Chapter Text
“Do your moms know that you’re here?”
That was the first thing Ekko said as Felicia trailed into his workshop. It was midday, and her mom had left her at the Firelight Sanctuary while she was tending to business in another part of the city. She had been given a choice to come, but Vi and Sevika had a meeting, and that meant sitting around in a stuffy room with people that glared daggers at one another. Felicia would much rather hang out with her uncle and the rest of the Firelights than be in the same room with a bunch of people who traded jabs and insulted each other for an hour and called it politics. And so, her mom left her by the entrance to the base with a smile and a hand atop her head, ruffling her hair.
“Mom dropped me off,” Felicia answered. “Said she’ll be back in an hour.” She blinked, then added the other part. “If they don’t try to kill each other.” She paused, sighing. “Again.”
Her uncle rolled his eyes. He turned to face her, sitting on a stool in the middle of the room. “Of course she did,” he said. “Apparently I’m Zaun’s greatest babysitter.” He snapped his notebook shut. Felicia caught a glimpse of it, the page covered in Ekko’s familiar scrawl and tiny doodles and sketches. “Where’s the Piltie?”
All these years later, that was still how Ekko referred to her mother.
Felicia blinked. “Working.”
“What is it now?” Ekko asked, raising an eyebrow. “Did Piltover’s finest tea shop get robbed? I sincerely hope all the tea cups weren’t stolen.”
“Actually,” Felicia said. “I believe it was a perfumery that was robbed.”
Ekko scoffed and rolled his eyes again. His shoulders shook ever so slightly, and she realized he was laughing.
Felicia wasn’t sure what was so funny. She furrowed her eyebrows. “What are you laughing at?”
Apparently, that only made him laugh even harder. “Janna,” he cursed. “It’s just, sometimes I still can’t believe Vi shacked up with a Piltie and then produced a carbon copy of said Piltie.” He chuckled earnestly, turning away from her and putting the journal back on his workbench. “If you would’ve told her that when she was younger, she would’ve decked you in the face.”
Felicia tilted her head. “Am I that much like my Mum?”
Ekko looked over his shoulder, studying her. “A lot, yeah.” He snorted. “You’ve even got her stupid accent.” Felicia opened her mouth to interject, but then Ekko was pointing to his face, to his eyes. “But your eyes, they’re all Vi’s.”
Felicia paused, listening to his words. She had been told that all her life. She had been given a mixture of her mothers’ hair colors: a shade of indigo. She mostly resembled Caitlyn—the cut of her jaw, her nose, her long legs, and the way she shot up shortly after starting puberty. But Vi was there too—in the blue of her eyes, the faint freckles against the ridge of her nose.
“That’s the first thing I noticed when I first held you, you know,” Ekko said, a fond smile on his face. “You were tiny, could fit into the crook of my arm.” He grinned. “I remembered thinking that you’d come out, like, absurdly long like your mom.”
Felicia laughed softly.
“And I remember when your mom told me about you,” Ekko said, reminiscing now. “She showed up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat and gasping like she ran the whole way here. I asked what the fuck was going on. I mean, I thought she or your mom was in danger or something, but then she just blurted out ‘Caitlyn’s pregnant.’ I think I just stared at her for a good minute, thinking she was screwing with me.” He gestured in her direction. “But, a few months later, you were in my arms, staring up at me with her eyes.”
His voice was tinged with something tender and soft, but his eyes were glazed over, distant. It was a look she knew all too well. It was the look everyone got when they recalled the before. Before she was born. Before peace.
He looked at her, still smiling. “You’re a good kid, Cici. Everyone would’ve loved you.”
Everyone. The people who were lost long before she was born. The family she would never meet. She swallowed thickly. She never met them, but sometimes she felt like she knew them. From the stories she was told, from the old faded photographs of an old bar and the official portraits of a grandmother she vaguely resembled.
They were gone, gone long before her birth. Hell, the last time her mom’s family had all been together was when she was fifteen, which was Felicia’s age.
That thought made her sad. She didn’t know the full story—her mother claimed it was too long, too painful, and she was still too young. She knew her mom had been through a lot. She knew both of her mothers had. She knew why they still had nightmares, why her Grandpa told her about the way they used to watch her as a baby, standing over her crib as she slept to make sure she was alright.
Sometimes, she wished things could’ve been different. She wished she could go back, find her mom in her deepest, darkest place, and give her a hug.
Intrigued, Felicia pursed her lips. “Uncle Ekko?”
Ekko, who had picked up his notebook again and was reading something with a thoughtful expression, hummed in acknowledgment. “Hmm?”
Felicia tilted her head. “What was my mom like?” She asked. “When she was my age?”
Ekko blinked, staring down at the open page in front of him like he was picking his next words. That look was on his face again—like he was uncovering something long buried, recalling something from a distant past.
Finally, he took a deep breath. He set down the notebook yet again and slowly turned to face her. “She was—”
Promptly, a loud shatter came from outside, followed by shouts and the sequels of children.
Felicia frowned. As the Firelight population had grown steadily over the years, so had the number of children running around the Sanctuary, which led to more and more accidents.
“I should go check on that,” Ekko announced, also frowning. He got up from the stool, sighing. He gave her a knowing look as he passed. “Don’t touch anything while I’m gone.”
She widened her eyes, feigning innocence. “What? Me? I would never.”
He scoffed, shouldered open the door, and stepped outside. She caught a glimpse of sunlight flickering through the large branches of the tree in the center of the base. “Zaun’s greatest babysitter,” she heard her uncle mutter, and then the door to his workshop shut. A moment later, she heard him call out, his voice further away this time. “Calla, if that was the generator again, I swear to Janna—”
He was cut off as his footsteps receded further away.
Felicia stood there for a moment, arms crossed over her chest. She listened to the sounds coming from outside but it soon grew quiet again. Quickly, she grew bored. She looked around the lab, at the gadgets and trinkets left on the countertops. Shelves overflowing with old books and scrolls. Broken hoverboards leaned against the wall.
Felicia winced. She wondered if one of those was from her little accident. She had finally gotten Ekko to agree to teach her how to ride and the results had been... disastrous to say the least. She had broken an arm and her moms had been pissed.
Her eyes landed on the notebook left on the workbench, the one Ekko had been reading and writing in so intently. Felicia raised an eyebrow, curious. She paused, listening, and heard nothing. She smiled to herself. Walking over to the workstation, she snatched up the notebook and opened it to the latest page.
She furrowed her eyebrows, taking in the jumble of messy writing. It was all rushed, slanted like his pen couldn’t keep up with his hand. The work of a man who was the only one who could understand his work. All Felicia could decipher was something about time and four seconds????
At the bottom of the page was a sketch of a strange contraption. It looked like a sphere, almost like it was encased in glass, and… was that a rock in the center?
Felicia squinted, then sighed. She wasn’t smart enough to understand her uncle. She shut the notebook and reached out to put it back down where she had found it. She paused.
Was that…?
Sitting in the corner of the desk was the same rock from the drawing. She opened the notebook again, holding it up, comparing it. It was indeed the same.
Felicia dropped the notebook to stare at the stone. It was small—small enough to fit in the palm of her head. It was blue and emitted a sort of light, softly glowing.
It was strangely beautiful. Alluring.
Intrigued, Felicia reached out. She hesitated, remembering her uncle’s words. Don’t touch anything while I’m gone.
Well, if it was that dangerous, he wouldn’t keep it in his workshop, would he?
Felicia poked it with her pointer finger and swiftly pulled back.
She held her breath. She squinted.
Nothing happened.
She shrugged, then started to turn.
That was when it happened. There was a change in the air. A shift. A jolt.
She turned back, eyes widening as she saw the strange stone only glowing brighter, almost vibrating. Her jaw fell open. Oh, no.
What had she done?
She backed up, running into the stool in the middle of the room, overturning it. It hit the floor with a loud, resounding THUD, but she barely noticed. She only had attention on the angrily glowing thing. She continued moving backward, heartbeat in her throat.
One step.
Two.
Then the world erupted.
The explosion hit like thunder from the heart of the earth, a shockwave that tore through her very being, piercing her apart from the inside out. The sound hit Felicia’s ears like a lightning strike—sharp, blinding, deafening. Her feet lifted off the ground. Her chest lurched with the force of it. She didn’t know if she was falling or flying or being thrown. Her hands reached out, grasping for anything, but the air had turned to nothing.
She tried to scream, but her voice was ripped from her. She felt her skin stretch, peel, and warp around her.
Her head hit something hard. Her eyes squeezed shut, flashes of white-hot light searing into her mind. Her ears rang, high and sharp, like a thousand bells clanging at once.
Her breath left her. She tried to gasp, but her chest wouldn’t move.
No sound.
No sense of up or down.
Just white.
Flashing white. Endless, blinding white.
And then her world went black.
When Felicia woke up, she was aware was staring up at the sky. A dark, cloudy, and polluted sky.
She sat up with a gasp, jerking upwards. Her head pounded as her vision spun, blurred at the edges. Her eyes burned. There was a dull ache buried in between her ribs. She grunted, shifting. She hoped nothing was broken. She managed several gasping breaths through her mouth, chest heaving, and clapped a hand to her chest, comforted only by the sound of her own heartbeat, the subtle, steady pulse dancing under her fingertips. Erratic, but still there.
She was alive. Barely, but somehow still breathing.
Only when she was sure she was still in one piece did she pick up her head and look around. The ground was solid beneath her, cold and hard. She blinked and realized she was laying on concrete. Carefully, she stood up, legs still wobbly. She slowly looked around, registering she was in some kind of alleyway.
Confused, she looked back up, at the darkness obscured by smog and shadows. She couldn’t see the stars, she realized.
Her heart beat faster.
She turned on her heel, head spinning, studying her surroundings. The building next to her was made up of worn brick, the roof leaning haphazardly—shingles hanging. It looked like the walls had been half-heartedly patched up in many areas. Pipes crisscrossed out of the building, jugged out in a rusted maze. A rickety flight of stairs led up to the upper level.
Felicia furrowed her eyebrows, looking up. There were few windows dotting the building, but most were dark or covered by ripped curtains or cardboard. A few were broken, glass still shattered on the pavement. Felicia looked down at her feet and wrinkled her nose, seeing she was standing in a puddle of groundwater. The water itself was black and metallic like it was mixed with oil.
Leaning on the wall, she limped over to the staircase, sitting herself down on the second step. Her boots were soggy, dripping water as she walked, and the old structure groaned under the sudden new weight.
Felicia wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold, shivering. The night was cold, the air biting at her exposed skin. The light overhead, a single fluorescent light bulb, flickered ominously. Further down the street, she registered more lights, the flicker of neons—shades of purples, greens, and pinks.
Flashy. Probably a part of the entertainment district.
She sucked in a breath. The air felt thick and heavy like someone had draped a blanket over her. She let out a dry cough, something rattling in her chest.
She squinted. The ramshackle architecture. The smog, the grease, the neon lights. Was she in Zaun? Though this Zaun seemed different. Harsher, grittier.
Felicia lifted her head, looking around again. She was tucked away in a dark, quiet alley, at least. Her eyes spotted the litter and crates shoved in the far corner of the alley. She sniffed.
This… didn’t seem right.
She closed her eyes, rubbing at her eyelids with her fingertips. She put her head in her hands, drawing her knees to her chest, making herself as small as possible. Her head throbbed, her skull aching. She could taste fresh iron in her mouth. She must have bitten her tongue.
She ran her hands through her hair, trying to recollect herself. She wished she could wake up and this would all be a dream. She wished the ground would open and swallow her whole.
Oh, her moms were going to kill her.
She kept her eyes closed, taking deep breaths. Her heartbeat was still racing, her blood roaring in her ears. Eventually, tentatively, the other sounds trickled in, like the slow dripping of water. She could hear the distant roar of a crowd and the occasional burst of howling, drunken laughter, and the continent drip, drip of the sewage drain to her right.
The hum of machinery was a constant sound in the lower city. The air was thick with fog and smoke—smelling of oil and like the rotting trash heap behind her.
Something definitely wasn’t right.
She sucked in another long breath, ribs still aching, as she heard another sound. Loud footfalls, the telltale sign of heavy footsteps approaching. She whipped her head up to see a figure at the head of the alley, making their way towards her.
Her breath caught her in her throat.
She watched them, curious and cautious. They were dressed in dark clothes from head to toe—dark ripped jeans and a dirty dark leather jacket—with dark, messed hair that hung limply over their face, one side shaved closer to their scalp. Their steps were oddly paced. They swayed slightly on their feet as if listening to a silent song only they could hear. She could smell the alcohol as the figure stumbled closer, radiating off of the person in waves.
Well then, definitely drunk.
She squinted. She could see it was a woman now, a tight bandage under her jacket, wrapped around her chest. Even under the jacket, she could make out the woman’s muscular build, the way her body rippled under the streetlights, shifting in the shadows. The closer she got, the more she could see the dark, dripping makeup she was wearing on her face—smeared under her eyes, across her cheeks.
Felicia furrowed her eyes. There was almost something familiar about the way the stranger walked, the way she held herself.
The footsteps continued. Felicia stayed, frozen to her spot on the step. A few more seconds passed and a pair of beat-up combat boots came into her field of vision, not much different from her own. She stiffened her shoulders, bracing for the worst.
Someone loudly cleared their throat. It echoed down the empty alley and Felicia winced.
Another second ticked by. She held her breath and then looked up, and found herself face to face with startling blue-gray eyes. Her eyes. They were stormy, dark, and dull, and nearly hidden behind caked-on makeup and greasy, dyed black hair, but there was no mistaking it.
Those eyes. She would recognize them anywhere. They were her own eyes, what she saw when staring into a mirror.
“Hey, kid,” a familiar voice said, though it was different. Harder, broken, a sharp edge to it, like a knife dragged through shards of broken glass. There was a slight slur to it, the alcohol heavy on her breath.
Another beat.
“Get out of the way, would you?” Said the stranger, who wasn’t a stranger at all.
Felicia’s jaw dropped. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit—