Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The aftermath, it’s a mess.

She still doesn’t know why Vi did it—that cut around her abdomen bleeding as it was—but the brawler had shaken off Caitlyn's grasp and spun on her heel, grabbed and shielded Jinx as the world shattered around them, knocking Caitlyn back but not off of her feet. The blast blinds and deafens them all, a bolt of blue so intense it became white, a crackle of energy so loud it kept her ears ringing for hours following.

For a long, ethereal moment, nothing happened: Noxians and Zaunites and whatever the hell the three of them were classified as now all frozen in some dissonant feeling of wonder and anticipation and horror as the light flashes and fades, the arcane thunderclap sounding and snapping before it dissipated entirely, leaving behind a horrible, ominous silence.

Or perhaps that was just the hearing damage.

Either way, almost no one moved even as the last of the dust settled, leaving behind a dozen motionless lumps in its wake. Almost no one, because just like she had as Vi pulled her to the ground, Jinx was still struggling in the older woman’s grasp, crying out for someone whose still form decorated the crater before them just as motionlessly as the rest of the corpses. The only reason Caitlyn even knew it was the girl was because of the size, the way a small, charred hand was wrapped around the barrel of that instrument of death.

When Jinx was finally able to shake free of Vi’s grasp, she stood and turned back to the crater where her father’s empty eyes stared up to the sky. She’s at their sides in less time than it takes for Vi to stand herself, mouth forming around words that she can’t hear because she’s watching the way Jinx howls, one hand wrapped around what’s left of the dead child’s shoulder and the other entangled in the hair of her own scalp. No matter how much she shakes her, the girl doesn’t shift from her position in front of the man who was once called Vander.

Caitlyn remembers blinking, remembers the ash in the air and the impenetrable scent of blood, the hollow look of something like regret or fury on the General’s face further into the former Zaunite safe haven. She remembers Vi staggering back after taking an elbow to her wound, the way it didn’t stop the black-haired woman from pulling Jinx up with a grip stronger than iron even as Jinx clawed at the hand around her arm.

And, worse than that, she remembers locking eyes with Ambessa, remembers watching the Noxian turn to face them fully before Caitlyn reached back and started pulling Vi along. Vi, who had just watched her father die for the second time. Vi, who last she’d seen her, had been staring up at Caitlyn from the ground where she’d left her, hurt and angry and alone.

Vi, who had a mentally unstable terrorist hanging over one of her shoulders as she struggled to run from the cesspool this shelter had become.

And Caitlyn?

Caitlyn caught the pistol—Jinx’s pistol—that Vi tossed at her and covered their escape, taking out any of the remaining Noxians that got too close. For whatever reason, Ambessa had not pursued them for much longer after they’d left the crumbling sanctuary—a fact that left her stomach in almost as many knots as Jinx’s continued presence.

Soon enough, though—after hours of traveling and pressing herself against grimy undercity alleyways, after firing that blasted pistol so often that it’d started overheating in her hand, she'd nearly forgotten Jinx was with them at all. She’d originally been worried that the criminal would give away their position with the way she’d so loudly protested leaving the safe haven, but then, a few streets into their journey, she’d shut herself up completely. Injured as she was, Vi wasn’t really in a position to carry her for much longer (in Caitlyn’s opinion, she shouldn’t have done that to begin with), and so when the thrashing had finally stopped and her and Cait shared a wary look, Vi’d set her down.

There aren’t really words that exist that could describe the way Caitlyn felt at the moment the Loose Cannon was set free once more, but to both of their surprises, Jinx didn’t make any moves to run or attack them, nor did she make any effort to retrieve her pistol—the only weapon that, in the chaos, the three of them had between them. Instead, Jinx only stood there, eyes glazed over like she wasn’t really there—and though she faced one of the alley walls, she wasn’t really looking at anything. It was unnerving, sure, but not in quite the same way she’d gotten accustomed to…it more reminded her of the haunted look on her father’s face as he walked around newly silent halls of the Kiramman estate, voice failing him more often than not even when Cait herself was his conversation partner.

All in all, it doesn’t evoke much sympathy from her.

Vi had leaned against the wall, then, a hand coming up to press on that still bleeding gash across her midsection without taking her eyes off of Jinx—like she was afraid that if she looked anywhere else, the scoundrel would have disappeared into the ether.

That, at least, Caitlyn can understand (if for different reasons).

The look in Vi’s eyes was complicated, and while Cait couldn’t exactly blame her, whatever she was stewing over would have to wait until they found shelter. It was getting too dark to see, and the local Zaunites would no doubt be able to carry themselves easier in the low light than Cait ever could. Catching Vi’s gaze, Cait had looked around and raised an eyebrow, her silent question not unheard as Vi seemed to come to the same conclusion—but her eyes flickered back to Jinx and she'd hesitated.

“There’s an old warehouse one of the chem-barons used to own a few blocks down—don’t think anyone’s taken it up yet. It’ll have to work for now.”

Caitlyn nodded and Vi turned to lead the way, but when neither of them heard a third set of footsteps behind them, they'd both turned. Caitlyn’s not sure why they’d expected Jinx to just follow along, nor is she entirely sure why Vi wanted her to, either. Last she’d seen them both before all of this, they had been at each other’s throats—literally—and she’d been so close to finishing all of this. She can say that, even now, she’s surprised that the monster hadn’t moved at all from her position then, the dead look in her eyes betrayed only by her steady breathing.

“I don’t think she’s coming, Vi,” Cait had started, stopping as she caught that horribly dyed hair shaking with the other woman’s head.

“I can’t leave her here. C’mon, Pow-pow.”

Vi reached out towards her, but when Jinx did nothing to acknowledge that she’d even been addressed, Vi’d just sighed and wrapped a hand around her forearm, pulling her up to where Caitlyn stood. When she’s met with no resistance from the blue haired criminal, that’s how they’d continued the whole way to the warehouse, Vi occasionally shooting both of them glances that neither of them returned.

When they’d arrived, when Vi'd led the two of them up the stairs and down a hall into an abandoned office, Jinx finally broke away from Vi’s grasp—which made Caitlyn tense and Vi shoot her a look of panic—but then all she'd done was press herself into one of the corners and slowly sink to the wooden floor, folding her arms over her knees and burying her face in them before stilling completely. Vi had opened her mouth to say something—to her or Jinx, she doesn’t know—but Caitlyn had cut her off with a hand.

“You’re hurt. Let’s take care of that first.”

Vi had nodded, and that had been that. They’d both agreed that whatever they were going to do—about Ambessa, about this war teetering between the two nations, about Jinx—needed to wait until they were rested. That had led to Caitlyn scrounging around the warehouse to find things to use for bedding (which ends up being mostly chair cushions and some of the cleaner looking rugs) and bandages (which, shockingly, she actually finds), and after she'd dragged all of that back to the office and helped tend to her injuries as best she could, they’d propped the office chair (covered in a coarse brown fur for reasons Caitlyn’s not sure she cares to know) under the door knob in an effort to barricade themselves in. It’s not that Vi was too injured to help her scavenge (though she had obvious difficulty supporting her weight on one of her legs), but there had been a silent agreement between the two of them that Jinx should not be left unsupervised…likely for different reasons.

She wasn’t exactly surprised that Vi had taken the first aid kit and wandered to Jinx’s side, but she had been irritated: call her unorthodox, but she didn’t generally stitch someone up that she’d once tried to kill—and still might. And Jinx wasn’t being much help, either; the two of them had both assumed she’d fallen asleep, but when Vi had gently moved her arms out of the way, they’d found her staring at the floor with that same empty look that she’d been sporting in the alley.

When Vi cleaned out those long, jagged slash marks that Vander had raked into her pale flesh, Jinx didn’t even flinch, her gaze vacant and unmoving from where it had been since, apparently, they had entered the office. Caitlyn had been worried about an awkward conversation on sleeping arrangements, but Vi had settled herself on the floor right next to the door, leaning back against the wall about a half a meter or so from the ball that Jinx had refolded herself into, glancing at Caitlyn long enough to explain:

“I don’t want her to…to ’wake up’ alone. I’m not sure how she’ll act when she sees you here.”

Strangely, she’d understood that. There was obviously something wrong with the blue haired criminal (besides what was already wrong with her, she means) and just because she wasn’t actively hostile to either of them then didn’t mean that couldn’t easily change on a sudden whim. Given what she'd just had to watch, her father and…child?...killed in a span of seconds, Caitlyn didn’t really have a way to know just how long it would take for her to come to her senses, to "wake up", as Vi had put it. It certainly hadn’t taken Vi very long, but she was also much more stable than Jinx was.

Speaking of which…

“I…am sorry about your father.”

Vi’d broke eye contact at that, but offered her a single, sharp nod. I’m not ready for that conversation yet, it’d seemed to say. Instead, what she'd said was much simpler, laden with the sort of authenticity she’d come to miss from the woman.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like this is the first time I’ve had to deal. Goodnight, cupcake.”

Caitlyn ended up sleeping on the floor, using a stained cushion as a pillow and a thin rug for a mattress. The room was freezing and she didn’t sleep well, tossing and turning until she'd eventually found a position where, apparently, she'd retained even a smidgen of body heat and was finally able to drift off.

Perhaps that’s why, when she’s awoken by the screaming, she’s in a less than charitable mood than she normally would have been. Still, the combat training she’d received from the General got her on her feet faster than her mind had even processed she was awake. She was planning on grabbing the pistol she'd left on the desk she’d shoved into the corner of the room, but the sight that greeted her stopped her in her tracks.

“SHUT UP! That’s not what happened!”

“Powder, no one’s—”

“IT’S NOT!”

One hand threaded through her hair on her scalp in a white knuckled grip, Jinx sat in that same corner as before, only this time with blood dripping down her face in deep red streaks, spread on her cheek with every twitch of her palm. The other hand gripped her own arm in much the same manner, only she had such a small stature that her nails—painted pink and blue and chipped from the fighting—dug into her own hand, producing more crimson streams that had steadily dripped onto the exposed skin of her stomach and seeped into the bandaging still wrapped around her midsection.

Caitlyn wondered, briefly, if the stitches there would pop open.

“You’ve gotta stop that, you’re hurting yourself!”

Jinx’s only response was to slam her head into the wall to her side, something Vi watched in a sort of mute horror.

“That’s not what happened…”

Her voice might have been softer, but it hadn't changed the way her wide, blown-open eyes flashed with an almost animalistic fear, nor the way her hands tightened further, deepening the cuts into her own skin…particularly where her one prosthetic finger had dug into the side of her skull.

Panicked (and, Caitlyn had absently noticed, without her jacket despite the cold), Vi'd reached out and hesitated before extricating first the hand in her hair and then the hand on her arm before forcing them both open and pressing them palm first into each other, wrapping her own hands around them, removing Jinx’s ability to bend her fingers and thus keep injuring herself. It hadn’t stopped her erratic twitching or the occasional way her head hit the wall, though, so Vi'd cursed and used her grip on the criminal to pull her forwards and into her lap, her expression darkening a bit as crimson streaked hair settled against her shoulder. To Caitlyn, the whole thing looked absurd: the position they were in mimicked the way her parents used to settle her in their laps to read or help her study as a small child, but Jinx…she wasn’t a child, wasn’t innocent or pure like they were. Jinx was a mass murderer, a terrorist.

And despite the way she'd kept repeating this fact to herself, it hadn’t stopped her from, in that moment, seeing her as one.

When her head jerked back the next time, it merely hit Vi’s arm, and while the slight grimace Vi made at the contact said it wasn’t a particularly pleasant feeling, it wasn’t nearly as liable to give Jinx a concussion.

Caitlyn’s not sure how she felt about that.

“Make them go away…”

For a moment, she'd thought Jinx was referring to her, but when she'd opened her mouth to say she wasn’t going anywhere for the time being, Vi'd caught her eye and slightly shook her head, and she'd stilled her tongue. That’s when she realized that despite the wild look in her eyes, Jinx wasn’t looking at her at all—in fact, it hadn’t seemed like she was looking at anything. Hesitating, Vi carefully removed one of her hands from Jinx’s own and wrapped it around her eyes instead, causing her to inhale sharply before, surprisingly, relaxing just the slightest bit into Vi’s shoulder. As time passed, she'd slowly unwound, the tension seeped from her posture, her hands stopped trying to clench, her breathing evened out.

When Vi pulled her hands away, Jinx was asleep, blood glistening off of her face and arm where she’d held them both in vice-like grips. Her hands had fallen unceremoniously into her lap, and Vi'd looked at her own palms, now slick with blood that wasn’t her own, before letting her head hit the wall she had slumped against with a quiet thump.

Unsure of what to say, Caitlyn had slowly sat back down on the makeshift bed, realizing with a start that the reason she must have finally been able to sleep was also the same reason Vi had finally taken off that hideous leather jacket. Endearing as it was, it reminded Caitlyn of what an absolute mess she’d found herself in, and she pinched the bridge of her nose with a long sigh.

“You alright, Cait?”

She huffed a laugh, both because the answer to the question was obvious and because, of the two of them, only one was holding a sleeping serial killer, shaded in various hues of red like a macabre imitation of a Councilor’s painting. Humored in a dark sort of way, Caitlyn had shaken her head with a half-smile, turning back on her side, throwing the jacket back over herself as she'd once again prepared for bed.

“Goodnight, Vi.”

Those episodes that Jinx has don’t stop as the days slowly tick by. They always started with those nervous twitches that now were enough to set both her and Vi on edge, but it doesn’t take long for them to discover that, if Vi’s fast enough to cover her eyes and start talking about something—anything—then Jinx’s little breakdowns could be avoided entirely. It’s something of a relief and a disappointment for Caitlyn: Vi said they’re far enough away from the bulk of the populace that they shouldn’t be overheard, but with Jinx’s screaming, she’s not sure it would matter as long as they were within a few streets of the definitely not soundproof building. The other, uglier part of her she’s somewhat learned to embrace as Piltover’s Commander takes a bit of satisfaction at the idea of Jinx suffering like she had following her mother’s death…but she soon discovered that it was only the idea. On the third day, Vi had been down the stairs when Caitlyn called out to warn her of what was about to happen, but it turns out that that wasn’t fast enough and when Caitlyn had to watch her start screaming at people that weren’t there and biting her lip so hard one of her teeth poked through it, or watching the helpless despair on Vi’s face, she found she didn’t actually have the stomach to wish she went through it again.

Not even she deserved that, if only because it seemed to hurt Vi, too.

Following that, while Caitlyn had gone off to shower as much as was possible with the single rusty sink down the hall, she'd come back to find Vi asleep on their little makeshift bed with Jinx half-sprawled across her, her now bandaged face hanging off of Vi’s side. One of Vi's hands had been wrapped around her arm—a fact that isn’t shocking to Caitlyn in the slightest: Vi had gotten essentially no sleep despite her protests because Jinx hadn’t “woken-up” yet, and while she’s not sure that Vi would ever admit it, she can tell that she’s worried that if she lets Jinx go or leaves her alone for too long that she’d wander off or run away and get herself killed.

Caitlyn didn’t know how to feel about that, either, so she’d let it be.

Deciding that she can’t wake the obviously exhausted other woman up and that it was too cold for her to try sleeping against the wall, Caitlyn settled herself on the rug, too, if a bit farther away than she’d normally have been from the center. She slept facing the two so that if Jinx decided to try and kill her, she’d be able to better react.

When she woke up the next day, it was to Vi’s face, a complicated expression gracing her features. Caitlyn had only glanced down to regard the still-sleeping serial killer sprawled out like a child would be on a couch and sighed, and beyond that, neither did anything to acknowledge the situation—not even that night, when Vi settled Jinx in the same position and Caitlyn fell asleep just as she had before.

Every night thereafter, it just became a part of their routine.

Sometimes, Vi will go out and find some food, and Caitlyn grit her teeth and forced herself to eat it without questioning what it is she’s consuming or where it had been procured, but she’s never gone for very long. Once, she comes back with a bit of clothing, a shoddy leather pack with basic necessities and a half a bottle of black hair dye that at least tells Caitlyn where she’d gone off to. Thankfully, the other woman had been sensible enough to grab her bedding (and noticing how limited it was, Caitlyn resolved herself to lecture her about it at a later date), and the cool air of the unheated warehouse became much more tolerable.

By the fifth day, it’s becoming clear that Jinx might never wake up, and Caitlyn can’t decide if that’s a problem or a solution. She wouldn’t say her attitude towards her was softening, per se, but seeing a glassy eyed stick of a person who didn’t so much as eat without being told to made it hard for Cait to connect her to the same mastermind that had terrorized so much of Piltover, had pushed the two sides of the bridge to the brink of civil war.

If she never went back…could she even stand trial like this? Was there any point in keeping their forces here when their ringleader was just an unstable husk? Would what little remained of the Council still demand her head?

Would Vi even let her make the arrest?

Caitlyn glances back at the woman, exhaustion plain on her features, written in the lines of her biceps and her sunken eyes as she cradled Jinx to her chest, one hand covering her eyes and the other softly carding through parts of her hair. Vi had cleaned her up a bit the last time she changed the bandages over her stomach, but there was only so much she could do to wash her ridiculously long hair without taking the braids out, and Vi claimed she had neither the skill nor patience to redo them. Since any little change seemed equally liable to set Jinx off should she miraculously recover from…whatever it was that happened, they both agreed it’s best not to trifle with it. Vi’s voice might have been pragmatic enough, but she can’t quite hide the softness in her gaze whenever she looked down at the person in her lap. Caitlyn is no fool; whatever it is that had somehow brought the two of them together again had obviously reignited that protective spark in her. Somehow, she thought Powder was still in there again, buried deep under layers of trauma, insanity, and malice.

She’s fairly certain they both knew it, but just as with the other pressing matters, neither of them acknowledges it.

Caitlyn almost never leaves the warehouse both because of the unspoken rule that Jinx could not be left alone and because she had no idea where the Noxian forces might be residing. Eventually…no, soon, they would have to figure this all out, move to handle it, but for now, they were both so tired, so uncertain…

They needed a break, even as lackluster as this one was turning out to be.

But the longer they waited, the worse things would no doubt become.

“Hey,” Vi calls out to her as she throws her jacket over her shoulder across the room. She’d set Jinx down on the now stack of carpet and fabric scraps that made up the “bed”, and Caitlyn isn’t surprised to see that she’s going out, already knows that’s what Vi’s about to tell her. Now that her leg was a bit better and her wounds weren’t in danger of popping back open, she’s started taking slightly longer trips, tried to get a feel for what was happening now that forces allied to Piltover had more or less declared war by destroying the only relatively prosperous area in the undercity—but she only did that after Jinx had one of her episodes. For whatever reason, they seemed to incapacitate the blue haired woman for at least a few hours afterwards, which thankfully meant she hadn’t woken either of them up more than once a night.

Small blessings.

“I’m heading out—I haven’t found any signs they’re still down here, but that Ambessa lady doesn’t seem like the type to make a big showing unless she knows how it’ll play out.”

Cait hums at that, unsure if she agrees or not. Despite the months she’d spent near the woman, when it came to battle strategies, she was rather difficult to read. Vi glances out the one window in the room, maybe checking how much daylight she had left before leaving—apparently, she trusted Caitlyn enough not to just leave or kill the criminal they were harboring, and as an enforcer (the head enforcer, at the moment), she’s not quite sure how to feel about that.

After Vi’s footsteps disappear down the hallway, lightly sounding she descends the staircase to the first floor, she decides she’s finally bored enough to peruse the near-rotting bookcase in the corner of the room and pulls out the first book she finds that isn’t so old that it might disintegrate upon her touch or that isn’t covered in some unidentifiable stain.

It takes longer than she would care to admit.

Absorbed as she is in the history book (of all things), she doesn’t immediately notice the stirring of the sleeping revolutionary symbol on the ground before she starts shouting, the shrill noise making her flinch so violently her book is launched a few meters from where she sat in the office’s lone desk chair.

“Shit. Vi!”

She internally curses as soon as the name is out of her mouth; it had been too long for her to be within earshot…but something else might be, and Caitlyn isn’t particularly interested in finding out.

“THAT ISN’T FAIR! IT’S NOT MY FAULT!”

This time, both of her hands tighten into fists, and while Vi had found a pair of winter gloves to put on the girl criminal while she was out one day, it’s clear by the crimson that bleeds through that they’re evidently too thin to help very much. She hesitates, unsure of what to do. She’s seen Vi soothe her at least a half-a-dozen times by now, but that didn’t necessarily make it a good idea to imitate it herself. Deep down, Jinx liked Vi, which is why she hadn’t let Silco kill her that day she committed the greatest act of terror ever to happen in Piltover’s two hundred years of existence.

And not so deep down, she hated Caitlyn.

Perhaps if she ignored it, it would go away? They hadn’t tried it before—

“YOU DON’T GET IT! SHUT UP!”

She grits her teeth and looks back at the way Jinx now lay curled in a ball on the floor, watching as an alarming amount of blood for what must be only a small wound starts pooling under just one of her hands—

And it’s only at that moment that she remembers the prosthetic, which is also the moment she decides to at least try and help her, because as much as she hated Jinx, the small form curled in the fetal position didn’t seem like Jinx, it seemed like a child, and Caitlyn has never had much of a stomach for seeing children in pain.

“NO, NO, NO!”

At first, she thinks Jinx is talking to her and she reflexively takes a step back, but then she sees those wide, scared eyes flit across the room, locking eyes with someone that wasn’t there. She shakes her head, not wasting her breath explaining this to someone who couldn’t hear her anyways.

She kneels besides her, mind racing to remember the steps Vi went through.

Stop the bleeding.

She doesn’t want to touch her any more than necessary, both not to upset her any more than she already is and because that loathing in her already serves to make the decision to help her at all difficult enough.

Cait reaches behind her and grabs one of the chair cushions they’ve been using as pillows and sets it in front of the girl, grabbing first her left arm and applying enough force that it forces her hand open long enough for her to shove the cushion into her hand before letting it close once more, noticing with a wince as the blood starts seeping out from under the fabric of the gloves and into the makeshift pillow before repeating the process with her right hand.

Cover her eyes.

“THAT’S NOT WHAT IT WAS!”

Caitlyn ignores how loud her voice gets as she covers her eyes with one of her hands and waits.

Eventually, she stops talking to whoever it is she saw, and a few moments later, her hands loosen around the cushion and Caitlyn nearly breathes a sigh of relief before Jinx’s head suddenly shifts out from under her hand, a pair of startled, focused eyes looking into her own.

They get up at the same time, Jinx wincing as she pushes herself off of the ground before looking at her blood-stained gloves in confusion and borderline disgust before ripping them off completely. When she looks back to Caitlyn, her eyes flash a pink that has her reflexively reaching for a rifle that isn’t there, making her come to terms with her monumentally idiotic decision to leave that pistol on the desk.

“What the fu—?”

Jinx staggers forwards a step, a hand coming up to rub at her head before she stops completely, that clarity slipping from her gaze just as swiftly as it appeared, leaving the shell of a person standing motionlessly in the room and Caitlyn overwhelmed. Unsure of what to do, she takes a step forward and calls out to her, a hand waving in front of her face to gauge for any reaction. When there is none, she backs up to where they now kept their first aid supplies, now mostly consisting of whatever odds and ends Vi was able to gather as well as a few rolls of gauze.

Caitlyn pointedly had not asked her where all of it had come from.

“Can I see your hand, Jinx?” she decides to ask before just reaching out for it. When there’s no reaction, Caitlyn assumes that, if she’s still in there like Vi suspected (and perhaps, like she had just witnessed for herself), the lack of a violent reaction was permission to stop the bleeding.

As she’d suspected, the indent in the center of her left palm is the cause of the majority of the bleeding, and Caitlyn briefly wonders if she should try her hand at stitching it up before discarding the thought; untrained as she is, she’d likely do more harm than good, perhaps get it infected.

When she sterilizes it with some strong alcohol that makes her gag just from the stench, Jinx doesn’t even flinch, making her wonder if that’s because she simply can’t feel anything when she’s catatonic like this or if she just had a ridiculously high pain tolerance.

She decides, as she finishes bandaging up the hand, that it’s likely both.

A shift from the doorway causes her to turn, and the casual way Vi watches her with her arms crossed as she leans against the doorframe would, under most other circumstances have made her laugh. The complicated look in her eyes might be what stops her, or maybe it’s the way Jinx’s blood now stains her otherwise clean hands.

“I thought I heard her,” Vi says, her eyes shifting to the bandages and then back to Cait with a unique mixture of mirth and uncertainty. “Uh…thanks, cupcake.”

Caitlyn offers her a stilted nod before mentioning the deeper cut in Jinx’s hand, not bothering to explain anything else before she left the room, feeling irritated for reasons that weren’t the fault of the one she was most liable to take it out on.

“Cait? Where are you—”

“Washing your sister’s blood off of my hands.”

When she falls asleep that night, she dreams of her mother—and somehow, even though it’s not a nightmare, it only makes everything worse.

It’s on the seventh night that she wakes up from a chill creeping up the back of her neck, and as she blearily opens her eyes, she quickly realizes why: two unnervingly pink, glowing irises regard her in near perfect silence in the dead of the night, the darkness only broken by the occasional blink.

And unlike what has become her new usual, Jinx looks perfectly calm, focused, as she stares. Her head still hanging off of Vi’s side from where she lay half draped over her.

“You’re still here.”

Her tone is conversational, light, but it doesn’t match the danger lurking in her gaze. Despite her small frame and current relaxed position, Caitlyn’s all too aware of just how quickly the girl could move, and it inspires just as much unease in her as resentment.

When those eyes aren’t glassy and vacant, and she isn’t huddled in a corner or cradled in Vi’s arms during one of her episodes, it is much easier to remember just how dangerous she could be…and just how much hatred she harbored for her, too.

“Obviously,” Caitlyn answers, because she's too prideful to show her any of her discomfort.

Jinx tilts her head, evident only by the shifting of those glowing orbs in the darkness.

“I’m still here,” her voice is softer now, and it carries an emotion that, without seeing her full expression, Caitlyn has difficulty placing. After a long moment, when Caitlyn’s half-tempted to wake Vi up or move farther away, Jinx speaks up again.

“Huh. Weird.”

Caitlyn watches her warily but doesn’t otherwise respond, a fact that Jinx is apparently fine with because she fills the silence herself.

“You know, you’re a lousy shot, cupcake.”

Caitlyn bristles at the obvious mockery, the over-enunciation of every syllable striking a nerve she didn’t know she had, and Jinx snorts a laugh, her eyes still locked onto her before shifting up towards Vi's face—which alarms her because she doesn’t know exactly where the two of them stand and Vi is still sleeping soundly. Just as Caitlyn starts to move an arm to rouse the other woman, Jinx’s eyes lock on something else. Even in the dark, Caitlyn can see where Vi’s hand is wrapped around a thin, pale wrist, their two arms crisscrossing over Vi’s stomach, which rises and falls at even, unhurried intervals.

She feels her brows knit together at that, but forces herself to respond to the prior, false statement, half in an effort to distract her conversation partner from whatever it is she’s doing and half because she’s legitimately offended by the assertion.

“I am not!” she puts as much force into it as she can in a whisper…which is to say, not much.

“Uh, yeah, you are.”

There it was again, that same tone of voice that Caitlyn can’t place. She shifts and Jinx’s eyes dart towards the sound, but that’s all that happens, for a while. The only sound that sits between them is Vi’s rhythmic breathing, the sleeping woman completely oblivious to the tension in the room all around her.

“How else,” Jinx starts again, her voice back to its upbeat casualness that puts Caitlyn further on edge, “would you explain this?”

She brings her arm—the one not held by Vi—up to her face and Caitlyn abruptly understands what she means, for where there used to be flesh now sits metal, a single finger erased with hextech as if she’d never had one there to begin with. She wiggles it around for effect, the metal shining in the light as it twitched closer to her eyes. She scowls; it’s not as if she’d been trying to maim the girl, but shimmer made her move faster than she could aim—it’s honestly a miracle she had even hit her at all.

“You know,” Jinx starts again, her voice softer, “I don’t really get whatever...this is,” her eyes noticeably flicker across the room before settling back on Caitlyn. “But shouldn’t you have, like, finished the job by now? Or are you just that shit of an officer?”

There’s something in her voice now that Caitlyn can recognize because it’s almost the only thing she’s felt since her mother was killed: misery…which is absolutely bizarre considering their current conversation topic. Caitlyn opens her mouth to say exactly that, but cuts herself off when Jinx’s gaze flits back to where Vi still has a calloused hand wrapped around her wrist, tight enough to keep it there even in sleep.

When pink eyes return to her own, she finds herself surprised at the empty look in them, and something in it compels her to ask a question she’s been dying to know the answer to ever since that first building exploded in fire all those months ago, setting off the hellish chain reaction of events that led the three of them here tonight.

“Just what is it that you want?”

For a moment, some clarity returns to her gaze, but to her shock, it soon dims—literally. Whatever unnatural power let the girl become her own personal candle shut off without her closing her eyes, her gaze still trained carefully on Caitlyn.

“I’ve wished for lots of things, over the years, y’know? Some new oil crayons, one of those fancy flip lighters—”

“—if this is some kind of game—”

“—to not go to bed hungry every night for a week, or to not have gone to that stupid apartment the boy savior tipped us off about. For my dad back…or at least, one of them…”

Some of that glass starts coming back into her eyes, and Caitlyn almost prods her to continue until some of the light creeps back into her gaze and she can clearly see the way her expression blanks out—wiped clean like an Academy blackboard after lecture, leaving no trace of what came before.

“But do you know what I wish for the most?”

Caitlyn waits, half-hoping she doesn’t answer because that unpredictable nature of hers was more a danger to the sleeping woman in the room than it was to Cait herself. But when she continues, the words aren’t what she’d been expecting them to be, all twisted in that horribly raw emotion that she could no more shut it out than she could teach a fish to fly.

“I wish you hadn’t missed.”

Stunned to silence, Caitlyn watches as Jinx regards her for a few moments before turning away, the motion causing Vi to shift in her sleep, and just as suddenly as their conversation had started, it ends, leaving her alone with her own thoughts.

When they wake up the next morning, Jinx is gone.

Chapter Text

Vi runs another hand through her hair, her roots finally starting to show through with just the tiniest bit of pink. She had been pacing ever since she’d come back from combing the streets for signs of Jinx, very obviously upset by her disappearance. Caitlyn watches her, but she doesn’t say anything; any words of comfort she could have offered wouldn’t sound authentic, and she’s not keen on lying to her…whatever they were. If anything, Jinx’s disappearance was a blessing—just one less thing they needed to worry about before getting back to this bleak reality they’d been so intent on ignoring, if only for a while.

“What if the Noxians got to her? I don’t think they’d just kill her on sight—she’s like this, this symbol to everyone down here now, they wouldn’t make it that easy…”

Vi turns back around, a hand over her mouth as she starts stalking back across the room, her pace picking up with the urgency of her words. And after what has to be at least the tenth time she watches the woman double back across the office, she finds that she can no longer hold her tongue.

“Why do you even care?”

Vi stops, but doesn’t turn to face her—which is good, actually, because it lets her finish what she wants to ask without stopping.

“She’s my sister, Cait.”

Caitlyn waits for her to meet her gaze before she continues, eyes like steel.

“She killed my mother.”

Vi nods, that hurt and uncertainty filling her face, but to her credit, she doesn’t look away when she responds.

“Yeah, she did.”

Outraged, Caitlyn continues, but is quickly cut off.

“Then why—”

“Because the same person who killed your mother used to climb into my bed during a storm when she was too scared of the thunder. The same person that made me stop whatever I was doing to come pick which rock was the prettiest, the same person I beat a guy’s ass for when he tripped her in the Lanes,” eyes filled with pain, she shook her head, still not fully looking away, “I can’t even look at her without remembering who she used to be.”

“That’s precisely my point: that is not who she is anymore—you even said as much yourself. We were going to kill her the last time we saw her!”

“Yeah, well, I was wrong.”

“Wha—”

“Look, I don’t expect you to get it—”

“How could I when you will not even explain it to me?!”

Vi turns all the way around now, crossing her arms as she faces Caitlyn.

“She’s the one who told me about Vander,” Caitlyn narrows her eyes at this, but nods at her to continue. There was hardly a point in prodding her to explain herself and then cutting her off as she did so.

“I got drunk, took a fight I knew I couldn’t win, and then when I woke up she was there, fucking with my shit like she did when she was a kid. And I—the first thing I did was slam her into the wall by her throat,” she runs a hand down the side of her face, tormented for reasons beyond Caitlyn’s comprehension, “And she didn’t even fight back. Told me Vander was alive, kept insisting even when I called her crazy, had that kid with her the whole way there—and she acted like an actual person. And when I finally asked her why she bothered telling me any of this, she looked me in the eyes and said ‘he’s your dad, too.’”

Vi exhales, the weight of everything apparently getting to her.

“And she was right, Cait. He wasn’t some fucked-up delusion of hers, she wasn’t leading me into some trap, never pulled a gun on me…that’s really all she wanted. I guess maybe, when I saw her with him, saw her interact with that kid…it made me realize that she still remembered everything, that there was still a person in there, somewhere...and I don't know. Maybe you're right. Maybe she's not the same kid I used to know, but that doesn’t mean she's not my sister anymore, either.”

Vi stops, breathing out a tired sigh as she looked out that open window.

“You know, I taunted her the whole way there. Asked her if she wanted him to see how psycho his daughter had become, and you know what she said? ‘Which one?’” Vi turns back to her with a grim expression.

“That’s not true,” Cait counters, “you’re not a monster like she is.”

Vi barks a laugh and Caitlyn instinctively knows it wasn’t the right thing to say.

“You sure about that, cupcake? Maybe we ‘share too much of the same blood’.”

Caitlyn turns away and the other woman huffs a laugh, but it’s humorless. After a moment, she forces herself to turn back, a tired frown on her face that has Vi quirking an eyebrow at her before she’s even opened her mouth.

“I shouldn’t have said that. I…was hurting, and blamed you for things that weren’t—aren’t—your fault. You have my sincerest apologies, Violet.”

Vi looks at her warily before offering her a nod, glancing at the doorway as if a mere glance would be able to conjure her sister.

“Yeah, well, she wasn’t wrong. This whole thing has messed me up…part of me thinks I would have been better off in Stillwater.”

Caitlyn winces at that, but doesn’t question her on it. She’d done enough to make her feel that way just by herself—let alone with what she’s had to go through with her family in the past few months. Instead, she asks something else.

“Why were you taking fights you couldn’t win? That’s unlike you,” which she meant in two ways: the first being that Vi was smart enough not to take them and the second because she can’t particularly imagine the other woman losing.

“I don’t know,” she closes her eyes, “I guess the pain helped ground me—reminded me what was real or not.”

“Wow, sounds like a tough gig, sis.”

Both of their heads snap to the window at the same time, one face melting in pure relief while the other hardened between something like caution and disgust.

Vi’s already moving before Caitlyn can draw another breath…but she stops when Jinx leans away from her hand, still perched on the windowsill, one hand hanging outside and out of sight that sets off alarm bells in Caitlyn’s head.

“Powder, are you alright? Are you…are you—shit, uh—”

Jinx cuts her off with a laugh, “yeah, I’m not crazy anymore,” she pauses a moment, head tilting in consideration, “Well. As crazy.”

“Where have you—”

Vi cuts herself off when Jinx raises the hand she’d had hidden outside the window, and the object that she drags into view coupled with the dried dirt on her hands makes Cait’s eyes widen in realization.

Enveloping her right hand is an oversized hat colored with jagged lines of blues and pinks and stained on the inside with what must be blue hair dye.

It’s the child’s.

Beyond that, Jinx doesn’t bother answering, a distant look overtaking her features before she shakes her head—which effectively clears it. Glancing at the hat, she props it over her one upturned knee in the windowsill, grabbing the rim and letting it spin around, goggles peering at Caitlyn with every revolution about its newfound axis.

“Powder…,” Vi starts, apparently understanding as much as Caitlyn does herself: that she’d gone to bury that girl where they’d left her body in that crater.

“His body was gone, you know.”

She says it so casually that, if Cait hadn’t been watching her expression, she would have called it callous…but that hollow look in her eyes tells her there’s more to it than that.

“What? Why?”

Jinx shrugs, her eyebrows raising a bit. “I don’t know, just…thought you’d wanna know, I guess.”

The two of them are quiet for a while before Vi takes another step forwards, causing Jinx’s distant expression to morph into one of distrust, narrow eyes locking onto Vi’s face uncertainly. Sensing her obvious discomfort, Vi slowly spreads her hands in a universal gesture of I mean no harm before speaking up once again.

“Alright. Alright. So what are you going to do now?”

Jinx eyes her for a moment before looking away with a laugh, her weary, sunken eyes the only thing that marked the two as related for the moment.

“Got some stuff I gotta do around here, things I gotta explode, you know the drill,” and the way she spits the last few words has Caitlyn raising an eyebrow before she can help herself—not that Jinx is even looking at her to see it. “I only came back here to tell you that…and to drop these off, I guess.”

Her hand drops back out the window and Cait tenses when she pulls out a rifle—not her own, but one of the more standard issue ones that some of the officers amongst the enforcers carried—but she frowns when all Jinx does is prop it up against the windowsill, the barrel of the gun scraping along the floor until it became stable enough to bear its own weight.

When her hand opens fully, two other objects clunk unceremoniously to the ground besides it—a pair of brass knuckles, shoddily made, probably Zaunite in origin.

“Powder, it’s dangerous out here right now,” Vi tries, her hands still spread to appease the monster whose leg dangled from the sill. Jinx spun the hat again, eyes following its rotation in a lifeless sort of way.

“I can take care of myself. Just…not other people.”

The latter part only comes out a whisper, barely audible over the sound of deft fingers occasionally twisting the side of the hat—but with her as the sole focus in the room, she can hear it clearly from where she stands across the room, and some unnamable emotion flickers to life (because surely it cannot be guilt—what had she to feel guilt over?) in her chest. It…reminded her too much of her father, of his face. Of herself, even…except instead of utter despair intermixed with a sharp desire for justice, it’s just…

Tired.

“I’m not saying you can’t,” Vi answers slowly, placating the younger girl, “But you’re—right now you’re—”

“I’m what?” Jinx locks eyes with her then, a challenge plain upon her face.

When Vi’s unable to respond, she looks away, facing out the window where neither her nor her sister could see her face.

“You…you could come with.”

There’s a bit of hope in there, a hope Caitlyn has heard just twice from Jinx: once when she’d begged her sister to shoot Caitlyn, and the other when she’d begged for her own death. It makes her skin crawl for reasons she doesn’t dare pick apart.

She did not deserve her sympathy.

Vi’s eyes soften into a sorrow so palpable it makes her want to look away, but she doesn’t—and even with all that Vi had said in the past several hours, she already knows what she’s going to say.

“You know we can’t, Powder, but—"

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. It’s always her.” And in case the message hadn’t been clear enough, Jinx shoots her a glare that could wither all the flowers in the Academy’s courtyard. Caitlyn meets it steadfastly, any pity she held for the girl evaporating like water in a forge fire. Jinx scoffs, grabbing the helmet on her knee only long enough to swing it over her head, letting it dangle crookedly over one side of her face.

“See ya around, sis.”

“Powder—”

Vi lunges, but Jinx is faster, and by the time her hand gets close enough to have wrapped around the girl’s forearm, Jinx is already gone.

Chapter Text

This morning, she woke up warm, one of her sister’s hands curled around her arm and another on her cheek, a few of her fingers poking out into her vision because her head was tilted on the side. She’d almost gone right back to sleep—she might not have that many marbles, but she had enough to know this was too good to be true, so it’d have been better to ignore it…except then she turned to bury her head in dream-Vi’s jacket to block out the sun and she saw her, and then the why of everything came crashing back, and for once she actually put some stock in her memory because she’d been in it…

And then she remembered Isha, and it’s like everything wanted to shut down.

It’s blurry, after that. One minute, she’d been staring at the sleeping form of her, and the next…

The next, she has a hat, chipped nails and a fresh grave dug where she’d buried the only person stupid enough to want to stay near someone like her, and then, she notices Vander’s gone, and…well, her brain wasn’t making sense of it, because he’d been dead as a door-nail, and then not, and then definitely grade-A dead again, and now he’s, what? Dead? Alive? Did someone take his body, or had his test-tube heart remembered to start beating again?

Why couldn’t Isha’s do that?

She’s at least pretty sure that you’re supposed to feel, like, sad or something when you bury someone, but she’d gotten through the whole thing feeling…nothing at all. Maybe it’s ‘cuz she’s never really done it before. Maybe it’s because her head feels so strange, clear and decisive when usually it didn’t think so straight.

Maybe it’s because when people die around her, they never really leave.

But really, she knows it’s because she finally knows what she’s going to do, and it leaves her feeling hollow, but free.

Vi’s answer to her question only solidified that.

She’s not sure why she’d even bothered asking, or why she’d even wanted her to come at all. It’d only get in the way of today’s agenda.

Maybe it'd been like what she'd been thinking that day she'd gone to fetch her from that shitty apartment of hers: like they should do this together...but it doesn’t feel quite right (actually, it's definitely not right), and frankly, she's tired of thinking about it when the answer to a different sort of question was sitting right in front of her now.

And that brought her here, to her office: the one she hadn’t been to since she and Isha had left for the commune that only one of them ever left. Broken oil crayons and the fort they’d set up greeted her, an empty container of cheap blue hair dye.

Despite her short tenure in the place, it now seemed emptier than it ever had before.

She doesn’t feel much when she loads all three of the gems into the barrel of her pistol, only sees the tear-streaked face, the lopsided hat, a small frame dwarfed by what used to be dad, his claws covered in her own blood…

And then, when she closes her eyes, she sees nothing.

“Thought I’d find you here.”

She doesn’t want to open them, because if she did that, then she’d have to acknowledge the other woman, have to come to terms with the fact that an explosion would mean her death, too. Knows somewhere inside of her that she doesn’t want that, and while her brain decides whether or not that matters enough to stop, the footsteps stop a few paces behind her.

“One of the few lookouts we have left thought he saw you running around near here. Thought maybe he’d had a bit too much to drink, but I guess the idiot isn’t always wrong after all.”

She waits, hears the quiet way someone shifts behind her, but doesn’t draw closer.

“I’m not gonna stop you if this is what you want to do, but from what I heard about the fight at that crazy cultist fuck’s compound, it ain’t what the kid would have wanted for you.”

Her finger starts depressing the trigger, her hand shaking a bit not in hesitation, but a clear, devastating grief.

“I told her what happens to people that stay too close to me. I told her.” Her voice sounds weird—like it should be loud or furious or something, but it just…couldn’t.

She’s so tired.

“Yeah, and she stayed anyways, saving your pansy ass, and you plan on repaying her by what? Splattering what little's left of your brains across your hideout—?”

“Shut up! Why do you even care?”

She opens her eyes then, turns to face the other woman, but is surprised to see the way her expression mirrored her own. Exhaustion plain on her features, sunken eyes, weary posture—like holding herself up was some huge task.

Doesn’t change the way her hands still curled around the pistol, though, barrel snug against her skull.

“’Care’ is a strong word, brat. Your timing’s just shit, that’s all. Would have cut off my other fucking arm and ate it for you to have done this half a year ago. Now, the people down here see you and see hope. I don’t really get it myself, seeing as it’s you and all, but it means you actually stand a chance to do something even your dear old dads couldn’t do: unite the undercity. And now, with the damn Noxians practically controlling what little’s left of their precious council…”

Her own eyes lose a bit of focus and, ever-fearless, the other woman snaps her fingers in front of her face, bringing her back from wherever her mind had decided to take her.

“Yeah, I know you don’t fucking care…but your little protégé did. The question now is, what are you going to do about it?”

Sevika waits, eyes impassive as they lock onto her own. She glances back around the room, the one she’d been so intent on shutting out just like she’d wanted to shut herself out.

And then she thinks of that stupid kid, whose stupid hat still sat crookedly on her own head—thought of the way she’d learned to read her hand signals because she liked talking with her, thought of how annoyed she’d gotten when she’d messed with her hair while she was trying to sleep, pulling on her braids, stealing her crayons, hiding in the smallest, dumbest hiding places she could find…and of the way she’d kept trying to get her to go play hero, of how happy it’d made her when she finally did.

Of how she’d wanted to be just like her, and of where that’s gotten her.

She takes a breath. Then another. Lowers the gun to examine it in front of her eyes, turning the barrel this way and that so she could see the spots Isha had colored in.

Like the rest of the markings on it, they’d mostly faded away.

“I can’t keep this up for long, Lefty.”

It’s meant as a joke—or at least part of it is—but none of it comes out very funny.

With Isha, it hadn’t mattered: either way, she didn’t make much noise, so even if the joke flopped—

“I’m not asking you to. Just get things up and running. Get a plan in motion for this civil war the Pilties want so damn bad. After that, you can do whatever the hell you want.”

She ignores the way the other woman had implied she couldn’t just do that now. It probably hadn’t been on purpose: she had never been able to say no (at least, not for very long) to Isha.

One way or another, the stupid kid always forced her hand.

“You’ll…really leave me be after that?”

Sevika shrugs, grunting.

“Woulda let you do it now if they didn’t see you as their fucking prophet.”

She lowers the pistol, shoving it into its holster before rubbing the side of her head. Things were getting blurry again…but she could do this a little longer, she thinks.

Had to, for the kid.

“’K. So, what now?”

Sevika turns, leading the way out of her office, says words that she doesn’t really hear because that window of clarity had shut the moment she decided to keep going for just a little bit longer.

In whatever hell Isha had ended up in, she better be thanking her…and keeping her spot warm.

It wouldn’t be very long now.

Her trigger finger itches just like it had when that bird had cawed at her in their old haunt (get it?). The voices don’t mean anything—Silco had told her so.

He still told her so, sometimes.

It wasn’t often that a majority of them agreed with each other, and it’s nothing short of a miracle that she’s been able to ignore their steady cries for her to end it now instead of later…but then she’d see Isha, hiding behind a dumpster or crawling around in a pipe in the corner of her eye—and she’d always turn, and there’d be nothing there—but then she’d remember why she was here, and, well…

It means she can’t shoot right now because then she’d have gone all this out of the way for nothing, even if Sevika wasn’t really that much better than nothing.

They’d left her office, left the main strip for the outskirts near the docks—and she’d had to double back to grab that something she’d seen on the wall near one of the patrol stations they’d demolished, the corpses of the enforcers stationed there propping themselves up in death, a macabre little tea party left behind for any of their friends that were stupid enough to come poking around.

They’d gone all over the place after that, killing whoever the enforcers were working with, freeing the people they’d captured, stepping over the bodies that they’d left in their wake. It was getting on her nerves—mostly because that crimson the Noxians wore reminded her too much of stuff she couldn’t handle right now, and that—

“Powder?”

The voice makes her freeze and Sevika curse, and then suddenly, thinking gets a little easier and more painful and she has trouble getting enough air.

“Shit! Get your ass off the streets, brat! Go!”

She looks up to see a wide-eyed Vi staring at her, glancing between her and Sevika before settling on her, and when they make eye contact, she starts remembering more of this morning, the way her nails had chipped and bled in the dirt, the way someone had put these thick work gloves on her hands, the way Vander hadn’t been there like she thought he would be, the way she heard Vi’s steady breathing, the way she hadn’t heard Isha’s, the way she’d never hear it again.

The sound of her quiet little voice going “Pew!” with her hands in the same stupid gun symbol that Mylo'd used to make—

Something falls on her hand and she holds it up to her face to check what it is, looking to the sky because she hadn’t noticed the rain…

“It’s not raining.”

She doesn’t have the energy to silence them anymore, nor the patience to separate them from the real people around her.

“It’s fine,” she says to nothing and no one and everyone all at once. Sevika turns on her like she’s gone crazy (which is funny for all the wrong reasons) and she meets her gaze with a tired one of her own. When the woman opens her mouth to dispute it, she cuts her off, ignoring the rain even as it stains her shirt, her bandages, her hand.

“You asked where I was, earlier. That’s where I was. With them.”

Them. Plural.

Standing besides her sister is her, the rifle carefully not held up yet still drawn, obviously expecting a fight.

The enforcer outfit still on—Gods, but her sister’d picked a moron.

“You’re kidding, right? Did you just conveniently forget the way they tried to kill you just a few months ago?”

There’s more than a hint of animosity in the oldest woman's tone, but she ignores it, some familiar weariness creeping into her very essence that she’s only just beginning to remember.

“Is this what you meant when you said you had something to do?”

She asks.

It makes things jump in her vision, makes the topsider’s arm twitch upwards reflexively, which makes Sevika yank her around—

She blinks as she realizes why, and similarly, so do the other two women, who now each looked either pissed or conflicted, because she’d just pulled her behind herself, shielding her from the Piltie’s sight.

She freezes, unsure of how to take that. Reminds her too much of Silco, of Vander and Vi and her on that bridge.

“Get the fuck away from my sister!”

“That’s weird, I thought she wasn’t your sister anymore,” Sevika grunts, sneering, “didn’t know you could un-disown someone.”

“Shut the fuck up or—!”

“Or what?” You really think you could take me without your fancy topsider gloves?"

“Vi, quiet down! They weren’t even two blocks away, and I’m not certain how Ambessa told them to handle you.”

A humongous moron.

Their voices continue, toppling over one another over and over again until she just can’t take it anymore.

“Why are you here, Vi?”

Her voice isn’t loud. It’s not angry, or sad, or anything, really. It’s just there.

Still grabs all their attention-s, though.

She steps around Sevika to watch her face as she responds, and Vi watches her reaction carefully—just, not the usual wary way she did, more like she was an egg or something balanced on the edge of a countertop.

They were all just waiting for her to crack.

That’s ok, though—so was she.

“Powder,” she starts, her focus solely on her, “just—just come with us for now, ok?”

“Why, so you can shove her in a jail cell? You trying to set one aside for a family vacation home?”

“Fuck. You.” Vi growls, knuckles cracking as her fists tighten in retort.

“I—I asked if you wanted to come, remember?”

Her voice cracks. She doesn’t care, can barely even hear it with the weight pulling her down to the crumbling stone road below.

“Powder, listen to me: you’re not well, ok?" There's a pause here, a look on her face like she's just swallowed a handful of nails that makes her own eyebrows raise. "I’m just trying to help you—”

“How?” She grits out, her tongue poking at some old wound on her lip.

“What?”

She looks back at Vi with her sunken eyes and dirty hands. “You can’t even help yourselves right now.”

The Piltie shifts, her gaze locking on her own. “She can do far better for you in Piltover than she can in the undercity. Our resources exceed your own.”

Sevika sneers. “You mean in bullets or psych wards?”

To not her surprise but apparently Sevika’s, the topsider actually sneers back. “Both. It wasn’t a question, Jinx; you will accompany us to Piltover and there—”

“You’re actually going back there with her?” Her voice cracks, sounding hoarse and distant even to herself.

They all shift to face her then to and now, it’s Vi’s turn to look tired. “Powder, there’s a war going on right now. We’re just trying to do what we can to end it before more people get hurt—”

She raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “And you think the best way to do that is to go topside.”

They either don’t notice or don’t care about her mocking tone of voice, because the Piltie answers this time.

“With you in custody there’s little doubt in my mind that they’ll pull the enforcers from the undercity—”

She cuts herself off when Sevika and Jinx (because if they wanted her to be Jinx, then that’s who she’d be) share a look with each other—one that makes Sevika grin, all teeth, because the topsider has just said the stupidest fucking thing she’d heard all day,

“Knew you were still in there somewhere, brat.”

“What’s so funny?”

Jinx ignores her, turning instead to her sister.

“Powder, I know how it sounds," and maybe, by that pained conflicted sort of look in her eyes, she really did, "but there are people up there who can help you—”

Jinx scoffs. “’Help’ me?”

Vi closes her eyes, trying to think...or maybe just trying to hide her own face. That weird emotion flickers across her face again, but it's too hard to read into with Vi's eyes shut like this, too distracting just like everything else since she'd holstered her pistol in her office. Jinx shakes her head, trying to will away the image of another girl with the same habit.

She’d always reminded Jinx of Vi.

“Not anymore.”

Her teeth grind together and her hand slides into her hair, trying and failing to get to the source of the voice so she can cut it out herself. Vi was taking it the wrong way, and those voices weren’t helping anything. She didn’t doubt the Pilties could…”help”…if they wanted to.

She just didn’t want help…and she strongly doubted they’d actually give it to her even if she went (unless the topsider had been talking about execution, which she can see as both possible and perhaps even tolerable)…especially considering what Jinx knew and they (apparently) did not. She scoffs, turning away from them both, intent on leaving the conversation altogether.

Still…maybe it’s stupid, and she should just let it be, let them go back to what they thought would be their perfect little topsider life just like Sevika wanted her to and finally free herself from them (and soon after, from everything else, too)…but now that she has the sense to think straight, she feels like she has to ask.

Turning back over her shoulder, she looks at Vi, those stupid pale eyes of hers still faintly lit up with hope even as Jinx’s herself were tempered steel.

“Why—Why her?”

Vi blinks like she hadn’t expected the question and Sevika rolls her eyes. Before Vi can even respond, Sevika starts walking away.

“I don’t have time for this. Figure your shit out before our people are slaughtered.”

As Sevika starts walking away, she feels her eyes flatten.

“Uh, Sevika?”

The older woman tenses in a more controlled anger than she’d normally have, a testament to her restraint…probably. It sounded like something Silco would have said, so she’s pretty sure it’s right.

“I said—”

“You’re going the wrong way.”

Now the lady turns around, skepticism plain on her face and the cape covering the place her arm used to be fluttering in the motion. Before she can respond, however, Vi finally starts to answer her question—which is great, because she’d almost forgotten the other two were even here.

“What do you—?”

“I mean, couldn’t you have picked someone less annoying—”

Vi lets out a frustrated sigh. “Are we seriously talking about this ri—”

“Or not an enforcer?” Her tone is laced with that familiarly bitter anger that makes the Piltie’s eyes narrow and a look of hurt flash across Vi’s face.

“Powder—”

“They killed our parents, Vi.”

The topsider stiffens, a look of rage completely overtaking her expression.

“Is murder only acceptable when it’s committed by you, then?”

Jinx’s eyes narrow dangerously. “Careful, cupcake: the way I see it, the score isn’t settled quite yet, and since you’re the only enforcer I know…gotta say, it leaves me in a tough spot.”

“Powder! Knock it off!”

Jinx raises an eyebrow, waiting for Vi to continue and expressly ignoring whatever expression her companion shot her.

She looks like she wants to say more, but must end up choking over the options, because her mouth just opens and closes around nothing until Jinx has finally had enough.

She hears Vi gasp and take a step forwards, but Sevika moves at the same time and as the sounds start meshing together, Jinx decides to act. Locking her own pink gaze on the Piltie, who immediately stiffens, she crosses the gap between them in a moment, shoving the paper she’d ripped from the wall near the enforcer checkpoint roughly into her shoulder.

Clearly, from her shocked (and mildly irritated, she’s pleased to see) expression, this wasn’t what any of them had thought she’d do. Perhaps that’s why Vi reacted too slowly to catch her as she made her way back to Sevika's side, that unnatural blaze of neon pink crackling in her wake.

“You know, Vi, it’s not my job to make you care about me or the people we grew up around,” Jinx turns over her shoulder then, her eyes flat but not wild like they just had been—even she knows that, can feel the colors drain from her face and the sky and the world around them even as they shine on Vi’s face.

“Do what you want.”

And with that, she turns around, locking eyes with Sevika and jerking her head in that “come with me” sorta way some of Silco’s people used to do before heading towards where she knew more of the Jinxers or whatever they called themselves would be.

“Powder! Stop! Where are you going?”

“How do you know where to go?” Sevika quietly asks, one bushy eyebrow raised in question.

And just as she finishes speaking, a light flashes through the dusky sky, big and bright and blue and she narrows her own eyes at it.

“Oh, that’s gonna get reeeeal old.”

They both stare at the flare a moment longer before she glances back over her shoulder, her pistol casually resting against it even as the rest of her feels weighed down to the stones, to the dirt, to the grave that’s been calling her name ever since Isha’d stopped signing it to her with those big yellow eyes.

“Ain't that kinda obvious?” Jinx says, just loud enough for them all to hear before they start going again, not pausing or looking back as she finishes the thought.

“To be a big fucking hero.”

Chapter Text

“I…,” Vi stops with a sigh, not moving from the spot where the other two had just left them, runs a hand through her hair half expecting it to come back dyed the same color as her strands. She was going to say “I knew that wouldn’t work” or something like it, but she doesn’t, because she’d said the same thing to Cait—as well as every other way one could say “I really don’t want to do this”—as soon as Powder’d left them in that warehouse with the weapons she’d given them and the two of them had had a chat.

Vi knew there was something wrong with her sister, but…well, it hadn’t seemed to bother her quite like it’d used to, because at some point, Jinx’d stopped the whole blowing people up for no reason thing she had going on and replaced it with a kid, and it’d been going pretty well for her. She’d seemed happy, and back by that mineshaft, when Vi’d seen the mural the undercity folk had created and the blue dye messily applied to the kid’s head that Powder kept not-so-discreetly rolling her eyes at…

She doesn’t know how to put it—hadn’t even when Caitlyn had tried to get her to explain it back in that drifty office. It certainly hadn’t been perfect (her situation and sister both), but it had been fine. Powder was OK.

And then that kid died.

That kid had died, and then she’d shut down like she had, and woke back up—except Vi could see that things were different; she just didn’t know how. When she’d asked Caitlyn about it in her own panic (there’d been something distant, off in Powder’s eyes that Vi really hadn’t liked), Cait had looked away, started talking about doctors and hospitals and the Kiramman estate, of special laws centering around mental illnesses and other bullshit that Vi hadn’t really heard. She had seen the discomfort in her face, though, and it’d confused her just like it’d confused her when she’d stormed back into the building upon hearing Powder’s screams only to find cupcake there, bandaging her wounds.

Powder didn’t need any of the things Cait had suggested…or at least, she hadn’t a week ago when they’d been picking flowers with the kid. When Cait pointed out the way something had changed in the week her sister had been…asleep, Vi couldn’t refute it. Cait had seemed dead-set on the idea of getting the three of them topside as soon as possible—and when Vi had turned on her then, pissed that she was still trying to lock Powder up even after she’d saved her life, Cait had set her jaw and tersely explained that that’s not what she meant. Vi’d pressed her for answers, but all she’d gotten was that look of discomfort and a rundown of some law or another, of privileges she had as a Councilor’s daughter (or an actual Councilor herself; Vi didn’t really know how all that stuff worked).

The worst part had been when Cait had finally turned to her after Vi’d bitched about every plan the other woman had had and asked her:

“Do you have any better ideas?”

And she hadn’t been able to answer, because she didn’t. Cait had found a way that the topsiders would tolerate Jinx’s existence both alive and outside of a jail cell, a suggestion that would help to stop this stupid war and let Cait focus on ousting the Noxians without having to worry about Zaunite interference, all to make Vi happy.

What right did she have to bitch?

That’s what she’d kept telling herself all day as they searched for Powder, some growing dread pooling in her gut as they continued for reasons she hadn’t dared voice. She’d practiced exactly what she was going to say when they found her, because they both knew that if it came out of Caitlyn’s mouth it’d be worse than ignored.

And then they'd finally found her, and Vi could hardly say it, because she knew it was bullshit, but trying to keep her sister alive and Cait able to still do her job was more important. She’d still tried, but when Powder had challenged her on it, had asked her how…it was like trying to talk with a mouthful of syrup, choking her on words that hadn’t even left her mouth.

She’d tried thinking of it like Cait had, tried understanding her point of view—tried everything she possibly could to rationalize this all into a temporary fix where Cait would be happy and Powder would be safe and (more importantly), close to her.

But as much as she fucking hated Sevika, none of what she’d said had been wrong. Vi had tried to kill Jinx, was trying to lock her up (in a sense, at least), was ignoring the problems that everyone in the undercity had been facing ever since she and Cait had led their stupid expeditionary team down there.

The truth was, she didn’t believe most of the shit that came out of her own mouth—couldn’t completely keep it from showing on her face, either—and Powder’d seen right through it.

So now here they both are, and Powder’s gone again, and she’s stuck with her mouth unable to form around the words she needed to speak.

And Cait…

Actually, what was Cait doing?

“Cait? You alright?”

She turns around to look at her, but Cait’s expression is all wrong, eyes wide with shock that Vi could practically see radiating off her with how rigid she’d gone, her hand wrapped around some piece of parchment—

Vi’s own eyebrows shoot up as she remembers what that is—that thing Jinx had shoved at Cait before leaving, heading towards the site where that flare was now fizzling out in the sky.

“What’s it say?”

Caitlyn’s mouth opens, but it shuts just as quickly, her eyes unfocused as she wordlessly turns the paper around for Vi to see—

And Vi instantly understands the problem, for facing her now was both Cait’s and her own faces, wanted for acts of treason against the city of Piltover.

Chapter Text

Sevika's leg slams into the body in front of her, makes sure they aren’t still kicking. Piltie bastards had a knack for playing dead—probably had something to do with all those damn theatres up there, gave ‘em a dramatic flair the people in the undercity lacked.

Her eyes flicker to the problem child to her right, who had just—somehow—won the fight with the enforcer she’d just killed by systematically taking apart their rifle, piece by piece, the panicked shots they fired off as the gun was still whole enough to do so always missing Jinx and yet also always hitting one of their bluebelly friends in one vital point or another.

Well. Most of the undercity lacked it.

Jinx examines the straight piece of metal in her hand, ignoring the corpse that falls down over her feet in the process, her eyes searching the piece for something Sevika’s not convinced she even wants to know.

There’d only been six of them this time, but the muffled sound of distant footsteps told her there would be more to follow if they didn’t start hauling ass in the very near future. Neither of them are uninjured at this point, and with Sevika down an arm and Jinx down most of her brain, they couldn’t afford to keep their little hit-and-run operations going for much longer.

Jinx’s eyes flicker to the side, flashing a vibrant pink before she tosses the part in her hands to the ground. The man who’d fired the flare lay dead in a pool of his own blood, and since he was the only Zaunite in the area, and this had just been a patrol and not a checkpoint, they hadn’t even gained anything by responding to the signal at all.

They’d only lost time—time that they didn’t have a lot of to begin with.

“We oughta head back. Regroup with some of the others,” she starts, a stray strand of dark hair flitting in front of her eyes as she surveyed the area.

Jinx raises an eyebrow, locking eyes with her from over her shoulder. “’Others?’ What others?”

She snorts in response, already turning down an alleyway she knew the younger’d follow her into.

“Guess it’s been a minute,” she starts, cape whipping a bit with a gust of polluted air from one of the ventilation ducts on a nearby building. “Those people you let outta jail a few weeks back, they—”

She hears the girl shift behind her, a confused hum cutting through their little chat much like Sevika’s commandeered spear cut through flesh. The thought makes her grimace: it’d come from a Noxian, sturdy and well-kempt and finely made…and the lone woman that had last wielded it had taken out seven of their own with it before they’d finally brought her down. There weren’t a lot of them (or at least, there hadn’t been; one of the scouts had reported seeing more of those crimson-clad ships from across the ocean dock in Piltover just before he’d stopped reporting back entirely), but they were tough sons of bitches—better trained, better disciplined, and, in terms of close-range combat, much better equipped.

“Weeks? That…that was that long ago?”

Jinx’s voice brings her back to the conversation and she grunts in affirmation, pushing aside a tattered old bedsheet someone had strung up to block off part of the narrow street they’d found themselves in.

When she doesn’t say anything else, Sevika starts into her explanation again, fully prepared to be interrupted as they continue.

“They wanted to help with the fighting, got all inspired by your little stunt—‘course, that stopped for most of them after they thought you went and got yourself killed,” she shoots the blue-haired pain in the ass a glare that's met with an impatient, unwavering stare, “but some of them stayed to ‘avenge’ you…helped that the topsiders have all but officially declared war, too.”

Jinx stays silent, so Sevika continues, wondering if the dipshit behind her had been listening to a word she said.

“And who knows—with you not dead, maybe more will resurface, in time. Either way, the headquarters are where they’ve always been, even with the change in management.”

Jinx snorts like Sevika had made a joke.

She was half-right and half-wrong all at once.

Or maybe she just hadn’t heard her at all, and was laughing at some joke or another the voices in her head told her.

Wouldn’t be the first time it’d happened…although she gets the strange feeling that isn’t the case now, judging by the weird shit the kid had been up to recently.

The whole wanting to kill herself thing hadn’t been all that shocking—in fact, Sevika’s surprised it’d taken her so long to try it.

Surprised, and a bit irritated, of course.

But hanging out with her traitor sister and her Piltie whore—that was something she never thought she’d see. Not that she’d thought the older brat was even still alive after The Hound of the Underground was killed by his own kid seven years ago, but after his prodigal mutt broke out of the pound still breathing…

Was sure that Vi would take one look at what the kid had turned into and turn against her…which she’d been right about, in a way.

What Sevika thought would happen with the return of Vander’s golden child was the rise of a second underground lord—one dedicated to stopping Silco, one who would also be quickly obliterated by the very same man. She’d actually been excited for it, even: get rid of Vi, get rid of any of the dumb shits still loyal to Vander, even get rid of Jinx when she inevitably flew so far off the deep end she drowned.

But then Silco died, and Vi’d done something she’d never have guessed the brat would have done as a teenager: become a lapdog for the very people responsible for killing her parents.

And what had that left Sevika with?

Jinx.

And Janna help us all, she’s actually our last hope.

When the brat had been younger, Sevika used to wish it’d been the other one that Silco hauled off the streets. At least that one could take a punch, she’d reasoned.

Now, though…well, Jinx wasn’t perfect (in Sevika’s opinion, she wasn’t even good), but she did get shit done, when she wanted to, and that she could respect.

It also helped that she wasn’t a fucking traitor, too.

The disconnect she’s having now came from whatever the fuck had happened after that incident in the jail; finally, she’d thought they were really getting somewhere, that the stray with that ridiculous looking hat had somehow wormed her way through that thick skull of her mentor and convinced her to play the part the Zaunites had laid out for her. But when she’d went off to find the two of them the next morning, a plan to mobilize the forces of the resistance already drawn up, the brats were nowhere to be found…and that stayed true until news of the weird shit at the commune came to light.

She could buy that the kid had died…but with Jinx, it was a harder sell. She’d said once that she “just couldn’t seem to die”, and Sevika half-believed it herself, after being around her for so damn long. So, she ignored the reports of her death that had surfaced, ignored the strange (yet repeated) stories of her stay in the weapons-free area where a metal savior had supposedly appeared, and had outright laughed at the report of her and Vi acting all buddy-buddy together.

Except apparently, that hadn’t been a load of horseshit—at least not according to Jinx herself (who was, admittedly, not the most reliable source of information)—because next she saw the prodigal sister and her irritable plus one, they hadn’t tried to kill Jinx…or her. She’d let Jinx handle it for the most part, but she could tell the brat hadn’t been paying much attention, and she’d also been a bit worried that her sister of the year would somehow be able to convince her to give up their fight, so she’d butt in a few times, tried to distract them for long enough that the people's precious little symbol could scamper off.

In the end, though, it hadn’t mattered what Sevika said, because everything out of Vi’s mouth had pushed Zaun's resident psychopath further into the undercity…and the look on her face as she spoke said she knew it even as the poison blew out of her mouth like the Grey she’d released into the undercity just a few months back. She had no way to prove it, but she suspected everything Vi’d said was just what the Piltie had told her to say. Why Vi went along with it was beyond her—and to be perfectly frank, Sevika didn’t give a shit as long as Jinx didn’t decide to go along for the ride.

Jinx isn’t as fickle as her sister, though, and considering the conversation they’d had in that shithole she called her office, she probably wouldn’t sign herself up for anything outside of her poorly defined, self-made time limit on her own life. That was unfortunately something that Sevika would have to handle, one way or another. Ideally, it’d be best to keep the poster child of the resistance alive and well until Zaun was independent and the Noxians repelled either to Piltover or (preferably) back across the damn ocean they’d come from, but realistically speaking with the way things were going now, that might take months…or years—and if they managed to stall for that long while she thought of something to do, it would mean that things were going well.

Sevika somehow doubts she has that much time to work with. She could try talking her out of it, but they would both know the real reason why…besides, she’s not sure she actually cares enough to bother with any of that in the first place. Kid’d done nothing her entire life but get in her way. Blew her arm to hell, burned their cargo, sabotaged countless missions with all the screws loose in that fat head of hers…

If the undercity folk hadn’t needed a symbol, Sevika would have left the brat to her own devices to begin with.

‘Course, that didn’t mean anything now, because unfortunately for her, they did need something to rally under, and Silco’s troublesome brat apparently fit the bill.

She stops her pointless musings as they come to a stop in front of the Last Drop, a frown tugging on one side of her face as she stares up at the faded-looking sign. Jinx, for her part, doesn’t even bother glancing at it before turning to look up at her, a single, tired eyebrow raised as if to say what are you waiting for?

Sevika could have even answered, too, because she is waiting. She’s waiting for the thin little bastard in front of her to get over herself and blow something important up. Waiting for the Noxians to come in full force, wipe all of them off the face of Runterra for good, waiting for the topsiders to stop pretending Piltover was still theirs to run.

Waiting for Jinx to snap and send her to meet the rest of Zaun’s former leaders.

She doesn’t, though. Answer, that is. Instead, she props the door open, waiting for the ticking time bomb in front of her to go inside, to go off and maybe spark change in her wake.

“C’mon, Jinx. We’ve got shit to do.”

Sevika only hopes they’ve got the time to do it.

They start back to the warehouse shortly after Jinx leaves them in the street, and they make it back just before dark. For some reason, the atmosphere’s different, though she only really notices it once Vi speaks up—can’t even remember the trip back because her mind was reeling from the implications of the parchment held loosely between her fingers.

Treason. Treason?!

According to who? The Council? With her mother dead and her appointment as Commander of their forces, even that should have been impossible.

“Cait?”

Just what the hell had happened since she’d come down to the undercity with the General? Was any of it real or were these Jinx’s fabrications? To what end would she have even created them?

Her fingers trace over her own likeness, neatly drawn and, presumably, mass-printed and distributed throughout the undercity as well as Piltover proper, hung neatly on every bulletin board, every concrete wall, on the insides of every tavern and security checkpoint from here to the Councilor’s chambers.

“Cait…”

She looks at Vi’s portrait, her hair shaded black because though she’d been effectively discharged once Caitlyn had returned to Piltover without her, someone with such close ties to a criminal—however tangential or convoluted—would never be able to just walk free after leaving the enforcers. Her movements carefully watched, the people she spoke to tracked, her slummy apartment complex monitored for suspicious behavior. They knew exactly where she’d gone and what she looked like and who she conversed with…the fact that Jinx herself had somehow managed to circumvent it all left her feeling physically ill. Worse, Cait didn’t know how closely they’d followed protocol because she’d staunchly refused to be part of or even look at any of the reconnaissance work her colleagues had done. She hadn’t thought much of it when Vi’d gone back to her place to grab her belongings, but that’s because of all the things to come out of this, of all the stories the Council could have conjured up to explain her disappearance following the explosion in the undercity, treason had never been one of the options.

Their deaths, maybe—from the blast itself, or from the attempt to finally arrest Jinx. Perhaps a missing person’s notice, for her at least. But not treason—not as a Kiramman, not as Commander…

Treason…

“Cait!”

She looks up from where she’d been sitting, slumped over in that lone office chair, her forehead held in one hand propped up on her own leg. She startles as she realizes Vi’s gripping her shoulders, looking at her with a barely-concealed panic. The other woman opens her mouth to say something, but Caitlyn cuts her off, clarity making her next actions easier as she stands, swinging that rifle back over her shoulder.

“This…,” she holds up the parchment in her hand for Vi to see without meeting her gaze, “tell me, did your sister make it?”

Vi shakes her head, mostly black locks twisting in her peripherals as she waits for her answer.

“I don’t think so—”

“Violet,” she turns to face her now, her voice laden with just a fraction of the anger she truly felt. “I need a better answer than uncertainty, beca—”

Vi scoffs, her own irritation almost palpable in the air. “If it was her, then she sure as shit’s been busy all fucking day putting them up in just the places the enforcers would travel through.” At Caitlyn’s silence, she rolls her eyes and continues, “seriously? Were you paying attention at all on the way back? We passed two of their old checkpoints, and her face is plastered on the same notice boards as ours’ are now.”

Caitlyn shakes her head, first slowly, then more quickly as she crosses the room, slinging Vi’s pack over her shoulder and shaking her grip off when Vi tries to get her to stop.

“What the hell are you—”

“We can’t stay here,” Cait breathes, her own anxiety making her words come out breathier than they should—which is likely also why the anger on Vi’s face fades into something more uncertain. “Do you need anything else from in here?”

“I—no…Cait, what’s going on?”

“I shouldn’t have let you go back there,” she curses, shaking her head, a tension headache forming between her temples.

Vi raises an eyebrow, her head tilting slightly at her words. “Back to my apartment?”

“Yes. I knew they were watching it, watching you, but I didn’t think that would matter if they thought you were dead or had abandoned the place—”

“Hold the fuck up—”

“Whatever you’re about to complain about, Vi, do it later.” Her tone leaves no room for negotiation, and once again the anger dissipates from Vi’s expression as she watches Cait finish counting her remaining ammunition—which isn’t much, after having to scare off a few thugs on the way back here. It’d been rather strange considering this part of the undercity had all but been abandoned, with none of its residents wanting to stay even remotely close to the site of the massacre. What’s more, the ruffians had outnumbered the two of them, and her and Vi weren’t particularly well armored; the fact that they’d pulled out of the fight after just a few warning shots had been something of a mira—

Her eyes widen in realization, and something about the way she freezes must alert Vi that there’s something wrong, because she’s instantly stepping into Caitlyn’s space, the shoddy knuckles Jinx had provided her held up at the ready. It was times like this, where the other woman instinctively knew when to shut up and prepare to fight, when any traces of her recent anxieties cleared from her face to leave behind only a tempered determination…when Caitlyn could tell Vi was putting all her trust in her despite everything that had happened between them that she felt her heartstrings tug a bit.

They would need to have a long, honest talk sometime soon about all of this, about them, but today wasn’t that day.

Caitlyn opens her mouth but a quiet, muffled noise from the floor below them draws her attention. She shares a glance with Vi, who raises her eyebrows for a moment in a “ready when you are” sort of way, and—steeling herself while raising her rifle—she silently opens the door.

“…and that about sums it up,” Sevika finishes with a sigh, rolling her shoulder that still had an arm attached to it and listening as some of the bones in her back crack in protest.

I’m getting too damn old for this.

She remembers Vander once, a decade or so ago, saying something similar and she snorts a laugh—one of Jinx’s blue eyebrows quirking in silent question. Sevika leaves it unanswered, shifting to take in the tired patrons of the old tavern. After Silco’s death, it’d stayed abandoned for a while, the denizens of the undercity too afraid of the repercussions they might face should he miraculously resurface…but as time went by and he never appeared, it’d gone through a short slew of six or seven different owners before Sevika’d more or less took it up herself. She wasn’t a fucking barkeep by any means, but she still had the same connections with people who actually knew what they were doing, and the place still sat in a nice, central and strategic location in the undercity thanks to its first owner, so she put in the bare minimum effort that was required to keep the damn place running.

Don’t misunderstand: it’s still a shithole…but it’s their shithole.

There, she stood leaning against the counter, drinking some sort of vodka out of an awkward and obviously repurposed jug, explaining exactly where they stood in this fight to the brat. Jinx, for her part, was lying on the bar's countertop, her feet facing the door and head almost in the way of the poor bartender, her legs crossed with one propped up over the other and using one arm as a pillow. The other…held the hat she hadn’t taken off until she’d settled on the counter, which now sat over her chest. The whole thing stirs vague memories of the welding goggles one of Vander’s boys used to wear—ones Silco’s progeny had taken to carting around like they were a young kid’s blanket.

Sevika honestly can’t tell if Jinx had actually listened to any of the words that she’d spoken, what with the way her eyes stared straight up at the ceiling, unfocused as the rest of her posture suggested. Part of the problem might be the way the bar’d gone dead silent upon her entrance, the way some of them shot her tentative smiles or mock salutes with just a little too much sincerity to be complete satire. Discomfort was a strange look on her—Sevika thinks the only time she'd seen Jinx look uncomfortable was back during that jailbreak—and while it was understandable considering half the undercity had been at her throat just hours before that, it was no less jarring to see the way the kid’s expression shifted under all the attention.

Well, when she blew up the Council Chamber, she probably should have expected that sort of reaction in Sevika’s opinion, but it was Jinx, and that meant she probably hadn’t actually taken the time to think things through before she did them.

As ironic as it is considering that it had been this exact sort of behavior that made Sevika hate her in the first place, it’s exactly the sort of thing their movement needs against the Noxians. Enforcers dealt with erratic behavior according to their topsider policies and protocols and laws, but the Noxians, Sevika’s found, are less restricted by them. If you pissed off an enforcer, you got arrested, maybe beat if you got caught by the wrong one. You piss off a Noxian, they just kill you. It wasn’t in the same way the enforcers did it, either—there was no spectacle, no public shaming or announcement, no harassment…so far as she knew, they didn’t so much as speak or remove their helmets if they weren’t told to do so. They killed, and they moved on.

That fact alone had made it infinitely more difficult to mobilize the undercity against their assaults; no one wanted to fight an enemy that showed no mercy under any circumstances, not when all of them knew they had no chance in hell of winning in the first place.

It was a fact Silco had known well, which is why he’d used the Doctor, why he'd ramped up the production of shimmer, why he stuck to fear tactics and keeping the fighting localized to Zaun because the topsiders couldn’t fight worth a shit in the trenches. He knew just as well as she did that if the Pilties launched a full scale assault, they were all fucked...and that was before their friends across the ocean showed up. It’s why Jinx had been such a problem then, her behavior too damn unpredictable for both the Pilties and Silco to keep up with.

And now that they’d actually started it, had even outsourced the death they brought to another, militarized country…she might just be the solution.

Sevika was dealing with miners, factory workers, ex-firelights and shimmer addicts. They’d all probably had some fighting experience just because you had to know how to defend yourself in order to live down here…but that was also part of the problem: they knew how to work alone, were all naturally distrustful of everyone outside of their immediate familial groups, and because there wasn’t any sort of law enforcement native to Zaun, they had absolutely no uniformity in terms of training or equipment or skill sets. There was no discipline and because there was almost no hope, there had been no motivation for any of them to develop it.

But now that they had Jinx, who had broken into a prison and freed dozens of them with a simple disguise and a single pistol, Jinx, who had singlehandedly stolen and weaponized hextech with a few notebooks and the scraps in her office and used it to decimate the Council, Jinx, who had set the Grey en masse against the topsiders after they’d wielded it against their children and their sick and elderly…

Now, the bar had slowly been filling up over the hours she’d been reviewing their situation with the brat, and people had that spark in their eyes again that wasn’t in the kid’s own, and it just might be enough.

A lot could be said about Jinx. A lot. But when she set her mind to something, no matter how crazy or poorly-thought out or impossible it seemed, she got it done.

And if the impossible was on their side…they might just be able to pull this off.

Sevika just had to make sure the kid lived long enough to give them a fighting chance.

She glances down at the near-vacant look in her eyes and suppresses a sigh. How the hell had Silco put up with this shit for 7 years?

“Got any questions, or do you about get it?” Sevika asks in between drinks—ones that got increasingly longer the more she thought about their situation. In response, Jinx’s eyes flicker to her own before she abruptly sits up, draping her arms and the hat over her one upturned knee. Twisting around, Jinx takes in the bar’s patrons, the still-smashed jukebox in the corner of the room (a byproduct of the fight Sevika’d had with the sister), the dents in the wall from the pool table. Then she hops off the counter, and starts walking towards the door. Sevika almost stops her but thinks better of it. If there’s anything she’d learned in her life, it’s that if you tell a teenager not to do something, it’d push them to want to do it more. If they were going to work together on this like they’d kind of been doing on and off since Silco’s death, she was just going to have to trust her.

To not kill herself.

Whether Jinx wanted to see it or not, the entire undercity depended on her right now...which was a whole new level of uniquely terrifying.

Sevika turns back to the bartender and orders a stronger drink. She has the feeling she’s gonna need it.

Please don’t fuck this up, kid.

They’d been running for hours now, and the only reason they’d finally stopped was because the last pair of Noxians they’d run into had reopened that wound on Vi’s stomach—one that Caitlyn had thought was fully healed by now. She’d assumed that, because Vi had been able to walk and take trips around the warehouse and run like she’d been doing for the past week, it’d meant the younger woman was doing alright. She hadn’t let Caitlyn see the injury after Vi’d stitched it up herself following the fight, claiming she hadn’t needed any help changing the bandages. In fact, she’d usually taken care of it on on one of her little excursions.

Maybe all of those things had actually been true. Maybe Caitlyn is panicking too much at the way the blood pools from her stomach, at the way she’d immediately fallen to her knees after the Noxian had slammed the butt of their spear into her side—the blow that the brawler had taken only after shoving Cait out of the arc of the second soldier’s blade.

Maybe she just can’t stand seeing the other woman in pain—especially not holding her torso like she’s currently doing, shaking in an effort to avoid crying out and inadvertently draw the others to their location…one Caitlyn had no real frame of reference for because she had absolutely no idea where they are. She can’t stitch her up, has no experience with doing so—couldn’t have Vi try and do it now, either, with how out in the open they were. She’s got four rounds left and counting and no idea of how many pursuers they had.

It is decidedly not ideal.

“Cupcake,” Vi starts, looking half-delirious from the blood loss, “you should get outta here.”

She winces and Caitlyn grits her teeth before slinging the rifle over her shoulder and hauling the other woman to her feet, ignoring the places she can see where the stitches had burst open on her stomach. The good news is that—for whatever reason—Vi’d done each one up separately, so they weren’t all reopened. The bad news was that it hadn’t stopped the cut from bleeding despite that. Dark as it was, she couldn’t make out any more than that, nor did she have the time to keep examining her if they were both to make it out of here in one piece.

“Cait—”

“Shut up and focus on staying conscious,” she snaps, pressing against a brick wall before pressing ahead, praying to any god that would hear her that the next building would be clear, because they had to get off the streets before Vi simply bled out in the alley.

What she’s met with—while it technically answered her plea—is arguably worse.

A small group of people—perhaps fifteen or so—lay dead on the cement floor of the dilapidated wooden building she’d found herself in—perhaps a remarkably old storage building that had been refurbished (however slightly) into a home. All had died in the same way: a slash across the throat or chest by a sharp blade…a spear, if Caitlyn had to guess. The oldest was perhaps 60, an older woman who had dyed what little remained of her hair a vibrant blue, and the youngest maybe 13. Four others had similarly dyed hair, leaving a bad taste in her mouth that she isn’t convinced is entirely due to the obvious slaughter that had happened here.

Without comment, she carefully helps Vi up on a rickety table towards the back of the room—an action that leaves her panting, sweat already beading on her forehead. Was that normal for reopened wounds like this? Or had their weapons been doused in some sort of poison? But what kind of poison would come from the wrong end of the weapon? No one in their right mind would do that to themselves, right?

Had it simply been infected this entire time? How would she even be able to tell?

Shaking herself out of her thoughts, she mechanically applies pressure to the wound as she fishes out the needle from the makeshift first aid kit they’d steadily thrown together over the week, the questionably sterile suture thread quick to follow as she placed them on the table next to Vi.

“Cait, I don’t—my hands are shaking too much for this…”

One glance is enough to see that she’s right…and now that Caitlyn has a better view of the wound, she can see the way her skin—which had been wrapped under bandages for the past week—appeared off-color, but not infected. She certainly hadn’t shown signs of infection throughout the week…but that didn’t mean that their weapons hadn’t been poisoned at the time of the initial wound, or that this new injury hadn’t ruptured one of her organs or otherwise caused internal—

“I can practically hear you think, cupcake,” Vi laughs, her own trembling hand coming to rest over Caitlyn’s own. Caitlyn’s eyes widen in unsuppressed fear, which makes Vi smile weakly.

“I—I can try to—but I don’t know how, and it could make it worse—”

“Hey, s’ok. It’s like sewing, just your fabric is people and if you fuck it up, your project dies. Not so bad,” Vi says, huffing out another laugh as Cait internally screams at her for the extremely unhelpful comparison.

Outside, footsteps draw closer—muffled, but in the still of the night, still easily detectable as the sound reverberates off of the surrounding buildings.

“Hey, I’ll be ok for a minute—just worry about not getting yourself killed first, cupcake,” Vi’s hand comes up and lightly caresses her face, shaking and unintentionally smearing a few stripes of crimson on her cheeks. She squeezes her eyes shut and takes a breath, knowing that Vi’s right and yet not wanting to leave her side. Still, she forces herself to calm down enough to get in position, her rifle aimed at the entrance to the makeshift house, ignoring the scent of death and iron that stagnated in the air.

She can tell they hadn’t expected for her to be ready for them, and Caitlyn doesn’t hesitate when the door swings open with a quiet creak. Two rounds is all it takes, hitting each soldier directly in the junction between their helmet and breastplate. The only problem is that her rifle is much louder than the one she typically wielded, and already, she can hear the sounds of armored footsteps slamming on the broken stone roads outside, though its still very far off.

She looks to Vi, counts the two rounds she has left, and bites her lip, resisting the urge to curse as she began looking around the place for something she could use as a weapon whilst the footsteps drew slowly but steadily closer.

“Hey, Cait?” Vi calls faintly from the rickety table, her voice weak but still present.

“Not now, Vi,” she warns, tossing the pitchfork she’d found aside once one of the prongs comes off at her touch, rusted away from use and time.

“How badly do you wanna get out of this alive?”

Caitlyn looks over to her distractedly, ready to cut her off, but stops herself once she sees that same look of determination on her face as she’d sported in the warehouse before this ordeal had begun.

“What exactly are you talking about?”

Vi laughs, but it doesn’t carry much mirth. “I got a plan,” she starts, her head shifting to look at something across the room, “but you’re not gonna like it.”

When Cait turns to follow her gaze with an unspoken question on her lips, her eyes widen in shock as she spots what Vi so obviously saw before running a hand down her face in exasperation.

Well, Caitlyn thinks, glancing back over to the woman slowly bleeding out on the table with a silent curse, she isn’t wrong.

She’s pretty sure this weighed less last time.

Sure, she’d made some tweaks to the original design, but this seemed like overkill—and that’s coming from her.

It threatens to pop her shoulder out of place from where she’d slung it across her back, the bow contrasting nicely with the color of her hair—though most of it besides the braids was still covered up by the hat.

She stops in place as her ears twitch, some odd noise catching her attention from a few streets behind her.

When she turns, she immediately knows why, and the relatively less-terrible mood she’d been in since shutting herself in her office melted away like it hadn’t existed at all, a grating noise coming from within her almost forcing her to her knees with its intensity.

“Stupid kid…irritating me all the way from the grave…,” she huffs out, the pain between her ears throbbing once, twice, three times before finally fading. Had the little shit not started going around pretending to be her, then this wouldn’t be her problem.

She wants nothing more than to ignore it, because the memories it stirs within her are almost unbearable, make the other people in her skull cranky, make her ears ring and the color seep from the world in such a weird-o way that all the oil crayons on Runterra wouldn’t be able to fix it.

But, its not like she would have to put up with it too much longer…and besides, Sevika probably wouldn’t like it if she ignored it, and that would make the last six hours feel like a whole lot longer if the lady never shut up about it.

She could really hold a grudge, ol’ Lefty.

So, ignoring the way the package tugs at her back, she heads towards the place where the blue flare lights up in the night sky, the color contasting with the pink that streaks through the air in little jets behind her as she runs by.

Chapter Text

Caitlyn made a mistake, listening to Vi.

It’s not the injured woman’s fault: she was delirious from blood loss, her breathing so labored it could probably be heard from outside of the building’s wooden walls. She wasn’t thinking straight, and in the process of trying to stay awake, had suggested something absolutely insane and Cait had just gone with it in her panic. Down the street, she can hear as boots thump on the cobblestones, probably half a dozen Noxians coming to burst through the door, and there wasn’t a damn thing Cait could do that would stop them before they arrived.

They had just done something irreparably idiotic and it was entirely her fault.

Still, even knowing that it’s her own death about to barge into the room, she’s not going to make it easy on them.

She’s got two rounds left, and a rifle with a decent weight to it. She might not be able to stop them…no, she definitely wouldn’t be able to stop them…but she damn well could take a few of them down with her.

A true traitor’s death.

She settles on one knee, ignoring the stench of decay permeating in the air, ignores the way Vi’s breathing slows even further, ignores the way her heart slams in her chest, threatening to jump ship.

And she waits.

Just like before, the two that enter first are dead almost as soon as the doors swing open, and training forces her onto her feet before the next three enter, all armed and focused on the sniper in the room without any bullets. When the first one lunges, she’s ready for them, side-stepping their swing before thwacking them across the side of the head with the stock of her rifle, making them stagger back from the force. She doesn’t have time to watch them for longer than that, already rolling out of the way of the arc of the second soldier’s blade—but this sends her into the path of the third Noxian, who kicks her in the stomach, sending her crashing into the nearby wall. She hits it with a loud bang, the air literally knocked from her lungs as she struggles to push herself upright, but she hardly has time to even look up to follow the spear’s swing with her eyes before it reaches her neck and slits her throat—

Or at least, it should have slit her throat.

It doesn’t—her head’s roughly forced down before the blade’s arc finishes, causing the steel to hit her temple instead…but even that is wrong somehow, blocked by some barrier that prevents the contact. Instead of the wet noise that one’d normally hear after someone’s neck was cut in the open air, she only hears a loud thunk, amplified by something she can’t quite identify since—in fractions of a second—something had been placed over her head and eyes.

As her hands scramble to find purchase around her blindfold(?), she hears a few muffled thumps sound from directly in front of her, followed and intersected by the unmistakable sound of gunfire that leaves her on edge—

And as she hurriedly rips the thing from her head that's been blocking her view of the fight that she’d been effectively removed from since the moment she’d hit the wall, Caitlyn freezes, because, standing in the center of the room sporting a new, shallow slash on her arm and twirling her pistol around by the trigger, is Jinx.

She finds herself almost unable to breathe as the criminal slowly turns over her shoulder to face her, the barrel of her pistol coming to rest on her shoulder in much the same manner as a miner might heft a pickaxe.

The glowing pink eyes that regard her, completely devoid of their usual mirth, do little to help ease anything, either.

“So. Didn’t really think that was going to be you when I saw the flare,” the blue-haired woman spits, something like suspicion coloring her tone, “but if you’re here, then where is my sister?”

Dumbstruck (and probably concussed, she thinks with a grimace), Cait wordlessly points to the back of the room, Jinx’s words serving to remind her of the situation and forcing some of the shock from her system.

As soon as Jinx turns, her eyes widen in actual horror and she’s gone, seeming to teleport directly on to the table, crouching in a ball near Vi’s head in less time than it takes to blink.

“Vi!”

She shakes her shoulder in a frantic panic, the fear in her features so palpable that it makes Caitlyn freeze from where she’d pushed herself up from the ground, ignoring the thump of an object in her lap falling to the dirt at her feet.

“Don’t—don’t do that, you’ll agitate her injury,” Cait starts, almost stopping when those hateful pink eyes settle back on her.

“Really, ‘cuz it already seems pretty agitated to me!”

If the words are meant to be a joke, neither her features nor tone of voice show it. Cait tenses as the blue-haired woman grips the side of her own head, muttering something under her breath that she’s too far away to hear as tears well up in her eyes—which express everything from fear to confusion to rage.

“Jinx,” she starts, her tone laced with a careful urgency that the girl (because now, that’s what she looked like again—an overwhelmed child waiting for the adults to make everything better) pays absolutely no mind to, her hand tightening around her head and reopening old cuts from her own nails there that makes Cait wince. “Do you know how to apply stitches? She’s bleeding out, and it didn’t look like there were many people nearby when we first entered here.”

“Vi, please…,” Jinx half-begs, the fear in her expression overtaking everything else, “don’t leave me again…”

Sparing a glance at the unconscious woman on the table, Cait curses, then knowingly makes a decision that will probably end up killing her.

And it’s not even the first one she’d made that night.

Swiftly making her way to Vi's side, Caitlyn forces herself not to hesitate as she places one of her dirty, blood-stained hands over Jinx’s now glass-filled eyes, listening as the girl sharply inhales before some of the tension leaves her crouched form. Some of the blood from her temple drips onto and flows over Caitlyn’s fingers, and it serves as an uncomfortable reminder of both this terrible situation and of the disaster that her last trip to the undercity had been—of the way she’d, in blind fury—almost shot through a child’s skull just to get to the one currently under her palm.

Of what she’d done to Vi immediately following it, even though she’d saved Caitlyn from being killed by the flying rubble and debris and destructively powerful wind.

She hates—hates—the way the thought now makes her stomach churn with anxiety and guilt, tries to attribute it to whatever it was that was happening right now.

She fools no one—not even herself—and it’s incredibly unfair.

To her great shock, Jinx suddenly jumps back, her wary, panicked eyes locking with Caitlyn’s just seconds before there’s a pistol in her face. Caitlyn’s eyes widen as it fires, more shocked that the projectile doesn’t hit her than she is to hear something drop to the ground outside of the building behind her, where the bullet had shot through the wall and—apparently—actually hit someone despite the wielder of the weapon that’d fired it not actually seeing their approach.

As she starts turning back to look at Jinx, her head snaps back to the wall because, in an instant, the pieces clicked together in her mind. Sitting close to the position where it had apparently fallen from her own head rests the child’s hat that Jinx had taken to wearing, now sporting a slight dent where a spear had struck its side.

She has no more time to ponder the situation before something’s shoved into her still outstretched hand—and, turning back to look at it, Cait is further shocked to realize it's Jinx’s pistol, one the girl forces into her grasp before walking around Cait and making her way outside, returning mere seconds later with some sort of large parcel complete with a bow.

Cait can’t stop the way her mouth hangs open as the wrapping on it is shredded, revealing a hideous replication of the prosthetic arm the Zaunite woman who used to be Silco’s right hand had wielded against them a few months ago.

Jinx sets its down without ceremony onto the table, heedless of the way it jostles Vi—but for some reason, as Cait looks between the exhausted looking girl, a hat, and the pistol in her hand, she finds she’s content to let the girl do whatever it is she’s doing.

Reflecting on it later, Cait decides this is because of the concussion.

She popped one of those hex crystals into a compartment on its side, and once an additional appendage shot out from the arm’s base, she had a sinking feeling she knew what was about to happen. She turns away, abruptly noticing there were more footsteps to be heard outside the building…and that Jinx had given her the pistol to cover them.

That left Caitlyn feeling oddly sick, but she decides not to dwell on it, too focused on the two of them making it out of the ordeal intact to lament on how she’d have to do it.

Cait does not watch as the laser starts cauterizing the wound, does not watch as Jinx, presumably, holds her hands much too close to its silvery beam to be safe in order to force the paired flesh together, nor does she focus on the blood that’s been steadily dripping from the table’s ledge her since she’d set Vi down on it in the first place.

There turn out to be two more Noxians, but though one of them is at least smart enough to bust a window to break into instead of charging in through the door, neither of them last longer than a few seconds of their appearances due to the hextech-powered pistol in her hands.

Once it’s all said and done, and Jinx had folded up the prosthetic she’d apparently been fixing up for her friend, the girl hops back onto the table, drawing one of Vi’s hands onto her knees before resting her chin on it, her haunted expression enough to give Caitlyn pause.

For the rest of the night, Caitlyn stands guard over Vi’s still form, forcing herself to ignore the silent spectre of the girl perched next to it before she drove herself mad.

When Vi wakes up, it’s to a searing pain in her abdomen—one so intense that it has her jolting up faster than she should have. The motion causes the blur of blue next to her to flinch back, and that’s when her head snaps to the side to take in Powder’s weary, hunched form. She forces herself to smile even through the pain, and Powder’s eyes widen as she takes her expression in.

The next thing she realized is that Powder looked like shit: an untreated cut ran up the side of one of her arms, messing up the faux-tattoo it ran through, and half her face was covered in dry blood, brown and maroon caked on her cheeks along with dirt and—considering the familiar smell and appearance—what had to be axle grease.

Suppressing a wince, she reaches out a hand to her sister’s face and wipes a tear from her eye and it only serves to make her crumple into herself, her form shuddering with silent, uneven sobs. Vi pats her head, quietly hushing her like she had after the nightmares following that night they’d lost their parents on the bridge.

Eventually, her form stills, and even though she doesn’t look up or otherwise react, Vi can tell she’s calmed down. Satisfied, she turns to examine the rest of the room and startles when she spots Cait watching her from a position near the door, her expression half-steel and half-relief.

“Hey, cupcake,” she rasps, coughing with how dry her throat had become. Caitlyn doesn’t answer at first, her eyes flickering between her and her sister before she sighs, a hand coming up to press against her head.

“How did you know she would come?” she asks, her eyes pointedly glancing in Jinx’s direction before returning to her own.

Vi shakes her head, huffing out something between a laugh and a sigh. “I didn’t.”

Caitlyn’s eyes widen in disbelief and the slightest bit of irritation, and Vi’s smile becomes a bit more genuine.

“What happened while I was out?”

Cait shuts her eyes with a sigh, reluctantly launching into a probably condensed version of the night’s events, hand clenching and unclenching around the barrel of Jinx’s pistol. It’s fucked up, but Vi finds she can’t help but smile: it’s nice to see the two people in the world she cares the most about in the same room together without trying to kill each other. She doesn’t count the last week; Powder hadn’t really been with them, trapped somewhere in her own terrible little world.

As Cait finishes her story, her eyes open again, revealing the dark circles underneath them, the sharp displeasure hidden in the rigid lines of her stance. Her enforcer jacket is tore open at the sleeve and her pants shredded near the knee where she must have hit a wall or fallen on it. Bits of dry blood and dirt stain the outfit in various, uneven intervals, and—like Jinx—half her face is painted with dry blood. Judging by the way she appeared mostly uninjured, however, Vi guesses it’s not her own.

When Cait raises an eyebrow at her, Vi suddenly realizes that stupid smirk is still plastered on her own face and she laughs—a reaction that, surprisingly, Caitlyn mimics a moment later. The other woman opens her mouth—but cuts herself off as her eyes sharpen at something behind Vi. As Vi turns over her shoulder to look, she spots Powder swinging—

Is that Sevika’s arm?

—a heavy looking, metal prosthetic over her shoulder, the only thing keeping it attached to her back a thin leather strap that’s haphazardly slung across her front.

“What are you doing?” Cait calls out accusatorily, her eyes still trained on Jinx. When Jinx doesn’t answer, Cait exchanges a glance with Vi, and she decides to try herself.

“Hey, Pow-pow,” she starts, her voice softer than she intends it to be, “what’s up?”

Jinx puts a hand on her hip, her distant eyes looking at something Vi can’t make out through a shattered window in the weird storage house they’d apparently spent the night in. Vi grits her teeth as she turns to face the girl standing a few paces from the table before—ever so slowly—she pushes herself off the side, making Cait gasp as she staggers.

She doesn’t hit the ground, though: Jinx’s hands are on her arms and steadying her almost as soon as her feet hit the dirt floor below them, and as the black spots fade from her vision, she offers her a tired, affectionate smile that Jinx doesn’t return.

“You’re…you’re gonna be ok now, right?” Jinx says quietly, her voice quavering as her wary blue eyes scan Vi’s face for any trace of discomfort.

Vi takes a step forwards and wraps her arms around her, gently pressing Jinx’s head into her shoulder. Jinx doesn’t return the embrace, but she does relax just the slightest bit into Vi’s arms, letting out a quiet, shaky breath.

“Yeah, I’m alright. You did good.”

From across the room, Cait shifts, the sound causing Powder to stiffen in place like she’d forgotten the other woman was still there. A moment later, Jinx pulls away, her face empty of emotion save for the exhaustion there, carved into the lines of her face like someone had chiseled it permanently into her features.

Then Jinx looks around the room, her eyes lingering on the blood that had seeped into the table before taking everything else in. The Noxians, the Jinxers, the bullet holes in the wall…and then her eyes shift to Cait. Jinx looks at her for a moment before turning back to one of the walls, and for the first time, Vi notices that that kid’s hat rests in the dirt there, splattered with blood from (she’s hoping) one of the half a dozen dead soldiers in the room.

Jinx lets out a breath as she picks it up, flicking off some of the bloody mud from the rim as she turns it in her hand, examining a dent with one of her fingers before she places it on her head.

“Sevika told me a bit about the whole war thing going on,” Jinx starts, her voice quiet enough that Vi has to strain to hear her. “Remember that dock we used to play at when we were kids—the one I jinxed our job at?”

Vi sighs, knowing that refuting it could upset the girl and that—by the distant look in her eyes—it wasn’t the point of her question.

“Yeah…what about it?”

Jinx looks out that busted window, absently rubbing at her injured arm. Vi’s just glad the cut isn’t deeper.

“There’s a smuggling operation going on there—or, well, there was before all the people abandoned ship once topside came down to visit,” her voice still doesn’t carry much of an emotion, and Vi can’t tell if it means anything or not. “Guess they were carting out shimmer to some dealers they met outside of the undercity and Piltover.”

Vi exchanges an uncertain look with Caitlyn before she speaks, carefully keeping her arms at her sides.

“OK? Why’s that matter to you?”

To us, she wants to say.

Jinx shrugs, turning back around before walking towards the doors, “Boat’s still there; you two can’t go topside right now, so…”

She trails off as she stops in front of Cait, hand held out expectantly without so much as glancing at her. Cait raises an eyebrow in Vi’s direction: do I give it to her? it seemed to ask, for still held in one of Cait's dirty hands was Powder’s pistol. Vi nods slowly, her gaze focused on Jinx, watching for any sudden movements.

Cait wordlessly passes the pistol to her, and Jinx takes it, holds it up closer to her face as her pointer finger carefully traces the faint markings on the barrel—ones made with paint and oil crayons in a few different shades of pink and blue that had faded over the course of the week, returning the metal and wood back to their original appearance. Cait watches her with barely concealed unease, her hands shifting at her sides in an effort (Vi guesses) to avoid crossing them over her chest. Eventually, Jinx stops, turning the gun onto its side and flicking it against her wrist, causing a compartment that held a hextech gem on the side to open up…but strangely enough, it wasn’t loaded into the firing mechanism where she’s sure another one sits. It makes Vi raise an eyebrow because she doesn’t understand why Jinx had bothered removing it…until, wordlessly and without looking at her, she flipped the gun back around and presents it grip first to Cait, holding it loosely by the barrel.

“What sort of game are you playing at?” Cait asks warily, making no move to take the pistol back from her as she attempted to stare her down. Considering the way Jinx otherwise completely ignores her, though, it’s a waste of effort.

“Hey, Powder,” Vi starts, staying rooted in place despite the weird tension in the air, “why are you giving Cait your gun?”

She shrugs, jiggling the weapon in her hand impatiently before turning to face Vi. “You’re hurt, her rifle’s broke…don’t see how you plan on making it outta here in one piece if neither of you can fight.”

“You’re…trying to help us?” Cait starts uncertainly. Jinx rolls her eyes at that, letting her flat gaze fall on Cait after she still hadn’t taken the gun from her hand. For once, Vi thinks her reaction is justified: hadn’t she spent the entirety of the past night helping them?

“Look, lady, I got places to be,” she grumbles, the bad attitude in her tone clearly forced and making Vi shift uncomfortably. "So why don’t you two scram before the new topsiders show up again and send you out a different way?”

Caitlyn warily accepts the pistol from her, opening her mouth to ask something—but the instant it’s out of her hand, Jinx starts back towards the door, ignoring the way Vi calls out to her until she runs up to her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, let’s just—let’s just talk, ok? You’re kinda worrying me,” Vi tries, her tone light despite the anxious energy zipping through her veins. There’s a certain something in the way Powder was talking and moving that set Vi on edge.

Jinx shrugs out of her hold, but doesn’t immediately move to leave, instead speaking in a voice so soft she wonders if Cait could even hear it.

“Get outta here. It’s not safe.”

“It’s not exactly safe for you here, either,” Vi tries, resisting the urge to reach out to her again.

Jinx shakes her head, a deep exhaustion coloring her expression in a way that makes Vi’s heart drop to her injured stomach.

“What do you want, Vi?”

“I…,” she starts, bringing a hand up to run through her hair, “I want this war to end, for Cait to get back home alright,” I want Vander, want that kid to be alive because she made you smile, she doesn’t say.

“I meant from me, meat head,” Vi chuckles at the attempt at a joke, but the humor is short-lived.

“I want you to come with us,” she answers honestly, not surprised in the slightest when it makes her sister shift.

“I can’t.”

Vi’s fingers twitch at the answer, her own nervous energy forcing her into motion. She purposefully stills them before she continues. “Why not?”

“’Cuz I made a deal. Gotta stick around until it’s done.”

Vi’s eyebrows furrow at that...something about her bitter tone was rubbing her the wrong way. “What kind of deal is it?”

Are you in trouble? she really means. Do you need help?

Jinx takes a moment to answer, looking down at her hand with the prosthetic finger before she speaks. “Ever since topside invaded, everyone down here’s been gettin’ all messed up, so Sevika's trying to get the undercity to band together before we’re all wiped out. They…they’re killing a lot of us, Vi. Guess she thinks I can help or something.”

There’s more to it than that, Vi knows: can tell by the distant look in Jinx’s eyes, the way she’d skirted around why she’d made the deal in the first place, the way she hadn’t given details about what “helping” the resistance down here actually meant for her. But it’s enough of an answer to understand she wasn’t just trying to avoid her. A second later, Jinx turns over her shoulder to lock eyes with her, those pink eyes locking on her own before her sister spoke once more.

“Try not to get stabbed anymore, alright?”

Powder doesn’t wait for her to respond. In a flash of pink and blue, she’s gone, the door shutting behind her.

After a while of staring at the spot her sister’d just been standing, Caitlyn clears her throat, and Vi turns to her—but to her surprise, the woman won’t meet her gaze.

“We need to discuss what we’re going to do about this,” Cait twirls her hand in the air, encompassing their surroundings in a vaguely circular motion. “I want to make it clear that I will not simply leave as your sister is suggesting. I…might not understand everything that’s transpired since we fled Viktor’s commune, but I refuse to abandon my people to Ambessa's tyranny.”

Vi nearly winces at the way she phrased that—reminds her too much of what she herself had done a few months ago to the undercity’s people…her people—but she keeps her expression neutral as she waits for Cait to continue.

It's not like dwelling on it would change what had happened.

Once Caitlyn sees that she’s not going to chime in, she continues—except this time, her head ducks down a bit and it’s so cute that it almost makes Vi laugh. She probably would have, too, if not for the look of something like shame on her face.

“I…w-we have to discuss, ah, this, too,” Cait says, one hand gesturing between the two of them. Vi waits, wanting to see where she’s going with this. Cait takes a deep breath before continuing, her words coming out rushed and embarrassed, “while we were separated I saw someone else and I understand if that’s upsetting to you or if you’d like to part ways now; however—”

Cait cuts off once Vi puts a hand on her shoulder, a half-smirk playing on her lips. “Is that what’s got you so up-in-arms?”

Cait blinks. “I suppose you could put it like that.”

Vi snorts a laugh, stepping further into her space. “I don’t give a fuck about shit like that, cupcake. Gotta say, I don’t mind the reaction you’re having to it, though.”

“W—I’m not sure what you could possibly mean by that,” she starts, her face getting redder by the second.

Strawberry cupcake.

Vi laughs again, her hand moving from Cait’s shoulder to rest on her cheek instead before she decides to stop teasing the other woman and pulls her face closer, wrapping her in an embrace that Cait hesitates only a moment before returning.

“You just helped save my life, cupcake,” she cuts Cait off by blowing on her neck when she starts to protest, making the other woman shudder. “There’s not a whole lot you could say that would drive me away, unless that’s what you wante—”

“No!” Cait interjects, voice apparently louder than she’d meant it to be by the rush of color that appears in her cheeks. Unable to resist the urge to mess with her, Vi pulls back enough to raise an eyebrow—but to her surprise, despite her obvious embarrassment, Cait keeps her gaze. “I could never want that.”

Vi smiles—a soft little thing she only had for Cait—before reluctantly pulling back. They did have other things to discuss, after all.

Unfortunately.

“Alright cupcake, what’s the plan?”

Caitlyn’s face falters at that, letting Vi know they had their work cut out for them. Then, she fixes Vi with carefully scrutinizing eyes that peak Vi’s interest.

“I don’t have enough information to make any decisive plans yet,” Cait muses, “but I feel as if you always ask me that, and I never reciprocate the question. What is it you want to do, Violet?”

Vi raises an eyebrow at that, a tired smile flashing on her lips.

“I meant what I told Jinx,” or Powder—to Vi, they’re starting to become interchangeable, because to her, they were the same person: her sister. “Stop the fighting, get you home…”

“…and stay close to your sister, right?” Cait finishes, a knowing frown on her face. Vi huffs a laugh, but it’s more sad than anything else. Tired.

“Yeah,” she runs a hand through her hair with a sigh, “I mean, it’s probably stupid—"

“It isn’t stupid, Vi,” Cait cuts in, an almost nervous look on her face. Nervous, exhausted, and yet reluctantly resolute. Vi looks up at her, waiting for her to explain. “They...Ambessa wants us dead; that's clear enough from the number of soldiers she's just sent to kill us. There’s likely not a way into Piltover we can utilize that won’t either be crawling with enforcers that the General isn’t already aware of—and supposing there is,” she adds, pointedly cutting Vi off because there’s about a million ways topside that the topsiders don’t know about, “I don’t know what we would be able to do once we got there. From the sounds of things, Ambessa has complete control over the Council—though how she's managed that is beyond me.”

Cait lets out a slow breath, eyebrows drawing together as she thinks. “This would be so much easier if we had more information, but what method do we even have of obtaining any that doesn’t involve risking our lives?”

Well damn. Vi’s got an idea relating to that…but she sorta needs a straight answer from her, first.

“Hey,” she starts, pulling Cait’s attention from her own head, “so when I asked about your plan, I already knew all this stuff you just said,” she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, trying to find a middle ground that didn’t make the nasty, but precise burn lines over her stomach wound ache any more than they already did. She meets Cait’s eyes again, expression serious. “What I meant to ask is whose side are you on, here—because the way I see it, it’s less ‘undercity vs. Piltover’ and more ‘undercity vs. Noxians'."

There is no nice way she could have said it, but it needed to be said: what was the goal here? When Vi woke up this morning, and Jinx and Cait were breathing the same air and not killing each other even when Jinx was acting more like herself…well. Now it seemed like Cait’s whole “kill Jinx and let the undercity burn” plan had been more or less given up.

If that was actually true and not just wishful thinking on Vi’s part…then maybe Jinx is right. Maybe they should leave, wait this out, fuck off somewhere until the fighting ended so they could pick up the pieces. Well, Cait could pick up the pieces. Vi can’t just leave her sister here…her current half-baked plan was Drop Cait off outside of the city and come back and…

She hasn’t worked the “and” part out yet.

The problem is that Cait had just made it explicitly clear that she didn’t want to go anywhere, and Vi’s not enough of a bitch to suggest she leaves…but choices like that, where you pick a fight with the world with only yourself by your side—they come with their own set of consequences. If Caitlyn really wanted to head down this path, to fight the Noxians and any of the undercity that got in her way, too, Vi’d tread the road with her…but she wants to make sure the other woman knows what she’d be getting into.

Vi’d almost tried it herself, once, and even the attempt had cost her everything.

Nobody wins in war.

“What exactly are you suggesting?” Caitlyn asks, looking wary of her words. Vi just shakes her head.

“I’m just trying to make sure you know that if we do this, we don’t have any backup. Folks topside aren’t gonna come rush to your aid if it’ll just get them killed—and the best case scenario with the fissure folk is that they ignore us. Either way, we’re alone in this fight. Are you sure it’s one you want to take?”

Cait stares at her for a moment like she hadn’t heard her right, and Vi nearly repeats her question before she’s cut off. “You’ll…actually help me?”

Vi huffs a laugh, this more genuine than her others. “You want to light a fire, cupcake, and I’ll show up with oil.”

Cait’s eyes soften and she closes them, turning away. It leaves Vi feeling vaguely confused and also like she’d said something wrong, but she’d meant every word of it.

“You shouldn’t be this kind to me. I’ve done nothing but hurt you,” she says, facing the back wall, her eyes lingering on a spot where a bullet had obviously shot through it.

Vi opens her mouth to correct her—it isn’t true, she’d betrayed Ambessa just for the chance at saving Vi’s father, getting nothing in return but a death sentence from the topsiders, had helped her look for her sister back when they’d first met despite knowing next to nothing about her—but Caitlyn sighs heavily, effectively cutting her off as she stared at that hole in the wall before looking down at the gun in her hands. Vi gets the feeling she wants to be left to her thoughts for a minute, so she decides now would be a good time to change and she does so—but when she goes to close the bag containing their sparse belongings, Cait speaks up, her hands tracing the same patterns on the barrel of Jinx’s pistol that her sister had.

“Do you have something in there that might fit me?” she gestures to her tattered enforcer gear, “I can’t exactly wear this for what I have in mind…”

Vi raises an eyebrow as a slow smile unfurls on her face. “You don’t need you make up an excuse to wear my clothes, cupcake.”

Cait snorts, turning to her with a half-smile.

“I…have a plan,” she says, her voice softer and uncertain.

Vi waits for her to continue, silently passing her the shitty, torn knapsack she’d been using to haul their shit around.

“But I’m not going to like it…and it might also get us both killed.”

Vi stares at her a moment before leaning against one of the wooden support beams, wondering exactly where that odd look on her face was going to take them.

“Where the hell have you been?” Sevika grumbles at her from the stool she sits on at the bar.

Normally, she'd be pretty excited to watch her test out her gift, but she hasn’t actually slept since she’d woken up in that warehouse, so the fact that she could carry the stupid thing all the way back to the Last Drop and now she can finally set it down is reward enough for her. Maybe that’s why, once she reaches the one-armed wonder’s side, she only drops the thing on the counter.

“Don’t remember it taking all night last time,” Sevika says, eyeing the prosthetic like it’s a pest instead of an arm.

“Uh-huh.”

Sevika shifts in her stool, finally turning enough to take in her injuries, and while it’s not a dramatic change or anything, she can tell the other woman is surprised.

That of course quickly shifts to something between frustration and reluctance—which is funny in a way because her bluntness is about the only thing she liked about Sevika, and now here she is, trying not to say something.

It's all messed up, like everything else that had happened in the past week.

The hat on her head dips down at the thought, and she nearly barks out a laugh.

It’s not like she could ever forget that it’s there…or why.

“You look like shit. Go clean up,” Sevika eventually says, apparently dropping whatever commentary she’d been about to provide.

She hums, looking down at her grimy, cut up hands, feeling the dried blood on her face itch in places that it’d started peeling.

And then she heads to the door again, following Lefty’s advice without protest…or at least, she starts to—one of the more annoying people she recognized from back in Silco’s time turns and laughs at them from the table closest to the counter.

“Never thought I’d see you two pallin’ around like this,” Fat Nose spat, “You get yourself a new parent that fast?”

That makes Jinx reply at the same time Sevika says:

“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever take in a stray like her.”

“I sure hope not—for her sake, I mean. I’m 0 for 2 as far as adoptive parents go…though, I don’t really like her…” she hums in faux thought before turning to Sevika, “so, how ‘bout it? Third time's the charm?”

Sevika rolls her eyes and turns away, and Fat Nose laughs so hard his chin starts jiggling.

Then she wanders off to find a sink, because as much fun as she was having pissing Sevika off, she still had a job to do.

For now.

I’m going to kill that brat.

Harold still sat behind her, laughing at their expenses, unknowingly shortening that timer Jinx had set in her own head—because unfortunately for Sevika, she’d been around the kid long enough to see when she didn’t like something. She also isn’t sure what that means for their deal, wonders if the fucking drunkard still cackling behind her would be so jolly if he knew just how much he was fucking their future plans up.

At least she hadn’t just killed him…though if he kept it up, Sevika might just do it for her.

She attaches the arm to the socket coming out of her shoulder, feels as the hextech powers on, glares at the “chomper” head where the hand would be, had a certain blue-haired little shit not disintegrated it along with the majority of her family. Tries not to grimace when she notices the damn thing is even more colorful than it had been before.

She twists her head around, eyes raking it for any design changes (because it really had taken much less time when the brat had built it before) when she notices yet another, less obvious lever up near the shoulder. When she pulls it, the chomper pulls back and folds into the forearm of the prosthetic, revealing…an actual hand, looking similar in make to Jinx’s own finger. Sevika stares at it for a moment, tests out the grip on the jug in front of her, unsure of what to make of it.

Then she notices Harold’s stopped laughing—actually, that the place has gone silent—which makes her turn—

And she immediately spots why, because standing in the entryway to the Last Drop is Vi and her Piltie whore.

Chapter Text

Sevika has never stayed shocked for very long. It’s one of the things Silco had liked about her—said she was an asset because she just didn’t stay frozen like others did, let her act where they faltered.

That’s why, when she says it takes a while for her to stand up and face the two idiots (because no matter how you looked at it, that’s what they are right now) that had just waltzed in the bar like they owned the place, it means something.

Still, her new arm hisses upon their arrival, sensing the way her blood boiled at their presence.

She takes them in as they move forwards to stop in the middle of the tavern, scanning for armor, weapons. Suspicion courses through her as she realizes that Vi has none besides her own bare fists. The Piltie might—was wearing a gods-awful leather jacket at least one size too large for her small frame that more suited the emo punk to her left. Baggy clothing could hide a lot of things, but her hands are as empty as Vi’s.

Finds it funny, because if they’d pulled enough wits together to realize coming in here dressed as officers was a bad idea, then they should’ve realized that coming in here at all was a shit plan.

Vi looks her up and down, her lips curling in disgust—though they obviously rake over her new arm, still mostly hidden under her cape. Sevika waits until she opens her mouth to speak before cutting her off, just because she can.

“Why the fuck are you here?” she doesn’t hide the resentment in her voice, the very obvious danger they are both in.

For her part, Vi doesn’t back down—and to her credit, though the topsider is obviously uncomfortable and out of her depth, she stands just as firm as Vi does.

“Where’s my sister?”

Sevika grunts, annoyed but unperturbed by her question. “Around. Now how about you answer me before only pieces of you are left to find her?”

Around them, some of the patrons let out a cheer at that—single word agreements or grunts or chest thumps all signaling the same sort of thing. Most of them are silent…everyone down here liked a good bloodbath now and then, but a lot of them knew Vi, knew how Jinx might fly off the handle if it came to that.

It’s pretty much the only reason Sevika hasn’t already made good on her threat.

Vi’s eyes narrow, but not dangerously. Seems Vander’s stupid mutt had finally learned when not to bite. “I came here to talk to her. Why the fuck else would I ask where she is?”

Her Piltie friend shoots her a wide-eyed look at the clear challenge in her tone, but Vi ignores it…if she’d even seen it at all.

Sevika gives her a long, hard look as she deliberates how to handle this. Vi matches it, looking more annoyed than anything else. With the jukebox still broken as it is, the tense silence in the bar only increases as no one speaks or moves or even breathes too heavily.

Finally, Sevika snorts, turns around completely before stopping at the staircase and calling to them over her shoulder.

“You coming, or would you rather they tear you apart while you’re waiting?” She jerks her head in the direction of the more hostile looking trenchers, eyeing the exchange with one hand on hilts and holsters.

Vi looks unimpressed by the threat (though this one isn’t quite as empty), waiting a moment before she starts after her…but her Piltie friend shoots a glance around the room, putting a smile on Sevika’s face that she can see visibly annoys Vi.

It's the little things in life.

They make it upstairs, Sevika produces a key that unlocks the office and they follow in behind her. She loudly drags a chair from the corner, still covered in dust in front of the coffee table across from the couch, shaking the cloth covering it off before letting it fall to the floor. She gives them and then the couch a pointed look before doing anything else. Vi rolls her eyes but takes the hint, removing a few empty bottles from the spot next to her so the Piltie could follow suit.

Sevika’s almost surprised the topsider followed through; she could very clearly see from the look on her face that she didn’t care for the place—and especially not for the torn, stained cushion that had just been cleared for her. Wonders how Vi'd convinced her to tag along.

Also doesn’t care, because she’s certain that this little interaction between the two will be as short as they always have been since Vi’d got out of prison…one way, or another.

Sevika’s really hoping it’s “another”.

She sits, reaches into her coat despite the Piltie’s protests to produce that old idiot Finn’s gilded lighter, snatching a cigar off the coffee table in front of them. She messes around with the new lever on her arm, starts switching it to different settings just to see what it did. Eventually, after cycling through most of the different options (one of which is a laser that had the two women across from her both tensing up), she finally finds something like a multitool—like one of those pocket knives the topsiders sometimes carry.

She finds the guillotine-like cutter and it works like a charm, cutting the end off the cigar with a smooth little click. Made her want to thank the brat until she notices the way the end of the cigar’s now splattered with pink chalk. She takes a little (a lot of) joy from the way she can tell her nonchalance is pissing Vi off. Once she’s got it lit and takes a drag of it, she looks back over at the women, pleased to see Vi’s staring at her with that same impatient look she’d sported on her face at 15.

Maybe if she wasn’t in such a damn rush all the time, she would have thought her actions through more and dear old daddy wouldn’t have had to die in the first place.

Sevika eyes her for a moment, barely glancing at her compatriot (whose eyes sharpen under her gaze) before she removes the file on her table full of the reports she’d yet to look through from their scouts…including that drunkard who’d let her know about Jinx’s whereabouts.

The drunkard who hadn’t—for the first time in weeks—shown up crossfaded to his shift last night because he had that same look in his eyes that everyone in the tavern had now, thanks to Jinx’s reappearance.

Hope.

Once Sevika makes it clear she’s not going to start anything with them, Vi speaks up, her knuckle cracking from where she’s gripped her own knee.

“Well?”

Sevika eyes her before returning to her papers. “Well what?”

“Where’s Jinx?”

She lets out another smoke filled breath, her shoulders already relaxing a bit from the nicotine in the cigar. “I already told you—she’s around.”

“Well when the fu—”

She flips the paper over in her hand as she cuts Vi off, annoyed that their sole yordle scout had taken to writing on both sides of the paper in the smallest fucking print possible instead of just using two sheets. “Look: she’ll be back…eventually. Went to clean up, came back here looking like she’d taken a swim in a vat of knives. You have any idea how long it takes for her to wash her hair?” Sevika shakes her head, not bothering to mask her irritation. “Ain’t my fault you have shit timing…must run in the family.”

Vi’s hostility dims some (and only some…smart girl), displaced by confusion. “Why bring us up here then?”

Sevika turns back to them then, pausing to level her with the most deadpan stare she can muster. “Would you rather have waited downstairs?”

Reluctant realization flashes across her face, and she looks away with a scowl. Sevika turns back to her work…another seventeen dead in the eighth district, all killed by spear or sword. Eight missing and three dead in the ninth district, found near the docks. She suspects Vi already knows why she hadn’t attacked her; suspects the real reason the brat’d taken so long on her puncher has something to do with the two idiots in front of her.

Makes her take another drag.

Her eyes flatten as the Piltie clears her throat, a “civilized” way of trying to get her attention. It almost makes her grimace. She looks up at her, clearly unamused by the situation—but to the kid’s credit, her gaze only hardens, no trace of discomfort left on her face.

“I remember you, from the vents—”

Sevika rolls her eyes, cutting her off before she got too into this. “I don’t do small talk. You want something, then spit it out.”

The topsider’s eyes narrow just a bit, and Vi looks the slightest bit impressed. “Alright then. Why did your people attack that memorial to the Councilors that died in Jinx’s attack?”

Sevika pauses, looks up from her work again before shutting the folder completely, catching both of the enforcers’ attention. “’My people’, huh? You’d know all about them, wouldn’t you?”

There’s an anger in the woman’s gaze now—sharp and burning just like it had in Jinx’s eyes, once. Sevika waits, takes another drag from the cigar.

“I know that you’re working with Jinx, that you helped set off the burst of the Grey that damaged so much of Piltover.”

She exhales, the smoke slowly dissipating in the room. “That was after my people’s attack—after you and your off-leash hounds decided to take a field trip to the undercity,” Sevika spits watching her face carefully.

Confusion is back on it again, but it’s not enough to douse the fire that’s still apparently lit under her ass. “What does that matter to this? Why are you emphasizing those words?”

“It mattered to Jinx,” she starts, but pauses when the topsider starts to cuts in, not keen on repeating herself.

“She’s the one responsible for that—that desecration,” the Piltie spits, making Vi glance at her uneasily and Sevika watch her flatly, “in the first place! Why should the consequences of her actions surprise—”

Sevika grinds her teeth together before pushing herself up, making Vi tense as she stands, but Sevika just levels her with a stare before turning to the wall behind her, removing a few of the pins…the ones about Renni.

“You know what the problem with you Piltie fucks is?” Sevika starts, gathering the reports and the photo and the drawings in a neat stack before walking back to their makeshift conference table, where the topsider watches her warily. “You assume all us undercity scum are on the same side without putting in any of the work to prove it, so eager to get your pound of flesh that it stops mattering where it’s roots really are, as long as it’s from the right side of the bridge.”

The Piltie’s face twists in anger—anger that Sevika shares for completely different reasons—before she flings the stack in front of the two of them with an audible thunk, picking her own folder up from the chair she’d left it in before going back to her work.

“What…is all of this?” the Piltie asks, carefully scanning each document she looks over. Sevika snorts, but doesn’t answer. Let the topsider figure it all out—they were all so fucking smart, after all.

Eventually, they come to the scout report—the one from the guy who’d been smart enough to sneak out of Renni’s gathering place before shit hit the fan. She can tell that’s what they’d found once she sees the way the Piltie tense and the traitor’s eyes widen in something like horror.

“This…this doesn’t prove anything; there’s nothing here exonerating the rest of you from working with this ‘Renni’—and besides which, these are just the words of a single man, what reason would a Noxian have to…involve…themselves in…”

A realization flashes across her eyes and Sevika fixes her with a sharp gaze. “Let me ask you something, Commander,” Sevika leans forward a bit to catch the topsider’s attention—most of which is on the papers in front of her, one drawing in particular catching her gaze before it shifts back across the table at the use of her title, “does it seem like we’re ‘one people’ down here? Does it look unified to you?”

“You…know who I am?” The topsider half-whispers, sounding more stunned than upset.

“Hard not to know who you are—you’re the face of their whole damn war effort,” she looks up at her, her lips quirking up into a sneer, “or were. Guess they don’t care for puppets who pull on their strings.”

The Piltie looks away at that, a look of conflicted shame tugging at her features. Sevika stares a moment longer before returning to her work.

“I…Vi, what do you make of this?” the topsider asks, turning to the woman with the shit hair dye job when she doesn’t say what she wants to hear. Sevika about ignores it until she happens to glance up and can practically see the gears spinning behind Vi’s eyes.

Interesting.

Vi runs a hand through her hair, looking almost exasperated. “That fucking airship…fuck.”

The Commander raises an eyebrow at her, more uncertainty slipping into her features as she watches the ex-Zaunite’s reaction.

“Cait…I didn’t think to mention it,” she sounds both remorseful and pissed at the same time, but the anger’s directed at herself for once. “There was an airship—it was, I don’t know, weirdly designed I guess, so I thought it must have come from down here. That’s where those buffed-up shimmer guys came out of—”

”What?”

Sevika about puts her papers down. She might not be happy to babysit the two idiots, but at least they were putting on a show.

“I—I didn’t think it was a fucking Noxian airship—why would that even cross my mind?!”

The Commander pushes a loose strand behind her ear, sinking back into the couch with a half-shake of her head, the sketch of that strange spear in her hands—the weapon of the man who’d approached Renni in the first place, the handle wrapped in those huge, strange stone beads. It hadn’t meant shit to her…but now that she sees the conflict in the Piltie’s face, she can say she’s glad she kept it around.

Some clarity eventually returns to her gaze, and she fixes Sevika with a determined look. “This doesn’t prove Jinx wasn’t involved.”

She glances at her with faux-disinterest before returning to her reports. “Jinx wasn’t involved—ask her yourself if you don’t believe me…but I’ll tell you this much: she’d pretty much refused to do anything after Silco’s death, the bounties on her head too high for her to so much as walk down the street without getting attacked. That’s around when she met that kid,” at the mention of Isha, both of them exchange an uncomfortable look. They should be uncomfortable—without that brat, Jinx was infinitely more unstable. That generally didn’t bode well for topsiders. “After she took her in, the two of them stayed mostly holed up in her little office, drawing on the walls or coloring bugs…think she let the kid draw on her gun or something, too,” interestingly, the Piltie closes her eyes at that, looking almost pained and yet still angry at the same time.

Whatever.

Sevika sits back a bit, taking another drag from the cigar before eyeing them again, her look very obviously pissing Vi off. “I should thank you, though—had you dumb shits not decided to ‘retaliate’ against Jinx, I don’t think I ever would have been able to convince her to help out around here again,” she turns to Vi with a cocky grin that has Vi staring at her hatefully, “I want to thank you especially, Vi—seeing her sister turn bluebelly like that worked wonders for our cause. Guess that’s just how it is when you find out your sister chose some topsider’s cunt over her own people.”

Sevika takes another drag of the cigar before idly flipping to the next page of her report, not really reading any of them anymore. “Hope she’s at least a good lay.”

The Piltie’s looking at her like she’s fucking crazy, and Vi’s looking at her like she wants to find out all the ways her new arm can eviscerate her—but of course it’s at that moment that Sevika hears the brat call out to her from down the stairs.

“Se-vi-kaaaa! Did you know the water lines to the old distillery are broken? Because I really woulda liked a heads-up before I—”

Jinx opens the door and her annoyed expression falters, looking between the three women with an interesting mix of confusion, anger, and something Sevika can’t quite put a name to.

“Much as I’d love to beat your traitorous ass,” Sevika starts, eyeing Vi with only a fraction of her displeasure on her face, “I’d rather not send her any further off the deep end than she already is, so hurry up and finish your talk and get out of my hair.”

Vi squints at her in disbelief. “Feels rich to hear you call me a traitor. You just conveniently forget about what you did to Vander?”

Sevika bares her teeth, “I didn’t betray him. He betrayed us! You used to feel the same way, back before prison somehow made you softer and you decided to play escort for one of the Piltie’s elite.”

Vi bristles and Sevika’s arm hisses, ready for the coming fight. “Oh, that’s just—”

“Both of you knock it off!” They both turn to look at the Commander, then, one in surprise and the other in disgust—but she isn’t looking at either of them, she’s looking at Jinx.

And Jinx is standing at the entryway into the office, still looking as fucked-up as she had before she’d left (in her defense, Sevika really should have told her about the water—place had been the brat’s go-to before Silco’d kicked the bucket—she’d just forgotten about it) except now, she’s also quietly arguing with people that aren’t there, one hand clenching and unclenching at her side.

Luckily, it’s her right hand…the other’d probably leave scars with the amount of pressure she’s using.

“That’s not—it isn’t what she’s doing…let me finish, dammit!” she growls, her teeth audibly grinding together. Sevika internally curses, and the other two sane women in the room lock eyes with each other before Vi walks over to her…or starts to. Sevika shoots her a look that pins her in place—at least, for a moment. Then she looks pissed.

It doesn’t matter, though. A moment’s all she needs.

She holds her good hand in front of the brat’s face, loudly snapping to get her attention. It doesn’t seem like it’s working, so Sevika sighs and starts into her little spiel.

“Hey, brat, you need to focus,” she starts, ignoring Vi’s interjection.

Slightly pink hair sways as the woman across the table speaks, voice laced in irritation. “That’s your plan?”

Sevika lowers her voice—the other two could definitely still hear it, but she’s hoping the tonal shift is enough to get the kid’s attention.

“It won’t be that much longer; you just gotta help with this one thing.”

To her (pleasant, for once) surprise, the kid’s eyes blink once, twice—unfocused—before that wildness fades a bit and she’s looking at Sevika’s hand like she might bite it off.

Back to normal, then…must have understood what she’d really meant.

Jinx crosses her arms, looking like the petulant child she is as she starts arguing with her.

“I woulda been fine—just got distracted, that’s all.”

Sevika raises an eyebrow that Jinx ignores even as the little shit meets her gaze. Then she seems to remember the other two are there and some of that unease returns to her face.

“What are you two doing here?”

There’s something in her voice, a certain, particular way that she emphasizes the “here” that has Sevika’s eyebrow somehow inching higher, but she doesn’t comment on it. After all, she wanted to know the real reason they were here, too.

No one put their asses in this much danger unless they had a damn good reason for it…or they were really fucking stupid.

Given how this is Vi she’s talking about, though…

Vi looks towards the Piltie uneasily—traitor dog nervous off her leash—and the topsider sighs, taking a breath before answering herself.

“We came to…possibly join you,” she says, looking almost physically pained as she chokes the words out.

Jinx’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline as she looks at Sevika with the clearest expression she’s seen on the brat’s face since she’d come back—and it’s screaming “what the fuck?”

Sevika looks back to the women across the table, her own face as incredulous as she felt. Maybe Silco was wrong: they’d gotten her to freeze up twice in less than an hour.

She answers at the same time as Jinx:

“No.”

”Huh?”

They exchange a look with each other again, Jinx’s expression shifting in and out of focus, a variety of emotions flashing almost violently on her pale, still blood-covered face. Sevika eyes her a moment longer before looking back to the Piltie—and the look she sees in the topsider’s eyes tells her that her own gaze has reached the level of violence she apparently should have met them with as soon as they’d walked in the door. Vi steps closer to her master’s side, matching Sevika’s glare with one of her own...that is, until she looks over to Jinx.

It's like the brat was a sponge, soaking up her sister’s rage so all that’s left is…fear.

As in, the kid looked afraid.

For Jinx.

Huh.

“Hey P—Jinx, you ok?” Vi starts, her entire demeanor shifting to something not even slightly threatening, her hands open and clearly visible in front of her.

Fuck, maybe the Piltie was right to think Sevika’s crazy—because there’s not a chance in hell this was happening right now. Vi hadn’t ever dropped her guard in front of her before, not even when the brat had still been brat-sized…though that was more because the kid just never had in general. Even a few minutes ago, when she’d been sitting on the couch, she still looked just a second away from swinging. Sevika just knew she wouldn’t; wanted to talk to her sister that badly, could see it in her eyes.

Hadn’t expected this, though. Whatever it is.

“You’re…not supposed to be here,” Jinx says, chewing on the inside of her lip. At least she's doing that much; helped ground her, Sevika’s learned. Hadn’t really cared to know the why behind her behaviors until she had to.

Jinx shakes her head, her eyes darting to something behind Sevika, towards the stained-glass window.

Towards the desk.

Well, at least she’s got a pretty good idea of who she’s seeing. Hopefully her imaginary Silco was just as rational as the one she’d killed.

Sevika pauses, thinking over her options before she backs up a step, letting Jinx take the lead. It’s a shit idea, she knows, but realistically speaking, if the kid imploded here, it’s not like she could do anything to stop it…plus, a part of her wants to see where this is going. That look in Vi’s eyes reminded her of something…she just can’t put her finger on it.

Leaning against the wall, she watches the exchange with unconcealed interest, not bothering to react to the twin glares the Piltie and her lapdog both shoot at her in unison.

Vi winces when the brat’s hand curls over her injured arm, pressing into the pre-made cut there. Shallow as it is, it had already clotted, but the pressure makes it open right back up.

“Jinx, you’re hurti—”

Jinx cuts her off, her eyes snapping to Vi’s face as her hand tightens. “You were supposed to leave!”

Vi swallows, eyes flickering to brat’s fingers as the blood from the injury slowly drips to the floor. “I thought this would make you happy…”

Sevika snorts, mouth upturning meanly at the glance the sister shoots her.

Maybe before you hunted her down like a dog.

“That’s why you’re here?” Jinx's hand opens and closes, smearing crimson over her…tattoos.

Sevika didn’t get why the kid didn’t just go to a fucking parlor, but she also doesn’t care enough to ask.

Jinx looks up at Vi, then, and must read something in her eyes because they flash in anger to the Piltie—the first time she’d acknowledged the other woman at all.

“It’s not, is it?”

Sevika watches the way the pieces clicked together behind manic, but hyper-intelligent eyes.

Just because she doesn’t like the kid didn’t mean she thought she was an idiot…most of the time.

The topsider and the traitor exchange glances before the Piltie speaks up at last, her tone oddly even considering who she’s talking to.

“No, it’s not. We have a common enemy now—one who’s ruining the lives of both our people—”

Jinx barks a laugh, the tone anything but humored. “I’m not helping the Queen of the Enforcers back onto the throne she built by poisoning my people!”

Sevika raises an eyebrow at that, wonders how much of it is because of the way her sister’d tried using the Grey to poison her, or how much was her kid’s own influence from six feet under—because she sure as shit hadn’t cared much before Vi’d put on that uniform.

…Half the undercity had been trying to hunt her down before that point, though, too.

The Piltie’s gaze hardens. “I’ve a question for you, Jinx: how exactly is it that you see this war playing out? As it stands, more Noxians could be sailing here by the day. There’s certainly more of them than there’d been when I left. Do you remember the deal Silco brokered with Jayce Talis?”

At the mention of Silco, the kid’s eye twitches—an action the topsider obviously sees but wisely does not comment on before she continues. “Did you know that Jayce only agreed to his terms because he knew in a war, your people would all be slaughtered? How much better do you think you’ll fair against the Noxians —soon to be armed with hextech with far more battle experience than any enforcer and with none of the regulations to stop them?”

Sevika forces herself not to react to that. It’s nothing they didn’t already know, nothing the topsiders didn’t already know—but it irked her to hear it from the fucker that caused this whole mess. It might be Jinx’s fault that it’d happened now, but the tension between the two sides of the bridge had threatened to boil over long before she’d reduced half their precious Council to ashes. She might have been the catalyst, but for once in her life, she wasn’t the problem.

Not here.

Jinx looks her over a moment before her hands drop to her sides, that ridiculous hat tilting to one side of her head with the motion before she speaks.

“And you plan on helping…how? You’re just one lady.”

The Commander doesn’t even blink. “Yes, one lady who is effectively the head of the Council—”

“—that they kicked you off of.” Jinx cuts in. The topsider doesn’t even pause, though.

“—and Piltover’s armed forces. And you’re wrong: Ambessa is responsible for the charges against us both,” she says gesturing to Vi, “charges we received for aiding you.”

Jinx stiffens and Sevika knows by her posture that she’d struck a nerve…probably because the Piltie’s right. Her own scouts had confirmed it just hours ago, sneaking topside through the ventilation ducts by her request because she'd wanted to know more about Jinx’s little vacation—and because at the time, the damn brat had disappeared again. Pictures of the two women before her had been hung up on public noticeboards, of Vi carrying Jinx and the Piltie making head-shots at Noxians around them with a familiar looking pistol. Jinx hums, her eyes focusing and unfocused again, looking paranoid, then angry, then…eerily calm. It makes the Commander tense and Vi glance between them like she doesn’t know who to shield.

“…what are you saying, then?” Jinx finally says, something brittle in her tone—like it could shatter at any second and send shards of glass flying everywhere. Even as wary as she’s become, the topsider answers easily.

“Simple. Vi and I will assist in your fight against the Noxians, we drive Ambessa’s forces out of Piltover, and once everything settles down, we put someone you appoint on the Council,” the Piltie closes her eyes for a moment before she continues, sounding like she’d rather be anywhere else, “…as well as pardon the crimes of all those who fight with us.”

Still much too calm for either of their tastes (not Sevika, now that she knew what the brat was doing), Jinx stares at the Commander, her expressionless face not putting her off in the slightest…at least, not until Jinx moves. Sevika can’t even see it, the arc of pink zigzagging across the small room and the way that leather coat falls back against the Piltie the only indication that anything had happened at all…well, that and the fact that Jinx now held her pistol, examining the barrel as she did on occasion.

The topsider’s eyes widen for a second before fading back to normal, and Vi looks almost nervous, but Jinx starts talking before they can further react.

“I let you borrow this, but since you fucked up that job, I should really take it back,” she starts, tapping the barrel against her own chin. Her eyes don’t fade back to their usual, still alight and yet still calm. “Isn’t it nice that we’re all at the table again?”

Some unease finally settles in the Piltie’s gaze. Must be an inside joke…or at least it was for Jinx.

For some reason, though, it makes Sevika want to be a little farther from the table.

“Soooo….how do we know that once you go topside, you’ll actually honor your end of the bargain?” Jinx starts, her pink eyes refocusing on the Commander.

“You don’t.”

Sevika turns to look at her, trying to decide if she’s an idiot, or clever. Jinx taps the barrel against her cheek, but she doesn’t stop the topsider from continuing.

“You would have to trust me to do my part…just as I have to trust I won’t wake up to find a knife in my back for the duration of our agreement.”

Jinx hums, but it’s an absent noise. Sevika waits.

“You know, I don’t know if I buy the whole ‘pardon everyone’,, thing. You just came down here and arrested pretty much anyone who crossed your path just to get to little old me,” the brat says, her eyes not leaving the Piltie’s, “why the sudden change?”

The topsider continues, unfazed. “Because if we were to arrest every criminal down here, there’d be no one left to stick on the Council.”

Jinx’s eyes narrow at that and Vi opens her mouth to say something—only to have that barrel pointed at her face faster than she can blink. Jinx doesn’t even look at her while she addresses her.

“Not talking to you. Quiet.”

Vi rolls her eyes putting a hand on her hip as she responds. “Stop it with the gun bullshit, Jinx—we both know you won’t do it.”

Sevika stands up from the wall, watching the brat warily because every single time someone tested her like that when she got like this, she open-fired—and while Vi’s death would normally make Sevika’s fucking year, if Jinx is the one to pull the trigger, their plans for Zaun will be irreparably fucked. It’s a long, tense moment before Jinx turns her head to her sister, her eyes narrower still before she speaks with a shrug.

“You’re right,” she starts, making Vi relax for all of a second as the barrel shifts to the Piltie, “and now you’re wrong,” her eyes harden before she continues, a steel in her voice that, apparently, even Vi’s dumb ass isn’t stupid enough to question. ”Don’t interrupt me again.”

The topsider, for her part, looks unaffected by the display.

“There’s more to it than that—can see it in her eyes,” Jinx says as she nods slightly towards Vi, picking up their conversation like it hadn’t ever stopped. “That…you really wanted me dead, y’know? Why give it up?”

The topsider takes a breath, her mouth forming a thin line before she speaks, her tone curt and direct. “I’ve come to understand that there may have been other factors that played into your…past transgressions against Piltover—ones I was not entirely privy to when I made the decision to track you down. Besides that…,” again, she stops, her jaw set, making it seem like she had to force the words through clenched teeth, “your recent actions have made me reconsider certain things…,” the woman pauses for a moment before continuing—like she’s trying to figure out whether or not to say something before she gives up. “And I’m rather tired of hating you, considering what it’s driven me to become.”

Jinx’s eyebrow comes up at that, but she doesn’t comment on it, apparently finding something else to prod her on.

“Oh, so you’re just here because of my sister.”

The Commander doesn’t even bat an eye. “No…but she is part of the reason,” she starts, only continuing when Jinx remains silent, a weariness appearing in her eyes that finally matches the bags under them with the Piltie herself, “Aren’t you tired of making her choose?”

Jinx’s gaze falters for a moment, that calm replaced by a wildness that’s gone almost as soon as it appears. By the subtle way the Piltie tenses, however, she can tell she’d seen it, too. Still, Jinx keeps her arm steady and the conversation controlled, which is honestly more than Sevika had been hoping for.

“And…what if you break up,” she says, popping the “p”, “or your little Noxian pals decide they want to be friends again…does your answer change?”

“No,” she looks extremely reluctant to say whatever it is she’s about to say, and it peaks Sevika’s interest, “I’m not stupid enough to be fooled by the same trick twice; I recognize that they had me dancing to their own tune. I’ve no desire to continue working with the General—particularly after what I witnessed at the commune…and frankly, Jinx, aside from this plan, there aren’t many other options.”

Jinx’s eyes flash even brighter and Sevika thinks the topsider might actually get herself killed here, “I can think of one.”

Her voice is deathly quiet, and she’s pretty sure that they could have heard a pin drop in the bar’s fucking basement with how silent the room got after that. Vi looks like she wants to step in between them, but she catches Sevika’s glare and apparently decides against it.

She didn’t have a weapon, after all.

“If you really think killing me will fix any of your problems, then go right ahead and shoot,” and gods, but Sevika wishes she had a camera to capture the terror on Vi’s face, “but all you’d really be doing is helping Ambessa—and she’s no more your friend than I am a Zaunite.”

Jinx’s head tilts, that emotionless look on her face not wavering in the slightest. Eventually, she slowly turns the gun in her hands, looking at the barrel, before fixing her gaze back on the Piltie—

And then abruptly spins the pistol by its trigger, holstering it in a practiced, flashy flourish. Her eyes dim a moment later, and she turns her now calmer, exhausted gaze on Sevika.

Sevika’s shoulders slump a bit in realization. “You’re fucking shitting me.”

Jinx keeps staring.

“You know they’re just going to run topside the second they can figure out how to get up there with their asses still attached to their bodies, right? Maybe drag you there with them?”

Jinx tilts her head, her expression not changing.

Sevika sighs, leaning over the coffee table to put out what’s left of her cigar, stares at it a second before returning Jinx’s own unenergetic look right back to her.

“You sure they’re in this?” she allows her gaze to sharpen, her words carrying a secondary meaning she knows the brat isn’t dense enough to miss, “For the long haul?”

You think they’re gonna stick around after you put a bullet between your own eyes?

Jinx shrugs, not looking at the way Vi’s eyes narrow at their exchange. “I believe her…buuuut if that does change, she’s a single Piltie trying to navigate the fissures alone. Not really seeing the problem, personally.”

Jinx waits a moment longer, glances at the desk again—only this time her gaze is even deader than the man who’d used to sit behind it. And then, without further warning, Jinx spins on her heel, grabbing the door handle before Sevika manages to spit out what she wants to say.

“Where the hell are you going?”

Jinx shrugs, but when she speaks again, her voice is all wrong: no heat or sass or humor behind it. Just…nothing.

“Out.”

Vi shifts, clearly seeing something wrong but far too daft to know what. The Commander only watches her in silence, a certain something flickering in her gaze that Sevika doesn’t care enough to read into.

Sevika turns back to the desk, too—eyes that gadget he’d used for his condition before sighing.

“None of them are going to like this.”

Jinx doesn’t say anything—and for once, Sevika doesn’t keep her anger in check like she usually does around the brat.

“They’ll just get themselves killed if they stay—”

Jinx brings a hand up to her face, hand running down it as her shoulders slump, and given that this is supposed to be their savior, the defeat in her posture doesn’t inspire much hope.

There’s an irony there, she thinks.

“Yeah,” her voice is quiet, almost solemn, and it makes Sevika a little sick. “Probably. They always do.”

Vi's mouth opens at that, empty reassurances on her tongue, but the Piltie lays a hand on her shoulder. As much as the motion only serves to solidify the fact that that ballsy, idiot teen she knew from before had been replaced by a cur, the topsider’s right in this regard. There’s something off in the kid’s eyes; now wasn’t the time to fuck with her. Hollow, her voice chimes in again. Mechanical, like her bombs.

“If you didn’t want my opinion, you shouldn’t have given me the lead.”

Sevika doesn’t have a good reply to that, so she doesn’t say anything as the brat finally leaves, glances back to corkboard behind her before leveling Vi with an even glare.

“You turn on us again, and I’ll personally scoop out your bitch’s insides and let Jericho serve them in his next stew.”

Vi starts forwards at the threat, only altering course when the Commander grabs her arm. Then she smacks her teeth before moving away, pausing at the doorway once she notices the Piltie has yet to leave the office.

Sevika turns to the topsider with a sneer. “We’ll talk terms later—one Council seat and some performative pardons aren’t going to be enough to get the rest of them on board—”

“Well, it’s a start—”

“—and it’s not gonna be enough to keep them from gutting you in your sleep either. Until then, if you want to keep all your organs, stick close to Jinx. Crazy as she is, they still practically worship her; I doubt they’d do anything to piss her off if she’s nearby. Otherwise, I hope you’re as good at dodging bullets as you are at maiming people with them.”

Sevika picks up the cigar from the ashtray—his ashtray, the one that brat had painted all those years ago that he kept on his desk even during business meetings—and relights it, taking a drag that she exhales right into the Piltie’s face. “Welcome to the Lanes.”

Chapter Text

She goes once the door shuts behind her, darts down the stairs and out the door and down the street and just…

Leaves.

Maybe she had a destination in mind at some point, but she’s pretty sure it’s just away. Doesn’t want to go back to her office, doesn’t want to go mess with Sevika or pick a fight with the enforcers.

Doesn’t really want anything except for something she agreed not to want, for a while.

And no one is letting her forget it: not Sevika, not Silco, and especially not Vi.

She’d had this all worked out and Vi just had to ruin it by deciding now of all times to come back. Did she not realize what that meant for her plan?

“Aren’t you the one who asked her to come with?”

She tucks her head between her knees on the rooftop she’d found herself on, biting down on her lip until her mouth tastes like copper so he’d finally shut up already.

Vi’d said he wasn’t good at that, once. If only she’d been wrong.

She feels the need to answer him anyway, because sometimes when she said what he wanted to hear, he went away on his own, and that grating noise would finally stop.

“That was before I made that stupid deal with stupid Sevika,” she tries, wincing as it all got even louder. She curls her hands over the cement of the rooftop, dully aware that if she keeps opening up these wounds then Vi will keep asking all these questions and then she’d never just leave like she was supposed to!

“Then you shouldn’t have told Sevika they could stay.”

Sounds and colors—pastel chalk and the cranking of a motor, white and green and blue and yellow, that one color she isn’t allowed to hate but she did because of that stupid little—

“Not really her fault you let her die, you know,” he says casually, laughing when she sinks further into herself. The sound twists, morphs, cuts where her nails dig into the ground, her not-middle finger scraping off some of the already crumbling cement with it as it rakes onto the rooftop below her.

She might be yelling at him, now. Or maybe not—sometimes, it got hard to tell.

Isha used to help her with that. With this.

She’d crawl into her lap and just exist, curl into her chest like she wasn’t a fucking monster that led kids to their deaths.

“Guess she learned her lesson then, huh?”

He won’t stop, he won’t stop, he won’t stop!

Neither did the laughter, or the jeering, or whatever that sound oozing from his mouth like the insides of a sump-rat when it came across a hungry trencher. It bubbles in her ears, it colors the air around her with pinks and greens and reds, it won’t fucking go away no matter how hard she shuts her eyes because she has never—not once in her life—been able to chase the monsters away.

“Stupid little baby always has to have someone to do it for her. When will you grow up?”

The voice is calm but angry, casual yet piercing—or perhaps that’s just the feeling of the base of her prosthetic jutting into the bones of her hand, crimson streaks leaking down the place her flesh used to connect to her palm.

She takes a breath in. Then another. Curls into herself on her side, on that dirty rooftop she doesn’t remember traveling to.

She lets her head slump against the cement, her pretty red hands curling around her legs.

“I can’t keep this up,” she says to no one, to everyone. “I can’t.”

Things go out of focus for a while, shapes taking over where details used to be, cement replaced only by the cold, darkness exchanged with scratches similar to her own handwriting in various colors—the words they form in a language known only by their styling and meaningless except for the anger.

She’s not sure how long that continues. It isn’t daybreak when it ends—the moon still out there somewhere above that ever-present smog. She can tell by the light that shimmers from behind some of that toxic cloud that it’s later.

If only she had one of those fancy topsider clocks.

Why had she even come out here?

Where is here?

Standing up, she wobbles on her feet, the black spots appearing in her vision probably her own. She hadn’t slept in…or eaten, actually…

She rubs at her temple, distracted. There’d been a reason she’d gotten up—she just has to focus…

“Oh. Oops.”

Her own voice quietly parrots to the open air as she surveys her surroundings. It takes longer than she’d care to admit to recognize the area, somewhere near the docks—maybe a few blocks away, if she had to guess. Maybe she’d been hoping Vi would come out and find her so she could tie the oaf to the boat herself…not that it’d be that easy to get rid of her, of course.

Try as she might, Vi never really seemed to leave. Not in any way that mattered. She just also didn’t seem to stay, either.

She can’t tell how that makes her feel.

She can remember, with that line of thinking, why she had to go back, though.

She grabs her pistol off the rooftop where it’d fallen from her holster, briefly glancing at the barrel before she freezes.

“No, no no no…”

That stupid scarlet on her hands had wiped away what little remained of the paint.

Her paint.

And…and she wasn’t around to redo it anymore.

“It’s your fault for letting the Piltie—” “Shouldn’t have taught her how to—” “—your fault that—” “—ust a stupid kid anyway, no need to—”

She’s back on her knees again, knows it in the way they hit the cement with a thump so loud it drowns out the words coming from everywhere.

They don’t mean anything. They don’t mean anything, they don’t mean anything—

”Is there anything so undoing as a daughter?”

“Stop! Just stop!”

She pulls the barrel closer to her chest, pretends it’s not a gun but a kid, pretends like she gets to have the do-over that Vi used to want before she realized Jinx isn’t Powder and decided she wasn’t worth the air she’d been breathing.

And yet nobody seemed to care that Jinx wasn’t even Jinx anymore.

Who’s supposed to tell them?

Is it her?

What’s she even supposed to say?

”Isha knew who you were.”

Now she didn’t know anything at all—couldn’t, because.

Because.

“I jinxed it.”

Was that her voice, or someone else’s?

Something whimpers and she curls back in on herself. The ground is nice here, cool.

She should just stay here…

She does, for a while. Something nags at her, in her head, though. It doesn’t speak out loud—which is weird, considering everything else is.

“Well, almost everyone—guess she isn’t—”

She fires before she even realizes she’d aimed, the hextech “bullet” (it’s just a big glump of energy, really) blasting a small hole through the rusted stairwell of the next building over.

She blinks.

Then she hears footsteps.

She dodges whatever they throw at her—remembers she’s by the docks, that no one stayed over here anymore because the area was crawling with assholes who liked to interrupt parties they weren’t invited to.

“This was a party?” He asks, his voice as shrill and derisive as she remembers it being.

She snorts. “'nough people to be one. Why not?”

He laughs. They laugh. It reminds her of the arcade, of the little shooting range she'd built, of the way she always won. Something about it soothes her, and it makes them feel less hostile. Shooting tended to make them do that, ‘s long as she hit something. Or someone.

That’s not so hard to do, of course…unlike Vi’s precious dessert lady, she’s a pretty good shot.

Takes some cuts to her arm. Starts to look like a tic tac toe board.

One of them grabs her hair, slams her against that stairwell she’d shot at earlier.

Huh. Doesn’t remember getting to the ground, leaving the rooftop.

Didn’t matter. She shoots the stairwell again, ignoring the pointy stick poised for her not-pointy throat.

It collapses on both of them, but that doesn’t matter—with the other support shot from the wall, it hits the butt-munch in front of her before it hits her, and after that time on the bridge (the second, not the first), any time is enough time for her to slip away.

Stick nicks her anyways, but that’s fine, too—just helps her match the rest of her getup.

Eventually, they stop coming, and she starts getting curious (because that was a whole lotta red guys all in one place), so she follows the trail of crimson (from their helmets or armor or whatever, she hasn’t looked at their outfits too closely yet) to a big old cart now completely unattended in the middle of the road. Gets a little nervous, so the gun’s out again as she approaches it, peeks around the side.

Notices the damn thing’s locked—and apparently the Noxians don’t play around with this sorta thing (not that she really knows what that thing is yet), because the whole cart’s made of metal, steel, probably.

Doesn't stop her from shooting out the lock, though.

In their defense, it probably hadn’t been designed to protect against hextech.

The door comes loose after that—or at least, after she jiggles it a bit—and when she swings it open, the sight shocks her so much that all that fucking noise, the grating, the snickers, the party…it all stops.

She approaches slowly, relieved that she can think now but finds that just because her thoughts are mostly her own doesn’t mean they make any sense.

She gets a little closer before reluctantly holstering the pistol, rubs at her eyes ‘cuz she can’t tell if it’s real or not and that would kinda suck if she wasted all this clear-thinky time on something that wasn’t.

When it stays, she clears her throat—not surprised that it’s dry and raw and probably bleeding even on the inside a little bit.

“Fortune Cookie?”

Chapter Text

“You promised me an unkillable army,” Ambessa spits, the venom in her voice rolling off the marred skin of his shoulder as he tests the fitting he’d installed just hours ago. He had weathered far worse storms than a single angry General.

“An outcome dependent on Viktor’s survival,” he answers unhurriedly, glancing at the woman before he turns to the beast. Unsurprisingly, the blast from the hextech powered-handgun hadn’t killed him, but it had knocked his subject unconscious—an outcome most convenient for both himself and the General’s forces. It was now carefully restrained with the tight chains forged with Noxian steel. The General claimed they were stronger than the brittle metal they used in Piltover.

He's not sure if that’s true or not—but if they failed to prepare the beast for transport, they would know soon enough.

The General isn’t happy about having to move anything at all, but unlike most of Piltover’s ruling class, she could be reasoned with. It helped that he had made it clear he wishes for her to succeed—Viktor’s transformation would only serve as proof that he was nearing his goal. Truthfully, he is less pleased with this turn of events than she is, but the Zaunites were putting up too much of a resistance to risk completing the procedure here. Something like this had not been done before, and from what information he had gathered from the rumors plaguing Piltover’s elite Academy, Viktor’s first…evolution, as he’d described it, had taken him quite some time to regain consciousness.

He can tell from the woman’s face that the level of organization from their current adversaries surprised her—they were more hostile than they’d previously thought. Even he had been rather surprised at the fact: from what her spies have reported back, the trio that she’d let escape into the undercity had yet to resurface, so it couldn’t be Jinx’s reappearance that stirred them up like this. Perhaps someone had tampered with the shimmer supply, laced a batch or two with a psychosis-inducing agent?

He shakes his head with a sigh, returns to his work. The blood he’d drained from his own arm interlaced with a bit of the beast’s had been enough to keep Viktor stable, but even that was starting to lose its effectiveness. They’d originally planned on waiting this out, to wait for the lad to wake up himself—something he’d had to explain in no uncertain terms to the woman now crossing her arms behind him was really their only choice, with his equipment limited as it was to what they’d brought down with them to begin with.

There’s only so much he can do if the subject is unconscious, and hextech is a tricky thing.

He regrets he hadn’t been able to observe the hexcore before Viktor had merged himself with it. Perhaps if he had the data to go off of, they wouldn’t have to play this so carefully…

But without knowing how long the procedure’s recovery would take, and without Viktor conscious, the Zaunite forces were proving to be too unpredictable to risk anything but moving the location of the procedure to a more secure area—one where the man would be easier to protect should his recovery take longer than a few hours.

After all, Viktor must survive.

He’d said as much to the General, and she’d been disgruntled—but fortunately, like Silco before her, she seemed to trust in his scientific judgement. That was days ago, now. Since then, she’d prepared a plan to ward off the increasingly hostile Zaunite forces, making the trip to and from Piltover several times to ensure everything would be orderly for their arrival. She, like all Noxians, in his experience, did not tolerate a lack of discipline.

He wonders what that would mean for Piltover’s citizenry now that the Kiramman girl was out of the picture.

Or perhaps into the picture is a better way to put it—he’d originally brought the camera to document the strange patterns that appeared on the people residing in the commune, but when he saw an opportunity to rid themselves of a moral hazard, he hadn’t hesitated, back in the greenhouse the Commander had suppressed him in.

Now those photographs were everywhere, and Ambessa’s continued, steadfast appearance had apparently convinced the Council into naming her Commander in the Kiramman’s place. He doubts it’s true…but that’s no doubt how she’d painted it to the public. More likely, her forces had stormed their chambers and they’d seized the power for themselves—or perhaps the few fools still left to serve on it had simply been charmed by the woman’s undoubtable charisma, as they had all been so far. He doesn’t particularly care for the actual details, though.

After all, her monopolization of the city’s power and resources only made his work that much easier to accomplish.

“When will he be ready to leave?” She finally asks, stifling another impatient sigh as he disconnects yet another pipe from the device he’d created for this project.

“Whenever you have a safe means to transport him. He’s already stable enough now that I’ve been able to remove him from his cocoon,” he answers calmly, standing back up as he glances over at the empty husk. Apparently, she had plans for it, since he’d taken great care not to damage the odd creation in the process of extricating the lad from it.

The details don’t matter. Viktor no longer needed it to survive, provided they kept the trip brief.

“And you’re certain he will agree to this?” She steps closer to him as she says so, but he knows it’s less an intimidation tactic and more of her own impatience bleeding through into her actions. She’d stopped threatening him the moment she realized that it wouldn’t accomplish anything.

It seems in that regard, they are much the same: only the results matter, not the means by which they are achieved.

Progress sometimes required it.

“I am certain of nothing save for the fact that this is our best chance of keeping him alive. There is higher-grade equipment in the Academy that I believe can be used to rouse him, provided certain safeguards are implemented. There may be some notes the lad and his partner left behind as well. But I can make no guarantees; ultimately, if he no longer possesses the will to carry out his own ambition, this will be for naught.”

He dusts his worn pants off, turning back to the woman when he’s done. She looks him over appraisingly before she flicks her wrist at one of the attending soldiers, who—in all likelihood, is off to fetch another cart.

“Come, then, Dr. Reveck. My soldiers will follow the instructions you left with them to package the beast and the boy,” she starts, turning on her heel authoritatively, “but we must leave before that happens.”

He does not ask why; the attacks against her sentries increasing so drastically in frequency within the last forty-eight hours alone meant that if she or himself were to travel with any of the actual carts (and not the decoys she’d sent out and will continue dispatching throughout the day), they’d be signaling the importance of their cargo. It is…less than ideal, given the issues with Viktor’s stability, but she is right: skilled though she may be, there is nothing that would save both her and their cargo if they were shot at with one of Jinx’s more deadly hextech weapons. He’s seen the remains of the Council building, and he remembers how…uncooperative that particular subject had been even knowing that he was trying to keep her alive.

He isn’t quite sure where they stood in her eyes—and that was without accounting for her unpredictable nature or the recent death of the child that had been following her around.

A shame, in his eyes. She had reminded him of his own daughter.

The recent disappearance of the child’s body had been unnoticed by all but himself, but it is part of the reason he’s been so insistent on the relocation. He cannot fault Ambessa for it: the only reason he’d noticed is because he’d recognized her from the prison. He also remembers the blue-haired girl’s reaction to her captivity…and to his newest creation.

It would be best not to risk an altercation.

Taking a last look at where Viktor lay strapped into the same rusty table that he’d once strapped his less willing subject onto, he turns around and boards the cart with Ambessa, looking forward to the insight that the lab notes of his former protégé would inevitably provide.

It is a setback, but that’s alright. There were always setbacks.

And he is a very patient man.

“Something is wrong,” he calls out, his mind dull and disconnected from the people he’d helped. It is…jarring, how different everything had become. He can still get a general sense of what’s going on around his physical body, but his core is hazier, stilted. It leaves him exhausted, still weakened by that blow Jayce had delivered before he’d disappeared.

It should have killed him—and perhaps it would have, had it not been for the Doctor and Piltover’s General. They wanted something from him, but he’d been much too disoriented to determine exactly what that had been, and this was before he’d lost his ability to speak—through his own mouth or those of his acolytes.

Now he couldn’t feel them at all, and it left him feeling vaguely hollow.

Even now, he is slipping further and further towards the edge, can feel it in the way his thoughts slow and his body weakens, the world in his mind growing ever so smaller.

It had started out a rapid decay—one he knows the Doctor had remedied by the sudden way it’d slowed…but it had only slowed, not stopped. Truthfully, he hasn’t the slightest idea of how long he has left, and without the people in the commune giving him a sense of purpose, it’s left him…frustrated.

No. That’s not quite it.

“You’re tired, Viktor,” Sky starts, crouching nearby. Everything but her face glows in that special, abstract way that differentiated people from his mindscape, the colors brighter and more concrete than they were in their surroundings. He’s saddened to see that even that has dimmed, has no way to know if it is because his perception has been altered or if it’s merely a result of his slow decline.

She smiles at him, but it’s a small, fragile thing that doesn’t look entirely at home on her face.

He looks at her a moment longer before directing his stare back in front of him, focusing on nothing.

“I had thought that removing the burdens weighing down the people of the commune would be enough to invoke change,” he starts, watching as the light flickers around him, expressing some of his dilemma in a way words alone could not, “but I was wrong…or rather, I have fundamentally misunderstood what those burdens are. It’s humanity itself that perpetuates this cycle of violence—fear and sorrow and hate creating the very issues that I sought to relieve them of in the first place. The only way to inspire real evolution is to remove the root of the problem.”

Jayce had proven as much, all on his own.

A shame, really: Viktor thought they were finally on the same page. Jayce had valued his life more than the promise he’d made him—he is the very reason the hexcore still exists, why Viktor still exists.

And yet, even he had proven capricious, for it was also Jayce who’d struck him down in his own home, Jayce who’d dealt that devastating blow that was slowly killing him in a place where weapons were explicitly prohibited. And for what?

What was so wrong about saving people?

After the first time, he’d never so much as touched anyone who hadn’t asked for it…and that first man had been an accident. Not only that, he’d been happy, grateful that someone had finally heeded the silent pleas of the undercity.

Viktor had accomplished their dream—one he’d wanted to share with Jayce, as they had always done: he'd brought the wonders of hextech to the people. That’s why he’d told Jayce where he was located. He trusted him to see what miracles he’d accomplished with hextech. All that good, all that healing, undone because of a single, troubled soul.

Viktor had been a fool. He would not make the same mistake again.

He would save them all from themselves—willing, or not.

Sky settles further into her seat, propping one leg up as she hums. “So you’ve said,” she replies easily. This solution that the Noxians had suggested was something of a point of contention between them. She did not believe he'd made his judgement unbiased. He did not think she was capable of seeing the bigger picture. They had argued about it extensively, but as it was an issue of morality and ethics, there was no clear winner, and no solution that would make all related parties happy.

He watches the colors in the background fade and merge, dripping down the area like honey down the inside of a teacup.

When was the last time he had tea?

It’s an odd thought. Stirs up...irrelevant memories. He pushes it aside. Sky shifts next to him. She wants to talk, he can tell.

He waits.

Before she can, though, the armored cart his physical form resides in abruptly comes to a stop. He wishes he knew more about its contents, but since his eyes refuse to open and his voice had failed him long ago, he can only wait. Perhaps he should just be grateful he could still hear and feel.

Had they arrived in Piltover already? It hadn’t seemed like a long-enough trip, but he admittedly knows little of the wagons they were making the trip in. Maybe they were of a faster ilk than the City of Progress’ own models.

“That seems unlikely,” Sky cuts in, understanding his thoughts without the need for him to voice them. Maybe his expression had given it away…but it’s more likely that she’d tapped into the strange bond borne between him and the others he had helped.

The thought almost makes him grimace. They were all gone now, an empty husk left in the place they used to occupy in his mind.

A sound back in reality draws him from his thoughts, forcing his attention outwards. It’s a loud bang—metal slamming into stone, perhaps?

“Maybe the door…,” he whispers to Sky, who had startled at the noise. She nods, her brow furrowing in thought.

For a moment, he’s sure they must have arrived—the Noxians, while skilled and expedient, weren’t much for conversation—but the silence continues longer than it should have, stretches without interruption from boots or chains or wheels.

What he hears next surprises him for what must be the first time in weeks.

“Fortune Cookie?”

He blinks, his shock fading into curiosity.

“That is…Powder, is it not? One of Vander’s daughters?”

Sky nods next to him, looking as lost as he feels.

From reality, he can hear her approaching, the rhythmic thumping of her boots on the metal interior of the cart catching his attention. This was…unexpected. She had not been among the Noxian forces last he saw her (or rather, last he knew of her—it had been some the other people in the commune that he'd observed her through).

How is it that she’d found herself amongst them? He cannot discern any real reason for it; for the Noxian's plan to succeed…sacrifices had to be made, one of which would be very personal to the teenager before him. It is perhaps one of his biggest regrets—he hadn’t been lying when he’d said Vander was worth saving. The man had good intentions, even if they had been encapsulated in the body of a beast.

But in order for humanity to be saved, the beast must die. There is no other way. His blood, his soul, would save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Viktor wants to believe that he would have wanted that, too, but he is not so imperious that he would speak for the man himself. The cold truth was that Vander would not have a choice—just like he hadn’t had a choice in becoming the monster Dr. Reveck had constructed of his remains.

He's pulled from his thoughts by the sounds of arguing…coming from just one person. Not all of what she says is directed at him, either.

“What? No, that’s not—I can’t just do that...how would I even—ugh, I don’t know…”

She trails off, a scratching sound coming from his side where—presumably—she’s now standing.

“Who is she…?”

Viktor shakes his head at Sky’s question—half-asked even as it was—a sad frown on his face.

“She is troubled of the mind. Extraordinarily gifted, but so full of trauma, of pain that it causes these…breaks.”

He’d known that because of Vander, and because of what the others in the commune had observed or seen elsewhere in their lives. Sometimes they discussed the girl Powder in a hushed, weary voice. Others, Jinx. This name they said in both reverence and fear—he found the duality rather interesting, considering what he knew of her.

She’d been responsible for destroying the Councilor’s chambers, for his hastened demise, in a sense—but also for bringing he and Jayce together in the first place. His feelings about both events now were complex, but he finds himself incapable of faulting her for either.

All he could see was an extremely tormented child…one that he owed something of a debt to, for his own betrayal.

Vander hadn’t just appeared to him out of nowhere, after all.

She was not beyond help, like so many of them believed. Not with what hextech has shown him. He could save her—he would save her, just as he would save them all. The children of Zaun did not deserve the hands they’d been dealt.

“Oh, fine!” the girl snaps, bringing him back to the present. “Hey, tin-can? Here’s the deal: I don’t know if you can hear me or anything, but these Noxians got you all tied to this table, and that kinda makes me think…just let me finish!” there’s a new anger to her voice, but he can tell it’s not directed at him…and neither were her words. “You really got the wrong sister for this, pal,” the pressure on his wrists, then his legs, then his chest and head that are suddenly alleviated, a hand slipping under one of his arms as he’s pulled into a sitting position. “’Cuz I’m not the one with a ‘good heart’, or whatever…but you did help Vander, so I at least gotta try an’ help you…”

In his mind, Viktor stands, his eyes widening in shock. “What is she doing?!”

Sky sighs from her seat on the ground. “She’s trying to save you, I think. Imagine how this looks to her, Viktor: last she saw, the people you’ve now allied with were attacking your own, and now she finds you tethered to a gurney in an armored carriage surrounded by their guards.”

He brings a hand to his face, rubbing at his eyes.

“I very much doubt it is surrounded by anything, anymore,” he sighs in exasperation, beginning to pace even as he feels his limp body—IV and all—be hefted upright, lurching towards the ground for a second before she steadies herself. He can feel her strain under the added weight, his arm involuntarily slung over her shoulder where her hand holds it in place.

“God, Fortune Cookie, you gotta—lay off the sweets!” she says, pausing as she struggles to right them both. He curses as she continues. “You should prolly know that whenever I try ‘n save something, it usually ends up dead. But only usually!" She quickly tacks on, sounding almost desperate for him to believe her. "Heads up ‘n all that,” she grunts, starting to drag him forwards.

“She hasn’t the slightest idea of what she’s doing—this will ruin everything!” He says, trying to keep his thoughts collected as the pressure appears anew.

Sky hums, clearly reluctant to agree with him. "She knows what she’s doing, Viktor, and it’s sweet of the girl to try. She couldn’t have predicted such a drastic shift in your behavior.”

“She should not have interfered at all! She was absolutely correct when she said this would lead to my death…but it will also condemn thousands more to far worse.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, letting out a slow breath of air as he tries to ignore the grating sound of his own leg dragging against the stone street below them.

“You don’t look so good,” Powder says uneasily, an odd quality to her voice that he’d perhaps be more inclined to read into if he wasn’t on his death bed.

Metaphorically speaking—because she’d up and removed him from the actual bed.

“Oh boy, here they come,” the girl mumbles irritably. She slowly sinks to the ground, propping him up against a wall, and a cold, liquid-filled object appears on his lap then. The IV bag, he thinks. She pats it before pulling away entirely. “Hold that, ‘k? I’ll take care of 'em lickety-split.”

He closes his eyes, runs a hand over his face. This was…a lot. More than he’d felt in a long time, he thinks. Perhaps the most since he’d come back to himself in the lab, when his partner admitted to betraying him and he’d had to come to terms with what he’s become.

“She’s just trying to help, Viktor,” Sky says, watching him with a tired smile. It’s of little comfort, considering what’s at stake.

“Yes,” he agrees, listening to the sounds of gunshots, steel and the thump of bodies, feeling the ground shake and blood that is not his own start splashing on his own wounds. “She is always trying to help.” He knew as much from her father, from the way he’d watched her live and how he’d breathed his last, her name on his lips.

“That is the problem.”

Chapter Text

Ok. Alright. This is fine. She’s got this.

Something laughs at her pep talk. Or maybe it’s just the wind.

Either way, it’s got her hand curling tighter around the grip of her pistol, trying to ignore the wetness of her fingers from the blood on her hands.

As in, literally on her hands—and she’s pretty sure at least some of it isn’t hers.

Even the tin can was splattered in various hues of red—and she’d been really careful with him this entire time.

After all, Fortune Cookies are fragile.

“You know, I was—gonna make a joke—about what words would come outta you—if I cracked you open,” She says, struggling to speak with each step forwards under the man-bot’s weight. “But it looks like—someone beat me to it.”

It's true: there’s a big, concerning kind of hole around where his stomach should be, a weird darkness ebbing from it that has slowly faded in intensity ever since she’d taken him off that table. She…hadn’t liked seeing that table again. It reminded her of the Doctor, of her father—of the way her sister’d thrown her aside for a Piltie she’d known less than a week, of the hope in his eyes on the bridge before she blew them both to hell.

Of the choice presented to her afterwards that Silco had made for her…and of the way that changed her forever.

Her hands are shaking again and she shakes her head to rid herself of the memories, ignoring the snickering and the scratching that came with running away. That seems like all she ever does, running away. She’d been running from Vi and her pet enforcer when she’d gotten into this mess with Sevika, she’d ran from Sevika and the bar when she’d gotten lost on that rooftop, and she ran from the voices when she’d found the Fortune Cookie in his own metal cookie jar. The only time she hadn’t ran away from something was after Isha…and even that choice had been taken from her—or rather, she’d been taken from the choice.

Vi was strong like that—strong enough to pull her across a rooftop, strong enough to suffocate her in her shitty apartment, strong enough to drag her away from the only kid in the world stupid enough to love her unconditionally.

And yet, also too weak to let her go—to get on that boat and row away and just live for herself for once in her damn life.

Janna knows it’d be better that she did that than…than if…

She bites her lip ‘til it bleeds, lets that iron remind her of what she’s doing, why she’s here.

That’s right. All she has to do is focus.

She pants as she kicks open the door to an old drug den, pleasantly surprised to see that the latch was so rusted that the door actually opened. It’s pretty much the only part of the day that had gone right so far.

She’s not sure how many Noxians she’d killed by now. She might normally be able to outrun them, but it turns out that just because this guy looked like he had a few eating disorders didn’t mean he weighed any less than that one jawless guy Vi kept beating up.

What had his name been again?

She snorts a laugh as she remembers, carefully pulling the injured sweet behind her and down old wooden steps. Her caution doesn’t even pay off—his stupid thin dowel-rod legs still snap half the damn stairs into pieces as they progress.

Lucky, she laughs again, remembering the guy’s fucked-up face, his name was Lucky.

When they finally reach the bottom, she wipes off some of the sweat on her forehead—wincing as the motion strains her sore shoulder. She’d really been carting this guy around for too long…and the number of Noxians only kept increasing.

That’s why she was going to plan B. Or should it be plan S?

“Heh. BS,” she hums through strained breaths, reaching behind the cabinet in the storage closet she’d dragged the scrap metal man to, fumbling with tired hands until she found the little switch that goofy fella Finn had thought he’d hidden so well. It was about the second worst kept secret among the chem barons, so hiding anything of value here—like Finn had done many, many times—from people in Zaun was a real bad plan…but hiding something from the Noxians here…

Well, she thinks it’s about the best idea her sleep-added brain could come up with.

“Isn’t it ‘sposed to be ‘addled’?”

She growls, her teeth grinding as she hops into the “secret” alcove where the floor boards had opened up, catching Fortune Cookie with a little less grace than she’d normally have.

She blames the know-it-all across the room, his goggles missing from his face.

She thinks it’s because Vi still has them.

“What do you know?” she huffs, shooting him a glare that he doesn’t see because he isn’t there when she looks up.

Would it be weird for her to ask for them back? She…misses them.

She misses them.

Something lands on her hand and she doesn’t look to see if it’s blood or something else before wiping it off.

“Ok, Cookie!” she says, putting in as much effort into sounding enthusiastic as possible so he doesn’t panic—wouldn’t do for him to think she’s a jinx, not after he’d trusted her for this long. As an afterthought, she decides to let him borrow her hat, hoping it could bring him as much luck as it’d brought the other dessert she’d shared it with. “You just, uh, sit tight right here and focus on not dying while I go get the ‘S’ for our plan, alright? I’ll be back in a jiff!”

She pats his head (or helmet, whatever) to be comforting—like Vi used to do to her when she was a kid…actually, she’d done that in that storage room yesterday, too.

…it was yesterday, right?

Right?

She swallows, shooting the dying rust bucket a thumbs up that she’s not sure he can even see before she hefts herself out of the hole, flicking the switch behind the cabinet before rushing out of the room. Inside, anxiety claws at her chest. He didn’t look very…living. It’s fine! It’s…fine. She can still fix this.

She’ll help him like he’d helped Vander, and it’d all be fine. She can do this. She’ll show them.

She’ll show them all.

“You want in, Cait?”

Vi shuffles the deck again, her dexterity with the cards still mildly shocking to Caitlyn even though this must have been the thirtieth time she’d watched the other woman deal. Caitlyn starts to shake her head before the look in Vi’s eyes sharpens almost imperceptibly.

Ah, right.

“I’ll pass this time, thanks,” she answers instead, trying not to appear too invested in Vi’s response.

Vi shrugged, her eyes going back to the others at the table—but Cait noticed the subtle way the woman’s lips twitched downwards at Cait’s reply. Had it been the thank you? She’s too tired to know for sure. It’s been…at least sixteen hours since Jinx had disappeared, leaving them both in a bar filled with people who wanted them dead. Sevika might not want to kill them anymore, but she highly doubted the woman would intervene on their behalf if her lackeys decided to hunt them for sport.

Caitlyn could infer this much when—after locking eyes with the woman when she’d heard the office door shut—Sevika’s eyes narrowed at her and she'd snorted, moving to sit at the bar where every half an hour or so, one of her actual people would come to talk to her about something despite the frankly ludicrous amount of alcohol the woman was constantly consuming. It seemed that she had reached the limit of what she was willing to do, even for Jinx.

That had been an interesting thing to watch, the way the two interacted with each other. At face value, Cait would say they disliked each other, but it’s more complicated than that: she’d watched the one-armed woman protect Jinx after their fight in the ventilation shaft, and Jinx allowed the woman free use of the hextech gem used in that prosthetic—a prosthetic that Jinx had obviously built with her in mind. Yet they were constantly at each other’s throats—Sevika would make digs at Jinx’s sanity, and Jinx at Sevika’s intelligence. Sevika seemed frustrated and disappointed with the undercity’s chosen symbol, and Jinx seemed almost like she wanted no part of it.

That was bizarre in and of itself: she can tell Jinx cares for the people of the undercity, somewhere underneath all that crazy—no one spoke about something with that much passion in their voice if they didn’t—but the role she’d assumed in it all seemed to irritate her.

No, perhaps that’s not the best way to put it.

She seemed…stumped. Mistrusting—like she was of most everything, it seemed—but also unsure of what to do. It makes Caitlyn question some of the assumptions she’s been making about the girl’s position in the undercity, particularly after the information Sevika had shared with them regarding the attack at the memorial. This entire time, she’d more or less thought that Jinx was this fearless, unstable dictator, Silco’s successor in both wit and authority…but everything she’s recently observed refutes this.

For starters, Sevika is right: the undercity is not unified—not at all. There are many people that seem to follow Jinx, but they’re not following the girl herself, more like what she represents to them. That meant they didn’t act together, yet, but they did things with the same goal in mind. That’s why everything around here’s been so chaotic: half of the people who called themselves “Jinxers” didn’t even seem to know that the woman they claimed to follow was even still alive. Caitlyn had skimmed the titles and summaries of some of those reports the woman in the office had been pouring through—suicide bombers attacking enforcers stationed near a checkpoint by the eastern bridge, ex-Firelights freeing captives being extradited to Piltover, a trap gone wrong when it was sprung on Jinxers disguised in stolen enforcer attire by another group of “Zaunites”.

That word still left a weird taste in her mouth. The undercity’s people were also Piltover’s people; this desire for a new nation wouldn’t save them, it would only strip them of the (admittedly few) resources that Piltover provided them with.

Were they really in a position to refuse that help?

But, a challenging thought asks in her mind unprompted, could they afford not to, with how destitute they already are?

It's the unspoken question that part of her keeps asking herself as she mulls over the night’s (and morning’s, because Jinx still isn’t back) events, trying and partially failing to keep a frown from tugging at her lips.

As soon as the door to the office had shut behind them, Caitlyn'd let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. That’d been…intense. Irritating. Insulting.

And illuminating.

She really, really wanted to believe Sevika had been attempting to deceive them with the information about the attack on the memorial, because then, she can try to justify what she’d done afterwards—the hextech weaponry, the strike team, martial law, Ambessa, the Noxians and the Doctor and…and the terrible things she’d said to Vi.

But then Vi had corroborated her story, then she’d read a report too detailed and subjective to be fabrication, saw an imperfect drawing of Rictus’ spear…and she’d had to stare her own shortsightedness in the face. Vi hadn’t said anything about it (not after her initial blunt remarks after Jinx had left them in that old storage house, anyways)—not on the walk to her childhood home, and not after that horribly friction-filled conversation with the two undercity leaders, and not during any of this time they'd spent awaiting Jinx’s return—but she didn’t have to. Caitlyn knew what she thought, she could read it in the tired lines of her face, the regret in the hunch of her shoulders, the tension in her posture.

Vi thinks this is a terrible plan. Vi thinks that, somehow, someway, they will be able to convince her insanity-riddled sister to come with them—that they should just all leave the mess that this city has become to its fate. Vi thinks that’s actually a good idea.

And Caitlyn?

She just wants to help her people, for the fighting to stop, and for Vi to be happy.

Right now, she’s failing on all three counts.

So that’s where she stands now (or rather, sits), with Vi dealing the starting hands to yet another round of some uniquely undercity card game with people who most definitely wanted their heads—and Cait’s right at her side because, as Vi had tersely whispered directly into her ear almost as soon as that office door on the next floor shut, “you don’t want them to think you’re afraid. Trust me on this.”

And she did.

“7,” the hulking man to Vi’s other side, his glare not leaving Caitlyn’s own face. A thin line of drool dribbles from the corner of his reddened face, and Caitlyn very careful doesn’t blanch at the disgusting sound he omits as he slumps it right back up.

“I’m in,” the little weasely man to Cait’s right squeaks out. She briefly starts trying to guess how old he is before the unremarkable woman across from Vi chimes in, boredly pulling out of the “bid”, as Cait’s learned it’s called. Vi waits for the last two at the table—an odd looking man with yellowish skin and a heavy set woman with equally yellow teeth—to announce their plays or pull out of the bid before she continues, flipping up a card in silence that makes the yellow man concede, placing his hand face down with a growl. Vi raises an eyebrow at the rest of them, waiting for their plays. Apparently, the dealer didn’t have to announce their play—but they always seemed to understand what the call was.

Caitlyn has watched dozens of games and even played in a few of them now and has yet to understand the rules. It’s infuriating. Every time it’d been her turn to deal, Vi’d either taken the cards from her hands or tapped out on her behalf. Caitlyn has yet to win any of them—in fact, she evidently played so poorly that the others would occasionally snicker at her—but if she wanted in, Vi’d always just paid for her entry anyways.

It seemed like, if she were to continue sitting here, she’s expected to play at least some of the time. By the way Vi occasionally gave her a “no-bullshit” look, walking off on her own somewhere else in the bar would be a really, really bad idea. She’s been at this table for so damn long that every other player but Vi, herself, and the drooling man had swapped out or left entirely. Caitlyn’s shifted into so many different positions on the extremely uncomfortable barrel she sat on that her legs had fallen asleep at least half-a-dozen times by now. She’s exhausted and yet keeps stifling all of her yawns because that’s what she keeps seeing Vi do, has to force herself not to react when people not-so-subtly bump into her or jeer at her, has to ignore the too-loud jokes and the too-angry faces and the staring because Vi does almost exactly the same—though when a woman had bumped into Vi so hard it’d spilled her drink (one Caitlyn had refused because why the hell would accepting a drink in a place surrounded by people who hate you ever be a good plan?!), she’d turned and pinned the woman with a glare so intense that the woman paid for the entire table’s next round.

Which really meant Vi got two drinks, because no amount of pointed glances or elbow bumping from Vi would make her do something as stupid as actually imbibing it.

Perhaps, after hours and hours and hours of this same fucking game that Vi was barely even competent in, that’s why she’d startled so much when the door to the tavern burst open to reveal—

Gods, what happened to her?

“Heyyyy, Sevika! Just the lady I wanted ta’ see!” Jinx says as she walks into the tavern, her gaze so focused on her conversation partner’s back that she doesn’t see the wince Vi shoots her way.

Jinx looked—somehow—even worse than she had when she’d left the office the night before: hair definitely still unwashed, her face absolutely covered in dry blood that now extended to most of her shirt and over the faint scarring Vander had left on her stomach and also splotching her pants, fresh and hardly scabbed over wounds making imprecise patterns about both of her arms (but especially her left one), and her hands—now partially covered by the same black fingerless gloves Cait had not seen the girl wear since Vi’d taken them off of her on that first night in the warehouse—faring little better than her arms with the added bonus of blood so thick and dried it appeared black pooling under her fingernails. What Vi probably zeroes in on the most, though, is a shallow cut on the girl's throat.

Oddly, the most noticeable thing about her is what Caitlyn doesn’t see.

Sevika doesn’t even turn around at first, her eyes scanning some piece of paper a twitchy fellow had delivered to her not even ten minutes ago.

“What the fuck do you want?” the older woman bluntly spits, the heat in her voice interlaced with the same exhaustion that—clearly—they all felt.

“Oh, you know, a little of this, a lot-tle of that!” Jinx responds…Caitlyn wants to say easily, and perhaps would have, had she not seen the focused look in the girl’s eyes. It completely clashes with both her obvious fatigue and her casual tone of voice in a way that makes Cait’s skin crawl—reminded her too much of that erratic behavior at the cannery for comfort. She exchanges a guarded look with Vi, who matches it with something more alert despite the bags under her eyes. She places her cards face down on the table, not even feigning interest in the game anymore as the both of them continue to stare.

Sevika grunts, finally turning around as she opens her mouth to offer some inevitably sardonic commentary—but stops as she takes in the girl’s appearance. To Caitlyn’s shock, the woman doesn’t bat an eye at it…but her expression, while not one of surprise, does shift. Her head tilts slightly—like she’s evaluating the girl, and her eyes narrow slightly, but not dangerously. Caitlyn’s not quite sure what to call it. Wariness, maybe? It’s definitely not concern—she’s not even sure Sevika is capable of feeling something like that, and this is especially true for Jinx—but it’s also not fear or shock or anger.

She’s left with no more time to think about it before Jinx comes to a stop a few feet away from Sevika’s bar stool, a smile plastered on her face. Something about it doesn’t fit quite right, and Cait has to force herself not to shift. Remembering the way the same girl had harmlessly curled up at Vi’s side the previous day (two days?) helps some, as do memories of the last week in general.

“Where have you been?” Sevika asks tonelessly: not judgmentally or cruelly or skeptically. It’s simply a question—one she can see Vi also would like to know the answer to, by the way one of her hands has curled into a fist underneath the table.

“Here, there, everywhere! Say,” Jinx says, eyes too critical for her relaxed tone to land, “do you know anything about all these pesky Noxian carriages floating all over the undercity?”

Cait quirks an eyebrow at that—both because she hasn’t heard anything about that and also because Sevika’s dismissive reaction to the question surprises her, the older woman turning back to her drink and paper.

“Know enough not to fuck with any of it—that why you look like you’re half in the grave?”

Jinx laughs, and the odd, almost forced quality to it makes Sevika’s shoulders tense, the jug in her hand pausing halfway to her mouth. “Mayyy-be!”

Sevika huffs, but sets the bottle back on the countertop.

“Our scout reported an increase in patrols in every occupied district. Just stay out of their way—I think they’re transporting weapons or some shit, but they’re so worried about it they’re going in waves. There’s no way to know which one has the cargo, and we don’t have the manpower to hit them all, so there’s no reason to take a fight.”

Jinx blinks once, one hand coming up to grasp her chin as she thinks that over. “Well. That explains a lot.”

Sevika lets out a long, frustrated sigh. “What did you do?”

“I…borrowed something from our friends upstairs!” Jinx says with a clap.

Sevika looks back over her shoulder at that, her face now slightly alarmed, but mostly just confused.

“What? How did you manage that? They have at least half a dozen of those carts throughout the undercity alone, not to mention the ones that have already made it topside.”

“Uhhh. So?” Jinx cocks her head to an almost comical angle as the woman in front of her slowly turns back around to face her.

“How did you know which cart had whatever it is they’re trying to guard? Or is there something in each of them?”

Jinx snorts. “Yeah, no, I don’t think that’s gonna be an issue. This thing’s one of a kind,” She holds up a single finger, wagging it around in the air as if to demonstrate…but her face, besides her smile, is serious. The look puts her on edge, and Cait hopes she isn’t sweating.

Sevika looks her over again before she raises an eyebrow, waiting. Caitlyn doesn’t understand it until she remembers the way Jinx had initiated the conversation in the first place.

The girl seems to take the hint. “See, the thing is, it’s kinda heavy, and I wasn’t able to take it all the way back to my office, y’know? So I was thinking—”

Sevika eye twitches. “No.”

Jinx grumbles at that. “Whaaaat? You didn’t even wait for the question!”

“I already know what your dumb ass is going to ask, and it’s suicide. Wait it out a few days—then we’ll go—”

“No!” Jinx cuts in sharply, the intensity of her voice causing the woman to look back at her again with an irritated scowl as Jinx laughs it off, “I mean, it can’t. It’s, uh, volatile, you know? Won’t last that long destabilized like it is right now.”

Sevika’s expression morphs back into the look she first wore when she laid eyes on the girl after she walked into the bar, and now Jinx holds her gaze, the smile twitching on her face. Finally, Sevika speaks, her tone laced with skepticism.

“Where’s your hat?”

Caitlyn had been wondering the same thing.

“I, uh, needed it for something,” Jinx answers, her fingers twitching at her side drawing the woman’s attention for all of a moment. Sevika stands, reaching for the girl’s shoulder—but as soon as her non-metal hand touches it, Jinx pulls back with a wince that makes Vi go rigid and Sevika’s eyes widen as she looks down at her hand…which is now painted in a bright red. Their reactions are entirely warranted: because if the injury is bad enough for Jinx to show it...

When the girl notices the problem, her eyes widen before she reaches back with her right hand to feel her left shoulder, freezing when she sees the blood for herself from a wound that Cait can’t make out from her position at the table. Jinx shakes her head at that, her hand reaching for her head before dropping back to her side and fisting the fabric of her…capris?

Had she…actually not noticed the injury?

To her credit, the older woman quickly shakes it off, wiping the blood on her pants before taking a step closer and whispering something without breaking eye contact with the blue haired criminal in front of her. While she can’t hear any of what was said, when Jinx abruptly turns to look at Caitlyn and Vi, she gets an idea of what the topic might have been.

Jinx’s eyes narrow and flash a vibrant, dangerous pink that has Cait’s hand twitching for her missing rifle—but her attention’s then drawn to the girl’s words.

“So…if I take care of that,” Caitlyn really doesn’t like the way she says this, “then we can—?”

Sevika scoffs, moving to lean against the counter, her hand wrapping around the jug once more. “Good fucking luck with that.”

Jinx shoots the woman a smile—one still very, very off, yet somehow in a way that seems more like it belongs on her face—before she takes a large step forwards and vaults over the counter, her braids disappearing as she crouches on the opposite side of the bar.

“Let’s see…where did I—bingo!”

Caitlyn has to suppress every instinct in her body to not flinch back when, without further warning, Jinx appears between the two of them in a flash of pink, leaning against the table with one hand, her legs crossed as she faces away from Caitlyn in a forced casual way that oozes impatience…

But also gives Caitlyn a clear view of an absolutely dreadful looking slash on her left shoulder—the one Sevika had tried to grip—and it drips from at least three places to soak into the fabric of her shirt. Cait nearly gasps, her eyes widening even as she forces her gaze away, focusing instead on the interaction between the two sisters happening right in front of her.

Jinx doesn’t say anything for a moment, her free hand a fist at her side as she regards Vi in front of her. Vi’s looking at her, too, but something on the girl’s face must piss her off, because her own is practically a scowl despite her previous worry.

Or perhaps it’s an act—everything else Vi’s done since last night certainly had been.

Whatever it is, Vi certainly hadn’t expected what happened next—because her eyes widen in unadulterated shock when Jinx’s fist opens up to reveal a key. There isn’t anything special about its appearance: it’s obviously old, probably brass, and dangles from Jinx’s prosthetic as it swings in little arcs around her fingertip until, wordlessly, Vi reaches for it.

Then, Jinx shift her hand and straightens her finger, letting the key fall into Vi’s beer (or at least, Caitlyn hopes it's only beer and not something stronger). Jinx huffs at her then, and Vi’s irritation returns in full force.

“Oops.”

Vi looks almost like she’ll start swinging, but stops once she looks back up at Jinx…which prompts Caitlyn to look up at her, too.

And that’s when she notices the girl is staring directly at her from over her shoulder.

Well. That’s probably not good.

“I need to borrow her for a sec, ‘k?” Somehow, the fact that she isn’t addressing Caitlyn whilst she’s speaking with her is more insulting than anything else she’s put up with from the girl in the past two days, and she feels her own eyes narrow in retaliation.

Vi’s head snaps to Caitlyn and then to her sister, who still hasn’t looked away from Cait.

“The fuck you do,” Vi says, an implicit threat in her voice that Caitlyn can’t tell if she finds chivalrous or stupid by the way it draws the heads of the other patrons. From her peripherals, Cait watches Sevika take another swig of her drink, watching them from where she’s still leaned against the bar.

Jinx rolls her eyes before pushing herself upright, slowly turning to face Caitlyn as she responds without looking at Vi at all.

“Relax, we’re not even gonna leave the room. Besides,” she says, shrugging as she glances down at the drink she’d dropped the key in before looking back at Cait, her pistol now dangling from one finger, “I wasn’t really asking. Upsidaisies, Piltie!”

She doesn’t give Cait a chance to react, a hand wrapping around her upper arm and yanking until Cait's staggering into Jinx’s back. The girl raises an eyebrow at her as she releases her arm, her expression morphing into one of mock offense.

“Didn’t your parents ever tell you it’s rude to push people?”

Caitlyn couldn’t have kept the irritation from her face if she’d tried, and it makes Jinx’s mouth upturn into a smile so off-putting that it has her rethinking her own reaction.

Vi looks uneasy, having stood up but not approaching as her eyes flicker to the other patrons. “Pow—”

“Shut up, Vi,” Jinx says calmly before taking a few steps forwards to the table near the center of the room. Turning back to where she’d left Caitlyn, Jinx locks eyes with her as she slowly slides out one of the chairs, turning it around so the seat faces her before she uses it like a staircase to get up onto the table itself, ignoring the way the people there rush to pull their drinks off of it as she waggles her eyebrows, the gun still held casually in one of her hands. From here, Cait can see the blood that had dried on it, too.

It certainly doesn’t make her decision any easier—but Jinx is right, she doesn’t have much of a choice.

When Caitlyn climbs up on the table herself, Jinx wastes little time in grabbing her arm again, dragging her a few feet closer to the center before releasing her and turning to the crowd in front of them that had gathered upon her approach, seeming to ignore Caitlyn entirely in favor of examining the pistol in her hands. As the bar grew silent—due in no small part to the broken jukebox on one of the walls—Jinx finally looks up, a casual smile on her face as she addresses them.

“Dearly detestables! Trashbags and lowlives, assholes of all ages! I’m sure by now you’ve met Vi’s pet Piltie,” she says, using the barrel of her pistol to gesture to where Caitlyn stands just slightly behind her.

The crowd collectively grumbles at that—saying louder the things they’d all been muttering all night:

“Oh, the topsider broad…”

“Yeah? What of it?”

“That bitch who they plastered all over our walls?”

“The one who fucking sicked the Grey on us?”

“Who cares?”

“Oh, you mean cupcake?”

Ah. Someone had overheard Vi.

Jinx snorts at that, then shakes her head, hands on her hips in faux disapproval.

Hey, that’s Commander Cupcake to you!”

They let out a communal laugh at that—and it's not one that screamed “let’s all get along!” either. Caitlyn only prays that if she miraculously survives the night somehow, the moniker doesn't stick.

Jinx goes back to examining her gun—and she continues until a short woman in the back speaks up.

“So? What’s the point of this?”

Jinx looks up at that, tapping the side of her head with the barrel.

“Well, you all hate her, right?”

There’s a lot of grunts at that—some people spit, others are more fervent…Caitlyn sees a disconcerting number of people lick their lips—and from the bar, she spots Sevika raise an eyebrow.

“Yeah, yeah, all a that,” Jinx says, her words stoking the embers of the tension in the room into actual flames. “Lemme tell you all something: I can promise you that as much as you hate her fucking guts, I hate them more.”

They let out a couple of cheers at that, her own typical manic grin plastered on a few dozen of their faces. From the bar, she watches Sevika run a hand down her face.

“So when I say I need her alive,” Jinx says, regarding the crowd in obvious displeasure at the situation, “I mean it. No one’s allowed to harm a hair on her stupid, Piltie head,” at this, Jinx reaches back and pats Caitlyn’s head for dramatic effect—but her hand moves so quickly that the touch makes Cait flinch back, causing some of them to laugh at her as Jinx moves her hand to rest easily on her shoulder. Caitlyn would normally have been embarrassed that the touch helped her balance after jerking backwards as violently as she had if this situation wasn’t so absolutely bizarre to begin with.

Jinx shoots the crowd a pleasant little smile. “Any questions?”

“FUCK THAT!” A man—the large, drooling one from the card game—yells in response, shouldering his way closer to the table. “She poisoned our fucking people, and you wanna let her stick around?!”

A gunshot sounds as Jinx jerks, her arm coming to curl around her face as she covers an obviously fake sneeze.

“Aw, sorry ‘bout that, it’s just so drafty in here what with all that hot air blowing around,” She says with a laugh before the mirth drops out of her expression completely as she locks eyes with the man, making Cait stiffen. “You were saying?”

Her voice is just loud enough to carry through to the man in the crowd, who is looking back at where the shot had gone through the table behind him—where it’d whizzed past his ear, missing by not even an inch. The criminal’s face is so serious that it makes her want to pull away, but she forces herself to stay put. When the man doesn’t answer, Jinx’s too-happy smile returns to her face and she holsters her pistol. From the bar, Cait sees Sevika, looking almost impressed and still somehow irritated even as the woman nods to herself.

“Great!” She says—and that’s all the warning Cait gets before the hand that’s still on her shoulder suddenly pushes, hard, and she’s flung off the table. Vi, who she hadn’t seen because she’d apparently been behind them the entire time, catches her easily, her hands appearing under her arms and hauling her up whilst Jinx watched them, a smug, but still off looking smile on her face.

Before she can hop off the table herself, though, a woman in the crowd speaks up.

“Wait! What exactly is the plan here?”

Jinx cocks her head at that, turning away from them to look across the crowd once more. “Hmm? Whatcha mean?”

“What do you want to do?”

“Oh, that?” Jinx says, her mouth upturning into an even larger, toothy grin. “That’s easy: watch it all burn.”

When the crowd erupts into cheering, Cait watches Jinx’s hand twitch for her pistol—but when the girl realizes what they’re doing, she simply turns to look around at them before letting out a small, barely-audible “huh”. After a moment, she hops off the table, ignoring Vi until the woman steps in front of her.

“What—”

A jagged line of pink is all Cait sees weave around the pink-haired woman before Jinx is at Sevika’s side, a raised eyebrow on her face. Sevika snorts, eyeing the girl with clear disdain.

“You know this is a shit plan, even for you,” she says—and Cait’s not sure if she means the plan to get their stolen weapon or the stunt she’d just pulled with her followers. Jinx’s hand curls into a fist and then relaxes a few times, but she doesn’t say anything.

After a long, long moment, Sevika starts shaking her head, though when she speaks, her words aren't, for once, unkind. “This all falls apart if you die right now. We can’t risk it—and you shouldn’t have fought them alone like that. Go get some rest; you look dead on your feet.”

Jinx’s gaze flickers away before she closes her eyes—and by the way Vi stiffens beside her, she can at least say she’s not the only one who’s surprised by her reaction.

Opening her eyes to reveal a soft, exhausted blue, Jinx’s shoulders slump as she looks up at where Sevika stands a few feet in front of her.

“I can’t do it by myself. Please?”

Sevika watches her impassively for so long that Jinx turns around and starts walking towards the door alone, her eyes pink once more, but Cait watches the way the older woman rolls her eyes and upends the jug in her hand, draining it of its contents before slamming it on the counter and pushing herself off of it.

“You get me killed tonight and I’m haunting you worse than the voices already in your fucked-up head,” she spits without any heat, stalking past the sulking girl towards the bar’s entrance.

Jinx’s eyes widen before her arms come up in celebration, fists in the air as she follows behind with newfound enthusiasm.

“Woohoo!”

When Vi starts to follow after them, Caitlyn stops her with a hand, and the other woman must see something in her expression because she doesn’t fight her on this as they watch the two revolutionaries go off on their suicide mission.

Good gods, what have I gotten myself into?

Chapter Text

Sevika was expecting a lot of different things when she'd agreed to go help Jinx retrieve her stolen cargo. She’s expecting hextech—there haven’t been any reports of new weaponry made with the gems the brat could do so much with, but neither had her sister’s or the Piltie’s gun or gauntlet shown back up yet, either. Sevika thought maybe that’s what the Noxians were so damn paranoid about. Maybe it’s a cache of Firelight hover boards they’d confiscated—not that she has the slightest idea of what the warmongers would possibly want with those, save to scrap them for parts. The rest of Renni or Smeech’s shimmer, the couple of chem barons still kicking, the Doctor’s supplies…there are a lot of things the kid could have found.

Somehow, though…

“What the hell?”

Somehow, despite her near-belief that the brat could have found anything, this wasn’t remotely like what she’d expected.

From beside her, Jinx hums. “Told you it was one of a kind.” God, but something about the way she says that puts Sevika on edge. Kid had been acting weird as shit ever since she’d convinced her to hold off putting a bullet through her own skull—and ever since her fuck-up of a sister’d come back (for now; Sevika isn’t a damn fool—once a traitor, always a traitor), her behavior’d only gotten worse, if those cuts along her hands and paired flesh at the base of her prosthetic had anything to say about it.

She’s pulled from her thoughts when Jinx starts hefting the man (if one could still call him that) up herself, shaking as she begins to right them. The man looked at least half made of some kind of metal, and the brat looked like she’d pushed past her own limits days ago. No wonder she’d asked for help—hell, it’s the closest to begging she’d ever heard the kid come to…and considering she's known the damn runt since she was in diapers, that’s saying something.

What she doesn’t understand, however, is why she’d asked for her help. Her sister had been right there…and since she can guarantee that both her and the Piltie had gotten the same amount of sleep as she herself had, it wasn’t like fatigue played any sort of factor.

So what had it been, then?

Sevika rolls her eyes and pushes the kid out of the way, drags the tin fuck over her actual shoulder—and damn, that’s gonna bruise something ugly later. She glances at the brat before she can help herself (blames the exhaustion, really), and decides not to bitch too much about it. If the whelp could somehow function with as much blood loss as Sevika can clearly see painted on her arms and clothes, she can handle a little internal bleeding.

In her mind, she curses Silco’s name to hell and back, hoping he actually listens to her for once in his damn life (or death; she’s not picky). After all, it’s certainly not her fault Jinx thought it was alright to walk around half-fucking-dead like she is.

Rationally, she knows why, of course. Why should Jinx care if this killed her or not? That was still her end goal here, which is why Sister Fucks-A-Lot’s miraculous, passive reappearance is throwing the little suicidal moron for such a loop. Kinda hard to kill yourself if your family gets in the way…if that’s even what they were, anymore.

Honestly, she’s tired of keeping track, tired of the look in the kid’s eyes whenever she remembers she’s just as alone in this world as she was the moment Vander’d died in that cannery.

Bah. She pushes the thought aside as she balances herself—must be getting tired, dwelling on stupid shit like that. Who cares if the kid was a little topsy-turvy? So’s the whole damn city, right now: Zaun and Piltover, for once.

The kid’s looking at her with an unimpressed smile that almost makes Sevika chuck her cargo—damn brat already forgot she’s doing her a favor. She raises an impatient, irritated eyebrow that her talking partner doesn’t bat an eye at, little shit she is.

Never did shy away from the kid like all the smarter idiots under Silco had. Most of the ones who hadn’t weren’t around anymore, but it’s not as if that were her doing: Silco didn’t tolerate dumb asses. Sevika’s gaze flattens at the thought.

He didn’t tolerate most dumb asses.

That’s not to say the kid was ever stupid—not in a conventional way, mind you. Crazy, sure. Trigger happy, absolutely. But not stupid as in stupid, stupid as in this plan you just concocted is going to get the lot of us killed while you stand there with that stupid fucking manic grin of yours and the boss man forgives it all like he always does kind of stupid.

…which, she’s not above admitting to herself, is exactly what she’s also doing, right now.

Fuck my life.

“Well, I guess that’ll work, if we’re quick. I was trying to tell you to maybe not try ‘n agitate his stomach-hole thing he’s got going on, but you sorta jumped the gun on that one…” the kid sighs—but before Sevika can even get pissed about her little commentary, the brat wavers on her feet, hands coming out to steady herself.

Now she pretty much forgets the words entirely in favor of giving her the most “what the fuck” look she can muster.

If she had to guess, she’d say it probably looks a lot like the look Jinx had shot her when the Piltie asked to join them. That thought alone is enough to exhaust her and she decides not to go into it right now.

“Let’s hurry this up, then,” she says instead of saying anything actually on her mind. The kid nods, and that’s that.

…as if.

The streets, as she’d expected, are crawling with those crimson fucks. It’s the main reason she doesn’t question the kid on how she knows that the rusty scrap heap on her shoulder is what they’d been trying to transport: there’s far, far too many of them, all ripping apart buildings and cutting their way through trash bags with too much energy for it to be standard procedure. They’d lost something important—and considering spaghetti for brains over here is the only one who’d been successful in taking anything from them since the moment they’d rolled their ugly mugs into the undercity, well, it kind of narrows things down a bit.

The real question isn’t really what they were looking for, but why?

Especially considering said shit bucket was practically fucking dead on her shoulder, his chest hardly rising enough to be called living.

And somehow, she’s got to drag his sorry ass halfway across Zaun—alive—whilst also avoiding the Noxians so they don’t swarm them like trenchers to a pit fight with the most unstable brat to ever live in all of the undercity.

Shoulda brought another damn drink.

Her steps clack as she makes her way back across the Councilor’s Chamber, the gaping hole in the ceiling doing little to help her mood. She’d been gone for what? A few months, at maximum—and what a living hell Piltover had become! Jayce, gone! Her mother, in control! The city, under martial law!

It…it’s as if she’d been sent back in time, like she was home again, and she fucking despises it.

What gave her the right? How scared could her mother of all people actually even be? How much is just an act? Not all of it, she knows—Lest is a reliable sort, and after what happened with Amara, with…with Kino…

Mel shakes her head, fuming and grieving and confused. In her own damn city!

She had yet to inform her mother she had returned from wherever the hell she went, wanted to get a feel for what had happened, first.

And what had that told her?

Caitlyn, a traitor. Her father—Tobias—on house arrest, awaiting what will surely be some sham of a trial. Heimerdinger, gone, and replaced by what basically amounted to a war criminal—or at the very least, a man just one step away from becoming one.

What the hell had happened?!

Caitlyn, a criminal? How in the hells had her mother even managed to trick the Council into believing such utter nonsense? Some fabricated photographs? Rubbish, the lot of it!

Caitlyn, helping Jinx, of all people? The woman who had killed her beloved mother, the woman whom she’d led a strike force into the undercity against, had let the Grey flood the air, had banished the closest thing to a lover the woman had ever had for? The only piece that lent the absurd statement any credibility at all was the fact that this Violet was also in the pictures, and to say she helped Jinx escape?

They’d almost killed each other, by all accounts Mel can get a hold of.

Does nothing in this damn city make any sense anymore?!

“Mel?”

She starts at the voice, turning towards the entryway to the large, broken room to see grimy, unkempt brown hair, broad, dirty shoulders scarcely hid behind a torn white shirt, and—just in case this hadn’t been enough recognize the man—a giant, ugly hammer hangs from one of his calloused hands.

“Jayce! You’re alive!”

He nods once, obviously distracted by something as he regards her with a gaze much colder than she ever remembers him wearing. She can hardly blame him: Mel’s been a Councilor for almost twice as long as the man before her and within…however long it’d been since she’d been taken, she can scarcely recognize her own city. So much had happened in so little time. It’s incomprehensible, it’s calamitous, it’s…it’s terrifying.

Every rumor she’d heard on her way here had seemed to imply the man before her had died—and maybe, by the way he’s looking at her now, part of him really had. Something’s not right in his eyes, in the way he stands, the defensive way one of his arms is held out in front of him as if to ward her away.

“Something’s happened to you,” she says, speaking more about the man than to him. She’s not even convinced he’d heard her until his eyes narrow and he slowly starts forward, that hammer sickeningly dragging behind him all the way. She forces herself not to back away from him even as he draws closer and closer and closer, even as his eyes sharpen into an irrationality the likes of which she’s never seen on anyone>/em>, let alone the man who’d single-handedly won the hearts of an entire city with his smile.

He'd won her heart with that smile.

For some reason, the thought makes her stiffen. What…just what is wrong with him?

As he finally comes to a stop, as she finally notices the dry blood on the blunt end of a ruined hammer, Mel realizes the problem: that shine she’d always noticed in his eyes whenever he looked her way is gone—in fact, she hasn’t seen it since she’d spotted him at the doorway.

Does he think she’s responsible for this?!

“Jayce?” She can’t keep some of the hurt from her voice, that same disbelief that’s kept her rooted in place despite the obvious danger exuding from his form.

“That night, when this room exploded—when you and I walked out unscathed—that was you,” he spits, making her flinch from the venom in his words, “why? Why didn’t you save him?! Why didn’t you protect everyone, why just me?! None of this would be happening—none of it!”

She blinks, confusion marring her features as she responds, tensing as hid hand tightens around the shaft of the hammer. “I didn’t—I didn’t know, Jayce. One second we’re voting on Zaunite independence and the next, it’s—it’s all just ash.”

“Bullshit! You don’t just—change like this overnight! You could have stopped this!”

She does back up from him, now, because that hammer starts pulsing an eerie blue light and she’s seen what it can do—or at least, what it used to be able to do. Who’s to say what’s changed with its new appearance?

Who’s to say how Jayce had changed in much the same manner?

It doesn’t escalate beyond this. It can’t.

She wouldn’t stand for it.

“'Stop it'?” The voice calls from the doorway, her perfectly clipped footsteps casual yet purposefully striding over to the pair of them in the room. Mel’s eyes narrow at her mother, but in that brief moment before Jayce looks over at her as well, she can see the pure, unadulterated relief there that makes her own hesitance flare up in response. “Stop what, boy?”

Jayce shares his head in fervor, speaking half to her mother and half to himself as he launches into a rambling explanation. “You don’t understand what’s coming: Viktor, he’s—he’s about to lead an army here, head down to the base of the hexgates so he can—he can ‘evolve’ us all. He’s trying to save everyone from themselves by destroying us all, plans on turning the world to metal and oil so no one’s left with any will of their own,” Jayce barks a laugh, this cruel, bitter thing half lodged in his throat. Her mother raises an eyebrow…but she knows this look, there’s something dark in her face that’s evaluating him, appraising the words of the mad man he’d apparently become. “Humanity’s greatest imperfection is apparently itself.”

“And just how do you know any of this? That boy you speak of was just some undercity cripple—from what my men have gathered, he hasn’t been spotted in nearly a week. There’s no army approaching Piltover…and certainly not one made of machines.”

Jayce’s grip tightens again and he turns around to fully face her, the poison in his eyes doing nothing more than sharpening her mother’s own glare. “There’s yours.”

The General snorts a laugh, but her eyes are more calculating than humored. It makes one if Mel’s hands curl into a fist, because Jayce is right: Ambessa’s army is approaching—and it’s not just returning from whatever the hell happened in the undercity. They arrive on boats by the day, they march around the city, they occupy the halls of the Academy. They’re everywhere, particularly now that Caitlyn isn’t around to keep them at bay. Pieces start clicking together in her own mind, her mouth almost uttering the words she can’t unsay: you set this up, didn’t you, mother?

There isn’t a point in getting the verbal confirmation, anyways.

Why ask the fox if they’re being sly? Her own eyes could see it well enough as it was.

Jayce’s words only serve to confuse her, because as right as he is, her mother also isn’t lying: besides her own forces, there are no encroaching forces. Viktor hasn’t resurfaced since that explosion in the undercity she’s heard whispers about in the streets, some humanitarian effort blown to bits, if she understands correctly.

And more importantly, in what crazy world would Viktor of all people lead an army?

…and yet. There’s something in her mother’s gaze that stills her tongue once more. Perhaps his ravings weren’t as mad as they seemed. She might know who her mother had pissed off, now, but she doesn’t quite know what she’d done, or why.

She can say, at least, that that cryptic warning she’d been given just before the Black Rose let her walk is turning out to be even more underscored than she’d thought it’d be.

Were they warning her of mother? She’d conquered dozens of other (albeit much smaller) places besides this in occasionally similar fashion, and they hadn’t seemed to be concerned then.

What use would she be as a silver bullet to an average threat? Why the worry, why the fear?

Who is lying—and more importantly, to what extent?

“Listen to me: we need to gather the Council, the Houses—hell, we even need the undercity, if we’re to have any hope of stopping what he’s bringing here. His evolution will be nothing short of mankind’s extinction.”

He speaks with conviction, but he looks afraid…and mother’s never had the patience to entertain cowardice.

“We will do no such thing,” she says simply, her eyes scanning his face even as she rolls them.

"What?! How can you not—”

She cuts him off with a dismissive wave. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, boy, and I do not care to find out. I can only say this: there hasn’t been a single word to pass your lips within the past fifteen minutes that’s worth my time to listen to. We are at war, and it is not with some mechanists army, but with the undesirable people of your own city. If you want to help Piltover, then you can start by perfecting the hextech weaponry you left behind before you decided to abandon your people at the first signs of combat.”

Jayce bristles. “Are you out of your mind?! Hextech is the problem! It’s what started all of this in the first place! I’m not helping you make more of it!”

Her mother’s gaze flattens. “And I am not asking. That’s your role as the person behind creating it. Now, I'd suggest you make your way to your lab and assist my own scientist before I have someone show you out. I wish to have a word with my daughter.”

For once, they were of the same mind on this: whatever the hell was going on, she needed more answers—and at least some of them were lurking behind the shadows in her mother’s eyes.

“I knew it! You are a part of this!” He rounds on her. Her eyes widen as he starts his swing, and she acts out of instinct even as her mother starts forwards herself.

The shield comes as a shock to them all—and she might never forget that look of confused betrayal on her former lover’s face as she uses it to shove him back a step, intending on getting him out of her space so they can have a civilized conversation.

She should have known that wouldn’t have been enough for her mother.

Jayce doesn’t have the combat experience necessary to parry her blow, and as her mother’s wrapped arm slams into his skull, his body ragdolls to the stone floor below their feet with an ungraceful bang.

"Jayce!” Mel starts forwards, ignoring her mother’s attempt to stay her as she kneels by his side. He’s bleeding from a few small cuts caused by the strange, runic stones (slabs of metal, perhaps?) adorning her mother’s arm, but besides this, he’s relatively uninjured and still breathing. She turns to look up at the woman with a fierce scowl that has her mother chucking. “Why did you do that? He’s obviously not sound of mind!”

“Be happy I didn’t simply kill him and be done with it, child.”

Mel scoffs, her anger making her eyes flash a blinding yellow that makes her mother tilt her head down at her. “Don’t act as if that was for my sake. You need him alive.”

She hears her short as she turns back down to Jayce, taking in how much he’d changed with a bewildered frown. He’d actually attacked her. Jayce attacked her. “You’re right, I do. Now come here,” and though it’s stated like a request, a strong hand wraps around her upper arm and she’s hauled to her feet, leaving her little time to react as she’s pulled into an embrace. Mel blinks, shock locking her muscles up even as her mother sighs over her head. “When they took you…it was like losing Kino...” her voice is barely audible until she pulls back, a strange vulnerability to the woman Mel’s not sure she’s ever seen before marring her expression. “Never do that to me again."

Mel’s mouth opens and closes once before she manages to ask what she wants to know. “I…what happened?” What did you do? She really means.

Her mother squeezes one of her shoulders before allowing her hands to fall back to her sides.

“That will take some time to explain,” she answers, her fingers absently running over the strange wrappings on her arm…wait. Are those from Rictus’ spear? “Come,” her mother says as she turns back towards the door, gesturing to two silent guards there to retrieve Jayce. “It seems as though we have much to discuss.”

When Mel doesn’t follow her to the door, her mother turns around and looks at her with her special mix of fondness and annoyance. “Don’t fret over the boy: he won’t be killed. In fact,” she adds as she starts back towards the door, “I’m having my personal physician see to him. He likely won’t even be conscious by the time we’ve finished speaking.”

Mel hesitates before stepping out of the way of her guards. Mother wasn’t going to hurt him, and she does need information…

As Mel lets out a sigh and finally follows behind her mother, she spares the gaping hole at the end of the room a single glance. She catches her mother’s half-smirk out of the corner of her eye, but pretends she doesn’t see it. Perhaps she can play up her own disorientation? Whatever actually happened while she was gone, at least she’ll learn part of it from her.

After all, the best lies come wrapped in truth.

Sevika spits a mouthful of blood out of her mouth, shifting the deadweight of the man so her next mechanical punch will kill the crimson fuck who’d just slammed a gauntleted arm into her face. She doesn’t get the chance to actually hit him, though—another shot rings out just as she readies her hissing prosthetic to deal the blow, this time killing the soldier instead of just disarming him.

“Why the hell didn’t you just do that in the first place?” she snaps at the brat, already turning in a circle to scan the rest of the dingy alley.

Jinx huffs before walking past her, that pistol held in a loose grip in one hand, the smoke visible even in the dark of the night.

Yeah, that’s how long they’ve been out here.

“They got a lotta armor—it’s way easier to shoot their hands than their necks,” glowing pink irises turn back over her shoulder to regard Sevika in mock disdain. “Maybe next time, just don’t get hit.”

Sevika grumbles, her arm hissing in response, but they’re too close to her office now to get into her irritation. They’d already done that enough in the last hour—except for once in their lives, it’d been on purpose. Can’t just lead them right to the entrance if this plan had a shot in hell at working…though judging by how cold and unmoving her questionably human cargo's become, the plan had failed long before they’d ever reach her office.

She grits her teeth as they make their way through the next few streets, ducking through one of the nearby scrap yards to find the hidden entrance to the…air ship? Balloon?

Sevika doesn’t fucking know—it’s an old, useless flying thing that the brat liked staying in to pretend she’s important.

“We’re here—what now?” Sevika prods, wanting to wrap this up already before the kid realized how pointless this all had been.

A hangover around a Jinx in the middle of a breakdown is not something she’d care to experience anytime soon.

Jinx crosses the way to the center of her office, an arm roughly scrubbing over her face to clear some of that dry, caked blood from her eyes. Sevika doesn’t bother telling her that the motion had reopened that nasty cut on the back of her shoulder—if the brat hadn’t cared the first three times she’d done it, she wasn’t gonna care the tenth. Instead, she makes her way over to her side, keeping her footsteps intentionally louder than they needed to be both because it’s a good outlet for the massive amount of irritation that’s been building within her ever since she’d agreed to take this stupid ass trip, and also because she doesn’t want to spook her.

Doing that would probably get her shot, and she’s not sure she has the restraint not to go out swinging.

"Put him down, uh…” Jinx trails off, looking to her side with a tired frown before shaking her head. She’s silent for so long that Sevika thinks those voices in her head have pulled her into another conversation…the fifth one of the day. Thinking about it makes her blood boil: kid had made it clear she’d have come to fetch the human scrap heap herself had Sevika not decided to tag along—and with these freeze ups she keeps having, that would have gotten her killed for sure. Sevika’s already had to shove the kid out of the way of three different attacks that would have left her bleeding out if they didn’t just kill her outright.

Is that why she’d bothered asking for help? Because otherwise she’d break their deal?

The thought gives her pause. Fuck, had she known shit’d gotten this bad and still wanted to save this pasty little shit?

Mentally cursing to herself (because now it’s been so long that fresh blood from the kid’s worst cut has dribbled down her entire arm and fallen to the floor), Sevika decides to cut in.

"Brat?”

Jinx startles, a hand twitching towards her holster before falling away.

“I-I gotta grab somethin’. The only place he could—just get it from in there. Drag it out, though. I...,” the kid takes a shaky breath before she continues in a voice so soft it’s almost a whisper, “I can’t go over there yet. I just…can’t.”

Ah. So that was the problem.

She grunts and heads towards the makeshift tent her and the pipsqueak had put together, dragging the thin mat they’d used as a bed out towards the center. The fact that that’s apparently enough to make Sevika pity her starts pissing her off again, but it’s dull compared to what it had been. Not sure she can blame the kid for this one.

When Jinx runs back towards them from where she’d been flitting about the blades that make up the floors of her office, her injured arms are so full of random, useless looking shit that it has Sevika’s eyebrow raising before she can help herself.

“OK, ok. Uh. Ok,” the kid says, setting all of it onto the floor as she flips this fancy looking notebook to a seemingly random page, her eyes scanning the handwritten notes in it with an erratic focus that almost makes Sevika back up a step.

Reminds her of that joke she’d made about the table in Silco’s old office the night before.

She doesn’t, though: if the kid fucked this up and killed them both or decided sticking around isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, deal be damned, then Zaun was as good as gone anyways.

So she sets the limp, unresponsive rust bucket on the mat and waits, instead, watching the kid do fuck-all but read for a while.

She almost speaks up again—but she cuts off when the brat jolts up out of the blue, her hands fiddling with some kind of metal thing that she sticks one of the hextech gems onto, runs this rubber piping in a circle around the mat and connects it to the metal piece through some fittings she has to run around the workshop to find. That book never leaves her hands, and eventually, when she’s apparently done with the hardware setup, she pulls out a—

Sevika has to clamp her jaws shut not to comment on the paintbrush the kid produces, halfway in the process of dipping it into a near-empty container of cheap pink paint.

What the fuck am I watching?

The kid doesn’t waste much time, gets right in the tin can’s face as she quickly but precisely copies some symbol in the book on the guy’s face and then the backs of each of his hands, setting that IV bag she’d insisted they’d bring along on his chest before she pushes the paint aside. The last thing she does before motioning Sevika to back away is take that hat back—and for some reason, it makes it hard to meet her eyes after that.

Well. She'd liked the runt, too.

“OK, Fortune Cookie, I’m pretty sure this won’t crack you open…err, any more than you already are, I mean—but if it does, sorry.”

Sevika hopes for his sake he didn’t hear that. It’d be a pretty shit way to die, the executioner apologizing right before they strung you up.

The girl bites her lip—hard—before pulling a lever near the side of that metal contraption she’d rigged up and blue light shoots out from it up into the air. Sevika’s only thankful that it doesn’t go farther than that…or she would have been, if it hadn’t made the kid flinch back violently and slam her head into the railing along the center.

“It was a mistake, it was a mistake it was a mistake—”

Sevika looks away as her hands fist into her hair, reopening old wounds in two different ways.

Instead, she watches as those pink symbols start to glow, a low hum sounding from them that gets progressively louder as the seconds tick by—and whatever made them start that also makes the arms on the metal gem holder thing spin, the motion so wild and unpredictable that it jumps on and off the ground, rattling the gem in its cage. Jinx pulls further away, her arms curling around her head as the entire floor starts to vibrate and Sevika curses, sure this damn thing is about to blow.

She pushes herself in front of the ball the kid had curled into, her quickened breathing only barely audible to Sevika over the thrum of the contraption and the loud clashes of the metal scraping against the floor, that light growing so bright she has to duck her own head down—

And then it all stops.

Sevika hesitates before she turns back to it, to him, thinking the damn thing had just fizzled out or killed the guy or something…but to her surprise, though the light on the marks has faded into something dimmer and the sound had died down almost completely, the contraption was obviously still on, the metal arms spinning at a slow, unhurried pace around the now settled gem.

The muffled sobs of the kid next to her draw her attention, and—uncomfortably because she’s never known the right thing to do in these sorts of situations with Jinx—she clears her throat, deciding to tell her the news herself since the brat’s eyes were too screwed shut to see anything.

“I think it worked—he’s still breathing, I mean."

Sevika slowly pushes herself up, still wary of the thing that had almost blown them both to kingdom fuck, but nothing happens as she stands.

“What?” Jinx mumbles, one arm wiping across her face as her eyes finally open. She gets up much faster once she sees the guy, that horrible looking chest wound he had starting to…pulse, or something. Sevika figures that’s probably a good thing, considering that’s what it had been doing when she’d first grabbed him. It’d sorta just petered off as time went by. It doesn’t look pretty or anything, but she can see a steady rise and fall of his chest now where there hadn’t been one before.

How the hell had she done that?

“It…worked,” Jinx sniffles, her tone making it sound almost like she’s asking, her eyes bloodshot and lined with blood and exhaustion and tears. After a minute, she nods, one hand coming back to her head just in time to catch a drop of blood from the wound her prosthetic had dug into her temple. She nods once, turning her palm to watch it slide down the side of her hand. "That's...great..."

And then she falls over, the light fading from her eyes even as Sevika catches her by the back of her shirt.

“What the hell—” she cuts off when she realizes the kid’s still breathing without any problems, realizes that it’s probably been at least two days since she’d eaten or slept or drank anything, that she’s absolutely littered in injuries and is somehow even paler than she normally is because of all the blood loss.

Blood loss and dehydration and exhaustion that she can't treat here or really anywhere close by because all of the healers she knew of had been evacuated to the Lanes or killed the moment that topiside had started their invasion in earnest.

Sevika glares down at her still form, the only sounds the steady hum of the machinery and the occasional creak of the blades turning above them.

“I fucking hate you, you know that?” She growls to no one, because the brat had gone and left her here to clean up her mess.

Like father like fucking daughter.

She hefts the dumb shit over her shoulder, sticking her pistol into her own belt and clipping that helmet around her arm before she takes off, hoping the irritation cascading off of her would somehow be enough to ward off their enemies as she dragged the kid back to the tavern.

Chapter Text

Vi’s not sure what to think right now.

Cait had finally convinced her to get some sleep a few hours after Jinx left with Sevika—a few hours spent pacing in the basement where she grew up because her sister had given her the key in the most passive-aggressive way possible.

And fuck, it’s like nothing had changed in all those years she’d spent in jail.

She’s not sure what it was that she was expecting, but it hadn’t been a trip back in time—Powder’s drawings and makeshift explosives hung around the room and dangled over the sides of the bunk bed. There’s a thick layer of dust over the coffee table and couch. A bin full of her scrap parts and defective Mousers sits in a corner, one of the boy’s jackets lay draped over the back of the couch, untouched and sporting a few new holes from the bugs that chewed up old clothing.

She’d frozen when she got halfway down the staircase, blinking away the images of Mylo with his feet propped up on the table as he tossed something at Claggor, who was helping Powder with one of her gadgets, a soft smile on his face as he ruffled her hair.

Cait had to clear her throat to get her to move, and she’d tore her gaze away from the sitting area to move to sit on the bed, her hands running across the old bombs dangling from the top bunk. When Caitlyn paused next to her, she hadn’t said anything, but she also hadn’t needed to, either: they both knew who’d made them, only Vi also knew how old they were, how they wouldn’t work even if they accidentally set them off.

“I take it this is where you lived?”

Vi’d let out a slow breath, her eyes closing as her hand dropped back down to her side.

“Yeah.”

Caitlyn hadn’t said anything after that, and after a while, she put a hand on Vi’s shoulder and she knows it’s meant to be comforting, she knows that—but all it does is remind her of that nasty gash on her sister’s arm and she flinched away from the touch.

“Vi…”

Vi’d sighed, a hand scrubbing through her hair, but she hadn’t answered, took to pacing around the room that had suddenly felt far too small for them, her mind trailing to Jinx, ripping her hair out at the roots in that warehouse, Jinx, laughing as the kid in her lap sneezed so hard her hat flew off her head in the commune, Jinx, covered in blood and twitching at things that weren’t there as she ignored Vi, threatened Cait, and asked Sevika for help.

Vi takes another breath, holds it, and lets it out. They’d been gone so long that last she’d checked it was dark out—and it’s not like there was a clock down here to keep track of the time.

Cait had woken up when she’d heard Vi shuffling. She still felt a little bad about that: Cait could tell she’d needed space, and even exhausted as she was still went and slept on that ratty ass couch. She’d have to thank her later, assuming Sevika’s cronies didn’t just gut the both of them in their sleep.

“Vi, do you want to talk about it?”

Vi shuts her eyes as she turns back around again, making her way back across the floor by muscle memory alone.

“What is there to talk about? We’re stuck working for the fucker who betrayed my dad, my sister’s out there on death’s door, and she apparently trusts that dick weed more than me. That’s pretty much it. Oh, actually,” Vi adds, her tone more cutting than it needs to be because the little sleep she’d gotten while tossing and turning on the bottom bunk of the bed hadn’t been restful at all. “She still fucking hates you—which reminds me, why the fuck did you push her like that in the office?”

She stops pacing now, turning to look over the back of the couch where Cait’s irritatingly calm face is visible.

“What do you mean?”

Vi looks at her like she’s an idiot. “Cait, she almost killed you.”

Caitlyn frowns, the exhaustion in her gaze as clear as the steadiness of her tone. “No she didn’t—and I doubt she would have tried to, either.”

Vi’s eyes widen in disbelief, but before she has the chance to tear into the other woman (and not in the fun way, either), Cait cuts her off.

“Think about it, Vi: she’s spent a ridiculous amount of time and effort trying to keep you alive…and in the process of doing so, she’s saved my life at least twice at this point. I’m not so foolish as to suggest she doesn’t want me dead, because she really does hate me—but short of my complete and utter betrayal, I sincerely doubt she’d ever pull the trigger.”

Vi stares. There’s a logic there, sure, but that’s exactly the problem.

“She’s…fuck, I don’t know how to say it,” Vi grumbles, her hand curling into a fist a loosening again with a shake of her head. She's still a little drunk, and the words don't come as easily to her as they normally would. She hadn't even meant to get drunk, but when that one fuck got spooked into buying the next round, they'd picked some of the stronger shit, and Cait hadn't drank hers, which meant Vi had to (she knows how that game worked: you refuse a free drink, you're either a lightweight or weak, and either way that meant you were a target when your drinking buddies already hated you), and that plus all of the other shit she'd had that night/this morning meant her mind is about as fucked as her liver.

“Unstable?” Cait tries, looking at her with a raised brow. Vi's knuckles pop as her fist clenches. Something about the way Pilties said that whenever her sister’s brought up puts her on edge—Cait included.

“If you knew that then you shouldn’t have—”

Cait hums, cutting her off yet again. It’s starting to piss her off.

Or maybe she’s just tired.

“As odd as this is going to sound, there was a certain point in that conversation where I was no longer worried about it," yeah, odd isn't the word Vi'd have chosen for that, "it’s like she decided to…take it seriously or something—did you not notice how her demeanor shifted when she began asking all of those questions? I’m not certain of why that is: perhaps because her friend was counting on—”

This time, it’s Vi who cuts in. “Sevika is not her friend.”

“Vi, stop being stubborn. You might not care for her, but Jinx certainly does: she would not have bothered building that prosthetic for her otherwise, nor would they have worked together to release the Grey in the ventilation systems or made whatever deal it is that they keep mentioning.”

Vi’s nostrils flare as she looks away…mostly because Cait’s right.

Cait’s always fucking right.

“I do think that if she suspects we’ll betray her that she’d kill me without hesitation. I suppose that can’t be helped…if she ever gets into one of her moods, I’ll probably have to leave the area.”

Vi turns back around, paces to the end of the room again at a quicker pace that does nothing to ease her anger. It’s not even justified anger: it’s not like any if this was Cait’s fault, and it’s not like anything she was saying was even wrong. It’s just…hearing her talk about it all so damn casually when Powder’s out there bleeding out with a traitor as her only backup is making her blood boil under her skin.

“I left that part out, you know,” Cait starts absently, her eyes tracing Vi’s form as she moves across the room and back, “when she protected me again.” Cait launches into a short, clipped version of the aftermath of shooting the flare that Vi'd already heard from her, only this time, she shared how Jinx had helped her again without Vi even asking her to.

Vi looks towards her with thinly veiled irritation, but Cait doesn’t bat an eye at it as she continues. “I was worried about how she’d react to it—I can tell she didn’t particularly want to help, and she was behaving rather strangely—”

“So you were scared of her—want to throw her in some topsider loony bin, ‘s that it?” Vi mentally curses herself as the words leave her lips unprompted. Fuck, why did she sound so angry?

Why is she so angry?

Caitlyn doesn’t look surprised or hurt at her words, and for some reason that just pisses her off more. “I won’t lie to you and say I don’t think she needs some form of professional help. The easiest way to do that—and really the only way a criminal could receive it—would be in an inpatient setting, but no, that isn’t what I was saying here—”

Vi cuts her off once more, pissed that they were discussing it again, pissed that they couldn’t agree on something that wouldn’t involve drugging the ever living fuck out of her already fucked-up sister or throwing her into the same box Vi’d had to live in for all those fucking years—except hers would even come with a straight jacket.

As if Stillwater hadn’t sucked enough dick.

"Oh, by all means then: enlighten me!”

Cait’s mouth turns into a sharp frown and Vi’s so pleased that she gets a reaction that she almost misses her words.

“Vi, I’m saying this for her own benefit—”

Vi barks a laugh, one as ugly as she felt, as her soul had become when she’d left an 11 year old alone near the most notorious crime lord in the undercity.

“Really? Sorry, cupcake, I didn’t realize prison was meant to help people, silly me—”

“Would you shut the fuck up and listen to me?”

Vi blinks, stopping mid-stride to turn back to the other woman, who looks at her now with a heated scowl.

“Your sister has needed help for a long time now—but the only reason I bothered bringing it up to you in that warehouse at all isn’t because I’m scared of her, I’m scared for her.”

Some of the anger starts fading from her face, replaced by wariness—that…that didn’t sound right. Cait must understand her confusion, because she sighs, propping her head up with an elbow on the back of the couch.

“Actually, it’s really more that I’m worried for you, Vi…there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” Cait isn’t looking at her anymore, and for some reason that makes all of her anger disappear entirely. It made more sense to hear that she wasn’t worried on Jinx’s behalf (she had killed her mom), but that meant that whatever this is was actually serious, and the nervousness in Cait’s face doesn’t help ease her anxiety in the slightest.

“What do you mean?”

Her voice is steadier than she’d thought it’d be, steadier than she feels herself.

Cait opens her mouth to respond—but then they both hear a loud whistle from up the stairs and Vi’s sprinting past the door before her brain registers that she’s even moving because she knows that whistle.

Her heart catches in her throat as she bursts from the hallway and locks eyes with the person in the doorway, who’d attracted a small crowd…probably because of what she carried.

Or rather, who.

“Powder!”

Sevika rolls her eyes as Vander’s mutt emerges from the basement, pissed that the deadweight slung over her shoulder hadn’t fixed that stupid jukebox yet so there’d be something to cover up her whistle. Apparently, she’d perfected it too well, because it’d carried to the basement and brought with it a second brat—except this one had muscles instead of brains inside that skull of hers.

She quickly hefts the kid off her shoulder, passing her to the only one of the healers who came up that looked like they could actually carry her without their arms falling off. Even now, they’re looking between the fucked up kid and her bitch sister as if unsure of what to do, and Sevika grunts, making the choice for them.

“Take the kid upstairs—there’s a couch in the office—and wash her fucking hair while you’re at it—she's probably got a nest of sump rats in there by now," she grumbles lowly, tossing the key at the next closest one as she pushes past all three of them. “I’ll handle her. Now go.”

Three jerky nods and the rushed sound of footsteps come from behind her as she steps in front of Vi, a scowl already on her face that doesn’t actually have anything to do with the cur's appearance. The walk back here had sucked.

Wouldn’t stop her from taking it out on the dipshit, though.

“Get the fuck outta my—”

“Look,” Sevika starts, her glare sharpening when Vi tries to step past her, “she ain’t that much more fucked up than she was when she left—dumbass just passed out, hasn’t slept in a few days, that’s all. She’s not in any kinda danger. I don’t need you punching out one of my medics ‘cause you can’t handle a little blood that's not your own.”

Vi bristles and Sevika’s arm hisses in warning…but that’s when she notices the Piltie approaching behind her.

“Vi, let it be,” the Commander urges from behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder that’s almost immediately shrugged off by the prickly little shit in question.

Sevika’s not even surprised when, after a few more seconds of staring her down, Vi spins, pushing past the topsider as she makes her way back to the basement, the entire bar watching her stalk away. The Piltie doesn’t spare Sevika a glance as she follows behind, pleased that a pull on the leash is all it took for her dog to return to its cage.

She sniffs as they disappear from sight, walking up the stairs to park a chair outside of the office door, ready to shoo them both away if needed so the kid inside could get some damn rest already.

Lighting up the cigar she’d just cut in her hand, Sevika takes a drag, already accepting she isn’t going to get any sleep again because for whatever reason Jinx had decided to sprout a savior complex. She almost shivers as a cold breeze blows past her arm, hitting her a lot harder now without the cape to dull its edge.

Stupid fucking kid.

When Vi gets to the basement, the first thing she does is punch a wall, hard, because she needed to feel something after that…whatever that was.

The next thing she does is flop down on the lower bunk, her legs hanging off the side and her eyes catching the faint movement of Powder’s hanging bombs rustling before she shuts them, intent on blocking everything out. Caitlyn waits a long time before she sits next to her, and Vi doesn’t have the energy to shoo her away or pull her closer.

She’s not sure which she wanted to do more, at the moment.

It leaves her feeling vaguely guilty about brushing her off like she had, and that pisses her off even more, because she’d told Cait this was a shit plan pretty much the second she'd suggested back in that storage building. Half the fucking people upstairs wanted them dead, Jinx kept changing her mind on whether she liked them or not, and the fact that Cait could read her better than Vi could irritated her to no end.

Vi hadn’t noticed a shift in that office talk—actually, no, that’s not true, she had, she just hadn’t read as much into it as Cait did, attributed it to the weird way her sister was grieving for a kid that may as well have been Vi’s fucking niece.

That guilt spikes up again and she squeezes her eyes shut harder. Caitlyn places one of her hands over where Vi’s are clasped tightly on her own stomach.

“She’s going to be alright, you know,” the other woman says softly. Vi huffs a laugh filled with as much hate as she had for herself—because with the kid, the cannery, and now with this, she was never there when Jinx needed her to be. Her sister had to help herself, yet again.

Or get Sevika. Fuck, but Cait really was right about that: she hadn't missed the way Sevika's cape had been tied tightly to Jinx's arm above the shoulder, acting like a makeshift tourniquet. Leaves her wondering just how badly she'd messed it up for her of all people to help her out.

“No thanks to me,” Vi mumbles, opening her eyes to the same scrap metal grenades that had been hanging there for longer than Vi’d been in prison.

Caitlyn hums, but ultimately decides against saying whatever she’d been planning to say—which is probably good, because Vi’s not sure how much more she can handle at the moment...not that that'sreally any different than how she'd felt at any point after she'd gotten out of Stillwater, save for that brief stint in the commune where she'd fooled herself into thinking someone like her deserved to be happy.

Instead, Caitlyn shifts to match her own position, both their heads against the wall, and they just…stay like that, sitting in silence. There reaches a point where she can’t stand it anymore for reasons she doesn’t fully understand, and at that point, she moves, sitting up and gripping Cait’s hand when she tries to pull it away, turning over her softer, slender fingers in her own for a while before she speaks.

“Hey, I’m sorry for flipping out at you. I know this isn’t…ideal or whatever for you, either,” Vi says, her eyes not leaving the hand now entangled with her own. It gives her a chance to examine her own palm, crusted with dry blood in a few places where even hours of playing cards and tossing in her sleep had yet to rub it away, the wraps over her wrist and some of her hand cut and fraying in a few places, spattered with dirt and grime and dry sweat, blood that is and isn't her own.

Caitlyn sits up, propping her chin up on Vi’s shoulder…which would probably be pretty funny to look at if someone walked in to see them because she has to slouch to do it. Vi’s just glad the woman’s shoes don’t add even more to her height advantage than Cait already had. Would probably give her back problems if she had to stoop any lower.

“You say that as if this were your idea,” Cait says, a teasing lilt to her voice that Vi can’t find the energy to acknowledge, “You’ve got nothing to apologize for. I…know this was a lot to ask, if for different reasons than myself,” she hesitates before continuing, shifting her own gaze to Vi’s hands. “She’ll warm up to you in time, I think.”

Vi snorts, the weariness creeping back into her bones now that she knew Jinx was ok…at least, kind of.

“She already did, at the compound. Only, that kid helped a lot with that—it’s not like she was avoiding me or anything, but the kid kept dragging her over to do things that were conveniently nearby wherever I was, and somehow I’d get dragged into them, too…,” she trails off, shaking her head. “Never really got it, why she did that. Did I tell you I decked her? The kid, I mean? Hit her real hard after she bit the shit outta me. It was an accident, just reflexes, y’know, but still.”

Vi smiles a bit at that, thinks about how she’d gotten pulled into a frankly unwinnable game of tag near the entrance to the commune, about having to apologize to people nearby because instead of just asking or picking the perfectly free fruit for themselves, her sister had taken the opportunity to teach the kid the best ways to pickpocket and it took a few hours before she got anywhere close to decent at it. Luckily, they all just thought it was funny. She thinks about the little bungalow they’d made inside the greenhouse and on its roof, about finding the two of them curled in on each other, leaning against a wall when she was trying to find Jinx, about how she’d turned around to leave so she wouldn’t wake them up only for the kid to stop her by pulling on the back of her coat and pointing to their makeshift bed, of how she almost refused until the kid had huffed and crossed her arms, a raised eyebrow on her face that reminded her so much of Powder that when the kid grabbed her again, she hadn’t stopped her from leading her over to them. Hadn’t stopped her from half climbing over her to settle back at Jinx’s side, either, the backs of her legs poking into Vi’s own.

And then, when she’d almost fallen asleep, she’d noticed Jinx’s hand running through the kid’s hair, smoothing some of her almost-curls as she’d shifted in her sleep.

”Sneaky little twerp,” her sister had said, a fond smirk on her face, her pink eyes shifting to Vi’s own from where she sat a foot or so away before she’d offered her a real, sleepy smile, looking more content than she had since Vi’d first found her, before all this shit had begun—and for just a second, she could have swore they were blue again, like she’d gone back in time and hadn’t had a chance to fuck this all up yet.

Vi blinks, pretends she doesn’t notice how wet her eyes had become because if she acknowledged it, she’d have to explain why, and she’s not ready for that conversation yet. Maybe never would be. So instead, she settles back down with her head against the wall, using the bed in the wrong way again and says something that sums it up without having to delve into it any further:

“She was a tough little thing. I liked her.”

And with that, she closes her eyes, pretends that, maybe, she isn’t grieving, too.

When she dreams of the kid, of the little handshake she’d seen them do, of her sister’s grin and the horror in her eyes as Vi pulled her away and they both saw that same gun hand signal that Mylo used to do in slow motion as the kid smiled despite the tears in her eyes, Vi decides to pretend a little harder.

Caitlyn was going to tell her—she really was—but Vi wasn’t in a state to hear it right now. Jinx was unconscious anyways, and it had seemed like…like she wasn’t going anywhere for the time being last they’d spoken to her.

Caitlyn purses her lips, looking down at Vi’s slumbering form before she pulls herself up, carefully extricating her hand from Vi’s own before she fetches the old, smelly but very warm blankets she’d used on the couch and lays back down in the same manner as before, spreading the blanket over her partner’s form—and then coloring as she realizes that in her mind, that’s the title she’d defaulted to.

Were they dating? Did she have to ask?

She shakes her head, dispelling the schoolgirl thoughts that have come at precisely the wrong time, because far more importantly than that, she had to bring something else to Vi’s attention. It's honestly not something Cait should have brought up at all today; she didn't know if the woman was still drunk or hungover from the drinks she'd had the night before, and if she is, then now certainly wouldn't be a good time for it. Unsurprisingly, she'd been quite agitated the entire time after consuming them. Given her apparent favored pass time after Cait had left her in the ventilation system, it makes sense.

Caitlyn winces, settles back on the bed in this extremely awkward position Vi’d chosen to sleep in as she gathers her thoughts…but it’s no good, no matter how she ponders it, there just wasn’t a good time to share that sort of thing.

After all, how does one share with a person that their last remaining loved one is suicidal?

“What…happened?” Sky asks, her eyes taking in the way the light had stopped fading in his mindscape, struggling to understand how this all came to be.

“I am not entirely certain,” he starts, taking in the rune now painted on the backs of both of his hands and—according to Sky—now also on his face, “but if I had to guess, I would say that she managed to stabilize my physical body.”

Sky shakes her head in exasperation. “I can see that much, but I don’t understand how. We’re still in the undercity, and she hasn’t the access to the Academy’s resources—the equipment, the personnel, the research—”

Ah, that explained it.

“Actually, that may not be entirely accurate: remember the last Progress Day festival? Some of Jayce’s notes went missing in the attack—a whole notebook full, if you can believe it.”

She stares at him, bewilderment slowly morphing into something between understanding and amazement. “I knew that it'd been her who'd committed the robbery, but I didn’t realize she was the one actually utilizing the research herself—that’s, that’s incredible! She just saved your life with paint and scraps from a junkyard!”

He hums, momentarily at a loss for words.

“That appears to be the case, but I am not sure I would go so far as to say she ‘saved my life’, just yet,” he replies quietly, looking back at the neon pink rune on his hand. “It’s true I am no longer deteriorating, but neither am I being reformed. Jayce’s attack did its work—and though I can say that this was unexpected,” that was the understatement of the century, but Sky was already far too invested in this development for his own comfort, “it is also problematic: unless we reach the lab in the Academy to complete the transformation, I fear we will be stuck in this state indefinitely.”

Sky turns on him, her surprise fading into something between sorrow and disbelief. “You still plan on going through with that, after everything this girl has done for you? You’re not in any danger of dying anymore—there’s no reason to take such a drastic measure.”

Viktor sighs, shaking his head. “Avoiding my own death was never the true end goal of the procedure. You know this,” he reminds her. “I have the power to end all of this pointless suffering, to allow people the life this girl was denied her entire life. You have not lived in the undercity as I have, Sky: the people here will be grateful for my help, and happier still for the safeguards I will put into place to ensure that their new lives can never be taken away.”

Sky turns away, but not out of shame. “Tell me Viktor: why do you get to make this choice for them? Before, it’s because you couldn’t ask them what they’d prefer—but you aren’t dying anymore. What if this utopia you want isn’t what the people wish for? Why is your voice the only one that should matter?”

Viktor blinks, pondering her words. “…they cannot choose happiness for themselves—not as a collective. There are too many people who act out in violence, who irreparably damage another’s livelihood in a fit of rage, or who live on only to see others suffer…”

He trails off as a memory flits through his mind, unprompted.

”There is always a choice.”

He shifts, suddenly filled with an uncertainty he’d thought it was no longer possible for him to feel.

“See what I mean, Viktor? If the girl really can fix you before the Noxians find where she’s stowed you away, promise me you’ll ask the people here what they want before you go through with anything. Promise me you’ll be sure.” Sky says, a resolute look in her eyes.

Viktor’s silent for a long moment, weighing his options carefully before he answers. Something about all of this…felt…

“I will ask her,” he decides, continuing before Sky can protest, “she represents both a populace that serves to benefit the most from this transformation and perhaps the only other individual affiliated with the undercity besides the Doctor who could even begin to understand the ramifications of the decision. I will not tell her what must occur for the full procedure to occur,” he says sternly, giving the other woman a pointed look as he continues, “I don’t wish for…his fate to play any part in that choice. However, you must also agree that if the Noxians come before this point, we will go about the procedure as originally planned.”

Sky frowns, but offers him a nod. Viktor turns away, settling on the ground to touch the rune that they’d roughly called “preservation” once a lifetime ago, when the two of them worked in the lab together, a time before the hexgates and the publicity and the sorrow that colored his memories of the time now.

Truthfully, though he planned on keeping his end of the bargain should it come to it, Viktor knows in his core that the girl’s choice in the matter wouldn’t end up being of any consequence: there is simply no way she could restore him to the point of conversing again. Nothing could, bar the Doctor’s interference.

He only hopes the girl doesn’t push herself too much in the process of…helping him. He’d hated the desperate, terrified edge to her voice when she’d activated whatever mechanism she’d created to keep him alive. It would be unfair to expect a miracle out of the girl—genius though she may be, she is also just one person, young, perhaps even still a child with next to no formal training or equipment save the dregs of the scrapyards. Even those would be mostly off-limits to her now that the Noxians were here: most of these were near one of the bridges or in the Fringes themselves, and to go there would be suicide, given the shear number of enforcers that lined the area.

He pushes the thought away that, perhaps, what she'd already done was a miracle in and of itself.

His fingers, cold and metallic, keep tracing the pattern on the back of his other hand.

Despite how much he touches them, the runes never smear or fade away.

Chapter Text

In all these years that she’s spent in exile, Mel has only ever known two things about Piltover.

The first is that Piltover really is a city of progress. Scientific discoveries happened at every corner of the city, the Academy brimming with bright, talented individuals with innovative ideas that could and often did change the world.

The second is that, at its core, Piltover was far different than any other nation she’s ever heard of—and that’s because Piltover had never gone to war. It didn’t even have a national fighting force, no armies, no militant navy…they didn’t even use their airships for combat. The closest thing they had were the enforcers, and these were used exclusively for internal disputes. Enforcers didn’t leave the city, because unlike every other nation, Piltover didn’t care about expanding, it only cared for, well, science…at least on the surface. No matter how far one dug below that, however, one wouldn’t find expansion, the desire to conquer and subjugate, to fight and to win and to own. It’s simply not something that was done, not something that was even on the minds of the ruling class.

Piltover was not perfect—not in any sense of the word—but you’d have to be blind if you thought they weren’t trying to make things more equitable in the City of Progress.

And now, she could hardly recognize the place.

Three months in captivity had somehow erased decades of these truths Mel had held dear to her heart, and she hated it with everything in her core.

Her mother had gutted the place, tasked these people—these brilliant scientists who lived just a step away from pacifism—into designing weapons, armored vehicles and explosive devices.

Anything that could be used to conquer and subjugate, to win and to own.

Is this the threat, that calamity facing Piltover they warned me about? she wonders, fingers toying with that necklace around her neck. Even now, she wonders if accepting it was truly a wise decision: was it the key to freedom, or had she simply traded her mother’s shackles in for others?

She shakes her head, eyes gazing around her quarters a last time. It’s been five days since she had returned, five days since her mother told her a similar version of the story she’d fed to the public: that Jinx had destroyed a peaceful commune in the undercity as it was being inspected by enforcers, that Caitlyn had set the whole thing up, betraying them all in a fit of passion over the re-appearance of this “Violet” woman who had once spoken to the Council.

Mel is buying none of it, but the betrayal of House Kiramman paired with the already substantial sway her mother already had over the Council had sent the greater Houses into disarray…a disarray that their new Commander had so graciously alleviated—seizing it like the opportunity it was.

Something about Jayce’s words had left her unsettled—she’d seen Viktor, what hextech had done to him as he slept in that stasis chamber his own body’d helped produce—and now that mother’s influence had reached a peak, now that the number of Noxian battalions increased by the day…she couldn’t just let this lie.

And, thinking back to the callous way Jayce had treated her in the Councilor’s Chambers, she couldn’t rely on his help to fix any of this, either.

It left her feeling ill, the heartbreak at odds with the betrayal she felt—both the one he had done, and the one she was about to do by abandoning him here.

Unfortunately, with the crazed way the man had been talking and the massive amount of surveillance he was under, bringing him along would probably be more detrimental to her goal than beneficial…and it’s not like she’d been able to speak with him yet, anyways. Her mother had told her that he was still unconscious, but Mel has her doubts. She’d seen the way she’d held back as she’d hit him, and it’d been 5 days already.

No, whatever she wanted him for, she simply didn’t need Mel’s interference.

Sighing, she draws her curtains closed, leaves her knife and purse both on her end table by her bed where she knew the woman who’d been assigned to watch her would be looking for it, leaves her traveling boots and her cloak in her closet for the same reason. She looks to the skyline, the sun already starting to set as she exits the mansion she’d called home for nearly two decades looking just as she always did save for the markings now permanently etched into her flesh.

After all, the best way to sneak out was to look like you weren’t sneaking out.

She waves politely at one of her neighbors in the window, but as soon as they make eye contact, the man draws his blinds, backing away from the window as they all did now. She suppresses a grimace, starts making her way to the bridge before, as soon as she’s alone, she ducks down the alley she’d been heading for, pressing herself to the wall to avoid an oncoming patrol.

It’s now past curfew, and while that would normally be a difficult thing to explain to her mother, she isn’t exactly planning on sticking around long enough to do so.

The fortunate thing about her floor-length gown is that it’s length allowed her to conceal the leggings she wore beneath it, an addition to her ensemble unlikely to be noticed by her mother’s informant and—more importantly—quite likely to make the next leg of her journey much more bearable.

If she’d read the map right, this would deposit her somewhere in the Fringes, which—while still heavily patrolled by her mother’s forces and enforcers alike—would allow her to circumvent the nearly dozen checkpoints that had been set up on the bridges to the undercity. That, and because after curfew was the only time of day these weren’t guarded—the only reason they were at all was more performative than anything—no citizen of Piltover would ever willingly use them to travel by, and the only thing her mother’s forces really cared about was that they weren’t used to help supply the undercity.

Taking a breath, Mel slides down the trash chute, one hand covering her face as the filth and debris flies up in her wake. Jayce could not be trusted, her mother had gone mad with power, and the Council was wrapped around her fingers through fear and awe alike. She has no one else…which, unfortunately, is a rather familiar experience.

If she was truly in this alone, then so be it. Hopefully, when she found him, he would be able to help stop this mess—and if he couldn’t, well, then she’d just have to fix things herself.

Viktor...just what is happening down there?

When Vi wakes up the next morning—afternoon, actually—she’s pleased to find that she’d mostly slept even the hangover off. When she sees Cait still sleeping next to her, her long ass legs still dangling from the bed, she huffs a laugh…which, combined with the sound of her slowly sitting up, is apparently enough to wake her up.

Oops.

“You know, I’ve woken up three different times already, and you’ve been asleep every one of them,” Cait mumbles, one dainty, but somewhat calloused hand sleepily coming to rub at her eyes as she stretches.

Vi shoots her a grin. “Sounds right.”

Cait smiles back at her, but it fades as she sits up, remembering where they are, what they’re doing—probably realizing just how out-of-their depths they both were.

Vi only kind of knows what might happen now, after all…but she sets those thoughts on the backburner as she stands, offering a hand that Cait grips as she pulls them both up.

“We gotta go check on Jinx—I’m not sure if she’d just come to us or not—but first we should get dressed, maybe eat something…,” she trails off as she takes Caitlyn’s form in (or, more accurately, her attire). Cait cocks her head at her, looking both faintly amused and uncertain. “Most of my shit is either really fucking dirty by now, and I was a lot shorter when I was 15,” she rolls her eyes when Cait raises an eyebrow, “ok, a little shorter, but still: I don’t know if it’d work for you…maybe something the boys had might fit you? Not gonna promise it won’t have holes in it, though.”

The humor drops out of Cait’s face as her eyes widen in shock, and Vi’s spinning towards the staircase behind them before she’s even processed she’s moving, but Cait stops her with an arm.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you—I just…,” Cait swallows almost nervously and Vi turns back to fully face the woman. “Perhaps, given your sister’s volatile temperament, it would be wise to…”

She doesn’t have to finish, now, because Vi suddenly gets it: it’s for the same reason she doesn’t wear Claggor’s goggles she’d grabbed in the arcade anymore. Better not to remind her of anything from the too-distant past.

It is interesting that Cait cares about it, though maybe that’s just because if Jinx had a meltdown, she’d be in actual danger.

Honestly, Vi’s not convinced she isn’t now.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Vi says simply, turning towards the bag they’d brought with them from the warehouse, “I mean, you’re welcome to try anything I got laying around here or that we packed—I’m just not convinced it’ll fit you…or that it won’t smell like dust and sweat. You’re call, cupcake.”

She laughs at her own forced attempt to lighten the mood, but Cait still has that troubled frown on her face that gives her pause, so she turns back to the woman, matching her look with a frown of her own.

“Hey, what’s up?”

Caitlyn takes a breath before turning to face her and Vi’s instantly anxious at the look on her face. “Vi…,” she opens and closes her mouth a few times before turning away, and Vi thinks that maybe she really had fucked this all up last night with some of the stupid shit that’s come out of her own mouth. She steps forwards, one hand wrapping around Cait’s cheek, her shitty, torn hand wraps be damned as she gently turns her head to face her.

“Hey, look, I…I’m sorry about the shit I said yesterday—this is just…it’s a lot, and Powder…,” she trails off, glancing away with a tired sigh before returning to look into those big, beautiful blue eyes of hers. “I’m just worried—really worried—about her, you know? And having to deal with Sevika for any amount of time is enough to piss me off by itself, but that’s not an excuse. I really am sorry, cupcake,” she repeats like an idiot—like saying it twice would make it any more effective.

Fuck, if that’s how it worked, she’d still be apologizing to Jinx.

Cait’s face falls a bit before she reaches forwards and wraps her arms around Vi, her voice quiet in her ear as Vi’s hand falls from her face.

“I know. It’s alright—you were right—I was out of line. I…suppose I’m just a bit stressed about this whole thing, too.”

Vi’s shoulders sag in relief: she’d been terrified that she’d pushed her away again, that she’d leave just like Vander had—and she’s not sure she could take another loss like that so soon.

Or at all.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it: I know I’m an ass when I’m drunk,” she pulls back to lock eyes with Cait and offers her a cheeky grin that makes the tentative smile return to the other woman’s face, “that’s part of the fun, though.”

Cait rolls her eyes, and even though Vi can see it’s at least partially an act, she doesn’t point it out. She knows what it’s like, trying to lie to yourself in order to feel something even like happiness. “You’re incorrigible,” Cait says, turning towards the bag Vi’d just been digging through with new purpose.

“Just for you, Cait, I’ll pretend I know what that means.”

Caitlyn’s going to hell for chickening out again, she thinks.

She internally curses at herself, upset that she can’t stand that damn defeated look on the other woman’s face.

She’ll have to tell her, sooner than later—mostly because she can’t keep a secret to save her damn life—but perhaps it could wait a while longer? Maybe until after Vi’d seen her sister, safe and bandaged and breathing first.

She nods to herself, pretends it’s in acknowledgement of the shorter woman’s attempts at lightening the mood.

You’re a coward, she thinks to herself, only allowing herself to wince as she pulls a truly filthy shirt over her head.

Just a bit longer.

She rolls, dully surprised that whatever it was that’s under her doesn’t feel like the hard floor of her office. Someone grunts in the background and though it nearly sends a jolt through her system, the familiar scent of cigar smoke forces her muscles to relax.

It’s ok, her mind tells her as she starts drifting off again, ignoring the footsteps as they slowly fade into nothingness, you’re safe.

Internally, she laughs at her brain’s own joke—she hasn’t been safe for months, and neither had anyone around her.

That doesn’t stop her from falling asleep again, though.

“You want in, Cait?” Vi says, ignoring the jeers of the other people at the table as she starts dealing them in. They really liked that whole Commander Cupcake nickname that Jinx had made up, so she tried not to encourage it too much up here. Still, she’d let her original name for her slip a couple days ago, which is probably where that dickhead who’d brought it up to Jinx during her little speech had heard it from in the first place.

That, unfortunately, meant that it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

It kinda makes Vi want to come up with a new one, but she refrains. Cupcake suited her too much, fissure folk be damned.

It’s been a day and a half since Sevika’d dragged Jinx in, and apparently, she was still out cold. By the way the trencher docs kept coming and going from that second-floor office, she doesn’t doubt the woman, either, but that didn’t mean she had to like it—especially considering that she hasn’t let Vi see her that entire time. She claims it’s because Vi’s too hot-blooded not to break something or threaten her healers (which was fucking rich coming from her), but Vi thinks it’s probably just because she’s afraid she’d take Jinx and run…

Which, well, might actually be true.

She’d been thinking about Jinx and the strange way she’d been acting, about what Cait said that night they’d gotten the key to the basement, about waking up with that mark that laser she’d built had etched into her skin…and she can’t help but feel like she’s letting her down. Like, Jinx apparently felt like she could trust Sevika to protect her better than her own sister. That hurt, and it hurt more that, given what Vi’d almost done in that ventilation system, she might be right to think that way. She had to try something to keep her safe—and if Jinx wasn’t going to trust her enough to even stay near her, if she was going to go out by herself with all of these fucking Noxians and enforcers crawling around…

How else could she keep her alive and safe than by leaving?

That boat was still there, she’d said.

She knows Cait doesn’t want to leave, but she feels like maybe, after seeing how fucking terrible this alternative had become, how hopeless this all seemed, how absolutely outmatched they were compared to topside in every sense of the word…

Maybe she could convince her to leave for a while? Not forever, just…long enough for some of this to blow over, for her to—fuck, she doesn’t know, convince Jinx to stay close to them so she’d know she’d be safe because she’d almost died again in that compound, would have had she not pulled her away from that blast and that terrified her—

“Vi?”

She blinks, looking over to her left where Cait sat with a raised brow. She’d taken Vi’s advice, at least—the concern isn’t on her face or in her voice, but Vi can tell that’s why she’d called out to her.

“Were you going to deal me in?”

Vi nods, easing her white-knuckled grip on the cards with a sigh that she hides in her mug—of water, because at Cait’s insistence, that’s what every other drink she had was.

“Yeah, give me a minute,” she says, her voice more annoyed than she actually felt.

They start the game—the twenty-seventh one they’d played since this morning, the forty-fifth one they’d played since yesterday—as she mulls over all of the ways she could convince Cait to go along with this.

Sit tight, Powder, she thinks, absently tossing out a card that—for once—must actually be a good play given the scowls on the other players’ faces (barring Cait, of course), I’ll figure this out, I promise.

Her hand comes up to scrub at her face, but it feels all heavy ‘n stuff, so she only barely manages to touch her cheek before letting it flop back down to her side uselessly.

It still smells like smoke.

The thought gives her pause. Still?

That meant it must have before now, right? But the last thing she can remember is…

Her face twitches in annoyance even with her eyes still shut as they are. Shit, what is the last thing she can remember? Everything feels so…fuzzy…

Someone touches her arm and she flinches back, reflexes making her eyes snap open and force her forwards towards whoever was stupid enough to fuck with her while she was asleep—

Oof. Bad idea.

Her muscles seize and she topples over, her hand releasing the person’s throat involuntarily as she flops forwards, falling into them despite her best efforts to, y’know, not do that. Apparently, they’re pretty weak, too, because then they’re both falling down and her eyes had closed the second the exhaustion’d hit her like it did—

“You moron,” a new voice calls, reminding her of cigar smoke and his one good eye even though she’s not him, but she was always around him, so it’s kind of fair, she thinks. “I told you not to touch her,” Something wraps around her arm again, but it feels weirdly cold and that sorta makes her panic a little because the last time a part of her body felt like that she’d stopped having a finger and Vi was all mad and it hadn't even ended all of this like it was supposed to—

“Janna, kid, stop fighting me,” the voice says again, this time with more agitation. It makes her pause, for some reason. Was…was she ok, like the smoke? Her brain isn’t thinking good enough to remember…

Pain laces in her mind for a moment as she remembers the monster, the prison, the voice’s owner and her one good arm shielding that stupid fucking kid and—

She relaxes again, her hand uncurling around the metal it’d wrapped around. She doesn’t remember why, but she’s pretty sure it’s safe in here.

Pretty sure she doesn’t want to remember it, anyways.

There’s something soft under her again, and she slumps back into it, trying to ignore the voice and the danger and pretty much everything else besides the smoke that she knows isn’t really there because that was his favorite brand—

“—was just going to check the stitchwork, it’s been healing at an a-abnormally fast rate—”

A snort. “Yeah, well unless you want a metal fucking neck to match that thick-skull of yours, don’t do it again. You think I could stop her if she tried tearing out your throat?”

The voice and the danger keep talking, she keeps trying not to hear, catches bits and pieces anyways.

“—ost a lot of blood, wouldn’t be healthy just to…”

“…ink I fucking care? I already got one brat to babysit, I don’t need…”

“…u-understood, ma’am—”

“—on’t fucking call me that, we ain’t Piltie trash…”

Shh, brain whispers to her, forcing her focus on the smoke and the sleep, safe.

She doesn’t catch anything else.

The next morning, when she and Cait go up the stairs in actually washed clothing (because after cards the night before, Vi’d ventured out and found a place with running water they wouldn’t get shanked for using), the first thing she sees is Powder, sitting cross-legged on the counter…with Sevika’s heavily blood stained cloak wrapped around her shoulders like a cape and a dirty, dented hat on her head, her fingerless-gloved hands idly flipping through a few papers with a bored look on her face.

She doesn’t even know she’s moving until she hears a startled “wait!” and then suddenly her sister’s in her arms from where Vi’d pulled her off the counter, a look of annoyance on her face.

“Hey, what gives, I was readin’ those!” Jinx grumbles, trying to push her away so she can get her papers (that, admittedly, Vi may or may not have sent flying to the floor and spread about the countertops when she’d moved her). When her response is only to tighten her embrace, Jinx stops trying to move, tilting her chin up to try and rest it on Vi’s shoulder. When she opens her eyes to look down at her face—which, like her now washed hair, is neat and clean—Vi laughs at the tired irritation there before she pulls back, letting her sister grab her…scout reports?

“Stole ‘em from Sevika,” she says matter-of-factly when she catches Vi’s gaze, gathering them in a smooth stack and shooting Vi an unamused glare when she notices one of them got a bit wet from the floorboards.

Vi hums at that, pleased that she’d started a conversation, that her sister really is fine after nearly three days of stress and anxiety.

“Why? Are there so many she can’t look at them all herself?” She swears she doesn’t mean for her voice to come out as sharp as it does, but when Jinx raises an eyebrow, she knows it must be pretty bad.

Still, her sister won’t meet her eyes as she jumps back up onto the counter, crossing her legs with a calm looking frown as she glances at something (or rather, someone) over Vi’s shoulder.

“Nah…but she did help me out, so…”

Vi just barely keeps the frown or scowl or maybe both off of her face at the words, listening as Cait quietly settles on a stool one away from the nearest one at Jinx’s feet. It’s so early that the bar isn’t even officially open yet, the bartender nowhere in sight, and the only lights are the fluorescent ones behind the counter that Powder must have turned on herself so she could read the reports at the counter.

Vi’s not gonna pretend like she gets why she doesn’t just sit on a barstool—but at least it meant she could sit near her without having to climb up there herself.

Over the years that Vander had run the place, she’d seen people do a lot of stupid shit on bar counters, and she has no desire to get any of that on her if she doesn’t have to.

“So, you’re good, then?” Vi asks seriously, letting the concern show on her face since no one’s around to see them.

Jinx doesn’t even glance up from the paper in her hand as she shrugs, focused eyes scanning the document for something that, judging by the way her eye twitches a moment later, she must not find.

“I told you she’d be fine,” a new voice says, the sound of a door shutting following behind her as footsteps clamber down those creaky wooden steps to the second floor. Vi doesn’t bother keeping the scowl off of her face this time…and pretends she doesn’t notice the glance Jinx shoots at her after that, either.

Sevika regards her coolly for a second before her eyes turn to Caitlyn behind her—and Vi forces herself not to prickle at that—but then the woman turns to her sister, and the danger in her gaze is replaced by mild irritation instead.

“Those are old, you know,” she says quietly, one hand reaching out to the girl on the counter expectantly. Jinx’s eyes flicker over to her as she bobs in place with a frown.

“Aww, but I was just getting cozy…,” she says, a toothy grin slowly sprouting on her face that puts Vi further on edge for different reasons than it normally would as Sevika rolls her eyes.

“Don’t push your luck, brat.”

Jinx huffs, but in a pink blur, the cloak is covering Sevika’s face, touching everything but her outstretched arm. Vi lets herself laugh as the woman rips it from her head, a furious expression that’s quickly replaced by one of confusion (albeit still angry confusion) as she looks back at Jinx. When Vi turns back to look at her, she sort of gets why: she looks uncharacteristically serious, holding a few of the papers up to her.

“These ones aren’t,” she says, pushing herself closer to the counter’s edge so her legs hang off of it. She kicks them while she talks. “So you’re not scouting six thirty-six?” she continues—and judging by the pointed look Sevika shoots her, it must not be the actual gibberish it sounds like to Vi.

The woman shakes her head, examining her cloak out in front of her with a frown. “Too close to the docks—you know how they’re all clustered over there for some reason. It’s too dangerous.”

Jinx cocks her head without blinking. “Not for me.”

Sevika’s eye twitches on her face. “Are you shitting me? You were just outta commission for three days, Jinx.”

Her sister just shrugs, her legs kicking out again. “It’s just scouting,” she grumbles, “’sides, you need the info, right? I’m prolly the only one who could get close enough and not die gettin’ it.”

Vi almost cuts in to tell her absolutely the fuck not, but Sevika doesn’t bat an eye before she responds, “No. You don’t go out there,” she jams a thumb over her shoulder with her actual (and only free) hand towards the door, “alone anymore. You keep coming back fucked-up, and that makes us look bad. You’re a symbol, so start fucking looking like one.”

Vi doesn’t like the weird, knowing look that crosses the oldest woman’s face at that, nor the way something about it makes Cait shift in the stool behind her, but before she can say anything about it, Sevika glances at her and rolls her eyes—like she’d forgotten the two of them were there and Caitlyn moving had reminded her. “If you’re gonna go somewhere, either do it on a team or take one of them with you,” her look sharpens as she turns to fully face Vi, and she can feel the scowl return on her face as she continues, “and only one of them. Got it?”

Jinx looks at her, face a mask of annoyance that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. After a long, tense moment, she sighs and looks away, “I’ll…think about it.”

Sevika grunts, but doesn’t press the issue anymore—except when she turns to head back up the stairs, Jinx gets up to follow, which makes her stop, her gaze flattening.

“What?” she asks, her metallic hand tightening around the fabric of the red cloak dangling at her side.

“I have some…suggestions,” Jinx says with a shrug, the reports held loosely behind her back where her hands are now clasped. Vi finally gets a look at the stitches in her shoulder, but to her surprise, there's fewer than she'd expected, the wound looking much better off than she remembers it being. Actually, all of her wounds do now that she thinks about it: the cuts across her arms had faded into thin, irritated pink lines, erasing parts of the tattoos(?) that'd been under them. Even on her head, there'd only been a single, small bit of gauze covering a wound near her temple that'd been medically taped there (probably a wound from her prosthetic). She'd been thinking that the wounds from...from Vander's claws just hadn't been as bad as she'd originally though when she'd changed her bandages back in that warehouse the third or fourth time, but looking at her now...could she actually heal faster than normal people, too?

Sevika raises an eyebrow, looking like she’d rather try fighting the entirety of the Noxian army herself than continue the conversation.

“We’re not playing a game here, kid—don’t pretend you know what you’re talking about—”

One of Jinx’s hands moves to her hip as she cuts the woman off with a clipped, monotone voice that makes Cait further shift behind her, “you don’t have six thirty-six covered—that means you don’t know which sub-area they’ll end up in next. Right now you’ve got no one in nine twenty-two for the same reason, but you think the scouts in six twenty-one and -ten will cover it, because of the high rooftops in those places, right? Well, what happens when they send in people from seven thirty-five around through six twenty? You’d move when you saw the bad-guys from nine twenty-two close in, and you’d have them fall back to six twenty…right into their pincer,” Jinx shrugs again, and Vi can’t see her face…but she can see the way Sevika froze, her mouth falling open in incredulity as she considers the words. “But, y’know, if you like that sorta thing, who am I to stand in your way…Lefty?”

The shock doesn’t stay on the woman’s face for very long, and eventually, she turns over her shoulder to look at where Jinx is smiling just a bit too smugly up at her.

At the woman who’d helped kill their father.

Something churns in Vi’s gut as she continues watching their interaction.

“You know, the ‘sub-areas’ as you called ‘em have don’t repeat over the districts. You don’t need to specify where they’re at,” she says, her gaze more appraising than ridiculing.

For some reason, it only makes Vi feel sicker.

She might not be able to see her face, but she can hear the eye-roll in her voice. “Oh, can it, you know what I mean.”

Sevika looks at her a moment longer before shaking her head with a long, tired sigh.

“Hurry the fuck up, then,” is all she says as she starts back up the stairs—causing Jinx to follow behind her like a lost puppy, happily humming all the while.

When the door shuts behind them, Vi slumps into the bar counter, uncaring of the sticky way it felt against her bare arm and the disbelief plain on her face.

“God,” she says to no one, closing her eyes at the tension headache forming in between them, “what the fuck happened?”

Chapter Text

When Jayce awakens, it’s to a bucket of cold water being thrown into his face, causing him to sputter and slump in the chair he’d evidently been tied into. He thrashes against his restraints, the runic stone embedded near the underside of his wrist occasionally catching on the rope there. Perhaps it would have been enough to make him wince in another life, but he’s spent too much time in that other world for such a minor inconvenience to faze him. He doesn’t stop moving—not when the skin around his ankles starts to chafe, not when the chair falls onto its side, and certainly not when the area around the stone starts to bleed, the fibers of the rope there digging into his marred flesh.

“I though you would be smarter than this, boy, but it appears I was mistaken,” footsteps approach from behind him, but he pays them little mind, his thoughts not leaving the man who’d sent him back here. His entire being was now alight with a singular focus, and he wouldn’t fail now.

He couldn’t, not if the world is to survive what’s to come.

He’d already broken one promise. He will not do it again.

He hears the woman sigh, doesn’t stop wriggling in his restraints even as a hand appears on the sturdy chair back behind his head, righting him without much effort. Distantly, the part of himself that still felt like himself marvels at how different the woman and her daughter are from each other, how each bore a strength of entirely different varieties. The newer part scowls, reminds him of his purpose, of metal people and a river man and those golden markings adorning the skin of his former lover.

It leaves him feeling hollow. It leaves him feeling apologetic.

Yet that determination does not waver.

“Oh come now, child, surely you don’t plan on keeping up this foolish resistance all day?” She says chidingly, slamming her hand back down on the back of the chair once his movements continue with newfound fervor. She didn’t understand. No one did—not even him.

Especially not him.

“You don’t get it—we have to stop him! Are you trying to destroy this world?!”

Ambessa walks in front of him, shooting his wrist an unamused glance before looking into his eyes. “I understand you disappeared—that when you returned, you murdered a Council member in cold blood and then caused a massive disturbance in the undercity—one that I’ve taken the liberty of cleaning up for you, I might add. I expect you’ll repay me in kind—”

He looks at her likes she’s lost her mind and she rolls her eyes. “That wasn’t enough to stop him—he’ll be coming, and you aren’t prepared to handle an army the likes of which he’ll bring upon you. Don’t you see?! We need to gather the Council, the enforcers—fuck, the whole damn undercity if we have to. He’s going to destroy everything!”

“Stupid boy: this man you’re so worried about has gone missing. He has no army—I have the bulk of my forces searching for him as we speak. He will be found…but if you’re actually worried about it, then you will do for my forces that which you excel at—providing them with weaponry capable of handling a threat of the magnitude of which you speak.”

“I will do no such thing! Don’t get me wrong—I don’t give a damn what’s going on between you and the Council here, but mark my words: hextech isn’t a blessing, it isn’t some godsend and it’s not the miracle cure-all it seems to be on the surface. It’s a curse, a blight—it’s what will lead humanity to extinction if we don’t act now.”

Ambessa’s eyes harden and she turns away, walking back towards a heavy wooden door Jayce can see in his peripherals.

“I thought you might say that,” she says casually, her hand pausing on the doorknob as she regards him coolly over her shoulder. “They always do, at first. But your tune will change soon enough, I think. You just need some… encouragement.”

Jayce scoffs, sneering at the woman as he spits his reply. “There isn’t any amount of torture on this planet I won’t be able to endure if it means the world doesn’t end. You’re wasting your time.”

She smiles at him, all teeth, but he doesn’t care, can't afford to with what’s at stake here.

“Ah, youth. You all tend to believe you know everything even when you haven’t experienced half of what the world has to offer. It’d be endearing if it wasn’t such a hindrance to my ambitions. But you’re right—that look in your eyes says you’d gladly endure any physical punishment I might conjure up to convince you to cooperate.”

Ambessa opens the door and his eyes widen as he stares into the face of his mother, bound and gagged and missing her prosthetic fingers. She lets out a muffled scream when she sees him, and he stiffens in his chair, his struggling continuing anew.

“That is why I won’t harm a hair on your pretty little head,” she says, slowly dragging the chair behind her as she shuts the door and turns it to face Jayce. He locks eyes with his mother all the while, a distant sort of dread filling him that he’d thought wasn’t possible for him to feel anymore. Not after everything.

“Now, I can see the reluctance in your eyes, still, and from what I understand of you, you’re an academic type, yes? Then let’s make this educational for you: you might already know that torture isn’t a very effective means of gathering information, but I’d prefer to think of this as securing your cooperation. In order to accomplish this, I need you to understand that I’m serious about the things that I say. I believe words have their places in these sorts of conversations, but sometimes, demonstrations are more effective at proving points. Allow me to show you how.”

When the woman pulls out the sharp, slightly curved hunting knife at her belt, Jayce freezes, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he has the chance to stop them.

“What are you doing?! She’s got nothing to do with this—is this seriously how you’re going to spend the precious little time we have left to prepare?!”

There’s a desperate edge to his words for multiple reasons, but he doesn’t think they matter much to Ambessa, not with the way her mouth curves into a sharper grin.

“Do try not to move so much, dear,” she tuts at his hysterical looking mother, her deep-set eyes blown wide with terror and shock, “it might sully the cut.”

Jayce doesn’t want to watch what’s about to happen, but he finds he can’t look away, either. It’s funny, in a way: he’d believed himself so ready for anything that could be thrown his way, he’d survived so much in that other world that nothing here besides his goal should have mattered or been able to faze him…yet he can’t stop the way he sweats as the edge of the knife presses neatly at the base of his mother’s only remaining index finger, can’t stop the way bile rises into his throat as Ambessa uses both hands on the top of the blade to push, cant stop the way he dry heaves once the bile is gone as she forces the knife down so quickly that it cuts into the wood of the arm of the chair after pairing through flesh and bone with a single, sickening thunk.

His mother screams underneath the gag, flinches so violently from the pain that the finger falls into her lap, splattering her dark dress with blood even as she thrashes—but unlike Jayce, she’s too weak even in her panicked state to force the chair over, her leaky eyes locked onto the severed appendage at her waist as she gasps for air that can’t come fast enough.

Ambessa only pulls on the hilt, yanking it up so roughly that the blade frees itself from the wood. She clicks her tongue at its appearance, wiping the sides off of it clean in the sleeve of his mother’s dress, forcing a startled cry out from her lips that Ambessa doesn’t acknowledge any more than she had the rest of her mewling. Jayce’s eyes can’t seem to leave the stump left where her finger used to be, blood still gushing from the wound that—rationally speaking—he knows won’t be enough to kill her or make her bleed out, but that he feels compelled to plug and treat and clean anyways, an unspeakable fear ebbing at his already fraying sanity.

“I hope this has been instructive, boy,” Ambessa says as she casually sheathes the knife at her belt. “I’ll return tomorrow morning to hear your answer regarding that matter I spoke of earlier. In the meantime, get some rest, catch up with your dear mother,” she looks back at him as she reaches the door, her face more serious than it had been the entire time they’d spoken as she speaks.

“Remember, boy: family is a precious thing. I’d so hate for you to lose yours.”

Jinx doesn’t leave that office for hours after she enters it, and it puts the both of them on edge, though she’s at least 90% sure it’s for different reasons.

She’s thought that a lot, lately.

Neither of them can stand another round of cards, and Cait wants nothing more than to head back to the basement, but since she can tell Vi’s rather reluctant to leave eyeshot of the office door and that unspoken rule of not going anywhere alone still likely applied they both park themselves at the bar counter and ignore the stares and the jabs and the whispers of the bar’s patrons as it opens.

Cait’s not sure that calling them “patrons” is even the correct term: they drank, sure, but for a good majority of them, the Last Drop seemed to serve as more a meeting place than a tavern. They exchanged ideas and reports and sometimes waited for Sevika to come down and talk with them or to call them up with a jerk of the head at the room’s entrance, never sparing Vi nor Cait more than a glare or a sneer assuming she bothered to look in their direction at all. Vi thankfully doesn’t drink this time, irritating some of the rowdier undercity dwellers to no end—but to her surprise, though there are no shortage of ill words or griping, they don’t actually ever bother approaching either of them about it.

Caitlyn supposes that’s more due to their combined fear and reverence of their symbol than any hesitation or newfound comradery.

Much later, when Jinx finally does come out, she ignores them both completely, heading towards the door with a distracted look on her face. It apparently surprises Vi so much that she doesn’t push herself up from the counter until Jinx has already woven her way around the tables and customers both until she reaches the front of the establishment—and once they both see the door open and shut in a jet of pink, Vi turns back around and throws herself on the barstool, propping her chin up on her hand.

When she goes to order a drink after this, Cait does nothing to stop her.

Jinx isn’t gone for very long, sporting a neutral sort of frown as she twirls her pistol on the finger of one hand and, for once, looking no worse for the wear. Vi’s shoulders sag in relief when she spots the girl, but this only lasts until Jinx starts back up those stairs, looking at something ahead of her with—

Ah. That explains Vi’s tension.

“So?” Sevika says, an eyebrow raised with a calm that, to Cait, seems paradoxical considering Jinx had just gone directly against the orders(?) against going out alone that the woman had insisted upon just this morning. Jinx rolls her shoulders, pulling at the stitches now visible to the two of them at her back.

Thankfully, for Vi’s sake, at least, they don’t break.

“I was right,” Jinx says simply, her voice giving away nothing beyond the fact that she was displeased.

The older woman, for her part, simply snorts, turning back towards the office she must have come out of when she’d noticed the girl’s return. “Great.”

And when the office door closes behind them, they don’t see Jinx until almost midday the following morning.

That’s not to say she hadn’t come out of it, mind you—it took some convincing, but now that she wasn’t in any sort of immediate danger, Vi had reluctantly agreed to retire for the night some hours later—but neither had the girl knocked on the basement door or (for all Cait knew) used her own key to get in. It seemed to put Vi in an even worse mood and Cait did her best to understand, but truthfully speaking, she’s not sure she’d sleep a wink if the girl slept even remotely close to her with all of her faculties…just because she didn’t want to kill her didn’t mean Jinx liked her at all, and Cait’s frankly unsure of what that means for an arrangement where they would share the same quarters.

This trend, intermixed with infrequent bouts of the girl lying on the bar counter, continues for another couple of days. She doesn’t speak to Vi unprompted—and even when she does talk to her, Cait can tell it’s either with great reluctance or great distraction. Once, she’d even stopped talking to her entirely to bolt out the door, a flash of something Cait couldn’t quite identify on her face before she’s gone. As irritated as it seemed to make Vi, that paled in comparison to when Sevika approached the counter a few minutes later, leaning against the far end that Vi sat just a few feet away from with a tired sigh as she orders another drink with a jerky hand motion that the bartender—a twitchy man named Thierman, she’s learned—passes her with careful hands.

“What the fuck do you want?” Vi spits, her voice as unfriendly and hostile as it’s always been when she addresses the older woman.

Sevika doesn’t even glance at her, her mechanical arm brushing her faintly stained cape aside as she tips her bottle up to her lips.

“Ideally, I’d like you to fuck things up with your sister again so she won’t try to stop me from killing you, but I’d settle for the two freeloaders sleeping in my bar getting off their asses and making themselves useful, too.” She takes another swig from her jug as Vi bristles, pushing herself onto her feet before Cait can stop her. Around them, some of the heads start turning…and while some of them obviously just want to see a bar fight, most of them look either wary or pissed…and not at the one-armed woman with her back to the counter.

”Your bar? The f—"

“Careful, mutt,” Sevika cuts in lowly, pointedly eyeing the patrons starting to watch them before finally turning to watch Vi with an unbothered look.

Vi, despite her anger, seems to understand the implicit threat, at least, because she sets her jaw and—after shooting the woman the most hateful glare she can muster—and turns away, forcing herself back into her seat. Sevika chuckles darkly at that, a smile playing on her face as she turns back towards the bar’s entrance, a half-filled jug hanging loosely from one hand.

“That’s what I thought.”

Cait can hear the somewhat pink-haired (the black dye had faded, by now, but her hair is still much darker than normal save for near the roots) woman’s teeth grind at that, but before anything else can happen, Jinx walks through the door, a thin cut on her cheek that—while certainly not serious—leaves both of the women watching her with a frown.

Sevika finishes off the bottle in her hand as the girl approaches, sporting that same frown on her face as she’d had that first time she’d up and left like this only to return shortly after.

“Well?” the oldest woman says, eyeing her like she’s something that’s stuck to the bottom of her shoe. Jinx glances to the side before offering her a curt nod, her face again betraying nothing besides the fidgety way she chews at her lip.

The other woman sets her jug down before she pushes herself up, shaking her head as she makes her way to the stairs. This time, though, Jinx merely watches her leave before turning around, her eyes unfocused until she shakes her head, her hand twitching at her side. Vi watches her in silence, her previous anger replaced by something more complicated—probably due to the interactions the both of them had just had with Sevika. It helped illustrate the stark differences between the relationships the both of them had with one of their father’s killers…something that apparently isn’t lost to Vi.

Ultimately, her worry must win out, because she calls out to the girl a second later, but as soon as the word leaves her mouth, the girl’s gone, the door swinging shut behind her as if the mere sound of her sister’s voice was enough to push her into motion.

Vi orders another drink. Caitlyn sighs, stifling her exhaustion until a few hours later, when she finally convinced the woman to come to bed.

On the fourth morning, they find Jinx lying on the counter with her legs crossed again—only this time, she can’t help but glare at the girl’s form because she’s looking through a very familiar looking notebook, one that Caitlyn hasn’t seen since she’d watched the girl’s form retreat from the laboratory robbery, Jayce’s research tucked loosely under one thin arm. Now, it's open and held above her head at a slight angle opposite the one her head’s currently tilted at, her eyes scanning the page she stares at with a scowl before she angrily skips that section of his notes.

When the two of them take their usual seats at the bar, still a few hours before the bartender would make his first appearance, Cait pulls her chair closer to Vi, ignoring the woman’s questioning glance as she fixes Jinx with a harsh stare…one that, if the silence is anything to go by, Jinx has no interest in acknowledging.

“Why are you looking through Jayce’s research notes?”

Jinx doesn’t answer her as she mouths something she reads with clear distaste, flipping to the next page with a quick flip of her fingers. After a while, the girl’s head snaps back to the top of the page she’d been on before she hurriedly pushes herself up, her eyes scanning it again and again as she reaches for a notebook—a very colorful, somewhat damaged notebook—on the countertop. When she opens it, Cait quirks an eyebrow at its contents: while there are some clear annotations, most of the space is taken up by drawings. The pictures inside are of strange, intricately colored symbols that she thinks she’s seen engraved on various objects and weapons from his lab. She starts sketching another one, the same one from his notes, it seems, before abruptly stopping, the pencil pausing mid-drawing.

Cait doesn’t understand it until she looks back up at Jinx’s face, which now stares directly into her own eyes with an annoyed frown.

“Whaddya want, Piltie?”

Cait bristles despite herself: there’s just something about the way the girl spoke to her sometimes that gets under her skin. Her words are at least even when she speaks, though.

“What is it that you’re doing?”

A raised eyebrow. “Working…unlike you.”

Ignoring the petty jab for what it is, Cait tries something else. “I’ve seen Jayce use those before to make the hextech do different things. Is that what you’re doing, too?”

Jinx states at her for a long moment before rolling her eyes, laying back on the counter.

Cait stamps out her own irritation at the obvious dismissal, but something about her words must intrigue Vi—or perhaps she’s looking to say anything to make conversation with her somewhat estranged sister—because she takes over from here.

“She’s right, you know: there were some of those engraved on those gauntlets I used. Cait’s gun, too.”

Jinx makes an annoyed grumble before setting the notes over her eyes, blocking her face completely in a way that obviously irritates Vi…at least until she starts to answer.

“No, she’s really not. This is why I hate Pilties: they think just ‘cuz they’ve seen something before they’re smart enough to know exactly what it's used for.”

When Jinx doesn’t continue, Vi probes her again, carefully avoiding the sensitive topic of Piltover’s entire citizenry.

“Alright, well what are they for, then?”

Jinx sighs into the book and it makes Vi stifle her own laugh at the childishness of it. “How the heck should I know?”

This time Vi does laugh, and since its probably the nicest sound she’s heard from the woman since they’d left the commune, Cait respectfully does not intervene in the conversation that started as a dig on her intelligence over the very thing that Jinx also did not know. Apparently annoyed with her sister’s amusement, Jinx continues, lifting the book from her face just enough to regard them (or rather, Vi: she didn’t tend to interact with Caitlyn unless she had to) with a single, pink eye.

“So listen: if the stupid symbols or whatever were just like words, where they only mean one thing, then you should be able to write it wherever and then boom: thing done, right? ‘Cept, when I tried sticking multiple of them near each other, different things started to happen—and eventually, I figured out that it’s less about what we tell the symbols to do and more what they tell us they want to do.”

Vi stares for a minute, clearly not understanding the words that—to Cait, at least—mean the same thing.

“Ok…so what happens if what they want to do isn’t what you want them to do?”

Jinx hums, letting the book fall over her face again as she lifts her head up enough to rest it on her arm.

“I dunno, still trying to figure that out.”

Vi opens her mouth to ask something else, clearly pleased that she’d managed to keep her sister engaged in conversation for more than a few seconds when the door to the upstairs office opens and Sevika steps out, fixing Jinx with a stare that—while Jinx can’t actually see from her position—has the girl turned around to face her in a couple of seconds, back to ignoring Vi completely.

“The next reports just came in.”

The blue-haired girl shoves herself off the table, her hands reaching back to grab her own notebook as she tucks it under an arm with the first one, silently making her way up the stairs at Sevika’s behest.

When the older woman glances at Vi and sees her balled up fists and look of irritation, she only rolls her eyes, following Jinx inside the office with a low click as the door latches shut.

Chapter Text

Viktor isn’t exactly surprised at the girl’s extended absence, but he is…something.

Pinpointing exactly what it is is proving difficult for reasons that elude him. Perhaps it’s boredom—there is nothing here for him but his own thoughts and the increasingly unsteady hum of whatever contraption she’d managed to put together that’s been keeping him alive, and he’d rather hear nothing than contemplate either of these things. The machine, for obvious reasons: it’s a precarious thing, to know that not just your life but countless others hang in the balance and the other object on the scale is, in all likelihood, a hunk of scrap metal piece-mealed together by an unstable teenager.

His thoughts, however…

When he’d mentioned his desire for a distraction from their monotonous situation, Sky had asked him to elucidate why he felt the need to distract himself in the first place, and unfortunately, it’s made him think.

He still doesn’t have an answer, and part of the reason for that is because his thoughts always end up drifting back to their last conversation, the one about the world and the girl and his place in it…and thus far, he’s simply shut it down.

Viktor shakes his head with a sigh, knowing his physical form still lies in exactly the same place her friend had deposited it…however long ago that it had been since then. He has no real way to keep track here: even if he could open his eyes, he believes that despite the loud, echoing sounds he’d heard while drifting in and out of even his mind’s consciousness, he was inside. He would not be able to discern the passage of time from indoors if there were no windows, and considering he’d overheard her friend call this her workshop and office both, he highly doubts there are any such things in here.

It simply wouldn’t make sense: she’s a wanted criminal with a hefty bounty on her head. No one would choose to hide out in an easily visible location. Or accessible…as time passes, he’s starting to come to the conclusion that it would take the Noxians longer than he’d initially thought to find him. He supposed he should have considered that before, but he’d been reasonably distracted by his imminent doom and thus hadn’t thought about it.

She’s been wanted for months and to his knowledge, no one save the Sheriff and the girl’s sister had managed to locate her during that time, a fact he’d discovered from the memories in some of his former followers.

He frowns at that, tired despite the plentiful rest he’s gotten since arriving here…or rather, that he should have gotten: the unfortunate, stagnant state of his physical body has made any sort of recuperation impossible, and he’s long since discovered by now that he cannot sleep or shut himself off as his metal limbs suggested he may be able to. He hadn’t required it, back in the commune, but he sometimes slept despite it, eager for even a brief reprieve from his mentally strenuous work.

Now that he can’t, he finds that he rather misses even the option. Uncertainty eats away at his core, an unease he hadn’t felt since the sisters had first walked into his compound and he deigned to lay a hand on the beast’s head stirring inside of him, churning his thoughts around like they’re wheels on a carriage.

He can’t think about this right now—can't process it, really—and yet it is simultaneously all he can do.

It's an interesting cycle of avoidance that some colder part of himself finds as intriguing as the sentimental part finds annoying.

When Sky appears behind him, he knows what she will want to talk about and also that he has no intention of humoring her sixth attempt at the conversation—but just as she opens her mouth to initiate it, the two of them both turn towards the “direction” (if one could call it that in a mental landscape such as the one they currently occupied, even) of the noise in reality…footsteps and incrementally louder thuds coming from below.

“I guess she’s finally back,” Sky says, a hint of relief in her voice. Viktor knows why: she’d been worried for the girl when she’d been dragged off by her friend, the extent of her injuries and exhaustion unclear to them from where they resided in his mind.

“That appears to be the case,” he says simply, his eyes unconsciously flickering to the runes etched into his metal flesh.

Eventually, the footsteps stop somewhere by his side—and if he had the ability to move of his own volition, he’s sure he would have startled at the sudden touch to the back of his hands, her soft fingers oddly cold against his skin. His metal skin.

Perhaps it’s a drawback of the runes of some sort?

“Wow, they didn’t fade,” the girl starts, her tone suggesting she’s almost bored at the prospect, “I used some pretty cheap paint, so I guess I thought they wouldn’t stay put for very long—but when I touch this, it doesn’t even scratch.”

He wonders if she knows he can hear her, or if this is something she does to herself often. He isn’t judging her for it—in fact, he’s also spoken to himself on occasion, should he find it necessary to voice his thoughts aloud—but he is thankful for the added noise. It made it easier to focus on what she’s doing, and also easier to avoid the intrusive, pervading thoughts that have plagued him since last she’d departed from him.

“Guess that’s pretty great for you, considering you’d be pretty much dead otherwise, huh?”

He hums an assent that be knows she can’t hear, waiting for her to continue…but she doesn’t. Powder removes her hand and steps away, the metallic sound coming from near his head suggesting that she’d gone to tinker with the machine keeping him alive.

This is about as comforting as you might expect it’d be.

“Oh, come now, Viktor, I’m sure she’s only thinking of ways to improve it,” Sky says, her voice tinged with the same curiosity as the girl’s had been just moments prior.

“So I am aware,” he answers dryly, his thoughts on the steady turn of a wrench, a few scrapes, the ratcheting sound almost soothing in its rhythm. With the way the girl starts to hum some oddly melancholy tune, he thinks the same must be true for her, too.

Sky looks as if she wants to say more, but they both startle when, after a long moment, the humming abruptly stops, as does the sound of her tweaking the machine.

“So. I feel sorta obligated to keep you alive, considering you helped me ‘n all, I guess,” she adds that last part reluctantly, and he’d bet that she rolls her eyes with the words, knowing who he was talking to.

Or, well, listening to. He’s not much for conversation in this state.

“But I don’t really know how to fix you. I mean, my sister said something that made me think about all this a little more—oh, but don’t worry, I didn’t tell her about you,” she adds quickly, the reassurance more confusing than relaxing in nature. Briefly, he wonders why she hadn’t said anything before discarding the thought. It’s irrelevant. “I think these weird, magic-y picture things Mr. Hammer and this other guy wrote about in his notes here might be able to help,” this other guy? Did she not know…? “I just gotta figure out how to convince them to play nice with each other.”

She snorts a laugh at that, but it sounds anything except humored.

“I, uh, messed with them once, a long time ago now—I was tryna’ make Fishbones, you know?—and when I picked the wrong ones, it caused a boom!” she claps her hands for effect, the sound reverberating off of the walls around what he’s assumed to be an enclosed space of some sort. “And that sorta freaked me out...I don’t know, maybe they just didn’t like me or something.”

There’s a scratching sound at that, but he can’t really tell what she’s doing with his eyes closed like this.

“I hope you don’t need any oil or anything—I’m not sure what gizmos tend ta' eat—them or Cookies—so try not to kick the bucket while I figure all this math-y hibby-jibby stuff out, ok?”

Her words might be light on their own, but there’s something odd in her tone that catches his attention. She sighs as she pushes herself up—and the only way he can tell is by the way her voice gets further away as she ascends.

“I don’t know when I’ll be by again—this place is kinda far out and…,” she huffs out a breath like a displeased child who isn’t getting their way, “and I’m taking care of some things for my sister—just, don’t go tellin’ her that, ok? It’s a secret,” she tacks on, an exhausted note to her voice as she continues. “I gotta mess with this some more before I can rig anything up to patch up this donut-hole situation you got going on here—not a good look on a Cookie.”

Viktor closes his eyes, something between confusion and curiosity momentarily clouding his thoughts as her footsteps start away again.

“Don’t go anywhere, rust bucket,” she calls out to him as she walks away.

Soon after, he’s alone, and the unsteady thrum of the machine is gone, replaced by a quieter, more even whirr that has Sky nodding in approval.

And faintly, just on the edge of his perception, Viktor can “feel” a new rune etched into the surface of her machine.

“…and that’s all the updates we have from the western front,” Sevika finishes, speaking through the puff of smoke she breathes out as she wraps up her explanation to the brat currently crouched on the couch, her eyes flickering between each of the six reports on the table with a frown. She’s distracted by something—even her idiot of a sister could probably see that much—but somehow, that hasn’t stopped her from providing actually useful information about positioning their teams and scouts along the Noxian-controlled areas of the undercity.

In just a few days, she’d tossed enough ideas at her that the two of them were able to come up with an actual strategy—one that she’s actually hopeful about because of its potential to split their enemies, destroying the supply line they had created between their two fronts via nine-twenty four. It wouldn’t hold for very long, once they took it—but it would force them to respond and in doing so, pull their forces away from the docks so Jinx could go (in a team, she’d had to remind the dipshit sternly) and see what it is, if anything, that they were so interested in.

She’d already been able to confirm they’d packed some of their camp in the old commune up: apparently she’d seen as much when she went to retrieve that hat…

…among other things.

Sevika shakes her head, taking another drag from her cigar as she impatiently waits for the kid to weigh in. To Sevika, the newest scout reports mentioned little she didn’t already know—but the brat's proven she’s got a knack for finding patterns in things she doesn’t see herself. It still felt weird, asking Jinx of all people for battle plans, but in a really irritating sort of way, it also made sense: who was in the rafters every time not just Sevika but also every other scout and spy and soldier Silco deemed important enough to talk shop with?

She thought the brat hadn’t cared enough to listen, because every single time she’d bothered to look up at her, the kid was drawing or putting together a bomb or sometimes both, looking like she hadn’t a care in the world as their people were slaughtered or imprisoned or beaten within an inch of their lives.

To discover that she’d been actively listening and—according to her, anyways—contributing to their plans when the door shut behind them…

Sevika’s not sure whether to be impressed or pissed.

No, she thinks, watching the kid with narrowing eyes, It’s both.

“Where’d the red guys from this one,” she holds up the fourth report with one hand, the writing clipped and concise, “end up?”

Sevika hums, gesturing vaguely to the table in front of Jinx. “Spread around. They dispersed from there, ended up in each of the four surrounding…sub-areas,” she finishes, using the kid’s own terminology to respond.

Jinx looks between the paper in her hand and the table with a frown, her eyes unfocused until she shakes her head, shaking the crazy out of them for a while. Eventually, she pushes herself up, setting the report back with the others before walking towards the office door without comment. When she doesn’t answer as Sevika calls out to her, she tosses a knife at the trim—which, to the kid’s credit, doesn’t make her startle as one of her hands comes up to boredly pluck it from the wall.

“Yeesh. You coulda just asked me to stop,” she grumbles, turning on Sevika with an annoyed frown.

She doesn’t bother explaining to the kid that she already had. That conversation’s always just a waste of breath.

“Where are you going?”

Jinx shrugs, idly twirling the knife around loosely in one if her braids. “Out.”

Sevika fixes her with a glare that the brat only smirks at, but seeing how fucking twitchy the kid’s been all day, she decides she can’t actually just let her leave…not that she could actually stop her, mind you.

Not with actions, anyways.

“Look: you see something wrong, that’s something you gotta share. That sort of thing is something one of the teams can take care of for us—I don’t need you injecting yourself into every little problem, it’s just not a good use of your time,” she pauses to put the cigar out in his old ashtray, her paint fading on the sides. “Besides, you can’t keep going out alone like you have been—it ain’t sustainable.”

Jinx clicks her tongue, flipping the knife around by the hilt so it points away from her torso as she puts her hands on her hips, petulant fucking child that she is. “You scared I’m gonna mess it up? ‘Cuz I really think you shoulda thought about that before asking someone named Ji—”

“More like mess yourself up,” she cuts in, her eye catching on that weird-ass syringe thing Silco used for his injections. Sevika rubs at her temple before spinning around in the chair enough to look out the stained glass window behind her. “How many?”

It's clear from the pause that the kid understands the change in subject, and clearer still by the almost sheepish way she kicks at the discolored wood paneling below her feet, her worn boots scuffing on planks older than she is.

Eventually, she does answer, and her voice is as exhausted as the kid looks…which made sense, considering just how often she’d had to deal with this shit for the past several nights.

Sevika would know, considering the only times the kid has slept have been in this room, up in those rafters she’d half lived in some months and a lifetime ago, swinging between them like some kind of exotic topsider pet. Even then, in all the time it’s been since the kid had woken up from her three day vacation, Sevika’s only found her up there twice, and each time for just two hours before she heard something that inevitably got her attention.

It’s not like Sevika was gonna give up her couch. She’d earned that shit.

“Fourteen,” the kid mumbles eventually, all traces of her prior amusement wiped clean as she stands with her back to the door, turning the blade over on her hand with a look that makes Sevika wish she hadn’t thrown it in the first place.

She grunts, suddenly tired as she pushes herself further back into the chair.

“Got a meeting later I want you listening in on,” she says instead of addressing that problem. They both knew who was (or rather, who were) sending them, but their choices were limited at the moment. Have someone else handle it and they’d disappear off the street in a few hours…but have Jinx handle it…well, this was her fuck-up anyways, in Sevika’s opinion.

Hopefully, she could figure this out before the kid passed out again. There wasn’t a lot of love (as in any) between them and the brat, and if she dropped in the wrong place…

She shakes herself from her thoughts as Jinx replies, looking peeved. “Can’t you handle it yourself? I got things to do.”

She rolls her eyes before looking back over the formations for their plan where they sit on the desk, untouched since this morning when the two of them had hammered out some of the finer details.

“I think she’ll try and fuck us over, but I don’t have any solid proof. I’m guessing one of her boys’ll try and pull something while we’re in the office,” she says, watching a family of three walk across the street outside of the window, looking oddly content for the circumstances.

Jinx makes a noise of irritation. “While you’re in the office,” she mutters, crossing her arms with the blade pointing straight up to her nose. Still, Sevika knows she’s caught her interest when she doesn’t just leave, so she counts it as a win in the distract Jinx so that she forgets she wants to kill herself long enough to set up a proper resistance in the undercity plan.

The name’s a work in progress, and the brat’s a piece of work. They went great together.

“Who’s it with, anyway?”

Sevika glances at the kid before she looks back down at the street, the family nowhere in sight.

“The hairdresser from Drop Street,” she starts, prepared to explain who she is since the information the kid retained from business meetings she’d attended was spotty at best. Apparently, anything related to the actual people themselves didn’t really interest the brat—so unless they were a chem baron or one of Silco’s higher-ups (and there weren’t a lot of them, anymore), it was hit or miss on whether or not she knew jack about them.

Jinx snorts, tapping the flat of the blade against her chin. “Yeah, she’s not a hairdresser.”

Sevika looks at her a moment before continuing, quietly pleased she doesn’t have to explain the woman’s influence over the Entresol. Few though the people there may be, a good Drop Street navigator was worth their weight in gold. The place was so far out of the way that even some trenchers couldn’t weave through it very well…which meant a Piltie would be as good as fucked if the fighting got that far down. Sevika’s hoping it won’t come to that, but she’s also not a fucking idiot. Better to prepare for the worst case and be wrong…so if the crafty chem dealer wanted to talk, she’d hear her out. Just because she’s known for being a backstabbing bitch didn’t mean Sevika’d gut her as soon as she walked in.

She’d wait for her to fuck up, first…and then, if they played their cards right, convince her smarter boy to join up, use the connections the hairdresser had made to get control of that critical junction between Piltover and that area of the undercity and generate some of the revenue they’d lost from her chem production and distribution. It’s not on any level of Silco’s shimmer plants, and it’s not even shimmer, but that awful smelling concoction made with “hair-care supplies” was still addictive enough to have users, and users meant profit.

Profit that, with the near complete cease of shimmer production, had grown astoundingly scarce.

Jinx waits a moment, examining her reflection in the metal before tilting it to the side with a nod of her head. “Well…fine—but only ‘cuz he said pretty much the same thing. Fetch me when it starts?”

Sevika waves her off, glaring when something shoots out and sticks in the wood just over her good shoulder.

“Careful, brat, you already stained this enough,” she says, gesturing to her cape as Jinx leaves with a huff, not missing the self-satisfied smile plastered over her face like a cheap coat of paint.

Internally, she sighs, her mind wandering to the two idiots in the basement without her permission.

“Fourteen, huh?”

She shakes her head as she re-lights the cigar, wondering where she’d stowed his mug away at as she wills the time away, hoping that count didn’t rise any higher in the hours before the meeting…the one that, as Jinx already seemed to know, she could have handled herself just fine.

Cait watches Jinx leave the upstairs office and settle on the bar counter, nudging Vi with her elbow as the girl covers her eyes with an arm, one of her knees up with her foot flat against the countertop and the other crossed over it in her usual position.

Vi’d wanted to talk with her about something—and though she hadn’t said what it was, Cait had a few guesses—so she’d asked her to watch the back of the bar whilst Vi watched the front. Neither of them ever really seemed to know where she’d gone off to, so it’d seemed as good a solution as any.

They both get up when Vi shoots her a knowing look, and Cait remains standing when Vi goes to sit until the other woman looks at her questioningly. Cait’s not sure what the confusion is about: all of the other stools were taken except that one besides Jinx, which is almost always empty anymore. Cait can’t tell if that’s out of respect or self-preservation. Some part of her thinks it’s both, which—as it’s just as insane as everything else down here—she’s inclined to believe. Why would you choose to follow someone who acted so erratically you feared for your own life?

Because the alternative is death, her brain unhelpfully supplies.

Vi understands after she looks around and she holds up a finger…

Cait knows at that moment she isn’t going to like whatever it is she’s about to do.

A man knocked flat on his ass and a near bar fight later, Cait sits just behind Vi, uncomfortably aware of the stares they’re shot by some of the other patrons…for a few moments, anyways. When Cait starts to notice how quickly many of them look away, she glances over to Jinx—and sure enough, she’d propped herself up enough to shoot out a generalized glare towards the rabble.

The looks don’t last much longer, and Jinx fixes Vi with the same look before shaking her head and dropping back to her original position.

“Hey, where have you been sleeping?" Vi asks, straight to the point as she’d always liked to be.

Jinx offers her a half-shrug of her shoulder before answering…though her response isn’t to Vi’s question.

“Stop picking fights with people, will ya? It’s getting annoying.”

Vi raises an eyebrow her conversation partner can’t see from her position with the way one of her arms is draped over her eyes. Her other she uses as a neck pillow.

“How do you know about the other times? It ain’t like you’ve been around to see them,” Vi says, a hint of irritation creeping into her voice.

Jinx lets out a breath as she answers, her crossed leg occasionally twitching over her knee. “First, it’s a bar, Vi, people talk…and they got a whole lot to say about an ex-bluebelly trencher who has almost as many drinks as she has words to say. Second,” she uncovers her eyes for a moment, a heated pink gaze locking onto Vi’s own in a way that makes the older’s hands ball into fists, “pot, meet kettle.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Jinx raises her eyebrow before abruptly shifting her gaze to Caitlyn—and she’s rather proud to say she doesn’t shift under the intensity of her stare. For a long moment, she says nothing, and Cait thinks that this is perhaps some sort of impromptu staring contest before, in a flash of pink, the girl appears in front of her, crouched on the counter with a hand wrapping around her wrist as she pulls it towards her face before Cait can even think to resist it.

“What the hell are you—?”

“Quiet, Piltie,” she grumbles in obvious displeasure, her other hand coming up to do something Caitlyn isn’t immediately privy to as Vi catches it in her fist.

“Jinx, knock it off,” she says, her tone suggesting she’s crossed a line of some sort. The girl’s eyes flicker to Vi’s, her hand not held in the older woman’s grip tightening around Cait’s wrist. Cait sets her jaw, but doesn’t attempt to pry her fingers off or pull back…there’s something in her eyes right now that’s putting her on edge, and she gets the faint impression that she shouldn’t do anything too rash…even if this made as little sense as everything else the girl did.

“Jinx,” Vi continues, her voice dangerously low. Cait opens her mouth to stop…whatever this was before Jinx shakes her head, almost like she’s talking herself out of something.

“Did you use pistols?”

Cait blinks as those intense pink eyes lock onto her own.

“I’m…what?”

Jinx’s eye twitches in irritation at the same time Vi’s own hand begins to tighten around the pale one in her palm, but Jinx doesn’t spare her another glance.

“Before your rifle. Did you use pistols?”

Caitlyn, unsure of what else to do, offers her a nod, at least pretty sure she now understood the question enough to answer.

Jinx waits another moment before nodding, her hand letting up on the pressure just enough to turn Cait’s wrist, her eyes looking for something Cait couldn’t even begin to explain. From next to her, Vi looks just as lost as she does—just with all her excess energy poured into being angry instead of confused.

“Jinx, what is this about?” Vi tries, her voice still confrontational—and yet she can obviously tell the other woman is holding back, considering she hasn’t crushed the girl’s hand yet.

“You don’t already know?” a voice asks from behind them, pulling all three of their attentions away from the scene before them.

The caped woman comes to a stop at her usual position, leaning against the counter with one hand as she watches the three of them with a look of displeasure.

Then she turns on Jinx, shaking her head as she ignores them, uninterested in the lost causes they apparently both were for not being fluent in whatever sort of insanity this was.

“She’s here,” Sevika says simply, obviously waiting on Jinx for something.

Jinx rolls her eyes before releasing Cait’s wrist, her eye twitching in annoyance as she fixes Sevika with a glare.

“What happened to it being hours later?”

The older woman only shrugs, her gaze drifting to where Vi’s still gripping the girl’s wrist. “They’re early.”

“Of course they are,” she mumbles, shaking her arm none too happily as she turns on Vi. “You gonna let go of me, Fat Hands?”

Vi’s eyes narrow and Cait switches her attention to Sevika, who looks between the two with mounting irritation before her eyes lock onto her own. Then she turns back to Vi.

“I need her for something, mutt. Go back to eating your cupcake."

Jinx nods, “Yeah! Go back to eating your—wait, what? Like cannibalism, or—”

Jinx cuts off and Sevika turns towards her with a raised eyebrow. Cait can see the exact moment where it clicks in the way that—in less than a few seconds—the girl’s eyes widen, then narrow, and then she stares straight ahead with a grimace.

“Well. Go ahead and add that to the list of mental images I can’t unsee.”

Sevika snorts and Vi closes her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. Cait’s mouth drops open while she wills her face not to flush at the remark as Vi finally releases her wrist and Jinx pushes herself from the edge, following Sevika up the stairs with a distracted-looking frown.

Not fifteen minutes later, the entire bar freezes as the sound of three gunshots ring out in quick succession, but when Jinx casually strolls out, blowing the smoke from her barrel, they all relax again, turning back to their cards and drinks as she descends the stairs with a neutral looking frown.

“Hey, can we talk about something?” Vi asks, her tone both irritated and urgent enough that it stops Jinx from taking her place back on the countertop. She’d gotten up at the same time Jinx reached the base of the stairs, and Cait followed suit shortly thereafter.

The girl cocks her head at her, her eyes narrowing in obvious suspicion. “What about?”

Vi pointedly glances at all of the people in the bar before turning back to Jinx with a knowing look.

“I’ll tell you downstairs.”

Cait watches the girl’s tired face flash with unease, but it’s enough for Vi to notice, too, by the way her hands curl and uncurl at her sides.

“I…don’t really go down there anymore,” she admits quietly, something brittle and avoidant in her tone that makes Vi take a breath, probably in an effort to control her anger.

“I got that,” Vi starts, stopping when she must be able to hear the way that irritation colors her words, “but it’s important. I’ll try to be quick.” She promises, her face a complicated mixture between pleading and assertiveness.

Cait’s never had a sibling, unless you counted Jayce—but he hadn’t been around her entire life, and he hadn’t lived with them. Seeing this interaction, with Vi so out of and yet into her element all at once, where she expected to be listened to and yet also felt the need to ask for permission…Cait thinks this is what that must be like. In perhaps equal measures, Jinx—despite her obvious preoccupation with something other than their conversation—looks like she’s been caught with her hand in the cookie jar and also vaguely like she’d been insulted.

Crime boss, or little sister?

Eventually, after a long moment spent staring the older woman down, Jinx’s shoulders slump and she looks away. Cait isn’t sure whether to be impressed or mildly terrified of Vi’s ability to convince her…that is, until she realizes that Jinx had successfully avoided having this very conversation for the entire time they’d spent in the tavern.

“Well….fine, if it’s quick. I guess.”

She sounded like she was sulking. It’s surreal.

Vi takes that for the win it is and spins on her heel, leading the three of them to the door that Jinx very obviously did not want to approach.

Still, when Vi holds the door open, she reluctantly heads down the stairs, stopping in the middle just as Vi had that first day as she took everything in with an almost haunted expression that she shakes herself out of before walking the rest of the way down, opting to stick to the wall directly at the end of the stairs than come further into the room.

“Come sit,” Vi says as she passes her, waving her onto where she’d started heading towards the couches.

Jinx crosses her arms, looking all the world like a pouting girl…save that odd gleam in her eyes that makes Cait grip her knees from her position on the couch.

Something’s not right…

“If it’s not going to take long, I don’t need to sit. Now, whaddya want?”

Vi takes a deep breath, clearly trying not to let her anger get the better of her.

“Alright,” she says, not sitting either as she faces her sister with a stern look on her face. “What’s up with you lately?”

Jinx tilts her head, waiting for her to elaborate. When Vi doesn’t, the girl’s eye twitches in irritation…at least until it inadvertently seems to catch on some of the other things in the room. She shakes her head violently before she answers, keeping her gaze carefully directed onto the pink-haired woman standing several feet across from her.

“Gonna need more than that, Vi,” she says, sounding displeased to have to explain that.

Vi’s frown hardens on her face, and that…whatever that is on Jinx’s face gets just a little more pronounced.

“No you don’t. You’re smarter than that: you know what I mean, you just don’t want to talk about it—not that I understand why.”

To her credit, though she’s obviously not happy about it, her voice is steady as she speaks.

Jinx’s eyes narrow into a glare, and Cait’s happy to sit out the conversation as the girl’s hand twitches at her side. Apparently needing something to do—or perhaps just unwilling to look at her sister whilst she speaks, the girl walks past Vi to that small box of scrap and dust, digging through it with careless abandon as she finally answers her question.

“Fine then, I’ll get right to the punchline: you’re not supposed to be here,” she spits, her voice venomous enough to temporarily surprise Vi out of her anger. The older woman stands there, a confusion overtaking her features as the anger slowly starts to return.

“Jinx—Pow, I thought this would make you happy—”

Jinx barks a laugh, but even Cait can see the pain hidden behind false bravado, the way she’s still rummaging around in that scrap bin instead of looking at them as she answers.

“Do I look happy?”

Vi hesitates before she takes another step towards her, but the sound makes Jinx shoot to her feet, the part she’d been searching for dangling from her hand in a vice grip as she eyes the other woman warily.

A pained expression flickers across Vi’s face before it fades. “Isn’t this what you wanted? For us to be together again?”

Something changes in Jinx’s expression as she looks away, suddenly finding the wall more interesting than her sister. Fast as she moves, Cait can’t quite parse the emotion there before only the back of her head is visible to them both. Vi seems to take it as a dismissal, starts to get visibly angrier…but Cait’s not so sure that’s what this is.

“You were right back then, you know,” Jinx says quietly, an odd quality to her voice that makes the hair on the back of her neck rise for different reasons than it probably should. “I don’t need you anymore—so just…just go away, stop pretending like this is going to play out like some fantasy where we’re all holding hands in some peaceful little world.”

“So what, you’re just gonna keep hanging around with that asshole who helped get dad killed, is that it?!”

Jinx turns on her then, her eyes flaring dangerously. “Well who do you think I got that from?”

Vi’s bares her teeth, apparently incapable of holding her anger back any longer. “Are you serious?! God, I don’t even know why I bother trying with you—how the fuck could you trust Sevika to help you when she betrayed him?”

Jinx shakes her head, an incredulous look on her face. “What the hell are you even—”

“You ditched Cait and I in the bar with dozens of fuckers who wanted to kill us so you could go out and nearly die just to, to what? Prove some point about not needing me? That was worth your life?! And now you just do that everyday—you leave alone and come back all pissy and go off to god knows where every night just to come back looking worse and worse every day.”

Oh gods. Cait shifts in her seat, a sudden, horrid guilt churning around her stomach, tying it into knots as her eyes widen in realization.

She hasn’t told her yet—and now she’s approaching this conversation in the worst way possible because she doesn’t know. She tries to get her attention, but she may as well not have existed to the pair of them at this moment.

Vi shakes her head as Cait tries to figure out how to salvage this, continuing as her fists ball up in blind fury. “We could have helped you. I could have helped you—so why the fuck would you put yourself in danger like this by trusting that crusty old backstabbing motherfucker over—”

”To protect you, dumbass!”

Vi cuts off in irritation, her eyes snapping back to look at Jinx—except when she gets a good look at her, she finally seems to get that something’s wrong, because she actually takes the time to think about her response. In the meantime, Jinx leans slightly against the wall with her outstretched arm, still facing away from them both as she stares at the floor, her breath coming just quick enough that Cait can hear each time she inhales.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Vi asks, the rage simmering down into irritation.

Jinx doesn’t answer, pushes herself off the wall—she would have left, too, had Vi not reached over and grabbed her shoulder first, apparently not fine with ending the conversation there.

Jinx tries to shrug her off, but unlike every other time she’d done so since their escape from the commune, Vi doesn’t allow it, her grip visibly tightening even as Jinx tries harder to pull away.

“You—it was dangerous and I didn’t know if your stupid stomach wound would pop open if you picked up somethin' too heavy—and I only keep leaving because these assholes keep trying to kill your stupid girlfriend and I can’t get any sleep because I don’t know if they’ll kill you too and I-I knew you would try to help if I told you but I’m just trying to keep you safe, why won’t you just go away so you don’t die just like everyone else?!”

Cait’s uncertain if it’s her words, the way she’s fighting her or the way Vi can now see her face, but something’s caused Vi’s eyes to widen, the anger completely dissolving from her face as she takes the girl in.

“Hey, hey,” Vi starts, her voice a soft mix of confusion and alarm, “everything’s fine right now, I shouldn’t have gotten so upset, just…here, look at me,” she reaches with her other hand to tilt Jinx’s avoidant gaze to her own, swallowing when she gets a look at her expression…an expression that Cait can see, too—her eyes welling up with tears, breath coming too fast, too shallow, a panic bubbling to the surface that she seems to be struggling to keep off her face.

When Vi releases her shoulder and moves her hand—presumably to stroke her hair, but Cait supposes she’ll never know—something about it clearly upsets the girl in her grasp because she pulls back. Without the support of Vi’s grip she falls back to the floor—but when Vi starts to kneel down in front of her, Cait watches with wide eyes as the girl pushes herself away—

—in absolute terror.

“I was only trying to help!”

Vi’s eyes get impossibly wider as she freezes in place, looks between Jinx and her own hand as she hastily pulls it to her side and stands, her arms coming out in front of her non-threateningly so Jinx can clearly see she’s backed away and isn’t trying to hurt her…but it doesn’t matter.

Jinx pushes herself back with one foot until her head hits that furnace with a loud thud, shaking so hard that her boots keep making little noises as they thump against the old floorboards, her arms coming up to shield her face…against Vi.

Vi, who watches her with the same horror that’d been on her face in the warehouse, Vi, who’d brought a hand up to cover her mouth at the sight before her.

Vi, who has absolutely no idea what to do—Cait can see it in her face, in the tension of her stance, in the unshed tears in her own eyes. Speaking so softly that Cait can hardly hear the words coming out of her mouth, Jinx keeps repeating those same words over and over again like a mantra even with the way her breathing remains so warped and constricted.

There’s something she’s missing here, she knows…but oddly and unlike the other two people in the room, she’s unafraid.

Vi runs a hand through her hair, takes a few quick, deep breaths before—surprisingly—stepping closer to Jinx, this time settling down next to her instead of in front of her, a hand curling around one of her upturned knees.

“Hey, Pow, I’m not going anywhere this time, alright?”

Jinx tightens further into a ball, her breathing labored, her face hidden behind her own arms.

Vi doesn’t move, her face contorted in a pain that—while Caitlyn doesn’t completely understand—she sympathizes with. The reason Jinx went out so late, that she came back injured, that she let Sevika knew she was leaving first…was them?

Or rather, to protect her.

It makes a lot of complicated emotions rise to the surface that she refuses to take the time to sift through right now because whatever is happening feels like some sort of crisis (could very well turn into something worse, if Vi actually allows the girl to leave the room like this), and she feels the need to do something.

But what?

She felt so out of her depth here that she finds herself unable to do anything but sit down next to Vi, grabbing her other hand with a gentle squeeze that the other woman takes as permission to hold onto her like she’s a lifeline, her eyes not leaving her sister as the girl sobs in silence.

It feels like an eternity before the pathetic whimpering intermingled with those haunting words she utters finally stop, and when Cait looks over to her, the ball Jinx had curled herself in is much looser. It makes Cait exchange a wary glance with a truly broken looking Vi, who very carefully calls out to the girl in question.

When she doesn’t respond, Vi reaches over and gently pulls one of those thin, pasty arms from Jinx’s face, and when Cait gets a look at the empty, lifeless expression there, she inhales sharply as Vi’s face crumples.

“I…fuck,” Vi whispers softly, releasing Cait’s hand so she can rub at her own eyes, her other hand not moving from where it rests on Jinx’s knee. “This is all my fault.”

Caitlyn closes her eyes, swallows, takes a deep breath before responding.

“No…not all of it.”

Vi looks at her then, an exhaustion plain on her face that Cait knows isn’t going away anytime soon, that there’s never going to be a perfect time for this conversation, that right now certainly wasn’t the time for it…but also that, judging by that empty look in Jinx’s eyes, if it didn’t happen soon, she could be too late.

“Vi, I have something I need to talk to you about,” she starts, her voice quiet but steadfast. Vi pinches the bridge of her nose, taking a huge breath before letting it out.

“Can it wait, cupcake?”

Caitlyn doesn’t hesitate—not now. “No,” she says, her eyes flickering to Jinx’s nearly lifeless form, “it really can’t.”

Chapter Text

Powder’s suicidal.

Caitlyn told her everything: a comment she’d made about Cait missing the kill shot in the ventilation shaft, the real meaning she's suspected behind the strange ways that Sevika and her sister interacted, that uncaring way she kept going out and coming back, putting herself in danger over and over and over again.

The real reason Pow wanted her to leave so badly…is because she didn’t want her to be around when she…

Vi runs a hand down her face as she takes another breath, eyes blown wide with her own fear—that sharp, paralyzing kind she’s only ever been able to feel for family.

The kind that always pushes her into action, that hasn’t ever done her any good.

The worst part of this entire thing is the fact that it didn’t shock her: she might not have realized it (or maybe she’d simply chosen not to) before Cait had brought it up, but once she’d explained what she knew, it’s like everything suddenly made sense, like all these pieces clicked into place to form one shitty puzzle.

Jinx isn’t avoiding her because she hates her, she’s not pushing the two of them towards that fucking boat because she actually wants them gone—she just doesn’t want Vi around to find her body.

God. Fuck!

She inhales. Holds it. Exhales slower.

Habit she picked up to deal with the pain from broken ribs, a broken nose—fingers from when she hadn’t learned the right way to throw a punch, too.

Cait watches it all in concerned silence, and the thought makes her repeat it, one of her fists curling into a ball at her side—because Cait fucking knew this entire time and hadn’t…but then, Vi should’ve known, too.

Vi had known—or at least, part of her had.

She should have done something or said something or maybe not fucking antagonized her suicidal kid sister because this weird hate-friendship thing she had going on with Sevika was driving her insane.

She’s not a kid, part of her supplies dully, the numbness starting to take over even as a larger part of her panics, you left her before she stopped being one, remember?

How could she ever forget?

She closes her eyes, Vander’s words growing so loud and repetitive in her own fucked-up head that she’s surprised Cait can’t hear them, too, reverberating off the walls of her mind and the basement both:

Protect the family.

Protect Powder.

She hadn’t honored either request—Mylo and Claggor and a Vander twice-fucking-removed, all buried under stone and ashes.

And Powder…Powder she’d decked and abused and abandoned, had been kidnapped and deluded and manipulated into becoming this remorseless killer for a man that she threw away the second he’d tried to shoot Vi, leaving behind this broken teenager…

An act Vi repaid her with by rushing into the undercity in the uniform of their parents’ murderers, hunting her like she was a beast, all the while willfully ignorant of the fact that that’s what Jinx wanted.

Vi’s no fool: she’s seen the way she moves, fights, kills—as fucked-up as she came back when she went out sometimes, she always came back…and the same couldn’t be said of the people she fought with.

How…how is she supposed to stop someone with inhuman reflexes and speed from…

She’s got to stop this—thinking about it, it’s making her fucking sick to her stomach, it’s threatening to empty the shitty sandwiches they’d eaten for dinner onto her own lap.

“Vi…”

Vi takes another breath to avoid lashing out at the woman. It’s not her fault. None of it was.

It’s Vi’s.

For leaving, and hunting, and choking…for not protecting her in any way that mattered.

But she can fix this. Powder doesn’t have to…

She swallows, her hand curling around her mouth. It’s shaking.

When have I ever fixed anything?

She takes another breath before she stands, shaking her head as she rubs at her temples. She can fix this—but if she tries to explain how to Cait right now, it won’t come out right, and she might just make herself panic so much it’d send her spiraling, and she can’t just leave the poor woman to deal with two fucked-up sisters.

She huffs a humorless laugh that has Cait shooting her a nervous looking glance from the floor. She gives her a half-smile before her eyes start to water and she has to look away, deciding to get on with the actual reason she’d pushed herself up to begin with as she offers an arm down to Powder.

She doesn’t take it—Vi’s not convinced she even sees it.

She hadn’t expected anything less, though. Instead of waiting for an acknowledgement that isn’t going to come, Vi bends down (and very carefully does not kneel, because the second her sister had reacted so violently to that, she’d figured out exactly where she’d fucked-up) and wraps her hands under her arms to tug her up, only releasing her when she can feel the way Jinx is supporting her own weight. She swallows, her fears confirmed in that empty stare, in her passively complacent demeanor that Vi’s pretty sure her sister isn’t even aware of.

Janna, she’s so small.

Powder just stands there after that, no more with them than she had been in that warehouse office—as out of touch with reality as Vi is far too aware of their own.

Vi grabs her arm and leads her to the bed, mentally resigning herself to the couch as she settles her sister under the covers of what used to be their spot once upon a lifetime ago.

When Caitlyn hovers somewhat awkwardly behind them, Vi finishes gathering Jinx’s ridiculous amount of hair to the side of her pillow so it doesn’t hang to the floor and turns to the woman with a sigh.

“This isn’t how I thought I’d convince her to stay down here tonight, y’know?”

Cait offers her a half-smile—more of an upturn of just one side of her lips that’s gone in a flash, but it’s there.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier, Vi—there just never really seemed like a good time for it...”

She trails off as she looks at where Powder’s still form is lying unmoving where Vi’d left her on the bed, her dull eyes still staring directly ahead at the same nothing she’d been looking at in the warehouse. Vi sighs as she reluctantly starts walking towards the couches, tossing herself over the smaller one with a frown.

“’Least you told me. I know you didn’t have to,” she says listlessly, her leg dangling over the side as she glances first at Cait, and then at Powder. The more Vi’d thought about it, the less angry she’d become: in her situation, would Vi have brought it up? Jinx killed her mom, kidnapped her, poisoned her people. And yeah: Cait had fucked-up, too—really fucked-up—but the situation’s a lot more complicated than what Sevika had dumbed it down to.

Vi can’t find it in herself to blame Cait for very much of it, because Vi’d gone right along with her vengeance, too—except perhaps the way she’d let Ambessa slip in by her side, let her whispers and suggestions fuel so much of this shitty fighting they’ve found themselves caught in the middle of.

And that…well, Vi thinks she might hate that so much because it reminded her too much of what Silco had done to Powder—had changed a delightful young woman into a cynical glutton for battle and fighting, made her ok with the atrocities she committed as long as they were for some bullshit “greater good”…but who gets to decide which cause is worth the lives of hundreds of people?

That’s one of those things she’d take to her grave, though—she doubted neither Caitlyn nor Jinx would appreciate the comparison.

Perhaps, being stuck where they are now…maybe that’s something she can fix, too.

But for now…

“Let’s go to bed, Cait. Figure out all of this in the morning,” she says, her eyes drifting back to her kid sister turned unstable teen as she suppresses another sigh. For a long moment, Caitlyn doesn’t answer, and it prompts Vi to glance over at her…but Cait isn’t looking at her, she’s turned away, facing Jinx.

“Hey,” Vi calls out to her, her voice hollow, somber in a room where once vibrant color seemed to have faded to ashes sometime in the last 7 years, leaving behind this bleak emptiness that no amount of words could ever fill. When Cait turns to her, she looks like she’s deep in thought about something—something, by the look in her eyes, that she really didn’t want to actually say. Vi only waits, her gaze nearly as empty as her sister’s, and eventually, Cait shifts back to face Jinx, her voice sounding quietly as if not to wake her despite the fact that she is no more asleep than either of them are.

“I…was wondering if you knew how to detach her prosthetic,” Cait says as delicately as possible, her jaw set in a mix of reluctance and something like pity. It almost makes Vi snarl at her before she can force herself not to: she knows the older woman didn’t mean it in a negative way. The question still doesn’t sit right with her, though—and her silence must say as much, because Cait continues after a moment, her voice just as tired as Vi felt. “I noticed you brought those work gloves from before, but I’m not sure she won’t be able to simply slice through those or not.”

Ah. Now Vi understands. Cait’s come to the same conclusion Vi has on that front: that Jinx wasn’t really there right now—only instead of flopping on a couch like a useless piece of shit, she’d actually put enough thought into it to think ahead so she could do something to help her before she ended up hurting herself. Vi shuts her eyes, trying to tune the thought out as she forces herself to sit back up and reach for the bag on the table, removing the same thick gloves that Vi had found in an employee locker that she’d managed to bust the lock off.

She remembers having mixed feelings about them, because they were actually a pretty nice pair (if a little worn), which meant they had hook-and-loop fasteners at the wrists that could be used to help keep them in place. Had they wanted to, back in the warehouse, they could have basically tied her wrists together to stop her from pulling at her scalp or arms—just, something about that felt wrong somehow, even knowing she’d have had a good reason to do it. She remembers forgetting to put them on Jinx before they went to sleep that night, too—but they’d been sitting near their “bed” when they’d woke up all the same, and she still didn’t know why. Maybe Jinx had gone through her bag before she left?

She hadn’t taken anything, though. Not even the gold…

She shakes her head, walking to the side of the bed with a sigh as she pulls Jinx’s left hand in front of her face, kneeling on the floor with an audible thunk as her knee strikes one of the creaky wooden boards.

“She never told me how to take it off,” she finally answers Cait’s not-question, turning her hand to the side as she examines it closer, feeling cold all of a sudden for reasons she refuses to look too far into. “Can’t be that hard though, right?”

This is, as they are soon to find out, wrong.

They do eventually get it off, but it’s not without a good 15 minutes of struggling—by the end of it, Cait seems both uneasy and vaguely impressed, mumbling something about how much her engineering skills would have been sought after by medical supply companies in Piltover. Vi almost doesn’t hear her at all, too caught up in staring at the empty space where her sister’s finger used to be to focus on anything else: a morbid, horrible fascination overcoming her as she remembers just how achingly close she’d been to snuffing her life out under her palm like a candle flame.

“Vi? Did you hear my ques—oh.”

Cait stops when she sees her face. Vi doesn’t want to know how she looks, doesn’t want to have to deal with any of the million thoughts bouncing around her head like balls in an arcade machine—but she can’t just give up now. Powder needed her…no. Powder might not need her, but she sure as hell needed someone on her side—and right now, Vi’s the best she’s got.

So quit your bitching and fucking help her for once in your miserable life.

Oddly enough, that thought actually makes her feel a bit better, and she puts the finger in their bag, fastens the gloves around her wrists (but not together—it still felt wrong, like she’s an enforcer and not her sister). She tucks Powder in, mumbles a quiet goodnight to Cait.

Lies there for she can’t tell you how long because, somehow, this felt like being 15, waking up in a shitty ass cell crying out for a sister she didn’t know for sure was even still alive. Like she’s 17 and looking over her dislocated knee in solitary, locked away again for “the unprovoked attack of a new inmate”, the third of the year. When she’s 20, and it’s been five fucking years and not a single person she’s talked to even knows the name “Powder” anymore and she’s staring at the fourth untouched tray those bluebelly bastards have just shoved under her door, the rotting stench from the first one so pungent it keeps her up at night—two nights, three nights—as she considers using it to crush her trachea like she’d heard her old neighbor do…only, every time she reached out for it, she remembers giving her that flare, the way she smiled, the way her innocent face used to be enough to force her off her ass and fight…and by the fourth day, she got over herself, started eating again. Pretends the walls are one of Silco’s people, or maybe the man himself, tires herself out from all the punching by the end of the night every night, repeats the same thing in her mind over and over and over again:

Powder is alive. Powder is alive. Powder is alive.

Then she’s 22 and free, lying in one of Cait’s fancy guest rooms with a piece of her heart fucking torn from her chest because she’s convinced Powder’s dead—that she’s been dead for a long time and that the only way she can even begin to atone for anything is by burying the husk that stole her sister’s face.

Then it’s months later and Cait’s torn out another piece and she’s wasting away in her apartment, too much of a coward to finish the job she’d started years ago and too into the bottle to care…and now…

Now, Vi watches Cait jolt across from her as she blinks herself back into existence hours after turning in (it feels like hours, anyways—but it’s not like there’s a clock to really tell) to Jinx screaming at something that isn’t there, her hands wrapped up in her scalp.

When Vi manages to soothe her back to sleep a while later, she keeps Jinx with her on the couch, settling her at her side with one hand wrapped around her wrist just like she had when they were kids, leaving the other over her eyes.

”No monster’s gonna get you while I’m here.”

Now, she knows Powder is alive, that what she’d thought was just a husk is actually her sister—that she’d always been, always would be no matter what she did to push her away—and it’s only now that she realizes this old, bitter truth…the one that Jinx had shared in the ruins of that cannery, but she hadn’t fully understood until this very moment:

Silco hadn’t created Jinx. Vi had—and slowly, but surely, she’s been ending her, too.

The entire time that Vi’d thought she’d been chasing the monsters away—the fake ones they made at night in their first home, the street punks who used to bully Powder, the enforcers who liked to search them near the lift, Sevika, Silco…Jinx…

She shifts her hand from her eyes to her hair, noticing even in the low light the way her bangs had been styled after his. She listens to her breathe, listens to just how fragile it suddenly seemed to sound, to how similar she’d sounded herself, lying on that bed bolted to the wall as she reached out with a trembling hand.

Well. Out of all those monsters…

Vi’s been the scariest one of them all.

Cait’s lying on the couch, pretending to be asleep as she listens to this melancholy tune Vi begins to hum, unable to make out her expression in the dark.

Vi had not taken it well. Caitlyn hadn’t thought she would, but…well, this is something beyond what she’d expected. Something more…she has no proof, but there’s just this look in her eyes when she speaks now, this empty, toneless quality to her voice…

She can’t shake the feeling that there’s something seriously wrong about all of it.

…which is a rather stupid thing to think, now that she considers it. Of course there’s something wrong: her sister is contemplating ending her own life and could very easily do so—likely even with their interference, because she’s far faster than either of them and has proven so on multiple occasions.

As Vi’s humming draws to a seemingly abrupt close, Cait ponders what they should do from here. That’s the next problem, in a sense: she really meant they—and for some unfathomable reason, this they had grown to include Violet’s deranged little sister. No…that’s not quite a fair assessment of her, anymore.

But when had anything in the past two weeks—six months, even—really been fair?

Caitlyn loathes it, and yet somehow, she loathes the idea of the girl injuring herself even more—particularly on her own behalf. In her mind, she’s been trying to justify it ever since she’d thought of this plan to team up with Jinx and her ilk in that storage house. They’re…teammates now, comrades in arms. That should be enough to want to ensure her safety, all grudges aside. But there’s this thing inside of her, gnawing at her chest—that grief, that desire for justice, this hate that’s been tearing her apart since she’d watched that empowered hextech charge wipe her mother and half of the Council off the face of the continent. It’s not easy to look past it, to brush it aside as she’s been trying to so she can even attempt to make this undercity army serviceable enough to oust the General…but it’s hard. It feels like she’s betraying so many people just by even being here: her mother, her father, Ambessa herself (even if that street went both ways), all of the people she’d sworn to protect as an enforcer of Piltover…Maddie…

She glances at Vi again out of the corner of her eye and sighs. Where had she even been going with this line of thought? She’d been so sure this was their only option—and it is their only reasonable one—but living like they have been, watching Vi suffer, feeling pity for a criminal who she’d been so certain did not deserve it, only to find she was more troubled and human than Caitlyn had given her credit for.

What a rude awakening that had been.

“You still up, Cait?”

She turns on her side to face the source of the voice. She’s not really sure why she does it: Jinx’s still, sleeping form blocks her view just as surely as it had before, and with the lamps unlit as they are, it’s not like she would be able to make out the other woman’s face, anyways.

But she turns all the same, words forming on her lips that come tumbling out of her mouth before her brain even registers she’d started speaking.

“This is hard, Vi. For all of us.”

What a useless statement that is. Why had she even bothered to voice it at all?

“Yeah, this really sucks, huh,” Vi replies, an unnerving emptiness in her voice.

“I…was going to ask if something is bothering you, but…,” she trails off, aware of how idiotic she must sound as Vi huffs a humorless laugh. “But that’s not…is there something else on your mind, Vi? Besides…well, Jinx, I suppose.”

She internally curses her own lack of decorum. She’s trying (with great difficulty) to keep that festering irritation out of her voice, and it’s only serving to stilt her speech. She’s just so angry: at this situation, at Jinx, at her own inability to hate her as much as she wants to—as she feels entitled to, at Ambessa for using her weakness to manipulate her into a marionette, at herself for dancing with every twinge of the strings.

Gods, at herself for so many other things. Why hadn’t she killed Jinx at that cannery, why had she afforded her the opportunity to surrender, why had she lowered her rifle in the ventilation shaft, why had she slammed the butt of her rifle into an old wound of someone who’d just saved her life, why had she thought herself so much better than all of the other enforcers to the extent that she’d performed an unauthorized excursion into the undercity as if she could magically solve all of the problems here by herself, why had she bothered putting those old work gloves on her mother's murderer when she fell back asleep that night in the warehouse, why does she have to feel pity for this monster that had ruined her life?

Why does the mere idea of letting that very same child person hurt herself in any capacity fill her with such dread when what she should do is finish the job herself?

Why, why, why?

“Something like that,” Vi answers after a beat, sounding as tired as Caitlyn felt.

“Vi…,” she shifts, unsure of what to say—what she even would be able to bring herself to say without sounding disingenuous.

Most of all, she hates the fact that whenever she’s around, Vi suffers. She’d like to say it wasn’t her fault—that none of this was her fault—but it’s a sham, an intentional misrepresentation of the truth she’d been able to hide behind in the confines of her psyche so she wouldn’t have to face the cold, hard reality of not only her current situation, but of everything she’d personally done within the last half a year to get here.

And she hates it.

The truth is that Caitlyn doesn’t know what to say to fix this—because lately, it seems she’s far more suited to breaking things than she is to repairing them. Her mouth opens and shuts as—ludicrously, irrationally—her eyes start to water.

I’m sorry, she thinks to no one—to everyone.

I’m so, so sorry.

When Vi wakes the next morning (Janna, she hopes it’s morning), she’s surprised to see that Powder’s already awake, her dull, unfocused eyes staring off into space as she steadily breathes in and out. Vi offers her a half-smile that she knows Jinx wouldn’t even be able to see with the way she’s sprawled out over her like she is before she shifts, moving to sit up and extricate herself from the couch without jostling her too much. It’s pretty easy to do considering how light her sister is, and in a few seconds, she’s wrapped Pow in the blanket she’d taken from the bed and propped her up against the other arm of the couch.

Vi runs a hand down her face as she places her feet on the cold floorboards below her, hunching over her knees with a long sigh. A few seconds later, she notices Cait sitting across from her and turns to look towards her, hoping she doesn’t look half so tired as she feels.

Judging from the pensive frown on the other woman’s face, she isn’t very successful.

Ok. Ok. It’s now or never.

Before Cait can start talking and Vi fucks this up again like she’s been fucking everything up, Vi takes a deep breath and clasps her hands over her legs, propping her elbows up on her thighs to support the weight of her head.

And then she’s talking, and she can’t get herself to stop because she’s fucking terrified in ways she hasn’t been in years.

“We should go. That boat, I mean—the one she keeps bringing up,” she jerks her head slightly to the side as Cait’s eyes begin to widen, “we should just—we can leave. Everyone fucking hates us here—topsiders, the Noxians, the trenchers. I think once we’re actually gone, she won’t want to turn back—remember how she almost agreed to that when I suggested it before…” she swallows, her throat suddenly dry. Yeah, genius, she thinks, her eyes shutting for a moment as she thinks, Keep bringing up that time she killed Cait’s mom—I’m sure it’s doing wonders to persuade her.

She opens her mouth to continue but Cait cuts her off. She doesn’t sound enraged like Vi would probably be in her situation, but it stops her in her tracks nonetheless.

“No.”

She sounds so fucking sure of herself—she’s got this confidence about her that Vi hasn’t had since she’d left that old prison cell behind for the one in her head—that for a second, Vi doesn’t know how to reply because her thoughts are scattered everywhere, like firelights on a summer night flitting about with no destination in mind. Cait must take that to mean she’s listening, because she continues while Vi puts up mental flypaper to capture the words she’d been trying to say, to sound like she had an idea that made actual fucking sense, that wouldn’t just get the people she loved all killed like most her plans tended to do.

“Vi, we can’t leave—I can’t just abandon the citizens of Piltover to the whims of a foreign dictator. Who knows what she’s planning to do with hextech, or Dr. Reveck…,” she pauses with a wince—almost like she’d forgotten something—before she continues, her voice softer. “And…I don’t think that’s what she would want, either—”

“Yeah, she’d rather stay here and kill herself—that’s so much fucking better,” her voice cracks and she starts tapping her foot on the floor anxiously, ignoring the rhythmic thumping in favor of the conversation before her. “I guess that’d work out just fine for you, though, huh?”

“That’s not what I—"

Vi scoffs, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel like it’s even herself that’s doing it—like she’d found some other place and she’s just watching this shitshow unfold without any power to stop it. “Really? ‘Cause you sure as shit took your sweet time telling me about it!”

That’s not fair, some part of her thinks from far away, she didn’t have to tell you—you even said so yourself. And you should have known.

Vi clenches her jaw—or something clenches it for her, maybe—as she waits. The thumping grows faster. The look of hurt that had flashed across Caitlyn’s face is finally replaced by something angrier—finally, because this is something she knows how to handle. This is easier, this made sense. Vi’s a fuck-up, people should be angry with her, enforcers should always be angry with her. The two of them should never have tried to coexist like this—all it’s done is fuck them both, spread some of Vi’s wonderfully shit luck around like the oil in water they were always meant to be, lighting a match in her wake so it inevitably burns just like the rest of her fa—

Vi freezes, suddenly overcome with a thought, somewhere in the spectator land she’d ended up in. Is…was this why Powder kept avoiding them, why she’d been such a little shit over the past two weeks? Because it’s easier—because anger’s easier than having to deal with other people, to risk setting fires and getting burned in the process?

Did she learn that from me?

The thought's enough to stop the thumping, but not to fully pull her back in.

Cait’s words, though, do the fucking trick.

“I can’t be like you, Vi! Not in this.”

Vi raises her eyebrows at her, a look of incredulity crossing her features. “I’m sorry, ‘like me?’ What the hell does that mean?”

“I can’t just look at how terrible things have become in the place I was raised and—and just leave or not feel any responsibility to fix it!”

Vi’s eyes widen in shock—and while Caitlyn obviously feels terrible about the way she said it, she also must not regret putting it out there, because she meets her gaze with an even stare of her own…though the anger in her eyes had significantly lessened.

“Are you shitting me right now, Cait? I didn’t just leave for no reason—your precious fucking enforcers kidnapped me and left my sister to Silco and his wolves! This place that I came back to is everything my father worked against my entire life—then he gets taken from me, my sister gets taken from me…,” Vi’s foot starts tapping once more and she forcefully snaps it back down with pressure from her elbow, far too present now to deal with the annoyance any longer, “I get taken from me. So don’t you ever say shit like that to me again!”

That hurt is back on Cait’s face again and she knows that this time, they’re a matching set, but neither of them can say what they need to because they’re both pissed and conflicted and lost. Vi turns away so she can…fuck, pack? Should she just—she can’t just leave Cait here, she won’t—but if they stay, then Powder…

Cait opens her mouth again—Vi can see it in her peripherals, but she has no idea what the woman might say—except then they both hear something quietly messing with the brass handle of the basement door.

Vi’s never gotten her shit together faster in her life. In a couple of seconds, she’s silently tossed Cait the pistol and she’s fished out those shitty punchers Pow’d brought them in the warehouse, glancing at Cait long enough to show her what she was going to do with her hands.

I’ll take point. Wait for them to open the door. Cover me from the base of the staircase.

And you know, fuck that argument, but at least when things got messy like this, they could save their shit for later.

Vi creeps to the wall, carefully makes her way up the stairs by stepping in just the right places to keep the creaking to a minimum. She waits for the telltale click of the lockpick, waits for the door to crack open the barest fraction of an inch.

And then she yanks the door open—

To the sound of a stifled cry, followed by a wet gurgling as a cloaked trencher tumbles into her…already dead, a hole ripped through his chest by some heavy-duty weapon that Vi doesn't see lodged inside of the wound.

As the door swings open all the way and she shoves the man’s body off of her to tumble down the stairs, more footsteps draw her attention and she raises her armored fists as an extremely annoyed Sevika walks into the doorway, eyeing her with a sharp frown as she takes in the weapon…and that of the person behind her.

Once Vi realizes that the hand of her prosthetic arm is covered in blood up to the wrist, however, she’s at a loss for words.

And since it’s Sevika, she has to be an absolute bitch about it.

“Fifteen,” Sevika mumbles, shooting Cait a glare sharper than the fingers on that prosthetic arm that she wielded more efficiently than any sword over Vi’s shoulder. Then she turns back to Vi as she wipes her hand off on her pants. “Are you just going to stand there like a moron or are you going to get out of my way?”

Vi looks her over warily (and angrily) as she stays rooted in place, watching the way that deadly arm of hers hisses in response.

“Why—”

“Why the fuck do you think I’d want to come down here? I’m looking for your sister.”

Vi considers throwing a punch, because she’s angry, because she knows Sevika would fight back, because she felt like she needed to protect Powder from the monster that Vander’s old friend had become…but she doesn’t. Instead, Vi walks down the stairs and throws her shitty trencher “gauntlets” on the coffee table before taking a seat next to her sister—because as much as she really, really didn’t want to admit it, her sister didn’t need protection from Sevika, because those two are on the same side.

You’re supposed to be, too.

She has to really focus to keep her foot from tapping with all this pent-up energy.

A few moments later, that caped fuck walks down the stairs, shooting Cait another glare as she steps over the body they'd all just ignored before she spots Jinx, still curled up where Vi’d left her. Exactly as she’d left her. It would be so easy just to leave this hellhole behind, to go build something else where things weren’t so fucking terrible, where neither her nor her sister or even Cait would be reminded day after day after day just how much they’d all lost or broken or fucked-up.

But…

Sevika raises an eyebrow, her non-metal hand coming up to snap in front of Jinx’s face as she calls out to her. Like Vi’d expected, she doesn’t react, and Sevika lets out a long, irritated sigh as she retracts her arm.

“Well. That’s new,” she mutters, looking oddly calm despite her apparent anger. Vi shoots her a look that has the woman rolling her eyes before she starts back towards the door, grumbling a quiet “I don’t have time for this,” under her breath.

Vi’d expected that to be the end of it, and she’s back to sitting in an increasingly awkward silence with Cait for a few minutes before the other woman clears her throat—except as soon as Vi meets her gaze, the door slams open again and Sevika comes back down the stairs, stalking back over to Jinx with some folded, black-and-red thing that her sister had obviously gotten ahold of (considering the neon sketches scattered over its surface) tucked under her right arm—

Which she just quickly unfolds and then chucks at Jinx like it’s nothing, the entire…blanket? No, it has sleeves—enveloping her small form as it settles in place.

When nothing happens for a long moment and Vi gets a good look at what it is, her anger comes boiling back to the surface and she clenches her fists over her knees—

And then Jinx shifts, her arm coming up to remove the overcoat covering her face, uttering a single, hoarse word as she struggles to find her way out of the fabric:

“Dad?”

Chapter Text

…she’s frustrated by something—frustrated that that bomb went off too early, frustrated that another guy almost lost part of an arm because she’d set the timer too low. She should have factored in the time it’d take for them to load up, she hadn’t thought the problem would ever be her bombs working too well—and now everyone’s paying the price for it again.

Everyone but her.

She scribbles another line, this one intersecting the others at as weird an angle as she felt herself shift to as she draws it, her face a canvas of her own self-loathing.

She’s stupid, stupid, stupid—and she’d messed everything up again—and now he—

“Jinx,” a voice calmly calls from the doorway. She’d heard him approach, of course, but she hadn’t expected him to talk to her—and to be honest, she didn’t really want him to, either. Maybe it’s because he’s never mad at her like he should be. She’s a screw-up, a bad luck charm, a jinx…and it feels like she’s always waiting for him to snap, to get so furious that he finally threw her to the side just like everyone else.

It doesn’t matter to her that they’re all dead now—they were still gone, and—

“Why did you vandalize my jacket?”

She blinks, looking up at him from the floor in mild surprise. He’s…not here to yell at her? He’s not even going to bring it up?

She stares at him as she thinks, her mind pouring over everything but the man’s question until eventually even his limitless patience runs thin.

“I have a meeting with a certain…bothersome individual in an hour, and now the overcoat I’d planned on wearing seems to have gotten into a rather serious accident with your oil crayon set. Care to explain?”

He doesn’t sound angry, or sad, or really much of anything except calm—because that’s just so easy for people to be, easy for everyone but her.

It’s not fair!

She grits her teeth and forces her gaze back to the drawing. It’s a big black splotch surrounded by rapidly fading colors as they grow out from the center like ripples in a pond, where the intensity is greatest at the point of contact. She doesn’t say anything, and for a time, neither does he.

“Are you not planning on joining me this time?”

The red snaps underneath her grip, his question making her jolt in shock. Surely…surely he didn’t mean that. She’d just ruined their last mission, sent two guys to the healer and blew up the wrong building—and she’d ruined his jacket! That used to be his favorite one, and now he can’t even wear it outside of the building…or maybe even at all!

He doesn’t really want you around, the voice whispers into her ear, making her reach for it with one hand to try and shut it away. You’re just his little charity case. He’ll get tired of you, just like the rest of them have.

She might be answering them now, but it’s hard to know for sure with all the buzzing—the lights and the whizzing and the jeering that comes with the voices and their stupid thoughts—but it all quiets down once a hand settles on her head, making her freeze.

She takes a deep breath. Lets it out. Tries to forget how she learned that trick, who she’d learned it from.

Everything starts fading out of focus, but she holds on to that feeling, that human contact over her own sorta messed up hair covering an even more messed up head as she slowly turns up to face him.

He’s crouched next to her, that ugly, defaced coat draped over his arm now making her feel more hollow than proud.

“I…I wanted you to be mad at me for that so you wouldn’t get mad about…today,” she decides to phrase it, blinking as she notices her vision blurring for some reason. At the soft sound of something hitting the floorboards beneath her, she glances down to see why: stupid little crybaby Jinx, at it again. She scrubs her face furiously even as he sighs, his hand lightly patting her head as she “composed herself”, he’d call it.

“Today was a fluke, and not even a particularly costly one at that. There’s no need to waste time dwelling on it.”

She shakes her head, aware of how pathetic she must seem to everybody else. His right-hand man (who’s not even a man) certainly seemed to think she was. She’d made it clear on multiple occasions exactly what she thought of Jinx’s continued presence, would have continued to do so had he not shut her up. He’s been protecting her, she knows—but Jinx is tired of being protected. She wants to help…but every time she tries, it backfires.

This time, she even means that literally.

“You shouldn’t keep me around,” she mumbles, her voice breaking as she sniffles, “Sevika’s right: I just mess everything up.”

He huffs a laugh before offering her a hand, and he pulls the two of them up together.

“I don’t recall asking for her opinion on the matter,” he says quietly, releasing her hand as he lets the jacket slide down his arm and into his own, throwing it over himself as he shrugs it on and begins to button some of it. Dully, she’s aware that must mean it’s cold out—he didn’t usually button it since he already had so many layers on underneath it, anyways. "You're a child, yet, Jinx—and despite this fact, you've already proven more reliable than a good majority of our people. But children make mistakes. As long as you learn from them, then you can make as many as you want. And one day, when you're older, you'll be able to use what you take from them to destroy anyone who gets in our way." He looks at her knowingly before he continues, a smile playing on his face. "Besides, Sevika's made a few of her own in her time."

As he shifts his weight to his other foot, the jacket sways in place, and she watches it move as she thinks about what he'd said. Secretly, Jinx thinks he likes the coat because it makes him look bigger—like birds puffing out their feathers. She doesn’t say that now, though: instead, she asks the question she actually wants to know the answer to.

“How come you’re still putting it on?”

He looks at her with a half-smile, his bad eye glinting in the low lamplight of the room. Her room. As in, one she got all for herself that no one made her do anything in return for.

“I admit I hadn’t liked it at first, but the colors are growing on me—and besides,” he adds, his smile growing wicked just like the monkey’s face on his chest—only, she finds she doesn’t fear the look like most other people he shot it at did, “if I can intimidate a man wearing this, I dare say we can accomplish anything. And that’s all thanks to you, Jinx.”

He waves her over to the door as he walks away, and she scrambles to follow behind him, amazed he could forgive her so easily like that.

“Hey,” she stops him, struck with an abrupt, but unshakable thought as she eyes the man who had given her a home, a fresh start, materials and tools and a workshop. A name. Someone who didn't care that she kept jinxing everything, someone who didn't just blow her off or call her crazy when she told him about the voices. “C-can I ask you something? You, uh, you can say no…”

He raises an eyebrow, looking humored at the sheepish way she spoke.

“That is how questions work, yes,” he pauses, humming thoughtfully, “well. Unless they're directed towards some of my more troublesome associates...but then, I suppose they don't stay troublesome for much longer, after that.”

He looks back to her, one eyebrow slightly arched as he waits for her to speak. She swallows, suddenly wanting nothing more than to just chicken out like she’s so great at—but something stops her. He’s not going to get mad, she thinks—and she might need to know this, because…

She takes a breath, letting it out as she forces the question past her lips before her teeth can close enough to stop her:

“Can I call you—”

“Dad?”

She looks around, but it’s all dark—dark like the shadows that follow her around, like the grave, like the black in his eyes—but as she brings her arm up to push it all away, she’s met with the light from several dusty old lanterns shining at her face.

In front of her, looking almost uncomfortable (or what passed for that, on her) stands Sevika, a less-pronounced scowl on her face as she watches her from where she’s…

Wait. What is…

“Why am I down here?” she asks, her voice rougher than it should be, her throat scratchy as she speaks—like she’d somehow gotten sick without remembering it.

That, among other things, she thinks about as she quickly glances around the room. Vi and the Piltie are also down here, and for once they’re both looking at her with the same expression—like she’s a glass dish some idiot left on the floor in a room full of barefoot toddlers.

Distantly, she wonders if they’re more afraid of her shattering or of the people she’d inevitably slice open in the process.

“Kid—”

She cuts her off, some feeling rising in her chest that only gets larger the longer she takes in this scene that had somehow not changed at all in seven years.

Or was it eight, now?

“I’m-I’m not supposed to be down here,” she reasons, ignoring the mounting hysteria in her own voice as she turns away from their gazes. She didn’t want their pity—didn’t want to have to explain what's happening when she doesn’t even know what’s going on herself. “We were in a meeting, how did I—why am I down here?!”

Sevika inhales sharply at that and Jinx doesn’t look away from the wall she’s facing until her eyes catch on her own hands and she notices both the work gloves from—from before that meant that something really is going on here and also that she can’t feel where that new pointer she'd made is attached to the stump of her missing one. Without waiting for an answer to her question, Jinx rips open the straps on each of the wrists and shakes the worn brown material off her hands, not surprised in the slightest when she finds the prosthetic removed from its place towards the center of her hand. It doesn’t stop a wave of discomfort from crashing into her, though—and by the way her sister shifts in her peripherals, she doesn’t do a good job of hiding it, either.

She almost answers when they call out to her despite her paranoia (because…because what day is it? How long had she been here, who brought her here, had something happened? The last time…she’d lost a week), but then with the absence of that bulky fabric blocking her view of the floor, she spots something resting there between the gaps of her fingers—

Oh.

Their voices become static in the background as her hands drop to her sides. It’s—it’s stupid, but when she’d smelled his stupid old-man cologne, she'd thought that maybe—that hopefully—

She bites the inside of her cheek, but it doesn’t help—not this time, not when…

Not now.

She tries harder to fight against this feeling that she’s being boxed in, that the world’s closing around her chest and blocking her from seeing anything besides that empty, lifeless jacket on the floor. He’d still worn it, even after she’d messed it up. He had a newer one made for him after that, but every once in a while, he’d wear it to a meeting and she’d try not to laugh at him from the rafters, and once it was over they’d review everything he’d talked about with her and she’d struggle to pay attention because that big green monkey face she’d drawn on it would snicker right alongside her and he’d scoff at her even though they both knew he didn’t really mean it—

She jumps back when something brushes her shoulder, pushing herself to her feet as she poises herself on the arm of the couch, her head reflexively snapping to the source of the touch only to find her sister standing about a foot or so from her with an outstretched hand—like she’d been trying to grab her arm or something—

“Don’t touch me!” she hisses, the words out of her mouth before she even notices she’s speaking, so surprised at the sharpness to her own voice that she blinks—which is good, because she can’t stand the hurt look on Vi’s face as she forces her eyes to look away because something about it reminded her of the look a younger face wore as she'd stalked away from her, a wrapped hand dripping with blood that used to be her own, back before she'd finally adopted Mylo’s moniker, back before that younger Vi kept walking and left her there in that alley, the scent of blood and burning flesh so thick it stuck in her nose for days after, where no amount of scrubbing would get the soot off her own hands even though there was nothing there—

Her hand finds its way to her temple because she’s got to shut this—this stupid line of thought down before another week passes by that she can’t remember. She forces herself to ask something instead—anything to make sense of this, to change the topic before she couldn’t anymore.

“W-What’s going on?”

She tries to slow her breathing down, tries not to freak out any more than she already is…but she finds she still can’t hear their answers as she hunches into herself, that pain in her head reaching her chest as it gets harder and harder to breathe—

But then something Sevika says catches her attention, and some of that static, the colors oozing in her peripherals, it stops.

“—Chross. We’re already going to be late, but—”

“Chross?”

Jinx's voice is a lot colder than it was before, and the caped woman has sense enough to look wary as Jinx’s head tilts to the side, the panic momentarily replaced by…a cold contemplation that’s frosty enough to lend ice to her tone. Mechanically, she pushes herself up to her feet, shaking her head as she crouches to pull his overcoat off the floor as she dusts it off, slowly starting to fold it the way he used to. They’re all looking at her, but it’s not like that’s fucking new, so she ignores it, locking eyes with Sevika when she notices that the oldest woman in the room hasn’t answered her yet.

Jinx isn’t really digging the look on her face, either.

“As I already said,” Sevika finally continues, her words much quieter than they were before, “the only pair of those idiots still kicking planned a meeting. They haven’t organized one of those since...”

Sevika trails off, and Jinx willfully shuts down the part of her brain that tried to figure out why because she already knew: can’t mention him right now, not to crazy ol’ Jinx. Wouldn’t want her to fly off the fucking rails again—

She's silent, for a while, her mind repeating her words on repeat so it can't drift anywhere else. Sevika seems to take that as a sign to continue, so she does, apparently fine with the fact that she’d have to repeat herself.

“They just want to talk, brat: there’s no need to get so damn twitchy about i—"

Jinx scoffs, letting his overcoat unfold again as she lifts the dense bundle of fabric into the air with one hand. “’Talk’, huh? Yeah,” she swings it over her shoulders, ignoring the way the Piltie tenses as she puts her arms through the sleeves, smoothing out the torso before doing up the stupid, fancy buttons so that the green monkey face would stare straight at anyone facing her. “Let’s go talk.”

“Kid,” the caped ogre says before she can move from her position in front of the couch (and cutting off Vi’s attempt at conversation), “I don’t think you’re grasping just how big this could be for our chances, here. The influence those two have over the north and western districts is huge—probably enough to stop the infighting, if we can get them to work with us. I don’t think they would have set this up if that wasn’t their goal…and if you kill him here, it’ll really fuck things up down the line.”

Jinx’s fingers crack when her hands ball into fists, but she waits for Sevika to continue instead of just telling her to go to hell like she wants to.

The caped woman sighs, but to Jinx’s surprise, she closes her eyes before answering her unspoken question, sounding extremely reluctant to bring up whatever it is rattling around her head as she opens her mouth.

Once she processes the words coming out of her mouth, well, Jinx can’t exactly blame her.

“Look, I don’t know what he did to the runt, but if we’re going to have any chance in hell at fighting back against the people that made the topsiders their bitches, we have to be unified. Jinx,” she opens her eyes, looking actually hopeful for the first time since…since someone made him go away, and she can’t turn away or shut out her voice like she’d been able for everything else going on in this shitty room crammed with all the memories she’s never found it in her to forget. “You have the opportunity to finally bring us all to the same side. This is our only real shot.”

Jinx bites her cheek so hard she tastes iron, her eyes burrowing into the wall, then the overcoat hanging loosely over her lithe frame because somehow, she’d never outgrown him—and that man was tiny. She takes a deep breath, then holds it, then internally laughs at herself as she releases it, wondering if the only family member she hadn’t sent to an early grave standing next to her knew that she’d stolen that technique along with their lives.

What can she say, she’s really good at jinxing things.

When she turns back to Sevika, the woman’s watching her with two conflicting looks on her face—like she’s a stick of dynamite rolling towards a campfire and also like she’d just kicked a puppy

“…fine. But we’re doing this my way.”

Sevika considers her words for less than a second before she nods, motioning her along towards the stairs—stairs she has never been happier to ascend in her life than she is in this moment.

“They’re offering us a seat at the table, here…but they haven’t said what they want—”

Jinx snorts a laugh as she stops in front of Commander Cupcake, holding out a hand to her for reasons she hopes don’t fly over her head like what happened the last time she did this. She ignores the look she shoots her girlfriend as Jinx looks over to Sevika, quirking an eyebrow at her choice of words.

“Yeah, no. Fuck that,” she starts, obviously irritating the older lady until she continues, “we are the table.”

Now she just looks confused—which, as far as Jinx is concerned, is something of an improvement.

“What?”

Jinx shrugs off her skepticism as she finally accepts her pistol back from the slowest Piltie she’s ever met before holstering it at her side (she has to brush the coat out of the way to do it, but it’s better than nothing), eyes scanning the table for that bag before she unceremoniously dumps the whole thing out (much to the two bluebellies' shock, she’s pleased to report) before she finds what she’s looking for slowly rolling across the edge of the old wooden surface. She wastes no more time with snatching it up, pressing the cylindrical shaft into the end of her stump until she hears that click that lets her know it’s time to turn it, and as it clicks into place again, she tugs at it just to make sure it’s really on.

For some reason, the two of them are weirdly transfixed on the whole process—and it eats at her already fraying nerves.

“I thought the first time was sorta justified—but stealing the same finger twice is a bit overkill, don’tcha think?”

None of them laugh at that.

Tough crowd.

She starts towards the staircase, but to her mild annoyance, Vi moves to block not her, but Sevika’s path, a look of determination plastered on her face that only serves to remind her of how exhausted she really is. The fatigue brings with it other things: things like the old Mousers stuffed away in that box whispering in her ear to quit while she’s ahead, the Whiskers hanging from that bunk bed reminding her of that night she’d left and never came back, of Mylo’s words on the lift back from their job.

First time down here with the new name, same old shit.

Her eyes catch on those goggles on the table and she swallows, remembering how weird his body’d looked without them on. Maybe if she takes them back, he won’t look at her without them anymore?

“Don’t,” he says, from somewhere behind her, his voice accusatory, confrontational in a way he usually wasn’t, “you won’t need them for that much longer, anyways. Let Vi have this.”

The other one—the other ghost of a ghost that used to live down here, too, the one whose couch she’d inadvertently stolen—laughs at that, and the sound is like nails on glass. She has to hold her head to stop the throbbing, her breath coming out in little pants that she can’t even hear over the blood pounding like the sound of cathedral bells at a funeral.

“Your funeral,” he adds, chuckling meanly at the way she clenches her jaw. “They’re all staring at you, you know—it’s ‘cuz you’re crazy.”

She didn’t need him to tell her that—she knows! The eyes are always on her now, and they never stop.

Someone calls her name and that scratching sound that continues as he laughs is so loud she can’t make out who. Some far off part of her is grateful she hasn’t seen the kid’s hat down here yet: that…she doesn’t—

“Jinx!”

Sevika. That’s Sevika.

“Hmm?”

The lady hesitates as Jinx forces herself to look over at her despite the way it makes a pain spike through her head, and she shifts her hand to rub at it before blinking, pulling it in front of her face in surprise.

When did I…

She shakes her head, turning back to Sevika with a tired frown that she sees reflected on the other woman’s face.

“Take a breath, kid. Focus; this won’t take that long.”

Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. She made a deal. She remembers.

Just have to focus.

Jinx slowly nods, letting her hand fall back to her side even though it’s wet with something she doesn’t remember touching.

Whatever. It’s probably not important.

Nothing is.

“Then why are you still here,” there’s a lilt to his voice, taunting her—but she can’t bring herself to rise to the bait. She’s got shit to do...

Right. Vi.

“Hey,” she says, her voice kinda toneless even to her own ears. Her sister seems to see that she’s being addressed, though, so it’s all the same to her. “Move. We gotta go.”

Vi looks between the two of them, from Jinx’s hand to Sevika’s hissing arm (maybe the weirdo just has a thing for prosthetics?) before she turns back to her, an odd look on her face that Jinx doesn’t really get until she speaks. “Is—is this what you want?”

Jinx stares at her, silently asking her to get to the point before Sevika’s limited patience got to Vi’s throat.

“To be down here, I mean—helping with all of, all of this,” she continues, vaguely gesturing around them with one hand. Sevikas arm gets louder as the other woman takes a threatening step forwards, but Vi doesn’t even spare her a glance as she finishes. “Is that what you want to do?”

Jinx sighs, blinking sleepily as she stops it—barely—from turning into a yawn.

“Why else would I still be here?”

For some reason, that makes her sister’s eyes widen even as Sevika’s close—but it’s hard for her to focus on why as her sister continues, that resolute expression back on her face as her hands ball into fists at her sides.

“Then I’m coming with you.”

Jinx doesn’t have it in herself to be surprised at that, so she levels her with a blank stare even as Sevika’s eyes snap back to the dummy in the edgy leather jacket, content on letting them sort this out hemselves as she just kinda…drifts.

Had she any extra fucks to give, she would have used them to not-so-politely ask the Piltie to look anywhere else.

What the hell’s so interesting about the side of her head?!

“’specially your head,” he laughs at her expense, getting to the punchline of his stupid, shitty joke. “Ain’t like there’s anything in there worth seeing.”

Her hands flex at her sides, but she forces them to stay down. Janna, anything would be better than listening to him talk, so she turns her attention at the two idiots in front of her, ball of meat vs. brick wall.

While she’s trying to decide which is which, she notices Sevika’s eerily calm demeanor—like she’s picking Vi apart and looking for something that, apparently, she doesn’t find, because next thing she knows, the lady’s shaking her head, opening her trap to spew whatever words Jinx already knows won’t deter her sister in the slightest.

It's at this exact moment that the one-armed wonder fucks up.

“You’re not ready.”

Jinx’s eyes flash a pink so vibrant it’s blinding, the light enough to reflect off of Sevika’s arm as that buzzing behind her eyes grows to a climax, a thousand screams and thirty shades of red temporarily knocking the air from her chest as she nearly drops to her knees.

She doesn’t, though, because now she has to fix this before it stayed as shattered as that day in her head did whenever she saw it in her dreams.

“She can come! Just. Just stop talking!”

There’s a desperate twinge to her voice that she fucking despises, but if she let them keep this up then it would get so loud she won’t be able to think—

”You’re not ready!”

She whimpers as her hands curl around her ears, but it can’t stop the sound coming from the past—a memory soaked in blood and rubble and death, a memory from this very room two lifetimes ago. Back when Powder drew her last breath along with the boys, one before Jinx was even conceived.

One where Vi still loved her.

“Kid—” There’s a warning in Sevika’s tone that she ignores just as readily as the way this new Vi calls out to her—

“She didn’t call your name when she had you pinned to that altar by your throat and you were begging her to punch your lights out for goo—”

“Shut UP!”

He finally stops talking after that, but the laughter continues, and with it the scenes from the past just keep flickering and flashing and banging, exploding just like she’d exploded the Council building and the cannery and Silco.

Like the kid had exploded herself.

She’s aware that she’s shaking again, that for the first time since she’d pushed herself off that couch, no one is talking, that her hands are still flat against her own ears…

Then why the hell is everything still so loud?

“Remember what I just. Said!” She spits, uncaring of the way her anger makes the words come out more heated than they should be, of the way they all look at crazy Jinx like she’s insane. “We do this my way—or we don’t do it. At all!”

She looks back up towards the pair, but not at Vi—not right now—and some tiny piece of her that’s more her is shocked at the way Sevika doesn’t look angry. Instead, her expression is just. Weird. She doesn’t get it.

It doesn’t matter.

“…kid,” the lady’s voice is quieter now, weary in a way Jinx felt in her core, that she hasn’t not felt in a long, long time now. “We both know that’s not a good idea.”

“Then you shouldn’t have said it like that!”

Someone gasps behind her—stupid fucking Piltie, why is she even here?!—but she doesn’t dare turn around because she’s not sure if she’d be able to stop herself from doing anything (something, anything, everything) right now. She thinks, maybe that Sevika must get it, somewhere in that thick skull of hers, because she offers Jinx a curt nod and uses her mechanical arm to pull Vi to the side, waving her up the stairs and out of Vi’s reach.

As Jinx shuts the door behind her, she finally slumps to her knees, resting her head on her thighs as her hands that are now both wet with something lace together over the back of her neck and she just.

Breathes.

Somewhere, another voice calls out to her, this one so much quieter than the rest that she has to strain to hear it:

“Have you had enough?”

She laughs, then, ignoring the way the people in the bar can probably hear it, ignoring the way it makes tears streak down her cheeks and soak into the fabric of her pants.

Almost, she promises him, coughing up some of the phlegm rising in her throat up into her lap as she yanks her neck down tighter, careful not to get anything on his jacket. After all, she'll be returning it to him soon enough.

Almost.

Chapter Text

Vi is going to deck Sevika.

It’s not a good idea—fuck, it’s not really even on purpose with the way she’d forcefully pulled Vi from Jinx’s path like that—but when her fists ball up and her arm starts moving out of reflex, she can’t say she doesn’t want to hit the traitor.

Then she hears Jinx start laughing, and her limbs turn into sandbags, weighing her down so much her knees nearly buckle underneath her. God, it just sounds so wrong: it’s loud and wet and obviously pained, and every few seconds or so she coughs, all without the sound ever stopping.

“Shit,” Sevika curses, her metal arm finally releasing her shoulder at the base of the stairs. She’s got an uneasy frown on her face, but though there’s a clear irritated note to her voice, Vi can somehow tell it’s not directed at Powder. Maybe it's her eyes: there’s a tired, conflicted look to them that makes the woman seem older than she really is…which is saying something, considering she was around Vander’s age.

Shaking her head, Vi starts back up the stairs, intent on soothing her sister’s erratic mood so she didn’t do anything…anything reckless—but a hand appears on the back of her jacket and yanks her back a few steps. She has just enough time for her gaze to flatten as Sevika releases her once again, fixing her with the same glare that’d made Vi freeze in the office.

Now it just pisses her off.

“I don’t know what the fuck you did to make her like this,” Vi bristles, her mouth forming into a snarl because even if Sevika is right, that comment dug too far under her skin to ignore—but the woman continues like she hadn’t noticed, “but you need to knock it off. Kid’s fucked enough as it is—and if your presence keeps setting her off, you won’t be around to do it much longer.”

“Oh, fuck y—”

Sevika’s eyes harden as some of that anger returns to her face. “We have to leave, and apparently, you’re coming with, so I’ll only say this once,” her arm hisses to life and Vi can hear Cait shift from further in the room. ”Do not fuck this up.”

Vi snorts before brushing past her, moving to open the basement door without a word to either of the women behind her because she can tell they’re both about as happy with this situation as she is. When she gets to the hallway, she’s surprised to find that Jinx has disappeared, too caught up with everything that had happened in the last five fucking minutes to notice that the laughter had cut out just as abruptly as it started. A sinking feeling rises in her chest and her anger completely subsides like air in the lungs after a blow to the stomach, replaced by a panic that has her running out into the tavern half-ready to start screaming her name.

Is…is she too late?

Fuck, surely she hadn’t—but where is she, then? She wouldn’t have just left Sevika after that whole scene, right?

Right?

She turns in a half-circle, willfully ignoring the gazes of all the lowlifes that had taken over the Last Drop as she frantically searches for her sister—but a second later, Vi spots her walking down the stairs from the office, her arms dangling by her sides where her hands are covered by the coat’s sleeves. She almost grinds her teeth at the thought before thinking better of it: don’t scare her off. Don’t scare her off even if she had called that backstabbing, murderous drug lord her father, even if she’s dressed in his clothes like he hadn’t kidnapped her and indirectly imprisoned Vi and just generally ruined both of their lives.

She looks away before Jinx can see the anger starting to reform on her face, and of course that’s when Sevika appears from behind her, striding past Vi with a pointed glare as she makes her way to her sister’s side like she hadn’t helped kill their father or beaten Vi half to the grave or fervently wished for Jinx’s death just months before.

You tried to kill Jinx after that, something in her reasons, and she was the one to help save her.

Vi closes her eyes for a moment, willing herself to get less angry at shit that wasn’t gonna help anything right now as she makes her way to their sides. Jinx’s head is still actively bleeding from a few different places—places where her nails had dug into her scalp and left little cuts in their wake as she’d panicked.

Jinx doesn’t look at either of them as she stands motionlessly at the base of the stairs, her eyes almost glazed over, empty save for the way they occasionally flicker to some seemingly random thing in front of her before the life fades from them again. She glances at Sevika once or twice, but doesn’t quite meet her eyes—and though she opens her mouth to speak, Vi doesn’t catch anything she says because when Jinx’s eyes flickered towards the traitor, Vi’s had, too and now her own gaze sits locked on the object in her hand: the kid’s hat.

She closes her eyes, some of her irritation waning at the sight, before she makes her way to Powder’s side.

Vi doesn’t get the chance to ask if she’s ok, or to maybe wipe some of the blood off of her face and hands, or to apologize like she really needed to—because even through this unshakable anger, she knows she shouldn’t have pushed her so hard last night—and almost as soon as she stops, Jinx wordlessly accepts the hat and swings it over her head, wounds and all, before she starts walking towards the door.

Sevika doesn’t immediately follow after her, filling Vi with suspicion until she gestures at one of the—

Vi almost stumbles at the sight of him, actually. It’s Ekko’s guy—or at least, it was his guy, before…before what happened at the bridge. She winces at the thought before shaking it off: now was definitely not the time for that kind of thinking, not when Powder still needed her help (ironically, her sister’s insistence that she didn’t only made Vi realize how much she did). The purple man, still dressed like the Firelight he’d once been sans the mask, seems to understand whatever Sevika had been trying to tell him, because he walks off towards the back of the bar with a curt nod, eyeing Vi a moment before looking away.

Vi doesn’t spare him another glance as she makes her way towards the door Jinx had already gone through, thankful beyond belief that she’s still there when she opens it herself. Her sister’s expression is relatively blank, but it isn’t vacant like it’d been in the basement, her gaze occasionally wandering around the Lanes as she stands there in silence. Deep, purplish bags droop under her eyes from her apparent fatigue, and it clearly shows in the slightly stooped way she stands, her posture even worse than it usually is as her eyes flicker to Sevika.

“Where’s it at?” Jinx asks letting a slow breath out through her nose as the door shuts behind the older woman, who snorts like the answer should have been obvious.

“Same place it’s always been.”

Jinx hums at that before turning down a seemingly random street and—

Takes off.

Fuck.

She’s obviously pacing herself—Vi can actually see her, for one thing, and there’s no wide pink arcs that follow behind her like fluorescent little streamers—but even then, it’s still a bitch catching up to her. She’s not winded or anything, but this little break they’d taken from all this running around has left her a little stiff, and she knows by the strain in her leg muscles that she’ll definitely be feeling it come tomorrow.

But that doesn’t matter right now.

It can’t.

Vi’s not really sure how long they actually spend running. The streets aren’t the same as she remembers them, and while she has a vague idea of the general direction they’re heading, it no longer means anything to her like it would have a decade ago. It sends a pang of something through her—this ugly, wriggling combination of pain and hurt, anger and sorrow and despair—because that street there? They used to head down that way when Claggor got too anxious for the main strip they’d usually use to get to Jericho’s. That rooftop there? It’s one of the first places she’d taken Pow to teach her the basics of parkour. Mylo used to hide in the dumpsters behind that run-down pawn shop—the same shop where Claggor never stopped apologizing that one time he’d balanced Little Man on his shoulders and ran under that hanging sign, nearly breaking his nose in the process. They’d robbed that herbalist—the one that isn’t even here anymore where a collapsed wooden building now sits vacant in its place—when she’d sold Babette that fake tea to help with her migraines that’d nearly killed her.

Vander hadn’t even gotten mad about that one.

She swallows at the thought, turning away from an empty alley that didn’t used to be empty, an old storefront-turned-duplex where a few families of the surviving miners had taken up residence all those years ago. Vi used to watch their kids until they were old enough to start fending for themselves at Vander’s behest. You couldn’t so much as walk by that house without someone hollering your way back when she was a teenager.

Now, the windows are broken, the doors boarded up. Faintly, she can make out someone’s shoddy attempt at patching the busted-up roof where a rotted-out part of it is caved in. Reminds her of something Cait had said about the Last Drop a little after they first met: ”that place looks like it has bodies buried in the basement.”

Looking at the duplex in her peripherals as they turn the next corner, Vi wonders if here, that’s actually true.

They make it almost to the nearest main strip that’d led to the Fringes before Jinx suddenly hangs a left, and Vi’s once again left guessing at where they’re going until she starts looking ahead instead of around them, too caught up in the memories of the past to see the here-and-now right before them…and that’s when she sees it: an ominous, older looking building that had obviously been modeled after some of the less-conspicuous one in Piltover, what with the giant stained-glass window peaking out on the side—a side that in so high up in the air that it towers over most of the other buildings.

And it’s only now that Vi finally gets an idea of where they are, considering the way she’d remembered seeing this very building back when she’d come down here with the strike-team, guns a-blazing as they’d tore their way through the undercity looking for, well, the teenager she’d just actively chosen to follow here.

So she can help her work with the people Vi’d been systematically trying to kill.

Fuck my life.

Jinx stops running when they’re a couple of blocks away, her eyes trained on the ground in front of her even though she isn’t really looking at anything. She wants to say something to her, something that could fix even a little of this, something that could pull her sister out of her own terrible thoughts, but she doesn’t. She’s caught between so many damn options, so much uncertainty about every one that she ends up choking on them just like she had back in that mineshaft.

It makes her want to bash her skull into the nearest wall.

Sevika glances at her over her shoulder, and Vi glares right back…and then, they’re standing in front of the tall ass building—and suddenly, it’s like even though it feels like it’d taken forever to get here that she needs more time to prepare. Vi’s got absolutely no idea what she’s getting into, she’s unarmed, they’re probably hopelessly outnumbered…and more importantly, she’s not so sure what Jinx will do if things take a turn for the worst, given what she’s recently discovered.

“You ready for this, kid?” Sevika asks, her face a tired steel that Vi knows is probably reflected in her own features. That only serves to make her blood boil, but one look at the blood that’d dried around Pow’s ear and temple has it fizzling out like hot iron that got stuffed in a tub of water.

Jinx blinks once, twice, rolls her neck a bit. Sevika’s eyeing her like she’s both realized that this is a terrible fucking idea and that they didn’t have much of a choice as Jinx buttons a couple of the overcoat’s buttons…in the wrong holes, adding yet another disheveled layer to her overall shitty appearance.

And then?

Then, Jinx wakes up.

That dull pink gaze sharpens almost dangerously, looking like it had back when she’d interrogated Cait in the bar’s office and scared the hell out of Vi in the process. She lets the hat flop over a bit more to one side and flexes her fingers before she starts towards the entrance, glancing over her shoulder to look at each of them in turn, starting with Vi.

“Don’t talk, Fat Hands,” she says without any heat…but the warning in her voice is still very real. It’s…not a threat, exactly (and even if it had been, it’s not like Vi would have taken it seriously), but there’s also too much of an edge to the words for it to be taken as mere advice. Vi only nods, easily acquiescing because she can’t be the one to add any more stress to her sister’s already overflowing plate, more for her own sanity than anything else. Jinx looks to Sevika almost as soon as Vi starts bobbing her head.

“How about…we let ‘em ramble, then I’ll start…aaaaand you’ll finish things up,” she says, popping the “p”. It’d be off-putting if it wasn’t her sister—there’s just this way she’s talking, this false-cheer and upbeat tone that doesn’t match at all with the serious look on her face.

Sevika raises an eyebrow at her as they make their way across the short entrance hall. “I thought you were doing this ‘your way’.”

It’s not a question, exactly, but it’s spoken like one all the same.

The girl she’s speaking to hums at that, nodding just once. “Yeah, this is my way—don’t worry, I’ll give ya’ a signal when it’s your go, ‘k?”

The gruff woman huffs at that, her expression twisting into something more wary. “The hell is it gonna look like, this signal of your’s?”

“Oh trust me: you’ll know.”

And with that ominous promise, Jinx turns back around, continuing with a snort.

“Let’s just get this over with.”

Sevika grunts, crossing her arms as they get in the building’s surprisingly well-kempt lift.

Or perhaps it’s not that shocking—this had been the meeting place of the wealthiest, most corrupt fucking bastards in the entire undercity: it made sense that they’d be willing to splurge on dumb shit like that, or the plush rugs they’d found in that one warehouse, or even the entire fucking building itself.

Her mouth almost downturns in her own distaste, but she quickly schools her expression, making the conscious choice here and now not to do anything to get in her sister’s way—and if that meant playing nice with a bunch of horrible, monstrous people that the world would be better without, then she would no matter how much it’d probably kill her inside.

She’d let Vi come, and that was enough.

It had to be.

The lift chimes lightly as they reach the top floor, that stained-glass window now an eyesore of a backdrop to this meeting that—it’s clear by the other two important occupants in the room—none of them wanted to be at.

The woman—Vi thinks she’s Margot or something like that—she’s got a real nasty scar jutting across her face from just under her left eyes down to her other cheek. It cuts a line almost completely through her nose, and as insane as it is that she’s wearing makeup, it’s even fucking crazier that it isn’t to cover up parts of the scar, but rather to highlight it.

Considering what Vi’d personally done to some of the fucker’s people, she can say that the lady’d gotten off easy. It begs the question, though : how the hell were either of these fuckers still alive?

Chross—she can’t forget him even had she wanted to: guy’s a Piltie who’d chosen to come live down here, using his parent’s fucking money to carve an asshole-shaped dent through the undercity which he used to take advantage of every unfortunate bastard that came across him. He doesn’t look any differently than their intel had described him as looking—which made sense at face value because they hadn’t actually managed to find the crusty old fuck during their raid on his warehouses…and it hadn’t been for lack of effort.

The part that’s tripping Vi up now is that the man’s livelihood had been utterly fucking decimated—they might not have had that much time, but they’d made damn sure of that after they couldn’t find the man himself—and yet here he is, looking no worse for the wear than he’d been in Cait’s pictures back before this entire thing started.

Regardless, they each have a good half-dozen guards behind them, both sides of which weird the hell outta her because on the one side, you got a large variety of women all in the strangest matching get-up she might have said she’d seen…if she hadn’t looked across the table, that is.

Seriously, what’s with the fucking pacifiers? Like, rationally, she knows that’s not what they actually are, but functionally, what could they possibly be for? She'd originally guessed "gas-mask", but she and Cait figured out pretty quickly that this wasnt true.

She’s having to really fight to keep the scowl off of her face as they walk to the chair—the single chair—at the end of the table closest to the lift. In hindsight, that made sense: none of the guards the ex-chem barons had brought with them are sitting, just the two stupid fucks themselves—but it does make Vi wonder how exactly this is going to go…and she can tell by the way Sevika’s eyes flicker to the girl to her right that she’s not alone in that line of thinking.

Of course, that all gets thrown out the window the second Jinx climbs onto the table, casually resting one arm over an upturned knee as she turns from side to side, eyeing each of the fucks to her left and right before she greets them like one might an old friend…y’know, if you fucking hated them, maybe. It’s not like she’s overtly angry or anything—it’s more the opposite, really: she’s too casual, too friendly and open and bubbly—but there’s a certain something lurking just beneath the surface of her tone that honestly sends a chill up her spine.

It's actually kind of impressive how absolutely off-putting it is.

“Hey. Long time, no see!” Jinx happily chirps, fingers wiggling at them as she shoots them a little wave with absolutely zero tension in her posture.

Chross hums at that, offering her a nod of his head, and Margot leans into her seat at the table, propping her head up on her chin as Sevika takes the seat behind Jinx…well, kind of behind her: Jinx is angled in such a way that she isn’t actually blocking any of their views of each other. For her part, the older woman looks unbothered by it all, though Vi thinks that’s less because she’s used to her sister’s strange antics and more because Jinx’d given her a heads up.

Vi kinda just wants to know what the signal’s gonna be: the sooner they got out of this fucking nightmare she’d admittedly brute-forced her way into, the sooner she could try and make things right—not that she had any idea how she was going to manage that, mind you.

She’s not going to leave her again—especially not to something like this.

It’s just kind of unfortunate that this means that, right now, she’s stuck standing awkwardly at Sevika’s left side and uncomfortably aware of what that implies, given the roles of all the other people standing in the room. The idea that she’s acting as a fucking bodyguard for the bitch that’d helped kill Vander and drove the Lanes into the ground soon after feels like it’s going to either make her throw up or throw hands, and she has to actually clench them behind her back to stop herself from doing something that she’d end up regretting, given her sister’s plan.

Her confusing, completely unexplained plan.

“So! What’s up? How’re things in, uh…” Jinx scratches at her chin, looking down at the table in thought as the two chem barons exchange a maliciously amused glance across the table…but the fact that Sevika isn’t outwardly reacting to it makes Vi study her sister a bit more carefully.

God. Sevika really did know her better now.

Her knuckles pop quietly behind her as she tries to process that information in a way that didn’t end up with one of them smashed through the table.

Vi forces her attention back on the scene in front of her as Jinx’s head pops back up. “Y’know, I actually don’t remember what you guys call your places anymore. But! That’s not important—you called this shindig for a reason, probably, so I’ll letcha’ get to it!”

She clasps her hands over her knee, her other foot twitching like she couldn’t keep it still…and oddly enough, that’s all it takes to make it—or rather, a very small part of it—click in Vi’s head: like, yeah, she knew Jinx’d been acting, but when they’d come up here, she’d thought that’d been more to distract them from her injuries or to try and appear normal (or at least, what passed for that for her in front of a crowd like this), but given how over-the-top it is…

Is she actually fucking with them right now?

Vi’s pretty sure that answer’s yes—and also that it’s working; she can see by the way they move and look at each other that they’ve somewhat dropped their guards…at least, about Jinx. She's not trying to trick them into thinking she's doing better than she really is, she's leaning into the erraticism they apparently knew her for, hadn't cleaned up her injuries, wore the jacket wrong, kept that faded oversized hat tilted over the side of her head. She sees it, but...

But why?

It's silent for a moment after that, like the drug lords don't have anything else to add to their greetings, or maybe they're basking in Jinx's perceived unpredictability. With the way they keep looking at Vi herself, though, she can’t say she’s surprised when the topic of conversation abruptly shifts.

“I see you’ve brought the traitor to us,” Margot drawls, a smooth drawl to her voice that makes Vi want to grind her teeth. She fixes the woman with a glare, but keeps it more subdued than she actually feels. It probably gives off a general annoyance rather than the impression that, say, she wanted nothing more than to bash the woman’s skull in with her bare fists. While Vi would like to retaliate, she’d also just promised Jinx she wouldn’t say anything, and she’s not going to further damage this tenuous trust that seemed to exist between them by immediately fucking it up now, so instead, she waits.

For her part, Jinx only grins. “Yeah, and?”

The chem baron’s delicate looking fingers tap the table’s smooth surface, the dust in the air enough to remind Vi that this room hadn’t been utilized for months. Similarly floating around the room is this stagnant kind of tension—the two across from each other clearly don’t share any love between them, and somehow Vi gets the impression that the only reason they keep glancing at one another is because they’re sizing each other up. That made even less sense than anything else that’s happened in the few minutes they’ve been in the room—hadn’t they called the meeting together in the first place?

The fact that they won’t just spit out what they want already is getting on her nerves—and maybe fucking Sevika’s, too, given the blank way she watches the entire spectacle—but it doesn’t seem to bother Jinx at all.

The drug lord hums, shifting her gaze back to the bizarrely dressed teen in the room with an air of disinterest that doesn’t match with the focused look to her eyes.

“And I must say, I’m surprised you’ve taken them in, what with the unfortunate way they’ve treated you in the past few months…well, you and the rest of our people,” she tacks on casually (though her eyes are anything but).

Her words make Sevika quirk an eyebrow besides her…honestly, the only reason she’s watching the woman’s reactions so carefully is because she wouldn’t normally trust her enough to let her within a few feet of her, let alone to stand directly behind her. She forces herself to tune back in once Jinx chuckles in response.

“Oh, that? I just figured we’d let bygones be bygones, y’know?” God, Vi’s glad she’d come in here prepared to keep her cool, because she has no fucking idea how her sister’d managed to say that with a straight face. It’s so convincingly nonchalant that even Vi half-believes it—and she knows for a fucking fact what a load of horseshit that is. “Oh!” She jolts, her sudden movement causing a few of the bodyguards behind the old ass man to shift until the chem-baron waves them off with a simple hand gesture. “That reminds me: could you all maybe stop sendin’ people to kill them? I’m getting’ real tired of having to pick ‘em off.”

“But how is it that you came to work with an enforcer of all people in the first place?” Margot presses—though the look in her eyes implies that she already knows. Plus, she'd also just dodged her sister's question entirely, so that didn't really bode well for the rest of the night.

“Wellllll, I think it’s really more like I’m just letting her stay around,” Jinx admits with a shrug.

“’Let her stay around’?” the woman to Jinx’s side repeats, looking lost.

“Sure! It’s kinda like how I let you guys stay around.”

“’Let us’?” the old man rasps, apparently deciding he’d stayed clammed up long enough.

“Well duh.”

The man scoffs and a few of his men lean more of their weight on the ridiculous canes they’re all carrying. “Don’t act like you have the authority to stop our enterprises: not even the enforcers could do that in a team…a team, I might add, that wouldn’t have been sent down here if it weren’t for you.”

Interestingly enough, the Margot woman shoots him a quick, stern glare from across the table, and it’s got Vi antsy, but Jinx merely cocks an eyebrow at him, either not noticing or not caring about his fellow shithead’s reaction to his words.

“’Authority’?” Jinx questions, apparently deciding to ignore the dig he’d thrown in at the end, “What’s that gotta do with this?”

Chross hums, sounding displeased. “Just because you’ve gained a bit of popularity doesn’t mean that you could do anything to hamper—”

He cuts off as soon as her arm is wrapped over his shoulders—and Vi hadn’t even seen her fucking move. The men behind him tense, but even they must have brains enough not to attack someone who had their hands so close to the guy’s neck.

“No no no, you got me all wrong here,” Jinx says, leaning in closer to his side, her voice taking on a chilling quality that starkly juxtaposes with that smile on her face. “I ain’t quite like you fellas—I don’t use a whole buncha’ goons of my own to get shit done for me: I get shit done for me. All this ‘authority’ and ‘popularity’ stuff, they can all take that and shove it on someone else,” her eyes finally narrow a bit, though her smile stays rooted in place, still somehow looking unforced despite everything. “’Cuz I don’t need it, ya know?”

She doesn’t move from his side until he dips his head in the subtlest of nods, pulling away before casually slipping back over the side of the table with a happy hum, her hand unconsciously coming up to fix the kid’s hat from where it’d fallen out of place. Margot looks between the other chem-baron and Jinx, this expectant glint in her eyes that rubs Vi the wrong way…and yet not even that is enough to completely erase the shiver still creeping its way up her spine.

Janna, kid, she thinks as she watches Jinx fold her hands back over her knee, what did that bastard do to you?

She hadn’t been like this before—like, Vi knew by now that she’d changed, had accepted all this violence and erraticism and panic…but this was something else. People aren’t supposed to be able to completely flip between emotions like this, or to completely conceal what they’re actually feeling from everyone else. It felt like nothing she’s said or done lines up with each other—like she was equally as likely to give them all a hug as she was to slaughter them in cold blood. Just what the fuck had Silco said to change Powder into someone capable of all of this? Don’t misunderstand her, here: Vi isn’t upset with her—she just wants her sister back and safe in any form she can get her in, and if that meant Jinx would be around for good, she’d happily accept that if the alternative was finding her in a ditch somewhere—but this took acting to a new fucking level, reminded her eerily of the cold way she’d introduced Cait to the bar not so long ago now (or at least, it felt like it was long ago).

Fuck, was it even an act?

It…it had to be, right?

“Great! So, what can I do for ya?”

Margot lets out a breath at that, shifting just enough to draw Jinx’s eyes. “Right to the point then. I’ll be blunt, here: the undercity seems to be rallying under you, but you’re no Silco—”

Jinx sighs in dramatic relief, whistling as she pretends to wipe the non-existent sweat from her brow…though the back of her hand does come back with a bit of dried blood that’s still crusted on parts of her face. “Don’t I know it.”

Margot’s eyes shift at that, clearly not expecting her to agree on this point. “…right. Regardless, everyone seems to be looking your way to signal how we’re going to go forwards regarding this nasty war business,” the woman continues, her eyes very carefully watching for Jinx’s reactions as she speaks. “Which brings us to the point of this meeting, if that’s what you want to call it: if you pick a successor—someone you can pass this burden of leadership off to, and that you’ll vouch for when there’s inevitably some…backlash,” Vi gets a sudden, clear idea of what this meeting actually is and has to really struggle not to cut in. “Then the infighting stops, we'll all be on the same page, and we'll no longer have these dreadful turf disputes Chross likes initiating so much."

Jinx blinks, a bit of confusion on her face as she looks between the two of them, cutting the man off before he can retaliate to the other drug lord's statement. “You…want me to pick a new Silco?”

It’s Chross who answers, this time. “The people respect you: they’ll go along with whatever you choose, and perhaps with a unified front,” Vi notices Sevika’s gaze flattens at this, “we might even stand a chance here. This fighting—it’s bad for business, you understand. The natural choices are sitting right in this room: people know who we are from our close affiliation with Silco, we’ve survived a targeted attack from the Piltover-Noxian coalition forces,” this time, it’s Margot that rolls her eyes…probably because the guy hadn’t survived shit considering he wasn’t even there when they sacked the place. “And we have the resources to help fund whatever battle plans the common folk choose to enact.”

Which means they’re not even planning on fighting—or at least, that’s what Vi hears. This is all some convoluted fucking long-con where one of them gets to come out of this war as the new underground fucking boogeyman. Vi sets her jaw, forcing the glare that she can’t stop at a wall instead of a person.

Jinx hums, that smile slipping from her face as she thinks over their words. A moment later, she shrugs, one hand reaching into one of the inner pockets of that graffiti-strewn overcoat, fishing out…a cigar—one that’s already been cut, by the looks of it. Vi half-wonders how old it must be if it’d been sitting in that musty-ass coat for all this time. “And you’ll go along with my decision?”

Margot smiles, all teeth. “That was the agreement, dear—besides,” she continues, resting her chin on one upturned fist, “This wouldn’t work at all without your support: no Zaunite would back it. You’ve got their hearts, and we’ve got the sway…so how about it?”

Her sister cocks her head, mulling it all over as she twirls that cigar around between her fingers. No one says anything for a long time before Jinx abruptly stops, looking between the two with a more neutral frown—almost like she’s bored.

“Alright then,” she says, her voice soft and contemplative, “since this is a monumental decision that should be made with the utmost care,” she says, taking on a tone of voice that Vi can only assume is her way of mimicking someone, given the exaggerated nature of it all. “I’ve carefully weighed our options and have come up with a method of choosing the next underground lord that is befitting of the station itself.”

Vi raises an eyebrow just as Margot smiles and Chross sighs.

Still does nothing to lessen the palpable tension in the room, all the guards and chem-barons alike appearing equally interested in the way Jinx ceremonially lifts the cigar in her hand and—

“Eenie—”

Oh god.

“—meenie—”

Vi’s gone rigid, because what in the actual fuck is she doing? This is not a good way to do this: she’s pointing a fucking cigar back and forth between two absolutely terrible people in order to decide who gets to be the next kingpin with a fucking nursing rhyme, what the hell—

“—miny—”

Had Vi missed what came next, she would have been as shocked as everyone else in the room seemed to be—which isn’t to say she’s not, but it has nothing on the completely frozen stares her sister’s receiving from all the other people here as, suddenly, the cigar pivots behind her foot-end first.

“—Sevika.”

The woman had gone stock still at the offering, not even bothering to hide her wide-eyed look or the way she gapes.

When no one moves, Jinx rolls her eyes and leans farther back, wiggling the object in front of her until the woman’s non-metal hand comes up to accept it, still so out-of-her-element that she didn’t seem completely present.

“That wasn’t—”

Jinx cuts the man of with a hand, and Vi’s eyes carefully watch the guards behind each of the chem-barons. The room felt a hell of a lot smaller than it had just moments ago, and she’s fairly certain everyone feels it…except, perhaps, the person still casually perched on the table.

Vi’s pretty sure her teeth are clenched so hard that, with any more pressure, they might crack.

“You said…sitting in this room,” she waggles up a finger, “someone people know from Silco’s time,” then another one, “that survived a fight with that strike team,” a third finger, “and something about resources and stuff, I think. I met all the criteria here.”

“How—what resources does someone like her have?!” Margot says incredulously, glaring at Sevika in a way that at least seems to catch the older woman’s attention. She gets an eye-roll for her efforts, but before she can even open her mouth, Jinx is answering for her.

“Easy: people,” she says with a shrug, looking at her four held out fingers like she’s examining her nails, “well, that and Smeech’s warehouse, I guess.”

“I’ve had my people stationed there for nearly an entire month by now,” Chross cuts in angrily, “she hardly has a claim to—”

“Ok buster,” Jinx cuts him off, “I ain’t really a fan of people lyin’ to me and all that: I know for a fact that that isn’t true…and even supposing it was,” Jinx continues when he moves to interrupt her, “what are you gonna do with a broken up old warehouse, anyways?”

“What do you think she’s going to be able to do with it, then, either?” Chross retorts, not bothering to acknowledge the fact that he’d been caught in a lie.

Suddenly the gross ass hair they’d found on that office chair way back then made a lot more sense.

“Well it ain’t like it’s gonna stay broken,” Jinx lets her hand fall back down to her lap, appearing more annoyed than anything else. Apparently, her answer peaks both of the former chem-baron’s interests, because they both seem to be studying her for a moment before Margot takes over the conversation.

“What is it that you mean by that?”

“Huh?” her sister turns back to the lady then, an unamused expression on her face. It screams something along the lines of you’re a dumb-fuck, which is a sentiment that Vi finds she can get behind even though she’s still reeling from how this night was turning out. How the hell had she planned all of this in the short time it’d taken to walk here? “I mean I’m gonna fix it up…just like I’ll get around to your guys’, if you can maybe stop tryna' kill each other long enough for that to happen.”

At the way the two of them freeze, Jinx snorts.

“You know the fact that your tanks are all busted to shit isn’t, like, a secret or somethin', right?”

Chross shakes his head, but Margot interjects before he can say anything. “You can fix them?”

The idea that Vi’s indirectly helping put that shit back on the streets makes her nauseous.

“Well duh,” she says, waving them away dismissively. Sevika, for her part, is still staring at the cigar in her hand like she’s debating whether or not it’s full of poison.

“And how do you expect us to believe that?” The crusty fuck spits, his anger from being passed over for the title of “overlord” seeming to steadily show as rage.

Her sister shrugs, letting her arm fall back on her knee. “I don’t really care if you do or not…but I guess if you want proof, I’ll have Smeech’s old ones up ‘n running within a few days.”

She sounded so sure of that. Just how the hell did she—

“How do you even know how to do that?” Margot says, eyeing her with significantly less hostility than she had before Jinx had revealed a potential return to her former chem-baron status.

“You guys sure don’t pay attention,” Jinx grumbles, looking annoyed. “Who the heck do ya’ think fixed ‘em up for Silco?”

The two chem-barons exchange a look. “The Doctor.” They say this like it’s supposed to be obvious, like any other answer would be unthinkable to even suggest. Jinx rolls her eyes.

“That guy only ever cared about making the most potent product,” she muses, glancing at a spot on the wall where the paint had chipped. “So beyond actually installing the original hardware—which he mostly had other people do for him anyways—or makin’ upgrades every once in a blue moon, he wasn’t really involved in any sorta maintenance work. You guys know: you have your own mechanics and the whatnot, too.”

Margot tilts her head, looking as if she’s re-evaluating her. “Yes, but the few who weren’t killed in the attack,” she spits that word, a sharp glare sent Vi’s way that causes Vi to flatten her own gaze before the woman continues, “haven’t been able to do anything to fix them—they’re irreparably damaged—”

“Nah, I bet your people just suck.”

Chross shakes his head in irritation. “This is all besides the point: if she actually can fix them, we’ll know soon enough,” he says, looking between the two before his gaze settles on Sevika. “Why is it you think his lapdog will be a good candidate for something as important as this?”

Jinx hums, her index finger coming to rest on her chin as she thinks (or at least, she pretends to), “Well, she’s survived this long around me—and considering the whole track record I got goin’, I figure that probably means she won’t kick the bucket before this whole party comes to an end, ya’ know?”

The two chem barons look at her blankly…and while Vi is not at all happy with this turn of events, she’s at least still having a hell of a time watching Sevika try and keep the incredulity off her face.

“If you know as much as you’re implying you do,” Chross continues, eyeing her carefully, “then you know we lack the manpower to continue operations at full production even if everything were working up to standard.”

“Weird: there didn’t seem to be a shortage of ‘em earlier today when we found another guy trying to play assassin,” Jinx says, her voice carrying a steely edge to it that doesn’t mesh well with the casual way she sits, the bored expression on her face.

“…those weren’t our personnel—”

The teenager cuts him off. “Oh, I know: they’re contract killers—some of ‘em have even been stupid enough to carry their papers with them,” she adds as an afterthought. Chross and Margot exchange a glance again, but both are soon drawn back to Jinx’s face. “Buuut I’m sure we won’t have to deal with any more of those once we’re all friends after this, right?” Her eyes narrow a bit and Chross shifts in his seat. “After all, it wouldn’t be very friendly, sending trained killers after each other like that…I bet you wouldn’t really like it if we did that, huh?”

There’s a pregnant pause before she continues, stifling a yawn before glancing at the stained glass window before them.

“We’ve got lots of people to fix that…but I’m not actually gonna let you have any of ‘em unless you stop grabbin’ up kids for the little mining gig you got goin’ on. I know you're both running real low on your shimmer stocks,” is that why they still had this much influence? They had barrels of this shit hidden away somewhere? "But that sorta thing ain't a real acceptable solution if we're gonna be pals now, got it?"

Chross scoffs, but when Jinx fixes him with a sudden, hard stare, he end up looking away.

So that’s why she didn’t like him…Vi wonders, briefly, if that’s how she’d met…

She shakes herself out of that thought, about as willing to relive the memories tied to it as Jinx apparently was.

“What makes you think we’ll even go along with this?” Margot asks—though interestingly, she looks more intrigued than hostile. Meanwhile, Sevika starts digging through her pockets for something, her brow furrowing when she can’t find what she’s looking for. With the cigar between her lips, it doesn’t take a genius to guess what that might be.

“See, here’s the thing,” Jinx starts, eyeing the woman with a half-smile that still somehow actually reaches her eyes. “Silco always said you lot were a ‘necessary evil’,” she turns and eyes different things in the room like a curious kid, her childlike action a total disconnect from the threatening words leaving her mouth even though her tone is as light as it’s been since they’d stepped in. “But he’s not really around anymore—and I’m not really all that convinced that we couldn’t just,” she claps her hands once, smiling a bit wider when the man at her side flinches, “replace you or somethin’…’cept, that kinda sounds like a lotta work, so!” She puts one of her hands on her hip, ignoring the way that both of their eyes flicker to where her pistol sits nearby her fingertips in its holster. “Here’s what I’m thinkin’: how ‘bout you just both start listening to ol’ Lefty here and gettin’ along for realsies, and then I don’t gotta, like, interview people for a couple of spontaneous job openings. You do that, and I’ll fix up all your stuff before you lose so much cash that you starve to death, and everybody's happy. Sound like a plan?”

The two chem barons look at her for a long, tense moment before—finally—Margot sighs, offering her a nod that Chross soon reluctantly mimics as well.

“Neat!” Jinx says, fishing something that Vi can’t make out from her overcoat until the flame flickers to life a few inches from Sevika’s face…her “signal” abruptly clear to both her and Vi as, hesitantly, the older woman shifts and uses the flame to light her cigar.

Vi’s stomach turns.

Jinx abruptly pushes herself off of the table after that, coming behind Sevika to lean against the back of her chair to face the lift as she casually pulls an oil crayon from her jacket pocket to color on her prosthetic finger…but the actual meaning of her presence there isn’t lost on anyone in the room.

Sevika spends the next twenty minutes or so going over logistics, and the other two in the room very reluctantly agree to part with a huge percentage of their profits from…from future shimmer production in exchange for manpower and Jinx’s assistance in repairing the tanks that Vi had spent so long destroying.

She swallows down the bad taste in her mouth, noticing the way Jinx glances at her only as her head turns away.

What the hell did I just sign myself up for, here?

She supposes, when this meeting finally ends and she gets the chance to actually talk to her sister, she’ll finally know.

When they get about halfway down the lift, Sevika puts the cigar away, having snuffed it before they got in the enclosed space. Jinx isn’t looking at either of them, though—instead, she just looks tired…but that doesn’t stop Sevika from turning to her, unable to withhold the question on her lips:

“How the hell did you do that?”

Jinx blinks once, half-shrugging a shoulder before going quiet again. It almost makes Vi reach out to her, because as much as what she’d just done had unsettled her, this was somehow so much worse—but to both of their surprises, after another couple of seconds, she continues, her voice quiet and almost toneless, that bravado from before gone just as abruptly as it’d come:

“Told you already: we are the table.”

Chapter Text

Vi can’t say she’s surprised when Jinx starts walking in the opposite direction they’d come here from as soon as they make it out the door.

She’s not surprised when the asshole traitor turned head-fucking drug lord behind her calls out to her to ask where she’s going, not surprised when Jinx’s answer is “out” like it always is, not surprised at how fucking dead her voice sounds…

But she is surprised when—as Jinx’s eyes flash a brilliant pink and before Vi can interject—Silco’s newly chosen replacement catches her by the shoulder before she can get any farther away, her hextech-fueled arm hissing as it activates.

“Look, kid,” the woman starts, her face more tired than unkind, “I don’t get what the deal is between the two of you, but you need to get your shit figured out because whatever was going on with you in the basement wasn’t fucking normal, even for you.”

Vi blinks, staring at Sevika like she’d grown a second head, and Jinx just shakes her own…but the caped-woman isn’t having it. It’s probably for that reason she’d grabbed on to her with that prosthetic hand instead of her uninjured one in the first place: maybe Jinx could have pulled herself from her grasp on a normal day, but Vi doesn’t think she has the energy for it right now…and Sevika seems to know it. She hauls the teenager back a few steps and presses her into Vi—something that Jinx doesn’t even look annoyed about as she just kinda.

Lets it happen.

It’s twisting Vi’s stomach for completely different reasons than it had in that meeting, and suddenly whatever fucked-up shit she’d just watched her sister do seems much more tolerable than the utter surrender that this feels like. It’s maybe because her focus is so targeted on Pow that it doesn’t immediately click that the caped woman hadn’t looked disgruntled or hostile like she normally does (particularly around Vi), hadn’t shoved Jinx or used any more force than necessary, those metal fingers not even leaving a mark on the pale skin they encircle.

Vi doesn’t need to be told to take her by the arm—she’s got the feeling that Jinx would possibly rather die than have this conversation, and she’s not convinced that if she lets her go now, that isn’t what she’d set off to do. Vi shoots Sevika a wary look that the woman only rolls her eyes at before she starts walking away. Fuck, had she just—did that bitch actually just help her?

This is getting Vi all kinds of fucked-up.

Instead of dwelling on it before she drove herself mad, she starts walking the same way Jinx’d been heading, all too aware that the chem barons and their lackeys could start oozing out of the building they’d just left at any second. Jinx just lets herself be pulled along, either unable or unwilling to spend the energy it’d take to bolt as they walk, one of Vi’s hands still firmly curled over her upper arm. She absently notices, when the overcoat she's wearing slides back down her shoulder, that the stitches in that shoulder wound of hers had been removed at some point, that it’s mostly healed now, the previously marred flesh now pink and slightly tender looking instead of its past angry red. Wants to ask her about it, but…

Well, there’s more important things to talk about, isn’t there?

They end up taking a real funky route to get to a somewhat secluded, dead-end alley several blocks out—and Vi’s careful to keep them away from the likely routes either chem-baron would use to crawl back to the holes they’d crawled from. It’s only here that she finally stops, doing now what she probably should have done last night instead of raging at her sister:

She pulls her in for a hug, pressing her head into her shoulder as her other arm wraps around her back.

Jinx’s breath hitches as she realizes what’s happening, but to Vi’s immense relief, she doesn’t try to pull away.

“I’m so sorry, Powder,” she says, her voice soft and tired, but as authentic as she’s ever been in her life. The girl still hasn’t relaxed yet, instead opting just to stand there, her barely-audible breath like music to Vi’s ears because it meant she’s still here, that Powder really is alive, that Vi hadn’t fucked this up beyond repair yet like she had with everything else. The thought makes her arms tighten around her, and as terrified as she is, she finds she can’t stop her stupid tears as they flow from her cheeks and she shakes, holding the little kid she’d lost that isn’t so little anymore as close as she can because it all suddenly felt so fragile.

“I don’t even know what to say now,” Vi admits, her hysteria more in control of her words than her limited sense of reason. Powder says nothing, still stiff as a board in her arms. “I love you so much that the thought of losing you again—it fucking terrifies me,” she sniffles, feeling as Powder—against all odds—somehow tenses even more. “I don’t honestly have any right to ask anything of you, but please, just…just don’t…” her voice cracks as she trails off, and she takes another breath, but...

Fuck, she can’t even—it’s like someone’s wringing out her heart like it’s a fucking washcloth, she can hardly even suck in enough air to breathe—just. FUCK!

She couldn’t have stopped it here, even had she wanted to, this way she’s now sobbing into Pow’s shoulder while she’s supposed to be the strong one—the one that could protect her from anything, the one that would always be there for her just like mom’d asked her to, like Vander’d expected her to. And all the while, she can’t tell if Powder’s even really here or if she’s stuck in some awful little place in a mind that hadn’t been as fractured once, before Vi’d broken her only promise to the woman whose vacant stare as she lay dead on that bridge will forever haunt her memory. To the man who’d died not once but twice protecting them both, all because she couldn’t control her fucking anger any more than she could control this ugly, twisted despair that’s eating away at her soul in much the same way.

It feels like she’s drowning—like they’re aboard a ship that’d slowly started sinking the moment Vi’d left her kid-sister in that alleyway, and there’s nothing she can do to get them out of there, or at least save Pow. And now? Now, Powder’s trapped below-deck, too exhausted to bang on the hatch anymore so someone can let her up because there’s been no one around to listen for so long that she’s convinced no one ever will, and it’s all Vi’s—

She freezes when—for the first time since the compound—Powder hugs her back, her hands slowly, almost hesitatingly curling around around her back before she finally cuts in.

“D-don’t say that, don’t—I can’t,” Pow takes a deep breath, shuddering as her grip abruptly strengthens and she holds onto Vi tighter than she’d thought possible. ”I can’t—"

Pow cuts herself off, burying her head into the crook of Vi’s shoulder, that hat pulling up off her head some as she sobs—and for all Vi’s wanted to be there for her, for all she’s been craving this confirmation that she’s actually here, she has no idea what to do now, no idea what to say that could possibly fix this…

And then she realizes something that she probably should have a long, long time ago.

Maybe, she can’t fix this—not with a few little words, not by beating up the monster making her sister cry even when that monster is herself…maybe there’s no quick solution, nothing she could do to magically erase all her problems away…

But she can listen.

So instead of trying to fix things, instead of running off like she’s fifteen again and thinks she’s got the power to make the world spin the wrong way on its axis just with her fists alone, Vi doesn’t do anything.

She waits…and eventually, Powder speaks.

“I didn’t mean to kill them—I, I know that doesn’t matter, I know you don’t care, I know I’m a jinx and that you hate me and that I can’t make it better o-or bring them back, but I didn’t mean to and I’m sorry!” She says, her face hidden under the hat and her proximity. Vi almost cuts in, because she’s needed to say something about that for a long time now…but she stops herself, noticing the way Pow starts up again. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save Vander, or that I made you fight your girlfriend,” Vi stifles a sigh, smoothing her hair with one hand as she continues. “I’m sorry I killed Ekko,” Vi shuts her eyes, but doesn’t stop her. “I’m sorry that I keep breaking everything, and that I can’t be who you want me to be. But I can’t keep doing this anymore, Vi—I can’t keep messing things up for everyone I care about.”

Vi runs her fingers down her hair, vaguely reminded by the way their mother used to do it with her. Vi gets the sense there’s something she hasn’t said that she needs to get off of her chest—something that Vi probably won’t like and that isn’t easy to speak out in the open air. So despite the tears and snot that are most definitely drenching her jacket, she waits.

“You’d be better off without me.”

Her hand stills and Powder takes that as an opportunity to push her away—or maybe as a rejection on Vi’s part—but now that she knows what the problem actually is instead of jumping to 80 different wrong conclusions like she always does, Vi finally figures out how to say what she means:

“Powder, there’s not a single version of the future that exists where I’d be happy without you in it.”

Her sister stops trying to break away, then—lets herself be pulled back into the embrace, lets Vi say everything she’s been dying to say to her for nearly a decade. Like her sister before her, after she starts, Vi doesn’t stop.

“Listen to me, Pow,” her voice is soft, no anger left in her bones to fill her tone from that wellspring of hate she’d slowly filled after that night on the bridge that had, for this moment alone, gone dry. “There’s nothing on this planet that you could say or do that would ever push me away for good, alright? I’m not going anywhere—not now, not ever—and the only reason I did back then was because I was scared…and I don’t mean of you.” Powder looks up at her then, actual surprise coloring her face because Vi’d brought this up, not her. “You’re not a jinx—hell, I’ll call you that if you really want, but it ain’t because I agree with it—you were just a kid, and you didn’t cause that fucking mess to begin with. I just—I saw what I did to you and thought about what I was saying and I—the blood on your face that I put there…there aren’t enough apologies in the world that could make up for that.” Vi looks down into her eyes and finally lets her pull away, turning as she moves to settle against the wall…and to her relief, Jinx follows suit, leaning back with her arms crossed about a foot away. “Do you want to know everything? About what happened that day, I mean?”

Pow looks at her almost nervously, waiting a long time before she answers with a question of her own. “You mean after—after you left?”

Vi suppresses a wince, but offers her a nod…and after a few moments, she tells her story—the one no one had ever really asked to hear in full, nor had she ever offered to share. She tells her about trying to go back to her, about Marcus and the rag and the boat ride she doesn’t remember. She tells her about waking up in a cell alone, on a floor devoid of anyone else, of the way she’d been kept in solitary every time someone important came to visit the prison without any explanation. She told her about all the times she’d wanted to disappear, about the nightmares she had, about the way she’d chewed her nails so much they bled and the skin around them peeled as much as the callouses on her knuckles. And then she tells her about the few, actually good moments where she’d beat the pulp out of one of Silco’s ex-people, about unlucky Lucky and of the way she’d thought about snapping Cait’s wrist for being stupid enough to get that close to her when they’d met.

She talks, and Jinx listens, and eventually, they sit in silence, a lost (but not empty) look in her sister’s face as she considers the words.

She toys with going on, but doesn’t—gets the feeling there’s more Pow wants to say that she hasn’t yet, wants to hear everything she’d kept bottled up like this so she didn't feel like she had to…

She swallows, forcing her thinking to something else. She’d like more than anything to pull her into another hug because—with her right there like that, right in her arms and breathing—she’d know for certain that Powder’s still alive…but she doesn’t. She also wants to turn around, punch those shimmer-dealing fucks so far into the dirt they’d wake up in Shurima, but she refrains from that, too. This isn’t just about what Vi wants…and if she’s going to stick around here like Jinx very obviously is, she’d have to accept that. It didn’t mean she had to agree with every choice she made—and fuck, after tonight, there’s a few that are seriously going to eat at her—but it does mean that she’s gotta figure out how to express all of this without blowing up the second she starts talking…not that any of that really matters to her at all when her sister’s life is hanging by a thread like this.

If Vi had to get her hands a little dirty, if she had to do some frankly fucked-up shit like Jinx was planning on doing herself in order to help keep her around, she’d do it in a goddamn heartbeat. Maybe eventually, when they both calm down a little more and Pow’s in a better place, they can have a real conversation about what all of this really means—but after today, after last night, for better or worse, Vi’s made her choice.

Caitlyn’s not gonna like it, but she’s also the one who’d come up with this plan in the first place…and really, how much say do either of them actually have here?

When the silence stretches on past the invisible line of her own sanity, Vi turns back to Jinx with newfound resolve…only to find her eyes focused on something far away. It makes her panic for all of a second until she notices the subtle difference between this look and the one plastered on her face from the basement or the warehouse: this one’s…it’s not empty or anything, it’s just…distant.

When she finally speaks, the words are soft, toneless, and brittle, her sister’s voice hoarse enough that Vi makes a mental note to get her some water when this was over.

“I wish you hadn’t become an enforcer,” there’s no heat to her words—she doesn’t even look at Vi as she speaks—but they burn her all the same. “I was in the arcade, you know—when you guys were around here lookin’ for me?” her hand twitches to gesture to their surroundings with far less energy than normal. Vi waits, balling one of her hands into a fist, the pain helping her focus on the present. She wonders, as Pow continues, if that’s something she’d picked up from Vi, too. “I…accidentally left his goggles there, and I only noticed when you…,”she trails off, her fingers twitching as she blinks. “But now I can’t—I mean, sometimes I see you and I see them on the bridge, the ones with the gas masks—” she cuts herself off when her voice breaks, and Vi resists the urge to reach out to her, more than a little convinced that that might make things worse. Her sister takes a shuddering breath in, closing her eyes before letting it out. Vi stays silent, waiting to see if there was more to this before responding…not that she knows what to say, anyways. Eventually, Jinx settles back down again, her gaze somehow farther away than it had been before.

“I took care of the one from back then—the guy who caused it all,” her voice is hardly above a whisper now, almost like she’s telling Vi some secret. Even as she goes on, Vi doesn’t have the slightest clue what she’s talking about, and she struggles to stop her own face from contorting in confusion. “It…took a while, but I did—broke right into this retirement place and slit his stupid Piltie throat. You don’t have to worry about it anymore,” her voice gets somehow smaller, shaking with an emotion Vi can’t really decipher as she finishes, “they don’t, either.”

It's hard not to ask about it right now, because whatever she’s talking about had obviously been eating at her…but the way she said it…that vulnerability there is ultimately what stays her tongue. Somehow, some part of her knows now isn’t the time to ask about it—she has to get her home, convince her to stay down in the basement with them if she can so Vi doesn’t spend the night wondering if she’d ever see her again—and she can’t do that if she upsets her so much that she wanders off. Vi doesn’t think she can stomach another night of Pow coming and going again, coming back with more injuries each time like she had that night they’d made a deal with Sevika. For a while, Vi thinks she’s done, but then she notices the way her lip trembles and she starts crying again, slipping down the wall to curl into a ball.

“I miss her so much.”

Vi winces, then settles down next to her, letting one arm dangle from her upturned knee. She doesn’t bother asking who she’s talking about, her sister’s hand curling around the brim of that hat where it still sits on her head, effectively hiding her face. Her prosthetic finger makes little clicks against it in time with the shaking from her own still form. It makes a pang of something awful shoot through Vi’s chest, but she doesn’t dare get any closer yet, not keen on repeating last night’s mistake. They stay there for a time, pieces of Vi’s soul ripping out with every hitched breath, every sob that racks her small frame as she waits for her sister to cry herself out. It probably doesn’t take more than a few minutes, but it feels like an eternity—had she been able to take just a fraction of her pain away for even a second, maybe she wouldn’t have felt as helpless as she does now, listening to Powder sniffle as she finally wears herself out. She tilts her head back up, then, but she doesn’t look at Vi when she speaks, her eyes trained on the wall in front of them.

“I don’t want to stay here anymore, Vi,” her tone is hollow, her gaze as dead as it had been after she’d left the meeting in Vander’s old office in the tavern and she’d come back looking so fucked up. Vi gets the distinct, terrifying impression that if she let her go now, she wouldn’t come back at all.

“I know, Pow,” she replies, her exhaustion plain to her own ears. “But…can you try? For me?”

She feels terrible about asking her this—feels worse that she even has to ask—but she’s not sure what else to do. She can’t realistically stop her from…from doing something bad (she doesn’t want to put it into words, can’t). If she really wanted to…leave, then Vi wouldn’t be able to make her stay—so the only way she can think of to help her stick around is getting her sister to agree not to go anywhere. Powder’s expression cracks at her question, and as another tear slides down her cheek, Vi’s struck by the memory of that quiet acceptance on her face when she’d pinned her at the altar in the vents and her heart constricts painfully in her chest.

Pow whimpers and when Vi holds out an arm towards her in silent invitation just like she had in the mine shafts with Vander and the kid, she darts into her side, shaking violently as she wraps her arms around her knees and buries her head in her own lap. Vi pulls her close enough that their sides touch and keeps her arm curled around her shoulders, absently wondering just how bad the kid (she’s not a kid) would crash after all of this was over. Vi keeps her voice low as she hushes her, lets her head rest lightly against the stone wall behind her as she waits.

Vi takes in the many spots her apparently temporary tattoo had been damaged in some way even in just the few places she can see it that aren't hidden by that coat she's wearing—whether it was faded or sliced through or where older, now healed wounds had left empty, pale skin where some shade of blue used to sit. She briefly wonders how she’d come up with a way to make it last so long without it being permanent, toys with the idea of letting her draw whatever she wanted on her own arm or something as a means of distracting her. Vi’d done similar things when they were younger—used to make sure they brought something back with them from their jobs that her sister could sketch with so she wouldn’t stay so hyper focused on why Vi wouldn’t let her come with. A cold sadness sets in when she remembers the way Pow would try and mask the hurt on her face whenever they left without her, how it’d changed to distress and panic over time, how a couple of oil crayons or a half empty canister of cheap paint would temporarily wipe that horrible look off her face.

How her face looked when Vi and the boys left her alone in the basement that last, final time, and how nothing ever stayed the same since.

Her grip tightens just the slightest bit, and Pow shifts her head to look at her. She looked like shit: red, irritated eyes, recently scabbed over self inflicted wounds at her temples, dry flakes of varying shades of red cracking and peeling where angry crimson streaks fell like second tears down her cheeks, deep purple bags under her eyes. She doesn’t say anything for a brief moment, taking in Vi’s own expression before she finally answers her question.

“…ok,” her voice is tiny, frail, and it cracks on the second syllable—but it’s there. Vi’s shoulders sag in relief, and for a long time, neither of them speak. Vi’s almost afraid to say anything else, too worried about Powder to bother with anything else. Part of her also thinks she should wait for Pow, see if there’s anything left she wants to say…but nothing else comes from her mouth.

Maybe that’s why, when her sister doesn’t say anything for a long stretch of silence, Vi decides to fill it herself.

“Hey,” she says, catching Pow’s attention as she starts to stand, “I know you don’t like the basement,” her sister stiffens at that, her eyes widening a hair before she continues, “because it looks too much like it used to…but if I move everything around, change it so it’s different, could you stay down there then?” Vi really didn’t want to let her out of her sight right now, and she can tell she's not the only one who could use some more sleep.

Jinx turns up to her then, a dim, yet present surprise in her eyes that serves to lighten her expression just a bit. “You’re…are you sure you’re ok with that?”

Vi’s mouth twitches up into a sad smile. “Wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t—now c’mon,” she offers an arm down to her sister that she accepts after a moment, and Vi’s not surprised when she has to support most of her weight before she steadies herself as she pulls her up. Part of it actually makes her feel a bit better, another real, solid reminder that she was actually still here. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Text

The walk back to the Last Drop is quiet, the only sounds the quiet thumps of their own footsteps over uneven cobblestone that slowly fades first into gravel and then worn dirt roads and Powder's occasional sniffling. They don’t run into any trouble: the few people they pass on their intentionally roundabout path don’t bother them (the one brave enough to try at the sight of the undercity’s symbol immediately clammed up when they caught a look at Vi’s glare), and when they eventually walk in the front door, she’s careful to mask her surprise when her sister shuffles closer to her side.

Beyond a few cursory glances and those somewhat off-putting mock salutes from the younger bunch of her followers, nobody bats an eye at her sister’s disheveled appearance, and they make it back into the hallway leading to the basement…only to find the purple skinned man from the Firelight compound leaning against the wall outside the door, that spear of his poised and at the ready. Vi’s not really sure what she’s supposed to tell him, or if he’s expecting her to say anything at all, but he leaves before she can even open her mouth.

She turns back to Jinx after that, and her sister curls up against the wall, her arms coming to wrap around her legs as she rests her chin on her knee. Vi almost asks her to promise not to go anywhere, but decides against it, and she runs a hand over her sister’s helmeted head before making her way through the basement door. It takes until she spots the bloodstains on the staircase and now seeped into the wooden floorboards of the room below until it finally clicks why Ekko’s former groupie had been skulking out just outside of the door.

So he was playing guard, huh?

She doesn’t have much of a chance to think about that, though, because almost a soon as she gets to the foot of the staircase, Cait’s by her side looking nervous and relieved and tired all at once.

Right. Cait.

…Vi’s gonna have to tell her about what had happened with the chem barons, but frankly, she doesn’t really have the energy for something like that right now, and she’s definitely still a little pissed about the argument they’d had earlier. She probably wouldn’t be able to deal with any of that without freaking the fuck out again, and she’s more than a little certain that that wouldn’t solve anything between them…not to mention what hearing something like that’d likely do to Jinx.

That talk was going to have to wait.

Instead of answering any of the many obvious questions that are clearly on the taller woman’s face, Vi shakes her head and walks around her, her hands already reaching up for the bombs and broken metal strewn up over the side of the bunk bed.

“Vi?” Cait starts, shifting uncertainly when Vi doesn’t immediately respond. “I…where’s Jinx?”

Vi jerks her thumb over her shoulder, vaguely gesturing in the direction of the door without opening her trap to explain what that means. A second later, she’s managed to rip the last nail out of the old wood and she tosses the mess of scrap and rope into the dusty box in the corner. She looks around the room, curious about where she should start next before she nabs all the blankets off of the couch and tosses them on the bottom bunk. When she gets to the coffee table between them, she grabs that now-empty bag and holds it open at one end before swiping her arm across the surface, unceremoniously scooping up everything that falls into it…save for one thing that she hesitates before shoving in one of her jacket pockets.

Cait watches her in silence, her mouth opening and closing a few times in uncertainty. Normally, Vi might have teased her about it—uncertainty looked strange on the older woman; she always seemed so headstrong, so self-assured even when she very obviously had no idea what she was doing…but today…

Vi suppresses a sigh as she tosses the bag into the corner with all the other loose shit in the room, and Cait blinks as if she hadn’t expected it.

Right. She probably thought I was still trying to bail.

There wasn’t a ton of room in here, and the way they had shit set up now was probably as space-efficient as things were gonna get…but if she wanted Jinx to be able to come in here without having a fucking breakdown, she’d have to figure something out…

“…I take it you’re no longer planning on leaving?”

Vi offers her a single, curt shake of her head without turning to glance at her, her eyes trained on the couch in front of her. Deciding she’ll figure out the layout of the room of the room as she works, Vi loops an arm over the side of the couch (the one Mylo used to claim for himself) and yanks it away from the wall, nearly wincing at the tattered pair of tattered jeans revealed under where it used to sit.

“What are you—”

“Pow—err, Jinx,” she corrects, kind of hating herself for using the name at all when she remember how she’d gotten it, “won’t stay down here unless shit looks different than how it used to before, so…”

She trails off, unsure of how to continue—but to her great shock, when she shakes her head and starts tugging the couch further towards the center of the room, Cait starts helping her with the other end. She continues to help with the rest of it. Vi doesn’t thank her at the end—she kind of gets the idea that she wouldn’t want to hear it, and Vi’d only half-mean it anyways.

They’re both a little sweaty by the end of it, and the room’s filled with newly loosened dust. The bed is moved to the spot the first couch had been sitting before. The second couch rests where the bed once had, but it’s at an angle since it’d been longer. The other couch sits against the wall furthest from the stairs, and when they’re all finished, Vi realizes that it’d mean that no matter where someone slept down here, they’d be able to see anyone sitting on any of the furniture. There’s a broom, somewhere, but Vi doesn’t feel like digging through the storage in order to find it (nor does she want to risk having to speak to Sevika in the case that the room’s locked in order to get the key), so Vi lets it be for now.

She clambers up the stairs after that, a relief she didn’t know she needed to feel coursing through her like blood through her veins when she spots Jinx still seated on the ground outside the door. Vi doesn’t even need to say anything to get her attention, and in a few seconds, her sister walks ahead of her and heads down the basement steps. There’s a certain tension in her shoulders that doesn’t fade even as she makes her way to the center of the room, but they do slump a bit as she looks around, though her face is about as blank as it is tired.

“Is this…?” Vi’s not sure how to ask what she’s trying to say, so she ends up trailing off before she finishes, but to her surprise, Jinx shrugs with a quietly mumbled “sure”.

Vi turns around scratching her head as she tries to think where she should recommend the teenager sleep at, but Jinx flits away a moment later, the pink arc that follows her up the only indication of where she’d gone at all. Vi watches as she settles lengthwise the rafters above, her arm coiling around her own braids in an effort to keep them from trailing to the floor. Somehow, in the short bit of time it takes her to get up there, that graffiti-strewn coat had been taken off and is now draped across her form like a blanket instead of actually worn. Where her feet stick out at the end, Vi can see she’s crossed her legs, her free arm serving as a sort of pillow as she brackets it under her head.

Vi thinks about asking her to come down before she talks herself out of it: she’s within sight, staying in a place she very obviously didn’t want to be, and maybe now Cait would be able to relax a little since she’d be able to see Jinx from wherever she decided to sleep.

Vi flops over the couch closest to the stairs, trying and failing to delude herself into thinking that she’d actually wake up if Jinx decided to slink off while they all slept.

To say that things have been going poorly is perhaps an insult on the word itself.

Mel hadn’t expected the true level of surveillance her mother had on this area of the Fringes to be this severe. Perhaps it’s more that she hadn’t expected there to be this many soldiers: there were perhaps more of them here than there were enforcers (though that may be more due to her presence here than because they were actually outnumbered). Her mother hadn’t taken her absence well, it’d seemed.

She’d put considerable effort into scoping out the place as best as she can, but she’s yet to find any signs of Viktor. She hadn’t exactly expected to, here: the Fringes weren’t technically what most people would consider to be a part of the undercity, but given what she’d overheard her mother say to Jayce, she’d have thought they would have found the man by now. She’s also just a single person, though—pursued by one of the most elite personal armies in the world (and certainly in Piltover); there’s only so much she could do alone.

Escaping from the Fringes to the undercity proper was proving to be a more daunting task than she’d anticipated.

She hasn’t had any direct contact with the soldiers or enforcers yet, but she feels it’s only a matter of time…and some of that is admittedly her own fault.

She’s had a few close calls just because she very stupidly decided to help some impoverished refugees hide from her mother’s forces…Mel doesn’t exactly know what’d happened down here to drive things to this point, but she can say that—whatever imagined slight her mother had conjured to justify any of this—it’s too much.

She recognized those looks of terror painted on the denizens of the Fringes unlucky enough to get cornered in a dead-end alley from faces in her own echoed past, and that alone had been enough to drive her to act. She’d kept her cloak pulled over her face each time, but with her every intervention, the watches grew more stringent, the lockdown even more strict—and frankly speaking, she’s unsure how much longer she can keep this up.

For now, she’s leaning against a crumbling brick wall, panting at the exertion from all the running and…and the magic.

She slumps a bit at the thought, scrubbing a hand down the side of her face and still half-surprised the gold lines carved into it like tattoos don’t wipe off with the motion. Is that what they were?

She supposes she’ll never—

She pushes herself from the wall at a sound from the other side of the wall, relishing in the feeling of her eyes lighting up with the power that’d been awakened inside of her inside that prison as she spins around it in a single, fluid motion.

“Wait!”

Mel has to force herself not to release the energy burgeoning at her fingertips at the sight of the woman before her—Mel recognizes her from the group she’d managed to distract some enforcers long enough for her to get away a day and a half ago. She stands with her hands held up before her, but the lack of weapon only makes Mel more skeptical than she already had been.

She lets her hands fall back down to her sides as the woman swallows, the plain leather scraps she wore over her sullied clothing that could scarcely pass as armor swaying a bit while she eyes Mel more like she’s a bomb than a person. Still, to the woman’s credit, the obviously supernatural qualities she’d just witnessed don’t have her turning tail as she begins to speak.

Perhaps that’s because of the other noteworthy detail regarding the woman’s appearance.

So the stories of these "Jinxers" aren’t as fabricated as they’d seemed.

“You—you’re the one that’s been going around helping everyone, yeah?” she whispers, her eyes flickering up the alley she’d come down.

Mel hums, unsure if she agrees with the statement, but also unwilling to turn the woman down if she needed assistance.

Or at least, she hadn’t been before she continues.

“They’re lookin’ for you, you know—got your picture ‘n everything—,” the woman cuts herself off when Mel’s hands crackles back to life, and she leans away in caution even as she goes on. “I don’t mean to freak you out—just figured you probably needed some help yourself,” when Mel blinks in surprise, the woman continues as if she’d been verbally encouraged to do so. “With respect, lady, you look real outta place down here. We’ve got a safe place we been holed up in for quite a while, now…it ain’t nothin’ fancy, but I figure it’s the least we could do seein’ you been goin’ so far outta your way and all.”

Mel looks into her eyes for a trace of a lie, and finding none, she reluctantly stops her hands.

Is this truly the wisest course of action?

She sighs before motioning the woman on, ears tuned to any sound indicating the approach of her mother’s soldiers.

Perhaps not, but what other choice do I have?

The sounds of their boots scuffing on the stone below is her only answer.

Jinx isn’t in the rafters when she wakes up the next morning.

It’s the first thing Vi had looked for upon opening her eyes, but the only indication the teenager had been there at all is that old fucker’s coat hanging from where her sister had slept and that messed up helmet sitting on top of it. It takes the coat swaying in the stagnant air of the basement to get Vi fully on her feet, and to both her surprise and quiet relief, she spots Cait’s still form sleeping on the other couch further into the room. She’d woken up first…somehow.

Despite Vi knowing that they should really have a chat about some of the shit that had happened last night, she doesn’t spare her another glance as she throws her coat and boots on and quietly heads up the steps.

Her shoulders sag in silent relief when she spots Jinx sitting with one upturned knee on her usual spot on the counter—and Vi knows she must have slept in later than she thought considering there’re actually other people around the tavern. Jinx looks focused on whatever’s in her lap, but Vi’s more interested on the other bits and pieces she’s got around her: there’s several papers hanging from above the bar that stop right around where her face is with what looks like fishing line, a couple of notebooks and assorted crayons at her side…and most confusingly, the parts of what most-probably used to be a handgun (but not the hangun) torn apart and strewn around her in what can only be described as organized chaos.

Jinx doesn’t say anything when Vi sits down in the seat closest to her, but she does glance at her with a half-smile when Vi says hello, so at least she’s got that much going for her. From her position, she can’t see what’s written on any of the papers Jinx has hanging at various heights to each side of her head, but she can see the piece she’s scribbling on in the notebook on her lap…not that she could make any sense of it. To Vi, it’s just a big mess of numbers and colors and the occasional surprisingly precise sketch, but it’s not like she’s got any context as to what any of it means.

“How long have you been up?” Vi asks, leaning into the counter as her eyes trace the thin scars that run along and through the faux-tattoos adorning her arms, the permanent bags under her eyes, the deep bruising around her prosthetic.

Jinx shrugs, not looking up as she answers. “Dunno, a couple ‘a hours, maybe?”

Vi nods, her eyes flickering around the different things her sister’d gathered, her silent question not going unanswered as Jinx continues without glancing her way again.

“Finishing some blueprints for something,” she sounds distracted and now that Vi’s more or less certain she isn’t gonna wander off for the time being, she’s content to let her work. Eventually, the barkeep places a mug on the counter in front of her without prompting, and Vi offers him a grateful nod while she waits. Sometime later, a battered little group of trenchers come in and speak in hushed voices to the skinny woman Vi and Cait’d played cards with the other night, and given the way she hauls ass up the steps to the office a moment later, Vi can only assume she’d been stationed near the door to gather reports for Sevika or something.

Ugh.

Sevika.

Now Vi had somehow let herself get talked into practically working for the bitch, and it takes some effort while she sits there at the counter to keep her lips from curling at the reminder.

She nearly startles when Jinx pushes herself off the countertop, but to Vi’s surprise, she doesn’t immediately run off when her boots hit the floor.

“I’ve gotta go get some parts to fix up that stuff we talked about last night,” the emphasis she puts on the word isn’t lost on her, though she doesn't know why she’d bothered not saying it aloud considering they were in the undercity’s effective base of operations. When Vi tenses in place, Jinx shifts her weight between her feet, this oddly pensive look on her face that puts Vi further on edge until she continues. “Do you wanna come with?”

Vi blinks in surprise for a moment before she offers her a smile. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

She probably shouldn’t have been surprised that Jinx wraps her in a hug a second later, but she is.

Doesn’t stop her from returning it, though…and she’s in such a good mood this morning that she even pretends not to notice the eye roll that Silco Jr. shoots their way a second later from above them. Jinx spins on her heels when she pulls away, gesturing to the absolute mess her shit made of the bar counter as she addresses Sevika, who'd apparently crawled out of her cave after that woman had spoken to her, if the way they're both standing at the top of the stairs is anything to go off of. Maybe she'd heard Jinx through the door, or maybe that report was more urgent than Vi really cares to know.

“Watch this, ok, Lefty?”

The woman’s face drops. “Just clean it up before you—”

But Jinx has already looped her arm around Vi and before she knows it, they’re halfway out the door. Vi doesn’t think she’d ever moved that quickly in her life.

“Where are we going, anyways?”

Jinx hums without looking back, gesturing for Vi to keep up with her brisk pace…one that Vi is loathe to maintain because of the way they’d ran halfway around the city last night, but that she doesn’t bitch about, anyways.

“Scrapyard…but I guess we might hafta go to a few of ‘em to find the parts I need…plus I gotta visit the warehouses to examine the tanks—”

Vi’s eyebrows furrow at that. “Wait, the parts aren’t for the Shimmer vats or whatever?” The fact that she’d kept the distaste from her tone should be enough to get her a medal.

Jinx shakes her head, then pauses as they get to the next intersection. “I mean, how would I get those without looking at the machines first? That’s why I gotta go see ‘em.” There’s a touch of impatience to her tone, but in Vi’s defense, getting the parts to fix that shit is what Jinx had just told Sevika they were doing.

Before Vi can ask what she means, Jinx continues, finally choosing a direction to head down at what seems like random. “I can’t really bring you with to the factories or whatever, though—doubt they’d take that too well, considering your fists are probably still engraved in the sides of their furnaces.”

Vi itches the back of her head at that, suddenly wondering if she should have brought those piece of shit gauntlets Jinx had scavenged with her as they continue on.

If the parts she’s fetching aren’t for the chem barons, she finds herself wondering, then what are they for?