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Chapter Text

“Restless again, child?”

Caitlyn’s posture stiffened where she sat at the foot of the bed, eyes widening slightly as her vision came back into focus. They’d gone a bit blurry, staring at the shapes on the floor created by the moonlight that filtered in through the large windows, split and slashed by the framing between panes. It was the fourth time this week she’d awoken in the middle of the night, plagued with an uneasiness she wasn’t certain she could explain.

They were months into their occupation of the Undercity in search of Jinx, and as often as her advisors assured her that the ends justified the means, Caitlyn couldn’t seem to shake the heaviness of guilt that pooled in her stomach at night. Always at night, long after she’d lain her head down to sleep. It was just like this, in the blue hours of the early morning, that Caitlyn felt most haunted by her choices.

“What shadows of unrest plague you this time?”

The mattress shifted beneath her, the strewn about covers rustling in the silence of night. Caitlyn sat up straighter, sucked in a sharp breath just before a heavy hand landed on her shoulder. It was long, thick, rough with scars of war and experience. The very experience she leaned on to guide her through her latest political endeavors as a leader not only of her house, but of an entire city. 

Despite her misgivings, Ambessa Medarda had a certain way of speaking that just… worked for Caitlyn. The cadence of her speech, the almost melodic lilt in her delivery that never failed to encourage honesty. And vulnerability. Caitlyn felt very little hesitation in this moment to simply unfold her mind and let Ambessa read the many scrawling pages of her thoughts, her worries.

“I’ve an audience with the Masons’ Guild first thing in the morning,” Caitlyn finally replied, her voice quiet and airy. A bit strained. It felt as if the night itself had its cold hand wrapped around her throat, making it difficult to speak despite her willingness to. “Or have you forgotten?”

“Forgotten?” There was a subtle hint of amusement to Ambessa’s tone, as if the idea of her forgetfulness itself was laughable. The hand on Caitlyn’s shoulder gave a squeeze, a gentle reminder of Ambessa’s power. Not just in influence, but in physical strength. A thick thumb pressed into her trapezius and Caitlyn inhaled a shallow breath, held it in her lungs as the barest layer of gooseflesh rose along her arms. “You wound me, child, insulting my intelligence.” 

“I don’t believe I could if I tried,” Caitlyn replied quietly, aiming for at least a low level of sarcasm to diffuse the insinuation.

“Why let the masons weigh on you so? The guilds bow to you,” Ambessa reminded her. Caitlyn’s shoulders rose with a deeper breath this time, and sank again with an exhale. It made Ambessa’s hand feel heavier where it rested. “Not you to them.”

“We are asking them to break their backs for your people–”

“Our people, little one,” Ambessa interjected sharply. The thick hand at her shoulder moved to her chin, claimed it in a commanding grip and urged Caitlyn to turn her head and tilt it up. 

It was always a bit disarming to see Ambessa this way, Caitlyn thought. A renowned warlord, a frighteningly fierce warrior, in an intimate setting. Completely bare, every muscle and every scar on display. Her curls, wild and untamed.

These weren’t the muscles or the scars or the unruly hair Caitlyn had once dreamed of having in her bed. When she closed her eyes to sleep, both mentally and physically exhausted from her position – at the top of Piltover by day, beneath the weight of Ambessa by night – Caitlyn couldn’t stop her thoughts from straying. In slumber, her mind conjured images of pink tendrils and steel blue eyes. Wrapped hands and sprawling tattoos.

Dreams of Vi had her waking in the dark hours of morning clutching tightly to her pillow, aching inside and out. Those eyes saw her… and they judged her for everything she’d done. Everything she continued doing.

It was how the doubt crept in, night after night. It was why Caitlyn couldn’t escape the crippling fear that every choice she’d made since donning the cape of the commander was the wrong one.

“ We are the ones breaking our backs to keep our people safe, Caitlyn.”

If that was true, why would Caitlyn spare even an ounce of energy fretting like this? 

“I just never expected it to go on so long,” Caitlyn admitted softly, eyes flicking back and forth between Ambessa’s intense stare. Even here, in the bed they shared, Caitlyn never saw those eyes go soft. Not really.

“War is a beast untamed, child,” Ambessa replied. Her tone straddled a line between teacher and lover now, part firm, part tender. Caitlyn sometimes wondered if she was being trained or condescended to, and when that tickle of doubt clouded her thoughts, she reminded herself of all she’d learned under Ambessa’s thumb and tried desperately to squash it. “We do not master it– we endure, we outlast.”

Caitlyn felt her heartbeat in her throat. Sometimes, Ambessa’s words were so wise that it felt more like lessons learned from a history book than something she should hear out loud. Least of all in the quiet privacy of her own bedroom.

“You’re right,” Caitlyn conceded quietly with a careful nod of her head. The action made her jaw shift in Ambessa’s hold and it tightened minutely.

“I know I am.”

Blue eyes bright in color but dark in spirit watched as Ambessa stood from the bed, strode across the floor with such pride and confidence that it somehow made Commander Caitlyn Kiramman feel painfully small. Her fingers curled around the edge of the bed, bare thighs squeezing together with anxiety as Ambessa plucked a silken robe of red and gold off the back of an armchair. 

“Where are you going?” Caitlyn let herself wonder aloud, gaze still tracking Ambessa’s movements.

“For a spot of fresh air,” she answered simply as she twisted a knot into the belt around her waist. It did hardly anything to keep the robe closed, though Caitlyn acknowledged that the important bits were, in fact, covered. “Keep the bed warm, little one. I won’t be long.”

—

Below Caitlyn’s bedroom in the Kiramman manor waited a man of impressive stature, clad in black and red. He knelt before a smoldering fireplace, head dipped, his cut jaw nearly touching the breastplate of his armor. One arm was outstretched towards the glowing hearth, reflections of the embers dancing in his metal gauntlet. Long fingers stretched out into the heat, and below, draped over the burning logs, was a red cord, decorated with a handful of stones. The rune carvings in each one glowed a vibrant green. 

The man’s stoic expression shifted slightly and a second later, the door to the study opened.

“Rictus.”

His brown eyes slotted open, one brow lifting into his forehead as his gaze swept sideways to regard his general.

“Our hold is slipping,” Ambessa murmured, her tone indicative of her disapproval over that very fact. “She grows more wary of our actions with each day that passes.” 

Rictus watched as Ambessa approached him, the gold inlays of her robe catching and throwing the red glow from the fireplace. She stopped at his side, simply towered over him as he continued kneeling at the hearth. 

He could feel her eyes on the runes. Rictus’s thick mustache twitched over his closed lips.

“We mustn’t lose control of her,” Ambessa all but whispered. The embers sparked and for a brief flash, flames engulfed the wood in the fireplace, hiding the runes away from view but for a moment. And when the fire died down again, the runes glowed a deep, menacing crimson.

Chapter Text

A low fire crackled in the hearth of her study, the faintest pops and hisses of embers a quiet and gentle ambiance to the otherwise silent room with its tall windows and even taller ceilings. Caitlyn stood before her wall of circumstantial evidence, one arm curled around her middle with the opposite elbow resting atop it, fingers at her chin.

There was once a time when this organized mess of photos and strings lay strewn across her bedroom floor. She had been tracking the movements of a leader whose name she hadn’t even known then, trying to put together pieces of a puzzle whose picture she’d never seen. It felt like a lifetime ago. Caitlyn had been younger then, but not by much. So much had happened between then and now that Caitlyn felt like an entirely different person. If not in age, then certainly in life experience.

Betrayed by her superior, whose death she’d witnessed firsthand. 

Fallen in love with a girl that her mother would never approve of.

Made motherless by the sister of that very same girl…

No, Caitlyn Kiramman was not the same woman now that she’d been then, and it showed in just about every way.

Her back stood a little straighter, her shoulders a little stiffer. The bun she’d twisted her hair into alluded to a certain sophistication that many higher-ups in Piltover would find familiar, with dark tendrils falling elegantly around her face in a way not so unlike Cassandra Kiramman’s had in her early years as a councilor. Not that Caitlyn styled it with that in mind, of course.

Perhaps the most noticeable of the changes were seen in her face. Not just in the determined set of her jaw, but in the darkness behind her blue eyes. They’d always been quite bright with curiosity and a sense of fearlessness her mother had rather hated, but had never been able to stamp out. That sense of wonder was gone, however. Replaced by the shadows of grief and the fires of vengeance.

A knock at the double doors of the study drew Caitlyn from her thoughts. Her father had always kept those doors open, when he and Cassandra had been the primary occupants of this room. But ever since they’d put her mother in the ground, the space had been silently upended. Tobias was rarely around, and Caitlyn tried not to worry about the way he floated about the manor day after day. As if he were a ghost himself.

She didn’t have much mental energy to spare for him in any case.

“Come in,” Caitlyn called simply. She’d expected Ambessa, so it came as something of a surprise to see someone short and fair enter where she’d been waiting for someone tall and dark. “Maddie,” she murmured in greeting. It was clear in the tone of her voice that Caitlyn felt some sort of relief in the junior officer’s visit, and her shoulders visibly fell.

“Commander,” Maddie greeted her with a nod and a closed fist pressed in respect to her chest.

“News from the Undercity?” Caitlyn assumed, turning her attention back to the wall as Maddie moved to stand beside her. A photo was held aloft in front of her and Caitlyn took it automatically, eyes narrowing on the picture.

“A riot at one of the checkpoints,” Maddie confirmed, crossing her arms one over the other. While Caitlyn remained facing her collection of evidence, Maddie faced Caitlyn. “Several of these detonated on site.”

“It’s hers,” Caitlyn spoke quietly. She took a step closer to the wall, reached up to hold the snapshot beside an older photograph she’d pinned up quite some time ago. Pictures of explosive devices they’d recovered from the Progress Day explosion. “I’d recognize it anywhere.”

“That’s where the similarities end,” Maddie interjected, pulling Caitlyn’s attention away from the wall. “No bodycount. No theatrics.”

It admittedly didn’t sound like Jinx at all and Caitlyn’s expression tightened slightly with thought, with her efforts to tie the loose ends together. “You think it’s a copycat?”

“I think we’ve made them desperate for something to believe in.”

Caitlyn’s stomach lurched and she turned away from Maddie once more, dark brows furrowing over her eyes as they landed on the wanted poster of Jinx. She’d pinned it dead center of the wall. Since Silco’s death, Caitlyn was under the firm belief that everything – every piece of this godforsaken puzzle with its hundreds of mismatched edges – connected back to Jinx.

It didn’t matter who she was, or in what ways she was convolutedly related to Caitlyn. Jinx had committed acts of terrorism against the city of Piltover. Her weapons, her actions , had resulted in the deaths of innocent people, and yet… by hunting her, they were somehow making a martyr of her. The people of Zaun were – as Maddie said – desperate. Desperate for a leader. Desperate for respite from the conditions they’d been forced to endure for decades.

Conditions largely ignored by Piltover and its council of leaders.

Caitlyn dropped her head, as if the weight of it was simply too much for her neck to bear in this moment.

She felt so conflicted. Just this morning, she’d confided in Ambessa that the whole thing had gone on longer than she’d expected. Longer than she’d ever cared to commit to this. To being Commander Kiramman . Half of her still longed to impart upon Jinx the justice she deserved. For Piltover. For her mother and father. For all those who had suffered the sting of loss at her hands.

The other half was just… tired. Simply exhausted by all of it. Some nights she sat before the fireplace in this very study and just stared up at the portrait of her mother, praying to their gods that the image of her would speak. 

Caitlyn had never cared for her mother’s advice growing up, and sometimes she’d even taken secret joy in doing things she knew Cassandra would disapprove of. But now? Now, Caitlyn felt more like a daughter in need of her mother’s guidance than she ever had before, but Jinx had stolen that from her, too.

“Officer Nolen.”

Both Caitlyn and Maddie started at the sudden declaration from the door. Ambessa stood there, familiar in her Noxian garb and looking every bit the war general they both knew her to be. Caitlyn stood up straighter, silently tucking the photograph of the bomb fragment behind her back and out of sight.

“General Medarda,” Maddie replied with a nod, standing at attention at Caitlyn’s side.

“I’d like a word with Commander Kiramman.”

Caitlyn felt Maddie’s eyes glance in her direction.

“In private.”

Cerulean eyes swept sideways to regard Maddie, and she gave the girl a small nod. It said plenty. Not just a silent thank you for the information Maddie had brought her, but approving of Ambessa’s dismissal of her.

Vi had never managed to work out what hurt worse – the brutal ache from a hangover or the rattling of her brain inside her skull after being punched in the face. One was more satisfying than the other, and maybe that made it less painful. More bearable.

When they combined to form one monster headache was when Vi truly felt she’d reached her stride. Loris had left her on the metal stairs that led to the poor excuse for an apartment she’d managed to secure for herself. Just enough room for a few cushions in the corner and a punching bag. What more did a girl need?

Had Loris left her? Vi lay crumpled halfway up the staircase, her face streaked in blood and black squished against one of the steps. Steel gray eyes were open, but barely. Bleary. They didn’t really see anything, except for the fact that Loris had left her here.

No , she managed to think through her drunken haze. I pushed him away.

Just like she did everything and everyone else.

Some time later, Vi managed to drag herself up the rest of the stairs and into her sad excuse for a home. She’d never known much. Wherever she landed, it tended to be small, cramped. But wherever she’d landed always managed to feel cozy, no matter where it was. The skinny but tall house they’d lived in when she was just a kid, covered in Powder’s eclectic artwork. Their names and heights scribbled on a supporting beam. Hell, even the Last Drop had felt comfortable, even for a gaggle of misfit teenagers.

Because they’d never been alone.

This? This apartment was a fucking closet and Vi had never felt more alone in her life.

She could keep Loris around. If she wanted to.

She could probably even find Jinx, but for what?

Banners decorated with the Piltovian Commander’s sigil hung everywhere she looked. 

And still, the solitude was suffocating.

Vi collapsed onto the cushioned palette she called a bed, flat on her stomach and head turned to the side. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to just close her eyes and succumb to the pounding in her head.

But when she slept, she saw Caitlyn.

Vi wasn’t just a failed sister. Nor was she just a failed enforcer, or a failed friend.

She was a failure at her core. She couldn’t keep close the things she loved. And if she couldn’t keep them close, how would she ever keep them safe?

Vi rolled from her stomach to her side, curled her knees up to her chest and wrapped one arm around them. The other curled around her head, balled fist twisted into her black hair as she fought the urge to sleep.

But there, right there on the other side of her small room, were the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Staring right back at her.

“We’ve lost so many,” Ambessa said. Caitlyn kept sharp eyes on the woman as she sat before the hearth, took the poker in her thick hand and gently stoked the low fire with it. “The anger, the sorrow… It’s tiring. Gods, I know it’s tiring.”

Her eyes widened just slightly, expression shifting with the discomfort of feeling like her mind had been read. Had she not just been thinking exactly this? 

“But you will never rest, knowing that she’s out there.”

Caitlyn’s breath caught in her throat and she lifted her chin just slightly, an automatic posture against the accusation despite Ambessa not even looking at her. 

There were words echoing in her head now. Not words uttered by Ambessa’s sure tongue, nor words Caitlyn herself had spoken aloud. They were words Vi said to her once, at the councilors’ memorial. “The hole gets smaller, but you never fill it.” Caitlyn couldn’t help but feel like she could have been doing a better job of trying. Even if the hole left behind by her mother’s death would never be gone, she could have tried harder. Done more to tend the wound with compassion, rather than more violence. 

Would enacting justice on Jinx do anything at all to mend what had been shattered?

At the fireplace, Ambessa set aside the fire poker. She used that same hand to instead touch the tangle of stones wrapped around her arm guard. Caitlyn had asked her about it once. Protection, Ambessa had answered. A Noxian tradition and even though Caitlyn didn’t understand the faith behind the stones – nor exactly what the war general needed protection from – she had no reason to question Ambessa. 

“Or, maybe I underestimated you.”

A feeling swept through Caitlyn that she couldn’t quite explain. In many ways, she felt she’d been underestimated her whole life. The only daughter of Cassandra and Tobias Kiramman, she’d been expected to pursue a position befitting of her station . An academic, of sorts. Perhaps young Caitlyn would grow up to be a doctor, or a renowned physicist. But an investigator, an enforcer , had never been on the list of approved avenues for Caitlyn. Serving her city in uniform was not a desk job, and it certainly wasn’t a safe one, but Caitlyn had donned the badge anyway.

Whatever missteps she might have taken, whatever her mistakes, Caitlyn believed she was a good enforcer.

And a damn good leader for the people of Piltover. Her people.

“Maybe you have the strength I do not.”

By the time Ambessa spoke again, Caitlyn’s expression had twisted into something angry and defiant, blue eyes gone hard and focused on the movement of Ambessa’s fingers over her arm guard.

“To forgive, and trust in tomorrow.”

Caitlyn approached her slowly, the photograph of the bomb fragment from today’s riot fluttering forgotten to the ground behind her. She lifted that hand, empty now, and laid it firmly over Ambessa’s shoulder.

“The decision is yours, Commander.”

The corner of Caitlyn’s mouth lifted in a small snarl. She looked inside her heart and recognized easily enough that whatever empty space was left there by recent events, there was no room for forgiveness. 

Not for Jinx.

“Proceed with the arrests,” Caitlyn said, her tone even and sound. It didn’t so much as falter with an ounce of doubt now. “We will interrogate every citizen of Zaun if we must.” There was but one path to justice, and Ambessa had swept it clean again at her feet. “Jinx will be found.”

Chapter Text

Maddie watched from several yards back as her commander stood before the towering statues that served as the memorial to the fallen councilors. The task force had been disbanded after Caitlyn accepted the title, and it wasn’t necessarily her assigned duty to be here. Trailing after the commander, keeping an extra set of eyes on her with the excuse that there simply was no such thing as too careful.

Half the high council had been eradicated with a single swipe, and they were still no closer to learning of Jinx’s whereabouts. Not really. So despite the lack of instructions, Maddie was here, shadowing Caitlyn Kiramman because it was what her gut told her to do.

“How many arrests thus far?”

When Maddie realized she was being spoken to, her neck elongated, her shoulders straightened. She set her jaw and met Caitlyn’s gaze when the commander turned her head just enough to look back.

“One hundred and eight,” Maddie replied promptly. It was the number from the latest report she’d heard, though she couldn’t be completely certain it was still accurate. “As of an hour ago, Commander.”

Yesterday, she’d thought maybe Caitlyn was getting closer to calling a proverbial ceasefire where their invasion of Zaun was concerned. It seemed their activity in the Undercity was doing more harm than good, inspiring the people to unite against Piltover – against Caitlyn – rather than concede any sort of information that might help them locate Jinx. Shimmer production had slowed, sure, but there was little they could do to fully stop the chem-barons without provoking further retaliation. The threat known as Silco had been but one piece of that particular puzzle.

Today, however, Caitlyn’s fire seemed to be burning hotter than Maddie had seen it in quite some time. It made her stomach twist with a discomfort she couldn’t quite describe, as if she was watching someone else wear the clothes of a woman she had once quite admired.

“And the general?”

“Overseeing transport of the prisoners at the skytram, Commander.”

Caitlyn nodded, then turned away from Maddie altogether to once again look up at the memorial statues. Light blue eyes couldn’t help but direct upwards, too, to regard the faces of the councilors they’d lost. 

She never got the chance to meet Councilor Kiramman, but even here, standing at the foot of a mere statue erected in her honor, Maddie felt small in her presence.

“Did she take Rictus?”

Maddie’s teeth clenched together, an expression tugging at the features of her delicate face in a way she could not control. There was disapproval in them. Sadness. Even a little regret. “Yes, she did.”

They both knew what that meant. More violence. It was always more violence with Ambessa and the Noxians.

“Good,” Caitlyn replied. The simple response felt sharper than a blade and Maddie actually took a small step back as the disappointment flooded her bones, like rain moving through the cracks of their cobbled streets.

“You demonstrated great strength today, child,” Ambessa spoke evenly, breaking a silence that had stretched for what felt like hours since their return from Stillwater. Caitlyn had been called to oversee the interrogation of a single remaining prisoner after the escape of one hundred and seven Zaunites. A truly gut wrenching blow, further infuriated by the knowledge that Jinx had orchestrated the entire ordeal.

It felt personal, and Caitlyn was enraged beyond all reason.

“How is allowing the largest prison break in all of Stillwater’s history a demonstration of strength?” Caitlyn asked, the hottest embers of her anger burning brightly in the edges of her voice. Her hand curled tightly around the damp cloth she’d been using to help tend to Ambessa’s many wounds. The general was a touch too stubborn to allow a proper healer to see to her, but in the privacy of her suite in the embassy and in the company of none but her protege, Ambessa did allow Caitlyn some leniency for caretaking.

If nothing else, it gave her hands something to do while her mind remained occupied with the day’s events.

“Not that,” Ambessa dismissed with a wave of her hand. She lay draped on the chaise that decorated the large and open balcony of her suite, the furniture suited to a Noxian’s tastes. The upholstery was of the finest velvet, deep crimson in color, the structural elements of the chaise a sturdy wood stained black and inlaid with decorative fixtures of gold. Caitlyn perched on a matching round ottoman, both fussing over her and simultaneously berating her for all that had happened.

Not that any of it was Ambessa’s fault, but Ambessa was here and no one would understand Caitlyn’s ire quite like the general would.

“We apprehended them once, we can do it again,” she assured Caitlyn. Both arms rested over the top edges of the chaise, positioned in such a way that her muscles looked to be deliberately on display. “You commanded our conversation with the scientist in an exceptionally admirable way,” Ambessa went on, explicitly clarifying what she’d meant by Caitlyn’s supposed show of strength.

This did give Caitlyn pause, her hand held aloft with the stained cloth dangling from her fingertips halfway between them. Her expression broke, a subtle change that allowed for the first relief of tension in her brow since learning of the breakin at Stillwater. Bright blue eyes flicked slowly back and forth between Ambessa’s keen golds, quietly awaiting further feedback.

“You showed ferocity, and an unwillingness to bend to those beneath you.”

The breath in her lungs tripped over itself on its way up her throat as Ambessa reached out to her. She’d grown quite familiar with these hands. The size of them, once intimidating, pushed a shiver down Caitlyn’s spine now. Ambessa didn’t cup her jaw, or stroke her cheek. She was a woman illiterate in gestures of affection. Instead, she held Caitlyn’s chin. It was an assertive touch, with something of a maternal undertone to it. A feeling that swept through her like cool water.

Where it encountered the heat of her anger and the low-burning embers of a physical desire Ambessa had curated inside her, darkness formed. Sharp crystals of obsidian that weighed like heavy stones in her stomach.

“I don’t believe the dungeons will loosen his tongue,” Caitlyn admitted through her teeth, jaw shifting only minutely in Ambessa’s grasp. “What do threats of isolation and darkness mean to a man like that?”

“Such tactics are less effective on some than others, certainly,” Ambessa conceded with a nod. The gash along the bridge of her nose oozed, a bead of blood dripped from the bottom edge of it to slowly trace the curve of her cheek.

Caitlyn barely hesitated to lift the cloth and catch it before it could reach the general’s mouth.

“But your resolve was plain to see no less. Make no mistake, child – it carries more weight than you know.”

It was a practice in self awareness to try and let Ambessa’s words penetrate the outer shell of Caitlyn’s temper. She craved that praise, and the assurance that her footing in this position was sound. But the lack of answers she’d received from the conversation she’d so-called commanded was a bitter pill to swallow, and that difficulty showed in the pout of her lips.

Lips that Ambessa touched now, the pad of her thumb running slowly along the line of the bottom one. It made the muscles in Caitlyn’s face relax. Just slightly.

“And if he doesn’t talk?” she asked, the edge to her voice eased some.

“You’ve played your role, Commander,” Ambessa replied evenly, their gazes locked with a certain intensity that exacerbated the weight in her stomach. The hand at her chin released its grip, only to reach for Caitlyn’s wrist instead. Ambessa guided her hand down, squeezed tightly until Caitlyn dropped the cloth from between her fingers. “Leave the rest to me.”

The room echoed with a steady tap tapping of the bed frame as it repeatedly bumped the wall. It was rhythmic, consistent. Like the room itself counted the seconds as they passed by.

On the balcony floor lay the forgotten cloth, stained with blood. Beside it, strewn messily about, were various items of clothing. A blue tunic with gold embroidery, a beige breastplate adorned with fixtures of black and gold. The trail of discarded pieces ended halfway through the room, the trajectory plenty discernable.

Caitlyn clutched tightly to the pillow beneath her chest, arms wrapped tightly around it. Long fingers fisted fiercely into the satin pillowcase, the material warm with the ferocity of her grip. 

Behind her, Ambessa in her finest element, muscles and scars exposed to the suite and all its fineries. Those hands grew even more familiar now, held firmly to the generous curves of Caitlyn’s hips as she thrust against her. Repeatedly. 

It was rhythmic, consistent. 

Caitlyn swallowed a cry, burying her mouth in the pillow as a bolt of pleasure – edging into the realm of pain – shot up her spine.

Fingers twisted into her hair and gave it a yank, forcing Caitlyn’s back into a deep arch as her head lifted. “Do not be shy, little one,” Ambessa purred. “I want to hear you.”

Bright blue eyes, glossy with the tight and tender grip of arousal, looked back as best they could. Ambessa had shed every piece of clothing for this, as she often did. There was nowhere to hide narcissism in the privacy of this space, intimate as it was. The embassy had provided Ambessa with each and every one of her most particular requests, including the handful of enormous mirrors that decorated the suite.

One of them happened to be situated on the wall parallel to the bed.

That was where her gaze landed now and another airy sound filtered up Caitlyn’s throat. She could not bury it this time, and it echoed through the room around them. She would come before Ambessa – she always did. It was nearing now, the pace of its approach ferocious and intoxicating. It made Caitlyn tremble, made her body feel weak. Like she balanced on the precipice of simply shattering beneath the weight of Ambessa’s powerful thrusts.

In the mirror, Caitlyn caught the flash of glowing runes on Ambessa’s arm. The protective stones she wore around her guard, to keep her safe… From what, Caitlyn still didn’t know. 

With mouth agape, hair still clutched in the commanding grip of the general, Caitlyn watched the markings’ glow fade from green to red as she tipped over the edge.

Chapter Text

It was only after pouring hours of time into her family’s archives that Caitlyn uncovered the truth about the scientist’s identity. He was no random genius from the Undercity, but someone familiar. Someone whose roots were buried not so far from her own. Someone cloaked in shadows, and for good reason. 

Doctor Corin Reveck had once been a revered scholar, with his name appearing alongside Heimerdinger’s in many publications. But his descent into questionable experimentation and his demonstrated lack of respect for the Piltovian ethos had forced him out of their high towers and expensive labs.

Doctor Reveck disappeared into the Undercity and became the man responsible for the shimmer epidemic that ran rampant through his streets.

None of this information seemed sufficient to change Ambessa’s mind about him, however. Caitlyn tried and failed to convince her that he belonged in Stillwater. Not to be bargained with or depended upon, but to be locked away for good. Where his tampering with nature and humanity itself would meet a swift and irreversible end.

Caitlyn did not win this argument. In fact, by the end of it, she better understood Ambessa’s defense of his brilliance and the importance of his beast to their cause.

They stood now in the center of the training hall on the Noxian flagship, each wrapped in flexible clothes of black and red. Even Caitlyn, whose midnight blue hair sat twisted into a bun at the back of her head. The efforts of their training were seen in the wisps of hair that fell messily around her face, her brow glistening with sweat. Cerulean eyes focused on her sparring partner. Her advisor, her general, her mentor – in so many ways beyond just one.

Those eyes narrowed as they circled one another slowly, gaze sharp and discerning. Ambessa spoke of the three principles of strength, a lesson within a lesson. Caitlyn couldn’t quite decide which one should pull her focus as they stared each other down. Her grip tightened on the bo staff in her hands as Ambessa twirled her own behind her back. A wind up, preparing for attack. Somehow, her words did not stutter or falter even as she lunged.

With a grunt, Caitlyn parried the attack, ducked left, spun her own staff at its center point and swung in Ambessa’s direction. Force , Ambessa said. Caitlyn did not practice enough of it, and the girl believed her reasoning to be sound. If she focused on force, the rest would slip. Her perception, her cunning, her speed. Such neglect left her vulnerable to attack, as evidenced now. Ambessa, a truly formidable warrior, blocked Caitlyn’s advance, sent a foot into her staff so the wood cracked in half. 

Caitlyn stumbled to the side, but righted her footing quickly. She drew back the half of her bo that remained in her hands, watching as Ambessa turned her back to carry out the lesson. 

Tunnels in your eyes .

Her lips curled into a snarl as an inexplicable rage boiled up inside her, irritated by the way Ambessa stood now facing away from the fight. It felt dismissive. It felt belittling, as if she didn’t trust Caitlyn to be capable of taking advantage of such defiance.

Lava in your veins.

With a yell, Caitlyn surged forward. She would not be made to look like a child by this woman, no matter the discrepancy in their sizes, their ages. In their experiences. Fury fueled her and Caitlyn was quick on her feet, a status acknowledged by this very same mentor. With her back turned, it was easy to advance on Ambessa. Her guard was down and Caitlyn’s staff was up, she lunged with the steel side facing forward.

A strike that would deal damage, if it landed.

Intentional.

Ambessa leaned at the perfect moment. A breath later and the attack would have landed to the back of her head. As it was, an edge of the blade caught nothing more than her cheek and the lack of resistance had Caitlyn’s momentum carrying her forward unexpectedly. 

Shadows in your heart .

She was disarmed immediately, the half staff torn from her grasp while the end of Ambessa’s bo suddenly connected with the side of her face. Caitlyn’s vision blurred and blackened around the edges. She took another hit to the center of her abdomen, a solid connection that knocked the wind from her lungs. Fire erupted inside her, the embers of anger coursing through the heat of pain that radiated outward from each point of impact.

Then, weightlessness.

Her stomach climbed up her throat as time itself seemed slow, as if giving Caitlyn the chance to truly experience the horrid and disorienting feeling of being so brutally handled. Ambessa’s hands gripped her tightly, too tightly. The floor became the ceiling and the walls went upside-down as Ambessa tossed Caitlyn over her shoulder like she weighed nothing at all. But Caitlyn became very aware of her own weight as it crashed into the floor at Ambessa’s feet.

Every bone rattled in protest and a sharp pain in her shoulder had a cry erupting from Caitlyn’s lips. Ambessa held her arm at an unnatural angle and she swore the joint felt nearly dislocated. The slightest tug and the bone would pop from its socket, Caitlyn thought, as she grimaced and fought to catch her breath.

She couldn’t bring herself to look up at Ambessa now.

“This is the truth of combat,” the general spat, hovering so close that Caitlyn could feel the heat of Ambessa’s breath on her chin.

With a huff, Caitlyn fought against Ambessa’s grip on her, a sharp lurch of her body that did nothing but provoke a tighter hold. Her grunt dissolved into a gasp, the ache of the position giving another profound throb that made her go slack again. 

“You are not ready, child.”

Deep blue eyes lifted at that, her lips still pulled into a frown of disapproval, her brows furrowed in anger. Caitlyn’s chest rose and fell rapidly with her labored breathing. Labored breathing that grew short and shallow as the hand on her chest that kept her pinned to the floor slowly moved. It traced a blazing path down her abdomen, paused and pressed where Ambessa’s staff had connected solidly with her body. Caitlyn grunted and once again lurched against Ambessa’s hold on her, but the woman’s might was unmatched. Caitlyn was powerless against her in a game of sheer strength.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed, wrapping her free hand around Ambessa’s wrist. Caitlyn squeezed, but it was her non-dominant hand and Ambessa was just… so thick. So powerful. Her efforts would come across as weak and Caitlyn choked on a breath.

“You have always demonstrated unmatched discipline, Caitlyn,” Ambessa spoke, her voice low now. “It is why your people placed their trust in you as their commander.” Even in its lack of volume, however, this voice did things to Caitlyn she simply could not explain. The lilt of her accent, the intonation of her vowels… It was a song that moved through Caitlyn like a river along its path. Uncontested, bending where the land commanded it to.

“But when anger rules you…” Ambessa’s hand moved lower across her stomach. Caitlyn’s moved with it, her grip incapable of stopping its travels. “Impatience is soon to follow.” Fingertips bumped the wide red waistband of her training trousers and slid beneath it. Caitlyn’s eyes widened, her pupils grew a fraction. Her breath tripped inside her lungs and the urge to escape Ambessa’s entrapment of her body slowly melted away.

“Impatience is a gateway to folly, child.” 

A ragged gasp slipped up her throat as warm fingers slid between her thighs and when Caitlyn’s hips lifted into the pressure, Ambessa gave her arm a sharp yank. That gasp tumbled into a breathless yelp and Caitlyn promptly corrected herself, pinning the small of her back to the floor.

“And folly could cost you your life.”

She was simply helpless to resist Ambessa’s hold on her – body and mind. With hardly any time allotted to preparing, two fingers slid through her folds and threatened against her entrance. Caitlyn’s lower lip trembled, gaze locked with Ambessa’s as those fingers forced their way in. A truly undignified sound fell off her tongue, caught between a moan and a whimper as Ambessa simply stayed right where she was, buried and burrowed so deeply inside Caitlyn that the girl might fear she’d never be able to dig her out again.

“Your life is too important, little one,” Ambessa continued, so quiet now. Her fingers were thick and dry and they shifted minutely. Caitlyn thought of the way their session today had started, with only their gazes locked as they slowly circled each other on the training floor, staffs poised but not yet striking. A dance, of sorts. A soft cry clawed its way up her throat and she squeezed tighter to Ambessa’s wrist. 

“To them. To me.”

At last, the arousal was beginning to pool, warm and thick and eager to coat Ambessa’s fingers. She felt no less full for it, such was the size of the general’s hands, but pleasure began to work its way up from between her thighs. The breath found Caitlyn’s lungs just a little easier and her hand released its grip on the wrist she’d held. It crawled up her arm instead, passing over runes that glowed red, to clutch at the black material wrapped over Ambessa’s shoulder.

“Your people need you.”

Caitlyn nodded her understanding, thighs falling open as Ambessa’s hand began to move inside her trousers.

“I need you.”

Maddie had been standing post beside Rictus at the end of the hallway leading to the training facility aboard the Noxian flagship when Singed appeared before them. The sight of him made her spine tingle in an unpleasant way – he was an unsettling man, but not for all the reasons one might immediately assume. Maddie was mostly unaffected by the scars that covered half his face, or by the way he hid his teeth by the plain scarf that tied off behind his neck.

It was his eyes that made her stomach turn and her expression harden. It didn’t feel like looking into the eyes of a man at all.

“I’ll notify the general,” Maddie offered when Singed declared he was prepared for an audience with Ambessa. Rictus nodded in approval and Maddie turned on her heels, walking at a deliberately calm pace to the training hall.

The sounds that filtered out from the cracks of the closed doors made Maddie think they were simply hard at work. Caitlyn was a dedicated leader, constantly at work to improve her mind, her body, to meet the demands of her position. While Maddie was beginning to question whether Ambessa’s influence was actually good for Caitlyn, she did recognize that the intentions were in the right place.

Justice above all, harm to none.

The promise they all made when they accepted the weight of the badge. 

But the closer she got, the clearer those sounds became. Maddie frowned, her steps slowed. She could feel her heart beating in her throat for fear of what she might be walking in on. Afraid of witnessing something that might change her opinion of the commander she’d come to respect so deeply – and a woman she’d chosen to follow without question.

A strip of light illuminated a thin line down the center of Maddie’s face as she reached the doors. The crack in the middle of them was just wide enough to see through in secret. No struggle was taking place on the other side. No combat training that she would recognize. 

The scene she laid eyes on made Maddie’s breath leave her at once, her eyes wide in horror. Her gloved hand shot up to cover her mouth before she could make a sound that might alert Ambessa to her presence and Maddie took a step back, then another. It wasn’t until her back hit the wall on the opposite side of the hall that Maddie stopped, struggling to comprehend what she had just witnessed.

She knew General Medarda and the commander had become close in the months since Caitlyn’s appointment. Ambessa’s knowledge and experience made her a valuable asset, an unparalleled advisor.

But before now, Maddie had believed their relationship to be strictly professional. Perhaps even a shadow of the mother and the daughter they’d both lost in strikingly identical timing.

What she’d seen Ambessa doing was in no way the actions of a trusted advisor, nor that of a maternal figure. And the sounds coming from Caitlyn hadn’t indicated she was particularly upset about those actions…

Maddie returned to Rictus and Singed at a brisker pace than she’d left and the junior officer tried hard to keep her expression neutral. “I think you should come back later,” she said to the doctor, giving a dip of her head that appeared respectful. “They’re busy training.” It was all she could muster up the stomach to say and while Singed looked inconvenienced, he also didn’t look like the type to stand around and argue. For that, Maddie was grateful.

As Singed left, Maddie returned to her post. She lifted a hand to push at the heat in her cheeks, glanced up to see that Rictus was staring down his nose at her with dark eyes that were perhaps just a bit too keen.

“They didn’t look like they were in a position to be interrupted,” Maddie responded to his silent incredulity. There wasn’t a hint of relief even when Rictus looked away again.

Chapter Text

Before now, Piltover’s invasion of the Undercity had consisted of sending enforcer units below to oversee checkpoints, to ensure peace and keep their eyes and ears peeled for signs of Jinx. It was the way of things, a manner of conduct that made sense to Maddie. It was why they put on the uniform, why they wore the badge – because they’d accepted the duty and responsibility of protecting their city and all its people.

Sending droves of Noxian warriors who answered to Ambessa Medarda into the Fissures to retrieve a chem-weapon contrived by unnatural means did not make sense. Maddie all but vibrated with her growing disapproval of their leaders’ choices.

“Can you spare a moment, Commander?” Maddie asked carefully. 

Caitlyn sat at a large desk in her family study. The wall behind her stretched floor to ceiling with books, spanning subjects from the biographies of Piltover’s founders to Runeterra’s most intricate technological achievements. The wall in front of her had been overtaken by police snapshots and handwritten notes, pins in maps and red thread weaving through the lot of it.

On the desk before her lay Caitlyn’s weapon – a rifle that, when standing on its stock, felt nearly as tall as Junior Officer Maddie Nolen. It was currently in pieces, the barrel and its modifications separated and resting parallel to one another on the deep blue cloth that covered the desk. The receiver had also been dismantled. Maddie recognized the various components, even from a distance. Caitlyn held the bolt in her hands now, using a fine-bristled brush to clean it of debris.

If handed a rusted musket from Runeterra’s oldest wars, Maddie was sure Caitlyn would still strike her target with ease, even blind in one eye. 

She suspected the thorough maintenance of her rifle was more about looking and feeling busy than it was ensuring its performance and accuracy, but Maddie wouldn’t comment on that now.

“Certainly,” Caitlyn answered simply, waving a hand in a vague gesture that beckoned Maddie closer. “What’s on your mind, Maddie?”

Her feet carried her forward across the familiar space. Up close, it was even clearer just how intricate of a weapon Jayce Talis had built for her. While Maddie considered herself well educated in all things relevant to her career, she realized now that there were plenty of pieces and mechanisms laid out before Caitlyn that she didn’t recognize at all.

Maddie swallowed thickly, her tongue feeling a bit larger than usual.

Just months ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated to be completely honest with Caitlyn. They were colleagues. Teammates, for all intents and purposes. Maddie had swelled with pride when she’d received Caitlyn’s endorsement for the elite strike force, had accepted the position without a second’s hesitation. 

But the woman sitting across from her now was not that Caitlyn. Maybe the eyes were the same, on the surface. The nose, the posture, the shape of lips that pursed when she concentrated too hard on something. All familiar… but changed.

Maddie had spent the last three days dwelling on what she’d witnessed on the Noxian flagship, her stomach twisted with guilt over seeing something she knew she shouldn’t have. Something that made her feel truly sick in so many ways.

“I have doubts regarding the general’s plans to take her army into the Undercity.”

She said the words too quickly. Spitting them out had taken a herculean effort and it made Maddie rush. Her anxiety hummed beneath the melodic tone of her accent

“The general’s plans?” Caitlyn repeated. Her hands were still now, her gaze focused on Maddie alone.

It took every ounce of her resolve not to shrink under the weight of Caitlyn’s stare.

“Yes. Don’t you think–”

“They are not the general’s plans.” Caitlyn’s sharp tone cut Maddie off mid-sentence, silencing her on the spot. “They are our plans, Officer Nolen, and you’d be wise to recognize authority where it is seated before you.”

“I do recognize authority,” Maddie argued and while her tone was not as pointed as Caitlyn’s, it demonstrated a certain sense of self assurance that Maddie had always harbored. A certainty for the choices she’d made that led her here – her devotion to the badge. “I have the utmost respect for authority, Caitlyn, but you must see that–”

“It’s Commander Kiramman,” Caitlyn growled quietly. She calmly placed the bolt and brush down so she could stand, the progressive change in her height causing Maddie’s chin to tip up in order to maintain eye contact.

“That’s exactly right,” Maddie replied. Though it was evident she was still trying desperately to keep her voice even, it was clear that her conviction was beginning to waver. “You are the commander of this city,” she reminded Caitlyn, as if she might have forgotten what that truly meant. “So why are you bending to Ambessa’s orders?”

“They are not orders,” Caitlyn snapped. A fist came down on the desk and caused the various metal parts of her rifle to shift and roll. Maddie took a cursory step back. “She is my advisor, and an accomplished war general who has fought for and earned every decoration. Every scar.” Maddie could feel her heart in her throat, could see it beating behind her eyes. It made focusing on Caitlyn an even tougher task. “Her guidance is invaluable, and Piltover’s future depends upon it.”

Caitlyn’s brows furrowed over her eyes and Maddie thought if a glare alone was capable of stopping a heart, she’d be rendered lifeless by this one.

“If your doubts persist, consider yourself relieved of duty until further notice.”

Maddie’s breath caught in her lungs and her hand immediately lifted to her hip, covering the badge tucked into her belt.

“Relinquish it,” Caitlyn commanded. 

There burned behind her eyes an emotion of rage. Of such thorough disappointment. Maddie could see it so clearly now – this was not the Caitlyn Kiramman who earned the respect and regard of her fellow enforcers through grace and cunning. This was not the Caitlyn Kiramman the citizens of Piltover had elected to lead them.

Ambessa Medarda had her claws in deep. It was the only explanation.

“You’re making a mistake,” Maddie whispered as she tugged the badge from her belt. She didn’t place it on the desk. Nor did she reach out to place it calmly in Caitlyn’s hands.

With a flick of her wrist, she tossed it. The badge hit Caitlyn’s chest with a dull thud before clattering to the desk, scattering rifle parts onto the floor. The metallic tinks of several pieces hitting the hardwood were as loud as gunshots in the silence.

Vi stood at her sink, staring at her own reflection in the mirror.

It had blurred around the edges over the past few months. Had it been months? Had it been a year? The only indication that time was passing at all was the length of her hair. The tail of it was beginning to crawl down the middle of her back. She could feel it there between her shoulder blades. A persistent reminder that the world was still spinning, moving on without her.

She craned over at the hips, managing to avoid tipping over entirely with a tight grip of her hands around the lip of the sink. Her body felt impossibly heavy – every bone, every muscle weighed down by physical and emotional exhaustion that seeped into every corner of her being. She wasn’t drunk, but she wanted to be. Would be later, after tonight’s fight.

Hands wrapped in white, dirty tape dipped into the sink, pulled up handful after handful of water to splash over her face. It did very little to make Vi feel refreshed. Or clean. In just a matter of hours, she’d be streaking black paint onto her cheeks all over again. The mask she wore in some pathetic attempt to keep the world from seeing how fragile she was behind her fists.

Vi hung her head, arms straight down and hands braced against the sink. Even as the room tipped on its side around her, she could see her own body with some clarity. Fuzzy at the edges, but there. Standing still, growing thinner. She needed to eat before the fight, but it was an acknowledgment more than a feeling. Food turned to ash on her tongue and the only thing that ever interested her anymore was alcohol.

She felt wasted and wasted away, but the surface looked like it was miles above her head.

A knock sounded from the door behind her and Vi froze. Thought to herself for a brief second that she’d only imagined it. People didn’t visit her here. She didn’t have visitors. The only person who’d ever shown up unexpectedly in her life was a certain blue-haired girl with legs for days and a tooth gap, and Vi was pretty sure she wasn’t here to break her out of prison this time.

Another rap on the door. Vi scowled.

“Fuck off.”

“Vi?”

The breath in her lungs tripped up her throat and Vi’s head lifted. A slow but steady march for someone in her condition. She looked at herself again, considered her reflection. Vi barely recognized it – would anyone else? 

“Vi, please. It’s important…”

She was certain it was a hallucination. A trick of the mind, conjuring up memories from her past to hurt her. To kick her ass. To disrupt the path that she was on because Vi knew – deep down, she knew – that it was dangerous. 

“I need to speak with you.”

Vi turned on the heels of her boots and stumbled across the apartment. It took all of four steps and when she reached the door, Vi slammed her fists against it. “I said fuck off! ”

What was Maddie even doing down here? Didn’t she know a place and a people like the Undercity could and would eat her alive? 

“It’s Caitlyn.”

Steel blue eyes blew wide and Vi felt the oxygen leave the room. Like a masked monster was sucking out air and pumping in the Grey. Vi reached for her throat, wrapped her fingers around it as she fought to breathe and something awfully akin to panic flooded her veins. She saw flashes of cerulean blue, a thin lock of hair falling before it. Before she could remember why she shouldn’t, Vi reached for the knob and swung the door open.

“What about her?”

Her flat wasn’t built for entertaining people. There was barely enough room for Vi to move around in it, let alone host a conversation with a topsider. But Maddie was small and somehow managed to keep any judgment out of her eyes as Vi moved to stand beside her hanging punching bag, hands on her hips and elbows out straight.

“You mean to tell me you came all the way down here to tell me she’s seated in Ambessa Medarda’s lap and you… don’t like it?” Vi repeated the watered down version of what Maddie had told her. It sounded stupid, and Vi was still half-convinced she was dreaming.

Why her imagination would waste precious sleep on images of this particular enforcer was beyond Vi’s comprehension, but it seemed the more likely scenario.

“It’s not just that,” Maddie replied. Vi watched her press a hand to her forehead with something like exasperation.

Vi had always been a bit thick in the head and where Caitlyn Kiramman was involved? Well, the skin was probably even thicker.

“You haven’t seen her, Vi.”

No, she hadn’t. Not for a long time. Not since Caitlyn had mercilessly tossed the butt of her rifle into Vi’s gut and left her sobbing at the bottom of a fucking hole in the ground.

“She’s different. She’s…” Maddie threw her hands down, clearly irritated with her own lack of proper vernacular to describe what was apparently indescribable. “She’s changed.”

“Changed how?”

“She’s not Caitlyn,” Maddie finally snapped and the sharp tone of her voice commanded Vi to soften her posture. Just a little. “It’s not just that she’s taking advice from Ambessa. It’s like she is Ambessa.”

Vi’s eyes narrowed slightly, brows tipping over them with confusion. And maybe a little concern.

“What do you mean?”

“Her sense of honor is completely shattered,” Maddie tried to explain, and that did manage to startle Vi somewhat. She’d been on the receiving end of Caitlyn Kiramman’s devotion to law and order. Caitlyn had seen a citizen wrongfully imprisoned and had taken it upon herself to see that injustice corrected.

She’d stood at Vi’s side before a council of her peers and superiors to defend a city she didn’t even belong to, because her integrity and her perception of what was right had always been inarguably sound.

So to hear Maddie calling into question Caitlyn’s honor was, perhaps, the perfect thing to say.

“She called for the arrests of dozens of Zaunites without due cause,” Maddie continued. Vi bristled. “She uncovered the man responsible for the creation of shimmer and allowed Ambessa to name him an advisor.” Vi’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. “They’re planning a full-scale invasion of Zaun, Vi. To claim some sort of weapon.”

Vi’s frown was deep, her eyes hard. Whereas before, she felt like no amount of breath could deliver the oxygen she needed, it now felt as though she was hyperventilating. Her chest rose and fell rapidly with the labor of her lungs. “To use against Jinx?” Vi whispered, seeking further clarification.

Maddie shook her head. “No, I don’t think so,” she answered, matching Vi’s volume. “Ambessa wants it.”

“So why is Caitlyn allowing her to launch a full-scale invasion on the Undercity if it’s not even about Jinx?”

“This is what I’m trying to tell you,” Maddie implored. She took an instinctive step closer to Vi, patting the back of one hand into the open palm of the other. “She’s like a different person, Vi.”

Vi turned again, put her back to Maddie and reached for the punching bag with both hands. Her body leaned into it, forehead resting against the tattered material of its outer shell. Vi closed her eyes and there in the darkness… she saw Caitlyn. The picture of decorum. The ultimate advocate for justice. The muscles in Vi's jaw shifted as she clenched her teeth tightly together, a strenuous and visible effort to keep her emotions in check.

“Why did you come here, Maddie?” she whispered into the bag. “What do you expect me to do about any of this?”

Wasn’t like Caitlyn was interested in hearing what Vi had to say anymore. She’d closed the door on that part of their relationship. Violently.

“You mean something to her.” Maddie’s voice was quiet and careful. Like she wasn’t sure she should say such things out loud. Like she was afraid of being overheard. “We could all see it, that day at the station when she made a case for your enlistment.”

Vi squeezed her eyes shut tighter, fingertips biting into the punching bag. Her shoulders shook with some silent, invisible tension.

Nobody knew about the kiss she and Caitlyn shared that day in the tunnels. No one but them. The taste of Caitlyn’s lips haunted her dreams and she chased that flavor every day, had convinced herself she’d find it at the bottom of a bottle. 

No one had seen it. Not even Maddie. But apparently they’d seen something. 

“Everyone who loves her is gone.”

Her heart lurched. Vi could feel it pounding against her ribs.

“Not just her mother, but her father, too. He’s like an empty shell.” That didn’t surprise her. The last time Vi had been in the Kiramman manor, Tobias had looked just about that. Bodily present, but nothing more. They may as well have laid him to rest in the ground beside Cassandra.

“Jayce is missing.”

Vi suddenly looked over her shoulder wearing an expression that illustrated her confusion. Maddie only nodded, her own face heavy with sadness.

“There’s just you.”

Vi’s lips pursed together when the sudden and untamable urge to deny loving Caitlyn threatened to jump off her tongue. But she knew it to be a lie. Even now, after months of suffering and solitude, Vi couldn’t say it. She let out a yell instead, the only sound she was capable of making, and drove a fist into the punching bag.

“She needs you, Vi.”

Chapter Text

Caitlyn spent the afternoon overseeing the construction of transport for the beast Ambessa had set her eyes on. Ample conversation had transpired between them and Singed. The scientist ensured that the thing – once a man, a harrowing thought Caitlyn shoved to the darker corners of her mind – was capable of being controlled. An asset that would give them an edge in an impending war where shimmer would prove itself unpredictable and dangerous.

Fight fire with fire, Ambessa said.

She’d never understood the expression. Caitlyn felt it a more prudent and effective course of action to fight fire with water, but she hadn’t been compelled to argue the idea with the general.

Dark brows furrowed over blue eyes as she focused on the map laid across the desk in her family’s study. A map of Zaun, specifically, as its larger counterpart on the wall was currently littered with Caitlyn’s visualized tracking of Jinx’s movements through both cities. Rendered unusable for her current task. Her gaze tracked the path they would take into and through the Fissures in just a matter of days. Preparation for the mission oftentimes felt endless, but Ambessa assured her they were close. Nearly ready.

A knock at the door pulled Caitlyn’s attention and she looked up, an instinctive glance towards the entrance more than a deliberate one.

But the pupils within those royal irises narrowed when the door opened to admit a phantom from her past and Caitlyn was powerless to prevent her throat from closing around her breath.

She looked different. Maybe Caitlyn wasn’t the utmost authority, considering the mere fraction of time she’d actually known this woman. But to Caitlyn, the difference was substantial and the commander felt certain that if she looked down, she’d witness her stomach convulsing at her feet.

“What are you doing here?”

Caitlyn’s years of prestigious upbringing and knowledge of proper manners were nowhere to be found. So blindsided was she that Caitlyn couldn’t have discerned left from right if asked to point in one direction.

“Nice to see you, too, Cupcake.”

Wax gathered beneath her nails from the map’s thin protective coating as Caitlyn’s fingers curled into it. Her heart beat in her throat – yet another thing making it difficult to breathe. She stood stalk still, fearful that the weakness she felt in her knees wasn’t just an illusion. Afraid that if she tried to take even a single step, she’d simply spill to the floor.

Yes, Vi looked very different. Gone were the vibrant locks of magenta pink Caitlyn had once threaded her fingers into. Not just blackened, but longer, too. The word buoyant had always come to mind when she looked at Vi, but it was as if the dye in its strands made her hair heavy. Weighted. 

It looked dead, Caitlyn thought now. A shadow of the Vi that had haunted her dreams for months.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said quietly. The commanding tone she used with the carpenters earlier this very same day had disappeared entirely. Deflated and hollow. Unsteady in its assuredness.

“Why not?” 

How was it possible that after all this time, Vi’s quips sounded just as sharp as they had in the beginning?

“Looks like your dad’s not around to rescind my invitation.”

Neither was her mother, Caitlyn thought as her lips pressed into a thin line. 

Caitlyn’s heart jumped to remind her that it was her own fault Cassandra wasn’t here to disapprove of the strays she brought home.

A breath later, Caitlyn’s head lifted its shield to denounce the accusation and replace guilt with rage. Jinx’s laugh echoed through her skull and Caitlyn’s frown fell into a scowl.

“Why are you here?” Caitlyn asked again, struggling to inject authority into her voice with every hope Vi might not see it.

Until this point, Vi had been carefully circling the outer perimeter of the study. Her path took her slowly in front of the window before tracing the line of the bookcases. But Caitlyn’s reiterated question – cold and uninviting – finally made the girl pause, her boots landing at the base of the dark hearth.

“Why do I need a reason?”

Gone was Vi’s attitude, replaced with something much more sincere. A glimpse beyond the violet curtain that Caitlyn had been granted several times before.

Before, when the foundation they’d built together had not yet shattered. When Vi’s arms were the safest place she’d ever visited and a touch of their hands could say a thousand words.

Did Caitlyn ruin it for good? 

The space between them overflowed with broken promises, a rotted wasteland of squandered potential. Not a night had passed in these long months where Vi hadn’t visited her in dreams. Sometimes Caitlyn didn’t even need the gift of sleep to see her. She was just… there. Waiting. Steel blue eyes could see her clearly even in that darkness and every night, Caitlyn felt their judgment. 

Maybe Vi didn’t need a reason to be here.

But Caitlyn needed a reason to breathe her air if she was to endure suffocating in it.

“I’m busy–”

“Invading the Undercity?”

Gods, but she couldn’t even try to put together an excuse before Vi’s wit obstructed her path. Ever since strapping that godforsaken cape around her shoulders, Caitlyn was simply given the respect and consideration of a leader. Citizens made way for her. Audiences dipped their chins in a show of deference. Every room she entered, she owned, but with Vi…

With Vi, she could barely breathe, and how did that make her worthy of Vi’s respect?

“Yeah, I know.” Vi touched two fingers to her eyebrow and flicked them forward with a twist of her wrist. A mocking gesture dripping with sarcasm. “Good work, Commander.”

“I don’t have time for this, Vi.” Caitlyn finally pushed her fists off the desk to stand with her spine straight, her shoulders squared. Long arms folded across her chest and slender fingers vined over lithe biceps on either side. A naturally defensive posture and Caitlyn’s mind didn’t allow her thoughts to wander to its implications.

It was as if she hadn’t spoken at all, such was Vi’s defiance of Caitlyn’s suggestion. Cerulean eyes watched as the girl came ever closer, her strides casual. Far too casual for what their first meeting in months should have been. So damn relaxed that it had an entirely opposite effect on Caitlyn, whose stance only grew stiffer with every thump of Vi’s boots on her floor.

Entirely unprovoked, Vi’s fingers slid beneath the bottom edge of the binding she wore around her abdomen. Tugged it up to reveal an impressive expanse of muscle, painted worrisome hues of purple and green. 

Vi would notice the way she stared, but Caitlyn couldn’t fix her gaze even if she tried. It was glued there, taking in every detail. Every mountain and dip of her abdominals, the ironically delicate shape of her bellybutton. And the bruises… The absolutely impossible number of bruises that decorated Vi’s body like brushstrokes on an old canvas.

“Don’t worry, these ones are new.” Vi practically sing-songed the words and Caitlyn could barely begin to decipher the meaning behind them. Her gaze flicked up to Vi’s face, her own expression pinched with a certain confusion she was sure Vi intended. “Yours was here.” With the same hand holding the binding, Vi pointed a single finger and Caitlyn’s eyes once again dropped. Focused. Her body literally leaned forward, angled at the hips, in an attempt to discern Vi’s meaning. But while much of her stomach was splashed in unnatural colors, the spot Vi indicated was notably unmarred.

Caitlyn’s brow furrowed.

“Took a while, but it’s gone now.”

Bile touched the bottom of Caitlyn’s esophagus and one hand lowered instantly to press to her stomach. Nothing in her twenty-three years had ever rendered Caitlyn speechless like Vi did now. And it wasn’t just that she failed to push words to her tongue. No, her mind itself had succumbed to a combustion of raw emotion and Caitlyn struggled to comprehend anything beyond the sickening guilt that flooded her system like gasoline. Just awaiting a spark.

It wasn’t the sharp sting of regret that penetrated her heart every time she pictured her mother’s broken body in the council chambers’ destruction. Caitlyn had been sitting with that hurt a long time now, knowing she’d had the shot that would have saved three councilors’ lives that day. But somewhere in the depths of that despair, an affirming message did settle in the ashes. I didn’t pull the trigger. Failing to prevent it was not the same responsibility as taking that action – a truth hard learned, and only through ample meditation on the matter and some painfully vulnerable conversations with her trusted advisors.

Vi had worn a bruise whose shape and size would match the butt of Caitlyn Kiramman’s rifle. No one else’s. And no hands but hers had ever wielded that weapon.

A choice she’d made, and a burden she alone had to bear.

“Nothing to say, Cupcake?”

It was a catapult landing back into the conversation and Caitlyn suddenly sucked in a breath. Her lungs had stalled, her vision swimming with stars as if she hadn’t taken a proper breath in far too long.

“Please leave,” Caitlyn muttered, pointing to the very same door Vi had entered through. As if she might have forgotten where it was.

“Caitlyn–”

“Please leave,” she repeated, a little louder now, as she rounded the edge of her desk with an unsteady bearing towards Vi. If her mind was faltering, maybe her body could muster the strength and the fortitude to physically force Vi out of her space.

“Cait, wait.”

Incorrect assumption. Caitlyn’s steps wavered halfway to the hearth and her body lurched forward with an uncontrollable momentum. She didn’t crash to the floor. She didn’t topple over the velvet ink armchair. Predictably, infuriatingly , Vi caught her.

Vi was always catching her.

Her chest heaved with the efforts of her breathing now and Caitlyn couldn’t look up, stuck staring at her own fists where they’d landed in the lapels of Vi’s black leather jacket. Strong hands were at her elbows. Sure hands. They were long and square and bloodied at the knuckles, but they were good hands. They could move mountains and knock a burly man unconscious, but they held her with such a gentle tenderness that Caitlyn’s vision suddenly blurred.

Her next breath came sharp and labored, its sound echoing through the study around them. 

“Caitlyn?”

Vi’s voice changed, no longer full of mockery but instead with something raw and uncertain. Later, Caitlyn might realize how she’d been played. Absolutely plucked like the strings of a violin, tinny and unpleasant. 

Her armor was crumbling. Still staring down, Caitlyn watched as her own hand slid over the strips of Vi’s binding to settle over the place she’d pointed out. No longer bruised, but invisibly scarred with Caitlyn’s insolence.

With the absolute and utter terror she remembered feeling in that moment before she shoved her rifle into Vi’s gut and ascended a ladder into hell.

I’m sorry.

“It’s gone, Cait,” Vi whispered, a repetition of something she’d already said, but Caitlyn wasn’t convinced she could hear it enough.

I’m so sorry.

Vi’s hands were at her waist now, holding her steady. There thrummed a fear beneath the surface of her skin that she’d simply fall backwards should Vi let go. Caitlyn’s lower lip trembled with her next breath and her eyes – the pupils were blown now – continued to follow the path of her hand as it moved up. Up and up, over the curves of Vi’s bound chest, along the byway of her throat to press tightly to a stubborn jaw.

I’m sorry, she screamed and Caitlyn witnessed her own fingers tremble against Vi’s face.

“Say something,” Caitlyn breathed. The way her eyes couldn’t settle on a single feature of Vi’s face was visible, their movements chaotic and discomposed.

“What?”

“Please.” The word escaped her throat alongside a ragged breath and her hand moved against Vi’s cheek, tugging the corner of her mouth up slightly with pressure. “Please, say anything.”

“Cait, I–”

The door to the study burst open and both young women started. Caitlyn’s instinct was to shove herself away from Vi, but Vi’s was to hold her tighter.

An exact and noticeable opposite to experiences they’d shared in the past. Caitlyn’s nature was to shield her loved ones from danger. Vi’s was to push them out of harm’s way with her might. All of this, a thin and fleeting thought that flew through Caitlyn’s consciousness like a bird on the horizon. Distant, a speck in the sunset.

Ambessa burst into the study with practiced ease, her voice sharp as a blade. “Vi,” she bellowed. Her shadowing frame stopped before the tall windows and Caitlyn fought a little harder to exfiltrate herself from Vi’s grasp. When she managed it, Caitlyn took several steps towards her desk, hands brushing over her arms and down her chest. As if Vi’s essence on her clothing was an unacceptable filth that needed removing.

“She was just leaving,” Caitlyn remarked. Her voice was the loudest and most even it had been since her appointment with the carpenters.

“Was she now?”

Distanced some from Vi now, Caitlyn’s expression neutralized. Her brows returned to a furrow that had become increasingly familiar in her months under Ambessa’s tutelage. Always thinking. Always speculating. 

“Caitlyn, we haven’t even–”

“That is your commander,” Ambessa cut in. For a woman worth her weight in gold, Ambessa had a way of moving like water through a room. Swift and silent, treacherous in its darkest depths. Caitlyn watched her approach Vi with keen eyes and a chill in her spine. “You would be wise to address her with respect.”

“She’s not my commander,” Vi spat, leaning forward on her foot closest to Ambessa in a way that simply screamed defiance.

“Zaun does not stand beyond this city’s reach,” Ambessa spoke evenly to Vi. Caitlyn noticed the lack of lyrical tonality that she so often heard in her mentor’s speech and felt frozen to come to either woman’s defense. “Its leaders are yours to obey. I suggest you temper your tone, child, unless you wish to learn the price of dishonor.”

“Dishonor?” Vi parrotted the word back to her with eyebrows halfway up her forehead. “I don’t think you understand the meaning.”

Without taking her gilded stare off of Vi, Ambessa pressed a hand to her wrist and asked, “Is she troubling you, Commander?”

The trouble Ambessa spoke of glinted daggers in blue eyes and Caitlyn’s gaze shifted back to Vi. Her veins stung with ire, a feeling that tugged tightly on her expression when Vi’s stare landed on her in turn.

“She is,” Caitlyn confirmed quietly. Her hands twisted into fists at her sides, nails biting crimson crescents into her palm.

“Rictus,” Ambessa roared, every iota of her attention still fixated with deadly precision on Vi. When her bodyguard entered the study to stand behind Ambessa, she beckoned him forward with a wave of her hand. “Have this woman escorted to Stillwater. Her intake should be... uncomplicated.”

Caitlyn spun on her heels to face her desk before Vi could even lift her hands in protest.

Chapter Text

Caitlyn’s clammy palms flattened on the map of the Undercity. Rictus and Vi were long gone but the sounds of their struggle still echoed through the study. Reverberated through Caitlyn’s mind, too, a ringing in her ears that continued to disorient her even in the silence.

She felt sick to her stomach, the urge to wretch very real and its grip on her spine vice like. Her head spun and even with her eyes squeezed shut, Caitlyn could see the terrified gaze of the woman she’d just forsaken.

Again.

They stared at her through the darkness. Judging her so sharply Caitlyn felt the sting of blades in her skin.

“Ambessa,” she whispered brokenly. Caitlyn’s shoulders trembled with the effort of speaking.

The general’s footfall was a blast of thunder through a space that felt emptier now than it had before. Caitlyn’s lungs tightened, knowing it was the sound of Ambessa drawing closer.

“Are you alright, child?”

“Is it too late to change their course?” she asked quietly, an effort not unlike moving walls with bare hands. An impossible task.

“Explain.”

Caitlyn’s eyes peeled open and her sapphire gaze focused on the map beneath her hands. They were the same color as the ocean depicted to the east, where a small island donned the label Stillwater Hold.

“Direct Rictus to the Undercity with Vi,” Caitlyn clarified. She didn’t dare turn to face the general, afraid of what Ambessa might see should they stand face to face. “Release her to her home, instead of incarceration.”

“Why should we show such leniency?”

“She committed no crimes, Ambessa,” Caitlyn spoke with a voice that was beginning to lose its nerve. “If we continue sending Zaunites to Stillwater without cause, we set a dangerous precedent.”

Caitlyn recalled thumbing through arrest records to find the intake forms for prisoner 516. Just a girl – sixteen at the time of her processing – with no reported crimes or misdemeanors. No evidence to substantiate her imprisonment. Vi had lost seven years of her young life to one man’s corrupt decisions and Caitlyn didn’t feel a single drop of remorse for the crimes she herself had committed to correct that injustice.

She wondered now how things might be different if Vi hadn’t been arbitrarily torn from her sister – a scared and traumatized little girl who’d just witnessed the deaths of her own family. Left unprotected and swept under the wing of a deranged and ruthless man who’d dared to think himself capable of being a father.

Without Silco’s hands to mold her, maybe Jinx never would have taken shape. 

Maybe Caitlyn Kiramman wouldn’t be a motherless daughter caught in a web of her own making.

The skytram vibrated with velocity as they rode across the water to an island Vi thought she’d never see again.

They were the only ones in the car, her and Rictus. He was unpleasant company. Silent like the dead, but the quiet wasn’t comfortable.

Vi sat in one corner with her back against the wall, knees bent and pulled towards her chest. Her elbows sat atop them, wrists cuffed and fingers twisted into her own sinister hair.

How could this be happening?

When she was sixteen and waking up over the shoulder of an enforcer, bound and gagged, they’d been in a boat. It was a slow float across the channel to Stillwater and Vi remembered feeling confused. Remembered screaming at the man she now knew to be Marcus, a man corrupt as they came. Just another one of Silco’s dogs. 

They’d been everywhere. Even in the solace of a cell, Vi couldn’t escape the reach of the man who’d murdered her family.

They beat her bloody, over and over again, and she never really knew why.

For fun?

Because for a time, she wasn’t big enough or armed enough to fight back?

Silco had already taken everything from her. What reason did he have to continue tormenting her from a distance?

Then there was Caitlyn.

How could she do this?

Vi’s knuckles paled as her fingers fisted in her own hair. The tug at her scalp didn’t hurt. Vi knew pain. Intimately. This wasn’t pain.

The ache in her chest… that was pain. The cold sting of betrayal and the familiar, haunting question of whether or not she’d done the right thing. Those were pain.

Maybe she’d taken the wrong approach with Caitlyn. Snark was easy, a natural defense mechanism at a time and in a place where Vi didn’t feel safe. A mask she could hide behind when insecurity dragged like a weight on her ankles.

She’d stepped into the Kiramman manor already convinced a fight awaited her. It was Vi’s native language, wasn’t it? Defaulting to aggression because where had tenderness ever gotten her?

Locked in a prison cell for a third of her life, for one. 

Punching ugly bastards in their stupid faces to afford food, for another. 

Vi pressed the heel of her hands against her eyes in a hopeless attempt to shove the image of Caitlyn out of them. She’d changed a bit, Vi thought. Less put together, like she was living life off a cuff, instead of in an orderly fashion. Nothing at all like the girl she’d first dragged into the Undercity by the collar of her frilly uniform. 

Not even like the girl she’d held against her body in the tunnels beneath their cities while she lost herself to the first real human encounter she’d ever experienced.

No, everything about Caitlyn had changed. 

Promise me you won’t change.

“I won’t.”

Vi leaned into her own knees, head dipped low between her elbows and released a howl of a scream. The sound of it was tearing, like flesh separating and bones snapping.

“Tell me, Commander, what flaw you see in a dangerous precedent,” Ambessa replied, looming ever closer. Caitlyn could all but feel the energy shifting in the shrinking distance between them. “It will only deepen their fear of you.”

Fear. Caitlyn felt it now, a stone cold grip on her throat that made her hyper aware of her own beating heart.

There wasn’t a bone in her body that wished to be the source of this feeling for others, be they of Piltover or Zaun.

“And fear is the cornerstone of control.”

Ambessa stood at her back now. She’d never needed permission to encroach upon her space like this. Caitlyn’s gut flooded with regret for having never established that boundary, as she was in desperate need of it now.

Slender shoulders shifted with the urgency of Caitlyn’s breathing as a broad hand – too big for her delicate frame – settled at the small of her back.

“You claimed the title of Commander, little one,” Ambessa reminded her, but Caitlyn had never felt further away from the position than she did now. “Control is what you desire.”

Could a person be both hot and cold at the same time? Caitlyn’s system was tripping over itself, struggling to function beneath the weight of Ambessa’s words. Under the heat of the hand at her back. Everything reached her as if she were underwater, muffled and distorted. The pressure was building in her chest. 

Collapse was imminent. 

It had never felt like this before, and Caitlyn wondered if it was because she’d never experienced Ambessa’s touch while the achingly familiar scent of Vi lingered in her nose. Concrete and leather.

“The weapon’s transport.” Mention of it amidst the lesson she’d been wrapped in felt like such a swift change of direction that for a brief second, Caitlyn felt dazed. It made her momentarily unaware of Ambessa’s hands on her body. They traveled a deft course around her thin waist before climbing the steps of her ribcage.

“What about it?” Caitlyn whispered. She didn’t recognize the sound of her own voice.

“Is it complete?”

Slender arms shifted in automatic obedience to accommodate the removal of her cropped jacket. The ornate buttons of sculpted gold were more decorative than functional, Caitlyn never bothered with them. It made the thing easy to slide from her shoulders.

“Nearly,” she answered quietly. Her eyes were a stormy sea staring at the wall behind her desk. A family portrait covered a grand majority of it.

As Ambessa’s fingers tugged the hem of her sweater free from her pants, Caitlyn felt shame seep through her veins. 

Oil through water.

“The carpenters estimate its completion in the morning,” she breathed once the sweater was off. The tip of her ponytail tickled the middle of her back, wisps of raven blue fell messily around her face. A charming frame, tousled and untidy. Nothing at all like the woman herself who stood half-bared before the scrutinizing stares of her sophisticated parents and a toothy child with innocence bright in her eyes.

“Good,” Ambessa chimed her approval. Caitlyn’s breath stumbled past her lips at the unencumbered touch of thick hands. Sensitive flesh pebbled against Ambessa’s palms and Caitlyn could hardly believe they were discussing the carpenters, the commission. The business they would soon see to in the Fissures.

Slender fingers felt fragile, like the petals of a flower, as they gripped tightly to the edge of her desk. She stood straighter now, no longer bent at the hips with palms flat. There was just something about Ambessa that commanded posture and Caitlyn could do nothing but stand there, stiff and shivering, as she was guided into a suitable state of undress.

“Their work is to your standards?” Ambessa assumed. Caitlyn hid her tidal blue gaze behind her eyelids once more, steeling herself against the way her belt gently jangled as Ambessa unclasped it. Her stomach cinched itself together, tighter with every inch her waistband traveled down her thighs.

“It will serve its purpose,” Caitlyn answered.

Naked. Exposed. In a place intended for study, and strategy. Caitlyn refused to open her eyes again, fearful that the faces of her parents and former self might have changed in their painting.

She didn’t need to see it in her mother’s discerning gaze to feel her disappointment. 

“Your supervision undoubtedly drove them to their best efforts.”

Ambessa gripped the generous flare of one hip with a single wide hand. Her fingertips cut beneath the bone. The other flattened between delicate shoulder blades, a shadow on fair flesh, and applied pressure.

Caitlyn forgot to breathe as she was folded over the edge of her own desk, pressed flat to the top of it with her bare feet still firmly on the ground. 

The weight of Ambessa curling over her back urged Caitlyn’s front harder into the desk’s surface, breasts aching in tender protest.

A warm breath washed over her ear. “That is called control, child.”

Vi held her head in her arms. The yelling stopped, but in its wake were tears she couldn’t swallow. They slipped from the corners of her eyes, left streaks in the dust on her cheeks and gifted her the sting of salt on her tongue when they reached the corners of her mouth.

She sniffled. It was a pathetic sound and for a moment, Vi fought the urge to look up. To see if Rictus was watching her, judging her. To see if he even cared. Probably not.

“Her sense of honor is completely shattered.”

Maddie’s words swirled through the noise in her head and Vi inhaled sharply through her damp nose once more.

Honor. She’d once believed Caitlyn to be the pinnacle of it. A hoity-toity topsider gone out of her way to bust a street rat Zaunite out of her own prison. Step one of a truly foolish plan to take down the Undercity’s nastiest kingpen.

A naive endeavor, maybe, but an honorable one.

Metal edges nipped at her wrists as Vi shifted to press a hand to her chest. The heel of her hand dug against her ribs, right over her heart. It ached. Worse that anything had ached in the months since she’d last seen Caitlyn, because this wasn’t just an unexpected gut punch.

It was a return to the burial ground of Vi’s deepest traumas, and on the orders of a girl she thought she loved.

Caitlyn’s lips parted on a silent sound as Ambessa’s length slipped into her. There was no effort spared to prepare her. Not physically, at least, as the slow and torturous removal of her clothing had given Caitlyn ample time to slide into the necessary headspace for this. But her body protested, knees trembling under the pressure of Ambessa’s unaided intrusion.

There was nearly something clinical about it. Caitlyn bared and bent over her own desk, Ambessa standing tall behind her in the striking textiles of a warlord. The cool press of the map beneath her cheek exacerbated the feeling.

As did the pinch between her thighs.

Heat stung at the base of her spine, cut through her belly and licked up her abdomen. Her grip tightened on the edge of the desk, her throat closed around a whimper. Ambessa would not approve of such pitiful sounds from a commander, but there was nothing about this moment that inspired passion.

The last word Ambessa spoke rattled freely in Caitlyn’s brain, a chaotic sound that concatenated itself with the white noise that echoed in her skull.

Control.

Caitlyn felt entirely out of control here. She couldn’t control her rapid breathing. She couldn’t control the way her body lurched as Ambessa’s hips suddenly snapped forward. She couldn’t control the ragged cry that stumbled off her lips as she turned her head to hide her face against the map of Zaun.

Despite everything, she didn’t want Ambessa to see it contorted with pain.

“Ask your question again, little one.”

Caitlyn immediately received the impression that Ambessa didn’t actually want her to repeat it. The weight of her retreated before Caitlyn could even draw a breath to form words. The shaft inside her moved, scraped backwards through tender walls that clamped anxiously around it. When only the tip remained, she greedily dragged air into her lungs.

“It was a stupid suggestion,” Caitlyn whispered instead, every word pouring like poison over the many borders and passages of Zaun. “Senseless.” Ambessa’s grip on her hip tightened and she descended just slightly, slid a mere inch deeper. Caitlyn’s spine trembled. “Weak,” she choked on the word.

Ambessa seemed pleased with the admission, rewarding her with a soft caress of thick fingers up the middle of her back. It rose and fell with the intense labor of Caitlyn’s lungs below.

“We are not weak,” the general growled. Her nails bit into the fair flesh between Caitlyn’s scapulas, hips pressing forward again. Ambessa was a smooth woman, her motion fluid like water. But Caitlyn felt her like fire and closed her teeth around a sob.

She shook her head, a slight but frantic motion that had her forehead rolling back and forth against the desk. A waterfall of blue spilled down the side of her neck with the motion, the end of her ponytail a deft caress against her jaw.

“Your decision was sound,” Caitlyn conceded. Ambessa ground forward against her and Caitlyn could only try to swallow the tight cry that tore at her throat.

Ambessa wasn’t imploring her to be free, Caitlyn noticed. Not encouraging her to let loose every sound, or to feel uninhibited at all.

This was Ambessa’s intention.

She’d never used sex as a tool between them before, but Caitlyn convinced herself now that Ambessa wanted this to feel like a punishment.

Wanted Caitlyn to feel degraded because her concern for Vi was misplaced. And unwelcome.

Vi was a weakness. A vulnerability. Ambessa was a master at expelling weaknesses, firmly ranking the importance of her ability to lead above all else. Her highest responsibility, with a practiced devotion that would see her forsaking even her dearest kin if it meant a sound mind and a sharp blade.

As a rhythm formed that had her hip bones grinding mournfully into the edge of the desk, Caitlyn bit down on a sob and braced herself against the hopeless ache of it all. It was with a concern she’d never felt before that she recognized the movements of Ambessa’s hands. As if the steady pounding between her thighs was not enough, the general might demand more of her. 

A muscled arm weaved itself beneath Caitlyn’s shoulder and damp azure eyes cracked open to look, to see Ambessa’s forearm against her chest, pinned between the pale of her body and the blue of the map. The runes that decorated her arm guard glowed a fiery red.

The next breath Caitlyn took was the slightest touch easier. Warmth bloomed in the pit of her stomach, slick seeping slowly between her thighs to soothe what had been abused raw. The next sound that filtered up her throat was not a cry, but an airy gasp as pleasure steadily replaced the pain. It rolled up her spine and through her limbs – relief, like a sip of steaming tea on a crisp morning.

Caitlyn’s fear that she was being punished for her insolence sifted away, sand in high tide, Ambessa her ocean. Even as a fraction of her attention followed the path of Ambessa’s other hand over the small of her back, she could not question this. Could not question her mentor, nor the palm that greedily struck her on the supple round of her bottom.

The sharp sound of it bounced off the walls of the study and Caitlyn forgot whatever harrowed echoes had come before it.

She absolutely would not question Ambessa. Not even when a finger traced a shiver-inducing line down the crease of her backside, and ultimately dipped inside her.

“Ambessa–” The breath heaved from her lungs, chest expanding against the arm still pinned tightly to it. It was a bodily reaction more than an intentional one, shock coursing through her at the tug and the stretch that was completely foreign to Caitlyn.

“Hush, child,” the woman whispered from behind her. Despite the renewed tension that tugged Caitlyn’s body taut, she delved further. Pressing that single digit through a tight ring that fluttered around her knuckle until she’d reached as deep as she could.

A whimper clawed up Caitlyn’s throat and she wondered if her knees had simply given out. There was very little comprehension for the rest of her body now, every synapse firing with the same objective – to adjust to the new presence inside her. To accept it. To find within the fire a reason, and a path towards folding it seamlessly into the rest of Ambessa’s command of her body.

“Ambessa,” she breathed again, but the sound had softened. A certain surrender expressed in the handful of syllables that slipped off her tongue.

But Ambessa wasn’t done, it seemed. Caitlyn’s head was forced up off the solid wood it had been resting against this entire time, because Ambessa’s arm was on the move. Snaking up the center of her chest, over her throat and chin, until two thick fingers pushed past her lips. A muffled sound escaped her, toeing the edges of rejection against this third trespass. But those fingers simply reached deeper, flattened to the plane at the back of Caitlyn’s tongue and rendered her incapable of resistance.

Her jaw slackened, her throat hollowed, all an attempt to avoid gagging on Ambessa’s intrusion.

And for a moment, everything stilled. Quiet settled around their joined bodies, the sort of peaceful calm that came with Piltover’s first snow of the season each winter. Nothing echoed. Nothing stirred. Even the night never reached true blackness. There was no breath as cleansing or as electric as that first inhale of ice in the air.

Everywhere a soul could find a place to rest inside Caitlyn was claimed. Every vacancy, occupied. Every corner, every hollow, filled, and by a force as fierce and immovable as Ambessa Medarda. There was room left for nothing and no one else and as she clamped blue eyes shut once more, a shimmering tear escaped past dark lashes.

Behind her eyelids, the heated stare of steel blue. The glint of metal in a perfect nose. The dusting of freckles around a thin tattoo and the sweet bounce of magenta hair.

It all faded into darkness, further and further from her grasp until Caitlyn saw nothing at all.

Caitlyn’s limp form was no inconvenience for Ambessa. After extracting herself from the girl’s holes and tucking the strap away into her trousers, Ambessa simply plucked Caitlyn off of the desk and lifted her used body into her capable arms. “Dear child,” Ambessa cooed to her unconsciousness as her quiet footsteps carried them from the study. She encountered not a single soul or obstacle on her way to the commander’s private quarters and tucked Caitlyn into the bed with tender hands.

A short time later Ambessa was back at the flagship, stalking slowly behind Singed where he busied himself with a menagerie of phials and flasks that she simply did not bother to understand.

Rictus had yet to return.

“Tell me, Doctor.” Ambessa’s voice was cool, unaffected. “What is your knowledge of the arcane?”

It didn’t surprise her in the least that Singed continued working without fault, as if she’d merely asked him his opinion on the weather. 

“I do not possess the gift,” Singed answered plainly. Ambessa’s pacing paused so she might watch him transfer a chemical from one flask to another using a pipette. “I’m inclined to say it is meager.”

“Can you hazard a guess at its limits?”

“Limits?” At this, Singed did stall. His hands held aloft, the various bits and bobs of his work clutched deftly in his spindly fingers. Ambessa’s head tilted slightly when he turned to face her. Their eyes met and one brow lifted, a challenge. “The arcane has no limits.” Despite his self-proclaimed meager knowledge, Singed offered this answer with a notable confidence. “It knows no bounds,” he reiterated.

Ambessa continued pacing, a hand passing silently over the twisting band of runes on her right arm. They pulsed with a low green light that emanated from the etchings in the stones.

“Magic is indefinite,” Singed carried on. Like Ambessa, he unpaused, and finished transferring one substance into another. “It is the vessel you should question.”

Ambessa’s hands curled into fists. “Meaning?”

“A physical body can only be pushed so far,” Singed clarified. His rough voice was barely capable of crossing the room, but Ambessa heard him with certain clarity. “Those are the limitations you need worry over.”

Chapter Text

Caitlyn wasn’t just taking Ambessa’s advice. It was like she was becoming Ambessa.

It was the warning Maddie had given her and Vi was so foolish to not take it seriously. She’d stepped into the Kiramman mansion with an expectation that she’d see just Caitlyn. That their conversation would feel like it always had, even though things between them were fractured. 

She knew how to speak to Caitlyn Kiramman. Even when Vi felt the world tip on its axis around the blue-haired girl who’d stolen her heart – no, not stolen; earned – there still existed inside her a certain level of confidence. Because she and Caitlyn understood each other in a way no one else could hope to. It didn’t make much sense, and it betrayed the often fabricated rules of social hierarchy. But it was their truth. Vi had always believed in that.

Their truth wasn’t just that Vi knew how to speak to Caitlyn. It was that Caitlyn knew how to speak to Vi, too.

But the Caitlyn she’d encountered today had said hardly anything at all.

“Please leave.”

She’d never known Caitlyn to be incapable of confronting her own mistakes. Guilt was a stepping stone to redemption, but acceptance – responsibility – was a necessary part of the journey. 

Without it, could they ever hope to heal?

For a brief moment, Vi was gifted the opportunity to feel Caitlyn in her arms. She’d seemed thinner – much like Vi herself had become. While Vi was no military leader and Caitlyn certainly wasn’t part of an underground fight club, she thought maybe their responses to losing one another weren’t so different.

Destructive, to say the least.

Vi laid a hand over her abdomen where Caitlyn’s fingers had touched her. It was the gentle, mournful ghost of a cold strike, an emotional scar left behind. An apology wasn’t offered in words, but Vi thought she’d seen the shadows of one in ocean blue eyes.

Why hadn’t she just said she was sorry? They both knew Caitlyn was capable, part of the honor and sense of justice that were primary motivators in Caitlyn’s chosen courses of action.

Well… Most of the time, anyway.

“Say something.”

What was Caitlyn looking for? What did she need? Vi would have given it to her – she’d give anything that was within her power to – if only Caitlyn had articulated it clearly. 

A quiet thunk filled the car as Vi’s head tipped backwards against the steel wall behind her. She expelled Rictus’s presence from her mind, chose to forget he was here so she could think and feel without the worry of his judgment. In doing so, Vi pressed a hand to her own cheek. It burned in the wake of Caitlyn’s touch.

She missed her. Vi ached with missing her, and one look at her life was enough to see the damage incurred by that pain.

There was something in the silence. There had to be. With eyes closed, Vi traveled back in time to the Kiramman manor. Straight into Caitlyn’s study, where they stood together before the hearth. Where Caitlyn’s hand trembled against Vi’s jaw and words had seemed to fail them both.

“Please, say anything.”

Pupils wide, gaze unsteady. Fingers tight to her cheek. Urgent.

Fear… Caitlyn was afraid of something. 

Vi’s head dipped again, grip sliding into her own stained hair to hold it woefully.

Steam rolled through the extravagant bathroom like fog on the ocean, blinding Caitlyn to a space she was plenty familiar with. The gash in her thigh throbbed from the heat, bandage soiled with blood and in need of replacing. Her head pounded, memories of butterfly explosions bombs themselves behind her eyes, inside her ears. Worse than all of it, though, was the sting of failure.

And the sharp stab of loss.

Maybe she was naive to believe the council would actually listen. To think they’d lay eyes on one of their people – a citizen who had been repeatedly wronged by the system they themselves built – and consider her opinion worthy. 

Caitlyn was beginning to learn she was naive in many ways. Sheltered from the many horrors of their world by her parents, shielded by her good name and substantial wealth.

She’d never be satisfied with naivety. Her name and wealth were inherited, her status etched into her stones at birth. Not earned, and no good reason to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others less fortunate. 

They weren’t done. If Caitlyn Kiramman was anything at all, she was a planner. A studyer, an observer. Maybe Vi stubbornly believed they’d reached the end of their road, but Caitlyn could be stubborn, too. She’d turn over every stone in search of a path that led to justice for the Undercity, and the apprehension of Silco.

Maybe somewhere down that path, a way for oil and water to become one.

Caitlyn’s feet carried her to the wide mirror over her bathroom sinks, dripping and entirely uncaring of the small puddles she left along the tiles. She toweled at the ends of her hair, all idle motions and her eyes unseeing in the fog. They were blurred anyway, obscured with sky blue eyes and pink hair. The glass was layered with steam, her body a mere fuzzy block of color for a reflection.

But as the fog slowly cleared, Caitlyn’s breath grew shallow. Her hands paused, the towel slipping from between her fingers to land at her feet. 

A message appeared in the steam, the features of her own face growing sharper in the sweeping lines.

No… not a message.

A drawing.

Panic flooded Caitlyn’s system in the time it took to fill her lungs. It was a dizzying drug, foggy like the byproduct of a shower too hot on a cool night. Wide blue eyes flicked about the mirror, trying to take in every familiar detail – an animalistic face, messily rendered as if drawn by a child.

Pink in the distance.

But objects in mirrors were closer than they appeared.

Caitlyn gasped as the shape of a wispy girl materialized before her, perched like a crow on her vanity.

Then, black.

The tram’s vibrations intensified as they neared the end of the cable. The end of their journey. With her chin dipped, Vi watched through her lashes as Rictus corrected his posture. It had gone lax through the duration of the ride, but his fingers tightened around the shaft of his glaive now.

Vi wondered if he feared retaliation. Might have found the idea comical, were she in any mood for entertainment.

Unarmed as she was, and Noxian as he was, Vi knew better than to try something that stupid right now.

Maybe death would have been a kinder sentence than another turn at Stillwater, but Vi was stubborn as a mule, and she knew it.

Too stubborn to die. Too stubborn to give these bastards the satisfaction of her demise.

“Scared?” Vi cooed as she pushed herself to her feet. She cracked her knuckles against her own palm, just for show. The cuffs around her wrists rattled in harmony.

Rictus said nothing, unsurprisingly. He simply gestured to the doors at the end of the cart with his polearm and waited for Vi to move first.

She went. What else could she do? Vi had tried resistance back at the Kiramman manor, if for nothing else than to make sure they knew she protested. To make sure Caitlyn knew that going back to Stillwater was no small matter. 

Vi would love to see the intake report this time.

No accusations. No crime. No trial.

Would Caitlyn recognize Marcus in her own reflection? Or was she really that far gone?

Small plumes of dust rose around her boots as Vi stepped off the car and onto Stillwater Hold. Despite her pomp – fuck Rictus – Vi withered at the sight of the looming prison. Night hadn’t even fallen but it somehow felt darker here. Like the sun couldn’t quite reach it through the marine layer. Through the sheer oppression of its menacing silhouette against the sky. 

“Keep moving,” Rictus ordered from behind her and Vi sneered at him from over her shoulder.

She only managed several steps forward before a startling crash of colliding bodies forced Vi into a crouch, throwing her arms over her head for protection.

Bashed over the back of the head with a hard object was a quick and painless fall into unconsciousness.

Digging her way out of the dark was slow and torturous, wrought with an agony that pounded in her skull. Caitlyn groaned quietly as she fought her way to the surface.

She may as well have still been in the bathroom, swallowed in clouds of steam. Her vision remained just as useless, deeply blurred and fading dark at the edges. 

Her nostrils flared with each breath. Every inhale and exhale forced itself through her nose.

Her mouth was covered.

The realization struck her like a physical blow. All at once, Caitlyn broke through the fog. Muffled sounds of her struggle didn’t travel far, her chest heaving with the urgency of anxious breathing. 

Terror pumped through her veins, a second heartbeat that thundered in her ears. It was a cacophony with the first, driving her panic higher. Her chest hurt – physically hurt – with the weight of it.

She thought to reach for her face. To peel away whatever contraption had been strapped to it to prevent her from using her mouth, but Caitlyn realized the horrors had not yet ended. Her hands were bound behind her back and upon glancing down, she noticed more. 

She was naked and dripping on the floor at the foot of her own bed, wet towel draped haphazardly over her as if it alone might rescue her modesty.

She screamed. Even knowing the sound would not travel past the mask on her face, Caitlyn screamed. It was simply instinct to do so.

“They’re not here.” The voice that spoke to her was light and raspy. It toed the line of pointed and playful. Caitlyn’s head snapped up, gaze landing on the shape of that same wispy girl standing in front of the open doors of her wardrobe. Two glowing pink eyes stared back.

“We’re all alone.” 

The thought Jinx traveled from Caitlyn’s head to her tongue and died against her covered lips. 

Jinx stood with a dress of fine shimmering silver draped over her front. The hem pooled on the floor at her boots, the shoulder straps still attached to a wooden hanger that Jinx wore around the back of her neck. 

“It’s fun, isn’t it?” Jinx turned away from Caitlyn to instead admire herself in the standing mirror beside the wardrobe. “Being alone.”

Caitlyn’s expression shifted, brows tipped over her heavy eyes in something caught between fear and sadness as she watched Jinx begin rifling through the clothes in her chiffonier. 

“It really gives creativity a chance to stretch its muscles,” she continued, as if Caitlyn was an active participant in the conversation and had asked for more. But she paused here, hands frozen between layers of apparel to look around Caitlyn’s room.

It was large. Humbly decorated to Caitlyn’s tastes, but no amount of perceived modesty could remove the details that screamed of the Kiramman’s wealth, nor the privilege Caitlyn had never thought to question growing up.

“Yours could use some exercise, from the looks of it.”

Jinx weaved the hanger and dress from off her neck, tossed the thing aside like she hadn’t a care in the world for its monetary value. Next out of the wardrobe, a satin teddy of royal blue, a lovely sheer lace at the breasts. The sight of it pushed heat to Caitlyn’s cheeks and her stomach rolled with anxiety.

“Jeesh,” Jinx exclaimed, looking down as she held the garment over her own body with some interest. “Who’s this for?”

Caitlyn hardly had a second to dip her head in horror before Jinx suddenly appeared right before her, the speed of her movement simply impossible. It made Caitlyn start, her body rattling against her bounds and her breathing ticking up once more.

“Certainly not for my sister,” Jinx murmured with an air of innocence that belied literally everything about her. She squirmed as Jinx reached out to thread the hanger over the back of Caitlyn’s head. The silk had never felt so unpleasant as it stuck messily to her damp skin. 

The mixture of emotions that poured through Caitlyn’s system was a potent cocktail of negativity. She’d never wavered in her confidence, but sitting here bound with a relatively modest piece of lingerie around her neck made Caitlyn feel shame. Jinx was right here, staring into her eyes and seeing something Caitlyn didn’t recognize. Forcing horrors on her that Caitlyn had never considered possible.

“She left you.”

A whimper trickled up Caitlyn’s throat, eyes narrowing as Jinx’s words dropped something new into the mix. Many somethings new, even…

Regret. Despair. Heartbreak…

“It’s okay,” Jinx squeaked. Caitlyn recoiled as a hand reached out to pat her softly on the head. “She left me, too.”

Vi stumbled backwards through the dirt, pushing herself on hands and feet away from the tram car where the ruckus occurred. Rictus’s glaive clattered and skidded across the ground, many feet away from them. Gray blue eyes were wide, scarred lips parted on her ragged breathing as she tried to make sense of the scuffle.

A flash of pink. Rolling waves of blue.

Out of the rioting dust of the tussle, Rictus’s goliath body fell to the ground. A motionless heap of muscle and bone.

Startled, Vi fought to correct her breathing, stare focused hard on the clouds as they settled. And from within it, two glowing fuschia eyes.

“Heya, Sis.”

Chapter Text

It was sometimes eerie how truly empty the Kiramman mansion felt in recent months.

Cassandra was by no means a loud woman. Her long line of matriarchs shared more than just genes. They were a refined type of woman, stiff in the spine and with striking blue eyes that saw more than the average Piltovan. They were observers and investigators. Keen listeners and clever planners. All things that made the Kiramman seat a steady fixture on the council.

Of all the traits they embodied, however, loud simply was not one of them. But there was something in Cassandra’s absence that was just… deafening. Caitlyn felt it everywhere she looked, everywhere she walked. Even lying alone in her own bed, in an entirely separate wing from her parents’ bedroom, Caitlyn felt it like a heavy stone on her chest.

Maybe the emptiness was exacerbated by another whom her heart missed fiercely, but that door inside her head was firmly closed. Bolted shut with a lock to which Caitlyn did not own the key.

She lay in the silence with her gaze unseeing on the ceiling, slowly taking stock of her own body. There were new and unfamiliar aches. Tenderness from an experience she had never sought for herself before. Her jaw hurt from being wrenched open, forced to accommodate fingers in her mouth for the duration of a session that had wreaked havoc on every piece of her. 

Ambessa took what she wanted, and Caitlyn allowed it.

Her body knew to protest what it didn’t like, but her mind failed to protect it. And in the end, she came anyway. Ambessa always had a way of suppressing the doubt, a way of burying the vulnerability so Caitlyn could find her way to finishing.

A finish so deep and so damning that her head had done the charitable thing and sent her consciousness careening into darkness by the end of it.

Caitlyn felt warmth creep up her chest and flood her cheeks. Was it embarrassment? Shame? Emotions she wasn’t used to feeling when it came to sex, as Caitlyn had always been a sure and self-assured woman who was unafraid of her desires and unashamed of the means she sought to slake them.

Many minutes of self-deprecating thoughts later, Caitlyn rolled to the edge of the bed and sat up. She ground her teeth together as the soreness intensified and pushed herself to her feet.

Like a wispy ghost herself, Caitlyn floated silently into the bathroom. She stood before the mirror, breath catching in her throat at the sight of her own naked body inside it. Matching bruises adorned her hip bones, early shades of angry red blooming on her fair skin. A thumb brushed deftly over one of them, a light touch that sent a bolt of pain through her stomach. Caitlyn didn’t flinch.

Ocean eyes, heavy and stormier than usual, climbed her own reflection. A slow ascent to a face Caitlyn wasn’t sure she recognized. Her own hand followed the same path, skimming up the planes of her abdomen, fingertips pausing at the single beauty mark at the right of her navel. Up still, dipping through the valley between her breasts and coming to rest at her own throat.

She squeezed. Just slightly.

Above her right eye glinted the scar she’d incurred from the explosion on the eve of Progress Day. She’d been so green then. Naive, and with grand ideas that wearing the uniform would make her existence meaningful. That she could somehow make a difference, but had she? This war they waged with the Undercity had been brewing long before Ambessa landed at the docks in Piltover, because for Caitlyn, the battle was hers and Jinx’s. It had been hers and Jinx’s alone even before a grenade escorted her mother swiftly and devastatingly out of Caitlyn’s life.

Caitlyn wore more than just an enforcer uniform now and what difference was she making? Everyone suffered the ire she harbored for a single soul and in what ways did that make her a good leader?

“Fear is a weapon, child. Sharper than any blade.”

Fear wasn’t just a means of securing the respect of her enemies – it commanded her allies, too. Her own citizens. Months ago, Caitlyn had taken Ambessa’s counsel like a woman drowning, clutching at a lifeline. But now, the lifeline was beginning to choke her.

“Who is it all for?” she whispered aloud, as though her reflection might offer absolution. Caitlyn felt the muscles in her throat flex beneath her fingers with every word.

The mirror stayed silent, and Caitlyn wondered if her home truly did feel empty… or if it was just a reflection of herself she recognized in its walls.

Chapter Text

Vi chomped loudly into a piece of fruit, uncaring of the juice that dribbled from her lip down to her chin. This was her third one so far today – she was pretty sure she’d heard one of the cureds call it a shaddock. Whatever its name, she and Jinx – and Isha, too – had been enjoying them thoroughly for the two days they’d spent here in the commune. Mostly sweet, but with a hint of what Vi thought was some sort of bitterness that made it easy to just keep right on eating them.

The commune buzzed around her. Sky blue eyes flicked this way and that, gaze landing on the various inner workings of a people who had come together for a singular purpose. A way of living that encouraged harmony and cooperation. Something Vi had seen once, a long time ago now. 

Something she’d thought she’d never see again. Not down here in the Undercity, anyway.

For a brief moment, she paused in her wandering. Tore another bite of the fruit off its core and relished its flavor, its crispness, while she watched a pair of men work a long piece of metal against an anvil. The rhythmic ting-tangs of their hammers on steel were pleasant. Just another layer of noise to the bustling sounds of the compound.

Vi thought maybe they could stay here. It wouldn’t be long before Viktor’s work with Vander would be complete, and they could be a family again. Hope for such happiness had died a long time ago – around the same time she’d seen Mylo and Claggor pinned and motionless beneath rubble and debris. Any spirit of family had been sucked out of her the moment light vanished from Vander’s eyes, but here she was – by some miracle she feared to put faith in – with the two people she loved most within arms’ reach.

With one final bite of the shaddock – an inappropriately large bite – Vi tossed the core to the ground nearby where a small flock of birds sat bouncing and pecking. They skittered their wings at its impact, then swarmed excitedly around it.

Thoughts of Vander carried her feet in the direction of the domed hut where he and Viktor had been spending the bulk of their time together. Maybe she could check in with them, Vi thought, images of Vander’s two-toned eyes floating through her vision and tugging on a loose thread of joy inside her chest.

But as she approached, a man exited the hovel. Vi’s progress immediately halted as she watched him, wondering if she was perhaps paranoid… or if there really was something vaguely familiar about this man. Tall and spindly, half his face obscured by a cloth wrap. Her brows furrowed, inexplicably compelled to follow him.

What was he doing in Vander’s hut? And why was he now walking away so briskly?

Vi wiped her lips with the back of her hand and slowly pursued.

He left the commune, and so did Vi. She kept a careful distance, boots silent in the dirt as she followed his path into the nearby fissures. Suspicion leaked into her veins with every step, every corner they turned that led them deeper into the ravine.

Where the hell was he going?

No sooner had Vi asked the internal question when a body all but dropped on her. She heard the slide of rocks first, the unmistakable thunk of feet hitting the earth. Her arms lifted in automatic defense of herself, but her assailant was quick. Irritatingly quick. Vi barely had a chance to swing an unaimed fist – which failed to land – before something solid connected with the side of her face. The cool and unyielding bite of Piltovan metal, Vi thought, still struggling to catch up with the brawl that was suddenly upon her.

There was no time given to recover from the strike to her face. Vi barely stood up straight again before another blow landed into her stomach, this one painfully familiar. They weren’t fists hitting her, a feeling Vi had grown plenty used to in recent months.

It was the butt of a gun. It connected again at the center of her chest, completely knocking the air from her lungs. Immediately after, another strike to her shoulder that forced Vi’s body off kilter.

Then, falling.

This feeling she knew well. A feeling of the earth diverging from its natural rotation. Was Vi spinning, or was everything else? She likened the experience of flipping unwittingly through the air to being drunk and incapable of forcing her eyes to focus. Her stomach lifted into her chest while her heart fell to her feet.

Crash.

It always ended in a crash of one form or another.

Caitlyn was usually there, too. Waiting for her in the silence, lying across from her when Vi finally collapsed onto the handful of cushions that poorly functioned as her bed. She’d stare blearily at those haunting cerulean eyes and drift back in time, to a moment and a place where she’d fallen asleep with Caitlyn’s hand wrapped in hers. A moment and a place where Vi had felt… safe, for the first time in such a long time. 

Vi had spent months wishing hopelessly for a way back to that moment, and that place. So why was she surprised now when she blinked away the shock to find familiar blue eyes staring down at her?

“Vi,” Caitlyn breathed, the expression she wore indicative of her own surprise.

The seconds that passed felt like eons, neither one capable of speaking. Vi’s body throbbed in the various places she’d been struck, but those aches paled in comparison to the grueling pace of her heartbeat against her ribs. It hurt, and her mind struggled to comprehend the whirlwind of emotions that the sight of Caitlyn conjured.

Rage. Caitlyn had betrayed her, over and over again. She'd proven herself a master at using Vi’s trauma against her. How could she do that knowing what she knew about Vi’s feelings? After everything Vi had done for her? After everything she’d sacrificed for her? 

Despair. Hope had become nothing but an old acquaintance to Vi, beaten down and buried after years of hell behind bars. But Caitlyn had planted a seed, tilled the earth and watered the soil until that seed sprouted hope anew. She’d nurtured it with hands Vi thought she knew so well by now. Tender hands that were disturbingly good at inspiring softness in Vi. That sprout was just beginning to bloom with the promise of something real between them – love she’d earned – when Caitlyn suddenly and brutally ripped it from the ground.

Were there any roots left behind to salvage?

Fear. What sort of power had taken Caitlyn in its grasp and morphed her into a woman Vi didn’t recognize? Was it Ambessa alone? Or was there something inherently cruel inside Caitlyn? Something ugly and unforgivable?

Could she be saved?

Could she be redeemed?

“On the job, I see,” Vi sneered, eyes narrowed and lips pulled into a disapproving frown. The chaos inside her head remained precariously hidden behind a mask of temper.

“How are you here?”

Vi scoffed, shoved upwards against Caitlyn’s shoulders to escape her hold and sit up. “Surprised to see me, Cupcake?” She brushed at her arms and shoulders, as if the smattering of dust she’d collected in being tackled to the ground was more offensive than the black grime that had coated her skin for months. “Your man Rictus isn’t the invulnerable giant you think he is.”

“Ambessa didn’t–”

“Fuck Ambessa,” Vi spat, uncaring of the rude nature of interrupting. And with such foul language at that. She didn’t want to hear the general’s name, least of all from Caitlyn’s lips. 

She pushed herself to her feet, straightened her jacket with a few pointed tugs that made the various metal buckles and buttons clink and clang. Amidst her shuffling, from behind her, the sound of a rifle being armed.

Vi froze, a chill leaking slowly down her spine, through her arms. She could almost feel the hair at the back of her neck stiffen and for a moment, her lungs forgot how to breathe.

Betrayal.

“Gonna finish the job yourself–” Vi turned only her head to glance back at Caitlyn over her shoulder. One cerulean eye stared at her through the glass lens of the rifle sight. “–Caitlyn?”

Lightheaded. It felt like gravity itself suspended and they were just floating, untethered. There was no solid ground beneath her boots, no rocky cliffs reaching for Piltover around them. Vi learned quickly that no amount of fists in her face could ever compare to the feeling of a gun pointed at the back of her head.

Caitlyn’s gun, to be specific.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Caitlyn muttered. She used a tone Vi wasn’t sure she’d ever heard before. It wasn’t without strain, and it lacked conviction entirely. Nothing at all like the confident woman Vi had pledged herself to when she tucked the enforcer badge into her belt, many months ago now.

“I know,” Vi whispered, finally turning her body to face Caitlyn. It was a careful and deliberate spin of her boots in the dirt and as they came face to face, Vi’s hands slowly lifted. Fingers up, palms out. “I’m supposed to be behind bars,” she continued, her voice edged with emotional pain now. Vi was capable of only so much restraint and Caitlyn’s actions were simply tearing at her walls and towers, breaking through her defenses. If the commander wanted to see her vulnerable, then she would. “Eating rotten slop twice a day. Sleeping on cold concrete.” She took two steps forward. “Getting the shit kicked out of me by your boys in blue every other night.”

She noticed Caitlyn’s shoulders now. As a Kiramman, she’d always held them impossibly straight. Stiff, well-postured. It was something Vi had noticed immediately. Something she sometimes admired, if for no other reason than the way it elongated Caitlyn’s body. It made her even more desirable, but now… Right now, those shoulders trembled. They rose and fell with a certain rapid pace that alerted Vi to the state of Caitlyn’s breathing – labored, unsteady. 

If nothing else, at least Caitlyn wasn’t totally unfeeling.

Maybe there were some shattered pieces left of her in there after all.

“Is that what you want, Cait?” Vi asked quietly, meeting Caitlyn’s piercing gaze down the line of her rifle.

Caitlyn didn’t answer. She only choked on a breath – a physical reaction that was mirrored by Vi a second later when she glimpsed the movement of Caitlyn’s finger over the trigger guard.

“She’s here!”

The call of a man’s deep and accented voice echoed through the ravine and both girls started. It was all alarmingly familiar and Vi immediately bent her knees, an automatic reaction to being startled. Ready to run – she was always fucking running.

“Commander!”

Several Noxian guards descended on them now and Vi’s heart pounded in her throat as she watched them approach with their polearms poised and pointed at her.

“Caitlyn,” she whispered, urgently now. She looked back at Caitlyn, who still stood firm with her rifle raised. Her expression had changed, just as it had that day in the study when Ambessa descended upon them. Vi could see it – the tension in her brow, the tight set of her lips.

She didn’t look like Caitlyn at all.

“Cait, please, ” Vi begged quietly, taking a step to the side in hopes of escaping around Caitlyn to return to the commune.

Jinx and Isha would be looking for her.

Vander was waiting for her.

When Caitlyn didn’t abandon her stance, Vi exhaled a sharp breath. It sounded horribly close to a sob and Vi’s outstretched hands curled into fists that trembled.

How many times could this woman forsake her before Vi’s pathetic heart stopped trying to love her?

“Detain her, escort her to base camp,” Caitlyn commanded coldly when the guards approached. Vi sent a fist flying into the face of the one that reached for her first, but her knuckles cracked and severed against his metal helmet and Vi cried out. She cradled that hand against her chest while the second guard came for her. “The general will be interested to learn of her capture.”

Chapter Text

Caitlyn stood in the middle of Ambessa’s tent with her back turned to the guards, all of whom had their hands full with a wily and defiant pink-haired girl from the Undercity. It had taken three of them to bring Vi here, and it still took all three to fasten her restraints to the wooden frame at the edge of the tent.

Vi’s anger burned so fiercely that Caitlyn wouldn’t have been surprised if the entire structure came tumbling down around them. Ultimately, she chose not to comment on the foolishness of affixing an aggressive detainee to one of the support beams.

She couldn’t bring herself to watch. It was the most curious of feelings – being aware of a locked box inside her head, but entirely incapable of accessing its contents. Caitlyn felt certain that Vi was trapped inside that box, but she was powerless to open it. Every feeling associated with her – the longing, the sorrow, the guilt – was buried so deep that Caitlyn could barely recall the way they once affected her. The tightness in her belly, the aching in her heart… mere figments.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to watch.

“Well done, Caitlyn.”

Ambessa’s praise urged Caitlyn to lift her chin, to straighten her spine. Her head turned only slightly in the general’s direction when Ambessa’s wide body moved to occupy the space beside her. A heavy hand curled over her shoulder and Caitlyn breathed – a long, deep breath that reached her diaphragm.

It steadied her.

The corner of her mind where that locked box resided grew a bit darker. Easier to forget.

“It’s time,” came a thin and wiry voice from the other side of the tent. Singed stepped away from his workstation and Caitlyn watched him with a narrow gaze. She didn’t understand his gadgetry, nor his alchemy. His had once been one of the most revered scientific minds in Piltover and while Caitlyn had received the finest education available to her, she’d never focused on such practices. Not when knowing the path destined for her was in politics, as opposed to academia.

“You will accompany the doctor to the commune,” Ambessa directed, and gave Caitlyn’s shoulder a subtle squeeze.

She only nodded, having avoided saying a single word after her initial arrival with their renewed captive. Caitlyn collapsed her rifle and swung it over her shoulder with an ease and a familiarity that demonstrated her years of handling the weapon. It attached to the holster at her back and freed her hands, which busied themselves with a quick adjustment of her uniform.

“Caitlyn.”

The ferocity of Vi’s resistance to her capture didn’t reach her voice now as she called for Caitlyn’s attention. Which, admittedly, the commander was hesitant to grant. She still didn’t turn, but neither did she exit. Caitlyn only froze, spine stiff, and stared hard at the opposite wall of the tent.

“Please.” Gloved hands curled into tight fists at her sides. “You’re making a mistake.” 

She didn’t look at Vi. Instead, Caitlyn’s head turned and tipped up to meet Ambessa’s gaze.

“You’re choosing the wrong side. ”

Was it a valid argument? Caitlyn tended to doubt it, considering what the side opposite her own entailed. A community of people helping to hide a fugitive. Jinx was a war criminal, with the blood of Piltover’s most renowned and respected names on her hands. All Caitlyn sought was justice for Bolbok and Hoskel, and for her mother. How could the pursuit of law and order be anything but ethical?

“This isn’t about sides,” Caitlyn murmured, her back still turned to Vi.

She’d come to learn what Vi would choose every time, hadn’t she?

It wasn’t Caitlyn.

Before Vi could present any further debates, Caitlyn followed Singed from the tent, expressionless.

“Vi.” Ambessa’s voice filled the tent like she was greeting an old friend. It was unnerving. Vi had every reason to believe Ambessa simply didn’t give a shit about the horrors she’d tried to shove on her. Had every reason to believe Ambessa knew of her history with Stillwater, and had ordered her arrest anyway.

“You’ve been quite a curiosity.”

Vi’s head hung low, her steely eyes focused on the ground in stubborn defiance. She wouldn’t look at Ambessa. Would sooner test her thin hold on self-control than allow Ambessa the satisfaction of her ire.

Half her focus was on the metal cuffs that bound her wrists, in any case. They were unyielding, as had been the restraints used on her during her trip back to Stillwater. Her hands twisted, her fists tugged. Quietly, carefully, so as not to alert Ambessa of her attempts at escape. But without a tool – hell, she could manage it with a damn toothpick if she had one – Vi struggled to best the cuffs.

“The one who captured Caitlyn’s heart.”

This gave her pause. Made scarred lips part on a short breath. But Vi stubbornly refused to look up.

She hadn’t captured anything. Vi didn’t think of it that way. What she’d been through with Caitlyn was real, and it mattered. They fought together. Not just in combat, but for what they believed to be right. They picked each other up out of the dirt and the debris, every time. When one was injured, the other was there. For safety, for comfort.

Nothing had ever felt quite so assuring as the warm press of Caitlyn’s palm against her cheek. Not in many, many years.

No, Vi hadn’t captured anyone’s heart. Caitlyn had given it, willingly and with earnestness. 

“I owe you thanks.”

Vi’s stomach rolled with disdain and she tugged harder on her restraints. Her arms brushed the beam between them, caused it to shift and sway. Powder blue eyes glanced up – the first time they’d done so – to regard Ambessa. She was busy pouring herself a gluttonous glass of wine and failed to notice the movement of the canvas around them.

“Your absence provided a vacuum I was able to fill.”

A slip of her mask, a crack in her armor. Vi lurched forward with a grunt and this time, the tent did shake.

“Fuck you,” she hissed, seething like a bull behind a gate with nostrils flared. Vi wanted no responsibility for this. Whatever empty hole Ambessa perceived was in no way Vi’s doing and she refused to be held accountable for any of the changes that made Caitlyn Kiramman unrecognizable.

“That won’t be necessary,” Ambessa replied coolly. Vi watched with a snarl as the general swirled her wine and took a loud sip.

What did she mean by that?

Now that she’d lifted her head, Vi couldn’t look away. Every move Ambessa made was a threat, one Vi was currently powerless to protect herself against. Her chiseled glare focused on the general as she procured a blade from a sheath on the table. It was thick like a sword, but short like a dagger, its tip angled. Vi caught the glint of its sharpened edge as Ambessa admired the weapon like a prize.

“A cell in Stillwater still bears your name, child.”

Did Ambessa think imprisonment was a kinder fate than death? Was she under the impression that offering a stay at Stillwater somehow made her generous? 

“You tried that once already,” Vi spat. The cuffs bore into her wrists, biting into the skin around her bones. Vi paid the discomfort no mind. “Remember?”

Ambessa smirked, the piggish expression on her scarred face only enraging Vi further. “There will be no more mishaps,” she declared, returning the blade to its sheath and taking the whole thing in hand. “I shall escort you to the Hold myself.”

“How kind of you.” The words simply dripped off Vi’s tongue, enshrouded in sarcasm. Inside, however, she felt anything but humor. She’d only managed to avoid Stillwater the first time because of her sister, but Jinx wasn’t watching her anymore.

“But first,” Ambessa cut in. She strapped the blade to her hip, the twisting of her fingers absurdly accurate and intricate for such a large woman. “I must take what is mine.”

Their eyes met from across the tent, an intense stare. Vi could only guess at Ambessa’s intentions. What did she consider hers, beyond the strength and innovation of Piltover itself? Hextech, and the minds behind it? The wealth and influence of families such as the Kirammans?

Did she mean Caitlyn?

Or something else, something completely unrelated to the admittedly meager portion of the picture Vi had seen with her own eyes?

Vi’s lip curled in distaste and she watched Ambessa curl her right arm up. Her left hand lifted, thick fingers tugging on a leather cord that twisted around her arm guard. Vi squinted her gray eyes, focusing intently on Ambessa’s subtle movements. Strewn throughout the cord were a series of flat stones. Vi thought she recognized the etchings.

They reminded her of the delicate carvings imprinted in the gold lining of the gauntlets. The arcane magic she knew gave them their power, but she didn’t fully comprehend it all.

Runes, she thought. Her posture straightened, pressing back into the beam behind her as a new sensation swept through her. Cold, like a chill. Confusion. Suspicion.

It wasn’t hard to see that the Noxians had an interest in hextech. For purposes of power in war, Vi assumed. But what the hell did a woman like Ambessa Medarda need this sort of magic for? Already a fierce warrior, Vi had seen with her own eyes how formidable Ambessa and her army could be by their own merit. Strength and cunning alone went a long way – they’d put an end to the attack on the memorial before anyone with a hextech-powered weapon could do so.

The markings in the stones surged with light as Ambessa’s hand passed over them, a bright and brilliant green that reflected in golden eyes when Vi looked back at them.

“Stay put,” Ambessa sang as she affixed animal-like armor to her face, plated gold and stained with blood from her previous battles. “Try not to cause trouble.” A pointed and sarcastic statement that had Vi fighting against her bonds immediately as she was left alone in the tent.

Vi could feel the sticky warmth of blood as it trickled over her palm and between her fingers. It did nothing to lubricate her wrists enough to slip free from the cuffs, though, and Vi released a deep yell of aggravation. It didn’t echo inside the tent, despite the silence that encased her like a shroud. There was no one left in camp. Ambessa’s guards and warriors had followed her to the compound and Vi could only guess at what they were after.

Maybe it was simple as the prophet they now knew to be Viktor. His power was great, but Viktor seemed… virtuous. Righteous to a fault. Vi believed he’d take one look at the Noxians with their glaives and their shields and send them right back out the way they came. 

Time was of the essence and all Vi wanted was to get back to her family. To wash her hands clean of Ambessa and her fucking poison, to hold onto her second chance at happiness with both hands. But the Piltovan cuffs were proving their strength now and Vi was losing hope in her ability to slip free of them.

A cacophonous ring of shrill screams suddenly echoed through the fissures and Vi froze, head up and eyes alert. As if the source of those screams was right here in the tent with her, despite sounding miles away. What was that?  

There was nothing down here that hadn’t been folded into the commune. No greater population of people. No plants, no mines. It was once the darkest corner of the Undercity, where cons and addicts disappeared to for hiding. The only possibility Vi could think of was that these screams were coming from the compound.

The cureds?

“Jinx,” she breathed, eyes wide as panic struck through her, an icy blast.

She doubled her efforts, tugging at her restraints with absolutely no regard to the physical ramifications. And when it seemed the cuffs would not give, Vi turned her attention to the beam itself. Steel might not bend, but wood, she could break.

Vi steadied herself, and filled her lungs with a breath so deep it tickled. She didn’t lunge forward. Instead, Vi threw her weight backwards with a yell. Put everything she had into buckling the beam behind her until she heard the splinter of wood, the creak of tension.

With a final vicious thrash, the beam snapped in half. Part of the wood frame suspending the tent toppled and collapsed over her, but Vi wasn’t deterred. She rolled out of the rubble, threaded her connected arms under her feet so her bound hands were in front instead of behind.

She was free, and whatever the hell was happening in the commune was hers to investigate. Her family, the top priority.

Running felt awkward with her hands bound, but Vi bolted out of the camp at a fast pace anyway. It seemed Ambessa had taken the entire brigade with her, not a single soul left behind to protect their temporary home or the things inside it.

Not even one armed guard to ensure their prisoner didn’t escape.

Their mistake.

Vi weaved through the ravine, following the sound of horrific cries like they themselves called out for her. Sweat beaded on her brow, the straps and buckles of her leather jacket clanged around her. Vi pushed her body to its limits for the sake of speed, but the adrenaline pumping in her veins made her burning muscles easy to ignore. She had but one objective, and it was to ensure the safety of her sisters, and a father she’d already lost once before.

The gate to the commune was in her line of sight now. Her bearing. Her mecca. There was more than just the haunting screech of tortured souls now. They’d been joined by the unmistakable sounds of combat, blades clashing and battle cries echoing from inside the compound.

Vi thought she heard the cold cut of a rifle firing through the chaos, and pushed her legs harder.

She wouldn’t make it to her family in time. All she could do was hope that Jinx had cleverly avoided the fight. All she could do was hope that Isha was with her, and that they’d found a quiet place to hide.

A deep and rumbling roar of a beast told Vi there was no sense in holding out hope for Vander’s safety. 

Whatever their fates, Vi wouldn’t get the chance to see them with her own eyes. She reached the gate and everything went white. For a moment, she was blind. 

The shockwave from the blast was a violent hand shoving her backwards. For a split second, Vi’s world slowed, the piercing screams falling into silence and replaced by the dull hum of debris falling, homes crumbling. Her chest felt like she’d been struck by one of her own gauntlets, the impact stealing her breath and her balance all at once. Gravity lost its grip on her, leaving her weightless, suspended in time and space. The air itself burned against her skin, a mixture of heat and dust clawing its way into her throat. 

When she hit the ground, it wasn’t just with a thud – it was a symphony of pain, the jarring crack of her shoulder meeting dirt, the sharp protest of her ribs compressed by the force. All over again, her surroundings seemed to tilt and spin, her vision blurred with flashes and shadows.

It was too much pummeling for one day and forsaking the resilience she wore like a badge on her chest, Vi remained a crumpled heap in the dirt for several long minutes.

A low ringing consumed her ears, muting the world around her. She blinked, dazed, and tried to piece together where the ground ended and the smoke began. It curled in lazy tendrils above the commune, billowed slowly around the shells of buildings that had once made up a home Vi thought she might call her own one day.

It was a disturbingly familiar sight, one that had Vi choking on the coarse air in her lungs.

For a moment, she wasn’t sure if the pounding she felt in her chest was remnants of the blast or her own heart fighting to remind her she was still alive.

With a raspy groan, Vi rolled onto her knees. Barely managed to push herself up with hands still cuffed together and found her footing.

Everyone was here. Everyone who mattered. Everyone she loved.

Did anyone remain?

With a breathless cry, Vi pushed forward, stumbling through the hum of chaos in search of her people. There were bodies everywhere, some strewn and bloodied, others mangled and broken into impossible shapes. Her steps slowed as she passed a familiar member of the commune, lying still in the dirt. The markings left behind by the prophet’s touch glowed, and his eyes were glazed over white.

Not killed by a Noxian weapon, but by something else. Something Other.

“Jinx!” Vi suddenly cried out, so stricken with panic that the aches and pains from the explosion no longer deterred her movements. She bolted further into the compound, dodging larger pieces of rubble that fell around her, launching over the bodies of those fallen to the blade or blast.

If some of them moved, if some of them coughed up blood and dust, Vi told herself she didn’t notice them.

The first familiar figure she came upon was that of a giant man in black and red, his thick and shapely beard frayed and matted with crimson.

Rictus, torn to pieces. No man’s sword or glaive could have wrought such damage.

Vi’s breathing quickened. Her vision pulsed with anxiety. When she took a step backward away from Rictus, her heel collided with a pliant form and she nearly toppled over again.

But Vi caught herself. Whirled swiftly to stare down at the next body that demanded her attention.

Ambessa.

The golden orbs of her eyes were tucked away behind lids and lashes, stained with dirt and grime and gunpowder. But her chest moved, a steady up and down that provoked many conflicted feelings inside Vi’s head.

Life would be so much simpler if this woman just… wasn’t here anymore.

Vi’s hands curled into fists. The cuffs rattled around her wrists as they vibrated with tension, her head and her heart at war with one another. Her lips pulled into a scowl that moved with her heavy breaths and when Mel Medarda’s face flashed before her eyes, Vi released an untethered yell.

She dropped to her knee beside Ambessa, peeled her fingers off the hilt of the weapon she wielded, and used the blade to cut the leather cord wrapped around her arm. With a wad of spit sent to the ground beside the general’s head, Vi tossed the katar some feet away and shoved the tangle of runes into her jacket pocket.

Her search felt tireless, the minutes trudging by like hours. Vi felt overwhelmed by the ruin of it all. The mess, the destruction. The sinister nature of the hextech involved here was new, but the smell of it was hauntingly familiar. 

Death. Everywhere she looked.

She froze at the sight of a woman with purple hair, wrapped in the arms of a man she must have loved. Both of them bore the markings of the healer. 

Vi’s lip trembled, and it felt an arduous task to tear her attention off of them.

As she moved on, Vi reached up – both hands, unwittingly – to swipe beneath her eyes as they grew damp.

“Jinx!” 

Vi inhaled sharply through her nose, air catching the moisture that gathered in it. A pathetic sound.

She tried again, calling desperately for her sister through the dust and the wreckage.

“Pipe down, will ya?”

Vi’s entire body stiffened. Ice blue eyes went wide and a chill crept up her neck, into the back of her skull.

“Jinx?”

“I’m right here.”

Vi turned left, eyes scanning the heaps of bodies and unrecognizable pieces of the compound. Then right, desperately trying to convince herself it was real. That it wasn’t just her mind becoming unhinged.

From behind half a hovel appeared her sister, bent under the weight of a small body she held in one arm. 

In her other hand, the scruff of a blue and gold jacket, dragging a limp and limby body behind her.

“Jinx!”

Vi rushed to her, vaulting over a broken column to reach her sister. And her sister’s sister, cradled against her chest. Isha was clearly unconscious, her helmet gone, half her hair singed and shriveling. Vi reached for her instinctively, a reaction fueled simultaneously by the need to check on her and to relieve Jinx from her weight.

But Jinx turned away in time to thwart Vi’s outstretched hands. Met Vi’s eyes and gave a solemn shake of her head. “Take this one,” Jinx said, thrusting her other hand forward and releasing what she held.

Caitlyn thunked unceremoniously to the ground in a plume of dust and at first, Vi didn’t move. She felt stuck staring, motionless. Enveloped in cold. Vi was certain she wasn’t even breathing, because the sight of Caitlyn only… confused her.

Her heart thumped so hard against her chest that Vi felt it in her throat. Thought that if she opened her mouth now, it might jump right out and span the distance between them. It wanted Caitlyn. It had always wanted Caitlyn, and it seemed no amount of cruelty could change its mind.

But Vi’s head was a wrought iron gate, the spikes buried deep within the earth after three betrayals that burned like fire in her belly.

“She tried to help them.”

Vi’s breath returned to her lungs at once and she looked at Jinx. “What?”

“The cureds,” Jinx clarified. “When they went all… oogly-boogly. She tried to help them.”

Her steely gaze returned to Caitlyn’s prone figure and finally, Vi’s feet moved. It was just a few steps and she dropped to her knees, straight into the dirt and the ashes. A lump formed in her throat – maybe it really was her heart, trying to break free. Trying to get to the only thing she’d ever wanted for herself.

The only thing she’d ever been stupid enough to believe she could have.

Caitlyn bore ample minor injuries that Vi could see. Bruises and cuts decorated her face, peaceful in its stillness. Not pulled tight with disapproval or discipline. Strange that this was the most she’d looked like Caitlyn in months. Vi frowned, hands hesitating to reach for her.

“Get her out of here, Vi,” Jinx whispered. When Vi looked up, Jinx held Isha’s body tighter. Both arms wrapped around her fiercely. Like she was protecting her, even though the apparent danger was behind them.

“Where are you going?” Vi asked. It was a broken question, because she recognized the tone of Jinx’s suggestion.

They were separating again. 

Would it always be one or the other?

Could Vi not have them both at the same time?

“To save Isha,” Jinx responded quietly. It was almost unsettling, talking with her sister in a way that lacked humor or sarcasm. Or psychopathy, for that matter. 

No, Jinx spoke with utmost empathy right now. Vi could hear it. She could see it.

Despite every protest bubbling like a bad meal in her stomach, Vi nodded. “Vander?” she whispered. It was a weak question. Just a single word that somehow felt as big as oceans.

Jinx didn’t answer.

“Get her out of here,” she repeated. 

A second explosion triggered in her chest and Vi pressed the heels of both her hands against it, digging desperately against her broken heart.

But now was not the time for mourning, as evidenced by the groans coming from shifting bodies on the battlefield. Vi steeled herself with a deep breath and dug her bound hands beneath Caitlyn’s body, lifting her dead weight out of the dirt and debris with steady arms. 

“You’ll find me?” Vi asked urgently, her voice raspy with emotion, as Jinx turned to leave with Isha in her arms.

Jinx paused, long braids swishing loosely around her feet. “I always do, Sis.”

Chapter Text

Carrying an unconscious Caitlyn from the devastation in the fissures proved to be one of the most physically taxing things Vi had ever done.

She’d trudged past the gauntlets that remained inactive outside the gate, toppled over and coated in a layer of dirt. Without the crystals, they were useless to her. More hindrance than help, especially with the weight of the commander in her arms.

As she crept through the darkest parts of the Undercity alone, the silence and the solitude pushed Vi deep into her own thoughts.

She would never see Vander again. Fists from deep within her past were clawing their way through time to drag Vi into her own internalized damage. Shoving her under layers and layers of an agony that she hadn’t looked at in years. The explosion inside the commune left Vi’s body aching and bruised, but the loss of Vander felt like an assault on her heart. It was the most severe of all her injuries.

But still, Vi marched on.

When would she see Jinx again? Her little sister had a knack for weaving in and out of Vi’s life unexpectedly. She’d changed – really changed – in the months after the attack on Piltover’s council. Since Silco’s death. What was her catalyst? Was it losing the man whose hands had sculpted the menace they now called Jinx? Or was it the introduction of a wide-eyed little girl who could look at Jinx the way Powder once looked at her big sister?

Vi knew from experience just how empowering a look like that could be.

“That won’t be necessary.”

This single statement echoed maddeningly through Vi’s skull, but she couldn’t make sense of it.

Regret bubbled in the bile at the bottom of Vi’s stomach as she thought of Ambessa, and the fact that she’d left her alive. Vi wasn’t a merciless killer and to snuff the general out like that – unconscious on the battlefield – would have been a cowardly play, no matter how effective. But she could admit to herself that whatever good might have come from it would have been significant. Piltover, free from the Noxian’s taste for bloodshed.

And Caitlyn, out from under the influence of a woman who’d done nothing but take advantage of her trauma.

But no. Vi had left her there, breathing. Alive to see another day, to start another war.

They moved through the Undercity like shadows, both defenseless and vulnerable. No weapons. Wearing a litany of injuries like they were the latest in Piltovan fashion. Vi didn’t even know the extent of Caitlyn’s wounds, nor which aspect of the events that led them here had even rendered her unconscious. The only thing within her power to do was to get them to some sort of safety. Even just a fraction of it, so Caitlyn could heal. So Vi could breathe…

It took a great deal of physical finesse to enter the sewer system at the lowest dregs of Zaun without dropping Caitlyn, or harming her further. Vi’s knees would bear additional bruises come tomorrow, but she deemed it a well worth it sacrifice for their heading.

If they’d even be permitted to enter.

By the time she reached the entrance to the Firelight’s hideout, Vi glistened with sweat. It dripped from her hairline, traced slow and agonizing lines down her forehead, where it teased like fire at the corners of her eyes. She used her foot to knock on the metal door, the toe of her boot colliding solidly three times.

Not long after, the huge hatch creaked with movement. Its age showed itself in the way it lumbered slowly open, groaning all the while. And in the gap leading inside stood Scar.

“Where’s Ekko?” Vi murmured. Her physical exhaustion hung heavy on her voice, making it airy and without much tone. When Scar’s gaze fell away from her face to stare at the woman in her arms, Vi frowned and curled Caitlyn closer to her chest. “Please, Scar,” she continued, unafraid of sounding desperate. She was desperate. “I need help.”

Ekko was gone – an alarming and deeply concerning fact that left Vi feeling terrible.

She’d been gone, too. In her own way. So unpresent that she’d never even realized her oldest friend was missing.

It meant Vi had to make her case to Scar himself, a man she barely knew. A man who had only just come around to the idea of Jinx as an ally instead of an enemy, and one who definitely had no interest in housing Piltover’s commander in his hideout. But Vi assured him that she would be responsible for Caitlyn. That she wouldn’t let her wander, or interfere with any of the Firelights’ business. Her only intent in bringing Caitlyn here at all was simply needing a place to lay low. A place where the Noxian general couldn’t find her.

A place where, with any luck, they could both heal. Even just a little bit.

It was with some understandable disdain that Scar escorted them through the hideout, up a spiraling path that led them to many rows of rooms reserved for residential dwellings. “This one’s been empty for a while,” Scar explained as he opened a door and stepped aside. Vi watched as he crossed his arms over his chest, noting the lean cut of his muscles before looking up at his eyes. Scar wore a look of uncertainty, and she didn’t necessarily blame him for that. His large ears twitched when Vi took a single step closer. Caitlyn felt heavier now, like her arms knew they were about to earn reprieve.

“Thank you,” Vi murmured quietly, holding Scar’s gaze firmly, and with conviction.

He looked right back, let the gratitude settle around them like the leaves that decorated the bottom level of the hideout. A simple nod let Vi know he accepted her appreciation, and she finally moved past him into the room.

Whoever they’d lost that left this dwelling empty, Vi didn’t know, but she sent up a silent prayer to Janna that their soul knew peace.

The door closed behind her.

For the first time in what felt like a very long time, she was truly alone with Caitlyn. Not fighting side by side, not sneaking away from their responsibilities to steal a moment together. There was no one looming nearby to interrupt this fragile privacy, and that felt deeply profound to Vi.

She crossed the space slowly, her footfalls heavy as hexblasts in the silence. The room was dimly lit by nothing more than a single lantern that sat on the bedside table, a candle’s flame that made the warm glow dance across the floor and up the walls. It was a strikingly empty room. Not just unlived in, but severely untouched. A thin layer of dust covered what few fixtures furnished the place and Vi couldn’t help but feel like she was intruding. Not on something seen, but on something felt.

When she reached the bed, she knelt slowly beside it. Her thighs trembled with exhaustion, but they did not falter. With her knees disturbing the dust on the floor, Vi finally relieved herself of Caitlyn’s weight. She laid her body with care atop the rustled blankets, a deep breath leaking from her lungs at the rush of respite through her arms and down her spine.

She didn’t immediately stand or move away. Vi recognized that her work wasn’t truly over. There were wounds that needed tending to – hers and Caitlyn’s. But she took this moment – one greedy, selfish moment – to give her body what it needed most. Air. Breath in her lungs that was not hurried or urgent. Right now, there was no panic in her veins. No fear or worry over an imminent threat.

Unconscious, Caitlyn was not the woman who continued to betray her. Ambessa wasn’t here to twist her judgment, or sway her decisions. Light blue eyes gone grey with fatigue and weariness focused softly on Caitlyn’s face. A gash at the bridge of her prominent nose was seeping slowly, but not freely leaking. Her lips were slightly parted, and there was blood at the corner of her mouth. A handful of other scrapes and bruises decorated her features, but she was largely just… Caitlyn. Expression unburdened, peaceful beneath whatever ailments held her under their blanket of darkness.

Vi reached for her, a slow slide of both hands over the edge of the bed. They went everywhere together now, and would continue to do so until Vi found something with which she could unlatch the locks of her cuffs. But that was far from a priority right now, as Vi’s thoughts were consumed with matters of the heart.

Her fingertips bumped Caitlyn’s left hand. Recoiled an inch, despite being the one actively seeking this touch. Did she even have the right anymore?

Would Caitlyn have allowed it, were she awake to protest?

The months had been cruel, time and discourse felt like deep chasms between them. But this was their language, Vi thought with a sharp breath that swept aggressively through her lungs. This was what had grounded them from the very beginning, even when it seemed their worlds and their personalities might keep them oceans apart. A simple touch of their hands had the uncanny power to bridge canyons. Every damn time.

She took the tip of Caitlyn’s middle finger between her thumb and forefinger. Pinched, pulled. The leather glove slipped deftly from Caitlyn’s motionless hand, a slow and unencumbered slide over her palm and down slack fingers. 

The glove was set carefully aside, like the material itself was as delicate as the silence that encased them. 

That hand was bare now, and Vi took it with trembling fingers. The first touch of skin to skin had her spine shivering, her chest convulsing. She cradled Caitlyn’s hand gently in her own, thumb tracing the lines of a palm she thought she knew so well. The memories flashed like lightning – Caitlyn’s steady hand pulling her off the wet cobblestones after taking a blade to the belly, the soft and assuring press of those fingers on her face when she woke with shimmer in her veins, a firm grip helping to keep her grounded more times than she could count.

But these hands had changed, wielded power in ways that kept driving them apart. Vi swallowed hard, staring at the hand she held like it might burn her. It wouldn’t be the first time, but she couldn’t let go. Not now.

Vi leaned forward over the edge of the bed, still on her knees, and simultaneously lifted Caitlyn’s hand. She met it in the middle. Vi pressed Caitlyn’s palm to her cheek, lashes fluttering down over the moisture in her eyes. The layers of her arm wrap rustled and creaked as her free hand tightened into a fist where it hung beneath their joined ones. Her breath hitched, a sob breaking through the shabbily constructed dam she’d built around her heart.

“I don’t hate you for what you’ve done,” Vi choked out, her voice barely audible, even in the silence. Her tears fell freely now, sliding over Caitlyn’s hand as Vi burrowed into it further. Grey eyes opened again, rimmed red with emotion and exhaustion, and Vi watched the rhythmic rise and fall of Caitlyn’s chest. She wanted to hate her. She should hate her. It was what others would say – that Caitlyn deserved her hatred and thensome. After everything she’d done – the alliances forged with monsters, the cold decisions that only hurt the people they’d once fought to protect – Vi had thought it would be easy. Resentment should have been her armor, fury her shield. But no matter how many times she tried to summon the hatred, it refused to come.

All she could feel now was the ache in her chest, the bone-deep longing for the Caitlyn she used to know. The one who knew how to lessen the pain, and had shown her there was still good in a broken world.

“I don’t want to lose you, Cait.”

She’d already lost so many. The tomb inside her chest where she kept the memories of her loved ones just kept collecting bodies, no matter how hard Vi tried to keep them safe.

“Not again.”

The room remained eerily quiet, save for the sound of Vi’s ragged breathing. Caitlyn’s hand stayed limp, unmoving where Vi held it firmly to her cheek. But it didn’t matter. Vi clung to it as if it were the last thread tethering her to hope.

Chapter Text

There was peace in silence. Vi had forgotten how it could feel. There were some nights when quiet was her only companion. Nights when she counted the hash marks on the walls just to keep her mind from thinking. Hush often greeted her like an old friend, and in her stone prison, she was the gentlest presence Vi knew.

This was the quietest space she’d occupied in months. No raucous roar of a crowd, no crunching of knuckles against a skull. The smarmy come-ons from drunken bastards, the thumping music that forced her bones into submission – all were blissfully absent.

If she listened hard enough, if she sat close enough, the only sound at all was that of Caitlyn’s even breathing. 

A small and kindly old fellow called Kem came by a handful of hours after their arrival at the hideout. He carried a bag with him, the thing wrinkled and tattered like the skin of Kem’s careful hands. Vi sat on a chest at the foot of the bed and watched those hands reach into that bag to procure a collection of utensils and tools.

When those old hands reached for Caitlyn’s jacket, Vi stood so abruptly the chest she sat on scraped backwards across the floor. It was horrendously loud, grating to the ears. A reflection of the gut-punch panic that made her heart slam against her ribs.

“Stop,” Vi murmured. Kem listened, his discerning gaze focused on Vi as she stepped around the edge of the bed to sit herself gingerly beside Caitlyn.

“Just… let me do that part.”

One of Kem’s green eyebrows arched curiously halfway up his forehead, but he didn’t argue. He gave Vi a nod and stepped back, allowing her whatever space she needed.

Vi’s chest heaved for no apparent reason. When she looked down at Caitlyn’s prone form, she was filled with the same overwhelming sense of dread she’d been struggling with for hours. It eked through the calm of quiet, poisoned the fragile sort of balance she thought they might have found here in the dark, alone together.

“That won’t be necessary.”

Inside the pocket of her leather jacket, her fingers untangled from within the leather cord she’d cut off Ambessa’s arm. She couldn’t really explain it, but the thought of someone Caitlyn didn’t know handling her body – undressing her – made Vi feel sick. A need to protect her, even from the hands of a healer, compelled Vi to act in her defense.

Her wrists were freed, the Piltovan cuffs unlatched and lying forgotten on the floor in the corner. Vi had tended to them herself, the best she could. A warm wash with soap and fresh wraps that twisted from the middle of her forearms down to the knuckles. Familiar enough, Vi paid them no mind now. 

With her hip pressed to Caitlyn’s, she gently dug her hands beneath slight shoulders and lifted. They didn’t know what injuries they might uncover, but there were no blatant signs of exterior trauma. It remained a mystery why Caitlyn was still unconscious, and it inspired great tenderness in every one of Vi’s movements. With one sure hand at Caitlyn’s back, the other peeled the jacket away. Off one arm, then the other. She didn’t toss it aside. Doing so felt disrespectful somehow, even though Caitlyn wasn’t awake or aware to comment on such indifference. Instead, Vi laid it at the foot of the bed, a small pile of clothing that slowly grew. The materials were of rich quality, though tattered by evidence of Caitlyn’s activities.

Maybe Vi disagreed with most everything Caitlyn had done since taking the title of commander, but deep beneath the layers of disappointment and hurt hid a shallow pool of respect for Caitlyn’s fortitude. She could have remained in her high tower, far above the mess and the bloodshed. But Caitlyn was here, in the thick of it all. Unafraid of getting her hands dirty. Unbothered by the dirt and the grime that dulled the shine of her golden fixtures.

Beneath the frilled blouse, Caitlyn wore nothing but a thin white undershirt, satin and sleeveless. Vi left it, completely unwilling to bare the rest. Not just to her own eyes – she’d imagined it plenty in the early days of their acquaintanceship, but never like this – but to Kem’s eyes. No matter how unattached and professional he might be. It was neither of their rights now to look upon Caitlyn in a way that was not invited.

Her hands smoothed over warm silk as she carefully laid Caitlyn’s limp body back down. One cradled the back of her head, fingers sliding through dark tendrils that had long been freed from the bun Caitlyn often kept it in. She helped that head to the pillow, lingered just a second too long with an aching in her chest that had nothing to do with guilt, or anger.

Kem cleared his throat and Vi flinched, her muscled shoulders trembling as she pulled her hand away from Caitlyn too quickly.

“Please be careful,” Vi whispered as she stood, clearing the way so Kem could do what he needed to. She returned to the chest at the foot of the bed. Not because she craved watching, but because she was completely unwilling to leave Caitlyn unattended with a stranger.

They weren’t able to determine why Caitlyn had not yet returned from unconsciousness. Kem declared that her injuries were not terribly severe. Nothing broken, nothing bleeding. Discoloration around her torso – wide swaths of green and purple that weren’t particularly unfamiliar to Vi – indicated some bruised ribs, but nothing that wouldn’t heal on its own. With a practiced skillfulness, Kem cleaned and bandaged the gash on Caitlyn’s nose.

It was such an undignified look that were the situation less serious, Vi might have chuckled.

He checked her pupils. Vi looked away while he hovered over Caitlyn’s head to lift her eyelids for examination, unsettled by it all. She had no desire to see those cerulean blues if the light behind them was out.

“It’s beyond my knowledge what holds her under,” Kem explained as he packed away his things into his fraying bag and made to leave. “We can’t rule out a concussion, so watch her closely through the night.” As if Vi needed explicit instructions to do exactly that. “If she’s not awake by morning, fetch me.” Vi stiffened when he stepped close to lay a hand lightly on her knee. She’d just watched him use those hands for good, and still, Vi hardened against his touch. “She’ll need a drip, should it come to that.”

Vi only nodded her understanding. Kem gave her knee two placating pats, then shuffled out the door.

Only after she was alone again did Vi release a long breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. It leaked from her lungs, snaked through her teeth and expanded her cheeks as it left her. Part of her recognized the relief she felt for Caitlyn’s lack of serious wounds. The other half felt constricted in panic over what unseen malady kept Caitlyn in the dark.

With her elbows on her knees, Vi leaned forward and hung her head between her biceps. Her hair slithered off her shoulder, fell into her view and tickled her hands. It was pink again. A comfort Vi didn’t expect to feel while washing it clean in the sink. It was long now. Longer than she’d ever worn it, and that didn’t feel quite right. But she was halfway there, and Vi told herself that had to count for something.

Vining through her fingers, spanning the distance between her hands, was Ambessa’s leather cord. The stones spun and trembled, suspended in her grip. She studied them carefully, warily, with brows furrowed over her eyes.

She gripped a single stone, turned it over between her thumb and forefinger. The last time she’d seen them, wrapped around Ambessa’s arm guard, the runes had been glowing. Vi traced the shape of an etching now, dark and dormant. The arcane was a subject far beyond her understanding, and she couldn’t even begin to guess at what the carvings meant. What they symbolized, what purpose they served.

But as she continued to sift the strand of runes through her fingers, Vi couldn’t shake the gut feeling that Ambessa’s reason for possessing them was far from virtuous. Even now, holding them in her hands, Vi was overcome with the sinister possibility that she was playing with fire.

When Vi’s lovely grey-blue eyes slipped shut a minute ago, Caitlyn hadn’t expected them to stay that way. Talking with Vi was surprisingly easy, she thought. She had a friend in Jayce, of course. A brother even. But he wasn’t a confidant. Not in the same way she thought Vi could be.

Girls were different that way, Caitlyn reckoned.

Vi was vulnerable here in her home, on her bed. Sad in so many understandable ways, and impossibly beautiful. Caitlyn thought she might like her just a little too much. The indications were here, both subtle and blaring. Pestering things that reminded Caitlyn she was quite good at getting what she wanted, and that what she wanted, she could have. But this thing with Vi was fragile, and it meant more than her usual impulsiveness when it came to her relationships.

If she could even call them that.

Her palm pressed tighter to Vi’s. A soft and silent way of being closer to her, without disturbing what she thought might be a delicate and much-needed slumber. Vi was safe here. Not just in the Kiramman manor, but with Caitlyn.

Tonight they would make their case before the council, and Caitlyn didn’t doubt that it would come with its own treacherous obstacles. But for now, they could have this.

Vi could enjoy this fleeting moment of peace, before the cruel realities of their world came bursting through their doors to challenge them once more.

It seemed ironic that in letting her own eyes drift closed, Caitlyn would see sky blue. Of course when sleep came for her, it would bring Vi. A person unlike any Caitlyn had invited into her orbit before, raw and crass and uninhibited. In many ways, Vi embodied everything Caitlyn believed her life lacked. Growing up a Kiramman was in itself a practice in discipline, even before the handful of literal disciplines Caitlyn folded into her repertoire. 

Ballet classes started at the tender age of four, insisted upon by her mother and the bane of a very young Caitlyn’s existence. By seven, she was out of her leotard and into the custom-tailored uniform of a marksman. Piano lessons were the bartering chip, an even ground her mother could accept that continued to refine Caitlyn’s practice in fine arts while her aim and dexterity developed at the hands of Grayson Devereaux. 

There was no room allotted for Caitlyn to stray even a step off her intended path. Many of her young curiosities went unslaked. What was it like to ride in the cockpit of an airship? What did Ionia look like in summer? If she tried, could she surf in the waves that rolled in from the Guardian’s Sea?

All her life, she’d wanted for nothing. Yet somehow, young Caitlyn Kiramman wanted for absolutely everything.

Vi was the wind whipping her hair at a full sprint. Vi was the sound of the woods in spring when the animals woke from their winter rests. Vi was the crest of the mountain she sometimes climbed, alone in the shower with her hand tucked between her thighs.

“Vi,” Caitlyn whispered. Her hand lifted, reaching through the darkness in pursuit of those sky blue eyes.

“Vi,” she said again. Her tone changed. There was urgency in it, a tightness that hadn’t been there before. Those grey eyes were disappearing, fading into blackness and Caitlyn choked on a quiet cry as her fingers stretched forward in desperation.

“Caitlyn?”

The first thing Caitlyn became aware of was the aching. It throbbed in her temples, dull and insistent, radiating outward in a way that consumed her entire body. She tried to shift, to push through the fog that clung to her mind like the marine layer over the bay every morning. But even the smallest movement sent fresh waves of pain rippling through her and Caitlyn’s face twisted into a grimace.

She stilled, focus shifting instead to the faint warmth against her hand. It was soft, steady, grounding – a lifeline in the haze.

Someone was holding her hand.

Who?

The question floated aimlessly in her mind, just out of reach. Moved like a shadow she couldn’t quite grasp. She focused harder, pulling at the threads of consciousness until a clearer sensation broke through. The faint press of a thumb in her palm, calloused and careful, tracing the lines she’d once paid to have read by a bizarre and wounderous woman at the Progress Day fair.

A deep head line. The Mount of Mercury. The heart line began beneath the middle finger. The fate line, broken.

That was years ago, meaningless. But this was now, and Caitlyn knew this hand.

“Cait…”

She knew this voice.

It was low, rough around the edges, but unmistakably familiar. It cut through the haze like a searing blade, sending a jolt through her chest that had nothing to do with the pain.

Vi.

Caitlyn’s breath hitched, the sound barely audible in the silence of the room. She strained against the weight of unconsciousness. Memories flickered in her mind, jagged and fragmented – the screams of Viktor’s followers, the chaos of battle, and a blinding explosion…

Her eyelids fluttered, heavy and reluctant, until she finally forced them open. She wasn’t at the commune. She wasn’t outside at all. The room was dim, shapes blurred and indistinct. It didn’t matter, because her gaze found Vi immediately.

Caitlyn’s hand twitched inside the one that held it.

Her lips parted, but her voice failed her, a rasp of air barely escaping her throat. She tried again, pushing through the dryness, through the tightness in her chest.

“Vi,” she managed, the name breaking like glass between them.

Vi’s light blue eyes widened in disbelief. For a moment, they simply stared at each other, the silence louder than any words could’ve been.

Caitlyn considered the idea that talking was easy – used to be easy – but so often, they simply did not need words to communicate.

“Cait,” Vi breathed. Her voice cracked on the vowels, her grip on Caitlyn’s hand tightened, as if reassuring herself that it was all real. “You’re awake.”

Bejeweled eyes that had lost their sparkle drifted, taking in the emotion she saw etched across Vi’s face – the relief, the worry. Something else that Caitlyn couldn’t quite discern, not here. Not like this.

Not with a thousand hours of unsaid things between them.

The last time she saw Vi was in Ambessa’s tent. Angry, defiant, even broken… But this? This unguarded vulnerability? It stole the breath from Caitlyn’s lungs.

She hadn’t seen this Vi in so long, and yet, it felt like Caitlyn had been with her just moments ago. Impossible.

“What happened?”

Chapter Text

“Where are we?”

Without looking down, Caitlyn slowly extracted her hand from within Vi’s. A chill immediately encased her palm, her fingers, but she used them to press against her own abdomen. Caitlyn winced, a sharp breath hissing through her teeth.

“Hey, careful,” Vi argued against her movements with hands that reached, but didn’t touch.

“Where are we?” Caitlyn asked again, firmer this time, steeling herself against the various aches and pains that plagued her. She forced her eyes open once more, stared hard at Vi through the bleariness that lingered.

“We’re safe,” was the answer offered. “That’s all that matters.”

Not quite good enough.

Her teeth ground tightly together, the muscles in her jaw visibly tightened. All efforts to bite down on the pain that throbbed through her bones like a second pulse. Caitlyn pushed herself upright with a hollow cry, arm curling firmly around her middle as Vi verbally protested.

“Cait, stop–”

It was only now that Caitlyn became aware of the state of her body. Not just injured – hells, she felt like she’d been trampled by a bull – but in a certain state of undress. Beyond her feet at the foot of the bed, her jacket. Her enforcer’s blouse. 

Where was her rifle?

She looked down, the bones in her neck shivering with discomfort as gravity intensified the weight of her head. Someone had peeled her down to her undershirt. It did very little to preserve her modesty and Caitlyn fought against the heart that began climbing up her throat. She felt it beating against her windpipe. It made breathing difficult.

“Caitlyn, you need to rest. ”

Rest? How could she rest when her chest was caving in, her ribs squeezing tighter to her lungs with every breath? The suggestion went largely ignored as Caitlyn swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for her clothes, vision blurring at the edges. Nothing about this was easy, but Caitlyn had fought through the ache of injury and the icy grip of nerves before.

This wasn’t even the first time she’d been blown up in the line of her perceived duty.

Caitlyn laughed to herself, the sound derisive. And broken. This wasn’t even the second time she’d been blown up in the line of her perceived duty.

Her hands trembled with the effort it took just to hold her shirt, the chiffon collar fluttering like a flower petal in the breeze. Caitlyn couldn’t see her own struggles, completely blind to them. Her vision swam with anxiety. It flooded her system, slowly. A gaseous creeping of sickness that filled her, steadily, like faceless plumes of smoke.

She couldn’t find the neckline of her blouse. It was as if the shirt had sewn its own holes shut and Caitlyn choked on a breath as she turned the damned thing around in her hands, over and over again. Her fingers shook with the effort of it all and when she continued to fail, Caitlyn tossed the piece of clothing behind her with a quiet and frustrated wail.

“You’re alright, Cait…”

They were words offered in comfort as Caitlyn sat there with her head in her hands, breathing heavily into her own palms. There was once a time when Vi would say exactly that, and Caitlyn would have believed her. A time when Vi would take Caitlyn’s chin in her gentle grasp and urge her head up, so their eyes could meet.

If a tear were to roll down her cheek, Vi would have captured it with a tender swipe of her thumb beneath a blue eye.

But they weren’t those people anymore, Caitlyn reminded herself with a bitter scoff and a weak inhale. It felt cold in her lungs and a layer of gooseflesh rippled slowly up her bare arms. 

She is looking for me.

When Caitlyn suddenly pushed to her feet, so, too, did Vi. Their bodies stood parallel to one another and Caitlyn considered it a miracle that she didn’t simply stumble forward into those steady arms, defined by sure muscles that had never failed to catch her. Or to pull her up out of the dust.

“Get out of my way,” Caitlyn whispered, fingers caught in a slow tremble. It took a great deal of mental restraint to keep them off of Vi’s body. To shove her away. To pull her close. The mental battle was as disorienting as everything else.

“No. No way.” 

Why did Vi always have to be this argumentative? So stubborn? Caitlyn scoffed, lifting one of those shaking hands to press it over her eyes. They burned. There was a pounding in her temples, a heavy beat like war drums that pulsed inside her ears. It made the room spin, a nauseating whirl of shadows and warm light. Caitlyn was sure the walls were moving, twisting, pressing closer. Her lungs worked just a little harder.

Hey mind grasped at control, but it slipped through her fingers like sand. She’s probably furious. She’s going to think I’m… weak.

“Cait, you’re not ready to–”

“I must go,” Caitlyn insisted, her words sharp, cutting through the tension like a blade. When she took a step to the side in an attempt to simply move around this stubborn arse blocking her path, Vi stepped, too. 

What if she finds me here?

Finally, Caitlyn looked up.

Their gazes met and Caitlyn might as well have been hit by a hexblast all over again. Steel blue eyes knocked the labored breath clean out of her. It was violent. It was merciless. Caitlyn’s expression cracked in half and as her shoulders began to rise and fall rapidly, she pressed a hand to her diaphragm. Every inhale felt like dragging glass into her lungs. Vi’s stare was raw, silently pleading, and filled with a patience Caitlyn knew she no longer deserved.

“She’ll be looking for me,” Caitlyn mumbled. Even without tone, her voice was clipped. Hoarse. Like being dragged over rocks and drowning. It trembled with terror. “You don’t understand, I need to–”

“Stop,” Vi cut in, the word firm, steady. Just like the girl who spoke it. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Caitlyn’s heart hammered against her aching ribs. She could feel it there, pounding beneath her palm. “You don’t understand, Vi,” she whispered again. Her head shook, there was a foreboding sense of urgency growing inside her and it showed. “I have to go. She’ll think–”

“I don’t give a shit what Ambessa thinks,” Vi snapped, and it startled Caitlyn to realize that Vi knew exactly who she meant. Exactly who she feared. Vi took a step closer and Caitlyn felt her throat close in around the air she already struggled to breathe. “You’re not walking out of here just to throw yourself back into her claws, Cait.”

Their gazes held and Caitlyn continued to suffocate. For a moment, she was back in the fissures. Back in Ambessa’s tent, listening while the guards fought to restrain Vi, her back turned all the while. The memory twisted inside her, sharp and unbearable.

What if she thinks I chose this?

“I can’t stay here,” she declared weakly. Her voice cracked, her panic spilling over. “Not with you.”

Vi visibly flinched, but she didn’t back down. Didn’t back away. “Why?” she demanded, but her voice was softer now. “Because of Ambessa? Or because you can’t face yourself?”

The words hit her like a punch to the gut – and wasn’t that just fair play, Caitlyn thought. She staggered back a step, knees nearly giving out. The hand at her chest pressed harder, the heel of her palm digging fiercely against her sternum. As if she was trying to force the air back into her lungs, but it wouldn’t come. The walls kept closing in around her, shrinking, pressing, smothering.

“I–” Her throat tightened, her vision blurring. “I can’t… I can’t breathe.”

“Cait.” Vi’s voice was gentler now, somehow both urgent and calm.

“Don’t,” Caitlyn gasped, holding out a shaking hand to keep Vi from moving any closer. It flattened in the middle of Vi’s firm abdomen, thin fingers splayed over the wraps of her binder. Her other hand gripped her side, pain flaring as her ribs protested the motion. “Please, just… don’t.”

When she sucked air into her lungs, it was audible. Choked and desperate. When it stumbled back up her throat, it left her like a gasp. The air was moving through her, but she couldn’t seem to get the oxygen she needed. Spots danced in Caitlyn’s vision, intensifying the nausea, the disorientation. 

She stumbled sideways, her legs weak, her mind spinning. The room tilted violently, and Caitlyn felt herself falling – until strong hands caught her, steadying her body before she could hit the ground.

“Hey, hey, I’ve got you,” Vi murmured, her tone softer now. With Caitlyn in her arms, Vi lowered them both carefully to the floor.

“No,” Caitlyn choked out, struggling weakly against Vi’s hold. The pull remained, a dark hand on her mind whose grip was unyielding, its power fierce and undeniable. Caitlyn was so compelled to let it take her. Home. She needed to go home, before Ambessa’s worry decayed and twisted into disappointment. “You don’t.” She shook her head again. “You can’t.”

“Cait, look at me.” Vi’s voice was firm, but not unkind. A warm hand pressed to her jaw and Caitlyn’s lungs continued to trip over themselves. “Just breathe, okay? One breath at a time.”

But Caitlyn couldn’t. The guilt, the pain, the pull – they were too much. Her chest heaved, her vision narrowing to a pinpoint. Vi held her face, and held her stare. Cerulean eyes visibly struggled to focus. “I’m drowning,” she confessed quietly, her voice breaking.

“You’re not,” Vi assured her with a shake of her head, her grip on Caitlyn solid but gentle. A thumb brushed slowly over her cheek, Caitlyn’s chest convulsed with a silent sob. “I won’t let you.”

She wanted to fight, to push Vi away. To escape the unbearable weight of this confrontation pressing down on her. To eliminate the distance between herself and Ambessa, so the strain caused by her absence might be swiftly relieved, before any further damage could be done. But Vi’s hands were steady, grounding her body, even as her mind spiraled.

“Cait.” The continued use of her nickname was a breeze off the ocean, a lifeline in the storm. “You’re right here with me.” Vi spoke so evenly. Caitlyn didn’t understand how she could while the world was spinning off kilter, faster with every breath she failed to take. “Just breathe. With me. ”

Vi’s voice cut through the noise. An anchor. Caitlyn’s chest hitched – her ribs gave a sharp throb – and she forced herself to take a shallow breath in time with the rise and fall of Vi’s wide shoulders. Then another, and another. The air came in short, ragged bursts. But it did come.

“That’s it,” Vi murmured. She nodded, just once. The erratic movement of Caitlyn’s eyes had finally settled, and it made looking up into Vi’s sad grays just a little easier. “Just like that.”

The pressure began to lift, the walls of the room expanding again. Caitlyn’s body sagged, exhausted in Vi’s hold. Tears burned behind her tired eyelids, and she didn’t have the strength to hold them back. When the first one slipped by her lashes, Vi captured it with a tender swipe of her thumb beneath a blue eye.

Now that the room itself no longer threatened to suffocate her, Caitlyn recognized the silence for what it was. A weighted blanket. No march of boots in the dirt, no breathless cries in the dark. Heavy lids slid down over even heavier eyes and behind them, Caitlyn tumbled backwards in time. Back to a familiar study, with its familiar sprawling bookshelves. A familiar hearth sat dark and neglected, and a familiar pink-haired girl stood before it.

Caitlyn had held her jaw then, much like Vi held hers now.

I’m sorry.

Vi had said nothing.

I’m so sorry.

But sorry wasn’t good enough.

“I can’t…” Caitlyn whispered with a tremble in her voice. Her eyes opened again, glossy, and flicked slowly back and forth between Vi’s. “I can’t… fix this, Vi.”

Vi’s arms tightened around her, a silent reassurance, and Caitlyn let them. “You don’t have to fix anything right now,” she promised quietly. Caitlyn couldn’t comprehend where Vi found the patience to say such things. Or to be here, holding Caitlyn together when all she wanted was to shatter to pieces. “But you don’t have to run either. Not from me.”

Was that what she’d been doing? As her gaze reverently explored the features of Vi’s face – so delicate for such an indelicate young woman – Caitlyn pondered over the idea.

She wasn’t running from anything.

She was running to someone.

But was it the right someone?

Were they one in the same?

She felt Ambessa’s presence in the back of her mind like a shadow. It cast her conscience into darkness, vast and seemingly eternal. The box that hid in a carved out corner was still there, Caitlyn recognized. But the lock was gone, the lid cracked open.

These two forces went to war behind her eyes and Caitlyn felt ripped in half by both of them.

She felt moisture at the corner of her mouth, the tang of salt an assault on her tongue. Her heart still beat a staccato rhythm against her tender ribs, but the pace of it was no longer dizzying. The breaths that managed to reach her lungs through a constricted throat were shallow, but they served their purpose. In the silence, they simply stared at one another.

Swimming in those sky blue eyes, Caitlyn recognized that none of this had done a thing to eradicate the fear from inside her mind. It still held her spine in a vice. But it wasn’t Vi she feared. It wasn’t even the impossible task of making up for her mistakes, or unburying the woman who deserved this girl's loyalty.

It was Ambessa, and the promise of retaliation. Not a spoken threat, but an implied one.

“I can’t stay here, Vi.”

Chapter Text

Vi didn’t get good sleep.

To be honest, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken up feeling truly rested, and she wasn’t convinced a mid-morning nap in the Kiramman’s manor counted.

As a teenager, she’d tossed and turned in her bunk bed, wondering how she could make things better for Powder. Her brain never shut up about it. Her little sister was her world and all Vi wanted was to give her a chance at a good life. A full one, in a place where Powder had time and room and resources to stretch that brilliant mind of hers.

As a prisoner, she’d never known comfort. Or peace. Vi learned to live cold. The guards at Stillwater didn’t give a damn about the rats Piltover sent there to wither and rot. They weren’t afforded beds. Vi’s blanket had been an old tattered towel she absconded with from the communal showers one day. Her pillow, nothing but the curve of her own arm, which only got harder and less comfortable as the years passed.

As a woman, Vi couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling of failure. It kept her up at night. Or in the morning. Whenever she tried to sleep, didn’t matter what time of day. Time and time again, she gave everything she had to keep the people she loved safe. But it was always one life for another. In trying to save Vander, she lost her brothers. In trying to protect her own heart, she lost Powder. 

When she chose her sister, she lost Caitlyn.

Even when she’d done what she believed to be the right thing, when she chose to take responsibility for her own actions and give herself to the enforcers seeking those responsible for the explosion in Piltover – so many years ago now – Vi’s sacrifice led to Benzo’s death. Slaughtered like a stray in the street.

She was a walking billboard for bad choices, and they haunted her. Every fucking day of her life.

Vi was tired. Simply exhausted. Physically, emotionally. Her body ached from the endless strain, not just from hauling Caitlyn out of the fissures, but from the vigilance she’d maintained ever since. Her heart ached just as hard. Vander was gone, again. Jinx left, again. Isha was probably dead. Caitlyn was broken. Vi felt like the last pillar standing in the middle of it all, but cracks were forming. She was crumbling and desperate for respite.

But she couldn’t sleep. She sat on the empty chest, which she’d shoved in front of the only door in and out of the home they now occupied. Vi’s shoulders weighed on her, posture slumped against the door, head resting backwards against the wood. It cocked her neck at an odd angle, but it felt good. Even if she couldn’t sleep, at least her body wasn’t moving. At least her bones could breathe.

Steel blue eyes slowly followed the path Caitlyn traced around the room. It was a line. Simple, straightforward. Uncomplicated. Back and forth, back and forth. She paced the room like a caged animal, her movements sharp and deliberate, her mind clearly elsewhere. 

Vi knew this energy. Intimately. She knew what it meant. Caitlyn was building up to something – an argument, a decision, a mistake. And Vi wasn’t about to miss whatever it was by falling asleep.

But no amount of determination could stop her lashes from feeling unusually heavy. She was no stranger to the weight of her own body dragging on her consciousness, but there was never quite so dire a time as this one. She usually enjoyed the freedom of simply passing out if she needed to. Even if it was on the cold, dirty streets of Zaun after a night of fists and whiskeys. It was a teeth-grinding fight to stay awake now.

Her head fell, lulled sideways, then jolted up again, a sharp inhale snapping the room back into focus.

“Just sleep.”

Vi’s lip curled as her gaze affixed itself to Caitlyn once more, still pacing with her arms folded neatly over her chest.

“Fat chance,” she replied quietly. Even her voice lacked energy, a reflection of the talking corpse she felt like on the inside.

Amidst the ample drowsiness in her bones, Vi felt a certain sense of whiplash from it all. To go from holding Caitlyn in her arms one minute, teaching her to breathe again, to... whatever this Caitlyn was felt like being hit by an airship. Vi didn't like it. Caitlyn needed rest, but no amount of Vi's gentle insistence could make her listen to reason. She didn't like that, either.

Caitlyn stopped suddenly, turning to face her. Vi felt her spine harden with anticipation, her body sitting itself upright just a bit. “Vi, you need to let me leave.” Caitlyn’s voice was almost steady, but there was a tremor underneath, a thin crack in the facade she clung to.

Despite the anxiety that brewed with Caitlyn’s stance, Vi didn’t get up. She only tilted her head to look at Caitlyn, exhaustion making her words blunt. “Not happening.”

“Vi.” There was a warning edge creeping into her tone. Caitlyn took a step closer. Vi clocked the way her hands clenched into fists at her biceps. 

Would Caitlyn hit her again? Would she dare to use her bare hands this time?

“I’m serious. You can’t keep me locked in here forever.”

Vi exhaled slowly, an audible manifestation of her weariness, and reached up to run a hand through her hair. “You’re right. I can’t.” She leaned forward then, propped her elbows up on her knees and regarded Caitlyn with a sideways tip to her head. It was a pointed look. Almost challenging. “But I can stop you from running back to the self-righteous windbag who twisted you into exactly this.”

Caitlyn flinched at the words, her expression hardening with a mixture of emotions Vi couldn’t quite make sense of. Irritation was in there, she thought, and maybe that was understandable. But Vi wouldn’t let it break down her walls.

Even if she felt physically weathered, even if she felt devastatingly alone, Vi liked to believe that the one thing she could always count on was her conviction.

“You don’t understand, Vi–”

“I understand more than you think, actually,” Vi interrupted, her voice rising despite the fatigue weighing her down. She sat up straighter still, meeting Caitlyn’s gaze head-on. “I understand that you’re scared, Cait.” And that was just it, wasn’t it? Fear. Vi knew it well. “But crawling back to the thing that scares you isn’t going to make it better.”

She watched Caitlyn’s jaw tighten, and for a moment, Vi thought she might back down. Thought maybe she’d finally struck the right chord. But then Caitlyn moved, quick and sudden – too quickly and too suddenly for someone with bruised ribs and a concussion. The calm exterior shattered as she surged forward and Vi launched to her feet.

“Get out of the way!” Caitlyn’s voice cracked as she reached around Vi’s sturdy body for the doorknob. But Vi was fast, and unafraid of physical altercations.

She was excellent at them, actually, and if Caitlyn wanted one, Vi would give it.

Her hands caught Caitlyn by the wrists, dragging them away from the knob she’d just managed to get her fingers on.

“Cait, stop,” Vi tried, her voice low and steady, though her heart was now pounding chaotically in her chest.

“Let me go!” Caitlyn twisted in her grasp, her movements frantic now, desperate. It occurred to Vi that Caitlyn fought this hard despite her injuries, despite whatever searing pain she must have been in now. She might have thought it admirable, were it not so foolish.

Caitlyn wouldn’t win.

Vi wouldn’t let her go this time.

Her grip intensified as the wrists she held attempted to slip free, but this only encouraged Caitlyn to work harder. She shoved, and Vi staggered, the heavy cloak of her exhaustion making it just a little more challenging than usual to hold her ground. But she refused to let go. “Damn it, Cait, listen to me!”

They were scuffling now. It wasn’t clean, and Vi sensed that neither one was truly willing to hurt the other to get what they wanted. Caitlyn grabbed and pushed and tugged. Vi held and restrained and blocked. But they didn’t strike, they didn’t scratch.

It was practically child’s play, were it not for the severity of the circumstances surrounding them.

“No, you listen!” Caitlyn’s hand curled over the collar of her jacket and yanked it sharply. Vi doubled forward with the force of it and for just a breath of time, she lost control of her hands.

They slipped, and in her desperate attempt to recover her hold, they connected firmly with Caitlyn’s waist.

A sharp cry filled the room, bright and feminine. Vi thought the walls would simply burst open with it. She watched with wide gray eyes as Caitlyn stumbled backwards, arms wrapped around her middle. Her heel caught on a raised floorboard and knocked her off balance. Vi was too far away this time to catch her when she fell and the sound of a body colliding with the floor might as well have been a bomb detonating.

It was what this new sensation felt like to Vi. The ringing silence in her ears. The chaos of destruction. The paralyzing feeling of helplessness. All things she’d only barely started recovering from, crashing into her universe all over again.

She didn’t catch her. She failed.

“Damn it, Caitlyn,” Vi murmured. Only now that their little quarrel was over did Vi realize her lungs were labored, her chest expanding with the clipped nature of her heavy breaths. Her nostrils flared as she stared at Caitlyn in the renewed silence. It was the kind of calm that came after a vicious storm. The sort of quiet that didn’t match its surroundings. Half the beach torn away from the shore and dragged into the ocean. Trees with limbs broken or dangling in the streets they proudly decorated. Debris scattered and forgotten after its wild ride in the wind. Peace and horror in one.

Oil and water.

“What are you doing?”

Vi didn’t answer the question as she pushed herself off of the crate and crossed the room. Not to Caitlyn, but to the corner at the foot of the bed, where she’d spent so much time watching – waiting – while Caitlyn remained unconscious. She bent at the knees, a deep crouch, and retrieved something unseen from the shadows.

Only now did she move to the tumbled commander, a set look in her eyes. A determination in her jaw that squared it off, stiff and unwilling to be reckoned with.

“Vi?”

She knelt at Caitlyn’s side and reached unceremoniously for one of the wrists she’d held before. They were thin and slippery – no wonder she’d lost her grip. But it wouldn’t be a mistake she made twice.

It didn’t feel right, not really. Not when Vi had been questioning Ambessa’s influence in Caitlyn’s life since the moment Maddie came knocking on her door. But desperate times and all that shit – Vi wasn’t about to let Caitlyn slip away. Not again.

This wasn’t about control, Vi told herself with a bite of her bottom lip. It was about protecting Caitlyn, whether she saw it that way or not.

The handcuffs clicked and clacked as she closed one side around Caitlyn’s wrist. Vi made sure it was tight enough to prevent a hand from slipping through, because damn were Caitlyn’s hands slender. The metal wasn’t tight enough to cut into bone and skin, though. Vi made sure of it.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Whatever it takes,” Vi finally answered, her voice stern.

She snapped the other cuff onto her own wrist and cranked it shut.

To say Caitlyn was irate would have been a terribly gross understatement. 

Her anger flared hot and bright, a natural reaction to the audacity of Vi’s actions, but it didn’t mask the undercurrent of something colder. Fear continued to gnaw at the edges of her composure, sharp and persistent. She didn’t like the feeling of being restrained. The cuffs weren’t just a nuisance, they were a reminder of something buried in the deep, dark trenches of Caitlyn’s psyche.

A lack of choice. The staunch and unfeeling removal of her agency.

It terrified her as much as it infuriated her, but the anger was easier to show now.

She stared at the gleaming metal that connected her wrist to Vi’s, dangling unceremoniously – so stupidly – between them.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Cait said, her voice sharp with disbelief. She tugged at the cuff around her wrist, but it didn’t budge. She’d been struggling with it for the better part of ten minutes, but nothing was changing. Vi had left just enough room for the thing to spin freely, but nowhere near enough to allow her hand to slip free. “Vi, take this off. Right now.”

“Nope.”

Vi had claimed a horizontal space on the bed now. She looked far too smug for someone so obviously exhausted – and for someone whose logic was clearly quite flawed. Caitlyn watched as she leaned back against the pillows and stretched out her body, free hand tucking itself beneath her head.

If Caitlyn found the way her elbow stuck up behind her notably pink hair endearing, no one but her would have to know.

“Vi, this is ridiculous.” Caitlyn’s voice rose, but Vi didn’t even flinch. Her eyes were already half-closed, her breathing slowing as if she was determined to fall asleep in record time. Now that Caitlyn had apparently been… sufficiently restrained, Vi would find it easy, wouldn’t she? Caitlyn stood there next to the bed, fiddling with the cuff in her opposite hand, her efforts aimless without a key.

Some might have found her lack of knowledge regarding the implements ironic, considering her profession. But Caitlyn was now reminded of the fact that she’d never actually made an arrest in her brief time as an enforcer.

When her attempt came up fruitless, Caitlyn growled quietly and gave the cuffs a shake. “Vi, I mean it.”

“I said no,” Vi muttered, her voice drowsy but firm. “You’re not going anywhere, and I need sleep. So just… chill out, Cupcake.”

Caitlyn stared down at her, aghast. Chill out? At a time like this?

Was she daft?

“No. Absolutely not.” Caitlyn’s tone bristled with disapproval and disdain. She gave the cuffs a sharp tug, yanking Vi’s arm so roughly her entire torso jostled with the force of it.

Infuriatingly, Vi seemed unbothered.

“You don’t get to pull this nonsense and then just… nap like it’s the most cavalier thing in the world.”

Vi groaned, apparently more offended by Caitlyn’s blathering than she was the childish rattling of her arm. She rolled onto her side, dragging Caitlyn a step closer in the process. Her knees bumped the edge of the bed. “Can’t hear you,” Vi sing-songed quietly, her voice muffled against the pillow.

Caitlyn narrowed her eyes. “Oh, you’ll hear me.”

She jerked against the cuffs again, harder this time, forcing Vi’s arm to flop backwards at an awkward angle. “This is completely absurd. What do you think this is going to accomplish?” Another sharp tug. It wasn’t even about trying to free herself at this point. “Keeping me tethered to you like some animal?”

Vi only hummed, a non-committal response, clearly half-asleep already.

“Unbelievable,” Caitlyn muttered under her breath. She gave her wrist another steady pull, and another. Rhythmic with it now, every yank making Vi grunt or shift. The only sleepy signs of disapproval she offered. “You know,” she continued, her tone deliberately conversational, “this is probably the most idiotic thing you’ve done. And that’s saying something, considering the number of questionable decisions I’ve seen you make myself.” Vi didn’t budge. “Should we travel back to the beginning? When you pawned me off as a courtesan at the brothel and left me there none-the-wiser?”

Vi groaned, rolling onto her back and glaring up at Caitlyn with two bleary gray eyes. “Cait, I’m begging you. Just shut the fuck up.”

“Oh, I’m just getting started,” Caitlyn said, her voice dipped in cyanide saccharine. She tugged on the cuffs for emphasis. “We both know where abandoning me led you–”

Vi retaliated, her swiftness unexpected considering the lackadaisical attitude she’d flaunted since the moment her body hit the bed. Suddenly sitting up, Vi yanked on the cuffs herself so hard that Caitlyn’s mouth snapped shut. Her long body swayed like a tree in the wind. Before she could react, the force of Vi’s pull sent her stumbling forward.

She crashed unceremoniously into Vi’s lap, her ribs protesting the abrupt movement and the messy landing. A tight gasp escaped her, but Caitlyn couldn’t argue. Not against any of it. She didn’t have the breath for it. Her free hand gripped Vi’s shoulder for balance, and it was sturdy. Dependable. The other… it fell naturally onto Vi’s hand between them. Because of the cuffs, influencing its trajectory. 

The shortness of breath in her lungs, it wasn’t because of anxiety. It wasn’t another panic attack settling like a boulder on her chest. The walls weren’t closing in, the room wasn’t spinning.

She was just… close to Vi. So close she could count the freckles on her cheeks. If she wanted to.

“Caitlyn,” Vi said, her voice rough and low. Not just with exhaustion, Caitlyn realized now, but with something else. Something even more taxing. With mere inches between them, Caitlyn could see it. A tension vibrating at a different frequency. “We were blown up.” Right, Caitlyn thought. It occurred to her that she still didn’t really understand what happened back at the commune, or how she ended up here… with Vi. “You slept. I haven’t.” 

A frown pulled at Caitlyn’s lips. The weight of it tugged on her eyebrows, too, a gentle furrow that might look familiar. If Vi looked close enough. She’d spent plenty of time looking at her in just this way – with concern, and sympathy.

The urge to press her hand to the side of Vi’s face swept over her, captured her heart in a tight fist. It was a fierce pull, but Caitlyn resisted it.

“Fine,” she finally mumbled. The single sound was drowning in surrender and Caitlyn carefully uncoiled herself from Vi’s arms. Standing was no graceful feat and her expression pinched with discomfort as her ribs ached in protest. Caitlyn pressed a hand to them once she was on her feet, but didn’t say a word about the pain. “Sleep,” she agreed. Her eyes met Vi’s, and a quiet moment passed between them.

Vi had things to say. She could tell.

Maybe Caitlyn had a few things she thought needed to be said, too.

But now wasn’t the time.

Caitlyn slid carefully to the floor beside the bed, long legs stretched out in front of her along the floorboards. She leaned back, breathed slowly, and tried not to be annoyed by the way her arm hung awkwardly beside her. Suspended halfway up the bed, dangling limply from the cuff attached to Vi’s wrist.

Vi’s hand hung off the side of the bed. It, too, was boneless, long fingers drooping over the center of the cuffs that linked them.

Caitlyn felt the deft brush of fingertips over the top of her hand – a fleeting, fragile connection – and let it linger without a word.

Chapter Text

Caitlyn didn’t want to fall asleep.

She already felt like she’d missed so much. The gaps in her memory were yet another thing to earn her concern. That particular pile in her brain had grown disturbingly large in recent months — the precarious stack of things she worried over. Caitlyn spent a great deal of time and energy trying not to look at it. Life was simpler if she just pretended it wasn’t there at all.

Singed had failed to tell them exactly what, or who, they were hunting for in the Undercity. Once a man, now a beast. Caitlyn hadn’t asked questions and she realized now how naive a thing that was. To follow blindly, and to accept the task at hand without further investigation. The Caitlyn Kiramman she’d been before she donned the heavy cape of the commander never would have allowed such negligence. Why could she see that now, but not then? 

If he was once a man, what happened to him? Whose battles had he died fighting? What did his loved ones look like, the ones he left behind? Were they still around, still looking for him? Still missing him?

Still loving him?

Caitlyn didn’t pretend to understand how hextech worked. Jayce built their weapons and supplied their crystals. Caitlyn pointed the gun, pulled the trigger. Viktor built a home and preached of a better way. The people came. What more was there to know? Only now did Caitlyn even attempt to put some of the pieces together. There was a man inside the beast, and they tracked the beast into the commune. To Viktor, the healer. Viktor, the provider of a better way.

Could he have slain the beast and saved the man?

Who were they to think it was their right to stop it?

All of these questions came too late, pointless now. Frivolous paths of thought that only burdened Caitlyn further. 

Lean legs folded up towards her body and Caitlyn used her right hand to peel the boots from her feet. It was a quiet respite, easy and secret. She hadn’t even noticed the ache of her heels until they were free and Caitlyn released a heavy sigh. With the stretch of her long arm, she set the boots on the floor near the foot of the bed, neatly side by side.

Her left hand was beginning to lose feeling, blood draining steadily from her fingers. The sensation of pin pricks over her skin as it cooled was unpleasant, but Caitlyn did not immediately seek to rectify the discomfort. It was mild compared to the rest. Bearable. If she could shove a single inconvenience into the depths, it would be the pounding in her head. She could feel her pulse thumping thick in her temple, an inescapable reminder of how she’d ended up here. Her mind already felt like a labyrinth of fragmented thoughts, with jagged fissures that threatened to drag her down with the smallest misstep. The pressure inside her skull only made the minefield a more treacherous place to navigate.

But it was the only terrain available to Caitlyn now, sitting alone in this room with nothing but the soft sound of Vi’s breathing to keep her company.

Caitlyn swallowed hard as Ambessa’s face slowly materialized before her. She could see it in every dark corner of the room, no matter which way she looked. If she closed her eyes, the general was there in the black, waiting. 

Come home, child.

A warm breath on the back of her neck. Caitlyn swore she felt it and gasped quietly as her hand flew beneath her hair. She rubbed at the nape with anxious fingers and slowly, quietly, turned her head to look behind her at Vi.

She hadn’t moved. Was still lost to sleep, melted onto her right side. The corner of her mouth glistened, but she didn’t drool. Not quite. It, too, was admittedly charming, but not enough so to distract Caitlyn from the golden eyes that haunted her.

Before facing forward again, her troubled gaze landed on the hand that dangled off the edge of the bed. It hung close to her face. Close enough that Caitlyn could tell Vi had taken time to clean herself up. To wash her hands, to change her wraps. Her fingers were long. So long, with some healing scrapes and bruises around her knuckles.

Caitlyn recognized the urge that filled her. It started in her belly, warm honey, and spun up her spine. Thick, languid, it seeped into her veins and traveled out through her limbs until she all but tasted it on her tongue. She wanted to touch these fingers, to trace their lengths and feel the contours of those powerful knuckles beneath her own.

She felt the ghost of a tender caress against her cheek and bit back a mournful breath for all she had turned her back on. Every good thing she’d had within her grasp, then crushed like glass into a million tiny fragments.

Looking at that limp hand, Ambessa’s watchful stare felt less intense. Couldn’t quite reach her like it could before. There was relief in it – wasn’t there always relief in the power of Vi’s hands? The way they picked Caitlyn up when she fell, the way they held her when her heart broke. Even without the gauntlets, Vi’s hands possessed an inexplicable magic. And maybe no one else in their world could see it, but Caitlyn selfishly thought that maybe it was better that way.

She uncurled her own fist where it dangled a handful of inches below Vi’s. Her palm stretched, her fingers reached. A tingling sensation moved rapidly through them, the blood recirculating through flesh gone cold. Her deft touch smoothed slowly along the inside of Vi’s fingers, a whisper of contact. Caitlyn watched as it happened, transfixed. Her hand climbed higher, like her heart in her throat. The blunts of her nails skimmed up the planes of a warm palm. Caitlyn filled her lungs, a slow breath that reached deep. Her ribs protested the subtle shift of her torso, but the bolt of pain went ignored when Caitlyn’s thumb brushed over Vi’s pinky. She watched that, too, her focus consumed by that fleeting touch.

Vi finally twitched, just slightly, but Caitlyn didn’t jerk away.

The corners of her lips turned up instead, and she continued her careful exploration.

The backs of her knuckles tucked into the wide curve of Vi’s palm. A perfect fit. And when Caitlyn unfolded her fingers, they reached the metal cuff around Vi’s wrist. In this position, her hand supported the slight and intimate weight of Vi’s, still boneless and soft.

Her next breath came easier.

With her heartbeat at the back of her tongue, Caitlyn leaned into the hand she held. Gently pressed her forehead to Vi’s fingers and just… existed.

For a moment, nothing else did.

When Vi’s hand moved, it was so subtle that Caitlyn didn’t notice it at first. A flutter of fingers, a quiver of her palm. Even when she caught on, Caitlyn didn’t run away. Cerulean eyes were hidden away behind her lashes, fighting against the emotion that threatened at her tear ducts. So she didn’t see it when Vi’s pinky extended, when it smoothed gently over her cheekbone.

Caitlyn’s breath caught in her throat. The sound was reminiscent of someone crying. Not sobbing, not weeping. Just… being, silently and sorrowfully.

“If you wanted to hold my hand, Cupcake, you could’ve just asked.”

Now that Vi had proven herself awake, Caitlyn took less care with her touch. No longer afraid of disturbing a rest sorely needed. Her wrist straightened, their stacked hands lifted. Caitlyn guided Vi’s to her face, so when she slid her own fingers down and away, Vi’s were left there against her cheek. And she gave Caitlyn what she needed, a firmer press of that palm against her. Stabilizing, capable of providing a profound comfort unlike any Caitlyn had known before.

Her tears stained Vi’s wraps. She didn’t need to lift her head to know that steel blue eyes were looking at her now.

“I don’t know how to anymore,” Caitlyn confessed in a broken whisper. It wasn’t just that Vi felt unreachable to her, standing on the opposite side of a river with a current too powerful to fight. It was that Caitlyn didn’t know how to ask for things at all . Didn’t even know what it meant now to want something that wasn’t simply granted to her for one reason or another. Her name, her wealth, her title. People had been in the habit of giving her things she didn’t need, things she didn’t even really want – not just recently, but her whole life. 

Her time spent as the commander only exacerbated this phenomenon. People gave and gave, but they also took. It was for them, not her. She didn’t need another bouquet of flowers, nor another card filled with hollow condolences. She didn’t require deep bows or pledges of faith to make it through the day. All of these things, they made no honest difference, but it made them feel better about themselves. It made them feel important.

In the darkness, a reflection of a woman she didn’t recognize shimmered into focus. As if surfacing from the depths of the ocean, lit only by stars. This woman’s dark tresses were a midnight blue, her eyes rich and dazzling sapphires that were empty behind their sheen. Her two front teeth had never quite grown together, and she wore two matching bruises on her hip bones.

Those marks left behind on her body, they weren’t for Caitlyn. They belonged to the woman to whom Caitlyn answered, and they served no purpose but to remind her of exactly that.

Where she sat curled beside a stranger’s bed, Caitlyn pressed her right hand to her hip. Firmly. The ache was almost gone, the purple paint left behind on her skin by a recent bout with Ambessa fading steadily into ugly shades of green and yellow. 

The next breath that escaped her lungs was a sob and Caitlyn clung tightly to Vi’s wrist beneath the cuff. Her grip trembled with the force of her emotions, but Vi didn’t rescind her touch. Didn’t let her go.

“Talk to me, Cait.”

How could Caitlyn speak when she felt like she couldn’t even breathe?

“I don’t know how, Vi,” she repeated herself, turning more fully into the hand at her cheek. The angle wasn’t quite natural, but even as the thought crossed Caitlyn’s mind, Vi moved. She understood without prompting and shifted on the bed, laid herself closer to the edge so the strain on their connected arms lessened. Caitlyn matched her movements, legs folding, body twisting in a way that drew them nearer.

Vi’s hand adjusted, opened fully against the side of Caitlyn’s face, and held her. 

“Funny you should say that,” Vi murmured. It wasn’t the response Caitlyn anticipated and it made her look up, eyes naturally wide, to regard Vi with uncertainty. “I barely managed to get you to shut up not that long ago.”

Despite the shadows creeping steadily through her body like fog in the night, Caitlyn laughed. One small, breathless little laugh that rocked her chest.

It made Vi smile, and Caitlyn wondered when she last saw that.

But the moment of reprieve faded as quickly as it came. The light and airy sound of Caitlyn’s laugh settled like ash on the floor around them.

“What’s in your head, Cait?”

Caitlyn knew immediately that it was the right question, because she knew exactly what was in her head. It wouldn’t be the sort of answer Vi sought. It wasn’t an emotion, or the claws of fear scratching at her door. It was just a pair of amber eyes, staring at her. Watching her every move, judging her every thought.

“She is,” Caitlyn whispered, as if the woman herself would know she was being spoken of. “Ambessa.” The name shivered off Caitlyn’s lips and she pressed closer to the edge of the bed, clutched tighter to Vi’s wrist. Another glistening tear escaped from a wide blue eye and Vi predictably swept it away with her thumb before it got too far. “She’s always there.” There were but inches between their faces and if Caitlyn took a moment, she could have counted the shades of grays and blues that built worlds inside Vi’s irises. “Even now. With you.”

Caitlyn recognized the irony in that and tried to decipher its meaning. For months, lying awake at night — so often with Ambessa filling the space beside her — Caitlyn saw these eyes in the darkness. She’d considered them a haunting at the time, as if Vi had been nothing but a specter sent to judge her in her most vulnerable hours. She was the beating heart of Caitlyn’s moral compass, and a reminder that her actions had damning consequences. 

But Caitlyn had failed to heed the warnings.

Now that Vi was actually here, a guiding light back to the path Caitlyn had strayed so far from, it was Ambessa who filled the role of phantom. Condemnatory, and inescapable.

Vi remained silent for many seconds, seemingly taking it all on board. Caitlyn’s grip intensified, fingertips pressing deftly into the collection of veins and tendons that decorated the inside of Vi’s wrist while she waited. For something. For Vi to say anything.

“Why are you loyal to her?”

It wasn’t a question. It was a swift blow to the chest that left Caitlyn reeling and despite every urge to bathe herself in the solace Vi provided just by breathing, troubled blue eyes fell away from their shared gaze.

Caitlyn looked inward in search of an answer, and came back with nothing but platitudes. Nothing that would satisfy Vi’s inquiry, because even Caitlyn could see that they weren’t answers of substance.

I had no one else.

Even just thinking the words pulled back the curtains hiding Caitlyn’s mistakes from sight. There was but a single soul responsible for the solitude she thought she could blame for her fealty, and it wasn’t Ambessa.

“She’s been there for me,” Caitlyn murmured without looking up. The moment her lips finished shaping the words, she wished she could take them back. It was no better, nothing more than a slight shift in perspective. There were others who’d have been there for her, Caitlyn silently berated herself. If only she had let them.

She thought of Maddie. Pictured the junior officer’s eager eyes and buoyant posture, felt her stomach roll with regret. Maddie had stayed at her side through it all, respected the position Caitlyn had unwittingly stepped into, and still… Caitlyn had cast her aside. Why had she done that?

A sorrowful furrow tugged at Caitlyn’s brows as her eyes slowly climbed back up to Vi’s. There she saw the hurt she expected to, etched finely into Vi’s stunning and scarred features. 

If she sought a monster to blame, Caitlyn need look no further than beyond her own nose.

“She’s been a mentor,” Caitlyn grasped desperately for a way to recover from her own insensitivity. “The sort of… figure in my life I thought I’d lost forever.” This approach was also a failure, Caitlyn realized with a start. Because the figure she referred to was her mother, and what a horrific comparison to draw.

It wasn’t just her mother’s honor and nobility that Caitlyn sullied by bringing Ambessa anywhere near her memory. It was the idea that anyone occupying a maternal space in her life would do the sort of things Ambessa had done with her… The sort of things Ambessa had done to her.

Caitlyn’s lungs seized as the fragile peace she’d found began unraveling, the floor beneath her vibrating with a sinister frequency.

“If that’s true, then why are you afraid of her?”

Slowly, with painstaking care, Caitlyn pulled Vi’s hand away from her face. She wished to retreat from it, desperate to let go, but the cuffs kept her from going far. “I never said I was–”

“You don’t have to say it, Cait. She scares the shit out of you.”

The protective walls she’d built around her thoughts were disintegrating. The dam burst wide, releasing a current that fought to sweep away Caitlyn’s tenuous grip on clarity. It was shattering and as Caitlyn struggled to fill her lungs, she pressed her right hand to her face, covered her eyes behind her fingers that shook against one another. Vi chased that hand, wrapped a firm grip around her wrist. 

“Why do you let her?”

The eyes were back. Glinting gold, emblazoned and furious. Wherever Ambessa was now, no matter how unreachable Vi thought they might be, Caitlyn felt the pressing weight of the general’s disapproval. It was crippling her shoulders, crushing her chest. So suddenly, Caitlyn shoved Vi’s hand away from her and stood to her feet, turned to pace away the riptide of anxiety. But her wrist cuffed to Vi’s stopped her momentum, an abrupt tug on her arm that had Caitlyn huffing out in irritation. She turned on her heels – silent now without her boots – and gave the cuffs a violent shake. 

“Sorry, Cupcake.” Vi’s arm was strong and sturdy. It barely swung even as Caitlyn raged indignantly against their bonds. “It’s still no.”

This time, the nickname only further exacerbated Caitlyn’s annoyance. Vi sat there on the edge of the bed, once again acting like she was completely unbothered by the inconvenience of having an untamed wolf attached to her. They’d somehow come full circle and Caitlyn didn’t know to whom she should assign responsibility. Vi, for the nature of the questions she’d asked? The amber eyes looming in the darkness?

Or was it simply Caitlyn’s own fault? 

“So you’d be just like her, then?” Caitlyn asked with incredulity. The edge was back, the bitterness a bite of the ocean in winter. 

Vi looked offended by the accusation, and that provided Caitlyn with a modicum of satisfaction. “How do you figure?”

“You’d strip me of my agency?” she snapped, shaking the cuffs for emphasis.

The shrewd back and forth of their bickering faded rapidly, the only evidence that it had swept by at all was the accelerated pace of Caitlyn’s breathing. She watched Vi stand, somewhat alarmed by the stillness that suddenly encased them. When Vi took a step forward, Caitlyn took one back. But there was no escaping her approach, not with the damned cuffs tethering them.

“Is that what she did?” Vi asked quietly. The expression she wore was chillingly grave and Caitlyn recognized that she didn’t care for it at all. Not on Vi, whose softness towards her had always been such a respite. “Stripped you of your agency?”

Caitlyn hardly remembered saying the words and that fact was made evident by the look on her face, flush with something like bewilderment. 

“I didn’t–”

“Yes you did, Cait,” Vi cut her off again and took a step closer. This time, Caitlyn remained frozen, eyes wide, lips slightly parted. Without her heels and Vi still wearing the advantage of her boots, they were closer in height. A disconcerting new discovery. She thought maybe she could feel the warmth of Vi’s breath on her chin. “Stop pulling that shit with me.”

“I’m not trying to pull anything,” Caitlyn argued with a subtle shake of her head. The sting in her voice had faded. “What… What did I say?”

She watched the tension in Vi’s brows release, just slightly. It was almost like witnessing the moment one discovered the solution to an insufferable equation and Caitlyn was sure she’d stopped breathing.

Chapter Text

“I recommend we establish checkpoints throughout the Undercity.”

The breeze blowing lazily through Piltover caught the edges of Caitlyn’s cape. The air lifted it away from her ankles, billowed behind her and tugged subtly at the clasp beneath her throat. Made it feel heavier than it already was. She turned her gaze away from the city she now commanded, body pivoting until she faced Ambessa, who stood in the middle of the empty space that had once been their council chambers. A brow lifted and Caitlyn frowned.

“Checkpoints?”

“Yes,” Ambessa hummed a confirmation, gesturing vaguely with her right hand. The other was on her hip, a dignified stance of confidence. It was thicker than any armor the Noxian general wore, and glinted just as brightly. “Guard posts. Enforcers spread evenly across the Lanes,” Ambessa went on to clarify. Caitlyn remained where she stood, decorating the gaping hole left behind by the senseless attack that had stolen her mother, while Ambessa circled slowly around what was left of the councilor’s table. “It will allow us to do more than listen for whispers – if Jinx moves, we will know.”

Caitlyn’s jaw tightened with fury at the sound of her name. She simply couldn’t contain the rage that coursed through her like a second set of veins, pumping viciously. Her expression hardened with the feelings, gloved hands curling into fists at her sides beneath the cape.

An echo of Jinx’s laugh filled the room, traveled in maddening circles around the commander before filtering up into the blue sky.

“No one wants her apprehended more than I do,” Caitlyn spoke, her voice low, a cool cut of steel. “But flooding the Undercity with enforcers will only further infuriate the Zaunites against us,” she argued. Despite her lust for vengeance against Jinx, Caitlyn could still see that the ideals of one did not inherently denote the ideals of the many. “Jinx acted alone. We would be remiss to hold all of Zaun accountable for her decisions.”

“Is that not precisely what we should do?” Ambessa replied without pause. Blue eyes, sharp like crystals, followed the general’s movements as she paced about the shell of the council chambers while Caitlyn continued to stand perfectly still, caressed by the wind. “Show them our strength, and who will they fault?” She recognized a glimmer of something unsettling in Ambessa’s amber eyes. It made Caitlyn’s stomach turn over on itself. “Not us, child – her .”

Caitlyn wondered if that was true, or if Ambessa was simply spinning possibilities to sway her decision. And it was Caitlyn’s decision, one she did not take lightly.

“There is but one way to draw a rabbit from its burrow,” Ambessa continued. Caitlyn felt her breath catch with anticipation for something violent. “Smoke it out.”

It was a deeply unsavory metaphor, but Caitlyn understood it plenty. Their reach in the Undercity was not so powerful as to scoop Jinx from whatever hole she was hiding in now. Ambessa implied that their only recourse was to hope her own people turned against her – make the home inhospitable, and the rabbit would flee it.

“No,” Caitlyn said firmly, shoulders shifting as she set them squarely to Ambessa. “The Zaunites are not at our disposal to use as tools when it is convenient for us,” she carried on, pointing a finger behind her for emphasis. “Especially when the council has so often seen fit to leave them out of their considerations entirely.”

“Tools?” Ambessa repeated, clearly a bit surprised to find Caitlyn so immovable in the matter. 

Perhaps she thought the argument would be easier to make, considering the activities of the strike force Caitlyn herself had led below Piltover. But that was different – using the Grey against the chem barons had been pointed and purposeful. They used the tunnels, and made every effort to keep innocents out of it. What Ambessa suggested now was nondiscriminatory. Everyone would suffer. Zaun would be rife with tension not just for Jinx, but for all. Caitlyn would not allow it.

“Yes. We will not use them as your proverbial smoke, Ambessa.”

Keen blue eyes caught the way Ambessa stroked a hand over her right arm. Her gaze fell briefly to watch it as it happened, and noticed that the general wore a band of stones she’d never seen before. Caitlyn thought little of it and realigned her gaze to Ambessa’s stern face.

“And what alternative do you propose, Commander?” Ambessa’s voice filled the council chambers like a baritone. She was moving again, taking steps closer now. “Shall we send an invitation to Jinx’s doorstep, politely requesting her surrender?” Caitlyn had never heard Ambessa speak in sarcasm before, and it unsettled her now. As Ambessa drew ever nearer, Caitlyn thought it became just the slightest bit harder to breathe. “Or perhaps you believe she’ll walk into a cell of her own volition?”

Caitlyn’s expression narrowed with frustration. “I’m suggesting we focus on precision. There is no need to disrupt the lives of an entire district we claim is under our protection.”

“Precision, you say?” Ambessa barked out a wolfish laugh. “A fine notion – on paper. But Jinx has slipped through your fingers before, has she not? Each day she remains free emboldens her and weakens you.” As Ambessa floated onto the bottom most step of the platform on which Caitlyn stood, she dragged in a deep breath. It expanded her chest, broadened her shoulders. Made the cape widen around her body, just a little. “Hesitation breeds failure, child. You were not named commander to soothe the fragile egos of the downtrodden.”

Ambessa rose another step closer, but Caitlyn stood her ground. “Heavy-handed tactics will not foster loyalty, Ambessa.” Of this, Caitlyn was completely certain. She’d been there, she’d seen herself how the people of the Undercity lived because the powers in Piltover couldn’t be bothered to dirty their hands with it. They wouldn’t help, even if indirectly. “We would be foolish to ever believe they’d give us Jinx.”

“Do not mistake their silence for loyalty, Caitlyn. Fear commands obedience far better than gratitude ever could.”

The idea made Caitlyn feel ill, a notion demonstrated in the downward curl of her lips. What Ambessa suggested now was manipulation, plain and simple. Coercion. Twisting the arms of thousands of innocents to provoke their cooperation, rather than earning it rightfully. It was maniacal, and entirely unacceptable.

“Make them feel the weight of our presence, and they’ll cast Jinx out themselves.” The distance between them was next to none now. In it, Ambessa’s hand pressed to her right forearm, fingers wrapped around the guard. Caitlyn didn’t notice it this time. “Better they burn their own than have us do it for them.”

At her sides, the tension slowly released from Caitlyn’s hands. Long fingers tingled as they unfurled from their fists, a silent and sudden surrender. “And when the fire spreads beyond Jinx?” she asked quietly, a reasonable doubt. “What then, General?”

“Then we extinguish it.”

The flame in the lantern on the bedside table had lessened in size since Vi first stepped into this space with an unconscious Caitlyn in her arms. It flickered violently now, threw shapes and shadows on the ceiling and walls that seemed to reflect the tension between them. They sat back to back on the bed, occupying the same space physically, but little else. It was a quiet and subdued compromise, coming to this position. A way of sharing the comfort of a mattress beneath them without having to look at one another, without having to talk. 

“You said she stripped you of your agency.”

Vi swallowed hard, her left hand twitching on the bed beside her. The metal cuff around her wrist shifted constantly, because Caitlyn hadn’t stopped moving since they sat down. Her fingers busied themselves by drawing unrecognizable patterns in the blanket. Vi didn’t ask why, and she wouldn’t ask her to stop.

“I said no such thing.”

The back and forth was becoming exhausting. Vi didn’t believe she was equipped to handle the mental acrobatics required to help pull Caitlyn from whatever cage she was trapped in, but… 

At least she saw the cage now. All she felt capable of was reaching through the bars for the girl she knew she loved, but it didn’t feel like enough. Alone and with nothing, Vi wasn’t strong enough to pry those bars open. She had stubbornness on her side, sure, and a certain power of will that made her resilient in some ways. It wasn’t often she got knocked down in a fight without getting up again, but her muscles meant nothing in this kind of battle. Forcing Caitlyn through the slats of her cage didn’t seem like the right approach. It might only hurt her further.

They needed the key. It was the only way forward Vi could see in the dark. 

Vi’s stomach suddenly released a low grumble. She looked down at it in disapproval, as if it could feel remorse for interrupting their fragile silence. It did nothing but lurch again, a rolling whine of hunger that tugged at her insides and directed Vi’s gaze to the wooden chest that now sat beside the door. On it was a plate of food, delivered a short while ago by Scar and a little girl who looked like him whose name Vi didn’t know.

They hadn’t touched it. Even from a short distance, Vi could see the edges of the apple slices turning brown.

“What were you even doing in the fissures?”

It was the first thing either one of them had said in what felt like ages. The cuff around her wrist stilled, a palpable relief that Vi wouldn’t acknowledge out loud.

“Ambessa was tracking a chem weapon,” Caitlyn answered after far too many seconds of tense silence. “A beast she encountered at Stillwater.” There came a pensive pause after the mention of the prison. Vi thought she felt Caitlyn’s spine stiffen against her back. “It slaughtered more than a dozen enforcers.”

Vi’s breath tripped in her throat, steel blue eyes going wide. Her posture went just as rigid as Caitlyn’s, fingers curling tightly into the blanket at her sides.

“Jinx was there. At the commune,” Caitlyn continued without prompting, but these words met her ears as if she were underwater. Vi felt it rising, and it sucked the oxygen from her lungs.

Were they on a carousel? Destined to go round in circles, taking turns falling apart and picking up each other’s pieces?

“I saw her. And the young girl.” Isha, Vi thought mournfully. She barely managed to choke down a ragged breath. “What were you doing in the fissures?”

An urge to curl her legs up to her chest pulsed through Vi, like a command from an unseen master. It was born of a compulsion to make herself small, like she’d done many times, alone in her own apartment. Like it would make her harder to see. Harder to find. But even the tightest fetal position hadn’t saved her from the visions of Caitlyn that came in the dark, and Vi managed to shut down that urge.

“Trying to save our dad,” Vi admitted quietly, staring straight ahead at the wall.

Quiet came again, their watcher. It never seemed to wander far and it returned now, a tender check-in. Quiet offered them a firm embrace and somehow, it kept Vi from coming undone.

The glide of long fingers over her own startled Vi out of the stillness, back muscles flinching against the expanse of Caitlyn’s pressed against it.

“Did he make it?”

Her shield fractured, a crack in the armor she’d wrapped herself in since the moment she’d lifted Caitlyn’s limp body from the dirt. There wasn’t time for feelings and despite the abundant space she had now to let them come, Vi wished desperately to resist.

When she stretched her fingers, let them reach, Caitlyn’s fell into the valleys between. They laced, clasped. Held on tightly like that hand was Vi’s only remaining anchor.

“I don’t think so.”

Caitlyn squeezed her fingers, a silent offering of comfort and consolation. Maybe even the implication of invitation, and Vi took it. Because she needed it. Her head tipped back, vision blurring, and landed softly on Caitlyn’s shoulder. Caitlyn mirrored the position, so their heads rested side by side, both staring up without really seeing the ceiling. Blue hair tickled the shell of her ear, but it didn’t bother Vi. In fact, nothing that should have been bothersome was when it came to Caitlyn.

A deep breath filled her chest and Vi felt her back press tighter to Caitlyn’s. She blew it out slowly through pursed lips, staring dazedly at a crack in the ceiling. “I miss you, Cait,” she whispered. The clip of her words spoke of nerves, scared to lay her heart so bare at Caitlyn’s feet. Vi certainly hadn’t forgotten the last time she’d been vulnerable here – nothing had ever felt so right as when she’d held this girl in her arms, when Caitlyn’s breath had been her breath. But she hadn’t forgotten what happened after, either. It made sharing this sentiment feel daunting and Vi waited anxiously for the drop that awaited her at the end of this climb.

Caitlyn’s silence was accompanied by a sudden chill. The drop didn’t come. Vi shifted her weight on the bed, uneasy. There was nothing immediately out of place – no creaks of the floorboards or shadows moving in the dark – but something gnawed at her. A faint prickle at the back of her neck, a reminder from instincts honed over years and years of fighting, and protecting herself. She scanned the room, steel blue eyes flicking toward the door, the wooden chest and their untouched meal atop it undisturbed. 

Still, the tension pressed down on her, thick and cloying. The air felt heavier somehow, like the stillness before a storm. Vi’s jaw tightened as her hand shifted subtly beneath Caitlyn’s, ready to move.

The door burst open before she could act, spilling sunlight and shadows into the room. She jumped, and so did Caitlyn, their bodies twisting and colliding in an entirely unnatural way. It was too soon, too unexpected. Somewhere in the logical part of her brain, Vi knew a door opening was in no way as loud as an explosion, but it felt the same. Triggered all the same responses. She angled herself in front of Caitlyn, a protective instinct. But while she did, Caitlyn’s arms reached for her. Tried to pull her in. It was cacophonous and nonsensical –

Made all the more so when Vi squinted through the sunlight pouring in through the open door to find that their intruder wasn’t a threat at all.

At least, Vi hoped she wasn’t.

“Well,” Jinx’s raspy voice broke on the vowel and she laughed, the sound a bit hollow and grating. “This is awkward.”

Vi scoffed, rolled her eyes over the drama that had just ensued over nothing. “You always knew how to make an entrance,” Vi cooed sardonically at her little sister, who stood in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest. She leaned sideways against the frame, braids swaying lazily at her ankles. Those pink eyes were keen, though. Not quite recovered, Vi thought as she stared at them.

“Am I interrupting?”

“Aren’t you always?” Vi quipped in return, but she was already standing to her feet to cross the room and greet her sister. Her forward progress was halted, however, by the cuff at her wrist. The sharp tug on her arm was also a sharp reminder of exactly what Jinx had just walked in on and Vi turned quickly.

Caitlyn looked frozen. Touched by the hand of time itself, unmoving, her stare locked fiercely on the girl who stood at their door. Vi immediately moved back to her, a knee sinking into the edge of the bed. “Shit, Cait–”

“Is she dead?” Jinx’s humor was ill placed and the sound of her voice just didn’t seem to fit inside this room. It didn’t just disturb the layers of dust and unseen memories – it threatened to shatter whatever delicate sense of understanding Vi and Caitlyn had been carefully constructing in their slow time here. 

“Can you give us a minute?” Vi snapped at her sister, shooting Jinx a glare over her shoulder. She watched Jinx hold up two pale palms, as if reclaiming an innocence she hadn’t possessed in a very long time. “I’ll meet you out there,” Vi promised with a nod. “Just… give me a few.”

For once, Jinx got the hint. She disappeared, but the door was left wide open. Everything that lay beyond that threshold felt like a threat and Vi felt her breathing buckle.

They weren’t ready for it.

“Cait, please don’t leave,” Vi murmured as she dug into the pocket of her leather jacket for the mangled piece of wire she’d used to uncuff herself upon first arriving. “I really need to talk to her, but you have to stay here.”

Caitlyn had curled in on herself and Vi realized how strikingly familiar of a position it was. A reflection of the pose she’d craved adopting herself, not even ten minutes ago. Long legs she deeply admired were all but folded in half, tucked up against her chest. Caitlyn’s right arm wrapped around them, grip so tight Vi could see the tendons in the back of her hands taut with tension. 

And Caitlyn was buried into her knees. Completely hidden away, raven blue hair spilling around her bare shoulders.

She looked small, but not insignificant. When Vi’s lower lip trembled with an emotion she couldn’t identify, she promptly dug her teeth into it.

“I’m sorry,” Vi whispered. It felt like the only thing she could say, even if… she wasn’t completely sure what she apologized for. Her body shuffled sideways, sat herself more fully where Caitlyn’s toes curled firmly into the blanket. Vi lifted a hand with the intention of resting it on one of these upturned knees, but she stalled halfway to her destination.

A lump formed in her throat. Vi could feel her pulse racing inside it.

With a shake of her head, Vi looked down instead to watch as she deftly slid the curled wire into the hole of the cuff on her wrist. The sound of metal scraping, components shifting, was a soft orchestral movement between them.

“You’ve had the key in your pocket this whole time?” Caitlyn asked, her voice a bit hoarse and toeing a familiar line of annoyance.

Vi’s head snapped up, her weightless fringe of pink hair falling over her right eye as she regarded Caitlyn. She’d lifted her head, was watching Vi work now in a way that made her fingers stutter with anxiety. “No. It’s not a key,” she replied softly, carefully removing the strand of wire from the cuff to hold it up for inspection. The sunlight from the open door glinted brilliantly off the tarnished steel. “It’s nothing, really.” With a shrug of her shoulders, Vi returned her attention to the cuff and went back to work.

With a few practiced twists and cranks, Vi’s half of the cuff sprang free.

“How do you know how to do that?” 

Was that wonder in Caitlyn’s tone?

Vi simply shrugged, secretly pleased that Caitlyn didn’t immediately move away with her newfound freedom to do so. “I don’t know,” she murmured, feeling a little silly with what was effectively a non-answer to Caitlyn’s simple question. “I just do.”

Chapter Text

Vi closed the door behind her. The knob latched shut with an unusually loud, definitive click. There was a tug in her chest, as if her heart had been left on the other side. It felt unnatural, it made her steps feel heavy and slow. But Vi swallowed those feelings to turn her attention to Jinx, who stood at the edge of the landing looking out over the hideout. The tree, its many winding paths, and the people who called this hidden sanctuary home.

Beside her, sitting on the edge with her legs dangling, was Isha.

The relief flooded her system like a cool bath, soothing the fiery aches of emotional pain she’d been submerged in for so long. Not just the last handful of hours with Caitlyn, but… days. Weeks. Even longer than that. Vi took an easy breath and moved forward, knelt there beside Isha and placed a hand gently on her two-toned hair. She gave it an affectionate rustle. “Good to see you, Squirt.” Isha only giggled, pulled back the pouch of a slingshot she held firmly in her little hands, and fired off a pebble into the reaching limbs of the tree. When she looked up, Vi choked.

The bright, curious honeyed eyes Vi once knew were gone, replaced by a shocking bolt of familiar pink.

“Where are you going?”

“To save Isha.”

Vi corrected her expression quickly, fearful of alarming Isha with her surprise. She gave the kid a smirk, stole a pebble from the small satchel at her hip and tucked it into the leather holster of the slingshot. “Bet you can’t hit that knot in the trunk,” Vi claimed, a lighthearted challenge, as she pointed towards the tree and subsequent swirl in the bark that was about at eye level with them. Isha’s face set itself with determination and she hmphed , wiggling her shoulders before lining up her shot. It wasn’t for lack of power that Isha missed, the rock thudding into the trunk several inches to the left of her target. “Not bad, kid.” Vi gave her shoulder a gentle nudge. “Keep practicing.”

With her hand on her knee, Vi pushed herself to her feet again and turned her attention to her sister. Jinx angled towards her and it was without a need for words that they met in the middle. Vander’s return helped to tear down the walls between them. His new death shattered what remained of the rubble and it was with nothing but love and aloneness that the sisters embraced. The need for a familiar comfort pulled them in like gravity and Vi wrapped twice around Jinx’s waifish frame.

“What happened, Jinx?”

It wasn’t just the two of them that paused in the silence immediately after the question left her lips. It was like the hideout itself was covered in snowfall, thick and slow and quiet. The sounds of life that filtered up from the base of the tree couldn’t reach them here. Birds flying overhead ceased to chirp, even the flaps of their wings became mere figments. Vi squeezed tighter to her little sister.

“Don’t call me that,” Jinx whispered, face burrowed firmly against Vi’s strong shoulder.

Vi’s heart lurched inside her chest. She felt it beat against her ribs, and it made her lungs stutter. Her head lifted, arms unwinding from around Jinx’s lithe body so she could lift her hands and use them to frame her sister’s face.

Something was different. Something had changed.

“Okay,” Vi murmured softly. Powder blue eyes flicked slowly back and forth between violet pink. “What should I call you?” She wouldn’t make assumptions. She’d already spent enough time calling her sister by a name she no longer associated with, and Vi had grown enough to understand why she couldn’t do that anymore.

“I…” She watched those fuschia eyes falter with doubt and Vi slowly stroked over a pale cheek with her thumb. “I don’t know. Just not that.”

Vi’s lips pursed as she felt emotion rush to her eyes. They stung with a confusing mixture of thoughts, a swirling cocktail of colors she couldn’t understand. She thought she saw the brilliant bright white of relief, tucked deeply within the brush strokes. “Easy,” Vi agreed with a gentle nod of her head. One hand slid down Jinx’s sharp jaw, thumb settling at the center of her chin with a knuckle tucked beneath it. A charming and affectionate pinch. “What happened, Sis?” If it was good enough for Jinx to use, then it could be good enough for Vi, too.

And it felt big. It felt simply monumental to hear Jinx separate herself from the name, which had been born out of the juvenile antics of kids who simply didn’t understand the weight of their jokes. A name then nurtured by the dark and manipulative love of a man who thought he could craft this brilliant girl in his image of chaos and bloodshed.

It didn’t mean Powder was back, not necessarily. But it felt like a step in the right direction.

For a short time, they talked about the events that led to the explosion at Viktor’s commune, Vi’s brow furrowed through the whole of it. They sat on the edge of the landing, much like Isha, with their feet dangling. Vi leaned forward, elbows on her knees, as Jinx leaned back, palms pressed to the wood. It wasn’t just that Ambessa and her army invaded the compound, Vi learned – in fact, that had very little to do with it.

As Jinx described a scruffy man with tattered clothes and a big hammer, Vi turned her head away. Stared out at the tree with thoughts of Jayce swirling through her head.

“Isha and I watched the whole thing,” Jinx explained with a tone that was almost too matter-of-fact. Like she was trying to sound like it didn’t bother her, but Vi knew it to be a front. “He lugged that hunk of junk hammer into the herald’s hutch and – pow–” Vi glanced back to watch Jinx make an accompanying hand gesture. “No more fortunte cookies.”

A frown tugged at Vi’s lips as she shook her head, a small gesture that made her quaff of pink hair flutter in front of her eye. “I don’t get it,” she murmured. Not necessarily to Jinx – she knew her sister didn’t have the answers. It just didn’t make sense, did it? Viktor was helping people, curing them of their addiction to shimmer. He was actually getting through to Vander, all they’d needed was a little more time…

Vi pressed her hand to her forehead, shoulders slumped forward and body sagging over her own lap.

“After tin man went kaput, the cureds… they dropped like dead flies. Did you hear the shrieking?”

This time, Vi nodded. Just a slow up and down to indicate her answer. Even from Ambessa’s tent in the ravine, she’d heard them. Imagined she wouldn’t forget the sound of them any time soon.

“Madame Commander wanted to help.” This made Vi’s hand fall away from her face and she once again met Jinx’s gaze. She’d mentioned this, back in the commune. After the explosion. It wasn’t really the time for taking on sentimental feelings, but Vi felt them now. Relief that the Caitlyn she knew – the one who had a vice grip on her heart – was still in there somewhere. It didn’t matter a person’s station or their physical condition. If they needed help, Caitlyn was first in line to give it if it was within her power to do so.

Sometimes, even when it wasn’t. Vi knew that better than anyone.

“I could tell,” Jinx continued. “She grabbed one of the kids, held her real close. Like that’d stop the river from sweeping her away, too. Didn’t take long before she was screaming like the rest of ‘em, though.”

Of course Caitlyn tried to help a kid, Vi thought, turning her head in the opposite direction now to regard Isha. She still didn’t understand where the girl had come from. How she’d come to be in Jinx’s life, or under what circumstances she didn’t have a home or a family to disappear to. The sad reality was that Vi didn’t need an answer, and Isha didn’t need a reason. She was just one in hundreds of children in the Undercity who didn’t have a place to call their own.

They were the most helpless, and the ones most deserving of help. 

Vi’s chest tightened around a breath and she tore her gaze off of Isha, who was innocently using one rock to scratch white marks into another.

“What about the explosion?” Vi asked, returning her attention to her sister.

Jinx leaned forward, placing her arms on her knees one at a time. It wasn’t so she could look Vi square in the face, but rather, so she could look beyond her. Vi leaned back, head swiveling left and right again between Jinx and Isha. When they settled on the former, light blue eyes were wide with disbelief.

“She really is a mini me, huh?”

“But–” Dumbfounded, Vi struggled with the right question to ask. “How? Why?”

“Because she’s a genius,” Jinx declared, her voice a little bright. It caught Isha’s attention and the two made eye contact from either side of Vi. When Jinx held her hand up in a finger gun, Isha did the same. “Snuffed out a tussle before it even had the guts to start.” The moment settled again and after the recoil of her invisible shot fired, Jinx’s hand landed on Vi’s shoulder. “And she kept Vander from landing in the wrong hands. The rest?” Vi’s grays flicked slowly back and forth between Jinx’s magentas. In them, she saw the emotional agony buried under the surface. Layered beneath the bravado of the tale of Isha’s bravery. It made Vi’s eyes burn. “Eh, that’s just scribbles in the margins.”

Vi lifted a hand and pressed it gently to the side of Jinx’s neck, leaned over and in so their foreheads pressed together. “I’m glad you’re both okay,” she promised, and left the rest unsaid. Scribbles in the margins.

There was a lump in her throat that she tried to swallow. It pulsed with emotions she once again felt like she wasn’t allowed to feel. Not here, when Jinx was clearly trying hard to keep her shit together in front of Isha. Isha, who was somehow responsible for the whole damn thing. Vi dragged in a long breath, one that pulled on her shoulders and straightened her spine. She gulped, and that lump went down. 

“Listen, I need a favor.”

“From me?” Jinx leaned out of the quiet moment and pressed a hand to her chest, fingers splayed. The smiley face sketched onto the tip of the middle one stared up at her and Vi tried not to find it funny. “I hope you’re not lookin’ for someone to, y’know.” Jinx tugged on one of her own braids so her head knocked to the side. “Disappear. I’m kinda outta the boom boom business these days.”

“Oh, shut up,” Vi scoffed, but her tone was as playful as it was dismissive. She reached into the pocket of her leather jacket, and carefully withdrew the red cord and carved stones. “I need your brains, not your guns,” she explained as she tediously unwound the runes. She held either end of the band in each hand and lifted, suspending the stones for Jinx to see. “You made hextech work for you,” Vi reasoned. The runes went blurry as her focus shifted to her sister’s face beyond them. There was already a pinch in her brow, inquisitive and thoughtful. “Can you make sense of these?”

Vi was transported back to a time when they were young, their scars still shallow. Powder had always been an impossibly curious kid, always poking at things she didn’t understand. Taking them apart and putting them back together, just to learn something. Vi saw that girl now, glowing beneath the tattoos and time. The angles were sharper, the hair was longer. The eyes were different, but they were also the same.

Despite everything, Vi smiled. 

“Sure I can,” Jinx answered after a moment of observation. She used a finger to spin one rune around on the cord, the rest of the stones bounced and bobbed with the motion. “This one I know. It’s precision,” she explained. It encouraged Vi to squint, to take a closer look at the stone in question, but the carvings were just… meaningless to her. “And this one – inspiration.”

“How do you know all this?” Vi wondered aloud, her question soft and admittedly laced with admiration.

For all she liked to yap, Jinx did little more than shrug as she continued to examine the various stones. “Figured it out,” she said simply. And finally, Jinx extracted the cord from Vi’s fingers and sat back with the stones herself, holding them closer to her face.

Her sister’s cunning and determination to learn had always deeply impressed Vi. So much had changed… but that hadn’t. 

“So… what do they do?” 

“I dunno,” Jinx answered without missing a beat. Her thin shoulders shrugged, but she never looked up from the runes she now turned over in her hands. “Where’d you get ‘em?”

Vi’s jaw went tight with the sudden and reprehensible urge to lie. She didn’t know where it came from – beyond, perhaps, the instinct to protect Caitlyn.

“I pulled them off a Noxian at the commune,” Vi replied, muscles loosening a little. Not a lie, she told herself. Just not the full truth, and that was acceptable. It had to be. “Precision, inspiration–” Vi steered the focus back to the runes themselves, rather than how she’d acquired them. “It’s arcane shit, right?”

Jinx hummed in the affirmative. She was tracing one of the stones now, the tip of her chipped periwinkle fingernail scraping quietly over the etching carved into it. “You string the right runes together–” Jinx plucked at the red leather cord, “–like a puzzle, and bam, you can make anything happen.”

While Jinx looked at it like a game to be solved, Vi looked at the runes like they were capable of killing.

Like they were capable of undoing a person, and building them back something different.

“Can you figure out what this puzzle does?” Vi asked, trying hard to hide the urgency she now felt pulsing inside her, a new storm to weather.

“I think so. Just give me some time.”

Cerulean eyes were wide and focused on the door she’d watched Vi leave through. Time felt strange in the stillness of the room. She wasn’t sure how long Vi had been gone or how much longer she’d stay away, but the absence left an oddly hollow ache in her chest. She didn’t wonder what discussion with Jinx was so important that Vi would leave her here. It wasn’t hard to guess, considering what she’d just learned during her own conversation with Vi not that long ago. 

She felt sadness there. A deep sympathy that cut through months of unexplained indifference when it came to her feelings for Vi. Months of smothering her affections and her attraction so deep into the dark that they’d died.

Or so Caitlyn had thought.

She’d forgotten about the cuffs, half of which still remained clasped around her wrist. And somehow, in the silence, Caitlyn had also forgotten to consider escaping. Part of her still wished to, she knew. It was a part of her that simmered on the surface, most emergent. The pieces of her that still belonged in many ways to Ambessa, calling her home. Home, where the general would expect to find her. Ready for more lessons, prepared to put in more work.

The other part craved to immerse herself in violets. They embodied the idea safety for Caitlyn, the promise of peace. Something whispered to her that there was salvation to be found in them.

The door opened, but only just. A mere crack wide enough to let a body through, but not the light. Caitlyn’s eyes narrowed anyway – it was Vi.

Caitlyn couldn’t tell if the room got bigger or smaller all at once.

They simply stared at one another, the silence as expansive as the sea. They were but ships upon it, rocking, at the mercy of the moon and the tides. Caitlyn thought she should speak, but couldn’t find the words. Maybe Vi would fare better.

But Vi didn’t say anything. Caitlyn watched as she slowly reached down, body lowering without bending or folding, until her hand found the plate of food neither of them had bothered to touch. Until now, apparently.

Of all the things Vi might have said or done, this was the last thing Caitlyn would have expected. Vi pulled from within her jacket pocket what looked like a tiny slingshot carved out of wood. Loaded the toy weapon with a blueberry and fired it across the room.

The small blue sphere thudded against Caitlyn’s chest and tumbled into her lap. Her shoulders jerked in reaction, but it was a subtle movement, in no way dramatic or jarring. It didn’t even jostle her tender ribs. But her expression did pull into one of perplexity. Bewildered, Caitlyn looked down, fetched the blueberry between her thumb and forefinger, and lifted it as if she were handling something dangerous and volatile.

“Did you just… fire a blueberry at me?”

“You looked hungry.”

Despite everything, Caitlyn smiled.

It was a mere flicker of expression, but it felt undeniably good no less. “Starved, actually.”

Vi placed the plate on the bed beside her outstretched legs and Caitlyn chewed quietly on a slice of apple, unbothered by its softened state, as she watched the other girl do… something inexplicable. The chest was dragged to the middle of the room, the lid propped open so the underside of it was on display to her. Vi moved to kneel in front of an old stove and Caitlyn continued to sit there, silent and curious, politely munching all the while.

“What exactly are you doing?”

“I just want to see something.”

Wasn’t much of an answer, but Caitlyn exercised her patience. It was rewarded not long after when Vi marched back to the chest, holding a small piece of charcoal in her right hand. 

The rubber pulls of the slingshot dangled out the side of Vi’s jacket pocket as she squatted in front of the open trunk to scribble something on the inside of the lid. Caitlyn’s suspicions were narrowing, just like her eyes on Vi’s movements. And when she stood again, it all became perfectly clear.

“How good are you without all your fancy scopes and attachments, Cupcake?”

Vi stood in front of her, holding the slingshot out in her hand. The open trunk was now a crudely drawn target across the room and Caitlyn’s chest flooded with an unprecedented sense of elation. Simply joy, and what a thing to feel. Here, deep in the Undercity, plagued with uncertainty and drowning in her loss of self.

Caitlyn took the offered weapon, let it simply rest in her open palm to get a feel for its weight. Vi clambered onto the bed beside her – Caitlyn bounced lightly up and down with the mattress, but did not drop the slingshot. She turned it over in her hand, its worn wood smooth against her fingers, the band taut but far from perfect. Her gaze was scrutinizing as she examined the material, the construction, as though it might reveal something deeper than just its origins – some hidden answer to the tangled mess inside her head, perhaps.

“A slingshot?” she questioned, clearly doubtful. She felt Vi settle in beside her, back to the wall. Blue eyes swept sideways, incredulous.

Vi shrugged, her lopsided grin flashing for just a second. The sight of it made Caitlyn’s stomach pitch. “Why not? Aren’t you an excellent shot?”

Caitlyn snickered, the sound of it derisive. Maybe a little uncomfortable with the memory Vi’s words evoked – not because she didn’t like the callback, but because she did. “I may have said that.”

Her fingers tightened around the slingshot, a thousand memories flooding her mind. It was a rush. Her mother’s hands guiding hers as she steadied her very first rifle. The smell of gunpowder on her gloves. The perfect stillness that encompassed the moment before pulling the trigger. Caitlyn had crafted an identity around precision, control, and discipline. Now here she was, a slingshot in hand, fumbling to even recognize herself.

When Caitlyn looked up from the toy in her hand, Vi’s was outstretched beside her. A blueberry sat in the center of her palm. “There are a dozen reasons why I’ll miss,” Caitlyn said indignantly as she took the blueberry and loaded it into the pouch. “Not the least of which is that this is a child’s toy,” she pointed out.

“All I’m hearing are excuses, Kiramman,” Vi goaded and gestured towards the chest in the middle of the room. 

Caitlyn sighed, her resistance slipping. Her fingers instinctively found the right grip around the pouch, and the squishy ammunition loaded inside it. The weight was off, the balance wrong, but the motions were somewhat familiar. The idea, however, was home, and muscle memory took over as she lifted the slingshot and drew the band back, aiming with both eyes open at her target. The cuffs swayed where they hung from her left wrist, completely forgotten.

She exhaled deeply through her nose, and released. The blueberry arced through the air, smacking into the center of the smallest circle with a wet splat.

It felt silly to swell with pride over successfully firing a blueberry from a homemade slingshot, but it was exactly the feeling that flooded Caitlyn’s system as she lowered the play weapon and turned her head to look at Vi. It was a warm feeling, pleasant and light. So unlike any and everything she’d been feeling for so long. Much longer than just her time here in this room with Vi.

“Huh,” Vi breathed and with one brow raised, returned Caitlyn’s gaze. “Guess you really are an excellent shot.”

“Like I said.”

They took turns shooting blueberries at the target, gently entertained by the sound of them plopping into the bottom of the empty trunk. Much of the center circle had been painted shades of red and blue from Caitlyn’s practiced aim, while a handful of stray ammo from Vi’s attempts would need to be recovered from the corners of the room and under furniture, lest the fruit be left behind to rot.

“Jinx pulled you out of the rubble, you know,” Vi said softly as she took aim. Her words made Caitlyn pause, a half-chewed bite of bread in her cheek. “After the explosion. That’s how I found you.” Neither one of them were looking when Vi released her blueberry, but they heard it ricochet off the open chest and thud somewhere towards the back of the room.

They were looking at each other.

“She didn’t even know I was there,” Vi went on, her voice even softer now. Caitlyn remained quiet and still, just listening. “But she was trying to get you to safety anyway.”

The warmth that came with practicing her aim dissipated slowly and steadily, leaking from her veins as if someone had punctured Caitlyn’s chest with a blade. What was she to make of this information? Was it atonement? One life saved for the other Jinx had stolen?

Did that nullify her crimes? 

“You don’t have to say anything, but she’s changed, Cait.”

Change. Caitlyn knew it well. She couldn’t even sit here and try to argue that people weren’t capable of change like that. Perhaps Vi was right. Maybe while Caitlyn was busy changing for the worse, Jinx had been changing for the better.

“We can’t erase our mistakes,” Caitlyn murmured, but the words were more for herself than they were for Vi. “None of us.”

Chapter Text

Caitlyn stepped out of the washroom quietly, her mind still adrift in a haze of uncertainty and unease. She’d avoided the mirror entirely, stared only at her hands as she washed them and tried to find within herself patience and understanding for the set of handcuffs still attached at her left wrist. They were terribly inconvenient, growing bothersome around the bones. They felt heavier now than they had when Vi first latched them together. Caitlyn idly wondered if it was because of the density of the tarnished gold, or because the other half was no longer clasped around Vi’s wrist. She bore the weight of them alone.

With a small handful of items tucked into her right arm, Caitlyn crossed the room. It was well lit, despite day bleeding into night. The chirean girl who had delivered their food had come by some time ago to change out the candle in their lantern and the flame now flickered vibrantly with new life. It helped the space feel a bit less daunting, with warm light reaching even the darkest corners.

Vi occupied half the bed. Neither of them ventured far from it for long and Caitlyn didn’t have the mental bandwidth to ponder why. She sat with her back against the wall, same as when Caitlyn had left her. Her legs were stretched straight out in front of her, feet hanging off the edge. They were bare, Caitlyn noticed. It made her steps falter, made her freeze halfway across the room. Vi had shed her boots and socks, her jacket lying on the floor beside their growing pile of discarded clothes.

It occurred to Caitlyn that this was the most she’d ever seen of Vi – uncovered, both physically and emotionally. She looked strikingly vulnerable and Caitlyn was overwhelmed with a familiar and irrevocable need to protect her. Even if, at this precise moment, Vi didn’t need protecting.

“What’s all that?”

Vi’s voice gently tugged Caitlyn back to a corporeal plane and she looked down, suddenly a bit self-conscious over the things she’d brought with her from the bathroom.

“It’s for you,” Caitlyn answered, and finally continued on her path across the room. The contents of her arm were carefully laid out on the bed beside Vi’s outstretched legs and Caitlyn knelt in front of her, sinking easily to her own knees. Her gaze landed on Vi’s hands, which were idly plucking at the elastic bands of the slingshot. Then it shifted, moving to the dark, uneven stains spreading across the wraps around her wrists. The blood was subtle at just a glance, but unmistakable, blooming through the thin fabric. 

Vi must have followed her gaze. She shrugged, her fiddling with the slingshot intensifying minutely. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.” Vi pulled too tightly on the rubber and it snapped back against her fingers with a sharp crack.

Caitlyn frowned. “It’s not fine.” She sat back on her heels and gave the edge of the bed a pat, indicating what she wanted. “Come here. Please.”

There was a second of hesitation, but Caitlyn’s tone left little room for argument. With a sigh, Vi pushed herself away from the wall. She came to sit on the outer edge of the bed, knees spread in a manner of sitting that was in no way unfamiliar. But this was the first time Caitlyn had occupied the space between them, and that was decidedly quite new. 

She steeled herself with a deep breath and reached for Vi’s left hand. “Let me,” Caitlyn murmured, her fingers brushing against Vi’s as she took hold of her wrist.

The wraps were coarse under her fingertips, but it felt an oddly fitting thing to feel while touching Vi. She worked slowly, carefully tugging at the end tucked beneath several layers against Vi’s palm to begin unwinding. Each turn uncovered more skin, until Caitlyn revealed bruised and scraped up knuckles that told a story Caitlyn had seen unfold with her own eyes. And when the last of the wraps fell away, Vi’s wrist was free to breathe. The ring around it was red and angry, wounds incurred from fighting hard against the very same cuffs Caitlyn now wore on her own arm.

“I told you,” Vi whispered, her voice wary as she shifted, anxious. “It’s not a big deal.”

Caitlyn glanced up at her, meeting Vi’s steely gaze with a steadiness she hadn’t felt in a long time. But beneath that certainty, sorrow. It was visible in the feminine lines of her face, the downward slant of her brows. It glistened in the shades of blue beneath her lashes. “It is to me.”

She watched Vi blink, witnessed the way her body seemed to settle and relax in a way that said surrender. 

Caitlyn reached for her small pile of items procured from the washroom, starting with a cloth she’d deemed acceptably clean. It was already damp and as gently as she could, she pressed it to Vi’s wrist.

Vi flinched, a sharp breath escaping her, but she didn’t pull away.

“Sorry,” Caitlyn mumbled, her fingers brushing Vi’s skin as she worked. She dabbed at bits of blood with a notable tenderness. While Caitlyn had inherited her sharp eye and steady aim from her mother, what she’d gained from her father she clearly demonstrated now. A featherlight touch and calm bedside manner, well suited to caring for another. Locks of dark navy fell around her face as she rotated Vi’s arm in her grasp. The silence between them was thick, but not uncomfortable.

Caitlyn found herself hyper-aware of every detail. The warmth of Vi’s skin beneath her hands, the slight hitch in her breath when the cloth pressed too tightly to a tender spot. She focused on the task, but her mind was flooded with memories – and also with regret.

“I should have said so much sooner,” Caitlyn whispered. A slow shake of her head ended with a tendril of blue falling in front of her left eye, but her hands were occupied. By some miracle, it was lifted out of her vision anyway. The tips of Vi’s fingers skimmed her temple as she tucked that piece of hair away, back behind her ear where it obediently stayed.

“Said what?”

“How sorry I am.” When she was satisfied with the cleanliness of the wound, Caitlyn spun the cloth to a new corner and reached for a small black bottle. She felt lucky to have found such prudent supplies beneath the sink in the washroom. It gave her the chance to tend to Vi in a way the other girl needed, but likely would have never asked for. Perhaps more importantly, it provided Caitlyn with the means to do exactly what she needed, too. Caitlyn’s dexterity showed itself as she popped the cap of the bottle with the same fingers she held it with and wetted a fresh corner of the cloth. “I am, Vi,” she continued, gaze focused firmly on Vi’s wrist as she now lightly dabbed it with alcohol.

“Okay, ow,” Vi hissed and withdrew her hand from Caitlyn’s hold. 

“I’m sorry,” Caitlyn whispered again, and lifted her head.

Their eyes met and time slowed. Caitlyn knew she’d dreaded ever reaching this confrontation. Not with Vi, necessarily, but with her own mistakes. Apologizing for them meant acknowledging them. Admitting to them, staring at them in their ugly faces. It filled Caitlyn with pools of shame. Every corner simply flooded with it. But she’d been holding onto other darknesses for so long – rage, vengeance – that this one… it somehow felt less damaging. It didn’t corrode her edges. It didn’t sweep her away in its current. Caitlyn found there was relief in finally laying it all bare – a weight she no longer had to carry.

“I’m so sorry, Vi. For everything.” They weren’t talking about the wounds now, at least not directly. Caitlyn’s hands hovered awkwardly over Vi’s lap with nothing to hold onto, but her attention was focused elsewhere. On the dulling blue of Vi’s eyes, and the way her lips parted around her breath. The freckles she’d once considered counting to make time move faster. “For all of it.” And though the detrimental moments in question flashed through Caitlyn’s mind like light through film, she hoped she wouldn’t have to detail them out loud.

The silence between them stretched impossibly thin, the air in the room heavy with the weight of all that had been left unsaid for too long. Every error, every fault, fell to ashes in the space around them. 

Their eyes locked, and for a moment, it felt as though the rest had fallen away. No walls, no politics, no wounds or failures – just the two of them, suspended in this fragile haven they’d built together.

Caitlyn’s pulse pounded in her ears, a nervous rhythm that mirrored the raw vulnerability coursing through her. She could feel the heat of Vi’s gaze, the intensity of it pinning her in place, stripping her bare.

“Say something,” she whispered, just to fill the silence. Just to keep from begging. Pleading words tangled in her throat, caught on the sheer gravity of the moment, of the waiting.

She thought she saw a flash of recognition in the steel blue eyes that watched her. And then Vi moved.

It was subtle – her hand, the one Caitlyn had been tending to, lifted with a deliberate slowness. It found Caitlyn’s in the ether, her touch light but grounding. Always grounding, an anchor for the both of them.

“Cait…” Vi’s voice was rough, just a murmur, but it carried enough weight to make Caitlyn’s chest tighten. Vi’s thumb brushed over the back of her hand, the motion tender – such a stark contrast to the only touch she had known for months – and Caitlyn felt the burn of tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. The damp cloth, now speckled with Vi’s blood, dropped to the floor at Caitlyn’s knees.

“I’ve been so angry,” Vi said finally, her volume low but her tone steady. To hear it felt like a knife to the chest and Caitlyn swore her ribs throbbed in response. “I’ve wanted to hate you for what happened.” She paused, her fingers tightening just slightly over Caitlyn’s. “But I can’t. I never could.”

Caitlyn’s breath hitched, her vision blurring as Vi’s words sank in.

Not forgiveness given in explicit terms, but Caitlyn thought she saw them. Shimmering silver just below the surface. Vi leaned forward, her forehead gently pressing to Caitlyn’s, her voice dropping to a whisper. “You’re still exactly what you’ve always been to me, Cait.”

The words hit Caitlyn like a blow and a balm all at once and the tears came unbidden, the fall of them unnoticed, until Vi’s palm pressed gently to her jaw. Until a familiar thumb brushed the moisture from her cheek, her touch as soft as her voice. A gentle sob wracked Caitlyn’s body and she nodded twice, forehead rocking slowly against Vi’s. For the first time in a very long time – since she last met eyes with her mother in the council chambers – Caitlyn thought she felt a glimmer of hope. Just a tentative thing, fragile as a flower petal, but real. Something she could touch, something she could hold in her hands.

Her throat was too tight to speak, so Caitlyn simply pressed up on her knees and lifted into Vi’s space. Their bodies collided, a warm press, and they sank into a familiar embrace. One sorely missed and desperately needed. Vi’s strong arms wrapped around her and Caitlyn greedily dragged air into her starving lungs. Burrowed into Vi’s shoulder, the breath tasted like something she loved – concrete and leather. 

“Thank you,” Caitlyn whispered, her voice damp with emotion. 

Vi shifted, burrowed in and held Caitlyn just a little tighter. She felt the warm press of lips to the bare skin of her collar. They made Caitlyn shiver. “I’ve got you,” Vi promised and there wasn’t a single doubt in Caitlyn’s mind that it was a promise she’d die to keep.

More than returning to the Kiramman manor after a long day of politics and placating, sinking into Vi’s embrace felt like coming home. The tension in her body eased, the aches and pains of a war she hadn’t chosen for herself seeped into the distance. Her breathing slowed, and her heart found a rhythm that didn’t feel like it would tear her apart from the inside.

Minutes passed. She didn’t know how many. Neither of them spoke, the quiet between them felt sacred. Caitlyn wasn’t ready to let go, and Vi didn’t seem to be either.

Even when Caitlyn did shift, it wasn’t to vacate the powerful sense of safety she felt in Vi’s arms. Her own slid up between their bodies – the damned cuffs clanked and rattled all the way, but Caitlyn paid them no mind. Her hands settled at Vi’s chest, fingertips grazing lightly over the ridge of bone, the cut of muscle. She didn’t lift her head yet, but it did move. Inwards, towards Vi’s. The subtlest of movements had them brushing, touching. Their ears caught, their jaws grazed. The tip of her nose tagged Vi’s cheek as she finally lifted her head fully. Their faces were only inches apart and Caitlyn was suddenly very aware of her own breathing. It was quick, and shallow. Vi’s eyes locked onto hers, wide and unguarded, and Caitlyn felt that breath stutter in her throat.

The air between them felt impossibly charged. Every nerve in Caitlyn’s body was alive and aligned to just one thing. Her heart pounded against her ribs, so loudly she was certain Vi could hear it.

Vi didn’t move, didn’t pull away. Her gaze flicked down to Caitlyn’s lips, then back to her eyes, and the quiet expectation in her expression was almost too much to bear.

Caitlyn’s thoughts scrambled in a frantic loop. The memory of their first kiss flashed vividly in her mind, the way Vi had held her just like this. The way they’d glanced at each other’s mouths, just like this. The way kissing this woman had felt like the most natural thing in the world, like she couldn’t imagine doing anything else as long as she had air to breathe.

Except… Caitlyn had done something else. Had chosen other things. Other people.

Her chest ached with the overwhelming weight of everything she felt – hope mingled with fear, excitement tangled with anxiety, longing shadowed by doubt. Caitlyn recognized the desire to close the gap between them – to kiss Vi like she had once before, and to let herself feel something real. Something hers, theirs, and no one else’s. 

But her courage faltered, and through the cracks of her resolve leaked a shadow so dense and so damning that Caitlyn stopped breathing altogether.

Ambessa.

She broke eye contact, her gaze dropping as she pulled back, just enough to put much needed space between their bodies. Cool air rushed into the gap where Vi’s warmth had been, and it felt like a tangible loss.

Vi didn’t move, didn’t say anything, but Caitlyn caught the flicker of disappointment in her expression before she masked it. She felt the sting of her own hesitation, her unconquerable fear a stone on her chest. She wanted to explain, but how could she when she didn’t fully understand it herself? Ambessa’s name alone could not undo this, it wouldn’t justify Caitlyn’s cowardice or make right her many wrongs. All she could do was sink away from Vi, sit there on her own feet, and suffer the distance she’d forced between them.

The silence that followed wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the warmth of Vi’s arms or the steady comfort of her embrace. It was the space Caitlyn had created, and she hated it.

Vi didn’t push. She stayed, steady and present, like she always did. 

Like moving through molasses, Caitlyn reached for Vi’s right hand. Wordlessly, she unwound the wraps from this hand, too. This wrist was less mangled, but Caitlyn took even greater care now in cleaning it. Like her quiet tending might somehow make up for the moment her fear had just shattered.

And when she was finished, Caitlyn silently removed everything from off the bed. Set it all on the floor, out of the way, so she might see to it later. Because for now, Vi still had her attention. Even if her mere attention felt like nowhere near enough to give.

Still knelt between Vi’s knees, Caitlyn reached for the hand she’d just finished treating. Without looking up, without saying a word, she slipped the empty cuff around Vi’s wrist. Made sure to keep it plenty loose, and slowly lifted her eyes to Vi’s. The clasp latching echoed through the room around them, resolute like a vow. “I don’t want to leave you again.”

But simply wanting it didn’t feel like enough anymore. 

They slipped under the covers of the bed side by side, Caitlyn closest to the wall with Vi behind her. It was the first time they’d truly shared the bed. It was less than half the size of what Caitlyn was used to, and yet, it didn’t feel small. It felt plenty big, actually, because even if her mind was weak, Caitlyn’s body still craved the closeness she’d abandoned.

It craved the warmth of Vi’s presence, the stability of her strength, and the peace that only she seemed capable of providing.

She turned onto her side. It was a movement in dance, the two of them caught in step together. Maneuvering with wrists latched was a practice in dynamics and unsurprisingly, they didn’t fail. Caitlyn’s left arm lifted over her head as she rolled onto her right shoulder, and Vi’s right arm lifted it with it. They didn’t need to say a word, because their bodies knew what to do. They fit, Caitlyn’s back settling into the sure and steady curve of Vi’s front. A strong arm weaved beneath her neck and Caitlyn settled onto it comfortably, another slipped over her waist to hold her close. It all just… worked.

It was as if the cuffs weren’t there at all, and this was simply the way she and Vi were meant to lay together. Tangled, seamlessly entwined, pressed together so tightly it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. 

“Will you promise me something, Violet?” Caitlyn’s whispered question was a shroud tossed over the whole thing, shielding them from the world outside their borrowed walls. 

Vi’s answer was in many ways wordless. It was the shift of her body against Caitlyn’s. It was the legs that slipped smoothly against and through her own beneath the blanket they shared. It was the hand that glided over her arm to hold her just a little more securely. It was the breath on the back of Caitlyn’s neck, a warm bath beneath the moon.

“I’ll do my best.”

When it came to protecting Caitlyn, Vi’s best had always been enough. She took a great deal of comfort in that.

“Don’t let me go,” she breathed, fingers curling over Vi’s wrist beside the cuff. Caitlyn saw it for what it was now – the physical manifestation of something intrinsic, something they never could have seen with their own eyes. An invisible path that had led Caitlyn straight into Vi’s life, everything that had happened between then and now. The many messy, bloody ties that bound them. “Whatever happens.”

A whisper of lips over the nape of her neck made Caitlyn shiver. It tripped down her spine, reached through her limbs and lit every piece of her ablaze.

“I think I can handle that.”

Chapter Text

Vi wished morning wouldn’t have come. She’d spent so much time floundering, working tirelessly not to fall off a platform that simply never stopped moving. She had no solid holds, no grooves to dig her feet into. But holding Caitlyn… it made the world stop spinning. There had been disappointment in witnessing the death of a kiss she’d desperately wanted, but there came honest healing in being given the chance to sleep with Caitlyn so close. Tucked in against her body, where Vi knew with certainty she could keep her safe. At least through the night.

They hadn’t spoken a word upon waking, as if afraid that breaking the silence would also shatter the illusion of simplicity they’d slipped into. Cassandra Kiramman wasn’t dead. Vi hadn’t just lost her father – again. Piltover wasn’t on the brink of war. Caitlyn wasn’t suffering lasting effects from months’ worth of training and manipulation under Ambessa Medarda’s thumb.

Simple. What Vi wouldn’t have given to be able to hold onto it. But no matter how powerful her grip, simple sifted through her fingers like sand. Back into the ocean and washed away with the tide.

A knock sounded at the door, its cadence quick and intentional. Like an attempt at something musical but failing to hit the mark. Vi looked up from where she sat on the corner of the bed, holding the tarnished manacles in her hands. Both cuffs were open. She’d been idly tracing the inner curve of the half that came off Caitlyn when the knuckles against the door drew her from her many thoughts.

“Look, I’m knocking!” Jinx’s voice carried shockingly well through wood, her naturally high pitch reaching Vi’s ears with ease. “I guess people really can change, huh?”

The joke didn’t soothe the edges left behind by her silence with Caitlyn, nor did it alleviate the anxiety that rose like a flood in Vi’s stomach. If Jinx was here, it meant she wanted to talk. And if she wanted to talk, it was probably about the runes. Had she figured out the puzzle? Did she have answers?

Were they as horrible as Vi had begun dreading they might be?

Vi stood on her bare feet and crossed the small space, dropping the cuffs onto the chest beside the door. It was closed now, the evidence of their target practice tucked away. She felt split in two as she reached for the knob to admit her sister. There was an eagerness to know what Jinx may have learned, a hope that maybe today they’d have reasonable explanations they didn’t have yesterday. But there was also a gripping fear that those explanations might be detrimental to Caitlyn. She was already so unsteady – could she handle any further devastation?

She opened the door slowly, eyes dark and steely as they landed on Jinx, who stood there with the band of runes twisted around her fingers.

“Gonna let me in?”

Vi stood aside, though she didn’t open the door any further. There was enough room for Jinx to slip through, and she did. 

“Sheesh, this place could really use a window,” Jinx observed as she entered and Vi closed the door behind her. Vi disagreed. There was something about the lack of entry points that made this room feel like a safe haven, at a time and in a place where she felt she needed one most. With only one way in and out, Vi felt protected. And moreover, she felt more capable of protecting Caitlyn.

A thick knot of nerves formed in her throat and Vi fought to swallow it. She lifted an arm, scratching anxiously at the back of her neck as she watched Jinx slowly explore the space with a scrutinizing stare. Vi’s entire focus shifted to the stones in her sister’s hands. “Did you figure them out?”

Jinx stopped moving, turned her head to look at Vi beyond the sweep of her blue bangs. “Straight down to business, I guess.” The way she said it wasn’t joyful, it didn’t imply relief was coming. Vi carefully padded across the room to stand in front of her sister, reached up to curl a hand gently around Jinx’s skinny wrist. That grip and her heavy stare said without words all that Vi needed to communicate. “I think I cracked the code – or maybe I broke it, I dunno.” Jinx looked down, tapped a fingernail into the center of one of the stones. “But it ain’t a pretty picture.”

Vi’s bottom lip tucked beneath her teeth and she nodded. Maybe for Jinx, maybe for herself, but it was some weak attempt at making herself look like she was ready to hear it. 

Together they looked down at the runes as Jinx began twisting them round, flicking through them like playing cards. She settled on one and Vi squinted slightly to see it better, the carving consisted of a curious swirling sphere. “There are five paths of the arcane – like, main roads,” Jinx explained, slowly tracing the shape of the rune they both examined. “But the patterns you can make with them? Endless. Told ya already, this one’s inspiration,” she went on. And while holding the inspiration rune in the fingers of her left hand, Jinx navigated to a second stone on the band in her right. “This one is domination,” Jinx explained, brushing a thumb over the etching made up of three curved spires. “Put ‘em together…” She pulled up a third stone, the next one the band. On it was an entirely different mark, built of individual pieces from the first two. “They’re persuasion.”

Vi’s breath caught in her throat and her gaze snapped up to Jinx’s face. It was hard to read, her expression flat. But the slightest tilt of her dark eyebrows spoke of feelings sinister. Jinx knew, and Vi was beginning to understand.

“This one here, it’s sorcery.” Jinx made something of a disgusted scoffing sound, but Vi was too focused on the stone and its diamond-like carving to care about her sister’s distaste. “You bump this one up with domination and you get something totally different. It’s called binding.” She flipped to another stone and Vi thought maybe she was starting to feel a bit dizzy.

Jinx went on to explain another combination of two runes that created a third effect called empathy.

“Then you got precision, like I said before. Another one of the main roads. I like this road – but that’s not important. Tie this one together with domination and you get…” Jinx brought two stones together, pressed them flat against each other in a marriage of meaning Vi was catching onto. “Control. Lame, I know.”

Persuasion. Binding. Empathy. Control.  

“And this is what I mean by endless patterns, ‘cause now you got all these derivative effects, right?” Jinx’s fingers moved through the runes like a machine, never faltering. “Twist ‘em all up in the right sequence, and you get a pattern.” Jinx held up the last stone on the strand and Vi’s eyes crossed slightly to focus on its symbol. “Coercion.”

Vi actually took this one herself, carefully holding the rune between her thumb and forefinger. She brought it close, examined the carving with eyes wide, brows lifted, and lips slightly parted.

“Ever seen those creepy ventriloquist guys? Y’know, the ones with the little puppets that never shut up?” 

“What?” Vi asked, unamused and lacking patience for her sister’s whims. She couldn’t follow them, not right now.

“Well it’s kinda like that. Looks like the puppet’s the one doin’ all the jabbering, but really? It’s the ventriloquist pulling the strings. ” Jinx flicked the bottommost stone and the whole strand swayed turbulently. “You could use this combination of runes to bend a poor sucker to your will, Vi.”

Vi’s breathing faltered, it entered her lungs shallow, left them too quickly. Her thoughts were the cogs of a broken clock, spinning in opposite directions, jagged and out of sync. Memories spilled over the floor at her feet. Standing in the Kiramman’s study with Caitlyn in her arms, begging her to say something . Looking terrified and confused, only to disappear into herself the moment Ambessa entered the room. Again in the fissures, bound in Ambessa’s tent, where Caitlyn couldn’t even look at her. The runes – these fucking stones – wrapped around the general’s arm through all of it. Always there. Always glowing.

“Wouldn’t a person know?” Vi asked, crashing out of her train of thought to meet Jinx’s gaze again. Her voice was hoarse, a bit breathless. “How could you use these to control someone without them realizing?”

Jinx gave an exaggerated shrug of her thin shoulders that made her braids waft around her hips. “Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest when you’re standing inside the trees.”

“What?” Vi asked again, her eyes flicking back and forth from the rune she held to Jinx’s face, back and again. “What does that even mean?”

“It means,” Jinx said. Her voice was almost painfully soft now. Vi hadn’t heard her speak in just this way since they were young, less scarred. A pale hand lifted to cover Vi’s where she held the coercion rune aloft, urged it down and out of their peripheral visions. “You can’t see the whole picture if you’re standing smack in the middle of it.” That landed, and Vi felt her eyes suddenly begin to burn. “Sometimes you gotta step back – waaaay back – to really get it.”

It was strange how a shower no longer seemed to possess the healing abilities it once had. The knob was twisted clockwise as far as it could go, and at her height, Caitlyn stood mere inches from the head. But hot wasn’t hot enough and the water pressure felt quite lacking when all she wanted was to feel something. Anything other than the emotional anguish of being here instead of home. In Piltover, where she could keep an eye on her father and Ambessa Medarda could keep an eye on her.

Caitlyn hated that she craved it. Wished she could dig her fingers into her own chest and simply tear the anchor out with her bare hands. Waking up in the warm curve of Vi’s body had been a quiet blessing and for several long moments, while her thoughts swam lazily to the surface, Caitlyn had known true peace. The sort of unencumbered rest she’d needed for months but couldn’t seem to find on her own. Not alone in bed, and especially not with Ambessa’s body occupying the space they’d so often shared.

She’d spent those quiet minutes reflecting on what Vi meant to her. A pillar – one of the few remaining structures in Caitlyn’s life she could depend on. Everyone else had died or disappeared or faded away, but Vi was here. Still, by some miracle unseen, willing to be someone who mattered to Caitlyn. Still willing to pick her up when she fell, still ready to stand between Caitlyn and whatever forces threatened her safety. 

Still looking at her with eyes that saw everything, every piece of her. And in those eyes, a hunger Caitlyn recognized. 

But in waking fully, the world was bathed in light once more. Not just Vi and her gentle embrace, but the many traps and trials that lay on the other side of her broad shoulders. The moment cerulean eyes opened, a weight pressed down on her chest and Caitlyn went right back to suffocating.

She needed to leave this place. It would be an arduous trek from here to the bed they shared and somewhere along the way, Caitlyn would hope to stumble upon her fortitude. Because begging Vi to let her leave after making her promise to not let go sounded simply absurd, but it had to be done.

Piltover was calling and laced through the bellowing tones of home were the dissonant notes of Ambessa beckoning. Caitlyn couldn’t shut them out, and they could not be ignored.

The mirror remained a silent and gilded antagonist. Caitlyn continued to avoid it, dried her body off with her back turned to the glass. Even though it was glazed over with steam, the objects inside it fuzzy and unrecognizable, Caitlyn couldn’t bring herself to look. Hidden inside the reflections were too many horrors and she simply didn’t have the spine or the energy to face them now.

She tugged onto her legs the same gray pants she’d pulled off them not so long ago, struggling to swallow her disdain for climbing back into dirty clothes after washing. But they had nothing else, no alternatives. It would only be for a short while, Caitlyn reminded herself, thumbing over a hole that had been blown into the material against her thigh. She reached for the undershirt next, wincing while her ribs gave a traitorous throb. Heavy blue eyes looked down – they were visibly bruised, the skin beneath her right breast splotched with ugly hues of purpling red. Just in time, Caitlyn thought, to compliment the memories of Ambessa that painted her hip bones before they faded away entirely.

Maybe one day she would be free of them entirely. Bruises, marks, scars. Both seen and unseen. But that day felt frighteningly out of reach.

Caitlyn slipped into her thin white undershirt, eager to hide it all away from her view. And after squeezing the ends of her hair with the towel, she finally emerged from the bathroom, a trail of steam curling out around her.

In the middle of the room stood not just Vi, but Jinx. Despite knowing the younger girl was here – somewhere in the hideout – and that the sisters had apparently reached some sort of reconciliation with one another, Caitlyn hadn’t anticipated having to confront Jinx in this space. So close. Right there. Staring back at her in a place and at a time where Caitlyn felt far too vulnerable to endure her knowing gaze.

Jinx had seen things, done things, that had contributed to Caitlyn’s mental scars and to come face to face with her now, skin damp and hair dripping, was simply too much.

She was transported back to a time and place where she’d had no control, her autonomy stripped away like an animal in a cage. That dark place without doors, without windows, where Caitlyn had simply existed, suspended and caught between worlds. Waiting in silence – so much waiting. So full of fear she thought she might vomit against the muzzle Jinx had strapped to her face. You’ll never be good enough for my sister. Caitlyn could hear her even now. You’re just a name – a stupid, nothing name – and that doesn’t mean anything to her. Here, in this room, Jinx’s mouth didn’t move. Caitlyn was staring right at her. But the words echoed anyway. 

Caitlyn’s breath stuck in her throat, an audible sound that filled the room like the pulling of a pin from a live grenade.

Two heads turned towards her, two sets of eyes snapped to her, and Caitlyn looked back and forth between the both of them. Before she could ask after the reason for Jinx’s visit, however, Caitlyn noticed what they both held. A red leather cord dangled from their joined hands, flat stones strung along it that slowly spun and swayed with natural forces they couldn’t see.

Ambessa’s runes. There was no mistaking them for something else, or someone else’s. Caitlyn had seen enough of them to know exactly what they were, and to whom they belonged.

The towel slipped from her grasp and pooled on the floor at her feet. Caitlyn pressed a hand to her chest, the heel of her palm grinding painfully against the bone where her heart began to race beneath it.

“What is she doing here?” Caitlyn’s voice was cold, dark in its disapproval. Her gaze settled on Vi, eyebrows furrowed over her incredulous stare. “Why do you have those?”

“Cait, I can explain–”

“I…” Jinx dragged out the sound of the single vowel, her thin hand falling away from the runes. Caitlyn’s chest visibly rose and fell with the intensity of her breathing. “Guess that’s my cue to, y’know.” She tossed a thumb towards the door even as she began backing away towards it. “Skedaddle. Good luck, Sis.”

Hard blue eyes stayed locked on Vi, who now stood alone in their space with the runes hanging from one hand.

“Why do you have those?” Caitlyn repeated, her tone a sharp-edged blade. “ How do you have them?”

“Caitlyn.” 

Vi’s use of the full version of her name startled Caitlyn and the insistence of her interrogation eased off some. But it wasn’t with anger that she asked these questions, not really. It was with panic, and something akin to a profound sense of dread she couldn’t quite explain.

“I saw Ambessa at the commune. After the blast,” Vi explained. Caitlyn’s gaze followed the runes as Vi slowly lowered her hands. Like she might be able to hide them, or otherwise undo the damage they’d already wrought just by being here. A muscle in Caitlyn’s neck twitched violently. “She was unconscious.” Vi paused, looked down at the runes she clutched tightly at her side. As if considering something Caitlyn couldn’t see, or understand. “I– I took them.”

“Why?” Caitlyn implored further. 

“Because I don’t trust her!” Vi shouted. Her volume shook the room. The fragile walls they’d built here together swayed and cracked, and Caitlyn took an instinctive step back. “You didn’t just change, Cait. She changed you.”

“Of course she did,” Caitlyn cut in with some desperate attempt to shut down Vi’s toxic line of thought. “She is my mentor, my advisor. It is her duty to–”

“To force you into submission?” Vi dove back into the conversation and this time, she held up the runes in a tightly clenched fist.

Caitlyn looked at them, perfectly aware of the way her stomach tightened at the sight of the familiar stones. A tool Ambessa used for protection, to shield herself, though Caitlyn never did learn what Ambessa thought she needed shielding from.

“She did no such thing,” she whispered, and the fact that she did implied enough. That her argument felt weak, that it came from a place inside her that was decaying. The fact of the matter was that Caitlyn knew she’d spent many moments – quiet hours in the dark, with Ambessa breathing at her back – wondering over her decisions, her actions. Questioning how she’d arrived at the path beneath her feet and imagining what messages of disappointment and disapproval her mother would share were she still alive to judge her only daughter’s recent ambitions.

But Caitlyn had never thought to blame Ambessa. Not really, not solely. Not in the way Vi seemed to be implying now.

“You said yourself that she stole your agency, Cait.” But Caitlyn didn’t remember saying it. “You say she’s your mentor, or some sort of maternal figure–” Unfortunately, she did remember drawing that comparison, and it made Caitlyn sick to her stomach all over again. “–but the only reason you’re loyal to her is because she scares you. She’s manipulating you.”

Caitlyn wrapped her arms around her middle, holding herself tightly. As if she feared the cut of Vi’s words might slash her open. As if she could prevent her insides from simply spilling to the floor, rendering her useless and lifeless.

Was she anything more than that anyway?

Ambessa’s voice echoed suddenly inside the empty chasm of Caitlyn’s mind. It had grown to be so hollow in the many months since her mother’s passing. So much had been pushed to the side. Buried, or erased. Plastered images of Jinx’s face hung everywhere, the scrawled neon brushstrokes of a deranged hand decorating them. The fuel for her hatred, embers that sparked the flames of vengeance. In the corner, shrouded in darkness, a wooden chest with its lid oddly half-open.

It was a good space for voices from her past to find eternal life. A wide and empty cavern where they could echo through the walls and live forever.

Fear is the cornerstone of control.

A cold chill crept along Caitlyn’s skin. It eked into her bones, slithered into her bloodstream and clawed quietly at her throat. Her eyes, shimmering oceans, focused on the runes Vi still held aloft between them.

“Do you even know what these do?”

Caitlyn couldn’t speak. She wanted to answer that Ambessa had explained them once, but her tongue wouldn’t move. Her mouth couldn’t make the words.

“They can control a person’s mind, Cait.”

“That’s not true,” Caitlyn managed to choke up a rebuttal, but it felt weak. Dry and powerless, falling off her lips like ash, still burning at the edges.

“It is,” Vi persisted. She took a step closer and Caitlyn’s spine seized. “Jinx has studied runes before. She knows what they mean, and she figured out the pattern. They make coercion.”

Caitlyn’s head shook, eyes staring hard at the stones suspended from Vi’s clenched fist. Her breathing hadn’t corrected itself and Caitlyn slipped steadily into lightheadedness, overwhelmed by the information Vi was sharing now. 

“You arrested half of Zaun without due cause, Cait. Innocent people who were gathered peacefully. Kids, ” Vi reminded her and Caitlyn took another step back, pressing a palm to her temple as it suddenly throbbed, a bolt of thunder through her head.

“Your sister isn’t trustworthy, Vi,” she whispered roughly in argument, tearing her thin gaze off the runes to look up at Vi instead. “How can you be sure she isn’t lying to you?”

“Who sent me to Stillwater, Cait?”

The heart inside Caitlyn’s chest stopped beating. It tripped, fell, and simply refused to get back up again. She struggled to swallow, struggled to see right. Vi’s face went in and out of focus and Caitlyn’s hand slid from her temple to cover her left eye, as if she could rub it back into working order.

“I did,” she choked on the words, horrified by the admission. It was just one of the many things she’d tried to apologize for last night, kneeling on the floor in front of this girl who held such a large piece of her. A piece Caitlyn had never managed to reforge in all the time since their paths diverged.

“For what?” Vi implored, continuing to push. “What did I do to warrant that?”

Again, Caitlyn shook her head, pressing the pad of her thumb tighter to her eye as it began to burn. “You did nothing,” she admitted, her voice breaking.

“Then why did you do it?”

Because it’s what Ambessa wanted, Caitlyn thought immediately. The answer poured into her head like water bursting through a dam and her chest shook with a sob. 

It was impossible to believe, and yet… it made the inexplicable make sense.

Realization settled over her like a fog, suffocating. For so many months, Caitlyn had believed she was in control, that the decisions she made as Piltover’s commander were hers alone. Advised, but hers. Caitlyn thought she’d worked tirelessly to chase peace, and justice. To maintain order. She’d been convinced she was the steady hand steering the city away from chaos, and yet, the truth was now laid bare. Insignificant carvings into a handful of small stones that dangled before her very eyes.

She wasn’t a leader. She was nothing more than a tool.

Ambessa had studied her like a battlefield from the moment her ship arrived at the docks, mapping out her weaknesses, her vulnerabilities. The sisters she’d come face to face with upon exiting the washroom. The mother she’d lain into the earth with petals of violet. Her utmost dedication to honor. Ambessa had used all of these as levers, pulling and twisting until Caitlyn was too blinded by rage and grief and loneliness to see her strings. Every decision she’d made since taking the cape – every raid, every checkpoint, every step toward militarizing the enforcers and the Noxian soldiers against the Zaunites – had been a move in Ambessa’s game.

Caitlyn’s breath quickened, her chest tightening with panic. She pressed a hand to her mouth, but it did little to ease the rising nausea.

Her mentor. Her trusted advisor. Ambessa was responsible for shaping Caitlyn into the cold, unyielding woman she barely recognized in the mirror. She had taken her trauma, her deepest wounds, and sharpened them into blades she’d unwittingly turned on others. On her people, on people she loved.

Caitlyn had trusted her. She’d believed in Ambessa, leaned on her when it felt like her own strength was faltering or the ghosts of her past came whispering. Without any consideration for the repercussions, Caitlyn had allowed her into her head – and gods, into her bed – and Ambessa had twisted her pain into a weapon for her own ends.

All the while using magic to secure her grip. 

Guile.  

“Cait?” 

Vi’s voice cut through the storm in her head and Caitlyn looked up, her vision blurred with tears, her breath ragged. She couldn’t speak. There was bile rising in her throat, not just from shame, but from rage.  

Their gazes met for a mere second before Caitlyn stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over the towel at her feet. She barely made it to the toilet, quick to lift its lid with hands that shook violently, and fell to her knees to retch over the bowl.

Nothing came up. She’d consumed nothing, had nothing to give. But her body didn’t understand that and when her stomach rolled, she heaved again. Tears glistened on her heated cheeks and between the awful sounds of retching were the cries of a woman broken. Simply shattered. She felt Vi at her side, a hand pressed to the middle of her back. Wide and frantic blue eyes swept sideways, as if fearful it might be someone else. Terrified to look up and see the godforsaken runes still twisted between Vi’s fingers. But they weren’t here. Vi’s hands were empty and it was just the two of them, here in a bathroom, deep underground.

When she curled over the toilet once more, Vi’s gentle hands reached for her wet hair to hold it back. A pointless endeavor – there was still nothing to expel – but the gesture was tender. A soft reminder that Caitlyn wasn’t alone. That her last pillar still stood, despite the rest of reality around her crumbling into ruin.

Chapter Text

“It’s been weeks, Ambessa,” Caitlyn lamented with a finger pointing at the ground for emphasis. Her crystalline eyes focused intensely on the general, who bent over a grindstone with her katar. The grating sound of the blade against stone echoed through the armory, further sharpening Caitlyn’s irritation. “Weeks of patrols and intimidation. The Undercity is suffocating under the weight of our presence and still, nothing. Not a single sighting,” she listed the facts Ambessa already knew, her tone short with ire. With such disappointment laced through every word. “Not even a whisper of Jinx’s whereabouts. We cannot go on like this.”

“Patience, child,” Ambessa crooned calmly, smoothly running her blade left and right over the grindstone. “These things take time. The pressure will bear fruit, as it always does.”

“Time is a luxury we do not have,” Caitlyn replied pointedly, taking a step closer to Ambessa without any real hope of threatening her easy demeanor. “Every day we linger in the Undercity, we risk retaliation. This is not the way to catch a shadow.” Of that, Caitlyn had become firmly certain.

“Order must be maintained in the pursuit of justice, Commander.”

“Establishing the checkpoints was never about maintaining order,” she argued, growing increasingly frustrated by Ambessa’s nonchalance. The Undercity was beginning to vibrate with tension and Caitlyn feared the day that dam burst. “It was about finding Jinx. And if we’re not finding her, what justification do we have for forcing the people of Zaun to suffer under our boot?”

The grindstone ceased to spin. The silence felt nearly overwhelming, a palpable contrast to the sound of steel on stone. “You think that is suffering?” Ambessa turned, her katar in hand. Caitlyn inhaled a deep breath and set her shoulders a little higher, expression stern in coming face to face with her advisor. “It is survival , little one. The tension you speak of, it’s exactly what we need.” Ambessa took a lumbering step closer and while the glint of her blade and the height of her stance drove an urge to step back deep into her bones, Caitlyn held her ground. “It means they are uncomfortable. Uncomfortable people make mistakes. Someone will crack.” Bright blue eyes narrowed as Ambessa held up her katar to study its edge, rotating it slowly this way and that. “Someone always does.”

“And if they don’t?” Caitlyn believed it to be a fair question. They’d seen the graffiti popping up. Homages to Jinx, painting her on walls like a symbol of their unity. Of their rebellion. It made Caitlyn uneasy. “The Zaunites are rallying behind her, Ambessa. Are we to keep them under pressure indefinitely?”

“If Jinx is unifying the people of the Undercity, then surely someone knows where she is. It is only a matter of time before we find the correct thread to pull.” Caitlyn’s breath faltered slightly as she watched Ambessa run a thumb over the sharpened edge of her blade. She fought to hide the slip in her composure by clearing her throat, delicately pressing her fingers to her lips before letting her hand fall again. “It will unravel yet, child.”

“Have you been down there?” Caitlyn inquired, her voice lower, a bit airier with the gravity of their precarious situation. “Do you have any idea what our heavy-handed tactics are doing to them? They don’t hate Jinx, Ambessa – they hate us. They fear us.”

“Good.” Ambessa’s voice bellowed through the armory and Caitlyn did take a step back, a subtle lean on her heel away from the general. “What have I told you time and time again about fear?”

Caitlyn’s lip curled in distaste and she momentarily rolled her eyes away from Ambessa. “Obedience is fleeting. It breeds resentment, not loyalty. And it will fester – it already is.”

Ambessa returned to the corner of the armory where the grindstone sat, still and silent, with its table and tools beside it. She relinquished her katar, laid it carefully atop the wooden surface beside a many number of objects meant for its upkeep that Caitlyn wasn’t familiar with. “Resentment can be managed.” Standing with her back to Caitlyn, it was difficult to discern exactly what the general was doing. She heard the faint shift of stone, the stretch of leather, and pursed her lips. “What cannot be managed is a girl known to have slaughtered half your council, who undermines everything your city stands for. Jinx’s capture is non-negotiable – I’d have thought you to be this notion’s prime defender.” As she turned, Ambessa’s hand passed over her arm guard. Caitlyn’s gaze flicked from the movement up to the general’s face, blue eyes as hard as the stones Ambessa wore on her forearm. “If it means the Undercity must endure discomfort a while longer, then so be it.”

The muscles in Caitlyn’s jaw tightened as her resolve began to decay. It crumbled around her like the debris of a weathered wall, cracked and collapsing on itself. She sighed, took but a moment to press her fingers to her temple.

Her mother’s face bore a hole into her memory and Caitlyn’s hunger for justice grew a fraction sharper.

“I understand you feel prepared to face the consequences of the resentment you so bravely think you can manage ,” Caitlyn spoke, her repetition of Ambessa’s words dripping in something just the slightest bit unsavory. “But I don’t know that I am.”

“Oh, but you are, child.” 

Ambessa was suddenly right in front of her. It was uncanny how quiet she could be, stealth woven into the fibers of her being like the golden threads that accented her clothing. Caitlyn’s breath caught in her throat and her hand promptly fell away from her face. It allowed Ambessa to take her chin, to lift it with a tender squeeze. 

“Do you think preparedness comes without risk? Without doubt?” 

A thick hand settled on Caitlyn’s hip and applied pressure, urging her to turn to her left. She came to face a wide mirror, its top reaching to the ceiling. For fitting armor, certainly, not intended for young commanders looking for reassurance.

“You’re learning what every great leader must – to bear the weight of doing what others cannot.”

“And if I cannot bear it?” Caitlyn asked, her voice shrinking at the sight of herself in that mirror. Ambessa stood behind her, a hand still at the flare of her hip, the other tracing slowly backwards over her jaw and down her neck.

She shivered, but didn’t think to step out of Ambessa’s grasp.

“Do not let their anger intimidate you. It is a tool we must shape, not fear.” Too busy regarding her own stare in the glass, Caitlyn didn’t see the way the stones on Ambessa’s arm shifted from a vibrant green glow to a deep crimson. “It is the heat that forges steel, little one. And you must learn to wield it.”

Ambessa’s fingers skimmed down the line of her throat and Caitlyn’s breath stuttered, as if physically tripping over her touch. She felt warm – too warm – but still did not resist.

“You believe I’m strong enough?” she wondered on a whisper, slipping into a blurry state of fixation over her own reflection. Praying to the ancient gods that she might see within herself whatever Ambessa saw.

“I know you are,” Ambessa replied in a low purr, the answer delivered straight into Caitlyn’s ear. Gooseflesh ripped along her skin beneath her uniform, raised along her arms and down her thighs. “I can show you.”

Whatever that demonstration might entail, Caitlyn didn’t know. She failed to agree out loud, but neither did she reject the offer. That seemed answer enough for Ambessa, whose fingers flicked open Caitlyn’s belt with a single steady tug.

Caitlyn collapsed backwards on the floor, back colliding with the opposite wall. She drew her knees up to her chest, entirely ignorant of the way her body throbbed in protest to the physical trauma it just went through. She covered her damp face with her hands, and fought to breathe through the crack between her palms. 

How could she have not seen it? Caitlyn’s perception had been conditioned, finely honed since she was a child. Since before she could even remember. Her mother had made it a point to explain the tiniest details of any given situation, things a young Caitlyn Kiramman might have overlooked due to inexperience and a lack of understanding for being thorough. When she’d graduated from her mother’s tutelage to that of Grayson Devereaux, her vision grew even sharper. Caitlyn had always believed she’d been born to see what others did not. It was one of the many reasons she’d become an enforcer, to lend her keen eye to the force and put those investigative skills to good use.

Despite all of it, despite a life of sharpening her abilities, Caitlyn had somehow been blind. Completely unaware of her own footing for the first time in her life.

She sobbed into her own hands, the sound of it breaking with anguish. All these months of doubting her actions, the countless minutes spent trying to recognize her reflection in the mirror, and Caitlyn hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t even thought to question the one figure in her life that was new. The single voice that replaced all others inside her head.

Foolish. Caitlyn Kiramman had always prided herself for her intellect and her intuition, but Ambessa had whittled those things away. Left Caitlyn a mere sliver of the formidable woman she’d worked so hard to become.

“Cait.” It was Vi. Still here, still trying. “What can I do?”

What was there to do?

Caitlyn couldn’t give an answer. She didn’t have one. The only thoughts circling her head now were antagonistic, critiques against her own lack of self-awareness that left cuts so deep, she swore she felt them bleed. And when the washroom began to spin, Caitlyn’s throat closed around her next breath.

The world narrowed to a pinpoint and Caitlyn surged to her feet, the floor tilting beneath her like the deck of a sinking ship. Her legs felt unsteady, more suggestion than support, and her lungs continued to fail inside her chest.

She needed to get out. She needed air.

“I need air.”

Her hand found the doorframe of the bathroom as she lurched forward, fingers curling tightly against the wood. The room they shared – their haven – loomed, both too bright and too dark at the same time. All wrong at once. Caitlyn stumbled into it, one arm outstretched like she could catch herself on some invisible baluster. But there was nothing to steady herself against the chaos and the furniture in the room spiraled in her periphery. 

The space between herself and the door seemed to stretch endlessly. Her bare feet dragged against the floor, the pulse in her ears thundering louder with each labored breath.

If she didn’t get air soon, she might crumble entirely. How would she ever put herself back together if there were no pieces left to reassemble?

Her chest was a collapsing cave and Caitlyn felt the pressure of it like a vice, unbearable. Squeezing, squeezing, tighter, tighter.  

The pressure will bear fruit, as it always does.

Echoed words lashed at her like a whip, striking her harder with every step. Caitlyn gasped for another breath, steps fumbling, falling off their intended path. Each of Ambessa’s lessons, laced with poison, dragged her deeper into the mire of her own self doubt, until even putting one foot in front of the other felt an insurmountable task.

The door ahead of her swam in and out of focus, a cruel mirage that only seemed farther away the closer she got to it. Her last step was an unsteady one and Caitlyn crashed into the unforgiving surface of the wood, one shoulder absorbing the brunt of the impact. Her fingers trembled as they wrapped around the knob and she heard Vi’s footsteps bearing down on her a second before she managed to turn it.

Her weight fell forward haphazardly, her struggle with balance ongoing as she teetered onto the open landing inside the hideout.

But Caitlyn had never been given a proper tour. She’d only been here once before, so long ago now, and Ekko had been too keen to be rid of her quickly. Caitlyn had barely seen more than the base of the tree, the mural that prevented lost faces from slipping from living memories, before the three of them had left together for the Bridge of Progress.

It needed a new name. Nothing that happened on that bridge transpired from a place of progress.

She’d never been up this high in the hideout. In all their time inside this room, Caitlyn had never been accurately oriented and as her momentum carried her forward, the world yawned open below her. Her toes caught the edge of the landing and it somehow felt like nothing at all – an illusion, a lie only pretending to hold her weight. Long arms shot out, flailing for balance. Reaching for anything, everything, and finding only the air she’d so urgently needed. 

Cerulean eyes went wide and a fleeting thought traveled through her mind, unraveling like a frayed thread.

It wouldn’t be the worst way to die.

Maybe there would be peace in falling.

And at the end, her mother’s waiting arms.

“Cait!”

The arms that did embrace her were thicker than Cassandra’s, decorated with tattoos and rippling lines of muscle that told a story of survival. Vi. Together, they toppled backwards and despite the sudden pain of an uncontrolled landing, Caitlyn finally felt a sense of steadiness against the sturdy body behind her. Her heels grated against weathered wood, legs still moving beyond the borders of her conscience. Like searching for purchase in sand. 

With Vi wrapped around her, Caitlyn could breathe. Her shoulders heaved with the effort, fingers curling into the firm bands of Vi’s forearms as if holding on for her life. It wasn’t a quiet collision, nor was it careful. It was raw and unhinged, a reflection of Caitlyn’s own thoughts as they came to terms with her new reality.  Her nails bit into Vi’s flesh, unintentional but fierce, and another broken gasp escaped her lips as she pressed herself backward, deeper into the only certainty she could find.

“Tighter,” she whispered, her voice a broken rasp from a throat still tight with despair. Her trembling hands slid to Vi’s elbows and tugged, clumsy and desperate, in an attempt at fortifying the only thing keeping her tethered.

Her anchor. The one she chose for herself.

Vi obliged. The powerful arms around her squeezed, her strength steady and unyielding as if her hold alone could bind Caitlyn back together. The air wasn’t quite the reprieve she needed it to be – down here in the Undercity, it never would be. But it provided oxygen, and the hazy edges of Caitlyn’s vision slowly began to clear. Her breaths were shallow but plentiful, a stuttering rhythm with audible exhales that dissipated into the void where she’d nearly disappeared.

“I’ve got you.” It was an assurance and a promise all in one and while Caitlyn felt miles away from deserving it, she clung as hard to the words as she did to the girl who spoke them. 

Her head fell back onto Vi’s shoulder, yet another form of pressing closer. Despite the stillness they’d found, Caitlyn could feel a fresh wave of emotion rising from the depths. She simply didn’t know what to do with it. Didn’t know how to contain it. She was hardly convinced there was anything to be done but drown in it, so she held tighter to the only thing left in her life that felt real. Her hands slid from Vi’s elbows to her wrists, wrapping around them like shackles, unbreakable.

“I don’t know what to do,” Caitlyn croaked quietly after a handful of silent moments. They weren’t peaceful. They felt as fragile as glass and Caitlyn could tell that Vi understood that, too. When she squeezed her eyes shut, a slow tear tracked down either temple. 

“You’ll get through it. Like you do everything, Cait.” Caitlyn shifted anxiously, as though she could fold herself deeper into Vi’s embrace and hide away from everything clawing at her insides. The arms around her flexed, and Caitlyn could feel the strength in them. It was grounding, a lifeline thrown into turbulent waters. “You’re stronger than you think.”

Caitlyn’s immediate thought was to question whether or not that was true. A doubt intensified by the echo of Ambessa’s voice in her head. Even here, far from her sizable grasp, Caitlyn wasn’t strong enough to escape the memory of the woman who’d turned her into this hollow shell. A ghost of the general was all it took to disable her completely and Caitlyn shuddered against Vi’s body.

She’d been transformed into the very shadow they’d been chasing – a haunting realization.

“You don’t understand,” she argued weakly with a shake of her head before turning it into the warm column of Vi’s neck. The scent of her – leather and concrete – cut through the fog and allowed Caitlyn a deeper breath, one that expanded her chest inside Vi’s firm hold. “You don’t know the things I’ve done, Vi.”

An image of herself standing in front of a mirror flashed violently beneath her eyelids. Ambessa stood behind her, holding her chin, commanding the direction of her gaze. A thick arm wrapped around to her front and disappeared below the waistband of her trousers. It wasn’t until after the first time Ambessa touched her that Caitlyn thought to even question it. Only after hours and hours spent agonizing over the meaning of it all, wondering what sort of weak it made her to have given in to such superfluous impulses.

She had no business engaging in sexual endeavors with a woman like Ambessa, her senior by far too many years of both life and professional experience. It was an endangerment to them both, one neither of them could afford to entertain amidst the tumultuous political atmosphere they’d curated together. So many nights, Caitlyn had lain awake wondering over her foolishness, her naivety. Wondering how and why she kept sliding further down a slope that had never been particularly slippery for her before. 

And now, Caitlyn had her answers. It never mattered how staunch her doubts, or how firm her resistance. There had been moments of hesitation – even determined instances of her denial. No matter how strongly forged her will, Caitlyn never would have been able to avoid Ambessa’s advances.

She’d been stripped of her agency. Made devastatingly and unquestionably subservient. Just like she’d said to Vi in a fleeting second of clarity.

Chapter Text

She watched from a shadowed ledge a short way up from the room she’d just vacated, where sunlight trickled through the reaching arms of the tree and decorated her pale face like the night sky. She stopped her climb when she heard the door open again, turned in time to witness it all transpire with a curious tilt of her head and breath stuck in her throat.

Violet eyes went wide. It wasn’t her sister stumbling out that door, but Caitlyn Kiramman. Piltover’s righteous commander.

But was she really?

She didn’t need Vi to tell her explicitly what significance the runes played in this unfolding shit-uation. Her big sister was a protector – always had been, unwittingly or not. Dedicated to being what her loved ones needed, even when she wasn’t strong enough. Even when it hurt her.

The commander was one of those figures now. A receiver of the kind of love she’d only been born with. Caitlyn had earned it somehow. By being pretty? By being noble? She wore the markings of Vi’s love subtly, but she could see it. Even from here. It was like a glow that radiated off that absurdly long body and it drew Vi back, time and time again.

She knew what the runes did. Quietly watching Vi and Caitlyn over the last couple of days filled in the rest of the blanks and it wasn’t hard to guess at their problems.

Caitlyn’s movements were frantic and imprecise. She hadn’t known where they were, clearly. Didn’t know the drop was coming. Anyone could see that in the way her feet found the edge of the landing and stopped, nearly too late. Anyone could see it in the way her arms wheeled at her sides, wild and stupid. Like a bird realizing too late that it was missing its wings.

It could have been funny. It probably should have been funny.

But it wasn’t.

She stood there, her own boots planted solidly on the wooden stairs that led up to the next platform, and watched as Caitlyn tilted toward the tree. A leaning tower, powerless against gravity. Frozen mid-motion like she’d never learned what it meant to protect herself. 

Did she want to fall?

Did this girl – this enforcer – have no regard for the wellbeing of her own body?

Well, she couldn’t judge on those bases, really. Her magenta eyes and freakish speed were testament to that.

Vi wasn’t far behind. She continued watching, the differences in their movements so starkly different. Caitlyn, off-kilter and flailing. Vi, quick and certain. She grabbed Caitlyn by the waist and yanked her back, hard, the both of them collapsing together in a sloppy heap.

Her fists curled. It wasn’t subtle, the way Vi held her. Arms locked tight around Caitlyn’s middle, her nose buried somewhere against the woman’s long neck as if it smelled of freshly baked cookies. Not a casual embrace. Not a thank-Janna-you’re-safe kind of hug, either. It was something else. Something that felt so far beyond her own understanding, and she tended to dislike things she couldn’t understand.

For a second – just one – she felt the old stir of jealousy rise violently in her chest. A tight knot of something ugly and familiar. Jagged lines that overlapped and criss-crossed in the darkness. But they weren’t as sharp as they used to be. Blunted, maybe. Like the edge of a knife after too many careless swings with it.

She shifted her weight, heard the platform creak beneath her feet, and thought about leaving. It was what she should have done, probably. But her legs were concrete. Instead, she kept watching, her gaze flitting between tangled limbs and Caitlyn’s face. The panic hadn’t abated, it was etched into every feminine line and regal angle. And there was something else now, too. Another thing she felt so far removed from…

Trust.

It explained all of it. Every piece. Them being here in the hideout together. Vi asking her to decipher the runes. The way Caitlyn clung to Vi like a buoy in the ocean. Like she knew Vi would hold her above water every time, no matter what.

Her sister had always been pretty good at that. Before everything went to shit, anyway.

The knot in her chest tightened. Then loosened. Then tightened again. 

She didn’t really know what to think, and confusion had never been a fun time for her already disjointed thoughts.

She’d hated Caitlyn, once. That much she remembered clearly. Hated the way Caitlyn looked at Vi like they could be each other’s heroes. Hated the way Vi went all googly-eyed when their gazes met. She especially hated the way Caitlyn’s presence pulled Vi’s attention. Even if her naive sister believed it couldn’t be pulled.

But now? Now, she couldn’t figure out what she felt. It wasn’t hate anymore.

Regret, maybe.

That was new.

It wasn’t like she’d aimed Fishbone at Caitlyn’s mother on purpose, but the explosion had torn through more than just the walls of the council chambers. She hadn’t thought about it at the time. Not really. The people in those fancy chairs sitting at that uppity table – they were mothers and fathers. Sisters and brothers. No, she hadn’t put it all in the hideous frame of loss when her finger was on trigger. Wasn’t sure it would have changed anything, even if she had.

She’d gotten what she wanted out of that blast. The rest was just a spill, and it hadn’t taken Piltover long to mop it up.

But now, watching Caitlyn crumble like a stale cracker, she couldn’t push it all away as easily. The memory stuck. Plenty sharp, perfectly jagged, and suddenly refusing to fit neatly into the tidy compartments where she once stored everything she didn’t want to feel.

Her thumb slowly traced down the length of her metal finger, then up again. Everything, all of it, was just a puzzle. If she looked at it that way, then it was just another thing to solve. And she was good at solving stuff. Vi needed her. Caitlyn needed… well, something, and she didn’t think she could sell a lobotomy to her lovestruck sister.

An apology? 

Too late for that. 

A solution, then. Something practical. Tangible.

Pink eyes lingered on the way Caitlyn pressed against Vi, the way her whole body trembled, just a frayed wire barely holding a current.

It was sad, in a way. She never would have believed herself capable of feeling pity for a Piltie, but it was there. Twisted up inside her stomach like that one time Sevika brought home a questionable stew for supper and they’d all ended up green in the face.

Maybe she couldn’t bring people back from the dead – neat trick that would have been. But she could do something.

Whatever she did for Caitlyn would also be for Vi, and that felt like a reasonable thing to aspire to. Familiar, even.

With a stern set of her jaw, she zipped from the landing, a flick of blue braids catching the sunlight as she disappeared.

Chapter Text

The first light of morning crept in from the cracks around the door, casting soft amber streaks across the room. Vi lay awake, her body heavy with exhaustion, her mind too restless for sleep. Caitlyn was tucked securely against her, body pulsing with the slow, steady rhythm of her breathing. 

Vi let out a quiet breath, her forehead resting against the back of Caitlyn’s head. She should have slept, should have let the comfort of their embrace lull her under, but rest felt like a foreign concept. Even last night, as she’d watched Caitlyn prepare for bed, Vi had doubted her chances of falling asleep. But Caitlyn was the one to approach her with the handcuffs and when they slipped into bed together, their bodies did what their words couldn’t seem to. They came together. They both sought and provided comfort. Neither one needed to acknowledge out loud that nobody else could be for each other what they were. 

Even with that comfort, however, Vi’s mind wouldn’t settle. Not after everything that had happened yesterday – Caitlyn on the verge of slipping away, of plummeting. Every time she closed her eyes, Vi saw it again. Caitlyn’s arms flailing, the terrifying moment where she thought she might be too late. The weight of it sat heavy on her chest, pressing into her ribs with every inhale.

At one point, engulfed in the silence as she was, Vi wondered how Caitlyn could feel so small in her arms. Realistically, she knew this body was conditioned to endure. To withstand. It wasn’t a feeble body and Vi had witnessed the many powerful things it was capable of. But against her, Caitlyn felt fragile, and Vi spent a sorrowful amount of time grappling with the very real fact that she couldn’t protect her wholly.

For the first time in some hours, Caitlyn’s body twitched and Vi instinctively tightened her hold. If it was all she could give Caitlyn right now, the only offering she was willing to accept, then Vi would be damned if she didn’t do it with every ounce of strength she had at her disposal.

Which was a fair amount, she thought humbly.

The soap here didn’t smell of anything, really. It was a nondescript sort of clean scent that clung to Caitlyn’s skin and twisted through her hair, all of which Vi greedily burrowed into. The tip of her nose traced down the back of Caitlyn’s neck as she inhaled deeply. Beneath the soap, the subtle and lingering sense of something familiar. Floral. Lavender. It tugged on the many memories she had of this girl and transported Vi to a place and time that had been so much simpler than here and now. Not without its own strife, of course, but her problems then had been so straightforward. 

The poison that laced through their lives now felt nearly impossible to untangle from the fabric of their shared reality. A daunting task that Vi truly didn’t know how to tackle. All she could comprehend was the moment in front of her. If they could just keep getting through the next one, they’d be alright.

One step at a time was how people climbed mountains. A piece of wisdom bestowed on her many, many years ago. Not by Vander, but by her first father. She’d never forgotten it.

Her fingers brushed over Caitlyn’s wrist, feeling the steady pulse beneath the skin. A reassurance. Proof that Caitlyn was still here, that Vi had caught her, that she hadn’t let her slip through her fingers. Maybe Caitlyn wasn’t capable of pushing her feet forward, but Vi wouldn’t let her stand still. And she definitely wouldn’t let her fall backward.

Two were stronger than one and together, they would climb this mountain. They had to.

Caitlyn stirred then. A soft inhale, then the faintest shift in her body. Vi felt the change in her immediately – the subtle tension of waking, the first flutter of consciousness. She watched, loosening her hold as Caitlyn rolled over, right arm adjusting accordingly to prevent the cuffs from pulling too tightly on either one of them.

What she expected to see in ocean eyes, Vi didn’t know. They bowled her over, as Caitlyn’s gaze always seemed to. Her next breath caught in her throat, but Vi held her sleepy stare.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. They just watched each other, something fragile and unspoken passing between them. The quiet was thick, charged, but the tension wasn’t uncomfortable. Vi searched Caitlyn’s face, taking in her tired eyes, the way her lips parted like she might say something, only to stop herself. Vi wished she could read her mind, wished she knew what Caitlyn needed. But she didn’t. So she just waited.

Then, slowly, Caitlyn’s gaze grew glossy. A single tear slipped free, then another. She didn’t sob, didn’t make a sound. Just let them fall, unbidden. Vi felt each one like a wave crashing into her, a pain that wasn’t hers but that she carried all the same.

She didn’t wipe them away this time, didn’t need to. She didn’t think Caitlyn was looking for that now. She was just letting herself feel, letting herself be seen. Vi did see her, and would hold her through it.

Caitlyn’s breath hitched slightly, her fingers twitching where they rested against Vi’s chest. For a moment, it almost seemed like she might close the distance between them, might bury her face against Vi’s collar and let herself unfold completely. But she didn’t. She just blinked, slow and tired, tears drying against her cheek.

Things had changed here, even if Vi felt incapable of identifying those things by name. The psychological warfare wrought upon Caitlyn in the last handful of months made Vi feel anxious in her proximity to this girl she knew she loved. Her eyes, cool in color but warm with affection, traversed the features of Caitlyn’s face. Noted every bruise, every scrape.They paused on the bandage over the bridge of a strong nose and Vi recognized a desire to touch her lips there. An innocent gesture to demonstrate how deep her care for Caitlyn ran.

But could she? Was she allowed?

Or would a wordless, uninvited token of her love trigger something dark? Something traumatizing?

Hatred for Ambessa bubbled low in Vi’s gut and she fought to steady her nerves with a deep breath.

“Are you alright?”

Vi froze, eyes widening slightly as they flicked back and forth between Caitlyn’s glistening blues. It felt silly – problematic, even – that she’d unintentionally provoked such a question when it was Caitlyn who needed her concern. 

With a thick swallow, Vi cleared her throat and nodded slowly. “Yea– yes, sorry. Was just… thinking.”

“About?”

She couldn’t say it. Didn’t think uttering the general’s name would do them any good here, in this safe space they’d carved out for themselves. A place Ambessa couldn’t find them. 

“About what we should do today,” Vi answered softly, a rushed alternative to the truth. A quiet lie she didn’t feel guilty for. “You feel like going down to the base?” she wondered, a gentle suggestion. They’d been cooped up in here for so long and while Vi didn’t particularly mind – it was warm and quiet, a solace she’d ever only managed to dream of before – she thought maybe getting out would be good for Caitlyn.

More importantly, it gave Caitlyn a choice. Control over her own actions. Restoration of the agency Ambessa had bled from her for far too long.

Caitlyn didn’t immediately answer. Vi watched her eyes move, and they were almost frantic in their pace. But she didn’t push, instead gave her whatever time she needed to process. To come to her own decision.

“Is that a good idea?” Caitlyn finally murmured, the tone of her doubt heartbreaking all on its own. “The Firelights aren’t particularly fond of me”

Vi fought to hide a frown. Much of the Undercity was not fond of Commander Caitlyn Kiramman, and now they had a much clearer understanding of why. Because she’d been acting under the impermeable influence of a ruthless Noxian warlord, whose values and merciless attitude were foreign to a place like Piltover.

“They’re also a more forgiving group than you think,” Vi argued softly. She rolled partially away from Caitlyn, left arm reaching back for the piece of wire that sat on the bedside table. No sense in hiding the thing, as Caitlyn had made it clear she didn’t know how to pick a lock. Vi used it now to unlatch the cuffs, starting with Caitlyn’s, and then her own. Even in freeing them from one another, Vi didn’t immediately move to get up. “They know you need healing.” Caitlyn’s ailments had been obvious when Vi arrived here, days ago now, carrying the unconscious commander in her arms.

They didn’t need to know about the mental wounds that had yet to close. Those were nobody’s business but Caitlyn’s.

“My injuries do not absolve me of my mistakes, Vi,” Caitlyn spoke quietly. Vi sighed, rolling onto her back as Caitlyn climbed over her to stand from the bed. She stared at the ceiling, pictured her pool of patience and imagined reaching an arm below the surface of its waters. How deep did it run? “Nor do they earn forgiveness by their own merit.”

Vi turned onto her side, facing Caitlyn, watching as the woman wrapped long fingers around the wrist that had homed a metal shackle all night. She wouldn’t be used to the weight of them like Vi was and it made sense that she might feel discomfort after so much time spent in them. 

Long strands of pink hair fell in front of her eyes – she’d need a haircut soon, Vi thought idly. She didn’t like it long so much. There was something in maintaining a short crop that felt like keeping her mother alive. A silly and childish secret that she’d never told anyone, and one Vi was eager to carry with her to the grave.

“Maybe not,” Vi agreed, propping her head up on her hand as she continued to watch Caitlyn. She was stretching out the shoulder she’d slept on now, both arms lifting above her head with the left tugging gingerly on the right. Vi couldn’t help the way her eyes drank it in – like Caitlyn was an oasis in the sand, a glittering pond of crystal blue against a world of unforgiving brown. Her gaze traveled slowly down the long length of her – and it was long, one of the many features about Caitlyn she’d always admired.

The generous swells of her breasts. She admired those, too.

The hem of Caitlyn’s simple undershirt rode up her waist with the delicate motions of her stretching. It was the most she’d ever seen. In person, anyway. Just an inch higher and she might catch a glimpse of Caitlyn’s belly button–

But Vi’s gaze was violently ripped away from its less-than-innocent exploration when she noticed the discolored skin peeking out from below the waistband of Caitlyn’s pants. Not just one bruise, but two. Identical patches of green and yellow on either hip.

Vi sat up suddenly, stuck staring straight at those bruises with eyes wide and brows furrowed. It was a look of concern, one she’d always been notably terrible at hiding.

“What?” Caitlyn asked, abruptly dropping both arms when she took note of Vi’s expression. “What is it?”

“Huh?” Vi responded automatically, dumbfounded, and tore her eyes off the bruises to look up at Caitlyn’s face instead. “Oh– erm.” Vi struggled to swallow the lump in her throat, right arm lifted to scratch anxiously at the back of her neck. “Nothing.” Those bruises weren’t nothing and Vi’s head spun with questions that made her dizzy and dumb. “I thought I heard someone coming.”

Caitlyn turned towards the door, arms folding over her stomach in a stance Vi recognized as painfully defensive. But there was only silence beyond their room. No footsteps on the landing, no knock on the wood. No Noxian general come to tear them apart and shove Caitlyn’s head back underwater.

Vi rose to her feet, her movements smooth, muscles rippling beneath tattooed skin as she stood. She felt soft lying in bed, still warm from a night spent wrapped around the woman who held her heart. On her feet, Vi felt like the fortified brawler she’d trained herself to be. The pillar that could stand in front of Caitlyn and take every punch, every jab intended for her. A bare hand reached through the space between them, fingers gliding lightly over Caitlyn’s elbow. “I’m just paranoid,” she murmured when those striking blue eyes looked back at her. Vi tried for a small, reassuring smile. Something about the way the muscles tugged around her mouth felt more like a grimace, though, and Vi feared it wouldn’t be particularly convincing.

She knelt at the foot of the bed, plucked up Caitlyn’s jacket, as well as her own. “Will you let me show you around?” Vi asked, still making sure to pose her suggestion as a question. An invitation, one she would allow Caitlyn to decline if she truly didn’t feel comfortable. Maybe it was naive, but Vi hoped that fresh air in their lungs and sun on their faces might be a sip of restoration they both sorely needed.

When her arm extended, Caitlyn’s gaze dropped to stare at the blue coat that dangled from Vi’s fingers. It was a symbol of her position in Piltover, the unquestionable palette of the enforcers. Vi hadn’t thought much of it one way or another, until Caitlyn reached instead for the black leather she held in her opposite hand.

It was with an uncontrollable warmth in her belly that Vi watched Caitlyn fold herself into the jacket, tossing the rejected coat onto the bed and leading the way out of the room with arms and shoulders bare.

A short while later, they stood on the ground level of the hideout. Side by side, knuckles brushing in the minute space between their thighs. The clearing around the base of the tree was mostly empty this early in the morning, but there were a few lone Firelights meandering here and there. Carrying baskets, towing a child, the like. It lacked the bustling activity that would surely come later on in the day and for now, Caitlyn appreciated the peace it offered.

They bore identical posture, heads tipped back, chins up and gazes focused on the sprawling faces painted over the wall before them. Caitlyn recognized some of them. The central figure was, of course, the very same face she’d woken up to this morning. She stared up at its younger rendering, noted the many similarities, but also the handful of differences. Not born of age alone, but of experience, too. The Vi painted on this wall looked light in spirit, bursting with a vivacity Caitlyn thought she’d seen maybe once before. The very moment their jon boat landed at the docks in Piltover and Vi took her first step as a free woman in seven years.

There was a sparkle in the gray eyes of Vi’s painted likeness that wasn’t there now, and Caitlyn didn’t have to guess at the many reasons that shine had corroded over time. 

Pain was a power none of them were resistant to. Caitlyn wore the many varied scars left behind by her own bouts with it.

“That’s Claggor.” Vi’s voice broke the silence and Caitlyn followed the line of her pointing finger to the topmost figure in the mural. A boy with a mop of brown hair atop his head, a pair of goggles covering his eyes. Caitlyn recognized them, and despite the rest, discovering their origin tugged the corners of her mouth upwards. “My older brother. He was gentle – too gentle for this shit we constantly dragged him into, probably.” Vi laughed, the sound breathy and quiet. Not exactly joyful, but rather, mourning. “And Mylo.” The next boy Vi indicated sported a shocking coif of dark hair that Caitlyn thought was quite charming. “Younger than us both, and constantly trying to prove he could keep up. He was a pain in the ass.” At that, Caitlyn turned her head to look instead at Vi, who still stared up.

It tore at her in many ways to see just how many people Vi had lost. She was young yet, no older than Caitlyn, and of everyone she’d once called family, only a single sister remained. Caitlyn felt as though she’d barely survived the death of her mother – a battle she clearly was not finished fighting. But somehow, Vi stood here beside her, the strongest person Caitlyn had ever known. Not just physically, but in heart. While she wasn’t naive enough to believe it unbreakable, Caitlyn knew with absolute certainty that it was unshakable. 

And it had been hers. Once.

“Vi…”

Vi turned her head and their gazes met. Caitlyn could see those sweet steel eyes swimming in memories, lost in the past. They were beautiful.

She was beautiful.

Her fingers flexed, reached. Slipped through the length of Vi’s until each one of them was laced, tangled. 

Nothing about touching Vi made her skin crawl, or her stomach churn. It only felt warm, and right. Caitlyn gave that hand a small tug and their bodies turned towards one another. She let her head drop, forehead pressing softly to Vi’s. This close, she could count the shades of blue in these eyes that stared back at her. She could feel the warmth of Vi’s breath on her lips and thought, maybe, it was easier to fill her lungs.

“I’m so sorry you lost them,” she whispered, thumb brushing slowly up the length of Vi’s.

“I’m sorry, too.”

It was enough, for now. Quiet tokens of consolation for everyone they’d loved and said goodbye to, collectively. For just another moment, they stood together beneath the immortalized stares of everyone their cities had failed. Everyone whose souls had been stolen too soon, but whose memories lived in the hearts of those left behind.

Everyone they’d fight for, right to the bitter end.

Caitlyn licked her lips, suddenly hyper aware of how dry they’d become. The subtle sounds of the hideout continued to rustle and chirp and creak around them, a natural backdrop to a moment that felt wildly natural in its buildup. She shifted, and the tip of her nose brushed gently against Vi’s. Her body swayed, the bout of a tree caught in a breeze that dragged it closer to the sturdier one beside it.

There was nothing and no one inside her head. No echoes. No faces. Just a wooden box in the corner, its lid wide open.

Caitlyn felt her heart thumping in her throat and fought to swallow it. A hand drifted to her hip, its presence there both firm and gentle simultaneously. 

“Cait…”

The sound of her name was a feather caught on the wind. She felt it, warm against her chin, and it beckoned her closer.

But the hand at her hip shifted, a thumb passing up over the jut of bone beneath thin skin. Caitlyn hissed out a breath and looked down, her own hand falling over Vi’s with an urgent squeeze. The bruise beneath her touch throbbed, a stark and stunning reminder of the last set of hands that had been on her body.

In an instant, Ambessa exploded inside her head. The low timbre of her voice, the sharp snare of her amber eyes. The commanding grip of her oversized hands and the way it felt to be at their mercy.

With a gasping breath, Caitlyn tore herself away from Vi’s body, turned away and pressed the heel of her palm to her temple.

“Cait, we need to talk.”

She didn’t want to talk. All they’d done was talk and Caitlyn felt no closer to reclaiming the woman who had been buried beneath the lies.

The closest she’d come was just now, a moment ago. Occupying Vi’s space in this insignificant plot of earth they called their own. With every breath she drew into her lungs having come straight from Vi’s.

Chapter Text

“I saw the bruises, Cait.”

Caitlyn shook her head, pressing her hand more firmly into her temple. She pushed hard enough to make it hurt, like that might somehow stop this train from coming.

“I’m covered in bruises, Vi,” she argued, but her tone didn’t cut. It didn’t defend her the way Caitlyn felt she needed defending. “As are you, for that matter.”

“Don’t do that.” When she heard Vi take a couple of steps closer, Caitlyn took several away. “You know what I’m talking about.”

She did. Of course she did. How could she forget? Caitlyn had every reason to believe Ambessa knew – had always known – exactly what she was doing. These bruises weren’t just marks on her body. They were scars on her memory and maybe if she pushed hard enough, Caitlyn could shove them right out of her skull.

“These ones didn’t come from the hexblast.”

Vi was right. They didn’t match the color of the bruising on her ribs, still angry red and vicious purple. The marks on her hips bore signs of age and Caitlyn knew she couldn’t simply explain them away. Doing so would require a lie and she wasn’t sure she had it in her to deliver one to Vi. Not after everything.

“What happened?”

A cold ripple moved through Caitlyn’s body. Shame curled tightly in her stomach like a living thing and she could feel it threatening to consume her from the inside. She couldn’t blame the bruises on training. Couldn’t claim they were the result of some clumsy accident. They were too peculiar, identical and so conspicuously placed. Caitlyn had known where they came from the moment she looked at herself in the mirror afterward, when she saw the dark imprints on her prominent hip bones and felt the ghost of Ambessa’s weight against her back.

But knowing and accepting were two very different things. And saying it aloud? It felt impossible.

“It’s not–” She exhaled shakily, head tilted down and gaze staring hard at a patch of grass growing through broken concrete. “It’s nothing you have to worry about, Vi.”

But Vi’s silence was deafening. It drowned out the chirping of birds that flitted about the top of the tree and the quiet mumblings of Firelights tending their morning business. Caitlyn could feel the weight of her stare, could imagine the way Vi’s fingers probably flexed and curled into fists at her sides.

“I’m already worried, Cait,” Vi said, voice edged with something sharp. Something she had heard before, in a conversation they’d had many days ago now. When it had been Caitlyn’s voice speaking someone else’s words.

Caitlyn squeezed her eyes shut.

She could still feel it. The press of hands where they shouldn’t have been, folding her over a desk that had once belonged to her mother. The mournful grind of wood against her bones. The way she had frozen in submission, unwilling to fight because Ambessa made her that way. The betrayal of her own mind that whispered, you let it happen. That maybe, somehow, she’d deserved it.

Caitlyn’s breath stuck in her throat and she shook her head. “I don’t– I don’t want to talk about it.”

She heard Vi take a step closer. “Cait–”

“I do not,” Caitlyn snapped, harsher than she intended, a desperate attempt at holding together the pieces threatening to spill across the ground at their feet. Her arms echoed the notion, crossed over her chest with fingers curled at the lapels of Vi’s jacket, pulling it tighter around her body. It smelled of concrete and leather, and Caitlyn felt the slightest release of tension in her throat.

Warm fingers curled slowly over her elbow and Caitlyn flinched, but she didn’t shrug Vi off. That hand tugged and Caitlyn turned with it, hesitating a handful of seconds before lifting her gaze to Vi’s. Her expression was a storm of emotions – rage, Caitlyn thought. The bubbling surface over concern, uncertainty, and something raw and protective that made Caitlyn’s heart beat just a little faster.

A long silence stretched between them. Vi shifted, exhaled sharply through her nose. Caitlyn could practically hear the battle raging inside her head – the desire to press, to demand answers, warring against a visible need to be patient.

She’d shown so much of it already. How much longer could Caitlyn test it before those waters ran dry?

When Vi finally spoke, her voice was softer. “Okay.”

Caitlyn’s fingers twisted against leather as Vi sighed with palpable resignation.

“But listen to me.” Caitlyn waited, and listened. “Whatever happened – whoever did that to you–” Her nostrils flared and Caitlyn felt a familiar sting behind her eyes. She already knows. “It wasn’t your fault, Cait.”

Her breath hitched as the words struck something deep inside her, something fragile and frayed and barely holding together. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

Vi held her gaze, unwavering. “You don’t have to tell me now. You don’t have to tell me ever. But I need you to remember that.”

Caitlyn swallowed. Hard. The tightness in her throat was back, a vicious lump that refused to ease again. Vi shifted, hesitated, and Caitlyn thought she might step back. Might retreat, and let it all go for now. Instead, Vi came forward, slow and deliberate, her motions easily trackable in Caitlyn’s peripheral vision. She moved closer, close enough that Caitlyn could once again feel the warmth of her. Not just a body pressed against her own, but the familiar and comforting wash of Vi’s breath over her chin.

Vi reached up, her fingers sliding over Caitlyn’s where they gripped too tightly to worn leather. In an instant, her grip loosened. Every muscle that held tension suddenly softened again with that one touch and Caitlyn tripped over her next breath.

“Ambessa.”

The name tumbled up her throat and off her tongue before Caitlyn could rein it in. Like her body just couldn’t deny Vi any longer, or hold onto this godforsaken secret for even another second. It was the animal, sleeping in her stomach. Corroding her bones and eating away at her where she couldn’t see it, couldn’t stop it.

Caitlyn released a gasping breath, her chest heaving beneath their hands.

“They’re from Ambessa. Vi–”

But Vi was already here. She was right here, immediately reaching a second hand up to hold the side of her face at precisely the same moment Caitlyn’s vision tipped sideways. Saying it out loud was every bit the horror Caitlyn feared it would be. The release was overwhelming, but even as the tension leaked out of her, a tidal wave of shame and embarrassment swept in to replace it. She couldn’t just be free, it seemed, and Caitlyn fought to take even a single steady breath.

Ambessa’s hands were all over her. The smooth timbre of her voice echoed in Caitlyn’s ears and her chest was collapsing beneath the insurmountable weight of her. 

“Cait– look at me. Look at me, Caitlyn. Only me.”

Vi’s voice barely cut through noise in her head and Caitlyn swore she felt her bruises throb, as if punishing her for her betrayal of their maker.

Her fingers trembled beneath Vi’s and Caitlyn thought maybe her knees felt weak. Thought maybe they’d given out entirely, because Vi wasn’t just pressed close anymore. She was holding her, and Caitlyn felt oddly weightless.

“You’re not alone anymore.”

The whisper touch of lips against her temple was little more than vibrations, blurry and unintelligible. But Caitlyn could admit to herself that the vibrations were… nice. Familiar. She wanted more of them.

Vi pressed her forehead to Caitlyn’s and finally, through the fog, bright steel. It glinted brilliantly in the morning sun and in the pinpoint pupils of these wonderful eyes that saw her so clearly, Caitlyn saw the reflection of cerulean blue.

This was Vi. And she was Caitlyn.

They’d always been better off together than apart.

“Vi, she–”

“I know, I know,” Vi cut her off. A gift. A glowing lantern in the darkness. “I understand – you don’t have to say it.”

She didn’t have to say it for Vi to know it and Caitlyn reached for her. The one true pillar left in her life. The only eyes left that saw the girl beneath the uniform, behind the name. The only heart still here that made room for her inside it by choice.

A garbled sound of despair bubbled up Caitlyn’s throat as she reached a shaking hand for Vi’s face. It molded to a warm cheek, where the pressure helped to hold it steady.

“It’s not your fault, Cait,” Vi repeated, only once the moment seemed to settle.

Caitlyn’s head shook. Her blue eyes were even brighter with emotion, and they flicked rapidly back and forth between Vi’s. “You don’t know that,” she whispered. The doubt and the self-blame were a rising tide inside her chest, the feeling of drowning still so devastatingly inescapable.

“We do, actually,” Vi argued, and while her tone was firm, her volume was soft. Gentle fingers brushed a wayward lock of raven blue away from Caitlyn’s eye, tucked it away behind her ear, where her touch lingered. “You weren’t in control. Literally. We know that now.”

“What does that change?” Caitlyn bit back, and it wasn’t with anger for Vi, nor a stubborn remark just for the sake of being combative. It was simply a feeling she couldn’t shake, even in learning the truth about Ambessa’s runes. “It doesn’t erase the things she–” Caitlyn choked on her words. Her palm slipped further up Vi’s cheek, fingers curling around her ear as if seeking another anchor to hold onto. “It doesn’t just wipe clean the shame I feel, Vi.”

In taking control of her mind, Ambessa had also claimed her body. It wasn’t Caitlyn’s anymore. It hadn’t felt like Caitlyn’s in a very long time, and she didn’t know what to do with that. 

Vi took a deep breath. It seemed to move between them. Caitlyn could feel it, the way it shifted Vi’s body against her. The way it made her arms flex and tighten, just a little. It was some kind of familiar magic, the way it encouraged Caitlyn to breathe, too. A deep inhale, a slow exhale. And all the while, her eyes remained on Vi’s. 

Vi was steady. Vi knew the truth – the ugly, horrific reality of it all – and she was still here. Still holding Caitlyn, just like she always had. Still Caitlyn’s anchor in a raging sea.

“I don’t know how you wipe it clean,” Vi murmured softly. She didn’t meet Caitlyn’s fire with fire, and it helped ease the sting of her own arguments. “But you don’t have to carry it alone.” Movement between them drew Caitlyn’s gaze down, so she might watch as Vi guided their joined hands to her chest. They settled together over the stained and fraying wraps of her binder, long fingers threaded through Caitlyn’s where her palm pressed to Vi’s heart. “You can give it to me.”

Caitlyn’s shoulders trembled with a shiver she couldn’t resist. It ripped across her bones and down her spine. Her next breath brought her closer to Vi. Her fingers curled against that strong chest, reveled in the firm muscle beneath her touch and knew…

Vi meant it. If Caitlyn wasn’t strong enough to bear it alone, she could trust Vi to help with the burden of its weight. She wouldn’t crumble, she wouldn’t falter.

They were better together.

“Vi, please stop,” Caitlyn murmured. She sat on the edge of the bed, knees pressed tightly together, wringing her hands over her lap as she watched Vi pace back and forth across their room. It felt like witnessing a rockslide – outside, at the base, Vi had been steady. Whatever feelings developed in learning of the many horrible things that had happened with Ambessa, she’d masked them. Expertly so. But now that they were alone, in private, Caitlyn could see her composure unraveling.

It made her anxious. How was Caitlyn supposed to keep Vi’s head above water when she hadn’t yet stopped spiraling herself?

She curled her hands into the arms of Vi’s jacket, tugged on them with no real goal of feeling comforted by the weight of it around her. Even the smell of it failed to ease her tension now, because her pillar was splintering. No self-soothing tactic could sidestep that particular dread.

“Vi,” she tried again, just a little louder this time.

But Vi didn’t stop. She dragged a hand through her hair and for once, the impressive cut of her bicep didn’t draw Caitlyn’s attention. “I just–” Vi’s fingers curled tightly against her scalp, like she was trying to hold something in. “I don’t–” Is this how Vi had felt all these days, watching Caitlyn slip in and out of coherency? It was unpleasant, and Caitlyn felt distinctly powerless to change the course of Vi’s emotions. “How could she–”

Vi stopped herself, jaw tight, chest rising and falling with the force of her breath. Caitlyn could see the war again, the one waging beneath the surface. Anger and sadness. Helplessness. Caitlyn knew those feelings well. When Vi turned to face her, she saw something else, too. Something coarse and bloodied, glistening sharply in her steel blue eyes. “I want to kill her.”

Caitlyn sucked in a ragged breath. Vi looked conflicted, like admitting such a thing physically hurt her. It was something none of them should ever aspire to, but how many times had they learned that willpower alone was not enough to stave off such feelings?

I want to tear that laugh from her throat forever.

Even she, a proper young woman born to high society, was not immune to feelings of vengeance. Of violence.

The darkest parts of their hearts had ways of creeping out of the shadows when their minds were weak with grief and rage. No one knew that better than Caitlyn Kiramman.

She hesitated, searching for the right thing to say with no real comprehension of what it might be. And how sad, Caitlyn thought, that she couldn’t seem to be for Vi what Vi had unflinchingly been for her. Vi, who always knew what to do, the right thing to say at any given moment. Caitlyn frowned. “I know,” she settled on, her voice nearly a whisper.

Vi let out a bitter breath of laughter, her magenta fringe shifting as she shook her head. “No, you don’t.” Caitlyn’s jaw tightened as Vi turned away again, hands reaching for the back of a chair at the table that sat at the other end of the room. Even from here, Caitlyn could see the flex of her muscles as she squeezed the wood, like she needed something physical to steady herself. “I’ve never wanted anything more.”

Caitlyn’s fingers dug into black leather. She could feel her pulse in her throat, rapid and thready. She knew Vi was capable of violence. She’d seen it, had fought fiercely right alongside it. But this was different. This wasn’t survival, and it wasn’t their noble but naive attempt at justice. This was something much more dangerous.

“Vi,” Caitlyn said carefully, and stood slowly to her feet. “You can’t.”

“And why not?” Vi fired back. She turned to face Caitlyn, eyes burning. “Why the fuck not, Cait? She deserves it. You know she does.”

Caitlyn flinched, but held her ground. “Because that’s not you.”

She watched Vi’s expression contort, twisted into something caught between frustration and pain. “You don’t know that.”

The distance between them wasn’t huge, but Caitlyn felt like she could take a hundred steps and never actually make it to Vi. She took them anyway, slowly crossed the room until she could reach carefully for Vi’s hand. Whatever firm and impenetrable armor Vi thought she wore, her fingers were soft against Caitlyn’s, and that alone was a comfort.

“I do,” she replied softly. “I know you. I know the kind of person you are.” Caitlyn gave her hand a tender squeeze, as if willing her words straight through Vi’s thick skin. “You don’t hurt people, Vi. You protect them.”

Vi exhaled a shuddering breath and for a moment, her fingers tightened around Caitlyn’s. Like she was trying to hold on to the proclamation. But then she pulled that hand away, turning her back once more. 

“I didn’t protect you.”

Caitlyn felt the loss of her warmth as if the jacket had been ripped off her body, a pensive frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. “That’s not your fault,” she whispered, taking the final step that closed the distance between them entirely. Her hands lifted, hovered for a few seconds over Vi’s broad shoulders before she finally touched. Vi’s skin was surprisingly smooth beneath her palms. Ocean blue eyes watched them as her fingertips slowly traced the swirling black clouds that decorated firm muscles. “It’s mine.”

“Cait–”

“Don’t,” Caitlyn stopped her before she could argue it, or make excuses. She knew the truth. That if she hadn’t abandoned Vi that day in the tunnels, things would have been different. They would have been alright, and Caitlyn wouldn’t have walked these last handful of months with no one dependable at her side. 

Maybe, if she’d had Vi to make tangible her moral compass, Caitlyn never would have slipped so far down the slope Ambessa had paved with oil.

Caitlyn pressed closer, forehead fitting itself to the nape of Vi’s neck. Her arms slipped beneath thicker ones to hold herself tightly to the length of her pillar. Vi’s back was strong, her stance sturdy. Reliable. She wrapped around Vi’s waist, and felt solace in the hands that settled over her own where they crossed over her bare abdomen.

What she’d done to this woman was Caitlyn’s to take accountability for. There was no questioning that. No doubt in it. Something she could and would own up to, because Vi deserved that from her.

And it was a piece – no matter how jagged, how hideous – that Caitlyn could claim with confidence.

“Every bit of remorse I have, it’s yours,” Caitlyn whispered, her breath warm against Vi’s skin. Where else would she put it if not here, in this girl she’d once risked everything for? She didn’t think the citizens of Zaun would accept it, even if her fountain of guilt was overflowing. Even if they knew the truth of Ambessa’s dark schemes – why should they believe it?

When Vi turned in her arms, Caitlyn stood still. Her hands settled at Vi’s bare hips and their gazes met. The space between their faces was minimal. She fought to focus, but Vi’s proximity made it difficult and Caitlyn was overwhelmed with the knowledge that it wasn’t just her eyes failing to perform a necessary function.

It was her head spinning, her world tilting. It made Vi’s edges blurry and indistinct.

“If I take it,” Vi started, her voice impossibly soft. Like the space suddenly called for nothing louder than a whisper, lest reality shatter around them. Vi’s hands held to the bottom of Caitlyn’s elbows, a halfway-there embrace. “Will you stop feeling it?”

Caitlyn’s lips parted on a sharp exhale. Her eyes stung with the question and the gut wrenching instinct to say no. How could she? Despite offering it so freely with her words, being faced with the idea of actually letting it go felt impossible.

“I don’t want to lie to you.”

“Then don’t.”

Damn Vi, she thought. Damn her for being this way – meticulously crafted by the gods themselves to be exactly the person Caitlyn needed. Not just now, but in her life. Every day. For always.

“I’ll try,” she whispered. It was the best she could.

Chapter Text

Caitlyn wrapped her arms around her chest, squeezed tightly and dropped her head to the side. Her cheek pressed to worn leather and for a moment, she just breathed. It still wasn’t easy, but she thought maybe it was getting better. 

A well-tended flower could bloom in even the darkest of holes.

It wasn’t until Vi exited the bathroom that Caitlyn lifted her head again, dropped her arms. A touch of disappointment moved through her chest as she shrugged the leather off her shoulders, feeling oddly hesitant to let the jacket off her body. She squeezed the material between her hands, almost reverently, as she folded it in half and placed it neatly atop the wooden chest.

When she turned, Vi stood at the edge of the bed, slowly pulling the covers down. Caitlyn moved around her, the steps of her bare feet quiet on the wooden floor. The handcuffs clinked lightly as she plucked them up off the bedside table, deftly cranking open one side, then the other.

“You think you still need those?” 

Vi’s question was soft, careful. Caitlyn thought maybe she recognized the slightest hues of hope around the edges of it, bleeding inward. She stood up straight and turned to face the girl fully, the manacles dangling from her fingers as their gazes met.

“You think I don’t?”

She felt Vi’s hand slide over her own and Caitlyn was perfectly compelled to release her grip on the metal cuffs. Vi took them, leaned sideways to reach around Caitlyn and deposit them back onto the nightstand. Their stares remained locked the entire time, until Vi was standing straight again in front of her. 

“I think…” Crystalline eyes flicked back and forth between Vi’s sky blues as she took Caitlyn’s hands in hers this time. “We should give this a shot instead.”

“Give what a shot?” Caitlyn replied, looking down to see if there was something she’d missed. Something specific Vi referred to. 

“Just this,” Vi reiterated softly with a gentle squeeze of Caitlyn’s fingers. “You like being by the wall,” she asserted, gesturing vaguely with an elbow without releasing either of Caitlyn’s hands. “And I’m a light sleeper.”

It was a subtle and kind way of saying she’d know it if Caitlyn tried anything in the middle of the night, and the discretion was… seen. And deeply appreciated. Caitlyn turned her head to the side, eyed the bed and the space they’d been sharing for many nights now.

The truth was, she still didn’t feel confident in her place here. None of them could fully comprehend the true power of arcane magic, nor the lengths to which Ambessa had gone to harness it. Caitlyn could say a hundred times over that she wanted to stay right here, but that didn’t guarantee she would. Not when she knew just how incapable she was of resisting the runes’ influence.

But when she looked back at Vi, the expression she wore chipped at Caitlyn’s doubts.

Well, shattered it completely, more like. Caitlyn recognized immediately that she didn’t harbor a single desire to try and fight Vi on this. Not when the hope she saw reflected inside those powder blue eyes inspired Caitlyn to feel it, too.

Hope. A promise of another tomorrow right here, with this girl who would stop at nothing to keep her safe.

Caitlyn didn’t speak, but she did nod. A slow up and down of her chin that said just enough.

She crawled into bed first, as she always did. There was safety to be found here, with the wall on one side of her, Vi on the other. They didn’t have to acknowledge it out loud. She didn’t have to ask Vi to press in close and hold her tight. It just… happened. Each night, precisely how and when she needed it to.

Caitlyn lay on her left side, arm folding in between their bodies as Vi settled in. Normally, Caitlyn would roll over now. They’d perform their wordless dance and adjust into a position that was comfortable despite the cuffs, but Caitlyn remained facing Vi, despite having the newfound freedom to explore any position she desired. The candle in the lantern on the nightstand burned low, a slow flicker that cast warm light across their space.

A home they shared, if even just for now.

“I wouldn’t, you know.”

She met Vi’s eyes and held them, a bit enamored with the color they took on in this light. The subtle touches of blue in them disappeared entirely and Caitlyn thought… they were new eyes entirely. Cool tones were softened by the warm, golden glow of the candle, transformed into something deeper. Something… enigmatic.

“Wouldn’t what?” Caitlyn whispered, secretly hinging on Vi’s answer.

“I wouldn’t… do that.” It hardly clarified the statement, but Caitlyn thought she knew what Vi meant. “You’re right. That’s not me.”

The shifting light made them appear more like molten pewter, Caitlyn thought, rather than bright steel. Shadows pooled at the edges of the iris, making them seem darker. Like smoldering storm clouds, tinged with sunset. Each flicker of the flame sent a ripple of warmth across them and Caitlyn wished she could save them just as they were.

She wasn’t sure what it was that made this moment feel so important. And also delicate, steeped in something that neither one of them would dare to name. It was the weight of the day settling over them, pressing them closer in the quiet. It was the fact that everything – all of it – had finally been laid bare. An explanation for Caitlyn’s inexplicable decisions. Coming to terms with the way she had been used as a means to someone else’s ends. And finally – finally – letting Vi inside her darkest circle of secrets.

It was relief. Small and simple, yet completely palpable in the minimal space between them.

Caitlyn reached for Vi’s hand, both of them unencumbered by the restraints they’d worn for a handful of nights now. She found it resting between them, fingers curled into the sheets like she wasn’t sure what to do with them. When they connected, Vi released the tension she seemed to be holding onto. Their hands twisted together.

“It’s not you,” she agreed softly, reiterating a truth that they had now both acknowledged out loud.

Vi shifted, her head turned slightly. The candlelight cast soft shadows over her cheekbone, catching on the edges of exhaustion. Caitlyn could imagine the feeling was reflected in the weight of her own expression, the shadows beneath her eyes.

She’d spent so much of the day feeling fragile, fearing the idea that too much pressure from either one of them might make her break entirely. But here, now, she realized Vi had been carrying something just as heavy.

It wasn’t just her grief. Nor was it her anger. She was powerless.

Vi had always been someone who acted. Someone who fought for her family, and found solutions with her fists when nothing else worked. But there was no enemy here she could take down, nothing she could fix with bruised knuckles and reckless determination. There was only Caitlyn, trying to find her way back to herself.

And Vi, constantly clawing at ways to help.

They saw things in each other that no one else did. They saw each other better than they saw themselves. Caitlyn had every reason to believe that there was no one left who could look at Vi and see that she was drowning, just as much as Caitlyn was. 

No one but her.

Vi had worked so hard today to make sure Caitlyn knew she wasn’t alone. That she didn’t have to carry the weight of her burdens in solitude. She could see now that the baggage weighing on Vi – the years of trauma, the seemingly endless losses – was not a weight Caitlyn wanted her to bear alone, either.

The silence between them stretched, thick with the many things Caitlyn felt she couldn’t say out loud. She was hyperaware of the way Vi’s fingers sifted through her own, how her breath had slowed.

She realized suddenly that Vi was waiting.

For what, Caitlyn wasn’t entirely sure. For her to say something, maybe. To roll away, to face the wall and curl into a comfortable position for sleep, like she usually did. 

But Caitlyn didn’t want distance.

She wanted Vi.

The realization settled deep into her bones, like the warmth of a crackling hearth after a winter’s morning in the snow. Like wearing Vi’s jacket, or feeling the tight embrace of those strong arms around her, the realization grounded her.

This was hers to decide. No one pulling her forward, no one leading her somewhere she didn’t want to go. She could turn away, let the silence stretch, and Vi would be none the wiser of the thoughts that tripped through her head now. But she didn’t want to.

Caitlyn wanted nothing more than to close the space between them.

Her heart pounded. Cailtyn felt it against her tender ribs, beating loud enough that she was sure Vi would hear it. Slowly, carefully, Caitlyn lifted a hand and brushed her fingers over Vi’s cheek.

Vi’s breath hitched, but Caitlyn’s remained notably steady.

When that sunset gaze flicked to her lips, Caitlyn knew she didn’t need to say what she wanted. Didn’t need to ask for it. They’d shared an intimate moment before – just once, what felt like a lifetime ago. An intimate moment that should have turned into many, into more, before Caitlyn’s grief and anger got the better of her. Before she’d used the end of her rifle to betray them both.

Caitlyn pulled in a breath that filled her lungs and leaned in. Her mouth covered Vi’s, a slow brush of lips to lips that was soft, but not unsure.

For the first time in a very long time, Caitlyn felt entirely certain that this was exactly what she wanted.

It was strikingly familiar, at first. The pace of their breathing sped up simultaneously, the only sound that moved around them. The touch of their lips was light, testing. Just like it had been the first time. There was space and time enough for either one of them to vacate the moment. To check in with each other, if it was deemed necessary.

But just like last time, their communication transcended the need for words.

Vi tugged on the hand she held, urging Caitlyn's body closer. They pressed, came together in a way that felt simply natural. Whatever differences in their stature – and they were plentiful – their bodies just seemed to fit. Every dip, every curve, sculpted with intention so when they finally found their way exactly here, they were one. Two halves of one whole that had been torn in half long ago, the edges chipped and worn with time and trauma. But their bodies remembered.

It felt like coming home.

It felt like the first breath of air after being underwater for too long.

Caitlyn untangled her hand from Vi’s so she could reach with it, so she could press her palm to Vi’s cheek and feel the untamable locks of magenta hair that fell messily around her face. With their mouths tightly locked, she had to breathe through her nose – a happy sacrifice. When Vi’s lips parted, Caitlyn’s followed their lead. A deeper kiss, one that granted entry to Vi’s exploration of her mouth. 

As desperate as she was not to think of anything or anyone else, it did occur to Caitlyn that in her many months spent ensnared in Ambessa’s web, they’d never once used their mouths. Not to kiss. Not to taste. She felt so foolish, looking back on a time and an experience that was just… incorrect in every way. Not at all to Caitlyn’s preferences when it came to lovers, and sex. How could she have been so blind to her own misery?

Kissing Vi was perfection personified. The way their mouths slotted together was kismet, the press of Vi’s tongue against her own, divine. Caitlyn keened quietly, the sound breathy and dipped in a sense of feminine power she hadn’t felt in so long. When Vi pressed forward, Caitlyn gave. When she craved the lead, she took it, and Vi let her. 

Another pull of pleasure up her throat echoed in the air between them and Caitlyn took Vi’s lower lip between her teeth, gave it a desirous tug before her tongue eagerly soothed the gentle bite.

The raspy groan of approval that rumbled in Vi’s chest unlocked something heady inside Caitlyn’s chest. It was raw, and it was real.

For so long, she’d wanted this. To learn the shape of Vi’s lips, to uncover the taste of her tongue. She wanted every tattoo and every scar revealed to her, so she might make a map of them inside her mind and spend the rest of her life looking for their mirror image in the stars.

“Cait–”

It wasn’t the impassioned call of a lover, nor a quiet plea for more. It was a warning, a question – one that sounded like the sharp hiss of molten metal suddenly quenched in cool water.

“Vi,” she replied, giving into the interruption because she would never push away something Vi needed. Especially here, like this.

Only now did Caitlyn realize how firmly her fingers had been gripped to Vi’s hair, and she slowly uncurled them. They tingled in the wake of a tight grip, but didn’t go far. Her fingertips traced down Vi’s temple, over her cheekbone, settling over the thin tattoo beneath her left eye.

“Is this–”

Those fingers dropped quickly to cover Vi’s lips instead, shushing her words before the question could fully take shape. Caitlyn’s eyes were bright with desire, a restless ocean that reflected the light of the single candle in their blue depths. Despite the fog of yearning that had fallen over them, she looked at Vi with stunning clarity.

“I understand what you’re doing,” she murmured finally, her fingertips still covering the luscious lips she only wished to keep kissing. “And know that I appreciate it. And you. I do.” Caitlyn leaned in, pressed her forehead to Vi’s. As if she’d simply dissolve into the night if she was not breathing Vi’s breaths. “But please don’t ask if this is what I want.” Her words were a whisper. They passed from Caitlyn’s lips and disappeared onto Vi’s. “Or if I’m sure.” Because she knew what Vi had meant to say. She was too clever, and too caring not to stop before they started and check in with Caitlyn, whose mind – and body – had been through unspeakable things.

But Caitlyn didn’t want to be considered in this moment.

She wanted to be lost. With Vi at her side, Caitlyn thought maybe a brand new path was the best way back to herself.

With the swiftness and dexterity of a young woman well trained in coordination and combat, Caitlyn rolled their bodies. Vi’s back sank into the bed, Caitlyn straddled her hips and sat up. In one fluid motion, she’d tugged the sleeveless undershirt up off her body and flicked it to the floor, forgotten.

A lock of raven blue hair fell in front of her eyes and needing to expel the large breath she’d just taken to settle herself, Caitlyn puffed a stream of air up her face to blow it aside.

There were few instances in her life where she wished she could save a moment in print. Take a photograph, or perhaps sketch a still life. Now, here, was one of those moments.

Vi’s eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted. The pink hair that fell over half her face was entirely charming and the way she simply stared made her feel just one thing.

Like Caitlyn. Just Caitlyn.

She waited with the same steadfast patience Vi had been showing her for days, and eventually, Vi did catch up. And sat up, her hands settling on either side of Caitlyn’s slender waist. She couldn’t help but look down, succumbing to her curiosity to see those strong hands on her body.

They were remarkable. Capable of inflicting great pain, and capable of holding a soul together. Big hands, long fingers, pressed and splayed against her skin. Pieces of it discolored, wide swatches of purple over her ribs, brushstrokes of yellow sage at her hips. They didn’t hurt, or in any way protest being touched. Because these hands, however powerful, treated her with staggering tenderness.

Caitlyn lifted her own hands to frame Vi’s face as she came close, their gazes gravitating naturally together. She could see the passion building in those gray eyes, a wanting that echoed every taut string inside Caitlyn’s belly. But alongside it, spinning darkness through the fire, remained a pinch of uncertainty.

“I want my body back, Vi,” Caitlyn whispered, deeply intent on soothing the cracks in Vi’s resolve. The statement seemed to spark something in Vi, whose hands slid around her waist to the small of her back to hold her closer. Her thumb reached for the corner of the mouth she’d been kissing, stroked over it reverently and marveled in the subtle give of warm flesh beneath her touch. “When it was mine, I wanted desperately to give it to you.”

These muscled arms tugged her closer still and Caitlyn went, settling fully into Vi’s lap, thighs bracketing her hips. Her head tipped down, an angle required for their eye contact. Dark hair poured around their faces and Caitlyn lost herself to the eyes that stared up at her. They weren’t kissing, but their lips brushed. Hers opened against Vi’s, starving for the warmth of her breath.

“I know that’s real.” She watched the birth of a tear at the corner of Vi’s eye. Waited for it to slip through her lashes and spill down her cheek before catching it with her thumb. “You are my choice.”

The kiss Vi pulled her into then was breathtaking. Caitlyn gasped into the contact, long fingers sliding through the short hair on Vi’s left side as the moment swept them into its irresistible current. Of the many hands that had explored her body, none compared to the feeling of Vi’s as they smoothed slowly up her back. They made her feel strong. They made her feel safe. These hands were the holds on her last remaining pillar and they were solid. Trustworthy.

When they reached her shoulders and urged her back, Caitlyn gave herself to their guidance. Their lips parted with a quiet gasp as she leaned away, trusting her weight in those hands that held her. Vi’s lips fell to her throat, left a slow and heated trail of open-mouthed kisses down the column of her neck. She settled where Caitlyn’s pulse thumped rapidly beneath the skin, paid the spot an extra dollop of attention until the breath that filtered through her lungs left her lips ragged and uneven.

Vi’s arms urged her back even further, the display of strength as breathtaking as the rest. Her fingers remained twisted in pink hair as her thoughts followed the path of that warm mouth down her chest. When that tactile touch suddenly vanished, Caitlyn held her breath, suspended. It wasn’t the press of hungry kisses that traveled up the slope of her breast – rather, it was the ghost of warm air against her skin. She felt it, every puff of it, against sensitive flesh that had stiffened with arousal, with anticipation. 

When Vi took it into her mouth, Caitlyn’s sigh of relief twisted with a soft cry of pleasure and she knew, irrefutably, that this was what she wanted. That this was what she needed to step back into skin that finally felt like her own again. 

The swirl of Vi’s tongue around her nipple was luxurious. The pull of pressure inside her mouth when she sucked on the peak tore a breathy cry from Caitlyn’s chest and she felt her spine shiver with desire. It coursed through her like a second pulse, one that beat just for Vi. It pooled low in her abdomen, a yearning heat that swelled with each new touch of Vi’s lips to her body.

Caitlyn’s mouth was dry with her labored breathing. Her fingers fisted in magenta hair and tugged, the muscles in her core tightening to pull her body back upright in time with Vi’s. She received the message without Caitlyn having to convey it with words and as their mouths found each other, she felt Vi’s hands working at her waistband. It was yet another silent dance, the way they moved with and against each other to remove Caitlyn’s pants without ever abandoning their hold on one another. Whatever reservations she might have felt in being bared to the girl she’d craved in earnest from the very beginning, Caitlyn worked to swallow them.

As she settled again over Vi’s lap, naked and weightless, Caitlyn felt herself open. As if her ribcage was splitting itself in half, her body unfolding in the hands of a woman who would soon be her lover. So that she could take Vi into her chest and keep her there, right next to her heart. No one could touch it with Vi this close and Caitlyn was overwhelmed with a sense of belonging.

She watched Vi even as Vi looked down between them. Drinking in Caitlyn’s bare body with her eyes first, before her hands would take their fill. The warmth wasn’t just in her belly, or between her thighs. Caitlyn felt it blooming across her chest, crawling up her neck and tinging the high points of her cheekbones. 

It wasn’t bashfulness, but it was something close. Because whosever eyes had seen her like this, whatever hands had felt the skin Vi would soon get to… none of them mattered even a fraction as much as these eyes, and these hands.

“Cait,” Vi murmured. It was the first word spoken between them in many long minutes, and Caitlyn simply hummed her acknowledgment of it. Her palm pressed to Vi’s jaw when her head finally lifted again, their gazes meeting. “Can I ask a different question?”

Caitlyn swallowed thickly, immediately pushing back on the desire to say no. She didn’t want questions. She didn’t have patience for doubt. But whatever else she did or didn’t feel, Caitlyn did have love for Vi, and that was more important than anything else.

“Yes.”

Vi paused, seemingly overcome with the very same trepidation Caitlyn had been wishing to eradicate from their space. But her capacity persisted and she waited, eyes flicking slowly back and forth between Vi’s, for whatever question she felt justified the interruption. 

“Is there anything I shouldn’t do?”

Her breath stuck in her throat. Somehow, this thought hadn’t crossed her mind. Caitlyn desperately wished for this to just be… natural. The way it would’ve been if they’d come together before. Before the tunnels, before Ambessa. They would simply listen to their bodies because they’d never steered them wrong and whatever love they made would just… float into existence. Without obstacle, without concern.

But Caitlyn understood the question, and where it came from. And she knew she had an answer to give.

A hand stroked slowly over Vi’s hair, curled into the growing length at the back and gently tugged. It urged her head back, so she looked up as Caitlyn looked down into those stunning eyes – so warm here in their hideout. “Please don’t treat me like I’m made of glass,” she whispered. The tip of her nose brushed against Vi’s before she touched a deft kiss to her chin. This felt abundantly important to Caitlyn. While Vi wouldn’t and couldn’t know the sort of lover she’d been in her past, Caitlyn did. She’d been confident, once. Proud of the way she looked, entirely unabashed when it came to her wants, her desires. Despite growing up something of a misfit, Caitlyn boasted a deep well of self-assuredness and while she couldn’t deny that Ambessa’s abuse had bled that well dry, Caitlyn didn’t wish for Vi to tiptoe around it.

She wanted Vi to touch her the way she would have before, before Caitlyn’s mistake shattered their potential and Ambessa rushed to pick up the pieces.

As if to acknowledge her request, Vi’s hand slipped between their bodies, glided up the defined planes of her abdomen to settle with certainty over her breast. Caitlyn’s next breath shivered off her lips and Vi leaned in to steal it. “You aren’t made of glass,” Vi replied. A thumb rolled firmly over her straining nipple at the same moment Vi’s tongue slid between her lips, pulling a strangled moan from Caitlyn’s throat.

“And don’t stop kissing me,” Caitlyn added breathlessly, the words spoken straight into Vi’s mouth as the attention paid to her breast provoked her arousal.

If she just kept tasting these lips, if Vi’s mouth simply refused to leave her body, then there was no chance the memory of Ambessa would creep into a place that was designed just for them. Caitlyn was sure of it.

The firm press of Vi’s tongue in her mouth continued to stoke the flame that burned low in Caitlyn’s belly. Her head tipped sideways, their lips slotting together tightly. She eagerly relented to Vi’s kiss, thoughts split between the way she tasted and the way she felt beneath her hands. The hair between her fingers was smooth and straight – the way she’d always dreamed it would be. The muscles beneath her exploring palm were firm, powerful, but not overbearing. Everything about Vi struck perfect balance that suited Caitlyn’s tastes – that slaked a lust that had been growing not just for some days, but for many months.

How many nights had she dreamed of these hands? This body? And these eyes watching her in the dim light as they finally gave themselves to one another?

“Please touch me,” Caitlyn begged, her airy words dissolving onto Vi’s tongue.

It couldn’t have been a more explicit invitation. Her choice, and their journey to take together.

Vi’s left arm curled around her waist, a firm anchor to hold her steady. Caitlyn’s hands gripped tightly to wide shoulders and the breaths that passed between their coupled lips were shallow, erratic. The first touch of Vi’s fingers between her spread thighs had Caitlyn’s throat closing around a quiet cry, the sound of it sharp with pleasure. And even more so, relief.

“Cait…” Her name falling off of Vi’s lips was all but a sigh and Caitlyn thought she heard the reprieve in her soft tone, too. Like they’d both been caught in a wheel of torture for too long, grasping at exactly this without ever managing to catch it fully.

They’d been slipping through one another’s fingers for too long, but at last, they were here. It wasn’t scary. It wasn’t even overwhelming. It was simply inevitable.

Caitlyn’s hips rolled forward over Vi’s lap, encouraging, rubbing herself slowly against Vi’s fingers. It wasn’t any kind of control she sought, but Caitlyn’s body recognized the freedom to do as it pleased. To follow its own instincts. No one here would tell her she couldn’t, or command her to deny what came naturally.

Her forehead fell to Vi’s, her grip on firm shoulders tight enough that the blunt edges of her fingernails bit lightly into inked skin. Vi’s fingers slid over her heated flesh and there wasn’t a single anxious thought afforded to just how easily they moved over her – Caitlyn’s arousal was slick and ample. Not to be ashamed of, but to admire. It was for Vi, because of Vi. Her mind and her body were in alignment, eager to invite this girl she loved inside herself so that for a single moment in time, they could be lost together.

It didn’t require manipulation. It didn’t require magic. All it took was the touch of someone she loved, someone she trusted, and Caitlyn’s body became an oasis.

The pads of Vi’s fingers settled over her clit and Caitlyn’s reaction poured through the room, a breathy gasp of pleasure and relief. Vi knew just how to touch her, the pattern of her strokes both consistent and unpredictable at the same time. Cerulean eyes peeled themselves open so she could look, so she could find Vi’s gaze in the short distance between their faces and hold it firmly. Passionately. When two fingers parted around the swollen bundle, slid along either side and gave it a firm squeeze, Vi tilted her chin up to capture Caitlyn’s lips as another moan slipped up her throat.

When Caitlyn’s thighs trembled on either side of Vi’s hips, her desire spiking, those confident fingers slid further through slick folds. She knew it was coming, managed to align the pieces inside her pool of thoughts that was quickly losing cohesion. With their gazes locked, their lips connected, Vi slipped into her, a slow push of two fingers into a body that welcomed her gladly.

Caitlyn’s head fell back, back arched in an elegant line against Vi’s sturdy frame. The arm around her waist held her steady, a firm and dependable hand planted in the middle of her spine. Midnight blue hair spilled over it and Vi dove for the exposed line of her neck. The kisses that fell against her throat were heated, warm with the press of Vi’s tongue and sharp with the teasing cut of teeth into her flesh.

“Vi,” she cried softly, hands abandoning their post at tattooed shoulders to instead slide into pink hair. Long fingers trembled through messy strands on one side, through the short buzz on the other. 

This was her haven, Caitlyn decided. A resolute revelation that she could have guessed at a hundred times over, but to know it – to feel it – was the clarity she’d been searching for. Not just since waking up here in the Firelights’ hideout, but for months. Since hanging off the strong shoulders of this very same woman while she watched a grenade soar towards the council chambers in the middle of Piltover.

Nothing could ever simply wash away their trauma. Nothing would ever truly fill the holes left behind by the people they’d loved and lost. But they could be the pieces for each other they had been forced to leave behind. They could be the steady hands that reached deep into the fractures of their hearts – maybe not to mend them, but to help hold them together.

Vi’s hand moved between her thighs, a slow pull and a deep push that created a rhythm which flowed easily through them. Caitlyn’s breathing synched with it and for a time, she simply rode the wave. Let Vi lead, her body suspended in the arms that held her steady. It felt good to let go. It felt good to sink into the sensations nurtured by the hands of a girl who’d taken the time and put in the effort to earn her heart first.

And when the pleasure began to climb, Caitlyn dove in head first. These waters were warm, inviting. Its current a guiding hand rather than a storm raging beneath the moon. Her fingers tightened in Vi’s hair as Caitlyn pulled herself upright again. They urged Vi’s head up so they came face to face once more. Caitlyn took her lips, exhaled a broken gasp into her mouth before reaching for her tongue.

Caitlyn moved. With a desperate desire to participate, her hips locked onto Vi’s rhythm and rolled with her, against her. It came as no surprise whatsoever that this simply worked. That their penchant for moving well together bled seamlessly into this. Bliss was mounting steadily, pushing her closer and closer to the top of her ascent. Caitlyn could feel it in the tremble of her naked body, and in the way her muscles clung desperately to each of Vi’s tender thrusts.

“I want more of you,” she breathed against Vi’s lips, unafraid of telling her lover what she needed. Because she knew Vi would give it.

And she did. That pink fringe slipped in front of wide eyes that watched her steadily as she nodded her head, just twice. And the next roll of her hips accepted the press of a third finger as it joined the first two. The stretch consumed Caitlyn’s thoughts entirely and there wasn’t a single ounce of restraint in the cry of pleasure that tumbled messily off her lips. She sank readily onto those fingers, ground against them with a rising greed as the culmination of their efforts grew ever nearer. 

“Gods, fuck– Cait.” The sweet and feminine sound of Vi’s voice filled her ears and Caitlyn couldn’t help but clamp her eyes shut as the first touches of ecstasy found her. There were no echoes in the empty chamber of her mind. No glowing amber eyes in the darkness. There was only Vi, only them. “You’re beautiful.”

Vi pushed in deep, the motion swift and sensual, and curled her fingers at the apex of her thrust. It shoved her over the precipice she’d been toeing and Caitlyn readily gave into the fall. Her head tipped back once more, mouth wrenched open wide with the calls of her climax slipping unbidden from her exposed throat. They filled the room, reached even its darkest, neglected corners.

It was stunning. It was all-consuming. It flooded rapidly through Caitlyn’s veins, coated her bones in light and left her trembling with sensation when the waves at last began to abate. “Vi,” she called, the name spilling off her tongue. Desperate and searching. “Vi,” she whimpered again, tone edging into a plea as her body slid back to earth from its high. She knew Vi’s arms were a safe place to land and yet, Caitlyn couldn’t control the way her body dissolved into trembles. Or the way her lungs shook with every gasping breath.

Vi’s hand retreated from between her thighs and pressed to the small of her back instead. Caitlyn could feel her own slick heat on the fingers that splayed against her skin. The other set threaded tightly into her hair, pulled her head up and tugged her forward so their foreheads pressed together.

“Open your eyes, Cait.”

The first command she’d been given in all this time, and Caitlyn obeyed immediately.

It wasn’t until those ocean eyes opened – stormed over with passion and emotion – that Caitlyn realized they were damp. Her gaze struggled to focus on Vi through the haze, but they did recognize the unmistakable markers of the woman she loved. Her lover.

Bright pink hair. Captivating silver eyes that glinted in the low light of their flickering candle. Full lips that were swollen from their loving one another.

“You’re okay.” Not a question, Caitlyn thought. An assertion, spoken with confidence. It helped her to breathe. Reminded her that the heart hammering behind her ribs was safe here, with Vi’s hands to hold it.

Though her breaths were still erratic, a natural occurrence after such breathtaking activities, Caitlyn’s next inhale was longer, deeper. Her grip on magenta hair softened and Caitlyn watched as her own thumb traced reverently down Vi’s temple.

“I’m okay.”

Chapter Text

“When it was mine, I wanted desperately to give it to you.”

Caitlyn might never understand exactly how much weight those words carried, or the way they barreled into Vi with the strength and ferocity of a wild bolor. Though the more unforgivable moments of their shared history might not be soon forgotten, to know that Caitlyn had wanted her – desperately – did help to soothe some of those lingering wounds. Deep cuts that had been left to fester in the wake of Caitlyn’s betrayal, worsened by the subsequent choices that had driven them further apart.

They knew now that Caitlyn’s feelings had not been the driving force behind those decisions, and while it didn’t absolve her completely… it softened the sharp edges of a reality that had nearly driven Vi into the ground.

Having the chance now to touch Caitlyn, this woman who existed in a plane Vi had thought for so long to be unreachable, felt like a gift. One she would not squander. One to which she would give every ounce of her energy, every last speck of her attention. And it wasn’t just that she believed Caitlyn deserved it. Or that they deserved it, after all this time, after all their battles. It was that deep down, beneath the scars and the muscles that acted as her armor, Vi knew that she deserved to give it.  

To have made it through and come together in the end felt like a one in a million outcome, and Vi knew better than to take life’s rare kindnesses for granted.

“I’m okay.” 

Vi nodded, encouraging Caitlyn’s process of recognizing the sentiment inside herself. It had been a startling moment at the end of something powerful. Something deeply emotional, and such a long time coming. There were fingers twisted into her hair on the right side, a warm palm pressed to her cheek on the left. She thought she felt Caitlyn’s touch shiver against her temple and Vi sighed quietly, turned her head to press her lips to the center of that palm.

No one else was allowed in this bed with them, Vi thought. If Caitlyn’s thoughts had slipped to some place else, if her guard went down and the ghost of someone else’s hands on her body crept into their space, then Vi would fight to bring her back, and to expel the presence of a monster that didn’t belong here. 

“This is your body,” Vi whispered the reassurance as she wrapped her arms fully around the very same body she spoke of. Her head fell, face pressed to the long line of Caitlyn’s neck where she couldn’t help but sample the taste of warm skin. It was damp with their efforts, the tang of salt like a feast on her tongue. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

She felt Caitlyn shake her head, even as those long arms wound around her neck. “Thank you, ” Caitlyn murmured from above her. A hand smoothed slowly down the back of her head, over and over. She felt the press of lips against her crown and tried not to feel anxious over the hope that was building inside her chest. A hope that if they’d found a way to be okay now, then they’d find a way to be okay in the future, too.

But hope was a fickle and feeble beast, one that had burned her before. Vi did not want to be the girl who let hope break her more than once.

She’d let the woman behind this new hope break her before. Would likely let her break her again, and still come back for more.

“Thank you for your patience.” Caitlyn’s words were accompanied by another kiss to the side of her head. “For catching me.” Vi hummed quietly, nosing over the prominent cut of Caitlyn’s collarbone as the words continued to bathe her in gratitude – in acknowledgement she hadn’t really known she’d needed before now. “For seeing what I could not.” Warm lips traveled a line down her temple and across her cheek in a way that encouraged Vi to lift her head, if only to allow them to keep moving. When they reached the corner of her mouth, Vi’s next breath trembled inside her lungs. “You are my harbor, Vi.”

Vi couldn’t explain the feeling that moved through her with these words. These stunningly chosen words that somehow captured her deepest desires. The sort of inherent pieces of her soul that even Vi had struggled all her life to comprehend, to untangle. She’d spent years – her whole life, really – trying to force those pieces into a shape that just… didn’t fit. Fists and fury, a creature of instinct, surviving by sheer grit alone. A fighter, always pushing forward even when it felt like she had nothing left to give. It got the job done, sure. But it was like forcing sand through a jagged pipe, its many twists and angles constant obstacles. 

But a harbor… A refuge. A safe space. A place to return to, not just someone to stand beside in a fight. It made the edges fade, helped the bends straighten. Looking up into these breathtaking blue eyes, Vi felt a sense of peace wash through her. And maybe it didn’t make sense, maybe the timing was unforgivable. But she let it rise inside her chest, let it fill her up. She took Caitlyn’s lips in a kiss bursting with intention, a quiet sound of desperation melting onto the tongue she reached for.

Against all odds, this woman – a topsider, an enforcer, of absurd wealth and affluence – saw Vi better than anyone else. Who she was, what she was. What she needed.  

Vi moaned softly into Caitlyn’s mouth, the fire that burned low in her belly suddenly surging with embers. If twice was too many, she would need Caitlyn to tell her. If not, she feared even twice would not be enough. Not when her good heart wished for nothing more than to take this woman inside it, where she could keep her safe in all the ways that mattered most.

She felt the press of hands between their bodies, felt a subsequent tug that encouraged Vi to pause, to look down. Caitlyn’s hands were at her chest, fingertips deftly identifying the wrap’s end to peel it away from the rest. Gray eyes glanced up to focus on Caitlyn’s face, but those bright ceruleans were elsewhere. Watching her task at hand with an intense care that she’d seen demonstrated in Caitlyn’s actions before.

Vi wasn’t frozen, but she did grow still. Not out of fear, not even out of hesitation. Caitlyn was touching her with such reverence that it stole the breath from her lungs and Vi could do nothing but watch, and wait.

Dexterous fingers trailed lightly over Vi’s chest, slow, careful, deliberate in the way she separated the wrap, unwinding it steadily. The first pass came around her back and Vi exhaled, something tender in the way her breath wrapped around them. “Not very convenient, is it?” she murmured, voice edged with something almost playful, almost self-conscious.

Caitlyn huffed a quiet laugh and shook her head. “Is anything easy worth it?”

The words shouldn’t have struck Vi the way they did, but they settled deep, threading through something unspoken inside her.

Caitlyn had been born into privilege, into a life where things were given rather than earned. But this – them – this wasn’t something that had been handed to her. It wasn’t easy. It had never been simple.

But it was worth it.

Vi swallowed, her throat tight. Long before Vi had been fighting for Caitlyn, Caitlyn… she’d fought for Vi. Not with fists, not with force. Instead, with her faith, and with a steady determination to change the things she thought needed changing. She’d seen Vi for everything she was, everything she’d done, and had chosen her anyway.

Vi wasn’t sure anyone had ever done that before.

By the time Caitlyn was peeling away the last layer, Vi was leaning forward, her forehead resting against Caitlyn’s. Something deep in her had softened, something that had been wound tight for too long. As her chest was freed, Vi closed her eyes and let herself feel the way her next breath reached deep into her lungs. The way it made her ribs expand, unconfined.

Her thoughts followed the path of a warm hand that slid up from her waist, nothing but skin beneath those soft fingers. Caitlyn’s hand settled over the curve of her breast and Vi thought perhaps she was right.

It wasn’t easy. But maybe the best things never were.

Vi sighed, the sound laced with relief where she nuzzled into the column of Caitlyn’s neck. It was quickly becoming a favored location, the skin here soft, decorated with the faintest hints of a perfume that couldn’t have been more than her imagination playing tricks. If she shifted just so, she could feel the thump of Caitlyn’s pulse beneath her lips. A gentle reminder of all that was real, this beautiful and beautifully flawed girl who, by some miracle, wanted her.

“Cait,” she whispered, fingers curling into the subtly muscled planes of Caitlyn’s back as a thumb circled her nipple. Vi had never offered her previous partners their names like this before. It had never been intimate. It had never been emotional. Before Caitlyn, sex had only been a means to fucking feel something and the who of it all hadn’t mattered much.

But Caitlyn Kiramman could stand on the opposite end of the room and make Vi feel storms with nothing but a look.

This meant everything. This felt like the most important thing she’d ever do and Vi knew better than to take it for granted. Every second was precious. Every breath, every touch was a gift. As her hands settled low on Caitlyn’s bare hips, she held her steady and shifted, her own rolling upwards in search of friction. In search of connection.

With the swiftness and dexterity of a young woman well trained in coordination and combat, Vi rolled their bodies. Caitlyn’s back sank into the bed, Vi settled between her open thighs and caught her lips. In one fluid motion, they were pressed together, molded and mashed, entangled so tightly the world would be hard pressed to tear them apart.

Vi would be damned if she ever let anything succeed at that again.

Up until this point, they’d struck an amiable balance with control. Neither one had seized it fully and that seemed to have worked well for Caitlyn. Even now, with Vi’s weight pinning her to the mattress, there was no grab at dominance, no play for power. If Caitlyn wanted something, she could take it. What Vi craved, she would chase. As she did now, slipping her mouth from Caitlyn’s to dust kisses down her throat instead. A slow dance, tongue tasting, lips sucking. She paused at the hollow where collarbones met and gluttonously sampled the skin there, humming her pleasure straight into Caitlyn’s chest.

Her bangs tickled bare flesh as she moved lower, kisses stepping slowly down the ridges of Caitlyn’s sternum, tracing the defined lines of her abdomen. It was with such reverence and absolute tenderness that Vi pressed her lips to darkened skin, sipping away the trauma these ribs had recently endured. Wishing with every ounce of love in her heart that she could just… erase the pain.

And not just that which had been inflicted by physical means.

A mole decorated Caitlyn’s stomach, Vi discovered next. Just to the right of her navel, dark against light. Isolated and charming. Her lips curled, completely endeared by the mark, and Vi didn’t hesitate to touch a kiss to it. She felt long fingers slide into her hair and Vi once again hummed her pleasure, appreciative of the affection. To be paid it even as she explored, as she gave, was something entirely new. Something only Caitlyn had ever given her, and it felt wonderful.

“Taking your time?”

Vi’s lips curled against warm skin, her chin sank deftly into Caitlyn’s tummy as she glanced up the length of her body. There, beyond the generous swells of her breasts, was her lover staring back. Her bright blue eyes were radiant in the glow of the candlelight and Vi felt her breath leave her all at once.

“You said, don’t stop kissing you,” Vi replied quietly. She held Caitlyn’s gaze as the tip of her tongue teased her bellybutton. Held it still even as she shifted, and moved to settle on her stomach between pale thighs. “I don’t intend to.”

Some time later, with her tongue at work over Caitlyn’s sex, unsteady hands slid over Vi’s where they held anchor at her hips. There was no mind paid to the bruises – they were fading with time, and they didn’t deserve attention now. Especially here, in the bubble of warmth and safety they’d built together. Despite Caitlyn having closed her eyes some time ago, Vi’s were open, sharp and focused on the taut string that was the body she pleasured. The fingers of her left hand lifted, tangling through Caitlyn’s where they held firmly to that hip. The right slid free, moved to cover its thinner counterpart. And with their hands stacked, Vi slowly began to move them both. 

Her grip was firm, but not forceful. A gentle promise rather than a demand. She guided Caitlyn’s palm over her skin – not to take, not to test, but to remind.  

This is yours.

Caitlyn didn’t resist. There was no flinch, no uncertainty, only the silent acceptance of her fingers following where Vi led. Up over the smooth plane of Caitlyn’s stomach, along the curve of her ribs. Up still, where together they climbed the slope of one breast. There was no urgency in the motion, no force – only patience. Only quiet, steady encouragement.

A straining nipple pressed not into Vi’s palm, but into Caitlyn’s. Something in the way she breathed changed then. Like it became just the slightest bit less burdened. Steel blue eyes, wide with wonder and determination, watched – even as she felt – Caitlyn’s fingers press against her own flesh. Watched as she traced the shape of herself as though relearning something she should have never had to forget.

Caitlyn didn’t even hesitate, and it was beautiful to witness.

Vi’s hold loosened when she felt a tug against her fingers. Her reach was exhausted, but Caitlyn moved on without her. She knew the way, Vi thought. She’d only needed reminding. So Vi’s hand remained, covering the swell of a breast that rose and fell with impassioned breathing, while Caitlyn’s traveled further still. Continued up, her touch passed over the dip of her collarbone, along the delicate line of her throat. She didn’t need guidance now, wasn’t waiting for permission – she was rediscovering, reclaiming every hollow space that had been carved into her by hands that had never deserved to touch her.

Emboldened by the brilliant display of strength, Vi renewed her efforts, realigned her focus. At long last, her own eyes slipped shut, every ounce of her attention shifting to the press of her tongue and the taste of Caitlyn that coated it. And it was like that, both their hands on her body, that Caitlyn came not apart, but together.

Vi lay sprawled on her stomach, body heavy with warmth and something deeper – something settled in her bones, wound loosely through her chest, soft and unfamiliar. It wasn’t exhaustion. It wasn’t even satisfaction. It was something that felt closer to peace.

She wasn’t used to this.

The sheets were soft beneath her, the faint chill of night lingered in the air, but she barely noticed it. Not with Caitlyn beside her, pressed close, the length of her warm and solid. An anchor in the dark.

And then there was her touch.

Vi had almost dozed off, drifting in that space between wakefulness and sleep, but the steady tracing of Caitlyn’s fingers kept her tethered to the present. Every movement was delicate, deliberate, following the ink that splayed across Vi’s back. She could feel the slow, exploratory drag over pipework, the careful sweep around a curling cloud of smoke. Not cataloging scars, not taking stock of the parts of Vi that had been broken and put back together over the years – just exploring something Vi had chosen for herself. Markings she’d put on her body because she wanted them, no matter how young and angry she’d been at the time.

A slow breath left her lungs through tight lips, her forehead pressing into the pillow. She was sure Caitlyn could feel the way her breathing hitched when fingertips ghosted over a particularly sensitive spot at the center of her spine, but she didn’t falter, didn’t tease. Just kept going. Gentle. Intentional.

Vi liked this.

She liked being touched just like this.

Not because someone wanted something from her, not because she wanted something in return. But just because it was Caitlyn, and while everything they’d just done together had been far from innocent, this was. This was simple. This was Caitlyn wanting to touch her, and Vi wanting to be touched.

She turned her head slightly against the pillow, cracking open one eye. “Studying for an exam, Cupcake?”

Caitlyn let out a soft breath of amusement, her fingers stilling for just a moment at the central core of Vi’s tattoo. “Perhaps,” she murmured. “It’s quite intricate.”

Vi hummed, burying half her face in the pillow. She’d never really seen the whole thing at once, only one half or the other in a mirror, if she tried. The tattoo had come in stages, piece by piece, ink pressed into her skin with the same ruthless patience that prison had taught her. The first gears were etched onto her shoulder a year in. The rest had followed, sprawling down her back, growing more complex as the years had cranked her insides tight like a boggled engine.

She was eighteen when the guard called Stiggs started calling her inmate five-one-six instead of Vi. He liked to hurt her, just like the rest of them, and he thought that stripping her name from her would strip her away, too. Thought that if he erased her, he could break her.

Two weeks later, the ink found her face. No one would forget her name ever again.

Caitlyn’s palm settled, gentle and steady, over those first gears one her left shoulder, grounding Vi in the present. She sighed softly, eyes slipping shut. Neither of them said anything. They didn’t need to. What wasn’t spoken was still here, in the quiet. In the warmth of Caitlyn’s hand, and in the way Vi’s body held no tension at all.

Caitlyn shifted then, slowly fitting herself against Vi’s side. The unfamiliarity of it struck Vi, the sharp recognition – she’d never let anyone hold her like this before. She was used to being the one to curl around Caitlyn at night, tucking her close, keeping her safe. But Caitlyn just pressed nearer, one arm slipping over Vi’s waist, her forehead resting against Vi’s shoulder, her breath soft and even. A weight that wasn’t heavy at all.

Vi swallowed. Her chest ached with something impossible to name.

She didn’t move, didn’t dare shatter the fragility of this moment. She just let herself have it.

For once in her life, she let herself be held.

And in the stillness of it all, Vi let herself drift.

Sleep pulled them both into its tender clutches, neither one aware of the cord of stones – discarded and forgotten in the corner – that glowed crimson in the darkness.