Chapter Text
Vi almost hopes that Caitlyn stays away from Powder.
Despite her stubborn attempts to steady herself and get back to work, she's still shaken and grieving and putting too much weight on her left leg. There's still some time left in long silences and bitter tears before she charges headfirst into the Undercity without a clue of what’s down there. Caitlyn tries to wrap up her hurt in armor, in the layers of her investigation and her organizing and her theories, but she takes a pistol when she goes to shower. Vi does her best to help, wrapping an arm around her shoulders at night, helping tack strings up on the wall, but she can feel the anger crackling along her skin, composed and refined but all too sharp. Nobody blames her for it, least of all Vi.
No. Vi has a dead man to blame, and she pins it square on his chest with all the power of a bullet from a minigun.
But maybe it’s selfish, and stupid, but she can't stand the thought of either of them hurting any further. So maybe it’s better that Vi doesn’t tell Caitlyn about the giant fan covered in scrap metal and scribbles on the edge of the Undercity.
She finds it by accident. It's not the first time she’s picked her way down into Zaun, passing the stale, clean sky of Piltover for the sickened, open air. The Piltover manor has gaps that you could put a gauntlet through - not in walls, but in empty closets and spaces at tables. Even if the house stands untouched, every piece of it feels wrong. The Undercity was bad enough, standing in the Last Drop with blood in her mouth, no messy drawings on the walls, no ball bouncing off the door, but it’s worse up here, with nothing to tether her except Caitlyn, and - Caitlyn tries. But it’s so clean and bright and even if the showers are warm and Tobias offers her bandages on her worst days, she’s leaving bloodied water on the walls with every touch. The half-familiar world is the far less of the evils, with Silco gone.
So Vi takes her brief leave, hood up, fists clenched, shoulders tense and pressed out. As she cuts her way through the marketplaces and crowds, she can’t look directly at the bar, at the people, and she moves further into the undercity, bit by foggy bit. Past the entresol, down to the sump.
The streets are new. A different name, one closed up by rubble, one where the buildings had likely fallen and been shambled back up that she can’t navigate. It’s a wrong turn that finds her at the edge of a staircase into the blackness below, and it’s that turn that holds her frozen.
She stands still for a moment. It’s hard to tell how far the drop is. That’s not what bothers her.
What does is the blue crayon sketch of a monkey on the doorframe.
(The thing is, the fucking sticking point, is that she never knows what to say. Used to try, when she was a kid, helping Claggor and shielding Powder and pulling Mylo into place, but that failed, didn’t it, and now all she can do is stare, fists clenching so tightly that blood beads into her palms.)
That damned drawing stares back, ragged eyes chipped by flaking wood beneath. The darkness yawns behind it. Vi leans forward to try and get a better look, and though a faint glint of metal shines barely a few yards below the last step, the stench of sulfur and metal slaps her in the face.
(It’s nothing she’s not used to. No flinch. Still fucking vile.)
Squinting as she is, she feels more than hears the step behind her. The ball of her foot plants in the ground, and Vi twists, fists shooting up to her face.
Wide pink eyes are barely a few inches from her face, and a sick sneering grin pulls across too-thin, desaturated lips. The familiar sound of a barrel loading, a minigun rattling to life.
Vi grabs for the barrel in the dark, pushes it away with a gasped “Powder-”
It’s as far as she gets. The grin twists, pulls into a tight snarl.
“Oh." The voice, dry and crackling, drips spite. "Don't remember yet?"
The windup pauses for a brief moment, but Jinx doesn’t back down. If anything, she gears further up. Takes a lightning-step back, dancing, almost, eyes flickering the street behind Vi. “That's over. Done. Dead. Get it through your thick skull, why dontcha?”
“I-”
Vi follows her gaze, shakes herself off. “I came by myself. How long have you been down here-"
“That was stupid,” Jinx cuts her off again, voice pitching up into something almost dreamy. “That was really, really, stupid, sister. When did you start going it alone? That’s different, too…”
It’s not, Vi wants to say, wants to grab her by the shoulders and drum it into her head, I haven’t changed, listen to me, the night everything fell apart I tried to go alone too and look where it got us.
She doesn’t get the chance. Jinx cocks her head to the side, birdlike, weighing the apparent change against something Vi can’t hear or see. A sigh hisses from her lips. The rattle stops. The snake doesn’t bite. No glowing purple venom.
She’s gone.
Vi chases her as long as she can, but the streets aren’t familiar anymore.
But not for good, she knows that. And as stubborn as Powder always was, Vi’s always been worse. Say it runs in the family.
So Vi goes down. And down, and down, and down. Powder isn’t there more often than she is, but when she is Vi’s met with a laugh. Vi’s met with a gun. Vi’s met with a field of scattered metal, burned and torn apart, and no Powder. Vi’s met with a pressure plate on the floor and a shower of glitter. Vi’s met with bright eyes on a rafter and fragments of conversation that cut off and die whenever she tries at a name, or the past. Vi’s met with a ghost.
Which might be for the best. Vi still can’t bring herself to tell Powder what she saw that night so long ago. Silco stabbing the dagger into Vander’s chest. The fall into the damned Shimmer. The monster with the wounded eyes. But for now, the two of them step around that night like it’s a new bomb, one neither of them know how to set off.
Every time she brings him up, Powder’s eyes go pink and bright, shiny in the way that - back when they were kids - meant Powder was about to cry. Vi would rush to catch her, usually shove Mylo out of the way, squeeze her hands. We’ll get ‘em, next time.
Sometimes it still signals tears, now, but that’s nigh-always accompanied by a gun in someone’s face.
It’s not the same, though. If it was a bomb, Jinx would have used it already.
(As soon as the thought crosses her mind, Vi hates herself for thinking it.)
But she keeps trying.