Work Text:
Easy they come, easy they go
I jump from the train, I ride off alone
I never grew up, it's getting so old
Help me hold onto you
Piltover is several hundred years old. Young, perhaps. But storied nonetheless.
And yet, for as large a name Piltover has made for itself in its own right and in all of Runeterra, there is nothing that lights the city up as much as simple, fresh gossip. Sure, the upper echelon tried to make themselves seem above it all — above all the chatter and talk and endless speculation about their own — but Caitlyn has earned that nothing will ever bring people together more than a good story.
It’s just unfortunate that today, right now, the story is her.
Caitlyn Kiramman’s return to Piltover Prepatory.
Leading up to the fated day, the Reunion is all anybody can talk about.
Did you hear? They whisper, voices alight with the weight of gossip and eagerness befitting of teenagers. Caitlyn Kiramman is the honoree. We have to go.
If it were any other time, I’m sure her mother would have bought the spot for her.
Just like in school.
Caitlyn pretends not to hear; she pretends not to see the mix of sympathy and awe as people struggle on which emotion to land on as they gaze upon her. If she turns her head, she can block them out completely, using her lack of peripheral vision on one side to her advantage when it normally would cause her anxiety to spike.
She pretends, she ignores, and she moves through the motions.
Caitlyn Kiramman is twenty-eight years old.
It’s just a reunion.
She’s the Sheriff of Piltover. The school is recently rebuilt and re-opened following years of construction without the aid of hextech.
It’s a symbol. She’s a symbol.
She’s used to being at the top. This comes with the territory of being alone.
She’s used to that.
“Give it here,” Caitlyn says quietly, her hand extended towards her classmates. Except now, they’re hardly acting like they’re students and peers. More like nuisances and bothers.
Baleful and insolent gazes swivel towards her. Caitlyn tries not to gulp or falter, knowing she’s on the smaller side for sixteen. She tries to stand taller. Back straight, chin up. Just like she has seen her parents do time after time.
“What are you going to do about it, Kiramman? Cry to your mother?”
One of the boys snickers and stands, still gripping the artifact he had swiped off Caitlyn’s fellow junior, Kendall. “She won’t do that,” he says, voice low with a taunt.
He’s right.
She hates that he’s right.
She won’t ‘cry’ to her mother or even tell her about this because she knows what her mother will do. She’ll say something to the Council. Maybe even to the Academy heads. From Cassandra Kiramman’s mouth to a God’s ears.
It’ll trickle down to all the right people and these students will probably be expelled. Their futures ruined simply because Caitlyn dared to be born into the station she was given.
“It’s not yours,” Caitlyn says, after a pause. She keeps her tone firm and her voice steady. “And you should return it immediately.”
“Or what?”
Later, as Caitlyn ices the sore spot on her ribs from where she had taken one well-placed punch (just one, after all—a Piltover Prep student would never sully their knuckles that much), she is surprised by the lingering sigh that comes from behind her. She whirls, surprised to see Kendall standing before her, brow furrowed and mouth turned downward.
“Are you alright?” Caitlyn asks quickly. “I’m sorry, I should have asked—”
“Why did you have to butt in?”
Caitlyn clamps her mouth shut.
“You know that it only makes me a bigger target, right? Knowing that Caitlyn Kiramman of all people stands up for me.”
Caitlyn’s jaw tenses. The disdain attached to her entire name is increasingly familiar and she’s not sure she likes that it evidently comes with the territory of being from the Kiramman line despite the long-standing premise that she ought to be proud of her station; proud of her lineage; proud of her upbringing.
“Just…next time, don’t. I don’t need your help. Or your money.”
At sixteen, Caitlyn isn’t sure what else she’s meant to offer the world.
It’s meant to restore a semblance of normalcy, Caitlyn supposes. How fortunate they are to be able to celebrate something as mundane as a Junior Academy reunion even amidst all the turmoil of restoring Piltover to its former glory.
It doesn’t even make sense - a ten-year-reunion with people who likely don’t even remember each other as Piltover and Zaun are still trying to figure out how to make things work at the most basic levels. Politically, it’s tenuous at best, but at least it feels peaceful. With Caitlyn taking up the mantle as Sheriff of Piltover With diminished hextech capabilities and a complete shift towards innovation that isn’t reliant on hextech or magic entirely, but rather, pure and simple science.
It’s slow, but there is progress. On all fronts.
It’s why Caitlyn can’t exactly fault the Academy administrators for wanting to do something so reminiscent of an easier time — when catching up social pleasantries and status quo mattered so much more to people.
She just kind of…wants to be excluded from this particular narrative.
She’s nearing the final years of her twenties and she kind of just wants to enjoy what remains of it with Vi, her father, and the positive memories she has of all the people that they weren’t allowed to bring forward into the future with them.
Speaking of Vi…
In the mirror’s reflection, Vi hovers, though she isn’t looking at Caitlyn. Caitlyn catches the way Vi fiddles with the tie hanging loosely from her neck. It would make an incredibly handsome addition to VI’s current outfit, which Caitlyn would never complain about, but she knows that Vi still waits for Caitlyn’s approval on some of the more formal aspects of Piltover etiquette, despite Caitlyn’s constant reassurance that everything she does, will do, and has done is absolutely and perfectly fine.
Caitlyn turns, happy to focus on anything but her problems for now. Vi’s furrowed brow is less severe than usual and Caitlyn knows Vi has no issues tying the fabric.
“Something on your mind?” She reaches for the tie, but only to loosely hold the two ends, neither moving to tie it nor remove it. She knows Vi can do it, but the grip anchors her and Vi understands that easily.
Vi shrugs, gaze set directly on Caitlyn’s eyes—searching carefully. “Just not sure what to expect tonight.”
The unspoken I’m coming only to be there for you sits between them, neither uncomfortable nor pleasant. Just there. Solid, like Vi’s unwavering support.
“Food,” Caitlyn offers wryly. “My speech. Drinks. So many drinks.”
Vi’s lips quirk upwards at a corner at how easily Caitlyn glosses over the mention of her keynote. “Well, if that’s all. Only if you have a drink with me. Then I’ll consider.”
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“Who will be there?” Vi asks.
Caitlyn shrugs, finally dropping her hands from Vi’s neckline, moving them instead to tug Vi’s hips closer. “People. Instructors. Donors.”
If Vi notices that she has left out the word “friends”, she says nothing. Ever the physically affectionate, she lifts Caitlyn’s chin and kisses her. Caitlyn can’t help her body’s natural response—she sinks into the embrace, eagerly chasing more even if Vi’s hands remain passive, gentle, and well-behaved.
Caitlyn wishes those hands would misbehave – she would welcome it so long as they make them tragically and woefully late.
Vi looks awfully smug as they pull apart. Her eyes drift down to where Caitlyn’s perfectly-applied lipstick is now just slightly less perfect-applied, but perfect all the same. Her expression quickly morphs into plain cockiness as she recognizes Caitlyn’s mildly dazed expression. “Should we go, or—?”
“Fine,” Caitlyn mutters, ignoring the pleased smile Vi shoots her way. She hastily turns, not wanting to see her favorite smile on her favorite person’s face or she might never leave.
Though she shuts the door firmly behind them, Caitlyn doesn’t quite close the door on the hesitation and doubt that lingers in the recesses of her mind; it all lingers in the form of an incredibly lonely teenager. Never quite gone, forever, despite years of pretending that part of her died long ago.
It is odd, thinking that this place was firmly planted so far in her memory that she had forgotten about it all.
In fact, it all just makes her miss all the people who should be here.
And the darker thought—
Instead of me.
As always, as if sensing her cloudy mind, Vi reaches across the seat as their cart traverses bumpy cobblestone.
"Are you nervous?" Vi asks, which isn’t a question she’d normally ask, but Caitlyn appreciates the levity and normalcy. Then, a sigh and her real question: “What are you thinking about, Cait?”
"I…" Where to begin, she thinks ruefully. “Just…thinking about how Jayce would find it all rather hilarious that I’m going to be up there giving a speech.” She leaves out the details of it all — a long buried memory of a shared laugh and gentle nudges. Jayce isn’t a topic she brings up often and that alone is enough for Vi to grip her and tighter, scoot a little closer, and let the quiet wrap around them like a heavy blanket.
“We would have never worked, you know?”
Caitlyn tries not to let the hurt shine across her face as she watches the visiting diplomat’s daughter continue to pack up her trunk. She had come with flowers and the thought that perhaps they could stay in touch. They understood each other in a way Caitlyn had never really been afforded before.
It’s the summer before she starts at The Academy, still on the fence as to whether she wants to pursue her Enforcer certification or something more acceptable to her parents’ tastes.
This had been a welcome distraction from the burden of responsibility.
But still—she’s eighteen and the emotions run high, coursing through her and making her blood feel hot in all the ways an eighteen year old ought to feel.
It had made her feel…wanted. Normal. Just Caitlyn.
But then again, she had been wrong.
A summer of flings, then. That’s all it was.
“But…”
Some of the fight leaves Caitlyn as she takes in the reality of the situation—it’s not an unfamiliar sight, somebody taking leave abruptly. Cleanly and neatly leaving Caitlyn’s life as if they were never there.
As easily as she has snuck girls into her room, they slip through her fingers all the same.
“I guess you’re right,” Caitlyn says, voice quiet and drowned out by the sound of the trunk clicking shut with finality.
Caitlyn is aware that she is a household name. Not just in Piltover or Zaun. She has heard the whispers of what people say beyond the land on this side of Runeterra. She is twenty-eight, barely. Twenty-eight and she has seen what war can do to people.
When she was twenty-three she lost her eye.
When she was twenty-three she lost her mother.
When she was twenty-three she lost her brother.
Since then, she has spent the past five years trying to make up not just for all the things she lost, but for all the things everybody around her lost as well and how much of that blood stained her own hands…well…
At twenty-three, she also falls in love.
She falls hard and fast and it hurts because she’s sure she lost it all for
good at some point. But when the papers write about the tears in her eyes as she collapses into Vi’s arms post-battle, they will simply write of the palpable relief as the symbol of Piltover realizes that it’s all finally over.
Viktor is dead.
Ambessa is dead.
…and Caitlyn should be dead.
They don’t write about how Caitlyn had stared at Vi, who was shaking and teary-eyed but alive, and realized how lucky she was to have gained everything and more, all in one lifetime.
She had been twenty-three.
Now, at twenty-eight, Caitlyn stands in front of ornate doors, imposing and tall, and wonders where all the time went. Where it disappeared to.
She is suddenly eighteen again and staring at her shoes while the headmaster reads names at graduation. She cringes at the memory of the enunciation of her name – the same name etched onto a library plaque for a generous donation made in her honor. She is suddenly eighteen all over again and realizing she is out of place, despite being the very reason for this place existing at all.
She is eighteen and realizing that she never belonged. Her smile was always too wide. Her voice was always just a bit too grating. Too posh. Too loud. Her tendency to overshare about topics made her an oddity and a bit of an outcast.
Her wealth made her unwanted.
(The whispers in her direction, floating all up over her head. As a teenager, rumors were everything and anything. They were somehow both vicious and sweet.
Caitlyn still hears some of them in her mind. Random, mindless rumors of which girl she snuck into her estate. Which boy dared to look too long at her. In retrospect, it was just the cruelty of children, really. Teenagers, but really children, who were too immature to grasp the repercussions of what it meant when they tore her down for her looks, her name, her confidence no matter how shattered, and how she tried to handle things with as much grace as possible because it was what her parents taught her.
Until the cracks finally appeared; but then, the rumors didn’t stop, they just morphed into false concern. Eyes began to glaze over instead when they looked at her.)
At twenty-eight, Caitlyn stands perfectly still, shoulders rigid and back straight just like she was taught.
At twenty-seven, Vi comes up next to her and her gentle, sure hand presses against Caitlyn’s back and somehow everything else falls away because at twenty-three, Caitlyn fell in love and never looked back.
Caitlyn stares at the doors before her, forlorn and heavy with distantly familiar nerves.
Decorated officer, war hero, survivor–-and this? This is what sends her to her knees once more?
She can feel the tension setting into her shoulders, old injuries flaring up like phantoms she thought she had banished.
Caitlyn rushes up the steps to her house, excited to dump all her books and bags so that she can follow Jayce to the workshop. He is finally allowing her to help out, even if he won’t let her go with him to the Undercity.
As if she’s scared.
She scoffs, ready to call out to her parents when she hears their voices floating down the hall.
“—she has no friends her own age.”
“That’s not necessarily an issue, Cassandra.”
“But surely—Grayson and Jayce? The sheriff and our ward? Does she not want to socialize with boys and girls her own age? Help build her network young—?”
Caitlyn’s shoulders slump, knowing this is a long-standing point of conversation between her parents. It isn’t the first time she’s heard it, though evidently it seems like she’s not even privy to how often this conversation occurs without her knowledge.
She is trapped between defiance and sadness, then. There is no shortage as both emotions well up in her until finally, she has no choice but to dash to her room.
She just wants to figure it out for herself.
She wants to be left alone.
Well—with how things are going at the Academy, she’s sure she’s got that second part figured out just fine.
Before she realizes it, tears spring to her eyes. She ought to send a messenger to Jayce to cancel—it would be the responsible thing for her to do. She doesn’t need to see gadgets and trinkets. She has plenty.
For however long she lies there, face down, she isn’t aware of how much time truly passes until finally, a knock at her door—
Caitlyn sighs and lifts her head, ready to throw a tantrum.
“Hey Sprout? You in there?”
“You know,” Caitlyn rasps. “Jayce used to call me sprout.”
If Vi thinks it odd that Caitlyn isn’t choosing to enter the building and is just standing outside, she says nothing. Instead, she lingers, protective and aware. It isn’t often that Caitlyn talks about Jayce or her past, so Vi recognizes this moment as particularly monumental, ever aware and sensitive. “Fitting. You are ridiculously tall.”
Caitlyn laughs, appreciating the levity. “It’s more that…he felt like he blinked and I was almost his height.” She glances at Vi. “He really was my only friend. Back then,” she clarifies.
Vi exhales, a short huff escaping her. “Well, I’m your friend now.”
Caitlyn snorts and relaxes completely. She turns so that she can properly loop an arm around her lover’s shoulders. “You know, I think you and I would have gotten on famously well if we went to school together.”
“Of course,” Vi agrees dryly. “Absolutely a universe where that would have happened. I’m certain I wouldn’t have passed any judgment towards you given how reasonable I was as a teenager. And you were a shining example of open-mindedness too.”
Caitlyn giggles, liking that it’s something they can talk about somewhat freely. She tries to envision a teenage Vi and she’s sure the conjuration is a result of how in love she is now, but the image makes her smile all the same. She can picture Vi’s slouched frame, leaning against a locker. Somehow effortlessly charming all the same.
And if she’s being completely honest: Her teenage self would have eaten it up.
It’s not even like she has to really imagine that much—Vi gazes at her with ridiculously unadulterated adoration and want sometimes, it’s kind of maddening just how far in love Caitlyn has fallen.
“Cait,” Vi murmurs, protectiveness flaring out before she can even think of stifling the emotion. “We can go.”
“No,” Caitlyn reassures, though there is a dullness to her voice that hadn’t been there earlier. “It’s fine,” she continues, but her voice has an unfamiliar uncertainty to it now. “We should stay.”
Vi hears the unspoken words. We have to stay. I have to stay. Save face. Show up.
It is admittedly not the first time that VI has experienced this…distinct lack of envy of the woman before her. She doesn’t envy that Caitlyn has been trained for this. She doesn’t feel envy, but rather she feels empathy; she feels endless empathy knowing that this is something that Caitlyn has had to live with her whole life.
The mask slips on with such ease.
Yet, when Caitlyn’s eyes flick back up to hers, Vi sees every single crack in her armor: Caitlyn has never been able to properly put up her defense around Vi — a vulnerability that flows in both directions.
“So,” Vi starts.
“I know,” Caitlyn interrupts, even if she doesn’t really. It’s just so hard to pretend to be perfect, especially in front of somebody with whom she has shared nearly everything. Someone who has seen her through her darkest moments. Someone who has seen her close to death and was the reason she pulled through.
“You do?” Vi’s brow furrows. “I was just…going to ask if you wanted to dance with me. For a second. You know, since we’re here and all. That’s what you did at these places right?”
“Out here?” Caitlyn asks, incredulity slipping into her voice. “There’s no music.”
“And?” Vi’s hand extends outward, slipping easily into Caitlyn’s. The other, around her back, securing her tight against her body.
Suddenly she’s sixteen again and she feels all care and poise leave her. Caitlyn leans in for a quick peck, shy almost as she lets her eyes gently slip shut. All young love and nerves that wash over her because it’s as close to normal as she allows herself to feel.
And when their lips touch, Caitlyn feels loved. She feels loved and wanted and revered all the same.
It’s just a peck and she truly has no intention of letting it go further given their very public positions, but before she can even just steal just another quick press, they are rudely interrupted by a cough and somebody clearing their throat.
When she turns, she is surprised to see a woman staring back at her with surprised eyes. An old classmate—Caitlyn barely remembers her now.
“Caitlyn Kiramman—as I live and breathe.”
The placid smile comes naturally, slamming any cracks in her door of vulnerability firmly shut for the time being. “Skylar,” she offers, as pleasant as she can.
Caitlyn can’t even revel in the power she clearly has over people now—can’t even appreciate how easily the woman’s eyes light up as she processes that Caitlyn, Sheriff that she is and decorated war hero, has remembered her name.
It feels like a burden.
And maybe that’s the feeling that never goes away — not really. Not when she has a name and a legacy wrapped up all in one nebulous entity. A cloud hanging over her head.
On time, as always, Vi’s hand slips around her waist, solid and firm. “Should we go inside, Cait?”
She’s twenty-eight. She’s in love. She’s alive.
Caitlyn breathes, remembering to ground herself in the sunlight that dares to poke through from time to time. It drenches her in warmth, emanating from the grip Vi has on her waist. “Yes, let’s.”
I've been the archer
I've been the prey
Screaming, who could ever leave me, darling?
But who could stay?