Chapter Text
The Monster You Created
The past is the shadow and foreshadowing of the present.
Wesley Morris and AO Scott
Prologue: Dig Up Your Grave
One Year After The Cannery
I Declare War
In Piltover, a bomb detonates.
In Zaun, a girl screams.
Make you lower your voice
He slams the door shut but nothing can hold back the girl’s wails spilling onto the streets above.
“Singed!”
The doctor injects another syringe full of drugs into the thin plastic tubes wrapped around the girl’s head, with the pink of her new crown, clashing with the blue. Singed sets the metal syringe on the filthy tray and tightens the bonds around the girl’s wrists and ankles.
“Her treatment is not yet complete.”
“That is what you said last week. And the week before.”
The girl screams and thrashes against her restraints, as if in agreement. Singed caresses another vial of Shimmer in his fingers for the briefest of moments, then taps it against the edge of the desk.
“I see no improvement!”
“She is unique, her condition calls for more time.”
He gestures at the walls around them.
“Have you heard of what we just accomplished?”
Singed’s eyes dart about the room.
“Answer the question.”
Singed whispers the rumour he has heard.
“You detonated a bomb. In Piltover.”
“I detonated her bomb in Piltover, Singed! Decades of oppression, and now this girl has given us the means to fight back.”
He slaps the vial from Singed’s hand. It hurls to the ground and smashes into a million pieces.
“Tell me how long this process will take, Singed. Zaun needs the girl.”
He nods at the shadow by the door. It stands, its head, brushing against the ceiling, and it approaches. Singed glances at the shadow, than at him, eyes wide, arms flailing.
“I said I would try! I didn’t guarantee...”
“Who can?”
The shadow steps into the light of the naked bulb revealing a brute of a man, Cote., His arms, dangerously close to Singed’s neck.
“A doctor of the mind! In Piltover! Dr Bloom!”
Cote retreats into the shadows, as he is taught. Singed breathes a little easier, talks a little faster.
“Her methods are unorthodoxed. Wordscraft, they say. But...”
He has heard all he needs to hear. A knife flashes in the dim light, and the bonds around the girl’s hands fall away.
How could you ignore
The girl sits in her corner and does her best impression of a wild animal, kicking and screaming and scratching anyone who comes her way. Cote runs to Sevika, who rolls her eyes and knocks on his door.
“Brat’s a distraction we don’t need, Silco.”
He gestures at the window behind him, at the distant cloud of black smoke rising in the horizon and the cries of Piltover which none of them can hear, but which would serve as the initial drawing of a bow, something which would, ultimately, drag Piltover to the negotiating table.
“The girl is an untapped talent who has succeeded where you have failed. We need her bombs, Sevika. And if the road to her bombs will take her through Piltover, then so be it.”
He brushes Sevika’s excuses aside and crosses the hallway to the girl’s room. His lackeys fall at the sight of him, and they stream out one by one, until there is no one left but the crying girl and the stench of piss and sweat.
“Girl.”
He does not know if his presence registers in the girl’s mind – she has resumed covering her ears with her hands, muttering at the unseen voices surrounding her, slipping into it as easily as he had barked and sniped at Singed this morning.
“Jinx!”
No words free the girl from her reverie. He watches her rock back and forth, knows from experience that she will not stop, that he must make his point now, or the screams will come again.
“You must go to Piltover.”
No response.
“Girl, you are a singular talent and you hold much promise. But you will do Zaun no good by sitting here, inhibited by these voices. You are ill. This doctor will fix you.”
He stands aside, motions at the open door. But still she hesitates. And he sees, perhaps the only person in Zaun who sees, why.
So he kneels before her, and he holds out his hand.
“My men will accompany you. You won’t be alone.”
The girl then leaps into him, knocking him over his feet. She clings to his chest and refuses to let go. He grips her tightly, surprised, confused.
Then he rises, and he carries her out the door.
Our neighbourhoods held us hostage
It is child’s play for Singed to inject the girl with a sleep draught while she is in his arms, for him to beckon his men to come and take the girl.
“She needs kindness. Not a firm hand.”
He does not know why he said that, nor why he now accompanies his men to the small jetty for the crossing. Darkness had fallen and Zaun lay around him, stretched tight like an elastic band wrapped around a pole, collectively holding its breath with its occupants. The cloud of smoke above Piltover had descended on them in the afternoon, acrid and bitter, hinting at the burning flesh and the ashen buildings it had left behind. And he can only guess at the welcome the Enforcers will afford a party from Zaun so soon after the attack, especially with a party of armed men and a girl sent by him.
So he beckons them away from the bridge, and he leads them to a small jetty, where rowboats await. He pays for the largest rowboat and the strongest coxswain.
“Go quickly. Quietly.”
A boat chugs up the river, its markings indistinguishable, its weak lights piercing the fog around them. He steps into the shadows and gestures his men to do the same. He does not need another pair of eyes on him.
But the boat passes them by, and he allows himself to step back into the moonlight. The men step into the rowboat with the girl. But the rocking boat jolts the girl awake and the screams begin in earnest. His men hold their hands over her mouth, but she bites and scrabbles and draws blood at every opportunity.
“Jab her with one of them medicines!”
“I’m tryin’!”
But the boat tilts to one side, the bag of sleep draughts tip overboard, and he has no choice but to raise his voice.
“Girl!”
His voice cuts through the hubbub. All around them, lanterns go just a little brighter, as heads turn and the lights in the huts by the shore blink back to life. In the distance, he hears the monotonous chug chug chug, this time, of a Piltover patrol boat, a great beam of light, sweeping across the shores. He does not know if this is a Piltover patrol boat making its regular rounds, or if this is a search party seeking him. But he knows they cannot be seen.
“Girl, we’ve no time for this!”
She seeks the sound of his voice, her eyes, wild, her screams dissolving into cries. And when their eyes meet, she is the first to react, to grab the front of his coat and yank him into the rowboat.
And he sees the only path ahead of him, as the roar of the patrol boat grows ever louder with that great beam of light fast approaching, bright as the muzzle of a gun, as one of his men screams.
“They gonna see us! We gotta go! We gotta go!”
He nods. The coxswain, with a firm sweep of his oars, pushes away from the shores and arches through the surface of the river towards Piltover. The patrol boat lurches past, its spotlight, barely skimming the edge of the rowboat. He settles into a more tolerable position; the girl mimics his movements, her cries, already softening.
“Girl, I can accompany you to the jetty, but no more. My men will handle the rest.”
The girl looks at him, her eyes, wide, and (he notices for the first time) pink with Shimmer.
He does not see the mine floating towards him until it lightly taps against the rowboat, and by then, he is thrown into the water, the rowboat smashed in two. The coxswain screams something, his men scream another, before the waves swallow them, but he can hear nothing but the blasts, followed by the ringing in his ears.
Another explosion, further away than before. He dives underwater to escape the blasts, pushes past the broken planks of wood and a floating figure, though dead or alive, he cannot tell. It is only when he is safely away, closer to shore, that he realises the ringing in his ears had transformed into the sharp shrill screams of the girl.
He swims back towards the edge of the wreckage, he grabs the back of her top and he drags her to shore, to the steps where they both collapse on, coughing and retching from the cold river waters. And when his stomach has nothing to give, when the coughs give way to shivers, he drags himself up, and he looks over the horizon.
He sees naval mines drifting pass, floating on the same river which had blinded him all those years ago. He sees patrol boats quietly guiding vessels through the waters, vessels which drop more naval mines in their wake, until they dot the river, cutting off any ship from Zaun.
He hears a siren and looks to the bridge, to see garrisons of Enforcers marching on the bridge towards Zaun, their rifles gleaming in the moonlight. He sees the bottoms of steamships, peeking through the clouds above them, gliding towards Zaun.
No way home.
And all those little mishaps
He storms into his Piltover house, newly bought, barely furnished, and what furniture he has, he destroys in an explosion of rage. Zaun was hopelessly outclassed, outgunned, and in the moment of her greatest need, he was here, standing in the city which wanted to destroy his home, with nothing but sticks and stones against an army.
A whimper by the stairwell. The girl, hugging the bannisters, eyes wide at the fury she has witnessed. He realizes he is still holding the remains of the stool he had destroyed, and he tosses it away, although why, he does not yet know. She realizes he has noticed her, and she backpedals in panic, returning into the shadows which she had emerged from.
This stings him in a manner he does not expect. The girl, wretched as she was, and him were the only survivors of this craven attack on Zaun; she should not be afraid of him like this.
So, he kneels before her, and he drapes his coat around her shoulders.
She clings to him tightly and because it is the first thing which crosses his mind, perhaps the only thing which he can do, he picks her up, he pulls her close and he refuses to let go.
“It’s okay.”
He rests his forehead against the window and watches, helpless, as fire rains down on his city from the clouds above.
All by my lonely
He sits by the window all night, watches as the orange glow of flames illuminate the horizon, so bright that he cannot see the rising sun until it is high in the sky, above the airships, hidden in the clouds. The girl announces her presence beside him with a sniff.
But the girl could wait. Her bombs were the key to their future. Zaun needed him now. His pain and anger and distress had already frozen him for one night, he could not afford to sit for any longer. So he takes his coat and he marches out the door. He does not know what he will do to Piltover, only that he will do something.
He is halfway down the street before he realises the girl’s hand is in his.
Any disrespect gets met with a vengeance
He barely manages a block before he encounters his first roadblock. A slow-moving queue stretching for half a mile. A squad of Enforcers at the end. He slips away, tries a different route, one which would take him closer to the bridge (although what he would do once he reaches the bridge, he does not know) and walks into another roadblock. He ducks away, sneaks into an alley here, a backstreet there, and he sees roadblocks at every turn.
Still, he tries, he hides in queues, he waits for an opening to force his way onto another path, heading towards the gunshots in the distance, the bombs beginning to ring in his ears again, as he fights against the tide of people coming his way, and the shouts of Enforcers as the girl clings to him for dear life.
“Turn back! This is an active warzone!”
And soon, he is on the edge of the fighting, surrounded only by Enforcers, erecting barricades, mounting checkpoints. Another Enforcer shoves him aside and waves a fleet of tanks through.
And he is seized by a sudden urge to stand before the tanks to stop them from reaching the bridge. But what resistance could he mount? What victory would he achieve before the tanks flatten him?
“Get down!”
An ear wrenching scream of hot metal in the clouds above, an airship breaks apart, still in the air, and collapses to the ground in an inferno. The girl screams, the Enforcers scramble, tank commanders poke their heads above the hatch, their eyes, only on the burning carcass before them.
But not him. His eyes lay in the sky, at the dark streak of light coming from Zaun. He recognises those lights, knows the missiles hiding behind them. He resists a wild urge to pump his fists in the air. To scream and shout and cheer. Zaun was mounting a defence. Zaun was mounting a...
“You can’t be here!”
Enforcers drag them away before he can retaliate.
We running this gang
The Enforcers drag him towards a corner. He looks them in the eye, fists clenched. Would they execute him now? Or would they force him through a show trial and publicly humiliate him?
They do neither and instead, shove him towards the closest roadblock for his papers.
“I don’t care how rich you were down there, Silco! When you’re here, you listen to us!”
It is only when the Enforcers leave him that he realises no one in Piltover had known what he had done.
Now let me switch up the optics
They visit Dr Bloom in the afternoon, because Piltover has sealed all routes to the border with Zaun, and he has nowhere else to go.
Yet, the office is dark when they reach it, its doors closed when it had no reason to be. He notes the windowpanes, caked with pigeon droppings, the chipped paint, the slate above the door, its words long faded under the sun. A ruse. A doctor who would work miracles would have a queue before the door and afford a far better office than this.
Singed had led him away from Zaun to a lie.
Something squirms under his grip. The girl. Now sporting a bruise on her wrist, dark purple under his white knuckles.
"Hello there."
A high-pitched voice, a fresh-faced researcher in a stained lab coat. Young, too young to be managing anything other than the half-eaten sandwich in her hand, much less someone who had stumped as many doctors as the girl.
And yet, bold enough to look him in the eye with fierce, intelligent eyes of her own.
“Can I help you?”
He sees the desperation beneath the researcher’s calmness then, her enthusiasm, as she unlocks the door and beckons them in. The hunger, when she finally dares to glance at the girl with large, unblinking eyes. As if the girl would disappear if she turned away.
And he realises then, that there was a Dr Bloom. But Dr Bloom was a doctor with no patient, just as he was a man with no options.
"The girl and I have travelled far to see you."
You stranded with a bad bunch of misfit toys
He pushes through the increasing crowds, the by-product of another roadblock. He flashes their papers at the flailing Enforcers, and walks pass them before they can call him back.
He would not have heard them, even if they did. For Dr Bloom had filled him with absurd sentences, riddled with concepts he did not understand. The wordscraft referred to by Singed was no medicine, but a form of therapeutic treatment with words. There would be lessons to teach the girl how to manage her illness. Sessions to acclimatise the girl, all leading to enrolling her in a school, to help her socialise with her peers. All drawn in a document balled in his fist, what Dr Bloom had called a program.
To commit the girl to this was absurdity, he knew. No different than bringing the girl to Singed and his Shimmer. But he also knows he will say yes the next time they meet Dr Bloom. He knows he will bring the girl to the doctor and strictly adhere to the program for the weeks, the months and the years, it will last.
For he has traded away the life he had known to bring the girl to Dr Bloom. His losses today cannot be for nothing.
He pushes past the last of the crowd to reach his door, only now, noticing the lack of chatter, the shouts of Enforcers instructing them to disperse. The girl pushes him forward as a shield, clutches the tails of his coat and buries her face in it.
He recognises the faces in the crowd. Some he had only seen yesterday. Others, last week. Zaunites who had crossed over to Piltover to work. To trade. And a few, he recognises from months ago. Zaunites who had lost faith. Who had abandoned their homes in Zaun for better lives in Piltover.
All had a semblance of a life yesterday. All now symbols of his failure. Twice he tries to speak, and twice he fails. Because saying the words out loud would crystalise the truth. That he had spent half his life planning and manoeuvring and hoping. That he had given everything he could, destroyed everything that he was, stopped at nothing to be strong. Only for Zaun’s dreams to implode because of him.
"Piltover."
He mumbles, his mind buckling under the weight of his past.
“Piltover.”
He says again. Louder, stronger. His words flow easily now, and he seeks refuge in them.
“Piltover has take from us. Our birthright. Our freedom. Our dignity. Mould us into who we are today. And when that is not enough, they force us into a war to destroy us!”
He shouts at the heart of his world, hoping that if he can shout loud enough, his past will disappear.
“They will use this war to divide us. To take us away from our brothers and sisters. To force us here to die, hungry and alone.”
He embraces Zaun, as he always does, as he always will. Knowing that anything less will force him to turn around, to reckon with a past which would bring him to his knees.
“But we are not alone! For we are here. And we are Zaun.”
A minute passes. Then another minute, longer than the first. The silence, now overbearing, as the Enforcers fall back, as their cries for backup fade.
Then one by one, they remove their hats, they bow their heads, and they look to him for help.