#silcoxreader

“Wait here. Gotta report.”

You settle into the same booth you had that drunken night, glancing up at the floor above, to the shadows that hide the door to Silco’s office, as Sevika trudges to go give him the rundown.

What will she say? The girl is crazy. No; she made a mistake. You cringe. She doesn’t owe you that courtesy, and it would be a lie. She lost control and shot a kid. That’s the accurate one. Accidentally. No; without realizing what she was doing. And that’s the worst part, isn’t it?

Teeth pinch at your lip, fingers fidgeting with the rumpled sleeve of your freshly-dried shirt. Before you know it, you’re back to the calming pattern of wedging your thumb nail between the plates of your prosthetic sleeve, tracing up and down your forearm, plucking at hard thin edges. Just enough to tug at your nail bed, just enough to hurt.

Waiting is its own special torture. You can’t stop remembering the last time you were here. The sting, the burn, the ecstasy…

Cheeks flame, throat feeling constricted as you fend off memories of his hands.

You had bruises after that. Nothing horrible, but a subtle ache that brought the memory to mind if you sat on the edge of a seat, or leaned against anything that pressed into a mark. Not a bad pain by any means, but a bittersweet one. More bitter than sweet, all things considered. The regular shimmer taken for your arm made the pain and marks fade quick, but you may have spent a night admiring them. Wanting more.

You’re such a goddamned sucker. Wanting him so much, when you know better.

The brief flutter of hope in your chest as Sevika reappears gets squashed by your own hand as soon as you notice it. If he doesn’t care, you can’t either.

…Fuck, you should know better.

Her walk down the stairs is silent, and you can’t tell if the slight furrow of her brow and thin press of her lips is irritation, confusion, or - knowing Sevika - irritation that she’s confused. There’s not quite enough on her face to read, or maybe she’s not feeling anything strongly enough to show.

Or maybe you’re paranoid and trying to see something that isn’t there.

“…Head on up. He’s waiting.”

He’s waiting. Your mouth goes dry, anxiety gnawing like a mouse on a wire at the base of your skull. Every worst-case-scenario flips through your mind before you shove that list out of your mind and opt to just stop thinking entirely as you walk upstairs to his office door.

A knock.

“Enter.”

How does one word now carry so much promise?

You try to hide your tells, but can’t help the hard swallow after struggling to breathe past the nervous lump in your throat. Hopefully you don’t start choking. That wouldn’t exactly prove your stability. Is proving your stability even possible?

The chair is back. Cheeks flame as everything that had happened in its absence plays on quintuple speed in your head. Palms— then elbows— then your whole burning face pressed to the desk, the desperate need that had snapped inside you. And how he’d satiated that need. The hand on your back as he thrust gloved fingers into you, the presence of him, rocking against you in tiny sinful movements.

You almost feel lightheaded, remembering. Blinks come more rapidly than usual, trying to push the image out of your mind.

Silco isn’t looking at you. Instead, a long finger taps delicately at a paper set before him. It almost feels like mercy, for him to be focused elsewhere. As soon as his eyes start to rise, you panic and drop your gaze to his collar. That tie, a perfect symbol of professionalism and discipline.

Discipline. Oh gods, wrong word.

“…You stayed at the gym overnight.”

It’s an observation, not a question, but you still offer your affirmation. “Yes.” He makes no comment about dropping the honorific. This is more serious than that.

“Why.”

For a fraction of a second you meet his gaze, before looking down again. “I don’t know.” It’s almost a whisper, voice feeling so small. The silence isn’t oppressive, but you can’t help the shame welling up around you. It wasn’t what you meant to happen, you didn’t even realize what was going on before you felt the cold shower shock you to your senses.

“Why didn’t you come here?”

…What?

You don’t even think to hide the surprise on your face as you meet that uneven gaze, flicking between the pale sea and the hellfire glow.

It doesn’t feel quite like hellfire. Whatever it is you’re feeling from him, it’s not rage or heat. There’s something reserved about his demeanor. Subdued. Not gentle, but barely a hint of that authoritative grip; a statue unto himself.

“I…” Why hadn't you? Weakly, you shrug a shoulder. “I can’t answer that.” It’s a frank answer. No lie there; if the choice was conscious, it wasn’t one you remember now. In lieu of certainty, you can’t offer an adequate response.

He’s silent for a long moment. Hands in your lap fidget, but it isn’t the heavy expectant silence of some other meetings. You can almost see him carefully tasting his words, deciding how to approach the conversation.

“What happened?”

“Sevika said she was going to tell yo—”

“I’m asking you.”

Something twinges in your gut. You didn’t think his calm could hurt you so much, and you can’t tell why it does. Maybe you expected to be berated and ripped apart for your mistake; this even-footed respect is disorienting. Maybe it hurts because he can’t seem to meet you so evenly in… other matters.

Maybe you don’t think you deserve his patience.

Most likely, it’s some conflicted mess of all three.

“…I didn’t realize what I was doing.” Only barely loud enough to reach him across the desk. When he has no reaction, you swallow and continue. “The kid pointed a gun at me.” Eyes go blank as you try very hard not to remember it, but you can feel your chest tightening. “And I— shot him.” Breath coming faster.

You cross your arms, digging nails into your bicep, pinching hard, drawing awareness away from the rush of shame and fear and memory. Eyes drop to the desk, and you gnaw at the inside of your lip with one quick bite that’s too hard, immediately breaking skin and making you wince. Doesn’t matter, it’s serving its purpose. You blink away the empty, forcing yourself to continue.

“It wasn’t even a real gun,” the hint of disgust that turns your stomach is audible, brow furrowed. “He was a kid, with a paintball gun, and I shot him.”

He says your name quietly, but firm. Pulling your attention, even if the look you raise to him is pained. “The boy is fine. You didn’t kill him.”

Shaking your head, you focus on your lap once more, posture hunched, like you can somehow protect yourself from your own mess of frustration, revulsion, trepidation. “It’s not about killing him— or shooting him, even, it’s—” You choke on it, but soldier on. “I wasn’t there. I was…”

“You were here. Losing your hand.”

Drawing in a breath, you hold it, nodding stiffly. Again, he’s read your mind. You don’t think to wonder how he knows exactly what you were thinking in that moment.

There’s a silence again, and you just want him to take control. Give you something to do, someone to be, something to feel that isn’t this mess roiling inside you.

When it stretches on too long, you finally give in and look.

The mismatched gaze fixed on you is guarded: calculating, measuring you up. You’re wary of what it might mean, after… everything. But he doesn’t seem angry, or pitying, or stern, or any shade of malevolent, really. Not like he’s about to say you’re too unstable to be armed. He’s just… thoughtful.

Finally, he scoots his chair back and stands. Walking to you with measured steps, he offers his hand. Not for the prosthesis, either; skin for skin.

The burn of your ears seems to radiate heat as you look at his open palm. It feels— too close. After the disastrous way things ended the other day— and no glove. No barrier. No added protection of games and roles to fall into.

Just his hand, open for yours.

“What is this about?” You’re trying to ask more questions now, to keep things clear. This can’t be another moment he’ll just walk back later, leaving you once more alone.

Again, your name.

You want to take his hand. Badly.

“Indulge me. Please.”

It’s the please that does it. A wary glance up at him before you take his hand, heat zinging through you at the way he squeezes your palm as he helps you to your feet. Like a silly little girl with a crush, blush seeping across your chest and up your neck. Fixated on the ghost of calluses on his hand against yours, even if your eyes watch his face.

The hint of self-satisfaction in that hidden smirk makes your eyes narrow. Exactly what kind of plan is this?

For a second, you’re about to ask, before you realize he isn’t leading you away, but rather escorting you around to his side of the desk. Dropping your hand to lift the paper he’d been reading and set it in the corner of this desk. Clearing the center.

Your eyes linger on the empty space, recalling the last time his desk had been cleared.

Silco pulls the chair back, creating a gap plenty big enough for you. He gestures to the surface. “Sit.”

Warily, you hesitate. You said no more games, and this feels like it might be one— but part of you still wants to play. Or at least see what it is.

…You can call it off, if you need to. That’s your decision: see what he wants, and call it off if necessary. With that decided, you take the offered seat.

It’s a strange place, perched on his desk. Too many bad ideas flicker through your head as you settle, even as you beat them back into their hidden places again. (The things you’ve thought about doing on this desk— particularly after last week…)

“Comfortable?” Silco asks, standing with one hand on the back of his chair as he waits for an answer.

You shrug a shoulder, noncommittally.

A raised brow prompts a more satisfactory answer.

“Seems so.” …Okay, maybe you haven’t completely given up making things difficult.

There’s a twitch to his lips, that hidden smirk that flicks a thrum in your chest. In one smooth move, he’s seated, and you shift back as he grasps the edge of the desk to roll himself closer, pressing your knees open as he tucks his legs into the space beneath.

Involuntarily, your back arches for him, hips shifting nervously at how open and vulnerable your position feels. Thank fuck you wear pants nearly every day. At least there’s that consolation.

An appreciative glance rakes over your body regardless, sending heat straight to your core, though the position you’re in prevents you from properly relieving any of that newfound tension. Instead, the instinct to close your legs just presses them against his hands, earning you a knowing look that makes your face flush and eyelids feel heavy.

His eyes drop to your knees, and one hand flattens, his pinky brushing your inner thigh before he seems to think better of it and pulls away.

Once again you struggle to fend off thoughts of his hands roaming your body.

The clear eye closes, a slow intake of breath one of the most transparent tells you’ve ever seen from Silco. Trying to refocus, but on what?

He wheels back just enough to reach for his desk drawer. Suspicion pricks behind your ear, trying to recall anything you've ever seen him pull from the desk, and what drawer they were located in. You’re ticking through options that all feel too much too quickly when he pulls out the odd syringe you’d seen him use with Jinx. There’s a click as he locks one piece into place, then a soft tk tk of his finger flicking the barrel.

As neutral as you try to keep your face, there’s a certain confused notch between your brows. You can’t help but stare at the device, trying to determine how it works, before glancing to Silco’s face again.

There’s a very slight smile on his lips, but it’s more like a grimace. This isn’t something he looks forward to using, obviously. Fair: it looks painful.

The chair rolls between your legs again, and Silco leans back, gesturing with the device. “Like this.” He holds it well above the intended target, making sure to emphasize where the hand holds and where the fulcrum is on the lever, how low you can choke your grip while still being able to activate it. Squeezing the grip makes a click that reminds you of the injector you use for painkillers, and similarly a needle (even if this is much longer) stings out from the canister, a dose of cool-toned shimmer delivered into the air above his cheek rather than his eye.

Silco wipes the liquid from his skin with his other hand, not bothering to find a handkerchief. “Is that clear?”

“You… you want me to-”

He nods, already offering the syringe. When you don’t immediately take it, he pulls your wrist to him to place it there.

You jump at the contact. Anxiety makes your prosthesis tingle, hyper aware of what you should be feeling where his fingers touch you.

“…You’re sure you want-”

The firm way he says your name brokers no argument. “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t believe you were capable.”

It shouldn’t steal your breath the way it does. He’d said it to Jinx, when she held his medicine in her hands. I trust you. That’s what this means. More than any I’m sorry, or I was wrong: this is an apology, and so much more.

He pulls the chair even closer, fully invading your space well before he leans back at an angle, watching you with an even stare, hands on the armrests. Ready. Prepared. Trusting.

Your ribs feel crushed, but you try to keep your hands as steady as possible.

“Take a breath,” he advises, voice low. You love that voice, when he speaks for an audience of one. “When you’re ready.”

A breath. Another.

You lean into his space, fully willing to complete the task, but unsure where to place your good hand to brace yourself.

Slim fingers take a gentle hold of your wrist, directing your fingers into his hairline, palm gently pressed against his forehead. The grip on your wrist is enough, but that brief combing hair between your fingers… Heat rushes through you at the contact, and right behind it a thin sparking wire of hurt, remembering the last time you got so close, and how he’d so quickly rejected you, striking right at your weakest points.

And now here he is. Baring his weakness to you, offering you a tool that can strike just as hard.

You look away from your task, examining his face, your own troubled.

“It’s okay.” His reassurance warms the air.

That thing fluttering in your chest won’t shut up. To silence it, you resolutely focus on the assignment, determined to do it right and not hurt him.

Lined up, eye socket in the cradle of the device. Hold your breath.

Click.

Instinctively the hand on his forehead drops to his shoulder, steadying him as he lurches forward, a grimace warping his features. You drop the device back on the desk and quickly steady his head again with the prosthesis. No sorry comes from your lips, because you already knew this would happen— you knew this is supposed to happen, even if seeing him in pain wrenches at your gut.

A trickle of shimmer leaks from the bad eye, and you swipe it away with a ceramic thumb—

A tiny noise of surprise catches in your throat.

Again, you swipe your thumb over the scarred skin. Then your other fingers. The tingling is brief, and settles, but you still feel warmth. You still—

Breath hitches, throat constricting, and you do it again.

You cup his cheek and run the thumb up the valleys of scars, barely brushing against skin. Softer than you’ve been able to achieve until now. Because now…

Tears spring to your eyes, fingers fanning across the scarred half of his face, breath uneven.

“I—” You can’t even find words.

For the first time in over a month, you have a hand again.

Every little divot, every puckered edge of old wounds, the heat of his cheek, the minuscule hairs on those areas left untouched— you feel it all.

There’s no attempt to hide the overwhelming flood that seizes you in its grip. Wonder and relief and bittersweet pain that you’d missed it for so long, all playing out across your face, inches from his. You still stare at his scars, at the ceramic fingers tracing along them— your fingers, finally feeling a part of you.

Flesh hand digs into his shoulder, excitement making you shift on your perch, push closer, reveling in the sensation.

It’s clear this is connected to the shimmer, because not every inch has gained feeling, just the textured finger pads that brushed the medication from his cheek. Realization clicks that that’s why your wrist tingled as well, once he took it with shimmer-touched fingers. Whatever mix he has, whatever specialized formula is in that syringe, that’s the key. Part of you wants to drench the hand in that mix, but you don’t want to let go.

A delicate touch follows the ashen curve beneath his eye, the half-missing eyebrow, then up along one deep scar to finger the start of the distinct light streak in his hair. A short breath breaks from lips parted with amazement at the fine texture freshly available to those fingers. Drawing down the scars again. Back up, in a slow lazy pattern.

Down, up, mapping his fault lines. Worshipping his injuries with your own.

It’s only his sigh of breath that makes you zoom out, to see more than just your fingers caressing skin. His good eye is closed, though there’s a small touch of concern pulling his brows together, just slightly. Lips are tight but not distressed exactly...

Again, it’s an expression you know.

Want.

Need for more, and a refusal to act on that need.

—At least, assuming you’re reading him correctly.

The thing in your chest beats against your rib cage frantically, heart speeding as you consider the choice you’re halfway done making.

Fingers cup his cheek. Ceramic thumb follows those lines again, down to the point where they meet his lip. It brushes across the skin there, running back and forth over lips far softer than you expected, marveling at every little ridge you can feel, how you can suddenly feel his breath hitting skin that no longer exists.

Maybe you didn’t consider this decision at all, because not a single consequence has cemented itself in your mind. Your body acts on its own, bending to close the distance between you. Hardly a fraction of a second of hesitation.

You press your lips to the corner of his mouth, to the spot where the scars end, still cupping his face with your ceramic hand. A kiss without kissing.

—

[Happy new year! Feels about time we get some real intimacy y’know? 😏

Anyway, I originally intended to post this Christmas Eve, but then I got in a car crash on the 16th (I’m fine, my car isn’t) and had to deal with all that while my parents were out of town, an underwhelming holiday, followed by a 12-to-24 hour stomach bug the day after getting back to my apartment. Overall, a bit of a mess for the holidays 🥲 Thanks go out to anyone who helped me shoulder the cost of all of that, it really did add up when it comes to the ridiculous price of a cross-state-lines car rental. And also, though they’ll never read this, thanks to my fellow Jewish families that I can rely on to feed me when I’m left alone on Christmas Eve/day 😅 Honestly, I was super lucky to have the friends and family I have, it made all of this mess bearable.

ANYWAY.

I only have like 85-90% of the next chapter written, and I want to find some way to bring it to at least somewhat of a conclusion, since I haven’t been able to write for shit lately, but want to give some degree of closure for loyal readers. We’ll see what I can manage, I guess! But the original intention of posting 29-31 before the end of the year… welp. That apparently isn’t going to happen >< Holiday complications were unexpected. Regardless, I have to do the regular plugs and requests, so; if you liked this chapter, let me know! Comments, reblogs, responses on the ao3 post, etc— and if you want to find more content (reverse POVs you may have missed, art you may not have seen (new art coming soon!), fics from friends, etc) you can find all of that on the story’s masterpost here on tumblr. If you want to be tagged in the next (and potentially last?) chapter of this fic, just comment on this linked post to join the tag list.

I love you all so much, it always thrills me to see people’s reactions, and this has been a bright spot in the mess of the last couple weeks. ❤️ -verbs]

Silco was supposed to be out for the day on shimmer business. No therapy, no planned contact. She’d already mourned over the minor loss, for Janna’s sake. Something oddly indignant had her lips forming a thin line and, clutching the gun with a suddenly damp hand, she spun around finally.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she stuttered, feeling immediately stupid.

Silco’s lithe form leaned against the splintered door frame, hands in his pockets, something she’d come to recognize as dark amusement glittering in his eyes. He must have just returned from a business engagement because he was wearing that damned coat.

His gaze dropped sharply to her prosthesis.

“On the contrary, my dear.” Silco’s eyes flicked back up to hers. “I go wherever I please.”

He shouldn’t be out alone, without protection. No, she disciplined herself, not for the first time. He could take care of himself. She knew that.

“Jinx helped me set this up,” she offered, at a loss for words.

“She is who directed me here,” he said, brow quirking as he peeled from the door frame, beginning a slow saunter toward her. “And curiosity, I suppose.”

Oh, he was wearing gloves, she noticed right away, a blush beginning a heated track across her cheeks. She tried not to let her shameful gaze wander as she fought off every instinct to take a step back for each one of his forwards.

Because this wasn’t his office. This was entirely new territory.

“About?” she asked lightly, turning from his approaching form, lest he spot something in her expression that he shouldn’t.

It was supposed to be a surprise, she thought, that she’d taken to practicing. Well, with her gun, of course. She wanted to pout. She wasn’t a child, she didn’t need to perform tricks for the man.

But she wanted to, didn’t she? Wanted to impress him. Hated that she ached for that praise.

“Your progress, of course.”

She nodded, swallowing down the sudden dryness in her throat as he inspected the area, eyeing the crudely made moving targets, dragging two sinful fingers across the surface of a nearby table until he came to a halt in front of a gold-plated, full-length mirror, contemplating.

There was something… excitable about him tonight, a feverish energy prickling the air around him like a live wire.

Hm.

“Your meeting go well?”

Silco’s head canted just enough for her to see the slow, evil curl of his lips from the shadows.

“More than well.”

His crimson eye sharply tracked the movement of her violent shudder from over his shoulder before he turned on his heels, making his way back.

She couldn’t feign indifference anymore when his boots stopped inches away, looming over her.

Silco’s voice was soft, but the glint in his eye was a knowing one.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d been practicing?”

She peered up from under her lashes and shrugged. Elected, instead, to stare intently at the silk tie that cinched his thin neck.

“I was planning on it.”

“Were you?” he asked, studying her a moment before stepping back, arms gesturing wide, flippant. “Demonstrate.”

Demonstrate… again?

She stared, unnerved. It was a pretty simple request, really, and it wasn’t as if it were the first time she’d been asked to perform for him. It was just different somehow,when these strange new boundaries seemed to be evolving, mutating by the second.

“Show me,” he repeated, eyes steady on hers, brooking no room for argument.

She turned to the whirring machine, a single target remaining. Her body felt alight with jitters, tremendously aware of the way his gaze stripped her down to her center, capturing and devouring her uneasiness like a cat with a mouse tucked beneath its paw.

She had 12 rounds. Nose twitching, she released a cleansing breath and took aim.

“Ivy,” he chided, and she grit her teeth.

They weren’t in his office. This wasn’t therapy.

She felt his searing satisfaction as she begrudgingly switched her gun to her prosthesis.

Closing one eye, she lined up her shot, peripheral vision blurring until the only thing down her sight was the moving target.

Her finger tightened on the trigger and-

She practically leapt out of her skin as something brushed across her back lightly, sending her shot firing upward. Whirling, she found Silco on her other side now, feet away, looking entirely unapologetic, fixing his glove.

“So sorry, do try again.”

She stared, unblinking, something irreparably destabilizing in the light touch of his hand, a cold shudder clanking down her spine.

11 rounds.

She could do this. Silco knew it, too, had been watching her for Janna knows how long before announcing his presence.

She squeezed her eyes shut, breathed, adjusted her stance.

And shuddered. It never worked. Never. Whenever she had to try. No, she had to feel it. But all she could feel right now was that paralyzing gaze, much too close as it darted across the angles of her profile.

Squinting in concentration, her shot fired out, skimming just outside the little target.

10 rounds.

“Try again,” he commanded harshly from her side.

She bit her lip, took a deep, quaky breath, trying to dispel the odd tremble in her limbs, the slow, crawling heat that was blooming softly in her belly. She raised the gun once more.

And missed.

She’d just done it. He’d seen.

9 rounds.

“You’re rushing. Again.”

Her throat constricted.

Was that excitement in his tone?

Another miss.

8 rounds.

“Again.”

She lowered the gun limply to her side, glaring pointedly ahead.

“I can’t,” she muttered, thoroughly humiliated.

“Oh, come now. Don’t be like that.”

And again, there was something… volatile in the chime of his voice. Like he was playing with her.

He stepped forward, tapping her bicep.

“Up.”

She jolted at the contact and with an almost embarrassing speed, did just as he asked, heating blooming across her cheeks at her unconscious submission.

With a low, approving hum at her side, he altered her grip on the gun, scarcely touching her, the hem of his coat brushing ghostlike across the backs of her knees.

Heart clattering like a tin can, eyes squeezed shut to try and lessen the quivering in her limbs from his proximity alone, she waited for him to release her wrist. But he didn’t, instead dragging his firm grip upward to rest on her elbow.

“There you are,” he said breezily, “Now, try again.”

The shot rang out.

Went completely stray, wood shattering somewhere in the recesses of the room.

7 rounds.

“It wasn’t but five minutes ago you were hitting every one.”

She let out a stuttering gasp when his arm progressed upward to wrap almost painfully tight around her upper arm.

“I wonder what it is that has Ivy so unsettled.”

Silco was hardly touching her. And she was melting, desperately trying to center herself from the crashing wave of almost nauseating desire that swelled from the single point of contact.

“For one, I can see a few improvements to be had,” he tsked, “One being your stance. Too stiff.” A booted foot wedged between her legs, kicked out her back foot, bringing his heat that much closer to her wobbling form.

Breath lightly caressed the shell of her ear, tone holding a cunning note of underhanded bemusement.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d been practicing?”

Because she wanted to impress him.

“Hm?” he prompted after a prolonged silence.

“I wanted to get back into shooting,” she exhaled, “That’s all.”

A rumble of disapproval hummed through his chest.

“Try again,” he commanded.

And she carried out his orders, how could she not? Squeezed the trigger, hardly aiming anymore, the shot once again going wide.

6 rounds.

A hand lightly grazed up her side, paused, almost in permission, and she found herself leaning back on her heels just slightly, searching for the heated planes of his stomach. Finding empty air, his body circumventing hers, always withholding.

His movement resumed as her breathing hitched, his knuckles just barely brushing the outside curve of her breast before traveling back down, fingers bracing almost tenderly around the soft skin just above her hip bone.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d been practicing?” he asked again, voice lethally quiet.

“I wanted-“

She stopped. It was too much, too humiliating. Because he was just going to mock her, step away and she’d have to go home, suffer the lonely consequences.

But then his nose brushed the curve of her ear, tracing the shell. And one of her knees buckled as she choked out a telling gasp. His palm slid around to her abdomen, splayed there, not so much bracing her up as just resting lightly, taunting.

“What is it? What did you want?”

She grimaced, couldn’t help the way her head drooped in embarrassment. Her voice was small, weak. Just like her subsequent words.

“I wanted you to be proud.”

Silco’s dark chuckle in her ear was practically a purr, sent a flurry of tremors racing down her stiffening spine.

“Did you?” His pinky moved a fraction, brushing just slightly across the top of her waistband. Her knees locked, nails latching onto the wrist of his offending hand. “And do you think I’m proud of you?”

Her lips thinned and she turned her glare away from his line of sight,

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, humiliation scorching like a wildfire across her cheekbones.

“Allow me to rephrase. Do you need more attention?”

All she could manage was a quick, indecipherable jerk of her head.

“Your words,” he commanded.

Another rough swipe of his pinky across her navel and she squeaked, pressing desperately backward, trying to escape the hot shock of desire that accompanied the miniscule motion and only managing to entangle herself further into him.

She let out a string of garbled nothings.

“What was that?” he taunted, nose grazing her temple. “Is it my attention you want?”

The gloved hand gripping her bicep traveled upward slowly, across the gentle curve of her shoulder, up the slope of her neck and into her raven hair, where it expertly massaged her scalp. She vibrated against him like an overheating engine, breathing shallow and head clouding with a heady lust.

“Yes,”she panted, eyes closing at the sensation. “Yes, sir.”

“Good girl,” he crooned, exhaling a quiet laugh as she clenched her thighs together, the words traveling lightning quick to the pooling wetness between them. Just as he knew they would.

And she’d just begun to relax into the gentleness, into something almost resembling a lover’s embrace, when his hand fisted roughly in her hair, yanking back until she had to arch her back to accommodate. Her hoarse cry echoed obscenely across the empty warehouse.

Silco’s words were ragged, hissed into her cheekbones, his knife-bladed nose pressed tightly against her hairline from where her head now lay across his shoulder.

“Have you considered, Ivy, the implications of holding my attention?”

Of course she had.

“Y-yes.”

And he tightened his fist further. The unoccupied gloved fingers dipped just beneath the hem of her pants, sitting there unmoving, and she bucked in his grip, eyes blurring with a heady mix of pain and pleasure.

“Make the shot.”

Her jaw slackened when he responded to her hesitation with an agonizing tug, the nails of her flesh hand digging red crescents into his forearm.

No, came a stubborn little voice inside her head.

But Janna, she wanted to hit that moving target for him. And she hated that she did.

“Hit the target, Ivy.”

Perhaps, she thought, a compromise.

With a frustrated cry, she locked her arm, fixed her sights elsewhere, finger pulsing like mad against the gun trigger until she’d unleashed all 6 rounds, the empty chamber clicking furiously several times before she finally relented on it.

Her arm dropped limply to her side.

And what followed was the purest form of silence, with only the weighted sounds of their oxygen intertwining as they both stared at a now busted dress mannequin with six perfect bullet holes in its chest.

See? She was fully capable.

She listened, with a subtle, growing anxiety, to Silco’s increasingly ragged breath fanning across her cheek, his fingers having loosened in her hair.

Had she messed this up?

She turned, painfully slow, afraid of what she might find, of the devastating, smirking outcome. But as the tip of her nose brushed his, she found it was the lack of humor that terrified her the most: a crazed intensity there that nearly consumed the beautiful teal of his right eye.

“Sir?”

He attacked. Hauled her wriggling form backward like she weighed nothing at all.

“Oh, you,” he snarled into her ear, “That wasn’t what I asked for at all, was it?”

She clung onto him for dear life.

“Complying just enough to strike innocent.”

She was propped up dazedly in front of the stand-up mirror, feeling very much like the ruined, lead-filled mannequin lying prone behind them.

“But do you want to know what I think?”

A gloved hand wrapped the front of her throat, pressing just enough to make her dizzy, the other traveling up the muscled planes of her abdomen.

“I think you tremble when I’m near,” he spat, emphasizing with a brush of his thumb across the fluttering pulse of her neck, pulling a pathetic whine from her.

It was near impossible to comprehend the mirror’s reflection, Silco’s chin resting on her shoulder, his calculating, frenzied eyes holding hers in a perilous deadlock.

“I want you to see yourself, Ivy, just how desperate you really are.”

As if on a mission to prove his point, she pressed backward dazedly, seeking out his heat through the small gap between their bodies.

She couldn’t be the only one.

She reached behind, trailing up Silco’s thigh.

And cried out in fresh pain as the roaming fingers on her stomach shot upward, locating and twisting her nipple hard through her t-shirt, serrated nose driving into her temple as he harshly reprimanded.

“When did I say you could touch?”

She entrenched her claws hopelessly into the smooth skin of Silco’s forearm, as if he had her dangled over an active volcano. Fingers dipped beneath her waistband, thumb brushing teasing strokes across the sensitive inner junction where thigh met groin. Each narrow pass of his digit left her trembling, just as he’d said, the pulsing between her legs fringing on painful.

She protested. “Why don’t I get to tou-“

Silco squeezed her windpipe, lips quirking villainously in the mirror as he choked the span of two breaths, her back bowing mechanically, backside grinding backward into an impressive erection.

“You’ll get your chance,” he said, “So long as you beg for it.”

Ivy was never one to sulk. She took life’s abuse with a hard glint in her eye, with her jaw clenched firmly against the storm. Therefore, the fact that the man was able to elicit such a quivering pout out of her was alarming to say the least.

Spotting her growing petulance, his thumb swiped once, hard, across her clit. A throaty cry cracked through the air as her knees buckled, head thrown back against his shoulder, resting on the wide lapel of his coat.

Panting, she desperately tried to paddle back to shore through the crashing onslaught of blood rushing through her now ringing ears, hardly catching Silco’s theatrical sigh through the haze.

Silco’s breath tickled the exposed column of her throat as the fingers around her throat dipped into the V of her shirt.

“I’m undecided as to what to do with you, Ivy,” he crooned. “Such a good girl for practicing on your own.”

Something delightful and warm snaked through her chest at the praise.

“But to keep such progress from me?”

“I’m s-sorry,” she rasped, voice tight.

“Oh, I know you are.”

Silco pinched a nipple between two fingers, paired it with another hard swipe across her clit, wrenching another moan from her throat.

“Look at yourself.”

Hesitantly, she cracked her eyes open, peering dazedly at the salacious scene.

Silco hunched, one hand lazily massaging her breasts, the other one down her pants. Her cheeks ruddy, chest heaving with fruitless gasps as she clung to him like a cat on a high branch. And he lay in wait below, arms splayed, a gold and crimson-tinted thorn bush.

“All I need you to do, Ivy, is beg.”

She knew he’d spotted it, that emblematic precipice she stood on. It reflected plain as day in her lust-filled eyes, how he’d won her subservience.

Something victorious and equally vicious quirked his lips into a devilish smirk.

She would beg. She would do it. But she was dragging him down with her.

And he did falter just the slightest when her nose brushed his jagged cheekbone as she turned to ghost her words hotly across the lobe of his ear.

“Please,” her breathlessness entirely genuine, chest heaving against his palm. “I need- I need you to touch me.”

And at the tattered, uneven breath in response, she surrendered, loading the final bullet in the chamber, pressing her damp forehead into the lapel of his coat, sighing into his neck.

“Please, sir. Please, Silco.”

Like a hot stove, she was released suddenly, and there was a long moment where her stomach free fell in anxiety.

Clearing off a nearby table with a ferocious swipe of a single arm, he yanked it in front of her, its legs squealing raucously across the concrete flooring.

With a shocking, cobra-like speed, he had her torso driven into the surface, one hand on her midback, the other going to work on her pants. Dexterously, he unclasped the buttons with a single hand, tearing her pants and underwear down to her ankles in one fell swoop.

Two gloved hands smoothed across the globes of her buttocks, spreading her to the cold air, exposing the wetness she knew full well was glistening on her inner thighs.

She dropped her forehead in a sudden wave of embarrassment and was quickly reprimanded with a tight fist in her hair, his eyes scorching into hers from where they hovered over her head.

“Oh no, you don’t get to look away from this.”

One hand gave her backside a rough thwack and she instantly pushed backward, shamelessly seeking him out.

“Look at you,” he breathed almost reverently.

Silco hardly allowed her the time to feel self-conscious as he released her hair, his now free hand hovering for just a moment in front of her panting mouth before she found herself suddenly invaded, leather fingers pressing inward, exploring the cavern of her mouth, scissoring, shoving slowly across the pad of her tongue until she gagged, eyes watering.

He slipped them out again.

“Bite,” he commanded.

And it took her a few dazed seconds to understand, vision misting. She quickly closed her teeth around the tip of his middle finger, allowing him to tug backward, to free his hand from the glove.

The second it was unencumbered it dove between her legs. Once again, her head thudded onto the table with a vulgar moan, quickly morphing into a whine of despair when his hand disappeared, clapping again at the soft flesh of her backside.

“What did I say?” he reprimanded, and she raised her head obediently.

“Good.”

His fingers danced across the backs of her thigh, kneading softly up to the place he’d just spanked and she bit her lip, hardly caring about the smugness twisting his features, nothing else more important than getting his fingers between her legs again.

“You said you want me to touch you?”

“Yes.”

“Where, exactly?”

Her eyelids fluttered in frustration as Silco’s warm digits danced across her inner thighs, merely outlining her throbbing core.

“Touch m-“ she stuttered, nearly incoherent, “Just touch me.”

“You’ll have to be more specific, dear.”

“Put your fingers inside me,” she snapped, and was rewarded with a third, sharp spank. Another painful fist in her hair.

“So shameless, so ill-mannered.”

But she didn’t miss the way his erection dug into her side approvingly.

“Please, sir” she pleaded.

Silco chuckled darkly, hinging forward from the waist, booted feet on either side of one of her quivering legs, lips tracing the shell of her ear.

“Remember this, Ivy,” he said, voice dangerously soft, as he kicked her insole, successfully widening her stance. “I’m not without mercy.”

And two fingers bee-lined to her clit, performing a quick circle around the sensitive bud. A shattered gasp tore from her throat and she only just managed to catch her head from dropping in pure, sanity-shattering bliss.

Silco dipped his fingers carefully between her wet folds, eyes wild and calculated as he drank in her reactions like a fine wine, chin coming to a rest atop her head.

“You are a needy thing,” he murmured quietly, and she shuddered at the feeling of his jaw working, at how docile she remained, pinned beneath him. “Perhaps I should have paid you better attention.”

He spread the growing slick, wanting her to feel how wet she was for him.

“Alleviated you sooner.”

Silco relented to her whining pleas, pushing two fingers slowly inside her, hooking them in a way that had her jaw dropping in euphoria, a low, satisfied groan puncturing the air, her nails digging into the wood from where her arms framed her head.

“You are under my supervision after all.”

He soon pumped with a third finger, refraining from speech, forcing her to listen to the sounds of her arousal, of just how drenched he’d made her.

Silco’s gloved hand released her hair, forging a lazy trail down the center of her back.  The gentleness sent shivers of pleasure through her already quaking form as he stroked across each vertebra until he reached her tailbone.

Bending, arm encircling her hips, leather-covered fingers located her aching bud, and she jerked forward, grinding against the unmoving digits.

He withheld any compassion, instead watching with a predatory head cock as she struggled against him in a desperate bid for friction.

“I suspect this isn’t the first time you’ve found yourself writhing against my glove, is it?”

And her stomach dropped, frenzied, lust-filled eyes connecting with his own in the mirror. It should’ve been shameful, the recognition, and it was certainly there, that twinge of embarrassment. But more than anything, it was a freeing acknowledgment of the tension that had been building over the course of a week and a half.

And she felt oddly fine with him knowing exactly what he did to her.

Her chin squeaked against the surface of the table as she jerked her head back and forth, finally tilting it to the side so she could speak.

“No. It’s not.”

Silco’s expression dripped in a villainous self-satisfaction and he finally moved, dragged another tight circle around her swollen bud, paired it with a particularly deadly hook of his fingers within her, sending her hands clawing forward.

“And would you ever have told me?”

He began a steady rhythm, working her, each pass of the ridged seam of his glove across her clit coinciding with a desperate moan.

Silco repeated the question, she shook her head fervently, unable to speak.

“It seems to me you’ve been awfully withholding,” he crooned, breath fanning across the small of her back, eyes fixed to hers in the reflection. “First your little set-up here, now admitting you’ve been fucking yourself with my glove.”

The sound of the spat curse from his lips had her clenching hard around his fingers, a familiar heat stoking in her lower belly, coiling insidiously slow.

“Perhaps I should stop.”

“No, no, no.”

Voice so tight it was practically a screech, her fingers scrabbled for purchase as the heat continued to build, as the tidal wave quickly approached.

“Hm?”

Any semblance of control she’d had was far gone. All she knew for certain was that he couldn’t. Couldn’t stop. Not when she was this close. So, snatching the string of a single, coherent balloon floating by, she babbled the only word she could come up with, muttered it like a prayer.

“Please, please, please, please.”

“Are you going to cum, Ivy?” he purred into the dampening skin of her lower back.

“Please,” she nearly sobbed, stomach tightening like a pulled back rubber band.

“Then, cum.”

The climax smashed into her devastatingly hard, her back bowing violently as that band snapped.

Mouth opened in a silent cry, brows knitted in ecstasy, she determinedly held his evil, gloating gaze until she couldn’t any longer, that tidal wave of pleasure finally crashing through. The weight of it dragged her forehead to thud against the table as she released a strangled moan, stars bursting across her vision.

He drew it out forever. Fingers hooking in time with each violent, perfect convulsion, thumb still circling her clit slowly.

He eased her gently through, not stopping until she was a shuddering, boneless heap on the table, twitching from the overstimulation.

Hair stuck sweaty to her forehead as she pressed it to the cool wood, breath coming out in short puffs, the post bliss of release tingling across her skin. And she thought, if she could, she’d fall asleep right there.

But a light brush of soft lips to her tailbone brought her dazed thoughts back to the man behind. Who still very much had his long fingers pressed inside her.

She raised her bleary gaze to his.

With a slow deliberateness, he pulled his fingers out of her, and she twitched violently as she was hit with an aftershock, clenching around him, the resulting squelch obscene in the otherwise quiet room. At her low groan, the hard outline of his cock twitched against her outer thigh.

For a man so chatty just thirty seconds ago, he was unnervingly quiet now.

She propped herself up with shaking arms, eyed her prosthesis, tried to force away that surge of familiar, venomous self-doubt.

She crawled up onto the table, ignoring, as best she could, his sizzling gaze as it flicked across the side of her face. Swinging her legs up, she tugged her pants the rest of the way off and pulled her boots off one by one, socks to follow, discarding them on the floor with a dull thud. She took a deep, cleansing breath, despising that he could see her fumbling hesitation, the way her eyes kept darting to her hand.

The wetness weeping from her cunt reminded her of what he’d done, how he’d touched her. That he’d wanted to touch her.

 She scooted to a kneeling position before him, butt resting on her heels, knees spread slightly, looking down uncertainly.

A gloved hand tipped her chin up, held it there while three curious fingers came to rest at her lips, waiting, and she darted her tongue out, catching the bitter taste of herself. Sucking his fingers greedily into her mouth, she gazed up at him from beneath her lashes.

“Good girl,” he whispered, thumb brushing with uncharacteristic tenderness across a small scar near the crease of her lips before he pulled away.

Fabric rustled as he bent, and two hands were skimming up her hips, stopping at the hem of her t-shirt. She jerkily raised her arms for him to draw it up and over her head.

Until she was entirely bare to him.

Silco swatted at her when she instinctively attempted to cover herself.

“We don’t hide, Ivy.”

She frowned, blinked curiously at his phrasing.

“Be still. Hands atop your thighs,” came the reprimand again as she curled inward. “Let me look at you.”

She could feel his eyes as they slid across her naked form, felt that golden ribbon of arousal curl between her legs once again as he cupped two hands beneath her breasts, thumbs rolling slow, tantalizing circles over her pebbled nipples as she squirmed and whined.

“It’s hard to be the only one without clothes,” she rasped finally.

“Oh,” he paused his ministrations to taunt, “That must be so difficult.”

Only fair to allow her a remedy.

The table creaked beneath as she redistributed her weight, reaching toward that intimidating erection in his pants. And he struck, quick as lightning, seizing both wrists, yanking her toward him, her knees sliding forward until they were flush against his upper thighs, chest thrusting upward in order to lean decidedly away from his face, suddenly so close.

“What did I say about touching, Ivy?”

It was a long moment before his words from minutes ago emerged through the thick fog of lust clouding her mind.

“That I’d get my chance,” she said, “So long as I begged.”

Silco rearranged her wrists into one long-fingered hand, snatching her jaw in the harsh, punishing grip of his other.

“Yet I haven’t heard so much as a please.”

An honest attempt was cut off with a hiss as her teeth scored into her cheeks.

“What’s that?” he murmured, half-lidded eyes dropping to her wet mouth. “If this is what you want, you’re scarcely trying.”

If he let go of her, she would fall. In more ways than one. She was lost. Lost in the familiar, smoky scent of him. Disappearing in the orange swirl of that obsidian eye. And she hardly thought she’d make it out.

“Can I touch you, please?”

His gaze drank her in from up close, eyes darting, and she beat him to it, knew exactly what he was opening his mouth to ask. Where?

“Your cock. I want to touch your cock, sir” she said, words strained from her awkward positioning.

Silco’s teal eye twitched.

“May-may I?” she stammered again in the silence.

A look of genuine, dare she say fond amusement crossed his features before he balanced her, pulled forward until her hands twisted into the stiff fabric of his coat, until their lips were inches away.

“Off the table. On your knees.”

He gave her hardly a body’s worth of space to do so, but the approval ignited a fire under her skin, and she eagerly wedged herself between him and the table, slid down his front until she knelt on the floor below him.

With a flourish, he shoved the table out of the way, giving him full view of her backside in the mirror.

Her flesh hand reached forward tentatively to meet one of the buttons of his pants, eyes falling to the strained fabric at the front.

“Both hands, Ivy,” he said, her name stretched into a soft, breathless exhale as she brushed across his clothed cock, moving to undo his buttons with remarkable speed, despite her quivering form.

She reached for the other side and found her wrist in his stern grip once more.

“I said, both hands.”

In a sudden bout of frustration and shame, her forehead pressed forward against his hip flexor, nose nuzzling inward, his skin twitching as she warmed the fabric there with her hot breath.

How shameful. Couldn’t she be allowed to forget about her disfigurement, her defect, just for a moment in time?

Fingers tangled gently in her hair and her eyes rolled to peer up at him, her core pulsing wildly at the feral edge he tried to contain within that impassive expression, crooked teeth visible through his slightly parted lips.

She’d use her prosthesis. She’d do anything if he continued to look at her like that.

I’m doing this for you.

Her pleading expression urged him to understand as she struggled with the final two buttons, her captured wrist released to her once finished with an uttered praise from Silco.   

She ran her hand along the hard bulge, feeling it twitch against her palm.

Appeasing him finally, she tugged at his waistband, releasing him, eyes widening a fraction at the generous length.

She took him into palm, prosthesis planting against his hip, thumb swiping teasingly against the sensitive skin around his cock. A tattered breath was released above her and she looked up again, hungrily devouring his reactions.

Her lips were so close. She could taste him if she wanted, was sure he wouldn’t mind. Maybe flick out her tongue a bit.

She met his gaze questioningly, pumping her hand slowly up and down his shaft, swiping her thumb across the head, gathering the beads of precum there, adoring the way his tongue pressed against his teeth in response.

“Do you want to take me in your mouth? Is that it?” he asked, words holding a serrated edge.

She nodded, biting the plush of her bottom lip.

“What are you waiting for?”

Nothing anymore. She darted her tongue across the tip, groaning softly when his hand tightened painfully in her hair, and even more when she wrapped her lips fully around the weeping head, tongue swirling lightly.

Taking deep, calming breaths through her nose, she eased him slowly into the warm, wet cavern of her mouth, and he expelled a ragged, drawn-out groan in tandem with her own as the sound of his pleasure shot straight between her legs.

“You’ve wanted this since the very beginning, haven’t you?” he grit out, and her eyes shot to his. “Pleasured yourself to my fingers between your legs, to your lips wrapped around my cock like this.”

She moaned out an affirmative yes around him and he hissed.

“Dirty girl.”

As she found her rhythm, his straying hands found their way to her face, pushing the sweat dampened hair back, clearing his line of sight, calloused thumbs dragging frenzied patterns into her temples as he began to take control, fucking steadily into her.

“That’s it,” he coaxed, voice strained.

The praise warmed like fine liquor in her chest, his groaning satisfaction pushing her to take more of him with each thrust, to please him. Tears rolled down her cheeks as he hit the back of her throat, as she struggled to breathe, relaxing her jaw, eyes rolling upward as his pleasure intensified her own.

Her hand released her grip on the base of his cock, snaking its way between her legs instead.

“Look at you,” he panted, thumb swiping gently at her tears, “Working yourself so good for me.”

She keened around his cock as she worked her clit furiously, provoking a ragged growl out of Silco that was positively sinful.

“Let me see you.”

She lifted her wild gaze to his, cunt clenching around nothing at the equally untamed glint in his eye.

Let him see you.

She spread her knees wider, and her thighs burned as she pushed her body slightly upward, arching her back so he could see the outline of her fingers pumping, palm grinding as his gaze honed on the mirror’s reflection.

And all the while he uttered crooning, breathless praises to her, petting her hair as he increased pace, eyes darting between her and the mirror as if she would disappear any second.

Pleasure ripped through her and she cried out, throat widening just that last amount to push her fully forward, both hands flying out to grab his legs in support as her nose smashed into his abdomen, fully encasing him inside her humming throat.

With a shattered groan, he followed suit, his release spilling down her throat, fist tightening so excruciatingly in her hair she would have squealed if she could, eyes rolling back as pain and pleasure formed an exquisite concoction.

 She rode out the cresting waves of her orgasm with her hands wrapped tightly around the backs of his thighs until she was a twitching mess beneath him.

The blackness that had begun to take hold at the edges of her vision had her smacking his fingers on her head with increasing desperation, and he finally released her, gasping for air.

She slumped forward against him.

She breathed him in, wanted it to freeze itself, this strange moment in time: her forehead pressed reverently against his thigh, his fingers rubbing gentle, absentminded circles into her temples. She didn’t know when she’d grabbed the wrist of his left hand with her prosthesis, but it gripped there all the same.

“Clothes on.”

The tone of his voice was cryptic. Quiet.

Her body sagged and she allowed herself one final moment to mourn what may well never transpire again.

Then, swallowing dryly, did as she was told, not looking at him as she dragged her clothes back on, wondering what the hell happened now.

Grabbing her abandoned boot from in front of the mirror, she paused, eyes on her prosthesis as another wave of venomous self-doubt washed over her, brought a swell of angry tears to her eyes. At how utterly broken she was.

Tearing her gaze away, she laced her boots, standing up straight only to find Silco beside her.

Turning slow, she faced him fully, uncertainty wrinkling her brow as she dared to look upon his face, fearing something smug. Finding only a searching softness.

Ironing out the space between her brows with one thumb, he took her prosthesis in the other, eyes darting across her features as he raised it, cupping it gently across the scarred side of his face.

“We don’t hide, Ivy.”

<3

I think, with this being my first smut piece, I may have gotten a little carried away, but there you have it folks, 6.5K words of my filthy, rotten brain.

Again, I highly encourage everyone to check out @x-amount-verbs A Helping Hand, although I know most of us are obsessed with it already :) I have heart eyes for her OC and for the complex way she writes Silco. And on top of that, she's also just a lovely person.

AO3 Link if you want to toss me a kudos or a comment. It makes my entire day :)

I don't have much under my belt yet, but am starting a master list and am always looking for requests if anyone wants to send em' my way. Or just send me any and all of your unhinged thoughts, this fandom is hilarious.

All the good girls go to Hell

'Cause even God herself has enemies

And once the water starts to rise

And Heaven's out of sight

She′ll want the Devil on her team

My Lucifer is lonely

There′s nothing left to save now

My god is gonna owe me

There's nothing left to save now

Your encounter with Vander left a serious impression on you. Just from his looks, you would have never thought that he would be a gentle giant. But he seems to be a good guy and you kinda liked that you pulled the gig on the enforcers together without even the need to exchange words.

While you were walking the streets heading to the Last Drop you were caught by the impressions around you. The rain stopped pouring like floods from the sky and was now more like light summer drizzles. The mud under your boots began to recover from the flood treatment it received and slowly began to dry. You walked by many little alleys with old and crumbling buildings… if you were honest with yourself the name “shacks” would describe it better since it's just building ruins that received an “Undercity treatment” of metal plates, nails and a LOT of good hope. The noise of children playing before the shacks pulled you out of your observations and captured your every ounce of attention. The tiny humans played catch and their laughter echoed from the metal surrounding them and you enjoyed the sound it made.

The next thing you encountered were other children who didn’t play but instead stood around a metal bin from which a fire rose steadily into the air. A certain smell got up your nose - rising further and further up your nose like vines crawling up a house wall to reach the shining sun. When the smell reached your brain it triggered a mechanism that reopened a long-forgotten memory - pushed so far down the well of remembrance that you could physically feel the monster sinking its claws into your flesh again.

The smell that caught up in your nose was the scent of burning oak, mixed with burning metal. You kept walking down the gloomy streets, but your demon caught up with you and they brought you back to your childhood, where the monsters had human faces…

You were what - 6, 7 years old? When the Enforcers brought you to Piltover. Away from your family and into a world you could have never even imagined. For the first time in forever, you had your own room, and your own bed… but no family.

Right from the beginning you were put aside, like the cast out that you are - or as the other Piltover kids said with their noses high up in the sky: “The amphibian from the Undercity”. It hurt a lot every time they said that but your dad could land harder punches than that, and while those roaches thought about new ways to hurt you, you learned and learned and learned everything you could get your hands on. In the end, you were the one with the best grades and the best results overall in school.

But after school… oh… you hated the time after school. Every day you had to train your arcane magic in the well-known academy of Piltover… which didn’t work at first. In the first months, you couldn’t even ignite a spark in your hand, while in the Undercity you could throw fireballs the size of your head and as hot as the sun. Your overseer was a grim and cold-hearted Junior Sheriff Enforcer and his name was Jackal Sparks. A name that will burn itself into your memory, never to be lost in the fog of oblivion that clouds many minds with increasing age. Junior Sheriff Sparks was a tall and expansively broadly built man, who was brimming with strength that you couldn’t help but imagine that he would break your neck like he breaks matchwoods in half. He has black well styled hair in which he took a lot of pride - measured by the frequency he touched it. All of his subordinates feared him and his rage tantrums - which he mostly unleashed upon you. True to his name, he mostly used electrical run weapons on you like his beloved Long-Rod-Taser he named “Tickler” … for obvious reasons. During one of your lessons on using your magic, there was this little, hairy, doglike creature standing at one of the windows of the academy. He was watching as you tried your best to perform something that was praised to be outstanding and world-changing. Yet - you couldn’t help but notice a steady sad glance in his eyes - like he was pitying you for what you have to endure. Many months later after your first exchange of sights, he found you crying and shaking, leaning on a wall in the academy. You recovered from one of Sparks’ treatments to bring out your magic, where he burned your back so horribly that it was covered with large burn bubbles, hot and wet as a sauna. You remember crystal clear how he reached for your hand, petting it without words as you cried your eyes out. He said not a single word so that your wailing was the only sound that echoed through the corridors.

After some time - you couldn’t say how long it took for you to finally adjust a bit to the pain, he spoke to you with the most calming voice you heard so far.

“Now dearest, is it a bit better?” Fascinated by the voice and still hoarse from your everlasting cry episode you could only nod in consent. The little creature put on the sweetest smile which gave you a feeling of security like nothing had in a long time.

“Good, very good. My name is Professor Heimerdinger and what’s yours, little butterfly?” he asked, his voice still soothing your physical wounds. With a trembling voice, you tell him your name and strangely enough, it feels good to do so. Professor Heimerdinger seems to be one of the nicer people on this planet, so you ask him the one thing that you wanted to ask him since you first saw him watch your “training”.

“Professor Heimerdinger… Why did you watch my training back then? You always seem so sad while watching…”

Heimerdinger clears his throat and gives you what you would classify as an unsure look. “I…”, he clears his throat again, “… was accidentally walking by one of the windows that led to one of the training halls. When I saw what they did to you… I couldn't avert my eyes from it. The sight was simply horrific - to see a young beautiful girl getting tortured to the very brim of her existence…and knowing I can’t intercept this malice.”, he explains.

You couldn’t understand much of what he said because he used strange words you had never heard before, but it sounded like he was not fine with the way you were being trained. So you asked, “Professor - it is training like it should be isn’t it? So you don’t need to be sad about normal things.”

Heimerdinger sighed, “No dear… what you have to endure… nobody else has to and it shouldn’t be `normal` for it is not.”

He suddenly takes a look behind him where heavy footsteps could be heard. “Now dear, you need to see a doctor or your injuries will get worse,” he informs you and you stand up slowly. He takes your hand again and you both quickly leave the corridor into another one to avoid the approaching footsteps which could only be Enforcer boots. Heimerdinger takes you down endless corridors inside the academy, past boards for students who study mechanics, history, mathematics, even art, and past laboratories for chemical experiments until you reach a huge iron door. Your newly acquired skill of reading tells you that here is the academy's sick wing. Heimerdinger reached for the handle of the door but unfortunately was too short for it. You reacted immediately and pushed the handle down yourself.

Again with a smile on his face, he said, “Thank you dear - unfortunately Mother Nature didn’t expect that people from my species will have definite problems in a ‘bigger world’.” You smiled for the first time in a long while and it felt good - like a little spark that warmed your chest. Together you walked through the iron door and closed it behind you.

You stood in one of the largest rooms you've ever been in. The ceiling of the room was so high, that you had problems seeing the exact pictures and statues at it. You kept walking - your mouth wide open from astonishment, watching everything that your eyes could lay sight on. Unfortunately, your astonishment couldn’t last very long, because a new wave of pain leaped through your body - making you bend your back backward in an attempt to release the pain. Heimerdinger flinched a little in your direction and waved to an elderly woman, judging from her clothing, a nurse, to come over to him. You stopped a few feet from them still caught in the wave of pain, but a small clear of his throat broke the focus of the pain on you and your head turned to him.

He called you to his side and introduced you to the nurse. “Little butterfly, this is Madame Wonders - as her name suggests: she can heal your every wound like magic. Not real magic like yours, but something equally impressive. Now why don’t you go with her and let her patch you up?”, he suggested and his hands directed you to Madame Wonders.

A little unsure if you can trust her, you put one foot after another. Madame Wonders extended her hands to you and spoke with her warm elderly voice, “Come, dear, let's get you fixed up so that you can play with the other kids and go to school again.”

“I don’t want to play with the others - they’re mean and I don’t want to practice the stupid magic anymore. That’s what got me here and I don’t want it anymore - I don’t want to get hurt anymore…”, everything that you’ve been carrying in your little heart just started floating out your mouth and you couldn't stop yourself. You wanted somebody to hear what you have had to bear throughout the last months. Madame Wonders and Heimerdinger listened patiently to every word you said and only the Madame’s hands on your shoulders stopped you from crying again.

A brief exchange of glances between them and Heimerdinger said just one tiny sentence that put your mind to rest, “Never again - I … will … find a way so that you don’t get hurt anymore.”

After Madame Wonders put you on a padded treatment table with your back to her, she started to treat the burns on your back. She cut your shirt open and removed it as carefully as she could, then she examined the burns which had already started to blister. Every time she started to do something, she explained it and you could always ask further questions. This way you learned how to classify burns and how to treat them. Plus your pain wasn’t that present during the procedure, because Madame Wonders always kept your brain on the subject. At the end of the treatment, your back was covered in a cooling ointment and bandaged completely.

“Now dear…”, she said, sitting right next to you, taking one of your hands. “… your burns are bad, which is why we need to change your bandages every day or the burns will stay for a long time. So for the next time, you will just go to school and do no training.”

Your eyes began to shine and the fire inside you started to flare out again.

You felt it again - the “Amber of the Undercity” as your mother called it. The power within you creates the heat on your skin until a thought ignites it into a raging flame. You could feel how the fire magic once again made its way through every fiber of your body - breathing new life into every cell of your body. ‘What a bit of safety can do‘ you thought to yourself and concentrated your magic to the palm of your right hand. At first, just heat rose from your open palm, so you concentrated more and a little amber ignited. It was tiny, very tiny and that was not enough for you, so brought your thumb and index finger together and snapped them. A full-grown flame ignited high and hot from your palm - illuminating the room with a new source. Heimerdinger and Madame Wonders watched you invoke magic - full fascination and on Heimerdinger’s site with a little bit of fear.

Your eyes began to shine and you looked at Heimerdinger full of joy like a kid on Christmas Day “I … I can do it again. Professor - I can do it again. I can summon the fire again,“ you said with tears of relief in your eyes.

At this moment, a loud clapping startled you out of your euphoria. Sparks stood at the door, clapping his hands with a wide smile on his face. Instantly the flame in your hand went out and fear painted your face in every shade of horror.

“Well done little one, well done. Finally, we can train you properly and for what you were brought here,” he said while walking towards you.

In an attempt to get away from him, you jumped behind the treatment table and crouched. You know it was not effective, but you just needed to buy some time to find a physical weapon, since your fear cut off your magic. On one of the tablets you could spot a scalpel, so you dashed toward it, grabbed it, and held it against your tormentor. A look of amusement graced his face and he walked towards you while holding his arms outstretched beside him.

“Now, now, little rat - don’t get feisty with me. Be a good little rat and come to the cat.“

“That is enough, Junior Sheriff Sparks,” said Heimerdinger with a serious voice and walked in your direction.

“Careful now, yodel. You were allowed to watch the training session because the sheriff had a liking for the little rat. If you get in my way, I will teach you a lesson and if somebody asks how you got yourself the treatment - I will simply give them a lie,”, the smile on his face widened as he looked at Heimerdinger from the corner of his eyes.

What a bad man. What a truly devilish creature. Like a nightmare that climbed off an old Undercity fairytale. The kind of fairytale, which was used to teach you to fear the Enforcers and all of Piltover - like the thing your mom told you - about the boy and the dream.

The boy that stood on the bridge to Piltover looking at the waves of the river imagining a better life, when an Enforcer walked up to him. The Enforcer asked the boy why he stared at the waves and the boy answered that he wanted to go to school and become an industrialist. The boy said he wanted to make the life of everybody better and proof that the Undercity also has things to offer people would want. The enforcer said 'You wish’ and pushed the boy over the railing of the bridge into roaring waves. You never got to know what became of the boy, but you don’t want to end up like him. Ever.

Sparks chuckle ripped you out of your memory and you focused on him. In a desperate act of fear, you ducked away under his arms and stabbed him in the stomach with the scalpel. He howled in pain as his face contorted in anger. He grabbed the handle of Tickler when the iron door burst open and a new wave of enforcers entered the room including a young woman who looked very important with the way everybody made way for her.

“Sparks - what are you doing? Where is the girl?“ she asked in a harsh tone.

“Sh-, Sheriff Grayson, ma‘am,“ Sparks stuttered - holding his midsection where the scalpel was still in place. The fear of Sparks was still turning your face into a grimace, but the young sheriff walked to you slowly and reached out a hand in your direction.

“It’s alright, little one. Nobody will harm-“

“Liar!!“, you screamed in her face and Sheriff Grayson involuntarily shrieked back.

Salty streams ran down your cheeks as you stood in shock in the sick bay. Sheriff Grayson came closer, but it was too close for your hurt soul. You fell on your knees cowering on the ground and hoping, praying to Janna that they would finally leave you alone.

As if “the Amber” could finally detect the danger surrounding you - it activated itself and surrounded you in a wall of flames. They covered your body completely, without burning you. The flames tore off the bandages within the first moments of the flare and revealed to everybody the damage you had taken. Yet only Sheriff Grayson grimaced in shame and sympathy, while from the other enforcers, only whispers could be heard. Things like: “What an abomination of nature.”, “We should kill her before she can kill us.” Or “Sparks was right - the rat has no worth beyond her fire shit.” The flames licked over every single wound, every single bruise, and as if by magic they disappeared, leaving little scars on only the worst. Sheriff Grayson could only watch - her eyes a mixture of fear and fascination. When you were exhausted beyond your physical limits - your vision blackened and you sagged sideways. Whatever happened now was beyond your control.

“My my. Poor child,” said Sheriff Grayson with her eyes on you. You looked like a miserable bundle of meat. Now rage sparked in her chest and she turned ferociously towards Sparks and gripped the handle of the scalpel. Face to face she asked him, “What have you done with the girl that she is so afraid - huh?”. She shakes the scalpel a little in the wound, which got Sparks howling in pain.

Quickly his eyes shoot back to Grayson with a devilish smile and an emotion behind those eyes that can be described as hell's gates in his eyes - dark, sinister, and all bad. And with this smile, he answered her: “You wanted me to train the little rat, only that she refused to follow my orders and didn’t train at all. So I got the lazy rat running. And… all it should take… was a little… encouragement…from Tickler.”

Sheriff Grayson couldn’t believe what message her ears and head just received. It felt like a call to arms, where you know that you march into a fight that can not be won, no matter how hard you fight. “Sparks… you are hereby demoted from your rank as ‘Junior Sheriff’ and I’ll order an investigation with subsequent legal proceedings against you. Let your wound be treated and report to the Council representative for any further questions regarding legal consequences. Dismissed!"

Spark kept smiling while he walked past Sheriff Grayson only answering a short, “Yes Ma’am”, and walking to Madame Wonders to let his wound be treated.

Meanwhile Professor Heimerdinger walked up to her and they both walked outside for a little private conversation. “Well done Sheriff, well done. Justice prevailed once more today!”, said Heimerdinger with an unknown happiness in his voice, but Grayson knew it better.

“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, Professor. Sparks has friends in high places and to make matters worse: the council hates the Undercity and its people even more than all of the Noxian legates who are present in Piltover right now. This action just now could also be me sailing against the wind… who knows…”, she held her head down, lost in thought if she really made the right decision.

“Nonsense dear.”, cuts Heimerdinger's voice through her fog of thought. “Your decision was right - no matter where we come from or under which circumstances we are born, everyone deserves a chance to reach the very top of their abilities.”

Grayson was downright impressed, she never really thought about it that much, but she agreed with Heimerdinger. With a smile on her lips she asked, “Did you make that up right now?”

“No dear…”, now Heimerdinger smiles too “… it is a part of my ‘Back to school speech’. It’s as old as these hallways.”

You awakened in your room again. But surprisingly your back didn’t hurt anymore - but your whole body was kind of sore. Moaning and groaning, you sat up and were greeted by a letter on your nightstand. You grabbed the fancy-looking paper and opened the envelope.

“Meet me in my office, when you’ve rested. Be dressed for training, and don’t fear Sparks - he won't be there for a while.

~ Sheriff Grayson”

You had to read the letter three times over before you could really realize its existence in your hand. The Sheriff orders you to come to her office… fear crept up in your chest again. Opening up a pitch-black hole which eats everything light and happy. You dropped the letter like it burns your skin and crawled into the far corner of your bed. You couldn’t go - they would kill you as soon as you opened the door, for what you did yesterday… and then you would end up like the boy… buried in the river waves.

‘No, no, no, no, no!‘, you said to yourself like a mantra to command the evil demons from you that want to devour your heart and mind. Eat you alive and drag you to the deepest depths of Janna‘s punitive prison for all the wrongdoers and criminals. Because that's what you are by birth - a criminal… a rat from the Undercity. Worthy of nothing but the dirt under someone else's boots. You fold your hands protectively over your head - reliving the torture of Sparks in your head for the God-knows-how-many times. You cried, cried even more, cried until you ran out of tears and further. The demon wouldn’t let go of your heart and body, squeeze it, twist it, tormenting itself. Then all of a sudden you heard a scream outside of your window. You shrieked hard but at the same time your attention shifted fully to the scream. There was another and another and another - not screams of pain… more like battle cries. While standing up from the bed you dried your tears with the tip of the shirt you wear for sleeping and slowly walked to the window.

The moment your eyes peeked outside of the window, you could see the rising sun, and standing in the rising sun were men bathed in sweat, training. You saw people doing hand-to-hand combat - fists flying so fast you could barely follow them until one of them landed on the ground hard, a cut on his face. In the other corner of the training field, you could see people training with long sticks - they were as long as two third of their body, so you guess. Swinging them like athletes in a circus the men hit each other with the stick parrying, blocking, dodging, and landing blows. You could barely hear the whistle on the outside of your window, but the men suddenly stop and give their sticks to other men and, then started the stick-fighting.

In the down left corner was a separate space, which was marked and only walkable through a single entrance. You see Enforcers with pistols and rifles aiming at drawn silhouettes of people.

You hear someone shouting “Ready…Aim…FIRE!!“ and then you hear countless bullets fly, hitting the silhouettes in various places, hitting the wall behind them, flying into the red to blue drawn sky.

“CEASE FIRE!!!“ and every person shooting immediately stops and secures their weapon. Now they all walk to the tattered papers and seem to discuss who’s bullet flew where and why. You roll your eyes - totally boring. Then you see her - the sheriff standing on the side, watching her soldiers like a shepherd does his sheep. Her eyes wandered over the training ground - watching every move, every behavior between the soldiers. She seems lost in thoughts for a moment and her eyes climb up the house walls like sunbeams illuminating the world and she spots you at your window. You can only vaguely see her smile, but she waves at you and gestures for you to come down to her.

Her smile was as warm as the sun and the warmth filled you inside out, blasting away all the demons that had held their deadly grip on you. With the sunlight making your feet fly, you got dressed for training and flew out to the training grounds.

You stormed out of the front door to the grounds only to be met with angry men looking at you like you’re yesterday's toast. So you stopped dead in your tracks, terrified. But you stood your ground, didn’t flinch, didn’t move a bit.

“It’s ok boys, let her go - she’s going to train with us for a while now.“, said a female voice. A big ‚OH‘ made its round among the men and everybody went back to their training. You saw Sheriff Grayson making her way to you, just casually walking between the men like she is on a stroll in the city center. She stopped right in front of you and smiled. “So little one, are you better now?“

You nodded because your voice just had the idea to make itself comfortable in your throat and not come out of your mouth.

“Does your back still hurt?“ You shake your head to say ‚no‘.

Sheriff Grayson tilted her head to one side. “Can you still speak or did you snore so loudly in your sleep that you lost your voice?“ she said and her smile now changed into something challenging. You could hold yourself from giggling. “Now little one, I don’t want to call you ‘Little One‘ all day - so please tell me your name.“

You tell her your name and hold out your hand to Sheriff Grayson like your mother taught you. Grayson bows down to your level takes your hand and gently shakes it.

“It’s very nice to finally meet you properly.” she said. You began to really like Sheriff Grayson - she never talked you down all the time and treats you like an actual human being with dignity.

She signals you to follow her and the both of you walk to the area of the training ground she calls “the martial arts mats“. You had no idea what ‘martial arts‘ are - but you were sure that you would soon find out. On arriving at the mats you saw an elderly man, shouting orders at the Enforcers and them obeying as their life depended on it. He turned to the Sheriff once you were close enough, saluting.

“Vise, I give our new recruit to you - train her in everything she needs to know for our job. About her other…“ she stumbled a bit on how to describe something, “… ability - we will find out how to train it. So please focus on making her a model Enforcer - I know she has the capabilities to be the best in our core.“

The old man's face showed an expression that you could mistake for a smile of excitement and happiness - you really couldn’t say for sure. Sheriff Grayson grins for a moment before walking away. Then all of a sudden Vice grabbed your left wrist and dragged you right into the middle of one ring. There he stands opposite you, fists his hands, and takes the position of a heavyweight boxer. The front fist is at his shoulder level and the second fist provides a cover over his chest.

“Try this, grasshopper.“, he says with a smile, his eyes pointed directly at you. Without an answer, you try to mimic his position and when you had a good stand, he quickly threw a punch at you. Your eyes widen your heart rate increases, and the fear of being hurt rattles your entire body. In an attempt to protect yourself, you step backward and by a hair's breadth, you dodge it.

“You are a natural, grasshopper,” says Vise and motions for you to attack him. You are y so scared you could shit yourself, so you step now forward, close your eyes, and hope to land the punch. A fist lands in your face so hard that you are thrown off your feet and painfully land on your back.

“NO GRASSHOPPER, NEVER CLOSE YOUR EYES. NOT UNLESS YOU WANNA DIE,“ Vice yells at you and his face starts to glow red in rage. He has the same commanding voice as Sparks and every brain cell in you engages unknown defense mechanisms within you. You step back in fear, every fiber in your body screams fire, and on your shoulders, flames start to flare up. You hold your hands in front of you as a defense against your opponent. Now all eyes are on you in a mix of fear and fascination for the unknown. Vice steps back - rather than fear, confusion painted his face. Sheriff Grayson came running towards you but stopped dead in her tracks when she sees you’re unharmed- also watching you in fascination.

“Don’t hurt me…“ your voice cracked and you started crying again. Your body started hurting again, which only fueled your fire. The mats around your feet began to crack open, change colors and burn up slowly. Know you can hear weapons being drawn and pointed right at you from various directions - all with malicious intentions.

“Stand down!“, Sheriff Graysons’ voice echoed through the tense air but yet nobody intended to follow her orders. “I SAID STAND DOWN!“ she yelled.

After that incident and after you calmed down Vice apologized for his temper and that he yelled at you and the Sheriff explained that Sparks tortured you for your fire powers. That his treatment probably caused trauma inside you. Vice didn’t answer - he instead took you by the arm again and you got into the ring again. This time he explained the steps more patiently and you quickly adapted to them. You trained all day until the sun went down - you didn’t even notice how time flew.

“That’s enough for today, grasshopper. We will continue tomorrow,” Vice said and he made a proud face. “You did well on your first day of training. Have you had to fight before?“

“Well…“, you tried to remember when exactly you fought for the first time. “… I had to fight a lot in the Undercity. There is never enough for us - I was hungry a lot of times because other kids stole my food. So I had to show them that they shouldn’t do that. Then there was that thing in the mines…“

Vices brows shoot up. “You were in the mines? Children shouldn’t be there!“, he said and you just shrugged - did he have no idea what’s going on in the Undercity?

“Yeah I was in the mines. It’s the only way to get money to buy food.“, you shrugged again - he really had no idea how things run down there. “It’s actually not that bad, but thanks to my special ability people thought I could withstand the toxic gas better than others. I couldn‘t - but in time I could breathe the air in the mines more easily. And so I could earn more money for more food - easy math right?“ The next hour you both stared into the sundown until the sky was covered in dark blue and sprinkled with the prettiest of stars - shining like diamonds in a light beam.

The whole team was shocked to hear Vice apologizing to somebody at all - he was not exactly known for having any feelings. But after training together - you and Vice became very close on a professional basis and of course, Sparks returned after the “internal investigation“ went by “without any recognizable misdemeanors“. So of course he was responsible to train you again. This time under close supervision of Vice and the Sheriff. But whenever Sparks was alone with you - the torture continued until you graduated and got a job as a special force enforcer. After that Sparks couldn’t get close to you anymore, but every time you met him, he had this… absurd behavior of staring at you with his slimy smile and a disgusting shine in his eyes.

During the rest of your training, you learned everything an Enforcer needed and perfected every skill to the highest level so that you became a model among the Enforcers. You know every martial art style from Piltover (Vice even trained you in the martial arts style of Noxus - the country where he was born), you learned how to spy, how to silence your target from the shadows, how to shoot with any kind of short distance weapon, how to sharp shoot people in the distance and how to squeeze information out of people to and use it against them. They called you a “Model rat“ behind your back. Just like in school, it hurt - but your father still could hit harder.

Yet ever since that moment of self-defense nobody except Vice and Sheriff Grayson looked at you like a person but more like a real-life monster…

End of Chapter 2