defmxl

[defmxl]

Ma Meilleure Ennemie (pt 22/?)

Wolves always circle their prey — with patience, with hunger. You have yours, and Silco has his. The difference is, he knows exactly what his will do. You, on the other hand… still don't know if yours will follow you or tear you apart.

Silco x fem!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+, MDNI)

Word Count: 8,7K

Warnings: blood and violence, graphic violence, deaths, description of deaths, reader being the killer machine that she is, attempted murder, Kindred being referenced, use of drugs as medicine (shimmer), Silco POV

Set before the events of Act 2 of the first season of Arcane.

This chapter contains graphic descriptions of violence, proceed at your own risk.

Part 21

You allowed yourself to be carried through the long corridor of the mines, your body limp in their grasp, your breathing steady—controlled. One of the men clapped his hands together in that slow, mocking way, sending small bursts of pale light flickering to life around you. The bioluminescent things that nested in the cave walls reacted instantly, their glow pulsing in time with the noise, casting strange, shifting shadows along the tunnel.

Them think the sedative had done its job, that you were nothing more than dead weight in their arms. The truth? It had only knocked you out for about five minutes—hardly enough to be useful. 

You were getting resistant to sedatives. Interesting.

You had known something was wrong the moment you fled to the mines. Silco's men were searching for you. You could feel it in the way the air itself seemed to tighten, in the way every sound felt sharper, more pronounced. They weren't just searching. They were hunting and you felt like you did that night when you escaped from the Institute.

Silco had seen you.

The bastard saw you.

The bastard was alive

Even now, that realization still sent a sharp jolt of something down your spine. Shock. Frustration. You could still feel the weight of his eyes against yours, the realization of the two of you existing in that same place after that night when everything was destroyed. The weight of your feelings distracted you.

And that distraction cost you dearly. You had been so focused on escaping Silco's presence and gaze that you made the mistake of not checking if you were being followed. And you were sure—so sure—that you had shaken them off. Hours passed, and you had allowed yourself the illusion of safety.

Until you heard the footsteps.

They had come for you. You knew it the moment the first echo reached your ears. You felt them drawing closer, their movements careful, practiced. They thought they were being quiet. Thought they had the element of surprise.

You let them think you had that advantage.

You remained still, letting your body sink into the illusion of unconsciousness while they invaded the hideout. You didn't even move when one of them stuck a needle in your skin and your body went limp for those few minutes. Long enough for someone to pick you up and carry you out, probably feeling like the coolest person in the world for having managed to knock you down.

And the idiots didn't realize that you were conscious the entire time.

You could have struck then. Could have ended them all in that moment they invaded the hideout. But you didn't.

Not in this place. This place was a sanctuary. One of the last you had left. You would not stain it with their blood. But that didn't mean they would leave it alive... no, you would paint the walls of the mines with their blood to send a message. A message to whoever had the stupid idea of ​​trying to get close to you again.

A message to Silco

You counted the seconds in your mind, each beat steady, measured. By your estimation, you were only minutes away from the entrance of the mines. That was enough. More than enough. They thought they had control, thought they were escorting some helpless, unconscious captive to whatever fate Silco had planned. It was almost insulting. Almost. But you would make them pay for that mistake soon enough.

You waited for it. The flickering pattern of light and shadow that pulsed through the tunnel as the bioluminescent things reacted to the noise around them. They didn't glow constantly. No, they needed sound—impact—to ignite, and when silence fell, so did the darkness. You listened to the rhythm of it, the cadence of claps, footsteps, any noise. Calculating. Watching. Then, you felt it—the brief moment when the tunnel was consumed by blackness, the heartbeat between one sound and the next. That was all you needed.

You struck.

Your body twisted sharply, shifting all your weight, and then—impact. Your elbow drove into the soft flesh of the man carrying you, a precise force to knock the air out of him. A sharp exhale, the satisfying crunch of bone, and suddenly, his grip slackened. You felt yourself drop, your body colliding with the ground in a hard, jarring impact that felt a violent jolt up your spine. The pain barely registered, drowned out by the rush of adrenaline flooding your system. The moment you hit the ground, the things in the walls responded—the cavern flashed with an eerie, pulsing white, illuminating everything for a single, fleeting second.

And that was enough.

Ten.

You saw them. Every single one. Their faces, their positions, their weapons. But more importantly—you saw the shift in their eyes. The flicker of realization. Their captivity was not a captive.

They moved, but so did you. The second the light began to fade, you rolled, letting your body sink into the consuming blackness once more. One of them shouted—too late. His voice set off another flicker of light, but by then, you had already moved behind the nearest one. Your hands were still bare, but that didn't matter. You reached up, wrapping one arm around his throat, the other grasping the side of his head. A violent, practiced motion. A sharp twist. The crack of his neck breaking was masked by another yell���more light, more confusion. His body dropped.

Another one turned toward the sound, gun cocking. You lunged before he could fire, grabbing the barrel, twisting it sharply to the side. A single shot rang out, reverberating against the stone walls, sending the entire tunnel into a frenzy of glowing white. Your knee drove into his stomach, making him buckle. His grip failed. The gun was yours now and you didn't hesitate. A single shot to the head. The glow pulsed again, flashing violently with the noise.

Eight.

They were shouting now. Trying to get their bearings. Trying to pin you down in the shifting light. But they were disoriented, reacting instead of thinking. You were already moving, weaving through them in the blackness, using the momentary bursts of light to track their positions. A blade glittered as one swung at you. You ducked, feeling the rush of air above your head, and retaliated—fingers finding the hilt of his knife, yanking it from his grip. A shot directly to his chin. The warmth of blood sprayed across your skin, hot and thick. Another gasp. Another flash.

Seven.

Someone grabbed you by the neck trying to suffocate you. A mistake. You just moved your hand, driving your newly stolen knife deep between their ribs. A choked gasp. You twisted the blade, wrenching it free in a violent, wet sound. His body collapsed.

Six.

Curiously, you were feeling... good about killing them. This wasn't just about survival anymore. This was released. Every frustration, every failure, every fucking moment that had led you to this boiled over, spilling out in every violent movement. Every strike. Every kill.

The moment the next man barked an order, the cavern erupted in a symphony of noise—stomping boots, clapping hands, the deliberate clatter of weapons against stone. It was a crude method, but it worked. The bioluminescent things pulsed with frantic, erratic bursts of light. They weren't going to let the darkness hide you anymore.

Clever.

You wiped the blood from your nose, chest rising and falling with deep, eradicates breaths. You couldn't afford to spend your 10 seconds on this shitty fight. If you took too long to kill them, you'd be dead before the last heartbeat passed.

Fine. You'd change tactics.

Your grip tightened around the knife, fingers slick with warm blood. They wanted a fight in the light? You'd give them one. This time you felt a burning behind your eyes instead of the traditional tingling. But you really didn't care.

One second, you were standing still. The next, you were there—a blur of motion, closing the distance between you and the nearest man before his brain could register it. You were faster.

His pupils barely had time to dilate before his hand snapped out, seizing the back of his skull. There was no hesitation, no theatrics—just raw, unfiltered violence. You slammed his head into a jagged outcropping of stone, the impact sending a wet, sickening crunch through the tunnel. His body went slack instantly, collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut.

Five.

You had already shifted when the gunshot sounds started, already moved, and the world felt different—you felt different. It wasn't just adrenaline, not just the traditional amplified vision of instinct. It was more. A deeper, more volatile energy surging through your veins, making your limbs feel lighter, more aware of everything. Shimmer. It seems like it was having an effect too.

Another step. Another blur of motion. You twist your body mid-run, narrowly avoiding the crack of gunfire of them fired in your direction. The next barely had time to process that the shots hadn't hit you before you were on him, the knife in your grip carving a deep, precise arc across his throat. More blood sprayed hot and thick, painting the cavern floor in violent crimson. He stumbled back, hands clutching at the gaping wound, making a horrible, wet gurgling sound as he collapsed.

Four.

Two tried to run.

Cowards

You just used the gun close to you to shoot them. A direct shot to each head was enough.

Two.

You turned—ready, primed, already calculating the next move, already shifting your weight toward the final two—

Bang.

A sharp, deafening crack split the air. And then—nothing.

For a moment, the world stopped. There was no pain, not at first. Just the sound of the shot ringing in your skull, echoing over and over like a cruel joke your mind couldn't quite process. Your body didn't move the way it was supposed to. It didn't react, didn't fight, didn't even flinch. Your limbs locked up, a violent, unnatural stillness seizing your muscles, and then—gravity.

Your knees hit the ground first, the impact reverberating up through your bones, your body had simply decided to shut down. But you didn't hit the ground completely. Not yet. You remained on your knees, swaying, head dipping forward slightly, arms hanging uselessly at your sides.

Your vision was blurred.

Then, it sharpened.

Then, it blurred again.

Something warm was dripping down your forehead, trailing past your temple, down your cheek, staining your skin. More warmth gathered at your lips, the taste of iron flooding your mouth, thick and suffocating. You swallowed instinctively, only to feel it seep from the corners of your lips, slipping down your chin. You had been shot.

In the head.

Something was wrong. More wrong than just the bullet stuck in your skull.

The burning that had thrummed beneath your eyes moments ago—the unnatural energy that had surged through your limbs, making you faster, sharper—was gone. Instinct had abandoned you in an instant, leaving behind nothing but cold emptiness. Your body felt... disconnected, foreign, as though every muscle, every nerve had been forcibly switched off. And yet, you were still here.

Trapped in this limbo.

Dying—but not allowed to die.

Your lungs burned. Your pulse, once so violently alive, now beat unevenly, faltering, as though unsure whether to continue at all. Something deeper, something fundamental inside of you was fracturing, breaking apart at the seams. The shimmer wouldn't let you die, but it wasn't saving you. It was killing you in a different way—slowly, painfully, twisting something inside you that wasn't meant to be twisted.

You heard them. The last two. Their voices were distant, muffled, like sound trying to reach you from beneath deep water.

"Is she—?"

"No fucking way... she should be dead. I put a goddamn bullet through her skull! Look at her, she's still sitting up."

The pause. You could hear the shuffle of boots against the cavern floor, cautious steps drawing closer.

"Then why isn't she moving?"

A beat of silence.

"I don't know."

Neither did you.

Time no longer moved the way it should.

It stretched and contracted, folding in on itself, warping reality into something distant, untouchable. The agony of being caught between two opposing forces—one trying to kill you, the other refusing to let you die—became an eternity. Every second felt stretched into hours, dragging your consciousness through the slow, torturous process of undoing. Your body wasn't yours anymore. Your mind wasn't yours anymore. You were trapped in this hell, trapped in the static between life and death, and something deep within you screamed against it.

You could feel yourself unraveling.

And then—something snapped.

Your body moved.

It wasn't a decision. There was no thought behind it, no conscious command. Something else had taken control, something more primal than instinct, something that didn't care about pain or wounds or the fact that your body was barely functioning. You felt your blood boil in your veins and a single feeling invade your mind.

Wrath

Wrath banished any state of death you were placed in. You lunged forward, hands grasping for the first thing they could reach. The throat.

Your fingers tightened around it instantly, muscles locking with a strength that wasn't entirely yours. A strangled gasp, hands clawing at yours, panic flooding wide, deceiving eyes.

Your hands twisted—brutally, mercilessly—snapping the man's neck with a sickening, sharp crack. His body went limp, collapsing beneath you. You were already on your way to the next one—no hesitation, no pause—launching toward the last one. He tried to react, tried to raise his weapon, but you were faster. The shimmer still clung to your muscles, still burned through your veins in erratic, uncontrollable bursts. 

You tackled him, sending both of you crashing to the ground. He struggled, but his hands were already around his face, pressing, digging his thumbs into his eyes. His screams were a raw, wet sound, cut short as your grip shifted, as you ended him with the same brutal efficiency as the last.

Your body shut down again.

Whatever force had been propelling you forward flickered out like a candle in the wind, leaving behind only the wreckage of what it had forced you to do. Your limbs gave out all at once, and you collapsed, falling against the still-warm body beneath you. Blood soaked into your clothes, your breath ragged, uneven. The cavern spun violently, tilting in and out of focus, but you barely noticed. Your body wasn't listening anymore. It had spent itself, drained every last ounce of energy into the kill, and now—now it refused to keep going.

You weren't sure how long it took. Minutes. Hours. It could have been forever. When you opened your eyes again, the vision came and went. You didn't know what was happening to your body, but you were sure you needed help. The taste of iron thickened on your tongue, turning sour. Your stomach twisted violently, your body finally, finally reacting the way it should.

You convulsed.

Blood spilled from your lips in a sudden, brutal wave, splattering against the cracked ground beneath you. It felt endless, pouring from your mouth in heaving, choking bursts, as if your body was trying to purge the sheer wrongness festering inside of it.

It seemed like your body wasn't giving up on living even when your mind was already crying out to die. You were exhausted and didn't even know if you had exceeded the ten second limit at that moment. Were you really alive?

Somehow, somehow, you started moving again.

Crawling.

Each movement was sluggish, painful. Every breath you took rattled in your chest, thick with the wet, metallic taste of your own blood. The cavern stretched on endlessly, stone digging into your skin as you dragged yourself forward, your body nothing more than raw, torn muscle and sheer, stubborn will.

And then—air.

Cold. Real.

You barely noticed when you crossed the threshold, barely recognized the moment you left the mines behind. But you felt it. The sharp, acrid sting of Zaun's air burned its way down your throat, scraping against raw lungs.

Then—you collapsed. Feeling more blood drip from your wounds and especially from your nose and the hole in your head... the recoil was now taking its toll, belatedly, but still punishing. 

You registered two things while you were passing out: a female voice letting out a scream followed by saying your name and the other thing was the growl of a wolf above you. A wolf about to sink its fangs into your neck.

[...]

Silco's Pov ━━━━━━━༺༻━━━━━━━

Silco exhaled slowly, his patience already stretched thin. He had no interest in drawn-out explanations or tangents on theoretical applications—Singed had a tendency to indulge in both if left unchecked. So, he leaned forward, setting his whiskey glass down with a clink against the desk, his mismatched gaze cutting through the dim light as he fixed the scientist with a sharp stare.

"Let's get straight to the point." Silco said, voice low and edged with authority. "What kind of mutation did her body undergo?"

Singed, unbothered as ever, made no immediate move to respond. Instead, he reached into the worn leather satchel resting by his side and retrieved a stack of documents. The motion was methodical, almost languid, as if the question itself held little weight in comparison to the greater puzzle he was piecing together. He placed the papers onto the desk and slid them toward Silco without ceremony.

Silco picked them up, flipping through the first few pages — the old man had been smart to keep copies of his research. His eyes scanned the dense, clinical writing—medical reports, blood analysis, handwritten observations in Singed's neat yet erratic script. He took in each detail with sharp precision, absorbing the data even as he listened to the chemist begin his explanation.

"I am still studying the full extent of the mutation." Singed admitted, his voice calm, devoid of hesitation. "However, the most significant change is her resistance to death."

Silco's fingers stilled against the edge of a page. His gaze lifted just enough to signal his full attention, though he said nothing, allowing Singed to continue.

"I conducted several tests on small animal subjects using a sample of her blood. Not the same sample I used in the Chemtanks, mind you. That was an attempt to synthesize her ability, not the mutation itself. These tests were different. I wanted to observe the raw, unaltered effect."

Silco remained silent, he didn't particularly care about the intricacies of the process—what mattered was the result. And judging by the methodical way Singed was explaining it, he already knew the answer would be... unique.

"Every variable that should have killed the subject... did not." Singed continued, an almost clinical curiosity lacing his words. "Poison. Oxygen deprivation. Hemorrhagic shock. Organ failure. The body refused to die. However—" he paused, tapping a long finger against the desk, "The ability itself became the cause of death. The mutation, it seems, does not grant true immortality. Instead, it sustains the host... until the body collapses from the inside out. In theory, the only thing capable of killing her... is herself."

Silco let the weight of the revelation settle in his mind, exhaling slowly as his fingers tapped idly against the desk. His gauze flickered toward the ashtray on his desk. His voice, when he finally broke the silence, was low, almost contemplative.

"So, she can still die."

Singed, as always, remained unfazed. He adjusted his posture slightly, folding his hands in front of him as if this were nothing more than a routine discussion of scientific theory. 

"She will likely come to that realization sooner or later." Singed remarked, his voice detached, clinical. "And when she does, she may choose to use it to her advantage."

Silco's head snapped up, his heterochromatic eyes moving to stare at him. For a brief moment, his expression was unreadable—calm, controlled, carefully composed. But there was something in the way his fingers curled against the desk, in the sharp tension that flickered beneath his skin, that suggested otherwise.

Then, without warning, he shot Singed a glare so sharp, so utterly venomous, that for the first time in this entire exchange, the chemist actually paused.

Silco wanted to throw him out the damn window.

The mere suggestion—that she might choose to end her own life—unsettled him in a way he hadn't anticipated. It was an intrusive, insidious thought, slithering its way into his mind like a toxin, poisoning every other rational consideration. A self-inflicted death was different from assassination, different from an enemy's blade or a bullet meant to silence her. It was deliberate. It was final. And it was something he could not—would not—allow himself to contemplate.

His jaw tightened. He forced the bitter thought from his mind before it could root itself any deeper. His emotions, volatile as they were in that moment, had no place here. He had spent years mastering control, wielding it like a weapon, and he would not let something so personal strip that from him now. So instead, he exhaled slowly, his expression smoothing out into something more composed. When he finally spoke, his voice carried the certainty of an unshakable truth.

"She wouldn't do such a thing."

Singed did not argue. He didn't challenge the statement, didn't raise an eyebrow in skepticism or push the topic further. He simply inclined his head slightly, a silent acknowledgment that neither agreed nor disagreed.

Smart man.

Silco let the silence stretch between them for a moment longer, then shifted the conversation. "You'll establish a temporary laboratory nearby. Effective immediately. You will begin the work I instructed."

For a brief moment, Silco saw it—the slight shift in Singed's expression, the way his lips parted just slightly, the subtle inhalation that preceded what was sure to be an argument. The chemist was never one to blindly follow orders, not without first dissecting them through the lens of his own logic. But then, just as quickly as the protest had begun to form, it died.

Singed exhaled through his nose, fingers twitching minutely at his side before he inclined his head in silent acquiescence. He wouldn't argue. Not this time.

With that obstacle cleared, Silco allowed his focus to shift to the next step. He reached for his whiskey glass once more, but this time, he didn't drink. Instead, he rolled it between his fingers, letting the amber liquid catch the dim light as he spoke.

"I may be bringing in another mind to assist you in this research." Singed's gaze flickered toward him, a silent question forming even before the man voiced it. Silco continued, his tone measured, deliberate. "A young scientist from Piltover. Someone I believe can be... persuaded, given the right incentive."

That earned more of Singed's attention. The chemist straightened slightly, the light catching the faint gleam of his eyes as he regarded Silco with quiet intrigue.

"Who?"

Silco allowed himself the barest hint of a smirk, though there was no amusement in it. He finally brought the whiskey to his lips, taking a slow sip before answering.

"His name is Viktor."

The reaction was immediate. Not one of shock, but of recognition. Singed's brows lifted slightly, a rare expression of genuine interest flickering across his usually impassive face.

"Viktor?" he repeated, the name rolling off his tongue with familiarity. There was a pause, as if he were considering something, reaching back through old memories before he finally spoke again. "He was my assistant... when he was younger."

Silco's fingers stilled against the glass. That was unexpected.

"What happend?"

Singed exhaled, his voice carrying the weight of an old recollection. "We parted ways due to... differences in ideology. He was brilliant, yes, but idealistic. He clung to the notion of progress serving the greater good." He tilted his head slightly, his gaze distant. "Still, despite his morals, he remains, above all else, a scientist. And a scientist in need of a solution to his own affliction is a man who will consider avenues he once rejected."

Silco hummed, satisfied. That had been his exact assessment. Viktor's brilliance was wasted in Piltover, suffocated by their bureaucracy, their refusal to take necessary risks. But desperation had a way of reshaping a man's convictions. If Viktor truly sought to cure himself, then the promise of a breakthrough—one that could only be found here, under Silco's guidance—would be all the leverage he needed.

"Then it seems I was right to consider him." Silco mused, leaning back in his chair. His gaze met Singed's once more, the unspoken command hanging heavy in the air. "Send a letter, request a meeting between you, present the proposal and be sure he will accept."

"As you wish."

The conversation was abruptly, violently, interrupted.

The office doors slammed open with such force that they nearly rebounded off the walls, the sharp bang cutting through the heavy air like a gunshot. Silco barely had the chance to register his irritation before he saw her—Sevika, standing in the doorway, breathless, her chest rising and falling as if she had run the entire way here. That alone was enough to make his blood sharpen with anticipation. Sevika did not run. Not unless it mattered.

"We found her whereabouts." she announced, her voice still slightly winded, but firm.

Silco was out of his chair before the sentence had even fully registered. His movements were immediate, instinctual—a predator responding to the scent of blood in the water. The reports, the whiskey, the previous conversation—all of it ceased to exist in an instant.

"Meeting's over." 

He declared, his voice cutting through the lingering tension as he strode toward the door. Behind him, he could hear Singed shifting slightly, but Silco didn't spare him a second glance. There was no room for hesitation now. He reached for his coat, yanking it from the nearby rack with a swift motion as he pulled it over his shoulders.

"Is she there?" His question came sharp, precise, laced with something dangerously close to urgency.

Sevika's lips pressed into a thin line, and for the briefest of moments, Silco felt an ugly coil of impatience tighten in his chest. "No, but you need to see what she left behind."

━━━━━━━༺༻━━━━━━━

Two days later

The air smelled of something thick, suffocating—overly sweet flowers, an overpowering concoction of perfumes so cloying it made your stomach turn. Your eyes snapped open, a sudden jolt of awareness crashing down on you. For a second, you couldn't tell where you were. The hazy remnants of your past bled into the present, dragging with them the ghost of a memory you had long since tried to bury.

That scent. It reminded you why you hated it. It reminded you of the first time you met Silco—of the way your eyes had locked, of how the world had felt different after that moment.

Ah, if only you had known.

You turned your head and found yourself staring at an unfamiliar figure crouched on the floor.

A man.

Which curiously reminded you a lot of Vander

He was gathering the broken shards of what had once been a ceramic flower vase, his large hands moving with surprising care as he picked up each jagged piece. From the way the fragments lay scattered across the wooden planks, you could tell he must have knocked it over when entering the room. Not surprising. The private quarters of the brothel were never particularly spacious, and for a man of his stature, they must have felt even smaller.

He was massive. Broad shoulders, thick arms, the kind of presence that demanded attention without needing to speak. His skin was a warm bronze, weathered by time and experience. Dark shadows rested beneath his golden-brown eyes, as if sleep had long abandoned him. His hair, dark brown with strands of silver creeping through, framed his face in thick sideburns that merged into a small, neatly trimmed goatee.

A single braid hung from the front of his hairline, tied off at the end with a tiny blue bead. But what truly caught you off guard was the way he looked at you.

When he finished collecting the shards, he straightened and lifting his head. His eyes found yours, locking onto them with a weight you couldn't quite place. Silence stretched between you, thick and unreadable.

And then, without a word, he turned and stepped out of the room.

You barely had time to process what had just happened before he returned. But this time, he wasn't alone. Trailing just behind him, dwarfed by his sheer size, was someone much, much smaller.

Babette.

The moment Babette's wide, luminous eyes met yours, something inside you twisted. The way her ears twitched, the way her small hands clenched at the fabric of her dress—it was as if she didn't quite believe you were real. And then, with a sharp intake of breath, she practically launched herself at you.

"You're awake!" Her voice wavered between relief and reprimand, her tiny hands grabbing at your arms, your shoulders, as if trying to confirm you were solid flesh and bone and not some cruel illusion. "Gods above, I thought you were dead! I feared you were dead!"

Her small frame trembled slightly, but she quickly masked it, lips pressing together in a tight line. Babette was never one for openly showing vulnerability, but this was different. This wasn't just business or camaraderie. You blinked, still sluggish from waking up, trying to string your thoughts together through the thick fog in your mind.

"How long?" Your voice came out rough, throat dry, like you hadn't spoken in days. "How long have I been out?"

Babette exhaled sharply, as if releasing a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She moved to sit on the edge of the bed beside you, her small weight barely shifting the mattress.

"A few days. Two, maybe three. I didn't count... I was too busy wondering if you'd even wake up at all."

Her words settled over you like a heavy blanket, thick with unspoken fears. The implication was clear—she had thought she might lose you.

Your fingers twitched against the sheets as you tried to recall what had led you here. The last thing you remembered was the mines, the cold damp air clinging to your skin, the weight of exhaustion dragging at your limbs. And then—nothing.

Your gaze flickered to Babette, still sitting beside you, her small hands gripping the edge of the mattress. "How did I get here?"

At that, she let out a huff, as if the answer should have been obvious. "That was me." she said, lifting her chin slightly, the usual pride creeping back into her voice. "Pure coincidence, or maybe fate, who knows? I was leaving a client's house when I saw you lying there, half-dead." she snorted a laugh. "You really know how to make an entrance, don't you?"

Her attempt at humor didn't fully mask the concern behind her words.

"You carried me all the way here?"

Babette let out a short, incredulous laugh. "As if. You're twice my size. I wasn't about to break my back dragging your sorry ass across the Lanes." She jerking a thumb toward the man standing in the corner of the room. "Loris."

The man—Loris, apparently—stood in quiet patience, arms crossed over his broad chest. Now that you could look at him properly, he was even bigger than you had first realized. The kind of man who could lift a grown person without breaking a sweat.

Babette sighed, shaking her head. "I ran back to the brothel and got him to do the heavy lifting. No way I could've done it alone."

You studied Loris for a moment, your thoughts still sluggish, before shifting your attention back to Babette. "And him? Since when do you have a bodyguard?"

Her expression soured instantly, ears flattening slightly. "Since Silco's men started getting even worse to deal with." She shot a glance at Loris, then back at you. "Figured I could use some muscle around the place. Turns out, hiring a walking mountain makes people think twice before getting handsy."

The wry humor in her voice was a thin veil over something else—frustration, exhaustion. You exhaled, your mind still trying to process everything. Babette had saved you. Again. And despite everything, despite the pain in your muscles and the dull ache in your skull, a small part of you was grateful that she was been the one to found you.

Babette's ears twitched as she studied your face, gauging your reaction before she spoke again, a sure sign that whatever she was about to say wasn't going to make you feel any better.

"The news is everywhere, Silco's looking for you. Hard. He's even offering money for information, good money." she continued. "Word's spread through every corner of Zaun by now. Every back alley, every dive bar, every desperate lowlife looking to make a quick stack of coin knows your name."

"Has anyone come here looking?"

Babette let out a sharp exhale, her nose wrinkling as if the very thought disgusted her. "Of course." she admitted, eyes narrowing slightly. "Men sniffing around, asking questions. But don't worry, I made sure they never saw you. No one suspects you're here. As far as the rest of Zaun is concerned, you might as well have vanished into thin air."

You felt a strange mix of relief and dread settle over you. Safe, for now. But for how long?

Determined, you swung your legs over the side of the bed, bracing your hands against the mattress to push yourself upright. The moment you tried to stand, however, the world lurched violently. Your vision blurred at the edges, and a wave of dizziness crashed over you like a tidal wave. Before you could collapse back down, Babette was there, small hands gripping your arm with surprising strength.

"Alright, no." she snapped, her voice cutting through your stubbornness like a blade. "You're not doing this right now. Loris!"

At the sound of his name, the massive man straightened from where he had been leaning against the doorframe, his golden-brown eyes flickering toward Babette in silent acknowledgment.

"Go get the medicine." she ordered, her tone leaving no room for argument. Without hesitation, Loris turned on his heel and disappeared through the doorway. Babette clicked her tongue in frustration as she helped guide you back against the headboard, ensuring you were seated properly before stepping back with her arms crossed. "You need rest, not whatever reckless bullshit you were about to pull."

Your fingers curled into the sheets, frustration simmering beneath your skin. "It's too dangerous to stay here." you murmured, shaking your head slightly. "If Silco finds out, if he so much as suspects, he'll burn this place to the ground. I can't let that happen."

A heavy silence hung between you. Then, Babette sighed. A deep, weary exhale that made her entire frame seem smaller for just a moment.

"You really do remind me of Vander, you know that?" Your gaze flickered to her, startled by the shift in tone. "Always putting other people ahead of yourself, always willing to throw yourself into the fire just so no one else gets burned."

Her words landed heavier than you expected.

You swallowed hard, pressing your back against the pillows. Babette had a way of seeing right through you, peeling back the layers even when you didn't want her to. And the worst part? She wasn't wrong. Babette exhaled sharply, her ears flattening for just a second before she turned away, rubbing at her temples as if warding off a headache.

"This is my fault." she muttered, more to herself than to you.

You frowned. "What?"

She let out a bitter laugh, shaking her head. "All of this." she gesturing vaguely, as if encompassing the entire mess you had found yourself in. "If I hadn't let you take that client that night, you never would have met Silco. You never would have gotten tangled up in his business, and none of this would be happening."

Her voice was tight, filled with something raw—guilt, frustration, regret.

You stared at her, caught off guard by the sudden shift. "Babette, I—"

"But you shouldn't have even been here to begin with." she cut in, her sharp golden eyes locking onto yours. "You never should have gotten into this life at all. You know that, right?"

A strange unease settled in your chest. There was something in her tone, something unspoken lingering between the words.

"What are you talking about?"

Babette hesitated. Her fingers curled into the fabric of her dress, and for the first time in a long while, she looked uncertain. Then, with a deep breath, she spoke. "Vander asked me to take care of you."

The words hit like a punch to the gut. Your mind stalled for a moment, grasping at the meaning behind them. "What?"

Babette's ears drooped slightly. 

"A few days before he died, he came to me. Asked for a favor. He said there was a girl arriving from out of town. Someone important. He told me that if anything happened to him, I should take her in. Give her a job, or just..." She trailed off for a second before looking at you again, something almost apologetic in her expression. "Keep her close."

Your lips parted, but no words came out. Because you understood. Your fingers dug into the sheets beneath you as the realization settled in your bones.

"Me." Babette nodded. You swallowed hard, your throat suddenly dry. "Why... why didn't you ever tell me?"

She shrugged, but it wasn't casual—it was the kind of shrug that carried weight, as if she had spent years deciding whether or not to say this. "Did it matter? I did what he asked. I kept you here. Gave you a place. A job. Maybe not the one he would've wanted for you, but at least you weren't..."

"Alone."

The word left your lips before you even realized you were saying it. A whisper, barely audible, yet it carried the weight of something far greater than just a single syllable.

Babette didn't confirm it. She didn't have to.

You turned your head slightly, staring at the far wall. A strange numbness settled over you, as if your body wasn't sure whether to feel anger, sadness, or something else entirely. Vander had planned for this. For you. He had tried to protect you—even from beyond the grave.

You remembered the first time you met Babette.

It had been late—though in the Undercity, time always felt like an afterthought, like something only people topside had the luxury to care about. The city was dim, cloaked in the sickly glow of flickering streetlamps and neon signs, but you had barely registered any of it. You had been sitting on cold stone, on what would eventually become the statue of Vander, though at the time, it was nothing more than an incomplete memorial, still in the early stages of construction.

You had been lost in that limbo between grief and nothingness—not feeling pain, not yet, but something worse. A hollow emptiness that stretched too wide, too deep, like a chasm carved into your chest where something important had once been. 

You hadn't cried when you built those three graves. Your hands had been stained with dirt, with dust, but not with grief. Not yet.

And then—Babette.

She had shown up out of nowhere, as small and unassuming as a shadow, settling onto the stone beside you as if she had always meant to be there. She hadn't said anything at first. Just pulled a cigarette from her coat, lit it, took a slow drag, and then— She had offered it to you.

You had taken it without thinking, bringing it to your lips, inhaling the smoke deep into your lungs. You hadn't spoken. Neither had she. The two of you had simply sat there, sharing the cigarette, passing it back and forth in silence, until it burned down to nothing but ash.

And then, finally, she had spoken.

"The brothel's hiring."

"I'm not interested."

She had shrugged, as if she expected the answer. But then she had said something else. "Think it over." she had murmured, tilting her head slightly, her golden eyes studying you in a way that felt uncomfortably knowing. "I've seen that look before."

"What look?"

"The kind people get when they stop wanting to live."

The words had settled over you like a weight, pressing into your ribs, into your lungs. A truth you hadn't wanted to name. And then she had said something else. Something you would never forget.

"Everyone who goes looking for death... lives."

She hadn't waited for you to respond. She had simply stood, dusted herself off, and walked away, leaving you alone with her words. And the next day you had found yourself standing in front of the brothel's door.

You had hesitated, hand hovering over the handle, debating whether this was a mistake, whether you were truly so lost that you would walk into a place like this, let yourself be swallowed by something so different from the life you had known. Before you could knock, the door had swung open. Babette had stood there, arms crossed, expression unreadable. Like she had known you would come.

Your thoughts scattered like dust in the wind the moment the door creaked open again.

Loris stepped inside, his hulking frame making the room feel smaller, more cramped. He moved with a quiet efficiency that didn't match his size, carrying a tray with a small glass vial, a pitcher of water, and an empty cup balanced carefully on top. His expression remained unreadable as he crossed the room and set the tray down on the bedside table.

Before you could ask, Babette was already moving. She hopped down from the bed, quick and nimble, snatching up the small vial with one hand and turning toward you with the other.

"Drink this." she instructed, offering it to you without hesitation.

Your fingers wrapped around the cool glass instinctively, but the moment your eyes flickered down to the liquid inside, your breath hitched. The vial trembled slightly in your grip. A rich, luminous purple.

Shimmer.

Your stomach twisted.

"Shimmer." you murmured, the word slipping from your lips before you could stop it—half passive, half bitter.

Babette's ears twitched slightly, but she didn't waver. "It's medicine."

Your grip on the vial tightened. "It's shimmer."

"I know what it is." she snapped. "And I know what you're thinking. But before you get all high and mighty about it, listen to me." She crossed her arms, her stance shifting, as if preparing for an argument she had already won. "I know a healer and yes, she uses shimmer in some of her mixtures. But that—" she nodded toward the vial in your hand, "Is what kept you alive these past few days."

"You drugged me!"

"I saved you!" Babette's jaw tensed, but she didn't back down. "And I'm not sorry." Her golden eyes locked onto yours, fierce, determined. "You can be pissed at me all you want. You can sit there and sulk and glare at that little bottle like it's the reason your life's gone to shit. But I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Because it kept you stable. It kept you breathing."

A silence settled between you, thick and heavy.

You didn't want to drink it. Every part of you resisted the idea, but deep down, you knew Babette was right. You had been teetering too close to the edge, barely clinging to the thread of consciousness for days. Whatever was in this little vial—shimmer-infused or not—had kept you breathing when you might have otherwise slipped away and you can't afford the luxury of death, not when you had to fulfill your promise once and for all.

So you swallowed your pride and the "medicine".

The moment the thick, acrid liquid coated your tongue, your body rejected it. A sharp, bitter sting that spread like fire, curling down your throat, clawing at your stomach. It was vile—worse than you imagined. Your gut twisted, nausea rolling through you in waves, threatening to bring it back up before it could even settle.

You forced yourself to keep it down.

You barely noticed that your eyes had shut tight, your jaw locked as you willed your body to stiffen the discomfort. But when you opened your eyes and heard Babette's voice, startled and disbelieving, you realized something was wrong.

"Your eyes..."

Your stomach sank. Your breath caught as you turned your head, gaze flickering toward the full-length mirror propped up against the far wall. The reflection staring back at you was your own—except it wasn't.

For the briefest moment, your irises shimmered with an eerie, unnatural glow. The deep, vivid purple.The same luminescence you had seen the day you destroyed Singed's lab, that color so similar to the necklace that rested around your neck. The color that made clear the sins Silco had committed. But just as quickly as it had come, it was gone. A flicker. Nothing more.

You exhaled slowly, turning away from the mirror as if it meant nothing. As if you hadn't just seen a glimpse of something terrifying staring back at you. Babette was still watching you, ears twitching slightly, her expression tight with unspoken questions.

"Don't ask questions, Babette." She hesitated but nodded, clearly unconvinced. You pushed yourself up, steadier this time, the medicine already dulling the lingering pain in your limbs. It was still there, but... lighter. Manageable. "I need to go. There's something important I have to take care of."

"You just woke up from almost dying, and now you want to go running off to gods-know-where? Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

You offered her a wry, tired smile. "I'll be careful."

She snorted. "That's reassuring."

"Okay okay... Do you have a mask I can borrow?"

Babette raised a brow. "A mask?" You nodded. She watched you for a moment before crossing her arms. "I don't suppose you're gonna tell me where you're planning on going?"

"No."

With another dramatic sigh, Babette waved a hand toward the wardrobe near the vanity.

"Third drawer, take your pick." Babette muttered. "Just... just try not to get yourself killed, kid."

You gave her a small, knowing smile. "I would love for this to be possible."

[...]

Silco's Pov ━━━━━━━༺༻━━━━━━━

Silco exhaled slowly, the burn of whiskey still lingering at the back of his throat. He rolled the empty glass between his fingers before pressing its cool rim against his forehead for a fleeting moment, as if the sensation could somehow ground him. It didn't. The headache throbbing behind his left eye remained, a dull and persistent reminder of the string of disasters unraveling before him.

The Last Drop was closed until further notice. He couldn't afford the distraction, couldn't stomach the chaos of noise and bodies while his patience was already wearing dangerously thin. There were too many problems demanding his attention, all of them colliding at once, and for the first time in a long while, Silco found himself struggling to maintain control of them all.

Jinx was out of control—again.

Three days ago, he had managed to subdue her, had coaxed her out of whatever downward spiral she had thrown herself into. But now, that fragile sense of calm had shattered into something far more volatile. She was lashing out, her frustration manifesting in explosions, destruction, senseless havoc that threatened to unravel the very foundation he had built.

And Silco—Silco simply didn't have the patience for it. Not now. Not when there were more pressing matters at hand. He had tried. Tried to contain her storm, to redirect it, to soften the inevitable blow of her self-inflicted torment. But the truth was, Jinx wasn't the only one hurting. She was wounded, yes—but so was he.

And unlike that child, he still had an empire to run.

So, for now, he would ignore her. Let her tantrum burn itself out like a flame deprived of oxygen. Let the weight of her own destruction settle on her shoulders for once. Because if he turned his attention to her now, in the state he was in, Silco wasn't sure whether he'd have the strength to be gentle.

Then there was the matter of Singed and his laboratory.

For the time being, the old man had been relocated to one of the warehouses near The Last Drop—a necessary precaution, both for logistical reasons and security. If she decided to finish what she had started, he needed Singed close enough to protect him, but not so close that his already fragile patience would be tested further. The scientist was undoubtedly brilliant, indispensable even, but his presence had a way of gnawing at Silco's nerves. A man like that—detached, methodical, unshaken by the chaos around him—was difficult to control in ways that even Jinx wasn't.

But that wasn't even the worst of it.

The Chem-Barons had caught wind of the situation—of course they had. Like vultures circling a wounded beast, they wasted no time in seizing the opportunity to test his grip on Zaun. They had called for an emergency meeting that very afternoon, no doubt eager to pick apart his perceived weakness, to probe for openings they could exploit.

Silco had not attended.

Not because he was avoiding them, not because he feared their scrutiny—no, he had simply been occupied elsewhere. The mines demanded his attention, and unlike those bloated opportunists, he still understood the value of getting his hands dirty when the situation called for it.

Let them scheme. Let them whisper behind his back, let them speculate about where his priorities lay. It would only make it that much more satisfying when he reminded them who held the leash.

Silco placed his glass against the counter and got up from the bar.

Two damn days ago, when Sevika had informed him of the massacre in the mine entrance, Silco had been certain of two things: First, she had been hiding there. Second, he hadn't been the first to figure it out. Because the ten men lying dead in the dirt weren't his. They belonged to Finn.

That arrogant little rat had been stupid enough to send his own people instead of hiring mercenaries, leaving behind a trail that might as well have been a signature scrawled in blood. A reckless move. Sloppy. And yet, as much as Silco wanted to confront him—no, as much as he wanted to strangle the bastard with his own hands—he couldn't. Not yet.

It wasn't the right time.

Not when he didn't know why. Why had Finn sent his men after her? What did he want with her? How did he even find out where she was?

That was the question gnawing at him, twisting in the back of his mind like a rusted knife. The obvious answer—the one that made Silco's fingers twitch with the urge to reach for his blade—was that Finn had simply seen an opportunity. He had always been ambitious, always pushing at the edges of his authority, testing limits he had no business testing. But this wasn't just a power play. Finn wasn't foolish enough to challenge him this directly.

Which meant there was something else at play.

Something Silco didn't know and that was unacceptable.

When Silco stepped into his office, the emptiness that greeted him was almost suffocating. It wasn't just silence—it was a void. A hollow, lifeless thing that stretched across the room like an open grave. No joy, no warmth, no color. The air itself felt stagnant, as if the very walls were mourning something long lost.

He had forgotten how gray his life had been before her.

Once upon a time, solitude had been his most faithful companion, a quiet, familiar presence that never betrayed him. But now, it had curdled into something far crueler. Loneliness.

His fingers twitched with the urge to loosen his collar, as though the weight pressing on his chest could be relieved by such a simple action. He exhaled, slow and steady, willing himself not to linger in this moment of weakness. There was no use dwelling on the things he could not change. Not when exhaustion clung to him like a parasite, dragging his limbs into leaden stillness.

Better to surrender to sleep. To the sweet, forced oblivion offered by Singed's pills.

He turned toward his quarters, already anticipating the bitter taste of medication on his tongue— Then he heard it. A sound so small, so subtle, that he might have dismissed it had he not been wired to notice the slightest shift in his surroundings. The groan of metal. A chair creaking under shifting weight.

His chair.

His eyes snapped toward his desk, breath stilling in his throat as he finally saw them.

A figure sat there, relaxed in the space that belonged to him, masked yet unmistakably familiar. He didn't need to see her face to recognize them. He knew the shape of those lips, the way they pressed into a thin, unreadable line. He knew those eyes, even from the shadows of the mask—haunting him in equal measure to the way he longed to see them again.

The room, once unbearably empty, was now far too full.

"You look pathetic right now." her voice cut through the stillness, sharp and dripping with sarcasm. "Almost makes me pity you."

Almost.

Silco remained where he was, rooted to the floor, the exhaustion in his body momentarily forgotten. The voice was different—colder, crueler than he remembered. A blade honed sharper than before. She tilted their head, studying him as if he were something fragile. A thing to be scrutinized, dissected.

"We have a lot to discuss, Silco." The leather of the chair groaned again as she leaned back, utterly at ease in his domain. "Sit."

Part 23

AUTHOR'S NOTES: The fight scene in the cave is entirely based on a blend of episodes 4 and 5 from the second season (in this case, the reader is Vander in his Warwick/wolf form). We still have quite a few long chapters ahead, so if you're still here reading—thank you so much! A little treat for you all: a story about two sisters. You need both sisters, right…?

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nutted

Ma Meilleure Ennemie (pt 21/?)

The past has a cruel habit of clawing its way back — even when it's buried six feet under. No grave is deep enough to silence what was left unresolved

Silco x fem!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+, MDNI)

Word Count: 8,5K

Warnings: panic and anxiety attacks, betrayal and all the feelings that come with it, alternate reality being referenced, Vander and Silco's past, murder referenced, PTSD, hallucinations, Silco POV

Set before the events of Act 2 of the first season of Arcane.

Part 20

Silco's Pov ━━━━━━━༺༻━━━━━━━

I've looked everywhere, but it's clear you don't want to be found. God I'm shit at this. I'm sorry. When she died... I lost my head. I told myself what I did to you was for the greater good, that you deserved it, but the dirt was on both our hands. Anyways, you know where to find me.

Blisters and bedrock.

V.

There were few things in life capable of truly unsettling Silco—few things that could rattle him enough to strip away his calculated composure, to leave him grasping for solid ground. Even fewer that could drag him into a state of melancholy, of raw uncertainty. But this—this—a single crumpled piece of old, stained paper, had somehow managed to do both.

Silco read the note again. A second time. A third. A fourth.

As if the meaning of the words might change if he stared hard enough. As if, through sheer force of will, he could bend reality to make them say something else—anything else. But they remained the same, etched in ink that felt heavier than any weight he had ever carried.

His fingers tightened around the edges of the note, the worn paper crinkling under the force of his grip. Outwardly, he remained unreadable—a picture of cold, practiced stillness. But inside? Inside, there was nothing but chaos, a silent, gnawing storm that had no beginning and no end.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

When he ordered the sweep of her home, he had expected to find something—a clue, a trace, the faintest whisper of where she had gone. He had thought he would piece together the fragments, follow the thread, fix this. That was why he had come himself when he had no business being here.

His injuries had not yet healed. The wound on his back was still raw, making every breath a quiet battle, every movement an exercise in endurance. He was pushing himself harder than he should, his body reminding him with every strained inhale that he was in no condition to be out here, let alone leading this search personally.

But he had to be here.

He had already been gone for more than a week, and that was time he could not afford to lose—not in Zaun. Not now. If he remained absent any longer, people would start to wonder, to notice. His men would begin to whisper. The other barons would start weighing their options, watching for signs of weakness, calculating the right moment to sink their knives into his back.

No. He couldn't allow that.

He was already bleeding. Already reeling and he refused to give them another reason to think he was anything but in control. Which he was, and for that he had Sevika to thank.

She had done her job well.

Sevika had kept everything under control in his absence—both during the days he had been unconscious and the four that followed, where he remained bedridden, regaining his strength. At the very least, the truth of his injury had been contained. Only three people knew the extent of it: himself, Sevika, and Singed—though the damned scientist had managed to cure himself far too quickly for Silco's liking.

Still, despite everything, despite the pain lingering in his bones and the other distraction clawing at the edges of his mind—her absence, the unanswered questions—there was now something else to contend withSomething he had thought long buried.

Vander.

Even dead, the bastard found ways to haunt him.

The emotions stirred in his chest were not simple. If they had been, he would have torn the letter apart the moment he realized who had written it. But instead, here it sat in his hands, edges yellowed with age, the ink faded but still legible. First, there was rage. That was the easiest to acknowledge. The fury that had burned in him for years had never truly extinguished, not even after he stabbed Vander. The betrayal, the injustice—what Vander had done to him could never be forgiven. Would never be forgiven.

And yet.

There was something else. Something far more unwelcome.

Surprise, perhaps. That Vander had even considered an apology, that he had felt the need to put it to paper after all those years. By the state of the letter, it had been written long ago—buried, forgotten, sealed away like some festering wound. And yet, even until the very end, until the day Silco killed him, Vander had still carried that regret.

It hurt more than it should have.

After all these years, after everything—Vander had finally apologized.

A hollow, belated thing. Words spoken too late, when the blood had already dried and the dust had long since settled. A sorry excuse for repentance that meant nothing now. And yet, it lingered, gnawed at him in ways Silco had thought himself immune to.

There had been a time when he wanted to hear it. A time when he told himself that, if Vander would just admit what he had done, just acknowledge the betrayal, then maybe—maybe—some part of him could find peace. But eventually, that desire had been buried beneath something sharper, something colder. Vengeance had been easier to cling to. There was no space for forgiveness in war.

Now, standing in the wreckage of what they had been, Silco felt rage.

Rage that it had taken Vander this long to feel any semblance of remorse. Rage at the audacity of it—that he would expect anything from Silco in return. And rage for yourself, rage for that feeling buried so deep it was barely worth recognizing, something quieter. Something bitter.

The ache of what had been lost.

Because once, once—they had been brothers.

Not by blood, but by something stronger. They had fought side by side, built something together, dreamed of a future together. Vander had been his partner, his family. There had been a time when Silco had trusted him more than anyone. But that time was gone and he did not regret killing him.

He couldn't.

Regret was a luxury he refused to afford himself. Too much had happened. Too many choices had led them here, down paths that had twisted and splintered until there was no way back. No way to undo what had been done. Silco had made the necessary choices to build a nation. To free their people. Vander had made the choices to stop him. In the end, one of them had to die for the other to win. Silco had won.

That was all that mattered.

But reading Vander's words, Silco couldn't stop himself from wondering. The thought crept in, unwanted and insidious, slithering past the walls he had built around that part of his mind.

Could it have been different?

In another reality—one where he had found this letter in time—would he have forgiven him? Could they have salvaged something from the wreckage of their brotherhood? He thought of the blood in the water, the searing betrayal, the years spent rebuilding himself from the ashes of what they had once been. Could they have found a way forward, past the chasm of their irreconcilable ideals?

Silco would never know.

And it was better not to dwell.

That was not the reality he had been given. It never would be. The past had already set its course, and in the end, it had buried Vander beneath the weight of his own choices. His choices. Silco had simply done what was necessary.

Silco stilled. For a moment, everything—the weight of the note in his hand, the dull, persistent ache in his body—faded beneath the weight of realization. She had a connection to Vander.

Not just a passing acquaintance, not just the knowledge any Zaunite might have of a once-revered name. No—close enough to keep something of his. A letter, written in Vander's own hand, tucked away among her personal belongings. A quiet, hidden fragment of the past. A past she had never spoken of.

Silco's grip on the note tightened.

Sevika had mentioned a few minutes ago a loose floorboard in the washroom, a small cache of old newspaper clippings and scattered pages tucked beneath it. He had dismissed it—unimportant, irrelevant. But now? Now, he would personally go through every single one of those papers.

The signs had been there all along.

The way she had slipped out of The Last Drop with such ease, as if she knew its layout. The way she had so vehemently defended Vander's actions that night on his balcony, her words laced with something raw, something personal. The way she had known Powder. And worst of all, the reference—the goddamn reference—to the friend who had helped her in the past.

Of course, it had been Vander. Of course. Who else could it have been?

A sharp breath burned its way through Silco's lungs, but it did nothing to steady the slow, crawling sensation beneath his skin. Something unpleasant. Something dangerously close to betrayal.

He had no right to feel it. He knew that. Not when he had betrayed her trust just the same. Not when he earned her trust, twist it, manipulate it, mold it into something that served his needs. But still— still, it felt like betrayal. And that, more than anything, infuriated him. Both of them had lied. But even Silco would admit—between the two of them, his lie had been the worse of the two. Because whatever she had done, whatever falsehood she had chosen to cling to, it had not broken him.

But his had broken her.

And that—that—was something he hadn't accounted for.

Even now, he could feel it. The weight of her gaze, scorching through him, lodging deep beneath his skin. That look—filled with hurt, with fury—had burrowed into his flesh, carving itself into the marrow of his bones. It refused to leave him. It haunted him. It felt so real that, for a moment, he almost believed she was watching him even now.

Silco exhaled sharply, shaking the thought from his mind, forcing himself to refocus. But the feeling didn't fade. His body went rigid. Slowly, he lifted his head, his gaze shifting, drawn instinctively to a darkened alley across the way. There was nothing there—only shadows stretching long in the absence of light. And yet, the feeling remained.

The sensation of being watched.

Something cold slithered down his spine, though he didn't let it show. Instead, he took a step forward. And that was when he saw it. A flicker of movement, barely noticeable—someone shifting, pulling away. For every step he took forward, the shadow withdrew further into the dark. Then, just for a second—a single, fleeting second—she moved through a thin beam of light, enough for him to see. Enough to know.

She.

Silco had barely caught a glimpse of her—just a flicker of movement, the briefest flash of familiarity—but it was enough. It had been so fast. A mere second, no more than that. And yet, he could have recognized her in a crowd of thousands.

His little dove.

She looked afraid. No—shaken. As if she had seen a ghost. As if he were the specter haunting her. Silco had seen many things in her eyes before—anger, defiance, even that quiet, unspoken sorrow she tried so hard to bury—but never this. Never this raw, wide-eyed shock that pinned her in place, staring at him as though reality had shattered around her.

Before his mind could catch up, his body moved. No strategy. No calculated hesitation. Just instinct.

It was a mistake—one he might have anticipated if he had given himself even a second to think. A moment to consider that this could be a trap, a carefully laid snare meant to draw him in and finish what she had started in that damned laboratory. But rationality meant nothing now. Not when it came to her. He had already accepted the truth long ago: he was a fool where she was concerned.

Sevika's voice barely registered behind him, calling his name—sharp, urgent. Then a curse, low and irritated, before she moved to follow. But by the time he turned the corner, by the time his breath was steady enough to shape her name, she was gone.

Vanished.

All that remained was the body of one of his own men, slumped against the alley floor. And Silco, standing there, realizing she had truly been there. That this hadn't been another ghost conjured by sleepless nights and an exhausted mind. 

She was here.

And then—just as suddenly—she wasn't.

Sevika appeared at Silco's side within seconds, crouching down without hesitation to check the body sprawled at their feet. Her fingers pressed against the man's throat, searching for a pulse.

"Still breathing."

Silco barely acknowledged the words. His gaze was already sweeping the length of the street, searching for someone that he knew was no longer there. A pointless effort, but still, his eyes lingered as if willing her form to materialize from the shadows she had so effortlessly melted into.

"She was here." he said at last, his voice steady. He didn't need to elaborate. Sevika understood. Then, sharper—commanding. "Search the area. She can't have gone far."

Sevika didn't hesitate. She whistled sharply, signaling to the nearest guards, gesturing for them to spread out. Within moments, boots pounded against the damp cobblestones, figures disappearing into the labyrinth of Zaun's streets in pursuit of a ghost.

Because that's what she was.

Silco knew it even as he gave the order. It was a wasted effort, a futile chase. If she didn't want to be found, they wouldn't find her. She had been trained for this. He'd known it from the beginning and had noticed it over their time together. The way she moved, the way she sometimes seemed hyperaware of herself and her surroundings. That damned Institute had shaped her into something sharp-edged and elusive, and if that alone hadn't made her impossible to track, then years under Vander's protection certainly had.

Years. Years he had hunted for her, pried at every whisper, followed the faintest hints of a ghost's existence, only to come up empty-handed every time. It was infuriating, impossible—a shadow among shadows, that hadn't changed now.

Looking for her was like trying to hold onto smoke. And there he was again, in the same situation.

[...]

It could have been hours. Was hours.

As he expected, they found nothing of her.

Sevika sat across from him, equally silent, equally grim, the two of them sifting through every scrap of paper they had pulled from her apartment. The room had grown dim with the encroaching morning, the weak light filtering through his office windows casting pale streaks across the table. The last note landed with an unceremonious thud, tossed aside in frustration, joining the scattered remnants of what should have been answers but were, instead, nothing more than ghosts of what she had left behind.

And yet, the longer he read, the more a different kind of knowledge settled deep into his bones, threading through the cracks like poison. A realization that didn't lead to understanding but to something far worse—something hollowing.

Among the torn-out newspaper clippings detailing the massacre, among the fragmented notes, the scribbled thoughts addressed to no one but herself, there were other things. Things about Vander.

Too many things.

Orders. Instructions Vander had given her. Some were tactical—telling her to keep watch over those wretched brats of his when he'd caught wind of one of their reckless little heists. Others were mundane. Insultingly domestic: Do you need new blankets? Have you eaten today? Tell me if you're still feeling unwell.

And worse—questions that felt far too personal, far too familiar, written in that same blunt scrawl: When's your birthday? Do you even celebrate?

She had kept these. Every single one of them. Not out of necessity, not out of some calculated purpose, but because she wanted to. Because they had meant something to her. And that—that bothered him. Silco sat back, exhaling slowly through his nose, forcing down the sharp coil of something ugly twisting inside him.

He had never asked her any of these things.

Not once.

It wasn't something he thought about. It wasn't something that mattered. But Vander—Vander had wondered. Had written it down, as if it was worth remembering, as if it had been something significant enough to carve into the back of his mind. The thought left a bitter taste in Silco's mouth.

He had spent years condemning Vander for his weakness, for his inability to commit to the cause, for the softness that had ultimately cost him everything. He had spoken of it with disdain, convinced that sentiment had no place in war, that attachment only bred hesitation.

And yet—yet—here he was. Sitting at his desk, drowning in old ink and wasted words, searching desperately for something, anything, that might bring her back. 

Perhaps Vander would have laughed at him for it. Perhaps, had he been alive to see it, he would have found some quiet, obnoxious vindication in knowing that Silco was no less vulnerable to such things than he had been.

Among the sea of papers scattered across his desk, one stood out. It was worn, the ink slightly smudged in places, the edges curled as if it had been read and handled more times than the others. But it wasn't its state of wear that caught Silco's attention—it was the words.

A directive. Another order from Vander, this one instructing her to escort Violet while she retrieved a shipment for the bar at the docks. Simple. Routine. Nothing out of the ordinary.

But it was the words beneath the directive that made Silco's grip tighten ever so slightly. A note—short but pointed, a final line scrawled in a hand that was careful, yet firm.

A demand.

"This needs to stop. We're not doing this anymore. No more notes. No more messages left in the dark. You don't have to speak to anyone if you don't want to but you're going to talk to me. At least once. Face to face. You can be the ghost you love to be for anyone else, but not for me."

It seemed she had always been this way. Lingering in the spaces between people, leaving traces of herself but never fully stepping into the light. She had kept even Vander at arm's length, existing just outside of reach, close enough to serve a purpose but never close enough to be held.

And it seemed like they both wanted to hold her, different times, but still.

"Well." Sevika muttered from across the room, breaking the silence as she poured herself a glass of whiskey. She leaned back into the worn leather of the sofa, exhaling as the tension left her shoulders. "That explains a lot."

He didn't look at her. He was still staring at the ink, his gaze dark and unreadable.

"Vander and her..." Sevika swirled the whiskey lazily in her glass, the amber liquid catching the dim light as she took a slow sip. "Pretty damn close, huh? Lovers, maybe?"

The question landed heavier than it should have.

Silco didn't so much as pause in his reading, eyes scanning over the paper in his hands, using the motion as an excuse not to look at her. His fingers gripped the parchment just a fraction tighter, an imperceptible tell—one he hoped Sevika didn't catch.

Just the thought —the damned thought— of her and Vander together in the way that Silco and she were, made him feel sick to his stomach. It wasn't a pleasant sight to contemplate, let alone think about.

"He's not her type."

He expected Sevika to move on—she was perceptive enough to know when to let something lie. But that didn't stop the way she tilted her head slightly, her eyes narrowing as she studied him. And then—there it was. That sharp, dry scoff, followed by the slow raise of her brow. A look so blatantly judgmental that, for a moment, Silco nearly set the papers down just to glare at her properly. He didn't. And thankfully, she didn't press.

"Anyway..." she drawled, stretching the word out as if they hadn't just brushed against something precarious. "I questioned Singed."

Silco exhaled slowly through his nose, folding the document back into the pile. "And?"

"He says he was 'compelled' to write that letter." Sevika said, rolling her wrist in an idle gesture. "Claims he was going to speak to you in person. That he wouldn't have sent a letter at all if it were up to him."

"Compelled..." Silco echoed the word.

Sevika nodded. "Described it like... a voice in his head. An order he couldn't ignore. So he wrote it." She took a sip of the drink. "Do we trust him?"

"Yes."

The answer left Silco's lips without hesitation. A single breath, a single second of silence as he pulled a memory from the depths of his mind—one that now carried far more weight than he had given it before.

"She told me something after the ball." he continued, voice even, measured as he leaned over to grab his cigarette from the ashtray, quickly lighting it. "That, at some point, she had been... taken. Not physically, no one had touched her. But her mind had been seized, lulled into something unnatural. A trance, she called it. Unlike anything she had ever felt before. And now, this?"

Sevika frowned, fingers tightening around her glass. "The same people."

Silco leaned back in his chair, exhaling a slow stream of smoke from his lips. The room smelled of it—rich, acrid, clinging to the air, curling in slow, deliberate tendrils that dissipated into the dim glow of the lights. Sevika's next words were spoken with the rare weight of genuine concern.

"Why Singed?"

It was a good question. A logical one. And yet, the answer had already formed in his mind before she even finished asking it.

"They were watching us, that much is obvious. How, I still don't know. Perhaps it was luck. Or perhaps it was an exceptionally calculated move. Either way, they knew precisely where to strike."

He let the silence settle between them before adding, 

"You were the one who told me she hated being near him." His gaze cut to Sevika, calm yet pointed. "Every time you brought her there, she recoiled. The disgust was visible. Singed never hurt her, and yet, she loathed him."

Sevika didn't deny it.

"That made it easy, didn't it?" Silco mused, voice lowering. "If you wanted to bend someone to their breaking point, you start with the weakest fracture. She despised Singed. He was the obvious target. Something to strip her control, to make her question herself. Make her question me."

Another drag of his cigar. Another slow exhale, the embers glowing, casting faint red light against his fingers before dulling to ash.

"It would be foolish, to think this wasn't deliberate. To think this wasn't designed to pull her out of my grasp, psychologically, if not physically. If she broke, she would be easier to reach. And without me in the way..." He trailed off, letting the conclusion settle.

Sevika released a frustrated breath, tossing her head back against the couch, clearly hating every second of this conversation.

"Great and here I thought this was already a mess." Her fingers clenched around the glass, jaw tightening. "Can't get much worse than this, can it?"

Silco smiled, but there was nothing amused about it.

"Sevika... It always gets worse."

He watched as Sevika stared into her now-empty glass, her brow furrowed in thought. The room was quiet, save for the occasional crackle of burning tobacco and the faint clink of ice melting against the sides of her drink. Finally, she let out a sharp exhale through her nose, shaking her head.

"I don't get it." She spoke with frustration, her voice edged with suspicion. "I see the threat she poses. I've seen it firsthand. But this—" 

She gestured vaguely to the air, as if referring to the unseen forces at play. 

"This is Noxus we're talking about. You really expect me to believe they don't already have something just like her? A super soldier? A walking weapon? You think a nation built on war doesn't have a dozen others waiting in the wings?"

She poured herself another drink before looking back at him, eyes sharp, searching for an explanation. Silco took a slow drag from his cigar, giving himself a moment to consider her words. He exhaled through his nose, watching the smoke curl into the air, before finally speaking.

"Perhaps they do. Perhaps there are others with her level of... devastation. Others who can tear through bodies like paper, who move faster than the eye can track, who slaughter without thought or hesitation." He tapped ash from his cigar, his fingers steady, methodical. "But that may not be what they're after."

Sevika frowned, shifting in her seat. "Then what?"

"Something far simpler... maybe, her recovery."

Sevika's expression barely flickered, but Silco caught the way her fingers tensed around the glass, the way she suddenly became very still, absorbing the weight of his words.

"She doesn't stop." his voice was quiet, thoughtful. "Not when she's injured. She already took a shot in the chest and continued as if it were nothing. It's not just raw power, Sevika. It's endurance. It's sustainability. A soldier like that is invaluable. Not one that can kill, but one that cannot be killed."

She said nothing for a long moment, simply raising her glass to her lips and downing the rest in one go. Then, without so much as a pause, she reached for the bottle and refilled it. Silco smirked. 

"Now you see it."

Sevika exhaled sharply through her nose, rubbing a hand down her face. "Yeah, I see it." She threw back the second glass just as fast as the first, letting the alcohol burn its way down. "But that's not all, is it?" she muttered, wiping at her mouth.

Silco's lips curled slightly at the corners. She was always quick. "No." he said smoothly. "That's not all."

She rolled her eyes, already reaching for another drink. "Of course it's not."

"Consider this, Singed injected shimmer into her. That much we know. That altered her body, warped it in ways we don't fully understand, but it kept her alive when she shouldn't have."

Sevika nodded, unimpressed. "And?"

"And..." Silco let the pause stretch just long enough for effect. "What if the shimmer did something more than just keep her alive?"

That got her attention. Her fingers tightened around her glass, and she looked at him sharply. Silco exhaled another slow breath of smoke before speaking again. "What if this change in her body had made her resistant even to death? A kind of immortality."

Sevika choked.

Literally.

The moment the words left his lips, she took an unfortunate sip of her drink, and instead of swallowing it, she promptly coughed it back up, sputtering as liquid went down the wrong pipe.

"The fuck did you just say?" she demanded, thudding a fist against her chest, trying to dislodge whatever had caught in her throat—be it disbelief, or that liquor she drank.

Silco didn't flinch. He didn't do flinching. He simply arched a brow, calm in the storm of her disbelief. "You heard me."

Sevika barked out a half-cough, half-laugh, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes were wild with a mixture of incredulity and barely-contained anger. "Immortal?" she echoed, like the word itself was offensive. "You're telling me she just... what? Can't die now?"

He tilted his head slightly, considering her. "Not in the traditional sense." he said coolly, tapping ash from his cigar into the ashtray. "Or at least, that's the implication from Singed's letter. His wording was... poetic, in that unsettling way of his."

Sevika scoffed, dragging a hand down her face. "That's fucking insane." she muttered under her breath. Her artificial arm clicked faintly as she poured herself another drink, fingers trembling just enough for Silco to notice.

"You don't actually believe that." she said, not as a question, but as a challenge. "Tell me you're not swallowing that lunatic's story whole."

Silco let out a low, humorless chuckle, leaning back in his chair. The leather creaked beneath him. "I believe that I've seen her survive things no one else could have."

She groaned, throwing her head back against the couch, her frustration bleeding into every motion. "Great. Fantastic. She's a goddamn cockroach now."

He smiled at that, a quiet, amused curl of the lips. "I wouldn't phrase it quite like that."

"Of course you wouldn't." she snapped. "Because you're fucking biased."

He didn't argue. No denial passed his lips. Sevika wasn't wrong, and they both knew it.

She leaned forward, her voice low, urgent. "So what then? We get her back and just hope she never turns against us?"

Silco's expression darkened, his fingers tightening just slightly around the cigar. He didn't answer immediately, and in the silence, the weight of his thoughts filled the room like smoke—thick, suffocating, and inescapable.

"She won't." he murmured finally, barely more than a whisper, but the certainty in his voice was ironclad.

Sevika watched him, studied him. The way his jaw clenched just a little. The flicker of something in his eyes—not fear, not doubt, but... protectiveness. Dangerous, blinding protectiveness.

She scoffed again and downed her drink in one go. "Fuck me." she muttered, slamming the glass down. "This just keeps getting better and better."

Silco took a slow drag from his cigar, letting the smoke coil around his fingers before exhaling it in a long, measured breath. His expression remained unreadable, but there was a certain weight behind his next words—one that made Sevika straighten slightly, her fingers twitching against the rim of her glass as she filled up again.

"This does not leave this room."

It wasn't a request. It wasn't even a command. It was a fact. A line drawn in the sand. A warning laced with quiet authority. Sevika didn't hesitate.

"Obviously." she taking another sip from her glass. She didn't even look offended by the implication—she understood the gravity of what they had just discussed. "You think I'd go running my mouth about something like this? Come on, Silco, give me some credit."

He held her gaze for a long moment, his visible eye sharp, unyielding. "It bears saying."

Sevika huffed, shaking her head. "Yeah, yeah. Consider it locked up. I'm not stupid, I know what kind of chaos this would cause if the wrong people heard about it."

"Good."

Another brief pause. His thoughts were already shifting. Turning toward the one man who might have the answers he needed. Singed. The only person who truly understood what had happened to her.

He let the last embers of his cigar burn down before extinguishing it with a slow press against the ashtray. "I need to speak with Singed." he murmured. "Directly. No more speculation. If anyone knows the full extent of what she's become, it's him."

Sevika hummed, rolling the glass between her fingers. "You want me to bring him here?"

Silco nodded, already deciding. "Yes. This afternoon. The lab is gone, until we rebuild, this will have to do."

She grunted, shifting in her seat. "Tch. That fire did more than just damage the place, you know. It wiped it clean. It's gonna take months before it's up and running again."

"I'm well aware."

Sevika scoffed, tilting her head back against the couch. "As if trying to kill you and gut Singed wasn't enough, she just had to burn the place to the ground too."

He let out a quiet chuckle, though there was no real amusement in it. "No half-measures"

"Yeah, no shit." She shook her head before pushing herself up from the couch, stretching her arm with a lazy roll of her shoulders. The bottle of whiskey that was once full was now almost empty. "Fine. I'll bring him here in a few hours."

Silco simply inclined his head. She lingered for a moment longer, then—perhaps sensing that his mind was already elsewhere—turned and left, the heavy door clicking shut behind her. Silco remained still, staring at the swirling tendrils of smoke rising from the ashtray, his thoughts shifting between the past and the uncertain future ahead.

No half-measures indeed.

He let his body sink further into the chair, exhaling as he tilted his head back against the worn leather. His good eye drifted shut, allowing the weight of exhaustion to settle over him like a suffocating fog.

It was an exhaustion that went far beyond the the stiffness in his limbs or the tight pull of the half-healed wound beneath his shirt. No, this was something deeper. He could endure physical pain—he had lived with it for years. But this... the sheer, relentless pressure pressing down on him was something else entirely.

A war was brewing, though its battle lines had yet to be drawn. Enemies moved in shadows, waiting, circling, gauging the right moment to strike. His empire stood, but for how long? And her—her absence left an open wound, festering, threatening to unravel everything he had worked to build. He had spent years mastering control, perfecting his grip on the world around him, and yet, for the first time in a long time, Silco felt something dangerously close to slipping.

For just a fleeting moment, he allowed himself the quiet.

A breath. A second. A rare indulgence in a city that never slept, never stopped bleeding. Silco allowed himself that stillness, just one moment of silence in the chaos, head bowed, eyes closed, a sigh coiled tight in his throat. The silence wasn't peace—it never was—but it was something.

Then, predictably, it shattered.

The door burst open with a force that rattled the hinges. Wood cracked against stone, reverberating through the walls. He didn't need to look. He knew who it was. Only one person ever entered like that. Without knocking. Without hesitation. Without fear.

Jinx.

Her footsteps were sharp, fast, punching into the floor like accusations. He heard the clipped rhythm of her boots before he saw her, felt the fury in every step. She came at him like a storm—quick, loud, and inevitable.

He opened his eye just enough to track her path, but he didn't lift his head. Not yet. Her face was twisted—not in the usual chaotic grin or gleeful twitch of mania, but in something darker. Her mouth was set in a hard line, and those wide, wild eyes he'd come to know so well were now hollowed with betrayal.

She didn't waste time. Didn't greet him. Didn't even slow down.

"She ran away again!" she spat, voice cracking like a whip across the room. It was raw—furious and trembling all at once. "And why, huh?! What did you do?!"

Silco didn't have time to straighten fully before she was in front of him, practically vibrating with rage. She stopped short of slamming her fists on his desk, but the energy was there—electric, dangerous.

"This is your fault, isn't it?" she snapped. "What did you say to her?!"

His jaw tensed. The headache behind his eyes throbbed with renewed venom.

"Jinx—"

"No!" she cut him off before the syllable had fully left his mouth. "Don't 'Jinx' me!"

Her voice wavered, cracking under the strain of something that went deeper than rage. She took a step back, then forward again, unable to stay still, hands clenched so tight her knuckles went white. "She was here! She was fine! And now she's gone! Just like before!"

She was trembling. Not violently, not obviously—but Silco saw it. The slight twitch of her fingers, the way her shoulders locked too tight for a child her age. Thirteen. Gods, she was still just thirteen. And yet she glared at him now as though she could set him ablaze with the sheer force of her will.

Jinx stood in the center of the room like a live wire. Her eyes—those too-bright, too-clear eyes—were wide, feverish, swimming in something between fury and heartbreak. The kind of look a child wore when their entire world had tilted sideways. Again.

"You made her leave."

Her voice cracked like flint on stone. It wasn't just an accusation—it was a verdict. One passed down by someone who had been hurt too many times to believe in coincidence.

Silco remained seated, calm, even as his own jaw tensed. He tapped his fingers slowly against the armrest of his chair, the old wood creaking beneath his knuckles. He didn't speak right away. Speaking too quickly with Jinx—especially like this—was like tossing lit matches into a powder keg.

Finally, he lifted his gaze to meet hers. "I did not make her leave. She made that choice herself."

The muscles in her face twitched, contorted. Her scowl deepened, and her nose scrunched like it always did when she was trying not to cry but refused to look weak.

"But why?" Her voice was quieter now, edged with something raw, something cracking. The shift was small but devastating. She wasn't yelling anymore. She was asking. Pleading. "She said she wouldn't go. She promised."

Silco stood slowly. Not quickly—not threatening. Measured, careful. Jinx's breathing was shallow now, uneven, her chest rising too fast. He knew that rhythm. She was spiraling. Not the explosive kind—yet—but the kind that came from deeper wounds. This wasn't the scream-and-shoot kind of rage. This was the silent breaking underneath.

And all of it was directed at him.

He wanted to reach for her. Gods help him, he almost did. But she would recoil. He could see it in her posture. She wasn't ready to be comforted. She needed a reason. A shape to her grief. Something—someone—to put it on.

So she'd picked him.

"I didn't push her away, Jinx." His voice was low, calm, but beneath it was steel. "She misunderstood a situation and assumed the worst. Then she decided to run away based on that misperception."

She blinked. Just once. And in that instant, her anger twisted into something worse.

"Liar."

The word wasn't shouted. It was whispered. Flat. Lifeless. That single syllable carved into the space between them like a blade. She was trembling harder now, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears, though she'd never let them fall in front of him. After Vander's death, Jinx never cried in front of him.

"You always do this." she hissed, her voice rising again, breath hitching. "You act like you're in control, like you know everything. But you don't. You just... you just make decisions, and people leave. They always leave!"

She turned her back to him, pacing now, frantic, one hand threading through her tangled hair, yanking at the strands as if trying to ground herself. Silco watched, jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached.

Silco approached slowly, his boots silent as he moved closer to where she stayed. He could see her shoulders tremble—not with fear, but with rage barely held together by the fraying edges of heartbreak.

"Jinx." he said softly, his voice lowered as if speaking too loudly might shatter the fragile thing before him. He crouched down to her level, lowering himself in a rare gesture of patience, of something like care. One hand reached out, palm open, steady. "Look at me."

She didn't. Not at first. She flinched the moment his hand neared her, recoiling like he was poison. It was a tiny movement—but it hit him like a bullet. She didn't scream. She didn't sob. She just stared ahead, eyes wide and glassy, and the sound of her shallow, erratic breathing filled the silence between them. Silco froze, hand still half-outstretched.

He could've handled anger. Rage was familiar—he knew how to shape it, how to weaponize it. But this? The crack in her voice, the tremor in her lip—this was betrayal. This was pain. And somehow, that stung more than he expected.

She finally looked at him, and her voice was sharp enough to cut.

"If she ran." she hissed, blinking hard but failing to stop the tears from breaking through, "If she left us, it's because you did something." Her hands curled into fists, nails digging into the sides of her legs. "You hurt her!"

Silco's jaw clenched. The accusation wasn't new—he had prepared for it. Expected it, even. But the way it came from her, with so much certainty, so much pain—it landed like a knife under the ribs. He kept his face composed, neutral. Emotionless. That mask he wore so well.

"I did nothing of the sort." he said calmly. Too calmly. A lie, of course. But one that needed to be said. She couldn't handle the truth—not now. Not in this state. Not when she was hanging by a thread, her faith in everything unraveling.

But Jinx didn't buy it.

"Bullshit!" she snapped, the word splintering in the air between them. Her voice cracked halfway through it, shrill and desperate, like the scream of a wounded animal. Her eyes blazing, her hands twitching at her sides. Her entire body was trembling now, not from cold, but from fury laced with confusion. She wanted to understand, but couldn't. And that tore her apart.

Silco exhaled through his nose, trying to keep his composure from slipping. His fingers went to his temple, rubbing briefly before he let his hand fall back to his knee.

"You need to understand—" he began, but she cut him off before he could finish.

"No! You don't get it!" Silco stilled. "She's broken, just like us!" Jinx shouted, her words tumbling over themselves, too fast, too forceful, like she couldn't contain them. "We were supposed to fix each other! Not fight... not leave!"

Her voice cracked on that last word, a sharp, splintering sound that made something tighten in Silco's chest. She shoved her fists hard against her temples, eyes squeezed shut, breath hitching in her throat like she was trying to dam up a flood that was already surging through.

He had seen this before. He knew the signs. The tremble in her limbs. The uneven cadence of her breathing. The way her mind began folding in on itself like a collapsing star.

"Kid." His voice was firmer now, steadier, a command more than a plea. "Listen to me."

But she didn't.

She just shook her head, faster and faster, like she could dislodge the thoughts clawing at her mind if she tried hard enough. Her arms crossed over her head now, fists pulling at her hair. "She was supposed to stay." she whispered, her voice almost childlike, broken in its simplicity. "She promised."

Silco said nothing at first. He watched—trapped in that awful stillness of knowing he couldn't stop what was already unraveling. She was coming apart, and all he could do was try to catch the pieces before they shattered completely.

She was curled in on herself now, the way an animal does when it knows the blow is coming and it has nowhere to run. Her shoulders shook violently, and her breathing turned to shallow, rapid gasps—panic beginning to take hold.

"No... no, no, no... shut up... shut up!" she cried, her voice rising with every word. "Shut UP!"

Silco stiffened. The realization struck him a second too late—by the time the sound echoed, sharp and jarring, and he saw the red bloom against her skin, it was already happening. Jinx had always been volatile—yes—but this? This wasn't one of her usual outbursts. This was deeper, darker, a panic that twisted her expression until it was barely her own. She wasn't angry at him. She was at war with herself.

She hit herself again.

A wild, open-handed slap against the side of her head—sharp, quick, almost mechanical in its desperation.

"Stop, stop, stop talking!" she cried, not to him, but to the voices she heard, the ones that lived inside her skull and scraped at her sanity. Each word was a plea masked as rage, her breathing too fast, too shallow. The kind of breathing that made your lungs burn but never fill.

Silco moved on instinct. Thought was irrelevant—useless in the face of this storm. He lunged forward and seized her wrists, firm but controlled. Her arms were small, bones like matchsticks beneath his fingers, but she fought like an animal cornered, eyes wide, pupils dilated, muscles coiled with sheer, panicked energy.

"Jinx." He said her name low, steady—but it didn't reach her. She writhed, kicking, twisting, her face contorted with fear, fury, something feral. Not at him, not really—at the chaos inside her.

"Let me go! Let me go!" she wailed, thrashing harder now, her body jerking in his grip. Her chest rose and fell with violent urgency, tears finally spilling over her cheeks, but even then, she didn't seem to notice them. She was somewhere else entirely.

And Silco, for all his calculated control, all his political power, all the blood that had stained his hands in Zaun's name—had no idea what to do.

This wasn't a battlefield he understood. This wasn't a negotiation or a coup or a threat he could snuff out. This was a child—his child—splintering before his eyes, drowning in a tide he couldn't see. Couldn't fight.

"Jinx!" he snapped, voice sharper now, slicing through the air like a blade. It wasn't gentle. It wasn't soft. And for once, he was grateful it worked.

She flinched. It was small—a twitch in her shoulders, a flutter of her lashes—but it was enough. She heard him.

Good.

She was still in there.

"You need to stop this." 

His voice was low and hard, his hands still wrapped around her thin arms. She was trembling beneath his grip, her skin clammy with sweat, breathing erratic and shallow. He gave her a small shake—not enough to hurt, never to hurt—just enough to pull her, to jolt her loose from the grip of whatever hell her mind had dragged her into. 

"Look at me."

But she didn't. Her head jerked to the side, her eyes refusing to meet his. She was teetering on the edge, lost in the between—between herself and whatever storm was howling inside her head.

Silco clenched his jaw, nostrils flaring. He could feel it rising in him—that sickening twist of helplessness. He hated it. Hated not knowing how to fix this, how to fix her. This was not something that could be threatened into submission or silenced with a knife. This was something fragile, something wild and broken and innocent, all at once. And it was far more terrifying than anything Piltover had ever thrown at him.

He tightened his grip just slightly. Enough to still her. Enough to make sure she didn't spiral again.

"Jinx."

The name was heavier this time. Not barked. Not shouted. Just spoken with something close to urgency.

She twitched again—another gasp escaping her lips—and finally, her eyes drifted toward him. Unfocused. Distant. But on him. Her brows pinched, as if just beginning to recognize him. Like a child waking from a nightmare and struggling to believe it's really over.

"There's no one else here." he continued, his voice now lower, grounded, deliberate. "It's just you and me."

Her breathing hitched. She wasn't fighting anymore—not really. Her body was still coiled like a spring, but she wasn't thrashing. She was listening, or trying to. He could work with that.

"Focus."

He loosened his grip. Just slightly. Just enough to allow her to breathe, to remind her she had control—but not enough to let her slip away again. He'd learned that lesson once before. She needed to feel held. Needed something stronger than the fear clawing at her mind.

"You're safe." He said it like a fact. Like it was unshakable truth. "No one's talking to you. No one's here." His voice dropped again, quieter now, steady and low, the way you'd speak to something wild that might bolt at the wrong movement. "Do you hear me?"

Jinx squeezed her eyes shut, so tightly it looked painful, as if she could force the voices out by sheer will alone. He thought she might spiral again, might jerk away from him and disappear into whatever inferno her mind had pulled her into.

But she didn't.

Not this time.

Her chest rose in another shuddering breath—quieter now, slower. Not calm, not yet, but no longer desperate. The trembling in her limbs eased, just enough for him to feel it under his hands. Her fingers twitched faintly, uncertain. And then her eyes opened.

Only slightly.

Glass-like. Haunted. But focused—on him.

Silco exhaled. Not with relief. That would have been too vulnerable, too soft. But it came out anyway, low and measured, like steam released from a cracked pipe.

"That's it." he murmured, voice just above a whisper, low and grounding. The closest he ever got to tenderness. "Come back."

She blinked slowly, her lashes still sticky with unshed tears. And then, like someone had thrown a switch, the fight just—left her. The tension drained out of her bones like blood leaving a wound. Her shoulders sagged. A breath escaped her lips, raw and ragged and too big for her chest. Her weight shifted forward slightly—not a fall, but close. It was like watching a structure collapse after a storm, quiet but irreversible.

Silco didn't let go. Not yet. He held her wrists a moment longer, eyes narrowing, watching for the signs. Any flicker of relapse, any twitch that might betray another wave. But there was nothing.

Only a girl standing still.

Shaking. Small. Wrecked.

The moment Jinx launched herself at him, Silco barely had time to brace himself. Her small body collided with his, and he stumbled backward, losing his balance as they both tumbled to the floor. The impact jarred him, and a sharp sting flared up from the wound on his back, but he pushed the pain aside, focusing instead on the girl in his arms.

She clung to him with a desperation that made his heart twist. Her fingers gripped the fabric of his coat so tightly that he could hardly breathe, and for a moment, he feared he might break under the intensity of her hold. Her small frame shook against him, and he could feel the remnants of her panic still coursing through her, though the storm within her seemed to have calmed, at least for now.

Silco quickly adjusted their position, shifting Jinx's weight so that she wouldn't be uncomfortable. He pulled her close, letting her nestle into him, the warmth of her body contrasting sharply with the coolness of the floor beneath them. He was acutely aware of her breath against his chest, each inhalation a reminder of how fragile she felt in this moment.

"It's alright." he murmured softly, brushing a hand gently through her hair. The action felt foreign to him, a tender gesture he rarely extended to anyone, but it seemed necessary now. She needed comfort, and he would give it to her, if only to reassure himself that she was still here, still with him. "You're alright."

She didn't answer. Didn't move. Just held on. And Silco— Silco let her.

Time passed in slow, heavy seconds, the only sound between them the erratic rise and fall of her breath. Eventually, her shaking dulled. Not entirely. Not completely. But enough. Enough for Silco to tilt his head slightly, resting his cheek against her hair. He closed his eyes.

"I'll bring her back to us." he murmured, voice low, firm, absolute. No matter what it took. No matter what it cost. "I promise."

With Jinx still in his arms, her body trembling in the aftermath of her breakdown, Silco felt a weight settle deep in his chest—something heavier than exhaustion, something colder than anger. The room around him was quiet now, save for the uneven rhythm of her breath, but his mind...

His mind wasn't quiet at all.

His grip on her was firm, steady, an anchor in a sea of chaos neither of them knew how to navigate. But even as he held her, even as he focused on keeping her grounded, something surfaced from the depths of his thoughts—something that had been buried, discarded, left to rot in the forgotten corners of his memory.

"You know where to find me."

The words had meant nothing at first. A final sentence scrawled at the bottom of that damned Vander's note, a throwaway phrase that should have been insignificant. But it wasn't.

It wasn't.

Because there was only one place Vander could have been referring to and the realization made Silco's breath catch. He had forgotten. Truly forgotten. For all these years, the place had meant so little to him that it had ceased to exist in his mind, reduced to nothing more than a phantom of the past. The mines.

"I know where your mother is hiding, Jinx."

Part 22

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Okay, I need to apologize especially to all the readers who usually comment on every chapter and I reply. I was really overwhelmed these past two weeks and was focusing on writing, so I kind of forgot to reply. I'm really sorry. Well, I always wondered how Silco would react upon seeing this letter, after everything had happened, and this is my vision of it.

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Why is he so cute???

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Chillin together

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#jayvik #viktor #jaycetalis #arcane   

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Ma Meilleure Ennemie (pt 20/?)

Everything Silco touches falls to ruin — a trail of ashes, broken oaths, and shattered lives. Unfortunately for you, he touched you too. And now, you can feel the cracks spreading beneath your skin

Silco x fem!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+, MDNI)

Word Count: 12,4K

Warnings: panic and anxiety attacks, betrayal and all the feelings that come with it, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempt, blood and violence, self-deprecating thoughts, allusion to human experiments, PTSD, hallucinations, Silco POV

Set before the events of Act 2 of the first season of Arcane.

Part 19

Silco's Pov ━━━━━━━༺༻━━━━━━━

The cracked ceiling was the first thing Silco saw when he opened his eyes—thin fractures etched across aging plaster, like veins in a withered leaf. The light filtering through the window was muted, heavy with dust, casting long, blurred shadows on the walls. He didn't move at first. Didn't dare. His body warned him before his mind could catch up—a deep, searing ache buried beneath his spine, blooming outward like fire with the slightest twitch. When he finally dared to breathe deeply, the pain sharpened, curling through his back and ribs until it forced a hiss from between clenched teeth.

Bandages. He could feel them tight around his torso, the rough fabric pressing against broken skin, soaked faintly with antiseptic and blood. Someone had wrapped him up, kept him breathing—barely. The care was utilitarian, without tenderness, just enough to stop the bleeding and keep his bones from shifting. Nothing more. He wouldn't have expected more.

Slowly, his surroundings came into focus. The air was stale, thick with the scent of old wood, smoke, and the ever-present undertone of oil and metal that clung to the underbelly of Zaun. Familiar. His room. Everything was as it had always been—unforgiving and dim, with walls lined in shadow and silence. Time had passed, that was for sure.

But his mind... his mind refused to follow. His thoughts were a mess of jagged memories and half-formed images, stitched together by emotion more than reason. It was like trying to remember a dream after waking, the details slipping through his fingers no matter how tightly he grasped. He could recall flashes—the argument, the kiss, the stabbing, the metallic tang of blood in the air and flooding his mouth.

And always, inevitably, everything led back to her.

Her face had been impassive. Cold. As still as stone in the seconds before the blade sank into his flesh. Her hands didn't tremble—didn't falter—not even for a heartbeat. He remembered the feeling far too clearly, as though his body still held the memory in its marrow. The dagger had pierced cleanly, with practiced precision, the kind of strike meant not just to wound, but to break. There had been nothing accidental in the way she drove it in—no flourish, no rage. Just purpose. Cold, calculated purpose.

But it wasn't the pain that lingered. It wasn't even the violent, choking gasp that tore through him as his lungs seized around the metal. No. What haunted him more than the searing agony, more than the way his body had collapsed under its own weight, was the expression she wore while doing it.

Or rather, the complete absence of one.

There had been no hesitation in her eyes. No flicker of uncertainty. Not a shadow of regret. Her features had been unreadable, locked into a mask of pure stillness—as if something deep within her had clicked into place, something mechanical and unfeeling, like a weapon finally pulled into alignment.

Silco had seen a thousand faces twisted by betrayal, rage, guilt. He had stared down enemies and allies alike in their final moments. But hers... hers had been different. It wasn't cruelty. It wasn't revenge. It was as if the decision to destroy him had already been made, long before the blade ever met his body.

And yet, despite it all... he was still breathing.

Still alive.

He didn't know if it had been mercy, or failure. Whether the blade had missed something vital by chance or by design. But he could still feel the echo of that moment every time his body shifted, every time his ribs pulled against the bandages and reminded him of how close he had come to death by her hand. Her hand. Not an assassin's. Not an enemy's. Hers.

He didn't know what was worse: that she had stabbed him... or that a part of him understood why.

Silco lay there, surrounded by the stale air of his own domain, the silence pressing in on him like a coffin lid. Every breath reminded him of how close she had come to ending it all. But the ache in his chest wasn't just physical. And he couldn't decide if the silence she left in her wake was louder than the scream that wanted to tear itself out of him.

Silco gritted his teeth as he pushed himself upright, every muscle in his body shrieking in protest. Agony tore through his ribs and spine like a jagged blade, each breath a raw, grinding reminder of how close he'd come to the edge. Pain was no stranger to him—it never had been—but this was different. It was personal. Deep. It clung to his bones, bled into his thoughts, and still, he refused to let it show.

The only sign of it was the brief tension in his jaw, the flicker of strain beneath his single visible eye as he braced himself against the headboard. He moved slowly, never allowing the agony to control him. That was the difference between weakness and survival. Between him and everyone else.

He had barely settled, his breathing ragged but controlled, when the door creaked open.

Sevika.

She entered with the heavy steps of someone who belonged, the door swinging shut behind her with a finality that echoed in the dim room. She carried a tray in one hand—steady, purposeful—her movements devoid of ceremony. She had done this before. Many times, it seemed.

His gaze flicked downward, scanning the contents of the tray like a commander evaluating his arsenal. Several pre-filled syringes glinted under the low light, labeled in her unmistakably scrawl. Painkillers. Anti-inflammatories. Stabilizers. And, of course, Shimmer.

He didn't speak. Neither did she.

The silence between them stretched, taut and heavy, thicker than the smoke that clung to the room's stale air. There was no casual greeting, no question of how he felt—because they both knew the answer, and Sevika had never been one for empty pleasantries. Instead, she stood there, watching him. Waiting. Her expression was unreadable, but not indifferent. Her eyes held a weight to them—something between scrutiny and expectation.

His face remained unreadable, calm on the surface, but beneath that stillness, a thousand thoughts turned like gears. He didn't need to ask what she was thinking. She was measuring him, as she always did, and perhaps wondering how much longer he could hold it together. How much more he could take before even he crumbled.

But he wouldn't give her that satisfaction.

She shifted slightly, adjusting her grip on the tray, and he caught the smallest trace of tension in her shoulders—frustration, perhaps. Or something closer to concern, though she'd never admit it. He had bled for Zaun more times than he could count, made sacrifices most wouldn't dare contemplate. And now, confined to this bed, barely able to breathe without pain lancing through his body, the one thing he couldn't ignore... was her.

Not Sevika.

Her.

The other one. The one who wasn't here. The one who should have been.

The image of her surfaced unbidden again, but not the image of that night but of many others. Where they were still something—those beautiful eyes, bright and defiant, like everything about her. He hated how his thoughts drifted to her now, how the memory of her voice haunted the quiet moments like a lingering echo.

There was a time when he could compartmentalize, when he could bury things that made him vulnerable beneath layers of strategy and resolve. But she had made that harder. Much harder.

Sevika finally broke the standoff, letting out a low breath that sounded more like resignation than anything else. Without a word, she crossed the room and set the tray on the table beside the bed with a muted clink. Her movements were efficient, impersonal—but Silco saw the tension in her jaw, the way her fingers curled slightly before she reached for a syringe.

Still, he said nothing. The silence remained, but now it buzzed with something heavier. Unspoken things. Lingering truths. And the ever-present reminder that while he might be alive, not all wounds could be stitched shut.

And not all pain could be numbed.

Silco watched as she reached for the first syringe, her fingers moving with the kind of practiced precision that only came from years of necessity, not choice. Sevika's hand were steady, impersonal, her grip on his arm firm but not cruel. There was no comfort in her touch, no tenderness—only the cool efficiency of someone doing a job that needed to be done. He didn't flinch when the needle pierced his skin. The sting was brief, the burn of the liquid slow and steady as it crept into his bloodstream. But pain was of no concern to him now. It barely registered, drowned out by the cacophony in his head.

"How long?" his voice was a rasp of gravel and ash. It hurt to speak—his throat dry, strained, as if it hadn't formed words in days.

Sevika didn't meet his gaze. She was already disposing of the first syringe, reaching for the next. "Almost a week."

A week.

The words hit harder than any of the wounds stitched beneath the bandages. A week since the lab. Since the fight. Since the chaos.

"You lost a lot of blood." Sevika went on, her voice clipped and clinical. "Not to mention internal bleeding. Frankly? It's a damn miracle you're still alive."

A miracle. Or, as she'd put it—luck.

Silco scoffed, though the sound barely left his chest. Luck had never been a currency he dealt in. He'd built his empire with blood and intent, carved it out of the filth of Zaun with ruthless precision. There was no room for superstition in strategy, no reliance on chance. Control—that was his creed. Control over every variable, every move, every outcome.

But this... this had been something else. Something beyond his control. His own life slipping from his fingers, and worse—his absence. Seven days of silence. Seven days removed from his throne, from the eyes and ears of the Undercity. Seven days without knowing if she was safe.

She.

He couldn't stop the thought of her.

The second syringe slid into his skin with the same mechanical rhythm as the first. He watched Sevika depress the plunger, her jaw tight, her brows drawn in that ever-present scowl. She said nothing, but he could feel the shift in her—some tension under the surface, coiled like a wire stretched too thin. She discarded the syringe without ceremony and reached for the third.

The shimmer one.

"Doesn't make sense." she muttered, voice lower now. Not meant for him, but he caught it all the same.

"What doesn't?"

"The way she did it. She would normally do a clean kill." Sevika kept talking, her voice low and steady as she pulled the cap off the next needle. "Back of the neck, that's where she should've aimed. Quick. Precise. Over before you even know it's happened. But this?" She scoffed, a bitter huff through her nose as she glanced at the wound that snaked along his side. "It was like she wanted—"

"She wanted me to suffer." Silco interrupted, his voice quiet, flat, but carrying the weight of finality. It wasn't a guess. It was a truth he could feel in his marrow.

Sevika paused at that. Just half a second. Then she gave a slow, grim nod, like someone acknowledging a death sentence already carried out.

Yeah. That's exactly what it looked like.

The needle in her hand gleamed under the low light, and before he could brace for it, she plunged it into the muscle. The moment the liquid entered his bloodstream, he knew what was coming.. It didn't slide in cold and numb like the others. No. This one burned.

Not the kind of burn that could be dismissed with gritted teeth and shallow breathing. This was deeper. Cruder. A wildfire tearing through his veins with reckless abandon. It moved fast—spreading from the injection site like molten steel, wrapping itself around bone and tendon, dragging itself through his body with a ferocity that felt personal. It didn't just hurt—it claimed him.

Silco gritted his teeth until his jaw ached, fingers curling into the thin blanket beneath him, knuckles white. His vision blurred at the edges as heat coiled around his spine, twisting up through his chest, threading between every beat of his heart. Every breath he took came with fire, searing his lungs, scorching his throat. It wasn't just pain—it was rage. Memory. Regret. Every piece of her that he had buried came roaring back with it.

It took everything in him to tilt his head back, pressing against the wooden headboard in an attempt to anchor himself—to force control back into his own body. His breath came slow and measured, a deliberate effort to mask the wreckage coursing beneath his skin.

Across from him, Sevika had already discarded the empty syringe, her attention purposefully elsewhere — not out of hesitation, but out of respect. She knew better than to watch him like this, to witness him in a state of vulnerability he had no intention of sharing. It was a silent understanding. One she had long since learned to obey.

Silco exhaled sharply through his nose, regaining himself inch by inch before speaking. His voice was strained, but steady.

"Singed?"

"Alive. Better off than you, at least."

Silco hummed, eyes narrowing in thought. So, the old man had survived as well. That was... an advantage.

Sevika was already moving again, this time with fresh bandages in her hands. Silco exhaled through his nose, understanding her intent without the need for words. She was going to replace the old dressing around his torso. A necessary task, but not an easy one.

Shifting was agony.

The kind that gripped every tendon and muscle with relentless cruelty, wrapping around his ribs and spine like iron chains set alight. Moving into that position had been torture enough, but adjusting from it—pulling his weight even slightly in a different direction—was a punishment all its own. His breath caught in his throat, sharp and shallow, as a fresh wave of pain radiated from deep within his back.

Sevika had come without announcement, without fanfare, as she always did. She didn't speak, didn't fill the space with questions or empty comforts. She simply acted—reaching out with a steadying hand to brace his arm, her grip strong enough to anchor him, but not unkind.

Silco stiffened the moment her fingers touched him. Reflex, not distrust. It was rare—almost unheard of—for anyone to touch him like that. Not in comfort, not in concern. He was a man who had built his walls tall and sharp, who did not lean, who did not falter. And yet, here he was, ribs wrapped in bloodied gauze, too weak to stand without support, flinching under the weight of something as simple as human contact.

But this wasn't kindness. He told himself that.

This was necessity. A means to an end. Nothing more. Sevika didn't challenge the lie. She didn't look at him with pity, didn't offer any of those sickly-sweet reassurances that others might have. No nod of acknowledgment, no patronizing glance. Just silence.

Not the kind of silence that felt awkward or heavy.

Just... silence.

The kind shared between two people who knew there was nothing that needed to be said.

Silco let his thoughts drift back to that night. The memory unfolded not with clarity, but with the aching slowness of a blade being drawn from a wound. It wasn't just recollection. It was torment. And yet, he welcomed it. He let himself feel it, because pretending otherwise would be a coward's path. And Silco had never allowed himself the luxury of denial.

In the dim silence, he acknowledged the feeling that had taken up permanent residence in his chest—a tight, suffocating thorn lodged deep behind his ribs. Pain, yes. But not the kind he understood. Not the physical torment he'd endured countless times before.

Pain was familiar. Pain had always been a loyal companion, one he knew how to manage, how to wield. But this—this hollow, spreading ache that crept through every breath, every heartbeat—this was something different. Something crueler.

It wasn't the sting of betrayal or the burn of failure. It was grief. Regret. Love.

And that realization struck harder than any wound ever had.

She had loved him.

And he, blind and prideful, had not seen it until it was too late. Until her hands were stained with his blood, and her eyes were wide with something between rage and devastation. Until the distance between them became a chasm that no amount of power or persuasion could bridge.

Love.

Even now, the word tasted bitter. It turned in his mouth like rusted iron, sharp and foul. Silco had always seen love as weakness—a weapon too easily turned against its wielder. He had watched it destroy others, watched it unravel even the strongest of men. He had built his empire on the foundation that emotion could be controlled, that affection was a liability. And it had destroyed him more efficiently than any enemy ever could.

Love had made him blind. It had made him trust when he should have questioned. It had dulled the blade of his instinct and buried him beneath the illusion that he was still in control.

He had been a fool. A blind, arrogant fool who had let something so rare, so impossibly his, slip through his fingers.

He had held her. Had felt the warmth of her devotion in the way she whispered his name, the way she surrendered to him, body and soul. She was his, in the way that he was hers. And yet—yet she had torn herself from him, ripped away by the consequences of his own decisions, by something he had failed to see in time to correct or twist to his favor.

Where had he lost her?

He had been so certain. Certain that she would understand, that she would see the necessity in it all. But something had changed. There had been a shift, subtle at first—an unease in the set of her shoulders, a tension in her fingers when he reached for her. He had seen it, had felt it, and yet had dismissed it as momentary hesitation, something that could be remedied, soothed away with words, with touch.

How had he not realized that he was already losing her?

That the moment he had let his guard down, the moment he had trusted that she would stay—she had made her choice. And she had chosen to kill him even though she loved him.

She loved him.

Or she had.

And in the end, it had not been enough.

"The wound is healing well." Sevika informs him, voice blunt, matter-of-fact. Ending the silence and interrupting Silco's thoughts "Should leave a scar, though."

Silco exhales a slow, humorless breath through his nose. "Hardly my first." he murmurs, the corner of his mouth twitching in something that might have been amusement if not for the bitterness beneath it. "And it won't be the last."

Sevika makes a sound of agreement—an unimpressed huff—before she sets to work, removing the old bandages with practiced efficiency. The gauze peels away, sticking in places, pulling against raw flesh, and Silco hisses at the sting but makes no move to stop her. He appreciates her lack of delicacy, the way she does not attempt to handle him gently. Sevika did not handle him as though he were fragile, as though he might break beneath her hands. Good. He didn't want her to.

He does not want gentleness. He wanted it to hurt. Pain is grounding. It reminds him that he is still here. That he did not die on that cold, blood-slicked floor.

But it is not only that, and he knows it.

The physical pain is a distraction. A welcomed one. It dulls the deeper ache clawing at his insides, the festering wound that no amount of bandages can mend. Sevika secures the fresh dressing with firm, almost punishing tightness. It pulls at the wound, making his muscles tense, but he doesn't complain. She finishes her work, discarding the bloodied wrappings with little care.

For a moment, there is only the distant hum of Zaun beyond the walls. The weight of an unspoken question lingers between them, and Silco is the one to break it.

"And her?"

The words slipped from Silco's mouth like a blade unsheathed—quiet, but laced with enough steel to draw blood. Sevika hesitated. Not visibly, not in a way most would catch, but he saw it—the slight flick of her eyes, the brief tension in her jaw. A second too long.

His gaze sharpened immediately, cutting across the room to pin her in place. There was no need for repetition. He had asked, and he would have his answer.

"She's nowhere to be found."

Sevika replied, voice measured, composed. But he knew her too well. Beneath the surface, behind the casual posture and the calculated calm, there was something else. Something guarded. She was walking carefully now, choosing her words like someone navigating a minefield.

"Vanished." she added after a beat, her eyes not quite meeting his. "Like before."

Silco's fingers curled into the sheets at his sides, the coarse fabric biting into his palms. But his expression remained stilll. Inside, however, the word echoed with cruel finality.

Gone.

It rang through him, heavier than it should have. Not just absent. Gone. As if she had never existed. As if everything he remembered—her voice, her presence, the spark in her when she challenged him, when she trusted him—was slipping into myth.

Sevika exhaled, rubbing a hand down her face. Frustration lingered in her movements, edged with exhaustion.

"I sent men to every exit out of Zaun." she continued. "Every crossing, every back alley, every goddamn sewer grate we know. Nothing. It's like she disappeared into the concrete."

Silco didn't answer right away. He stared ahead, unblinking, his mind churning beneath the surface. He breathed in slowly through his nose, voice quiet when it came.

"We need to find her before they do."

Sevika was already halfway to the door, but she paused, back straightening at the weight in his tone. She turned, frowning.

"They?"

Silco leaned his head back against the cool headboard, letting the chill of the wood ground him. The pain flared slightly with the motion, but he welcomed it. It kept his thoughts sharp, and he needed that clarity now more than ever.

"The people from the Institute. More specifically... her former master."

Sevika stilled. No reply, no immediate protest—just a narrowing of the eyes and the visible tension in her shoulders. He let the silence stretch, considering his next words with care. Then, after a beat, he spoke again.

"And a mysterious organization from Noxus."

That gets the reaction he expected. Sevika's head snaps toward him, her face twisting in sheer disbelief. "Noxus?" Her voice is edged with frustration now, the sharp disbelief. She runs a hand through her hair, exhaling sharply before muttering, "This is getting out of control, Silco."

Silco doesn't respond—not to that. He doesn't acknowledge the implied criticism, doesn't validate her concern. Instead, his expression hardens, and the leader in him takes the reins once more.

"We don't have time for doubts, Sevika." His tone is sharp, commanding. "I need you to interrogate Singed."

Sevika's brow furrows again. "About what?"

"The letter. The one that was sent to my office that day, the damn catalyst for all of this." Silco states plainly, his eyes darkening with the memory. "Find out what intentions he had behind sending it at that precise moment."

Sevika doesn't look thrilled at the idea, but she doesn't argue either. With a slow exhale, she runs a hand down her face before nodding. But that's all.

Sevika is quiet again.

Silco notices it immediately. The way she stands there, shoulders tense, as if caught in the midst of an internal war. He can see the deliberation in her eyes—the hesitation. Sevika is not a woman prone to uncertainty, which means whatever she's about to say is something she's weighed carefully, something she has debated with herself over and over before deciding that, yes, it needs to be said.

Silco narrowed his good eye, studying the way her fingers tapped against her bicep, the telltale twitch of her mouth when she was holding back. He didn't like it.

"Say it."

Sevika exhaled slowly, as if finally resigning herself to whatever was weighing on her, then met his gaze with an unreadable expression. "You're worried about her."

The words landed like a knife against stone. Silco's lips pressed into a thin line. His body ached, his mind swirled with half-formed thoughts, but that—that—he could answer without hesitation.

"Of course, I'm worried! If she's in the wrong hands, if anyone else gets to her before we do, it would be catastrophic. For all of us."

Sevika didn't move, didn't react the way he expected. She simply stared at him, eyes unreadable, as if waiting for something. And then, with the same unwavering certainty as before, she repeated. 

"No. You're worried about her. Not what could happen because of her. Not the risks. Not the consequences. Her."

The air between them was taut, a thin wire stretched between understanding and defiance. Silco's jaw clenched, irritation flaring hot beneath his skin. He should have expected this. Sevika was many things, but a fool was not one of them.

"This is not the time for pointless sentiment."

"And yet.. Here we are."

Silco's grip on the blanket tightened. He could feel the weight of her gaze, the way she was dissecting him, seeing through him in a way few ever dared. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Sevika exhaled sharply, the sound somewhere between a sigh and a resigned grumble, before reaching into her coat pocket. A second later, she pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, tapping it against her palm before offering it to him.

Silco glanced at it, then at her.

It had been years since he'd held a cigarette between his fingers. Not since he had taken Zaun for himself.

The shift had been subtle at first—something as simple as switching from cheap, hand-rolled cigarettes to rich, imported cigars. It wasn't just about preference; it was symbolism. A cigarette was the habit of a man scraping by, filling his lungs with something fleeting and bitter. A cigar, on the other hand, was indulgence, permanence. It was power wrapped in tobacco leaves, the slow burn of a king rather than the hurried vice of a soldier.

And yet, as he plucked the cigarette from the offered pack with fingers that still bore the faint tremor of recovery, a strange sense of familiarity settled over him.

Sevika pulled out a lighter. It was old—he could tell by the way it sat in her palm, heavy with years and use. The once-polished metal had dulled to a gunmetal gray, its edges worn smooth from habit. She flicked it open with that familiar, metallic click, the flame leaping to life between them.

"Do you remember how we met?" she asked as she leaned in, lighting the tip of his cigarette.

Silco's eye narrowed slightly—not in suspicion, but in contemplation. He couldn't understand the reason for that sudden question but still, it wasn't a difficult memory to summon. Their first meeting had been anything but forgettable.

"You thought I was a woman."

Sevika let out a sound—half a snort, half a low, rumbling chuckle that vibrated in her chest, a grin pulling at the corners of her mouth. "You looked like one back then."

He exhaled slowly, smoke curling past his lips, mingling with the air between them. The memory surfaced sharper now.

The Last Drop, long before it belonged to him. The air thick with smoke, the scent of spilled ale clinging to the wooden floors. It had been a typical night—Vander behind the bar, sleeves rolled up, effortlessly juggling orders, Felicia at his side, sharp-tongued as ever, tossing comments over her shoulder as she scribbled on a notepad and drank. And then—her, Sevika.

A woman—a massive woman, been broad-shouldered like a brawler, built like she could snap a man's spine over her knee without breaking a sweat. Silco had been mid-sentence, discussing something inconsequential—something about supply routes or shipments, he couldn't recall—when suddenly, a heavy arm draped around his shoulders, nearly yanking him off balance.

"Well, aren't you just a pretty little thing?" she had purred, her breath laced with the scent of whiskey and smoke. "Didn't think I'd be meeting a princess here tonight."

Silence.

Silco blinked, momentarily stunned, before opening his mouth to correct her. And oh—oh, the moment she heard him speak.

The shift in her expression had been nothing short of theatrical. First, confusion. Then, horror. Then, an agonizing, cringing sort of understanding that had twisted her features as if she wished she could rewind time and take it all back. The second she registered her mistake, her arm recoiled as if burned, her brows furrowing in what could only be described as mild disappointment.

"You're a—"

"Yes" he had interjected, voice flat.

Felicia had snorted so hard she nearly choked on her drink. Vander, across the bar, had turned just in time to see it happen, brows raising before his entire face split into a slow, knowing grin, for he then howled with laughter.

"Ah, shit!" Sevika had muttered, rubbing the back of her neck. "I—uh. My mistake."

Her discomfort would have been a satisfying revenge if not for the absolute delight Vander and Felicia had taken in the entire ordeal. It had been weeks—months—before either of them let it go. "How's my favorite princess today?" Vander would say every time Silco entered the bar. "Silco, dear, have you ever considered letting your hair down? Maybe a nice updo? I think it'd really suit you." Felicia had teased more than once, voice dripping with false sincerity.

"Things were simpler before." Sevika muttered, taking a slow drag from her cigarette. The ember flared, casting a dim glow across her face as she exhaled the smoke in a long, steady stream.

Silco let out a quiet breath, nodding slightly. "They were."

Before Zaun, before power, before the weight of responsibility crushed down on them with every step. Before alliances were made and broken, before Shimmer, before her.

"We lost a lot over the years." Sevika continued. Her gaze flickered down for the briefest of moments—to the place where flesh met metal. Silco watched her, the way her fingers briefly tensed around the cigarette before she brought it back to her lips.

Yes. Loss was something they both understood too well.

The silence stretched, thick and heavy. Then, without warning, Sevika shifted her stance, rolling her shoulders before finally saying what she had been holding back.

"I heard you."

Silco arched a brow. "You'll have to be more specific than that."

Sevika gave him a dry look before clarifying. "That night. You and her. I heard the whole damn thing."

For a moment, neither of them moved. The words settled between them like a blade placed carefully on the table, waiting to be picked up. Sevika wasn't the type to beat around the bush. If she was bringing this up now, it wasn't for curiosity's sake.

"And?"

Sevika took another slow drag before exhaling. "And that's why I know this isn't just about damage control. You want her back, personally."

A statement. Not a question. Silco didn't flinch. Didn't scowl. Didn't snap at her for daring to press into something that wasn't her concern. Because Sevika had never been wrong about things like this.

He could lie, of course. He could dismiss it as irrelevant, as unnecessary. He could say what does it matter? That this was about control, about keeping Zaun from collapsing under the weight of one single, dangerous person slipping through his fingers. But he had never wasted breath lying to Sevika. So instead, he simply exhaled through his nose and said, evenly, 

"Yes. I want."

He wanted her back.

For Zaun. For himself.

Sevika didn't speak right away. She let the admission settle, watching Silco as if measuring the weight of his words, the depth of their truth. Then, after a long moment, she sighed, running a hand over her face before exhaling another stream of smoke.

"You know." she muttered, voice low, "Years ago, when Vander was still in the picture, I saw something in both of you."

Silco arched a brow, waiting.

"Zaun needed you both. In different ways, maybe, but it needed you." She flicked the ash from her cigarette, her tone steady, unwavering. "My loyalty has always been to Zaun. To the cause. Not to either of you."

Silco took a slow drag of his own cigarette, inhaling deep before releasing the smoke through his nose, his expression entirely unbothered.

"That's exactly why you're my right hand. Because I never have to question where your loyalty lies."

Sevika didn't react much to the words, simply watching him for a beat longer before she hesitated. That small pause—so brief it could have been missed by anyone who didn't know her—spoke volumes.

Then, finally, she asked, "If you bring her back... will she change the tides for Zaun?" Her tone was measured, but her eyes were sharp, searching his face for any trace of hesitation. "Even with your personal reasons, you haven't forgotten what actually matters. Have you?"

Silco met her gaze without so much as a flicker of doubt. "You and I both know that, right now, she is the most dangerous asset in both Zaun and Piltover. Whoever has her holds an advantage that could shift the entire playing field."

Sevika didn't speak right away. Instead, she took another slow pull of her cigarette, considering. Then, after another moment of thick, heavy silence, she finally nodded. 

"Alright." she muttered, exhaling a breath of smoke. "I'll help you get her back."

Silco watched as Sevika crushed the cigarette against the edge of the tray, the embers snuffed out with a sharp hiss. She didn't look at him as she picked up the tray, her steps deliberate as she moved toward the door. There was no hesitation in her movements, no second-guessing—she had already made her choice.

His gaze followed her, though something in the back of his mind itched. The room was quiet except for the soft creak of the floorboards beneath her boots. She reached for the handle, pulling the door open, and for a moment, it seemed like she would leave without another word. But just as she stepped through the threshold, still facing away from him, she paused. Her fingers curled slightly around the edge of the tray before she spoke.

"In Zaun, we protect our own."

The words were spoken evenly, almost as if they were nothing more than a passing remark. But Silco knew better. He knew exactly where that damn belief came from.

A relic of another time, another leader. The kind of sentiment Vander had built his entire foundation on—a philosophy that refused to die, even with the man himself rotting in the dirt. Even now, Vander's influence lingered like a ghost in the streets of Zaun, in the people, in the way they spoke, in the ideals they clung to like a lifeline.

Silco exhaled slowly, smoke curling from his lips as he leaned back against the headboard. He didn't respond, didn't call her back, didn't let a single flicker of irritation show on his face. Sevika didn't wait for an answer. She stepped out, shutting the door behind her with a quiet click, leaving Silco alone in the dimly lit room.

"We protect our own."

For all Vander's foolishness, for all his weakness—it was an ideal that Silco understood the appeal of. It was something he believed in despite everything. He never gave up on his people and he wouldn't give up on her.

━━━━━━━༺༻━━━━━━━

You watched as Vander shoved the woman's body into the river.

The dull splash of flesh hitting water, the ripples spreading outward, the few stray droplets landing against the worn stone of the bridge. With the way the current was moving tonight, it wouldn't be long before she drifted closer to Piltover's docks. By morning, the enforcers would find what they had been so desperately searching for—a body to blame for the crimes you committed, a corpse to shoulder your sins.

Your fingers reached for your throat instinctively, brushing against bare skin where cold metal had once rested. The absence of it felt... strange. Unnatural. You had grown so accustomed to the press of steel against your flesh, the weight digging into your collarbone, a constant, inescapable presence.

It hadn't been easy to remove.

Vander and his friend, Benzo, had spent hours debating how to cut through it without slicing your throat open in the process. You hadn't understood why they were so concerned—what did it matter if the blade slipped? You had told them as much, voice flat, indifferent. The scientists had done worse to you anyway.

But the moment the words left your mouth, both men had given you a look—one you couldn't quite place. A strange, heavy pity that settled in their eyes before they turned back to their work.

In the end, the collar had come off. And all it had cost you was a single cut—a thin, shallow thing, insignificant compared to the marks already left behind on your skin. A wound that would fade, just like the rest of your scars.

You turned your head toward Vander, watching as he wiped his hands clean.

This man was strange.

You couldn't understand why he had pulled you from the river a month ago, why he had brought you into his bar and tended to your wounds, why he had asked—pleaded—for you not to give up on living. You couldn't comprehend why he had kept you close all this time, why he had gone through with this entire plan to fake your death, why he had taken on the burden of helping you when, clearly, he didn't have to.

None of it made sense.

And yet, here he was.

You were certain he knew what you were. Word traveled fast in the Lanes—the enforcers were searching for an assassin, and yet, despite knowing that, Vander had willingly chosen to help you.

You didn't deserve his kindness. A man with a heart like his shouldn't have been stained by someone like you. Just being near him felt like a corruption of something good, like you were leaving something ugly in your wake.

"Thank you for your help." The words left your lips, finality in your tone. You were already preparing for the inevitable farewell—there was no reason for you to stay any longer. "I suppose this is the right time for us to part ways."

But Vander didn't seem particularly eager to let that happen.

"Do you have somewhere safe to go?" His voice was calm, measured. And in that moment, you knew—he wasn't asking just to ask.

The question made you think. You had your father's old shack—the one you used to call home. You could take it for yourself after you killed him, but there was always the risk that he wasn't there anymore. It had been ten years, after all. You'd have to find him first. There were other options. You could steal. Maybe kill—you were good at that.

Or you could simply die...

"Yes." 

The word left your lips quickly, cutting off the thought before it could fully form. But hesitation lingered in your voice, and Vander heard it. You knew he did. Your answer wasn't convincing enough.

"I got a proposition for you." 

His voice was low, rough with that same grounded certainty he always carried. The kind that made it sound like he had already made up his mind before you even had the chance to argue.

"I've got some kids to look after. And sometimes, hell, more times than I'd like, I can't be there to keep an eye on 'em." He shifted his weight slightly, rubbing the back of his neck. "You know how things are down here. Zaun ain't kind to people who can't hold their own."

"No." The refusal was immediate, slipping past your lips before you could even think about it. "I'm not a babysitter."

You had seen them from a distance.

They were small, fragile. The blue-haired one clung to her sister's side like a shadow, big eyes bright with mischief, her little hands always fidgeting with some half-built contraption. The pink-haired one carried herself with a confidence far too large for her small frame, always watching, always assessing.

They were innocent and you... you were dangerous.

The thought of getting too close to them made something ugly coil in your stomach. What if something went wrong? What if you lost control? What if one day, in the haze of a moment too raw, too violent, you hurt one of them?

You couldn't risk it.

"I'm the last person you want near those kids, Vander." Your voice was low, tight but Vander didn't look convinced.

"Good thing I ain't lookin' for a babysitter, then." Vander didn't waver. If anything, his expression softened, but not with pity—no, it was something else. Understanding. "I need someone to watch 'em. Step in when things go south. A protector."

You kept your arms crossed tightly over your chest, posture rigid, gaze locked onto Vander with barely concealed skepticism.

"I'm not a protector." you muttered, your voice sharper than you intended. "That's not what I do. It wouldn't be safe for the—"

"—for the kids to be around an assassin?" Vander cut in smoothly, his tone neither mocking nor surprised, just... matter-of-fact.

Your throat tightened, and for a moment, you couldn't find the words to respond. Vander exhaled through his nose, shifting his weight slightly as he studied you. His expression was unreadable, but there was no judgment there. Just a quiet understanding.

"You think you're the only one in Zaun with blood on your hands? That you're the only one carryin' ghosts?" His voice was steady, rough around the edges, but there was something in his tone—something lived-in, something weary. "That don't make you special, little one. Just makes you one of us."

He leaned back against the crate beside him, crossing his arms.

"I ain't some saint, and I sure as hell ain't the kind of man you got in your head right now. You think I've never done things I regret? That I've never made choices that cost people their lives?" His jaw tensed slightly before he exhaled. "Difference is, I made a choice to be better. To make sure those kids don't go the same way I went."

You frowned, your fingers twitching slightly at your sides.

"I ain't askin' you to be something you're not. I don't need you playin' house with them. Just keep an eye out. From the shadows, if that's what makes you feel better. Step in when you need to. That's all."

Your instincts told you to walk away, to leave before you got tangled up in something you couldn't undo. But a smaller voice—one you had long since buried—whispered something else.

"What's the payment?"

Vander let out a quiet huff of laughter, shaking his head. "Food. A roof over your head." He glanced at you, a hint of something softer in his expression. "Maybe even a friend, if you let yourself have one."

The last part caught you off guard. A friend? You weren't sure you even remembered what that was supposed to feel like. In fact you have never had one in the last ten years.

Vander raised his arm toward you, palm open, that same look on his face—the kind that told you he already knew he'd won. Not smug, not gloating, just... assured. Unshakable. It was a little intimidating, in your opinion. Not the kind that made you brace for a fight, but the kind that made you brace for an argument you weren't going to win.

"So... do we have a deal?"

You stared at his outstretched hand for a moment, considering. It would be easy to walk away. Safer. But there was something about the offer—about the way he made it—that made you hesitate. Slowly, you reached out. Your fingers met his, and then you grasped his hand in a firm shake. His grip was strong, steady, but warm. You expected roughness—expected the calluses of a fighter, of a man who had spent his life in the streets—but there was a certain gentleness beneath it.

It was the first time in a long time you'd touched someone without the intent to kill. And you liked the way it felt. You glanced up at him, only to find him already watching you, that same half-arrogant, half-gentle expression lingering on his face. Like he knew something you didn't.

Then—

You blinked.

And everything shifted.

The docks of Zaun vanished behind him, melting away like mist in the morning sun. In their place, old, dust-covered wooden beams stretched from floor to ceiling, coated in cobwebs and grime, as if time itself had forgotten this hidden refuge. Strange patches of luminescent mold or foam clung to parts of the walls, pulsing faintly in reaction to sound. 

The dim glow of an old lantern, flickering where it hung from the ceiling, served as the only source of light in the small, cramped space. And then, there was the silence—deafening, absolute. The abandoned mines of Zaun had long since been forgotten, but here, in their depths, the quiet felt almost alive.

But Vander was still there.

He was on the ground with you, mirroring your position, watching you with that same expression. Like nothing had changed.

Except everything had.

"You will always be a good man to me."

Vander didn't answer. Just smiled, that quiet, knowing kind of smile as he pushed himself up from the ground. His broad frame rose before you, casting a familiar shadow, and then he looked down at you.

Ah.

You didn't even need to glance at your chest to know the wound had disappeared. It was routine by now—your daily ritual. Try to die. Feel death creeping in. Then let delirium take hold, let your mind unravel into fragments of memory. And just as your body finally started slipping into that cold, merciful abyss—

The damn Shimmer would wrench you back.

It would drag you from the void and force you to wake, lungs burning, skin knitting back together, nerves igniting in agony all over again. You felt fresh blood trickle from your nose, warm against your lips, but you made no move to wipe it away. The floor was already stained with your blood—old, dried smears overlapping with newer, wetter streaks. It was all the same now.

So, fuck it.

You'd already ruined this place.

Self-destruction was a pit, a limbo with no end. Quicksand that swallowed you whole, dragging you deeper the harder you struggled. You knew that and yet, here you were.

Sinking.

You sat up, arms wrapping around your knees as your gaze drifted to the far corner of the room. Two jackets hung there, untouched, their fabric stiff with age. You had never dared to lay a hand on them. Not once. You were afraid—afraid you might ruin the only physical remnant of Vander you had left.

Everything else, every memory of him, was locked away in that small apartment you had abandoned. You hadn't stepped outside the mines since you fled. You hadn't dared. This place—this dark, suffocating hole in the earth—was your refuge. Your sanctuary. The one place where the world couldn't reach you.

"You must be disappointed." your voice was barely above a whisper. Your eyes flickered toward where he stood—or at least, where you thought he stood.

He wasn't real.

But there he was, just as he had been for days now. Watching. Silent. His presence had started as nothing more than fleeting glimpses in the periphery of your vision, shadows that disappeared the moment you turned to face them. But now? Now he stayed. Always there, always watching. And you let him. Maybe, in some twisted way, the illusion of him made the solitude easier to bear.

Your fingers curled into fists, nails digging into your palms, desperate to ground yourself in something real. But what was real anymore? The walls that felt like they were closing in? The stale air that sat heavy in your lungs? The ache in your chest that never seemed to dull? Or was it just this—this endless cycle of regret and ghosts and silence?

"I left Powder when she needed me most." you confessed, the words slipping past your lips like a prayer to something that would never answer. Your throat burned with exhaustion, your body sagged under the weight of everything left unsaid. "I still haven't found Violet."

You sucked in a breath, but it didn't feel like enough. It never was.

"And I fell in love with the man who killed you."

The words hurt. They should hurt. They carried the weight of something unspeakable, something rotten and unforgivable that festered beneath your skin. The admission left a bitter, acid-like taste in your mouth, twisting your stomach into something unbearable. "What kind of person does that make me?"

You hesitated, searching his face for something—judgment, anger, hate. You wanted him to hate you. You deserved it. But Vander's expression didn't shift in the way you needed it to. His brow furrowed, not with rage, not with scorn, but with something softer.

Pity.

A look you had seen before. One that made something deep inside of you snap.

Your throat clenched. The burn behind your eyes intensified, but no tears came. Maybe they had dried up long ago. Maybe there was nothing left to give. Just this. Just emptiness. Ache. A wound that refused to close no matter how much you tried to stitch it back together with purpose and resolve.

"At least I avenged you." The words felt like a lie, hollow and weightless as they left your lips. You wished they meant something. You wished saying them aloud would force you to believe them. "I killed Silco."

You waited. Waited for something—relief, satisfaction, even the smallest flicker of triumph. But all you felt was nothing.

"I killed the man I loved... the man who took away my choice to die." A dry, broken laugh tore from your throat, barely recognizable as your own. The sound was brittle, fragile, cracking under the weight of your own unraveling. "And now I'm talking to myself... Seeing ghosts... Alone."

Your voice faltered, fading into the oppressive quiet that surrounded you. And still, Vander didn't answer. Of course, he didn't. He wasn't real.

You ran a trembling hand down your face, pressing your fingers hard against your skin as if you could force the exhaustion from your bones. Every inch of you ached—your chest, your throat, the space behind your eyes, that place deep inside you where something vital had been ripped out and left to fester.

You wanted to slam your head against the wooden floor.

You had done it before.

But your body—the wretched, cursed thing—had refused to break. The same way it always did. The same way it had ever since they got their hands on you, since the hell they carved into your flesh and called progress. Since Silco, since Singed, even without meaning to, they had succeeded where the Institute had failed. They had done what Piltover's finest minds spent years trying to perfect, they had conquered death. Or at least, forged some crude, unfinished mockery of immortality.

You wished they hadn't.

"I'm alone again..."

The realization struck too late. The moment the words formed, the moment they solidified into something real, you were already spiraling.

Your breath hitched—stuttered, caught in your throat like barbed wire. Your chest constricted, as if unseen hands had wrapped around your ribs, pressing, squeezing, crushing. The walls around you warped, stretching outward, then closing in too fast, too tight. The air thinned, suffocating, clawing at your lungs with invisible fingers. It wasn't real, it wasn't real, but your body refused to believe that. Your body only knew the terror seeping into your bones, the sharp, suffocating knowledge that you were alone.

Alone.

Your hands clenched into fists, nails biting into your palms as if pain could anchor you, as if it could keep you here. But your fingers trembled, uncontrollable, useless. A sickening numbness crawled up your limbs, a distant tingling that sent your mind reeling. The pounding in your ears drowned out the room around you, your own heartbeat hammering in an erratic, frantic rhythm. The edges of your vision blurred, the world tilting, spinning, distorting into something unrecognizable.

Too tight. Too loud. Too much.

Your hands shot up to your throat, clawing at the skin there, desperate to breathe. Your body screamed for air, but your lungs wouldn't obey. They clenched instead, seizing in panic, your ribs locking tight like iron bars around your heart. You gasped, choking on nothing, your breath shallow, sharp—each inhale too quick, too weak. It wasn't enough. It would never be enough.

"Stop it. Stop. Just... breathe."

You tried. God, you tried. You willed yourself to take a deep breath, but it caught in your throat like bile, burning. The panic clawed up your spine, digging rusted nails into your ribs, tearing at the edges of your sanity. And suddenly—

You weren't here anymore.

The walls bled away. The room dissolved. And you were back there. Chained. Restrained. Cold metal biting into your skin.

The sterile, suffocating scent of chemicals flooded your nose. A harsh, artificial light burned above you, buzzing like a swarm of insects inside your skull. Shadows moved just beyond its glare—faceless, merciless. The sharp click of surgical instruments, the unmistakable hum of machinery coming to life.

Your body stiffened. Instinctively, you tried to move, to fight, but the restraints didn't budge. Wires burned under your skin, needles punctured deep, metal and flesh entwined in a sick, inescapable symphony of pain. Your breath came in ragged, uneven gasps as the memories consumed you whole.

"No. No, not again."

Your vision swam. The walls weren't just closing in—they were swallowing you. You weren't in the mines anymore. You weren't safe. You were back in that lab.

"No... please... stop!"

The words barely scraped past your lips, fragile, broken. A whisper lost in the suffocating weight of memory. Your hands clamped over your ears, pressing hard, as if that could stop it. As if that could keep it out. But it was inside you, woven into your bones, carved into the deepest corners of your mind. The echoes of the past ricocheted through your skull—voices barking orders, the sterile clang of metal instruments, the white-hot agony of needles pressing deep—No, no, stop, please stop—

Your breath hitched, caught, stuttering into a shallow gasp. Your pulse hammered against your ribs, frantic, erratic. The room spun in on itself, collapsing inward, suffocating. The walls weren't real anymore. The floor wasn't real. The only thing that existed was the panic clawing its way up your throat, the cold sweat sliding down your spine, the terror sinking its teeth into your chest and not letting go.

Alone. Alone. Alone. Always alone

You couldn't breathe.

"Breathe, little one. Just breathe."

The voice cut through the chaos like a blade through fog. Deep. Steady. Familiar.

Your body jerked at the sound—muscles twitching like a puppet with severed strings—but your mind was still trapped, spiraling, drowning. The words barely registered. They felt distant, muffled, like they were reaching you from across an impossible chasm. You couldn't react. Couldn't think. The world still felt too small, too heavy, pressing in from all sides. Your lungs burned, your throat clenched, your mind was—

"Hey. Look at me."

A new sensation. Pressure. Hands.

Warm. Solid. Real.

They gripped yours, firm but careful, grounding. A tether. You barely registered that your eyes had been shut, squeezed so tightly that dark spots burst behind your lids. But now they fluttered open—wild, unfocused, darting in frantic confusion until—

A face.

Strong features softened by concern. A presence so unmistakable, so deeply ingrained in your past that for a second—just a second—everything around you flickered. The cold, sterile walls of the lab, the distant hum of machinery, the phantom pain in your limbs—it all wavered. Dissolved.

Vander.

Your throat clenched. A fresh wave of tremors rattled through your fingers, but his hands squeezed yours in reassurance. Your breathing was still ragged, still uneven, but you were here now. And you weren't alone.

He was crouched in front of you, his massive frame lowered to meet your level, broad hands gripping yours—not harshly, not forcefully, just holding. Grounding. His thumbs brushed slow, deliberate circles over your knuckles, the same way he used to when these attacks came creeping in, silent and suffocating. He had always been the one to pull you back, to anchor you when your own mind threatened to consume you.

"There you are."

His voice was softer now, but it still carried weight—enough to press against the rising tide of panic, to hold you in place, to stop you from slipping further into the void swallowing you whole. His presence commanded attention, as it always had, and against all logic, all reason, your body listened.

"Breathe with me."

Your whole body shuddered. The tension coiled in your chest, your ribs still locked tight, your breath still shallow and erratic, but something inside you hesitated. Hesitated.

You knew. God, you knew this wasn't real. That he wasn't real. That Vander was nothing more than a flickering ghost conjured up by your unraveling mind, a desperate hallucination clawing its way into reality. But for just a second—just one fleeting, fragile second—you wanted to believe.

"Just follow my lead, alright? In..."

He inhaled, slow and deep, his broad chest rising, steady, controlled, deliberate. You tried—tried to follow, tried to drag air into your lungs the way he did, but it stuttered on the way in, jagged and broken. Your throat clenched, your body resisting, refusing, but—

"And out."

He exhaled, long and even, like it was the easiest thing in the world. Like it wasn't the impossible task it felt like inside your own chest.

Your breath came out in a trembling, uneven gasp, but Vander didn't waver.

"Again."

Another inhale. Another exhale. The air still shuddered past your lips, still came out too fast, too weak, but—this time—this time, it wasn't as shallow.

"That's it. One more."

You focused on him. Not the walls closing in, not the ghost of metal restraints biting into your skin, not the memories gnawing at the edges of your sanity. Just him. The way his tired, knowing eyes never left yours. The way his grip remained firm, steady, but never cruel. The way his voice filled the space around you, thick like smoke, solid like the ground beneath your feet.

"You're not there anymore. You hear me?"

The warmth of his hands, the depth of his voice, the sheer weight of his presence pressed against the panic, pushed against it, forced it back inch by inch.

"You're not there. You're safe."

A sob wrenched its way up your throat—ugly, raw, painful. The kind that scraped like broken glass on its way out. But when you breathed this time—actually breathed—it was deeper. Fuller. The weight on your chest didn't vanish, but it shifted, loosened just enough to let air in.

Your grip on his hands tightened, desperate, clinging to the illusion because the alternative—facing the empty room, facing the fact that he was gone, had been gone for so long—was too much.

The walls weren't closing in anymore. The room was still, no longer shifting, no longer wrong. Your pulse, though erratic, no longer slammed violently against your ribs like a frantic bird trying to escape its cage. The crushing weight in your chest had begun to loosen, unraveling inch by inch, like fingers finally releasing their bruising grip on your lungs.

Vander watched you, his expression unreadable, but there was something there—something knowing. As if he saw the exact moment you started to come back to yourself.

"I'm here, little one."

Oh.

That hurt.

"No." Your voice came out rough, hoarse from the force of your own panic. From holding your breath. From fighting. "You're not."

He exhaled slowly through his nose, watching you with that look—half-knowing, half-sorrowful. The kind of look he used to give when you had had another one of your nightmares but tried to pretend you were fine. When you gritted your teeth and swallowed the pain, hoping no one would notice.

"Maybe not the way you want me to be." he admitted, voice weighted with something unreadable. "But I will always be here, as long as you seek me."

Your breath hitched. Your throat closed again, but this time it wasn't from fear. It was something else. Something heavier. Your hands, still trembling beneath his, twitched like you wanted to pull away—but he didn't let go. Not yet.

"I don't want to do this anymore."

The confession slipped out before you could stop it. Before you could shove it back into the dark where it belonged. It sounded so small, so desperate. Like a child whispering into the void, hoping someone—anyone—would answer.

"I don't want to be here."

Vander's grip tightened—not harsh, not forceful, but firm. Grounding.

"I know." His voice was low, steady as a heartbeat. "But you don't really want to go, do you?"

You clenched your jaw. A sharp, aching pressure built behind your ribs, spreading to your throat, your eyes. You didn't want to answer. Because you knew the truth.

You didn't want to be here. But you didn't want to go either. You just didn't know how to exist in the in-between.

Vander sighed, a sound so familiar, so real that for a second, you could almost believe he was. He reached forward, resting his palm gently against the crown of your head, fingers threading into your hair with the same rough, careful warmth you remembered from so long ago.

"Breathe, little one." His voice softened, barely above a whisper. "Just breathe."

You swallowed hard, closing your eyes for just a second—but there was no relief in the darkness. No comfort. No escape. Just the weight of his words pressing against you, heavy and unrelenting, like a truth you didn't want to face.

"You need to pull yourself out of this hole you crawled into."

His voice was steady, warm, but the certainty in it cut through you like a blade. There was no pity in it. No empty reassurances. Just the raw, unshaken belief that you could—that you had to.

"You've been through hell. More than most could bear. I know it hurts. I know you're tired. But you can't lose yourself now."

The words settled deep in your chest, like embers catching in the hollow spaces between your ribs. You wanted to argue, to tell him that it wasn't that easy, that it was never that easy. But you didn't. You remained silent.

You blinked up at him, searching, wanting to hold onto this—onto him—for just a little longer. But the warmth—the illusion of his hands wrapped around yours—began to fade.

Your fingers twitched against empty air.

The rough callouses, the weight of his palm, the steady, grounding presence of him—it all wavered, slipping through your grasp like mist in the morning light. You tried to cling to it, to keep him here, but his figure was already losing definition, the edges of him turning soft and translucent.

The last thing to go was his eyes.

Watching. Waiting.

And then—

Gone.

The room was empty again.

A quiet stillness settled over you, wrapping around your skin, pressing against the edges of your awareness. But it wasn't the same suffocating isolation as before. The panic had loosened its grip, leaving only exhaustion in its wake.

You were alone.

But you could still feel the ghost of his presence, lingering in the space between breaths. In the memory of his voice. In the quiet, unwavering certainty that he had always tried to give you. And this time, this time, you let yourself believe it.

Even if only for a moment.

You stayed there, sitting on the cold floor, grounding yourself in silence. The aftershocks of your panic still echoed through your limbs—subtle tremors, the lingering tightness in your chest, the dull ache left behind by your own body waging war against itself. But you focused on the things that tethered you to now. The feeling of your own breath, shaky but present. The way your pulse thrummed against your skin, no longer erratic, but fragile. Real.

Minutes passed. Maybe more. Time had blurred, stretched thin between past and present, but it didn't matter. What mattered was that you were still here.

Eventually, you lifted your gaze.

The room felt different now—emptier, quieter, like the storm had finally settled but left the wreckage behind. Your eyes drifted to the far corner, where forgotten remnants of a past life remained untouched.

The jackets.

A lump formed in your throat, but you swallowed it down, forcing yourself to move. Every part of you resisted. Your limbs were stiff, weak from exhaustion, but you refused to stay crumpled on the floor like something broken, like something left behind.

So you pushed through it.

Sluggishly, you planted your palms against the ground and dragged yourself upright. Your legs wobbled under your weight, protesting with every motion, but they held. One step. Then another. The air in the room felt heavier the closer you got, each step dragging invisible chains behind you, but you didn't stop.

By the time you reached them, the dust-coated fabric seemed almost untouched by time, despite the years that had settled into the worn material. Your fingers hovered over them, hesitating for a fraction of a second before reaching out.

The first touch sent a shiver through you.

Vander's jacket was rough beneath your fingertips, the leather stiff, cracked in places, but still solid—still him. Your hand trailed down the sleeve, ghosting over familiar stitching, familiar creases from where he used to roll up the cuffs. The scent was long gone, but in your mind, it lingered—faint traces of smoke, ale, the distinct warmth that had once wrapped around you like a shield.

Then, your eyes fell to the other jacket, partially hidden beneath Vander's.

Silco's.

The difference in size was almost comical—Vander's heavy, broad-shouldered coat nearly swallowing the of Silco's—but seeing them together like this... For the first time in what felt like forever, you let out a small, breath of a laugh.

It barely lasted a second.

But it was real.

With careful hands, you took them both down. They felt like ghosts in your grip, lingering echoes of the men who had once filled them, who had once filled you with a sense of belonging.

A part of you—one you barely wanted to acknowledge—ached to bury your face in Silco's, to press the fabric to your skin and pretend, even for just a moment, that he was still here. That you could find comfort in the lingering traces of him, in the faded scent that still clung to the collar. That you weren't standing alone in the dim, dust-filled room, wearing grief like a second skin. But you didn't let yourself.

Instead, with deliberate care, you placed it back exactly where it had been. Untouched. Preserved.

Vander's, though—

The moment you pulled it over your shoulders, the weight of it settled against you like an embrace. Too big, drowning you in fabric. The sleeves swallowed your hands, the hem nearly brushing your knees. It smelled of dust, of time, of a life that had slipped through your fingers before you ever had the chance to hold onto it properly.

You didn't care.

You just needed something.

Something to hold on to. Something to remind you that you were still here. That despite everything, despite the blood, the ghosts, the ache in your bones that never really faded—you were still standing.

Your fingers curled around the fabric, gripping it like a lifeline. The world still felt too quiet, too hollow, like the silence after a storm when everything is ruined, when there's nothing left but wreckage.

But you were breathing.

And that had to be enough.

For a long moment, you stood there, still and unwilling, caught between the crushing urge to stay and the distant pull of something else—something quieter. Vander's words still echoed at the edges of your mind, rough and steady, as unwavering as the hands that had once guided you.

"It's time to get out of that hole."

[...]

You were suffocating an man.

A hand clamped tight over his mouth, fingers digging into his skin, silencing any attempt at a scream. His body thrashed against yours, fighting against the inevitable, and you grit your teeth at his refusal to surrender. He didn't understand—you weren't going to kill him. That would be reckless. Stupid. Killing one of Silco's men now, right in the middle of their patrol, would only send the rest into a frenzy. You couldn't afford that.

Not when you were so close.

For the past three days, you had been returning to your old apartment, taking back what was yours piece by piece, dragging your past into the safety of the mines. It was a delicate process—moving in shadows, making sure no one followed you. But tonight, on the fourth night, the risk caught up to you.

Silco's men were here.

You had managed to evade them at first, pressing yourself into the shadows, breathing slow and measured as their boots echoed against the wet pavement. But then—one of them had wandered too close. Too fucking close. And now here you were, with his weight pressing against yours, his fingers clawing at your wrist, his desperate gasps muffled beneath your palm.

His struggling slowed. His body sagged. The fight bled out of him, leaving only dead weight in your grasp. You held on for a moment longer, ensuring he was truly out, before letting him slump to the ground in a heap. His chest still rose and fell in shallow breaths. Good. That was enough. You crouched over him, stripping him of his weapons, tucking a stolen blade into your belt as you moved swiftly toward the edge of the building. Peering around the corner, you scanned the street, assessing their positions.

They were inside.

Of course they were.

Your stomach twisted as your gaze flickered to the dimly lit windows of your old apartment. They were searching for somenting. Most of what mattered had already been moved. Vander's things, the small keepsakes you couldn't bear to leave behind. But there were still pieces of you inside. Things you'd left for tonight.

And now, you were too fucking late.

You pulled Vander's jacket tighter around yourself, sinking into its worn fabric as if you could disappear into it, as if the heavy material could swallow you whole and meld you into the darkness. Your eyes remained locked on the window of your old apartment, watching the shadows shift inside. Then, the door opened, and she stepped out.

Sevika.

She moved with purpose, descending the stairs with a slow, measured stride, her mechanical arm catching the faint glimmer of the streetlights. Even from your hiding place, you could see the way the others turned toward her, waiting. She was already barking orders, her tone sharp, authoritative. It made sense, you supposed. With Silco gone, it was only natural she'd take over. The only thing that didn't make sense was the way no one—no one—was talking about him.

No whispers. No hushed rumors. No fucking acknowledgment that Zaun's Eye had been put in the dirt. The absence of it gnawed at you. Silco was dead. You had killed him. And yet... it was as if nothing had changed.

You swallowed against the tightness in your throat, forcing yourself to push the thought aside. Ignore it. You couldn't afford to dwell on it. If you did, the hole in your chest would only widen, and you weren't sure you could afford to bleed any more than you already had.

Instead, you turned your focus to the plan. First, find Powder. She had lost everything—first Vander, and now Silco. You couldn't even begin to imagine the state she was in, but you knew she needed someone. She needed you. Second, find Violet. Wherever she was, whoever she had become—you would track her down. You would reunite the sisters, keep them safe, hold them together no matter what it took.

And maybe—once you had them both—you could leave. Leave Zaun behind. Leave everything behind. You weren't sure where you'd go. But that was a problem for another time. Right now, all that mattered was keeping yourself moving. Because if you stopped, if you let yourself think—

No. You weren't going to break. Not yet.

You were just about to turn away. Whatever was left in that apartment—whatever remnants of your past still lingered within those walls—it no longer belonged to you. If Silco's men had it now, then it was lost. And you weren't about to risk your life for sentiment.

But then, movement at the front door caught your eye. Another figure was stepping out. And the moment your brain registered what you were seeing, your body betrayed you. Your breath caught. Your vision swayed. Your knees nearly buckled, and the only thing keeping you upright was the cold, rough surface of the wall pressed against your back. Because descending those stairs, framed by the dim, flickering streetlights—was a ghost.

The coat was unmistakable. Heavy fabric draped over broad shoulders, the high collar turned up against the night air, giving him that same cold, looming presence you had long since committed to memory. A coat that had once brushed against your skin, the scent of smoke and metal clinging to its fibers. A coat that belonged to a man you had buried a knife into.

Silco.

Alive.

Your stomach twisted violently. No. No, this wasn't—this wasn't possible. You had felt the blade sink into flesh, had watched as blood spilled between your fingers. He had collapsed. He had gasped through gritted teeth, had struggled for breath. You had felt him start to die.

His gait was steady but not without struggle, a barely-there stiffness to his movements, as if something still ached beneath his skin. He adjusted his gloves, flexing his fingers with an absent-minded precision, the way he always did when he was lost in thought. The way he carried himself—imposing as ever, yet restrained, as if still adjusting to his own body—made your stomach churn. Every detail clawed at your senses, every movement proof of something that should have been impossible. Silco was right there, standing no more than a few meters away.

You stood frozen, unable to move, unable to breathe, your body betraying you in the worst way possible. The air felt thick, suffocating, the walls too close, the floor unsteady beneath your feet. Your pulse hammered wildly, erratic, violent, a frantic rhythm that made you nauseous. Was it panic? Relief? Anger? You couldn't tell. 

Perhaps it was all of them at once, twisting inside you like a poisonous knot, tightening, burning, making your throat close up as if you were choking on something vile. It hurt. Whatever this feeling was, it was consuming you, clawing at your insides like an open wound left to fester, and you couldn't stop it, couldn't control it, couldn't even put a name to it.

Silco was alive. He was there, whole and breathing. As if he hadn't died. As if you hadn't died with him. Because a part of you had. A part so deeply intertwined with him that when he had slipped away, it had taken you with it. The empty space in your chest had been him, the unbearable ache of loss, the silence that had devoured you from the inside out. And now, against every law of reality, against everything you knew to be true, he was standing there again. Breathing. Watching. Existing.

The world around him faded into insignificance. Your senses dulled to everything but him—the rise and fall of his chest, the tension in his jaw, the weight of his presence, so familiar yet so utterly wrong. He was the force that had shaped you, broken you, rebuilt you into something unrecognizable. The love of your life was alive. And you didn't know how to survive that.

It took you too long to realize what he was holding in his hand, the reason he was standing there for all that time. A piece of paper you could see and you could almost recognize it, after all, the luminescent mold stains behind it were unmistakable.

Vander's letter.

Part 21

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Silco's memory was based on this X art: click here. The trigger for reader trauma is loneliness, if it wasn't clear. Just a heads up that updates may not be weekly anymore, since I don't have much free time to write. But whenever I have time, I'll try to write. Again, if you came for smut, you won't find it in the next chapters.

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[defmxl]

Lazy attempt

[defmxl]

just finished him, kinda proud tbh

[defmxl]

[defmxl]

some more jayvik!!

[defmxl]

Daughter Harasses Her Own Father For No Reason

Well, I did a thing with another scene again...

Am I the only person who enjoys watching how Silco reacts to each stab?

[defmxl]

Someone needs a good rest.

[defmxl]

Apologies for the lack of posts. Have some Silco rope play. FULL UNCENSORED VERSION HERE

[defmxl]

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦

[defmxl]

young silco doodles <3

[defmxl]

Ma Meilleure Ennemie (pt 19/?)

"You are the worst of all blessings and the beautiful of all cursеs. The best thing that ever happened to me, yet the worst mistake I never had the chance to undo. If I could go back to the day we met… maybe I’d pray for it to never come."

Silco x fem!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+, MDNI)

Word Count: 9,6K

Warnings: panic and anxiety attacks, Silco being a manipulator, emotional manipulation, betrayal and all the feelings that come with it, suicidal thoughts, blood and violence, self-deprecating thoughts, allusion to human experiments, threats with weapons, attempted murder, Silco POV

Set before the events of Act 2 of the first season of Arcane.

Part 18

Silco's Pov ━━━━━━━༺༻━━━━━━━

Singed was a brilliant mind.

Silco would be the first to admit it. The scientist's ingenuity was undeniable—his ability to twist the very laws of nature to suit his vision, to push beyond the constraints that lesser men cowered before. But just as his skill was unmatched, so too was his utter disregard for morality. That, Silco could appreciate. A man unburdened by conscience was a man who could achieve the impossible.

And yet, even he had been caught off guard by the Chemtanks.

It had been a revelation, seeing them in motion—hulking, chemically enhanced weapons of war, raw destruction given form. A promise of the power Silco had long envisioned, brought to life by Singed's meticulous, if unorthodox, hand. For a brief, tantalizing moment, it had seemed as if Zaun finally held a force that could rival Piltover's mechanical monstrosities.

But then came the inevitable disappointment.

In his attempt to replicate her ability, Singed had succeeded—if only in the most rudimentary sense. The Chemtanks could move as she did, could blink in and out of reach, vanishing and reappearing in bursts of violent momentum. But they lacked the one thing that made her truly dangerous: control.

They were mindless creatures with a singular purpose: destruction.

They obeyed without hesitation, tore through anything in their path, and let the power coursing through them exact its price—devouring them from the inside out. Five seconds. That was all Singed had managed to grant them before their bodies ruptured under the sheer force of the strain. But in those five seconds, they had left nothing but devastation in their wake.

It had been enough to surprise even Silco. Enough to make the other Barons pause, their usual arrogance tempered by the sheer violence of what they had just witnessed. These were not the failed prototypes that had lost all control, wild and unpredictable. These obeyed. These followed orders. These slaughtered their targets like unstoppable war machines—tanks given flesh, unyielding, relentless, immortal.

And five seconds, in the grand scheme of battle, was more than enough.

But if the Chemtanks, with no mind of their own, had already reached such heights—then her potential was something beyond comprehension.

Which was why the order had changed.

Silco could make use of a disposable army like the Chemtanks, yes, but they were a single-use weapon. Their power burned too hot, too fast. But she—she was something else entirely. She could be more than a one-man army, more than a perfect killing machine.

She thought. She adapted. She had this logic and strategy behind her attacks even though it seemed like she simply advanced without blinking. The unstoppable force of her ability was merely a tool—one she wielded at will. And in the right hands, she could be the most dangerous person Piltover had ever known.

All Singed had to do—or at least attempt—was to eliminate that damnable ten-second limit. Without that constraint, without the ever-looming risk of death hanging over her like a blade poised to strike, there would be nothing standing in her way.

At least, that was the current plan.

It was the thought turning over in Silco's mind as he returned to The Last Drop at the onset of the evening. The walk back had been uneventful—no disturbances, no signs of anything out of place. His men were where they were supposed to be, their postures relaxed but attentive. Even Sevika, usually brimming with her usual brand of skepticism, seemed at ease.

A routine night in Zaun.

Or so he thought—until he stepped into his office and saw something that made his blood run cold. There, embedded deep into the wooden surface of his desk, was his dagger.

The blade was buried to the hilt, piercing through a piece of parchment Silco recognized immediately. He knew that paper. He knew the weight of it, the texture of it, and most damning of all, he knew exactly who had felt it.

His jaw tightened as he reached for the dagger, yanking it free with a sharp motion before carefully unfolding the letter beneath it. His gauze scanned the words, his fingers tightened around the edges, and for a brief, violent moment, he considered storming into Singed's lab and wringing the old man's neck with his bare hands.

Of all the things Singed could have been sent, of all the times he could have chosen.

It didn't take a genius to figure out who had read the letter before he did.

Silco let out a slow, controlled breath through his nose, forcing down the white-hot frustration curling in his chest. He should have expected her to pry. She was too perceptive, too damnably curious for her own good. And normally, he would have accounted for that. Normally, he would have seen it coming.

But how in all the hells was he supposed to predict that this, of all things, would end up in her hands first? Singed only sent letters when it was absolutely necessary and that matter was not one of them. Silco had given an irrefutable order so there should be no room for dispute, but it seemed that the scientist thought otherwise.

Silco left his office in a rush, his footsteps sharp and purposeful as he strode back toward the bar. His patience was wearing thin, irritation slithering beneath his skin like a slow-burning fuse. Something was wrong—he could feel it, a gnawing unease that refused to settle.

"Where is she?" His voice came out as a low growl, rough and edged with something dangerously close to anger.

Sevika, who had been leaning lazily against the counter, barely lifted her gaze as she answered, though he didn't miss the slight narrowing of her eyes—her own instincts were on alert now.

"In her room." she answered, her voice even. "It hasn't even been half an hour since I saw her carrying Jinx."

That made him pause. Jinx? Here?

"Jinx is here?"

"Yeah." Sevika straightened slightly now, her casual posture shifting into something more alert. "The kid was passed out in her arms, so she took her to bed. No one has seen either of them leave. No chance they got past the men without being noticed." 

That should have been reassuring. Should have been.

But it wasn't.

The unease had already settled deep in his gut, cold and suffocating, long before Sevika had even finished speaking. Something was wrong. He knew it. He felt it. The kind of instinct that had kept him alive all these years, that had warned him before every betrayal, before every ambush.

And now, it was screaming at him.

He didn't waste another second. He was already moving, taking the stairs two at a time, his coat billowing behind him as his stride lengthened. He barely registered the heavy thud of Sevika's footsteps following close behind, barely noticed the guards stationed at their posts—silent, unbothered. No alarms had been raised. No signs of struggle.

That should have meant everything was fine.

And yet. Dread curled tighter in his chest, constricting like a vice as he reached the door. He didn't knock, the handle turned under his grip, the door swinging open in one fluid motion.

The room was dark. The dim glow of Zaun's neon lights filtered weakly through the curtains, casting fractured shadows across the walls. His gaze swept over the space, cataloging every detail. The furniture was undisturbed. No overturned chairs. No shattered glass. The air was still, untouched—wrong.

And then he saw her.

Not her, but Jinx.

She was curled up in the bed, deep in sleep, the steady rise and fall of her chest the only sign of life in the oppressive stillness.

But the bed was empty aside from her.

Silco stepped further in, slow. His heartbeat was a measured thing, controlled even as the tension in his body coiled impossibly tight. His mind worked quickly, too quickly—scenarios and explanations fighting for dominance, each one dismissed as fast as it came.

His eyes landed on the small form curled beneath the blankets, deep in sleep, her breathing slow and even. Jinx. She had been tucked in carefully, the sheets drawn over her with care, as if someone had taken the time to ensure she would not stir, would not wake too soon.

That meant she had been here.

She had laid Jinx down. She had smoothed the sheets. She had lingered long enough to be certain. And then, she had left.

Silco's jaw tensed, his fingers curling into a slow, measured fist at his side. It wasn't panic—not yet. It was something worse. The cold, sinking weight of realization as the pieces of the puzzle began to shift and fall into place. The air in the room felt thicker now, laced with something unseen, something wrong.

Behind him, heavy boots scraped against the floorboards, and Sevika stepped into the doorway, her presence a solid, grounding force. Her voice was low, laced with something close to doubt—but not quite.

"She wouldn't just leave."

No. She wouldn't but the space where she should have been was empty.

Silco barely had time to process the thought before the hurried slap of boots echoed from the corridor outside, fast, desperate. He turned, already sharp, already expecting the worst, as a familiar red-haired man skidded into view, breathless and wide-eyed. There was no mistaking the look on his face—sheer, unfiltered despair.

"Boss—" His chest rose and fell sharply, but he barely took a breath before forcing the words out, voice taut with something close to panic. "We found a body. Back exit... one of ours. Dead."

A slow, seething rage curled deep in Silco's chest, pooling there like a well of tar, thick and suffocating. His expression didn't shift, didn't crack—not outwardly.

"How?" His voice was quiet. Deceptively calm. But the weight behind it was anything but.

The man swallowed hard, his throat bobbing as he fought to steady himself. "Head smashed against the wall. Blood everywhere. And the other one? Thrown a few meters, alive, but out cold. No one saw a damn thing."

A silence stretched between them, heavy, suffocating. Sevika exhaled sharply, something between a curse and a growl, but Silco simply narrowed his gaze, there was only one answer. One inevitable, inescapable conclusion.

"Singed."

The name left his lips like a final verdict, sharp as the edge of a knife scraping against stone. Sevika didn't ask. She didn't need to. She already knew. And the realization was written across her face as her expression darkened.

"Then she knows."

"Of course, she does."

Sevika straightened, already shifting, already preparing. "I'll gather the men."

"No."

The word came quick, firm, final. He didn't need to raise his voice for it to carry weight—it settled into the air like a gavel striking wood, irrefutable, absolute.

"Wouldn't matter anyway," Silco continued, his tone measured but edged with something unmistakably lethal. "She'd cut through them before they even reached her."

Sevika hesitated. Just for a second. Just long enough for doubt to flicker across her features before she exhaled sharply, nodding once, begrudgingly accepting the truth they both knew.

"Then what do we do?"

Silco turned back toward the open doorway, not wanting to disturb Jinx's sleep any longer. He already knew how this would end if he let it spiral out of control. There was no time to strategize, no time to send men who would only slow things down, who would only make things worse. There was only one course of action left.

"We go after her ourselves."

A beat of silence. Then—

"You've gone fucking mad, Silco."

Sevika's voice was low, but every word was laced with steel. Not defiance. Not quite. But close.

She stepped forward, her presence looming, her broad frame blocking part of the dim light spilling from the hallway. "Going after her alone? After what she did to the guard?" She gestured sharply toward the door, her meaning unmistakable. "She's a goddamn storm waiting to tear through anything in her path. We have to make her reach her limit, then we contain her."

Silco's patience thinned. "No."

The single word sliced through the air like a knife, sharp, unyielding. His fingers twitched at his side, a restless movement barely restrained. "I won't risk killing her for this."

Sevika's nostrils flared. "And why the hell not? You saw what she did. She's not thinking straight—"

"And neither are you if you think I'm letting anyone put a bullet in her head."

His voice was dangerously low now, measured, controlled—but Sevika knew better than to mistake that for restraint. A muscle in her jaw twitched. Her lips curled into something close to a snarl.

"Then it'll be you she kills next."

"She won't."

The certainty in his voice was unwavering. A conviction built not on logic, not on reason, but on something far more dangerous—belief. Sevika stared at him like he was already dead.

The tension coiled like a live wire, snapping and sparking in the silence between them. The subordinate questioning the big boss's orders, if it had been anyone else, would have been dead by then, but Silco's right-hand man, despite being a faithful dog, knew when his boss was doing questionable things. And this was definitely one of those things.

"How the fuck do you know that, Silco?"

She stepped closer, towering over him, her broad shoulders squared with the kind of rigid defiance that only surfaced when she was preparing to say something he wouldn't want to hear. Silco didn't move, didn't so much as blink, but he felt the shift in her—felt the weight of her frustration, her disbelief, pressing against him like a physical force.

"I get it. You trust her. You think she wouldn't turn on you. But trust won't stop her if she's too far gone."

Her words hung between them, thick and suffocating. The implication clear. The accusation unspoken but ringing in the air nonetheless. Silco's expression remained impassive, unreadable, but there was a shift—something subtle, something dangerous. A flicker of something sharp and unyielding in his eyes.

"She's not gone."

"She threw a man's skull against a wall like it was nothing."

"He was in her way."

Sevika's lips pressed into a thin line, her patience thinning. "And what if you're next?"

Her tone hardened now, more forceful, pressing him, pushing against the walls of whatever belief he was clinging to. 

"What if she doesn't stop? What if she doesn't even realize it's you until it's too late?"

The words should have unsettled him. Maybe, deep down, they did. But fear had never been something Silco allowed himself to entertain. Instead, he exhaled slowly, deliberately, his gaze locking onto hers with an intensity that made even her pause.

"Then I'll make her see me."

There was no hesitation in his voice. No wavering. No doubt. Just the weight of absolute certainty. Silco let the silence stretch between them. And when he finally spoke again, his voice was lower, measured, but no less commanding.

"Now, I think it's better for you to follow my orders instead of questioning them."

Sevika held his gaze for a long moment, jaw tight, tension radiating from her like a storm barely held at bay. She wasn't convinced. Not entirely. But even reluctantly, she nodded.

That would have to be enough.

Silco turned away, already turning to head down the corridor towards Singed's laboratory. There was no time to waste knowing what she could do. This was a problem—his problem. One that needed to be solved before it spiraled further out of control. And the worst part? He had no idea if he could.

━━━━━━━༺༻━━━━━━━

You stared at your own reflection in the shard of glass lying amidst the wreckage of the laboratory you had just torn apart in a violent wave of fury. The sharp edges caught the dim light, fractured pieces of a shattered world, and within them, your own gaze burned back at you—those unnatural violet irises, alive with something unholy, something that should not exist yet thrived within you, searing through your veins like a brand.

Everything still felt the same. The ever-present tingling in your eyes. The way the world seemed to sharpen at the edges, details unraveling before you with piercing clarity. Every fiber of your body was hypersensitive, attuned to the slightest shift in the air, the faintest crackle of electricity running through exposed wires in the ruined room. And yet... there was something else. A shift. A raw, untamed force humming beneath your skin, stronger, more refined—evolved.

The realization barely settled before your knees buckled.

You stumbled, reaching blindly for something—anything—to anchor yourself. A nearby table caught your weight just in time, though the impact sent scattered papers skidding across the surface. Your breath came in ragged, uneven gasps, the burn at the back of your throat morphing into something wet. Then, the first drop.

Scarlet against white.

You exhaled sharply, and more followed. Blood dripped from your nose, staining the documents beneath your fingers, blooming into irregular patterns against the stark pages. A cough tore through you, dry and brutal, and this time, crimson splattered across the surface, each droplet a damning reminder of what was happening inside you.

Then, as suddenly as it had surged, the power drained from your body.

Like water slipping through your fingers, it abandoned you, leaving nothing but hollow exhaustion in its wake. Your limbs trembled, the unbearable intensity that had just consumed you now reduced to an aching void. The edges of your vision blurred, the weight of your own body becoming foreign, distant.

Five seconds. You only needed five seconds. Five seconds to unleash the kind of destruction that would have made even God turn away in disgust. Five seconds to nearly kill Singed in the process.

You hadn't been thinking. Not in any coherent sense, at least. Your rage had swallowed you whole, the pain twisting inside you like something alive, something desperate for release. And you had indulged it, let it consume you until all you could do was lash out, tear apart everything in your path.

By the time you fled The Last Drop, you were already beyond reason, past the point of rational thought. The world around you was a blur of color and movement, your breath ragged in your lungs, your hands slick with something warm, something wet. Blood. Yours? Theirs? You didn't care. Someone had tried to stop you. Someone had died for it. And yet, it didn't matter. Not now.

The only thing that mattered was getting into that lab.

Singed didn't even flinch when you charged. Didn't recoil, didn't try to run. Maybe he had been expecting you. Maybe he had already come to terms with this inevitable moment. But none of that mattered, because the second your hands found him, all thought was drowned beneath the rush of unrelenting, violent rage.

You threw him across the room like he was nothing more than a ragdoll. Glass shattered on impact, vials of unknown liquid spilling onto the floor, hissing where they met other, less stable substances. The air thickened with the acrid scent of chemicals, sharp and burning. The carefully curated chaos of this place had finally dissolved into something purely destructive.

You hadn't cared—hadn't wanted to care. Not until the last possible second, when the red haze of fury has receded just enough for you to wrench yourself back from the edge.

Instead of snapping his neck, you had thrown him.

Now Singed lay slumped against the cold stone wall, his body limp, a dark stain spreading across the front of his coat where the deep gash in his abdomen wept crimson. Blood dripped from his fingers, pooling on the floor, soaking into the fabric of his tattered garments. Yet, despite the mortal wound, he made no sound. No groans of pain, no curses, no desperate pleas for mercy.

Because he had known.

When you had demanded the truth after you threw him into that corner—had spit your accusations at him, voice raw, hands trembling—he had simply confirmed your worst fears. No hesitation, no attempt to twist the narrative in his favor. Just a quiet, damning admission. He had accepted the attack the same way he had accepted everything else in his wretched existence: as if it were nothing more than another inevitable step in a predetermined sequence of events. As if he had welcomed it.

And maybe he had.

Maybe, somewhere in the depths of that fractured, inhuman mind, that was what he wanted. Or maybe he just didn't care.

You wanted to believe there was some grander scheme at play—some hidden angle that you hadn't yet uncovered, some intricate web of deception woven beneath the surface. But as you stood there, chest rising and falling in uneven gasps, hands slick with blood that was not entirely your own, you realized something far worse.

There was no plan. No careful manipulation, no convenient lie to cling to just the unrelenting, inescapable truth. And it was staring back at you, etched in every bloodstained page scattered across the table, your own crimson spilling over them like an offering.

Reports. About you.

Meticulously detailed, clinical, damning.

Singed had handed them over without resistance, as if your discovery had never been in question. As if you were always meant to find them. Pages upon pages detailing the mutations in your system—meticulously recorded, analyzed, broken down into cold, sterile observations. Singed had been studying you, dissecting you in a way that went far beyond flesh and bone. He had been trying to replicate you, or what is running through your veins. To implement whatever he had discovered in your blood into the prototype of a new shimmer strain. The one Silco had ordered him to create.

A plan years in the making. One that had finally come to fruition the moment he found you.

The moment Silco made you his.

Each line of text felt like a blade carving into you, methodical and merciless. Silco had used you. Silco had injected shimmer into your body without your knowledge. Silco had let Singed experiment on your blood, dissect it, manipulate it, twist it into something unnatural.

Silco had done exactly what your old master had done.

Your breath came shallow and ragged. A cold, sick feeling coiled in the pit of your stomach, wrapping around your ribs like a vice. The weight of the realization settled over you, suffocating, crushing. Tears spilled onto the pages, darkening the ink, smudging the clinical handwriting that reduced you to nothing more than a subject—a specimen.

A means to an end.

You could feel yourself bleeding from every part of you. Not just from the recoil, not just from the shards of glass that littered the floor around you, but from something far deeper. Your heart was bleeding. Torn open, gutted by the weight of betrayal, of realization, of the undeniable truth staring you in the face.

You wanted to die just to make it stop.

The buzzing in your ears was deafening, drowning out everything but the furious, erratic pounding of your heart against your ribs. Too fast. Too hard. As if it might break free from your chest entirely. You tried to breathe, to steady yourself, but every gasp felt like a knife plunging deeper, twisting cruelly with each failed attempt to contain the storm raging inside you.

Your body has given up on supporting your weight.

You crashed to the floor, hands clutching at your chest, nails digging into your skin as if you could reach inside and tear the pain out by force. It hurt. Gods, it hurt. Like a bullet lodged deep in your heart, pulsing with every beat, refusing to let you forget it was there. Refusing to let you escape it.

You wished you couldn't feel it anymore.

You wished you couldn't feel anything at all.

The pain was unbearable. A raw, festering wound inside you, growing deeper with every second that passed. Your breath hitched, throat constricting as you fought against the wave of nausea crawling up your spine, your mind was unraveling, burning through every moment, every touch, every whispered word from him, searching for signs, for warnings, for the moment you should have known.

But through the haze of agony, your gaze fell upon Singed, He simply watched you with that same detached curiosity, as if he were observing a subject in an experiment, documenting your pain with quiet precision.

Your voice was hoarse when it finally came.

You swallowed once, twice, but your throat remained dry, raw from the scream that had never come. When you finally spoke, your voice was hoarse, stripped down to its barest, most fragile form.

"When?"

Singed blinked, as if weighing the significance of the question. As if, somehow, he hadn't expected you to ask it. But when he spoke, there was no hesitation, no inflection of regret. Just the same eerie calm that always lingered in his voice, even as blood pooled beneath him, seeping into the cracks of the cold stone floor.

"Months ago." he answered. "The night you were taken."

Your lips parted, but no sound came. The world around you shrank, muffled, as if submerged underwater. The dim light of Singed's lab flickered against the glass containers — more precisely the shards of them, their eerie glow casting warped reflections in your peripheral vision. But you couldn't focus on any of it. You could only look at him.

"The night I was—"

The words faltered, barely making it past your lips. But Singed, ever the scientist, ever the surgeon of brutal truths, filled in the gap without pause.

"The night you nearly died."

There was no malice in his tone. No judgment. No pity. Just cold, clinical precision. "That was the first time Shimmer was introduced into your system."

The silence that followed was suffocating. Your pulse pounded in your ears, a deep, rhythmic thrum, like distant war drums signaling an inevitable end.

And then—

"Silco's orders."

It was that final nail, that final twist of the knife, that shattered something inside you.

You had thought—No. You knew Silco was ruthless. You knew his cruelty, his willingness to sacrifice, to bleed the world dry if it meant securing what he wanted. You know that he makes choices that others wouldn't, choices that demanded suffering for the sake of survival. You had known all of this. But you hadn't thought you were just another choice.

Just another body to be carved open and experimented on.

The weight of it pressed against your ribs, clawing at your skin from the inside out, something thick and unbearable. A betrayal so sharp, so utterly suffocating, that for a moment, it didn't even feel real.

You had trusted him.

More than that—you had belonged to him, in a way you could never quite name. Had followed him through blood and fire, through the darkness of his ambitions and his accursed sins. You had been willing to be molded into something more, something greater, because he had promised you were more than just another pawn in his game. Not a monster passed from one owner to another.

And yet...

Something inside you cracked.

But this time, it wasn't violent. It wasn't fire and fury, wasn't an eruption of rage that demanded to be felt, to be heard. No, this was something quieter. Something colder. More insidious. It seeped into you like a slow-moving toxin, curling through your veins, settling deep in your bones. A hollow, sinking weight that dragged you down, down, down into something you couldn't yet name. Not grief. Not yet. But close.

That night—the one you'd thought would be your last. The one where your body had been broken, where your vision had blurred at the edges, where each breath had been an agony, a fight you weren't sure you wanted to win.

You had been dying. You had felt it. You literally saw death —the sheep pointed its arrow at you and you still remembered what it felt like... to have accepted a fate that did not come. And Silco? He hadn't saved you. He had refused to let you die.

The difference was damning.

A shaky breath left your lips—something caught between a laugh and a sob. Maybe both. Maybe neither. You weren't sure. It didn't matter. Your body felt foreign, distant, like it didn't belong to you anymore. Like it hadn't belonged to you for a long time.

Your eyes lifted as if seeing the world for the first time in its rawest, ugliest truth. The war beneath your skin still raged—anger, sorrow, something deeper, something raw—but when you spoke, your voice was eerily calm.

"Of course." you whispered. "Of course, he did."

You wanted to cry more, but your eyes were already burning, raw from exhaustion, from the weight of realization pressing against your skull like an iron vice. Maybe you wanted to scream, but even if you tried, nothing would leave your throat except a strangled, broken sound.

And why shouldn't you feel this way? This was your fault, wasn't it?

In the end, you were the one who let yourself believe in the fairy tale Silco spun just for you, so intricately woven, so perfectly designed to trap you. You had walked into his web willingly, a foolish little fly tangled in silk, only to lose yourself—your body, your mind, your very soul—to something far greater, far crueler. You should have known.

Look at what he's done to you.

He made you complacent. Tamed you. He softened the edges of your rage, buried your claws beneath velvet, twisted your thoughts until the impossible became truth. He made you love him.

Love.

You would have laughed if there was even a sliver of strength left in you for such pathetic self-mockery.

A noble thing. A foolish thing. A double-edged blade meant only to carve out your insides, to gut you with hollow promises and fleeting illusions of happiness. It was never meant for you. So why? Why do you keep reaching for it? How many betrayals? How many losses will it take before you finally understand that you are not meant to love, nor to be loved in return? That whatever you touch, whatever you care for—whatever fragile, precious thing you give to claim—would be taken.

It would be destroyed.

Would end.

It was an unbreakable cycle — your fate, your curse — You should have known better. You did know better and yet, you still let yourself hope.

How foolish.

You lay there for what felt like an eternity, sinking deeper into the abyss of your own ruin. The cold, unforgiving floor of the shattered laboratory was your only anchor to reality, its surface slick with spilled chemicals and littered with jagged shards of glass that bit into your skin. Tiny cuts burned along your arms, your legs—but the sting was nothing compared to the agony festering inside you.

Pain, at least, should have been grounded. But even that had abandoned you.

The air was thicker than before now, saturated with the acrid stench of chemicals, sharp and cloying in the back of your throat. Something burned in the distance, the faint scent of charred metal and singed cloth curling through the chaos, but you couldn't bring yourself to care. Let it all burn. Let the flames consume what little remained.

Your body felt heavy, drained, as if whatever fire had once burned inside you had finally flickered out. There was nothing left to fight with. Nothing left to hold onto.

Then—sound.

Faint at first, distant echoes beyond the laboratory, but growing closer.

Footsteps.

Someone was coming. Someone you knew who you were, someone who would always find you.

You finally pushed yourself up from the floor, your limbs sluggish, your body aching like a marionette with its strings half-severed. The room swayed around you, but you forced yourself forward, each step dragging you toward the weapon that had been discarded in the chaos—flung into the corner in your violent outburst, slick with someone else's blood. The person you killed before you got here.

Your fingers wrapped around the cold metal, trembling but steady enough as you pulled it to your chest. The sharp, mechanical click of the gun being cocked cut through the silence. Then, with slow steps, you turned to face Singed.

The scientist did not flinch.

He barely even blinked as you lifted the pistol, leveling it at his skull. The dim, flickering lights cast cruel shadows over his gaunt features, but his expression remained eerily neutral.

Your finger brushed the trigger.

But the gun jammed. 

The shot that should have killed Singed never happening. But before you thought about trying to pull the trigger again, just as you expected, the heavy metal doors burst open behind you, rattling on their hinges, the impact shaking through the very air.

You didn't turn around. You didn't need to.

You knew him by his footsteps—sharp, purposeful, each one striking the floor like the countdown of a detonator. You knew him by his breath—ragged, uneven, the telltale sign of a man who had run, who had raced to get here. And, most of all, you knew him by the weight of his gaze—burning into your back, searing through layers of flesh and bone like a brand, demanding, unrelenting.

"Put it down." His voice was rough, hoarse. It wasn't a request. It wasn't even an order. It was a warning.

Slowly, excruciatingly, you exhaled. "No."

"Now." he repeated the order. "Don't make me ask twice."

Your grip on the pistol tightened, the metal digging into your palm. "You knew." The words tumbled past your lips, raw and venomous, barely above a whisper, but they rang louder than any gunshot. "You knew what he was doing and you let it happen."

A pause.

"I did."

You swallowed, bile rising in your throat, burning like acid. If there was anything close to regret in Silco's voice, it was buried beneath layers of cold resolve. But if anger wasn't twisting his gut the way it twisted yours, you might've thought he sounded... tired. Worn thin. Almost defeated.

"You used me..."

Silco barely blinked. "I did what I had to do."

A bitter laugh clawed its way out of your throat, hollow and empty. "Of course you did, Silco."

He stepped forward, slow and measured. "Put the gun down, dove."

You shook your head, jaw clenched so tightly that a dull ache spread through it. "Why should I?"

"Because you don't want to do this."

Your breath came sharp and shallow. You finally turned your head, just enough to glance at him over your shoulder. Your eyes met his—fire against ice, raw pain against that infuriating, unshaken calm.

"Don't tell me what I want, Silco."

Another step. "Then pull the trigger."

Your breath hitched. A flicker of confusion, a slight hesitation—he wasn't supposed to say that. But you knew him well enough to recognize when he was making his next move.

"Go on." his voice deceptively soft. "Shoot him. Spill his blood. But if you do, understand that you're choosing something you can't take back."

His words slithered through the cracks in your resolve, wrapping around your throat, tightening. You would have made that choice if the damn gun hadn't jammed, but Silco didn't know that and didn't need to.

You gritted your teeth. "What does it matter? Isn't that what you wanted? Me, broken beyond repair?"

His expression darkened, something unreadable flickering behind the orange and blue of his gaze. "I never wanted that."

"You never cared if it happened either."

A long, slow inhale. Silco dragged a hand down his face before pinching the bridge of his nose, exhaling through his teeth. "Dove..."

Your grip on the gun tightened, knuckles white. You turned back to Singed, pressing your finger against the trigger again, with the certainty that the shot would come out. But your hands weren't steady. Not like they were before — a flicker of doubt. A hesitation — And then, finally, you turned completely to Silco.

Silco stood just a few steps away, his mismatched gaze locked onto yours with an unreadable intensity, his expression carved from stone. But it wasn't him that caught your attention. Not at first. Out of the corner of your eye, in the dim glow of the laboratory's dying lights, you saw her.

Sevika.

She was standing near the far wall, arms tense, eyes sharp and calculating, a predator waiting for the moment her leash snapped. Her stance was wide, grounded, her cybernetic arm twitching slightly in anticipation—like she was just waiting for the order, waiting for the signal to strike you down the second you made the wrong move.

Your lips parted slightly, but you didn't speak.

For a single breath, you thought about what would happen if you pulled if the previous shot had worked. If you emptied the clip into Singed's skull, watching his lifeless body crumple to the ground in a heap of flesh and failed experiments.

It would be so easy, but it wouldn't change anything. Because the real problem wasn't Singed.

Your fingers curled tighter around the gun as realization sank in like a dagger between your ribs. Singed was just a tool. A cog in a machine. A machine that Silco built. He had let it happen. None of it would have happened without his approval. Singed had been interested in you, yes, fascinated even, but he wouldn't have touched you without Silco's permission.

He gave the order.

Silco was the root of all of it.

Your breath steadied, shoulders squaring as a new, colder kind of resolve settled into your bones.

"The two of them. Out."

Silco blinked once. Sevika didn't move. The tension in the room coiled tighter, suffocating. She was waiting for confirmation. Waiting for Silco to overrule your command. Your eyes locked onto his. 

"Now!"

For a long, excruciating moment, he said nothing. Just regarded you in that quiet, studying way of his, as if trying to map out every thought spiraling through your head. Then, finally—

"Do as she says."

That was all it took.

Sevika let out a breath through her nose, barely more than a huff, but she obeyed, stepping toward Singed. Her metal fingers clamped around his shoulder, pulling him away from the room without ceremony. The scientist didn't resist, didn't argue. He merely cast you a lingering glance, something strange and unreadable in his gaze, before allowing himself to be led out.

The heavy metal door groaned shut behind them.

And then—

It was just you and Silco.

Your fingers curled around the pistol, but you didn't lift it again. It would've been pointless. Silco stood there, unshaken, composed in a way that made your blood boil. He had the audacity to look at you with that same knowing expression, that same unreadable calm.

And it made you sick.

"When you touched me." your voice was hoarse, breathless, barely held together. "When you kissed me... when we fucked." Your throat tightened. "Did you feel even a shred of remorse?"

"No."

The answer landed like a blade between your ribs, so sharp in its purpose that you nearly recoiled from the sheer truth of it. No hesitation. No doubt. No guilt.

You inhaled sharply through your nose, fingers tightening against the smooth grip of the pistol. You should've expected it. You knew the answer before you even asked, but hearing it spoken aloud felt like a final nail being driven into a coffin you hadn't realized it was already sealed. Your lips parted again, the words clawing their way out of your throat. 

"So, in the beginning... that obsession." Your voice wavered, but you forced it out. "It was because you found the last missing piece of your plan, wasn't it?"

For a moment, Silco didn't respond. His one good eye traced your face, as if weighing something heavy. Then, he exhaled softly, tilting his head just enough to let his gaze darken.

"Would you believe me if I said no?"

You didn't respond. Didn't dare to. Because the truth was there—unsaid, unspoken, but lingering between you like a phantom neither of you could ignore.

"Of course it was," Silco continued, voice smooth as velvet, as if he were merely stating a fact rather than admitting to something monstrous. "I would be a fool to intend otherwise. When I finally found you, I had no intention of letting it slip away again. You were something I wanted, something I needed for the greater good. You still are."

Your stomach twisted.

His lips curled, just slightly. "And tell me, dove..." he took a slow step forward, voice lowering into something almost gentle. "If I had told you the truth back then, would it have changed anything?"

Would it? Would you have left? Would you have fought harder to resist him? Or would you have fallen just the same?

You gripped the gun tighter, your knuckles aching with the pressure, but your hand didn't waver. The weight of it felt like an extension of your own rage, your own grief, and yet—Silco stood there, composed, as if the world wasn't crumbling between you.

As if this wasn't the moment where everything finally broke.

"I would never have believed you." you growled, venom dripping from every word. "I would never have let you near me... I would never have hesitated to kill you... I would never have fallen in love!"

The silence that stretched between you was suffocating, thick with the weight of all the things you could no longer take back. Your words still echoed in the air, lingering like a wound freshly opened: I would never have fallen in love. And for the first time in this wretched, sick game you had played with him, Silco actually looked... surprised. Just for a flicker of a second—just long enough for you to catch it before it was gone, buried beneath the careful mask he always wore.

The pain of betrayal coiled inside you like a viper, lashing out with every second you locked eyes with him—those damn irises, the first thing you saw when you woke up, the last thing you saw before sleep. How many nights had you stared into them, finding warmth in their depths? How many times had you been fool enough to think they held something real?

"You weren’t so wise after all."

Your voice was somewhere between hysteria and hatred. Your entire body trembled, not with fear, but with unrestrained, undiluted rage. It radiated off you in waves, suffocating, burning. Your nails dug into your palms, blunt crescents marking your skin, but you barely registered the pain.

"Because you’ve lost. Do you hear me? Lost!" The word ripped from your throat, cracking under the weight of it. "You lost your most important piece from your damn board! You were so sure, so convinced that you had it all under control. But you forgot, Silco. You forgot how close hate is to love!”

You wanted to see him break. Wanted to see some evidence—any evidence—that this meant something to him, that the foundation of carefully woven lies he had spun around you was finally crumbling. But Silco didn’t flinch. He never did. His expression remained steady, unreadable, his body poised like a man who had fought too many battles to fear another. The dim glow of the lab lamps caught the sharp planes of his face, making the shadows under his eyes look deeper, more hollow.

"You don’t know what you’re saying, dove.” he murmured, voice quiet, almost gentle, but there was steel beneath it. A warning. A refusal.

A bitter laugh tore from your throat, sharp and humorless, the sound of something breaking apart. “Oh, I know exactly what I’m saying.” Your chest ached, the weight of realization pressing down on you like a vice. “You never loved me.”

The words stung even as you said them, as if speaking them aloud was some kind of irreversible act, the final, devastating confirmation of what you had been trying so hard not to believe. You had wanted to be wrong. Had begged to be wrong.

But you weren’t.

"You knew that I loved you, and you used that. You let me believe you cared, let me trust you, while all along—” You swallowed hard, the taste of bile sharp in your throat. “While all along, you were bleeding me dry!”

Silco's expression shifted, the patience in his features cracking at the edges, darkening into something harsher, something frayed. His jaw tightened, his fingers flexing at his side. As if you were saying something unthinkable. As if you were the one betraying him.

"Stop talking nonsense!" he snapped, his voice sharp and seething, cutting through the air like a blade. "We’re playing for lives now!”

You inhaled sharply, your heart pounding against your ribs like it was trying to escape your chest.

"Yes.." you whispered, your voice suddenly eerily calm, a stark contrast to the storm that had been raging just moments ago. "We are, aren’t we?"

Silence.

Heavy. Unrelenting.

The space between you stretched, filled with everything unsaid, with everything that could never be taken back. And for the first time since this confrontation began, you saw it. Something flickered in Silco’s gaze—too fast to name, too brief to hold onto.

But it was there and it wasn’t victory.

That damned silence remained.

The kind that made your pulse thunder in your ears, that made the air feel electric with the tension hanging between you both. Slowly, you lifted the gun again, just enough to remind him it was there now aimed at him. Your voice was quiet now, calm in a way that felt ice through your own veins. 

"I'd advise you to be careful what you say."

Silco exhaled through his nose, his lips twitching ever so slightly—not quite a smile, not quite amusement, but something in between.

"Well..." he mused, tilting his head ever so slightly, "Rather melodramatic, aren't you?"

You said nothing, fingers tightening around the pistol.

Silco's good eye flickered to it for just a moment before returning to yours, as if assessing his odds. Then, as if the entire situation were nothing more than a casual business meeting, he reached into his pocket, retrieving a cigar. "Do you mind if I smoke?" he asked, tone almost conversational.

"Smoke?"

Silco nodded, already slipping a cigar between his fingers. "I always smoke in a negotiation." He flicked open the lighter with practiced ease, the small flame illuminating its sharp features in the dim light. "Somehow, it enhances the performance."

Cigar smoke curled through the stale air, thick and suffocating, the scent of tobacco clinging to every surface, seeping into the very walls of this forsaken place. It was a smell so achingly familiar, one that once wrapped around you like a second skin, a constant presence woven into the very fabric of your life.

Now, it was unbearable.

The scent twisted something inside you, coiling tight in your chest, pressing against your ribs with a cruel sort of pressure. It wasn't just smoke—it was memory. A thousand moments crystallized into something intangible yet suffocating. The way it used to linger on his clothes, on his hands, on his breath when he whispered in your ear. The way it used to settle into your skin after long nights tangled in sheets, in plans, in something that felt like belonging.

Now, it only burned.

Your throat constricted, the acrid sting making your eyes water—not from the smoke, but from the cruel irony of it all. How something so trivial, so Silco, could feel like a knife twisting between your ribs.

"You can do anything you please, Silco," your voice was sharp as the steel in your grip. "But you have very little time to do it in."

His expression didn't change. If anything, he looked bored.

"You mean you're actually going to kill me?" His voice was smooth, composed, as if this were nothing more than an inconvenience.

"I mean just that."

"Well, go ahead."

"I'll do this my own way."

 "You won't do it." Silco let out a breath, tilting his head just so."

The certainty in his voice made something in you snap. A desire to tear away that certainty from his words even though deep down you knew he was slightly right.

"It takes a very brave and a very cold woman to do that and I don't think you can." His eye bores into you, challenging, stripping you bare. "Isn't that true? Isn't that why you're waiting?"

"That's not true."

"Or..." he stepping closer, ignoring your words as he continued to drag from his cigar. "Is it that you want to watch your victim? You want my heart to constrict with agony, my hands to shake. You want me to plead for my life so you can make a generous gesture and spare me?"

His smile was razor-sharp, knowing.

"Sorry, dove." he murmured, extinguishing the cigar, or what was left of it, with the sole of the his boot. "I don't seem to be in the mood for prayers tonight."

Your jaw clenched so tightly it ached, the pressure radiating down your neck, into your shoulders, locking your entire body into place. It was the only thing grounding you, the only thing keeping you from unraveling completely beneath the weight of the truth pressing into your skull like a vice.

"You don’t think I’ll do it." the words left your lips quieter this time, but the venom within them remained. Lethal. Certain. "That’s why you’re so brave."

Silco’s smile didn’t waver—not entirely. It remained in place, a thin, practiced curve, carefully controlled. But there was something underneath it now, something raw and bleeding at the edges. A flicker of something deeper. Sharper. Perhaps even—hurt.

It was almost laughable. Hurt? As if he had the right. As if he could even begin to compare his wounds to yours. But maybe that was the cruelest part of all. That for everything he had done, for all the lies, the deception, the slow poisoning of your trust—there was still something broken in him. Just like you.

You wanted something—anything—to distract from the ache blooming in your chest, from the way your stomach twisted violently with betrayal.

"You’re a coward at heart, Silco."

You spat the words out like a curse, watching as his eyes flickered, as his jaw tensed just slightly, just enough for you to know that they had hit their mark.

"You lied to me. You deceived me."

It wasn’t just anger—it was grief. A slow, agonizing mourning for something you had never truly had. The illusion of safety, of loyalty, of trust. A cruel fantasy spun in whispers and reassurances, only to be torn apart at the seams, leaving nothing but jagged edges behind.

"You tried to kill me."

Silco’s response came effortlessly, the same unshaken calm that always preceded a storm.

"I should have killed you!"

The words ripped from your throat, raw and violent, burning with fury and something dangerously close to sorrow. They came out too fast, too sharp, slicing through the air between you, and for a brief moment, the room felt too small, too suffocating.

And then he stepped forward.

You let him.

Too late, you realized how his expression had softened, how the sharp edges of his usual smirk had smoothed into something else. Pity? No. Silco didn't waste his time on sentimentality like that. But there was understanding there. A recognition of something deeper, something broken. Perhaps, for the first time, he truly saw how ruined you were—how the fire of your anger was nothing more than a mask, a smokescreen for the hollow ache that festered beneath.

"You gave me your heart," his voice was quiet now, measured. "And you'd like me to hand it back whole again. But I won't... I am selfish." he admitted, tilting his chin slightly as if daring you to deny it. "I have no regrets about the choices I've made so far... about the choices I made in relation to you."

The pause.

"And I never will."

Your hand didn't waver. The weight of the gun was steady in your grasp, the metal cool against your skin, but inside, something burned. The heat of betrayal, of anger, of something far more dangerous—a longing that should have died the moment you learned the truth. And yet...

Silco moved.

Not to disarm you, not to reach for the weapon or sway your aim, but to touch you.

Fingers brushed along your jaw, the gloved leather a stark contrast against your fevered skin. You should have pulled away. Should have flinched, spat at his touch, but you stood there, frozen in place, as if his hand alone had rooted you to the spot. It was as if he truly didn't care if you pulled the trigger. If you ended this here.

"I never lied to you." His voice was low, intimate. "I omitted things, yes. But I never lied."

A bitter laugh threatened to rise in your throat. "That's the same damn thing, Silco."

"No." His thumb grazed your cheekbone, deceptively gentle, as if you weren't seconds away from painting the walls with his blood. "A lie is meant to mislead. I only ever kept what was necessary from you. For something greater."

You rolled your eyes —that shit again. "Something greater? Like what?"

"You."

Silence stretched between you, thick as smoke.

"You put shimmer in my body." The words came out flat, but they carried a tremor, a ghost of disbelief despite everything you had already come to understand. "You did this to me."

"Yes." No hesitation. No denial. "I was the one who administered the doses." he continued, his voice unwavering. "I was the one who sat beside your bed while you lay comatose. I ensured it took root in you, wove itself into your veins, strengthened you—"

"Poisoned me." Your grip on the gun tightened, your finger ghosting over the trigger. "You—"

"Kept you alive." His fingers curled under your chin, forcing you to meet his gaze. "And I would do it again."

Your breath hitched.

"I had no intention of losing you."

There was no regret in his voice. No hesitation in his admission. Your pulse pounded in your ears. You should shoot him. You should. 

Silco's touch was a poison of its own—one you knew you should reject, but your body betrayed you. You should have pushed him away, recoiled from his hands as they moved against your skin with that same infuriating tenderness he had no right to wield.

But you didn't.

You let him touch you.

It was a cruel indulgence, to allow yourself this moment of false softness in the wake of everything. A sin carved from old habits, from something broken and toxic that festered between you both. He had no right to be this close, no right to look at you with such aching gentleness. Not after what he had done. Not after what he had taken. And yet, he invaded your space like a tide rising to swallow you whole, and you let it happen.

Your arm, once so steady, weakened. The gun dipped, hanging useless at your side. It was no longer a threat, no longer a weapon—it was weight, dead weight in your grasp. Silco's hands framed your face, gloved fingertips pressing just enough to hold you there, as if you were something fragile. As if you were precious.

Just like before.

The memory surged like a phantom—months ago, another night, another confrontation. When you had stormed into his office with the same intent to kill him, when he had cradled your face like this, whispering words you hated yourself for believing.

How many times had you let him do this?

His touch trailed lower, the leather of his glove grazing your cheek, then your jaw, then—oh—your lips, where he wiped away the blood that had trickled from your nose. His gaze didn't waver, didn't darken with calculation or cruelty. Only quiet understanding. Your breath hitched when he did the same to your tears. It was unbearable. The tenderness. The contradiction of it all.

"Did you love me?" 

The words trembled from your lips before you could stop them. For a moment, Silco only looked at you, something shifting behind the deep crimson of his eye. Then, softly—too softly—he spoke.

"I still love, dove."

Present. Not past.

A confession. A fact. A truth that should have been the greatest joy of your life. But all you could feel was pain.

Then Silco kissed you.

It wasn't the kind of kiss that burned with hunger, nor was it one of control or victory. No, this was something else entirely. It was bitter. Slow. Laden with everything neither of you could say aloud. It was the venom that you willingly drank, knowing full well it would kill you. And yet, you parted your lips for him, let him pour it down your throat like it was salvation instead of poison.

And gods, it was sweet.

Not in the way a kiss should be, not in the way that lovers were meant to share, but in the aching way that only something doomed could be. It carried the weight of all your contradictions—love and hate, devotion and betrayal, desire and destruction. A cruel, quiet requiem for everything you had been, and everything you could never be again.

Your tears salted the kiss, mixing with the taste of him, with the heat of his breath and the slow, languid drag of his mouth against yours. Silco held you close, arms wrapped around you as if he could will the broken pieces of you back together. As if he had not been the one to shatter them in the first place.

The gun slipped from your fingers. It hit the floor with a dull thud, unnoticed, unimportant. The scent of smoke thickened in the air, curling at the edges of your awareness, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered except the way your fingers curled around the nape of Silco's neck, drawing him deeper into the kiss, into the quiet devastation of it.

You let yourself drown.

You let yourself die.

Your other hand moved slowly—carefully—down his back, fingertips trailing along the fine fabric of his vest. The revolver was there, holstered at his hip, but you weren't interested in it.

No.

His dagger.

Your fingers found the hilt with ease, curling around the cool, familiar weight of it. And Silco... Silco was still kissing you like he didn't have a single doubt in his mind.

The dagger was cool in your grip, the blade hovering just above the fabric of his vest, waiting—waiting for you to do what had to be done. But you let yourself linger, just for a second longer. 

Silco's body pressed against yours, warm and firm, utterly unaware of what you held behind his back. The kiss had ended, but neither of you moved, your breaths mingling in the space between you. Close enough that you could count every flicker of orange in his left iris, every shade of blue in the right.

Gods, how you had loved those eyes.

Loved them when they softened in the dim of his office. Loved them when they studied you like you were a puzzle only he could solve. Loved them when they burned with anger, with hunger, with something terrifyingly close to devotion.

But now? Now they only made you want to die.

A cruel, hollow ache settled in your chest, knowing—deep down—that you would never truly stop loving them. No matter how much you wished to rip that feeling from your heart, no matter how deeply he had betrayed you. You swallowed past the lump in your throat.

"I hate..." your voice was barely above a whisper, wavering only slightly, "I hate how much you made me love you, Silco."

Something flickered across his face, but you didn't give yourself time to decipher it. The dagger moved toward its target — a single, precise thrust — No hesitation, no mercy. And not once did you look away from his eyes as you drove the blade into his back.

At the end, you were both backstabbers.

Part 20

AUTHOR'S NOTES: The rollercoaster has only just begun, so grab your seats. If you're here just for the smut I have to warn you that we won't have that for a while, for logical reasons. Anyway, if you're here for the story know that we'll have a lot of that now. The dialogue between them is a reference/based on an episode of an old radio show from 1944 "Dangerously Yours — Masquerade" because, holy shit, it fits perfectly with this chapter and I love the lines between Catherin and Rudolf. Watch it if you get the chance. Curiosity to screw up the psychological even more: Silco also stabbed Vander in the back, so we can consider it a payback... Please don't kill me... (By the way, this is the chapter planned since the beginning of this story and also the reason for the title being ma meilleure ennemie)

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[defmxl]

His young appearance made me go feral so I had to draw him 🌝