A reminder for anyone who might have missed it or forgotten: this chapter is a continuation from chapter 1, not chapter 2. I don't currently plan to write any more of these AUs. If anyone else wants to, please go ahead and tag me or tell me so I can read.


At the surface, the air was warm and there was no breeze, but Silco felt an icy chill throughout his whole body. It should have been a moment of victory. With this, all the terms of the agreement had been fulfilled.

The three of them had fallen silent. Sevika put Jinx down before they reached the bridge, and loosened the restraints around her ankles, allowing her the dignity to walk without giving her the opportunity to escape. Silco looked at her from the corner of his eye. Jinx looked at him for a moment. Her tears had dried in black trails down her cheeks, and most of her cuts had begun to heal. He wished she would be angry with him, anything other than that blank stare. She turned her head away. He glanced at Sevika, who was likewise stoic. He imagined for a moment Sevika pleading Jinx's case to him, but he knew that would not happen.

Sevika grasped the binding fastening Jinx's hands behind her back, and they marched forwards onto the bridge.

Enforcers were waiting for them, quite a number of them. They were taking no chances should this turn out to be an ambush. Silco felt a lifetime of fury towards Piltover grasp his insides. They deserved an ambush, after everything they had done. And what they had asked of him. But what would that achieve, except to start a war they had no hope of winning?

He found himself walking very slowly towards the centre of the bridge. Even though this moment was torture, and he was only delaying the inevitable.

Silco opened his mouth, and tried to say something, but no sound came out. He tried again. "Jinx-"

"Whatever you have to say, I'm not interested," Jinx said. She glanced at him from under her hair, and her voice suddenly sounded quiet and thin. "Unless this has been some big ol' plan I wasn't let in on."

Silco desperately grasped at what he wanted to say to her. But his mind was racing. And ultimately, did it really matter? "…I'm sorry," he muttered.

Jinx let out a laugh. "Guess I wasn't really listening properly when you told me everyone would betray me," she said, looking down at the ground. "Even you betrayed me in the end."

Her words pierced him like knives. "This won't be for long. I'll do… something," he said pathetically.

"Bullshit."

"I promise Jinx, I'll try."

Jinx turned to him, her eyes full of hate. "I don't believe you!" she yelled. "You don't mean anything to me!"

Silco wanted to say something, tell her that he very much did not feel that way about her. But he was too close to the enforcers, and if they heard him, it might jeopardise everything. "Goodbye, Jinx," he said, as distantly as he could manage.

The enforcers immediately surrounded her, two of them grabbing her by the arms. She struggled more than she had with Sevika. Silco watched in horror as they fought with her, one of them eventually dealing her a blow to the head.

Sevika jabbed Silco in the back to bring him back to his senses. Jayce was standing in front of him, and Silco had completely missed what the other man had said to him. Jayce was gracefully lowering the hand he must have extended for Silco to shake.

"I understand that must have been difficult for you," Jayce said.

Silco shook his head mechanically. "No. She had to be brought to justice," he said absently, his eyes scanning for the blue haired girl who had disappeared into the sea of blue uniforms.

"Well, thank you for your compliance. I hope our nations will continue to grow strong alongside each other," Jayce said.

"As do I," Silco said, reaching out to shake the other man's hand. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have much to deal with."

Jayce smiled warmly. "I understand. Nations don't run themselves."

"No."

Silco turned and returned to the newly independent Nation of Zaun. Mercifully, Sevika always knew when not to say anything.

The first thing he did when he got back to his office was to freeze. He wasn't ready for the sight of his desk. Gifts from Jinx, and other things she had left on there and never tidied away had become so normal that he had no longer even noticed them. Now he felt a stab of guilt when he saw them. He sat down, turning his chair around the other way and picked up some documents that he had been half-way through looking at. He had important things to do, he really couldn't afford to dwell on sentimentality.

He succeeded in pushing his emotions to one side until the pricking sensation in his left eye became too much for him to continue to ignore. Without thinking, he had assembled the syringe and looked upwards towards the rafters. He sighed, resigning himself to performing the injection himself. The needle was agony, and the syringe fell from his hands as he bent double and clutched his head in his hands, screaming.

Silco took several deep breaths, trying to slow his heart, which he realised had been pounding since they had taken Jinx to the bridge. He recognised now that her presence had soothed him far more than he had appreciated. He smoothed back his hair and wiped the drug from his left eye and a tear from his right. Getting up unsteadily and walking over to his drinks cabinet, he picked up a bottle and poured some out into a glass. To steady his nerves.

Wherever he turned, things reminded him of Jinx. The whole place was filled with things that were unmistakably hers. He couldn't go to his own bedroom without passing her room. It was destroying him. By the start of the second day, he gathered up Jinx's things from his desk, and after a brief pause to consider, put them away in a drawer. Despite what he had promised to her about trying to do something to help her, in the cold light of logic he highly doubted that there would be any such opportunity.

There were celebrations of independence, but not of the imperial, tickertape parade style of Piltover. Zaun celebrated in its own way. There was however an endless parade of people coming to Silco's office to congratulate him, invariably followed by some sort of request. He busied himself in the work that independence had somehow created. In some ways, not much had changed, but at the same time now a lot of things operated differently.

Not everyone was happy about the changes. Rich and poor people alike had depended on Shimmer to various degrees and for various reasons. There were a number of incidents of unrest. Some complained how their lives had been destroyed by the sudden criminalisation of the substance they depended on, and multiple deaths were attributed to its lack of availability. It wasn't long before a small, black-market trade in Shimmer began. It was rumoured that Silco instructed his agents not to investigate allegations of such illegal drug manufacture and trade.

With their now unrestricted access to the Hexgates, foreign trade was booming. Money started to trickle into Zaun, and then it began to pour. They now had the resources to do far more sustainable repairs than ever before, and launched a renewal project for the main city, with major improvements to their infrastructure. Money was put into cleaning up and minimising the damage from the toxins from the mines.

All of this brought the creation of many jobs. Silco was heartened to know that the new generations being born here would not have to suffer poverty and illness and hardship as he had. Paid work was available in abundance, and they had set up an organised system to ensure that those unable to work were supported, not forgotten and left to struggle and die.

Silco's regime had never been without its opponents. But with Zaun's independence, it was possible to investigate the root causes of their opposition and deal with the underlying issues. Silco enjoyed for the first time in his life, not only success, but popularity. The idea to construct a statue to him kept arising, but Silco repeatedly batted it away, forbidding it while he still lived.

Of course, no leader could rule a nation alone. Finding those he could trust was a challenge. Sevika was the only person whose loyalty he knew he had without a shadow of doubt, so she naturally became his deputy. With others, he found it useful to give them a title and some small area of responsibility. There was an unexpected appearance from Heimerdinger, formerly the longest serving member of Piltover's council. He had apparently been meddling here since he was voted off the council. Silco found it prudent to keep him around to supervise his meddling, and utilise the man's knowledge of centuries of history. Silco also met with the group who had been known as the Firelights. Ekko, a boy around the age of… well, a promising young man, had gathered a close community around him and developed some innovative technology.

It was only a matter of time before Ekko addressed the elephant in the room, both he and Silco knew that. When he finally asked Silco what had become of Jinx, Silco had to admit that he did not know. Of course, he knew that she had been sent to Stillwater, but that was all.

Silco knew he would go to see Jinx at some point. Every day he found himself thinking about going to visit her, and played out pretend conversations between her and him. Sometimes he'd try to force the waking fantasy around to some scenario where she could leave and come home with him. But his subconscious rebelled and refused to play along, it knew that was ludicrously unrealistic.

As for his real world visit to Stillwater, he kept putting it off. He still hadn't come up with the perfect speech to make her realise that he still cared about her more than anything, and that she should forgive him. He had made subtle enquiries as to the possibility of her release, but these were met with a firm no.

The months of contemplating it made it ultimately even more of a blow when at last he turned up at Stillwater and was turned away. He hadn't considered that prisoners would have a say in whether they wanted to receive certain visitors.

Jinx did not want to see him.

Silco held it together until he got back to his office. He slammed the door shut and walked over to one of the walls and hit his forehead against it. He wanted to break something. He wanted to destroy something. All he'd wanted was to talk to her for a few minutes, to check she was all right. And despite all of his power and influence, that was denied to him. He hit the wall with his fist.

He went over to his desk to get his glass, but it fell from his hand and shattered on the floor. Grabbing a bottle from the drinks cabinet, he threw himself down on the couch and drank directly from the bottle.

It was almost as if Jinx was dead. He'd lost her completely. She'd come into his life the same day that Vander had died. Although Vander had done awful things to him, Silco was not unaffected by his death. But the whirlwind of having a child around while trying to find a way to rebuild his empire had eased his grief. Presently, the alcohol brought some sense of numbness and quietened his thoughts, but his deep sadness remained.

Silco awoke in the early hours of the morning, feeling various aches and pains and a general sense of malaise. He blinked a few times and realised he was lying awkwardly on the couch in his office. There was a bottle lying on its side on the floor, a little patch of alcohol soaking the carpet beside it. He recalled that the bottle had been half way full yesterday.

He got himself to his feet and picked up the bottle, and his head throbbed from the attempted drowning of sorrows. The broken glass also needed clearing up, and he did so. A shard of glass sliced into his hand. He found himself sitting on the carpet, watching blood drip from the wound. It occurred to him that he could either let the wound bleed, or he could do something about it.

Ignoring his morning appointments, he returned to Stillwater. This time he demanded to see Jinx, and told the guard he would not be taking no for an answer.

He was led down a corridor of cells. There were shouts and jeers from the other cells as he walked past, some of them doubtlessly recognising him, others just looking for an excuse to make noise. The prison was dark and oppressive, almost reminiscent of how some of the poorest areas of Zaun used to be.

Finally, he found himself in front of Jinx's cell. She was slumped in one of the back corners, her head against the wall. For a few moments, Silco just looked at her. Her hair was cut much shorter and was tied in a messy ponytail at the base of her neck. Her arms were covered in a chaotic collection of new tattoos.

Silco held onto the bars of the cell. "Jinx, it's me," he said.

Jinx got up with exaggerated slowness. She turned around, and when she saw Silco she pushed herself backwards into the corner, eyes darting around wildly. "He can't hurt me anymore," she said to one wall, then looked at the other wall and added, "he left me. He left. He left me all alone!"

"Jinx, I'm here," he said softly.

Jinx started laughing hysterically, but she still wasn't looking at him. Eventually, she stopped and laid her head against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. He noticed she looked thinner, her face was gaunt and her eyes sunken. Just as he'd feared, she wasn't doing well in here.

"I never should have given you up. I'm so sorry."

Jinx glanced at him, briefly meeting his gaze, but then she winced and looked away, like the mere sight of him hurt her.

Silco gripped the bars tighter. "I know I don't deserve to be forgiven, but please, just talk to me."

Jinx turned her head and Silco thought he saw her old spark in back her eyes. "Why? Are we getting out of here?"

Silco shook his head. "Not yet," he said.

Jinx closed her eyes. "Yeah yeah, not ever," she said.

She turned back around and slumped against the wall. Silco stood and watched her for some time. He called her name a few times, but she didn't respond. He waited, in case she decided she wanted to talk. She didn't. Eventually, he left, feeling just as heartbroken as before.

No matter what, he was proud of his work in building the new Nation of Zaun. He had made a difference to the lives of thousands.

But in doing so, he had failed the one person who he cared about more than anything. The one person who had actually cared about him. At the end of the day, his employees and citizens went home to their families and the people they loved.

Jinx had always been there for him. And he hadn't appreciated how important that was. He would regret that for the rest of his life.