Chapter Text
Ekko climbs swiftly into the underbelly of the airship, watching as all of the barrels of shimmer get loaded in. He needs this job to go well. He has to impress Silco. When Ekko was left, alone in the alleyway, it was Silco who found him, patched up his bleeding head, and gave him a place to stay. He was kind to him, even though he didn’t deserve it. He was a murderer. He’d killed his entire family and brutally disfigured his best friend in one fell swoop- and she had suffered. As far as Ekko was concerned, he didn’t really deserve any help, from anyone. His mind wanders as he sits on a little swing built into the airship. It doesn’t even cross his mind to wonder why it’s there, but he quietly starts checking over all his gear. He's got his weapon, a pipe that he’s ripped from a wall somewhere, and boy is he excited to use it. A high-pitched ringing sounds in his ear, but he waves his hand to clear it. He doesn’t have time to get distracted. He has to get this right.
It doesn’t take long for them to arrive. The Firelights, they called themselves. Ekko finds the nickname ‘Bugs’ much more fitting. After all, they were easy to kill. He hears the whirring of their hoverboards, the thud of their boots, the firing of their weapons, and Sevika and the other goons grunts of pain. He stands up, and quietly sinks into the shadows.
On the deck, one of the Firelights is opening a barrel of shimmer and calling another over. They are all hooded, and masks, but the one she calls is evidently their leader. She stand taller above the rest, and stare down at the shimmer with a disgruntled air about Her. No words are exchanged, just a mutual headshake and a nod. Two other Firelights head towards the underbelly, determined to find the rest of the shimmer, and destroy it.
Ekko smiles to himself as the trapdoor opens, eager for this fight to start. It’s not often Silco lets him test his new gadgets, let alone trying them on actual Bugs? This was going to be fun. He hears a flare light as the trapdoor shuts and locks behind them, his calling card, the monkey that started this whole fiasco, painted on the ceiling. There’s a whispered conversation, and he moves, deliberately knocking his weapon against a few barrels to make an echoing clang. The conversation stops, and the flare is thrown. It's nowhere near him, but now he can see them, clear as day. And they’re terrified. The fear rolling of them makes his skin prickle. This is what he lives for.
The screams are all they hear from the deck of the airship, and Sevika grits her teeth as the Firelight leader drops their head for a second. She watches them stare at the trapdoor, before turning and starting to continue emptying and ruining as much of the merchandise as they can. She’s aware of the creaking of the trapdoor, but from her position, she can’t see much. In fact, for most of the ensuing fight, she’s huddled against the crate, shielded partly by the crystals holding her there. She watches Ekko take them out, one by one, until he punches one, knocking her mask free… and freezes.
His grip on her arm is like solid stone. Her eyes are wide and terrified, and she’s trying to get away from him. The Firelight leader watches with an air of confusion, silently praying that their friend will get away. She doesn’t. As the fire begins to lick its way up her legs, she finally breaks free, only to be felled by a single strike to the back of the head. Ekko stands there, shaking, blade in his hands dripping blood. He’s completely transfixed by the blood pooling around her head, but he doesn’t look happy. He looks like he’s seen a ghost. It’s only the scream from the Firelight leader that breaks him from his trance, and he starts swinging. He’s not sure who he hits, but he’s almost certain of two connections, two sickening slices, before Sevika all but punches him in the face. He drops the blade, looking up at her, suddenly snapped out of his rage. Her face is twisted in anger, and he looks up at her, his pulse thudding so loud in his ears that he can barely make out her words.
“You were supposed to guard the cargo.”
He only scoffs.
The hurried journey back to the Undercity is uneventful. He can feel the anger coming off Sevika in waves, but he can’t bring himself to care. She was a grunt. This was her whole thing, dealing with stuff when it goes wrong. But he isn’t focused on that. He’s haunted by the fight he was just involved in. The girl’s eyes as she stared at him. They weren’t blue, were they? They couldn’t be. Yeah, maybe her hair was pink, but it can’t have been her. Silco said they found her body. He wouldn’t lie about that. After all, he was the one who comforted Ekko when he trembled after those wake-up-screaming nightmares that has followed him for years after that night.
The anger on Vi’s face.
Powder’s ruined form-
He squeezes his eyes shut. Now really isn’t the time for that. When he opens his eyes again, he realises he’s fallen behind Sevika, and before she can notice, he slips down an alleyway and away from his minder.
He makes it back to The Last Drop long before she does. Silco gives him a hum of acknowledgment as he enters the office, and very quickly scales the side of the room and nestles himself in the rafters. Ekko isn’t stupid. He knows Silco isn’t a good person, and that what he’s doing to the undercity is wrong, but at this point, he’s locked in. Silco cared for him, fed him, cleaned his wounds when nobody else was willing to. Vi’s gone. Benzo’s gone. Vander’s gone. Powder-
Ekko has nobody else, and the thought keeps him awake at night often enough that he knows staying under Silco’s thumb is his best option. He's lying on his back, looking at the glow in the dark stars he stuck up there when he was younger when the door bursts open. He doesn’t need to look to know that it’s Sevika. He’d recognise the sound of her mouth breathing anywhere.
She stomps to sit on the couch in the room, and Silco turns slowly in his chair, clipboard in hand. He’s not looking at her, and Ekko feels a swell in his chest at the power that he exudes. It’s effortless. People cower around him, and Ekko wishes he could make people do that. He refocuses when Sevika starts talking. “Job went wrong. He ran off afterwards, haven’t managed to find him.” She goes silent, and Ekko becomes aware that she’s drinking. “Swung at us. Had to hit him before he snapped out of it.”
Silco barely responds. “Mistakes happen in business.”
“It wasn’t a mistake!” Sevika snaps. “He froze up and lost his shit.”
“Is that so?” There’s rustling of paper and the scratching of a pen.
“He’s a problem and we all know it.”
The movement stops. “Who’s we?”
Ekko has to give Sevika the credit she deserves for deciding to stay silent.
Silco’s sneer is evident in his voice. “I don’t pay you for excuses. You were supposed to make sure everything went smoothly. You failed.” He takes a deep breath. “Do not disappoint me again.”
The door slams. Silco sighs, and his chair creaks as he sits back and turns to look out of the window behind him. “What happened?”
Ekko sighs and hides his face in the crook of his elbow. “She told you.”
“And I want to hear your side.”
Ekko hesitates, and slides down from the rafters, leaning against Silco’s desk, his back to him. “One of the Firelight idiots was a girl… and she had pink hair.”
“Ah.” Silco turns to him slowly, extending his injector towards Ekko, who takes it, gingerly. He shifts to perch on the edge of the desk, looking down the barrel of the cylinder. It looks like he’s checking it’s all in order. Silco watches him quietly. “Vi’s gone, Ekko.”
Ekko splutters an incredulous laugh. “I know! I know that.” His eyes are empty and distant, and he pushes off the desk. Silco’s eyes track him as he paces the room. “She said she hated me, and she left, so why do I even care if she’s dead?” He keeps laughing, but it’s more of a fighting back tears laugh. He continues rambling until he sits on the desk in front of Silco, staring down at the injector.
Silco lets him rant, before gently taking the injector, breaking his focus. “You understand why I’m doing this, don’t you?”
Ekko bites his tongue, and nods. He understands Silco’s message but feels the execution could be better. “Of course-“
Silco places the injector back into his hands. “The sons and daughters of Zaun deserve more than their runoff.” He leans his head back against the chair, sighing. “Today’s incident will set us back weeks.”
Ekko winces, feeling Silco’s disappointment in his core. “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”
Silco nods, opening his eyes as Ekko shifts, positioning the injector over his eye. “I know.”
There’s a metallic squeak as the needle shoots out, piercing Silco’s eye. Ekko shifts back onto the desk as Silco doubles over, the Shimmer coursing through his body. He takes a gravelly breath as he sits back upright, offering Ekko a slight smile. “Sevika will clean up today’s mess.”
“Sevika?” Ekko straightens up, indignant. “That ogre couldn’t clean a dust bunny with a blowtorch!”
Silco chuckles softly. “She’ll suffice. You should go home. Focus on your gadgetry.” There’s a thud as Ekko shifts to stand in front of Silco, his ashtray rolling away along the floor. “Take some time.”
“But I- I don’t need time!”
“Take it anyhow.”
Ekko storms back to his lair, and stares down the dummies he’s made on his desk. They’re nothing special, closer to worry dolls than anything else. There’s four, made of wooden clothes pegs, each to represent the four friends he’s lost He’s silently seething, teeth gritted to the point of pain in his jaw. There’s a drawing on his desk. In fact, the whole room is littered with them, in varying degrees of detail. Powder features in most of them, but it’s not quite her. Try as he might, Ekko cannot bring himself to draw her face. He’s not sure if its due to the trauma, blocking out her burns-
He shakes his head, desperately trying to clear the image behind his eyes. He digs the heel of his palms into his eye sockets as he groans. The faint droning that seems to have followed him for months flares somewhere in the back of his mind, and without thinking, he seizes the worry doll with blue hair, launching her into the abyss below his lair. He hears her bounce off the rocks for a moment, before fading into the hum.
Immediately the guilt stings him. He shouldn’t have done that. I mean, he knows she isn’t dead, so that’s not… but he should’ve remembered her the way she was, not the-
His breath catches, and he slams away from the desk, combat boots thudding along metal until he comes to a stop, sitting on the edge of the propellor. He’s got his head in his hands, but he’s suddenly aware that it’s very dark. When did night fall? He looks up towards the sky, which he can’t see from his lair, but it’s the thought that counts, as he huffs out a sigh. “It wasn’t her.”
He sees the tears streaming down Powder’s face.
“It wasn’t Vi, I just got confused, that’s all.” He’s trying to convince himself. “She’s dead, I know that.” Silco’s disappointed face, and the coldness in his tone flashes through his mind. “But now he thinks I’m weak!”
Ekko gets up and snatches his weapon and one of the trinkets he nabbed during the mission. A tiny model airship. Powder liked these. His mind bounces back to the last time he saw her.
The way her hands held his face. How quiet everything had seemed, the world no bigger than her blue eyes boring into his, before it all fell apart around him. A lump grows in Ekko’s throat, and he looks down. She’d said something, something that... Well, what exactly she’d said doesn’t matter anymore, because Ekko had snapped, and… well. Safe to say he wouldn’t be experiencing that momentary peace again. In fact, since that night, he was fairly certain he’d never even see her again, and so far that was proving to be true. She had simply vanished from the Undercity, and while it provided him some respite from the feeling of being haunted, he missed her. She was so soft, and gentle, and kind, and-
He shakes himself out of his thoughts, and pulls out a pencil, starting to scribble on the airship as he banishes her from his thoughts. Ekko returns to Silco’s disappointment, painfully aware, that as soon as he stops being useful, he will be out of a job, food, and any sort of companionship. He has to fix this, and quickly. It’s as he stares at the model airship, drawing a smiley face onto the side that the thought occurs to him. Ekko likes science, it’s one of the few things that makes sense in his traumatised mind, so he tries his absolute best to keep up with any of Piltover’s advancements. It’s for that reason that he knows of the Man Of Progress, and the developments he’s no doubt been making to Hextech in the time since he made the Hexgates. He also knows where their lab is. Ekko admires their work and knows where they are purely because he finds it a sort of tourist attraction. Certainly not for any nefarious reason, but the same way you’d know where a celebrity lives. Well. Not for a nefarious reason, until now. Surely there must be something good he can bring back to show Silco. That’s sure to get Ekko back in his good graces. He smiles and starts tossing the airship up and down.
“Oh, this is gonna show him for sure.”