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Though it’s been barely a week since he’s seen it, Silco feels nostalgic about stepping into the kitchen in the apartment above the Drop. They spent so many lazy mornings, him curled in Vander’s lap, and late nights laughing with Felicia and Benzo, spreading maps and plans across the battered table and ironing out details. His memories of this kitchen are golden and dreamy.
The version of this place in his mind is infinitely preferable to the version he squints to see this morning. Fog sits low in Zaun today, making the grey thicker, the light weaker, the people more sluggish. They go about their business down on the street, and Silco stares blankly out at them. His head is pounding. The spare few hours of sleep he got were separated by waves of agony centered around his eye. He’ll give it to Vander-- at least the eye wound distracts from the vast bruising and his ruined windpipe. He chuckles at the thought and turns away from the window. His head sloshes when he moves, and he has to steady himself on the wall.
“Do you think you can eat anything?” Vander asks hesitantly. He’s been hovering anxiously since Silco stumbled out of his room to vomit river water into the bathroom sink. Silco is pretty sure he’d slept in the hallway, standing guard just outside of the door like it hadn’t been him who’d had designs on Silco’s life in the first place.
“I doubt I'll be able to keep anything down,” Silco tells him as he steps toward the kitchen table. He keeps his steps slow and shuffling, and closes his eyes as best he can. If he already can’t see, he may as well keep the room’s spinning to a minimum.
“Maybe some broth? Crackers?” Vander suggests. Silco sighs. Vander has always been a fixer. He sees a problem and wants to do something to help. Even when the problem is grief or guilt, he’s got to get his hands dirty, has to do anything to try and fix it. Even when the problem is Silco himself.
“Do you have broth, Vander?”
“Yeah.” Vander grabs a mug and pot to heat up a portion of the broth he has on hand. When he comes over to give Silco the mug, he telegraphs his movements, big and wide and slow so Silco can see him coming. He grudgingly approves, despite it being the least Vander could do. He takes a sip. The broth is lovely, spiced and flavorful, but still light enough to drink. It’s hard to swallow; Felicia definitely made this. Silco’s gaze meets Vander’s. Vander tries and fails to smile at him.
“Thanks.” They both ignore the way Silco’s voice creaks. Vander nods. He clears his throat and mutters something about not letting the girls oversleep, before vacating the room. Silco stares blankly at the far wall.
Zaun is a city of loss. Every person you could meet has lost someone, or many someones. Sometimes, it’s a comforting thought. When you make an inside joke, and the pause where laughter would be is actually a silence, people get it. They understand that there are certain days people can’t get out of bed, or, if they have to, can’t be good company. It is not a place where the dead are forgotten. Their names are said, their portraits drawn, candles or incense lit to guide their way. But with death being so routine, so commonplace, it can be easy to forget how it affects you. It’s not that the person is missing. In Zaun, it’s that they’re never really gone. They’re an empty seat at a celebration, a phrase they used to say, clothing or shoes that couldn’t be wasted, had to be passed on to someone else. When Silco’s father had died, his mother had given him his father’s good boots. Heavy bottomed and good quality leather, he’d definitely stolen them off some stupid or unfortunate topsider. And he’d been a bad man, a worse father, but Silco had cried for hours as he’d carefully cleaned and polished them up to wear the next day. He still wears those boots today, though they are still a little too big.
The broth Silco is forcing himself to drink was assuredly made by Felicia’s own hands. Silco wasn't there for her last rights; he had been too busy trying to do damage control after the bridge. Vander probably had to clear out her house alone. He probably even left the girls with someone, wanting to save them from the burden. Silco would be surprised if there weren’t a box with some of Felicia and Connol’s clothes, ready to be reused or passed on, once the girls grow into it. Vander had definitely brought home the contents of their kitchen. You don’t waste the dead’s time or money.
Something solidifies in Silco’s chest. You don’t waste the dead’s time. Felicia is gone the way of many, many historical revolutionaries. He’s not going to let her death be in vain.
“Silly,” Powder says when she and Violet timidly make their way into the kitchen. Vander follows behind them. He plates up small portions of breakfast for the girls. Silco usually does the cooking for their household, but Silco can’t see three feet in front of himself, so Vander had tossed together something simple.
Silco knows without asking that they haven’t been eating quite right since the bridge. From the looks of it, they haven't been sleeping quite right either. He supposes that makes them four of a kind.
“Hi, Owie,” Silco rasps. Powder gives him half a smile for her baby name.
“What happened to you?” Violet asks, harsh, suspicious. Silco shrugs, glancing over at Vander, who is hunched over his breakfast, trying to take up very little space. He is failing.
“I lost a fight.” From anyone else, it would've been a joke.
Violet huffs at his answer. She makes sure Powder is all settled in her seat before taking one of her own. “Well you look like shit,” Silco laughs, then winces when his head throbs. He’s the one person in her life who was never quite able to stop cussing when she was coming up. She’s always had a bit of a potty mouth because of him.
“Language, Vi,” Vander objects tiredly. Vi pouts. “Listen, girls. I got a message from Benzo that a couple other kids may need a place to stay for a bit until we can find their parents. Or find out if, ah, if they’ll need a permanent thing. Do you want to move upstairs, or do you want to stay downstairs?”
Vi starts asking follow-up questions, but Silco isn’t listening. The words smear across his awareness. He’s so exhausted, head heavy where it’s propped up on his hand. Vander had sat him down in the morning to look at his eye, face pale with guilt. It was worse in the light, inflamed and leaking. Vander did his best with the treatment, but Silco can feel every involuntary movement of his eye, deep inside his skull.
He’s never had to think much about the anatomy of his eyes, but now he finds himself very invested. He knows it all connects somehow in there. How long until the toxic waters of the Pilt touch his brain? He thinks he remembers hearing from someone about the tiny bugs that make people sick. Maybe his eye is full of bugs right now. Maybe the bugs will finish the job for Vander. Maybe that’s what Vander really wanted. He wanted to be absolved of Silco’s blood on his hands. Why else would he have called him out to the riverside? He wanted to give Powder closure on Silco, let her see him one last time before the bugs eat his brain. He wonders if that’s why his head hurts so much, why his stomach keeps turning over.
A tiny hand tugs at his sleeve. Silco startles and looks down. A shiny ring stretches itself across the plane of his view, blurring out more of his vision than he generally prefers. Around the blurry spot, Power looks up at him, thumb stuck in her mouth.
Vi and Vander have moved on, and are discussing some project, Vander carefully outlining the supplies they’ll need to get, steps they’ll need to complete. Powder obviously won’t be involving herself with it. She looks like she’s been ignoring them, too.
“Hi,” Silco murmurs. “Vander told me you wanted to see me.”
“I wanna sit with you,” Powder mumbles around her thumb. She’s already such a big kid. Silco thinks he remembers missing her 5th nameday a few months back. He’d sent a carefully-wrapped present with Vander, but he’d been planning, meeting with people to start some factory on the course towards unionization. Silco swallows and carefully leans down to pick her up. She cuddles into his bony lap. “Does your eye hurt?”
“Yes, I got hurt pretty bad yesterday. How are you, mouse?”
“‘M not hungry.” She pouts, looking at her sad little plate. “You can’t make me eat. Neither can Vi.”
“No?” Says Silco, consideringly. He reaches across the table to bring the plate closer. “You got your potatoes here, egg, peppers, onions… Hmm. I can see the issue.” Powder cuddles closer still. Her bony shoulder digs into his sternum.
“What?”
“You’re not eating with your hands,” Silco says, playful and coaxing. One of his first memories of his mother is of her scoffing at the very idea of eating utensils and telling him that they were born with hands for a reason, before carefully building a perfect bite on her fingertips. He remembers being delighted, if a bit confused by how she could play in her plate and never seem to get messy. As he gathers up a bite for Powder, he feels a pang of loss in his chest. His mother ate with her hands because her mother taught her. How many other things are the people of Zaun missing because of Piltover’s influence? Silco couldn’t properly use a fork until he was ten years old, as they were an odd new invention in his youth. Now they’re as commonplace as bowls or plates.
Silco thinks of his mother the entire time he coaxes Powder through her meal. All while quietly directing her to eat with her fingers, realizing they’re disgusting, ordering her to wash her hands, getting back to the meal with water soaked into his sleeve from helping her get the dirt from under her nails. He thinks of what she’d been to him. Who had she been before? Felicia was just the same before she’d had the girls as after. Maybe a bit brasher. Was he the reason his mother was so soft-spoken? His father? He knows in the depths of his soul that his mother would be furious with the man he’s become. He’s too rude, too violent, head mixed up in ways she couldn’t have imagined, let alone wanted for him. He forgets namedays, he makes excuses, has little use for manners unless it serves him. He knows she’d have much to say about him. Her dressing-downs were vicious. What did she lose by being his mother? By loving him?
He gently wipes sauce from Powder’s cheek. This exchange between them is so small, so average. But it feels like he’s spinning on a new axis. Powder wanted to see him. He’s surprised that she even remembers him. He’s been so absent from her life recently. She gives him a shy little smile and his heart aches. How much time has he wasted, not knowing her? How must have Felicia felt, knowing how amazing her girls are, and knowing he’d been avoiding them?
If he’s to honor her, it can’t just be with the nation of Zaun. He’d promised her to make a better world for Violet and Powder. It shakes his resolve a bit. How much harder will it be to care for them than it will be to free his people?
Power doesn’t finish the whole plate, her appetite being stunted with grief, but Silco is satisfied that she won’t feel hunger pangs. If she is to be in his charge, she will have a full belly. He sends her off to wash her hands again and rests his head on the table. Feeding a child isn’t strenuous by any means, but he feels like he may keel over at any moment.
“Sil,” Vander finally says from across the table. Silco had been ignoring Vander's gaze the entire time his attention was on Powder. “Do you want to go back to bed? Some good rest will help, I think.”
“Do you expect me to get good rest?” Silco asks, dry.
“You could try.” Vander is pleading, a bit. Vi is glancing between them, her quick little mind working on something. Silco grimaces. He may be suffering quite a bit at Vander’s hand, but he’s not quite sure he wants the girls to know what really happened. He rolls his eyes. It hurts, but dramatics are a hell of a painkiller.
“Fine. But you’ll have to help me up ‘cause I’m very dizzy.” He tries not to pout when Vander chuckles.
Vander insists on checking on his eye before letting him sleep. He’s tender with Silco’s face, hands big and cool on Silco’s flushed skin. Vander’s always had beautiful hands, big and gentle and dexterous. Before they were whatever they are, Silco used to daydream about Vander’s hands. About Vander touching him. It’s odd now, with the way he has to hold himself still, instincts screaming. He hopes it’ll get better with time.
Silco isn’t afraid of Vander. He’ll just have to convince his body of that.