Chapter Text
Silco stumbles his way through the dingy back alleys of the Lanes, clutching his wounded side and praying he can find a familiar hideaway to pass out in before his pursuers catch up.
It's just finished raining. Fog thickens the air and wreaths the nighttime chemlights in clouds of pea-soup green, lending the once-familiar Lanes an unearthly, eerie atmosphere. Fat puddles swirling with technicolor oil slick litter garbage-strewn streets, chemlights reflecting neon on wet black asphalt like crime scene blood splatter.
His body is growing colder by the second, the only sensation in his numb hands the hot blood that trickles from between his fingers. It's coating his palms now, so he uses an elbow to brace himself against the nearest wall as he pauses, panting, to hunch over and stick two blood-slick fingers down his throat to vomit.
What comes out is a vile black mess—blood streaked with yellow bile and thick, viscous strands of the mysterious pink concoction his kidnappers had forced down his throat.
He's pretty sure it's not poison at least—that would be too kind, and besides, they wanted him alive. They had been pretty clear about that, during the—days? week? he can't be sure—they'd had him locked up and at their mercy. Of which, very clearly, they were lacking.
Under different circumstances, Silco would be… impressed at the inventiveness of some of their tortures. As it is, having been subjected to a multitude of very unpleasant devices over the past few days, of which he may still not survive, he's unable to feel much of anything save numbness and vague horror.
None of that matters, now.
He will survive. He survived growing up an orphan in the lowest layers of the fissures, a dirty little thing from the Sump. He survived the mines and the Gray and countless cave-ins, beatings from Enforcers or foremen or just those bigger and stronger who didn't like to be told no. He survived Vander, clawed his way out of the Pilt only to find himself strapped to a table in Singed's cave of a lab, and came out stronger for it. Silco will survive this too, he just—he just needs to find a safe place to… stop. To rest.
Head spinning, Silco forces himself to carry on. He hasn't been able to purge himself of all of the drug they'd given him, not by a long shot, hardly a few specks of it in his vomit. Which means it's already in his system and will start taking effect soon, if it hasn't already.
His whole body is shaking violently, vision growing increasingly blurred. Chemlights swimming, searingly bright and branding murky circles into his retina. His head feels as though it's about to crack open into shards of plaster-white shell, brain an explosion of yolk dribbling from his ears.
He can't—he can't think—he knows he was escaping, but from what, from where? He doesn't even know where he is.
A wave of pain, starting in his side, seizes through him and he glances down to see the hilt of a knife protruding from below his ribs. When—when did that happen—he can't remember but he needs to find somewhere, somewhere safe—
Almost hyperventilating, Silco searches frantically, the corners of his sight fuzzing into black, and—there.
He can't say how or why, but as soon as he spots the small door, low-set and inconspicuous behind several tin garbage pails, a familiar recognizance of safety rings in his mind. He shoves aside the pails, knocking one over with a clang, and lifts up the chipped clay flower pot behind to extract a key concealed underneath.
Another wave of pain runs through him, and he groans as he jabs inefficiently at the lock with shaking hands, fresh blood dripping onto the cobblestone. It takes him several tries to get the key in, and even more to turn it with his quivering, blood-slick hands.
At last, he manages to open the door and lurch his way inside, whereupon he promptly tumbles down a flight of stairs to pass out a crumpled, bloody heap in the basement of the Last Drop.
Powder wakes first to a scratching outside the door. She rolls over, dismissing it as a stray cat, but the door slams open and something—no, someone—plummets down the stairs and collapses just next to her bed.
She kicks the bed above hers to wake her sister, but Vi has already jolted awake at the intrusion and is slinging her legs over the side of the bed. She leaps off, landing with a heavy thump next to the figure crumpled on the floor.
"Stay there, Powder," she commands, circling the body like a hyena tracking prey.
Having just turned twelve years old, Vi is irritatingly determined to play the part of the mature older sibling and has taken to bossing Powder around with gusto. She's even begun to exclude her, suddenly preferring sneaking in to watch cage fights with the older kids to going mudlarking with Powder. Even more infuriating, she hardly ever brings Powder along on these illicit excursions anymore, claiming that it's "too dangerous" whenever she doesn't want her little eight-year old sister trailing after her, which is often.
Vi's bossiness has increasingly been getting on Powder’s nerves. So when Vi tells her to stay put, Powder elects to ignore her and do the exact opposite. Once Vi's back is turned, climbing the stairs to turn on the basement light, an old repurposed miner's carbide lamp jerry-rigged to the ceiling, Powder hops out of bed, into her yellow rain boots, and crouches down to inspect the intruder.
They’re crumpled on their side like a used cigarette, face concealed by wet matted chin-length hair the color of an oil spill. She puts a hand on their shoulder and rolls them over, letting out a little shriek when the face—more specifically, the eye, lidless and black as tar, with a pupil like glowing embers and surrounded by mottled, scarred flesh—comes into view.
"I told you to stay there!" Vi hisses, rushing down the stairs. The lamp takes a while to warm up, reaching a zenith the color of dehydrated piss and barely bright enough to cast a shadow. By the time it lights upon the hilt protruding from the stranger's abdomen, the dark puddle Powder initially took for rain has spread, macabre red kissing the toes of her sunny yellow boots.
"Dad!" Powder ignores her sister and screams, not moving her gaze from the stranger's face. "There's a dead guy in the basement!"
Silco wheezes awake with a wet gurgle, pain surging through him like a lightning strike.
"Shit! They're alive—Pow, get away!" A young girl's voice to his left is shouting.
Silco cracks open his good eye, then instantly slams it shut, vision skull-searingly bright and swimming with streaks of light. The floor is simultaneously rocking and spinning beneath him, as if he is strapped to a spinning carousel on a boat caught in a powerful storm.
A drug—there had been a drug, forced down his mouth, but by who? Where? Here? For that matter, where is here?
"Dad! Dad!" Another voice, also a young girl, this time on his right. "The dead guy's waking up!"
Tiny hands, warm and gentle, brush the hair from his face. He's too tired to flinch away as they cradle his throbbing head, lay it in a child's lap, sitting cross-legged behind him.
He dares to crack his eye open again and this time it’s a little bit better, the overhead light blocked by the inquisitive face of a small girl of about eight with shocking blue hair, looking less scared than would be expected for a child of her age when faced with a deformed, dying scrap of a man. But then again, she is a child of Zaun, and Zaunites are used to this sort of thing.
Where am I? Silco tries to ask, but all that comes out from between his bloodied lips is a slurred "Whuh?"
"Don't worry," she whispers. "Our dad is super nice. Not our real dad, technically, he's our second one, but he won't hurt you, promise."
His vision is still blurred and he can't make out her face properly, but her voice… that hair…
No. No, it can't be.
There’s a noise from above them, a door opening followed by heavy footsteps, and the girl looks up. "See?" she says. "Here he comes now."
Silco manages to lift his head just enough to see the man from each and every one of his nightmares for the past several years standing at the foot of the stairs.
"What the—Silco?" Vander says incredulously.
Silco absolutely does not let out a tiny squeak of terror. He scrambles up onto his elbows, adrenaline buoying him through the pain ripping his insides.
Fear and panic floods his synapses—he must have been brought here so Vander can finish off the job of whoever stabbed him in the first place—the drug must be to ensure he can't fight back this time, won't escape—Vander is working with them—
Silco can taste the chemical sting of the Pilt runoff on his tongue, feel his windpipe being crushed beneath those monstrous hands. His throat is closing up and he can't breathe, can't breathe—
No. He is Silco and he survives. And whoever stabbed him had been foolish enough to leave him with a weapon.
"Get—Get behind me," he rasps, propping himself on one elbow and waving at the two children gaping at him with the other. Everything is blurred, but he knows those children, he thinks. He does not take his eye off of Vander. He can't.
Silco grits his teeth, bracing himself, and grips the handle of the knife lodged inside him. He rips it out with a grunt and points the dripping blade at Vander. He barely hears the shrieks of the children over the ringing in his ears. One is yelling, "You know him?!"
Vander, for his part, just looks confused, though he raises both his hands in a placating gesture. Silco isn’t fooled—Vander could effortlessly wrap those hands around his throat and squeeze until his eyes pop out of his skull. He could enclose his head between them and twist it off his neck as easily as he could a bottle cap. He could—he could—
"I'm not gonna hurt you," Vander says slowly, though he looks unsure of his own words. He takes a small step closer and Silco scrambles backwards as best he can, elbow slipping in his own blood. He somehow manages to keep the knife fixed on Vander, though it trembles visibly. The light flashing off it is nauseating.
"Liar!" Silco snarls. His vision is tunneling, black encroaching. "This was you, wasn't it—you sold me out, you're here to finish—finish what you started—"
His voice is thinning, growing reedy, pathetic—he can’t breathe, can’t breathe— Vander is so close, too close, and the children—the children had tried to help him, what if Vander hurts them, too—
"I didn't even know you were alive." Vander, for some reason, sounds pained. His face crumpled in on itself.
He moves to take another step closer, but when Silco flinches, a pained whimper escaping his lips, he aborts the movement and stands awkwardly, flexing his hands into fists then relaxing them repetitively, an old compulsive habit Silco hasn't seen for years.
Silco doesn't believe him. "Girls," he rasps, shaking with the effort of staying conscious. He can't tear his gaze away from Vander long enough to look at them, but he feels their presence behind him. "Leave—run, now—I'll hold him off as long as I can—"
There's a pregnant pause, filled only with the wet rasping huffs of Silco's shallow breaths. Then—
"You're insane," declares the older girl. The floorboards creak as she shifts her weight.
"Vi, no!" Vander shouts, stumbling forward, a moment too late. Vi kicks Silco in the head and he goes out like a light.
Benzo is the closest thing they have to a doctor in the Lanes, especially at this time of night. He's there within minutes of Vander's call, still dressed in his nightclothes and carrying his medical kit bag.
There's no spare beds, so they spread an old sheet over one of the bar tables and lay Silco on it. Powder and Vi take Vander's bed for the night as the basement has a still-warm puddle of blood in it, and are ordered not to leave until morning.
"I thought you said he was dead," Benzo says, staring down at Silco, arms folded across his chest. "That you—" he makes a slicing gesture over his throat.
"I did," says Vander. "Or, I thought I did."
Benzo harrumphs. "Bloody cockroach. I told you he was bad news from the start. If you'd'a just listened to me then…"
"I know," Vander acknowledges wearily. It's something they've been over at least a hundred times by now.
"And, just to get this straight, you called me here to fix him? Are you sure that's for the best?"
"What?" Vander's gaze snaps up, brow furrowing.
"What I'm sayin', Vander," Benzo explains, not impatiently, "is that maybe we should just… let nature take its course."
"You mean, let him die."
Benzo winces. "Who knows what sort of muck he's got himself mixed up in nowadays. What if that follows him here? To you, to the kids? To the Lanes? All I'm saying is, it might be… easier. Less trouble for everyone if he were to disappear. For good, this time."
Silence blankets the room. Vander looks down at Silco, considering. He's a pitiful slip of a thing, dripping wet and filthy with blood and grime. His chest rises and falls with weak, wheezing breaths that stutter and rasp like the exhaust pipe of an ancient motorcar.
Vander takes in his disfigured, scarred face, the monstrous lidless eye permanently open. It glares back, accusatory. You did this to me.
A wave of revulsion washes over Vander, surprising even himself with its vitriol. It seems inconceivable that this dirty pile of limbs had once been beautiful, loved. Maybe Benzo is right, it would be better. Less trouble for everyone.
And yet, he can't shake the tiny glimmer of hope that's crept into his chest, laid inside the hole in his heart that's been cold and barren since he wrapped his hands around Silco's narrow throat and forced him under the Pilt's oily surface.
He's missed Silco. And if there's a chance, however miniscule, that he could... not necessarily fix things between them, he's hurt him too much for that, but ameliorate the situation somewhat, have him back in his life again… he'd curse himself forever if he let this opportunity pass him up.
Vander swallows, shakes his head. "No, he says. "Help him. Please."
Benzo tuts and mutters something defamatory under his breath, but slams his medical briefcase on the table and opens it, withdrawing two pairs of rubber gloves. He hands one to Vander.
"Alright," he sighs, snapping on the gloves. "Let's get to work."
Together they strip Silco of his clothes, having to cut some off, which Vander knows he'll be furious about if—when—he wakes.
He's not wearing underwear and his pants were hastily put on, buttoned half the way and missing a belt. Vander doesn't want to draw premature conclusions, but it makes his stomach churn violently, a sour taste on his tongue which only gets worse the more they catalogue Silco's injuries.
Like many Zaunites he's always been on the scrawny side, especially those brought up in the Sump like Silco was, but now he is positively gaunt, bordering emaciated. His stomach is concave, hips jutting out like cliffs, and they can see his ribs clearly enough to tell from sight that several of them are cracked or out of place.
The stab wound they treat first, Benzo stitching and bandaging it neatly. When they set up a drip IV, the veins in his forearms are already bruised purple, poked and protruding. If the red, pus-filled open sores ringing his wrists and ankles are anything to go by, Silco wasn't injecting himself, and he certainly wasn't doing it willingly.
Most of his fingernails are missing. The empty beds glisten red in the lamplight, making Vander's stomach churn. It reminds him of After, when he had bandaged the defensive wounds Silco left on his arms, and found several of his fingernails embedded in the scratches and gouges. He must have torn them clean off in his desperation to escape Vander. He hadn't even noticed until it was too late.
Vander takes his time bandaging each finger where the nails have been torn off. It feels like penance.
Silco used to paint his nails rich, dark colors; deep maroons and velvety plums, or most often a black like the soot that was eternally caked into every crevice of their being. It was one of the few frivolities he allowed himself, always filching a bottle of polish or two from the dresser of whatever Piltie mansion they'd be pilfering that night.
"They say eyes are the window to the soul, but that's false," he'd remarked once, as Vander watched him idly painting his nails a smoky gray. "It's the hands." And he'd held one up to his eyes, twisting it this way and that, and flashed a knife-like grin when he'd caught Vander staring, entranced, at his nimble, bone-white fingers.
"And what do your hands say?" Vander had leaned over the bar, running a finger up his inner wrist, feeling a sense of victory as Silco's pulse quickened under his fingertip.
He was able to wrap his forefinger and thumb around Silco's bony wrist with room to spare, and held it in place while he made a show of inspecting it thoroughly. Silco let him, observing blankly as Vander tilted it up to catch the light, ran a light fingertip over thick calluses, traced along the soot caked into the creases in his palm.
"You tell me," Silco had said back. He rested his head on his free hand and looked up through hooded eyes with a quirked eyebrow and a snide twist to his lips.
Vander hummed, pantomiming contemplation. "A hard worker," he'd said, tapping the calluses, meeting Silco's eyes as he spoke. "Strong and independent. Capable of carrying a heavy load."
"Heavy loads, you say?" Silco had smirked, but Vander ignored the bait, tracing along his long fingers.
"Not afraid to get dirty." Vander rubbed at a spot of soot on the side of his palm until it was smeared over his thumb as well. "But despite that, an attraction to beauty."
He raised Silco's fingers to admire the fresh coat of nail polish, the way it shimmered under the light, until Silco withdrew his hand, watching him with a contemplative look in his eyes.
"An attraction to beauty," he mused. "Are you calling yourself beautiful?"
"Are you saying you're attracted to me?" Vander had retorted.
"Would I be here if I wasn't?" Silco had said wryly. "Or did you think I was screwing the barkeep for free refills of that watered-down swill you call whiskey?"
"Well, you certainly drink enough of it to keep me guessing," Vander had laughed, and leaned far enough over the counter to close the distance between them with a kiss.
Now, Silco lays there, looking just as corpse-like as he had when Vander left him on the riverbed. His long, gorgeous fingers are broken, twisted into painful-looking contorted shapes. They look like sad pale twigs, crooked at bizarre angles and dotted with purple bruising.
Vander fashions crude splints from spare wood he keeps for repairs. Benzo is watching him, so he resists the urge to press a kiss to each of Silco's broken fingers as he splints them, like he does for Vi and Powder (even though they're both too old for that sort of nonsense by now).
Vander wouldn't even know where to start with Silco.
There are a myriad of fresh burns and cuts littering his body, some that look like hot metal was pressed against his skin until it seared like a steak; others with almost elegant-looking tendrils of red, cracked skin extending from a central burn, as if he had been electrocuted. When they turn him over to wrap bandages around his chest to hold his broken ribs in place, there are long bloody lines of whip marks on his back. Some need stitches.
The whole time, he and Benzo hardly speak. The silence between them is punctuated only by occasional requests to pass the bandages or salve.
It's several hours, well past daybreak when they finish. Benzo collapses on a chair, head in his hands. Vander wordlessly brings him a drink.
"He'll survive," Benzo says tonelessly. The hand lifting the drink to his lips is shaking.
"Thank you."
Benzo sighs and swirls the drink around in his hand, eyes following the ice cubes as they clink together pleasantly. "There's not much more I can do for him now. I have no idea what to do about the face, that—that eye—"
He shudders and takes a large gulp of his drink, grimacing as it goes down. "That wound looks older than the rest, but it's not properly healed—infected, by the looks of it. I can't even imagine how that one came about, must've hurt something awful."
Vander hangs his head. He catches himself absentmindedly rubbing the bracer on his arm and forces his hand to still. "That one was me."
There's a clink as Benzo puts down his drink, and then he scoots next to Vander, wraps an arm around his shoulders. Vander leans into him, despite the guilt churning his intestines into paste, telling him he doesn't deserve the comfort.
"You did what you had to," Benzo murmurs. When Vander shakes his head, he doubles down. "Silco never would have agreed to Grayson's deal. He’d’ve let the Lanes burn, so long’s it took a couple’a Enforcers with it.”
Vander says nothing, staring morosely at his hands. Benzo presses on.
"You did the right thing," he insists, giving Vander's shoulder a squeeze. "He couldn't see a lick past the end of his nose, nothing 'cept his ridiculous dream of Zaun." His voice hardens, turns mocking. "How many died on the bridge because he decided to get uppity? How many starved in the blockades after, or were beaten to death by Enforcers, or got shipped off to Stillwater?"
"None of that was his fault," Vander grumbles.
"He threw the first cocktail. Fuck, Vander, he'd made crates of them. And what did he say to you after, when we'd tallied the dead?"
Vander groans and leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees and rubbing his forehead tiredly. "That it was an acceptable loss. That it was worth it if it taught Piltover to fear us."
He and Benzo have had this conversation hundreds of times, when Vander's deep in his drink and lonesome in the bar late at night. Missing the sound of a pen scratching and pages turning, a polished fingernail tapping the counter in thought, accompanying him as he polishes the glasses and sweeps the floor. Their shared, comfortable silence had been so loud, in retrospect. Vander doesn't think he'd ever experienced true silence until Silco was gone.
"He never would've stopped," Benzo insists. "How many do you think would have died if he'd been allowed to keep going? How many more Bridge incidents? You know we can't fight Piltover. The only option is to work with them. That deal, the one that gave us peace? That got us the Lanes, less Enforcers wandering about, that opened the blockades, that got everyone back to work? He never would have let that happen. You had no choice, Vander. I'll tell you as often as you need to hear—Silco needed to die. You did what had to be done."
"Maybe you're right." Vander rubs his face, hard, as if attacking it with sandpaper.
"Of course I'm right," Benzo asserts. "So what are we gonna do, now that the rat has crawled out of his hole?"
Vander sighs. "Don't talk about him like that," he says wearily. He groans again. "Maybe—maybe there's some way I can salvage this."
"Stick that knife back in him and give it a twist," suggests Benzo. "Before he does it to you."
"Stop that," Vander chides, giving him a perfunctory slap on the arm. "I know you never liked him, but—he was like a brother to me. He might be a right dirty little bastard, but I miss him, despite everything that happened. And he came here, when he needed help. Maybe he feels the same."
"That's assuming he has feelings," mutters Benzo. But he slaps his knees and pushes himself to his feet, groaning as his joints pop.
"I'm gonna get me some shuteye," he declares. "You'd best get some yourself." He twists around, giving Vander a meaningful stare. "But make sure to lock up all the knives 'fore you do. Keep one under your pillow. Don't let your guard down 'round him just 'cause he's half dead."
Vander sighs, gets to his feet as well. He shakes Benzo's hand. "Thanks," he says, sincerely. "Really. I owe you."
Benzo waves him off. "Just clear my tab, will you?"
"Done." Vander opens the door for him, squints in the artificial light. "Take care, now."
"I will. You look out for yourself, Vander," Benzo warns, leaving the Last Drop. "I'll be back tomorrow, make sure you haven't been gutted."
"I can handle him," Vander promises. "I killed him once, didn't I?"
Benzo purses his mouth. He wavers, looking as if he wants to say something, but ultimately gives Vander a final, silent wave and vanishes into the fog.