Chapter Text
This is how it goes:
Jinx steals an airship, and she leaves.
She says goodbye to undercity and topside, Piltover and Zaun, whatever its name is, sailing into the sky beyond, out into the world, so much vaster than the one she left behind.
Jinx knows that if Vi even had a sliver of hope that she was alive, she would come after her. Vi loved her too much, too deep, to let her go or give up on her. Jinx loved and loves her for that. But if Vi found her, they would both just hurt and hurt and the cycle would never end.
So she had done the only thing she could.
Jinx remembers pulling the pin of the bomb, Vander loosening his grip just the slightest for her to dart away with shimmer in her veins.
She remembers hearing Vi, above the explosions, crying and screaming her throat raw for her brothers she had once lost, her father that she lost twice, and her sister that she had lost far too many times to count.
It was guttural, heartbroken, so filled with pain and desperation and a lifetime of loss after loss.
For a moment, Jinx almost hesitated. Wanted to go back. Tell her sister, look at me, I’m alive, you don’t have to worry about me ever again and I’ll stay alive as long as I can and we’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.
I’m sorry, she had whispered instead, though no one would ever hear her over the sound of the explosions, and slipped into an opening, an escape. Amidst the chaos and the deaths and broken corpses, she found the airships.
It’s easy enough to power up, to steer and control. She’d say her own hand-crafted airship was far more complex to handle.
Well. Not entirely her own. She wonders if Ekko will miss her, regret her, or be glad that she’s gone.
She misses him. She wishes things would’ve ended up differently for them. Maybe there would’ve been a world where they worked, and were happy. Maybe there would’ve been a world where she worked.
Jinx knows that it's not this one.
So she looks out at the ocean in front of her, thousands and millions of places to go to, at her fingertips, with all the time in the world she wants to explore them.
She thinks that maybe, just maybe, she can be free. She whispers her goodbyes, to Benzo and Vander, to Mylo and Claggor, to Silco and she thinks, Sevika, to Isha and Ekko, and to Vi.
She will leave, and they will rebuild. Maybe someday, far enough in the future, they can be happy.
She steers the airship above the clouds, and doesn't look back.
______
Vi stares at the ceiling from the bed.
It’s been two weeks, and Caitlyn’s out today. She has to discuss plans and blueprints on rebuilding Piltover with other council members, as well as plans for the memorials and speeches a few days later, and even though she’s technically revoked the Kiramman name from it, her opinions are still valued. She thinks she might be able to help “dull down the snobbery” of the other members, to which Vi thinks it’s frankly impossible, but if there was a way, Caitlyn would find it.
Regardless, she’s looking forward to a long rant complaining about the council tonight.
For now, she distracts herself by looking at the ceiling of their room. It’s white. How interesting.
Then someone knocks on her door.
She gets up from the bed, padding her way over- why is the room so big, she’s still not used to it, and one of the butlers, Jared, she thinks, is standing there.
“There’s someone at the door waiting for you, Miss Vi,” he says, and Vi thinks he looks- nervous?
She furrows her eyebrows.
“Who is it?”
“Ah, one of the council members, Miss Vi.”
“Oh. Thank you, Jared.”
He nods, which means she got the name right. Hopefully.
According to Vi, all the council members were looking at blueprints, so none of them should be here. She walks to the front door anyways, making it past the long hallways and the staircases. Unless maybe Caitlyn didn’t make it to the meeting and they couldn’t find her and oh god she went missing and the house is their last resort for looking for her and-
Oh.
Sevika is standing at the door.
Great.
Shouldn’t she be at the council meeting?
Vi resists the urge to slam the door in her face, and asks,
“Shouldn’t you be at the council meeting?”
“Eager to get rid of me, huh?”
Sevika manages to smile and not look happy. It’s a talent of hers.
“They’re planning Piltover business, they call it. Zaunites aren’t invited until after they finalised the first draft, and then we’re allowed to point out all the flaws for them to ignore.”
That, Vi can deal with.
“That’s nothing special, they all have sticks up their asses.”
Sevika laughs without turning up her lips.
“Most of them. Shoola’s decent. Actually cares about the people and doesn’t look at me like I’m shit at the bottom of her shoe. Your girlfriend’s fine, I guess. Not a council member, though.”
Vi can tell she’s stalling.
“Cut to the chase, Sevika. Why are you here?”
Sevika shifts her weight, and Vi realises she’s holding a parcel. A fairly large one, at that. It looks like a deformed cylinder, crossing her arm and gold prosthetic.
“Ever so welcoming. I’m here because I have something for you.”
“Yeah, no shit, what is it?”
“It’s something of Jinx’s.”
Vi’s heart stops, stutters, for a second. Looks at the parcel, and notices all the bumps and imprints of gears. Sevika’s not lying. She wouldn’t, Vi thinks, not about this. She must’ve kept it from Piltover, to be able to still have something made by Jinx not incinerated for “safety reasons”. Some shitty enforcers burnt it all to smithereens before Vi even had a chance to look for it. Caitlyn had wanted to have them removed from their positions, but that would’ve damaged the Kirammen’s reputation in the eyes of Piltover, and it wouldn’t bring anything back. The only reminders she had were a few of her bombs and an old gun that Ekko found.
Vi goes against all her moral values, and opens the door wider.
“Come in.”
______
She takes Sevika to the memorial. It’s in the corner of the house, a cleared out guest room, and there’s the gigantic spray paint portraits by Ekko, plastered all over the walls.
Powder, nine years old with her choppy bangs and metal clips.
And a bit older, maybe twelve or so, and it’s blurrier. Ekko doesn’t remember much, and Vi never even saw her. But it was still the same old blue hair, blue grey eyes, same her.
Then Jinx, before the shimmer, braids and bangs flying with a gun in her hand. She’s smiling in that one, happier than Vi’s ever seen her since she got out of prison. Sometimes it looks so real that Vi wants to go up and cradle her face, mutter a thousand unspoken words and cry herself to sleep.
And then the last Jinx she ever saw, hair shaved off with a hood of shark teeth. Her eyes are shimmer pink and she’s at the deck of a ship, wheel under her hands, and Vi wants to rip her out of the wall and pretend that she's real and alive and breathing, pretend that nothing has happened since she was 15 and had a family, and start over again.
There’s a table, there, decorated with flowers and letters and paintings and necklaces and the only remains she has of her sister, two bombs and a gun. Beside that, an incense holder. Vi counts about eleven of them still burning down.
On the other side of the room, a portrait of Vander and Benzo, standing over Mylo and Claggor. There’s a singular pair of goggles on the table. They couldn’t find anything else. And beside them, blurry and badly drawn because Vi cant draw for shit Ekko’s never met her and only ever heard descriptions, is Isha. They have her hat, hanging off the side of the table.
Sometimes, in the dead of the night, Vi wakes up and sneaks out of the bedroom without waking up Caitlyn. She comes down here, in front of all the paintings of everyone she’s ever loved, and she says sorry to each and every one of them until her throat is dry and hoarse.
To Benzo, because he never deserved what happened to him.
To Vander, because she was young and stupid and reckless and he paid the price, dying over and over again.
To Mylo, because she spent too much time complaining and yelling at him and now she would do anything to give him a hug.
To Claggor, because even now she’s still learning how to live without him and she misses his safe calming presence beyond words.
To her brothers, because they never would’ve died if she hadn’t brought them on that goddamn rescue mission and that stupid, stupid heist because she was too full of herself to realise the consequences.
To Isha, because she was a kid, so bright eyed and full of love and hope it reminds her so painfully of Powder, who made Jinx happier than Vi had ever seen her, who died in a way that no child ever should and Vi couldn’t save her, just like she couldn’t save her sister all those years ago.
And to Powder, Jinx, her sister. Because Vi couldn’t protect her even though it was her job, couldn’t keep her safe and couldn’t even keep her alive, and chose wrong every, single, time. Because Vi loved her too much and yet not enough and snapped too quickly and didn’t give her what she needed, and she can never take anything back, no matter how much she wishes she could.
The door shuts, and Sevika gets ignored. Vi walks over to the table first, lights an incense stick, putting it in the holder, and clasps her hands together.
What surprises have you got for me this time, sis?
Then she turns to Sevika, who’s already unwrapped the parcel and put it on the floor and-
Oh.
It’s her arm.
Vi walks over, ever so slowly, kneels down, and runs her fingers over it, feeling like if she puts even the smallest amount of force it’ll crumble away.
It’s Jinx everywhere. The giant metal shark clamp at the end and metal pieces stapled all over it, neon pink and purple and blue haphazardly covering it in blots and splotches, notches and gears all over and the slot machine on top with the handle, and every single detail is screaming her sister’s name.
Jinx, Jinx, Jinx.
It’s horrendous to use as a prosthetic and it’s clunky and messy and it’s beautiful. Vi lifts it up onto her lap, almost hugging it, and she feels her eyes getting hot and misty.
She blinks it out and looks at Sevika instead, who’s staring at her with a strange expression. Not hostile, or angry, or loathing like she usually would, but something else. Vi doesn’t know what it is. She settles for talking.
“Thank you. Sevika. I don’t- I don’t know what to say.”
“Then don’t. It’s yours now. I’ll get going.”
Just as she stands, Vi pulls on her metal arm.
“Wait. Not yet. Just- sit here with me for a while, okay?”
Sevika hesitates, for a moment. Like she’s going to shake Vi off and walk out. Whatever it is, she ends up deciding against it, and sits down cross legged on the ground after Vi sets the prosthetic arm on the table.
They sit, and they look at Jinx’s memorial. Sevika takes out a cigarette to smoke.
It’s silent. Vi’s starting to second guess herself. Why did she even tell Sevika to stay? What was the point? It wasn’t like they had anything to talk about. They were never on good terms and now she’s given Vi the most precious thing she could ever have. What did Vi even expect from telling her to sit together like they were meditation buddies?
Sevika offers Vi her cigarette. Vi declines it. Sevika goes back to smoking.
Fuck this, Vi thinks.
“What…was my sister like? When she was with you guys?”
Sevika takes a long drift of her cigarette. Vi wants to yank it out of her mouth.
“She was annoying. Stick up my ass. Never knew when to stop talking and when to stop shooting. Silco didn’t stop her either. Let her do whatever the fuck she wanted.”
Vi opens her mouth, about to tell her to just forget it and shut the fuck up, but Sevika beats her to it.
“I hated her, for a long time. But I think maybe I didn’t, not completely. She was also a kid, y’know? Made her bombs and inventions and all that stuff and she got so proud when she succeeded. Showed it to everyone. Was so damn intent on adding those doodles onto everything.”
Sounds like Jinx. Powder. Her sister. Vi laughs, a short huff that really doesn’t make it all the way through. Her voice is getting rougher and thicker, she thinks. She doesn’t like it, swallows it back down.
“I remember. She gave all of them names. Mouser, whiskers. She got so excited when she found new materials and just got to work as soon as she could. She was so, so smart. Knew where everything would go somehow. Figured it out all on her own without anyone’s help. I bet you she’s smarter than anyone in the Academy. And she got so disappointed when they didn’t work, she would just beat herself up, when we didn't even understand how she did half of it in the first place. She thought she had to get stronger, punch people like I did. God, she wanted to be like me. She didn’t even realise what a fucking genius she was. I told her the bombs would work someday. I knew they would. I just didn’t expect it to end up like- like this.”
Her eyes are misty, she thinks. She blinks, once, twice, and tears are threatening to spill out. Her voice is cracking now, wet and thick with all the things she wanted to keep pent up inside and she doesn’t think she can swallow it back, now. Not this time.
Sevika, very purposely, doesn't look at her. She looks straight ahead, and breathes out another puff of smoke.
“She was a kid. Never got the chance to grow up before all the fucked up shit happened to her, and she got lost. She never really hurt anyone else on purpose for no reason. She just wanted to help, I guess. Didn’t know any better.”
She just wanted to help .
Vi’s going to cry. She doesn’t want to, especially not in front of anyone else. But words come out of her mouth, unprompted, raw and ugly and she doesn’t know why she’s spilling her guts out in front of a woman she hated for years, but here she is.
“I-I ruined her. I left her there in the rain and I punched her and made her think I’d abandoned her. I told her I was her big sister that I’d always protect her and I-I didn’t. And even after seven years I didn’t change. I pushed too hard and I was so, so stupid to think that nothing would change and I led her to this and now she’s-gone.”
The tears are flowing down her face now, hot and angry even when she’s doing her hardest to keep it all in, box it all up. The incense in front of her is blurring and multiplying, she's speaking in choked up gasps and half formed sentences, struggling to get in a breath of air when Sevika speaks.
“How old were you?”
It’s so sudden and so blunt that Vi stops crying for a moment.
“Huh?”
“You know what I’m asking. How old were you when all that shit happened?”
“Fifteen.”
“So you were fifteen when you stole and faced far more consequences than any kid should’ve ever gotten, got far too much responsibility put on your shoulders that even adults twice your age couldn’t fathom. You were fifteen when the lives of your three siblings depended on you, and decided that they were more important and decided to turn yourself in. You were fifteen when you decided to lead a rescue mission to make up for what you did, when your brothers and father got killed in front of your eyes. You were fifteen when you realised your sister was the one who set the bomb, when you got arrested for nothing.”
“No, you don't understand, I should’ve known better, I made the same mistakes over and over again-“
“You were fifteen when you got sent to Stillwater. Stillwater, Vi. You know how many people keep their lives, much less their sanity? And the last thing you saw was your family dying and Silco standing over the last remaining bit of that family.”
Vi’s crumbling, now. The ground is turning into ashes beneath her feet, the world slamming into her and knocking her off guard because she thinks that might be the first time she’s really looked back on everything. The first time anyone has taken everything that happened, and shoved it in front of her for her to see. Sevika’s taken her mechanical arm and filled it with seven years worth of pain and used the boxing glove to knock it straight into Vi’s face.
She and Sevika are face to face now, and she thinks Sevika looks almost angry. Like she’s angry at her.
“You were fifteen, Vi. Like it or not, you were a kid too. And how long were you in Stillwater for, seven years? Even I don’t know half of the things that happened there. You never got a chance to grow up either. And when you got out, what’s the first thing you did? You looked for your sister.”
She’s jabbing her pointer finger at Vi’s chest, pushing the words in. Daring Vi to interrupt, to tell her she’s wrong. But Vi, even with her mouth open and words at the tip of her tongue, can’t force them out.
“You looked for her, almost died for it, and continued to look and look and look. And even when you thought you had given up, thought you were ready to say goodbye, you still hadn’t. You never gave up on her, and kept trying until the end. You don’t get to take all that, everything you did, and say that you ruined her.”
Possibly for the first time in her life, Vi sees Sevika’s eyes soften, just the smallest bit, that those who didn’t know her wouldn’t be able to notice. These are the small moments where Vi is forced to remember that for all she hates Sevika, she’s also known her since she was a kid, with Vander standing behind her.
“You did everything you could, Vi. You tried so damn hard, but you were a kid too. Still are. You’ve been pushed from fight to fight without any time to recover for seven years. You can’t put all that responsibility on yourself. You don’t deserve it. Save some for the rest of us.”
And Vi breaks. Stops holding everything back and just lets it spill out, stops caring about how Sevika’s right in front of her because she’s never heard anyone say exactly everything she needed to hear, didn’t even know she needed to hear it, but somehow Sevika knew, and she gets it , Vi knows, from that look in her eye because she was there too. Not like Caitlyn, who’s only ever heard Vi’s side of the story, or Ekko, who got pushed away, but was there the whole time, and understood.
And maybe Vi’s been waiting for this too, even if she didn’t know it, she’s been waiting since everything went down the drain and never came back up.
She finds the wall and slides down until she’s sitting, and she’s fully sobbing now, tears all over her face and rich fancy clothes and eyes scrunched up so hard she can’t see. Throat ragged and cracked and thick with snot and tears and entire body trembling and racking with sobs. Her voice is raw and ugly and she half screams, half cries, and it feels both guttural and freeing, and everything is like needles digging into her skin and it hurts .
Somewhere, she’s aware of Sevika, slowly lowering her body beside her and sitting with her knees up, not moving or hugging her or even smoking her cigarette, just being there and looking straight ahead.
“Come on,” she hears her mutter. “Let it out. You’ve been holding onto this for a long time.”
If possible, Vi cries even harder. She’s fairly sure she’s hyperventilating, choking on her own tears but she thinks that she needs this, has needed this for a long time, and maybe thirty minutes earlier she would’ve never let herself be this vulnerable with Sevika beside her but now she doesn’t mind.
It’s messy and painful and loud and Vi feels like her lungs will burst and it feels good.
Time passes, so they sit, and wait for however long it takes for Vi to pick up the broken pieces of herself, to let the sounds of her crying die down, and they sit some more. Sevika goes back to smoking her cigarette. Vi wonders how it still hasn’t gone out.
When Vi settles at last, head between her knees, breathes more regularly again, Sevika says one last thing.
“You’ve got a good heart, Violet. Don’t you forget it.”
Been taking lessons from Vander, huh?
Vi has bled her eyes dry, so she doesn’t cry anymore. She settles for the second option.
Very slowly, she raises her head, and bumps the elbow by her left, the one that’s not made of metal, and she says,
“Thank you. Sevika.”
Her voice is gone and cracked in all the wrong places, and there’s a lot more that she wants to say and remains unsaid, but she thinks Sevika hears it anyways. The corner of her lip turns up just the slightest, blue hextech coloured veins rippling with the motion, and she offers Vi her cigarette.
Vi takes it.
“You know, these things are going to kill you one day.”
“I know.”
They sit beside her sister’s memorial and smoke the cigarette until it goes out.