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Climbing from the pile of constructs that had toppled with her, Sevika took in the scene around her and felt the eerie tickle of de ja vous. Where now white concrete dust and the leftover smell of gray lingered, memory brought forth the smells of iron and matches from years ago. A revolution’s failure surmounted in casualty. A war’s success wearing the same weighted tragedy.
Nature brought her to help her fellows from the rubble, or gave her a chance to be someone to delegate help to those injured. The work would take the better part of a day, and she could not rest yet. There needed to be a headcount, identification of those lost, plans for a memorial… god, the work was barely started.
‘What now?’ was the resounding question in the air.
When these accounts were taken, what was the next step? The thought that things might return to their former state of conflict – Zaun versus Piltover, suppressed and oppressor, loser and winner – she couldn’t fathom it. That in itself would be a tragedy. Insurmountable loss, emphasized by no change to the system… That simply could not be it.
For once, all of Zaun had stood together to make this sacrifice in recognition of some unifying force, and it could not be for nothing.
-
Damage had reached Zaun regardless for the relative separation from Piltover’s marina and ports. A fire had blazed in and around The Last Drop, seeding a new pang of grief behind her breastbone. The account for missing people had yet to finish, and likely wouldn’t finish for another week at least. Sevika went to the place she knew she could find Jinx, if she was around. That girl had a pattern, and the waters called to her for moments of respite.
Instead, she found the older sister, Vi.
“You looking for her too?” Sevika said, keeping her distance. Sometimes her jaw clicked from that knee to the face almost a year back. She was too tired herself to fight, and Vi’s defensive posture relaxed after a few seconds. She was tired too.
“No.” Her head dipped, and she tossed a stone into the water with a slosh. “She’s gone. I couldn’t stop her.”
“What does that mean?” Sevika couldn’t help but hold her breath. Hope burned that the truth wouldn’t be what she assumed. But Sevika was wise to how people spoke in grief – she’d witnessed and experienced it herself many times over. She just didn’t want to be the one to say it.
“She’s dead.” Vi’s voice cracked, and Sevika felt it like a gut punch. Releasing her breath, she turned to the water and prayed for rain. She turned further still, and felt the phantom of it on the high points of her face. She found the hole she called home with tunnel vision, and tried not to rot.
-
It took a few days for her to leave again. Grief weighed on her, pulling her to the left. Sevika sought a man, whom she’d only known in passing at rallies. Where she’d find him, she had few clues. Knowing the people though, she might be able to find him anyways.
Instead, she found a young pageboy of an enforcer tailing her. Sevika sighed, walking off into an empty alley.
“What do you want?” She asked when she saw him round the corner.
“W-well, I was tasked with finding you to deliver a message. I got… curious. You left your home as I was about to reach it.” He fidgeted, cropped brown hair poking out above his eyes.
“What’s the message then?” She had a goal, and wanted to finish it quickly. Making to cross her arms, she started hefting Jinx’s arm, but stopped. Sevika put her hand on her hip.
“Councilor Shoola has requested an audience with you after the memorial tonight. She said to meet her at her property in Piltover.” Sevika scowled, her lip curled in confusion and disgust.
Disgust for the use of a memorial to bid her attention, confusion at how much time had passed since she’d last left her home. She’d really lost track of time, and felt a bit like an ass for it.
“Fine. I’ve got things to take care of kid.”
-
‘Things to take care of’ translated to ‘pull myself together’ in reality. The ceremony put her other intent of finding out who to talk to from the Firelights to the side. Instead, she – for some reason – had been asked to take part in lighting the bowls of paper in the shared memorial of those who died in the war.
Really, she felt bitter for it. Why come together now, if only in the face of an invading force? Why not any time before, while people were actively dying in the lanes?
As it was, Sevika had written two names, on two pieces of paper.
One for Jinx, and the other for Isha.
And she thought hard about some of the choices that had landed them with names in a bowl. Sevika did not want to talk with a councilor today or any day.
-
Later, once people had gone on their way back home, she stood by the bowls and waited for Shoola to begin.
“I would like to offer you a position on the council.” At least she didn’t beat around the bush. “Your reputation as Silco’s second-hand precedes you. He had proposed the independence to former Councilor Talis, and I figure… You might want the same. This could be the best way for you to ensure that Zaun has an advocate – additionally I would be there with you to aid in that advocacy.”
Sevika would be lying if she said she didn’t need to take pause. She stared at the gilded woman blankly as the emotion came to her face. Disgust and offense creased her brow and curled her lip.
“Join the council?” She asked dryly. “What gives you any inclination that I would want to sit up there above my brethren here? ‘Advocate for Zaun.’ I wouldn’t be able to pass a motion if I tried and you know it.”
Shoola wore a schooled expression as she looked over Sevika in thought.
“Give it some thought. Collective grief is tiring, and can fog judgment.”
“I have no clouded judgment. I have spent my life in the undercity watching as Piltover screws us over time and again. You need to reckon with the harm that’s been done to us, and you need to do it fast. Other than that, this conversation is done.” She stalked off, away from the pristine pier and back into the crowded alleys of her home.
-
What a pissant. She thought. Aloud Sevika muttered: "The gall to ask that of me."
No less surly looking than is typical for her, she went on to do what she'd meant to yesterday: find the Firelight vastaya. The war - brief as it was - had only served to make the streets of Zaun dustier, though the color was muddier and more vibrant than before. Everyone went back to business as usual with survival as priority.
No one was so ignorant as to think Zaun would've been left alone after Noxus took Piltover. Of course they'd helped ensure that their city would remain marginally safe. It was the upper-city who took that as a show of kindness and good faith. Fools, the whole lot of them. She breezed through the roadways of Zaun.
Vander looked as iron-wilted as ever, as she paused in the square to think about all the spots she'd seen that Firelight before. Once had been right here, before enforcers stormed and the kid had -
He'd been right in front of her, practically. Enough that she'd recognized him at Stillwater.
Flashes of blue-haired people filtering through starled her, just a bit, as she studied the crowd from the feet of a dead man. The sun shone gray light into the square, and a running child tripped on cobblestone. A glint of a brass limb reaching for underfed youth had Sevika second guessing what she'd seen, but she'd lost sight of the pair.
She cut her losses there, the crowd made her stress climb.
Her gaze cut a path through the people, and she found she never had to touch or be touched if she moved swiftly. Just the way she prefered it. Not like she had anything to pickpocket either. Contact was her choice, and it had lent itself to her being Silco's best observer. Finger on the pulse, work to be done where a frailer man would fall…
Except for now, she supposed. Those who did not want to be found were mostly halfway decent at not being found. Sevika contemplated returning to her dreadful home, but decided she'd gotten tired of staring at the walls. It was only ever a place to sleep anyways.
Surely if she wandered she might come across someone.
Rusted pipes hissed down the alleys, and her feet carried her back to the square. So she sat again. If people recognized her and wanted to talk, they could. If they wanted to fight, then so be it. It would give her some aim to her day at least.
A cigarette might make the well of empty and unexpected grief a bit more bearable, but she'd set her mind to quitting months ago. One day it had just made her so utterly sick to her stomach, and all attempts to pick it up again had the same result. Her body was tired of the shit treatment.
Too busy scouring foot traffic for ill-intent, Sevika missed the man who sat beside her.
"Finally have a day off and you're spending it watching people as if you'd been hired to." Said the voice beside her, giving her a start. Sevika turned to her left with a scowl.
Her nails dug into her palm and her knuckles into the concrete base of the statue. Loath be the hearing loss and tinnitus of near-death.
Teeth clenched, she said: "I have information that you and the lead Firelight might be interested in."
"Regarding?" He looked over towards a shop.
"Topside's post-war plans." Sevika looked towards the shop, laying eyes on another vastaya wearing a sling over their front side. "I can meet you here later if you need time."
"Deal. You can bring your arm, but expect to remove it." He stood to leave. "After sundown."
Sevika went to the water to wait. She supposed she would be going sober in near totality, without The Last Drop to supply her and her newfound lack of desire to threaten it out of people. Had she the will to gamble, she'd try that.
Drunkenness wouldn't fill the well again though. A tolerance break could be good anyways. Sobriety could give her more space to think.
"No more messes to clean up for the moment. Everyone's too busy to bother me with them." Talking to air helped her find levity in a shitty situation. Though anger came abruptly the more she thought about the people she'd lost. Ignoring the way her world had been shaken couldn’t be avoided forever.
"I can't believe you took that kid somewhere without telling me. I could have helped, if you'd fucking asked.
"But you had to follow in his footsteps, didn't you? Not an ounce of thought for the waves out of view! Neither of you should’ve survived near as long as you did." As quickly as it came, it was gone. Wind left her sails. "Like father, like daughter…"
She shook herself from that cascade of memory, and went for a walk to the ruins of Jinx's adoption. Glass crunched underfoot when she arrived, her last memory being atop the now warped and grisly catwalk of the old factory. If she cared to look, she'd see the old gore too.
Something bitter ran down her spine as she took it in again.
What was she doing? What had she been doing?
She'd wanted to lend herself to the liberation of Zaun, but really… she'd just continued the cycle of violence that created the need for liberation. The proof of that was smattered across the floors and old walls of this building. It was the lights of the ruined pub, which had first belonged to Vander, whom she'd been loyal to once.
Had Silco ever done anything to really liberate people?
"Agh!" She exclaimed and kicked concrete steps before she turned for the exit. Beyond the door the sun had begun to set, turning the sky into a wealth of peachy red that made smog look blue. She continued away from the defunct building, aiming for a food stall and then the square.
-
Sevika stood at Vander's statue again. She seemed to be taking vigil here with more frequency.
It only served to irritate her.
Few people walked the streets this late, and those who did were going home or up to no good. Pollution's fug made the moon hazy and details of the upper floors of homes appear to blur. Somewhere someone hacked with gray lung - wet, desperate, and agonizing to hear.
Fweet! Fweet-eet! From her right this time. Dim green light and two figures stood to the edge of the alley head. Sevika watched for onlookers and, finding none, approached.
"Need you to wear this. We'll guide you." A fabric hood smacked into her chest. Sevika took three deep breaths to slow her roll towards blowing up at the very people who were going to be essentially holding her hostage.
"Unless you need help putting it on?" Asked a vaguely familiar voice. She rolled her eyes, and wrestled the thing over her head.
"Don't go dumping me into the waters." She almost couldn't believe that she'd willingly gone so far as to blind herself for the simple sake of telling these people about the council.
"Don't go making me regret this then."
Trusting strangers to guide her through the rougher streets of the lanes had her on edge. Yet, as the terrain changed, the man taking point told her how to step. If she stumbled, the man on her six made sure she remained stable. It was an embarrassment, but admirable.
-
When the hood was removed, she was in the maintenance room of an old pipe cistern who's hatch could only be opened from the inside. The man she'd spoken to before was with her, holding a lantern.
"You're free to take off that arm. I'll hold onto it, and keep it somewhere safe while we talk. It… more of a weapon than a functional prosthesis."
"At least you're apologetic." She responded, doing what she needed to and releasing the mechanisms that held the extension to her residual limb enhancement. The socket dropped the arm, and the weight went fully limp into her right arm's cradle.
The hatch opened as she passed the piece of machinery to the proffered arms. She ducked into the cistern.
Before her, in the deepening dark, she saw the mural first.
And then the tree. And the lanterns strung throughout, marking homes. Somewhere an infant squalled in hunger, and was fed quickly.
Few moments brought Sevika into a state of awe.
Even fewer solidified her dedication to a cause.
"This way." Said the shorter of the two men. She followed, darting glances to the mural to try to make out it's details. It was soon obscured by the wood walls of a shack. Light warmed the inside of the shanty structure. "What is it you have to tell us?"
"Shoola offered me a position on the council, after the memorial." She spoke plainly. "I told her I wouldn't accept it."
"Why the hell would she offer that to you?"
"I wonder the same exact thing." She said. "I'm not interested in playing into their politics."
"No, you've been interested in pandering to chembarons and other ilk." Maskless, he was more familiar. She'd seen enough children grow up to see the changes and similarities they carry into adulthood.
"I had begun to think that Jinx was different than the rest of them, yeah. But then again she had a penchant for child endangerment and abandoning people." Sevika's ire could be a blade with no handle sometimes. She knew this by the pang of instant guilt in her gut, and the responsive anger on Ekko's face.
"If this is all you have to say, then you can leave now. Scar will escort you back to the square." Ekko stood, and the guilt gnawed more.
"Damn it." She said. An apology was not in her consideration, she didn't know these people. "I want to help. I said no because I'm getting old enough to recognize my regrets, and a good amount come from Silco's bullshit. I would like to find some way to atone."
"Atone?" Ekko asked incredulously. "Good luck with that."
He left, and Scar followed soon after. Sevika was alone, but she heard a hushed and indeterminate conversation outside the cracked door.
"Come with me." Ekko said moments later, calmer but no less pissed off. She stepped out onto the deck, and he stalked towards the mural in the center of the cistern. "If you want to atone, I want you to look at the cost of your complacency."
He shone a light onto the surface, and there she could see new and old portraits - the wall was nearly choking in color. The oldest were Vander's kids - two she'd forgotten the names of, Jinx when she was Powder, and Vi. Eternalized in youth, despite two having lived to see adulthood.
“Some of these people died because of mass complacency. I’m sure you recognize a few.”
Newer was a portrait of Jinx, hair shorn short and horribly tired looking in comparison to what she'd been as a child. Guilt became grief became a lump in Sevika's throat. Extra confirmation to what she hadn't fully accepted as truth.
When she next spoke, her voice came out thick.
"I thought that she'd been doing better. She was happier. The kid - Isha - lit her up in a way that was almost like she was also a kid again." A deep breath. Damp eyes blurring the light. "I had hoped that she would heal, if only a little bit. I lost track of her for a while before you two managed to rally us for the war. The haircut and absense of Isha told me what I needed to know. Couldn't help but love that kid and be torn apart when she was gone so suddenly."
Jinx had been tired, and held a wealth of trauma no one her age should be burdened with. Sevika had not helped it, had not been good to her, had punished her for being a point of apparent weakness in Silco just as she'd accused Vander of being weak not long before.
And he had been weak, she realized now, but not for the love he held for the children in his life. Not for that protective instinct. The tools hadn't been there for him to truly hold a candle to the might of Piltover and so he'd sought them in the hopes that he could get someone to change it from the inside.
Years later, Vander and all his children but one dead, Silco dead, Isha dead, Sevika stared at this mural and thought… maybe the tools can be built here.
She looked at Ekko, a head or so shorter than her, and said to him: "Sorry isn't enough to make up for what I've done in a state of manipulated hope that turned into acceptance. An apology is minimum of the work I need to do, but for what it's worth I am sorry. You kids deserved a better outcome."
"What do you want us to do with the information about the council?" His voice was quiet. "You say you don't want to join, but what other option is there?"
"I know people. Silco had forced deals with some doctors around the districts to sell shimmer as medicine. They only started selling after he'd had me threaten them." Her lips pressed into a line as she grit her teeth. "What if we started our own council with representatives of each district? It's an awful lot better than a single Zaunite sitting outnumbered."
Ekko seemed to be considering Sevika as she spoke, and then considered the idea. His posture shifted as he studied the mural too, and when he spoke there was an implied acceptance.
"What did Isha look like?"
-
For what it was worth, Sevika argued with Shoola and then later argued Zaun's case to the council - bearing the glares and disdain that wealth wore openly. Shoola argued politely for Sevika, bidding that Piltover's council give it a chance. A new age without Silco and with a fragile state of alliance could be good if they let it grow.
The fear, of course, was that the undercity would war with Piltover.
It would serve them right, but there were kids in the undercity and the unfortunate truth that they had to function under was that Piltover had all the means to wreak havoc upon Zaun. It wasn't as if a topsider hadn't just recently seen fit to gas the populace in search of one person.
Collective punishment was imbedded in Piltover's flesh.
It was a promise hidden in the infantalizing way that the council then voted to let the undercity have its council.
Sevika hated polite politics. She would have taken a violent revolution instead of this, but all previous attempts to rouse one had failed and the people were wary after years of continuous loss. So council it was.
At the end of the meeting, Sevika let herself rot and stare at mildewed walls for a couple of days as a treat. More work still had to be done.
-
Over the weeks of solidifying the council, Ekko had begun to paint Isha's portrait right beside Jinx - with Sevika's direction. He'd never seen the girl, and Sevika was finding herself particular about getting the image as close to the real child as possible. She critiqued him as gentle as possible; bring the mouth corners up more, the eyes were wider, the hair wilder from a loose helmet. When the last details were right, she stared breathless.
Whatever Jinx and Isha had been to each other, they were… family, really, to Sevika. And they got to live in perpetual relief in this space under a tree that had grown against all odds.
When she looked at the children of the Firelights playing in the unfettered sunlight of the cistern, her thoughts drifted and lingered towards the two who had briefly been in her life. Regret colored her hope for forgiveness as she took in the mourned dead. She had not worn her arm for a week now as she settled into routines of the cistern. While the phantom sensations were painful, she was working to accept the state of her body as it aged and get comfortable with new forms of discomfort.
Her priorities had changed. Liberation was the core, and she still longed for violence during long hours of negotiation with Piltover, but the exuberant joy of the children around her now took precedence over that impulse.
The children of the Firelights held hope for the collective children of Zaun, and perhaps in that there was a future where fear was of false monsters instead of a reality to endure.