@zaunite-hound
They said a ghost haunted this place, a ghost that might have resembled a man who had fallen away into the faint memories of the older folks. And so the children stayed away, as children were want to do, because no one wanted to disturb the haunt of a ghost.
It was too dangerous, anyway, full of creaking floorboards that cracked underfoot and support beams that leaned, their innards ash. A wrong step and one might fall through to the sewers below, a death trap if nothing else.
Or further below into a forgotten mine pit.
He himself hardly ventured back into these ruins that for so long had been his life's work, the place where he'd schemed and fought and manipulated, all for what? For a people who thought of him as nothing more than a petty drug lord with a grudge against Piltover? It had been Jinx who had united those beneath.
She had done what he truly never could.
There he was, and he had been seated in one of the few remaining chairs that hadn't burnt completely to ash. It wasn't his chair, no, someone had seen to it that there would be nothing left of that particular relic, and his desk along with it. Perhaps Silco had come to die again, here in this place, whenever the end might come to him. He could hasten it, he knew. Let the rest of the Shimmer go to waste. It was waste, anyway, barely stable, the worst of the lots he and his had deemed too unfit for human consumption beyond testing. It was in the midst of his contemplation about how he might just let himself go when the unmistakable sound of something massive moving through the ruins interrupted, too loud in ears that often heard nothing more than silence and clocks ticking in his day to day life. There was something within the footsteps that tugged at a memory, and it was when at last whoever--or whatever--it was at last that he was able to put a face to the steps.
And a tentative name to the face.
Whatever surprise Silco had felt, he kept it hidden easily; years clawing his way through the dirtiest scum had taught him that to show feelings was to be vulnerable, and the world had no place for that. His world had no place for that.
So Silco had made his words, had risen and approached, and it seemed that which was Vander saw fit to approach as well, to meet him... Not halfway, but to meet him where he wouldn't have to take anymore steps. Like a bird, his head tilted to the side, his one eye scrutinizing, and how Vander had changed.
Yet it was still undeniably Vander, wasn't it? Both hands clasped tightly around the cane's handle, and how small he felt before this mountain of a manbeast as he held tightly to the guilt he felt. This was his doing. One more mistake that hadn't been a mistake at all.
"I hope you're not here to drown me again."
