Arcane Fanfic: Feeding the Tree

[kaffy_r]

Title: Feeding the Tree
Author: kaffy_r 
Words: 4,812 per AO3
Fandom: Arcane: League of Legends
Edited by: my beloved dr_whuh
Summary: (No longer under a cut, since the show has been out for 6 months in most markets.) Up, down, across, under, and - finally - out into a clearing with a tree that could mean shelter from Silco and Shimmer. In a timeline where Powder's monkey bomb didn't kill her family, the need to save people from Silco's drug is just as necessary. How Ekko drags Mylo into a productive plan.
Notes:This is my fourth story in an imagined alternate universe in which Powder doesn't inadvertently kill the people she loves, and thus doesn't end up with Silco. I love the canon universe, and always will, but ... I also love Vander and the boys who were Vi's and Powder's brothers. Because I specifically rather love Mylo as a character, this story focuses on him. It also, I hope, reflects my feeling that some things in this AU would lead to the same outcomes as the canon universe. One thing I think would remain the same is the need for a sanctuary for people who survive Silco's Shimmer drug, and the leadership Ekko showed in setting it up. I've posited a distance far enough from Zaun's pollution and Piltover's notice to allow such a gorgeous tree to grow in isolation. I've tried to keep my description of The Tree as close as possible to what we see in the show, but I hope readers will forgive any of my deliberate or accidental liberties. And finally, I extrapolated Mylo's enjoyment of carpentry and self-taught architecture from his lockpicking skills. There are dots to connect there, I think.
Disclaimer: With the exception of the occasional original character, all characters are the property of Riot Games, Fortiche Productions, Alex Yee and Christian Linke. I intend no copyright infringement and take no coin. I just love their characters.
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“Look Ekko, I’m willing to put up with all your secrecy shit because Powder says I should, and I trust her, but for god’s sake, we've been walking — and climbing up, and jumping across and climbing down  — for, what, hours?” Mylo was more out of breath than he wanted to admit to Ekko, who seemed to move as if gravity and weariness had no hold on him. 

“Don’t worry; it’s just a little while longer,” Ekko called over his shoulder. 

“That’s what you said 10 minutes ago,” Mylo muttered. 

“I heard that.”

“I meant you to.”

“And we’ve only been walking about half an hour; don’t whine.”

Mylo was indignant. “I am not whining!”

Ekko didn’t answer; he was pulling down a rusty ladder attached to the metal wall next to them, and clambering up it. Mylo reluctantly followed, tucking the chem torch that was at times their only light source in dark passages into his belt so that he could use both hands on the ladder. He had to keep up with Ekko because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to find his way back to The Lanes on his own, even though he’d tried to memorize their route.

Ekko reached the top of the ladder, and pulled hard on the latch to a door so tiny it was obviously an access to some water or sewer main. The door groaned in protest as he tugged on it, but eventually gave way. Its opening allowed an air current to breeze through, and Mylo smelled the river. They must be close … he breathed in deep; while a Piltie might retch at the odor, it was fresh air as far as residents of the many lower levels of the Undercity were concerned. 

“Are we under the river?” He followed Ekko, watching his feet on the rickety ladder rungs. 

“Sort of.” Ekko sounded a bit out of breath at this point; Mylo felt better about his own lung capacity. “We did travel under it by a couple of levels, thanks to a route folks apparently forgot because it was close to a water main collapse. It was that section where we had to do some fancy footwork to get around.”

“Huh.” Mylo remembered that part of their journey. It actually made sense that people would avoid everything past the collapsed puzzle of ancient pipes. He would have turned back if Ekko had not urged and guided him through it.

“We’re on the Piltover side of the river now,” Ekko said. “C’mon. Through this one door, down a passage to our left, one more set of stairs, a final hallway, and we’re there.”

Mylo was abruptly wary. There was a reason Undercity residents steered clear of even the deepest neighborhoods of Piltover. Any neighborhood Piltover citizens viewed as bad was still apt to be cleaner, more spacious, and better protected than the best Undercity neighborhoods, including The Lanes.  They might be down more levels than Piltover Enforcers generally patrolled, but the idea of being past the bridge in any fashion made him feel exposed and vulnerable. 

As if he could read Mylo’s mind, Ekko laughed softly. “Don’t worry; where we’re going is past an abandoned warehouse district that the Pilties consider too polluted — too much like our side — to bother with. The last businesses using the docks were hanging on by a thread anyway, and they went bankrupt a year or two ago, once the hex gates got up and running. And since —” He stopped to pull the access door shut behind them. “ —since Enforcers are a lot more interested in breaking heads on our side of the bridge, they don’t patrol these docks enough to notice where we’re going. 

“They’re blind, they’re stupid, they’re completely unaware of … well, the blindness and stupidity are both winners for us. C’mon. Almost there.”  

Mylo grimaced, as his attempt to balance himself in the old main while restarting the torch meant he had to put one hand on the old pipe’s walls. “Why do I always wind up with shit on my hands when I’m with you or Vi?”

Ekko snorted. “Relax, Mylo. It’s just condensation because we’re so near the river. This main hasn’t been in use for years; and it was probably a water main anyway, not sewage.”

Mylo wiped his hand on his trousers, and tried to ignore his own embarrassment. 

The next five minutes or so neither of them spoke; the main was large enough that they didn’t have to duck down as they had had to do once or twice earlier, but what passed for the floor was uneven at best, and more than occasionally treacherous. Mylo was glad to have the torch, since this main was as dark as a tomb.

Their final passage led them to the end of the main, through another access door, down a hall and to a set of ancient maintenance stairs, from there to a door that led into a hallway so completely different from the passageways they’d already been through that Mylo blinked in surprise. 

Traces of faded blue paint and even fainter gold designs on its walls hinted at how pleasant the passageway must once have been. Mylo peered at it in astonishment as he shut down the torch and stuck it back in his waistband. A row of faint floor lights, many broken or missing from their frames, gave enough light to walk by; another larger and more ornately bracketed strip of lights on the walls near the passageway ceiling suggested some ruined Piltover hotel. 

Before Mylo could ask about the hallway, it ended in the kind of circular metal hatch that seemed completely out of keeping with the decor leading up to it. 

It was much easier to open than previous hatchways they’d gone through. Once Ekko rolled it open, light poured through; the kind Mylo didn’t immediately recognize since it was so rarely seen in any part of the Undercity.

Sunlight. 

Mylo had never seen it so golden in the Undercity. The sun that made it down to even Zaun’s upper levels had to fight through the smog and airborne toxins still seeping from the old mines, leaving it wan even at midday. This … this was like that long ago day on the Piltover roof, before everything damn near went completely pear-shaped.  

Powder lying motionless on the stones, Deckard howling above them — 

Mylo pushed the image away with an ease born of years of dealing with his never-quite-exorcised guilt at being so awful to Powder when she was a kid. He refocused on the door.

“Come on. Welcome to The Tree,” Ekko said, the capitalization evident in his voice. He beckoned Mylo forward and Mylo, drawn by the sunlight, walked through the doorway in wonder.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, he realized he was standing on some sort of platform; almost a balcony with decorative wrought-iron railings, but with steps going down to a lower level, and circling, as they did so, a huge — 

“Holy ….” Mylo trailed off, before trying again, craning his neck to see the living greenery around and above him; the rich dark  texture of a trunk so massive he couldn’t get his mind around it next to him. “This is a … we’re standing on a — a tree?”

Ekko nodded, his eyes bright under the hourglass he’d painted across much of his face. He’d recently taken to using the design for some reason, but Mylo was determined not to comment on it. That was easy today, when there was so much more all around him, filling him with amazement.

“I … this is, like, bigger than anything I've seen down here. For that matter,  I don’t remember anything this big growing, even in some of the Pilties’ fancy-dancy parks.” He stopped. “This is … was this ever something that the Pilties owned?”

Ekko shook his head. “I don’t think so. It feels … I don’t know … older than up top, somehow. You saw the hall, right? It feels as if something really high-class was supposed to be here, but something high class that started below Piiltover. And it never got finished.”

“But … down here?”

Ekko nodded. “You talk to some of the old ones down in The Lanes, and if they remember some of what their oldest grans told them, they say our upper levels, and even the mid-levels, used to be different. Used to be better.”

Mylo scoffed. “You listen to them?”  He couldn’t believe Ekko would actually pay attention to the old folks of the Undercity. There weren't a lot of them, granted; life where he and Ekko had grown up was hard, even in the best sections, like The Lanes. If you lived to the ripe old age of 60, you were ahead of the game, and apt to be respected just for beating the odds. 

There were a very, very few old grans and gramps who lived longer. They had a whole lot of street cred, Mylo admitted to himself. And really, even he could respect anyone who hadn’t fallen ill from the poisoned air or polluted water, the lack of good food or medicine. But believe their stories about the good old days? As far as Mylo was concerned, there was no such thing as the good old days. Not in the Undercity.

In the Undercity, in Zaun, things were still bad, really bad. They’d been bad as long as he could remember. 

It was years ago now, but he still remembered crying for his mother as she ran away, tears in her bruised and swollen eyes, left him on a broken sidewalk, and was hauled back into one of the cheaper brothels by her brutal pimp to ply her trade. He still remembered being hit, hard, by the brothel bouncer when he tried to follow her back into the only home he’d known. 

He still remembered the next few days without food, how he begged the Piltie boys who’d come slumming for food, remembered them laughing at him, throwing some of their half eaten “authentic Undercity” treats at him. He still remembered how ashamed he’d been for grabbing the scraps before slinking away and running into an alley to eat them. He’d slept in that alley night after night, because it was dry, and narrow enough that the bigger boys couldn’t easily follow him in to take the stuff he’d pickpocketed.

And he still remembered the day a big bearded man had reached into his alley and hauled him out. Mylo had thought he was dead for sure, because he’d stolen coins from the guy’s back pockets. Instead, the big man had looked at him for a long time, then asked if he was hungry. Mylo, frozen in place, had just nodded. Then the big man told him his name was Vander and asked Mylo what his name was.

Well, Mylo, the big man had said, I think you’d better come with me. We’ll get you something to eat. Normally, Mylo would have run the other way, but Vander had had a tight hold on him. No one was more surprised than Mylo when this stranger didn’t rob, hurt, or assault him, and actually did what he said he would; he fed him, dumped him in a hot bath and scrubbed him raw, getting months of alley filth off him. Then he’d scrounged up clean clothes from somewhere for him to wear.

You’re going to be staying here from now on, Vander had said. This is your home now.

Mylo damn near worshiped Vander after that. He didn’t mind having a new big sister either, even if she was bossy, and he was even alright with a new little sister, even if he did get a little too much of a kick out of pushing her around.

Powder crying because of what he called her … Powder hunching in shame when he yelled at her for screwing something up … Powder beating him at marksmanship … Powder putting her arms around him as she sat up in her bed … Powder giving him gun lessons … Powder forgiving him.

He shook his head a little, once again relegating those thoughts to the background noise in his mind. 

The thing was that he and Claggor, who Vander had brought home some months after Mylo, were lucky Vander had found them. Mylo knew he would have died if he’d had to hole up in that godawful alley much longer. Claggor had been too nice, too sweet, to survive on the street; he might have died before his growth spurt made him too large and strong to bully. 

The kids Vander couldn’t take in? They died. Too few people in the Undercity could take care of other peoples’ orphans; they had a hard enough time taking care of their own kids. 

As for Piltover? Not a single blessed peep about kids dying of hunger, not a single tear about dead babies, not a single bit of coin, or medicine, or help of any kind wasted on the Undercity. Nothing. 

He hated them. 

He still dreamed about taking down one of the airships that now dotted the skies  thanks to Piltover’s hex tech systems. He still hated most Pilties, even though Vi and Vander insisted there were some who weren’t complete shits. 

Maybe there were some who didn’t deserve kicking off the top of one of their precious buildings. The Kiramman woman, maybe; Vi was sweet on her, and Vander said she was on the Undercity’s side. That might make her alright — 

“Mylo?”

Mylo flinched, brought back to the present. “Sorry. Just thinking,” he said, even though he knew people didn’t associate him and thinking all that often. “You said you’d talked to some old grans and gramps who said Zaun used to be different?”

Ekko frowned. “The Undercity used to be different.”

“Yeah. The Undercity. Sorry.” Mylo had forgotten how much Ekko hated anything to do with Silco, and that apparently extended to the name Silco had bestowed on the Undercity. Ekko hated Silco and everything he did as much as Mylo hated Piltover. “So, okay; tell me about it.”

Ekko lost the frown, and regained the look of excitement that was so familiar to Mylo. The guy could get excited over the weirdest things, Mylo thought; he’d been like that since he really was Little Man. 

“Here’s what they told me,” he said. “They said that we used to be the real city, and that we built what’s up there and across the bridge, only to find out they weren’t going to let us live there.

“Huh.” Mylo didn’t believe a word of it, but he had to admit it sounded about like the kind of thing Pilties would pull. “And?”

“Here. Let’s sit down; we’ve walked a long way, and I’m tired,” Ekko said. He sat down on the platform, well away from the edge, then patted a spot beside him. Mylo gratefully followed suit.

The younger man took a deep breath; Mylo rolled his eyes and braced himself for a history lesson. He was pleasantly surprised to find out he wouldn’t be subjected to one.  

Ekko once again looked as if he could read Mylo’s mind. He grinned his lop-sided grin. “Look, I know you’re not that interested in all the history. I just need you to understand that this place, this tree, isn’t Piltover. It’s us. It’s ours. The tree’s been growing for … hmmm … I don’t know much about growing things; mechanicals are more my thing. But it’s got to have been growing for years, maybe a century, maybe more.

“In fact, I talked to some people who weren’t originally from here, and not from Piltover, either. A couple of them said they were farmers back where they came from, so I asked them how long it would take trees to grow. They said trees can take decades and centuries to grow. Centuries!” He looked awestruck as he said that. 

“And the Pilties don’t know about it. Not at all,” he said triumphantly. “I’ve been keeping watch ever since I found this place, and it’s pretty clear it isn’t even a gleam in the Council’s eye. I finally figured it’s because it’s not in Piltover, not even in their suburban outskirts. And it sure as hell isn’t in the Undercity.”

“It isn’t?” Mylo’s brow furrowed. “But you said it was ours. And we came here directly from —”

“Yeah, I know. That’s the brilliant part!”  

“Ekko ….” Mylo was losing patience. 

“Yeah. Sorry. It does belong to us — but it’s not within the geographic limits of the Undercity. You know how long it took for us to get here, right? And you know how difficult it was? No one comes looking for it, because no one knows it’s here. Whoever planted it, and whoever cleared the space around it — that goes a fair pace back from here, by the way — is long gone. Maybe it was whoever painted that hallway back there.

“Something happened to them. Who knows if they were our ancestors, or the Pilties’? They never came back here, for whatever reason … all gone, and we’ll never know ….” Ekko trailed off for a moment before starting again. “So the tree grew by itself, and it grew up healthy. That’s because — take a deep breath; d’you smell anything?”

Mylo sniffed, and realized that the normal smell of Zaun was completely missing, just as the Undercity’s toxin-laden and misty atmosphere was missing. “Nothing.”

Ekko nodded, his smile once again splitting his face. “Yeah. That’s one way you can tell how far we are from the Undercity we know and live in. Still … I’ve decided that this is the Undercity. My Undercity. Powder’s. Maybe yours, maybe Claggor’s. Not Vi’s, at least not yet. Not Vander’s, ever, because I don’t want to put him in danger.” He looked vulnerable for a minute, like the Little Man who’d cried so hard as they laid Benzo to rest. Then he spoke again.

“And it won’t ever be Silco’s.” 

Mylo could feel the hate and banked rage radiating from Ekko. He didn’t blame him at all. Silco stayed out of The Lanes, thanks to the uneasy truce brokered by Vander, but he’d made the rest of the Undercity a purple-tinged nightmare. The guy went on and on about his precious Zaun, Mylo thought, but he’d made everyone in his territories slaves, addicts, or members of his gang. 

And Ekko never forgot it was Silco and Shimmer that had killed Benzo. 

“So … what’s it going to be, then?” Mylo asked cautiously. He had an irrational worry that Ekko would turn his anger on him, but he had to get some answers, and had to know why Ekko had dragged him here.

“It’s going to be a refuge,” Ekko said. “A refuge for people who’ve been hurt by Silco and his drug.”

Mylo squinted, partly at the thought and partly because the sun had risen to its midday zenith, making the light around the tree hard on his Undercity eyes. “What do you mean? What kind of refuge?”

“I’ll show you.” Ekko got to his feet and put down one hand to help Mylo up. “Come over here.”

‘Here’ turned out to be another breadth of platform that was built to curve around a further  section of the tree’s vast trunk. As Mylo turned to follow Ekko, he was amazed to see that the opening through which they’d entered The Tree’s clearing was actually in a wall that had apparently been part of some long-vanished building; despite its age deteriorated state, it was elegant, even beautiful. 

“Look up.” Ekko’s voice was soft with the same awe that he’d exhibited earlier. “Up around the trunk.”

Mylo did. To his wonderment, he saw actual buildings resting on platforms built around the tree; stairs that wound around the trunk connected a couple of buildings on levels farther up, some of them perched on the tree’s large limbs themselves. Despite his determination not to be impressed, Mylo’s breath hitched at the sight. 

Ekko resumed. “Now look across the clearing … see all the ruined buildings on the other side, and those up at the top of the cliff? I’m going to fix them up; they’re going to be homes. And workshops. Maybe a clinic, if I can figure that one out. 

“It isn’t going to be easy, but Powder’s helping. So are some of my board people.”

“Your what?”

“Board people. The folks I fly with.”

Mylo knew Ekko had accrued a group of kids, young men and women of his age, that followed him around. They all used versions of the hoverboard Ekko had invented, and they all shared Ekko’s loathing of Silco. “Ah. Okay. A lot of them?”

Ekko nodded. “Maybe about twenty. They’re all survivors.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen them,” Mylo said. Those he’d seen once or twice at The Last Drop had the look of former Shimmer addicts — faded violet eyes and occasional purple lesions, the slight but constant tremor in their hands and shoulders — but they were all obviously free of the drug and apparently wanted to stay that way. He respected the hell out of anyone that could pull themselves free from that shit.

“Silco’s hurt them all, bad, in one way or another. Some of them lost someone to Shimmer. Others damn near lost themselves. And there are younger kids my people tell me about, little ones whose parents died or left them because of Shimmer. They all want something better.” Ekko continued. “Especially those of them who’ve come back from the edge and who have kids of their own.
They started talking about wanting to bring them up somewhere healthy and 100 percent free from Silco and the drug. 

“We’d talk about it over and over, but we couldn’t figure out how or where to pull that off. And then Powder and I found this place on one of her ‘Let’s go somewhere new’ explorations. We knew as soon as we did that this was perfect,” he said. 

“I’ve brought a couple of my board team out to see it, and they agree. They’re willing to put in the sweat equity to make this a home. And maybe a home base, if we decide to make life hard for Silco and his thugs.

“But I want you to help, too.” He stopped, adding diffidently, “If you want to. I mean, we could use you.”

For a moment, Mylo didn’t know what to say. “Uh … how? I mean … me? Why?”  He tried to ignore the warmth that blossomed in his chest. 

“You’ve got skills we need here.”

Mylo threw up his hands in barely restrained panic. “I’m not riding one of your crazy-ass boards.”

That made Ekko laugh out loud. “I’m not asking you to do that — you’ve got a great sense of balance, though, you’d probably be a great boarder — I’m talking about some of the other things you’re great at.

“I mean, you know how good you are at lock-picking, right? And I’ve seen your face when you’re figuring out puzzles, which is kind of like lock-picking. You like figuring out where things go so that they fit together properly.”

Mylo, who was a little unnerved by the thought that Ekko was observing him that closely, nodded warily. He thought he understood what the younger man was saying, though. 

Mylo knew that, despite his dreams, he would never use his admittedly good marksmanship to take down an airship. He might want to, but he’d come around eventually to Vander’s way of thinking. Doing something like that would bring down death and misery on the Undercity, and he would be to blame for blood, and starvation, and crying children like he had once been. It meant that that kind of revenge against Piltover was off the table. 

Now that he was a man, or at least close to being a man, he needed to do what adults do for their families. And for him, the way to pull his own weight as part of Vander’s family was through carpentry. He’d apprenticed to one of Vander’s buddies; initially not because he thought he’d like it, but because he wanted to please his adoptive father.

Then he discovered how much he liked putting wood and nails and glue and other building materials together, turning them into useful things; chairs, beds, counters that wouldn’t sag, doors, strong walls and waterproof roofs.

And when he had access to pencils and something to draw on, he really enjoyed doodling out plans for things to build. Good shelving units, for instance, and floor plans for Undercity homes, plans that took space and availability of money and building materials into consideration. 

“You want me to help figure out how to make these—” he pointed to one of the more decrepit buildings clinging to the tree trunk “ — “safe and livable.”

“Yeah.” Ekko looked so hopeful that Mylo had to stop himself from laughing.  

“It’s going to be hard to get building materials in here,” Mylo said. “You got a plan for that, or do I have to drag it through that maze we just came through?”

“I’ve got a plan,” Ekko said. His face lit up as Mylo spoke; probably, Mylo thought, because Ekko could tell that he was going to help. Mylo knew himself; he’d end up doing it with a maximum of complaining and a minimum of grace, but if he could help build things here, or make existing things better, he’d know for certain he had the chops that his boss said he might have. And helping people with kids escape Silco’s Undercity … that sounded good, too. 

“My people will help bring stuff in by board,” Ekko said. “It’ll have to be at night, so that no one notices where they fly, but I’ve got contacts on the docks, thanks to Claggor. We’ll have the material in a couple of weeks.”

“Fell-Off-The-Truck Inc.?” 

Ekko’s smile was a bit more lop-sided. “Got it in one.”

“Don’t tell me any more. I don’t want to know,” Mylo said. He wanted to make that a serious order, but ruined it with a huge grin. Then he had a thought. “I’m going to lose work time over this. You going to pay me?”

Ekko stared. “Seriously? No. We don’t have that kind of money.”

“Huh; that’s what I thought,” Mylo said after a moment. “I tell you what. Once the project’s over, you and I —”

“ — and Powder.” 

“ — and Powder, sure … you and I and Powder will sit down and figure out what my work was worth. And we can figure out some way to make up for my lost wages. Maybe  buy me a set of new clothes or something.”

Ekko, who Mylo knew made a decent living with his engineering and inventing, slowly nodded. “That’s fair.”

The two of them spent the next few hours clambering up into the tree, exploring the ground around it, and climbing up to the clifftop houses as well as those around the trunk. Mylo had no paper or pencil, so he tried to commit to memory some of the items he'd initially need to improve most of the buildings. A couple he told Ekko bluntly were beyond help, but where they stood, he said, could be the site of new and better houses. Ekko looked impressed, and Mylo tried not to preen.

Around them, the clearing had slowly shifted into violet shadows, although the sky far above the tree and the cliff top still appeared blue. Tiny green lights started to blink on and off in the air around them, as the firelights beloved of Undercity dwellers awakened and began their nighttime flights. 

By unspoken mutual consent, Mylo and Ekko silently watched the firelights, and breathed in the clean air. When it got darker, Mylo pulled out his chem torch and flicked it alive. 

“Time to go,” he said in something close to a whisper. 

“Yeah.” Ekko looked sideways at him. “We can head back the way we came. Or you can hold on to me and my board. There’s a system of old intake valves one of my guys discovered that’s too dangerous to walk through, but great for fast board travel. The valves come out at one of Piltover’s airship docks.”

Mylo groaned. “You just want to see me throw up, don’t you?”

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a no, Ekko. I’m going to have to get used to the long way here anyhow. I might as well start now.”

Ekko nodded in appreciation. “Alright.”

Just before they shut the sliding door to the clearing, Mylo put one hand on his companion’s shoulder. “Hold up a minute.”

He took a last look at The Tree — he fully understood the capitalization now — and its moving wreath of tiny green dancers. Beauty was hard to come by in the Undercity, and this? 

This was beauty.

-30