Archive of Our Own

The halls of the Academy were indeed decked, every inch covered with twinkling lights, decorative bulbs, and sparkling tinsel in the traditional Progress Day colors of red and green. Progress trees stood at every corner, obscuring the view and causing people to bump into each other if they rounded a corner too fast.

One of these pine corpses, garishly defiled with blue sparking lights and glass globes, and topped with a glowing blue star that definitely had a stolen Hex Tech™ crystal in it, was taking up most of Viktor’s lab when he got in.

“What. The hell. Have you done to my lab,” he asked wearily as his friend (friend? Was ‘friend’ too strong a word?) Jayce lifted him off the ground in a bear hug that was merciful only in that it kept him from immediately seeing Jayce’s home-knitted reindeer-with-hammers sweater pattern.

“Merry Progress Day, old friend! I was going to jump out and surprise you, but you were so late my back started cramping.”

“Yes, it is incredibly difficult to climb stairs whose railings are covered in tinsel with a bad leg-,”

“I’ve been up all night getting the lab ready to surprise you!”

“I almost broke my neck three times-,”

“But what the hell, you’re here now!” Jayce clapped his friend bracingly on the shoulder. “Eggnog?”

“This is a research lab, no eggnog!” Viktor slammed his crutch down on the floor for emphasis. “No food, no drink. No dead trees covered in fire hazards and also my crystals that I need to do my actual research.”

Viktor pointed up at the glowing star while glaring daggers at Jayce, who grinned ear to ear. “Nice, right? The idea just came to me while I was moving your stuff out of the way. Inspired, if I do say so myself. Anyway, you’re not doing research today! It’s the start of Progress Day vacation!”

“Progress Day whomst now?”

“We’ve both been working too hard, old friend,” Jayce said, moving over to a Bunsen burner on the lab bench (which was shoved into a corner) over which bubbled a pot of eggnog. He poured himself a cup in a mug painted to match his sweater. “And I think it’s high time we took some time off. Celebrate the season!”

“I intend to celebrate the season exactly as I do every year; working straight through it with a two hour break for cookies at your mother’s, and seeing some fireworks from the lab window.”

 “Chancellor Heimerdinger won’t come fill your stocking with goodies if you’re up all night.”

“We literally work with Chancellor Heimerdinger and you know he doesn’t fill all the good girls’ and boys’ stockings on Progress Eve.”

“Oh don’t be such a spoilsport. Where’s your childlike wonder? Don’t you remember trying to get to sleep so that Heimerdinger would leave you chocolate and peppermints?”

“Do you know what children in the Undercity get in their stockings for Progress Day?”

“Like. Penny candy and an orange?”

“Fish guts. Fish guts if they’re rich. The poor ones get rusty nails from the scrap heap, if their parents are sober enough to remember to do it.”

Jayce nodded thoughtfully and without any comprehension whatsoever, then clapped his hands together in a completely transparent gesture of pretending that an idea had just occurred to him out of the blue. “Say, how about you head home this Progress vacation?”

“Again, Jayce, Progress vacation is not a thing and I will not accept it-,”

“Head home, see your folks- er,” To his credit, Viktor’s closest friend of several very intense years did remember that he didn’t really have folks, “See your old friends, see what’s up with the old neighborhood, remember the good times,” Jayce took a deep breath in those bellows-sized lungs and Viktor knew what was coming a second before he burst into song, “Have yourself a nostalgic little Progress Day! Make the season shine-,”

“OK, OK, I will drink your damned eggnog,” Viktor muttered, stumping over to the Bunsen burner and turning the heat off. The burner had not been cleaned before being used for foodstuff, he noted to himself. He poured some eggnog anyway, into a mug with a disconcerting cartoon of Heimerdinger drinking a cola.

“Oh good! I made it myself. You want some brandy for it?”

“Jayce. It is nine in the morning,” Viktor leaned against the stone lab bench, grateful to be able to get off his feet somehow, despite the fact that his chairs seemed to have disappeared behind the tree. “I assume I am again invited to your mother’s place for Progress …Vacation?”

“Um,” Jayce immediately deflated, suddenly taking up his regular amounts of more space, instead of his expanded Progress Day Spirit amounts of more space. “Well, uh, about that, old friend. Buddy.”

Viktor’s hand shook as he shoved the mug back onto the bench behind him. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was rage. Jayce was rolling the dice on that one. “About that?”

“It’s just… uh… well, I thought that this year, um… really it was Mom’s idea, but, well she…” Now a shade of bright red to rival any Progress Day sweater, Jayce dropped his gaze and muttered, “really wants to meet Mel and I thought maybe it could just be the three of us this year. You know. ‘Cause. Of. How…. Things… work.”

“So,” Viktor shut his eyes, rubbing them tiredly as the afterimage of the blue Progress tree burned against his retinas, “Let me get this straight. You are shuttering my lab and kicking me out for Progress Day and you are not even offering me a place to go?”

“Well, when you put it like that I sound like a bad friend.”

Viktor let that one lie. “I think I will have some of that brandy after all, Jayce.”

Despite being one of the key inventors of the most important technology of the century, Viktor’s apartment was… well. Affordable for an academic. Viktor had once told Jayce that he’d like to know which building inspector his landlord bribed to keep this place affordable in such a hot neighborhood, and Jayce had been utterly confused, then scandalized, when Viktor explained what he was suggesting. Viktor had a dimly-lit first floor apartment, the plumbing was ‘delicate’ but mostly functional, and the walls were so thin you could set up a shadow puppet show if your neighbors had a bright enough lightbulb… although that would probably take out the electricity for the block.

Viktor was not, he would say, thrilled to see the Enforcers outside the entrance, guarding the large but tattered fake wreath that the landlord hung up as his sole tribute to the season. They nodded and let him pass when he explained he was a resident, and he made it to his door before being properly stopped.

“Sir, you can’t go in there.”

A well-honed self-preservation instinct fought through the brandy to stop him from leg-sweeping the officer with his crutch. “This is my apartment!”

The officer started to respond when his door opened and another Enforcer stepped out and tapped her fellow on the shoulder. “John, take a break. I’ll handle this.”

John seemed happy enough to skive off work and didn’t argue. Viktor waited until he had vanished down the hallway to get into it.

“Caitlyn, what the hell. Did Jayce put you up to this?”

Caitlyn sighed, resting her hands wearily on her hips. “I wish. We got reports of illegal experimentation at this address.”

“What? That is absurd! That’s slander! I have a lab for fuck’s sake, I do my experimentation there!”

“I know, I know,” Caitlyn held up her hands, shushing. A neighbor poked her head out of a nearby door and then closed it again. The sound of the deadbolt locking came through the hall, barely muffled. “And I’m going to sort this out, Viktor, I promise. But… and look, I’m no narc-,”

“You are literally an Enforcer.”

“So be straight with me-,”

“That will be difficult for me on account of how much I like men,” Viktor muttered and half-heartedly raised his fist for a fistbump that Caitlyn resolutely left him hanging on.

“Do you have anything… illegal in here?”

“NO!” Viktor yelled, and a baby on the second floor started crying. “Why the hell would I have anything illegal in my apartment? I have a lab. I have permits attached to my lab. I have a carte blanche from the council to basically do whatever I want in my lab. Why would I bring illegal chemicals back to where I sleep?”

“OK, sir, I’m going to need you to calm down,” Caitlyn said in her very best training day de-escalation voice, and Viktor very nearly cold cocked her before he realized she was holding back a laugh. “Look, like I said, we’ll sort this out, but we did find traces of some explosives in there. Do you know anyone who might want to hurt you?”

“Well, Jayce’s new ‘friend’ might have some unresolved jealousy-,”

Caitlyn actually laughed at that. “OK, well, if this goes all the way to the top, you’re just going to have to go lay low for a bit, I can’t help with that. I’m sure it’s just something residual that you tracked home from work one night. We’ve got a specialist coming in to do some decon and we’ll get this sorted. But in the meantime, I’m afraid you’ll have to find somewhere else to go. Just until after Progress Day.”

 Viktor narrowed his eyes suspiciously, “And you’re sure Jayce didn’t put you up to this?”

Caitlyn placed a hand on her heart. “Scout’s honor.”

“And you’re sure he didn’t sneak into my apartment and plant explosives in it, then call in a bomb threat?”

“Whoa, now, I didn’t say that, I just said he didn’t tell me if that’s what he was doing.”

“Can I at least get some of my things?”

The Enforcer shook her head. “Sorry, old boy, can’t do it. On account of the explosives… but… tell you what…” she checked around her to be sure no one was there, and leaned in conspiratorially, “If you tell me where they are, I can smuggle out your Progress Day gifts.”

“I don’t have-,”

“You don’t give Progress Day presents? Not even to Jayce? Not even to your lab assistant who wants to jump your bones?”

“Wait, who?”

“Not even a tree up,” Caitlyn opened the door a crack and looked meaningfully back into Viktor’s mostly-empty apartment, shaking her head sadly. “Somebody is getting coal from Chancellor Heimerdinger.”

“How are Chancellor Heimerdinger stockings a thing up here? The man literally works half a mile away!” Viktor muttered as Caitlyn (an absolute traitor of a friend of a friend) closed the door in his face.

“Go home and see your folks, Viktor,” she said through the door. “It’s Progress Day, for fuck’s sake. Bring them some cookies.”

You could write an entire academic paper about Councilmember’s families and their comprehension of human mortality, Viktor thought bitterly as he leaned against the railing on the rickety trolley. He did not have cookies. He had no family to go home to, but he sure has hell wasn’t going to find a hotel room Topside this close to Progress Day, and he would rather (he had decided angrily while trudging towards the canal) get stabbed in the kidneys and bleed out in plain sight the Fissure than be the Poor Crippled Man sleeping on the Piltover streets to make everyone else grateful for what they have on Progress Eve.

He took a sarcastic sniff as he stepped onto the trolley landing. “Smells like Progress Day back on the farm,” he remarked to no one in particular. The car had been mostly empty, and the folks who were on it had scattered as soon as they hit the platform, leaving him the lone lingerer.

“Eel pie and cigarettes,” a particularly wizened Yordle remarked genially from within the folds of an oversized wool cloak. Viktor started; he had taken the man for a bundle of rags.

“Uh… yes, something like that,” Viktor sidled sideways, embarrassed to be caught out talking to himself. “Well. Er. Merry… uh, Progress Day.”

The Yordle winked at him with eyes that sparkled ice blue even in the haze of the Undercity. “Merry Progress Day, young man. Oh, but don’t let me keep you. Your welcoming committee is here!”

Viktor tensed, instinctively clutching his crutch and shifting his weight so he could swing it at an attacker, but the platform was empty. Filthy, stinking, covered in debris, dark, a little damp in a concerning way, but empty.

“What welc-,” he turned back to his companion, but the man had vanished into the gloom.

More on edge than ever, vividly aware that he had spent the journey here basically begging the universe to stab him so that Jayce would feel bad later, Viktor turned slowly, eyes darting from shadow to rusted debris pile, looking for the inevitable mugger, when something incongruously bright purple scuttled out of the dark.

On closer examination, it was a crude little clockwork crab, gaudily smeared with some sort of florescent paint to mimic a toothy grin.

“Well, hello, little guy. Where’d you come from?” Viktor reached for it slowly, and the crab gave a mechanical lurch and started scuttling off towards the neon lights of the Undercity. “Hey! Get back here!”

If you had asked a typical Fissure denizen where the sausage got made, they would point you to Bubba Blue’s Butcher Seconds Shop, purveyor of fine reworked leftovers. If you explained that you meant politically, they would point you to the back room of the Last Drop and figure you’d be found dead in the river in a few days.

The two most important people in the Lanes were currently locked in there, leaned over a desk full of paperwork.

“The last shipment before the holiday goes Topside tomorrow,” Sevika was saying. “You still want to charge double this year?”

“No,” Silco ran his finger over his ledger. “Lots of young rich idiots spending their holidays with their overbearing old rich idiot folks… charge triple, they’ll pay. Oh, and we might as well send the Enforcers their Progress Day bonuses while we’re up there. The usual amount. Pick a crew you trust.”

His second in command nodded and made a note. “Got it, boss. And for the collection- oh.” Silco looked up at the blunt tone change, and she pointed over his shoulder with a sigh. “You’re being summoned.”

Silco swiveled his chair around slowly, until he was eye to eye with Jinx, who was hanging upside down above them.

“I’m hungry,” she declared.

“Hi, Hungry. I’m… in the middle of an important meeting.”

“I want eel pie,” Jinx pressed on relentlessly. “We haven’t gone for eel pie in forever. And you have to get eel pie for Progress. I don’t make the rules.”

Sevika tapped her foot impatiently, and audibly, as her boss reached into his desk for the petty change.

“Sure, Jinx. Here, take some-,”

But Jinx dropped heavily from the ceiling and onto his lap, knocking the coins out of his hand with a wave. “You’re not coming with me?”

“You’re a big girl, you can buy a fish pie on your own,” he said, but he also put an arm around her as she settled into the chair on top of him. He didn’t see Sevika roll her eyes, or Jinx stick her tongue out at the older woman.

“It’s just…” Jinx pouted, repositioning so she was looking up at Silco with big puppy eyes, “you’re so busy and we haven’t done anything together in so long-,”

“Progress Day is busy for us, Jinx, you know that.”

“I just…” Jinx crossed her arms over her chest and sniffled. “I miss hanging out with my dad.”

Silco’s entire asymmetrical face melted like a cinnamon candle in a forge. “I- you’ve never called me that before.”

Jinx squirmed. “Pleeeeaaase… dad?”

“Jinx, I-,”

“RIGHT.” Sevika slammed both hands on the desk as she jumped to her feet, interrupting the moment with extreme prejudice, “Well, you go on then,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’ve got a handle on things here.”

“Yeah!” Jinx jumped to her feet. “Sevika’s totally got this! And we’ll be back in no time.”

“Uh… yes,” Silco shook himself off and got unsteadily to his feet. “Let me just… Yes. Let’s go.”

“Jinx, sweetheart, a word,” Sevika grabbed the girl by her pigtail as she went to follow Silco, who walked straight into the doorframe on his way out. “You lay it on any thicker and he’s going to realize something is up,” she hissed in her ear.

“I know what I’m doing,” Jinx hissed back. “Don’t get jealous just because he trusts me and not you,” she bit her lip and suddenly wretched her neck violently to one side. “And if you’re suggesting I should feel guilty because I know he’s been hoping I would come to think of him as a father for years and now I’m using that hope to manipulate him, you’re wrong,” she hissed-spat, then shook her head, gesturing wildly with her hands. “I’m a great dau-“ Her head jerked to the other side and Sevika dropped her pigtail like a hot coal, “This is a really good Progress Day present for someone that I lo- Look I don’t need your judgement just because maybe I decided to rush a decision with a lot of emotional weight for me in the name of getting someone laid. We agreed he needs to get laid!”

Sevika took a cautious step back as Jinx spun wildly on her heel and marched out the door. She took a few more deep breaths before sitting back down at the desk and getting back to work.

She had just settled in when Jinx popped her head back in the office and said in a singsong, “Remember, we are IN THIS TOGETHER” and slammed the door shut behind her again.

“Ha, gotcha!” Panting and in a considerable amount of pain, Viktor finally managed to scoop up his quarry when it got caught on a food stall’s outer wall. “You gave me quite a chase, little man,” he said, raising the crab up to the light to get a better view. Its little metal claws clicked together as it vibrated, unable to move out of his grasp.

Someone bumped into him from behind and almost sent him ass over teakettle into a pile of refuse, yelling at him to get the hell out of the way. He kept ahold of the little crab toy, but barely, and ducked into the food stall that the crab had caught itself on, pleasantly surprised to find that it was selling fish pies.

The little row of stools was packed out, but he got lucky and someone vacated their seat with a hearty belch as he slid up. “Excuse me, could I get an eel pie? And a beer?”

The shopkeep, who looked to be mostly fish themselves, ignored him but not his money, and slung a pie and a mug of something that was at least appropriately foamy at him.

Thus situated, he pulled the crab out again and plopped it on the counter, elbowing the other patrons out of the way to create a little clear space for himself (an old knack that apparently, he hadn’t lost yet). The materials were crude, but the execution was, well, inspired. He reached into his vest for a pair of tweezers to unscrew the outer plate to get a look at the gears, and absently grabbed his pie with the other hand and shoved it in his mouth.

He wasn’t sure exactly when he first realized that bustle around him had completely vanished, only that he looked up, fish gravy dribbling down his chin in the least attractive possible way, to find that the stall had cleared out entirely except for a distinguished gentleman (distinguished as much by the expensive tailored suit as the fact that his face was, and Viktor was a veteran Fissure lad who had seen it all and didn’t think this lightly, fucked up) and a much more average blue-haired girl dressed in the usual assortment of salvaged fabric leading him around by the arm.

The shopkeeper’s fish eyes kept darting back and forth between Viktor and the new arrivals, and Viktor knew he was supposed to make himself scarce, but they had literally every other seat at the counter to choose from and his leg was taking its union break after chasing this stupid (no, sorry, crab, you are not stupid, just annoying) crab and wouldn’t be available for weight bearing for at least another half hour.

The man barely glanced at him, however, even as he took the stool to his left.  He barely glanced at the shopkeep except to hold up two fingers by way of ordering. He instead was focused entirely on the conversation with the girl, who had slung herself onto a stool with a wild disregard for how human bones were supposed to go.

“I’m looking forward to it. You always make me proud,” he was saying. “Oh, and what did Sevika want with you?”

“Oh, you know, girl stuff,” the girl said with a shrug, “Menstruation, hair braiding, boys… condoms…feminine pleasure-,”

“Yes, I get it,” the man said quickly, glancing uneasily around and happening to make brief uncomfortable eye contact with Viktor despite his very strong intention to not be part of this conversation whatsoever.

“I wish you’d tell her not to. It’s embarrassing,” she said, grabbing her pie out of the shopkeep’s hand and shoving it in her mouth. “Who wanfs to teaf their bothef-,”

“Jinx, don’t talk with your mouth full, you’ll make me reconsider the whole concept of eel pie at the shop counter.”

“Sowway,” she said thickly before swallowing the whole mouthful in one gulp, then immediately digging into the pie with the feral gusto of a kid who grew up unsure where her next meal was coming from. Viktor was watching her with something that unfortunately he had to identify as nostalgia, as though children fighting to eat was somehow quaint and charming and not a horrific statement on the society that he lived in. Maybe he did need to go back home more often.

The man next to him cleared his throat pointedly. “Can I help you?”

“I uh!” Viktor’s hand flew to his mouth in shock and discovered just… a whole bunch of fish gravy on his face. Oh fuck, I promise I am not a weird gravy-faced pervert watching your daughter eat a fish pie, I am just… a mess. Coming back here is messy and emotional and it’s been a long day and-. “No, just uh… sorry, staring into space. Long day. Carry on.”

The girl, now licking her fingers loudly, was also leaning most of the way over the counter to fix him with an intense, gleeful blue stare. “Do you need a hanky?”

Viktor shook his head as quickly as he could, but the man next to him had already offered him one and he wasn’t about to dig himself deeper into whatever grave this was by refusing it. So. He hastily wiped his face off as quickly as he could and then was stuck with a greasy silk handkerchief that he did not want to steal and did not want to hand back.

“I haven’t seen you around before,” the handkerchief’s original owner remarked casually, sizing Viktor up from his almost-new shoes to his patch-free jacket. He plucked the handkerchief out of Viktor’s hand and folded it up carefully.

“It has… been a while,” Viktor admitted, starting to calculate the distance from his stool to the road. Social interactions had never been a strong suite of his and this did seem like a prelude to him getting stabbed in the kidney by what was clearly a mob boss. In the background, the teenager motioned for the shopkeep to keep the pies coming without taking her eyes off him. “But, uh, I am from…around.”

“I thought so,” the alleged mob boss said with a satisfied nod. “Where are your folks from?”

“Uh, South Thrublurk.”

“Hn,” the man’s mouth twisted in a brief grimace of recognition. “My condolences.”

Fuck, imminent stabbing aside, was it ever nice to talk to someone who understood things. Nobody down here was going to ask why he wasn’t taking cookies to his folks in South Thrublurk. Viktor’s shoulders unhunched a quarter of a centimeter. This was fine. Things were fine. Talking to this perfectly pleasant family that happened to terrify the rest of the populace… look, it was fine.

“You seem to have done well for yourself; I am sure they would be proud.”

“I like to think so. But I am keeping you from your dinner,” he said quickly, motioning to the pastry cooling on the counter. The other man glanced at it, then back at the girl, who was double-fisting pies in a veritable tornado of crust and eel bits.

“You really are not. And I am intrigued. What brings you back home?”

“Oh, you know. Uh. Nowhere else to go.”

The girl, her father no longer focusing on her, slowed her chewing and perked up, looking expectantly between the two of them.

“You are hardly alone in that. You might try Madame Featherbottom’s. She offers very good rates on Progress Eve overnights, especially if you avoid any add-on purchases,” the man said with a very understated wink of his good eye. Viktor managed a weak chuckle, but he had somewhat lost track of the conversation when the girl had, in response to the mention of the brothel, slammed her face down recklessly hard on the counter, and then raised it back up, holding her half-eaten pies in both hands as if beseeching the heavens to give her strength.

“Wow-look-it’s-Mr-Clippity-Snippity-I’ve-been-looking-everywhere-for-him,” she exclaimed in a single breath, half climbing onto the counter to reach around her father and grab the mechanical crab out from in front of Viktor’s pie. “Whereever-did-you-find-him?”

It took Viktor a moment to process that there had been a question there, but his brain caught up after a moment of being stared at expectantly. “Uh, by the trolley platform. He gave me quite a chase.”

The girl grinned ear to ear. “Yeah, he’s tricksie that way.” She tapped a fingernail against the screw that Viktor had been loosening when his afternoon had taken a real turn. “Oh, he’s coming all undone,” she muttered, and pulled a jeweler’s screwdriver out of a pouch at her waist, shrinking back down into her seat and seeming to shut out the rest of the world suddenly.

“Did you make that?” Viktor asked. She didn’t answer, instead flipping the crab over to examine something on its underside, but he supposed the question had been a bit superfluous anyway.

Her father had a much sharper and more concerning question. “It’s not armed, is it, Jinx?”

“Noooo,” Jinx pouted, looking up briefly to meet the man’s eyes, then going back to tinkering. “Not yet. He’s in his prototype phase.”

Nobody looked comforted by this response, especially the shopkeeper.

Her father didn’t fidget, because Lane men didn’t fidget. It was a sign of weakness and would get you beaten up and your cane stolen and you’d have to hobble home with a bloody nose and your mom would get mad- no, focus, we are not unpacking that here. Her father wasn’t fidgeting exactly but he did flash Viktor the briefest possible grin and say, “She’s an inventor.”

“She’s very good,” Viktor said honestly, and was rewarded with a look of genuine attention that he didn’t realize he had been hoping for. “Is she self-taught?”

This was the right question.

“I make the fireworks for Progress Day,” the girl said, her head popping up from her work quickly. “They’re way better than what they have Topside. You should come see them.”

“There are fireworks down here now?”

“Yes,” the girl said emphatically. “Because I make them. It’s sort of a… community outreach thing. But Silco-,” she bumped her shoulder into her father, who was demonstrating an immaculate poker face, “can tell you about that. That’s really more his thing, I just like making fireworks. And crabs. And… things.”

“You haven’t been home in a while,” Silco remarked. “I imagine things have changed quite a bit.”

“For one, Progress Day is way better,” the girl said. “Do you want a tour? I mean, I’m obviously very busy in my workshop. If only we knew someone who was making the rounds tomorrow who could show you around. Gosh, I just-,”

“I think I would be more interested in seeing your workshop, if you are inviting me,” Viktor said with a small smile. “I do a lot of tinkering myself. It would be an honor to see where the inventor of Mr. Clippity Snippity works.”

The girl was counting names off on her fingers, “And Se-vi-ka is going to be busy all day so she can’t do- Wait,” her full attention locked back on Viktor. “Really? You want to see my workshop?”

“Can Viktor stay with us for Progress Day, can he, can he, can he?”

“It sounds like he gave you sugar, which is making me think no,” Silco drawled, but he was keeping his attention pointedly on his paperwork while she spun in circles on her chair (OK well it was Silco’s chair but he didn’t appreciate it so sometimes she had to commandeer it), and Jinx knew she had already won this fight.

Yes, because that’s what grateful children do, they manipulate the people who took them in and turn every conversation into a competition to be won. Great job.

“Shush!” Jinx swatted at the shadow whispering in her ear and shook herself off, pushing her legs off the desk to set her chair spinning again. “Please, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“I’m not in the business of taking in strays,” Silco informed her, which was not a no.

“He’s not a stray!” she objected, flipping around in her chair so she could lean over the back of it as it slowed down, “He’s a genius and he helped me make a firework that’s going to be shapes, and he said he can show me how to fix my forge so it doesn’t heat so unevenly. So,” she flopped over the back and pushed off against the desk. “He’s basically earning his keep. You’ll barely even know he’s here. He can sleep in your room!”

“Those two things are fundamentally mutually exclusive, Jinx.”

“Why? Your bed’s pretty big, he probably won’t even be able to kick you.” The chair hit the opposite wall and she kicked off to sail back across the room.

“He can sleep on the old sofa in the basement.”

The chair bumped into the desk and this time she left it, her face falling. “Oh.”

“Oh?” Silco put his pen down and looked up at her, steepling his fingers and grinning. “Oh? That isn’t good enough for your precious Viktor?”

“It’s just, uh… I don’t like the basement. That’s where… we used to hang out, and…”

Oh yeah, remember your real family? What ever happened to us?

“Oh. Jinx, no, I’m sorry,” She lost a second and when she looked up, he across the desk and kneeling next to her chair, arms out to pull her into his chest, “Come here. I’ll have someone set up the basement, OK? You won’t have to go down there at all.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t plan this part.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

You have so much to be sorry for. He’s going to be crushed if you ever tell him. You’re crushing him.

“Shut up shut up shut up,” Jinx whispered fiercely.

Silco squeezed her tighter. She hated that, he was going to make the tears come out and that was the worst. “She’s not really there, she can’t hurt you.”

“I know.”

“You want to tell me what she’s saying?”

How about; You’re not my real father!

Jinx shook her head. Oh no, there were the tears. Fuck. “Fuck.”

“Shhh. You’re safe.”

“No, I-,” she pushed him away. Fuck, the tears made everything blurry and then things could sneak up on her. “I have to go. Got fireworks to make. But you’ll take care of Viktor, right? Make sure he has a place to sleep? Take him caroling tomorrow?”

“If that’s what you want.”

Aw he trusts you so much! And you’re such a liar!

That was no fair; she was already crying. But there were fireworks to make, and ones with shapes, even, and that would shut them up for a while.

The storage-room-slash-abandoned-den that Viktor passed the night in was really not that uncomfortable, he was just a terrible sleeper. There was a bit of a thumping bassline making its way through the floor from the club above, but he got used to that quickly. There were also a few disturbing glow-in-the-dark monsters painted on the walls, but those dimmed down after a few hours. At some point his internal clock had set itself to “We can just finish one more thing before we leave for the night” and he had honestly not noticed until this, the first night in years that he had not been in lab.

“Well, no wonder Heimerdinger has never left me stockings,” he muttered to himself as he drifted off.

He also woke up early, although that was less an internal clock and more the ticking time bomb of his back, which had not appreciated the couch and wanted to register its displeasure with the entire set of circumstances that found him away from his bed.

So, he did what any polite couch surfer would do, and he ventured out to bring back some caffeine, and locked himself out of the closed bar with two mugs of coffee from a stall down the road.

He was leaning forehead-first against the door, contemplating if it would be wise to just leave his suit jacket locked in the basement of this bar and see how easy it would be to just break into his apartment and pretend this had never happened. Maybe grow a mustache and take on a new identity.

“And you must be Viktor. You have the look of a man trapped in an inescapable nightmare by a blue-haired maniac.” A woman grabbed him from behind by the shoulder and pulled him back upright like a ragdoll, then took one of the mugs of coffee off him while he blinked up at her. “Cheers.”

“Have we met?” Viktor asked. This woman could easily bench press him and it was, by his guess, seven in the morning. He wondered vaguely if he could make a break for it by throwing his luke-warm coffee in her face and blending in with the sparse crowd on the street.

“No,” she shrugged and drew a keyring out from under the poncho covering her left side and holding the door open for him. “And we don’t need to, it’s not important. You’re going to miss your marching orders.”

“This is for the caroling, right?” Viktor asked, hesitating at the door. A lot of instincts from growing up in the Undercity involved not showing your back to strangers who knew your name.

She laughed. “Oh, caroling is very serious business.”

“Am I going to get blood on me?” Viktor frowned at his rumpled suit vest. It was a nice suit vest. Tailored and everything. “I just have the one shirt.”

“You’re going to be fine, kid,” she said, swinging the door wide open and sweeping into the bar, giving him a chance to scurry in before he could get hit on the backswing.

There was some sort of elaborate war council going on in the office, and Viktor was more than happy to sit in the back and sip his coffee and make eye contact with absolutely no one. He was also deep enough into this to be actively trying not to overhear too much about what was being discussed. Jinx had proudly shown him multiple inventions that could level whole blocks the night before and he would just be happier with some plausible deniability about what her father did for a living.

Imagine the look on Jayce’s face, though. He’s going to think I’m fucking with him for putting a Progress Day tree in the middle of my fucking lab. Maybe I will tell him.

Dear Jayce, Merry Progress Day. I hope you and Mel are well. I am making lots of friends in my new gang. Thank you for putting explosives in my apartment, that was great. Hope to return the favor next year. Love-

Something moving in the rafters caught his attention, then waved at him. Then, slowly, lowered a little toy frog on a string down off the rafter.

He nodded back at Jinx and tapped his vest pocket, where he had a matching frog toy. He had made her a completely hollow promise the night before, while showing her how to rig up a firework fuse for consecutive explosions, and clearly, she had not forgotten.

That’s fine. It’s not going to come up, and she’ll have to just accept that.

“And Nash and Mumbles can take the east side dock… that leaves the boss and Deckard in Lightning Falls.” Sevika had assured Silco yesterday that she could handle planning the Progress collection round on her own, and he was begrudgingly admitting to himself that she seemed to have actually done it. And she had found Jinx’s new friend locked outside and brought him in with her, although not before Jinx had found out he was missing and gotten into a very unnecessary pre-coffee argument with him about it. The day was turning around, was his point.

“Everyone’s going to say I got to do the Falls this year because I know someone on the planning committee,” Silco deadpanned. His second in command shrugged.

“Yeah, you’ll have to send me a postcard, boss. Not coming on rounds this year.”

Really, though, Lightning Falls would be nice change of pace for, wait, “What do you mean, you aren’t coming on rounds?”

“I told you, I’m doing the shipment to Topside and the bonuses. We talked about this,” Sevika said. “You said to take someone I trust.”

“And you picked… yourself?” So this was it. The ultimate betrayal, just when he least expected it. Being left to do rounds alone on Progress Eve so she could do last minute shopping with her cut of the holiday rush.

“Don’t trust no one else,” she said, taking a long noisy sip of coffee. “Anyway, the new kid can handle it. I bet he’s got a great singing voice.”

She jerked her head back towards Viktor, who was sitting on one of the barstools in the back with the rest of the new blood. He was staring at the ceiling lackadaisically and didn’t seem to notice that the rest of the crew was talking about him, so that was at least something. He was also cradling a cheap mug identical to Sevika’s (Son of a bitch, he was gone this morning because he brought me coffee. She stole my coffee. I can have her killed for this, it’s right there in our charter.)

“So, if there aren’t questions…” she looked around at the assembled group expectantly, snapping her fingers when they shook their heads. “Great. I have to get running, then, my ship is leaving in an hour. And remember to have fun out there!”

She took off with her stolen coffee suspiciously fast. Now, maybe that was because she always went with Silco for the Progress rounds, so her leaving at all felt wrong, but it wouldn’t hurt to check the numbers on her haul when she got back, either.

Deckard was weaving through the assembling groups, handing out little flour-bag sacks to some of the heavies before they headed out to their assigned neighborhoods. He patted Farrah the Shark on the shoulder as she opened her gift, and then ducked past her to take his usual spot behind Silco’s desk while the room cleared out.

Deckard had learned how to knit, oh, two years back now. At first, what he lacked in talent he made up for in excess nervous energy, but he had gotten pretty good at it. His designs were… unique.

Once they were more-or-less alone, he handed Silco a bag with a self-pleased pointy-toothed grin.

“Oh, a hat this year?” Silco had a number of chunky scarves that matched exactly nothing about his general fashion sense, but it was good for the lad to have a hobby. Kept him out of trouble. This year’s offering was a chunky, sludge-green hat with some deeply unhealthy trees and a fist-sized pompom on the top. He pulled it on, of course. “Beautiful.”

Deckard nodded wildly and pulled another bag out, looking around.

“Is that for Jinx?”

Nod.

“She should be down soon.” Actually, she should have already been down. “Jinx?”

There was some clattering from the ceiling, and finally, “yes?”

“…We’re going caroling now.”

“I’m not coming this year!”

Oh, no. She was still upset. From this morning? Last night? “Why not? You love caroling.”

The answer, getting farther away, “Got fireworks to make.”

“Deckard’s got something for you. You want to give him his present?”

He thought for sure that would get her down, but instead she said, “Sorry, Deckard! Fireworks!”

“Sevika isn’t coming?” Silco tried tentatively.

There was some scuttering, and a sprinkle of dust from the rafters, followed by two braids and a pair of eyes. “But you’re taking Viktor, right?”

“Behold,” Silco gestured dramatically across the room, “he has returned even though I didn’t think to lock him in the basement.”

 Viktor looked, quite reasonably, upset by this statement. “You were going to lock me in the basement?”

“Well, I wasn’t. Apparently, I do not know how to host properly.”

“You don’t,” Jinx wailed from the ceiling.

Viktor made his way to the middle of the room, which frankly was a bit of a poor choice on his part. Privately, Silco felt like this poor man should have tried to get the hell out of the entire Lanes by now, and the fact that he hadn’t was a little concerning. “Jinx,” he called up at the ceiling. “Come on, don’t leave me alone here. I don’t know anyone else.”

“You know Silco,” Jinx offered immediately. “Do you need a scarf? I can give you a scarf.”

“Oh, please no, it is sweltering down here,” Viktor whispered under his breath, but to his eternal credit, he clearly did not intend anyone to hear him, and he followed it up by yelling, “Or I can stay and help with the fireworks?”

“No! I’m coming, I’m coming! Let me get my scarf!”

The whole purpose of Progress collection day was, of course, an annual show of force and a tacit rebuttal of any rumors that Silco had died and his gang was just trying to pretend someone was still in charge. But then Jinx missed caroling with her friends that she no longer had, and what was he supposed to do, go shake some businesses down for protection money one day and go around singing the day after like this was a perfectly dignified thing to do?

“Do we have to sing?” Jinx’s new friend asked him as she ran ahead of the entourage, her chunky new purple hat with not one, not two, but three oversized and asymmetric pompoms bouncing atop her head unsteadily.

“I don’t. Haven’t had the voice for it since I took a swim in some chemical runoff. Had to cancel my debut album. My agent was livid.” Viktor laughed, which was… nice. It wasn’t as though nobody laughed his jokes, anymore, it was just nice to… he was just new, and novelty was nice, that was all. “You know, you can slip away if you want. If we had kidnapped you, you would know it.”

But he shook his head. “I would drive myself crazy trying to get back into my… office. It’s good to be distracted.” And, well, wasn’t that was an interesting pause. Does something he thinks I shouldn’t know about, Silco added to his mental dossier on the new guy. “And this is… something. I haven’t been in the Lanes since I was a kid running errands. People are getting out of my way,” he said with a nod at a few men who were standing well back to let them pass, “It must be because I have gotten so much taller.”

“Must be.”

Both of them side-eyed Deckard as he made unblinking, grinning eye contact with someone who was falling over themself trying to get the hell out of the way without turning their back. Up ahead, Jinx had launched into an extremely off-tune rendition of “Festoon the halls”.

“I can go faster than this,” Viktor pointed out, “If you’re trying to keep up with her.”

“I’m sure you can. I do not hurry anywhere. It’s a matter of principle.”

“Jinx-,”

“Is always acting under my direct orders, of course, so I have no reason to monitor anything she does, and certainly no reason to rush after her.”

“She’s incredible. Her workshop is… I mean, half of that stuff should not work. Not that- metallurgy is not really my area of expertise, but to be able to do that much with assorted scrap is… miraculous.”

Yes. Correct. You have identified the most precious jewel in my kingdom and are now worthy of your place in the basement den that we do not use. But, of course, what he said was, “Doing more with less has always been our specialty.”

“Some things haven’t changed, then.”

“Not yet. But they will.”

Doucet’s place was the first one on the edge of the Lightning Falls neighborhood, an unassuming tin cabin in a line of unassuming tin cabins. It was distinguishable as a business by the open door and the sign swinging from the eaves. They had put up a string of lights along the roof this year, so you could even see ‘Repairs’ before you got right up to the door.

“Lightning Falls has electricity now?” Viktor asked. A few other houses had tried their hand at holiday decoration, leaving the little street practically visible, even this early in the day, before the sun made it up over the cliffs.

“It’s still a little-,” The lights picked this moment to flicker, sending the street back into its usual morning gloom. “Patchy. We’re working on it.”

“We?”

Silco shrugged at the threshold of the shop. “Who else is there?”

The shop itself was lit by nice reliable oil lamps, of course. Doucet, exactly the kind of broad-shouldered, tattooed mountain that you wanted repairing your machinery, was settling up with a kid in hand-me-downs that were probably about four siblings’ old and fit accordingly.

“Merry Progress Day,” Silco drawled as Deckard and, presumably, Viktor, but if he saw something he didn’t want to see that was on him, filed into the room after him. “We’re taking up a charitable collection and thought perhaps-,”

“Yeah, yeah,” Doucet growled. Doucet was a big enough guy and ran an honest enough shop that he didn’t have to put up with Silco’s Progress Collection spiel, and Silco could respect that position. “I got your money. It’s in the back.”

The boy had all but flattened himself against the counter, staring up in wide-eyed horror at the newcomers. Silco knelt down in front of him after Doucet vanished behind the curtain to ‘the back’.

“You’re Vayu’s boy, aren’t you?” The kid nodded, eyes darting frantically between him and the two men behind him. “I haven’t seen you since you were just little. How’s your hand?”

Uneasily, the boy raised up his right hand to reveal scarred stubs where his index finger and thumb should have been. Slowly, telegraphing all the way so the kid didn’t panic more than he already was, Silco reached out to take it, flexing the remaining fingers gently. “Not wearing the glove today?”

“It don’t fit,” the boy managed. His hand was trembling in Silco’s grasp. “Outgrew it last year.”

“Oh my. Well, maybe you’ll get a new one in your stocking tonight.” The boy nodded again. “Now,” Silco dropped his hand and he withdrew it into his sleeve as though it was burning, “You’re going to run out of here as soon as I turn my back and tell your mother and everyone else you find that I’m doing the rounds this year, aren’t you?”

The boy hesitated, clearly sizing him up for what answer he wanted. Silco slipped him a couple coppers. “Smart lad.”

The kid took off like a bullet the second Silco levered himself to his feet.

“Did you know,” Viktor remarked casually, staring out the door at the trail of dust the kid had left in his wake, “they give their kids Heimerdinger Stockings in Piltover?”

“Really? Where Chancellor Heimerdinger lives? A visible public figure that their children can see on a regular basis?”

Viktor nodded.

“Those people are completely crazy,” Silco muttered in disgust.

“You’re telling me.”

“Is Jinx outside? Will you wave her-,”

He didn’t manage to finish his request before she popped up at Viktor’s elbow, machine grease smeared over her face.

“Got the electric working again,” she said brightly. “Are you done yet? What should we do next, Progress Season Wonderland or Oh Progress Tree?”

Actually, it was taking Doucet a suspiciously long time. But that was what Deckard was for. Silco gave him a quick up-nod and he slipped into the back room. That out of the way, he turned back to Jinx. “We need to add Vayu’s boy to the list this year.”

Her face fell, but that was to be expected. They had some version of this argument every year, after all. “With the hand? But I already did one for him.”

“Yes, and he outgrew it. As one does.”

Jinx groaned dramatically, throwing her whole body into it for effect. “Can I at least add a finger gun this time?”

Silco only held her gaze until she looked away, kicking at the shop’s dirt floor. “Yeah, I know, I know, the Progress collection is about ‘helping the children’ and not ‘giving kids weapons and setting them loose in the streets’ but listen. What if it was about setting kids loose with weapons.”

Silco was about to launch into his usual lecture about being a responsible member of the community and how important it was to the cause that the Progress collection fund went to a service that nobody else was going to provide, and how many children in Zaun would suffer if she didn’t, and how she used to like making prosthetics, and help him understand what had changed, and it was going to be a whole thing, like it was every year.

But Viktor interrupted. “I understand,” he said, patting her on the shoulder.

“Yes, thank you! It’s boring-”

“Children grow so fast, and thumbs are very finicky,” Viktor gave her shoulder another squeeze. “You made one that worked once, but who’s to say that you will be able to do it again? And again, when he outgrows that one? You can’t let people know that the first one was a fluke.”

He might as well have stabbed her in the back. Her mouth fell open indignantly. “It wasn’t a fluke! I’ll have you know I make great prosthetics. Better than the doctor.”

“Mm-hmm,” Viktor nodded understandingly. “And you would not want anyone to know you have lost your edge.”

Her whole body was bristling at this point. Silco was surprised her hair didn’t stand on end. “I have not lost my edge. I am the edgiest. I could make a thousand thumbs! You’ll see,” she declared, pointing around the room in general as she backed into the street. “You’ll all see.”

Deckard had emerged from the backroom, with a suitably full bag of coin, a little blood on his knuckles, and notably sans Doucet.

“Well, I am glad that is all settled,” Silco said to the room at large. “Shall we?”

Back on the street, he maneuvered up close enough to Viktor to quietly thank him. It only seemed appropriate.

“Do not mention it,” he shrugged at him with a wry smile. “When I was young, I had the benefit of a mentor who explained the utility of repetition, and I am sure it would have helped me immensely if I had bothered to listen to him.”

“Still. I know when someone has done me a favor.”

This felt like a pretty innocuous statement, but Viktor reacted like this was the most awkward thing anyone had ever said to him, suddenly speeding up to put a little distance between the two of them and examining the sparse house lights with far more interest than they could possibly deserve.

Lightning Falls was not a tough collection beat. Mostly residential, which they didn’t bother with. A few smalltime numbers runners, a few honest shops of the kind that didn’t need to be on a main drag to attract a clientele, and Mrs. Lee, who ran a boarding house and insisted on paying her dues as extra insurance in case a renter ever got uppity.

But the real reason it was the most popular Progress beat was the view. The whole neighborhood circled cautiously around a ravine where a stream from some long-abandoned mine above rushed over a series of boulders and carved rock before plummeting into the depths below. This might have been nice enough, but something, either from the source of the stream or some property of the rocks themselves, caused brilliant flashes of white-blue light in places where the water hit the rock with particular force.

The area immediately around the ravine was just rock and dirt, all the houses set a good fifty feet back. The Falls were good real estate but nobody was going to set up their homestead right next to whatever was in that water. Some enterprising soul, probably one with kids, had set up a scrap wood wall around the ravine, and it was sturdy enough to lean over and enjoy the show. There was no point in coming out without at least stopping by.

Jinx had vanished, but then, she always got bored with ‘caroling’ halfway through and wandered off. Deckard had taken up his post with his back to the waterfall, in case anyone got any bright ideas about trying to get a piece of the collection money. And Viktor-

Viktor looked absolutely transfixed by the place. He leaned up against the wood barrier, watching the light crackle through the water in not-quite repeating patterns.

“You’ve seen them before, of course,” Silco remarked after a second. Most kids came by at least once growing up.

“Yes, but…” he seemed to lose his train of thought for a second. “I forget how beautiful this place can be. It’s so much easier to remember the ugly parts, but this… there is nothing like this Topside. They don’t have anything… wild. Nothing raw. Just… topiaries and manicured lawns.”

“Nothing real.”

“No,” Viktor shook off the reverie, “Of course, I’m sure whatever is causing the lights has taken ten years off the average neighborhood lifespan, and here I am talking about how real it is. If you want to push me off this cliff, I would understand.”

“No, I…” He reached out to touch the other man’s hand, and their eyes met. “…happen to agree.”

But Viktor flinched away, muttering, “Shit.” He turned back with a pained grin. “So, funny story, your daughter extracted a promise from me last night in her workshop… she, uh,” he pulled something out of his pocket and held it up in the palm of his hand. It looked like a metal frog, obviously Jinx’s (your daughter’s, he had said) handiwork. It was welded to what appeared to be a bullet casing. “Gave me this ah…” It was hard to tell in the uneven light of the Falls, but he might have been blushing, “Missile-toad.”

“Ah. Mistletoe is a bit hard to come by around here.”

“Anyway, she made me promise to try and kiss you if the opportunity presented itself, and I of course assumed that no such opportunity would present itself because clearly you are at work and I am tagging along as sort of a take-your-daughter’s-weird-adult-male-friend-to-work day, but then-,”

“Oh.”

“And I am an adult who knows how inappropriate that would be, and also that if you were ready to be dating after your marriage, you would not need your daughter to set you up with a stranger, so obviously-,”

“I’m sorry. After my what?”

“Your… late husband. Jinx just mentioned-,”

That little minx. Silco had to physically bite down on his lip to stop himself from laughing, and he needed a moment to get back to the icy detachment he was aiming for. “I need you to think very carefully. What, exactly, did she say about my late husband?”

“She said that you hadn’t been with anyone since her father died. I guess she did not specifically say that you were married, but I got the impression that it was an important relationship, so of course I want to respect that.”

That can’t be right, I’ve been with someone since Vander died. Haven’t I? Didn’t Sevika have that cousin… no that was for a job, and he didn’t even do it right. “Oh, it was not a romantic relationship. Closer to business.” Almost a friendship, even, for a while. If he had just seen what I was trying to do- And I must have met some people after we… fell out, at least. Right? Right? “Maybe it has… been a while. But my work does not lend itself to relationships.”

“Nor does mine,” Viktor said. His brow was furrowed in concentration, much like a man who was subtracting dates in his head and coming up with a number he did not like. “It has maybe been a while for me, too. But,” he added quickly, palming the little toad again, “I am having a wonderful time as is, and only brought this up to clear the air.”

“Ah.” Does it count as a date if it was supposed to be a working dinner and you had to have them escorted off the property? No, it doesn’t. I know it doesn’t.

“And also, I really appreciate you letting me sleep in your storage room and do not want to make it awkward. Hm. I am making it awkward now.”

Add ‘nervous talker’ to the dossier, along with ‘suspiciously vague about work’, ‘good at Jinx’, ‘unusually perceptive’, ‘wry smile’, ‘likes your vaguely threatening jokes’, ‘big soft eyes’… shit, how long has the dossier been horny? “We should head back. Everyone is clearly aware I am not dead, and I need a drink.”

The walk back was much quieter than the way out, and that was fine. Probably for the best, really. It was not the most awkward end to a date Viktor had ever had, and logically letting things go any further would have been a much worse mistake. Maybe his apartment was cleared by now. Maybe he could just sleep in the lab. With the tree bedecked with unstable explosives. Was getting stabbed in the street still on the table?

The garish lights weighing down the façade on The Last Drop were still turned off when they got back, although it was getting on in the afternoon. There was a sign on door, in spiky, distinctive handwriting.

“CLOSED FOR PROGRESS EVE!!

GO HOME AND DISAPPOINT YOUR FAMILIES!!”

Silco sighed, not entirely unamused, and tapped the sign, dragging his fingers down through the still-wet purple paint. Viktor thought he heard him mutter something about a mutiny as he nodded at his body guard to open the door.

“Last time she did this, I walked into a glitter bomb,” he said by way of explanation as the guard walked into the dark bar.

The lights clicked on as he crossed the threshold, lighting up strings and strings of blue, purple, and green lights wrapped around every available surface and glittering off the tinsel garlands. A Progress tree stood in one corner, made entirely out of scrap metal covered haphazardly in black-light paint. Little missile-toads hung from the ceiling in clusters. There was the mechanical whirr of a jukebox record slotting into place, and “The only thing I want for Progress Day is you” started playing softly.

The guard looked around, more in awe than in a danger-appraisal way and then gave Silco a thumbs-up. He had the sort of perpetually-tiny pupils and nervous twitch of a man who had long ago burned all his braincells out at once in one big Shimmer binge, which, combined with the lights, did not make him a particularly reassuring presence, but he wasn’t covered in glitter, and really that was good enough for Viktor to follow his host into the bar.

“Where are my manners?” Silco muttered as he rolled up his sleeves and inched his way around the tree to get behind the bar. “Viktor, would you like something to drink? I am not the bartender that my,” his lips quirked, “ex-husband was, but I can pour most liquids into most glasses reliably.”

The bodyguard had settled in a chair next to the main door and had pulled a ball of lumpy yarn and some knitting needles out of nowhere.

“Um,” Viktor levered himself onto a stool, trying not to notice the sprig of missile-toads above every available seat. “I do not really drink. My body spends enough time trying to betray me, I do not need the help. But I will nurse something inexpensive so you are not drinking alone,” he offered as Silco poured himself a good three fingers of some amber liquid and flipped a curly orange peel out of a box on the counter and into his glass.

Silco shrugged and grabbed a hose from under the bar to fill up a second glass with soda water. “I can put some grenadine in it, but Jinx says I never get the proportions right, so I can’t promise it will be drinkable.”

“This is perfect, thank you.”

They sat for a moment, sipping their respective drinks as the lights blinked. “The only thing I want for Progress Day is you” was still playing.

“This is a longer song that I remember,” Viktor remarked after a while.

“Well, this is its third repeat.”

“Hmm.” Both of them glanced up at the same time, noticed the missile-toad above them, and immediately looked off in different directions.

Awkward. Maybe now was a good time to bring up something unrelated to romance that Viktor had been mulling over. That was it. Change of subject. “You know, I, ah, have some contacts at the Academy.”

“I did not know that,” Silco remarked levelly, taking a sip of his drink and fixing his mismatched gaze on the jukebox. “I thought maybe you had a degree, but you know what they say about assumptions.”

“I could talk to the admissions committee. About Jinx. I even… well,” Viktor hesitated. He had been extremely careful not to let on that he had any important contacts that could be exploited, but hell, the girl was a genius and maybe it was worth getting blackmailed to give her a future. “I know people who… could sponsor her, even.” Mel. If Mel just knew this girl existed, she would move heaven and earth to help her.

The gentle clacking of the knitting needles stopped abruptly and the air went out of the room with an audible whoosh. Silco set down his glass. “Why would she need to go to the Academy?” he asked in a dangerous undertone.

“She’s incredibly gifted, you know this,” Viktor sat up straighter. He had expected some suspicion, maybe some pointed questions about his motives, but not… smoldering rage. “They have teachers there who could… well, teach her! She could be one of the greatest inventors of our time-,”

“And why can’t she become that here?” Silco rasped before he could finish, slamming a fist down on the bar. “Why must they take something and mold it into their image before it is worthy of recognition? Why do our best and brightest have to go up there and scrape and beg to be allowed a seat at their table?”

“They have resources at the Academy that she could never find here-,”

“And why is that? Because they refuse to share them. Because they want to keep us below them, dependent on them. They want to take everything of worth from us and leave us begging for scraps. Well, they can’t have her.”

“I’m not…” How was Viktor supposed to respond to that? Of course, he was right. It wasn’t fair. Why did it need to be said that this wasn’t fair? How did you grow up down here and think that fair was going to matter? “I’m not saying that it’s fair, but think about her. Think about her future.”

Silco fell silent, and for a moment Viktor thought he had maybe talked some sense into him, but then he whispered, “I only think about her future. I have thought about nothing but her future since the day I found her crying in the rubble. Do you think she would survive up there? Do you think that your contacts at the Academy would understand her? That they would accept her?” Silco laughed, once, bitterly, and downed his drink in one gulp. “Did they accept you?”

“I have friends in Piltover. Good people. Kind people.” People who make me eggnog and tell me when I need to take a break and use their connections to handle facetious tips that I’m building bombs.

“And these friends, these good people. Do they want to know who you really are? Or do they tune it out when you start talking about the things you’ve seen, the things you know are still happening while they hold their little classes and have their little festivals, because they don’t want to think about the people they leave behind to die-,”

“That is unfair-,” Viktor started.

“THEY WOULD EAT HER ALIVE. She can’t blend in down here. If she went Topside, they would wait for her to fuck up, and they would fall on her like sharks on a chum bucket. She won’t be able to play their games. She won’t change to be what they want to see. She could never do what you’ve done.”

Viktor’s eyes narrowed. "And what is that I have done, exactly?”

Silco looked him up and down, coolly, and said simply, “You’ve convinced them that you’re one of them.”

“How horrible. Perhaps I should have stayed down here and built weapons for drug dealers,” Viktor spat.

“Perhaps so. At least your own people would be allowed to touch your inventions, then.”

“I think I should leave,” Viktor declared, standing up. And it is because I am taking the high road and not because I do not have a specific rebuttal for that.

Lanes men didn’t look back over their shoulders when walking away from a big argument, but, well, Viktor had never been good at that macho bullshit, and he glanced back at the door, to see if Silco would try to stop him. But no, he was staring blankly at the jukebox as the record started over again.

Jinx was set up cross-legged on his chair, with a set of gears laid out carefully over the map on his desk, slotting them together into something that was starting to resemble a thumb. “And how was caroling?” she asked Silco eagerly when he slunk back into his office. “Fun? Exciting? Ro-maaaan-tic?”

It was so hard to be mad at her. He sank into the couch instead. “I have a lot of work to catch up on today.”

“That’s not true,” she said immediately. “Where’s Viktor?”

“He went home, Jinx. He doesn’t belong down here.”

“What did you do?” She launched herself onto the coffee table to loom over him. “You didn’t read him your manifesto, did you?”

“Shoes off the table,” he said automatically. She popped her feet to the floor and settled down into a seat on the mahogany. “I didn’t do anything. You can’t just shove two people together and expect them to… work out. Especially if one of them is some Piltover elitist.”

“He’s from South Thrublurk!” Jinx exclaimed. “You’re impossible, you know that? I should have just got you a tie.”

Ah yes, a confession. He leaned back into the couch, smiling just a little. “Jinx, did you ruin that poor man’s Progress Day as a gift to me?”

She let out an indignant little gasp. “OK, well, first of all, I think that Viktor had a pretty nice time and his original plans were just… really sad. His assistant says that he basically never leaves his lab…” She grinned, “I told her I was his cousin, she totally bought it, it’s fine… and second of all, do you have ANY idea how small your dating pool is? It is literally a miracle that we managed to find one guy who meets all your ridiculous criteria.”

“We?” Silco said right before the pieces fit together and he said, “Sevika was in on it, wasn’t she.”

“Yes, completely. She didn’t believe I could do it, but she said she was willing to give it a shot because she thought you would be less grouchy if you could…” Jinx’s cheeks went pink and she mumbled, “um, actually, I don’t really want to repeat what she said… we just are worried about you.”

He leaned forward again to tuck a stray hair behind her ear. “You don’t need to be worried about me.”

“Mm-hmm. Did you take your medication?”

“Of course, I did,” he said immediately, closing his good eye. The room went blurry and when he opened it, Jinx was looking at him with both eyebrows raised up to her goggles and her arms crossed over her chest.

“I’ll get it,” she said, standing back up. “But you did like him, right? It seemed like you really liked him.”

“I suppose it was nice to talk to someone who isn’t afraid of me for a bit.”

“It’s not too late, you know,” she said as she fiddled with the injector. “You could rush out to the trolley to tell him you want him back. Dramatically. Right before he gets aboard to leave the Undercity for the last time and be lost to you forever.”

“Even if I ran- and I do not run in public, he’s halfway to Piltover by now.”

“Not if there’s a bomb threat,” Jinx sang, tossing the loaded injector up in the air with one hand and catching it behind her back with the other. “Say the word, boss. Can make the trolleys stop all day.”

“Under no circumstances are you to ever call a fake bomb threat into the Enforcers.”

“Fake?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.

Trolley service was slow on Progress Eve this late in the day, and Viktor found himself waiting on the platform, looking out at the smog, lit from below with the Lanes’ newly-steady electricity. He’d go find Jayce, tell him what happened… maybe not everything that happened, an abridged version of events, and demand to sleep over. Maybe get some Progress cookies and cocoa. And he would forget all about this entire incident. He had barely known Silco a full 24 hours, after all. So whatever it was that kept drawing his attention wistfully back towards the general direction of The Last Drop was going to get over itself.

“Hey, you got a light?” the only other person on the platform, a young woman in a fresh-starched maid’s outfit, tapped him on the shoulder, snapping him out of his thoughts abruptly.

“No, I don’t-,” he turned around, and her face lit up.

“Oh, I know you! You’re the Talis boy’s friend. Viktor? What are you doing down here?” She slipped the cigarette back in her pocket before giving him a hug, and he recognized her just a second after.

“You’re one of the Kirammens' maids… Brynna, right?”

She laughed and smoothed her skirt. “It’s a living. Gave me a whole day off to see my folks before Progress Day. So gracious,” she rolled her eyes and then winked at him. “Are they ever going to invite you back? You’re the only good dinner guest we’ve ever served.”

“You wouldn’t put me through dinner at the Kirammens’ just to wait on someone halfway decent,” Viktor begged, only half-joking.

“Like hell we wouldn’t,” she said, spitting over the railing for emphasis. “Watching the Councilor try to bend over backward to kiss some miner brat’s ass is the best thing that’s ever happened to us. We still joke about the look on her face when you asked me my name!” She pulled an exaggerated look of shock and horror to demonstrate, “And the way you looked at them whenever they talked about money… I thought her hairpiece was going to catch fire.”

Viktor smiled wanly as she wiped away some tears of laughter. “I was not trying to glare at her. Sometimes Topsiders just say the most ridiculous things and I … can’t help it. Those people are insane.”

“Well, please get Talis to get the young mistress to get her mother to ask you back, because it’s a nice change of pace to see a Fissure lad at the table, making ‘em squirm.” Brynna smiled at him again as the platform bell started ringing, announcing the imminent arrival of their trolley. “You going past their place? I’ll walk with you.”

“No, I…” Viktor half-turned to the opening trolley doors, then swung himself back towards the staircase. “I have to go. There’s a promise I need to keep.”

Despite Jinx’s absolute insistence to the contrary, Silco did have work he could be doing. But she had settled on the sofa with her head in his lap, holding the mechanical thumb up over her head so she could fiddle with it. He had picked up a book from the table instead, and was leafing through it without really looking at any of the words. It might have been poetry. It might have been a ledger. Hell, it might have been blank. His mind was elsewhere.

“Jinx… would you… want to go to the Academy? If it were an option.”

She pulled a face without taking her attention off her work. “No, gross. Doc says they make you report every little thing you do for approval. AND they don’t let you use any of the good stuff. Why?” She lifted her head up just a hair, looking towards the door. “Do you hear that?”

‘That’ was an uneven footstep on the stairs, and before Silco could even jump to conclusions, Viktor threw the door open and stormed into the office, out of breath and wild-eyed.

“I have figured something out,” he announced as Jinx gave a delighted cry and jumped to her feet. “You,” he pointed at Silco, “Are the angriest person I have ever met.”

“I usually take meetings by appointment only,” Silco said, but that was mostly reflex. He stood up. Viktor didn’t look murderous per se, but it never hurt to be a little taller when someone came storming into your office looking like they had just run half a mile.

“You are swearing like a sailor in your head all the time,” Viktor carried on relentlessly, taking one swinging step after another closer to the sofa. “But you’ve trained yourself not to say it out loud. Because you are a respectable businessman. You wear tailored silk suits and fill your office with art that half of Piltover can’t afford because when they come in here, they have to admit that you are more fashionable and cultured than them, that you have them beat at their own game, and then, when you are contemptuous, when you look down at them, they have to take it. They don’t get to pretend not to see you, and I,” Viktor took a deep breath. “I know, because I am so angry all of the time, and nobody in Piltover ever sees. They just. Look right through me. They just don’t care, and. They are never angry. And I miss. Anger.”

He flung his left arm out to gesture triumphantly at an imaginary blackboard behind him, presumably covered in the imaginary written proof of this thesis, and beamed at Silco in a slightly unhinged way. “So, fuck it,” he concluded, swinging his arm back around to grab Silco by the back of the neck and pull him into a kiss.

Fuck it, indeed. The man clearly had a death wish, but he kissed like he was starving, like the kiss was the only thing keeping him alive.

“I’ll go put a scrunchie on the door!” Jinx yelled, bolting out of the office before he could surface, let alone stop her.

Viktor let him go and looked up at him with an incongruously bashful grin while Silco tried to catch his breath.

“What… do they teach you at that academy?”

“Almost nothing,” the grin turned smug, “I am naturally talented.”

“Well.” There was a next step here. “Have I shown you my room yet?”

“Why no, but I would be very interested.” He waggled his eyebrows and then frowned. “Do you want to, uh, take that scrunchie off the door first?”

Ah. That was the next step. “Yes. That first.”

Viktor was having a good morning. He had probably slept, oh, maybe a full five hours the night before. He was in a nice bed, his partner had a hand tangled up in his hair a little possessively. Some physical contact. Nice. He was going back to sleep.

Someone banged on the door, and a woman, maybe the woman who had stolen his coffee, shouted, “Merry Progress Day, Boss. You decent?”

Silco groaned next to him and pulled a blanket over both of them. “No.”

“You’re going to miss the fireworks.”

“Good. Wait. No.” With another groan, he rolled out of bed. “Don’t have kids, Viktor, you will never sleep again.”

“I do not really sleep,” he muttered, eyes still closed.

“He said with no trace of irony while snuggling into the mattress like a tiny little kitten.”

“Shhh,” Viktor groped blinding around in the general direction of Silco’s voice until he managed to tap a finger against what were maybe lips. “You’re ruining Progress Day.”

“Well. I have places to be. I suppose you could stay here. I can’t imagine you doing any damage like this.”

“No, I will come with you, I want to see my fireworks. I made some that are shapes, you know.” He opened one gummed-up eye to find Silco staring at him. “What?”

“You’re too good for them.”

“Correct,” he murmured, gesturing vaguely. “Can you hand me my brace?”

Silco picked his leg brace up off the floor and set it down obligingly on the bed on his way over to the wardrobe. Viktor grabbed it blindly and curled up around it like a teddy bear. “There. Practically dressed already.”

“We could use you,” Silco said over his shoulder. “If you wanted to come home.”

“I have a home; it’s just currently covered in explosives. Unrelated to the events of yesterday, I am sure.”

“You know what I mean. And the offer stands. You know where to find us.”

Jinx was scanning the crowd anxiously from the launch point, but she still heard Sevika swearing as she squeezed into the space. (None of Jinx’s firework launching points were designed to be accessed by anyone but her. Why would she make them that way? She kept explosives in here.) “Is he coming? Is he there yet?”

“Front row seats. And…” Sevika paused so long that Jinx was forced to look over and make eye contact. She was smiling smugly, like they had some kind of shared… bonding… moment. Gross. And she pointed at a spot clearing towards the top of the waterfront, where the crowd was giving two men a wide berth. “He brought his Progress present.”

Jinx pulled a face at her to hide how relieved she was. “So, you owe me a beer,” she said.

“No, I don’t.”

“You said that if I pulled it off, you’d buy me a beer.”

Sevika leaned in real close (too close. What were they, friends, now?) and whispered, “Prove it.”

“I hate you,” Jinx muttered, and Sevika, like a monster, clapped her on the back.

“He seemed happy this morning. You did good, kid. You’re a good daughter.”

Someone started hissing behind her and she couldn’t turn around to chase them away because Sevika couldn’t know about them. “I’m not-,”

“Not what?” Sevika was laughing at her. She was always laughing at her.

“I’m not his daughter.”

“I’ve got bad news for you, pipsqueak,” she announced with unnecessary glee, “You are.”

“No, it’s-,” Jinx sputtered. Sevika was the worst. “It’s more complicated.”

“No, it’s not. Never has been. You’re his little girl, he’s your dad. Doesn’t matter what you call each other. It’s the only normal thing about you two weirdos.”

Jinx squeezed her eyes shut and tried to stop her hands trembling by fumbling with the fuses. Like hell she was going to start crying in front of fucking Sevika. “I’m gonna tell him you said that,” she managed to grit out without her voice wavering.

“Do it. He knows I know he’s a weirdo.” She rolled her shoulders. “I’m going back down. I want to see this show, too, you know.”

“Yeah, OK, whatever,” Jinx muttered, and then she was alone with the fuses. “I did good though,” she whispered to her lighter before bringing it down on the whole tangle of them.

All things equal, Viktor would have preferred not to run into anyone he knew on his Walk of Shame home, but that was before Jayce ambushed him right off the bridge, running towards him and shouting at the top of his lungs, “Viktor? VIKTOR! It is you! You’re alive!”

Viktor really wanted to be offended that his friend seemed to think he would be dead in three days left to his own devices but honestly, it was just… really good to see Jayce, stupid reindeer-hammer sweater and all. And when Jayce reached him and wrapped his arms around him, Viktor hugged him back just as tightly.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” Jayce said while they clung to each other, “Caitlyn came by Mom’s looking for you and said your apartment was ready to go back to and I said you weren’t there and what do you mean what was wrong with his apartment and she told me and I would never have kicked you out if I knew you didn’t have a place to sleep, you know that right, and then nobody could find you and I missed you so much you can never leave me again.”

“No, it was terrible, the worst thing that has ever happened to me and I missed you so much and I’m never letting you disinvite me from your family’s Progress Day dinner ever again. I will get a set of keys from your mother and break in if I have to. You are never allowed to abandon me again.”

“I missed you!”

“I missed you too!”

Jayce sniffed loudly, and then again, more faintly and deliberately. “Hey, Viktor, why does your hair smell like cotton candy?”

“It is girl’s conditioner. I stayed with some friends. Do you like it? I could get you some.”

“I don’t hate it,” Jayce loosened his grip, absolutely so he could get a better look at Viktor’s hair and assess it for softness and sheen, and then his expression changed completely to something… ominously amused. “What kinds of friends were you staying with, now?”

He had a lie thought out for this, but Jayce, still smiling impishly, reached over to trace his thumb along Viktor’s jaw line. “Just, you’ve got something here…” He moved the thumb further down his neck. “And here. And…” he hooked a finger into Viktor’s collar before Viktor realized what he was getting at and swatted him away.

“Ah, yes, that. Well. You know.” He was definitely blushing, that was just how it was going to be. Jayce was still grinning at him. “Had to find somewhere to sleep.”

“Uh-huh. Was he cute?”

“Well, I thought so.”

“I uh, have eggnog and cookies,” Jayce rummaged around in a backpack (how had he not noticed the backpack immediately?) and held up a thermos and a little tin with a snowman on it. “Mom sent them with me when I rushed out to find you… do you want to have some eggnog and cookies before we go home?”

“I do want that.”

“So, uh,” Viktor, now cozily situated on a bench overlooking a nice vista of the channel, cradled his mug of eggnog and glanced over at his friend, “how was your Progress Day?”

“Oh, uh, you know,” Jayce took a sip of his own mug with a shrug. “The usual. Mom said Mel seems… nice. They didn’t like, fight. So. I guess that’s… You know. One thing checked off the relationship list. I don’t know.” He bumped his shoulder gently against Viktor’s. “What about you?”

“Oh, the usual. Had a really intense three-day romantic affair with a drug kingpin. Borrowed conditioner from a teenager who is probably going to make our entire life’s work redundant before she’s thirty. Watched the fireworks. Turns out the Lanes have fireworks now.”

“Are you fucking with me?”

“No, they really do have fireworks now. Honestly, I am a little surprised you could not see them from up here, they were pretty… intense.”

Jayce draped an arm around him companionably. “Well, then, I am sorry I kicked you out of your lab. I had no idea you’d go on a mob boss sexual walk around if you couldn’t have your science.”

“Oh, you know me. A world-renown maker of excellent life choices,” Viktor sighed and leaned into the side-hug. It was a nice sunset. And there was a whole year between him and the next Progress Day. “There is something really comforting about snuggling up to a man and knowing he’s got a fish-gutting knife tucked in his belt, though. Makes you feel safe.”

The subtlest shift in Jayce’s body language betrayed that this was the line that made him realize Viktor was not, in fact, fucking with him.

“We have different taste in romantic partners,” he said after a moment.

“Oh,” Viktor raised his head off Jayce’s shoulder to look at him. He patted him on the cheek. “Oh, honey. Sweetie. Little baby Jayce.”

“What?”

“I have met Mel, we… are more similar than you think.”

“You’re saying Mel keeps a fish-gutting knife in her belt?”

“Metaphorically, yes.” Viktor took a loud, slurping sip of eggnog. “And literally, also yes, although I think she calls it a stiletto.”

Jayce made a strangled little noise and then gulped down some more eggnog. Viktor helped himself to another cookie. It was going to be a good year.

And stay tuned next year for "A Shimmering Progress Day Miracle 2: A Shimmering Progress Day Miracle Prince"*

*I'm not going to write this