#Silkat

[kikiiswashere]

AAAAA!!! Delta! 🥰 Your words always make my damn day. It is a never ending well of happiness to know that you love my babies so much!

Children of Zaun - Chapter 30

Tightrope

Pairing: Silco/Fem!OC

Rating: Explicit

Story Warnings: Canon typical violence, drug use/dealing, dark themes, smut

Chapter Summary: Grayson nor Bone get what they want.

Previous Chapter

Word Count: 4.1K

Grayson tossed the most recent Enforcer reports onto her desk in a haphazard flourish. Leaning back in her chair, her wide hand roughly scrubbed at her face.

Things were a fucking mess.

Somehow, despite increased Enforcer presence in the Undercity, the Children of Zaun were yet to be ferreted out. It was as if their adversaries were not just a few dangerous malcontents, but the whole of the Underground. Not one Undercity citizen had come forth to relay any information. Not even a monetary reward was enough to persuade them.

How were they supposed to cull a terrorist group if a whole section of Piltover’s population was involved?

And things were only getting worse.

Since Council’s most recent crackdown, Enforcer-issued skips had been vandalized. Enforcers attempting investigations were met with even more resistance and vitriol: garbage and rocks thrown at them from the dark shadows of alleyways. Business owners refused to serve any officer who crossed their threshold. Some Trenchers had taken to skulking around the Undercity’s side of the Bridge. A sneering, intimidating, spiteful version of the attendance hut and barricade on Piltover’s side of the River. While those leering and cat-calling any who passed through, no one had been physically assaulted. Yet. But it had discouraged Piltovans from venturing into the Undercity.

The worst development came from the Undercity’s shoreline, and from the murk of their narrow alleys.

For several weeks, Enforcer squads tasked with tailing suspicious activity were found beaten and bleeding. Their weapons, masks, and badges missing. Once retrieved and treated for their injuries, none of the officers could give useful information, but all the squads’ stories were the same: They’d be following a group of suspicious-acting Trenchers. Their quarry would weave and loop through the labyrinth of streets and alleys, moving in a nonsensical fashion, thoroughly disorienting the Enforcers. When a backtrack was attempted, they would be rushed. No one could say how many there had been, nor where they’d come from. From behind, from above, from the very shadows themselves. The assault would be fast and furious and unforgiving. They would fight with their fists and metal.

The skips that hadn’t been damaged were being shot at. One Enforcer had been killed thus far. LeDaird had turned parts of the Undercity upside down looking for whoever was storing such weaponry. His efforts produced nothing. Piltover’s foreign relations began to strain as they wondered if some nation was supplying the Undercity with an arsenal.

And all of this made it near impossible for Grayson to tend to her deal with Councilor Bone. She hadn’t even seen him since before Snowdown. A combination of her Captain duties and his illness had kept them apart. She had heard, though, when in Chambers he was fighting tooth-and-nail to curb Council’s discipline of the Undercity.

The situation was a powder keg.

There was a knock at Grayson’s office door. She jolted in her seat, the wood creaking as the chair swiveled side-to-side.

“Come in,” she called, righting herself and spinning back to the desk.

LeDaird opened the door, looking angry and haggard. It had been his most common expression since the airship crash. Grayson stood up from her seat.

“Sheriff.”

“At ease, Dora. I am not hear to deliver news. Nor give official orders.”

This did not put Grayson at ease, but she returned to her seat all the same. LeDaird tiredly placed himself in the one in front of her desk. He eyed the papers on it, and sighed heavily.

“This is a bloody fucking mess.”

“Yes, sir.”

She opened a low desk drawer and took out the heavy bottle of scotch that lived there. LeDaird managed a smirk, but shook his head.

“No, thank you.”

Grayson looked at the bottle, considered, and then rehomed it. They sat in silence for a minute before she broke it.

“What is it you need to ask me?”

LeDaird sat back in his seat, a large hand swiping down his face.

It was a long moment before he said, “I need you to speak with Councilor Bone.”

“Sir?”

“I need you to speak with Councilor Bone,” he repeated. Leaning forward, he braced his large forearms on his knees. “I need you to convince him to stop stymying Council’s efforts. It is making our job impossible.”

“Sir – “

“I do not know what he wished to speak with you about all those weeks ago, but he sought you out. Perhaps you may be able to talk some sense into him.”

Grayson grimaced, and sat back in her seat, rubbing at her eyes. She knew Council was being pushed by aristocrats, nobles, and other Piltovans to be even harsher with their treatment of the Undercity. They wanted to beat their citizens into compliance. It would go against the promise she made Bone all those weeks ago.

After a moment, she reached for the top righthand drawer of her desk, and withdrew the reports Bone had given her. She placed them next to the ones about the Children of Zaun.

“What is this?”

“When Councilor Bone asked for that audience with me,” she began, opening the files, “he wanted my help and support in his endeavors to curb Enforcer brutality within the Undercity. He presented me with all these reports and evidence that shows a distinct disparity between legislative and judicial inequity when it comes to its citizens.”

LeDaird sat up, spine straightening. He eyed the files Grayson had put on her desk suspiciously.

“What does this have to do with what I am asking you?”

Grayson’s heart thumped against her breastbone.

“Sir, after going over the reports he provided, I believe there is cause for concern. And now, what with the Children, tensions between Enforcers and Undercity citizens has only become worse. Asking Bone to back down will not work. And pressing any harder on the Undercity will not either.”

“The Undercity is not leaving us much of a choice. Leniency is not an option anymore – “

“Leniency was never attempted.”

“Politics are not our job, Captain,” LeDaird barked. Out of habit, Greyson’s spine snapped straight at his tone. “Our job – your job – is to enforce the Council’s will.”

“Our job is to protect our citizens.”

“Whose safety is ensured by our laws.”

“And what happens when those laws do not apply to everyone? Or when our laws prevent certain of our citizens from thriving?”

LeDaird pinned her with a fiery stare. It was a look she’d never been on the receiving end of, and it sent her heart thundering. Despite that, she held it.

“The Children of Zaun got the Undercity into this mess, and no one from the Underground seems keen on getting themselves out,” LeDaird grit. “Leniency can come once justice is served. Go to Bone, and do your job, Captain. I will not entertain this nonsense.”

The Sheriff rose, posture and movements militant. Lethal. He paused at her office door, and glanced over his broad shoulder.

“You’re a good Enforcer, Dora. Your father would be proud to see where you are sitting. Don’t jeopardize it.”

The cold season had not been kind to Bone. The freezing temperatures had seized his lungs, near stilling any attempts for breath. He had visited the Council physician with the intention of getting stronger medication. But, after an examination, he was told that little could be done. The blight in his lungs was too pervasive. Even increasing his dosage of decongestant was unlikely to do much of anything. The doctor had looked at Bone somberly, and apologized. At this point, the only means for relief would be morphine.

Bone refused.

He wouldn’t be able to do his job under the influence. And with the Council, Enforcers, and Rynweaver squeezing the Undercity, his presence in Chambers was needed more than ever.

He arranged a temporary living space for himself within the Council Building so he would not have to travel in the whipping winds and snow. His Council peers – save for Heimerdinger – whispered and hissed about it.

If Bone was so ill that he could not venture outside, should he not resign?

Unfortunately for them, Bone’s body was failing; not his fortitude. And since he was lucid, and could still get to and participate in assembly, there were no grounds to remove him.

Every day, when Bone sat in the small apartment he had carved out in the Council Building, he stared out the window at the Promenade across the river. He watched his home, the city he was fighting for.

The city that was desperately, dangerously fighting for itself.

From his seat, Bone could make out some of the larger graffiti emblazoned on Promenade buildings.

FREE ZAUN

FUCK TOPSIDE

WE ARE THE STORM’S FURY

He thought about that day in the café. Of the owner and that customer mentioning The Last Drop in a way that left his weak heart pattering. When the warm came, he told himself, he would travel down to the Entresol and pay The Last Drop a visit.

The warm came.

Bone moved back into his loft on the Promenade after the first full week of consistent above-freezing temperatures. He shuffled about his space, wiping down the dust that had accumulated on the surfaces. He tossed away the old food in the icebox, wincing at the waste. He vomited several times into the toilet, and sputtered bloody globules into the sink. The warmer weather did not ease Bone’s breathing. It kept him from fully choking, but it did not relax his lungs like it had in the past.  

Bone blotted his clammy forehead with a handkerchief, staring down at the sizable, glistening wad of blood, mucus, and tissue in the sink. His hands were shaking, but not only from the effort of keeping himself upright.

Fear sluiced through his veins. Not for death itself. Fear that he would not be able to temper the conflict boiling between the Underground and Piltover. People had already died.

He had to try.

Despite being told it would do little good, Bone took a double dose of the decongestant, wrapped a long scarf around his neck, mouth, and nose, grabbed his cane, and set out for The Last Drop.

It had been a long while since Bone had traveled low into the Undercity. For no other reason than time and his health. But as he stepped off the conveyor car and hobbled down the lanes, a jabbing pang of regret prodded his heart.

For one, the Undercity was beautiful and impressive. A testament to the tenaciousness of her citizens.

Two: His constituents – those that recognized him, anyway – regarded him aloofly. A thin veil of suspicion clouding their eyes when they looked at him, and were tight-lipped if they spoke to him.

He wanted to be able to comprehend their distrust. Logically, he could arrive at an understanding: even though he was from the Undercity, he was still a Councilmember. And Council was notorious for their abuse and neglect. And despite what Bone had been able to accomplish during his time on Council, it was barely a stitch in the gaping, festering wound.

But he couldn’t help but feel a small slice of anger and sadness at his peers’ recoil. Hurt that his work and love of their home was not acknowledged, or believed in.

Hurt that they were lumping him in with them.

The Lanes were a kaleidoscope of color covered in a miasma of grey mist. The Enforcer presence was heavy, but that did not seem to stop anyone from going about their evening. People crowded around food stalls, meandered in and out of brothels, haggled at trader stands. Trenchers had always kept a wide berth around Enforcers, but now the air between them was charged to dangerous levels.

An Enforcer wiped away Zaun propaganda from the side of a building, and nearby Trenchers fixed them a look so hateful it took away what little breath Bone had. The minute the Enforcer stalked on, a young street urchin popped out of the alley shadows. Armed with a chunk of chalk, they redrew the Zaun graffiti. Bone frowned deeply behind his scarf and carried on.

It had been years since Bone had been to The Last Drop. When the establishment came into view, he felt a bittersweet wave of nostalgia. In his youth, he and the crew of miners he worked with would gather there after a too-long shift. They would be tired, battered, and filthy. Perhaps they should’ve just gone home, but they would fill the chairs around a table, and drink ale anyway. The togetherness relieved them in a way that sleep could not.

Bone’s heart ached as he neared. They were all dead now. And soon he would be, too.

The inside of the tavern was as he remembered it. Clunky mismatched tables and chairs, swaths of warm orange, yellow, and green light, large barrels of Fissure Froth tucked right behind the bar. The young man behind the counter was robust-looking, built broad and tall.

Belatedly, Bone realized some of the patrons nearest the door were eying him carefully, whispering amongst themselves. He shored up the grip on his cane and pressed forward. His gait was slow, but purposeful. His jaw grit with determination. As he continued, the cheerful chatter dwindled. The young barmaid – a slip of a thing with loose indigo plaits – held her serving tray to her chest before whisking back to the bar.

The customers there – all young folk themselves – spun at her sudden appearance. The barkeep leaned over as she hurriedly whispered to them. Then, they all looked in Bone’s direction. Varying levels of shock, concern, and irritation covered their faces. But Bone pressed forward. He sidled up to the bar with confidence only age brought.

“I am here,” he said in a light croak, “to inquire about The Children of Zaun.”

The barkeep’s face vacillated between tightening and softening, as if he were unsure to deal with Bone coolly or openly.

“Go lock the door, Annie,” one of the other men growled.

Bone glanced over to him: young, lean and made of angry angles, with a mop of wavy dark hair. His nose . . .

Bone’s mind guttered to a halt and his feeble heart skipped a beat. But he kept his face schooled. Now was not the time. His light eyes tracked over the man’s shoulder and his heart stuttered again.

Viktor’s sister.

“I don’t work for you!” the barmaid spat.

“Go lock th’door, Annie,” the barkeep said.

The barmaid – Annie – huffed, and swept away. The other patrons, who had quieted to a low hiss, watched her trajectory before turning their heads back to the bar.

“Can I get’cha something, Councilor?” the barkeep asked, setting massive, bruised hands on the counter.

“Information.”

The barkeep smirked. The thin young man sneered. Viktor’s sister grimaced, her pretty face turning pink.

“Aye. I got that. Anything t’go with? Ale? Schnapps? Tea?”

“Water is fine.”

The barkeep nodded, rising back to his full height. “Benzo, clear your table fer the Councilor.”

Behind Bone, another swarthy-built young man rose, and shooed away the others sitting with him. They readily scattered, taking their drinks, and stationing themselves nearby to watch and listen to whatever was about to happen.

Bone only hesitated a moment before stepping over, and stiltedly took the proffered seat. He kept it to himself, but his knees and hips groaned in thanks. It had been a long time since he had traveled so far on foot in one go.

The foul-faced young man slipped from his barstool, a freshly lit cigarette between his lips, and prowled over. The Councilor searched him, looking for any other signs of Rynweaver. Physically, there was nothing else but his nose, and perhaps the color and texture of his hair. Bone did not recognize his other features, but they were striking. He wondered how many more illegitimate children of Rynweaver’s were hidden in the crags and crevasses of the Undercity. How many of its women and girls he had terrorized in more ways than one?

He wondered if the young man knew. He wondered if it would be a tactical advantage to mention it.

Moving like smoke, he slipped into the chair to Bone’s left. A tall glass was suddenly plunked down in front of him, and the barkeep lowered his enormous body into the chair on the right. The rest of the tavern had turned to face them, the weight of hundreds of eyes settling heavily on Bone’s chest. The only sound left was the occasional uneasy tap of a tankard on a table’s surface.

“We were wonderin’ if you’d show up eventually,” the barkeep hummed, lighting a cigarette of his own.

“It is difficult to show up when one does not receive an invitation.” Bone looked around the room. “Is this everyone?”

“Your even more of a fool than I thought if you think this is everyone,” the blade-nosed man spat.

Bone’s upper lip twitched. He looked between the two. “You’re the leaders then, are you? What’re your names?”

A stream of smoke shot from the thin one’s mouth. “Like I said: Fool.”

“You are foolish if you think my purpose in coming here is only to turn you in to the Enforcers. I could’ve come here with Enforcers. I did not.”

The silence in the space quivered, uncertain and precarious.

“What’d’ya want then?” the barkeep asked.

“To talk,” Bone said. And then: “To reason.”

The silence broke into sharp, angry hisses and whispers. The barkeep waved a massive hand in the air, instructing the crowd to settle.

Once they did, he fixed the Councilor with firm, earnest eyes and said: “Name’s Vander.”

Vander glanced across the table to his compatriot, who did not look back. He kept his glare firmly fixed on Bone. After a several-second stare down, he sat back in his seat.

“Silco.”

Bone nodded, eyes flitting between the pair. Then around the room. They landed on Viktor’s sister for a beat longer than anyone else. He turned back to Silco and Vander.

“Where is the money from the airship crash?”

Silco snorted, shaking his head.  The cherry end of his cigarette glowed persimmon-orange as he took a long drag.

“That’s all Topside cares about. Their money.Their ego. Their status quo.” Rumbles of agreement rippled around the room. “Even if we could give them their coin back, it won’t keep them from punishing us.”

“They are punishing us now,” Bone reminded. “The trade blocks and inspections. The Bridge. The increasing number of Enforcers in the Underground.”

“And whose fault is that?” Silco’s voice was a low, predatory growl. It seemed to be another thing he’d inherited from Rynweaver.

Bone frowned. “I am the only one managing to hold them back right now. I have been keeping Piltover’s fist loose enough that we can still breathe. They will not back off until the threat of the Undercity seceding is terminated.”

“Maybe the tactic should be cuttin’ off their hand,” Vander said with a shrug. “Instead of tryin’ to loosen it.”

Bone sighed, and ran a hand over his head. After a moment, he took a sip of water. The cool trickles seared his ravaged throat.

“You’re not the first, you know,” he rasped, “to dream and ache about such things. Years ago, my friends and I would sit in this very bar, and listen to others talk about independence – “

“But that’s all it was: talk,” Silco said. “Talk gets one only so far. To see a dream through, it requires action. Fighting – “

“You will get people killed – “

“People have already been killed,” Vander countered.

“And will continue to be massacred, whether the Children of Zaun disband or not. There is nowhere to move but forward. Toward our freedom.”

Bone’s lips pulled tight. He looked around the room again. At the angry and hopeful faces of his fellowman. He’d seen glimmers of those expressions in every person he’d ever heard speak about independence from Piltover. It was only ever a flicker, not enough to nestle into the lines on their faces; not enough to become fully imbued with the dream they were concocting. Because they knew –

“The Undercity will not survive a war with Piltover,” the Councilor said lowly. There was no defeat in his voice. Just the flatness of fact.

Silco’s eyes flared. Vander frowned deeply.

“We lack the funds and supplies,” he continued. He spoke with the grounded authority of a parent, and The Children bristled under him. “Piltover and the Undercity rose up from the same place. From Oshra Va’Zaun. They are sisters. They’re meant to be together. They will be stronger, safer together. That is what I have been working on in Chambers – “

“Fat lotta good it’s done!” a voice deep in the crowd cried. A roil of agreement swelled through the Drop.

“All due respect, Councilor,” Vander said, and his tone matched the sentiment, “Topside has had plenty o’ time to pull the Undercity up. They’ve no interest. An’ despite yer heart-felt efforts – “ Silco scoffed at this – “we’re still livin’ n’ dyin’ in squalor. Bodies covered in soot, lungs full o’ Grey, barely two cogs to rub together despite all the work we do.”

“We deserve more,” Silco growled.

“We do,” Bone agreed.

“So work with us,” interrupted Vander. “Like I said, we were wonderin’ if ya’d ever come knockin’. It’s clear ya love the Undercity, but Topside won’ listen.”

“They’ve thrown you placating crumbs,” Silco sneered. “Just enough to think that your agenda for equitability is possible. And you’ve gobbled them up.”

Bone glared at him. After a long beat, he addressed the room quietly, “Your anger is righteous, real, and well-founded. But freedom is too costly a thing. For both the Undercity and Topside. Our people will be decimated. They will get further away from their humanity.” His eyes settled on Viktor’s sister. “Lives will be ruined.”

She stiffened under his stare, and he was glad the message landed.

Silco leaned into his eyeline, redirecting Bone’s attention back onto him and Vander. There was a wild sharpness to his eyes now, like they’d been cut from ice. Cold and deadly. The back of Bone’s neck prickled. This one was dangerous. Like his father, he’d run the Undercity into the ground if let loose. So, Bone turned his attention back to the other revolutionary.

“I understand that it is not what you want. So often what is best is not the thing we want. Peace arguably requires more work. Requires humbleness and a swallowing of pride. From both sides. It requires forgiveness. But it preserves life. That is what we should be working towards.”

“You’re a stark raving, idealist fool,” Silco hissed.

Agreements slithered around them. Vander’s lips flattened. He smashed his cigarette into the ashtray on the table.

“We have to try, Councilor.”

Bone’s heart tapped an agitated, uneven rhythm. Heat bloomed beneath his collar, frustration and grief gripped his throat. He coughed, pulling the scarf back over his nose and mouth, turning away from the table.

He felt defeated. Like the blight in his chest, there was nothing to be done here either.

He would have to contact Grayson. He would have to do as much work in Chambers as he possibly could before his illness finally choked him out.

When the fit passed, Bone braced himself onto the strength of his cane, and hauled himself to his feet. No one stepped forward to offer a hand. The inkling of alienation that had been brushing up against his insides since before Snowdown became a scythe that gutted him.

“Thank you for the water. I will keep doing what I need to do to protect the Undercity.”

“So will we,” Silco volleyed.

Slowly, the tap of his cane filling the room, Bone rounded the table. Before he began the journey to the door, he paused in front of Viktor’s sister. She held his gaze, but he saw the muscles in her jaw flutter manically with anxiety.

“You should be ashamed,” he whispered.

A chair shrieked behind him as Silco shot to his feet, but he did not react. Bone watched doubt flicker in the young woman’s eyes before they glazed over defensively.

“Get out.”

Bone heeded her and limped toward the front door. The crowd parted with each hobbled step. Annie unlocked the door, and opened it for him. Despite his better judgement, Bone looked back over his shoulder at the angry and hopeful faces he recognized so well. Guilt hung heavy on his heart.

“Good luck,” he said, and stepped out back into the Lanes.

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Coming Up Next: The Children reel after Bone's visit

Taglist: @pinkrose1422 @dreamyonahill @sand-sea-and-fable @truthandadare @altered-delta

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[taraross-1787]

Medal of Honor Monday: Edward Silk

At about this time in 1944, a hero launches a one-man attack on Germans who were after his company. Amazingly, First Lt. Edward A. Silk survived his daring run.

Silk was then commanding a weapons platoon in France. He and his men had been tasked with a mission: They were to seize high ground outside the city of Moyenmoutier.

By noon on November 23, scouts for Silk’s company were approaching some woods near the vicinity of St. Pravel. They noticed that a nearby farmhouse had an enemy sentry posted out front.

Our soldiers were soon under attack.

The story continues here: https://www.taraross.com/post/tdih-edward-silk-moh

[anastasiaauclaire]

My starwars cat gal Silkat for our new Sunday campaign! 💕 she's a pod/speeder racer and session one she managed to sneak inside an enemy compound, kill the leader, free all the other pcs and get her bike back. So in short I love her.

[kikiiswashere]

AUNTIEEEE 😭😭😭 Thank you for the recommendation and kind words!!!

If anyone has any SilcoXreader/ SilcoxFOC, etc recommendations, plz shoot em over, ya gurl has a mighty need

I don’t mind if they’re first person etc, only stipulation is no X instead of a name, it makes my brain 404 hahahahaha

[douglaspanaresf56]

Asa Namuyo ang mga Datong Negosyante ug mga Pamilyang Silkat sa Cebu?

[kikiiswashere]

Children of Zaun - Chapter 26

The Necessity of Desire

Pairing: Silco/Fem!OC

Rating: Explicit

Story Warnings: Canon typical violence, drug use/dealing, dark themes, smut

Chapter Summary: Kat asks Silco to show her Zaun again. And they finally allow themselves to give into their desire.

CW: Heavy petting/groping, descriptions of nudity, cunnilingus

Previous Chapter

Word Count: 4.3K

Silco stared at her for a moment, the thin line of his mouth slowly falling open.

For the briefest of moments, Kat felt like the rest of the tavern fell away. It was only her and him. Like in her dream. Her throat was a knot, her gut near exploding with the excited thrashing of Desire; her limbs trembled.

He set his drink down on the bar, and the noise and energy of the celebration rushed back in. Kat’s feet began moving again. Like she was a magnet, and Silco was one with an opposite pole.

“Kat,” he said, eyes wide, a nervous curl on his lips. His fingers twitched. Like he wanted to reach for her.

She reached for him instead, grabbing his hands.

Relief seeped from his palms into hers. She held tighter.

“Can we talk?”

He nodded, and she pulled him from the main room. She didn’t know at first where she wanted to go, but only knew the tavern was too noisy, too public. They snuck through the backrooms, past Vander’s private quarters, and into the alley behind The Drop.

The chill of the air took Kat’s breath away, the cold pricking her eyes. Her heart was galloping in her chest, an erratic rhythm that shook her body. Silco squeezed her hand.

“Kat?”

“This way,” she said, tugging at him.

Her feet led them to the rickety fire escape that snaked up the side of the The Last Drop like a withering vine. The metal clanged and whined beneath their boots as they climbed. The building the bar was in was tall, and when the pair reached the rooftop, the bustling square beneath spread out before them several stories below.

Kat’s heartrate slowed as she approached the waist-high wall that prevented the drop off the building, and looked out. The square beneath them thrummed with life. The sound of people, music, vehicles, buzzing chem-lights wove together in a symphony of unlikely beauty. The Last Drop’s marquee bled a warm spotlight onto the cobblestones, highlighting merry revelers entering and exiting the tavern and neighboring establishments, arm-in-arm with their friends and loved ones. Their laughter and happiness rose above the main musical theme of the Lanes in bursts, like bubbles floating, then popping playfully through the air.

It was beautiful. Tears shelved themselves along Kat’s eyelids.

It was beautiful. And she was part of it.

A sigh escaped from her lips in a watery shudder. Silco stood closer.

Finally, she looked up at him, gold eyes clear and bright like polished hexes.

“Silco, will you tell me about Zaun again?”

Silco’s voice caught, surprised by the question. His chest ached to see the broken, searching look behind Kat’s eyes. She had been so standoffish as of late. He missed her. Would she allow him to reach inside and help puzzle her back together?

A breath left him, a cloud filtering out through his lips and dissipating over the breeze. His eyes tracked through the crowd; his ears filled with the sounds of Zaun; the warmth of Kat’s palm pressed against his.

“Look down there, Kat.” He jut his chin to the wide open space below, and her eyes slid to look again. “We have made our intentions known. We’ve taken the first stand against Piltover, and they’ve tried to deter and choke us already. But look down there, think of what you walked into in The Last Drop. No one is afraid – at least not enough to cow down and remain small.

“That is what Zaun is: Brothers and Sisters standing against whatever is thrown at them. Loyal and steadfast. Fierce and wild in a way that chafes Piltover. Across the River, Topsiders police themselves and us to maintain the status quo. Their devotion is to their station, not their lives. Certainly not the lives of others. You’ve been over there. You have seen how dour and stagnate that city is. Pretty, perhaps. But it’s only an ornate and bejeweled husk. Piltover is not alive.”

Kat realized she’d been holding her breath the entire time Silco had been speaking. His grip on her hand was tight, solid. She looked up at him and saw the same fiery, passionate profile she’d taken in all those weeks ago when he had first showed her Zaun. When that first inkling of want and desire flickered inside of her. It filled her with awe.

“Zaun is alive,” he continued, voice fervent, eyes wide with possibility. “It is breathing. Look. Even beneath the surface, look how we thrive despite it all.”

“It is not a pipedream anymore,” Kat whispered in a wavering voice.

Silco’s head snapped in her direction. “It never was. We were always meant for this. We deserve it.”

Something unstoppable shifted in the air; a charge that had been building, preparing. Puffs of breath mingled between them like a binding fog. Desire leapt into Kat’s throat so suddenly she nearly choked. Her fingers latched tighter to his as she angled herself into the shelter of his body. He mirrored her, hand sliding out of hers only to rehome itself on the small of her back, pulling her closer. A small gasp hissed through her lips; his hold was warm and right. It caused Desire to shiver down her spine and pool low in her belly.

Thoughtlessly, her hands reached up. One combed through his hair, drawing the strands away from the angles of his face. The same thought as what came up at the Springs struck her: Beautiful. Her other hand cupped his left cheek, thumb running along the pink line that now hatched his upper lip, the stitches having since dissolved.

“We deserve it,” she repeated reverently, and closed the space between them.

The firm press of his lips against hers made Kat’s body lock up in delight. The hand in his hair gripped, while the other slid around his shoulders, holding him close. It was so much better than her dream. It was real. He was; and so was she.

Silco tugged her in closer, the hand on her back wrapping around her waist; the other reaching up to cradle her jaw. He used the hold to gently lean her head to the side, the opposing slant of their mouths allowing deeper access to each other. When his tongue gently swiped along her lower lip, a sharp inhale pulled in through Kat’s nose. Excitedly, she met him, tongue sliding over his with a relieved sigh.

Everything that had not filled out in her dream came into stark, beautiful relief. The eager push and pull of his lips and tongue against hers were warm and hungry. Like hers. The blade of his nose slotted against hers, caressing her cheek as his jaw moved. She could taste the bright-earthiness of the tobacco he used, the woody-burn of the whisky he’d left at the bar.

Desire gave way to lust, seeping lower, oozing past Kat’s navel. Sweet like honey. Her breasts began to feel heavy in their confines, nipples pinching tight.

She wanted more.

Such is the nature of desire.

Silco’s hand slid down from her neck, traveling in a commanding hold to her waist. His hand ghosted over her breast as it went, and her insides went molten. She clawed at his shoulders and back. An undeniable firmness and warmth pressed against her lower abdomen, and their kisses turned frenzied. Less lips; more tongue, teeth, and breath.

Kat snatched his lower lip between her teeth, and Silco finally paused. He watched her with wide eyes, pupils blown out; their hungry darkness having eaten away at the blue of his irises. Kat looked up at him, her eyes similarly darkened, his lip slowly sliding out from the hold of her incisors. When it finally snapped back, Silco rested his forehead against hers. Their breath mingled in damp huffs between them, their lips kiss-swollen and tingling.

“Should we go back inside?” he eventually whispered, hand running up her spine.

Kat swallowed, thinking.

They should.

But she didn’t want to.

She bit the inside of her lip, heart hammering, core beginning to throb. Her fingers dug into his shoulders; a sapling desperate to take root in sturdy ground.

Slowly, she nodded her head, but clarified in a breathy voice, “Yes. But not back to the party.”

If possible, Silco’s pupils dilated further. A grin, manic with enthrall, appeared on his face, and kissed her again.

“Come on,” he gasped, after pulling back from her lips in a sharp pop!

He grabbed Kat’s hand, and led her back to the fire escape and down. They tucked back into the lowlight of The Drop’s back rooms, staggering down the hall, ping-ponging off the walls as they grabbed and groped at each other, mouths meeting in messy kisses.

Silco pressed them against a door, pawing at the handle as his lips latched onto Kat’s neck. She mewled and squirmed – then squawked as the door opened and they tumbled through. Laughing, they tripped through Vander’s apartment on lust-sloppy feet until they reached another door that Silco pushed open.

“It’s a guest room,” he answered when the question flashed across her face. “This is where I stay if I spend the night.”

‘Room’ was a very generous term; it was more of a converted large closet. The space was just big enough to hold a twin bedframe and a few stacks of boxes whose use mimicked that of a dresser. None of this deterred Kat, though. She snicked the door shut, as he turned a small, pot-bellied lamp on.

When Silco turned, Kat was reaching for him once more. His hands greedily grabbed for her again, sliding beneath her open coat to grip at her waist and hips. Despite the animalistic tug of his body, a higher part of his brain managed to gutter back online for a moment.

He kissed her, sweeter this time, then asked, “This is okay? You’re sure?”

Kat looked up at him, her eyes heavy-lidded and sparkling. Her hands threaded back up into his hair, nails scraping across his scalp in pleasurable tracks. She was moved he had thought to ask. It only solidified what she knew.

“Yes. I want you.”

She pulled him into a kiss, deep and consuming, their tongues intertwining. After a minute, Silco’s lips trailed over her cheek to the space beneath the bolt of her jaw, confidence and excitement renewed by her confirmation.

His teeth nipped at her. “Do you have any contraband in this coat tonight?”

“Not tonight,” Kat chuckled. “Just me.”

She nudged her nose against his head, reeling his lips back to hers. As he kissed her, his hands slid back up to her shoulders, peeling the coat off her back and down her arms in a smooth movement. Her vest was next to follow, crumpling to the floor in a soft pile of canvas and old tweed.

Kat’s hands snapped to the closure of his shirt, ripping it open with a sharp tug. They slid across his sides and up the cut muscles of his back, hungry to feel him. Silco tugged the hem of his shirt out of his trousers and flailed his arms out of his sleeves; Kat’s hands pulling the garment along to help. It landed in a soft wumpf on the floor.

Kat’s eyes were closed, completely enraptured, and lost in the feelings, smells, and tastes of him. Her mind and body basked in the answers to mysteries she had been pondering for weeks. She barely felt the spin, but her eyes shot open when the back of her knees hit the foot of the bed. She flopped onto the mattress with a yelp. Silco chuckled, stooping down to undo her boots, then his own. Kat scrambled to sit up, hooking her fingers around her socks and ripping them off. Silco’s face crashed into hers as she did, bowling them back.

Kat laughed and kissed him. His body was a blessed, grounding weight that kept her right here, right now. Her arms wrapped around his broad shoulders and held him close; legs drifting apart, allowing him to nestle snuggly between her thighs. The warm, hard bulge in his trousers pressed promisingly against her. A sigh loosed itself from her throat. The crown of her head dropped back onto the pillow, and Silco returned his attention to her neck, its creamy expanse laid bare to him.

He licked, then latched on. A smile curled the corners of his mouth as she writhed needily beneath him. One arm burrowed beneath her body and the mattress, pulling her impossibly close; the other came up to palm the heavy weight of her breast.

The taste of sunshine was on her skin – as impossible as that seemed for someone who lived in the Sump. Deep, warm, and sweet. Like caramel being tempered across a confectioner’s marble table. He wanted more. He sucked hard – Kat gasping, her chest arching up into his – before popping off that spot and sucking onto another one an inch lower.

Breath came to Kat in sharp huffs, her hands desperately gripping in Silco’s hair and on his back. Every pull on her neck sent a twinge to her center. Her nails created crescent moons on the meat of his shoulders. Desire and lust looped and swelled inside her. A bright, luminescent ball that tingled her bones and warmed her from the inside out, opening and preparing.

Silco was not her first, and she highly doubted that she was his. She did not know what the statistics were in Piltover, but in the Undercity – where danger lurked around every corner in the form of Enforcers, desperate thugs, and illness – it was commonplace for people to be sexually active at a young age. To get the most out of a most-likely short life.

Kat had been older than the average Trencher; her first being when she was sixteen. A similarly aged boy who lived in the same apartment building as her, her father, and brother. He had been nice and polite, but the backbone of their brief relationship mostly had to do with curiosity and proximity. One day, he was arrested for pickpocketing a Topside woman in the Promenade, and was sent to Stillwater. Kat never saw him again.

The last fling Kat had occurred a few weeks before her father’s murder.  She’d met the young man at a food stall in Bridgewaltz, and cautious, but promising, sparks flew. She met him again the next night, and they went to a nearby boarding house that rented rooms by the hour.

Probably the worst five washers Kat had ever spent.

He hadn’t so much fondled her breasts as he had squeezed and yanked at them. His hips pistoned roughly and sloppily, and did not last long. And he had made a self-congratulatory pussycat joke upon rolling off her. She quickly cleaned and dressed, and never saw him again.

Silco moved to the other side of her neck, nipping at her jaw before sucking a third plum-colored mark right below it. A slight roll was beginning to build in his hips, the movement oiling his muscles and bones.

When his stiffness brushed against the seam of Kat’s trousers again, she panted and choked on a whimper.

Many sensations in her body felt familiar: the heavy, warm ache growing in her breasts, her nipples tightening to the point of discomfort; the wet, insistent pulse between her thighs . . .

Others weren’t.

The lust roiling inside of Kat was specifically for Silco. It was an itch that she only wanted him to scratch. Her other exploits, limited though they were, had not hinged on who her bedmate had been. Only that she had been curious, bored, lonely.

This Desire was specific. It was for him. And she felt hopeful, confident that his was too.

Kat’s hands left their hold on his back to tug at her shirt, pulling its hem from her trousers, before her fingers frantically began undoing the buttons.

Silco joined her, leaving the blossoming purple mark he had been working on to sit on his haunches, and hurriedly slip buttons through their eyelets. He nearly panted and salivated like a dog as more and more of her flesh was exposed to him. She was the color of a pearl and just as precious.

Kat thrashed her arms out of her sleeves, tossing the blouse onto the floor, before her hands wiggled behind her back to undo the hooks of her brassiere. Once undone, Silco shed the straps down her arms and threw the garment aside, revealing what he had been privately imagining since the Springs. Ample and heavy-bottomed, Kat’s breasts arched in their freedom; nipples, the color of her deep pink lips, stiff and proud.

Steadying the hungry shake of his hand, Silco held the weight of one of them, relishing the sensation of its softness. His breath hitched when Kat sighed and pressed into his hand. He dipped down, kissed her thoroughly, before settling prone over her, and began laving her other breast. His teeth puzzled against her nipple, and sucked. Kat gasped and choked on her pleasure, her spine bowing into him. Pleased, Silco spurred onward, his teeth and tongue performing an intricate dance over the sensitive bud.

Kat was no longer in control of how her body was reacting to him. Her hands struggled to find suitable purchase, gripping his body, then the sheets, then the pillow. Her hips undulated needily beneath him, searching for any sort of pressure to relief the maddening ache growing between her thighs.

Silco pulled away from her breast with a vicious tug that left Kat panting, and licked his way over to its partner. A moan that seamlessly wove together the sounds of eroticism and frustration bleated from her as he began nipping and sucking again. Her hands flew to grip his waist, attempting to make his pelvis crush against hers. Silco’s eyes rolled back behind his closed lids. She was so responsive and hungry. His dick strained at the front of his trousers, begging for attention.

Once both her breasts were glossy and rigid, he shifted down her torso, kissing the other moles and deep freckles now visible. His hands swept down the tantalizing curve of her waist as his lips and nose nuzzled the soft flesh of her stomach. Above him, she panted, her voice caught in a net of sharp breaths and half-words.

Silco raised himself again, sitting back on his heels. His own breathing was raggedly warped, a curse on the tip of his tongue as he beheld the woman under him. Kat’s chest heaved, her skin sweat-sheened and flushed; deep purple love-notes blossoming across her skin. Her eyes met his, a hazy, needy fire smoldering behind them.

Carefully, Silco’s fingers touched the waist of her pants. Kat’s eyes snapped open and she nodded madly.

“Yes!”

Together, they made quick work of her button fly, and tore her trousers off. Kat sighed as cool air hit the damp gusset of her underwear and her slick inner thighs. Silco’s fingers greedily gripped the waist of her undergarments, and Kat lifted her hips as he shucked them down and threw them into oblivion.

The curse finally leapt from Silco’s tongue in a disbelieving, “Fuck.”

She was lovelier than any daydream he’d manage to concoct. Luminescent and soft. Perfect. Her supple waist swooped into the generous curve of her hips, the flesh of her thighs quivering in anticipation.

“Sweet talker,” she giggled breathily, cheeks flushing like a rose.

Silco smiled and ran his hands up the length of her legs, marveling at their softness. As his palms grazed up, Kat’s hips canted. A needy reflex. His eyes honed in on the pretty thatch of curly hair between her thighs, at how the curls became dewy at the ends; the deep pink of her sex peeking out from underneath.

Saliva pooled under Silco’s tongue, and he licked his lips. His own aching need temporarily forgotten in the presence of this alter. Like a good disciple, he shimmied himself low, got onto his belly and guided her legs over his shoulders. Kat propped herself up on her elbows, watching him, her chest rapidly rising and falling in excited breaths.

He hadn’t even tasted her yet, and Silco already felt like he was drunk. The smell of her was so potent – a musky tang settling on the back of his tongue – and she was so warm – humidity radiating off her like a summertime rainstorm – that his mind wobbled with hunger and disbelief.

A soft coo from above drew him out of his revery. Blue met gold. His eyes were dilated and starry, hers were wide and waiting.

Silco scooched closer and took his first taste, his tongue a solid press and slide against her. A clipped, relieved groan sighed from Kat’s mouth, her body sagging. Silco’s eyes closed, a similar relief seeping through him. The sunshine taste of her skin boldened into something sharper here. A heady bouquet that he hoped would stay on his tongue for days after.

Silco drew back, and Kat whined at his absence. It was quickly remedied, though, as he snaked his hands up and around the crest of her hips and pulled her into his mouth. His actions were dichotomous: he ate like a man starved; but also licked and suckled at her methodically enough that it was clear her pleasure and experience was the priority.

Kat’s elbows gave way, and she collapsed onto the bed, a strangled cry caught in her throat. She didn’t know what to do with herself. Her gaze went down the length of her torso to the man between her thighs. Her imagination all those weeks ago paled in comparison to the real thing. Silco’s brows and eyelids remained soft, like he was at total peace and had all the time in the world to be with her. His nose rested against the split of her, breathing her in while his lips and tongue thoroughly explored below.

The sight and feeling of it all was overwhelming. Her head flopped back onto the pillow, vision swimming. The heat in her center pooled low and seeped out. She heard him groan against her, and tears pricked her eyes. Desire and euphoria bloomed big in her belly and chest. Her body trembled.

She wanted she wanted she wanted.

Despite his hold on her, Kat rocked her hips as much as she could. Matching the undulations of Silco’s tongue roll-for-roll. Wispy, sex-addled breaths and words huffed out from between her swollen lips. Affirmations and swears.

Silco’s mouth hooked in a smile against her. His eyes cracked open a sliver to watch Kat writhe, a lover’s pride filling him to see her peaked breasts, flushed skin, and pretty face twisted in erotic agony.

He drew back, left hand unwrapping from her hip so he could fill her with his fingers. His dick twitched at the warm, plush feel of her around his digits. His eyes fluttered when she moaned his name.

He would hear it again.

Like a hawk, his eyes honed in on the peak of her slit, to where that small bud sat hooded and sensitive. Bracketing his right forearm across her hip bones and gently shifting up, he unveiled his next target. Fingers hooking in such a way that had Kat gasping, Silco dove forward, flicking at her clitoris with the tip of his tongue.

She screeched and spasmed. A hand flew to his head and she grabbed his hair at the roots. The instruction was clear: Stay right there. Keep doing that.

Silco’s fingers pumped and pressed rhythmically, his tongue a steady dance on that little ball of nerves. Kat’s thighs began to shake around his head. His name was a chant on her lips once more. Delighted, enthralled, Silco took her clit between her lips and sucked.

Kat was teetering. Despite her screwed-shut eyes, she could see her climax barreling towards her. She was overwhelmed with the need for it, her want of it.

She wanted she wanted she wanted.

Despite everything – despite her desire, despite the man she had chosen – she could sense that this release had the potential to be the start of a big, life-altering reckoning. And while she wanted it, craved it, desired it, tendrils of fear slithered back out from behind her ribs. One last ditch effort to protect her from the unknown of choosing Silco. Choosing her life. Choosing herself.

Pleasure mounted. Desire coiled. Her skin grew tight over her bones.

She wanted. So, she chose.

Silco’s fingers pressed, his lips sucked, and Kat screamed her release with a resounding YES!

She renewed her hold on his head, and rode his fingers and tongue through wave after wave, hips rolling wildly as she claimed what was hers. And Silco stayed, dutifully pulling her orgasm along as long as she wanted.

Eventually, Kat’s body gave out, and her limbs became a quivering, jellied mess. Her legs slid off Silco’s shoulders, her hand released him and her arms lay boneless at her sides. Like bellows in the old forges of Augmentation Alley, her ribcage swung erratically. Her teeth chattered.

Distantly, she was aware of the feeling of Silco’s tongue back on her, cleaning her, kissing her thighs. Then, he suddenly scrabbled up the length of her body, hands coming to cup her face. She felt wetness between her cheeks and his palms.

“Kat. Kat. Hey. You’re okay? What’s wrong?”

She blinked, not understanding. There were tears in her eyes, she realized, and on her cheeks.

Sucking a great breath in, she prepared to tell him she was fine. More than fine. But instead of words, a bubbling sob-laugh burst from her mouth. She curled into him, wrapping her arms tightly around his back. He returned the hold automatically, limbs encompassing her without question. She panted and gasped into his neck, trying to speak.

“I got you,” he whispered above, drawing her closer. “I got you.”

There was a joyful laugh hidden within her labored breaths.

“You have me.”

Notes: Ahhhh! The slow-burn finally paid off! If you've been here, waiting for the smut, wow! You're patient! More to come, I promise. And it won't take long, either. The Silkat train had officially left the station ❤️

Comments, reblogs, and recommendations keep me and other author's motiviational fires burning! We love to hear what y'all are thinking.

Coming Up Next: Silco and Katya bask in a sultry morning after . . . until they're interuppted.

Next Chapter

Taglist: @pinkrose1422 @dreamyonahill @sand-sea-and-fable @truthandadare @altered-delta

[kikiiswashere]

NAUSICA 😭😭😭😭

My sweet babies! You captured them so well 😭🥹

quick silco & katya sketches (character by @kikiiswashere from their fic children of zaun) i fear for her life but it's fine nothing bad is going to happen RIGHT right

[kikiiswashere]

Children of Zaun Chapter 32 Sneak Peek!

It’s my 35th birthday today! And to celebrate, here is a little glimpse in to the next chapter. Domestic fluff abounds!

————

When Kat’s eyes cracked open, she saw the dim, orange glow of light outlining the jamb of Silco’s bedroom door. Signaling that Enyd was already up. If she had managed to sleep at all. Several nights over the past few weeks, the ferocity of her coughing and retching hadn’t allowed for more than a couple hours of sleep at a time. It left the already haggard woman exhausted, her throat raw, and her voice the soft crackle of a dwindling fire. Weak and smokey.

Kat shifted beneath Silco’s arm, and he grunted, muscles flexing and drawing her in closer.

“It’s time to get up, Silco.”

He mumbled something into her hair that she’d since learned was ‘Not yet’.

“There is going to be a delivery of supplies to the clinic today. I need to be there to receive it.”

His body stilled in consideration. Finally, his arm relaxed and she sat up, twisting to face him. In the shadows of the dark room, the angles of his face appeared sharper. They cut against the softness of the pillow beneath his head, hair an ink spill over the light color of the case’s fabric. She reached down and brushed some strands away from his eyes. It was getting so long.

A blue eye cracked open and squinted up at her.

“What?”

Kat smiled sleepily, and dipped down to kiss the summit of his cheekbone.

“Nothing. You’re just handsome.”

There was something about the mornings, when it was just them and a tangled-up sheet. Before they had to open that door and march into the world. Ready to live, lead, and fight. For a few brief, waking moments nothing else existed.

Silco shifted his head against the pillow, setting both eyes upon her. Even in the dark of the bedroom, she saw the color on his cheeks shift, and a careful-not-to-be-too-pleased smile on the edges of his mouth. Kat leaned down and pressed a kiss to it, before suddenly slipping away as his arms attempted to ensnare her and draw her back into the covers. Kat laughed quietly as his arms flopped on to the bed, heavy in defeat. She gently padded toward the dresser she’d left her clothes on and began changing out of her pajamas.

Silco untangled himself from the sheets, grabbed his cigarette tin from the bedside table, and shuffled to the window. The light that filled the bedroom as he drew back the ratty curtain was grey and watery. Soft enough that the brightness did not sting, clear enough that Kat could easily thumb the buttons of her trousers through their eyelets.

Silco cracked the window open, the sounds and smells of Zaun gently wafting into the room, and he struck a match against the sandpaper within the tin of the case. He lit a cigarette, and leaned out the window.

Kat shrugged into her blouse, fingers making quick work of the button-front. Her vest was next, the chain of her papa’s pocket watch catching the light in a joyful twinkle. Tying her hair up in a ponytail, she crossed over to Silco.

“You are going to have to tie this back soon,” she said, tucking his hair behind an ear. Goose pimples rose on his skin as her fingers traced lightly down his neck and shoulder.

He hummed in response, sucking a long drag from the cigarette. The paper was eaten away by a wriggling orange line, and the ash blew away on a soft breeze.

“You don’t want to get it caught in any of the machinery at work.”

Silco lifted his eyebrows in a ‘that’s true’ fashion. Leaning farther out the window, he blew a mouthful of smoke into the air and crushed the end of the cigarette against the bricks of the building. Standing back into the room, he pulled the window shut and turned to Kat.

“Any spares, perhaps?” he asked, reaching out and running his fingers through the thick waves of her ponytail.

“In my coat, probably. I’ll get you one before we leave.”

Kat left Silco in his bedroom to change, and ventured into the apartment. She heard Enyd before she saw her. A steady, wheezing drone whistling from the living room. She dipped her fingers into the pockets of her coat, searching for a spare elastic, before continuing.

The older woman was propped up in her rocking chair, pillow wedged behind her head, a large drop cloth spread over her lap. She held a section of the fabric up to the light at her side, stitching a long, red swatch to it with aching precision. Her eyes flicked over to Kat as she stepped into the room, a smile stretching her face.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning, Enyd.”

Kat’s eyes gave a cursory glance around Enyd’s immediate space. A water glass on the end table, her medicine (woefully low) next to it; no signs of bloody rags or a sick bucket. Then she looked at the project in Enyd’s lap. A flag. Zaun’s flag. She’d been working on it for a few weeks, desperate to keep herself busy as her ability to consistently leave the apartment lessened. Enyd had presented the idea to Kat and Silco one evening, along with a few rough sketches of a design and emblem.

“Every nation needs a flag,” she’d insisted.

And she wasn’t wrong. Kat couldn’t decide whether to inspect the drawings Enyd was showing them, or to stare at Silco’s utterly entranced face as he took in his mother’s work. Enyd had come such a long way from initially scolding him that one night at Vander’s, to creating the crest of their nation. He’d excitedly taken her sketches to The Last Drop the next day to confer with Vander.

The two men talked for hours, mulling over the scraps of paper, piecing together different facets of the drawings until the final draft emerged. The emblem for the Nation of Zaun. A ‘N’ and ‘Z’ artfully combined in a strong tower, against a backdrop of blue and red whorls meant to pay homage to Oshra Va’Zaun and Lady Janna.

“Did you sleep?” Kat asked, taking a step closer. It didn’t seem like Enyd had much progress from where she had stopped the night prior. Hopefully meaning –

“Yes. Better than I have the past few nights.”

“How long have you been up?”

Enyd blinked, rubbing at her eyes before glancing at the clock on the wall.

“Only about an hour. Is Silco up?”

“He is getting dressed. I’ll make you some tea and breakfast.”

“Oh, Kat. You don’t have to do that. I can – “

Enyd slipped her needle through the flag to keep from losing it, and began to carefully gather the fabric up.

“No, no,” Kat insisted. She placed a hand on Enyd’s shoulder. “Really, I got it.”

The older woman looked up at her, eyes simultaneously grateful and abashed. She settled into the pillow behind her head, and lifted up her sewing again as Kat went to the kitchen.

Enyd’s kitchen had become as familiar as her own. Kat moved swiftly between either side of the galley. The kettle went on the top right burner, as it was the one that got hottest most quickly. Tea was tucked away in the cupboard above the hood. Mugs were in the second cupboard that faced the stove, along with the plates. Bread was kept in the box below those cupboards. The bread knife and other silverware were tucked in the middle drawer beneath the butcher block counter. The drawer stuck if one did not lift the handle first and give it a gentle, but firm, yank. The marmalade was in the icebox door, next to the yeast.

Like seeing her and Silco’s clothes drying next to one another, the way Kat easily moved about the kitchen was honey-sweet comfort. A warm blanket that wrapped around her heart.

She heard Silco enter the living room as she began slicing bread. Then, gentle and loving ‘good mornings’ shared between mother and son, before Silco appeared in the kitchen, Enyd’s water glass in hand. He went to the sink and filled it. Kat thinly applied the citrus marmalade to the bread just as the kettle began to warble. Silco reached over and turned the flame beneath down.

“Go ahead and take the bread over,” he said. “I’ll make the tea.”

“I’ll take the water, too.”

Silco handed her the fresh glass before turning his attention to the box of tea and mugs, and Kat walked over to the kitchen table, and placed the bread and water glass down.

Enyd knotted off the thread, and slid her needle snugly into the drop cloth’s weave for safekeeping. Gently setting her work on the floor, she gripped the arms of her chair and pressed up onto her feet. Kat watched her carefully, body tightening like a spring. Ready to leap forward should Enyd look at all unsteady. But she managed to the table just fine, though the plop into her seat was a little graceless. Kat slathered a slice of bread with marmalade, set it on a plate, and handed it to Enyd. She murmured her thanks as Kat went to prepare her own breakfast. Silco appeared, placing a mug of tea in front of his mother and Kat, before returning to the kitchen to grab his own.

As he took his own seat, Kat frowned as she scraped the sides of the marmalade jar with the knife.

“Do you - “

“You can finish it up,” he said, sipping at his tea.

Enyd watched as Kat slid the scant amount over her bread, lips pursing.

“I can go to the market today to see if I can find more.”

“Don’t, mum. The marketplaces barely have staples, muchless condiments.” Silco gave her a reassuring smile as he tore a piece of bread from his slice and popped it in his mouth. “We’ll be able to get marmalade soon enough. And butter. And cheese.”

Enyd returned the smile weakly, before tucking her head into the crook of her elbow and coughing. It passed quickly, and she waved Kat off before the young woman could assist her in any way.

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” With a quivering hand, Enyd grabbed for her water glass. She took careful sips, her face softening with each one.

“There is a delivery coming to the clinic today,” Kat said. “I will grab another bottle of decongestant. We - we could also try some anti-inflammatories, too. See if that helps at all.”

Enyd’s knee-jerk reaction was to turn down the offer. Out of humbleness, out of fear. But she’d since learned to not fight against Kat’s instance. Especially when Silco backed her up. Even if Enyd said ‘no’, she knew Kat would bring them to her anyway.

Kat’s eyes lifted to the wall clock, and she grunted, biting her bread. She took a few large gulps of tea and made to stand.

“That delivery will be there shortly. I should head out. Oh, here.”

She held out her wrist to Silco, presenting the black elastic wrapped around it. He blinked, then was jolted back to what she had said in the bedroom.

He peeled it off her arm. “Thank you.”

Smoothing his wavy hair across his skull, and gathering its bulk at the nape of his neck, he tied it off. Kat’s eyes were warm as she took him in. Sighing, she folded the rest of her bread and took it up in one hand, as the other went gently rest on the side of Silco’s neck. She used the contact as a counter-balance to hold her upright as she dipped to kiss him. She rounded the table and kissed Enyd’s head.

“Be safe,” Enyd called as Kat walked toward the door.

“I will be.” She twirled her coat over her shoulders, and opened the door. “See you both tonight.”

[kikiiswashere]

Children of Zaun - Chapter 29 Sulphur, Saltpeter, and Charcoal

Pairing: Silco/Fem!OC

Rating: Explicit

Story Warnings: Canon typical violence, drug use/dealing, dark themes, smut

Chapter Summary: Things between Zaun and Piltover go from bad to worse. Katya's attempts to protect Viktor do not land as intended.

Note: Thank you all for your patience with this chapter. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, life has been a lot lately. I truly appreciate all you readers and am humbled by all the kind words this labor-of-love of mine has recieved. Y'all keep me going 💗

CW: Canon typical violence, police brutality, gun violence, murder, brief allusion to 69-ing

Previous Chapter

Word Count: 5.5K

Snowdown season ended. And with it, Topside’s patience.

A week after the skies dumped snow on Piltover and Zaun, three of the Children’s contraband runners were intercepted by Enforcers. Their usual route was gobbed up with snow and slush, forcing them to take a more travelled path.

They were stopped outside Augmentation Alley’s scrap pit. Enforcer’s pressed their fronts against the chain link fence, and searched them. Despite the cold, the air sizzled with the heat of tension. Each of the runners’ bodies was taut with anger and fear. Quivering like cornered dogs ready to bite.

The four Enforcers found bottles of clear Freljordian liquor tucked into their coats, shirts, trousers, and boots. They gently laid them in a snowbank nearby. Excitement bubbled beneath their skin over the find. Over what it might mean.

One of the Enforcers snidely asked for the stamped paperwork that was meant to accompany such product. Of course there was none, and the runners stayed tight-lipped, fuming and trembling.

“If there is no paperwork,” the Enforcer had said, his slippery voice hollow in his mask, “where did this come from?”

The other Enforcers pressed their batons firmly against the runners’ backs, the chain link biting into their skin. They said nothing.

“You steal it?”

No answer.

The Enforcer questioning them jerked his chin toward one of his peers. They knocked one of the runners to the ground – an older teen boy with shaggy blond hair. He grunted as he faceplanted into the dirty snow. The other Enforcers hauled him to his knees and found a revolver in his face.

“We can make it so you actually can’t answer.”

Feeling cornered shuts down one’s prefrontal cortex and the amygdala surges forward. Rational thoughts and actions get swallowed up by the primal need to survive. Which is why one of the runners, still held against the fence, flailed suddenly, her elbow threading the space between the Enforcer’s mask and chest, smashing into his neck. He choked and staggered, and she made to run.

Melee followed.

The Enforcer with the revolver shifted his attention and fired. The bullet embedded itself in the girl’s back, and she fell. The teen on his knees leapt up and tackled him. The third runner bucked against the hold of the Enforcer pinning them in place, thrashing out of their thread-bare coat and escaping. They went to scoop up the fallen girl, but her limp, heavy weight felt like death and they left her, darting for the hellish glow of Augmentation Alley. Two of the Enforcers streaked after them.

The tackled Enforcer and older teen wrestled on the ground, hands clamoring for control of the revolver. It went off without warning, without knowing its aim. The Enforcer’s back exploded in a warm, red shower and the young man gasped, kicking his way out from under the dead body.

The remaining Enforcer screamed, leapt forward, and bludgeoned the suspect with his baton. Between the twists of arms, mists of blood, and crunching of bone, another shot from the revolver blared and knocked the Enforcer back. He hit the fence and crumpled, chest gaping.

Shaking, bleeding, gasping, the battered runner gathered as many bottles as he could and crawled toward the nearest alley. He nestled himself in a snowbank, pouring the clear liquor over his wounds and down his throat. He waited for death to come.

It didn’t.

At some point, a pair of strong arms had hoisted him up. Voices murmured and glass clinked. Then there was warmth. The smell of stale beer and sweat. And astringent. The sound of a deep rumble and a rolling whisper. Something soft wrapped around his head. Something sturdy held his arm.

It would be a week before Dustin became remotely lucid. And even then, his eyes remained dark and drawn. Crazed.

The other runner managed to give the Enforcers the slip in the hot maze of Augmentation Alley. Ran appeared at The Last Drop a day later, covered in soot and burns, to inform Vander and Silco of what had happened. Their usual monotone speaking pitch turned jittery with anxiety.

The Children had been unable to retrieve the other runner’s body. The Enforcers that had pursued Ran came back to the crime scene before they could get to her.

There was a raid of Augmentation Alley the next day. Shops were turned inside out. Owners and their families lined up in the narrow streets while an army of Enforcers ransacked their livelihoods and homes.

Pok attempted to stop his shop from being destroyed, and was struck to the ground. Before Mek could come to his father’s aid, an Enforcer’s knee ground into the older man’s back and wrenched his arms around, slapping brass cuffs around his thick wrists.

“You’re under arrest for obstructing law enforcement.”

“You can’t do this!” Mek raged, advancing on the Enforcer.

“Leave it, boy!” Pok wheezed. Their eyes found each other. Even from the ground, Pok could pin his nearly grown son in place. “Leave it. Take care of things.”

The old augmenteer was hauled to his feet and led away. He gave Mek one last firm look, and his son was sure ‘take care of things’ did not just mean their shop.

Take care of Topside.

Pok was taken to Stillwater and never made it out.

The upturning of Augmentation Alley did not produce the suspect Enforcers were looking for. It technically did not reveal anything of note. But LeDaird had already been feeling Council’s pressure to act, to produce results. And now two of his own officers had been killed. The terrorist attack was already personal, but now the threat of the Children of Zaun had threaded beneath his ribs.

Screenings of goods destined for the Undercity intensified. Suppliers were searched along with their loads. New documentation became required. Small and fast skips patrolled wider and longer sections of the coastline, watching for any unusual activity.

Three weeks after the raid on Augmentation Alley, there was an unheard-of assembly at Rynweaver’s mine. Confused and agitated, miners and other employees shuffled into the facility’s cathedral. The space was rimmed with masked and armed Enforcers. The well-hewn walls glowed with strings of chem-bulbs and flood lights blared. Shadows of stalactites, stalagmites, and thin columns crisscrossed over the floor and walls. Atop the lead foreman’s trailer, Rynweaver stood. He looked coldly down at the Trenchers ambling in. Their dirty faces and dull eyes gazing up at him distrustfully.

Kat hung on the outskirts, shoulder brushing up against Silco’s. He’d positioned himself behind a craggy boulder, and had pulled the kerchief he wore around his neck over his nose. It was a habit he had developed the few times he and Rynweaver ever habituated the same space; born of his mother’s desire to keep her son separate from his sire. Lessening the chance of Rynweaver’s greedy gaze finding her boy in a crowd, and putting two-and-two together.

Sevika also stood with them, thick arms crossed over her chest.

Rynweaver held up a gloved hand and the crowd’s murmuring reluctantly dwindled.

“I will make this brief.” His cognac-smooth voice reverberated off metal and stone, sending vibrations beneath his audiences’ skin. “In light of the terrorist attack several weeks ago, the murder of Enforcers, and the raid recently, this mine will be doing its part to flush out the Children of Zaun. If anyone is discovered to be a member of this terrorist organization, they will be immediately fired and arrested. If anyone is found to have information of them and has not come forth, they will be fired and arrested. If anyone is found in support of the Undercity’s freedom, they will be fired and arrested.

“Thanks to these terrorists, the restrictions and protracted wait-time on imports and exports is causing the mine to lose money. To compensate for this unfortunate turn of events, all workers’ salaries shall be diminished by eight-percent – “

At once, the crowd erupted. They jostled and shifted like a school of fish, scales made of pickaxes and shovels glinting in the light. Kat’s stomach dropped, Silco stiffened. Sevika gasped and trudged forward, throwing her voice into the wails of complaints.

The Enforcers on the perimeter moved as one, stepping closer and herding the crowd with the slender but deadly bodies of their rifles.

“Consider this,” Rynweaver called above the din, “motivation for helping Council ferret out these traitors.” The angry swell of voices ebbed. “The sooner they are exterminated, the sooner this nation of Zaun nonsense is laid to rest, the sooner things go back to normal.”

“Normal is unacceptable!” Silco roared later that night at the Drop, standing atop the bar.

The Children rumbled their agreement. Over the course of the recent weeks, their faces had morphed. Once shining and hopeful, now darkening and angry.

“What is normal for Topside is us breathing smog, rationing breadcrumbs, breaking our bodies to service their needs!” A few of the growls rose into barked agreements. Others nodded, eyes hard and glassy. “Their normal will kill us!”

Kat watched him from her spot next to Enyd, heart pounding furiously. It was different than her first meeting. Her blood didn’t run cold with fear. Now, it boiled with indignation and fury. Her body thrummed with Zaunite pride and a disdain for their Sister City. Her chest swelled as Silco continued railing against Piltover’s abuse. Warm, slithering, smokey tendrils of awe filled the spaces between her organs and bones. His unabashed insistent belief and zealousness wafted from him, feeding her. Feeding the room. Their value, worth, and deservedness served to them on a silver platter with his words. And the crowd gorged.

Kat could even feel Enyd’s slight frame puff with pride at her son’s words and command of the room.

Vander leaned against the bar, watching and listening to his Brother’s ire. His face was a craggy series of lines and shadows, as if he’d been hewn from stone. His own fury was palpable. For the first time since overtaking The Last Drop, he hadn’t been able to pay the building’s rent, nor the other taxes Piltover burdened business owners with. It meant a yellow letter and a warning. Never mind the fact that the reason he’d been unable to pay in full was due to Topside’s chokehold on products coming into the Undercity.

Despite this, Vander listened to Silco and watched the crowd with a small amount of caution, ready to temper any hasty suggestions that would get their movement killed before any progress could be made. His eyes found Katya across the room, irritated that it was always her voice in his head when he thought of his responsibility to the Children. To the cause. To Zaun.

Since walking in on her and Silco, he’d avoided her the best he could. If he had to speak to her, his words were brief and colorless. He didn’t know if she thought he was still embarrassed and cagey, or if she was able to pick up on the undercurrent of envy coursing through him. In any case, she did not let on that she was aware of any shift in him. She appeared too preoccupied with the bombastic unfurling of her and Silco’s new relationship. Rarely was one seen without the other, their fingers tightly intertwined.

“We should gut any Enforcer that dares to step foot in the Undercity!” Tolder roared, leaping to his feet and throwing a fist into the air.

Lu jostled at his hip, giggling and tossing his own dumpling of a hand up. There was a small, angry swell of impulsive assent, frothing and spectacular in its heat. But most of the Children remained a dull sort of red. Their frustration grayed – caked and cracked by many heavy layers of unfairness.

Vander straightened at Tolder’s outburst. His heart hammered as he shot a glance up to Silco. His Brother folded his arms across his chest, lips thinning into a tight line.

“They deserve it,” Vander agreed, stepping forward. “But goin’ after Enforcers recklessly ain’ practical r’ wise. Silco n’ me – “

“So what? We’re just suppose’ta take it? What’re we doing here?”

“No,” Silco said firmly. “We will not take it. Haven’t you been listening?” He hopped off the bar and stepped in line with Vander. “We will not return to their status-quo. Nor shall we be stupid and hasty with how we move forward.”

Tolder blanched at his words, but Silco held the older man’s gaze. Then looked around the room.

“We are still in the cold season. Resources are always scarce. Now is the time to lean on each other. Stand shoulder to shoulder as Brothers and Sisters. We shall not be rattled.

“In terms of action, Vander and I have discussed the following – “

He laid out the development for new safehouses – places those in need could go if Janna’s Temple was full. It had been an endeavor spearheaded by Enyd. She reached out to her clients in the marketplaces and on the Promenade. Calling in favors and utilizing her likability to convince them to shelter Children who needed to hide, eat, or sleep. Thereby curling them into the cause.

Smuggling would continue. It had to. The change there would be security detail. Vander, Mek, Sevika, and other brawlers would flank the smaller, faster runners and take out anyone who stood in the way of their route.

Beckett would head a small crew of other Children – those specifically familiar with the docks – and sabotage Enforcer skips. Cutting fuel lines and puncturing hulls. There was also discussion of luring skips to the coast where a few Children would hide in the shadows of the craggy rocks, and use the few long -range rifles they had smuggled in from a Noxian trader to shoot them down. Although, the practicality of that plan was hotly debated. For one, ammunition was scarce. For a second, long-range marksmanship was a skill, and if the Children missed it would cost more than bullets and gunpowder.

“Katya can shoot,” Annie chirped.

Heads swiveled towards the medic, and while her shoulders stiffened, her eyes remained hard.

“I have never been trained. And firing a pistol is different than firing a rifle.”

“To-MAY-to, To-MAH-to,” Annie countered flippantly. “The ends of both go BANG, don’t they?”

“It is not that simple,” Katya replied, keenly aware that she was not scoffing outright at the suggestion. In fact, she felt annoyed by the idea’s pragmatic blocks. A frown formed on her face.

“We can make ammo,” Mek growled. Since his father had been hauled away, the teen had darkened and grown up fast. His voice had sunk and a heavy black cloud settled over his shoulders. His small eyes shone with rage. “Augmentation Alley can mold bullets.”

Katya swallowed, jaw setting. Her eyes locked onto Silco’s, still standing at the bar, before shifting back to Mek. “What of the gunpowder?”

Unsure murmurs vibrated through the tavern. Then, the most unlikely voice answered.

“The mines have gunpowder,” Enyd said.

All eyes fell on her, and she recoiled under the attention. But she took a deep, wheezing breath and stood as tall as her four-foot-eleven frame allowed.

She looked to her son and Vander before continuing. “The black powder used to blow apart the rocks there is the same as gunpowder. It is a fairly simple compound, too. Charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur.”

Silco took a sharp breath in through his nose, remembering how that rotten-egg scent would linger on her clothes, in her hair.

“We have access to all of those things,” Vander said. “We could jus’ make our own. More work, yeah, but would be one less thing t’hafta smuggle.”

“We will do both,” Silco decided. His eyes shone as he looked at his mother. Possibility pulsed in his chest.

“There are sulfur pots deeper in the cave where the Springs are,” Kat said.

She nuzzled closer, her cheekbone rubbing against Silco’s neck, her left hand idly playing with the fingers of the arm wrapped around her shoulders. A low hum vibrated in his chest as he brought his other arm behind his head. He stared up at her bedroom ceiling in thought.

“Charcoal is easy enough to come by.”

“So is saltpeter,” he added. “It’s crusting every smokestack in Zaun.”

Silence fell between them. Then a thought curled Kat’s lips.

“It is ironic that Topside would shove us underground, only to give us the tools for their own undoing.”

A darkly amused sound huffed in Silco’s chest.

“They’ll choke on their own blood and hubris,” he whispered. “We’ll show them.”

The same warmth from the meeting swelled in Kat’s chest. It felt weighty with righteousness, her lungs struggling a bit under the emotion.

Suddenly, she sat up and made to straddle Silco’s waist. He started at her abrupt movement, but quickly settled back into the pillows. The blazing earnestness in her eyes held him in place. She hinged forward and kissed him, and he reached up to touch her cheek. When she straightened, the hand ghosted over her bare breast and rested on the ribs beneath it. She smiled at him, the dim green glow of the streetlamps outside cutting her into a beautiful shape. Then her smile lessened. Her eyes broke from his gaze and looked to the window.

“What is it?”

Silco watched the muscles in her jaw flex under the chartreuse light as she decided how to articulate whatever she was thinking.

“I have to get Viktor tomorrow.”

A low, short hum rumbled in Silco’s throat. His thumb swept over the mole beneath the swell of her breast. Kat disappeared from his side when she had her brother under her wing. He saw nothing of her between Friday afternoon and Monday morning.

“I will not lie,” she said, “the tenser things between Zaun and Piltover become, the more I am worried. I know there is no way forward without violence, but I am scared something may happen to him.”

Silco gently pet her flank, trying to decide what was best and truest to say.

“You cannot hide him from this forever.”

Kat’s brows pinched. “I am not hiding him. He knows there is unrest – “

“That’s not what I am talking about.”

She said nothing for a long moment. Then sighed, “I am not ready to tell him that I am a part of this. I am not ready to tell him anything.”

Her eyes sheepishly found his in the dark, the subtext of that statement settling heavy between them. She did not want Viktor involved in this part of her life – not the Children, not Enyd, not Silco.

Not yet.

Silco did not fight her on it. It wasn’t his decision to make. Viktor was her family, her responsibility. If Kat felt it was safest for him to be kept separate for the time-being, it wasn’t his place to insist otherwise.

Even so, he asked: “When will you?”

“When our freedom is on the horizon,” she said with a smile. Then, her expression sobered. “Or when I absolutely have to.”

Silco’s lips thinned and he nodded once, his eyes breaking away from hers. Kat reached out, running the back of her fingers down his cheek and over the scar on his lip.

“He is eleven. I want him to be a child as much as he can be. I know it is a privilege most Zaunite children do not get to have, but if I can offer some semblance of youth to him, I will. I want him to have better than I did. In every way. You understand?”

He did. Of course he did. A long sigh softened Silco’s body, and he leaned into her hand.

“I understand. I am selfish, and miss you on the weekends.”

Kat’s mouth quirked into a grin. She leaned over to kiss him, her hand threading through the ebony tangle of his hair.

How easily they fell into one another. Her plushness and his angles slotting together perfectly. How much sweeter would it be once Zaun was free, when their angst lifted and floated away on a sea breeze?

She could not wait.

“I miss you, too,” Kat whispered, pulling back. Then that mischievous, secret glint flashed in her eyes. “Shall I give you something to remember me by?”

Silco’s own eyes darkened, his pupils swallowing any of the faint light filtering into the room. A wolfish grin lifted the corners of his mouth.

“Like I said: I am selfish. I will gladly take whatever you’ll give me.”

“And then some.”

“And then some,” he agreed.

She matched his smile before spinning around, diving head first beneath the covers. Silco’s large hands gripped her hips firmly, and pulled her to his mouth just as her lips wrapped around him.

There was a promise of warmth on the edges of the breeze that fluffed Viktor’s hair. He and Miss Ivy stood by the Bridge’s attendance hut waiting for his sister. He hoped the warm season would begin sooner rather than later, if for no other reason than that he could take his lunch outside again. During the cold season he had no choice but to eat in the cafeteria with the rest of his class. They would shoot him prying stares and whisper about the stitches on his uniform and worn shoes. About how the button-up beneath his vest was a dingy grey color, instead of their pristine, crisp white ones. They’d hiss about how he was from the Undercity, and therefore made him a novelty. Not a novelty to be coveted, but one to be gawked at, poked and prodded. The other-ing had only gotten worse since that airship crash several weeks ago. The boys and girls in his classes plied him with taunts thinly veiled as questions. In more extreme cases, he’d be harassed as he walked across campus: older students yelling slurs at him, gesturing rude things.

He didn’t mention it to anyone. Professor Heimerdinger may have been willing to listen, but nothing would change. He had not seen Councilor Bone since before Snowdown. He didn’t tell Katya because . . . because something was off.

The sense of something being amiss he had had several weeks ago hadn’t ebbed. For weeks, his sister seemed a shell of herself. Attentive enough to keep his needs met, but there had been no light in her eyes. None of her smiles brightened her face. Then, the Friday after the Snowdown holidays, something had changed. Katya was bright again, but it didn’t warm him. She seemed happier, but still distant. Like her mind was elsewhere.

When she did not appear distracted, Katya was bubbling with frigid indignation about Piltover’s recent treatment of the Undercity. In the past, she kept their heads low and made a point to skirt around Enforcers. Avoiding them was not an option any longer, and Katya’s nervousness about them had transformed into anger. She kept her face hard when they walked through the Lanes back to the Sump, the grip she had on Viktor’s shoulder commanding and tight.

They had been stopped for questioning a couple of times. Where were they coming from? Where were they going? Had they seen anything suspicious lately? Katya’s answers had been short and sharp. Not rude enough to set the Enforcers off, but she left no room for them to think she would be any kind of helpful.

They’d been searched once. A perfunctory pat-down of Katya and a search of Viktor’s duffle bag. For a split second, he thought she might actually lash out when one of the Enforcers gently patted his body down. Of course, they had nothing on them, so they were allowed on their way. The rest of the evening, Katya stomped around the apartment, pots and pans clanging, her eyes – stuck in a perpetual glare – continually shot to the door and to the windows. As if she was expecting to see something there. She also kept lifting the collar of the shirt she was wearing – one he did not recognize – up to her nose, and breathing deeply. As if it brought her some sort of comfort.

The increased Enforcer presence in the Undercity also meant that he and Katya spent most of the weekend holed up in the apartment. No trips to the docks, the Oases, the Springs, or any of the marketplaces. And despite the close and constant quarters with his sister, Viktor battled a persistent, creeping sense of alienation.

His young heart twisted painfully in his chest as the ability to find solace on either side of the River dwindled.

“Here she comes,” Ivy sighed suddenly, pulling Viktor from his heavy thoughts.

He blinked his gaze back into focus, and saw Katya striding across the Bridge. She beamed at him, and Viktor desperately wished he could feel it. The gate attendant lifted the barricade, allowing him and Ivy to step through.

As usual, once Viktor was within arm’s reach, Katya gathered him up against her chest in a tight hug. Her nose buried itself in the fluffy folds of his hair, and her lips pressed against his crown.

“I missed you.”

Viktor knew she wasn’t lying. Yet, the sentiment seemed to bounce off his heart, unable to sink in.

“I missed you, too.”

She drew back and pet a hand through his hair. Her eyes gleamed as she took him in, an intense look of pride that strangely left him feeling lacking.

“Come. Let us go home.”

As had been the case for the past several weeks, Katya only acknowledged Ivy enough to take Viktor’s duffle from her.

“Have a nice weekend, Miss Ivy,” he offered before limping away.

The aide smiled sweetly at him. “You as well, Viktor.”

“Come along.”

Katya gently tugged on his coat, encouraging him to step away from Piltover. He gave Ivy a meek smile and she waved good-bye.

As they slowly traveled toward the conveyor car station, Viktor eyed the artwork and graffiti that now decorated buildings, walkways, fencing, and lampposts. Blue birds and ‘Zs’ scribbled in varying art styles and detail. Slogans of ‘FREE ZAUN,’ ‘WE ARE THE STORM’S FURY,’ and ‘FUCK TOPSIDE’ were written in manic zig-zags of chalk. It made him feel nervous. Dread brushed gently against his stomach.

The pair stiltedly ascended the few steps up to the conveyor car, and Katya flashed her Academy-issued badge. She and Viktor took their seats, and he fished out one of his steno pads from his school satchel. His sister smiled as he reviewed the notes he’d made that week in Professor Heimerdinger’s robotics class. Sketches of gears, cogs, and possible engine designs covered the pages.

“Still planning on a boat?”

Viktor nodded. “We will get to start constructing in a few weeks. We have to get designs approved first.”

Katya nodded. Her body jostled as the conveyor car began to slide down into the Undercity.

She pet a hand through his hair and said, “I am sure you will have no problem getting your plans approved.”

“I want to make an engine that is not reliant on traditional fuel. Like wood or coal,” he said, eyes glued to his notes and drawings. “Something that is sustainable and renewable. That way, maybe, it is something that can be transitioned to a larger scale. To help out the fishermen at the docks.”

Katya’s arm wrapped around his shoulders and drew him close. She kissed the crown of his head.

“That is a marvelous idea.”

Viktor kept his notebook close the rest of the night. Skimming through pages, adding notes and annotations. Adjusting sketches and scribbling new ones.

Gnawing on his lip, he sat back in his chair at the kitchen table. Katya stood at the sink, washing the dishes from dinner. He looked at his notebook, then Katya, then the living room window, then Katya again.

“Kat?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s getting warmer out. Do – do you think that we could go out this weekend to try and find materials for my boat?”

Katya stilled, the soft scrubbing of her sponge silencing. Viktor watched as her shoulders slumped. Disappointment began smoldering in his belly before she even turned around.

“I thought the Academy was providing materials,” she said, turning to face him. A hand on her hip, her mouth fighting a frown.

“They are. But . . . I want to use things from the Undercity. We could go to the scrap pit by Augmentation Alley. Just get scraps. We don’t have to even spend any money.”

Katya lost the fight with the grimace trying to spread across her face. Viktor held her gaze, but he could not understand why her emotions were being so fickle. He knew things were precarious in the Lanes as of late, but he was so tired of spending his weekends holed up in their apartment.

“Viktor – “

“Please!” he burst. “Please? Nothing will happen. We will not draw any attention to ourselves. Enforcers won’t bother us. Please? I want to go out. I want to find things for my boat.”

A heavy sigh blew through Katya’s lips as she hung her head. Viktor watched as the fingers on her hip tightened, the skin on her knuckles pulling white. His lower lips tucked itself under his incisors as he waited for her verdict.

“We can go – “ Viktor sat up and gasped “ – but if there are more than two Enforcers skulking about, we will come home.”

Her brother nodded emphatically, unwilling to press his luck. Katya’s eyes did not soften, and he tried to not let it bother him. He turned back to his notebook, pretending that his sister was just as excited as he was.

After a beat, Katya wiped her hands on the rag hung over the kitchen faucet before stalking over to her coat, hung on the peg by the door. Surprised, Viktor looked up as she whipped the garment around herself.

“What are you – “

“I need to go take care of something,” she answered, shaking the collar out around her head. “If I am not back before nine, get ready for bed. Yes?” He nodded slowly. “Good. I love you. I’ll be back soon. Do not open the door for anyone.”

Viktor’s brow crumpled as she whisked out of their home. The sharp sound of the door clattering into its frame echoed in his ears. It vibrated against his bones. It inspired loneliness to press against his chest. And frustration to bubble beneath his skin.

Katya kept her promise and they visited the scrap pit the following day. Relief sagged through Viktor’s body when he counted only two Enforcers in the immediate area. Eagerly, he scurried toward the bent and barbed metal gates. His eagerness was quelled as he saw a small pile of candles and trinkets piled against a section of fence a few feet away. There was a framed picture of a young girl leaned against half-melted pillar candles. Dread swiped a cold finger over his stomach. He ignored it and pressed onward. Clumsily, he sat before the nearest tangled heap of metal, and began scouring through it.

Katya lingered behind him, arms crossed over her chest, eyes continually scanning their surroundings. Her lack of interest made him feel self-conscious. A small voice in his head sneered that he shouldn’t have pushed for this. But when his hand landed on a large, uncorroded gear, that voice was drowned out by excitement.

“Kat! Look! I think this will be the perfect size for the motor’s main driver!”

Her head snapped back to look at him. Her eyes were wide and blank, confirmation that she was not actually there with him. She blinked and her gaze focused on the cog in his hand. She smiled.

“Very good. Are you going to put it in your satchel?”

He nodded. “It would be great if I could find another one. Or, at least, one of similar size. Will you help me look?”

The small pull at the corner of her mouth sent a bolt of shame through his chest. But before his face could fully fall, Katya knelt beside him. She held her hand out, and he gingerly placed the gear in her palm.

Inspecting it closely, she asked, “Do the teeth need to be the same, or just the size of the gear?”

“Ideally both.”

Together, they dug through piles of metal. Just beyond the scrap pit’s ridge, Augmentation Alley smoked and burned, its forges in full-force. When the wind picked up, Katya instructed Viktor to pull his scarf over his mouth and nose. The boy grimaced, but complied. He was already sweating. The day and activity proving too warm for the coat and scarf Katya had been insistent on. But his annoyance waned as they continued to sift through scraps together. Every now and then, she would present a particularly interesting looking twist of metal or clean gear, and ask for his opinion.

Slowly, carefully, ease dared to flicker in Viktor’s chest. The interaction between him and his sister leaning much more familiar than they had in several weeks. He held to it tightly, even when they would shift to a new pile, and her eyes would lift and the energy of her presence slipped for a moment. When she hunkered down again, Viktor would sneak a peek in the direction she had looked, expecting to see an Enforcer. There was none. Instead, a slender silhouette swaggered back-and-forth just beyond the scrap pit’s fence.

For some reason, that pricked at Viktor’s nerves more than any Enforcer.

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Coming Up Next: Bone pays the Children a visit

Next Chapter

Taglist: @pinkrose1422 @dreamyonahill @sand-sea-and-fable @truthandadare @altered-delta

[kikiiswashere]

Children of Zaun - Chapter 33 Repurcussions

Pairing: Silco/Fem!OC

Rating: Explicit

Story Warnings: Canon typical violence, drug use/dealing, dark themes, smut

Chapter Summary: Grayson and Bone meet up, and Viktor's goes missing.

Author’s Note: Shout out to @sand-sea-and-fable for the help with this one ❤️

Word Count: 8k

Previous Chapter

CW: allusions to death, questionable parenting techinques

It surprised Grayson when she received a tube at her private residence from Councilor Bone asking  for a private audience with her. She hadn’t known he knew where she lived, but, she figured, being a Councilor made it easy information to come by. She’d only seen him a small number of times since that day before Snowdown in his apartment. But all of those times had been in passing; perfunctory head nods in the presence of other Councilors, and the Sheriff. They had not spoken about his ask of her, of the work she’d promised to do with him. Bone had asked her not to come to his home, and he had not reached out since. That, coupled with the scolding Le Daird had given her a few weeks prior, had left her cagey and conflicted.

All she ever wanted to be was an Enforcer. And now she was on the trajectory to become Sheriff when Le Daird retired. 

She wanted to be a good Enforcer. Protect her people. Make them feel safe. When Bone came to her, she saw the possibility of realizing it more fully than she’d ever known. Then Le Daird told her to drop it, to ‘choose a side’ essentially. Nevermind that the Undercity was a part of Piltover, part of the people she had been sworn to protect. 

But she also did not want to lose ground on all that she’d worked for. All the accomplishments she’d managed in the name of her dead father. However, Grayson could not unknow what Bone had showed her. And that made all her achievements feel less impressive. Made them feel tarnished. 

She sent a tube back to Councilor Bone, telling him to come to her flat the following afternoon.

Bone was prompt. His gnarled knuckles rapped against her door at 5:00pm sharp. Grayson opened the door and fought to keep her face neutral. The Councilor looked horrendous. He’d lost weight, his skin so paper thin and pale that she was certain she could see his skeleton beneath. He leaned heavily on his cane, and held an old, soiled handkerchief in his other hand.

“Councilor. Please come in.”

She stood aside as Bone wheezed something that sounded like ‘thank you’, then immediately coughed into the handkerchief. His whole body shook with the force of it. Grayson was afraid he was going to crumple to the floor. The sounds that clawed up his throat hurt her ears and curdled her stomach. A sludgy, suction sound overlaid by the scratches of knives and forks on a porcelain plate.

It passed and Bone straightened his spine as much as he could. Grayson closed the door, but her muscles stayed coiled, prepared to catch him should he fall over.

“I appreciate you taking the time to see me, Captain.” Bone’s voice was hoarse and gravely. It seemed to pain him to speak.

“Of course.”

“Would it be alright if we sat? My body is tired these days.”

“Of course, Councilor,” Grayson repeated. “The sitting room is this way.”

She guided him through the small foyer into the flat’s living space. Large, window-paned double doors faced south, filling the room with orange and yellow sunlight. It was pretty for a moment, but then the abundance of light allowed Bone to take in the heart-aching emptiness of Grayson’s home. There was a low, tufted couch and a matching armchair. Nice, but not ostentatious. A well-made, wooden coffee table filled the space between the two seats, but that was it. The book shelves were bare. Nothing hung above the soapstone fireplace. There were a couple photographs on the mantle, but in the sunlight Bone could see a fine layer of dust on their glass fronts.

Homes in the Undercity were small. So, when they were inevitably bare, it was less apparent. And, often, the energy and hub-bub of too-many people living under one roof made the space not seem empty at all.

There was something unsettling about Grayson’s home being so stark. It felt purposeful, and that made Bone feel sorry for her for some reason. He shook it off, and limped to the armchair. He sat down heavily, a hiss shooting from between his teeth as his bones and muscles flared with pain.

 “Can I get you anything?” Grayson asked. “Tea? Water?”

 Bone shook his head, a clearing rumble rattling in his throat. 

 “No. Thank you, Captain. We need to discuss something.”

Grayson’s fingers twitched and flexed at her sides. Her legs suddenly felt lead-heavy. Stiltedly, she walked over to the end of the sofa closest to him, and sat down. Despite the urgency of his words, Bone took a moment to look out the windows. His brow furrowed, emotion shimmering in his eyes. He coughed lightly and adjusted himself in his seat.

“I am afraid, Captain Grayson, that I am not long for this world.”

It was obvious, but Grayson’s heart fluttered anyway.

“I am sorry, Councilor,” she whispered.

Bone’s lips pulled thin and tight. There was a small nod of his head in thanks.

“I feel,” he said, “that I need to tell you what I’ve learned before it’s too late.”

Grayson’s stomach tumbled. Leaning closer, she laced her fingers together and squeezed, letting her nerves go somewhere that wasn’t her head.

“I have been hemming and hawing for a couple weeks, debating if I should tell you this,” he sighed. “But I owe it to you. And someone needs to know. Someone who can stop further bloodshed and conflict.”

Grayson waited. Her face was stoic while her insides quaked.

Another small cough rose in Bone’s chest. He muffled it with the dirty handkerchief, and as he dropped it back into his lap, he said: “Just before Snowdown, I was doing some investigating of my own. I happened upon a tip in a cafe. Nothing solid, just an inkling. 

“A couple of weeks ago, I followed through on that information, and managed to meet with the Children of Zaun.”

Grayson could not stop her jaw from dropping. Shock and frustration stiffened her limbs.

“Why are you just bringing this to me now? Why did you not call for me the moment you found something out?” 

“Because, Captain, you are still an Enforcer. And the fearful elite have their claws in Council, Council has their claws in your institution. The safety of my people, as you are well aware, will always be my priority. Until the day I die.”

Grayson swallowed thickly. He wasn’t wrong. She thought about Le Daird telling her what her ‘job’ was really about. She thought about the whispers running through behind-the-scenes: Noble families and other rich houses trying to pressure Council into shifting the Enforcers from serve-and-protect to a more militant role in the face of the current threat.

The mirror of Le Daird’s and Bone’s sentiments were made clear to her as well. Le Daird alluded to prioritizing the protection of citizens from Piltover proper. Bone swore his allegiance to the denizens of the Underground. 

“What did you find out, Councilor?” Grayson eventually asked, keeping her tone sympathetic.

“I spoke with two young men who present themselves as the leaders of the movement. I hoped to talk them down from their stance of secession from Piltover. They were not open to it.” Bone sighed, and looked away. “I beseeched them. Tried to get them to understand that they will not survive Piltover should people like Rynweaver get his way. Tried to convince them that separating Piltover and the Undercity will serve no one in the end. Piltover needs to be a bastion of progress. Scientifically and socially. Not only will that not happen if the Undercity continues to threaten abdication, but I fear there will be no Undercity if this presses on. Piltover will, perhaps rightfully, finish choking us out.

“This is dire, Captain. The citizens I swore to serve and you swore to protect will destroy themselves. Not just the Undercity. Piltover will lose her humanity should her hand be moved to genocide.”

Grayson’s blood went cold. 

“Please, Captain,” Bone whispered. “Promise me you won’t allow that to happen.”

A clicking sound was all that made its way from her throat, voice caught in a web of terror and disbelief. The weight of Bone’s eyes on her felt too heavy, and she looked away, gaze going to the windows. From her flat, she had a view of the boundary markets and the Bridge. And beyond that, the first sections of the Promenade. Her chest swelled unbearably.

“I promise,” she whispered, looking back at him. “I promised you before, Councilor Bone, and I promise you now: I will do everything in my power to protect the citizens I’ve been sworn to serve. Especially those who cannot protect themselves. I will keep the Undercity and Piltover safe.”

Bone searched her face. And only found integrity.

“I went to The Last Drop. The men I spoke with, their names are Vander and Silco.”

For now, he would leave Viktor’s sister out of it.

Viktor had managed to see Rio a couple of times since their initial meeting. Being small, being dressed in Academy garb (tatty though it may be), being quiet, and being cripple, allowed Viktor to move through the immaculate streets and annoyingly clean alleyways of Piltover unnoticed. Or, at least, not noticed enough to garner any attention. He abandoned his study hours, and escaped from campus grounds on random afternoons to take shelter in the Doctor’s makeshift laboratory.

The Doctor. That’s what the stranger had told Viktor to call him. No name, first or last. Just ‘Doctor’. And, generally speaking, Viktor did as he was told.

The Doctor had him clean test tubes and petri dishes in the rusted sink. He organized journals and periodicals. He brought the Doctor more slides from the damp storage closet. Mostly, Viktor was tasked with gathering the strange purple flowers that Rio ate. Whatever his job, the Doctor did not ask Viktor if he required help. He simply said what he needed and carried on with his work. It was refreshing to be spoken to and treated like a fully competent human. 

Despite his intellect, his professors still treated him as if he were fragile. Usually, they were overly kind and simpering, utterly blind to needling microaggressions they peppered him with.

“You’re so bright for being from the Undercity” was something he frequently heard.

Professors and well-meaning administrators would help him retrieve an item when he did not ask, nor need the assistance. On several occasions, the elderly librarian had shooed him away from the shelves, insisting that she could get the books for him.

Viktor knew they meant well. And he was put off by their ignorance. Their ignorance of his home, and of himself. He was completely capable. Certainly intellectually, regardless of his upbringing. Even physically, he was not as fragile as people feared. Some tasks he had to do in his own way, in his own time, but he could do it. The Doctor saw that. Why couldn’t others?

Even his sister, he realized, treated him like a Faberge egg. She coddled and kept him. It was becoming more apparent each time he visited the Doctor and Rio that Katya other-ed him just as much as any Topsider.

His sister had not needed to scurry away during a weekend since that one Saturday a few weeks prior. And despite aching for her presence for weeks, he was not put at ease by it. In fact, he found himself annoyed. 

Annoyed by her simultaneous walled-off and overbearing behavior. Annoyed by her infantilization of him. Annoyed at her growing distrust, borderline paranoia, of Enforcers and Piltover. Annoyed that she could go out on her own, but not him.

He thought about naming his boat the SS Freedom, because it was the only means by which he could convince her to let them trek out on the weekends. 

During the school week, when he wasn’t sneaking off to play assistant, Viktor made adjustments to his boat informed by its last trial. Tweaking the ignition, improving the balance between the paddle-wheels, reshaping the hull to reduce drag. Each time he’d been able to let it set sail he found something else to improve upon. Another fixed detail that would make his creation stronger, better, faster. 

This past week, Viktor had modified the crankshaft and eccentric rod to create a smoother and stronger drive. He smiled to himself, watching the little boat cut through the lagoon’s glassy surface with hardly any residual rippling. Effective and efficient. He scribbled in his notebook before pushing himself to his feet, and rounding the bank to gather his boat at the other side.

The body of water was small and enclosed. As much as that first excursion had turned out in his favor – in more ways than one – he did not want to potentially lose his invention again. He hobbled around the bank and scooped it up on the other side.

“It is much smoother than last week!” Katya observed with a smile.

She was seated on a rock a few feet away from the water, legs long in front of her, ankles crossed. Her arms braced behind, holding her body up like a kickstand. She beamed at him, and he returned it with a cautious smile. Clumsily, he sat back down on the bank. When the heavy landing pushed an involuntary ‘oof’ through his lips, Katya sat up straighter, legs beginning to tuck closer to her body in preparation to stand.

“I’m fine,” he called.

After a beat, she settled back. Not as nonchalant as before, her limbs locked up like springs ready to pounce. Even her face tightened. But she stayed put, and Viktor turned his attention back to his boat. Rolling it over in his hands, he inspected the components he’d modified. They continued to remain stable. He smiled. Taking the turnkey from his pocket, Viktor cranked the motor before releasing it back into the turquoise pond.

As before, he lifted back to his feet and shuffled back to the opposite bank. As he passed Katya, she smiled up at him. Then her eyes shifted further up. Viktor followed her gaze, expecting to see that lithe stranger that had taken to appearing wherever they were. He’d asked once about it; the second time he’d spied the man in their vicinity. 

“Why is that man always around?” he’d whispered as they were cutting through a marketplace one day.

“What man?”

“That one! It seems like I always see him when we’re out.”

Her gaze had followed the direction he’d gestured to. The person in question - a young man made of angles, with a loping gait - hovered near a tobacco tent, smoking a cigarette. He never got close, nor did Viktor ever catch him looking at himself or Katya. But Viktor always saw him at least once when they were out.

Something about the way Katya’s face had flickered curdled his stomach. Annoyance quickly veiled by an expression too-sweetly calculated.

Shaking her head, she had placed an arm around his shoulders and steered him away.

“I am sure you do not always see him. Frequently, maybe. But there are plenty of Zaunites we see again and again when we go out.”

“Zaunites? - “

“It is nothing to worry about,” she continued, shepherding him through the crowd. “We are not being followed. It is simply a coincidence that he’s crossed your field of vision so often.”

“Professor Heimerdinger says that rarely are things coincidences. If there is a pattern, then something is waiting to be discovered.”

The hand around his shoulder tightened. It didn’t feel like a comfort. It felt like a warning.

“Bratříček,” she had cooed. “It is nothing. Some things just are. Some things are surprising and unexplainable. You are letting that brilliant mind run away with you. Come. It is time to head home.”

Viktor scanned the rock ledge above them, but there was no one there. Just the growing stretch of shadows as the sun began its afternoon descent toward the horizon.

“We need to get going soon, Viktor.”

Viktor frowned, and a whine grumbled deep in his throat. Shoulders hiked up, he pointedly limped in the direction of his boat, which had reached the other side of the lagoon, and was now beached on the bank. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay.

He wanted to go check on Rio.

Katya withdrew her pocket watch. 

“Ten more minutes.”

“Fine,” Viktor spat in a tone that made it very clear that it was, in fact, not fine. His face darkened as he plopped down again to look at his boat and take notes.

Katya’s lips thinned, wondering if she should say something about his grumpy attitude. It was an unfair struggle, toeing the line between sibling and parent. She was ten years older than him, and had always held the role of caretaker; even when Papa was alive. But their father’s presence shielded her from the bulk of responsibility. Until he was killed, and it was all thrust upon her in a matter of moments. 

She was not his mother, but still had to usher him through life as if she were. She was his sister, but could not relax fully into that title when the weight of his well-being was yoked across her shoulders.

That nasty little flicker of a feeling needled her heart. The same one that had cropped up the night the Children had decided to begin stealing gunpowder, when she and Silco were lying in bed wrapped warmly in each other’s bodies, and blankets. The same feeling that was appearing with more and more frequency. Guilt sat like a cement weight in her stomach at its name.

Resentment.

Katya sighed and readjusted herself on the warm stone. Hoping that moving her body would shift the feeling out.

She knew, of course, that none of this was Viktor’s fault. He tumbled into their unfortunate circumstances as much as she had. It wasn’t his fault that their parents were gone. It wasn’t his fault he was younger and needed looking after. His handicaps weren’t his fault. It wasn’t his fault that Piltover was a monster.

And yet . . . 

The responsibility that shackled her to him kept her other life that had been blossoming at arm’s length. The life with Silco and Enyd, the Children; a life where she felt simultaneously more free and more held.

She hadn’t lied to Silco: Viktor’s safety was still paramount to her. She couldn’t ask him to hold the knowledge of her revolutionary entanglements and send him across the river every week into enemy territory. 

 But she’d been omitting – even to herself – that the resentful piece of her wanted to keep the relationships with Silco, Enyd, and the other Children for her alone. It had been a long time since she’d had anything that was only for her. For a while, she had had Mama and Papa. Then Viktor came, bent and needy. And Mama left. And Papa had to be shared. Then their whole family’s life revolved around keeping Viktor healthy and well and alive.

Then Papa had been killed, and it all fell to her. She’d thought nothing of it until the Children of Zaun. Until a small, private revolution began taking place inside her. When she realized her own developing worth, want, and needs had been stunted. Not just by Piltover. But by the too-big responsibility put upon her at ten years old.

She knew it wasn’t Viktor’s fault.

And yet . . . And yet . . .

Katya shook her head, willing those thoughts to go back into hiding in the deep recesses of her mind. Despite that, she felt disgusted with herself. In front of her, the boat cut smoothly across the water, and moments later Viktor limped by. She took a deep breath in, belly growing round with it, and slowly let the exhale drift through her nostrils. Her eyes closed.

I am doing this for us.

For us.

For you.

For me.

When ten minutes passed, Viktor huffily gathered his boat and notebook up. A thoroughly sour expression pinched his face. Again, Katya kept her lips tucked between her teeth, and kept in-step beside him, hands tucked into her coat pockets. 

As they neared the final stretch of path that led out of the Oases, Viktor spied a small, budding patch of those purple flowers. His brow dropped. It was odd to see them this far from a water source. He desperately wished he could take note of it, gather the buds, and bring them to the Doctor.

Instead, he hobbled into the dark and dank of the Undercity with his sister.

Even the narrow side streets they usually took were patrolled by Enforcers. So, Katya and Viktor didn’t bother, and stuck to main thoroughfares. This also provided the additional benefit of blending into the bustle of other Zaunites. A hodge-podge of faces and bodies and color melding into a mass that made it difficult to be singled out.

However, Annie was much more hawk-eyed than any Enforcer.

“Katya!”

Katya’s head jerked up, swiveling in the direction of the call. Through the throngs of people in the marketplace, Annie’s thin, pale arm thrust up and waved enthusiastically. Before she could think, Katya’s arm flew up and waved back. Next to her, Viktor squinted and his eyebrows knit together.

“Is that the same person from the docks a few months ago? One of your patients from the mine?”

“What? Oh, yes,” Katya muttered, head whipping around to address him.

An annoying itch and tempting tug appeared beneath Katya’s skin. The want to go over, and speak with her friend. A small reprieve from the weighty responsibility of parenting her brother. To bask in the reminder that she was her own person beyond being Viktor’s caretaker.

Her brother eyed her curiously. Wondering why she did not seem to be as perturbed this time as she had been at the docks. 

“Should we go say ‘hello’?”

Something flashed in Katya’s eyes. Before he could decipher it, she glanced above his head. A smile stretched across her face, and he felt his stomach dip. It was the sort of smile he got when he had an idea or figured something out. He could feel it like a phantom on his own face though his mouth did not move.

“Viktor, why don’t you sit here,” Katya said, turning him around.

A few steps away was a food tent. Kebabs spit and crackled on the grills just on the other side of its counter. Prior to the trade blocks, the skewers would’ve been plump with meat and veg. Now, they were dressed in flimsy cuts of meat that were more gristle than anything. One of the skewers pierced something suspiciously shaped like a rat. 

Katya pressed him forward, and Viktor staggered toward one of the counter’s stools. Awkwardly, he climbed up into one, annoyed at his sister for helping him along. He hefted his boat up, and set it on the counter. The cook behind the grill looked at Katya expectantly. She reached into her coat, and withdrew a few cogs. The tenseness in his face eased when the metal hit his palm.

“Sit here,” Katya repeated, her voice too-sugar sweet, “and have a kebab. I am going to go check in on her for a couple minutes, okay? Stay here. I will be back.”

Viktor felt his head give a perfunctory, disciplined nod. He also felt anger prickling in his chest. 

Katya smiled at him, kissed his head, and slipped away.

The anger spread to Viktor’s fingers and toes. His hands balled into fists as the cook placed a kebab in front of him. Glaring down at the meager scrap of maybe-meat woven onto the skewer, emotion welled up in Viktor’s small body. Enough that he began to shake. 

He didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want a kebab. 

He wanted to assist the Doctor. He wanted to test his boat. He wanted to do whatever he wanted to do. 

Like Katya was, apparently. 

She’d never left him like this before: alone in the Lanes. Even if he was old enough to do so, even if he was growing tired of her overbearing nature, he did not like this. This feeling of being dumped. Of being left behind. Left out.

Fine. FINE.

Twisting in his chair, Viktor’s gaze searched the direction she’d gone. She was not far. He spied the back of her head at a tent a few vendors away, speaking with a purple-haired young woman, and a broad, freckled young man with a blaze of red hair. They were all smiling as they spoke, their comradery apparent. And belied a strictly patient-medic relationship.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Viktor scooped up his boat and slid off the stool. Anger made his grip clumsy as he took up his crutch, and stumbled away from the grill. He pushed through the crowd, and headed back toward the Oases, determined to spend the afternoon how he wanted to. Among strange flowers, thought-provoking theories, a sense of comradery, and a pink waverider.

As Katya walked in the direction of Annie, she was unsurprised to see Beckett as well. He’d been hunkered beneath the stall Annie was perched on, and stood up once Katya was in easy greeting distance.

“Oh-HO!” Annie laughed. “She approaches!”

Beckett’s head whipped around as he set a box packed with ice on the wooden counter. He grinned and shook his hair from his eyes.

“Hi Katya.”

He ducked back beneath the booth. He reappeared a moment later with a spiny fish the size of his hand. Carefully, he placed it over the chunks of ice.

Katya grinned and rolled her eyes a bit, sidling up.

“Yes,” she greeted, “I approach. I did not know you sold at the market.”

She eyed the line of small fish Beckett laid out. The markets were rife with them. Rock Smelt, Crescent Skips, Mud Gobies. Any and all of the diminutive creatures that made a home in the shallower waters of the Pilt’s estuaries, as fishermen were prohibited from sailing to the deeper waters of the gulf that led to Conqueror's Sea. Another of Piltover’s attempts to squeeze Zaun into submission. As such, fish no larger than a child’s forearm were making their ways to the Undercity markets.

“On occasion,” Beckett answered, setting another box of ice on the counter. His face clouded, and his blue eyes flicked over to a pair of Enforcers standing near a trinket vendor a few stalls down. “Usually,” he said in a hushed voice, “my boss sends his nephew here to sell, but he met the wrong end of an Enforcer’s baton last week. The kid with the broken arm? That’s him.”

Katya’s lips thinned, rage bubbling inside her. She remembered. The poor teen who’d been carried to the Drop by Sevika and Cairn, bloodied and bruised. It was unclear what his infraction had been (not that Enforcers needed one to beat Trenchers to a pulp). As awful as the situation had been, it did give Katya the ability to demonstrate to the Children how to suture wounds and set bones.

“Yes, I remember. How is he?”

 Beckett shrugged. “Doin’ okay, I think. All things considered. Think it spooked Raggs, though” - Beckett’s employer, and the injured’s uncle - “He’s keepin’ Vonne on a tight leash.”

“That’s good. He needs rest to recover. I am sorry it means more work for you.”

Annie laughed. “Nah! He’s fine! Besides, he has the best former-fishwife to help him out.”

She flourished her arms, presenting herself. Katya chuckled, and Beckett grinned before nudging her hips off the counter with another wooden crate of ice.

“What’re you doing out and about?” Annie asked, hopping onto her feet.

“My brother and I were at the Oases. He built a model boat for one of his classes, and he was testing it in the water.”

Annie’s eyebrows cinched, and she glanced around. “Where’s your brother?”

“He’s at the grill over there,” she answered, vaguely gesturing in Viktor’s direction.

Annie looked over Katya’s shoulder, eyes squinting. Her lips pursed.

“There’s no one at that counter.”

Katya knew Viktor was small, and that the market was crowded, but it would be difficult to miss a young boy with a model boat perched next to him. She turned and gestured back toward the kebab stall.

“He’s right - “

Nowhere.

The stall’s counter was empty, all its stools vacant. Warmth bled from Katya’s skin; her stomach splattered to her toes. It suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe. Her brain seized, the higher, rational piece of it blacking out entirely as the fearful, primal portion of it began raging. 

Of all the days to not have Silco shadow them . . .

Of their own volition, her legs staggered through the crowd, pushing people out of her way. Annie followed behind, placating the people Katya had shoved aside.

When Katya’s fingers brushed against the now-empty stool, tears burned behind her eyes. The kebab she’d ordered for him still sat in front of the seat. Her heart lodged itself into her throat. Head whipping around, she hoped, prayed, pled that he’d simply gotten up to stretch his sore leg. But everywhere she turned, there was no sign of Viktor.

“Where is my brother!” she demanded, fixing her stinging eyes on the man behind the grill. Her voice choked and cracked around the words.

The cook jumped and grimaced at her.

“I grill meat. I don’t babysit.”

Katya nearly reached inside her coat and withdrew her Papa’s revolver. Before she could act, though, Annie intervened. The other woman placed grounding hands on her shoulder and arm, and fixed a pretty smile on the cook.

“Do you know where he went?” she asked.

“Dunno,” the cook snorted, flipping kebabs. Fat crackled and hissed. “He took that thing of his and went that way.”

He jut his large chin in the direction Viktor and Katya had initially wandered into the market from. Katya rushed into the crowd without another word. Annie thanked the cook and followed. 

Katya’s voice was a shrill cry in the din of the marketplace. An out-of-tune woodwind in a pit of brass instruments. She screamed for her brother, mindlessly throwing herself through the marketplace, running into people and stalls alike. Eyes wide and peeled, but somehow struggling to see anything.

Annie followed behind and grabbed Katya by the scruff of her coat, holding her in place. Too far gone, raving with fear, Katya thrashed against the other woman’s hold. But Annie was quick. She gripped the other woman’s arm, keeping it in its sleeve, and held fast to her opposite shoulder. 

She leaned in close and said: “Katya. Katya, breathe. We’ll find him. But you’re making a scene. The Enforcers will notice.”

A terrible choked cry pealed from the back of Katya’s throat. Her head swiveled, finally noticing the strange looks she was receiving. Noticed how an Enforcer’s helmet tilted in her direction. Before the officer could approach, Annie pulled her back into the crowd, back toward Beckett’s stall. 

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I need to find him!” Katya hissed, trembling and head swiveling about again.

“Her brother’s gone missing,” Annie explained. 

“Shit - “

“I’m gonna help look for him.”

“I need Silco,” Katya hiccuped. Tears were finally beginning to stream down her cheeks, shaken loose by the intense vibration of her whole body. “I need to find him.”

“Shhh, we’ll find him,” soothed Annie, rubbing her hands up and down Katya’s arms.

Beckett grimaced, and looked down at the crates he’d set up for sale. 

“Fuck it,” he decided. “Raggs’ll understand.”

He rounded the stall, pulling a cabby hat over his red hair. 

“I’ll go get Silco,” he said. “Which way did your brother go?”

Jaw chattering and tongue stiff, Katya told him what direction Viktor had allegedly headed in. He nodded, and hurried out of the market. Annie held tightly to Katya as they began striding in the opposite direction. Katya’s legs trembled, the energy within them fighting against Annie’s steady pace.

“We’ll find him,” she promised again. Then, a little, wry smile: “He couldn’t have gotten that far, could he?”

Despite the tactlessness, Katya knew Annie had a point. She nodded, and pressed forward.

Deciding a bird’s eye view may be beneficial, the two women took to the roofs. Katya’s usually swift feet were sloppy, her body weighed down by a sloshing gut. Her heart tapping an erratic rhythm in her chest. 

She was such an idiot. So selfish. Foolish. If only she’d stayed by his side!

You should be ashamed.

That is what Councilor Bone had said. And she was. She’d left her brother to satisfy her own want, and now he was gone. 

After jumping a few roofs, scanning the streets below, Annie made the suggestion to drop back down and ask people if they’d seen Viktor. Her mind too frantic a whirr of worry and self-loathing to think straight, Katya agreed.

They had made it a few blocks with no luck when Beckett reappeared, Silco in tow. He reached for Kat, pulling her into his chest and wrapping his arms tightly around her. Hidden within his jacket, she finally allowed herself a quick burst of a sob. Her fists balled up in his shirt, and they shook with how tightly she held.

“We’ll find him,” he promised. He drew her away from her shelter, and took her splotched face in his hands. When he was sure she was finally looking at him, he repeated: “We’ll find him.”

Silco pulled her forehead to his lips and held her again. Kat’s heart cramped. How could he sound so certain all the time? Usually, it soothed her. Today, it made her wince.

“Any sign?” Beckett asked. 

Annie shook her head. “Not yet.”

“He probably went back to the Oases,” Kat hoped. “He was upset that I was making us go - “

“Let’s head there then,” Silco said, grabbing her hand.

“You two take the South side,” Annie said. “We’ll take the North side, and work our way in.”

Kat swallowed, and wiped her eyes. “He - he won’t talk to you. He’s not supposed to speak with strangers.”

Viktor was good about following rules. Or so she had thought.

“Then if we see him, one of us will come find you. The other will keep an eye on him,” Beckett suggested.

Kat’s throat constricted too tightly for words. She nodded, and the pairs split.

Silco did not speak as they strode toward the South end of the Oases. And Kat was grateful for it. She didn’t want to talk. She just wanted to find Viktor and go home.

The South Oases were dryer than the north side. But the terrain was more level. Kat hoped that if Viktor had come back alone, that he’d have the sense to opt for the areas that were safer from him to travel unassisted.

But he wasn’t there. 

The further she and Silco traveled along the trickles of water and shallow pools, there was no sign of him. Not even uneven footprints and the drag marks of his crutch. With each step, and no evidence of her brother, Kat found it harder and harder to breathe.

Maybe he hadn’t returned to the Oases.

Or maybe that had been his intention, and someone grabbed him before - 

Kat slammed on her mental breaks, forbidding herself from fleshing out that thought.

As if sensing the distress in her mind, Silco reached out and squeezed her hand.

“We will find him, Kat.”

Her tongue was too thick, her jaw couldn’t move. She couldn’t meet his eye - 

“Hey!”

Both Kat and Silco jumped as Annie appeared, tumbling herself over a rock ledge just ahead. Her pale face was split into a wide grin, and Kat’s insides dared to tighten with hope.

“We spotted him! He’s near the northernmost edge of the canyon. Where the Oases begin to feed out into the Pilt.”

Kat did not question why Viktor would be that far out, nearing the docks and deeper water. She just ran. Ran as fast as she could, Silco and Annie tailing her. She didn’t slow down or stop, feet nearly flying beneath her. Adrenaline rushed through her veins, numbing any muscular ache; negating the need to stop and catch her breath. Somewhere in the very back of her mind she knew she’d be incredibly sore the next day.

She tore up the rocks as they appeared in her path. She sprinted past the turquoise and green lagoons. The children playing there looked over interestedly as three adults ran at breakneck speed through their playground.

When Beckett’s fiery fringe finally came into view, Kat fought to not shout for him. Instead, she grit her teeth, and barreled up the rock ledge he was perched on. They were barely in the canyon any longer. As Annie had said, the small rivers that ran from the Oases were spilling into the mouth of the Pilt. Not that far away to their right the Docks creaked and groaned as brackish water lapped at the soaked wood. Kat looked around frantically, panic still too great to actually see anything.

“He’s heading round those rocks,” Beckett said quietly, nodding his head to the left.

Her head whipped around, eyes bugging as she spied Viktor’s angled shoulders limping away. He was walking very close to the water’s edge, navigating the slick and uneven rocks and small tide pools. There was a basket tucked beneath his free arm. Something about it pricked Kat’s memory. As did when he stooped down to pick something up off a rock. He placed it in the basket, angled his crutch against a crack in the stone, and pushed himself back up. He continued to round the coastline.

She shouted for him just as a boat’s engine roared to life behind her, and as a wave splashed loudly around the rocks at Viktor’s feet. A worried cry broke from Kat’s throat, and she threw herself over the rock’s ledge. The drop was farther and steeper than she’d realized. Her unprepared legs buckled beneath her, and she skidded down, landing heavily on the ground below. She hissed, hands and knees stinging as gravel and grit bit into them.

“Kat!”

Silco slid down, landing next to her much more carefully.

“I’m fine,” she wheezed, brushing his hands away.

Blindly, she staggered back onto her feet, and stumbled in the direction Viktor had gone. She didn’t know if Silco, Annie, and Beckett followed her.

And, frankly, she didn’t care. 

Her boots slipped and splashed over the rocks and puddles between. By the time she’d gotten to the spot Viktor had been, he was already rounding the bend again, heading up a narrow path toward . . . A door?

So shocked by the sight, he’d already disappeared inside before she could call out for him again. The fear in her body changed. Going from a stabbing cold to a sick, oily feeling that coated the inside of her veins.

What was going on? What was Viktor doing?

She looked down at the rocks, eying the slippery streaks of purple algae coating them. A tide of confusion, worry, and fear rose in her chest. Katya clenched her jaw, and jogged up the path Viktor had taken, only vaguely aware that Silco, Annie, and Beckett were coming up behind her. 

Perhaps she should’ve been more quiet about it. More mindful, and sneaky. But, instead, Katya threw the door open and burst inside. 

“Viktor!”

Her brother jumped. The thing he was feeding purple algae to bleated and trilled. It took Katya a moment to recognize it as a waverider, large and pink. She’d never seen one in-person, much less up close, and the unknown of it sent self-preserving fear zinging up her spine.

The waverider’s frills and bulb-y spines on its back flared. Eyes darkening, it hissed and lunged. Without needing to think about it, Katya’s hand reached into her coat and whipped out the revolver. The creature kept advancing.

“No!” Viktor screamed.

With speed he didn’t know he was capable of, he managed to pull on the waverider and place himself between it and his sister. He hugged its face, holding it back as much as he was protecting it.

“No, don’t!” Viktor looked up over his shoulder at his sister, at the gun in her hand. “Don’t hurt her!”

The pleading look of horror in his eyes made Katya’s arm loosen, the barrel of the gun drifting. Her hand trembled.

“What is going on here?” A voice - monotone and reedy - asked.

A man stepped into a doorway that led to some other room beyond. Belatedly, Katya realized it was a room, and not a cavern she and her brother were in. Made from the surrounding stone, but the surfaces had been smoothed to a flat finish, sutured together with sharp corners. There were tables, the surfaces of which were covered in vials, flasks, scalpels, papers, a microscope, and purple flowers. More papers, covered in tiny, slanted handwriting, were tacked up on the walls. Crates with smudged labels were stacked about. Just to her right, Viktor’s boat was carefully propped against the wall.

What was this place? What had Viktor gotten himself into?

The man, gaunt and sallow, took another easy step forward, and Katya turned the nose of the revolver on him. Unnervingly, the man did not react.

“No!” Viktor cried again.

He closed the space between him and his sister, free arm clawing at her lifted one.

“No, Katya! Please! Stop!”

A low whine rumbled from the waverider. Katya’s eyes flicked from the man, to the creature, and back. 

Fear, confusion, anger. 

Vaguely, she became aware of someone just behind her. Silco had followed her in.

The waverider hissed and flared again. Silco stopped just short of Katya’s shoulder, eyes wide. As automatically as she had, he pulled a knife out of the hidden pocket of his trousers. Feeling outnumbered, the waverider growled and shuffled back.

“Put the weapons down,” the man said, utterly unphased by the intrusion. He continued walking to the longest table in the room, one hand sliding a locket into the pocket of his large coat. “They are not necessary. And are causing Rio undue stress.”

Katya’s free arm snapped out and forcefully gathered Viktor against her. He squeaked and gasped, crutch catching against the dirt floor. She refocused the sights of her revolver on the man, and bared her teeth.

“What are you doing with my brother?”

“Kat - “

“Be quiet!”

Viktor’s stomach dropped. Katya had never spoken to him like that. It made him freeze. His jaw snapped shut and his eyes went wide. He allowed her to hold him tightly, facing away from the Doctor and Rio. Then his eyes flicked up, looking beyond Katya’s shoulder, and saw the man she said wasn’t following them. Still too scared to move, Viktor remained still, but a kernel of heat sparked and smoked in the pit of his stomach.

“Young Viktor is assisting me in my work,” the Doctor replied evenly. 

“You think it appropriate to just gather young boys off the streets to assist you?”

Katya’s mind was a rabid beast, frothing and chomping sharp teeth in the stranger’s direction. It barely allowed her to wonder how he had found Viktor in the first place.

“I do not appreciate the insinuation, young lady.” Finally, the Doctor’s voice modulated, dropping into a displeased timbre. 

“Then don’t put yourself in the position,” she spat. The hand on Viktor squeezed tighter as she awkwardly tucked the gun back into her coat. “You are not to ever speak to my brother again. Or else I will not hesitate next time.”

The small flame of anger in Viktor’s belly faltered as dread took over. He wouldn’t be allowed back. He wouldn’t be able to see Rio. He’d be alone. Again. He pulled back against Katya’s hold.

“No! Please!”

Katya grabbed his arm and tried to tug him along. But Viktor braced his feet and crutch against the floor.

“Please, Kat!”

He’d never, ever seen her so mad. She was barely recognizable as she seethed down at him, gold eyes sparking and nostrils flaring. She tugged at his arm again, and he didn’t budge. Her face dropped into dark seriousness, and before Viktor could stop her, she stooped and gathered him up in her arms. 

Viktor’s stomach lifted at the sudden height change. Then shame and panic set in. He hadn’t needed to be carried in years. He didn’t need to be carried. He wasn’t a baby, a child. And he didn’t want to leave! 

His cheeks blistered and he squirmed against the solid hold she had on him.

“No! Please!”

He felt tears burning at his eyes, gathering on his lids. The embarrassment grew hotter, less manageable.

“Grab his boat,” she commanded the not-a-stranger man.

He jolted, eyes busy drinking in the room. Deftly, he sheathed the knife back into his trousers, and grabbed the boat. He spared the strange man and the waverider one last look before he followed Katya out the door.

Viktor fought less as he was carried back outside. His stomach dropped again when he saw two other people standing nearby. A woman – Katya’s ‘patient’ – and a man. They looked at him with worried, but relieved eyes. He was mortified. Now, three people had seen his sister haul him off like an incapable child. A desperate need to regain control took over his body. He wriggled madly in Katya’s arms.

“Put me down!”

His sister grunted as his thrashing loosened her grip, and caused her to stumble. In order to catch herself, Katya awkwardly began to lower him to the ground.

Neither brother nor sister was sure what happened next. If it was intentional or an accident. Both were too lost in their own hurricane of emotions; their anger at the other, to see or think clearly. But as Katya set a distressed Viktor on his feet, his arm swung his crutch into her face, and knocked her down. 

Katya grunted as she fell on her backside, one hand covering her nose. The heat that had been driving Viktor suddenly disappeared, and he became horribly cold as he looked down at his sister. His eyes were wide, mouth agape though he was not breathing. He felt utterly frozen. 

The couple stared, shocked and quiet. Their eyes searing pinpricks against Viktor’s skin.

“Kat!” The not-stalker cried.

He attempted to go to her, but Katya’s patient grabbed his arm, stopping him. 

Kat. 

Beneath the icy humiliation coating Viktor’s insides, that little flicker of anger breathed back to life.

Katya stared up at him, eyes wide with shock. Slowly, she pulled her hand away from her face and looked at it. There was blood. Her nose was bleeding. Viktor’s stomach twisted. He bit the inside of his lip until he tasted metal. 

Katya’s eyes darkened and sunk into their sockets. She sniffed and wiped her nose on her coat sleeve before standing up. Her legs wobbled. She and Viktor stared - glared - at one another. After a beat, she held a hand out, prompting the man to give her the boat. Slowly, he did. She didn’t look at him, or the others.

“Leave us,” she whispered to them, eyes still on her brother. “Thank you for your help. I can handle it from here.”

The lithe man with the hooked nose didn’t move initially. But then, Katya’s patient came over, and gently tugged him back. Slowly, the three of them, each glancing back periodically at Katya and Viktor, trekked down the path and round the bend of the coastline, disappearing.

The siblings continued to stare at each other for several agonizing seconds. Above, sea birds squawked shrilly. Around them, the water crashed and lapped at the shoreline. 

“We are going home, Viktor,” Katya finally said. “We will talk about this there.”

She adjusted his boat against her hip, and started toward the shore. When he didn’t follow, she spun, and stalked up to him. A thin trickle of blood oozed down her upper lip.

“Walk, or I will carry you.”

The flame in Viktor’s belly sparked and swelled. His brow hunkered low over his eyes, lips spinning down in a deep frown. He kicked his crutch out and pushed past Katya. After a few steps, he heard the crunch of her boots behind him.

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Coming Up Next: Katya and Viktor bash heads. Katya doubts herself.

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[kikiiswashere]

Children of Zaun Snippet - Selfish

Silco and Kat have a post-mortem following a meeting with the rebellion.

Children of Zaun

(Art by me. Uncensored version on my Patreon)

“There are sulfur pots deeper in the cave where the Springs are,” Kat said.

She nuzzled closer, her cheekbone rubbing against Silco’s neck, her left hand idly playing with the fingers of the arm wrapped around her shoulders. A low hum vibrated in his chest as he brought his other arm behind his head. He stared up at her bedroom ceiling in thought.

“Charcoal is easy enough to come by.”

“So is saltpeter,” he added. “It’s crusting every smokestack in Zaun.”

Silence fell between them. Then a thought curled Kat’s lips.

“It is ironic that Topside would shove us underground, only to give us the tools for their own undoing.”

A darkly amused sound huffed in Silco’s chest.

“They’ll choke on their own blood and hubris,” he whispered. “We’ll show them.”

The same warmth from the meeting swelled in Kat’s chest. It felt weighty with righteousness, her lungs struggling a bit under the emotion.

Suddenly, she sat up and made to straddle Silco’s waist. He started at her abrupt movement, but quickly settled back into the pillows. The blazing earnestness in her eyes held him in place. She hinged forward and kissed him, and he reached up to touch her cheek. When she straightened, the hand ghosted over her bare breast and rested on the ribs beneath it. She smiled at him, the dim green glow of the streetlamps outside cutting her into a beautiful shape. Then her smile lessened. Her eyes broke from his gaze and looked to the window.

“What is it?”

Silco watched the muscles in her jaw flex under the chartreuse light as she decided how to articulate whatever she was thinking.

“I have to get Viktor tomorrow.”

A low, short hum rumbled in Silco’s throat. His thumb swept over the mole beneath the swell of her breast. Kat disappeared from his side when she had her brother under her wing. He saw nothing of her between Friday afternoon and Monday morning.

“I will not lie,” she said, “the tenser things between Zaun and Piltover become, the more I am worried. I know there is no way forward without violence, but I am scared something may happen to him.”

Silco gently pet her flank, trying to decide what was best and truest to say.

“You cannot hide him from this forever.”

Kat’s brows pinched. “I am not hiding him. He knows there is unrest – “

“That’s not what I am talking about.”

She said nothing for a long moment. Then sighed, “I am not ready to tell him that I am a part of this. I am not ready to tell him anything.”

Her eyes sheepishly found his in the dark, the subtext of that statement settling heavy between them. She did not want Viktor involved in this part of her life – not the Children, not Enyd, not Silco.

Not yet.

Silco did not fight her on it. It wasn’t his decision to make. Viktor was her family, her responsibility. If Kat felt it was safest for him to be kept separate for the time-being, it wasn’t his place to insist otherwise.

Even so, he asked: “When will you?”

“When our freedom is on the horizon,” she said with a smile. Then, her expression sobered. “Or when I absolutely have to.”

Silco’s lips thinned and he nodded once, his eyes breaking away from hers. Kat reached out, running the back of her fingers down his cheek and over the scar on his lip.

“He is eleven. I want him to be a child as much as he can be. I know it is a privilege most Zaunite children do not get to have, but if I can offer some semblance of youth to him, I will. I want him to have better than I did. In every way. You understand?”

He did. Of course he did. A long sigh softened Silco’s body, and he leaned into her hand.

“I understand. I am selfish, and miss you on the weekends.”

Kat’s mouth quirked into a grin. She leaned over to kiss him, her hand threading through the ebony tangle of his hair.

How easily they fell into one another. Her plushness and his angles slotting together perfectly. How much sweeter would it be once Zaun was free, when their angst lifted and floated away on a sea breeze?

She could not wait.

“I miss you, too,” Kat whispered, pulling back. Then that mischievous, secret glint flashed in her eyes. “Shall I give you something to remember me by?”

Silco’s own eyes darkened, his pupils swallowing any of the faint light filtering into the room. A wolfish grin lifted the corners of his mouth.

“Like I said: I am selfish. I will gladly take whatever you’ll give me.”

“And then some.”

“And then some,” he agreed.

She matched his smile before spinning around, diving head first beneath the covers. Silco’s large hands gripped her hips firmly, and pulled her to his mouth just as her lips wrapped around him.

[kikiiswashere]

Children of Zaun - Chapter 32

Loners

Pairing: Silco/Fem!OC

Rating: Explicit

Story Warnings: Canon typical violence, drug use/dealing, dark themes, smut

Chapter Summary: Kat's busy, so Viktor's goes out by himself to take his boat for a spin.

Author's Note: Bright Yule, all! Hello again to all the new followers of this little blog of mine, and thank you for being here. My holiday gift is this next chunky chapter 💗

Previous Chapter

Word Count: 7.8K

When Kat’s eyes cracked open, she saw the dim, orange glow of light outlining the jamb of Silco’s bedroom door. Signaling that Enyd was already up. If she had managed to sleep at all. Several nights over the past few weeks, the ferocity of her coughing and retching hadn’t allowed for more than a couple hours of rest at a time. It left the already haggard woman exhausted, her throat raw, and her voice the soft crackle of a dwindling fire. Weak and smokey.

Kat shifted beneath Silco’s arm, and he grunted, muscles flexing and drawing her in closer.

“It’s time to get up, Silco.”

He mumbled something into her hair that she’d since learned was ‘Not yet’.

“There is going to be a delivery of supplies to the clinic today. I need to be there to receive it.”

His body stilled in consideration. Finally, his arm relaxed and she sat up, twisting to face him. In the shadows of the dark room, the angles of his face appeared sharper. They cut against the softness of the pillow beneath his head, hair an ink spill over the light color of the case’s fabric. She reached down and brushed some strands away from his eyes. It was getting so long.

A blue eye cracked open and squinted up at her.

“What?”

Kat smiled sleepily, and dipped down to kiss the summit of his cheekbone.

“Nothing. You’re just handsome.”

There was something about the mornings, when it was just them and a tangled-up sheet. Before they had to open that door and march into the world. Ready to live, lead, and fight. For a few brief, waking moments nothing else existed.

Silco shifted his head against the pillow, setting both eyes upon her. Even in the dark of the bedroom, she saw the color on his cheeks shift, and a careful-not-to-be-too-pleased smile on the edges of his mouth. Kat leaned down and pressed a kiss to it, before suddenly slipping away as his arms attempted to ensnare her and draw her back into the covers. Kat laughed quietly as his arms flopped on to the bed, heavy in defeat. She gently padded toward the dresser her clothes were left on, and began changing out of her pajamas.

Silco unraveled himself from the sheets, grabbed his cigarette tin from the bedside table, and shuffled to the window. The light that filled the bedroom as he drew back the ratty curtain was grey and watery. Soft enough that the brightness did not sting, clear enough that Kat could easily thumb the buttons of her trousers through their eyelets. 

Silco cracked the window open, the sounds and smells of Zaun gently wafting into the room. He struck a match against the sandpaper within the tin of the case, and lit a cigarette. With a sleepy sigh, he leaned out the window.

Kat shrugged into her blouse, fingers making quick work of the button-front. Her vest was next, the chain of her papa’s pocket watch catching the light in a joyful twinkle. Tying her hair up in a ponytail, she crossed over to Silco. 

“You are going to have to tie this back soon,” she said, tucking his hair behind an ear. Goose pimples rose on his skin as her fingers traced lightly down his neck and shoulder.

He hummed in response, sucking a long drag from the cigarette. The paper was eaten away by a wriggling orange line, and the ash blew away on a soft breeze. 

“You don’t want to get it caught in any of the machinery at work.”

Silco lifted his eyebrows in a ‘that’s true’ fashion. Leaning farther out the window, he blew a mouthful of smoke into the air, and crushed the end of the cigarette against the bricks of the building. Standing back into the room, he pulled the window shut and turned to Kat. 

“Any spares, perhaps?” he asked, reaching out and running his fingers through the thick waves of her ponytail. 

“In my coat, probably. I’ll get you one before we leave.”

Kat left Silco in his bedroom to change, and ventured into the apartment. She heard Enyd before she saw her. A steady, wheezing drone whistling from the living room. She dipped her fingers into the pockets of her coat, searching for a spare elastic, before continuing.

The older woman was propped up in her rocking chair, pillow wedged behind her head, a large drop cloth spread over her lap. She held a section of the fabric up to the light at her side, stitching a long, red swatch to it with aching precision. Her eyes flicked over to Kat as she stepped into the room, a smile stretching her face.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning, Enyd.” 

Kat’s eyes gave a cursory glance around Enyd’s immediate space. A water glass on the end table, her medicine (woefully low) next to it; no signs of bloody rags or a sick bucket. Then she looked at the project in Enyd’s lap. A flag. Zaun’s flag. She’d been working on it for a few weeks, desperate to keep herself busy as her ability to consistently leave the apartment lessened. Enyd had presented the idea to Kat and Silco one evening, along with a few rough sketches of a design and emblem.

“Every nation needs a flag,” she’d insisted.

And she wasn’t wrong. Kat couldn’t decide whether to inspect the drawings Enyd was showing them, or to stare at Silco’s utterly entranced face as he took in his mother’s work. Enyd had come such a long way from initially scolding him that one night at Vander’s, to creating the crest of their nation. He’d excitedly taken her sketches to The Last Drop the next day to confer with Vander. 

The two men talked for hours, mulling over the scraps of paper, piecing together different facets of the drawings until the final draft emerged. The emblem for the Nation of Zaun: A ‘N’ and ‘Z’ artfully combined in a strong tower, against a backdrop of blue and red whorls meant to pay homage to Oshra Va’Zaun and Lady Janna.

“Did you sleep?” Kat asked, taking a step closer. It didn’t seem like Enyd had made much progress from where she had stopped the night prior. Hopefully meaning – 

“Yes. Better than I have the past few nights.”

“How long have you been up?”

Enyd blinked, rubbing at her eyes before glancing at the clock on the wall.

“Only about an hour. Is Silco up?”

“He is getting dressed. I’ll make you some tea and breakfast.”

“Oh, Kat. You don’t have to do that. I can – “

Enyd slipped her needle through the flag to keep from losing it, and began to carefully gather the fabric up.

“No, no,” Kat insisted. She placed a hand on Enyd’s shoulder. “Really, I got it.”

The older woman looked up at her, eyes simultaneously grateful and abashed. She settled into the pillow behind her head, and lifted up her sewing again as Kat went to the kitchen. 

Enyd’s kitchen had become as familiar as her own. She moved swiftly between either side of the galley. The kettle went on the top right burner, as it was the one that got hottest most quickly. Tea was tucked away in the cupboard above the hood. Mugs were in the second cupboard that faced the stove, along with the plates. Bread was kept in the box below those cupboards. The bread knife and other silverware were tucked in the middle drawer beneath the butcher block counter. The drawer stuck if one did not lift the handle first and give it a gentle, but firm, yank. The marmalade was in the icebox door, next to the yeast.

Like seeing her and Silco’s clothes drying next to one another, the way Kat easily moved about the kitchen was honey-sweet comfort. A warm blanket that wrapped around her heart. 

She heard Silco enter the living room as she began slicing bread. Then, gentle and loving ‘good mornings’ shared between mother and son, before he appeared in the kitchen, Enyd’s water glass in hand. He went to the sink and filled it. The kettle began to warble. Silco reached over and turned the flame beneath down.

“Go ahead and take the bread over,” he said. “I’ll make the tea.”

“I’ll take the water, too.”

Silco handed her the fresh glass before turning his attention to the box of tea and mugs, and Kat walked over to the kitchen table, placing the bread and water glass down. 

Enyd knotted off the thread, and slid her needle snugly into the drop cloth’s weave for safekeeping. Gently setting her work on the floor, she gripped the arms of her chair and pressed up to her feet. Kat watched her carefully, body tightening like a spring. Ready to leap forward should Enyd look at all unsteady. But the older woman managed to the table just fine, though the plop into her seat was a little graceless. Kat slathered a slice of bread with marmalade, set it on a plate, and handed it to Enyd. She murmured her thanks as Kat went to prepare her own breakfast. Silco appeared, placing mugs of tea in front of his mother and Kat, before returning to the kitchen to grab his own.

As he took his own seat, Kat frowned as she scraped the sides of the marmalade jar with a knife.

“Do you - “

“You can finish it up,” he said, sipping at his tea.

Enyd watched as Kat slid the scant amount over her bread, lips pursing.

“I can go to the market today to see if I can find more.”

“Don’t, mum. The marketplaces barely have staples, muchless condiments.” Silco gave her a reassuring smile as he tore a piece of bread from his slice and popped it in his mouth. “We’ll be able to get marmalade soon enough. And butter. And cheese.”

Enyd returned the smile weakly, before tucking her head into the crook of her elbow and coughing. It passed quickly, and she waved Kat off before the young woman could assist her in any way. 

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” With a quivering hand, Enyd grabbed for her water glass. She took careful sips, her face softening with each one.

“There is a delivery coming to the clinic today,” Kat said. “I will grab another bottle of decongestant. We - we could also try some anti-inflammatories, too. See if that helps at all.”

Enyd’s knee-jerk reaction was to turn down the offer. Out of humbleness, out of fear. But she’d since learned to not fight against Kat’s insistence. Especially when Silco backed her up. Even if Enyd said ‘no’, she knew Kat would bring them to her anyway.

Kat’s eyes lifted to the wall clock, and she grunted, biting her bread. She took a few large gulps of tea and made to stand.

“That delivery will be there shortly. I should head out. Oh, here.”

She held out her wrist to Silco, presenting the black elastic wrapped around it. He blinked, then was jolted back to what she had said in the bedroom.

He peeled it off her arm. “Thank you.”

Smoothing his wavy hair across his skull, and gathering its bulk at the nape of his neck, he tied it off. Kat’s eyes were warm as she took him in. Sighing, she folded the rest of her bread and took it up in one hand, as the other went to gently rest on the side of Silco’s neck. She used the contact as a counter-balance to hold her upright as she dipped to kiss him. She rounded the table and kissed Enyd’s head. 

“Be safe,” Enyd called as Kat walked toward the door.

“I will be.” She twirled her coat over her shoulders, and opened the door. “See you both tonight.”

The delivery arrived. Kat had the crates stacked and lined up against the wall across from the reception desk. She attached two invoices to a clipboard: the one that accurately reflected the amount of goods in the crates, and the one she’d forged to represent what would be stocked in the clinic’s stores. It was a strategy she’d never done before these last few orders, instead just sneakily slipping bottles and bandages here and there. But with this large of a job, the hard copies of paperwork would help shield her from any suspicion.

She hoped that no miners would come by. The only face she wanted to see peek through the clinic door was Sevika, who would arrive about an hour before Will was due to start. She would tuck a large portion of the confiscated goods in a hollow-bottomed trash bin, and wheel it out of the mine. She would meet Brothers and Sisters near the mine’s refuse trenches and divvy up the supplies among them to take to The Last Drop.

She’d had the foresight after Snowdown to convince the board to stock up on medicine and materials, arguing that the previous cold season they’d been woefully short on supplies. They had ended up being unable to contend with a flare of Fissure Fever that had broken out in the barracks. And subsequently spread to the tunnels. Sixty-two children, twenty-two men, and forty-five women died by the time the Cold broke.

Of course, the loss of life meant little to the Piltovan Board and Rynweaver. So, Kat spun the clinic’s need for preemptive supplies to the tune of the bottom line. If less miners got sick, more miners could work. If more miners could work, the more business the mine could do. A simple deflection, but a successful one. The board greenlit Kat to triple the order of supplies for the cold season. However, due to the intensity of the weather this past cold season and with the continued scrutiny over goods entering the Undercity, the shipments had been parsed out and delayed. Only two of the three orders arrived during the cold months; this was the last one.

Luckily, there had been no major illness outbreak this past Snowdown. And, luckily, that was not the reason Kat had requested the large orders.

More and more weapons were coming in from black market dealers, pirates, and morally dubious traders. Mek and several other augmenteers kept their forges burning bright at all hours, crafting weapons from metal scraps. Creating domed bullet heads and chrome-colored casings. 

In very, very small amounts, the Brothers and Sisters who had access to it were carefully smuggling gunpowder out of the mine. They’d scoop it up in random glass vials and jars, small enough that it wasn’t apparent on their person, and whisk it away to Augmentation Alley. There, blacksmiths became munitioners and assembled bullets. 

To compensate for the minimal amounts of prepared gunpowder, Brothers and Sisters began assembling the ingredients Enyd had listed weeks ago. Those who happened to be chimney sweeps gathered crusts of saltpeter in their satchels while they worked. Everyone who had access to a wood burning stove saved the charred remains left in their hearths. Kat showed Annie and Beckett where the Springs were, and the pair had been leading small crews to the caves to collect chunks of sulphur.

The collected hodge-podge of materials were brought to the Drop. The days Enyd was well enough to venture from her home, she taught the Children how to combine the trinity together, and oversaw the process. Never once did she think being a Slipper would be anything but a killing curse. Using the skills that had been forced upon her by Piltover to rend their own misfortune allowed her to remember what sweetness tasted like.

And in preparing for the inevitable fight, Kat spent Piltovan coin on supplies that would help heal and protect Zaunites injured in the fray. She’d nearly cackled and kissed Rynweaver’s signature at the bottom of the permit when it arrived in her hands. Instead, she folded it up and kept it in her coat as a keepsake.

Kat’s shift was blessedly quiet. Allowing her all the time to intake and craftily organize supplies. Most new items would stay in the clinic. The ‘extras’ she set aside, using empty boxes to hold them. She also stuffed a few items in her coat. Most of it would go to the stocks in the Drop’s walls. The rest she would bring to her clients.

Just as she closed the lid on the final box that was destined for The Last Drop, Sevika showed up with the trash bin. Together, they shoved the supplies snugly into the bin’s hollow bottom. The door snapped shut with a quick tug. Any sign of the door’s outline was hidden beneath the coarse texture of rust. Corroded metal barely received a first-glance, muchless a second one, in Zaun.

“Be careful.”

“‘Course.” Sevika winked and beamed her endearingly cocky smile.

Kat watched her friend go until she turned the corner and headed for the lift.

The rest of Kat’s time passed quietly. She was grateful for that. The absence of hubbub, sirens, and Enforcers meant Sevika had pulled her job off successfully.

It also gave her more time to finish stocking the storeroom. To make it seem fuller than it actually was. Like the window dressers that tended to the boutiques in Main Spring Crescent, Kat placed items in the cabinets and drawers just so. Absolutely no suspicion would be roused. 

A few minutes before the shift bell sounded, Silco swaggered into the clinic. Kat popped her head out from the supply closet, mouth drawing into a bright smile at the sight of him.

“That time already?”

“Already? Were you just having so much fun pilfering Topside that you lost track of time?” Silco cheekily asked.

Kat laughed, and stepped out of the closet, clipboard in hand. She set it on the reception desk, and sauntered over to him.

“I do love taking from them,” she cooed. Placing a hand on his chest, she lifted onto the toes of her boots. Mouth but a scant couple inches in front of his, she said, “It is a nice change of pace.”

There was a grin on Silco’s lips. It existed only for a moment. The tease of Kat so close to him too strong of a thing to keep from kissing her. She met him half-way with a small tug on his shirt. Her other hand wove its way up into his hair. Still in its knot from the morning. 

Silco’s tongue appeared in her mouth, his arms around her hips. His fingertips grazing the top of her ass. She welcomed him with a tilt of her head and a firmer press of her lips. He responded in kind, until it was difficult to know where he stopped and she began. 

The kiss slowed before it grew irrevocably frenzied. Kat loosened the grip on his shirt, and dropped back onto her feet. He grinned down at her, expression ever so slightly dazed.

“Let me grab the medicine. I left it in the closet. Then I’ll grab my coat and we’ll go.”

She patted his chest, went back to the supply closet, and pulled a brown glass bottle of decongestant and a tin of anti-inflammatories from the shelves. Closing the door behind her, Kat handed Silco the two medicines before going to grab her coat off the rack. 

“Excuse me?”

Silco started and spun around. He’d forgotten to shut the clinic door upon arriving, allowing Will to appear with no announcing sounds.

Will’s face dropped into an expression one might make when discovering shit on their shoe.

“Silco.”

Kat had finally given them a perfunctory introduction after the eighth time he had come to pick her up after work. Will had eyed him suspiciously, like he always had. Silco regarded him with a disdainful eye; Kat had told him about Will cautioning her about the Children. Silco had no time and little respect for someone trying to convince the fight out of someone.

“Will.”

“Hello, Will,” Katya said as she stepped over, gently adjusting her coat as she went. “I did the intake of the supplies. Could you call someone to come get the crates?”

Will didn’t answer her. His eyes were focused on Silco’s hands.

“What do you have there?”

The medic knew very well what Silco had. Decongestant and anti-inflammatories. But why did he have containers of each in his hands?

Will’s small eyes traveled over to Katya. He furrowed his brow, and used the knuckle of his index finger to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “We don’t give patients entire bottles of medicine, Katya. You know that.”

It was Silco’s first instinct to tell the man to mind his own fucking business. But Kat pressed a hand to his shoulder, short-circuiting any hasty reaction. She fixed Will with a firm look.

“Yes, I know that. But a family member of his is very ill, and needs the help.”

“Over half of the Undercity needs help!” Will hissed in a harried voice. He closed the door behind him, and spun back to her. “And you can’t go giving away medicine that doesn’t belong to you. You could get into big trouble. We could get into big trouble!”

Katya frowned. “We won’t get into trouble. I’ll make sure of it. Silco’s mother suffers from the Lung Blight she developed working in these mines. This - “ she gestured to the medicine in Silco’s hands “ - is the least Topside can do.”

“Katya,” Will whined. “This isn’t going to end well - “

“She just told you that there’ll be no trouble,” Silco snapped. “So, unless you want there to be trouble, I suggest shutting your mouth.”

Will stared up at Silco, expression livid. His lips turned downward, as his eyebrows and nose pinched together. His hand lashed out, and pushed Silco’s shoulder.

“You’re a bad influence!”

Silco snarled and went to lunge forward. Kat jockeyed between the two men, a firm hand to Silco’s chest and a gentle elbow against Will’s collarbones.

“Just stop,” she demanded. “Drop it.” She focused her attention on Will. “I am giving him the medicine because it is the right thing to do. No one will know.”

Gently, Kat guided Silco around Will, toward the clinic door. Silco tucked the bottles into his shirt, and didn’t spare the other man a second glance as he and Kat disappeared into the hallway.

Viktor held tight to the clunky model boat tucked under his arm as he and Miss Ivy waited for Kat to pick him up. He’d finished this first proto-type earlier in the week, and could not wait to show her. Miss Ivy had already ‘ooh-ed’ and ‘aah-ed’ over it when she came to gather him at his dorm. 

“It’s spectacular, Viktor,” she had said, gently tapping one of the paddle-wheels.

“I’m going to take it for a test-drive this weekend.”

“I’m sure it will go swimmingly.”

She winked at him. Viktor’s cheeks warmed, and he carefully placed his boat into the shelter of his free arm. Miss Ivy took up his rucksack, and together they traveled to the Bridge.

Kat was prompt per usual. Grinning at him as she walked up, her eyes widened at the machine in his arm. Viktor gnawed on the inside of his lower lip in anticipation. He limped forward once she was a few feet away, carefully adjusting the boat against his hip.

“Is this it?” Kat gasped excitedly. “The SS Viktor?”

She held out her hands, and Viktor allowed her to take up the boat. He bathed in the look of awe and pride on her face, in the small little exclamations that escaped her mouth as she turned the boat this way and that.

“I am not going to name it that,” he mumbled, a rosy tint on his cheeks, an awkward smile tugging his lips. 

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Ivy gushed.

The joy in Katya’s face melted into stony protectiveness as the aide stepped forward. Gingerly, she handed the boat back to her brother.

“It is.” 

The agreement was cool. A small wince crinkled the corners of Ivy’s eyes. Katya held her hand out, and Ivy handed Viktor’s bag to her. Without a ‘thank you’, the brunette shouldered it, and encouraged her brother to begin the journey back home.

“Have a good weekend, Miss Ivy,” he called over his shoulder.

The discomfort on her face morphed quickly back into a kind expression.

“You too, Viktor. See you Monday!”

���See you Monday!”

“Come along, Viktor,” Katya murmured. 

She softly grazed her fingers over his cheek to redirect his gaze away from Piltover, and toward the Undercity. 

Once situated in the conveyor car, Viktor settled the boat on his lap, small hands wrapped securely around it. The other passengers eyed it and him curiously, but kept to themselves. Not that he would’ve noticed; the attention of his bright eyes and clever fingers held completely by his creation. 

“Were you able to figure out the motor?”

His sister’s voice was the one thing that could draw him away from the boat. Viktor’s head snapped up to look at her. The interest in her eyes warmed him.

“Yes, and no,” he admitted, looking back at the boat. A finger pet agitatedly at a slot near the helm. His lips thinned. “The motor needs to be cranked. The key is in my bag. So, it is renewable energy in a sense. But not self-sustaining.”

Kat chuckled, and pet a hand over his head. 

“That is still very good.”

“I want to test it out,” he said, eyes big and pleading. “Can we go to the Oases tomorrow? Please?”

Kat blinked, fingering the duck-tailed curls at the nape of his neck. The conveyor car’s engine rumbled to life, and the cab jerked as it began its descent. Viktor kept his eyes on her the whole time. Bright and hungry and deserving.

She smiled softly. “Yes. Alright.”

Viktor barely slept that night. His mind vibrating with images of his boat pleasantly chugging through water, formulas of acceleration and fluid mechanics dancing behind his eyelids. He leapt out of bed the moment he heard Kat shuffling about the apartment. He dressed in a whirlwind, particularly grateful that his brace was so much easier to slip on and set in place. Shirt only partially tucked in, he staggered excitedly into the hall, and shuffled toward the kitchen on clumsy socked feet.

“Careful,” Kat chuckled as he damn-near tumbled into the table. 

Viktor sucked in an excited breath the way children do - one wet sounding around the edges, as if they’re about to salivate around their joy - and shoved himself into his seat. He’d left the boat and his notebook on the table the night before. He pulled the items closer, eyes sparkling, and flipped the notebook open.

He heard Kat chuckle beneath her breath before she stepped over from the stove, and placed a hot mug of tea at his side.

“Don’t spill.”

“I won’t!”

His sister returned to the stove, and continued preparing their bowls of oatmeal. Viktor continued pouring over his notes, periodically mumbling to himself, and looking up at his boat. His breakfast appeared before him with a sudden clunk, oats thickly sloshing about within the bowl. Kat took up her seat beside him, and carefully moved the boat back to the center of the table.

“Eat, Viktor.”

Reluctantly, he closed his notebook and set it aside, tugging the bowl in front of him. Internally, his mind tantrumed a bit from having to be pulled away from its preferred activity, but he knew the faster he dealt with breakfast, the faster he’d get to the Oases. That was motivation enough to keep him from grumbling. Kat knew this, and smiled to herself as her brother tore through his oats and tea. 

When the bowl was empty, Viktor pushed it away, reached for his crutch, and hauled himself to his feet.

“I’m going to go brush my teeth!”

Kat glowed under his excitement, gathering their breakfast dishes, and bringing them to the sink.

Just as she finished washing them up, Viktor enthusiastically trundled back from the washroom. He made for the kitchen table to gather the boat, heart pattering excitedly at the thought of getting to test it out for the first time. 

Then, Viktor was unfairly pulled from his boyish excitement by surprising, rapid knocks at the apartment door. He looked to Kat - whose own face conveyed her confusion - to the door, and back to his sister. The knocks started up again. Frowning, Kat set the dish towel in her hand on the counter, and made for the door. She peered through the peephole, and Viktor watched as the color drained from her face. Her eyes flicked to him before pulling the door chain loose and unlocking the deadbolt. Opening the door only enough so she could slip outside, Viktor saw the silhouette of the visitor slink back to make space for her. She pulled the door mostly closed behind her, and he heard her hurriedly whisper. There was concern in her tone, though he could not make out the words. A voice, a man who sounded distraught, answered. A pause. Then his sister murmured an answer. 

She whisked back inside and closed the door. Turning to face him, Viktor felt his heart splatter to his feet. The heat of unfairness prickled his round cheeks. 

Despite having some idea of what Katya was about to say, he still asked: “What’s going on?”

She sighed, stepping toward him. “I’m so sorry, Viktor. Something has happened, and I need to go help someone.”

Viktor’s eyes, burning with tears he refused to let form, flicked to the door. Then back to his sister.

“Who? What happened?”

“It’s not anything you need to worry yourself with. If I am back before it is dark, we will go to the Oases. If not today, tomorrow - “

“But - !”

“Viktor, please.” Katya crouched low and grabbed his shoulders. “A . . friend of mine who is sick had a fall. She needs someone to check on her. Please.”

Viktor’s lower lip jutted forward, and he averted his gaze. Waves of anger roiled in his body. Flotsam and jetsam of disappointment and hurt frothed under his skin. Stiltedly, he nodded. Katya’s hands softened in relief as she leaned forward to kiss his forehead.

Then she whisked away. 

As she shrugged into her coat, she said, “I’ll be back as quickly as I can. Do not leave the apartment. Yes?”

Viktor opened his mouth to respond, but his voice hitched in the back of his throat. His jaw snapped shut, and he nodded instead.

Katya’s shoulders slumped. Remorse bled over her face.

“I am sorry, Viktor. I will try to be back as soon as possible.”

Lips pulling into a tight, tight line, Viktor looked away and nodded again.

“I love you,” Katya promised. 

He mumbled it back, and she stole out the door. In the brief moment before it shut, Viktor got a peek of a tall figure with black hair and pale skin.

Then he was alone.

Again.

Finally, the tears escaped his eyes, streaming in near-unstoppable rivers down his cheeks. He limped back to his seat, laid his head down on his notebook, and cried. And cried. He didn’t know what he was feeling. Anger, yes. Disappointment, for sure. But those emotions did not quite fit in the cracks of his heart. There was something deeper there. Something that wrenched at his gut and strained his bones.

Eventually, his anger became hotter; drying up the tears from his eyes and burning his face. He lifted his head up, and glared at the boat in front of him. It sat cock-eyed on the table, as if it were asking a question. 

Viktor sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. His brain was beginning to buzz, an agitation fizzing under his skin. The insatiable need to do something. The strange, foreign sensation of defiance thrummed in his chest. He looked over at the clock, then the window. Then the boat. Then the door.

He knew how to get to the Oases. And he wasn’t nearly as fragile as his sister and teachers at school treated him. He knew how to move his body, he knew his home-city, and he was eleven. Twelve soon! Other fissure children scurried about on their own far earlier!

Viktor decided. He would go to the Oases himself. With any luck, he would be back before Katya. If not . . . Well, then, she’d know where to find him.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Viktor shoved himself out of his chair, grabbed the boat and made sure its key was still in his pocket, and left the apartment.

While he knew the way to the Oases, it felt strange traveling there alone. An odd cocktail of sadness and excitement swirled inside him as he limped through the Lanes. Most did not even acknowledge him as they walked by. Those that did, did not look at him like they were wondering why he was alone. 

Viktor’s chin lifted higher, and he pressed on.

His confidence wavered slightly as he descended the incomplete iron steps that led down to the tributaries and lagoons of the Oases. It wasn’t graceful, but he and his boat managed to clamber down in one piece. 

As he carefully hobbled down the soft sandstone, high squeals and excited whoops echoed off the rocks and retention walls. Nerves dared to sully his feeling of independence, and he shuffled as quickly as he could past one of the larger lagoons. He glanced over his shoulder as he went, and spied four or five children splashing about in the oil-slicked water.

He followed the stream that led to the Springs down deeper into the small valley. Sidling up to the bank, Viktor sat down, placing his boat and crutch on either side of him. The water before him trickled pleasantly, softly lapping at the light beige stone. He fished the turnkey from his pocket, and pulled the boat into his lap. Nerves began to dance under his skin again, but this time in anticipation. It was time to see if his creation worked!

The small, metal key slid into the slot easily. Viktor turned it. The gears within clicked and clacked as they were supposed to, and Viktor’s concerns began shifting into careful elation. He turned it again. More lovely mechanized sounds issued from under the boat’s hull.

Viktor turned and turned and turned the key, winding up the mechanism that would spin the paddle wheels and propel the boat through the water. 

Next to him, the shadow of the rock ledge above grew and shifted. Viktor saw it in his periphery, and glanced up. He half-expected to see Katya, but instead a young girl peered down at him. A slip of a thing with tan skin, dark, unruly hair pulled back into a ponytail, and green eyes that glittered with interest in the day’s sun.

She didn’t say anything, and nor did he. The girl eyed him and his boat curiously, and he found himself unable to look away. He didn’t have any friends his own age. His throat went dry and his heartbeat quickened under her scrutiny. Nervous she’d stay; nervous she’d leave.

Under his fingers, Viktor felt the motor fight the last turn of the key. Wrenching it out, the boat vibrated lightly and whirred. The paddle wheels began spinning. He glanced down, a thrill rippling up his arms. Aware that the girl was still watching him, Viktor looked back up at her. Was she going to say something?

“Sky!” A voice called from over the cliffs. One of the other children back by the lagoon.

Sky’s eyebrows lifted, and she turned to climb back towards her friends. She threw him one last glance over her shoulder before disappearing over the other side of the rocks. Viktor’s chest deflated a bit. Equal parts relief and disappointment.

The boat shook gently in his hands, like it was begging to be placed in the water. He gave it one last look over, checking for any gaps or cracks in the metal.

Holding his breath, Viktor delicately put the boat into the stream, and let go. Just as he had designed, the wheels pulled his creation smoothly through the water. He bit his bottom lip, and grinned, feeling very pleased with himself.

Viktor grabbed his crutch and hauled himself onto his feet. He walked along the bank, following the boat, the intoxicating sense of accomplishment welling up within him as he watched it chug along.

Readily, the boat cut through the water, heading further and further downstream. Going faster and faster. Viktor’s own pace quickened, his weak leg dragging behind him as he went. But he cared little about his scuffed shoe, his inability to keep pace with the boat. All that he could hear in his head was “I did it!”

Until the gap between him and his invention widened. And widened. Panic that he’d lose the boat began to drown out the happiness he felt. The dissonance between his spirit and physical body became frustratingly apparent as he willed his legs to move faster, and they simply would not. 

After a few, sloppy, hurried steps, his legs tangled and he fell to the ground, crutch clattering out of his hand. And the boat kept paddling along, following the stream into a crack in a sandstone wall.

Embarrassment welled heavy in Viktor’s chest, threatening to keep him plastered to the dusty bank. He lifted his head, and glanced over his shoulder. Sky, nor any of her friends, were peering down at him. 

He was alone. 

Ignoring the stinging pain in his shins, Viktor gathered up his crutch, pressed himself up, and timidly followed the stream toward the gap in the rock. There was a tumble of gravel leading down into a cavern, the stream babbling next to it, his boat near the bottom of the slope. Gritting his teeth and crutch in determination, Viktor began down the rocks. 

The stream fed into a large underground pond. Pockets of glowing purple flowers lit the cavern eerily. Viktor’s brow furrowed. He remembered Papa telling him and Katya about this subterranean flora. About its fickle nature, and how above ground its phenotypic state morphed into that of an algae-like substance. He also remembered Papa saying that there was no apparent use for the plant. It wasn’t edible, nor did it survive beyond its natural habitat. 

As Viktor shuffled lower down, the air became cool and moist. It smelled of petrichor, aquatic funk, and . . . Something he could not put his finger on. A light, metallic sweetness. Something about it sent a shiver down his crooked spine.

So distracted by the environment, staying upright, and keeping an eye on his boat, Viktor hadn’t realized that there was someone seated on a boulder on the opposite bank of the pond. A man, Viktor could see. A great swath of daylight poured in from above where the cavern’s ceiling broke open. His heart stuttered in his chest. Looking from his boat, to the man, up to the opening in the rock from where he came, he steeled his resolve and crept closer. 

When the boat gently bumped against the boulder the stranger sat on, the man reached down and scooped it out of the water. He moved as if he were unsurprised. Like he’d been expecting the little boat to arrive. Viktor hunkered behind a stone peppered with the strange purple flowers and watched.

Suddenly, a large pink and purple waverider slithered out from behind the boulder the man sat on. It moved like water, slipping and flowing easily around the rock until it perched itself atop it. Viktor let out an unstoppable, fearful gasp, and pushed himself to his feet. Despite having no apparent ears, the creature responded to the soft sound, bracing in a protective stance. Appendages on its back and around its head flared up defensively, a strange barking-trill bleating from its throat. 

“Don’t be afraid,” the man said in a soft voice.

Viktor didn’t move. Nor did the waverider.

The man, gaunt and ghoulish-looking, held the boat up into the light and said, “You built this.”

He was pale with beady, but intelligent, eyes. His mouse-brown hair was cut close to his head and receding. Mismatched, ill-fitting clothes draped over his slender frame. Despite having no idea who this person was, Viktor felt an inexplicable and strange pull towards him. He swallowed, and nodded.

One of the man’s long, spider-like fingers tapped one of the boat’s rearmost paddle wheels, and it gently spun.

“Why aren’t you playing with the others?”

Warm anger and embarrassment pricked at Viktor’s cheeks. But he held himself up as tall as he could, and stepped forward, letting the sparkling sunlight present his crutch and handicap. He kept his eyes on the ground, tongue glued to the roof of his mouth. The waverider keened as he took a few more hobbled steps closer. The man did not seem to react to Viktor’s body, nor reveal.

Instead, he said: “Loneliness is often the byproduct of a gifted mind.”

He lifted the boat in emphasis. Viktor took a couple more steps forward, curiosity growing. The sense of alienation that had been building up for months in his chest receded a bit. His eyes shifted to the waverider. The creature slid down the rock to peer over the man’s shoulder.

“What is it?” Viktor asked.

As if trying to answer the question itself, the waverider opened its mouth and squealed, a multi-tipped tongue flashing in its pink maw.

“This is Rio. She’s a rare mutation that I cultivated.” The man stood, reaching into the pocket of his coat. He withdrew one glowing, purple flower and offered it to Viktor. “Here. Go on.”

Viktor’s eyes widened. The pull of curiosity was too strong, and he limped forward, stepping over the shallow, lapping water to the bank the stranger and Rio were on. He handed Viktor the flower. It felt strange. Warm, somehow. And spongy. It was unlike any plant he’d ever come into contact with. 

Rio’s frills pulsed, her jaw smacking and head cocking as she eyed the plant in Viktor’s hand. He stiffened on instinct as she crept closer, but kept the flower held out. Her snout was cool and moist when it bumped against his fingers as she inspected the offering. Then, her mouth opened wide and that multi-tipped tongue slid out, and wrapped around his hand before pulling the treat in. Viktor giggled at the slippery sensation of the bifurcated muscle sliding over and around his fingers and palm. It left a viscous trail of saliva in its wake, and the smile on his face spun down in a grimace as the heavy ooze stuck between his fingers.

Pleased, Rio drew back, smacking her gums, and settled back against the stranger’s side. He placed a hand on her back, and gently stroked it.

“She’s dying,” he said suddenly. 

Despite having just met her, Viktor felt sadness and grief wash over him. Rio let loose a low, shuddering vocalization. 

“I am attempting to prevent that,” the stranger said, almost breezily. Then, more ominously: “The mutation must survive.”

Viktor watched the waverider, listened to the man. He sounded like a scientist, talking about mutations and cultivation. He’d discovered that Papa’s purple plant wasn’t so useless after all - 

“Can I help?” 

“You want to assist me?”

Viktor glanced down, thinking. He was so alone. And this man hadn’t looked at him pitifully, nor spoke to him like he was incapable. Or a child. He’d recognized Viktor as a burgeoning scientist, what with his boat and lack of friends. And in that recognition, he felt a small flicker of tantalizing belonging. 

He looked back up at the man, and hid a nod in the shrug of his thin shoulders.

“Very well.”

The stranger stepped forward, and handed Viktor back his boat. He held it tightly against his chest as the man placed a large, cold hand on his shoulder and leaned in: “We can be loners together.”

With that, he glided away toward a rusted metal door set cockeyed between slabs of rock. Rio scuttled after him, looking back at Viktor once more - her nictating membrane flashing over her bulbous eyes - before disappearing behind the door with a flick of her tail. 

Despite being left in the cavern, Viktor suddenly didn’t feel so alone. He held his boat tighter against his chest, and smiled. 

When Viktor got home, Katya was not there. He wasn’t sure if she still wasn’t back yet, or if she’d returned, saw he was gone, and was now scouring the Undercity looking for him. His stomach swooped guiltily at the thought of the second scenario. Not only did he not actually want to worry her, he didn’t want to get in trouble. Heart thudding in his chest, Viktor set his boat back on the kitchen table, retrieved some homework from his school bag, and waited for Katya to come home.

It was another few hours before the apartment door’s locks rattled, and Katya stepped in. Viktor, still seated at the kitchen table, went very still over his assignments. Waiting, praying, not breathing.

Then Kat sighed heavily. She buried her face in her hands for a beat before running them back over her head. Her eyes landed on her brother, and she smiled weakly. Viktor’s muscles sagged in relief. She didn’t know he’d been gone.

Kat slipped off her coat and hung it on its peg.

“Is everything okay?” 

She walked over, head bobbing heavily. Sliding into the seat next to him, she ran a hand through his hair. She looked tired, and a touch piqued, but glad to see him.

“Everything is fine,” she murmured. “My . . . friend is fine. She will need bed rest for a couple days - “ 

Her voice snagged in her throat. She cleared it, and then looked at Viktor’s boat. Her amber eyes grew bright and glossy.

“I am sorry we could not take your boat out today, Viktor.”

He squeezed the pencil between his fingers and chewed the inside of his lip.

Looking back down at his notes, he said, “It’s alright.”

“Perhaps we could try again tomorrow?”

He shrugged. “Sure. We can try.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kat’s smile tighten. Then she stood, and kissed his head.

“I am going to start supper.”

Viktor nodded, pretending to be absorbed in his homework. As she moved about the kitchen, he sketched purple flowers and thought about Rio the waverider. About how he was going to help save her. About how he now he had his own secret. And it made him happy.

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Coming Up Next: Grayson and Bone meet up, and Viktor's goes missing.

Next Chapter

Taglist: @pinkrose1422 @dreamyonahill @sand-sea-and-fable @truthandadare @altered-delta

[kikiiswashere]

WIPs of my baby Katya (feat. Silco for modesty)

[kikiiswashere]

Children of Zaun - Chapter 31

The Cost of Peace

Pairing: Silco/Fem!OC

Rating: Explicit

Story Warnings: Canon typical violence, drug use/dealing, dark themes, smut

Chapter Summary: The Children reel after Bone's visit. Bone seeks Viktor out.

Author's Note: HELLO AGAIN, ARCANE FANDOM!!! It's so, so good for all of us to be together again. And have new faces! I want to second @space-blue's sentiment from yesterday

I'm really excited that interest in the series is being reinvigorated by s2's premiere <3 That being said, several of us creators have put tremendous amounts of time, effort, and love into our art since s1. Please reblog and comment. We love 'hearts' and 'kudos' - but comments are really where the fuel to stoke the creative fires are at. Thank you <3

Previous Chapter

Word Count: 3.7K

The silence in The Last Drop vibrated. Like a violin string pull too tight; energy building from the inside-out, threatening to burst the container.

It was Sevika with the courage to break it.

“What do we do now?”

Her words broke the room from its trance. Bodies loosened, their gazes connecting with each other instead of the door. They murmured worriedly. Questions and concerns beginning to build.

“What if he tells the Enforcers?”

“What are we gonna do if Bone doesn’t support us?”

Then the anger rose up.

“Whatta fuckin’ traitor!”

“Topside lapdog!”

“Piltie fucker!”

“Never cared about the Undercity – “

“About Zaun!” a voice corrected.

Agreeing voices swelled.

“Oi! Aw’right! Settle, settle!”

Vander’s voice boomed over the lot of them. He stood, collected Bone’s glass, and went to lean against the bar next to Benzo. Silco rose as well. His eyes flicked to Kat in a quick quandary.

You’re alright?

Her lips flattened, in a failed attempt at a thankful smile. Instead, her brow firmed up, and her eyes hardened. A single curt nod was all the confirmation she was able to offer. Silco’s chin dipped, and joined his Brothers at the bar.

“We keep doing what we are doing,” Silco answered.

Despite not being as tall or as wide as his Brothers, Silco readily and easily drew the room’s attention. His zealousness and charisma just as – if not, more – eye-catching. He surveyed the room.

“This visit from our esteemed Councilor changes nothing. All it does is confirm what we already knew: That no member of Council has Zaun’s interest at heart. They even take our own, and mold them into pawns to keep furthering their agenda. To keep the Poor poor, and the Rich rich.”

The gathering rumbled in agreement, heads nodding.

“We should march across that Bridge, and storm Council!” a loud, ragged voice cried from the back.

Tolder, and the men near him, exuberantly agreed. Sevika wrenched her hand from Nasha’s, stomping forward, and threw her voice into the mix.

Vander’s eyes slid side-long to watch Silco’s face become edged and excited. Then the high whoops! of younger voices joined the crowd. The simmer of the room was slowly growing into a boil.

A panic clamped down on his heart. He thought about what Bone had said. And what Katya had said all those weeks ago. He smacked the glass down on the counter, and rose to his full height.

“We won’ be doin’ that,” he warned, voice a deep growl.

He gave the crowd a hard, pinning look. Vander could bluff. It was a survival skill he’d honed over many years. Just like mastering his fists. It was why he won at cards (save for when he played with Sevika). Why Silco did not know about his feelings for him. His stony face was a lie because his heart was battering his ribs, and his stomach had splattered to the soles of his shoes.

They didn’t have Bone’s support. It was never guaranteed, but having the Councilor condemn their movement shifted something in him. He supposed he must’ve held some subconscious, foolish hope that Bone, and his position on Council, would lend itself to a more easeful transition. One littered with less bodies. No more than necessary. If that was even a thing.

He hadn’t known the girl who’d been killed outside the Augmentation Alley scrap yard. She’d joined the cause recently. Riled up and hurt just like the rest of them. Frothing for change, and power over her own life. Just like the rest of them.

She should’ve been able to have it.

Instead, her name was added to the long, long list of Fissurefolk killed by Piltover.

The Undercity won’t survive a war with Piltover.

“Bone was right about one thing: we don’ have the means to take on Topside. Not right now. The augmenteers are crafting weapons and bullets. We have contacts now in Bilgewater who’re supplying us with firearms here n’ there. Smuggled alcohol fer fire-starters. An’ we’ll need all the time we can get.” He paused here, looked around the room. At Tolder and Sevika. Benzo and Silco. At Katya. “’Cause we all know that when Bone goes to meet Janna, Topside’ll come crashin’ down. He is the one thing between them n’ us right now, flimsy wall that he is. We build n’ prepare fer then.”

And hopefully something helpful comes up beforehand.

The energy in the Drop fizzled after that. The Children, angry and disappointed, mumbled into their drinks. When Tolder won his card game, he did not beam and gloat as he usually did. Sevika sat, arms cross, hunkered over her tankard; Nasha looking distant and uncertain at her side. Annie twisted through the crowd like smoke, eyes glossy and cheeks pink. Beckett pulled her into his lap when she wandered by, placing a grounding hand on her waist.

The Children left the Drop after finishing their drinks, too sour and foul-feeling to stick around. For the first time in a long while, Vander closed the tavern early. He, Silco, Benzo, Katya, and Sevika retreated to his private quarters.

Silco had not gone back to his drink since Bone left. Instead, he had begun chain smoking and paced feverishly around Vander’s kitchen. There was a manic flare to his eyes that Vander both sympathized with and watched warily.

“Well,” Benzo sighed after a while, tired of the silence, “there goes the plan of havin’ Bone’s support.”

“It was never a plan,” Silco spat, turning on heel and stomping back toward the sitting area.

“We have the whole of the Lanes!” Sevika proclaimed. Her silver eyes flashed. “Even Fissurefolk who haven’t officially joined the Children are standing beside us. None of them are taking down the graffiti, or eye-balling us weird. Everyone wants this!”

“Aye. Everyone does. But it doesn’ change the fact that we are still buildin’ up the means to protect ourselves,” Vander reminded hotly. “An’ even though everyone wants out o’ Topside’s shadow, they’re plenty who can’t defend themselves. We’ll need to be prepared for them.”

He hated that they did, but his eyes flicked over to Katya. She was leaned near the doorway, arms crossed tightly over her chest. She gave no indication that she had heard him, her amber eyes dull and unfocused.

Sevika scoffed. “Everyone in Zaun can fight. It’s what we’ve had to do since birth. Shit, Lu’s been pick-pocketing Enforcers since he was five. Even the old-timers will wield pick-axes and shovels. We need to show them we’re not afraid!”

“We’re not afraid,” Vander growled. He glared at Sevika, and she glared back. “We’re not afraid. And we can’t afford to be stupid. We keep doin’ what we’re doin’.”

He glanced up at Silco for confirmation. For back up. But his Brother continued to pace, face sharp angles and shadow under a plume of cigarette smoke.

“Fer fuck’s sake, Silco,” Benzo groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sit down. Yer makin’ me seasick.”

Surprisingly, Silco did stop. He took the cigarette from his mouth – just a filter nub at this point – and smashed it in the ashtray on Vander’s table. He loosed a long breath, smoke shooting out through his nostrils, and curling about his face. A rageful dragon itching to crack armor and bones between its teeth.

“Sil,” Vander said. His voice was low, a plead humming beneath.

Finally, Silco looked at him. The wrath almost took Vander’s breath away.

“We keep moving forward as we have,” he said, voice gravelly with embers and cigarette smoke. “If they instigate further, we respond in kind.” He looked at Sevika, “We are not afraid.” To Vander, “We are not stupid.” To the room, “And we will not take peace as the prize.”

Like earlier, Vander’s stomach dipped. But he kept his face stoic and grim. Katya straightened and shoved her hands into her coat pockets, and stepped into the group’s circle.

“What say you, Sis?” Benzo prompted.

Katya’s jaw worked and her eyebrows furrowed.

Finally, she said in a hoarse voice, “Peace is not an option. I would rather die than have a peace that keeps us strapped to them. We deserve more than their crumbs and virtue-signaling. Freedom, or nothing.”

The silence grew tight again. The hairs on the back of Vander’s neck prickled, unease brushed against his gut. Silco looked at her with fierce, simmering pride.

“We should go,” he said quietly after a moment. “Mum’ll be waiting.”

Tentative fingers brushed against Kat’s arm, and she nodded.

“I should go, too,” Sevika said, pushing herself out from the table.

The darkness in her young face made Vander say: “Sev. No funny business.”

“Yeah. Whatever.” And she stomped from the room.

Silco and Katya made to follow her.

“Get home safe,” Vander said.

Silco nodded.

The silence followed Silco and Katya as they skulked through the dimmer, less traversed streets of Zaun. The sounds of the city were deadened by the blood rushing through their ears. Kat’s fingers squeezed and trembled between his. She’d only ever felt this angry at Heimerdinger.

You should be ashamed.

Her lungs froze remembering Bone’s words and his scathing glare. Painfully, her teeth gnashed together behind the tight line of her mouth.

How dare he . . .

His admonishment stabbed deeply. He knew what she, Viktor, and his constituents endured. And he had the nerve – the gall – to suggest that she should be ashamed for fighting for a better life for her brother? For herself? For the whole of the Underground?

Suddenly, Silco’s fingers slipped from hers. The absence sent a jolt down her spine, and she whipped around. Ugly fear shot through her, afraid she would see his silhouette fading away into the smudged shadows.

But he wasn’t. He stood, rooted to the cobblestones, his eyes an icy blaze cutting into the middle-distance.

“Sil?”

“I don’t want peace. I want freedom. We deserve no less.”

Kat searched his face carefully, eying the taut lines of light and dark that pulled his features into something fearsome. And desperate. She took a step towards him, and waited.

He swallowed. When next he spoke, his voice was ragged. Emotions reined in tightly, lest he snap and lose control.

“Zaun needs to be free. Not only is peace unacceptable, but it – it takes time if to be truly achieved. And it never is,” he added spitefully. “We have plenty of historical examples of that.”

Kat took another step closer. Her own anger tempered into something softer, preparing to help hold whatever it was he was slowly allowing himself to reveal. He still hadn’t looked at her, gaze still boring into an imaginary point ahead of him. The ice-hot fire in his eyes nearly glowed.

“Mum,” he started, voice growing horribly tight. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Mum won’t make it through the development and implementation of a peace treaty.”

Grief, heavy and sickly, weighed down Kat’s shoulders. Pulled her heart down to her stomach in a dead-weight.

Enyd was getting worse. To the point that she and Silco were beginning to help with her tailoring and bread deliveries. More days than not, she was too exhausted to travel outside of her home. And when she did, Zaun’s air choked her so much quicker than it used to. Already slight to begin with, she was losing weight. Her skin was growing duller, her hair thinning and turning limp.

She, nor Silco, nor Kat spoke about it. They only made the quiet adjustments necessary to keep Enyd as comfortable as possible. But Kat could feel Silco’s desperation beginning to grow manic. Willful denial a tantalizing balm offering to protect him from the harsh reality they were spiraling towards.

This was the first time Kat had heard him acknowledge his mother’s impending death. It had always been ‘she’s sick’ – never an out-loud admittance that she was dying. And, now, dying quickly.

Kat’s heart ached for him. The Blight, in her medical experience, did not have rhyme nor reason for how it progressed in a body. Some died within weeks of their diagnosis. Some got a few months to a few years. Very few, like Bone (Kat recognized that hacking sound he’d made. Wet and tearing and deep), got to live damn-near a full life.

Rage on Enyd’s behalf flooded through her.

It wasn’t fair.

Kat stepped closer, and took Silco’s face between her hands. He gave the smallest of starts beneath her touch, but the fury that had been building in his eyes quickly diminished. She didn’t say anything at first, just ran her thumbs over the jut of his cheekbones.

“Peace is not good enough,” she agreed quietly. We won’t make her wait for it.

The fire in Silco’s eyes rekindled, but this time it was more controlled. Strong hands came up, and hung themselves on her wrists. His thumbs brushed against her pulse point. The blood under Kat’s skin pumped steadily.

“You said you’d die before making peace with them. I don’t want that. I don’t want you to die for the cause. I want you to fight for it.”

The following day was beautiful. Powder blue skies streaked with whisps of cirrus clouds, the sun an intense, luminous pinprick high, high above. The air in Piltover was contentedly warm. Seats outside cafes were full, patrons enjoying their luncheons in the bliss of clear and comfortable weather.

Bone limped across the Academy’s campus with single-minded focus. He’d not seen Viktor since before Snowdown, and was hopeful that the boy would be taking his lunch outside now that the cold season had been blown out to sea.

His frail body thrummed and vibrated with anger and panic. He hadn’t slept a wink once he got back home from The Last Drop, his mind spinning with worries about what to do. How to best serve his people. How to protect them. How to keep them from harming themselves.

How to keep them from ruining everything.

Viktor had also not left his thoughts since leaving the Drop, either. He could not believe his sister would be so foolish. So selfish. Her involvement was jeopardizing everything for him.

Did he know? Was his sister stupid enough to use her brother as a mole for The Children of Zaun?

Bone’s blood boiled at the thought.

Finally, he spied the boy on his usual bench. Bone was surprised by the way his breath hitched at the sight of him. His sympathy for Viktor intensified, daring to transform into affection. In the span of twelve hours, he understood Heimerdinger’s want for Viktor to have a more secure spot on Piltover’s soil. Especially now. Especially now that it very much hung in the balance.

As Bone trudged up, he saw Viktor tinkering with a small mish-mash of metal in his lap. Per usual, his lunch sat untouched at his side. A fond smile tugged at Bone’s mouth.

“Mr. Slostov,” he greeted merrily, “fancy seeing you here!”

Viktor jumped, head whipping up at an alarming speed. His eyes were wide, bright, and owlish. He blinked and dropped his shoulders.

“Councilor.”

Bone smirked at him, cocking his head to one side. A small, self-conscious – but pleased – smile slowly spread across Viktor’s round face.

“Jarrot.”

“Better. May I sit with you?”

Viktor nodded, hurriedly adjusting his lunch and belongings. With a heavy groan and ungraceful plop, Bone took up the offered space. He stood his cane between his knees and rested his gnarled hands atop the tortoiseshell handle, giving a confident, casual air. A useful camouflage for his sensitive intention.

“What do you have there?”

Viktor looked down at the metal in his hands, turning it over. It looked like a set of wheels held together with a rubber band. Belatedly, Bone realized that there was a second, similar looking piece set on top of the paper that wrapped his lunch.

“It is a part of the motor mechanism for the boat I am building for Professor Heimerdinger’s class.”

“Ah.”

An awkward silence hung between them, too much time having passed since their last interaction to lend to flowing conversation. Bone gnawed the inside of his lip, pondering how to get information from Viktor without spooking him.

“We haven’t seen each other since before Snowdown,” Bone observed, casually glancing up at the trees that were beginning to bud. “Did the cold season treat you well?”

A shadow cast itself over Viktor’s face, and he shrugged in that way children do when they are upset but unwilling to talk. Whether it be because they don’t know how to voice their difficulties, or because they don’t want to get in trouble. Bone’s stomach churned, and he felt goose pimples appear on his arms.

“It was fine.”

“Was it? You seem . . . bothered by the question. If I may be so bold.”

Viktor’s mouth puckered and pulled to one corner, his brow furrowing as he tried to tug the rubber band to a gear tooth that was just too far away.

“I don’t like the cold. And Snowdown was in the middle of the week this year. I get off school, but Kat still has to work, so I had to stay on campus for the holiday.”

Bone’s hand tremored with the effort of keeping it from reaching out to cup Viktor’s shoulder. He knew the boy’s unique, lonely pain. The pain of having to exist on this side of the River in this time – under Piltover’s scrutinizing, prejudice gaze.

But he also knew that his and Viktor’s presences in varying esteemed circles were priceless cogs in the motor of progress to achieve equitability for the Undercity. They’d earned their stations so that, hopefully one day, other Trenchers would have much less of an uphill battle.

Bone hummed an understanding note, nodding sagely. “That is unfortunate. Especially right now with all the upheaval between our two cities.” He glanced sideways at Viktor to see if that garnered a reaction. His expression stayed stony, but did not deepen nor flicker. “Has your sister managed to stay safe while all of this is going on?”

The rubber band snapped out from between Viktor’s fingers, and whipped against his hand. He jumped and hissed. A small, angry, red welt began to grow on the web between his thumb and index finger. He shoved his hand into his mouth, sucking on the injury.

“Are you alright?”

Viktor nodded, and withdrew his hand from between his lips with a pop! He glared at the irritated reddened skin. A frown that was too-world-weary for such a young boy pulled his round cheeks down.

“Kat is – “ Viktor’s lips melded together, brows dropping. Bone waited on baited breath. “Kat has been keeping us home when I go back. I know she is just trying to keep me safe from what those people are doing – “

“The Children of Zaun.”

Viktor nodded. “Yes, them. Ever since they have appeared, she’s been keeping me home on the weekends.”

“To keep you safe?”

“That is what she says, but – “

Viktor paused, mouth clamping shut. Bone watched something fresh and hurtful flash in his eyes.

“But what, Viktor?”

Jumbles of thoughts made his brain hazy, words gummed up in his mouth, feelings thrashed inside his crumpled body. Viktor couldn’t decide what to say, how to say it, or what he was even feeling. In his mind’s eye, he saw Kat’s face – once full and kind – become dull and withdrawn. Nausea rippled across his stomach.

“I feel like something is going on.” Viktor hated how small and tight his voice had become. “She’s not telling me something. We’ve always been so close, and since before Snowdown it feels like she is going away.”

Suddenly, he hiccupped and sniffed. Hurriedly, horrified, Viktor set his invention down and wiped at his face. Shaking, he began to shove his belongings back in his satchel, embarrassment and confusion lighting his nervous system with the desperate need to get away.

Bone finally reached out to set a hand on Viktor’s shoulder.

“It’s alright, m’boy.”

“No. It is alright, Council – Jarrot. I need to head to my next class. There was something I needed to speak with Professor Holmgren about beforehand. I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to – “

As he rambled, Viktor sloppily stood, knocking his lunch to the ground and nearly falling over as he unevenly braced himself on his crutch.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, limping away. “I need to go. I’m sorry.”

Wanting to spare the child from further discomfort, Bone let him go. The ache in his chest grew with each uneven step Viktor took away from him.

While Bone now felt certain that Viktor was not being used by the Children, he still felt deeply sorry for him. He was glad for what he had told his sister the previous night. That she should be ashamed. Her actions were already tearing at her little brother’s tender heart.

Bone knew it was an awful thing to be alone. He’d felt it every day since becoming Councilor. It painfully intensified as he was realizing his fellow Fissurefolk did not feel supported by his political efforts.

Viktor knew what it was like to be alone. A brilliant child, unable to exist in the world he was born into because of his handicaps; unable to exist in the world he’d worked tooth-and-nail to get into because of where he had come from. No friends. Only a sister, who was now sacrificing their relationship, and his well-being, for a cause that would not end well.

A breeze blew by, ruffling Bone’s thin hair. His breath caught, and he quickly pulled the pocket square from his coat. He managed to bring the fabric to his mouth before the hacking started. His skeleton bent and shook with the force of the coughing. Abdominal and back muscles contracted painfully, threatening to pull and spasm.

When it passed, he folded the pocket square up without looking at the contents. Gently, he patted his forehead with the dry edge of the cloth. Bone’s breath was a sharp, shallow rasp – like a dull knife being pulled along a whetstone.

He needed to speak with Grayson, he decided. What he would tell her, he still wasn’t sure. But time was running out. For everyone.

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Coming Up Next: Kat's busy, so Viktor's goes out by himself to take his boat for a spin.

Next Chapter

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[kikiiswashere]

Children of Zaun - Chapter 23

The Dangers of Want

Pairing: Silco/Fem!OC

Rating: Explicit

Story Warnings: Canon typical violence, drug use/dealing, dark themes, smut

Chapter Summary: Katya patches Silco up. Enyd is very distaught when her son comes home with a battered face. She becomes even more upset when she hears why, and decides to pay Katya a visit.

Previous Chapter

Word Count: 6.1K

The silence in Katya’s head was quickly overtaken by the vicious and mighty rush of blood in her ears, the thundering of her heart in her chest. Her stomach twisted and squeezed.

She stared at where Kells had been, skin going cold. She felt an urge to crawl to the edge of the turbine blade and peek over. Was the pit deep enough that the shadows would blanket his body? Was the fall so great that he would be left down there, an extraction deemed too costly and unsafe to retrieve him?

The gentle call of her name pulled her from her clamoring thoughts. Her head snapped away from the blade’s edge over to Silco. He was propped on his knees and hands watching her intently. Katya’s eyes flicked over his head to see the entire fissure’s unit huddled along the edge of the turbine’s chasm, staring at them with dirty, pale faces and wide eyes. They were muttering amongst themselves, she realized. Their voices slid into her ears, crawled under her skin.

Silco called for her again, and her eyes were pulled back to him. She took in his bloody face, how his nose was bent, his eyelids and cheeks already beginning to swell and discolor. How blood dribbled freely from his mouth and nose. Despite all this, he looked at her like she was the one to be worried about. 

“What’s happenin’? Wha’s goin’ on?” Foreman Baz yelled, muscling his way through the crowd.

He stopped at the edge of the cliff, taken aback by the sight of the pair on the blade. Katya looked at him with a fearful, tear-stained, and scraped up face; Silco with his beaten and bloodied one. 

“One of the miners was attacking them!” a small voice piped up.

Both Baz and Katya looked over and saw the young teen she’d been called down there to patch up. His glossy dark eyes flitted to her and back to the foreman. Baz looked to the boy, back to Katya, then to Silco.

When no one refuted what the boy had said, Baz shifted agitatedly and ordered, “Help him up! Get them to medical!”

A few of the miners nearest to the blade stepped forward, and lifted Silco up by the armpits, hoisting him onto unsteady feet. One of them approached Katya, and she waved him away, scrabbling onto her own legs. She stumbled after the pair that had Silco slung between them. She kept her eyes on his back as she followed, keenly aware of the probing, curious eyes on her.

Katya did not remember the trek back to the medical clinic. One moment, she was in Fissure 27, the next she was in the cool light of the exam room. The miners who had carried Silco placed him on the table and whispered to him.

Belatedly, Katya realized they were members of the Children. She didn’t know them by name, but knew their faces. They assured Silco that they would make sure to spin Kells’s death in his favor; that there would be no trouble, no word about it after today.

They hurried back to the fissure, ready to fulfill the task before them. The room was quiet. The clock on the wall ticked and ticked.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Katya muttered, going to the small sink.

Her hands trembled beneath the faucet. The soap fell from her hands multiple times as she attempted to wash them. She tried to breathe, tried to steady herself. Closing her eyes, she gripped the soap like she might’ve gripped Kells’s throat had her body not locked in fear. Like when the Enforcer attacked her papa.

“Kat.”

His voice sent a shiver up her spine. She ignored him, drying her hands and riffling through the cabinets in search of her tools.

“You need to get patched up,” she mumbled, gathering gauze, a small splint, and rubbing alcohol. “Your nose needs to be set before it becomes even more painful to do so.”

“Kat. Kat wait,” Silco grit, his voice pained and nasally. 

He reached for her wrist and she lurched back, dropping the supplies in her arms. Silco retracted quickly, murmuring an apology. She gave a perfunctory nod before ducking down, and gathering her tools. She set them next to him.

“You are alright to sit up?” 

Her eyes were on him, but she wasn’t looking at him. Silco’s chest caved at the vacantness of her face.  He gave a small nod – it was as much movement his head would allow without causing spikes of pain to radiate through his skull. 

Katya softly muttered what she was doing while tending to him, but he only part-listened. Barely a wince pulled at his lips as she wiped away the blood on his face, as she inspected the gash across the bridge of his nose. She explained she couldn’t stitch it shut, that there was too little flesh to suture together. She’d use a butterfly bandage.

The sensation of the edges of his skin being pulled toward each other sent his insides crawling. It reawakened that small spark of rage that had risen in him when he’d first seen Kells holding Katya to the wall. He’d finished working the engine of the excavator, and jogged to the fissure over to see her. A group of sullen looking teens had pointed him toward a small crack in the rock near the turbine, and he went.

If he hadn’t went . . . 

His body shuddered with fury. Katya thought she did something and apologized.

“You don’t need to be sorry,” he was quick to say. He noticed how speaking was becoming painful. How his teeth ached at the roots. His blue eyes, filled with cold fire, locked onto hers, and she finally looked at him. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

There was a long moment where their gazes remained tethered. Silco willing his words to sink in, Katya trying to let them.

“Your nose is broken,” she finally said. Her voice was hoarse and quiet. “I need to set it.”

Carefully and swiftly – her hands having stopped their trembling in the comfort of performing familiar tasks – she placed a small splint on either side of his nose, taped them down, and then covered the whole thing with a pad of gauze.

She turned her attention next to his mouth. A deep cut had split the left side of his upper lip. Blood was beginning to clot, but still dribbled down his chin in a bright crimson river. 

“I will need to sew this.” She eyed it carefully, assessing. “It’s most likely going to scar.” 

She gathered a sterile needle and thread, and an empty syringe. She stuck its needle into the membrane of a dark bottle and explained, “This is local anesthetic. Open your mouth slightly.”

Silco did so. He bit back a grunt when the needle pierced his swollen lip. Then the sense of his lip fuzzed out, and disappeared into the haze of the drug. He fought the urge to poke at it.

Katya brought thread and needle up to his mouth, and began suturing the split together with expert quickness. While he couldn’t feel his lip, he could feel the pull of the thread and pressure of the needle. The process didn’t hurt, but the ghostly sense of the thread’s pull and needle’s point made him feel nauseous. His mouth watered and bile rose at the back of his throat.

“Do you need to vomit?” Katya asked, watching his eyes fog over and shoulders sway.

Silco shook his head. A mistake, it turned out. The motion loosened the already shaky hold his stomach had, and he pitched over. Luckily, Katya was fast, and had placed a small wastebin under his face before the sick gushed from his mouth. As he retched, she held his hair back and stroked a hand up and down his spine.

When it passed, Katya let go of his hair and placed a hand over his heart. “We’re going to sit you back up now. Go slow.”

Silco’s vision swam as he was guided back up. He winced as the ache and pressure in his skull jostled and thudded during the movement. As if his brains had turned to jelly and sloshed freely and heavily in his skull.

“Sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. It’s not unusual for such a response after something stressful. You are also most likely concussed, which would cause that reaction, too. Here, I need to knot and clean those sutures.”

She doused a small cotton round with rubbing alcohol and gently pressed it to the stitches on his upper lip. Silco hissed and grimaced, and then winced further when the expression caused a great swell of pain to ripple across his face. 

Katya tossed the sodden pad in the wastebin, and finished tying off the small line of stitches. She then turned to the room’s sink, and filled a small cup with water, before handing it to him.

“Swish, then spit into the sink.”

It hurt, but Silco did so. He watched as blood swirled down the drain, and then sat back on the exam table. Katya’s hand at his back the whole time. But he wasn’t soothed by it. Despite her attentiveness, she felt distant. He knew, and understood, that it was an unconscious defense mechanism on her part; keeping her safe and separate from what had happened in the fissure.

Had his mother behaved similarly in the days following her own assault?

Silco muscled that thought back. It was too much. And he wasn’t the one who needed sturdiness right now. Katya was. 

But she was closed off. 

He could feel it. And he wanted in. Wanted to take care of her.

“Kat – “

“Open your mouth,” she instructed. 

Silco did so, and Katya leaned forward, inspecting.

“Your two front teeth have been chipped.” 

She stood back up, and turned to one of the upper cabinets. Reflexively, Silco ran his tongue over his teeth, and shuddered at the roughened edges of his incisors. Embarrassment joined the sickening ache in his body. 

“It’s not too bad,” Katya said, returning with a bottle of pills in her hand. She gave them to him and explained, “Painkillers. Take two as needed every four hours. Ideally with food. If you can, take the next few days off and keep the apartment dark. Avoid looking at or reading anything too intensely. It’ll help with the concussion.”

While he was grateful for her expertise, Katya’s perfunctory motions and monotone voice continued to madden and scare him. He could feel her slipping away. Retreating from him. 

Instead of grabbing for the pill bottle, he gripped her hands.

“Kat,” he pleaded. She jolted beneath his hold. He internally winced at it, but couldn’t bring himself to release her. She looked at him, her eyes big and glassy. He swallowed, unsure of what to say now that he had her attention. “Just . . . stop for a moment.”

She blinked. And then her body tensed. She didn’t want to stop. Doing her job allowed her mind to settle into the rut of monotony, instead of replaying what had happened in Fissure 27. Stopping meant having to feel the fear and shame rattle through her bones. Stopping meant having to listen to the hateful and disparaging voices pounding in her head. They became clearer the longer she stood still. Voices that insisted that what had happened in the fissure was her fault. 

Her fault because she’d deviated from the quiet, monotonous life she’d set up for her and her brother. She had stupidly stepped into the open arms of the Children of Zaun. Had gone from a solitary, anonymous life to one of community, and it had gotten her sexually assaulted. The tentative understanding and belief in her own value, her own hopes and desires were dashed. 

Were not worth it.

Were nothing. 

Silco gently pulled on her hands and she jumped back into the moment. She stared at him, no longer sure what she was looking at. He had brought her into the Children’s fold, and adamantly spoken of her and Zaun’s inherent value.

She didn’t blame him.

She blamed herself for not keeping herself safe. 

“Why did you come for me?” Katya heard her speak the words, but had no sense of doing it. They suddenly just floated in the space between them.

Despite his swelling eyelids, Silco’s eyes widened. His mouth gaped, those two newly chipped teeth peeking out from under his stitched lip.

He was hurt because of her. Tears began to burn at the corners of her eyes. Her heart began to jump and tap the longer she stood still. Her legs trembled.

“I – because,” Silco stumbled.

The clinic door suddenly creaked open. They both jumped, Katya ripping her hands from Silco’s hold.

“Katya?” Will called.

Katya busied herself at the exam room’s counter. “In here. With a patient.”

Silco watched sadly as Katya retreated, absentmindedly fussing with a canister of cotton balls. A moment later, Will peered into the room. He couldn’t contain his gasp when he saw Silco. 

“What happened?”

“A fight,” Katya answered, adjusting the jar of tongue depressors before turning around. 

She set her hips against the counter and folded her arms tightly across her chest. Will’s eyes widened as he took in her dirtied clothes and scuffed up face. 

“I just finished patching him, and giving the medication instructions.” There was a pause, and then she spoke in Silco’s direction. “You’re able to go. Do you think you can get home, or should I call for ‘Vika?”

Silco’s voice stuck in his throat. He didn’t want to leave. But he also did not want her cross with him. 

Finally, he mumbled, “I can get home on my own.”

Katya’s lips thinned and she nodded, not looking him in the eye. “Put ice on your nose and lip when you get home. It will help with the pain and swelling.”

Silco looked at her for a moment longer before gingerly slipping off the exam table. He limped passed Will, who watched him with careful, distrusting eyes. 

It was late enough now that Silco’s shift had ended. He didn’t care to go find Sevika or anyone else who could let him know what was happening in the way of Kells, and the story that was being spun. Slowly, he made his way for the lift, ignoring the mutters and looks that swirled around him as he went. 

A bone-deep ache settled into his body as he walked away from the mines. His hands throbbed and he winced as his back repeatedly squeezed in small spasms with every other step. But it was nothing compared to his face and head.

Nothing compared to the sinking feeling in his chest.

His feet carried him home, slow and sluggish. He leaned into the door as he shuffled inside the apartment. A warm, scratchy horn piece softly bled from the gramophone, his mother’s humming accompanying it. Silco slipped off his shoes and limped toward his bedroom.

“Silco?”

He knew it was pointless, but he didn’t answer her and tried to shuffle as quickly as he could down the hall.

“Silco? Are you home? – “

Enyd’s voice guttered and dropped as Silco hobbled past the doorway. She could see that something was obviously wrong with his gait, but her heart plummeted at the sight of his face. Hurriedly, she set her sewing aside, leapt from her rocker, and followed him down the hall.

“Silco!”

He grimaced, but kept the course to his room. Until his mother closed the space between them, grabbed a hold of his arm, and spun him around. She gasped and tears immediately welled up in her eyes.

“Wh-what happened?”

“I’m fine. I have medicine for it,” he muttered, gently shaking the pill bottle in his hand.

He went to turn away from her again, but Enyd reached up and gently cupped his jaw. Silco gasped in pain and dropped the bottle. It hit the wood floor with a thud and rolled away.

“What happened?”

“It – Just a fight at work.”

“You need ice. Come with me.”

Too hurt and tired to argue, Silco let his mother lead him back down the hall toward the kitchen. She scooped up the pill bottle as they went. 

She placed him on one of the dining table chairs, and flipped the overhead light on. Silco grunted and squinted at the brightness. His stomach curdled.

. . . keep the apartment dark . . .

Before he could say anything, Enyd was on him, worriedly inspecting the bandages over his nose, the stitches in his upper lip, and the intense bruising and swelling around his eyelids and cheeks. Her breathing was shallow and watery, her eyebrows pitched upward with intense concern.

“Janna’s sake, Silco,” Enyd whispered. Her eyelids fluttered, and the tears that had been shelved on her lower lids trickled down her pale cheeks. 

She turned and went to the icebox, pulling out a tray of frozen cubes. A clean teacloth from a drawer near the stove was fetched, and the ice was dumped into it. Pinching its corners up, she created a small sack, and brought it to him.

As she gently pressed it to his nose and mouth, Silco hissed at the biting cold and tried to jerk his head away. Despite the concern trembling through her limbs, Enyd stayed solid and held the ice to his face regardless. 

Silco’s hand quivered, and he propped an elbow on the table to steady himself. Slowly, his other hand reached up to hold the ice to his sore face. Enyd extricated her hand, and returned to the kitchen. She filled a glass with water, and brought it to the table, sitting in the chair next to her son.

“Mum,” Silco finally croaked, “would you turn the light off? It . . . hurts.”

Enyd stepped to the wall and slapped the light switch. Silco’s shoulders sagged in relief as the kitchen and dining area fell into shadow; the only light the soft, warm glow of the lamp by his mother’s rocking chair in the room over. 

“Silco,” Enyd whispered as she took up her seat again, “what happened?”

Her hands slid across the table, but stopped short of touching him. Her eyes were wide, fear threatened to collapse her lungs. Scared, angry voices began hissing in her ears – the same ones that had initially flooded her when she had learned of the Children of Zaun.

Today he came home with a broken nose and beaten face; what if next time he came home with a bullet wound? What if next time he didn’t come home at all?

Silco swallowed, his throat clicking. His breaths became shorter, shallower as he thought back to what he had seen in that small crack in the cave wall. Kells pinning Katya against the rocks, one hand tangled in her hair, the other snaked between her thighs. He had watched in rage and disgust as Kells’s hips slowly undulated against Katya’s backside.

Rage flooded him, sent his heart pounding. The wrath was not the same as the variety he wielded at Piltover. This was something different. Something somehow deeper, more personal. 

“Another miner assaulted Kat today,” he finally said. “One of the Children.”

Enyd’s eyes widened and her body went cold. She couldn’t find her breath. Her hands and feet began to shake. A memory flashed in her head. Of her and Katya sitting in one of The Drop’s booths after a meeting. She had sneered at a blond young man who had ogled back at her.

“I – I walked in on him holding her against the wall,” Silco recounted, his voice a low scrape. “Forcing himself on her.” He swallowed again and said, “I attacked him.”

Enyd wiped at her eyes, chin wobbling horribly. Her breath had come back, but in small hiccups. 

“I wanted to beat him into the dirt until he wasn’t recognizable,” Silco admitted, “but I knew I needed to get Kat out of there. Away from him.” He paused, mouth gaping for a moment before he quietly said, “I wished someone had done the same for you. Had noticed and come to help.”

A small sob burst through Enyd’s teeth and she clamped a hand over her mouth. Tears streamed down her face. She nodded. She wished that, too.

“But he got up and swung a length of track at us,” he rustled the ice against his face. “He got me. I – I went for him again, and – I don’t remember it happening – but we ended up on one of the turbine blades. He hit me with a rock,” Silco gestured to the side of his head where his hair was matted to his temple with dried blood.

Enyd sobbed, her fingers twitching horribly. They itched to gather him up, to do something.

“He tried again, but then Kat appeared and pushed him off me. Pushed him off the turbine.”

Enyd held her breath, her thrashing heart stilling, fingers going rigid. She watched as, even through the bruises and cuts on his face, a myriad of emotions washed over him. She could see him trying to snatch up any one thing to feel. 

He finally settled on anger.

“If he hadn’t fallen,” Silco grit, barely tethered rage seething through his bloodied teeth, “I would’ve killed him. I wanted to kill him.”

A shiver trickled down Enyd’s spine. She gawped at her boy. Part of her insisted that he was wrong, that this wasn’t him; but another part – a hurt and vengeful part – was irrevocably grateful for what he’d done. Him wanting to kill Katya’s assaulter soothed her, soothed the traumatized seventeen-year-old who had been left in a dark mine tunnel, her skirts ripped, a tearing ache between her thighs, and semen dripping down her legs.

She was proud of him. And that silenced the part that tried to assert his actions, his desire, was wrong.

Finally, Enyd took up Silco’s free hand in both of hers. She kissed his bloody and swollen knuckles before resting her forehead against them.

Will had tried to convince Katya to let him attend to her. He eyed her scratched face and disheveled clothes worriedly. She refused, promising that she was fine. And that Silco had nothing to do with the state she was in. 

Will was unconvinced, insisting that he help her. She had jerked away from his well-meaning hands, and yelled at him to leave her alone.

“I will not be in tomorrow,” was all she said before she grabbed her coat and left. Leaving behind all the supplies she had set aside for the Children and for Enyd.

She pulled the large lapels of her coat up around her head, using them as blinders as she silently walked home. She didn’t hear the city around her. She didn’t know if people called out to her. She didn’t even know if she passed any Enforcers. She focused on the feel of her boots striking the cobblestones, on the static filling her brain, on the scratch of damp fabric rubbing against her thighs.

She threw herself at her door when she arrived home, messily staggering inside. Relief washed over her, a heavy weight that pulled at her taut muscles, loosening them beyond function. She slammed the door’s locks back in place before crumpling to the ground, sobbing and shaking.

She didn’t know how long she laid there, the warped and rough floor scratching against the scuff marks on her cheek. Her tears, for the time being, had run out. Breathing came in raspy, raw gulps. Her head throbbed. She either couldn’t – or didn’t want to – feel her body.

She needed to get up. She didn’t want to spend the night on the floor in front of her apartment door. She wanted to get out of her clothes, and wash the whole, awful day from her body.

With a great amount of effort, Katya staggered to her feet and shed her coat, stumbling for the bathroom. With shaky hands, she peeled her clothes off and started the shower. Her eyes stared down at the pile while she waited for the water to warm. She wanted to toss those clothes, burn them. But that wouldn’t be practical. If she got rid of them, that just meant she’d need new ones; and she didn’t have the money for that. 

Warm steam began to float from the shower stall and she numbly stepped inside. Normally, she relished a hot shower, but now she barely felt the comforting heat of it. Water beat in uneven patterns across her back and shoulders, small rivulets trickling down her arms and legs. At least, that’s what she would usually feel. Now it all felt distant. Almost as if the shower didn’t matter. There was no way to wash away the events of today.

Katya reached up and ran her fingers through her hair, her eyes closing as water ran over her face. Suddenly, she was back in the small crevasse. Kells breath on her cheek. His dick pressing against her.

Her eyes snapped open. A great, shuddering gasp burst from her mouth, sucking water droplets down her throat. She coughed and sputtered, her hands gripping fruitlessly against the tiled wall as her legs threatened to give way. Coughing morphed into desperate cries, and Katya slid to the floor, curling up on herself as the shower beat down.

She wanted comfort.

But also wanted to be alone. 

Deserved to be alone. 

The luxury of community had gotten her here, an oily voice in her head jabbed. If she had just told Sevika, Vander, Benzo, and Silco to fuck off, she could’ve gone on living her lonely life with little incidence. 

Yes, she would’ve needed to find a way to deal with Viktor’s rising tuition cost. But she had always found a way before. She didn’t need anyone to step in and shoulder the load with her . . . however nice it had been.

I got you.

Silco’s promise rumbled through her head, agitating and temporarily dispersing the hateful voice.

Katya hiccupped, wiped her nose, and rubbed her eyes. She didn’t deserve to ‘be gotten’. He’d nearly been killed trying to ‘get her’. She didn’t want that for him. Silco’s endeavors were dangerous enough without having to worry about her. 

Her heart ached at the thought. That foreign sense of wanting and desire throwing an equally loud tantrum at the thought of pulling away from him.

Katya reached up and turned the shower off, forgoing soap. Water would have to do. She crawled out of the stall and reached for her scratchy towel. With little care, she dried herself. Before shuffling from the bathroom, she grabbed her father’s pocket watch from the heap of clothes. She left the rest. 

Despite the vile rhetoric in her head, Katya still opted to sleep in the shirt Silco had given her. A small keepsake of when she had dared to want for herself, she figured. She snuggled under her thick new blankets; another lovely item belonging had gotten her.

Her chest caved, the fragile muscle of her heart collapsing like a dying star.

She prayed for sleep to come hard and fast.

It must have, but it was not at all satisfying. It felt like a blink. The night passed so fast, in fact, that she was certain it couldn’t be the next day. But someone was knocking on her apartment door. And the watch she’d left on her nightstand insisted that it was 10 o’ clock in the morning. 

Her head pounded. And the insistent knocking at the door didn’t help. Katya threw her blankets over her head, and waited for whoever it was to get the hint and go away. In the dark nest she’d made for herself, she tucked her knees up toward her chest, grit her teeth and waited. 

Then someone called her name. Katya shot up, blankets pooling at her waist.

Her heart thudded as she gingerly got out of bed, body tired, heavy, and aching. She pulled the blankets around her like a great, puffy cape, and shuffled to the front door. The voice was familiar, but Katya peered through the peephole all the same. 

The sound of scraping, old metal filled her ears as her hands undid the door’s latches and bolts. Wrapping her hand around the knob, Katya took a deep breath in, and opened the door. 

Enyd and Sevika stood on her front step.

Katya felt her resolve waver at the sight of the two women. Her chin wobbled, and she choked on her own breath.

“Oh, Katya,” Enyd whispered, stepping forward and pulling the girl into her arms. “I am so sorry.”

Katya crumbled. She dropped her head into the crook of Enyd’s shoulder and wailed. The older woman did not buckle under the weight of the taller, thicker girl. She stood solidly and held her with strong hands. 

“Come,” Enyd whispered after a minute. “Let’s go inside.”

Katya couldn’t bring herself to deny them. She was too tired. And despite that voice working so hard the night prior to convince her of the safety if loneliness, she wanted their company. 

Enyd ushered them inside, and Sevika locked the door behind her. 

The next hour was a whirlwind.

After wiping her boots on the doormat – chips of white paint flaking off – Sevika steered Katya toward the couch. Enyd headed to the kitchen, and made her tea and something to eat. Once she delivered a steaming mug and a plate of toasted bread with butter, she scurried through the apartment, straightening up and cleaning. She gathered the soiled clothes from the bathroom floor and began scrubbing them in the sink.

While Katya timidly gnawed at her toast, Sevika told her about the fallout of the previous day – or lack thereof. It turned out Kells had no family. He was orphaned at some young age, and had grown up in the mine’s barracks until he had aged out. Having no family made his death easier for people to forget, easier for the mine to ignore. Even the sniveling troupe he ran with did not seem willing to put up much of a fuss. Sevika wagered they were too afraid to go against the rumor in the mines that Kells had attacked Silco first. Katya didn’t doubt her, but she also felt Kells’s friends were probably the types who had loose loyalties. 

Her heart skipped a beat at the thought. If she pulled back now, wouldn’t that make her the same?

“I’m glad Silco went to go find you,” Sevika said quietly. Then, with a wry grin, “I almost feel bad giving him grief about it when he ditched me.”

The tops of Katya’s cheeks colored at the story. Then, ducking into her tea, she muttered, “I am glad he came, too.”

A moment later, Enyd strode from the kitchenette, Katya’s damp, but clean, clothes draped over her arm.

“Do you have a drying rack, Katya?”

She shook her head, dark fringe tickling her eyebrows. “I usually just set things up by the radiator.”

She nodded her head toward the old, woven pipes under the window. As if in response, they bumped and hissed. Enyd nodded and stepped forward, shaking out each piece of clothing, and laying them carefully around the warm metal.

“I may have a spare drying rack,” Enyd mused as she fussed with the clothes. “I think its broken, technically. But it would be safer than putting your things directly on or near a heat source. I can bring it over tomorrow – “

“That is very kind, but not necessary, Enyd.”

The older woman shushed Katya’s worries with a wave of her hand. “Nonsense. You’ll have it.”

“I should get going,” Sevika said, rising from the couch. “I promised to meet Nasha today. We’re playing hooky.”

Enyd looked wholly disapproving, but chose not to rebuke the young woman’s decision. 

“Just don’t push your luck.”

“I won’t. I won’t.” Sevika turned to Katya, before dipping down and giving her a warm squeeze. “I’m glad you’re okay, Kat. Let me know if you need anything, ‘kay?”

Katya��s throat swelled, and she glued her tongue to the roof of her mouth to keep from crying. She looked up at Sevika and nodded.

“Bye, Ms E!”

“Good bye, Sevika. Be safe.”

Sevika smiled broadly and left. 

Silence seeped into the apartment. Katya trembled despite her blanket cocoon. Enyd eyed her, her face full of motherly concern. And understanding. She stepped toward the coffee table and bent to pick up the plate of crusts.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry Silco got hurt.”

Enyd’s hand jerked away from the plate as if it had burned her. Her head snapped up, eyes staring at the bleary-eyed young woman on the couch. 

At once, Enyd rounded the table and took up the cushion Sevika had vacated, pulling Katya close.

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

Katya sniffed and choked, burying her nose behind the curtain of Enyd’s ebony hair. The decision to draw back, draw away, quickly dissolved as motherly comfort wrapped around her, warmer than her blanket.

“You did nothing wrong, Katya. And Silco is fine. Banged up, but fine.”

Katya keened into Enyd’s shoulder. Thinking on Silco’s mangled face, on how much worse it must look today. Her arms snaked out from the blanket folds and wrapped around the older woman, holding tight. Holding on as if Enyd was her own parent. Enyd held her back with equal fervor. 

“He’s home. Resting. Vander is with him right now.” A pause, and then Enyd whispered again, “It wasn’t your fault, Katya. You didn’t do anything wrong.” She pulled back to draw the young woman’s puffy and tear-streaked face between her hands. “Do you hear me? It was nothing you did.”

Katya hiccupped, her eyes – turned the color of sap by her tears – searched Enyd’s face.

“How long did it take for you to believe that?”

The older woman’s shoulders sagged. She ran her thumbs under Katya’s swollen eyelids, wiping tears as she went.

“Too long, considering it was not my fault,” she quietly answered, her voice hoarse with her truth and her illness. “Don’t let it be so long for you, sweetheart.”

Eventually, Enyd cleared the table and brought Katya a tall glass of water. Instead of drinking it, she slid horizontally on the couch, tucked herself deep into the burrow of her blankets again. Enyd sat with her, a thin hand resting atop her covered feet and ankles. 

She stayed when Katya drifted into uneasy sleep. She was there when Katya woke back up, feeling dry and sick. Clumsily, she reached for the glass of water – Enyd steadying it as she brought it to her parched mouth. The drink was necessary, but not soothing. It cut ravines down her raw throat and sat heavy in her stomach. Her nose wrinkled in a wince and she tucked herself back in her blankets, curling towards the couch’s back cushions. 

Sometime later, Enyd hovered over her cheek and whispered that she was leaving for the day, but that she’d be back the next. Katya tucked her lips between her teeth to keep her from pleading that she should stay. Instead, she nodded. Then, Enyd kissed her temple, and it was a staggering effort for Katya to not start crying again. She listened to the soft padding of Enyd’s light steps, the front door opening and closing, then silence. 

Thick, lonely silence.

In the quiet, thoughts grew like weeds. A contemplative garden taking root in Katya’s brain. She pruned through each thought. How joining with the Children put her more directly in Kells’s path. How Silco had sacrificed his safety to assure her own. How Enyd and Sevika had appeared unprompted on her doorstep, out of concern, out of love, out of a sense of responsibility for her. How other Children had spun the story to protect Katya and Silco from any scrutiny over Kells’s death.

Katya sighed and pressed her forehead into the lumpy couch cushion. 

She wanted Enyd to come back. She wanted Silco tucked against her side, so they could heal together. 

She wanted, she wanted, she wanted.

She thought on Enyd’s words. 

It wasn’t her fault.

Kells had tried to take something from her, and, perhaps, if she did pull away from these people, he would posthumously succeed: He would manage to take away her sense of belonging, the comfort of her community. The idea that she was worth something. And she wanted that. Badly.

She wanted, she wanted, she wanted.

Notes: Our poor baby girl, Katya ���� She'll come around. Don't you worry.

Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear yout thoughts in the comments or reblogs ❤️

Coming Up Next: Rynweaver pays Heimerdinger a visit. Grayson and Bone have a talk.

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