Chapter Text
Nova had always suspected there was something off about her. Not wrong, exactly — wrongness was for broken machines and twisted limbs — but misaligned, like a door hung crooked that never quite shuts. Nights she didn't sleep, which was most of them, she filled the hours and the ashtrays trying to trace it back. Wondering whether it was something coiled in her blood—Undercity blood, unruly, unrepentant—that had done it. Or if it was the city itself. Piltover's shadow, thick with smoke and rot, raising her the only way it knew how: with fists, silence, and the occasional illusion dressed as love.
She preferred those answers. They made things cleaner. A product of place, not choice. Like rust on metal — inevitable, impersonal. It meant she could keep the blood on her hands without feeling the need to wash it off. After all, wasn't it a kind of love, too, the way she protected what was hers? Even if it meant doing terrible things. Especially if it meant that.
She told herself those stories—quiet, hushed lies to make the weight easier to carry. You kill to protect, she whispered. You do what has to be done. The blood isn't yours. It's borrowed. That was the trick, wasn’t it? Paint a prison with meaning, and it starts to look like a shrine.
But there was the other voice, too. Not a whisper—never that kind. More like rot in the walls, humming just beneath the plaster of her thoughts. A voice that knew her. Knew what she flinched from in the mirror.
You’re not a protector, it said. You’re a coward with a knife. All your clever words are just silence in disguise. You don’t want to hear the screaming. That’s all.
And then the worst part, the truth that never needed saying but said itself anyway:
You’re filth. Born of filth, steeped in it. Pretend all you want—you're still rot at the root. And no amount of borrowed light will ever clean you.
☆
“They should just put me down. Like a sick dog.”
Nova's voice came out sand-dry, cracked with use and disuse both, like something left too long in the sun—if there were sun in the Lanes. She groaned as she peeled herself off the couch, slow and reluctant, her joints protesting with brittle cracks, vertebrae slotting into place like reluctant soldiers answering roll call.
The mirror—tilted, smudged, and vaguely accusatory—waited for her on the floor. She dropped down in front of it, cross-legged like a girl at a sleepover, if the sleepover involved blood and poison and waking up drowning in your own regrets.
Nova was compact. Slender, like a blade. Short, like a warning. A face that pretended softness, delicate in the way spider silk is. But the softness was a trap, a decoy. Ink curled up her skin in black waves: flames, sigils, jagged ornaments that whispered violence. Piercings glittered like tiny threats. Her hair, black as oil and nearly as volatile, curled long to her hips, dyed at the ends in fading colors that looked like they'd been stolen from better times. Bangs cut straight, almost ritualistic. Skin pale, undercity-pale, the kind that never met sun, only smog and shadow. Her eyes—too large, too blue—carried the insomnia of a life lived in alleys and backrooms. They always seemed to be holding back a story, or choking on one.
Today, though, those shadows weren’t helping her mystique. Last night’s choices clung to her like smoke. Or shame. Or both.
With the grace of repetition, she reached for her scattered makeup, the tools of concealment. Not to pretend. Just to recalibrate. Survival requires illusion, not denial.
“Sounds a bit dramatic. And that’s me saying it,” came the voice from behind her.
Jinx, boneless on the couch, lounging in that careful slump that screamed don’t care, which always meant she did. Her words were arrows dressed up as jokes.
Nova didn’t look at her, not at first. Just kept dabbing at the wreckage of her own reflection. Then she flicked her gaze sideways, raised her brows.
“You’re not helping.”
Deadpan. But not biting. Not to her.
Jinx grinned—wild, pleased—and unfolded herself from the cushions, drifting over with that off-kilter grace she had. She didn’t ask; she just started gathering Nova's hair, fingers deft and strangely gentle, working it into those two buns Nova always wore when things were about to get serious. Half utility, half armor.
“You’re kinda pushing it lately,” Jinx said, all casual hum. Then, quieter, childlike almost: “You never hang out anymore.”
Nova didn’t answer. What could she say? Working was the easy lie. But the truth wore a different shape. It hadn’t just been work. It was pills, and vials, and bitter liquids with no names, traded in corners by people who had no gods and even less conscience. She’d looked at that sordid table, full of ruin, and thought—why not. One more time. One more night to pretend she had control. I can handle it, she’d told herself.
Fool.
“I’ve been... all over the place,” she said finally, eyes locked with Jinx’s in the mirror. She saw her then—really saw her. When did she grow up? Wasn’t she just a wiry limb of chaos, trailing behind Nova like a living fuse, talking to her bombs and laughing at blood? And now she'd grown into someone real — legs too long, eyes too sharp, laugh too reckless.
Despite the nausea still curling around the edges of her vision, Nova smiled. Thin. Fond.
“I could grab us dinner from Jericho’s on my way back.”
Jinx lit up like gunpowder. “Now we’re talking! But bring something sweet, too!”
Nova let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh if you squinted.
“Spoiled brat.”
Jinx, perfectly unrepentant, gave the world's most theatrical shrug. Her hands were still in Nova’s hair, pinning down the last curl like it had wronged her.
“When’s that shipment coming again?”
Nova blinked, then reached for the old pocketwatch and squinted.
“Shit. Twenty minutes.”
Her tone was flat, but the pulse in her throat ticked faster.
“I can’t be late - I’ve been working on the Bilgewater route for months. Besides - father won't let me hear the end of it if this goes sideways.”
“Heh. Tell me about it.” Jinx didn’t sound worried. But then again, fire doesn’t flinch before it burns.
Nova stood, automatic, movements honed to precision—strapping her twin blades onto her back, the pistol to her belt. The leather jacket came last: cropped, patched, and worn like a warning. Her outfit was black from neck to boot, the only color stitched into the fabric in threadbare rebellion.
She looked the part. The stories were true: a spitfire, a shadow in leather and ink. Feminine in the way venom can be sweet. Smuggler. Killer, if need be. Survivor, always.
She grabbed her shoulder bag on the way out, hesitating at the threshold.
“Don’t blow my place up, yeah?”
“No promises!” Jinx called, already sprawled again, already reaching for something she probably shouldn’t touch.
And then Nova stepped into the belly of the city.
Swallowed by its mouth of rust and ruin.
Streets like veins. Smoke like breath.
And somewhere out there—the Undercity, waiting.
Unforgiving, as always.
And hungry for whatever you were willing to lose.