Chapter Text
It started with a baldfaced lie and a gift she couldn’t refuse.
Twenty-two, and kindly asked to spread their fortune.
A newly christened ship, its hull gleaming spotless and sails stained a mixture of Noxian scarlet and coal-charred black. Two masts, one smokestack. A fusion of old and new, as obviously a sham as the whole event itself. Steel plating had been engraved with sarcastic artistry; legions of foxes chased one another, hounds at their back and hidden wolves looking on with placidity. Strangely loping beasts hid in a mirage, the sunlight gleaming at strange angles to reveal and obfuscate them.
The few men assigned to it all referred to her as Lady, saluted with absolute perfection and kept their eyes pinned to the floor. A banner hung from the side of the ship, a crest that declared allegiance and family.
It was a beautiful day outside, and it only served to sour Mel’s mood. The breeze came in soft gusts, the salt flooded her nostrils. The pungent odour of the sea, of oil, burned against the back of her throat and filled her lungs with noxious fumes.
But there was no salt to drip down her cheeks. No tears of frustration or melancholy to impede her vision.
The gift of a curse. The unspoken order that this was exile, that there would be no choices left to her except those she found on other shores. Just board the damned ship, and see what the horizon brought her.
“I expect that they’ll welcome you with open arms. They're a curious land, weakness running in their blood. Let them kneel for you. I’ve made no arrangements on your behalf, no plans or warnings of your arrival. Use that silver tongue you’re so very fond of. Establish a presence, make our name known.”
Her mother’s words were delivered with all the efficiency of a general addressing troops. No emotion, no lilt to it. Like she was describing the weather or a particularly dull report. Mel knew she never favoured long goodbyes and refused to break character even as she sent off her only remaining child.
Just those private words, a firm salute. A short nod in the direction of the ocean, and then the rapidly disappearing back of Ambessa Medarda. Her cloak waved, even if the woman didn’t, and Mel couldn’t help but feel some kind of relief at the sight. There’s been no word of further contact, and Mel honestly didn’t expect it. Nothing like good luck, I love you, I’ll check in, or any platitude that would ease her growing worries.
There was no reason to remain, and Mel could sense the men around her growing antsy, eager to be off and then back home. None offered more than a grunt of conversation to her as she boarded, just a hail as she walked by and they returned to their duties.
The ship was small but seaworthy. Interesting only because it existed. There was no point in exploring or reason to, so Mel simply went to her cabin to wait out the trip.
She noted with some slight confusion that it was packed tight. Her mother had shoved it full of new clothing, old books, and all the accoutrements and knickknacks a noblewoman should have.
It seemed the only way that her mother could express herself. Goodbye, here’s some baubles.
But it was safe enough. Comforting enough. Tasteful, quiet, subtly rocking side to side as they sailed forward. Mel endured her meals at a small desk inside the cabin and remained cloistered off without even the thought of familiarising herself with the crew.
They knew better than to try and curry favour with an exile or make small talk with someone they shouldn’t know. She was no general, not one to be known.
And Mel was confident that by the time she finally managed to arrange an apartment or something similar, they would just move her luggage off the ship and set off once again. No household guards for exiles, no defences for one who would only use violence as a last resort.
Mel regretted her stance somewhat. Wished that she’d asked them something about her mother’s plans or made some effort to find out why they’d been picked.
When the ship overturned in the middle of the night, bodies tossed away amid the swells of water rising atop the ship, it just seemed wrong that she’d never even known their names.
----
Dark clouds in an inverted sky. A golden sun, its rays a brilliance of diamonds that pierced her. Pinpoint light revealing the absence, aberration, a void in the shape of a wolf. Its teeth were broken, the shattered remnants of the moon.
I regarded Mel, and she felt herself pull apart. Inspected, ablated, reconstituted as it walked away.
----
Returning to consciousness was torment.
Mel choked, lungs filled with fire as seawater spewed forth. Her eyes were crusted scabs, sand and detritus a scraping grit. Her limbs were filled with an unfathomable weakness, hardly able to do more than flop around as she struggled to move. The pounding beat of drums in her skull was a reverberation that didn’t seem likely to ever end, a blade driven deep within her skull. She could barely feel the sensation of air on her skin, only slowly understanding she’d somehow become bereft of clothing, no wraps or rings or anything that would save her modesty.
“She’s alive!” A shrill voice screamed out from behind her, a pair of rough hands grabbing her shoulders and hauling her back.
Mel felt herself be sat upright and moved further, still blind as she worked the salt out of her eyes and unable to form any words. The sand beneath her slowly blended into aged wood, warped and soaked, the splinters catching in her skin and piercing as she was moved.
Then, gently, slowly, she was laid flat. Her breath came easier, one eye opening as the other remained stubbornly crusted shut. Dim light, shifting focus. A muted hulk rounded her left side to spread something warm atop her chest.
“It’s just an old cloak,” a rough voice announced from her side. “You alright to talk?”
No.
Mel choked back a shaking cough, forced herself to try and sit upright as the cloth was wrapped around her further. Scratchy fabric, winding and bunched up so she could hunch forward into it. The other eye finally cleared enough to crack it open, and Mel wasted no time scanning her apparent saviour's visage.
And wherever the hell it was she’d landed.
A question not answered simply. Too dark, but at least some sort of dock half sinking into a sandy beach. Night closed in around her, pushed back only by the neon afterglow of hanging lanterns. The profile of the man in front of her came into focus; large, bearded and slowly turning grey. He had a slight tan, or what looked like one beneath a blue-green glow, and his large frame was reminiscent of the old soldiers Mel had known from her homeland. At his side crouched a young girl with wide eyes, her hair a shocking pink and shaved back on one side. Neither of them were clad in anything exciting or put together. No looks of sophistication, just a mixture of tattered remnants that had been patched and repatched to suit them well enough.
“Where am I?” Mel asked, voice a croak.
“Zaun.”
Zaun. The word was foreign, echoing in Mel’s head before she could entirely place it. Zaun, a twin city to Piltover and one half of an old whole that was distinctly on the other side of a river she needed to be across.
----
It took what felt like forever to feel strong enough to stand, but getting up was an ordeal all its own. In the end she needed assistance, and some reluctant part of herself was fighting back at the help even if she knew it was ridiculous.
Vander supplied his name as easily as he helped her to her feet, and seemed so far from Mel’s expectations that she half wondered if she’d really died. This was the famous undercity, a known laundering point for malcontents and illegal goods, and a smuggling port for those on their way between Noxian provinces.
But he was kinder than she’d hoped, respectful as he helped her up, and strong enough to lean on when she felt unsteady. Loud, his voice a booming reverberation that seemed more for the benefit of any onlookers who might try pouncing on them as they walked.
Though cute, the little girl at her side was undoubtedly more the ruffian between the two.
Not exactly shrill anymore, but not quiet. The girl’s voice projected what surety she could muster, an authority she seemed intent on conjuring. Whether for Mel’s benefit, or to mollify her own nerves, the young girl spoke as if every word would be analysed for weakness, her tone sure even if her conversation wasn’t.
“So Powder, that’s my sister, said she’d seen a body floating in off the tide. But you can’t just trust what she sees; half the time it isn’t real, or she mixed up something else entirely. But she was sure she’d seen someone in the inlet and wouldn’t shove off ‘til we went looking. How’d you end up here of all places? I know the airships are supposed to be safe, but Mylo says he’s seen one fall out of the sky once. Or was it a regular ship? The storms have been shit lately, but no one else washed in from the sea, and you don’t look like you’re from around here. Oh! Do you have amnesia? I heard that sometimes-”
“Enough, Vi.”
Vander reeled her back in with a simple gruff to his voice, a chuckle as she rolled her eyes at him. The remainder of their walk was a relatively quiet affair, and Vander led her safely to what he humbly described as his own establishment.
His words were warm, his welcome genuine. Still, Mel could hardly take it in.
Between the questions fostered by Vi and the gentle handling of Vander, Mel felt she might be in shock. Just floating through the ramshackle streets and past worn-down structures. She coughed and nearly fell. Hell, she could hardly function in this state. Her lungs were still overheated, but at least breathing was easier now. Her eyesight still seemed off, but Mel knew part of this distress was just pure exhaustion.
But she made it, somehow. One foot in front of the other and her mind a maelstrom of worry.
Vander unlocked a door near the rear of the structure and ushered her inside, the old bar quieting the outside world and enveloping her in stillness.
Quietude was necessary. She ached, bone-deep and heavy. She could rest, heal, and head up to Piltover in the morning. Sort out this whole disaster of a start and figure out where to go next.
All problems for the morning.
For now she simply allowed Vander to lead her up a thin stairwell to what seemed like his office. He left her there to go off and fetch Mel something more to wear than a simple cloak, Vi heading off with a simple wave.
The room was nice. Sweet, if a bit rustic. A wide window sat at the back with the shades drawn tight, photographs and children’s drawings littering the walls. The desk was a monster of stained wood, clutter atop it in reams of paper and old notes. It was enough to draw the eye but not enough interest to invade her host’s privacy and inspect them.
Mel spent a few minutes just trying to keep herself from falling asleep before Vander returned. He dropped off some cuts of brown fabric; comfortable pants, a pair of sandals, and an oversized shirt with the sleeves chopped off that she guessed was one of his own.
There was a circular mirror, small and hazy, embedded in one of the walls. The twisting reflection that greeted her inspection made Mel’s heart ache. There were ugly bruises up the side of her face, one eye startlingly red where it wasn’t stained green. At some point her hair had come undone, the braided lengths falling apart to spill down her shoulders, distressed and split apart in tangled knots.
All said, Mel could tell she looked like hell. Like death come home to roost, a miscreant amongst miscreants. Nothing about her said power, said strength. Despite all the pain, there was some rueful levity on her face. She looked nothing like the Noxian matriarch her mother had wished for her to one day become.
A new look, a new land.
Nothing for it but to straighten her back and continue on for now. Finish dressing and decide on her next move.
She opened the door to find Vander waiting for her, and he led her back down to the bar.
Vi, and likely Powder, were waiting for her arrival. They crowded her as Mel sat at a stool, just a little bit of respectful distance as they whispered to one another. Vander filled an old metal glass with water and passed it over just as the little blue-haired girl spoke up.
“That’s my cup.”
“Well,” Mel sipped at the cold water, savouring how it relieved her throat. “I’ll thank you for letting me use it. Powder, I assume?”
Small, probably more so than she should be, given that the undercity wasn’t known for gently rearing its inhabitants.
The girl smiled widely as she leaned side to side. She seemed to measure Mel momentarily, her eyes turning clearer before she threw out her hand for Mel to shake.
“You can use it. Not every day I tell someone I found a body and it turns out they’re still alive.”
“Oh?”
Powder’s eyes sparkled, the open invitation to tell her story readily taken up.
It was cast heroic, barely spotting Mel’s drifting body and convinced it’d been there, even when no one else believed her. There was added danger, shark fins in the water and rats trying to use her as a raft. Embellishments that could only come from an overactive child, even if they were more morbid than Mel would have expected. The whole of it was pitched enthusiastically, arms waving and her older sister chiming in when appropriate.
Mel had drained her cup twice by the time Powder was finished, leaning heavily against the bar to try and keep herself awake.
“Alright girls,” Vander shot Mel a sympathetic look, turning the children off towards the hallway at the back. “Head on down for the night. Gonna check on our guest for a bit, and then I’ll be down.”
They whined as all children seemed prone to do, but relented. The space was quiet when they exited, silent except for Vander dragging a stool to sit next to her.
“Thank you for all you’ve done,” Mel started before he could speak. “For saving my life and bringing me here. I appreciate it, truly. But I have to ask, if only because it's not what I expected. Why?”
The older man simply shrugged, reached over the bar to grab a bottle of unlabelled liquor and poured himself a shot.
“It’s like the girls said. Powder saw you floating out there. Said she needed to tell someone. Almost as if she were compelled to. It's not exactly easy to exist down here; she’s seen bodies before but never pestered me so much to check on ‘em. Still, can’t exactly say I’m not surprised to see she was right. She’s still young, prone to imagining things that aren’t there. But here you are, in my bar. And, forgive me, but I still don’t know your name.”
“Mel,” she said. “Mel Medarda.”
“Well then, now that the hard part is outta the way, the rest of the answer for why is that it seemed the right thing to do. Ain’t no sense leaving someone like that. May I ask what it was that set you out there?”
Mel gave him the loose outline. The spiel that she’d been preparing for an introduction to Piltover. Just a young woman looking to make her mark on the world, branching out at the request of the family matriarch. A daughter looking to explore beyond the power games of Noxus. Simple, and near enough to the truth that it gave her a veneer of respectability that meant she needn’t explain the reality behind her sudden exile.
“I’ll wait until morning and head up to Piltover. I want to see if any of my crew survived and if I can get someone to sponsor me. With any luck, the ship will have rode out the storm and washed up somewhere else.”
Vander winced, looked down into his glass.
“Well, there might be some trouble with that. Piltover is mighty tore up over some recent thefts and high-profile impersonations. Some big shot or another lost a lot of money and influence before they were caught out. Idiot came from down here, and now the bridge is closed against anyone without proper documentation. They’re watching all the usual ways in and some of the more hidden ones. As you might guess, proper identification that meets Piltover’s expectations is rather hard to find around these parts. And, don’t take any offence to this cause none is meant as such; I believe your story, but do you have anything that will prove you are who you say you are?”
The look of sudden desperation must have been clear on her face. He winced again and sighed as Mel’s hands began to shake.
She hadn’t anything. The damned storm had stripped her clean somehow, and unless her crew made it out, there would be no one to vouch for her. If the ship survived the torrent it might be useful, but as Mel remembered the last bits of her voyage she had to conclude that it most likely hadn’t.
“No money, no guard, as I take it. Zaun isn’t the kindest place to its residents, much less to those who come to destitution.”
“Alright. I’ll head out then and see what I can find. Surely there’ll be someone around here who will trade a bed for a favour. I’ll go up there tomorrow regardless.” Mel leaned on the bar and rubbed her temples, pinching at the last bits of salt crusted to her hair.
“Well, the first bit needn’t be done.” Vander polished off his drink and poured another. “You’re free to stay in one of the spare rooms for the night. Not much, but it’ll do in a pinch. I’ll take you to the bridge tomorrow morning if you’re up for it. If not, I know a healer who I can call in a favour from. She’s rather picky about her clients but terrific at her job.”
Again, the sudden need to know why he was being so kind flooded through the forefront of Mel’s mind. She pushed it away and shoved it back. She wouldn’t let herself be ungrateful after being rescued, especially by someone who seemed a truly decent sort of man.
“Thank you,” she settled for, setting her glass down and genuinely relaxing for the first time since she’d woken on the beach. “I think I’ll take you up on that offer. I can’t say how I’ll feel in the morning, but I’m just a few minutes away from collapsing right now.”
Vander smiled as she finished, something so genuine in it that it set Mel at ease.
“Come on then, let’s get you situated for the night.”
She followed Vander, lost in her head but grateful to still be able to think. A bad start, but she’d see what the morning brought and go from there.