Chapter Text
Act I
Powder knows she’s dreaming.
Static in the air. A piercing resonance. Carefully cultivated crystals that remind her of the marbles she used to play with Mom. Honestly, past that, she doesn’t remember much. Everything had happened so quickly.
But her mind is brilliant, and it fills in the gaps. It turns that hazy, smoke-filled shock into technicolor detail.
There’s sounds coming outside, in the hallway.
Mylo jams a chair under the handle.
“Powder, we got to go.”
The doorknob moves. Someone curses under their breath. Fear and panic and thrill light in her veins–it’s fire to fuse to powder. Her friends are all scrambling to get the last of their haul, tossing in every scrap that looks like it could be worth something.
The person behind the door is growing more frantic. Powder doesn’t hear what they say, only her own blood pounding in her ears. She hurries to leave, corralling the last of the crystals into her bag.
One crystal (later, in the trials, the motherfucker had called it magic) tumbles out of her hands. Thud. She remembers thinking: such pretty things shouldn’t be so heavy.
The crystal rolls. Hits the wall. Distantly, a door slams open.
Hands shove her out of the way.
“Pow– ”
“What– ”
BOOM .
Blinding light. Something slams into her. Everything goes dark.
Her memory skips forward. The next thing she remembers is dust and debris, everywhere. Ringing in her ears. Smoke. Someone is coughing. The smell of ozone and damp earth and ancient stone hits her like a wave. It’s all consuming, almost indecent, the way that something so shiny and polished could feel... raw . She’s pinned underneath something heavy, and there’s red everywhere, and it kind of looks like–
The details creep in: a jacket stained with axle grease, and a bandaged hand over her eyes, and the taste of copper on her tongue, and cutting through it all is this chill that something here is unnatural, something is so very wrong, and–
Powder knows she’s dreaming.
It’s the job, which is what everyone’s been calling it these last few years. It’s mostly due to a lack of a better way to say “the incident” or “Zaun’s media moment” or (and maybe this is the real gut-punch they all avoid saying) “your sister’s…you know...”
Everything happens in flashes. Everything happens in slow motion. It’s Powder’s careful cultivation of this moment. She’s brilliant, and she’s Zaun’s most talented engineer, architect, revolutionary, you name it. Her mind tinkers with the memory, perfecting it, iterating, giving each detail a treatment and control group. But no matter which way she cuts it, there’s one constant–
Vi, completely still. Vi, who, every morning, painstakingly slicks her hair back because she wants to look more like Vander. Vi, with eyes the same pale-blue-it-was-almost-gray shade as their mother’s. Vi, who refused to teach her how to throw a punch because “ that’s what me, Mylo, and Claggor are for, dummy.” Her stupid, protective, fiercely heroic sister. Dead.
Powder knows she’s dreaming. She replays it from the beginning.
Ekko’s acting…odd.
She could chalk it up to nerves that the big day is coming, but hell, some behavior is too out of character to ignore, even for her. And after growing up in a place like The Last Drop, where every sort of shitstain from the undercity eventually crawls their way to, Powder’s seen her fair share of odd .
Like hugging Benzo. That’s fine, not a very common occurrence, but maybe he was feeling extra sentimental. The sudden waterworks? Sweet, sure. Admittedly, a little embarrassing for all of them.
His sudden chumminess with Heimerdinger is…certainly new too. It’s explainable–they’re all scientists of course–but the yordle had been with them for years now. So, it’s weirdly timed, sure. Maybe Ekko had a research question.
But not remembering how Vi died? Genuinely surprised to hear that she had died, when Powder remembers how inconsolable they both were in the months after? Odd. Like, really fucking odd.
She has half a mind to get Ekko checked for selective amnesia, or at least delayed PTSD. It’s not uncommon for Zaun residents to experience side effects from the Gray, even years later. There will always be something separating the Topsiders from the Undercity, and it could be as simple and wretched as dormant illnesses, atrophied limbs, or minds that have reached new points of breakage.
Powder hopes desperately none of these are the case with her Ekko, but he’s starting to feel more and more like a stranger with each passing moment. Every touch is met with a flinch. She leans in, and he gets this shininess to his eyes that is equal parts terror, disbelief, and hope. None of it makes sense.
That is, until he shows her shards from that fucking crystal. And everything feels like it starts sliding again.
She’s not quite sure yet if it’s the pieces sliding together, or if it’s the feeling of everything slipping from her fingers. It doesn’t make any sense. Powder wants to ask him: Where’s the sudden interest coming from? Are you trying to replicate the incident that, in one instance, ruined our family and saved Zaun? Why are you digging up old graves? What could possibly move you to revisit the lab of that madman who believed in magic?
On the other hand, a small part of her feels vindicated. I was right, she wants to scream from the underbelly of Uncle Silco’s lab to the top of Piltover’s towers. You all moved away too quickly. See? There was something we buried with her. And it makes every rerun of that damned memory feel worth it.
Ekko talks about a dream of a different life, but he speaks with the sorrow and cadence of an oft-told story. Honestly, everything slotted together at that moment. All the strange notes, the technical conversations with Heimerdinger, even Ekko’s memories that were equal parts fictitious and missing. It’s Occam’s Razor. Parsimony. The simplest answer from all these disparate, nonsensical facts.
That’s for her to put together later though. Right now, she’s staring at the mural of Vi, and there’s a buzzing between her eyes. Powder knows her sister, who loomed so large in life, died so terribly young. By all counts, and she’s tried to avoid the math every time the anniversary comes by, Powder has already lived a decade longer than her sister has. It doesn’t quite set in until moments like now, staring up at this older version of her sister.
The hair is longer, a deeper red. There’s a tattoo under her left eye. Her sister finally grew into her features–the aquiline nose, intense eyes, perpetual scowl. Janna, this…this is more than she could have ever hoped for. Vi looks like she’s still hunting for her next fight. She never looks like that in Powder’s memories anymore.
It fills her with a dangerous, impossible ache. How can she grieve, when this glimpse is more than she could have ever hoped for?
She repeats to herself, like a mantra, like a prayer, taking a leap forward means leaving a few things behind .
There’s moments that are pure light, though.
Like this: Ekko and Powder on the steps overlooking Piltover. She’s done her hair just the way she likes it for formal events, with the pink streak peeking out from underneath. The evening has been a whirlwind of breakthroughs and festivities. Warmth bubbles up within her when she thinks about everything they’ve built, about the Zaun they’ve pieced together through blisters and bedrock.
He asks her, “Can we just…pretend like it’s the first time?”
Again. Occam’s Razor. Another odd request added to the idea forming in the back of Powder’s mind. It doesn’t matter just yet though, because her Ekko (and well…technically speaking maybe not her Ekko) is there, heartbroken and hopeful.
Hand on his cheek. Powder draws from her memories, and the ghost of the same tenderness will always remain between them. It was an easy ask, anyway. Every kiss will always feel like their first. Together, they are always inventing something new.
Later, she tells herself the same thing while sneaking into the lab behind Ekko. It’s been weeks of overhearing him and Heimerdinger talk about time, space, and “getting back.” Janna, do they think she’s an idiot?
Today though, something is different. Namely, there’s a big, fat thing in the middle of her lab. It pulses irregularly, an otherworldly orb that webs. She knows that whatever this thing is, it’s reality breaking. Every fiber of her being wants to recoil, rejecting this perversion.
Time slows. Four seconds. Ekko shouts. Something is wrong. There’s no time to think. Heimerdinger jumps out of the singularity, and, in his place–
Powder takes the leap.
(It almost feels like Vi’s hands pushing her forward, away from the crystals, careening towards some terrible and unreal future where she isn’t there.)