Chapter Text
It had all gone well. Far too well for Vi’s luck. To be honest, there hasn’t been a larger moment of panic within her life than when she’d realised Vander was gone, snatched up in the smoke of a quiet Undercity street. Then came the grief. The grief of maybe she was going to lose him too. Then came the determination. No, not again. She refused to let another person get ripped from the planes of life to save her sorry ass.
Well. She’d thought atleast.
Powder. It’s always Powder. It can’t ever be Mylo or Clagger, just so the blame can be shared and Vi doesn’t have to get so mad at her gentle little sister who just wants to help out.
It felt like Vi’s whole body was being crushed, collapsed building crumbling down atop her and knocking her clean out, if only momentarily. Even without looking, she’d known her pseudo-brothers were dead.
Then Vander. He’d grabbed her amidst the burning crumbling remnants of the last room she’d seen her family alive in, and leaped through a window. It took Vi, heart wrenching in her chest, and grief burning in her stomach, a good minute to notice the disfigured form of her father’s body.
Inhuman. Corrupted.
Arms wrapped around her torso, breath wheezing from the fumes, she’d stared at him with something akin to fear for the very first time. Not because it was Vander, but because she knew what it meant for Vander.
He wasn’t going to be alive for very long.
A scream in her throat, tears clogging in her eyes, Vi leant over his body, praying for him to wake up. Just wake up. She needed him right now. She couldn’t take care of this all alone!
He didn’t.
Footsteps behind, excitement. Powder’s voice. Vi’s skin prickled, hairs standing on end as she slowly turned, eyes ticking wider open with each word from her sister, standing on shaky legs like a frail doe.
“You did this?” She breathed, Vander just behind her, flames roaring wildly behind him.
Powder uncertainly shuffled on her feet, shoulders hunching a little. Her eyes, swirling with that same naivety that made her both infuriating and charming, flicked to the sprawled out body behind Vi.
Vi stared at her, arms twitching as she closed her eyes, unable to continue looking at her… unintentionally traitorous sister, head turning away. “Why? Why did you do this?”
“I- I did.. I was saving you.” The girl’s face twisted, something in her voice pleading, perhaps with herself. She paused, eyeing something nearby. “I only wanted to help.” Her voice thickened, a lump in her throat growing. “I only wanted to help. I only wanted to help!”
Vi doesn’t remember the details all too well. It was a fit of rage, a blur of empty feelings and action without thought. But she remembers the steaming of her blood bubbling in anger under her flesh, the way her heart had furiously thrummed, calling for payback, and she remembers the stinging pain of her palm slapping Powder across the face.
“Why did you leave me?” The girl had screamed, tears pouring down her cheeks, snot dribbling from her nostrils and saliva coating her teeth.
”Because you’re a Jinx!”
Then came the realisation. The horror. The sinking pit of regret in her stomach that churned hungrily, emptying through what remained of her fury-fuelled fire.
She’d risen from her spot, arm cradling the other, ignoring the lingering sensation of blood dripping over her fists, bandages tightly wrapped. She’d clenched her jaw, ignored the pleading of a heartbroken child, and turned her back for a whole of two seconds, walking in the opposing direction of her sister.
”Come back! Vi! Please come back!”
There was a clatter, a scream, “Get off me! Get off me! Violet!”
Faster than she could think, faster than her rage had boiled, Vi’s heart lurched and she swirled around, snarling violently like a wild animal, bolting over towards her previous place.
An enforcer, mask tightly pinched over his lower face, vile ugly hat hanging over the forehead, had Powder yanked back in a grip she had no chance of breaking.
Vi leaped forward. “Powder!” Her throat protested, the yell scraping down her insides like a rough surface on moving knee.
She was gone. Whisked away in the wind like a ghost. Like she’d never been there to start with.
There was no Powder there. Not anymore.
Legs pushing forward, Vi tumbled towards the crackling flames that had just been behind where she’d left her sister for all of less than a minute. Vander’s body stared at her, the mockery of her mistakes laying right before her eyes.
She dropped to the ground.
The pink-haired girl’s body jerked with every sob, silent tears dripping down her dirtied cheeks and pooling beneath her on the ground. Powder’s gone. She was gone. They were all gone.
There were footsteps behind her, the clunk of boots.
Vi snarled, fists raised and body twisting around, lurching forward instinctively. A hand draped on-top of her head. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
Her body slumped, Vander’s only a few meters away, the remnants of shimmer still spread beneath his skin, his flesh, soon to still into rigidness. A single remaining tear slid across her skin, contrarily human to his, and between her lips, the taste of salt bitter on her tongue.
“I’m going to kill you one day.” She muttered, the heavy weight of water pouring through her lungs in drowning debt to her father.
Silco had laughed morbidly. “Oh I don’t doubt that.”
——
Silco was a bad man. Vi’d felt its truth bleed through her own skin deeper than the truth that she herself, was a bad child. That wound, the very one confirmed for herself as only a teenager, was one she held tightly to her chest, and chose to ignore when the days got longer, her heart buzzing in fluttery guilt.
The Lanes were hell. Chaos. Sprouted from the very palm of the man who’d grabbed her off the laying place of her second dead father. His schemes had ripped through the thin net of peace that had begun laying itself down thanks to Vander’s hard working efforts.
Worst of all, Vi couldn’t find it in herself to care as much as she should’ve. Perhaps it was the remnants of ghosts whispering in her ears, the odd shadow in the corners of her eyes pointing at her accusingly.
They screamed at her, sometimes.
But with wraps on her fists, and a steel glint in her eye, Vi pummelled on, the sound of knuckles crunching through faces drowning out the sounds, as Silco sent her on wild goose chase after chase after chase, dirty work cleaning up the shitty remains of his brutalising plots.
Anything was worth living. That was what she’d told herself. Live. Live so you can wipe that shitty smirk off his smug face when you’ve gotten strong enough. Live so you can rip through bodies after bodies, anything it takes, until you find Powder and get her back from whatever hellhole those scumbags had taken her to.
The ghosts of three dead parents, two dead brothers, and a sister snatched away by a man in a mask, watched her day in day out. They watched her crack through jaws, punch her way out of groups, rip fingers off hands and bite through muscle laid in strips along bone. The watched her curl up at night, in the small room Silco had handed to her, her childhood bedroom beneath The Last Drop, possibly in some mockery of her weakness.
It had felt like the world was out to get her. Or maybe it was karma biting her in the ass.
Piltover’s bridge loomed, silent at night, empty. Vi occasionally perched herself nearby, staring with flames burning in her irises, determination flaring in her bloodstream. Her fists balled up, nails digging sharply into her palms, chipped in places from brawls and flying punches.
There’s no day where the rage didn’t burn, a never ending, never dying down bonfire that roared as it charred through everything inside her. It hollowed out everything left, cremating old pieces of a once happy girl, leaving her empty and a shell of a once life-filled body.
The bridge was a symbol. A symbol of her failures.
“Mom! Dad!”
”Violet please! Don’t leave me! Get off me! Vi!”
“Take care of Powder.”
”If you say run, they run. If you say swim, they dive in. If you say light a fire, they show up with oil. Whatever happens, it’s on you.”
Vi shuddered, hand swiping across her face. Memories. Memories of mistakes. She raised from her place.
——
“You’re falling behind.” Silco stares at her, hand draping lazily over a glass.
Jaw clenching tightly, Vi shoves her hands in her jacket pockets, aggressively dropping her body into the seat opposite him. “What about it? I’m still getting it done.”
He clicks his tongue, spare hand swiping a loose strand of hair back. “I need that swine gone by tomorrow. He’s causing me more trouble than it’s worth.”
”Okay? And that’s my problem how?” Vi scoffs.
“It’s your problem if you want a head on your shoulders.” Silco’s hand tips the glass up, remaining droplets of alcohol sliding down to land just between his lips.
She grunts. “As if. You couldn’t find a replacement even if you wanted one. I’m as good as you’ve got.”
He leans over the desk a little further, glass placed at the further side of the right, temporarily abandoned. “Sevika prides herself on being efficient and effective. And that she is.”
”She’s also a pain in the ass.” Vi snaps, hair falling into her eye.
“She’s an asset.” Silco murmurs, hand digging through the heap of files on the wooden surface.
“And I’m not?”
He rolls his eyes. “You’re something.” Pulling out a specific sheet of paper, he narrows his eyes. “And you’re something I need to get jobs done on time.”
”Fine.” She huffs, shoving herself up. “I’ll get the damned thing done.”
“That’s my girl.”
Her shoulders tense, body turned towards the door. “Don’t call me that.” She exhales, hands balling at her sides, a jolt of something disgustingly familiar crawling under her skin.
Silco’s voice is arrogantly smooth. “Mind the attitude. It’s annoying.”
Vi knows a dismissal when she hears it. She bites her tongue, copper rushing around her mouth as she storms out the room, door slamming behind her.
——
Silco’d been a bad man. Vi knew that, knows it.
But the traitorous shard of glass stabbing through her heart threatens to unearth the lingering child-like desires for affection. She hates it. She hates the way her body leans closer to him than the rest of his goons, hates the way her mind whispers to her words that betray every moral bone still left in her body.
More than anything, Vi hates herself. She hates her disgusting heart for tearing itself between hatred and longing. She hates her stupid head for getting her into more problems than she’d ever hoped to.
The ghost of Vander’s disapproving stare hasn’t left in a long time. The others dart in and out of existence. But his… his stays near constantly these days.
And if at night, she screams into her pillow, both grief and anguish piling over one another, no one other than him knows. So who cares?
She just wants her life back.
——
Twenty years old. Twenty and still counting the bodies at her feet, soon to be more. The graves built with naught but her fists and the grit of her determination pile up, stacked on top of another.
She steps, exhaling shakily, ignoring the squelch of some sort of organ as she rolls her shoulders, fists wrapped in bleeding bandages. Twenty years old. Five years since Silco grabbed her. Five years since she last saw Powder. Five years since her family died all over.
The more time that passes, the more Vi feels herself get nudged closer into Silco’s moral direction. At some point, she’d have denied having a thing in common with him, but it’s undeniable.
Once, she’d been Vander’s pride and joy, but these days she’s turned into Silco’s great work of art - sculpted from the ashes of burnt regret and memory, remade into the body of a custom weapon.
Piltover. She snarls in her sleep. I’ll make you bastards pay for what you’ve done to me and my people.
The people of the Undercity whisper her name, in something akin to awe. Her skin crawls at the thought; Vi is no Zaunite hero - she’s a murderous ball of brute force combined with steeled apathy. The people whisper anyway.
Vander’s child. They breathe. Liberation calls for us. She will pave the way to Zaun.
Vi sees the bodies piling at her feet, hears the calling of dead men, and feels awfully like the worst person in the world.
Silco’s never been so happy. That makes it so much worse, in so many different ways.
——
“I knew your mother, you know.” Silco breathes into the air, cigar smoke curling around his lips languidly.
A flicker of a memory drifts through Vi’s mind, the muddied sound of a man’s voice, smooth and rich - sounding in the way chocolate tastes. Her eyebrows furrow, the silhouette of a smaller, leaner figure joking with Vander growing a little clearer in her head.
”That was you.” She murmurs, having one of the mysteries of time finally answered for her. “I remember you.”
His eyes glint. “Yes.” The smoke blooms from his mouth in gentle puffs, ringlets like that of rippled water. “She was a… charming woman.”
Vi’s heart stutters in her chest, body slouched against the wall at the back of his office, just behind his chair. He’d just been having a meeting with a chembaron and she’d been stuck on watch. “Can you tell me more about her? I don’t..” She exhales, frown on her lip corners. “The memories get fuzzier with every year.”
“…She was like you.” Silco, shoving his cigar down on a matt and twisting it until the spark dies out, grabs a handle of a desk drawer. “Passionate. Determined. Capable.”
A weight in her chest shifts just a touch. The words are both curses and gifts, each one. From any other man, she’d have taken them with a skip in her step and puffed out her chest. But Silco? Silco’s ideas of those concepts were… mildly twisted. “Really?” She murmurs.
”She told me and Vander,” He taps the desk. The use of Vander’s name jolts Vi’s body on reflex; Silco never brings him up. “To ‘figure out that Zaun thing’ for you.”
“What?” Saliva pools in her mouth, brows furrowing deep. “She- she said that? She wanted Zaun?”
”Yes. And I’ve never forgotten that promise once.”
——
She doesn’t return to The Last Drop for a few weeks, living off scraps in alleys and hiding away like a lone rat. Her mind’s too full, thoughts piling up atop each other and driving her near crazy.
Every step she takes, Zaun breathes. She feels it in the air, the ground beneath her feet and the buzzing in her ears. Children cry in the dark corners of streets, cradling parents bodies, limbs far too thin and bones jutting out unnaturally. Starvation, a plague of its own, is guilty of ravaging the Undercity’s entirety. Piltover’s neglect has brutalised the city, and completely dehabilitated its ability to function alone.
The whispers of long forgotten peoples grow louder, whispers of Zaun’s saviour, a new Vander.
Vi wants to rip her ears off. She’s nothing like Vander, not anymore. She refuses to dirty his name with the blood staining her hands and the blackening heart that wheezes in her chest, corrupting further and further over time.
‘She was like you. Passionate. Determined. Capable.’
A crack in her mask, a sliver of weakness.
Zaun screams for a saviour, and Vi wonders if she should answer its call.
——
Vi screams into the silence of the night. She screams for a mother who gave up everything for her, a father who fell at her side, and a second father who chose his daughter over revenge. She’s a complete failure. A failed husk of everything they wanted her to become.
Powder’s soft cheeks, big eyes and wide smile flash in her head, a giggle echoing out, distorting and glitching as it bounces from ear to ear.
The woman yells, punching through the board of her old arcade game - highest score still hers from when she’d been a kid. She pants wildly, body twisted at an angle.
I’ll rebuild Zaun with the bodies at my feet, and use the weapon I’ve become to do something useful for once. Piltover, Topside, the fuckers from upstairs.
They’ll all pay.
——
Silco’s all too ecstatic when she tells him, finally returned from her self isolation. He eyes her with that same greedy glint in his expression, a hand laying on her shoulder. “You pave the way forwards and I will be your support from the background. Zaun’s people do not trust me, but they trust you. Lead them, as Vander always should have.”
His affection, the softness in his eyes beneath the greed, weakens her resolved spite pointed at him and she finds herself swallowing with a nod. “Okay.”
——
At twenty two years old, Vi stares at Piltover’s bridge, fists covered in gauntlets, ticking as the machinery’s plates shift into place around her bandaged hands. Her teeth bare, hood pulled up high over her head, and she snarls, darting towards a back alley route to topside.
A message. She needs to send a message, one that Zaun’s people can’t ignore.
Even Ekko’s little group of bandits will fall into line, the way they’ve refused to until now.
Fists ready to do what she does best, Vi sneaks her way up topside, the ghosts in her mind screaming for bloodshed and the revenge they so desperately want.
Time to blow some shit up.