Chapter Text
Silco is heavier than he looks, but that quickly becomes a mere afterthought.
No, no, no, no. I can fix this.
Jinx’s body protests under the added weight across her shoulders, but the shimmer pulsing across her body pushes her forward, breaking across the sewage at speeds only possible under chemtech.
The doctor. I need that damn doctor.
Claggor’s dark form suddenly flashes across her vision.
You sure you can fix this?
Jinx grits her teeth. “Shut up.”
Mylo and Vi follow suit. She can’t risk looking at their twisted apparitions without giving in.
Jinxed it again. Not surprising.
This is your fault, Powder. It’s always been.
“Shut. Up.”
It’s all she can muster.
Her name is Jinx!
The temptation to stop and put a bullet in Mylo’s giant forehead was strong, but the primal desire to save the family she nearly killed was stronger. Every nerve in her body screamed even louder, demanding more from the shimmer.
I never would have given you to them. Not for anything.
She can feel the blood from his wound seeping into her shirt, the life beating against her back growing weaker and weaker with each breath he drew.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
The wind stings against her tear-stricken face.
Don’t cry.
Their voices seem further away. Vi, Mylo, Claggor...even that enforcer girl. As if the echo of his familiar burr pushed them away until they became nothing but smoke in the wind.
You’re perfect.
Jinx is perfect.
Jinx can fix this.
The door slammed open with enough force to wake half of Piltover.
Jinx barely acknowledged Singed as he stood with a jolt in her peripherals and beelined for the operating table.
She set Silco’s body down on the stone, a little more aggressively than necessary. The relief of his relinquished weight was short-lived as her eyes fell on the chemist. She eyed his every move, increasing the lighting, strapping her father in, all methodical with a slight tinge of urgency.
But not urgent enough for her. He’s working too slow and Silco’s life was seeping away too quickly.
After a short examination and some deliberation, Singed straightens without tearing his gaze away from the body.
“I’m afraid he’s too far-”
No.
Not again.
Jinx knew exactly what he was about to say. That’s why she makes sure her pistol beats him to it.
Gun drawn against his neck, his back collides against the desk behind them, shaking and spilling some unknown contents across papers. Jinx can feel the surge of shimmer resurfacing alongside her anger and desperation, illuminating a soft pink glow against the lair’s firelight greens.
“What were you about to say, doc?”
She watches his eyes flicker between the gun and her. His deliberation curves her lips into a sinister smile.
“That you were gonna save him? Be a doctor and do doctory things with your doctory tools?”
Singed sighed heavily. “Even with the process, he won’t-”
“I wouldn’t finish that line, doc. Else you might get jinxed .” She pushes the pistol deeper into his neck for emphasis.
Without wasting another breath, Jinx releases the doctor and leaves his lair as quickly as she’d entered. Every second counted. The less they talked, the longer Singed had to help him.
He had to.
Silco was the only one.
It couldn’t end like that.
Not right after she’d finally realized he was the only one who loved her as she is now
By the time Jinx journeyed back to retrieve her weaponized hextech, both her sister and the enforcer were gone.
Good.
She wouldn’t have to hear Vi ramble on about Powder or watch them doe eye each other anymore.
He screamed.
It was too painful to repress.
The puncture of what felt like a thousand needles and the unfathomable pain that coursed through his veins.
A familiar fluid, most likely shimmer, forced into his body so aggressively that he felt as though he would crumble to dust if he took on anymore.
He remembered how long it lasted. How agonizing it was. How he might have subjected Jinx to the same torture because of his desperation.
Jinx.
He would fight this for her. He would fight anything for her.
And he vowed to never subject her to this ever again if he could help it.
It felt like centuries before his mind mercifully went pitch black.
The low rumble of the club below creeps into his consciousness.
His senses return to his body and mind, slow as it may be. He registers the soft padding beneath, the silk of his coat covering his body, then the swathes of bandages across his torso.
Silco’s eye flickered open and he instantly recognized his office through the brief blur from sleep.
He hears clinking of glass as if someone was going through his liquor cabinet, followed by pronounced footsteps that drew closer until a shadow hovered over him.
The silhouette eventually becomes Sevika, who places a whiskey bottle on the table before lighting a cigarette in a seat across from him.
“You’ve been out for a day and I don’t know where Jinx is.”
Straight to the point, answering questions that had danced in his mind the minute he roused. They knew each other well enough.
Silco sat up with a groan, his bones weary from inactivity. A hand flew to his chest where the bullet had pierced him and found nothing but bandages and a dull ache.
Life coursed through him and yet he felt...pleasantly different.
But he knows exactly where she is because of it.
He reaches for his shirt and vest laid across the couch.
Silco clears his throat, his voice scratchy from prolonged sleep. “What of Vi and Caitlyn?”
“Last saw them crawling back to topside.”
After dressing, he moves to pour himself a drink but pauses when he notices an unfamiliar whiskey glass on the table. It was decorated with all too familiar cartoony shapes, colored in bright blues, greens and yellows. He could make out a particular drawing of a one-eyed cigar and a blue-haired monkey with a portion of the sun drawn at the rim. A metal trinket was crudely attached to the bottom.
He hummed, a corner of his lip twitching upwards in amusement as he poured the orange liquor into the glass.
“Any word from the council?”
“Letter from the boy’s over there.” Sevika gestured over to his desk. “The chem barons also want to meet about this.”
He scoffed, swirling the drink in his hand.
“Did it sound like a request this time?”
“No. They’re less of a nuisance now without Finn’s ego hovering over them.”
“Good. Tell them we’ll meet when the time is right. Like we’ve been doing for past decades .”
Sevika nods. He dismisses her not long after.
Silco takes a swig of his drink before he reaches for his cigar and trimmer. The shimmer pulsing through his veins is gentle, delicately beating a rhythm only he could decipher. It told him he wasn’t alone.
He brings the cigar to life after trimming the end off and takes a deep hit before exhaling a thick cloud of smoke. The familiar smell of tobacco was well-needed, a temporary relief from his slight headache and past ordeal and piling businesses to take care of.
But what he really needed was…
“Jinx.”
Detecting her presence should be second nature at this point, but Silco is aware that whatever had happened to him between yesterday and today was a factor as well.
There’s a brief pause. She’s most likely surprised that he knew she was up there.
He hears the boards creak as she moves.
“I wasn’t sure you wanted to see me after…I mean, I know I wanted to because you know, apologies are a thing and all and you’re you and I’m me and we’re kinda sorta family and I pretty much...”
She rambles when the topic is delicate. It was her shield against vulnerability.
He was familiar with the concept. A shield was necessary growing up in a place like Zaun, but somehow, this child had slipped past it...and became more than a weapon for the cause. She became more than the cause itself.
Silco chuckled.
This child tortured him, shot him, drove him up the wall at times and yet no matter how hard he searched...
We’ve both been undone, brother.
“I could never hate you, Jinx.” His voice carries pieces of vulnerability, more pronounced since that fateful day.
He wants to tell her to come down. Her silence was near torture, but Sevika’s words stop him from crossing the boundary uninvited.
She’ll come to you when she’s ready.
Silco takes another hit from his cigar.
“Not for anything,” he echoes.
The familiarity behind those words must have affected her. He can hear her soft sniffles.
Silco sighs deeply. He doesn’t like seeing or hearing her in pain. What started as a nuisance now cuts deeper than any wound.
Eventually Jinx climbs down and lands on his desk, scattering the papers onto the floor. Her face is buried behind her knees, another habit of hers.
“Did you mean it?”
She should know the answer, but he can’t fault her. It’s her damn sister that’s poisoned her with that insecurity.
He smothers his cigar in the ashtray and picks up his drink before moving to a spot next to her on his desk. His bones protested each step, but the ache was nothing compared to his daughter’s.
“Of course I did.” His eye falls to the golden syringe on the coffee table. She’d been taking care of his injections while he was out.
Silco turns to her then, his gaze softening when it falls on her withdrawn form. “I’d go through it again if it meant you’d believe me.”
Slowly, she uncurls and wraps her arm around his, pressing her face against his shoulder.
“You won’t have to...It’ll never happen again.”
He presses his forehead against her hair and closes his eyes.
“I know.”
Her grip tightens. He can feel her tears seeping through his vest. Her voice came through in a mere whisper.
“I’m sorry. I should have realized it was just us like you said.”
“I know, child. It wasn’t your fault.”
They both knew who he was referring to, but there was no benefit in bringing them into the conversation right now.
A comfortable silence enveloped them with only the bustle of the club reverberating across the walls. Silco allowed her to cry as she needed to and gathered her bearings. Time was never her favorite thing to take advantage of, but he was glad she at least allowed herself to take some of it willingly today.
His drink was nearly finished by the time he felt her lift her head.
“I have a surprise for you later.”
He hums.
“Will it involve spending 3 hours cleaning my office again? ”
“Well, sort of but not really. I mean it’d definitely take longer than 3 hours to sort out if I did it here.”
He's deliberate with his next answer, fixing her a knowing look.
“...You’ve weaponized the hextech, haven’t you?”
She nods, her hair bouncing alongside the movement, her eyes glinting with the same excitement when he brings her a bag of Jericho’s.
He can’t help the pride and affection that swells in his chest. It’s foreign and unfamiliar inside someone who was roughened up by an unforgiving undercity.
But he welcomes it and treasures it like any Zaunite would if they’d found a gemstone in thick sewage.
A small smile curves his lips. “Well done, Jinx.”
She giggles. “Oh well, you know. Only took me forever. Pilty tech is so snobbishly neat and picky.”
“I’ve no doubt.”
Strange.
He waited for the overwhelming surge of excitement at the prospect of finally having a weapon that could propel the cause forward.
But it’s muddled by the infectious glee of this child. The mold around his heart has begun cracking at a much faster rate with each passing day by her side...and he’s pleasantly powerless to stop it.
Oh, he can practically hear Vander rolling and laughing at him in his grave right now.
“But before you show me…”
He raised and swirled the glass around, inspecting the colorful drawings with more care.
“Tell me more about this new...gadgetry of yours.”
Jinx perks up immediately, a wide grin spreading across her face.
“Ok so Sevika gave me the short version of how she fucked up your original glass during that weird meeting you had with umm...Fido? Fred? Finn? Whatever. So I got you another one. But here’s the neat thing - this little guy at the bottom can actually keep the ice from melting…”