Vi

The smell of sweat, blood, and beer was the perfume of her kingdom. Before the lights of Piltover were even a bright smudge on the horizon, Vi already knew the taste of metal in her mouth. Growing up in the lower districts of Zaun, where the air tasted of smoke and smiles were scarce, she learned early that the world gave you nothing if you didn't tear it away with your fists.

Her adoptive father, Vander, ran a bar called The Last Drop, a tavern of worm-eaten wood and clientele with quick fists. Vi soon learned to clean tables and scare off drunks with a glare. But it wasn't until Vander, tired of finding her coming home with bloody knuckles from street fights, decided to teach her to box. He wrapped her hands, took her to the basement, and showed her how to close her fist properly. Not to hurt without reason, he said. To protect. To protect her own.

And Vi understood instantly. Not only because she needed to help keep the bar afloat, although that too, the coins she earned as a corner fighter in clandestine matches filled the dinner pot many nights, but because something inside her burned when the gloves tightened around her wrists. The dry crack of a punch against a jaw, the vibration traveling up her arm to her shoulder, the moment before the bell rang and the world reduced itself to her and her opponent. The adrenaline was a purer drug than any spark from the shimmer mines. Winning or losing was secondary; what mattered was that instant when she didn't know which of them would fall.

That was how she went from fighting in alleys to fighting in improvised cages, and from there to official rings under tin lights. Her name began to roll through Zaun like an urban legend. The champion of the undercity. The one who smiled when they split her lip. The one who wore torn jeans at the knees, fishnet tops that showed her tattoos, and leather jackets that smelled of cigarettes and victory. She had no time or interest for formalities. Her hair was a disaster of pink strands that refused to lie flat, her knuckles were always bruised, and her laugh was too loud for a woman who should have learned to be cautious.

And then came the need for a manager. Her career was growing like an uncontrolled fire, and Vi knew nothing about contracts, sponsorships, or how to turn punches into gold. That was when someone told her about a woman in Piltover. A lady of forty seven years, neat, silent in her efficiency, who had spent a decade turning the clumsiest fighters into rough diamonds. Vi screamed bloody murder. A Piltover woman? Someone from the top? No way.

But debts don't wait, and Vander needed medicine, and the children from the bar needed shoes. So she agreed to a meeting. She went to Piltover, to an office that smelled of old paper and expensive tea, and found herself face to face with a woman who didn't say more than ten words during the first hour. She listened. She watched. And when Vi finished launching into her speech about how she didn't need anyone, least of all a rich woman from the upper city, the woman simply nodded and slid a contract across the table. The terms were fair. More than fair. Vi, distrustful by nature, spent three days turning the paper over in her mind. But something pushed her to sign. Maybe it was the way that woman hadn't tried to straighten her out or dress her differently. Maybe it was that, when Vi talked about Vander and the bar and the nights without heating, her eyes grew slightly moist, not tragically, just with a tenderness that Vi didn't know she needed.

Over time, that Piltover woman became the only person from the upper city that Vi tolerated. The only one who could call her at three in the morning to ask something absurd without Vi hanging up. The only one who, when Vi lost a fight and broke a chair in the locker room, would sit beside her in silence until the storm passed. Vi began to seek her out. First for business, then out of habit, then because on bad days, that serene presence reminded her of something she thought she had lost forever. Of a mother. Of the woman who rocked her on stormy nights in Zaun, before the civil war took her away when Vi was barely ten years old. They didn't talk about it. There was no need. Vi would simply lean her head on her manager's shoulder sometimes, when no one was watching, and let the scent of cleanliness and stability envelop her. It was her harbor in the chaos of herself.

Then things changed. Vi couldn't say exactly when, but one night, after a particularly brutal fight that she won by knockout in the final round, euphoria pushed her to cross a line. They were in her manager's office, celebrating with cheap whiskey that Vi had brought. The light was dim. Vi, dizzy with adrenaline and affection, got too close. And before thinking, she kissed her. It was clumsy, graceless, full of teeth and haste. Her manager didn't pull away, but she didn't respond immediately either. She looked at Vi with those eyes that saw everything, and Vi, for the first time in years, felt shame.

"Sorry" she murmured, stepping back.

But her manager shook her head, very slowly, and something in her expression changed. It wasn't rejection. It was something deeper. An acceptance that was more terrifying than a punch. And so the relationship began. Vi, deep down, believed she was in control. She was the fighter, the one who bent opponents, the one who imposed her presence in every room she entered. Her manager was older, quieter, more contained. Vi thought she could take the helm, decide when they saw each other, when they kissed, when they left. But she soon discovered otherwise.

The first cracks appeared at a party. An after-fight event in a Piltover club, full of strobe lights and sweaty bodies. Vi had drunk enough to feel invincible. A girl, thin, with an easy smile, approached her and whispered something in her ear. Vi laughed. The girl wrapped her fingers around the belt loop of Vi's torn jeans. And Vi, who had never said no to a touch on any ordinary night, felt an icy weight in her stomach. She looked toward the bar. Her manager was there, silent, a glass of wine in her hands. She wasn't looking. She didn't need to. Vi felt the cold from a distance. She could kiss that girl. She could take her to the bathroom and forget the world for twenty minutes. But if she made her manager angry, if she broke that trust,what would happen? She would lose her career. The contracts. The money that kept Vander's bar afloat. The protection that only a Piltover woman with connections could offer her. Or worse: she would lose the only person who looked at her as if she weren't just a fighter. The only one who saw her as a daughter.

Vi didn't kiss the girl. She pulled away abruptly, muttered an excuse, and lost herself in the crowd. That night, in the car on the way back, her manager said nothing. But Vi felt the arm around her shoulder, the thumb making slow circles on her skin. And she understood that it wasn't about fear of consequences. It was that, for the first time, she cared more about not losing someone than about winning anything else.

But pride is a difficult animal to tame, and Vi had more pride than blood in her veins. The night of the defeat arrived like a sledgehammer. It was against a younger fighter, faster, who read each of her movements as if she had been studying her for years. The ring felt too small. The lights too bright. For the first time in a long time, Vi felt fear. And she lost. It wasn't a quick or clean knockout. It was a slow, exhausting beating that tore her pride to shreds before her knee even touched the canvas.

In the locker room, with a split lip and a bruised rib, Vi listened to her manager. They weren't shouts. It was worse. It was a cold disappointment, measured, each word cutting deeper than any punch. That she hadn't trained properly. That she had been overconfident. That she had disrespected her opponent. That she wasn't professional. That she was a disgrace to her own manager's name. Vi wanted to answer back, wanted to punch the mirror, wanted to roar that she was the champion and that one bad night didn't define anything. But the words got stuck. Because her manager was right. And because, deep down, Vi knew she had lost because she believed herself invincible. Because she believed no one could touch her.

That night, in her manager's apartment, because she no longer went to her own, not for months, the tension was a caged animal. Vi limped in, her knuckles wrapped but still bleeding through the gauze. Her manager closed the door softly. And then, without a word, she pushed Vi against the wall. It wasn't violent. It was firm. Vi, dazed, wanted to resist. She was stronger, younger, faster. She could reverse the situation in a second. But she didn't. Something in the other woman's gaze, that mix of contained fury and something darker, more possessive , paralyzed her. Her manager had endured her outbursts, her binges, her escapades, her false sense of control for months. And now, for the first time, Vi saw what lay beneath. She wasn't just the manager. She wasn't just the maternal figure. She was a woman who had decided never to let go of what she considered hers again.

The night became slow, heavy, like breathing underwater. Vi felt her own hands being raised against the wall, her wrists immobilized, the wrapping on her knuckles coming undone with fingers that didn't tremble. There was only the rustle of clothing, the heat of breath against her neck, and the sweet humiliation of knowing herself folded. Vi, the unbeatable one, the one who never bowed her head, felt her legs weaken. Not from pain. From something she couldn't name. Submission fell upon her like a slab and at the same time like a caress. Every time she tried to sit up or regain control, a firm hand brought her back to her place. It wasn't punishment. It was a lesson. A demonstration that, outside the ring, someone else made the rules.

“This is for your own good,” you whispered with that spark of sarcasm that you always used as a shield when things got too real. “To calm down,” you added, trying to regain control of the situation as you pushed her with a determination that surprised even yourself. Before you could process the intensity of Vi's gaze, she was already lying on the bed, wearing only her boxers and that striped mesh that revealed her carved abs and the map of ink that ran across her skin.

You positioned yourself over her, feeling the difference in height and the power of her body under yours. You slid the fabric of her boxers to the side, leaving her skin exposed to the cold air of the cell, and began to rub the tip of your hextrap against her wetness, searching for that desperate touch that would make you forget the outside world. An involuntary moan escaped her lips as the friction hit her exact spot, making her feel strangely vulnerable yet dangerously turned on.

Vi watched you from below, her eyes dark with desire. She put a hand to her mouth, pressing her lips together to contain her own sounds, but her voice came out hoarse, laced with an authority that made you want to surrender and fight at the same time.

"Is this what mommy wants?" she whispered, her gaze boring into yours as if she were reading your soul. "Am I being a good girl?"