamn night.”

“No, I do.”

“Then why the fuck are you trying to run?”

“I don’t want you to be there.” This is for a private conversation with him, for the sort of intimacy that’s absolutely punctured by big, angry, glaring lugs. Sevika snorts out something that she can’t tell is a laugh or an annoyed grunt, but either way, they lapse into silence 

—

Jinx doesn’t bother to knock, instead fishing a key from her belt and unlocking the door herself. It takes a long moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness: even at night, the streets of Zaun are bathed in neon and fluorescence, powered by the great humming engines of Chem that boil in the lowest levels. Sevika is practically pressed to her back as she walks in—probably trying to ensure that she doesn’t suddenly turn tail and run—but her presence has graduated from incredibly grating to simply irritating . 

Not a single light is on in the place. The murky windows do a good enough job of blocking out any stray beams that might attempt to creep in through the glass, so she must turn and fumble at the wall until she hits a switch that brings a dim orange hue back to the space. Still, it’s empty, of both the many experiments that used to adorn it and of Viktor himself . 

“Viktor!” She calls, trying to calm the palpitations of her heart. A moment of stomach-twisting silence, and then slowly, so slowly, the door at the far end of the room creaks open a sliver of a crack. Another moment of stillness, and then it opens more, and there he is , cane in one hand and the other on the doorknob, peering out at them. 

When his eyes meet hers, it is a jolt, a spark to her heart. Even in the little light of the room, they practically shine , shine a bright, Shimmer-hued purple. Not amber. 

Not as she remembers. 

Both of them stand still, separated only by the emptiness of the room and the darkness of the corners, and it’s her that breaks it, rushing forwards. He does not move in turn, even when she stops before him, the expression upon his face inscrutable. She’d started the rush forwards with the intention of an embrace, to at least feel the solidity of him beneath her, assure that this isn’t some sort of cruel apparition, he will not unpeel his face to reveal Vi wearing his skin, but all that is suddenly stopping and fizzling sadly into the air between them. 

“You’re alive,” she finally says, quiet enough that Sevika, at the back of the room, hopefully cannot hear. 

“Why?” He asks, and then, before she can answer, alters his question fractionally, “ what ?”

“What what?” She asks. The absurdity of the sentence almost forces a laugh from her chest, but that’s probably not the wisest idea. Viktor’s eyes skate away from hers, instead drifting over her head, and he stiffens faintly—no doubt noting Sevika, looming like some great mangy dog in the back of the room. 

“We can go into your room,” she says, half-turning to shout at Sevika, “ That okay, boss?” 

“If I hear glass shattering-” she replies, but Jinx is already brushing past VIktor into the sanctity of his bedroom, pulling the door closed behind them. He doesn’t move from his perch, simply swiveling around to follow her with his eyes. 

Somehow, the silence is as loud as anything. 

“What what?” She repeats. 

“What am I?”  On the final word, his voice cracks, borne not of the sickness that usually stifles his words, but instead an uncharacteristic bloom of emotion that swishes by her too fast to identify. 

“You’re alive!” she bursts out, trying to sound as earnest as she can, patch a bandage of words over whatever gaping sort of hole drops the last bit of Viktor’s question away. 

“What did you do to me?” He asks, and she doesn’t like that accusatory note in the voice, the type of thing that reminds her of many nights many years ago, of the dolls that hang from the roof of her airshaft. 

“Brought you back!”

“Why?”

Return to the first question. She blinks. “What was I… what was I supposed to do? Let you die?”

“Jinx, I…” he extends a hand, turns it around, rotating it so his palm faces the ceiling. There, stark on his pale wrist, is what he’s trying to display—bright purple veins that intertwine and conjoin like the roots of some otherworldly tree. “...I didn’t… you shouldn’t have done this.”

You , you, always you, accusatory fingers that jab like needles, voices screaming blame, and that overwhelming crush of feelings from Silco’s office begins to rise once again. “No,” she manages, practically stammering the word out, “this is good ! I was helping! You were- you were bleeding, you died , I couldn’t let that happen! So what, you have some Shimmer , what’s the big deal ?”

“It’s not just that,” he says, reaching down and grabbing a fistful of his pants fabric, tugging it up. The full breadth of his leg—the one that she only caught a glimpse of—is revealed. A mottled stretch of something that’s too shiny to be flesh and too textured to be skin, many indeterminable colors painting stochastic murals across a miniature landscape of sweeping valleys, sharp mountains. 

“Okay,” she says, drawing in a deep breath and tearing her eyes away from the sight, “okay, so your leg is… is abnormal , still, you’re alive, aren’t you?” The last bit of the sentence is breathed out more than spoken, riding on the tails of a shuddering sort of sigh. Suddenly, she is small in a very large, very dark space, and the only source of light gleams purple, poised on the brink of extinguishing. The only thing keeping her anchored in this particular room is her own arms, hugging her body, nails of each hand cutting into the arm of the other. 

He hesitates, something flickering in his eyes. When he still does not respond, she flings out the last bit of deflection she has in her. 

“And it was Singed .”

Not entirely true, but enough that she can hide from any of the accusation in his eyes. And, sure enough, this is what finally breaks down that barrier that keeps him from walking towards her—he takes at first one halting step, and then another, marked only by the click of the cane. It’s not him that opens the embrace first, but the step is enough to finally push her forwards, allow her to bury her head against his chest. 

This, more than the simplicity of sight, drives in that something has changed . Not only a new, solid strength that lines his torso, gone the feeling that she could knock him over with too much force. Not only the lack of rattling breaths when she listens for the movement of his lungs, but the smell . Perhaps it’s simply the clean clothes, or something of that matter, but there is none of that familiar cold scent of metal, bitterness of chemicals. Still something acrid there, something that toes the coppery line of blood and reminds her, after a moment of thought, of those great vats in Singed’s cave. 

It’s what makes her pull away first—it’s the sort of smell that starts innocuous but builds until it is a spike of unpleasantness trying to spear its way through her brain. 

So he’s been brought back with Shimmer. So there’s something wrong with his leg. So she cannot stand the nearness of that pungency for too long. 

He’s still Viktor . 

She reaches into the pocket where she’d stowed the small butterfly away, draws it out and presents it on an open palm. “It broke,” she says in explanation, “when… I remade it. And this one-” she’s getting carried away, she knows, but this is what she’s been toiling over in an effort to stop the worry from bursting out of her chest, and she needs to get this spiel out, “you can activate it through the bottom, toss it, and it’ll go boom . So if there’s ever anything else…”

He takes it as she talks, spins it about on the tips of his fingers, expression not near as ecstatic as she’d hoped. 

“You made it into a weapon,” he says, as she eventually trails off to a halt. She nods. 

“Isn’t it good? Do you like it?”

“It’s well-made,” he replies, voice hardening an imperceptible amount, and sets it down upon a nearby table without further inspection. Anticlimactic . Did she not make it well enough? Should she have added more defense? Or, or maybe he doesn’t want it at all, didn’t even like the original, and she’s done something wrong once again-

The racing thoughts are stalled, perhaps thankfully, by his next words. 

 “You should sit,” he continues, gesturing to the bed. It’s scattered with many different mechanical parts, as well as a box that holds familiar syringes—they look like the ones that Silco uses, if a bit more polished. 

“What’s this?” She asks, sitting beside it. He frowns. 

“Doses. Apparently, I cannot go too long without a fresh hit of Shimmer.” 

“Or?”

A grimace. “Ill symptoms. But that’s not important.”

“What is, then?”

“I don’t suppose you know of the brace’s whereabouts?”

“It’s gone,” she says, wincing at the words. Just as much for Viktor’s sake as her own—those brief hours of being able to walk were better than a thousand bombs. 

“How?”

“The gem,” she says, “it didn’t really handle resurrection well. Kind-of went… boom .” She points at his leg. “I think it has something to do with…”

“What was it?” he asks, turning to pace. A bit of a comical sight in a space so small—he hardly gets four steps in one direction before he must turn—but the movement indicates strength, and that’s comforting. 

“I don’t know. Some… some Piltover stuff.”

“Robbed an academy student?” He asks. Back to her, at the moment, but another turn about, and now, those purple eyes are drilling into hers. Like father like son, maybe, at least in this way, because they both have a piercing way with their eyes. 

“Yes.” 

She has to fight all those fractured, too-colorful memories back. 

“With your sister?”

“Why?” She demands. Viktor’s never one for curiosity like this—it’s why she likes being around him, his placid sort of acceptance, able to spill any little tidbits of information and trust him not to try and follow the threads to the source. 

“Vi?” He asks, and she rocks back, blown back physically by the word. So simple, two letters, but it starts up a roar in her mind, a voice barely distinguishable under the noise. 

“ How do you know ? Did- Did Silco-” Only logical explanation. He’s how Silco knows about Ekko, so maybe he’s how he knows about Vi, and it doesn’t make sense, but nothing else does either. 

“No,” he replies, stretching out the word, caught in uncertainty or hesitation or something, slow enough that she almost leaps up and orders him to continue speaking—but before she must resort to that, he says, “She was here.”

And the world drops out. 

Hey, someone says, voice right beside her ear, you okay, Pow-pow?

“You’re not real,” she replies, but there’s the ghost of a hand upon her shoulder, the softness of breath against her ear. 

You okay? Someone else asks, this voice lower, brasher, Mylo on her left. She whips around, brushing at him, and his face is briefly outlined in jagged white lines that snap away like lightning, and Claggor laughs behind her, and when a real hand lands upon her arm, she strikes out instinctually. 

Viktor lets out a muffled grunt of pain, but his hand does not leave her. She must concentrate on that—though his hand is strangely cold—let it draw herself slowly, slowly back down, away. Despite the hit, he has not moved, another reminder that he’s stronger now than whatever he was before. Interesting, but no room in her mind to process that fact. 

“She’s dead,” is the first thing that spills from her mouth, “you’re… you’re wrong.”

“Vi?” He asks, “red hair? Ah… prone to violence?”

“Silco said she was dead ! She ran from me!”

“Maybe Silco was wrong,” he says. All the air goes out of her, at those words, and she slumps, shoulders curving downwards. Too much lately, too much agonizing and fault and blood, and somehow, when she thinks of Silco now, his visage is washed in less of the comfort that she usually knows. And it’s wrong, everything’s wrong, she is a vortex that sucks things in and spits them out contorted, and what if he’s right ?

Because Viktor’s smart, Viktor wouldn’t lie, and…

“Why? Was she here ?”

“Looking for the gems. Or… I think, more succinctly, looking for you .”

“Looking for me?” She hates the immediate flutter of hope because it makes her feel gullible , like she has not matured an iota from that weak, sniveling child of her youth. “Where… where is she?”

“I sent her to the mines,” he says, “nowhere inhabited.”

“Are you sure ? I don’t… she left me, she abandoned me, why is she looking?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure. Jinx, I had to tell you, but…”

Reproach in his tone. There’s a wash of something like relief when she realizes the source—he’s concerned , he still cares about her. It quiets those voices that are always threatening to overwhelm her—and this is why she loves him, this is why she brought him back, because what would she do without his presence? Fly into a frenzy, sink back into whatever it was that possessed her back in Silco’s office? No, that won’t do, she needs his quiet strength. 

“I have to find her,” she says, and he nods, expecting the answer. 

“I’m unfortunately unable to join the search.” He gestures to the cane. 

“Right. Your leg. It- the Shimmer didn’t help anything?”

“No. Perhaps the deformity was too old for Shimmer to touch. But clearly, it’s still been altered, yes?”

“ Clearly .”

“If there’s one man who could puzzle this out,” he says, voice the slightest bit strangled, “it’s Singed.”

“He’s in the cave.”

“I’ve surmised.”

The plan, all these dangling lines, slowly coalesces, and she looks up at him. “So we go to Singed, and then I can…” still can’t quite say those words, mostly for how unreal they sound, find Vi , find her sister. 

“Tomorrow,” he states. A complaint rises immediately—no, they need to do it now , for both his health and hers, but he stills it immediately with that calm reason that she knows so well. “You need the morning to lose Sevika. And I need… time.”

She swallows. “It’ll be too late, though. I’ll miss her.” She’ll leave again, and it’ll be just like it always was before, except in this case, she’ll never know with the same certainty that Vi is dead, not completely. 

Viktor cocks his head. “Jinx. If she’s truly looking for you, then hours won’t go amiss. And I do believe she wanted to find you. For better or for worse.” 

“Do you promise?” She asks, and it’s childish, a return to a time that she’s desperately hoped to shed like a caterpillar’s cocoon, but he nods, utterly serious. 

“Of course.”

—

She leaves eventually, harried along by Sevika, who’s a horrible mixture of tired, angry, and sober—though it’s not too much of a departure from her usual temperament. A short journey back along the streets to The Last Drop, stumbling into the party that’s still somehow going strong , thoughts racing through her mind all the while. They grow in both volume and intensity, the further she gets from Viktor’s lab, unpleasant, grating . 

It is not until she is in her room that she finally thinks to ask Silco. About Vi’s nebulous state of life, about…

About everything, really. 

But she cannot get her legs to move, not even as she remains stalwart in the center of the room. Their conversation of hours earlier holds court in her mind, all those metaphors of rats and cheese and death, and Vi is another rat, of course, another leftover from a past that she should have left behind. Following along that train of thought, Silco’s still feline, still a hunter, and maybe it’s not best for him to know, just yet. 

She’ll tell him later, after she’s found Vi, and they have a talk that will surely go better than anything—once she convinces Vi that Silco’s not so bad , really, once they’re on the same team once again—and then he’ll accept her too, seeing that, and everything will be good . 

Of course, there’s also the chance that Vi is not alive at all, but that thought is less tempting by the second, so off-putting that she pushes it away almost immediately. 

Yes, later, but for today and tomorrow and the foreseeable future, it’s time to search.

Chapter Text

Jinx arrives with a thankfully no entourage, no looming Sevika only inches behind her. It’s a relief for Viktor—a spot of faint brightness on an otherwise quite worrying day. After an otherwise quite worrying night, in which he slept none and feels no worse for wear for the fact. He even tried, once the surreality of the lack of exhaustion hit him, but a solid hour of laying still under the sheets has effectively convinced him that—at least for now—sleep is something that’s no longer quite so foundational on the hierarchy of needs. 

More frustrating is the fact that little breakthrough has been made in finding an easy, efficient way to deliver Shimmer. Something that can be triggered on command, or perhaps automated—but also light enough to carry around, that won’t put even more strain upon his leg. Of course, the simple thing is just to carry a syringe at all times, but that’s pedestrian and inconvenient and trying to think his way through the problem is more of a distraction than anything else. 

In the minutes before she knocks, he is examining the butterfly she’d left him. Truly a marvel in delicacy, if nothing else, those thin wings made of dozens of carefully intertwined filaments, all of them a spectrum of slightly different colors, small changes in metallic composition or whatever it is. 

Something about it, though, nags at him. Perhaps the shine of the Chem stored in its lower half, perhaps the promise that if he tweaks some small switch on the underside, it will blow , and that lingering thought keeps him a safe distance away from it. Though, logically, it will not, he thinks of brightness and blood and the dull slowing of his heart. 

In any case, she knocks mid-examination, and he swings up, looking towards the door. By the time he steps into the main room, she’s letting herself in, smiling and raising a long arm in greeting. 

“Are you ready?” She asks, practically vibrating. He nods. 

“To the cave?”

He grabs a syringe from the box for good measure, tucking it into one of his pockets. He’s changed out of Silco’s plain white clothes into more of his own, and that act makes him a bit more comfortable in his own skin, but there’s still oddity to be found in the way it hangs from his bones. He cannot pinpoint it, not exactly, but it all traces back to that lingering idea that he is not himself , is not made still of the flesh and bone and blood borne of before. 

They depart from the alleyway soon enough, into watery Zaun sunlight and the comparatively-quieter streets. The city is, in fact, at its rowdiest in the latest hours of the night - or earliest hours of the morning - but, right now, bleeding into midday, it’s almost startlingly still. All of the twilight revelers are sleeping off hangovers, preparing for tonight’s festivities, or bleeding out in alleyways. Pick one. Not necessarily mutually exclusive. 

“...It’s empty in there,” Jinx ventures after a moment, “no more, of all those… jars .”

“I cleaned it out,” he replies stiffly, and she nods far more dramatically than the words would usually induce. A moment of silence, and then it bursts from her, the question that he knows she’s been quite physically holding back. 

“What- what did she do ? My sister?” The last bit is tacked on as an afterthought, as if there’s any sort of confusion as to who ‘she’ could refer to. 

“Threatened me,” he says lightly, “ah, in search of you.” He cuts a sidelong glance at Jinx, at the way she perks up at that mention, at so thin a tether of a relationship. She’s always had that faintly desperate air to her that all children of Zaun have, hungering for some intangible thing that only exists in the brightness of topside, meant to be touched, not seen. The same ravenous sort of feeling that he had, before Singed took him and filled that chasm with something that didn't necessarily satiate the hunger, but stopped it in any case. Jinx, though, Jinx, he gets the feeling that Silco has never deigned to quench that thirst in any way, but only widened the conduit. 

And Vi. Vi must’ve done that too, because the brightness in her eyes right now is as starved as he’s ever seen it. 

“She was desperate to know who you are,” he says quietly, as they turn down another line of streets, down to where Zaun is worn down to half-erected buildings and jagged lines, scratched away by a sheet of time as rough as sandpaper. Hunched against tall, craggy walls, are many dark shapes, thin arms that twitch faintly where they lie. He’s never liked them, but now, it brings up a physical wave of disgust that has nothing to do with them and everything to do with whatever swollen heart must reside within his chest. 

So distracted is he that he very nearly misses Jinx’s next words, no doubt helped by the frailty of her voice. “...She wanted to see me?”

“Yes,” he replies, pushing all the conviction he can into the word, “she was willing to attack a crippled man for that information.”

Jinx snorts out a bubbly sort of a laugh, which he’s glad for, because that was his intention with the words. Still, the humor is tinted by something that’s uncomfortably close to tears. “She ran ,” she says after a moment, “left- left me. Left me! And now..?”

“Did she?”

“You’re a jinx ,” she murmurs darkly, more to herself than him, and he swallows an uncomfortable beat of silence. Before he must come up with a response to that particular phrase, she looks back up at him, then away, “she’s in the mines?”

“As far away as I could think of,” he replies, “just in case…”

“I didn’t want to see her,” she replies, catching onto the thread he’d left. “Smart. Always.”

“Of course,” he replies. She doesn’t put up a response to that, and the rest of the journey is an exercise in something rarely done - that being the art of enjoying Zaun in silence. 

Because it’s beautiful in its own way, in an entirely separate manner from gilded Piltover. When you focus on the weeds that poke through the path, this far away from the city proper, adorned with uncharacteristically delicate white flowers. The way the sun slants over served rooftops, ignites the motes of dust that spiral through the air. And, when they approach the sloping bank of the river, the deceptively clear water, the warm rocks that gleam, cast-over with a silvery powder that’s probably poisonous, but quite nice to look at. 

It’s home. 

The cave is his home. 

He swallows once. The motion is easier than it’s ever been.  

“I should go,” Jinx says, rocking back on her heels, “I can’t- I need to catch her. And you and Singed should be, uh…”

“Alone,” he replies, completing her sentence as easily as she completed his. She nods gratefully at that, at his saying the words she did not want to. 

“When you find her,” he says, when , not if , “come back.”

“To you?”

“So you can tell me how it went.”

She nods resolutely. “ Obviously , I will. And… you haven’t told me about Piltover yet. I’ll be back. Always.”

“Always,” he echoes, and then, she wraps him in an embrace so quick that he doesn’t even have time to return it, before turning to bound back into Zaun’s depths. He watches her leave, braids swaying behind every step, prolonging the moment before he must turn. 

Turn, take one halting step down, then another, cane heavy in his sweaty hands. 

When he reaches the bottom, the door is already open. 

He steps inside. It feels like a mirror of another moment, of a thousand other moments. For a moment, he is a young boy chasing his toy boat, stumbling into this cave. He is fourteen, and Rio greets him at the door, wrapping around his legs like a feline and humming affectionately. He is eighteen, stepping out of the cave for the last time, off to that Zaun-contained lab. 

It is two days ago, and he is fresh off of Piltover, and there is a monster upon the ceiling. 

A thousand tableaus rush by quicker than the river outside, quicker than the single footstep it takes to walk inside. Singed is nowhere to be seen. Viktor takes a few more tentative, anticlimactic steps into the room, noting the clear signs of work hastily halted, papers scattered about the desks and chemicals scattered atop the papers, many different tools left haphazardly around. Most notably, the place in the rafters where a monster once dangled is… is empty, tubes and wires hanging tattered like they’d been torn away. 

“Singed,” he says, quietly once, and then again louder, “Singed!” 

From behind one of the large lines of vats comes a shuffling, and despite his common sense, fear paralyzes him for just a moment - the memory of Vander , of what he became, still here, maybe, still waiting. 

And then, a minute passes, and Singed walks slowly out from around the corner, revealed in lean, crooked lines, in the rustling of thick fabric. 

“You’re back,” he says simply, and he does not know why he expected a spectacle from the man, but the disinterested way his eyes slant over Viktor is entirely on brand, actually. 

Suddenly, he wonders how he’d react if his daughter, that fabled myth, returned to life. 

Probably more dramatically than this. 

He does not like how bitter that thought tastes. 

“I am,” he replies. Distasteful though the reunion is, it’s easy enough to slip back into their common patterns, into that specific sort of tone that he always adopts with Singed. “We need to talk.”

“How is your health?” he asks, pushing past that statement entirely, “did you require a dose?”

“Yes,” he replies. Singed hums, stepping closer. By his side, revealed in the greenish glow that comes off the nearest cat, he carries a leather bag. 

“Shame. I do wonder how we could eliminate that.”

“What did you do ?” He finally bursts out, breaking the mold as easily as he slipped into it. He cannot , right now, do all this, all this oblique exchanging of words with many meanings layered under them, cannot look Singed in the eyes and accept that he will get no answers, “what am I?”

“First,” Singed says, turning away from Viktor and towards a table, “an injection. One of Shimmer, one of my blood. I suspect the latter is the reason your body did not shut off entirely.”

He sets the bag down upon the table. It settles with a heavy sort of clattering. With dextrous fingers, he begins to undo the tie that draws the top shut. 

“Second, electric shock. To pump the heart, disperse the Shimmer. I performed a similar procedure on Vander. With many refinements, of course. And, he still clung to life. You were…”

Viktor falls back slightly, forced to accept that he will get an answer when Singed decides he will get an answer. He pauses for a moment, as if expecting Viktor to finish his sentence, still deftly untying the knot, continuing. 

“Third,” he replies, “the gem.”

Finally, the knot comes undone, and he lets the satchel fall open. From it like the many rays of many suns comes a bright stream of blue, small balls clattering against each other and rolling onto the table. Viktor’s breath catches in his throat. 

“Where did you get those?”

“Clan Ferros,” Singed replies, “after much maneuvering. Do you recall Vander’s greatest flaw in reanimation?”

“The soul,” Viktor answers automatically. He nods. 

“I have refined the procedure much,” he says, gesturing lightly to Viktor, “you are in far better physical condition. But I did not entirely trust the… ah, the psyche would recover. There was no novelty that could have altered that, except-” he grabs one of the errant gems, holds it tightly pinched between thumb and index, the blue casting strange planes of light on his gaunt face, “-this. We have found the key, Viktor.”

“ We ?” He asks, “what, exactly, did I do?”

“You were an adequate test subject,” Singed replies, “and that is all we need, at times.”

For a long moment, he’s something approaching speechless. Eventually, he settles on ignoring that, and instead approaches both Singed and the table - though he keeps a careful distance from the former. There are many dozens of gems in the sack. Briefly, he thinks that Jayce would have an aneurysm at this sight, and then he pushes that stray thought from his mind. 

As he draws closer, though, his leg lightens , that pain that always permeates it, that he’s swiftly grown used to, ceasing in an instant. Experimentally, he takes a step back, feels the dull ache set in, and then another forward, the strength of flesh. Singed watches without comment. 

“I need a gem,” he mutters, reaching for one. Singed moves as if to hand him his own, but he ignores the motion, grabs one from the table, holds it down to his leg, as near as he can get through the pants. Immediately, a thrum of strength courses through the flesh and the bone, enough that he could stand without his cane. It reminisces of the preternatural mobility that Jinx’s brace gave him, but now, it seems the gem does not even need mechanical activation. Most definitely has something to do with the new color and texture to his leg, with how Jinx so eloquently said that the original gem went ‘boom’. 

“They’re quite remarkable,” Singed says after a moment. Viktor’s grip tightens around the smooth roundness of the gem. Another brace, that’s what he needs, nothing so complicated as the first, but perhaps just a frame of metal to hold the gem closely, and he will have mobility again. Could try to combine that, maybe, with the syringe that administers drops of Shimmer, kill two topsiders with a single bullet, and he can make something. 

“My leg,” he says, remembering that he’d planned, at first, to have Singed look at it, “it’s… strange.”

He doesn’t need to say any more for the man to nod, lead him to one of the tables erected in the corner of the cave, unnervingly stained at the bottoms and unnervingly clean at the top. 

Climbing onto the metal operating table, especially when he knows he may have lain upon it dead and cold only days earlier, isn’t the most comforting of feelings, but he does so anyways. His pants are hung neatly over a nearby chair, leaving him in only his shirt and undergarments, corded leg bared in full glory. Singed collects a handful of tools from a small drawer under the table - a pair of tweezers, a magnifying glass and, he notices with a lump in his throat, a scalpel. 

Do not think of creatures flayed open. Do not think of swollen hearts and ribcages and glistening, bloated stomachs. Do not think of Rio. 

He fails. 

“Shimmer heals,” Singed says, “but perhaps this particular malady was too old. Too well-rooted.” He runs a single delicate hand down the ankle, finger tripping over the many grooves and rifts. 

“What about the gem?”

“How it affected you?” He holds the magnifying glass up to the expanse of skin, peers through it for only a moment before placing it to the side. “That, I could not say. I am not an expert in these matters. Only…” a pause, some shadow of an expression flitting over his face, “only Heimerdinger has a chance of knowing, in either city. May I?” The last words come as he picks up the scalpel, holds it above his leg in a way that should not be threatening. Again, those errant thoughts enter his mind. 

There is no ask if he wants some sort of numbing agent, not even a moment of hesitation after his half-cocked nod before Singed pushes the scalpel down, through the first layer of skin - in the loosest meaning of that word. There is less pain than expected. Perhaps that’s the presence of the gem clenched in Viktor’s hands, lending strength to the limb, perhaps that’s because all nerve endings have been burnt away. 

“Tougher than usual,” he says after a moment, “but I can make out little else. You do not bleed, here.”

He withdraws the instrument, and as he turns, the slim cut is already beginning to knit up again. Viktor’s glad for it, glad for that to be excised from his skin. 

“The gem lends you strength,” Singed says, “there’s no other solution I could give you.”

He’d almost hoped that Singed would, in fact, have some miracle cure. Another lump of disappointment, there and gone, reminder of what he is now, so foreign that even the smartest man he knows cannot puzzle him out. 

“Where is Vander?” He asks after a moment, when his eyes alight once again on the tangled mess hanging from the ceiling. 

“Gone.”

“ Gone ?”

“There was little use for him, in any case. Not anymore.”

“Where is he?”

“Wherever the attacker went, most likely,” he replies, and Viktor wonders what happened to him too, Ekko’s companion, but all that once again feels strangely distant within the cave’s bubble. Here, there is only him and Singed and the dead girl. He swings his legs over the edge of the table, lands solidly back on the floor of the cave. 

“Come,” Singed says then, no ask about his condition, no checking if he’s alright after being cut into, so on-brand, so disappointing. 

Despite his best instincts, he follows. 

Just holding the gem at a fair height above the leg is enough to lower the load of the cane immensely, as they weave around tall stacks and shelves and glowing tanks. He knows where they are going by the time they turn the first corner. 

Towards the door that has always been there, but never been acknowledged. Towards what’s assuredly not the last of Singed’s secrets, but perhaps the biggest. 

It is already open, bright, white light spilling into the darkness of the cave. It occurs to him that this must’ve been where the man was, when he walked in. 

Many tubes, thick and coiled like mechanical worms, line the floor, must be stepped over and navigated around. Into a tall, glass-ceilinged room, fine fabric hanging up around the walls and a coffin in the center, boxy thing with panes of iridescent glass and long gold seams. Viktor stops in his tracks in the doorway. 

“All the components,” Singed says, walking until he stands directly above the coffin, “but I am no man of hubris. I recognize that my own expertise is not enough to bridge the path to life in… in this specific case. The gems, they are mechanical creatures.”

“Jinx’s brace activated one,” he replies, still staring at the coffin, trying to make out the face of the person within, afraid and frustrated and strangely, deliriously excited all at once. 

“ We ,” Singed says, “can bring her back. Mechanical, biological, combine what should be and what should not.”

“Have you planned this?” Viktor asks. He remembers the first set of tools that Singed ever gave him, much too high-quality than what a child should have been allowed to handle. Remembers his small corner hacked out in the corner of the lab, remembers many words of idle encouragement - as much encouragement as he was able to give, of course. “Was I always meant to be so… so suited to bring her back?”

“What are you asking?” Singed asks, and this is the best part, him asking for clarity. 

“What am I?” Viktor asks, “test subject, ward, colleague, specimen-” and the last word slips out of him before he can even really stop it, so quietly that he wouldn’t think Singed heard, if not for the infinitesimally small tilt of his head, “ son ?”

“Does it matter?”

“It should not,” he admits, the words whooshing out with a defeated sort of breath, “but it does.”

“I suggested you leave. Find solace in Piltover. You cannot incite- cannot make this an issue, Viktor, not now , so close.” There’s actual anger in his voice, or at least a dull, lethargic sort of breed of it, which is as startling as anything, gives Singed’s voice a quality that teeters on unrecognizable .

Both are silent. Viktor takes a step closer, then another, watches as the glass slowly clears with each progressing angle, watches as the face clarifies. A young girl, cherubic even with a death-cast face, locks of blonde hair floating in perpetual stasis. She looks , is the first thought in his mind, Piltover . She does not have the hardness that Zaunites have, even the youngest of children. She is foreign and tragic and depressingly, disappointingly mundane. He cannot imagine her being Singed’s child, not in the slightest. 

The gem falls from his hand. When it hits the ground, it flares slightly, and he almost expects her face to change, contort into a grimace or a grin, but she is still. 

“If I did not care,” Singed says after a moment, quieter, all that momentary rage bled and seeped away, “then you would be dead.”

Perhaps that would be better are the first words that come to the forefront of his mind, but that’s petty and, if he truly admits it to himself, not entirely true. Despite this boiling sort of disgust at whatever makes up his body now, he cannot say that death is better, not when looking at this girl’s blank visage. 

“That doesn’t answer my question,” he replies instead. 

“No,” he replies, “but it’s not the sort of inquiry that has a solution.”

Another moment of silence. Viktor kneels slightly, places a hand upon the glass, which is unexpectedly warm and thrums with some internal energy. 

“It was her lungs,” he continues, so distant that he might as well be a dream, “and her heart, in the end. The machine cannot imitate that alone, and biology cannot recreate it, but both, with the gems, with the Shimmer…”

“Alright.” His own voice, too, feels like some half-there reminiscence, hazy, dreamy. He expects her eyes to open. He expects to see himself somewhere in her form, some sign that they are in any way similar, but there is nothing to connect them, which only explains more and more about Singed’s strange version of love. “I must… first, my brace. But then, then…”

“Thank you,” Singed breathes. He nods. He thinks it might be the first time he’s ever heard the man say that. Never have they needed to thank each other before, but now, now, perhaps it makes sense. 

Chapter Text

Jinx tries to put Viktor out of her mind, as she darts through the downwards spiral of Zaun. Nothing personal, obviously, but she cannot have her brain torn this-way-and-that, any more fractured than it usually is. No, instead she focuses on going straight downwards, swinging past rooftops and craggy pathways that bleed off into foggy depths. Her own airshaft leads down to the old mines, located at the very bottom of the tall metal column, but she’s never gone so far down that she’s risked even a whiff of that stale, toxic air gracing her nose. 

Now, though, it’s deep and dark and down, gravity pulling them all to the center of the earth. 

She swings under a corroded outcrop of pipe, past a huddle of cloaked figures around some makeshift fire, over a street that’s littered with shards of shattered glass. It’s not all bad down here—some enterprising artists have drawn scruffy murals on the walls, stained and half-chipped away, faded colors of people she’s sure are long-dead. She wonders if there are any of…

No. Don’t think of that. 

In any case, there’s the small slivers of life that always manage to burst through in Zaun, so achingly familiar, and she skates down a line of corroded stairs, hand skipping over the rusted rail, towards the open maw of the mineshaft. There are others, but most have been filled in by landslides and cave-ins, or otherwise bled through by toxic fumes, or otherwise already claimed by various gangs. A Piltie wouldn’t know any of that, but she does. But Vi should. 

Unless time on topside has scrubbed all that away. Unless she doesn’t, anymore. 

But no. She has to. 

When Jinx alights before the maw, there’s something off about it. She realizes only a second later. 

Deeper down the tunnel, globs of white, mucousy fungi cling to the corrugated walls. She knows the type—they don’t have a name, or at least nothing scientific, but she knows how they work. Dark and lifeless when undisturbing, flares into brightness only when there’s noise. 

And, currently, they’re halfway lit, still slowly fading. 

Someone else has been here. Someone else has been making noise. 

Good sign, right?

She adjusts the gun on her belt as she takes a tentative step in. Claps once, for good measure, and the spheres blaze again. 

“Vi!” She calls, hunching slightly as she walks through the tunnel, feeling somehow like she is disturbing something. Her feet land uncomfortably on an old railway underfoot, and the wooden frames above that keep the ceiling from crashing down look to be as close to death as anything can be. 

More worrying, however, is the fact that nobody answers. Something moves in the corner of her vision, and she whirls around, afraid—afraid?—that it’s vi, but no, just another half-imagined shadow. Deep breath. Turn back around. Keep walking. 

Maybe she’s gone already. Maybe she never came. Decided this was too much to bother with, not worth finding her errant little sister, jinx, curse, anomaly. 

“Vi!” She tries again, but even she can hear the weakness in her voice, the way it fades out, sputtering a bit like a dying wire, “Vi?” And this one is little more than a question. Around her, the luminosity of the fungi is already fading. She claps again. 

Ahead, the path forks. Down the left, the globules attached to the wall are an iota brighter than the right, a shade of greenish-gray that she can hardly discern. She takes a tentative step down that route. Still nothing, a silence so oppressive that it approaches deafening. 

She can’t take it. Can’t take this- this proof, Viktor was wrong, or Silco was right, or something between those two possibilities, and turns abruptly, slams her hand against one of the white spheres of fungi. It bursts on impact with a silent flash, dissipates rapidly into many sticky motes of white that coat her hand. 

Dully, looking down on it, she thinks, it’s probably poisonous . 

Maybe that’s a good thing. 

“Powder?” Someone asks. She whirls around, mouth bared to snarl at the apparition, but there is something different about the Vi that emerges from the darkness of the tunnel ahead. Maybe it is the fact that light doesn’t pass through her, maybe it is the expression upon her face, not taunting , not blaming, but wonder. She looks real. 

Jinx backs up a step. 

“It’s really you ,” Vi-not-Vi says, and she rushes forwards, arms wide, scoops her up in an embrace that’s solid and warm and real, it’s real, it’s real! Jinx fights for a brief second, limbs stiffening, gone with the adrenaline of being contained, but then it all sinks in once again, and with that goes any trace of fight from her bones. 

She is gunpowder and oil and the faint tang of leather, mud and water and sunshine, strong arms encircling Jinx from both sides and corded muscle that barely manages to keep her legs from slipping out from under her. 

Slowly, she regains control of her arms, manages to raise them clumsily, thud them onto Vi’s back in some numb motion that approximates an embrace. Only when her hands finally settle on the smoothness of her jacket does it sink in, for perhaps the second or third time, that this is real. Her hands try to curl into fists, but the movement is aborted by the expanse of Vi’s back, so the fingernails simply dig into the leather. She doesn’t seem to notice. 

“You’re real,” she murmurs, repeating the two words that are currently trying their best to break free from her skull. Again, she tightens her grip, nails yet deeper, trying to cut low enough that they feel the warmth of skin. 

“Of course I am,” Vi says. The words are more mumbled into her shoulder than anything else, muffled. Her skin is wet. She realizes, after a moment, that it might be tears. Vi is crying. Why is she crying? It’s not her right , she left , and it makes the tears flowing down Jinx’s own cheeks feel somehow worse, somehow like she is not deserving of them after all. 

“A lot has changed.” There’s more she wants to say, things along the line of where have you been and she’s unable to get most of it out, but Vi catches the drift anyways, because of course she does, why would she not? 

“That doesn’t matter, Pow-pow. I’ve… I’ve found you.”

There is, somehow, just as much wonder shoved into that singular word as is buzzing around Jinx’s entire brain, like Vi herself is astonished in ways that she cannot fathom. 

And then, there is a footstep. Jinx catches a glimpse, from where her eyes cut over the crest of Vi’s shoulder, of a man, tall and broad and standing a ways behind her, and leaps back immediately, tearing out of her arms. Vi’s fingers catch on her shoulders, tightening reflexively, but she twists hard enough that her injured shoulder screams out in agony, all to remove herself from the sudden claustrophobia of her arms. 

“What?” Vi starts, more a surprised sort of start than any consolidation of letters, and Jinx’s hand goes straight for her belt, landing upon her gun, small and compact and freshly reloaded. The man is tall, broad, dressed in clothes that may be trying to look non discreet but are instead clearly, so clearly topside, all neat stitching and not a single tear.

Vi found her. Vi looked for her. Vi looked for her with Piltover in tow. 

He takes a step back, coming to a stop against the far cave wall, crushing a few globs of fungi under him with the impact. Hands up, in front of his face, so nonthreatening. 

Could be an act. 

Hand on the grip. Withdraw it slowly. Vi’s eyes widen, and there it is, there’s what she’s been expecting, the horror that punctures this little reunion, pops it straight away. 

“Who’s he?” She asks. Her voice tremors the slightest bit. She hates it. Hates how her sister does this to her, makes her feel suddenly like she’s been shoved into a smaller, weaker body, like she is always on the cusp of crying her eyes out. Little girl in the shadows of The Last Drop, watching the infinitely older kids go on missions and succeed and laugh and her, her , never there, never there. 

“A friend.”

“You have topside friends?” She raises her arm in slow increments, like the hand of Piltover’s great clock. All ten of her fingers gripping the gun, though it’s light as anything.

“Powder, let me explain .” Vi glances over her shoulder at him, still pressed against the wall like he wishes he could fall through it, and then turns back to her, holds up a single hand, palm-out, like she could catch the bullet herself. Somehow, a part of Jinx thinks that she could. Vi has always been this, in her mind, impartial pillar, strength personified in the tautness of her arms and the quirk of her grin, stone that will never shatter, chip, or wear. “I was imprisoned,” Vi says, soft, like Jinx is a wild animal— maybe not too far off the mark , she thinks—“he freed me.”

“And why would he ever do that?” She snarls, mouth twisting into something that rests on the spectrum between sneer and grimace . 

“We were- we shared a few goals,” Vi says, voice louder now, the hitch of panic to it. It’s satisfying to hear. Jinx can almost believe she has the upper hand, that she’s finally going to beat her at some sort of silent contest. 

“Oh? And what would those be?” She claps once, relighting the cave, and both of them startle at the loud crack . “ Capturing me, maybe? Taking me to…” she gestures with her gun-hand, using it as a pointer to indicate upwards , “ away , again?” 

“No.” The singular word is solid, entirely certain, “ no , Powder, I don’t know what… I was imprisoned, Jinx, they threw me in there. So many nights on that floor, being…” she hesitates, eyes darting back towards the man against the wall, like this is not necessarily something she wants him to hear. Jinx’s grip on the gun tenses. 

“...when I was broken, tired, starving, I thought of you , Powder, I survived to find you .” 

It’s meant to break her. It’s meant to bow her spine, send her heart collapsing and reforming and reuniting with her sister. 

It almost works. She has to grit her teeth, bite into her cheek so hard that blood blooms through the cracks in her teeth, to keep herself from dropping the gun. 

“And him ?”

Vi opens her mouth to speak, but surprisingly, he beats her to the punch. “Gems.” A pause, before he clears his throat, continues, “uh, long story , but I was… looking for them. Small, blue things. Heard you were, uh, quite the inventor.”

A moment of silence as the words sink in. She stares at him for long enough that he actually manages to shrink in on himself, broad as he is. 

The laugh forces its way out of her before she even knows what’s happened. Tinged with more than a bit of mania, a shrill sort of thing that’s underlaid by the rasp of a hack. She tries to strangle it back down, but it won’t , and then, there are arms around her once again, encasing her against the solidity of smoke and leather, of hands tightening around her back and dragging her into an embrace. 

The gun stays hovering for a moment. Would be so easy, now, to shoot. Finger’s upon the trigger already. She meets the man’s eyes for the briefest of moments, and maybe he divines her thoughts, because his eyes widen. She toys with the idea, rubbing her index finger up and down the smooth metal. 

“I hope you know,” Vi near-whispers, tears upon Jinx’s neck, “I hope you know I never meant to hurt you, Powder.”

The gun falls to the floor. 

“You left me.” Despite this small concession, she doesn’t let herself collapse, doesn’t give herself the privilege of trust just yet. “I screamed for you. And you left!” 

“I shouldn’t have,” Vi whispers, and there’s the idea that she could say a thousand words, about prison and enforcers and death, shift the blame to a probably-valid third party excuse, but Jinx is grateful that she leaves it at that. Gives her an almost silent permission to fall , rest her head on Vi’s shoulder, finally, finally loose. 

The moment stretches for what feels like an eternity before, eventually, she unsticks herself. Does it first because she gets the feeling that, if she doesn’t, Vi never will. 

“Name,” she demands, once they are both free of each other, pointing at the man. 

He’s still for a moment before leaping into a slightly-panicked, “ Jayce . Jayce Talis.”

Full name. Probably his real name, too. He really is a topsider. She frowns at him, but he seems unfazed, which is something, at least. 

“You know Victor,” she states, not a question. They found him somehow , and since she knows it’s not Vi who located him, it has to be him. Victor never mentioned him , but maybe he didn’t rank as all that important when put up against her long-lost-sibling.

Jayce dips his chin in a nervous nod. “Yes. Met him at Progress Day.”

That makes sense. It’s all coming together, wires snapping into place, sparks flying to life. 

“How do you know him?” Vi asks, veiling what she’s sure is quite a lot of curiosity behind the light question. 

“He’s my… friend ,” she settles on, because there’s really no other way to say it. Mentor too impersonal, and when she thinks family , she thinks Vi and Silco, and he does not fit into the slot of either. 

Which reminds her of the wyvern in the room, the name that neither of them have said. She remembers Ekko, remembers the disbelief in his voice, incredulity, I didn’t believe you’d sink so low or something to that effect. Her hand twitches. Maybe she should pick that gun back up. 

“I heard you threatened him,” she says to dispel the silence. Vi winces. 

“I- yeah, I did. I didn’t know he was your…” she trails off, again that vagueness, that space that neither of them know how to fill because they don’t know what they’re allowed to say around each other, exactly. 

A moment of silence, again. She’d never imagined this sort of reunion in the first place, but if she had, she wouldn’t have thought it would be so awkward . 

“We were looking at something,” Vi says abruptly, “before you got here. Further down the hall. It’s why I didn’t… it’s why I took so long to find you. There's a room.”

“Yeah?” Jinx asks, unsure of what, exactly, she’s meant to do with that information. They haven’t seen each other for half a decade. A couple minutes of panicked shouting is fetid water under the bridge. 

“I think…” she trails off, and then simply beckons, nodding to the darkness of the tunnel ahead, “I didn’t get the chance to look at much, but I think you should see it.”

Jayce pushes off the wall hesitantly, like he’s waiting for an invitation. She doesn’t miss the miniscule nod that Vi gives to him. It rankles at her, gnaws at her sides. How can she trust him already, topsider? How does Victor know him? Do they both like him? Do they like him more than they like her?

This time, it’s her that’s shocked when Vi claps, bathing the tunnel in light once again. Push those thoughts away. Box them up. It’s what she’s good at. 

Well, that’s a lie. She’s good at breaking boxes. 

Still. Can’t hurt to try. 

—

They walk down a long stretch of tunnel, twisting through a few more pathways. As Jinx trails behind, she tries to categorize all the ways that Vi has changed . Her tattoos, for one, mechanical patterns sprawling across the exposed sections of her back, the VI scrawled under her left eye. Her hair, longer now. Still short, but styled, trimmed with at least the idea of a haircut. Taller, of course, wider, and still so horribly familiar. 

She tries to identify how she’s changed, as well. More of the same—longer hair, tattoos scraping across her arms and back, a few more voices in her head, all that typical sort of stuff. Maybe more relevant are the weapons strapped to her hip, is the gun that she managed to grab before following. She certainly didn’t have those, in the beforetimes. 

Embedded into the side of one of the walls is a door. More accurately, a series of wooden slats boarded into something that approximates a door, already cracked open. The crusted remains of white fungi line the edges, and the ground is dusted in pale dust. 

“In here,” Vi says, though there was no need to clarify. She tugs the door open. Enters first. Jayce makes to walk in next, but Jinx shoulders past him, darting forwards fast enough that she almost runs into Vi’s back. “Have you been here?” She asks, “Victor said you spent a lot of time down here.” 

She swallows. “No. Victor was lying.”

“Oh,” Vi says, and then, “...should’ve figured, I guess. I don’t think anyone’s been here for a while.” 

“Is it an old miner’s room?” That’s what it looks like at first glance—smells of fire and metal, grimy surfaces coated with an inch of dust, and under that, what looks to be the shining speckles of many different minerals, all passing over these worn surfaces. On some of the tables, carelessly askew like they were abandoned mid-sip, are chipped cups. Many other personal accoutrements too, pens and tools and a stained shelf piled with yellowed books. 

Vi’s voice cracks when she speaks next. She stands near the closest wall. Upon it are a line of hooks, torn jackets hanging from each rusted slip of metal. “Not just any miner, I think.”

Jinx draws closer. Obligingly, Vi takes the edges of the closest jacket, a broad thing that would swallow either of them except perhaps Jayce—and even then, remain a size or two too large—and there is the hint of a premonition, the bitterness of foresight pooling upon Jinx’s tongue as she draws closer. Vi separates the wings like a ribcage, bares the delicate leather spine, and there, in the center, is a single faded V . 

There, below it, nestled in the hollow of its chest like a heart, is another jacket. Similar in all ways except its size, its size and the letter that’s engraved upon its bones. 

1. S. 

Jinx stares for a long moment, long enough that Vi lets the flaps fall shut again. The outer jacket is large enough to dwarf the one within, but the V remains visible, and she can almost imagine the S if she tries hard enough. 

“He was a-”

“I know ,” she interrupts. Desperately, her mind spins, trying to find a way that this cannot be, though she doesn’t even know why it cannot be. It makes sense. The wyvern has burst through the walls and it’s trying to gore her to death. It only has one eye. 

“Do you think…?”

“It has to be.” The words slide out around her lips, numb and slick and viscous. “Him and… him.” She can’t say either name, for some reason. 

“Silco,” Vi says, and evidently, she has no such problem, “and Vander, maybe they…” she whirls away, leaving Jinx alone by the row of jackets, paces an angry semicircle around the room before turning again, slamming a hand down upon the table. “I can’t make sense of it, it doesn’t…” 

“Maybe this will help,” someone says, such a new voice that Jinx almost grabs her gun again before realizing it’s just Jayce. He stands at the opposite side of the room, holding a stained sheet of parchment pinched between his thumb and index finger. Vi crosses the room in an instant, snatches it from him to no resistance. 

Slowly, almost reluctantly, Jinx makes her way across the room as well to stand beside her. It’s uncomfortable, in a way, to be so close. Unfamiliar. Why isn’t Vi familiar? 

It’s the handwriting that strikes her first, agonizingly familiar, pieces of paper pinned to the walls of The Last Drop, small notes of encouragement dropped in her pockets, shopping lists and letters and maps. Vi considers it for a moment, hand tightening enough to nearly rip the delicate paper. 

“It’s to Silco,” she says hoarsely, voice hardly a hair above a whisper. 

From Vander . 

Neither of them need to say that part. 

After a moment, Vi drops the paper down onto the table. Doesn’t turn away—her eyes are still fixated to it, still reading—but it’s like it burnt her, like she cannot bear the contact anymore. At least it gives a better angle to read it at than half-covered by her shoulder. 

I’ve looked everywhere , it starts, and blisters and bedrock , it ends, everything in between a blur of letters that seem to be trying their best to force their ways out of her head. Vi finishes before she does, takes a wide step back. The paper has graduated from white-hot to straight-up diseased , a sphere of pathogen surrounding it. 

“Who’s she ?” She demands, and without waiting for an answer, “Silco knew him, and he still- he never found this, he killed him!” She turns, barely avoiding hitting Jayce with her shoulder—he who currently looks like he’s heavily considering if it’s appropriate to vacate the room. Jinx doesn’t know if she pities or envies the poor guy. It’s a bit hard to get her emotions in check, now that everything, everything , is crashing down. 

So they were… so they knew each other in some strange, twisted way, impossible to divine—except not impossible, she could just ask (except, impossible, because how’s she gonna explain that — except she has a lot of things to explain, Vi doesn’t know, Vi still doesn’t know about her, her and Silco )—a thousand things nested within each other, impossible to dig her way to the bottom. 

The world brightens, dims. She pays it no mind. 

“How could he?” Vi asks, all the anger suddenly gone, bled from her voice, “I wish they’d…” 

“If he’d found this,” Jinx says, and it feels odd to talk about Silco like this, impersonal—like she did not see him this morning, was not planning on seeing him again tonight. He’ll need his dosage. Can’t do it himself. How’s she going to get home to do that with Vi in tow ? 

“Everything might be different,” Vi completes, “whatever- whatever happened, whoever she was.” 

It almost rings true, for the briefest second. Then, though, his face appears in her mind’s eye—scarred, contorted in anger—and forgiveness doesn’t seem like a suit he’s quite used to wearing. Would it have changed anything? Would he forgive Vander, would Vander forgive him, for whatever strange sin tore their strange bond to shreds?

“I was afraid you’d… he’d’ve done something to you,” Vi says, letting out the words all in a singular breath like a confession, “that I would never find you again.”

“Yeah?” Jinx asks. Again, the world brightens, dims. She should tell Vi, tell her right now, he’s not so bad, he wouldn’t do anything, he told me you were dead . 

Ekko. Give me something . Betrayal. 

“He didn’t, did he?” She asks, looking suddenly up with wide eyes. Fear that’s tinged with anger, panic in her voice and tension in her fists, “you… you escaped, even when they took me?”

So easy. Just say it! Just a few short words, and then she’ll be disbelieving—followed quickly by bargaining, anger, maybe a punch thrown or two. 

Silco told her she was dead. Silco told her there was something wrong with Victor, not to trust him, Silco has told her many things, many words streaming in-one-ear-out-the-other, and most have been right, she thinks. He saved her. He’ll always be with her. 

Maybe he can forgive her for this. 

“I escaped,” she confirms, nodding shortly, “he never hurt me.”

It’s not even much of a lie. 

Bright. Dim. Vi’s face shutters in relief, tension bleeding out of her, and it’s almost worth the lie just to see her so happy -

“There’s something out there,” Jayce says. Both heads snap to look at him. In the duration of the conversation, he’s moved to edge around the back of the table, shoulders tense. 

Bright, dim, and only now, does Jinx realize that it’s not a figment of her imagination, not her vision going wonky the way it usually does, but instead the response of the fungi outside the door. Something moving—something making enough noise to alert it. 

There is the scrape of something against stone, a dull thud, another, closer, bright, dim, she takes a step back, withdrawing her gun once again. 

“Shimmer victim?” Jayce suggests, “maybe they use the tunnel-”

“ Quiet ,” Vi snaps at him, and he falls silent immediately. 

Bright, dim, bright dim, in quicker and quicker succession, scraping and the dull sounds of movement, and then, and then there is something visible through the gaps in the door, fur and skin and it’s the monster , Singed’s monster. 

“What the fuck is that?” Vi breathes, backing up a step. Jinx considers explaining, but then, it reaches a massive paw-claw towards the door, rips it off with a single yank, and she shoots thrice, three bullets in whatever expanse of flesh they manage to hit. 

It doesn’t even faze the thing. The doorway is small enough that it doesn’t quite fit, but it reaches a massive, clawed hand in, sends one of the shelves toppling to the side. Again, she shoots, but she’s rapidly running out of bullets, and it does not even flinch when they hit. She also has the flashbangs upon her belt, but in such a small space—her most dangerous bombs, they are not, but it’s more than enough to blind and deafen and scramble their brains in their skulls, here. 

Vi’s swearing a constant stream under her breath. She moves back again, nearing Jayce, who’s managed to grab a small, rusted hammer—little help that’ll be—but she seems to take similar inspiration, grabbing about on the tables for anything, any sort of weapon. 

Again, it makes a swipe with those long, jagged claws. Jinx tries to aim more carefully this time, its eye, but the bullet sinks into its arm instead. The walls of the shaft shake, clearly unused to sustaining such force. If it doesn’t manage to slash them up, it’ll kill them via cave-in. 

A cup flies to shatter against its chest, and then an inkwell, a book. 

“ Seriously? ” She yells, darting around a table, trying to find a good angle. 

“I can’t fistfight that!” Is Vi’s frantic response, skittering around the room. Another shot. It doesn’t hit the eye, but it manages to land against its nose, and it rears back, lets out a long, low roar of pain. 

One more. There’s little left to throw, anymore, the room was barren in the first place, and Jinx takes aim, steadying herself as it screeches, the ground shakes, room so bright that it’s almost blinding, shoot ! 

It twists at the last moment and the bullet sinks into its shoulder. She darts back, and the edge of the doorway crumbles, allowing it to force its upper midsection in. She’s going to die here. She’s going to die here, and Victor’s going to be so mad at Singed for setting this thing on the city, and she won’t even be around to hear him rant about it. 

Something large and black flies through the air, fluttering with the force of, not something solid, but instead fabric. It drapes across the creature’s face—the jacket, Vi threw the jacket , followed swiftly by the other, which lands a bit short, sprawled across the ground. 

Everything freezes. Jinx’s breath crystallizes in her throat. 

It stills for a long, taut second, not even a single twitch of the claw. And then, another sound, but this one is not a growl— a register higher than all the rest, long and keening, and it reaches up a paw not to eviscerate them but instead swipe the jacket from its head, backing out simultaneously. All of them are silent, afraid to make the slightest sound—afraid to draw it back—but it keeps going, until it’s entirely removed from the room, still making that strange, mournful sort of noise. 

It makes a quick turnabout in the center of the hall, bounds back the way it came. Again, the tunnel is entirely dark. 

“What was that?” Vi asks, once a good ten minutes of darkness have passed, and their breathing has slowed to something that doesn’t sound like a frightened rabbit. Jinx stares at the darkness it left. 

“A monster,” Jinx says, and, knowing that’s the obvious answer, “Singed released it.”

“Who’s…?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Chiefly because that’s all too much to explain. 

“...Where’s it going?” How’s she supposed to know? The rankle from the assumption is only made worse by the fact that she maybe does, in fact, know. 

“To wherever Ekko is.” 

“ Ekko ?” Vi exclaims standing straight, and she’s struck once again by the knowledge of how distant they’ve been, how much Vi does not know. Maybe it’s because she’s been hearing her voice, all this time, but she thought she’d been here for more . 

“Long story,” Jinx says, a laugh puttering about at the end of the phrase, and Vi pushes off the wall, walking gingerly to the cracked entranceway. 

“It’s looking for- for Ekko, you’re sure?”

“Something like that. Got the trail and everything.” Assuming it's still locked onto the Chirean, that it still has the sent of Singed's blood flooding through its veins. 

She turns, eyes wide. “We have to find him, then. Where is he?”

Jinx blinks at her slowly, dumbly. Almost says, why would we look for him, he tried to kill me , before remembering that she was in fact not there for that, either. 

“...I don’t know,” she replies, “but the monster will leave a trail. Do we-”

“Okay,” Vi says, like she does not even hear the reproach in those words—she probably doesn’t, really—“and I want to get a closer look at it.”

“It’s a monster,” Jinx says, still trying to turn her off of this, for a multitude of reasons—the aforementioned attempted murder, the fact that this will surely let Vi know she’s been lying about Silco, the fact that she should probably be returning to Silco himself sometime soon—“what else d’you need ?”

“There was something off about it,” Vi maintains, taking a cautious step into the tunnel, “I need to see…”

“And me?” Jayce asks. Jinx turns, startled once again. She’d forgotten he was there. There’s a jab of vicious satisfaction at Vi’s turn, at the fact that she’s forgotten about him too. 

“You’re not making it back up alone,” Vi states, and he dips his head in a nod. Looks like he’s not too eager to go wandering about Zaun alone either. “But we don’t have time to ferry you… Victor’s lab?” She turns back ot Jinx with those last words, “Will he-”

“No,” she says, no, she doesn’t think he’ll be back there, not unless something goes quite wrong with Singed, but something tells her that that’s not going to happen. 

“Then come on,” she says. Problem solved, just like that. Except, not really, because Jinx would really rather he be gone, and he looks like he would rather he be gone as well—but, after a moment of apparent contemplation, he nods, standing fully to his feet as well. 

She must swallow past the lump in her throat. Maybe she can split off before they reach Ekko’s. Doubt Vi’s able to catch her, anymore. Or maybe it won’t even lead to his nebulous hideout, maybe it’ll all be fine . 

Doing that, though, will lead to losing this new, tenuous thread between her and Vi, will lead to the shattering of this brief sisterhood. The stone in her throat travels down through her esophagus, down to settle leaden in her stomach. 

Better enjoy it well it lasts, then. She only realizes, as these thoughts pass through her head, that Vi’s been calling her Powder , not Jinx. Enjoy that, too—she’ll be doing the latter soon enough, she’s sure. 

“Okay,” she agrees, walking up to meet Vi beside the door. She bumps her shoulder against hers—and it hurts— but Vi looks down, half-smiling, and nudges her back, and maybe it’ll be worth it, ten minutes in the heavens before an eternity deep, down below.

Chapter Text

If nothing else, it is a relief to finally break back out into open air, as open as air can be, down here in Zaun. The smog that usually scratches its way down her throat, clumps like shards of glass when inhaled too liberally, is almost as fresh as topside after so long underground. She cuts a glance at Jayce, trying to evaluate if he’s looking pale around the edges, but he’s taking the trials of the undercity annoyingly well. Or, he’s at least annoyingly good at hiding his struggle, which isn’t much better for her sense of vindication. 

The path left is far from the hardest to follow. A section of the railing has been torn away, metal twisted into sharp edges that resemble a blade, and there are similar marks of passage lining the underalleys they pass through. Great gashes that cleave through the exposed dirt, uprooting weaker bits of cobble. A scrap of fur caught on the jagged outcrop of a twist of scrap. A Shimmer addict who, when approached, simply huddles deeper into their rags, making an inarticulate sort of whine, and points frantically down a far alley. 

Instead of taking them deeper into the city center, the path instead skirts around it, not quite reaching either the burning core or the bleeding edges of the city. Still far enough that Piltover is hardly but a geometric shape in the mist, outlined at its highest buildings by a slick of pale sunlight. The bit of light that drips tentatively across the rooftops is not yet strong to the point of viscosity, but instead warily insipid, wan. Helped maybe by the fact that the sun is not at full strength—it’s slowly dying, sinking below the horizon like a drowning man. It’s not enough to reach the streets, and if Jinx were alone, she’d be strolling along the rooftops, but since she’s not, she must content herself with darkness. 

“Ekko,” Vi says, after a long stretch of walking, as Jinx traces a long line of half-dried blood that’s been scraped across the buildings, leaving scraps of fur and some other, greenish fluid in its wake, “he’s… good?”

“Just fine,” Jinx says. She knows that her tone verges on snappish, which must look quite strange to Vi, but she can’t bring herself to modulate it. She tilts her head, curiosity swimming in her eyes, and there’s the clear expectation that she’ll leap to answer this unspoken question, clear up a momentary misunderstanding. 

“Why does it have his trail?”

“Long story,” she drawls. It’s not even much of a lie. Vi slows a fraction, and she pauses mid-step when she falls out of step with her. 

“We have a long walk. Shoot.”

“...It attacked me,” she says. She doesn’t remember ever being that good of a liar, never able to sew words together as smoothly as Silco, but this one is cobbled from half-truths and maybe Vi wants to believe it so much that it fills more yet of the gaps. “One of Ekko’s friends saved me. And it… caught his scent.”

Truth—that being, a mad scientist and a blue gem and the boyish desire to rescue— really is stranger than fiction, in this scenario. 

A beat passes before Vi says, “wasn’t very long.”

“I cut a lot out.”

The path rises a bit, curving about, and she realizes that, in a roundabout way, it’s taking them back near Viktor’s river. Surely a different section, more upriver than the cave that sits at its mouth. Not the most efficient route, such a circuitous way, but she supposes that the monster wasn’t really thinking about that, not when it was following the panicked path the Chirean surely must have made. 

They are close enough to the river that she can hear it when the path diverges suddenly, a gouge of claw in the dirt that sends them turning towards what was once a sealed tunnel. The circular metal lid covering it has been rent, ripped from the surface and discarded in a crumpled mess, revealing the darkness below. It’s a generic thing, no markings upon it, no doubt installed by whoever built this section of the city to bar access to the tunnels below, but she notes that it has signs of use even beyond its premature destruction. A bit of wear on the handle, some thin scratches around the rim that have no doubt come from being lifted up and reinserted a thousand times. 

Jinx knows, deep in her gut, that this is her last chance. Last chance to turn and run, to flee from the crushing weight of facing Ekko again, from Vi finding out all the secrets that boil in her pericardium. Vi will find out either way, but if she proceeds, she’ll have to watch it happen. It’ll be disappointment first, she’s sure, and then grief, and then the anger she knows all too well. 

It will be familiar. It will be like coming home, leaving home, having no home at all. 

She takes a step back, away from the gape in the earth. 

“It’s down there,” Vi says grimly, matching her backwards movement by walking forwards, feet in line with the edge. A plane of light manages to drape across the vertical walls, illuminating a ladder and a surprisingly vast space below. 

Another step back, away. She’s standing in-line with Jayce now, who has noticed her retreat, and gives her an all-too-concerned look. She doesn’t like it, doesn’t like his concern, doesn’t like him . 

Only when she has made it back one further stride does Vi think to turn. Every nerve in her body screams to run , to dart back into a place that’s grown hopefully unfamiliar enough that she won’t be followed. She almost does, heels rising from the earth, hand clenching tight enough that her nails dig red crescent moons into the paleness of her palm, but then Vi tilts her head. 

“Powder, what’s wrong?” 

“Nothing,” she snaps, feet bolted to the ground. 

“Is it the tunnel?” She moves towards her, a single hand reaching out in concern, “we can find a different way.”

No, they can not, given the monster’s trail leads into the tunnel and the tunnel alone, but it’s the offer , the care behind the words, reaching for her as delicately as a flower for the sun. Jinx folds like a bad hand of cards, shoulders bowing into silent submission. 

“Let’s go,” she says sharply, dodging Vi’s reaching comfort and crossing to the other edge of the hole. Before another question can be asked of her that she does not know how to answer, she lowers herself onto the first rung of the ladder. 

It is some material that’s not metal and not wood but instead some nebulous third thing that’s probably dangerous in some way. She darts down with quick, narrow movements, until she’s alighting down on the bottom. Vi follows swiftly, slightly more careful, and Jayce takes more than enough time, carefully testing each rung with his foot, hands white-knuckled around the bars. It’s like he’s never even climbed a ladder before. 

The space below is even larger than it looked from the top of the hole. The walls are marked with graffiti, none of that fancy, coherent stuff that adorns some of the top levels—murals of the long-dead, of goddesses and prayers and other useless stuff—but instead what someone’d expect more of Zaun. The type of thing that Jinx would make—large, sweeping scrawls of dissonant color, all layered up on each other and mixing into kaleidoscopic knots. Things that might be signatures, or might be nonsensical lines, impossible to tell. 

She reaches up a hand, traces down one of them. It’s gritty beneath her fingertips, slightly raised. Maybe Ekko drew this one. Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

Encased by metal and concrete as they are, there are no claw-gouges to mark the way, no tufts of fur or piss-scared onlookers, but then again, the tunnel only goes one way. She inhales a deep gulp of air, and then another, when the first doesn’t seem to satisfy, and by the time she’s trying to swallow the third, Vi is at her side, and oh—she didn’t realize she’d been making noise. Or crying. 

“What’s wrong?” She repeats, placing a hand upon her shoulder, folding Jinx into an embrace like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like they have not been separated for a decade, like there is nothing wrong, and for a moment, she is able to imagine that they’re in The Last Drop, many years ago, and something stupid happened—Mylo destroyed one of her toys—none of this complication . 

She can’t stand it anymore, the weight that’s leaden in her chest, and the words come first as a whisper, but then louder, as a stone rolling down a hill. “I have… have something to tell you.”

“What?” Vi asks. It’s clear that she doesn’t know what to expect from this impromptu confession, which makes sense. She thinks Jinx is some poor little girl, innocence bottled and brewed, hiding from the big bad wolf who stalks Zaun’s desire trails. 

Jayce, maybe taking some silent sort of hint, trudges on ahead. Not far enough that Vi, mother hen, can call for him to come back, but he’s distant enough that he can examine the graffiti on the wall and pretend he can’t hear the conversation. Her estimation of him grows by about a tenth of a centimeter, but it’s quickly swallowed by the issue at hand. 

That being actually speaking . 

“Remember,” she finally manages, “when you asked about him ? Silco?”

She nods slowly. 

“Hurt,” she says, and when Vi’s shoulders tense, she quickly rushes, “ I wasn’t hurt, he never hurt me. I just…” the clog of a decade’s worth of memories all rise in her throat, potent enough to gag . Some dark shape, some person she once knew, circles around her, hands just barely brushing over her shoulders. It’s not Vi—obviously—too broad to be Mylo. Larger than Claggor, even. 

Scratch that. She does know who it is, even if she averts her eyes from his slow orbit. 

“Hetookmein,” she finally expels, all the words coming out in one quick rush, “after you left , he- he and I, he…” saying it once was evidently more than she could handle, because she can’t think of a way to finish that sentence, a way to differentiate it. 

“He…?” Vi trails off as she processes, turns the idea about in her head. Jinx closes her eyes, expecting… expecting the absence of warmth, maybe a hand to her face, the anger of words to come raining down upon her head. 

None of it comes. The grip around her shoulders doesn’t loosen. Doesn’t tighten either, doesn’t constrict. 

“Oh, Powder ,” Vi murmurs, chin coming down to rest upon her head. Her voice is quote, a bit textured, the hint of a warble or a sob, “he took you?”

Not exactly—funny how much that sentence changes, without the final word—but she nods. 

“Why didn’t you say?” She asks. The answer to this is easier to force out, somehow, maybe because it seems more like a truth than anything else. 

“You’d hate me, wouldn’t you? For staying with him? Leave me again?”

A silence follows those words. The same large shape makes another stalking circle around them, and she can almost reach out a hand to touch him, touch Vander, and she wonders if he’s disappointed in her, wherever he is. 

“We’re sisters ,” Vi swears, and now the grip of her embrace does tighten, but not to strangle—just to squeeze—“forever. I wouldn’t do that to you. What did he..?”

She hesitates for not the first time, trying to find an answer that encapsulates all that. Fed me, kept me from dying , is the obvious, but that feels wholly inadequate and also like she sold her soul for nothing more than a few scraps, the promise of a stolen roof over her head. 

“He was all I had,” is what she finally manages, and Vi’s head falls upon her own, thudding down with a force that would hurt if she had the mind to be worried about that sort of thing. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers into her hair. Jinx internalizes the words more from the sensation of her mouth moving than from actually hearing them, that and a bridge of knowledge, of knowing, on some base level, what Vi would say. 

Maybe they are sisters, after all, even after all this. 

Jayce makes an inarticulate sound, puncturing the bubble of brief peace.She whips around, pulling free from Vi’s grip, face already falling into a frown. What , is on the tip of her tongue, snappish, but it fades when she sees him—staring up, up and down the tunnel. There is a faint roar, so loud that miniscule echoes reverberate even through the tunnel. Must’ve been another sound that was lost to her—one that caught his initial attention. The sound of viciousness: of brutality . 

“We should go,” Vi says, stepping back as well, her gaze following his. Something stirs in Jinx’s chest, that same reluctance that’s been dogging her heels since they left the mine, but it’s weaker than it was before. No more secrets between them—well, less —and the biggest one is out of the way. And, maybe if Vi can forgive her for Silco, she can forgive her for Ekko as well. 

With that, they break into a run. 

—

The tunnel blurs into a journey of nothingness. Can’t be more than a minute or two of running before they’re slowing, approaching an exit—the path forked once, but that was an easy enough maze to puzzle, if not by the claw marks in the dirt floor then by the graffiti. More sounds run jagged through the air—another snarl, a scream, muffled shouting and the buzz of machinery. It’s a hole similar to the one they entered through, another ladder leading up, another cover torn away. 

“Wait,” Jayce says, as Vi places one foot upon the ladder, “what’s the plan ?”

When she gives him a blank look, he runs a hand through his hair, indicates the open air. “You don’t have a weapon, I don’t have any, she -” he points at Jinx and she tries not to bat his hand out of the hair—“used hers up, back there.”

She scoffs. Pulls, from her belt, two small, round flashbangs, tosses one to Vi—she catches it one-handed—and one to Jayce, who almost lets it slip to the ground. 

“Light and sound,” she instructs, “pull the plug, cover your eyes and ears. I have more. Only used the gun.” She puts a bit of emphasis on those last few words, pushing distaste, annoyance, some combination of those emotions into it. He frowns, annoyingly unperturbed. 

“That’s good, but… of course, I want to help ,” he stresses, as Vi’s gaze locks upon him, “I’m just…”

“Not used to this?” Jinx asks, “too busy living it up in Topside? Poor baby .”

 He opens his mouth, closes it again. 

“Maybe,” he finally says. 

She’s not sure what to do with the acquiescence. Expected him to argue, not roll over and agree, but maybe that all makes sense as well. 

“We’re wasting time,” Vi snaps, pocketing the small bomb, “I’ll talk to Ekko, figure something out.” Well-timed, a scream rings out overhead, shrill. Jinx wonders briefly if he’s going to lose any more friends than the one she killed already, that girl upon the board, but swallows the thought before something suspiciously similar to guilt begins to creep up her spine. 

She doesn’t wait for their input before she begins to scale the ladder with quick, tight movements. Jinx offers Jayce a shrug and a smile that bleeds into the edge of a grimace before she follows. For a moment, she almost thinks he’ll stay there—wait in the tunnel which might actually be the better choice, from a practical perspective. Before the thought has a full moment to set, though, the ladder trembles with the beginning of his ascent. 

So he’s either stupid, or brave. Which, not saying much, they’re all stupid or brave, except for her , who’s insane, which is a good mix of both of them. 

From the tunnels, they emerge into what looks like a back alley, a slit between two tall gray buildings, both sides similarly scrawled over with bright colors and curving designs. Not in the middle of the conflict—but as they emerge from the alley, the nexus is clear. 

What first hits her eyes, though, is not the monster tearing its way across the ground, nor the many figures flitting about on boards overhead, but instead the tree . It stretches as tall as a building, and half as thick as one too, trunk almost bronzed in color, leaves as green as gems, illuminated perfectly by a shaft of sunlight. In some areas, the large roots merge with stretches of pipe, colored deep bronze by rust and sunlight. 

Coiled around it and extending to the buildings around are what must once have been rope paths, but are now mostly tatters of cut string and hanging planks of wood. Perched upon the highest boughs, she spots platforms and roofed constructions. It’s unlike anything she’s ever seen, Zaun or otherwise, but the wonder only lasts a moment. 

Mostly because of the aforementioned monster, which stands on its hind legs, great claws reaching for those who flutter past it on green-trailed hoverboards. They seem to be doing a good enough job of staying out of its reach, but none of them have weapons either—none, except for one, who circles around near the high canopy. She can make out an owl mask and an achingly familiar gun. 

Ekko . 

Her stomach twists. 

The monster reaches ineffectually for him again, and he yells something, a taunt that doesn’t reach her ears. Shoots, and the bullet pelts into its shoulder, sending it staggering back a step, but it regains ground just as quickly. Not just ground, but it leaps onto the roots of the tree, and then up, digging its claws into the bark. From there, it propels itself to the lowest branch, and then to another, rapidly leaping up the tree. 

In one of the roofed houses located near the top, a face peers out from the window. Eyes wide, mouth open in a scream, staggering back. Young —a child, she realizes belatedly. 

Vi must see too, because she dashes forwards, into the clearing, straight into the midst of the flying figures. Most swing around to regard her—one yells something approximating, who is that , but she doesn’t respond. Before she can think, Jinx’s legs are taking her after her, sprinting into the center as well, even though that’s a profoundly bad idea. More shouts of alarm, but most are focused not on the two strangers in their midst but instead the monster scaling the tree and reaching for the blood encased in flimsy walls of wood. 

At least until Ekko swoops lower. She cannot see his eyes behind the darkness of his mask, but she knows he is looking at her. Behind him, a streak of green flashes, and she spots a mask like a skull, two large ears that belay more than a face could. 

For a moment, they are caught in silent stalemate, suspended in what they know happened and what nobody else does, some shared secret that she can’t find much joy in. 

Instead of speaking, of spilling these skeletons into the open air, she turns, aims up. Lines up her last bullet, shoots . 

It digs its way into the expanse of the monster’s back, right at the nape of its spine. No blood seeps from the wound—it’s almost like it has not penetrated at all—but it must hurt, because the creature lets out a low groan, turns around the trunk on a single coiled arm. Its eyes land upon her after a moment of searching, and even from this distance, she doesn’t miss the brief gleam of animal intelligence. 

She’d anticipated some sort of quick motion, but by the time it’s landing in a roll, she’s only just barely processed the fact that it leapt from the tree in the first place. Where it pushed off, the bark is gouged, long, thick strips of brown gnarl that reveal the soft white flesh beneath. Her eyes catch on that detail for a second that lasts far too long, especially when there is a goliath barreling towards her. 

She wonders if it recognizes her. Their third time meeting, slipped from its claws the first two, and maybe thrice is the charm. For it, not her. 

Most of the flying figures have drawn back by now—some flit towards the upper constructs on the tree, maybe hoping to evacuate those within, but others simply hover high above the earth, content to watch, not help. She catches a glimpse of red in her peripheral, Vi pushing off the tree to run towards her, but she’s too far away, and only growing more distant as Jinx bolts away from the slavering dog at her heels. 

In any case, she doesn’t need a comprehensive survey of the scene to know what’s going on. 

She’s alone. Utterly. 

Turning on a heel, she darts around an outcropping of low stones. Each one is painted with small, clumsy drawings in many bright colors, clearly made by the hands of many children. 

She shoots around an outcrop of wall, finds not another open space, but instead an alley similar to the one they emerged into. Only, this one has no conveniently-placed manhole, just a stretch of wall. When she skids to a stop just before the end, her fingers scrabble against the stone, searching , but there’s not even a single grip to hoist herself up onto. 

Hopelessness choking her throat, she turns, fumbles at her belt for last resort—one of the bombs. Hefts it in her hand, as heavy as a heart, looks at the pinprick eyes that bound towards her, red like Zaun fireflies. Remembers catching them in the weeds when she was young, cupping them in her hands and feeling the wings beating weakly at her palms, and there is a connection here, something about hands and something about traps and something about eyes in the dark. 

Her grip upon the flashbang loosens. It falls to the ground, slipping between her fingers like water. She gathers the wherewithal, a moment later, to kick it forwards—she is slow, slow as cotton and honey and laudanum—but it’s too late. 

There is the click of metal as it chatters once, twice, and she barely manages to slap her hands over her ears. Doesn’t summon the mental fortitude to close her eyes, though. 

For a brief moment, she sees stars and feels a claw clench around her neck and smells something smoke and dog and chemical . 

The only thing that manages to penetrate the fog of white that lines every corner of her vision is red . 

That’s why it’s so noticeable when the color fades, flickers. 

Her legs give out beneath her, but she does not fall, perhaps helped by the clawed hand that’s wrapped around her neck. She cannot tell which motes of white are due to the bomb, and which are the lack of air. 

One goes light, and one goes dark. Eyes, she means. Or at least she thinks they’re eyes, because if they’re not, then she doesn’t know where the red went. One goes yellow and one goes blue, fading enough that she can make out the dark iris within each, light flaring out from the center like the corona of the sun. 

The grip around her throat tightens fractionally. Loosens again. It’s not the first time she’s been held by the neck in the past week, and isn’t that absurd?

Anything might be absurd when you’re dying. 

Is she dying?

The eyes brighten once again, fully settled into their new nebula of colors, and she falls. Takes her a moment to realize why, suddenly, she’s on the ground—she’s been released. 

There is a head above her, framed only by motes of fading light. 

“ Powder ,” someone growls, a voice she knows. She gasps for breath, hand coming up to her throat. The skin is tender enough that just the brush of her fingers sends pain coursing through her nerves. 

Her vision clears by the faintest amount, enough to see the monster above lean closer, two eyes like flowers, like the sun and the sea. 

“ Powder ,” it repeats, and she would not believe that the voice came from it if she didn’t watch its mouth move, see the long strings of drool that pool beneath its thick tongue and seep between its teeth. 

Funnier yet that she recognizes the voice. Uproots some memory embedded in the darkest corners of her brain, the grains of something smoothed and shaved away by Silco’s rough grip. 

If she flays off skin in the center of her mind, rotates his face about, cleaves away the snout, the jaw and the teeth… reshapes the face like it’s made of clay, melts it down in some great subconscious furnace and dredges it up again like a shipwreck, then it looks like a memory. 

If she had more air, she would ask how , or maybe, who —redundant, she knows—but because she has none, she simply flops back, trying to intake yet another gasp. 

Strong arms snake under her, one beneath the back and the other the legs, and she is bodily lifted into the air. Face pressed against a hard, leathery chest, serrated claws digging into her skin. Just enough pain to keep her lucid. Or, if not lucid, conscious. 

He turns, and she turns with him. 

“ Powder !” Someone calls. Cracking voice, thinner than she’s ever heard it, Vi . 

“What are you?” Another. Male. Higher up than the previous, not so weak. Ekko. She tries to crane her chin to look at him, but the movement doesn’t work. 

She answers both, expelling all the air she has collected. “ Vander .”

—

When she returns to the world, she is no longer in the arms of a beast, but instead laid out in the center of the commune. Above, the last dregs of sunlight filter through the tree’s canopy, and it’s only in the thickness of the light that belays nighttime’s arrival, writ out in crescents of ochre and burnt honey. 

“She’s awake,” a rough voice says. The words are accompanied with a rather unceremonious kick of a boot, leather digging into the softness of her side. That clues her into the identity of her watcher before she even sees the skull-shaped mask. 

The sound of footsteps drawing closer. Vi emerges into her field of view as a tableau of wide eyes and panic, crouching down to cradle Jinx’s head in her hands. 

Speaking hurts, but she does so anyways. “What- what’d I miss?”

Vi simply lets out a long, low sob, something approaching a keen. 

A third figure alights upon the ground with a thump and a puff of dust. 

“We have a lot to talk about,” he says.

When Jinx manages to sit up, she finds herself faced only by the three that have made themselves known. 

“Where is he?” She asks. Her memory is foggy, but she knows enough, and that enough is finally sinking in. The process of assimilation is faster with adequate oxygen and lack of adrenaline. If it is—it she’s not crazy, craz ier , then what does that mean about… about everything— “Was… was-”

Ekko and Vi exchange a silent look. She wonders what they talked about, when she was gone to the world. 

“Come,” he says. 

Vi helps her to her feet with only a little bit of stagger—and a lot-bit of lean—to the point that each step is practically carried by her. 

They circle around the long, bronze roots of the tree, to an angle she’s had yet to see. This is where everyone else is, she realizes—a group of Ekko’s community, men and women of all ages and appearances, huddled in a semi-circle around a tall concrete wall. 

Upon the wall is a mural, still with that touch of graffiti-messy, but there’s purpose to it, purpose to the strokes and swathes that take a moment to coalesce into one image. 

People. 

Benzo, Vi, Claggor and Mylo and Powder , not Jinx, young face and bright eyes. 

And, profiled like some ancient God, eyes gazing up at the canopy above, Vander . 

It’s only natural that her eyes fall upon the figures at the base of the painting. 

A beast wrought out in thick cords of muscle, in a mat of gunmetal-gray fur, sitting with its head bowed. Thick cords of rope wind around its wrists. Strong as they look, she doesn’t think they could hold it. Hold him. 

-And Jayce is there too, in the corner of the clearing, hands bound as well with a considerably weaker bit of twine that, funnily enough, she thinks will hold him. 

The crowd clears like the tides parting for the moon, wordless. It’s silent enough that the short walk from the edge of the mob to the mural is almost awkward, nothing but the scuff of footsteps and labor of her own breath. 

He turns as they approach, eyes alighting upon them as lightly as a breeze. Goldenrod and turquoise, flax and sapphire, familiar and not. They follow the movement of Ekko’s hands as he grabs his gun, holds it at a ready. 

“Is it you?” Vi asks. She sounds more scared than Jinx has ever heard her, and that makes her own heart pound evermore, because if her sister is frightened, then how can she be brave?

“ Yes ,” he growls, and Vi collapses forwards, bringing Jinx along with her, onto the broadness of his shoulder. There’s movement, the sound of rope snapping—Ekko’s gun clicks —but neither Jinx nor Vi flinches at the arms that come around to curl them into an embrace. 

She digs her face into his chest, wonders how there could have ever been any doubt. 

Vi mutters something, maybe I missed you . Jinx can’t decipher it, and she doesn’t try. It’s words meant for her alone. 

A long moment passes before they pull back, both in unison. 

“How?” Is the second question. It comes from neither of them but instead Ekko, who’s let his hand fall limply to his side, and now stares at him with a mixture of awe and… and envy . 

She only realizes why when she glances up at his face and sees the portrait of Benzo behind, illuminated by the hanging lanterns. 

“ Silco ,” he rasps. The name shatters the warm feeling encasing her heart—brings up a mix of emotions so tangled that she cannot decipher, grief regret hope more . It’s enough of a cacophony that she almost misses the second name to slide from his lips. “ Singed .”

Far from helping, it simply stirs the pot more—and entirely new angle of possibilities reveals itself to her, angled like shadows cast by the sun, that of experimentation and a lab and, and-

“Did he know?” She asks, thinking of a young man standing in a cave, of veiled panic in his voice. What did he say? It may be dangerous ?

For who?

Whatever puzzled response may have come of that, it’s interrupted by the bang of a gunshot . She whirls around, but Ekko’s eyes are just as wide as hers, and he’s only just pulling his weapon back into position. Someone screams—one of the crowd, so indistinct that it may as well be all of them—and she’s roughly pulled back , shunted by a large, clawed hand as Vander leaps to cover both her and Vi. 

Again, the crowd parts, but this is not so wordless, so calm as before—instead a rush to tear open, both sides falling to the side like the seams of a dress. 

Sevika walks down the aisle almost carefully , each step placed with precision. Behind her follows six figures; faces Jinx recognizes from Silco’s employ, nameless and angry. Both aim their own weapons indiscriminately, sending people stumbling back into each other. None take to the air, despite apparent capabilities—perhaps they’re afraid of being sniped down without the cover of a throng. 

“It’s past your curfew,” she says, as she alights into the square. The Chirean whirls around, snarl barely audible beneath the mask. 

“You-” he starts, as he lunges forwards, but Vander growls, slaps out a paw to catch him in the side. He flies back into the concrete wall upon the impact, but is up not a moment later. 

“I didn’t!” Jinx exclaims—screams, more like—volume beyond her control. She turns to Vi, notes that she has drawn back a bare centimeter, “I didn’t-”

“You work for him,” Vi says, cutting her off. She turns in a slow increment to face Sevika with the words—Jinx would think she was talking to her if not for that—and the woman nods slowly, mouth curling into a grim sort of smile. 

“What? Little miss didn’t tell you?”

“You all do,” she says, eyes slipping past Sevika and towards the men behind, “Drago? Jett?”

Presumably the ones in the row directly behind her, one dark-skinned and the other tan, black-haired and deep purple respectively. If Jinx digs into her memory, she can conjure up images of Vander sliding a drink across the bar to one, or the other at a dark gambling table, but she cannot tell if those are real or fictitious. 

The black-haired one doesn’t react, but purple does, eyes widening fractionally, with recognition or something of the sort. 

Vi takes a step forward. “You’re here to take my sister back to him?”

Black-hair, Drago, chuckles. “She ain’t your sister anymore, girl .”

“Because he’s in charge,” she says, slowly, as if guiding them to a conclusion. Sevika snorts, and beneath her cloak, her mechanical arm shifts. 

“God, that’s enough .” She takes a long stride forwards. Someone in the crowd makes a rush towards her, but one of the lackeys in the back turns, brings them down with a strike upon the head. 

“Not anymore,” Vi says. She doesn’t back up against Sevika’s advancement. At this point, they’re practically chest-to-chest. She reaches back, places a hand upon Vander’s arm, and it’s only at this moment that Jinx realizes where she’s going with this. 

“He’s back!” She yells, loud enough that the shout echoes off the curved walls, “the Hound! Vander!” 

Sevika snarls, leaps forwards, arm emerging from beneath her cowl like a snake from its burrow. She doesn’t touch Vi—in the same moment, Vander twists, and the simple movement matches her, sends her rolling across the floor. Ekko rises, twists off into the sky in a burst of green fire, and after a moment, those from the crowd follow, enough of them emboldened that not a single one can be shot down. 

“Get them!” Sevika yells, pushing back to her feet, hand scraping down mural-stone. 

Nobody does. 

Jett—purple hair, the one with the reaction—blinks once. 

“...Really?” He asks, voice so soft that it sounds almost childlike. Vi, panting with adrenaline-laced exertion, manages a nod. 

“Silco’s not in charge anymore,” she says, quietly. Her voice boldens with the second phrase, rising to a crescendo, “and he’ll never be again .”

Jinx wobbles on her feet. Good words, bad words, and she almost says something meek. Something defensive, along the lines of that confrontation with Ekko—so long ago, so short ago. He’s not so bad . Maybe we can work this out. 

But no. They can’t. 

She looks at Vander, at Vi, recalls that old letter in the bottom of the mineshaft, a plea for forgiveness left unanswered. 

No , she mouths. It feels like the burning of a bridge just to say it. 

Jett whirls around, pulling his pistol from its holster and training it upon Sevika. Even with the motion, she glances once back at Vander and asks, “is it really..?”

A moment of silence. Taut. 

“ Yes ,” he says hoarsely. 

After that, it is all motion. One more from the group breaks away—not a lot, but enough, enough that the other four back away. Of those four, she notes one eyeing Vander with some unspoken, tentative question. She expects a fight, for a moment—but of all of them, it’s Sevika who breaks, pushing off the wall and running. The four follow after a moment, and Ekko’s sky-bound group swoop in, a cloud of green and gunfire. Clips one in the leg, and she falls with a muffled shout. Two of the flying group soar down to apprehend her, and the rest follow the group, rounding around the edge of the tree and out of sight. 

Jett and the other back a step away, but neither run. The Chirean, on foot, walks up to them, beckons towards some other area. Limits himself to a single dirty glance before he leads them off. 

Jinx doesn’t follow. Neither does Vi. 

“He-” she starts, and then, because it’s probably best to be specific, “Silco… Viktor-” specific about what still isn’t quite in her field of mind. 

“What about them?” Vi murmurs, leaning down to rest her forehead against Jinx’s. An arm comes up around her back, large and muscular, herding her into a huddle of breath and warmth. 

“I don’t… I need to talk to-” she starts, takes that back immediately, “no, I don’t, I mean, what are we going to… you know , do ?” 

“We’ll take him down,” Vi says carefully, enunciating every word, “and then, we’ll be safe again.”

“But what about..?”

“You don’t need them,” she swears fiercely, “just us . Sisters.”

The sentiment echoes something else. 

She swallows down any possible protestation. Silco’s face floats in her head, vague imagery of a man who she cannot ascribe a single label to. 

Nods, even as her resolve begins to crumble. 

(“...Can I be untied, please?” Asks Jayce.)

—

She’s late.

Silco leans back in his chair, raises a thin hand, watches the way it shakes. The needle of the syringe bounces in all directions, guided by the trembling in his wrist. 

He sighs, holds the breath in his chest as he plunges down. The pain is sharper than usual, and burns when he withdraws the syringe. 

Never used to be this hard. Maybe he’s gotten old. Or maybe he’s gotten… dependent. 

At the thought, his lips quirk into a half-smile before he can stop it. 

He’s just managed to quash the brief amusement when the door to his office bursts open. Sevika stumbles in, collapses on the couch pushed to the side of the room. He rises immediately—scans her for signs of injury. There’s none visible, but the fact remains that she’s alone , and that means…

“Where is she?” He demands, stepping around the desk. Sevika takes an infuriatingly deep heave of air before answering. 

“ They’re alive .”

“Who?” He snaps. She fixes him with a dark, murderous gaze. 

“Her family.”

“The girl? Her sister?” No—Marcus was supposed to have killed her. Either he has a mistake to correct, or he has a mistake to snuff out. He backs away a step, hand running through his hair, but Sevika interrupts before he can descend too far into thought. 

“ Both of them.” she snarls, “ he’s back.”

He stops completely. Stares at her for a long moment. “You cannot-”

“The hound,” she says, a laugh bubbling up at the end of the word, “and he’s on your trail, boss.”