Chapter Text
Panting, lungs on fire as if someone had poured gas and lit a match, legs pained as if you had walked through bear straps, back hunched as your arms, screaming and groaning in intense pain, you carried the unconscious man.
You were alive, but he was very well on his way to greet Kindred at the doors to the afterlife.
He was not a heavy man by any means, he was lithe, but he was cumbersome, as if he carried more weight than what could be seen, and from what you knew of him, he did. As your exhausted body rushed through the stabbing pain, jumping from rooftop to rooftop as you made your way down to your home, you still took breaks to check his pulse. Everytime it got fainter, but everytime he was still alive despite it all. So you pushed forwards, through agonizing pain as you cut through the lively streets of Zaun, no one paying any mind to a girl holding a man in her arms while she rushed above the roofs. Perhaps it was the first and only time of your life you've been grateful for Zaun's misfortune, no one would question you and that was good enough for you to push forward.
Your home was nothing great, an appartment at the top of a building at the limit between the Entresol and the Sump in a quaint square, it was safe, calm, the people were kind and the Chem Barons' influence didn't matter to such a small community. A hole in the wall, almost as if blessed by Janna herself. But as you entered the building, kicking the door open, the calm subsided.
"Are you okay?" Asked the worried voice of the landlord's son, Jarren, his sweet brown eyes looking at you panicked. "I'm alive, run upstairs and open my door for me please kid, because he won't be for long." He nods, his small body taking on the stairs two by two, speeding to the top as you did the same, your ankle twisting as you landed badly on a step but you pushed forward, determination fuelling your body like coal and vapor fuelled Piltover's machines. At the top your apartment was open, Jarren sitting at the small dining table as his knee bounced in worry. Scared your adrenalin would run out soon you hurried up the stairs to the mezzanine where your room was, curtains acting as both walls and door while you rush into them, too panicked to properly open the fabric as you lay the dying man in your arms on the comfort of your bed. "Is that..." I hear a whisper as I take the man's pulse again, for a second you freeze believing him dead, but you felt it, a weak pump of blood beneath your finger, a soft breath on your cheek; he was still hanging on. And so would you. "No matter who he is, he's a Zaunite and he's dying, and I'll be damned if he dies in my arms. Get me my kit Jarren." You turn to him, panting voice strained from thirst and exhaustion while you reach for the desk chair, sitting near the person you've saved, or at least were actively trying to.
Silco, the Industrialist, the Eye of Zaun. A man who, in a decade gained much more power than anyone ever had in Zaun other than Vander. A man of great contradiction, flooding the streets with drugs yet protecting those under his hand from any evil done by the other Chem Barons. Ruling with an iron fist, imposing his violence and control over the entire city, yet fending for it by slowly and intelligently gaining on Piltover's enforcers. Some deemed him a traitor, a monster, some deemed him a hero. But in the world there was no dark black or pure white, there were though, millions of shades of gray, dirty and mixed, a contradiction to themselves. You didn't know him personally, and you doubt that anyone really did, but you still didn't want to judge whatever was said by whomever on the streets. He had once been a revolutionary, fighting for Zaun, and in your mind you wagered that he still was in a way. What changed him so drastically from a bright eyed boy to a bitter comandeering man, you didn't know. Nor did you want to, especially at the moment.
All you knew was that he was a Zaunite, and that he was dying. And that was enough for you to want to do anything in your power to save him.
When Jarren came back with a chest, big enough to cover the upper half of his body, he set it next to Silco on the bed shakily watching the bleeding man tainting your sheets red. Then you, your upper body stained with oxydizing blood, crusting at the edges, the ruby red becoming a burnt umber. "Go Jarren, and please don't tell your folks? I'll deal with that myself, so you can rest easy." You kiss his forehead and send him on his way, hearing the door click downstairs, you then begin working on the older man laying before me. Trying to undo his vest clasp by clasp, which were very inconvenient when trying to save him so you just cut through them preferring his wrath over ruined clothing over a dead man, and opened his shirt throwing it on the ground as it was ruined, bullets having ripped about a handful of holes through the delicate fabric. You turn the man over, checking if any bullets had come out, a couple had, but that meant you had to remove a few yourself. "Shit." You mutter roughly to yourself, picking tweezers, a needle, a spool of suture wire, alcohol and leaning over Silco, and after shakily passing the wire through the eye of the needle you cleaned and closed the wounds which held no bullets. Then came the most harrowing moment, picking up the tweezers and cleaning up the wounds you search for the bullets remaining in the man's abdomen, checking on his disappearing pulse as you go. Pulling out one, two, three, four bullets. And after wiping out your sweat with an arm, of which the strength was waning, you pushed yourself further, suturing the body, praying for it to not grow any colder as you quickly put ointment on the freshly stitched wounds and dress them. He had lost too much blood, and before you pumped air in his lungs you had to make sure he had enough. So, weakly you grab a tube, a needle on each extremity connecting you with a pinch as your blood transfused to him, your fist clenched and a newly tied elastic band around your bicep.
After what seemed an eternity of providing blood and checking his pulse, which had thankfully stabilized, you decide to help him breathe deeper, the last step to what you hoped and prayed was a successful endeavor. "Forgive me." Is muttered as you take away the tube and elastic, getting closer to his face and angling his head backwards with a careful and soft grip, placing your lips upon his and breathing out in his lungs as hard as you could to get oxygen back into his declining body. Switching to cardiac massage after a while, pumping his chest with two strong cupped hands, before going back to breathing out, and so on so forth in a morbid dance. His lungs expanding as yours deflated, your warm hands pushing against his frigid chest.
You had kissed death, and he felt cold.
But as cold and pale as as he was, a soft flush of pink came back to his skin, warmth returned as his blood pumped once more through his heart and veins, no longer the soft pulsing of an half empty body but the thrum of a survivor's. Tears of relief escape your eyes as, when you go give him oxygen one last time, his breath fans your face, an almost imperceptible breeze no more. And then came rushing all the feelings you had locked away during your mission, tears fashing your grimy face and replacing soot by salt, heart beating madly like a derailing train, your blood too hot for your body like bubbling lava right beneath the crust of Runeterra. Skin not quite feeling like your own as you try to claw it, at your arms and chest to rid yourself of his blood and so that the pain forces you to snap back to reality. Your lungs gulping air voraciously as if you had been drowning, and in a way you had been, under the weight of someone's near death. Under the weight of The Eye of Zaun's mere existance within your microcosm. And as you shuddered, choking out sobs that you were trying to quiet behind gritted teeth, you felt the rise of his chest as he took a large breath, and another. As if it was guiding you to do the same.
So you did.
In, hold and out.
In, hold and out.
The blood and sweat covering you, both your own and his, felt stickier now, your skin hotter, but your vision was clearing and your sobs stopped piercing through your chest like lances. He was alive, you had saved him and you were alive as well. No matter what else would happen, you'd deal with that in due time. Today you had saved someone, and you were proud of it. The demons of your mind taking steps back as this warm and bright flickering flame gained on them, calming their hissing and screaming for a moment as you caressed Silco's forehead, feeling the fever coming as you raked the few stands of hair that fell on his forehead back into the slick back crowning him with silver and obsidian. It was well into the night, but still only the beginning of it all, so with a deep breath you get up from the chair, immediately falling back at the pain in your left ankle. The adrenalin had completely suppressed your pain for the time you were actively trying to maintain Silco alive while he couldn't do so himself, but now that most of the pressure had gone, so had the one thing keeping you from being distracted. And so, groaning while your ankle felt like the clawed hands of the damned were dragging it to hell, you lifted your foot up bandaging it to the best of your ability while hissing, tying it hard so keep it nice and safe.
Walking back downstairs was painful, long and chronovore, especially when you came back, a basin full of cool water and a rag held tightly in your arms as you waddled back up. Now, was a twisted ankle the worse you had? Not by far, not in the fissures and especially not for someone like you. It didn't mean that you felt any better about the scalding flashes of pain burning your foot alive every time you set it to the ground though. But no matter when you have a man to take care of, man who was the most notorious person in the lanes and who almost died in your arms. And while his face had a frigid, pained frown, tight jaw and a deeply set furrow in his brows before, what you saw now as you entered back into your room through the curtains was akin to a child falling back asleep into their parents' arms after a nightmare. The storm had passed, even his body knew that, but now was going to be a different kind of conundrum. Unlike the fast paced, angry and tumultuous waters that you were sailing as you inched his body away from death little by little, now you'd have to face dead calm. No wind to push your sails, no waves to rock your boat, no cloud to paint abstract shapes in the canvas of the sky. You'd be at a standstill, fighting off his fever and protecting his body while he healed enough to gain back conciousness. And so after placing the cold wet rag on his forehead you pulled another couple of blankets, placing them on top of his frail form after wiping his body a little bit of the blood and sweat, focusing on his feet and upper body as you wished for him to keep as much of his privacy and decency. They were all he had left after all.
The world was unmoving and Zaun was cruel, not by its own fault at first, the separation from its sister Piltover by her elites having created disparity and a life of slavery at the hands and under the feet of comfortable Piltovans. The Undercity had to move fast to keep up with its sister's demands, and while many were just exhausted hard working folks, many also turned to depravity and horrible methods to get whatever they felt entitled to have. After all, if no one in Runeterra cares about you, would you be seen any more wrong if you did whatever it was you wanted? And so, through the fast paced life riddled with death, exhaustion and people fending for themselves as well as people taking it all, the trenchers had more than enough on their plates. Even if someone as infamous as Silco were to die, not much would change unless someone ambitious and powerful enough entered the game. The Eye of Zaun, as soon as his heartbeat started to fade, was already doomed to be forgotten, nothing more than old news as the new status quo was left at the hands of miscreants that had it all yet again. Just another day down in the Undercity, where everyone is but a chunk of coal getting burnt through by their neighbor or by the gilded Piltovan "Progress", while you are left in the soot and chemicals.
Deciding to stay up until he showed any sign of waking, you sighed as you slowly made your way back down, preparing a pot of strong tea and a quick meal to take upstairs on a metal tray. The cold wood of the floorboards groaning as you make your way back up and the clinking of the tray on your desk clashing with your sigh of relief when you sit down for good, drinking your tea and eating as you stared absentmindedly at the wall in exhaustion. While the physical exhaustion was something you were used to as a blacksmith, the mental exhaustion, albeit not new either, was catching up to you. The events of the night overwhelming you, filling you with dread at what would happen next, at how Silco would react towards you or towards his situation as a whole. You didn't know all that happened, but what you heard was enough, he was crumpled on a high chair when you stepped out of the shadows.
You were trying to find your way to a Chem Baron meeting to listen in, your own plans of revolution like a flame stoked by despicable Zaunites and elistist Piltovans alike as you fought off your own secret war. You made your way to a building to take cover as you waited for the meeting to take place a few hours from then, in a building right next to it. Stopping your nonchalant trek into the empty place as you hid in the shadows, having heard a girl, presumably Silco's daughter, have an episode while her sister, a young adult named "Vi" it seems, was trying to reason with her. Silco sounded desperate, fearful, and angry, and while you knew the last one as something that could be a normal feeling from him, desperation and fear were far from what you expected in the man. A woman with a high Piltovan accent named "Cait", apparently the sister's friend, tried to reason with her zaunite companion, telling her that "Powder" was gone and they needed to end "Jinx". The last name you knew at the very least. But after a lot of arguing, the younger girl entered a state of frenzy, as if she was hearing much more than any of us in her fractured mind, and a fast and heavy noise was heard. A machine gun. After that, listening was a blur up until the girls had left and all you had in mind was saving whoever got shot, which just so happened to be the most powerful man in all of Zaun.
Hours pass while you're at his bedside, food eaten, tea drunk and eyes heavy but still holding on. Two days without sleep and this would be your third, but you couldn't falter, you had to take care of Silco and you would no matter what. No matter if you were sweaty and bloody, no matter if everytime you went to prepare a snack and tea your foot would scream at you, nothing mattered but this singular thing. Making sure that the man in your bed was safe and sound. Any shift in his expression or breathing were known and taken care of, more blankets, another wet rag, a check of his pulse, redressing his wounds and then wait. Again and again, for days, you give your all taking care of Silco. No rest, enough strong tea to kill a Noxian warrior, enough food to keep your energy levels as much as a sleep deprived metal worker can were how you spent your days; refusing to spend more than five minutes away from him. You were dirty and the stench of caked blood on you was horrible enough that you threw that shirt away and replaced it with a cleaner one from your wardrobe, using the cold water basin and a second rag to provide yourself with the smallest bit of hygene.
After eight days without sleep, and six days of caring for Silco, you gave out, body leaning forward from its position on your chair and leaning your chest on your bed, head on the mattress as your arms cradled it, hair spilling like an inverted halo as sleep forcefully took you. Usual nightmares trapped your mind, although your exhaustion was such that you couldn't wake up from them, forced to live and re-live through them like you were a puppet, manipulated by invisible strings as you were shackled within your own head. A gasp waking you up with a start and making you fall backwards from your chair as a younger you punched a man through his chest, gripping his heart and squeezing it as cheers were heard all around. Groaning, you drag your weak body to the bed, sitting yourself on the edge of it slowly while minding the pulsating pain in your overstrained ankle. Your elbows settle against the tops of your knees as your head burrows itself in your hands, gripping at the tendrils of hair as you try to swallow your shivers. Eyes closing to forget, then reopening at the visions of horror engraved beneath your eyelids. Ears filled with remnants of noise as your room rings with ghost filled silence. And as you take one last steadying breath running your hands down your face to wipe away at the last of your nightmare your airways are blocked, a wet rag wrung tight around your windpipe.
"You have five seconds to explain what happened before I snap your neck."