Archive of Our Own

Caitlyn sighs and places another small wooden block onto the table, onto the map of Piltover. She had so many bases to cover, so many scenarios to account for, and such a small amount of time.

Stress was tearing through her chest, but she forced it to simmer like she’d been doing the last few months. She has no time to break right now. In four days she’d know if she could finally break - finally take a break - or if the funeral preparations that she’d set up for herself in advance hadn’t been overpreparing. But the future is not now.

Caitlyn groans, swipes her hand over the table, and destroys her carefully set up plan. It wasn’t going to work. Nothing was going to work; Ambessa was too crafty, too good at this. Her people were either going to live or die on Caitlyn’s plan and at the moment her little internal compass was pointed to die. So she grabs the last block off the table, the last little piece that represents another person that Caitlyn is responsible for, and tosses it to the ground as well, reaching over and grabbing another handful from the box on her desk.

A noise echoes through the room and Caitlyn reaches for her pistol, almost grabs it from its holster when she she sees the tea saucer balanced on the edge of her preparation table. “Hello, dear,” her father says, and Caitlyn relaxes.

She reaches out, pulls him into a tight hug, and holds on until he wraps his arms around her. They rarely hugged anymore. After her mother passed he couldn’t seem to bear it, but she doesn’t care if he can bear it, not right now. “Hello, father.”

They pull away and he lifts her chin with his thumb and finger, like he used to do when she was young and fragile. “Chin up,” he’d say. “Never let them see you cry, not a Kiramman,” he’d say, and he’d sound just like her mother when he spoke like that. She’d get angry, push his hand away, cry even harder, and he’d just sigh, pat her on the head fondly. It felt like condescension.

He doesn’t say that this time. Instead he asks, “Do you not have any help,” and so she leans into his hand. She’s glad he didn’t say it, but she’s also not sure she’d mind if he sounded like her mother right now. Just this once.

“Vi’s helping, but I believe she’s rewrapping her wounds at the moment,” she says, and he pauses.

“Right. Vi is staying with us right now,” he says, and she pulls away.

“What does that mean?”

“Caitlyn,” he says, and she doesn’t like it when he says her name like that. “Her sister killed your mother. She’s one of them,” he emphasizes, and she knows that they’d both lost themselves when her mother died, but she doesn’t know how it got this bad. She doesn’t know when she and her father became unrecognizable, became cruel, but she’d hoped that the threat of war would have cleansed his mind of hatred, at least for a little while.

Caitlyn raises an eyebrow. “Well don’t worry then, as she’s staying in my room. There are no extra rooms to clean and her clothing is from the enforcer unit,” she says, which she’s still mildly annoyed about, but none of her clothes would fit Vi and they had to make do for the time being. But Caitlyn will make sure to order her more fitting clothing at a later date. If they make it there. “So no extra costs will be spent on her,” she says, and hopes that her father can feel her dissatisfaction.

He sighs, looks to the ceiling, and then looks back at her. “And what about that Maddie girl? What’s your plan?”

“My and Maddie’s relationship is none of your business, nor were we ever romantically involved.”

“But you and Vi are, correct? And how will that work?”

She tosses her hands in the air, “I don’t know, father! We haven’t exactly had time to talk through our feelings for each other in between war discussions! I assume we’ll figure it out when imminent death isn’t on the horizon!”

Tobias stares at her for a moment, looking exasperated and fond and irritated, but he just takes a deep breath, closes his eyes for a moment, and nods his head. “Alright, dear. Make sure to drink your tea, the maid will be bringing more every hour.”

Caitlyn’s shoulders relax slowly and she nods. “Okay,” she whispers, and she’s uncomfortably aware of how much she sounds like a child.

“Okay,” he says back and he hugs her again. She tucks her head into his shoulder, wraps her arms around his back, and he places a hand on her head, rocks them from side to side slowly like they’re dancing. She wonders if he’s scared as well. She wonders when she stopped being able to tell.

He pulls away and touches her chin again. “You’ll do just fine. You’ve always been a strong woman. Just like your mother,” he says to her, and Caitlyn’s breath shudders.

He steps away and when he turns to leave the door opens. He and Vi freeze for a second before Vi moves away from the doorway and nods her head to him, letting him pass. Her body is tensed and her hands are clenched at her sides like she’s expecting an insult, but her father just nods back and quietly leaves the room.

Vi looks at her in mild astonishment, but Caitlyn just walks towards her, reaches out, and wraps her arms around her neck. Vi slowly hugs back, rubbing over her back with warm, strong hands until Caitlyn’s breath is stable and calm.

“You okay?”

Caitlyn nods against the side of her head. “Yes, but I had to start over again.”

Vi lets out a brief, only mildly fake chuckle, so Caitlyn counts that as a win. “Then we’d better get started.”

—

Ekko remembers Sevika from when he was a kid, somewhat. When he was a child she was a calm, gruff but kind person that hung around The Last Drop as much as they did. Before everything and before he even knew who Silco was, he remembered her teaching him and Powder how to throw darts. His aim was always terrible; Powder’s aim was always perfect. Sevika never liked touch - giving or receiving -, though Ekko could never figure out why. But everyone in the undercity had their own small, trauma-induced quirks, so he’d just shrugged it off.

This Sevika is different. A bit older, a bit meaner, missing an arm, and cradling Jinx as she sobbed on the ground.

“Where’s Isha,” she’d asked when they found her, and he didn’t know what or who that was, but Jinx had wailed in grief, loud and unrestrained and absolutely tragic to hear. He’d wanted to comfort her, wrap his arms around her, but she’d already thrown herself into Sevika and he could only watch as they slid to the ground together in the middle of the street.

Sevika pets over Jinx’s short hair with her one hand, gentler than he’d seen her in years, maybe ever, and sniffles. She wasn’t crying, but she sounded like she wanted to, and he suspects that that’s about the same thing for a person like Sevika.

“Well at least she doesn’t have to be here anymore, right,” Sevika says to Jinx, completely serious, and he wants to step in, except Jinx nods against her. And maybe he understands a bit if she thinks that death is less of a miserable existence than the life that they’re forced to live.

In an old part of him that he tries to suppress, if only for the optimism of the Firelights, he understands. Sometimes, when you’re so hungry that you’ll eat the sewer rats with your bare hands, when you’re so exhausted as you fly through the fissures that you almost let yourself fall on your thousandth jump just to get some sleep, when you’re so cold that you can’t move and can only sit there and watch as your fingers turn blue, death seems like the better option. No one can leave you if you leave first, no one can kill someone who’s already dead. Sometimes it feels like you’d be less lonely, less unsafe, less scared if you were dead. And even though he doesn’t want Jinx to continue thinking like that, doesn’t want her to want to die any longer, he still understands.

And so he doesn’t interrupt, just nods a little when Sevika sees him and waits for them to collect themselves.

They sit there for minutes and he leans against the nearest wall until Jinx jumps to her feet so fast that she blurs. “Alright, up we go! Lots to do,” she shouts, and her manic yelling seems to be more distraction-based than genuine this time. Sevika and Ekko let her lead the way through the Lanes and he almost smiles when people duck out of their way. He’d like to think that he’s the one they're scared of, but he doubts that’s true.

“Um, Sevika,” he says once Jinx is far enough ahead, showing a worrisome decrease in her normal amount of enthusiasm, though not an unexpected one considering their day so far. “Who’s Isha,” he asks, and he finds it morbidly amusing that the first thing they’ve talked about after years of silence is the death of a loved one. Because what else would they have to talk about?

Sevika sighs, heavy and grief-stricken. “A little girl that Jinx took in a few months ago.”

He looks over, surprised. “Jinx adopted a kid?” Adopting a kid was very normal down in the undercity, almost a right of passage with how many children were consistently and systemically orphaned, but he’d kind of just assumed that Jinx wouldn’t be in a position - or care enough - to take one in herself. And guilt, as well as probably hunger, twists around in his stomach.

He knows on a personal level how Jinx took her parent's death. She may not have remembered much about them when they got older, but she still got nightmares years after. She would sometimes kick and whine and scratch at his skin when they fell asleep near each other. There’s probably a scar somewhere on his body that’s been left there from one of her nightmares, but he has so many that he could never figure out which one it might be. And he may not have been there, but he knows that losing Vander had fucked her up good. He hadn’t seen her all that often over the years, but he’d seen her enough to watch her progressively get worse. He could only imagine what losing Silco would’ve done. She was just as orphaned, just as alone, as the rest of them.

(He’d always thought that she’d be terrible with kids. He used to daydream about finally managing to convince her to become a Firelight, before she’d killed more of them than he would realistically be able to put aside, but he’d get caught up in fears over her not getting along with the others. He was scared that, in her new cruelty, her new manicness, she’d be terrible with the kids and the children would grow to fear her. But now it makes sense. Jinx grew up to be a strong, weathered, scrappy woman, but he’s also pretty sure she never grew up the correct way. While most people in the undercity, having gone through so much, would completely push away all childish thoughts and urges to be able to survive, he thinks she survived in the opposite way. She’s probably great with children - she understands them. He’d seen her hideout, covered in art and lights and stuffed animals, with a blanket fort on one of the turbines.

She’s probably great with kids. And he wants to cry just a bit for himself, mourning for a life that he now knows is out there, where he might get to see her with one. But he knows with everything he is that that will never be an option for them. Not this version of them. And that’s truly, genuinely okay, but it’s a nice thought. Even if the thought is never verbalized.

He can see it, just barely, in the back of his head. It’s fleeting - not who they’ll ever get to be - and beautiful. He takes a step, sees a sleepy, happy woman with blue hair and a small, giggling child on her hip, and the image is gone before he takes the next step.

But honestly, if they make it out of this shit, he’s pretty sure they’ll only have the energy to take care of themselves. And slow, peaceful days of them tinkering and painting and surviving together sound just as good. Even if that ends up being just a dream too.)

“Yeah, she really looked up to her,” she says, and Ekko isn’t sure which one of them she’s referring to, but he nods. Probably both. Isha, for what a strong, beautiful person the woman raising her was, and Jinx, for what a carefree, sweet child Isha likely was.

Even when they were kids, young and nowhere near as jaded, Jinx had always seen and heard more things than were actually there. Which never bothered him much, but she had told him once, when they were tucked into bed and she was partially asleep on his shoulder, that she liked his mind so much more than her own. Her own was meaner to her than his ever was and it made her feel like a weak, like a bad, person.

He never got around to convincing her otherwise and now he’s not sure he’ll get the time to.

—

“Where will I be stationed?”

“What?”

Violet looks up from the table, watches Caitlyn fidget with a little block, watches the way she avoids looking at her. She hates it when she does that, when anyone does that. If Caitlyn is going to say something that she knows Violet won’t like, then she’d prefer her to at least give her the respect of direct eye contact.

“ Where will I be stationed, Cait?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Caitlyn says, setting down the block near the little dock on the map.

“Right. Because you don’t plan on stationing me.”

Caitlyn sighs and turns toward her, crossing her arms over her chest defensively. “You just got out of a coma, Vi, so no. I wasn’t planning to have you deployed.”

Violet scuffs, “Right, okay, like I’m not one of the best fighters you have on hand. I’m fine, and I deserve to fight. They’re attacking my people, too,” she says, louder than she intended.

“You deserve to not have to fight! Why do you insist on putting yourself in dangerous situations when there isn’t a need,” Caitlyn shouts back, full of fear anger and indignation over why Violet was being so difficult.

And Violet sees the issue now. One of them, at least. And it stems from where most of their problems stem from: class differences. Fighting is a necessity in the undercity. Fighting gives you respect, power, influence. Often times it meant food on the table. Fighting shows that life is worth living. If you have something to fight for - whether that be yourself, your family, your money, your pride, or even pure fucking spite, pure hatred - then that shows you and everybody else that you’re not out of the game yet. You still have shit to do and you’re not clocking out until you either choose to or you lose the fight. Not fighting when there’s a reason to, not fighting when you should, or need to, is disgraceful. You shame yourself if you opt out of a fight. And you’ll probably die whether you choose to fight or not, so might as well die with integrity.

It’s not healthy to think this way, Violet knows, but it’s how she was raised, how they were all raised, and she needs something to cling to, something to look forward to. She needs something to focus on, something to shove all her energy into, and for years she’s gotten by on anticipation of the next fight. She needs to fight. It’s who she is and she needs Caitlyn to understand that. She just wants to be understood by her, she wants to be seen for how fucked up she is and she wants Caitlyn to want to kiss her anyway.

Violet takes a deep breath, leans over to set her hand on Caitlyn’s arm. “There is a need. You know that. I can’t leave these people to die without at least trying. And if you died out there and I was just sitting here drinking your stupid Piltie tea and sitting in your stupid, fancy chair, then I’d never be able to move on from that. You have to understand that,” she says, and she knows that that’s at least something that Caitlyn can understand. She may not have known her for very long - a lot less long than it actually feels -, but she knows that Caitlyn has never been one to sit still and let others do things for her. There’s no one she trusts more than herself to get the job done and Violet knows that that’s one thing they can agree on. “You have to let me do something. You have to let me fight.”

Caitlyn stares at her for a moment and then she sighs, covers Violet’s hand on her arm with her own. “I just-” she says, takes a deep breath, “Alright. I’ll station you with Loris, but I won’t have you on the ground with me. Not if Ambessa’s going to be down there,” she says, and Violet is almost rashly, uncontrollably angry that Caitlyn doesn’t believe in her strength, which has been all Violet’s had and all of what’s kept her going, enough to have her right alongside her, until she says, “She knows you’re my weakness. If she sees you, you’ll become a priority-kill.” And then she’s somehow charmed.

Violet still wants to argue, but she also wants them to agree and this is probably the best compromise either of them will get, so. “Fine.”

Caitlyn sighs, grips tight to the hand on her arm, and pulls her in with it. Caitlyn wraps an arm around her waist, tucks Violet’s head into her throat with the other, and it’s nice to be covered by someone. Nicer than she thought it’d be. “Thank you.”

—

Caitlyn reaches over, entangles Vi’s hand with her own, and Mel watches as they grip onto each other: scared, determined to fight, and desperate to reassure each other. Their eyes meet and Mel can see them converse, support each other with a glance. She looks to Jayce and she doesn’t understand how they got to a point where they stopped knowing how to comfort one another.

It’s been months since she’s seen him and they’ve both been through horrible things, but when did it stop being Jayce’s first instinct to lay his head on her lap and close his eyes when things got a bit too rough? She wants him to reach out, clutch her fingers tight, but she also knows that it wouldn’t be right. Not by any moral failing, of course, but in her gut she knows it wouldn’t be right.

And that scares her.

Vi and Caitlyn leave the room, still holding onto each other as they go over battle plans. Caitlyn had pulled Vi’s chair out earlier, which Mel had thought was just due to her injury, and Vi had opened the door for them on the way in and on the way out, which Mel had thought was just due to politeness, but it actually seems to be that they’re falling into habits. How had they formed such a close attachment so quickly, so close that they’re already taking care of each other in little, near-imperceptible ways? It had taken years for her to even want to form a bond with Jayce and that bond seems to have already crumpled. She doesn’t understand what that means.

Mel sighs, watches Jayce hunch over the table, breathing heavily like he’s on the verge of panic, but she knows that he would bat her hand away if she attempted to touch him right now, so she just watches him.

“Mel,” he asks, and she’s mildly surprised that he even decided to talk to her with the air so heavy, so stiff between them. “What do you think you’ll do after this,” he asks, and she knows that he’s saying he hopes she’ll survive, saying he doesn’t think he will, saying he still cares but he’s also aware that he likely won’t be in her life anymore either way.

“I’m not sure. I think,” she says, takes a breath. “I think I’ve decided to go home. I believe it’s been long enough.”

He nods to her, kind and distant. It feels like their roles have been reversed. She craves comfort and he doesn’t know how to react. “I hope that goes well for you.”

She stands there for a moment with her hands clasped before walking the couple steps towards him. She leans up, kisses him on the cheek, and only parts them again after she feels him wrap his arms around her in a warm, quick hug. “Thank you. I hope you manage to make it home as well,” she says to him.

“I’m gonna try,” he says.

He smiles a pained smile as she pulls her hood back up and walks out of the room as slowly as she can without it being obvious, even when she knows that he’s not going to stop her.

The door shuts behind her and she stills.

A moment passes and she sighs, walking further down the hall. She supposed she had more important things to think about anyway.

—

Viktor’s body had never been useful. His body had never been productive and he’d never been strong, only able to hobble around and beg whoever from the inside of his head to wake up in a body rid of disease and weakness. So being Noxus’s “secret weapon”, so to speak, was an odd feeling.

An even odder feeling were the dreams. It was interesting, nice even, that he could still dream as he waited to be rebirthed from his pod like a reptile.

He was always aware in these dreams, sure that he wasn’t really there and that his mind would drift to another topic soon, but he just went along with them. Could even control them in the slightest way - more like a daydream than an actual dream.

He dreamt of the past, alone and in pain and knee-deep in water that could never be filtered enough to be clean. He dreamt of the things he wanted most: a better future, of a people that could live without the worry of ailment or starvation or poverty.

But mostly he dreamt of Jayce.

Many of his dreams were memories. Even unconscious, even when his torn-apart body is knitting itself back together, he dreams of work. Sitting in their lab, in the obnoxiously big and much-too-comfortable chairs that Jayce bought once their backs had started to kill them, as they spent hours and days and weeks of their time working on Hextech without ever leaving the building. Back when things were easier and Hextech was only a small, up-and-coming business and Jayce wasn’t a council member, just his partner. He dreamt of hundreds of cups of coffee and too many meetings to count and watching Jayce fall asleep in the chair beside him.

Sometimes his dreams aren’t memories, but they’re desires all the same.

Jayce kneeling in front of him, kissing his bad knee just because, letting Viktor run his hands through his hair - both when it was short and in the grown-out length it was when they last saw each other. Jayce holding him from behind in an elaborate, private bath, making sure he doesn’t sink too far in. Viktor could smell that dream, rife with oils and flower petals and the scent of Jayce’s body after he’d just come back from hours of metalworking. Jayce cradling him to his chest and letting him dose off there, never moving to shove him away like Viktor had always been scared of him doing. He’d never gotten the chance to do any of these things when he was alive, so he’s somehow given himself the chance to experience them in death. He’d appreciate the poeticness of it all if he was still able to.

Yes, it appears that he desires Jayce Talis most of all.

If he still believed in wishes, he’d wish to be less aware of his dreams. He would wish to be truly immersed in them while he was still capable of dreaming at all. He could feel that ability slipping away from him as his body grew stronger - stronger than it had ever been in the past. Strangely, he was less enthusiastic about that than he expected himself to be. Maybe enthusiasm was another emotion that was drifting away from him.

He would wake up soon, emerge from the safe little cocoon that had been created for him to help in the war, leading Ambessa and her troops into his home.

He’s aware, on some level, that that would have upset him before. That even though he didn’t particularly like Piltover, the idea that soon it would all either be taken over or decimated would still have made him want to recoil, but he doesn’t feel that way now. He knows that that’s because of Hextech, because of the Arcane, but it doesn’t feel important anymore.

Not much does.

—

Her sister had vanished again, disappeared into the night with no shoes and hair that dragged on the floor.

Her eyes were dead, like the prisoners that had gotten a little too out of hand in Stillwater. The ones that she’d pass on the way to the prison cafeteria, crumpled on the floor of their cell like a doll carelessly thrown to the ground. Violet used to wonder if the guards ever told their families what happened to them. If they had any family. 

Violet closes her eyes and steps under the warm spray. She’d had to get Caitlyn to help her figure out how to use the shower ‘cause there were too many levers to pull and too many little bottles for her to figure out which ones to use. The bottles smelled like fruit and they smelled like Caitlyn.

It was nice being in a shower with warm water; most showers in the undercity were either unable to heat up or just completely unsafe regardless. The Last Drop had a nice shower, but you’d still have to manually boil water if you wanted a hot bath.

Violet had been used to the cold water for years, but she always made sure to heat some water on the stove when it was Powder’s turn to bathe.

Violet grabs the bottle of shampoo, lathering her hair with a vaguely blue substance. She hopes that, after this, the undercity citizens would get the chance to have actual, consistently warm showers. Hopefully, a war will make Piltover believe in the undercity’s right to bathe properly. Though that might be asking for too much.

Worse than the undercity showers were the showers in Stillwater. They mostly just stripped you naked and hosed you down with too-harsh water pressure and ice-cold water that Violet was pretty sure was some sort of contaminated.

She hopes that Jinx had a better experience living with Silco. He was one of the richest, right? He was probably able to afford better things. She could imagine that that would’ve been the only good thing about living with him.

Where did she go? The Last Drop would be too obvious and their old hideout was destroyed. She couldn’t have gone to the Firelights since she supposedly doesn’t know where they are and Ekko had gone missing months ago so there was no one for her to look for there. Isha was gone and Vander was gone and Violet hadn’t been to any of Jinx’s other hiding spots before everything went to shit.

Everything was shit. Sometimes she felt she would’ve been better just staying in prison. Life would’ve at least been simpler.

Locked in Stillwater she could believe whatever she wanted. That Silco had died and Ekko and Powder found each other and kept each other safe and happy. That the undercity had gotten better while she was locked away and she would get out to a peaceful, clean place instead. That she could just retire back home, go back to The Last Drop and be welcomed back by everyone. She’d work at the bar and Ekko and Powder would move in with her and everything would be fine.

But none of that happened, everyone’s dead, and she has no idea where her sister’s gone.

She hopes that Jinx is safe, tucked into a bed somewhere warm and comfortable. She hopes that everything will go well and they won’t have to fight too hard in a battle that they didn’t ask for and didn’t have long enough to prepare for. She hopes that Ekko’s actually alright and he’s just hiding out somewhere down there.

If she just hopes hard enough, long enough, then maybe it’ll all go away. Everything might just be a dream and she’ll wake up to snoring from all corners of the room, lying under a soft blanket and over a stiff mattress on a rickety old bunk bed. And for only that one day, she won’t complain about the snoring in the morning.

—

Dear Vi,

No. She crosses it out.

My sister Violet,

Definitely not. She crosses that out twice.

Vi, she writes, and that one stays.

We’re going to war soon and I might die.

Uh, no, she wouldn’t like that.

We don’t know what’ll happen in the next few days, so I’m just gonna leave this here. Sorry I’m so fucked up now. I don’t know when that happened.

Jinx thinks, goes to cross off the last two sentences, but leaves them there.

I did love them. Mom and dad and Vander and Mylo and Claggor. Silco and Isha too. I know it probably doesn’t seem like it, but I promise I did. And I promise I still love you and Ekko. I’m sorry that you guys love me back.

I’m sorry that it’ll probably kill you too, she puts down, writing what she’s always wanted to say, but she stops, scratches it out over and over again until you can’t see it even if you hold it up to the light.

You’re my sister. Nothing will ever change that.

And if you’re reading this, good job on surviving! Wish my congratulations could be in person.

Jinx

She should probably say more, but she doesn’t know what else to say, isn’t even sure Vi will want to take the time to read what she’s already written. And, for once, Jinx doesn’t have a lot to say. Nothing feels important anymore.

Jinx sits, trying to decide if she should leave it just like this or transfer it over to another paper, one without scribbles all over it, wonders if she even has time to do so. 

She can see the top of Piltover from there, sitting on the roof. Her sister’s up there, somewhere. Hopefully not still in that prison cell.

She left her in prison. They may never see each other again, she was planning to never see her again, and she left her in prison. And somehow Vi still loves her, probably, fuckups and mass murder and all.

Jinx sighs, presses the little paper to her lips once, then lights a match, holds the tip of it against the paper's corner.

The paper lights on fire and she clutches it in her hand, waits for the fire to reach her fingers. But it doesn’t, it just turns the rest of the letter to ash and then that falls to the floor. She holds her name in her hand, the only thing left of her, and decides to let go of it, watches it flutter away in the wind until she can’t see it anymore.

None of it matters. Not really.

—

He was one of the academy recruits, Steb remembers. The one with too-shaky hands that gave awkward half-smiles to the recruits from the undercity.

Steb’s young. Not by human standards, but still young. This isn’t his first battle, but he believes it might end up being his most bloody. To date, at least. But this boy is young. Barely a man by human standards and a would-be child by his own peoples.

Steb doesn’t remember his name.

The boy finishes his food but doesn’t leave the makeshift cafeteria. He sets his plate with the others on the table and instead walks over to the piano in the corner.

He sits down on the bench and Steb can see the side of his body from where he’s standing. He runs his hands along the fallboard like it’s precious, pulls it open slowly.

He takes a deep breath and then he plays, disregarding all the conversations in the hall and not realizing that they all fall silent ten seconds in anyway. His eyes are closed, every key hit purely by memory.

The song is long. Long and intense and he can see people in the crowd shaking, overcome with emotion. In awe of the boy's talent, yes, but in fear too. One of the recruits, a kind-looking middle-aged man with piercings and peaked eyebrows, stands up quietly, covers his eyes with his hands, and leaves the room. Another man, younger and already crying, walks out the door a few seconds later.

When the song ends and the boy finally opens his eyes, Steb is the first one to clap. The boy stands, pulls the fallboard closed, and bows a small bow to the crowd in thanks.

The boy’s eyes hold fear in them, but his hands were finally steady.

—

Ekko watches her. For hours he watches her and he’s glad that she proved him wrong. She’s wonderful with children. They follow her around even when she tries to push them away, but she thrives on their attention. Children aren’t cruel like teens and adults have learned to be and they like that she answers their questions genuinely no matter how inconsequential or dumb they might seem to be. She’s heavily sarcastic, but she never makes them feel talked down to and he can tell they appreciate that.

“So where’d you go?”

“Huh?”

“Where’d you go? You were gone for months, we all thought you were dead,” Jinx clarifies.

“Just away.”

“Ah. Time travel,” Jinx asks and Ekko fumbles with his wrench, drops it, and shouts in pain when it lands on his foot. Jinx stares at him as he gets up to hop around, lifting an eyebrow when he brings his foot up to clutch onto it. He wants to flip her off.

“Ow, shit! Ow, yeah. Fuck,” he says, sitting down again and lifting his foot onto the chair so he can rub the ache out of it. “How’d you know?”

“Your face paint was wearing off earlier,” she tells him, completely calm even when he knows she means that time when I ripped my body apart and splattered my blood over your face over and over again before jumping into the abyss.

He wants to yell at her, wants to hold her, kind of wants to hit her, but he knows that in the fragile state of mind she’s in right now, she’d probably just let him. The idea of hitting her is not nearly as satisfying when she doesn’t hit him back. It doesn’t feel even. They may have hated each other before, sort of, but they were equals. Equally as likely to hurt each other, but still.

He sighs. “Yeah, different timeline.”

“Was it a better one,” she asks him, and she sounds hopeful. Maybe she just wants reassurance that there’s at least one version of them that isn’t miserable somewhere out there.

“In most ways, yeah. Zaun was beautiful. We weren’t starving,” he says, knowing he sounds wistful.

“Well, that’s always a plus, having food,” she says, and he snorts. 

“Yeah. Everyone was alive. We were okay.” He doesn’t want to tell her about Vi, doesn’t think he should. She should be able to believe that he has proof of a peaceful universe where their family is alive and happy and safe and all together. They deserve to all be together. He physically can’t take that from her, not after all they’ve been through. Not right now. The idea of telling her about the pretty shrine she’d set up for Vi in her workshop, the workshop they were currently in, with cushions so she could sit there for hours and talk to her if she felt the need to that day, makes him feel sick. He can’t do it.

She pauses, “Why are you lookin’ at me like that?”

“What,” he says, blinking. He shifts, looking down instead until she wacks his arm.

“Alright, what’d you do? You look like I’m gonna ground you or some shit.”

“Nothing! I didn’t do anything!”

She rolls her eyes. “Right. You know, you make the same face when you’re hiding something now that you did then.”

“What, no I don’t!”

“Mhm, you do. You don’t make eye contact either,” she says, and his eyes snap to her face again. He’d looked away at some point. She laughs at him.

“I’m not hiding anything.”

“I thought friends weren’t supposed to keep secrets,” she says - playful, but still serious. “Aren’t we friends?”

“Yes, yes, we’re friends, Jinx. It’s, I just,” he sighs, scrambles. He can’t tell her about Vi. He can’t. “We, we were, uh, more than friends in the other universe.”

She stares at him blankly.

“That’s what you were hiding? That’s it,” she asks, and he nods.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he says, lying.

“So we were fucking? Big deal,” she says, and he sputters, averting his eyes again instinctually even if he knows that she’ll just laugh. And laugh she does. “What are you, five?”

He rolls his eyes, “Alright, Miss Mature,” he says, poking her in the side until she giggles, slaps at his hand.

She turns back to her work and Ekko turns back to her, watches the way her hands move assuredly, the way she kinda wiggles to the music that’s playing.

Her hair’s short like Powder’s now and he almost doesn’t like it because now it’s even harder to tell the difference. He wants to preserve as many memories of them both as separately as possible and he doesn’t want them to blur together, because then he’s scared that he’ll forget the details of who they actually are.

Powder will always be a part of Jinx whether she’ll acknowledge it or not, but it was nice to meet a Powder that was never forced to become a Jinx.

Even still, this is his Powder, his Jinx. And leaving her behind would mean leaving behind all he knows. She represents his childhood, she represents his struggle, she represents his love, she represents his weakness, she represents his willpower.

He wants to live and he wants her to want to live. They deserve it, after everything. Some people might not think that, and he gets it - they’ve both hurt people, killed people -, but they do. He just wants her to realize that too.

—

The butler lets him straight in, no questions asked, and he is so thankful that the staff here like him so much. He used to sneak in and hang out in the kitchen when he was younger, lonely and waiting for Cait to get out of school. He got pretty close with the cook there for a couple years.

Jayce goes up the stairs and speedwalks down the halls, looking left and right like he’s playing spy. He doesn’t have the time to be drawn into conversation right now and Tobias has been, though understandably, not the best conversationalist in recent months. The kind, generous medic that he knew when he was younger isn’t really present anymore.

He goes up to the archives, which he now presumes to be Caitlyn's office, and lets himself in. Or breaks in, whatever. He doesn’t have time to be pedantic.

He never got to be in here much, but it’s as beautiful as always - just a bit cluttered with the walls and table covered in string and maps and little scraps of paper. It’s good to know that some things about Cait will never change.

He still gets a bit uncomfortable in this house, what with all the excess wealth. He used to be terrified to touch anything that wasn’t in Cait’s bedroom. His family, before Hextech, had a somewhat-known name throughout Piltover, but they were never the richest of people. Especially because they weren’t born citizens. It wasn’t too bad, but the Academy students could get mean about it when they felt like it.

Jayce sighs, sets the box onto Cait’s desk - the box that holds the key to his and Viktor’s lab and the deeds to all aspects of Hextech.

Caitlyn’s made some bad decisions, of course. Especially recently. But there’s no one that he trusts more to give this to. She’ll know how to deal with everything, how to successfully take Hextech down without crashing the market or pissing off investors. Better than he would, probably. Vi should be able to help her figure out how to safely dispose of everything without negatively affecting the undercity, too. He believes they’ll figure it out one way or another. He just hates that he’s giving them, giving Caitlyn, another thing to do.

She’s probably gonna be pissed.

He wishes he’d be able to take care of it himself, maybe with Mel’s help, but he can feel that he won’t be there to do so. He knows that he won’t survive this battle. He hates to leave everyone with more work in his absence, but that seems to be the way things have to happen. He’s surprised he lived this long, surprised he survived the caves.

He used to be scared of death. His mothers, out in the cold and in the middle of nowhere. Caitlyn’s with how close she was to the explosion years back. Viktor’s, as his body slowly shut down on itself over the years. It was terrifying to watch it progress. His own, in every way he managed to think up late at night. But now it doesn’t bother him much. Not in the same way, not after everything.

He just hopes he doesn’t die alone.

—

Having children in the undercity was always a risk. Scar was well aware of that fact, but it’s not like she was planned. Risa and him had gotten a bit careless when the Firelights got bigger. They were safer at the tree, well-fed, and maybe they had gotten a little complacent. A little too comfortable. But everything was okay for a while.

And then Risa died. And they’re going to war.

He’d gotten a little too sure of himself. His strength was great and he hadn’t lost anyone since he was a child, spineless and small. Somehow that made him think that it would stay still, that his little moment of quiet living would expand and maybe even last. Even though he knew that that’s not how things work. Not in general and definitely not for undercity citizens. He somehow came to the conclusion that even though everyone was dying around him, from enforcers and Silco’s men and Jinx and Noxus and plain starvation, that he would be the exception. That his daughter and Risa weren’t the ones fighting so they’d be fine. And that wasn’t true, wasn’t real.

Scar slows down, matching Ekko’s slightly slower pace.

Children were being evacuated to the outskirts of Topside, so hordes of little Firelight families were slowly traveling the streets together to get to one of the two train stations that had been put in down there.

Scar didn’t know where they were going but Ekko did, so they all followed him. Like usual. Scar had been leading for months before Ekko had vanished, leaving them all to assume his death. Scar hates that, even though he’s older and bigger and stronger, Ekko has always been wiser, always been smarter, always been more merciful. He was always more suited for leadership. They still didn’t know where he had gone, and a little part of Scar was resentful of him showing back up without an explanation - and the fact that he’d left them in the first place -, but it was Ekko. And all Ekko ever wanted to do was help, so Scar let him. 

Even if it meant leaving his kid behind to the other Firelights, the only person he really has left. He’ll do it because Ekko asked. Ekko’d saved his life, most of their lives, and he’d follow him anywhere. Even into a battle that he knows they’ll never win, even though it means that Scar’s just continuing the cycle, giving his child to other children until they’re forced to raise one another the best they can. Until they grow up and die, leaving their children to others too.

And then they all stop together, standing still at the bottom of the tracks that rise high into the clear, clean sky of Piltover.

Scar leans down, pulls his daughter closer to his face to nuzzle into her. Her hair’s soft against his face and he remembers when she didn’t really have hair not so long ago. There’s light, soft fur coming in over her cheeks, around her ears. She’s asleep, but she nuzzles back on instinct. She fusses and he coos a little sound, smiling when she settles.

Ekko grabs his arm with one of his hands, clearing his throat a little, and the train’s coming down, slowing until the entrance is settled at the bottom and its doors open with a sharp mechanical sound.

Scar sighs, gulps down a sound of anguish, and relents. He kisses his daughter on the forehead, smooths back her hair gently, and lets one of the kids take her. All children sixteen and under were leaving together, with the oldest carrying the youngest. A girl, probably around fifteen, holds his daughter to her chest as they board the train, nodding when one of the enforcers asks if they’re siblings so they won’t be separated. She’s sweet, good with children, and Scar can’t remember her name. Another failing.

Scar’s breath shudders and he’s glad Ekko’s so sturdy because Scar almost collapses into him when the train rises up and turns out of sight. Ekko grunts, but doesn’t say a word, just wraps his arms around him and provides the comfort he seems to have endless supply of.

“She’ll be okay. She’s going away, right? They’ll be fine,” he says. And Scar knows that, but he doubts they’ll be. He wants to go away too, board the train with his daughter in his arms until they’re far away from whatever fucked up situation they’re heading into. He also knows that he’d never be able to do that. He helped lead these people, he helped give them hope. He has no right to take that away now.

Scar sighs, pulls away from Ekko, and looks to the others: siblings and parents and friends and enemies staring at the two of them for guidance.

“Let’s go,” Scar shouts.

They had a war to lose.

—

Maddie was always an interesting coworker to have. Overly preppy, somewhat mysterious, and kinda messy. She was a great source of optimism in the force though; she was sweet, good at boosting morale, good at being levelheaded in tough situations.

Just not now, apparently.

Steb sighs, watches as Maddie stops in the middle of the hall and blatantly eavesdrops on Vi and the Commander again.

He stands there, watches her look back to check if the coast was clear like a child stealing sweets - not turning her head far enough to see him - and returns to peeking through the little crack in the door to the Commander's office. Of all her talents, one thing Maddie had not yet mastered was subtlety.

Being an enforcer was a good job. Stable, helpful, and structured - just the way Steb liked it -, but it was also a career rife with rumor and quiet scandal. Unlike him, some people got bored with monotony. It was usually harmless, so he would often just dismiss what he heard, whether he believed it to be true or not.

The more interesting rumors that he’d heard to date were usually of the Commander's personal life. And despite his attempts, even Steb’s ears perked up when others whispered about it on the job. It was entertaining, however much he dislikes unprofessionalism.

With Vi being the first undercity citizen to become an enforcer, and the only enforcer with the Commander’s explicit, loud support, people started coming up with all sorts of theories regarding their relationship and how they came to meet in the first place. Vi sort of came up out of nowhere and she wasn’t part of the annual “undercity scholarship” thing that gives out a few internships around Piltover yearly, so people were very confused. And then one day, after weeks of hunting down Jinx, the Commander came back Jinx-less, Vi-less, and injured, and then the rest of the precinct fell into a tizzy.

Steb was very appreciative to be a part of the Commander’s personal strike team along with Maddie and Loris. It made him feel valued and he got more emotional when she asked him than he cares to admit. He didn’t fully agree with many of the things she did, but the Commander was a respectable woman regardless. And as a member of her personal team, he tried his best to stay away from the gossip. But it was certainly difficult when a large aspect of the drama was about another team member.

While Steb is very work-oriented, Maddie had started staying even later than he did. Every night he’d leave past dark and she’d still be there, fluttering around the Commander like a little bug. Handing her things, bringing up theories, grabbing her drinks from the cafe when they went on break.

It was mildly embarrassing, but who is he to judge?

And yes, he was aware that Maddie had started spending a bit too much time at the Commander’s home after work hours, but it wasn’t Steb’s home, so he didn’t care all that much.

She’d also started coming into work with oddly placed bruising on her throat, but maybe those bruises were from training, he didn’t watch her all the time.

And alright, there’s a chance that he’d seen the Commander crying on a chair in her study the day after she’d come back alone, curled into a ball and whimpering Vi’s name into a little fluffy pillow, but who knows why that had happened? Certainly not him.

Steb sighs, walks over quietly, and taps Maddie on the shoulder.

She gasps in surprise, reaches for her gun until she sees who it is, and then realizes that her gasp was way too loud and lurches away from the door.

She stumbles into Steb and they almost crash into the wall before he manages to stabilize them. “What are you doing,” he asks her, like he doesn’t already know.

“What? I’m not doing anything,” she whisper-shouts, indignant.

He looks at her, raising an eyebrow when she just stares back aggressively.

“Just, don’t you think it’s suspicious?”

“ What is suspicious?’

Maddie throws her hands in the air. “Just - with the Commander!”

Steb blinks. “You think the Commander is suspicious?” You’re acting suspicious, he wants to say. But he doesn’t. Because he’s professional.

“ No! Not the Commander,” she whispers angrily, “Vi!”

“You think Vi’s suspicious? How so?”

“I, well, she just came out of nowhere? Where has she been all these months, and why come back now,” she asks, and Steb stares at her blankly.

“Wasn’t she brought here unconscious? I don’t think she had much of a choice, actually.”

“Okay, but why does she have to be in personal quarters with the Commander? Surely we know more about what’s going on than she does! And she’s not-”

Steb cuts her off. “Look, Maddie. I don’t much care about what happened between you and the Commander. It’s not my business. But we’re going to battle soon. This is hardly our biggest problem. Vi doesn’t have to be here to help us, but she decided to stay anyway for whatever reason,” he emphasizes when she looks like she wants to interject. “We really don’t have time to care why she’s decided to help, we need to take all the help we can get at this point.” Steb didn’t have time to care. Nor the emotional capacity to care, either.

She reluctantly nods to him, looking frustrated. “Alright.”

“Now. Would you please quit eavesdropping on the Commander? You’re going to make us look bad,” he says, and she rolls her eyes.

Maddie nods and walks up to him, hooking her arm with his and walking them back to the temporary barracks that’d been set up. “Fine. Are we done for the night?”

“Yes, we’re able to turn in now.”

Maddie smiles at him, grabbing onto his wrist and running until he’s forced to jog alongside her. Even if he detests running inside.

“Great! Let’s grab Loris and break out the cards then!”

Steb nods and smiles just a little.

Maddie was eccentric, but she was also ever-the-optimist. And maybe a bit of fun before war didn’t sound too bad.

—

“I’ve killed a lot of people,” she whispers, and he blinks his eyes open, squints at her in the dark.

He doesn’t know how to respond, how to keep her from getting upset. There’s definitely a lot they need to talk about, but they really don’t have the time. And, more selfishly, they’ve settled into a peaceful sort of bubble over the past few days that he really doesn’t want to disrupt. He missed feeling at peace. He missed her.

Ekko hums a little, turns onto his side until he’s facing her properly. They’re under the same blanket - there wasn’t enough to go around and somehow Jinx volunteered for them to share one at some point. They’re not touching, kept apart just barely. He wants to reach out, wants her to reach out, wants to feel if her fingertips are still as cold as they used to be when they were children and she would tuck her cold hands up against his belly to make him jerk, to share his warmth. He stares into her eyes and they’re glowing, pink and bright in the pitch-black of whatever room they’re in. (Scar had offered him his old room back - the “leaders quarters” they’d called it -, but Ekko’d refused and the two of them had been stashed somewhere else.)

“Yeah,” he whispers. “I know.”

“Don’t you hate me?”

“I’m,” he huffs a little laugh, “I don’t think I could ever hate you, really.” I’ve tried, he wants to whisper, wants to joke, but he thinks she’d flinch and he doesn’t want that anymore.

“What if I get you killed?”

“If we go to battle and I die, then it won’t be because of you. I’m choosing to fight. If I die, it’ll be because of me.”

“But what if I kill you?”

“I’ve already made peace with that possibility.”

“I haven’t,” she says, and even though he can’t see in the dim light, he can feel that she’s shaking. “I don’t want to kill you. Not really.”

“Jinx,” he says, pauses in thought, in hesitancy. “I thought you were going to kill me a long time ago. And there were worse ways to die down here than by one of your bullets.”

She has many different laughs. The mean, somewhat homicidal one that she gained a reputation for; the lovely, bubbling one that reminds him of the innocence of childhood; the quiet, content one that she seems to only make when she’s working on something. This one’s sad. It’s rough and painful to hear, and it sounds like she might be choking.

“There are better ways, too. Ones that don’t have me in it,” she says to him, and it sounds like they’re standing on the propeller of her balloon again. It sounds like she wants to die.

“Yeah, probably,” he says. She flinches and he lifts a hand up, softly sweeps her bangs off her face. “Like old age or something. But that’s not exactly common down here.”

She nods, listening to him even when he just sees her hand come up to bat at the air near them, shooing something away that’s not there.

“What if we die in the morning?” She sounds scared, as scared as he feels in his stomach, in that way that he won’t allow himself to give in to.

“I didn’t expect to live this long and I know you didn’t either. So, if we do die tomorrow, then at least we went out the best way we know how.”

She hums, “Fighting.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t want to fight anymore, but what else does someone from the undercity know how to do? They can’t take a break yet, not yet.

She sighs, small and exhausted, before she shuffles closer and their bodies brush together. She stops when they’re near, but not actually pressed together. Their arms brush and their ankles lock, but they stay apart. He wonders if she’s as nervous as he feels.

But then nothing. She closes her eyes and she settles.

Minutes later, when he can tell she’s falling asleep, he has a question to ask her. One that he’s always wanted to ask, but hasn’t spoken to her long enough in the past seven years to get a chance. “Jinx,” he whispers, waits for her to hum in acknowledgment. “Why did you change your name?”

She hums sleepily, doesn’t open her eyes. “Mmm, Mylo used to say that I jinxed everything.”

He snorts, “And you listened to him?”

“No,” she says. “I listened to Vi.”

Ekko’s mouth drops open.

Vi? Violet? He’s wants to fight against it, tell her that there’s no way and she must have misunderstood, but he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know much anymore.

“I don’t think you jinx everything,” he whispers, pressing closer until their legs are fully interlocked and his words tangle with her hair.

“Thanks. I’m still not going back to Powder.”

Ekko laughs. “Alright, Jinx. That’s fine,” he says, and he can see her smile just a little.

They could talk about everything they’d done wrong, every person they’d killed, everything that’s happened to them a different night. Because this night was short and the next night may never be reached, so it doesn’t matter. They’ll address it later, if they survive, but right now he’s just going to pull her closer, wrap an arm around her back, and let her tuck herself into his chest.

Her hands press against his stomach and they’re cold.

—

Isha wants her to paint bunny ears, is what Jinx thinks she saying, with her fingers wiggling over her forehead the way Jinx taught her to do.

Jinx sighs fondly, rolls her eyes, and nods a little, hoping that her response was subtle enough that none of the others saw her. She knows Isha isn’t there, but sometimes it feels like she’s there. And Isha is one of the only hallucinations that Jinx wants to keep. People don’t get to be mad at her for seeing Isha, she won’t let them. So she keeps Isha all to herself, doesn’t react outlandishly when she pops up and doesn’t ever yell at her. It’s not all that difficult, since Isha can’t touch her and she never spoke in the first place.

Silco’s hallucination is kind and helpful. He’s there when she needs someone to speak to, when she needs wisdom or support or calm affection. His voice is steady and deep, it never raises and he never gets angry with her. She sometimes wishes her hallucinations were physical and not just auditory and visual because she could really use one of his hugs right about now. But it’s probably for the best because she’s pretty sure Mylo would’ve shoved her off a cliff a long time ago if that were the case.

She feels guilty every once in a while, when she’s coherent, for the way Mylo and Claggor treat her in her hallucinations. She knows that, over the years, they’ve drifted away from who they actually were into something that she’s created in her fucked up, cruel mind. It’s different with Silco and Isha, she remembers everything about them. Every specific detail down to the way Silco’s clothing would smell after he smoked and the way Isha’s teeth had a little gap in the front. She’s forgotten who Mylo and Claggor actually were. She doesn’t remember their eye colors and they never hugged her enough for her to have memorized their touch. She remembers the way their hair sat and she remembers their voices only because they’ve been seared into her head from all the screaming over the years.

Her mother and father are distant memories. She remembers the calluses on their hands and the way they smelled. She doesn’t remember her father’s face at all and she can only picture her mother’s face in death, eyes wide open and scared. Sometimes it feels like her dead eyes are watching from somewhere, but Jinx can never look around fast enough to find where she’s coming from. Vander she remembers more than some of the others. He’s so big that he takes up more memory, she likes to think. She remembers his chuckle and how he used to intimidate people with just a glance, how he’d carry her to bed when she pretended to be asleep sometimes and how his pats on the head felt like approval. She hates the name Powder, but it was okay when he said it, even when it didn’t sound human.

She remembers Vi and Ekko, too. Who they are now and who they used to be, young and fearless. She wanted to say that she’d try to live for them, try to stay for them, but she knows that’s not true.

However much they still seem to love her, somehow, she knows that there’s a part of her that will never, ever work properly. The part of her that made her shoot Silco when all he wanted was to keep her safe. The part of her that still hates Mylo for the things he said and Claggor for never stopping him, even when she knows, on some level, that they were just kids too - when she knows that she’s done way worse things than they ever did and she has no excuses besides just being her. The part of her that blew up The Last Drop because just the thought of it still being there felt mocking. The part of her that forced Ekko to watch her die over and over again because she’d just thought that her subconscious was being kind for once, letting her see him one last time before she killed herself the way she’d killed him. The part of her that punched her sister in the stomach so that she wouldn’t be able to chase after her even if that meant reopening her wounds.

She still wants to die a bit, just to be able to take a break, but she knows she’d somehow take Ekko with her. She’d jump off a cliff and somehow he’d be right beside her, freefalling with her and gripping onto her wrist, and she can’t have that. She ruined enough of his life already, she refuses to ruin his death too. She’s not desperate enough this time to risk taking him out with her.

Jinx stands up and stretches her legs for a second, then reaches down to grab the bucket of white paint by her feet. She needs to get the shape right before she starts painting the inside of the ears. Jinx has always loved a more chaotic, outline-free art style, but that’s not what Isha liked on her bunnies. And Isha deserves the best, especially if Jinx is gonna make her go to war with her from inside her head.

“You’ll do well,” Silco says quietly, right by her ear. She stopped jumping long ago, when the voices stopped surprising her. “You’ll live,” he says, and it sounds like a demand even in his soft tone. She nods, smiles back at him widely.

For them, she’ll try. She can’t hurt people if they’re already dead and for some reason, Silco and Isha had decided to stick with her either way. She can’t kill them a second time. They’d want her to live.

If she dies then she’ll be reunited with them, but at least if she lives she’ll never completely be alone, even if she leaves. They won’t let her.

Jinx paints, listens to the sound of people talking and running and laughing all over the Firelights base, and then she brings one hand to the front of her stomach, shielded by the ballon, and does one half of a handshake into the air. Isha does it back and Jinx smiles even when she can’t feel Isha’s little fingers tapping against her skin back.

—

The volunteers filed out of the training room in make-shift groups. Even now, with a battle on the way, they still kept to their people. Zaunites drifted to Zaunites and Piltovans drifted to Piltovans. Such is the nature of people, Loris assumes. Always finding ways to separate from one another.

He lifts another mat, stacking it on the pile with the others.

“Excuse me,” someone asks, and he turns.

A somewhat muscular girl with thick blue dreads had spoken to him, not leaving the room with the others.

“Yes, miss?”

She bristles, “Don’t call me that.”

There were cultural differences that even Loris, one of the few Piltovans that consistently visits the undercity, couldn’t understand. And somehow he’s offended this girl.

“Right, I apologize . . .”

“Gert. My name’s Gert.”

“Okay, sorry then, Gert. What’d you need to talk to me about?”

“Nothing important. It’s just,” she pauses. “Do you think we’ll win,” she asks, and she looks like a little girl now, wide-eyed and trembling. 

Noxus was a nation that showed little to no mercy when it came to conquering other cities and Ambessa Medarda was particularly well known to be cruel in the name of war. There was an almost surprisingly small number of recruits and they had less than a week to prepare those recruits for battle. Apparently there was an evil magical being on the other side, too.

Loris did not think that they would survive.

“Yes, I think we have a good chance,” he says to her. He can’t give her an explanation on why because he doesn’t have one. He doesn’t believe it. But he can see it in the way she relaxes, nods her head to him like she just needed someone to confirm what she already thought.

He doesn’t believe it, but she needs to think he does. He can tell that she doesn’t believe him either, not really, not deep inside, but she desperately wants to. Desperation can do interesting things to a person’s psyche.

“Right. Thank you,” she says.

He nods, “Of course.”

She turns around and grabs her jacket off one of the hooks.

“Have a good night, Gert,” he tells her as she’s about to leave.

She glances at him from the doorway. He can’t tell what she’s feeling. Maybe she can’t either. “You too,” she says, and then she’s gone.

Somehow he must’ve said something right because she smiles at him when they pass in the hallway the next morning.

—

Cait’s bed was cold. Not in the “the bed’s actually just a mat” or the “we’re too poor to afford heating” or even the “we can’t find any blankets” kind of way. It was just really fucking big.

Violet sighs, wiggles around under the comforter a little more in an attempt to get comfortable without disturbing Cait. She wasn’t used to sharing a bed anymore.

They had to be up in like six hours, bright and early. Apparently war was an activity built for morning people.

She sighs again and Cait shifts, so she stills. “Cait,” she whispers.

“Yeah,” is whispered back to her and Violet wasn’t expecting a reply at all. She wonders if she woke Cait up at some point or if she’s just really good at faking sleep.

“What do we do after,” she asks. If we survive.

“I don’t know,” Cait says to her, and Violet opens her eyes. Cait stares back at her, eyes a lighter blue than Jinx’s. Violet’s whole life, shades of blue. “We just . . . stick together, I guess. Figure out how to live.”

Violet nods her head into the pillow, but was it that easy? She’s never really had the chance to just figure out how to live before, she was more focused on figuring out how to survive. And she’s pretty sure she didn’t even do that well. She’s not even sure she cared most of the time.

They’re silent for a long moment and Violet closes her eyes. Caitlyn has an intense gaze. Whether she’s angry or happy or scared, staring into her eyes is always an experience. In the beginning, back when Violet didn’t like her and Cait disliked her just as much, she’d keep eye contact to show that she could. She didn’t want the stupid enforcer girl to see her look away; Violet was prideful and she had an image to maintain. Averting your eyes showed weakness in the undercity and Violet was many things, but weak wasn’t one of them. And then later she didn’t want to look away, especially with the way she could see Cait slowly realizing that everything she was taught was wrong by the way her eyes widened. And then somewhere along the line, she had just wanted to stare her in the eyes until Caitlyn was forced to see her, with all her healed-over walls and built-up anger and needy, desperate disposition.

Now, though, she has trouble looking at her. The intensity kind of makes her uncomfortable now, just slightly. She doesn’t know how to fix that.

“Vi?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry,” Caitlyn says, clear and loud in the large, silent room, and Violet’s eyes snap open.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and her voice cracks.  “I’m sorry. And when we get past this, when everyone’s done fighting, I’ll fall to my knees and beg for my forgiveness, I swear it,” she promises.

Violet blinks at her, caught off guard. “I, I don’t want you to beg for my forgiveness.”

Caitlyn sighs, curls forward to press her forehead to Violet’s. “I know. But I’m still going to do it. For a moment I became someone that I couldn’t find a reason to be proud of and I never want to get there again.”

Violet closes her eyes, “You don’t have to beg for my forgiveness. I’m giving it to you,” she says, and it’s true. She forgives her. She probably shouldn’t, but she does.

She doesn’t need Caitlyn to beg her for forgiveness. She won’t stop her if she does, but she doesn’t want that. She just wants proof that she cares. She wants to feel that Caitlyn is genuinely, profusely sorry. She just wants her to cry or break down or clutch onto her in a hug so tight that it makes her sore in the morning. She wants her to stop suppressing so damn much so that Violet can see the expressive, caring person she was before all this shit. She was told that Cait watched over her when she was in her coma. Loris told her that Cait had barely left her side and had fallen asleep holding her hand and had washed her hair for her, but Violet wasn’t awake to see any of that and it didn’t feel fair.

“But,” Violet continues, “If you ever hit me again I will leave and you’ll never be able to find me. I won’t forgive that a second time.” If you ever leave me sobbing on the ground again, if you ever turn your back on me, if you ever sleep with another woman while we’re apart, if you ever hit me again. I will be gone faster than you can plea my name. So please don’t, please, because there’s no one left but you.

“I won’t. If I ever end up hitting you again, then make sure to hit me back twice,” she whispers, her lips inches from Violet’s, and she really can’t tell if she’s joking.

“I’ll try my best,” she jokes half-assedly, and Caitlyn huffs a little chuckle with a shaky, unsteady breath.

Her next exhale is almost a sob, but she chokes it down and Violet runs a hand over her back gently, hopefully in a soothing way. “Shh, you can let go, it’s fine.”

She shakes her head, “No, tomorrow,” she says, and wraps her arms around her back tightly. She presses herself closer, pushing until their legs are slotted together, their breasts are pressed together, and Violet’s head is tucked into her throat. It’s comforting, even when it’s now becoming a little too hot where it was previously too cold. It should be arousing, especially with Caitlyn in the red lace nightgown she’s in, but she must be really, really tired because it’s mostly just happening. It’s like she can’t really feel her body and she’s just heavy. Heavy and lethargic and comfortable, for once.

“Tomorrow,” she repeats, and Violet nods.

If the only way Caitlyn can get through this night is by staving off a breakdown, then Violet will let her. It will probably be a longer one than they can afford to manage right now anyway, on the brink of battle. And so Violet clutches back, pulls Caitlyn in by the waist as Cait hikes a leg higher up on her hip.

They probably had only five hours now, and deep down Violet was scared, like she always was, so she just settles in, tucks into the crevices of Caitlyn’s body, and tries to steady her breathing, listens to Cait try to settle her breathing.

It doesn’t really work, but somehow they fall asleep anyway.

—

He used to talk about her a lot, back when they didn’t have the tree and they just had an abandoned building and some unstable, flickering hope. “I need to find Powder,” and then “I can convince her, just give me time,” and then “She used to be different.” Lex could never figure out if that was actually true or just him desperately trying to convince himself, make excuses for why he always went back to find her. She’d never met the girl, so who knew?

They would go on a mission and she’d somehow show up in the same area, related to shimmer or not, and Lex could never figure out which one of the two were stalking each other. The few members that they had at the time would watch the two of them exchange pained, angry glances and bitter, loud conversation filled with references that none of them could understand before she either shot at him or they ran. Lex would see him turn back every time, but Jinx would always have already vanished. Sometimes she wondered if Jinx had always left as soon as she could or if she hid, watching him flee from the shadows like an insect.

They were all younger then, more naive and more reckless. They’d all been through a lot and the rest of them suspected that he’d been through more. They knew some of it, what with how many people he’d put on the mural himself, but he never told them much, never explained how they passed or what life was like after, before they found each other and he was just drifting. Maybe he told Scar, but he never told the rest of them. Her and Ekko were the same age, but he’d always seemed a touch older.

He mentioned Powder sometimes, still. Usually on accident and always as a separate entity to Jinx, but his jaw would clench once he realized what he said.

“Her laughs different,” he’d told her one night, tipsy and exhausted after that day on the ship where she’d killed so many of them. Eve’s loss really fucked him up, she was one of the youngest they’d let come on a mission once they had an actual community and had the ability to be picky like that. She’d begged for months, wanted to be helpful. “Meaner. It used to be sweet. And happier.”

He’d cried, just a little, and then he’d retired for the night and was perfectly alright in the morning.

Her laugh was different now, different from the cruel, uncomfortable laugh she used to have. She heard it earlier, but she can see it now, too.

Lex watched them blatantly and didn’t even attempt to be subtle. They wouldn’t notice anyway and Scar was too busy to scold her. They were in the corner, kinda tucked behind and under one of the propellers on the fuck ass huge balloon covered in paint that they’d flown into the hideout the day before. And they were painting each other. They had to leave in two hours for war with a Noxian general, but instead of helping set up, Ekko was letting a terrorist paint on him.

Lex couldn’t tell if she was upset or not. Admittedly, most things were already taken care of, but still. Maybe she’s being petty or maybe she’s just scared, it didn’t really matter.

They were playing, dipping their brushes into a bucket and dabbing each other seemingly at random. A green streak on her arm, a pink splotch over his knee pad, some purple on her pants.  They looked like they were giggling, like children getting away with something they shouldn’t be doing. Jinx draws a sloppy ‘x’ over his chest in pink, another one on his upper thigh - getting a little close there -, laughing all the while, and he does it back right over her chest - they really just do not care about boundaries -, noticeably more intentional to the point that Jinx slowly falls silent and just lets him.

She stares up at him, reaches down to add more pink paint to her brush, and does it again, adding another layer of paint onto the ‘x’ she’d drawn on his shirt - the crop top she’d got him to wear. Something about needing to “have matching battle outfits” or whatever.

She lowers her arm when she’s done, and he lifts his, slowly tracing a thin pink hourglass over her bicep. Jinx smiles at him, softer than Lex has ever seen her, and then brushes the back of her hand over his cheek once. Lex can’t see Ekko’s face, but she can see him brush paint over his fingers and then slowly cup Jinx’s face and smear two pink strips under her matching pink eyes with his thumbs.

The way she looks at him is odd. She looked young and fearful and joyful. A bit skittish, too, like she didn’t know what to do. Half the time she looked a second away from ducking away from his touch, but she never ended up moving.

She can only imagine what they were like as children, healthier and happier and more alive than they are now. Curled up together, painting or reading or playing with nuts and bolts or some shit together. Whatever kids like them did. With different hair and wider smiles and a secret handshake. Or a secret language; they seemed smart enough to create a secret language together.

Lex hated Jinx and she was certain she always would. She’d killed and maimed and hurt too many of the people that Lex cared about for her to ever warm up to her. And she was no doubt fucked in the head - even for Zaun standards, where everyone is at least a little fucked from all the chemicals and lack of nutrients or sunlight or parents. Jinx, even over the past few days when she’s been better than Lex had ever seen her, still whispered to the air and stared into space and looked at the faces on the mural like they were gonna get her. She moved faster than she was supposed to and her eyes would glow pink whenever someone moved too quick around her or raised their voice too much. Even her jokes were vicious and crude half the time - and she made a lot of jokes, with some being funnier than Lex wanted to admit.

But she also knew that whatever had orphaned Ekko had orphaned Jinx. Lex, if she wanted to be very, uncomfortably honest with herself, could recognize that Jinx had probably been through things unimaginable to her. She’d definitely lost more people than Lex had and who knows what life was like living with Silco. And she knows that Jinx is ill, but she struggles to care most of the time. Usually when she doesn’t have to stare her in the face, when she doesn’t have to see the face of a malnourish, exhausted girl her age that kind of makes her want to cower in fear, in some sort of recognition deep inside her that makes her want to say that she sort of gets it.

So maybe none of it mattered, because you can still see the sick, sad, desperate look on Jinx’s face that every kid from the undercity can recognize in another. And maybe she was a hypocrite, because she’d still welcome her mother home with a hug if she ever showed up at her door, even after everything. Sometimes it just doesn’t matter what a person does, you’ll love them regardless. Sad, but true. Jinx seemed to be that person for Ekko.

Ekko pulls Jinx in by the hips, paint-covered fingers hooked under the hip windows cut out of her pants. She laughs happily, throws her head back, and Lex rolls her eyes, turns away, and continues fixing up her board.

She did not want to be a part of whatever weird ass, long-overdue courting ritual those two had going on. They looked like they were marking their territory. She wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to piss on each other soon.

Maybe, and only maybe, when they get past the war and survive the battle, Lex won’t care as much. Maybe, in her happiness to be alive, she’ll look at Ekko and Jinx wrapped up together and she’ll just smile, glad that two more people in their fucked up city had found some sort of peace within each other, even if one of them wasn’t a good person. Because maybe labels like that didn’t really exist below Piltover, “good” and “bad”, not really. So maybe, instead of rolling her eyes at them, she’ll just laugh, because at least they’ll be alive to hate one another.

—

Under a large, beautiful tree stood many people. There were no children and many families had fled days before, but others, those who’d decided to fight and those who refused to leave their home whether it meant death or not, had stayed behind.

The two men grip onto one anothers arms tightly out of respect and out of trust, thanking the other for doing a job that they were unable to do during a difficult time, speaking over each other light-heartedly. They do not say goodbye. They chuckle and pull away, helping each other gather their people into a group.

Two women with too much history stand together, unsure of what to do, but hesitancy wasn’t a word created by those in crisis, and so they hug. They squeeze each other tightly and do not say a word, because there is too much to say for the little time they have.

Previously on opposite sides, they nod across the crowd. The past wasn’t important now, not much was. And being angry was becoming too tiring for either of them to keep it up. Friend or foe was a phrase forgotten for another time.

A man and a woman stand together covered in paint. He reaches out but quickly backs away, and she rolls her eyes. She reaches up with strong, sure hands, and yanks him down to her height, kissing him with all the energy she has to spare outside of what she’s stored for the fight ahead. He kisses back and they only stop when they begin to smile. And as they head out, she puts two fingers up to her forehead, wiggling them at him playfully until they laugh together once more.

—

On a wall overlooking the sea stood many people. All were wearing armor and all were holding weapons. They had to disperse soon, as those with the best eyesight could just barely make out the ships in the distance.

One comrade clasps a hand onto the shoulder of another. Good colleagues they were, good acquaintances they were, great friends they could have been. They smile sad smiles and turn away from one another.

A young man walks, humming all the while. He stops at a post beside many others and kneels down. He says a quick prayer - not a particularly religious man, but he’s already on his knees and their enemy is already on their way, so he may as well - and then sets up his gun on the ledge. He hums to himself again and his hands are steady.

A woman stands high, overlooking the ships in the distance. She ponders over choice, as she’s been doing for a long while. She hasn’t had much over the course of her life, and the whole concept could very well not be real, but she hopes it to be. Because she can feel it just out of reach. Maybe she’ll get to grab it one of these days.

The pocket watch opens up silently and the man stares at it, looking at the little photo on the inside of his wife and their daughter, tiny and peacefully asleep. He hopes deeply that that’s where she is now, asleep and far, far away from him. He closes the watch, brings it up to his mouth, and kisses it once. Maybe he’ll be back in time to wake her.

The Commander walks up to one of her subordinates and grabs her hand. The woman grips her hand back, leans forward, and presses their foreheads together. Uncaring of who was watching, they just breathe for a moment. They exhale in sync with one another and then pull away, nodding once to each other before leaving with their own squads in separate directions.

Two old friends, siblings at heart, embrace one last time. He cups the back of her head and she smiles, because at least war doesn’t change everything. They part ways, her further up and him deep into the ground.

—

They win.