Work Text:
It’s the footsteps that gives him away. Powder puts her eyeliner down for the third time and stands up straight without turning. In her mirror she sees the owner of the footsteps.
Vander has a heavy, slow gait. Ekko walks lightly but fast. Mylo and Claggor haven’t been allowed in without express permission since she was fourteen.
But this patient gait can only be one person.
“You’re going to miss your party, darling,” Silco walks over to her with his hands in his pockets.
Powder whirls around and holds her arms out. “No way! Fit done, hair done, all I need is to do my eyes. Your timing is impeccable. C’mere!”
Silco shakes his head and smiles indulgently at her. His arms wrap around her, his chin coming to a rest on top of her head. He smells a little like Piltover, clean and more sterile than Zaun somehow, but he’s wearing the cologne and the hair oil he always has ever since they met. Definitely Zaun, cedarwood and clary sage and the oud from that stall where he gets her incense for Vi, sunk into his skin and his clothes. It makes her feel calm in a way only her family can.
“Don’t stay away so long next time,” Powder mumbles into his shoulder. She misses him when he’s not around, misses the way he tells her the unvarnished truth. Everyone else seems to treat her so delicately.
Silco leans back and smooths his hands over her hair. “I’ll do my very best.” He takes a step back as he lets her go and she turns back to her mirror, agonizing over what to put on her eyes. Silco leans against her workstation. “If it’s any consolation I convinced the Council to open up more routes for us.”
“Let me guess, you’ve got Hoskel wrapped around your little finger again.”
Silco looks mildly disgusted before he shrugs. “The man has the intellect of a wobbly chair,” he grins when Powder guffaws. “I’ve had more trouble opening doors than getting one over on that buffoon. Here, let me see that.”
Powder looks down at the blue eyecolor in her hand and gives it to Silco. She sits on her stool and closes her eyes diligently. This has been their thing ever since puberty hit and Powder found she had just as much of a passion for girly things like make-up as she did for engineering explosives. While Vander didn’t quite know what to do with the former, Silco took up that mantle effortlessly, leaving Vander to supply her with spare parts for the latter. Throughout the years it had become moments when Powder felt like she could say what was really on her mind - a comfortable space she didn’t often find elsewhere.
Silco’s fingers are gentle on her face. He’s not a particularly gentle person - moreso because he’s not a tactile person at all, but he is with her. “How bold are we going for?”
“Bold enough to make my boyfriend’s jaw drop when I walk in?” Powder offers with a wag of her eyebrows.
Silco moves to work on one eyelid. “Hardly difficult, that boy looks at you like the second coming of Janna. But I know one look that always works.”
Powder tries not to move too much but still grins a little. “Is it a look you did when you were my age? Trying to catch the attention of a certain barman? The tall and cuddly kind?”
There’s a smile on Silco’s face even though Powder can’t see it. “He wasn’t cuddly back then, I assure you. And I didn’t need eyeliner to reel that one in. Open your eyes for me a moment, darling, I need to see if I’ve gone too high.”
Powder does just that, blinking a few times. Up this close she can see the minute hints of aging on Silco’s face. The soft gray hairs coming in at his temples, the just ever so slightly deeper crevices by his eyes, dark circles under his eyes that never seem to go away, the slight permanent puckering around his mouth from so many cigars.
“Perfect,” he says and when he reaches up Powder closes her eyes on instinct. She usually doesn’t like that word. It feels like pressure and it feels dishonest. Who’s perfect? Definitely not her. Not when she still struggles to let her feelings come out the right way, too loud one minute and terrifyingly quiet the next.
“Who me?”
It’s a joke, so Silco could have volleyed humor back at her, but his reply is surprisingly earnest. “Of course. My perfect girl, who else would I be talking about?”
For a moment Powder struggles with the feeling inside. She knows she’s different and it can get messy sometimes. It’s better now. Her brothers give her space and come back later with something to cheer her up; sweets or spare parts or something pretty they probably stole. Vander is quiet about it, runs his big hands over her head, lets her hide away in hugs or cling to him behind the bar. Ekko gives her flowers and writes her notes with pretty artwork, tells her she’s beautiful or brilliant or both. Silco asks her questions and never lets her think there’s a wrong answer.
It took a lot of practice to get there, but they never try to change her, even when they don’t understand her.
“Remember when you took us Topside for that Council banquet?” Powder asks as he starts to work on the other eye.
Silco scoffs. “Remember it? It’s seared into my brain, felt like it lasted a week. How can you be served eleven courses and still go home hungry?”
It was the first time since Silco had become the formal liaison between the Piltover Council and the Zaunite Assembly, and for some reason he brought not only Vander but his four children as well. To say they were unruly at that age was an understatement.
“I thought that one Councilor, the one with the oily hair who looks like a rat?”
“Salo.”
“Yeah, him. I thought for sure he would tear up the accord right there in front of everyone. I think I spilled juice all over that pretty Councilor’s dress. And I got that goopy sauce all over my shirt.”
It’s the reaction she’s going for and Silco doesn’t disappoint when he pulls his hand away from her face. She keeps her eyes closed because she knows he’ll look straight through her.
“Powder,” he says her name in that soft way with underlying severity. “Is there a point to this reminiscence?”
The point should be obvious but apparently Silco, who never shies away from being both comforting and strict with her, wants Powder to say it.
“Vander told me I’m too smart to be working in a bar. And all this work with Ekko and Heimerdinger-“
“Heimerdinger?” He interrupts with a surprised look but she pushes on.
“-has really made me think, what if I could? I mean, I know I could! I know I can. Probably should, too. But…”
Silco crosses his arms across his chest and leans back to look at her. He looks tired, collar uncharacteristically rumpled and his shoulders a bit slumped. But he looks patient, the way he always does whenever Powder thinks she’s being more of handful than she’s worth.
“What if I mess it up? I always manage to mess things up. I’m a-“
“Don’t.” Even tempered but still giving no room for discussion. “You are not some bad luck token or ill omen or whatever it is you think you are. Sometimes, many times, things don’t go the way we thought they would, or how we wished they would. It doesn’t mean you are at fault for that.”
Powder looks down, feeling a little chastised. “Vi used to say I was strong in my own way. That I just needed to figure out how to use it.”
Silco runs a hand over her hair and lets it linger at the top of her head. “Your sister was wise, and she knew you better than anyone. I would be happy for you to take that advice.”
Powder sighs, her shoulders slumping.
“You don’t have to know now. Or tomorrow or next week. But my darling girl, we live in a different world now. Let the doors and windows of this world open, see where they lead you. You’ve spent far too long with your back to the wall, terrified something will go wrong.”
Silco turns her around so she can see herself in the mirror. “You are many things, Powder, but a wallflower you are not.”
Powder blinks away the little bit of emotion that wells up in her eyes, reaches up and grabs his forearms, grins at herself and this one half of the head of her makeshift family.
“Not bad, huh?” She asks with one definite sniff to compose herself.
Silco smiles. “Perfect.”
***
“Strange thing you said before,” Vander hands him a drink with one hand and puts a bottle away with the other. Silco takes the drink from him and leans back in his usual spot.
The Last Drop has emptied out, an absolute mess that they’ll deal with hours from now, and there’s a slow, comfortable feeling to it just being the two of them. Silco hums in confusion.
“About forgiveness.”
Silco holds up his drink. “Ah, that. Is it strange?”
Vander looks a bit abashed but he still breathes out a low laugh. “You and I both know it was never that simple. In fact it’s a miracle…”
“Spare me your contrition and guilt,” Silco can make even a nightcap in a Zaun bar look imperious, especially with the intensity of his dual colored gaze. “I haven’t had use for that in years. I made a decision when it came to you, and I won’t have you hijacking it.”
Vander looks properly admonished and holds up his hands in good natured defeat. “Alright, you’re right… far be it from me to argue with the brains of this outfit.”
“And let’s not forget that,” Silco says with a sip. “I told a young man an oversimplified explanation of a complex true story. I don’t know if I believe it myself, but it sounds like something that should be true.”
For just a moment Vander stands at the bar and just looks at him, right in the face, like he’s just observing, waiting to come to a truth of his own by just looking at Silco. So intently in fact that it unnerves Silco enough to clear his throat.
“Stop that. You’re looking at me like you haven’t been already for decades.” Silco puts his drink on the bar and scoffs when Vander breaks his quiet gaze with a smirk and an invasion of his space.
His arms wrap around Silco and his nose presses into his hair. “Has it been that long?”
“Our children are grown and the world is changing in ways we both never thought was possible,” Silco curls a hand tightly around the back of Vander’s neck. “I wonder sometimes how we’ve managed to last this long.”
Vander huffs and kisses his brow, uneven skin meeting a bristly beard growing thicker by the day. “Guess we haven’t run out of luck yet. Bed?”
Silco pushes him away gently. “Yes. You’re an old man now, it’s bad for your health to be awake so late.” He slides off his stool and makes his way towards the stairs.
The laugh Vander lets out would have woken anyone before but their bar is an empty nest now and the world, even Zaun, is as quiet as its ever going to be. Vander follows him upstairs.
Silco thinks for a moment more on possibilities than forgiveness as they ready for bed.
“You staying here for awhile?” Vander rubs a towl over his freshly washed hair a little while later. For a moment Silco marvels at the sheer size of him, even if he’s gone a little soft around the edges. Tall and cuddly, Powder had adoringly called him. Strange thing to see him as, knowing so well how dangerous in his size he had been once.
“You know I can’t stand sleeping up there. It’s like sleeping in a museum.” Silco crosses one leg over the other, back against the headboard of their bed. “I spoke to Powder. Apparently you have as well.”
“Just another gentle nudge,” Vander replies. “That girl has a brilliant mind and she’s wasting it pouring drinks and wiping down tables.”
Silco decides to challenge him. “Nothing wrong with honest work.”
“Course there ain’t,” Vander scoffs. “I’m salt of the earth as they come, love, you think I’d ever look down my nose at anyone for the work they do.”
With a shake of his head, Silco continues. “She’s terrified she’ll mess everything up. She can’t seem to let go of this notion that she’s… hell, what was that word she kept using?”
“I don’t believe in luck, bad or otherwise.” Vander says by way of refusal to say the word they both knew very well. Powder had called herself that over and over in the wake of Vi’s death, in such an obsessive and self flagellating manner that they were both clueless what to do.
It had also been the catalyst to the bond between her and Silco, one thorny step at a time. Life was never meant to be sweet in Zaun, the fact that there was what little of it they have now still boggled the mind.
“Well, perhaps this time it will awaken something in her. Her difference is her strength, not her weakness.”
Vander hums and lays down on the bed, puts his head in Silco’s lap. “Vi used to say that to her.”
It lingers in the air for a moment.
Silco threads his fingers through Vander’s hair. “She looked beautiful on the dance floor tonight.”
“Spittin’ image of her mama,” Vander says.
“And yet somehow more.”
Silco can feel Vander’s smile against his thigh.
“There’s nothing that would’ve made Feli happier.”
Again a silence falls between them. Through the open window the sound of people reluctant to call it a night filters into their room, but it’s a muted sort of noise, the backdrop sound of their city that they had known all their lives.
They move, rearrange themselves to lie under the covers. Vander’s breath evens out quickly so Silco decides to speak before he can fall fully asleep.
“By the way, if we’re on the topic of speaking to our children about their choices in life…”
Vander moves and looks at him in the dark. “The moustache?”
“The moustache.”
They look at each other and then burst into laughter.
“He says he’s building up so he can have a beard like mine,” Vander says still grinning.
Silco rolls his eyes with the same grin. “Dear god, can you imagine.”
Vander puts an arm around Silco’s waist and presses his face into the pillow. “I’m trying not to. Go to sleep, Sil. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
It invokes a last hint of laughter from the both of them. Silco hums and closes his eyes.