Archive of Our Own

“I need you, Vi. I can’t do this alone.”

It’s not an emotional plea.

It’s a fact, cold and blunt.

Stated with enough force that despite its lack of edges it still pierces your dilapidated defences, lodges deep within your chest, the chain of obligation snapping taught and jerking you further forward so that you have to set out a hand against the dirty cobbles to steady yourself, leaving you hunched over on your knees. You slowly lift your head a fraction, guardedly peering up through your sweat slicked fringe to watch as Caitlyn towers over you.

Impassive, unmoving, taller than you can ever remember.

You’d blame the perspective if you hadn’t been in this exact position before, hunched over, palm pressed into your side to try and quieten the deep throb of a couple of bruised, maybe broken, ribs, blood running down your face to fall like rain to the dirt below.

Too weak to fight gravity as it had brought you crashing to your knees.

You take another glance up at her.

Feels like déjà vu.

Reminds you of the day when she first released you from your cage.

The sinner and the saint.

Her eyes narrow slightly, prompts you that she’s asked a question and probably expects some sort of response.

Even thinking about her request makes your skin crawl, makes the muscle underneath twitch and contract, trying to throw off the suffocating debt you know is owed. Your free hand balls for a fight you know you’d never attempt and surely would never win. After a few shallow breaths to try and spare your ribs, you slowly unfurl your fingers and drag the back of your hand across your lips, fresh red barely noticeable against the other, darker stains discolouring your wraps.

You don’t even attempt to rise, to face her as an equal. Instead, you just grind your teeth as you finally lift your chin and take her in.

You trace the starched outline of the uniform of the newly crowned sheriff, badge bright and polished, jacket uncreased and unsullied. A beret perched atop neatly scraped back hair. Half gloved hands are clasped tightly in front of her, shoulders pressed back.

Everything held perfectly in place.

A string pulled just a little too taught to not betray the strain its under.

Because despite everything, you know her too well to not notice the slightest hint of red around her eyes, the dark rings poorly hidden by makeup beneath. The purse of her lips that highlights her frustration. Determination written in the dip of her eyebrows. The tap of her index against the back of her other hand as she wills her non-existent patience to hold out just a little longer.

But there’s something else there too, something deeper gnawing away at the person you once knew.

You know the look of a desperate person when you see one. After all you grew up watching people being pushed far past their limit, have had it etched into your conscious the way people twist and distort just before they snap.

The way anger and grief can take even the most compassionate people and turn them into empty vessels for revenge.

For a second too long you get lost in her cobalt stare.

Your fingernails dig into your hands as the nausea rises, as your surroundings begin to fade.

A hoarse scream, the one that’s been haunting you for months, echoes from somewhere. A flash of blue light fills your vision.

Then, silence as the horizon shatters.

You blink it all back, until the blue light retreats to irises that continue to fix you into place. Still holding you to the question that’s been asked. That really doesn’t need to be asked, because in which lifetime could you ever say no?

Your debts are insurmountable in the face of the woman who saved your life. Who rescued you just in time for you to ruin hers.

And then to add insult to injury, after watching her fall from grace, heading for a rock bottom you’re all too familiar with…

Well, then you did what you did best.

Disappeared.

So, despite the repulsion of betraying everything you once stood for, betraying the person that you once were, you force a nod, a subtle dip of your head.

If she feels any lighter for your response, then she doesn’t show it.

Instead, she gives a terse nod of her own before sighing and reluctantly holding out a gloved hand.

You stare at it for a moment, disbelief stilling you.

How many times will she offer redemption before she learns her lesson?

How many times will you take it before you learn yours?

The white satin cloth of her gloves is tarnished with red as you take her offer, finally rising as she pulls you to your feet.

Bruised and bloody you stand to attention.

As Caitlyn leads the way, you wonder at which point she regretted ever thinking you had a good heart.

The barkeep pours you a glass, a generous two fingers of golden liquid splashing across three cubes of ice. They go to pull back, but you tell them to leave the bottle and for a healthy tip they oblige.

Enforcer training has tired your body, but no amount of exercise ever seems to quiet your mind. Never stops the onslaught of reminders that maybe it would just be better if you slinked into the sumps and didn’t return. After all, when did you ever touch something that didn’t turn to ruin? When have you ever been more than a burden to those foolish enough to care? Why would you think that you could ever undo the hurt you had caused?

When the first drink doesn’t bring any relief, you pour yourself another. You vaguely remember Vander telling you about how drink can ruin the best of people. How it’s a slippery slope between a stress reliever and a crutch. How its only ever a temporary relief, a way to run from your problems rather than fix them.

Good job you ain’t the best of people then.

And he ain’t exactly here to stop you now, is he?

After all, sobriety worked out so well for him.

You drain the glass in one go, wincing as it stings your throat on the way down.

Staring at the amber liquid through the green glass of the bottle, you wonder how much more it will take to forget about the past, to forget about yourself, just for a little while?

To free yourself of the burden of being you.

To escape your past, just for the night.

You lose count somewhere between glass four and five.

Memory fading with a bottle that’s still half full.

Don’t manage to maintain consciousness long enough to find the answer that’s always promised to be there waiting for you at the bottom.

You wake the next morning not sure when you made it home or even how. Your head thunders, your muscles ache and nausea rises as the room spins.

Not for the last time you wonder whether the consequences were worth the relief.

Occasionally you’ll consider whether you have a drinking problem.

But it ain’t like it interferes with your work, with your non-existent social life.

Just burns a hole in your pocket every Friday and Saturday night.

And it ain’t like you didn’t have problems long before you tried to sanitise them with alcohol.

It starts as soon as you get up, as you reluctantly push back the blanket, shivering in the cold morning air. You sit on the edge of the bed a moment, reluctant to go back to the seamlessly pointless task of chasing down your sister. Of the daily battle of grappling with whether you even want to find her or not.

But it’s not the only thing pinning you to the mattress. Exhaustion weighs heavy on your bones, blurs your vision, slurs your thoughts. Sleep hadn’t come easy last night and then when it finally did, you’d found yourself under the grip of familiar nightmares. Vivid depictions of every poor decision you’ve ever made interspersed with promises of future destruction yet to come. Visions of the monster you fight daily for control, the one that lies just beneath the surface, coiled and primed, ready for the slightest loss of composure to rise to the surface and show your true colours.

You had felt every thrown punch, every barbed word that was thrown out in anger and in pain. Watched from the sidelines as you had morphed into the worst version of yourself, clawing at everything you had tried to rebuild, ripping through everything and everyone you hold dear. Powerless to stop yourself until suddenly you woke up, chest heaving, cheeks damp, blood thundering in your ears and fists clenched in your sheets ready for the next swing.

You’d stayed up for most of the night too afraid to fall back asleep. Instead, you’d worked out, tried to calm your racing thoughts and drain yourself of all the restless energy. Added a few swigs of whiskey to the mix when your head refused to quiet. Finally stumbled back to bed in the pre-dawn light, shivering under a cooling sweat until you’d passed out from exhaustion about half an hour before your alarm was due.

So yeah, you slept poorly.

And now your muscles ache, your head is swimming and your ability to deal with the day ahead is at an all-time low.

But it’s hardly like it’s the first time this week, this month, you’ve woken up like this. If you gave it any thought you might start picking out a pattern, a declining trend leading to the rut you find yourself in now. But you ain’t going to do that, ‘cause if you acknowledge that, you might have to admit there’s a problem. Might have to question whether you’ve reached the bottom of this particular spiral yet.

And you’re far too afraid to plumb the depths of your own darkness, too wary of the distance still to fall and all too aware of the exhausting scrabble back to the light to even want to contemplate it. So instead, you shelve that line of thought, rub the sleep from your eyes, swing your legs over the edge of your mattress and force yourself to get out of bed.

After all, you have a debt to pay.

Another shiver ripples through you and you hunch in on yourself. Try to ignore the niggling, scarcely there sensation scratching under your skin. The dull drone of a warning siren far off in the distance, a rumble of thunder on an otherwise clear day.

Promises of trouble just over the horizon.

But they ain’t nothing new.

Warnings that fall on selectively deaf ears.

So, you roll your shoulder, try the futile ritual of shrugging off the feeling as you force one foot in front of the other.

But as usual they persist, dragging at your ankles as you head for the shower.

No matter how much you scrub under the scalding stream, no matter how much soap you lather across your skin, nothing ever helps to wash your thoughts clean.

Rather than dissipating, the feeling lingers, festers, tendrils wrapping itself around your ribs and shoulders, a building pressure that slowly constricts until you’re ready to crack. You throw up you hood as you leave the house, a protective barrier of worn cloth to blinker yourself against the lights and the sounds and the people that overwhelm your senses and set your hackles to rise. Shoving your hands deeper into your pockets, you hunch yourself over. Make yourself as small as possible.

Try your best to disappear entirely.

When that fails, you resort to a silent prayer on shaky hands that today the eye of the storm doesn’t find you.

By the time you get to work the pressure’s been building, pressing in, filling your head with a buzzing static that distorts any constructive thought until they’re warped and barely recognisable. You keep your hood up, head down. Accept today’s one of those days. One where you hide flaring knuckles in your pockets, where the buzz of the overhead lights grates on you, where you want to snarl and snap and tear down anything within reach. One where just the bare minimum will be a challenge, where survival will be an achievement.

If you can just get through the day without detonating, well, then you’ll call it a raging success.

“Are you ok?”

The hand on your shoulder sets everything ablaze and it takes any self-control you have left not to turn with a snarl and a swung fist.

But you know that voice, that tone. It’s enough to disarm, to reduce you to a compliant, malleable version of yourself you’re not so sure you even want to recognise.

When you meet Caitlyn’s gaze, meet the blue that still resemble a shattering sky, you buckle slightly. The cracks in your foundations sag, threaten to give way entirely, to allow your guts to spill freely on freshly polished leather boots.

You want to warn her.

Give me an inch and I’ll take everything you have.

It’s like siphoning gas, when the feelings start to bubble up there’s no stopping the flow.

And it’s oh so tempting to relent, to give in.

But the dark circles around concerned eyes, the grey hairs that collect around temples, the strain invisible to most but clear to you, gives you pause.

With every gram of self-restraint you take a step back, allow her hand to fall from your shoulder. You give her a huff, a shrug.

“Never better,” you reply.

Before she has time to call you on such a bald-faced lie, you’re walking away. Taking your pain and anguish to darken someone else’s doorway.

To anywhere but here.

Anywhere but her.

Instead, you try to unleash some of the pressure onto a beat-up punch bag in the precinct sparring grounds, swinging until it splits along its seams, fabric guts spilling out the gap. Your ears ring with the pulsing of your own blood, and its only as you finally pause your onslaught that you notice the red coating your knuckles.

You bandage your hands, the usually meditative practice becoming hurried and disorderly as you head continues to grow louder, as the whirlwind picks up speed, as the voices grow teeth and snap at your psyche. Out the corner of your eye you catch the mirrored wall at the far end of the changing room, drawing your gaze to the reflection of your hunched over form.

Muscles and sinew, marked by pistons and gears, a reminder of your lost humanity.

Far too cold and broken to be a person.

Yet far too flawed to be a machine.

After all, how long has it been since you last recognised your reflection? Since you didn't picture yourself as a monster, hidden in a human form?

How long has it been since you've trusted your hands to bring anything other than destruction or pain?

Do you remember the days of soft touches, of careful caresses?

Or have they become distorted by time?

When did these hands become the scarred and bloodied enforcers of a retribution you're not even sure you believe in?

How long has it been?

Do you even remember?

Or is it less painful to forget?

The end of another long week leads you back to the bar. To the same glass of golden spirit, to the hope that this bottle will hold the answer you desperately wish to find. This time you don’t even pretend to pace yourself, foregoing the glass after the first two pours to swig straight from the bottle.

The restless energy drives you from the bar, stalking down the street with a snarl that keeps people at a safe distance. You stride aimlessly, desperately waiting for the cheap whiskey to drown out the hounding of your thoughts, to bring you sweet relief from the burden of yourself.

Instead, they get louder, emboldened by the burning liquor. Taunting you, reminding you of every single reason you should put everyone out of their fucking misery.

Maybe this time you’ll find the answer at the bottom of the bottle.

You drain it in desperate gulps.

Hold the empty glass up to a streetlight.

Destiny take the wheel, fate call you home.

Time blurs and then finally the world fades to black.

You awake in an apartment you don’t recognise, sprawled on the floor in a pool of your own vomit, the stench of bile filling your nostrils, scratchy carpet irritating your skin. You’re not sure you’ve ever been so thirsty in your life, and as you try to move you realise the room still spins while your muscles feel leaden and unwieldy.

Fear comes violently and suddenly, sparking an icy dread that rushes through your veins and sends you scrabbling from the floor and stumbling towards the nearest exit. You fumble in the dark, bouncing off walls, adding further bruises from unseen furniture to your limbs until finally you burst forth into cold air and the grey of a pre-dawn light.

A few more stumbling steps and you slump against a brick wall to catch your breath, the cold seeping through your jacket and adding to the growing chill of ever building fear. The world still swims and memories from the night before assault you in discordant flashes that do nothing to dissipate the dread.

You push off the wall, trying to shake off the blur of your vision as you blindly stumble in a direction you can only hope is home. Hunching against a biting wind that sweeps straight up from the harbour, carrying salt and sea that stings your eyes and cracked lips, you wander for what feels like hours before you finally find a familiar landmark.

Finally, back at your apartment, you slump into your bed, boots and jacket still on and allow yourself to fade back into the blackness. By the time the protests of your stomach forces you awake aagin, the light on the walls is a deep orange and the red alarm clock shows you’ve once again allowed another day to pass you by.

It also means enough hours have passed for you to fully realise the magnitude of your actions. To acknowledge that this time maybe you took it too far. That maybe there is a limit to what you are willing to sacrifice to escape yourself.

You spend the remaining hours of the day finding every bottle in your apartment, collecting them into an alarming pile by the sink. Knowing to never trust yourself, you pour them down the drain one by one.

When it’s done you find yourself craving something diabolically greasy and wishing you could have a drink.

The next few days are occupied with your newfound paradox.

Of the realisation you’re apparently not quite ready to die.

But that you have absolutely no idea how to keep living in the meantime.

Life has a cruel sense of humour, seems to like to toy with you for its own sick satisfaction. You’re still reeling from the weekend, staring off into the distance from your desk, trying to untangle the mess of your own thoughts rather than focus on tracking down the one person in the twin cities who might just be crazier than you.

The order comes barked from the emergency response squad leader. The open office space goes from calm to frantic in a second, enforcers rushing to their lockers, throwing riot gear into place and picking up respirators before heading towards the waiting vehicles.

You load into the back of an old army truck, already crammed with faceless masked enforcers that dredge up a hundred memories you’d rather forget. Flashes of the past try to force their way through, leave you desperately fighting them down as you slump into an empty seat.

Past experience pushes you into fight mode, every sensation amplified and overwhelming. You can feel every contact, every point where someone else is pressed up against you, where their inadvertent and unavoidable touch burns and has you clenching your teeth hard enough they might crack.

Eyes screwed shut, you try to count your exhales, hands clasped tightly in your lap to stop them from shaking.

Every nerve ending feels raw, exposed, screams danger both imaginary and real, sends muscle fibres twitching in anticipation.

You try to block it all out, but the rumble of the truck’s engine is too loud, the hiss of breath through regulators slowly seeps into your skin. Everything is dialled beyond bearable today and it’s all you can do to screw your eyes closed tighter and lay your head back against the cool metal of the truck, trying to ignore how it feels like your headed for disaster.

Too unstable. Too on edge.

Not today. Not today. Not today.

You repeat it like a prayer, a plea.

When you reopen your eyes Caitlyn's watching you, cobalt eyes narrowed slightly in assessment.

You flash an empty smile.

It doesn't work, her eyebrows dip with concern.

And you can’t have that, so you turn away.

You want to tell her to focus on someone else. Someone worthy of her time. Need her to understand that whatever worth she thinks you have is misguided, built on a lie you must have sold her to ever convince her you’re anything more than sump trash.

But no matter how hard you try, no matter how insistent you are, she continues to care. To treat you as something worthy of compassion, of understanding, of concern.

So today you settle with biting your tongue until you taste iron, in a too loud truck with too many people, in an environment where you have too little control.

But where else would you be?

After all, violence might just be the one thing you’re still good for.

As you cross into Zaun and the truck begins to navigate the switchbacks leading down into the fissures, the streets narrow, bracketed by jagged rock walls on one side and stomach-churning drops that disappear into the grey on the other. People fill the streets, milling from stalls that cling perilously close to the edges of the fissures. The smell of boiling broths, of sweating meat and sweatier people fills the air, mingles with sulphurous gases that rise from the depths of the sumps.

Eventually the crowds and stalls thicken until the truck can go no further, until your squad is given the order to move out.

You watch the mood of the crowd shift as the canvas is drawn back and heavily armed enforcers jump to the ground. The entire mass of people react as one, bristling in the presence of an old enemy. The enforcers return the ire, sneers matching sneers, teeth baring under ventilators and barked out orders hurled towards the crowds.

Some reluctantly do as told, others hold their ground until hands turn to rifles and suddenly there is conformity, a reluctant bowing of heads, shuffled feet slowly drawing the crowd back and away. It makes anger flare, makes your hands flex inside your gauntlets, teeth grinding to dust. You don’t wear a respirator, lungs raised on fissure gases, the sting at the back of your throat comforting as you take a deep breath of it in. You try and count it on the exhale, expel some of the roiling mass of hatred barely contained beneath the surface.

You snarl as someone sets a hand to your shoulder, turning to snap at the offender as you roll your shoulder to throw them off. But the words die before they pass your lips, at the sight of cobalt eyes you find yourself shrinking again under their scrutiny. You’ll choose the judgement of the crowd rather than stay a second longer in the proximity of someone who looks like they care far too much. Who offers emotions you’ve never known what to do with and can’t fathom ever deserving.

The hurled insults, spat with an unrestrained fury from the crowds as you walk forwards acts as a welcome distraction. It’s almost as if they hate you the most out of all the enforcers here, their vitriol fuelled by your betrayal of the city and people who raised you.

It’s almost as if they hate you just as much as you hate yourself.

Lap dog

Traitor

Bastard

Sheriff’s bitch

You’ve heard them all by this point. These streets you used to run down, that used to be your entire world. The people amongst whom you felt a belonging, who kept you safe from those at the surface, who gave you the little they had to help you survive. Now all they see is a traitor and these streets that used to feel like home have become foreign under your feet.

Your existence some sort of paradox, no longer welcome here but never to be accepted topside.

A chimera of both worlds, a citizen of none.

As soon as the enforcers smash down the doors of the factory all hell breaks loose. The lackeys know a raid when they see one, abandoning the ramshackle lab equipment to take up makeshift weapons. A sumpsnipe no older than ten looks to where a crowbar is being held towards them, eyes blown wide with fear, chest heaving. An adult leers over them, face obscured by a prosthetic that flares a sickly green in the low light, that muffles the barked-out order that has the child backing away.

The goon’s metalled hand catches the light as he raises it above his head, glinting as he brings it back down with force.

You feel the weight of the impact as the child staggers sideways and falls to the floor.

It’s enough for the final tether inside of you to fray and snap.

As your ears fill with the roaring sound of blood, you’ve already thrown yourself over the rusty balcony, landed in a cloud of dust and are halfway to a sprint, lips curled up into a snarl, face feral before you hear an order calling you back.

But it lands on deaf ears, unable to break your focus on the goon who is now dragging the child back upright, grip on their arm clearly digging into their skin as the bloodied child desperately tries to pull free.

You stumble as the past rears its ugly head.

Flashes of masks.

Of the sound of regulated breathing.

Of being dragged away from Powder.

Powder.

JINX.

Any remaining restraint snaps, like a dog finally breaking free of its chain. The world narrows, funnelling onto the target of your rage.

The rush of adrenaline through your veins is electric, spurs you onwards, dulls the sounds of your name called out in vain.

You haven’t felt this way in years.

Haven’t allowed yourself a chance to just feel, ain’t stopped holding yourself back for a second.

And now it all comes frothing up, raw and bloody and glorious.

Pressure builds up in your chest, erupting in an animalistic roar as you swing a gauntleted fist around.

The goon only looks up as it’s too late, just in time for metal to crash into metal, regulator shattering under the force of the blow. His head snaps back, feet cleanly leaving the floor. A blur of spit and blood paints your uniform before the steam rising from your gauntlets obscures your vision.

As it clears you take a moment to watch him crumple, groaning pathetically where he’s landed sprawled across a table surrounded by shattered flasks and oozing pink liquid. Your senses are filled with the sound of your own ragged breathing and the thunder of blood in your ears. As it wanes, you turn to check on the kid. Frown at the wild fear in their eyes, the way it roots them to the ground.

You look around, scouting for the unseen danger, taking a step closer to shield them from the invisible threat.

It only takes you a few seconds.

To realise the monster terrifying the child…

…is you.

That you’re the hextechian horror in blue and gold.

The realisation pins you to the spot, snuffs out the righteous fire and leaves a smoking hollow crater in its wake.

Rage and hurt are replaced by the suffocating weight of an ice-cold nothingness.

You become so lost to it, the world dulling, sounds distorting as if you’re under water. It’s too late by the time you register the frantic shouting, too late do you catch the blur of neon pink out the corner of your eye.

You turn to see the turbo chemtank almost upon you, operator raising the plasma blade high, their eyes wide and wild. A bang is almost instantly followed by a shower of glass, a bullet lodging itself deep in the operator’s neck, where their veins are bulging neon pink against pallid skin.

It doesn’t even serve to slow them down.

Another bullet, this time targeting the machinery itself, punctures a hose at the back of the machine and sends a stream of pink vapour pouring out the back.

And still, it bears down on you.

But despite the danger, you don’t feel the urge to fight take over, don’t raise your fists, don’t curl your lips into a snarl. The empty nothingness persists, brings a calm that has your gauntlets hanging lax at your sides, your feet planted into place. It’s as if you are existing outside of yourself, unable to prevent the inevitable, embracing the fate that really should have consumed you all those years ago.

A final bullet sinks into the hinged leg joint, causing the turbo chemtank to stumble.

But it’s too close now, the only person who could save you is yourself.

The plasma blade sinks deep into your torso.

For the briefest of moments, it feels like sweet relief.

You barely notice as the sword cuts clean through your chest before erupting out between your shoulder blades.

Finally, the turbo chemtank buckles under the bullet induced damage, teetering forward and forcing you down with it, landing in a tangle of machinery and man.

The world blurs as iron floods your mouth, has you coughing, spluttering, gasping for a breath you just can’t seem to take. Instead, you can hear your shallow breathing gurgle, your senses dull and any remaining feeling in your limbs slowly retreating.

You force heavy eyelids to stay open, to stay alert just long enough to force an apology to the kid still frozen in place.

And then you’re falling backwards into the dark, wondering if this is how you’ll finally find peace.

It comes faintly as first, so distant its barely perceptible. But slowly it gets louder, a single word that becomes sharper and clearer with each insistent use.

“Vi”.

Your eyelids are heavy, but you manage to blink them open. Squinting against the bright light, you bring up a non-gauntleted hand to shade your eyes.

“Vi”.

The voice comes again, more insistent, desperate. A child’s voice, one you recognise but struggle to place. Following the sound with your gaze, you can vaguely make out the shape of a person in the distance.

Small, petite, blue hair.

“Vi!”

“Powder?” you mouth, trying to push to your feet but unable to raise yourself up. All your limbs feel like lead, not responding to anything you ask of them.

“Don’t go Vi”.

You try to reply, but nothing comes out, mouth dry, voice hoarse. You scrabble again at the floor, trying and failing to get your limbs to obey you, to get up and close the distance.

“Please stay with me,” Powder begs, voice cracking. She sniffs a few times, breaths coming short and raspy.

She’s closer now, and as she finally gets close enough for you to fully see her, you realise she’s the spitting image of that day at the cannery. Sobbing, scared, face smeared with soot and arms wrapped tight around her waist. She’s the picture of fear and grief, dredging up guilt you’ve tried to bury before it could bury you. This is the opportunity you thought you’d never have, a chance to do it all again, to be better this time.

If you could just reach out, close the distance. But you’re so tired, eyelids heavy, focus slipping. You force yourself to remain conscious, even if you can’t do anything else.

 And slowly but surely Powder stumbles closer, still sobbing and sniffling.

“Don’t do this to me Vi”.

You reach out, she’s so close now, if you can just reach her, just tell her that everything is going to be ok, that you’re here and not going anywhere. If you can just reach her…

You force your arm out, stretch out your hand, fingers grasping for the touch of your little sister’s arm. Just as you are about to make contact fire bursts forth from your chest and the world fractures into dark static. You try to scream out for Powder but all that comes out is a pained howl as the fire rapidly spreads, racing through your veins, burning every sinew in your body, until your muscles are tensed, and your back is arched to an almost unnatural extent.

Flashes of pink. Explosions of hextech blue. A distorted smile you once knew with teeth that are far too sharp and luminous pink eyes that glow through the dark as it bleeds back in. A chorus of haunting laughter.

All the while the fire races under your skin, cauterising blood vessels and tendons, filling your lungs with acrid smoke that has you choking. It feels like you’ll be consumed by it, gasping for breath in between involuntary screams.  It’s going to consume you, a firestorm ripping you apart piece by piece.

Just when you can’t stand it any longer, it suddenly recedes, a tide that finally turns. All at once you crumble, slumping into the ground, face pressed against the dirt, drool dripping down onto the dust. And as your eyelids flutter close, as you once again get drawn into the blackness, you hear another voice.

Words and tone oddly familiar as you drift into the abyss.

“Easy, easy. I’ve got you Vi”.

You wake up slowly, your eyelids refusing to open properly the first few times, head heavy and full of diachronous memories of some sort of fight that you very clearly lost. You’re not sure how many times you surface just to immediately slip back under into unconsciousness, never waking enough to take in the time or your surroundings.

Finally, you manage to keep your eyes open, to blink against the harsh strip bulb light and to pull yourself up slightly. The movement sends shooting pains through your abdomen and left shoulder and has you looking down and frowning at the hospital gown that’s replaced your usual clothes. Peaking inside reveals an angry, raised mass of purple scar tissue just right of your belly button, the tell-tale signs of shimmer stitched skin standing stark against a pale, freckled background. A ginger investigation of your left shoulder blade with your fingertips reveals raised and knotty skin and your brain vaguely remembers something about being stabbed in that general region.

Carefully settling against the pillows again, you turn your gaze around the room. It’s undoubtedly a hospital, it’s the same sort of décor as always but this time rather than being crammed into a loud and overcrowded ward in Zaun you’re in your own private room with windows that give views across gilded rooftops and deep blue domes all the way out to the sea.

Its an excessively expansive space with a coffee table and comfy chairs set up by the windows and numerous different pieces of hospital equipment pushed to the edges of the room.

It’s far too much expense to be used for you and you can only assume who ever filled out the intake paperwork screwed up royally somewhere because there is no way you can afford this. Not wanting to hang around to await the bill, you spy the remnants of your bloodied clothes atop a cabinet in the corner and go to swing your legs over the edge of your bed.

Sharp pain flares through your chest, but you bite down any exclamation and force yourself to stand regardless. The shimmer will probably still be stitching up your insides but with the outsides sealed there shouldn’t be too many problems moving around. You might just have to refrain from too many flourishes as you traverse the city’s rooftops, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

You feel a tug on your left hand as you go to shuffle forward, looking down to find a needle neatly taped to the back of your hand with an IV line coiling its way back to a bag of transparent liquid hung on a pole.

You shuffle closer to the bag, checking its nothing critical to keeping you alive and when it’s not something you recognise as integral to human life you start peeling back the tape from your left hand.

“What in the gods do ya think you’re doin’?”

You pause, fingers floating above the plastic cannula that you were just about to give a good yank. You turn to find a nurse stood just inside the doorway, royal blue nurses pinafore cinched in at the waist with a golden belt. Short, platinum curls contrast with brown skin, while amber eyes pin you into place. Threatening that all 5ft 1 of her will be manhandling you back into that bed if you don’t make the smart choice to get back in yourself. And judging by the muscles that flex in her arms as she crosses them across her chest, you reckon she might just be able to come through on that promise.

“Nothing?” You offer, your hand retreating back to your side, leaving you stood there in your speckled dressing gown, bare ass exposed to the cold air.

“Back in bed. Now”. It’s an order, barked and clearly meant. For once in your life you comply without protest, hissing as you twinge something on the way to sitting on the edge of the mattress. Your head swims for a moment and you take a few breaths to try and steady yourself, focussing in on the sound of heels off tile that rapidly closes in on you. As you reopen your eyes, the nurse is stood before you, head titled to one side and eyebrow raised expectantly.

“I’m fine,” you grunt, shuffling back and swinging your legs up onto the mattress while trying to suppress just how much discomfort it brings you. A scoff meets your antics before the nurse turns her attention to the chart by your bedside, flicking through the pages with vague interest. You lean in, trying to catch the diagnosis but it’s doctor’s scrawl that requires an advanced degree to even begin to decipher and so you give up to slump back against the pillows.

“The lass outside said yous were a flight risk, didn’t actually think anyone in your condition would actually try it though,” the nurse huffs, eyes still scanning your chart.

Suddenly the fancy hospital room makes sense. Sets something cold and heavy to settle in the pit of your stomach.

“She’s been out there since you came in y’know. Ain’t left that bench just outside. We tried to get her to go home, heck even the man o’ progress himself was down here trying to convince her. But the stubborn lass wouldn’t have any of it”.

The nurse looks at you pointedly over her half-moon spectacles. The looks enough to give the devil pause for thought but you’re so lost in the mix of shame and something warm and not altogether unpleasant trying to spark in your chest that the impact is thankfully lessened. The nurse clicks her tongue, pulling you back and drawing your gaze over to where she’s still watching you with narrowed eyes.

“So, even if you don’t give two shits about yourself, maybe you should give her half a thought before you try to pull a disappearing act the second I turn my back.”

You’re not sure you could move even if you wanted to with the monstrous weight of guilt that’s just been hefted onto your chest. But the nurse isn’t done yet, no she’s still happy pilling even more on top, ensuring you might never be able to move again. Stacking up the guilt until your trapped inside a burial cairn of your own remorse and regret.

“That poor lass has suffered enough loss to last a lifetime. She doesn’t need you adding to it. So, for her sake, if not yours, stay put and rest”.

It’s not that long after that the door creaks open. You brace, ain’t no amount of time that could leave you feeling prepared for what’s coming next.

Caitlyn sticks her head around the edge, strands of hair falling free from a tired ponytail to frame her face as she pauses for a moment before taking a few steps inside and allowing the door to fall closed. She’s still wearing her sheriff’s uniform, but this time it’s no longer pristine, trousers creased and mud caked, jacket missing altogether. White shirt untucked and-

And covered in blood.

Panic flares immediately, has you scrabbling to get out of bed in an instant, tangling yourself in your IV and causing you to hiss as you pull at the newly formed scars on your torso. As you fight the IV line, thrashing your limbs until your free, Caitlyn stays in place. Just as you go to close the distance, you pause, the confusion painting Caitlyn’s features finally cutting through your panic just long enough for you to have a chance to think. She traces your gaze to the red across her chest and abdomen and then slowly looks back up at you.

“Its yours,” she says, voice hoarse, strangled with far too much emotion for you to be able to do much more than take a stumbling step backwards.

“Good”.

“Good? GOOD? Vi, you nearly died!”

Silence hangs as you both just stare at each other.

As always, you break first

“Well, I didn’t so…” you huff, shrugging off her concern, gingerly climbing back into bed and pulling up the blanket.

“You only didn’t because I-”

Caitlyn strides over, grabbing the chair up against the far wall and dragging it over to the bed. She slams it down with enough force to have you jolt, before cobalt eyes are boring holes into your skull.

“The only reason you are still alive is because I gave you shimmer,” Caitlyn hisses, voice low.

“Well, you didn’t have to do that.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said you-”

“I heard what you said Vi, but-” Caitlyn pauses, brow furrowing, hands jittering where they are held out in front of her mid gesture. She mouths a few silent words, before licking her lips and looking at you. The anger’s snuffed out, replaced by concern and a bunch of other things you’re not too sure you care for.

“But surely you don’t mean that?” she asks, leaning forward, one hand tightening on the railing of the hospital bed.

You shrug. You’re not really sure to be honest. Sure, you’re somewhat relieved to be alive but you weren’t all that bummed about dying either. You kinda just take the hand life deals you and try not to fuck it up too badly.

Which when you look over at Caitlyn, you realise you are doing a terrible job of. Her lips are pulled taught, moisture lining angry eyes, she’s watching you with a look that ain’t nothing short of accusatory.

“How could you say that?”

The anger once again vanishes in a split second, replaced by a fear that somehow is a thousand times worse.

You offer another shrug.

Caitlyn licks her lips, turns to look down to where she’s fiddling with the edge of the bed sheet now.

“Vi, do you want to die?”

It’s a question you’ve asked yourself for a while now. You can’t give her the answer she wants to hear, so instead you offer up the truth.

“I don’t know”.

Before you know it, arms are thrown around your shoulders and Caitlyn’s buried her face deep in your neck, pressing you back into the pillows. For a moment you freeze, arms held mid-air out to your sides, muscles tensed, and breath held in your chest. It’s only as you see the way her back shudders, feel the way she desperately nuzzles deeper, presses more of herself against you that you start to thaw. Slowly and cautiously, you bring your arms around her, tilting in your head to lightly rest against hers, gently drawing her in closer until you’re both leaning awkwardly over the edge of the bed. As you feel tears against your collar bone, you press your forehead into the fabric of her shirt collar, whisper desperate apologies over and over as if you stand any chance of fixing the hurt you’ve just caused.

It could be seconds or hours you stay like that, time becomes an illusion, measured only in stuttered breaths, muffled apologies and racing heart beats. But gradually her breathing settles and her hold loosens, and you immediately begin to pull back. Before you can retreat too far, she catches you gently, hands bracing against your shoulders. Then slowly fingers drift along and up the curve of your neck until thumbs gently wipe away the tears staining your cheeks. You involuntarily melt under the contact, a pleasant shiver wriggling down your spine and that unfamiliar warmth settling in your gut.

Caitlyn gives a small huff, a weak smile tugging at her lips as she cups your cheek in her right hand, thumb brushing the tattoo on your cheek.

“I’d really rather you stayed than went somewhere I can’t follow,” she whispers, blue eyes glistening.

Leaning further into her touch, you force yourself to meet her gaze, allow yourself to get lost in the blue for once. But this time there’s no skyline that shatters, no tower deconstructed to its composite atoms. Just an ocean of emotion, of hurt and love and fear that has you drowning in it all.

And in that moment, you make a promise you can only hope to keep.

Apparently after a traumatic event its mandatory that enforcers go through at least six sessions of therapy. And apparently rushing into battle, getting stabbed through the heart with a plasma sword, dying, being force fed shimmer against your will, being resurrected by said shimmer that apparently was not council sanctioned but in fact part of an illicit stockpile the Sheriff had been secretly keeping for just such an eventuality (also without your consent), waking up in hospital and coming down from shimmer, rehab and returning to work, was considered a “traumatic experience”.

Fucking Pilties and their soft dispositions.

In Zaun the most you would get was a half day off work with the expectation you made up the hours later in the week.

The only silver lining to the situation is that the man of progress has decided that you weren’t the only one to have gone through something traumatic.

Which meant that for Caitlyn to enforce you going to therapy, she too has to spill her guts to some judgemental prick and their notebook every two weeks.

It’s petty but the thought of Caitlyn silently staring down some poor state assigned therapist, daring them to ask her about her feelings, gives you some solace and not a small a bit of amusement.

Your therapist’s office sits on the entresol level, the boundary of Piltover and Zaun where topisders and zaunites mingle freely. Much like the buildings around it, the therapist’s office is tall and slender, their office on the second floor of a structure that looks like it extends beyond the upper reaches of the grey.

You’re expecting the worst, some highly educated piltie without a clue of what life is like in the sumps other than the pictures and sob stories they’ve read in their textbooks. Maybe they once went on a field trip to the lower levels, were deeply impacted by what they saw and then returned to the surface to write an op-ed in the local paper about socio-economic problems in the twin cities while inexplicably centring their own experience.

Your prejudice is almost immediately confirmed when you enter the office, every stereotype you have in your head manifesting before you. Off white walls, exposed natural fibres and wooden furniture decorate the room, along with soft furnishing in a range of soothing pastel colours. The walls have inspirational posters that make you fight the urge to roll your eyes and the shelves behind the therapist’s desk host generic tchotchkes to give an unconvincing illusion of a homely feel but without any of the heart.

But then amongst the sea of generics, your eyes get caught by something far more particular. Around 15cm tall, carved from a dark stone is a statue of a woman with her hands upturned, hair sprawling wild from behind her. You recognise it almost immediately, Vander used to keep a statue of Jana behind the bar, claimed she’d keep them all safe when they used to come running to him scared as kids.

Must be a cheap knock off, some sort of replica sold by the pedallers who make their living swindling clueless tourists out of their outrageous amounts of cash. It’s probably just some keepsake from the one excursion the therapist has taken into the deeper levels of Zaun.

“Fancy yourself an anthropologist?” you ask, settling yourself into one of the plush armchairs that sits across from a simple but well-built oak desk.

A small smirk twitches at the therapist’s lips, and they consider you for a moment through their gold rimmed glasses. They’re not quite what you had expected, their jet-black hair cut short and mussed with some sort of gel or mousse, several helix piercings adorning the cartilage of their ears and a black stud puncturing their right nostril. Their grey green eyes sparkle slightly with something you suspect is amusement, the edges of their eyes creasing as a small smile grows. Then they push back their chair and stand, smoothing out of their grey high waisted trouser and pulling their unbuttoned waistcoat a little tighter around the loose shirt they have on underneath. The sleeves are rolled up slightly, and you wonder if you spy the hint of inked skin disappearing along their forearms.

They walk over to the shelf and point to the Jana statue looking at you for confirmation which you give with a nod.

They then move further along the shelf, picking something up and holding it out over the desk. You lean forward to take it, seeing it’s a miniature of an old, mechanized clock tower, distinctive grinding gears exposed on the outside.

“Old Hungry,” you say softly to yourself, turning the piece in your hands a few times before looking back up.

“Not an anthropologist,” the therapist huffs, rolling up their shirt sleeves further to reveal designs you could describe with your eyes closed. “Just a Zaunite”.

They grin and you can’t help but smile the same knowing smirk back.

“I like to leave little suggestions around the office, small tokens that allow Zaunites to recognise they are around good company while Piltovians remain oblivious to the traitor in their midst”.

You laugh at that.

The therapist leans forward, hand extended across the oak desk.

“My name’s Ash”.

You settled Old Hungry to one side and take their hand, appreciating the firm hand shake you receive.

“Vi”.

“Well Vi what brings you in today?” They pick up a notebook and a pen before settling back into their chair, gaze curious and focussed.

You consider quipping you’re mandated to be here, saying your boss will never give you a moment’s peace if you don’t do your time.

But thoughts of Caitlyn bring back memories of her expression at the hospital, the moment she looked like she would break when you admitted you weren’t sure you wanted to be alive. It’s quickly replaced by the feeling of her smiling softly at you, holding you as if you were something special and rare. A wonder that she discovered deep in the pits of Zaun and wouldn’t lose again.

If she could see something worth salvaging, worth holding onto and for… well maybe you could try and see it too. Probably wasn’t any harm in trying, even if you didn’t hold out much hope for success.

You’re not really sure how to condense and distinguish all the different emotions fighting in your chest, so instead you try for a simple truth.

“I want to get better”.

And for the first time, in a really long time, you actually mean it.