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It was a trap.
That was the first thought shooting through Silco’s head when he finished reading the letter he had found on his desk after returning from a meeting with the chem-baron Renni; a meeting that definitely could have gone better, but by now he was almost done with his preparations for a takeover of the Lanes, so it didn’t bother him too much. The letter however was something he couldn’t possibly have foreseen, and if its content could be believed, it rendered all of his carefully crafted plans utterly meaningless.
Because the letter was from Vander. Of all the people in Zaun, of all the people who could have an interest in writing to him for one reason or another, be it information, a part in his plans or a plea for mercy, he didn’t expect to receive a message from his old partner. Apparently Vander had subtly asked around about his current whereabouts, and in the end Sevika had agreed to deliver the letter.
“He looked really desperate, and given his current situation, I guess that’s not a surprise”, she had told Silco when he asked her why she had helped Vander, and then “Just read the letter” when he had wanted to know what she meant by that. So he did.
But it simply had to be a trap. Of course the timing was weird, since Sevika had reassured him several times that Vander didn’t know anything about his plans and the only reason why he assumed Sevika would know how to contact Silco was her personal displeasure with his way of keeping peace with Piltover. If that was true, Silco really couldn’t come up with any other reason on why Vander would choose to finish him off now, years after his initial attempt, but there simply was no way this stupid letter could actually contain just one honest word.
On the other hand, Vander usually didn’t use cunning strategies like that. Vander certainly had the necessary sharpness to craft elaborate plans if he had to, it was just that he preferred hitting every problem in his way enough times to make it disappear. At least that had been the case years ago, when Silco would have trusted him with his life without so much of a hint of a doubt.
Now it was different though. The aftermath of the terrible day on the bridge had been messy, to say the least, and given the attitude most people from the Lanes seemed to have adopted when it came to Silco, it was abundantly clear that Vander had told them some kind of lie to either justify his action towards his former partner or to just cover everything up in a way that made it seem like Silco abandoned their cause.
In Silco’s opinion this possibility was almost ironic since it appeared to be Vander who betrayed their dreams of a free nation of Zaun with his sorry attempt of ‘helping his people’ by making deals with the enforcers, of all people. Learning about this had made Silco so furious he ultimately decided it would be best to just getting rid of Vander once and for all, but somehow there still was a part in him that couldn’t accept everything they once had truly was over and their shared dreams had burned to ash in the fires of the bridge that day years ago.
Silco wouldn’t go as far as calling this feeling that so stubbornly refused to die ‘love’, at least not like it once had been, but it still turned out to be rather inconvenient for his plans for a return in the business of the Undercity. No matter how he turned it, Vander was in his way, and Silco still wasn’t completely sure if his old friend would accept him scheming his way to a deal for freedom for Zaun with Piltover’s council, or if he would search the whole Undercity as long as it took to finally bring an end to their relationship.
Vander however had already let a chance like this pass when he didn’t go after him after the failed drowning attempt, even when it should have been clear how weak and vulnerable it had left Silco. Of course he was aware that Vander indeed had tried to find him again in the following months, but whatever his motivation behind this half-hearted effort had been, it clearly hadn’t been important enough to really start digging in the deepest pits of Zaun, and soon Silco had even been bold enough to wander to the edges of the Lanes again without getting in trouble, at least as long as he stayed hidden in the shadows of the dirty alleyways. It had been evident that Vander’s priorities now lay on caring for the bunch of kids he had taken in, two of them the young daughters of Felicia and Connol.
Silco hadn’t devoted as much time for them as Vander had before Felicia’s death, but sometimes he still mourned the afternoons spent crammed in Vi’s tiny room, listening to her ramblings of what she wanted to do with Powder when Zaun finally gained independence or in turn telling her stories of the time Vander and he had gotten out of the mines thanks to the success of The Last Drop. On some days they even had been joined by Powder and ended up playing various boardgames the young girl had made up using a wild arrange of little trinkets, knick-knacks and the brightly coloured remnants of a broken floorboard until Felicia had to interrupt their sessions to finally put the complaining girls to bed. Letting these little get-togethers go sparse the farther Silco got with his plans for a united Zaun still was one of his biggest regrets. And if what the letter stated really was true…
Frustrated Silco scanned the neatly written lines again, hoping to find some clue that could convince him to disregard Vander’s claims as a malicious attempt to lure him out of his hiding again. But there simply wasn’t any.
Silco,
I know you probably don’t want to hear from me ever again and believe me, I get why. And I promise I wouldn’t be writing this letter if I knew how to figure this out myself, but I really just don’t know what to do with everything. The explosion in Piltover, I’m sure you heard about it, and the kids that got killed. Vi, Felicia’s little girl, she is one of them, she is dead, and now I’m just supposed to deal with that. She is dead and it’s my fault and I have to comfort the other kids and I can’t get Powder to stop crying and I just don’t know how to go on.
If the kids didn’t feel the need to prove themselves this would have never happened, and I just can’t stop thinking about if I could have prevented all of this. If a free Zaun could have prevented this.
I know I’m asking too much from you, I’m in no position to ask anything from you ever again and I should be thankful if you even read this, but I really need your help, I can’t do this alone. I don’t even know if you ever read my first letter and if that would make things better or worse, and I’m so sorry for everything, I hope you know that.
If not for the kids, then maybe do it for Felicia. She wouldn’t want any of this, Janna knows I already disappointed her so much, and it’s too late to change how things have gone, but maybe it’s not too late to save what’s left of everything. I have to believe that, and maybe you can too. Please write back to me.
V.
Obviously Silco had been informed about the strange explosion that had not only completely demolished the upper storey of some piltie building in the academy district and led to the exile of one of the students of the Piltover Academy, but also killed two children, one of them the daughter of the influential House Kiramman, the other apparently a kid from Zaun the newspapers didn’t even care enough about to print their name in the countless articles published about the incident, so Silco knew that this part of the letter couldn’t be a lie.
But to think that this nameless child had been Vi, little Vi, who had dreamed so brightly of a future in freedom and whose eyes had lighted up whenever Silco managed to squeeze a visit to the girls in his terribly packed schedule, was something Silco never would have dared to consider. It also was something too cruel to be a lie from Vander, or at least Silco hoped so.
On the other hand he hadn’t expected Vander’s betrayal either.
He also had found the first letter on the desk of their little hideout, weighted down by one of the glasses from The Last Drop they had brought to the place, only one of the many little details Vander had came up with to transform the shabby old storage room into something that felt more like it truly belonged to them. A place they could spend their time not only discussing possible plans for the future of Zaun, but also just enjoy each other’s company after a long day of work, talking about meaningless topics or sitting together in a comfortable silence, Silco scribbling away in his notebook while his hand absentmindedly combed through Vander’s hair, who was snoozing off next to him to catch a few moments of sleep before the start of his shift behind the counter of the bar.
With their jackets hanging from an old pipe they used as a makeshift clothes rack, Silco’s tucked into Vander’s, and the first flag of the Nation of Zaun promising a future of freedom and independence from its place pinned to the wall - a flag they had designed and crafted together- the room had been something far too personal to share with other rebels, not even with Felicia.
A few weeks after Vander’s betrayal, when Silco had made his way through the abandoned mine shaft to visit the hide-out again, he hadn’t been entirely sure what had driven him to this decision. There was nothing there he could have hoped to find but painful memories of a lost past. Maybe he simply had wanted to know if Vander had decided to destroy those, too. And although the terrible attempt at an apology Silco had found instead of the expected chaos sure had been a surprise, the badly chosen words had done nothing to sway Silco from anger or brought him anywhere near forgiving Vander for what he had done. In the end he had decided to think of the letter as a pathetic last effort to lure him out of his hiding, Vander’s clumsily chosen words probably a product of a long night spent drinking at the counter of the bar after The Last Drop had closed its doors for the usual patrons (even if Silco knew the handwriting was way to neat for this to be true).
At least this time Vander hadn’t been shameless enough to add “blisters and bedrock” at the end of his letter. Silco seriously couldn’t come up with any reason on why Vander might have thought their little saying could buy him back his affection.
Sure, Vander probably hadn’t felt great after the whole debacle either, but after all he was the one at fault for why they couldn’t try their best to get through the loss of their friend together. He had been the person that had turned on their lover, had tried to drown him in the murky depths of the Pilt and even after failing had left him with injuries so bad they might have killed Silco if he hadn’t been lucky enough for the Doctor to find him, collapsed and bleeding out in an abandoned shack in the lower levels of Zaun. So needless to say, Silco’s sympathy for Vander had been quite limited.
With the new letter Silco could at least partially understand why it hadn’t been Vander’s priority to care for how well phrased his pleas would turn out, he had lost a child after all, not to mention all of the organizational struggle he had to deal with after Vi’s death, like identifying the body and preparing a funeral, or the group of grieving kids he was responsible for. In comparison with the previous one, the length of the note made it clear how desperate Vander seemed to be, enough so to try and bait Silco with mentioning the idea of a free Zaun again, of the possibility to work together for their once shared dream again. Of course this would get Silco thinking, and Vander knew that all too well.
Scoffing Silco placed the message back on his desk next to the ever-growing stack of documents, protocols and written conversation he used to keep track of his schemes, especially the ones already set in motion to strengthen his stance as a new chem-baron, and that now could prove to be almost entirely pointless if he actually decided to help Vander. Or blindly ran into a trap, that was.
After rummaging around in one of the drawers of his desk for a cigar and lighting it, Silco sat down, laid his head against the back of the chair and watched the curling smoke escape through his lips to make its way up to the ceiling of his office. He needed to stay calm for this decision.
By now it was almost certain the letter wasn’t part of some elaborate scheme constructed to lead to his downfall, but that had been only one reason for refusing to help Vander with the situation. Silco wasn’t really sure how exactly that should work to begin with. Was Vander expecting him to look after the kids when he was too exhausted to do that himself? Should Silco try to calm down little Powder, who not only just lost her sister but also could blame him for the death of her parents? How was he supposed to help with the other children, kids he didn’t even know to begin with? And why didn’t Vander just ask Benzo for help if he needed it so desperately?
The logistics were a whole other problem, with Vander and the children living in the Lanes and Silco not being willing to permanently leave the old cannery, his current base of operations. If he actually agreed on helping out, travelling between those two locations would take up more time he could realistically afford if he still wanted to expand his business with Shimmer and maintain an at least somewhat reasonable sleep schedule. Not that he ever had been particularly great at that to begin with.
But then again, the letter made it seem like Vander truly was questioning the results of his deal with the enforcers, and if Silco played it right, he might be able to convince him to pick up their fight for independence again. It had been Vander’s dream too, after all, and if they truly could succeed this time there could be a future with no need for shady business operations and negotiations with chem-barons any more.
Silco inhaled the last drag of his cigar before stubbing it out in the ashtray standing next to the already prepared syringe he used to treat his eye with Shimmer. Vander certainly wouldn’t agree with a lot of the plans Silco had for pressuring Piltover’s Council into finally accepting a deal for Zaun’s independence and he definitely wouldn’t like the Shimmer either.
In the end however, it probably still was worth a shot, especially if Silco could use Felicia’s wish of a safe future for her children and Vander’s failure at accomplishing that to convince him to join the cause again. Sure, that might be a bit cruel, but Silco had learned that sometimes such things were necessary for change to happen. Maybe they really could achieve a better future together, now that they’ve both known failure and had grown more experience with leadership.
The possibility of seeing Powder again wasn’t so awful either. Despite the fact that he had spent considerably less time with the girl than with her sister, Silco couldn’t deny that he missed her more often than he had expected since Vander had taken them in and it had become clear he wouldn’t be able to visit them anymore.
And just maybe he was missing Vander, too. Just answering his letter wouldn’t mean he agreed to anything, right?
Slowly Silco placed a new sheet of paper on the desk in front of him, reached for his pen and started to write.