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i.
Mere hours ago he was finally someone, finally vindicated, and now he is reduced to this: a filthy thing scrambling through the shadows like a rat, pathetic and terrified. No one bothers him as he stumbles his way under the bridge and down to the lower levels; it’s as if everyone can smell it on him; predators avoiding diseased prey--like every wrong thing that had been lurking under his skin for his whole life is suddenly on display. Better to shun him than risk the bad luck that drips off him and stains the concrete in his wake.
Through the haze of pain and desperation, he realizes he has nowhere to go -- no bar, no hideaway, no workhouse. Even the abandoned tunnels aren’t safe. Every place he knows, Vander knows just as well and he’ll be waiting to finish Silco off. With Felicia and Connol dead the children will forever be turned against him. No family. No people. No home. An entire life up in smoke.
His hands shake as he stumbles down a familiar shaft to the lowest levels of the city. Blinded by blood and half dead, he presses his body against the cold iron and tries to keep his breath from coming in gasps as he travels. It takes him hours to make his way through the chaos and find a place to hide, a corner of the underground far away from the Lanes. The fissures are dark and deep, and Silco can only hope that will be enough to keep Vander from sniffing him out. That he will sink away long enough to regain his strength.
ii.
Then --
Biding his time. He spends years watching Vander get older from a distance. Silco takes inventory of the way the familiar lines in Vander’s face start to deepen with age, as the hard line of his jaw, always kept clean shaven when Silco knew him, is gradually covered by a beard. Vander slips comfortably and confidently into his new self, while Silco nurses a ravaged face that will never heal in the shadows. He buries the brash young thing from the bridge under this new Vander -- father, sentry, leader -- until it is as if Silco had never stood beside him at all. History rewritten. Silco, one remaining piece of a matching set that has ceased to exist.
He watches and he waits and he wonders. Does Vander wish he had succeeded? Does he dream of growing old without looking over his shoulder for a ghost? Does he regret it? Even if the rest of the Lanes could pretend, Vander isn’t stupid. Silco can see it in the way he checks the street before locking up at night, in the way the children never venture close to the river. Silco lives, and Vander knows it. That’s why he twisted the truth, rewriting their story where the only part left for Silco to play was the monster. If he had died, would Vander have made him a martyr instead? Or would he have been written out entirely, left behind to rot and disappear under the floorboards while Vander brokered deals across their bar?
Perhaps it doesn’t matter; Silco changed too. Besides, bitterness keeps a different hunger at bay -- the one that feels too close to an ache. Bitterness provides fuel, at least. It’s motivating in a way that lingering on the could-have-beens of the past never is.
For as long as he can remember, Silco has dreamed of suffocation. Before, it was always the pit - the ever present fear of a cave in, of the earth and stone collapsing and the mine slowly stealing your breath like a kiss. Of the air so thick it coats your lungs, making your eyes feel like they’d pop out of your head. Or worse, dirt and rubble filling your throat. Spend long enough being buried alive for your dinner, and eventually it starts to feel inevitable; they were all the same in those darkest parts of the fissures, no difference between the ones who came back up and the ones who didn’t except luck.
Now, that dream is nearly comforting. Nightmares from an old life, a fear that could be shared and chased with liquor or schemes or fiery, idiotic hope. Sometimes when he wakes up, he nearly misses the mine.
The new ones are worse. There’s the smoke that smells like flesh and ash and scratches his lungs raw. Different than the Gray, different than anything, it dances, braids through the red-hot air, screams in his ear. His palms are wet with kerosene that stains like blood. It’s like drowning in hellfire. Condemnation. And then --
Well. The watery sentencing, he supposes.
Different dreams, different graves, but always the thick, cloying darkness that presses into his mouth and nose, fills him up until his vision goes black. Always drowning.
iii.
Vander is gone, and in his place there’s a little scrap of an orphan, eleven years old and grieving a life taken from her twice over - once by enforcer scum, and again by a father who would choose to lick their boots rather than avenge what was stolen from her. Silco lit the match both times, spurring them towards this uncanny reunion whether he meant to or not. Maybe in time she’ll thank him - a life here, with him, is better than anything Felicia or Vander could have offered her. Their deaths make her a true heir of Zaun.
This is what he tells himself to keep from feeling like he’s floundering. His world feels flipped upside-down.
She wails when Silco calls her Powder. Sobs, snotty and inconsolable when he tries to figure out what she wants. He knows her but she doesn't remember him. He is a dark stranger in a dark bar that belonged to her dead father. He is an intruder in her empty home.
“I’m a jinx, a jinx, a jinx...”
Two days of this. She alternates between sullenly hiding away in dark corners like an injured animal, making him think she’s run away, and screeching up and down the halls like a banshee.
“A jinx, a jinx...”
“Enough,” he snaps finally, his headache and frustration getting the better of him. “So what if you are?” The sharpness of it is enough to quiet her and she stares at him, eyes wide and watery.
“What if you are?” he repeats, making the deliberate effort to even his tone this time. “What does that mean?”
She takes a moment, eyes lowered, and Silco watches as she presses her nail against the soft skin of a bloody cuticle.
“Bad luck” she answers finally. “I ruin everything.”
Ah.
Carefully, trying to convey more confidence than he feels, Silco lowers himself down to the ground where she sits. He crosses his legs, tilting his head to look at her.
“Is that what they told you?” he asks, and she nods. “People have all kinds of names for things they can’t control -- for things that scare them.”
This gets him no response. She’s still too damaged to understand what he means yet, but maybe it will come with age. She deserves to know the truth of her upbringing - of Vander - but despite bitter impulse, Silco knows that imparting that legacy too soon only risks isolating her. Besides, Vander is dead and the undercity is a little emptier for it. Even Silco can understand that, and he isn’t immune to it. Vander was the centre of everything - of their life, their dream, of the betrayal of it. Now there’s a hole in the world, and Silco’s rage has no singular point of focus.
Vander, the coward. He cut Zaun off at the knees to spare his own comfort, spat on their work and left the undercity to shrivel and die under Piltover’s glory. Instead of building Zaun up, he kept them hidden, stunted, convinced of their own inferiority. This girl is proof enough of that - another stain on Vander’s hypocritical heart, to raise her into thinking she is anything less than deserving. To carry her home from the ash and the fire only to prepare her for a lifetime accepting she’s nothing.
The hound of the underground reduced to sniveling, toothless mongrel.
He hadn’t always been that way -- he’d been full of fire, once. Principled and furious, with an inherent violence thrumming through his veins that Silco had always admired -- even when he was on the receiving end of it. He’d loved every accidental press of teeth that drew blood when they kissed, loved the shuddering, animal mess of him that brawled with their oppressors. Loved the splits in his knuckles and the swollen snarl of his eye after a fight. Loved the softness that came after, the deliberate warmth of a fire abated.
And when that love rotted away, dragged from the river, filthy and disfigured, Silco had at least respected him. He couldn’t fault Vander for his nature, after all, when he had spent so long coveting it.
One boon -- he died as he should have lived. Full of rage, fighting for something. In spite of everything, Silco finds that he still misses him desperately. The realization is unsteadying, and for a moment he’s at a loss. Next to him, Powder’s tears have started to dry and together they sit in silence. Her body still shudders every now and then, like an unconscious remnant surge breaking through her gangly frame. She continues to pick away at her self inflicted wound, which stirs in him an uncomfortable mixture of sadness and irritation. Reaching out carefully, Silco wraps his fingers around her hand, gently nudging her attention away from her bloody thumb.
“Mm,” he hums thoughtfully, then slowly admits: “I’m bad luck too.”
Saying it out loud feels heavy on his tongue for reasons she can’t yet understand, but the girl’s face snaps up to peer at him immediately, her gaze flicking curiously over his scarred eye.
“You are?” She shuffles closer, not pulling her hand from his grip. “Is that what happened to your face?”
“I am,” Silco answers, then tilts his head pensively. “But no -- a jinx is only trouble for other people, not for himself. You should remember that. This was a parting gift from --” He swallows the instinctive venom on his tongue, course-corrects. “-- someone in a past life. Like that one.” He nods, indicating the bruise that’s bloomed across her pale cheek. “From your sister. It’s a story for another day.”
“Does it still hurt?”
“Very much.”
She considers this, frowning, clearly working something out in her head that Silco isn’t privy to.
iv.
The girl is exhausting. Silco adores her.
He expects it to take longer to gain her trust, but he soon realizes that’s a projection of his own issues. Instead, she throws herself into her new life with as much vigor as she’d thrown herself into his traitorous arms, taking every scrap of attention or kindness she can get as if she’s been starved for it. She follows at his heels while he works, rearranges his furniture, yaps incessantly to the crew he employs to keep watch over the bar. No one knows what to do with her, and they suspect--Silco is certain--that he’s lost his mind in keeping her.
On bad days, she’s a tempest. All trauma and theatrics, chaos incarnate. She chatters at ghosts, spits poison at anyone in her path, destroys her room for the sake of it. She is difficult and overly loud. She is miserable and cruel. She screams at him, mocks his offerings of careful advice, pushes to see if his patience for her has a limit. She wants to see when he’ll decide he’s had enough of her -- when he’ll decide to send her away, leave her alone. These are the times she reminds him most of himself.
He still has nothing to call her. In one of her fits, she tells him that Powder is dead -- she died in the explosion with her friends and the girl who stands before him now is an evil ghost that rose up in her place. Does he get it? Does he understand?
Yes, he gets it. Yes, he felt the same once. Yes, she will have to carry on anyway, just as he did.
“You’re just saying that,” she says, yanking furiously, manically, on her own hair. “You don’t really get it -- you killed Vander on purpose. You do everything on purpose and everyone listens to you! You’re not like me. Not really.”
There are things he hasn’t shared with her. He’s not sure why -- the fear of opening old wounds, both hers and his own, maybe. The uncertainty of how he’s meant to care for her at all. It seemed to come so naturally to Vander, but Silco is less sure of himself.
Later, once the air is quiet enough to mean she’s exhausted herself, Silco descends the stairs to her bedroom. He finds her curled up in bed, her forehead pressed to the wall, her knees pulled up under her chin.
“Do you remember your mother?”
The girl doesn’t move. From his place in the doorway, Silco can’t see her expression, just the bony curl of her back and her blue, blue hair.
“I knew her,” he continues, venturing to step into the room and close the door behind him. When she doesn’t protest, he sits on the edge of the bed, hunched forward to avoid the top bunk. “We were friends -- good friends. I loved her very much. Did Vander tell you this story?”
A shake of her little blue head. Interesting. The tension in her shoulders changes, just slightly, and Silco can tell that she’s listening.
“She was a sister of Zaun -- she was my sister. A fighter. A true believer. We marched across the bridge together, Vander, Felicia, your father and I. She was strong, just like you.”
“Not strong enough to stick around.” The girl sniffs quietly, muffled. “Enforcers killed her. I already know that.”
“Yes,” Silco agrees softly. “But I haven’t finished.” He shuffles, carefully and deliberately, to fit into the bottom bunk next to her. He doesn’t touch her, just leans his back against the wall. The wood of the bed frame is covered in scribbles, childish faces and creatures and symbols he has no context for. The documentation of a whole little life that, of the three of them, only Vander was allowed to witness.
“We marched together,” he continues. “Vander used his gloves to tear them down. Felicia and I held the line. I couldn’t use my fists like Vander, but I could fight in my own way. There was a mistake. I threw a bomb, tried to burn one of them. I thought it would be enough, but it wasn’t -- it only made them more angry.” He can see it still, as clearly as if it were yesterday. The mechanical hate in the Enforcer’s mask, the flames reflected in the soulless goggles. He can taste the fear that rose and burned in his throat, acidic as bile.
“The one I hit turned to kill me, and he missed.” Silco wets his lips, head bowed, pretends that talking about this doesn’t still smell like kerosene after all these years. His voice feels thick and raspy. “Felicia -- your mother was next to me. She took my place. Bad luck.”
His chest is tight, and he tries to breathe through it in the silence that hangs between them. Perhaps the girl will blame him, too. Perhaps she’ll recognize everything he’s taken from her over the years. There is a tremor in his hands and he clenches them in his lap, resenting the weakness.
“Bad luck,” whispers an unsteady voice next to him. She turns from the wall, and Silco barely gets a glimpse of her red, wet eyes before she’s squirming to wrap her arms around his waist, burying her face awkwardly against his stomach. Caught off guard, he brings a shaky hand to the crown of her head, soothing it over her hair where she lays in his lap.
“Vander blamed me,” he adds quietly, finding the words come more easily now, the old, familiar bitterness more forthcoming than the secret grief. “He wasn’t the man you believed him to be. He tried to kill me that day, held me underwater while the river toxins ate away at my eye. I lost everything. Everyone. To survive, I had to become someone new -- like you did, when I found you.”
“I didn’t know,” the girl says, her voice forlorn and nearly lost in Silco’s shirt. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” An apology he doesn’t deserve, a realization of her pain reflected in his. She clutches him close, tucks herself against his body like he’s the only father she’s ever known, and in the dim light of her bedroom Silco is dizzied by the thought that they are the only two people in all of the world who matter. He wonders if Vander felt like this, carrying her and her sister home and putting them to bed every night. Did his heart feel fit to burst like Silco’s does? Did it feel like he was standing on the edge of a precipice?
He brings two fingers to her chin, urging her head up to look into her face.
“I was betrayed, left for dead, just like you.” he tells her. “But I was reborn -- I can help you do the same. I can protect you, and we can be a family. We can have a home.”
An unlikely dream, one that had seemed lost to him long ago.
“You said a jinx is trouble for other people, not for themselves,” She’d listened, tucking his words away in her mind and trying to make sense of them. Silco feels a surge of pride. “What if I mess it up again? What if one day I’m trouble for you?”
Wiping the back of a hand over her teary eyes, she scowls and shuffles up to sit in his lap. She’s too big for it at her awkward age -- young enough to still be a child, but already long in the limbs, all angles. Silco has to lift his chin to avoid bumping her head when she lets it fall against his shoulder.
“Maybe you will be,” he agrees, finding no point in denying it. “But I can live with that. I would be happy to live with it.”
He tucks his nose carefully against her hair, lets himself feel the unfamiliar warmth of affection.
“Some things are worth the trouble, little jinx.”
Fondness, not cruelty. Recognition. After a beat she laughs, immediately breaking the somber mood with an inelegant snort. Silco tenses a little, prepared to regret his candour, glancing down at her questioningly.
“What?” He raises his eyebrows, but her smile is infectious, and he finds the side of his mouth twitching despite himself. “You don’t believe me?”
She shakes her head again, looking at him as if trying to decipher something in his expression before settling back down against his body.
“No, it just --” She blows out a huffy exhale. “It sounded okay when you said it. Even though it was babyish. Jinx. It just didn’t sound so bad for once I guess.”
Silco hums, leaning back against the wall as she rests against his chest. Eventually her breathing goes slow and even while he strokes her hair. She sleeps peacefully for once, and after a while Silco follows her.
He dreams of nothing at all.
v.
In the end, it’s neither smoke nor polluted water that floods his lungs and finishes him off. It isn’t even Vander’s hands around his throat. Another recurring nightmare - hate and desire and disgust bearing down to kill him in a shimmered haze. In the real, waking world there is no hatred, no distortion, no disgust.
There’s just Jinx and her fear. As the bullets pierce his heart and he realizes he’s dying, Silco can only feel an immeasurable, aching sorrow to be leaving her. Sheer vertigo at the thought of her loneliness.
Jinx looks at him, eyes wide and panicked as the day she wrapped her arms around him on the pavement, and she’s crying. He might have preferred Vander’s revulsion to her tears.
“No no no...”
Even now, with his blood on her hands, she’s perfect. She’ll need to be brave and furious and fully herself -- a survivor, like him. His daughter. His legacy.
He tries to tell her as much, with his life slipping eagerly away from him. He hopes it gets across. She weeps in his lap like a child, and his last thought is that he wishes he could soothe his hand over the crown of her head, like he did when she was small.