Chapter Text
Violet is dead.
Silco didn’t hear about it from Vander. He didn’t hear it from anyone who matters. He heard it from a drunkard outside a bar—slurred words about the fact that the child who was killed in the explosion in Piltover was Vander’s kid. Selfishly, he prays for it to be one of the boys. One of the ones he never had the chance to foster a bond with. Anything but the two little girls Silco knew when the world was a kinder, warmer place. He carries that cruel hope with him for all of a few hours, and goes about business as usual.
But then he hears murmurs of the flowers laid across a freshly-dug grave near the riverbank.
Violets.
They’re a particularly hardy flower. One of the few that actually grow naturally in the filth of the Undercity. They cling stubbornly to the dirt between the cracks of brick and cement alike, and not even the acrid smoke and gas of the deepest fissures can wilt them away. One would have to deliberately remove them to ever be fully rid of the sea of purple each spring.
And now they litter the grave of a child.
Silco isn’t a grieving man. His heart is a wretched thing, withered and tired. He can’t remember the last time he shed a tear, or the last time a death gave him enough pause to reconsider. He isn’t a good man, either. He won’t ever claim to be one. He has done terrible things in the pursuit of progress, and will continue to do so. Whatever it takes to finally claw Zaun free of the crushing grip Piltover has on it, he’ll do it.
But even his old heart manages to ache, realizing what the world has lost.
What he has lost.
Though he’s missed the last several years of her life, he still remembers the child he used to hold. The one he would scoop up into his arms and cradle against his chest—the one who would pull at his hair when he didn’t tie it back, always so strong, even so young. She was bright, too. Brilliant. He and Vander wanted to build a future for her. One safe from the Grey, and the violence. One where she could play freely under the same sun that Piltover takes for granted.
But she’s gone now, and Silco never got to say a proper goodbye.
It takes him several weeks to work up the nerves to go and visit. In that time, the motions of his network slow to a crawl, lethargic as the Enforcers overextend their hand into Zaun. A child has died, and though rumors quickly grow of a budding inventor’s expulsion from the Academy and city alike, the Council still hasn’t gotten their pound of flesh.
With the Undercity’s second head silent, there are no orders to follow. Silco dismisses any attempts at meetings, secluding himself away in his office and spending hours in silence. Many try to reach him, demanding action. The Hound is at his weakest, they say, and Silco can’t deny the way he salivates at the thought of finally sinking his teeth into Vander’s beating heart.
And yet, he finds his hand stilled.
It’s a curious thing, to want something that’s now gone. It’s not the first time Silco’s felt such a tug in his heart, and it certainly won’t be the last. Grief can drive a man mad, they say, and he certainly understands such a saying now. Perhaps it’s also what drove Vander to such extremes all those years ago.
One evening, Silco finds himself walking through the upper streets, a hood drawn over his head, alone and unguarded. He walks with purpose, leaving the tunnels he hides in like a rat for lighter skies. Above, he can see the sunlight filtering through the smog, painting the upper Lanes in that thick shade of yellow-gold. The world still seems to be holding its breath, the violence and competition in the city’s belly at a standstill as the little would-be nation in the fissures waits. It balances on a precipice, now, and the slightest push could drive it into a second revolution, or to bow its head in further subservience.
Silco’s only out to clear his head. At least, that’s what he tells himself. Perhaps a glimpse of the river will be enough to shake him from this thrall, so that he can at last do what needs to be done.
But his weary eyes flicker up—and find a curious thing, strung up on an electrical line.
An hour later, he’s kneeling beside a grave.
There’s something soft in his hands, being turned over again and again. He feels the scratch and tug of fleece against dry hands, nails working bits of crusted mud away with each pass of his fingers across it. A little plush rabbit, ragged from years of harsh weather, nearly unrecognizable in its state and yet distinctly familiar to him nevertheless. He holds it loosely in his lap, frowning down at the name etched on the grave.
“…So it’s true,” he murmurs. He rolls the rabbit’s ear between the pads of two fingers, an absentminded habit, and an attempt to dispel the grief as though it’s something physical to be rubbed away. “You always were a reckless child. But… I had hoped…” He trails off, hands going still.
There’s no point in hoping any longer. There’s no point in talking to a grave, either, and yet he kneels, with the mud staining his knees and a child’s toy held in his lap. He always has been sentimental, even when he wishes he could feel nothing at all. Better to be alone with one’s grief for a moment, then to allow it to bleed through later on.
He isn’t alone, though. Not for very long at all.
Two grey eyes flicker up at the sound of distant footsteps. They fall heavy against the earth, like the beat of a war drum. He would know those footfalls even in his dreams, after spending so many years sharing a home. Sharing a life. No matter how many years it’s been, he would still know them.
Perhaps that’s why he draws his hood up over his face, though he knows the other man will recognize him by the sound of his voice in an instant. He draws the little rabbit close to his chest, some feral, possessive thing nagging there, as if his company might reach out and snatch it away from him if it’s spotted. It’s all he has left of the little girl buried six feet beneath him.
She was his once, too.
The man stands beside him now. Quiet. Unmoving. Silco risks a glance up, and sees someone who has aged ten years in just a few short weeks. Vander looks haggard in a way Silco hasn’t seen him look like since the rebellion, working himself to early grey hairs and crow’s feet. He’s never known Vander to care for himself, always too focused on the others around him. There were days where he would simply sink into bed after late hours in the mines, still covered in coal-dust and reeking of blood and sweat.
This time, it’s different. There’s a sadness that clings to Vander like a cloak, grief weighing heavy down on his shoulders. He looks as if the world has chewed him up and spat him back out again. It’s bittersweet to share something in common with him again. To stand, for a moment, united.
Or perhaps, to kneel. Vander sinks down beside him, eyes on the grave and the grave alone. For now, perhaps he believes Silco to just be a nameless well-wisher, here to pay his respects. Or perhaps he already knows, and is just pretending, as Silco is, that things are different.
They stand beside the very river where things ended all those years ago. The river where Felicia died and was buried, and the river where Silco died, too. Not in body, but perhaps in spirit. He is, after all, a changed man. Not for the betterment of himself, but for Zaun.
He heaves a long sigh, the rabbit pinned to his chest as he finally breaks the silence.
“…If you’re going to try and drown me again, at least afford me the mercy of grieving a daughter, first.”
The words are cold. They mask his grief, though it’s surely visible by the fact that he’s even here at all. He hears the soft intake of breath from Vander—a tiny little thing that most wouldn’t ever catch. But he’s always known Vander more intimately than anyone else ever will. That’s what makes their predicament all the more cruel, isn’t it?
They were close, once. A bond forged through blistered knuckles and the scrape of bedrock beneath their pickaxes. So much has changed since then, and yet so much remains the same. Vander is still stubborn, in the way he lets the silence linger between them, deliberate in the way he makes Silco wait for any reaction at all. Finally, he turns to look at him, greasy brown hair framing sunken cheeks. There’s no anger there, yet. Only a tired sort of acceptance, as though Silco’s mere presence is just one more blow against his failing heart.
And so what if it is? It would do him some good, to regret.
“Not here to take any more lives,” Vander says, in a voice just as tired as he looks. “One… one was already too much.”
Vander doesn’t immediately shove him into the river. That’s good, at least. The last thing Silco needs is to lose another perfectly good eye. He hums absently at the other’s murmured words, and wonders just how much he can trust them. Once, he would have trusted Vander with everything. To watch his back, and to support him in his decisions.
But their paths diverged a long time ago, ripped apart by brute force rather than simply drifting. He hasn’t ever tried to stitch those frayed edges back together again. Some things are best left alone.
“Well, that’s good news for me, then,” he says dryly. Silco makes no attempt to move from where he kneels, even if he would be wise to. Despite all of the anger and hurt that Vander’s voice still brings, it’s the first time they’ve properly spoken in a long time. Foolishly, he doesn’t feel like abandoning it just yet. He has the opportunity to leave, before things ever get ugly.
And yet Silco lingers, like the scent on an old coat that can’t be washed away.
“Powder,” he says softly. “Is she…?” He doesn’t think he could bear it if she was injured. The little girl who bears his smile and his crooked nose, young and wide-eyed and full of childish innocence… She’s lost her sister now. Silco knows what that sort of loss feels like—the way it settles in your lungs and squeezes. He’ll regret throwing that explosive for the rest of his life, even if he doesn’t regret the cause he was fighting for.
“Unharmed,” Vander answers. “But… you know how she is. Stubborn, just like her old man.”
Unharmed. No tension drains from Silco—no slumping of his shoulders or sighs of relief. But the knot in his chest does loosen, if only a little.
“Do I?”
The words slip from Silco’s lips before he can think better of it. It’s rare for him to be impulsive these days, and yet the mere thought of his relationship with Powder is enough to undo him. And he does know how she is—or perhaps he knew it, once—but Silco is a bitter, tired man.
“Really, I’m not quite certain she knows I exist anymore.” Once, he had held her, a pudgy-faced toddler with a tooth gap and bright eyes. He had known her smile, and her laughter, and her brilliance. But then he had reduced her parents to scorched corpses. He imagines he’s little more than a distant, unpleasant memory now.
Vander doesn’t rise to his bait. He always was the noble sort. Or, he pretended to be.
“She’s got this idea in her head—that it’s somehow her fault,” the man explains. “I dunno what’s gotten into her—what made her think that. Can’t seem to convince her otherwise.”
Silco’s expression gives little away when he listens to Vander’s explanation. He’s silent, gaze lingering on Violet’s name, carved so tenderly into stone that will one day crumble and turn to dust.
Powder’s guilt is familiar. Like father, like daughter, he supposes. It’s only fitting that Vander wouldn’t be able to talk her out of it. After all, the only way he knows how to talk someone out of something is with his fists.
It’s a testament to just how lost Vander must truly be that he continues to tolerate Silco’s existence beside Violet’s grave. The slump of his shoulders, the way his head hangs, and the dead look in his eyes—it all speaks of a man living only out of necessity. Tolerance certainly isn’t the reaction Silco was expecting, nor are the next words that come out of the other man’s mouth.
“Look, Silco, I—” Vander breaks off with a soft little scoff beneath his breath, like he can’t even believe the words he’s about to say. “What do you say we… call it a truce? Just for a while.” The words sound choked—the equivalent to pulling his own teeth from his gums. Silco feels much the same just hearing them.
“A truce?” Silco’s chin jerks up again, the hood finally falling from his head. The moonlight paints over his scars—the twisting, ugly things raked across his eye, that caused his flesh to start to rot away when mixed with filthy river water. Vander finally looks at him properly, and Silco wishes he hadn’t.
“You loved her too,” Vander says, with such finality that Silco is unable to find the words to protest. “So just… take the damned truce, Silco. We both need it right now.” Vander speaks of love, but all Silco can think of right now is grief. He frowns, and looks away, toward the way the moon looks on the river’s surface.
“…My sources are already immobilized by the presence of the Enforcers on our streets,” Silco eventually says. Vander just sighs at him, in the way he always does when he’s disappointed with something that Silco’s done.
Silco’s words aren’t an agreement to the truce, but a statement of fact. One that just so happens to align with Vander’s suggestion. Silco will gladly take risks, but not ones with no merit to them. He will not send men on suicide missions if there won’t be results to justify the loss of life. Another man might believe that to be the good still lingering somewhere in him.
Silco just knows it’s practical.
“Everyone’s immobilised by the damn Enforcers. Trust me—I know.” Vander’s voice is short and clipped, like Silco’s brushed a nerve without even meaning to. Good. “…The Kiramman girl died in the explosion, too. This was the best I could do. They wanted more.”
“Their pound of flesh,” Silco muses, with a twitch of his lips into a wry smirk. “Tell me, Vander. Who did you offer up as a sacrifice this time?”
“I don’t sacrifice my own, Silco.”
“Don’t you?”
It’s quiet for a while after that. Silco feels that sick satisfaction warm his chest again.
“…I didn’t come to talk politics with you, Silco. I came to grieve my daughter. Our daughter.” Vander’s voice loses that tiredness to it. He sounds a lot more like the man Silco once knew, with a sharp bite to match his title. But Silco doesn’t want Vander’s explanation. His excuses. His accusations. That bitter, ugly thing in his chest rears its head again, and for a moment, he contemplates turning on the man beside him.
But to do such a thing in front of Violet’s grave stoops to morals even lower than Silco’s own, which is a feat in and of itself.
“If you want something from me,” Vander continues, “—this is the wrong place to ask for it.”
Vander, once more, assumes that Silco has ulterior motives to him being here. That he’s here for something more than sitting beside the grave of someone he lost. Silco feels whatever foolish hope he’d still held wither and die, lip curling with a sneer that tugs at old scars.
“I want my daughter back, Vander,” he says coldly. He stands, and perhaps the weight of his grief does bear down on his shoulders after all, slumped in the shadows of the night. His lips rest against the doll he holds close to his chest, imagining soft pink strands rather than matted faux fur, and a little girl clinging to his waist.
But that little girl is buried beneath the ground they stand on, and Silco isn’t foolish enough to believe that wanting can bring her back.
He pulls his cloak tighter around himself. He’s made every move to leave, and yet he lingers, that bitter thing in him lingering right along with him. This is the first time he’s spoken to Vander in so long, after all that happened between them. Does the man regret what he did? Silco doesn’t think he’ll ever trust again, after the sheer betrayal of it all. He’s still defensive, still volatile, retreating from every hand offered to him because all of them want something.
“It’s funny, how accidents happen,” Silco says, quiet and cruel. “Be careful with my daughter, Vander. Wouldn’t want you to repeat history, would we?”
He leaves Vander where he sits as the rain begins to fall, and finds that the conversation has does nothing to heal the gaping wound in his chest.