Chapter Text
Silco sensed the intruder the moment he opened the door and stepped inside the darkened room.
In the Undercity of his youth, children were told that enforcers would steal them away at night if they didn’t behave, so he and his peers grew up training themselves to detect another’s breathing in the quietest alleys and to carry a weapon everywhere, even their own home.
Muscle memory kicked in before his brain could register what was happening, and he found himself with a hand in the inside pocket of his gold-trimmed waistcoat, fingers gripping the hilt of a small knife he kept hidden there, when he realised that the intruder couldn’t be a threat, for they weren’t trying to conceal their presence.
They appeared to be huddled under the thick covers of his bed.
Releasing a breath, he let his arm fall back to his side. It was only Jinx, acting precisely as he had taught her to: as his “daughter”.
Most had snickered under their breath at his decision to save the girl. The reaction hadn’t come as a surprise to him. Many sought to replace him and hungered like starving animals for any sign of vulnerability on his part. Many more still followed him out of interest in the wealth they could amass, not out of faith in his design. They had greed; he had vision.
Looking into the child’s swollen, bloodshot eyes, he had seen her for what she truly was: the embodiment of Zaun[1]. All he had done – all he was still doing – was so that children like her could grow up with opportunities on the palm of their hand, not knives in their pockets. Had he left her among the rubble and the dying fire, he wouldn’t have been able to look at himself in the mirror and still claim that he was fighting for the Undercity. Had he done that, he would have been no better than those beasts who had watched her stumbling after him in the streets, and had licked their lips, anticipating the taste of his weakness.
To keep them at bay, calling her his daughter had seemed the safest course of action: a daughter could be moulded into anything he might need; anything Zaun might need. With that argument and Jinx’s talent for gadgetry, he had retained his associates’ loyalty and the Chem-Barons’ respect, and he had got himself a little girl that had turned out to be a champion card[2] up his sleeve.
Now that Jinx was eighteen, however, her habit of sneaking into his bed at night was beginning to spark the wrong kind of talk among his allies and enemies alike. They would never dare to say it to his face, but Sevika overheard what they murmured behind his back.
Why does she go to him at night? Are they sleeping in the same bed?
He had to put an end to those whispered questions before they became bawdy jokes shouted by drunken morons in a pub. He wouldn’t allow such filth to taint either Jinx’s reputation or his own. He needed to teach her what she must be to him now that she was an adult, but he needed to be patient. She could be as malleable as putty in his hands, but too much stick and too little carrot could damage her delicate psyche and set her back for weeks.
So, rather than reprimanding her, all he said was, ‘Again?’
The person-shaped bundle of brown cloth shifted into a little mound as Jinx pulled her knees to her chest. Her muffled voice rose from under the sheets, but her head remained firmly buried under the warm fabric: ‘It was different this time.’
‘Oh?’
As he waited for clarification, Silco closed the door, made his way to a dresser in a corner, and turned on a small chem-lamp sitting on it. Chemtech was a testament to the talent of the sons and daughters of Zaun as well as a painful constant reminder that, whilst Piltover thrived on Hextech, his Undercity had to make do with toxic scraps.
Neon green-yellow light from the chem-lamp suffused a soberly decorated room, with wooden floorboards, white walls, a sturdy king bed, a wardrobe, the dresser standing before him, and, next to it, an armchair with red velvet padding on the seat and armrests. The furniture was carved from light-coloured oak wood, a luxurious material smuggled in from Piltover, a small victory against the topsiders.
Located above the Last Drop, the attic had a single oeil-de-boeuf window overlooking the entrance of the nightclub, so that Silco could always keep his good eye on his domain, even when he wasn’t working in the office downstairs or sitting in a VIP booth on the ground floor.
At this hour, the sky looked pitch black. Regardless of the moon phase, Zaunites didn’t have the luxury to see either the satellite or the stars through the Zaun Gray, the thick barrier of toxic fumes enveloping the Undercity. That small window never failed to remind him of his purpose: freeing Zaun from Piltover’s influence, so that his people could have the stars and the moon, too.
‘It wasn’t a nightmare,’ Jinx explained, her voice clearer now, as if she had decided to emerge from under the covers. ‘I wasn’t even asleep. It was…’ She huffed. ‘It was the voices. They were being silly.’
With his back still turned to her, Silco glanced at her over his shoulder and glimpsed a head of electric blue hair resting on his pillow, gleaming blue eyes, and plump lips. Her face was still round, but her cheeks were losing body fat and her cheekbones were slowly rising to the surface, like details of a magnificent sculpture coaxed out of a block of marble little by little by a capable artist. Every day she looked less like the child who used to barely reach his chest when sitting in his lap, and more like an attractive woman he would have wanted in his lap for entirely different reasons.
Silco looked away, so she wouldn’t see him brushing a hand over his face as he held back a sigh. Who was he trying to fool? He wished the matter could be as simple as teaching Jinx what she was to him. What indeed was she to him?
In his most rational moments, he chided himself. What a silly question. She was still his daughter, of course. Why would age change anything?
In his most honest moments, he wondered… He loved her. Of that, he had no doubt. But did he still welcome her into his bed to indulge her or to indulge himself now?
Not that it mattered. It could not matter. He wouldn’t have Jinx treated as a whore. Of course, there was an alternative solution, but that was dangerous for both of them.
‘Aren’t they always?’ Silco unbuttoned his waistcoat, shook it off, and folded it over the back of the armchair. His shoulders trembled with relief as if he had just removed an entire suit of armour. ‘That’s why I keep telling you not to listen to them.’
‘I knoooooow,’ she drawled. ‘I know, I know, I know.’ Out of the corner of his vision, he caught her rolling her eyes, and felt a small smirk curling his own lips. ‘They were just, you know, sillier than usual? Like, they were saying things.’ She hesitated, worrying her bottom lip. ‘About you.’
Silco took off his golden tie. ‘What were they saying?’
This time, her reply came only after a long silence: ‘That you’re going to leave, too.’
He paused. It was so late that Sevika had already shut the Last Drop an hour earlier. He longed to change out of the rest of his stiff attire and succumb to exhaustion until the sun rose upon another opportunity to help the children of Zaun – his children – but Jinx needed him right now, and she was a child of Zaun, too. The most precious of them, if he was being honest with himself. Could he truly call himself the leader of Zaun if he couldn’t look after its princess?
So he rolled up the sleeves of his scarlet shirt and went to sit on the edge of the bed. Lying on her side, she looked up at him, her eyes bright in the dim lamplight. He laid a hand on her exposed pale cheek, and she leant into the touch, her entire body relaxing at once, like a taut bow string released at last.
‘Is that why you’re here?’ Silco asked. ‘To check that I haven’t left?’
‘Nope,’ she answered immediately, pouting. ‘Of course not! What do you take me for? Someone who believes silly voices? No, sir! Nuh-uh.’ She broke into one of her widest smiles, one of those that could light up an entire room like blazing fire. ‘I wanted to check that you weren’t having nightmares, old man.’
Anyone else bothering him at this hour would rouse his ire, but her antics stole another smile from him against all odds. ‘And when you found out I hadn’t come to bed yet…’
He waved his free hand in the air in an invitation to complete his sentence. Her smile grew into a full-fledged grin. ‘I thought I’d make sure you wouldn’t get any nightmares!’ She batted her eyelashes at him and stuck her bottom lip out. ‘You’re going to let me stay, aren’t you?’
And there it was: her objective, finally revealed.
Silco heaved a sigh. It was time to begin her training. ‘Jinx, we’ve talked about this.’ He let a measure of sharp steel creep into his voice. ‘You’re not a little girl anymore.’
She furrowed her brow, drawing his attention to her freshly plucked eyebrows and her black eyeliner. That was suspicious. She knew to wipe her make-up off before bed.
‘I don’t want to sleep with you because I’m a little girl,’ she hissed through her teeth.
Silco closed his tired eyes. It felt like they were rehearsing for a play, having the same argument night after night. When she was younger, and her nightmares much more frequent, she would only beg to share his bed on occasion. Now that she was a full-grown woman, it had become an almost daily whim.
He breathed out her name slowly: ‘Jinx…’
The truth was, he knew the reason behind her behaviour. He only recited that script and avoided a confrontation because satisfying her unspoken request would be a risk to her safety and to his social standing.
Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time Jinx took an interest in something, only to discard it in a matter of weeks. He was certain this was another passing fancy, and he wasn’t going to make a gamble for the sake of something as volatile as smoke.
Feigning obliviousness was the easier, risk-free option in that bargain.
‘Do you want to be like her?’
That question was most definitely not an ordinary part of their little song and dance. Caught off guard, Silco blinked and found Jinx staring him dead in the eye, nose inches from his own, lips pursed into a grimace.
‘Well? Well? Well?’ she insisted, firing the words like a machine gun, giving him no time to formulate a response. ‘I said, do you want to be like her?’ All of a sudden, she shook her head with great vehemence and snarled at something – someone? – above his shoulder. ‘Shut up! I’m asking him!’
Silco cupped her face with both hands. ‘Jinx!’
When she started seeing things, he had to act with speed and without mercy. Her name, uttered as a forceful command as his fingertips dug into the sides of her face as if to crush her skull, jolted her back to reality.
She blinked a dozen times in rapid succession, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then at last opened them again and saw him, truly saw him, instead of seeing through him. Recognition and shame flashed across her face as it dawned on her that she had lost control in front of him again, but he hardly registered her upset. She was back with him, not in the hands of some ghosts from her past that had never deserved her.
Cheeks reddening from a combination of adrenaline and embarrassment, she still held his gaze with her chin raised, waiting for his answer in stubborn silence.
Silco loosened the grip on her face. ‘Of course not,’ he told her once he was sure she was listening to him and no one else. That she would dare to imply that he would abandon her like her sister, was an insult to all he had ever done for her and to the fragments of his past that he had shared with her. Even so, he couldn’t bring himself to be angry with her; only with the filth who had caused and was still causing her so much grief. Violet might have been Vander’s wonder, but gods was he glad she was dead. ‘Why would you ask something like that?’
She scrunched up her nose and crossed her arms over the sheet she had dragged all the way up to her chin, glaring at him. ‘Because you keep treating me like a child.’ After a pause, her voice dropped low – a much older, much more vicious woman’s voice, a glimpse of what she was becoming – as she enunciated every word like it was a death sentence: ‘I’m. Not. A. Child.’
Almost as quick as a Shimmer addict, she grabbed the collar of his shirt with both hands and yanked him down towards her. Taken by surprise, he put his hands on the mattress on either side of her head to stop his fall.
In that position, his torso was draped over hers, their bodies separated only by the all too thin barrier provided by the covers, which slipped down during their little scuffle, revealing Jinx’s naked shoulders and sharp collarbones. He realised that she hadn’t been hiding under the bedsheets for warmth; she wasn’t wearing any clothes and didn’t want him to find out and kick her out before she had had a chance to carry out her scheme.
Though his gaze was drawn to her exposed flesh, what gave him pause was the fact that he could feel her heart thrumming in her chest, the warmth radiating from her, the curve of her slim waist and narrow hips. With the scant amount of clothing she favoured on a daily basis, it was impossible not to notice that she had indeed grown, but this was the first time he could feel it.
She was right; she wasn’t a child anymore. She was beautiful, she was his, and she was offering herself more than willingly. He was tired – tired of working all day, tired of resisting, tired of pretending he didn’t know that she was begging him for his attention in a different way than she had as a little girl. Why had he been resisting?
It was the one part of his mind that always maintained a razor-sharp focus on Zaun and Zaun only, no matter the time of day or his mental and physical state, that reminded him of the answer: Because calling her your daughter is a safeguard for you both. Because the alternative to a whore is a lover.
His attention drifted upwards from the top of her chest to her lips. She was biting into them again. Finally, he looked into her eyes, which were wide open, searching his face, flicking all over it without a sign of discomfort or contempt for his disfigurement. She only ever gazed at him as though he was still a whole person, whereas nearly everybody else – every associate, every whore, every topsider he was forced to have dealings with – cowered at the sight of him as though he was the monster under their bed. Sevika wasn’t scared of him, either, of course, but the two of them had long since established that their partnership ended where sexual and romantic interest began.
Jinx’s fearlessness, more than anything else, made her perhaps the only one worthy of standing at his side as a lover. The others deserved nothing more than to serve him as his underlings.
But a lover is an equal, that nagging voice in his head pointed out. She will be seen as a weakness, just like a daughter would, but one that can’t be moulded as easily. She isn’t ready to take on the duties of a leader. The Chem-Barons would eat her alive, then accuse you of going soft. You can’t risk a riot and leave Zaun in their fat opportunistic hands.
For once, he thought he understood exactly what Jinx went through when her ghosts started torturing her. He wanted those haunting thoughts to leave him, yet he couldn’t help reacting to their pull – away from her, away from her demands and promises – as he stared at her, unable to move.
Finally, she broke the spell that kept them locked in that standstill: ‘What… what is it?’ She glanced away from him, but only for a second. They were too close for her to be able to look at anything else, so instead she lowered her gaze to the sheet between them. ‘You don’t… you don’t like me? But I thought… Why don’t you like me? I mean, I like you and I thought…’ She pressed her fingertips to her temples and groaned in pain, as though her head was about to explode like one of her Chompers. ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it! He’s not going to leave just because… just because…’
She was slipping away from him again. That would not do.
Frowning, Silco took hold of her bony wrist and gripped it hard until she squealed and squirmed beneath him. She reacted out of discomfort, but he couldn’t help wondering how enticing she would look, moaning and writhing under him for different reasons.
To his chagrin, it seemed like her mischievous design was bearing fruit at last. Though he still had a firm enough grasp on his own resolve to stand his ground right now, she was beginning to stir fantasies that he had managed to never conjure up until then. She was pouring oil over an open fire. How long until it burnt the Undercity down?
‘Look at me,’ he commanded. The seething rage in his voice more so than the order itself granted her immediate obedience. ‘If you want to be treated like an adult, then reason like one. What do you think will happen if I indulge…’ He waved his free hand at the space between them. ‘… this?’
She giggled, her face growing redder than before. Her heart was beating faster now. Watching her in the warm light, feeling her naked body but a scrap of cloth away, was what Silco supposed Shimmer addicts experienced when they got a taste of the drug after weeks without it.
‘We’d… have a really good time?’ she offered tentatively, her impish grin faltering when he didn’t laugh with her.
Although her smile was tugging at his heartstrings, Silco kept his jaw stiff and his eyes hard. ‘What then?’ When she didn’t answer, he pushed himself away from her – a decision demanding more willpower than he was willing to admit – and sat up again, angling his body away from hers and scowling at the wall above the headboard. ‘They’ll call you my whore.’
He uttered the last word through gritted teeth. Whilst both a daughter and a whore were pliable, the former was inaccessible, the latter tantalisingly available. Although he might preserve his authority and fulfil his own base desires, he had no intention of doing so at the expense of her dignity. ‘I don’t want that for you.’
‘I don’t care,’ Jinx declared immediately.
Silco couldn’t resist the urge to lay his hand atop her head in reaction to her earnestness. ‘Maybe not now, but I do. And so will you eventually. You’ve fought too hard to earn their respect to lose it all like that.’
She glared up at his hand ruffling her hair, but didn’t disagree. She chewed on her response, mulling it over. ‘Then you could tell them that I’m not your… that,’ she countered at last. ‘You could tell them that I’m, I don’t know…’ She brought the tip of her index finger to her lip, closed her eyes, and pretended to be deep in thought, then flashed him a winning smirk. ‘… Your girlfriend?’
He withdrew both hands, dropping her wrist like it was on fire – he needed to stop touching her, tempting himself – and shook his head. ‘If I did that, you’d be in danger.’
She snorted. ‘More in danger than as your daughter?’
‘Yes,’ he said, firmly enough to wipe the amusement from her expression. ‘They’ll expect you to have a lot more responsibility. A lot less freedom to tinker with your inventions, too.’ He shot her a pointed look. She was pouting again, but once again she didn’t argue. ‘They’ll expect you to be committed to the cause, not disappearing in your workshop for days.’ He paused once more, tasting the following sentence on his tongue like bitter medicine before forcing himself to continue: ‘And they’ll try to kill you more often. More seriously, too.’ Unlike a daughter, a lover can be replaced. If they decide they can offer me someone better, someone of their own choosing… ‘I can’t protect you from all of that, Jinx.’
To his surprise, she howled in frustration. ‘You don’t have to protect me!’
She flung the covers away and leapt out of bed, towering over him as he was still seated. She was indeed completely naked but for a pair of black panties that left very little to his imagination, but she didn’t care to keep the secret any longer. He couldn’t even process what he was looking at, though, shocked as he was by her outburst.
‘Why, why, why do you have to keep saying that? You taught me to fight!’
She slammed her fists against her small breasts, leaning forward to shout in his face. He could only gawk at her, eyes wide, like he was the child caught with his hands in the honeypot and she was the responsible adult chastising him.
‘I can protect myself! I can help you; I want to help you. Who says I don’t want more responsibility? Who says I don’t want to be committed to the cause? Do you think… Why do you think I spend all that time in the workshop?!’
She stabbed him in the left side of his chest with her index finger, then shoved at him with both hands. It was a much weaker blow than she was capable of, but it struck him harder than if she had wanted to hurt him for real. ‘I’m building all that to help you. I’m doing it for you!’
Winded, she stood over him for a long time, her breath coming in shallow gasps, her long braids shuddering with the force of the emotions she had just let out like wild dogs.
At last, she pressed her forehead to his – though it was hard to gauge whether she was being affectionate or about to headbutt him – and stared him down, grinding her teeth together. ‘Stop. Treating. Me. Like. A. Child.’
With a final contemptuous huff, she turned away from him and stomped out of the room, the floorboards protesting under every one of her heavy steps.
‘I’ll show you!’ she yelled, slamming the door closed.
Too dazed to do anything else, Silco listened to her storming away down the corridor, presumably going back to her own bedroom. She had never got so angry with him before, which was concerning. Anger was like a trigger on the gun that fired Jinx’s impulses. Now that it had been provoked, predicting her next move was impossible. The only certainty was that she would destroy every obstacle in her wake.
At last, Silco smoothed down the strands of hair that had fallen out of place under the explosive impact of Jinx’s fury. He threw his head back to look at the ceiling and heaved a deep sigh.
So much for looking after the princess of Zaun…
He had better go to sleep now. He had a feeling that tomorrow the sun would rise not upon an opportunity, but upon whatever ploy Jinx would devise to retaliate against this alleged slight.
[1] Both in an interview with Upcomer and during a live interview with Chrissy Costanza, Silco’s voice actor Jason Spisak explained that Silco sees Jinx as “the perfect embodiment of what Zaun is”.
[2] A champion card is one of three types of card in the digital collectible card game Legend of Runeterra. In this fanfiction, “a champion card up one’s sleeve” holds the same meaning as “an ace up one’s sleeve” in our world.