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Chapter Text

“Oh no,” The young sergeant looks at her hand, wet and red with blood, then presses it again to the gash in her arm. Her mouth is already dry. “Oh no. Ok…” She keeps moving, her jackboots slick with chemwaste and blood, not her own. She’s running but it’s getting harder to keep up the pace. She rounds a corner in a tight alley and presses herself against the wall. Breathing hard, she again pulls the hand away from the wound and looks at it, as if she’s going to find a different, better situation than the one she’s gotten herself into. The hand is still wet and red with blood, more of it now. The hand and the blood go wobbly, doubling, then center into one again. “Oh no,” Cait says again, then, “Ugh… Shit.”

She reaches into a pocket and pulls a roll of gauze free. Tearing at the end with her teeth, she quickly and tightly wraps the cut in her upper arm. It’s very deep. If she could stand to look at it she would see the pillowy yellow fat lining the wound that reaches all the way to the bone. It’s bleeding a lot. The gauze will help. But more urgent is the poison that’s already got access to Cait’s bloodstream and is making its way through her system at the speed of her racing heart.

She closes her eyes and focuses on her breathing, bringing it under control with some difficulty. She then listens for the sounds of her pursuers. She’s pretty sure she had managed to shake the last of them off several blocks ago but bottomsiders know their neighborhoods well and there’s more than one way to tail a person in the narrow city that sprawls straight up instead of out. Cait throws her gaze up, worried, still panicked, and already starting to feel the effects of the toxin working its way into her tissue, blood, and bone. She sees no sign of movement on the rooftops above, nor any eyes watching her from the many windows. She pockets the gauze and moves out into the open away from the wall she’s been leaning against.

Her legs and feet feel heavy and she has no plan where she’s going next. The obvious place is too far, she’s in the wrong damn Fissure. Too far from friendly turf to trust she can make it there in time before the poison does its work and makes it so she can’t move at all. Her arm is throbbing and her head is beginning to swim and ache. She has to think fast before thinking gets real slow. She scrambles for the solution to the puzzle now facing her:

I can’t get to the Last Drop before I’m too out of it to move. If I stay here they’ll find me before Vi does. I have to get somewhere they won’t be able to find me and Vi will, and I have to get there fast.

Her vision blurs again, going double, and she swoons and falls backwards onto her ass. She lands against a rusted-out drain pipe arcing from the wall behind her into the street. She leans against it, resting just for a minute, pressing her hot face to the cool sweat condensed on the metal pipe. The wet rusty sensation of the iron against her skin brings her senses into alignment for a moment. With her clearing vision, the voice of a memory.

Doesn’t matter what the rules are, Cupcake. Topside and bottom? You and me? Oil and water.

A smile curls at the corner of Cait’s chapped lips despite the circumstances. It’s her best bet. She’s certain Vi is already on her way, even if she only has a general sense of where to start looking. With much effort Cait pushes herself to her feet and takes an experimental step forward, then another. She has very little time and a ways to go. She pushes forward, each step driving a spike of pain through her legs, her polluted bloodstream weakening her every faculty. She holds the iron catwalk in her mind’s eye, focusing all of her intent on it. She will get there, Vi will find her there. They will both get there in time.

“Fuck,” The bottle Vi was just pouring from clatters to the bartop as her hand moves on its own to tightly grip the hard bicep of her left arm. It throbs with pain and burns with something nasty. She pulls the hand away. It comes back clean, no sign of injury. The phantom ache throbs again, worse this time, and the hand once more grips the arm. “The fuck? Cait!” she feels hot, a wave of nausea hitting her as her skin goes clammy with fearful sweat. She steadies herself, one hip leaned against the lip of the bar’s edge and closes her eyes, waiting, hoping this will pass quickly.

It doesn’t pass.

“Shit,” Vi opens her eyes, finding Vander already watching her, the mug he’d been drying with a rag held still in his big hands.

“Something wrong, kiddo?” His eyebrows go up and he moves to her. She only grimaces as another flash of searing pain cuts through her arm followed by an icky feeling prickling in her bloodstream that brings a flood of hot saliva into her mouth. Vi turns and retches, spilling her lunch into a dish bucket on the floor behind her. Vander reaches her, one hand rubbing her back as she retches again.

“Alright, it’s ok…” he throws a look over his shoulder, and Mylo nods and moves from the table he’s sharing with Claggor and Gert. Coming behind the bar, he throws a towel over one shoulder and takes up a mug, pulling the tap and taking over while Vander snatches two small flasks from the shelf as they round the bar and make for the door.

“Take this,” the sound of a small cork pulling from the mouth of the flask bottoms out in Vi’s ears and she feels the gritty brick behind her. A sharp smell comes under her nose and she snaps her head away, opening her eyes. Vander’s face–several of them–thread through each other before centering into one in front of her. Vi gets her bearings. They’re outside the Last Drop, she’s leaning against the wall of the alley. Vander is holding something out for her, telling her to take it. It smells bad. She takes it and drinks it down, making a face.

“Cait’s in trouble,” Vi’s gripping her left arm again, a steady and violent throb now settled there. “It’s bad.”

“I can see that,” Vander’s hand lightly brushes Vi’s face, his thumb wiping away blood dripping from her nose. She sees the red on his fingers and her eyes go wide. She brings her hand to her face and feels the bruises sore under her touch.

“Oh no,” she looks at Vander, panic watering her eyes. “Vander if it’s coming up this bad she’s really out of it. I have to find her before–” a groan as her attempt to push off the wall and get moving is stopped dead by one of Vander’s warm hands. The thick fingers hold her firmly in place.

“You can’t go anywhere like this, Violet. Let me look for her,” he looks into her face, knowing what the answer will be. She returns his gaze, a flash of appreciation evident, before she shrugs off his hand and steps around him.

“I’ll be ok, there’s time. I just have to figure out…” a small wave of vertigo washes through her and she staggers once. Spreading her arms, she takes a wide stance and feels the earth under her feet right itself. “... I just have to figure out where she’s at.”

She turns, facing Vander again. “Call Tobias, tell him to get ready for his two favorite patients.” She throws Vander half a smile, trying to reassure him, then gets serious again, thinking on something before she continues.

“Get Silco. See if he can bring his favorite egghead with him to the ward,” something unclean is curdling Vi’s blood, or it sure feels that way. Her stomach is cold with fear even as she plays it cool for Vander’s sake… even though he sees right through the act.

“Violet–” Vander's not gonna try to stop her. He only holds out the second flask and she takes it and pockets it. “Please be careful,” his hands come together then find his belt buckle, the thumbs curling into it, the scarred knuckles resting uneasily as he watches her go.

Chapter Text

The first time this had happened was bad. Bad in every way a thing can be bad. 

Many people were hurt, including Vi and Cait who were–for a little too long–at the brink of death. That was the first of the additional bad things about the first time this had happened: that there were more people hurt than just the two of them. The second bad thing– making the whole thing worse–was that the two of them were so badly hurt they couldn’t stop from hurting each other. And that started the death loop. Which was the third bad thing.

The fourth bad thing was that all of this meant the two of them were soulmates. The connection was apparent and urgently relevant. There was no denying it. The problem was that it was technically illegal. That was the fifth bad thing. And number six is holding Cassandra Kiramman’s daughter’s little hand in his and how did he get in here? Who let this man near my daughter?!

“I’m so sorry, sprout,” Jayce is standing at Cait’s bedside. He’s tired and his eyes are wet and he’s holding Caitlyn’s hand in his and he’s feeling more stupid and more sorry than he’s ever felt in his life.

“Please,” he gives her hand a very gentle squeeze. “Please come back to us. Just do what you need to do to get better and come back, ok?”

The wood heels of Cassandra’s boots beat a hurried rhythm toward him and she’s grabbed his elbow with one hand and is whipping him around to face her before the sound even reaches Jayce’s ears.

“You have no right to be here! And no permission! Leave now!” The Councilor’s face is red and her eyes are wide but wet with more fear than anger. Jayce is so sorry. He can’t help but say so.

“Councilor Kiramman… Cassandra, I’m so–”

“Do not speak to me!” her voice is suddenly calm, low. “You have been so reckless! You’ll be lucky if you don’t get arrested! I have half a mind to see to it that you are!”

Jayce doesn’t say anything. His face just falls and he turns and he leaves. Cassandra goes to her daughter and falls into the chair at her bedside, resuming her vigil.

The night is soon morning. And then: the afternoon. And two nights and mornings and afternoons. She sits by Caitlyn’s bedside and she watches the nurses closely as they tend to her daughter’s dressings and the tubes and things helping her broken body hold on long enough to start healing itself along with the other one in the bed nearby.

She tries to ignore the other girl in the other bed. But it’s impossible to do because when she looks at her Caitlyn, she’s also looking at the other girl, in a way. In that absurd way that just happens sometimes because the Arcane wills it and what can be done about that?

Well, as a matter of fact– what can be done about that? -was a question the Council of Piltover had answered 150 years prior when it had decreed that no citizen of Piltover was beholden to the so-called “will” of the unaccountable body commonly referred to as “The Arcane,” or simply “magic,” and that no bonds of the “soulmate” commonly recognized in most other parts of Runeterra would be recognized in the city of progress. For 150 years this law had seemed more or less effective. That was merely coincidence since soulmate bonds are so vanishingly rare in Piltover or anywhere in Runeterra as to be once in a generation flukes at best and widely scattered. Not at all the norm! Very easy to legislate against and call that taken care of.

Cassandra reads the words of the legislation included in the memo from the Council and rolls her eyes, dropping the parchment onto the bed. She reaches for Caitlyn, and leans in, just resting her eyes for a moment. Any law is only as effective as its capacity to be enforced. Some laws require no enforcement or very little. Some laws go on the books a century ago or longer and get forgotten until suddenly they matter very much. It’s still illegal to be soulmates in Piltover, and there’s no laws or policies or processes in place to protect soulmates when something like this happens. 

But it has happened. And to her Caitlyn, no less.

As two long days become three, Cassandra gets accustomed to the rhythm of the room around her daughter’s bed. There is a little pattern of happenings swirling around both beds, actually. And Councilor Kiramman marks them well. The other girl, pink-haired and burned and broken and sleeping just like her Caitlyn, has a father who never leaves her side except for those same reasons that pull Cassandra away from Cait for a few minutes every day and night. But unlike Cait, the other girl has siblings, though the Councilor isn’t sure yet exactly how many. 

She had thought it was just the one little girl with the blue hair. But then, a little boy with white hair and brown skin had shown up a few times. And a pair of what seemed like brothers came and went together or one at a time to relieve… their father? His name is Vander, she’s got that one down. Though she and the man have exchanged very few words over the last 72 hours, despite spending the bulk of those hours in the same terrible room for the same terrible reason.

He’s there now and from the cradle of her sore shoulder and elbow on her daughter’s hospital bed, Cassandra Kiramman watches the huge man as he softly whispers to his daughter, promising, as Cassandra has promised Cait, that he is right here with her, that he isn’t going anywhere, that she isn’t alone.

Cassandra throws a weary look back to the stack of papers on the bed near her elbow. Something very bad has happened. Soon, it will get worse. But before that, there are these hours with the two girls suspended, together. Bound in their struggle to live while their injuries feed on each other, calling them both to die. The Councilor listens to the warm voice of the big man standing at the other bed and lets it soothe her, too. She’s so tired, and she’s afraid that she’ll lose her daughter. And she needs to sleep. And so she closes her eyes and lets the voice reassure her.

Everything’s gonna be ok. I’m right here. 

Chapter Text

“This is exactly the type of extortion this law is meant to protect against!” 

And,

“Soulmates are rare but they’re no less real. We must acknowledge that there are factors in this world simply out of the control of mortal will and mortal laws.” 

And,

“This is no time to undo over a century of established law. We would be better served to direct our attention toward protecting Councilor Kiramman and her family from the unfortunate circumstances precipitated by this… coincidence.”

Cassandra rubs her eyes. She’s hurrying through the corridors of the hospital, in a rush to return to Caitlyn’s bedside. Hoping against hope she’ll find her daughter awake and alert and responsive when she does. The tedium of the Council meeting has worn her already ragged nerves to a dangerously threadbare state. She thinks if she can only hear her daughter’s voice, or see her eyes open! Even just to feel Caitlyn’s hand return her squeeze, however weakly… anything would restore her strength and ease her fear. 

As she enters the room though, Caitlyn remains as Cassandra had left her a few hours before: comatose, unresponsive, not out of the woods yet. The other girl is in a similar state, though she seems to stir occasionally in vague response to the touch and voices of her various family members. One sits by her bed right now. One of the brothers… the one with the wild mop of hair. Cassandra thinks his name might be Miles? Something like that. He’s resting his head in his arm as Cassandra often does, his eyes on his sister as she sleeps. Vander is nowhere to be found. 

Councilor Kiramman settles into the hard chair at Caitlyn’s side and, taking her daughter’s hand, once again resumes her prayerful vigil. She sends wordless pleas through the grip she maintains on Caitlyn’s hand: come back to me… I am right here… I am waiting for you to come back… and half an hour of silence passes before the blue-haired sister bounds into the room, a heavy bag on her shoulder rattling with a metallic clamor. She approaches the other girl’s bed, but as she does, the boy snaps up. Putting himself between the girl and the bed, he grabs her face in one hand and pulls it close to his.

“Get out!” he hisses at her through gritted teeth. “You did this! It’s all your fault! If you hadn’t come none of this would have happened! I was right! You’re a jinx! ” He pushes her hard, releasing his hold on her little pointed chin and she stumbles backward, the bag on her back weighing her down. She falls onto her bottom, tears already streaming from her big eyes. Scrambling to her feet, she clutches the bag to her chest and she runs from the room, a pained wail following her out. 

The boy looks after her and Cassandra sees a whisper of regret on his face before he sits back down and takes his sister’s hand. The silence resumes, but Councilor Kiramman is ill at ease. Moreso, now. She sits a minute longer, then lets go Caitlyn’s hand and exits the room. 

Outside the door, she looks left down the hall, then right. No sign of the blue-haired girl. No reason to go looking for her. No obligation to do so except…

We would be better served to direct our attention toward protecting Councilor Kiramman and her family from the unfortunate circumstances precipitated by this… coincidence.

The Councilor sighs and takes a wild guess. She goes to the left, down the long corridor lined with tall windows and turns the corner. There she finds the girl sitting against a wall, her bag open between her knobby knees. She’s rummaging through it idly and wiping big tears from her round cheeks, softly sniffling. She’s in her own little world and doesn’t notice Cassandra standing over her. The Councilor sighs again and nearly turns to walk away, back to the room, back to her daughter’s bedside. But something about the weeping child at her feet compels her to stay. She moves a step closer and crouches down, bringing herself to the girl’s level.

“That was a very unkind thing your brother said,” she begins, her voice wrapped in the congenial tone usually reserved for matters of statecraft. “Family can be very difficult. Especially in times like this.” 

The girl doesn’t look at Cassandra, only wipes a trail of snot up her skinny arm before resuming her tinkering. The woman crouching beside her now sees the device the girl holds. It looks heavy in the child’s small hands. Crude but thoughtfully assembled. She’s not sure what it could be. She’s not sure why she’s still here.

“Is that something you made?” She's not sure why she’s asking. 

Powder at last looks up and meets the eyes of the other girl’s mother. She’s not as scary close up, but she doesn’t seem all that friendly… even though she’s checking in on her after Mylo was mean to her… even though she’s asking her about her bombs. Powder isn’t sure what she should say. She’s never talked to a topsider before, and certainly not one this fancy and important . Could she get in trouble if she says the wrong thing? Something inside of the girl just shrugs and she holds the device out to the woman who takes it and stands, holding it close for inspection.

“You… built this?” Cassandra is incredulous. A closer look reveals that the device the girl has handed over is clearly some kind of bomb. She has no way of knowing if it’s armed or if it would work at all but she is too surprised by the revelation to react with anything but sheer wonder at the cheek of this child for bringing such a thing into a hospital and then handing it over to a Councilor of Piltover.

“Yeah!” The question seems to be the magic bullet. The blue-haired girl leaps to her feet, her tears suddenly dry. Her eyes are wide with excitement. “I still can’t make it go BOOM! though…” 

“Go… boom…” Councilor Kiramman feels a wave of something come over her and before she can process it she’s already laughing. It just comes rolling out of her. Belly laughs like she hasn’t experienced in a long time and certainly not in this last week of terrible waiting. Her eyes water as she holds the dud grenade in hand and lets the absurdity of everything that’s happening to her family shake her body with something other than grief and fear and anger. 

Confused, Powder stands by the fancy woman and just watches. She chuckles a little, too, an awkward half smile playing on her lips. Her fingers are laced together in front of her and she’s twisting them nervously, not sure what she said that’s so funny… but when the woman laughs like this she seems much nicer. Powder feels like she’s seeing this strange lady for the first time. She thinks maybe she’s not so bad… for a Piltie.

Cassandra feels a flood of dopamine brought on by the outburst relax through her body. A mercy that somewhat eases her tense muscles and resets her weary mind. She looks again through watered eyes at the device she holds. Well, a dud it may be but she can’t just give a grenade back to this small child. She looks down to the girl beside her who looks up at her with an eager expression, clearly hungry for feedback, approval, praise, attention . Cassandra improvises.

“You are certainly very clever. I’m sure the Academy would be lucky to have such a precocious and promising young inventor! I have a close friend who is very high up at the Academy. Would it be all right if I borrowed this to… show him? An example of your… potential?” As she says the words, the Councilor knows she means them. She also knows how careless she has been to say them at all. Few bottomsiders are granted entry into the Academy, no matter how promising. Fewer still can afford to stay and study long. She wonders if she’s just made the beginnings of some sort of promise to the child.

“Oh, uhm…” Powder looks around, suddenly anxious. She doesn’t know why anyone would want something that she’s made. Let alone something that doesn’t work . She thinks the lady is just being nice, but maybe not? Could she be trying to get Powder into trouble? Or does she really mean what she’s saying about Powder’s potential ? She’s the other girl’s mom… and the other girl is Vi’s soulmate . That’s not something Powder knows a lot about, but it makes her scared and curious in equal measure. Does that make this woman family, too? 

Again, something inside Powder shrugs. If the fancy lady wants her failed prototype, she can have it. Powder has everything she needs to make another one, and better than this one, too! The lady is still looking at her, holding the mouse-shaped bomb in the flat palm of her very clean and soft-looking hand. Powder says nothing, her voice suddenly feels very sticky. She only holds the lady’s gaze and nods once.

This is exactly the type of extortion this law is meant to protect against!

Cassandra looks into the girl’s face, hearing Salo’s infuriatingly airy little voice in her head. “My name is Councilor Cassandra Kiramman,” she says, a little stiffly and far too formal. “Please, call me Mrs. K,” she corrects.

The girl’s eyes light up, overjoyed to have a new friend. Her voice flies free from her throat and she sings “I’m Powder! Vi’s my big sister! Mylo is our brother… he’s mean sometimes, but he’s not all bad. Claggor is nicer, but he’s not here… he’s helping Vander at the Last Drop… I don’t know where Ekko is today, probably at the shop with Benzo. Vi keeps Mylo from being so mean to me but–” her voice is stopped by a loud sob that interrupts her cheerful litany and she’s once again snotty and tearful and just crying messily and openly right in front of Cassandra.

The Councilor watches the girl’s face go from bright to devastated in a flash and she understands completely. With one arm she reaches for the child. Pulling her close, she wraps her in a warm hug, rubbing her back reassuringly. Powder accepts this, throwing her skinny arms around Mrs. K’s waist and wetting her silk blouse with snot and tears.

“That’s all right, dear,” Cassandra says as she holds the sister of her daughter’s soulmate. “That’s all right.” Councilor Kiramman stands for a long time waiting for the girl to wear herself out. Eventually she does. Wordlessly, she directs them both around the corner and back down the hall to the room. Before they enter, she hands the mouse bomb to a nurse (no worries, it's a dud). She directs them to find her husband, Dr. Kiramman, and have him put it somewhere safe until she can come and collect it later. She and Powder then enter the room again together. Mylo’s head snaps up, his mouth open to again kick his little sister out with some cruel insult. Seeing Powder with the woman, he balks. His mouth slowly closes and he turns back to Vi, ignoring Powder. She settles on the other side of Vi’s bed, taking her hand.

Cassandra again sits in her hard chair at Caitlyn’s side. Taking up her hand, she resumes her wordless pleas to her daughter, asking her to fight and come back to her. As she does, her eyes stay on the blue-haired girl sitting at the other bed. Powder holds her big sister’s hand and chatters into her ear, telling her anything and everything she can think to say, including about the new friend she just made: it’s the other girl’s mom! Mrs. K: the topsider who was nice to her, and who shut Mylo up before he could even say anything mean to her again, and who likes her bombs.

Chapter Text

There’s something evil in her blood. It’s doing its thing in there, it’s tearing the place apart. It’s hitching a ride on the healthy little platelets and coursing through the miles of narrow pathways threading through her body. It's going into her heart and her heart is pumping it back out and it’s coming back around just as fast. It’s killing her. 

Her heart beats again, and that’s bad because that sends the shit back through the whole system and makes everything worse. Her heart beats again, and that’s necessary. It has to . The alternative is even worse. Cait is sitting in the middle of the iron catwalk and she’s putting everything she has into keeping herself awake, alert, alive.

About 20 minutes ago, she’d felt the vibrant shock of a Shimmer draught ice her veins and sharpen her senses and she knew that meant Vi is poisoned, too. Or as good as poisoned. The death loop has started. The clock is ticking. And she knows that Vi is on her way. That Vi drank it down and then set out to find her. And Cait, for her part, had needed that. That little shock, the cold snapping of her nerves back to center for just long enough to get her here. But will Vi know where here is?

The young sergeant is sitting in the middle of the iron catwalk, just right out in the open, easy to spot. And she’s hoping. Gods, she's hoping so. That Vi will know where here is. That Vi is coming. That Vi will reach her in time.

***

“You might as well wait for tomorrow, unless you're tryna piss off your Captain again.”

Had she said it like that? Exactly that way? Not sure it matters now. Ok. Focus. Take it from the top. Wiping down the bar. Cait’s there. She’s in uniform, her shift is ending.

“How was your day, Cupcake?” 

Her hand in Vi’s hand. The real touch, not the phantom.

“Better now.”

Always better together. When they’re really together. Not like this. The pain punishes both of them no matter the distance. The pain becomes blinding. The pain feeds on itself. 

That’s not what matters. Focus, dammit. Take it from the top. Cait was done, her shift done. She’d walked her beat all morning and afternoon because that’s how much Marcus despises her. Midnight to noon. An awful shift. And yet, Cait had something she just had to look into. She’s always got something. There’s always something brewing on the side. Some investigation. Unsanctioned. And that’s why Marcus despises her so much and puts her on an awful beat as punishment for doing shit like what she did today.

And Vi has always taken Cait’s side. Vi always will. But gods, Cait. You could have stayed, had a drink, waited. They could have gone out and looked into it together. Vi’s tagged along more than a few times. But Cait had to look into this one thing. Just a quick peek. It’s not nearby, but it’s not too dangerous. She was supposed to come back on her own two feet.

“You might as well wait for tomorrow, unless you're tryna piss off your Captain again.”

Something nasty punches Vi right in the chest and she falls straight down into a filthy puddle. She’s on her hands and knees in it, the wind knocked right out of her and every single heartbeat feels like a bomb detonating inside her ribcage.

“Cait,” she’s getting up, of course. That’s what she does. Cait can’t hear her but she’s talking to her anyway. “I’m coming. Don’t leave, ok? Just hang on, I’ll get to you.” and she’s up and she’s moving again.

***

Pain has been holding her. Rigid. It has held her for days. She knows it has been days because she hears her mother’s updates every morning and every evening. It has been over a week, in fact. She has been held rigid, still, unmoving, in the grip of the pain for nearly eight full days. Alongside her, the other girl, too.

Something is happening now. The pain is not holding her up. The pain is swallowing her. She’s sinking and the other girl is getting further off. She feels the other girl moving away and she feels the pain. Both are urgent. Both are killing her. The pain is swallowing her up. The pain is all she has ever known. The other girl is reaching for her, she feels that amid the pain. 

She had felt her heart beating. All this time, all 8 days, and the other girl’s, too. Now, in her chest, it’s just the pain, and the other girl’s heartbeat is moving away.

***

“Cait!” A white light blinds her eyes, open for the first time in days and days. She closes them again but she continues to thrash and she screams from behind the plexiglas of the mask. She screams the name again, “Cait!” 

The adults come swarming. There are hands on her and to her right there are hands on the other girl, too. Vi feels herself pushed upward on a wave of excruciating pain. It’s so bad it forces her mind out of the comfort of oblivion and her body into a rigid arc of panic. 

The doctor has his hands on her. There are other hands. There are things touching her. Metal and glass and sticking gauze and tape and the pain clings to every part of her and she feels the other girl sinking away from her. She had just been there, she had been right there. 

“No!” Vi turns her head to find her and she’s under the hands of some doctor and Vi feels the hands as if they’re pressing on her own chest and she feels her sternum give under the weight and she hears the bones crack in the chest of the other girl and she feels it around her own heart.

Her heart. Vi feels her own heart beating and it hurts but she doesn’t feel the other girl’s heart beating anymore. She had been feeling it for days like something obvious. Like something common. Now its absence has thrust her awake and scared and screaming into this chaotic and unfamiliar room. The other girl is sinking. “No!” she screams again and the doctor’s hands are warm on her.

“It’s ok, Violet,” but she hears in his voice a dread tone of stone cold fear. So he knows it, too.

“Something is wrong with her!” Vi is trying to get up but there are all these tubes and hands on her and the pain. She’s trying to get up. She keeps trying. It’s what she does.

“Please!” She pleads but the needle is finally in her arm and there’s a flood of something and she turns to find the other girl again and she is swallowed by an encroaching dark as Vi, too, sinks into the pain, her hoarse voice begging Cait “Don’t leave,” then the darkness takes her but Vi’s will remains.

I’m coming. Don’t leave, ok? I’ll find you. 

Chapter Text

“How are you feeling, Violet?”

It hurts. It hurts so much.

“Can you squeeze my hands with yours? Tight as you can… good.”

Was I squeezing?

“Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”

It was dark. There were two heartbeats but then the other one stopped. The other girl… Cait. I went after her. I think I found her, oh gods… did I find her? Is she…

“There was… an explosion.” Vi’s voice is quiet behind the mask, her lips chapped, her throat dry. The doctor; she remembers his face from before… the blue whiskers… he’s sitting by the bed. Vander is there, too. This must be a hospital. Vi has never been inside one before.

“Is Cait ok?” Vi’s eyes are beginning to fight her wakefulness. Heavily lidded, they’re trying to close and return her to the calm dark. She’s fighting it. That’s what she does. The doctor’s face looks sad through the haze separating them. Vi sees the worry there. Remembers the fear in his voice from before. She tries to turn her head to see for herself if the other girl is still there in the bed beside her, but the attempt goes nowhere. All she feels is the pain. It’s paralyzing. Her eyes are open and she’s awake but it’s iffy. She’s in so much pain. She closes her eyes and focuses on her heartbeat and finds it and then sinks into it until she feels…

Buhdum. Buhdum. Buhdum. Buhdum. Buhdum. Buhdum. Buhdum. Buhdum. Buhdum. 

It’s there. Cait’s heart is beating again. But the pain, it’s so much worse. She needs to tell the doctor about the pain, maybe there’s something he can do for Cait… it’s so much worse for her.

“Hurts…” Vi can’t open her eyes now that they’re closed again. She’s slipping back into the cold dark that’s been holding her and the other girl. She’s being taken in by the pain, it’s forcing her back into oblivion for a little while longer. But she’s fighting while she can for the other girl. It’s what she does. One hand comes to her chest, resting there, the fingers pressed together right on top of her own heart. With everything she has left, she raises her other hand and points to Cait.

“Hurts,” she says again, and that’s all she has left for now. The darkness takes her back.

***

"Tobias,” Cassandra holds Caitlyn’s hand as she watches her husband tend to the girl in the other bed. 

It had been a very close call followed by a harried and sleepless night of watching, waiting. An endless repetition of placing her husband’s stethoscope onto their daughter’s chest just to be sure that her heart is still beating. 

Not out of the woods yet.

Of course, Tobias cannot tend to Caitlyn. Ethics forbid him to provide her primary care. But he had insisted on staying on the case, and leads up the team for the girl from the Undercity. It’s the best he can do. If this girl is truly his daughter’s soulmate, then everything he does for her he is also doing for his daughter and that will have to be good enough. But it pains Cassandra to see him care for their daughter this way, by proxy. And it reminds her of the trouble they’re all in. 

In violation of the law.

Out of alignment with the status quo.

And the added taboo… that this girl… she’s from the Alcove District. Not just that but The Lanes . One of a pack of strays being raised by a bartender with a record (the Councilor has looked into the other girl’s guardian, of course, and found a history of radicalism and brutal violence).

“Tobias,” Cassandra is impatient though she has no clear ask. “Tobias… please.” At last he looks at her, their eyes meeting. Each looks to the other over the broken body of either of the girls. Tobias’ warm hands come away from the other girl, asleep again. He stands, pulling on his white coat. He leans to the big man sitting at the bed, saying something softly. Vander nods.

“Thanks, doc.”

Tobias crosses the room and extends a hand to his wife. She takes it and follows him into the hall. She crosses away from the door and stands at the tall window, looking at nothing. The doctor finds a nurse, scribbles something onto a pad, hands it to him. The nurse nods and heads for the apothecary’s window, the script for the pain medicine in hand.

Cassandra then feels her husband behind her, feels his arms wrap around her. His whiskers tickle her cheek as he leans close to her ear and whispers promises to her. 

“She’s going to be fine… She’s strong.” And Tobias believes this but he doesn’t say what else he believes. He doesn’t say that yes, their daughter is strong, but that he’s certain what’s keeping her alive is the strength, the sheer will of the other girl. He doesn’t say that the other girl… Violet… is fighting with everything she has for both their lives. He doesn’t say this because it’s only a guess, albeit an educated one.

Since soulmates are illegal in Piltover, the field of medical science surrounding their care is woefully deficient. Tobias has been studying, though. With help from Councilor Heimerdinger, he’s been able to access restricted books on the subject from the Academy Archives. There’s quite a lot of scholarship on the topic, but much of it is long out-of-date. What he has gleaned though–and then applied to his treatment plan for Vi–suggests that what the girls are experiencing following the accident that nearly killed them both is a sort of death loop. Their injuries are so severe that neither can quite begin to heal, so both get worse. Something in the bond seeks to take them both or strike a balance and take only one… from what Tobias has read, it seems like when this happens–if both soulmates don’t die–one inevitably will. His duty is to his patient, though he can’t help but fear that–if what he’s read is correct, immutable–then saving Violet will mean losing Caitlyn. 

This is unacceptable. These books are helpful, but they are old. Piltover tried to legislate the phenomenon of soulmates out of existence and failed. The only thing the law has accomplished is to prevent over a century of research into the soulmate bond that could have been conducted with all the resources of the city of progress. Now, Tobias has to figure it out on his own. What can be done to save both of them? His patient and his daughter? His daughter and her soulmate? Dr. Tobias Kiramman believes there is a way. He believes that he will find it. For now, he puts his faith in the strength of his patient. The pink-haired girl from the Fissures… She's keeping his baby girl alive. She’s doing everything she can to keep her alive. 

Tobias lets a little smile come to his lips as he holds his wife and reassures her. He’s only just had his first conversation with his daughter’s soulmate, but already, he feels a warm flood of gratitude and something like love for the girl fill his chest. 

We’re running out of time… but… I believe Violet can hold on. To both of them. I believe she will keep Caitlyn with her. We won’t lose one of them. We will lose both of them or neither. Because of Violet.

He tries to share this wordlessly with Cassandra. His arms around her, he rocks them both side to side and, saying nothing, promises:

She’s strong. They’re both strong. They’re going to come back together or not at all.

Chapter Text

She sits slumped over at the center of the iron catwalk, resting her chin on her arms which are propped on her raised knees. She’s looking down into the murky waters below. The sound of boots clang on the rusted metal toward her but she doesn’t look up to see who’s coming.

“Thought I might find you here,” Cait settles down next to Vi and leans against her. Vi doesn’t answer but leans back and they sit together, their bodyweight propping each other up. The babbling sounds of the polluted waters beneath them fill their ears and they sit for a long time, leaning against one another, saying nothing. Finally, Vi breaks the silence.

“Please tell me you’re here to say you didn’t go through with it,” Vi’s voice is hard.

“Violet–”

“Just please be here to tell me you changed your mind. Or your mom finally got through to you. Or they wouldn’t take you. Anything but what I know you’re gonna say,” She’s not looking at Cait, her eyes are locked on something only she can see, inside her memories. The metal face of the badge reflecting the flames. The gas mask and goggles under the helmet. The muzzle flash. The smell of smoke and ash and blood. Cait doesn’t answer.

“Say it,” Vi closes her eyes.

“I’ve enlisted, as I said I would. Next month I’ll begin training as a cadet,” there’s no shame in Cait’s voice, but maybe a hint of remorse.

Vi drops her head, rubbing her eyes back and forth over one hard forearm. Her hands grip her own flesh tightly, painfully. “Fuck, Cait… why? ” Cait feels Vi’s body go rigid against her, the trusting weight moving away slightly, holding itself up now.

“You’ve known for a year I was doing this, Vi. It’s what I want… to help people. To help the city!”

“By putting on that fucking badge? ” Vi still won’t look at Cait. Her voice is pained and flies away from both of them. “How could you think you can help anyone like that? By joining them? Becoming one of them? ” There’s venom on the words “badge… them.” Vi speaks from a place of plain and simple hatred. It hurts her to do it, but she can’t find anywhere else inside that this news belongs other than the well of rage that’s been churning in her heart for years.

“By serving the Ethos,” This isn’t quite right and Cait knows it. That’s an answer for the recruiter. One slender hand comes to the handsome face, turning it toward her. She strokes the smooth scar under Vi’s chin with her thumb as she tries again. “Things aren’t the same now as they were before. The system is changing! Reforms are happening! Because of us, Vi! Because of you!” Vi still won’t meet her eyes, but neither does she turn away.

“I know this is hard for you. I know it’s not what you want for me,” Cait sighs, wearied. “It doesn’t seem to be what anyone wants for me. The one thing you and mother agree on in four years and it’s this…” she offers a half smile, but Vi still won’t look at her. This hurts. “But Violet, it’s what I want! It’s what I know I’m meant to do! It’s where I belong! I never expected mother to be on board but I had hoped that you…”

“That I’d forget that Enforcers killed my parents so that you wouldn’t feel guilty for joining up with them?” Vi meets Cait’s eyes at last as she speaks with a nastiness Cait has heard before, but never directed her way. 

“I thought ‘where you belong’ was with me!” Her eyes are wet, her face red with anger. Cait presses her hand to the hot face and thumbs away the first tear that tries to fall down the freckled cheek of her soulmate.

“You are my home, Violet. And the badge is my calling. Please, try to understand.”

Vi brings her hand to Cait’s, hooking her fingers into the palm pressed against her face. She leans for one heartbeat into the gentle touch before peeling the hand away and dropping it. She turns her body away, and Cait slumps against her back, the hand coming around Vi’s waist, still reaching for her.

“Violet…”

One scarred hand runs through the pink locks, scratches the back of the head where the hair is shaved short, grips the neck and pulls around as Vi tilts her head back, eyes closed. She sighs heavily, then groans, an earnest wail of frustration and hurt, before she rests both arms again on her raised knees.
She leans away from Cait’s touch.

“I need to be alone…” Her voice is just loud enough for Cait to hear it.

“Please… leave.” She feels the slender hand on her again, this time lightly resting on her bicep. She jerks away from the unwanted touch. “I said leave! Just go, Cait! You made your choice! I’ve got nothing to say to you!” With this, Vi scooches away and a small but definite chasm opens between them.

Cait sits a moment longer, her arm still extended, the hand touching nothing. The fingers curl and she pulls her hand back, hurt and suddenly full of doubt. She opens her mouth again but closes it immediately. There’s nothing to say. She stands and turns and walks away and Vi listens to the sound of her footsteps until she can no longer hear them.

***

In and out of wakefulness. For how long? It’s been forever. All there is anymore is this bed, the voices and hands around it, the aching pain, the hours that pass. Sometimes Vi can crack an eye open, answer a question, return a squeeze of her hand to Little Man. But mostly she’s down there in the dark holding onto the other girl. Just holding on. After awhile she gets the sense away down there in the hurting darkness that the other girl is starting to float again. That the tug of war with whatever tried and has been trying to take her is ending. Or will end soon. That Vi has won… or will win soon. That the other girl–Cait–will make it back.

Vi, for her part, can’t wait. She’s tired, and it’s hard to hang on but she’s doing it. But she’s looking forward to the sensation–whatever it may be–that will tell her that Cait has come all the way back. That she’ll be ok. That Vi won’t have to hold onto her anymore (but Vi will want to, anyway). So she sleeps on, hearing the voices around the bed day in and out and she comes to know them all. Vander’s, of course and the voices of all three of her brothers. Powder’s comes through loud and clear and for long bursts of distracted jabbering. Her doctor, who’s Cait's father, has a friendly voice and Cait’s mother, the Councilor, speaks with a stern tone in an accent so proper Vi’s never heard its like until now. 

Once or twice she’s heard Benzo’s jovial warble joking with Vander and then the dozen or so nurses get sorted by the voice or the sensation she knows them by: cold hands, smoker’s breath, chewing gum, lisp. She categorizes and tracks the time of day by the voices she hears, anchoring herself to the routine and the sounds as she fights the force that’s trying and failing to pull Cait under. It’s something to do. 

It’s early afternoon, and Vi hears Cait’s mother greet someone who strides into the room in a few long, confident steps. The thick heel of the boot against the cool tile of the hospital floor is not immediately familiar to Vi’s ear.

“Thank you for coming, Sheriff. I’m sure she’d be thrilled to see you here.” That’s Cait’s mom, polite but tired. The voice is familiar but Vi, sleeping, doesn’t really register the words.

“Are we back to titles, Cass? Or should I say ‘Councilor?’ How is she doing?” The deep husky voice pulls Vi straight up outta the dark to full wakefulness. If she had the ability to do so she’d have shot up outta the bed. She’s alert, her heart beating fast. But she keeps her eyes squeezed shut, not daring to give away that she’s awake and listening.

Vi is confused. Why is the Sheriff here? Has she finally come to arrest her for the robbery? Nasty work to wait for Vander to be gone before showing up.

“It’s been a rough few days. There was a very close call and ever since she’s just been… fighting.” Cait’s mom’s voice is almost unfamiliar to Vi, the tone she uses now is one she’s never heard. It’s the tone one uses when speaking to a very old friend.

“If fighting is what it will take then we have nothing to fear. Caitlyn is a fighter first and foremost. And she’s so strong. Like her mother.” Sheriff Grayson’s voice is unmistakable, though Vi has never heard it like this. Usually it comes muffled through the brass of an Enforcer’s mask. Now it rings naked in the clean air of the upper city, the tone sympathetic, even loving. It’s messing with Vi’s head. It’s like seeing a fish walking itself down the street upright, its fins as good as a pair of feet. Does Cait know this woman? Are they close?

“Thank you for saying so, Chrisjen. It’s unbelievable but… I think I needed to be reminded. I know she’s strong. It’s so hard to remember, though. Seeing her like this, day after day. She looks so small. Fragile. Still my little girl… my baby.” Cait’s mom is crying. Vi can hear it clearly. Her confusion intermixes now with something strange… she doesn’t know what… betrayal? 

“You’ll say the same thing on her wedding day,” Vi hears the smile in the Enforcer’s words. “When was the last time you got some fresh air, Cass? Why don’t you come take a walk with me? Maybe a bite to eat? Caitlyn will be ok.” The Sheriff’s voice moves, pointed down now, and takes on that knowing tone adults use when they talk to precocious children. “I promise to bring your mother right back, Caitlyn. Won’t be more than an hour. And when you’re awake, I have some things I wanted to go over with you regarding your last lesson on the range. I’m looking forward to our next conversation.” There’s a sound of a chair scraping backwards and Vi can’t help but crack one eye open just long enough to catch the amber badge winking at her from the blue sea of uniform it’s pinned to as the Sheriff turns and offers an elbow to Cait’s mom. Her eye closes again and the sound of a pair of footsteps falling into sync out the door and down the hall fill her ears then fade away.

At last Vi opens her eyes wide. Something unpleasant, ugly, bubbles inside her chest. She turns her head and looks across the little chasm between the beds to the sleeping girl. She really looks at her. Who is this girl? Vi doesn’t know anything about her, not even the sound of her voice. She’s been fighting for days to keep herself and this girl alive and she hasn’t even given it a second thought. Why? Because they’re soulmates? Vi didn’t ask for that. Neither of them did. 

Anywhere else in Runeterra there’d be all these rules and norms and expectations about their responsibilities to each other and their families’ responsibilities to each other. Based on the books and stories Powder’s spent hours reading to her, in some places they’d both be considered mages and given special status. They’d be bound together by duty. Or at least that’s how it's described in fairytales and old stories. But in Piltover, soulmates are outlawed. None of that flies here. The Arcane doesn’t get to decide anyone’s fate or duty.

Vi wonders if for the first time in her life she’s appreciative of a law written by that pack of Piltie pissants called the Council. If this girl is taking shooting lessons with the fucking Sheriff, if she’s some kinda starry-eyed mentee of the upper city’s top bluebelly, Vi wants nothing to do with her.

She looks away, annoyed. No. Pissed off. But she’s more mad at herself for not realizing it on her own, and sooner. A soulmate bond is magic. The Arcane may have decided to bind them to each other but Vi knows what city she lives in. She knows which side of the bridge she was born on. She knows what the Enforcers do to bottomsiders who cross that bridge with anything other than goods or services to offer the other side. It’s what they’re for, in fact. Keeping trencher trash like her in their place. All to protect pretty princesses like this sleeping beauty one bed over.

Her eyes close on their own. She sinks like a stone, the swirl of intense emotions exhausting her. Soon, she’s suspended again in the dark. Anchored. Holding fast. And she’s got the other girl there with her, and she can let her go if she wants to. She’d probably be fine on her own at this point. Vi is pretty sure the worst has passed. She can just let her go. 

But she doesn’t.

Chapter Text

She sits slumped over at the center of the iron catwalk. The gauze around her left bicep is soaked through with blood that has resumed dripping, then streaming in skinny fingers down her arm under the uniform. It pools under the hand she’s propped on. Her eyes are open but glassy and she’s feeling something familiar coming on. An old friend, really. A mean one, though. A deep, black, darkness that’s lapping at her consciousness like a swelling sea. She knows how to float in it, but she’s not sure how long she’ll be able to manage before it swallows her down. 

Her beating heart is the only thing she hears. Inside of it, the other one, too. A wry smile glances on her cracked and bleeding lips. She’s going under. She’ll anchor herself to that other distant heartbeat and she’ll hold on for dear life. She’ll float for just as long as she can. Cait closes her eyes and the darkness takes her back.

***

His chest is already aching, his breath coming with a wheeze. The air down here is worse than it’s ever been and he’s not used to breathing it anymore. He lives topside now, in the upper city, in the faculty and staff chambers high in the glittering Academy building. Still, he knows the route well and limps his way through the twisting alleys, his mind elsewhere. Unraveling the fascinating mystery the Arcane has put before him in the form of two badly injured teenagers.

Their doctors are at an impasse, biding time, keeping the girls on the edge of death, but unable to bring them back from that brink. Lacking adequate knowledge of their unique physical needs, Tobias Kiramman reached out for help and now the Academy has gotten involved. Heimerdinger is busy navigating the political and legal questions concerning the girls’ violation of the law. So the Councilor has assigned his assistant to act as liaison with the medical team trying to save their lives. The information available in the Archives has been useful, but has led them to an unfortunate dead end. The “death loop,” as Dr. Kiramman refers to it, demands one or both of the bonded pair die. There are plenty of accounts in the scrolls and books they’ve poured over, and no examples to the contrary. Once the death loop begins there’s no way to stop it. It’s just the nature of the soulmate bond.

Viktor scoffs again around the thought. The irritating dead end. The immutable “truth.” If the nature of the bond placed upon these girls against their will by the Arcane means that they will die… then the time has come to step outside conventional science (and the law), and seek out a way to change that nature. Viktor knows just the man to talk to about how he might make that happen.

Rio’s tank glows darkly and a man’s sharp voice cuts off suddenly when Viktor steps unannounced into the chamber of his old mentor. He sees him standing by a man he doesn’t know. The man looks at him, a hardness in his seeing eye. The other eye is dead, a misshapen amber pupil lulls in the black of it.

“Am I interrupting?” Viktor leans on his cane and looks from the stranger to Singed. “Is now not a good time?”

Singed hears the wheeze whistling on Viktor’s every breath. He gestures with one gaunt arm at a couple of chairs near the workbench. “No matter,” he gives a knowing nod to the other man, who looks annoyed before he turns to leave. He brushes past Viktor in the narrow threshold, their shoulders making contact. They share a look and then Silco is out the door. Viktor takes a seat and Singed does, too.

***

Why are you not waking up?

This is getting ridiculous. Since the new treatments started, Vi has been able to stay awake for hours at a time. She’s been drinking on her own, and had a bite of solid food this morning. Though Dr. K has absolutely forbidden it, she’s even able to get out of bed on her own and move around a little. Sure it hurts like hell and wipes her out quick but she can do it. But the other girl? She just sleeps on. Vi can’t figure it out. She should be awake by now, too. Vi doesn’t admit it to anyone–least of all herself–but she’s eager to meet Cait, to talk to her. She’s not over the Sheriff Grayson thing, but she’s not as pissed as she was before. It’s hard to stay angry when it makes you so tired. And anyway, she’ll only get answers for what the hell that whole thing was even about when this girl finally wakes the fuck up.

So why won’t she?

Vi stands at Cait’s bedside and watches her sleep. She’s pretty. That’s annoying. Her face is still bruised just like Vi’s. She brings her hand there, feeling how tender these weeks-old injuries still are under her touch. Remembering Powder’s probing hand earlier this morning. Not on her face, but this one here.

“Ow! Fuck, Powder… Leave her alone!”

“Your soulmate is so boring, Vi! Get a new one. This one’s broken!” she poked the bruise again and Vi felt hers smarting with the obnoxious prodding.

“Maybe you should try kissing her!” Powder turned, her eyes wide, her face excited by the prospect of the experiment. “It worked in that one story!” She’d crossed to the chair by Vi’s bed and gone digging through the stack of books in her bag. Gifts from Mrs. K.

“This one!” She cracks open a picture book and points to the illustration of the sleeping prince and the stalwart knight leaning in close to kiss him back to life. “See?”

“That’s just a stupid story, Powder. It’s not real.” Vi had rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, pouting but spying on Cait through the corner of her narrowed eye.

“Yeah, but it’s a soulmate story. It’s based on the real thing! There’s only been so many in history and most of their stories are written down somewhere. Even if they’re really old and just fairy tales now. They happened at some point.” She held up the book again, closer this time. Her oil-blackened finger tapped the shoulder of the knight. “It worked for them!”

Vi had chased Powder’s stupid suggestion out of her mind immediately. But now, hours later, the ward is quiet and the two girls are alone (a rare occurrence), and she’s thinking about it. It’s idiotic… but maybe? Vi shakes her head, her cheeks getting hot. It couldn’t possibly work… unless??? She’s grateful nobody's around to see her right now. She feels like a creep, looming over this pretty stranger, watching her sleep. Sleep?! She’s in a fucking coma! Her ribs are broken from when she’d nearly died just a couple weeks ago and the doctor’d had to pump her own heart for her! She still needs the mask to help her breathe! And Vi's hovering over her, wondering if maybe a little smooch will do the trick and get her to open her eyes so Vi can finally see what color they are!

She shakes her head, turning away from the bedside, leaning on the rolling hanger that holds her hydration drip in a heavy glass bottle sloshing precariously with the motion. Vi’s foot moves back toward her bed and then she’s turning on her heels and she’s once again looking down at the sleeping girl. Her heart flutters in her chest and her ears ring as she slowly, haltingly, bends down. 

This is so ridiculous. But maybe… maybe Powder is right. 

She lingers, her mouth just above the temple, and she smells the metallic sweat and the oily aroma coming off her dark blue hair. 

ThisisstupidThisisstupidThisisstupidThisisstupidThisisstupidThisisstupidThisisstupid

She puckers her lips and leaves a nervous little peck on the sweaty temple.

It has to be on the lips or it doesn’t work!

 She hears Powder’s voice, sees her little finger tapping at the colorful illustration in the book: the handsome knight laying a chaste but loving kiss of life on the lips of sleeping prince. Vi opens her eyes, standing straight. She’s not gonna kiss an unconscious girl on the lips. Besides, she’s wearing that mask. But still... Vi doesn’t feel quite finished. Her hand comes on its own to the narrow face. Gently, she moves a long lock of the midnight blue hair away from Cait’s face and brings her lips down one more time, pressing a careful kiss on the center of her forehead, just beneath the bandages. She’s careful, not wanting to hurt her bruised and tender face. She feels no pain herself and knows she’s succeeded. 

Standing upright again, she passes one thumb over the spot she just kissed, carefully wiping it away. When she was little and her mom or dad would kiss her fat cheeks, she would always wipe the wet impression away with her hand. 

Are you wiping your mom’s kisses off? Her dad would grab her with tickling fingers.

She’s rubbing them in! And her mom would reach for her, too.

Vi returns to her bed, crawling in, tired again. She pulls the covers over her and falls into a deep sleep almost immediately. She dreams of her parents’ voices.

***

The cold dark is everything. It’s all there is. She’s not sinking anymore, she’s being held in place. Then, at some point, an icy shock reaches her, streaking a purple lightning bolt through the colorless void, jolting her upward fast. It isn’t quite enough though. She feels like she’s just beneath the surface of a great, rolling ocean. She can see the light of day glancing into lacework above her, but she can’t quite break through. She’s still floating. This goes on for a long time. Until.

There’s a presence. Familiar. There’s even something material to it. A smell? A sweaty smell. Then, another jolt of sensation. At the center of her forehead, a burst, like a third eye flying open. It sees the way to the surface.

Cait sits up, gasping loudly, one palm pressed to her forehead. The room is pitch black and quiet following the sound of her waking breath. Her fingers come to her face and pull the mask away from her mouth. Her eyes see nothing first but soon adjust and she begins to make out the shapes around her, putting them together into something that makes sense. A room. A hospital room. She’s in a bed and beside her there’s another bed and in that bed is the other girl.

They’re both awake and looking through the darkness of the room right at each other.

Chapter Text

It’s the middle of the night and a very rare occurrence. The girls are alone in their room. Assured by the care team that there is nothing left to do but wait for Caitlyn to wake up, Cassandra has gone home to shower and sleep in her own bed. Tobias is napping in his office in another wing of the upper city hospital. Vander is in The Lanes with Powder and the boys to see to business and return in the morning.

Well before dawn, the room and the corridor outside are quiet. Both girls sleep, then, at the same time, two sets of eyes open to a midnight blue darkness. They turn and see each other for the first time. With so little light, they get only a general sense of the other. Cait can’t see Vi’s freckles and Vi can’t tell that Cait’s eyes are the same deep blue as the late night color all around them. They can both see the glistening white gauze and wrappings on the other, binding the exact same areas for the exact same reasons. The room is still with silence but their hearts beat in their own ears and as the tension builds the heartbeat of the other starts to come in loud and clear, too.

Vi gets nervous and she’s looking through the blue dark into a set of eyes that sparkle wetly and she’s feeling her heartbeat in her throat and the other girl’s heart is just over there beating too and she’s got the rhythm down, she can feel it in the pulse at her temples and she’s been staring a long time now and does this girl even talk?  

“Took you long enough,” Vi throws an elbow over the railing of her bed, trying a little too hard to be casual. It’s unnecessary because it’s still so dark in the room that Cait can’t even make out the devil-may-care expression Vi has awkwardly forced her face into. It’s one she’s borrowing from Mylo, and she immediately regrets it and takes it out on her brother.

“I’ve been awake for days waiting to talk to someone who’s not a nurse or who doesn’t whine as much as Mylo,” She scoffs into it, rolling her eyes. She just doesn’t wanna sound like she feels. Relieved. Cait, for her part, can’t see Vi’s feigned look of indignation. She sees through the tough talk though. She cuts to the chase.

“Your name is Violet,” Cait’s turn to be cool.

“It’s just Vi–”

“I’m Caitlyn. Cait,” as she says her own name Cait realizes Violet… Vi probably already knows it the same way she knows her name. How could she not after all that time in the dark… mingled up like that? Her cool falters for only a second as she adjusts her strategy.

“Are you still in pain?” Her voice is soft and clear, her accent pretty fancy. Vi likes it.

“I’ve had worse,” then, “Yeah. You?”

“Better now, but it was…” Cait’s silhouette moves in a way that Vi recognizes. The eyes are gone and the other girl is looking far away to something no else can see. “I got lost. I was… gone. You,” the eyes return and Vi watches them and listens. “You brought me back.”

Vi’s face goes red hot and Cait can’t see that either, but the hint of the other girl’s heartbeat inside her own flutters tellingly. That makes Cait’s ears flush hot, and now both of them are looking away from the other, hiding what neither is able to see but which is plainly obvious to both. Vi waves it all away. “It wasn’t me. It was the medicine they started using–”

“Yes, but you–Ssssssss! Agh!” Cait moves to sit up more, but a shock of pain jolts through her ribs, keeping her down. She hisses, embarrassed, and worries she’s hurt Vi.

Vi feels it, but her stocking feet are already on the floor. The tile is cold through the holes worn in the heels. Both the pain and Cait are scolding her.

“Violet! Get back into bed!” Cait grips her side where the flareup is cutting them both to the bone.

“I said… it’s… just Vi,” she grunts and she’s padding across the space between them, closing the distance, her hand reaching for her soulmate who reaches for her.

***

The girls are finally together. The invisible line that has connected them since forever is coiled as they lay side-by-side in Cait’s hospital bed. The pre-dawn grey light makes everything a muted opaque shadow they can both just see by. And they’re looking at each other. They’re holding their hands up and lightly touching scars and telling the stories of the scars and saying “ oh!” and “ wow!” and (silently to themselves only) I’m sorry, as they put the pieces together.

Cait is running one finger over the scarred knuckles of Vi’s hand, feeling the misshapen bones lumpy and bulging and all out of place and listening to Vi talk about form and stance and how her “guard needs working,” and Cait is remembering all the days and afternoons and some late nights when her hands would ache and swell and there was no reason why. All her father could do was ice them and tease her to make her smile through the pain.

“There we go, my little fat hands. This will help it feel better.”

And it had been Vi all along. Training with the dummy in the arcade she’s told Cait all about, or just plain brawling with some tough who picked on her kid sister. 

Cait brings her right foot to her raised knee and Vi beholds the scar explaining that time she’d nearly broken her neck. She was leaping from the lip of a rooftop when her own right ankle had been shot through with a crazy pain. Her foot faltered and she barely cleared the gap, smashing chest first into the edge of the other roof and scrambling up with Claggor’s help. There was no sign of injury to her ankle, though it still felt like a spear had been driven straight through it. But in fact, it had been Councilor Heimerdinger’s poro. The little beast’s curved horn had hooked deep and painful into Caitlyn’s leg, drenching her lacy sock with hot blood and upending her mother’s box social entirely.

A lotta what they discover makes them laugh and they both keep to themselves how there’s a leaping going on in their stomachs whenever another invitation comes to touch this scar or that old spot that’s still tender sometimes. But things go grim when Caitlyn starts wondering out loud about a time a few years ago when it had felt like the skin on her chin had been filed off by a lathe and turning, finds Vi’s eyes brimming with tears. In the hazy half light, Cait touches the other girl’s quivering chin and sees the patch of scar there and hears a scrap of the story of how Vi had lost her parents at the bridge in an event Cait has studied in school.

Cait’s hand lingers on Vi’s chin, her thumb gently circling the smooth scar. She looks into the other girl’s eyes: grey as the light surrounding them. She then looks at her lips, set in a slight frown. She brings her hand from the chin to Vi’s cheek and Vi takes it in her own and curls it to her chest and they turn their bodies toward one another. Pressing their foreheads together, they close their eyes and doze off for a little while.

***

The eggheads from the Academy who’ve been hanging around for the last two weeks studying them like bugs under a magnifying glass explain it like this: bonded soulmates are more likely to feel each other’s pain when they’re emotionally or physically stressed out… “to the max,” as Councilor Heimerdinger’s assistant had put it.

“Simple cuts and bruises are unlikely to be felt along the connection. However… the higher the stress on either of their bodies or minds, the more powerfully the connection responds. The explosion was an extreme event that really… cranked it to the max.”  

The man had leaned on his cane as he spoke, addressing the small cadre of white-coated doctors and uniformed academics. Councilor Heimerdinger had glared worriedly at his assistant–Viktor–who had clearly become enamoured of the fascinating fusion of magic and science the soulmate conundrum called for. Viktor removed a small vial of a shining purple liquid from his pocket. Holding this up for all the see, he had continued:

“Our research led us to the conclusion that the injuries sustained by both girls as a result of the explosion created a feedback or “death” loop. There was very little conventional science could do to stop this. However, upon the initiation of chemical treatment using microdoses of this substance, the process was interrupted and, thankfully, reversed. The efficacy of this still-illicit drug in the reversal of the soulmate death loop shows much promise for its application more broadly as a medicine for treating unbonded mortals afflicted with incurable diseases or disabilities. This, ultimately… will be up to the Council. But I would venture to say that Shimmer will be an essential medicine for these girls moving forward, should catastrophic illness or injury visit them again.”

Hearing this, Councilor Heimerdinger had only put his small hand to his chin, shaking his head disapprovingly, saying nothing. The drug, new, untested, and colloquially referred to as “Shimmer,” was undoubtedly effective in ultimately saving the girls’ lives… but what risks does its mainstreaming pose to the Ethos? To the people of Piltover? Not to mention, it had been developed illegally by a disgraced and expelled former student of the Academy Headmaster; someone whom Heimerdinger had no idea Viktor had any connection to until he had shown up with the man and a few vials of his experimental substance.

Just the same, the treatment had worked, saving both lives. And the recovery of both girls had allowed for more thorough examinations of their unique bond. Viktor had become obsessed. Insights include the likelihood that sensations other than pain may be shared along the connection–pain just being a particularly potent conduit; the absolute certainty that no kind of telepathy or mind reading is possible through the soulmate connection–though emotional resonance was likely; and the open question of how this would all play out for these two once they left the hospital and returned to their very different lives.

With one foot in the academic gaggle of pure curiosity, and the other foot firmly in the governance of Piltover, Councilor Heimerdinger was more troubled than he’s been in quite some time. First the appearance of a pair of soulmates. A statistical fluke in violation of the law! Then! The use of an unsanctioned drug in their treatment, and the elevation of the alchemist who had produced it along with the… questionable character that came with him. A man called Silco who no one seemed to know much about but who claimed to hold partial rights to the use and potential study and development of the purple miracle stuff. The yordle was pacing, agitated. Viktor’s lecture was washing over him, and he had suddenly stomped one small foot and pointed an accusing finger up at his assistant.

“What we do not know can still get us into trouble!” 

This outburst had left everyone present confused by its meaning. Cait and Vi are mulling it over later on what will be their last afternoon in the room together. 

“I think the Councilor is worried that we haven’t enough solid information on how the soulmate connection functions to feel comfortable… separating us yet,” a cold silence expands after Cait’s words, and the girls shift, unconsciously moving closer on the narrow bed.

“Bummer,” is all Vi can muster, and she just rests her head on Cait’s shoulder. Cait in turn rests her cheek on the other girl's head, the pink waves of hair tickling under her nose. It’s a few minutes before a friendly voice comes into the room and they both look up, wide-eyed. Caught in the act.

“I’m not sure you girls are meant to be up and about just yet,” Vander raises the device to his chest and peers down into the viewfinder, centering them in the frame.

“We’re not! This is bedrest. No one said which bed we had to rest in. Put that thing away, Vander. You’re being weird.” Vi extends her arm, palm out, a feeble attempt at a screen of privacy between the spying camera and her and Cait.

“Aww, don’t be so shy, kiddo. Caitlyn told me I could borrow it to snap a few pictures before they send you both home,” with this, one thick finger comes to rest over the button and Vander’s smiling eyes come up. He insists, “Say cheese!”

Vi’s hand twists around and her middle finger springs up and Cait turns to her saying her name scolding and Vander pushes the button and the shutter flies open then closes again and the film catches the light and the big thumb turns the crank and an inverse impression of the intimate moment advances on the roll inside the wooden box of Cait’s camera.

***

Vander smiles mischievously at the girls, placing the camera down on the bedside table before turning to leave the room again. In the corridor, he breezes by the group of doctors and academics making their way to the room for another session of poke and prod and postulate before the girls are discharged later today. His shoulders stiffen as his eyes meet Silco’s seeing eye. One hand goes on its own to the gauntlet he wears on his wrist, covering the jagged scar there. 

The men have been successfully ignoring each other. This unexpected reunion isn’t happening in the best time or place to hash out the unresolved business… the bad blood… still between them. Vander doesn’t fully understand what connection Silco has to all of this, only that he’s got something to do with the substance that the doctors started using and which finally seemed to do the trick in bringing both girls out of their comas and putting them on the road to recovery. He knows better than to assume Silco got involved with the alchemist and his little project because he was interested in saving lives. Still… he had saved Vi’s life, and the other girl’s, too. Even if just by association. Vander bristles at the thought. 

Whatever Silco was planning with this alchemist, that’s all been derailed now that the Academy is involved. But Silco is nothing if not ambitious. He’ll leverage this sudden interest in his investment in a way that benefits him. There was a time when he might have used that leverage to benefit The Lanes, instead. But that was a different time… and Silco had been a different man. He’s a stranger now, and not a trustworthy one. As if this whole ordeal weren’t complicated enough! 

Vander shakes his head subtly, but a strange little smile comes to one corner of his mouth. Seeing Silco again has stirred something in his heart, and he can’t help but feel a little glimmer of a forgotten hope that maybe forgiveness–if not reconciliation–might still be possible.

As he turns the corner, Vander throws another look back at the group and finds Silco’s eye on him, too. They share a look before stepping out of sight of the other, back to business.

Chapter Text

Cait is rifling through stacks of photos and maps and notes and Vi is angrily wiping a table and they’re both having a very bad day for no particular reason. They scowl through their distractions and chores and manage no more than begrudging grunts as answer to anything anyone around them says all morning long and they feel plain awful… for no particular reason.  

It’s been three months since they were discharged and six weeks since they were both back on their feet (well… eight weeks for Vi). The threat is long past, even if the legal maelstrom is in full swing. As minors, their involvement in the legal proceedings of their current predicament is limited. Simply put, the Council has cut them out of the proceedings concerning their illegal status as soulmates. It’s mostly been Cassandra and Tobias’ and Vander’s problem and that bothers Caitlyn and it bothers Vi but that’s not what’s bothering either of them today. They just feel off . 

Vi crashes two fistfuls of empty mugs a little too hard into the small copper sink behind the bar of the Last Drop and Cait hears a knock on the door of her bedroom. Turning from the mess on the floor at the foot of her bed, she sees her father’s head poking into the room.

“Are you decent?”

“Come in, dad. I’m just… working on something.” Cait turns back to the mess in front of her, no clear path toward anything worth working on. She holds one photo in two hands that she can’t seem to put down in the right pile.

Vander approaches Vi, who’s staring down into the sink, now full of mugs and jagged shards that used to be mugs. “Something wrong, kiddo?” His big hand is on her shoulder. She only looks up into his eyes, saying nothing. Confusion and irritation and stress are written all over her face though.

Tobias crosses the floor to his daughter and finds her squatting before a wide puddle of pages and scrolls and pictures that she’s half heartedly started to arrange into piles but clearly given up on. The huge map of Piltover is open before her, the notes and strands of yarn from her previous project removed. It’s ready for Cait’s next investigation into her city’s many secrets. Tobias looks again and notices that the map is not completely back to a clean slate. Southwest, across the bridge in the Alcove District, he sees one red X penciled over the easternmost fissure. A starting point for… something. Tobias can probably guess what. He kneels beside his daughter, noticing the photograph she holds.

“You know, work isn’t always the right thing to throw yourself into when you’re having a bad day,” Vander’s hand is on Vi’s shoulder, and with little effort he’s turned her whole body toward him, looking into her troubled grey eyes as he speaks. “I’ve got things taken care of here… Isn't there somewhere you’d rather be?” Vi looks away, embarrassed, ashamed, call it what you want, she’s not feeling herself.

“Where would I even start?” Caitlyn is looking at her father, who is wearing a rare but familiar look of mischief on his face. He’s taken the photo from her hands and he keeps looking at it and he’s clearly lost his mind. 

“At your first lead, I’d say,” Tobias tilts his chin to the map, indicating the single red X.

“I’ve never even been to the Undercity! I know which Fissure but that’s all I know for sure!” Is he really serious right now?

“Just take a walk, alright? Clear your head. See where your feet carry you,” Vander uses his big hand to turn his daughter’s shortstack body 180° and gives her a shove toward the door. One foot falls forward to catch herself and the other takes the next step and she obeys, pushing through the door and out into the cobbled streets of The Lanes. Vander throws a towel over his shoulder and watches her disappear into the rectangle of green daylight. 

Tobias stands at the platform and watches the glass doors pull closed and the tram descend on its steep rail down into The Fissures, his baby girl onboard. He feels a little uncertain about his decision, and Cassandra will be absolutely furious. Looking down, he considers the photograph he’s holding. In it he sees the two girls, just on the other side of as-close-to-death-as-anyone-can-be and still come back. They’re laying side-by-side, comfortable and right in each other’s space as if they hadn't just met for the first time a couple weeks before this picture was taken. Vi holds up her fist, one finger extended, her crude gesture a form of protection from the spying eye of the camera. Caitlyn looks at Vi. Tobias brings the picture close, looking at that look his daughter is giving this other girl. There’s something very familiar in it. An enamoured sort of bemusement that’s about to give way to a scold. It’s the same look Cassandra will give him when she finds out he’s let their daughter go down into the Undercity unsupervised to find her very illegal soulmate.

***

Cait’s hands are starting to ache and swell so she’s pretty sure she’s headed for the right spot just as long as she is headed there. No way to know until she arrives or doesn’t. Based on Vi’s descriptions of the place, Cait has made an educated guess. There’s no detailed maps of the streets of The Lanes, so she has to rely on the kindness of strangers to help her navigate by the handful of landmarks she’s got to work with. She’s not that surprised to find the people of the Undercity more or less willing to help out a lost teen from topside, though it’s only early afternoon. If she were down here in the nighttime, The Lanes might live up to their reputation a little more readily. 

She makes it, and she knows she has because from outside she can hear the powerful whump-whump-whump of punches landing into the thin padding on the training dummy and the clicking of the tiles falling fast to count the hits. Cait stands outside for one second longer, plucking up her courage, then, with sore hands, pushes through the glass door into the arcade.

The air inside is stale and muggy with oniony sweat. Vi is drenched and angry and wailing on the sparring dummy, but the sudden change in air pressure caused by the door opening and closing pulls her out of her trance. She turns her head and sees Cait just as a paddle swoops toward her in facsimile of a left hook. This catches Vi right in the jaw and sends her sprawling to the floor. Cait’s hand goes to the right side of her face, the pain of the blow smarting there. 

“Ouch!” They both say in unison. Vi scrambles to her feet, embarrassed and pissed off.

“What the hell are you doing here? How did you find this place? Do your folks even know that you’re down here?!” She’s not sure which question matters most but she knows none of them is the one she wants to ask. Does this mean…

“My father bought my tram ticket,” Cait flashes a cheeky grin through her sore jaw and holds up the ticket stub between two fingers. “The rest I figured out from what you told me.” She looks pretty proud of herself.

“Ok, well… whaddya want?” Vi is suddenly guarded. She’s happy to see Cait after so long apart but she also doesn’t see the point of it. They’re not friends. They have nothing in common except the magical thread that binds them; and that bond is illegal. If the Council has its way, neither of them will have reason or right to ask anything of the other… and Vander will be on the hook for an awfully huge hospital bill… not to mention the fact that this all happened in the first place because Vi and her siblings were engaged in a crime they still haven’t been made to answer for. One thing at a time.

“Well, I…” Cait is suddenly nervous. Maybe this was a bad idea? Just because the Arcane has made them soulmates doesn’t mean that everything else here in the “real world” conspiring to keep them apart is inconsequential. Was her father wrong to let her come down here? But she’s already come this far. Her doubts aren’t going to stop her now. She presses on. “I came to see you. I… I’ve missed you.” She can’t help but smile and blush, sheepish with the confession.

Vi blushes, too, of course. But not because of the bond. The heat comes to her face all on its own. She’s missed Cait a lot, but has been pushing all thoughts of the girl from the upper city out of her mind as much as possible. Her bad mood today is one consequence of that fruitless exercise. Something in her stomach flutters knowing Cait has been thinking of her as much as she’s been thinking of Cait. But she can’t let herself fall for it. It’s just not gonna work, and there’s no point in getting her hopes up. “You came all the way down here to tell me you miss me? Was that your whole plan?” She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t move toward the other girl. She stands with her fists clenched, a hard look on her face.

“Pretty much,” Cait is undeterred. Something has come over her. Seeing Vi here, in her own space, in her element. She knows exactly what the other girl is trying to do, and she’s not going to play along. “Seems only fair. We spent so much time in the upper city before… well, in the hospital, but still… I wanted to see you. I wanted to see your home.” She smiles again and Vi’s blush goes a deeper red. This makes her angry.

“Alright,” she rushes past Cait to the door, pulling it open and running into the street. “You wanna see my home? I’ll show it to ya.” With this, Vi is off like a shot, darting down the street and pulling herself up a drainpipe. She scrambles deftly up the face of the brick building and soon she’s swinging her leg over the edge of the rooftop. She straddles the lip of the roof and shouts down to Cait, who’s standing in the middle of the street looking up at her. “Try and keep up, Cupcake!” Pushing herself to her feet, she turns and casts one last look over her shoulder at the girl on the street below before stepping onto the roof and making her way to the other side in a full sprint.

Cait’s eyes go wide, then her eyebrows pinch inward and her determination flares. She breaks into a run and leaps, grabbing the same pipe Vi had. Clumsily, she scrabbles her way up the side of the building and pulls herself with some difficulty over the edge of the roof. She lands on her side and rolls away from the edge. Standing, she brushes herself off and notices the other girl watching her from the opposite roof. Their eyes meet, and Vi takes off again. Cait sighs. She blows her mussed hair out of her face, poises herself for a sprint, and takes off toward the opposite edge of the roof she’s standing on, chasing after her soulmate.

***

Vi pushes the door open and Vander watches her go out to “where her feet carry her.” He’s grinning to himself about his lovesick daughter as she disappears into the rectangle of green daylight but the smile drops right off his face when he sees the slender man step over the threshold, the door swinging shut behind him. At the same moment, an old timer slides one copper cog into the jukebox and punches in the code and a mechanical arm reaches for the steel disk. It’s pressed into place and the disc starts to turn and the song starts to play. The drums give way to the soulful guitar and the two men stand looking at each other. 

The old timer turns, moving his arthritic hips in a little dance but then recoils when he recognizes Silco. This catches the attention of a nearby table and soon every voice has stilled and the Last Drop orbits around the standoff happening between its proprietor and the man who, a long time ago, had been the closest person to him in the world.

Bozo one and Bozo two!

The old letter, folded in his breast pocket, burns against his chest. Maybe he’s found it too late. Maybe coming here was a mistake. The instrument track yields to the crooning voice and Silco doesn’t flinch.

There's a girl in town and word's gone around she's just fine
So I don't worry my head 'cause I know her heart is tied to mine
The life that we live and the love that I give to her
Each day it grows more and more I'm sure, it shows

His eyes still on the other man, one big hand edges under the bartop. The fingers hover near the knife hanging there, the handle leaving a film of dust on Vander’s fingertips as he grazes the leather of it. Silco moves, one long stride followed by another. 

Our love, is a bubblin' fountain
Our love, that flows into the sea 
Our love, deeper than any ocean 
Our love, for eternity

Ooh, like someday I'll pray our love will always stay pure
Ooh, when the world turns around, he holds me down for sure

The hand wraps around the skinny neck of the bottle and the other reaches for the metal tumbler. He pours, dropping a few ice cubes in and three drops of bitters. Another tumbler comes up with a flourish and he crams it into the mouth of the first. The heavy fist pounds it in place and both tumblers are pressed tight between the wide palms as Vander shakes and shakes and shakes, then pours Silco’s favorite cocktail into the brass champagne flute. This he sets on the bar just as the man reaches it and places his two hands palms down on either side of it. Neither looks away from the other. For Vander and Silco, the whole world fades away but for the other man there and the song singing to them from the old jukebox and from a thousand scattered memories besides.

And after all (After all)
The rain will fall (Rain will fall)
On us two
But I'll keep movin' on (Movin' on)
But I been strong with you

At last Silco’s seeing eye breaks the gaze, going on its own to the picture affixed to the wall over Vander’s shoulder. It’s been there a long time but the frame and glass are clean. He doesn’t have to look close, he knows every face. But he does. He looks. He really looks at it. 

There are no scars on the young faces and no lines carved where too many scowls and too much anger and too little sleep would someday leave their mark. Vander has no beard and no grey and Silco has two healthy eyes and his smile reaches all the way to both of them. Felicia and Connol are pressed close. The photo was snapped before they were a couple but the signs are all there anyway. They’re all greasy, filthy with grime and dressed in coveralls and so gods damn young!

Our love, is a bubblin' fountain 
Our love, that flows into the sea 
Our love, deeper than any ocean 
Our love, for eternity

Silco’s eye goes to the drink before him, then to Vander, who still watches him, then back to the drink. Two long fingers pinch at the narrow neck of the metal flute and spin it, a groan rising from the brass complaining against the bartop. His lips twist into a sneer then relax, his mind racing. Felicia and Connol and Vander and Silco. Blisters and bedrock. He kept the picture up. It’s still up and I’m still in it. He hasn’t torn me out of it. I’m still there. Silco lifts the drink and waves it under his nose. It smells just right. No one makes this cocktail like the man standing on the other side of the bar. He brings it to his lips and sips and it’s bittersweet, as it should be. Silco drinks it down and returns the empty flute to the bar. Only then does he meet Vander’s gaze once more.

“So there’s a chance for us yet.”

Chapter Text

Ok. If she keeps this up she’s gonna kill both of us.

Telepathy isn’t possible along the soulmate connection, but Vi and Cait are thinking the same thing, anyway. Vi is pushing it, even past her own limits. She’s been running them for nearly an hour, taking them right outta her home Fissure and into the neighboring one. She’s been climbing and leaping and rolling and running, for miles, trying to shake this stubborn Piltie off her tail. But Cait just won’t quit . 

Cait, for her part, is more than ready to quit, except that she refuses to be left in the dust like this. If Vi wants to get rid of her, she’s going to have to face her and say so. She won’t be able to just outrun her, no matter how fast she goes or how high she climbs. Still, Cait is not accustomed to this form of travel, and her body is aching. She’s covered in cuts and bruises, and her feet hurt like hell, as do her hands. But she keeps up with the other girl (just barely), every foul landing rocking Vi almost as bad, slowing her a little, making it a bit easier for Cait to close the distance.

At last Vi can run no farther. She tumbles over the concrete wall and lands hard on the iron catwalk stretching over the polluted spillway. She gets to her feet slowly, sore, breathing hard, and very annoyed. She limps forward, making her way across the little bridge, then standing in the middle of it. She leans heavily on the railing, catching her breath. A minute or two later, Cait comes rolling over the same wall, landing on her face with a “Shit!” and springing up again wiping her now-grimey skirt and vest with both hands before giving up. She looks up and sees Vi and walks directly to her. They stand together over the rushing water until they’ve both caught their breath.

“It’s so colorful!” Cait’s eyes are bright.

“What?” Vi is confused. What’s wrong with this girl?

“The Undercity. I had no idea! There’s so much color! So much life! It’s beautiful in some places!”

Vi can only scoff, rolling her eyes. She throws her hand out, waving it at the filthy water flowing beneath them. “Yeah, real paradise, isn’t it?” There’s a sharp smell of sulphur coming off the rushing water. “City of Farts!”

Cait smiles, then laughs. It’s clear and earnest and Vi blushes which makes her even more annoyed. Will humiliations never cease? How is she gonna get rid of this girl? “Didn’t realize you had a sense of humor.” Maybe just being plain mean will do the trick?

Cait moves another step closer and Vi stands her ground, her fists curling at her side. She opens her mouth to lob another insult but Cait speaks first. “I know what you’re doing,” She’s smiling! The nerve of this topsider!

“What?” Vi plays dumb.

“What you’re doing. I see right through it. You don’t really want me to leave you alone. You want the problem we both have to leave you alone. But I’m not that problem.” Cait’s talking fast now and Vi is a little perplexed. “The soulmate bond is illegal and neither of us asked for this but..” Cait’s eyes look away for a moment, searching for the right words. She looks again at Vi and continues. “...the Arcane chose us. We don’t get a say and that’s not fair but there’s nothing to be done about it. That’s just how it works, it’s what the rules are!” She really thinks she’s got it all figured out, huh? Vi thinks otherwise.

“Doesn’t matter what the rules are, Cupcake. Topside and bottom? You and me? Oil and water. That’s the only rule that matters in this city. Soon as you get that through your head you’ll figure out the rest.” Vi stands stock still, a hard, mean look on her face. Cait moves even closer. She looks… amused? Is this funny to her? She’s moving even closer! She’s smiling! Her pretty blue eyes dart from Vi’s eyes down to her lips and back and several times. She seems to be considering something and then she moves a little bit closer, right in Vi’s face. 

“You’re really cute when you’re pissed off,” with this, she closes the distance and presses her lips to Vi’s.

The other girl goes rigid and for a flash Cait thinks maybe she’s overplayed her hand. But just as fast she feels the lips part just a little, accepting her kiss. This is not a first for either of them. There’s half a dozen upper city girls that Cait’s mom would have been more than happy to have found her daughter kissing if only Cait would bring them through the front door instead of through her bedroom window. Vi’s got better things to do than flirt but she’s also going through puberty and when the opportunity to smooch a pretty thing has presented itself (once or twice, here and there) she’s compelled to meet the moment.

But neither of them have had a kiss quite like this one. It’s not anything crazy. Their hands stay at their sides and their mouths stay mostly closed and it's halting and rife with inexperience but there’s something to it. Neither of them have the words for it. It’s like the opposite of the death loop. They linger in it for a while, the sound of the rushing water filling their ears. Eventually, the kiss ends and they stand very close just looking at each other. Vi’s not smiling but her face has softened and with one wrapped hand she reaches for Cait’s and holds it gently, stroking the knuckles with her thumb. They press their foreheads together but the tender moment is interrupted when both their stomachs loudly groan, squawking like angry geese from hunger caused by any hour of intense parkour. They laugh, their cheeks flushing red.

“You worked up an appetite for the both of us,” Cait waggles the hand Vi holds, teasing. Vi gets an idea.

“Welcome to The Lanes, Cait! To cap off your tour, let me show you one of our finest establishments,” Vi turns and, pulling Cait’s hand, drags her for the first time (but not the last) to Jericho’s for lunch.

***

“Enough is enough! Why are we even entertaining this? The law is well established. Just because it’s never applied until now doesn’t make it any less the law! ” Councilor Salo is very annoyed, not to mention bored with this now. These troublesome children and their illicit little bond have been eating up meeting time reserved for regular business for months now. It’s time to face facts and move on. “This is extortion, plain and simple! It makes no difference that Councilor Kiramman and her husband consent to it! The law forbids this! And this Council is bound to uphold the law! The Ethos! Or am I the only one who hasn’t forgotten that?”

“Now, now, Councilor,” Heimerdinger’s voice is measured. “I don’t think it wise to discount the feelings of the Kirammans in this matter. The law against soulmates is preventative, not punitive. If the Kirammans wish to waive their right to disregard the soulmate bond between their daughter and the young lady from the Undercity, then surely they have the right to associate with whomever they choose, and however they like!” To his right, Councilors Shoola and Medarda nod in subtle agreement. 

Hoskel is not convinced. “And what sort of precedent does that set? A sitting member of the Council of Piltover disregarding one of the city’s oldest laws and providing patronage and financial backing to a pack of Undercity orphans and their radical activist guardian?! How long before bottomsiders decide fraud is the easiest road to such a cushy arrangement? We’ve seen their ingenuity over the years! Surely someone down there will figure a way to fake the soulmate bond once it becomes lucrative enough to do so!” Councilor Hoskel huffs his conspiracy at the assembly, and the gallery audience reacts, a loud murmur of speculation passing through the hundreds of people present to witness today’s business.

At the edge of the crowd, Vander and Tobias stand together. They’ve been compelled to be present for these meetings for months, but rarely get the opportunity to speak on their own behalf. Instead, they rely on Cassandra to represent their positions–and her own–from her seat at the table. This is technically a conflict of interest, though the matter is already so complicated that Salo’s initial objection, calling into question Councilor Kiramman’s objectivity, went overruled by the rest of the Council. Nevertheless, Cassandra has to choose her moments wisely, lest she be seen increasingly as more concerned with her own interests than with her duty to the Ethos. She chooses this moment now.

“All due respect, Councilor Hoskel, but the 12 weeks I spent at my daughter’s bedside have more than convinced me of both the validity and urgency of the soulmate bond that she shares with Violet. It has also left me absolutely certain that no such bond could ever be faked.” Another murmur of gossip and assent from the assembly. “My husband and his team worked tirelessly to bring those girls back from the brink of death. They are talented, capable doctors, but they were powerless to stop the death loop the soulmate bond initiated. It was only through the intervention provided by former Academy alchemist Reveck and Mr. Silco–using an illicit substance no less–that the process was interrupted and reversed, and the girls’ lives spared. There is simply no faking something like that, no matter how much ingenuity a potential con man may have.” 

Hoskel only scoffs, crossing his short arms and biting the inside of his cheek, irritated and embarrassed. But Councilor Kiramman isn’t finished yet. “Quite frankly I’ve grown weary of this Council’s refusal to be flexible, or to entertain the possibility that the law we’ve been discussing for several months now may just be a bad one!” An audible gasp from the gallery audience and Councilors Salo and Hoskel, too. Questioning the laws–the Etho–is not forbidden, but it is very taboo. Cassandra, once preoccupied with avoiding such taboos, has grown a bit these past several months. 

“I have made it plain that the Kiramman estate will bind itself to the family of Mr. Vander, offering patronage and sponsorship to any of his children who wish to attend the Academy or access other opportunities not available to them in the Undercity. I have made it clear, also, that this is not the result of coercion on the part of Mr. Vander or Violet. It is something my husband and I have discussed at length and have every right to do.”

A mechanical gurgling gives way to Councilor Bolbek’s uncanny voice. “The Kiramman estate has every right to enter contracts of formal patronage with whomever the matron deems fit. The restrictions of this law may be easily bypassed in this way. However, I am concerned about the role the former Academy alchemist and his partner have come to play. It seems we have stumbled by accident on something potentially very dangerous that has been brewing in The Lanes. I wonder if this event hasn’t uncovered a very serious threat in the substance known as Shimmer?”

All eyes go to the thin man from The Fissures and the even thinner disgraced Academy alchemist standing beside him. Behind them stands Viktor, who has been attached to the duo since their partnership began while he worked as liaison with the medical team that had used Shimmer to save the girls from the death loop. All three have also been compelled to be present in the Council chamber until a decision can be made about the fate of the development and use of the wonder drug, the formula for which Silco and Reveck control. 

It turns Silco’s stomach just being here in this pit of snakes. Councilor Bolbek is very perceptive in his estimation that Silco and Singed were poised to do a great deal of damage in unleashing Shimmer in the Undercity. But circumstances have changed, and not necessarily for the worst. Viktor’s unexpected appearance, his need for the miracle drug, the fact that it had worked… That it had saved the life of Cassandra Kiramman’s own daughter… Silco has every intention to seize this opportunity, this audience, and the leverage he has as result of his claim to Shimmer. For the first time in so many years, Silco is feeling something familiar. Something he’d thought he’d long lost… even killed in himself. But there it is, glowing dim as ember at the center of his wounded heart. Hope for Zaun.

“Councilors,” his voice comes cool and calm. “We may have conducted our work in secret and outside the law, but that’s only because the upper city and the Academy have placed restrictions. Denied the Undercity the tools we need to develop our own medicines. The upper city withholds robust services and resources. We must make do.”

“Are we to believe that you developed Shimmer with the intention of using it as a medicine for the people of the Undercity?” Councilor Shoola sounds a little incredulous but she offers the question in good faith.

“Councilor,” Silco is prepared. “It really doesn’t matter what our intentions were. Our reasons for making Shimmer are moot. Its efficacy has been proven. The Academy has taken an interest. What matters is what you, the so-called leaders of this city will choose to do with this opportunity. Shimmer shows great promise. Even in its current form. A substance that was made with scrap materials on a shoestring budget. Imagine what could be possible if the city of progress lived up to its name. Invested for once in something produced in The Fissures besides ore and labor.” An audible gasp from the gallery audience at this audacious if well-measured stab at the upper city’s history of exploitation.

“Hmmm…” Councilor Heimerdinger’s nasally voice chimes it. “We’re getting sidetracked here. The matter on the table is that of the soulmate bond and whether the Kiramman’s shall be permitted to proceed with their formal contract with the family of their daughter’s soulmate. Let us return to that now. More time is needed… more study, more experimentation… before this Council will have the proper data to make a decision about the future of Shimmer in this city.”

A mumble of agreement around the gear-shaped table sets the meeting back on track. Silco fades into the audience once more, a sly smile curling on his thin lips. Live to fight another day! Behind him, Viktor smiles, too.

Heimerdinger proceeds. “It is my opinion that an adequate argument has been made in favor of allowing the Kiramman estate to sidestep the prohibitions of the law and enter into formal contract with Mr. Vander and his family. If we are in agreement, may we put that matter to rest at last?” Six hands go up, six spotlights shining on six of the most powerful people of Piltover. Hoskel votes with Mel. Salo abstains, rolling his eyes. But his vote is not needed. A simple majority is enough and the Kirammans are free to associate formally with whomever they choose.

“That being said,” Councilor Heimerdinger is realizing something. “When this law was put into place 150 years ago, this Council believed it was doing something to protect the people of this city. It seemed an easy way to reassure the citizens that the Arcane has no power here where science and ingenuity reign! Alas, we were too hasty and too arrogant by far! I fear Councilor Kiramman may be right in her indictment of this as a ‘bad law,’ and Councilor Shoola said it best months ago when this all began: ‘ We must acknowledge that there are factors in this world simply out of the control of mortal will and mortal laws.’ Well, I move that we acknowledge this now. This law has done no one any good. It kneecapped scientific research for almost two centuries and it almost cost two young girls their lives. Let us strike this law from our Ethos, even if it means ceding this bit of ground to the Arcane.”

A little slower this time, but seven hands go up, Salo’s among them. He knows when the time has come to go along to get along (though he’s rolling his eyes again). Seven spotlights beam down, and just like that, it’s no longer illegal to be soulmates in Piltover.

“And as to the matter of the robbery that precipitated this whole ordeal,” Councilor Kiramman takes control. “I believe that matter to be closed as well. The fault lay with Jayce Talis, who has already been stripped of his position at the Academy and remanded into the care of his mother. Whatever magical elements he was unwisely tinkering with have been destroyed along with his notes and research. There is no further threat, and I believe the actions of Violet and her siblings that day to be the result of…” here Cassandra is making some concessions, and struggling to go through with something a Cassandra from only a few months ago would never have even considered. “...the result of immaturity and youthful recklessness. Their exploits were nearly fatal. I think everyone involved has been punished quite thoroughly. My husband and I have no desire to pursue further charges relating to the destruction of our property or the attempted theft.”

No one puts up a fight. The matter of the soulmates and robbery and the magical explosion has been dragging on for months and, this close to the finish line, no one is willing to throw a wrench into Councilor Kiramman’s attempt to wrap it up. She makes the motion, Heimerdinger seconds, and all hands go up. At last, the Council, and all of Piltover, can move on to other business.

A little later, Viktor is with Silco and Reveck. The three men are making their way down the many stairs from the Capitol Dome atop the Academy back to the ground floor when they’re waylaid by a honeyed voice.

“Gentlemen,” Councilor Mel Medarda has appeared from around a corner, seemingly out of thin air. She stands before them, her hands folded in front of her, a subtle but warm smile on her lips. “Do you have a moment?”

Silco and Reveck share a look. Viktor demures. Silco speaks for them. “We’re headed back to the Undercity, Councilor Medarda. Until the Council makes its decision… that is… your decision about our reward or punishment for saving those girls, being seen with us is a risk for you, I think.”

“I recognize that any worthwhile venture involves risk,” the young woman is entirely unfazed and Silco is impressed. “I’m very intrigued and quite moved by your candor today, Mr. Silco. Calling out the Council of Piltover for its failures in providing equal opportunity and adequate resources for the people of the Alcove District… very courageous… and quite correct.” 

The woman seems genuine, but Silco’s guard is up. His seeing eye narrows as he speaks. “You're interested in what The Fissures can do for you?”

“My interest is in you, Mr. Silco. In all three of you,” she looks now to Reveck and Viktor, then back to the businessman before her. “The Council has long been aware of the talent that languishes in poverty across the bridge. Now, Shimmer provides an opportunity for the people of your district to make their own terms.” Silco can hardly believe his ears. This woman is clearly shrewd and most certainly has her own reasons for approaching them about this, but he can also tell that she means what she says. This makes what she says next that much more shocking.

“Perhaps it’s time for the era of the Undercity.”

“Of Zaun,” Silco corrects, daring to hope. “The era of Zaun.”

***

It’s just past 1PM and the Councilor is in his office when a metallic clunk reaches him and he looks up from the piles of pages and scrolls on his desk to see the brass canister angled in its receiving port, having just dropped from the pneumatic tube connecting this room to the citywide network. He stands, stretching, then moves to the opposite wall to collect the message. The tube is embossed with a mug, a single drop suspended over the mouth of it. He unscrews the lid and tugs the paper loose, unfurling it. His eye darts over the words before he hurries from the room, dropping the message as he reaches for the door on his way to find his fellow Councilor.

The page swings on the burst of air kicked up by the heavy door opening then closing. It swirls in a loop then comes to rest on the marble floor of the office. On it, a message written by a hurried hand:

Silco,
Girls in death loop.
Only two draughts on hand.
Get Vik, meet at the ward.
BB,
-Vander

Chapter Text

She sits slumped over at the center of the iron catwalk, maybe for the last time. The darkness has her, and her heartbeat is a thready, fragile thing. Along the line connecting them, Vi’s heart is struggling, too. But she’s still on her feet, hard as it is to stay upright and she’s there, she’s right there. The catwalk jiggles and groans under her staggering steps and she reaches Cait, falling to her knees sick and dying right behind her. 

There’s no time. There’s less than no time. Both hands fumble inside every pocket and finally come back with the little flask and she tears the cork out with her teeth and, kneeling behind Cait, she tilts her soulmate’s chin up, her head falling back and the Shimmer draught trickles through the bleeding lips into the parched mouth and down the swollen throat and that’s all Vi can manage before the darkness takes her, too. The flask clatters to the platform and rolls over the side, swallowed by the clear running waters below.

Cait and Vi sit slumped at the center of the catwalk. From a distance one might mistake them for a pair of lovers just holding each other close, enjoying a bright afternoon over the spillway. Along the line that binds them their heartbeats pulse and rattle and then go still.

***

Just the dark. Not suspended but sinking like stones, like anchors cut loose. A spark of something strong, sour, purples through the void. But it’s not quite enough and they go sinking deeper. Outside of it, at the edge of what remains of sensory perception, something like a big pair of hands on one of them, and slender, cold hands on the other. Right under the armpits, a really sensitive area. There’s a voice, too. Distant, so far away. But familiar. It’s saying something. Only one word gets through and only to one of them. Sprout… All this, the hands, the voice, the word, and that jagged line of purple slows the descent just a little. Just enough. Just in time.

***

“Am… I… interr… upting?” The words come wrapped in a gruff accent spat with great effort between gasping breaths. 

“What the hell is y– oh! Um… are you ok, sir?” Jayce turns to find an old man, quite fat, leaning heavily on the doorframe. His face is bright red and wet with sweat and he’s breathing pretty hard. One hand is clutched to his side and the other is still reaching out to Jayce where he stands at the edge of the blasted out apartment. Jayce rushes toward the stranger, his suicidal mood suddenly derailed by the apparent asthma attack of this unannounced stranger. Jayce grabs a chair and slides it forward, pointing down into the seat with both hands, “Please, sit down. Catch your breath. It’s a lot of stairs, I know.”

“Aye, yer right about that. Don’t come topside of’n. Buildin’s climb a lot higher this side-a the bridge. Air’s a fair bit cleaner though,” the old man takes a deep breath, then another and settles with a loud groan into the chair. “Thank ya, lad. Sorry t’ave barged in on ya. Name’s Benzo. I came ta… uh, well I came ta apologize… but I seem t’ave stumbled into somethin’ erm… sensitive.”

Both men look away from the other. Shame and embarrassment roll in Jayce’s chest. Sympathy (and a slight arrhythmia) in Benzo’s. The old timer doesn’t let the moment go on too long. “Listen, I know that uh… that losin’ somethin’ ya worked real hard fer can feel just like dyin’.” Jayce turns, looking at the man. A pair of warm, knowing, old eyes, behind two tiny round lenses, find Jayce’s brown eyes, still wet with fearful tears. He holds his gaze and it feels like one of his mother’s hugs. 

“Believe me when I tell ya, life’s long, if yer lucky. But death’ll come fer ya all on its own. I’ve seen it take too many still in their prime, still young…” Jayce sees in Benzo’s eyes a deep well of loss. The old man continues. “I’d hate fer ya to do death’s job for ‘im on accounta my, erm… well… Ya see it’s my fault those rascals came here ta loot yer place that day. I’ve got this… well he’s sorta my… well anyway ya met him an’ he followed ya back here an’ then he told Vi n’ em where ta find ya and that’s how this whole mess got kicked off an’, well…” Benzo sighs, his big eyebrows high over his friendly, tired eyes. He shrugs, giving Jayce a look that says kids!  

Two eyebrows pinch in, furrowing the young man’s brow as he recalls the kid who sold him the box of gizmos at the cramped shop down in the Undercity all those months ago. White hair, brown face. Jayce had paid him in gold. “Did you remember to haggle?” Caitlyn had asked him later in the hall while trailing behind him, the box of curios slowing her down. Then the door to the lab wouldn’t open… then the explosion… then Cait crumpled, bleeding… Jayce hadn’t known if she was alive or dead; he'd just run as fast as he could, carrying her skinny little body all the way to the hospital. It was hours later that the doctors put the pieces together and wheeled the other girl into the room and everything had gotten even more complicated. The end of his dream and nearly the end of Cait’s life. Jayce looks away from the soft eyes of the stranger and back to the ragged hole in the far wall. It opens to a void, hazy with the amber light of the gas lamps on the street below.

“I’m sorry ya lost yer work. I dunno know the details of it but I know what a man looks like when he’s lost the thing that means the most to ‘im in the world and that’s all over your face, lad. An’ I’m sorry.” Jayce closes his eyes, clenching his fists, thinking about the ledge, just a few steps away, the fall beyond it, just a few seconds and then–

“Erm, well,” the wooden chair screeches loudly against the stone floor as the old man slowly stands. “Listen ehm… since Ekko’s gone off to the Academy I haven’t had the help I need an’ I… well I know it’s not a lot to a son of an established house, an’ I’m sure ya’ve got plenty other options open to ya–not the least yer family’s business–but I eh… Well… I feel like I owe ya an’… it’s not just a pawn shop ya know there’s a machine shop too an’ plenty to tinker with, tho it’s not the Academy by a long shot but I…” Benzo is struggling to say what Jayce knows and can’t believe he’s offering. It seems silly, but it’s better than the alternative. Making hammers for the rest of his life, or… Jayce looks once more at the blasted out wall and the jagged lip of the floor spilling into the other other alternative. He turns and takes the old man’s hand in his, shaking it firmly.

“I’ll come work with you, Mr. Benzo,” he says and he feels something almost like relief. “What have I got to lose?”

***

The first time this had happened was bad. Bad in every way a thing can be bad. It had led to twelve weeks in the hospital and months more of legal fallout and the whole damn shape of Piltover had changed as a result. A lot of what came after had been good. Good for the girls and their families, good for the city, good for its people, in the end. It had been a tragedy, then a spectacle, then a tiny revolution. Then things calmed down and the pace of life resumed and sure, things were changing until things were different, but everyone got back to business and life went on.

The second time it happened it was just bad. Ugly. The poison–an offshoot of Shimmer brewed up in back alleys by would-be Barons of The Lanes’ dwindling underbelly–resisted the Shimmer draughts and drips that had been so effective the first time. The death loop had pulled Cait and Vi pretty deep by the time Loris and Steb had found them. An analogue of the bone-deep cut on Cait’s arm had even opened up on Vi’s. They were both bleeding and their hearts had stopped when the Enforcers reached them. They’d followed Jayce’s lead to the place he said he was sure they’d be: the place Cait had told him about, where she’d had her first kiss with her soulmate. Sergeant Loris and Lieutenant Steb had lifted their dying bodies and carried them with all haste out of the Undercity, across the bridge, to the hospital ward where the doctors and nurses with the specialized training in caring for soulmates were prepping for their emergency arrival. 

Jayce stays with them until everyone else arrives. Behind a closed door, the doctors are working to stabilize the young women enough to buy time for Councilor Viktor and Provost Reveck to arrive. Outside, a huge group of people intermingle, checking in and reassuring and grabbing a cup of coffee for and so on and so on until finally, after a few hours, Tobias appears to say that Cait and Vi are stable but not out of the woods yet.

Cassandra crosses to him from her seat next to Vander and Councilor Silco. Her husband pulls her into a hug, promising her, reminding her, of how strong their girls are, of how they will fight. Claggor, spiffy in his Academy uniform, has a hand on Mylo’s shoulder and Mylo is failing to hide his trembling lip and watering eyes. Powder and Ekko, also wearing the blue and gold vests of the Academy uniform, sit with Jayce next to Benzo. The old man is reassuring the three of them that these girls will make quick work of this little matter. “They’re fightn’ fer each other. They made it back seven years ago an’ they’ll make it back now.” Jayce nods his head, reassured by his mentor’s words, needing to believe that he reached them in time. Powder leans into Ekko, who wraps an arm around her shoulders.

The first four weeks are touch and go. Cait–directly poisoned–requires a full blood transfusion within the first 24 hours. Jayce–a universal donor–provides as much as he safely can. Working directly with Tobias and his team, Viktor and Reveck continue the original regime of Shimmer microdoses while they concoct a more aggressive formula and a new treatment plan to implement it once it’s ready. Under orders from the Sheriff, Captain Marcus goes down into the Undercity with Steb and Loris to follow up on Cait’s lead. They bust up the little operation producing the foul stuff, collaring the aspiring crime lord funding the alchemists. Smeech goes to Stillwater, and the little strike team brings back a critical sample of the off-brand Shimmer toxin needed to devise an effective antidote. This buys some time, but without a more potent Shimmer treatment, the soulmates are still spiraling. The death loop is in full force, greedily trying to claim one or both of them. 

The large family keeps watch at Cait and Vi’s bedsides in shifts, maintaining a round-the-clock vigil. Powder and Ekko read to them, while Cassandra and Vander update them on the business of the day, talking to the unconscious pair as if they can hear every word. Mylo tries and fails to maintain his cool, and Claggor teases him, dishing to Cait and Vi about Mylo’s latest failures to talk to Gert. Jayce and Benzo take turns managing the shop and one day Jayce arrives with a device he’s designed. His eyes are wide with lack of sleep, and he’s demanding to see Viktor and Reveck.

“Please! Let me talk to them! I think I can help!” Tobias relents when Cassandra nods her consent and Jayce is brought to the lab where the Councilor and the alchemist have been working tirelessly for a solution. Jayce enters the room, his invention clutched in his gloved hands held against his grease-stained apron.

“I have a theory,” and the door closes behind him.

***

Down in the dark it’s cold and it’s quiet. They float, then sink, then reach for one another and float again. The weak rhythms of their dual heartbeats struggle but carry on. They’re stubborn and they’re fighting, but the poison, the bond, the death loop… it’s so much more aggressive than they had suffered the first time. They’re not conscious, nor are they unaware. Powder’s and Ekko’s voices reach them, reading from novels, books of poetry, academic texts. Cassandra and Vander’s words help them track the time. Mylo and Claggor bring something like laughter to a place where nothing like that exists. 

They hold to each other, the heartbeats their lifeline to the other. But there are no words. Just the dark, and the pain. Searing this time. The poison had been caustic, and every nerve and bone and vein is scorched and blistered and the healing can’t start until the death loop is interrupted. So the pain is what they experience the most, when experience is possible at all. Every now and then, a wan purple jolt offers a little buoyancy, but it’s not enough to reach the surface. Not even close. The effect gets weaker, then ceases to lift them at all. Soon, they’re sinking. Only sinking. Slowly at first, then in freefall. 

Voiceless, bodiless, they scream wordlessly down. The dark somehow gets darker. The cold and the pain are eternal sensations. The only truth. The voices of their family fade, then vanish. There’s just the thready heartbeats, side-by-side, sinking ever faster, fading. Then…

A shock of purple, then gold. Strong, potent. Following this: a weak crackling of blue arcing, then exploding into a blinding azure. This happens several times. The shock, the crackling, then the incendiary blue. The first iteration slows their descent. The next stops it. The third holds them in place. More come, a steady pulse beat. Purple then gold then blue. It goes on and on. There’s no sense of time but eventually the voices return, as if they’d never left. Powder reads an old story about a knight and a prince. Mylo brags that he’s just being strategic… choosing the right moment to make his move. Vander runs through the inventory, asking Vi to remind him to double the order at the end of next month in preparation for the party. Cassandra holds Cait’s hand in hers until… Cait feels it. She feels her mother’s hand. With everything she has, from just beneath the surface now, she struggles and she tries and then she does… she squeezes her mother’s hand.

***

This time Cait wakes first. Her mother is there holding her hand as she stirs, then opens her eyes. The pain holds her down but she manages to turn her head and meet her mother’s eyes. The effort takes everything she has and she falls again into a deep sleep, right at the surface. She floats and finds the other heartbeat and holds fast, not letting go. 

She opens her eyes again the next morning and stays awake nearly five minutes, managing a smile to reassure Cassandra. That night she wakes again and speaks to Jayce who’s sitting by her bed this time. 

“...hurts,” she says and he squeezes her hand gently.

“I know, Sprout. I’m sorry,” and Cait is out again.

The colorful pattern carries on and the following morning Cait wakes again. The pain is with her but she’s feeling stronger somehow and she struggles against the tubes and wires attached to her arms and chest and forehead.

“Whoa, easy there, Sergeant long legs. You’re part machine right now, try not to damage the hardware!” Powder’s voice comes teasingly to Cait’s ear, and she stills, noticing for the first time the bright blue light throbbing at the center of the room. With great effort she turns her head and sees it. A series of twisting tubes feed into a cylindrical chamber. Inside, several blue shards dance and glow in the current running through them. A ring of cymbal crashing monkeys circle the bottom of the cylinder. Purple Shimmer flows into one end. The gem shards warp and flex bizarrely under its influence. It comes out the other end gold. Purified by the Hex crucible, this substance splits along two tubes, feeding through the needles in Cait and Vi’s arms. Cait doesn’t understand what she’s seeing. Powder explains.

“Jayce designed it. Me and Ekko helped a little, obviously. Pretty clever, right? ‘Course it’ll probably cost him since he used illegal tech the Council thought they destroyed ages ago! Oh well! Lucky for you and Vi he’s such a sneak!” Cait manages one half of a smile before dropping again into the dark.

***

This time Cait is up first. Sitting up, then talking, then on her feet though that’s strictly forbidden. She doesn’t care. She holds the tubes and wires carefully in hand and crawls into Vi’s bed and wraps herself around her soulmate and whispers to her that it’s time to come back. It takes a few hours and one or two chaste smooches but at last, Vi opens one grey eye and then the other to find Cait snuggled close. Cait smiles, her parted teeth showing. “Took you long enough,” and she kisses Vi’s chapped and smiling lips.

***

Gert spins a record between her palms before laying it on the turntable and dropping the needle. The music fades in and Mylo and Claggor sit with Ekko watching as Cait holds Vi from behind, snorting loud kisses into her cheek and neck while the siblings throw peanuts and blow raspberries at the couple. 

“Booooooo!” Mylo launches a whole handful of shelled nuts across the table and they scatter against the couple. “No PDA at the party!”

“Can’t I just come and check on my soulmate in peace?” Cait is grinning as another peanut arcs toward her, bouncing off her chin.

“Leave her alone, guys. She can’t resist all of this. ” Vi moves her body in a serpentine fashion closing her eyes with an expression of exaggerated self-confidence.

“Ewww, Vi!” More peanuts.

Behind the bar, Vander and Silco watch the teasing, sharing a knowing look with Benzo, who sits beside Jayce. The younger man is watching Cait and Vi with obvious relief.

“Well if the kids’r back to lobbin’ peanuts at each other an’ teasing I’d say the girls ‘r outta the woods fer sure this time.” Benzo claps Jayce on the shoulder, the big hand then resting there giving a warm squeeze. “Thanks to you, lad. It’s yer magic tinkerin’ that saved ‘em this time. Funny, that!” 

Jayce nods, but looks nervous. “It was a hunch. I was lucky I had those shards but… It wasn’t exactly legal that I kept them. And it definitely wasn’t legal to use them to build the machine to refine the Shimmer.” He takes a deep drink from the mug he holds. He doesn’t mention the help Ekko and Powder provided in developing the illicit device, not wanting to get them into trouble with him.

“Oh, there may be hope for you,” Silco’s voice slides across the bar. He stands by Vander, one hand on his wide shoulder. Vander is mixing his favorite cocktail. He pours it into a brass champagne flute and hands it to Silco, who takes a drink. “Your experiments with magic have yielded… mixed results. But the Council isn’t what it was seven years ago. It’s more… open minded. Flexible even.” He takes another drink then turns his eye to Jayce. “This Council understands one of its greatest powers is the power to forgive. And to offer a second chance to those who deserve it.” Silco smiles up at Vander, who smiles warmly back.

At the table, peanuts and insults are flying. Cait is peppering Vi’s face with loud smooches and Mylo and Claggor are complaining. Finally, Vi turns to Ekko. “Hey, where’s Powder?”

“Not sure,” he looks a little sheepish, and he’s blushing. “She said something about making an entrance.”

“She does love a spectacle,” Cait says, ribbing Ekko and Vi pulls her by the waist into her lap.

“That’s my sister you’re talking about.”

“So you know better than anyone!”

The music fades out and the lights go dim. Pinpricks of colorful light begin to spin as spotlights find the rotating mirror balls hanging from the rafters. An electronic melody fades in as something whips across the ceiling, whistling loudly. It crashes into a sign that, until now, had been hanging unnoticed overhead. The sign illuminates in bright neon colors: INNOVATORS COMPETITION as the dancy music punches up. All eyes turn to the door to find Powder standing confidently in a white dress, her eyes on Ekko who rises from the table and almost floats to her. 

Gert cranks the volume. The crowd parts around them and they begin to dance. The two young Academy prodigies only have eyes for each other as they move together to the beat. Ekko offers a hand and Powder takes it and they spin and twirl to the music. At the table, Claggor is watching Mylo who is watching Gert at the DJ booth. In her chair, Vi sways, Cait in her lap. She wraps her arms around her soulmate, squeezing tight, holding her close. She presses an ear to Cait’s back and hears her heartbeat, strong and regular. It beats in time with her own. Together they watch the dance. 

Ekko smiles as Powder spins into him, then away. The two move with harmonious steps, their eyes locked. Time seems to slow, allowing them to indulge in every lingering second. Vi smiles, Cait, too as they watch Powder and Ekko–soulmates of a different kind–move closer under the sparkling lights.