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It doesn’t matter that Ekko wasn’t there when it mattered.
He knew how to get here all the same.
Even six stories down, on the Midtown streets he watched but didn’t dare walk; where his boots still clacked on the cobbles even if weren’t actually paved with gold. I have people back home who need me, he’d told the Professor, listening to his banjo and not to him. The vomit still running into the dirt when Powder…
Doesn’t matter. He wasn’t here either.
The Enforcers didn’t stop him. Not on the bridge or those cobbles. Didn’t even look when he didn’t realise he was staring till his own reflection caught him from the polished brass of a pinchbeck trim — Pilties really are obsessed with it.
But Councilhall still leers at him, from up on its high, sunkissed hill.
We don’t belong here.
Exactly where Caitlyn Kiramman was supposed to take him, months ago. Ekko doesn’t know what her promises are worth these days, and Vi isn’t here to vouch for them.
No, she’s back home running around the fissures with that Piltie. A flash of pink slipping back into the pipeworks before even he could catch them through the Grey. If he even wants to, with the badge on her belt and the holes they’ve left in the Chem-Barons for fellow trenchers to fall into, for Ekko to fill in.
More than he can.
One thousand, one hundred twenty-eight days, six hours, and twenty minutes.
Ekko can’t wait that long.
Scar needs him. And Kay. Ax and Lem. Shomi, Red, Elie. Who knows how many kids off the streets without parents in sight. Girls who ran from the hollowed-out Rapturewalk, the Grey still in their eyes. Pilties sucking it back up like they’ll be able to pretend they never let it out. Line-workers from the shut-down factories, whether for Silco’s motorcars — or his Shimmer, nothing left to help people when the uncontrolled withdrawals started to kick in.
Mom and Dad. No chance to see them in months; no tries at speaking in longer. Just more letter slipped under the door, with the rent that Benzo had first hired him just to help with, and his promises that this was worth doing.
Anyone caught in the crossfire. Everyone left behind, after it was done.
Vi, soon enough. Whenever Piltover finally spits her back out.
Maybe even…
There isn’t a receptionist behind the front-desk, or buttons in the elevator to the garret or the top-floor; its pair of bulbless sockets left to rust and not to heal.
Each floor he climbs gets quieter and quieter, till the top landing is silent, and the door Ekko needs is locked. That lasts as a problem for four seconds: the time it takes to grab a chisel from the toolbag, waggle it into the lock, and tap down on the handle till all the pins jump up and the door clicks.
It opens to an empty floor, and more locked doors. He rounds the corner, and a series of posts supporting the ceiling, then one hollow, boarded-up doorframe — last on the left.
Not even the hinges are left, just a pile of dried-up petals he crunches over.
The boards themselves give like leaves wilting off the branch, rotted around the nails that drove them to the stone. The boards that must’ve blocked the landing door were already stacked just to the side of it, tucked precisely into a corner.
Everything inside has been gutted.
Ekko follows a faint line of footsteps that march up unevenly to a breach between the two rooms, and trails his finger down one of the twisting juts of rebar. It lifts enough dust to make even a trencher choke.
The footsteps are just a little less deep: left prints bound tightly to the right ones, with a small circle stamped further to their right.
He is not supposed to be here. There’s no tools or journals to pilfer, but somehow they’ve left the chalkboard. Jayce’s last notes, a chalk version of the rune he wore on his bracelet, have been chipped away at by the winds creeping between the boards on the window and the hole-in-the-wall. There’s enough for Ekko to scribble it all down though, tucked into another Ekko’s journal, next to his fever-driven rendition of the anomaly.
But it’s missing Jayce’s breakthrough.
Ekko needs the Professor to fill that in, and needs to somehow prove that he can take them both home — and safe — with that piece.
Not easily said, or done. So Ekko gets to work.
He traces his hastily-borrowed hammer over the cracks in the far wall; pushes aside the rubble and ash and the face in his head. The first hit is terrifying, like the wall’s going to crumble as he pins everything he has into it. Another and pricks of blue start to shimmer in the cracks. Two more, and he’s found his first piece of Hexite. A couple hours later he’s pulling the last, delicate fragment and slipping it into the tallow sheet of a carry-case.
He hoists the toolbag over his shoulder, turns the hammer still in his hand. It’s not got a Piltie maker’s mark on it. He knows all of those by heart. It’s someone else’s, and nicer too. Not with their brass but the sort of purpose he puts to all the marked things he’s borrowed. No, someone in Zaun got to make it like this.
It feels like hope in his—
“Ah-hakh!”
Someone behind him chokes.
The toolbag tumbles off his shoulder, and dust spatters his slacks. He manages to keep the hammer in his hand, and turns around to look up and see legs awkwardly stepping down into the room, a fistful of petals scattering onto the floor.
He meets their eyes and—
“Who the hell are you!?”
No. Eye.
“Shit, Caitlyn!?” he mouths, dusting off his ruffled slacks. The eye glitters as blue as the broken Hexite. The other — milky and greyed — follows without seeing, a ring of pockmark scars decorating its socket. “I-I was just—”
“You can’t be here!” she snaps, first staring at him, then behind to the wall. “What’re you— No, how do you know about this place?” she demands, before covering her mouth as more dust threatens to kick up.
Ekko tries to slowly approach, but her eye darts to the tightly-gripped hammer and she seizes. He stops and loosens his grip till he’s cupping the head between his thumb and finger, and lowers it the ground with his other hand raised.
“P-Professor Heimerdinger told me, alright,” he stammers out, sure Caitlyn knows at least one Councilor other than her mom. “He gave me permission to… have a look.”
Ekko tries not to think about what his parents would say if they found out he’s finally going to the Academy, but only in a rushed-out lie.
Caitlyn’s left knee seems to rattle and Ekko looks down to see it coupled into a delicate, mechanical brace; drawn up on trestles that coil out of a gold-plaqued boot. “And that includes permission to pick it out of the walls?” she says.
“How did you—?”
She nods down to the toolbag, its cover flopped open. “I can see tweezers and you have that— hammer. One of Adolfo’s, if I’m correct. You’re from the undercity. I’m guessing you’ve just gone and stuffed whatever it is you think you’ve found into a sack in there.”
"I-It’s in a carry-case!” Ekko tries to reassure, aware it would’ve been rolling across the floor right now if the toolbag hadn’t fell perfectly flat. “It’s safe, I promise.”
“Then you admit it’s unstable!” Caitlyn shakes her head, “You’ll promise me nothing.”
Her brace starts to ratchet as she circles towards Ekko’s right. How didn’t he hear that?
“I won’t let those be used to harm the undercity again,” Caitlyn continues, tongue thrumming in her mouth like the rotors of an aeroglider. “Heimerdinger wouldn’t either, especially since he’s retired.”
“Ah,” Ekko mutters, “I-I suppose you’d know about that.”
Caitlyn’s probably seen the stupid banjo that’s still ringing in Ekko’s ears. Maybe that’s how she snuck up on him. She rounds one of the posts supporting the ceiling, and wipes a finger over the board.
“He’s more-or-less my godfather, why shouldn’t I?” she says, interrogating the chalk on her fingertips before wiping it on her sweater with a distant disdain.
She sidles past a chunk of wall on the floor.
Ekko can’t wait to find the lie that’ll work, and Caitlyn Kiramman probably believes too many already to fit another. “Look,” he says, “I need these fragments, okay. Just let me take them and you won’t—”
Caitlyn pounces on him.
“—Ahhh! Hey!”
She grabs his lapels, and has him more by surprise than strength. He lets his feet stammer back till she’s pressed him up against the window, nearly tripping over the loose concrete.
“How did you know about this place!?” she asks again, her knee shaking into his own.
Ekko’s patience boils out of him.
“Because I know who died here!” he spits, and his eyes fall on the rows of Caitlyn’s teeth grinding against each other. “You wanna get off me, topsider?”
Caitlyn snorts.
“If— if this window wasn’t boarded up I’d throw you out of it,” she tries, the sun splitting her face in two through the cracks.
He turns his own glare on her, “You think Vi would like that?”
Caitlyn’s eye dims, and her shoulders go slack. She slips off his chest and pulls her arms in to her sides. She steps back and hisses, face curdled and teeth gritted, as she catches on the rubble and her brace locks up to stop the fall.
Her eyes shut, she bites her lip.
Ekko eyes the toolbag behind her.
When Caitlyn starts to straighten up, she does so carefully. Every couple of clicks is interrupted by another shuffle of her boots, till she’s leant back on the chalkboard.
“She was your friend, wasn’t she…”
He could just grab it, and run. She wouldn’t be able to—
“Vi.”
The seconds it takes for it to wallow off her tongue are like pond-scum slipping off a rock. Like she’s never said it out loud before.
Or doesn’t think she’s allowed to.
“Yeah. She is,” Ekko answers, in the place neither of them belongs. He tries to forget about the toolbag as he offers, “So why’re you here? I mean, I know you own the lab.”
Don’t mind the kid. Doesn’t know when to pipe down.
Caitlyn tucks the hair beside her wounded eye behind her ear. A small earring hangs off it, gold-rimmed but inlaid with a plain, grey pearl. “We own the entire floor now. But yes, it was a friend of mine’s.”
Ekko brushes his hand over the board, watches as the knuckle of Caitlyn's presses into her cheek. “He’s been gone a long time now,” she sighs.
Ekko doesn’t say his name, “No second chances, I guess.”
“None. Not for that,” Caitlyn admits. Her chest hitches and her shoulders pull in as she grasps at her own elbows. She turns towards the chalkboard, “Worth the risk. I hope he’s dead in the same desert he first found those damn runes in.”
Her knee bounces on the spot, and she winces.
Both them are lying too.
“I don’t really think you do,” Ekko says.
“No… I was there too, you know,” she replies, and indicates the brace. “I was on the other side of the wall, too busy looking at the cracks in it to notice the bit of roof falling on me. Didn’t see much after that. It… changed a lot of things for me.”
Ekko sits on one of the horizontal posts, “And now?”
Caitlyn laughs with her mouth closed, but after a moment she starts to spill like a fish on the docks, “First time I came here was the year after, when I could finally walk on my own. Then it was every time I visited the undercity. Then half those times. Then today.”
It was four years after when it would’ve mattered, after his first successful flight on an aeroglider that didn’t end up with him in the branches.
Then it was every few months.
Then once a year.
Then today.
Caitlyn stands up. She stamps her boot and doesn’t let it show on her face, “And now I’m here to remember, what I’m fighting for. To make sure none of this happens to anyone else. Not just the Hexite, but to make sure all of it never has to happen again.”
It would’ve just been another job without it.
More of her fish-guts fall on the floor.
“I just— when they pulled her out, and she was gone, I saw her face… Vi’s. And I knew I had to make things better. Hard to explain more than that.”
Her guts rot on the floor, and she turns up her nose like it’s actually there.
“You can still see her,” Ekko says, stepping in it.
Caitlyn looks behind him, at a face that’s only in her head.
“And haven’t told anyone,” he adds.
Her eye locks onto him.
“No one that listened,” she bites. “I think they all still see me as the child I was. She used to want to be an Enforcer, if you can believe it.”
Ekko laughs. He tries to stop himself, but suddenly Caitlyn takes it as a cue to laugh too, her mouth open this time.
“A little ineligible now, I suppose. Thanks to—”
“Y-you would’ve been too good for them, I promise,” he interrupts.
More than I ever imagined.
“Me. Really? I’ll have to take that promise under advisement,” she says. “No, I know what you mean. Except now I’m stuck everyday trying not to let this all come apart again."
It’s a misunderstanding.
Caitlyn grabs onto a piece of the jutting rebar, and tries to place herself on one of the hunks of concrete. Ekko rushes over, putting a hand on her back as she sits, “You… work for the council?”
“Councilor’s Aide. Yes, I’m aware it’s a vague title,” she pre-emptively defends. Another earring shines through her hair, matched if not for its brilliant sapphire. “One the papers can attach all sorts of meaning to.”
Please, let me help you.
Ekko moves himself to the other hunk.
“Mostly it’s just about about shouting at the bastards till they listen,” Caitlyn adds.
Ekko snorts, “Vi would’ve killed to see that.”
“And would she want to see this?” she asks, the smile distant on her face as the pockmark scars tuck into the creases beside her eyes.
“Does Powder know?” Ekko asks.
“Who’s—”
“Vander,” he corrects.
“Oh, yes,” Caitlyn sputters, before she checks to make sure if she should be making eye-contact right now. She settles on somewhat, “Powder’s the sister, isn’t she?”
Ekko nods.
“You won’t tell her, will you?” she asks, her nails clawing through the dust. “You can refuse me. I know I’m not supposed to be here, a-and I stay away from the family. I send money from time-to-time. Vander just asked me to sponsor… some competition. It’s all only via message canister. I’ve… declined to speak in-person, since the one time we did.”
Her tongue curls around ‘some’ like she knows exactly what it’s been substituted in for, the Young Innovator’s Contest that seems to have spun-off what the Pilties are running Topside, but it seems better that she cares too much.
“I know it’s not my grief to bear. I just—”
Maybe it can make up for all the other Pilties.
“You’ve got a piece missing,” Ekko says.
“Exactly.” Caitlyn’s elbows press into her lap. “I don’t even notice it when I’m not here, but then I am and— it’s like there’s this hole I didn’t know I had.”
More than she can fill. Her hands grasping for something for it, before she nestles them together to stop herself. Ekko looks at them down to the painted tips.
“I’m the one who gave the tip,” he admits.
Caitlyn’s looks up to gawk at him, her jaw dropped just enough to see the gap between her teeth.
“I told Vi about the job,” he explains. “Saw your friend, and heard all of his… I don’t know what I’d call it if not boasting, and followed him back here.”
Last time he’d walked here till today.
Caitlyn glances back at the chalkboard.
“It isn’t your fault,” she says, reaching awkwardly for his arm and rubbing off some of the dust. “If you could be blamed, I’d be blaming myself far before I got to you.”
Like she hasn’t already admitted every other mistake she could.
Ekko doesn’t brush her off, but he does let them fall as he stands up. He looks at the toolbag and begs at last, “You have to let me take it. I need them to fix something, and I know it can be done, I just can’t—”
“It’s got a missing piece,” Caitlyn says, “and this is that piece?”
“Maybe. Yes.”
Caitlyn tries to follow him, and scowls at her own disobedient body when it fails to.
“Well. I don’t think I could actually stop you if I tried, nor do I think I can bear to scream for an Enforcer. Besides — the words my mother would have for me being here.”
“Think I know the feeling,” he replies, and dusts the last of himself off, before he tries to back off when it starts to make Caitlyn choke. His face squishes up in apology, and he offers her a hand up. She goes for it slowly, her fingertips hovering for a moment around his wrist, before she seizes it and pulls herself up on him.
“If it makes you do better,” he adds, “you should be here. Could— ask Powder to talk about her.”
Caitlyn shakes her head, “I don’t think that’s good for either of us.”
It’s not a ‘no.’
He looks at her wobbling leg, as she nods for him to pick up the toolbag, and he asks, “Is there anyone who can help you get home?”
Caitlyn hobbles towards the door. “I have an arrangement. Across the bridge, as a matter of fact.” She bends down to start scooping up the fresh petals she lost on the bottom of the steps. “She’s paid well enough not to mind the wait.”
Ekko tries not to pry, but, “What kind of flowers?”
When she doesn’t answer, he goes to shoulder the toolbag and slips the hammer back in. Then he realises she’s considering him.
“Violets,” she does at last.
“She would’ve been proud of you,” Ekko tells her. “Vi.”
Caitlyn shuts her eyes, and only opens them a little to rub her balled-up fists into them, and Ekko realises he’s made a Councilor’s daughter cry. And he feels bad about it. At least, for the little she’s either dared to, or can’t help but show.
Caitlyn opens her petal-stuffed hands, and her eyes widen.
“Violet,” she whispers, her pieces as together as they’ll ever be. “Thank you.”
She looks at the hollow frame to the apartment, and waits for him to walk past her out of it. He steps carefully over the dried-up violets, down the stairs, and across the bridge.
There’s a woman smoking outside the bathysphere.
Ekko tries not to look back when the door slides shut. Instead, he opens his cross-dimensionally-borrowed journal, traces his finger over the lines, and starts to work.
Caitlyn tries not to count how long she cries for, petals strewn about her boots.
A last one, pressed between her fingertips.
Violet.
Before she lets it go too.
What makeup she still has sits on her cheeks, and she knows it’ll prompt another gentle invitation to talk that she won’t accept. But doing so won’t also break the heart of another someone her mother likes more than she does. Not with her.
Now. Caitlyn’s late enough as it is.
She wants to get up, but her knee sears in its cage.
Doubtless, Viktor will have some concoction of forgiving and stern words as he fixes whatever she’s broken in his device this time; reminding her how pushing herself too far again will only stop it from healing.
As if it would have by now, even if she did actually listen.
Caitlyn wrenches herself up on the doorframe, and stumbles back to the elevator that only goes to the third floor. She should’ve stopped him when she had the chance.
Whoever he was. If she ever had that chance.
It didn’t matter.
She couldn’t run after him now, in the dark. And if she had called out? Or if she marched down there in the morning, with Enforcers for epaulettes? It wouldn’t be hard to find him, she knew where he was going, but she also knew what the headlines would say after:
AIDE KIRAMMAN’S OBSESSION WITH THE UNDERCITY SINKS TO NEW LOWS.
She was surprised he’d never heard of her. Everyone else had, Allira Salo had made sure of that in the worst way possible. He owned all the most wretched of them.
She could never tell if he did it because of political opposition, or just because she’d won his own mistress out from under him at his own ball. Found her some air, and then the sweetness she kept hidden under so much poison and fur, that she hides herself in now as the bathysphere shudders down its tracks.
“Thought I was going to have to start hunting for you,” she purrs in Caitlyn’s ear — soft, slitted eyes on her, as Caitlyn listens more to the silken sound than the words.
Caitlyn needs to stop visiting the apartment.
“Don’t worry, Princess. I have something for both the knee and the heart.”
She promises herself it’s the last time over and over, and can never count on it.
Maybe she should talk to the sister.
Or maybe another day.
Another life.
The bathysphere clunks into its end-of-track buffers, and the door clicks open. There’s too many people nodding at her on the promenade for comfort — too much praise heaped onto her for work she swears is never enough — and a hand squeezes hers as she looks around and reminds herself that everything she sees is why it’s all worth doing.
It’s only when she’s fallen into a bed too familiar to not be hers, adding up all the pieces and grasping for the ones that have hidden themselves from her, she finally realises:
If he could call her out on sight, but never have seen her with Vander — or at the bar she still refused to visit. If he could dance over her grey eye like it was still there, and not know a Kiramman nearly died in the accident he thought he was the cause of.
If he could cut right to her heart, but didn’t even know her from the papers.
Then…
Why did he call me Caitlyn?