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The river had always been there, dark and unyielding. Familiar.
Silco stood on its edge now, the murky water lapping hungrily at the edges of his shoes like an old friend reminding him of shared secrets, reminding him of everything that he had ever endured within it's darkness. He drew in a breath that rattled in his chest, feeling the sharp sting of memory cut deeper than any blade.
He had once loved Vander with the kind of fervor that burned bright against the hollow cold of Zaun's underbelly. They had whispered revolution in shadowed corners, hands clasped and hearts thrumming with the same dream, eyes bright with their hopes as they shared wide grins and carefree glances.
There had been a time when Silco’s voice, hardened by ambition and dedication to the cause, softened only for Vander’s laughter - that deep, resonant sound that made the air in the depths of the mines feel less suffocating. The sound that made the smog that clung to every corner of Zaun slightly less oppressive.
He had loved that sound. He had loved the man behind it even more.
But love was a fickle, venomous thing. Their love had become twisted, bitter, hateful. The Vander he had loved and the Vander that had held him under the water, lips pulled back to bare his teeth in a sharl, were not the same. Silco hated that Vander. The Vander that betrayed him.
Silco clenched his jaw as he stared into the water, its surface rippling like it had the night Vander held him down and pressed his head beneath, drowning him amongst the filth of Zaun's pollution. The memory surged forward, unbidden - the gurgle of water as it invaded his mouth and nose, the pressure of betrayal squeezing his chest tighter than the river ever could, his struggle growing weaker and weaker - the reality of his death becoming stronger and stronger - until his fingers curled around the hilt of Vander's familiar knife.
Before that night, Silco had believed they still shared their dreams of forging a future - their future - only to find that Vander’s vision was strangled and smothered by fear, his ideals mired in compromise.
Silco’s rage had been a wildfire during that careful night, sparking from the embers of everything they’d built together - everything Vander was throwing away so easily. But as the darkness closed in around him that night, his vision going black as the fingers around his neck tightened, it was not the fear of death that broke him. It was the realization that Vander had chosen to follow his fear at the cost of their bond.
That Vander had chosen his fear over Silco.
Vander's knife in Silco’s hand had been an afterthought, a last desperate gambit as his fingers reached out for anything to save himself. The blade had met flesh, a fleeting moment of resistance, before Vander's fingers loosened and the water claimed Silco whole.
Silco had sunk into the river’s embrace, lungs burning as if they were being scorched from the inside, the taste of iron and salt searing his tongue.
He had almost drowned that night, too weak to swim.
His vision had gone black, the cold numbing him to the core until the world itself seemed to dissolve.
But even as his consciousness slipped away, the hatred - raw and primal, all focused on Vander - festered in the hollow spaces left behind by lost love. He hadn’t known then that he would awaken, that the river would spit him back out as if even it had no claim on a spirit so consumed by rage. And as he had pulled himself onto the shore, choking on pollution and blood that tasted of bitter toxins and filth, he had only known hatred.
And now, standing on the river’s edge with the city sprawling behind him like a jagged crown, Silco’s lips curled into a grim smile.
He had survived that night, baptized in Vander's betrayal, reborn in the suffocating embrace of that river tainted with their blood, sweat, and tears.
Vander had thought he could drown out the flames of Silco’s conviction with water, but fire, he learned, burned hotter when it clawed back to life. And Silco's conviction had become an inferno, only fueled to grow higher and hotter by the betrayal of the one he had considered dearest to his heart.
He could almost hear Vander’s voice again, rough with remorse, but it only fueled the poison coiled in his gut. He traced the jagged scars that split his face, a testament to the day he lost more than a friend - he lost the one who had given him hope and then ripped it away. His infected eye ached, reminding him of the mark that he would bare forever as a reminder of what Vander had done to him. A reminder to all of Zaun, that the Silco and Vander were no more.
It had become a ritual, this return to the water’s edge, as if Silco was daring the past to rise up and confront him. But it never did.
The river kept its secrets as well as he did.
Silco wondered if Vander ever stood in this same spot, guilt coiling in his chest like a serpent, his long-healed knife wound aching with the pain of guilt and betrayal.
To some of Zaun, Vander was the hero, the man who tempered dreams with caution. But in Silco’s story, Vander was the villain, the lover turned coward, the betrayer who traded loyalty for control.
And so, Silco nurtured his hate like a seed, roots tangled in love long decayed but never forgotten. It only worked to fuel his hatred, growing and growing with every passing day. Unlike Vander, Silco would build the Zaun the people deserved, not on dreams and hopes, but on power. On fear.
He would build his Zaun, free of Piltover's oppression, upon the ashes of his love now burned away by the fire of betrayal.
The river gurgled on, uncaring, and Silco turned away from its pull.
He walked away from the river, the memories trailing behind him like a second shadow. They whispered in the dark, echoing with the ghost of laughter that no longer warmed the air but chilled it, brittle and cold, offering no comfort from the toxicity of the city Silco called his.