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Powder’s hands. The day she was born, that chubby little paw wrapping around Vi’s finger while she slept. The little dimples. The new skin, soft as powder.
The cudgel hit her gut like a ton of bricks and she hit the floor, a terrible, breathless, animal sound in her throat.
Her mother, rocking her to sleep. Faceless now, memories of her knocked askew by childhood brawls, but Vi could still feel her arms wrapped snugly around her, the steady rhythm of her heartbeat beneath her cheek as the hammock swayed.
A steel-toed boot to the face and her vision exploded in blacked-out stars. Rough, unkind laughter as she scrambled blindly away. A hand gripping her hair, hauling her upright.
Vander. All muscle and stone, with calloused, heavy hands. Carrying her off that bridge. Drying her tears. Cleaning her cuts and scrapes with a gentleness she wouldn’t have expected from a man so massive. His hands were heavy where he laid them on her shoulder, but it was his love and pride in the familiar weight.
Blood in her mouth, running into her eyes. She’d never had a very good guard.
Mylo’s skinny, wiry arms, wrapped around the back of her neck while he knuckled her crown. Claggor’s warm bear hugs.
She thought she heard a rib crack. Pain flashed, lightning through her muscles and lungs. She tried not to scream. She tried so hard.
Powder’s hands. Powder’s hands. Powder’s hands.
When they left, it was like the passing of a hurricane - nothing but silence and carnage in their wake. She lay still, trying to remember how to breathe, trying to ignore the way her muscles spasmed every time her lungs expanded. She inhaled blood by accident and rolled onto her stomach, coughing violently, clutching her ribs, tears streaming down her cheeks against her will. Her forehead ground into the stone floor, and she howled. It hurt. She didn’t stop. Her voice rang in her ears, reverberating out and into the past, shattering the faces and the memories of the people who had loved her once. She collapsed and the cold darkness of her cell fell over her like a wolf’s jaws closing on its bleeding prey.
Her body learned the feeling of hatred. She felt it curling in her gut every time she heard the rattling of the elevator shaft, the heavy bootsteps and clang of the cudgel on the stone floor. It stole down her spine as she readied herself for what came next, burning through her muscles with a white heat, making her fists clench. She’d fought back once. Just once. She’d landed a hit, and four other guards appeared out of nowhere. It was the only time she’d gone to the hospital. After that, she knew to take her beatings with her arms up and her head down, trying to recall what love had felt like, years ago. And when they’d gone, she’d pound her hatred into the stone walls instead, bloodying her knuckles until they grew callouses, and then bloodying the callouses, imagining an enemy’s face with every hit she landed.
Today, her hand wraps were just beginning to show blood when the elevator rattled through the walls. She paused, but only for a moment. This was sooner than she’d been expecting. It had only been a few days since their last visit. Usually they liked to give her time to recover. It took all the fun out of it if she was still an insensate heap when they came calling. She slammed her fists into the wall in a steady rhythm. No better way to get her blood up, get her ready for the pain. In between the crushing sound of impact, she heard the footsteps. They were lighter than she was used to. Dainty, almost. New recruit probably. They’d likely be showing her the ropes, maybe demonstrating a new technique for inmate beatings. The footsteps slowed and then stopped outside her cell. She dropped her fists, still breathing heavy, and looked over her shoulder. Standing in the hallway was a woman, tall and lithe with long, dark hair, a serious mouth, a shadowed brow. She wasn’t a guard - she was wearing an Enforcer’s uniform. Vi couldn’t see any other guards nearby either. She’d come alone. Her blue eyes gleamed even in the gloom of the prison. Something rippled down Vi’s spine - something hot, something baring its teeth.
“Who the hell are you?”
The Enforcer’s name was Caitlyn Kiramman. She said it with a small lift of her chin, a flash of pride in her eyes, like someone who had been introducing herself to people her whole life. Just like all the rest of them. Chests puffed, heads high, like they were something special. Vi should have cooperated. She knew she should have, but she didn’t have it in her to bow and scrape, especially not to someone who didn’t carry a cudgel. Especially not to someone who didn’t know enough about danger to stay on the other side of that red line. Vi toyed with the idea of giving her a scare, and when she saw Powder’s monkey head drawing, the chance all but took itself. She lunged at the door, trying to ignore the way her heart almost leapt out of her chest, gripping the bars so tightly she could feel the rough metal cutting into her palms. The damn woman wouldn’t answer her question, wouldn’t tell her where she’d gotten Powder’s drawing from. She wanted answers herself, proof of Silco’s involvement in the Piltover attack, as if Vi was in any position to help.
“I could get the proof for you,” Vi said. “Just not from in here.”
The woman scoffed. Vi considered reaching through the bars and ripping that fancy brooch from around her neck.
“In what mad world would I trust someone like you?” the Enforcer said.
Vi should have shut her mouth. She should have shut her fucking mouth, gone back into the shadows, let this Enforcer woman wear her questions out in the silence. But she was itching. Her skin hurt from seeing that monkey head, and her bones ached with the weight of all the dark stone that had hung over her for the last five years. The Enforcer would probably bring down hell on her already for being so uncooperative, so what the hell.
“Someone like me? ” Vi snapped. “You Enforcers are all the same, just asshole criminals in fancy uniforms. You know what? Find Silco yourself.”
The Enforcer sniffed. “I will, thank you.”
Vi snorted as the Enforcer turned on her heel. “The Undercity’s gonna eat you alive.”
The woman paused, but she didn’t turn back. Her dainty steps faded away down the hall, taking with them the only hands that had come within five feet of Vi in the last five years and not done violence to her.
Vi paced the cell, listening to the elevator ascend until she could no longer hear it. She wondered for the thousandth time just how far they had buried her, and for the thousandth time, she felt like she could all but rip her skin off with the sudden, strangling panic at the thought. She slammed her fist into the wall, trying to disrupt the feeling, trying to drive it off. She did it again, and again, and again, until her wrists ached even through the handwraps. It wasn’t helping. She shook her hands, pacing again.
“Caitlyn Kiramman,” she said softly, trying to imitate the snobby accent.
She imagined her voice right now, speaking to that massive ogre of a guardsman. “That inmate hurt my feelings. Go hurt her back!” She tried to imagine the woman on the streets of the Undercity, questioning every junkie she came across with that same tone, those same proud blue eyes. She’d be dead within the hour. That feeling again, ripping hot and angry down her spine. A yell broke out of Vi’s mouth, and she hit the wall again, sending bits of concrete sprinkling to the ground.
Only a few minutes later, high overhead, she heard the clunk of the elevator coming back into earshot. Maybe the Enforcer had changed her mind. Maybe she was going to come back and ask for Vi’s help after all. The elevator doors opened at the far end of the hall, and Vi heard the heavy footsteps and the clunk of the cudgel. A short breath left her lips, taking her hope with it. She closed her eyes, clenched her jaw, rolled her shoulders as the footsteps grew closer. Her body had tensed already, her muscles almost trembling in anticipation of the pain.
The cell door unlocked, slid open. Vi braced for the blow. It didn’t come. The guards were never the type to make her wait. She looked over her shoulder and saw the Enforcer there. Caitlyn. Her expression was hard. The heavy footsteps, the clang of the cudgel, belonging to the guard who had unlocked her cell, faded down the hall. The Enforcer said nothing, but before she turned away, for a split second, the mask fell away, and Vi saw something else there. Something she couldn’t name. She watched the Enforcer leave, waiting for a trap, still waiting for the blow to fall. None came. She approached the threshold of her cell, took a breath, stepped across, and followed Caitlyn Kiramman out of Stillwater Prison.
When she found Sevika, her blood was already shivering through her veins. She felt restless, like a limb that had fallen asleep and was being shaken to life again. So much hatred, built up over so much time, and it had settled, somehow. It was that damn Enforcer. Caitlyn. Something about her presence had taken Vi out of herself. Maybe it was because she hovered. They’d spent the last 24 hours together and she’d never been further than a few paces from Vi for most of that time. Maybe it was all the questions she asked, all of her prideful earnestness to get to the bottom of Silco’s empire. Maybe it was her naivete, and the way she seemed to really believe that she could solve all of Piltover’s problems if she could crack her little case. Maybe it was the way her blue eyes widened when Vi had called her cupcake and backed her against the wall. Maybe it was the smell of her perfume.
Whatever the cause, she’d dismantled something inside of Vi. But seeing Sevika again, the hatred shook back to life, stirring like a waking animal, pouring cold and painful through Vi’s blood. She was ready. And oh, that first hit. Her knee straight to Sevika’s jaw. It was like music. Vi fought like she’d never fought before. Five years of nothing but taking punches in that dark tomb of a prison, and this was her resurrection. Even getting hit felt different. She could stand it. Sevika’s arm was powerful, but Vi had had worse. She’d tasted her own blood before. She’d been slammed against walls and thrown on the floor. None of this was new. For once, she felt grateful for the hell those Stillwater guards had put her through. She cracked Sevika’s head against the walls, once, twice, and knocked her to the ground with a boot in her chest. Then she waited, panting, puffing like a bull, waiting for Sevika to gain her feet. Sevika did. Vi charged, and kicked her through the wall.
“Where's my sister? Where's he keeping her?”
She thought she had the upper hand. Her boot on Sevika’s arm, her fist cocked as a threat. But the next words out of Sevika’s mouth hit her like a freight train.
“Keeping her? You mean Jinx?” A cruel sneer. “She works for him.”
No. No, that couldn’t be right. Powder wouldn’t, she could never… The pain that billowed up was extreme, breath-taking. Then it was different. Sharper, more present, and there was something else, pressure. At her abdomen. No, in it. She panted against it, bewildered, and Sevika leaned up to her ear, her metal fingers still buried in Vi’s stomach.
“She’s like his daughter.”
She shoved Vi onto the ground. Vi crawled away, or tried to. Nothing made sense except the pain. The pain she knew intimately. The pain had been her only companion over the years. She clutched at her stomach and let it overwhelm her. Powder. That tiny, fragile, blue-haired girl. Working for Silco. A daughter to Silco. Going by the name Vi had given her that night, that horrible, cataclysmic night: Jinx. It couldn’t be true, could it? But if Vi knew anything, it was that the most painful truth was almost always the only truth. When Sevika grabbed her jaw, dragging her upright, when she cocked her arm back to administer a deadly strike, when she uttered words that Vi heard but did not understand, she had nothing left. She knelt, and she was ready to die.
A blast split the air, and Sevika’s arm jerked back, the hydraulic vial of Shimmer at her shoulder shattering. She stumbled, looking overhead. Another blast, a bullet pinging off the arm. She ran, spun sideways by a third shot before staggering around the corner and out of view. Vi stayed kneeling in the dirt, hunched, feeling the blood pour from her belly as Caitlyn Kiramman leapt from the stone arch overhead, checking down the alley to make sure Sevika was really gone.
Vi’s head was clouding quickly, filling with static faster than her stomach was leaking blood, but when she chastised Caitlyn for letting Sevika go, she couldn’t help the stab of admiration when Caitlyn was uncowed, when she firmly laid the blame on Vi’s shoulders instead. That was alright. Vi could bear the weight. She’d seen her mother’s dead body on a bridge. She’d watched her best friends crushed to death under a collapsed ceiling. She’d felt her father’s heartbeat slow and stop beneath her hands. She’d abandoned her sister. She could shoulder the weight of having alerted Silco to their presence. It was really the least she could do.
“You’re an alright shot,” she said, and she felt a smile on her own lips.
“I’m an excellent shot,” said Caitlyn Kiramman.
Vi considered standing. She watched a runnel of blood slide down her wrapped fingers, pooling on the packed dirt. Her wound ached at just the thought of movement. She was lightheaded, and not entirely herself when she lifted her hand into the air.
“You gonna help me out, cupcake?”
“Stop calling me that,” Caitlyn said, but she took her hand, and her grip was surprisingly strong, her body appropriately anchored to heft Vi’s weight from the ground. “My name is Caitlyn.”
Vi was absolutely not thinking clearly when she said, “But you’re so sweet. Like a cupcake.”
They moved through the streets slowly, too slowly with the threat of Silco’s hounds on their heels. Vi wanted to move faster, but her legs wouldn’t obey. Every time she tried, she would stumble, and every time she stumbled, Caitlyn caught her, steadied her, tightened her grip around her waist. The pain was exquisite, whiting out her vision with every wrong step. She thought she’d known every kind of pain after being trapped in that hellhole for so long, but no. She’d never been stabbed. She’d never been told that her sister was a terrorist working for the man who murdered their father. Her breath came shallow and she struggled furiously to keep her expression blank, to keep the sounds of pain out of her voice. Caitlyn spoke close to her ear as they went.
“Where now?” she’d ask, and she would move obediently in the direction Vi told her.
Vi should have been humiliated, dangling in the arms of an Enforcer like this. How many times had she and Powder been stopped on the street, searched, beaten for simply existing in an Enforcer’s presence? But her head was muddied, and she could taste blood where her breathing grew rough, and Caitlyn’s support was the only thing keeping her upright, and she found herself leaning into her, head lolling against her shoulder a little. It was the pain. It was the blood loss. It had to have been. Why else would she have felt so safe?
Caitlyn carried her through winding alleys, down darkened side streets, out to the far edge of the trenches. There was an eye, massive, purple, glowing, towering over the place Vi had once called home.
“What the hell is that?” she mumbled.
“The sign?” Caitlyn asked.
“Nevermind,” Vi grunted. It was just as well. Just another reminder of what she had done that day when she left Powder alone. “Just help me to the edge.”
Standing here, looking down into the familiar ravine, shook her back to the present. Caitlyn held her still, but she pulled away. Her touch had eased the pain, somehow. It wasn’t right. Powder was suffering. She was a tool in Silco’s malicious hands, and Vi was here getting comfort from an Enforcer? No. She was better than that. She had to remind herself.
“Can you do this in your-?”
She didn’t wait for Caitlyn to finish. She jumped. Her footing was unsteady on the first landing, and she fell, crushing the air from her lungs on the next beam down, scrambling for hold, slipping anyway, crashing sideways onto the next beam, and then finally landing in a heap on the packed dirt ground. There was the reminder. Agony speared through her stomach, her ribs, her head. She didn’t move. She let the pain rip its way through her. She thought of Powder’s hands.
Then there were other hands. Caitlyn. Gripping her shoulders, pulling her up from her curled position. Vi wanted to fight her off, but she didn’t have the wherewithal. She could barely think anymore. It took all of her remaining strength to limp into her old home, to climb up on her old dining room table. Powder’s sketches were still there across the room. The hook where their hammock used to hang. The overhead beams they used to play on. The light from the purple eye arced through her head like lightning, splitting her down the middle. She thought of her mother, her gentle hands. Her mother, dead on that bridge.
Caitlyn was reaching toward her face, handkerchief in hand to wipe away the blood. Vi stopped her.
Don’t touch me, she wanted to say, but her breath felt thick in her lungs.
“I know you have your reservations about me,” Caitlyn said, standing. “But this only works if we can trust each other.”
Trust. What a word.
“It doesn’t work. It never has,” Vi panted. “You topsiders always find a way to screw us.”
“I suppose topside is to blame for all your problems,” Caitlyn said. Vi couldn’t tell if it was a jab or not.
Powder’s eyes. Her large, sad eyes.
“No,” Vi said. “Not all of them.”
Powder’s hands. The blood in her nose, on Vi’s knuckles. Her sooty, tear-streaked face.
I shouldn’t have left you.
“It’s alright,” Caitlyn responded. Had Vi spoken aloud? The room blurred. Caitlyn reached out again, and Vi didn’t stop her as she pressed a rag to her bleeding stomach. “Despite it all, I can tell you have a good heart.”
Vander’s hands. Cleaning the blood from her brow. Heavy and warm on her shoulders.
The room spun into blackness, reaching out, swallowing her whole. She was lost in a sea of voices and great, glowing eyes, watching her from the depths. She tried to surface, struggling frantically. Blood burned on her tongue, hot and rusted. Hands, then, gripping her throat, reaching through her, into her guts, pulling her down even deeper. She twisted, desperate to escape, but the pain only got worse. The hands only gripped tighter.
“Take care of Powder.”
Vander?
She turned, but no one was there. Nothing but his hands on her shoulders, heavy, weighing her down.
“Please, Violet, I need you.”
Powder. She tried to scream. Powder, where are you?
Small hands, pressing to her stomach, digging deep. She coughed. More blood.
“Vi?” Her mother. She turned, and she saw her mother’s face, leaning over her, lit by a warm candle on the table. “Vi?” her mother said, her voice echoing, accented.
Powder’s hands, inside her suddenly, ripping her guts open.
Vi screamed, launching upright. Arms caught her. She smelled perfume. Not her mother’s. She panted. Something was happening inside her, and it hurt . Caitlyn’s arms were around her back, a hand in her hair, holding her head steady. She leaned Vi down against the wall again, slowly, carefully. A flash of pain - Powder’s hands, ripping her up - and she arched, killing the cry of pain in her throat, only allowing a whimper to emerge.
“Easy, easy, easy.”
She was surfacing. She couldn’t taste blood anymore. There were hands on her face. Her body constricted at the touch, but then she realized that she was not being strangled, not ripped apart. She was being held. Vi opened her eyes, and Caitlyn was there. She was leaning close, her blue eyes flickering across Vi’s face, her brows creased in concern and suddenly, suddenly Vi felt something unraveling. A thread being pulled, a clock moving backward, time folding in on itself, all her scarred and calloused parts unspooling and leaving something brand new behind. Her heart stuttered as if it was restarting. Then Caitlyn pulled away like she’d been spooked, and Vi felt a piece of her follow. She sat up, bracing for pain, for the consequence of someone else’s hands on her, but none came. She touched her side, looking for blood, and instead found herself whole again.
She tried to put herself back together. She tried to sew up what had split open, tried to reassemble her walls, tried to revive that cold, brutal feeling of hatred. She couldn’t. When Caitlyn dragged her up out of that ravine, when she put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her away from an altercation with someone on the street who’d gotten in her way, Vi felt it reverberate in all of her hollow spaces, in every place she’d boarded up and shut away. When she saw Powder again, she was shot through with a mix of joy and agony. When she hugged her sister for the first time, she felt her hands, and remembered the pain of the prison, the taste of blood, the feeling of being torn open, but she didn’t mind it. When she watched Powder firing bullets at their attackers, fighting and laughing like a hyena in equal measure, something inside her stuttered. She should have kept fighting, but she was undone now. She’d been opened, and she couldn’t close herself again, and she called her sister’s name, and stepped toward her, and then everything went black.
She woke and Powder was gone, but Caitlyn was there, and they were angry with each other. Over something stupid. Something that mattered, but it was stupid, because suddenly Vi was being dragged away, and she heard Caitlyn calling for her, and she was shouting at their captors, and Vi was struggling - what will they do to her when they take me away? - but it was no use. But it was alright. Because suddenly Ekko was there, and suddenly Vi was glad that all her hatred had been dissolved, because if it hadn’t been she might’ve faced him like an enemy. As it was, though, she could touch him like a friend, and she pulled him into her arms, and he buried his face in her shoulder, and she cried.
Caitlyn, being who she was, had Ekko at her throat in moments after being freed from her bonds. He hadn’t had a chance to get used to her righteous insistence that Piltover wasn’t as cruel as it was, that topsiders only had the best of intentions, that this was all some misunderstanding. Vi pulled them apart, wondering how many times she would have to, wondering now, in the face of an old friend who had suffered at the hands of Enforcers the same way she had, if she would be proven wrong for having let Caitlyn touch her. For having let Caitlyn change her. When Ekko pulled out that small blue sphere, the same one Powder had had last night, she imagined briefly that Caitlyn would snatch it from his hand and leave and never look back, having gotten what she came for. She didn’t. She kept her distance. She explained the importance of the gemstone. She told Ekko that using the gemstone to stop Silco wouldn’t solve things, and Ekko snapped back at her.
“Easy for you to say. Your people aren’t dying all around you.”
Vi braced, waiting for Caitlyn to say something ignorant, something callous, something that indicated that trenchers simply didn’t matter as much as Piltover citizens. She shouldn’t have. She watched Caitlyn’s expression soften.
“Ekko, it’s wrong what’s been done to you. You’d be well within your rights to keep it,” she said quietly. “But if you do, the cycle of violence will never stop. Returning that stone is our best shot at setting the record straight. This city needs healing, more than I ever realized. Please. Let me help you.”
Vi felt something tug at the inside of her chest as she watched Caitlyn’s profile. She felt the planet turn on its axis. She felt the sun warming her shoulders. She heard the laughter of children in the air around them and as she watched Caitlyn’s face, something fell very quietly, very naturally, into place inside her.
They made a plan to leave at nightfall to return the gemstone to topside and Ekko left them alone. Vi paced the small room he’d shown them to. Caitlyn busied herself with leaning against the windowsill, gazing out into the green, sunlit space the Firelights called home. Vi’s hands tingled and she flexed her fingers, rolling them into fists and out again. She thought of finding somewhere she could go to hit something, but for the first time in a long time, she didn’t want to. The feeling was odd, unsettling, like missing a step on a flight of stairs, something missing where there should have been cold, blind rage. She remembered the feeling of unraveling, of Caitlyn’s hands on her face, of wholeness.
“What did you do to me?”
The question came out before she’d had a moment to think on it, to consider what she even meant by it. Caitlyn turned away from the window, looking perplexed.
“Do to you?”
Vi gestured to the bloodied spot on her shirt. “I was stabbed, and I’m not anymore. I assume you have something to do with that.”
Caitlyn’s eyes went to the stain, then back to Vi’s face. “There was an apothecary in that shanty town. She gave me a potion for you.”
“What, out of the kindness of her heart?”
Caitlyn blinked, her brows not lifting from their serious set. “No,” she said simply.
“Then what-?” Vi started, but she stopped herself. That’s what was different about Caitlyn, about her silhouette. Her rifle sheath was gone. She’d assumed that Ekko had confiscated it, but thinking back, she realized it had been missing from the moment she’d woken from her nightmarish haze in her old home.
Caitlyn met her eyes as the realization sank in, then looked away quickly, as though embarrassed.
“You gave up your gun?” Vi asked. “Why? Does cracking Silco’s case really matter that much to you?”
Caitlyn shifted, looking out the window again, her hand on the sill as if to steady herself. When she looked back at Vi, there was something in her expression. It wasn’t a familiar look; Vi didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone look at her that way, but somehow she recognized it. Somehow, it was like she’d known it her whole life, in a hidden, private part of her.
“I didn’t do it for the case,” Caitlyn said.
Vi stared at her in the quiet that followed. Her heart was suddenly pounding and that same, familiar thrill ran down her spine. She thought of running, of making some jibe, breaking the silence between them with a dismissive remark that would protect her. She stepped forward instead, her eyes fixing on the small scrape above Caitlyn’s right eyebrow. She reached up without thinking and brushed a thumb across it. Caitlyn’s expression shifted, but Vi wasn’t brave enough to look.
“They do this to you?”
“The Firelights?” Caitlyn asked, her voice oddly devoid of breath. “No, this is old. From the attack in Piltover.”
Jinx. Vi dropped her hand, looking away, feeling a phantom twinge in her belly. What a convoluted mess. If her sister hadn’t done this, hadn’t killed people, hadn’t hurt Caitlyn, then Caitlyn never would have come looking for Vi. Vi would still be buried in Stillwater Prison, maybe forever. She moved away from Caitlyn and didn’t meet her gaze again.
“I’m going to go see if Ekko needs any help.”
Then she left the room, and even the bright, clear air outside couldn’t help her catch her breath.
The bridge was quiet and dark as they began their long walk toward Piltover. Something gnawed at Vi’s guts. She watched Caitlyn walk ahead at Ekko’s side, her steps still so dainty, so small for someone with such long legs. She wondered how old Caitlyn had been when she was taught to clip her stride. Caitlyn glanced over her shoulder as if she could feel Vi’s gaze, as if checking to make sure Vi was still there. Just a flash of blue eyes, and she looked forward again. Vi could see Powder on that platform, her machine gun aimed straight at Caitlyn’s head. The gnawing grew stronger, a prickle starting at the back of her neck. Vi turned her head, as though she’d be able to hear Powder’s voice on the wind if she listened hard enough.
She stopped walking. Caitlyn noticed and stopped too, turning, Ekko following suit a moment later. Vi could already feel the void in her chest beginning to yawn open at the thought of walking the opposite way, an ache that reached toward Caitlyn like a magnet. She knew what she had to do. She was a walking target, and Caitlyn was in the blast radius. She needed to get Powder alone, mend what she had broken when she left that night all those years ago. Then, maybe, she could find Caitlyn again. Introduce them anew when Powder was feeling more safe, less threatened. Then, maybe, they could all be together.
“Vi?” Ekko said.
“I can’t leave her again.”
“You can’t change her.”
“I have to try.”
Ekko knew her better than to argue. He knew better than to waste time when it was precious enough already. He sighed, and came forward.
“Don’t get yourself killed.”
Vi laughed a little, hugged him. “No promises.”
She looked at Caitlyn as Ekko let go and stepped back. She half expected the Enforcer to argue, to insist that Vi come along and leave Powder behind. But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. When was Vi going to give her the credit she deserved? Not soon enough, it seemed.
Caitlyn stepped forward, and Vi didn’t move. She couldn’t meet her eyes. She waited for Caitlyn to offer her hand, give a bracing handshake and maybe a few words of farewell in true Enforcer fashion. Then Caitlyn moved in, throwing her arms around Vi, holding her tightly as if this were the hundredth time they’d ever touched outside the bounds of necessity and not the first. Vi met the hug without hesitation, holding Caitlyn around her back, very nearly pressing her hand to the back of her head, but stopping herself short.
“It’s been real, cupcake,” she said, using the nickname in an attempt to cover the emptiness in her chest. It didn't work. “Thanks. For everything.”
Caitlyn didn’t respond, and Vi didn’t blame her. She felt tears choking her throat and could say nothing more, though they held the hug for a few moments longer. She shut her eyes as she felt Caitlyn lean into her neck, as her arms tightened around her. The void yawned and Vi held on as tightly as she could, willing this hug to pull her back together, to mend what had been undone inside her. She wanted Caitlyn to bargain with her, to ask her not to go. Caitlyn was silent, and Vi was grateful. She wouldn’t have had the heart to refuse her, and maybe Caitlyn knew it. Maybe she held her tongue on purpose. A swell of something warm and desperately sad passed through Vi’s chest, and it took a moment before she recognized it as grief. She’d known grief her whole life, but this was the first time it had appeared in the wake of her own decision. Every other time, someone had been taken from her by force. This time, she was the one doing the taking. She was the one walking away.
If she did not let go now, she would lose her nerve. She knew it, so she took a deep breath, and let her arms loosen. Caitlyn did not insist on holding on longer. She let Vi go with the determined deliberation of a soldier turning her back on a fallen friend’s gravestone. She stepped back, and without thinking, Vi reached out and touched her cheek. A brief brush of her fingers, lingering on her jaw as she memorized the lines and expression of Caitlyn’s unspeakably beautiful face. Then she dropped her hand and walked away, toward Powder, and it took all of her strength not to look back.
She thought she died on the bridge. She heard the gunshot and she cried Caitlyn’s name and as she ran, she thought she saw Caitlyn’s body, chest devoid of breath, eyes open and lifeless. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d met death on this bridge, but she didn’t know if she’d survive it again. The bombs went off up ahead, the Firelights exploding in a firework show of death and carnage, and she couldn’t breathe. But there, amidst the bodies - Caitlyn. Her face twisted in pain, her leg bloody, but alive. Alive. Vi touched her face and lifted her to her feet, and when Powder emerged from the smoke and darkness, when Ekko commanded them to take the gemstone and go, Vi felt something break, but she turned away from her sister, and she carried Caitlyn to safety. The bomb that exploded moments later behind them put a crater in her chest, and she held onto Caitlyn just as tightly as Caitlyn held onto her.
Caitlyn guided her through Piltover’s streets, and it was like deja vu, only this time it was Caitlyn limping, her face taut with pain, and Vi the one holding her close, asking in low tones, “Where now?” This time, Vi was the one completely and hopelessly lost, feeling as though she were leaving a trail of filth behind her as she moved through topside’s immaculate streets. There was no trash on the ground, no rats or homeless lurking in the shadows, no broken windows on shopfronts. They made their way into a neighborhood, and the houses were massive and gleaming, standing four, five, six stories tall. Buildings like this in the trenches were reserved for tenement houses. From what she’d heard, these houses were built one per family. They towered overhead, and as Vi walked through their shadows, she felt very small.
Caitlyn’s strength was waning, and she sagged heavier and heavier against Vi’s side. The weight wasn’t a problem - if Vi had been more bold, she would have swept Caitlyn into her arms and carried her that way, but something told her that Caitlyn’s pride would be more than a little bruised and, well, Vi would spare her that for as long as she could. She hefted Caitlyn a little higher up on her shoulder, renewing her grip around her waist as bracingly as she could.
“Where to now, cupcake?”
“Just across this street.”
Why they didn’t just go in the front door, Vi couldn’t fathom. Maybe the house belonged to a friend of Caitlyn’s, and she just knew that the door would be locked. Whatever the reason, she directed Vi to a large window around the side of the house. It slid open easily, and Vi climbed up, taking a very brief sweep of the room. It was massive. She should have expected as much with a house of this size, but it hadn’t occurred to her just what it would look like inside. This one room was nearly the same size as the whole interior of The Last Drop. She didn’t dwell, leaning out the window and hefting Caitlyn up after her.
“Who lives here?” she asked, moving Caitlyn toward the emperor-sized bed on the back wall. “Another one of your Councilor friends?”
Caitlyn didn’t have a chance to answer, because at that moment, the double doors to the room slammed open, and then they were staring down the barrel of a three foot hunting rifle. Vi's mind flashed through a thousand scenarios. She considered flinging Caitlyn back toward the window, out of harm’s way, cutting around to the side of the woman sighting down the weapon. If she was half the shot Caitlyn was, Vi would probably end up with a bullet in her guts. Maybe if she pivoted on the spot, put her back to the door, she could at least keep Caitlyn from getting hit.
Before she could make any dire decisions, the woman lowered the gun abruptly, and as Vi saw her face - the nose, the cheekbones, the sharp chin, the gap teeth - something clicked. This was not one of Caitlyn’s Councilor friends. This was Caitlyn’s mom.
“Caitlyn!” the woman exclaimed, and at that moment a dark-haired man with kind eyes came around the corner, breathing a little hard as if he’d followed the woman here at a sprint.
“Oh, we were so worried,” he said, and Caitlyn let go of Vi immediately, falling into his arms instead. “Thank goodness you’re safe.”
Vi’s attention went to the room again, to the high ceilings, the gold plated filigree that adorned the walls, the finery in every detail that she’d only imagined would have a place in the castles of ancient kings. This was Caitlyn’s house? This is how she’d grown up? What must she have thought, following Vi around the undercity, seeing the squalor that had been Vi’s childhood home? Vi’d thought her attitude of pride was unearned, but seeing this place, a single bedroom alone that was finer than anywhere Vi had ever seen, Vi understood better, and she felt even smaller than before.
The woman’s voice telegraphed the same sort of disgust Vi would have expected from any Piltover citizen. The kind of disgust Caitlyn had never shown her. “And you found a stray.”
“This is Vi,” Caitlyn said firmly. Something about her tone felt like a reprimand, like a shield designed to defend Vi. “She’s from the undercity.”
“So I see,” said Caitlyn’s mother, doing little to hide the sneer in her teeth. “Could we have a word, Caitlyn? In private.”
Caitlyn didn’t look back at Vi, and maybe it was just as well. Vi had the feeling that her mother was waiting for a chance to strike, and Caitlyn wasn’t going to give it to her. She limped out of the room on her father’s arm, and her mother shut the doors behind them with a look that told Vi she was not to move from this room if she knew what was good for her.
So she didn’t move. She waited. She walked the length of the room slowly, taking in every inch, every detail. There were flowers, so many flowers, loose bouquets piled near the door and on a nearby table along with notes and letters. Some of them still lay open, and they said things like “Wishing you a speedy recovery!” and “In honor of Piltover’s finest.” The bed had a sweeping canopy, and the window’s curtains were a heavy green velvet, embroidered more finely than any clothes Vi had ever seen, let alone worn. There was a weird, three-paneled wooden thing that partitioned off part of the room. That was intricately carved, too, and Vi couldn’t even begin to guess what it was for. She turned on the spot at the center of the room, slowly, stretching her arms out to get a feel for how much space there was. Even in the open streets of the undercity there’d never been this much room to breathe.
At the foot of the massive bed was a map, and on the map was a criss-crossed network of threads and notes, some scribbled onto small bits of paper, some written directly onto the map itself. Books held down the edges, and more papers covered various parts in a sort of organized chaos. Vi knelt, inspecting it more closely. It was a map of the undercity, intricately and intimately detailed, documented street by street. The papers held various bits of information, histories of undercity cultures, uprisings and rebellions, names like Vander, Silco, Finn, circled with red marker. Vi exhaled quietly. Caitlyn had really done her research.
She felt exhausted, suddenly, and she stood, stepping carefully around the map and all of its loose papers to the bed. She tested it with her palm, then sat. It was softer than she thought beds could be. Years on a cot had made her forget that people actually got to sleep in comfort in other places. She shifted her legs around and lay on her stomach, resting her chin in her hands, staring down pensively at the map, letting her eyes drift over Caitlyn’s delicate handwriting, trying to find The Last Drop amongst the expansive web of string.
It was a long time before Caitlyn’s door opened. Caitlyn entered alone, looking weary but oddly elated. Vi glanced up at her.
“We’ll present our case to the Council tonight,” Caitlyn said, sounding as if she didn’t believe the words coming out of her own mouth.
That resonated distantly, and Vi tried to make it mean something to her, but she was so tired everything felt like it was bouncing out of numbed fingers. She let it go. She could think about it later. Right now, she wanted to lie still. She wanted to talk to Caitlyn. She wanted to be in this huge, quiet room and not feel lonely.
“You did all this yourself? Without even going down there?” she asked, looking back down at the map. Caitlyn came toward the bed and Vi rolled onto her back, making space. “And I thought Powder could get obsessed.”
“What happened to her,” Caitlyn said quietly, gently, so gently. “It’s not your fault.”
She lay back on the bed, and Vi felt the warm weight of her body move the mattress, and she stayed still. The proximity felt natural, and as her body recognized Caitlyn’s, her body remembered. She remembered the hands on her face, the unraveling, the opening of something that she thought had been closed forever. And in the remembering, there was pain. Unfamiliar pain. Not the kind of pain that had rotted her from the inside out, not the kind of pain that made her want to break something, not the kind of pain she had forced herself to memorize just for the sake of survival. It was a small pain. A simple one. As she looked at it, as she let it unfold inside that new open space in her chest, she recognized it for what it was. She missed her sister. She missed her sister, and Caitlyn was here, and she didn’t have to dredge up her hatred about it. She could just miss her. It was so simple, and it didn’t make any sense at all. But, Vi thought, maybe that was alright.
“When my parents were still alive,” she said, “me and Powder used to share a bed like this. Except, maybe, half the size. We played a game where we pretended to be bigger and bigger monsters.” She felt Caitlyn shift, rolling over to face her. “So she would say, ‘I’m a slug monster with venom for ooze.’ And I’d say, ‘well I’m a slug-eating crab with razor spikes.’”
Vi turned too, rolled to her side to face Caitlyn. Caitlyn’s expression was quiet, but she watched Vi with a singular intensity, her blue eyes focused on Vi as if she were the only thing that existed in the world.
“Sometimes I’d get carried away, and she’d get scared.I didn’t want her to start crying and wake my parents up, so I pretended to chase my own monsters away.” Her chest gaped. It ached. Tiny Powder, with her big, tearful eyes. It hurt. But Caitlyn was here; she was safe. “I’d say, ‘No monster’s gonna get you while I’m here.’ Then a real monster showed up.” Powder, weeping in the rain and flames, begging her to come back. Vi looked down, guilt welling up. “And I just ran away. I left her.”
Caitlyn said nothing, but she moved, lifting her hand, reaching out, and her fingers grazed softly down Vi’s cheek. It was like remembering. It was like opening a door in a dark alley to find an endless horizon and a streaming sunset beyond. It was like unraveling all over again. Vi couldn’t comprehend it. She had learned the language of hatred so fluently, she thought she’d never understand anything else ever again. But she did. And it was in Caitlyn’s hands. She reached up without thinking, caught Caitlyn’s fingers in her own, pulled them to her chest. An easy movement, a natural one, as if - even with all her brawls, even with the way she’d made her way through the world with her fists - as if this was the thing she’d been born to do. And she looked at Caitlyn and she was gazing at her with those wide, impossibly blue eyes, with that familiarity, like they’d known each other for a lifetime. She wanted to ask, do you feel it? Have I unraveled you? Have I changed you, too?
She didn’t get a chance to say it, because a breath passed, and Caitlyn shifted, and this time, Vi knew she wasn’t going to leave. She didn’t even think it as Caitlyn pivoted on the bed, never pulling her hand from Vi’s grip, as she leaned over her. Her breath caught, and for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t snagged on a spike of pain. Her breath caught as Caitlyn lifted her free hand, and held it to Vi’s cheek, as Caitlyn’s beautiful blue eyes flickered between hers, searching her, seeing her. Then Caitlyn leaned down and kissed her.
Warmth. Light. Her heart racing ahead a hundred miles an hour, her hands trembling, her breath unsteady. She had been kissed before, but never like this. Never by Caitlyn Kiramman. She didn’t have the wherewithal to process anything, not how Caitlyn tasted, not how her skin smelled this close, before the kiss ended. Caitlyn pulled back slightly, her breath coming short now, too, her eyes a little wider than before, a question in their depths.
“Was that-?” she began.
Vi didn’t let her finish. She answered the question by taking her face in her hands and leaning up and kissing her again. Caitlyn made a small sound in the back of her throat, a low, pleased hum, and she tilted her head, deepening the kiss. Their tongues met briefly and Vi felt a heat rise in her belly and she couldn’t help the sound she made. She felt desperate, aching, broken and whole all at once. She wrapped an arm around Caitlyn’s waist, pulling her closer, and Caitlyn moved willingly. They tangled themselves up in each other, legs intertwining, Vi wrapping an arm around Caitlyn’s shoulders. Caitlyn had one hand on her cheek, the other curled around her back. Her kiss was soft, her mouth warm and open, quiet sounds spilling out with her breath where their lips parted. Vi tasted her and she was perfect, she was wholeness, she was home. She didn’t understand it. She didn’t know how she was here, in the arms of the most wonderful woman she’d ever met. She didn’t know why she deserved this, after everything she’d done, after everything she’d seen, after all the hate she’d carved into her bones and fists, that she’d tried to become.
She should have been embarrassed when Caitlyn pulled away, looking at her face with a startled expression. Vi should have felt shame when Caitlyn gently pressed the tears away from her cheeks. She should have tried to extract herself and run when Caitlyn said, “Vi, what’s wrong? Have I hurt you?” She didn’t. She only shook her head and buried her face in Caitlyn’s chest and let the tears come, heavy and quiet. Caitlyn didn’t ask any more questions. She pressed a hand to the back of Vi’s head and held her closely.
Vi should have been humiliated, wrapped in the arms of an Enforcer like this. But she wasn’t. She let Caitlyn Kiramman hold her, and as the exhaustion settled into her bones and she let sleep take her away, she knew one thing, one very simple thing: she was safe. And that was enough.