Chapter Text
"To get back to Powder." That single, desperate thought had been the engine driving Vi through years of pitch-black solitary.
"To get Powder back." That was the revised hope, the only thing keeping her standing after learning what the world had done to her sister.
But now, staring into Jinx's crimson eyes—swirling with manic anarchy—Vi felt the certainty drain from her bones.
"Powder! We don't have to do this!" Vi roared. She stalked forward, raising her massive hextech gauntlets to deflect the incoming spray of bullets.
"Still the wrong name, jackass!" Jinx cackled, her erratic, dancing footsteps keeping Caitlyn's sniper sights wildly off-target.
Suddenly, Vi's rhythm shifted. She abandoned her guard entirely. It wasn't just her usual brawler's recklessness; this was something deeper. Faster. Devastating. The crystalline blue glow of her gauntlets traced furious arcs in the dusty air. On her face was a terrifying, raw desperation Jinx had only seen once long before.
Caught off guard by the sheer ferocity, Jinx wavered. A rifle crack echoed, and one of Caitlyn's bullets whizzed mere inches from Jinx's nose.
Trying to break my focus, huh? Jinx gritted her teeth, twisting violently to dodge both the sniper fire and the incoming metal fist.
Another shot. Another fluid dodge. The manic grin on Jinx's face only stretched wider.
But Vi wasn't playing the same game anymore. Instead of pulling back, Vi’s left gauntlet violently swatted Jinx’s handgun aside, blowing her defense wide open. Her right arm pistoned forward—an inescapable strike.
The impact sent Jinx skidding backward, but Vi didn't give her a second to breathe. She lunged, tackling her sister to the grated floor and pinning her down with a heavy forearm pressed perilously close to Jinx's throat.
Anger. Desperation. Exhaustion. From this suffocating proximity, Jinx saw it all etched into her older sister's face. But what Vi saw looking back at her was a ghost.
"It hurts, Violet. It really hurts." The voice was high-pitched, trembling, shrinking away—an eerie, perfect echo of the little girl Powder used to be. "You don't have to hit me this hard."
Vi froze. Her iron grip loosened instantly. Protective instinct flooded back, drowning out the adrenaline. "It's okay. It's okay, I got you now," Vi pleaded, her voice cracking with nervous relief. "I won't hurt you anymore. I won't let anyone hurt you. I'm taking you away f—"
"Oh, Violet..." Jinx interrupted, her trembling lip curving into a cruel, razor-sharp smile.
CRACK.
Vi's jaw snapped violently upward. Jinx had driven her knee forward, a concealed shock-baton sparking viciously against Vi's chin. Flying out from Vi's mouth were her teeth, her saliva, her blood, along with the last fraying threads of her sanity.
Using the momentum of the strike, Jinx vaulted backward, leaving Vi crumpled on her knees.
"Haha, sucker! You let your guard down!" It was just Jinx being Jinx. Jinx was Jinx. Jinx is Jinx. Menace. Madness. Mockery. "You look really pathetic right now, sis."
"Vi!" Caitlyn screamed. She fired instantly. The first shot missed, sparking off the iron pipes. The second found its mark, striking Jinx's handgun and sending it clattering into the shadows, entirely out of reach.
Disarmed, Jinx couldn't keep up the fight. Her manic eyes darted across the ventilation shaft, calculating her next move, until they locked onto a backup plan: the detonator for their rigged explosives. It was triggered. Not what she had planned. "Hey! That's not-"
Shattered.
Pillars, ceiling panels, and steel vents. Violently tore apart.
A terrifying cascade of dust and brick rained down.
Caitlyn instinctively dove for cover, but a glance backward stopped her heart—Vi was still kneeling in the center of the collapse, unmoving.
"What the—" Caitlyn cursed. She abandoned her hextech rifle without a second thought, sprinting back to grab Vi. She hauled her partner upward.
Vi's heavily muscled frame, the powerful massive gauntlets, and the fading hope in her eyes, was dead weight. The very strength and resolve that usually defined Vi were utterly useless now.
"Vi! Come on!" Caitlyn strained, dragging her through the collapsing debris.
Vi was conscious as she was dragged. All her systems and organs were still working. Vi had everything a human being needs in order to feel: a brain, sensory nerves connected organum sensuum, and something to feel. Except her broken jaw, everything was perfectly fine biologically. Yet somehow Vi couldn't feel.
Shattered.
Her heart, her mind, her soul. Violently tore apart.
Through the choking dust, her numb eyes watched the blue phantom of her sister maneuver nimbly through the collapsing chaos, fading into the smoke. Fading away from her forever.
The deafening roar of bursting sewer lines from the upper city drowned out everything else. The world around Vi was breaking. The world had broken, literally or not.
Miraculously, Caitlyn dragged them behind a massive boulder of fallen concrete just as the ceiling caved in completely. The toxic wind howled, pelting them with rocks and debris, before finally settling into an eerie, suffocating silence.
Coughing, Caitlyn dusted the debris off her uniform, her chest heaving.
She looked over at the brawler. "Hey... you okay?"
The silence stretched.
Thirst and exhaustion from adrenaline washing away. Pain from a nociceptive slightly broken jaw. Partial deafness and blurry sights from overwhelming hormones.
Besides these, maybe she was okay. Vi had been through a lot worse before.
Vi tried to speak, then stopped trying, before she spoke.
"I'm okay," Vi said. Her voice was terrifyingly hollow—detached, cold, and entirely flat. "Go, Cupcake. I want some privacy. I want to be alone. For a few da—months. No. I'm out. Out. Now go. Just go."
With a heavy, metallic thud, Vi unlatched the gauntlets. They dropped into the dirt, dead and heavy, just like her heart. Her eyes stared straight ahead, unfocused and dim. They were the eyes of a complete stranger.
Caitlyn froze, completely unprepared for this hollow version of Vi. She tried to say something comforting, words Vi didn't even process.
Recognizing the depth of the shock, Caitlyn didn't leave her in the ruins. She coaxed the numb, heavy brawler to her feet, guiding her through the wreckage until they reached a quiet nook near a small underground settlement.
Caitlyn gave her the space she asked for, slipping away briefly only to retrieve the heavy hextech gauntlets and set them down beside her, along with Caitlyn's water bottle and rations.
And then, Caitlyn was truly gone.
Maybe she just needs to let it out by punching stuff again, Caitlyn hoped as she walked away.
But there was no fighting left in her. There was only Vi, sitting motionless in the dirt, staring at two deactivated gauntlets.
Powder was truly dead. Ventilated by Jinx.